“You’d better send for the doctor,” urged the lady.

“No.  I’ll wait until the morning, and then, if he’s no better, or should be worse, I’ll call in our physician.  Children often appear very sick one hour, and are comparatively well again in the next.”

“It’s a great risk,” said the lady, gravely.  “A very great risk.  I called in the doctor the moment my dear little Eddy began to droop about.  And it’s well I did.  He’s near death’s door as it is; and without medical aid I would certainly have lost him before this.  He’s only been sick a week, and you know yourself how low he is reduced.  Where do you think he would have been without medicine?  The disease has taken a terrible hold of him.  Why, the doctor has bled him twice; and his little chest is raw all over from a blister.  He has been cupped and leeched.  We have had mustard plasters upon his arms and the calves of his legs.  I don’t know how many grains of calomel he has taken; and it has salivated him dreadfully.  Oh! such a sore mouth!  Poor child!  He suffers dreadfully.  Besides, he has taken some kind of powder almost every hour.  They are dreadfully nauseous; and we have to hold him, every time, and pour them down his throat.  Oh, dear!  It makes my heart sick.  Now, with all this, the disease hangs on almost as bad as ever.  Suppose we hadn’t sent for the doctor at first?  Can’t you see what would have been the consequence?  It is very wrong to put off calling in a physician upon the first symptoms of a disease.”

“Pardon me, Mrs. Lee, for saying so,” was my reply, “but I cannot help thinking that, if you had not called the doctor, your child would have been quite well to-day.”

Mrs. Lee—­that was the lady’s name—­uttered an exclamation of surprise and disapproval of my remark.

“But, cannot you see, yourself; that it is not the disease that has reduced your child so low.  The bleeding, blistering, cupping, leeching, and calomel administrations, would have done all this, had your child been perfectly well when it went into the doctor’s hands.”

“But the disease would have killed him inevitably.  If it requires all this to break it, don’t you see that it must have taken a most fatal hold on the poor child’s system.”

“No, Mrs. Lee, I cannot see any such thing,” was my reply.  “The medicine probably fixed the disease, that would, if left alone, have retired of itself.  What does the doctor say ails the child?”

“He does not seem to know.  There seems to be a complication of diseases.”

“Produced by the treatment, no doubt.  If there had been scarlet fever, or small pox, or croup, active and energetic treatment would, probably, have been required, and the doctor would have known what he was about in administering his remedies.  But, in a slight indisposition, like that from which your child suffered, it is, in my opinion, always better to give no medicine for a time.  Drugs thrown into the tender system of a child, will always produce disease of some kind, more or less severe; and where slight disorders already exist, they are apt to give them a dangerous hold upon the body, or, uniting with them, cause a most serious, and, at times, fatal illness.”