The doctor burst into angry laughter. “Digby’s Sympathetic Powder! It’s useless! It’s worse than useless! There hasn’t been a reputable physician use it for pretty near a hundred years.”

“Is that so?” Doc said. “Well, you’d be surprised, the results I’ve got with it! It never did nobody no harm, and that’s more’n regular doctors can say for most of their drugs and powders.”

The other looked at him haughtily, but changed the subject. “What system do you use for reviving drowned persons?”

“It depends,” Doc said. “It depends how old they are, and whether they’re male or female.”

“In what way does it?” the doctor asked.

“If they’re male and young,” Doc said, “I hang ’em to the side of a house, by the feet, and bend ’em up from the waist a few times. That dreens ’em out. If they’re old, I lay ’em over the edge of a bed, if I got one.”

“Good God!” the doctor cried. “The suspension method! Why, it’s no better than murder, especially if the body’s been under water more than an hour.”

“According to my experience,” Doc said, “anything or anybody that’s been under water more than an hour, excepting of a fish, I’d let alone on account such few results could be expected.”

The doctor stared incredulously from Doc to the rest of us, and then back to Doc again. “Do you mean to stand there and tell me,” he whispered, “that the judgment of the greatest physicians in Europe—the judgment of Réaumur, Stoll, Murray, Cullen—is inferior to your own? Do you mean to tell me you’ve never heard of the marvelous cures effected by blowing smoke up into the insides of persons who have been under water for five hours—yes, for an entire day and more?”

“Down our way,” Doc said mildly, “people drowned over an hour don’t get well. It may be their own fault, but my opinion is, it’s ordained; and all them judgments of Mary Cullen and all them Europe doctors you talk about wouldn’t give satisfaction to them or their relations either, except if they happened to be kin to the undertaker.”

The official medical man, already crimson with indignation, looked dangerous. “May I ask,” he said, “whether you ever heard of the Humane Society of London? Of course you haven’t! You’re not aware that the Humane Society of London has denounced the suspension method! The Humane Society of London recommends the injection of smoke, tickling with feathers, scorching the cuticle and putting the fingers and toes out of joint. I give you the information, but no more trust you to execute such recommendations than I would trust a tadpole to prescribe for General Washington! If I hear of your attempting to practice medicine or surgery in this camp—–”