“Nothing of the sort!” Doc cried. “They got to be doctors by holding a doctor’s horse and sweeping out his office! Most of ’em never even saw a childbirth and wouldn’t want to. They couldn’t even help a weasel be delivered! Doctors! Look at the best doctors we got in the army—Levi Wheaton and John Morgan and William Shippen—there ain’t no better army doctors than those fellers. They’re regular doctors, and everybody says they’re fine ones. Do you know how they treat sick folks?”

“Listen,” Cap said, “I ast you a civil question, and I expect a civil reply.”

“By Grapes!” Doc said. “You talk like a doctor! You don’t know, so I’ll tell you! According to them, all diseases are inflammatory, and to get rid of the disease you got to get rid of the inflammation. So when they find a sick man, they bleed him first and then feed him tartrate of antimony, epsom salts and calomel. They don’t leave nothing inside the feller—no blood, no food, no courage, no nothing! They ain’t as sensible as what a dog is!”

Cap made an effort to speak, but Doc silenced him with a gesture. “If I bled you right now, and then gave you a dose of tartrate of antimony and calomel, d’you know what you’d feel like? You’d be sick abed for three days! You’d be sicker than these here smallpox patients.”

“I s’pose,” Cap said contemptuously, “I s’pose you consider yourself qualified—–”

Doc interrupted him. “Now when a dog’s sick, he crawls under the barn and stays there, don’t he? He don’t bleed himself and fill himself up with all kinds of gurry guaranteed to rip his insides to pieces. He lays there and sleeps, and don’t eat nothing; and when he comes out, he’s cured. If you was sick, that’s the kind of medicine I’d give you, too—let you sleep, and not give you nothing to eat. There’s some sense to treatment like that.”

“I s’pose,” Cap sneered, “I s’pose there ain’t no doctor that knows so much as you! I s’pose you know better’n all of ’em.”

“No,” Doc said. “Some of ’em have a little sense. There’s a feller down in Virginia—Dr. Siccary. He says the best food there is for anyone is tomatoes. He says if you can eat enough tomatoes, you won’t never die. That feller Siccary, he sounds all right. Then there’s Benjamin Franklin’s doctor, Thomas Tryon, over in—–”

Cap became violent. “Tomatoes? Love apples? Why, they’re rank poison! Any doctor’ll tell you that!”