Athothis : a satire on modern medicine / by Thomas C. Minor.

inscribed on the tombstones of humanity. Admit, my mortal friend, that Doctor Slasher usually hastens trans- migration, instead of keeping life in its original habita- tion? Perhaps Slasher is about to perform some other wonderfully skillful operation on suffering mankind, as I notice he has in his company two young physicians, evidently assistants. Let us follow him ! M And in a few seconds the little party entered a superbly furnished suite of front rooms. Lying on a velvet-covered sofa, in a chamber facing the west, was a beautiful child of seven summers, with light flaxen hair, clear blue eyes, rounded and dimpled face flushed with fever and excitement. Kneeling by the child was a sweet-faced, but care-worn, woman in tears, who, clasping the tiny hands of the terror- haunted baby, was whispering words of comfort and en- couragement to the little one. " Do n't be frightened, my darling," she softly murmured, as the thoughtless phy- sicians gravely arranged their cases of terrible instru- ments in full view of the patient. "Mamma will not leave you, and these good doctors have only come to make you well. Be a good little girl, and you shall have a new dolly and ever so many pretty dresses." " These gentlemen are about to perform tracheotomy." remarked Paulus Androcydes. " This is evidently one of those cases of membraneous croup in which an early operation offers the only chance for life/' " I suppose these modern practitioners would scorn an emetic," quoth Athothis, " and prefer to cut the baby's throat, in the interest of science and self-glory, in order to report the result of the operation at the next meeting of the Philautian Medical Society."