"Exhausting all _persuasive_ means to light
Our fallen race to Virtue's glorious height,
To Medicine gives his comprehensive mind,
And fills his pockets while he cures mankind.
He scorns M. D.'s, at all hard study sneers,
And soon the science of its mystery clears.
_His_ knowledge springs intuitive and plain,
As Pallas issued from the Thunderer's brain.
He takes a patent for some potent pill
Whose cure is certain--for it cures to kill.
Such mighty powers in its materials lurk,
It grows, like Gibbon's Rome, a standard _work_!
Pill-militant, he storms the forts of pain,
Where grim Disease has long entrenchéd lain,
Routs fevers, agues, colics, colds, and gouts,
Nor ends the war till life itself he routs.
If of his skill you wish some pregnant hints,
Peruse the gravestones, not the public prints!
To aid his work, and fame immortal win,
Brings steam from physics into medicine;
From speeding packets o'er th' Atlantic waste,
O'er Styx's stream old Charon's boat to haste,
Proving that steam for double use is fit--
To whirl men _through_ the world, and _out_ of it!"
The difference in the item of sleep is amusing. I know a poor, worn-out
doctor who finds all health in early rising. Let us refer him to the
following, by John G. Saxe:--