They are the two practices both always in
full blast.
Yet you must take advice of the one school as if
there was no other. In respect to religion and the healing art,
all nations are still in a state of barbarism. In the most
civilized countries the priest is still but a Powwow, and the
physician a Great Medicine. Consider the deference which is
everywhere paid to a doctor's opinion. Nothing more strikingly
betrays the credulity of mankind than medicine. Quackery is a
thing universal, and universally successful. In this case it
becomes literally true that no imposition is too great for the
credulity of men. Priests and physicians should never look one
another in the face. They have no common ground, nor is there
any to mediate between them. When the one comes, the other goes.
They could not come together without laughter, or a significant
silence, for the one's profession is a satire on the other's, and
either's success would be the other's failure. It is wonderful
that the physician should ever die, and that the priest should
ever live. Why is it that the priest is never called to consult
with the physician? Is it because men believe practically that
matter is independent of spirit. But what is quackery? It is
commonly an attempt to cure the diseases of a man by addressing
his body alone. There is need of a physician who shall minister
to both soul and body at once, that is, to man. Now he falls
between two souls.
After passing through the locks, we had poled ourselves through
the canal here, about half a mile in length, to the boatable part
of the river. Above Amoskeag the river spreads out into a lake
reaching a mile or two without a bend. There were many
canal-boats here bound up to Hooksett, about eight miles, and as
they were going up empty with a fair wind, one boatman offered to
take us in tow if we would wait. But when we came alongside, we
found that they meant to take us on board, since otherwise we
should clog their motions too much; but as our boat was too heavy
to be lifted aboard, we pursued our way up the stream, as before,
while the boatmen were at their dinner, and came to anchor at
length under some alders on the opposite shore, where we could
take our lunch. Though far on one side, every sound was wafted
over to us from the opposite bank, and from the harbor of the
canal, and we could see everything that passed. By and by came
several canal-boats, at intervals of a quarter of a mile,
standing up to Hooksett with a light breeze, and one by one
disappeared round a point above. With their broad sails set,
they moved slowly up the stream in the sluggish and fitful
breeze, like one-winged antediluvian birds, and as if impelled by
some mysterious counter-current.
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