hands
of Mohegan, than while suffering under the practice of the physician. Indeed,
the Indian gave him but little opportunity for the exercise of a forbearing
temper, as he had come prepared for the occasion. His dressings were soon
applied, and consisted only of some pounded bark, moistened with a fluid, that
he had expressed from some of the simples of the woods.
    Among the native tribes of the forest, there were always two kinds of
leeches to be met with. The one placed its whole dependence on the exercise of a
supernatural power, and was held in greater veneration than their practice could
at all justify; but the other was really endowed with great skill, in the
ordinary complaints of the human body, and was, more particularly, as Natty had
intimated, curous in cuts and bruises.
    While John and Richard were placing the dressings on the wound, Elnathan was
acutely eyeing the contents of Mohegan's basket, which Mr. Jones, in his
physical ardour, had transferred to the Doctor, in order to hold, himself, one
end of the bandages. Here he was soon enabled to detect sundry fragments of wood
and bark, of which he, quite coolly, took possession, very possibly without any
intention of speaking at all upon the subject; but when he beheld the full, blue
eye of Marmaduke, watching his movements, he whispered to the Judge -
    »It is not to be denied, Judge Temple, but what the savages are knowing, in
small matters of physic. They hand these things down in their traditions. Now,
in cancers, and hydrophoby, they are quite ingenous. I will just take this bark
home, and analyze it; for, though it can't be worth sixpence to the young man's
shoulder, it may be good for the toothache, or rhoomatis, or some of them
complaints. A man should never be above larning, even if it be from an Indian.«
    It was fortunate for Dr. Todd, that his principles were so liberal, as,
coupled with his practice, they were the means by which he acquired all his
knowledge, and by which he was gradually qualifying himself for the duties of
his profession. The process to which he subjected the specific, differed,
however, greatly from the ordinary rules of chemistry; for, instead of
separating, he afterwards united the component parts of Mohegan's remedy, and
thus was able to discover the tree, whence the Indian had taken it.
    Some ten years after this event, when civilization and its refinements had
crept, or rather rushed