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Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 1809-1894

"The Professor at the Breakfast-Table"

The idea that you must
pull out every one of every nice young man and young woman's natural
teeth! Poh, poh! Nobody believes that. This tooth must be
straightened, that must be filled with gold, and this other perhaps
extracted, but it must be a very rare case, if they are all so bad as to
require extraction; and if they are, don't blame the poor soul for it!
Don't tell us, as some old dentists used to, that everybody not only
always has every tooth in his head good for nothing, but that he ought to
have his head cut off as a punishment for that misfortune! No, I can't
sign Number One. Give us Number Two.
II. We hold that no man can be well who does not agree with our views of
the efficacy of calomel, and who does not take the doses of it prescribed
in our tables, as there directed.
To which I demur, questioning why it should be so, and get for answer the
two following:
III. Every man who does not take our prepared calomel, as prescribed by
us in our Constitution and By-Laws, is and must be a mass of disease from
head to foot; it being self-evident that he is simultaneously affected
with Apoplexy, Arthritis, Ascites, Asphyxia, and Atrophy; with
Borborygmus, Bronchitis, and Bulimia; with Cachexia, Carcinoma, and
Cretinismus; and so on through the alphabet, to Xerophthahnia and Zona,
with all possible and incompatible diseases which are necessary to make
up a totally morbid state; and he will certainly die, if he does not take
freely of our prepared calomel, to be obtained only of one of our
authorized agents.


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