I then exchanged a few words with Bainbridge, and informed Castleton of
the result. "Ah, ha--ah, ha--indeed," he said, with as near an approach
to sarcasm as was possible with him. "So my learned young friend thinks
that an organ--the liver--weighing nearly four pounds is to be moved
with a hundredth of a drop of--of--anything! Damn it, sir, am I awake?"
"Ask Doctor Castleton, sir, what portion of a grain of small-pox virus
it would require to disseminate over a whole county, if not checked, a
dread disease? Ask him from what an oak-tree grows?"
"Ask him," said Castleton, "how long it takes an acorn to act. In this
case we require celerity of action--force and penetration."
"Ask him," said Bainbridge, "if the solar rays have celerity, and force,
and penetration; and how much they weigh. It requires fine shot to bring
down the essence of a disease----"
"Tell him," shouted Castleton, "that the liver is a mammoth that
requires a twenty-four-pounder to penetrate its hide. We don't hunt the
rhinoceros with bird-shot."
"Say to the gentleman," said Bainbridge, slightly flushed, but still
with dignity, "that in this case the animal is not to be slaughtered,
but to be cured.
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