A little later along, when gunpowder had come into general use as
a humanizing factor of civilization, surgeons treated a gunshot
wound by pouring boiling lard into it, which I would say was
calculated to take the victim's mind off his wound and give him
something else to think about--for the time being, anyhow. I
assume the notion of applying a mustard plaster outside one's
stomach when one has a pain inside one's stomach is based on the
same principle.
However, one doesn't have to go clear back to medieval times to
note the radical differences in the plan of treating human ailments.
A great many persons who are still living can remember when the
doctors were not nearly so numerous as they are now. I, for one,
would be the last to reverse the sentence and say that because the
doctors were not nearly so numerous then as they are now, those
persons are still living so numerously.
In the spring of the year, when the sap flowed and the birds mated,
the sturdy farmer felt that he was due to have something the matter
with him, too.
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