specialist in each department of medical practice.

"In the course of the year I experienced a variety of slight
indispositions. For these I was auriscoped by an aurist, laryngoscoped
by a laryngologist, ausculted by a stethoscopist, and so on, until a
complete inventory of my organs was made out, and I found that if I
believed all these searching inquirers professed to have detected in my
unfortunate person, I could repeat with too literal truth the words of
the General Confession, "And there is no health in us." I never heard so
many hard names in all my life. I proved to be the subject of a long
catalogue of diseases, and what maladies I was not manifestly guilty of I
was at least suspected of harboring. I was handed along all the way from
alopecia, which used to be called baldness, to zoster, which used to be
known as shingles. I was the patient of more than a dozen specialists.
Very pleasant persons, many of them, but what a fuss they made about my
trifling incommodities! 'Please look at that photograph. See if there is
a minute elevation under one eye.'

"'On which side?' I asked him, for I could not be sure there was anything
different on one side from what I saw on the other.

"'Under the left eye. I called it a pimple; the specialist called it
acne. Now look at this photograph. It was taken after my acne had been
three months under treatment. It shows a little more distinctly than in
the first photograph, does n't it?'

"'I think it does,' I answered. 'It does n't seem to me that you gained
a great deal by leaving your customary adviser for the specialist.'

"'Well,' my friend continued, 'following my wife's urgent counsel, I kept