Raphael gave way before their custom, thinking that he could slip into
a passage adjoining, whence he could easily overhear the medical
conference in which the three professors were about to engage.
"Permit me, gentlemen," said Brisset, as they entered, "to give you my
own opinion at once. I neither wish to force it upon you nor to have
it discussed. In the first place, it is unbiased, concise, and based
on an exact similarity that exists between one of my own patients and
the subject that we have been called in to examine; and, moreover, I
am expected at my hospital. The importance of the case that demands my
presence there will excuse me for speaking the first word. The subject
with which we are concerned has been exhausted in an equal degree by
intellectual labors--what did he set about, Horace?" he asked of the
young doctor.
"A 'Theory of the Will,'"
"The devil! but that's a big subject. He is exhausted, I say, by too
much brain-work, by irregular courses, and by the repeated use of too
powerful stimulants. Violent exertion of body and mind has demoralized
the whole system. It is easy, gentlemen, to recognize in the symptoms
of the face and body generally intense irritation of the stomach, an
affection of the great sympathetic nerve, acute sensibility of the
epigastric region, and contraction of the right and left
hypochondriac.
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