I had forgotten my side altogether.

"Not a bit," said I; and it didn't.

"So far, so good," said the doctor. "Now, my friend, about this throat trouble of yours. Do you think you have diphtheria, or merely toothache?"

I hadn't thought of toothache before, but as soon as the doctor mentioned it, a pang went through my lower jaw, and my larynx seemed all right again.

"Well, doctor," said I, "as a matter of fact, the pain does seem to be in my wisdom teeth."

"So-called," said he, quietly. "More tooth than wisdom, generally. And not in your throat?" continued the doctor.

[Ill.u.s.tration: I VISIT aeSCULAPIUS]

"Not a bit of it," said I. My throat seemed strong enough for a political campaign in which I was princ.i.p.al speaker. "It's _all_ in my teeth."

"Upper or lower?" he asked, with a laugh, and then he gazed fixedly at me.

I had not realized that I had upper teeth until he spoke, and a shudder went through me as a semicircle of pain shot through my upper jaw.

"Upper," I retorted, with some surliness.

"Verging a trifle on your cheekbones, and thence to the optic nerve,"

he said, calmly, still gazing into my soul. "I'll try your sight.

Look at that card over there, and tell me--"

"What nonsense is this, doctor?" I cried, angry at his airy manner and manifest control over my symptoms. "There is nothing the matter with my eyes. They're as good as any one of the million eyes of your friend the Argus."

"Then what, in the name of Jupiter, is the matter with you?" he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, elevating his eyebrows.

"Nothing at all," said I, sulkily.

aesculapius threw himself on the sofa and roared with laughter.

"Perfectly splendid!" he said, when he had recovered from his mirth.

"Perfectly splendid! You are the best example of the value of my system I've had in a long time. Now let me show you something," he added. "Put these gla.s.ses on."

He took the gla.s.ses from his nose and put them astride of mine, and lead me before a mirror--a cheval-gla.s.s arrangement that stood in one corner of the room.

"Now look yourself straight in the eye," said he.

I did so, and truly it was as if I looked upon the page of a book printed in the largest and clearest type. I hesitate to say what I saw written there, since the gla.s.s was strong enough to reach not only the mind itself, but further into the very depths of my subself-consciousness.

On the surface, man thinks well of himself; this continues in modified intensity to his self-consciousness, but the fool does not live who, in his subself-consciousness, the Holy of Holies of Realization, does not know that he is a fool.

"Take 'em off," I cried, for they seemed to burn into the very depths of my soul.

"That isn't necessary," said aesculapius, kindly. "Just turn your eyes away from the gla.s.s a moment and they won't bother you. I want to cure this trouble of yours."

I stopped looking at myself in the mirror and the tense condition of my nerves was immediately relieved.

"Feel better right away, eh?" he asked.

"Yes," I admitted.

"So I thought," he said. "You've momentarily given up self-contemplation. Now lower your gaze. Look at your chest a moment."

Just what were the properties of the gla.s.s I do not know, nor do I know how one's chest should look, but, as I looked down, I found that just as I could penetrate to the depths of my mind through my eyes, so was it possible for me to inspect myself physically.

"Nothing the matter there, eh?" said aesculapius.

"Not that I can see," said I.

"Nor I," said he. "Now, if you think there is anything the matter with you anywhere else," he added, "you are welcome to use the gla.s.ses as long as you see fit."

I took a sneaking glance at my right side and was immediately made aware of the fact that all was well with me there, and that all my trouble had come from my ill-advised "wondering" whether that Midas omelet would bother me or not.

"These gla.s.ses are wonderful," said I.

"They are a great help," said aesculapius.

"And do you always permit your patients to put them on?" I asked.

"Not always," said he. "Sometimes people really have something the matter with them. More often, of course, they haven't. It would never do to let a really sick man see his condition. If they are ill, I can see at once what is the matter by means of these spectacles, and can, of course, prescribe. If they are not, there is no surer means of effecting a cure than putting these on the patient's nose and letting him see for himself that he is all right."

"They have all the quality of the X-ray light," I suggested, turning my gaze upon an iron safe in the corner of the room, which immediately disclosed its contents.

"They are X-ray gla.s.ses," said aesculapius. "In a good light you can see through anything with 'em on. I have lenses of the same kind in my window, and when you came up I looked at you through the window-pane and saw at once that there was nothing the matter with you."

"I wish our earthly doctors had gla.s.ses like these," I ventured, taking them off, for truly I was beginning to fancy a strain.

"They have--or at least they have something quite as good," said aesculapius. "They are all my disciples, and in the best instances they can see through the average patient without them. They have insight.

You don't believe you deceive your physician, do you?"

"I have sometimes thought so," said I, not realizing the trap the doctor was setting.

"How foolish!" he cried. "Why should you wish to?"

I was covered with confusion.

"Never mind," said aesculapius, smiling pleasantly. "You are only human and cannot help yourself. It is your imagination leads you astray.

Half the time when you send for your physician there is nothing the matter with you."

"He always prescribes," I retorted.

"That is for your comfort, not his," said aesculapius, firmly.

"And sometimes they operate when it isn't necessary," I put in, persistently.

"True," said aesculapius. "Very true. Because if they didn't, the patient would die of worry."