Ms. Payer quotes Oliver Wendell Holmes as saying, with his customary sarcasm: How could a people which has a revolution once in four years, which has contrived the Bowie Knife and the revolver … which insists in sending out yachts and horses and boys to outsail, outrun, outfight and checkmate all the rest of creation; how could such a people be content with any but “heroic” practice? What wonder that the stars and stripes wave over doses of ninety grams of sulphate of quinine and that the American eagle screams with delight to see three drachms [180 grains] of calomel given at a single
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