His tone was so sententious that Serviss instantly became flippant, as an offset. "Yes, one by one we round 'em up! But don't think me unfriendly to the 'beasts.' They have their uses. I'd no sooner kill a bacterium than a song-bird. I think we care too highly for the cancerous and the consumptive. I'm not at all sure that humanity oughtn't to be hackled like weeds, and so toughen its hold on life. Germs may be blessings in disguise."
Clarke pursued his way. "How little we know about their reactions--their secretions. You've given some attention to the X-ray and its effect on these cells, I presume?"
Serviss inwardly grinned to think what Weissmann would say at sight of his assistant sitting in solemn discussion of the germs and X-rays with a village clergyman and two reverential women. "Why, yes, I've considered it. Naturally, any new thing that bears on my specialty makes me sit up. I've even done a little experimenting with it."
"But have you considered the bearing of all these subtleties of science upon"--he hesitated--"a--upon certain--a--occult phenomena?"
Serviss eyed him non-committally. "Well, what, for instance?"
"Well, upon, say, telepathy--and--a--well, upon spiritual healing--and the like."
"I can't say that I have; I don't exactly see the connection. Furthermore, I don't believe in these particular delusions. My work concerns the material facts of life, not the dying superstitions of the race. I have no patience with any morbid theory of life."
This remark plainly produced a sensation. The preacher cast a significant glance at the mother, and the girl looked away at the lamp, a flush upon her face.
"Hello!" exclaimed Serviss, under his breath. "Have I discovered a neat of cranks? I've been enlisted on somebody's side--I wonder whose?"
The clergyman faced him again and calmly asked: "Have you ever investigated these occult phenomena?"
"Certainly not. I have no time to waste on such imaginings. My time is all taken in a study of certain definite processes in the living organism."
A light began to glow in the eyes of the young clergyman. "I suppose you class mental healing among the delusions?"
"Most assuredly I do," answered Serviss, with the remorselessness of youth.
"You would say that the mind of man cannot mend the body of another--"
"If you mean directly--in the manner of 'faith cures' and the like--I would answer certainly not, unless the disorder happens to be in itself due to a delusion. I can imagine the hypochondriac being cured by mental stimulus." He felt that he was drawing near the point at issue, and his eyes shone with glee.
The preacher set his trap. "You believe in the action of a drug--say, prussic acid--you believe it will kill?"