So in medicine, when inflammation takes place at some vital point of the system, counter-irritation is brought about at some other point, by means of blisters, scarifications and cupping.

Another method consists in blistering your wife, or giving her, with a mental needle, a prod whose violence is such as to make a diversion in your favor.

A man of considerable mental resources had made his honeymoon last for about four years; the moon began to wane, and he saw appearing the fatal hollow in its circle.  His wife was exactly in that state of mind which we attributed at the close of our first part to every honest woman; she had taken a fancy to a worthless fellow who was both insignificant in appearance and ugly; the only thing in his favor was, he was not her own husband.  At this juncture, her husband meditated the cutting of some dog’s tail, in order to renew, if possible, his lease of happiness.  His wife had conducted herself with such tact, that it would have been very embarrassing to forbid her lover the house, for she had discovered some slight tie of relationship between them.  The danger became, day by day, more imminent.  The scent of the Minotaur was all around.  One evening the husband felt himself plunged into a mood of deep vexation so acute as to be apparent to his wife.  His wife had begun to show him more kindness than she had ever exhibited, even during the honeymoon; and hence question after question racked his mind.  On her part a dead silence reigned.  The anxious questionings of his mind were redoubled; his suspicions burst forth, and he was seized with forebodings of future calamity!  Now, on this occasion, he deftly applied a Japanese blister, which burned as fiercely as an auto-da-fe of the year 1600.  At first his wife employed a thousand stratagems to discover whether the annoyance of her husband was caused by the presence of her lover; it was her first intrigue and she displayed a thousand artifices in it.  Her imagination was aroused; it was no longer taken up with her lover; had she not better, first of all, probe her husband’s secret?

One evening the husband, moved by the desire to confide in his loving helpmeet all his troubles, informed her that their whole fortune was lost.  They would have to give up their carriage, their box at the theatre, balls, parties, even Paris itself; perhaps, by living on their estate in the country a year or two, they might retrieve all!  Appealing to the imagination of his wife, he told her how he pitied her for her attachment to a man who was indeed deeply in love with her, but was now without fortune; he tore his hair, and his wife was compelled in honor to be deeply moved; then in this first excitement of their conjugal disturbance he took her off to his estate.  Then followed scarifications, mustard plaster upon mustard plaster, and the tails of fresh dogs were cut:  he caused a Gothic wing to be built to the chateau; madame altered the park ten time over in order to have fountains