THE young gentleman, without the slightest consideration, replies with many thanks, that she is remarkably well. ‘Well, Mr Hopkins!’ cries the young lady, ‘why, we heard she was bled yesterday evening, and have been perfectly miserable about her.’*
‘Oh, ah,’ says the young gentleman, ‘so she was. Oh, she’s very ill, very ill indeed.’ The young gentleman then shakes his head, and looks very desponding (he has been smiling perpetually up to this time), and after a short pause, gives his glove a great wrench at the wrist, and says, with a strong emphasis on the adjective, ‘Good morning, good morning.’
And making a great number of bows in acknowledgment of several little messages to his sister, walks backward a few paces, and comes with great violence against a lamp-post, knocking his hat off in the contact, which he is going to walk away without, until a great roar from a carter attracts his attention, when he picks it up, and tries to smile cheerfully to the young ladies, who are looking back, and who, he has the satisfaction of seeing, are all laughing heartily.
abridged
That is, Harriet was treated for a disease by bloodletting. William Harvey (1578-1657), physician to both James I and Charles I, and a scourge of all superstitions, was one of the first to prove that bloodletting is almost always completely ineffective (indeed, it generally weakens the patient). The practice continued until the later 19th century, typically when other avenues had been explored without success.