True, she was not more than nineteen years of age, so she told me, and was still pursuing the studies which were to qualify her to become a full-blown Lecturer on Chemical Science, but her physique was so splendid, and her mental qualities of such surprising vigour for one so young as she, that it was impossible for me to regard myself other than as a very inferior being in her presence.
She was very pleased to find that I had been able to read the books she had placed at my disposal; but her powers of belief were severely taxed when I insisted that the retrospect, referring to the peculiar habits and customs of the Ancients, was a faithful picture of things as they still existed in my own country.
“To tell you the truth,” she said at last, “I think that you have been asleep for about six hundred years. You must have been taking Schlafstrank, though I had no idea it had been so long in existence.”
“And, pray, what is Schlafstrank, and what are its uses?” I asked, whereupon I was told that Schlafstrank was an essence, discovered in the year 2239, by Ada of Garretville, while Senior Lecturer in Chemistry for that year. The uses to which this essence was devoted was to put people to sleep for a longer or a shorter period of time, according to the quantity inhaled or swallowed. While under the influence of Schlafstrank any amount of pain could be borne without causing the subject of it any real inconvenience, since no sense of pain or bodily suffering was conveyed to the sleeping mind.
Thus if, in unusual exception to the rule of perfect health which prevailed here, some dangerous or painful disease overtook any of the children of the State, be they old or young, they were subject to the influence of Schlafstrank, and then dosed or operated upon until the disease was conquered. In this way did New Amazonians avoid suffering, and it struck me as marvellous to picture them as the subjects of an accident resulting in a few broken limbs, and being unconscious of any inconvenience arising therefrom during the processes of setting and recovery. I was told that Schlafstrank produced no deleterious effect upon the body, although repeated doses were given, if the patient’s mind threatened to awake before complete recovery of the body had set in.