One day, when Jefferson, the third US president, was visiting his friend William Fitzhugh, a servant ran up to report that a black man had cut himself severely in his calf with an axe.
As Jefferson had some experience with surgery, he went to see the wounded man at once and soon had sewed up and bandaged the wound.
He then remarked that, while the ways of Divine Providence were wise, it was strange that the fleshy coverings of the bones in the limbs of the human frame were placed in the rear when the danger of their injury usually came from the front.
Not long after Jefferson left, David Stuart, a Federalist with an abiding hatred of Jefferson, came for a visit. Hearing what Jefferson had done and said, he cried in horror: "What is this world coming to? Here this fellow, Jefferson, after turning upside down everything on this earth, is now quarrelling with God himself!"