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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Forty Years in the Wilderness of Pills and
+Powders, by William A. Alcott
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Forty Years in the Wilderness of Pills and Powders
+       Cogitations and Confessions of an Aged Physician
+
+Author: William A. Alcott
+
+Release Date: October 5, 2010 [EBook #34038]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WILDERNESS OF PILLS, POWDERS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Edwards, Josephine Paolucci and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net.
+(This file was produced from images generously made
+available by The Internet Archive.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: Engraved by J. C. Buttre, expressly for Fireside
+Lectures.
+
+Doct. W'm. A. ALCOTT.]
+
+FORTY YEARS
+
+IN THE WILDERNESS
+
+OF
+
+PILLS AND POWDERS;
+
+OR, THE
+
+COGITATIONS AND CONFESSIONS OF
+
+AN AGED PHYSICIAN.
+
+BOSTON:
+JOHN P. JEWETT AND COMPANY.
+
+NEW YORK:
+C. M. SAXTON AND COMPANY.
+ROCHESTER, NEW YORK: E. DARROW AND BROTHER.
+1859.
+
+Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1859, by
+JOHN P. JEWETT AND COMPANY,
+In the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the district of
+Massachusetts.
+
+LITHOTYPED BY COWLES AND COMPANY,
+17 WASHINGTON ST., BOSTON.
+
+Printed by Geo. C. Rand and Avery.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+The present volume was one of the last upon which its author was
+engaged, the facts having been gathered from the experience and
+observation of a long life. It was his design to publish them
+anonymously, but under the changed circumstances this is rendered
+impracticable.
+
+A short time previous to his death, the writer spoke of this work, and
+said, in allusion to the termination of his own somewhat peculiar
+case,--"This _last chapter_ must be added." In accordance with this
+desire, a brief sketch, having reference chiefly to his health and
+physical habits, with the closing chapter of his life, has been
+appended.
+
+Boston, June, 1859.
+
+
+
+
+TO THE READER.
+
+
+In the sub-title to the following work, I have used the word
+"Confessions"--not to mislead the reader, but because _to confess_ is
+one prominent idea of its author. It is a work in which confessions of
+the impotence of the healing art, as that art has been usually
+understood, greatly abound; and in which the public ignorance of the
+laws of health or hygiene, with the consequences of that ignorance, are
+presented with great plainness. The world will make a wiser use of its
+medical men than it has hitherto done, when it comes to see more clearly
+what is their legitimate and what their ultimate mission.
+
+These remarks indicate the main intention of the writer. It is not so
+much to enlighten or aid, or in any way directly affect the medical man,
+as to open the eyes of the public to their truest interests; to a just
+knowledge of themselves; and to some faint conception of their bondage
+to credulity and quackery. The reader will find that I go for science
+and truth, let them affect whom they may. Let him, then, suspend his
+judgment till he has gone through this volume once, and I shall have no
+fears. He may, indeed, find fault with my style, and complain of my
+literary or philosophic unfitness for the task I assigned myself; but he
+will, nevertheless, be glad to know my facts.
+
+Should any one feel aggrieved by the exposures I have made in the
+details which follow, let me assure him that no one is more
+exposed--nor, indeed, has more cause to be aggrieved--than myself. Let
+us all, then, as far as is practicable, keep our own secrets. Let us not
+shrink from such exposures as are likely, in a large measure, to benefit
+mankind, while the greatest possible inconvenience or loss to ourselves
+is but trifling.
+
+Some may wish that instead of confining myself too rigidly to naked fact
+and sober reasoning, I had given a little more scope to the imagination.
+But is not plain, "unvarnished" truth sometimes not only "stranger,"
+but, in a work like this, better also, than any attempts at "fiction"?
+
+THE AUTHOR.
+
+AUBURNDALE, March, 1859.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+CHAPTER.                                                PAGE.
+
+I. EDUCATIONAL TENDENCIES                                  1
+
+II. MY FIRST MEDICAL LESSON,                               6
+
+III. THE ELECTRICAL MACHINE,                               9
+
+IV. THE MEASLES, AND POURING DOWN RUM,                    11
+
+V. LEE'S PILLS AND DROPSY,                                13
+
+VI. THE COLD SHOWER BATH,                                 16
+
+VII. MY FIRST SICKNESS ABROAD,                            18
+
+VIII. LESSON FROM AN OLD SURGEON,                         20
+
+IX. LEE'S WINDHAM BILIOUS PILLS,                          23
+
+X. DR. SOLOMON AND HIS PATIENT.                           26
+
+XI. PHYSICKING OFF FEVER,                                 28
+
+XII. MANUFACTURING CHILBLAINS,                            31
+
+XIII. HOW TO MAKE ERYSIPELAS,                             34
+
+XIV. STUDYING MEDICINE,                                   38
+
+XV. NATURE'S OWN EYE WATER,                               41
+
+XVI. THE VIPER STORY,                                     43
+
+XVII. STRUCK WITH DEATH,                                  46
+
+XVIII. EFFICACY OF COLD SPRING WATER,                     51
+
+XIX. CHEATING THE PHYSICIAN,                              56
+
+XX. MEDICINAL EFFECTS OF STORY TELLING,                   58
+
+XXI. OSSIFIED VEINS,                                      61
+
+XXII. HE WILL DIE IN THIRTY-SIX HOURS,                    64
+
+XXIII. ABOUT TO DIE OF CONSUMPTION,                       72
+
+XXIV. MY JOURNEYMANSHIP IN MEDICINE,                      81
+
+XXV. MY TEMPERANCE PLEDGE,                                85
+
+XXVI. TRIALS OF A YOUNG PHYSICIAN,                        87
+
+XXVII. A DOSING AND DRUGGING FAMILY,                      90
+
+XXVIII. POISONING WITH LEAD,                              96
+
+XXIX. STANDING PATIENTS,                                 102
+
+XXX. KILLING A PATIENT,                                  105
+
+XXXI. A SUDDEN CURE,                                     109
+
+XXXII. GIGANTIC DOSES OF MEDICINE,                       112
+
+XXXIII. THE LAMBSKIN DISEASE,                            115
+
+XXXIV. MILK PUNCH FEVER,                                 120
+
+XXXV. MY FIRST CASE IN SURGERY,                          124
+
+XXXVI. EMILIA AND THE LOVE-CURE,                         127
+
+XXXVII. HEZEKIAH JUDKINS AND DELIRIUM,                   133
+
+XXXVIII. MY FIRST AMPUTATION,                            136
+
+XXXIX. MILK AS A REMEDY IN FEVERS,                       138
+
+XL. VIRTUES OF PUMPKIN SEED TEA,                         141
+
+XLI. BROKEN LIMBS AND INTEMPERANCE,                      144
+
+XLII. DYING FROM FILTHINESS,                             148
+
+XLIII. TAKING THE FEVER,                                 153
+
+XLIV. BLESSINGS OF CIDER AND CIDER BRANDY,               156
+
+XLV. THE INDIAN DOCTOR,                                  160
+
+XLVI. DYING OF OLD AGE AT FIFTY-EIGHT,                   163
+
+XLVII. DAUGHTERS DESTROYING THEIR MOTHER,                169
+
+XLVIII. POISONING WITH STRAMONIUM,                       172
+
+XLIX. CURING CANCER,                                     175
+
+L. SWELLED LIMBS,                                        179
+
+LI. SUDDEN CHANGES IN OLD AGE,                           182
+
+LII. AN OPIUM EATER,                                     185
+
+LIII. COFFEE AND THE LAME KNEE,                          188
+
+LIV. THE OPIUM PILL BOX,                                 193
+
+LV. BLEEDING AT THE LUNGS,                               196
+
+LVI. BUTTER EATERS,                                      201
+
+LVII. HOT HOUSES AND CONSUMPTION,                        206
+
+LVIII. POISONING BY A PAINTED PAIL,                      216
+
+LIX. ONE DROP OF LAUDANUM,                               218
+
+LX. MRS. KIDDER'S CORDIAL,                               220
+
+LXI. ALMOST RAISING THE DEAD,                            225
+
+LXII. FEMALE HEALTH AND INSANE HOSPITALS,                231
+
+LXIII. A GIANT DYSPEPTIC,                                236
+
+LXIV. GETTING INTO A CIRCLE,                             246
+
+LXV. POISONING WITH MAPLE SUGAR,                         249
+
+LXVI. PHYSICKING OFF MEASLES,                            251
+
+LXVII. TIC DOULOUREUX,                                   253
+
+LXVIII. COLD WATER IN FEVER,                             256
+
+LXIX. COLD-TAKING AND CONSUMPTION,                       258
+
+LXX. FREEZING OUT DISEASE,                               261
+
+LXXI. THE AIR CURE,                                      263
+
+LXXII. THE CLERGYMAN,                                    266
+
+LXXIII. HE MUST BE PHYSICKED OR DIE,                     268
+
+LXXIV. WHO HATH WOE? OR, THE SICK WIDOW,                 272
+
+LXXV. THE PENALTY OF SELF-INDULGENCE,                    275
+
+LXXVI. DR. BOLUS AND MORPHINE,                           282
+
+LXXVII. BLEEDING AND BLISTERING OMITTED,                 286
+
+LXXVIII. MEDICAL VIRTUES OF SLEEP,                       288
+
+LXXIX. CURE BY DEEP BREATHING,                           291
+
+LXXX. SPIRIT DOCTORING,                                  295
+
+LXXXI. REMARKABLE CURE OF EPILEPSY,                      301
+
+LXXXII. SCARLATINA CURED BY LETTING ALONE,               312
+
+LXXXIII. IGNORANCE NOT ALWAYS BLISS,                     314
+
+LXXXIV. MEASLES WITHOUT SNAKEROOT AND SAFFRON,           317
+
+LXXXV. THE CONSUMPTIVE PAIR,                             320
+
+LXXXVI. HOW TO CURE CHOLERA,                             322
+
+LXXXVII. OBSTINACY AND SUICIDE,                          324
+
+LXXXVIII. HEALTH HOSPITALS,                              327
+
+LXXXIX. DESTRUCTION BY SCROFULA,                         329
+
+XC. STARVING OUT DISEASE,                                334
+
+XCI. DIETING ON MINCE PIE,                               342
+
+XCII. GIANTS IN THE EARTH,                               346
+
+XCIII. THE GREEN MOUNTAIN PATIENT,                       349
+
+XCIV. CURE OF POISON FROM LEAD,                          355
+
+XCV. FAITH AND WORKS,                                    358
+
+XCVI. WORKS WITHOUT FAITH,                               360
+
+XCVII. DISEASES OF LICENTIOUSNESS,                       365
+
+XCVIII. CURIOUS AND INSTRUCTIVE FACTS,                   367
+
+XCIX. ANTI-MEDICAL TESTIMONY,                            371
+
+C. AN ANTI-MEDICAL PREMIUM,                              375
+
+CI. CONCLUDING REMARKS,                                  378
+
+CII. A LAST CHAPTER,                                     380
+
+
+
+
+FORTY YEARS IN THE WILDERNESS
+
+OF
+
+PILLS AND POWDERS.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+EDUCATIONAL TENDENCIES.
+
+
+I was born in a retired but pleasant part of New England, as New England
+was half a century ago, and as, in many places, despite of its canals,
+steamboats, railroads, and electromagnetic telegraphs, it still is.
+Hence I am entitled to the honor of being, in the most emphatic sense, a
+native of the land of "steady habits."
+
+The people with whom I passed my early years, though comparatively rude
+and uncultivated, were yet, in their manners and character, quite
+simple. Most of them could spell and read, and write their names, and a
+few could "cipher" as far as simple subtraction. To obtain the
+last-mentioned accomplishment, however, was not easy, for arithmetic was
+not generally permitted in the public schools during the six hours of
+the day; and could only be obtained in the occasional evening school, or
+by self-exertion at home.
+
+The majority of my townsmen also knew something of the dream-book and of
+palmistry, and of the influence of the moon (especially when first seen,
+after the change, over the right shoulder), not only on the weather and
+on vegetation, but on the world of humanity. They also understood full
+well, what troubles were betokened by the howling of a dog, the
+blossoming of a flower out of due season, or the beginning of a journey
+or of a job of work on Tuesday or Friday. Many of them knew how to tell
+fortunes in connection with a cup of tea. Nay, more, not a few of them
+were skilled in astrology, and by its aid could tell under what planet a
+person was born, and perchance, could predict thereby the future events
+of his life; at least after those events had actually taken place.
+
+Under what particular planet I was born, my friends never told me;
+though it is quite possible some of my sage grandmothers or aunts could
+have furnished the needful information had I sought it. They used to
+look often at the lines in the palms of my hands, and talk much about my
+dreams, which were certainly a little aspiring, and in many respects
+remarkable. The frequent prediction of one of these aged and wise
+friends I remember very well. It was, that I would eat my bread in two
+kingdoms. This prediction was grounded on the fact, that the hair on the
+top of my head was so arranged by the plastic hand of Nature as to form
+what were called two crowns; and was so far fulfilled, that I have
+occasionally eaten bread within the realms of Queen Victoria!
+
+According to the family register, kept in the cranium of my mother, I
+was born on Monday, which doubtless served to justify the frequent
+repetition of the old adage, and its application to my own case--"Born
+on Monday, fair of face." I was also born on the sixth day of the month,
+on account of which it was said that the sixth verse of the thirty-first
+chapter of Proverbs was, prospectively, a key to my character. It is
+certainly true that I have dealt out not a little "strong drink to him
+that" was "ready to perish;" and that few of my professional brethren
+have furnished a larger proportion of it gratuitously; or as Solomom
+says, have _given_ it.
+
+Whether there was any clear or distinct prophecy ever uttered that I
+would one day be a knight of the lancet, clad in full armor, is not
+certain. If there was, I presume it was unwritten. That I was to be
+distinguished in some way, everybody appeared to understand and
+acknowledge. I was not only at the head of all my classes at school, in
+spelling, reading, and writing, but exalted above most of my competitors
+and compeers by a whole head and shoulders. In ciphering, in
+particular, I excelled. I understood the grand rules of arithmetic, and
+could even work a little in the Rule of Three.
+
+That the thought of being a "doctor" did, in a sort of indefinable way,
+sometimes enter my head, even at that early period, I will not deny. One
+of my teachers, as I well remember, had medical books, into which bars
+and bolts could hardly prevent me from peeping. But there were a
+thousand lions in the way--or at least _two or three_. One was extreme
+indigence on the part of my parents. They came together nearly as poor
+as John Bunyan and his wife, or Sydney Smith and his companion. Or if,
+in addition to a knife, fork, and spoon, they had a looking-glass, an
+old iron kettle, an axe, and a hoe, I am sure the inventory of their
+property at first could not have extended much farther; and now that
+they had a family of four children, their wants had increased about as
+fast as their income.
+
+Besides, there was a confused belief in the public mind--and of course
+in mine--that medical men were a species of conjurors; or if nothing
+more, that they had a sort of mysterious knowledge of human character,
+obtained by dealing with the stars, or by reliance on some supernatural
+source or other. And to such a height as this I could not at that time
+presume to aspire; though I certainly did aspire, even at a very early
+period, to become a learned man.
+
+As a means to such an end, I early felt an ardent desire to become a
+printer. This desire originated, in part at least, from reading the
+autobiography of Dr. Franklin, of which I was exceedingly fond. It was a
+desire, moreover, which I was very slow to relinquish till compelled. My
+father, as we have seen, was a poor laborer, and thought himself unable
+either to give me any extra opportunities of education, or to spare me
+from the cultivation of a few paternal acres. Still, in secret, I I
+clung to the hope of one day traversing the lengths and breadths and
+depths and heights of the world of science.
+
+But for what purpose, as a final end? for, practically, the great
+question was, _cui bono_? As for becoming a lawyer, that, with me, was
+quite out of the question; for lawyers, even thus early, were generally
+regarded as bad men. All over the region of my nativity the word lawyer
+was nearly synonymous with liar; and to liars and lawyers the Devil was
+supposed to have a peculiar liking, not to say affinity. I had never at
+that time heard of but one honest lawyer; and him I regarded as a sort
+of _lusus naturę_ much more than as an ordinary human being. My friends
+would have been shocked at the bare thought of my becoming a lawyer, had
+the road to that profession been open to my youthful aspirations.
+
+The clerical profession was in some respects looked upon more favorably
+than the legal or the medical. I was scarcely "three feet high" when an
+aged and venerable grandmother said one day, _in my hearing_, and
+probably _for_ my hearing, "I always did hope one of my grandsons would
+be a minister." This, however, neither interested me much nor encouraged
+me; for (reader will you believe it?), as the doctor was regarded in
+those days as more than half a sorcerer, and the lawyer three-fourths
+devil, so the minister was deemed by many as almost half an idiot,
+except for his learning.
+
+I am not, by any means, trifling with you. It was the serious belief of
+many--I think I might say of most--that those boys who "took to
+learning" were by nature rather "weak in the attic," especially those
+who inclined to the ministry. It was a common joke concerning an idiot
+or half idiot, "send him to college."[A]
+
+In short, so strongly was this unfounded impression concerning the
+native imbecility of ministers, and in general of literary men, fastened
+on my mind as well as on the minds of most people, that I grew up nearly
+to manhood with a sort of confused belief that as a general rule they
+were below par in point of good, common sense. One prominent reason, as
+I supposed, why they were sent to college and wrought into that
+particular shape, was to bring them up to an equality with their
+fellows. Hence, I not only repelled with a degree of indignation the
+thought of becoming a minister, but felt really demeaned by my natural
+fondness for books and school; and like the poet Cowper, hardly dared,
+all my early lifetime, to look higher than the shoe buckles of my
+associates. Still, I could not wholly suppress the strong desire to
+_know_ which had penetrated and pervaded my soul, and which had been
+nurtured and fed not only by an intelligent mother but by a few books I
+had read. Perhaps the life of Franklin, already referred to, had as much
+influence with me as any thing of the kind. For along with the love of
+knowledge which was so much developed by this book, the love of doing
+good was introduced. The doctor says, somewhere, that he always set a
+high value on a doer of good; and it is possible, nay, I might even say
+probable, that this desire, which subsequently became a passion with me,
+had its origin in this very remark.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[A] To illustrate this point, and show clearly the state of the public
+opinion, I will relate an anecdote. A certain calf in the neighborhood,
+after long and patient trial, was pronounced too ignorant to be able to
+procure his own nourishment, or in other words, was said to be a fool.
+On raising the question, what should be done with him, a shrewd colored
+man who stood by, said, "Master, send him to college!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+MY FIRST MEDICAL LESSON.
+
+
+Straws, it is said, show which way the wind blows; and words, and things
+very small in themselves, sometimes show, much better than "two crowns,"
+or the "stars," what is to be the future of a person's life. The choice
+of a profession or occupation, were we but trained to the habit of
+tracing effects up to their causes, will doubtless often be found to
+have had its origin, if not in _straws_, at least in very small matters.
+
+When I was ten years of age, my little brother, of only two years, sat
+one day on the floor whittling an apple. The instrument in his hand was
+a Barlow knife, as it was then called. The blade was about two inches in
+length, but was worn very narrow. How his parents and other friends,
+several of whom were in the same room, came to let him use such a
+plaything, I cannot now conceive; but as the point was almost square,
+and the knife very dull, they do not seem hitherto to have had any
+fears.
+
+Suddenly the usual quiet of the family was disturbed a little by the
+announcement, "Somebody is going by;" an event which, as you should
+know, was quite an era in that retired, mountainous region. All hastened
+to the window to get a view of the passing traveller. The little boy
+scampered among the rest; but in crossing the threshold of a door which
+intervened, he stumbled and fell. A sudden shriek called to him one of
+our friends, who immediately cried out, "Oh dear, he has put out his
+eye!" and made a hasty but unsuccessful effort to extract the knife,
+which had penetrated the full length of its blade. The mother hastened
+to the spot, and drew it forth, though, as she afterward said, not
+without the exertion of considerable force. Its back was towards the
+child, and by pressing the ball of the eye downward, the instrument had
+been able to penetrate to the bottom of the cavity, and perhaps a little
+way into the bone beyond. The elasticity of the eyeball had retained it
+so as to render its extraction seemingly difficult.
+
+Most of those who were present, particularly myself and the rest of the
+children, were for a short time in a state of mental agony that bordered
+on insanity. Not knowing at first the nature of the wound, but only that
+there was an eye there, and brains very near it, we naturally expected
+nothing less than the loss of this precious organ of vision, if not of
+life. There was no practising physician or surgeon, just at that time,
+within five or six miles, and I do not remember that any was sent for.
+We probably concluded that he could do no good.
+
+The child's eye swelled, and for a few days looked very badly; but after
+the lapse of about two weeks the little fellow seemed to be quite well;
+and so far as his eyes and brain are concerned, I believe he has been
+well to this time, a period of almost half a century.
+
+Although we resided at a considerable distance from the village, and
+from any practising physician, there was near by a very aged and
+superannuated man, who had once been a medical practitioner. Our
+curiosity had been so much excited by the wonderful escape of the little
+boy from impending destruction, that we called on the venerable doctor
+and asked him whether it was possible for a knife to penetrate so far
+into the head without injuring the brain and producing some degree of
+inflammation. From Dr. C. we received a good deal of valuable
+information concerning the structure of the eye, the shape of the cavity
+in which it is placed, the structure and character of the brain, etc.
+
+This was a great treat to me, I assure you. It added not a little to the
+interest which was imparted by his instructions when he showed us, from
+the relics of better days, some of the bones of the skull, especially
+those of the frontal region, in which the eye is situated. Of course the
+sight of a death's head, as we were inclined to call it, was at first
+frightful to us; but it was a feeling which in part soon passed away. It
+was a feeling, most certainly, which in me was not abiding at all.
+Indeed, as the title to the chapter would seem to imply, I received in
+this dispensation of Providence and its accompaniments my first medical
+lesson; though without the remotest thought, at the time, of any such
+thing. I was only indulging in a curiosity which was instinctive and
+intense, without dreaming of future consequences.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+THE ELECTRICAL MACHINE.
+
+
+Two years after this, an aged man, a distant relation, came to reside in
+my father's family for a short time, and brought with him a small
+electrical machine. He was a person of some intelligence, had travelled
+much, and had been an officer in the army of the American Revolution. On
+the whole, he was just such a man as would be likely to become a
+favorite with children. He was, moreover, fully imbued with the
+expectation of being able to cure diseases by means of electricity;
+which in our neighborhood, at the least, was quite a novel, not to say a
+heterodox idea.
+
+Curiosity alone had no small share of influence in bringing my mind to
+the study of electricity; but a general desire to understand the subject
+was greatly strengthened by the hope of being able to apply this
+wonderful agent in the cure of disease. One of the most interesting
+phases of Christianity is that the love and practice of healing the
+bodily maladies of mankind are almost always seen in the foreground of
+the New Testament representations of our Saviour's doings; and it is no
+wonder that a youth who reverences his Bible, and has a little
+benevolence, should entertain feelings like those above mentioned.
+
+The owner of the machine had brought with him a book on the subject of
+curing by electricity. It was a volume of several hundred pages, and was
+written by T. Gale, of Northern New York. It had in it much that was
+mere theory, in a highly bombastic style; but it also professed to give
+with accuracy the details of many remarkable cures, in various forms and
+stages, of several difficult diseases; and some of these details I knew
+to be realities. One or two cases at or near Ballston Springs were
+those of persons of whom I had some knowledge; and one of them was a
+relative. This last circumstance, no doubt, had great influence on my
+mind.
+
+As I had in those days some leisure for reading, and possessed very few
+books, I read--and not only read but studied--Dr. Gale's work from
+beginning to end. It is scarcely too much to say, that I read it till I
+knew it almost "by heart;" and my heart assented to it. I believed a new
+dispensation was at hand to bless the world of mankind; and what
+benevolence I had, began to be directed in this particular channel. I do
+not mean to say, that at twelve years of age I began to be a physician,
+for I do not now recollect that either our aged friend or myself ever
+had a patient during the whole year he remained with us.
+
+Eight or ten subsequent years at the plough and hoe, and the absence of
+book, electrical machine, and owner, did much towards obliterating the
+impressions on this subject I had received. Still, I have no doubt that
+the affair as a whole had a tendency to lead my thoughts towards the
+study and practice of medicine, and even to inspire confidence in
+electricity as a curative agent. In other and fewer words, it was, as I
+believe, a part of my medical education.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+THE MEASLES AND POURING DOWN RUM.
+
+
+When I was about fourteen years of age, an event occurred which left a
+stronger impression on my mind than any of the foregoing; and hence in
+all probability did more to give my mind a medical bias and tendency.
+
+It was in the month of August. My father, assisted by two or three of
+his neighbors, was mowing a swamp meadow. It was an unusually wet
+season, and the water in many places was several inches deep,--in some
+few instances so deep that we were obliged to go continually with wet
+feet. To meet, and as it was by most people supposed to remove the
+danger of contracting disease, a bottle of rum was occasionally resorted
+to by the mowers, and offered to me; but at first I steadfastly refused
+it.
+
+At length, however, I began to droop. A feverish feeling and great
+languor came over me, and I was hardly able to walk. I was not then
+aware, nor were my friends, that I had been exposed to the contagion of
+measles, and therefore was not expecting it. I spoke of my ill health,
+but was consoled with the answer that I should soon get over it. But no;
+I grew worse, very fast. "Turn down the rum," said one of the mowers,
+"if you mean to work." But I hesitated. I was not fond of rum at any
+time, and just now I felt a stronger disinclination to it than ever
+before. "Turn down the rum," was repeated by the mowers, from time to
+time, with increased emphasis.
+
+At length wearied with their importunity; and, not over-willing to be
+the butt of their mirth and ridicule, I went to the spring, where the
+bottle of rum was kept, and, unperceived by any one, emptied a large
+portion of its contents on the ground. The mental agitation of
+temporary excitement dispelled in part my sufferings, and I proceeded
+once more to my work.
+
+In a very short time my noisy alcoholic prescribers went to the spring
+to pour rum down their _own_ throats. "What," said they, with much
+surprise, "has become of the rum?" "Have you drank it?" said they,
+turning to me. "Not a drop of it," I said. "But it is almost all gone,"
+they said; "and it is a great mystery what has become of it." "The
+mystery is easily cleared up," I said; "you told me to turn it down, and
+I have done so."--"Told you to turn it down!" said one of them, the most
+noisy one; "I told you to drink it."--"No," said I, "you told me to turn
+it down; and I have poured it down--my part of it--at the foot of the
+stump. If you have forgotten your direction to turn it down, I appeal to
+two competent witnesses."
+
+The joke passed off much better than I expected. For myself, however, I
+grew worse rapidly, and was soon sent home. My mother put me into bed,
+applied a bottle of hot water to my feet, and gave me hot drinks most
+liberally, and among the rest some "hot toddy." Her object was to sweat
+away a supposed attack of fever. Had she known it was measles that
+assailed me, or had she even suspected it, she would almost as soon have
+cut off her right hand as apply the sweating process. She would, on the
+contrary, have given me cooling drinks and pure air. She was not wholly
+divested of good sense on this point, neither was the prevailing public
+opinion.
+
+I suffered much, very much, and was for a part of the time delirious. At
+length an eruption began to be visible, and to assume the appearance
+which is usual in measles, both to my own relief and that of my parents
+and other friends. But the mistaken treatment, or the disease, or both,
+gave a shock to my already somewhat delicate constitution, from which I
+doubt whether I ever fully recovered. The sequel, however, will appear
+more fully in the next chapter.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+LEE'S PILLS, AND THE DROPSY.
+
+
+In consequence either of the disease or its mismanagement, I was left,
+on recovering from the measles, with a general dropsy. I might also say
+here, that at the recurrence of the same season, for many years
+afterwards, I was attacked with a complaint so nearly resembling measles
+that some who were strangers to me could hardly be diverted from the
+belief that it was the veritable disease itself.
+
+But to the dropsy. This disease, so unusual in young people, especially
+those of my sanguine and nervous temperament, alarmed both my parents
+and myself, and medical advice was forthwith invoked. Our family
+physician was an old man, bred in the full belief of the necessity in
+such cases of what are called "alteratives," which, in plain English,
+means substances so active as to produce, when applied to the body
+either externally or internally, certain sudden changes. Alteratives, in
+short, are either irritants or poisons.
+
+Our aged doctor was called in to see me; and after the usual
+compliments, and perhaps a passing joke or two,--for both of which he
+was quite famous,--he asked me to let him see my tongue. Next, he felt
+my pulse. All the while--a matter exceedingly important to success--he
+looked "wondrous wise." He also asked me sundry wondrous wise questions.
+They were at least couched in wondrous words of monstrous length.
+
+The examination fairly over, there followed a pause; not, indeed, an
+"awful pause," but one of a few seconds, or perhaps in all of half a
+minute. "Now," said he, "you must take one of Lee's pills every day, in
+roasted apple." There were other directions, but this was the principal,
+except to avoid taking cold. The pills, of course, contained a
+proportion of mercury or calomel, on the alterative effects of which,
+as I plainly perceived, he placed his chief dependence.
+
+I took the pills, daily, for about six weeks; but they produced very
+little apparent effect, except to spoil my appetite. What their remoter
+effects were on my constitution generally, is quite another question.
+Suffice it to say, for the present, that for his occasional calls and
+wondrous wise looks, and his Lee's pills, he made quite a considerable
+bill. We were, it is true, always glad to see him, for he was pretty
+sure to crack a joke or two during his stay, and he sometimes told a
+good story. Nor, after all, were his charges remarkably high. For coming
+two or three miles to see me, he only made a charge of fifty cents a
+visit.
+
+It was near the beginning of October, and I was "getting no better very
+fast." A young physician had in the mean time come into the place, and
+my friends were anxious to call him in as "counsel." He proposed
+digitalis, and the family physician consented to it. But it was all to
+no purpose; I was still a bloated mass, and extremely enfeebled.
+
+At length, after some two or three months of ill health and loss of
+time, and the expenditure of considerable money on physicians and
+medicine, our good family doctor proposed a tea made from certain sweet
+roots, such as fennel, parsley, etc. Of this I was to drink very freely.
+I followed his advice, and in a few days the dropsy disappeared. Whether
+it was ready to depart just at this precise time, or whether the tea
+hastened its departure, I never knew. In any event, one thing is
+certain; that, either with its aid or in spite of it, I got rid of the
+dropsy; and it nevermore returned.
+
+But it is one thing to get rid of an inveterate disease, and quite
+another to be restored to our wonted measure of health and strength. The
+disease or the medicine or both had greatly debilitated me. I tried to
+attend school, but was unable till January or February; nor even then
+was I at all vigorous. I was able in the spring to work moderately; but
+it was almost a whole year before I occupied the same ground,
+physically, as before. Indeed, I have very many doubts whether I ever
+attained to the measure of strength to which I might have attained had
+it not been for the expenditure of vital power in a long contest with
+Lee's pills and disease.
+
+One lesson I learned, during my long sickness, in moral philosophy. I
+allude to the power of associated habits. Thus I was accustomed to take
+my pills daily for a long time, in combination with the pulp of a
+certain favorite apple. By degrees this apple, before so congenial to my
+taste, became so exceedingly disgusting to me that I could hardly come
+in sight of it, or even of the tree on which it grew, without nausea;
+and this dislike continued for years. By the aid of a strong will,
+however, I at length overcame it, and the apple is now as agreeable to
+my taste, for any thing I know, as it ever was.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+THE COLD SHOWER-BATH.
+
+
+My long experience of ill health, and of dosing and drugging, had led me
+to reflect not a little on the causes of disease, as well as on the
+nature of medicinal agents; and I had really made considerable progress,
+unawares, in what I now regard as the most important part of a medical
+education. In short, I had gained something, even by the loss of so
+precious commodity as health. So just is the oft-repeated saying, "It is
+an ill wind that blows nobody any good."
+
+It was about this time that I began to reflect on bathing. What gave me
+the first particular impulses in this direction I do not now recollect,
+unless it was the perusal of the writings of Dr. Benjamin Rush and Dr.
+John G. Coffin. My attention had been particularly turned to cold shower
+bathing. I had become more than half convinced of its happy adaptation
+to my own constitution and to my diseased tendencies, both hereditary
+and acquired.
+
+But what could I do? There were in those times no fleeting shower-baths
+to be had; nor indeed, so far as I knew, any other apparatus for the
+purpose; and had there been, I was not worth a dollar in the world to
+buy it with; and I was hardly willing to ask for money, for such
+purposes of my father.
+
+I will tell you, very briefly, what I did. My father had several clean
+and at that time unoccupied stables, one of which was as retired as the
+most fastidious person could have wished. In one of these stables,
+directly overhead, I contrived to suspend by its two handles a corn
+basket, in such a way that I could turn it over upon its side and retain
+it in this position as long as I pleased. Into this basket, when
+suspended sideways, and slightly fastened, I was accustomed to set a
+basin or pail of water; and when I was ready for its reception, I had
+but to pull a string and overturn the basket in order to obtain all the
+benefits of a cold and plentiful shower.
+
+Here, daily, for almost a whole summer, I used my cold shower-bath, and,
+as I then thought and still believe, with great advantage. My
+consumptive tendencies were held at bay during the time very
+effectually. I was fortunate, indeed, in being able always, with the aid
+of a coarse towel and a little friction, to secure a pretty full
+reaction.
+
+This season of cold bathing was when I was about sixteen years of age. I
+shall ever look back to it as one of the most important, not to say most
+interesting, of my _experiences_. Indeed, I do not know that in any six
+months of my life I ever gained so much physical capital--thus to call
+it; by which I mean bodily vigor--as during these six months of the year
+1814.
+
+I may also add here, that it has been my lot all my life long to learn
+quite as much from experiment and observation as in any other way. The
+foregoing experience gave me much knowledge of the laws of hygiene.
+Sometimes, while reflecting on this subject, I have thought of the
+assurance of the Apostle John, that he who "doeth truth cometh to the
+light," and have wondered whether the good apostle, along with this
+highly important truth, did not mean to intimate that the natural
+tendency of holy living was to an increase of light and love and
+holiness. And then I have gone a step further, and asked myself whether
+it was not possible that the doing of _physical_ truth as well as
+_moral_, had the same tendency.
+
+I have alluded to experience, or experiment. It is sometimes said that
+medical men are very much inclined to make experiments on their
+patients. Now, although I have a few sad confessions of this sort to
+make hereafter, yet I can truly say, in advance, that while I have made
+comparatively few experiments on other people, I have probably, during
+the progress of a long life, made more experiments on myself, both in
+sickness and in health, than any other existing individual. Whether I
+have learned as much in this way as I ought, in such favored
+circumstances, is quite another question.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+MY FIRST SICKNESS ABROAD.
+
+
+When I was about half-way through my nineteenth year, a desire to see
+the world became so strong that I made up my mind to a little
+travelling. Accordingly, having provided myself with an employment which
+would, without a great deal of hindrance, enable me to earn my passing
+expenses, I set out on my journey.
+
+It was in the month of March, and near its close. The weather was mild,
+and the snow was fast disappearing--but not as yet the mud. In walking
+all day, my boots became soaked and my feet wet. The era of India
+rubbers had not then arrived. In truth, I went with my feet wet in the
+afternoon two or three days.
+
+On the evening of the third day I came to the house of the friends with
+whom I was desirous of stopping not only for the Sabbath's sake, which
+was now at hand, but to rest and recruit. The next morning I was quite
+sick, and my friends were alarmed. It was proposed to send for a
+physician; but against this I uttered my protest, and the plan was
+accordingly abandoned.
+
+The next purpose of my kind friends was to bring on a perspiration. They
+were accustomed in these cases to aim at sweating. This is indeed a
+violence to nature; but they knew no better. The mistress of the house
+was one of those self-assured women who cannot brook any interference or
+submit willingly to any modification of their favorite plans. Otherwise
+I should even then have preferred a gentle perspiration, longer
+continued. Yet on the whole, for the sake of peace, I submitted to my
+fate, and went through the fiery furnace which was prepared for me. More
+than even this I might say. I was cooler, much cooler, when I got
+through the fire than when I was in the midst of it!
+
+In three days I was, in a good measure, restored. I was, it is true,
+left very weak, but was free from fever. My strength rapidly returned;
+and on the fifth day I was able to set out for home, where in due time I
+safely arrived.
+
+During this excursion I learned one good lesson, if no more. This was,
+the danger of going day after day with wet feet. A vigorous person may
+go with wet or damp feet a little while, in the early part of the day,
+when in full strength, with comparative safety; but towards evening,
+when the vital forces are at ebb tide, or at least are ebbing, it is
+unsafe. The feeble especially should guard themselves in this direction;
+nor should those who may perchance at some future time be feeble,
+despise the suggestion.
+
+One important resolution was also made. This was never to use violent
+efforts to induce perspiration. Such a course of treatment I saw
+clearly, as I thought, must be contrary to the intentions of nature; and
+time and further observation and experiment have confirmed me in this
+opinion. There may of course be exceptions to the truth of such a
+general inference; but I am sure they cannot be very numerous. What
+though the forcing plan seems to have succeeded quite happily in my own
+case? So it has in thousands of others. So might a treatment still more
+irrational. Mankind are tough, and will frequently live on for a
+considerable time in spite of treatment which is manifestly wrong, and
+even without any treatment at all.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+LESSON FROM AN OLD SURGEON.
+
+
+Five or six miles from the place of my nativity a family resided whom I
+shall call by the name of Port. Among the ancestry of this family, time
+out of mind, there had been more, or fewer of what are usually called
+natural bone setters. They were known far and near; and no effort short
+of miraculous would have been sufficient to shake the confidence which
+ignorance and credulity had reposed in them.
+
+One or two of these natural bone setters were now in the middle stage of
+life, and in the full zenith of their glory. The name of the most
+prominent was Joseph. He was a man of some acquired as well as inherited
+knowledge; but he was indolent, coarse, vulgar, and at times profane.
+Had it not been for his family rank and his own skill as a surgeon, of
+which he really had a tolerable share, he would have been no more than
+at best a common man, and occasionally would have passed for little more
+than a common blackguard.
+
+I was in a shop one day conversing with Capt. R., when Dr. Port came in.
+"Capt. R., how are you?" was the first compliment. "Very well," said the
+captain, "except a lame foot." "I see you have one foot wrapped up,"
+said Dr. Port; "what is the matter with it?"--"I cut it with an axe, the
+other day," said he, "very badly."--"On the upper part of the foot?"
+said the doctor. "Yes, directly on the instep," said Capt. R. "Is it
+doing well?"--"Not very well," he replied; "and I came into town to-day
+partly to see and converse with you about it."--"Well, then, undo it and
+let me have a look at it."
+
+Wrapper after wrapper was now taken from the lame foot, till Dr. Port
+began to scowl. "You keep it too warm," said he. "A wound of this sort
+should be kept cool, if you don't wish to have it inflame. A slight
+wrapping is all that is needful." They came at length to the wound. "It
+does not look very badly," said Dr. Port; "but you must keep it cool.
+And then," added he with an oath, the very thought of which to this day
+almost makes me shudder, "You must keep your nasty, abominable ointments
+away from it. Remember one thing, Capt. R., whenever you have a new
+flesh wound, all you can possibly do with any hope of advantage is to
+bring the divided edges of the parts together and keep them there, and
+nature will take care of the rest."
+
+"Would you, then, do nothing at all but bind it up and keep it still?"
+said Capt. R. "Nothing at all," said he, "unless it should inflame; and
+then a little water applied to it is as good as any thing."--"But is
+there nothing of a healing nature I can use?" said the captain. "I have
+told you already," said he, with another strange oath, "that you don't
+want any thing healing on the outside, if you had a cart-load of
+medicaments. All wounds, when they heal at all, heal from the bottom;
+and of course all your external applications are useless, except so far
+as is necessary to protect the parts from fresh injury and keep them
+from the air."
+
+The crowd around looked as if they were amazed; but it was Dr. Port who
+said it, and therefore it must be swallowed. I was somewhat surprised
+with the rest. And I have not a doubt that what he said was to most of
+them an invaluable lecture. For myself, as a student of _man_, it was
+just what I needed. It set me to thinking. It was a lesson which I could
+never forget if I were to live a thousand years.
+
+It was a lesson, moreover, which I have repeated almost a thousand
+times, in circumstances not dissimilar. Indeed, I believe this very
+occurrence did much to turn my attention to the medical profession. I
+saw at once it was a rational thing; a matter of plain common sense; a
+thing of principle; and not on the one hand a bundle of mysteries, nor
+on the other a mere humbug.
+
+Dr. Port long ago paid the debt of nature; but not till he had made his
+mark on the age he lived in. If, indeed, he died as the fool dieth,--and
+thus it was said he _did_ die,--he was at least a means of teaching
+others to live right. He did great good by his frequent wise precepts,
+as well as not a little harm by his sometimes immoral example. For
+myself, I honor him because he was my teacher on a point of great
+practical importance, and because he was to thousands of over-credulous
+people a light and a benefactor.
+
+Although I had not at this time any very serious thoughts of becoming a
+physician and surgeon, yet I certainly inclined in that direction. My
+great poverty was the chief difficulty that lay in my way; but this
+difficulty at that time seemed insurmountable. Besides, I was wedded to
+my father's farm, and I did not see how the banns could very well be
+sundered.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+LEE'S WINDHAM BILIOUS PILLS.
+
+
+I was, at length, twenty-two years of age. I had about fifty dollars in
+my pocket, besides a few books. But what would this do towards giving me
+a liberal education? And yet, to an education in the schools, of some
+sort, either as a means to a profession, or as affording facilities for
+obtaining knowledge or communicating it to others, I certainly did
+aspire. But I seemed compelled for the present to plod on in the old
+way.
+
+There had been, but recently, a gold fever--not, it is true, of
+California, but of Carolina. The young men of the North, shrewd,
+intelligent, active, and ambitious Yankees, had flocked by hundreds, if
+not by thousands, from New England to the Southern States, to sell tin
+ware and clocks, especially the former. The trade at first had been very
+lucrative. Though many had been made poor by it, yet many more had been
+made rich. I do not say how honorably the trade had been conducted. To
+sell tin lanterns, worth fifty cents each, for silver, at fifty dollars,
+and tin toddy sticks, worth a New York shilling, for twelve dollars, did
+not in the final result redound much to our New England credit. Though
+it brought us gold, it did not permanently enrich us.
+
+A much better trade had now, in 1820, sprung up with the South. The
+North--the great nursery of America--had still a surplus of young men
+who wanted to go somewhere. A part of them found their way to Carolina
+and Georgia, and engaged during the winter, and occasionally through the
+year, in teaching; while another part labored on their canals and
+railroads and in their shops. This was to furnish the South with a
+commodity of real value, for which we received in return a fair
+compensation. Besides, it had a better effect than clock and tin
+peddling, both on the seller and buyer.
+
+To improve my pecuniary condition, and to acquaint myself with the
+world, I prepared to embark for the South. My purpose was to teach. It
+was the beginning of October, and yellow fever was said to be raging in
+Charleston, where I purposed to disembark. Was it, then, safe for me to
+go? Should the prospect of doing good, improving my mind, and bettering
+my condition in many other respects, weigh against the danger of
+disease; or was it preferable that I should wait?
+
+My numerous friends counselled me according to their various
+temperaments and prepossessions. The strong and vigorous in body and
+mind said, _Go on_; the feeble and timorous and trembling interposed
+their caution. But the vessel was ready and would soon sail; and I saw
+on board many of my acquaintances. The temptation was before me, and was
+great; the dangers, though many, were remote--the dangers of the sea
+excepted. For these, it is true, I was, like everybody else, entirely
+unprepared, having never before in my life crossed more than a single
+river. I was moreover exceedingly timid.
+
+One kind friend--kind, I mean, in general intention--who had been many
+years at the South, amid the ravages of the gold fever, as well as other
+fevers more or less yellow, whispered me just at this critical moment,
+"Take with you a box of Lee's Windham Bilious Pills; and as soon as you
+arrive at Charleston, make it your rule to swallow, every other day, one
+of these pills. That will prevent your getting the fever. I have often
+tried it, and always with success."
+
+My friend's words gave me more courage than his pills. I saw that he had
+been in the midst of sickness and had lived through it. Why might not I?
+My mind was soon made up to proceed on the journey.
+
+We sailed from New Haven in Connecticut, and were seventeen days on our
+passage. When we reached Charleston, either the yellow fever had spent
+itself or it had not recently been there, except in a few rare
+instances. I found no use for pills of any kind, except _such as grew on
+fruit-trees_--the apple, peach, orange, persimmon, etc., or such as
+were the products of the corn, potato, and rice fields; nor did I ever
+take any other while I remained in the South. A queer idea, I often said
+to myself, that of taking poison while a person is well, in order to
+prevent becoming sick! In any event, I did not do it.
+
+There was sickness in the country, however, if not in the city; and I
+was much and often exposed to it. But what then? How would one of Lee's
+pills defend me from it, even for two days? I preferred to eat and drink
+and sleep correctly, and then trust to my good fortune and to Him who
+controlled it, rather than to nauseous and poisonous medicine. And I had
+my choice, and with it a blessed reward. I was in the low country of
+North and South Carolina and Virginia six months or more, and often and
+again much exposed to disease, and yet I never had a sick day while I
+remained there. And yet, as I have before intimated, I never took a
+particle of medicine during the whole time.
+
+Once, indeed, I was beguiled into the foolish habit of using French
+brandy with my dinner, under the idea that it would promote digestion.
+But I did not continue it long; and I verily believe that it did me more
+harm than good while I used it; for I have at no other period of my life
+suffered so much from dyspeptic tendencies as during the summer which
+followed this temporary indulgence of brandy with my dinner.
+
+During my wanderings in the South, I had, much of the time, a fellow
+traveller, who, though he took no medicine, was less cautious than
+myself, and less fortunate. Perhaps his very recklessness served as a
+warning to me. In truth, without being much of a theologian, I have
+sometimes thought that the errors of mankind were intended in the divine
+plan--at least in part--for this very end. Happy, then, if this is so,
+are they who make a wise use of them!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+DR. SOLOMON AND HIS PATIENT.
+
+
+I have said that my fellow traveller was less cautious than myself, and
+have intimated much more. He was in some respects cautious, and yet in
+others absolutely reckless. When hot and thirsty, for example, instead
+of just rinsing out his mouth and swallowing a very little water, he
+would half-fill his stomach with some of that semi-putrid stuff, ycleped
+water, which you often find in Virginia and the Carolinas; and when
+hungry, he would eat almost any thing he could lay hold of, and in
+almost any quantity, as well as at almost any hours, whether seasonable
+or unseasonable.
+
+This course of conduct seemed to answer very well for a few months; but
+a day of retribution at last came. He was then in Norfolk, in Virginia.
+I had been absent from the place a few weeks, and on my return found him
+sick with a fever, and without such assistance as was absolutely and
+indispensably necessary. There were Yankees in the place in great
+numbers, and some of them were his personal acquaintances and friends;
+but they had hitherto refused to come near him, lest they should take
+the fever.
+
+I proceeded to take care of him by night and by day. At the suggestion
+of an old citizen, in whom I placed great confidence, Dr. Solomon was
+called in as his physician. There was some bleeding and drugging, and a
+pretty constant attendance for many weeks; but the young man finally
+recovered.
+
+If you ask what this chapter has to do with my medical confessions, I
+will tell you. Dr. Solomon was an old school physician, and made certain
+blunders, which I am about to confess for him. He prescribed--as very
+many of us his medical brethren formerly did, for the _name_ of a
+disease rather than for the disease itself, just as it now appeared.
+
+Thus, suppose the disease was typhus fever; in that case he seemed to
+give just about so many pills and powders every day, without much regard
+to the circumstances; believing that somehow or other, and at some time
+or other, good would come out of it. If his patient had sufficient force
+of constitution to enable him to withstand both the disease and the
+medicine, and ultimately to recover, Dr. S. had the credit of a cure;
+not, perhaps that he claimed it,--his friends awarded the honor. If the
+patient died, it was on account of the severity of the disease. Neither
+the doctor nor his medicine was supposed to be at fault. Some, indeed,
+regarded it as the mysterious work of Divine Providence.
+
+Dr. S. attended my young companion in pedestrianism a long time, and
+sometimes brought a student into the bargain. He probably kept his
+patient insane with his medicine about half the time, and greatly
+prolonged his disease and his sufferings. But he knew no better way. He
+was trained to all this. The idea that half a dozen careful visits,
+instead of fifty formal ones, and a few shillings' worth of medicine
+instead of some twenty or thirty dollars' worth, would give the young
+man a better prospect of recovery than his own routine of fashionable
+book-dosing and drugging, never for once, I dare say, entered his head.
+And yet his head was large enough to hold such a simple idea, had it
+been put there very early; and the deposit would have done much to make
+him--what physicians will one day become--a rich blessing to the world.
+
+Reader, are here no confessions of medical importance? If not, bear with
+me awhile, and you will probably find them. We have yet a long road to
+travel, and there are many confessions to be made in which I have a
+personal concern and responsibility, and, as you may perhaps conclude,
+no small share of downright culpability.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+PHYSICKING OFF FEVER.
+
+
+The eyes of my mind having just begun to be opened to the impotence of a
+mere routine of medication as a _substitute for nature_, rather than _as
+an aid to her enfeebled efforts_, I was prepared to make a wise use of
+other facts that came before me, especially those in which I had a
+personal concern and interest. Here is one of this description.
+
+On the morning of March 12, 1821, during the very period when I was
+watching over my sick friend, as mentioned in the preceding chapter, I
+took from the post-office a letter with a black seal. It contained the
+distressing intelligence of the death of a much-valued sister and her
+husband, both of whom, but a few months before, I had left in apparently
+perfect health.
+
+On a careful inquiry into the particulars, both by letter and, after my
+return, in other ways, I learned that the Connecticut River fever, as it
+was then and there called, having carried off several persons who were
+residing in the same house with my brother, the survivors were advised
+to do something to prevent the germination and development of such seeds
+of the disease as were supposed to be in their bodies and ready to burst
+forth into action. I do not know that any medical man encouraged this
+notion, the offspring of ignorance and superstition; but my brother and
+his wife had somehow or other imbibed it, and they governed themselves
+accordingly.
+
+Both of them took medicine--moderate cathartics--till they thought they
+had physicked off the disease; and all seemed, for a time, to be well,
+except that they complained still of great weakness and debility. It was
+not long, however, before they were both taken with the disease and
+perished; my brother in a very short time, and my sister more slowly.
+
+My sister, on being taken ill, had been removed to the house of her
+mother, in the hope that a change of air might do something for her; but
+all in vain. My mother and a few other friends who were with them as
+assistants sickened, but they all ultimately recovered. They, however,
+took no medicine by way of prevention.
+
+Now I do not presume to say, that my young friends were destroyed solely
+by medicine, for the assertion would be unwarranted. I only state the
+facts, and tell you what my convictions then were, and what they are
+still. My belief is, that though they might have sickened had they taken
+no medicine or preventive, yet their chance of recovery after they
+sickened was very much diminished by the unnecessary and uncalled-for
+dosing and drugging.
+
+The notion that we can physick off the seeds of disease, or by our
+dosing prevent their germination, is as erroneous as can possibly be,
+and is a prolific source of much suffering and frequent death. The best
+preventive of disease is good health. Now, physicking off generally
+weakens us, instead of giving strength. It takes away from our good
+health instead of adding to or increasing it. As a general rule, to
+which there are very few exceptions, all medicine, when disease is
+unusually common or fatal, is hazardous without sound medical advice,
+and not generally safe even then. It is fit only for extreme cases.
+
+You may be at a loss to understand how such facts and reflections as
+these could allure me to the study and practice of medicine as a
+profession. Yet they most certainly had influence. Not that I felt a
+very strong desire to deal out medicine, for to this I felt a repugnance
+which strengthened with increase of years and experience. What I most
+ardently desired was to know the causes of disease, and how far they
+were or were not within human control. Such a science as that of
+_hygiene_--nay, even the word itself, and the phrase _laws of
+health_--was at that time wholly unknown in the world in which I moved.
+There was, in truth, no way then to this species of knowledge, except
+through the avenues opened by a course of medical study. Hence it was
+that I blundered on, in partial though not entire ignorance, for some
+time longer, groping and searching for that light which I hardly knew
+how or whence to seek, except in pills and powders and blisters and
+tinctures.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+MANUFACTURING CHILBLAINS.
+
+
+At the period of my life to which we have at length arrived, I was for
+four or five months of every year a school teacher. This was, in no
+trifling degree, an educational process; for is it not well known that,
+
+    "Teaching we learn, and giving we retain?"
+
+It was at least an education in the great school of human nature.
+
+Every morning of one of these winter sessions of school keeping, Lydia
+Maynard, eight years of age, after walking about a mile, frequently in
+deep snow, and combating the cold northwest winds of one of the southern
+Green Mountain ranges, would come into the schoolroom with her feet
+almost frozen, and take her seat close to the stove, so as to warm them
+and be ready for school as quickly as possible. Here she would sit, if
+permitted to do so, till the bell rang for school.
+
+It was not long before I learned that she was a great sufferer from
+chilblains. Whether she inherited a tendency to this troublesome and
+painful disease, which was awakened and aggravated by sudden changes of
+temperature, or whether the latter were the original cause of the
+disease, I never knew with certainty. But I was struck with the fact
+that sudden warming was followed by such lasting and terrible
+consequences.
+
+And herein is one reason why I have opposed, from that day to this, the
+custom or habit, so exceedingly prevalent, of rushing to the fire when
+we are very cold, and warming ourselves as quickly as possible. I have
+reasoned; I have commanded; and in some few instances I have ridiculed.
+Every one knows it is hazardous to bring the ears or fingers or toes,
+or any other parts of the body, suddenly to the fire when really
+frozen,--that is, when the temperature is lowered down in the part to
+32°; and yet, if it is only down to 33°, and the part not quite frozen,
+almost every one, young and old, will venture to the fire. Can there be
+such a difference in the effects when there is only a difference of one
+degree in temperature? No reflecting person will for one moment believe
+it. The trouble is we do not think about it.
+
+Sudden changes from heat to cold are little more favorable than when the
+change is in the other direction. Indeed, it often happens that children
+at school are subjected to both these causes. Thus, in the case of
+Lydia, suppose that after roasting herself a long time at the stove, she
+had gone to her seat and placed her feet directly over crevices in the
+floor, through which the cold wind found its way at almost freezing
+temperature. Would not this have greatly added to the severity of the
+disease?
+
+There are, it is true, other reasons against sudden changes of
+temperature, particularly the change from cold to heat, besides the fact
+that they tend to produce chilblains; but I cannot do more just now than
+barely advert to them. The eyes are apt to be injured; it renders us
+more liable than otherwise we should be to take cold. Occasionally it
+brings on faintness and convulsions, and still more rarely, sudden
+death. I will only add now, that sudden warming after suffering from
+extreme cold, whether we perceive it or not at the time, is very apt to
+produce deep and lasting injury to the brain and nervous system.
+
+But my main object in relating the story is answered if I have succeeded
+in clearly pointing out to the reader one of the avenues through which
+light found its way to my benighted intellect, and led me to reflection
+on the whole subject of health and disease. Here was obviously one cause
+of a frequent but most painful complaint. It was natural, perfectly
+natural, that by this time I should begin to inquire. Have all diseases,
+then, their exciting causes? Many certainly have; and if many, perhaps
+all. At least, how do we know but it may be so? And then again, if the
+causes of chilblains are within our control, and this troublesome
+disease might be prevented, or its severity mitigated if no more, why
+may it not be so with all other diseases?
+
+To revert for a moment to the case of Lydia Maynard. Though I was the
+cause, in a certain sense, of her suffering, yet it was a sin of
+ignorance. But it taught me much wisdom. It made me cautious ever
+afterward. I do not doubt but I have been a means of preventing a very
+considerable amount of suffering in this form, since that time, by
+pointing out the road that leads to it.
+
+Prevention is better than cure, was early my motto, and is so still. And
+from the day in which I began to open my eyes on the world around me,
+and to reason from effects up to their causes, I have been more and more
+confirmed in the belief that mankind as a race are to be the artificers
+of their own happiness or misery. All facts point in this direction,
+some of them with great certainty. And facts, everywhere and always, are
+stubborn things.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+HOW TO MAKE ERYSIPELAS.
+
+
+My periodical tendency to a species of eruptive disease closely
+resembling measles, was mentioned in Chapter IV. During the summer of
+1823 this affection became unusually severe, and seemed almost beyond
+endurance. The circumstances were as follows:--
+
+I had in charge a large and difficult school. The weather was very hot,
+and I was not accustomed to labor in summer within doors. Besides, my
+task was so difficult as to call forth all the energies of body and mind
+both; and the "wear and tear" of my system was unusually great. It was
+in the very midst of these severe labors, in hot and not well-ventilated
+air, that the eruption appeared. Perhaps it was aggravated by my diet,
+which, in "boarding around," was of course not the best.
+
+The eruption not only affected my body and reached to the extremities,
+but was accompanied by an itching so severe that I was occasionally
+compelled to lie awake all night. My general strength at last began to
+give way under it, and I sought the advice of our family physician.
+
+He advised me to use, as a wash to the irritated and irritable surface,
+a weak solution of corrosive sublimate. I hesitated; especially as I
+believed it to be, with him, an experiment. But on his repeated
+assurance, that if I would take special care of myself and avoid taking
+cold, there was no danger, I waived my objections, and proceeded to
+carry out his plan.
+
+The solution was applied, accordingly, to the letter of the doctor's
+directions. For many days no change appeared, either favorable or
+adverse. At length a most distressing headache came on and remained. My
+sufferings became so severe that I was obliged to postpone my school
+and return to my father's house.
+
+On the road, I observed that an eruption of a peculiar kind had
+appeared, particularly about the forehead, accompanied with small
+blisters. It was not here that I had applied the solution, but on the
+arms, chest, and lower limbs. Of course the corrosive sublimate, if at
+all operative, had affected me through the medium of the circulation and
+not by direct contact.
+
+Our physician came, pronounced the disease erysipelas, and without
+saying a word about the cause, prescribed; and I followed out carefully
+his prescription. But the disease had its course in spite of us both,
+and was very severe. It took away my sleep entirely for a day or two. It
+proved a means of removing the hair from one side of my head, and of so
+injuring the skin that it never grew again. Indeed, gangrene or
+mortification had actually commenced at several points. Suddenly,
+however, the pain and inflammation subsided, and I recovered.
+
+Now my physician never said that I was poisoned by the corrosive
+sublimate, probably for the two following reasons: 1, I never made the
+inquiry. 2, He would probably have ascribed the disease to taking cold
+rather than to the mercury, had I inquired. I do not believe I took
+cold, however. How it came to affect me so unfavorably I never knew with
+certainty; but that it was the medicine that did the mischief I never
+for one moment doubted. I suppose it was absorbed; but of the manner of
+its introduction to the system I am less certain than of the fact
+itself.
+
+But besides the absorption of the corrosive sublimate into the system,
+and its consequences--a terrible caution to those who are wont to apply
+salves, ointments, washes, etc., to the surface of the body
+unauthorized--I learned another highly important lesson from this
+circumstance. Active medicines, as I saw more plainly than ever before,
+are as a sword with two edges. If they do not cut in the right
+direction, they are almost sure to cut in the wrong.
+
+I must not close, however, without telling you a little more about the
+treatment of my disease. After I had left my school and had arrived at
+home, a solution of sugar of lead was ordered in the very coldest water.
+With this, through the intervention of layers of linen cloth, I was
+directed to keep my head constantly moistened. Its object, doubtless,
+was to check the inflammation, which had become exceedingly violent. Why
+the sugar of lead itself was not absorbed, thus adding poison to poison,
+is to me inconceivable. Perhaps it was so; and yet, such was the force
+of my constitution, feeble though it was, that I recovered in spite of
+both poisons. Or, what is more probable, perhaps the lead, if absorbed
+at all, did not produce its effects till the effects of the corrosive
+sublimate were on the wane; so that the living system was only
+necessitated to war with one poison at a time. Mankind are made to live,
+at least till they are worn out; and it is not always easy to poison a
+person to death, if we would. In other words, human nature is tough.
+
+Now I do not know, by the way, that any one but myself ever suspected,
+even for one moment, that this attack of erysipelas was caused by the
+corrosive sublimate. But could I avoid such a conclusion? Was it a hasty
+or forced one? Judge, then, whether it was not perfectly natural that I
+should be led by such an unfortunate adventure to turn my attention more
+than ever to the subject of preserving and promoting health.
+
+For if our family physician--cautious and judicious as in general he
+was--had been the unintentional cause of a severe attack from a violent
+and dangerous disease, which had come very near destroying my life, what
+blunders might not be expected from the less careful and cautious man,
+especially the beginner in medicine? And if medical men, old and young,
+scientific as well as unscientific, make occasional blunders, how much
+more frequently the mass of mankind, who, in their supposed knowledge of
+their own constitutions and those of their families, are frequently
+found dosing and drugging themselves and others?
+
+I do not mean to say that in the incipiency of my observations and
+inquiries my mind was mature enough--well educated enough, I mean--to
+pursue exactly the foregoing train of thought; but there was certainly a
+tendency that way, as will be seen more fully in the next chapter. The
+spell at least was broken, and I saw plainly that if "died by the
+visitation of God" _never_ means any thing, it _generally_ does not. And
+as it turned out that the further I pushed my inquiries the more I found
+that diseases were caused by transgression of physical and moral law,
+and hence not uncontrollable, why should it not be so, still farther on,
+in the great world of facts which I had not yet penetrated?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+STUDYING MEDICINE.
+
+
+My thoughts were now directed with considerable earnestness and
+seriousness, to the study of medicine. It is true that I was already in
+the twenty-fourth year of my age, and that the statute law of the State
+in which I was a resident required three years of study before receiving
+a license to practise medicine and surgery, and I should hence be in my
+twenty-seventh or twenty-eighth year before I could enter actively and
+responsibly upon the duties of my profession, which would be rather late
+in life. Besides, I had become quite enamored of another profession,
+much better adapted to my slender pecuniary means than the study of a
+new one.
+
+However, I revolved the subject in my mind, till at length, as I
+thought, I saw my path clearly. It was my undoubted duty to pursue the
+study of medicine. Still, there were difficulties which to any but men
+of decision of character were not easily got removed. Shall I tell you
+how they were gradually and successfully overcome?
+
+Our family physician had an old skeleton, and a small volume of anatomy
+by Cheselden, as well as a somewhat more extended British work on
+anatomy and physiology; all these he kindly offered to lend me. Then he
+would permit me to study with him, or at least occasionally recite to
+him, which would answer the letter of the law. Then, again, I could,
+during the winter of each year of study except the last, teach school,
+and thus add to my pecuniary means of support. And lastly, my father
+would board me whenever I was not teaching, and on as long a credit as I
+desired. Were not, then, all my difficulties practically overcome, at
+least prospectively?
+
+It was early in the spring of the year 1822 that I carried to my
+father's house an old dirty skeleton and some musty books, and commenced
+the study of medicine and surgery, or at least of those studies which
+are deemed a necessary preparation. It was rather dry business at first,
+but I soon became very much interested in the study of physiology, and
+made considerable progress. My connection with our physician proved to
+be merely nominal, as I seldom found him ready to hear a recitation.
+Besides, my course of study was rather desultory, not to say irregular.
+
+In the autumn of 1824, having occasion to teach school at such a
+distance as rendered it almost impracticable for me to continue my
+former connection as a student, I made arrangements for studying with
+another physician on terms not unlike those in the former case. My new
+teacher, however, occasionally heard me recite, especially in what is
+properly called the practice of medicine and in surgery. His
+instructions, though very infrequent, were of service to me.
+
+In 1825 I became a boarder in his family, where I remained about a year.
+Here I had an opportunity to consult and even study the various standard
+authors in the several departments which are usually regarded as
+belonging to a course of medical study. So that if I was not in due time
+properly qualified to "practise medicine and surgery in this or any
+other country," the fault was chiefly my own.
+
+However, in the spring of 1825, after I had attended a five months'
+course of lectures in one of the most famous medical colleges of the
+Northern States, I was regularly examined and duly licensed. _How_ well
+qualified I was supposed to be, did not exactly appear. It was
+marvellous that I succeeded at all, for I had labored much on the farm
+during the three years, taught school every winter and two summers, had
+two or three seasons of sickness, besides a severe attack of influenza
+(this, you know, is not regarded as a disease by many) while attending
+lectures, which confined me a week or more. And yet one of my fellow
+students, who was present at the examination, laughed at my studied
+accuracy!
+
+One word about my thesis, or dissertation. It was customary at the
+college where I heard lectures--as it probably is at all others of the
+kind--to require each candidate for medical license to read before the
+board, prior to his examination, an original dissertation on some topic
+connected with his professional studies. The topic I selected was
+pulmonary consumption; especially, the means of preventing it. It was,
+as may be conjectured, a slight departure from the ordinary routine, but
+was characteristic of the writer's mind, prevention being then, as it
+still is, and probably always will be, with him a favorite idea. I go so
+far, even, as to insist that it should be the favorite idea of every
+medical man, from the beginning to the end of his career. "The best part
+of the medical art is the art of avoiding pain," was the motto for many
+years of the _Boston Medical Intelligencer_; and it embraced a most
+important truth. When will it be fully and practically received?
+
+But I must recapitulate a little; or rather, I must go back and give the
+reader a few chapters of incidents which occurred while I was a student
+under Dr. W., my second and principal teacher. I will however study
+brevity as much as possible.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+NATURE'S OWN EYE WATER.
+
+
+When I began the study of medicine, my eyes were so exceedingly weak,
+and had been for about ten years, or indeed always after the attack of
+measles, that I was in the habit of shading them, much of the time, with
+green or blue glasses. My friends, many of them, strongly objected to
+any attempt to pursue the study of medicine on this very account. And
+the attempt was, I confess, rather hazardous.
+
+What seemed most discouraging in the premises was the consideration that
+I had gone, to no manner of purpose, the whole round of eye waters,
+elixir vitriol itself not excepted. Was there room, then, for a single
+gleam of hope? Yet I was resolutely, perhaps obstinately, determined on
+making an effort. I could but fail.
+
+Soon after I made a beginning, the thought struck me, "Why not make the
+experiment of frequently bathing the eyes in cold water?" At that very
+moment they were hot and somewhat painful; and suiting the action to the
+thought, I held my face for some seconds in very cold water. The
+sensation was indescribably agreeable; and I believe that for once in my
+life, at the least, I felt a degree of gratitude to God, my Creator, for
+cold water.
+
+The practice was closely and habitually followed. Whenever my eyes
+became hot and painful, I put my face for a short time in water, even if
+it were _twenty_ times a day. The more I bathed them, the greater the
+pleasure, nor was it many days before they were evidently less inflamed
+and less troublesome. Why, then, should I not persevere?
+
+I carried the practice somewhat further still. I found from experiment,
+that I could open my eyes in the water. At first, it is true, the
+operation was a little painful, and I raised, slightly, its temperature.
+Gradually, however, I became so much accustomed to it that the sensation
+was not only less painful, but even somewhat agreeable. In a few weeks I
+could bear to open my eyes in the water, and keep them open as long as I
+was able to hold my breath, even at a very low temperature.
+
+Perseverance in this practice not only enabled me to proceed with my
+studies, contrary to the expectation of my friends, and in spite, too,
+of my own apprehensions, but gave me in addition the unspeakable
+pleasure of finding my eyes gaining every year in point of strength, as
+well as clearness of sight. My glasses were laid aside, and I have never
+used any for that specific purpose since that time. Of course I do not
+mean by this to say that my eyes remain as convex as they were at
+twenty-five or thirty years of age, for that would not be true. They
+have most certainly flattened a little since I came to be fifty years of
+age, for I am compelled to wear glasses when I would read or write. I
+mean, simply, that they have never suffered any more from inflammation
+or debility, since I formed the habit of bathing them, even up to the
+present hour.
+
+The more I observe on this subject, the more I am persuaded--apart from
+my own experience--that pure water, at the lowest temperature which can
+be used without giving pain, is the best known eye medicine in the
+world, not merely for one, two, or ten in a hundred persons, but for
+all. I recommend it, therefore, at every opportunity, not only to my
+patients but to others. It may doubtless be abused, like every other
+good gift; but in wise and careful hands it will often accomplish almost
+every thing but downright miracles. We may begin with water a little
+tepid, and lower the temperature as gradually as we please, till we come
+to use it ice cold.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+THE VIPER STORY.
+
+
+I was, early in life, greatly perplexed in mind by the oft-recurring
+question, why it was that in the hands of common sense men, every known
+system of medicine--even one which was diametrically opposed to the
+prevailing custom or belief, like that of Hahnemann, seemed to be
+successful. Not only the botanic practitioner with his herbs, and the
+homoeopathist with his billionth dilutions, but even the no-medicine
+man[B] could boast of his cures, and, for aught I could see, of about an
+equal number--good sense and perseverance and other things being equal.
+And then, again, he that bled everybody, or almost everybody, if
+abounding in good sense, like the late Dr. Hubbard, of Pomfret, in
+Connecticut, was about as successful as those who, like Dr. Danforth,
+once an eminent practitioner of Boston, would bleed nobody, nor, if in
+his power to prevent it, suffer the lancet to be used by anybody else.
+
+While cogitating on this subject one day, the following anecdote from a
+surgical work--I think a French work--came under my eye, and at once
+solved the problem, and relieved me of my difficulty. It may probably be
+relied on.
+
+When the Abbé Fontana, a distinguished medical man and naturalist, was
+travelling, once, in some of the more northern countries of Europe, he
+was greatly surprised to find such a wonderful variety of applications
+to the bite of the viper, and still more to find them all successful, or
+at least about equally so. Even those that were in character
+diametrically opposed to each other, _all cured_. His astonishment
+continued and increased when he found at length that those who applied
+nothing at all recovered about as readily as any of the rest.
+
+In the sequel, as the result of diligent and scientific research, it
+turned out that the bite of this animal, however dangerous and fatal in
+hot climates, is scarcely dangerous at all in cold ones. Hence it was
+that all sorts of treatment appeared to cure. In other words, the
+persons who were bitten all recovered in spite of the applications made
+to their wounds, and generally in about the same period of time.
+
+Thus, as I began to suspect,--and the reader must pardon the suspicion,
+if he can,--it may be with our diversified and diverse modes of medical
+treatment. A proportion of our patients,--perhaps I should say a large
+proportion,--if well nursed and cared for and encouraged, would recover
+if let alone so far as regards medicine. And it is in proof of this
+view, that nearly as many recover under one mode of practice, provided
+that practice is guided by a large share of plain, unsophisticated
+sense, as another. And does not this fully account for a most remarkable
+fact?
+
+Hence it is, too,--and perhaps hence alone,--that we can account for the
+strange development in Boston, not many years since, during a public
+medical discussion; viz., that he who had given his tens of pounds of
+calomel to his patients, and taken from their arms his hogsheads of
+blood, had been on the whole about as successful a practitioner as he
+who had revolted from the very thought of both, and had adopted some of
+the various forms of the stimulating rather than the depleting system.
+
+"Is there, then, no choice between medication and no-medication? For if
+so, what necessity is there of the medical profession? Why not
+annihilate it at once?"
+
+My reply is,--and it would have been about the same when these
+discoveries began to be made,--that there is no occasion to give up the
+whole thing because it has been so sadly abused. Every mode of medical
+practice, not to say every medical practitioner from the very beginning,
+has been, of necessity, more or less empirical. The whole subject has
+been involved in so much ignorance and uncertainty, that even our wisest
+practitioners have been liable to err. They have been led, unawares, to
+prescribe quite too much for names rather than for symptoms; and their
+patients were often glad to have it so. And were the whole matter to
+come to an end this day, it might well be questioned whether the
+profession, as a whole, has been productive of more good than evil to
+mankind. But then, every thing must have its infancy before it can come
+to manhood. And it is a consolation to believe that the duration of that
+manhood always bears some degree of proportion to the time required in
+advancing from infancy to maturity.
+
+Medicine, then, as a science, is valuable in prospect. And then, too, it
+is worth something to have a set of men among us on whom we may fasten
+our faith; for, credulous as everybody is and will be in this matter of
+health and disease, till they can duly be taught the laws of hygiene,
+they will lean upon somebody; it is certainly desirable that they should
+rely on those whom they know, rather than upon strangers, charlatans,
+and conjurors, of whom they know almost nothing.
+
+But I shall have frequent occasion to revert to this subject in other
+chapters, and must therefore dismiss it for the present, in order to
+make room for other facts, anecdotes, and reflections.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[B] Of the hydropathist at that time I had not heard.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+STRUCK WITH DEATH.
+
+
+Throughout the region where I was brought up, and perhaps throughout the
+civilized world, the notion has long prevailed that in some of the last
+moments of a person's life, he is or may be "struck with death;" by
+which, I suppose the more intelligent simply mean that such a change
+comes over him as renders his speedy departure to the spirit-world
+inevitable.
+
+Now that we are really justified in saying of many persons who are in
+their last moments, that they are beyond the reach of hope, is doubtless
+true. When decomposition, for instance, has actually commenced, and the
+vital organs have already begun to falter, it would be idle to conceal
+the fact, were we able to do so, that life is about to be extinguished
+beyond the possibility of doubt.
+
+In general, however, it is never quite impossible for the sick to
+recover even after recovery _seems_ to be impossible. So many instances
+of this kind have been known, that we ought at least, to be exceedingly
+cautious about pronouncing with certainty, and to encourage rather than
+repel the application of the old saying, "as long as there is life,
+there is hope."[C]
+
+I had a lesson on this subject while a medical student, which was
+exceedingly instructive, and which, if I were to live a thousand years,
+I could never forget. It was worth more to me in practical life
+afterward, than all my books and recitations would have been without it.
+The facts were these:--
+
+My teacher of medicine used occasionally to take his students with him
+when he rode abroad on his professional visits. One day, it fell to my
+lot to bear him company. His patient was an aged farmer, a teamster
+rather, who had been for some time ill of a fever, and had not been
+expected to recover. Yet his case was not so desperate but that the
+physician was expected to continue his daily visits.
+
+On our arrival at the house of the sick man, we were met by a member of
+the family, who said, "Come in, doctor, but you are too late to do us
+any good. Mr. H. is struck with death; all the world could not save him
+now."
+
+We entered the room. There lay the patient almost gone, surely. So at
+least, at the first view, it appeared. It was a hot summer day, and
+hardly a breath of air was stirring. The friends were gathered around
+the bed, and there was less freedom of circulation in the air of the
+sick-room than elsewhere. It was almost enough to kill a healthy man to
+be shut up in such a stagnant atmosphere; what, then, must have been the
+effect on one so sick and feeble?
+
+The doctor beckoned them away from the bed, and requested them to open
+another window. They did it rather reluctantly; but then, _they did it_.
+The sufferer lay panting, as if the struggle was almost over. "Don't you
+think he is struck with death, doctor?" whispered one and another and
+another. Almost out of patience, the doctor at length replied: "Struck
+with death? What do you mean? No; he is no more struck with death than I
+am. He is struck much more with the heat and bad air. Raise another
+window."
+
+The window was raised. "Now," said he, "set that door wide open." It was
+quickly done. "Now bring me a bowl of water, and a teaspoon." The bowl
+of water was quickly brought. "Put a little water into his mouth with
+the teaspoon," said he. "O doctor," they replied, "it will only distress
+him; he is already struck with death."--"Try it then, and see."
+
+Tremblingly they now moistened his parched lips. "Put a little of it in
+his mouth, with the teaspoon," he said. They shuddered; the doctor
+persisted. "Why," said the attendant, "he has not been able to swallow
+any thing these two hours." "How do you know?" said he. "Why, he has
+been all the while struck with death."--"Nonsense! have you tried it?"
+"Tried it? oh, no; by no means."--"Why not?"--"Because we knew it would
+only distress him. He is too far gone to swallow, doctor; you may rely
+on it."
+
+The physician's patience was now well nigh exhausted, as well it might
+have been, and seizing the bowl and teaspoon with his own sacrilegious
+hands, "I will see," said he, "whether he is struck with death or not."
+
+He not only wetted his lips and tongue, as they had partially done
+before, but gradually insinuated a few drops of Nature's best and only
+drink, into the top of his throat. At last he swallowed! The doctor's
+hopes revived; while the family stood as if themselves struck, not with
+death, but with horror. At length, he swallowed again and again. In half
+an hour, he opened his eyes; before we left him, he had become quite
+sensible, and, had we encouraged it, might have spoken.
+
+To make my story as short as possible, the next day he could swallow a
+little gruel. The third day, he could be raised upon the bed. The
+fourth, though still weak, he was dressed and sat up an hour. In a
+fortnight, he was once more driving his team; and for ought I know to
+the contrary, unless debarred by reason of age, he may be driving it at
+this very moment!
+
+Going home together from our visit, already so fully described, the
+conversation turned on the silly notion which so extensively prevails
+about being struck with death. We talked of its origin, its influence,
+and its consequences. It had done no good in the world, while it had
+been the means, we could not doubt, of indirectly destroying thousands
+of valuable lives.
+
+OF ITS ORIGIN.--How came the notion abroad that a person can be struck
+with death, so affected that there is no possible return for him, to
+life and health? Struck! By whom? Is there a personage, spiritual but
+real, that strikes? Is it the Divine Being? Surely not. Is it an arch
+enemy? is it Satan himself?
+
+    "No day, no glimpse of day, to solve the knot."
+
+The doctor and I had, however, one conjecture concerning it, which, if
+it should not instruct the reader, may at least, afford him a little
+amusement. It certainly amused us.
+
+You have seen the old-fashioned New England Primer. It has been in
+vogue, I believe, a full century; perhaps nearer two centuries. It has
+done not a little to give shape to New England character. In its
+preliminary pages is a sort of alphabet of couplets, with cuts prefixed
+or annexed. One of the couplets reads thus:--
+
+    "Youth forward slips,
+    Death soonest nips."
+
+While at its left, is the representation of a skeleton, armed with a
+dagger, and pursuing a youth--a child rather--with the apparent
+intention of striking him through. Now I cannot say how this picture may
+have affected others, but to my medical teacher and myself, as we
+mutually agreed, it always brings up the idea of striking down a youth
+or child prematurely, and sending him away to the great congregation of
+the dead.
+
+Nor am I quite sure that this representation, innocent as may have been
+its intention, has not been the origin of a relentless and cruel
+superstition. I know certainly, that my own early notions about being
+struck with death, had, somehow or other, a connection with this
+picture; and why may it not be so with others?
+
+But the _influence_ and _consequences_ of this superstition must be
+adverted to for a moment. I said they affect and have affected
+thousands; perhaps I ought to have said millions. Under the confused and
+preposterously silly idea that Death, the personification of Satan or
+some other demon, has laid hold of the sick or distressed, and that it
+would be a sort of useless, not to say sacrilegious, work to oppose, or
+attempt to oppose, the grim messenger, we sometimes leave our sick
+friends in the greatest extremity, to suffer and perhaps die, when the
+gentle touch of a kind hand, a mere drop of water, or a breath of fresh
+air, might often bring them back again to life and health and happiness
+and usefulness.
+
+If this chapter should not be deemed a confession of medical impotence,
+it is at least a practical confession of medical selfishness or
+ignorance. If duly enlightened themselves, medical men ought long ago,
+to have rid society of this abominable superstition; and if not
+sufficiently enlightened to perceive its existence and evil tendency,
+they ought to have abandoned their profession.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[C] Dr. Livingstone, in his work of Travels and Researches in Africa,
+tells us that during his residence among the Backwains, a tribe in the
+African interior, two persons who had been hastily buried, perhaps
+"struck with death" in the first place, returned home "to their
+affrighted relatives." p. 143.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+EFFICACY OF COLD SPRING WATER.
+
+
+An aged man not far from where I was studying, had an attack of
+dysentery which was long and severe. Whether the fault of its long
+continuance lay in his own bad habits, or the injudicious use of
+medicine, or in both, we can inquire to better advantage by and by. I
+was not, however, very much acquainted with his physician, so as to be
+able in the premises to form a very correct opinion concerning him.
+
+The greatest puzzle with me, at that time, was why he should live so
+long after the disease appeared to have spent itself, without making any
+advances. The physician used to call on him day after day, and order
+tonic medicine of various kinds, all of which was given with great care
+and exactness. Every thing in fact, seemed to be put in requisition,
+except what were most needful of all, pure air and water. The former of
+these was, as is usual in such cases, neglected; the latter was
+absolutely interdicted.
+
+For this last, as not unfrequently happens at this stage of acute
+diseases, the poor man sighed from day to day as though his heart would
+break. But, no; he must not have it. The effect on his bowels, he was
+told, would be unfavorable. And such at that day was the general
+_theory_. It was not considered that a very small quantity at first, a
+few drops merely, would be a great relief, and might be borne, till by
+degrees a larger quantity would be admissible.
+
+After repeated efforts, and much begging and crying for a little water
+to cool his parched tongue, the old gentleman, one night dreamed that he
+drank from a certain cold spring, which really flowed at a remote corner
+of his farm and was a great favorite both with him and his whole family,
+and that it almost immediately restored him. Delighted with his dream,
+he no sooner fairly awaked than he called up his eldest son and sent him
+with a bottle, to the spring. He did not now _plead_, he _commanded_.
+The son returned in due time, with a bottle of water. He returned, it is
+true, with great fear and trembling, but he could do no less than obey.
+The demands and commands were peremptory, and the father was almost
+impatient.
+
+"Now, my son," said the father, "bring me a tumbler." It was brought,
+and the father took it. "Now," said he, "pour some of that water into
+it." Samuel could do no other way than submit to the lawfully
+constituted authority, though it was not without the most painful
+apprehensions with regard to the consequences, and he kindly warned his
+father of the danger. Nor were his sufferings at all diminished when the
+father, in a decided tone of voice, ordered him to fill the tumbler
+about half full.
+
+Whether he had at first intended to drink so large a draught and
+afterwards repented, is not known; but instead of swallowing it all at a
+draught, the son's distress was greatly mitigated when he saw that he
+only just tasted it, and then set down the tumbler. In a few minutes he
+drank a little more, and then after a short time a little more still. He
+was about half an hour drinking a gill of water. When that was gone, he
+ordered more; and persisted in this moderate way till morning. By ten
+o'clock, when his physician arrived, he had drunk nearly a quart of it,
+and was evidently better. There was a soft, breathy perspiration, as
+well as more strength.
+
+The physician no sooner saw him than he pronounced him better. "What
+have you been doing?" he said, rather jocosely. The sick man told him
+the simple story of his rebellion from beginning to end. The doctor at
+first shook his head, but when he came to reflect on the apparent good
+consequences which had followed, he only said: "Well, I suppose we must
+remember the old adage, 'Speak well of a bridge that carries you safe
+over,'" and then joined in the general cheerfulness.
+
+The patient continued to drink his spring water from day to day, and
+with increasing good effects. It acted almost like a charm; it was not
+only food and drink to him, but also medicine. Doubtless his great faith
+in it was not without its efficacy; still it was not to be denied that
+the water did him great and positive good.
+
+He soon found his newly discovered medicine not only more agreeable to
+his taste, but cheaper also than Huxham's tincture and quassia. He also
+found that his son's daily visits to the spring cost him less than Dr.
+Physic's daily rides of three or four miles. So that though he was
+greatly delighted to see the smiling face, and hear the stories and
+jolly laugh of the latter, he was glad when he proposed to call less
+frequently than he had done and to lay aside all medicine.
+
+He recovered in a reasonable time, and lived to a very advanced age. A
+friend of his and mine, found him in his eighty-sixth year, mowing
+thistles barefooted. Two or three years still later, I found him--it was
+during the cold month of January, 1852--in the woods with his hired man
+far from his house, assisting in cutting and loading wood; in which
+employment he seemed to act with much of the energy and not a little of
+the activity of his earlier years.
+
+I do not of course undertake to say that he owed his recovery from his
+long sickness, above described solely to drinking cold water, there are
+so many other circumstances to be taken into the account, in settling
+all questions like this, that such an assertion would be hazardous, not
+to say foolish. His fever at the time of making his experiment, had
+already passed away; and having great tenacity of life, it was but
+reasonable to expect nature would ere long, rally, if she _could_ rally
+at all. It is also worthy of remark, that though his physician was one
+of those men who place their chief reliance on the medicine they give,
+rather than on the recuperative powers of the system, yet to his credit
+be it said, he had in this instance departed from his usual routine, and
+given comparatively little.
+
+Perhaps we may explain the phenomenon of his recovery, as follows:
+nature long oppressed, yet by rest partially restored to her wonted
+energy, was now ready to rally as soon as she could get the opportunity;
+this the moderate draughts of water by their effects on the circulation
+enabled her to do; then, too, one consideration which I forgot to
+mention in its place, deserves to be noticed. When the sick man began
+the use of water, he laid aside (without the knowledge of his physician)
+most of what pills and powders and tinctures were prescribed him. And
+finally he had great faith in the water, as you have already seen;
+whereas he had lost all faith in drugging and dosing. And the efficacy
+of faith is almost sufficient in such cases, to work a cure, were this
+our only reliance. Of this we shall have an illustration in Chapter
+LXXVI.
+
+But though the water, as I now fully believe--and as I more than half
+believed when I heard of the facts at the time,--was fairly indicated,
+there is great hazard, in such circumstances in its use. Had this
+gentleman taken a large draught at first, or had he swallowed more
+moderate draughts with great eagerness, and a quick succession, it might
+have produced an ill effect; it might, even, have provoked a relapse of
+his dysentery and fever. Many a sick patient in the same circumstances,
+would have poured the cooling liquid into an enfeebled throat and
+stomach without the least restraint. And why did not he?
+
+I will give you one reason. He was early taught to govern himself. He
+told me, when eighty-eight years of age, he had made it a rule, all his
+life long, never to eat enough, but always to leave off his meals with a
+good appetite. He did not indeed, follow out with exactness the rule of
+the late Amos Lawrence: "Begin hungry and leave off hungrier," but he
+came very near it. He managed so as always to have a good appetite, and
+never in the progress of more than fourscore years, whether by night or
+day, to lose it. Such a man, if his mind is not too much reduced by long
+disease, can be safely trusted with cold spring water, even during the
+more painful and trying circumstances of convalescence from acute
+disease.
+
+Another thing deserves to be mentioned in this connection. He had not
+kept his bowels and nervous system, all his life long, under the
+influence of rum, tobacco, opium, coffee, tea, or highly seasoned food.
+He did not it is true, wholly deny himself any one of these, except
+opium and tobacco; but he only used them occasionally, and even then in
+great moderation. Nor was it from mere indigence, or culpable stinginess
+that he ate and drank, for the most part in a healthful manner. It
+seemed to be from a conviction of the necessity of being "temperate in
+all things;" and that such a course as he pursued tended to hardihood.
+As one evidence of a conviction of this kind, I have known his children
+and their school teacher to carry to the schoolroom for their dinner, a
+quantity of cold Indian cake--ycleped Johnny cake--and nothing else; nor
+was there an attempt at the slightest apology. Such a man would not be
+very likely to have an ulcerated alimentary canal, or bad blood; or to
+be injured by swallowing every five minutes a table-spoonful of cold
+water; no, nor to sink as quickly as other people under the depressing
+tendency of irritating or poisonous medicine.
+
+This last-mentioned fact concerning the use of water,--for it is a fact
+on which we can rely, and not one of those statements which Dr. Cullen
+was accustomed to call "false facts,"--was to me exceedingly
+instructive. It taught me more concerning the human constitution and the
+laws of health and disease than I had ever before learned from a single
+case of mere disease, in my whole life; and I endeavored to make a wise
+use of it--of which as I trust, I shall give some evidence in the very
+next chapter.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+CHEATING THE PHYSICIAN.
+
+
+It was by no means an uncommon thing with me, while studying medicine,
+to take long walks. One day, in the progress of one of these rambles, I
+came so near the family mansion of a young man with whom I had formerly
+been acquainted, that I thought I would, for once, go a little out of my
+way and make a call on him. And judge, reader, if you can, of my
+surprise, when I found him exceedingly sick. For residing, as we did,
+only a few miles apart, why had I not heard of it? Most people, in
+truth, would have called on some of the young doctors--for there were
+three or four of us together,--to take care of the sick man, especially
+by night. Young doctors, I grant--and this for various reasons which
+might be named, were it needful--are usually the very worst of watchers
+and nurses of the sick; but the public often appear to think otherwise,
+and even to prefer them.
+
+I found him under the care of an old school physician;--one who, though
+he otherwise prescribed very well, gave quite too much medicine; and
+like the old physician mentioned in the preceding chapter, mortally
+detested cold water; at least he detested its use in bowel complaints.
+The young man's case, however, was as yet wholly unlike that of the
+elderly gentleman of the foregoing chapter; and cold water at first, was
+not particularly needed; nor perhaps quite safe.
+
+Some few days afterward, I called again. Found my young friend rather
+less feverish, but no better; in fact, he was much worse, and was most
+obviously running down. I continued after this to call on him daily,
+till he too, like the old man before mentioned, began to beg for cold
+water. But his physician said, "No, not a drop," and with a good deal of
+emphasis.
+
+One day, while I was at his bedside, he turned to me, and with a most
+imploring look begged to know whether I believed a very little cold
+water would really hurt him. I told him no; but that a good deal
+doubtless would, and might even prove the means of his destruction.
+"Simple a thing as water is," I said, "it is to you, in circumstances
+like yours, a sword with two edges. If it should not cut away the
+disease, it would probably cut in the other direction, to the
+destruction of your health, if not of your life."
+
+My remarks had both awakened his curiosity and increased his desires for
+the interdicted beverage. I found I had gone too far, and I frankly told
+him so. I told him it was not in accordance with medical etiquette, nor
+even with the rules of good breeding, for one medical man to prescribe
+for another's patient without his knowledge. But this explanation did
+not satisfy him. Water was what he wanted; and as I had opened the
+budget and removed some of his fears, water he must have. He was
+willing, he said, to bear the responsibility.
+
+Water, then, in exceedingly small quantity at a time, was permitted; but
+it was to be given by stealth. The physician was not allowed to know it,
+or, at all events, he was not to know under whose encouragement he
+acted. His friends were very careful in regard to the quantity, and I
+had the happiness of finding him, in a few days, very much better. But,
+as I said in reflecting on the recovery of my aged friend before
+mentioned, it is not quite certain, after all, how much was effected by
+the water, and how much by the recuperative efforts of Nature herself.
+She might have been long waiting for that opportunity to rally, which
+the judicious introduction of the water, and the partial or entire
+discontinuance of other medicine, greatly facilitated.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+THE MEDICINAL EFFECTS OF STORY TELLING.
+
+
+My aged father sickened about this time, and remained in a low condition
+many months. I was at a distance so great, and in circumstances so
+peculiar, that I could not see him often enough to become his medical
+adviser. Besides, in my then unfledged condition as a disciple of Galen,
+I should not have regarded myself competent to the discharge of so
+weighty a responsibility, had I even been at home with him. The result
+was that he employed his family physician as usual, and went through, as
+might have been expected, with the whole paraphernalia of a dosing and
+drugging campaign.
+
+Among other troubles, or rather to cap the climax of his troubles, he
+was exceedingly low-spirited. Confined as he had been to the house
+almost all winter, and seeing nobody to converse with,--no new faces, I
+mean,--was it very strange that his mind turned, involuntarily, to his
+complaints, and preyed upon itself, and that he was evidently
+approaching the deep vortex of hypochondria? Medicine did him no good,
+and could do him none. It is true he had, after three months, almost
+left off its use; but the little to which he still clung was most
+evidently a source of irritation.
+
+My own occasional visits, as I soon found out, did him more good than
+any thing else. This gave me a needful hint. Near him was an old
+Revolutionary soldier, full of mirthfulness, and a capital story teller.
+Unknown to my father, and even to the family, I employed this old
+soldier to visit my father a certain number of evenings in each week,
+and tell stories to him.
+
+Sergeant K. complied faithfully with the terms of the contract, and was
+at my father's house three evenings of each week for a long time. This
+gave the old gentleman something else to think of besides himself, and
+it was easy to see, did him much good. During the progress of the fourth
+month his improvement became quite perceptible; and in another month he
+was nearly recovered.
+
+But, as I have repeatedly said of cold water, and indeed of all other
+remedial efforts or applications, whether external or internal, and
+whether moral, mental, or physical, too much credit should not be given,
+at least hastily, to a single thing. The opening spring was in my
+father's favor, as well as the story telling. The bow, so long retained
+in an unnatural position, on having an opportunity, sprung back and
+resumed its wonted condition. Still, I could never help awarding much
+credit to the Revolutionary soldier.
+
+Most persons must have observed the effects which cheerfulness in a
+medical man has on his patients. The good-natured, jolly doctor, who
+tells a story now and then, and cracks a joke and has occasionally a
+hearty laugh _with you_, or _at_ you, about something or nothing, will
+do you much more good, other things being equal, than the grave, staid,
+sombre practitioner, who thinks it almost a sin to smile, especially at
+the sick-bed or in the sick-room.
+
+I think story telling, as an art, should be cultivated, were it only for
+its good effects in sickness. But this is not all. Its prophylactic or
+preventive tendencies are much more valuable. Few people know how to
+tell a story of any kind; while others, in some few remarkable
+instances, such as I could name, will make a story of almost any thing,
+and bring it to bear upon the precise point or end they wish to
+accomplish. It is yet, in reality, a mooted point, which could make the
+deepest, or at least most abiding, impression, Daniel Webster by a
+Congressional oration, or Jacob Abbott by a simple story. If this is an
+indirect or incautious confession of medical imperfection or impotence,
+let me say as Patrick Henry once did, in Revolutionary days, "then make
+the most of it."
+
+While on this topic of story telling, I must not forget to allude to its
+moral effects. Lorenzo Dow, the eccentric preacher, is not the only
+pulpit occupant who has acquired the art of "clinching the nail," in
+his discourses by a well told story. It was quite a habit, in former
+times, with certain preachers of certain denominations of Christians,
+whose sermons were chiefly unwritten, to tell stories occasionally. And
+I appeal to Father Waldo, late chaplain in the United States Senate, to
+see whether the effects of these discourses were not as deep and as
+lasting, to say the least, as many of our modern sermons, which, while
+they smell much more of the lamp, fall almost lifeless upon the sleepy
+ears of thousands of those whom Whitfield by his more practical course
+would have converted.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+OSSIFIED VEINS.
+
+
+While I was studying medicine with my new or second master, I had
+several excellent opportunities for studying health and disease through
+the medium of the doctor's patients.
+
+One of them was a swaggering man of wealth, about sixty-three years of
+age. He had long lived very highly, had eaten a good deal of roast beef,
+and drunk a good deal of wine, and had almost swum in cider. He was in
+short, one of that class of men who "go off" in very many instances, at
+the grand climacterical period, some of them very suddenly.
+
+"Doctor," said the general, exhibiting himself in full size and the
+boldest relief, "I want to be bled."--"What do you want bleeding for?"
+said the doctor. "Oh," said he, "bleed me, and you will see. You will
+find my blood in a very bad state."--"Your blood, general, was always in
+a very bad state," said the shrewd son of Galen, with a sardonic grin.
+"None of your fun, doctor," was the prompt reply; "I must be bled. I
+have headache and giddiness half the time, and must have some blood
+taken."--"Very well," said Dr. S. "It shall be as you desire. Here, my
+son, bring me a bowl."
+
+An older student assisted, while I, glad of the privilege, kept aloof,
+and at a distance. The general's brawny arm was mauled a long time; and
+even then not much blood was obtained. At last the attempt was given up,
+and the man returned home, though not, as might have been expected, very
+well satisfied.
+
+When he was gone, I inquired of Dr. S., as modestly as I could, what
+serious difficulties he had to encounter in his attack on Gen. Upham's
+arm. "Why was it," said I, "that you could get no more blood?" "For the
+plainest reason in the world," he answered; "his veins were all
+ossified."
+
+I was quite satisfied at the time, with this answer; for I knew so well
+the habits of Gen. U. that I stood ready to believe almost any thing in
+regard to him, especially when it came from a highly respectable source.
+Yet I have often suspected since that time, that there was a serious
+mistake made. Ossified or bony arteries, even at this great distance
+from the heart, in such a man, ought not to excite surprise; but these
+would hardly be met with in attempting to open a vein, since the
+arteries are much more deeply imbedded in the flesh than the veins are.
+And as for ossified veins themselves, especially in the arm, they are
+seldom if ever heard of.
+
+You may wonder why I did not satisfy my curiosity at the time, by making
+diligent inquiry at the proper source of information; and I almost
+wonder too. But, in the first place, my curiosity did not rise so high
+on any occasion whatever, as it has since done. For, though I was
+hungering and thirsting for knowledge thirty years ago, my solicitude to
+know has so increased with increasing years that my present curiosity
+will admit of no comparison with the former. Secondly, I was exceedingly
+diffident. Thirdly, my mind was just then fully occupied with other
+things. And lastly, whenever I was in the company of Dr. S., both while
+I remained in the office and subsequently, it was only for a very short
+time, perhaps a single half hour, at best; and we had always so many
+other things to talk about, that Gen. U. and his _ossified veins_ never
+entered our minds.
+
+However, it was not many years afterward that I heard of the old
+general's death. Of the manner of his exit except that it was sudden, I
+never heard a word, up to this hour. It is by no means improbable that
+there was ossification about his heart, for he was a very fit subject
+for ossification of any parts that could be ossified. I do not know,
+indeed, that a post mortem examination was ever made; the family would
+doubtless have opposed it. The uses of the dead to the living are in
+general very little thought of.
+
+Such cases of disease are, however, a terrible warning to those who are
+following in the path of Gen. Upham. They may or may not come to just
+such an end as he did, but of one thing we may be well assured; viz.,
+that the wicked do not live out half their days, or, in other words,
+that sins against the body, even though committed in ignorance, can
+never wholly escape the heaven-appointed penalty of transgression. "The
+soul that sins must die." For no physical infraction of God's holy,
+physical laws, do we know of any atonement. We may indeed, be thankful
+if we find one in the moral world or anywhere else.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+HE'LL DIE IN THIRTY SIX HOURS.
+
+
+In the autumn of 1824, while a severe sickness was sweeping over one or
+two towns adjacent to that in which I resided, and considerable
+apprehension was felt lest the disease should reach us, the wife and
+child of my medical teacher, and myself, suddenly sickened in a manner
+not greatly dissimilar, and all of us suffered most severely.
+
+It was perfectly natural, in those circumstances, to suspect, as a cause
+of our sickness, the prevailing epidemic. And yet the symptoms were so
+unlike those of that disease, that all suspicions of this sort were soon
+abandoned. Besides, no other persons but ourselves, for many miles
+around, had any thing of the kind, either about that time or immediately
+afterward. I have said that the symptoms of disease in all three of us
+were not dissimilar. There was much congestion of the lungs and some
+hemorrhage from their organs, and occasionally slight cough, and in the
+end considerable tendency to inflammation of the brain. The last
+symptom, however, may have been induced at least, in part, by the large
+amount of active medicine we took.
+
+When the news of my own sickness reached my near relatives who resided
+only a few miles distant, they were anxious to pay such attention to me
+as the nature of the case appeared to require. But they soon tired; and
+it was found needful to employ an aged and experienced nurse to take the
+general charge, and under the direction of the physician, assume the
+entire responsibility of the case.
+
+This nurse was one of those conceited people whose aid, after all, is
+worth very little. He was as far from affording the kind of assistance
+I required as could possibly be. And yet his intentions were in the main
+excellent.
+
+The selection of physician was equally unfortunate. My teacher had
+nearly as much as he could do to take care of his wife and child. At his
+request, and in accordance with the wishes of my friends, their and my
+former physician were called in. When the danger became more imminent, a
+third was occasionally consulted. It was supposed, no doubt, that in the
+midst of counsellors there was safety.
+
+The counsels of our third man, or umpire, may have had influence; but
+his manners were coarse, and in many respects objectionable. He was in
+favor, also, of a highly stimulating treatment, which appeared to me to
+add fuel to the flame, for I soon began to be at a loss when called upon
+to recollect things and circumstances. He saw the tendency, and, partly
+by way of "showing off" his powers of diagnosis, as well as in part to
+gain applause should a case so desperate turn out favorably, said, in
+the hearing of my nurse, "He'll die in just thirty-six hours."
+
+Now, whatever his intentions were, and however honest his declaration,
+my nurse swallowed it at once, and was restless till he had an
+opportunity to divulge what he regarded as an important secret. It is by
+no means improbable that he entertained the usual impressions that a
+special preparation should be made for death, and that it was needful I
+should know my danger and attend to the subject before it was too late.
+
+In one of my most lucid intervals, therefore, he said to me, "Do you
+expect to recover from your disease?"--"Most certainly I do," was the
+reply. "Do you know what Dr. Thornton thinks about it?"--"Not certainly;
+but from his cheerful manner, I suppose he thinks favorably."--"Do you
+think you could bear to know the truth? For if it was unfavorable, would
+it not be too much for you in your enfeebled condition?"
+
+My heart was in my mouth, as the saying is, at this broad hint; and with
+a strong and earnest curiosity, I begged to know the worst, and to know
+it immediately. My attendant saw, in my agitation, his error, and would
+doubtless have receded had it been in his power; but it was too late;
+the die was cast; my curiosity was all on tiptoe, and I trembled, as a
+sailor would say, from stem to stern. "Well," said he, at length,
+putting on a face which of itself was enough to destroy some very feeble
+persons, "he says you cannot live more than thirty-six hours."
+
+My friend, in divulging what he deemed an important secret, doubtless
+felt relieved; but not so with me. My philosophy had disappeared with
+the progress of my disease, and I was now, in mind, a mere child. In
+short, I was so much agitated by the unexpected intelligence, that I
+sank at once under it, and remained in this condition for several hours.
+When I awoke from this delirium, the symptoms of my disease were more
+favorable, and from that day forth I began to recover.
+
+But the risk was too great for my enfeebled and diseased frame, and
+should not have been incurred. Dr. Thornton, though a physician of much
+reputation, was nevertheless a man of very little principle, and though
+respected for his medical tact and skill, was beloved by very few. He
+died, moreover, not many years afterward, as the fool dieth; viz., by
+suicidal hands. Nor do I know that as a man--a mere citizen--he had many
+mourners.
+
+The reader will pardon me, perhaps, for saying so many times, and with
+so much emphasis, that "it is an ill wind that blows nobody any good."
+But I must be allowed to repeat the saying here, and to observe that
+while I entirely disapprove of the course my attendant took in the
+present instance, I am by no means sure that the delirium into which I
+was thrown by his tattling propensity was not safer for me than a
+restless apprehension of danger would have been, especially when long
+continued; nor that it did not contribute, indirectly, to bring about my
+recovery.
+
+I was confined to the house by my sickness about five or six weeks, or
+till it was midwinter. And yet, all covered as the earth was when I
+first ventured forth, no Paradise could ever appear more beautiful to
+any son or daughter of Adam than did this terrestrial abode to me. And
+if ever I shed tears of devout gratitude to my Father in Heaven, it was
+on this very occasion.
+
+It was a long time, however, after I got out of doors, before I was
+strong enough, in body or mind, to attempt to perform much labor. At the
+time of being taken sick, I was teaching a public school; and as soon as
+I began to be convalescent my patrons began to be clamorous about the
+school. They were hardly willing to wait till my physicians and myself
+deemed it safe to make a beginning. Indeed, notwithstanding all my
+caution, I was hurried into the pedagogic chair quite too soon.
+
+But it is time for me to inform my readers what were the probable causes
+of my sickness; for I have already said, more than once, that to be able
+to do this is a matter of very great importance, both as it concerns
+ourselves and others; and it is a thing which can be done, at least to a
+considerable extent, whenever parents and teachers shall be wise enough
+to put their children and pupils upon the right track. I am well
+acquainted with a minister of the gospel, now nearly sixty years of age,
+who says he never had any thing ail him in his whole lifetime of which
+he could not trace out the cause.
+
+For some months before my sickness I had been curtailing my hours of
+sleep. I had resolved to retire at eleven and rise at four. But it had
+often happened that instead of retiring at exactly eleven and rising
+exactly at four, I had not gone to bed till nearly twelve, and had risen
+as early as half-past three. So that instead of sleeping five full
+hours, as had been my original intention, I had often slept but about
+four.
+
+How far this abridgment of my sleep had fallen in with other causes of
+debility, and thus prepared the way for severe, active disease, I cannot
+say. I was at this time tasking my energies very severely, for I was not
+only pursuing my professional studies with a good deal of earnestness,
+but at the same time, as has been already intimated, teaching a large
+and somewhat unmanageable district school. If ever a good supply of
+sleep is needful, whatever the quantum required may really be, I am sure
+it is in such circumstances.
+
+But then it should be remembered, in abatement of all this, that the
+symptoms of disease, in all the three cases which I have alluded to, as
+occurring in the family with which I was connected, were very much
+alike; whereas neither the mother nor the child had suffered, prior to
+the sickness, for want of sleep. Must we not, therefore, look for some
+other cause? Or if it is to be admitted that sleeplessness is
+exceedingly debilitating in its tendencies, must there not have been in
+addition some exciting cause still more striking? We will see.
+
+During the latter part of the autumn which preceded our sickness, the
+water of the well from which we were drinking daily had a very
+unpleasant odor, and a fellow student and myself often spoke of it. As
+it appeared to give offence, however, we gradually left off our remarks
+and complaints about the water, and only abstained, as much as we could
+conveniently, from its use.
+
+In the progress of the autumn, the well became nearly dry, and the
+offensive odor having become troublesome to others no less than to
+ourselves, it was very wisely concluded to draw out the water to the
+bottom, and thus find and remove the impurities. The task was
+exceedingly trying, but was at length accomplished.
+
+Besides other impurities, there were found at the bottom of the well,
+several toads in a state of putrefaction, and so very offensive that it
+was difficult to approach them, or even to approach the top of the well
+that contained them. They were of course removed as soon as possible,
+and every practicable measure was adopted which was favorable to
+cleanliness. This final clearing of the well was about two months before
+the sickness commenced.
+
+Now whether there was a connection between the use of this water and the
+sickness which followed, is a curious, and at the same time, a very
+important question. Against this belief, at least apparently so, is the
+fact that our disease resembled in no trifling degree, the prevailing
+disease in certain neighboring towns. Another fact is also worthy of
+consideration. The rest of the family drank freely of the water, why did
+not they sicken as well as we?
+
+But as a deduction from the force of these facts, it is to be observed
+that nobody else around us for several miles had the prevailing
+epidemic unless it was ourselves. And then as to the objection that only
+a part of the family sickened, it is to be recollected that in the case
+of some of them who sickened there might have been, nay, probably were,
+other debilitating causes in operation previously, to prepare the way;
+such as, for example, in my own case, the want of sufficient sleep.
+
+Thus far, then, though we arrive at nothing positive, we yet find our
+suspicions of a poisonous influence emanating from the putrid reptiles
+remaining. Indeed, it were impossible wholly to suppress them, and I
+will ask the candid reader's attention for a few moments to certain
+analogical evidence in the case, which, it is believed, will greatly aid
+the mind in coming to a right decision on the subject.
+
+An eruptive disease broke out in two families residing in a house in
+Eastern Massachusetts, a few years ago, which was observed to affect
+more or less, every member of the two families who had drunk water from
+the common family well, except two; and these last had drank but very
+little. On cleaning the well, the same species of reptiles which I have
+already mentioned, were found in it, in a state of decomposition, and
+highly offensive. No eruptive complaints of the same general kind
+prevailed at the time in the neighborhood, and those which I have
+mentioned disappeared soon after resuming the use of pure water.
+
+Another instance occurred in this same region, a few years afterward. In
+the latter case, however, the putrid animals were rats and mice, and the
+eruption, instead of having a diffused or miliary appearance, partook
+largely of the character of the common boil.
+
+Forty years ago a sickness broke out in Litchfield county in
+Connecticut, in a neighborhood where the wells were all very low; and
+the water which remained being in a cavity of rock, and continuing
+unchanged or nearly so, had at length become putrid. It was late in the
+autumn when the disease broke out, and it disappeared as soon as the
+wells were duly filled for the winter. It is true, I never heard in the
+latter case, any thing about putrid animals, but their existence and
+presence under such circumstances, would be natural enough.
+
+It has, I know, been sometimes said that putrid animal substances,
+however unpleasant their odor might be, were not poisonous. But this
+opinion is doubtless unfounded; and, for myself, I find it difficult to
+resist the belief that in all the foregoing cases, except the last, and
+very possibly in that too, animal putridity had influence.
+
+The practical lessons to be derived from the developments of the
+foregoing chapter are exceedingly numerous. I shall direct your
+attention for a few moments, to some of the more important.
+
+First, we learn the necessity of keeping our wells in a proper
+condition. Could it be even proved that dead reptiles never produce
+disease, it is at least highly desirable to avoid them. No reasonable
+person would be willing to drink water highly impregnated with their
+odor, even if it did not reach his own seat of sensation.
+
+Secondly, we should avoid the use of stagnant water, even though it
+should be free from animal impurities. Especially should we be cautious
+where there is a liability, or even a possibility, to impurity and
+stagnation both. Either of these causes may, as it is most fully
+believed, produce disease; but if so, what is not to be expected from a
+combination of the two?
+
+Our wells should be often cleaned. It is not possible, of course, to say
+with exactness, how often, but we shall hardly err in the line of
+excess. Very few wells are cleaned too often. Once a year, in ordinary
+cases, cannot be too much; nor am I quite sure that twice would be
+useless.
+
+It seems to me quite possible to exclude animals from our wells, would
+we but take the necessary pains; and this, too, without covering them
+closely at the top. I can not see how any toad, unless it be the
+tree-toad so called, could climb a well-curb three feet high. Other
+animals, however, might do so, and therefore I would keep a well as
+closely covered as possible.
+
+Many, I know, believe it desirable that the surface of the water in a
+well should be exposed to the air. I do not believe there is any
+necessity for this, though it is certainly desirable to avoid stagnation
+of the air at the bottom. Motion is essential, I might even say
+indispensable. I have sometimes thought the modern endless or chain pump
+as perfect a fixture as any other.
+
+Thirdly, we may learn from the details of the foregoing chapter, the
+necessity of having in our sick-chambers the right sort of nurses or
+attendants. There should be a class of persons educated to this service,
+as a profession; and most happily for the prospects of the great human
+family, such efforts are now being made; it is hoped and believed they
+will be crowned with success.
+
+One thing more may, as I think, be inferred from the story of my
+sickness as above:--the folly of multiplying physicians. In the present
+case, when the physician's own family was in a condition to demand a
+large share of his attention, if not to absorb all his energies, it may
+have been desirable to call in an additional medical man as counsellor.
+But the multiplication of counsel, besides adding to the danger of too
+much dosing and drugging, brings with it a host of ills too numerous to
+be mentioned in this place, and should be studiously avoided. My full
+belief is, that Dr. Thornton was a principal agent in creating the
+dangers he deprecated, and which came so near effecting my own
+destruction.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+ABOUT TO DIE OF CONSUMPTION.
+
+
+I have already mentioned more than once,--or at least done so by
+implication,--that I hold my existence, on this earth by a very feeble
+tenure. Consumption, by right of inheritance, made very early claims;
+and its demands, as I approached manhood, became more and more cogent,
+in consequence of measles, dropsy, Lee's Pills, and the injudicious use
+of medicine and many other errors. My employment, too, as school teacher
+had been far enough from favorable to health. While thus engaged from
+winter to winter, and sometimes from year to year; I was accustomed to
+have cold upon cold, till at length especially towards the close of
+winter and at the opening of the spring, I was often apparently on the
+verge of a rapid decline. A ramble up and down the country, with a
+summer or part of a summer on the farm or garden, did indeed for a time
+partially set me up again, so that I could return to my favorite
+employment of teaching in the autumn and during the winter; and thus
+time with me went on.
+
+A course of medical lectures which I heard in 1825-6, left me, in March,
+1826, in about as bad a state of health as school keeping usually had
+done. However I was too indigent, I might even say too destitute, to be
+idle. Scarcely was my license to practise medicine and surgery fairly in
+my pocket, than I found myself turning towards the district school
+again. Yet I did not continue it many weeks before my old enemy returned
+upon me with renewed strength; till I was at length compelled to abandon
+the school entirely. I had as much as I could do, in attempting to keep
+up a successful war with cough, night-sweats, purulent expectoration,
+and hectic fever.
+
+This was one of the darkest periods of my life. Destitute of money, and
+even somewhat in debt, yet too proud or self-relying to be willing to
+ask my friends to aid me; my hopes of usefulness defeated in two
+favorite fields of activity, teaching and medicine; and practically
+given up to linger out a year or two and then die, how could I avoid
+discouragement? Was it strange even, if I approached at times, the very
+borders of despair?
+
+For some time prior to this crisis--indeed at certain seasons all my
+life long,--I relied not a little on medicine, in various forms,
+especially in the shape of tonics. Strange that I should have done thus,
+when my general impressions were so unfavorable to its exhibition; and
+yet such inconsistencies have been, and may be again. Huxham's tincture,
+quassia, ale, and other bitter infusions and tinctures, had been
+successively invoked, and I still clung to ale. I also used some wine,
+and I attached a good deal of importance to a stimulating diet. But it
+was all to no purpose, the disease was marching on steadily, and
+appeared destined to triumph; and that, too, at no very distant period.
+
+In these circumstances, I repeat, what could be done? Nature's extremity
+is sometimes said to be God's opportunity. But without assuming that
+there was any special providence about it, I will say, that I was driven
+to desperation, nay almost to insanity or madness. I deemed myself on
+the very verge of a mighty precipice, beneath which yawned a gulf
+unfathomable. I must make a last mighty struggle, or perish
+irretrievably and forever.
+
+It was July 4th, the anniversary of American Independence; I sought and
+found a few moments of calm reflection, and began to interrogate myself.
+Why was I so dependent on the physician and the apothecary's shop, and
+so tremblingly alive to every external impression of atmospheric
+temperature, or purity? Why must I, at the early age of twenty-eight, be
+doomed to tread the long road of decline and death? Why can I not
+declare independence of all external remedial agents, and throw myself
+wholly on nature and nature's God? I know, full well, the laws of my
+being. If trust in these, and faithful and persevering obedience will
+not save me, nothing will. Thus I mused; but alas! it was to muse only.
+Though almost ready to take the critical step,--I will not say make the
+desperate plunge,--the fourth of July finally passed away, and found me
+still lingering, to use a Scripture expression, "between the porch and
+the altar."
+
+July the fifth at length arrived. And is it all over? I said to myself.
+Has the "glorious" _Fourth_ gone by and I have not acted up to the
+dignity of a well-formed and glorious resolution? Must I, alas! now go
+on to woe irretrievable? Must I go down to the consumptive's grave? Must
+I perish at less than thirty years of age, and thus make good the
+declaration that the wicked shall not live out half his days?
+
+A new thought came to me. "One of the South American provinces
+celebrated her Independence to day, the fifth. I will take the hint,--I
+will yet be free. I will escape from present circumstances. I will fly
+from my native home, and all that pertains to it. I will fly from
+myself,--It is done," I added, "and I go with the first conveyance."
+
+I could indeed walk a little distance, but it either set me to coughing,
+severely, or else threw me into a profuse perspiration which was equally
+exhausting. One favorable symptom alone remained, a good appetite and
+tolerable digestion. Had there been, in addition to the long train of
+troublesome and dangerous symptoms above mentioned, a loss of digestive
+power and energy, with colliquative diarrhoea, my hopes must have been
+forever abandoned.
+
+But I had made my resolution, and was prepared to execute it, let the
+consequences be what they might. With little more than a single change
+of clothing, I contrived to find a conveyance before night, quite beyond
+my immediate neighborhood. Fatigued, at length I stopped, and without
+much delay, committed myself to the friendship of Morpheus.
+
+On the top of a considerable eminence, in the very midst of a mountain
+range, one of the most delightful in all New England, only a few miles
+from the place of my lodging, was a tower some sixty or seventy feet
+high, which commanded a view of the surrounding country. I had often
+wished to enjoy the prospect which this tower afforded. Was there, now
+an opportunity? I had the leisure, had I the needful strength? Could I
+possibly reach it? And by what means?
+
+I rested for the remainder of the day and the night following, at the
+foot of the eminence, in order to prepare myself for the excursion of
+the following morning. It was as much as I could do, that night to take
+care of my irritable and irritated lungs. At length, however, I slept,
+and was refreshed. The only drawback upon my full renewal, was my usual
+night--or rather as I ought to say morning--perspiration, which was
+quite drenching and exhausting; though not much worse after all my fears
+than usual.
+
+God is good, I said to myself, when I saw from my chamber window the top
+of the hills I wished to climb, and perceived that the first rays of the
+morning sun were already falling upon them. By the middle of the
+forenoon I was at the foot of the mountain, and prepared to ascend it.
+After a little rest, I wound my way to the tower, and finally to its
+top, when I took a survey of what seemed to me like a new world. Here I
+renewed my declaration of independence with regard to those earthly
+props on which I had so long been wont to lean, and of dependence on
+God, and on his natural and moral enactments.
+
+Here, too, I formed my programme for the day and for the week. Distant
+from the point which I occupied not more than eight miles was a most
+interesting educational institution I had long wished to see; and near
+it was an old acquaintance, with, whom I might perhaps spend the
+Sabbath, which was now approaching. Could I carry out my plan? Had I the
+needful strength?
+
+My resolution was at length made; and no sooner made than begun to be
+executed. The public houses on the way were miserable things; but they
+were better far than none.
+
+They gave me a temporary home, such as it was. I reached the
+institution, had a partial view of it, and, half worn out with my week's
+labor, was glad to rest the seventh day, "according to the
+commandment," in the house of an old acquaintance.
+
+Monday morning came, and with the aid of the intervening Sabbath,
+brought to my attenuated and almost sinking frame a new recruit of
+strength. With a new object of interest some fifteen miles distant, I
+was once more on the road. I could now walk several miles a day without
+greatly increasing my cough, or ride in a stage coach many miles. Nor
+was the nightly perspiration, nor even that which was induced by
+exercise, any more distressing than it had been, if indeed it was as
+much so.
+
+In due time I reached my point of destination, and curiosity became
+fully gratified. What next? A few miles distant was a high mountain
+which I greatly desired to climb. I reached its base; but the heat was
+great, so dog-days like, that my courage failed me. I had the necessary
+strength, but dared not use it for such a purpose. Perhaps I acted
+wisely.
+
+Twelve miles in the distance still was my father's house, now grown from
+a few patrimonial acres to full New England size; viz., a hundred acres
+or more, and well cultivated. My wandering abroad had given me a little
+strength and very much courage. Why should it not? Was it not truly
+encouraging that while I was making a long excursion, chiefly on foot,
+in the heats of midsummer, my cough and hectic and night sweats should
+become no worse, while my muscular strength had very much increased?
+
+My mind's eye turned towards my father's house as a place of refuge. In
+a day or two I was in it; and in another day or two I was caparisoned as
+a laborer, and in the field. It is true that I did not at first
+accomplish a great deal; but I held the implements of husbandry in my
+hands, and spent a certain number of hours every day in attempting to
+work. Some of the workmen laughed about me, and spoke of the vast
+benefits to be derived from having a ghost in the field with them; but I
+held on in spite of their jokes. I had been accustomed of old to the
+labor of a farm, which greatly facilitated my efforts. Habit is
+powerful.
+
+Not many weeks passed ere I was able to perform half a day's work or
+more in a day. My consumptive tendencies, moreover, were far less
+exhausting and trying. In a word, I was better. The Rubicon was already
+passed. I did not, indeed, expect to get entirely well, for this would
+have been a hope too big for me. But I should not die, I thought,
+immediately. Drowning men, as you know, catch at straws; and this is a
+wise arrangement, for otherwise they would not often be saved by planks.
+
+One point, at least, I had gained. I was emancipated from slavery to
+external forms, especially medicated forms. But I had not only declared
+and found myself able to maintain independence of medicine, but I had
+acquired much confidence in nature and nature's laws. And this faith in
+the recuperative powers of nature was worth more to me than worlds would
+have been without it.
+
+Much was said, in those days, not only in books but by certain learned
+professors, about shaking off pulmonary consumption on horseback.
+Whether, indeed, this had often been done--for it is not easy, in the
+case of a joint application of various restorative agencies, such as
+air, light, full mental occupation etc., to give to each agency its just
+due--I am not quite prepared to say. But as soon as I was able to ride
+on horseback several miles a day, the question was agitated whether it
+was or was not advisable.
+
+In prosecuting this inquiry, another question came up. How would it do,
+thought I, to commence at once the practice of medicine? But
+difficulties almost innumerable--some of them apparently
+insurmountable--lay in my way. Among the rest, I had no confidence in my
+medical knowledge or tact; I was a better school-master. But teaching,
+as I had every reason to fear, would bring me down again, and I could
+not think of that: whereas the practice of medicine, on horseback, which
+at that time and in that region was not wholly out of date, might, as I
+thought, prove quite congenial.
+
+Besides being "fearful and unbelieving" in the matter, I was still in
+the depths of poverty. I had not even five dollars. In fact, during my
+excursion already described, I had lived on a few ounces of solid food
+and a little milk or ale each day, in order to eke out my almost
+exhausted finances; though, by the way, I do not know but I owed my
+partial final recovery in no small degree to this very starvation
+system. However, to become a practising physician, money would be
+indispensable, more or less. What could be done without it? My father
+had credit, and could raise money for me; but _would_ he? He had never
+wholly approved of my medical tendencies and course; and would it be
+right to ask him to aid me in an undertaking which he could not
+conscientiously approve?
+
+Just at this time our own family physician wanted to sell, and offered
+me his stand. His practice, he said, was worth a thousand dollars a
+year. He had an old dilapidated house and a couple of acres of miserable
+land, and a horse. These, he said, he would sell to me for so much. I
+might ride with him as a kind of apprentice or journeyman for six
+months, at the expiration of which time he would vacate the field
+wholly.
+
+The house, land, and horse were worth perhaps one-third the sum
+demanded, but probably not more. However, the price with me, made very
+little difference. One sum was much the same with another. For I was so
+anxious to live, that I was willing to pay almost any price which might
+be required by a reasonable man, and till that time, it had not entered
+my heart that a good man would take any serious advantage of a fellow
+being in circumstances so desperate. And then I was not only anxious to
+live, but very confident I should live. So strong was my determination
+to live on, and so confident was I in the belief that I should do so,
+that I was willing to incur a debt, which at any other period of my life
+would have discouraged me.
+
+There was another thing that tended to revive me and restore my courage.
+The more I thought of commencing business, and talked about living, the
+more I found my strength increasing. That talking about dying had a
+downward or down-hill tendency, I had long known; but that the tendency
+of talking up-hill was exactly the reverse, I had not fully and clearly
+understood.
+
+My father tried to dissuade me from a hasty decision, but it was to no
+purpose. To me, it seemed that the course I had proposed was my only
+alternative. "I must do it," I said to myself, "or die;" and life to me,
+as well as to others, was sweet. But although it was a course to which I
+seemed shut up, and which I must pursue or die, it was a step which I
+could not take unaided. I had not the pecuniary ability to purchase so
+much as a horse, or, had I needed one, hardly a good dog.
+
+It was at length proposed by my medical friend, the seller, to accept of
+a long credit for the amount due for the place and appurtenances,
+provided, however, I would get my father or some other good man to be my
+endorser. But here was a difficulty almost or quite insurmountable. My
+father had always said he would endorse for nobody. And as for asking
+any one else to endorse for me, I dared not.
+
+But I cannot dwell at this point. My father at length became my
+endorser, and the bargain was signed and sealed. It was indeed, a
+desperate effort, and I have a thousand times wondered how I could have
+ventured. Why! only one or two years before, I was miserable for several
+days because I was in debt to the extent of only two dollars for a
+much-needed article, and actually procured the money with considerable
+difficulty, and went and paid the debt to get rid of my anguish; whereas
+now, without much pain and without being worth fifty dollars in the
+world, I could be willing to contract a debt of from twelve to fifteen
+hundred dollars, and involve my good old father in the consequences
+besides. How entirely unaccountable!
+
+But mankind love life, and fear death. The scheme proposed was, as I
+believed, not only a dernier but a needful resort. It was a wrong step
+no doubt, but I did not then think so. I believed the end "sanctified"
+or at least sanctioned the means. How could I have done so? "What
+ardently we wish, we soon believe." I had most ardently wished, I now
+began to believe!
+
+My consumptive tendencies now receded apace, even before I was astride
+of my horse. The stimulus of the hope of life with a forgetfulness of
+myself, were better tonics than Huxham or ale or rich food. There was
+the expectation of living, and consequently the beginning of life. Mind
+has great power over even inert matter; how much more over the living
+animated machine!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+MY JOURNEYMANSHIP IN MEDICINE.
+
+
+Journeymen in medicine, though without the full responsibilities of the
+profession, have yet their difficulties. I had mine; and I had not only
+the ordinary complement of ordinary men, but some which were a little
+extra.
+
+For example, I was no horseman at all, and people around me knew it. At
+the first attempt to mount a new horse, and ride out with the old
+physician, of whom I had purchased my stand, to see his patients, I made
+an exhibition of my horsemanship which I shall not soon forget, and
+which I am sure certain wags and half-buffoons and common loungers who
+witnessed the scene _never_ will.
+
+My horse stood at the post all caparisoned, while I made ready. In
+setting off, I knew well I must submit to the ordeal of being gazed at
+and commented on by a crowd assembled in an adjoining store. It was a
+rainy day, and the crowd would doubtless be much larger than usual. Now
+my love of approbation was excessive; so great as at times to defeat
+entirely its object. So in truth, it proved on the present occasion.
+
+When I was ready to go forth on my journey, I mounted my horse and
+attempted to place my right foot in the stirrup. At this critical
+instant the gaping multitude in the grocery, presented themselves in
+quite a formidable column at the door to see the young doctor on his new
+horse. Their appearance threw my mind off its balance to an extent that
+prevented me from well-balancing my body, and with every possible
+exertion I could not get my feet firmly fixed in the stirrups. To add to
+my trouble, my horse was in haste and trotted off high and hard before I
+could muster presence of mind enough to check him. I rolled this way and
+that, till at length, down I came headlong. My hat went one way, and my
+whip another. A great shout was at once raised by the spectators, but
+being cured by this time, of my excessive diffidence, and not at all
+hurt, I could soon join in the laugh with the rest. I could most
+heartily adopt my old maxim, "It is an ill wind that blows nobody any
+good;" and I had learned by my fall at least, one thing, at least for
+the moment; viz., my excessive regard to human approbation.
+Thenceforward, I rode as I pleased.
+
+But before I enter upon the details and particular confessions of my
+professional career, it is needful that I should say something of those
+changes which were made about this time in my physical habits, by means
+of which I gained at least a temporary victory over my great enemy, the
+consumption. For it must not be supposed that because I could sit on a
+horse and ride six, eight, ten, or twelve miles a day, or work in the
+field or garden half the day, I was out of danger. I had, indeed, gained
+important victories, but there remained very much land yet to be
+possessed.
+
+Of my abandonment of all medicine, I have already told you. But I had
+also greatly changed my dietetic habits. During my excursion of the
+fifth of July, and subsequently, I had lived almost wholly on what might
+have been denominated the starvation system. The case was this: I
+started with less than five dollars in my pocket, and with too much
+pride to borrow more. That my money might hold out, therefore, though I
+took care to secure a good, clean bed by nights, even at the full market
+price (except when I was entertained occasionally, by particular
+friends), I almost went without food. Many a time was I satisfied,
+because I was determined to have it so, with a tumbler of milk and a
+couple of crackers for my breakfast, or even my dinner; and as for
+supper, I often dispensed with it wholly; and all this too, strange
+though it may seem, not only without the loss of strength, but with a
+slow, yet steady, increase.
+
+These dietetic changes, though they were a necessity, were continued and
+extended from principle. I had known, for a long time, what the laws of
+digestion, respiration, circulation, cleanliness, exercise, etc., were,
+but had not fully obeyed them. But I now set myself obeying them up to
+the full extent of my knowledge. I do not mean to affirm that my
+obedience was perfect and entire--wanting in nothing; but only that I
+made an attempt at sinless perfection. However, I speak here, of course,
+of the physical code; for to moral obligation, at that time, I do not
+mean, now, to refer.
+
+My diet was exceedingly plain and comparatively unstimulating. It
+consisted chiefly of bread, fruits, potatoes; and, once a day of salted
+meats. These last should have been exchanged for those which were not
+pickled, and which are of course less stimulating; but at that time I
+was not fully aware of their tone and tendency. My drink was water and a
+little tea; for cider I had long before abandoned.
+
+I paid particular attention to purity of air, and to temperance.
+Fortunately I resided in a house which from age and decrepitude, pretty
+effectually ventilated itself. But temperature, as I well knew, must be
+carefully attended to, particularly by consumptive people. While they
+avoid permanent chilliness, and even at times, the inhalation of very
+cold air on the one hand, it is quite indispensable that they should
+breathe habitually as cool an air as possible, and yet not be
+permanently chilly. This, by means of a proper dress, by night and by
+day, and proper fixtures for heating my room, I contrived to secure.
+
+Cleanliness, too, by dint of frequent bathing, received its full share
+of my attention. It was a rule from which I seldom if ever departed, to
+wet my body daily with cold water, and follow it up by friction. At home
+or abroad, wherever I could get a bowl of water I would have a hand
+bath.
+
+Need I say here that a medical man--one who rode daily on
+horseback--paid a proper regard to the laws of exercise? And yet I am
+well persuaded that not a few medical men exercise far too little.
+Riding on horseback, though it may sometimes shake off consumption, is
+not so good an exercise for the mass of mankind--perhaps not even for
+consumptive people themselves--as an alternation of walking with the
+riding. This, also, I took good care to secure.
+
+Physicians are usually either very greatly addicted to the habit of
+dosing and drugging for every little ill, real or imaginary, or
+particularly hostile to it. I have seldom found any such thing as a
+golden mean in this respect, among them. My feelings, saying nothing at
+present of the sober convictions of my head, led me almost to the
+extreme of no medicine, if extreme it can be called. I did not even
+retain my daily tumbler of ale.
+
+Though I began my medical career as an apprentice or journeyman, merely,
+and went abroad chiefly as the associate of my predecessor, I was soon
+called upon in his absence, and in other circumstances, to take the
+whole charge of patients; or at least to do so till a longer experience
+was available. Thus I was gradually inducted into an important office,
+without incurring a full and proportionate share of its
+responsibilities.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+MY TEMPERANCE PLEDGE.
+
+
+The subject of Temperance, in its present associated forms, had, at this
+time, just began to be agitated. At least, it had just begun to receive
+attention in the newspapers which I was accustomed to see. It could not
+be otherwise than that I should be deeply interested in its discussion.
+
+I had been brought up, as I have before intimated, to a pretty free use
+of cider and tea; but not of ardent spirits or coffee. Neither of these
+was regularly used in my father's family; though both occasionally were.
+But I had abandoned cider long before this time, because I found it had
+a tendency to produce, or at least to aggravate, those eruptive diseases
+to which I was greatly liable. Temperance, then, in the popular sense of
+the term, was, to me, an easy virtue.
+
+And yet as a temperance man--in the circle of my acquaintance--I stood
+nearly alone. No individual around me was ready to take the ground I
+occupied. Of this, however, I was not fully apprised, till a patient
+attempt to recruit the temperance ranks convinced me of the fact. But I
+will give you a full account of my enterprise, since it has a bearing on
+my subsequent history and confessions.
+
+With the aid of a Boston paper which I habitually read, I drew up the
+customary preamble, declaration, and pledge of a temperance society. It
+involved the great idea of total abstinence from spirituous liquors;
+though by the term spirituous liquors, as used at that day, was meant
+chiefly _distilled_ spirits. Having first affixed my own name to the
+paper I went to the most influential of my patrons and friends and asked
+them to sign it likewise. But, reader,--will you believe it?--not a
+single subscriber could I obtain far, or near. They all, with one
+consent, made excuse.
+
+The elder deacon of the most evangelical church in the place where I
+resided, had for his apology that he suffered seriously from a complaint
+for which his physicians had prescribed the daily use of gin, "Now,"
+said he, "though there is nothing in the pledge which goes to prohibit
+the use of spirits in a case like my own, yet as some might think
+otherwise and charge me with inconsistency, I must on the whole be
+excused from signing it."
+
+His son, who was also a deacon in the same church with the father,
+excused himself by saying he was young, and without influence, and it
+would be far better for the old people to put their names down first.
+"Perhaps," said he, "I may conclude to sign the paper by-and-by. I will
+consider well the matter, and if I conclude to sign it, I will let you
+know."
+
+Other leading men in the church as well as in the town affairs, refused
+to sign the pledge, because Deacon H. and son would not. It belonged to
+the deacons in the church, they said, to take the lead in all good
+things, and not to them. When _they_ had put _their_ names to the
+document, others would not long hesitate to follow.
+
+In short nobody would consent to sign the paper, and it remains to this
+day, just as it was when I drew it up; and it is now more than thirty
+years old. There it is, with my name attached to it, as large as life. I
+have been President, Vice President, Treasurer, Secretary, and "all
+hands too," of my would-be Temperance Society, from that day to this. I
+doubt whether many societies can be found which in thirty years have
+made so little change as the one under consideration.
+
+For about four years from the time of getting up the above-named
+temperance society, strange as the assertion may seem, I retained the
+right to use a little beer and a good deal of coffee. But in May, 1830,
+I abandoned all drinks but water, to which custom I have ever since
+adhered and in which I shall probably die.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+TRIALS OF A YOUNG PHYSICIAN.
+
+
+The poet Cowper, in his delineations of a candidate for the pulpit,
+prescribes, as one needful condition or qualification,
+
+    "That he is honest in the sacred cause."
+
+So, when I entered upon the medical profession, which I regarded as next
+of kin to sacred, I deemed honesty quite a high recommendation; and
+whatever in the abstract appeared to me to be right, I endeavored to
+pursue through the routine of every-day life. Alas, that I should ever
+have had occasion to doubt the policy of common honesty!
+
+I was called to see Mrs. ----. The case was an urgent one. There was no
+time for deliberation or consultation. I understood her case but very
+poorly; yet I knew that in order to success I must at least _seem_ to be
+wise. Besides, what was to be done must be done quickly; so I boldly
+prescribed. My prescription was entirely successful, and I left the
+house with flying colors. I left, moreover, with the full consciousness
+of having acted in the main like an honest man.
+
+A few days afterward I was sent for by Mrs. ----, who immediately filled
+my ears with the most piteous complaints, the sum total of which was
+that she was exceedingly _nervous_, and I told her so. Of course I did
+not complain of culpability or crime. But I told her, very plainly, that
+she needed no medicine--nothing but plenty of air and exercise, and less
+high-seasoned food. My great frankness gave offence, and impaired my
+reputation. She employed, in my stead, Dr. Robinson, who continued to
+attend her till his bill amounted to a sum sufficient to buy a good
+carriage and harness, and till his credit for skill was advanced in a
+degree corresponding.
+
+Mr. B.'s child was sick, and his wife besides. He came for my
+predecessor; but, not finding him at home,--though he still remained in
+the place,--he was compelled to Hobson's choice--myself or nobody; Dr.
+Robinson lived at too great a distance. I was accordingly employed, and
+was soon on the spot. The child was very sick; and for some little time
+after my arrival I was so much occupied in the performance of my duties
+that I paid no attention to any thing else. But having prescribed for
+both my patients, I sat down quietly to look over the newspaper.
+
+Presently I heard from Mrs. B. a deep groan. I was immediately at her
+bedside, anxious to know the cause. "Oh, nothing at all," she said,
+"except a momentary feeling of disappointment because Dr. ---- did not
+come." I said to her, "You can send for him now, madam, as soon as he
+returns. Do not think yourselves compelled to adhere to me, simply
+because you have been obliged to call me once. I will yield most
+cheerfully to the individual of your preference."
+
+Mrs. B. apologized. She knew I had done as well as I could, she said;
+and perhaps no one could have done better. "But little Leonora," said
+she, "is dreadfully sick; and I do very much want to see Dr. B. He has
+had more experience than you. These young doctors, just from the
+schools, what can they know, the best of them?"
+
+I saw her difficulties; but, as I have already intimated, I did not look
+so wise as Dr. B., nor had I so grave a face, nor so large an abdomen. I
+could neither tell so good a story, nor laugh so heartily; I could not
+even descend to that petty talk which is so often greatly preferred to
+silence or newspaper reading, not only by such individuals as Mrs. B.
+and her friends, but by most families. A physician must be a man of
+sympathy. He need not, however, descend to so low a level as that of
+dishonesty; but he must come down to the level of his people in regard
+to manners and conversation. He must converse with them in their own
+language. He must not only _seem_ to be devoted, unreservedly, to their
+interests, but must actually _be_ so. This confession is most cheerfully
+and sincerely and honestly made; and may he who reads it understand.
+
+On a certain occasion I was called to prescribe in a family where the
+disappointment was so great that the patient was actually made worse by
+my presence, and an unfavorable turn given to the disease. It may be
+said that people ought not to yield themselves up to the influence of
+such feelings; and it is certainly true that they ought not. But sick
+people are not always rational, nor even judicious. Dr. Johnson says:
+"Every sick man is a rascal;" but we need not go quite so far as that.
+Sickness changes us, morally, sometimes for the better, but much oftener
+for the worse; and in general it makes us much less reasonable.
+
+But it is far enough from being my intention to present a full account
+of the trials incident to the life of a young medical man; for, in order
+to do this, I should be obliged to carry you with me, at least mentally,
+to places which you would not greatly desire to visit. Physicians can
+seldom choose their patients; they are compelled to take them as they
+find them. They will sometimes be called to the vilest of the vile and
+the filthiest of the filthy.
+
+Their office is indeed a noble one; but is noblest of all when performed
+honestly, in the fear of God, with a view to do good, and not merely to
+please mankind and gratify their own ambition. Above all, they should
+not practise medicine for the mere love of money. A physician should
+have a heart overflowing with benevolence, and should feel it incumbent
+upon him, at every step in his professional life, not only to do good to
+his patients, but to all around him. He should be a guide to mankind,
+physically, for moral ends. He should let his light so shine, that they,
+seeing his good works, may be led to glorify the Father who is in
+heaven. His object should be to spread, by the good he performs, the
+everlasting gospel, just as truly as this should be the object of him
+who ministers in holy things at the altar. Such a physician, however, at
+first, I was not. Such, however, I soon aspired to be; such, as I trust,
+I at length became. Of this, however, the reader will judge for himself,
+by-and-by. "By their fruits ye shall know them."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+A DOSING AND DRUGGING FAMILY.
+
+
+For several months of the first year of my medical life, I was a boarder
+in a family, all of whom were sickly. Some of the number were even
+continually or almost continually under the influence of medicine, if
+not of physicians. Here my trials were various, and some of them severe.
+
+But I must give you a particular description of this family; for I have
+many things to say concerning it, some of which may prove instructive.
+
+Mr. L. had been brought up a farmer; but being possessed of a delicate
+constitution, had been subsequently converted into a country
+shop-keeper,--a dealer, I mean, in dry goods and groceries. As is usual
+in such cases, he was in the habit of keeping a small assortment of
+drugs and medicines. The circumstance of having medicine always at hand,
+and often _in_ hand, had led him, as it has thousands of others, into
+temptation, till he had formed and confirmed the habit of frequent
+dosing and drugging his frail system. But as usually happens in such
+cases, the more medicine he took, the more he seemed to require, and
+consequently the more he swallowed. One thing prepared the way for
+another.
+
+With Mrs. L. matters were still worse. In the vain belief that without a
+course of medication, _she could never have any constitution_, as she
+was wont to express it, her mother had begun to dose and drug her as
+early as at the age of twelve or fourteen years. And what had been thus
+early begun, had been continued till she was twenty-four, when she
+married Mr. L. But she was feebler, if possible, at twenty-four, than at
+fourteen, and believed herself under the necessity of taking medicine in
+order to be able to sit up a part of the day and perform a little
+light, but needful, family labor, such as sewing, mending, etc.
+
+When I first had a seat at their family table, it was by no means
+uncommon for Mr. and Mrs. L. to begin their meal, as soon as "grace" was
+over, with Stoughton's bitters, or some other supposed cordial, or
+strengthener of the appetite. As I not only refused to join them, but
+occasionally spoke a kind word against the custom into which they had
+fallen, the bitters at length fell into disuse; and it was found that
+their meals could be digested as well without the stimulus, as with its
+aid.
+
+But I was much less successful in preventing the torrent of medicine
+from producing its wonted ---- upon this family, at other times and
+seasons; for which Mr. L.'s business furnished such facilities. But you
+must not think of Mrs. L. as a mere tyro in this business of compounding
+medicine, nor in that of administering it, especially to herself. From
+the apothecary's shop of her husband, as well as from other sources, she
+selected one thing after another, not merely for the time, but for
+permanent purposes, till it was almost difficult to say which had the
+best assortment, she or her husband. And she not only had it on hand,
+but she took it, as freely, almost so, as her food and drink.
+
+More than even this should be affirmed. Had she at any time flagged in
+this work of self-destruction, she would have been brought up again to
+the line by her mother. For though the latter resided at a considerable
+distance, she paid Mrs. L. an occasional visit, and sometimes remained
+in the family several weeks. Whenever she did so, little was heard of in
+the usual hours of conversation,--especially at the table,--but Sarah's
+stomach, Sarah's nerves, and what was good for Sarah. It was enough to
+make one _sick at the stomach_, to witness the conversation even for a
+single day; and above all to be compelled to join in it.
+
+She was there once, in the early spring, and remained until the ground
+was fairly settled. No sooner could she get into the woods, and come to
+the naked surface of the earth, than the whole country around was laid
+under tribute to furnish roots "good for the blood." These were put
+into a beer to be prepared for Sarah. It was supposed by many,--and by
+this wondrous wise old lady, among the rest,--that the efficacy of these
+medicinal beers in cleansing the blood, must ever be in due proportion
+to the number of their respective ingredients. Thus, if twenty articles,
+"good for the blood," could be procured and boiled in the wort, the
+result would be a compound which would be worth twenty times as much, or
+at least be _many_ times as useful, in accomplishing its supposed
+specific purpose, as if only one kind of root had been obtained.
+
+It was a long time before I could break in upon this tissue of error, to
+any practical purpose. For so deeply imbedded in the human brain is the
+idea of purifying the blood by some such unnatural means, that one might
+almost as well think of building a railroad to the moon, as of
+overcoming it. They never thought--perhaps never knew--that the blood of
+the human body of to-day, will be little more the blood of the body
+to-morrow, than the river which flows by our door to-day will be the
+river of to-morrow; and that the one can no more be purified
+independently of any and all things else, than the other.
+
+But it is said to be a long road which never turns. Some good
+impressions had been made on this family, as we shall see hereafter.
+Not, indeed, until there had been much unnecessary suffering, and many
+an unwilling penalty paid for transgression, as well as much money
+uselessly expended for physicians and medicine. For though I was
+somewhat a favorite in the family, I was as yet young and inexperienced,
+and many a wiser head than mine was from time to time invoked, and much
+time and money lost in other ways, that might have been saved for better
+and nobler purposes.
+
+Among the items of loss, as well as of penalty, was that of offspring.
+These were generally still-born. One, indeed, lived about two weeks and
+then perished. The parents seemed to be written childless. Or rather,
+they seemed to have written themselves so. They seemed destined
+moreover, to follow their premature children, at no great distance, to
+an untimely grave. For nothing was more obvious--I mean to the medical
+observer--than at an age when everybody ought to be gaining in bodily no
+less than in mental and moral vigor, they were both of them growing
+feeble as well as irresolute.
+
+As a boarder, I left the family some time afterward, though I did not
+lose sight of it wholly; nor did they entirely forget or disregard the
+numerous hints I had given them. They made some progress every year. At
+length, however, I lost sight of them entirely, and only kept up a faint
+recollection of them by means of an occasional word of intelligence from
+the place where they resided, showing that they were still alive.
+
+One day, after the lapse of about eight years, as I was passing through
+a charming New England village, the stage-coach stopped to let the
+passengers dine, when, to my great surprise, on stepping out of the
+coach, whom should I see but my old friend Mr. L.? He was equally
+surprised, and perhaps equally rejoiced, to see me. The interview was
+utterly unexpected to us both.
+
+"How do you do?" said he, grasping my hand. I returned the compliment by
+inquiring after his own health and that of Mrs. L. It turned out that he
+had failed in his business a few months before, and that, as a
+consequence, he had been compelled to remove to the place where he now
+was, and engage in an employment which brought his skin into contact
+with the air, and his muscles into prolonged and healthful activity. It
+appeared also that both he and his family had long since banished the
+use of medicine. "And now," said he, "thank God I know what it is, once
+more, to enjoy health; I can not only eat, but work."
+
+It was Monday, the great _washing-day_ of Yankee house-keepers; and
+while we were talking together with so much earnestness, that, like
+Milton's first pair in innocence, we "forgot all time," a female
+approached, with her sleeves rolled up, greeted me with much cordiality
+and seized me by the hand. "Can this be Mrs. L.?" I asked. How changed!
+She was, it is true, like her husband, a little sunburnt; but then she
+was as she assured me, and, as I had every reason for believing to be
+true, comparatively healthy.
+
+While I was still in amazement, hardly knowing whether I was awake or
+dreaming, a little girl approached us. Though somewhat slender and
+delicate, she was only slightly diseased; rather, she was only
+predisposed to disease by inheritance; and mere predispositions no more
+destroy us, than a train of powder explodes without igniting. The girl
+was about four or five years old. "Who is this?" I inquired. "Not yours,
+most certainly," I added, turning to Mr. and Mrs. L. "We call her ours,"
+they said, "and yours; for we, no doubt, owe her life and health, in no
+small degree, to your instructions."--"This," said I, "is what I little
+expected to see; but you may thank God for it rather than me, since she
+lives by virtue of obedience to his laws, and not mine. Then you are not
+only pretty healthy yourselves," I added, "but you have a healthy
+child."--"We have two," said they. "The other is in the cradle; we will
+go and bring her."
+
+At this moment, the loud declaration, "The coach is ready, gentlemen,"
+reminded us that our conversation was at an end for the present, and we
+were obliged to separate. Not, however, till we had enjoyed a most
+luxurious mental repast in "the feast of reason, and the flow of soul,"
+with no abatement but the consciousness, on my part, of a little loss to
+the landlord, who had provided for the passengers a smoking dinner.
+
+This, reader, to speak somewhat paradoxically, was one of the proudest,
+and yet one of the humblest days of my life. To have been the
+Heaven-appointed instrument of such a marked change for the better in a
+human family, was more than could have been foreseen or even expected.
+It is more than has often fallen to my lot. True, I do not hesitate to
+regard it as an extreme case; and yet it is, in magnitude, just what I
+could show you in miniature, at various points in the same vicinity, and
+indeed, all over the country.
+
+Mr. and Mrs. L. still pursue the even tenor of their way, and have their
+reward in it. One of their two daughters,--buds of early
+promise,--though probably more or less scrofulous, hardly reached
+maturity, ere she descended to the tomb. The rest enjoy a tolerable
+degree of health. Of course, I do not speak of their health as greater
+than that of the average of mankind, notwithstanding their thorough
+reformation. It is much, all things considered, that it should be equal
+to that average.
+
+As for the mother of Mrs. L., who still occasionally visits the family,
+she looks on in silent amazement, hardly knowing whether to recommend
+any more beer, with all sorts of roots good for the blood in it, or
+whether to give up the pursuit. I believe, however, that she does not
+often presume to interfere with their habits. Perhaps she has
+learned--if not, she may possibly live long enough to acquire the
+lesson,--to "let well alone," as her children and grandchildren already
+have. I certainly hope she has. It will conduce greatly to her health
+and happiness, as well as make her a better citizen and better
+Christian.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+POISONING WITH LEAD.
+
+
+Nearly at the beginning of my practice in medicine, I was called to see
+a fine and hitherto healthy youth, twelve years old, but who had for
+several weeks before application was made to me, complained of a steady
+and sometimes severe pain in his bowels, attended with more or fewer
+febrile symptoms and a loss of appetite.
+
+In endeavoring to trace out carefully the causes of his disease, the
+first thing that attracted my attention was his employment. His father
+was a blacksmith, and being in moderate circumstances and destitute of
+any other help besides this son, had for a considerable time required
+him to perform the work of an adult, or nearly such. It had not been
+suspected at the time, that the work injured him, though he had
+sometimes complained of great fatigue, and of a slight weakness and
+uneasiness in the place where the pain had now become fixed. As the
+result of my investigations, I came to the conclusion that he had been
+overworked, and certain ligaments of the bowels had been weakened.
+
+My treatment in the case was at first mild and palliative, in the hope
+that after a few days of rest the trouble would disappear. Instead of
+this, however, it grew worse. At my special request, various counselling
+physicians were called in; but I do not know that they were of any
+service to me. No new light was thrown on the case, though we could all
+converse very learnedly on the subject.
+
+Like many other young practitioners, I was at that time apt to indulge
+in gloomy fears about poisons. I seldom had a case of acute disease,
+without suspecting their influence. I suspected poison now, and
+accordingly made search into every possible nook and corner whence such
+an influence could possibly have emanated. For a long time nothing could
+be found.
+
+One day, on examining a pot of pickled cucumbers which had hitherto
+escaped observation, I found that a part of its glazing had been
+destroyed by the acid. I no sooner saw this than I was ready to say,
+_eureka_ (I have found it), and to inform the family and my patient. It
+appeared that the pickles had been there for some time, and that the boy
+had eaten of them very freely. The parents and friends, though they had
+much confidence in the wisdom and skill of their physician, were very
+slow to believe in the injurious tendency of the pickles. They admitted
+the danger of such cases generally; but how could the boy be injured,
+and not the rest of them? they asked. They forgot, or did not know, that
+the poison would be more likely to affect one who was weakened in the
+abdomen from other causes, than those who were sound; especially when he
+took much more of it into his stomach than they did.
+
+In my suspicion about lead poisoning, I had very little sympathy from
+those around me. Even the counselling physicians had little confidence
+in any such existing cause of disease. They were nearly as ready as
+other people to leave the case in the dark, and to say, practically,
+"The finger of Providence is here;" or, in other words, It comes of some
+cause which God alone knows or _can_ know.
+
+How much of human ignorance--ay, and of human credulity and folly,
+too--is clustered round the well-known decision of many a court of
+inquest; viz., "Died by the visitation of God!" What do they mean by it?
+Do they suppose that since Satan or some other personage whom we call
+Death, is guilty of striking us down here and there, those who are not
+"struck with death" are struck down by the great Source of light and
+life?
+
+The far greater probability is, that they know not what they _do_ mean.
+Mankind are not addicted to thinking, especially on subjects of this
+sort. It is much easier, or at least much lazier, to refer all our ills
+and complaints, as well as their unfavorable terminations, to God or
+Satan, friend or foe,--to some agency exterior to themselves,--than to
+consider themselves as the probable cause, and proceed to make diligent
+search for their own errors.
+
+Thus it was, in a remarkable degree, in the region where it was my lot
+to meet and palliate and try to cure diseases. I say, here, _cure_; for
+the idea would hardly have found a lodgment, at that early period, in
+any human brain which could have been found in that region of rural
+simplicity, hardly in my own somewhat more highly enlightened cranium,
+that _medical men never cure_; and that when people get well, it is the
+result of the operations and efforts of nature, or of nature's God, who
+is doing the best thing possible to set matters right.
+
+It was even deemed by many as not only foolish, but almost sacrilegious,
+to say much about the causes of disease, and especially about lead. And
+then to talk about lead as connected with the use of their favorite red
+earthen, which had been in use time immemorial, and which had never, in
+all past time, killed anybody, as they supposed, was the dictate of
+almost any thing else rather than of good, sound, sober, common sense.
+
+You can hardly imagine, at this day, in the year 1859, what an air of
+incredulity the gaping countenances of the family and neighbors of my
+young friend and patient presented, when I told them stories of lead
+disease in different parts of the country, especially of such cases as
+were then recent and fresh in my memory. One of these stories may not be
+out of place in the present connection.
+
+About the year 1812, the people of Elizabethtown, Penn., put up what
+they called their apple butter in these same red earthen vessels,
+glazed, as almost everybody now knows, with an oxyde of lead. There had
+been a pottery established near the village that very year, and it was
+thought not a little patriotic to purchase and use its products, thus
+favoring the cause of home manufacture. Nearly every family, as it
+appeared in the sequel, had bought and used more or fewer of these
+vessels.
+
+This was, of course, some time in the autumn. In the progress of a few
+months a dreadful disease broke out in the village, which baffled the
+skill of the best physicians, and consigned some forty or fifty of the
+inhabitants to the grave. The cause, at first, was not at all suspected.
+At length, however, from a careful examination of facts, it was
+ascertained that the disease which had proved so fatal must have had its
+origin in the glazing of these vessels. The sickness abated only when it
+had attacked all whose bowels--already weakened by some other cause or
+causes--were duly prepared for the poisonous operation of the lead. It
+is indeed true that the physicians supposed the disease came to a stand
+on account of the overwhelming tendency of huge doses of calomel, which
+they gave to almost everybody who had used the apple butter; but of this
+there was no satisfactory evidence. It ceased, as I believe, and as I
+have already intimated, because--except in the case of those who were
+enfeebled by other causes, nature was too strong for it, or her
+recuperative powers too energetic.
+
+Now this story illustrates a case which, in magnitude or in miniature,
+is in our country of almost every-day occurrence; and the only reason
+why the results everywhere else are not like those at Elizabethtown, is
+simply this: that there is not so much of the poison used in any one
+village, at the same time, as there was at that place in the
+circumstances which have been mentioned. One is sick here, another
+there, and another elsewhere. In one, owing to peculiar predisposition
+or habit, it takes the shape of fever; in another, of palsy; in another,
+of eruptions or boils; in another, of bowel complaint. And as all these
+and many other diseases have been known before, and have been induced by
+other causes equally unobserved or obscure, we have fallen into the
+habit of supposing that these things must needs be, do what we will. In
+other words, God the Creator, is supposed to have made the world and
+appointed to us, for trial or otherwise, these various forms of disease;
+and they are for the most part dealt out to us arbitrarily; or, if not
+arbitrarily, by chance or hap-hazard.
+
+But to return to the young man. There was such a hostility of the public
+mind to the idea that his disease was induced or even aggravated by
+lead, that I receded in part from my suspicions. At least, I proceeded,
+with fresh energy and enthusiasm, to search for other and more probable
+or popular causes. Cause there must have been, of some sort, I was
+confident; while to all my efforts of this kind the friends of the boy
+stood opposed. They did not, it is true, say much against it; but then
+it was perfectly evident from all their conversation and conduct that
+they regarded it as not only idle, but presumptuous, perhaps wicked. How
+can it be, they seemed to say, by those looks and actions which so often
+speak louder than words, that this young doctor is always trying to
+ferret out the causes of disease, while Dr ---- (my predecessor) never
+attempted any such thing, but rather dissuaded us from it?
+
+Yet thus it was precisely. For three long months I was endeavoring to
+meet and obviate the symptoms of a disease which I secretly believed was
+induced by lead, but of which I had no such strong evidence as would
+have justified the positive affirmation that it was so, or prevented me
+from searching for other causes. This state of mind was by no means
+favorable to my success as a medical practitioner; for it somehow
+greatly impaired or weakened their general confidence in my wisdom and
+skill. Had I, on the other hand, "looked very wise," declared the
+disease to be so and so, with great pertinacity, and adhered, through
+good report and through evil, to my opinion, whenever it was assailed,
+and withal manifested no desire to receive medical counsel, I should
+have had a larger measure of their esteem, and a very much larger
+measure, as a professional man, of their confidence. They might then
+have thought me a very wise and good physician.
+
+A man who wishes to be greatly popular in the world must learn the ways
+of the world, and walk in them more or less, whether they are crooked or
+straight. He must not be over-modest, or over-honest; nor must he be
+over-solicitous to improve his own mind or heart, or encourage others,
+by precept or example, to walk in the way of improvement. He must not
+only make up his mind to take the world as it is, but to suffer it to
+remain so. The world does not like to be found fault with; it has a
+great deal of self-confidence.
+
+The young man, in the end, recovered; not, as I now believe, in
+consequence of the treatment, but in spite of it. Had he been nursed
+carefully from the first, and kept from every source of irritation, both
+external and internal, even from food, except a very little of the
+mildest sort, just enough to keep him from absolute starvation; and had
+his air been pure and his temper of mind easy, cheerful and hopeful, he
+would probably have recovered much sooner than he did, and with far
+better prospects for the future. But he had been frightened about
+himself, from the very first, by my own inquiries about poison,--which
+had unwarily been communicated to him,--and his fears never wholly
+subsided.
+
+How much wisdom from both worlds does it require in order to be a
+physician! The office of a medical man, I repeat, is one of the noblest
+under the whole heaven. The physician is, or should be, a missionary. Do
+you regard this assertion as extravagant or unfounded? Why, then, was it
+made an adjunct, and more than an adjunct, in the first promulgation of
+the gospel, and this, too, by the gospel's divine Author? Why is it that
+our success in modern times, in spreading the gospel, has been
+greater--other things being equal--in America or China, in proportion as
+its preachers have attended to the body as well as to the soul?
+
+At the time of my commencing the practice of medicine, I was no more fit
+for it than I was to preach the cross of Christ; that is, I was almost
+entirely unqualified for either profession. I was honest, sanguine,
+philanthropic, but I was uneducated. I knew very little, indeed, of
+human nature; still less did I know of the sublime art of becoming all
+things to all men, in the nobler and more elevated sense of the great
+apostle Paul. I would yield to no other compromise than such as he
+encourages, of course. Let us be honest and truthful, though the heavens
+fall.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX.
+
+STANDING PATIENTS.
+
+
+Medical men well know--should any such condescend to look over this
+volume--what is meant when I affirm that I was not long in securing to
+myself a good share of _standing patients_. They are the dread, not to
+say the curse, of the profession. And yet they abound. They are found
+throughout the length and breadth of the land, and in great numbers.
+
+They are a class of persons, not always of one sex, who hang
+continually, like an incubus, on the physician, and yet are forever a
+disadvantage to him. They are never well enough to let him alone, and
+yet seldom ill enough to require much medical advice or treatment. And
+yet, medicine they will have, of somebody, even if they go to the
+apothecary for it, without so much as the semblance of a medical
+prescription of any sort. But then, after all, they are seldom reduced
+to any such necessity. They usually have on hand prescriptions enough of
+some sort. A dearth of Yankee physicians--could such a thing possibly
+occur--would still leave us a supply of Indian doctors, mesmeric
+doctors, nutritive doctors, etc., etc., to say nothing of doctresses, in
+liberal abundance, ever ready to prescribe.
+
+When I succeeded Dr. ----, in the chair of medicine, surgery, etc., at
+----, I received, as if by contract, if not by inheritance, his whole
+stock of standing patients. They were not slow to _call on_, sometimes
+to _call in_, the new doctor. Nor was I often long in the house before
+comparisons began to be made between my predecessor and myself. They did
+not, of course, directly traduce or slander Dr. ----, but they were very
+careful to intimate that, having got his name up, he had grown careless
+about his patients, especially such of them as did not belong to his
+clique, political or sectarian; and that, on this account, they were
+almost willing to part with him, and to receive and accept as his
+substitute one who was not only younger and more active, but also less
+tinctured with conservatism and aristocracy!
+
+A very large amount of valuable time was spent during the first year of
+my practice as a physician, in endeavors to do good to these very
+devoted and loving and loyal patients; for if they did not always call
+me when I had occasion to pass their doors, I knew full well they
+expected me, and so I usually called. Besides, in many an instance I was
+sent for in post haste, with entreaties that I would come and see them
+immediately; and no atonement for neglect or even delay--if such neglect
+or delay was ventured--would suffice. And yet, despite of their fears of
+"monarchy and aristocracy," they were my most truly aristocratic
+patients. They expected me to come and go at their request, whether
+anybody else was attended to or not. And, to add to the vexation of the
+case, though they boasted of having paid most enormous bills to my
+predecessor, they never, if they could avoid it, paid any thing to me.
+
+Now, I do not suppose that every medical man has as large a share of
+these standing patients as fell to my unhappy lot; but from the
+knowledge I have acquired of mankind, and from the acquaintance I have
+necessarily formed with medical men, I do not think I err when I affirm
+that they are everywhere numerous, and that they are everywhere not only
+a pest to society at large, but particularly so to the physician.
+
+But the worst feature of the case is, that after all our efforts, we can
+seldom, if ever, cure them. They are always hanging upon us like an
+incubus; and yet like Solomon's daughters of the horseleech, are never
+satisfied. They take the medicine, and follow the advice, if they _like_
+it; or they take such parts of it as they choose, and reject the rest.
+Or they take the advice and follow us to-day, but get discouraged and
+abandon us, at least practically, to-morrow; especially if some smart
+young physician happens to come along, who has more than an average
+share of empiricism and pretension, and more than he has of real merit.
+
+I must here confess, among other confessions, that at first I was not a
+little deceived by their open countenances and concealed thoughts, and
+unintelligent and hence unconfiding professions. It was a long time
+before I relinquished the hope of doing them good; or at least a portion
+of them. But I was at length compelled. There was nothing on which to
+build. If a foundation seemed to be laid one day, it would disappear the
+next.
+
+One fundamental difficulty lay in the way of these persons to health, as
+it has to thousands of others. They were all the while talking or
+thinking about themselves, their ailments and woes and abuses and
+neglects. They were particularly inclined to turn their attention to
+their own diseased feelings. Now it may be pretty safe to say that no
+individual can fully recover from chronic disease,--nervous, stomachic,
+or glandular--who is always turning his thoughts inward, and watching
+his own feelings, and perhaps relating his woes to every one he meets
+with. We must learn to forget ourselves, at least a part of the time,
+and think of others, if we are in earnest to get rid of chronic disease.
+I do not say, of course, that everybody would recover of disease, even
+if they acted right in every particular; but this I _do_ say, that if
+every person who is ill would act wisely, and if their physicians, in
+every instance, were wise enough to take the best course, the number of
+these standing patients would soon dwindle to a very small remnant.
+Instead of thousands, or tens of thousands, it would soon be reduced to
+hundreds.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX.
+
+KILLING A PATIENT.
+
+
+President Lindsley, late of one of our south western colleges,--a very
+shrewd and observing, as well as learned and excellent individual--has
+been often heard to say that no half-educated young physician ever
+succeeded in obtaining a good run of professional business, and a fair
+medical reputation, without despatching prematurely to the other world,
+at least as many as half a dozen of his patients.
+
+It is said that most rules have their exceptions; and it is even
+affirmed by some, that the exceptions strengthen the rule. If this is
+so, perhaps the rule of Pres. L. may stand; though to many it seems at
+first exceedingly sweeping. One known exception to its universality may
+be worth mentioning, on which the reader may make his own comments, and
+from which he may draw his own inferences. I was so fortunate for one,
+as to attain to the eminence he mentions, without killing any thing
+_like_ half a dozen patients; at least, so far as I know.
+
+And yet, as I verily fear and most honestly confess, I _did_ kill one or
+two. Not, of course, with malice aforethought, for they were among my
+very best friends; and one in particular was a near and highly valued
+neighbor. Let me give you a few details concerning the latter. It may
+serve as a lesson of instruction, as well as a confession.
+
+He was about six feet high, with large vital organs; and though by no
+means possessed of a strong constitution, yet in virtue of a most rigid
+temperance, generally healthy. He was, however, subjected to the
+habitual influences of a most miserable cookery. Indeed, I never knew
+worse. Seldom, if ever, did he pass a single week--I might even say a
+single day--without having his alimentary organs irritated to
+subinflammation by more or fewer of what Dr. Dunglison, the
+physiologist, would call "rebellious" mixtures. I do not wonder, in
+truth, that he occasionally sickened. The wonder with me is, that he did
+not sicken and die long before he did. And though the blow that finished
+his perilous mortal career, was doubtless inflicted by my own hand, I do
+not hesitate to say that his "housekeeper" had nearly half destroyed him
+before I was called.
+
+It was a midsummer night, when the messenger came across an intervening
+field, and aroused me from my slumbers with the intelligence that Mr. M.
+was very sick, and wanted to have me come and see him immediately.
+Although it was fully twelve o'clock, and I had been so fully occupied
+during the preceding evening, that I had but just crawled into bed and
+begun my slumbers, I was instantly on my feet, and in about twelve
+minutes at the bedside of the sick man.
+
+He had been affected with a bowel complaint, as it appeared, for several
+days, during which his wife, who was one of those conceited women who
+know so much, in their own estimation, that nobody can teach them any
+thing, had dosed him with various things, such as were supposed to be
+good for the blood, or the stomach, among which was brandy and loaf
+sugar. Now his bowels, though they were inflamed, might have borne the
+sugar; but the brandy was a little too much for them. They had endured
+it for a time, it is true, but had at length yielded, and were in a
+worse condition than when she began her treatment. And what was worse,
+her alcoholic doses, frequently "inflicted," had heated the circulatory
+apparatus, and even the whole system, into a burning fever.
+
+It needed no very active imagination, in such circumstances, to make
+out, at least in prospect, a very "hard case." And as he who has a giant
+foe to contend with, arms himself accordingly, I immediately invoked the
+strongholds of the Materia Medica for the strongest doses which it could
+furnish, and these in no measured or stinted quantity. In short, I
+attacked the disease with the most powerful agents of which I could
+avail myself.
+
+I will not trouble the non-professional reader with the names of the
+various and powerful drugs which were laid under contribution in this
+trying and dangerous case, and which were most assiduously plied. It is
+sufficient, perhaps, to say that on looking over my directions--fairly
+written out as they were, and laid on a small stand near the
+sick-bed--you might have discovered that hardly a half-hour, by night or
+day, could pass, in which he was not required to swallow some very
+active or in other words poisonous medicinal agent or other. For though
+I was even then greatly opposed, in _theory_, to the exhibition of much
+medicine in disease, yet in _practice_ I could not free myself wholly
+from the idea that my prospects of affording aid, or rather of giving
+nature a chance of saving a patient, was nearly in proportion to the
+amount I could force into him of opium, calomel, nitrate of silver,
+carbonate of ammonia, etc.
+
+It was, in short, enough to kill a Samson or a Hercules; and I repeat
+that I verily fear that it did kill in the present instance; not,
+however, immediately. For several days and nights we watched over him,
+heating his brain, in our over-kindness, to a violent delirium on the
+one hand, or to a stupor almost like the sleep of death on the other.
+
+Not satisfied with our own murderous efforts, we at length applied for
+medical counsel. My predecessor was not so far off as to be quite beyond
+our reach, and was in due time on the spot. He, good man, sanctioned the
+deeds already done, and only made through the force of their
+prepossessions, an addition to the dark catalogue of demons which
+already assailed if they did not actually possess him.
+
+For the first time in my medical career, I suffered, here, from a loss
+of the confidence of my employers. A very mean man, who could gain
+notoriety in no other way, undertook to insinuate that I did not
+understand well my profession; and this story for a short time made an
+impression. However, there was soon a reaction in my favor, so that
+nothing was lost in the end. More than even this might be said--that I
+rose higher, as the result of the report.
+
+Mr. M. at length began to decline. Nature, though strongly entrenched in
+her citadel, and loth to "give up the ship," began to succumb to the
+powers of disease and the load of medicine; and he gradually descended
+to the tomb. His whole sickness was of little more than a week's
+duration.
+
+I was present at the funeral, but I could scarcely hold up my head, or
+look any person in the face. To my perturbed imagination every one who
+was but "three feet high" was ready to point at me the finger of scorn,
+and say, "You have killed that man." The heavens themselves seemed
+covered with thick darkness, and the green earth with sackcloth and
+ashes. "Never again," I said to myself a thousand times, "can I bear up
+under such sad and severe responsibilities."
+
+And yet--will the reader believe it?--no one circumstance of my whole
+medical life ever did more to establish my reputation than this. True, I
+had contended on the battle field, and had been beaten, but then it was
+thought I had contended against a powerful foe. Men sometimes think it
+honorable even to be beaten. I well remember an instance of this sort. A
+very great scoundrel heaped insults upon a worthy justice of the peace,
+till the latter seized him and held him down to the ground for a
+considerable time. The man was quite respectable afterward, and told the
+story to his own praise a thousand times over! He had measured lances
+with 'Squire H.! And though the 'Squire was too much for him, he
+obtained a town-wide reputation by the contest.
+
+You will see, more and more, as I proceed with these confessions, that
+it is not in him that willeth nor in him that runneth, to be acceptable
+as a physician, but in certain circumstances, partly within and partly
+beyond our control. You will see, however, that the best way in the end
+is, boldly and fearlessly to do right, and then trust in Him who loves
+right, and whose throne is in the Heavens, for the final issue. We may
+not always be popular in doing right--probably we shall _not_ be--but we
+shall, in any event, have a clear conscience.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI.
+
+A SUDDEN CURE.
+
+
+I was called one morning very early, to see a little girl, five or six
+years of age, who, it was said, was extremely sick, and without
+immediate aid could not probably long survive.
+
+She was one of a very numerous family, most of whom, though suffered to
+run almost wild, like so many rabbits, were comparatively healthy. I do
+not suppose they had ever called in a physician more than once or twice
+in a year. In truth, they had very little confidence in physicians;
+though in extremities, they were accustomed to call on them almost as
+much as other people. In any event Caroline was very sick now; and they
+loudly demanded aid. I was forthwith on the spot. Caroline was groaning
+most piteously. "Where is your distress?" I inquired. She gave no direct
+answer, but continued to groan and writhe, as if she were impaled. As I
+could obtain no reliable information from her, and could discover no
+special or exciting cause of her suffering, and as the case was urgent,
+I proceeded to do _something_, though, as I must honestly confess, it
+was to labor quite in the dark. One thing I knew, it is true; that there
+were spasms, and that it depended on a diseased condition of the brain
+and nervous system; but what the cause or causes were, I could hardly
+divine. Nor, in truth, had I time to ask many questions.
+
+Though the days of Hydropathy had not yet arrived, the world, even then,
+had a good deal of water in it, and physicians were sometimes wise
+enough to use it. It was demanded, as I thought, on the present
+occasion. It would, at least, by whiling away the time, give opportunity
+for further observation and reflection, and deeper investigation. There
+was a good fire in the kitchen, and I ordered a warm bath immediately.
+
+Every effort was made to hasten the process of warming the water, as
+well as to keep the patient quiet and within doors; for she raved like a
+maniac--partly indeed from a childish fear, but partly also from real
+bodily suffering. The family and neighborhood--for the latter were very
+largely collected together--were almost as much alarmed and distressed
+as the little patient, and this reacted on the patient to her increased
+disadvantage.
+
+As there were no special preparations in those days for bathing--I mean
+in the region of which I am now speaking--we used a large wash-tub. The
+water was soon ready, and was made rather warm, quite above 100° of
+Fahrenheit. I had taken the precaution to have my patient already
+undressed, so as to lose no time. The very instant the bath was ready,
+she was plunged into it. It cost some trouble, for she resisted with
+almost superhuman strength, and uttered most terrific screams. But as
+the ox is dragged to the slaughter, she was dragged into the water and
+held in it.
+
+The effect was like magic. She had not been in the water twenty seconds
+before every thing was quiet; and I do not know that she has ever had
+another pang to the present hour. Certain it is that she seemed to be
+entirely cured by this single bath, and none of her spasms ever
+returned.
+
+The family were greatly delighted, and so were the neighbors. And was
+the physician, think you, an uninterested spectator? Had he been wholly
+destitute of the love of doing good, by relieving human distress, he
+must at least have been susceptible of receiving pleasure from general
+approbation.
+
+He certainly sought respectability as a physician. And this he was by
+degrees now attaining.
+
+It is hardly possible to refer the sudden quiet which followed in this
+instance from the application of warm water, to a mere coincidence, as
+if the system was ready, just at this very instant, to react or rally.
+The bath must have had something more than a mere imaginary or
+accidental effect, though its prescription may be said to have been
+empirical.
+
+Had the experiment in the present instance wholly failed, it is by no
+means improbable the physician would still have been on a par with other
+men. The _guess_ he made was his _only_ thought. He had nothing in
+reserve. But he was successful; he _guessed right_, and it built him up.
+His fame now began to spread far and wide, wafted, as it were, on the
+wings of every breeze. If he succeeded, it was supposed to be undeniable
+proof of his skill; if he failed, it was not supposed to be so much his
+fault as the result of circumstances; or, more properly, the severity of
+the disease. And even in the case of failure, as I have said elsewhere,
+he often gained credit; for he had boldly contended, at great odds, with
+a mighty because intangible antagonist!
+
+It is an old proverb,--but by no means the less true for its age,--that
+when a person is going down hill every one will give him a kick. But is
+it not equally true that when he is resolutely going up hill, they are
+equally ready to help him on? So at least I found it at this period of
+my progress.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII.
+
+GIGANTIC DOSES OF MEDICINE.
+
+
+Although I was opposed to the frequent and free use of medicine, I early
+fell into one habit which was as diametrically opposed to my general
+theory as could possibly have been. I refer to the habit of giving my
+patients, at least occasionally, most enormous doses of those more
+active preparations which should seldom, if ever, be administered in
+this way. As nearly as I can now recollect, I fell into this habit in
+the following manner:
+
+Among my standing patients, before mentioned, were several drunkards.
+Occasionally, however, they were more than standing or standard
+patients; they had attacks of mania, or as it is usually called in the
+case of drunkards, delirium tremens. In these circumstances, among these
+patients, I often had the most severe trials. Sometimes I could relieve
+them; but sometimes, too, I failed.
+
+One night, while endeavoring to relieve the sufferings of one of these
+patients in delirium tremens, almost to no purpose, the thought struck
+me, "What effect would a prodigious dose of calomel have on the poor
+creature? Can it kill him? I doubt it. I will venture on the trial."
+
+So, without communicating the slightest hint to any one around me of
+what I was about to do, I contrived to insinuate a hundred grains or
+more of this substance into the man's stomach, that like a chemical
+receiver took what was poured into it. Having succeeded in the
+administration of the dose, I waited patiently the issue.
+
+The medicine had, in due time, its full ordinary effect; but the degree
+of its cathartic effect was not in proportion to the largeness of the
+dose. Its activity hardly amounted to violence. It seemed, however, to
+quiet the brain and nerves as if by magic; nor am I aware that any
+injurious effects, either local or general, ever followed its
+exhibition. I had the full credit of a speedy and wonderful cure.
+
+Another fact. I was frequently called to prescribe for children who were
+threatened with the croup. One night, on being called to a child of some
+eight or ten months, I thought of large doses of calomel. Was there any
+great risk in trying one? I ventured. I gave the child almost a
+teaspoonful of this active cathartic. It was indeed a gigantic dose, and
+the treatment was bold if not heroic.
+
+For a couple of hours the patient breathed badly enough. There was
+evidently much oppression, not only of the lungs but of the nervous
+system. The parents and friends of the child grew uneasy. They were not,
+however, more uneasy than their physician. But I consoled myself by
+laboring to compose them. I preached to them long and loud, and to some
+extent with success.
+
+At the end of about two hours, the latter part of which had been marked
+by a degree of stupor which almost discouraged me, a gentle vomiting
+came on, followed by moderately cathartic effects; and the child
+immediately recovered its mental activity, and in a few days was well.
+
+Empirical as this practice was, I ventured on it again and again, and
+with similar success. At length the practice of giving giant doses in
+this disease became quite habitual with me, and I even extended it to
+other diseases. Not only calomel, but several other active medicines
+were used in the same bold and fearless manner. I do not know that I
+ever did any direct or immediate mischief in this way. On the contrary,
+I was regarded as eminently successful.
+
+And yet I should not now dare to repeat the treatment, however urgent
+might seem to be the demand, or recommend it to others. It might,
+perhaps, be successful; but what if it should prove otherwise? I could
+make no appeal to principle or precedent in justification of my conduct.
+It is true, I have met with one or two practitioners whose experience
+has been similar; but what are a few isolated cases, of even honest
+practice, in comparison with the deductions of wise men for centuries?
+There may be after consequences, in these cases, which are not foreseen.
+Sentence against an evil work, as Solomon says, is not always executed
+speedily.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+THE LAMBSKIN DISEASE.
+
+
+Should any medical man look through these pages, he may perchance amuse
+himself by asking where the writer obtained his system of classification
+of disease. It will not, certainly, be very easy to find such a disease
+as the lambskin disease in any of our modern nosologies. But he will
+better understand me when he has read through the chapter. He may be
+reminded, by its perusal and its quaint title, of the classification
+which is found in Whitlow's New Medical Discoveries, founded, as the
+doctor says, on the idea that "every disease ought to be named from the
+plant or other substance which is the principal exciting cause of such
+disease." It is as follows:
+
+    "The Mercurial Disease,
+    The Belladonna       do
+    The Stramonium       do
+    The Tobacco          do
+    The Cicuta           do
+    The Butter Cup       do
+    The Colchicum        do
+    The Colocynth        do
+    The Pork or Hog      do
+    The Vinegar          do
+    The Fool's Parsley   do
+    The Fox Glove        do
+    The Nux Vomica       do
+    The Quassia          do
+    The Opium            do
+    The Hellebore        do
+    The Salt             do
+    The Mineral Acid     do
+    The Acrid            do
+    The Putrid           do"
+
+If on examination the curious reader should find no such disease as the
+"Lambskin disease" in Dr. W.'s catalogue, he should remember that the
+list is by no means complete, and that there will be no objection to the
+addition of one more. And why, indeed, may I not coin terms as well as
+others? All names must have been given by somebody.
+
+But I will not dwell on the subject of nosology too long. I have
+something else to do in this chapter than merely to amuse. I have some
+thoughts to present on health and sickness,--thoughts, too, which seem
+to me of vast importance.
+
+A son of Mr. G., a farmer, had been at work in an adjoining town, all
+summer, with a man who was accustomed to employ a great number of hands
+in various occupations,--farming, road building, butchering, etc., etc.
+Of a sudden, young G., now about twenty years of age, was brought home
+sick, and I was sent for late at night--a very common time for calling
+the doctor--to come and see him.
+
+I found him exceedingly weak and sick, with strong tendencies to
+putridity. What could be the cause? There was no prevailing or epidemic
+disease abroad at the time, either where he had been laboring, or within
+my own jurisdiction; nor could I, at first, find out any cause which was
+adequate to the production of such effects as were before me.
+
+I prescribed for the young man, as well as I could; but it was all to no
+purpose. Some unknown influence, local or general, seemed to hang like
+an incubus about him, and to depress, in particular, his nervous system.
+In short, the symptoms were such as portended swift destruction, if not
+immediate. I could but predict the worst. And the worst soon came. He
+sunk, in a few days, to an untimely grave. I say _untimely_ with
+peculiar emphasis; for he had hitherto been regarded as particularly
+robust and healthy.
+
+His remains were scarcely entombed when several members of his father's
+family were attacked in a similar way. Another young man in the
+neighborhood, who had been employed at the same place with the deceased,
+and who had returned at the same time, also sickened, and with nearly
+the same symptoms. And then, in a few days more, the father and mother
+of the latter began to droop, and to fall into the same train of
+diseased tendencies with the rest. Of these, too, I had the charge.
+
+My hands were now fully occupied, and so was my head. Anxious as most
+young men are, in similar circumstances, not only to save their
+patients, but their reputation, and though the distance at which they
+resided was considerable, I visited both families twice a day, and
+usually remained with one of them during the night. I was afraid to
+trust them with others.
+
+Physically this constant charge was too much for me, and ought not to
+have been attempted. No physician should watch with his patients, by
+night or by day,--above all by night--any more than a general should
+place himself in the front of his army, during the heat of battle. His
+life is too precious to be jeoparded beyond the necessities involved in
+his profession.
+
+But while my hands were occupied, my mind was racked exceedingly with
+constant inquiry into the cause of this terrible disease,--for such to
+my apprehension it was becoming. The whole neighborhood was alarmed, and
+the paleness of death was upon almost every countenance.
+
+My doubts were at length removed, and the cause of trouble, as I then
+supposed and still believe, fully revealed. The disease so putrescent in
+its tendencies, had originated in animal putrefaction. The circumstances
+were as follows:--
+
+The individual with whom the young men who sickened had been residing
+and laboring, had laid aside, in his chamber, some time before, quite a
+pile of lambskins, just in the condition in which they were when removed
+from their natural owners, and had suffered them to lie in that
+condition until they were actually putrescent and highly offensive. The
+two young men, owing to the relative position of the chambers they
+occupied, were particularly exposed to the poisonous effluvia.
+
+I did not forget--I did not then forget--the oft inculcated and
+frequently received doctrine, that animal impurity is not apt to
+engender disease. It most certainly had an agency--a prominent one--in
+the case before us. Perhaps it has such an influence much more
+frequently than is generally supposed.
+
+One of my patients, in the family which I first mentioned,--a little boy
+two or three years old,--died almost as soon, after being seized with
+disease, as his elder brother had done. The rest, though severely sick,
+and at times given over to die, finally recovered. Some of them were
+sick, however, many months, and none of them, so far as I now
+recollect,--with perhaps a single exception,--ever enjoyed as good
+health afterward as before.
+
+I had in these families six or eight of the most trying cases I ever had
+in my life; and yet, with the exceptions before named, all recovered.
+How much agency my own labors as a medical man had in producing this
+result, I am at a loss to conjecture. As an attendant or nurse, I have
+no doubt my services were valuable. And it was because a good nurse is
+worth more than a physician that I so frequently ran the risk of
+watching over the sick so closely as considerably to impair my own
+health.
+
+The neighbors and friends of the two sick families, as I have already
+intimated, looked on in silent agony during the whole campaign;
+expecting, first that _their_ families, too, would soon be called to
+take their turn; and secondly, that I, the commander in chief, should be
+a sufferer, which of course would be a great public disadvantage. They
+were almost as much gratified as I, when we all came forth from the fire
+unscathed.
+
+On the whole, except as regards health, I was a gainer rather than a
+loser by the affair. I mean, of course, in the way of medical
+reputation. I was by this time fairly established as a powder and pill
+distributer, of the _first water_. In other words, I was beginning to be
+regarded as a good family physician, and to be sought for, not only
+within the narrow limits of my own native township, some four or five
+miles square, but also quite beyond these narrow precincts. Occasionally
+I had patients in three or four adjoining towns, and I was even
+occasionally called as counsel to other physicians. My ambition was
+high, perhaps higher than it ought to have been; but it had its checks
+and even its valleys of humiliation; so that on the whole I retained my
+sanity and a full measure of public confidence.
+
+And yet, in conclusion, I have to confess that besides exposing my own
+health, I made many medical blunders. I would not again run the risk to
+health or reputation which, during this long trial of several months, I
+certainly ran, for any sum of money which king Croesus or the
+Rothschilds could command. Nor do I believe an intelligent physician can
+do it, without being guilty of a moral wrong. Every one has his
+province; let him carefully ascertain what that is, and confine himself
+to it. The acting commander in an important military expedition has no
+right to place himself in the ranks of those who are about to leap a
+ditch, scale a wall, or charge bayonet. Paul has no right to labor in
+Athens when he knows perfectly well that he can do more good in
+Jerusalem, and the voice of God, by his Providence or otherwise, calls
+him thither. And "to him that knoweth to do good and doeth it not, to
+him it is sin."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV.
+
+MILK PUNCH FEVER.
+
+
+A certain young woman who had great general confidence in my skill,
+after I had stood by her many long hours in one of Nature's sorest
+trials, was left at length in a fair way to recover, except that she was
+exceedingly exhausted, and needed the most careful attendance on the
+part of those around her. She no longer needed any medicine, nothing but
+to be let alone. In other words, she needed nothing but good nursing and
+entire freedom from all care and responsibility.
+
+Being obliged at this juncture to leave her for nearly the whole night,
+I gave the best directions to her principal nurse of which I was
+capable, as well as the principal reasons on which it was founded. She
+seemed entirely submissive, and perhaps, in theory, was so. But in my
+zeal to make them understand that I was acting on common-sense
+principles, I committed one error, a very common one, indeed, but yet an
+error. It was that of reasoning with them with a view to make every
+thing particularly intelligible. One has authority, in these matters, as
+long as he takes the _attitude_ of authority, but the moment he descends
+to the general level of his patients, and in true republican style puts
+himself on a par with them, he begins to lose their confidence as a
+physician. You may not be sensible of a loss of this sort, nor even the
+physician. You may even think the reverse were more true. But you
+deceive yourself. Though your patients may love you better as a friend
+or even as a father, yet they have lost confidence in you medically, in
+nearly the same proportion. Strange indeed that it should be so; but so,
+according to my own observation, it ever has been. That a prophet is
+"without honor"--and most so in his own country and among his own
+personal friends--is as true now as it was eighteen hundred years ago.
+
+Had I told Mrs. D.'s attendants to do so or so, and left them without
+saying a word more, they would probably have done it. But I had
+condescended to reason with them about the matter; their belief that
+medical men dealt with the stars, and spoke with a species of
+supernatural authority, had been shaken; and they were emboldened to
+reason on the subject, and to hearken to the reasonings as well as to
+what had but the slightest resemblance thereto in others, during my
+absence.
+
+Having occasion to use all possible precaution against the supervention
+of milk fever in my patient, I left particular directions that nothing
+stimulating should be administered, and assigned several good,
+substantial reasons. No food was to be given, except a little bread and
+some plain chicken broth, with no condiment or dressing but a little
+salt; and this at intervals of about four hours. No drink--not a
+particle--was to be given, except frequent very small draughts of cold
+water.
+
+While I was absent Mrs. D.'s mother came into their family, not only to
+rejoice with them in an accession to their number, but to render them a
+little aid. She was one of those mothers whose kindness so often defeats
+their best and purest intentions. She was all eyes, ears, and attention,
+and _nearly all talk_. The daughter's treatment soon underwent a special
+scrutiny, and was found "wanting."
+
+"Has the doctor ordered my daughter no milk punch?" she said to the
+attendants. "Not a drop," they replied. She raised both hands in
+astonishment. "How, then," she asked, "can the ninny expect she can ever
+have any nourishment for that _boy_?" The attendants could not inform
+her. "The doctor," they said, "gave reasons," but they could not fully
+understand them.
+
+"He did not probably understand them himself," said she. "There are no
+reasons against it, I am confident. It is only a notion of his. These
+young doctors are always full of their book wisdom. Why, a little
+experience is worth a whole world full of theories. Now _I_ know--and so
+does every other person who has nursed children--that a little milk
+punch, in these cases, is necessary. Not a great deal, it is true; but a
+little, just enough to give the system strength. Nature is weak in these
+cases. I wish some of these young doctors themselves were obliged to
+endure the trials we have to endure, and we should see whether they
+could get along with no drink but cold water!"
+
+The rebellion soon reached the daughter's ears, who, till now, had
+confided in the "doctor's" prescription, and was doing well. She was
+soon as uneasy with things as they were, as her mother and the nurse and
+the neighbors. The husband was not of the clique; but then he was one of
+those good-natured men who leave every thing to their wives; and though
+they may not fully approve of every thing that is attempted, will yet do
+and refrain from doing many things for the sake of peace. He interposed
+no veto on the present occasion.
+
+The mother, in short, soon reigned "sole monarch," and proceeded to
+issue from her imperial throne, the sage decree that a little milk punch
+must be made. Judith, the nurse, was to have it prepared so and so, and
+she would herself administer it. Only just so many spoonfuls of rum must
+be added to the tumbler of milk and water, and just so much sugar. It
+must be weak, the decree said.
+
+Mrs. D. drank freely of the punch, because her mother told her that it
+would do her good. True, she asked after the first swallow, "what will
+the doctor say to this?" but her mother bade her be quiet, she would see
+to all that. "It is made very weak," said the mother, "on purpose for
+you; drink of it a little and often. It will be both food and drink to
+you. It will be good for the babe, dear child! how can these doctors
+wish to starve folks? I have no notion of starving to death, or having
+my children or grandchildren starved."
+
+It was now past midnight, and Mrs. D. had as yet slept but very little.
+Had she simply followed out my directions she might have slept an hour
+or two before midnight, and several hours in the aggregate afterward.
+This, though done by stealth and in short naps, would have given her
+more real rest and strength than a whole gallon of milk punch, and
+instead of kindling fever, would have carried off all tendencies of the
+kind.
+
+On my arrival, early the next morning, I found a good deal of headache,
+such as cold water and plain food and rest seldom, if ever, create. My
+fears were at once excited, and they were greatly strengthened when I
+saw her mother. But the blow had been struck, and could not be recalled.
+Mrs. D., in short, was already in the beginning stage of a fever which
+came within a hair's breadth of destroying her.
+
+It is indeed true that she finally recovered. No thanks, however, were
+due to the mother's over-kindness, nor to my own over-communicativeness.
+Had I done my duty, had I kept my own counsel, nobody, not even the
+mother herself, as I now verily believe, would have ventured to disobey
+my positive injunctions. And had this mother done, as she would have
+been done by in similar circumstances, all would probably have been well
+still. We should have saved a little reputation, and a good deal of
+health.
+
+I learned, I repeat, from this unexpected adventure, that it was wisdom
+to keep my own secrets. I do not say that I have always acted up to the
+dignity of this better knowledge, but I am justified in saying that I
+have sometimes profited from an acquaintance with human nature that cost
+me dear. It is no trifle to see an individual suffer from painful
+disease a couple of weeks, and jeopard the life of a child during the
+whole time, when a little knowledge how to refrain from speaking _ten
+words_ of a particular kind and cast, would have prevented every evil.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV.
+
+MY FIRST CASE IN SURGERY.
+
+
+My first surgical case of any magnitude, was that of a wounded foot.
+For, though I had been required to bleed patients many times,--and
+bleeding is properly a surgical operation,--yet it had become so common
+in those days, and was performed with so little science or skill, that
+it was seldom recognized as belonging to the department of surgery.
+
+One of my neighbors had struck his axe into the upper part of his foot,
+and cut it nearly through. Happening to be at home when the accident
+occurred, which was in my own immediate neighborhood, I was soon on the
+spot, and ready to afford assistance; and, as good luck would have it,
+the man was not at all weakened by loss of blood, at my arrival.
+
+My lesson from an old surgeon[D] was not yet forgotten. I still knew, as
+well as any one could have told me, that to put together the divided
+edges of the wound and keep them there, was half the cure. But how was
+this to be done? Slips of adhesion plaster would bring the divided edges
+of the wounded surface into their place, but would the deeper-seated and
+more tendinous parts unite while left without touching each other? Or
+should a few stitches be taken?
+
+The wound was lengthwise of the foot, and no tendons were divided. I
+made up my mind to dress it without any sewing, and acted accordingly.
+The bleeding soon ceased. When all was secured, the patient inquired
+what he should put on it, to cure it. Had he not raised the question, I
+might, perhaps, have followed out my own ultra tendencies, and left it
+without any application at all; but as it was, I concluded to order
+something on which he might fasten his faith,--something which, though
+it should do no good, would do no harm.
+
+"Nothing is better for a fresh wound," I said, "than the 'Balsam of
+Life.' Just send Thomas over to Mr. Ludlow's, and get a couple of ounces
+of his 'Balsam of Life.'" It was soon brought, and the surface of the
+wound and its bandages moistened with it. "Now," said I, "keep your foot
+as still as you can till I see you again. I will be in again before I go
+to bed."
+
+I called again at nine o'clock in the evening. All appeared well, only
+the patient had some doubts whether the Balsam of Life was just the
+right thing. Several of the neighbors had been in, as he said, and,
+though they admitted that the Balsam might be very good, they knew, or
+thought they knew, of something better. However, I succeeded in quieting
+most of his rising fears for the present, by assuring him that nothing
+in the wide world was equal, for its healing virtues, to the "Balsam."
+My voice here was law, for _I gave no reasons_!
+
+On making inquiry, afterward, with a view chiefly to gratify
+curiosity,[E] I found that the first individual who came in after I had
+left the house, assured them there was nothing so good for a fresh wound
+as a peach leaf. The next, however, insisted that the best way was to
+bind up the part in molasses. The third said the best way was to take
+just three stitches to the wound, and bind it up in the blood. The
+fourth said the most sovereign thing in the world, for a fresh cut, was
+tobacco juice!
+
+Now I could have told these various representatives of as many various
+public opinions, that all these things and many more which might have
+been named, are, in a certain sense, good, since any mere flesh wound,
+in the ordinary circumstances of ordinary life, will heal in a
+reasonable time, in spite of them. I could have told them, still
+further, that the Balsam of Life was probably little, if any, better
+than the other things proposed, any farther than as it secured more
+faith and confidence, and prevented the application of something which
+was worse. I could have assured them that all the external applications
+in the world are of no possible service, except to defend from cold air,
+and prevent external injuries, or reduce inflammation; and that the
+last-mentioned symptom, should it occur, would be best relieved by cold
+water. But what good would it have done? Just none at all, according to
+my own experience. Positive assurance--mere dogmatism--was much better.
+
+The wound did well as it was, though it might have done much better,
+could the patient's faith have been just as firmly fixed on nothing at
+all but Nature, as it was on _medicaments_. However, the tincture I
+proposed, which somebody had dignified with the name of Balsam of life,
+had done very little harm, if any, to the parts to which it had been
+applied, while it had done a great deal of good to the patient's mind,
+and the minds of his friends. It was nothing, I believe, but a compound
+tincture of benzoin. I have used it a great number of times, and with
+the same wonderful results. The patient always gets well, either on
+account of it, or in spite of it! Does it make much practical difference
+which?
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[D] See Chap. VIII.
+
+[E] Even such inquiries as these are usually of doubtful tendency. They
+weaken public confidence. There must be but one opinion of any value to
+the physician or his patients, and that must be _his own_!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI.
+
+EMILIA AND THE LOVE CURE.
+
+
+One young family on whom I was accustomed to call from time to time, was
+not only accustomed to send for me in the night, as did many others,
+but, what made it much worse for me, they resided some four or five
+miles distant, among the mountains. They were of that class of people
+who look every man on his own things, and never, as the apostle would
+enjoin, on the things of others. They knew very well that a physician,
+though he might be half a conjuror, required sleep; still, they were
+willing to finish their day's work, eat their supper, perform a large
+number of _et ceteras_, even if they did not call for the doctor till he
+had fairly taken off his boots to retire for the night. But there was
+one consolation in all this, that they paid me promptly; and medical
+men, as you know, like other men, work for pay. They cannot live wholly
+on air.
+
+In the same house with the family alluded to, was a young woman, about
+twenty-five years of age, who had been confined to her bed ten or twelve
+years. She was the only daughter of very indulgent parents, who had
+never, from her earliest years, thought they could do too much for her.
+In truth, this was the source of her feebleness. Some little ailment,
+indeed, there might have been at the outset, induced by pie, cake,
+preserves, pickles, or something which no truly kind parents should
+permit a child to take; though nothing more than might have been got rid
+of in its effects, by a little patient waiting. But instead of waiting a
+little, the anxious mother had dosed and drugged her. And these ill
+turns had been more and more frequent, just in proportion to the
+frequency with which she had been drugged for them; till, at twelve
+years of age, she was almost all the while complaining. And at
+fourteen, she was completely bedridden--a burden to herself and to
+others.
+
+"I wonder," said my principal employer, at about twelve o'clock, when I
+had attended to his own little family, and was about to leave, "whether
+you could do any thing for our Millie. She has tried almost all the
+doctors, to no purpose; but we have so much confidence here in your
+skill, that she sometimes speaks of trying you. She is hardly willing to
+'give up the ship' without another trial."
+
+This, as you must be aware, was a stirring appeal to my love of
+approbation; but it was too late at night to make a call on her at that
+moment. So, promising to come and see her shortly, I took my leave, and
+rode home, as usual, meditating.
+
+Now I had never seen Emilia, but from the account which I had received
+from the neighbors, as well as from the nature of the case, I knew very
+nearly how she was; and that the great difficulty in the way of recovery
+was the constant habit of watching herself and attending to every
+internal sensation. In other words, she was so completely wrapped up in
+self, that I could see no reasonable prospect of getting her mind out of
+the maze in which it had been so long involved.
+
+But I found time, a few days afterward, as I was employed again in the
+same neighborhood, to call and see her; and I ventured accordingly. She
+was sitting up in the bed, well bolstered, with a huge mass of clothing
+both on herself and on the bed. Then, at her right hand, was a stand
+half covered with bowls, saucers and tumblers; and near it a little
+closet or recess, in which were nearly an equal number of parcels of
+medicine, wrapped in papers ready to be used, when they were supposed to
+be necessary.
+
+I had no sooner entered the room, than she began to give me an account
+of her medicine, rather than of herself. So rapid was her enunciation,
+and so eager was she to tell me what she knew--not about the symptoms of
+her disease, but about the treatment--that it was a full quarter of an
+hour before I could reach the inmost recesses of her condition. "That,"
+said she, "is for canker in the mouth; that for sore throat; that is an
+eye wash I sometimes use, and that is a kind of bitters Dr. R. left for
+me, but which I have now nearly done taking--and they never did me any
+good," etc.
+
+When I found an opportunity, I endeavored to investigate, very fully and
+freely, what had hitherto been supposed to be a very remarkable case. I
+found, indeed, that the patient had a great many little troubles,
+dependent mainly on the state of a mind greatly harassed by constant
+reflex tendencies, not easily eradicable. But I did not find it easy to
+prescribe for her. She was one of those very inquisitive people who wish
+to know what every thing you give them is, and who have a very
+conscientious objection to every thing. However, I at last settled down
+on a course of treatment, and wrote it out in a fair hand, and left it
+at the bedside. Not, however, I repeat, till I had foolishly fallen into
+my former error, and told her all the whys and wherefores.
+
+This familarity into which she had drawn me, had already extracted
+one-half the virtue of my medicine; for that is no longer mysterious
+which the medical man openly and freely discusses. The freedom of
+thinking she had indulged in while I was present, had been extended to
+freedom of action; and the very medicine, whose virtues she had dared to
+discourse upon, she ventured to set aside, when her experience assured
+her it was not producing the effect she desired, and for which she
+supposed it was intended. So that what, from the first, I had feared,
+and more than I had feared, at length happened. She took my medicine,
+professedly,--that is, just when she pleased,--for about four weeks, to
+no manner of purpose whatever, except to deceive herself; for during the
+first and second weeks of its use, she imagined herself all the while
+getting better; while during the third week she began to doubt, and
+about the fourth week she came to the sage conclusion that she was just
+where she had been a month or two before.
+
+The great, abiding difficulties of her case--her want of simple,
+confiding trust in her physician, and her constant, anxious attention to
+her own internal sensations, were far enough from being overcome. She
+was, in short, very nearly where she was ten years before, except that
+she was in circumstances rather more difficult to be reached, and had
+become rather more sceptical about medicine.
+
+What should now be done? Must the case be abandoned? Or was there some
+other way, some _new_ way, by means, of which it could be reached? I was
+not quite willing to give her up as irrecoverable, and yet I saw nothing
+remaining which I could do. I revolved the thing in my mind, by night
+and by day. At last a plan struck me which I verily believed would
+succeed.
+
+A few miles distant was a young physician, just from the schools, who
+vainly, though naturally, supposed he knew almost every thing which was
+known, and who wanted business. As he had nothing to lose, even if he
+were to fail in a hundred trials, but every thing to gain could he
+effect one very remarkable cure, I proposed to the family to employ him.
+I knew well he would have one or two advantages over his older and more
+experienced brethren. He would not at once place himself on the same
+platform with his patient and the friends, by answering their numerous
+questions; and for this plain and simple reason: In the first place,
+that he _could_ not, and very probably knew his own weakness; secondly,
+he would have more of that blind faith in medicine which inspires the
+ignorant with confidence.
+
+But there was another thought beyond all this, a wheel within a wheel.
+The young physician might succeed better than I, in drawing her
+thoughts, and even her affections, away from herself; for he was a
+single man, and the patient, though sick, not destitute of charms,
+especially of that more tangible charm which, to _indigent_ young men,
+and especially young _medical_ men, so often eclipses all others. She,
+on her part, as I well knew, was not wholly resigned to the world of
+single blessedness, though her long-continued ill health had almost
+unfitted her for any thing else.
+
+It only required a little _management_ to bring about the desired
+result. Dr. Juvenis was soon employed; and, though he did not always
+reply to her questions, which were numerous, and often wholly
+irrelevant, yet according to my own secret anticipations, he gradually
+raised her hopes in another direction, and hence drew her attention in
+no small degree from herself. His reserve, too, served but to inspire
+her with confidence in his great wisdom. There was something deep beyond
+the exterior, she always thought, which did not come out to the full,
+vulgar gaze.
+
+The final result was a strong attachment on her part, which, though not
+reciprocated by him in a direct manner, was not by any means repelled.
+The virtues of the medicines were no longer discussed or doubted; and it
+was obvious to all that she was beginning to mend.
+
+It was now high time for me to abandon a field which was not only fully
+occupied, but _well_ occupied. The visits of the young physician were
+continued, at longer or shorter intervals, for years, till the young
+woman's health was nearly restored; and, as I subsequently learned, they
+were married. The more recent history of her life, I have not been able
+to ascertain, except that neither party gained as much by the new
+connection as had been expected,--a result which, alas! is by no means
+any thing new, and that there was, after some time, a relapse of
+disease.
+
+This artifice for restoring health to a bedridden patient, is not
+mentioned in a way of approbation, but of regret, or at least of
+confession. Yet, while it declares my weakness, it develops or at least
+confirms a well-known principle, which it concerns mankind, patients as
+well as physicians, most fully and clearly to understand. The medical
+efficiency of an agent is greatly enhanced when the mind can be made to
+go along with it.
+
+I have wished a thousand times, both by night and by day, that I had
+never commended Dr. Juvenis to the favorable notice and regard of this
+illiterate but confiding family. True, I had the good fortune thus to
+get rid of a most troublesome, standing _patient_. Had I a moral right
+thus to do? Did the end either sanction or sanctify the means? Grant
+that I saved, or seemed to save, the patient;--was she really saved?
+Was there any absolute gain in the end? These are questions which I
+cannot, as yet, fully settle. Most certainly she was not quite cured.
+
+What a mighty work for this fallen world education has yet to achieve;
+especially Physical Education! This, reader, let me say once for all,
+this physical education, under the guidance of Christianity, whose
+handmaid all true science should be, and to whose development and
+application all true religion should be directed, is our chief
+dependence. It is the lever by which we are to raise the world.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII.
+
+HEZEKIAH AND DELIRIUM TREMENS.
+
+
+One morning, about two o'clock, in the depth of winter, I was roused
+from my slumbers by a stranger's voice, requesting me to get up and go
+immediately along the sides of the mountain and see Hezekiah. "And who
+is Hezekiah?" I said, only half awake; "and where is the side of the
+mountain? And who are you with whom I am conversing?"
+
+The mystery was easily cleared up, and I mounted my horse and was soon
+on the road through the sides of the mountain. It was wild and
+unfrequented; nay, it was, in places, almost impassable, especially in
+the night. Mr. Judkins, the father of the sick man, not only resided
+quite beyond my usual range of practice, but almost out of the range of
+everybody else, squirrels and rabbits and wild fowls excepted.
+
+In passing along, I made many inquiries with regard to the particular
+condition of the young man, in order to prepare myself for a more rapid
+investigation of his case whenever I should arrive. But I sought in
+vain. The messenger's lips were almost wholly sealed. The cause, at that
+time, I did not at all understand; but I had, subsequently, great reason
+to believe he was silent and reserved by the special command of the
+patient's friends. All I could obtain from my guide, was that Hezekiah
+had an ill turn; that he was occasionally subject to ill turns, and that
+the family were greatly alarmed about him.
+
+On my arrival, I found a group of friends large enough, almost, for a
+train band, gathered so closely round the bed of the young man that he
+could hardly breathe. There was, also, a monstrous fire in the chimney,
+sufficient to heat well the whole house, had the heat been properly
+distributed. The air was, at best, greatly confined; but it was
+particularly so to the poor patient, who lay panting as if in a dying
+condition.
+
+Yet I soon saw, and, as it were, instinctively, that he was not likely
+to die immediately. Some adventitious cause was evidently operating to
+throw his brain and nervous system into an abnormal condition, nor was I
+long in determining what it was. The father was a farmer. He possessed
+immense orchards, and made great quantities of cider, and one of his
+neighbors owned a distillery. For every barrel of cider Mr. J. carried
+to the distillery, he received in return a certain amount of
+cider-brandy; and at the time when I was called to see Hezekiah, he had
+more than two barrels of this "precious commodity" in his cellar. At the
+close of autumn he had had three barrels.
+
+Why this deposit of an article so doubtful? And what had become of the
+one barrel which had disappeared? Not a member of the family would touch
+it, but Mr. J. himself, and Hezekiah. The women and children did,
+indeed, sometimes taste a little molasses toddy, as it was called. Mr.
+J. would prepare it and pass it round in the morning just before
+breakfast, in the hope and expectation that all would taste it; and they
+usually did so. It was not, however, quite a voluntary thing on their
+part, but a species of moral compulsion. Left entirely to themselves,
+they never would have tasted it.
+
+Now think, reader, of two persons in a family, with two or three barrels
+of brandy at their entire disposal, with the expectation of consuming
+it, or the far greater part of it, during autumn and winter. Why, three
+barrels are more than a quart a day, for every day of the year. Mr. J.
+drank freely; but not more freely than his son. The latter was treading
+in the steps of his father, with the almost certain prospect of going,
+in the end, quite beyond him.
+
+It was not difficult to prescribe for the young man. The far greater
+difficulty was to induce him to follow out the prescription. I was
+honest enough to tell the father what ailed the son, and what ought to
+be done, and to plead with him to change his own habits immediately. I
+could not, it is true, quite prevail, when I urged him to pour his
+brandy, the whole of it, into the street; for that, as he said and
+doubtless thought, would be a waste of property. But he _did_ promise to
+_sell_ it; though even this promise he never kept. He even continued to
+drink it; though as he always insisted, with great moderation. But the
+greatest drinkers we have among us, are usually the first to speak of
+their own moderation.
+
+The sequel of the story may easily be guessed. Hezekiah became a
+miserable creature, and ere he reached the age of fifty came to a most
+miserable end,--the drunkard's death, by the drunkard's mania. Mr. J.
+having inherited a strong constitution passed on to sixty-three, when,
+like a mighty tree with decayed trunk, a slight wind crushed him to the
+dust.
+
+His family, most of them, still survive; but they are daughters, and
+have not inherited the vices of their father, so much as his diseases.
+They have, at least, inherited the disease which drinking is so apt to
+entail on the next generation,--I mean scrofula. Several of Mr. J.'s
+elder daughters are already dead; and the younger ones--for he had a
+very large family--are feeble, and always will be so; and their children
+are still more feeble. Thus "earthward," and not heavenward, "all
+things" in the family of the drunkard have a tendency.
+
+How painful the reflection that I did not labor with this family, not
+only in season, as I certainly did, but also out of season, and try to
+save it! I had influence with them. My honest plainness at my first
+visit, above described, did not prevent them from calling on me again
+for counsel; though at first I had feared such a result. I was often in
+the family, but not so often as I might have been; nor was I so bold as
+I ought to have been. Shall I be able to render up my account of the
+intercourse I had with them, in the great day, with joy, or must it be
+with grief and shame?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII.
+
+MY FIRST AMPUTATION.
+
+
+It is easy in imagination, to be wise, especially at a distance. How
+many a surgical operation have I performed _on paper_; or still oftener,
+and with more assurance, in my own brain. The difficulties are much
+fewer than in the reality.
+
+A fine young man came to me, one day, with a crushed thumb. He had been
+at work on a wool-carding machine, and through the most inexcusable
+carelessness had suffered his thumb to be drawn in. On a careful
+examination, I found the wound to be very severe, and, as I believed,
+requiring amputation.
+
+But what could I do? I had no surgical instruments. Young medical men,
+in plain country places, are hardly expected to purchase these
+conveniences, except perhaps a lancet and the needful instruments for
+extracting teeth. I had, however, a keen penknife in my pocket, and
+without the smallest formality, I proceeded to separate the mangled
+thumb at the joint.
+
+It was a very painful process, and as I now fully believe, quite an
+unnecessary one. But young men are not apt to see things in the same
+light with those who have had experience. They are not half as ready to
+rely on nature. They are inclined to think art will do every thing;
+nature, almost nothing. They frequently love to use the lancet, the
+knife, the scalpel, and the trephine. Of this fondness, however, I knew
+comparatively little. In the present instance, I simply saw it to be a
+doubtful, and as I thought, a hopeless case to attempt to save the
+thumb; and therefore, without much reflection, I removed it.
+
+Now I shall never cease to feel a pang, whenever memory calls up this
+hasty act, as long as I live. Were life to be protracted to a thousand
+years, I should always reproach myself for it. And yet I am not aware
+that either the young man himself or his friends ever respected me the
+less for it. And so far was I from suffering in the eyes of society at
+large, I verily believe I was a gainer by it. But I respected myself
+less on account of it. I respect myself less to-day. I am fully
+conscious I was too hasty,--that had I waited a little, I might have
+been a means of saving his hand without much deformity. Nature, in such
+cases, left to herself, will work all but miracles, especially in the
+young, and in those who have a sound constitution.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIX.
+
+MILK, AS A REMEDY IN FEVERS.
+
+
+Early in my practice as a physician I had a patient, a little girl, who,
+after having been sick for many weeks with a fever, seemed at length to
+become stationary. She was not weak or sick enough to die, and yet she
+seemed not strong enough to recover. Her vitality was almost exhausted,
+and yet Nature was loth to give up.
+
+On this young patient, during her long sickness, I had tried a thousand
+things, to see if I could not give Nature a "start;" but all to no
+purpose. The wheels would not move. She would either vomit up every
+thing I gave her, or it would pass away as into a reservoir, unchanged.
+There appeared to be, I repeat, no vital action in the system.
+
+To check the vomiting or prevent it, I had tried various measures, both
+external and internal. I had used warm applications to her stomach, both
+dry and moist. I had tried frictions of the skin and fomentations of the
+abdomen, both simple and medicated. Electricity I believe I had not
+used. Cheerful conversation, music to some extent, and the society of
+pleasant faces had all been invoked. Still there she was, on her bed. It
+seemed next to impossible for her "chariot" to go either backward or
+forward.
+
+One day she asked for some milk. In an instant I determined to try it.
+So I took a teaspoonful of this fluid, warm from the animal, and gave it
+to her, only requiring her to swallow it very slowly. She not only
+obeyed me, but appeared to relish it. Nor was there any nausea
+afterward, nor any evidence of evil effects or evil tendencies.
+
+At the end of four hours, I gave her another teaspoonful of milk, in the
+same way and with similar effects. At the end of four hours more,
+another was given; and thus onward. In twenty-four hours I was able to
+increase, slightly, the dose. All this while there was no stomach
+sickness, in the smallest degree. In three or four days, she could bear
+a table-spoonful of the "new medicine," every four hours, or a quantity
+equal to two or three ounces a day. In a week or ten days, she could
+take nearly half a gill at once, and had gained considerable strength.
+She recovered in the end, though her recovery was very slow.
+
+But I had hardly used the milk three days, before I began to be
+denounced as an almost insane man, especially by those who were wont to
+set themselves up as the arbiters of public opinion, and who lived too
+remotely to witness the good effects of the course I was pursuing. The
+family, of course, though they disapproved of what I did, could say
+nothing against it, especially as it afforded the only ground of hope of
+recovery. The whole public mind, in that region, was affected by the
+belief that milk, in a fever, is heating and dangerous. "What a strange
+thing it is," said many an old woman, and not a few young ones, "that
+the doctor should give milk to a person sick with a fever! He will
+certainly kill the girl before he is through with her. If these young
+doctors are determined to make experiments, they ought surely to make
+them on themselves, and not on their patients."
+
+The public complaint involved one serious mistake, else it would have
+had the semblance of reason to justify it. As a general fact, milk is
+heating in a fever, and is consequently inadmissible. The mistake to
+which I allude consisted in the belief that the fever still existed,
+when it had wholly passed away and left nothing behind it but debility,
+or the consequences of the fever.
+
+But the evidence that milk did not hurt her, lay, after all, in the
+indisputable fact that she improved as soon as she began to use it, and
+under its moderate and judicious exhibition entirely recovered her
+health. Observe, however, that I do not say it cured her; although I
+might make this affirmation with as much confidence as can justly exist
+with regard to any thing belonging to the _materia medica_. All I say
+is, that after having hung in suspense for some time, neither growing
+better nor appearing likely to do so, she commenced the use of the milk
+as aforesaid; and almost as soon as she began to use it she began to be
+convalescent, and her improvement went on steadily, till it terminated
+in sound health.
+
+And yet our good friends, up and down the country, who uttered so many
+jeremiades about the folly of giving milk to a little girl in a fever,
+lived to witness her complete recovery, notwithstanding. She is now a
+mother in our New England Israel, and I believe a very healthy one.
+
+Whether I would venture to pursue exactly the same course in the same
+circumstances, were I to live my life over again, is not quite certain.
+And yet I certainly think it not only safe, but desirable in such cases,
+to do something. Why, I have occasionally, in circumstances of
+convalescence from fever, given things which, in themselves considered,
+are much more objectionable than a little milk, and with the most
+perfect success. I have even given pork, cabbage, cheese, and beans. It
+is true, I have been compelled to exercise a good deal of care in these
+cases, with regard to quantity. That which in the quantity of half a
+pound might destroy life, might in the quantity of half an ounce, be the
+one thing needful to the salvation, physically, of a valuable member of
+society.
+
+A man in New Haven County, in Connecticut, some fifty years ago, was for
+a long time suspended, as it were, between this world and the next, in
+consequence of being left in great debility after a long and dangerous
+fever. For several weeks, in fact, it was scarcely guessed, except in
+the softest whisper, whether the slightest movement or change in his
+system might not precipitate him at once into the eternal world. In this
+perilous condition, he one day asked for sweet cider, just from the
+press. His attendants very properly and naturally hesitated; but the
+physician, when he arrived and was made acquainted with his request,
+immediately said, "Yes; give him a teaspoonful of good, clean, sweet
+cider, every two hours." The cider was given, according to the
+commandment, and appeared to have a restorative effect. The man
+recovered in a reasonable time, and is, I believe, alive to this day.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XL.
+
+THE VIRTUES OF PUMPKIN-SEED TEA.
+
+
+Physicians are sometimes compelled by the force of circumstances, to
+visit the poor as well as the rich; albeit, they expect, so far as mere
+pecuniary compensation is concerned, that they are to have "their labor
+for their pains." They know well that honesty here, if nowhere else, is
+the best policy. Dr. Cullen, who became, as is well known, a giant in
+the profession, first attracted public attention from the act that he
+was often seen coming out of the hovels of the poor.
+
+My own lot for several years was to labor _chiefly_ for the poor. In a
+region where it had been customary for a medical man who had the whole
+control of the business to charge one thousand dollars a year, my
+charges scarcely exceeded three hundred. A few of the wealthy employed
+me, it is true, but not all; while I had all the poor. Indeed, it is
+among the poor, as a general rule, that sickness is most frequent and
+prevalent, not to say fatal.
+
+In one of these poor families, on a certain occasion, I had a long
+campaign and a hard one. First, I was obliged to travel a great distance
+to see them; secondly, I had a very severe disease to encounter;
+thirdly, there were several patients in the house; and the family,
+usually unprovided with sufficient space for a free circulation of the
+air, was still more incommoded when sick. Fourthly, the mistress of the
+house was exceedingly ignorant; and ignorance in a mother is, of itself,
+almost enough to insure the destruction of all patients over whom she
+has control.
+
+My chief source of trouble, in the present instance, was the injudicious
+conduct of the mother to the family; for all else could have been borne.
+She was almost incessantly trying to do something over and above what I
+had ordered or recommended. The neighbors, almost as weak as herself,
+would come in and say: "Why don't your doctor give such or such a thing?
+Mr. Blarney was sick exactly like Samuel, and they gave him a certain
+powder and he got right up in a very few days." This would usually be
+quite sufficient to make Mrs. ----very unhappy, at least till she had
+again seen me.
+
+Among the sick members of her family, was a daughter of about fifteen
+years of age. For this daughter, in particular, more than for the son
+Samuel, the good matrons of the neighborhood had their thousand
+remedies; and they regarded them all as infallible. With these, their
+favorite notions and doses, they were continually filling the ears of
+Mrs. ----.
+
+One day, when I had been the usual round of the family, and given all
+needful directions for the day, Mrs. ---- came to me and said: "Doctor,
+what do you think would be the effect of a little pumpkin-seed tea on my
+daughter Eunice? Do you think it would hurt her?"
+
+"Why, no; I suppose not," I said. "But for what purpose would you give
+her pumpkin-seed tea? Is she not doing as well as could be expected? And
+if so, is it not desirable to let well enough alone?"
+
+"To be sure she is doing very well," said Mrs. ----; "and I do not know
+but every thing is just as it should be. We certainly have great
+confidence in your treatment. But she is so feeble it seems as if
+something might be given which would make her gain strength faster. Why,
+she is very weak, doctor! Mrs. Gay and several others have thought a
+little pumpkin-seed tea might give her strength; but I do not like to
+order any thing new without first consulting you."
+
+I did not object to the pumpkin-seed tea, _administered in great
+moderation_. I did not say as I ought boldly to have said: "I shall be
+obliged, as your physician, at least till you choose to dismiss me, to
+pursue the course I have marked out for myself, since I shall have to
+bear the responsibility." In my modesty and even diffidence, I preferred
+to let the ignorant friends of the young woman dabble with this
+comparatively inoffensive article, rather than with something worse.
+Besides, I wished to have no clandestine movements, and had already
+rejected so many proposals to give this or that medicament, that I dared
+not do it longer. "Oh, yes," said I, "you may give her pumpkin-seed tea;
+but give it in moderation."
+
+The pumpkin-seed tea was given for the next twenty-four hours, I
+believe, with great exactness. But as there was no obvious or immediate
+advantage from using it during that time, it shared the fate which might
+have been expected. Like the wad in the child's pop-gun, which some new
+wad soon and effectually expels, the pumpkin-seed tea was thrown aside,
+and some other infallible cure proposed in its stead.
+
+Now, reader, do not suppose I deemed it at all derogatory to medical
+authority that pumpkin-seed tea should be proposed by a weak and silly
+mother for a darling daughter. Such a feeling as that would have placed
+me on the same level of human folly that she herself occupied. On the
+contrary, a medical man of any considerable experience among the sick
+and the friends of the sick, should think himself exceedingly fortunate
+when nothing worse is suggested by ignorance for his patients than
+_pumpkin-seed tea_!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLI.
+
+BROKEN LIMBS AND INTEMPERANCE.
+
+
+Wrestling for amusement, in the region where I practised medicine, was a
+very common occurrence, and certainly had its advantages. But there was
+one drawback upon its excellence, except to physicians. It involved a
+good deal of bone-breaking. One famous wrestler with whom I was well
+acquainted, broke, for his neighbors, an arm and a collar-bone; and in
+the end almost broke his own neck. He certainly injured it to an extent
+from which there was never an entire recovery. I shall mention him in
+another place.
+
+For more or fewer of these broken bones from wrestling, I was called on
+to prescribe. One case in particular may be worth a few moments'
+attention, especially as it brings with it certain medical confessions.
+
+I was sent for one evening, about nine o'clock, to visit a young man who
+had been injured, as it was said, by wrestling. On my arrival, I found
+him in great distress. He had delayed sending for aid so long that there
+was much inflammation, and consequent heat, swelling, tenderness, and
+pain.
+
+It was not easy, at first, to ascertain the exact character of the
+fractures; but on inquiry and examination, it appeared that while the
+patient was resting nearly or quite his whole weight on the fractured
+leg, his antagonist had struck or tripped with his foot so violently as
+to fracture both bones a little way above the ankle.
+
+It was rather a trying-case to me--for as yet I was, in the art of
+surgery, a mere tyro. But it was a case which would not admit of much
+delay; for the inflammation, already sufficiently great, was rapidly
+increasing. Nor would it do long to hesitate from mere modesty. I was
+among a class of people, who would, as I well knew, construe modesty,
+even though it should chance to be, as sometimes it is, an accompaniment
+of true science, into sheer ignorance; and this would deprive me, as a
+physician, of my principal lever. For who can lift up the down-fallen
+without having their full confidence.
+
+But I must explain. My patient with the fractured leg, though not in the
+usual acceptation of the term a drunkard, was, nevertheless, in the
+habit of drinking more or less of ardent spirit; and there were not
+wanting those who believed he was pretty well heated with liquor at the
+time his leg was broken. But, however this may have been, his frequent
+and excessive use of spirituous liquors had rendered his blood
+exceedingly impure; and I could not help shrinking, at first, from the
+task of having charge of him. Yet, it was a war from which there was no
+honorable discharge. There was no other surgeon within a reasonable
+distance, and why should I refuse to do my best for him? Somebody must
+assist him; and though the case was a troublesome one, why should I not
+take my share of troublesome cases among the rest?
+
+There was another consideration. As he was poor, any thing like
+reluctance would have been construed into a willingness to neglect him
+on account of his poverty--a suspicion from which I should, at that
+time, have shrunk as readily as from the charge of robbery or murder.
+
+But his associates were worse than he; and, with the exception of his
+own immediate relations, not an individual would be likely to call on or
+proffer him aid who was not half or two thirds of the time steeped in
+spirits. Has the surgeon or physician, in such circumstances, much
+reason to hope? And what is the hope of his patient? Can he reasonably
+expect, even with the aid of a skilful surgeon, ever to have a good leg?
+
+However, I did my duty, according to my best knowledge. I had the man
+laid in a proper position, then placed the divided bones as nearly in
+their natural position as possible, and bound them. I confess, here, to
+very great ignorance. Moreover, I repeat, it was a difficult case. And
+yet I think I succeeded very well for a beginner.
+
+Having properly placed the fractured bones and detained them there by
+suitable means, I gave due orders concerning the patient's management
+and treatment. I was particularly careful to interdict all stimulating
+or indigestible food, and all drink but water. My directions were
+written down with great care, and the strictest charge was given to his
+friends and family to see that they were faithfully regarded.
+
+But, alas, for the best person in the world with such attendants!
+Whenever his wife took care of him, things went on very well; but in
+other instances, almost every thing went wrong. His attendants gave him
+rum, opium, laudanum, or almost any thing that he called for. It is
+true--and I mention it to his credit--that he was often rather moderate
+in his use of interdicted articles; but then he took just about enough
+of these unnatural or extra stimulants, to prevent the healing process
+from going forward as fast as in a man of only thirty years might have
+been expected.
+
+Instead of being on his feet in a couple of months or so, he lay on his
+bed three months or more. And then, instead of having a good leg, it was
+not merely slightly crooked, but half an inch too short. And then, in
+addition,--and what was very hard to endure,--he charged the whole blame
+of its imperfection on the surgeon, and insisted that it was not "set"
+right!
+
+Now, while I confess to much awkwardness, and to the possibility that
+the limb was not managed as well as it might have been, I must maintain,
+notwithstanding, that such a charge was wholly misplaced and even
+gratuitous. Had he employed the best surgeon in the world, and had the
+leg received the best possible attention, it could not have been kept in
+its proper place with so much distilled spirits in the house, and so
+many slaves of the bottle! One might almost as well expect a leg to heal
+in the nether pit. Though I have never said, either by way of
+retaliating the abuse or otherwise, that his punishment was richly
+merited, I _might_ have said so. A man is hardly entitled to good health
+and a good frame who keeps such company as he did, whether in sickness
+or in health. God has so connected law and penalty, that he who should
+complain of the penalty would but insult the law given.
+
+Many cases of petty surgery as well as of severe and complicated
+disease, fell to my lot, which embarrassed me in a manner not unlike the
+foregoing; though in no one did I suffer quite so much from
+misrepresentation as in this. For at least twenty years, to my certain
+knowledge, my patient took pains to speak of me in terms of reproach,
+and to say that his leg was set badly; and all without the slightest
+evidence. I do not positively aver, I again say, that the surgery in the
+case was faultless; but whether it was so or not, neither he nor any
+living individual could know, unless it were a more skilful surgeon than
+myself; and no such surgeon, I am sure, ever saw him during the time I
+was in attendance.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLII.
+
+DYING FROM MERE FILTHINESS.
+
+
+The family of a wealthy farmer came under my hands, as physician, one
+autumn, in circumstances peculiarly painful and trying. Several of them
+had been taken suddenly and severely sick, and one or two were almost
+dead before they were fairly aroused to a sense of danger. They lived,
+however, quite remote from any village, and were strongly prejudiced
+against both physicians and medicine. But a fearful foe, in the shape of
+typhoid dysentery, now assailed them, and handled them so roughly that
+they laid aside their prejudices for the moment, and cried aloud for
+help.
+
+I was soon on the spot, but, oh, what a scene presented itself! As I
+have more than intimated, two of the family were already beyond hope.
+Others seemed likely to die. What was to be done for them, as I saw
+plainly, must be done quickly. On nearly every countenance I met with,
+both within the family and beyond its precincts, were the marks of
+consternation, and on some, of despair.
+
+In these circumstances--for desperate cases require a desperate
+remedy--I sought the counsels of an older physician. He came immediately
+and took a survey of the dreadful field of slaughter. On retiring with
+him for consultation, he immediately said; "There must be some local
+cause or causes for all this. Have you," he added, "been into the
+cellar?" When I replied in the negative, he said, "Then we must go there
+immediately."
+
+On speaking to the lady of the house, who was among the sick, by the way
+of asking permission, she objected, and with a good deal of promptitude
+and spirit. However, she at length yielded, and we made a thorough
+examination. The results of this examination were such as to confirm
+our suspicions. "We need not search further for the causes of a deadly
+disease," said Dr. B., and I thought so too.
+
+I have said already that the family was wealthy; but wealth need not
+include negligence, and still more filth. It was now September; and I am
+quite of opinion that the cellar had not been cleaned in one year,
+perhaps not in two. I had seen many farmers' cellars before, but I had
+never seen such an one as this. Nor do I believe my consulting physician
+ever had, though he was some twenty years older in medical practice than
+myself. Nor am I certain that what I may state will appear to you wholly
+reliable.
+
+In the first place there were, in abundance, cabbage leaves and stumps
+in a semi-putrid state. Next there were decayed potatoes, turnips,
+beets, and apples. Then there were in various parts of the cellar
+remnants of cider and vinegar, and cider lees--the latter in a most
+offensive condition. Finally, there were remnants of barrels of beef and
+pork, in a bad state--to say nothing of other casual filth--the whole
+contributing to such a stench as I had never before perceived in a
+cellar.
+
+The old physician who accompanied me had said, "We need not go farther;"
+but our determination was, on full and mature reflection, to know the
+worst and the whole, and we governed ourselves accordingly.
+
+Close to one corner of the kitchen was the well, the water in which was
+very low, and near to that the sink. And if the contents of the sink did
+not find their way, from day to day, into the well, thus adding impurity
+to putridity, it must have been in virtue of some unknown law which
+stood opposed to the great law of specific gravity and attraction. It is
+true that many speak of the earth as having a _cleansing_ power in such
+cases; but I know of no power which it possesses of cleaning sink water,
+while the latter is passing only five or six feet through it. The
+coarser parts may be strained out, but the essence must remain.[F]
+
+But our work was not yet finished. The vault, greatly neglected, was not
+far from the well; and so of the pigsty. Nor was it easy to resist the
+conviction that there was an underground communication between them.
+Then, finally, the house instead of standing on an elevation, greater or
+less,--a very common mode of building in New England,--stood in a sort
+of concavity, which contained also the barn and barnyard and
+woodpile;--connected with both of which was a large amount of decayed
+and decaying animal and vegetable matter.
+
+Now after such a review as this, he who could remain in doubt with
+regard to the cause of existing disease, especially on its assuming the
+form of bowel complaint with typhoid tendencies, must be much more
+ignorant of the laws of health and disease than I was. In fact the signs
+were unmistakable.
+
+We immediately made our report to the heads of the family, and
+recommended a most thorough cleansing, at once. It was easy to see that
+we gave great offence; indeed we had anticipated such a result. But we
+were not at all intimidated. We insisted on a work of immediate
+expurgation, which was finally effected, only we could not put pure
+water into the well. But we could and did require that the well water
+should not be used for any thing except washing clothes.
+
+The result was a decided and almost immediate improvement in the
+condition of the family, except the two already spoken of, and a very
+young child. These three died. Some of the rest lingered for weeks, and
+one or two for months; but they finally recovered.
+
+It is worthy of remark, moreover, that of the people of the
+neighborhood, though they had been excessively frightened and had not at
+first dared to come near the house, at least without holding their
+breath, not a person among them sickened. The disease began and ended
+over the foul cellar I have mentioned; nor has a similar disease ever
+since broken out there. The fair presumption is, that they have never
+since suffered such foul accumulations to remain through the hot season,
+on their premises.
+
+My honest and truly honorable course of conduct, in this instance, cost
+me something. Though I was a means of saving their lives, the survivors
+never thanked me for the exposure I made of their slovenliness. Perhaps
+I was wrong in reporting it abroad; but it was next to impossible to
+conceal the facts; and I, for once, did not attempt it. Physicians
+sometimes thus stand between the living and the dead, and must expect to
+give offence. They are, however, in duty bound to keep the secrets of
+their patients' faults as long as they can, unless the greater good of
+the public demands an exposition.
+
+But while I lost reputation in this particular family, I have not a
+doubt that I gained a strong hold, by this adventure, on the public mind
+and feelings. In truth, despite of even some trifling errors, I deserved
+it. I had, moreover, during the adventure, acquired a good deal of
+practical knowledge, of which, in the progress of my course as a medical
+man, I was glad to avail myself.
+
+This was doubtless an extreme case of disease from filthiness; but cases
+of the same general character are quite numerous. I have sometimes
+wished the public could have a history of these cases. There is an
+immense amount of neglect in the departments of cleanliness and
+ventilation; and the consequent suffering in the various forms of
+disease, is in similar degree and proportion.
+
+I will conclude this chapter with a single anecdote, which, were it
+necessary, could be substantiated by a very great number of living
+witnesses.
+
+Some fifteen or twenty years ago, a severe disease was accustomed to
+visit one of our New England factory villages, and to carry off more or
+fewer of its inhabitants. So regular and certain were its yearly visits
+and ravages, that not a few were disposed to regard it as a sort of
+necessary evil, or, perhaps, as a divine infliction. At length a very
+shrewd old gentleman told the people that the troublesome visitor was of
+human and not of divine origin; and that if they would attend properly
+to their cellars, sleeping-rooms, wells, etc., it would no more be heard
+of. At first, they were disposed to laugh at him; but the matter was
+talked of and agitated, till a work of general purgation was actually
+attempted and finally accomplished. The disease has never re-appeared.
+Was all this the result of mere accident? Do our diseases spring out of
+the ground? Are they the result of chance or hap-hazard? or, are they
+not the heaven-appointed penalties of transgression?
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[F] Farmers, in former times, while making cider, were very slovenly.
+When I observed a large amount of filth adhering to their boots and
+shoes as they carried the pumice from the vat to the press, I thought of
+the worms, insects, and dust, which were ground up and incorporated with
+the mass, I sometimes expressed surprise. "Oh," said they, "the cider
+will work itself clean!" If so, I thought, and still think, it must be
+by the operation of some law not yet discovered. It may work itself
+_clear_, perhaps; but to work itself _clean_, is quite another matter.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIII.
+
+TAKING THE FEVER.
+
+
+A large family, not much more careful of their habits or cleanly about
+their premises than the family alluded to in the foregoing chapter, had
+sickened one autumn, and one of them had died. Anxious to save the rest,
+I again acted as physician and nurse both, and effected my object; or,
+at least, appeared to do so. The rest of my patients ultimately
+recovered.
+
+But while thus watching these patients, by night and day, standing in
+the very front of the battle, I suddenly sickened. The circumstances, as
+nearly as I can recollect them, were the following:----
+
+Among the sick of this afflicted family was one unmarried man of rather
+eccentric and very unsociable habits, and exceedingly negligent both of
+his person and dress. His linen, and I think also his bed-clothes, were
+hardly changed once a month; at least as long as he was well. And then
+he had, of course, extended the same neglect to his sick chamber. Added
+to this, moreover, was a species of _necessity_ at this juncture; for so
+much distressed were the family, and so difficult was it to procure aid
+in the neighborhood, that a part of the neglect to which our old
+bachelor was subjected seemed unavoidable.
+
+I took notice of the neglect, spoke of it repeatedly, and labored
+assiduously to correct the evil. But the case seemed an almost forlorn
+one. I was morally obliged, as I then felt, to do a thousand things for
+him that usually fall to the lot of nurses and assistants. In some
+instances, I passed even whole nights in the family, in attendance on
+him and the other sick persons.
+
+My task was the more severe from the fact that a similar fever was
+prevailing in other parts of the town, and my labors beyond the
+precincts of this family were exceedingly fatiguing and severe. In
+truth, I was, in the end, greatly overworked and debilitated, and my
+system most admirably prepared for the reception of disease.
+
+For various reasons, some of which, have already been named, I often
+assisted in turning my bachelor-patient in his foul bed. It is true the
+process was so offensive that I avoided it whenever I could; but on
+occasions, I yielded to the pressure of necessity.
+
+One night, when I was greatly fatigued and exhausted, and at the bottom
+of my condition,--utterly unfit for exertion, even in a pure
+atmosphere,--I was stooping over Mr. V., to turn him in his bed, when I
+suddenly felt a sensation like that of receiving a blow externally on
+the chest and stomach. The thought struck me as quickly as the imaginary
+blow did--have I not taken the disease? I knew the laws of contagion;
+the only question was whether any contagion had been generated. My
+opinion was to the contrary; nevertheless, I could not wholly suppress
+my fears.
+
+A sensation of oppression which followed the imaginary blow, soon
+gradually passed away, though I felt, each succeeding day, more and more
+debilitated. Many a resolution was made to leave my patients, so far as
+personal manual care was concerned, and be much more than I had been, in
+the open air, though it was only made for a time--to be broken. At
+length, however, principle prevailed over sympathy and inclination, and
+I did as I ought to have done long before. It was, however, rather late,
+for the die was already cast. I was taken sick, and the symptoms of my
+disease were precisely like those of Mr. V.
+
+Perceiving now, most clearly, my condition, and that I was engaged in a
+war from which there could be no discharge, I made preparation for a
+long and severe sickness. First, I calmly and deliberately adjusted all
+my domestic concerns of a pecuniary kind, and made such arrangements as
+would, in case of my demise, render every thing intelligible. Then, in
+the second place, I made up my mind to submit, as cheerfully as I
+could, to my condition. I determined to keep quiet, and not indulge for
+a moment in any undue anxiety. I employed a physician,--my old
+master--but steadfastly, and almost obstinately determined not to take
+much medicine;--nor was there much prescribed.
+
+My disease proved to be much milder than was expected; but it had its
+regular course. I never wholly lost my muscular strength or my appetite.
+While I was sick, several of my nearest friends and patrons sickened in
+a similar way, only more severely; and one or two of them died. On my
+recovery, however, or about the same time, the most of them began also
+to recover, and the disease in general abated.
+
+Now, when I came to reflect coolly and carefully on the whole affair, I
+could not help perceiving that I richly deserved all I suffered. It was
+the just penalty of transgression. I had been fully and repeatedly
+warned not to watch with my patients, as those who turn back to Chapter
+XXIII, and those too who remember its contents, will perceive. It was
+fit, therefore, that I should feel the rod, even if I could not kiss the
+hand that had appointed it. The only wonder with me now is, that my
+punishment was not more severe.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIV.
+
+BLESSINGS OF CIDER AND CIDER BRANDY.
+
+
+Some of these blessings have been alluded to in Chapter XXXVI. But the
+subject is one of too much importance to be left in an unfinished state,
+and I have concluded to make it the principal topic of a separate
+chapter.
+
+A man came to me, one day, with sundry grievous complaints about his
+head and stomach. It was easy to see, at once, that they were not of
+mushroom growth, and that they could not be removed either in an hour or
+a day. However, I did the best I could with him, and charged him to
+follow, implicitly, my directions, which he promised faithfully to do. I
+told him, even, that he was in danger of a severe disease, but
+counselled him to do his utmost to escape it, if possible.
+
+He was, in the first place, a New England or Yankee farmer. Not quite
+satisfied with the products of his farm from the labors of the day, he
+coupled with them the night labors of managing a saw-mill and a
+distillery. And not satisfied with even these, he sometimes burned
+charcoal, which also involved more or less of nocturnal labor. In truth,
+these employments and avocations kept him up a great many nights during
+a considerable portion of the year, and were evidently wearing him out
+prematurely; for, though less than forty years of age, he had the
+appearance of being fifty or sixty.
+
+This severe tasking of his system, had led him greatly into temptation.
+Not only had he acquired the habit of chewing tobacco, as a solace in
+his seclusion and toil, but also of drinking very freely of cider and
+cider brandy; the last two of which, as might naturally be inferred from
+what has been said, he was accustomed to manufacture in large
+quantities. He was not a great eater, though I have no doubt he ate too
+much. But he did not take time to eat--he did not masticate any thing;
+almost every thing was swallowed in masses, and washed down with tea,
+coffee, or cider. Then, lastly and finally, he ate, as it were, by the
+job, when he _did_ eat; for his meals were very irregular and sometimes
+very infrequent.
+
+Another thing should be noticed. His cider and perhaps his tobacco,
+having leagued together, took away his appetite. Cider, as is well
+known, practically and in a gradual way, takes away the appetite, and so
+does coffee. Many a farmer will tell you that it is a matter of economy
+to give his laborers cider or coffee, since they will not eat so much.
+It is highly probable that brandy, and indeed all extra stimulants, have
+the same appetite-destroying effect.
+
+And as the result of his various irregularities and abuses, his
+digestive and nervous systems had become very much deranged and
+disordered, and I could hardly help foreboding evil concerning him. I
+prescribed for him as well as I could, and requested him to call on me
+in two or three days, and "report progress."
+
+On the next day but one, I was summoned to his bedside. My medicine had
+indeed appeared to afford him a little temporary relief, but it was only
+temporary. He was now much worse than ever before. I prescribed again;
+but it was with similar effect. Nature, somewhat relieved, as I then
+vainly imagined, seemed disposed to rally, but was unable. Every
+successive effort to rally, showed more and more clearly how much she
+had been crippled. At least she seemed to succumb either to the
+treatment or the disease, which last became in the end quite formidable.
+
+But though Nature had yielded, apparently vanquished, she still made
+occasional faint efforts, every two or three days, to regain the
+supremacy, or, in other words, to set things right; and sometimes we
+were led to indulge in hope. But the remissions of disease and of
+suffering were only temporary, and were succeeded, in every instance, by
+a worse condition of things than before. I called for sage medical
+counsel, but all to no permanent purpose. Downward he tended, step by
+step, and no human power or skill seemed likely to arrest his progress.
+
+In this downward course his constitution held out--for he was by nature
+exceedingly tenacious of life--till about the twenty-third day, when the
+vital forces began to retreat. He died on the twenty-fifth.
+
+One practical but general error deserves to be noticed, for want of a
+better place, in this very connection. Notwithstanding the great
+difficulty of convincing a person who habitually uses extra stimulants,
+narcotics, or any medicinal agents, all the way from rum, opium, and
+tobacco, down to tea, coffee, and saleratus, that they are injuring him
+at all, as long as he does not feel very ill, yet it ought to be clearly
+and fully known that every one who is thus addicted to unnatural habits,
+and _being_ thus addicted is seized with disease of any kind and from
+any cause whatever, is certain to have that disease with greater
+severity than if his habits had been, from the first, perfectly correct
+or normal. Nor is this all. Medical aid, whenever invoked under these
+circumstances, is more questionable as to its good tendencies. No
+medical man of any skill or observation but must feel, in such a case,
+most painfully, the terrible uncertainty of that treatment of the living
+machine which is quite enough so when the habits have been most
+favorable, by being most correct.
+
+One caution of quite another kind may be interposed here. My patient
+above had neglected to call on me for several days in the beginning of
+his disease, under the very general impression of ignorant people, that
+if he called a physician he should certainly be severely sick; for if he
+was not already very sick, any efforts to prevent disease would only
+serve to make him so.
+
+Now this is, as a general rule, a very great mistake. It would be much
+more safe to call a physician very early, than to wait till Nature is so
+much embarrassed and even crippled that we can place very little
+reliance on her efforts. Worse still is it for the physician, when
+called late, to load down the enfeebled system with medicine by way of
+atoning for past neglects. Thousands have made the mistake here alluded
+to, and have thus been a means of hastening on a fatal termination of
+the disease. It is not by any means improbable that such was the result
+in the foregoing instance.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLV.
+
+THE INDIAN DOCTOR.
+
+
+A little child about two years of age, severely afflicted with bowel
+complaint, came under my care during the first year of my medical
+practice, and proved the source of much difficulty.
+
+She was the child of a mother who had been trained to delicacies, in the
+usual fashionable way, and who had begun to carry out the same wretched
+course of education in her own family. In addition to a generally wrong
+treatment, the child had been indulged, for many weeks before I was
+called, with a large amount of green, or at least very unripe, fruit.
+
+It was at a season of the year when both children and adults were
+suffering from bowel complaints much more than at any other; but as the
+hot days and nights were expected soon to give way to the cooler and
+longer nights of October, I fastened my hopes of the child's final
+recovery, very largely, on the natural recuperative effects of the
+autumnal season. I did not attempt to give much medicine. My reliance
+was almost wholly on keeping up what I was wont to call a good
+centrifugal force, or in keeping the skin--the great safety valve of the
+system--in proper and healthful activity. Much that I ordered was in the
+way of bathing, local and general, especially warm bathing.
+
+The parents of the child were among my most confidential, not to say
+influential, friends. If there was a family within the whole of my
+medical circuit with whom my word was law, it was this. Yet after all
+they were ignorant, especially of themselves; and such people always
+were and always will be credulous. They would open their ears, not only
+to the thousand and one insinuations of malice and envy, which at times
+are ventured against a young physician,--especially if he is going
+ahead, and as they say "getting rich" too fast, and thus securing more
+than they believe to be his share of public popularity;--but to the
+still larger number, if possible, of weak criticisers in his practice.
+
+My friend's residence, moreover, was in a neighborhood contiguous to
+quacks and quackery, in the pretensions to which there were many
+believers. These dupes of ignorance and assurance were ever and anon
+filling the heads of my "patrons" with their stories of wonderful cures,
+in cases almost _exactly like that of my own little patient_, and urging
+the poor half-distracted parents to try something new--either medicine
+or physician. They would appeal to their feelings by asking them how
+they could be willing, as parents,--however great might be their
+confidence in me as a physician,--to let a darling child lie, day after
+day, and yet make no extra effort to save it.
+
+Their appeals were not wholly ineffective; indeed, what else could have
+been expected? My first suspicion of any thing radically wrong, arose
+from a decidedly unexpected effect from a little medicine I had
+previously ordered. It seemed quite clear to my mind that a neutralizing
+agent had been at work somehow, by design or otherwise. And yet I shrunk
+from making an inquiry. In the end, however, I found myself morally
+compelled to do so. The results were very nearly what I had feared, and
+what might have been expected.
+
+One of the _reliabilities_ of the wise ones of the neighborhood went by
+the name of the "Indian" doctor. Whether in addition to a very little
+Indian blood he was half or three-fourths Spanish, Portuguese, or
+Canadian, I never knew, for I never took pains to inquire. But he had
+Indian habits. He was at times intemperate and vicious. No one who knew
+him would have trusted him with a sixpence of his own honest earnings,
+at least any longer than he was within his sight or reach. Yet many
+people would and did trust him with their own lives and the lives of
+their children.
+
+There was one redeeming circumstance in connection with the history of
+this Indian doctor. He would never prescribe for the sick when in a
+state of intoxication. He knew, in this respect, his own weakness. But
+then it must be confessed he was not often free from intoxication. He
+was almost always steeped in cider or spirits. He was seldom, if ever,
+properly a sane or even a steady man.
+
+On pressing the parents of the sick child more closely than usual, they
+frankly owned that though they had not of themselves called in the
+Indian doctor, they had permitted Mrs. A. B. to invite him in, and had
+permitted the child to take a little of his medicine.
+
+The secret was now fully revealed, and it was no longer a matter of
+wonder with me, why poison did not work well against poison. The wonder
+was why, together, we had not killed the poor child. And yet it was by
+no means certain that the Indian's prescription was of much force, save
+the few drops of alcohol which it contained, for all his medicine was to
+be taken in alcohol.
+
+I stated to the parents the probable issues--that unless the child
+possessed more than ordinary tenacity of life, it must ultimately sink
+under the load it was compelled to sustain. But to our great
+surprise--certainly my own--it survived; and, though it was suspended
+for weeks between life and death, it finally recovered.
+
+The most mortifying circumstance of all was, that this miserable mongrel
+of a man had the credit of curing a child that only survived because it
+was tough and strong enough to resist the destructive tendency of two
+broadside fires--mine and his own. But medical men are compelled to put
+up with a great many things which, of course, they would not prefer.
+They must take the world as it is--as the world does the corps of
+physicians. They must calculate for deductions and drawbacks; and what
+they calculate on, they are pretty sure to experience. But, like other
+men with other severe trials, they have their reward.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVI.
+
+DYING OF OLD AGE, AT FIFTY-EIGHT.
+
+
+Within the usual limits assigned me in the daily routine of my
+profession, but on its very verge, there resided an individual of much
+general reputation for worth of character, but of feeble constitution
+and cachetic or deranged habits, for whom as well as for his numerous
+family I had frequently prescribed.
+
+He was at length, one autumn, unusually reduced in health and strength,
+and I was again sent for. There was evidently very little of real
+disease about him, and yet there was very great debility. All his bodily
+senses were greatly deranged, and all his intellectual faculties
+benumbed. His internal machinery--his breathing, circulation, and
+digestion--was all affected; but it seemed more the result of debility
+than any thing else. There was no violence or excess of action anywhere,
+except a slight increase of the circulation.
+
+The man was about fifty-eight years of age. Had he been ninety-eight or
+even eighty-eight, I should have had no difficulty in understanding his
+case. I should have said to myself, "Nature, nearly exhausted by the
+wear and tear of life, is about to give way;" or in other words, "The
+man is about to did (?die) of mere old age." But could he have been thus
+worn out at the age of fifty-eight?
+
+I gave him gentle, tonic medicine, but it did not work well. Without
+increasing his strength, it increased his tendencies to fever. Yet, as I
+well knew, depletion would not answer in a case like this, whether of
+bleeding, blistering, or cathartics. In these circumstances, I contrived
+to while away the time in a routine of that negative character which, in
+true medical language, means laboriously doing nothing.
+
+He was visited about twice a week. I heard patiently all his
+complaints, and endeavored to be patient under all my disappointments,
+for disappointments I had to encounter at nearly every step. No active
+treatment whatever would have the general effect I desired and intended.
+If I gave him but a single dose of elixir paregoric for his nervousness,
+it only added, nine times in ten, to the very woes it was intended to
+relieve. My policy--and I fully believe it was the only true policy--was
+to leave him to himself and to Nature, as much as possible.
+
+Though I have spoken here of what I regarded as the true policy in the
+case then under my care, yet, after all, the truest course would have
+been to call for consultation some wiser head than my own. Another
+individual, even though he were no wiser than I, might have aided me
+most essentially, in compliance with, and in confirmation of, the good
+old adage--"Two eyes see more than one."
+
+Why, then, did I not call on some inquiring and highly experienced
+physician? It was not that I was too proud to do so, nor that I was too
+jealous of my reputation. It was not that I feared any evil result to
+myself. It was rather because I did not, at first, think it really
+necessary; and then, subsequently, when I supposed it to be really
+needful, I feared my patient would grudge the expense. This fear, by the
+way, was grounded in something more than mere conjecture. The proposal
+had been practically made, and had been rejected.
+
+In this general way things went on for some time. The friends grew
+uneasy, as they should have done; and one or two of them, now that it
+was almost too late, spoke of another physician as counsel. My own
+readiness and more than readiness for this seemed to have the effect to
+quiet the patient, though it had the contrary effect on his friends.
+They appeared to construe my own liberality and the admixture of modesty
+and conscientiousness, which were conspicuous in my general behavior,
+into self-distrust, and hence began themselves to distrust me.
+
+The patient's state of mind--for he was a man whose habits of thinking
+and feeling approximated very closely to those of the miser--more than
+once reminded me of some doggerel verses I have seen, perhaps in an old
+almanac, which are so pertinent in illustration of the point in my
+patient's character which these remarks are intended to expose, that I
+have ventured to insert them:--
+
+    "The miser Sherdi, on his sick-bed lying,
+    Affrighted, groaning, fainting, wheezing, dying,
+      Expecting every hour to lose his breath,
+    Enters a Dervise: 'Holy Father, say,
+    As life seems parting from this sinful clay,
+      What can preserve me from the jaws of death?'
+
+    "'Sacrifice, dear son, good joints of meat,--
+      Of lamb and mutton for the priest and poor.
+    Nay, shouldst thou from the Koran lines repeat,
+      Those lines might possibly thy health restore,'
+
+    "'Thank you, good father, you have said enough;
+      Your counsels have already given me ease.
+    Now as my sheep are all a great way off,
+      I'll quote holy our Koran, if you please.'"
+
+At length my patient began, most evidently, to decline. There were
+various marks on him and in him, of approaching dissolution. When
+pressed, as I frequently was, to say definitely what the disease
+was--that is, to give it a name--under which Mr. ---- labored, I only
+replied that he was suffering from premature old age. This always
+awakened surprise, and led to much and frequent inquiry how it was that
+a man of fifty-eight years could be dying of mere old age. My
+explanations, whenever attempted,--for sometimes in my pride of
+profession I wholly evaded them,--were usually, in substance like the
+following:--
+
+"Mr. ---- was feeble by inheritance. He never had that firmness of
+constitution which several of his brothers now possess. Then, too, he
+was precocious. His body and mind, both of them, came to maturity very
+early; which, as you know, always betokens premature decay. Men live
+about four times as long, when not cut short by disease, as they are in
+reaching maturity. As he was apparently mature at fourteen or fifteen,
+he might very naturally be expected to wear out at or before sixty.
+
+"But then, in addition to this, he has all his lifetime labored too
+hard, not only from necessity, but from habit and choice. His ambition,
+it is well known, has been unlimited, except by his want of strength to
+accomplish. He has only ceased to labor hard when he had strength to
+labor no longer, or when it was so dark or so cold or so stormy as to
+prevent him.
+
+"Then of late years he has had the care and anxiety which are almost
+inseparable from the work of bringing up a numerous family. It is indeed
+true that he has not been called to that severest of all possible trials
+pertaining to the family, the pain of seeing that family or any of its
+members go materially wrong. Still he has had a world of care; of its
+effects none are aware who have not been called to the same forms of
+experience.
+
+"There is one thing more; Mr. ---- has, at times, taken a good deal of
+medicine: not alcohol, in any of its forms, I admit, but substances
+which for the time were, in their effects, almost equally bad for him.
+He has used tea immoderately, and even tobacco. His constant smoking has
+been very injurious to his nervous system, and along with other things
+has, doubtless, greatly hurried on the wheels of life."
+
+Remarks like these had their intended effect on a few individuals,
+especially such of them as were couched in language with which they were
+already familiar. On most, however, they fell lifeless and hopeless.
+What knew they about precocity and its effects on the after life? In
+short, it was quite doubtful then, and is still more doubtful with me
+now, whether, on the whole, any thing was gained by attempts at
+explanation. For example, when I spoke of my patient being worn out,
+prematurely, by overworking, it was asked by one man, "But how is this?
+Other men as well as Mr. ---- have worked too hard, and brought up large
+families, and perhaps taken a great deal of medicine, and smoked a vast
+amount of tobacco? Why are they not affected in this way as well as Mr.
+----?"
+
+It was not easy to make current the idea that Mr. ---- was about to die
+of old age; although partly from conviction, but partly, also, to
+conceal my ignorance, I still endeavored to promulgate it. It was the
+only apology I could make for suffering a man to run down and die,
+without appearing to those around him to be very sick.
+
+But he died, after some time, to my infinite mortification and great
+regret. I was invited to his funeral, as I was usually to the funerals
+of my patients. In this case, however, I contrived to be absent. So
+great was my consciousness of ignorance and so much ashamed was I of my
+ill success, that I felt as if the veriest ignoramus would be disposed
+to point at me, and to charge me with having been, practically, the
+murderer of the much-beloved head of a family, and a worthy and highly
+respected member of society. But, whether others would deem me culpable
+for my ignorance or not, I could not avoid the pangs of habitual
+condemnation.
+
+There were, I grant, a few extenuating circumstances in the case. One or
+two causes existed, of premature decline, on which, in a work like this,
+I cannot stop to expatiate. It was also very unfortunate for him that he
+was accustomed to look on the dark side of things, and to forebode ills,
+where, oftentimes, none existed.
+
+Notwithstanding my former ignorance and doubt, and numerous misgivings,
+in cases like the foregoing, I have of late years, on a maturer review,
+been obliged very frequently to confirm my earlier decisions. In the
+case which has been detailed in this chapter, I have, on the whole, come
+to a belief that my first judgment was nearly correct; and that the
+patient actually perished, as much as men ever do, of premature old age.
+It is, indeed, very possible that had I pursued a different course in
+several important particulars, his life might have been prolonged for a
+year or two. Men have a tendency to become what they are taken to be;
+and many a person has died much sooner for being taken to be near his
+end, and treated accordingly. If we would have our patients recover, we
+must take for granted that recovery is at least possible.
+
+In the case above, I believe I lost reputation, in large measure.
+Several shrewd people insisted, at the time and long afterward, that I
+ought to have had medical counsel. Mr. ----, they said, was too good a
+man to lose without a more persevering effort to raise him. They charged
+me with having got my name up, and having at the same time grown
+careless. Had he been properly doctored, they said, from the very first,
+they believed he might still have been alive to ornament and bless
+society.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVII.
+
+DAUGHTERS DESTROYING THEIR MOTHER.
+
+
+There are, of course, many ways of destroying or killing people. To
+kill, with malice aforethought, though sometimes done, is a much less
+frequent occurrence than killing in the heat of passion, or by
+carelessness; by leading into bad habits, or by the injudicious use of
+medicine.
+
+Then, again, there is such a thing as killing by omitting to keep alive.
+Thus we have sins of omission as well as of commission. If I leave a man
+in a mill-pond and suffer him to drown, or if I suffer him to take a
+dose of arsenic or Prussic acid, when I might, with the utmost ease, or
+even with considerable difficulty, prevent it,--is it not, in a
+practical sense, to destroy or kill him?
+
+It is certainly within the wide range of human possibility, that a
+daughter may, without bludgeon or pistol, and even without poison, kill
+her mother. And it is quite notorious and a plain matter of fact that
+many a mother kills her own children. It could be demonstrated that
+thousands, if not tens of thousands of children are destroyed every year
+by their own mothers; as truly so as if they had received at their hands
+a quantity of arsenic. Why, then, may not children sometimes kill their
+parents?
+
+I have known people, in very many instances, kill, in trying to save. I
+have even known the medical man do this, as may be seen by turning back
+to Chapter XXX. Then, too, I have known the attendants of the sick,
+though among their dearest friends, sometimes kill in this very way. In
+truth, such killing is not uncommon.
+
+One of the most painful instances of this last kind of killing came
+under my own immediate observation, and was in the range of my own
+practice.
+
+I was visiting a sick woman, whose only property lay in three or four
+lovely and loving children. Two of these, who were full-grown daughters,
+resided in her house and took care of her. She was severely afflicted
+with typhoid dysentery. Her daughters in turn watched over her, both by
+day and night, and would not suffer her to be left in the care of
+anybody else for a single minute. And, in general, their faithfulness
+was above all praise.
+
+One day, however, disliking the appearances of a part of my medicine,
+they mutually agreed to throw it into the fire; and the deed was done.
+They had supposed it to be calomel, as it had the color and general
+appearance of that drug, and to calomel they had a most inveterate and
+irreconcilable hatred. It was a hatred, however, which whether well or
+ill founded, very extensively prevails.
+
+At first, I could not help wondering at the results of my supposed doses
+of medicine; and indeed it was a long time before I began to suspect the
+true cause. For, while I verily believed I was employing the only thing
+which could help her,--one which I then thought _ought_ to help her,--I
+had the unspeakable mortification of finding her every day growing
+worse. What could be the possible cause, I often asked myself, of this
+downward tendency?
+
+While thus perplexed and pained, I accidentally learned that the main
+ingredient in my plan of treatment--the main pillar in my fabric--had
+been habitually withdrawn by her anxious but injudicious attendants. I
+no longer wondered at the threatening symptoms. My only wonder was, that
+things had not gone wrong with her at a much more rapid rate.
+
+The patient continued to sink from day to day, and to become more and
+more insensible. The daughters themselves saw her downward tendency, for
+it could not be concealed. I did not tell the young women of their error
+at first, although I did so afterwards. It was a most painful duty, but
+it was one from which I dared not shrink. I hoped and trusted it would
+be a means of saving some among the coming generations.
+
+I have never met with either of these daughters since that day--for one
+of them, at least, is still living--without blushing for their sake.
+They, on their part, appear to be equally affected and agitated. They
+almost adored their mother, and yet they inadvertently destroyed her.
+She might have perished, it is true, without their aid; but I rather
+think she would have slowly recovered.
+
+Let him that readeth understand: It is extremely hazardous for a second
+or third person to change the doses of a physician's medicine, either by
+the omission or addition of an ingredient. It would be safer--very much
+safer--to omit every thing, and leave the disease wholly to nature. The
+true course, however, in all cases, is to follow the prescription of the
+physician, to the best of our abilities, or else dismiss him.
+
+I might pause here a moment to animadvert on the unreasonableness of the
+vulgar prejudice which almost everywhere prevails against calomel. That
+this drug does great harm, in many instances, is most certain; but that
+it does more mischief to the human constitution when in the hands of
+judicious practitioners, than some half a dozen articles of the _materia
+medica_ I could name, about which complaint is seldom made, remains to
+be proved. Let us, if possible, prevent the necessity of using any of
+these two-edged weapons, by so living that disease cannot assail us, and
+then we shall not, of necessity, be exposed to the danger of medicinal
+agents, whether calomel or any thing else.
+
+My own principal error in relation to this interesting case, consisted
+in not telling the attendants of the sick woman, in the plainest
+language, what my medicines were and how much, in my own estimation,
+depended on their careful and proper exhibition; that if they should
+take away or suffer to be taken away, one faggot from the bundle, they
+would not only spoil their effect, but might, very probably, turn the
+edge of the sword against the very citadel of life itself. But from the
+extreme of explaining every thing, in sick families where I was called,
+I had passed over to that of explaining nothing. Truth here, as
+elsewhere, usually lies midway between extremes.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVIII.
+
+POISONING WITH STRAMONIUM.
+
+
+One of my patients was subject to repeated attacks of rheumatism. He was
+by no means a man of good and temperate habits, and never had been so.
+And even his rheumatic attacks, though they were now frequently excited
+by taking cold, or by a sudden strain, as well as by many other causes
+of no considerable magnitude, often had both a foundation or
+predisposition in his former and later intemperance.
+
+Let me here say, most distinctly and unequivocally, even at the risk of
+being charged with repetition, that a large proportion of even these
+casual or apparently accidental attacks of rheumatism, neuralgia, sick
+headache, etc., etc., with which our world--the fashionable part of it,
+at least--is half filled, instead of springing out of the ground, or
+coming upon us by the special appointment of high Heaven, have their
+origin in the intemperance, excess, or licentiousness of somebody. The
+cause may lie many years back, and may be almost forgotten; nay, it may
+be found in a preceding generation rather than the present. But it lies
+somewhere in the range of human agency. "Almighty man," as the poet has
+well said, "decrees it." Solomon never uttered a more palpable truth
+than when he said: "Because sentence against an evil work is not
+executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set
+in them to do evil."
+
+My rheumatic friend sent for me one day, to come and see him in great
+haste, for, as the messenger said, he could not long continue in such
+suffering. I found him in the greatest distress, and after making the
+usual temporary applications, I gave him what I had never given him
+before--a pretty full dose of tincture of stramonium. It had, in due
+time, its accustomed effect, and I left him, rather prematurely, to
+visit another patient in a somewhat distant part of the town, intending,
+however, to see him again in the evening.
+
+But I had not been absent more than an hour, before I was sent for in
+post-haste. As soon as possible I hastened to the spot. I found my
+patient in a state somewhat peculiar and not easily described. He was
+evidently affected by the stramonium; but how, I said to myself, can
+this be? I certainly did not give him an overdose. Besides, as I well
+knew, the effects, so long as I remained with him, had been decidedly
+favorable.
+
+The mystery was soon revealed. On finding himself much better, soon
+after my departure, he had resorted again to the stramonium bottle,
+which in my haste and contrary to my usual practice, I had left within
+his reach. The result was a degree of delirium that had alarmed his
+friends and induced them to send for me.
+
+By means of careful and persevering management, a partial recovery soon
+took place, though a train of incidental evils followed which it is not
+necessary here to enumerate. The patient was one of those ignorant and
+selfish individuals on whom a permanent cure can rarely be effected.
+
+This circumstance taught me one important lesson which ought to have
+been impressed on my mind long before. It was, not to leave medicine of
+any kind within reach of my patients or their friends. In many an
+instance, medicine thus left has been taken by others, under the belief
+that since it operated favorably in the case for which it had been
+prescribed by the physician, it would do so in another case which was
+vainly supposed to be just like it, when, in truth, it was not at all
+similar.
+
+To the custom of keeping medicine in the house, of any sort, I am
+equally opposed, and for similar reasons. There will generally be time
+enough to send for it when its presence is really needed. Such at least
+is the fact, ninety-nine times in a hundred. And as a set-off against
+the fact of its being thus useful once in a hundred times, we have to
+acknowledge the multiplied dangers to which we are exposed, of using it
+without prescription, and to which we are otherwise exposed by having it
+constantly before us in our houses.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIX.
+
+CURING CANCER.
+
+
+Theodore, a laborious young man, came to me one day, saying, "I am
+afraid I have a cancer on one side of my nose, and I wish you would look
+at it." Accordingly I made a careful examination of the sore, taking
+care to give him a little pain, and, at the same time, as a most
+indispensable ingredient, to look "wondrous wise;" after which the
+following conversation, in its essentials, took place between us:--
+
+"What makes you suspect this sore to be a cancer?"
+
+"There are various reasons. Many of the neighbors think it to be so.
+Then, too, it has a very strong resemblance to the cancer on Mrs.
+Miller's lip. And then, again, it burns and itches and smarts, just as
+people say cancers always do."
+
+"How long have you been troubled with it?"
+
+"It is three months or more since I first observed it; but it has given
+me very little uneasiness or trouble till within a few weeks."
+
+"What have you done for it?"
+
+"It would take a long time to tell you of all I have done for it. Every
+thing I could hear of, far or near, has been applied; from plasters of
+clay and chalk, to plasters of vitriol and other poisonous things. But I
+have used most a plaster made of chalk and the white of an egg. I do not
+know that any thing I have done has benefited it."
+
+"Perhaps you have not persevered in the use of any thing long enough.
+How long is it, pray, since you began to use the chalk and egg plaster?"
+
+"Oh, it is three weeks, or more."
+
+"And how long is it usual to wear it? do you know?"
+
+"Mrs. Lovejoy, who advised it, only said, 'Use it as long as it appears
+to do good.'"
+
+"Is it a favorite remedy with her?"
+
+"Very much so."
+
+"Has any one been really cured by it?"
+
+"Oh, yes. Mr. Browning, the gardener, was entirely cured by it; so, at
+least, people say."
+
+"Any one else?"
+
+"Yes, half a hundred or more have tried it."
+
+"But how many have been cured by it? That is my main inquiry."
+
+"That I cannot tell you. I have heard of no positive cure but that of
+Mr. Browning."
+
+"It is almost incredible, my dear sir, that any thing like fifty cases
+can have come within such a small range of population as the village or
+even the town in which Mrs. Lovejoy resides. Do you mean as you say?"
+
+"Well, then, a great many. I know of a dozen, most certainly; and I have
+heard of a great many more. I venture, at least, to say twenty."
+
+"And you have no positive knowledge of but one permanent cure among them
+all?"
+
+"Only one, I meant to say, that I can call by name. There must be many
+more, I am sure, but I have not their names."
+
+"Have you much confidence in a method of treatment that succeeds once in
+fifty times, or even once in twenty?"
+
+"Not much, I confess; but if it now and then succeed, that is something.
+You know that they who run in a race _all_ run, though but one receives
+the prize."
+
+"Are you quite sure there _is_ any gain or prize, after all?"
+
+"Do you mean to ask if I believe Mr. Browning was really cured?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"How could I doubt what I have seen and known?"
+
+"I do not expect you will doubt the existence of what you have seen and
+known. But the question before us is, what you _have_ seen and known.
+Mr. Browning had something on his face, and it got well; but do we know
+it was a cancer? Only a very small proportion of twenty sores suspected
+to be cancers ever prove to be such, and many of them get well after a
+little time, if they are let entirely alone; or, if not let entirely
+alone, they would probably still get well, in spite of the treatment. It
+is quite a marvel with me, not that one person, Mr. Browning, recovered
+in spite of the treatment, but that more did not."
+
+"This is to me a new way of reasoning on this subject, and yet I do not
+know but you are correct. I confess, that on reflection, I do not find
+positive evidence that any good has been done to Mr. Browning. It may be
+so, or it may not. And yet the story of his cure is told all over the
+neighborhood and for many miles around, and Mrs. Lovejoy gets great
+credit by it."
+
+"No doubt she does; and thousands obtain both credit and cash in a
+similar way. Much of the reputation of our wonderful cure-alls,
+advertised in the newspapers, comes in a similar way."
+
+"Do you really think so?"
+
+"It can be demonstrated."
+
+"Why, then, is it not oftener done?"
+
+"It has been done, again and again."
+
+"Are the public, then, fully determined to act against their own
+interest? Do they choose to be humbugged?"
+
+"It seems so."
+
+"But can you do nothing with my face?"
+
+"I can try. I will do what I can. But I must first tell you what I
+_cannot_ do. I cannot pronounce your disease to be cancer. I cannot say
+positively that my method of treatment will cure it. I cannot say,
+moreover, that somebody else cannot cure you, even if I cannot. If,
+however, I prescribe for you, you must consent to follow me for the time
+most implicitly, and let everybody else alone."
+
+"That I shall be both willing and glad to do."
+
+"You need not begin till you are fully satisfied in regard to the
+efficacy of Mrs. Lovejoy's plaster."
+
+"I am pretty well satisfied already. I see that science is modest but
+honest, and I prefer it to humbuggery."
+
+My prescription was an application of the common blistering ointment of
+the apothecary's shop. The part to which it was to be applied was quite
+denuded and tender; but I told the patient to stick a small piece of the
+plaster over it and wear it, and keep it as sore as he could for a month
+or more. He was, however, to call on me once a week,--or, perhaps, at
+first, twice,--that I might watch the effects. There was some danger of
+an absorption of the cantharides into the system, which might do more of
+general harm than would justify an attempt at local good.
+
+No man ever followed the prescription of his physician with more
+pertinacity and faithfulness than young Theodore. He adhered, without
+wavering, to plain and unstimulating food, and to water for drink. At
+the end of twenty-one days, all the fiery redness of the ulcer had
+passed away, and it had begun to wear a healthy appearance. "Now," said
+I, "you may take away your plasters, and let the sore get well, if it
+will."
+
+In about ten, or at most fourteen days more, the young man's nose was as
+well as any other part of his system. Whether the Spanish flies
+contained in the plaster had any thing to do with it, or whether it
+recovered its healthful condition in spite of them,--having just then
+got ready to heal,--I cannot, of course, positively determine. In any
+event, the case was a strong one, though not stronger, I confess, than
+that of dosing largely with calomel, as detailed in Chapter XXXII. And
+yet, as I have already told you, I should not dare to repeat that heroic
+treatment. Success is not always competent proof that a given course is
+correct;--at least, this is true with regard to the success of a
+particular formulary of medicine. There are very many things on earth to
+be known and thought of, as well as in heaven.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER L.
+
+SWELLED LIMBS.
+
+
+Not far from this period I was called to visit Mr. O. B., sixty-one
+years of age, a farmer by occupation. He had been for twenty or thirty
+years addicted to cider drinking very freely, according to the custom of
+the country; which habit, conjoined with full feeding, a diminished
+amount of exercise, and a lymphatic tendency by inheritance, had
+rendered him exceedingly corpulent. His legs had even fallen into a
+habit of swelling, especially at night, sometimes to a very alarming
+extent.
+
+His story concerning himself was essentially as follows: In getting into
+a wagon, some time before, he had detached a small portion of skin from
+one of his legs. Although the wound was slight, and was duly attended
+to, according to the usual method of the family, with cabbage leaves,
+and with considerable care and neatness, yet, instead of healing kindly,
+it had put on a very unhealthy appearance, and had, at length, even
+become extensively ulcerated. He was also habitually a sufferer from
+chronic rheumatism in his back and hips, partly constitutional and
+partly as the result of overstraining the parts, especially in
+wrestling.
+
+When I was called in to see him, it was about the last of June. His
+wounded leg was now evidently growing worse; and as the heat of the
+weather was increasing, and was for some time to come likely to
+increase, I could hardly help apprehending the most serious
+consequences. He had been in the habit of making greasy applications to
+it for a short time, but these at my special request were set aside
+immediately.
+
+He was also encouraged to keep his leg cool; to exercise his whole
+system moderately; to avoid exciting, above all, stimulating, food and
+drink; and to keep his mind quiet. In regard to drinks, particularly, he
+was directed to use none but water. He was also required to abstain
+wholly from pork, and all long-salted meats. He had also been, for
+almost half a century, a chewer of tobacco--a circumstance rather
+unfavorable to a rapid return of healthy action; but I did not think it
+expedient to interdict its use entirely at the very first; for I feared
+the change, at his advanced age, would be more than his system could
+well endure.
+
+In fact, I found it extremely difficult to persuade him to pursue the
+straight and narrow path which, letting alone his tobacco, I had deemed
+indispensably necessary. To encourage him to do so, I availed myself of
+a circumstance which, though in itself trifling, was nevertheless likely
+to have its influence. The thirteenth day of July was at hand, and would
+be the fortieth anniversary of his marriage. My proposal was that he
+should commence the change of habits that very day, and continue it
+precisely eighteen months.
+
+Although the danger to which he would be exposed by neglecting my
+prescription was neither immediate nor imminent; yet it was so
+considerable in prospect that I pressed him very hard to comply with my
+requirements, notwithstanding their seeming rigidity. And as a further
+inducement,--for he was not above the influence of pecuniary
+considerations,--I offered him a certain sum of money.
+
+I left him without much hope, after all, that he would follow out my
+suggestions and advice, so difficult is it, at the age of sixty, to make
+substantial and radical changes. But I was most happily disappointed. He
+began the work of reform on the very day appointed, and began it well;
+and though he did not adhere to the letter of my prescription entirely,
+he did quite as much as I had dared, even in my most sanguine moments,
+to expect. And though his leg did not at first improve much, it was
+something to find that during the very hottest weather of the season it
+did not grow worse.
+
+For three months he did not use, as he said, so much as fifty cents
+worth of pork, nor much salted food of any kind. He abandoned entirely
+all drinks but water, and all condiments with his food except a little
+salt. He subsisted almost wholly on bread, fruits, and vegetables, with
+a very little flesh or fish.
+
+At the end of three months he ventured abroad more than before; and as
+it was now near the middle of October, he consented to put on woollen
+stockings. But he made one change at this time which I had not intended.
+He returned to the use of one of his former greasy and worse than
+useless ointments. In the course of the month, however, in spite of the
+foul external application, his leg was entirely healed; and the swelling
+considerably abated. In short, at the close of the year he had entirely
+recovered.
+
+The friends and neighbors attributed the cure to the ointment. How very
+unreasonable! The ointment had been used during the spring, up to the
+time when he came under my direction, without any apparent benefit. What
+evidence then was there that it had been useful now? Why should not the
+change for the better be attributed to his increased exercise, the
+change of air and food, and the stimulus and warmth of woollen
+stockings? Had water, moreover, as his only drink, nothing to do with
+the cure?
+
+But while standing in the position I did, it was useless to decry the
+ointment or exalt my own treatment, since it would have been regarded as
+merely special pleading. Still, I did not shrink wholly from the
+statement of my honest convictions, whenever I was inquired of, even
+though I did not manifest a disposition to carry the war into Africa.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LI.
+
+SUDDEN CHANGES IN OLD AGE.
+
+
+Mrs. N. was about seventy years of age. In her early years she had
+possessed a sort of masculine constitution; and though embarrassed by
+poverty, had reared a large family of children, who were all well
+settled in the world. She resided with the youngest but one of them,
+where she did just as she pleased. In short, she had a good home, and,
+had she enjoyed health, might have been happy.
+
+But a change had come over her in point of health, which it was not so
+easy to account for at its outset as in its progress. For her first
+derelictions, at least, I know of no cause. But she had, at length,
+become reconciled to the use of tea, and as her spirits began to flag,
+she added to it strong coffee. From these she proceeded to the pipe.
+
+The more she increased her extra stimulants, the more she added to her
+troubles, and the greater was her necessity for additional stimulus.
+Laudanum was very soon on her list; at first, it is true, in very small
+quantities. Yet, as she grew older, she found a necessity, as she verily
+believed, for increasing the size of her dose from year to year, till,
+at the age of seventy, I found her in the full and free use of tea,
+coffee, tobacco, and laudanum,--the latter to the enormous extent of
+half an ounce a day,--and yet her complaints were more numerous than
+ever.
+
+She was a reasonable woman, and therefore I attempted to set forth, in
+their true colors, the realities of her condition. However, as I was not
+acting as her physician, but only as a friend, I had little hope of
+making any very permanent impressions. She knew the whole story as well
+as I or any one else could know it. The great difficulty under which she
+labored was a want of resolution to change her habits. Her irresolution
+was sustained by the belief--a very general one--that old people cannot
+make sudden changes in their physical habits with safety.[G] But she was
+unhappy in the condition she then was. She had no peace with conscience,
+nor, as I might almost venture to say,--for she was a religious woman by
+profession,--with God.
+
+I assured her that the real danger of sudden changes, at her age, had
+been greatly overrated; though danger there certainly was, in greater or
+less degree. But I pointed out to her the means of obviating what danger
+there was, and urged her, as a Christian, to make up her mind to meet
+it. Of course, I did not presume to urge her to cast every thing aside,
+and return to Nature's path at once; but to drop first one thing and
+then another. I counselled her to be thorough and determined, as far as
+she went; and when she abandoned a thing to make no reserve, but to be
+sure of not going too fast and too far at once.
+
+When I left her one day, after a somewhat protracted conversation, it
+was with many feelings of discouragement. I doubted very seriously
+whether, on the whole, she would move at all. The power of half an ounce
+of laudanum and a paper of tobacco daily, in paralyzing the human will,
+is very great. But she was one of those persons who cannot, or think
+they cannot, leave off a habit gradually, in the way I proposed. She
+must "go the whole figure," as it is said vulgarly, or do nothing at
+all.
+
+Judge then, if you can, of my surprise, when about two months afterward
+I learned, from a source which was perfectly reliable, that the very
+next day after I saw her, she abandoned the whole herd of extra
+stimulants, both solid and liquid, and betook herself to water. Nor had
+it, so far as I could learn, at all injured her.
+
+No sooner did I hear the news of her reformation, than I took my horse
+and made her a visit. There she was, nearly as well as ever she had been
+in her life, though perhaps a little paler and thinner. And oh, what
+rejoicing she had in her freedom! It would have done you good to see
+her. She had now no fears for the result. "True," she said, "I suffered
+for a few days, but the agony was soon over."
+
+One thing should be mentioned, since it doubtless added to the dangers,
+real and imaginary, of her condition and trial. It took place during the
+middle of a very cold winter--one of the coldest which we of the North
+ever experienced; scarcely, if at all, behind those of 1855-6 and
+1856-7.
+
+But all persons have not Mrs. N.'s faith, nor her deep-abiding religious
+principles. These, it is presumed, greatly aided her in the terrible
+conflict. No one ought to attempt such changes, at least in life's
+decline, unless most fully convinced of their importance and necessity.
+Yet, _with_ this conviction, and strong faith in addition, all becomes
+comparatively easy.
+
+Mrs. N. died a few years after her reform; but she died a free woman,
+and not a slave to her appetite. Some few there were of her acquaintance
+who appeared to think that the sudden changes to which she had subjected
+herself several years before, hastened her dissolution. But I do not
+believe there was a particle of evidence to be found that such was the
+fact. Reader, remember Mrs. N., and if you are in the road of error, and
+not more than seventy years of age, go and do likewise. If you have not
+_lived_ free, resolve at least to have the pleasure of dying so.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[G] This error has been met and refuted in the happiest manner, by the
+late lamented Dr. John C. Warren, of Boston, in his little work,
+entitled, "Hints for the Preservation of Health." Also, by Dr. Alcott's
+new work, "The Laws of Health."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LII.
+
+AN OPIUM EATER.
+
+
+Almost at the next door from me was an opium eater. He, like the female
+whose case was described in the preceding chapter, was not far from
+three score and ten, and was of industrious and, in many respects,
+temperate habits. And yet he was one of the most inveterate and
+abandoned voluntary slaves to the drug opium I have ever seen. He had
+used it largely thirty years.
+
+His case is the more singular from the fact that he became enslaved to
+it so very early. To use opium or laudanum at the present day, I grant
+is no uncommon occurrence. We may often find six, eight, or ten opium
+takers in a single township, if not a single village, or even a single
+neighborhood; and the number is rapidly increasing. Opium has not that
+offensive appearance to many that tobacco has, and a much larger amount
+of stimulus may be kept in a very small space, perhaps in the very
+corner of the smallest pocket.
+
+Another circumstance which rendered the case of my opium-taking neighbor
+somewhat striking, was his usual good health. I say, here, _usual_, for
+there were exceptions which will appear presently. Yet though he was
+nearly threescore and ten, this man had, while under the influence of
+his accustomed stimulus, as much elasticity and nearly as much strength
+as most men of thirty.
+
+How could this happen, you will naturally ask, if opium is such a deadly
+narcotic as some medical men proclaim it to be? How can a person, male
+or female, begin its use at forty and continue it to seventy years of
+age, and yet be, for the most part, strong and healthy?
+
+In the first place, we must remember the force of habit. We have seen
+how it is with alcoholic drinks and tobacco. I might tell you how it is
+with arsenic, which is beginning to be taken, it is said, by men and
+horses, both in the old world and the new. I might even give you the
+story of Mithridates, king of Pontus, who is said to have so accustomed
+himself to hemlock,--the most deadly poison of his time,--that in any
+ordinary dose, it would not affect him injuriously, or, at least, would
+not do so immediately.
+
+We must remember, in the second place, the active, industrious habits of
+this patient--of which, however, I have already spoken. He who is always
+or almost always in the open air, is less likely to suffer from the use
+of extra stimulants, and the penalty when it _does_ fall on his head, is
+much more likely to be deferred, than in the case of the sedentary and
+inactive. He was so hardy and withal so bold, that in the summer season
+he sometimes slept in the open air, under a tree.
+
+But, thirdly, he was descended from a very long-lived race or family.
+His father died at the age of ninety-seven. At the time of his decease
+he had been the progenitor of nineteen children, one hundred and five
+grandchildren, one hundred and fifty-five great grandchildren, and four
+of the fifth generation,--a posterity amounting in all, to two hundred
+and eighty-three. And what is most marvellous, nearly all of them were
+at that very moment living. In truth, he had several sons and daughters
+already between the ages of sixty-five and eighty. There was one of the
+brotherhood, whom I had seen, nearly eighty, and yet as active and
+elastic as the opium eater of seventy.
+
+One thing more: The latter, as we have seen, was a man of excellent
+habits in respect to nearly every thing but opium. He drank no ardent
+spirits, nor much coffee and tea; he used very little tobacco, and he
+ate in great moderation. He was an early riser and was in general
+cheerful. In short, but for his opium taking, he would have enjoyed a
+green old age.
+
+I have said he was usually healthy. When he was out of opium and could
+not obtain any, I have seen him sit and writhe in the most intense
+apparent anguish till the arrival of the accustomed stimulus, when the
+transformation would be as sudden as it was striking. In fifteen
+minutes, instead of writhing and groaning and almost dying, he might be
+found talking, laughing, and telling stories most merrily, to the
+infinite amusement of all around him.
+
+But he had troubles more abiding than this; at least, occasionally.
+After taking his opium for a long time, such a degree of costiveness
+would sometimes supervene, as seemed almost to defy the combined powers
+of both nature and art. In these circumstances, of course, the aid of
+the physician was usually invoked. It was on one of these occasions that
+I first became fully acquainted with his habits and tendencies.
+
+Once, when thus called to his bedside, I began to think he was not very
+far from the end of his career. The wheels of life seemed so completely
+obstructed, that I doubted whether they would ever start again. He
+himself declared, most positively and I doubt not in sincerity that he
+must die. But he lived on many years longer. He died at about
+seventy-five years of age--more than twenty years younger than his
+venerable and more temperate father.
+
+From this distinguished opium eater, and from his family, I learned two
+things: First, that Solomon was right when he spoke of the certainty of
+punishment, even though long deferred. Secondly, the certainty of the
+visitation, so to call it, of human transgression upon subsequent
+generations no less than on the individual transgressor. The fourth
+generation from the patriarch of ninety-seven was puny and
+feeble--exceedingly so; the fifth and sixth not only puny and feeble,
+but absolutely sickly, not to say dwarfish.
+
+Did I say I learned these important truths from this source? Not at all.
+I mean only, that I received from it a new confirmation of what I had
+fully believed long before, and concerning which, till compelled, most
+men--even some thinking men--appear to me not a little sceptical. They
+seem to think it reflects dishonor on our Maker. How this is, we shall
+perhaps see more fully in another place. Let it suffice, for the
+present, to say that the fact itself is fully established, whatever may
+be the deductions or its consequences.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LIII.
+
+COFFEE, AND THE LAME KNEE.
+
+
+Mr. W. was a distinguished minister of the gospel, and teacher of
+females. He could not at this time have been much less than seventy
+years of age. He was originally a man of iron constitution and of great
+mental activity.
+
+Of late it had been observed by some of the members of his family, that
+his mind had seasons of great inactivity, and it was even suspected he
+had, either in his sleep or at some other time, suffered from a slight
+attack of paralysis. His face seemed a little distorted, and one of the
+angles of his mouth a little depressed. There appeared to be a slight
+change even of his speech. It was recollected, too, that he inherited a
+tendency of this kind.
+
+Along with other difficulties was a lame knee. This he called
+rheumatism; but was it so? People are very fond of having a name for
+every thing; and yet names very often mislead. Prof. Ives, of the
+Medical College in Connecticut, was wont to say to his students,
+"Diseases, young gentlemen, are not creatures to whom we can give
+particular names, or assign particular marks of distinction. They are
+merely _modes of action_." My friend's over solicitude for a name to his
+complaint was therefore no new thing.
+
+I explained the matter as well as I could, very cautiously. I told him
+it was of little consequence about the name of his disease, provided we
+could ascertain the cause and remove it. "However," I said, "we will
+conclude to call it rheumatism." For though possessed of a good natural
+constitution, and, in general, of comparatively temperate habits, he had
+nevertheless set at defiance some of nature's laws, and was suffering
+under a just penalty.
+
+One member of his family, a favorite son, was suspicious of coffee. He
+himself had abandoned it long before, and had thus placed himself in a
+position to observe its effects on others. His father used it very
+strong, he said; and had used it in this way for a long time. He even
+ventured, at length, to express his fears to his father.
+
+"Nonsense, my son," said the father; "do you think coffee is powerful
+enough to give a man a lame knee? Why, the whole world--I mean the whole
+civilized world--use it; and do they all have stiff knees?"
+
+"Perhaps not," said the son; "but almost every coffee-drinker has,
+sooner or later, some ailment about him, that may very possibly have its
+origin in this source. Our troubles, as you yourself are accustomed to
+say, do not spring out of the ground. Coffee, as the best authorities
+tell us, is a slow poison; and if it is so, its effects must, at some
+time, be manifested."
+
+"Ay, a very slow poison this coffee must be, my son," said the
+half-indignant father; "for I have used it pretty freely forty years,
+and am not dead yet. But to be serious for a moment, Henry, do you
+really believe that such a small transgression as this, even if it could
+be proved to be a transgression at all, would be the cause of so much
+suffering?"
+
+"You admit, then, that your troubles may possibly be the result of
+transgression, and that they did not spring out of the ground."
+
+"Oh yes, I suppose it must be so; but there is such a strange
+disproportion between the transgression and the penalty, in the case you
+mention, that I cannot for one moment believe any thing about it. Why,
+what rational man in the world will believe that a little coffee, once a
+day, will entail upon a person severe rheumatism?"
+
+"To what larger transgression, my dear father, will you be more ready to
+refer it? You do not use tobacco, or rum, or opium; and I am happy in
+being able to say that you never did. You are no tea-drinker. You are no
+worshipper of the apothecary's shop. You have not, so far as I know,
+strained your knee, by over exertion, either in labor or amusement Yet,
+here you are a sufferer; and you have suffered for months. Now, how do
+you account for it?"
+
+"There is no possibility of accounting for it, my son, and why should we
+talk about it? If any thing can be done to cure it, I am sure I shall be
+glad; but though I admit that the complaint may have had a cause--and
+indeed _must_ have had--I do not think we shall ever be able to trace it
+out."
+
+The son still adhered to the opinion that the coffee was the cause of
+the father's sufferings; and there was reason for believing that the
+father was more than half convinced of it himself; only that he was too
+proud to confess it. He concluded by asking his father if he would like
+to consult me on the subject--to which he cheerfully consented.
+
+On a careful investigation of the case, I came to a full conclusion that
+the son was right in his conjectures; that the coffee was the principal
+source of his troubles; and that troubles still more serious might
+befall him unless he abandoned it; and accordingly I told him so.
+
+It was a severe trial. He was, in truth, a most inveterate
+coffee-drinker; and the greater his slavery to it had become, the
+greater his reluctance to believe it produced, on him, any injurious
+effects. He consented, at length, to leave off its use for two months,
+and see if it made any difference with him. Being, however, about half a
+convert to hydropathy, as was also his son, it was concluded, with my
+permission, to apply the cold _douche_ every day to his knee, by way of
+an adjunct to the abstinence plan. No change was made in his diet; as,
+in fact, very little was needed after the coffee had been removed. "But
+one thing is needful," at the same meal, had long been his motto; and he
+was never excessive in the use of even that.
+
+The coffee was laid aside, and resolution was put to the test. He
+suffered in his feelings for want of his accustomed stimulus during the
+first month; but during the second, very little. In about five weeks
+after I saw and had prescribed for him, I met him one day, by accident,
+and inquired about his lameness. "Very much better," said he, smiling;
+"but no thanks to you for it. It is the _douche_ which is curing me." I
+replied that I was not very solicitous to know the cause, provided he
+was cured.
+
+On a more particular inquiry I found that his lameness had nearly
+disappeared already; and what is more remarkable still, it never
+returned. As long as he lived he could walk up and down stairs nearly as
+well as I. He continued to be a water-drinker about ten years, when he
+died, as he had lived, rejoicing in his emancipation from slavery to
+coffee. He believed, most fully, in its evil effects and tendencies, and
+did not hesitate, for many years before he died, to acknowledge that
+belief. Neither his son nor myself had firmer faith in the connection of
+law with penalty, in these matters, that he. And his only regret, in
+this particular, seemed to be that he had suffered himself to remain,
+almost all his lifetime, in what he now regarded as utter ignorance. And
+yet, compared with most men of his day, he was quite enlightened.
+
+The case of Mr. W. was a pretty apt illustration of the truth of what I
+regard as the great or cardinal doctrine of temperance, faintly
+announced in Chapters XVIII., XXI., XXVIII, and elsewhere, viz., that,
+as a general rule, much more mischief is done to society at large by the
+frequent or at least habitual use of small quantities of poison, than by
+an equal aggregate quantity in much larger doses. I mean just this: The
+poisonous effects of Mr. W.'s coffee, though the amount daily taken was
+trifling, produced a greater aggregate of mischief, in the end, than if
+the same amount of poison had been applied in a very short time. A pint
+of rum drank in a single day will do much less mischief to the human
+constitution, than if divided into twenty _small_ doses and two of them
+are taken every day for ten days. In the first case the effect will be
+severe, but temporary; in the second, it will seem to be trifling, but
+there will be an accumulation of ill effects, a heaping up, as it were,
+of combustible matter in the system, till by and by when an igniting
+spark comes to be applied to the pile, lo! we have an explosion.
+
+Some of the hydropathists who knew the facts concerning Mr. W.,--for the
+case did not occur in a corner,--tried to make it appear, perhaps in
+all honesty, that he was cured by the cold _douche_. Now I have no
+disposition to deny, wholly, its good effects. I have given you the
+facts just as they were. Yet I have not a doubt that had he returned to
+his coffee, the same troubles or others of equal magnitude would have
+fallen to his lot again, despite the influences of the _douche_. In
+truth, I know of no sensible hydropathist who, in such a case, would
+rely upon the _douche_ alone; which is to concede, practically, all that
+I desire to claim.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LIV.
+
+THE OPIUM PILL BOX.
+
+
+The statements of the following chapter will include a confession of one
+of the principal faults of my life,--a fault, moreover, which, as a
+physician, I ought to have guarded against with the most assiduous and
+unwearied care. For no man more than the medical man, is bound to let
+his light shine--especially in the matter of general temperance, in such
+a manner that others may be benefited by it.
+
+When, in the beginning of my medical career, I attempted to establish a
+temperance society, though I was exceedingly free from the charge of
+using distilled liquors, according to the tenor and spirit of the
+pledge, yet exposed, as I was, to colds, and delicate in constitution,
+and above all, particularly liable, in the daily routine of business, to
+temptation, I was yet one of those who lay aside one stimulus and retain
+or resort to another. I did not, indeed, use my substitute with much
+freedom, at first. The example daily before me, which was alluded to in
+Chapter LII, was sufficient, one would think, to deter me from excess;
+and so it proved. All I did for some time, whenever I had been
+peculiarly exposed and feared I had taken cold, was to go and swallow a
+small pill--say about a grain--of opium.
+
+But as usually happens in such cases, though the pill seemed to remove
+all tendency to cold, or in other words to cure me for the time, the
+necessity for recurring to it became more and more frequent and
+imperious, till I was, at length, a confirmed opium taker. And
+yet--strange to say it--all the while I regarded myself as a rigid
+temperance man; nay, I was a violent opposer of the use even of opium as
+a daily stimulus, in the case of everybody but myself. My apology
+was--and here was the ground of self-deception--that I only used it as
+a medicine, or rather as a medical means of prevention.
+
+It is, however, quite obvious to my own apprehension now, that a
+substance is hardly entitled to the name of medicine, in any ordinary
+sense of the term, which is used nearly or quite every day. Yet to this
+stage of opium taking I soon arrived. Nay, I went even much farther than
+this, and was, at length, pretty well established in the wretched habit
+of using this poisonous drug three times a day.
+
+In the summer of 1830, while under the full habitual influence of opium,
+I had a slight attack of dysentery. It even went so far as to derange
+all my habits, and to break in, among the rest, upon my opium taking.
+Opium or laudanum was, indeed, included in the prescription of my
+physician,--for I did not wholly rely on my own judgment in the
+case,--but as a habitual daily stimulus, at certain fixed hours, it was,
+of course, omitted. As I began to recover, however, my old desire for
+the opium pill began to recur, at the accustomed former hours, and with
+all its wonted imperiousness.
+
+In a moment of reflection, reason resumed her throne, and the inquiry
+came up, whether I should ever again wear the chain which had been
+temporarily loosened. After a short debate, it was decided in the
+negative. But a second question soon came up, whether I could keep my
+resolution. This was a matter of serious inquiry, and it caused a
+somewhat lengthy mental discussion.
+
+During the discussion a new thought struck me. It was a child's thought,
+perhaps; and yet it was interesting, and not to be despised for its
+simplicity and childishness. It was that I would take my opium, what I
+had in the house, and after carefully enclosing it in my pill box, would
+make use of the box as a nucleus for the twine I was daily using. "When
+I am inclined to break my resolution," thought I, "nothing shall be done
+till I have unwound the ball of twine. I shall thus gain a little time
+for reflection; and perhaps before I come to the opium, I may permit
+reason to return and to mount the throne. The trial shall, at all
+events, be made."
+
+My resolution was carried into effect, and steadily adhered to. The
+opium was fairly entombed in the twine, where, for aught I know, it
+still remains. Most certainly I never saw it more; nor have I ever
+tasted any of the opium or laudanum family, from that day to the
+present, whether in sickness or in health.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LV.
+
+BLEEDING AT THE LUNGS.
+
+
+Having occasion to go to the metropolis, one day, I took the most
+expeditious public conveyance which the times and the season afforded.
+It was January, 1832. Railroad cars were not so much in vogue that I
+could step into one of them, and, unless in case of accident, be there
+in four or five hours, as I now could. It required something like
+twenty-four hours to perform the journey I proposed, especially in the
+winter.
+
+We started at three o'clock in the morning. It had recently snowed, the
+snow was deep, and the path was not well broken. Of course it was not
+daylight when we set out, and as it was cloudy, it proved, as is not
+unfrequent in such cases, to be the darkest time in the whole
+twenty-four hours. However, we did as well as we could--driver, horses,
+passengers, and all.
+
+Our company consisted of seven males and two females. The coach was
+small, and we filled it to the brim. The weather was by no means very
+cold for the season; at least, it was not extreme. There was a sound of
+rain,--the January thaw, perhaps, as we are wont to call it,--but as
+yet, fortunately for us, the storm had not begun.
+
+We had proceeded about ten miles, and the day had not yet dawned, when,
+in passing around the point of a hill and winding our way among the deep
+drifts, our driver and his charge missed the path, and we were
+precipitated down a steep bank. The horses stopped immediately. Every
+effort was made to rescue us from the stage-coach, which was lying on
+its side, deeply embedded in the snow. I was so situated at the first
+moment after the overturn, that most of the affrighted passengers made
+use of me as a stepping-stone in their endeavors to reach the door
+above, which was either opened or broken. At last we were all fairly
+outside of the coach; no one appeared to be seriously injured.
+
+As we were at a considerable distance from any dwelling-house, and as
+the stage-coach was somewhat broken, and the harnesses torn, it required
+a full hour to put things to rights, so as to enable us to proceed.
+Meanwhile, though the weather was not very cold, it was quite chilly.
+Some of the passengers stood still or sat still; others walked about.
+The day had broken when we renewed our journey.
+
+The sleighing here was better than at the place where we started. At the
+next stage-office we exchanged our coach for a huge sleigh, which was
+not only more commodious than the coach, but more easily drawn over the
+ground, especially for a short time.
+
+About noon it began to rain. Soon the travelling became worse again, and
+our progress was slow and tedious. To me, the tediousness of the journey
+was increased by a lame shoulder--the effect either of the overturn, or
+of being used as a stair when the passengers made their sudden exit, or
+of both. No bones were broken, nor joints dislocated; though there were
+several considerable bruises.
+
+Our other troubles were not yet over. In the midst of a violent rain,
+and at a considerable distance from any public house, our sleigh broke
+down, and we were obliged to send for a wagon. In making the exchange,
+moreover, we were more or less exposed to the storm. I for one became
+considerably wet, and did not get perfectly dry till we reached the
+metropolis.
+
+We arrived at evening at a large thoroughfare, forty miles or more from
+our point of destination, when, after procuring a comfortable supper and
+a good sleigh, with a new relay of horses, we set out to perform the
+remainder of our journey. This was fortunate and very expeditious. We
+reached our place of destination just before midnight, having travelled
+the last forty-two miles in little more than four hours. This was almost
+equal to railroad speed; but it was good sleighing, and we had with us,
+in the sleigh, the United States mail, which imposed on the driver a
+necessity of being as expeditious as the nature of the case would admit.
+For even then, we had been twenty-one hours in making our passage.
+
+I soon discovered that I had taken a severe cold during the journey; nor
+do I believe my opium itself would have saved me. My only medicine was a
+warm bed, into which I threw myself as soon as possible. In the morning
+I repaired as early as I could to a boarding-house, in which a friend to
+whom I had previously written, had made ready a place for me.
+
+I was at first quite ill; but in the hope that a few days of rest would
+restore me, I was not particularly anxious about myself, though some of
+my friends were so. Several individuals called to inquire after my
+health--nearly every one of whom pressed me to take medicine.
+
+The second day after my arrival I began to expectorate a little blood.
+Those who were familiarly acquainted with my consumptive tendencies
+became greatly alarmed. They thought me not only presumptuous, because I
+took nothing, but absolutely and carelessly ungrateful. And as I refused
+to dose myself, they pressed me to send for a physician.
+
+Yielding, at length, to their importunity, they called one of the oldest
+and best physicians in the metropolis. He was an eccentric man, but he
+had the full confidence of the better sort of people, and richly
+deserved it; and I knew I should not be advised by him hastily. He was
+acquainted with my peculiar views, at least in part. Besides, I should
+not be obliged to follow his counsel implicitly. I should still be my
+own physician. My disease had not, at least thus far, impaired my
+intellect or taken out of my hands my free agency.
+
+The doctor remained with me half an hour or so, during which time I made
+him acquainted, as perfectly as I could, with my whole case. My good
+friends, many of them, sat around waiting almost with impatience, to
+hear him bid them or me to do some great thing--for great men though
+some of them were, they were not great in matters pertaining to health
+and disease. They were born, several of them, in the eighteenth
+century.
+
+At length the time for prescription and departure had arrived, and my
+good brother and father of the lancet rose very deliberately, and said
+with great gravity, "You will be obliged to stay in your room a few
+days, and keep both your body and mind as quiet as possible. For the
+most part, it will be well to maintain a recumbent position. For food,
+use a little water gruel. In following this course, I think you will
+very soon find yourself convalescent." Then, with a sort of stiff bow,
+that every one who knew him could pardon in so excellent a man, he said,
+"Good-morning, sir,--Good-morning, gentlemen;" and was making the best
+of his way to the door of the chamber. "Will it not be needful for you
+to call again?" I said to him. "I shall be most happy to call," said he,
+"should it be necessary; but I doubt very much whether my advice will be
+any farther required."
+
+My friends were very much astonished that he did not prescribe active
+medicine. "What can it mean?" they asked again and again. For myself,
+too, I must confess that I was not a little disappointed. Not that I had
+any considerable attachment to pills and pill boxes,--such a confidence
+had gone by long before, as you know,--but I verily thought my
+particular tendencies to pulmonary consumption demanded a little
+tincture of digitalis, or something in the shape of strong medicine.
+
+But the physician knew my theories, better than he knew the power of
+that habit whose chains, in this respect, he had long ago escaped. For I
+learned afterwards, much better than I then knew, that so feeble was his
+faith in medicine, at least in all ordinary cases, that whenever the
+intelligence of his patients would at all warrant it, he prescribed, as
+he had for me, just nothing at all, but left every thing to be done by
+Nature and good common-sense attendants. This was, in fact, just what he
+attempted to do here. He doubtless supposed my friends were nearly as
+well informed in the matter as I was; and that I was as fully
+emancipated in practice as I was in theory.
+
+"How much drugging and dosing might be saved," I said to myself, when I
+came to reflect properly on the subject, "if mankind were duly trained
+to place a proper reliance on Nature and Nature's laws, instead of
+fastening all their faith on the mere exhibition of some mystic powder
+or pill or tincture--or, at best, a few drops of some irritant or
+poison. It is their ignorance that makes their physicians' and
+apothecaries' bills so heavy, and the grave-digger's calling so good and
+so certain."
+
+It is hardly necessary for me to say that I followed the advice which
+had been so wisely given, and which, after all, was but the echo of my
+own judgment, when that judgment was freely exercised. My friends were
+not satisfied at first; but when they saw that I was slowly recovering,
+they submitted with as good a grace as they could. The fact was that
+they had no court of appeal. They had selected a man who was at the head
+of his profession, and whose voice, in the medical world, and as a
+medical man, wherever he was known, was law. Had some young man given
+such "old woman's" advice, as they would most certainly have regarded
+it, they would have appealed to a higher court.
+
+No man ever did better, when placed in similar circumstances, with the
+aid of medicine, than I did without it. In two weeks, at farthest, I was
+as well as I had been at any time in ten years or even twenty. What more
+or greater could I have asked? What more could my friends have expected?
+What more could have been possible? Could Hippocrates or Galen have done
+more?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LVI.
+
+BUTTER EATERS.
+
+
+About the year 1833, I became somewhat intimately acquainted with the
+dietetic and general physical habits of a young woman in a family where
+I was a boarder, whose case will be instructive.
+
+She was about twenty-five years of age, and resided in a family that had
+adopted her as their own, her parents being unknown. She possessed a
+good natural constitution; and was, for the most part, of good habits.
+If there was any considerable defect of constitution, it consisted in a
+predominance of the biliary and lymphatic over the nervous and sanguine
+temperaments. Yet she was not wholly wanting in that susceptibility, not
+to say activity, which the sanguine temperament is wont to impart. But
+the same necessity which is so often the mother of invention, is also
+sometimes the progenitor of a good share of activity; and this was, in a
+remarkable degree, the lot of Miss Powell.
+
+Although her skin was not by any means fair, it was not a bad skin. It
+was firm in its structure, and very little susceptible of those slight
+but ever recurring diseased conditions in which persons of a sanguine
+temperament so often find themselves involved. Such I mean to say was
+her natural physical condition, when uninfluenced by any considerable
+practical errors.
+
+And yet I had not been many months one of her more intimate
+acquaintances, ere her face--hitherto so smooth and transparent--became
+as rough and congested as any drunkard's face ever was, only the
+eruption was more minute. It was what the common opinion of that region
+would have called a rash. It came on suddenly, was visible for a short
+time, and then gradually disappeared, leaving, in some instances, a
+branny substance, consisting of a desquamation of the cuticle.
+
+When the eruption had once fairly disappeared, her skin was as smooth as
+ever. Then again, however, in a little time, its roughness would return,
+to an extent which, to young ladies, is usually quite annoying. Young
+men, in general, are not so much disturbed by a little roughness of the
+skin, as the young of the other sex.
+
+My particular acquaintance with her habits and annoyances continued as
+many as four or five years. During this period there were several
+ebbings and flowings of this tide of eruptive disease. My curiosity,
+towards the end of this period, was so much excited that I sought and
+obtained of her an opportunity for conversation on the subject. The
+result was as curious as it was, to me, unexpected. It appeared, in the
+sequel, that she understood, perfectly well, the whole matter, and held
+the control of her cutaneous system in her own hands, nearly as much as
+if she had been a mere piece of mechanism. She had not sought for
+medical advice, because she knew the true method of cure for her
+complaints as well as anybody could have told her.
+
+In truth, she cured it about once a year, simply by omitting the cause
+which produced it. This she had found out was butter, salted butter, of
+course, eaten with her meals. She had somehow discovered that this
+article of food was the real cause of her disease, and that entire
+abstemiousness in this particular, would, in a reasonable time, remove
+it.
+
+I inquired why, after a long period of abstinence from butter, she ever
+returned to its use. Her reply was that she was too fond of it to omit
+it entirely and forever. She preferred to use it till the eruption began
+to be quite troublesome, which was sometimes many weeks; then abstain
+from it till she recovered, and then return to it. This gave her an
+opportunity to use it from one-third to one-half of the time; and this
+she thought greatly preferable to entire abstinence.
+
+At this time I did not press her to abandon wholly an article of food,
+which, though partially rejected, was yet slowly producing derangement
+of her digestive system, and might, in time, result in internal disease,
+which would be serious and irremediable. I did not do it; first, because
+I knew my advice would not be very acceptable; secondly, for want of
+that full measure of gospel benevolence which leads us to try to do
+good, even in places where we have no right to expect it will be
+received; and, lastly, no doubt for want of moral courage.
+
+Were I to live my life over again, particularly my medical life, I would
+pray and labor for a little more of what I am accustomed to call holy
+boldness. By this term I do not mean _meddlesomeness_,--for this is by
+no means to be commended,--but true Christian or apostolic boldness.
+
+Of late years the young woman above referred to has been in
+circumstances which, I have reason to believe, practically precluded the
+use of the offending article. I meet her occasionally, but always with a
+smooth face, which greatly confirms my prepossessions.[H] Happy would it
+be for a multitude of our race if their circumstances were such as to
+exclude this and many other articles of food and drink which are well
+known to injure them.
+
+One instance occurred in the very neighborhood of the foregoing, which,
+though I received it at second hand, is not a little striking, and is
+wholly reliable. A certain young mother--the wife of a merchant in easy
+circumstances, was so excessively fond of butter, that, though she was a
+dyspeptic, and knew it increased her dyspepsia, she used to eat it in a
+manner the most objectionable which could possibly have been devised.
+
+For example: she would take a ball of this article,--say half or
+three-quarters of a pound,--pierce it with the point of a firm stick,
+and having heated it, on all sides, over the fire, till the whole
+surface was softened, would then plunge it into a vessel of flour, in
+such a manner that the latter would adhere to it on all sides, till a
+great deal was absorbed by the butter. Having done this, she would again
+heat the surface of the ball and again dip or roll it in the flour. This
+alternate melting the surface of the ball and rolling it in flour, was
+continued till the whole became a mass of heated or scorched flour,
+entirely full of the melted butter, and as completely indigestible as it
+possibly could be, when she would leisurely sit down at a table and eat
+the whole of it.
+
+Did it make her sick?--you will ask. It did, indeed, and she expected it
+would. She would go immediately to bed, as soon as the huge bolus was
+swallowed, and lie there a day or two, perhaps two or three days.
+Occasionally such a surfeit cost her the confinement of a whole week.
+
+It is truly surprising that any Christian woman should thus make a beast
+of herself, for the sake of the momentary indulgence of the appetite;
+but so it is. I have met with a few such. Happily, however, conduct so
+low and bestial is not so frequent among females as males, though quite
+too frequent among the former so long as a single case is found, which
+could be prevented by reasoning or even by authority.
+
+There is one thing concerning butter which deserves notice, and which it
+may not be amiss to mention in this place. What we call butter, in this
+country,--what is used, I mean, at our tables,--is properly pickled or
+salted butter. Now, I suppose it is pretty well understood, that in some
+of the countries of Europe no such thing as salted or pickled butter is
+used or known. They make use of milk, cream, and a little fresh butter;
+but that is all. In the kingdom of Brazil, among the native population,
+at least, no such thing as butter, in any shape, has ever yet been
+known.
+
+Fresh butter is sufficiently difficult of digestion; but salted butter
+is much more so; and this is the main point to which I wish to call your
+attention. Why, what is our object in salting down butter? Is it not to
+prevent change? Would it not otherwise soon become acid and
+disagreeable? And does not salting it so harden or toughen it, or, as it
+were, fix it, that it will resist the natural tendency to decomposition
+or putrefaction?
+
+But will not this same "fixation," so to call it, prepare it to resist
+changes within the stomach as well as outside of it; or, in other words,
+prevent, in a measure, the work of digestion? Most unquestionably it
+will. And herein is the stronghold of objection to this article. Hence,
+too, the reason why it causes eruptions on the skin. The irritation
+begins on the lining membrane of the stomach. The latter is first coated
+with eruption; and, after a time, by what is called sympathy, the same
+tendency is manifested in the face.
+
+These things ought to be well understood. There is great ignorance on
+this subject, and what is known is generally the _ipse dixit_ of
+somebody. Reasons there are none for using salted butter. Or, if any,
+they are few, and frequently very flimsy and weak. Let us have hygiene
+taught us, were it only that we may know for ourselves the right and
+wrong of these matters.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[H] Since this was penned, the young woman has died of erysipelas. Can
+it be that she has been compelled, in this form, to pay a fearful
+penalty for her former abuses? One might think that twenty years of
+reformation would have worn out the diseased tendencies. Perhaps she
+recurred, in later years, unknown to the writer, to her former favorite
+article.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LVII.
+
+HOT HOUSES AND CONSUMPTION.
+
+
+If any individual in the wide world needs to breathe the pure
+atmospheric mixture of the Most High,--I mean a compound of gases,
+consisting, essentially, of about twenty parts of oxygen and eighty of
+nitrogen,--it is the consumptive person. Mr. Thackrah, a foreign writer
+on health, says, "That though we are eating animals, we are breathing
+animals much more; for we subsist more on air than we do on food and
+drink."
+
+And yet I know of no class of people, who, as a class, breathe other
+mixtures, and all sorts of impurities, more than our consumptive people.
+First, their employments are very apt to be sedentary. Under the
+impression that their constitutions are not equal to the servitude of
+out-of-door work, agricultural or mechanical, they are employed, more
+generally, within doors. They are very often students; for they usually
+have active, not to say brilliant minds. And persons who stay in the
+house, whether for the sake of study or anything else, are exceedingly
+apt to breathe more or less of impure air.
+
+Secondly, it is thought by many that since consumptive people are
+feeble, they ought to be kept very warm. Now I have no disposition to
+defend the custom of going permanently chilly, in the case of any
+individual, however strong and healthy he may be; for it is most
+certainly, in the end, greatly debilitating. It would be worse than
+idle--it would be wicked--for consumptive people to go about shivering,
+day after day, since it would most rapidly and unequivocally accelerate
+their destruction.
+
+And yet, every degree of atmospheric heat, whether it is applied to the
+internal surface of the lungs through the medium of atmospheric air, or
+externally to the skin, is quite as injurious as habitual cold; and
+this in two ways: First, it weakens the internal power to generate heat,
+which, no doubt, resides very largely in the lungs. Secondly, it takes
+from them a part of that oxygen or vital air which they would otherwise
+inhale, and gives them in return a proportional quantity of carbonic
+acid gas, which, except in the very small proportion in which the Author
+of nature has commingled it with the oxygen and nitrogen of the
+atmosphere, is, to every individual, in effect, a rank poison.
+
+Hence it is that those who have feeble lungs, or whose ancestors had,
+should pay much attention to the quality of the air they breathe,
+especially its temperature. And this they should do, not only for the
+_sake_ of its temperature, but also for the sake of its purity. Such a
+caution is always needful; but its necessity is increased in proportion
+to the feebleness of the lungs and their tendency to suppuration,
+bleeding, etc.
+
+I was once called to see a young woman (in the absence of her regular
+physician) who was bleeding at the lungs. She had bled occasionally
+before, and was under the general care of two physicians; but a sudden
+and more severe hemorrhage than usual had alarmed her friends, and, _in
+the absence of better counsel_, they sought, temporarily, the advice of
+a stranger.
+
+It was a cold, spring day, and in order to keep up a proper temperature
+in her room, I had no doubt that a little fire was needful. But instead
+of a heat of 65° in the morning and something more in the afternoon, I
+found her sitting in a temperature, at ten o'clock in the forenoon, of
+not less than 75° or 80°. On inquiry, I was surprised to find that the
+temperature of her room was seldom much lower than this, and that
+sometimes it was much higher. I was still more surprised when I
+ascertained that she slept at night in a small room adjoining her
+sitting-room, and that a fire was kept all night in the latter, for her
+special benefit.
+
+No wonder her cough was habitually severe! No wonder she was subject to
+hemorrhage, from the irritated vessels of the lungs! The wonder was that
+she was not worse. The greatest wonder of all was, however, that two
+sensible physicians should, for weeks if not for months, have
+overlooked this circumstance. For I could not learn, on inquiry, that a
+single word had been said by either of them on the subject.
+
+If you should be inclined to ask whether she had no exercise in the more
+open and pure air, either on horseback or in a carriage, the reply would
+be, none at all. Horseback exercise was even regarded as hazardous, and
+other forms of exertion had not been urged, or, that I could learn, so
+much as recommended.
+
+I was anxious to meet her physicians, that I might communicate my views
+and feelings directly to them; but as this was not convenient I gave
+such directions as the nature of the case seemed to require, requesting
+them to follow my advice till the arrival of her physicians, and then to
+lay the whole case before them. My advice was, to reduce the temperature
+of the sitting-room as low as possible, and yet not produce a sensation
+of chilliness, and to have her sleeping-room absolutely cold, taking
+care to protect her body, however, by proper covering. I also
+recommended exercise in the open air, such as she could best endure; and
+withal, a plain, unstimulating diet.
+
+What was done, I never knew for many months. At last, however, I met
+with a neighbor of the family, one day, who told me that the young
+woman's physicians entirely approved of my suggestions, and that by
+following them out for some time, she partially recovered her wonted
+measure of health.
+
+Whether she recovered entirely, I never knew. The far greater
+probability is, that she remained more comfortable through the summer
+and autumn, but that the injudicious management of the next winter and
+spring reduced her to her former condition, or to a condition much
+worse. People are exceedingly forgetful even of their dearest rights and
+interests. They may, perhaps, exert themselves in the moment of great
+and pressing danger; but as soon as the danger appears to be somewhat
+over they relapse into their former stupidity.
+
+There is, however, much reason for believing that consumptive people
+might often live on many years beyond their present scanty limit, could
+they be made to feel that their recovery depends, almost wholly, on a
+strict obedience to the laws of health, and not on taking medicine. If
+Miss H., by strict obedience, could recover from a dangerous condition,
+and enjoy six or eight months of tolerable health, is it not highly
+probable, to say the least, that a rigid pursuance of the same course
+would have kept her from a relapse into her former low and dangerous
+condition?
+
+It is in this way, as I suppose, that consumption is to be cured, if
+cured at all. It is to be _postponed_. In some cases it can be postponed
+one year; in some, five years; in some, ten, fifteen, or twenty; in a
+few, forty or fifty. It is in this respect with consumption, however, as
+it is with other diseases. In a strictly pathological sense, no disease
+is ever entirely cured. In one way or another its effects are apt to be
+permanent. The only important difference, in this particular, between
+consumption and other diseases, is, that since the lungs are vital
+organs, more essential to life and health than some other organs or
+parts, the injury inflicted on them is apt to be deeper, and more likely
+to shorten, with certainty, the whole period of our existence.
+
+Connected with this subject, viz., the treatment of consumption, there
+is probably much more of quackery than in any other department of
+disease which could possibly be mentioned. One individual who makes
+pretensions to cure, in this formidable disease, and who has written and
+spoken very largely on the subject, heralds his own practice with the
+following proclamation: "Five thousand persons cured of consumption in
+one year, by following the directions of this work." Another declares he
+has cured some sixty or seventy out of about one hundred and twenty
+patients of this description, for whom he has been called to prescribe.
+
+Now, if by curing this disease is meant the production of such changes
+in the system, that it is no more likely to recur than to attack any
+other person who has not yet been afflicted with it, then such
+statements or insinuations as the foregoing are not merely groundless,
+but absolutely and unqualifiedly false, and their authors ought to know
+it. For I have had ample opportunity of watching their practice, and
+following it up to the end, and hence speak what I know, and testify
+what I have seen. But if they only mean by cure, the _postponement_ of
+disease for a period of greater or less duration, then the case is
+altered; though, in that case, what becomes of their skill? No book
+worthy of the name can be consulted by a consumptive person without his
+deriving from it many valuable hints, which if duly attended to may
+assist him in greatly prolonging his days; and the same may be said of
+the prescriptions of the physician. Yet, I repeat, it is a misnomer, in
+either case, to call the improvement a cure.
+
+Consumptive people continue to live, whenever their lives are prolonged,
+as the consequence of what they do to promote their general health. One
+is roused to a little exercise, which somewhat improves his condition,
+and prolongs his days. Another is induced to pay an increased regard to
+temperature, and he lives on. Another abandons all medicine, and throws
+himself into the open arms of Nature, and thus prolongs, for a few
+months or a few years, his existence. If this is _cure_, then we may
+have all or nearly all of our consumptives cured, some of them a great
+many times over. Some few aged practitioners may be found to have cured,
+during the long years of their medical practice, more than five thousand
+persons of this description.
+
+There is no higher or larger sense than this in which any individual has
+cured five thousand, or five hundred, or even fifty persons a year, of
+consumption. On this, a misguided, misinformed public may reply: Many,
+indeed, revive a little, as the lamp sometimes brightens up in its last
+moments; but this very revival or flickering only betokens a more speedy
+and certain dissolution.
+
+On the other hand, predisposition to consumption no more renders it
+necessary that we should die of this disease in early life, at an
+average longevity of less than thirty years, than the loading and
+priming of a musket or piece of artillery renders it necessary that
+there should be an immediate or early explosion. Without an igniting
+spark there will be no discharge in a thousand years. In like manner, a
+person may be "loaded and primed" for consumption fifty years, if not
+even a hundred, without the least necessity of "going off," provided
+that the igniting spark can be kept away. Our power to protect life,
+both in the case of consumption and many more diseases, is in proportion
+to our power to withhold the igniting spark.
+
+And herein it is that medical skill is needful in this dreadful disease,
+and ought to be frequently and largely invoked. If the estimate which
+has been made by Prof. Hooker, of Yale College, that one in five of the
+population of the northern United States die of consumption, is correct,
+then not less than two millions of the present inhabitants of New
+England, New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, are destined, as things now
+are, to die of this disease. What a thought! Can it be so?
+
+Can it be that two millions of the ten millions now on the stage of
+action in the northern United States, are not only _predisposed_ to
+droop and die, but are laid under a constitutional necessity of so
+doing? Must the igniting spark be applied? Must the disease be "touched
+off" with hot or impure air, by hard colds, by excitements of body and
+mind, and in a thousand and one other ways? People are not wholly
+ignorant on this great subject. Would they but _do_ as well as they
+_know_, the fatal igniting spark would be much oftener and longer
+withheld; and, indeed, in many instances, would never prove the
+immediate cause of dissolution. The lamp of life would burn
+on--_sometimes, it may be, rather feebly_--till its oil was wholly
+exhausted, as it always ought. Man has no more occasion, as a matter of
+necessity, to die of consumption, than the lamp or the candle.
+
+This, if true,--and is it not?--should be most welcome intelligence in a
+country where, at some seasons and in particular localities, one-fourth
+of all who die, perish of this disease. In March, 1856, twenty-one
+persons out of eighty who died in Boston in a single week, were reported
+as having died of consumption; and in June of the same year, the
+proportion was nearly as great. In Newton, a few miles from Boston, the
+proportion for the last ten years has been also about one in four.
+
+But place the proportion for the whole northern United States, at one in
+five only, or even one in six. Yet even at this rate, the annual
+mortality for New York or New England, must be about twelve or fourteen
+thousand. Yet it seems to excite little if any surprise. But when or
+where has the cholera, the yellow fever, or the plague depopulated a
+country of three millions of people, for each succeeding year, at the
+rate of twelve thousand annually, or one hundred and twenty thousand
+every ten years?
+
+One reason why the statements I have made, of the possible postponement
+of consumptive disease, should be most welcome intelligence, is found in
+the fact that they inspire with the hope of _living_. The ordinary
+expectation that those who inherit a consumptive tendency must die
+prematurely, has been fatal to thousands. Mankind, in more respects than
+one, tend to become what they are taken to be. If we take them to be
+early destined to the tomb, they go there almost inevitably. There is, I
+grant, one most fortunate drawback upon this tendency. Most people who
+have the truly consumptive character, are disposed to disbelieve it.
+They are generally "buoyant and hopeful," which, in some degree,
+neutralizes the effect of sombre faces, and grave and prognosticating
+jeremiades.
+
+It will not be out of place to present the patient reader with an
+anecdote, which may or may not be true, but which I received as truth
+from the people of the neighborhood where the facts which it discloses
+are said to have occurred.
+
+In the eastern part of Connecticut, not many years since, a young man
+lay on his bed, very feeble and greatly emaciated, almost gone, as
+everybody supposed but himself, with pulmonary consumption. And yet, up
+to that very hour, the thought that his disease was consumption, had
+never obtained a lodgment in his own mind for a moment. On the contrary,
+he was still fondly hoping that sooner or later he should recover.
+
+It was fortunately about the middle of the forenoon one day,--an hour
+when his body and mind were in the best condition to endure it,--that
+his listening ear first caught from those around him the word
+_consumption_. Starting up, he said, "Do you think my disease is
+consumption?" They frankly told him their fears. "And do you think," he
+added, "that I must die?" They did not conceal longer their real
+sentiments.
+
+He was for a few moments greatly distressed, and seemed almost
+overpowered. At length, however, a reaction came, when, raising his head
+a little, he deliberately but firmly exclaimed, "I can't die, and I
+won't die." After a few moments' pause and reflection, he said, "I must
+be got up." His attendants protested against the effort, but it was to
+no purpose. Nothing would satisfy him but the attempt. He was bolstered
+up in his bed, but the effort brought on a severe fit of coughing, and
+he was obliged to lie down again.
+
+The next forenoon, at about the same hour, he renewed the request to be
+got up. The result was nearly as before. The process, however, was
+repeated from day to day, till at length, to the great joy and surprise
+of his friends, he could sit in his bed fifteen or twenty minutes. It is
+true that it always slightly increased the severity of his cough; but
+the paroxysm was no worse at the twentieth trial than at the first,
+while he evidently gained, during the effort, a little muscular
+strength. It was not many weeks before he could sit up in bed for an
+hour or more, with a good degree of comfort.
+
+"Now," said he, "I must be taken out of bed and placed in a chair." At
+first his friends remonstrated, but they at length yielded and made the
+attempt. It was too much for him; but he persevered, and after a few
+repeated daily efforts, as before, at length succeeded. Continuing to do
+what he could, from day to day, he was, ere long, able to sit up a
+considerable time twice a day.
+
+He now made a third advance. He begged to be placed in an open carriage.
+As I must be brief, I will only say that, after many efforts and some
+failures, he at length succeeded, and was able to ride abroad several
+miles a day, whenever the weather was at all favorable. Nor was his
+cough at all aggravated by it. On the contrary, as his strength
+increased, it became rather less harassing and exhausting.
+
+One more advance was made. He must be helped, as he said, upon a horse.
+It was doubtful, even to himself, whether he had strength enough to
+endure exercise in this form; but he was determined to try it. The
+attempt was completely successful, and it was scarcely a week before he
+could ride a mile or two without very much fatigue.
+
+The final result was such a degree of recovery as enabled him to ride
+about on horseback several miles a day for six years. He was never quite
+well, it is true, but he was comfortable, and, to some extent, useful.
+He could do errands. He could perform many little services at home and
+abroad. He could, at least, take care of himself. At the end of this
+period, however, his strength gave way, and he sank peacefully to the
+tomb. He was completely worn out.
+
+Now the principal lesson to be learned from this story is obvious.
+_Determination_ to live is almost equivalent to _power_ to live. A
+strong will, in other words, is almost omnipotent. Of the good effects
+of this strong determination, in case of protracted and dangerous
+disease of this sort, I have had no small share of experience, as the
+reader has already seen in Chapter XXIII.
+
+Another fact may be stated under this head. A young man in southern
+Massachusetts, a teacher, was bleeding at the lungs, and was yielding at
+length to the conviction--for he had studied the subjects of health and
+disease--that he must ere long perish from consumption. I told him there
+was no necessity of such a result, and directed him to the appropriate
+means of escape. He followed my directions, and after some time regained
+his health. Ten or twelve years have now passed away, and few young men
+have done more hard work during that time than he; and, indeed, few are
+able, at the present moment, to do more. It is to be observed, however,
+that he made an entire change in his dietetic habits, to which he still
+adheres. He avoids all stimulating food--particularly all animal
+food--and uses no drink but water.
+
+I did not advise him, while bleeding, to mount a hard-trotting horse,
+and trot away as hard as he could, and let the blood gush forth as it
+pleased. It is a prescription which I have not yet hazarded. I might do
+so in some circumstances, when I was sure of being aided by that almost
+omnipotent determination of which I have elsewhere spoken. I might do it
+occasionally; but it would be a rare combination of circumstances that
+would compel me. I might do it in the case of a resolute sea captain,
+who insisted on it, would not take _no_ for an answer, and would assume
+the whole responsibility. I might and would do it for such a man as Dr.
+Kane.
+
+I have, myself, bled slightly at the lungs; but while I did not, on the
+one hand, allow myself to be half frightened to death, I did not, on the
+other hand, dare to meet the hemorrhagic tendency by any violent
+measures; not even by the motion of a trotting horse. I preferred the
+alternative of moderate exercise in the open air, with a recumbent
+position in a cool room, having my body well protected by needful
+additional clothing, with deep breathing to expand gently my chest, and
+general cheerfulness. But I have treated on this subject--my own general
+experience--at sufficient length elsewhere.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LVIII.
+
+POISONING BY A PAINTED PAIL.
+
+
+A child about a week old, but naturally very sensitive and irritable,
+became, one night, unusually restless and rather feverish, with
+derangement of the bowels. The condition of the latter was somewhat
+peculiar, and I was not a little puzzled to account for it. There was
+nothing in the condition of the mother which seemed to me adequate to
+the production of such effects. She was as healthy as delicate females
+usually are in similar circumstances.
+
+The derangement of the child's bowels continued and increased, and I was
+more and more puzzled. Was it any thing, I said to myself, which was
+imbibed or received from the mother? Just at the time, I happened to be
+reading what Dr. Whitlaw, a foreign medical writer, says of the effects
+which sometimes follow when cows that are suckling calves feed on
+buttercup. The poison of the latter, as he says, instead of injuring the
+cow herself, affects, most seriously, the calf, and, in some few
+instances, destroys it. This led me to search more perseveringly than I
+had before done, for a cause of so much bowel-disturbance in my young
+patient.
+
+At length I found that a wooden pail, in which water was kept for family
+use, had been but recently painted inside; and that the paint used was
+prepared in part, from the oxyde of lead, usually called white lead. On
+this I immediately fastened the charge of poisoning.
+
+My suspicions were confirmed by the fact that the mother had been more
+thirsty and feverish than usual, during a few hours previous to the
+child's first manifestation of disease, and had allowed herself to drink
+very freely of water, which was taken from the very pail on which our
+suspicions now rested. Another fact of kindred aspect was, that the
+child recovered just in proportion as the mother left off drinking from
+the painted pail, and used water which was procured in vessels of whose
+integrity we had no doubt.
+
+Most people who had any knowledge of the facts in the case, said that
+the cause I assigned could not have been the true one, since it was
+inadequate to the production of such an effect. But the truth is, we
+know very little about poisons, in their action on the living body,
+whether immediate or remote. Till this time, although I had read on it
+as much as most medical men, yet I knew--practically knew--almost as
+little as the most illiterate. Yet the subject was one with which
+professional physicians should be familiarly acquainted, if nobody else
+is. Many an individual, as we have the most abundant reason for
+believing, loses his health, if not his life, from causes which appear
+to be equally slight. A Mr. Earle, of Massachusetts, cannot swallow a
+tumbler of water containing a few particles of lead, without being made
+quite sick by it. Nor is he alone in this particular. Such sensitiveness
+to the presence of a poisonous agency is by no means uncommon. It may be
+found to exist in some few individuals in every country, and almost
+every neighborhood.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LIX.
+
+ONE DROP OF LAUDANUM.
+
+
+A babe, not yet a day old, came under my care for treatment. What the
+symptoms were, except those of nervous irritation, I have now forgotten;
+but there was ample evidence of much disturbance in the system, and the
+parents and friends were exceedingly anxious about the results.
+
+Now it was one of those cases in which a large proportion of our medical
+men are exceedingly ignorant, and only guess out the cause or causes as
+well as they can. I was thus ignorant, and would not--and as an honest
+man, _could_ not--attempt to divine the cause or give a name to the
+disease. Yet I must needs, as I verily thought, prescribe something and
+somehow. So I took a single drop of laudanum, and diluted it well, and
+made the child swallow it.
+
+He soon became easy, quite too easy, and fell into a profound sleep. So
+deep and profound, in fact, was its sleep, or rather its _stupor_, that
+I began to be afraid it never would awake. How strange, I thought within
+myself, that a single drop of this liquid should produce so much effect!
+Yet it taught me wisdom. It taught me to let medicine alone--strong
+medicine, at least--in the diseases of very young children. It also
+taught me not to give too large doses to anybody, especially to those
+who had never taken any before. The first dose, for unperverted nature,
+must be very small indeed!
+
+How much my little patient was injured, permanently, by this act of
+unpardonable carelessness, I never knew. It may have laid the foundation
+for many ills which he has since experienced, some of which have been
+severe and trying. Or, if otherwise, it may have aggravated such ills as
+had their origin in other causes. Or, if nothing more, it may have
+contributed to a delicacy and sensitiveness and feebleness of
+structure, which can never, in all probability, be fully overcome, and
+which have more to do, even with our moral tendencies and character,
+than most of us are fully aware.
+
+How much would I give to be able to blot from my history such errors and
+defects of character as this! For, though I confess to nothing worse
+than haste and carelessness, in the present instance, yet a medical man,
+like the commander in the battle field or elsewhere, has no right to be
+careless. My aged, honored father gravely insisted, all his life long,
+that no accidents, as they are termed, in human life, ever take place,
+unless there is in the first place, carelessness, somewhere. Much more
+is it true that many an individual who sickens and loses his life, is
+the victim of carelessness; or, what is the same thing, want of
+attention, when great care and attention were necessary, and the issues
+of life and death were suspended, as it were, on a thread!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LX.
+
+MRS. KIDDER'S CORDIAL.
+
+
+Should you ever go to Boston, and pass along a certain street called
+Court Street, almost to its western extremity, you may probably see at
+your left hand, in large letters of various fantastical shapes, the
+words which I have placed at the head of this chapter; viz., "MRS.
+KIDDER'S CORDIAL." Sometimes, I believe, it is called her cholera
+cordial; but it is sufficiently well known, as I suppose, by the former
+name.
+
+But how is it known? Not merely by the sign I have mentioned, fastened
+up at the door of that aforesaid shop in Court Street, but by a host of
+advertisements in the public papers; and in other cities as well as
+Boston. You may find them in almost every public house, post-office,
+railroad depot, and grocery in New England; or, as I might perhaps say,
+in the whole Union.
+
+I once had a child severely sick, at a season of the year when not only
+the Asiatic cholera prevailed, but also the cholera morbus. She was
+teething at the time, which was doubtless one cause of her illness,--to
+which however, as I suppose, other causes may have been added. In any
+event, she was in a very bad condition, and required the wisest and most
+careful medical attention. There was also a young woman in the house who
+was ill in the same way, but not so ill as the child.
+
+At that time my residence was very near the metropolis, though, as I
+have already told you, Mrs. Kidder's cordial could be had almost
+everywhere. Having occasion to go to town, I fell in with an old friend
+who kindly inquired after the health of my family. When I had told him,
+he boldly and with true Yankee impertinence, asked what I had done for
+my family patients; to which I replied, with a frankness and simplicity
+which was fully equal to his boldness, "Nothing, as yet." "Do you mean
+to do nothing?" said he, with some surprise. I told him that I did not
+know what I might do in future, but that I saw no necessity of using any
+active medication at present. "Are you not aware," I added, "that
+physicians seldom take their own medicines or give them to their
+families?"
+
+"I know very well," said he, "that physicians theorize a good deal about
+these matters; but after all, experience is the best school-master.
+Should you lose that little girl of yours, simply because you are
+anxious to carry out a theory, will you not be likely to regret it? As
+yet you have lost no children, and therefore, though much older than
+myself, you have not had all the experience which has fallen to my lot;
+and experience is the best school-master."
+
+"True," I answered, "I am not too old to learn from that experience,
+which, in a certain sense, is the basis of all just knowledge,
+especially in medicine. What you call my theory, or at least all the
+theory I have, is grounded on this same experience; not, indeed, that of
+one man in one neighborhood, nor, indeed, in one nation. I have looked
+the world over."
+
+"And you have come to the very wise conclusion, it would seem," said he,
+"that medicine never does any good, and that you will never give it
+more, except to those who are determined to have it, or will not fasten
+their faith on any thing else."
+
+"Not exactly that," I replied. "I can think of a great number of cases
+in which I would give medicine. For example: suppose one of my children
+had by the merest accident taken a dose of poison, which, if retained,
+must inevitably destroy it, I would much sooner give that child an
+active emetic--which, of course, is medicine--than stand still and see
+it die."
+
+"Very well," said he, "your child and Miss L., are, in one point of
+view, poisoned. They will probably die, if you stand still and do
+nothing; at least I have not a doubt that the little girl will. Now take
+my advice, and do something before it is too late. Give up all your
+theories and fine-spun reasonings, and do as others do, and save your
+child."
+
+As I had but little time for conversation with him, even on a highly
+important and deeply interesting subject, above all to point out the
+difference between the two cases he mentioned. I was now about ready to
+say "Good-morning," and leave him. "Stop a moment," said he, "and go
+with me to the second shop beyond that corner, and get a bottle of Mrs.
+Kidder's cordial for your sick folks."
+
+Here I smiled. "Well," said he, "you may continue to smile; but you will
+mourn in the end. I have used Mrs. Kidder's cordial in my family a good
+deal, and I assure you it is no humbug. It is all it promises. Now just
+go with me, for once, and get a bottle of it. Depend upon it, you will
+never regret it."
+
+Although my good friend had not succeeded in changing my views by his
+many affirmations, nor by his strong appeal to his experience of the
+good effects of the cordial in his own family (for I well knew he had
+lost almost all his children), I consented to go with him to the shop,
+partly to get rid of him. When we arrived I bought a bottle of the
+cordial,--I believe for fifty cents,--put it in my pocket, and carried
+it home with me.
+
+When I reached home I put away the bottle, on a shelf in our family
+closet which was quite unoccupied, and inquired about the patients. The
+little girl was rather better, it was thought, but Miss L. was still
+weak and low. I told them about the adventure with the bookseller, but
+omitted to state that I had purchased the cordial.
+
+In a very few days, by dint of good care and attention, and the blessing
+of a kind Providence, the sick were both of them much better, and I
+could leave them for a whole day at a time. My business in town demanded
+my presence, and I repaired thither again. And who should I meet, on
+getting out of the omnibus, but my old friend, who had reasoned with me
+so patiently and perseveringly, in defence of Mrs. Kidder's cordial?
+
+He inquired, almost immediately, about my family; to which I joyfully
+replied, "Better, all better. They were better in less than two days
+after I last saw you;--yes, they were a little better that very
+evening."
+
+"I told you it would be so," said he. "I never knew the cordial to fail
+when taken in season. I have lost several children, it is true; but they
+did not take it soon enough. I am profoundly glad you were in season.
+Does it not operate like a charm?"
+
+"Exactly so," said I, "if it operates at all; exactly like a charm, or
+like magic. Shall I tell you the whole story?"
+
+"By all means," he replied; "let us have the whole of it; keep nothing
+back."
+
+"Well, then, I went home, and placed the bottle of cordial on a high and
+obscure shelf, where nobody would be likely to see it, and proceeded
+with our sick folks just as before. The bottle of cordial remained
+unknown, except to myself, and untouched, and is probably untouched to
+the present hour. So you see--do you not?--how like a charm it
+operates."
+
+"Just _like_ you, doctor. Well, as long as they recovered I do not care.
+But I shall always have full faith in the medicine. I know what I know;
+and if all the world were of your opinion I could not resist a full
+belief in the efficacy of Mrs. Kidder's Cholera Cordial."
+
+My friend was not offended with me, for he was, in the main, a sensible,
+rational man. He pitied me; but, I believe from that time forth, gave up
+all hopes of my conversion. I come to this conclusion because he has
+never uttered a syllable on the subject, in my hearing, from that day to
+this hour, though I have met with him probably fifty times.
+
+There can be no doubt that were we to place full faith in the
+recuperative efforts of nature, three-fourths of our medicine--perhaps I
+may just as well say nine-tenths--would be quite as useful were it
+disposed of in the way I disposed of Mrs. Kidder's cordial, as when
+swallowed. Nay, it is possible it might be much more useful. If a sick
+person can recover without it just as well as _with_ it, he certainly
+will get well more easily, even if it should not be more quickly, than
+if he had a load of foreign substance at his stomach to be disposed of.
+In other words, to get well in spite of medicine seems to me much less
+agreeable, after all that is said in its favor, than to get well in
+Nature's own way.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXI.
+
+ALMOST RAISING THE DEAD.
+
+
+So many people regarded it, and therefore I use the phrase as a title
+for my chapter. I have heard of families of children so large that it
+was not easy to find names for them all. My chapters of confession are
+short, but very numerous, and I already begin to find it difficult to
+procure titles that are _apropos_.
+
+Mary Benham was the second daughter, in an obscure and indigent family
+that resided only a little distance from my house, just beyond the
+limits of what might properly be called the village. I do not know much
+of her early history, except that she was precocious in mind, and
+scrofulous and feeble in body.
+
+The first time I ever heard any thing about her, was one night at a
+prayer-meeting. Mr. Brown, the minister, took occasion to observe, at
+the close of the meeting, in my hearing, that he must go to Mr. Benham's
+and see Mary, for she was very ill, and it was thought would not live
+through the night.
+
+She survived, however, as she had done many times before, and as she did
+many times afterward, in similar circumstances. More than once Mr. Brown
+had been sent for--though sometimes other friends were called, as Mr.
+Brown lived more than a mile distant--to be with her and pray with her,
+in what were supposed to be her last moments. But there was still a good
+deal of tenacity of life; and she continued to live, notwithstanding all
+her expectations and those of her friends.
+
+It appeared, on inquiry, that her nervous system was very much
+disordered, and also her digestive machinery. She was also taking, from
+day to day, a large amount of active medicine. Still no one appeared to
+doubt the propriety of such a course of treatment, in the case of a
+person so very sick as she was; for how, it was asked, could she live
+without it?
+
+In one or two instances I was sent for; not, indeed, as her physician,
+but as a substitute for the more distant or the absent minister. At
+these visits I learned something, incidentally, of her true physical
+condition. I found her case a very bad one, and yet, as I believed, made
+much worse by an injudicious use of medicine.
+
+Yet what could I do in the premises? I had not been asked to prescribe
+for her, nor even to give counsel as a supernumerary or consulting
+physician. Dr. M. paid her his weekly and semi-weekly visits, and
+doubtless supposed all the wisdom of the world added to his own would
+hardly improve her condition. I was, of course, by all the rules of
+medical etiquette, and even by the common law of politeness, obliged to
+bite my lips in silence. One thing, indeed, I ventured to do, which was
+to send her a small tract or two, in some of the departments of hygiene
+or health.
+
+Soon after this her physician died; and died, too, by his own
+confession, publicly made, of stomach disease,--at least, in part. He
+was a man of gigantic body and great natural physical force. His
+digestive apparatus was particularly powerful, and it had been both
+unwisely cultivated and developed in early life, and unwisely and
+wickedly managed afterward. For an example of the latter, he would,
+while abroad among his patients, sometimes go without his dinner, and
+then, on his return to his family and just as he was going to bed, atone
+for past neglect by eating enough for a whole day, and of the most solid
+and perhaps indigestible food. In this and other abusive ways he had
+been suicidal.
+
+But he was now gone to his final account, and on whose arm could Mary
+lean for medical advice? Her parents were too poor to pay a physician's
+bill. What had been paid to her former medical attendant--which, indeed
+was but a mere pittance--was by authority of the town. Mary felt all the
+delicacy she should have felt, in her circumstances, and perhaps more,
+for she refused for some time to ask for farther aid, preferring to
+groan her way alone.
+
+One evening, when I was present on a moral errand, she spoke of the
+great benefit she had derived from the perusal of the little books I had
+sent her, and modestly observed that, deprived as she was by the wise
+dispensation of Providence, of her old friend and physician, she had
+sometimes dared to wish she could occasionally consult me. I told her I
+hoped she would not hesitate a moment to send for me, whenever she
+desired, for if in a situation to comply with her requests, I would
+always do so immediately. She was about to speak of her poverty, when I
+begged her not to think of that. The only condition I should impose, I
+told her, was that she should do her very best to follow, implicitly, my
+directions. With this condition she did not hesitate to promise a full
+and joyful compliance.
+
+From that time forth I saw her frequently, since I well knew that even
+voluntary visits would be welcome. I found she had become convinced of
+the necessity of breathing pure air, and of ventilating her room every
+day. Nor did she neglect, as much as formerly, the great laws of
+cleanliness. Yet, alas! in this respect, the hard hand of necessity was
+upon her. She could not do all she wished. However, she could apply
+water to her person daily, if she could not to her clothing and bedding;
+so that, on the whole, she did not greatly suffer. Her mother did what
+she could, but she was old and decrepit.
+
+She had also made another advance. She had contrived to obtain, I hardly
+know from what source, but probably from the hands of kind friends, a
+small amount of good fruit to use daily, with one or more of her meals.
+This excluded a part or portion of that kind of food which was more
+stimulating and doubtful.
+
+But the greatest difficulty we had to encounter was to shake off the
+enormous load of narcotic medicine which had been so long prescribed for
+her that she seemed unable to live without it. Morphine, in particular,
+she had come to use in quantities which would have destroyed a person
+who was unaccustomed to its influence, and in frequently repeated
+doses. I told her she might as well die in one way as another; that the
+morphine, though it afforded a little temporary relief, was wearing out
+her vital energies at a most rapid rate, and that the safest, and, in
+the end, the easiest way for her was, to abandon it entirely. She
+followed my advice, and made the attempt.
+
+I have forgotten how long a time it required to effect a complete
+emancipation from her slavery to drugs; but the process was a gradual
+one, and occupied at least several months. In the end, however, though
+not without considerable suffering, she was perfectly free, not only
+from her slavery to morphine, but to all other drugs. All this time,
+moreover, she was as _well_, to say the least, as before; perhaps, on
+the whole, a little better.
+
+I now set myself, in good earnest, to the work of improving her physical
+habits. The laws of ventilation and cleanliness, to which her attention,
+as I have already intimated, had become directed, were still more
+carefully heeded. She was required to retire early and rise early, and
+to keep her mind occupied, though never to the point of fatigue, while
+awake. Her habits with regard to food and drink were changed very
+materially. The influence of the mind on the condition of the body was
+also explained to her, and the influence of temperature. In short, she
+was brought, as fast as possible, to the knowledge of physical law in
+its application to her circumstances, and encouraged to obey it.
+
+The recuperative powers of nature, even in unfavorable circumstances,
+were soon apparent. This greatly increased her docility and inspired her
+with faith and hope. The greatest trouble was in regard to muscular
+exercise. Much of this was needed; and yet how could it be obtained? She
+could not walk, and yet, in her indigence, she had no means of
+conveyance, except at the occasional invitation of some friend.
+
+But this even had its good tendencies. To take her up, as we would have
+taken a child, set her in a carriage and let her ride half a mile or a
+mile, was obviously of great service to her. She was far less fatigued
+by it than was expected; her subsequent sleep was far better; nor did
+any remote evil effects follow. This greatly increased her courage, and
+raised the hopes of her friends.
+
+She was at length able to be placed in the railroad cars, and with the
+aid of coaches, at embarking and disembarking, to travel about a good
+deal, to the distance of ten, twelve, or twenty miles; and all this with
+favorable effects. Her recovery, at no distant day, began to be
+regarded, by the most sceptical, as quite probable.
+
+My removal, a hundred miles or so from the village, just at this time,
+was, however, a misfortune to her. In one of her excursions, she
+received and accepted an invitation to spend a few months with a distant
+relative, where she came under the influence of one of the phases of
+modern quackery, by means of which her progress to the promised land of
+health was very considerably retarded. She even sickened, but afterward
+recovered.
+
+Sometime after this, as I subsequently learned, she partially regained
+her good condition of steady progress, and returned to her father's
+house. Finding herself, at length, able to do something for her support,
+she entered into the service of a neighboring family, at first with
+little compensation except her board, but subsequently at half pay or
+more. Her domestic duties were such as only taxed her system to a degree
+which she was able to endure without any injury.
+
+It was in this condition, that, after two or three years of absence, I
+found her and rejoiced with her. For, though she could no more be said
+to be restored to perfect health, than a vessel could be considered
+perfectly sound that is full of shot holes, yet her condition was far
+enough from being desperate, and was even comparatively excellent. I
+left her once more with the tear of gratitude to God on her cheek, and
+again, for many long years, neither saw her nor heard from her.
+
+At our next interview she brought with her a gentleman whom she
+introduced to me as her husband. The meeting was to me wholly
+unexpected, but most happy. She lived in this relation, but without
+progeny, a few years more, and then sank in a decline, to rise no more
+till the sound of the last trumpet.
+
+Of the particulars of her decline and death, I have never heard a word.
+Her scrofulous temperament and tendencies rendered her liable to
+numerous diseases of greater or less severity and danger, to some of
+which she probably fell a victim. It is, however, by no means impossible
+that her numerous cares and anxieties--for she was naturally very
+sensitive--may have hastened her exit.
+
+If I have any misgivings in connection with this protracted, but very
+interesting case, and consequently any confessions to make, it is with
+reference to the point faintly alluded to in a preceding paragraph.
+While I honor, as much as any man, the marriage relation,--for it is in
+accordance with God's own intention, and is the first institution of
+high Heaven for human benefit and happiness,--I must freely confess that
+in the present fallen condition of our race, it occasionally happens
+that an individual is found unfit for the discharge of its various
+duties, as well as for the endurance of some of its peculiar
+responsibilities. Such, as I believe, among others, was Mary Benham.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXII.
+
+FEMALE HEALTH, AND INSANE HOSPITALS.
+
+
+A female, about thirty-five years of age, and naturally of a melancholic
+temperament, was very frequently at my room for the purpose of
+conversing with me in regard to her health. Most of her complaints--for
+they were numerous--were grafted upon a strongly bilious habit, and were
+such as required in the possessor and sufferer, more than an ordinary
+measure of attention to the digestive organs and the skin. And yet both
+these departments, especially the latter, had been in her case,
+hitherto, utterly neglected. To speak plainly, and with some license as
+a physiologist, _she had no skin_. It was little more than a mere
+wrapper, so far as the great purposes of health were concerned. A dried
+and even tanned hide, could it have been fitted to her person with
+sufficient exactness, would have subserved nearly the same purposes.
+
+Perhaps you will excuse the tendency in the description of this case, to
+exaggeration, when you are informed that the treatment of themselves, in
+the particular here alluded to, by females especially, is one which
+habitually fills one with disgust, and sometimes with indignation.
+Persons of good sense, of both sexes, who from month to month, perhaps
+from year to year, never wash their skins, nor use much muscular
+exercise, ought to know that they must, sooner or later, experience the
+dreadful penalty attached to violated physical law, and from which there
+is, neither on earth nor in heaven, any possible escape. Can any one
+suppose, for a moment, that so curious and complicated an organ as the
+skin, and one of such considerable extent, has nothing to do?
+
+Nearly every living person has some idea, of greater or less intensity,
+of pores in the skin; at least, they use language which implies such an
+idea. They talk, often, of the necessity of keeping these pores open.
+But how is it to be done? Not certainly while they use little or no
+muscular exercise, by washing, once a day, their hands and faces merely,
+or, as some say, their fingers, their noses, and the tips of their
+chins. They may talk, on occasions, very boldly and flippantly, about
+_sweating_ away a cold, as they term it; but do they vainly suppose that
+the sweat vessels or sweating machinery has nothing to do, from day to
+day, which might prevent the necessity of resorting to these sweating
+processes?
+
+Miss L. appeared to be in utter ignorance of any laws of the skin, or of
+the digestive or muscular systems. And yet her thoughts had been turned,
+often and frequently, to her own feelings and sensations. She would
+talk, almost incessantly, if anybody would hear her, about her aches and
+pains, and could describe her whole train of feelings, from morning to
+evening, with a faithfulness and patience and minuteness that would have
+furnished a genius less than Defoe with material sufficient for quite a
+huge volume.
+
+Now I could have visited and counselled Miss L., at least once a week,
+with great profit to herself, had she been as intelligent, in general,
+as she was familiar with her own sensations. As things were, her
+confidence was rather more troublesome than agreeable; but she was,
+practically, a standing patient; and physicians, as you know, cannot
+choose. They must be, among mankind, like the Great Physician, as they
+who "_serve_;" not as those who are _to be served_, or accommodated. And
+they must serve those who come to them.
+
+Miss L. was evidently somewhat disappointed, when she found I was not
+disposed to give her any medicine. A little, she thought, might
+sometimes be useful; a great deal she did not believe in, of course.
+Experience had forced upon her some of the lessons of wisdom. However,
+she contrived to fasten a good deal of faith on the laws of health,
+which I continually held forth to her. In particular, I urged on her the
+necessity of endeavoring to keep up what I was wont to call a
+centrifugal tendency in her system. A good plump, healthful, ever
+active, and ever vigorous skin was, as I told her, our only hope in her
+case. As a means to this end, and also as a means of withdrawing her
+attention from the slavery of a constant attendance on her own
+sensations, I urged her to mingle with society much more, and go about
+doing good to others, on the great principle, "It is more blessed to
+give than to receive." I warned her, however, against the danger of
+falling into the habit of giving an account of herself--her woes and
+sorrows--to every one she might meet with, who should kindly inquire
+about her condition, since it would greatly retard her improvement, even
+if it did not keep up or renew her disease.
+
+Among other things, I ventured to suggest to her the importance of
+having something to do--something of a permanent nature. "We hear," I
+said, "of gentlemen at large, and you seem to be a lady at large. You
+have, in the usual acceptation of the phrase, nothing to do. Would it
+not be well for you to take charge of something or of somebody? You
+might, perhaps, assume the office of teacher, and take the charge of a
+few pupils; or even adopt a child or two as your own, where you might
+receive compensation. Or," as I finally added,--for I perceived she
+shrunk from all responsibilities of this kind,--"you might, perhaps,
+become the mistress of a family."
+
+On the last mentioned topic, I was also obliged, for obvious reasons, to
+speak with considerable caution. She was unsocial, timid, fearful of
+being burdened with cares--the very stuff, though she knew it not, that
+human life is made of, ay, and human happiness too. But I could not
+hesitate to make the trial. My suggestions, however, were of little
+avail. She went on for some time, in the old way, and made very little
+progress.
+
+I lost sight of her about this time, and never met her more. The sequel
+of her history I only know from report. It is painful in the extreme. It
+is, however, the history, in all its essential features, of thousands of
+selfish people, who, after all, by dint of numbers, force, and
+influence, contrive to rule the world.
+
+Being fully determined to have no cares or responsibilities connected
+with children or household, she not only refused to hearken to my
+advice, but also to one or more truly kind and promising offers of
+marriage. She pursued her selfish course undisturbed, unless by
+occasional misgivings, till her brain and nervous system suffered so
+severely that she began to approach the confines of insanity.
+
+It was, however, a considerable time before the silver cord was loosed,
+the golden bowl broken, and the wheel broken at the cistern. But the
+terrible result at length came. The demands of violated physical law are
+inexorable. She was conveyed, as a last resort, in the hope of cure, to
+an insane hospital. Here, after many and patient attempts to restore the
+crippled and broken down machinery to healthful motion, she ended her
+days.
+
+My female patients were not all equally unfortunate. One I had, whose
+case, if minutely described, would present an array of facts painful in
+the extreme. She, too, approached the dark regions of insanity; but she
+did not enter. She still lives, and is at once a useful and happy woman,
+and an excellent wife and housekeeper. As a means to her recovery,
+however, she pursued a course diametrically opposite to that pursued by
+Miss L. She did not shrink from care and responsibility; on the
+contrary, she submitted to both. First, she sought increased activity
+and usefulness in her father's family; and, secondly, in a family of her
+own.
+
+Concerning the last mentioned case, I have few misgivings, and equally
+few confessions to make. I call it a remarkable case; but it must not be
+revealed in its details, for other reasons besides its tediousness. In
+the case of Miss L., however, I have one deep and lasting regret.
+
+In the early part of my acquaintance with her, as a medical man, she
+probably had more confidence in my integrity and skill than in those of
+any other living individual. She had been early left an orphan; and I
+was among the first--perhaps the very first--to take the attitude
+towards her of a true father. Such kindness, and especially such
+paternal care, never fail to make their impression.
+
+    "Love, and love only, is the loan for love."
+
+At this early sympathizing period, had I been more faithful, I might,
+perhaps, have saved her. But I was remiss--disposed to delay. I waited,
+a thousand times, for a better opportunity. I waited till the favorable
+moment--ay, the _only_ moment--had passed by.
+
+Physicians often err here. God gives to many individuals the most
+unbounded confidence in medical men; and this remarkable provision of
+his has a deep meaning. It is not, however, to the intent that they
+should abuse the influence thus secured to them, by filling their
+patients' stomachs with pills and powders; but for such purposes,
+rather, as have been indicated by the general tenor of the foregoing
+remarks. It is that they may give them wise paternal counsel and sound
+physiological and pathological instruction.
+
+Such counsel and such instruction were indeed given to Miss L., but not
+to that extent which the nature of the case required, and which a little
+more moral courage and Christian plainness would have secured. She was
+worth saving, and I might, perchance, have been the honored instrument
+of saving her, and of thus rendering to society a most valuable service.
+That vital energy of hers which was expended in watching over her own
+internal feelings, might have been rendered a much more profitable
+investment.
+
+But the account is closed and sealed, to be agitated or questioned no
+more till the inquisitions of the last day. Let such considerations and
+reflections as this remark suggests to the human mind have their
+intended effect. Let us ever increase our zeal and watchfulness, that we
+may avoid such a course of conduct as makes confessions meet, or
+needful, or even salutary.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXIII.
+
+A GIANT DYSPEPTIC.
+
+
+There have been giants in the earth, in nearly every age, if not in
+every clime--giants mentally, and giants physically. Of course they may
+have been rare exhibitions, and may thus have elicited much attention;
+and some of them have attained to quite a memorable place in history.
+
+There have been and still are, on the earth, giants of other
+descriptions. We sometimes even meet with giant dyspeptics. Dyspepsia,
+at best, is formidable, many-headed, but not always gigantic. If
+gigantic size, in this case, were the general rule, what we now call
+giants would, of course, cease to be regarded as such.
+
+It may be thought that what I shall here call dyspeptic giants, or giant
+dyspeptics, were better designated as monsters, than giants. Be it so,
+for we will not quarrel about names; though a difficulty might be found
+in making the required distinction between giants and monsters; for is
+not every giant a monster?
+
+Not far from the year 1830, perhaps a little earlier, you might have
+seen, in connection with a certain private seminary of education, in New
+England, one of these giant dyspeptics. I do not mean, of course, that
+he had already attained to giant size, but only that what proved in the
+result to be gigantic was already a giant in miniature, and was rapidly
+advancing to one of magnitude.
+
+He had early been a cabin boy; and like many other cabin boys, had been
+gluttonous, and in some respects intemperate. Not by any means, that he
+had ever been guilty of downright intoxication; for of this I have no
+certain knowledge. My belief is, however, that he had gone very far in
+this direction, though he might not have--probably _had_ not--been
+justly chargeable with going quite to the last extremity.
+
+But why should such a young man be found at a seminary of learning? Was
+he with "birds of a feather?" Do not these attract each other?
+
+Mr. Gray, for that is the name I shall give to our young dyspeptic, had
+been recently subjected to the influences of one of those seasons of
+excitement well known in the religious world by the name of _revivals_;
+and what is not at all uncommon with the rude and uncultivated minds of
+even more hardened sailors than he, a great change had come over him. In
+short, he had the appearance, in every respect, of being a truly
+converted young man.
+
+Why this change of character had led him to this school-house, may not
+at first appear. Yet such a result is by no means unusual. This waking
+up the mind, by awakening the soul, and causing it to hunger and thirst
+after knowledge, has been observed long since, by those who have had
+their eyes open to what was going on around them.
+
+Young Gray was penniless, and his parents not only poor, but
+overburdened with the cares of a large family, so that they could give
+him no aid but by their prayers. He was not, however, to be discouraged
+by poverty. He agreed to ring the bell, sweep the hall, build fires,
+etc., for his board and tuition. As for clothing, he had none, or almost
+none. Charity, cold as her hand oftentimes is, supplied him with
+something. Dyspepsia had not, as yet, marred his visage or weakened his
+energies.
+
+In his connection with this seminary and others of kindred character,
+such as he could attend and yet pay his expenses by his labor, he
+became, ere long, able to teach others. Here was a new means of support,
+of which he eagerly availed himself. In whatever he undertook, moreover,
+he was singularly successful. He was in earnest. An earnest mind, in
+connection with an indomitable will--what may it not accomplish? It is
+every thing but omnipotent.
+
+"Heaven but persuades, almighty man decrees," as I have before said,
+assuming our old English poets as standard authority; but this saying
+has more in it than mere poetry. Or, if Heaven more than
+persuades--somewhat more--does not man still decree? But I am inclined,
+I see, to press this thought, perhaps in undue proportion to its
+magnitude. Whether or not it abates one half the guilt, I make the
+confession.
+
+For several years Gray pushed his devious course, through "thick and
+thin," sustaining himself chiefly by his teaching. In 1835, he was the
+private instructor of a wealthy family in Rhode Island; but so puzzling,
+not to say erratic, were some of his movements, that he was not very
+popular. Subsequently to this, he was found in another part of New
+England, editing a paper, and teaching at the same time a small number
+of pupils.
+
+All this while he paid great attention to physical education; but being
+either a charity scholar, or obliged to pay his way by his own
+exertions, he had not at command the needful time to render him thorough
+in any thing, even in his obedience, as he called it, to Nature's laws.
+Nearly all his studies were pursued by snatches, or, at least, with more
+or less irregularity.
+
+In nothing, however, was he more irregular than in his diet. This, to a
+person already inclined, as he certainly was, to dyspepsia, was very
+unfortunate. Perhaps, as generally happens in such cases, there was
+_action and reaction_. Perhaps, I mean, his dyspeptic tendencies led to
+more or less of dietetic irregularity; while the latter, whenever
+yielded to, had a tendency, in its turn, to increase his load of
+dyspepsia.
+
+There was, indeed, one apology to be found for his irregularity with
+regard to diet, in his extreme poverty. There were times when he was
+actually compelled to subsist on the most scanty fare; while his
+principles, too, restricted him to very great plainness. In one
+instance, for example, after he had finished his preparatory, course of
+study and entered college, he subsisted wholly on a certain quantity of
+bread daily; and as if not quite satisfied with even this restriction,
+while he needed his money so much more for clothing and books, he
+purchased stale bread--sometimes that which was imperfect--at a cheaper
+rate. Now a diet, exclusively of fine flour bread, and withal more or
+less sour or mouldy, is not very suitable for a dyspeptic, nor yet,
+indeed, for anybody whatever. However, he learned, at length, to improve
+a little upon this, by purchasing coarse, or Graham bread.
+
+Subsequently to this period, not being able, either alone or with the
+aid of friends, most of whom were poor, to pursue a regular academic
+course of instruction, he accepted the proposition that he should become
+an assistant teacher in the English department of a school in Europe.
+This, he feared, might postpone the completion of his studies, but would
+enable him, as he believed, to improve his mind, establish his health,
+and add greatly to his experience and to his knowledge of the world. It
+would also perfect him in teaching, so far at least as the mere
+inculcation of English grammar was concerned.
+
+His health was by no means improved by a residence of three or four
+years in Europe, but rather impaired. He returned to America, in the
+autumn of 1839, and as soon as he had partially recovered from the
+effects of a tedious and dangerous voyage, went to reside in the family
+of a near relative who was a farmer, with a view to learn, for the first
+time, what the labors of the farm would do for him.
+
+Here he often resorted to the same rigid economy which he had before
+practised, both at academy and college, and in Europe. The very best
+living he would allow himself was a diet exclusively of small
+potatoes--those, I mean, from which the larger ones had been separated
+for the use of others.
+
+This, his dyspeptic stomach would not long endure. His digestive and
+nervous systems both became considerably deranged; and even his skin,
+sympathizing with the diseased lining membrane of his stomach and
+intestines, became the seat of very painful boils and troublesome sores.
+These, while they indicated still deeper if not more troublesome
+disease, gave one encouraging indication--that the recuperative powers
+of the system were not as yet irrecoverably prostrated.
+
+He now came to me and begged to become my patient, and to reside
+permanently under my roof, so that he might not only receive such daily
+attention and counsel as the circumstances required, but also such
+food, air, exercise, and ablutions as were needful. He was accordingly
+admitted to the rights, privileges, and self-denials of the family.
+
+Here he spent a considerable time. While under my care, I made every
+reasonable exertion for his recovery which I would have made for a
+favorite child. Indeed, few children were ever more obedient or docile.
+He would sometimes say to me: "Doctor, I have no more power over myself
+than a child, and you must treat me _as you would_ a child." Nor was he
+satisfied till I restricted his every step, both with regard to the
+quantity and quality of his food, and the hours and seasons of bathing,
+exercise, reading, etc. It was to me a painful task, and I sometimes
+shrunk from it, for the moment. There was, however, no escape. I had
+embarked in the enterprise, and must take the consequences.
+
+At first, his improvement was scarcely perceptible, and I was almost
+discouraged. But at length, after much patience and perseverance, the
+suffering digestive organs began, in some measure, to resume their
+healthful condition, and the whole face of things to wear a different
+aspect. He left us to take charge of a public school.
+
+For some time after the opening of this school, his health seemed to be
+steadily improving, and the world around him began to have its charms
+again. He was in his own chosen, and, I might say, native element, which
+was to him a far more healthful stimulus than any other which could have
+been devised, whether by the physician or the physiologist.
+
+Nothing in this world is so well calculated to preserve and promote
+human health, as full and constant employment, of a kind which is
+perfectly congenial and healthful, and which we are fully assured is
+useful. In other words, the first great law of health is benevolence. It
+keeps up in the system that centrifugal tendency of the circulation of
+which I have already spoken, and which is so favorable for the rejection
+of all effete and irritating matters. It would have been next to
+impossible for our Saviour, with head, heart, and hands engaged as his
+were, to have sickened; nor was it till the most flagrant physiological
+transgressions had been long repeated, that even Howard the
+philanthropist sickened and died. Not the whole combined force of
+malaria and contagion could overcome him, till continual over-fatigue,
+persistent cold, and strong tea,--an almost matchless trio,--lent their
+aid to give the finishing stroke.
+
+Mr. Gray was a boarder with a gentleman who kept a grocery store, and
+who was glad to employ him on certain days and hours of vacation or
+recess, in taking care of the shop and waiting on his customers. Here
+the tempter again assailed him, in the form of foreign fruits, raisins,
+figs, prunes, oranges, dried fish, cordials, candy, etc. For some time
+past he had been wholly unaccustomed to these things; they had even been
+forbidden him, especially between his meals. As a consequence of his
+indulgences, and his neglect of exercise, his health again declined, and
+he came a second time under my care.
+
+He was partially restored the second time, but not entirely. His labors,
+which were teaching still, became more exhausting than formerly.
+Cheerfulness, hope, sympathy, conscious usefulness, and the force of
+many good habits, sustained him for a time, but not always. His great
+labors of body and mind, with a deep sense of responsibility, and the
+indulgences to which I have alluded, preyed upon him, and dyspepsia
+began once more her reign of tyranny.
+
+Doubtless he attempted too much here, for he was an enthusiast on the
+subject of common schools and common school instruction. And yet, under
+almost any circumstances of school-keeping, dyspepsia, nurtured as it
+was by every physical habit, would most certainly have assailed him.
+With regard to his food and drink he was very unwise. It contributed
+largely to an extreme of irritability, which was unfavorable, and which
+at the end of a single term compelled him to resign his place and seek
+some other employment.
+
+This was a grievous disappointment to Mr. Gray, and, as some of his
+friends believe, was the mountain weight that crushed him. The horrors
+of the abyss into which he believed he had plunged himself, were the
+more intolerable from the fact that he now, for the first time, began
+to despair of being able to consummate a plan by means of which both his
+sorrows and joys, especially the latter, would have been shared by
+another.
+
+Yet, even here, he did not absolutely despair. Hope revived when he
+found himself, a third time, my patient. I did all in my power to
+encourage him till I had at length, to my own surprise as well as his,
+the unspeakable pleasure of finding him again returning to the path of
+health and happiness. It is indeed true, that a capricious appetite
+still retained its sway, in greater or less degree, and whenever he was
+not awed by my presence, he would indulge himself in the use of things
+which he knew were injurious to him, as well as in the excessive, not to
+say gluttonous, use of such good things as were tolerated. He
+occasionally confessed his impotence, and begged us to keep every thing
+out of his way, even those remnants which were designed for the domestic
+animals!
+
+And yet, after all, strange to say, he absented himself very frequently,
+as if to seek places of retirement, where he could indulge his
+tyrannical appetite. I saw most clearly his danger, and spoke to him
+concerning it. I appealed to his fears, to his hopes, to his conscience.
+I reminded him of the love he bore to humanity, and the regard he had
+for Divinity.
+
+Once more, being partly recruited, he resumed his labors as a teacher.
+This was doubtless a wrong measure, and yet I was not aware of the error
+at the time, or I should not have encouraged the movement, or assisted
+him as I did in procuring a situation. But I then thought he had been
+punished so effectually for his transgressions, that he would at length
+be wise. Besides he was exceedingly anxious to be at work, and to avoid
+dependence, a desire in which his friends participated, and in regard to
+which they were so unwise as to express their over anxiety in his
+hearing.
+
+Three months in the school-house found him worse than ever before. He
+had attempted to board himself, to subsist on a very few ounces of
+"Graham wafers" at each meal, and to be an hour in masticating it. As an
+occasional compensation for this, however, a sort of _treating
+resolution_, he allowed himself to pick up the crusts and other
+fragments left about the school-house by his pupils, and when he had
+collected quite a pile of these, to indulge his appetite with them, _ad
+libitum_. Nor was this all. He erred in other particulars, perhaps in
+many.
+
+He came to my house a fourth time, but my situation was such that I
+could not well receive him. He staid only a day or two, but his
+residence with us was long enough to enable me to mark the progress of
+his case, and to deplore what I feared must be the final issue. From me
+he went to a friend in an adjoining State; not, however, till he had
+alluded to certain errors of his recent life that he had not yet
+devulged, even to his best friend. "Doctor," said he, "there are some
+things that I have not yet told you about."
+
+To me, also, it belongs, at this point of Gray's lamentable history, to
+make confession of great and glaring error. To have received the young
+man to my house, and to have devoted myself to the work of endeavoring
+again to raise him, would, most undoubtedly, have been a sacrifice to
+which few people in my circumstances would have thought themselves
+called. Yet, difficult as it was, the sacrifice might have been made.
+Had he been my only brother, I should, doubtless, have received him. The
+Saviour of mankind, in my circumstances, would probably have taken him
+in. Was I not his follower? And was I not bound to do what I believed he
+would do, in similar circumstances?
+
+His more distant friend, but more consistent Christian brother, opened
+wide his doors for his reception, and did the best he could for him. It
+was his intention, at first, to employ him, as I now think he ought to
+have been employed long before; viz., on a small farm. In this point of
+view this friend's house was particularly favorable. Yet there were
+offsets to this advantage. One thing in particular, cast a shade upon
+our efforts in his behalf. It was about April 1st, and the house and
+farm had an eastern aspect, and the easterly winds, which at that season
+so much prevailed, were very strong and surcharged with vapor at a low
+temperature. For a few days after his arrival he was worse than ever.
+
+This was discouragement heaped upon discouragement, and he began soon to
+sink under it. For a short time he was the subject of medical treatment.
+What was the character of the medicine he took, I never knew. At length
+there were signs of convalescence; but no sooner did his bodily health
+and strength begin to improve, than his mental troubles began to press
+upon him, till he was driven to the very borders of insanity. Indeed, so
+strong was the tendency to mental derangement that his relatives
+actually carried him, _per force_, to an insane hospital.
+
+But his residence at the hospital was very short. Provision having in
+the mean time been made for his reception in a private family, among his
+acquaintance, and the superintendent of the hospital having advised to
+such a course, he was remanded to the country, to familiar faces, and to
+a farm.
+
+On reaching the place assigned him, he became extremely ill,--worse, by
+far, than ever before,--so that, for several weeks, his life was
+despaired of. But by means of careful medical treatment, and a judicious
+and very simple diet, which at the hospital had been exchanged for a
+stimulating one, nature once more rallied, and in three or four weeks he
+appeared to be in a fair way for recovery. His strength increased, his
+mind became clear; his digestive function, though still erratic,
+appeared about to resume its natural condition, and to perform once more
+its wonted office; and the other troublesome symptoms were all gradually
+disappearing, except one;--he had still a very frequent pulse.
+
+But even this rapid arterial action was at length abating. From a
+frequency of the pulse equal to 100, 110, and sometimes 120 in a minute,
+it fell in two weeks to from 70 to 75; and this, too, under the
+influence of very mild and gentle treatment. There was no reduction of
+activity or power, by bleeding, or by blistering, or in any other way;
+on the contrary, as I have intimated, there was a general increase of
+strength and vigor, both of body, and mind. He did not even take
+digitalis or morphine. The prospect, therefore, was, on the whole, truly
+encouraging.
+
+And yet he had a set of friends--relatives, I should say, rather--who
+were not satisfied. It was strongly written on their minds that he was
+about to die; and they sternly insisted on removing him to his native
+home, that if he should die, he might die in the bosom of his own
+kindred. I was consulted; but I entered my most solemn protest against
+the measure, as both uncalled for and hazardous. It was to no purpose,
+however. In their over-kindness they determined to remove him; and the
+removal was effected. I ought also to say that though Mr. Gray highly
+appreciated their kindness, he was himself opposed to the measure, as
+one attended with much hazard.
+
+On the road to his paternal home, influenced in no small degree by
+mental excitement, his delirium returned, and with an intensity that
+never afterwards abated. He was, for about three weeks, a most
+inveterate and raving maniac, when, worn out prematurely with disease,
+he sunk to rise no more till the general resurrection.
+
+There was no post-mortem examination of this young man, though there
+should have been. Not that there was any lurking suspicion of
+peculiarity of disease, but because such examinations may always be made
+serviceable to the cause of medical science, while they cannot possibly
+injure either the dead or the living.
+
+I have been the more minute in my account of this man, because the case
+is an instructive one, both to the professional and non-professional
+reader, and also because it places medicine and physicians in the true
+light, and holds forth to the world the wonderfully recuperative power
+of nature, and the vast importance of giving heed to the laws of health
+and to the voice of physiology.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXIV.
+
+GETTING INTO A CIRCLE.
+
+
+The oddity of some of my captions may seem to require an apology; but I
+beg the doubtful reader to suspend any unfavorable decisions, till he
+has read the chapter which follows. He will not, either in the present
+instance or in any other, be introduced to a magic ring, or to the
+mysteries of modern "spiritualism." The circle into which my patient
+fell, was of a different description.
+
+A young mother from the west, about the year 1840, came to consult me
+with regard to her health. Not being able to receive her into my own
+family, I made arrangements for her reception in the immediate
+neighborhood, where she remained for a long time. She was a
+dyspeptic--if not of giant magnitude, but little short of it.
+
+I spent many an hour in endeavoring to set all right, both in mind and
+body. It was, however, much easier to set her head right, than her
+hands, feet, and stomach. She had been under the care of almost all
+sorts of medical men--hydropathic, homoeopathic, and allopathic. Some of
+them, from all these schools, had been men of good sense, while a much
+larger proportion of them had turned out to be fools, and had done her
+more harm than good. In short, like the woman in the New Testament, she
+had spent much on many physicians, and was nothing bettered by it, but
+rather made worse.
+
+Under such circumstances what ground was there for hope? What she most
+needed, it was easy to see, was a little more of resolution to carry out
+and complete what she believed to be her duty. I told her so. I told her
+how many times I had repeated to her the same directions; while she,
+after the lapse of a very few days,--sometimes only a day or two,--had
+come round again, in her remarks and inquiries, to the very point whence
+she had first started. I told her how easy a thing this getting into a
+circle was, and how difficult it was to escape from it.
+
+Although she perfectly understood her condition, there was still a
+strange and almost unaccountable reaching forth for something beyond the
+plain path of nature, which I had faithfully and repeatedly pointed out
+to her. She wished for some shorter road, something mysterious or
+magical. She was, in short, a capital subject for humbuggery, had she
+not tried it already to her heart's content.
+
+Occasionally, I must confess, I felt somewhat disposed to put her on the
+"starvation plan," as Dr. Johnson calls it,--on a diet of two pints only
+of plain gruel (thin hasty pudding, rather) a day,--for she would have
+borne it much better than did Mr. Gray, of the preceding chapter. I am
+sorry I did not. However, I prescribed for her, in general, very well;
+and, except in the last-mentioned particular, have no reason for regret
+nor any call for confessions.
+
+She remained under my care several weeks--all the while in a mill-horse
+track or circle, beginning at the same point and coming round to the
+same result or issue, when I frankly told her, one day, that it was a
+great waste, both of time and money, for her to remain longer. I saw,
+more and more clearly, that all her thoughts were concentrated on her
+own dear self. _Her_ troubles, _her_ health, _her_ concerns, _her_
+prospects in life and death, were, to her, of more importance than all
+the world besides. No woman, as good as she was,--for she was,
+professedly, a disciple of him who said to his followers, "Feed my
+lambs,"--whom I have ever seen, was so completely wrapped up in self,
+and so completely beyond the pale of the world of benevolence.
+
+My final advice to her, in addition to that general change of personal
+habits which, from the first, I had strongly recommended to her, was to
+return to her native city, and, after making her resolution and laying
+her plan, give herself no rest, permanently, till by personal appeal or
+otherwise she had brought all the females within her reach into
+maternal associations, moral reform societies, and the like.
+
+On her return to her husband and children, she made an attempt to carry
+out the spirit of my prescription, and not without a good degree of
+success. But the great benefit which resulted from it--that, indeed,
+which it was my ultimate object to secure--was that it diverted her
+thoughts from their inward, selfish tendency, and placed her on better
+ground as to health than she had occupied for some time before.
+
+I saw her no more for ten or twelve years. Occasionally, it is true, I
+heard from her, that she was better. Yet she was never entirely well.
+She was never entirely beyond the circle in which she had so long moved.
+She returned, at times, to medical advice and medicine; but, so far as I
+could learn, with little permanent good effect. She died about twelve
+years after she left my "guardianship," an extreme sufferer, as she had
+lived; and a sufferer from causes that a correct education and just
+views of social life, and of health and disease, would, for the most
+part, have prevented.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXV.
+
+POISONING WITH MAPLE SUGAR.
+
+
+A particular friend of mine purchased one day, at a stand in the city,
+two small cakes of maple sugar. It was early in the spring, and very
+little of the article had as yet been manufactured. My friend, in his
+eagerness, devoured them immediately. He observed, before eating them,
+that they had a very dark appearance; but the taste was correct, as far
+as he could judge, and he did not hesitate. He was one of those
+individuals, moreover, who are not greatly given to self-denial in the
+matter of appetite.
+
+The next day he had as sore a mouth as I ever saw. The inflammation
+extended not only to the back part of the mouth, but into the throat,
+and probably quite into the stomach, and was attended with a most
+distressing thirst, with loss of appetite, and occasional nausea. In
+short, it unfitted him for business the whole day; indeed it was many
+days before he recovered entirely.
+
+My own conclusion, after a careful investigation of the facts, was, that
+the sugar was cooled down in vessels of iron, which were, in some way,
+more or less oxydated or rusted, and that a small quantity of free acid
+having been, by some means unknown, developed in the sugar, it entered
+into a chemical combination with the metallic oxyde, to form a species
+of copperas--perhaps the genuine sulphate of iron itself.
+
+No medicine was given, nor was any needed. It was sufficient to let the
+system rest, till Nature, with the assistance of small quantities of
+water,--such as she was constantly demanding,--could eject the intruding
+foe. It required only a little patient waiting.
+
+There is scarcely a doubt that the sufferer learned, from his
+experiment, one important lesson; viz., to let alone every thing which,
+by cooking, has been changed to a dark color. Beets are sometimes
+blackened by cooking in iron vessels, as well as sugar; and so are
+apples and apple-sauce, and sundry other fruits and vegetables.
+
+The word apple-sauce reminds me of an incident that recently occurred in
+my own family. A kind neighbor having sent us some apple-sauce, such of
+the family as partook of it freely, suffered, soon afterward, in a way
+that led to the suspicion of poison. This apple-sauce was quite
+dark-colored, but tasted well enough.
+
+We have seen, in Chapter XXVIII., that in the use of apple-sauce, or
+apple butter, or, indeed, any thing containing an acid, which has been
+in contact with the inner surface of red earthen ware, glazed with the
+oxyde of lead, people are sometimes poisoned; but for common, plain,
+apple-sauce, recently cooked, to be poisonous, is rather unusual.
+However, we can hardly be too careful in these matters. Serious evils
+have sometimes arisen from various kinds of complicated cookery, even
+when the healthiness of the vessels used was quite above suspi. A
+powerful argument this in favor of simplicity.
+
+It should also be remembered, with regard to sugar, that this is a
+substance whose use, even when known to be perfectly innoxious, is, at
+best, of doubtful tendency, beyond the measure which the Divine Hand has
+incorporated into the various substances which are prepared for our use.
+That sugar, in considerable quantities, leads to fulness, if not to
+fatness, is no proof of its healthfulness; since fatness itself is a
+sign of disease in man and all other animals, as has, of late, been
+frequently and fully demonstrated.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXVI.
+
+PHYSICKING OFF MEASLES.
+
+
+The father of a large family came to me one day, and, with unwonted
+politeness, inquired after my health. Of course, I did not at first
+understand him, but time and patience soon brought every thing to light.
+His family, he said, were all sick with measles, except his wife, and he
+wished to ask me a question or two.
+
+The truth is, he wanted to consult me professionally, without paying a
+fee; and yet he felt a little delicacy about it. But I was accustomed to
+such things; for his was neither the first nor the hundredth application
+of the kind; so I was as polite as he was, in return.
+
+Another individual stood near me just at that moment, who supposed he
+had a prior claim to my attention; and I was about to leave Mr. M. for a
+moment, when he said, in a low voice, and in a fawning manner: "I
+suppose, doctor, it is necessary to physic off well for the measles; is
+it not? The old women all say it is; but I thought that, as I saw you,
+it might be well to ask."
+
+This species of robbery is so common, that few have any hesitancy about
+practising it. Mr. M., though passing for a pattern of honesty and good
+breeding, wherever he was known, was nevertheless trained to the same
+meanness with the rest of the neighborhood where I resided, and was
+quite willing--even though a faint consciousness of his meanness chanced
+to come over him now and then--to defraud me a little in the fashionable
+or usual manner.
+
+Perhaps I may be thought fastidious on this point. But though I have
+been sponged,--I may as well again say robbed,--in this or a similar
+way, a hundred or a thousand times, I believe I never complained so
+loudly before. Yet it is due to the profession of medicine, and to those
+who resort to it, that I should give my testimony against a custom which
+ought never to have obtained foothold.
+
+But to return to our conversation;--for I was never mean enough to
+refuse to give such information as was required, to the best of my
+abilities, even though I never expected, directly or indirectly, to be
+benefited by it;--I told him, at once, that if costiveness prevailed at
+the beginning of convalescence, in this disease, some gentle laxative
+might be desirable; but that, in other circumstances, no medicine could
+be required, the common belief to the contrary notwithstanding.
+
+Mr. M. seemed not a little surprised at this latter statement, and yet,
+on the whole, gratified. It was, to him, a new doctrine, and yet he
+thought it reasonable. He never could understand, he said, what need
+there was of taking "physic," when the body was already in a good
+condition.
+
+This physicking off disease is about as foolish as taking physic to
+prevent it--of which I have said so much in Chapter XI. and elsewhere. I
+do not, indeed, mean to affirm that it is quite as fatal; though I know
+not but it may have been fatal in some instances. Death from measles is
+no very uncommon occurrence in these days. Now how do we know whether it
+is the disease that kills or the medicine?
+
+And when we physic off, in the way above mentioned, how know we, that
+if, very fortunately, we do not kill, some other disease may not be
+excited or enkindled? You are aware, both from what has been said in
+these pages, and from your own observation, that measles are not
+unfrequently followed by dropsy, weak eyes, and other troubles. No
+individual, perhaps, is, by constitution, less inclined to dropsy than
+myself; yet he who has read carefully what I have noted in Chapter IV.,
+will not be confident of his own safety in such circumstances. Yet if
+they are endangered who are least predisposed to this or any other
+disease, where is the safety of those who inherit such a
+predisposition?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXVII.
+
+TIC DOULOUREUX.
+
+
+Some fifty years ago, I saw in a Connecticut paper, a brief notice of
+the death of an individual in Wellingworth, in that State, from a
+disease which, as the paper proceeded to state,--and justly too,--not
+one in a million had then ever felt, and which not many at that time had
+ever heard of; viz., _tic douloureux_.
+
+This notice, though it may have excited much curiosity,--it certainly
+arrested my own attention,--did not give us much light as to the nature
+of the disease. "What _is_ tic douloureux?" I asked my friends; for at
+that time, of course, I knew nothing of the study of medicine. They
+could not tell me. "Why do medical men," I asked, "give us such strange
+names? Is it to keep up the idea of mystery, as connected with the
+profession, in order thus to maintain an influence which modest worth
+cannot secure?"
+
+It was largely believed at that time, by myself and many others, that
+science, like wealth,--especially medical science,--was aristocratical;
+that the learned world, though they saw the republican tendencies of
+things, were predisposed to throw dust in the people's eyes as long as
+they could. The fact that almost all our medicines, whether in the
+condition in which we see them labelled at the apothecary's shop, or as
+prescribed by the family physician, have Latin names,--was often quoted
+in proof of this aristocratic feeling and tendency.
+
+Now there was doubtless some foundation for this opinion. Medical men
+did then and still very generally do believe, that it is better, on the
+whole, for the mass of mankind to have nothing to do with these matters,
+except at the prescription of those who have given the best part of
+their lives to the study of medicine and disease. That they are weapons
+of so much power, that even physicians--men who only partially
+understand the human constitution and their influence on it--are almost
+as likely to do harm with them as good, and that it is quite enough for
+society to bear the evils which are connected with the regular study and
+practice of the profession, without enduring a much larger host,
+inflicted by those who have other professions and employments, and must
+consequently be still more ignorant than their physicians. And may not
+this be one reason why a foreign language has been so long retained in
+connection with the names of diseases and medicines?
+
+But though physicians entertain the belief alluded to, and though it
+were founded in truth, it does not thence follow that mankind are to
+remain in ignorance of the whole subject of life and health, nor is it
+the intention of enlightened medical men that they shall. The latter are
+much more ready, as a general rule, to encourage among mankind the study
+of the most appropriate means of preventing disease, than they are
+willing to take the needful pains. In short, though physicians by their
+slowness to act, in this particular, are greatly faulty, the world as a
+mass are still more so.
+
+I was speaking, at first, of tic douloureux. This is a painful affection
+of a nerve or a cluster of nerves. When it first began to be spoken of,
+it was confined chiefly to an expansion of nerve at the side of the
+face, called in anatomical works _pes anserina_. But, of late years, it
+has been found to attack various nerves and clusters of nerves in
+different parts of the body. In truth, under the general name of
+neuralgia, which means about the same thing, we now have tic douloureux
+of almost every part of the human system, and it has become so common
+that instead of one in a million, we have probably one or two if not
+more in every hundred, who have suffered from it in their own persons.
+
+About the year 1840, I had a patient who was exceedingly afflicted with
+this painful disease. She was, at the same time, consumptive. The
+neuralgia was but a recent thing; the consumption had been of many
+years' standing, and was probably inherited. The physicians of her
+native region had exhausted their skill on her to no purpose.
+
+There was no hope of aid, in her case, from medicine. The only thing to
+be done was to invigorate her system, and thus palliate the neuralgia
+and postpone the consumption. She was accordingly placed under the most
+rigid restrictions which the code of physical law could demand. She was
+required to attend to exercise and bathing with great care; to avoid
+over anxiety and fretfulness; to drink water, and to eat the plainest
+food. It was not intended to interdict _nutritious_ food; but only that
+which was _over-stimulating_.
+
+It required considerable time to show her and her friends the practical
+difference between nutrition and stimulation. They thought, as thousands
+have thought beside them, that without a stimulating diet she could not
+be properly nourished. But they learned at length that good bread of all
+sorts, rice, peas, beans, and fruits, especially the first two, while
+they were unstimulating, were even more nutritious than the more
+stimulating articles of flesh, fish, fowl, butter, and milk and its
+products.
+
+The treatment to which she was directed was at length pretty carefully
+followed. The Friends--of which religious connection she was a
+member--are generally thorough, when we gain their full confidence. Her
+health was so far restored, that at one period I entertained strong
+hopes of her ultimate recovery; or, at least of a recovery which would
+permit of her continuance some twenty or twenty-five years longer. But
+after seven or eight years of comfortable though not very firm health,
+she again declined. She died at forty years of age.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXVIII.
+
+COLD WATER IN FEVER.
+
+
+My daughter, then about three years of age, was feverish; and as the
+lung fever was somewhat prevalent, the family became considerably
+alarmed.
+
+On examination, I found a strong tendency to the head. The eye was
+heavy, the head hot and painful, and the tongue thickly coated. The
+digestive system was disordered, and the skin was collapsed, inactive,
+and cold. The extremities, especially the feet, were particularly cold
+and pale.
+
+The days of hydropathy had now arrived; but I was not a full convert, as
+I have already told you, to the exclusive use of cold water in disease.
+However, a case was before me which obviously demanded it. So I
+proceeded to make frequent applications of Nature's drug to the top of
+her head, and to the temples, while I ordered warm and stimulating
+applications to the feet and ankles.
+
+This treatment had the effect to render her condition somewhat more
+comfortable during the day, but at evening the fever returned, and
+during the night was violent. The tendency to the head was so great as
+to cause delirium. The anxiety of the family became very great. In the
+morning, however, she was rather better, so that hope again revived.
+
+During the day the fever increased again, and towards evening and during
+the whole night was accompanied by restlessness and delirium. But we
+only persevered with the more earnestness in the use of what we believed
+to be the most rational treatment. She had, however, a very sick night.
+The next morning she was again better, though, as might have been
+expected, somewhat more feeble than she was twenty-four hours before.
+
+Most parents, I know, and not a few wise medical men among us, would
+have resorted to powders and pills; but we only persevered with our cold
+applications to the head, and our stimulating draughts to the feet. The
+bowels were in a very tolerable condition, otherwise a very mild
+cathartic might possibly have been administered. We had very strong
+hopes,--at least I had,--that nature would be too strong for the
+disease, and that the fever would, ere long, begin to abate.
+
+In the afternoon the fever increased again, in some degree, and there
+was a slight delirium during the succeeding night. She slept a little,
+however, towards morning, after which she was evidently much better.
+This third day was passed away very comfortably, and she slept well
+during the succeeding night. The fourth morning she seemed to be quite
+restored.
+
+Now a case of fever treated with emetics, diaphoretics, etc., and
+followed up with the usual paraphernalia of customary medical practice,
+which should yield so promptly and so immediately, would be supposed to
+be cured by the medicine; and the cure would very probably be regarded
+as rather remarkable; and if there was any peculiarity in the treatment,
+if the diaphoretic powders, for example, had any new or strange name,
+the practice would, peradventure, be thought worth imitating in other
+apparently similar cases of disease.
+
+For myself, however, I simply regard it as one of Nature's own cures,
+unobstructed and unembarrassed by medicine. As the child was young and
+tenacious of life, she might very probably have recovered under the more
+common routine of medical treatment. But would there have been any
+advantage in such a recovery, over one which was equally rapid and
+perfect without the aid of medicine? Would there, in the latter case,
+have been no hazard to the constitution?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXIX.
+
+COLD-TAKING AND CONSUMPTION.
+
+
+In Chapter XXIII., I have given a full account of my partial recovery
+from consumption. I have even spoken of the postponement as if it were
+complete and final. More than twenty years had now passed away, and I
+had begun to indulge the hope that I should never have another relapse.
+
+As one element of this hope, I had nearly broken up the habit--once very
+strong--of taking cold, especially on my lungs. In truth, I believed all
+danger from this source to be entirely removed, and my particular
+susceptibility to any thing like acute pulmonary attacks forever at an
+end. I was confident, moreover, that the art of avoiding cold was an art
+which not only an individual, here and there, like myself, could
+acquire, but one which was within the reach of every one who would take
+the needful pains.
+
+On a certain occasion of this latter kind, I was under a conventional
+necessity of exposing myself, in an unusual degree, for several
+successive evenings, to circumstances which, at an earlier period of my
+life, would, almost inevitably, have been followed by a cold. Was it
+safe, in my present condition, to run the risk? I hesitated for some
+time, but finally decided to comply with the request which had been
+made, and take the responsibility. I believed my susceptibility to cold
+so entirely eradicated that there was little if any danger.
+
+But, as the event proved, I was quite mistaken; a severe cold came on,
+and left me in a condition not merely alarming, but immediately so. My
+lungs were greatly oppressed and my cough exceedingly severe and
+harassing; and it was followed with great debility and rapid emaciation.
+
+Ashamed of myself, especially as I had boasted, for so many years, of
+an entire freedom from all tendencies of this sort, I endeavored, for a
+few days, to screen myself entirely from the public eye and observation.
+But I soon found that inaction, especially confinement to the house,
+would not answer the purpose,--that I should certainly die if I
+persisted in my seclusion.
+
+What now should I do? I was too feeble to work much, although the season
+had arrived when labor in the garden was beginning to be needed. Trees
+were to be pruned and washed, and other things promptly attended to. The
+open air was also the best remedy for my enfeebled and irritated
+bronchial cavities. Whether there was, at this time, any ulceration of
+tubercles in my lungs, is, to say the least, very doubtful. However, I
+greatly needed the whole influence of out-of-door employment, or of
+travelling abroad; and, as it seemed to me, could not long survive
+without it.
+
+Accordingly I took my pruning knife in my hand, and walked to the
+garden. It was about a quarter of a mile distant, and quite unconnected
+with the house I occupied. At first, it was quite as much as I could do
+to walk to the garden and return without attempting any labor. Nor could
+I have done even this, had I not rested several times, both on the road
+and in the enclosure itself.
+
+It was a week before I was able to do more than merely walk to the
+garden and back, and perhaps prune a small fruit tree or shrub, and then
+return. But I persevered. It seemed a last if not a desperate resort;
+yet hope sometimes whispered that my hour had not yet come, that I had
+more work to perform.
+
+At length I began to perceive a slight increase of muscular strength. I
+could work moderately a quarter of an hour or more, and yet walk home
+very comfortably. In about two months, I had strength enough to continue
+my labors several hours, in the course of a whole day, though not in
+succession--perhaps two in the forenoon and two in the afternoon. In
+about three months, I was, so far as I could perceive, completely
+restored.
+
+It is to be remarked and remembered that, during the whole three
+months, I never took the smallest particle of medicine, either solid or
+fluid. My simple course was to obey, in the most rigid and implicit
+manner, all known laws, physical and moral. It was my full belief at
+that time,--it is still my belief,--that conformity to all the Creator's
+laws is indispensable to the best of health, in every condition of human
+life, but particularly so when we are already feeble and have a tendency
+to consumption.
+
+When it became known to my neighbors, who saw me day after day, reeling
+to my garden or staggering home, that I refused to take any medicine,
+there was a very general burst of surprise, and, in some cases, of
+indignation. "Why," said they, "what does the man mean? He must be
+crazy. As he is going on he will certainly die of a galloping
+consumption. Any one that will act so foolishly almost _deserves_ to
+die."
+
+As soon as I found myself fairly convalescent, I returned gradually to
+all those practices on which I had so long relied as a means of
+fortifying myself, but which, since my _fall_, had been partially
+omitted. Among these was bathing, especially cold bathing. To the last,
+however, I returned very cautiously. Not for fear I should not be able
+to secure a reaction, but rather for fear Nature would have to spend
+more _vitality_ during the process than she could well afford to spare.
+
+I have known cases of the latter kind. An aged minister in Cleveland,
+Ohio, who had long followed the practice of cold bathing every morning,
+came to me in Dec. 1851, when the cold weather was very intense, and
+told me that though he could, with considerable effort, get up a
+reaction in his system after the bath, he was afraid it _cost_ too much.
+I advised him to suspend it a few weeks, which he did with evident
+advantage.
+
+There are, however, many other things to be done besides giving due
+attention to cold bathing, if we would harden ourselves fully against
+taking cold, to which I should be glad to advert were it not foreign to
+the plan I had formed, and the limits which, in this work, I have
+prescribed to myself.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXX.
+
+FREEZING OUT DISEASE.
+
+
+I am well acquainted with one man of Yankee origin, who formerly made it
+a practice to freeze out his colds, as he called it. It is certainly
+better to prevent them, as I have all along and always taught. But this
+man's story is somewhat amusing, and by way of relief from our more
+sober subject, I will very briefly relate it.
+
+Whenever he fancied he had taken cold, he would go, at about nine
+o'clock in the evening, in such diminished clothing as would render him
+in a very little time, quite chilly, and remain out of doors, when the
+weather would possibly permit, till he was almost frozen, and then come
+in and go immediately to bed, and procure a reaction. This he called
+freezing out his colds. Whether it was the cold or the heat that
+restored him, may be a point not yet fully settled; but it was a
+well-known fact to his friends, though they insisted in protesting
+against the practice, that every vestige of his cold would frequently,
+if not always, immediately disappear.
+
+But it was a method of treatment which, as the event proved, was not
+without its hazards. I met with him a few years since, and on inquiring
+whether he continued to be as successful as formerly in freezing out his
+colds, he replied that for some time past he had not tried the plan,
+for, on a former occasion, after many successful experiments, he had
+failed in one, and had concluded to relinquish it. He made no farther
+confessions for himself, but his friends have since told me that in the
+case he faintly alluded to, he came very near dying under the process.
+He was sick with a fever, as the consequence, for a long time.
+
+A man in one of the Middle States, who is himself about half a
+physician, and who has in various ways done much for his fellow-men as
+a philanthropist, is accustomed to pursue a course of treatment which,
+though slightly related to the former, is, nevertheless, founded on
+principle. He keeps the sick in a room whose temperature is very
+low,--little, if at all, above the freezing point,--in order that they
+may inhale a full supply of oxygen. For every one doubtless knows that
+the colder the air, the denser it is, and consequently, the greater the
+absolute quantity of oxygen inhaled at each breath. By compelling his
+patients, however weak and feeble, to breathe a cold atmosphere, he
+secured to them an increased and full supply of oxygen.
+
+To prevent his patients from suffering, in consequence of the external
+atmospheric cold, he keeps them in warm beds, and only suffers them to
+be out of bed a very short time, at long intervals. And while out of bed
+even, they are rubbed rapidly, in order to prevent any collapse of the
+skin from the cold. I knew him to keep a very delicate female, who was
+scrofulous if not consumptive, for several weeks of the coldest part of
+the winter, in a room whose temperature seldom exceeded 30° to 40°,
+scarcely permitting her to go out of it night or day, and what is still
+more curious, she slowly recovered under the treatment, and is
+now--seven or eight years afterwards--in the enjoyment of excellent
+health.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXI.
+
+THE AIR-CURE.
+
+
+The individual alluded to in the preceding chapter, once sent for me to
+come and aid him for a time. He was the proprietor of a somewhat
+dilapidated water-cure establishment, which he wished to convert into
+what he chose to denominate an air-cure. For though half a physician
+himself, he had usually employed men of education to assist him; but,
+not having been quite fortunate in his selection, in every instance, he
+was disposed to make trial of myself.
+
+In expressing to me his desires, he said he understood, perfectly well,
+my position. He well knew, in the first place, that I was not a
+hydropathist, but a regular, old-school physician, with this
+modification: that I had, for the most part, lost my faith in medicine,
+and relied chiefly on the recuperative efforts of Nature. He thought, on
+some points, as he said, a little differently from me; still, he
+supposed that wherein we could not agree we could at least agree to
+differ.
+
+The sum total of his wishes, in short, was, that I would aid him in such
+way and manner as might seem to me best. He believed air to be the most
+important and efficient remedial agent in the world. His ideas of the
+virtue of this ęrial fluid were hardly exceeded by those of Mr.
+Thackrah, of Leeds, England, who believes that we subsist more on air
+than on food and drink.
+
+I was with this good man about six months, when, finding it impossible
+to carry out his plan, I left him. But I left him with regret. His
+purposes were generous in the extreme--I might even say noble. He loved
+to cure for the pleasure of curing--not for the emolument. In short, he
+seemed to have no regard to the emolument--not the slightest, and to be
+as nearly disinterested as usually falls to the human lot.
+
+But did he cure? you will perhaps inquire. Yes, if _anybody_ cures.
+Persons came under his care who had been discharged by other
+physicians--both allopathic and homoeopathic--as incurable; and who
+yet, in a reasonable time, regained their health. They followed our
+directions, obeyed the laws of health, and recovered. You may call it
+what you please--either cure or spontaneous recovery. Miracle, I am
+quite sure, it was not.
+
+What, then, were the agencies employed in the air-cure? My friend
+believed that the judicious application of pure air, in as concentrated,
+and, therefore, as cool a state as possible, particularly to the
+internal surface of the lungs, was more important than every other
+agency, and even more important than all others. But then he did not
+forget the skin. He had his air bath, as well as his deep breathings; it
+was as frequently used, and was, doubtless, as efficacious.
+
+He also placed great reliance on good food and drink. Animal food he
+rejected, and condiments. I have neither known nor read of any
+vegetarian, of Britain or America, who carried his dietetic
+peculiarities to what would, by most, be regarded as an extreme, more
+than he. And yet his patients, with few exceptions, submitted to it with
+a much better grace than I had expected. Some of them, it is true, took
+advantage of his absence or their own, and made a little infringement
+upon the rigidity of his prescriptions, but these were exceptions to the
+general rule; and I believe the transgressors themselves regretted it in
+the end--fully satisfied that every indulgence was but a postponement of
+the hour of their discharge.
+
+One thing was permanently regarded as ultra. He did not believe in
+breakfasting; and therefore kept every patient, who wished to come under
+his most thorough treatment, from the use of food till about the middle
+of the day. This permitted of but two meals a day, which, however, is
+one more than has sometimes been recommended by O. S. Fowler, the
+phrenologist, and even by a few others.
+
+The main error, however, of this air-cure practice,--if error there was
+in it,--consisted in the idea of its applicability to everybody, in
+every circumstance. For though it may be true that as large a proportion
+of inveterate cases of disease would disappear under such treatment as
+under any other, yet there are probably not a few to whom it would be
+utterly unadapted.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXII.
+
+THE CLERGYMAN.
+
+
+An Ohio clergyman, just setting out in his ministerial career, consulted
+me, one day, about his health and future physical prospects. His nervous
+system and cerebral centre had been over-taxed and partially prostrated;
+and his digestive and muscular powers were suffering from sympathy. In
+short, he was a run-down student, who, in order to be resuscitated,
+needed rest.
+
+It was not, however, the rest of mere inertia that he required, but rest
+from those studies to which his attention had been long and patiently
+confined. His bodily powers were, indeed, flagging with the rest; but
+then it was impossible for him to be restored without _some_ exercise.
+In truth, it was not so much a _rest_ of body, mind, or heart that he
+needed, as a _change_.
+
+I will tell you what a course he had been, for five or six years,
+pursuing. Though his father was reckoned among the wealthier farmers of
+Ohio, yet, having a large family to sustain and educate, he did not feel
+at full liberty to excuse his children from such co-operation with him
+as would not materially interfere with their studies. Hence they were
+required--and this son among the rest--not only to be as economical as
+possible, in all things, but also to earn as much as they could,
+especially during their vacations. They were not, of course, expected to
+do any thing which was likely to impair their health, but, on the
+contrary, to take every possible pains to preserve the latter, and to
+hold labor and study and every thing else in subserviency to it.
+
+The son for whom I was requested to prescribe, not only attended to his
+father's wishes and expectations, and endeavored to fulfil them, but
+went much farther than was intended, and did more than he ought. Besides
+keeping up with his class, he taught school a very considerable portion
+of the time, so that his mental apparatus, as I have already more than
+intimated, was continually over-taxed; and he had been a sufferer, more
+or less, for several years, when I met with him.
+
+My advice was that he should leave his studies, entirely, for two years,
+and labor moderately, in the meantime, on his father's farm. His
+principal objection to doing so, was, that he was already at an age so
+much advanced, that it seemed to him like a wrong done to society, to
+delay entering upon the duties of the ministry two whole years. But I
+reasoned the case with him as well as I could, and, among other things,
+pointed out to him the course pursued by his Divine Master.
+
+I have never met with him from that day to this; nor have I ever
+received from him--strange as it may seem--any communication on the
+subject. But I have been informed from other sources, that after
+laboring for a time with his father, he was settled as a minister in a
+neighboring village with greatly improved health and highly encouraging
+prospects. He is at the present time one of the main pillars,
+theologically, of the great State of New York, and, as I have reason for
+believing, is in the enjoyment of good health.
+
+It is easy to see that the time he spent on his father's farm, instead
+of being a loss to him, was, in the end, among the most important parts
+of the work of his education. How much better it was for him to recruit
+his wasted energies before he took upon him the full responsibilities of
+preacher and pastor in a large country church and congregation, than to
+rush into the ministry prematurely, with the prospect, amounting almost
+to a certainty, of breaking down in a few years, and spending the
+remnant of his days in a crippled condition,--to have the full
+consciousness that had he been wise he might have had the felicity of a
+long life of usefulness, and of doing good to the souls and bodies of
+mankind.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXIII.
+
+HE MUST BE PHYSICKED, OR DIE.
+
+
+Mr. S., a very aged neighbor of mine, fell into habits of such extreme
+inactivity of the alimentary canal, that instead of invoking the aid of
+Cloaciną, as Mr. Locke would say, every day, he was accustomed to weekly
+invocations only. There was, however, a single exception. In the month
+of June, of each year, he was accustomed to visit the seaside, some
+twenty miles or more distant, and remain there a few days, during which
+and for a short time afterward, his bowels would perform their wonted
+daily office.
+
+And yet, despite of all this, he got along very well during summer and
+autumn, for a man who was over seventy years of age. It was not till
+winter--sometimes almost spring--that his health appeared to suffer as
+the consequence of his costiveness. Nor was it certain, even then,
+whether his inconveniences,--for they hardly deserved the name of
+sufferings,--arose from his costiveness, or from the croakings of
+friends and his own awakened fears and anxieties. Nearly every one who
+knew of the facts in his case was alarmed, and many did not hesitate to
+cry out, even in his hearing, "He must be physicked, or die!" And their
+fears and croakings, by leading him to turn his attention to his
+internal feelings, greatly added to his difficulties.
+
+My principal aim, as his friend and physician, was to convince him that
+there was no necessity of anxiety on the subject, as long as none of the
+various functions of the system were impaired. As long as digestion,
+circulation, respiration, perspiration, etc., were tolerably well
+performed, and his general health was not on the decline, it was not
+very material, as I assured him, whether his alvine movements were once
+a day, once in two days, or once a week.
+
+The various emunctories or outlets of the body should, undoubtedly, be
+kept open and free, so that every portion of worn-out or effete matter
+may be effectually got rid of. In order to have this done in the very
+best manner, it is indispensably necessary that we should eat, drink,
+breathe, sleep, and exercise the muscles and all the mental and moral
+powers daily. And yet we are to such an extent the creatures of habit,
+that we can, in all these respects, bring ourselves to almost any thing
+we choose, and yet pass on, for a time, very comfortably. Thus we may
+eat once, twice, thrice, or five times a day, and if possessed of a good
+share of constitutional vigor, we may even accustom ourselves to
+considerable variation from the general rule with regard to drinking,
+sleeping, exercise, temperature, etc. Healthy men have been able to
+maintain their health, in tolerable measure, for a long time, without
+drink, without exercise, and even without sleep. Of the truth of this
+last remark, I could give you, did time and space permit, many
+well-attested, not to say striking facts.
+
+I was not wholly successful in my attempts at quieting the mind and
+feelings of my aged patient or his friends. And yet his erratic habit
+was never entirely broken up. He lived to the age of fourscore without
+suffering much more from what are usually called the infirmities of age,
+than most other old men. It must not, however, be concealed that he
+possessed what has been sometimes denominated an iron constitution.
+
+Mr. Locke strongly insists that children should be trained, from the
+very first, to diurnal habits of the kind in question; and I cannot help
+thinking that such habits should be secured very early--certainly at
+eight or ten years of age. Some of the healthiest men and women I have
+ever known were those who had either been trained or had trained
+themselves in this way. And yet I would not be so anxious to bring
+nature back to this rule when there have been large digressions, as to
+be found administering cathartics on every trifling occasion.
+
+An old man, who eats little and exercises still less, but has a good
+pulse, a good appetite, and a free perspiration, with a cheerful mind,
+need not take "physic" merely because his bowels do not move more than
+once a week; nor need those who are feverish, and who eat and exercise
+but little. The disturbance which will ensue, if medicine be taken, may
+be productive of more mischief, on the whole, than the absorption into
+the system of small portions of the retained excretions, or the small
+amount of irritation they produce--and probably will be so.
+
+It will be a solace to some to know that the alvine excretions of the
+system are not so much the remnants of our food, when that food is such
+as it should be, as a _secretion_ from the internal or lining membrane
+of the bowels. Consequently, if this secretion is interrupted by
+disease, there will be a proportionally diminished necessity for alvine
+evacuations.
+
+Prof. ----, of Ohio, had been sick of fever, for a long time, and, on
+the departure of the disease, his bowels were left in such a condition
+that cathartics, or at least laxatives, began to be thought of; but his
+physician interdicted their use: His costiveness continued to the
+twenty-first day, without any known evil as the consequence. On this day
+nature rallied. Then followed a period of quiescence of fourteen days,
+and then another of seven days, after which he fell into his former
+diurnal habits. There was much croaking among the neighbors, on account
+of the treatment of his physician; but the results put all to silence.
+
+The case of Judge ----, in the interior of the same State (Ohio), was so
+much like that of Prof. ----, in all its essential particulars, that I
+need but to state the fact, without entering at all upon the details.
+
+J. W. G., a lawyer of Massachusetts, was sick with a lingering
+complaint, attended with more or less of fever, for several months.
+During this time there was one interval, of more than thirty days,
+during which his bowels did not move. And yet there was no evidence of
+any permanent suffering as the consequence.
+
+The principal use I would make of these facts, so far as the mass of
+general readers is concerned, is the following: If, during feebleness
+and sickness, human nature will bear up, for a long time, under
+irregularities of this sort, is it needful that we should be alarmed and
+fly at once to medicine in cases _less_ alarming--above all, in these
+cases, when, except in regard to costiveness, the health and habits are
+excellent? May we not trust much more than we have heretofore believed,
+in the recuperative efforts of Nature?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXIV.
+
+WHO HATH WOE? OR, THE SICK WIDOW.
+
+
+Early in the year 1852, I received a letter, of which the following,
+with very slight needful alterations, is an extract. It was written from
+the interior of Massachusetts.
+
+"About three months ago, I took a long journey by stage-coach, which
+brought on, as I think, an internal inflammation. Since that time I have
+taken very little medicine. Please tell me whether it is right for me to
+bathe daily in, and drink freely of, cold water; and whether it is safe
+to make cold applications to the parts affected.
+
+"I take as much exercise as I can without producing irritation. I do
+not, by any means, indulge in the food which my appetite craves.
+
+"I am twenty-six years of age; was married and left a widow, while young
+and very ignorant, under circumstances the most deeply painful. I have a
+strong desire to get well if I can; though if I must give up the thought
+I am willing to die.
+
+"I should be very glad to see you, if you will take the trouble to come
+and see me. I should have made an effort to consult you, in person,
+before now, if I could have safely taken the journey."
+
+At the time of receiving this letter I was travelling in a distant
+State, and, as an immediate visit was wellnigh impracticable, I wrote
+her, requesting such farther information as might enable me to give her
+a few general directions, promising to see her on my return in the
+spring. In reply to my inquiries, I received what follows:--
+
+"I have been, from childhood, afflicted with bunches in the throat.
+There is no consumptive tendency on either my father's or my mother's
+side; but I come, by the maternal side, from a king's evil[I] family. I
+am an ardent, impulsive creature, possessing a nervous, sanguine
+temperament; naturally cheerful and agreeable, but rendered, by
+sickness, irritable, capricious, and melancholic. I fear consumption so
+much, that were I convinced it was fully fastened upon me, I might be
+tempted, unless restrained by a strong moral influence, to commit a
+crime which might not be forgiven.
+
+"I have great weakness in the throat, and soreness in the chest, with a
+dull pain between the shoulders. My appetite is extraordinary;--I think
+it has increased since I have dieted. My flesh is stationary. I gain a
+few pounds, and then commit some wild freak and lose it. I am
+unaccountable to myself. I think, sir, that my mental disturbances
+impair my health.
+
+"I anticipate much pleasure from seeing you; for I see, by your letter,
+you understand me. I have always been thought inexplicable. I feel a
+universal languor. I am, at times, unconscious. I feel dead to all
+things; there seems a loss of all vitality; and sometimes there is a
+sense of suffocation. All these feelings are extreme, because I am, by
+my nature, so sensitive. I met the other day with a slight from a
+friend, a young lady, which caused grief so excessive that I have ever
+since been suffering from influenza."
+
+These lengthy extracts may not be very interesting to the general
+reader, except so far as they reveal to him some of the internal
+cogitations of a soul borne down with a load of suffering, which almost
+drove her to suicide. "Who hath woe,"--as Solomon says, with respect to
+a very different description of human character,--if not this poor
+widow?
+
+And yet it required a personal visit, and the conversation of a couple
+of hours, to fathom the depths of her woe, to the utmost. For there are
+secrets of the human heart, with which, of course, no stranger--not even
+the family physician--should presume to intermeddle; though to these
+depths, in the case of the half-insane sufferer of whom I am speaking,
+it was not necessary that I should go, in order to find out what I had
+all along suspected. Disease had been communicated several years before,
+of a kind which was much more communicable _then_, than it was
+eradicable now.
+
+Whenever, by the laws of hereditary descent, in their application to
+health and disease, our children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren
+suffer, we may recognize in it the hand of the great Creator; nor do we
+doubt, often, the wisdom of such laws nor their ultimate tendency to
+work out final good. But when we find a widow suffering many long years,
+from a disease to which a husband's weakness and wickedness has
+subjected her, what shall we say, especially when we have reason to fear
+that the evils in question, some of them, at least, will be terminable
+only, in their effects, with life itself?
+
+My patient is _patiently_ wearing out her ills; and what she cannot wear
+out, she is learning to endure. Her case cannot be reached with
+medicine, at least with safety, and is only to be affected, so far as
+affected at all, by yielding the most unflinching obedience to the laws
+of God, physical and moral. She will not die of consumption; she will
+live on; but how much progress she may be able to make towards the land
+of life and health, is by no means certain. Her case is, at best, a
+trying one, and must compel us, whenever we reflect on the subject, to
+say, "Who hath woe, if not persons situated like this widow?"[J]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[I] She was not aware that king's evil, or scrofula, is oftentimes the
+parent of consumption.
+
+[J] Since this chapter was written, I have had the pleasure of learning
+from a reliable source that the young woman above referred to is now
+enjoying comparatively good health. She married a second time, a year or
+two afterwards; and by following out the course prescribed, and with the
+blessing of Heaven, she came at length to her present position of
+usefulness and happiness.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXV.
+
+THE PENALTY OF SELF-INDULGENCE.
+
+
+The thought that a minister of the gospel can be gluttonous is so
+painful that, after selecting as the caption to the present chapter, "A
+gluttonous minister," I concluded to modify it. Perhaps, after all, it
+might be as well in the end, to call things by their proper names.
+However, we will proceed, as we have set out, for this once.
+
+A minister about forty years of age came to me one day, deeply involved
+in all the midnight horrors of dyspepsia.
+
+On investigating his case, I found it one of the most trying I had ever
+met with. It was not only trying in itself, in the particular form and
+shape it assumed, but it had been rendered much more troublesome and
+unmanageable by injudicious medical treatment.
+
+My course was a plain one, and I proceeded cautiously to prescribe for
+him--not medicine, for in my judgment he needed none, but simply a
+return to the physical laws he had so long and so palpably violated.
+These laws I endeavored briefly to recall to his attention. As he was an
+intelligent man, I dealt with him in the most plain and direct manner.
+
+Some two or three weeks afterward he called on me again, saying that he
+was no better. I repeated my prescription, only more particularly. Still
+I was not, as I now think, sufficiently particular and definite, for
+want of time. Moreover, he still clung to the off-hand customs of
+empiricism,--that of looking at the tongue, feeling the pulse, and
+seeming "wondrous wise,"--and vainly hoped I would treat him in the same
+direct way, instead of requiring what he regarded as a more circuitous
+course.
+
+He called on me the third time. We had now ample leisure and
+opportunity for attempting to ferret out the causes which had operated
+to bring him into his present condition, some of which, it appeared, had
+been of long standing.
+
+I inquired, in the first place, concerning his exercise. This, he said,
+was taken very irregularly, chiefly in walking abroad on business,
+seldom or never in company. His mind, in all probability, was not
+directed, to any considerable extent, from its accustomed mill-horse
+track. His gait, too, when he walked, was staid and measured. It was
+never buoyant, lively, or playful. And as for amusement, he had none at
+all.
+
+His diet was still worse than his exercise. He had a large family, and
+resided in the midst of a dense population; and was so situated as to
+render his house, practically, a kind of ministerial thoroughfare. He
+probably entertained, at his hospitable table, more ministers, literary
+men, and students than any other three clergymen in the neighborhood.
+
+"Now," said he to me, "we have a good deal of table preparation to make,
+and Mrs. Y., who dearly loves to have things in pretty good order, sets
+a full table, with, a large variety. Well, this food must be eaten. It
+will never do for a minister who has a large family and lives on a
+moderate salary, to _waste_ any thing. And, besides, as I ought to tell
+you, we sometimes, if not always, have a very considerable amount of
+rich food on the table."
+
+"Do you mean to intimate that the bountiful provision you make for
+others renders it necessary for you to overeat? Or have your remarks a
+reference to a supposed necessity of eating rich food?"
+
+"We are not, of course, absolutely compelled to _any_ thing. My meaning
+is this: In order to meet the wants of those who are liable to call on
+us at almost any hour, _we prepare largely_. Then, to meet these varying
+and often very fastidious tastes, we must have _a large variety_ of
+food, and it must be _highly seasoned_. And then, if it happens that our
+company is not as large as is expected, we have an extra quantity
+remaining, and I am tempted to aid in eating it up, the highly seasoned
+food among the rest."
+
+"And you think, do you, that this highly seasoned food is the cause of
+your dyspepsia?"
+
+"Undoubtedly it is."
+
+"And do you expect to be cured of a disease which is produced by certain
+definable causes, like this, and yet be permitted to go on in the same
+way you have long gone? Do you suppose I have any power to grant you an
+immunity from the evil effects of high living while that high living is
+persisted in? Can you get rid of an effect till you first remove the
+cause?"
+
+"Why, no, sir, not exactly. Such an expectation would be very
+unreasonable. But is there no medicine I can take that will _partially_
+restore me? Perhaps, at my age, entire restoration from such a hydra
+disease as dyspepsia is hardly to be expected; but can you not patch me
+up in part?"
+
+"What! and suffer you to go on sinning?"
+
+"Why, yes, to some small extent. It is very hard, nay, it seems to me
+almost impossible, to break away from the routine of my family, at least
+as long as Mrs. Y. is fully determined to prepare for company according
+to the prevailing customs. I could submit to a different arrangement if
+she were ready for it."
+
+"I wish I could encourage you to pursue this compromising course of
+conduct. But it is not so. You must change your habits entirely, or you
+must continue to suffer. For if it were possible to patch you up, for a
+short time, while your present habits are continued, it would not be as
+well for you in the end: It would only add another head and horn,
+perhaps several others, to the monster that annoys you. No, sir; you
+must change your habits or give up the contest. There is no use in
+attempting to do any thing, in such a case as yours, with medicine."
+
+"Well, then, if it must be so, it must. I will try once more, and see
+what I can do."
+
+He left me with a downcast look, and, I suspected, with a heavy heart.
+At all events, my own heart was heavy, and seemed almost ready to bleed.
+Here was a father in our ministerial Israel,--one to whom multitudes
+looked up for the bread of spiritual life,--who was a perfect slave to
+his appetites; or, at least, to the conventionalisms of modern
+house-keeping. He groaned daily and hourly under bodily disease the most
+aggravated and severe. His eyes were red and swelled; the sides of his
+nose enlarged and inflamed, till he had the appearance of being about
+half a sot. He knew all about it, and yet refused to take the first step
+in the way of reformation.
+
+I saw him, by accident, once more, and would have spoken with him
+freely; but he seemed to shun every thing beyond a merely passing
+compliment. I saw how it was with him; and the reflections which arose
+in my mind gave me the most intense pain.
+
+Two or three weeks afterward, while in an intimate and confidential
+conversation with two of his very familiar friends, I ventured to
+predict his fall, with nearly as much particularity as if the events
+which were predicted had already taken place. I was asked how I dared to
+say such things, even in secret, of so good a man and such a father in
+the American Church. So I gave them, by way of reply, the principal
+facts in the case, as detailed above.
+
+Not many years passed ere this very minister was tried for a crime much
+more high-handed than gluttony, though sometimes the sequel to it; and
+not only tried, but silenced. The results of the trial were as shocking
+to most people as they were unexpected. Every one said: "How can it be?"
+
+Mr. Y. became a farmer, and is still so. But he is cured of his
+dyspepsia. Compelled, as I have reason to believe he is, to practise the
+most rigid economy, having very little temptation to unlawful
+indulgence, and having an abundance of healthful exercise in the open
+air, he has every appearance, externally, of a reformed man. His old
+friends would, I think, hardly know him. His skin is as clear, and his
+eyes and nose as physiologically correct in their appearance, as yours
+or mine. True, he is an old man, but he is not a gluttonous old man. He
+is a fallen man, but a healthy, and, I hope, a penitent one. He has
+experienced a species of first resurrection, and has, I trust, the hope
+of a better one still.
+
+Now, had this man believed, in the first place, that the fault of his
+dyspepsia was not wholly chargeable on Mrs. Y., but also on
+himself,--had he clearly seen that he loved high living, and would not
+relinquish it,--he might have been reformed without a dreadful and
+scathing ordeal, and without disgracing the cause of his Divine Master,
+But alas! "the woman that thou gavest to be with me," as he said, was in
+fault; and so he did not reform himself.
+
+That his wife was in fault, most deeply, I do not deny. She knew her
+husband's weakness, and yet continued to place before him those
+temptations which she well knew were too strong for him. How she could
+do this, and persist in doing it, is, to me, a mystery. But she had her
+reward; at least, in part. For in the fall and retirement of her husband
+from public life, and in the consciousness--which was the most terrible
+of all--of his guilt, must not her sufferings have been terrible?
+
+It is indeed true that she may not have been wise enough--for this
+wisdom has not yet been made public property, in the fullest sense--to
+look at the subject in one point of view, which would be calculated to
+add to the poignancy of her anguish. So that we may be almost ready to
+say, in her case, "Ignorance is bliss." I refer, here, to the infliction
+of scrofula and nervousness, by high living, on the next generation.
+
+For while Mrs. Y. was bowing down to public opinion, and preparing rich
+viands for her guests, and practically compelling her husband and
+children to eat up what they had nibbled at and left, she was not only
+fastening dyspepsia upon the former and nervousness upon herself, but
+imparting more or less of a tendency to nervousness and scrofula upon
+the rest of her family. Of the two thousand children born in a day, in
+the United States, from two hundred to three hundred--perhaps nearer
+four hundred--come into the world with a scrofulous tendency; and of
+these, it is highly probable, that at least one hundred per day are
+manufactured at just such tables as those which were set by Mrs. Y. for
+the teachers of the religion of Jesus Christ.
+
+I have quoted the old adage, that "Ignorance is bliss;" but alas! is it
+not to trifle with the most solemn considerations? Can that be regarded
+as blissful which leaves a mother, who, in general, means to love and
+honor the Saviour, to destroy her husband and one or two of his
+children? There is little doubt that, besides shutting her husband out
+of the sacred enclosure, after she had destroyed his health, Mrs. Y. was
+the means of destroying at least one or two of her children. One of
+them, who was scrofulous, ran at last--a very common occurrence--into
+consumption, and perished early, in the beginning of active usefulness.
+
+I may be suspected of exaggeration, by some of my readers. Would to God,
+for humanity's sake and for Christ's sake, it were so! For though I
+cannot subscribe to the creed of those who profess to be willing to come
+into everlasting condemnation for the glory of God, yet, so long as
+opportunity for repentance shall last, I would willingly be convicted of
+untruth, if so that the falsehood might be made palpable to my mind,
+rather than believe what I am compelled to believe with regard to the
+murderous tendency on soul and body of our murderous modern cookery. Is
+it not true--the old adage, that while "God," in his mercy, "sends us
+meats, the Devil," in his malignity, "sends us cooks?"
+
+This unnatural cookery,--this mingling medicine with viands naturally
+healthful, and torturing the compounds thus formed into sources of
+irritation, has more to do with that sensuality which has come upon us
+like a flood,--much of it in new forms,--than many are aware. And I am
+much mistaken if modern societies for moral reform, popularly so called,
+might not thank the over-refined cookery of a gross and highly
+stimulating diet, for that necessity which impels to their own field of
+labor.
+
+One thing more might have been mentioned in its proper place--the
+tendency of high living to eruptions on the skin. These, in their
+various forms of pimple, carbuncle, boil, etc., are becoming quite the
+order of the day. Mr. Y.'s family had a full share of them, especially
+those of them who were scrofulous. I have already mentioned the
+appearance of Mr. Y.'s face, and have alluded to the change which took
+place after his fall. But I should have spoken of the eruptions on his
+face, which, at times, were such as almost made him ashamed to enter the
+pulpit.
+
+You will see, from the tenor of these remarks, that I have laid the
+guilt, in this sad affair, just where I believe it ought to rest. I have
+not sought to exculpate one individual or party, at the expense of
+another equally guilty, but rather to do justice to all.
+
+Only one thing remains, which is to confess my _own_ guilt. Have I not
+great reason to fear that my advice was not sufficiently pointed and
+thorough? I might have gone to Mr. Y. and told him the truth, the whole
+truth. What if it had given offence? Would not the prospect of doing
+good, rather than of giving offence, have been worth something? In any
+event, I do regret most deeply my unfaithfulness, even though it arose
+from delicacy and diffidence, for that very delicacy and diffidence were
+far enough from being grounded on the love of God. They were grounded
+much more on the love of human approbation. No man was ever more free
+from it than our Saviour. Ought I not to have used the same plainness
+that he would have used? Had I rebuked Mrs. Y. as kindly and as
+faithfully as he rebuked Martha at Bethany, how much, for ought I can
+ever know, might have been saved, not only to the cause of health and
+conjugal happiness, but also to that of piety.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXVI.
+
+DR. BOLUS AND MORPHINE.
+
+
+A telegraphic communication was made to me one day, nearly as follows:
+"B. J. W. is very sick, and is not expected to live through the day.
+Please come on immediately."
+
+The distance was about one hundred and fifty miles, and the mode and
+means of conveyance neither very direct nor rapid for these latter
+times. It was more than probable that Mr. B. J. W. would be dead before
+I could reach the place. However, as he was a particular friend, and as
+there was some hope, I concluded to set out.
+
+Late in the evening,--or rather, in the night,--I arrived at the place,
+and found the young man still alive. He was, however, as it was easy to
+perceive, in a very critical condition. Glad to find him alive, but
+inclined to fall in with the general opinion that his case was a
+hopeless one, and withal greatly fatigued, I yielded to the demands of
+exhausted Nature, and slept a short time, when his physician arrived.
+
+Now I had been sent for, in part, as a special friend, and in part, as a
+medical counsellor. And yet there were difficulties. Dr. Bolus, the
+family physician, was just such a man--for reasons that might be
+given--as I dreaded to advise with, should my advice be needed. He was
+one who would be likely to think any important suggestion an impeachment
+of his own superior wisdom. Science, true science, is always modest, and
+does not fear any thing; because she loves, most of all things, _to be
+right_. But Dr. Bolus had not, as I think, enough of true science to
+make him feel or perceive the want of it. The ignorant are always
+self-confident in proportion to their ignorance.
+
+We examined the patient, as soon as possible, and retired for
+consultation. Dr. Bolus gave a full history of the progress of the case,
+with a particular account of the treatment. I saw at once, both from the
+existing symptoms and Dr. Bolus's statement, that the tendency to the
+brain--so great as to keep up an almost constant delirium--was quite as
+likely to be caused by the enormous quantities of morphine and quinine,
+and other active medicines which had been administered, as to belong
+properly to the disease. I therefore advised a gradual reduction and
+ultimate discontinuance of the extra stimulants.
+
+Dr. Bolus was opposed to the reduction I proposed, but finally consented
+to it, at least in part, and the patient evidently derived almost
+immediate benefit from it. When I had pushed my views with regard to the
+stimuli as far as I could, we separated, and as the distance at which
+the doctor resided was considerable, and as I was on the spot to watch
+the patient, he proposed not to call again till early in the morning of
+the following day.
+
+I was by no means satisfied with the compromise we had made. It had not
+accomplished its intended object. Dr. Bolus had, indeed, yielded a
+little, but not enough to satisfy me. I believed the amount of stimulus
+still given vastly too great, and was unwilling to continue it. In
+truth, I persuaded one of the attendants to omit the principal articles,
+whenever the hour came for administering them, assuring him that I would
+take all the responsibility.
+
+Of the other attendant I would have made the same requisition, but he
+being exceedingly attached to Dr. Bolus, would never have tolerated the
+slightest concealment, or departure from the strictest letter of the
+law.
+
+It was easy to see that the less stimulating treatment of each alternate
+two hours, during which it was entirely omitted, left behind it, on the
+patient's frame, a better influence than the more active treatment of
+the other two. And when the next medical consultation came, I pleaded
+for a still greater diminution of the stimulus. But, as I had
+unwillingly used a little duplicity,--a thing I now deeply regret,--in
+order to come at my conclusions against the stimulants, I was not
+willing to state, in full, the grounds of my opinion, and therefore
+could not prevail with Dr. Bolus to consent to any farther advances in
+the unstimulating plan.
+
+I was now, at length, compelled to leave for home; and the results, for
+the rest of the time, were reported to me through the kindness of the
+young man's friends. It is sufficient, perhaps, to say that he finally
+recovered; but it was not till the lapse of several months. In the mean
+time, a severe ulcer broke out on the lower part of his back, which
+caused much suffering, and appeared to retard very greatly the progress
+of his recovery.
+
+My errors in this case were numerous and great. Believing, as I did, in
+the outset, that Dr. Bolus and myself could never agree, I did wrong in
+consenting to a consultation with him. I ought to have been nothing but
+a visitor, or else to have entered fully into the spirit and duty of a
+counsellor. In the former case I might, indeed, have outraged every
+feeling of benevolence; in the latter I ought to have proposed my
+objections in full, and not to have compromised so as to submit to what
+I really believed to be radically and essentially wrong.
+
+For I did most fully believe all this; and in spite of every effort at
+concealment, my scepticism finally came out, and I was weak enough to
+speak of it, and openly to find fault with Dr. Bolus. A practical
+quarrel followed between Dr. Bolus and myself, in which the friends
+joined, or, at least, strongly sympathized.
+
+My own belief, then, was, and it still remains the same, that the
+violence of the young man's disease, especially the tendency to the
+brain, was chiefly, if not wholly, owing to the medicine administered;
+and that, from the very first, no active medicine--nothing but an
+exceedingly mild and cooling treatment--was required. It was even my
+belief that the ulcer was caused by the medicine.
+
+But, while I lost confidence in human nature, and especially in the
+human nature of some of my brethren of the medical profession, by this
+experiment, I became more thoroughly convinced than ever before of the
+great need of honest and benevolent as well as scientific men in this
+department, and of the general impotency and worse than impotency of
+much that is dignified with the name of medical treatment. I became most
+fully convinced, that in acute diseases as well as chronic, Nature,
+unembarrassed, will generally accomplish her own work, when left to
+herself and to good and careful nursing and attendance.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXVII.
+
+BLEEDING AND BLISTERING OMITTED.
+
+
+One of my neighbors had fallen down-stairs, and injured himself
+internally, in the right side of the chest; and a degree, greater or
+less, of inflammation had followed. The pain was constant, though not
+severe; but the soreness was considerable, and did not give promise of
+speedy amendment.
+
+My advice was to keep quiet, both in body and mind, and to avoid all
+kinds of exertion that could possibly affect the chest. I also advised
+the use of water, not only for drink, in small draughts, but, if the
+pain and soreness should be troublesome, as an external application to
+the part affected. The food was to be mild and unstimulating. A tendency
+to crowd around the fire was to be guarded against and prevented, by
+putting on, if necessary, an increased amount of clothing.
+
+Two days passed away with no great variation of the symptoms, either for
+better or worse. I was now fully convinced that I had taken the true
+course, because, otherwise, my patient must, by this time, have become
+worse. Accordingly, I persevered in my general let-alone plan for about
+two weeks, when the patient fully recovered.
+
+He was a slender boy, in the fifteenth year of his age, strongly
+inclined, by inheritance, to disease of the chest and brain; and this
+consideration, among others, led me to be extremely cautious about his
+treatment. The greater the danger the greater the necessity that what is
+done should be done right, or we shall defeat our own purposes.
+
+But the most remarkable fact in relation to this very interesting case
+is,--and it is chiefly for the sake of this fact that I have related the
+story,--that more than forty-eight hours had passed, after the
+occurrence of the accident, before it came into my mind that any thing
+could, by possibility, be done for the chest, in the way of bleeding,
+blistering, etc.,--so utterly irrational had this treatment, once so
+fashionable, come to be regarded, both by myself and a few others. How
+strange that I should not think of it in two whole days! Twenty years
+before, I should not have dared to pass through the first twenty-four
+hours, in such a case, without _thinking_, at least, of balsams and
+mustard poultices and the whole paraphernalia of external treatment, to
+say nothing of bleeding and blistering.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXVIII.
+
+MEDICAL VIRTUES OF SLEEP.
+
+
+My own child, a boy nine or ten years of age, and somewhat inclined to
+croup, was one evening wheezing considerably, and, as his mother
+thought, was threatened with an immediate attack, either from this or
+some other disease. Of course, there was not a little anxiety manifested
+in the family on his account, and we were deliberating what to do with
+him, when the late Dr. Shew, the hydropathist, chanced to come in.
+
+After a little general conversation, we turned our thoughts again to our
+little patient, and asked Dr. Shew what he would do with him if he were
+his patient. "If it were my case," said he, "I would give him a tepid
+bath--say at about the temperature of 80° or 85°." "Would you do nothing
+more?" "Nothing at all, except to put him early to bed."
+
+I was not committed to hydropathy, as I have before told you. I never
+have been, though I had a sort of general respect for Dr. Shew; and
+hence it was that, incidentally, I asked him the question which I did;
+and I was pleased with his reply. There was nothing suggested which was
+at all akin to violence. He did not propose a shower bath of any kind.
+He did not speak of hot bathing, which for that hour of the day might
+have induced too violent a perspiration. He did not propose vapor
+bathing or steaming. A tepid bath could, abstractly considered, do no
+harm. It would, at least, while away the time till nature could have
+opportunity to rally. And then, if the return to health should be
+attributed to the application of the tepid water, we had no special
+objection to it. We had no medical pride--most certainly I had
+none--that would lead me to fear lest I should add to the popularity of
+the cold-water system.
+
+But it was rather late in the evening,--between seven and eight
+o'clock,--almost time for such a child to be in bed. In order to get up
+a tepid bath and make the application, so much time would be required
+that it would keep him from sleep till nine o'clock, and perhaps later;
+whereas, I had a very high opinion of the healing and renovating power
+of natural and healthy sleep. It struck me that to put the child to bed
+immediately, and let him have a good night's rest, would be a much wiser
+measure than to bathe him even in _tepid_ water. So, after thanking Dr.
+Shew for his advice, I told him that, for the reasons above stated, we
+had concluded to omit the bath and put the child immediately to bed.
+
+On being put in bed and suitably covered, he went to sleep immediately,
+and fell into a gentle perspiration, and in about two hours his
+breathing was much better. It continued to improve till the next
+morning, when he arose, at the usual time, and was nearly well. Dr. Shew
+himself jocosely observed that the _sleep_ cure had proved quite as
+successful as the _water_ cure.
+
+Much, therefore, as I prize bathing of all sorts, in its proper place,
+it must never take the place of other and more important influences,
+whenever these influences can be brought to bear on the case. Indeed, no
+bathing of any kind can be desirable, any farther than as it serves to
+aid these natural processes. It has no magic or miraculous power. If we
+do not eat, drink, sleep, and wake, all the better for it; if the
+various offices of digestion, respiration, circulation, perspiration,
+and cerebral action are not thereby, as a whole thing, better performed,
+it might as well--nay, better--be omitted. Otherwise we waste time and
+trifle away vital energy.
+
+If all the functions of the body and all the faculties of the mind could
+be kept steadily employed, and in healthful proportion, it is obvious
+that a person could not be sick. Or, if one of these only should be
+deranged, and we should fall sick, as the consequence, what else, pray
+tell me, is needed, but to effect a speedy return of the faltering
+function or part to its proper post and duty?
+
+But sleep, more than all things else, whenever the usual hour has
+actually arrived, has the effect to facilitate a cure. We all know how
+wakeful some maniacs are, and how hurried and deranged all the movements
+of the muscular and nervous systems are apt to become, no less than
+those of the brain itself. And we all know, too, how much good it does
+such persons to be able to obtain good, sound, substantial, quiet sleep.
+It acts like a charm, and does more than charms can do, or mere
+medicine.
+
+Half the formality of having watchers by night in the sick room, does
+more harm than good. It were better, in many instances, to extinguish
+all the lights, except at certain set times and on particular occasions,
+and let the patient sleep. And yet I have as exalted an estimate of the
+importance of careful nursing as any other individual.
+
+For example of my meaning, in a case of seeming contradiction, I may say
+that I have taken all the needful care of a young man who was very sick,
+for more than thirty successive nights with the exception of two, and
+yet maintained my health, which, as you already know, was never very
+firm. And I have known those who could do this for three months. But
+they extinguish or hide their light, and acquire a habit of waking at
+certain times, so as never to neglect the wants of the patient.
+
+So true is it that sleep is the grand restorer as well as the great
+curer of disease, that its salutary influence in the case of various
+infantile complaints, has long been known and regarded. And one reason
+why infants should neither be nursed nor fed in the night, as many
+physiologists maintain, is, that it breaks in upon the soundness of the
+sleep, as experience has most abundantly proved. Sleep, in short, if not
+a "matchless" sanative, is at least a universal one.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXIX.
+
+CURE BY DEEP BREATHING.
+
+
+A young man, fifteen or sixteen years of age, who was in the habit of
+suffering from protracted colds, nearly the whole winter, till they
+seemed to terminate almost in consumption in the spring, came under my
+care about March 1st, 1854, and was treated as the nature of his case
+seemed to require, though with a few of what may be, by some, regarded
+as peculiarities.
+
+He was directed to rise in the morning at about six o'clock, which at
+that season of the year is about as early as any one can see well
+without lamp-light. At the moment of leaving his bed, he was required to
+wet his body all over, as quickly as possible, either with the hand or a
+sponge, or if preferred, with a coarse towel, and then wipe himself
+hastily and partially, so as to leave on the surface a little moisture,
+and yet not enough to cause, by evaporation, any sensations of
+chilliness. The water to be used was to be cold, or at such temperature
+as is usual at that season, when standing all night in a room without
+fire. This was to be followed by a rapid rubbing with _crash mittens_, a
+coarse towel, or the hand, as long as he could keep up a good reaction
+and a proper degree of vital warmth.
+
+Or, if rubbing the body increased the cough, and an assistant was
+required, in this case, a healthy man well charged, so to speak, with
+electricity, was always to be deemed preferable. In general, however,
+the young man found no difficulty in keeping himself warm, in this
+exercise, about half an hour.
+
+Whenever his strength began to flag, or a little before,--for I did not
+think it desirable to go farther than the mere borders of fatigue,--he
+was placed in bed and well covered, so as to be immediately warm. The
+room itself was kept as cool as possible, even in the coldest weather,
+the fire having been entirely removed at bedtime the night before, and
+the room well aired and ventilated.
+
+This method of placing him in a warm bed was called dry packing. In this
+dry pack he usually remained from half an hour to an hour. At the end of
+this period, he was required to get out of bed, and repeat the former
+course of rubbing the naked surface of the body a long time, in the cold
+air, though, in this case, without repeating the application of the cold
+water.
+
+Thus the forenoon passed away, with a few slight but unimportant
+variations. At twelve o'clock, this alternation of air-bathing with
+friction and dry-packing, ceased, and the patient was expected to put on
+his clothes and come to dinner. You will, perhaps, ask when and where he
+had his breakfast. No breakfast was allowed him. Nothing was to be
+taken, except small draughts of water, till twelve o'clock.
+
+Another operation, which had much more the appearance of peculiarity
+than any other part of the treatment, but which was deemed, more than
+all else, indispensable to his recovery, consisted in a series of deep
+inspirations or breathings. It may be described thus: The patient was
+required to draw as much air into his lungs as possible, and then
+immediately expel as much of it as possible. This was to be repeated and
+continued till a suitable degree of fatigue was induced. At first, it
+was only required as a species of amusement while in the dry pack; but
+subsequently it was demanded in other circumstances.
+
+I have usually required a person to begin the process by ten, twenty, or
+thirty deep inspirations, according to his strength of lungs and their
+irritability; for, at first, it often makes him cough. In the present
+case, I began with fifty, and gradually increased the number to one
+hundred. Sometimes, by way of experiment, and to pass away the time
+while in the dry pack, he went much farther; once to six hundred. In
+this case, however, the face became slightly flushed, the eyes reddened,
+and the whole arterial action became hastened. It was evidently like
+"too much of a good thing," and was never repeated.
+
+The afternoon was spent in physical exercise, active amusement, reading,
+conversation, etc. The first consisted chiefly in sawing and splitting
+wood, and in walking abroad. The amusements were of various kinds. The
+reading was chiefly of the lighter sort, such as newspapers and
+magazines. The conversation--not always controllable--was the best we
+could furnish him. Some of the walks were long, extending to five or six
+miles.
+
+Music, both vocal and instrumental, was regarded as a most valuable
+amusement, and was not wholly overlooked. It had its difficulties, but
+most of them could be surmounted. As a devotional exercise, its soothing
+influence was almost always evoked.
+
+I have said that no breakfast was taken by this young man, and no drink
+used but cold water. The dinner was also without drink, and so was the
+supper. The first consisted of a very few kinds of coarse
+food,--generally not more than two or three at once,--such as coarse
+whole-meal bread, rice, potatoes, apples, etc., and was the principal
+meal. The supper was a lighter meal, both as respected quantity and
+quality, and was taken at about six o'clock. No condiments were allowed
+except salt, and very little of this; and no animal food, or the
+products of animals, except, occasionally, a little milk. Fruits, either
+raw or cooked, were frequently among the staples at dinner, but never at
+supper.
+
+This treatment, with slight variations, would be applicable to most
+persons suffering with lingering complaints, and to persons in health,
+as a means of invigorating their systems; but my present purpose is,
+chiefly, to speak of it as a remedial agency in the particular case of
+this young man.
+
+I had hoped to be able to effect a cure on him in about a month. But I
+was happily disappointed in finding him recover so fast that he was
+dismissed and sent home on the twenty-fifth day. Nor has his consumptive
+tendency ever again appeared with much severity. Since the spring of
+1856--now between two and three years--it has not appeared at all.
+
+This method of cure, by deep breathing, consists simply in using the
+lungs freely, without overworking them. They may be overworked as well
+as used too little; though the danger is generally in the latter
+direction. They are made, most undoubtedly, for a great amount of
+action, in breathing, conversation, singing, reading, etc.; and yet, in
+all these respects, they are sadly neglected.
+
+Our ordinary conversation is such as hardly to exercise the lungs at
+all. We talk with the mouth and throat rather than the lungs. So is it,
+for the most part, with our singing. And, as for breathing, we only
+breathe a little way down, even when our dress is such as to form no
+impediment. Full breathing, except in making violent efforts, is hardly
+known.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXX.
+
+SPIRIT-DOCTORING.
+
+
+One of the most amusing incidents of my "Forty Years among Pills and
+Powders," is found at full length of detail in the following chapter.
+The amusement it affords has, however, a tinge of sadness.
+
+A young man came under my care in the early part of the year 1854, who,
+for the sake of convenience, I will call Thomas. He was about eighteen
+years of age, but as delicate, sensitive, and effeminate as a female
+directly from Broadway would have been, or as a plant reared in a
+hothouse. In truth, he had been reared very much like many females of
+the present day, in a manner entirely sedentary--the creature of
+over-tenderness and over-kindness.
+
+His disease was scrofula; but, with his scrofulous tendencies were
+conjoined some other difficulties, more obscure and still more
+unmanageable. His joints were enlarged; and in particular portions of
+his body were various watery swellings or sacs.
+
+As it was a scrofulous tendency that lay at the bottom or basis of his
+complaints, I proceeded to treat him accordingly. I was to have him
+under my care three months, during which time, it was believed,
+something might be done, if ever. At least, it was believed that a
+beginning might be made, if indeed the disease should prove to be at all
+curable.
+
+He was subjected to the treatment, with few variations, which is
+mentioned in the preceding chapter. He was not permitted, however, to do
+much in the way of deep breathing till his general health and strength
+could be improved by other measures. Warm water, in his case, was
+preferred, also, to cold, and was used in the form of a tub-bath, at
+five o'clock in the afternoon.
+
+Thomas had been with me about three weeks, without much variation of
+condition or prospects, when I received a long letter from his friends,
+the purport of which was that they had been favored with a communication
+from the "spirit world," which was attended with the appearance of so
+much truth and reality, that they were not at liberty wholly to
+disregard it. The communication purported to be made by the late Dr.
+Benjamin Rush, of Philadelphia.
+
+As these friends of Thomas well knew I was not a believer in this
+new-fangled spiritualism, they had taken much pains to satisfy me that I
+was to have for my venerable counsellor not a mere pretender, but the
+veritable Dr. Rush himself. As one evidence in the case, they had
+inquired through the "medium," who were the present associates of the
+good doctor in his new abode; who, nothing loath, had deigned to gratify
+their supposed curiosity, by giving them the names of five distinguished
+physicians, among whom were the elder and younger Dr. Ingalls, of
+Massachusetts, and Dr. Sanborn, of New Hampshire.
+
+And then, with regard to Thomas, he only said, at first, that he was
+very much interested in him, and that he would examine him and report.
+Soon after this, at another communication, he said his case was a
+difficult one, but he thought not incurable. He added, that he was
+already in very good hands, the best, perhaps, that could be found in
+this mundane sphere, but rather cautiously insinuated that there were
+symptoms in the case which I had not yet got hold of, but which would,
+if rightly apprehended, modify, in some of its particulars, my
+treatment. What it was in the case which I had not discovered, he did
+not say directly, but subsequently intimated that the young man's
+disease was not scrofula, as I had pronounced it, but dropsy of the
+joints.
+
+It was not long afterward that the mother paid us a visit, and brought,
+well written out, the substance, as she said it was, of quite a number
+of communications from Dr. Rush. Much was said in them about the
+necessity of exercise and a plain diet. And, in general, so far as the
+mere treatment was concerned, the statements of the spiritual doctor
+accorded so well with those of the earthly one, that had I been a
+believer in these modern mysteries, I should have been highly gratified,
+not only on Thomas's account, but my own.
+
+But the spirit doctor urged a few variations in the treatment of the
+young man. Beside pressing a little harder than myself the use of green
+vegetables, and particularly of vegetable juices, he requested, with
+great apparent earnestness, that he might be permitted to occupy a room
+heated by a wood fire, rather than by coal. He also made a few other
+suggestions of less importance.
+
+His mother was a very good woman, save her great credulity. And even
+here, perhaps, I do her injustice, for there were some curious facts and
+coincidences. The venerable spirit doctor appeared to have possessed
+himself of certain secrets which it was extremely puzzling to conjecture
+how an impostor could have obtained.
+
+After spending a day or two with me, and giving me "much exhortation,"
+the mother returned to her friends. Of her safe arrival, as well as of
+certain changes that had been resolved on, the husband informed me, by a
+letter, which, so far as the case of Thomas is concerned, I copy entire.
+
+     "Dear Sir:--By Mrs. P., in her recent visit to your place,
+     you have been made acquainted with some of the
+     manifestations of spirits, made to us through a young lady,
+     a medium of our acquaintance.
+
+     "The communications purporting to come from Dr. Rush (as he
+     says in his last communication, tell Dr. ---- that it is the
+     veritable old Dr. Rush, the signer of the Declaration of
+     Independence), and with such apparent earnestness and
+     reality, we feel that, to us, they are something more than
+     human or earthly, and of momentous account in this case of
+     Thomas, and that we are not at liberty longer to disregard
+     them. And though we have great confidence in yourself and
+     your practice, we hope you will not think we are losing
+     either when I say that we have decided to have Thomas
+     return to ----, and commence following the prescriptions of
+     this invisible personage. They appear to be harmless, and
+     may be of great virtue; and much which pertains to them
+     appears to be in harmony with your practice.
+
+     "Again, in closing, I must say that these communications
+     come to us with such force and apparent reality and truth,
+     that I think it would not be doing justly, either to Thomas
+     or our Creator, longer to disregard them.
+
+    "With much esteem, yours, etc., ---- ----."
+
+
+
+In a somewhat extended postscript it was added: "We have witnessed other
+manifestations, of several of which we had ample proof of their
+correctness."
+
+On another small portion of a sheet which was appended to the former, I
+found, in pencil, the following:--
+
+     "We have, this evening, had another conversation with Dr.
+     Rush. His medium was in ---- to-day, and was brought to us
+     in order that she might speak to us (Mrs. P. and myself). We
+     are directed to tell you this: that he wants Thomas to be
+     under her (Mrs. P.) care; that there are no earthly
+     physicians that can cure him; that we could not have placed
+     him in better hands than with you. He (Dr. Rush) says he can
+     and _will cure him_. He says he could cure him without our
+     help, if he could impress him, but in that he has not yet
+     succeeded. He says he has seen Thomas with rubbers on, and
+     that he would have taken them off if he could. Says
+     positively, he must not wear them. Be good enough, dear sir,
+     to see that he does not wear them in coming home." He adds,
+     in conclusion, "Tell Dr. ---- to remove him from the room he
+     now occupies, and place him in one with a wood fire, and
+     where he will have no bed-fellow."
+
+Thus ended the communication. Thomas went home, according to request,
+and was, forthwith, put under the treatment of the spiritual doctor. All
+appeared to be going on very well for a short time; but after the lapse
+of about three weeks, I heard of his death. No particulars were added,
+in the papers, but I afterwards learned that his death was rather
+sudden.
+
+I did not chance to fall in with Mr. P. for several months, and out of
+respect to his feelings and those of Mrs. P., I did not depart from my
+usual track to call on them or even write. At the end of the year,
+however, I visited them, and after the usual passing remarks, the
+following conversation took place.
+
+"It seems, then, that Dr. Rush with all his wisdom and skill could not
+save Thomas."
+
+"No; he said it was too late for any power of earth or heaven to cure
+him."
+
+"But he was very confident he could cure him?"
+
+"Perhaps he spoke with more confidence than he really felt, in order to
+encourage us and lead us to exert ourselves."
+
+"Do I understand you? Do you mean to say that perhaps the spirit
+doctors, like the fleshly ones, in order to encourage the friends of the
+sick, will depart a little from the truth?"
+
+"Not exactly that. Rather this: we do not consider it a departure from
+the truth."
+
+"I am of a different opinion. In earth, or elsewhere, I call such a
+course as you intimate a species of white lying--quite common on earth,
+but which, till now, I did not suppose had found its way to the confines
+of the world spiritual."
+
+The conversation ended here, and was not afterward resumed. I have,
+indeed, witnessed a good deal of spiritual doctoring since that time,
+but it was of a somewhat different character from the foregoing.
+
+For example: I saw a family in the interior of Massachusetts, whose
+faith in spiritualism and spirit doctrine was perfect. The mistress of
+the house was the patient. The physician a young man who had been a
+mechanic, but who had very recently become convinced that it was his
+duty to attend the sick,--not to do anything for them, on his own
+responsibility, but only to suffer an old Indian physician to operate
+through him as a medium.
+
+The chief thing which Dr. H. did, so far as I observed, was to lay his
+hands on her, and sit for some time in that position. I am not sure
+that he did not prescribe a few very simple things, from time to time,
+such as a little weak tea, or the infusion of some domestic herb, from
+the garden. He was counted, everywhere (for his circuit was a large
+one), very successful; for his patients generally recovered. Their
+recovery, it is true, was often very slow.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXXI.
+
+REMARKABLE CURE OF EPILEPSY.
+
+
+When I was a lad, a man was employed by my father on his farm, who used
+occasionally to fall down in convulsions, lie for some time, not
+entirely still, but foaming at the mouth and agitated or rocked to and
+fro, as if in great distress; and yet, as I afterward learned,
+senseless. These attacks, they told me, were _falling sickness_ fits.
+The man was weak in mind, and not vigorous in body, though, by diligence
+and perseverence, he could accomplish something in the progress of a
+whole day. He died but little beyond middle age.
+
+Since that time I have been intimately acquainted with several
+individuals who were subject to these attacks of epilepsy, some of whom
+were affected in one way, some in another. The cause, too, was as
+various as the manner of attack, and in a few instances was peculiar and
+remarkable. In general, their memory and intellectual faculties, as well
+as their bodily strength, became, ultimately, a good deal impaired. In
+my practice as a physician, I had very few of these cases, and none in
+which I could afford relief at first. The patients were, however, for
+the most part, of middle age, or at least beyond thirty years. Several
+had taken nitrate of silver or other minerals, till their skins were of
+a blue-black color.
+
+In the beginning of the year 1854, a young man about seventeen years of
+age, of scrofulous and nervous temperament and of great delicacy, came
+under my care, to be treated for this disease, whose history, from
+beginning to end, was remarkable. I will call him Samuel.
+
+When about twelve years of age he had difficulty with another boy,--an
+Irish or Scotch lad,--which ended in a personal affray, in which Samuel
+was worsted, and his head severely injured. It was thought by some that
+a portion of the skull, which, by the violence of the blow it had
+received, had been forced in, ought to have been elevated by the
+trephine; but I believe no surgeon of reputation ever saw him. Being
+young, the depressed portion of skull gradually resumed its place, so
+that the depression could scarcely be seen.
+
+All, however, was not right within, for he was soon afterward attacked
+by epilepsy. Whether, at first, any connection between the disease and
+the bruised skull was suspected by the friends, I was not able to learn;
+but probably not. The attacks having been once commenced, were frequent
+and severe, and every year became more so. They were particularly
+frequent and severe during the winter and spring.
+
+The medical art was invoked in his behalf, especially in the region
+round about New Haven, Conn. He was not only treated by the regular
+physicians, of different kinds and schools, but by not a few empirics or
+quacks. By some of them he was evidently injured, and by none was he
+benefited. The tendency still continued to be downward, on the whole,
+and his friends were, at length, almost discouraged.
+
+All this while his diet appears to have been the usual diet of that part
+of New England in which he resided---too stimulating, and too much
+refined by cookery. In general, too, his active and perverted appetite
+led him to excess in quantity; but, as his friends never thought of its
+being a morbid or diseased appetite, no strong efforts were made to
+control it. In truth, as he was feeble and growing, it was thought
+necessary that he should eat stimulating and highly seasoned food, and
+in large quantity. He was also accustomed to tea and coffee. All his
+appetites, as it afterwards appeared, were, to say the least, very
+active, though the gratification of _the third appetite_ was wholly
+confined to solitude.
+
+No restriction, nor indeed any direction, so far as I could learn, had
+been made at this period, with regard to his mental food. Whatever he
+chose to read, he was indulged in, both as regards quantity and quality.
+And as usually happens, in the case of epileptic, and scrofulous people,
+he was quite too much inclined to works of imagination, with which the
+age and country abound. It appears, also, that being regarded as quite
+unequal to the task of laboring in field or garden, he was thus, in
+large measure, deprived of two essentials of health and happiness,
+especially to epileptics; viz., air and exercise.
+
+In August, 1853, he went to an institution that had once been a
+water-cure establishment, but which had undergone many modifications,
+till it better deserved the name of College of Hygiene, than water cure.
+Here he remained several months.
+
+The peculiar treatment he received at this institution consisted, first,
+in a plain and unstimulating diet. Water was his only drink, and bread
+and fruits, with a few well-cooked vegetables, his only food. But, in
+the second place, he was subjected to a course of treatment not unlike
+that described in Chapter LXXIX, with the exception of the deep
+breathing and cold-bathing. The last, however, was, I believe, used
+occasionally.
+
+There was, indeed, one important addition made to the treatment above
+alluded to. This consisted in an exercise designed to expand and
+strengthen the lungs, by what was called _shaking down the air_. This
+exercise was practised very frequently, and was curious. I will describe
+it as well as I can.
+
+He was first required to inflate his chest as much as possible, and
+then, while retaining the air with all his might, rise on his toes, and
+suddenly drop on his heels, with a sort of jerk, several times in
+succession, till he could hold his breath and retain the air no longer,
+which was now suffered gradually to escape. A new recruit was then drawn
+in, and treated in the same manner. The exercise, as a whole, seemed to
+consist of a series of jumpings up and down, without quite raising the
+toes from the floor, and of deep sighing. The object aimed at was to
+shake down a large amount of good, pure air, into the cells of the
+lungs, and retain it there as long as possible; and then, to let out or
+force out the air, so as to empty the lungs as perfectly as possible.
+
+The warm bath was occasionally used at four o'clock in the afternoon,
+but with doubtful effect. Exercise, especially mechanical exercise, was
+of much more service, and so was the gymnasium. He was, however,
+required to forbear all violence, in his exercises and amusements; nor
+was he allowed any severe studies. His reading was to be light, though
+not trifling.
+
+For several months next subsequent to his arrival at the institution, he
+appeared to improve. Instead of weekly, or semi-weekly, or still more
+frequent attacks, he suffered but rarely; and, in one instance, he was
+exempt from an attack for several weeks. But in December and January
+they became, once more, rather frequent. They had, however, usually been
+most frequent in winter and spring.
+
+He now began to be apprehensive of a return of his disease, in all its
+former violence; and the dread of February, March, and April had an
+influence on his system which was any thing but favorable--since fear,
+in these cases, is often worse than the evils which excite it. And,
+according to his faith, or rather according to his want of faith, so it
+was with him. The attacks became very frequent, sometimes daily; and, in
+one or two instances, twice a day.
+
+He came under my special and almost exclusive care, Feb. 1, 1854. I soon
+discovered that there was a close connection between excess and
+irregularity, in regard to his food and his paroxysms of disease. I saw,
+also, that a part of his food had been too stimulating. In justice,
+however, I ought to say that in the government of the other appetites,
+he had succeeded far better than I had expected, though his power to
+control himself was far from being perfect.
+
+While, therefore, I did not materially change the general treatment in
+other particulars, I determined to regulate his diet; and, with a view
+to this important end, to watch him, and even to deal out to him his
+daily rations, with just as much care and particularity as if he were a
+mere child. He ate but two meals a day, and these were taken at _twelve_
+and _six_; and then I always sat by him. I did not leave him, except for
+one single meal, for a period of fifty-five days.
+
+During the whole of this long period--long, I mean, to the patient--he
+not only had no attacks of his disease, but none of the giddiness or
+other symptoms which had formerly accompanied or preceded them. He did
+not, it is true, gain in flesh or strength during the time. In all this
+and in many more particulars he remained nearly stationary.
+
+Towards the close of March, his friends became desirous of taking him
+home. I was not without apprehension; but, hoping for the best, I
+submitted to their wishes as cheerfully as I could. He was among them
+for a short time; and was then, by my particular request, as well as in
+conformity with his own choice, placed on a farm.
+
+Nearly three months after his return to his friends, I received a letter
+from him, which I insert here, not only as a convenient nucleus around
+which to cluster certain suggestions I wish to make to the general
+reader, but also as a continuation of my patient's history. It was dated
+June 18, 1854.
+
+     "MY DEAR PHYSICIAN,--I am now at Mr. ----'s. Every thing
+     seems to be in perfect accordance with the wishes of those
+     who are concerned in the case. I can get as plain a diet as
+     I please, and have nothing, so to say, to tempt me. I
+     confine myself to a very small variety. I have had
+     strawberries ever since I came here, which was June 7th. I
+     eat sometimes nearly a pint at a meal. Sometimes I eat
+     nothing but strawberries and dry bread. I have some sugar on
+     the table, and sweeten the berries a little. I eat
+     considerable potatoe--say two or three at dinner--sometimes
+     a little more. I have had two dinners of asparagus, just
+     boiled in a little water, and poured on to some crusts of
+     toasted bread. It was good. I do not think I have had more
+     than three things set on the table for me, at a time, while
+     I have been here. I have bread, potatoes, and berries for
+     dinner. For supper I have bread and berries, and sweetened
+     bread, as it might be called. It is sweetened but a very
+     little. Now don't I live plainly.
+
+     "But I have left out some things that I have had. I had
+     Graham mush a few days, but I like the bread better, as Mrs.
+     ---- makes such good bread. Mr. ---- likes it better than
+     superfine. I have had boiled rice--a few meals. I had one
+     meal of bag-pudding--Indian--with a few whortleberries in
+     it.
+
+     "I have now given you an account of how I live. I eat at ten
+     or half-past ten, A. M., and at four, P. M. So I do not have
+     to go to bed with a meal of victuals on my stomach.
+
+     "After I left you, and before I came here, I had, all the
+     time, a great looseness of the bowels. It seemed to weaken
+     me. Afterwards I thought it was caused, partly, by some very
+     tart, dried apples, of which I ate freely at every meal.
+     Aunt ----thought it was working at hoeing up turf around
+     trees, for she said that working hard with her arms affected
+     her in that way. My stomach did not seem quite right.
+     Perhaps I strained it in coming home. The very next day
+     after I came here, I commenced eating the ripe strawberries
+     at meals, and have eaten them freely ever since. I sometimes
+     eat nearly a pint at a meal. From the first they have seemed
+     just the thing for me. They regulated my stomach and bowels,
+     and they have strengthened them ever since.
+
+     "I eat alone, and enjoy it capitally. I would not go back to
+     the Institution (the Hygiene establishment) for a great
+     deal, because there are so many things there to harass one's
+     mind, or tempt him, at every corner of the street and almost
+     every shop. Since I came here I have not tasted of any thing
+     between meals, and have had no inclination to do so. I think
+     there will be no trouble on that account.
+
+     "I am busy out of doors a good deal of the time. I have hoed
+     corn, piled cord-wood, driven team, picked strawberries,
+     etc. At night I milk one cow. I go barefooted three or four
+     hours in the middle of the day, use no flannels, dress very
+     thin,--as little as I can get along with.
+
+     "Do you wish me to learn to swim, if possible? There is a
+     pond--a natural one--about a mile from this place. Will you
+     not answer me soon, and give me your opinion on this and
+     other subjects?
+
+     "In love, yours, etc.
+
+     "SAMUEL."
+
+
+
+About a month later, viz., July 18, he wrote thus:
+
+     "MY DEAR DOCTOR:--Five months and a half without a symptom!
+     I have not the slightest feeling to remind me of my old
+     attacks. Should I not be thankful?
+
+     "A short time since, I had a very sore stomach. It got out
+     of order, I think, in consequence of eating too much. I
+     broke off, went a day without nothing to eat; eat less now,
+     and feel well. When Mrs. ---- was here, she told me she
+     thought I might eat all I craved. I did so, and suffered the
+     consequences, though I cured myself.
+
+     "There is a place here in the woods where raspberries are so
+     thick that people get six quarts at a time. Apples are
+     nearly ripe. Pears will soon succeed them.
+
+     "Yours truly,
+
+     "SAMUEL."
+
+
+
+Two weeks later than the above,--a little more than six months after the
+discontinuance of the epileptic attacks,--I received a letter from
+Samuel's guardian, in which he wrote as follows:
+
+     "We have continued the same course of diet as at your house;
+     in short, have carried out your views perfectly as possible.
+     Notwithstanding all this, he (Samuel) has lost flesh and
+     strength; and, for the last few weeks, has fallen off
+     greatly, in mental and physical vigor. He has run down in
+     flesh to eighty pounds, is pale as this paper, coughs
+     considerably, especially at night, yet does not expectorate
+     very much. He had a spell of spitting blood, some five or
+     six weeks ago, raised perhaps a gill. I do not think that it
+     debilitated him very much at the time."
+
+Not far from this time Samuel was taken from the farm, and subjected to
+various changes in his habits, which were unauthorized, and which
+probably proved injurious. He took a large amount of cream,--an article
+which had not before been allowed him,--also a little fresh meat at his
+dinners. Instead of going without his breakfast, as before, he now
+appears to have taken breakfast; and in some instances, at least, to
+have used not only large quantities of cream at this early hour, but
+animal food likewise. There was a strong and increasing belief among his
+friends, that his food was not sufficiently nutritious, and that he was
+suffering for want of materials for blood; whereas the error lay in the
+other direction. His stomach and other digestive organs were overloaded
+and depressed by the large amount of nutriment he had for some time
+received. But more on this hereafter.
+
+He now appeared to be falling into what is called a galloping
+consumption, of which he died a few weeks afterward. There should have
+been a post mortem examination; but, from various causes, it was not
+attended to. At the time of his death he was about eighteen years of
+age.
+
+The treatment of this young man on the farm, was by no means what had
+been intended. The experiment of having him eat alone was hazardous, and
+I sternly protested against it. But the hours at which he chose to take
+his two meals, especially the first, were such as to preclude,
+practically, a better arrangement. There was no one that wished to eat
+at ten in the forenoon, but himself; and it was not customary for the
+family to convene for eating in the afternoon, till six. Now, although,
+abstractly considered, he selected the best hours for his meals, yet,
+taking society as it is, and human nature as _his_ was, it would have
+been much better, in the result, had he eaten with the family at twelve
+and six. He would have eaten less, and yet would probably have been
+better nourished and better satisfied.
+
+No housekeeper who has the usual feelings of a housekeeper, will be
+content to set before a young man of seventeen or eighteen years of age,
+no more, for example, than one-sixth as much food as she would prepare
+for six such persons. It would seem to her almost like prisoner's fare.
+And then, few young men or old ones will content themselves with one
+sixth as much food when sitting alone, entirely unrestrained, as when in
+company, where pride or self-respect would have influence. And of one
+thing we may, at least, be sure, viz., that Samuel, with his almost
+illimitable appetite, tempted by abundance and assured that he might,
+with safety, eat as much as that appetite craved, would never be the
+individual to stop short of fifty per cent more of carbon than his
+feeble machinery could appropriate; while every ounce of the surplus was
+burned up by his lungs, at an expense of that vital energy which should
+have been husbanded with the greatest care, and expended no faster than
+was indispensably necessary.
+
+His friends, no doubt, supposed--for such views greatly prevail--that he
+would not be likely to hurt himself on plain and simple food; and, in
+truth, that it was so light and unsubstantial that he needed a large
+amount of it to keep him alive.
+
+One or two individuals, largely interested in him, gave this as their
+opinion, more than once, and vainly believe, to the present day, that he
+ran down and died for want of proper nourishment. Whereas, we need
+nothing more than Samuel's own confessions, to show us, as clearly as
+the sunlight could possibly show us any thing, that it is much more
+likely that he perished from excess of nutrition than for the want of
+it.
+
+Let us look a little at particulars. It appears, most clearly, that
+Samuel always had before him a good supply of bread, of such excellent
+quality that he could make a full and agreeable meal of it. While under
+my special care, he could eat and enjoy a full meal of the driest bread;
+and he would even have proceeded beyond the limits of safety on it, had
+I permitted it, and this, too, without berries, sugar, or cream, to make
+it still more inviting, or without his "sweetened bread," as he called
+it, for a dessert. It is, moreover, by no means probable, that the
+morbid keenness of his appetite was at all diminished by being on a farm
+and in the open air much of the time.
+
+Observe, now, his living. Fruit, he says, he allowed himself always, at
+both dinner and supper, sometimes a pint at a meal. Dried apple-sauce,
+very "tart," as he called it, he appears to have had at every meal.
+Sugar, moreover, to sweeten his berries, etc., he always had on the
+table. Will one who has such an appetite as he had, eat moderately,
+with fruit, sugar, and apple-sauce always before him,--and these
+regarded as a dessert, of which he may eat _ad libitum_, after having
+eaten a full and more than a full meal of bread? In potatoes, too, he
+indulged, as you will see by referring to his letter, in rather large
+quantity.
+
+Now the most healthy person in the world, would ere long have an acid
+stomach, as well as weakened lungs, who should undertake to live in this
+way; how much more a person who has long been feeble, especially in his
+lungs, nervous system, and even his digestive system, for that was
+active rather than strong.
+
+Indeed, there are many circumstances which favor the belief that he
+burned himself out by excess of stimulus, or, in chemical language, by
+excess of carbon. His thoughts seem to have been very largely on eating.
+It will be seen by the extracts I have made from his letters, that after
+speaking on any other needful topic, he would soon get back to the
+subject of eating. Observe, too, he says he feels no temptation to eat
+between his meals; but why? First, doubtless, because he eat to the full
+at his regular meals; and secondly, because the food was mostly, if not
+always, set away out of his reach.
+
+Another thing deserves consideration. Not only was he, but his friends
+also, inclined to the opinion that he would not, and perhaps could not,
+hurt himself on such things as plain dry bread; but they also appeared
+to believe, _practically_, at least,--and the belief is very
+common,--that the use of bread would atone for other transgressions.
+Thus, suppose he were to have, for once, a rich pudding to eat, or some
+baked beans, or sweetened rice pudding,--which, as you know, are of
+themselves very pure nutriments,--set before him, and he were to eat to
+the full, till the question should begin to arise in his own mind,
+whether he had not gone too far, it was apt to be thought, or rather
+_felt_, that an addition of plain bread, or some fruit, or a few cold
+potatoes, or some other vegetable, would be a correction for the
+preceding excess. Such, I say, is the virtue which, by a kind of
+tradition, is awarded to coarse and plain food, and to fruits, and even
+nuts. I know, indeed, that this idea would hardly be defended in so
+many words; still, it is practically entertained.
+
+To make plainer a great dietetic error, I will explain my meaning. It is
+believed, for example, that a pound or two of greasy baked beans would
+not be so likely to hurt a person, if a little bread or fruit or potatoe
+or sauce were eaten after them, as if eaten alone,--a belief than which
+none can be more unfounded or dangerous.
+
+One more proof that Samuel was constantly inclined to excess in eating,
+is found in the fact that there was a continual tendency, in his
+stomach, to acidity, which was best relieved by a day of entire
+abstinence; and the same might be said of a tendency to relaxation of
+the bowels, and its correction. In short, if there be a plain truth
+fairly deducible from the facts in the case, it is that he was destroyed
+by a carbonaceous nutriment in too great proportion for his expenditure.
+
+It may have been feared by his friends, that he yielded, at this period,
+to _other propensities_. Indeed, one letter which I received after his
+death, more than intimated all this. The remark alluded to was as
+follows:--"I have had the fear that there was something unexplained
+about his case, as you say you once had." For various reasons, I am
+inclined to believe that the indulgence referred to had little to do
+with his comparatively sudden death. His whole soul was pivoted on that
+great central organ, the stomach. For this he lived, and for this,
+probably, he died.
+
+My own principal error, in relation to the case, was, in suffering him
+to go upon the farm with such unintelligent, though well-intentioned
+teachers. Lord Bacon and others have said, "A little knowledge is a
+dangerous thing;" and in nothing is the remark more applicable than to
+the first or pioneer knowledge of people on hygiene. From the very
+nature of the case it must be so. I ought either to have protested
+against the farm, _in toto_, or given such minute instructions that they
+could not have been easily mistaken. But I had my reasons, at the time,
+for the course I took, and I thought them quite sufficient. How easy it
+is, in this world, to find cause for misgivings!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXXII.
+
+SCARLATINA CURED BY LETTING ALONE.
+
+
+At a certain season when scarlet fever was very prevalent among us, a
+member of my family was attacked with it slightly, and, as it was
+believed by almost everybody to be contagious, the case excited much
+alarm. The fact that in persons of my friend's age, it had, during the
+season, occasionally proved fatal, no doubt increased the apprehension
+and alarm, and led to many anxious fears about the treatment. Those who
+regarded my general method of treating disease as rather too "tame," and
+who supposed themselves in special danger of "taking the disease," were
+not only curious, but curiously inquisitive to know what I would do in
+my own family, to meet this supposed terrible malady.
+
+My first object was to quiet all fears, especially in the patient. It
+would have been easy--comparatively so--to do this, had it not been for
+the croakings of our neighbors. They told the sick person so many dismal
+stories of persons of her age--she was in middle life--who had died of
+scarlet fever, that it was not so easy to resist, wholly, the
+impressions. The most resolute and determined are apt to yield, in such
+circumstances.
+
+However, we did the best we could. We endeavored not only to keep her
+quiet in mind, but in body. All irregularities were carefully watched
+and guarded against; not by giving medicine to prevent evil, real or
+imaginary; not by prophylactics, as they are called; but by strictly and
+carefully obeying all the laws pertaining to the human, physical frame,
+so far as they were then understood.
+
+It was one object to keep the patient cool,--not, of course, chilly; for
+this would have been worse than a temperature a little too high. But
+excess of heat, in its application to the surface, was dreaded as one
+of the worst of evils; and no pains were spared in attempts to keep the
+sick-room not only cool, but well ventilated. Her food, also, both for
+the sake of the general circulatory system, and for that, also, of the
+sympathizing skin, was not only cool, but unstimulating.
+
+In addition to all this, and in pursuance of the same general plan, a
+warm or rather a tepid bath was administered. But in applying this the
+greatest care was used. The water was only warmed just enough so as not
+to feel uncomfortable. It had so good an effect that it was repeated.
+
+The fever did not run so high as had been expected; and our
+apprehensions gradually disappeared. All went on well, and, in a few
+days, health was entirely restored. None of the neighbors sickened as
+the consequence, either of infection or of contagion.
+
+I do not mean, by the relation of this fact, to intimate that every case
+of scarlatina, treated in the same way, would be attended with similar
+results; for the powers of life are often fed by sicklier streams than
+in the present case. There is often a large amount, so to speak, of
+combustible matter in every "nook and corner," ready to be ignited by
+the burning flood, as it courses its way through the system. Yet, even
+then, the flame would be greatly diminished by keeping quiet. Who has
+not observed the difference, amid a general conflagration, between a
+most perfect stillness and a blustering or windy moment? The difference
+between perfect quiet of body and mind and great agitation and fear, in
+their effects on health and disease, is scarcely less striking, if not,
+indeed, more so.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXXIII.
+
+IGNORANCE NOT ALWAYS BLISS.
+
+
+Pope says of the freethinker, that he may be "all things in an hour." So
+may some people in their medical creed, at least, practically. They
+change their opinions with almost every change in the position of the
+weathercock. To-day they are very orthodox, medically; to-morrow they
+are ready to throw physicians and medicine to the four winds, if not to
+the dogs. Just as the freethinker is now very orthodox in religious
+matters, and in a day or an hour quite out at sea.
+
+My troubles with patients of this description have been numerous and
+great. They promise well, and probably _mean_ well. But just as the new
+wad in a boy's pop-gun drives out the old one, in order to occupy its
+place, so the very next medical adviser, especially if he have much
+self-confidence, secures their entire trust, and I, for the time, seem
+to lose it. At least, mine is eclipsed. The people I am describing are
+of too easy virtue to be virtuous.
+
+And whence all this? It arises from ignorance--not very blissful
+ignorance, either. As well might Nebuchadnezzar's image, had it
+possessed sensation, been blissful, as such persons as these. Brass,
+iron, and clay may quite as easily unite to form a reliable compound, as
+these persons become settled in opinion with regard to a proper medical
+treatment.
+
+I had one patient of this description who harassed me for many years. It
+is true that he finally recovered; but I hardly know how. His recovery,
+when I reflect on it, leads me towards the belief that people oftener
+get well in spite of their medicine, than as the consequence of using
+it.
+
+He was originally a boot and shoe maker; and being exceedingly
+ambitious, he had neglected exercise, and worked too hard at the bench,
+as well as committed certain imprudences connected with diet, till he
+was almost a perfect wreck, from dyspepsia. He was about twenty-five
+years of age.
+
+At first, despite of his ignorance, I had hope of being able to put him
+upon the high road to health. He seemed unusually docile. But, as I have
+before said, virtue is sometimes too easy. He would believe in and
+follow me almost implicitly, for a little while; but when about half or
+perhaps two-thirds of the way to the land of health, he would become
+impatient, and either run to me anxiously or veer to somebody else. I
+have known him to start in pursuit of me when I was a full day's journey
+distant, and not easily found even then.
+
+But I have also known him go, with the same earnestness and anxiety, to
+another adviser, and follow his directions with the same care with which
+he had followed my own, and perhaps about as long. While following a
+person, however, he was, for a very short period at the first, entirely
+devoted to him and his principles, which, as far as it went, was
+undoubtedly favorable.
+
+Once he followed, for a time, a clairvoyant,--a female,--and took her
+medicine. She gave him, it is true, rather more medicine than he was
+willing to take, or even pay for; but as I gave him less than he
+desired, he thought it advisable to give her system a fair trial. I do
+not know whether he thought himself at all benefited by her
+prescriptions. Most certain it is that he did not long follow her, and
+that he came to me again some time afterwards, in the same condition as
+formerly.
+
+In another instance, he sought relief of the hydropathists. One of the
+most eminent of them had him under his care for a long time. I believe
+he even visited, and staid a week or two, at a Water Cure Institution.
+Yet he never acknowledged any benefit from this treatment. He finally
+tried to unite allopathy and hydropathy, and to invoke their combined
+forces. A meeting of myself and an eminent hydropathic practitioner was
+appointed and held, but even this did not result in his recovery.
+
+And yet he finally recovered, though I hardly know how. Such cases
+force me to the acknowledgment that human physical nature is tough, that
+we are machines made to live. Were it not so, this dyspeptic friend of
+mine must, at a comparatively early age, have sank to the grave, a
+victim of ignorance. He has, however, acquired wisdom in the school of
+experience.
+
+A brother of his, who was my patient in a similar complaint, and from
+similar causes, recovered in a very few months. But he was not a mere
+weathercock.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXXIV.
+
+MEASLES WITHOUT SNAKEROOT AND SAFFRON.
+
+
+In the early part of the year 1854, measles prevailed considerably, and
+was rather severe even under the most favorable circumstances. In our
+cities, such as New York and Boston, it destroyed a great number of
+valuable lives. It was by no means confined to children; it attacked
+adults, who had hitherto escaped it, as well as children.
+
+One of my most intimate female friends, who was over forty years of age,
+had often been exposed to it without taking it, and had begun to hope
+she should escape through life. The family to which she belonged had it,
+and in the end a blow fell on her. It alarmed her most fearfully. She
+declared, again and again, that she should not and could not survive it,
+and her fears greatly aggravated the severity of her symptoms.
+
+She was well acquainted with the most enlightened views on the subject
+of disease, and though her fears were great, she endeavored to pursue
+the proper course at first, which, as she knew, consisted mainly in
+supporting her strength as much as possible, in the most appropriate and
+healthful ways. She had no thought, it would seem, of taking medicine.
+
+But she had neighbors,--some of them of the gossiping kind,--who called
+on her frequently, to convince her of the necessity of _taking something
+to bring out the measles_, and to relate the pitiful story of Mr. and
+Mrs. Such-an-one, who perished because they would do nothing to save
+themselves, and to entreat her to take at least a little saffron and
+snakeroot tea. And they had some influence with her; not indeed at
+first, but after she became weakened by the disease. Drowning people, it
+is said, catch at straws.
+
+I was called to see her late one Saturday evening. She did not know, as
+she said, that any medicine was needed, but as she was considerably
+advanced in life, and many had sunk under the disease of late, and as
+she had such a continual feeling of depression and fainting, she thought
+it barely possible I might think it advisable to give her some little
+thing to make her feel more comfortable.
+
+There were indeed many things that required attention. Her feet were
+cold, unnecessarily so, and her room was not properly ventilated. Then
+she needed small draughts of water much oftener than she had been
+accustomed to receive them, or had dared to venture in their use. She
+needed no snakeroot and saffron, nor indeed any other form of herb tea.
+I gave particular orders with regard to the little things so needful in
+such cases, and in order to be on hand in case of alarm, I remained in
+the house till morning.
+
+More than once during the night, her courage nearly failed her, and I
+was summoned to her bedside. In one or two instances, she ventured to
+complain of me as neglectful of her case, because I gave her no
+medicine. But I cheered and encouraged her as well as I could. Her
+disease had made her a child, and she needed a child's treatment. I was
+not, indeed, without my fears, but I did not see how her condition could
+be alleviated by medicinal agents, unless they become necessary as a
+substitute for that faith in Nature, which she was accustomed to
+exercise when she had more strength. This faith, as I have already told
+you, did indeed sometimes fall a little below the proper standard, but
+the depression was in general but momentary.
+
+Early in the morning a near neighbor called, and kindly inquired how she
+did; and when assured that she was, as yet, no better, was unable longer
+to repress her feelings. "Why, in the case of _my_ children," said she,
+"the measles never came out without giving them something, and they
+never would have done so to this day." Yet she had a large family. I
+might have asked her how she knew what Nature _could_ have done unaided,
+since she gave her no opportunity to test her strength; but she was too
+ignorant to converse with on such subjects. To have asked her how she
+knew whether her children got well in spite of the medicine they took,
+or on account of it, would have been but throwing pearls before swine,
+and I would not do it.
+
+It was very soon reported, all over the neighborhood, that Mrs. O. was
+in a very dangerous condition, and if she did not have some other
+doctor, would soon die. And, what was worst of all, the stories got back
+to Mrs. O. herself. And now came the tug of war; and had not the
+eruption, just at this time made its appearance, I do not know what the
+results might have been.
+
+Before noon, however, of this day (Sunday), every thing went right, and
+Mrs. O. was as blooming as she had been before pale and disconsolate. My
+good friend who had given me the morning homily, did not again make her
+appearance, and the neighbors in general who had dealt out their
+jeremiades so freely, kept themselves at a very respectful distance.
+
+The recovery was as rapid as could have been expected, even in the most
+vigorous young person. Nor was there any after-trouble, to require
+physic, or eye-water, or remedies for the dropsy. And,--what added to my
+own surprise, if not to that of the neighbors in general,--though she
+was a feeble woman, constitutionally, she recovered with as much
+rapidity as the most healthy and robust, and as well, to say the least,
+as if she had taken "_snakeroot and saffron_."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXXV.
+
+THE CONSUMPTIVE PAIR.
+
+
+A young man, recently married, called on me one day, and requested me to
+visit his family as soon as I could conveniently, for the purpose of
+having what he was pleased to call a general consultation.
+
+I called in due time, and found the case as follows: Both the husband
+and wife were descended from consumptive families, and though they had
+got along tolerably well till very recently, there were now, in them
+both, many evidences of approaching disease; and though consumptive
+people are said to be slow in admitting they have consumption, yet this
+young couple formed an exception to the general rule.
+
+In the bosom of the family, and possessed of their entire confidence, I
+had an ample opportunity for examining the case of this interesting
+couple. I found the tendency downward much more marked and rapid than I
+had expected, and I frankly told them so. Some of the circumstances
+were, indeed, rather peculiar. Consumptive people are generally sensual,
+while indulgence is peculiarly fatal to them. But here was a case more
+glaring than I had before seen. They had been married but about three
+months; nor were the indulgences of the table believed to be remarkable,
+as they were forbidden by a due regard to economy. They suffered much by
+excessive heat in their rooms, both by day and by night, and in several
+other ways, much more than by high living.
+
+But I endeavored to put all things right, and to convince them of the
+necessity of keeping them so. In a long, but very familiar series of
+conversations,--for the most part separately,--I endeavored to show them
+that conjugal life was a life of duty, as well as of enjoyment; and that
+consumptive people, in order to live out more than half their days,
+must forego a great many gratifications to which they might very
+naturally lay claim.
+
+The results of this conversation were probably worth a hundred-fold the
+expense they involved. This young couple are, to this hour, for aught I
+know, enjoying tolerable health; and their health is improving. Their
+children, though not strong, reap the full benefit of thorough parental
+reform; and their scrofulous tendencies seem every day more and more
+receding.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXXVI.
+
+HOW TO CURE CHOLERA.
+
+
+While cholera was prevailing in our large towns and cities, and a few
+cases were occurring and proving fatal in my own neighborhood, a friend
+of mine, who had till recently been a sea captain, complained, one day,
+of cholera symptoms, and begged to know what he could do to ward off the
+threatened disease.
+
+On inquiry I found he was more than half right, that cholera, surely
+enough, was already marking him for its victim. The rice-water
+discharges, so called, had actually commenced. Had he been any thing but
+a resolute tar, he would have gone on, most evidently, into severe if
+not fatal disease.
+
+I gave him the best advice I was able, with regard to diet, exercise,
+etc.,--probably the same, or about the same, that any thoughtful medical
+man, in the same circumstances, would have given. He was to be cheerful,
+quiet, and abstinent. For food, he was to use nothing but a little
+boiled rice,--at least, till the symptoms of cholera began to abate. He
+was especially directed to avoid all medicine.
+
+Several weeks passed away, during which I heard nothing from him. As I
+did not hear of his death, however, I concluded he must have recovered.
+One day, rather unexpectedly, I met him again, and inquired familiarly
+how he got along with his cholera? He laughed outright, but immediately
+added,--"Sit down, sir, and I will tell you the whole story."
+
+"After I left you," said he, "the thought struck me,--Why cannot I
+control the muscles of my system as well as my appetites and passions?
+Indeed, on occasions, I have done it, at least for a short time. These
+little rice-water evacuations cannot, in the nature of things, do much
+harm by being retained. I can do what any man can. These frequent
+demands of nature seem to me very unreasonable. I will not yield to
+them. And, like a good sailor, I kept my word. For nearly a whole day I
+never permitted a single evacuation. Then, after yielding obedience, for
+once, to nature's clamorous demands, I again enforced my prohibitory
+law. My task, the second day, was less severe than it was the first, and
+on the third day I got along very comfortably. The fourth day I was
+well; and to-day you see me here."
+
+Whether he told me the truth, I do not know, of course; but I give the
+statement, as nearly as I can recollect, just as it was given to me. I
+have reason, however, for believing it to be true. The man is still
+alive, and is as likely to live for twenty or twenty-five years to come,
+as you or I, or any other individual.
+
+Mrs. Willard, of Troy, New York, under the full impression that the seat
+of human life is in the lungs, and not in the heart, and that even the
+blue color of the skin during the collapse of Asiatic cholera, is owing
+to an accumulation of unburnt carbon in the air cells of the lungs, made
+the experiment of trusting a few patients, in this disease, to the full
+influence of pure air, and nothing else. According to her account the
+experiments were most admirably successful. She cured every individual
+she experimented on (and it was a considerable number), and in a
+comparatively short period.
+
+It was my good fortune to escape cholera patients, with the single
+exception mentioned above. However, I am quite confident that, but for
+the alarm, which more than half paralyzes our efforts, we might much
+more frequently recover, under its deadly influences, especially if we
+begin the work of preparation in good season, and duly and faithfully
+persevere. There is much in enduring to the end.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXXVII.
+
+OBSTINACY AND SUICIDE.
+
+
+Without examining the term suicide, in regard to its various shades of
+meaning, I have placed it at the head of this chapter; for I think it
+properly belongs there. Of this, however, I leave the reader to judge
+when he has heard a statement of the facts in the case to which I have
+applied it.
+
+A young woman was admitted to the family where I was, to be treated for
+a nervous complaint so obstinate as to remind one who was not wholly
+insane nor strikingly imaginative, of the demoniacal possessions of
+eighteen hundred years ago. She would not eat; she would not drink; she
+would not or _could_ not sleep. In short, she would not, if she could
+help it, do any thing which did not have an immediate bearing on her own
+well-being, for the moment. She was, in truth, one of the most selfish
+creatures in human shape I ever yet saw. If Dr. Johnson, who is said to
+have held that every sick person is a rascal, had seen her, I wonder
+what he would have said of the case.
+
+She was one of those young women who have never been governed, and hence
+cannot govern themselves. If she took it into her head to do or not to
+do a thing, she would be sure to carry her point, if not in one way, at
+least in another.
+
+How she came to consent to be placed under my care, I never knew; for
+all the neighbors and friends of the poor girl well understood that if
+she came there she would have to obey me; and yet that, if she _did_
+obey me, it would be the first instance in which she ever yielded to any
+mind or will but her own, either earthly or heavenly. Perhaps it was a
+last resort--a sort of desperation.
+
+I began my directions, however, as if I expected to be obeyed, and had
+no fears of any disinclination on her part. Some things which pleased
+her, she consented to attempt; others she would tell me she _could_ not
+do. When I was quite confident nothing was wanting but a will, I
+sometimes asked for a reason; but it could, in no instance, be obtained.
+If I pressed her for an answer, or for a reason, she would either be
+silent or groan most dreadfully with pain!
+
+At length I saw that nothing could be obtained in this way, and that she
+must either attend to my directions, as far as was really in her power,
+or I could have nothing to do with her; and I told her so. She did not
+appear to care. Her alienation of feeling was so rapid that in a very
+few days she seemed almost to hate the very sight of me. Indeed, I
+believe she made statements to this effect to several of her friends.
+
+Her report, so unfavorable and so very strange, soon reached the ears of
+several very respectable people, who in wonder and surprise came to me,
+to learn what it meant, and among the rest came her minister. They made
+diligent though respectful inquiry whether the facts were as she
+represented them to be. I believe that, for the most part, they were
+satisfied with the treatment.
+
+But the girl herself was not satisfied. She could not leave the house
+without help; and yet it was easy to see that she was determined not to
+remain. She preferred, as she said, to die. Everybody seemed to pity
+her, despite of her unreasonableness, and the more for her
+unreasonableness. Her friends assured her that this treatment of mine
+afforded her the last chance of recovery, and begged her not to decide
+to leave us too hastily. It was all to no purpose, however; she said she
+preferred death in the street to a cure at my hands.
+
+There had been serious difficulty about her diet. I had strenuously
+forbidden the use of certain condiments which I thought injurious to
+her, but which she was resolutely determined to have. At first, a few
+things prepared to her taste had been smuggled in by certain psuedo
+friends; but this, when discovered, was absolutely prohibited.
+
+One evening, just at dark, some of her friends called to see her and
+me. They found me in the sitting-room. We had a short conversation
+concerning the patient, in which they were made most distinctly to
+understand that they must either leave her to be treated wholly
+according to my discretion or remove her. They were left at a loss what
+course was best; but at length, in compliance with her clamors, they
+placed her in their carriage and carried her away.
+
+This was both the first and last patient that ever ran away from me, or
+that ever appeared to be desirous of doing so. On the whole, though no
+one pitied her more than myself, I was glad when she was gone. She was
+hardly worth curing. I never heard from her more, except vaguely, some
+time afterward, that she was dead, which was probably correct. Most
+certainly I could not have lived long, in her circumstances.
+
+I was very unwise in taking the charge of her, or, at least, in
+retaining her a moment after she refused to obey me. However, I had my
+reward. The public not being possessed of all the facts in the case,
+probably lost confidence in me. It was proper that they should. He who
+takes a viper to his bosom, must not be surprised if he suffers the
+natural consequences of his presumption.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXXVIII.
+
+HEALTH HOSPITALS.
+
+
+Some of my friends, fully aware of my strong reliance on the
+recuperative powers of nature, and of my growing scepticism in regard to
+medicine, entered into combination and proposed to place me at the head
+of a hospital, in which I should have an opportunity, as they supposed,
+to test the superiority of my favorite practice.
+
+The buildings needful for the purpose, were to be furnished by one of
+the company, gratuitously. For the rest, a subscription was to have been
+started. The salary was to have been $1,000 a year. Matters were, in
+fine, carried so far that nothing remained but my own acceptance or
+non-acceptance, of the proposal, as there was no doubt that the
+subscription would readily succeed.
+
+But I saw, at the moment, so many difficulties, that after a careful
+consideration of the subject I was compelled to decline. Situated as I
+then was, and with very little self-confidence, perhaps the decision was
+right. And yet I have at times, ever since, regretted it. I was not then
+so fully aware as I now am, of the stern necessity of such institutions.
+
+Still later than this, I made an effort to establish a Hospital, on my
+own responsibility, and on my own plan. This was, simply, to receive
+patients at my house, and teach them, both by precept and example, _how
+to live._ In other words, I was to teach the art of preventing disease
+by obeying the physical and moral laws. Even disease itself was to be
+cured by obedience to these laws,--those of hygiene.
+
+At this time, I was residing in the country. Had I been in the crowded
+city, I might, perhaps, have succeeded. As it was, I found many
+difficulties. Just now, too, among other difficulties, my pecuniary
+condition became embarrassed, and I was anxious to be freed from debt
+before I begun a work which, at best, required a good deal of capital.
+Not to be able to labor wholly gratuitously would, as I thought, defeat
+my whole plan.
+
+In these circumstances, and after considerable delay, the whole thing
+was indefinitely postponed; and soon after, I removed to a region still
+less promising. I shall not, at present, if ever, repeat my attempts, at
+least on the plan of doing my work gratuitously. What costs little is,
+usually, little valued.
+
+And yet, such institutions are needed; and the time must come when they
+will succeed. Some eminent medical man who already possesses wealth,
+will perhaps make the trial. For myself, I prefer a more radical work. I
+prefer to throw my own make-weight, while I live, into the scale of
+early and correct physical education.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXXIX.
+
+DESTRUCTION BY SCROFULA.
+
+
+Much is said in these days about scrofula, and much indeed should be
+said about it; for it has become a most frequent, not to say fatal,
+disease. For, if few die of it, immediately, it leads to, or renders
+more severe, numerous other diseases, which are more directly fatal. In
+truth, a scrofulous constitution not only prepares us for many other
+diseases, but renders them, when they assail us, much more severe than
+they otherwise would have been. Colds, fevers, and consumption, in
+particular, are not only more frequent in scrofulous people than in
+others, but also more intense or severe, as well as less manageable by
+medical skill.
+
+This disease itself, though often inherited, may, on the one hand, be
+greatly aggravated by improper treatment; or, by a proper course of
+living, may, on the other hand, be postponed many years, if not
+indefinitely. Living much in the open air, cheerfulness of mind, plain
+food and drink, and a proper regard to the skin, will do a vast deal
+towards arresting its progress, and in some instances will wholly
+prevent its doing us any harm. For though five millions of the
+inhabitants of the United States were probably born with a tendency to
+this formidable disease, and the same proportion--if not a greater--of
+each generation to come will be likely to have the same tendency, I do
+not believe it to be indispensably necessary that one-half of this
+number should die, as now they do, of consumption. I have not a doubt
+that two-thirds of them might, by proper management, be made to last
+many years, and some of them to what is usually called old age.
+
+It has been my lot to have a very great number of scrofulous patients,
+daring the last twenty-five years, from almost every part of the United
+States. One of the worst cases I ever had was that of Mrs. ----, of New
+Hampshire. Her history, prior to the period when she came to me, is very
+briefly as follows.
+
+She was born of parents, who, at the time of her birth, were very near
+their dotage; in consequence of which, as it was believed, she held her
+existence by a very feeble tenure. At two and a half years of age, she
+was nearly destroyed by dysentery, or by the medicine given to arrest
+her disease, or by both. In addition to this and almost before she
+recovered, she had an attack of scarlet fever, which was very severe,
+and which was also probably treated freely by medicine. By this time
+there is no doubt that scrofula, at first slightly inherited, had become
+pretty well riveted on a constitution already but poorly prepared to
+endure it.
+
+In her seventeenth year, she was afflicted with a troublesome eruption,
+which was cured, or at least checked, by a wash of sugar of lead. (See
+Chapter XIII.) She was married at twenty-one; and though stinted in her
+growth, so as to be almost a dwarf, she seemed, at first, to be
+tolerably healthy. But in the course of a year she suffered from various
+complaints, to which scrofulous and otherwise debilitated females are
+subject in early conjugal life, for which she was treated--as I suppose
+very injudiciously--with active medicine, especially calomel.
+
+And now, as if to render what was already bad enough a great deal worse,
+she made use of a certain patent medicine, which had been greatly lauded
+in the public papers. She was also persuaded to make use of a more
+stimulating diet than before; which was doubtless to her great
+disadvantage, in such a feeble condition. Her diet, though it should
+have been _nourishing,_ should have been _less stimulating_ than usual,
+and not more so.
+
+Falling in with the famous Sylvester Graham, who was lecturing near her
+at the time, she was overpersuaded to change her habits very suddenly,
+especially her dietetic habits. From a highly seasoned diet, she was at
+once transferred to a very plain one, to which was added cold bathing
+and abundant exercise in the open air. This change, though it caused
+great emaciation, appeared to restore her health entirely. Her appetite
+and general strength were such that she thought it almost impossible she
+could ever be sick again.
+
+But now a heavy domestic affliction befell her, which again very much
+reduced her; and, as she was wont to say afterward, "killed her." What
+it was, however, I was never informed. Being greatly depressed, she
+undoubtedly confined herself to the house too much, and in one instance
+when she ventured out, she unluckily exposed herself to a damp east
+wind, which appeared to give her cold. To remove this, and for other
+purposes, she fasted rigidly, for several days.
+
+It was at this time that she came, in part, under my care. But she was
+already so much diseased in mind and body, and so ignorant of any just
+principles of hygiene, as to be greatly liable to be led about by the
+fancy or whim of this friend or that--sometimes by Mr. Graham and
+others, who only relied on Nature; and at others, by those who went to
+the opposite extreme. I could do little for her to any valuable purpose,
+and was glad to send her to the elder Dr. Jackson, of Boston. Not,
+however, till I had given her to understand, in general, that aside from
+her scrofulous tendencies, I did not know what ailed her; and that, so
+far as I could understand her case, her safest course was to avoid
+medicine and depend almost wholly on a careful obedience to God's laws,
+physical and moral, especially to his laws of hygiene. I had not then
+fully learned how much she had been abused, in early life, by
+unnecessary dosing and drugging.
+
+Dr. Jackson told her it was evident there was something in her case very
+much out of the way; but he would be honest with her, and confess that
+he did not know what it was. He proposed to have Dr. Putnam see her, and
+another physician at Lowell. He insisted, however, on a more nutritious
+diet.
+
+The last suggestion was heeded for awhile, but evidently to her
+disadvantage. Under the impression that in order to obtain more
+nutriment she must do so, she suddenly returned to the free use of
+flesh, butter, eggs, milk, etc., which, for a long time, till now, she
+had refused. This course brought upon her much acidity of the stomach.
+She returned once more to the plain diet, and by avoiding extremes and
+letting alone medicine, according to the general tenor of my directions,
+she partly recovered, and seemed destined to still higher advance
+towards the land of health and life.
+
+But here, again, domestic trials, like a flood, came upon her, and
+brought her into great mental anxiety and embarrassment, as well as into
+that weak and vacillating condition which had once before existed, and
+which I have already described. To-day she would use her well-balanced,
+plain diet; to-morrow, perhaps, resort to the starvation system, for a
+few days. Then, in the fear of suffering from that, she would resort
+again, for a few days, to luxurious living.
+
+Now, too, she would adhere to and follow this physician, now that, and
+next, none at all; or, perchance, follow some quack. I was not in a
+situation to exert much influence over her, or it is possible she might
+still have been saved. She would, indeed, adhere to my general plan,
+when all else that promised more seemed to fail, and perhaps would have
+been more persevering, but for her friends. They wanted to have the
+"prophet" do "some great thing," and cure her as by magic or miracle.
+
+In saying these things, it is far enough from being my intention to be
+reproachful. She was not educated to a knowledge of herself; and she was
+by no means, at the present time, what she had been in her best days. It
+is not to be wondered at, therefore, that she acted like a wayward
+child; though it is greatly to be regretted, since, in her
+circumstances, it probably cut off every chance of her recovery.
+
+In the spring, two or three years after her first change of diet, a
+cough with which she had occasionally been troubled before, came on with
+renewed violence, and never after wholly left her. She remained in this
+condition till the opening of the next year, when her cough made still
+farther advances, and was attended with hectic fever. She died in the
+month of May following.
+
+A post mortem examination was made, which determined the case to have
+been what Dr. Jackson and myself and many others supposed, a case of
+scrofula or struma; though it was certainly attended with many curious
+and rather anomalous symptoms. Though there were no ulcers in the lungs,
+they were found full of tubercles; and so were the mesenteric glands,
+and the lining membrane of the alimentary canal. It was even said by the
+principal individual concerned in the examination, that her whole body
+was but a mass of disease. For myself, I was necessarily absent at the
+time, and therefore have no facts of my own to present.
+
+I never had a case, either before or since, in which my hands were so
+completely tied as in this. The patient probably had as much confidence
+in me as in anybody; and yet she would not long follow me implicitly and
+strictly, without yielding to the whims of her friends or her enemies,
+and halving the practice with some physician or quack, either known or
+unknown. Under the care of some good, common-sense physician, and with
+full faith in him on the part of all concerned, I am still of opinion,
+as I always have been, that she might have recovered and lived many
+years, and, perhaps, been able to do a vast amount of good.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XC.
+
+STARVING OUT DISEASE.
+
+
+Dr. Johnson, one of the best British writers on dyspepsia, advises his
+medical brethren to starve out the disease, as the surest way of getting
+rid of it. He says he has by far the best success with those patients
+who submit to this course. It is not starvation, exactly, though it
+savors of it. He says, keep them on just two pints of Indian-meal
+gruel--by which he appears to mean thin hasty pudding--a day, and no
+more. If they are really afraid of starving, after the trial of a few
+weeks, let them eat a few times of something else; but they must soon
+return to the starvation plan.
+
+I have usually preferred cakes of Indian meal, or wheat meal unbolted
+and baked very hard, to gruel or pudding. The reason is, that I consider
+mastication very essential to good digestion, especially in the case of
+dyspeptics. I believe the small quantity of Indian meal that goes into
+two pints of gruel, or even of pudding, were it firmly baked, would hold
+out and sustain the health and strength of an individual much longer
+than gruel; and it will, by most persons, be preferred.
+
+One of my dyspeptic patients, a young man of great resolution, was put
+upon ten ounces a day of thin Indian-meal cake, or johnny cake; and it
+wrought wonders. The prescription was made about twenty years ago, and
+no young man under forty years of age, in Massachusetts, is more
+efficient, at the present time, than he.
+
+To another young man, similarly afflicted, I recommended eight ounces of
+the same kind of food. He was from a family that had long known me, and
+that appeared to confide in me. I have never heard from him since. My
+conjecture is that he refused to follow the directions, and hence did
+not wish to communicate with me any farther. He may be still a
+dyspeptic, as the consequence, though it is certainly possible he may
+have obeyed the prescription, to the saving of his health.
+
+Some have supposed that a quantity of food so small, is not sufficient
+to keep alive an ordinary adult; but they are mistaken. Much smaller
+quantities than eight ounces have proved sufficient for this purpose, in
+a great many instances. Three or four ounces have been found adequate to
+every want, in these circumstances.
+
+As I regard this as a highly important point, I will endeavor to
+establish it by two or three facts, which have come, in part, under my
+own observation. The first appeared in the _Boston Medical and Surgical
+Journal_, for 1851, and in several other papers. The other is from a
+Philadelphia paper, and is as reliable as the former. It is, however, of
+much later date; viz., December, 1853.
+
+Jervis Robinson,[K] of Nantucket, was a ship-master, born in 1800. In
+1832, he became a most miserable dyspeptic. For three or four years he
+relied on the popular remedy of beef-steak three times a day, and with
+the usual consequences. It made him worse rather than better.
+
+In the year 1836, a friend of his who had heard lectures on dyspepsia,
+or had read on the subject, suggested a new remedy. It was three Graham
+crackers daily, one at each meal, without any drink at the time of
+eating. This, it was said, if persevered in long enough, would certainly
+effect a radical cure.
+
+But I prefer to let Mr. Robinson tell his own story, which he does in
+the following manner:--
+
+"The novelty as well as simplicity of this prescription, greatly
+interested my mind, and I laid the case before my friends. But they, as
+with one voice, endeavored to dissuade me from a course which they said
+would certainly destroy me. They were particularly afraid of the sudden
+change from a full flesh diet to one entirely vegetable.[L] But I told
+them I might as well die in one way as another, and that I was resolved
+on the experiment.
+
+"At first I had no Graham crackers; I therefore used the common soft
+Graham bread cut in thin slices and thoroughly dried. Twenty-one ounces
+a week was my allowance. Of these I made three meals a day, at the hours
+of six, twelve, and six. Small as the allowance was, I spent half an
+hour in consuming it. Occasionally at evening, I omitted one-half of
+even these scanty rations.
+
+"My drink, for twenty-four hours, was one gill of water, divided into
+three equal parts, and one of them to be taken just two hours after each
+meal. I also used a cold shower-bath at rising in the morning, and
+walked a mile before breakfast, having retired at ten the previous
+evening.
+
+"Under this course, my flesh and strength wasted fast. I was weighed
+every week, and for the first three or four weeks, I lost half a pound a
+day. The daily loss then diminished somewhat, but was not entirely
+discontinued till the lapse of two months. At this time I had lost, in
+all, twenty pounds weight.
+
+"All this time the cry of starvation was heard from every quarter, and I
+must frankly own that, for a week or so, I was not myself wholly without
+fears. However, my head felt so much better, and my spirits so much
+revived, that I began to take courage. My bowels, moreover, which up to
+this time had rarely moved, and never to much purpose, now began to move
+more regularly, and in about three weeks they resumed their functions
+entirely, both as regarded time and quantity.
+
+"At the end of two months, I ceased to lose flesh, and remained, in this
+respect, about stationary for four weeks; but after this I began to
+gain. At first, the increase of weight was very slow indeed, but soon it
+became much more rapid, so that in two months more I gained nearly what
+I had lost, or at the average rate of five or six ounces a day. For a
+part of this time, however, the gain was half a pound a day, or nearly
+three times as much as the whole weight of my food, and more than the
+whole weight of my food and drink together.
+
+"I have said that I ate three ounces, by weight, of Graham bread,
+daily,--an ounce at each meal. But I afterwards procured the Graham
+crackers in Boston, and used them a part of the time. Of these, too, I
+continued frequently to omit half a cracker at evening. The water,
+also,--one-third of a gill,--was generally omitted at evening.
+
+"As to my appetite, during the experiment, I can truly say that, though
+I never in my life came to the table with a better appetite, I was never
+better satisfied with my meals when they were finished. After the first
+three weeks, I had little or no thirst. Nor had I, so far as I now
+recollect, any desire to eat between meals. In truth, food, except at my
+meals, was seldom thought of. But, on this subject, my mind had been
+made up at the outset. I will only add, on this point, that my bread,
+during the whole time, tasted better, far better, to me than the nicest
+cake formerly had.
+
+"As regards perspiration, my skin, after the first three or four weeks
+(during which it was dry and hard), became soft and moist. When I used
+much exercise, I perspired very freely. My sleep was sound and
+satisfying. Indeed, the whole "machinery," so far as I could judge,
+worked admirably during the latter part of the experiment, and at its
+close I could perform a good day's work at my trade.
+
+"I was about thirty years of age when I made the experiment. I am now
+above fifty. I have not always, nor indeed generally, been as rigid in
+my habits since that time. In one instance, however, I worked two weeks
+on a ship, at "sheathing," on but five ounces of food a day, and was
+never better in my life, and never felt less fatigue at night. In fact,
+I felt much better at night than I did in those instances in which I
+indulged myself in eating two pounds of food a day.
+
+"During a part of the time of my principal experiment, I kept a grocery.
+On leaving this, I established a Graham boarding-house, in which I
+continued for one year.
+
+"About a year after the termination of my experiment, I had occasion,
+for about three weeks, to work in a bake-house, where the mercury in the
+thermometer was at 90°. While here, I ate twelve ounces of dry bread and
+two apples a day, and drank nothing. Yet I perspired as freely as ever,
+nor did I perceive any difference in the quality or the quantity of any
+other secretions or excretions."
+
+The reader will take notice that Mr. Robinson's principal or starvation
+experiment, lasted five months, or one hundred and fifty days. He will
+also observe that he left off the experiment with nearly or quite as
+much flesh as he had when he commenced, and with a very great increase
+of muscular strength.
+
+The above statement was so remarkable, that not a few medical men and
+others regarded it as a hoax. "To live on three ounces of bread, and yet
+be in daily employment," they said, "even though such employment were of
+a kind likely to call for very little muscular effort, is altogether
+incredible. And what renders the whole so much more unlikely, is, the
+yet more extraordinary assertion, that, part of the time, he gained more
+in weight than the whole amount eaten and drank."
+
+It was no wonder that medical and all scientific men were staggered at
+the account. I was in doubt myself, in regard to the functions of waste,
+and made a very rigid examination, in order to be certain of the facts,
+before I ventured to publish any thing. On one or two points, I
+afterward obtained Mr. Robinson's particular statement, as follows:--
+
+"In regard to the question you propose, I shall have to guess a little.
+So far as the fluids are concerned, however, I think it was about half a
+pint a day. The solids--for I weighed them this morning, and they appear
+to me about equal to those voided during the experiment--are fully half
+a pound."
+
+I also recently ascertained another curious fact. Mr. Robinson's
+eyesight, prior to the experiment, had, for many years, been very poor,
+but was perfectly restored during its progress. It appeared, also, that
+he had again resorted to the exclusive use of bread and water for food;
+but not in such small quantities as before. Mr. Robinson, of course, is
+now above sixty years old.
+
+One medical correspondent of the _Boston Medical and Surgical Journal_,
+pressed Mr. Robinson, very hard, for corroborative testimony concerning
+the facts just stated, to which Mr. Robinson very kindly replied, by
+sending him the certificate of his wife, Mrs. E. D. Robinson, whose
+veracity is undoubted. The certificate was as follows:--
+
+"The most of the facts which my husband has written, I well recollect,
+and will give my name as a voucher for the truth of them."
+
+A brother of Mr. Robinson, at Holmes' Hole, whom I called on, appeared
+to give full credence to the statements of the latter, although he was
+much opposed to the experiment, at the time it was made, and mortally
+detested all his bread and water tendencies.
+
+I will only add, that a medical man who was sceptical in regard to the
+whole matter, became finally convinced that the story bore the marks of
+truth, and made public his conviction, in the subjoined statements and
+reasonings.
+
+"It is no true philosophy to refuse credence to a statement of fact
+supported by competent evidence, simply on the ground that we cannot
+understand how it can be. That his system (Robinson's) absorbed a very
+considerable amount of weight from the moisture at all times existing in
+the atmosphere, I have no doubt--partly through the skin, but chiefly,
+as I apprehend, through the mucous membrane of the lungs. The fact that
+they are capable of transmitting such an amount of water in a very short
+time, as may be rendered evident by breathing on a cold, polished
+surface, is a pretty conclusive proof that they may, under favorable
+circumstances, be as active in absorption.
+
+"That the alvine evacuations are purely and entirely a secretion, to
+become an excretion, I have been satisfied for a number of years; and I
+am glad of this new and striking--I might say incontrovertible--proof
+that it is so. To be sure, all matters incapable of solution and
+digestion, pass off through the alimentary canal, but they are purely
+accidental. One of the most satisfactory proofs, to my mind, of the
+fact, has been the discharges from the bowels of a healthy infant. The
+whole of the milk is so digested that there is no residuary matter to
+pass through the canal, and yet the discharges are abundant."
+
+The case of Mary B. Adams, of Oakham, Mass., though differing
+considerably from that of Mr. Robinson, is, nevertheless, remarkable. I
+have dwelt so long on the preceding case, however, that I must study
+brevity. What I shall say, was published in the papers of some years
+since, and is from her own pen.
+
+"In June, 1840, I had an abscess in my throat, accompanied by slow
+fever, and in the fall, dysentery. In the autumn of the same year, I
+discontinued the use of animal food.
+
+"In 1842, I had an attack of spinal complaint, which lasted me three
+months. In the spring of 1843, I had lung fever, followed, for nearly
+two years, by a cough, and accompanied by a very indifferent appetite. A
+piece of bread three inches square and one inch thick would serve me for
+a meal. A hard fit of coughing, however, was sure to follow every meal.
+I also became very much emaciated. In the fall of 1844, I took some
+medicine which removed my cough.
+
+"Through the winter and spring of 1845, I had diarrhoea; and in the
+last of May, I was suddenly and completely prostrated. I had risen in
+the morning more unwell than usual, but before flight I was suffering
+intolerable pain through the kidneys and back; and it was not till the
+lapse of two weeks that I was able to walk about the house. All this
+while I was entirely destitute of an appetite, though my stomach
+continually craved acids. For six months, I lived almost wholly on
+fruit. Four good-sized apples a day,[M] was all that I required. My
+drink was, for the most part, catnip tea. Sometimes I could take sugar
+and milk in my tea; at others, milk could not be borne. I drank four
+teacupfuls of it a day.
+
+"While I was at one period expectorating largely, I had custards made
+from the white of eggs, sweetened with loaf sugar, of which I took
+three table-spoonfuls, every twenty-four hours. I slept but little--not
+more than two hours in twenty-four.... My bowels were very costive; I do
+not suppose there were more than two or three natural evacuations during
+the whole of the six months I am describing."
+
+A more particular account of her diet, in 1846, is elsewhere given. It
+is in the following words: "During this year I took but little food, and
+that of the simplest. I lived chiefly on fruit, such as apples,
+currants, strawberries, gooseberries, and blueberries, and other acid
+fruits."
+
+Some years later than this, Miss Adams was still living very simply. "My
+food," she says, "is raised bread, and butter, apple or pumpkin pie, and
+fruit in small quantity. I do not require more than a third as much food
+as most females. In fact, I can eat but little of any thing. My food,
+even now, distresses me very much, unless I vomit it. I eat no animal
+food, and roots of every kind distress me. I drink tea; I cannot drink
+water; it seems, in swallowing it, more like a solid than a liquid."
+
+There would be no difficulty in adding largely to the list of cases of
+dyspepsia which have been cured on the starvation plan; but these must
+suffice for the present chapter.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[K] For obvious reasons, I give real names and dates in this chapter.
+
+[L] Even Mr. Graham himself, whom he accidentally met, repeated to him
+the same caution!
+
+[M] Or other fruits equal to them. The reader must not forget that she
+had already subsisted five years without animal food, and that what she
+took of vegetable food was a very small quantity--little more than was
+taken by Mr. Robinson.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XCI.
+
+DIETING ON MINCE PIE.
+
+
+A recent letter from a patient of mine, contains the following
+statement: "I met, yesterday, with a poor dyspeptic. He said he felt
+very bad indeed, and that he had been _dieting_ for a long time. I asked
+him what his diet had been. He said 'Bread and butter, for the morning
+meal; beef, etc., for dinner; and nothing at all, for supper, but a
+piece of mince pie and one or two glasses of cider.'"
+
+Admitting this to be dieting, it is, at least, such a kind of dieting as
+will not be likely, very soon, to cure dyspepsia. And yet to hundreds,
+if not thousands, _dieting_ is little more than an increased attention
+to what they eat--I mean, from meal to meal. Yet no changes of food,
+even for the better, will compensate for this increased watchfulness
+over--I might perhaps say devotion _to_--the stomach. The Philippians,
+to whom Paul wrote so touchingly, are not the only people in the world
+whose god is their abdominal region. Such an anxious attention to the
+demands of an abnormal appetite, only tends to increase that
+determination of blood to the stomach, to prevent which all judicious or
+effective dieting is intended.
+
+Dyspepsia only renders her devotees--her very slaves--the more enslaved.
+With such, every attempt to cure the disease by dieting is still stomach
+worship. They must have their very medicine taste agreeably and _sit_
+well. At all events, they must and will have their minds continually
+upon it, and must and will be continually inquiring whether they may
+safely eat this article or that or the other.
+
+It would be almost true to affirm that the fall of man from primeval
+integrity, consists essentially in dyspepsia, and that every descendant
+of Adam and Eve is a dyspeptic. The attention of mankind generally, is
+directed too exclusively as well as too anxiously, to the inquiry, what
+they shall eat, and what they shall drink. That we must eat, and drink
+too, is quite obvious--nothing more so. That the Author of nature
+intended, also, that we should take pleasure in our eating and drinking,
+is scarcely less so. But does he secure to himself the most pleasure who
+thinks most about it? Most certainly there is pleasure--_much_ pleasure
+in the anticipation of good. We may, by aid of imagination, then, feast
+upon the same dish half a dozen times. Yet, does not this--I repeat the
+idea--tend to determine an increased amount of blood and of nervous
+energy to the stomach, and to aggravate the disease? Let the reader
+ponder this question.
+
+My own most deliberate conviction is, that the stomach, in general, is
+best managed, and the greatest amount of gustatory enjoyment secured,
+when it is subjected most fully to good habits; that this organ, being
+blind and deaf, is best served when directed by the wiser head; or, to
+express the same truth in a better way, instead of asking the stomach at
+any time what it will have, _we should ask the head what is right_, and
+follow its directions. If the stomach is pleased, why, very well; if
+not, let it go without being pleased. Give it what you think is right,
+all things considered, and think no more about it. If it rebels, give it
+a smaller quantity. If it still complains, lessen still more the
+quantity, and perhaps diminish the frequency of your meals. There is no
+danger of starving to death, as every one must be convinced who has read
+carefully the two preceding chapters. When the system is really in a
+suffering condition for want of nutriment, then the stomach will be able
+to receive more, and dispose of it. If you give it what is right for it,
+there will be no want of appetite--at least, very long. Nay, more; the
+mere animal or gustatory enjoyment of that food which the head tells us
+is right, and to which we conscientiously adhere, will, in the end, be
+far greater than in the case of continual inquiry and anxiety and
+anticipation and agitation about it.
+
+Dyspepsia, I know, has a great variety of causes--as many, almost, as it
+has forms. And yet I do not believe it can often be induced by other
+causes alone, as long as the stomach is treated correctly. Give to that
+organ, habitually, what is exactly right for it, both as regards quality
+and quantity, and I do not believe we shall hear any more, in this
+world, about dyspepsia.
+
+But he who would confine his stomach to food which his head tells him is
+right, will not surely put mince pie into it. He must know that such a
+strange compound, however agreeable, will in the end be destructive, not
+only of health, but of gustatory enjoyment.
+
+The mince pie dyspeptic is just the man for quackery to feed upon. He
+will keep his nerves in such a state as to render him liable to read
+about and swallow all the wonderful cures of the day--whether hunger
+cures, nutrition cures, clairvoyant cures, "spiritual" cures, or any
+other cures. Now it is great gain, when we have got beyond all these,
+when we simply put into our stomachs what is right, and think no more
+about it, leaving ourselves to the event; and this in sickness and
+health both.
+
+A man in the eastern part of Massachusetts,--an asthmatic,--told me he
+had spent six hundred dollars in fourteen years, on quack medicines, and
+that he was nothing bettered by them. That man, you may depend, is the
+slave of his feelings. No man who has been accustomed to dictate to his
+stomach what it shall have, and make it submit, would ever do this. A
+very poor woman, on the Green Mountains, assured me she had spent, or
+rather wasted, four hundred dollars in the same way. We must drop all
+this. I do not now say we must drop or lay aside all medicine, in all
+cases; that is quite another question. But I do say, we must rely on
+obedience to the laws of God, or on doing right, not on medicine. It
+will be time enough to rely on medicine when our family physician urges
+it upon us as indispensable.
+
+If I have a single regret with regard to the instruction I have given
+my patients, from time to time, it is that I have not pressed upon them
+more forcibly and perseveringly, such views as are comprised in the
+foregoing reasonings and reflections. They are all-important to the
+dyspeptic, and by no means less important to the healthy than to the
+diseased.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XCII.
+
+GIANTS IN THE EARTH.
+
+
+It is said of Job, and his friends who visited him to condole with him
+in his sufferings, that they sat down together and said nothing, for
+seven days and seven nights.
+
+Nearly twenty years ago, a man of gigantic frame, but haggard
+appearance, came to me, and after the usual compliments,--which were
+indeed very dry ones,--sat down by my side, and said nothing; and this
+for the very same reason which is assigned as the cause of the long
+silence of Job and his friends--his grief and his sufferings were very
+great.
+
+His disease, however, was very different in its nature from that of Job.
+It was more like insanity than small pox, or eruptive disease of any
+kind. But hear him tell his own story, which I solicited at his hands
+for the express purpose of publication:
+
+"My business, until I was twenty years of age, was farming. Since that
+time, it has been mechanical, and for the most part sedentary. From my
+youth, I ate animal food of all kinds, prepared in the usual manner.
+Twice a day I partook, more or less freely, of such vegetables as are in
+general use. Fruits, as they came in their season, I ate whenever and
+wherever I could lay hands on them, more especially apples; these last
+at almost all hours of the day, and almost without number. I was also in
+the habit of eating a luncheon at nine or ten o'clock in the morning,
+and just before going to bed.
+
+"My drinks, till 1830, were principally tea, coffee, cider, and beer;
+but sometimes I used rum, brandy, molasses and water, milk and water,
+etc. For twelve years previous to 1837, I used tobacco. From my youth, I
+have had a fondness for reading and study--have spent many hours in
+reading after the whole village were asleep.
+
+"My health I considered good, compared with that of my acquaintances,
+and I was able to labor hard, although I was subject to dizziness and
+vomiting with such intensity that I could not walk or stand without
+assistance; and for a number of days, the complaint seemed to bid
+defiance to all medical aid. Here began the day of retribution, and
+bitterly have I suffered for my intemperance, both in eating and
+drinking. At length, my dizziness in some measure wore away, so that I
+returned to my work; but my system had received a shock that was not to
+be got rid of at once. And although my dizziness and inclination to
+vomit were in some measure removed, yet I grew weaker by degrees, so
+that by spring I was unable to perform my daily labor.
+
+"I continued to decline until summer, when I was attacked with a violent
+cough--from what cause I did not know. Some said it was the
+hooping-cough, some said it was _la grippe_. Suffice it to say, I took
+all the medicines prescribed by our family physician, followed all his
+good advice, and took all to no purpose. I was also persuaded to try the
+prescription of a celebrated physician in a neighboring town; but, alas!
+his prescription was tried in vain.
+
+"My cough and dizziness not having left me, I tried a respectable
+physician of Boston, who, with an honesty of heart that does credit to
+his profession, bid me buy a ninepence worth of liquorice, keep my mouth
+and throat moist by chewing a little of that, and let my cough have its
+course; 'For,' said he, 'though I should like to sell you medicine and
+give you medical advice, for the sake of the emolument, it will do you
+no good. Your disease will have its course, and you cannot help it.' I
+now thought my days were few; but, as a last resort, I repaired to you."
+
+He here enters into particulars which are not needful to my present
+purpose; and the detail, by one so intimately concerned, and withal so
+complimentary to me as his physician, would be fulsome. It is
+sufficient, perhaps, to add the following paragraphs.
+
+"Agreeably to your advice, I now began to reform, in good earnest. With
+a constitution broken down, and almost rotten with disease, it was no
+easy matter for me to cure myself; but to it I went, determined to
+overcome or die in the attempt.
+
+"I now began to think of eating what God created for man to eat. And now
+it was that my health began to return; and by the time I had practised
+the rules and prescriptions you laid down for me, about three months, my
+cough ceased, my dizziness left me, and my health and strength partly
+returned.
+
+"Since that time I have lived on bread made of wheat meal, rye and
+Indian bread, rice boiled or stewed, rice puddings, corn puddings,
+apples, potatoes, etc. I sleep soundly and sweetly, on a straw bed; rise
+at four in summer and five in winter, refreshed both in body and mind;
+do as much work as it is necessary for any man to do; am cheerful,
+happy, contented, and thankful to God for all his mercies; go to bed at
+nine and go to sleep without having the night mare or any thing else to
+disturb my rest. I ought to add that I eat no luncheon; and but about as
+much in a whole day, as I used to eat at one meal."
+
+As I have already intimated, it is about twenty years since I prescribed
+for this individual, at which time he had a wife and two or three
+children. The latter seemed to require not a little watching and dosing.
+Now, in 1858, he has a very large family, many of whom have either
+arrived at maturity or nearly so; and the whole family have, for many
+years, been strangers to dosing and drugging. Except the mother, they
+seem like a family of giants, so large are their frames, and so marked
+and strong are their muscles. They are pictures of health, so to speak;
+and if Mr. Barnum would exhibit them at his museum, or elsewhere, he
+might, for aught I know, retrieve his shattered fortunes.
+
+I know another great family, in New England, whose history, so far as
+physical inheritance is concerned, is not unlike that of the family just
+described. "There were giants in the earth in those days," hence appears
+to be applicable to the world since the flood, as well as to that which
+was before it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XCIII.
+
+THE GREEN MOUNTAIN PATIENT.
+
+
+Not many years since, I received a letter from a family in a retired
+village of the Green Mountains, begging me to visit one of their number,
+a young woman about twenty-seven years of age. She was a farmer's
+daughter, and had been, in early life, employed as is customary in such
+families in that region; but, for a few years past had been employed, a
+considerable portion of the time, in teaching in the district or public
+schools. It is probable she exchanged the employments of home for the
+labors of the pedagogue, on account of increasing ill health (though of
+this I am not quite certain), since nothing is more common or more
+hazardous. The daughters of our agriculturalists, who inherit, as she
+did, a scrofulous constitution, and who appear to be tolerably healthy
+while they remain at home, almost always break down within a few years
+after leaving the broom and duster.
+
+But whatever may have been the first cause or causes of her diseased
+condition, it is probable there had been both action and reaction. She
+was now, at the time I received her most piteous petition, quite ill,
+and had been so for a considerable time. However, in order to come at
+the case and the results, it may be as well to make a few extracts from
+the letters of her friends and herself. For, though they were not
+accustomed to such descriptions of a case as a medical man would be apt
+to give, yet, for popular perusal, they are, after all, the more useful.
+
+My first extract will be made from a long letter written by her brother.
+
+"The first attack of what we suppose to be her present disease, was a
+year ago last spring, and was believed to be the result of taking
+severe colds repeatedly, while teaching school among the mountains of
+New Hampshire, and which ended in what Dr. K. (their family physician)
+called inflammation of the lungs, and was treated accordingly. There was
+much cough and expectoration of mucus. Though she partially recovered,
+so as to be able to teach again the ensuing summer, yet her cough was
+somewhat troublesome till autumn, when health seemed again to smile upon
+her.
+
+"Late in the fall, however, she had a very severe attack of
+diarrhoea,--caused, perhaps, by imprudence in diet, and sundry other
+deviations from a straight line,--which has been her constant companion
+ever since. (This was a period of eight months.) During all this time
+her food has passed almost without being dissolved. There is much pain
+in the stomach and bowels, unless mitigated by opiates, morphine or
+something analogous. But very little cough has attended her since the
+last attack of diarrhoea. There has been some pain and soreness in the
+right side; an eruption over the region of her stomach, swelling of the
+feet and ankles, whenever fatigued by walking, with pain and soreness in
+the left ankle.
+
+"I will now give you, briefly, her physician's views. He was called soon
+after the disease had taken hold of her, and made an examination of her
+case, which he then called dyspepsia, attended with a little
+inflammation of the right lung, or perhaps, said he, a slight filling up
+of the air passages, and he thought the lower part of her right lung
+might be somewhat indurated. 'Still,' said he, 'the case is not a
+serious one.' These were his very words. He said he could cure her; and,
+till very lately, he has always held out to her the language of hope.
+But now he speaks very differently; he says the case is a hopeless
+one--that of tubercular consumption; and he says he has always known it
+to be such!--and adds that there is, even now, a small cavity in her
+right lung, and that her lungs are passing off in her diarrhoea,
+without any inconvenience in breathing, or any disagreeable sensation in
+filling the lungs to fulness."
+
+It is difficult to believe that a medical man who has any regard for his
+own reputation, would tell such a downright falsehood, as that above
+represented; and still more difficult to believe he would make the
+strange mistake of representing her lungs as passing off through the
+bowels! Why, they might almost as well pass though the moon! Probably my
+correspondent did not exactly and truly apprehend his meaning; at least,
+I would charitably hope so.
+
+The appeal for relief was so very urgent, and withal so humble, I
+visited and examined her, the family physician being present. I found
+the latter to be a timid invalid, for whom, before I left, I was
+requested to prescribe; which may account, in part, for his very
+inefficient practice. I also found him ignorant, in many particulars, of
+the first principles of his profession; and it was with extreme
+difficulty--like that of mingling oil with water--that we could unite on
+any thing reasonable or desirable. He still clung to medicine, as his
+sheet-anchor in the case, while I was for depending, mainly, on a strict
+conformity to the laws of health, and the restorative efforts of Nature.
+
+There were other difficulties. A part of the family still inclined to a
+reliance on him and his old system, while the rest were in favor of my
+general views, as far as they understood them. The patient herself
+sometimes inclined to one, and sometimes to the other. While in health,
+she had been a woman of much decision of character; but, in her present
+condition, she was weak and vacillating.
+
+But there was, at length, a partial blending of the inharmonious
+elements, and a prescription made out. It did not satisfy, however.
+There was so strong a leaning to nature, that, after my departure, Dr.
+K. gradually worked his way back to his old system of full medication,
+as a letter received a few weeks afterwards plainly indicated. For, as
+the great change in her treatment which we made, left her no mystical
+props to lean upon, and as Dr. K. was a little disposed to speak to her
+in a way which was calculated to increase her fears, it preyed upon her
+mind so much that, though her diseased tendencies gradually diminished,
+yet the continual croakings of her would-be friends, and the
+faithlessness of a half-sick and wholly sombre physician, more than
+counteracted every favorable tendency.
+
+In about two weeks after I saw her, she began to have more heat and pain
+in the stomach, with some other threatening symptoms,--probably induced
+by an attempt to use food prescribed for her, but which was too
+stimulating. Her physician now, to gratify both his own morbid feelings,
+and the clamor of her friends, ordered brandy and other stimulating
+drinks; also morphine and camphor powders, and a new relay of
+stimulating food.
+
+The sequel of the story, as related by a sister of the patient, is as
+follows:--
+
+"Soon after I wrote you last (which was the letter containing an account
+of the strange resort to beef, brandy, morphine and camphor), she began
+to fail very fast, and Dr. K. informed her that she could live but a
+very short time. But she clung to life, and it was distressing to see
+her going down to the grave, while we were doing nothing to help her. We
+spoke to her about sending for you again; but she said you were a great
+way off, and if you could come at all, which was doubtful, it would be a
+long time before you could arrive; whereas, if she could not have help
+soon, she must be compelled to leave us. We asked her if she could think
+of any other physician that she would like to see? She replied, that she
+should like to see Dr. Q.,--an old physician about twenty miles distant.
+We sent for him immediately. He came, and with him her old physician,
+Dr. K.
+
+"I wish to say that she had taken but very little medicine before Dr. Q.
+came, except the morphine, camphor, and brandy. But the counselling
+physician said that would not do, and he could not help her unless she
+took three opium pills, eighteen drops of laudanum, and from six to nine
+drops of the chloride of iron, a day; and when she hesitated about being
+able to bear it, he told her to drink down the white part of two eggs in
+cold water, which would keep the medicine from hurting her.
+
+"We inquired if he would come again and see her: to which he replied in
+the affirmative. She proceeded to take his medicine for one day, but it
+quickly increased her diarrhoea. Instead of six movements a day, they
+were increased to thirty-five. Under these circumstances, her weakness
+increased so fast that she could help herself very little; and her feet,
+hands, and limbs were very much bloated. As Dr. Q. did not come,
+according to his agreement, we sent for her old physician. When he saw
+her, he said it was a wonder she had lived so long after taking Dr. Q.'s
+medicine."
+
+We are not told, in the letter from which the above is extracted, why
+her old physician, Dr. K., consented, in the first place, that she
+should take the medicine, if he regarded it as so very bad for her. But,
+then, he was a timid as well as a Janus-faced man, and probably said as
+he did because he did not know what else to say. But I will go on with
+the extracts, since they reveal another most astounding fact in regard
+to medical dishonesty.
+
+"He also (the family physician) told us that we must not expect Dr. Q.
+any more, for he told him expressly that he should not come again, as he
+could do nothing for her, and that if he had known how she was before he
+came, he never would have come so far in a case so hopeless. And, true
+to his engagement with Dr. K., but contrary to his promise, both to my
+sister and my father, separately, he never came again.
+
+"But the other doctor came again, and attended her as formerly. He gave
+her a powder of morphine, and some gum myrrh, and a little anise, which
+reduced the evacuations from thirty-three to three a day. But her
+distress was still very great, and her feet soon began to turn purple,
+and she began to bloat in her stomach and bowels. This continued till
+she was as full as she could be; and you could have heard her scream and
+groan as far as the road (a distance of three or four rods). The
+physician then applied ether, to relieve her distress, and gave
+twenty-five drops of laudanum, and a morphine powder, upon which her
+distress left her for a very short time, but soon returned, not to leave
+her again while she lived. Almost her last breath was a scream. She died
+in just eight days after Dr. Q. came to see her.
+
+"But I must close by saying that we think if our sister could have been
+a patient of yours, she would have been restored to health. But it is
+past, and we cannot recall it; and all I can now do, is to tender our
+thanks to you for your kindness and attention during our sister's
+sickness. I trust you will have life and health, long to pursue your
+noble vocation."
+
+I am afraid the patient reader of this long chapter, will be led to one
+conclusion which the writer would exceedingly regret; viz., that all
+medical counsel, in chronic disease, is of more than doubtful utility;
+and that it would be safer to leave it wholly to nature and to good
+nursing. There are medical men in the world who are honest as well as
+skilful, and who, because a case is difficult to manage, will not,
+chameleon-like, tell two or three different stories, and thus half ruin
+a profession that embraces so many noble and honorable-minded men; nor
+will they persist in a course of treatment which is evidently murdering
+their patients.
+
+It is hardly needful to say that the patient above described was
+murdered; but I am obliged to say, without doubt, that there was no
+necessity of her coming to such an untimely end. Her sister, it seems,
+thought that, had she fallen into my hands from the first, she might
+have been saved. I think so too. And yet, it might have been otherwise.
+In any event, she ought not, at the first, to have been treated for
+consumption, but for dyspepsia. Starvation, and a little mental
+quietude, with daily exercise, such as she could bear, in the open air,
+would have greatly changed her condition, when her diarrhoea first
+commenced.
+
+I never knew a case which was worse managed in my whole life. It is a
+wonder to me, when I think of it, that she so long survived under it.
+But it is a wonder, greater still, that medical men who are so
+unqualified for the duties of their profession as the physicians who
+were most concerned in the treatment of the above case appear to me to
+have been, do not feel compelled, by the remonstrances of their own
+consciences, to quit their profession, and do something for a living for
+which they are better prepared.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XCIV.
+
+CURE OF POISON FROM LEAD.
+
+
+Cases of poisoning by lead are occurring in our country almost daily;
+and it becomes a matter of much importance to know how to treat them.
+Indeed, there are many who are so susceptible to the action of this
+deleterious agent, that the reception of a single tumbler of water
+brought through lead pipes, in a certain condition, into their stomachs,
+will cause serious disturbance. I have had one patient of this
+description--a Mr. E., of Worcester, Mass.
+
+Some twenty years ago, much of the water used in the village of Dedham,
+Mass., was conveyed to the village, for half a mile or so, in lead
+pipes. Many who drank the water were injured by it; some of them for
+life. A Mr. R., a printer, is believed to have lost his life, by disease
+which was either induced or aggravated by this cause. I have, myself,
+been called to prescribe for several, who were probably led into a state
+of ill health by this unhealthy water. One of the clergymen of the
+village suffered from it very greatly, though he is, as I believe, yet
+living.
+
+There is some difference of opinion as to the circumstances which most
+favor the action of the lead, or, rather, which cause its dissolution in
+the water. But, with regard to its danger, in certain circumstances,
+either known or unknown, there can be no doubt. Nor can we doubt that,
+in view of facts which exist, it is our duty to banish lead pipes, as
+much as possible, from common use.
+
+During the early part of the year 1855, Capt. J. H., near Boston, aged
+thirty-four years, of good natural constitution and comparatively
+healthy habits in general, had a slow typhoid fever, from which,
+however, he finally recovered, though not without a continued liability
+to a relapse. About this time, he began to use water brought to his
+kitchen in lead pipes.
+
+Late in the year 1856, he was taken down very suddenly, with fever and
+great debility, and in four or five days his upper and lower limbs
+became completely paralyzed. He was not able to stir so much as one of
+his hands. Indeed, the whole abdominal region seemed to be almost as
+inactive as his limbs; for very severe friction across the hips, and
+along the spine, down the legs, produced no sensation; and his bowels
+were so constipated, as to remain motionless from five or six days to a
+fortnight at a time, unless excited by medical agents.
+
+His case was examined by several eminent medical men in the vicinity of
+Boston, who gave it as their unanimous opinion, that the cause of his
+disease was the irritation of the water. Some of them prescribed for his
+case, but all to no apparent purpose.
+
+On the first day of November, he was sent to an electro-chemical bathing
+establishment, to be treated according to the usages of that
+institution. I was intimately acquainted with the establishment, and, in
+circumstances like his, was understood to regard it with favor. I was,
+therefore, from time to time, consulted in the case of Captain H. To
+give an impulse to the nervous and arterial systems of Capt. H., one
+bath was administered. The use of his limbs was restored, as if by
+magic. When he came out of the bath, he walked some twenty feet or more,
+to his bed, without assistance; and, to his great surprise, could raise
+his hands to his head. The second day's bath, and treatment with simple
+diet, not only restored sensation, but gave him a better use of his
+hands than he had enjoyed before for many months. His bowels, also,
+became immediately regular, and continued so.
+
+It is, however, to be confessed, that his recovery was not so rapid as
+at first seemed probable. The baths seemed to give an impulse; but it
+was reserved for a proper diet, suitable exercise, and good air, to work
+out, slowly, a perfect cure. How much was attributable to the baths,
+considered by themselves, is not known. No medicine was given, from
+first to last, except the electricity.
+
+It should also be confessed, that no belief was entertained, by myself
+or my associates, of any mechanical power possessed by the electricity,
+of forcing the lead out of the system; though some individuals had
+believed in such a power. The most we claimed was, that the invisible
+agent had an immediate influence on the nerves, and a more remote one on
+the absorbent system.
+
+As a farther proof, if more proof had been needed, that the paralysis
+was induced by lead, some of the water from which he had drank was
+analyzed by Dr. Hayes, City Assayer for Boston, who pronounced it to be
+strongly impregnated with lead, and "utterly unfit for culinary
+purposes."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XCV.
+
+FAITH AND WORKS.
+
+
+In the autumn of 1856, a fine young man, a clerk in a large mercantile
+house in Boston, came to me with complaints not unlike those of
+thousands of his own age and sex, and begged for relief; but was
+surprised when he learned that I treated all such cases as his without
+medicine. Added to the surprise, moreover, was a degree of mortification
+at the idea of attempting to cure himself by a change of habits,
+especially of dietetic habits, which, in a boarder in a family, might be
+observed. He would have been much better pleased to take medicine, so
+concentrated that a few drops or a few small boluses or pills could be
+taken a few times a day unperceived--than to run the risk of awakening
+suspicions of diseases to which he was unwilling to make confession.
+
+And herein, by the way, comes out the secret of such a wonderful
+imposition on our young men, by what I have elsewhere called land-sharks
+in the shape of physicians. The fondness of young men for secret
+cures,--or, at least, their money, which is the thing most wanted after
+all,--leads them, almost directly, into the mouths of these monsters.
+
+My young patient, however, had faith in me; and, after the first shock
+of surprise and the first feelings of mortification were over, resolved
+to follow my directions, and did so. He came to me, it is true, several
+times, and said he could not endure it; that he was losing flesh very
+fast, and that he was already so weak that he could scarcely walk to his
+desk. I comforted him as well as I could, told him there would be a
+change soon for the better, and kept him on through the tedious months
+of December, January, and February, when his strength began to return,
+and his flesh to be restored. Between March and May, he gained
+twenty-one pounds; and in June, he was in as good health as he ever had
+been before in his life. And yet he took not a particle of any thing
+medicinal, from first to last.
+
+If you desire to know, in few words, what he _did_ do, I will tell you.
+First, he took a long walk, regularly,--sufficiently long to induce a
+good deal of muscular fatigue,--as the last thing before he went to bed
+which was at an early hour. Secondly, he used a cold hand-bath, followed
+by much friction, daily. Thirdly, he abandoned tea and coffee (tobacco
+and rum he had never used), and drank only water. Fourthly, he abandoned
+all animal food and all concentrated substances and condiments, and
+lived simply on bread (unfermented), fruits, and a few choice
+vegetables.
+
+It was faith that served this young man,--not faith without works, but
+faith which is manifested by works. "According to your faith be it unto
+you," might be enjoined on every patient, under all circumstances. But
+the most remarkable thing connected with this case, is the fact that
+this young man had been brought up _in the lap of ease and
+indulgence_--an education which is as unfavorable to faith as it is to
+works.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XCVI.
+
+WORKS WITHOUT FAITH.
+
+
+A female, in Worcester County, Massachusetts, nearly sixty years of age,
+having for many years been a sufferer from domestic afflictions, till,
+along with certain abuses of the digestive function, it had brought upon
+her a full load of dyspepsia, was at length subjected to a trio of
+evils, which capped the climax of her sufferings, reduced her to a very
+low condition, and laid her on her bed.
+
+While lying in this condition, a young woman who was her constant
+attendant, and who was acquainted with my no-medicine practice,
+recommended to her to send for me. She hesitated, for a time, on account
+of the expense; for, though by no means poor, she felt all the pangs of
+poverty in consequence of the hard and unworthy treatment of the
+individual who was to have justly executed the last will and testament
+of her husband.
+
+But I was at length sent for. I found her under the general care and
+oversight of a homoeopathic physician; but as he was ten or twelve miles
+distant and had not been informed of my visit, I did not see him. His
+practice, however, in the case, was similar to what I had usually met
+with in cases which had come under the care of physicians of the same
+school, and was, at most, as it appeared to me, negative. She had indeed
+been drugged by some one most fearfully, and her whole system was
+suffering as the consequence; but it was a physician who had preceded
+Dr. A., and who was of an entirely different school.
+
+I found no great difficulty in persuading her to ask Dr. A., when he
+should next call, to suspend his medicine a week or two; and, after
+ordering a warm bath two or three times a week, and certain changes in
+diet, with particular care about ventilation and temperature, left her,
+to call again the next week.
+
+On calling, at the time appointed, I was greatly disappointed in finding
+her with many better symptoms. There was indeed cough, which busy rumor
+had converted into an indication of galloping consumption; but I found
+no other symptom which belonged to that disease. The homoeopathic
+medicine had been suspended, and the warm bath had been applied with
+apparent success.
+
+I left, with the promise of calling again in ten days--but not sooner,
+unless they sent for me. At the end of the ten days, I called and found
+all things ajar again. Her female attendant had left her about a week
+before; and the new attendants--two of them--being destitute of faith in
+me, had found no great difficulty in persuading her that she had a fever
+of the lungs, and that she would die if she did not take a _little_
+medicine, and that she would do well to recall Dr. A., and take his
+medicine.
+
+When I arrived, at this third visit, I found her taking a small amount
+of homoeopathic medicine, but without appetite or strength, and
+evidently tending downward. It was too late to do any thing, especially
+when there was no faith in anything but pills and powders; and I left
+her to her native strength of constitution, her homoeopathic
+physician, her croaking nurses, and God, vainly mourning, all my way
+home, about the inefficiency of works without faith, especially in the
+case of the sick. This woman's case is recent, and it is possible that
+she may recover, in spite of pills, powders, croakings, and
+faithlessness. I have witnessed such things. Nature is tough.
+
+But while I lament the inefficiency of works, where faith is wanting, I
+have had one case which seems an exception to the general rule,
+"according to your faith," etc., which I take great pleasure in
+recording.
+
+In June, 18--, a young man from the interior of New England called on me
+while abroad on business, and desired to receive my advice concerning
+certain complaints, attended with great debility, and accompanied by
+hernia and varicocele, and, in general, by dyspepsia. On examination, I
+found the case a very obstinate one, of long standing. The patient was a
+young man of twenty-two, a clerk in a country store, a man of some
+principle, and yet trained to find his chief happiness in the indulgence
+of his appetite, especially in what is called good eating.
+
+I gave him some general directions, promising him something still more
+specific as soon as I got home. In July, I gave him written directions,
+in full, and urged him to push the treatment as fast as possible, in
+order to get into a beginning state of convalescence, soon enough to
+take advantage of the naturally recuperative effects of autumn. If he
+could find himself recruiting in September, the month of October, I told
+him, would produce on him a very decided change.
+
+He went to work accordingly, but it was because it was a last resort,
+and he must do so. It was not because he had much faith in me. Some of
+his friends, it seems, had directed his attention this way; but when I
+came to talk of the starvation plan of cure, to which I so much
+inclined, both they and he revolted. However, he made a faint beginning.
+
+I had foreseen most of the difficulties I had to contend with, and was
+prepared to meet them. Thus, knowing full well that if I laid down the
+laws of diet in great strictness, either as regards, quality or
+quantity, he would be discouraged and do nothing at all, I permitted him
+to use almost all kinds of food, and only insisted on a rigid adherence
+to the great law, and avoiding medicine. These two points I made much
+of, and explained them fully.
+
+For example: I told him that all kinds of cookery or preparations which
+prevented the necessity of teeth labor, such as soaking in milk, forming
+into toast, mashing, or in any way softening, were wrong, and must be
+avoided. Also, that all additions to our food, whether of foreign
+bodies, such as pepper, mustard, vinegar, salt, etc., or of more
+concentrated substances, such as molasses, sugar, honey, butter, gravy,
+etc., should, for the same reason as well as others, be shunned as much
+as possible.
+
+When, therefore, said I, the question comes before your mind, whether
+you may or may not eat a particular thing, consider first, whether its
+use would be a violation of the general laws I have laid down for you. I
+gave him many specific directions, at first, and yet continued to urge
+it upon him to reason for himself.
+
+But it seemed, for a long time, a hopeless case. He kept writing to me,
+to know if he might eat toast, bread and butter, soup, milk, etc., or to
+know why it was that he ought not to make additions of foreign or
+concentrated substances, as of pepper, mustard, molasses, syrup, etc. I
+have before me sixteen letters from him, in most of which his pleadings
+abound, up to the very last but one. This fifteenth letter, dated
+December 27, more than six months after my interview with him and first
+prescription, has the following inquiries:--
+
+"Will a diet do for me that admits of any pastry?--of pies, of any kind?
+What _kind_ of puddings, pies, and cake will answer? What kind of meats?
+What food shall I be obliged to avoid to keep my passions in check? What
+am I to eat this winter--next spring--next summer? How much at a time?
+Can I eat tripe--corned beef--oysters--lean pork steak? What kinds of
+meat and fish will do for me to eat? Any salt fish? Is milk bad in case
+of liver disease? Is there any objection to baked sour apples and milk,
+or to sour apples after using a little milk or bread? Will you allow me
+to eat any simple thing between meals?"
+
+And in this same letter, after six months' instruction, as aforesaid, he
+undertakes to tell me what his habits of living are, which, despite of
+all said and done, in the way of personal counsel and nearly twenty
+letters, strangely reads thus:--
+
+"I use some milk three times a day, and almost always soak my toasted
+bread in milk. Since I have been out in the open air, I have usually had
+some wild game, or a piece of beef steak, or raw eggs, twice a day. My
+suppers, lately, have been toasted bread, of any convenient kind
+(usually Graham), with milk, about a tumbler full, at a time, or
+three-fourths full. I usually eat two apples, with or after each
+breakfast and dinner. I use considerable cream soaked into my bread,
+when I can obtain it, and some molasses. Now, which is the best for me
+to use on my bread, at supper time--cream, milk, molasses, or a little
+butter?--or with my other meals? Is there any objection to my using all
+these now, in proper quantities? Will a little plain sauce do with my
+supper? Why do you so strongly object to cream toasts, or cream on
+bread? Is chewing gum from spruce trees injurious?--or birch bark? Any
+objections to eating two sour apples after breakfast and dinner?"
+
+Now the great difficulty with this young man was, that he had but little
+faith, either in me or in principles--though if I would direct him, from
+step to step, like a child, he would obey me, for the moment: though,
+like a child, too, he would forget my directions at almost the next
+moment, and ask for information on the very same point.
+
+Was not such a trial almost too great? However, he was destined to
+survive it, to live on in spite of it, notwithstanding my after fears.
+In March, 18--, he wrote me as follows:--
+
+"As I have been getting better all the while, and have troubled you with
+so many little queries from time to time, I thought I would delay this
+letter a while. My health has been constantly improving all winter, and
+I think I have not enjoyed as good health before for many years. People
+now say, 'How well you are looking!' and 'How fleshy you are!' I mean to
+live according to the '_laws_.'"
+
+In short, this young sufferer from dyspepsia in one of its worst forms,
+after more than half a year of works without faith, and of whining and
+complaining a part of the time, without either works or faith, is at
+last shouting victory! And a glorious victory it is! Would that the rest
+of our dyspeptics, with land by millions, might stand on as good a
+footing, with as good prospects before them, as this young man! And yet
+he might have come up to the same point long ago, had he used more
+common sense, and exercised but a little more faith and trust in just
+hygienic principles.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XCVII
+
+DISEASES OF LICENTIOUSNESS.
+
+
+Not far from the end of July, 1857, I received the following, in a
+letter through the post office, as usual, and dated at Boston, but
+signed by a name probably fictitious.
+
+"It was with no small degree of interest that I noticed, in a book
+written by yourself,--I cannot recollect its name,--some remarks upon
+certain diseases which you called nameless; yet, through a dread to
+introduce so delicate a subject, I have neglected so to do, till it has
+become an imperative task. And now, laying aside all feelings of
+modesty, allow me to be familiar with you, as with a father, and to lay
+my case before you, assuring you that, however unfortunate I have been,
+it is not my fault, but has come upon me while living with my husband,
+having never betrayed _his_ confidence."
+
+She then proceeded at once to describe her disease and sufferings, which
+were terrible. It appeared that she had not been of the number of those
+who, in circumstances akin to hers, so often fall into shark's mouths.
+She had taken but little medicine of any kind, except balsam copaiba.
+After the details of her symptoms and sufferings were finished, she
+added:
+
+"Now, if you are able to understand me, I wish to ask you whether, from
+the description I have given, you cannot prescribe something that will
+relieve me. If so, you can be assured that you will put your humble
+correspondent and her erring but repentant companion under great
+obligation to yourself, and that you will be rewarded for all your
+trouble and advice."
+
+As the result of this request, a correspondence followed, which
+continued several months. At first, the patient clung to the idea that
+she could not possibly be restored without minerals, or at least
+without active medicine of some sort or other, she scarcely knew what.
+But she at length understood me, and followed, quite implicitly, my
+directions. There was indeed a little shrinking, at first, from the
+rigidity, or, as she would call it, the nakedness, of a diet which it
+was indispensable to use in order to purify her blood effectually; but
+she finally came bravely up to the mark, and probably reaped her reward
+in it.
+
+It is true, I did not hear from her till she came to the end of a very
+long road; but up to the last of our correspondence, she was slowly
+improving. My belief is that, before this time, she has fairly
+recovered, and with far less injury to the vital powers than if
+mercurial or other strong medicines had been used.
+
+And herein we are reminded of a crime that not only has no name, but
+deserves none. I allude to the act of communicating a disease so
+distressing to an innocent and unoffending female. We had an instance of
+this same crime in Chapter LXXIV. If there be such a thing as punishing
+too severely, I am sure it is not in cases like these. The individual in
+human shape, who, with eyes open, will run the risk of injuring those
+whom he professes to love better, if possible, than himself, deserves a
+punishment more condign and terrible than he to whom is so often awarded
+a halter or a guillotine.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XCVIII.
+
+CURIOUS AND INSTRUCTIVE FACTS.
+
+
+It is morally impossible for any medical man who has kept his eyes open
+for forty years, not to have been struck with certain obvious and
+incontrovertible facts, of which I present a few specimens.
+
+The _Boston Medical and Surgical Journal_, a few years since, in an
+obituary notice of Dr. Danforth, who had long been an eminent
+practitioner in Boston, makes the following remarks:--
+
+"Though considered one of the most successful practitioners, he rarely
+caused a patient to be bled. Probably, for the last twenty years of his
+practice, he did not propose the use of this remedy in a single
+instance. And he maintained that the abstraction of the vital fluid
+diminished the power of overcoming the disease. On one occasion, he was
+called to visit a number of persons who had been injured by the fall of
+a house frame, and, on arrival, found another practitioner engaged in
+bleeding the men. 'Doctor,' said the latter, 'I am doing your work for
+you.' 'Then,' said Dr. Danforth, 'pour the blood back into the veins of
+those men.'"
+
+Dr. Thomas Hubbard, of Pomfret, Conn., long a President of the Medical
+Society in that State, was, on the contrary, accustomed to bleed almost
+all his patients. Yet both of these men were considered as eminently
+successful in their profession. How is it that treatment so exactly
+opposite should be almost, if not quite, equally successful?
+
+There was a discussion in Boston, many years ago, between Dr. Watson,
+one of the most successful old-school practitioners of medicine, and a
+Thomsonian practitioner, whose name I have forgotten, in the progress of
+which the former made the open and unqualified declaration, that, in the
+course of four years' practice, he had drawn one hundred gallons of
+human blood, and that he was then on the use of his thirty-ninth pound
+of calomel.
+
+Now both these men had full practice; and while one did little or
+nothing to break up disease or destroy the enemy, the other did a great
+deal; and yet both were deemed successful. Can we explain this any
+better than we can the facts in regard to Drs. Danforth and Hubbard?
+
+Let us look at the case of Dr. M., of Boston, a successful allopathic
+practitioner. In order to satisfy his curiosity, with regard to the
+claims of homoeopathy, he suddenly substituted the usual
+homoeopathic treatment for allopathy, and pursued it two whole years
+with entire success. Curiosity still awake, he again exchanged his
+infinitesimal doses of active medicine for similar doses, as regards
+size, of fine flour, and continued this, also, for two years. The latter
+experiment, as he affirms, was quite as successful as the former.
+
+Do not such facts as these point, with almost unerring certainty, to the
+inefficiency of all medical treatment? Do they not almost, if not quite,
+prove that when we take medicine, properly so called, or receive active
+medical treatment; we recover in spite of it? Is there any other
+rational way of accounting for the almost equal success of all sorts of
+treatment,--allopathic, botanic, homoeopathic, hydropathic,
+etc.,--when in the hands of good, sound, common sense, and conjoined
+with good nursing and attendance? Is it not that man is made to live,
+and is tough, so that it is not easy to poison him to death?
+
+But the most remarkable fact of this kind with which I am acquainted, is
+the case of Isaac Jennings, M.D., now of Ohio. He was educated at Yale
+College, in Connecticut. During the progress of his education, he served
+a sort of medical apprenticeship in the family of Prof. Eli Ives, of New
+Haven. He took his medical degree in 1812, and soon after this commenced
+the practice of his profession in Trumbull, in Fairfield County. Here,
+for eight years, he had ample opportunity to apply the principles with
+which, at the schools, he had been fully indoctrinated. In the summer
+of 1820, he removed, by special request, to Derby, nine miles from New
+Haven. Up to his second year in Derby, he pursued the usual, or
+orthodox, course of practice. The distance from his former field of
+labor was not so great but that he retained a portion of his old friends
+in that region. He was also occasionally called to the town of
+Huntington, lying partly between the two.
+
+On meeting one day with Dr. Tisdale, of Bridgeport, an older physician
+than himself, he said to him, very familiarly, "Jennings, are you aware
+that we do far less good with our medicine than we have been wont to
+suppose?" He replied in the affirmative, and observed that he had been
+inclining to that opinion for some time. "Do you know," added Dr.
+Tisdale, "that we do a great deal more harm than good with medicine?"
+Dr. Jennings replied that he had not yet gone as far as that. Dr.
+Tisdale then proceeded to state many facts, corroborating the opinion he
+had thrown out concerning the impotency of medicine. These statements
+and facts were, to the mind of Dr. Jennings, like a nail fastened in a
+sure place.
+
+From this time forth his medical scepticism increased, till he came, at
+length, to give his doubts the test of experiment. Accordingly, he
+substituted for his usual medicaments, bread pills and colored water;
+and for many years--I believe five or six--gave nothing else. The more
+rigidly he confined himself to these potions, the better he found his
+success, till his business was so extended, and his reputation so great,
+as to exclude all other medical men from his own immediate vicinity.
+
+His great conscientiousness, as well as a desire of making known to his
+medical brethren what he believed to be true, and thus save them from
+the folly of dealing out that which he was assured was only a nuisance,
+especially under the shelter of what they supposed to be his example,
+led him, at length, to call a meeting of physicians, and reveal to them
+his discovery. The surprise was great; but greater or less, according to
+their tact for observation, and the length of their experience.
+
+But the secret was now out, and Dr. Jennings soon began to lose
+practice. Instead of employing a man to give them bread pills and
+colored water, many chose to take care of themselves, and let the
+physician wholly alone; while a far greater number, though they dearly
+loved and highly respected Jennings, as an old friend and physician and
+an eminent Christian, began to seek medical counsel at other hands.
+
+The result was, that his business became so much diminished as to leave
+him without a full support, except from past earnings, and he began to
+make preparations for a removal to the West. But this his friends were
+unwilling to have him do, and they accordingly raised, by subscription,
+$300 a year, to induce him to remain. In a few years, however, the
+subscription failed to be renewed, and in 1839 or 1840 he removed to
+Ohio, where he still remains. He does a little business, and what he
+does is attended with great success; and yet, the number of those who
+follow him is small.
+
+Facts of similar import, in very great numbers, some more and some less
+striking, might be related, to almost any extent; but can it be
+necessary? Suffice it to say that some of the oldest physicians in
+Boston and its vicinity, the oldest physician in Cleveland, and some of
+the most intelligent ones in New York and Philadelphia, as well as
+elsewhere, are coming rapidly to the same conclusions with Dr. Jennings,
+and a few of them have already arrived there.
+
+It is from stumbling on such facts as these, together with my own long
+experience, all bearing in the same direction, that I have long since
+renounced dependence on medicine, properly so called, as a means of
+restoring the system, when out of order, to a state of health. In other
+words, I have ceased to employ poison to _cure_ poison.
+
+But, lest it should still be thought I make too much of my own
+experience, and of the facts which have been adduced in this chapter, I
+subjoin another of kindred character, containing the written testimony
+of others, especially medical men, on the subject.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XCIX.
+
+ANTI-MEDICAL TESTIMONY.
+
+
+A very large amount of testimony, going to show the inefficiency and
+inutility of medicine, might be presented; but I have limited myself to
+a selection of some of the more striking and important.
+
+Let me begin with Dr. Rush, of Philadelphia. In a published lecture of
+his, more than half a century ago, he made the following remark:--
+
+"Dissections daily convince us of our ignorance of disease, and cause us
+to blush at our prescriptions. What mischief have we done under the
+belief of false facts and theories! We have assisted in multiplying
+diseases; we have done more; we have increased their mortality.... The
+art of healing is like an unroofed temple, uncovered at the top, and
+cracked at the foundation."
+
+Magendie, late a distinguished French physician and physiologist, says,
+as follows:--
+
+"I hesitate not to declare,--no matter how sorely I shall wound our
+vanity,--that so gross is our ignorance of the real nature of the
+physiological disorders called diseases, that it would, perhaps, be
+better to do nothing, and resign the complaint we are called upon to
+treat, to the resources of nature, than to act, as we are frequently
+compelled to do, without knowing the why and the wherefore of our
+conduct, and at the obvious risk of hastening the end of our patient."
+
+Dr. Good, a learned and voluminous British writer, also says:--
+
+"The science of medicine is a barbarous jargon; and the effects of our
+medicines upon the human system, are, in the highest degree, uncertain,
+except, indeed, that they have already destroyed more lives than war,
+pestilence, and famine combined."
+
+Professor Clark, of the Harvard Medical School, in Boston, in an address
+of his, recently published, insists, again and again, that medicine
+never cures, and that it rarely, if ever, so much as _aids_ nature;
+while he exalts, in an unwonted degree, the remedial effects of every
+hygienic influence. Let him who longer doubts, read this most remarkable
+production; and with the more care from the fact that it is a very fair
+exponent of the doctrines now held at the very fountain-head of medical
+orthodoxy.
+
+From a work entitled, "Memoirs of James Jackson, Jr.," late of Boston,
+written by his father, I have extracted the following. It is part of a
+letter, written from Europe, to his venerable father, the present elder
+Dr. James Jackson, of Boston.
+
+"But our poor pathology and worse therapeutics--shall we ever get to a
+solid bottom? Shall we ever have fixed laws? Shall we ever _know_, or,
+must we always be doomed to _suspect_, to _presume_? Is _perhaps_ to be
+our qualifying word forever and for aye? Must we forever be obliged to
+hang our heads when the chemist and natural philosopher ask us for our
+laws and principles?... If honest, must we not acknowledge that, even in
+the natural history of disease, there is very much _doubtful_, which is
+received as _sure_? And in therapeutics, is it better yet, or worse?
+Have we judged--have we deduced our results, especially in the last
+science--from _all_, or from a selection of facts?
+
+"Do we know, for example, in how many instances such a treatment fails,
+for the one time it succeeds? Do we know how large a proportion of cases
+would get well without any treatment, compared with those that recover
+under it? Do not imagine, my dear father, that I am becoming a sceptic
+in medicine. It is, not quite as bad as that. I shall ever believe, _at
+least_, that the rules of _hygeia_ must be and are useful, and that he
+only can understand and value them, who has studied pathology. Indeed, I
+may add that, to a certain extent, I have seen demonstrated the actual
+benefit of certain modes of treatment in acute diseases. But, is this
+benefit immense? When life is threatened, do we very often save it? When
+a disease is destined by _Nature_ to be long, do we very often
+materially diminish it?"
+
+It is worthy of remark, that the discussions in the pages of the _Boston
+Medical and Surgical Journal_, for two or three years past, concerning
+the treatment of scarlatina, have usually resulted, practically, in
+favor of the no-medicine system. It clearly appears that the less our
+reliance on medicine, in this disease, the better. But what shall hinder
+or prevent our coming to similar results, in the investigation, in time
+to come, of other diseases?
+
+Dr. Reynolds, one of the most aged as well as most distinguished medical
+men of Boston, has been heard to affirm that if one hundred patients
+were to call on him during the day, and he could induce them to follow
+such directions as would keep them from injuring themselves from eating
+and drinking,--no matter what the disease,--he should be surprised at a
+mortality of more than three per cent of their number; and he should
+_not_ be surprised if every one who implicitly followed his direction
+should finally recover.
+
+I will only add, in this place, the testimony of two or three
+distinguished individuals on this subject, whose opinion, though they
+were not medical men, will with many have weight, as it certainly ought.
+
+Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to Dr. Caspar Wistar, of Philadelphia,
+thus writes: "I have lived to see the disciples of Hoffman, Boerhaave,
+Stahl, Cullen, and Brown succeed each other, like the shifting figures
+of a magic lantern.... The patient treated on the fashionable theory,
+sometimes recovers in spite of the medicine. The medicine, therefore,
+restores him (!!!), and the doctor receives new courage to proceed in
+his experiment on the lives of his fellow-creatures!"
+
+Sir Walter Scott says, of Napoleon: He never obeyed the medical
+injunctions of his physician, Dr. O'Meara, and obstinately refused to
+take medicine. "Doctor," said he, "no physicking. We are a machine made
+to live. We are organized for that purpose. Such is our nature. Do not
+counteract the living principle. Let it alone; leave it the liberty of
+defending itself; it will do better than your drugs. The watchmaker
+cannot open it, and must, on handling it, grope his way blindfold and at
+random. For once that he assists and relieves it, by dint of tormenting
+it with crooked instruments, he injures it ten times, and at last
+destroys it."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER C.
+
+AN ANTI-MEDICAL PREMIUM.
+
+
+The Massachusetts Medical Society, in the year 1856, were authorized by
+an unknown individual to offer a premium of one hundred dollars for the
+best dissertation which should be presented to them, on or before April
+15, 1857, on the following subject, viz.: "_We would regard every
+approach towards the rational and successful prevention and management
+of disease without the necessity of drugs, to be an advance in favor of
+humanity and scientific medicine._"
+
+A number of essays were accordingly presented, having, as is usual in
+such cases, various degrees of merit; but the preference was given to
+one written by Worthington Hooker, M. D., of New Haven, Conn. This essay
+is to be published in due time, and it is devoutly hoped there will be
+as little delay as possible in the circulation of so remarkable, and, as
+I have no doubt, valuable, an essay.
+
+The facts in connection with this essay, taken as an item in the history
+of human progress, are truly remarkable. The very title of the essay is
+at once peculiar and striking; but the main idea which it suggests to
+the mind is much more so. That a learned society, in the literary
+metropolis of New England, if not of the United States, should, at the
+present time, in any way or shape, encourage a discussion of the
+question, whether, in the practice of medicine, drugs can be dispensed
+with, was not an event to be expected or so much as dreamed of. It is,
+therefore, I repeat, very remarkable, and must have a deeper meaning
+than at first appears.
+
+What, then, let us inquire, is that meaning? Does it intimate that there
+is a belief,--a lurking belief, if you choose to call it so,--among our
+scientific medical men, that drugs might be entirely dispensed with?
+Or, does it rather imply a belief in the possibility of approximating to
+such a point,--with those approximations of two mathematical lines, of
+which we sometimes hear,--without the possibility of ever reaching it?
+
+It is by no means improbable, at least in my own view, that the essay
+intended by the Boston Society had its origin in a growing tendency,
+everywhere, among scientific medical men, to the belief that, in the
+most rational and successful practice of medicine, drugs are not
+indicated; and that they are only necessary on account of the ignorance
+or credulity of the community.
+
+The family practice of many sensible physicians, perhaps I might say of
+most, is strongly corroborative of this main idea. I can point to more
+than a score of eminent individuals, in this department, who never, or
+at most but seldom, give medicine in their own families; above all, they
+never take it themselves. It is indeed true, that some of them are
+hardly willing to own it, when questioned on the subject; but this does
+not alter the plain matter of fact.
+
+Thus Dr. S----, ten miles from Boston, is subject to attacks of a
+species of neuralgia, which sometimes last two days; and yet, none of
+his family or friends or medical brethren have ever been able to
+persuade him to do any thing to mitigate his pain, except to keep quiet
+and abstain almost entirely from food; and a daughter of his assures me
+that she can scarcely recollect his giving a dose of medicine to any
+member of his family. Dr. H., seven miles from Boston, not only does the
+same, but frequently disappoints the expectations of his patients, by
+giving them no medicine. Yet both these individuals are exceedingly slow
+to be seen in company with those men of heterodoxy in medicine, who dare
+to advocate, everywhere and on all occasions, what they habitually
+practice on themselves and their families.
+
+What, then, I repeat it, can these things mean? Is there not reason for
+believing that the truly wise men of the medical profession, at the
+present time, are beginning to see, in certain facts which in the
+providence of God are forced upon them, that in the general management
+of disease, and as the general rule of treatment, no drugs or medicines
+are needful?
+
+There is a wide difference between that practice of our profession
+which, as a general rule, excludes medicine, and that which, as a
+general rule, includes it. And an entire change from the latter to the
+former, is, perhaps, too great to be expected immediately. Yet, in the
+progress of society towards a more perfect millennial state of things,
+must it not come?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER CI.
+
+CONCLUDING REMARKS.
+
+
+It is a notorious fact, that while the number of physicians and the
+expenditure for drugs and medicines is constantly increasing, in every
+civilized country where they have been much employed, diseases have been
+multiplied in proportion. Perhaps, too, they have, in a like proportion,
+become more fatal; but this does not so clearly appear. Nor is it quite
+so certain that acute diseases have been multiplied, as chronic ones.
+
+Another fact deserves to be placed by the side of this; viz., that in
+those countries, or portions of country, where no physicians have ever
+been in vogue, and very little medicine beyond a few herbs, and roots,
+and incantations, or charms, the health of the people is quite as good,
+and the longevity quite as great, all other things being equal, as in
+those countries and places where physicians and medicine have obtained a
+strong foothold.
+
+There is no evidence that the want of physicians before the flood,--if
+such a want or deficiency there was, which appears probable,--had any
+influence in shortening human life, since Methuselah, who lived at the
+end of the series, was the oldest of all. Nor does it appear at all
+probable that there were more diseases, or more fatal ones, at that
+early period, than since.
+
+One thought more. It is confidently expected that a better day than the
+present is yet to dawn upon our dark world. Not only is it predicted
+that the child shall die a hundred years old, by the highest authority,
+and that men, like the oak tree, shall live several hundred years, but
+profane writers no less than prophets and sacred ones, have expected
+and still expect it. The better time coming is, as it were, in
+everybody's mouth.
+
+But, is it probable that this better day will dawn on a world which, in
+respect to health and longevity, is going in the other direction? While
+nearly half our children die under ten years of age, and the mortality
+is increasing, are we tending towards the point when a child shall die a
+hundred years old? And are our physicians and our medicines likely to
+bring us there?
+
+If not, and if a radical change is desirable, when is it to be made?
+Shall we wait till we have run down a century or two longer, or shall we
+begin the work immediately? And if we are to begin it at once, on whom
+shall the work devolve?
+
+These are questions, I grant, more easily asked than answered.
+Nevertheless, they must soon be met; they cannot much longer be shuffled
+off. Would it not be the part of wisdom to meet them now, rather than
+postpone?
+
+Here, then, I leave the subject. Let it be pondered in the light of
+reason, common sense, conscience, and, above all, the truth of God. Let
+there be no immature or hasty decisions. Truth, in truthful hands, has
+nothing to fear.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER CII.
+
+A LAST CHAPTER.
+
+
+William A. Alcott was born in Wolcott, Conn., August 6th, 1798. His
+father, a farmer in the rough mountain town, employed his son, as soon
+as he was old enough to be useful, in laboring on the farm, so that,
+from childhood, he was trained to habits of industry. His early
+employments were, in many respects, beneficial, and his feeble
+constitution was probably invigorated by this out-of-door work. The only
+apparent drawback was being kept at work too closely, with very little
+time left for amusement; and, as he was too conscientious to neglect the
+tasks assigned him, he plodded on, thus losing, in a great measure,
+while young, the natural and healthy relish of boys for athletic games
+and sports. As a natural consequence, his mind developed too rapidly. He
+early showed a great fondness for books, and the love of reading came to
+be his chief and almost only amusement.
+
+Till eight years of age he attended the district school, in summer and
+winter, but after this period his father employed him in farm labor
+constantly, except during the winter term. At the age of fourteen he had
+measles, from which he suffered greatly at the time, and in its
+consequences for several years. He grew rapidly, was, when a lad, tall
+and thin, and his strength, when young, and, indeed, through his whole
+life, lay chiefly in a strong will, combined with great energy and
+perseverance. To these qualities, doubtless, is owing the continuance of
+his life for many years.
+
+When little more than eighteen years of age, he commenced teaching,
+which was continued, during the winter, for several years; sometimes
+through the entire year. But a strong desire to improve and elevate the
+schools, led him to overtask himself. Mr. Barnard's _Journal of
+Education_, speaks thus of his labors at this period: "The severity of
+his exertions and self-denials, joined to other causes, especially a
+feeble constitution, brought on him a most violent attack of erysipelas,
+from the effects of which, though he escaped with his life, he never
+entirely recovered."
+
+About this time he commenced the study of medicine, and the succeeding
+winter, 1825-6, attended medical lectures in New Haven, not so much with
+the design of making it a profession, as with the hope that it might
+prove an aid in fitting him to become a more thorough teacher. The
+following March he received a license to practice medicine and surgery.
+But his health was far from being good, and he was, himself, more
+apprehensive of a fatal result, than consumptive people usually are.
+
+However, he soon found an opportunity to engage in teaching again, and
+embraced it eagerly. But here he was destined to disappointment. His
+pulmonary tendencies, which had for ten years been increasing upon him,
+aggravated, no doubt, by hard study and improper diet of the preceding
+winter, now became very alarming. Beside a severe cough and great
+emaciation, he was followed by hectic fever, and the most exhausting and
+discouraging perspirations. He fought bravely to the last moment, but
+was finally compelled to quit the field, and endeavor to regain his
+health.
+
+For a time, he followed the soundest medical advice he could obtain;
+kept quiet, took a little medicine, ate nutritious food, and when his
+strength would permit, breathed pure air. This course was at length
+changed, for one of greater activity and less stimulus. He abandoned
+medicine, adopted for a time the "starvation system," or nearly that,
+and threw himself, by such aids as he could obtain, into the fields and
+woods, and wandered among the hills and mountains.
+
+In autumn, he was able to perform light horticultural labors, a few
+hours of the day, and to ride on horseback. For six months he rode
+almost daily in company with a physician; at the end of which period he
+commenced the practice of medicine, in the place where he had last
+labored, and where he was born.
+
+After continuing in the practice a few years, and his health seeming to
+be restored, he ventured to return again to the work dearer to him than
+any other--that of teaching. But his labors seemed again to be slowly
+undermining his health, and, fearful of a relapse of the pulmonary
+tendencies, he abandoned for a time all hope of teaching permanently.
+
+The following year, he became connected with Rev. William C. Woodbridge,
+and continued to labor in the cause of education for several successive
+years.
+
+In Jan. 1833, he removed to Boston, and during the winter had a severe
+attack of bleeding at the lungs, and other dangerous symptoms. These,
+however, passed away; and the great change which, in 1830, had been made
+in his physical habits, seemed to be working one equally great in his
+constitutional tendencies. For while his labors were constant and often
+severe, there was a steady gain in health. The strength and elasticity
+of youth returned, and, to use his own words it was with him, now,
+"morning all day." The effects of an unfavorable climate, which he had
+feared, were apparently held in check, and he sometimes said that
+"Obedience gave him command over climate, in a great degree." Yet,
+during all these years when his health was apparently most firm, it was
+kept in this condition only by a rigid obedience to the laws of life and
+health, as he understood and expounded them. His precepts and practice
+were in harmony.
+
+In the spring of 1848, owing to some unusual exposure, a return of the
+cough and other symptoms of his old disease made their appearance.[N]
+But, with care, and light labor in the garden, they gradually passed
+away, and his usual measure of health returned, and continued, with
+slight interruptions, till 1855. During this year he was confined to his
+room several months with a broken limb. The change, at his age, from
+exercise daily in the open air, to confinement without exercise nearly
+all winter, was very unfavorable, in its results, to his general health.
+The lungs, doubtless, suffered greatly, and were never able to resist,
+as before, the effects of exposure to sudden changes of temperature.
+
+Still he labored on from year to year, untiringly as ever, writing,
+lecturing, visiting schools, etc. During the last winter, his time was
+employed more exclusively in reading and writing, and he went out less
+than usual. His lungs were weak and very easily affected. A difficulty
+of breathing after much exertion was frequent. His feet and ankles were
+often much swollen, and there was a loss of strength and general
+debility quite new to him.
+
+These indications were not to be mistaken, and in the retirement of his
+own home he often spoke of the possibility and even probability, that
+his earthly labors were drawing to a close.
+
+On the 18th of March, he left home to be absent a few days, partly with
+the hope that being more in the open air might prove beneficial. On
+Friday of the following week, though scarcely able to be moved, he was
+brought home, having been prostrated by what appeared to be a violent
+attack of pleurisy, which terminated his earthly existence, on Tuesday,
+March 28, 1859.
+
+In many minds the question will naturally arise: What should induce such
+an apparently violent disease, in a person who so rigidly obeyed the
+laws of health? A satisfactory answer to this can be given only by
+supposing the acute disease to have been merely a finishing up or
+termination of that disease which for years had been held in check. His
+own views on the subject were in accordance with this conclusion, and
+the condition of the lungs, as shown by a post mortem examination,
+served to confirm it. The amount of disease found in the lungs was so
+great that the examination could not be as careful and satisfactory as
+would have been desirable.
+
+The hand that wrote this volume, and that would have drawn important
+lessons from this page of life, now moulders in the dust. To the reader
+it is left to gather from it instruction and motive and courage, for a
+like battle against evil, for a like victory over self, until he, too,
+shall accomplish his mission upon earth.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[N] See Chapter LXIX.
+
+
+
+
+
+
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+    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" />
+    <title>
+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of Forty Years in the Wilderness of Pills and Powders, by William A. Alcott
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Forty Years in the Wilderness of Pills and
+Powders, by William A. Alcott
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Forty Years in the Wilderness of Pills and Powders
+       Cogitations and Confessions of an Aged Physician
+
+Author: William A. Alcott
+
+Release Date: October 5, 2010 [EBook #34038]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WILDERNESS OF PILLS, POWDERS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Edwards, Josephine Paolucci and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net.
+(This file was produced from images generously made
+available by The Internet Archive.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+
+<p><a name="Front" id="Front"></a></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 464px;">
+<img src="images/frontis.jpg" width="464" height="700" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<h1>FORTY YEARS</h1>
+
+<h1>IN THE WILDERNESS</h1>
+
+<h4>OF</h4>
+
+<h1>PILLS AND POWDERS;</h1>
+
+<h4>OR, THE</h4>
+
+<h2>COGITATIONS AND CONFESSIONS OF</h2>
+
+<h3>AN AGED PHYSICIAN.</h3>
+
+<p class="center">
+BOSTON:<br />
+JOHN P. JEWETT AND COMPANY.<br />
+<br />
+NEW YORK:<br />
+C. M. SAXTON AND COMPANY.<br />
+ROCHESTER, NEW YORK: E. DARROW AND BROTHER.<br />
+1859.<br />
+<br />
+Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1859, by<br />
+JOHN P. JEWETT AND COMPANY,<br />
+In the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the district of<br />
+Massachusetts.<br />
+<br />
+LITHOTYPED BY COWLES AND COMPANY,<br />
+17 WASHINGTON ST., BOSTON.<br />
+<br />
+Printed by Geo. C. Rand and Avery.<br />
+</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="PREFACE" id="PREFACE"></a>PREFACE.</h2>
+
+
+<p>The present volume was one of the last upon which its author was
+engaged, the facts having been gathered from the experience and
+observation of a long life. It was his design to publish them
+anonymously, but under the changed circumstances this is rendered
+impracticable.</p>
+
+<p>A short time previous to his death, the writer spoke of this work, and
+said, in allusion to the termination of his own somewhat peculiar
+case,&mdash;"This <i>last chapter</i> must be added." In accordance with this
+desire, a brief sketch, having reference chiefly to his health and
+physical habits, with the closing chapter of his life, has been
+appended.</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+<span class="smcap">Boston</span>, June, 1859.<br />
+</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_v" id="Page_v">[Pg v]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="TO_THE_READER" id="TO_THE_READER"></a>TO THE READER.</h2>
+
+
+<p>In the sub-title to the following work, I have used the word
+"Confessions"&mdash;not to mislead the reader, but because <i>to confess</i> is
+one prominent idea of its author. It is a work in which confessions of
+the impotence of the healing art, as that art has been usually
+understood, greatly abound; and in which the public ignorance of the
+laws of health or hygiene, with the consequences of that ignorance, are
+presented with great plainness. The world will make a wiser use of its
+medical men than it has hitherto done, when it comes to see more clearly
+what is their legitimate and what their ultimate mission.</p>
+
+<p>These remarks indicate the main intention of the writer. It is not so
+much to enlighten or aid, or in any way directly affect the medical man,
+as to open the eyes of the public to their truest interests; to a just
+knowledge of themselves; and to some faint conception of their bondage
+to credulity and quackery. The reader will find that I go for science
+and truth, let them affect whom they may. Let him, then, suspend his
+judgment till he has gone through this volume once, and I shall have no
+fears. He may, indeed, find fault with my style, and complain of my
+literary or philosophic unfitness for the task I assigned myself; but he
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_vi" id="Page_vi">[Pg vi]</a></span>will, nevertheless, be glad to know my facts.</p>
+
+<p>Should any one feel aggrieved by the exposures I have made in the
+details which follow, let me assure him that no one is more
+exposed&mdash;nor, indeed, has more cause to be aggrieved&mdash;than myself. Let
+us all, then, as far as is practicable, keep our own secrets. Let us not
+shrink from such exposures as are likely, in a large measure, to benefit
+mankind, while the greatest possible inconvenience or loss to ourselves
+is but trifling.</p>
+
+<p>Some may wish that instead of confining myself too rigidly to naked fact
+and sober reasoning, I had given a little more scope to the imagination.
+But is not plain, "unvarnished" truth sometimes not only "stranger,"
+but, in a work like this, better also, than any attempts at "fiction"?</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+<span class="smcap">The Author.</span><br />
+<br />
+<span class="smcap">Auburndale</span>, March, 1859.<br />
+</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii">[Pg vii]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CONTENTS" id="CONTENTS"></a>CONTENTS.</h2>
+
+
+<p>
+CHAPTER.                                                        <span class="tocnum">PAGE.</span><br />
+<br />
+I. <span class="smcap">Educational Tendencies</span>                                 <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_1'>1</a></span><br />
+<br />
+II. <span class="smcap">My First Medical Lesson</span>,                              <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_6'>6</a></span><br />
+<br />
+III. <span class="smcap">The Electrical Machine</span>,                              <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_9'>9</a></span><br />
+<br />
+IV. <span class="smcap">The Measles, and pouring down Rum</span>,                   <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_11'>11</a></span><br />
+<br />
+V. <span class="smcap">Lee's Pills and Dropsy</span>,                               <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_13'>13</a></span><br />
+<br />
+VI. <span class="smcap">The Cold Shower Bath</span>,                                <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_16'>16</a></span><br />
+<br />
+VII. <span class="smcap">My First Sickness Abroad</span>,                           <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_18'>18</a></span><br />
+<br />
+VIII. <span class="smcap">Lesson from an Old Surgeon</span>,                        <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_20'>20</a></span><br />
+<br />
+IX. <span class="smcap">Lee's Windham Bilious Pills</span>,                         <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_23'>23</a></span><br />
+<br />
+X. <span class="smcap">Dr. Solomon and his Patient</span>.                          <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_26'>26</a></span><br />
+<br />
+XI. <span class="smcap">Physicking off Fever</span>,                                <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_28'>28</a></span><br />
+<br />
+XII. <span class="smcap">Manufacturing Chilblains</span>,                           <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_31'>31</a></span><br />
+<br />
+XIII. <span class="smcap">How to make Erysipelas</span>,                            <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_34'>34</a></span><br />
+<br />
+XIV. <span class="smcap">Studying Medicine</span>,                                  <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_38'>38</a></span><br />
+<br />
+XV. <span class="smcap">Nature's own Eye Water</span>,                              <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_41'>41</a></span><br />
+<br />
+XVI. <span class="smcap">The Viper Story</span>,                                    <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_43'>43</a></span><br />
+<br />
+XVII. <span class="smcap">Struck with Death</span>,                                 <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_46'>46</a></span><br />
+<br />
+XVIII. <span class="smcap">Efficacy of Cold Spring Water</span>,                    <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_51'>51</a></span><br />
+<br />
+XIX. <span class="smcap">Cheating the Physician</span>,                             <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_56'>56</a></span><br />
+<br />
+XX. <span class="smcap">Medicinal Effects of Story Telling</span>,                  <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_58'>58</a></span><br />
+<br />
+XXI. <span class="smcap">Ossified Veins</span>,                                     <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_61'>61</a></span><br />
+<br />
+XXII. <span class="smcap">He will Die in Thirty-Six Hours</span>,                   <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_64'>64</a></span><br />
+<br />
+XXIII. <span class="smcap">About to Die of Consumption</span>,                      <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_72'>72</a></span><br />
+<br />
+XXIV. <span class="smcap">My Journeymanship in Medicine</span>,                     <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_81'>81</a></span><br />
+<br />
+XXV. <span class="smcap">My Temperance Pledge</span>,                               <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_85'>85</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_viii" id="Page_viii">[Pg viii]</a></span>XXVI. <span class="smcap">Trials of a Young Physician</span>,                       <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_87'>87</a></span><br />
+<br />
+XXVII. <span class="smcap">A Dosing and Drugging Family</span>,                     <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_90'>90</a></span><br />
+<br />
+XXVIII. <span class="smcap">Poisoning with Lead</span>,                             <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_96'>96</a></span><br />
+<br />
+XXIX. <span class="smcap">Standing Patients</span>,                                <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_102'>102</a></span><br />
+<br />
+XXX. <span class="smcap">Killing a Patient</span>,                                 <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_105'>105</a></span><br />
+<br />
+XXXI. <span class="smcap">A Sudden Cure</span>,                                    <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_109'>109</a></span><br />
+<br />
+XXXII. <span class="smcap">Gigantic Doses of Medicine</span>,                      <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_112'>112</a></span><br />
+<br />
+XXXIII. <span class="smcap">The Lambskin Disease</span>,                           <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_115'>115</a></span><br />
+<br />
+XXXIV. <span class="smcap">Milk Punch Fever</span>,                                <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_120'>120</a></span><br />
+<br />
+XXXV. <span class="smcap">My First Case in Surgery</span>,                         <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_124'>124</a></span><br />
+<br />
+XXXVI. <span class="smcap">Emilia and the Love-Cure</span>,                        <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_127'>127</a></span><br />
+<br />
+XXXVII. <span class="smcap">Hezekiah Judkins and Delirium</span>,                  <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_133'>133</a></span><br />
+<br />
+XXXVIII. <span class="smcap">My First Amputation</span>,                           <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_136'>136</a></span><br />
+<br />
+XXXIX. <span class="smcap">Milk as a Remedy in Fevers</span>,                      <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_138'>138</a></span><br />
+<br />
+XL. <span class="smcap">Virtues of Pumpkin Seed Tea</span>,                        <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_141'>141</a></span><br />
+<br />
+XLI. <span class="smcap">Broken Limbs and Intemperance</span>,                     <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_144'>144</a></span><br />
+<br />
+XLII. <span class="smcap">Dying from Filthiness</span>,                            <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_148'>148</a></span><br />
+<br />
+XLIII. <span class="smcap">Taking the Fever</span>,                                <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_153'>153</a></span><br />
+<br />
+XLIV. <span class="smcap">Blessings of Cider and Cider Brandy</span>,              <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_156'>156</a></span><br />
+<br />
+XLV. <span class="smcap">The Indian Doctor</span>,                                 <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_160'>160</a></span><br />
+<br />
+XLVI. <span class="smcap">Dying of Old Age at Fifty-Eight</span>,                  <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_163'>163</a></span><br />
+<br />
+XLVII. <span class="smcap">Daughters Destroying their Mother</span>,               <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_169'>169</a></span><br />
+<br />
+XLVIII. <span class="smcap">Poisoning with Stramonium</span>,                      <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_172'>172</a></span><br />
+<br />
+XLIX. <span class="smcap">Curing Cancer</span>,                                    <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_175'>175</a></span><br />
+<br />
+L. <span class="smcap">Swelled Limbs</span>,                                       <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_179'>179</a></span><br />
+<br />
+LI. <span class="smcap">Sudden Changes in Old Age</span>,                          <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_182'>182</a></span><br />
+<br />
+LII. <span class="smcap">An Opium Eater</span>,                                    <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_185'>185</a></span><br />
+<br />
+LIII. <span class="smcap">Coffee and the Lame Knee</span>,                         <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_188'>188</a></span><br />
+<br />
+LIV. <span class="smcap">The Opium Pill Box</span>,                                <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_193'>193</a></span><br />
+<br />
+LV. <span class="smcap">Bleeding at the Lungs</span>,                              <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_196'>196</a></span><br />
+<br />
+LVI. <span class="smcap">Butter Eaters</span>,                                     <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_201'>201</a></span><br />
+<br />
+LVII. <span class="smcap">Hot Houses and Consumption</span>,                       <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_206'>206</a></span><br />
+<br />
+LVIII. <span class="smcap">Poisoning by a Painted Pail</span>,                     <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_216'>216</a></span><br />
+<br />
+LIX. <span class="smcap">One Drop of Laudanum</span>,                              <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_218'>218</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_ix" id="Page_ix">[Pg ix]</a></span>LX. <span class="smcap">Mrs. Kidder's Cordial</span>,                              <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_220'>220</a></span><br />
+<br />
+LXI. <span class="smcap">Almost Raising the Dead</span>,                           <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_225'>225</a></span><br />
+<br />
+LXII. <span class="smcap">Female Health and Insane Hospitals</span>,               <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_231'>231</a></span><br />
+<br />
+LXIII. <span class="smcap">A Giant Dyspeptic</span>,                               <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_236'>236</a></span><br />
+<br />
+LXIV. <span class="smcap">Getting into a Circle</span>,                            <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_246'>246</a></span><br />
+<br />
+LXV. <span class="smcap">Poisoning with Maple Sugar</span>,                        <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_249'>249</a></span><br />
+<br />
+LXVI. <span class="smcap">Physicking off Measles</span>,                           <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_251'>251</a></span><br />
+<br />
+LXVII. <span class="smcap">Tic Douloureux</span>,                                  <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_253'>253</a></span><br />
+<br />
+LXVIII. <span class="smcap">Cold Water in Fever</span>,                            <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_256'>256</a></span><br />
+<br />
+LXIX. <span class="smcap">Cold-taking and Consumption</span>,                      <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_258'>258</a></span><br />
+<br />
+LXX. <span class="smcap">Freezing out Disease</span>,                              <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_261'>261</a></span><br />
+<br />
+LXXI. <span class="smcap">The Air Cure</span>,                                     <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_263'>263</a></span><br />
+<br />
+LXXII. <span class="smcap">The Clergyman</span>,                                   <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_266'>266</a></span><br />
+<br />
+LXXIII. <span class="smcap">He Must be Physicked or Die</span>,                    <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_268'>268</a></span><br />
+<br />
+LXXIV. <span class="smcap">Who hath Woe? or, the Sick Widow</span>,                <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_272'>272</a></span><br />
+<br />
+LXXV. <span class="smcap">The Penalty of Self-Indulgence</span>,                   <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_275'>275</a></span><br />
+<br />
+LXXVI. <span class="smcap">Dr. Bolus and Morphine</span>,                          <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_282'>282</a></span><br />
+<br />
+LXXVII. <span class="smcap">Bleeding and Blistering Omitted</span>,                <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_286'>286</a></span><br />
+<br />
+LXXVIII. <span class="smcap">Medical Virtues of Sleep</span>,                      <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_288'>288</a></span><br />
+<br />
+LXXIX. <span class="smcap">Cure by Deep Breathing</span>,                          <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_291'>291</a></span><br />
+<br />
+LXXX. <span class="smcap">Spirit Doctoring</span>,                                 <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_295'>295</a></span><br />
+<br />
+LXXXI. <span class="smcap">Remarkable Cure of Epilepsy</span>,                     <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_301'>301</a></span><br />
+<br />
+LXXXII. <span class="smcap">Scarlatina Cured by letting alone</span>,              <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_312'>312</a></span><br />
+<br />
+LXXXIII. <span class="smcap">Ignorance not always Bliss</span>,                    <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_314'>314</a></span><br />
+<br />
+LXXXIV. <span class="smcap">Measles without Snakeroot and Saffron</span>,          <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_317'>317</a></span><br />
+<br />
+LXXXV. <span class="smcap">The Consumptive Pair</span>,                            <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_320'>320</a></span><br />
+<br />
+LXXXVI. <span class="smcap">How to Cure Cholera</span>,                            <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_322'>322</a></span><br />
+<br />
+LXXXVII. <span class="smcap">Obstinacy and Suicide</span>,                         <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_324'>324</a></span><br />
+<br />
+LXXXVIII. <span class="smcap">Health Hospitals</span>,                             <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_327'>327</a></span><br />
+<br />
+LXXXIX. <span class="smcap">Destruction by Scrofula</span>,                        <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_329'>329</a></span><br />
+<br />
+XC. <span class="smcap">Starving out Disease</span>,                                <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_334'>334</a></span><br />
+<br />
+XCI. <span class="smcap">Dieting on Mince Pie</span>,                              <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_342'>342</a></span><br />
+<br />
+XCII. <span class="smcap">Giants in the Earth</span>,                              <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_346'>346</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_x" id="Page_x">[Pg x]</a></span>XCIII. <span class="smcap">The Green Mountain Patient</span>,                      <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_349'>349</a></span><br />
+<br />
+XCIV. <span class="smcap">Cure of Poison from Lead</span>,                         <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_355'>355</a></span><br />
+<br />
+XCV. <span class="smcap">Faith and Works</span>,                                   <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_358'>358</a></span><br />
+<br />
+XCVI. <span class="smcap">Works without Faith</span>,                              <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_360'>360</a></span><br />
+<br />
+XCVII. <span class="smcap">Diseases of Licentiousness</span>,                      <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_365'>365</a></span><br />
+<br />
+XCVIII. <span class="smcap">Curious and Instructive Facts</span>,                  <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_367'>367</a></span><br />
+<br />
+XCIX. <span class="smcap">Anti-Medical Testimony</span>,                           <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_371'>371</a></span><br />
+<br />
+C. <span class="smcap">An Anti-Medical Premium</span>,                             <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_375'>375</a></span><br />
+<br />
+CI. <span class="smcap">Concluding Remarks</span>,                                 <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_378'>378</a></span><br />
+<br />
+CII. <span class="smcap">A Last Chapter</span>,                                    <span class="tocnum"><a href='#Page_380'>380</a></span><br />
+</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p>
+<h2>FORTY YEARS IN THE WILDERNESS<br />
+
+OF<br />
+
+PILLS AND POWDERS.</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I"></a>CHAPTER I.</h2>
+
+<h3>EDUCATIONAL TENDENCIES.</h3>
+
+
+<p>I was born in a retired but pleasant part of New England, as New England
+was half a century ago, and as, in many places, despite of its canals,
+steamboats, railroads, and electromagnetic telegraphs, it still is.
+Hence I am entitled to the honor of being, in the most emphatic sense, a
+native of the land of "steady habits."</p>
+
+<p>The people with whom I passed my early years, though comparatively rude
+and uncultivated, were yet, in their manners and character, quite
+simple. Most of them could spell and read, and write their names, and a
+few could "cipher" as far as simple subtraction. To obtain the
+last-mentioned accomplishment, however, was not easy, for arithmetic was
+not generally permitted in the public schools during the six hours of
+the day; and could only be obtained in the occasional evening school, or
+by self-exertion at home.</p>
+
+<p>The majority of my townsmen also knew something of the dream-book and of
+palmistry, and of the influence of the moon (especially when first seen,
+after the change, over the right shoulder), not only on the weather and
+on vegetation, but on the world of humanity. They also understood full
+well, what troubles were betokened by the howling of a dog, the
+blossoming of a flower out of due season, or the beginning of a journey<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span>
+or of a job of work on Tuesday or Friday. Many of them knew how to tell
+fortunes in connection with a cup of tea. Nay, more, not a few of them
+were skilled in astrology, and by its aid could tell under what planet a
+person was born, and perchance, could predict thereby the future events
+of his life; at least after those events had actually taken place.</p>
+
+<p>Under what particular planet I was born, my friends never told me;
+though it is quite possible some of my sage grandmothers or aunts could
+have furnished the needful information had I sought it. They used to
+look often at the lines in the palms of my hands, and talk much about my
+dreams, which were certainly a little aspiring, and in many respects
+remarkable. The frequent prediction of one of these aged and wise
+friends I remember very well. It was, that I would eat my bread in two
+kingdoms. This prediction was grounded on the fact, that the hair on the
+top of my head was so arranged by the plastic hand of Nature as to form
+what were called two crowns; and was so far fulfilled, that I have
+occasionally eaten bread within the realms of Queen Victoria!</p>
+
+<p>According to the family register, kept in the cranium of my mother, I
+was born on Monday, which doubtless served to justify the frequent
+repetition of the old adage, and its application to my own case&mdash;"Born
+on Monday, fair of face." I was also born on the sixth day of the month,
+on account of which it was said that the sixth verse of the thirty-first
+chapter of Proverbs was, prospectively, a key to my character. It is
+certainly true that I have dealt out not a little "strong drink to him
+that" was "ready to perish;" and that few of my professional brethren
+have furnished a larger proportion of it gratuitously; or as Solomom
+says, have <i>given</i> it.</p>
+
+<p>Whether there was any clear or distinct prophecy ever uttered that I
+would one day be a knight of the lancet, clad in full armor, is not
+certain. If there was, I presume it was unwritten. That I was to be
+distinguished in some way, everybody appeared to understand and
+acknowledge. I was not only at the head of all my classes at school, in
+spelling, reading, and writing, but exalted above most of my competitors
+and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span> compeers by a whole head and shoulders. In ciphering, in
+particular, I excelled. I understood the grand rules of arithmetic, and
+could even work a little in the Rule of Three.</p>
+
+<p>That the thought of being a "doctor" did, in a sort of indefinable way,
+sometimes enter my head, even at that early period, I will not deny. One
+of my teachers, as I well remember, had medical books, into which bars
+and bolts could hardly prevent me from peeping. But there were a
+thousand lions in the way&mdash;or at least <i>two or three</i>. One was extreme
+indigence on the part of my parents. They came together nearly as poor
+as John Bunyan and his wife, or Sydney Smith and his companion. Or if,
+in addition to a knife, fork, and spoon, they had a looking-glass, an
+old iron kettle, an axe, and a hoe, I am sure the inventory of their
+property at first could not have extended much farther; and now that
+they had a family of four children, their wants had increased about as
+fast as their income.</p>
+
+<p>Besides, there was a confused belief in the public mind&mdash;and of course
+in mine&mdash;that medical men were a species of conjurors; or if nothing
+more, that they had a sort of mysterious knowledge of human character,
+obtained by dealing with the stars, or by reliance on some supernatural
+source or other. And to such a height as this I could not at that time
+presume to aspire; though I certainly did aspire, even at a very early
+period, to become a learned man.</p>
+
+<p>As a means to such an end, I early felt an ardent desire to become a
+printer. This desire originated, in part at least, from reading the
+autobiography of Dr. Franklin, of which I was exceedingly fond. It was a
+desire, moreover, which I was very slow to relinquish till compelled. My
+father, as we have seen, was a poor laborer, and thought himself unable
+either to give me any extra opportunities of education, or to spare me
+from the cultivation of a few paternal acres. Still, in secret, I I
+clung to the hope of one day traversing the lengths and breadths and
+depths and heights of the world of science.</p>
+
+<p>But for what purpose, as a final end? for, practically, the great
+question was, <i>cui bono</i>? As for becoming a lawyer, that, with me, was
+quite out of the question; for lawyers, even thus<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span> early, were generally
+regarded as bad men. All over the region of my nativity the word lawyer
+was nearly synonymous with liar; and to liars and lawyers the Devil was
+supposed to have a peculiar liking, not to say affinity. I had never at
+that time heard of but one honest lawyer; and him I regarded as a sort
+of <i>lusus natur&aelig;</i> much more than as an ordinary human being. My friends
+would have been shocked at the bare thought of my becoming a lawyer, had
+the road to that profession been open to my youthful aspirations.</p>
+
+<p>The clerical profession was in some respects looked upon more favorably
+than the legal or the medical. I was scarcely "three feet high" when an
+aged and venerable grandmother said one day, <i>in my hearing</i>, and
+probably <i>for</i> my hearing, "I always did hope one of my grandsons would
+be a minister." This, however, neither interested me much nor encouraged
+me; for (reader will you believe it?), as the doctor was regarded in
+those days as more than half a sorcerer, and the lawyer three-fourths
+devil, so the minister was deemed by many as almost half an idiot,
+except for his learning.</p>
+
+<p>I am not, by any means, trifling with you. It was the serious belief of
+many&mdash;I think I might say of most&mdash;that those boys who "took to
+learning" were by nature rather "weak in the attic," especially those
+who inclined to the ministry. It was a common joke concerning an idiot
+or half idiot, "send him to college."<a name="FNanchor_A_1" id="FNanchor_A_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_A_1" class="fnanchor">[A]</a></p>
+
+<p>In short, so strongly was this unfounded impression concerning the
+native imbecility of ministers, and in general of literary men, fastened
+on my mind as well as on the minds of most people, that I grew up nearly
+to manhood with a sort of confused belief that as a general rule they
+were below par in point of good, common sense. One prominent reason, as
+I supposed,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span> why they were sent to college and wrought into that
+particular shape, was to bring them up to an equality with their
+fellows. Hence, I not only repelled with a degree of indignation the
+thought of becoming a minister, but felt really demeaned by my natural
+fondness for books and school; and like the poet Cowper, hardly dared,
+all my early lifetime, to look higher than the shoe buckles of my
+associates. Still, I could not wholly suppress the strong desire to
+<i>know</i> which had penetrated and pervaded my soul, and which had been
+nurtured and fed not only by an intelligent mother but by a few books I
+had read. Perhaps the life of Franklin, already referred to, had as much
+influence with me as any thing of the kind. For along with the love of
+knowledge which was so much developed by this book, the love of doing
+good was introduced. The doctor says, somewhere, that he always set a
+high value on a doer of good; and it is possible, nay, I might even say
+probable, that this desire, which subsequently became a passion with me,
+had its origin in this very remark.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_A_1" id="Footnote_A_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_A_1"><span class="label">[A]</span></a> To illustrate this point, and show clearly the state of the
+public opinion, I will relate an anecdote. A certain calf in the
+neighborhood, after long and patient trial, was pronounced too ignorant
+to be able to procure his own nourishment, or in other words, was said
+to be a fool. On raising the question, what should be done with him, a
+shrewd colored man who stood by, said, "Master, send him to college!"</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></a>CHAPTER II.</h2>
+
+<h3>MY FIRST MEDICAL LESSON.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Straws, it is said, show which way the wind blows; and words, and things
+very small in themselves, sometimes show, much better than "two crowns,"
+or the "stars," what is to be the future of a person's life. The choice
+of a profession or occupation, were we but trained to the habit of
+tracing effects up to their causes, will doubtless often be found to
+have had its origin, if not in <i>straws</i>, at least in very small matters.</p>
+
+<p>When I was ten years of age, my little brother, of only two years, sat
+one day on the floor whittling an apple. The instrument in his hand was
+a Barlow knife, as it was then called. The blade was about two inches in
+length, but was worn very narrow. How his parents and other friends,
+several of whom were in the same room, came to let him use such a
+plaything, I cannot now conceive; but as the point was almost square,
+and the knife very dull, they do not seem hitherto to have had any
+fears.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly the usual quiet of the family was disturbed a little by the
+announcement, "Somebody is going by;" an event which, as you should
+know, was quite an era in that retired, mountainous region. All hastened
+to the window to get a view of the passing traveller. The little boy
+scampered among the rest; but in crossing the threshold of a door which
+intervened, he stumbled and fell. A sudden shriek called to him one of
+our friends, who immediately cried out, "Oh dear, he has put out his
+eye!" and made a hasty but unsuccessful effort to extract the knife,
+which had penetrated the full length of its blade. The mother hastened
+to the spot, and drew it forth, though, as she afterward said, not
+without the exertion of considerable force. Its back was towards the
+child, and by pressing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span> the ball of the eye downward, the instrument had
+been able to penetrate to the bottom of the cavity, and perhaps a little
+way into the bone beyond. The elasticity of the eyeball had retained it
+so as to render its extraction seemingly difficult.</p>
+
+<p>Most of those who were present, particularly myself and the rest of the
+children, were for a short time in a state of mental agony that bordered
+on insanity. Not knowing at first the nature of the wound, but only that
+there was an eye there, and brains very near it, we naturally expected
+nothing less than the loss of this precious organ of vision, if not of
+life. There was no practising physician or surgeon, just at that time,
+within five or six miles, and I do not remember that any was sent for.
+We probably concluded that he could do no good.</p>
+
+<p>The child's eye swelled, and for a few days looked very badly; but after
+the lapse of about two weeks the little fellow seemed to be quite well;
+and so far as his eyes and brain are concerned, I believe he has been
+well to this time, a period of almost half a century.</p>
+
+<p>Although we resided at a considerable distance from the village, and
+from any practising physician, there was near by a very aged and
+superannuated man, who had once been a medical practitioner. Our
+curiosity had been so much excited by the wonderful escape of the little
+boy from impending destruction, that we called on the venerable doctor
+and asked him whether it was possible for a knife to penetrate so far
+into the head without injuring the brain and producing some degree of
+inflammation. From Dr. C. we received a good deal of valuable
+information concerning the structure of the eye, the shape of the cavity
+in which it is placed, the structure and character of the brain, etc.</p>
+
+<p>This was a great treat to me, I assure you. It added not a little to the
+interest which was imparted by his instructions when he showed us, from
+the relics of better days, some of the bones of the skull, especially
+those of the frontal region, in which the eye is situated. Of course the
+sight of a death's head, as we were inclined to call it, was at first
+frightful to us; but it was a feeling which in part soon passed away. It
+was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span> a feeling, most certainly, which in me was not abiding at all.
+Indeed, as the title to the chapter would seem to imply, I received in
+this dispensation of Providence and its accompaniments my first medical
+lesson; though without the remotest thought, at the time, of any such
+thing. I was only indulging in a curiosity which was instinctive and
+intense, without dreaming of future consequences.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></a>CHAPTER III.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE ELECTRICAL MACHINE.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Two years after this, an aged man, a distant relation, came to reside in
+my father's family for a short time, and brought with him a small
+electrical machine. He was a person of some intelligence, had travelled
+much, and had been an officer in the army of the American Revolution. On
+the whole, he was just such a man as would be likely to become a
+favorite with children. He was, moreover, fully imbued with the
+expectation of being able to cure diseases by means of electricity;
+which in our neighborhood, at the least, was quite a novel, not to say a
+heterodox idea.</p>
+
+<p>Curiosity alone had no small share of influence in bringing my mind to
+the study of electricity; but a general desire to understand the subject
+was greatly strengthened by the hope of being able to apply this
+wonderful agent in the cure of disease. One of the most interesting
+phases of Christianity is that the love and practice of healing the
+bodily maladies of mankind are almost always seen in the foreground of
+the New Testament representations of our Saviour's doings; and it is no
+wonder that a youth who reverences his Bible, and has a little
+benevolence, should entertain feelings like those above mentioned.</p>
+
+<p>The owner of the machine had brought with him a book on the subject of
+curing by electricity. It was a volume of several hundred pages, and was
+written by T. Gale, of Northern New York. It had in it much that was
+mere theory, in a highly bombastic style; but it also professed to give
+with accuracy the details of many remarkable cures, in various forms and
+stages, of several difficult diseases; and some of these details I knew
+to be realities. One or two cases at or near Ballston<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span> Springs were
+those of persons of whom I had some knowledge; and one of them was a
+relative. This last circumstance, no doubt, had great influence on my
+mind.</p>
+
+<p>As I had in those days some leisure for reading, and possessed very few
+books, I read&mdash;and not only read but studied&mdash;Dr. Gale's work from
+beginning to end. It is scarcely too much to say, that I read it till I
+knew it almost "by heart;" and my heart assented to it. I believed a new
+dispensation was at hand to bless the world of mankind; and what
+benevolence I had, began to be directed in this particular channel. I do
+not mean to say, that at twelve years of age I began to be a physician,
+for I do not now recollect that either our aged friend or myself ever
+had a patient during the whole year he remained with us.</p>
+
+<p>Eight or ten subsequent years at the plough and hoe, and the absence of
+book, electrical machine, and owner, did much towards obliterating the
+impressions on this subject I had received. Still, I have no doubt that
+the affair as a whole had a tendency to lead my thoughts towards the
+study and practice of medicine, and even to inspire confidence in
+electricity as a curative agent. In other and fewer words, it was, as I
+believe, a part of my medical education.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE MEASLES AND POURING DOWN RUM.</h3>
+
+
+<p>When I was about fourteen years of age, an event occurred which left a
+stronger impression on my mind than any of the foregoing; and hence in
+all probability did more to give my mind a medical bias and tendency.</p>
+
+<p>It was in the month of August. My father, assisted by two or three of
+his neighbors, was mowing a swamp meadow. It was an unusually wet
+season, and the water in many places was several inches deep,&mdash;in some
+few instances so deep that we were obliged to go continually with wet
+feet. To meet, and as it was by most people supposed to remove the
+danger of contracting disease, a bottle of rum was occasionally resorted
+to by the mowers, and offered to me; but at first I steadfastly refused
+it.</p>
+
+<p>At length, however, I began to droop. A feverish feeling and great
+languor came over me, and I was hardly able to walk. I was not then
+aware, nor were my friends, that I had been exposed to the contagion of
+measles, and therefore was not expecting it. I spoke of my ill health,
+but was consoled with the answer that I should soon get over it. But no;
+I grew worse, very fast. "Turn down the rum," said one of the mowers,
+"if you mean to work." But I hesitated. I was not fond of rum at any
+time, and just now I felt a stronger disinclination to it than ever
+before. "Turn down the rum," was repeated by the mowers, from time to
+time, with increased emphasis.</p>
+
+<p>At length wearied with their importunity; and, not over-willing to be
+the butt of their mirth and ridicule, I went to the spring, where the
+bottle of rum was kept, and, unperceived by any one, emptied a large
+portion of its contents on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span> the ground. The mental agitation of
+temporary excitement dispelled in part my sufferings, and I proceeded
+once more to my work.</p>
+
+<p>In a very short time my noisy alcoholic prescribers went to the spring
+to pour rum down their <i>own</i> throats. "What," said they, with much
+surprise, "has become of the rum?" "Have you drank it?" said they,
+turning to me. "Not a drop of it," I said. "But it is almost all gone,"
+they said; "and it is a great mystery what has become of it." "The
+mystery is easily cleared up," I said; "you told me to turn it down, and
+I have done so."&mdash;"Told you to turn it down!" said one of them, the most
+noisy one; "I told you to drink it."&mdash;"No," said I, "you told me to turn
+it down; and I have poured it down&mdash;my part of it&mdash;at the foot of the
+stump. If you have forgotten your direction to turn it down, I appeal to
+two competent witnesses."</p>
+
+<p>The joke passed off much better than I expected. For myself, however, I
+grew worse rapidly, and was soon sent home. My mother put me into bed,
+applied a bottle of hot water to my feet, and gave me hot drinks most
+liberally, and among the rest some "hot toddy." Her object was to sweat
+away a supposed attack of fever. Had she known it was measles that
+assailed me, or had she even suspected it, she would almost as soon have
+cut off her right hand as apply the sweating process. She would, on the
+contrary, have given me cooling drinks and pure air. She was not wholly
+divested of good sense on this point, neither was the prevailing public
+opinion.</p>
+
+<p>I suffered much, very much, and was for a part of the time delirious. At
+length an eruption began to be visible, and to assume the appearance
+which is usual in measles, both to my own relief and that of my parents
+and other friends. But the mistaken treatment, or the disease, or both,
+gave a shock to my already somewhat delicate constitution, from which I
+doubt whether I ever fully recovered. The sequel, however, will appear
+more fully in the next chapter.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V"></a>CHAPTER V.</h2>
+
+<h3>LEE'S PILLS, AND THE DROPSY.</h3>
+
+
+<p>In consequence either of the disease or its mismanagement, I was left,
+on recovering from the measles, with a general dropsy. I might also say
+here, that at the recurrence of the same season, for many years
+afterwards, I was attacked with a complaint so nearly resembling measles
+that some who were strangers to me could hardly be diverted from the
+belief that it was the veritable disease itself.</p>
+
+<p>But to the dropsy. This disease, so unusual in young people, especially
+those of my sanguine and nervous temperament, alarmed both my parents
+and myself, and medical advice was forthwith invoked. Our family
+physician was an old man, bred in the full belief of the necessity in
+such cases of what are called "alteratives," which, in plain English,
+means substances so active as to produce, when applied to the body
+either externally or internally, certain sudden changes. Alteratives, in
+short, are either irritants or poisons.</p>
+
+<p>Our aged doctor was called in to see me; and after the usual
+compliments, and perhaps a passing joke or two,&mdash;for both of which he
+was quite famous,&mdash;he asked me to let him see my tongue. Next, he felt
+my pulse. All the while&mdash;a matter exceedingly important to success&mdash;he
+looked "wondrous wise." He also asked me sundry wondrous wise questions.
+They were at least couched in wondrous words of monstrous length.</p>
+
+<p>The examination fairly over, there followed a pause; not, indeed, an
+"awful pause," but one of a few seconds, or perhaps in all of half a
+minute. "Now," said he, "you must take one of Lee's pills every day, in
+roasted apple." There were other directions, but this was the principal,
+except to avoid taking cold. The pills, of course, contained a
+proportion of mercury<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span> or calomel, on the alterative effects of which,
+as I plainly perceived, he placed his chief dependence.</p>
+
+<p>I took the pills, daily, for about six weeks; but they produced very
+little apparent effect, except to spoil my appetite. What their remoter
+effects were on my constitution generally, is quite another question.
+Suffice it to say, for the present, that for his occasional calls and
+wondrous wise looks, and his Lee's pills, he made quite a considerable
+bill. We were, it is true, always glad to see him, for he was pretty
+sure to crack a joke or two during his stay, and he sometimes told a
+good story. Nor, after all, were his charges remarkably high. For coming
+two or three miles to see me, he only made a charge of fifty cents a
+visit.</p>
+
+<p>It was near the beginning of October, and I was "getting no better very
+fast." A young physician had in the mean time come into the place, and
+my friends were anxious to call him in as "counsel." He proposed
+digitalis, and the family physician consented to it. But it was all to
+no purpose; I was still a bloated mass, and extremely enfeebled.</p>
+
+<p>At length, after some two or three months of ill health and loss of
+time, and the expenditure of considerable money on physicians and
+medicine, our good family doctor proposed a tea made from certain sweet
+roots, such as fennel, parsley, etc. Of this I was to drink very freely.
+I followed his advice, and in a few days the dropsy disappeared. Whether
+it was ready to depart just at this precise time, or whether the tea
+hastened its departure, I never knew. In any event, one thing is
+certain; that, either with its aid or in spite of it, I got rid of the
+dropsy; and it nevermore returned.</p>
+
+<p>But it is one thing to get rid of an inveterate disease, and quite
+another to be restored to our wonted measure of health and strength. The
+disease or the medicine or both had greatly debilitated me. I tried to
+attend school, but was unable till January or February; nor even then
+was I at all vigorous. I was able in the spring to work moderately; but
+it was almost a whole year before I occupied the same ground,
+physically, as before. Indeed, I have very many doubts whether I ever
+attained<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span> to the measure of strength to which I might have attained had
+it not been for the expenditure of vital power in a long contest with
+Lee's pills and disease.</p>
+
+<p>One lesson I learned, during my long sickness, in moral philosophy. I
+allude to the power of associated habits. Thus I was accustomed to take
+my pills daily for a long time, in combination with the pulp of a
+certain favorite apple. By degrees this apple, before so congenial to my
+taste, became so exceedingly disgusting to me that I could hardly come
+in sight of it, or even of the tree on which it grew, without nausea;
+and this dislike continued for years. By the aid of a strong will,
+however, I at length overcame it, and the apple is now as agreeable to
+my taste, for any thing I know, as it ever was.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI"></a>CHAPTER VI.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE COLD SHOWER-BATH.</h3>
+
+
+<p>My long experience of ill health, and of dosing and drugging, had led me
+to reflect not a little on the causes of disease, as well as on the
+nature of medicinal agents; and I had really made considerable progress,
+unawares, in what I now regard as the most important part of a medical
+education. In short, I had gained something, even by the loss of so
+precious commodity as health. So just is the oft-repeated saying, "It is
+an ill wind that blows nobody any good."</p>
+
+<p>It was about this time that I began to reflect on bathing. What gave me
+the first particular impulses in this direction I do not now recollect,
+unless it was the perusal of the writings of Dr. Benjamin Rush and Dr.
+John G. Coffin. My attention had been particularly turned to cold shower
+bathing. I had become more than half convinced of its happy adaptation
+to my own constitution and to my diseased tendencies, both hereditary
+and acquired.</p>
+
+<p>But what could I do? There were in those times no fleeting shower-baths
+to be had; nor indeed, so far as I knew, any other apparatus for the
+purpose; and had there been, I was not worth a dollar in the world to
+buy it with; and I was hardly willing to ask for money, for such
+purposes of my father.</p>
+
+<p>I will tell you, very briefly, what I did. My father had several clean
+and at that time unoccupied stables, one of which was as retired as the
+most fastidious person could have wished. In one of these stables,
+directly overhead, I contrived to suspend by its two handles a corn
+basket, in such a way that I could turn it over upon its side and retain
+it in this position as long as I pleased. Into this basket, when
+suspended sideways, and slightly fastened, I was accustomed to set a
+basin or pail<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span> of water; and when I was ready for its reception, I had
+but to pull a string and overturn the basket in order to obtain all the
+benefits of a cold and plentiful shower.</p>
+
+<p>Here, daily, for almost a whole summer, I used my cold shower-bath, and,
+as I then thought and still believe, with great advantage. My
+consumptive tendencies were held at bay during the time very
+effectually. I was fortunate, indeed, in being able always, with the aid
+of a coarse towel and a little friction, to secure a pretty full
+reaction.</p>
+
+<p>This season of cold bathing was when I was about sixteen years of age. I
+shall ever look back to it as one of the most important, not to say most
+interesting, of my <i>experiences</i>. Indeed, I do not know that in any six
+months of my life I ever gained so much physical capital&mdash;thus to call
+it; by which I mean bodily vigor&mdash;as during these six months of the year
+1814.</p>
+
+<p>I may also add here, that it has been my lot all my life long to learn
+quite as much from experiment and observation as in any other way. The
+foregoing experience gave me much knowledge of the laws of hygiene.
+Sometimes, while reflecting on this subject, I have thought of the
+assurance of the Apostle John, that he who "doeth truth cometh to the
+light," and have wondered whether the good apostle, along with this
+highly important truth, did not mean to intimate that the natural
+tendency of holy living was to an increase of light and love and
+holiness. And then I have gone a step further, and asked myself whether
+it was not possible that the doing of <i>physical</i> truth as well as
+<i>moral</i>, had the same tendency.</p>
+
+<p>I have alluded to experience, or experiment. It is sometimes said that
+medical men are very much inclined to make experiments on their
+patients. Now, although I have a few sad confessions of this sort to
+make hereafter, yet I can truly say, in advance, that while I have made
+comparatively few experiments on other people, I have probably, during
+the progress of a long life, made more experiments on myself, both in
+sickness and in health, than any other existing individual. Whether I
+have learned as much in this way as I ought, in such favored
+circumstances, is quite another question.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII"></a>CHAPTER VII.</h2>
+
+<h3>MY FIRST SICKNESS ABROAD.</h3>
+
+
+<p>When I was about half-way through my nineteenth year, a desire to see
+the world became so strong that I made up my mind to a little
+travelling. Accordingly, having provided myself with an employment which
+would, without a great deal of hindrance, enable me to earn my passing
+expenses, I set out on my journey.</p>
+
+<p>It was in the month of March, and near its close. The weather was mild,
+and the snow was fast disappearing&mdash;but not as yet the mud. In walking
+all day, my boots became soaked and my feet wet. The era of India
+rubbers had not then arrived. In truth, I went with my feet wet in the
+afternoon two or three days.</p>
+
+<p>On the evening of the third day I came to the house of the friends with
+whom I was desirous of stopping not only for the Sabbath's sake, which
+was now at hand, but to rest and recruit. The next morning I was quite
+sick, and my friends were alarmed. It was proposed to send for a
+physician; but against this I uttered my protest, and the plan was
+accordingly abandoned.</p>
+
+<p>The next purpose of my kind friends was to bring on a perspiration. They
+were accustomed in these cases to aim at sweating. This is indeed a
+violence to nature; but they knew no better. The mistress of the house
+was one of those self-assured women who cannot brook any interference or
+submit willingly to any modification of their favorite plans. Otherwise
+I should even then have preferred a gentle perspiration, longer
+continued. Yet on the whole, for the sake of peace, I submitted to my
+fate, and went through the fiery furnace which was prepared for me. More
+than even this I might say. I was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span> cooler, much cooler, when I got
+through the fire than when I was in the midst of it!</p>
+
+<p>In three days I was, in a good measure, restored. I was, it is true,
+left very weak, but was free from fever. My strength rapidly returned;
+and on the fifth day I was able to set out for home, where in due time I
+safely arrived.</p>
+
+<p>During this excursion I learned one good lesson, if no more. This was,
+the danger of going day after day with wet feet. A vigorous person may
+go with wet or damp feet a little while, in the early part of the day,
+when in full strength, with comparative safety; but towards evening,
+when the vital forces are at ebb tide, or at least are ebbing, it is
+unsafe. The feeble especially should guard themselves in this direction;
+nor should those who may perchance at some future time be feeble,
+despise the suggestion.</p>
+
+<p>One important resolution was also made. This was never to use violent
+efforts to induce perspiration. Such a course of treatment I saw
+clearly, as I thought, must be contrary to the intentions of nature; and
+time and further observation and experiment have confirmed me in this
+opinion. There may of course be exceptions to the truth of such a
+general inference; but I am sure they cannot be very numerous. What
+though the forcing plan seems to have succeeded quite happily in my own
+case? So it has in thousands of others. So might a treatment still more
+irrational. Mankind are tough, and will frequently live on for a
+considerable time in spite of treatment which is manifestly wrong, and
+even without any treatment at all.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII"></a>CHAPTER VIII.</h2>
+
+<h3>LESSON FROM AN OLD SURGEON.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Five or six miles from the place of my nativity a family resided whom I
+shall call by the name of Port. Among the ancestry of this family, time
+out of mind, there had been more, or fewer of what are usually called
+natural bone setters. They were known far and near; and no effort short
+of miraculous would have been sufficient to shake the confidence which
+ignorance and credulity had reposed in them.</p>
+
+<p>One or two of these natural bone setters were now in the middle stage of
+life, and in the full zenith of their glory. The name of the most
+prominent was Joseph. He was a man of some acquired as well as inherited
+knowledge; but he was indolent, coarse, vulgar, and at times profane.
+Had it not been for his family rank and his own skill as a surgeon, of
+which he really had a tolerable share, he would have been no more than
+at best a common man, and occasionally would have passed for little more
+than a common blackguard.</p>
+
+<p>I was in a shop one day conversing with Capt. R., when Dr. Port came in.
+"Capt. R., how are you?" was the first compliment. "Very well," said the
+captain, "except a lame foot." "I see you have one foot wrapped up,"
+said Dr. Port; "what is the matter with it?"&mdash;"I cut it with an axe, the
+other day," said he, "very badly."&mdash;"On the upper part of the foot?"
+said the doctor. "Yes, directly on the instep," said Capt. R. "Is it
+doing well?"&mdash;"Not very well," he replied; "and I came into town to-day
+partly to see and converse with you about it."&mdash;"Well, then, undo it and
+let me have a look at it."</p>
+
+<p>Wrapper after wrapper was now taken from the lame foot, till Dr. Port
+began to scowl. "You keep it too warm," said<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span> he. "A wound of this sort
+should be kept cool, if you don't wish to have it inflame. A slight
+wrapping is all that is needful." They came at length to the wound. "It
+does not look very badly," said Dr. Port; "but you must keep it cool.
+And then," added he with an oath, the very thought of which to this day
+almost makes me shudder, "You must keep your nasty, abominable ointments
+away from it. Remember one thing, Capt. R., whenever you have a new
+flesh wound, all you can possibly do with any hope of advantage is to
+bring the divided edges of the parts together and keep them there, and
+nature will take care of the rest."</p>
+
+<p>"Would you, then, do nothing at all but bind it up and keep it still?"
+said Capt. R. "Nothing at all," said he, "unless it should inflame; and
+then a little water applied to it is as good as any thing."&mdash;"But is
+there nothing of a healing nature I can use?" said the captain. "I have
+told you already," said he, with another strange oath, "that you don't
+want any thing healing on the outside, if you had a cart-load of
+medicaments. All wounds, when they heal at all, heal from the bottom;
+and of course all your external applications are useless, except so far
+as is necessary to protect the parts from fresh injury and keep them
+from the air."</p>
+
+<p>The crowd around looked as if they were amazed; but it was Dr. Port who
+said it, and therefore it must be swallowed. I was somewhat surprised
+with the rest. And I have not a doubt that what he said was to most of
+them an invaluable lecture. For myself, as a student of <i>man</i>, it was
+just what I needed. It set me to thinking. It was a lesson which I could
+never forget if I were to live a thousand years.</p>
+
+<p>It was a lesson, moreover, which I have repeated almost a thousand
+times, in circumstances not dissimilar. Indeed, I believe this very
+occurrence did much to turn my attention to the medical profession. I
+saw at once it was a rational thing; a matter of plain common sense; a
+thing of principle; and not on the one hand a bundle of mysteries, nor
+on the other a mere humbug.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Port long ago paid the debt of nature; but not till he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span> had made his
+mark on the age he lived in. If, indeed, he died as the fool dieth,&mdash;and
+thus it was said he <i>did</i> die,&mdash;he was at least a means of teaching
+others to live right. He did great good by his frequent wise precepts,
+as well as not a little harm by his sometimes immoral example. For
+myself, I honor him because he was my teacher on a point of great
+practical importance, and because he was to thousands of over-credulous
+people a light and a benefactor.</p>
+
+<p>Although I had not at this time any very serious thoughts of becoming a
+physician and surgeon, yet I certainly inclined in that direction. My
+great poverty was the chief difficulty that lay in my way; but this
+difficulty at that time seemed insurmountable. Besides, I was wedded to
+my father's farm, and I did not see how the banns could very well be
+sundered.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IX" id="CHAPTER_IX"></a>CHAPTER IX.</h2>
+
+<h3>LEE'S WINDHAM BILIOUS PILLS.</h3>
+
+
+<p>I was, at length, twenty-two years of age. I had about fifty dollars in
+my pocket, besides a few books. But what would this do towards giving me
+a liberal education? And yet, to an education in the schools, of some
+sort, either as a means to a profession, or as affording facilities for
+obtaining knowledge or communicating it to others, I certainly did
+aspire. But I seemed compelled for the present to plod on in the old
+way.</p>
+
+<p>There had been, but recently, a gold fever&mdash;not, it is true, of
+California, but of Carolina. The young men of the North, shrewd,
+intelligent, active, and ambitious Yankees, had flocked by hundreds, if
+not by thousands, from New England to the Southern States, to sell tin
+ware and clocks, especially the former. The trade at first had been very
+lucrative. Though many had been made poor by it, yet many more had been
+made rich. I do not say how honorably the trade had been conducted. To
+sell tin lanterns, worth fifty cents each, for silver, at fifty dollars,
+and tin toddy sticks, worth a New York shilling, for twelve dollars, did
+not in the final result redound much to our New England credit. Though
+it brought us gold, it did not permanently enrich us.</p>
+
+<p>A much better trade had now, in 1820, sprung up with the South. The
+North&mdash;the great nursery of America&mdash;had still a surplus of young men
+who wanted to go somewhere. A part of them found their way to Carolina
+and Georgia, and engaged during the winter, and occasionally through the
+year, in teaching; while another part labored on their canals and
+railroads and in their shops. This was to furnish the South with a
+commodity of real value, for which we received in return a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span> fair
+compensation. Besides, it had a better effect than clock and tin
+peddling, both on the seller and buyer.</p>
+
+<p>To improve my pecuniary condition, and to acquaint myself with the
+world, I prepared to embark for the South. My purpose was to teach. It
+was the beginning of October, and yellow fever was said to be raging in
+Charleston, where I purposed to disembark. Was it, then, safe for me to
+go? Should the prospect of doing good, improving my mind, and bettering
+my condition in many other respects, weigh against the danger of
+disease; or was it preferable that I should wait?</p>
+
+<p>My numerous friends counselled me according to their various
+temperaments and prepossessions. The strong and vigorous in body and
+mind said, <i>Go on</i>; the feeble and timorous and trembling interposed
+their caution. But the vessel was ready and would soon sail; and I saw
+on board many of my acquaintances. The temptation was before me, and was
+great; the dangers, though many, were remote&mdash;the dangers of the sea
+excepted. For these, it is true, I was, like everybody else, entirely
+unprepared, having never before in my life crossed more than a single
+river. I was moreover exceedingly timid.</p>
+
+<p>One kind friend&mdash;kind, I mean, in general intention&mdash;who had been many
+years at the South, amid the ravages of the gold fever, as well as other
+fevers more or less yellow, whispered me just at this critical moment,
+"Take with you a box of Lee's Windham Bilious Pills; and as soon as you
+arrive at Charleston, make it your rule to swallow, every other day, one
+of these pills. That will prevent your getting the fever. I have often
+tried it, and always with success."</p>
+
+<p>My friend's words gave me more courage than his pills. I saw that he had
+been in the midst of sickness and had lived through it. Why might not I?
+My mind was soon made up to proceed on the journey.</p>
+
+<p>We sailed from New Haven in Connecticut, and were seventeen days on our
+passage. When we reached Charleston, either the yellow fever had spent
+itself or it had not recently been there, except in a few rare
+instances. I found no use for pills of any kind, except <i>such as grew on
+fruit-trees</i>&mdash;the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span> apple, peach, orange, persimmon, etc., or such as
+were the products of the corn, potato, and rice fields; nor did I ever
+take any other while I remained in the South. A queer idea, I often said
+to myself, that of taking poison while a person is well, in order to
+prevent becoming sick! In any event, I did not do it.</p>
+
+<p>There was sickness in the country, however, if not in the city; and I
+was much and often exposed to it. But what then? How would one of Lee's
+pills defend me from it, even for two days? I preferred to eat and drink
+and sleep correctly, and then trust to my good fortune and to Him who
+controlled it, rather than to nauseous and poisonous medicine. And I had
+my choice, and with it a blessed reward. I was in the low country of
+North and South Carolina and Virginia six months or more, and often and
+again much exposed to disease, and yet I never had a sick day while I
+remained there. And yet, as I have before intimated, I never took a
+particle of medicine during the whole time.</p>
+
+<p>Once, indeed, I was beguiled into the foolish habit of using French
+brandy with my dinner, under the idea that it would promote digestion.
+But I did not continue it long; and I verily believe that it did me more
+harm than good while I used it; for I have at no other period of my life
+suffered so much from dyspeptic tendencies as during the summer which
+followed this temporary indulgence of brandy with my dinner.</p>
+
+<p>During my wanderings in the South, I had, much of the time, a fellow
+traveller, who, though he took no medicine, was less cautious than
+myself, and less fortunate. Perhaps his very recklessness served as a
+warning to me. In truth, without being much of a theologian, I have
+sometimes thought that the errors of mankind were intended in the divine
+plan&mdash;at least in part&mdash;for this very end. Happy, then, if this is so,
+are they who make a wise use of them!</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_X" id="CHAPTER_X"></a>CHAPTER X.</h2>
+
+<h3>DR. SOLOMON AND HIS PATIENT.</h3>
+
+
+<p>I have said that my fellow traveller was less cautious than myself, and
+have intimated much more. He was in some respects cautious, and yet in
+others absolutely reckless. When hot and thirsty, for example, instead
+of just rinsing out his mouth and swallowing a very little water, he
+would half-fill his stomach with some of that semi-putrid stuff, ycleped
+water, which you often find in Virginia and the Carolinas; and when
+hungry, he would eat almost any thing he could lay hold of, and in
+almost any quantity, as well as at almost any hours, whether seasonable
+or unseasonable.</p>
+
+<p>This course of conduct seemed to answer very well for a few months; but
+a day of retribution at last came. He was then in Norfolk, in Virginia.
+I had been absent from the place a few weeks, and on my return found him
+sick with a fever, and without such assistance as was absolutely and
+indispensably necessary. There were Yankees in the place in great
+numbers, and some of them were his personal acquaintances and friends;
+but they had hitherto refused to come near him, lest they should take
+the fever.</p>
+
+<p>I proceeded to take care of him by night and by day. At the suggestion
+of an old citizen, in whom I placed great confidence, Dr. Solomon was
+called in as his physician. There was some bleeding and drugging, and a
+pretty constant attendance for many weeks; but the young man finally
+recovered.</p>
+
+<p>If you ask what this chapter has to do with my medical confessions, I
+will tell you. Dr. Solomon was an old school physician, and made certain
+blunders, which I am about to confess for him. He prescribed&mdash;as very
+many of us his medical<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span> brethren formerly did, for the <i>name</i> of a
+disease rather than for the disease itself, just as it now appeared.</p>
+
+<p>Thus, suppose the disease was typhus fever; in that case he seemed to
+give just about so many pills and powders every day, without much regard
+to the circumstances; believing that somehow or other, and at some time
+or other, good would come out of it. If his patient had sufficient force
+of constitution to enable him to withstand both the disease and the
+medicine, and ultimately to recover, Dr. S. had the credit of a cure;
+not, perhaps that he claimed it,&mdash;his friends awarded the honor. If the
+patient died, it was on account of the severity of the disease. Neither
+the doctor nor his medicine was supposed to be at fault. Some, indeed,
+regarded it as the mysterious work of Divine Providence.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. S. attended my young companion in pedestrianism a long time, and
+sometimes brought a student into the bargain. He probably kept his
+patient insane with his medicine about half the time, and greatly
+prolonged his disease and his sufferings. But he knew no better way. He
+was trained to all this. The idea that half a dozen careful visits,
+instead of fifty formal ones, and a few shillings' worth of medicine
+instead of some twenty or thirty dollars' worth, would give the young
+man a better prospect of recovery than his own routine of fashionable
+book-dosing and drugging, never for once, I dare say, entered his head.
+And yet his head was large enough to hold such a simple idea, had it
+been put there very early; and the deposit would have done much to make
+him&mdash;what physicians will one day become&mdash;a rich blessing to the world.</p>
+
+<p>Reader, are here no confessions of medical importance? If not, bear with
+me awhile, and you will probably find them. We have yet a long road to
+travel, and there are many confessions to be made in which I have a
+personal concern and responsibility, and, as you may perhaps conclude,
+no small share of downright culpability.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XI" id="CHAPTER_XI"></a>CHAPTER XI.</h2>
+
+<h3>PHYSICKING OFF FEVER.</h3>
+
+
+<p>The eyes of my mind having just begun to be opened to the impotence of a
+mere routine of medication as a <i>substitute for nature</i>, rather than <i>as
+an aid to her enfeebled efforts</i>, I was prepared to make a wise use of
+other facts that came before me, especially those in which I had a
+personal concern and interest. Here is one of this description.</p>
+
+<p>On the morning of March 12, 1821, during the very period when I was
+watching over my sick friend, as mentioned in the preceding chapter, I
+took from the post-office a letter with a black seal. It contained the
+distressing intelligence of the death of a much-valued sister and her
+husband, both of whom, but a few months before, I had left in apparently
+perfect health.</p>
+
+<p>On a careful inquiry into the particulars, both by letter and, after my
+return, in other ways, I learned that the Connecticut River fever, as it
+was then and there called, having carried off several persons who were
+residing in the same house with my brother, the survivors were advised
+to do something to prevent the germination and development of such seeds
+of the disease as were supposed to be in their bodies and ready to burst
+forth into action. I do not know that any medical man encouraged this
+notion, the offspring of ignorance and superstition; but my brother and
+his wife had somehow or other imbibed it, and they governed themselves
+accordingly.</p>
+
+<p>Both of them took medicine&mdash;moderate cathartics&mdash;till they thought they
+had physicked off the disease; and all seemed, for a time, to be well,
+except that they complained still of great weakness and debility. It was
+not long, however, before they<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span> were both taken with the disease and
+perished; my brother in a very short time, and my sister more slowly.</p>
+
+<p>My sister, on being taken ill, had been removed to the house of her
+mother, in the hope that a change of air might do something for her; but
+all in vain. My mother and a few other friends who were with them as
+assistants sickened, but they all ultimately recovered. They, however,
+took no medicine by way of prevention.</p>
+
+<p>Now I do not presume to say, that my young friends were destroyed solely
+by medicine, for the assertion would be unwarranted. I only state the
+facts, and tell you what my convictions then were, and what they are
+still. My belief is, that though they might have sickened had they taken
+no medicine or preventive, yet their chance of recovery after they
+sickened was very much diminished by the unnecessary and uncalled-for
+dosing and drugging.</p>
+
+<p>The notion that we can physick off the seeds of disease, or by our
+dosing prevent their germination, is as erroneous as can possibly be,
+and is a prolific source of much suffering and frequent death. The best
+preventive of disease is good health. Now, physicking off generally
+weakens us, instead of giving strength. It takes away from our good
+health instead of adding to or increasing it. As a general rule, to
+which there are very few exceptions, all medicine, when disease is
+unusually common or fatal, is hazardous without sound medical advice,
+and not generally safe even then. It is fit only for extreme cases.</p>
+
+<p>You may be at a loss to understand how such facts and reflections as
+these could allure me to the study and practice of medicine as a
+profession. Yet they most certainly had influence. Not that I felt a
+very strong desire to deal out medicine, for to this I felt a repugnance
+which strengthened with increase of years and experience. What I most
+ardently desired was to know the causes of disease, and how far they
+were or were not within human control. Such a science as that of
+<i>hygiene</i>&mdash;nay, even the word itself, and the phrase <i>laws of
+health</i>&mdash;was at that time wholly unknown in the world in which I moved.
+There was, in truth, no way then to this species of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span> knowledge, except
+through the avenues opened by a course of medical study. Hence it was
+that I blundered on, in partial though not entire ignorance, for some
+time longer, groping and searching for that light which I hardly knew
+how or whence to seek, except in pills and powders and blisters and
+tinctures.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XII" id="CHAPTER_XII"></a>CHAPTER XII.</h2>
+
+<h3>MANUFACTURING CHILBLAINS.</h3>
+
+
+<p>At the period of my life to which we have at length arrived, I was for
+four or five months of every year a school teacher. This was, in no
+trifling degree, an educational process; for is it not well known that,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Teaching we learn, and giving we retain?"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>It was at least an education in the great school of human nature.</p>
+
+<p>Every morning of one of these winter sessions of school keeping, Lydia
+Maynard, eight years of age, after walking about a mile, frequently in
+deep snow, and combating the cold northwest winds of one of the southern
+Green Mountain ranges, would come into the schoolroom with her feet
+almost frozen, and take her seat close to the stove, so as to warm them
+and be ready for school as quickly as possible. Here she would sit, if
+permitted to do so, till the bell rang for school.</p>
+
+<p>It was not long before I learned that she was a great sufferer from
+chilblains. Whether she inherited a tendency to this troublesome and
+painful disease, which was awakened and aggravated by sudden changes of
+temperature, or whether the latter were the original cause of the
+disease, I never knew with certainty. But I was struck with the fact
+that sudden warming was followed by such lasting and terrible
+consequences.</p>
+
+<p>And herein is one reason why I have opposed, from that day to this, the
+custom or habit, so exceedingly prevalent, of rushing to the fire when
+we are very cold, and warming ourselves as quickly as possible. I have
+reasoned; I have commanded; and in some few instances I have ridiculed.
+Every one knows<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span> it is hazardous to bring the ears or fingers or toes,
+or any other parts of the body, suddenly to the fire when really
+frozen,&mdash;that is, when the temperature is lowered down in the part to
+32&deg;; and yet, if it is only down to 33&deg;, and the part not quite frozen,
+almost every one, young and old, will venture to the fire. Can there be
+such a difference in the effects when there is only a difference of one
+degree in temperature? No reflecting person will for one moment believe
+it. The trouble is we do not think about it.</p>
+
+<p>Sudden changes from heat to cold are little more favorable than when the
+change is in the other direction. Indeed, it often happens that children
+at school are subjected to both these causes. Thus, in the case of
+Lydia, suppose that after roasting herself a long time at the stove, she
+had gone to her seat and placed her feet directly over crevices in the
+floor, through which the cold wind found its way at almost freezing
+temperature. Would not this have greatly added to the severity of the
+disease?</p>
+
+<p>There are, it is true, other reasons against sudden changes of
+temperature, particularly the change from cold to heat, besides the fact
+that they tend to produce chilblains; but I cannot do more just now than
+barely advert to them. The eyes are apt to be injured; it renders us
+more liable than otherwise we should be to take cold. Occasionally it
+brings on faintness and convulsions, and still more rarely, sudden
+death. I will only add now, that sudden warming after suffering from
+extreme cold, whether we perceive it or not at the time, is very apt to
+produce deep and lasting injury to the brain and nervous system.</p>
+
+<p>But my main object in relating the story is answered if I have succeeded
+in clearly pointing out to the reader one of the avenues through which
+light found its way to my benighted intellect, and led me to reflection
+on the whole subject of health and disease. Here was obviously one cause
+of a frequent but most painful complaint. It was natural, perfectly
+natural, that by this time I should begin to inquire. Have all diseases,
+then, their exciting causes? Many certainly have; and if many,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span> perhaps
+all. At least, how do we know but it may be so? And then again, if the
+causes of chilblains are within our control, and this troublesome
+disease might be prevented, or its severity mitigated if no more, why
+may it not be so with all other diseases?</p>
+
+<p>To revert for a moment to the case of Lydia Maynard. Though I was the
+cause, in a certain sense, of her suffering, yet it was a sin of
+ignorance. But it taught me much wisdom. It made me cautious ever
+afterward. I do not doubt but I have been a means of preventing a very
+considerable amount of suffering in this form, since that time, by
+pointing out the road that leads to it.</p>
+
+<p>Prevention is better than cure, was early my motto, and is so still. And
+from the day in which I began to open my eyes on the world around me,
+and to reason from effects up to their causes, I have been more and more
+confirmed in the belief that mankind as a race are to be the artificers
+of their own happiness or misery. All facts point in this direction,
+some of them with great certainty. And facts, everywhere and always, are
+stubborn things.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIII" id="CHAPTER_XIII"></a>CHAPTER XIII.</h2>
+
+<h3>HOW TO MAKE ERYSIPELAS.</h3>
+
+
+<p>My periodical tendency to a species of eruptive disease closely
+resembling measles, was mentioned in Chapter IV. During the summer of
+1823 this affection became unusually severe, and seemed almost beyond
+endurance. The circumstances were as follows:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>I had in charge a large and difficult school. The weather was very hot,
+and I was not accustomed to labor in summer within doors. Besides, my
+task was so difficult as to call forth all the energies of body and mind
+both; and the "wear and tear" of my system was unusually great. It was
+in the very midst of these severe labors, in hot and not well-ventilated
+air, that the eruption appeared. Perhaps it was aggravated by my diet,
+which, in "boarding around," was of course not the best.</p>
+
+<p>The eruption not only affected my body and reached to the extremities,
+but was accompanied by an itching so severe that I was occasionally
+compelled to lie awake all night. My general strength at last began to
+give way under it, and I sought the advice of our family physician.</p>
+
+<p>He advised me to use, as a wash to the irritated and irritable surface,
+a weak solution of corrosive sublimate. I hesitated; especially as I
+believed it to be, with him, an experiment. But on his repeated
+assurance, that if I would take special care of myself and avoid taking
+cold, there was no danger, I waived my objections, and proceeded to
+carry out his plan.</p>
+
+<p>The solution was applied, accordingly, to the letter of the doctor's
+directions. For many days no change appeared, either favorable or
+adverse. At length a most distressing headache came on and remained. My
+sufferings became so severe that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span> I was obliged to postpone my school
+and return to my father's house.</p>
+
+<p>On the road, I observed that an eruption of a peculiar kind had
+appeared, particularly about the forehead, accompanied with small
+blisters. It was not here that I had applied the solution, but on the
+arms, chest, and lower limbs. Of course the corrosive sublimate, if at
+all operative, had affected me through the medium of the circulation and
+not by direct contact.</p>
+
+<p>Our physician came, pronounced the disease erysipelas, and without
+saying a word about the cause, prescribed; and I followed out carefully
+his prescription. But the disease had its course in spite of us both,
+and was very severe. It took away my sleep entirely for a day or two. It
+proved a means of removing the hair from one side of my head, and of so
+injuring the skin that it never grew again. Indeed, gangrene or
+mortification had actually commenced at several points. Suddenly,
+however, the pain and inflammation subsided, and I recovered.</p>
+
+<p>Now my physician never said that I was poisoned by the corrosive
+sublimate, probably for the two following reasons: 1, I never made the
+inquiry. 2, He would probably have ascribed the disease to taking cold
+rather than to the mercury, had I inquired. I do not believe I took
+cold, however. How it came to affect me so unfavorably I never knew with
+certainty; but that it was the medicine that did the mischief I never
+for one moment doubted. I suppose it was absorbed; but of the manner of
+its introduction to the system I am less certain than of the fact
+itself.</p>
+
+<p>But besides the absorption of the corrosive sublimate into the system,
+and its consequences&mdash;a terrible caution to those who are wont to apply
+salves, ointments, washes, etc., to the surface of the body
+unauthorized&mdash;I learned another highly important lesson from this
+circumstance. Active medicines, as I saw more plainly than ever before,
+are as a sword with two edges. If they do not cut in the right
+direction, they are almost sure to cut in the wrong.</p>
+
+<p>I must not close, however, without telling you a little more<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span> about the
+treatment of my disease. After I had left my school and had arrived at
+home, a solution of sugar of lead was ordered in the very coldest water.
+With this, through the intervention of layers of linen cloth, I was
+directed to keep my head constantly moistened. Its object, doubtless,
+was to check the inflammation, which had become exceedingly violent. Why
+the sugar of lead itself was not absorbed, thus adding poison to poison,
+is to me inconceivable. Perhaps it was so; and yet, such was the force
+of my constitution, feeble though it was, that I recovered in spite of
+both poisons. Or, what is more probable, perhaps the lead, if absorbed
+at all, did not produce its effects till the effects of the corrosive
+sublimate were on the wane; so that the living system was only
+necessitated to war with one poison at a time. Mankind are made to live,
+at least till they are worn out; and it is not always easy to poison a
+person to death, if we would. In other words, human nature is tough.</p>
+
+<p>Now I do not know, by the way, that any one but myself ever suspected,
+even for one moment, that this attack of erysipelas was caused by the
+corrosive sublimate. But could I avoid such a conclusion? Was it a hasty
+or forced one? Judge, then, whether it was not perfectly natural that I
+should be led by such an unfortunate adventure to turn my attention more
+than ever to the subject of preserving and promoting health.</p>
+
+<p>For if our family physician&mdash;cautious and judicious as in general he
+was&mdash;had been the unintentional cause of a severe attack from a violent
+and dangerous disease, which had come very near destroying my life, what
+blunders might not be expected from the less careful and cautious man,
+especially the beginner in medicine? And if medical men, old and young,
+scientific as well as unscientific, make occasional blunders, how much
+more frequently the mass of mankind, who, in their supposed knowledge of
+their own constitutions and those of their families, are frequently
+found dosing and drugging themselves and others?</p>
+
+<p>I do not mean to say that in the incipiency of my observations and
+inquiries my mind was mature enough&mdash;well educated<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span> enough, I mean&mdash;to
+pursue exactly the foregoing train of thought; but there was certainly a
+tendency that way, as will be seen more fully in the next chapter. The
+spell at least was broken, and I saw plainly that if "died by the
+visitation of God" <i>never</i> means any thing, it <i>generally</i> does not. And
+as it turned out that the further I pushed my inquiries the more I found
+that diseases were caused by transgression of physical and moral law,
+and hence not uncontrollable, why should it not be so, still farther on,
+in the great world of facts which I had not yet penetrated?</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIV" id="CHAPTER_XIV"></a>CHAPTER XIV.</h2>
+
+<h3>STUDYING MEDICINE.</h3>
+
+
+<p>My thoughts were now directed with considerable earnestness and
+seriousness, to the study of medicine. It is true that I was already in
+the twenty-fourth year of my age, and that the statute law of the State
+in which I was a resident required three years of study before receiving
+a license to practise medicine and surgery, and I should hence be in my
+twenty-seventh or twenty-eighth year before I could enter actively and
+responsibly upon the duties of my profession, which would be rather late
+in life. Besides, I had become quite enamored of another profession,
+much better adapted to my slender pecuniary means than the study of a
+new one.</p>
+
+<p>However, I revolved the subject in my mind, till at length, as I
+thought, I saw my path clearly. It was my undoubted duty to pursue the
+study of medicine. Still, there were difficulties which to any but men
+of decision of character were not easily got removed. Shall I tell you
+how they were gradually and successfully overcome?</p>
+
+<p>Our family physician had an old skeleton, and a small volume of anatomy
+by Cheselden, as well as a somewhat more extended British work on
+anatomy and physiology; all these he kindly offered to lend me. Then he
+would permit me to study with him, or at least occasionally recite to
+him, which would answer the letter of the law. Then, again, I could,
+during the winter of each year of study except the last, teach school,
+and thus add to my pecuniary means of support. And lastly, my father
+would board me whenever I was not teaching, and on as long a credit as I
+desired. Were not, then, all my difficulties practically overcome, at
+least prospectively?</p>
+
+<p>It was early in the spring of the year 1822 that I carried<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span> to my
+father's house an old dirty skeleton and some musty books, and commenced
+the study of medicine and surgery, or at least of those studies which
+are deemed a necessary preparation. It was rather dry business at first,
+but I soon became very much interested in the study of physiology, and
+made considerable progress. My connection with our physician proved to
+be merely nominal, as I seldom found him ready to hear a recitation.
+Besides, my course of study was rather desultory, not to say irregular.</p>
+
+<p>In the autumn of 1824, having occasion to teach school at such a
+distance as rendered it almost impracticable for me to continue my
+former connection as a student, I made arrangements for studying with
+another physician on terms not unlike those in the former case. My new
+teacher, however, occasionally heard me recite, especially in what is
+properly called the practice of medicine and in surgery. His
+instructions, though very infrequent, were of service to me.</p>
+
+<p>In 1825 I became a boarder in his family, where I remained about a year.
+Here I had an opportunity to consult and even study the various standard
+authors in the several departments which are usually regarded as
+belonging to a course of medical study. So that if I was not in due time
+properly qualified to "practise medicine and surgery in this or any
+other country," the fault was chiefly my own.</p>
+
+<p>However, in the spring of 1825, after I had attended a five months'
+course of lectures in one of the most famous medical colleges of the
+Northern States, I was regularly examined and duly licensed. <i>How</i> well
+qualified I was supposed to be, did not exactly appear. It was
+marvellous that I succeeded at all, for I had labored much on the farm
+during the three years, taught school every winter and two summers, had
+two or three seasons of sickness, besides a severe attack of influenza
+(this, you know, is not regarded as a disease by many) while attending
+lectures, which confined me a week or more. And yet one of my fellow
+students, who was present at the examination, laughed at my studied
+accuracy!</p>
+
+<p>One word about my thesis, or dissertation. It was customary<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span> at the
+college where I heard lectures&mdash;as it probably is at all others of the
+kind&mdash;to require each candidate for medical license to read before the
+board, prior to his examination, an original dissertation on some topic
+connected with his professional studies. The topic I selected was
+pulmonary consumption; especially, the means of preventing it. It was,
+as may be conjectured, a slight departure from the ordinary routine, but
+was characteristic of the writer's mind, prevention being then, as it
+still is, and probably always will be, with him a favorite idea. I go so
+far, even, as to insist that it should be the favorite idea of every
+medical man, from the beginning to the end of his career. "The best part
+of the medical art is the art of avoiding pain," was the motto for many
+years of the <i>Boston Medical Intelligencer</i>; and it embraced a most
+important truth. When will it be fully and practically received?</p>
+
+<p>But I must recapitulate a little; or rather, I must go back and give the
+reader a few chapters of incidents which occurred while I was a student
+under Dr. W., my second and principal teacher. I will however study
+brevity as much as possible.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XV" id="CHAPTER_XV"></a>CHAPTER XV.</h2>
+
+<h3>NATURE'S OWN EYE WATER.</h3>
+
+
+<p>When I began the study of medicine, my eyes were so exceedingly weak,
+and had been for about ten years, or indeed always after the attack of
+measles, that I was in the habit of shading them, much of the time, with
+green or blue glasses. My friends, many of them, strongly objected to
+any attempt to pursue the study of medicine on this very account. And
+the attempt was, I confess, rather hazardous.</p>
+
+<p>What seemed most discouraging in the premises was the consideration that
+I had gone, to no manner of purpose, the whole round of eye waters,
+elixir vitriol itself not excepted. Was there room, then, for a single
+gleam of hope? Yet I was resolutely, perhaps obstinately, determined on
+making an effort. I could but fail.</p>
+
+<p>Soon after I made a beginning, the thought struck me, "Why not make the
+experiment of frequently bathing the eyes in cold water?" At that very
+moment they were hot and somewhat painful; and suiting the action to the
+thought, I held my face for some seconds in very cold water. The
+sensation was indescribably agreeable; and I believe that for once in my
+life, at the least, I felt a degree of gratitude to God, my Creator, for
+cold water.</p>
+
+<p>The practice was closely and habitually followed. Whenever my eyes
+became hot and painful, I put my face for a short time in water, even if
+it were <i>twenty</i> times a day. The more I bathed them, the greater the
+pleasure, nor was it many days before they were evidently less inflamed
+and less troublesome. Why, then, should I not persevere?</p>
+
+<p>I carried the practice somewhat further still. I found from experiment,
+that I could open my eyes in the water. At first,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span> it is true, the
+operation was a little painful, and I raised, slightly, its temperature.
+Gradually, however, I became so much accustomed to it that the sensation
+was not only less painful, but even somewhat agreeable. In a few weeks I
+could bear to open my eyes in the water, and keep them open as long as I
+was able to hold my breath, even at a very low temperature.</p>
+
+<p>Perseverance in this practice not only enabled me to proceed with my
+studies, contrary to the expectation of my friends, and in spite, too,
+of my own apprehensions, but gave me in addition the unspeakable
+pleasure of finding my eyes gaining every year in point of strength, as
+well as clearness of sight. My glasses were laid aside, and I have never
+used any for that specific purpose since that time. Of course I do not
+mean by this to say that my eyes remain as convex as they were at
+twenty-five or thirty years of age, for that would not be true. They
+have most certainly flattened a little since I came to be fifty years of
+age, for I am compelled to wear glasses when I would read or write. I
+mean, simply, that they have never suffered any more from inflammation
+or debility, since I formed the habit of bathing them, even up to the
+present hour.</p>
+
+<p>The more I observe on this subject, the more I am persuaded&mdash;apart from
+my own experience&mdash;that pure water, at the lowest temperature which can
+be used without giving pain, is the best known eye medicine in the
+world, not merely for one, two, or ten in a hundred persons, but for
+all. I recommend it, therefore, at every opportunity, not only to my
+patients but to others. It may doubtless be abused, like every other
+good gift; but in wise and careful hands it will often accomplish almost
+every thing but downright miracles. We may begin with water a little
+tepid, and lower the temperature as gradually as we please, till we come
+to use it ice cold.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVI" id="CHAPTER_XVI"></a>CHAPTER XVI.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE VIPER STORY.</h3>
+
+
+<p>I was, early in life, greatly perplexed in mind by the oft-recurring
+question, why it was that in the hands of common sense men, every known
+system of medicine&mdash;even one which was diametrically opposed to the
+prevailing custom or belief, like that of Hahnemann, seemed to be
+successful. Not only the botanic practitioner with his herbs, and the
+hom&oelig;opathist with his billionth dilutions, but even the no-medicine
+man<a name="FNanchor_B_2" id="FNanchor_B_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_B_2" class="fnanchor">[B]</a> could boast of his cures, and, for aught I could see, of about an
+equal number&mdash;good sense and perseverance and other things being equal.
+And then, again, he that bled everybody, or almost everybody, if
+abounding in good sense, like the late Dr. Hubbard, of Pomfret, in
+Connecticut, was about as successful as those who, like Dr. Danforth,
+once an eminent practitioner of Boston, would bleed nobody, nor, if in
+his power to prevent it, suffer the lancet to be used by anybody else.</p>
+
+<p>While cogitating on this subject one day, the following anecdote from a
+surgical work&mdash;I think a French work&mdash;came under my eye, and at once
+solved the problem, and relieved me of my difficulty. It may probably be
+relied on.</p>
+
+<p>When the Abb&eacute; Fontana, a distinguished medical man and naturalist, was
+travelling, once, in some of the more northern countries of Europe, he
+was greatly surprised to find such a wonderful variety of applications
+to the bite of the viper, and still more to find them all successful, or
+at least about equally so. Even those that were in character
+diametrically opposed to each other, <i>all cured</i>. His astonishment
+continued and increased when he found at length that those who applied
+nothing at all recovered about as readily as any of the rest.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span></p>
+<p>In the sequel, as the result of diligent and scientific research, it
+turned out that the bite of this animal, however dangerous and fatal in
+hot climates, is scarcely dangerous at all in cold ones. Hence it was
+that all sorts of treatment appeared to cure. In other words, the
+persons who were bitten all recovered in spite of the applications made
+to their wounds, and generally in about the same period of time.</p>
+
+<p>Thus, as I began to suspect,&mdash;and the reader must pardon the suspicion,
+if he can,&mdash;it may be with our diversified and diverse modes of medical
+treatment. A proportion of our patients,&mdash;perhaps I should say a large
+proportion,&mdash;if well nursed and cared for and encouraged, would recover
+if let alone so far as regards medicine. And it is in proof of this
+view, that nearly as many recover under one mode of practice, provided
+that practice is guided by a large share of plain, unsophisticated
+sense, as another. And does not this fully account for a most remarkable
+fact?</p>
+
+<p>Hence it is, too,&mdash;and perhaps hence alone,&mdash;that we can account for the
+strange development in Boston, not many years since, during a public
+medical discussion; viz., that he who had given his tens of pounds of
+calomel to his patients, and taken from their arms his hogsheads of
+blood, had been on the whole about as successful a practitioner as he
+who had revolted from the very thought of both, and had adopted some of
+the various forms of the stimulating rather than the depleting system.</p>
+
+<p>"Is there, then, no choice between medication and no-medication? For if
+so, what necessity is there of the medical profession? Why not
+annihilate it at once?"</p>
+
+<p>My reply is,&mdash;and it would have been about the same when these
+discoveries began to be made,&mdash;that there is no occasion to give up the
+whole thing because it has been so sadly abused. Every mode of medical
+practice, not to say every medical practitioner from the very beginning,
+has been, of necessity, more or less empirical. The whole subject has
+been involved in so much ignorance and uncertainty, that even our wisest
+practitioners have been liable to err. They have been led, unawares, to
+prescribe quite too much for names rather than<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span> for symptoms; and their
+patients were often glad to have it so. And were the whole matter to
+come to an end this day, it might well be questioned whether the
+profession, as a whole, has been productive of more good than evil to
+mankind. But then, every thing must have its infancy before it can come
+to manhood. And it is a consolation to believe that the duration of that
+manhood always bears some degree of proportion to the time required in
+advancing from infancy to maturity.</p>
+
+<p>Medicine, then, as a science, is valuable in prospect. And then, too, it
+is worth something to have a set of men among us on whom we may fasten
+our faith; for, credulous as everybody is and will be in this matter of
+health and disease, till they can duly be taught the laws of hygiene,
+they will lean upon somebody; it is certainly desirable that they should
+rely on those whom they know, rather than upon strangers, charlatans,
+and conjurors, of whom they know almost nothing.</p>
+
+<p>But I shall have frequent occasion to revert to this subject in other
+chapters, and must therefore dismiss it for the present, in order to
+make room for other facts, anecdotes, and reflections.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_B_2" id="Footnote_B_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_B_2"><span class="label">[B]</span></a> Of the hydropathist at that time I had not heard.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVII" id="CHAPTER_XVII"></a>CHAPTER XVII.</h2>
+
+<h3>STRUCK WITH DEATH.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Throughout the region where I was brought up, and perhaps throughout the
+civilized world, the notion has long prevailed that in some of the last
+moments of a person's life, he is or may be "struck with death;" by
+which, I suppose the more intelligent simply mean that such a change
+comes over him as renders his speedy departure to the spirit-world
+inevitable.</p>
+
+<p>Now that we are really justified in saying of many persons who are in
+their last moments, that they are beyond the reach of hope, is doubtless
+true. When decomposition, for instance, has actually commenced, and the
+vital organs have already begun to falter, it would be idle to conceal
+the fact, were we able to do so, that life is about to be extinguished
+beyond the possibility of doubt.</p>
+
+<p>In general, however, it is never quite impossible for the sick to
+recover even after recovery <i>seems</i> to be impossible. So many instances
+of this kind have been known, that we ought at least, to be exceedingly
+cautious about pronouncing with certainty, and to encourage rather than
+repel the application of the old saying, "as long as there is life,
+there is hope."<a name="FNanchor_C_3" id="FNanchor_C_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_C_3" class="fnanchor">[C]</a></p>
+
+<p>I had a lesson on this subject while a medical student, which was
+exceedingly instructive, and which, if I were to live a thousand years,
+I could never forget. It was worth more to me in practical life
+afterward, than all my books and recitations would have been without it.
+The facts were these:&mdash;</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span></p>
+<p>My teacher of medicine used occasionally to take his students with him
+when he rode abroad on his professional visits. One day, it fell to my
+lot to bear him company. His patient was an aged farmer, a teamster
+rather, who had been for some time ill of a fever, and had not been
+expected to recover. Yet his case was not so desperate but that the
+physician was expected to continue his daily visits.</p>
+
+<p>On our arrival at the house of the sick man, we were met by a member of
+the family, who said, "Come in, doctor, but you are too late to do us
+any good. Mr. H. is struck with death; all the world could not save him
+now."</p>
+
+<p>We entered the room. There lay the patient almost gone, surely. So at
+least, at the first view, it appeared. It was a hot summer day, and
+hardly a breath of air was stirring. The friends were gathered around
+the bed, and there was less freedom of circulation in the air of the
+sick-room than elsewhere. It was almost enough to kill a healthy man to
+be shut up in such a stagnant atmosphere; what, then, must have been the
+effect on one so sick and feeble?</p>
+
+<p>The doctor beckoned them away from the bed, and requested them to open
+another window. They did it rather reluctantly; but then, <i>they did it</i>.
+The sufferer lay panting, as if the struggle was almost over. "Don't you
+think he is struck with death, doctor?" whispered one and another and
+another. Almost out of patience, the doctor at length replied: "Struck
+with death? What do you mean? No; he is no more struck with death than I
+am. He is struck much more with the heat and bad air. Raise another
+window."</p>
+
+<p>The window was raised. "Now," said he, "set that door wide open." It was
+quickly done. "Now bring me a bowl of water, and a teaspoon." The bowl
+of water was quickly brought. "Put a little water into his mouth with
+the teaspoon," said he. "O doctor," they replied, "it will only distress
+him; he is already struck with death."&mdash;"Try it then, and see."</p>
+
+<p>Tremblingly they now moistened his parched lips. "Put a little of it in
+his mouth, with the teaspoon," he said. They<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span> shuddered; the doctor
+persisted. "Why," said the attendant, "he has not been able to swallow
+any thing these two hours." "How do you know?" said he. "Why, he has
+been all the while struck with death."&mdash;"Nonsense! have you tried it?"
+"Tried it? oh, no; by no means."&mdash;"Why not?"&mdash;"Because we knew it would
+only distress him. He is too far gone to swallow, doctor; you may rely
+on it."</p>
+
+<p>The physician's patience was now well nigh exhausted, as well it might
+have been, and seizing the bowl and teaspoon with his own sacrilegious
+hands, "I will see," said he, "whether he is struck with death or not."</p>
+
+<p>He not only wetted his lips and tongue, as they had partially done
+before, but gradually insinuated a few drops of Nature's best and only
+drink, into the top of his throat. At last he swallowed! The doctor's
+hopes revived; while the family stood as if themselves struck, not with
+death, but with horror. At length, he swallowed again and again. In half
+an hour, he opened his eyes; before we left him, he had become quite
+sensible, and, had we encouraged it, might have spoken.</p>
+
+<p>To make my story as short as possible, the next day he could swallow a
+little gruel. The third day, he could be raised upon the bed. The
+fourth, though still weak, he was dressed and sat up an hour. In a
+fortnight, he was once more driving his team; and for ought I know to
+the contrary, unless debarred by reason of age, he may be driving it at
+this very moment!</p>
+
+<p>Going home together from our visit, already so fully described, the
+conversation turned on the silly notion which so extensively prevails
+about being struck with death. We talked of its origin, its influence,
+and its consequences. It had done no good in the world, while it had
+been the means, we could not doubt, of indirectly destroying thousands
+of valuable lives.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Of its Origin.</span>&mdash;How came the notion abroad that a person can be struck
+with death, so affected that there is no possible return for him, to
+life and health? Struck! By whom? Is there a personage, spiritual but
+real, that strikes? Is it the Divine Being? Surely not. Is it an arch
+enemy? is it Satan himself?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"No day, no glimpse of day, to solve the knot."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The doctor and I had, however, one conjecture concerning it, which, if
+it should not instruct the reader, may at least, afford him a little
+amusement. It certainly amused us.</p>
+
+<p>You have seen the old-fashioned New England Primer. It has been in
+vogue, I believe, a full century; perhaps nearer two centuries. It has
+done not a little to give shape to New England character. In its
+preliminary pages is a sort of alphabet of couplets, with cuts prefixed
+or annexed. One of the couplets reads thus:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Youth forward slips,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Death soonest nips."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>While at its left, is the representation of a skeleton, armed with a
+dagger, and pursuing a youth&mdash;a child rather&mdash;with the apparent
+intention of striking him through. Now I cannot say how this picture may
+have affected others, but to my medical teacher and myself, as we
+mutually agreed, it always brings up the idea of striking down a youth
+or child prematurely, and sending him away to the great congregation of
+the dead.</p>
+
+<p>Nor am I quite sure that this representation, innocent as may have been
+its intention, has not been the origin of a relentless and cruel
+superstition. I know certainly, that my own early notions about being
+struck with death, had, somehow or other, a connection with this
+picture; and why may it not be so with others?</p>
+
+<p>But the <i>influence</i> and <i>consequences</i> of this superstition must be
+adverted to for a moment. I said they affect and have affected
+thousands; perhaps I ought to have said millions. Under the confused and
+preposterously silly idea that Death, the personification of Satan or
+some other demon, has laid hold of the sick or distressed, and that it
+would be a sort of useless, not to say sacrilegious, work to oppose, or
+attempt to oppose, the grim messenger, we sometimes leave our sick
+friends in the greatest extremity, to suffer and perhaps die, when the
+gentle touch of a kind hand, a mere drop of water, or a breath of fresh
+air,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span> might often bring them back again to life and health and happiness
+and usefulness.</p>
+
+<p>If this chapter should not be deemed a confession of medical impotence,
+it is at least a practical confession of medical selfishness or
+ignorance. If duly enlightened themselves, medical men ought long ago,
+to have rid society of this abominable superstition; and if not
+sufficiently enlightened to perceive its existence and evil tendency,
+they ought to have abandoned their profession.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_C_3" id="Footnote_C_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_C_3"><span class="label">[C]</span></a> Dr. Livingstone, in his work of Travels and Researches in
+Africa, tells us that during his residence among the Backwains, a tribe
+in the African interior, two persons who had been hastily buried,
+perhaps "struck with death" in the first place, returned home "to their
+affrighted relatives." p. 143.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVIII" id="CHAPTER_XVIII"></a>CHAPTER XVIII.</h2>
+
+<h3>EFFICACY OF COLD SPRING WATER.</h3>
+
+
+<p>An aged man not far from where I was studying, had an attack of
+dysentery which was long and severe. Whether the fault of its long
+continuance lay in his own bad habits, or the injudicious use of
+medicine, or in both, we can inquire to better advantage by and by. I
+was not, however, very much acquainted with his physician, so as to be
+able in the premises to form a very correct opinion concerning him.</p>
+
+<p>The greatest puzzle with me, at that time, was why he should live so
+long after the disease appeared to have spent itself, without making any
+advances. The physician used to call on him day after day, and order
+tonic medicine of various kinds, all of which was given with great care
+and exactness. Every thing in fact, seemed to be put in requisition,
+except what were most needful of all, pure air and water. The former of
+these was, as is usual in such cases, neglected; the latter was
+absolutely interdicted.</p>
+
+<p>For this last, as not unfrequently happens at this stage of acute
+diseases, the poor man sighed from day to day as though his heart would
+break. But, no; he must not have it. The effect on his bowels, he was
+told, would be unfavorable. And such at that day was the general
+<i>theory</i>. It was not considered that a very small quantity at first, a
+few drops merely, would be a great relief, and might be borne, till by
+degrees a larger quantity would be admissible.</p>
+
+<p>After repeated efforts, and much begging and crying for a little water
+to cool his parched tongue, the old gentleman, one night dreamed that he
+drank from a certain cold spring, which really flowed at a remote corner
+of his farm and was a great favorite both with him and his whole family,
+and that it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span> almost immediately restored him. Delighted with his dream,
+he no sooner fairly awaked than he called up his eldest son and sent him
+with a bottle, to the spring. He did not now <i>plead</i>, he <i>commanded</i>.
+The son returned in due time, with a bottle of water. He returned, it is
+true, with great fear and trembling, but he could do no less than obey.
+The demands and commands were peremptory, and the father was almost
+impatient.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, my son," said the father, "bring me a tumbler." It was brought,
+and the father took it. "Now," said he, "pour some of that water into
+it." Samuel could do no other way than submit to the lawfully
+constituted authority, though it was not without the most painful
+apprehensions with regard to the consequences, and he kindly warned his
+father of the danger. Nor were his sufferings at all diminished when the
+father, in a decided tone of voice, ordered him to fill the tumbler
+about half full.</p>
+
+<p>Whether he had at first intended to drink so large a draught and
+afterwards repented, is not known; but instead of swallowing it all at a
+draught, the son's distress was greatly mitigated when he saw that he
+only just tasted it, and then set down the tumbler. In a few minutes he
+drank a little more, and then after a short time a little more still. He
+was about half an hour drinking a gill of water. When that was gone, he
+ordered more; and persisted in this moderate way till morning. By ten
+o'clock, when his physician arrived, he had drunk nearly a quart of it,
+and was evidently better. There was a soft, breathy perspiration, as
+well as more strength.</p>
+
+<p>The physician no sooner saw him than he pronounced him better. "What
+have you been doing?" he said, rather jocosely. The sick man told him
+the simple story of his rebellion from beginning to end. The doctor at
+first shook his head, but when he came to reflect on the apparent good
+consequences which had followed, he only said: "Well, I suppose we must
+remember the old adage, 'Speak well of a bridge that carries you safe
+over,'" and then joined in the general cheerfulness.</p>
+
+<p>The patient continued to drink his spring water from day to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span> day, and
+with increasing good effects. It acted almost like a charm; it was not
+only food and drink to him, but also medicine. Doubtless his great faith
+in it was not without its efficacy; still it was not to be denied that
+the water did him great and positive good.</p>
+
+<p>He soon found his newly discovered medicine not only more agreeable to
+his taste, but cheaper also than Huxham's tincture and quassia. He also
+found that his son's daily visits to the spring cost him less than Dr.
+Physic's daily rides of three or four miles. So that though he was
+greatly delighted to see the smiling face, and hear the stories and
+jolly laugh of the latter, he was glad when he proposed to call less
+frequently than he had done and to lay aside all medicine.</p>
+
+<p>He recovered in a reasonable time, and lived to a very advanced age. A
+friend of his and mine, found him in his eighty-sixth year, mowing
+thistles barefooted. Two or three years still later, I found him&mdash;it was
+during the cold month of January, 1852&mdash;in the woods with his hired man
+far from his house, assisting in cutting and loading wood; in which
+employment he seemed to act with much of the energy and not a little of
+the activity of his earlier years.</p>
+
+<p>I do not of course undertake to say that he owed his recovery from his
+long sickness, above described solely to drinking cold water, there are
+so many other circumstances to be taken into the account, in settling
+all questions like this, that such an assertion would be hazardous, not
+to say foolish. His fever at the time of making his experiment, had
+already passed away; and having great tenacity of life, it was but
+reasonable to expect nature would ere long, rally, if she <i>could</i> rally
+at all. It is also worthy of remark, that though his physician was one
+of those men who place their chief reliance on the medicine they give,
+rather than on the recuperative powers of the system, yet to his credit
+be it said, he had in this instance departed from his usual routine, and
+given comparatively little.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps we may explain the phenomenon of his recovery, as follows:
+nature long oppressed, yet by rest partially restored<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span> to her wonted
+energy, was now ready to rally as soon as she could get the opportunity;
+this the moderate draughts of water by their effects on the circulation
+enabled her to do; then, too, one consideration which I forgot to
+mention in its place, deserves to be noticed. When the sick man began
+the use of water, he laid aside (without the knowledge of his physician)
+most of what pills and powders and tinctures were prescribed him. And
+finally he had great faith in the water, as you have already seen;
+whereas he had lost all faith in drugging and dosing. And the efficacy
+of faith is almost sufficient in such cases, to work a cure, were this
+our only reliance. Of this we shall have an illustration in Chapter
+LXXVI.</p>
+
+<p>But though the water, as I now fully believe&mdash;and as I more than half
+believed when I heard of the facts at the time,&mdash;was fairly indicated,
+there is great hazard, in such circumstances in its use. Had this
+gentleman taken a large draught at first, or had he swallowed more
+moderate draughts with great eagerness, and a quick succession, it might
+have produced an ill effect; it might, even, have provoked a relapse of
+his dysentery and fever. Many a sick patient in the same circumstances,
+would have poured the cooling liquid into an enfeebled throat and
+stomach without the least restraint. And why did not he?</p>
+
+<p>I will give you one reason. He was early taught to govern himself. He
+told me, when eighty-eight years of age, he had made it a rule, all his
+life long, never to eat enough, but always to leave off his meals with a
+good appetite. He did not indeed, follow out with exactness the rule of
+the late Amos Lawrence: "Begin hungry and leave off hungrier," but he
+came very near it. He managed so as always to have a good appetite, and
+never in the progress of more than fourscore years, whether by night or
+day, to lose it. Such a man, if his mind is not too much reduced by long
+disease, can be safely trusted with cold spring water, even during the
+more painful and trying circumstances of convalescence from acute
+disease.</p>
+
+<p>Another thing deserves to be mentioned in this connection.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span> He had not
+kept his bowels and nervous system, all his life long, under the
+influence of rum, tobacco, opium, coffee, tea, or highly seasoned food.
+He did not it is true, wholly deny himself any one of these, except
+opium and tobacco; but he only used them occasionally, and even then in
+great moderation. Nor was it from mere indigence, or culpable stinginess
+that he ate and drank, for the most part in a healthful manner. It
+seemed to be from a conviction of the necessity of being "temperate in
+all things;" and that such a course as he pursued tended to hardihood.
+As one evidence of a conviction of this kind, I have known his children
+and their school teacher to carry to the schoolroom for their dinner, a
+quantity of cold Indian cake&mdash;ycleped Johnny cake&mdash;and nothing else; nor
+was there an attempt at the slightest apology. Such a man would not be
+very likely to have an ulcerated alimentary canal, or bad blood; or to
+be injured by swallowing every five minutes a table-spoonful of cold
+water; no, nor to sink as quickly as other people under the depressing
+tendency of irritating or poisonous medicine.</p>
+
+<p>This last-mentioned fact concerning the use of water,&mdash;for it is a fact
+on which we can rely, and not one of those statements which Dr. Cullen
+was accustomed to call "false facts,"&mdash;was to me exceedingly
+instructive. It taught me more concerning the human constitution and the
+laws of health and disease than I had ever before learned from a single
+case of mere disease, in my whole life; and I endeavored to make a wise
+use of it&mdash;of which as I trust, I shall give some evidence in the very
+next chapter.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIX" id="CHAPTER_XIX"></a>CHAPTER XIX.</h2>
+
+<h3>CHEATING THE PHYSICIAN.</h3>
+
+
+<p>It was by no means an uncommon thing with me, while studying medicine,
+to take long walks. One day, in the progress of one of these rambles, I
+came so near the family mansion of a young man with whom I had formerly
+been acquainted, that I thought I would, for once, go a little out of my
+way and make a call on him. And judge, reader, if you can, of my
+surprise, when I found him exceedingly sick. For residing, as we did,
+only a few miles apart, why had I not heard of it? Most people, in
+truth, would have called on some of the young doctors&mdash;for there were
+three or four of us together,&mdash;to take care of the sick man, especially
+by night. Young doctors, I grant&mdash;and this for various reasons which
+might be named, were it needful&mdash;are usually the very worst of watchers
+and nurses of the sick; but the public often appear to think otherwise,
+and even to prefer them.</p>
+
+<p>I found him under the care of an old school physician;&mdash;one who, though
+he otherwise prescribed very well, gave quite too much medicine; and
+like the old physician mentioned in the preceding chapter, mortally
+detested cold water; at least he detested its use in bowel complaints.
+The young man's case, however, was as yet wholly unlike that of the
+elderly gentleman of the foregoing chapter; and cold water at first, was
+not particularly needed; nor perhaps quite safe.</p>
+
+<p>Some few days afterward, I called again. Found my young friend rather
+less feverish, but no better; in fact, he was much worse, and was most
+obviously running down. I continued after this to call on him daily,
+till he too, like the old man before mentioned, began to beg for cold
+water. But his physician said, "No, not a drop," and with a good deal of
+emphasis.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>One day, while I was at his bedside, he turned to me, and with a most
+imploring look begged to know whether I believed a very little cold
+water would really hurt him. I told him no; but that a good deal
+doubtless would, and might even prove the means of his destruction.
+"Simple a thing as water is," I said, "it is to you, in circumstances
+like yours, a sword with two edges. If it should not cut away the
+disease, it would probably cut in the other direction, to the
+destruction of your health, if not of your life."</p>
+
+<p>My remarks had both awakened his curiosity and increased his desires for
+the interdicted beverage. I found I had gone too far, and I frankly told
+him so. I told him it was not in accordance with medical etiquette, nor
+even with the rules of good breeding, for one medical man to prescribe
+for another's patient without his knowledge. But this explanation did
+not satisfy him. Water was what he wanted; and as I had opened the
+budget and removed some of his fears, water he must have. He was
+willing, he said, to bear the responsibility.</p>
+
+<p>Water, then, in exceedingly small quantity at a time, was permitted; but
+it was to be given by stealth. The physician was not allowed to know it,
+or, at all events, he was not to know under whose encouragement he
+acted. His friends were very careful in regard to the quantity, and I
+had the happiness of finding him, in a few days, very much better. But,
+as I said in reflecting on the recovery of my aged friend before
+mentioned, it is not quite certain, after all, how much was effected by
+the water, and how much by the recuperative efforts of Nature herself.
+She might have been long waiting for that opportunity to rally, which
+the judicious introduction of the water, and the partial or entire
+discontinuance of other medicine, greatly facilitated.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XX" id="CHAPTER_XX"></a>CHAPTER XX.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE MEDICINAL EFFECTS OF STORY TELLING.</h3>
+
+
+<p>My aged father sickened about this time, and remained in a low condition
+many months. I was at a distance so great, and in circumstances so
+peculiar, that I could not see him often enough to become his medical
+adviser. Besides, in my then unfledged condition as a disciple of Galen,
+I should not have regarded myself competent to the discharge of so
+weighty a responsibility, had I even been at home with him. The result
+was that he employed his family physician as usual, and went through, as
+might have been expected, with the whole paraphernalia of a dosing and
+drugging campaign.</p>
+
+<p>Among other troubles, or rather to cap the climax of his troubles, he
+was exceedingly low-spirited. Confined as he had been to the house
+almost all winter, and seeing nobody to converse with,&mdash;no new faces, I
+mean,&mdash;was it very strange that his mind turned, involuntarily, to his
+complaints, and preyed upon itself, and that he was evidently
+approaching the deep vortex of hypochondria? Medicine did him no good,
+and could do him none. It is true he had, after three months, almost
+left off its use; but the little to which he still clung was most
+evidently a source of irritation.</p>
+
+<p>My own occasional visits, as I soon found out, did him more good than
+any thing else. This gave me a needful hint. Near him was an old
+Revolutionary soldier, full of mirthfulness, and a capital story teller.
+Unknown to my father, and even to the family, I employed this old
+soldier to visit my father a certain number of evenings in each week,
+and tell stories to him.</p>
+
+<p>Sergeant K. complied faithfully with the terms of the contract, and was
+at my father's house three evenings of each week for a long time. This
+gave the old gentleman something else<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span> to think of besides himself, and
+it was easy to see, did him much good. During the progress of the fourth
+month his improvement became quite perceptible; and in another month he
+was nearly recovered.</p>
+
+<p>But, as I have repeatedly said of cold water, and indeed of all other
+remedial efforts or applications, whether external or internal, and
+whether moral, mental, or physical, too much credit should not be given,
+at least hastily, to a single thing. The opening spring was in my
+father's favor, as well as the story telling. The bow, so long retained
+in an unnatural position, on having an opportunity, sprung back and
+resumed its wonted condition. Still, I could never help awarding much
+credit to the Revolutionary soldier.</p>
+
+<p>Most persons must have observed the effects which cheerfulness in a
+medical man has on his patients. The good-natured, jolly doctor, who
+tells a story now and then, and cracks a joke and has occasionally a
+hearty laugh <i>with you</i>, or <i>at</i> you, about something or nothing, will
+do you much more good, other things being equal, than the grave, staid,
+sombre practitioner, who thinks it almost a sin to smile, especially at
+the sick-bed or in the sick-room.</p>
+
+<p>I think story telling, as an art, should be cultivated, were it only for
+its good effects in sickness. But this is not all. Its prophylactic or
+preventive tendencies are much more valuable. Few people know how to
+tell a story of any kind; while others, in some few remarkable
+instances, such as I could name, will make a story of almost any thing,
+and bring it to bear upon the precise point or end they wish to
+accomplish. It is yet, in reality, a mooted point, which could make the
+deepest, or at least most abiding, impression, Daniel Webster by a
+Congressional oration, or Jacob Abbott by a simple story. If this is an
+indirect or incautious confession of medical imperfection or impotence,
+let me say as Patrick Henry once did, in Revolutionary days, "then make
+the most of it."</p>
+
+<p>While on this topic of story telling, I must not forget to allude to its
+moral effects. Lorenzo Dow, the eccentric preacher, is not the only
+pulpit occupant who has acquired the art of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span> "clinching the nail," in
+his discourses by a well told story. It was quite a habit, in former
+times, with certain preachers of certain denominations of Christians,
+whose sermons were chiefly unwritten, to tell stories occasionally. And
+I appeal to Father Waldo, late chaplain in the United States Senate, to
+see whether the effects of these discourses were not as deep and as
+lasting, to say the least, as many of our modern sermons, which, while
+they smell much more of the lamp, fall almost lifeless upon the sleepy
+ears of thousands of those whom Whitfield by his more practical course
+would have converted.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXI" id="CHAPTER_XXI"></a>CHAPTER XXI</h2>
+
+<h3>OSSIFIED VEINS.</h3>
+
+
+<p>While I was studying medicine with my new or second master, I had
+several excellent opportunities for studying health and disease through
+the medium of the doctor's patients.</p>
+
+<p>One of them was a swaggering man of wealth, about sixty-three years of
+age. He had long lived very highly, had eaten a good deal of roast beef,
+and drunk a good deal of wine, and had almost swum in cider. He was in
+short, one of that class of men who "go off" in very many instances, at
+the grand climacterical period, some of them very suddenly.</p>
+
+<p>"Doctor," said the general, exhibiting himself in full size and the
+boldest relief, "I want to be bled."&mdash;"What do you want bleeding for?"
+said the doctor. "Oh," said he, "bleed me, and you will see. You will
+find my blood in a very bad state."&mdash;"Your blood, general, was always in
+a very bad state," said the shrewd son of Galen, with a sardonic grin.
+"None of your fun, doctor," was the prompt reply; "I must be bled. I
+have headache and giddiness half the time, and must have some blood
+taken."&mdash;"Very well," said Dr. S. "It shall be as you desire. Here, my
+son, bring me a bowl."</p>
+
+<p>An older student assisted, while I, glad of the privilege, kept aloof,
+and at a distance. The general's brawny arm was mauled a long time; and
+even then not much blood was obtained. At last the attempt was given up,
+and the man returned home, though not, as might have been expected, very
+well satisfied.</p>
+
+<p>When he was gone, I inquired of Dr. S., as modestly as I could, what
+serious difficulties he had to encounter in his attack on Gen. Upham's
+arm. "Why was it," said I, "that you could<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span> get no more blood?" "For the
+plainest reason in the world," he answered; "his veins were all
+ossified."</p>
+
+<p>I was quite satisfied at the time, with this answer; for I knew so well
+the habits of Gen. U. that I stood ready to believe almost any thing in
+regard to him, especially when it came from a highly respectable source.
+Yet I have often suspected since that time, that there was a serious
+mistake made. Ossified or bony arteries, even at this great distance
+from the heart, in such a man, ought not to excite surprise; but these
+would hardly be met with in attempting to open a vein, since the
+arteries are much more deeply imbedded in the flesh than the veins are.
+And as for ossified veins themselves, especially in the arm, they are
+seldom if ever heard of.</p>
+
+<p>You may wonder why I did not satisfy my curiosity at the time, by making
+diligent inquiry at the proper source of information; and I almost
+wonder too. But, in the first place, my curiosity did not rise so high
+on any occasion whatever, as it has since done. For, though I was
+hungering and thirsting for knowledge thirty years ago, my solicitude to
+know has so increased with increasing years that my present curiosity
+will admit of no comparison with the former. Secondly, I was exceedingly
+diffident. Thirdly, my mind was just then fully occupied with other
+things. And lastly, whenever I was in the company of Dr. S., both while
+I remained in the office and subsequently, it was only for a very short
+time, perhaps a single half hour, at best; and we had always so many
+other things to talk about, that Gen. U. and his <i>ossified veins</i> never
+entered our minds.</p>
+
+<p>However, it was not many years afterward that I heard of the old
+general's death. Of the manner of his exit except that it was sudden, I
+never heard a word, up to this hour. It is by no means improbable that
+there was ossification about his heart, for he was a very fit subject
+for ossification of any parts that could be ossified. I do not know,
+indeed, that a post mortem examination was ever made; the family would
+doubtless have opposed it. The uses of the dead to the living are in
+general very little thought of.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Such cases of disease are, however, a terrible warning to those who are
+following in the path of Gen. Upham. They may or may not come to just
+such an end as he did, but of one thing we may be well assured; viz.,
+that the wicked do not live out half their days, or, in other words,
+that sins against the body, even though committed in ignorance, can
+never wholly escape the heaven-appointed penalty of transgression. "The
+soul that sins must die." For no physical infraction of God's holy,
+physical laws, do we know of any atonement. We may indeed, be thankful
+if we find one in the moral world or anywhere else.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXII" id="CHAPTER_XXII"></a>CHAPTER XXII.</h2>
+
+<h3>HE'LL DIE IN THIRTY SIX HOURS.</h3>
+
+
+<p>In the autumn of 1824, while a severe sickness was sweeping over one or
+two towns adjacent to that in which I resided, and considerable
+apprehension was felt lest the disease should reach us, the wife and
+child of my medical teacher, and myself, suddenly sickened in a manner
+not greatly dissimilar, and all of us suffered most severely.</p>
+
+<p>It was perfectly natural, in those circumstances, to suspect, as a cause
+of our sickness, the prevailing epidemic. And yet the symptoms were so
+unlike those of that disease, that all suspicions of this sort were soon
+abandoned. Besides, no other persons but ourselves, for many miles
+around, had any thing of the kind, either about that time or immediately
+afterward. I have said that the symptoms of disease in all three of us
+were not dissimilar. There was much congestion of the lungs and some
+hemorrhage from their organs, and occasionally slight cough, and in the
+end considerable tendency to inflammation of the brain. The last
+symptom, however, may have been induced at least, in part, by the large
+amount of active medicine we took.</p>
+
+<p>When the news of my own sickness reached my near relatives who resided
+only a few miles distant, they were anxious to pay such attention to me
+as the nature of the case appeared to require. But they soon tired; and
+it was found needful to employ an aged and experienced nurse to take the
+general charge, and under the direction of the physician, assume the
+entire responsibility of the case.</p>
+
+<p>This nurse was one of those conceited people whose aid, after all, is
+worth very little. He was as far from affording the kind<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span> of assistance
+I required as could possibly be. And yet his intentions were in the main
+excellent.</p>
+
+<p>The selection of physician was equally unfortunate. My teacher had
+nearly as much as he could do to take care of his wife and child. At his
+request, and in accordance with the wishes of my friends, their and my
+former physician were called in. When the danger became more imminent, a
+third was occasionally consulted. It was supposed, no doubt, that in the
+midst of counsellors there was safety.</p>
+
+<p>The counsels of our third man, or umpire, may have had influence; but
+his manners were coarse, and in many respects objectionable. He was in
+favor, also, of a highly stimulating treatment, which appeared to me to
+add fuel to the flame, for I soon began to be at a loss when called upon
+to recollect things and circumstances. He saw the tendency, and, partly
+by way of "showing off" his powers of diagnosis, as well as in part to
+gain applause should a case so desperate turn out favorably, said, in
+the hearing of my nurse, "He'll die in just thirty-six hours."</p>
+
+<p>Now, whatever his intentions were, and however honest his declaration,
+my nurse swallowed it at once, and was restless till he had an
+opportunity to divulge what he regarded as an important secret. It is by
+no means improbable that he entertained the usual impressions that a
+special preparation should be made for death, and that it was needful I
+should know my danger and attend to the subject before it was too late.</p>
+
+<p>In one of my most lucid intervals, therefore, he said to me, "Do you
+expect to recover from your disease?"&mdash;"Most certainly I do," was the
+reply. "Do you know what Dr. Thornton thinks about it?"&mdash;"Not certainly;
+but from his cheerful manner, I suppose he thinks favorably."&mdash;"Do you
+think you could bear to know the truth? For if it was unfavorable, would
+it not be too much for you in your enfeebled condition?"</p>
+
+<p>My heart was in my mouth, as the saying is, at this broad hint; and with
+a strong and earnest curiosity, I begged to know the worst, and to know
+it immediately. My attendant saw, in my agitation, his error, and would
+doubtless have receded had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span> it been in his power; but it was too late;
+the die was cast; my curiosity was all on tiptoe, and I trembled, as a
+sailor would say, from stem to stern. "Well," said he, at length,
+putting on a face which of itself was enough to destroy some very feeble
+persons, "he says you cannot live more than thirty-six hours."</p>
+
+<p>My friend, in divulging what he deemed an important secret, doubtless
+felt relieved; but not so with me. My philosophy had disappeared with
+the progress of my disease, and I was now, in mind, a mere child. In
+short, I was so much agitated by the unexpected intelligence, that I
+sank at once under it, and remained in this condition for several hours.
+When I awoke from this delirium, the symptoms of my disease were more
+favorable, and from that day forth I began to recover.</p>
+
+<p>But the risk was too great for my enfeebled and diseased frame, and
+should not have been incurred. Dr. Thornton, though a physician of much
+reputation, was nevertheless a man of very little principle, and though
+respected for his medical tact and skill, was beloved by very few. He
+died, moreover, not many years afterward, as the fool dieth; viz., by
+suicidal hands. Nor do I know that as a man&mdash;a mere citizen&mdash;he had many
+mourners.</p>
+
+<p>The reader will pardon me, perhaps, for saying so many times, and with
+so much emphasis, that "it is an ill wind that blows nobody any good."
+But I must be allowed to repeat the saying here, and to observe that
+while I entirely disapprove of the course my attendant took in the
+present instance, I am by no means sure that the delirium into which I
+was thrown by his tattling propensity was not safer for me than a
+restless apprehension of danger would have been, especially when long
+continued; nor that it did not contribute, indirectly, to bring about my
+recovery.</p>
+
+<p>I was confined to the house by my sickness about five or six weeks, or
+till it was midwinter. And yet, all covered as the earth was when I
+first ventured forth, no Paradise could ever appear more beautiful to
+any son or daughter of Adam than did this terrestrial abode to me. And
+if ever I shed tears of devout gratitude to my Father in Heaven, it was
+on this very occasion.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It was a long time, however, after I got out of doors, before I was
+strong enough, in body or mind, to attempt to perform much labor. At the
+time of being taken sick, I was teaching a public school; and as soon as
+I began to be convalescent my patrons began to be clamorous about the
+school. They were hardly willing to wait till my physicians and myself
+deemed it safe to make a beginning. Indeed, notwithstanding all my
+caution, I was hurried into the pedagogic chair quite too soon.</p>
+
+<p>But it is time for me to inform my readers what were the probable causes
+of my sickness; for I have already said, more than once, that to be able
+to do this is a matter of very great importance, both as it concerns
+ourselves and others; and it is a thing which can be done, at least to a
+considerable extent, whenever parents and teachers shall be wise enough
+to put their children and pupils upon the right track. I am well
+acquainted with a minister of the gospel, now nearly sixty years of age,
+who says he never had any thing ail him in his whole lifetime of which
+he could not trace out the cause.</p>
+
+<p>For some months before my sickness I had been curtailing my hours of
+sleep. I had resolved to retire at eleven and rise at four. But it had
+often happened that instead of retiring at exactly eleven and rising
+exactly at four, I had not gone to bed till nearly twelve, and had risen
+as early as half-past three. So that instead of sleeping five full
+hours, as had been my original intention, I had often slept but about
+four.</p>
+
+<p>How far this abridgment of my sleep had fallen in with other causes of
+debility, and thus prepared the way for severe, active disease, I cannot
+say. I was at this time tasking my energies very severely, for I was not
+only pursuing my professional studies with a good deal of earnestness,
+but at the same time, as has been already intimated, teaching a large
+and somewhat unmanageable district school. If ever a good supply of
+sleep is needful, whatever the quantum required may really be, I am sure
+it is in such circumstances.</p>
+
+<p>But then it should be remembered, in abatement of all this, that the
+symptoms of disease, in all the three cases which I have alluded to, as
+occurring in the family with which I was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span> connected, were very much
+alike; whereas neither the mother nor the child had suffered, prior to
+the sickness, for want of sleep. Must we not, therefore, look for some
+other cause? Or if it is to be admitted that sleeplessness is
+exceedingly debilitating in its tendencies, must there not have been in
+addition some exciting cause still more striking? We will see.</p>
+
+<p>During the latter part of the autumn which preceded our sickness, the
+water of the well from which we were drinking daily had a very
+unpleasant odor, and a fellow student and myself often spoke of it. As
+it appeared to give offence, however, we gradually left off our remarks
+and complaints about the water, and only abstained, as much as we could
+conveniently, from its use.</p>
+
+<p>In the progress of the autumn, the well became nearly dry, and the
+offensive odor having become troublesome to others no less than to
+ourselves, it was very wisely concluded to draw out the water to the
+bottom, and thus find and remove the impurities. The task was
+exceedingly trying, but was at length accomplished.</p>
+
+<p>Besides other impurities, there were found at the bottom of the well,
+several toads in a state of putrefaction, and so very offensive that it
+was difficult to approach them, or even to approach the top of the well
+that contained them. They were of course removed as soon as possible,
+and every practicable measure was adopted which was favorable to
+cleanliness. This final clearing of the well was about two months before
+the sickness commenced.</p>
+
+<p>Now whether there was a connection between the use of this water and the
+sickness which followed, is a curious, and at the same time, a very
+important question. Against this belief, at least apparently so, is the
+fact that our disease resembled in no trifling degree, the prevailing
+disease in certain neighboring towns. Another fact is also worthy of
+consideration. The rest of the family drank freely of the water, why did
+not they sicken as well as we?</p>
+
+<p>But as a deduction from the force of these facts, it is to be observed
+that nobody else around us for several miles had the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span> prevailing
+epidemic unless it was ourselves. And then as to the objection that only
+a part of the family sickened, it is to be recollected that in the case
+of some of them who sickened there might have been, nay, probably were,
+other debilitating causes in operation previously, to prepare the way;
+such as, for example, in my own case, the want of sufficient sleep.</p>
+
+<p>Thus far, then, though we arrive at nothing positive, we yet find our
+suspicions of a poisonous influence emanating from the putrid reptiles
+remaining. Indeed, it were impossible wholly to suppress them, and I
+will ask the candid reader's attention for a few moments to certain
+analogical evidence in the case, which, it is believed, will greatly aid
+the mind in coming to a right decision on the subject.</p>
+
+<p>An eruptive disease broke out in two families residing in a house in
+Eastern Massachusetts, a few years ago, which was observed to affect
+more or less, every member of the two families who had drunk water from
+the common family well, except two; and these last had drank but very
+little. On cleaning the well, the same species of reptiles which I have
+already mentioned, were found in it, in a state of decomposition, and
+highly offensive. No eruptive complaints of the same general kind
+prevailed at the time in the neighborhood, and those which I have
+mentioned disappeared soon after resuming the use of pure water.</p>
+
+<p>Another instance occurred in this same region, a few years afterward. In
+the latter case, however, the putrid animals were rats and mice, and the
+eruption, instead of having a diffused or miliary appearance, partook
+largely of the character of the common boil.</p>
+
+<p>Forty years ago a sickness broke out in Litchfield county in
+Connecticut, in a neighborhood where the wells were all very low; and
+the water which remained being in a cavity of rock, and continuing
+unchanged or nearly so, had at length become putrid. It was late in the
+autumn when the disease broke out, and it disappeared as soon as the
+wells were duly filled for the winter. It is true, I never heard in the
+latter case, any thing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span> about putrid animals, but their existence and
+presence under such circumstances, would be natural enough.</p>
+
+<p>It has, I know, been sometimes said that putrid animal substances,
+however unpleasant their odor might be, were not poisonous. But this
+opinion is doubtless unfounded; and, for myself, I find it difficult to
+resist the belief that in all the foregoing cases, except the last, and
+very possibly in that too, animal putridity had influence.</p>
+
+<p>The practical lessons to be derived from the developments of the
+foregoing chapter are exceedingly numerous. I shall direct your
+attention for a few moments, to some of the more important.</p>
+
+<p>First, we learn the necessity of keeping our wells in a proper
+condition. Could it be even proved that dead reptiles never produce
+disease, it is at least highly desirable to avoid them. No reasonable
+person would be willing to drink water highly impregnated with their
+odor, even if it did not reach his own seat of sensation.</p>
+
+<p>Secondly, we should avoid the use of stagnant water, even though it
+should be free from animal impurities. Especially should we be cautious
+where there is a liability, or even a possibility, to impurity and
+stagnation both. Either of these causes may, as it is most fully
+believed, produce disease; but if so, what is not to be expected from a
+combination of the two?</p>
+
+<p>Our wells should be often cleaned. It is not possible, of course, to say
+with exactness, how often, but we shall hardly err in the line of
+excess. Very few wells are cleaned too often. Once a year, in ordinary
+cases, cannot be too much; nor am I quite sure that twice would be
+useless.</p>
+
+<p>It seems to me quite possible to exclude animals from our wells, would
+we but take the necessary pains; and this, too, without covering them
+closely at the top. I can not see how any toad, unless it be the
+tree-toad so called, could climb a well-curb three feet high. Other
+animals, however, might do so, and therefore I would keep a well as
+closely covered as possible.</p>
+
+<p>Many, I know, believe it desirable that the surface of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span> water in a
+well should be exposed to the air. I do not believe there is any
+necessity for this, though it is certainly desirable to avoid stagnation
+of the air at the bottom. Motion is essential, I might even say
+indispensable. I have sometimes thought the modern endless or chain pump
+as perfect a fixture as any other.</p>
+
+<p>Thirdly, we may learn from the details of the foregoing chapter, the
+necessity of having in our sick-chambers the right sort of nurses or
+attendants. There should be a class of persons educated to this service,
+as a profession; and most happily for the prospects of the great human
+family, such efforts are now being made; it is hoped and believed they
+will be crowned with success.</p>
+
+<p>One thing more may, as I think, be inferred from the story of my
+sickness as above:&mdash;the folly of multiplying physicians. In the present
+case, when the physician's own family was in a condition to demand a
+large share of his attention, if not to absorb all his energies, it may
+have been desirable to call in an additional medical man as counsellor.
+But the multiplication of counsel, besides adding to the danger of too
+much dosing and drugging, brings with it a host of ills too numerous to
+be mentioned in this place, and should be studiously avoided. My full
+belief is, that Dr. Thornton was a principal agent in creating the
+dangers he deprecated, and which came so near effecting my own
+destruction.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIII" id="CHAPTER_XXIII"></a>CHAPTER XXIII.</h2>
+
+<h3>ABOUT TO DIE OF CONSUMPTION.</h3>
+
+
+<p>I have already mentioned more than once,&mdash;or at least done so by
+implication,&mdash;that I hold my existence, on this earth by a very feeble
+tenure. Consumption, by right of inheritance, made very early claims;
+and its demands, as I approached manhood, became more and more cogent,
+in consequence of measles, dropsy, Lee's Pills, and the injudicious use
+of medicine and many other errors. My employment, too, as school teacher
+had been far enough from favorable to health. While thus engaged from
+winter to winter, and sometimes from year to year; I was accustomed to
+have cold upon cold, till at length especially towards the close of
+winter and at the opening of the spring, I was often apparently on the
+verge of a rapid decline. A ramble up and down the country, with a
+summer or part of a summer on the farm or garden, did indeed for a time
+partially set me up again, so that I could return to my favorite
+employment of teaching in the autumn and during the winter; and thus
+time with me went on.</p>
+
+<p>A course of medical lectures which I heard in 1825-6, left me, in March,
+1826, in about as bad a state of health as school keeping usually had
+done. However I was too indigent, I might even say too destitute, to be
+idle. Scarcely was my license to practise medicine and surgery fairly in
+my pocket, than I found myself turning towards the district school
+again. Yet I did not continue it many weeks before my old enemy returned
+upon me with renewed strength; till I was at length compelled to abandon
+the school entirely. I had as much as I could do, in attempting to keep
+up a successful war with cough, night-sweats, purulent expectoration,
+and hectic fever.</p>
+
+<p>This was one of the darkest periods of my life. Destitute of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span> money, and
+even somewhat in debt, yet too proud or self-relying to be willing to
+ask my friends to aid me; my hopes of usefulness defeated in two
+favorite fields of activity, teaching and medicine; and practically
+given up to linger out a year or two and then die, how could I avoid
+discouragement? Was it strange even, if I approached at times, the very
+borders of despair?</p>
+
+<p>For some time prior to this crisis&mdash;indeed at certain seasons all my
+life long,&mdash;I relied not a little on medicine, in various forms,
+especially in the shape of tonics. Strange that I should have done thus,
+when my general impressions were so unfavorable to its exhibition; and
+yet such inconsistencies have been, and may be again. Huxham's tincture,
+quassia, ale, and other bitter infusions and tinctures, had been
+successively invoked, and I still clung to ale. I also used some wine,
+and I attached a good deal of importance to a stimulating diet. But it
+was all to no purpose, the disease was marching on steadily, and
+appeared destined to triumph; and that, too, at no very distant period.</p>
+
+<p>In these circumstances, I repeat, what could be done? Nature's extremity
+is sometimes said to be God's opportunity. But without assuming that
+there was any special providence about it, I will say, that I was driven
+to desperation, nay almost to insanity or madness. I deemed myself on
+the very verge of a mighty precipice, beneath which yawned a gulf
+unfathomable. I must make a last mighty struggle, or perish
+irretrievably and forever.</p>
+
+<p>It was July 4th, the anniversary of American Independence; I sought and
+found a few moments of calm reflection, and began to interrogate myself.
+Why was I so dependent on the physician and the apothecary's shop, and
+so tremblingly alive to every external impression of atmospheric
+temperature, or purity? Why must I, at the early age of twenty-eight, be
+doomed to tread the long road of decline and death? Why can I not
+declare independence of all external remedial agents, and throw myself
+wholly on nature and nature's God? I know, full well, the laws of my
+being. If trust in these, and faithful<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span> and persevering obedience will
+not save me, nothing will. Thus I mused; but alas! it was to muse only.
+Though almost ready to take the critical step,&mdash;I will not say make the
+desperate plunge,&mdash;the fourth of July finally passed away, and found me
+still lingering, to use a Scripture expression, "between the porch and
+the altar."</p>
+
+<p>July the fifth at length arrived. And is it all over? I said to myself.
+Has the "glorious" <i>Fourth</i> gone by and I have not acted up to the
+dignity of a well-formed and glorious resolution? Must I, alas! now go
+on to woe irretrievable? Must I go down to the consumptive's grave? Must
+I perish at less than thirty years of age, and thus make good the
+declaration that the wicked shall not live out half his days?</p>
+
+<p>A new thought came to me. "One of the South American provinces
+celebrated her Independence to day, the fifth. I will take the hint,&mdash;I
+will yet be free. I will escape from present circumstances. I will fly
+from my native home, and all that pertains to it. I will fly from
+myself,&mdash;It is done," I added, "and I go with the first conveyance."</p>
+
+<p>I could indeed walk a little distance, but it either set me to coughing,
+severely, or else threw me into a profuse perspiration which was equally
+exhausting. One favorable symptom alone remained, a good appetite and
+tolerable digestion. Had there been, in addition to the long train of
+troublesome and dangerous symptoms above mentioned, a loss of digestive
+power and energy, with colliquative diarrh&oelig;a, my hopes must have been
+forever abandoned.</p>
+
+<p>But I had made my resolution, and was prepared to execute it, let the
+consequences be what they might. With little more than a single change
+of clothing, I contrived to find a conveyance before night, quite beyond
+my immediate neighborhood. Fatigued, at length I stopped, and without
+much delay, committed myself to the friendship of Morpheus.</p>
+
+<p>On the top of a considerable eminence, in the very midst of a mountain
+range, one of the most delightful in all New England, only a few miles
+from the place of my lodging, was a tower some sixty or seventy feet
+high, which commanded a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span> view of the surrounding country. I had often
+wished to enjoy the prospect which this tower afforded. Was there, now
+an opportunity? I had the leisure, had I the needful strength? Could I
+possibly reach it? And by what means?</p>
+
+<p>I rested for the remainder of the day and the night following, at the
+foot of the eminence, in order to prepare myself for the excursion of
+the following morning. It was as much as I could do, that night to take
+care of my irritable and irritated lungs. At length, however, I slept,
+and was refreshed. The only drawback upon my full renewal, was my usual
+night&mdash;or rather as I ought to say morning&mdash;perspiration, which was
+quite drenching and exhausting; though not much worse after all my fears
+than usual.</p>
+
+<p>God is good, I said to myself, when I saw from my chamber window the top
+of the hills I wished to climb, and perceived that the first rays of the
+morning sun were already falling upon them. By the middle of the
+forenoon I was at the foot of the mountain, and prepared to ascend it.
+After a little rest, I wound my way to the tower, and finally to its
+top, when I took a survey of what seemed to me like a new world. Here I
+renewed my declaration of independence with regard to those earthly
+props on which I had so long been wont to lean, and of dependence on
+God, and on his natural and moral enactments.</p>
+
+<p>Here, too, I formed my programme for the day and for the week. Distant
+from the point which I occupied not more than eight miles was a most
+interesting educational institution I had long wished to see; and near
+it was an old acquaintance, with, whom I might perhaps spend the
+Sabbath, which was now approaching. Could I carry out my plan? Had I the
+needful strength?</p>
+
+<p>My resolution was at length made; and no sooner made than begun to be
+executed. The public houses on the way were miserable things; but they
+were better far than none.</p>
+
+<p>They gave me a temporary home, such as it was. I reached the
+institution, had a partial view of it, and, half worn out with my week's
+labor, was glad to rest the seventh day, "according<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span> to the
+commandment," in the house of an old acquaintance.</p>
+
+<p>Monday morning came, and with the aid of the intervening Sabbath,
+brought to my attenuated and almost sinking frame a new recruit of
+strength. With a new object of interest some fifteen miles distant, I
+was once more on the road. I could now walk several miles a day without
+greatly increasing my cough, or ride in a stage coach many miles. Nor
+was the nightly perspiration, nor even that which was induced by
+exercise, any more distressing than it had been, if indeed it was as
+much so.</p>
+
+<p>In due time I reached my point of destination, and curiosity became
+fully gratified. What next? A few miles distant was a high mountain
+which I greatly desired to climb. I reached its base; but the heat was
+great, so dog-days like, that my courage failed me. I had the necessary
+strength, but dared not use it for such a purpose. Perhaps I acted
+wisely.</p>
+
+<p>Twelve miles in the distance still was my father's house, now grown from
+a few patrimonial acres to full New England size; viz., a hundred acres
+or more, and well cultivated. My wandering abroad had given me a little
+strength and very much courage. Why should it not? Was it not truly
+encouraging that while I was making a long excursion, chiefly on foot,
+in the heats of midsummer, my cough and hectic and night sweats should
+become no worse, while my muscular strength had very much increased?</p>
+
+<p>My mind's eye turned towards my father's house as a place of refuge. In
+a day or two I was in it; and in another day or two I was caparisoned as
+a laborer, and in the field. It is true that I did not at first
+accomplish a great deal; but I held the implements of husbandry in my
+hands, and spent a certain number of hours every day in attempting to
+work. Some of the workmen laughed about me, and spoke of the vast
+benefits to be derived from having a ghost in the field with them; but I
+held on in spite of their jokes. I had been accustomed of old to the
+labor of a farm, which greatly facilitated my efforts. Habit is
+powerful.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Not many weeks passed ere I was able to perform half a day's work or
+more in a day. My consumptive tendencies, moreover, were far less
+exhausting and trying. In a word, I was better. The Rubicon was already
+passed. I did not, indeed, expect to get entirely well, for this would
+have been a hope too big for me. But I should not die, I thought,
+immediately. Drowning men, as you know, catch at straws; and this is a
+wise arrangement, for otherwise they would not often be saved by planks.</p>
+
+<p>One point, at least, I had gained. I was emancipated from slavery to
+external forms, especially medicated forms. But I had not only declared
+and found myself able to maintain independence of medicine, but I had
+acquired much confidence in nature and nature's laws. And this faith in
+the recuperative powers of nature was worth more to me than worlds would
+have been without it.</p>
+
+<p>Much was said, in those days, not only in books but by certain learned
+professors, about shaking off pulmonary consumption on horseback.
+Whether, indeed, this had often been done&mdash;for it is not easy, in the
+case of a joint application of various restorative agencies, such as
+air, light, full mental occupation etc., to give to each agency its just
+due&mdash;I am not quite prepared to say. But as soon as I was able to ride
+on horseback several miles a day, the question was agitated whether it
+was or was not advisable.</p>
+
+<p>In prosecuting this inquiry, another question came up. How would it do,
+thought I, to commence at once the practice of medicine? But
+difficulties almost innumerable&mdash;some of them apparently
+insurmountable&mdash;lay in my way. Among the rest, I had no confidence in my
+medical knowledge or tact; I was a better school-master. But teaching,
+as I had every reason to fear, would bring me down again, and I could
+not think of that: whereas the practice of medicine, on horseback, which
+at that time and in that region was not wholly out of date, might, as I
+thought, prove quite congenial.</p>
+
+<p>Besides being "fearful and unbelieving" in the matter, I was still in
+the depths of poverty. I had not even five dollars.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span> In fact, during my
+excursion already described, I had lived on a few ounces of solid food
+and a little milk or ale each day, in order to eke out my almost
+exhausted finances; though, by the way, I do not know but I owed my
+partial final recovery in no small degree to this very starvation
+system. However, to become a practising physician, money would be
+indispensable, more or less. What could be done without it? My father
+had credit, and could raise money for me; but <i>would</i> he? He had never
+wholly approved of my medical tendencies and course; and would it be
+right to ask him to aid me in an undertaking which he could not
+conscientiously approve?</p>
+
+<p>Just at this time our own family physician wanted to sell, and offered
+me his stand. His practice, he said, was worth a thousand dollars a
+year. He had an old dilapidated house and a couple of acres of miserable
+land, and a horse. These, he said, he would sell to me for so much. I
+might ride with him as a kind of apprentice or journeyman for six
+months, at the expiration of which time he would vacate the field
+wholly.</p>
+
+<p>The house, land, and horse were worth perhaps one-third the sum
+demanded, but probably not more. However, the price with me, made very
+little difference. One sum was much the same with another. For I was so
+anxious to live, that I was willing to pay almost any price which might
+be required by a reasonable man, and till that time, it had not entered
+my heart that a good man would take any serious advantage of a fellow
+being in circumstances so desperate. And then I was not only anxious to
+live, but very confident I should live. So strong was my determination
+to live on, and so confident was I in the belief that I should do so,
+that I was willing to incur a debt, which at any other period of my life
+would have discouraged me.</p>
+
+<p>There was another thing that tended to revive me and restore my courage.
+The more I thought of commencing business, and talked about living, the
+more I found my strength increasing. That talking about dying had a
+downward or down-hill tendency, I had long known; but that the tendency
+of talking up-hill was exactly the reverse, I had not fully and clearly
+understood.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>My father tried to dissuade me from a hasty decision, but it was to no
+purpose. To me, it seemed that the course I had proposed was my only
+alternative. "I must do it," I said to myself, "or die;" and life to me,
+as well as to others, was sweet. But although it was a course to which I
+seemed shut up, and which I must pursue or die, it was a step which I
+could not take unaided. I had not the pecuniary ability to purchase so
+much as a horse, or, had I needed one, hardly a good dog.</p>
+
+<p>It was at length proposed by my medical friend, the seller, to accept of
+a long credit for the amount due for the place and appurtenances,
+provided, however, I would get my father or some other good man to be my
+endorser. But here was a difficulty almost or quite insurmountable. My
+father had always said he would endorse for nobody. And as for asking
+any one else to endorse for me, I dared not.</p>
+
+<p>But I cannot dwell at this point. My father at length became my
+endorser, and the bargain was signed and sealed. It was indeed, a
+desperate effort, and I have a thousand times wondered how I could have
+ventured. Why! only one or two years before, I was miserable for several
+days because I was in debt to the extent of only two dollars for a
+much-needed article, and actually procured the money with considerable
+difficulty, and went and paid the debt to get rid of my anguish; whereas
+now, without much pain and without being worth fifty dollars in the
+world, I could be willing to contract a debt of from twelve to fifteen
+hundred dollars, and involve my good old father in the consequences
+besides. How entirely unaccountable!</p>
+
+<p>But mankind love life, and fear death. The scheme proposed was, as I
+believed, not only a dernier but a needful resort. It was a wrong step
+no doubt, but I did not then think so. I believed the end "sanctified"
+or at least sanctioned the means. How could I have done so? "What
+ardently we wish, we soon believe." I had most ardently wished, I now
+began to believe!</p>
+
+<p>My consumptive tendencies now receded apace, even before I was astride
+of my horse. The stimulus of the hope of life<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span> with a forgetfulness of
+myself, were better tonics than Huxham or ale or rich food. There was
+the expectation of living, and consequently the beginning of life. Mind
+has great power over even inert matter; how much more over the living
+animated machine!</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIV" id="CHAPTER_XXIV"></a>CHAPTER XXIV.</h2>
+
+<h3>MY JOURNEYMANSHIP IN MEDICINE.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Journeymen in medicine, though without the full responsibilities of the
+profession, have yet their difficulties. I had mine; and I had not only
+the ordinary complement of ordinary men, but some which were a little
+extra.</p>
+
+<p>For example, I was no horseman at all, and people around me knew it. At
+the first attempt to mount a new horse, and ride out with the old
+physician, of whom I had purchased my stand, to see his patients, I made
+an exhibition of my horsemanship which I shall not soon forget, and
+which I am sure certain wags and half-buffoons and common loungers who
+witnessed the scene <i>never</i> will.</p>
+
+<p>My horse stood at the post all caparisoned, while I made ready. In
+setting off, I knew well I must submit to the ordeal of being gazed at
+and commented on by a crowd assembled in an adjoining store. It was a
+rainy day, and the crowd would doubtless be much larger than usual. Now
+my love of approbation was excessive; so great as at times to defeat
+entirely its object. So in truth, it proved on the present occasion.</p>
+
+<p>When I was ready to go forth on my journey, I mounted my horse and
+attempted to place my right foot in the stirrup. At this critical
+instant the gaping multitude in the grocery, presented themselves in
+quite a formidable column at the door to see the young doctor on his new
+horse. Their appearance threw my mind off its balance to an extent that
+prevented me from well-balancing my body, and with every possible
+exertion I could not get my feet firmly fixed in the stirrups. To add to
+my trouble, my horse was in haste and trotted off high and hard before I
+could muster presence of mind enough to check him. I rolled this way and
+that, till at length, down I came<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span> headlong. My hat went one way, and my
+whip another. A great shout was at once raised by the spectators, but
+being cured by this time, of my excessive diffidence, and not at all
+hurt, I could soon join in the laugh with the rest. I could most
+heartily adopt my old maxim, "It is an ill wind that blows nobody any
+good;" and I had learned by my fall at least, one thing, at least for
+the moment; viz., my excessive regard to human approbation.
+Thenceforward, I rode as I pleased.</p>
+
+<p>But before I enter upon the details and particular confessions of my
+professional career, it is needful that I should say something of those
+changes which were made about this time in my physical habits, by means
+of which I gained at least a temporary victory over my great enemy, the
+consumption. For it must not be supposed that because I could sit on a
+horse and ride six, eight, ten, or twelve miles a day, or work in the
+field or garden half the day, I was out of danger. I had, indeed, gained
+important victories, but there remained very much land yet to be
+possessed.</p>
+
+<p>Of my abandonment of all medicine, I have already told you. But I had
+also greatly changed my dietetic habits. During my excursion of the
+fifth of July, and subsequently, I had lived almost wholly on what might
+have been denominated the starvation system. The case was this: I
+started with less than five dollars in my pocket, and with too much
+pride to borrow more. That my money might hold out, therefore, though I
+took care to secure a good, clean bed by nights, even at the full market
+price (except when I was entertained occasionally, by particular
+friends), I almost went without food. Many a time was I satisfied,
+because I was determined to have it so, with a tumbler of milk and a
+couple of crackers for my breakfast, or even my dinner; and as for
+supper, I often dispensed with it wholly; and all this too, strange
+though it may seem, not only without the loss of strength, but with a
+slow, yet steady, increase.</p>
+
+<p>These dietetic changes, though they were a necessity, were continued and
+extended from principle. I had known, for a long time, what the laws of
+digestion, respiration, circulation, cleanliness, exercise, etc., were,
+but had not fully obeyed them. But<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span> I now set myself obeying them up to
+the full extent of my knowledge. I do not mean to affirm that my
+obedience was perfect and entire&mdash;wanting in nothing; but only that I
+made an attempt at sinless perfection. However, I speak here, of course,
+of the physical code; for to moral obligation, at that time, I do not
+mean, now, to refer.</p>
+
+<p>My diet was exceedingly plain and comparatively unstimulating. It
+consisted chiefly of bread, fruits, potatoes; and, once a day of salted
+meats. These last should have been exchanged for those which were not
+pickled, and which are of course less stimulating; but at that time I
+was not fully aware of their tone and tendency. My drink was water and a
+little tea; for cider I had long before abandoned.</p>
+
+<p>I paid particular attention to purity of air, and to temperance.
+Fortunately I resided in a house which from age and decrepitude, pretty
+effectually ventilated itself. But temperature, as I well knew, must be
+carefully attended to, particularly by consumptive people. While they
+avoid permanent chilliness, and even at times, the inhalation of very
+cold air on the one hand, it is quite indispensable that they should
+breathe habitually as cool an air as possible, and yet not be
+permanently chilly. This, by means of a proper dress, by night and by
+day, and proper fixtures for heating my room, I contrived to secure.</p>
+
+<p>Cleanliness, too, by dint of frequent bathing, received its full share
+of my attention. It was a rule from which I seldom if ever departed, to
+wet my body daily with cold water, and follow it up by friction. At home
+or abroad, wherever I could get a bowl of water I would have a hand
+bath.</p>
+
+<p>Need I say here that a medical man&mdash;one who rode daily on
+horseback&mdash;paid a proper regard to the laws of exercise? And yet I am
+well persuaded that not a few medical men exercise far too little.
+Riding on horseback, though it may sometimes shake off consumption, is
+not so good an exercise for the mass of mankind&mdash;perhaps not even for
+consumptive people themselves&mdash;as an alternation of walking with the
+riding. This, also, I took good care to secure.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Physicians are usually either very greatly addicted to the habit of
+dosing and drugging for every little ill, real or imaginary, or
+particularly hostile to it. I have seldom found any such thing as a
+golden mean in this respect, among them. My feelings, saying nothing at
+present of the sober convictions of my head, led me almost to the
+extreme of no medicine, if extreme it can be called. I did not even
+retain my daily tumbler of ale.</p>
+
+<p>Though I began my medical career as an apprentice or journeyman, merely,
+and went abroad chiefly as the associate of my predecessor, I was soon
+called upon in his absence, and in other circumstances, to take the
+whole charge of patients; or at least to do so till a longer experience
+was available. Thus I was gradually inducted into an important office,
+without incurring a full and proportionate share of its
+responsibilities.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXV" id="CHAPTER_XXV"></a>CHAPTER XXV.</h2>
+
+<h3>MY TEMPERANCE PLEDGE.</h3>
+
+
+<p>The subject of Temperance, in its present associated forms, had, at this
+time, just began to be agitated. At least, it had just begun to receive
+attention in the newspapers which I was accustomed to see. It could not
+be otherwise than that I should be deeply interested in its discussion.</p>
+
+<p>I had been brought up, as I have before intimated, to a pretty free use
+of cider and tea; but not of ardent spirits or coffee. Neither of these
+was regularly used in my father's family; though both occasionally were.
+But I had abandoned cider long before this time, because I found it had
+a tendency to produce, or at least to aggravate, those eruptive diseases
+to which I was greatly liable. Temperance, then, in the popular sense of
+the term, was, to me, an easy virtue.</p>
+
+<p>And yet as a temperance man&mdash;in the circle of my acquaintance&mdash;I stood
+nearly alone. No individual around me was ready to take the ground I
+occupied. Of this, however, I was not fully apprised, till a patient
+attempt to recruit the temperance ranks convinced me of the fact. But I
+will give you a full account of my enterprise, since it has a bearing on
+my subsequent history and confessions.</p>
+
+<p>With the aid of a Boston paper which I habitually read, I drew up the
+customary preamble, declaration, and pledge of a temperance society. It
+involved the great idea of total abstinence from spirituous liquors;
+though by the term spirituous liquors, as used at that day, was meant
+chiefly <i>distilled</i> spirits. Having first affixed my own name to the
+paper I went to the most influential of my patrons and friends and asked
+them to sign it likewise. But, reader,&mdash;will you believe<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span> it?&mdash;not a
+single subscriber could I obtain far, or near. They all, with one
+consent, made excuse.</p>
+
+<p>The elder deacon of the most evangelical church in the place where I
+resided, had for his apology that he suffered seriously from a complaint
+for which his physicians had prescribed the daily use of gin, "Now,"
+said he, "though there is nothing in the pledge which goes to prohibit
+the use of spirits in a case like my own, yet as some might think
+otherwise and charge me with inconsistency, I must on the whole be
+excused from signing it."</p>
+
+<p>His son, who was also a deacon in the same church with the father,
+excused himself by saying he was young, and without influence, and it
+would be far better for the old people to put their names down first.
+"Perhaps," said he, "I may conclude to sign the paper by-and-by. I will
+consider well the matter, and if I conclude to sign it, I will let you
+know."</p>
+
+<p>Other leading men in the church as well as in the town affairs, refused
+to sign the pledge, because Deacon H. and son would not. It belonged to
+the deacons in the church, they said, to take the lead in all good
+things, and not to them. When <i>they</i> had put <i>their</i> names to the
+document, others would not long hesitate to follow.</p>
+
+<p>In short nobody would consent to sign the paper, and it remains to this
+day, just as it was when I drew it up; and it is now more than thirty
+years old. There it is, with my name attached to it, as large as life. I
+have been President, Vice President, Treasurer, Secretary, and "all
+hands too," of my would-be Temperance Society, from that day to this. I
+doubt whether many societies can be found which in thirty years have
+made so little change as the one under consideration.</p>
+
+<p>For about four years from the time of getting up the above-named
+temperance society, strange as the assertion may seem, I retained the
+right to use a little beer and a good deal of coffee. But in May, 1830,
+I abandoned all drinks but water, to which custom I have ever since
+adhered and in which I shall probably die.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXVI" id="CHAPTER_XXVI"></a>CHAPTER XXVI.</h2>
+
+<h3>TRIALS OF A YOUNG PHYSICIAN.</h3>
+
+
+<p>The poet Cowper, in his delineations of a candidate for the pulpit,
+prescribes, as one needful condition or qualification,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"That he is honest in the sacred cause."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>So, when I entered upon the medical profession, which I regarded as next
+of kin to sacred, I deemed honesty quite a high recommendation; and
+whatever in the abstract appeared to me to be right, I endeavored to
+pursue through the routine of every-day life. Alas, that I should ever
+have had occasion to doubt the policy of common honesty!</p>
+
+<p>I was called to see Mrs. &mdash;&mdash;. The case was an urgent one. There was no
+time for deliberation or consultation. I understood her case but very
+poorly; yet I knew that in order to success I must at least <i>seem</i> to be
+wise. Besides, what was to be done must be done quickly; so I boldly
+prescribed. My prescription was entirely successful, and I left the
+house with flying colors. I left, moreover, with the full consciousness
+of having acted in the main like an honest man.</p>
+
+<p>A few days afterward I was sent for by Mrs. &mdash;&mdash;, who immediately filled
+my ears with the most piteous complaints, the sum total of which was
+that she was exceedingly <i>nervous</i>, and I told her so. Of course I did
+not complain of culpability or crime. But I told her, very plainly, that
+she needed no medicine&mdash;nothing but plenty of air and exercise, and less
+high-seasoned food. My great frankness gave offence, and impaired my
+reputation. She employed, in my stead, Dr. Robinson, who continued to
+attend her till his bill amounted to a sum sufficient to buy a good
+carriage and harness, and till his credit for skill was advanced in a
+degree corresponding.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Mr. B.'s child was sick, and his wife besides. He came for my
+predecessor; but, not finding him at home,&mdash;though he still remained in
+the place,&mdash;he was compelled to Hobson's choice&mdash;myself or nobody; Dr.
+Robinson lived at too great a distance. I was accordingly employed, and
+was soon on the spot. The child was very sick; and for some little time
+after my arrival I was so much occupied in the performance of my duties
+that I paid no attention to any thing else. But having prescribed for
+both my patients, I sat down quietly to look over the newspaper.</p>
+
+<p>Presently I heard from Mrs. B. a deep groan. I was immediately at her
+bedside, anxious to know the cause. "Oh, nothing at all," she said,
+"except a momentary feeling of disappointment because Dr. &mdash;&mdash; did not
+come." I said to her, "You can send for him now, madam, as soon as he
+returns. Do not think yourselves compelled to adhere to me, simply
+because you have been obliged to call me once. I will yield most
+cheerfully to the individual of your preference."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. B. apologized. She knew I had done as well as I could, she said;
+and perhaps no one could have done better. "But little Leonora," said
+she, "is dreadfully sick; and I do very much want to see Dr. B. He has
+had more experience than you. These young doctors, just from the
+schools, what can they know, the best of them?"</p>
+
+<p>I saw her difficulties; but, as I have already intimated, I did not look
+so wise as Dr. B., nor had I so grave a face, nor so large an abdomen. I
+could neither tell so good a story, nor laugh so heartily; I could not
+even descend to that petty talk which is so often greatly preferred to
+silence or newspaper reading, not only by such individuals as Mrs. B.
+and her friends, but by most families. A physician must be a man of
+sympathy. He need not, however, descend to so low a level as that of
+dishonesty; but he must come down to the level of his people in regard
+to manners and conversation. He must converse with them in their own
+language. He must not only <i>seem</i> to be devoted, unreservedly, to their
+interests, but must actually <i>be</i> so. This confession is most cheerfully
+and sincerely and honestly made; and may he who reads it understand.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>On a certain occasion I was called to prescribe in a family where the
+disappointment was so great that the patient was actually made worse by
+my presence, and an unfavorable turn given to the disease. It may be
+said that people ought not to yield themselves up to the influence of
+such feelings; and it is certainly true that they ought not. But sick
+people are not always rational, nor even judicious. Dr. Johnson says:
+"Every sick man is a rascal;" but we need not go quite so far as that.
+Sickness changes us, morally, sometimes for the better, but much oftener
+for the worse; and in general it makes us much less reasonable.</p>
+
+<p>But it is far enough from being my intention to present a full account
+of the trials incident to the life of a young medical man; for, in order
+to do this, I should be obliged to carry you with me, at least mentally,
+to places which you would not greatly desire to visit. Physicians can
+seldom choose their patients; they are compelled to take them as they
+find them. They will sometimes be called to the vilest of the vile and
+the filthiest of the filthy.</p>
+
+<p>Their office is indeed a noble one; but is noblest of all when performed
+honestly, in the fear of God, with a view to do good, and not merely to
+please mankind and gratify their own ambition. Above all, they should
+not practise medicine for the mere love of money. A physician should
+have a heart overflowing with benevolence, and should feel it incumbent
+upon him, at every step in his professional life, not only to do good to
+his patients, but to all around him. He should be a guide to mankind,
+physically, for moral ends. He should let his light so shine, that they,
+seeing his good works, may be led to glorify the Father who is in
+heaven. His object should be to spread, by the good he performs, the
+everlasting gospel, just as truly as this should be the object of him
+who ministers in holy things at the altar. Such a physician, however, at
+first, I was not. Such, however, I soon aspired to be; such, as I trust,
+I at length became. Of this, however, the reader will judge for himself,
+by-and-by. "By their fruits ye shall know them."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXVII" id="CHAPTER_XXVII"></a>CHAPTER XXVII.</h2>
+
+<h3>A DOSING AND DRUGGING FAMILY.</h3>
+
+
+<p>For several months of the first year of my medical life, I was a boarder
+in a family, all of whom were sickly. Some of the number were even
+continually or almost continually under the influence of medicine, if
+not of physicians. Here my trials were various, and some of them severe.</p>
+
+<p>But I must give you a particular description of this family; for I have
+many things to say concerning it, some of which may prove instructive.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. L. had been brought up a farmer; but being possessed of a delicate
+constitution, had been subsequently converted into a country
+shop-keeper,&mdash;a dealer, I mean, in dry goods and groceries. As is usual
+in such cases, he was in the habit of keeping a small assortment of
+drugs and medicines. The circumstance of having medicine always at hand,
+and often <i>in</i> hand, had led him, as it has thousands of others, into
+temptation, till he had formed and confirmed the habit of frequent
+dosing and drugging his frail system. But as usually happens in such
+cases, the more medicine he took, the more he seemed to require, and
+consequently the more he swallowed. One thing prepared the way for
+another.</p>
+
+<p>With Mrs. L. matters were still worse. In the vain belief that without a
+course of medication, <i>she could never have any constitution</i>, as she
+was wont to express it, her mother had begun to dose and drug her as
+early as at the age of twelve or fourteen years. And what had been thus
+early begun, had been continued till she was twenty-four, when she
+married Mr. L. But she was feebler, if possible, at twenty-four, than at
+fourteen, and believed herself under the necessity of taking medicine in
+order to be able to sit up a part of the day and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span> perform a little
+light, but needful, family labor, such as sewing, mending, etc.</p>
+
+<p>When I first had a seat at their family table, it was by no means
+uncommon for Mr. and Mrs. L. to begin their meal, as soon as "grace" was
+over, with Stoughton's bitters, or some other supposed cordial, or
+strengthener of the appetite. As I not only refused to join them, but
+occasionally spoke a kind word against the custom into which they had
+fallen, the bitters at length fell into disuse; and it was found that
+their meals could be digested as well without the stimulus, as with its
+aid.</p>
+
+<p>But I was much less successful in preventing the torrent of medicine
+from producing its wonted &mdash;&mdash; upon this family, at other times and
+seasons; for which Mr. L.'s business furnished such facilities. But you
+must not think of Mrs. L. as a mere tyro in this business of compounding
+medicine, nor in that of administering it, especially to herself. From
+the apothecary's shop of her husband, as well as from other sources, she
+selected one thing after another, not merely for the time, but for
+permanent purposes, till it was almost difficult to say which had the
+best assortment, she or her husband. And she not only had it on hand,
+but she took it, as freely, almost so, as her food and drink.</p>
+
+<p>More than even this should be affirmed. Had she at any time flagged in
+this work of self-destruction, she would have been brought up again to
+the line by her mother. For though the latter resided at a considerable
+distance, she paid Mrs. L. an occasional visit, and sometimes remained
+in the family several weeks. Whenever she did so, little was heard of in
+the usual hours of conversation,&mdash;especially at the table,&mdash;but Sarah's
+stomach, Sarah's nerves, and what was good for Sarah. It was enough to
+make one <i>sick at the stomach</i>, to witness the conversation even for a
+single day; and above all to be compelled to join in it.</p>
+
+<p>She was there once, in the early spring, and remained until the ground
+was fairly settled. No sooner could she get into the woods, and come to
+the naked surface of the earth, than the whole country around was laid
+under tribute to furnish<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span> roots "good for the blood." These were put
+into a beer to be prepared for Sarah. It was supposed by many,&mdash;and by
+this wondrous wise old lady, among the rest,&mdash;that the efficacy of these
+medicinal beers in cleansing the blood, must ever be in due proportion
+to the number of their respective ingredients. Thus, if twenty articles,
+"good for the blood," could be procured and boiled in the wort, the
+result would be a compound which would be worth twenty times as much, or
+at least be <i>many</i> times as useful, in accomplishing its supposed
+specific purpose, as if only one kind of root had been obtained.</p>
+
+<p>It was a long time before I could break in upon this tissue of error, to
+any practical purpose. For so deeply imbedded in the human brain is the
+idea of purifying the blood by some such unnatural means, that one might
+almost as well think of building a railroad to the moon, as of
+overcoming it. They never thought&mdash;perhaps never knew&mdash;that the blood of
+the human body of to-day, will be little more the blood of the body
+to-morrow, than the river which flows by our door to-day will be the
+river of to-morrow; and that the one can no more be purified
+independently of any and all things else, than the other.</p>
+
+<p>But it is said to be a long road which never turns. Some good
+impressions had been made on this family, as we shall see hereafter.
+Not, indeed, until there had been much unnecessary suffering, and many
+an unwilling penalty paid for transgression, as well as much money
+uselessly expended for physicians and medicine. For though I was
+somewhat a favorite in the family, I was as yet young and inexperienced,
+and many a wiser head than mine was from time to time invoked, and much
+time and money lost in other ways, that might have been saved for better
+and nobler purposes.</p>
+
+<p>Among the items of loss, as well as of penalty, was that of offspring.
+These were generally still-born. One, indeed, lived about two weeks and
+then perished. The parents seemed to be written childless. Or rather,
+they seemed to have written themselves so. They seemed destined
+moreover, to follow their premature children, at no great distance, to
+an untimely<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span> grave. For nothing was more obvious&mdash;I mean to the medical
+observer&mdash;than at an age when everybody ought to be gaining in bodily no
+less than in mental and moral vigor, they were both of them growing
+feeble as well as irresolute.</p>
+
+<p>As a boarder, I left the family some time afterward, though I did not
+lose sight of it wholly; nor did they entirely forget or disregard the
+numerous hints I had given them. They made some progress every year. At
+length, however, I lost sight of them entirely, and only kept up a faint
+recollection of them by means of an occasional word of intelligence from
+the place where they resided, showing that they were still alive.</p>
+
+<p>One day, after the lapse of about eight years, as I was passing through
+a charming New England village, the stage-coach stopped to let the
+passengers dine, when, to my great surprise, on stepping out of the
+coach, whom should I see but my old friend Mr. L.? He was equally
+surprised, and perhaps equally rejoiced, to see me. The interview was
+utterly unexpected to us both.</p>
+
+<p>"How do you do?" said he, grasping my hand. I returned the compliment by
+inquiring after his own health and that of Mrs. L. It turned out that he
+had failed in his business a few months before, and that, as a
+consequence, he had been compelled to remove to the place where he now
+was, and engage in an employment which brought his skin into contact
+with the air, and his muscles into prolonged and healthful activity. It
+appeared also that both he and his family had long since banished the
+use of medicine. "And now," said he, "thank God I know what it is, once
+more, to enjoy health; I can not only eat, but work."</p>
+
+<p>It was Monday, the great <i>washing-day</i> of Yankee house-keepers; and
+while we were talking together with so much earnestness, that, like
+Milton's first pair in innocence, we "forgot all time," a female
+approached, with her sleeves rolled up, greeted me with much cordiality
+and seized me by the hand. "Can this be Mrs. L.?" I asked. How changed!
+She was, it is true, like her husband, a little sunburnt; but then she
+was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span> as she assured me, and, as I had every reason for believing to be
+true, comparatively healthy.</p>
+
+<p>While I was still in amazement, hardly knowing whether I was awake or
+dreaming, a little girl approached us. Though somewhat slender and
+delicate, she was only slightly diseased; rather, she was only
+predisposed to disease by inheritance; and mere predispositions no more
+destroy us, than a train of powder explodes without igniting. The girl
+was about four or five years old. "Who is this?" I inquired. "Not yours,
+most certainly," I added, turning to Mr. and Mrs. L. "We call her ours,"
+they said, "and yours; for we, no doubt, owe her life and health, in no
+small degree, to your instructions."&mdash;"This," said I, "is what I little
+expected to see; but you may thank God for it rather than me, since she
+lives by virtue of obedience to his laws, and not mine. Then you are not
+only pretty healthy yourselves," I added, "but you have a healthy
+child."&mdash;"We have two," said they. "The other is in the cradle; we will
+go and bring her."</p>
+
+<p>At this moment, the loud declaration, "The coach is ready, gentlemen,"
+reminded us that our conversation was at an end for the present, and we
+were obliged to separate. Not, however, till we had enjoyed a most
+luxurious mental repast in "the feast of reason, and the flow of soul,"
+with no abatement but the consciousness, on my part, of a little loss to
+the landlord, who had provided for the passengers a smoking dinner.</p>
+
+<p>This, reader, to speak somewhat paradoxically, was one of the proudest,
+and yet one of the humblest days of my life. To have been the
+Heaven-appointed instrument of such a marked change for the better in a
+human family, was more than could have been foreseen or even expected.
+It is more than has often fallen to my lot. True, I do not hesitate to
+regard it as an extreme case; and yet it is, in magnitude, just what I
+could show you in miniature, at various points in the same vicinity, and
+indeed, all over the country.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. and Mrs. L. still pursue the even tenor of their way, and have their
+reward in it. One of their two daughters,&mdash;buds of early
+promise,&mdash;though probably more or less scrofulous, hardly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span> reached
+maturity, ere she descended to the tomb. The rest enjoy a tolerable
+degree of health. Of course, I do not speak of their health as greater
+than that of the average of mankind, notwithstanding their thorough
+reformation. It is much, all things considered, that it should be equal
+to that average.</p>
+
+<p>As for the mother of Mrs. L., who still occasionally visits the family,
+she looks on in silent amazement, hardly knowing whether to recommend
+any more beer, with all sorts of roots good for the blood in it, or
+whether to give up the pursuit. I believe, however, that she does not
+often presume to interfere with their habits. Perhaps she has
+learned&mdash;if not, she may possibly live long enough to acquire the
+lesson,&mdash;to "let well alone," as her children and grandchildren already
+have. I certainly hope she has. It will conduce greatly to her health
+and happiness, as well as make her a better citizen and better
+Christian.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXVIII" id="CHAPTER_XXVIII"></a>CHAPTER XXVIII.</h2>
+
+<h3>POISONING WITH LEAD.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Nearly at the beginning of my practice in medicine, I was called to see
+a fine and hitherto healthy youth, twelve years old, but who had for
+several weeks before application was made to me, complained of a steady
+and sometimes severe pain in his bowels, attended with more or fewer
+febrile symptoms and a loss of appetite.</p>
+
+<p>In endeavoring to trace out carefully the causes of his disease, the
+first thing that attracted my attention was his employment. His father
+was a blacksmith, and being in moderate circumstances and destitute of
+any other help besides this son, had for a considerable time required
+him to perform the work of an adult, or nearly such. It had not been
+suspected at the time, that the work injured him, though he had
+sometimes complained of great fatigue, and of a slight weakness and
+uneasiness in the place where the pain had now become fixed. As the
+result of my investigations, I came to the conclusion that he had been
+overworked, and certain ligaments of the bowels had been weakened.</p>
+
+<p>My treatment in the case was at first mild and palliative, in the hope
+that after a few days of rest the trouble would disappear. Instead of
+this, however, it grew worse. At my special request, various counselling
+physicians were called in; but I do not know that they were of any
+service to me. No new light was thrown on the case, though we could all
+converse very learnedly on the subject.</p>
+
+<p>Like many other young practitioners, I was at that time apt to indulge
+in gloomy fears about poisons. I seldom had a case of acute disease,
+without suspecting their influence. I suspected poison now, and
+accordingly made search into every possible<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span> nook and corner whence such
+an influence could possibly have emanated. For a long time nothing could
+be found.</p>
+
+<p>One day, on examining a pot of pickled cucumbers which had hitherto
+escaped observation, I found that a part of its glazing had been
+destroyed by the acid. I no sooner saw this than I was ready to say,
+<i>eureka</i> (I have found it), and to inform the family and my patient. It
+appeared that the pickles had been there for some time, and that the boy
+had eaten of them very freely. The parents and friends, though they had
+much confidence in the wisdom and skill of their physician, were very
+slow to believe in the injurious tendency of the pickles. They admitted
+the danger of such cases generally; but how could the boy be injured,
+and not the rest of them? they asked. They forgot, or did not know, that
+the poison would be more likely to affect one who was weakened in the
+abdomen from other causes, than those who were sound; especially when he
+took much more of it into his stomach than they did.</p>
+
+<p>In my suspicion about lead poisoning, I had very little sympathy from
+those around me. Even the counselling physicians had little confidence
+in any such existing cause of disease. They were nearly as ready as
+other people to leave the case in the dark, and to say, practically,
+"The finger of Providence is here;" or, in other words, It comes of some
+cause which God alone knows or <i>can</i> know.</p>
+
+<p>How much of human ignorance&mdash;ay, and of human credulity and folly,
+too&mdash;is clustered round the well-known decision of many a court of
+inquest; viz., "Died by the visitation of God!" What do they mean by it?
+Do they suppose that since Satan or some other personage whom we call
+Death, is guilty of striking us down here and there, those who are not
+"struck with death" are struck down by the great Source of light and
+life?</p>
+
+<p>The far greater probability is, that they know not what they <i>do</i> mean.
+Mankind are not addicted to thinking, especially on subjects of this
+sort. It is much easier, or at least much lazier, to refer all our ills
+and complaints, as well as their unfavorable terminations, to God or
+Satan, friend or foe,&mdash;to some agency exterior to themselves,&mdash;than to
+consider themselves as the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span> probable cause, and proceed to make diligent
+search for their own errors.</p>
+
+<p>Thus it was, in a remarkable degree, in the region where it was my lot
+to meet and palliate and try to cure diseases. I say, here, <i>cure</i>; for
+the idea would hardly have found a lodgment, at that early period, in
+any human brain which could have been found in that region of rural
+simplicity, hardly in my own somewhat more highly enlightened cranium,
+that <i>medical men never cure</i>; and that when people get well, it is the
+result of the operations and efforts of nature, or of nature's God, who
+is doing the best thing possible to set matters right.</p>
+
+<p>It was even deemed by many as not only foolish, but almost sacrilegious,
+to say much about the causes of disease, and especially about lead. And
+then to talk about lead as connected with the use of their favorite red
+earthen, which had been in use time immemorial, and which had never, in
+all past time, killed anybody, as they supposed, was the dictate of
+almost any thing else rather than of good, sound, sober, common sense.</p>
+
+<p>You can hardly imagine, at this day, in the year 1859, what an air of
+incredulity the gaping countenances of the family and neighbors of my
+young friend and patient presented, when I told them stories of lead
+disease in different parts of the country, especially of such cases as
+were then recent and fresh in my memory. One of these stories may not be
+out of place in the present connection.</p>
+
+<p>About the year 1812, the people of Elizabethtown, Penn., put up what
+they called their apple butter in these same red earthen vessels,
+glazed, as almost everybody now knows, with an oxyde of lead. There had
+been a pottery established near the village that very year, and it was
+thought not a little patriotic to purchase and use its products, thus
+favoring the cause of home manufacture. Nearly every family, as it
+appeared in the sequel, had bought and used more or fewer of these
+vessels.</p>
+
+<p>This was, of course, some time in the autumn. In the progress of a few
+months a dreadful disease broke out in the village, which baffled the
+skill of the best physicians, and consigned<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span> some forty or fifty of the
+inhabitants to the grave. The cause, at first, was not at all suspected.
+At length, however, from a careful examination of facts, it was
+ascertained that the disease which had proved so fatal must have had its
+origin in the glazing of these vessels. The sickness abated only when it
+had attacked all whose bowels&mdash;already weakened by some other cause or
+causes&mdash;were duly prepared for the poisonous operation of the lead. It
+is indeed true that the physicians supposed the disease came to a stand
+on account of the overwhelming tendency of huge doses of calomel, which
+they gave to almost everybody who had used the apple butter; but of this
+there was no satisfactory evidence. It ceased, as I believe, and as I
+have already intimated, because&mdash;except in the case of those who were
+enfeebled by other causes, nature was too strong for it, or her
+recuperative powers too energetic.</p>
+
+<p>Now this story illustrates a case which, in magnitude or in miniature,
+is in our country of almost every-day occurrence; and the only reason
+why the results everywhere else are not like those at Elizabethtown, is
+simply this: that there is not so much of the poison used in any one
+village, at the same time, as there was at that place in the
+circumstances which have been mentioned. One is sick here, another
+there, and another elsewhere. In one, owing to peculiar predisposition
+or habit, it takes the shape of fever; in another, of palsy; in another,
+of eruptions or boils; in another, of bowel complaint. And as all these
+and many other diseases have been known before, and have been induced by
+other causes equally unobserved or obscure, we have fallen into the
+habit of supposing that these things must needs be, do what we will. In
+other words, God the Creator, is supposed to have made the world and
+appointed to us, for trial or otherwise, these various forms of disease;
+and they are for the most part dealt out to us arbitrarily; or, if not
+arbitrarily, by chance or hap-hazard.</p>
+
+<p>But to return to the young man. There was such a hostility of the public
+mind to the idea that his disease was induced or even aggravated by
+lead, that I receded in part from my suspicions. At least, I proceeded,
+with fresh energy and enthusiasm,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span> to search for other and more probable
+or popular causes. Cause there must have been, of some sort, I was
+confident; while to all my efforts of this kind the friends of the boy
+stood opposed. They did not, it is true, say much against it; but then
+it was perfectly evident from all their conversation and conduct that
+they regarded it as not only idle, but presumptuous, perhaps wicked. How
+can it be, they seemed to say, by those looks and actions which so often
+speak louder than words, that this young doctor is always trying to
+ferret out the causes of disease, while Dr &mdash;&mdash; (my predecessor) never
+attempted any such thing, but rather dissuaded us from it?</p>
+
+<p>Yet thus it was precisely. For three long months I was endeavoring to
+meet and obviate the symptoms of a disease which I secretly believed was
+induced by lead, but of which I had no such strong evidence as would
+have justified the positive affirmation that it was so, or prevented me
+from searching for other causes. This state of mind was by no means
+favorable to my success as a medical practitioner; for it somehow
+greatly impaired or weakened their general confidence in my wisdom and
+skill. Had I, on the other hand, "looked very wise," declared the
+disease to be so and so, with great pertinacity, and adhered, through
+good report and through evil, to my opinion, whenever it was assailed,
+and withal manifested no desire to receive medical counsel, I should
+have had a larger measure of their esteem, and a very much larger
+measure, as a professional man, of their confidence. They might then
+have thought me a very wise and good physician.</p>
+
+<p>A man who wishes to be greatly popular in the world must learn the ways
+of the world, and walk in them more or less, whether they are crooked or
+straight. He must not be over-modest, or over-honest; nor must he be
+over-solicitous to improve his own mind or heart, or encourage others,
+by precept or example, to walk in the way of improvement. He must not
+only make up his mind to take the world as it is, but to suffer it to
+remain so. The world does not like to be found fault with; it has a
+great deal of self-confidence.</p>
+
+<p>The young man, in the end, recovered; not, as I now believe,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span> in
+consequence of the treatment, but in spite of it. Had he been nursed
+carefully from the first, and kept from every source of irritation, both
+external and internal, even from food, except a very little of the
+mildest sort, just enough to keep him from absolute starvation; and had
+his air been pure and his temper of mind easy, cheerful and hopeful, he
+would probably have recovered much sooner than he did, and with far
+better prospects for the future. But he had been frightened about
+himself, from the very first, by my own inquiries about poison,&mdash;which
+had unwarily been communicated to him,&mdash;and his fears never wholly
+subsided.</p>
+
+<p>How much wisdom from both worlds does it require in order to be a
+physician! The office of a medical man, I repeat, is one of the noblest
+under the whole heaven. The physician is, or should be, a missionary. Do
+you regard this assertion as extravagant or unfounded? Why, then, was it
+made an adjunct, and more than an adjunct, in the first promulgation of
+the gospel, and this, too, by the gospel's divine Author? Why is it that
+our success in modern times, in spreading the gospel, has been
+greater&mdash;other things being equal&mdash;in America or China, in proportion as
+its preachers have attended to the body as well as to the soul?</p>
+
+<p>At the time of my commencing the practice of medicine, I was no more fit
+for it than I was to preach the cross of Christ; that is, I was almost
+entirely unqualified for either profession. I was honest, sanguine,
+philanthropic, but I was uneducated. I knew very little, indeed, of
+human nature; still less did I know of the sublime art of becoming all
+things to all men, in the nobler and more elevated sense of the great
+apostle Paul. I would yield to no other compromise than such as he
+encourages, of course. Let us be honest and truthful, though the heavens
+fall.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIX" id="CHAPTER_XXIX"></a>CHAPTER XXIX.</h2>
+
+<h3>STANDING PATIENTS.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Medical men well know&mdash;should any such condescend to look over this
+volume&mdash;what is meant when I affirm that I was not long in securing to
+myself a good share of <i>standing patients</i>. They are the dread, not to
+say the curse, of the profession. And yet they abound. They are found
+throughout the length and breadth of the land, and in great numbers.</p>
+
+<p>They are a class of persons, not always of one sex, who hang
+continually, like an incubus, on the physician, and yet are forever a
+disadvantage to him. They are never well enough to let him alone, and
+yet seldom ill enough to require much medical advice or treatment. And
+yet, medicine they will have, of somebody, even if they go to the
+apothecary for it, without so much as the semblance of a medical
+prescription of any sort. But then, after all, they are seldom reduced
+to any such necessity. They usually have on hand prescriptions enough of
+some sort. A dearth of Yankee physicians&mdash;could such a thing possibly
+occur&mdash;would still leave us a supply of Indian doctors, mesmeric
+doctors, nutritive doctors, etc., etc., to say nothing of doctresses, in
+liberal abundance, ever ready to prescribe.</p>
+
+<p>When I succeeded Dr. &mdash;&mdash;, in the chair of medicine, surgery, etc., at
+----, I received, as if by contract, if not by inheritance, his whole
+stock of standing patients. They were not slow to <i>call on</i>, sometimes
+to <i>call in</i>, the new doctor. Nor was I often long in the house before
+comparisons began to be made between my predecessor and myself. They did
+not, of course, directly traduce or slander Dr. &mdash;&mdash;, but they were very
+careful to intimate that, having got his name up, he had grown careless
+about his patients, especially such of them as did not belong to his
+clique, political or sectarian; and that, on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span> this account, they were
+almost willing to part with him, and to receive and accept as his
+substitute one who was not only younger and more active, but also less
+tinctured with conservatism and aristocracy!</p>
+
+<p>A very large amount of valuable time was spent during the first year of
+my practice as a physician, in endeavors to do good to these very
+devoted and loving and loyal patients; for if they did not always call
+me when I had occasion to pass their doors, I knew full well they
+expected me, and so I usually called. Besides, in many an instance I was
+sent for in post haste, with entreaties that I would come and see them
+immediately; and no atonement for neglect or even delay&mdash;if such neglect
+or delay was ventured&mdash;would suffice. And yet, despite of their fears of
+"monarchy and aristocracy," they were my most truly aristocratic
+patients. They expected me to come and go at their request, whether
+anybody else was attended to or not. And, to add to the vexation of the
+case, though they boasted of having paid most enormous bills to my
+predecessor, they never, if they could avoid it, paid any thing to me.</p>
+
+<p>Now, I do not suppose that every medical man has as large a share of
+these standing patients as fell to my unhappy lot; but from the
+knowledge I have acquired of mankind, and from the acquaintance I have
+necessarily formed with medical men, I do not think I err when I affirm
+that they are everywhere numerous, and that they are everywhere not only
+a pest to society at large, but particularly so to the physician.</p>
+
+<p>But the worst feature of the case is, that after all our efforts, we can
+seldom, if ever, cure them. They are always hanging upon us like an
+incubus; and yet like Solomon's daughters of the horseleech, are never
+satisfied. They take the medicine, and follow the advice, if they <i>like</i>
+it; or they take such parts of it as they choose, and reject the rest.
+Or they take the advice and follow us to-day, but get discouraged and
+abandon us, at least practically, to-morrow; especially if some smart
+young physician happens to come along, who has more than an average<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span>
+share of empiricism and pretension, and more than he has of real merit.</p>
+
+<p>I must here confess, among other confessions, that at first I was not a
+little deceived by their open countenances and concealed thoughts, and
+unintelligent and hence unconfiding professions. It was a long time
+before I relinquished the hope of doing them good; or at least a portion
+of them. But I was at length compelled. There was nothing on which to
+build. If a foundation seemed to be laid one day, it would disappear the
+next.</p>
+
+<p>One fundamental difficulty lay in the way of these persons to health, as
+it has to thousands of others. They were all the while talking or
+thinking about themselves, their ailments and woes and abuses and
+neglects. They were particularly inclined to turn their attention to
+their own diseased feelings. Now it may be pretty safe to say that no
+individual can fully recover from chronic disease,&mdash;nervous, stomachic,
+or glandular&mdash;who is always turning his thoughts inward, and watching
+his own feelings, and perhaps relating his woes to every one he meets
+with. We must learn to forget ourselves, at least a part of the time,
+and think of others, if we are in earnest to get rid of chronic disease.
+I do not say, of course, that everybody would recover of disease, even
+if they acted right in every particular; but this I <i>do</i> say, that if
+every person who is ill would act wisely, and if their physicians, in
+every instance, were wise enough to take the best course, the number of
+these standing patients would soon dwindle to a very small remnant.
+Instead of thousands, or tens of thousands, it would soon be reduced to
+hundreds.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXX" id="CHAPTER_XXX"></a>CHAPTER XXX.</h2>
+
+<h3>KILLING A PATIENT.</h3>
+
+
+<p>President Lindsley, late of one of our south western colleges,&mdash;a very
+shrewd and observing, as well as learned and excellent individual&mdash;has
+been often heard to say that no half-educated young physician ever
+succeeded in obtaining a good run of professional business, and a fair
+medical reputation, without despatching prematurely to the other world,
+at least as many as half a dozen of his patients.</p>
+
+<p>It is said that most rules have their exceptions; and it is even
+affirmed by some, that the exceptions strengthen the rule. If this is
+so, perhaps the rule of Pres. L. may stand; though to many it seems at
+first exceedingly sweeping. One known exception to its universality may
+be worth mentioning, on which the reader may make his own comments, and
+from which he may draw his own inferences. I was so fortunate for one,
+as to attain to the eminence he mentions, without killing any thing
+<i>like</i> half a dozen patients; at least, so far as I know.</p>
+
+<p>And yet, as I verily fear and most honestly confess, I <i>did</i> kill one or
+two. Not, of course, with malice aforethought, for they were among my
+very best friends; and one in particular was a near and highly valued
+neighbor. Let me give you a few details concerning the latter. It may
+serve as a lesson of instruction, as well as a confession.</p>
+
+<p>He was about six feet high, with large vital organs; and though by no
+means possessed of a strong constitution, yet in virtue of a most rigid
+temperance, generally healthy. He was, however, subjected to the
+habitual influences of a most miserable cookery. Indeed, I never knew
+worse. Seldom, if<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span> ever, did he pass a single week&mdash;I might even say a
+single day&mdash;without having his alimentary organs irritated to
+subinflammation by more or fewer of what Dr. Dunglison, the
+physiologist, would call "rebellious" mixtures. I do not wonder, in
+truth, that he occasionally sickened. The wonder with me is, that he did
+not sicken and die long before he did. And though the blow that finished
+his perilous mortal career, was doubtless inflicted by my own hand, I do
+not hesitate to say that his "housekeeper" had nearly half destroyed him
+before I was called.</p>
+
+<p>It was a midsummer night, when the messenger came across an intervening
+field, and aroused me from my slumbers with the intelligence that Mr. M.
+was very sick, and wanted to have me come and see him immediately.
+Although it was fully twelve o'clock, and I had been so fully occupied
+during the preceding evening, that I had but just crawled into bed and
+begun my slumbers, I was instantly on my feet, and in about twelve
+minutes at the bedside of the sick man.</p>
+
+<p>He had been affected with a bowel complaint, as it appeared, for several
+days, during which his wife, who was one of those conceited women who
+know so much, in their own estimation, that nobody can teach them any
+thing, had dosed him with various things, such as were supposed to be
+good for the blood, or the stomach, among which was brandy and loaf
+sugar. Now his bowels, though they were inflamed, might have borne the
+sugar; but the brandy was a little too much for them. They had endured
+it for a time, it is true, but had at length yielded, and were in a
+worse condition than when she began her treatment. And what was worse,
+her alcoholic doses, frequently "inflicted," had heated the circulatory
+apparatus, and even the whole system, into a burning fever.</p>
+
+<p>It needed no very active imagination, in such circumstances, to make
+out, at least in prospect, a very "hard case." And as he who has a giant
+foe to contend with, arms himself accordingly, I immediately invoked the
+strongholds of the Materia Medica for the strongest doses which it could
+furnish, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span> these in no measured or stinted quantity. In short, I
+attacked the disease with the most powerful agents of which I could
+avail myself.</p>
+
+<p>I will not trouble the non-professional reader with the names of the
+various and powerful drugs which were laid under contribution in this
+trying and dangerous case, and which were most assiduously plied. It is
+sufficient, perhaps, to say that on looking over my directions&mdash;fairly
+written out as they were, and laid on a small stand near the
+sick-bed&mdash;you might have discovered that hardly a half-hour, by night or
+day, could pass, in which he was not required to swallow some very
+active or in other words poisonous medicinal agent or other. For though
+I was even then greatly opposed, in <i>theory</i>, to the exhibition of much
+medicine in disease, yet in <i>practice</i> I could not free myself wholly
+from the idea that my prospects of affording aid, or rather of giving
+nature a chance of saving a patient, was nearly in proportion to the
+amount I could force into him of opium, calomel, nitrate of silver,
+carbonate of ammonia, etc.</p>
+
+<p>It was, in short, enough to kill a Samson or a Hercules; and I repeat
+that I verily fear that it did kill in the present instance; not,
+however, immediately. For several days and nights we watched over him,
+heating his brain, in our over-kindness, to a violent delirium on the
+one hand, or to a stupor almost like the sleep of death on the other.</p>
+
+<p>Not satisfied with our own murderous efforts, we at length applied for
+medical counsel. My predecessor was not so far off as to be quite beyond
+our reach, and was in due time on the spot. He, good man, sanctioned the
+deeds already done, and only made through the force of their
+prepossessions, an addition to the dark catalogue of demons which
+already assailed if they did not actually possess him.</p>
+
+<p>For the first time in my medical career, I suffered, here, from a loss
+of the confidence of my employers. A very mean man, who could gain
+notoriety in no other way, undertook to insinuate that I did not
+understand well my profession; and this story for a short time made an
+impression. However,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span> there was soon a reaction in my favor, so that
+nothing was lost in the end. More than even this might be said&mdash;that I
+rose higher, as the result of the report.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. M. at length began to decline. Nature, though strongly entrenched in
+her citadel, and loth to "give up the ship," began to succumb to the
+powers of disease and the load of medicine; and he gradually descended
+to the tomb. His whole sickness was of little more than a week's
+duration.</p>
+
+<p>I was present at the funeral, but I could scarcely hold up my head, or
+look any person in the face. To my perturbed imagination every one who
+was but "three feet high" was ready to point at me the finger of scorn,
+and say, "You have killed that man." The heavens themselves seemed
+covered with thick darkness, and the green earth with sackcloth and
+ashes. "Never again," I said to myself a thousand times, "can I bear up
+under such sad and severe responsibilities."</p>
+
+<p>And yet&mdash;will the reader believe it?&mdash;no one circumstance of my whole
+medical life ever did more to establish my reputation than this. True, I
+had contended on the battle field, and had been beaten, but then it was
+thought I had contended against a powerful foe. Men sometimes think it
+honorable even to be beaten. I well remember an instance of this sort. A
+very great scoundrel heaped insults upon a worthy justice of the peace,
+till the latter seized him and held him down to the ground for a
+considerable time. The man was quite respectable afterward, and told the
+story to his own praise a thousand times over! He had measured lances
+with 'Squire H.! And though the 'Squire was too much for him, he
+obtained a town-wide reputation by the contest.</p>
+
+<p>You will see, more and more, as I proceed with these confessions, that
+it is not in him that willeth nor in him that runneth, to be acceptable
+as a physician, but in certain circumstances, partly within and partly
+beyond our control. You will see, however, that the best way in the end
+is, boldly and fearlessly to do right, and then trust in Him who loves
+right, and whose throne is in the Heavens, for the final issue. We may
+not always be popular in doing right&mdash;probably we shall <i>not</i> be&mdash;but we
+shall, in any event, have a clear conscience.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXI" id="CHAPTER_XXXI"></a>CHAPTER XXXI.</h2>
+
+<h3>A SUDDEN CURE.</h3>
+
+
+<p>I was called one morning very early, to see a little girl, five or six
+years of age, who, it was said, was extremely sick, and without
+immediate aid could not probably long survive.</p>
+
+<p>She was one of a very numerous family, most of whom, though suffered to
+run almost wild, like so many rabbits, were comparatively healthy. I do
+not suppose they had ever called in a physician more than once or twice
+in a year. In truth, they had very little confidence in physicians;
+though in extremities, they were accustomed to call on them almost as
+much as other people. In any event Caroline was very sick now; and they
+loudly demanded aid. I was forthwith on the spot. Caroline was groaning
+most piteously. "Where is your distress?" I inquired. She gave no direct
+answer, but continued to groan and writhe, as if she were impaled. As I
+could obtain no reliable information from her, and could discover no
+special or exciting cause of her suffering, and as the case was urgent,
+I proceeded to do <i>something</i>, though, as I must honestly confess, it
+was to labor quite in the dark. One thing I knew, it is true; that there
+were spasms, and that it depended on a diseased condition of the brain
+and nervous system; but what the cause or causes were, I could hardly
+divine. Nor, in truth, had I time to ask many questions.</p>
+
+<p>Though the days of Hydropathy had not yet arrived, the world, even then,
+had a good deal of water in it, and physicians were sometimes wise
+enough to use it. It was demanded, as I thought, on the present
+occasion. It would, at least, by whiling away the time, give opportunity
+for further observation and reflection, and deeper investigation. There
+was a good fire in the kitchen, and I ordered a warm bath immediately.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Every effort was made to hasten the process of warming the water, as
+well as to keep the patient quiet and within doors; for she raved like a
+maniac&mdash;partly indeed from a childish fear, but partly also from real
+bodily suffering. The family and neighborhood&mdash;for the latter were very
+largely collected together&mdash;were almost as much alarmed and distressed
+as the little patient, and this reacted on the patient to her increased
+disadvantage.</p>
+
+<p>As there were no special preparations in those days for bathing&mdash;I mean
+in the region of which I am now speaking&mdash;we used a large wash-tub. The
+water was soon ready, and was made rather warm, quite above 100&deg; of
+Fahrenheit. I had taken the precaution to have my patient already
+undressed, so as to lose no time. The very instant the bath was ready,
+she was plunged into it. It cost some trouble, for she resisted with
+almost superhuman strength, and uttered most terrific screams. But as
+the ox is dragged to the slaughter, she was dragged into the water and
+held in it.</p>
+
+<p>The effect was like magic. She had not been in the water twenty seconds
+before every thing was quiet; and I do not know that she has ever had
+another pang to the present hour. Certain it is that she seemed to be
+entirely cured by this single bath, and none of her spasms ever
+returned.</p>
+
+<p>The family were greatly delighted, and so were the neighbors. And was
+the physician, think you, an uninterested spectator? Had he been wholly
+destitute of the love of doing good, by relieving human distress, he
+must at least have been susceptible of receiving pleasure from general
+approbation.</p>
+
+<p>He certainly sought respectability as a physician. And this he was by
+degrees now attaining.</p>
+
+<p>It is hardly possible to refer the sudden quiet which followed in this
+instance from the application of warm water, to a mere coincidence, as
+if the system was ready, just at this very instant, to react or rally.
+The bath must have had something more than a mere imaginary or
+accidental effect, though its prescription may be said to have been
+empirical.</p>
+
+<p>Had the experiment in the present instance wholly failed,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span> it is by no
+means improbable the physician would still have been on a par with other
+men. The <i>guess</i> he made was his <i>only</i> thought. He had nothing in
+reserve. But he was successful; he <i>guessed right</i>, and it built him up.
+His fame now began to spread far and wide, wafted, as it were, on the
+wings of every breeze. If he succeeded, it was supposed to be undeniable
+proof of his skill; if he failed, it was not supposed to be so much his
+fault as the result of circumstances; or, more properly, the severity of
+the disease. And even in the case of failure, as I have said elsewhere,
+he often gained credit; for he had boldly contended, at great odds, with
+a mighty because intangible antagonist!</p>
+
+<p>It is an old proverb,&mdash;but by no means the less true for its age,&mdash;that
+when a person is going down hill every one will give him a kick. But is
+it not equally true that when he is resolutely going up hill, they are
+equally ready to help him on? So at least I found it at this period of
+my progress.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXII" id="CHAPTER_XXXII"></a>CHAPTER XXXII.</h2>
+
+<h3>GIGANTIC DOSES OF MEDICINE.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Although I was opposed to the frequent and free use of medicine, I early
+fell into one habit which was as diametrically opposed to my general
+theory as could possibly have been. I refer to the habit of giving my
+patients, at least occasionally, most enormous doses of those more
+active preparations which should seldom, if ever, be administered in
+this way. As nearly as I can now recollect, I fell into this habit in
+the following manner:</p>
+
+<p>Among my standing patients, before mentioned, were several drunkards.
+Occasionally, however, they were more than standing or standard
+patients; they had attacks of mania, or as it is usually called in the
+case of drunkards, delirium tremens. In these circumstances, among these
+patients, I often had the most severe trials. Sometimes I could relieve
+them; but sometimes, too, I failed.</p>
+
+<p>One night, while endeavoring to relieve the sufferings of one of these
+patients in delirium tremens, almost to no purpose, the thought struck
+me, "What effect would a prodigious dose of calomel have on the poor
+creature? Can it kill him? I doubt it. I will venture on the trial."</p>
+
+<p>So, without communicating the slightest hint to any one around me of
+what I was about to do, I contrived to insinuate a hundred grains or
+more of this substance into the man's stomach, that like a chemical
+receiver took what was poured into it. Having succeeded in the
+administration of the dose, I waited patiently the issue.</p>
+
+<p>The medicine had, in due time, its full ordinary effect; but the degree
+of its cathartic effect was not in proportion to the largeness of the
+dose. Its activity hardly amounted to violence.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span> It seemed, however, to
+quiet the brain and nerves as if by magic; nor am I aware that any
+injurious effects, either local or general, ever followed its
+exhibition. I had the full credit of a speedy and wonderful cure.</p>
+
+<p>Another fact. I was frequently called to prescribe for children who were
+threatened with the croup. One night, on being called to a child of some
+eight or ten months, I thought of large doses of calomel. Was there any
+great risk in trying one? I ventured. I gave the child almost a
+teaspoonful of this active cathartic. It was indeed a gigantic dose, and
+the treatment was bold if not heroic.</p>
+
+<p>For a couple of hours the patient breathed badly enough. There was
+evidently much oppression, not only of the lungs but of the nervous
+system. The parents and friends of the child grew uneasy. They were not,
+however, more uneasy than their physician. But I consoled myself by
+laboring to compose them. I preached to them long and loud, and to some
+extent with success.</p>
+
+<p>At the end of about two hours, the latter part of which had been marked
+by a degree of stupor which almost discouraged me, a gentle vomiting
+came on, followed by moderately cathartic effects; and the child
+immediately recovered its mental activity, and in a few days was well.</p>
+
+<p>Empirical as this practice was, I ventured on it again and again, and
+with similar success. At length the practice of giving giant doses in
+this disease became quite habitual with me, and I even extended it to
+other diseases. Not only calomel, but several other active medicines
+were used in the same bold and fearless manner. I do not know that I
+ever did any direct or immediate mischief in this way. On the contrary,
+I was regarded as eminently successful.</p>
+
+<p>And yet I should not now dare to repeat the treatment, however urgent
+might seem to be the demand, or recommend it to others. It might,
+perhaps, be successful; but what if it should prove otherwise? I could
+make no appeal to principle or precedent in justification of my conduct.
+It is true, I have met with one or two practitioners whose experience
+has been similar;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span> but what are a few isolated cases, of even honest
+practice, in comparison with the deductions of wise men for centuries?
+There may be after consequences, in these cases, which are not foreseen.
+Sentence against an evil work, as Solomon says, is not always executed
+speedily.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXIII" id="CHAPTER_XXXIII"></a>CHAPTER XXXIII</h2>
+
+<h3>THE LAMBSKIN DISEASE.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Should any medical man look through these pages, he may perchance amuse
+himself by asking where the writer obtained his system of classification
+of disease. It will not, certainly, be very easy to find such a disease
+as the lambskin disease in any of our modern nosologies. But he will
+better understand me when he has read through the chapter. He may be
+reminded, by its perusal and its quaint title, of the classification
+which is found in Whitlow's New Medical Discoveries, founded, as the
+doctor says, on the idea that "every disease ought to be named from the
+plant or other substance which is the principal exciting cause of such
+disease." It is as follows:</p>
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="">
+<tr><td align='left'>"The Mercurial</td><td align='left'>Disease,</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The Belladonna</td><td align='center'>do</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The Stramonium</td><td align='center'>do</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The Tobacco</td><td align='center'>do</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The Cicuta</td><td align='center'>do</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The Butter Cup</td><td align='center'>do</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The Colchicum</td><td align='center'>do</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The Colocynth</td><td align='center'>do</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The Pork or Hog</td><td align='center'>do</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The Vinegar</td><td align='center'>do</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The Fool's Parsley</td><td align='center'>do</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The Fox Glove</td><td align='center'>do</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The Nux Vomica</td><td align='center'>do</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The Quassia</td><td align='center'>do</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The Opium</td><td align='center'>do</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The Hellebore</td><td align='center'>do</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The Salt</td><td align='center'>do</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The Mineral Acid</td><td align='center'>do</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The Acrid</td><td align='center'>do</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>The Putrid</td><td align='center'>do"</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<p>If on examination the curious reader should find no such disease as the
+"Lambskin disease" in Dr. W.'s catalogue, he should remember that the
+list is by no means complete, and that there will be no objection to the
+addition of one more. And why, indeed, may I not coin terms as well as
+others? All names must have been given by somebody.</p>
+
+<p>But I will not dwell on the subject of nosology too long. I have
+something else to do in this chapter than merely to amuse.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span> I have some
+thoughts to present on health and sickness,&mdash;thoughts, too, which seem
+to me of vast importance.</p>
+
+<p>A son of Mr. G., a farmer, had been at work in an adjoining town, all
+summer, with a man who was accustomed to employ a great number of hands
+in various occupations,&mdash;farming, road building, butchering, etc., etc.
+Of a sudden, young G., now about twenty years of age, was brought home
+sick, and I was sent for late at night&mdash;a very common time for calling
+the doctor&mdash;to come and see him.</p>
+
+<p>I found him exceedingly weak and sick, with strong tendencies to
+putridity. What could be the cause? There was no prevailing or epidemic
+disease abroad at the time, either where he had been laboring, or within
+my own jurisdiction; nor could I, at first, find out any cause which was
+adequate to the production of such effects as were before me.</p>
+
+<p>I prescribed for the young man, as well as I could; but it was all to no
+purpose. Some unknown influence, local or general, seemed to hang like
+an incubus about him, and to depress, in particular, his nervous system.
+In short, the symptoms were such as portended swift destruction, if not
+immediate. I could but predict the worst. And the worst soon came. He
+sunk, in a few days, to an untimely grave. I say <i>untimely</i> with
+peculiar emphasis; for he had hitherto been regarded as particularly
+robust and healthy.</p>
+
+<p>His remains were scarcely entombed when several members of his father's
+family were attacked in a similar way. Another young man in the
+neighborhood, who had been employed at the same place with the deceased,
+and who had returned at the same time, also sickened, and with nearly
+the same symptoms. And then, in a few days more, the father and mother
+of the latter began to droop, and to fall into the same train of
+diseased tendencies with the rest. Of these, too, I had the charge.</p>
+
+<p>My hands were now fully occupied, and so was my head. Anxious as most
+young men are, in similar circumstances, not only to save their
+patients, but their reputation, and though<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span> the distance at which they
+resided was considerable, I visited both families twice a day, and
+usually remained with one of them during the night. I was afraid to
+trust them with others.</p>
+
+<p>Physically this constant charge was too much for me, and ought not to
+have been attempted. No physician should watch with his patients, by
+night or by day,&mdash;above all by night&mdash;any more than a general should
+place himself in the front of his army, during the heat of battle. His
+life is too precious to be jeoparded beyond the necessities involved in
+his profession.</p>
+
+<p>But while my hands were occupied, my mind was racked exceedingly with
+constant inquiry into the cause of this terrible disease,&mdash;for such to
+my apprehension it was becoming. The whole neighborhood was alarmed, and
+the paleness of death was upon almost every countenance.</p>
+
+<p>My doubts were at length removed, and the cause of trouble, as I then
+supposed and still believe, fully revealed. The disease so putrescent in
+its tendencies, had originated in animal putrefaction. The circumstances
+were as follows:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>The individual with whom the young men who sickened had been residing
+and laboring, had laid aside, in his chamber, some time before, quite a
+pile of lambskins, just in the condition in which they were when removed
+from their natural owners, and had suffered them to lie in that
+condition until they were actually putrescent and highly offensive. The
+two young men, owing to the relative position of the chambers they
+occupied, were particularly exposed to the poisonous effluvia.</p>
+
+<p>I did not forget&mdash;I did not then forget&mdash;the oft inculcated and
+frequently received doctrine, that animal impurity is not apt to
+engender disease. It most certainly had an agency&mdash;a prominent one&mdash;in
+the case before us. Perhaps it has such an influence much more
+frequently than is generally supposed.</p>
+
+<p>One of my patients, in the family which I first mentioned,&mdash;a little boy
+two or three years old,&mdash;died almost as soon, after being seized with
+disease, as his elder brother had done. The rest, though severely sick,
+and at times given over to die, finally recovered. Some of them were
+sick, however, many<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span> months, and none of them, so far as I now
+recollect,&mdash;with perhaps a single exception,&mdash;ever enjoyed as good
+health afterward as before.</p>
+
+<p>I had in these families six or eight of the most trying cases I ever had
+in my life; and yet, with the exceptions before named, all recovered.
+How much agency my own labors as a medical man had in producing this
+result, I am at a loss to conjecture. As an attendant or nurse, I have
+no doubt my services were valuable. And it was because a good nurse is
+worth more than a physician that I so frequently ran the risk of
+watching over the sick so closely as considerably to impair my own
+health.</p>
+
+<p>The neighbors and friends of the two sick families, as I have already
+intimated, looked on in silent agony during the whole campaign;
+expecting, first that <i>their</i> families, too, would soon be called to
+take their turn; and secondly, that I, the commander in chief, should be
+a sufferer, which of course would be a great public disadvantage. They
+were almost as much gratified as I, when we all came forth from the fire
+unscathed.</p>
+
+<p>On the whole, except as regards health, I was a gainer rather than a
+loser by the affair. I mean, of course, in the way of medical
+reputation. I was by this time fairly established as a powder and pill
+distributer, of the <i>first water</i>. In other words, I was beginning to be
+regarded as a good family physician, and to be sought for, not only
+within the narrow limits of my own native township, some four or five
+miles square, but also quite beyond these narrow precincts. Occasionally
+I had patients in three or four adjoining towns, and I was even
+occasionally called as counsel to other physicians. My ambition was
+high, perhaps higher than it ought to have been; but it had its checks
+and even its valleys of humiliation; so that on the whole I retained my
+sanity and a full measure of public confidence.</p>
+
+<p>And yet, in conclusion, I have to confess that besides exposing my own
+health, I made many medical blunders. I would not again run the risk to
+health or reputation which, during this long trial of several months, I
+certainly ran, for any sum<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span> of money which king Croesus or the
+Rothschilds could command. Nor do I believe an intelligent physician can
+do it, without being guilty of a moral wrong. Every one has his
+province; let him carefully ascertain what that is, and confine himself
+to it. The acting commander in an important military expedition has no
+right to place himself in the ranks of those who are about to leap a
+ditch, scale a wall, or charge bayonet. Paul has no right to labor in
+Athens when he knows perfectly well that he can do more good in
+Jerusalem, and the voice of God, by his Providence or otherwise, calls
+him thither. And "to him that knoweth to do good and doeth it not, to
+him it is sin."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXIV" id="CHAPTER_XXXIV"></a>CHAPTER XXXIV.</h2>
+
+<h3>MILK PUNCH FEVER.</h3>
+
+
+<p>A certain young woman who had great general confidence in my skill,
+after I had stood by her many long hours in one of Nature's sorest
+trials, was left at length in a fair way to recover, except that she was
+exceedingly exhausted, and needed the most careful attendance on the
+part of those around her. She no longer needed any medicine, nothing but
+to be let alone. In other words, she needed nothing but good nursing and
+entire freedom from all care and responsibility.</p>
+
+<p>Being obliged at this juncture to leave her for nearly the whole night,
+I gave the best directions to her principal nurse of which I was
+capable, as well as the principal reasons on which it was founded. She
+seemed entirely submissive, and perhaps, in theory, was so. But in my
+zeal to make them understand that I was acting on common-sense
+principles, I committed one error, a very common one, indeed, but yet an
+error. It was that of reasoning with them with a view to make every
+thing particularly intelligible. One has authority, in these matters, as
+long as he takes the <i>attitude</i> of authority, but the moment he descends
+to the general level of his patients, and in true republican style puts
+himself on a par with them, he begins to lose their confidence as a
+physician. You may not be sensible of a loss of this sort, nor even the
+physician. You may even think the reverse were more true. But you
+deceive yourself. Though your patients may love you better as a friend
+or even as a father, yet they have lost confidence in you medically, in
+nearly the same proportion. Strange indeed that it should be so; but so,
+according to my own observation, it ever has been. That a prophet is
+"without honor"&mdash;and most so in his own country and among his own<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span>
+personal friends&mdash;is as true now as it was eighteen hundred years ago.</p>
+
+<p>Had I told Mrs. D.'s attendants to do so or so, and left them without
+saying a word more, they would probably have done it. But I had
+condescended to reason with them about the matter; their belief that
+medical men dealt with the stars, and spoke with a species of
+supernatural authority, had been shaken; and they were emboldened to
+reason on the subject, and to hearken to the reasonings as well as to
+what had but the slightest resemblance thereto in others, during my
+absence.</p>
+
+<p>Having occasion to use all possible precaution against the supervention
+of milk fever in my patient, I left particular directions that nothing
+stimulating should be administered, and assigned several good,
+substantial reasons. No food was to be given, except a little bread and
+some plain chicken broth, with no condiment or dressing but a little
+salt; and this at intervals of about four hours. No drink&mdash;not a
+particle&mdash;was to be given, except frequent very small draughts of cold
+water.</p>
+
+<p>While I was absent Mrs. D.'s mother came into their family, not only to
+rejoice with them in an accession to their number, but to render them a
+little aid. She was one of those mothers whose kindness so often defeats
+their best and purest intentions. She was all eyes, ears, and attention,
+and <i>nearly all talk</i>. The daughter's treatment soon underwent a special
+scrutiny, and was found "wanting."</p>
+
+<p>"Has the doctor ordered my daughter no milk punch?" she said to the
+attendants. "Not a drop," they replied. She raised both hands in
+astonishment. "How, then," she asked, "can the ninny expect she can ever
+have any nourishment for that <i>boy</i>?" The attendants could not inform
+her. "The doctor," they said, "gave reasons," but they could not fully
+understand them.</p>
+
+<p>"He did not probably understand them himself," said she. "There are no
+reasons against it, I am confident. It is only a notion of his. These
+young doctors are always full of their book wisdom. Why, a little
+experience is worth a whole world full of theories. Now <i>I</i> know&mdash;and so
+does every other<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span> person who has nursed children&mdash;that a little milk
+punch, in these cases, is necessary. Not a great deal, it is true; but a
+little, just enough to give the system strength. Nature is weak in these
+cases. I wish some of these young doctors themselves were obliged to
+endure the trials we have to endure, and we should see whether they
+could get along with no drink but cold water!"</p>
+
+<p>The rebellion soon reached the daughter's ears, who, till now, had
+confided in the "doctor's" prescription, and was doing well. She was
+soon as uneasy with things as they were, as her mother and the nurse and
+the neighbors. The husband was not of the clique; but then he was one of
+those good-natured men who leave every thing to their wives; and though
+they may not fully approve of every thing that is attempted, will yet do
+and refrain from doing many things for the sake of peace. He interposed
+no veto on the present occasion.</p>
+
+<p>The mother, in short, soon reigned "sole monarch," and proceeded to
+issue from her imperial throne, the sage decree that a little milk punch
+must be made. Judith, the nurse, was to have it prepared so and so, and
+she would herself administer it. Only just so many spoonfuls of rum must
+be added to the tumbler of milk and water, and just so much sugar. It
+must be weak, the decree said.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. D. drank freely of the punch, because her mother told her that it
+would do her good. True, she asked after the first swallow, "what will
+the doctor say to this?" but her mother bade her be quiet, she would see
+to all that. "It is made very weak," said the mother, "on purpose for
+you; drink of it a little and often. It will be both food and drink to
+you. It will be good for the babe, dear child! how can these doctors
+wish to starve folks? I have no notion of starving to death, or having
+my children or grandchildren starved."</p>
+
+<p>It was now past midnight, and Mrs. D. had as yet slept but very little.
+Had she simply followed out my directions she might have slept an hour
+or two before midnight, and several hours in the aggregate afterward.
+This, though done by stealth and in short naps, would have given her
+more real rest and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span> strength than a whole gallon of milk punch, and
+instead of kindling fever, would have carried off all tendencies of the
+kind.</p>
+
+<p>On my arrival, early the next morning, I found a good deal of headache,
+such as cold water and plain food and rest seldom, if ever, create. My
+fears were at once excited, and they were greatly strengthened when I
+saw her mother. But the blow had been struck, and could not be recalled.
+Mrs. D., in short, was already in the beginning stage of a fever which
+came within a hair's breadth of destroying her.</p>
+
+<p>It is indeed true that she finally recovered. No thanks, however, were
+due to the mother's over-kindness, nor to my own over-communicativeness.
+Had I done my duty, had I kept my own counsel, nobody, not even the
+mother herself, as I now verily believe, would have ventured to disobey
+my positive injunctions. And had this mother done, as she would have
+been done by in similar circumstances, all would probably have been well
+still. We should have saved a little reputation, and a good deal of
+health.</p>
+
+<p>I learned, I repeat, from this unexpected adventure, that it was wisdom
+to keep my own secrets. I do not say that I have always acted up to the
+dignity of this better knowledge, but I am justified in saying that I
+have sometimes profited from an acquaintance with human nature that cost
+me dear. It is no trifle to see an individual suffer from painful
+disease a couple of weeks, and jeopard the life of a child during the
+whole time, when a little knowledge how to refrain from speaking <i>ten
+words</i> of a particular kind and cast, would have prevented every evil.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXV" id="CHAPTER_XXXV"></a>CHAPTER XXXV.</h2>
+
+<h3>MY FIRST CASE IN SURGERY.</h3>
+
+
+<p>My first surgical case of any magnitude, was that of a wounded foot.
+For, though I had been required to bleed patients many times,&mdash;and
+bleeding is properly a surgical operation,&mdash;yet it had become so common
+in those days, and was performed with so little science or skill, that
+it was seldom recognized as belonging to the department of surgery.</p>
+
+<p>One of my neighbors had struck his axe into the upper part of his foot,
+and cut it nearly through. Happening to be at home when the accident
+occurred, which was in my own immediate neighborhood, I was soon on the
+spot, and ready to afford assistance; and, as good luck would have it,
+the man was not at all weakened by loss of blood, at my arrival.</p>
+
+<p>My lesson from an old surgeon<a name="FNanchor_D_4" id="FNanchor_D_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_D_4" class="fnanchor">[D]</a> was not yet forgotten. I still knew, as
+well as any one could have told me, that to put together the divided
+edges of the wound and keep them there, was half the cure. But how was
+this to be done? Slips of adhesion plaster would bring the divided edges
+of the wounded surface into their place, but would the deeper-seated and
+more tendinous parts unite while left without touching each other? Or
+should a few stitches be taken?</p>
+
+<p>The wound was lengthwise of the foot, and no tendons were divided. I
+made up my mind to dress it without any sewing, and acted accordingly.
+The bleeding soon ceased. When all was secured, the patient inquired
+what he should put on it, to cure it. Had he not raised the question, I
+might, perhaps, have followed out my own ultra tendencies, and left it
+without any application at all; but as it was, I concluded to order
+something<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span> on which he might fasten his faith,&mdash;something which, though
+it should do no good, would do no harm.</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing is better for a fresh wound," I said, "than the 'Balsam of
+Life.' Just send Thomas over to Mr. Ludlow's, and get a couple of ounces
+of his 'Balsam of Life.'" It was soon brought, and the surface of the
+wound and its bandages moistened with it. "Now," said I, "keep your foot
+as still as you can till I see you again. I will be in again before I go
+to bed."</p>
+
+<p>I called again at nine o'clock in the evening. All appeared well, only
+the patient had some doubts whether the Balsam of Life was just the
+right thing. Several of the neighbors had been in, as he said, and,
+though they admitted that the Balsam might be very good, they knew, or
+thought they knew, of something better. However, I succeeded in quieting
+most of his rising fears for the present, by assuring him that nothing
+in the wide world was equal, for its healing virtues, to the "Balsam."
+My voice here was law, for <i>I gave no reasons</i>!</p>
+
+<p>On making inquiry, afterward, with a view chiefly to gratify
+curiosity,<a name="FNanchor_E_5" id="FNanchor_E_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_E_5" class="fnanchor">[E]</a> I found that the first individual who came in after I had
+left the house, assured them there was nothing so good for a fresh wound
+as a peach leaf. The next, however, insisted that the best way was to
+bind up the part in molasses. The third said the best way was to take
+just three stitches to the wound, and bind it up in the blood. The
+fourth said the most sovereign thing in the world, for a fresh cut, was
+tobacco juice!</p>
+
+<p>Now I could have told these various representatives of as many various
+public opinions, that all these things and many more which might have
+been named, are, in a certain sense, good, since any mere flesh wound,
+in the ordinary circumstances of ordinary life, will heal in a
+reasonable time, in spite of them. I could have told them, still
+further, that the Balsam of Life was probably little, if any, better
+than the other things<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span> proposed, any farther than as it secured more
+faith and confidence, and prevented the application of something which
+was worse. I could have assured them that all the external applications
+in the world are of no possible service, except to defend from cold air,
+and prevent external injuries, or reduce inflammation; and that the
+last-mentioned symptom, should it occur, would be best relieved by cold
+water. But what good would it have done? Just none at all, according to
+my own experience. Positive assurance&mdash;mere dogmatism&mdash;was much better.</p>
+
+<p>The wound did well as it was, though it might have done much better,
+could the patient's faith have been just as firmly fixed on nothing at
+all but Nature, as it was on <i>medicaments</i>. However, the tincture I
+proposed, which somebody had dignified with the name of Balsam of life,
+had done very little harm, if any, to the parts to which it had been
+applied, while it had done a great deal of good to the patient's mind,
+and the minds of his friends. It was nothing, I believe, but a compound
+tincture of benzoin. I have used it a great number of times, and with
+the same wonderful results. The patient always gets well, either on
+account of it, or in spite of it! Does it make much practical difference
+which?</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_D_4" id="Footnote_D_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_D_4"><span class="label">[D]</span></a> See Chap. VIII.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_E_5" id="Footnote_E_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_E_5"><span class="label">[E]</span></a> Even such inquiries as these are usually of doubtful
+tendency. They weaken public confidence. There must be but one opinion
+of any value to the physician or his patients, and that must be <i>his
+own</i>!</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXVI" id="CHAPTER_XXXVI"></a>CHAPTER XXXVI.</h2>
+
+<h3>EMILIA AND THE LOVE CURE.</h3>
+
+
+<p>One young family on whom I was accustomed to call from time to time, was
+not only accustomed to send for me in the night, as did many others,
+but, what made it much worse for me, they resided some four or five
+miles distant, among the mountains. They were of that class of people
+who look every man on his own things, and never, as the apostle would
+enjoin, on the things of others. They knew very well that a physician,
+though he might be half a conjuror, required sleep; still, they were
+willing to finish their day's work, eat their supper, perform a large
+number of <i>et ceteras</i>, even if they did not call for the doctor till he
+had fairly taken off his boots to retire for the night. But there was
+one consolation in all this, that they paid me promptly; and medical
+men, as you know, like other men, work for pay. They cannot live wholly
+on air.</p>
+
+<p>In the same house with the family alluded to, was a young woman, about
+twenty-five years of age, who had been confined to her bed ten or twelve
+years. She was the only daughter of very indulgent parents, who had
+never, from her earliest years, thought they could do too much for her.
+In truth, this was the source of her feebleness. Some little ailment,
+indeed, there might have been at the outset, induced by pie, cake,
+preserves, pickles, or something which no truly kind parents should
+permit a child to take; though nothing more than might have been got rid
+of in its effects, by a little patient waiting. But instead of waiting a
+little, the anxious mother had dosed and drugged her. And these ill
+turns had been more and more frequent, just in proportion to the
+frequency with which she had been drugged for them; till, at twelve
+years of age, she<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span> was almost all the while complaining. And at
+fourteen, she was completely bedridden&mdash;a burden to herself and to
+others.</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder," said my principal employer, at about twelve o'clock, when I
+had attended to his own little family, and was about to leave, "whether
+you could do any thing for our Millie. She has tried almost all the
+doctors, to no purpose; but we have so much confidence here in your
+skill, that she sometimes speaks of trying you. She is hardly willing to
+'give up the ship' without another trial."</p>
+
+<p>This, as you must be aware, was a stirring appeal to my love of
+approbation; but it was too late at night to make a call on her at that
+moment. So, promising to come and see her shortly, I took my leave, and
+rode home, as usual, meditating.</p>
+
+<p>Now I had never seen Emilia, but from the account which I had received
+from the neighbors, as well as from the nature of the case, I knew very
+nearly how she was; and that the great difficulty in the way of recovery
+was the constant habit of watching herself and attending to every
+internal sensation. In other words, she was so completely wrapped up in
+self, that I could see no reasonable prospect of getting her mind out of
+the maze in which it had been so long involved.</p>
+
+<p>But I found time, a few days afterward, as I was employed again in the
+same neighborhood, to call and see her; and I ventured accordingly. She
+was sitting up in the bed, well bolstered, with a huge mass of clothing
+both on herself and on the bed. Then, at her right hand, was a stand
+half covered with bowls, saucers and tumblers; and near it a little
+closet or recess, in which were nearly an equal number of parcels of
+medicine, wrapped in papers ready to be used, when they were supposed to
+be necessary.</p>
+
+<p>I had no sooner entered the room, than she began to give me an account
+of her medicine, rather than of herself. So rapid was her enunciation,
+and so eager was she to tell me what she knew&mdash;not about the symptoms of
+her disease, but about the treatment&mdash;that it was a full quarter of an
+hour before I could reach the inmost recesses of her condition. "That,"
+said she,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span> "is for canker in the mouth; that for sore throat; that is an
+eye wash I sometimes use, and that is a kind of bitters Dr. R. left for
+me, but which I have now nearly done taking&mdash;and they never did me any
+good," etc.</p>
+
+<p>When I found an opportunity, I endeavored to investigate, very fully and
+freely, what had hitherto been supposed to be a very remarkable case. I
+found, indeed, that the patient had a great many little troubles,
+dependent mainly on the state of a mind greatly harassed by constant
+reflex tendencies, not easily eradicable. But I did not find it easy to
+prescribe for her. She was one of those very inquisitive people who wish
+to know what every thing you give them is, and who have a very
+conscientious objection to every thing. However, I at last settled down
+on a course of treatment, and wrote it out in a fair hand, and left it
+at the bedside. Not, however, I repeat, till I had foolishly fallen into
+my former error, and told her all the whys and wherefores.</p>
+
+<p>This familarity into which she had drawn me, had already extracted
+one-half the virtue of my medicine; for that is no longer mysterious
+which the medical man openly and freely discusses. The freedom of
+thinking she had indulged in while I was present, had been extended to
+freedom of action; and the very medicine, whose virtues she had dared to
+discourse upon, she ventured to set aside, when her experience assured
+her it was not producing the effect she desired, and for which she
+supposed it was intended. So that what, from the first, I had feared,
+and more than I had feared, at length happened. She took my medicine,
+professedly,&mdash;that is, just when she pleased,&mdash;for about four weeks, to
+no manner of purpose whatever, except to deceive herself; for during the
+first and second weeks of its use, she imagined herself all the while
+getting better; while during the third week she began to doubt, and
+about the fourth week she came to the sage conclusion that she was just
+where she had been a month or two before.</p>
+
+<p>The great, abiding difficulties of her case&mdash;her want of simple,
+confiding trust in her physician, and her constant, anxious attention to
+her own internal sensations, were far enough from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span> being overcome. She
+was, in short, very nearly where she was ten years before, except that
+she was in circumstances rather more difficult to be reached, and had
+become rather more sceptical about medicine.</p>
+
+<p>What should now be done? Must the case be abandoned? Or was there some
+other way, some <i>new</i> way, by means, of which it could be reached? I was
+not quite willing to give her up as irrecoverable, and yet I saw nothing
+remaining which I could do. I revolved the thing in my mind, by night
+and by day. At last a plan struck me which I verily believed would
+succeed.</p>
+
+<p>A few miles distant was a young physician, just from the schools, who
+vainly, though naturally, supposed he knew almost every thing which was
+known, and who wanted business. As he had nothing to lose, even if he
+were to fail in a hundred trials, but every thing to gain could he
+effect one very remarkable cure, I proposed to the family to employ him.
+I knew well he would have one or two advantages over his older and more
+experienced brethren. He would not at once place himself on the same
+platform with his patient and the friends, by answering their numerous
+questions; and for this plain and simple reason: In the first place,
+that he <i>could</i> not, and very probably knew his own weakness; secondly,
+he would have more of that blind faith in medicine which inspires the
+ignorant with confidence.</p>
+
+<p>But there was another thought beyond all this, a wheel within a wheel.
+The young physician might succeed better than I, in drawing her
+thoughts, and even her affections, away from herself; for he was a
+single man, and the patient, though sick, not destitute of charms,
+especially of that more tangible charm which, to <i>indigent</i> young men,
+and especially young <i>medical</i> men, so often eclipses all others. She,
+on her part, as I well knew, was not wholly resigned to the world of
+single blessedness, though her long-continued ill health had almost
+unfitted her for any thing else.</p>
+
+<p>It only required a little <i>management</i> to bring about the desired
+result. Dr. Juvenis was soon employed; and, though he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span> did not always
+reply to her questions, which were numerous, and often wholly
+irrelevant, yet according to my own secret anticipations, he gradually
+raised her hopes in another direction, and hence drew her attention in
+no small degree from herself. His reserve, too, served but to inspire
+her with confidence in his great wisdom. There was something deep beyond
+the exterior, she always thought, which did not come out to the full,
+vulgar gaze.</p>
+
+<p>The final result was a strong attachment on her part, which, though not
+reciprocated by him in a direct manner, was not by any means repelled.
+The virtues of the medicines were no longer discussed or doubted; and it
+was obvious to all that she was beginning to mend.</p>
+
+<p>It was now high time for me to abandon a field which was not only fully
+occupied, but <i>well</i> occupied. The visits of the young physician were
+continued, at longer or shorter intervals, for years, till the young
+woman's health was nearly restored; and, as I subsequently learned, they
+were married. The more recent history of her life, I have not been able
+to ascertain, except that neither party gained as much by the new
+connection as had been expected,&mdash;a result which, alas! is by no means
+any thing new, and that there was, after some time, a relapse of
+disease.</p>
+
+<p>This artifice for restoring health to a bedridden patient, is not
+mentioned in a way of approbation, but of regret, or at least of
+confession. Yet, while it declares my weakness, it develops or at least
+confirms a well-known principle, which it concerns mankind, patients as
+well as physicians, most fully and clearly to understand. The medical
+efficiency of an agent is greatly enhanced when the mind can be made to
+go along with it.</p>
+
+<p>I have wished a thousand times, both by night and by day, that I had
+never commended Dr. Juvenis to the favorable notice and regard of this
+illiterate but confiding family. True, I had the good fortune thus to
+get rid of a most troublesome, standing <i>patient</i>. Had I a moral right
+thus to do? Did the end either sanction or sanctify the means? Grant
+that I saved,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span> or seemed to save, the patient;&mdash;was she really saved?
+Was there any absolute gain in the end? These are questions which I
+cannot, as yet, fully settle. Most certainly she was not quite cured.</p>
+
+<p>What a mighty work for this fallen world education has yet to achieve;
+especially Physical Education! This, reader, let me say once for all,
+this physical education, under the guidance of Christianity, whose
+handmaid all true science should be, and to whose development and
+application all true religion should be directed, is our chief
+dependence. It is the lever by which we are to raise the world.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXVII" id="CHAPTER_XXXVII"></a>CHAPTER XXXVII.</h2>
+
+<h3>HEZEKIAH AND DELIRIUM TREMENS.</h3>
+
+
+<p>One morning, about two o'clock, in the depth of winter, I was roused
+from my slumbers by a stranger's voice, requesting me to get up and go
+immediately along the sides of the mountain and see Hezekiah. "And who
+is Hezekiah?" I said, only half awake; "and where is the side of the
+mountain? And who are you with whom I am conversing?"</p>
+
+<p>The mystery was easily cleared up, and I mounted my horse and was soon
+on the road through the sides of the mountain. It was wild and
+unfrequented; nay, it was, in places, almost impassable, especially in
+the night. Mr. Judkins, the father of the sick man, not only resided
+quite beyond my usual range of practice, but almost out of the range of
+everybody else, squirrels and rabbits and wild fowls excepted.</p>
+
+<p>In passing along, I made many inquiries with regard to the particular
+condition of the young man, in order to prepare myself for a more rapid
+investigation of his case whenever I should arrive. But I sought in
+vain. The messenger's lips were almost wholly sealed. The cause, at that
+time, I did not at all understand; but I had, subsequently, great reason
+to believe he was silent and reserved by the special command of the
+patient's friends. All I could obtain from my guide, was that Hezekiah
+had an ill turn; that he was occasionally subject to ill turns, and that
+the family were greatly alarmed about him.</p>
+
+<p>On my arrival, I found a group of friends large enough, almost, for a
+train band, gathered so closely round the bed of the young man that he
+could hardly breathe. There was, also, a monstrous fire in the chimney,
+sufficient to heat well the whole house, had the heat been properly
+distributed. The air was,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span> at best, greatly confined; but it was
+particularly so to the poor patient, who lay panting as if in a dying
+condition.</p>
+
+<p>Yet I soon saw, and, as it were, instinctively, that he was not likely
+to die immediately. Some adventitious cause was evidently operating to
+throw his brain and nervous system into an abnormal condition, nor was I
+long in determining what it was. The father was a farmer. He possessed
+immense orchards, and made great quantities of cider, and one of his
+neighbors owned a distillery. For every barrel of cider Mr. J. carried
+to the distillery, he received in return a certain amount of
+cider-brandy; and at the time when I was called to see Hezekiah, he had
+more than two barrels of this "precious commodity" in his cellar. At the
+close of autumn he had had three barrels.</p>
+
+<p>Why this deposit of an article so doubtful? And what had become of the
+one barrel which had disappeared? Not a member of the family would touch
+it, but Mr. J. himself, and Hezekiah. The women and children did,
+indeed, sometimes taste a little molasses toddy, as it was called. Mr.
+J. would prepare it and pass it round in the morning just before
+breakfast, in the hope and expectation that all would taste it; and they
+usually did so. It was not, however, quite a voluntary thing on their
+part, but a species of moral compulsion. Left entirely to themselves,
+they never would have tasted it.</p>
+
+<p>Now think, reader, of two persons in a family, with two or three barrels
+of brandy at their entire disposal, with the expectation of consuming
+it, or the far greater part of it, during autumn and winter. Why, three
+barrels are more than a quart a day, for every day of the year. Mr. J.
+drank freely; but not more freely than his son. The latter was treading
+in the steps of his father, with the almost certain prospect of going,
+in the end, quite beyond him.</p>
+
+<p>It was not difficult to prescribe for the young man. The far greater
+difficulty was to induce him to follow out the prescription. I was
+honest enough to tell the father what ailed the son, and what ought to
+be done, and to plead with him to change his own habits immediately. I
+could not, it is true,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span> quite prevail, when I urged him to pour his
+brandy, the whole of it, into the street; for that, as he said and
+doubtless thought, would be a waste of property. But he <i>did</i> promise to
+<i>sell</i> it; though even this promise he never kept. He even continued to
+drink it; though as he always insisted, with great moderation. But the
+greatest drinkers we have among us, are usually the first to speak of
+their own moderation.</p>
+
+<p>The sequel of the story may easily be guessed. Hezekiah became a
+miserable creature, and ere he reached the age of fifty came to a most
+miserable end,&mdash;the drunkard's death, by the drunkard's mania. Mr. J.
+having inherited a strong constitution passed on to sixty-three, when,
+like a mighty tree with decayed trunk, a slight wind crushed him to the
+dust.</p>
+
+<p>His family, most of them, still survive; but they are daughters, and
+have not inherited the vices of their father, so much as his diseases.
+They have, at least, inherited the disease which drinking is so apt to
+entail on the next generation,&mdash;I mean scrofula. Several of Mr. J.'s
+elder daughters are already dead; and the younger ones&mdash;for he had a
+very large family&mdash;are feeble, and always will be so; and their children
+are still more feeble. Thus "earthward," and not heavenward, "all
+things" in the family of the drunkard have a tendency.</p>
+
+<p>How painful the reflection that I did not labor with this family, not
+only in season, as I certainly did, but also out of season, and try to
+save it! I had influence with them. My honest plainness at my first
+visit, above described, did not prevent them from calling on me again
+for counsel; though at first I had feared such a result. I was often in
+the family, but not so often as I might have been; nor was I so bold as
+I ought to have been. Shall I be able to render up my account of the
+intercourse I had with them, in the great day, with joy, or must it be
+with grief and shame?</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXVIII" id="CHAPTER_XXXVIII"></a>CHAPTER XXXVIII.</h2>
+
+<h3>MY FIRST AMPUTATION.</h3>
+
+
+<p>It is easy in imagination, to be wise, especially at a distance. How
+many a surgical operation have I performed <i>on paper</i>; or still oftener,
+and with more assurance, in my own brain. The difficulties are much
+fewer than in the reality.</p>
+
+<p>A fine young man came to me, one day, with a crushed thumb. He had been
+at work on a wool-carding machine, and through the most inexcusable
+carelessness had suffered his thumb to be drawn in. On a careful
+examination, I found the wound to be very severe, and, as I believed,
+requiring amputation.</p>
+
+<p>But what could I do? I had no surgical instruments. Young medical men,
+in plain country places, are hardly expected to purchase these
+conveniences, except perhaps a lancet and the needful instruments for
+extracting teeth. I had, however, a keen penknife in my pocket, and
+without the smallest formality, I proceeded to separate the mangled
+thumb at the joint.</p>
+
+<p>It was a very painful process, and as I now fully believe, quite an
+unnecessary one. But young men are not apt to see things in the same
+light with those who have had experience. They are not half as ready to
+rely on nature. They are inclined to think art will do every thing;
+nature, almost nothing. They frequently love to use the lancet, the
+knife, the scalpel, and the trephine. Of this fondness, however, I knew
+comparatively little. In the present instance, I simply saw it to be a
+doubtful, and as I thought, a hopeless case to attempt to save the
+thumb; and therefore, without much reflection, I removed it.</p>
+
+<p>Now I shall never cease to feel a pang, whenever memory<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span> calls up this
+hasty act, as long as I live. Were life to be protracted to a thousand
+years, I should always reproach myself for it. And yet I am not aware
+that either the young man himself or his friends ever respected me the
+less for it. And so far was I from suffering in the eyes of society at
+large, I verily believe I was a gainer by it. But I respected myself
+less on account of it. I respect myself less to-day. I am fully
+conscious I was too hasty,&mdash;that had I waited a little, I might have
+been a means of saving his hand without much deformity. Nature, in such
+cases, left to herself, will work all but miracles, especially in the
+young, and in those who have a sound constitution.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXIX" id="CHAPTER_XXXIX"></a>CHAPTER XXXIX.</h2>
+
+<h3>MILK, AS A REMEDY IN FEVERS.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Early in my practice as a physician I had a patient, a little girl, who,
+after having been sick for many weeks with a fever, seemed at length to
+become stationary. She was not weak or sick enough to die, and yet she
+seemed not strong enough to recover. Her vitality was almost exhausted,
+and yet Nature was loth to give up.</p>
+
+<p>On this young patient, during her long sickness, I had tried a thousand
+things, to see if I could not give Nature a "start;" but all to no
+purpose. The wheels would not move. She would either vomit up every
+thing I gave her, or it would pass away as into a reservoir, unchanged.
+There appeared to be, I repeat, no vital action in the system.</p>
+
+<p>To check the vomiting or prevent it, I had tried various measures, both
+external and internal. I had used warm applications to her stomach, both
+dry and moist. I had tried frictions of the skin and fomentations of the
+abdomen, both simple and medicated. Electricity I believe I had not
+used. Cheerful conversation, music to some extent, and the society of
+pleasant faces had all been invoked. Still there she was, on her bed. It
+seemed next to impossible for her "chariot" to go either backward or
+forward.</p>
+
+<p>One day she asked for some milk. In an instant I determined to try it.
+So I took a teaspoonful of this fluid, warm from the animal, and gave it
+to her, only requiring her to swallow it very slowly. She not only
+obeyed me, but appeared to relish it. Nor was there any nausea
+afterward, nor any evidence of evil effects or evil tendencies.</p>
+
+<p>At the end of four hours, I gave her another teaspoonful of milk, in the
+same way and with similar effects. At the end of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span> four hours more,
+another was given; and thus onward. In twenty-four hours I was able to
+increase, slightly, the dose. All this while there was no stomach
+sickness, in the smallest degree. In three or four days, she could bear
+a table-spoonful of the "new medicine," every four hours, or a quantity
+equal to two or three ounces a day. In a week or ten days, she could
+take nearly half a gill at once, and had gained considerable strength.
+She recovered in the end, though her recovery was very slow.</p>
+
+<p>But I had hardly used the milk three days, before I began to be
+denounced as an almost insane man, especially by those who were wont to
+set themselves up as the arbiters of public opinion, and who lived too
+remotely to witness the good effects of the course I was pursuing. The
+family, of course, though they disapproved of what I did, could say
+nothing against it, especially as it afforded the only ground of hope of
+recovery. The whole public mind, in that region, was affected by the
+belief that milk, in a fever, is heating and dangerous. "What a strange
+thing it is," said many an old woman, and not a few young ones, "that
+the doctor should give milk to a person sick with a fever! He will
+certainly kill the girl before he is through with her. If these young
+doctors are determined to make experiments, they ought surely to make
+them on themselves, and not on their patients."</p>
+
+<p>The public complaint involved one serious mistake, else it would have
+had the semblance of reason to justify it. As a general fact, milk is
+heating in a fever, and is consequently inadmissible. The mistake to
+which I allude consisted in the belief that the fever still existed,
+when it had wholly passed away and left nothing behind it but debility,
+or the consequences of the fever.</p>
+
+<p>But the evidence that milk did not hurt her, lay, after all, in the
+indisputable fact that she improved as soon as she began to use it, and
+under its moderate and judicious exhibition entirely recovered her
+health. Observe, however, that I do not say it cured her; although I
+might make this affirmation with as much confidence as can justly exist
+with regard to any thing belonging to the <i>materia medica</i>. All I say
+is, that after having<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span> hung in suspense for some time, neither growing
+better nor appearing likely to do so, she commenced the use of the milk
+as aforesaid; and almost as soon as she began to use it she began to be
+convalescent, and her improvement went on steadily, till it terminated
+in sound health.</p>
+
+<p>And yet our good friends, up and down the country, who uttered so many
+jeremiades about the folly of giving milk to a little girl in a fever,
+lived to witness her complete recovery, notwithstanding. She is now a
+mother in our New England Israel, and I believe a very healthy one.</p>
+
+<p>Whether I would venture to pursue exactly the same course in the same
+circumstances, were I to live my life over again, is not quite certain.
+And yet I certainly think it not only safe, but desirable in such cases,
+to do something. Why, I have occasionally, in circumstances of
+convalescence from fever, given things which, in themselves considered,
+are much more objectionable than a little milk, and with the most
+perfect success. I have even given pork, cabbage, cheese, and beans. It
+is true, I have been compelled to exercise a good deal of care in these
+cases, with regard to quantity. That which in the quantity of half a
+pound might destroy life, might in the quantity of half an ounce, be the
+one thing needful to the salvation, physically, of a valuable member of
+society.</p>
+
+<p>A man in New Haven County, in Connecticut, some fifty years ago, was for
+a long time suspended, as it were, between this world and the next, in
+consequence of being left in great debility after a long and dangerous
+fever. For several weeks, in fact, it was scarcely guessed, except in
+the softest whisper, whether the slightest movement or change in his
+system might not precipitate him at once into the eternal world. In this
+perilous condition, he one day asked for sweet cider, just from the
+press. His attendants very properly and naturally hesitated; but the
+physician, when he arrived and was made acquainted with his request,
+immediately said, "Yes; give him a teaspoonful of good, clean, sweet
+cider, every two hours." The cider was given, according to the
+commandment, and appeared to have a restorative effect. The man
+recovered in a reasonable time, and is, I believe, alive to this day.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XL" id="CHAPTER_XL"></a>CHAPTER XL.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE VIRTUES OF PUMPKIN-SEED TEA.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Physicians are sometimes compelled by the force of circumstances, to
+visit the poor as well as the rich; albeit, they expect, so far as mere
+pecuniary compensation is concerned, that they are to have "their labor
+for their pains." They know well that honesty here, if nowhere else, is
+the best policy. Dr. Cullen, who became, as is well known, a giant in
+the profession, first attracted public attention from the act that he
+was often seen coming out of the hovels of the poor.</p>
+
+<p>My own lot for several years was to labor <i>chiefly</i> for the poor. In a
+region where it had been customary for a medical man who had the whole
+control of the business to charge one thousand dollars a year, my
+charges scarcely exceeded three hundred. A few of the wealthy employed
+me, it is true, but not all; while I had all the poor. Indeed, it is
+among the poor, as a general rule, that sickness is most frequent and
+prevalent, not to say fatal.</p>
+
+<p>In one of these poor families, on a certain occasion, I had a long
+campaign and a hard one. First, I was obliged to travel a great distance
+to see them; secondly, I had a very severe disease to encounter;
+thirdly, there were several patients in the house; and the family,
+usually unprovided with sufficient space for a free circulation of the
+air, was still more incommoded when sick. Fourthly, the mistress of the
+house was exceedingly ignorant; and ignorance in a mother is, of itself,
+almost enough to insure the destruction of all patients over whom she
+has control.</p>
+
+<p>My chief source of trouble, in the present instance, was the injudicious
+conduct of the mother to the family; for all else could have been borne.
+She was almost incessantly trying to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span> do something over and above what I
+had ordered or recommended. The neighbors, almost as weak as herself,
+would come in and say: "Why don't your doctor give such or such a thing?
+Mr. Blarney was sick exactly like Samuel, and they gave him a certain
+powder and he got right up in a very few days." This would usually be
+quite sufficient to make Mrs. &mdash;&mdash;very unhappy, at least till she had
+again seen me.</p>
+
+<p>Among the sick members of her family, was a daughter of about fifteen
+years of age. For this daughter, in particular, more than for the son
+Samuel, the good matrons of the neighborhood had their thousand
+remedies; and they regarded them all as infallible. With these, their
+favorite notions and doses, they were continually filling the ears of
+Mrs. &mdash;&mdash;.</p>
+
+<p>One day, when I had been the usual round of the family, and given all
+needful directions for the day, Mrs. &mdash;&mdash; came to me and said: "Doctor,
+what do you think would be the effect of a little pumpkin-seed tea on my
+daughter Eunice? Do you think it would hurt her?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, no; I suppose not," I said. "But for what purpose would you give
+her pumpkin-seed tea? Is she not doing as well as could be expected? And
+if so, is it not desirable to let well enough alone?"</p>
+
+<p>"To be sure she is doing very well," said Mrs. &mdash;&mdash;; "and I do not know
+but every thing is just as it should be. We certainly have great
+confidence in your treatment. But she is so feeble it seems as if
+something might be given which would make her gain strength faster. Why,
+she is very weak, doctor! Mrs. Gay and several others have thought a
+little pumpkin-seed tea might give her strength; but I do not like to
+order any thing new without first consulting you."</p>
+
+<p>I did not object to the pumpkin-seed tea, <i>administered in great
+moderation</i>. I did not say as I ought boldly to have said: "I shall be
+obliged, as your physician, at least till you choose to dismiss me, to
+pursue the course I have marked out for myself, since I shall have to
+bear the responsibility." In my modesty and even diffidence, I preferred
+to let the ignorant friends of the young woman dabble with this
+comparatively inoffensive article,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span> rather than with something worse.
+Besides, I wished to have no clandestine movements, and had already
+rejected so many proposals to give this or that medicament, that I dared
+not do it longer. "Oh, yes," said I, "you may give her pumpkin-seed tea;
+but give it in moderation."</p>
+
+<p>The pumpkin-seed tea was given for the next twenty-four hours, I
+believe, with great exactness. But as there was no obvious or immediate
+advantage from using it during that time, it shared the fate which might
+have been expected. Like the wad in the child's pop-gun, which some new
+wad soon and effectually expels, the pumpkin-seed tea was thrown aside,
+and some other infallible cure proposed in its stead.</p>
+
+<p>Now, reader, do not suppose I deemed it at all derogatory to medical
+authority that pumpkin-seed tea should be proposed by a weak and silly
+mother for a darling daughter. Such a feeling as that would have placed
+me on the same level of human folly that she herself occupied. On the
+contrary, a medical man of any considerable experience among the sick
+and the friends of the sick, should think himself exceedingly fortunate
+when nothing worse is suggested by ignorance for his patients than
+<i>pumpkin-seed tea</i>!</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XLI" id="CHAPTER_XLI"></a>CHAPTER XLI.</h2>
+
+<h3>BROKEN LIMBS AND INTEMPERANCE.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Wrestling for amusement, in the region where I practised medicine, was a
+very common occurrence, and certainly had its advantages. But there was
+one drawback upon its excellence, except to physicians. It involved a
+good deal of bone-breaking. One famous wrestler with whom I was well
+acquainted, broke, for his neighbors, an arm and a collar-bone; and in
+the end almost broke his own neck. He certainly injured it to an extent
+from which there was never an entire recovery. I shall mention him in
+another place.</p>
+
+<p>For more or fewer of these broken bones from wrestling, I was called on
+to prescribe. One case in particular may be worth a few moments'
+attention, especially as it brings with it certain medical confessions.</p>
+
+<p>I was sent for one evening, about nine o'clock, to visit a young man who
+had been injured, as it was said, by wrestling. On my arrival, I found
+him in great distress. He had delayed sending for aid so long that there
+was much inflammation, and consequent heat, swelling, tenderness, and
+pain.</p>
+
+<p>It was not easy, at first, to ascertain the exact character of the
+fractures; but on inquiry and examination, it appeared that while the
+patient was resting nearly or quite his whole weight on the fractured
+leg, his antagonist had struck or tripped with his foot so violently as
+to fracture both bones a little way above the ankle.</p>
+
+<p>It was rather a trying-case to me&mdash;for as yet I was, in the art of
+surgery, a mere tyro. But it was a case which would not admit of much
+delay; for the inflammation, already sufficiently great, was rapidly
+increasing. Nor would it do long to hesitate from mere modesty. I was
+among a class of people,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span> who would, as I well knew, construe modesty,
+even though it should chance to be, as sometimes it is, an accompaniment
+of true science, into sheer ignorance; and this would deprive me, as a
+physician, of my principal lever. For who can lift up the down-fallen
+without having their full confidence.</p>
+
+<p>But I must explain. My patient with the fractured leg, though not in the
+usual acceptation of the term a drunkard, was, nevertheless, in the
+habit of drinking more or less of ardent spirit; and there were not
+wanting those who believed he was pretty well heated with liquor at the
+time his leg was broken. But, however this may have been, his frequent
+and excessive use of spirituous liquors had rendered his blood
+exceedingly impure; and I could not help shrinking, at first, from the
+task of having charge of him. Yet, it was a war from which there was no
+honorable discharge. There was no other surgeon within a reasonable
+distance, and why should I refuse to do my best for him? Somebody must
+assist him; and though the case was a troublesome one, why should I not
+take my share of troublesome cases among the rest?</p>
+
+<p>There was another consideration. As he was poor, any thing like
+reluctance would have been construed into a willingness to neglect him
+on account of his poverty&mdash;a suspicion from which I should, at that
+time, have shrunk as readily as from the charge of robbery or murder.</p>
+
+<p>But his associates were worse than he; and, with the exception of his
+own immediate relations, not an individual would be likely to call on or
+proffer him aid who was not half or two thirds of the time steeped in
+spirits. Has the surgeon or physician, in such circumstances, much
+reason to hope? And what is the hope of his patient? Can he reasonably
+expect, even with the aid of a skilful surgeon, ever to have a good leg?</p>
+
+<p>However, I did my duty, according to my best knowledge. I had the man
+laid in a proper position, then placed the divided bones as nearly in
+their natural position as possible, and bound them. I confess, here, to
+very great ignorance. Moreover, I repeat, it was a difficult case. And
+yet I think I succeeded very well for a beginner.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Having properly placed the fractured bones and detained them there by
+suitable means, I gave due orders concerning the patient's management
+and treatment. I was particularly careful to interdict all stimulating
+or indigestible food, and all drink but water. My directions were
+written down with great care, and the strictest charge was given to his
+friends and family to see that they were faithfully regarded.</p>
+
+<p>But, alas, for the best person in the world with such attendants!
+Whenever his wife took care of him, things went on very well; but in
+other instances, almost every thing went wrong. His attendants gave him
+rum, opium, laudanum, or almost any thing that he called for. It is
+true&mdash;and I mention it to his credit&mdash;that he was often rather moderate
+in his use of interdicted articles; but then he took just about enough
+of these unnatural or extra stimulants, to prevent the healing process
+from going forward as fast as in a man of only thirty years might have
+been expected.</p>
+
+<p>Instead of being on his feet in a couple of months or so, he lay on his
+bed three months or more. And then, instead of having a good leg, it was
+not merely slightly crooked, but half an inch too short. And then, in
+addition,&mdash;and what was very hard to endure,&mdash;he charged the whole blame
+of its imperfection on the surgeon, and insisted that it was not "set"
+right!</p>
+
+<p>Now, while I confess to much awkwardness, and to the possibility that
+the limb was not managed as well as it might have been, I must maintain,
+notwithstanding, that such a charge was wholly misplaced and even
+gratuitous. Had he employed the best surgeon in the world, and had the
+leg received the best possible attention, it could not have been kept in
+its proper place with so much distilled spirits in the house, and so
+many slaves of the bottle! One might almost as well expect a leg to heal
+in the nether pit. Though I have never said, either by way of
+retaliating the abuse or otherwise, that his punishment was richly
+merited, I <i>might</i> have said so. A man is hardly entitled to good health
+and a good frame who keeps such company as he did, whether in sickness
+or in health. God has so connected<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span> law and penalty, that he who should
+complain of the penalty would but insult the law given.</p>
+
+<p>Many cases of petty surgery as well as of severe and complicated
+disease, fell to my lot, which embarrassed me in a manner not unlike the
+foregoing; though in no one did I suffer quite so much from
+misrepresentation as in this. For at least twenty years, to my certain
+knowledge, my patient took pains to speak of me in terms of reproach,
+and to say that his leg was set badly; and all without the slightest
+evidence. I do not positively aver, I again say, that the surgery in the
+case was faultless; but whether it was so or not, neither he nor any
+living individual could know, unless it were a more skilful surgeon than
+myself; and no such surgeon, I am sure, ever saw him during the time I
+was in attendance.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XLII" id="CHAPTER_XLII"></a>CHAPTER XLII.</h2>
+
+<h3>DYING FROM MERE FILTHINESS.</h3>
+
+
+<p>The family of a wealthy farmer came under my hands, as physician, one
+autumn, in circumstances peculiarly painful and trying. Several of them
+had been taken suddenly and severely sick, and one or two were almost
+dead before they were fairly aroused to a sense of danger. They lived,
+however, quite remote from any village, and were strongly prejudiced
+against both physicians and medicine. But a fearful foe, in the shape of
+typhoid dysentery, now assailed them, and handled them so roughly that
+they laid aside their prejudices for the moment, and cried aloud for
+help.</p>
+
+<p>I was soon on the spot, but, oh, what a scene presented itself! As I
+have more than intimated, two of the family were already beyond hope.
+Others seemed likely to die. What was to be done for them, as I saw
+plainly, must be done quickly. On nearly every countenance I met with,
+both within the family and beyond its precincts, were the marks of
+consternation, and on some, of despair.</p>
+
+<p>In these circumstances&mdash;for desperate cases require a desperate
+remedy&mdash;I sought the counsels of an older physician. He came immediately
+and took a survey of the dreadful field of slaughter. On retiring with
+him for consultation, he immediately said; "There must be some local
+cause or causes for all this. Have you," he added, "been into the
+cellar?" When I replied in the negative, he said, "Then we must go there
+immediately."</p>
+
+<p>On speaking to the lady of the house, who was among the sick, by the way
+of asking permission, she objected, and with a good deal of promptitude
+and spirit. However, she at length yielded, and we made a thorough
+examination. The results of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span> this examination were such as to confirm
+our suspicions. "We need not search further for the causes of a deadly
+disease," said Dr. B., and I thought so too.</p>
+
+<p>I have said already that the family was wealthy; but wealth need not
+include negligence, and still more filth. It was now September; and I am
+quite of opinion that the cellar had not been cleaned in one year,
+perhaps not in two. I had seen many farmers' cellars before, but I had
+never seen such an one as this. Nor do I believe my consulting physician
+ever had, though he was some twenty years older in medical practice than
+myself. Nor am I certain that what I may state will appear to you wholly
+reliable.</p>
+
+<p>In the first place there were, in abundance, cabbage leaves and stumps
+in a semi-putrid state. Next there were decayed potatoes, turnips,
+beets, and apples. Then there were in various parts of the cellar
+remnants of cider and vinegar, and cider lees&mdash;the latter in a most
+offensive condition. Finally, there were remnants of barrels of beef and
+pork, in a bad state&mdash;to say nothing of other casual filth&mdash;the whole
+contributing to such a stench as I had never before perceived in a
+cellar.</p>
+
+<p>The old physician who accompanied me had said, "We need not go farther;"
+but our determination was, on full and mature reflection, to know the
+worst and the whole, and we governed ourselves accordingly.</p>
+
+<p>Close to one corner of the kitchen was the well, the water in which was
+very low, and near to that the sink. And if the contents of the sink did
+not find their way, from day to day, into the well, thus adding impurity
+to putridity, it must have been in virtue of some unknown law which
+stood opposed to the great law of specific gravity and attraction. It is
+true that many speak of the earth as having a <i>cleansing</i> power in such
+cases; but I know of no power which it possesses of cleaning sink water,
+while the latter is passing only five or six feet through it. The
+coarser parts may be strained out, but the essence must remain.<a name="FNanchor_F_6" id="FNanchor_F_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_F_6" class="fnanchor">[F]</a></p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span></p>
+<p>But our work was not yet finished. The vault, greatly neglected, was not
+far from the well; and so of the pigsty. Nor was it easy to resist the
+conviction that there was an underground communication between them.
+Then, finally, the house instead of standing on an elevation, greater or
+less,&mdash;a very common mode of building in New England,&mdash;stood in a sort
+of concavity, which contained also the barn and barnyard and
+woodpile;&mdash;connected with both of which was a large amount of decayed
+and decaying animal and vegetable matter.</p>
+
+<p>Now after such a review as this, he who could remain in doubt with
+regard to the cause of existing disease, especially on its assuming the
+form of bowel complaint with typhoid tendencies, must be much more
+ignorant of the laws of health and disease than I was. In fact the signs
+were unmistakable.</p>
+
+<p>We immediately made our report to the heads of the family, and
+recommended a most thorough cleansing, at once. It was easy to see that
+we gave great offence; indeed we had anticipated such a result. But we
+were not at all intimidated. We insisted on a work of immediate
+expurgation, which was finally effected, only we could not put pure
+water into the well. But we could and did require that the well water
+should not be used for any thing except washing clothes.</p>
+
+<p>The result was a decided and almost immediate improvement in the
+condition of the family, except the two already spoken of, and a very
+young child. These three died. Some of the rest lingered for weeks, and
+one or two for months; but they finally recovered.</p>
+
+<p>It is worthy of remark, moreover, that of the people of the
+neighborhood, though they had been excessively frightened and had not at
+first dared to come near the house, at least without holding their
+breath, not a person among them sickened.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span> The disease began and ended
+over the foul cellar I have mentioned; nor has a similar disease ever
+since broken out there. The fair presumption is, that they have never
+since suffered such foul accumulations to remain through the hot season,
+on their premises.</p>
+
+<p>My honest and truly honorable course of conduct, in this instance, cost
+me something. Though I was a means of saving their lives, the survivors
+never thanked me for the exposure I made of their slovenliness. Perhaps
+I was wrong in reporting it abroad; but it was next to impossible to
+conceal the facts; and I, for once, did not attempt it. Physicians
+sometimes thus stand between the living and the dead, and must expect to
+give offence. They are, however, in duty bound to keep the secrets of
+their patients' faults as long as they can, unless the greater good of
+the public demands an exposition.</p>
+
+<p>But while I lost reputation in this particular family, I have not a
+doubt that I gained a strong hold, by this adventure, on the public mind
+and feelings. In truth, despite of even some trifling errors, I deserved
+it. I had, moreover, during the adventure, acquired a good deal of
+practical knowledge, of which, in the progress of my course as a medical
+man, I was glad to avail myself.</p>
+
+<p>This was doubtless an extreme case of disease from filthiness; but cases
+of the same general character are quite numerous. I have sometimes
+wished the public could have a history of these cases. There is an
+immense amount of neglect in the departments of cleanliness and
+ventilation; and the consequent suffering in the various forms of
+disease, is in similar degree and proportion.</p>
+
+<p>I will conclude this chapter with a single anecdote, which, were it
+necessary, could be substantiated by a very great number of living
+witnesses.</p>
+
+<p>Some fifteen or twenty years ago, a severe disease was accustomed to
+visit one of our New England factory villages, and to carry off more or
+fewer of its inhabitants. So regular and certain were its yearly visits
+and ravages, that not a few were disposed to regard it as a sort of
+necessary evil, or, perhaps, as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span> a divine infliction. At length a very
+shrewd old gentleman told the people that the troublesome visitor was of
+human and not of divine origin; and that if they would attend properly
+to their cellars, sleeping-rooms, wells, etc., it would no more be heard
+of. At first, they were disposed to laugh at him; but the matter was
+talked of and agitated, till a work of general purgation was actually
+attempted and finally accomplished. The disease has never re-appeared.
+Was all this the result of mere accident? Do our diseases spring out of
+the ground? Are they the result of chance or hap-hazard? or, are they
+not the heaven-appointed penalties of transgression?</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_F_6" id="Footnote_F_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_F_6"><span class="label">[F]</span></a> Farmers, in former times, while making cider, were very
+slovenly. When I observed a large amount of filth adhering to their
+boots and shoes as they carried the pumice from the vat to the press, I
+thought of the worms, insects, and dust, which were ground up and
+incorporated with the mass, I sometimes expressed surprise. "Oh," said
+they, "the cider will work itself clean!" If so, I thought, and still
+think, it must be by the operation of some law not yet discovered. It
+may work itself <i>clear</i>, perhaps; but to work itself <i>clean</i>, is quite
+another matter.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XLIII" id="CHAPTER_XLIII"></a>CHAPTER XLIII.</h2>
+
+<h3>TAKING THE FEVER.</h3>
+
+
+<p>A large family, not much more careful of their habits or cleanly about
+their premises than the family alluded to in the foregoing chapter, had
+sickened one autumn, and one of them had died. Anxious to save the rest,
+I again acted as physician and nurse both, and effected my object; or,
+at least, appeared to do so. The rest of my patients ultimately
+recovered.</p>
+
+<p>But while thus watching these patients, by night and day, standing in
+the very front of the battle, I suddenly sickened. The circumstances, as
+nearly as I can recollect them, were the following:&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Among the sick of this afflicted family was one unmarried man of rather
+eccentric and very unsociable habits, and exceedingly negligent both of
+his person and dress. His linen, and I think also his bed-clothes, were
+hardly changed once a month; at least as long as he was well. And then
+he had, of course, extended the same neglect to his sick chamber. Added
+to this, moreover, was a species of <i>necessity</i> at this juncture; for so
+much distressed were the family, and so difficult was it to procure aid
+in the neighborhood, that a part of the neglect to which our old
+bachelor was subjected seemed unavoidable.</p>
+
+<p>I took notice of the neglect, spoke of it repeatedly, and labored
+assiduously to correct the evil. But the case seemed an almost forlorn
+one. I was morally obliged, as I then felt, to do a thousand things for
+him that usually fall to the lot of nurses and assistants. In some
+instances, I passed even whole nights in the family, in attendance on
+him and the other sick persons.</p>
+
+<p>My task was the more severe from the fact that a similar fever was
+prevailing in other parts of the town, and my labors<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span> beyond the
+precincts of this family were exceedingly fatiguing and severe. In
+truth, I was, in the end, greatly overworked and debilitated, and my
+system most admirably prepared for the reception of disease.</p>
+
+<p>For various reasons, some of which, have already been named, I often
+assisted in turning my bachelor-patient in his foul bed. It is true the
+process was so offensive that I avoided it whenever I could; but on
+occasions, I yielded to the pressure of necessity.</p>
+
+<p>One night, when I was greatly fatigued and exhausted, and at the bottom
+of my condition,&mdash;utterly unfit for exertion, even in a pure
+atmosphere,&mdash;I was stooping over Mr. V., to turn him in his bed, when I
+suddenly felt a sensation like that of receiving a blow externally on
+the chest and stomach. The thought struck me as quickly as the imaginary
+blow did&mdash;have I not taken the disease? I knew the laws of contagion;
+the only question was whether any contagion had been generated. My
+opinion was to the contrary; nevertheless, I could not wholly suppress
+my fears.</p>
+
+<p>A sensation of oppression which followed the imaginary blow, soon
+gradually passed away, though I felt, each succeeding day, more and more
+debilitated. Many a resolution was made to leave my patients, so far as
+personal manual care was concerned, and be much more than I had been, in
+the open air, though it was only made for a time&mdash;to be broken. At
+length, however, principle prevailed over sympathy and inclination, and
+I did as I ought to have done long before. It was, however, rather late,
+for the die was already cast. I was taken sick, and the symptoms of my
+disease were precisely like those of Mr. V.</p>
+
+<p>Perceiving now, most clearly, my condition, and that I was engaged in a
+war from which there could be no discharge, I made preparation for a
+long and severe sickness. First, I calmly and deliberately adjusted all
+my domestic concerns of a pecuniary kind, and made such arrangements as
+would, in case of my demise, render every thing intelligible. Then, in
+the second place, I made up my mind to submit, as cheerfully as I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span>
+could, to my condition. I determined to keep quiet, and not indulge for
+a moment in any undue anxiety. I employed a physician,&mdash;my old
+master&mdash;but steadfastly, and almost obstinately determined not to take
+much medicine;&mdash;nor was there much prescribed.</p>
+
+<p>My disease proved to be much milder than was expected; but it had its
+regular course. I never wholly lost my muscular strength or my appetite.
+While I was sick, several of my nearest friends and patrons sickened in
+a similar way, only more severely; and one or two of them died. On my
+recovery, however, or about the same time, the most of them began also
+to recover, and the disease in general abated.</p>
+
+<p>Now, when I came to reflect coolly and carefully on the whole affair, I
+could not help perceiving that I richly deserved all I suffered. It was
+the just penalty of transgression. I had been fully and repeatedly
+warned not to watch with my patients, as those who turn back to Chapter
+XXIII, and those too who remember its contents, will perceive. It was
+fit, therefore, that I should feel the rod, even if I could not kiss the
+hand that had appointed it. The only wonder with me now is, that my
+punishment was not more severe.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XLIV" id="CHAPTER_XLIV"></a>CHAPTER XLIV.</h2>
+
+<h3>BLESSINGS OF CIDER AND CIDER BRANDY.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Some of these blessings have been alluded to in Chapter XXXVI. But the
+subject is one of too much importance to be left in an unfinished state,
+and I have concluded to make it the principal topic of a separate
+chapter.</p>
+
+<p>A man came to me, one day, with sundry grievous complaints about his
+head and stomach. It was easy to see, at once, that they were not of
+mushroom growth, and that they could not be removed either in an hour or
+a day. However, I did the best I could with him, and charged him to
+follow, implicitly, my directions, which he promised faithfully to do. I
+told him, even, that he was in danger of a severe disease, but
+counselled him to do his utmost to escape it, if possible.</p>
+
+<p>He was, in the first place, a New England or Yankee farmer. Not quite
+satisfied with the products of his farm from the labors of the day, he
+coupled with them the night labors of managing a saw-mill and a
+distillery. And not satisfied with even these, he sometimes burned
+charcoal, which also involved more or less of nocturnal labor. In truth,
+these employments and avocations kept him up a great many nights during
+a considerable portion of the year, and were evidently wearing him out
+prematurely; for, though less than forty years of age, he had the
+appearance of being fifty or sixty.</p>
+
+<p>This severe tasking of his system, had led him greatly into temptation.
+Not only had he acquired the habit of chewing tobacco, as a solace in
+his seclusion and toil, but also of drinking very freely of cider and
+cider brandy; the last two of which, as might naturally be inferred from
+what has been said, he was accustomed to manufacture in large
+quantities. He was not a great eater, though I have no doubt he ate too<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span>
+much. But he did not take time to eat&mdash;he did not masticate any thing;
+almost every thing was swallowed in masses, and washed down with tea,
+coffee, or cider. Then, lastly and finally, he ate, as it were, by the
+job, when he <i>did</i> eat; for his meals were very irregular and sometimes
+very infrequent.</p>
+
+<p>Another thing should be noticed. His cider and perhaps his tobacco,
+having leagued together, took away his appetite. Cider, as is well
+known, practically and in a gradual way, takes away the appetite, and so
+does coffee. Many a farmer will tell you that it is a matter of economy
+to give his laborers cider or coffee, since they will not eat so much.
+It is highly probable that brandy, and indeed all extra stimulants, have
+the same appetite-destroying effect.</p>
+
+<p>And as the result of his various irregularities and abuses, his
+digestive and nervous systems had become very much deranged and
+disordered, and I could hardly help foreboding evil concerning him. I
+prescribed for him as well as I could, and requested him to call on me
+in two or three days, and "report progress."</p>
+
+<p>On the next day but one, I was summoned to his bedside. My medicine had
+indeed appeared to afford him a little temporary relief, but it was only
+temporary. He was now much worse than ever before. I prescribed again;
+but it was with similar effect. Nature, somewhat relieved, as I then
+vainly imagined, seemed disposed to rally, but was unable. Every
+successive effort to rally, showed more and more clearly how much she
+had been crippled. At least she seemed to succumb either to the
+treatment or the disease, which last became in the end quite formidable.</p>
+
+<p>But though Nature had yielded, apparently vanquished, she still made
+occasional faint efforts, every two or three days, to regain the
+supremacy, or, in other words, to set things right; and sometimes we
+were led to indulge in hope. But the remissions of disease and of
+suffering were only temporary, and were succeeded, in every instance, by
+a worse condition of things than before. I called for sage medical
+counsel, but all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span> to no permanent purpose. Downward he tended, step by
+step, and no human power or skill seemed likely to arrest his progress.</p>
+
+<p>In this downward course his constitution held out&mdash;for he was by nature
+exceedingly tenacious of life&mdash;till about the twenty-third day, when the
+vital forces began to retreat. He died on the twenty-fifth.</p>
+
+<p>One practical but general error deserves to be noticed, for want of a
+better place, in this very connection. Notwithstanding the great
+difficulty of convincing a person who habitually uses extra stimulants,
+narcotics, or any medicinal agents, all the way from rum, opium, and
+tobacco, down to tea, coffee, and saleratus, that they are injuring him
+at all, as long as he does not feel very ill, yet it ought to be clearly
+and fully known that every one who is thus addicted to unnatural habits,
+and <i>being</i> thus addicted is seized with disease of any kind and from
+any cause whatever, is certain to have that disease with greater
+severity than if his habits had been, from the first, perfectly correct
+or normal. Nor is this all. Medical aid, whenever invoked under these
+circumstances, is more questionable as to its good tendencies. No
+medical man of any skill or observation but must feel, in such a case,
+most painfully, the terrible uncertainty of that treatment of the living
+machine which is quite enough so when the habits have been most
+favorable, by being most correct.</p>
+
+<p>One caution of quite another kind may be interposed here. My patient
+above had neglected to call on me for several days in the beginning of
+his disease, under the very general impression of ignorant people, that
+if he called a physician he should certainly be severely sick; for if he
+was not already very sick, any efforts to prevent disease would only
+serve to make him so.</p>
+
+<p>Now this is, as a general rule, a very great mistake. It would be much
+more safe to call a physician very early, than to wait till Nature is so
+much embarrassed and even crippled that we can place very little
+reliance on her efforts. Worse still is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span> it for the physician, when
+called late, to load down the enfeebled system with medicine by way of
+atoning for past neglects. Thousands have made the mistake here alluded
+to, and have thus been a means of hastening on a fatal termination of
+the disease. It is not by any means improbable that such was the result
+in the foregoing instance.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XLV" id="CHAPTER_XLV"></a>CHAPTER XLV.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE INDIAN DOCTOR.</h3>
+
+
+<p>A little child about two years of age, severely afflicted with bowel
+complaint, came under my care during the first year of my medical
+practice, and proved the source of much difficulty.</p>
+
+<p>She was the child of a mother who had been trained to delicacies, in the
+usual fashionable way, and who had begun to carry out the same wretched
+course of education in her own family. In addition to a generally wrong
+treatment, the child had been indulged, for many weeks before I was
+called, with a large amount of green, or at least very unripe, fruit.</p>
+
+<p>It was at a season of the year when both children and adults were
+suffering from bowel complaints much more than at any other; but as the
+hot days and nights were expected soon to give way to the cooler and
+longer nights of October, I fastened my hopes of the child's final
+recovery, very largely, on the natural recuperative effects of the
+autumnal season. I did not attempt to give much medicine. My reliance
+was almost wholly on keeping up what I was wont to call a good
+centrifugal force, or in keeping the skin&mdash;the great safety valve of the
+system&mdash;in proper and healthful activity. Much that I ordered was in the
+way of bathing, local and general, especially warm bathing.</p>
+
+<p>The parents of the child were among my most confidential, not to say
+influential, friends. If there was a family within the whole of my
+medical circuit with whom my word was law, it was this. Yet after all
+they were ignorant, especially of themselves; and such people always
+were and always will be credulous. They would open their ears, not only
+to the thousand and one insinuations of malice and envy, which at times
+are ventured against a young physician,&mdash;especially if he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span> is going
+ahead, and as they say "getting rich" too fast, and thus securing more
+than they believe to be his share of public popularity;&mdash;but to the
+still larger number, if possible, of weak criticisers in his practice.</p>
+
+<p>My friend's residence, moreover, was in a neighborhood contiguous to
+quacks and quackery, in the pretensions to which there were many
+believers. These dupes of ignorance and assurance were ever and anon
+filling the heads of my "patrons" with their stories of wonderful cures,
+in cases almost <i>exactly like that of my own little patient</i>, and urging
+the poor half-distracted parents to try something new&mdash;either medicine
+or physician. They would appeal to their feelings by asking them how
+they could be willing, as parents,&mdash;however great might be their
+confidence in me as a physician,&mdash;to let a darling child lie, day after
+day, and yet make no extra effort to save it.</p>
+
+<p>Their appeals were not wholly ineffective; indeed, what else could have
+been expected? My first suspicion of any thing radically wrong, arose
+from a decidedly unexpected effect from a little medicine I had
+previously ordered. It seemed quite clear to my mind that a neutralizing
+agent had been at work somehow, by design or otherwise. And yet I shrunk
+from making an inquiry. In the end, however, I found myself morally
+compelled to do so. The results were very nearly what I had feared, and
+what might have been expected.</p>
+
+<p>One of the <i>reliabilities</i> of the wise ones of the neighborhood went by
+the name of the "Indian" doctor. Whether in addition to a very little
+Indian blood he was half or three-fourths Spanish, Portuguese, or
+Canadian, I never knew, for I never took pains to inquire. But he had
+Indian habits. He was at times intemperate and vicious. No one who knew
+him would have trusted him with a sixpence of his own honest earnings,
+at least any longer than he was within his sight or reach. Yet many
+people would and did trust him with their own lives and the lives of
+their children.</p>
+
+<p>There was one redeeming circumstance in connection with the history of
+this Indian doctor. He would never prescribe for the sick when in a
+state of intoxication. He knew, in this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span> respect, his own weakness. But
+then it must be confessed he was not often free from intoxication. He
+was almost always steeped in cider or spirits. He was seldom, if ever,
+properly a sane or even a steady man.</p>
+
+<p>On pressing the parents of the sick child more closely than usual, they
+frankly owned that though they had not of themselves called in the
+Indian doctor, they had permitted Mrs. A. B. to invite him in, and had
+permitted the child to take a little of his medicine.</p>
+
+<p>The secret was now fully revealed, and it was no longer a matter of
+wonder with me, why poison did not work well against poison. The wonder
+was why, together, we had not killed the poor child. And yet it was by
+no means certain that the Indian's prescription was of much force, save
+the few drops of alcohol which it contained, for all his medicine was to
+be taken in alcohol.</p>
+
+<p>I stated to the parents the probable issues&mdash;that unless the child
+possessed more than ordinary tenacity of life, it must ultimately sink
+under the load it was compelled to sustain. But to our great
+surprise&mdash;certainly my own&mdash;it survived; and, though it was suspended
+for weeks between life and death, it finally recovered.</p>
+
+<p>The most mortifying circumstance of all was, that this miserable mongrel
+of a man had the credit of curing a child that only survived because it
+was tough and strong enough to resist the destructive tendency of two
+broadside fires&mdash;mine and his own. But medical men are compelled to put
+up with a great many things which, of course, they would not prefer.
+They must take the world as it is&mdash;as the world does the corps of
+physicians. They must calculate for deductions and drawbacks; and what
+they calculate on, they are pretty sure to experience. But, like other
+men with other severe trials, they have their reward.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XLVI" id="CHAPTER_XLVI"></a>CHAPTER XLVI.</h2>
+
+<h3>DYING OF OLD AGE, AT FIFTY-EIGHT.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Within the usual limits assigned me in the daily routine of my
+profession, but on its very verge, there resided an individual of much
+general reputation for worth of character, but of feeble constitution
+and cachetic or deranged habits, for whom as well as for his numerous
+family I had frequently prescribed.</p>
+
+<p>He was at length, one autumn, unusually reduced in health and strength,
+and I was again sent for. There was evidently very little of real
+disease about him, and yet there was very great debility. All his bodily
+senses were greatly deranged, and all his intellectual faculties
+benumbed. His internal machinery&mdash;his breathing, circulation, and
+digestion&mdash;was all affected; but it seemed more the result of debility
+than any thing else. There was no violence or excess of action anywhere,
+except a slight increase of the circulation.</p>
+
+<p>The man was about fifty-eight years of age. Had he been ninety-eight or
+even eighty-eight, I should have had no difficulty in understanding his
+case. I should have said to myself, "Nature, nearly exhausted by the
+wear and tear of life, is about to give way;" or in other words, "The
+man is about to did (?die) of mere old age." But could he have been thus
+worn out at the age of fifty-eight?</p>
+
+<p>I gave him gentle, tonic medicine, but it did not work well. Without
+increasing his strength, it increased his tendencies to fever. Yet, as I
+well knew, depletion would not answer in a case like this, whether of
+bleeding, blistering, or cathartics. In these circumstances, I contrived
+to while away the time in a routine of that negative character which, in
+true medical language, means laboriously doing nothing.</p>
+
+<p>He was visited about twice a week. I heard patiently all his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span>
+complaints, and endeavored to be patient under all my disappointments,
+for disappointments I had to encounter at nearly every step. No active
+treatment whatever would have the general effect I desired and intended.
+If I gave him but a single dose of elixir paregoric for his nervousness,
+it only added, nine times in ten, to the very woes it was intended to
+relieve. My policy&mdash;and I fully believe it was the only true policy&mdash;was
+to leave him to himself and to Nature, as much as possible.</p>
+
+<p>Though I have spoken here of what I regarded as the true policy in the
+case then under my care, yet, after all, the truest course would have
+been to call for consultation some wiser head than my own. Another
+individual, even though he were no wiser than I, might have aided me
+most essentially, in compliance with, and in confirmation of, the good
+old adage&mdash;"Two eyes see more than one."</p>
+
+<p>Why, then, did I not call on some inquiring and highly experienced
+physician? It was not that I was too proud to do so, nor that I was too
+jealous of my reputation. It was not that I feared any evil result to
+myself. It was rather because I did not, at first, think it really
+necessary; and then, subsequently, when I supposed it to be really
+needful, I feared my patient would grudge the expense. This fear, by the
+way, was grounded in something more than mere conjecture. The proposal
+had been practically made, and had been rejected.</p>
+
+<p>In this general way things went on for some time. The friends grew
+uneasy, as they should have done; and one or two of them, now that it
+was almost too late, spoke of another physician as counsel. My own
+readiness and more than readiness for this seemed to have the effect to
+quiet the patient, though it had the contrary effect on his friends.
+They appeared to construe my own liberality and the admixture of modesty
+and conscientiousness, which were conspicuous in my general behavior,
+into self-distrust, and hence began themselves to distrust me.</p>
+
+<p>The patient's state of mind&mdash;for he was a man whose habits of thinking
+and feeling approximated very closely to those of the miser&mdash;more than
+once reminded me of some doggerel verses I have seen, perhaps in an old
+almanac, which are<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span> so pertinent in illustration of the point in my
+patient's character which these remarks are intended to expose, that I
+have ventured to insert them:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"The miser Sherdi, on his sick-bed lying,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Affrighted, groaning, fainting, wheezing, dying,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Expecting every hour to lose his breath,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Enters a Dervise: 'Holy Father, say,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As life seems parting from this sinful clay,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">What can preserve me from the jaws of death?'<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"'Sacrifice, dear son, good joints of meat,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of lamb and mutton for the priest and poor.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nay, shouldst thou from the Koran lines repeat,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Those lines might possibly thy health restore,'<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"'Thank you, good father, you have said enough;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Your counsels have already given me ease.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Now as my sheep are all a great way off,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">I'll quote holy our Koran, if you please.'"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>At length my patient began, most evidently, to decline. There were
+various marks on him and in him, of approaching dissolution. When
+pressed, as I frequently was, to say definitely what the disease
+was&mdash;that is, to give it a name&mdash;under which Mr. &mdash;&mdash; labored, I only
+replied that he was suffering from premature old age. This always
+awakened surprise, and led to much and frequent inquiry how it was that
+a man of fifty-eight years could be dying of mere old age. My
+explanations, whenever attempted,&mdash;for sometimes in my pride of
+profession I wholly evaded them,&mdash;were usually, in substance like the
+following:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. &mdash;&mdash; was feeble by inheritance. He never had that firmness of
+constitution which several of his brothers now possess. Then, too, he
+was precocious. His body and mind, both of them, came to maturity very
+early; which, as you know, always betokens premature decay. Men live
+about four times as long, when not cut short by disease, as they are in
+reaching maturity. As he was apparently mature at fourteen or fifteen,
+he might very naturally be expected to wear out at or before sixty.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"But then, in addition to this, he has all his lifetime labored too
+hard, not only from necessity, but from habit and choice. His ambition,
+it is well known, has been unlimited, except by his want of strength to
+accomplish. He has only ceased to labor hard when he had strength to
+labor no longer, or when it was so dark or so cold or so stormy as to
+prevent him.</p>
+
+<p>"Then of late years he has had the care and anxiety which are almost
+inseparable from the work of bringing up a numerous family. It is indeed
+true that he has not been called to that severest of all possible trials
+pertaining to the family, the pain of seeing that family or any of its
+members go materially wrong. Still he has had a world of care; of its
+effects none are aware who have not been called to the same forms of
+experience.</p>
+
+<p>"There is one thing more; Mr. &mdash;&mdash; has, at times, taken a good deal of
+medicine: not alcohol, in any of its forms, I admit, but substances
+which for the time were, in their effects, almost equally bad for him.
+He has used tea immoderately, and even tobacco. His constant smoking has
+been very injurious to his nervous system, and along with other things
+has, doubtless, greatly hurried on the wheels of life."</p>
+
+<p>Remarks like these had their intended effect on a few individuals,
+especially such of them as were couched in language with which they were
+already familiar. On most, however, they fell lifeless and hopeless.
+What knew they about precocity and its effects on the after life? In
+short, it was quite doubtful then, and is still more doubtful with me
+now, whether, on the whole, any thing was gained by attempts at
+explanation. For example, when I spoke of my patient being worn out,
+prematurely, by overworking, it was asked by one man, "But how is this?
+Other men as well as Mr. &mdash;&mdash; have worked too hard, and brought up large
+families, and perhaps taken a great deal of medicine, and smoked a vast
+amount of tobacco? Why are they not affected in this way as well as Mr.
+&mdash;&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>It was not easy to make current the idea that Mr. &mdash;&mdash; was about to die
+of old age; although partly from conviction, but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span> partly, also, to
+conceal my ignorance, I still endeavored to promulgate it. It was the
+only apology I could make for suffering a man to run down and die,
+without appearing to those around him to be very sick.</p>
+
+<p>But he died, after some time, to my infinite mortification and great
+regret. I was invited to his funeral, as I was usually to the funerals
+of my patients. In this case, however, I contrived to be absent. So
+great was my consciousness of ignorance and so much ashamed was I of my
+ill success, that I felt as if the veriest ignoramus would be disposed
+to point at me, and to charge me with having been, practically, the
+murderer of the much-beloved head of a family, and a worthy and highly
+respected member of society. But, whether others would deem me culpable
+for my ignorance or not, I could not avoid the pangs of habitual
+condemnation.</p>
+
+<p>There were, I grant, a few extenuating circumstances in the case. One or
+two causes existed, of premature decline, on which, in a work like this,
+I cannot stop to expatiate. It was also very unfortunate for him that he
+was accustomed to look on the dark side of things, and to forebode ills,
+where, oftentimes, none existed.</p>
+
+<p>Notwithstanding my former ignorance and doubt, and numerous misgivings,
+in cases like the foregoing, I have of late years, on a maturer review,
+been obliged very frequently to confirm my earlier decisions. In the
+case which has been detailed in this chapter, I have, on the whole, come
+to a belief that my first judgment was nearly correct; and that the
+patient actually perished, as much as men ever do, of premature old age.
+It is, indeed, very possible that had I pursued a different course in
+several important particulars, his life might have been prolonged for a
+year or two. Men have a tendency to become what they are taken to be;
+and many a person has died much sooner for being taken to be near his
+end, and treated accordingly. If we would have our patients recover, we
+must take for granted that recovery is at least possible.</p>
+
+<p>In the case above, I believe I lost reputation, in large measure.
+Several shrewd people insisted, at the time and long<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span> afterward, that I
+ought to have had medical counsel. Mr. &mdash;&mdash;, they said, was too good a
+man to lose without a more persevering effort to raise him. They charged
+me with having got my name up, and having at the same time grown
+careless. Had he been properly doctored, they said, from the very first,
+they believed he might still have been alive to ornament and bless
+society.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XLVII" id="CHAPTER_XLVII"></a>CHAPTER XLVII.</h2>
+
+<h3>DAUGHTERS DESTROYING THEIR MOTHER.</h3>
+
+
+<p>There are, of course, many ways of destroying or killing people. To
+kill, with malice aforethought, though sometimes done, is a much less
+frequent occurrence than killing in the heat of passion, or by
+carelessness; by leading into bad habits, or by the injudicious use of
+medicine.</p>
+
+<p>Then, again, there is such a thing as killing by omitting to keep alive.
+Thus we have sins of omission as well as of commission. If I leave a man
+in a mill-pond and suffer him to drown, or if I suffer him to take a
+dose of arsenic or Prussic acid, when I might, with the utmost ease, or
+even with considerable difficulty, prevent it,&mdash;is it not, in a
+practical sense, to destroy or kill him?</p>
+
+<p>It is certainly within the wide range of human possibility, that a
+daughter may, without bludgeon or pistol, and even without poison, kill
+her mother. And it is quite notorious and a plain matter of fact that
+many a mother kills her own children. It could be demonstrated that
+thousands, if not tens of thousands of children are destroyed every year
+by their own mothers; as truly so as if they had received at their hands
+a quantity of arsenic. Why, then, may not children sometimes kill their
+parents?</p>
+
+<p>I have known people, in very many instances, kill, in trying to save. I
+have even known the medical man do this, as may be seen by turning back
+to Chapter XXX. Then, too, I have known the attendants of the sick,
+though among their dearest friends, sometimes kill in this very way. In
+truth, such killing is not uncommon.</p>
+
+<p>One of the most painful instances of this last kind of killing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span> came
+under my own immediate observation, and was in the range of my own
+practice.</p>
+
+<p>I was visiting a sick woman, whose only property lay in three or four
+lovely and loving children. Two of these, who were full-grown daughters,
+resided in her house and took care of her. She was severely afflicted
+with typhoid dysentery. Her daughters in turn watched over her, both by
+day and night, and would not suffer her to be left in the care of
+anybody else for a single minute. And, in general, their faithfulness
+was above all praise.</p>
+
+<p>One day, however, disliking the appearances of a part of my medicine,
+they mutually agreed to throw it into the fire; and the deed was done.
+They had supposed it to be calomel, as it had the color and general
+appearance of that drug, and to calomel they had a most inveterate and
+irreconcilable hatred. It was a hatred, however, which whether well or
+ill founded, very extensively prevails.</p>
+
+<p>At first, I could not help wondering at the results of my supposed doses
+of medicine; and indeed it was a long time before I began to suspect the
+true cause. For, while I verily believed I was employing the only thing
+which could help her,&mdash;one which I then thought <i>ought</i> to help her,&mdash;I
+had the unspeakable mortification of finding her every day growing
+worse. What could be the possible cause, I often asked myself, of this
+downward tendency?</p>
+
+<p>While thus perplexed and pained, I accidentally learned that the main
+ingredient in my plan of treatment&mdash;the main pillar in my fabric&mdash;had
+been habitually withdrawn by her anxious but injudicious attendants. I
+no longer wondered at the threatening symptoms. My only wonder was, that
+things had not gone wrong with her at a much more rapid rate.</p>
+
+<p>The patient continued to sink from day to day, and to become more and
+more insensible. The daughters themselves saw her downward tendency, for
+it could not be concealed. I did not tell the young women of their error
+at first, although I did so afterwards. It was a most painful duty, but
+it was one from which I dared not shrink. I hoped and trusted it would
+be a means of saving some among the coming generations.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>I have never met with either of these daughters since that day&mdash;for one
+of them, at least, is still living&mdash;without blushing for their sake.
+They, on their part, appear to be equally affected and agitated. They
+almost adored their mother, and yet they inadvertently destroyed her.
+She might have perished, it is true, without their aid; but I rather
+think she would have slowly recovered.</p>
+
+<p>Let him that readeth understand: It is extremely hazardous for a second
+or third person to change the doses of a physician's medicine, either by
+the omission or addition of an ingredient. It would be safer&mdash;very much
+safer&mdash;to omit every thing, and leave the disease wholly to nature. The
+true course, however, in all cases, is to follow the prescription of the
+physician, to the best of our abilities, or else dismiss him.</p>
+
+<p>I might pause here a moment to animadvert on the unreasonableness of the
+vulgar prejudice which almost everywhere prevails against calomel. That
+this drug does great harm, in many instances, is most certain; but that
+it does more mischief to the human constitution when in the hands of
+judicious practitioners, than some half a dozen articles of the <i>materia
+medica</i> I could name, about which complaint is seldom made, remains to
+be proved. Let us, if possible, prevent the necessity of using any of
+these two-edged weapons, by so living that disease cannot assail us, and
+then we shall not, of necessity, be exposed to the danger of medicinal
+agents, whether calomel or any thing else.</p>
+
+<p>My own principal error in relation to this interesting case, consisted
+in not telling the attendants of the sick woman, in the plainest
+language, what my medicines were and how much, in my own estimation,
+depended on their careful and proper exhibition; that if they should
+take away or suffer to be taken away, one faggot from the bundle, they
+would not only spoil their effect, but might, very probably, turn the
+edge of the sword against the very citadel of life itself. But from the
+extreme of explaining every thing, in sick families where I was called,
+I had passed over to that of explaining nothing. Truth here, as
+elsewhere, usually lies midway between extremes.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XLVIII" id="CHAPTER_XLVIII"></a>CHAPTER XLVIII.</h2>
+
+<h3>POISONING WITH STRAMONIUM.</h3>
+
+
+<p>One of my patients was subject to repeated attacks of rheumatism. He was
+by no means a man of good and temperate habits, and never had been so.
+And even his rheumatic attacks, though they were now frequently excited
+by taking cold, or by a sudden strain, as well as by many other causes
+of no considerable magnitude, often had both a foundation or
+predisposition in his former and later intemperance.</p>
+
+<p>Let me here say, most distinctly and unequivocally, even at the risk of
+being charged with repetition, that a large proportion of even these
+casual or apparently accidental attacks of rheumatism, neuralgia, sick
+headache, etc., etc., with which our world&mdash;the fashionable part of it,
+at least&mdash;is half filled, instead of springing out of the ground, or
+coming upon us by the special appointment of high Heaven, have their
+origin in the intemperance, excess, or licentiousness of somebody. The
+cause may lie many years back, and may be almost forgotten; nay, it may
+be found in a preceding generation rather than the present. But it lies
+somewhere in the range of human agency. "Almighty man," as the poet has
+well said, "decrees it." Solomon never uttered a more palpable truth
+than when he said: "Because sentence against an evil work is not
+executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set
+in them to do evil."</p>
+
+<p>My rheumatic friend sent for me one day, to come and see him in great
+haste, for, as the messenger said, he could not long continue in such
+suffering. I found him in the greatest distress, and after making the
+usual temporary applications, I gave him what I had never given him
+before&mdash;a pretty full<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span> dose of tincture of stramonium. It had, in due
+time, its accustomed effect, and I left him, rather prematurely, to
+visit another patient in a somewhat distant part of the town, intending,
+however, to see him again in the evening.</p>
+
+<p>But I had not been absent more than an hour, before I was sent for in
+post-haste. As soon as possible I hastened to the spot. I found my
+patient in a state somewhat peculiar and not easily described. He was
+evidently affected by the stramonium; but how, I said to myself, can
+this be? I certainly did not give him an overdose. Besides, as I well
+knew, the effects, so long as I remained with him, had been decidedly
+favorable.</p>
+
+<p>The mystery was soon revealed. On finding himself much better, soon
+after my departure, he had resorted again to the stramonium bottle,
+which in my haste and contrary to my usual practice, I had left within
+his reach. The result was a degree of delirium that had alarmed his
+friends and induced them to send for me.</p>
+
+<p>By means of careful and persevering management, a partial recovery soon
+took place, though a train of incidental evils followed which it is not
+necessary here to enumerate. The patient was one of those ignorant and
+selfish individuals on whom a permanent cure can rarely be effected.</p>
+
+<p>This circumstance taught me one important lesson which ought to have
+been impressed on my mind long before. It was, not to leave medicine of
+any kind within reach of my patients or their friends. In many an
+instance, medicine thus left has been taken by others, under the belief
+that since it operated favorably in the case for which it had been
+prescribed by the physician, it would do so in another case which was
+vainly supposed to be just like it, when, in truth, it was not at all
+similar.</p>
+
+<p>To the custom of keeping medicine in the house, of any sort, I am
+equally opposed, and for similar reasons. There will generally be time
+enough to send for it when its presence is really needed. Such at least
+is the fact, ninety-nine times in a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span> hundred. And as a set-off against
+the fact of its being thus useful once in a hundred times, we have to
+acknowledge the multiplied dangers to which we are exposed, of using it
+without prescription, and to which we are otherwise exposed by having it
+constantly before us in our houses.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XLIX" id="CHAPTER_XLIX"></a>CHAPTER XLIX.</h2>
+
+<h3>CURING CANCER.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Theodore, a laborious young man, came to me one day, saying, "I am
+afraid I have a cancer on one side of my nose, and I wish you would look
+at it." Accordingly I made a careful examination of the sore, taking
+care to give him a little pain, and, at the same time, as a most
+indispensable ingredient, to look "wondrous wise;" after which the
+following conversation, in its essentials, took place between us:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"What makes you suspect this sore to be a cancer?"</p>
+
+<p>"There are various reasons. Many of the neighbors think it to be so.
+Then, too, it has a very strong resemblance to the cancer on Mrs.
+Miller's lip. And then, again, it burns and itches and smarts, just as
+people say cancers always do."</p>
+
+<p>"How long have you been troubled with it?"</p>
+
+<p>"It is three months or more since I first observed it; but it has given
+me very little uneasiness or trouble till within a few weeks."</p>
+
+<p>"What have you done for it?"</p>
+
+<p>"It would take a long time to tell you of all I have done for it. Every
+thing I could hear of, far or near, has been applied; from plasters of
+clay and chalk, to plasters of vitriol and other poisonous things. But I
+have used most a plaster made of chalk and the white of an egg. I do not
+know that any thing I have done has benefited it."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps you have not persevered in the use of any thing long enough.
+How long is it, pray, since you began to use the chalk and egg plaster?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, it is three weeks, or more."</p>
+
+<p>"And how long is it usual to wear it? do you know?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Lovejoy, who advised it, only said, 'Use it as long as it appears
+to do good.'"</p>
+
+<p>"Is it a favorite remedy with her?"</p>
+
+<p>"Very much so."</p>
+
+<p>"Has any one been really cured by it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes. Mr. Browning, the gardener, was entirely cured by it; so, at
+least, people say."</p>
+
+<p>"Any one else?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, half a hundred or more have tried it."</p>
+
+<p>"But how many have been cured by it? That is my main inquiry."</p>
+
+<p>"That I cannot tell you. I have heard of no positive cure but that of
+Mr. Browning."</p>
+
+<p>"It is almost incredible, my dear sir, that any thing like fifty cases
+can have come within such a small range of population as the village or
+even the town in which Mrs. Lovejoy resides. Do you mean as you say?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, then, a great many. I know of a dozen, most certainly; and I have
+heard of a great many more. I venture, at least, to say twenty."</p>
+
+<p>"And you have no positive knowledge of but one permanent cure among them
+all?"</p>
+
+<p>"Only one, I meant to say, that I can call by name. There must be many
+more, I am sure, but I have not their names."</p>
+
+<p>"Have you much confidence in a method of treatment that succeeds once in
+fifty times, or even once in twenty?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not much, I confess; but if it now and then succeed, that is something.
+You know that they who run in a race <i>all</i> run, though but one receives
+the prize."</p>
+
+<p>"Are you quite sure there <i>is</i> any gain or prize, after all?"</p>
+
+<p>"Do you mean to ask if I believe Mr. Browning was really cured?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"How could I doubt what I have seen and known?"</p>
+
+<p>"I do not expect you will doubt the existence of what you have seen and
+known. But the question before us is, what<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span> you <i>have</i> seen and known.
+Mr. Browning had something on his face, and it got well; but do we know
+it was a cancer? Only a very small proportion of twenty sores suspected
+to be cancers ever prove to be such, and many of them get well after a
+little time, if they are let entirely alone; or, if not let entirely
+alone, they would probably still get well, in spite of the treatment. It
+is quite a marvel with me, not that one person, Mr. Browning, recovered
+in spite of the treatment, but that more did not."</p>
+
+<p>"This is to me a new way of reasoning on this subject, and yet I do not
+know but you are correct. I confess, that on reflection, I do not find
+positive evidence that any good has been done to Mr. Browning. It may be
+so, or it may not. And yet the story of his cure is told all over the
+neighborhood and for many miles around, and Mrs. Lovejoy gets great
+credit by it."</p>
+
+<p>"No doubt she does; and thousands obtain both credit and cash in a
+similar way. Much of the reputation of our wonderful cure-alls,
+advertised in the newspapers, comes in a similar way."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you really think so?"</p>
+
+<p>"It can be demonstrated."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, then, is it not oftener done?"</p>
+
+<p>"It has been done, again and again."</p>
+
+<p>"Are the public, then, fully determined to act against their own
+interest? Do they choose to be humbugged?"</p>
+
+<p>"It seems so."</p>
+
+<p>"But can you do nothing with my face?"</p>
+
+<p>"I can try. I will do what I can. But I must first tell you what I
+<i>cannot</i> do. I cannot pronounce your disease to be cancer. I cannot say
+positively that my method of treatment will cure it. I cannot say,
+moreover, that somebody else cannot cure you, even if I cannot. If,
+however, I prescribe for you, you must consent to follow me for the time
+most implicitly, and let everybody else alone."</p>
+
+<p>"That I shall be both willing and glad to do."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"You need not begin till you are fully satisfied in regard to the
+efficacy of Mrs. Lovejoy's plaster."</p>
+
+<p>"I am pretty well satisfied already. I see that science is modest but
+honest, and I prefer it to humbuggery."</p>
+
+<p>My prescription was an application of the common blistering ointment of
+the apothecary's shop. The part to which it was to be applied was quite
+denuded and tender; but I told the patient to stick a small piece of the
+plaster over it and wear it, and keep it as sore as he could for a month
+or more. He was, however, to call on me once a week,&mdash;or, perhaps, at
+first, twice,&mdash;that I might watch the effects. There was some danger of
+an absorption of the cantharides into the system, which might do more of
+general harm than would justify an attempt at local good.</p>
+
+<p>No man ever followed the prescription of his physician with more
+pertinacity and faithfulness than young Theodore. He adhered, without
+wavering, to plain and unstimulating food, and to water for drink. At
+the end of twenty-one days, all the fiery redness of the ulcer had
+passed away, and it had begun to wear a healthy appearance. "Now," said
+I, "you may take away your plasters, and let the sore get well, if it
+will."</p>
+
+<p>In about ten, or at most fourteen days more, the young man's nose was as
+well as any other part of his system. Whether the Spanish flies
+contained in the plaster had any thing to do with it, or whether it
+recovered its healthful condition in spite of them,&mdash;having just then
+got ready to heal,&mdash;I cannot, of course, positively determine. In any
+event, the case was a strong one, though not stronger, I confess, than
+that of dosing largely with calomel, as detailed in Chapter XXXII. And
+yet, as I have already told you, I should not dare to repeat that heroic
+treatment. Success is not always competent proof that a given course is
+correct;&mdash;at least, this is true with regard to the success of a
+particular formulary of medicine. There are very many things on earth to
+be known and thought of, as well as in heaven.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_L" id="CHAPTER_L"></a>CHAPTER L.</h2>
+
+<h3>SWELLED LIMBS.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Not far from this period I was called to visit Mr. O. B., sixty-one
+years of age, a farmer by occupation. He had been for twenty or thirty
+years addicted to cider drinking very freely, according to the custom of
+the country; which habit, conjoined with full feeding, a diminished
+amount of exercise, and a lymphatic tendency by inheritance, had
+rendered him exceedingly corpulent. His legs had even fallen into a
+habit of swelling, especially at night, sometimes to a very alarming
+extent.</p>
+
+<p>His story concerning himself was essentially as follows: In getting into
+a wagon, some time before, he had detached a small portion of skin from
+one of his legs. Although the wound was slight, and was duly attended
+to, according to the usual method of the family, with cabbage leaves,
+and with considerable care and neatness, yet, instead of healing kindly,
+it had put on a very unhealthy appearance, and had, at length, even
+become extensively ulcerated. He was also habitually a sufferer from
+chronic rheumatism in his back and hips, partly constitutional and
+partly as the result of overstraining the parts, especially in
+wrestling.</p>
+
+<p>When I was called in to see him, it was about the last of June. His
+wounded leg was now evidently growing worse; and as the heat of the
+weather was increasing, and was for some time to come likely to
+increase, I could hardly help apprehending the most serious
+consequences. He had been in the habit of making greasy applications to
+it for a short time, but these at my special request were set aside
+immediately.</p>
+
+<p>He was also encouraged to keep his leg cool; to exercise his whole
+system moderately; to avoid exciting, above all, stimulating,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span> food and
+drink; and to keep his mind quiet. In regard to drinks, particularly, he
+was directed to use none but water. He was also required to abstain
+wholly from pork, and all long-salted meats. He had also been, for
+almost half a century, a chewer of tobacco&mdash;a circumstance rather
+unfavorable to a rapid return of healthy action; but I did not think it
+expedient to interdict its use entirely at the very first; for I feared
+the change, at his advanced age, would be more than his system could
+well endure.</p>
+
+<p>In fact, I found it extremely difficult to persuade him to pursue the
+straight and narrow path which, letting alone his tobacco, I had deemed
+indispensably necessary. To encourage him to do so, I availed myself of
+a circumstance which, though in itself trifling, was nevertheless likely
+to have its influence. The thirteenth day of July was at hand, and would
+be the fortieth anniversary of his marriage. My proposal was that he
+should commence the change of habits that very day, and continue it
+precisely eighteen months.</p>
+
+<p>Although the danger to which he would be exposed by neglecting my
+prescription was neither immediate nor imminent; yet it was so
+considerable in prospect that I pressed him very hard to comply with my
+requirements, notwithstanding their seeming rigidity. And as a further
+inducement,&mdash;for he was not above the influence of pecuniary
+considerations,&mdash;I offered him a certain sum of money.</p>
+
+<p>I left him without much hope, after all, that he would follow out my
+suggestions and advice, so difficult is it, at the age of sixty, to make
+substantial and radical changes. But I was most happily disappointed. He
+began the work of reform on the very day appointed, and began it well;
+and though he did not adhere to the letter of my prescription entirely,
+he did quite as much as I had dared, even in my most sanguine moments,
+to expect. And though his leg did not at first improve much, it was
+something to find that during the very hottest weather of the season it
+did not grow worse.</p>
+
+<p>For three months he did not use, as he said, so much as fifty cents
+worth of pork, nor much salted food of any kind. He<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span> abandoned entirely
+all drinks but water, and all condiments with his food except a little
+salt. He subsisted almost wholly on bread, fruits, and vegetables, with
+a very little flesh or fish.</p>
+
+<p>At the end of three months he ventured abroad more than before; and as
+it was now near the middle of October, he consented to put on woollen
+stockings. But he made one change at this time which I had not intended.
+He returned to the use of one of his former greasy and worse than
+useless ointments. In the course of the month, however, in spite of the
+foul external application, his leg was entirely healed; and the swelling
+considerably abated. In short, at the close of the year he had entirely
+recovered.</p>
+
+<p>The friends and neighbors attributed the cure to the ointment. How very
+unreasonable! The ointment had been used during the spring, up to the
+time when he came under my direction, without any apparent benefit. What
+evidence then was there that it had been useful now? Why should not the
+change for the better be attributed to his increased exercise, the
+change of air and food, and the stimulus and warmth of woollen
+stockings? Had water, moreover, as his only drink, nothing to do with
+the cure?</p>
+
+<p>But while standing in the position I did, it was useless to decry the
+ointment or exalt my own treatment, since it would have been regarded as
+merely special pleading. Still, I did not shrink wholly from the
+statement of my honest convictions, whenever I was inquired of, even
+though I did not manifest a disposition to carry the war into Africa.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_LI" id="CHAPTER_LI"></a>CHAPTER LI.</h2>
+
+<h3>SUDDEN CHANGES IN OLD AGE.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Mrs. N. was about seventy years of age. In her early years she had
+possessed a sort of masculine constitution; and though embarrassed by
+poverty, had reared a large family of children, who were all well
+settled in the world. She resided with the youngest but one of them,
+where she did just as she pleased. In short, she had a good home, and,
+had she enjoyed health, might have been happy.</p>
+
+<p>But a change had come over her in point of health, which it was not so
+easy to account for at its outset as in its progress. For her first
+derelictions, at least, I know of no cause. But she had, at length,
+become reconciled to the use of tea, and as her spirits began to flag,
+she added to it strong coffee. From these she proceeded to the pipe.</p>
+
+<p>The more she increased her extra stimulants, the more she added to her
+troubles, and the greater was her necessity for additional stimulus.
+Laudanum was very soon on her list; at first, it is true, in very small
+quantities. Yet, as she grew older, she found a necessity, as she verily
+believed, for increasing the size of her dose from year to year, till,
+at the age of seventy, I found her in the full and free use of tea,
+coffee, tobacco, and laudanum,&mdash;the latter to the enormous extent of
+half an ounce a day,&mdash;and yet her complaints were more numerous than
+ever.</p>
+
+<p>She was a reasonable woman, and therefore I attempted to set forth, in
+their true colors, the realities of her condition. However, as I was not
+acting as her physician, but only as a friend, I had little hope of
+making any very permanent impressions. She knew the whole story as well
+as I or any one else could know it. The great difficulty under which she
+labored<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span> was a want of resolution to change her habits. Her irresolution
+was sustained by the belief&mdash;a very general one&mdash;that old people cannot
+make sudden changes in their physical habits with safety.<a name="FNanchor_G_7" id="FNanchor_G_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_G_7" class="fnanchor">[G]</a> But she was
+unhappy in the condition she then was. She had no peace with conscience,
+nor, as I might almost venture to say,&mdash;for she was a religious woman by
+profession,&mdash;with God.</p>
+
+<p>I assured her that the real danger of sudden changes, at her age, had
+been greatly overrated; though danger there certainly was, in greater or
+less degree. But I pointed out to her the means of obviating what danger
+there was, and urged her, as a Christian, to make up her mind to meet
+it. Of course, I did not presume to urge her to cast every thing aside,
+and return to Nature's path at once; but to drop first one thing and
+then another. I counselled her to be thorough and determined, as far as
+she went; and when she abandoned a thing to make no reserve, but to be
+sure of not going too fast and too far at once.</p>
+
+<p>When I left her one day, after a somewhat protracted conversation, it
+was with many feelings of discouragement. I doubted very seriously
+whether, on the whole, she would move at all. The power of half an ounce
+of laudanum and a paper of tobacco daily, in paralyzing the human will,
+is very great. But she was one of those persons who cannot, or think
+they cannot, leave off a habit gradually, in the way I proposed. She
+must "go the whole figure," as it is said vulgarly, or do nothing at
+all.</p>
+
+<p>Judge then, if you can, of my surprise, when about two months afterward
+I learned, from a source which was perfectly reliable, that the very
+next day after I saw her, she abandoned the whole herd of extra
+stimulants, both solid and liquid, and betook herself to water. Nor had
+it, so far as I could learn, at all injured her.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span></p>
+<p>No sooner did I hear the news of her reformation, than I took my horse
+and made her a visit. There she was, nearly as well as ever she had been
+in her life, though perhaps a little paler and thinner. And oh, what
+rejoicing she had in her freedom! It would have done you good to see
+her. She had now no fears for the result. "True," she said, "I suffered
+for a few days, but the agony was soon over."</p>
+
+<p>One thing should be mentioned, since it doubtless added to the dangers,
+real and imaginary, of her condition and trial. It took place during the
+middle of a very cold winter&mdash;one of the coldest which we of the North
+ever experienced; scarcely, if at all, behind those of 1855-6 and
+1856-7.</p>
+
+<p>But all persons have not Mrs. N.'s faith, nor her deep-abiding religious
+principles. These, it is presumed, greatly aided her in the terrible
+conflict. No one ought to attempt such changes, at least in life's
+decline, unless most fully convinced of their importance and necessity.
+Yet, <i>with</i> this conviction, and strong faith in addition, all becomes
+comparatively easy.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. N. died a few years after her reform; but she died a free woman,
+and not a slave to her appetite. Some few there were of her acquaintance
+who appeared to think that the sudden changes to which she had subjected
+herself several years before, hastened her dissolution. But I do not
+believe there was a particle of evidence to be found that such was the
+fact. Reader, remember Mrs. N., and if you are in the road of error, and
+not more than seventy years of age, go and do likewise. If you have not
+<i>lived</i> free, resolve at least to have the pleasure of dying so.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_G_7" id="Footnote_G_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_G_7"><span class="label">[G]</span></a> This error has been met and refuted in the happiest manner,
+by the late lamented Dr. John C. Warren, of Boston, in his little work,
+entitled, "Hints for the Preservation of Health." Also, by Dr. Alcott's
+new work, "The Laws of Health."</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_LII" id="CHAPTER_LII"></a>CHAPTER LII.</h2>
+
+<h3>AN OPIUM EATER.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Almost at the next door from me was an opium eater. He, like the female
+whose case was described in the preceding chapter, was not far from
+three score and ten, and was of industrious and, in many respects,
+temperate habits. And yet he was one of the most inveterate and
+abandoned voluntary slaves to the drug opium I have ever seen. He had
+used it largely thirty years.</p>
+
+<p>His case is the more singular from the fact that he became enslaved to
+it so very early. To use opium or laudanum at the present day, I grant
+is no uncommon occurrence. We may often find six, eight, or ten opium
+takers in a single township, if not a single village, or even a single
+neighborhood; and the number is rapidly increasing. Opium has not that
+offensive appearance to many that tobacco has, and a much larger amount
+of stimulus may be kept in a very small space, perhaps in the very
+corner of the smallest pocket.</p>
+
+<p>Another circumstance which rendered the case of my opium-taking neighbor
+somewhat striking, was his usual good health. I say, here, <i>usual</i>, for
+there were exceptions which will appear presently. Yet though he was
+nearly threescore and ten, this man had, while under the influence of
+his accustomed stimulus, as much elasticity and nearly as much strength
+as most men of thirty.</p>
+
+<p>How could this happen, you will naturally ask, if opium is such a deadly
+narcotic as some medical men proclaim it to be? How can a person, male
+or female, begin its use at forty and continue it to seventy years of
+age, and yet be, for the most part, strong and healthy?</p>
+
+<p>In the first place, we must remember the force of habit.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span> We have seen
+how it is with alcoholic drinks and tobacco. I might tell you how it is
+with arsenic, which is beginning to be taken, it is said, by men and
+horses, both in the old world and the new. I might even give you the
+story of Mithridates, king of Pontus, who is said to have so accustomed
+himself to hemlock,&mdash;the most deadly poison of his time,&mdash;that in any
+ordinary dose, it would not affect him injuriously, or, at least, would
+not do so immediately.</p>
+
+<p>We must remember, in the second place, the active, industrious habits of
+this patient&mdash;of which, however, I have already spoken. He who is always
+or almost always in the open air, is less likely to suffer from the use
+of extra stimulants, and the penalty when it <i>does</i> fall on his head, is
+much more likely to be deferred, than in the case of the sedentary and
+inactive. He was so hardy and withal so bold, that in the summer season
+he sometimes slept in the open air, under a tree.</p>
+
+<p>But, thirdly, he was descended from a very long-lived race or family.
+His father died at the age of ninety-seven. At the time of his decease
+he had been the progenitor of nineteen children, one hundred and five
+grandchildren, one hundred and fifty-five great grandchildren, and four
+of the fifth generation,&mdash;a posterity amounting in all, to two hundred
+and eighty-three. And what is most marvellous, nearly all of them were
+at that very moment living. In truth, he had several sons and daughters
+already between the ages of sixty-five and eighty. There was one of the
+brotherhood, whom I had seen, nearly eighty, and yet as active and
+elastic as the opium eater of seventy.</p>
+
+<p>One thing more: The latter, as we have seen, was a man of excellent
+habits in respect to nearly every thing but opium. He drank no ardent
+spirits, nor much coffee and tea; he used very little tobacco, and he
+ate in great moderation. He was an early riser and was in general
+cheerful. In short, but for his opium taking, he would have enjoyed a
+green old age.</p>
+
+<p>I have said he was usually healthy. When he was out of opium and could
+not obtain any, I have seen him sit and writhe in the most intense
+apparent anguish till the arrival of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span> the accustomed stimulus, when the
+transformation would be as sudden as it was striking. In fifteen
+minutes, instead of writhing and groaning and almost dying, he might be
+found talking, laughing, and telling stories most merrily, to the
+infinite amusement of all around him.</p>
+
+<p>But he had troubles more abiding than this; at least, occasionally.
+After taking his opium for a long time, such a degree of costiveness
+would sometimes supervene, as seemed almost to defy the combined powers
+of both nature and art. In these circumstances, of course, the aid of
+the physician was usually invoked. It was on one of these occasions that
+I first became fully acquainted with his habits and tendencies.</p>
+
+<p>Once, when thus called to his bedside, I began to think he was not very
+far from the end of his career. The wheels of life seemed so completely
+obstructed, that I doubted whether they would ever start again. He
+himself declared, most positively and I doubt not in sincerity that he
+must die. But he lived on many years longer. He died at about
+seventy-five years of age&mdash;more than twenty years younger than his
+venerable and more temperate father.</p>
+
+<p>From this distinguished opium eater, and from his family, I learned two
+things: First, that Solomon was right when he spoke of the certainty of
+punishment, even though long deferred. Secondly, the certainty of the
+visitation, so to call it, of human transgression upon subsequent
+generations no less than on the individual transgressor. The fourth
+generation from the patriarch of ninety-seven was puny and
+feeble&mdash;exceedingly so; the fifth and sixth not only puny and feeble,
+but absolutely sickly, not to say dwarfish.</p>
+
+<p>Did I say I learned these important truths from this source? Not at all.
+I mean only, that I received from it a new confirmation of what I had
+fully believed long before, and concerning which, till compelled, most
+men&mdash;even some thinking men&mdash;appear to me not a little sceptical. They
+seem to think it reflects dishonor on our Maker. How this is, we shall
+perhaps see more fully in another place. Let it suffice, for the
+present, to say that the fact itself is fully established, whatever may
+be the deductions or its consequences.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_LIII" id="CHAPTER_LIII"></a>CHAPTER LIII.</h2>
+
+<h3>COFFEE, AND THE LAME KNEE.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Mr. W. was a distinguished minister of the gospel, and teacher of
+females. He could not at this time have been much less than seventy
+years of age. He was originally a man of iron constitution and of great
+mental activity.</p>
+
+<p>Of late it had been observed by some of the members of his family, that
+his mind had seasons of great inactivity, and it was even suspected he
+had, either in his sleep or at some other time, suffered from a slight
+attack of paralysis. His face seemed a little distorted, and one of the
+angles of his mouth a little depressed. There appeared to be a slight
+change even of his speech. It was recollected, too, that he inherited a
+tendency of this kind.</p>
+
+<p>Along with other difficulties was a lame knee. This he called
+rheumatism; but was it so? People are very fond of having a name for
+every thing; and yet names very often mislead. Prof. Ives, of the
+Medical College in Connecticut, was wont to say to his students,
+"Diseases, young gentlemen, are not creatures to whom we can give
+particular names, or assign particular marks of distinction. They are
+merely <i>modes of action</i>." My friend's over solicitude for a name to his
+complaint was therefore no new thing.</p>
+
+<p>I explained the matter as well as I could, very cautiously. I told him
+it was of little consequence about the name of his disease, provided we
+could ascertain the cause and remove it. "However," I said, "we will
+conclude to call it rheumatism." For though possessed of a good natural
+constitution, and, in general, of comparatively temperate habits, he had
+nevertheless set at defiance some of nature's laws, and was suffering
+under a just penalty.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>One member of his family, a favorite son, was suspicious of coffee. He
+himself had abandoned it long before, and had thus placed himself in a
+position to observe its effects on others. His father used it very
+strong, he said; and had used it in this way for a long time. He even
+ventured, at length, to express his fears to his father.</p>
+
+<p>"Nonsense, my son," said the father; "do you think coffee is powerful
+enough to give a man a lame knee? Why, the whole world&mdash;I mean the whole
+civilized world&mdash;use it; and do they all have stiff knees?"</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps not," said the son; "but almost every coffee-drinker has,
+sooner or later, some ailment about him, that may very possibly have its
+origin in this source. Our troubles, as you yourself are accustomed to
+say, do not spring out of the ground. Coffee, as the best authorities
+tell us, is a slow poison; and if it is so, its effects must, at some
+time, be manifested."</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, a very slow poison this coffee must be, my son," said the
+half-indignant father; "for I have used it pretty freely forty years,
+and am not dead yet. But to be serious for a moment, Henry, do you
+really believe that such a small transgression as this, even if it could
+be proved to be a transgression at all, would be the cause of so much
+suffering?"</p>
+
+<p>"You admit, then, that your troubles may possibly be the result of
+transgression, and that they did not spring out of the ground."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh yes, I suppose it must be so; but there is such a strange
+disproportion between the transgression and the penalty, in the case you
+mention, that I cannot for one moment believe any thing about it. Why,
+what rational man in the world will believe that a little coffee, once a
+day, will entail upon a person severe rheumatism?"</p>
+
+<p>"To what larger transgression, my dear father, will you be more ready to
+refer it? You do not use tobacco, or rum, or opium; and I am happy in
+being able to say that you never did. You are no tea-drinker. You are no
+worshipper of the apothecary's shop. You have not, so far as I know,
+strained your knee, by over exertion, either in labor or amusement<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span> Yet,
+here you are a sufferer; and you have suffered for months. Now, how do
+you account for it?"</p>
+
+<p>"There is no possibility of accounting for it, my son, and why should we
+talk about it? If any thing can be done to cure it, I am sure I shall be
+glad; but though I admit that the complaint may have had a cause&mdash;and
+indeed <i>must</i> have had&mdash;I do not think we shall ever be able to trace it
+out."</p>
+
+<p>The son still adhered to the opinion that the coffee was the cause of
+the father's sufferings; and there was reason for believing that the
+father was more than half convinced of it himself; only that he was too
+proud to confess it. He concluded by asking his father if he would like
+to consult me on the subject&mdash;to which he cheerfully consented.</p>
+
+<p>On a careful investigation of the case, I came to a full conclusion that
+the son was right in his conjectures; that the coffee was the principal
+source of his troubles; and that troubles still more serious might
+befall him unless he abandoned it; and accordingly I told him so.</p>
+
+<p>It was a severe trial. He was, in truth, a most inveterate
+coffee-drinker; and the greater his slavery to it had become, the
+greater his reluctance to believe it produced, on him, any injurious
+effects. He consented, at length, to leave off its use for two months,
+and see if it made any difference with him. Being, however, about half a
+convert to hydropathy, as was also his son, it was concluded, with my
+permission, to apply the cold <i>douche</i> every day to his knee, by way of
+an adjunct to the abstinence plan. No change was made in his diet; as,
+in fact, very little was needed after the coffee had been removed. "But
+one thing is needful," at the same meal, had long been his motto; and he
+was never excessive in the use of even that.</p>
+
+<p>The coffee was laid aside, and resolution was put to the test. He
+suffered in his feelings for want of his accustomed stimulus during the
+first month; but during the second, very little. In about five weeks
+after I saw and had prescribed for him, I met him one day, by accident,
+and inquired about his lameness. "Very much better," said he, smiling;
+"but no thanks to you for it. It is the <i>douche</i> which is curing me." I
+replied<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span> that I was not very solicitous to know the cause, provided he
+was cured.</p>
+
+<p>On a more particular inquiry I found that his lameness had nearly
+disappeared already; and what is more remarkable still, it never
+returned. As long as he lived he could walk up and down stairs nearly as
+well as I. He continued to be a water-drinker about ten years, when he
+died, as he had lived, rejoicing in his emancipation from slavery to
+coffee. He believed, most fully, in its evil effects and tendencies, and
+did not hesitate, for many years before he died, to acknowledge that
+belief. Neither his son nor myself had firmer faith in the connection of
+law with penalty, in these matters, that he. And his only regret, in
+this particular, seemed to be that he had suffered himself to remain,
+almost all his lifetime, in what he now regarded as utter ignorance. And
+yet, compared with most men of his day, he was quite enlightened.</p>
+
+<p>The case of Mr. W. was a pretty apt illustration of the truth of what I
+regard as the great or cardinal doctrine of temperance, faintly
+announced in Chapters XVIII., XXI., XXVIII, and elsewhere, viz., that,
+as a general rule, much more mischief is done to society at large by the
+frequent or at least habitual use of small quantities of poison, than by
+an equal aggregate quantity in much larger doses. I mean just this: The
+poisonous effects of Mr. W.'s coffee, though the amount daily taken was
+trifling, produced a greater aggregate of mischief, in the end, than if
+the same amount of poison had been applied in a very short time. A pint
+of rum drank in a single day will do much less mischief to the human
+constitution, than if divided into twenty <i>small</i> doses and two of them
+are taken every day for ten days. In the first case the effect will be
+severe, but temporary; in the second, it will seem to be trifling, but
+there will be an accumulation of ill effects, a heaping up, as it were,
+of combustible matter in the system, till by and by when an igniting
+spark comes to be applied to the pile, lo! we have an explosion.</p>
+
+<p>Some of the hydropathists who knew the facts concerning Mr. W.,&mdash;for the
+case did not occur in a corner,&mdash;tried to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span> make it appear, perhaps in
+all honesty, that he was cured by the cold <i>douche</i>. Now I have no
+disposition to deny, wholly, its good effects. I have given you the
+facts just as they were. Yet I have not a doubt that had he returned to
+his coffee, the same troubles or others of equal magnitude would have
+fallen to his lot again, despite the influences of the <i>douche</i>. In
+truth, I know of no sensible hydropathist who, in such a case, would
+rely upon the <i>douche</i> alone; which is to concede, practically, all that
+I desire to claim.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_LIV" id="CHAPTER_LIV"></a>CHAPTER LIV.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE OPIUM PILL BOX.</h3>
+
+
+<p>The statements of the following chapter will include a confession of one
+of the principal faults of my life,&mdash;a fault, moreover, which, as a
+physician, I ought to have guarded against with the most assiduous and
+unwearied care. For no man more than the medical man, is bound to let
+his light shine&mdash;especially in the matter of general temperance, in such
+a manner that others may be benefited by it.</p>
+
+<p>When, in the beginning of my medical career, I attempted to establish a
+temperance society, though I was exceedingly free from the charge of
+using distilled liquors, according to the tenor and spirit of the
+pledge, yet exposed, as I was, to colds, and delicate in constitution,
+and above all, particularly liable, in the daily routine of business, to
+temptation, I was yet one of those who lay aside one stimulus and retain
+or resort to another. I did not, indeed, use my substitute with much
+freedom, at first. The example daily before me, which was alluded to in
+Chapter LII, was sufficient, one would think, to deter me from excess;
+and so it proved. All I did for some time, whenever I had been
+peculiarly exposed and feared I had taken cold, was to go and swallow a
+small pill&mdash;say about a grain&mdash;of opium.</p>
+
+<p>But as usually happens in such cases, though the pill seemed to remove
+all tendency to cold, or in other words to cure me for the time, the
+necessity for recurring to it became more and more frequent and
+imperious, till I was, at length, a confirmed opium taker. And
+yet&mdash;strange to say it&mdash;all the while I regarded myself as a rigid
+temperance man; nay, I was a violent opposer of the use even of opium as
+a daily stimulus, in the case of everybody but myself. My apology
+was&mdash;and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span> here was the ground of self-deception&mdash;that I only used it as
+a medicine, or rather as a medical means of prevention.</p>
+
+<p>It is, however, quite obvious to my own apprehension now, that a
+substance is hardly entitled to the name of medicine, in any ordinary
+sense of the term, which is used nearly or quite every day. Yet to this
+stage of opium taking I soon arrived. Nay, I went even much farther than
+this, and was, at length, pretty well established in the wretched habit
+of using this poisonous drug three times a day.</p>
+
+<p>In the summer of 1830, while under the full habitual influence of opium,
+I had a slight attack of dysentery. It even went so far as to derange
+all my habits, and to break in, among the rest, upon my opium taking.
+Opium or laudanum was, indeed, included in the prescription of my
+physician,&mdash;for I did not wholly rely on my own judgment in the
+case,&mdash;but as a habitual daily stimulus, at certain fixed hours, it was,
+of course, omitted. As I began to recover, however, my old desire for
+the opium pill began to recur, at the accustomed former hours, and with
+all its wonted imperiousness.</p>
+
+<p>In a moment of reflection, reason resumed her throne, and the inquiry
+came up, whether I should ever again wear the chain which had been
+temporarily loosened. After a short debate, it was decided in the
+negative. But a second question soon came up, whether I could keep my
+resolution. This was a matter of serious inquiry, and it caused a
+somewhat lengthy mental discussion.</p>
+
+<p>During the discussion a new thought struck me. It was a child's thought,
+perhaps; and yet it was interesting, and not to be despised for its
+simplicity and childishness. It was that I would take my opium, what I
+had in the house, and after carefully enclosing it in my pill box, would
+make use of the box as a nucleus for the twine I was daily using. "When
+I am inclined to break my resolution," thought I, "nothing shall be done
+till I have unwound the ball of twine. I shall thus gain a little time
+for reflection; and perhaps before I come to the opium, I may permit
+reason to return and to mount the throne. The trial shall, at all
+events, be made."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>My resolution was carried into effect, and steadily adhered to. The
+opium was fairly entombed in the twine, where, for aught I know, it
+still remains. Most certainly I never saw it more; nor have I ever
+tasted any of the opium or laudanum family, from that day to the
+present, whether in sickness or in health.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_LV" id="CHAPTER_LV"></a>CHAPTER LV.</h2>
+
+<h3>BLEEDING AT THE LUNGS.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Having occasion to go to the metropolis, one day, I took the most
+expeditious public conveyance which the times and the season afforded.
+It was January, 1832. Railroad cars were not so much in vogue that I
+could step into one of them, and, unless in case of accident, be there
+in four or five hours, as I now could. It required something like
+twenty-four hours to perform the journey I proposed, especially in the
+winter.</p>
+
+<p>We started at three o'clock in the morning. It had recently snowed, the
+snow was deep, and the path was not well broken. Of course it was not
+daylight when we set out, and as it was cloudy, it proved, as is not
+unfrequent in such cases, to be the darkest time in the whole
+twenty-four hours. However, we did as well as we could&mdash;driver, horses,
+passengers, and all.</p>
+
+<p>Our company consisted of seven males and two females. The coach was
+small, and we filled it to the brim. The weather was by no means very
+cold for the season; at least, it was not extreme. There was a sound of
+rain,&mdash;the January thaw, perhaps, as we are wont to call it,&mdash;but as
+yet, fortunately for us, the storm had not begun.</p>
+
+<p>We had proceeded about ten miles, and the day had not yet dawned, when,
+in passing around the point of a hill and winding our way among the deep
+drifts, our driver and his charge missed the path, and we were
+precipitated down a steep bank. The horses stopped immediately. Every
+effort was made to rescue us from the stage-coach, which was lying on
+its side, deeply embedded in the snow. I was so situated at the first
+moment after the overturn, that most of the affrighted passengers made
+use of me as a stepping-stone in their endeavors to reach the door
+above, which was either opened or broken. At<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span> last we were all fairly
+outside of the coach; no one appeared to be seriously injured.</p>
+
+<p>As we were at a considerable distance from any dwelling-house, and as
+the stage-coach was somewhat broken, and the harnesses torn, it required
+a full hour to put things to rights, so as to enable us to proceed.
+Meanwhile, though the weather was not very cold, it was quite chilly.
+Some of the passengers stood still or sat still; others walked about.
+The day had broken when we renewed our journey.</p>
+
+<p>The sleighing here was better than at the place where we started. At the
+next stage-office we exchanged our coach for a huge sleigh, which was
+not only more commodious than the coach, but more easily drawn over the
+ground, especially for a short time.</p>
+
+<p>About noon it began to rain. Soon the travelling became worse again, and
+our progress was slow and tedious. To me, the tediousness of the journey
+was increased by a lame shoulder&mdash;the effect either of the overturn, or
+of being used as a stair when the passengers made their sudden exit, or
+of both. No bones were broken, nor joints dislocated; though there were
+several considerable bruises.</p>
+
+<p>Our other troubles were not yet over. In the midst of a violent rain,
+and at a considerable distance from any public house, our sleigh broke
+down, and we were obliged to send for a wagon. In making the exchange,
+moreover, we were more or less exposed to the storm. I for one became
+considerably wet, and did not get perfectly dry till we reached the
+metropolis.</p>
+
+<p>We arrived at evening at a large thoroughfare, forty miles or more from
+our point of destination, when, after procuring a comfortable supper and
+a good sleigh, with a new relay of horses, we set out to perform the
+remainder of our journey. This was fortunate and very expeditious. We
+reached our place of destination just before midnight, having travelled
+the last forty-two miles in little more than four hours. This was almost
+equal to railroad speed; but it was good sleighing, and we had with us,
+in the sleigh, the United States mail, which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span> imposed on the driver a
+necessity of being as expeditious as the nature of the case would admit.
+For even then, we had been twenty-one hours in making our passage.</p>
+
+<p>I soon discovered that I had taken a severe cold during the journey; nor
+do I believe my opium itself would have saved me. My only medicine was a
+warm bed, into which I threw myself as soon as possible. In the morning
+I repaired as early as I could to a boarding-house, in which a friend to
+whom I had previously written, had made ready a place for me.</p>
+
+<p>I was at first quite ill; but in the hope that a few days of rest would
+restore me, I was not particularly anxious about myself, though some of
+my friends were so. Several individuals called to inquire after my
+health&mdash;nearly every one of whom pressed me to take medicine.</p>
+
+<p>The second day after my arrival I began to expectorate a little blood.
+Those who were familiarly acquainted with my consumptive tendencies
+became greatly alarmed. They thought me not only presumptuous, because I
+took nothing, but absolutely and carelessly ungrateful. And as I refused
+to dose myself, they pressed me to send for a physician.</p>
+
+<p>Yielding, at length, to their importunity, they called one of the oldest
+and best physicians in the metropolis. He was an eccentric man, but he
+had the full confidence of the better sort of people, and richly
+deserved it; and I knew I should not be advised by him hastily. He was
+acquainted with my peculiar views, at least in part. Besides, I should
+not be obliged to follow his counsel implicitly. I should still be my
+own physician. My disease had not, at least thus far, impaired my
+intellect or taken out of my hands my free agency.</p>
+
+<p>The doctor remained with me half an hour or so, during which time I made
+him acquainted, as perfectly as I could, with my whole case. My good
+friends, many of them, sat around waiting almost with impatience, to
+hear him bid them or me to do some great thing&mdash;for great men though
+some of them were, they were not great in matters pertaining to health
+and disease. They were born, several of them, in the eighteenth
+century.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>At length the time for prescription and departure had arrived, and my
+good brother and father of the lancet rose very deliberately, and said
+with great gravity, "You will be obliged to stay in your room a few
+days, and keep both your body and mind as quiet as possible. For the
+most part, it will be well to maintain a recumbent position. For food,
+use a little water gruel. In following this course, I think you will
+very soon find yourself convalescent." Then, with a sort of stiff bow,
+that every one who knew him could pardon in so excellent a man, he said,
+"Good-morning, sir,&mdash;Good-morning, gentlemen;" and was making the best
+of his way to the door of the chamber. "Will it not be needful for you
+to call again?" I said to him. "I shall be most happy to call," said he,
+"should it be necessary; but I doubt very much whether my advice will be
+any farther required."</p>
+
+<p>My friends were very much astonished that he did not prescribe active
+medicine. "What can it mean?" they asked again and again. For myself,
+too, I must confess that I was not a little disappointed. Not that I had
+any considerable attachment to pills and pill boxes,&mdash;such a confidence
+had gone by long before, as you know,&mdash;but I verily thought my
+particular tendencies to pulmonary consumption demanded a little
+tincture of digitalis, or something in the shape of strong medicine.</p>
+
+<p>But the physician knew my theories, better than he knew the power of
+that habit whose chains, in this respect, he had long ago escaped. For I
+learned afterwards, much better than I then knew, that so feeble was his
+faith in medicine, at least in all ordinary cases, that whenever the
+intelligence of his patients would at all warrant it, he prescribed, as
+he had for me, just nothing at all, but left every thing to be done by
+Nature and good common-sense attendants. This was, in fact, just what he
+attempted to do here. He doubtless supposed my friends were nearly as
+well informed in the matter as I was; and that I was as fully
+emancipated in practice as I was in theory.</p>
+
+<p>"How much drugging and dosing might be saved," I said to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span> myself, when I
+came to reflect properly on the subject, "if mankind were duly trained
+to place a proper reliance on Nature and Nature's laws, instead of
+fastening all their faith on the mere exhibition of some mystic powder
+or pill or tincture&mdash;or, at best, a few drops of some irritant or
+poison. It is their ignorance that makes their physicians' and
+apothecaries' bills so heavy, and the grave-digger's calling so good and
+so certain."</p>
+
+<p>It is hardly necessary for me to say that I followed the advice which
+had been so wisely given, and which, after all, was but the echo of my
+own judgment, when that judgment was freely exercised. My friends were
+not satisfied at first; but when they saw that I was slowly recovering,
+they submitted with as good a grace as they could. The fact was that
+they had no court of appeal. They had selected a man who was at the head
+of his profession, and whose voice, in the medical world, and as a
+medical man, wherever he was known, was law. Had some young man given
+such "old woman's" advice, as they would most certainly have regarded
+it, they would have appealed to a higher court.</p>
+
+<p>No man ever did better, when placed in similar circumstances, with the
+aid of medicine, than I did without it. In two weeks, at farthest, I was
+as well as I had been at any time in ten years or even twenty. What more
+or greater could I have asked? What more could my friends have expected?
+What more could have been possible? Could Hippocrates or Galen have done
+more?</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_LVI" id="CHAPTER_LVI"></a>CHAPTER LVI.</h2>
+
+<h3>BUTTER EATERS.</h3>
+
+
+<p>About the year 1833, I became somewhat intimately acquainted with the
+dietetic and general physical habits of a young woman in a family where
+I was a boarder, whose case will be instructive.</p>
+
+<p>She was about twenty-five years of age, and resided in a family that had
+adopted her as their own, her parents being unknown. She possessed a
+good natural constitution; and was, for the most part, of good habits.
+If there was any considerable defect of constitution, it consisted in a
+predominance of the biliary and lymphatic over the nervous and sanguine
+temperaments. Yet she was not wholly wanting in that susceptibility, not
+to say activity, which the sanguine temperament is wont to impart. But
+the same necessity which is so often the mother of invention, is also
+sometimes the progenitor of a good share of activity; and this was, in a
+remarkable degree, the lot of Miss Powell.</p>
+
+<p>Although her skin was not by any means fair, it was not a bad skin. It
+was firm in its structure, and very little susceptible of those slight
+but ever recurring diseased conditions in which persons of a sanguine
+temperament so often find themselves involved. Such I mean to say was
+her natural physical condition, when uninfluenced by any considerable
+practical errors.</p>
+
+<p>And yet I had not been many months one of her more intimate
+acquaintances, ere her face&mdash;hitherto so smooth and transparent&mdash;became
+as rough and congested as any drunkard's face ever was, only the
+eruption was more minute. It was what the common opinion of that region
+would have called<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span> a rash. It came on suddenly, was visible for a short
+time, and then gradually disappeared, leaving, in some instances, a
+branny substance, consisting of a desquamation of the cuticle.</p>
+
+<p>When the eruption had once fairly disappeared, her skin was as smooth as
+ever. Then again, however, in a little time, its roughness would return,
+to an extent which, to young ladies, is usually quite annoying. Young
+men, in general, are not so much disturbed by a little roughness of the
+skin, as the young of the other sex.</p>
+
+<p>My particular acquaintance with her habits and annoyances continued as
+many as four or five years. During this period there were several
+ebbings and flowings of this tide of eruptive disease. My curiosity,
+towards the end of this period, was so much excited that I sought and
+obtained of her an opportunity for conversation on the subject. The
+result was as curious as it was, to me, unexpected. It appeared, in the
+sequel, that she understood, perfectly well, the whole matter, and held
+the control of her cutaneous system in her own hands, nearly as much as
+if she had been a mere piece of mechanism. She had not sought for
+medical advice, because she knew the true method of cure for her
+complaints as well as anybody could have told her.</p>
+
+<p>In truth, she cured it about once a year, simply by omitting the cause
+which produced it. This she had found out was butter, salted butter, of
+course, eaten with her meals. She had somehow discovered that this
+article of food was the real cause of her disease, and that entire
+abstemiousness in this particular, would, in a reasonable time, remove
+it.</p>
+
+<p>I inquired why, after a long period of abstinence from butter, she ever
+returned to its use. Her reply was that she was too fond of it to omit
+it entirely and forever. She preferred to use it till the eruption began
+to be quite troublesome, which was sometimes many weeks; then abstain
+from it till she recovered, and then return to it. This gave her an
+opportunity to use it from one-third to one-half of the time; and this
+she thought greatly preferable to entire abstinence.</p>
+
+<p>At this time I did not press her to abandon wholly an article of food,
+which, though partially rejected, was yet slowly producing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span> derangement
+of her digestive system, and might, in time, result in internal disease,
+which would be serious and irremediable. I did not do it; first, because
+I knew my advice would not be very acceptable; secondly, for want of
+that full measure of gospel benevolence which leads us to try to do
+good, even in places where we have no right to expect it will be
+received; and, lastly, no doubt for want of moral courage.</p>
+
+<p>Were I to live my life over again, particularly my medical life, I would
+pray and labor for a little more of what I am accustomed to call holy
+boldness. By this term I do not mean <i>meddlesomeness</i>,&mdash;for this is by
+no means to be commended,&mdash;but true Christian or apostolic boldness.</p>
+
+<p>Of late years the young woman above referred to has been in
+circumstances which, I have reason to believe, practically precluded the
+use of the offending article. I meet her occasionally, but always with a
+smooth face, which greatly confirms my prepossessions.<a name="FNanchor_H_8" id="FNanchor_H_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_H_8" class="fnanchor">[H]</a> Happy would it
+be for a multitude of our race if their circumstances were such as to
+exclude this and many other articles of food and drink which are well
+known to injure them.</p>
+
+<p>One instance occurred in the very neighborhood of the foregoing, which,
+though I received it at second hand, is not a little striking, and is
+wholly reliable. A certain young mother&mdash;the wife of a merchant in easy
+circumstances, was so excessively fond of butter, that, though she was a
+dyspeptic, and knew it increased her dyspepsia, she used to eat it in a
+manner the most objectionable which could possibly have been devised.</p>
+
+<p>For example: she would take a ball of this article,&mdash;say half or
+three-quarters of a pound,&mdash;pierce it with the point of a firm stick,
+and having heated it, on all sides, over the fire, till the whole
+surface was softened, would then plunge it into a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span> vessel of flour, in
+such a manner that the latter would adhere to it on all sides, till a
+great deal was absorbed by the butter. Having done this, she would again
+heat the surface of the ball and again dip or roll it in the flour. This
+alternate melting the surface of the ball and rolling it in flour, was
+continued till the whole became a mass of heated or scorched flour,
+entirely full of the melted butter, and as completely indigestible as it
+possibly could be, when she would leisurely sit down at a table and eat
+the whole of it.</p>
+
+<p>Did it make her sick?&mdash;you will ask. It did, indeed, and she expected it
+would. She would go immediately to bed, as soon as the huge bolus was
+swallowed, and lie there a day or two, perhaps two or three days.
+Occasionally such a surfeit cost her the confinement of a whole week.</p>
+
+<p>It is truly surprising that any Christian woman should thus make a beast
+of herself, for the sake of the momentary indulgence of the appetite;
+but so it is. I have met with a few such. Happily, however, conduct so
+low and bestial is not so frequent among females as males, though quite
+too frequent among the former so long as a single case is found, which
+could be prevented by reasoning or even by authority.</p>
+
+<p>There is one thing concerning butter which deserves notice, and which it
+may not be amiss to mention in this place. What we call butter, in this
+country,&mdash;what is used, I mean, at our tables,&mdash;is properly pickled or
+salted butter. Now, I suppose it is pretty well understood, that in some
+of the countries of Europe no such thing as salted or pickled butter is
+used or known. They make use of milk, cream, and a little fresh butter;
+but that is all. In the kingdom of Brazil, among the native population,
+at least, no such thing as butter, in any shape, has ever yet been
+known.</p>
+
+<p>Fresh butter is sufficiently difficult of digestion; but salted butter
+is much more so; and this is the main point to which I wish to call your
+attention. Why, what is our object in salting down butter? Is it not to
+prevent change? Would it not otherwise soon become acid and
+disagreeable? And does not salting it so harden or toughen it, or, as it
+were, fix it, that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span> it will resist the natural tendency to decomposition
+or putrefaction?</p>
+
+<p>But will not this same "fixation," so to call it, prepare it to resist
+changes within the stomach as well as outside of it; or, in other words,
+prevent, in a measure, the work of digestion? Most unquestionably it
+will. And herein is the stronghold of objection to this article. Hence,
+too, the reason why it causes eruptions on the skin. The irritation
+begins on the lining membrane of the stomach. The latter is first coated
+with eruption; and, after a time, by what is called sympathy, the same
+tendency is manifested in the face.</p>
+
+<p>These things ought to be well understood. There is great ignorance on
+this subject, and what is known is generally the <i>ipse dixit</i> of
+somebody. Reasons there are none for using salted butter. Or, if any,
+they are few, and frequently very flimsy and weak. Let us have hygiene
+taught us, were it only that we may know for ourselves the right and
+wrong of these matters.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_H_8" id="Footnote_H_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_H_8"><span class="label">[H]</span></a> Since this was penned, the young woman has died of
+erysipelas. Can it be that she has been compelled, in this form, to pay
+a fearful penalty for her former abuses? One might think that twenty
+years of reformation would have worn out the diseased tendencies.
+Perhaps she recurred, in later years, unknown to the writer, to her
+former favorite article.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_LVII" id="CHAPTER_LVII"></a>CHAPTER LVII.</h2>
+
+<h3>HOT HOUSES AND CONSUMPTION.</h3>
+
+
+<p>If any individual in the wide world needs to breathe the pure
+atmospheric mixture of the Most High,&mdash;I mean a compound of gases,
+consisting, essentially, of about twenty parts of oxygen and eighty of
+nitrogen,&mdash;it is the consumptive person. Mr. Thackrah, a foreign writer
+on health, says, "That though we are eating animals, we are breathing
+animals much more; for we subsist more on air than we do on food and
+drink."</p>
+
+<p>And yet I know of no class of people, who, as a class, breathe other
+mixtures, and all sorts of impurities, more than our consumptive people.
+First, their employments are very apt to be sedentary. Under the
+impression that their constitutions are not equal to the servitude of
+out-of-door work, agricultural or mechanical, they are employed, more
+generally, within doors. They are very often students; for they usually
+have active, not to say brilliant minds. And persons who stay in the
+house, whether for the sake of study or anything else, are exceedingly
+apt to breathe more or less of impure air.</p>
+
+<p>Secondly, it is thought by many that since consumptive people are
+feeble, they ought to be kept very warm. Now I have no disposition to
+defend the custom of going permanently chilly, in the case of any
+individual, however strong and healthy he may be; for it is most
+certainly, in the end, greatly debilitating. It would be worse than
+idle&mdash;it would be wicked&mdash;for consumptive people to go about shivering,
+day after day, since it would most rapidly and unequivocally accelerate
+their destruction.</p>
+
+<p>And yet, every degree of atmospheric heat, whether it is applied to the
+internal surface of the lungs through the medium of atmospheric air, or
+externally to the skin, is quite as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span> injurious as habitual cold; and
+this in two ways: First, it weakens the internal power to generate heat,
+which, no doubt, resides very largely in the lungs. Secondly, it takes
+from them a part of that oxygen or vital air which they would otherwise
+inhale, and gives them in return a proportional quantity of carbonic
+acid gas, which, except in the very small proportion in which the Author
+of nature has commingled it with the oxygen and nitrogen of the
+atmosphere, is, to every individual, in effect, a rank poison.</p>
+
+<p>Hence it is that those who have feeble lungs, or whose ancestors had,
+should pay much attention to the quality of the air they breathe,
+especially its temperature. And this they should do, not only for the
+<i>sake</i> of its temperature, but also for the sake of its purity. Such a
+caution is always needful; but its necessity is increased in proportion
+to the feebleness of the lungs and their tendency to suppuration,
+bleeding, etc.</p>
+
+<p>I was once called to see a young woman (in the absence of her regular
+physician) who was bleeding at the lungs. She had bled occasionally
+before, and was under the general care of two physicians; but a sudden
+and more severe hemorrhage than usual had alarmed her friends, and, <i>in
+the absence of better counsel</i>, they sought, temporarily, the advice of
+a stranger.</p>
+
+<p>It was a cold, spring day, and in order to keep up a proper temperature
+in her room, I had no doubt that a little fire was needful. But instead
+of a heat of 65&deg; in the morning and something more in the afternoon, I
+found her sitting in a temperature, at ten o'clock in the forenoon, of
+not less than 75&deg; or 80&deg;. On inquiry, I was surprised to find that the
+temperature of her room was seldom much lower than this, and that
+sometimes it was much higher. I was still more surprised when I
+ascertained that she slept at night in a small room adjoining her
+sitting-room, and that a fire was kept all night in the latter, for her
+special benefit.</p>
+
+<p>No wonder her cough was habitually severe! No wonder she was subject to
+hemorrhage, from the irritated vessels of the lungs! The wonder was that
+she was not worse. The greatest wonder of all was, however, that two
+sensible physicians<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span> should, for weeks if not for months, have
+overlooked this circumstance. For I could not learn, on inquiry, that a
+single word had been said by either of them on the subject.</p>
+
+<p>If you should be inclined to ask whether she had no exercise in the more
+open and pure air, either on horseback or in a carriage, the reply would
+be, none at all. Horseback exercise was even regarded as hazardous, and
+other forms of exertion had not been urged, or, that I could learn, so
+much as recommended.</p>
+
+<p>I was anxious to meet her physicians, that I might communicate my views
+and feelings directly to them; but as this was not convenient I gave
+such directions as the nature of the case seemed to require, requesting
+them to follow my advice till the arrival of her physicians, and then to
+lay the whole case before them. My advice was, to reduce the temperature
+of the sitting-room as low as possible, and yet not produce a sensation
+of chilliness, and to have her sleeping-room absolutely cold, taking
+care to protect her body, however, by proper covering. I also
+recommended exercise in the open air, such as she could best endure; and
+withal, a plain, unstimulating diet.</p>
+
+<p>What was done, I never knew for many months. At last, however, I met
+with a neighbor of the family, one day, who told me that the young
+woman's physicians entirely approved of my suggestions, and that by
+following them out for some time, she partially recovered her wonted
+measure of health.</p>
+
+<p>Whether she recovered entirely, I never knew. The far greater
+probability is, that she remained more comfortable through the summer
+and autumn, but that the injudicious management of the next winter and
+spring reduced her to her former condition, or to a condition much
+worse. People are exceedingly forgetful even of their dearest rights and
+interests. They may, perhaps, exert themselves in the moment of great
+and pressing danger; but as soon as the danger appears to be somewhat
+over they relapse into their former stupidity.</p>
+
+<p>There is, however, much reason for believing that consumptive people
+might often live on many years beyond their present scanty limit, could
+they be made to feel that their recovery<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span> depends, almost wholly, on a
+strict obedience to the laws of health, and not on taking medicine. If
+Miss H., by strict obedience, could recover from a dangerous condition,
+and enjoy six or eight months of tolerable health, is it not highly
+probable, to say the least, that a rigid pursuance of the same course
+would have kept her from a relapse into her former low and dangerous
+condition?</p>
+
+<p>It is in this way, as I suppose, that consumption is to be cured, if
+cured at all. It is to be <i>postponed</i>. In some cases it can be postponed
+one year; in some, five years; in some, ten, fifteen, or twenty; in a
+few, forty or fifty. It is in this respect with consumption, however, as
+it is with other diseases. In a strictly pathological sense, no disease
+is ever entirely cured. In one way or another its effects are apt to be
+permanent. The only important difference, in this particular, between
+consumption and other diseases, is, that since the lungs are vital
+organs, more essential to life and health than some other organs or
+parts, the injury inflicted on them is apt to be deeper, and more likely
+to shorten, with certainty, the whole period of our existence.</p>
+
+<p>Connected with this subject, viz., the treatment of consumption, there
+is probably much more of quackery than in any other department of
+disease which could possibly be mentioned. One individual who makes
+pretensions to cure, in this formidable disease, and who has written and
+spoken very largely on the subject, heralds his own practice with the
+following proclamation: "Five thousand persons cured of consumption in
+one year, by following the directions of this work." Another declares he
+has cured some sixty or seventy out of about one hundred and twenty
+patients of this description, for whom he has been called to prescribe.</p>
+
+<p>Now, if by curing this disease is meant the production of such changes
+in the system, that it is no more likely to recur than to attack any
+other person who has not yet been afflicted with it, then such
+statements or insinuations as the foregoing are not merely groundless,
+but absolutely and unqualifiedly false, and their authors ought to know
+it. For I have had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span> ample opportunity of watching their practice, and
+following it up to the end, and hence speak what I know, and testify
+what I have seen. But if they only mean by cure, the <i>postponement</i> of
+disease for a period of greater or less duration, then the case is
+altered; though, in that case, what becomes of their skill? No book
+worthy of the name can be consulted by a consumptive person without his
+deriving from it many valuable hints, which if duly attended to may
+assist him in greatly prolonging his days; and the same may be said of
+the prescriptions of the physician. Yet, I repeat, it is a misnomer, in
+either case, to call the improvement a cure.</p>
+
+<p>Consumptive people continue to live, whenever their lives are prolonged,
+as the consequence of what they do to promote their general health. One
+is roused to a little exercise, which somewhat improves his condition,
+and prolongs his days. Another is induced to pay an increased regard to
+temperature, and he lives on. Another abandons all medicine, and throws
+himself into the open arms of Nature, and thus prolongs, for a few
+months or a few years, his existence. If this is <i>cure</i>, then we may
+have all or nearly all of our consumptives cured, some of them a great
+many times over. Some few aged practitioners may be found to have cured,
+during the long years of their medical practice, more than five thousand
+persons of this description.</p>
+
+<p>There is no higher or larger sense than this in which any individual has
+cured five thousand, or five hundred, or even fifty persons a year, of
+consumption. On this, a misguided, misinformed public may reply: Many,
+indeed, revive a little, as the lamp sometimes brightens up in its last
+moments; but this very revival or flickering only betokens a more speedy
+and certain dissolution.</p>
+
+<p>On the other hand, predisposition to consumption no more renders it
+necessary that we should die of this disease in early life, at an
+average longevity of less than thirty years, than the loading and
+priming of a musket or piece of artillery renders it necessary that
+there should be an immediate or early explosion. Without an igniting
+spark there will be no discharge in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span> a thousand years. In like manner, a
+person may be "loaded and primed" for consumption fifty years, if not
+even a hundred, without the least necessity of "going off," provided
+that the igniting spark can be kept away. Our power to protect life,
+both in the case of consumption and many more diseases, is in proportion
+to our power to withhold the igniting spark.</p>
+
+<p>And herein it is that medical skill is needful in this dreadful disease,
+and ought to be frequently and largely invoked. If the estimate which
+has been made by Prof. Hooker, of Yale College, that one in five of the
+population of the northern United States die of consumption, is correct,
+then not less than two millions of the present inhabitants of New
+England, New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, are destined, as things now
+are, to die of this disease. What a thought! Can it be so?</p>
+
+<p>Can it be that two millions of the ten millions now on the stage of
+action in the northern United States, are not only <i>predisposed</i> to
+droop and die, but are laid under a constitutional necessity of so
+doing? Must the igniting spark be applied? Must the disease be "touched
+off" with hot or impure air, by hard colds, by excitements of body and
+mind, and in a thousand and one other ways? People are not wholly
+ignorant on this great subject. Would they but <i>do</i> as well as they
+<i>know</i>, the fatal igniting spark would be much oftener and longer
+withheld; and, indeed, in many instances, would never prove the
+immediate cause of dissolution. The lamp of life would burn
+on&mdash;<i>sometimes, it may be, rather feebly</i>&mdash;till its oil was wholly
+exhausted, as it always ought. Man has no more occasion, as a matter of
+necessity, to die of consumption, than the lamp or the candle.</p>
+
+<p>This, if true,&mdash;and is it not?&mdash;should be most welcome intelligence in a
+country where, at some seasons and in particular localities, one-fourth
+of all who die, perish of this disease. In March, 1856, twenty-one
+persons out of eighty who died in Boston in a single week, were reported
+as having died of consumption; and in June of the same year, the
+proportion was nearly as great. In Newton, a few miles from Boston, the
+proportion for the last ten years has been also about one in four.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But place the proportion for the whole northern United States, at one in
+five only, or even one in six. Yet even at this rate, the annual
+mortality for New York or New England, must be about twelve or fourteen
+thousand. Yet it seems to excite little if any surprise. But when or
+where has the cholera, the yellow fever, or the plague depopulated a
+country of three millions of people, for each succeeding year, at the
+rate of twelve thousand annually, or one hundred and twenty thousand
+every ten years?</p>
+
+<p>One reason why the statements I have made, of the possible postponement
+of consumptive disease, should be most welcome intelligence, is found in
+the fact that they inspire with the hope of <i>living</i>. The ordinary
+expectation that those who inherit a consumptive tendency must die
+prematurely, has been fatal to thousands. Mankind, in more respects than
+one, tend to become what they are taken to be. If we take them to be
+early destined to the tomb, they go there almost inevitably. There is, I
+grant, one most fortunate drawback upon this tendency. Most people who
+have the truly consumptive character, are disposed to disbelieve it.
+They are generally "buoyant and hopeful," which, in some degree,
+neutralizes the effect of sombre faces, and grave and prognosticating
+jeremiades.</p>
+
+<p>It will not be out of place to present the patient reader with an
+anecdote, which may or may not be true, but which I received as truth
+from the people of the neighborhood where the facts which it discloses
+are said to have occurred.</p>
+
+<p>In the eastern part of Connecticut, not many years since, a young man
+lay on his bed, very feeble and greatly emaciated, almost gone, as
+everybody supposed but himself, with pulmonary consumption. And yet, up
+to that very hour, the thought that his disease was consumption, had
+never obtained a lodgment in his own mind for a moment. On the contrary,
+he was still fondly hoping that sooner or later he should recover.</p>
+
+<p>It was fortunately about the middle of the forenoon one day,&mdash;an hour
+when his body and mind were in the best condition to endure it,&mdash;that
+his listening ear first caught from those around him the word
+<i>consumption</i>. Starting up, he said, "Do<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span> you think my disease is
+consumption?" They frankly told him their fears. "And do you think," he
+added, "that I must die?" They did not conceal longer their real
+sentiments.</p>
+
+<p>He was for a few moments greatly distressed, and seemed almost
+overpowered. At length, however, a reaction came, when, raising his head
+a little, he deliberately but firmly exclaimed, "I can't die, and I
+won't die." After a few moments' pause and reflection, he said, "I must
+be got up." His attendants protested against the effort, but it was to
+no purpose. Nothing would satisfy him but the attempt. He was bolstered
+up in his bed, but the effort brought on a severe fit of coughing, and
+he was obliged to lie down again.</p>
+
+<p>The next forenoon, at about the same hour, he renewed the request to be
+got up. The result was nearly as before. The process, however, was
+repeated from day to day, till at length, to the great joy and surprise
+of his friends, he could sit in his bed fifteen or twenty minutes. It is
+true that it always slightly increased the severity of his cough; but
+the paroxysm was no worse at the twentieth trial than at the first,
+while he evidently gained, during the effort, a little muscular
+strength. It was not many weeks before he could sit up in bed for an
+hour or more, with a good degree of comfort.</p>
+
+<p>"Now," said he, "I must be taken out of bed and placed in a chair." At
+first his friends remonstrated, but they at length yielded and made the
+attempt. It was too much for him; but he persevered, and after a few
+repeated daily efforts, as before, at length succeeded. Continuing to do
+what he could, from day to day, he was, ere long, able to sit up a
+considerable time twice a day.</p>
+
+<p>He now made a third advance. He begged to be placed in an open carriage.
+As I must be brief, I will only say that, after many efforts and some
+failures, he at length succeeded, and was able to ride abroad several
+miles a day, whenever the weather was at all favorable. Nor was his
+cough at all aggravated by it. On the contrary, as his strength
+increased, it became rather less harassing and exhausting.</p>
+
+<p>One more advance was made. He must be helped, as he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span> said, upon a horse.
+It was doubtful, even to himself, whether he had strength enough to
+endure exercise in this form; but he was determined to try it. The
+attempt was completely successful, and it was scarcely a week before he
+could ride a mile or two without very much fatigue.</p>
+
+<p>The final result was such a degree of recovery as enabled him to ride
+about on horseback several miles a day for six years. He was never quite
+well, it is true, but he was comfortable, and, to some extent, useful.
+He could do errands. He could perform many little services at home and
+abroad. He could, at least, take care of himself. At the end of this
+period, however, his strength gave way, and he sank peacefully to the
+tomb. He was completely worn out.</p>
+
+<p>Now the principal lesson to be learned from this story is obvious.
+<i>Determination</i> to live is almost equivalent to <i>power</i> to live. A
+strong will, in other words, is almost omnipotent. Of the good effects
+of this strong determination, in case of protracted and dangerous
+disease of this sort, I have had no small share of experience, as the
+reader has already seen in Chapter XXIII.</p>
+
+<p>Another fact may be stated under this head. A young man in southern
+Massachusetts, a teacher, was bleeding at the lungs, and was yielding at
+length to the conviction&mdash;for he had studied the subjects of health and
+disease&mdash;that he must ere long perish from consumption. I told him there
+was no necessity of such a result, and directed him to the appropriate
+means of escape. He followed my directions, and after some time regained
+his health. Ten or twelve years have now passed away, and few young men
+have done more hard work during that time than he; and, indeed, few are
+able, at the present moment, to do more. It is to be observed, however,
+that he made an entire change in his dietetic habits, to which he still
+adheres. He avoids all stimulating food&mdash;particularly all animal
+food&mdash;and uses no drink but water.</p>
+
+<p>I did not advise him, while bleeding, to mount a hard-trotting horse,
+and trot away as hard as he could, and let the blood gush forth as it
+pleased. It is a prescription which I have not yet<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span> hazarded. I might do
+so in some circumstances, when I was sure of being aided by that almost
+omnipotent determination of which I have elsewhere spoken. I might do it
+occasionally; but it would be a rare combination of circumstances that
+would compel me. I might do it in the case of a resolute sea captain,
+who insisted on it, would not take <i>no</i> for an answer, and would assume
+the whole responsibility. I might and would do it for such a man as Dr.
+Kane.</p>
+
+<p>I have, myself, bled slightly at the lungs; but while I did not, on the
+one hand, allow myself to be half frightened to death, I did not, on the
+other hand, dare to meet the hemorrhagic tendency by any violent
+measures; not even by the motion of a trotting horse. I preferred the
+alternative of moderate exercise in the open air, with a recumbent
+position in a cool room, having my body well protected by needful
+additional clothing, with deep breathing to expand gently my chest, and
+general cheerfulness. But I have treated on this subject&mdash;my own general
+experience&mdash;at sufficient length elsewhere.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_LVIII" id="CHAPTER_LVIII"></a>CHAPTER LVIII.</h2>
+
+<h3>POISONING BY A PAINTED PAIL.</h3>
+
+
+<p>A child about a week old, but naturally very sensitive and irritable,
+became, one night, unusually restless and rather feverish, with
+derangement of the bowels. The condition of the latter was somewhat
+peculiar, and I was not a little puzzled to account for it. There was
+nothing in the condition of the mother which seemed to me adequate to
+the production of such effects. She was as healthy as delicate females
+usually are in similar circumstances.</p>
+
+<p>The derangement of the child's bowels continued and increased, and I was
+more and more puzzled. Was it any thing, I said to myself, which was
+imbibed or received from the mother? Just at the time, I happened to be
+reading what Dr. Whitlaw, a foreign medical writer, says of the effects
+which sometimes follow when cows that are suckling calves feed on
+buttercup. The poison of the latter, as he says, instead of injuring the
+cow herself, affects, most seriously, the calf, and, in some few
+instances, destroys it. This led me to search more perseveringly than I
+had before done, for a cause of so much bowel-disturbance in my young
+patient.</p>
+
+<p>At length I found that a wooden pail, in which water was kept for family
+use, had been but recently painted inside; and that the paint used was
+prepared in part, from the oxyde of lead, usually called white lead. On
+this I immediately fastened the charge of poisoning.</p>
+
+<p>My suspicions were confirmed by the fact that the mother had been more
+thirsty and feverish than usual, during a few hours previous to the
+child's first manifestation of disease, and had allowed herself to drink
+very freely of water, which was taken from the very pail on which our
+suspicions now rested.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span> Another fact of kindred aspect was, that the
+child recovered just in proportion as the mother left off drinking from
+the painted pail, and used water which was procured in vessels of whose
+integrity we had no doubt.</p>
+
+<p>Most people who had any knowledge of the facts in the case, said that
+the cause I assigned could not have been the true one, since it was
+inadequate to the production of such an effect. But the truth is, we
+know very little about poisons, in their action on the living body,
+whether immediate or remote. Till this time, although I had read on it
+as much as most medical men, yet I knew&mdash;practically knew&mdash;almost as
+little as the most illiterate. Yet the subject was one with which
+professional physicians should be familiarly acquainted, if nobody else
+is. Many an individual, as we have the most abundant reason for
+believing, loses his health, if not his life, from causes which appear
+to be equally slight. A Mr. Earle, of Massachusetts, cannot swallow a
+tumbler of water containing a few particles of lead, without being made
+quite sick by it. Nor is he alone in this particular. Such sensitiveness
+to the presence of a poisonous agency is by no means uncommon. It may be
+found to exist in some few individuals in every country, and almost
+every neighborhood.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_LIX" id="CHAPTER_LIX"></a>CHAPTER LIX.</h2>
+
+<h3>ONE DROP OF LAUDANUM.</h3>
+
+
+<p>A babe, not yet a day old, came under my care for treatment. What the
+symptoms were, except those of nervous irritation, I have now forgotten;
+but there was ample evidence of much disturbance in the system, and the
+parents and friends were exceedingly anxious about the results.</p>
+
+<p>Now it was one of those cases in which a large proportion of our medical
+men are exceedingly ignorant, and only guess out the cause or causes as
+well as they can. I was thus ignorant, and would not&mdash;and as an honest
+man, <i>could</i> not&mdash;attempt to divine the cause or give a name to the
+disease. Yet I must needs, as I verily thought, prescribe something and
+somehow. So I took a single drop of laudanum, and diluted it well, and
+made the child swallow it.</p>
+
+<p>He soon became easy, quite too easy, and fell into a profound sleep. So
+deep and profound, in fact, was its sleep, or rather its <i>stupor</i>, that
+I began to be afraid it never would awake. How strange, I thought within
+myself, that a single drop of this liquid should produce so much effect!
+Yet it taught me wisdom. It taught me to let medicine alone&mdash;strong
+medicine, at least&mdash;in the diseases of very young children. It also
+taught me not to give too large doses to anybody, especially to those
+who had never taken any before. The first dose, for unperverted nature,
+must be very small indeed!</p>
+
+<p>How much my little patient was injured, permanently, by this act of
+unpardonable carelessness, I never knew. It may have laid the foundation
+for many ills which he has since experienced, some of which have been
+severe and trying. Or, if otherwise, it may have aggravated such ills as
+had their origin in other causes. Or, if nothing more, it may have
+contributed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span> to a delicacy and sensitiveness and feebleness of
+structure, which can never, in all probability, be fully overcome, and
+which have more to do, even with our moral tendencies and character,
+than most of us are fully aware.</p>
+
+<p>How much would I give to be able to blot from my history such errors and
+defects of character as this! For, though I confess to nothing worse
+than haste and carelessness, in the present instance, yet a medical man,
+like the commander in the battle field or elsewhere, has no right to be
+careless. My aged, honored father gravely insisted, all his life long,
+that no accidents, as they are termed, in human life, ever take place,
+unless there is in the first place, carelessness, somewhere. Much more
+is it true that many an individual who sickens and loses his life, is
+the victim of carelessness; or, what is the same thing, want of
+attention, when great care and attention were necessary, and the issues
+of life and death were suspended, as it were, on a thread!</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_LX" id="CHAPTER_LX"></a>CHAPTER LX.</h2>
+
+<h3>MRS. KIDDER'S CORDIAL.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Should you ever go to Boston, and pass along a certain street called
+Court Street, almost to its western extremity, you may probably see at
+your left hand, in large letters of various fantastical shapes, the
+words which I have placed at the head of this chapter; viz., "<span class="smcap">Mrs.
+Kidder's Cordial</span>." Sometimes, I believe, it is called her cholera
+cordial; but it is sufficiently well known, as I suppose, by the former
+name.</p>
+
+<p>But how is it known? Not merely by the sign I have mentioned, fastened
+up at the door of that aforesaid shop in Court Street, but by a host of
+advertisements in the public papers; and in other cities as well as
+Boston. You may find them in almost every public house, post-office,
+railroad depot, and grocery in New England; or, as I might perhaps say,
+in the whole Union.</p>
+
+<p>I once had a child severely sick, at a season of the year when not only
+the Asiatic cholera prevailed, but also the cholera morbus. She was
+teething at the time, which was doubtless one cause of her illness,&mdash;to
+which however, as I suppose, other causes may have been added. In any
+event, she was in a very bad condition, and required the wisest and most
+careful medical attention. There was also a young woman in the house who
+was ill in the same way, but not so ill as the child.</p>
+
+<p>At that time my residence was very near the metropolis, though, as I
+have already told you, Mrs. Kidder's cordial could be had almost
+everywhere. Having occasion to go to town, I fell in with an old friend
+who kindly inquired after the health of my family. When I had told him,
+he boldly and with true Yankee impertinence, asked what I had done for
+my family patients; to which I replied, with a frankness and simplicity<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span>
+which was fully equal to his boldness, "Nothing, as yet." "Do you mean
+to do nothing?" said he, with some surprise. I told him that I did not
+know what I might do in future, but that I saw no necessity of using any
+active medication at present. "Are you not aware," I added, "that
+physicians seldom take their own medicines or give them to their
+families?"</p>
+
+<p>"I know very well," said he, "that physicians theorize a good deal about
+these matters; but after all, experience is the best school-master.
+Should you lose that little girl of yours, simply because you are
+anxious to carry out a theory, will you not be likely to regret it? As
+yet you have lost no children, and therefore, though much older than
+myself, you have not had all the experience which has fallen to my lot;
+and experience is the best school-master."</p>
+
+<p>"True," I answered, "I am not too old to learn from that experience,
+which, in a certain sense, is the basis of all just knowledge,
+especially in medicine. What you call my theory, or at least all the
+theory I have, is grounded on this same experience; not, indeed, that of
+one man in one neighborhood, nor, indeed, in one nation. I have looked
+the world over."</p>
+
+<p>"And you have come to the very wise conclusion, it would seem," said he,
+"that medicine never does any good, and that you will never give it
+more, except to those who are determined to have it, or will not fasten
+their faith on any thing else."</p>
+
+<p>"Not exactly that," I replied. "I can think of a great number of cases
+in which I would give medicine. For example: suppose one of my children
+had by the merest accident taken a dose of poison, which, if retained,
+must inevitably destroy it, I would much sooner give that child an
+active emetic&mdash;which, of course, is medicine&mdash;than stand still and see
+it die."</p>
+
+<p>"Very well," said he, "your child and Miss L., are, in one point of
+view, poisoned. They will probably die, if you stand still and do
+nothing; at least I have not a doubt that the little girl will. Now take
+my advice, and do something before it is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span> too late. Give up all your
+theories and fine-spun reasonings, and do as others do, and save your
+child."</p>
+
+<p>As I had but little time for conversation with him, even on a highly
+important and deeply interesting subject, above all to point out the
+difference between the two cases he mentioned. I was now about ready to
+say "Good-morning," and leave him. "Stop a moment," said he, "and go
+with me to the second shop beyond that corner, and get a bottle of Mrs.
+Kidder's cordial for your sick folks."</p>
+
+<p>Here I smiled. "Well," said he, "you may continue to smile; but you will
+mourn in the end. I have used Mrs. Kidder's cordial in my family a good
+deal, and I assure you it is no humbug. It is all it promises. Now just
+go with me, for once, and get a bottle of it. Depend upon it, you will
+never regret it."</p>
+
+<p>Although my good friend had not succeeded in changing my views by his
+many affirmations, nor by his strong appeal to his experience of the
+good effects of the cordial in his own family (for I well knew he had
+lost almost all his children), I consented to go with him to the shop,
+partly to get rid of him. When we arrived I bought a bottle of the
+cordial,&mdash;I believe for fifty cents,&mdash;put it in my pocket, and carried
+it home with me.</p>
+
+<p>When I reached home I put away the bottle, on a shelf in our family
+closet which was quite unoccupied, and inquired about the patients. The
+little girl was rather better, it was thought, but Miss L. was still
+weak and low. I told them about the adventure with the bookseller, but
+omitted to state that I had purchased the cordial.</p>
+
+<p>In a very few days, by dint of good care and attention, and the blessing
+of a kind Providence, the sick were both of them much better, and I
+could leave them for a whole day at a time. My business in town demanded
+my presence, and I repaired thither again. And who should I meet, on
+getting out of the omnibus, but my old friend, who had reasoned with me
+so patiently and perseveringly, in defence of Mrs. Kidder's cordial?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He inquired, almost immediately, about my family; to which I joyfully
+replied, "Better, all better. They were better in less than two days
+after I last saw you;&mdash;yes, they were a little better that very
+evening."</p>
+
+<p>"I told you it would be so," said he. "I never knew the cordial to fail
+when taken in season. I have lost several children, it is true; but they
+did not take it soon enough. I am profoundly glad you were in season.
+Does it not operate like a charm?"</p>
+
+<p>"Exactly so," said I, "if it operates at all; exactly like a charm, or
+like magic. Shall I tell you the whole story?"</p>
+
+<p>"By all means," he replied; "let us have the whole of it; keep nothing
+back."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, then, I went home, and placed the bottle of cordial on a high and
+obscure shelf, where nobody would be likely to see it, and proceeded
+with our sick folks just as before. The bottle of cordial remained
+unknown, except to myself, and untouched, and is probably untouched to
+the present hour. So you see&mdash;do you not?&mdash;how like a charm it
+operates."</p>
+
+<p>"Just <i>like</i> you, doctor. Well, as long as they recovered I do not care.
+But I shall always have full faith in the medicine. I know what I know;
+and if all the world were of your opinion I could not resist a full
+belief in the efficacy of Mrs. Kidder's Cholera Cordial."</p>
+
+<p>My friend was not offended with me, for he was, in the main, a sensible,
+rational man. He pitied me; but, I believe from that time forth, gave up
+all hopes of my conversion. I come to this conclusion because he has
+never uttered a syllable on the subject, in my hearing, from that day to
+this hour, though I have met with him probably fifty times.</p>
+
+<p>There can be no doubt that were we to place full faith in the
+recuperative efforts of nature, three-fourths of our medicine&mdash;perhaps I
+may just as well say nine-tenths&mdash;would be quite as useful were it
+disposed of in the way I disposed of Mrs. Kidder's cordial, as when
+swallowed. Nay, it is possible it might be much more useful. If a sick
+person can recover without it just as well as <i>with</i> it, he certainly
+will get well more easily,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span> even if it should not be more quickly, than
+if he had a load of foreign substance at his stomach to be disposed of.
+In other words, to get well in spite of medicine seems to me much less
+agreeable, after all that is said in its favor, than to get well in
+Nature's own way.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_LXI" id="CHAPTER_LXI"></a>CHAPTER LXI.</h2>
+
+<h3>ALMOST RAISING THE DEAD.</h3>
+
+
+<p>So many people regarded it, and therefore I use the phrase as a title
+for my chapter. I have heard of families of children so large that it
+was not easy to find names for them all. My chapters of confession are
+short, but very numerous, and I already begin to find it difficult to
+procure titles that are <i>apropos</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Mary Benham was the second daughter, in an obscure and indigent family
+that resided only a little distance from my house, just beyond the
+limits of what might properly be called the village. I do not know much
+of her early history, except that she was precocious in mind, and
+scrofulous and feeble in body.</p>
+
+<p>The first time I ever heard any thing about her, was one night at a
+prayer-meeting. Mr. Brown, the minister, took occasion to observe, at
+the close of the meeting, in my hearing, that he must go to Mr. Benham's
+and see Mary, for she was very ill, and it was thought would not live
+through the night.</p>
+
+<p>She survived, however, as she had done many times before, and as she did
+many times afterward, in similar circumstances. More than once Mr. Brown
+had been sent for&mdash;though sometimes other friends were called, as Mr.
+Brown lived more than a mile distant&mdash;to be with her and pray with her,
+in what were supposed to be her last moments. But there was still a good
+deal of tenacity of life; and she continued to live, notwithstanding all
+her expectations and those of her friends.</p>
+
+<p>It appeared, on inquiry, that her nervous system was very much
+disordered, and also her digestive machinery. She was also taking, from
+day to day, a large amount of active medicine. Still no one appeared to
+doubt the propriety of such a course<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span> of treatment, in the case of a
+person so very sick as she was; for how, it was asked, could she live
+without it?</p>
+
+<p>In one or two instances I was sent for; not, indeed, as her physician,
+but as a substitute for the more distant or the absent minister. At
+these visits I learned something, incidentally, of her true physical
+condition. I found her case a very bad one, and yet, as I believed, made
+much worse by an injudicious use of medicine.</p>
+
+<p>Yet what could I do in the premises? I had not been asked to prescribe
+for her, nor even to give counsel as a supernumerary or consulting
+physician. Dr. M. paid her his weekly and semi-weekly visits, and
+doubtless supposed all the wisdom of the world added to his own would
+hardly improve her condition. I was, of course, by all the rules of
+medical etiquette, and even by the common law of politeness, obliged to
+bite my lips in silence. One thing, indeed, I ventured to do, which was
+to send her a small tract or two, in some of the departments of hygiene
+or health.</p>
+
+<p>Soon after this her physician died; and died, too, by his own
+confession, publicly made, of stomach disease,&mdash;at least, in part. He
+was a man of gigantic body and great natural physical force. His
+digestive apparatus was particularly powerful, and it had been both
+unwisely cultivated and developed in early life, and unwisely and
+wickedly managed afterward. For an example of the latter, he would,
+while abroad among his patients, sometimes go without his dinner, and
+then, on his return to his family and just as he was going to bed, atone
+for past neglect by eating enough for a whole day, and of the most solid
+and perhaps indigestible food. In this and other abusive ways he had
+been suicidal.</p>
+
+<p>But he was now gone to his final account, and on whose arm could Mary
+lean for medical advice? Her parents were too poor to pay a physician's
+bill. What had been paid to her former medical attendant&mdash;which, indeed
+was but a mere pittance&mdash;was by authority of the town. Mary felt all the
+delicacy she should have felt, in her circumstances, and perhaps<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span> more,
+for she refused for some time to ask for farther aid, preferring to
+groan her way alone.</p>
+
+<p>One evening, when I was present on a moral errand, she spoke of the
+great benefit she had derived from the perusal of the little books I had
+sent her, and modestly observed that, deprived as she was by the wise
+dispensation of Providence, of her old friend and physician, she had
+sometimes dared to wish she could occasionally consult me. I told her I
+hoped she would not hesitate a moment to send for me, whenever she
+desired, for if in a situation to comply with her requests, I would
+always do so immediately. She was about to speak of her poverty, when I
+begged her not to think of that. The only condition I should impose, I
+told her, was that she should do her very best to follow, implicitly, my
+directions. With this condition she did not hesitate to promise a full
+and joyful compliance.</p>
+
+<p>From that time forth I saw her frequently, since I well knew that even
+voluntary visits would be welcome. I found she had become convinced of
+the necessity of breathing pure air, and of ventilating her room every
+day. Nor did she neglect, as much as formerly, the great laws of
+cleanliness. Yet, alas! in this respect, the hard hand of necessity was
+upon her. She could not do all she wished. However, she could apply
+water to her person daily, if she could not to her clothing and bedding;
+so that, on the whole, she did not greatly suffer. Her mother did what
+she could, but she was old and decrepit.</p>
+
+<p>She had also made another advance. She had contrived to obtain, I hardly
+know from what source, but probably from the hands of kind friends, a
+small amount of good fruit to use daily, with one or more of her meals.
+This excluded a part or portion of that kind of food which was more
+stimulating and doubtful.</p>
+
+<p>But the greatest difficulty we had to encounter was to shake off the
+enormous load of narcotic medicine which had been so long prescribed for
+her that she seemed unable to live without it. Morphine, in particular,
+she had come to use in quantities which would have destroyed a person
+who was unaccustomed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span> to its influence, and in frequently repeated
+doses. I told her she might as well die in one way as another; that the
+morphine, though it afforded a little temporary relief, was wearing out
+her vital energies at a most rapid rate, and that the safest, and, in
+the end, the easiest way for her was, to abandon it entirely. She
+followed my advice, and made the attempt.</p>
+
+<p>I have forgotten how long a time it required to effect a complete
+emancipation from her slavery to drugs; but the process was a gradual
+one, and occupied at least several months. In the end, however, though
+not without considerable suffering, she was perfectly free, not only
+from her slavery to morphine, but to all other drugs. All this time,
+moreover, she was as <i>well</i>, to say the least, as before; perhaps, on
+the whole, a little better.</p>
+
+<p>I now set myself, in good earnest, to the work of improving her physical
+habits. The laws of ventilation and cleanliness, to which her attention,
+as I have already intimated, had become directed, were still more
+carefully heeded. She was required to retire early and rise early, and
+to keep her mind occupied, though never to the point of fatigue, while
+awake. Her habits with regard to food and drink were changed very
+materially. The influence of the mind on the condition of the body was
+also explained to her, and the influence of temperature. In short, she
+was brought, as fast as possible, to the knowledge of physical law in
+its application to her circumstances, and encouraged to obey it.</p>
+
+<p>The recuperative powers of nature, even in unfavorable circumstances,
+were soon apparent. This greatly increased her docility and inspired her
+with faith and hope. The greatest trouble was in regard to muscular
+exercise. Much of this was needed; and yet how could it be obtained? She
+could not walk, and yet, in her indigence, she had no means of
+conveyance, except at the occasional invitation of some friend.</p>
+
+<p>But this even had its good tendencies. To take her up, as we would have
+taken a child, set her in a carriage and let her ride half a mile or a
+mile, was obviously of great service to her. She was far less fatigued
+by it than was expected; her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span> subsequent sleep was far better; nor did
+any remote evil effects follow. This greatly increased her courage, and
+raised the hopes of her friends.</p>
+
+<p>She was at length able to be placed in the railroad cars, and with the
+aid of coaches, at embarking and disembarking, to travel about a good
+deal, to the distance of ten, twelve, or twenty miles; and all this with
+favorable effects. Her recovery, at no distant day, began to be
+regarded, by the most sceptical, as quite probable.</p>
+
+<p>My removal, a hundred miles or so from the village, just at this time,
+was, however, a misfortune to her. In one of her excursions, she
+received and accepted an invitation to spend a few months with a distant
+relative, where she came under the influence of one of the phases of
+modern quackery, by means of which her progress to the promised land of
+health was very considerably retarded. She even sickened, but afterward
+recovered.</p>
+
+<p>Sometime after this, as I subsequently learned, she partially regained
+her good condition of steady progress, and returned to her father's
+house. Finding herself, at length, able to do something for her support,
+she entered into the service of a neighboring family, at first with
+little compensation except her board, but subsequently at half pay or
+more. Her domestic duties were such as only taxed her system to a degree
+which she was able to endure without any injury.</p>
+
+<p>It was in this condition, that, after two or three years of absence, I
+found her and rejoiced with her. For, though she could no more be said
+to be restored to perfect health, than a vessel could be considered
+perfectly sound that is full of shot holes, yet her condition was far
+enough from being desperate, and was even comparatively excellent. I
+left her once more with the tear of gratitude to God on her cheek, and
+again, for many long years, neither saw her nor heard from her.</p>
+
+<p>At our next interview she brought with her a gentleman whom she
+introduced to me as her husband. The meeting was to me wholly
+unexpected, but most happy. She lived in this relation, but without
+progeny, a few years more, and then<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span> sank in a decline, to rise no more
+till the sound of the last trumpet.</p>
+
+<p>Of the particulars of her decline and death, I have never heard a word.
+Her scrofulous temperament and tendencies rendered her liable to
+numerous diseases of greater or less severity and danger, to some of
+which she probably fell a victim. It is, however, by no means impossible
+that her numerous cares and anxieties&mdash;for she was naturally very
+sensitive&mdash;may have hastened her exit.</p>
+
+<p>If I have any misgivings in connection with this protracted, but very
+interesting case, and consequently any confessions to make, it is with
+reference to the point faintly alluded to in a preceding paragraph.
+While I honor, as much as any man, the marriage relation,&mdash;for it is in
+accordance with God's own intention, and is the first institution of
+high Heaven for human benefit and happiness,&mdash;I must freely confess that
+in the present fallen condition of our race, it occasionally happens
+that an individual is found unfit for the discharge of its various
+duties, as well as for the endurance of some of its peculiar
+responsibilities. Such, as I believe, among others, was Mary Benham.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_LXII" id="CHAPTER_LXII"></a>CHAPTER LXII.</h2>
+
+<h3>FEMALE HEALTH, AND INSANE HOSPITALS.</h3>
+
+
+<p>A female, about thirty-five years of age, and naturally of a melancholic
+temperament, was very frequently at my room for the purpose of
+conversing with me in regard to her health. Most of her complaints&mdash;for
+they were numerous&mdash;were grafted upon a strongly bilious habit, and were
+such as required in the possessor and sufferer, more than an ordinary
+measure of attention to the digestive organs and the skin. And yet both
+these departments, especially the latter, had been in her case,
+hitherto, utterly neglected. To speak plainly, and with some license as
+a physiologist, <i>she had no skin</i>. It was little more than a mere
+wrapper, so far as the great purposes of health were concerned. A dried
+and even tanned hide, could it have been fitted to her person with
+sufficient exactness, would have subserved nearly the same purposes.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps you will excuse the tendency in the description of this case, to
+exaggeration, when you are informed that the treatment of themselves, in
+the particular here alluded to, by females especially, is one which
+habitually fills one with disgust, and sometimes with indignation.
+Persons of good sense, of both sexes, who from month to month, perhaps
+from year to year, never wash their skins, nor use much muscular
+exercise, ought to know that they must, sooner or later, experience the
+dreadful penalty attached to violated physical law, and from which there
+is, neither on earth nor in heaven, any possible escape. Can any one
+suppose, for a moment, that so curious and complicated an organ as the
+skin, and one of such considerable extent, has nothing to do?</p>
+
+<p>Nearly every living person has some idea, of greater or less intensity,
+of pores in the skin; at least, they use language<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span> which implies such an
+idea. They talk, often, of the necessity of keeping these pores open.
+But how is it to be done? Not certainly while they use little or no
+muscular exercise, by washing, once a day, their hands and faces merely,
+or, as some say, their fingers, their noses, and the tips of their
+chins. They may talk, on occasions, very boldly and flippantly, about
+<i>sweating</i> away a cold, as they term it; but do they vainly suppose that
+the sweat vessels or sweating machinery has nothing to do, from day to
+day, which might prevent the necessity of resorting to these sweating
+processes?</p>
+
+<p>Miss L. appeared to be in utter ignorance of any laws of the skin, or of
+the digestive or muscular systems. And yet her thoughts had been turned,
+often and frequently, to her own feelings and sensations. She would
+talk, almost incessantly, if anybody would hear her, about her aches and
+pains, and could describe her whole train of feelings, from morning to
+evening, with a faithfulness and patience and minuteness that would have
+furnished a genius less than Defoe with material sufficient for quite a
+huge volume.</p>
+
+<p>Now I could have visited and counselled Miss L., at least once a week,
+with great profit to herself, had she been as intelligent, in general,
+as she was familiar with her own sensations. As things were, her
+confidence was rather more troublesome than agreeable; but she was,
+practically, a standing patient; and physicians, as you know, cannot
+choose. They must be, among mankind, like the Great Physician, as they
+who "<i>serve</i>;" not as those who are <i>to be served</i>, or accommodated. And
+they must serve those who come to them.</p>
+
+<p>Miss L. was evidently somewhat disappointed, when she found I was not
+disposed to give her any medicine. A little, she thought, might
+sometimes be useful; a great deal she did not believe in, of course.
+Experience had forced upon her some of the lessons of wisdom. However,
+she contrived to fasten a good deal of faith on the laws of health,
+which I continually held forth to her. In particular, I urged on her the
+necessity of endeavoring to keep up what I was wont to call a
+centrifugal tendency in her system. A good plump, healthful,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span> ever
+active, and ever vigorous skin was, as I told her, our only hope in her
+case. As a means to this end, and also as a means of withdrawing her
+attention from the slavery of a constant attendance on her own
+sensations, I urged her to mingle with society much more, and go about
+doing good to others, on the great principle, "It is more blessed to
+give than to receive." I warned her, however, against the danger of
+falling into the habit of giving an account of herself&mdash;her woes and
+sorrows&mdash;to every one she might meet with, who should kindly inquire
+about her condition, since it would greatly retard her improvement, even
+if it did not keep up or renew her disease.</p>
+
+<p>Among other things, I ventured to suggest to her the importance of
+having something to do&mdash;something of a permanent nature. "We hear," I
+said, "of gentlemen at large, and you seem to be a lady at large. You
+have, in the usual acceptation of the phrase, nothing to do. Would it
+not be well for you to take charge of something or of somebody? You
+might, perhaps, assume the office of teacher, and take the charge of a
+few pupils; or even adopt a child or two as your own, where you might
+receive compensation. Or," as I finally added,&mdash;for I perceived she
+shrunk from all responsibilities of this kind,&mdash;"you might, perhaps,
+become the mistress of a family."</p>
+
+<p>On the last mentioned topic, I was also obliged, for obvious reasons, to
+speak with considerable caution. She was unsocial, timid, fearful of
+being burdened with cares&mdash;the very stuff, though she knew it not, that
+human life is made of, ay, and human happiness too. But I could not
+hesitate to make the trial. My suggestions, however, were of little
+avail. She went on for some time, in the old way, and made very little
+progress.</p>
+
+<p>I lost sight of her about this time, and never met her more. The sequel
+of her history I only know from report. It is painful in the extreme. It
+is, however, the history, in all its essential features, of thousands of
+selfish people, who, after all, by dint of numbers, force, and
+influence, contrive to rule the world.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Being fully determined to have no cares or responsibilities connected
+with children or household, she not only refused to hearken to my
+advice, but also to one or more truly kind and promising offers of
+marriage. She pursued her selfish course undisturbed, unless by
+occasional misgivings, till her brain and nervous system suffered so
+severely that she began to approach the confines of insanity.</p>
+
+<p>It was, however, a considerable time before the silver cord was loosed,
+the golden bowl broken, and the wheel broken at the cistern. But the
+terrible result at length came. The demands of violated physical law are
+inexorable. She was conveyed, as a last resort, in the hope of cure, to
+an insane hospital. Here, after many and patient attempts to restore the
+crippled and broken down machinery to healthful motion, she ended her
+days.</p>
+
+<p>My female patients were not all equally unfortunate. One I had, whose
+case, if minutely described, would present an array of facts painful in
+the extreme. She, too, approached the dark regions of insanity; but she
+did not enter. She still lives, and is at once a useful and happy woman,
+and an excellent wife and housekeeper. As a means to her recovery,
+however, she pursued a course diametrically opposite to that pursued by
+Miss L. She did not shrink from care and responsibility; on the
+contrary, she submitted to both. First, she sought increased activity
+and usefulness in her father's family; and, secondly, in a family of her
+own.</p>
+
+<p>Concerning the last mentioned case, I have few misgivings, and equally
+few confessions to make. I call it a remarkable case; but it must not be
+revealed in its details, for other reasons besides its tediousness. In
+the case of Miss L., however, I have one deep and lasting regret.</p>
+
+<p>In the early part of my acquaintance with her, as a medical man, she
+probably had more confidence in my integrity and skill than in those of
+any other living individual. She had been early left an orphan; and I
+was among the first&mdash;perhaps the very first&mdash;to take the attitude
+towards her of a true<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span> father. Such kindness, and especially such
+paternal care, never fail to make their impression.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Love, and love only, is the loan for love."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>At this early sympathizing period, had I been more faithful, I might,
+perhaps, have saved her. But I was remiss&mdash;disposed to delay. I waited,
+a thousand times, for a better opportunity. I waited till the favorable
+moment&mdash;ay, the <i>only</i> moment&mdash;had passed by.</p>
+
+<p>Physicians often err here. God gives to many individuals the most
+unbounded confidence in medical men; and this remarkable provision of
+his has a deep meaning. It is not, however, to the intent that they
+should abuse the influence thus secured to them, by filling their
+patients' stomachs with pills and powders; but for such purposes,
+rather, as have been indicated by the general tenor of the foregoing
+remarks. It is that they may give them wise paternal counsel and sound
+physiological and pathological instruction.</p>
+
+<p>Such counsel and such instruction were indeed given to Miss L., but not
+to that extent which the nature of the case required, and which a little
+more moral courage and Christian plainness would have secured. She was
+worth saving, and I might, perchance, have been the honored instrument
+of saving her, and of thus rendering to society a most valuable service.
+That vital energy of hers which was expended in watching over her own
+internal feelings, might have been rendered a much more profitable
+investment.</p>
+
+<p>But the account is closed and sealed, to be agitated or questioned no
+more till the inquisitions of the last day. Let such considerations and
+reflections as this remark suggests to the human mind have their
+intended effect. Let us ever increase our zeal and watchfulness, that we
+may avoid such a course of conduct as makes confessions meet, or
+needful, or even salutary.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_LXIII" id="CHAPTER_LXIII"></a>CHAPTER LXIII.</h2>
+
+<h3>A GIANT DYSPEPTIC.</h3>
+
+
+<p>There have been giants in the earth, in nearly every age, if not in
+every clime&mdash;giants mentally, and giants physically. Of course they may
+have been rare exhibitions, and may thus have elicited much attention;
+and some of them have attained to quite a memorable place in history.</p>
+
+<p>There have been and still are, on the earth, giants of other
+descriptions. We sometimes even meet with giant dyspeptics. Dyspepsia,
+at best, is formidable, many-headed, but not always gigantic. If
+gigantic size, in this case, were the general rule, what we now call
+giants would, of course, cease to be regarded as such.</p>
+
+<p>It may be thought that what I shall here call dyspeptic giants, or giant
+dyspeptics, were better designated as monsters, than giants. Be it so,
+for we will not quarrel about names; though a difficulty might be found
+in making the required distinction between giants and monsters; for is
+not every giant a monster?</p>
+
+<p>Not far from the year 1830, perhaps a little earlier, you might have
+seen, in connection with a certain private seminary of education, in New
+England, one of these giant dyspeptics. I do not mean, of course, that
+he had already attained to giant size, but only that what proved in the
+result to be gigantic was already a giant in miniature, and was rapidly
+advancing to one of magnitude.</p>
+
+<p>He had early been a cabin boy; and like many other cabin boys, had been
+gluttonous, and in some respects intemperate. Not by any means, that he
+had ever been guilty of downright intoxication; for of this I have no
+certain knowledge. My belief is, however, that he had gone very far in
+this direction,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span> though he might not have&mdash;probably <i>had</i> not&mdash;been
+justly chargeable with going quite to the last extremity.</p>
+
+<p>But why should such a young man be found at a seminary of learning? Was
+he with "birds of a feather?" Do not these attract each other?</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Gray, for that is the name I shall give to our young dyspeptic, had
+been recently subjected to the influences of one of those seasons of
+excitement well known in the religious world by the name of <i>revivals</i>;
+and what is not at all uncommon with the rude and uncultivated minds of
+even more hardened sailors than he, a great change had come over him. In
+short, he had the appearance, in every respect, of being a truly
+converted young man.</p>
+
+<p>Why this change of character had led him to this school-house, may not
+at first appear. Yet such a result is by no means unusual. This waking
+up the mind, by awakening the soul, and causing it to hunger and thirst
+after knowledge, has been observed long since, by those who have had
+their eyes open to what was going on around them.</p>
+
+<p>Young Gray was penniless, and his parents not only poor, but
+overburdened with the cares of a large family, so that they could give
+him no aid but by their prayers. He was not, however, to be discouraged
+by poverty. He agreed to ring the bell, sweep the hall, build fires,
+etc., for his board and tuition. As for clothing, he had none, or almost
+none. Charity, cold as her hand oftentimes is, supplied him with
+something. Dyspepsia had not, as yet, marred his visage or weakened his
+energies.</p>
+
+<p>In his connection with this seminary and others of kindred character,
+such as he could attend and yet pay his expenses by his labor, he
+became, ere long, able to teach others. Here was a new means of support,
+of which he eagerly availed himself. In whatever he undertook, moreover,
+he was singularly successful. He was in earnest. An earnest mind, in
+connection with an indomitable will&mdash;what may it not accomplish? It is
+every thing but omnipotent.</p>
+
+<p>"Heaven but persuades, almighty man decrees," as I have before said,
+assuming our old English poets as standard authority;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span> but this saying
+has more in it than mere poetry. Or, if Heaven more than
+persuades&mdash;somewhat more&mdash;does not man still decree? But I am inclined,
+I see, to press this thought, perhaps in undue proportion to its
+magnitude. Whether or not it abates one half the guilt, I make the
+confession.</p>
+
+<p>For several years Gray pushed his devious course, through "thick and
+thin," sustaining himself chiefly by his teaching. In 1835, he was the
+private instructor of a wealthy family in Rhode Island; but so puzzling,
+not to say erratic, were some of his movements, that he was not very
+popular. Subsequently to this, he was found in another part of New
+England, editing a paper, and teaching at the same time a small number
+of pupils.</p>
+
+<p>All this while he paid great attention to physical education; but being
+either a charity scholar, or obliged to pay his way by his own
+exertions, he had not at command the needful time to render him thorough
+in any thing, even in his obedience, as he called it, to Nature's laws.
+Nearly all his studies were pursued by snatches, or, at least, with more
+or less irregularity.</p>
+
+<p>In nothing, however, was he more irregular than in his diet. This, to a
+person already inclined, as he certainly was, to dyspepsia, was very
+unfortunate. Perhaps, as generally happens in such cases, there was
+<i>action and reaction</i>. Perhaps, I mean, his dyspeptic tendencies led to
+more or less of dietetic irregularity; while the latter, whenever
+yielded to, had a tendency, in its turn, to increase his load of
+dyspepsia.</p>
+
+<p>There was, indeed, one apology to be found for his irregularity with
+regard to diet, in his extreme poverty. There were times when he was
+actually compelled to subsist on the most scanty fare; while his
+principles, too, restricted him to very great plainness. In one
+instance, for example, after he had finished his preparatory, course of
+study and entered college, he subsisted wholly on a certain quantity of
+bread daily; and as if not quite satisfied with even this restriction,
+while he needed his money so much more for clothing and books, he
+purchased stale bread&mdash;sometimes that which was imperfect&mdash;at a cheaper
+rate. Now a diet, exclusively of fine flour bread, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span> withal more or
+less sour or mouldy, is not very suitable for a dyspeptic, nor yet,
+indeed, for anybody whatever. However, he learned, at length, to improve
+a little upon this, by purchasing coarse, or Graham bread.</p>
+
+<p>Subsequently to this period, not being able, either alone or with the
+aid of friends, most of whom were poor, to pursue a regular academic
+course of instruction, he accepted the proposition that he should become
+an assistant teacher in the English department of a school in Europe.
+This, he feared, might postpone the completion of his studies, but would
+enable him, as he believed, to improve his mind, establish his health,
+and add greatly to his experience and to his knowledge of the world. It
+would also perfect him in teaching, so far at least as the mere
+inculcation of English grammar was concerned.</p>
+
+<p>His health was by no means improved by a residence of three or four
+years in Europe, but rather impaired. He returned to America, in the
+autumn of 1839, and as soon as he had partially recovered from the
+effects of a tedious and dangerous voyage, went to reside in the family
+of a near relative who was a farmer, with a view to learn, for the first
+time, what the labors of the farm would do for him.</p>
+
+<p>Here he often resorted to the same rigid economy which he had before
+practised, both at academy and college, and in Europe. The very best
+living he would allow himself was a diet exclusively of small
+potatoes&mdash;those, I mean, from which the larger ones had been separated
+for the use of others.</p>
+
+<p>This, his dyspeptic stomach would not long endure. His digestive and
+nervous systems both became considerably deranged; and even his skin,
+sympathizing with the diseased lining membrane of his stomach and
+intestines, became the seat of very painful boils and troublesome sores.
+These, while they indicated still deeper if not more troublesome
+disease, gave one encouraging indication&mdash;that the recuperative powers
+of the system were not as yet irrecoverably prostrated.</p>
+
+<p>He now came to me and begged to become my patient, and to reside
+permanently under my roof, so that he might not only receive such daily
+attention and counsel as the circumstances<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span> required, but also such
+food, air, exercise, and ablutions as were needful. He was accordingly
+admitted to the rights, privileges, and self-denials of the family.</p>
+
+<p>Here he spent a considerable time. While under my care, I made every
+reasonable exertion for his recovery which I would have made for a
+favorite child. Indeed, few children were ever more obedient or docile.
+He would sometimes say to me: "Doctor, I have no more power over myself
+than a child, and you must treat me <i>as you would</i> a child." Nor was he
+satisfied till I restricted his every step, both with regard to the
+quantity and quality of his food, and the hours and seasons of bathing,
+exercise, reading, etc. It was to me a painful task, and I sometimes
+shrunk from it, for the moment. There was, however, no escape. I had
+embarked in the enterprise, and must take the consequences.</p>
+
+<p>At first, his improvement was scarcely perceptible, and I was almost
+discouraged. But at length, after much patience and perseverance, the
+suffering digestive organs began, in some measure, to resume their
+healthful condition, and the whole face of things to wear a different
+aspect. He left us to take charge of a public school.</p>
+
+<p>For some time after the opening of this school, his health seemed to be
+steadily improving, and the world around him began to have its charms
+again. He was in his own chosen, and, I might say, native element, which
+was to him a far more healthful stimulus than any other which could have
+been devised, whether by the physician or the physiologist.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing in this world is so well calculated to preserve and promote
+human health, as full and constant employment, of a kind which is
+perfectly congenial and healthful, and which we are fully assured is
+useful. In other words, the first great law of health is benevolence. It
+keeps up in the system that centrifugal tendency of the circulation of
+which I have already spoken, and which is so favorable for the rejection
+of all effete and irritating matters. It would have been next to
+impossible for our Saviour, with head, heart, and hands engaged as his
+were, to have sickened; nor was it till the most flagrant physiological<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span>
+transgressions had been long repeated, that even Howard the
+philanthropist sickened and died. Not the whole combined force of
+malaria and contagion could overcome him, till continual over-fatigue,
+persistent cold, and strong tea,&mdash;an almost matchless trio,&mdash;lent their
+aid to give the finishing stroke.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Gray was a boarder with a gentleman who kept a grocery store, and
+who was glad to employ him on certain days and hours of vacation or
+recess, in taking care of the shop and waiting on his customers. Here
+the tempter again assailed him, in the form of foreign fruits, raisins,
+figs, prunes, oranges, dried fish, cordials, candy, etc. For some time
+past he had been wholly unaccustomed to these things; they had even been
+forbidden him, especially between his meals. As a consequence of his
+indulgences, and his neglect of exercise, his health again declined, and
+he came a second time under my care.</p>
+
+<p>He was partially restored the second time, but not entirely. His labors,
+which were teaching still, became more exhausting than formerly.
+Cheerfulness, hope, sympathy, conscious usefulness, and the force of
+many good habits, sustained him for a time, but not always. His great
+labors of body and mind, with a deep sense of responsibility, and the
+indulgences to which I have alluded, preyed upon him, and dyspepsia
+began once more her reign of tyranny.</p>
+
+<p>Doubtless he attempted too much here, for he was an enthusiast on the
+subject of common schools and common school instruction. And yet, under
+almost any circumstances of school-keeping, dyspepsia, nurtured as it
+was by every physical habit, would most certainly have assailed him.
+With regard to his food and drink he was very unwise. It contributed
+largely to an extreme of irritability, which was unfavorable, and which
+at the end of a single term compelled him to resign his place and seek
+some other employment.</p>
+
+<p>This was a grievous disappointment to Mr. Gray, and, as some of his
+friends believe, was the mountain weight that crushed him. The horrors
+of the abyss into which he believed he had plunged himself, were the
+more intolerable from the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span> fact that he now, for the first time, began
+to despair of being able to consummate a plan by means of which both his
+sorrows and joys, especially the latter, would have been shared by
+another.</p>
+
+<p>Yet, even here, he did not absolutely despair. Hope revived when he
+found himself, a third time, my patient. I did all in my power to
+encourage him till I had at length, to my own surprise as well as his,
+the unspeakable pleasure of finding him again returning to the path of
+health and happiness. It is indeed true, that a capricious appetite
+still retained its sway, in greater or less degree, and whenever he was
+not awed by my presence, he would indulge himself in the use of things
+which he knew were injurious to him, as well as in the excessive, not to
+say gluttonous, use of such good things as were tolerated. He
+occasionally confessed his impotence, and begged us to keep every thing
+out of his way, even those remnants which were designed for the domestic
+animals!</p>
+
+<p>And yet, after all, strange to say, he absented himself very frequently,
+as if to seek places of retirement, where he could indulge his
+tyrannical appetite. I saw most clearly his danger, and spoke to him
+concerning it. I appealed to his fears, to his hopes, to his conscience.
+I reminded him of the love he bore to humanity, and the regard he had
+for Divinity.</p>
+
+<p>Once more, being partly recruited, he resumed his labors as a teacher.
+This was doubtless a wrong measure, and yet I was not aware of the error
+at the time, or I should not have encouraged the movement, or assisted
+him as I did in procuring a situation. But I then thought he had been
+punished so effectually for his transgressions, that he would at length
+be wise. Besides he was exceedingly anxious to be at work, and to avoid
+dependence, a desire in which his friends participated, and in regard to
+which they were so unwise as to express their over anxiety in his
+hearing.</p>
+
+<p>Three months in the school-house found him worse than ever before. He
+had attempted to board himself, to subsist on a very few ounces of
+"Graham wafers" at each meal, and to be an hour in masticating it. As an
+occasional compensation for this, however, a sort of <i>treating
+resolution</i>, he allowed himself<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span> to pick up the crusts and other
+fragments left about the school-house by his pupils, and when he had
+collected quite a pile of these, to indulge his appetite with them, <i>ad
+libitum</i>. Nor was this all. He erred in other particulars, perhaps in
+many.</p>
+
+<p>He came to my house a fourth time, but my situation was such that I
+could not well receive him. He staid only a day or two, but his
+residence with us was long enough to enable me to mark the progress of
+his case, and to deplore what I feared must be the final issue. From me
+he went to a friend in an adjoining State; not, however, till he had
+alluded to certain errors of his recent life that he had not yet
+devulged, even to his best friend. "Doctor," said he, "there are some
+things that I have not yet told you about."</p>
+
+<p>To me, also, it belongs, at this point of Gray's lamentable history, to
+make confession of great and glaring error. To have received the young
+man to my house, and to have devoted myself to the work of endeavoring
+again to raise him, would, most undoubtedly, have been a sacrifice to
+which few people in my circumstances would have thought themselves
+called. Yet, difficult as it was, the sacrifice might have been made.
+Had he been my only brother, I should, doubtless, have received him. The
+Saviour of mankind, in my circumstances, would probably have taken him
+in. Was I not his follower? And was I not bound to do what I believed he
+would do, in similar circumstances?</p>
+
+<p>His more distant friend, but more consistent Christian brother, opened
+wide his doors for his reception, and did the best he could for him. It
+was his intention, at first, to employ him, as I now think he ought to
+have been employed long before; viz., on a small farm. In this point of
+view this friend's house was particularly favorable. Yet there were
+offsets to this advantage. One thing in particular, cast a shade upon
+our efforts in his behalf. It was about April 1st, and the house and
+farm had an eastern aspect, and the easterly winds, which at that season
+so much prevailed, were very strong and surcharged with vapor at a low
+temperature. For a few days after his arrival he was worse than ever.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>This was discouragement heaped upon discouragement, and he began soon to
+sink under it. For a short time he was the subject of medical treatment.
+What was the character of the medicine he took, I never knew. At length
+there were signs of convalescence; but no sooner did his bodily health
+and strength begin to improve, than his mental troubles began to press
+upon him, till he was driven to the very borders of insanity. Indeed, so
+strong was the tendency to mental derangement that his relatives
+actually carried him, <i>per force</i>, to an insane hospital.</p>
+
+<p>But his residence at the hospital was very short. Provision having in
+the mean time been made for his reception in a private family, among his
+acquaintance, and the superintendent of the hospital having advised to
+such a course, he was remanded to the country, to familiar faces, and to
+a farm.</p>
+
+<p>On reaching the place assigned him, he became extremely ill,&mdash;worse, by
+far, than ever before,&mdash;so that, for several weeks, his life was
+despaired of. But by means of careful medical treatment, and a judicious
+and very simple diet, which at the hospital had been exchanged for a
+stimulating one, nature once more rallied, and in three or four weeks he
+appeared to be in a fair way for recovery. His strength increased, his
+mind became clear; his digestive function, though still erratic,
+appeared about to resume its natural condition, and to perform once more
+its wonted office; and the other troublesome symptoms were all gradually
+disappearing, except one;&mdash;he had still a very frequent pulse.</p>
+
+<p>But even this rapid arterial action was at length abating. From a
+frequency of the pulse equal to 100, 110, and sometimes 120 in a minute,
+it fell in two weeks to from 70 to 75; and this, too, under the
+influence of very mild and gentle treatment. There was no reduction of
+activity or power, by bleeding, or by blistering, or in any other way;
+on the contrary, as I have intimated, there was a general increase of
+strength and vigor, both of body, and mind. He did not even take
+digitalis or morphine. The prospect, therefore, was, on the whole, truly
+encouraging.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>And yet he had a set of friends&mdash;relatives, I should say, rather&mdash;who
+were not satisfied. It was strongly written on their minds that he was
+about to die; and they sternly insisted on removing him to his native
+home, that if he should die, he might die in the bosom of his own
+kindred. I was consulted; but I entered my most solemn protest against
+the measure, as both uncalled for and hazardous. It was to no purpose,
+however. In their over-kindness they determined to remove him; and the
+removal was effected. I ought also to say that though Mr. Gray highly
+appreciated their kindness, he was himself opposed to the measure, as
+one attended with much hazard.</p>
+
+<p>On the road to his paternal home, influenced in no small degree by
+mental excitement, his delirium returned, and with an intensity that
+never afterwards abated. He was, for about three weeks, a most
+inveterate and raving maniac, when, worn out prematurely with disease,
+he sunk to rise no more till the general resurrection.</p>
+
+<p>There was no post-mortem examination of this young man, though there
+should have been. Not that there was any lurking suspicion of
+peculiarity of disease, but because such examinations may always be made
+serviceable to the cause of medical science, while they cannot possibly
+injure either the dead or the living.</p>
+
+<p>I have been the more minute in my account of this man, because the case
+is an instructive one, both to the professional and non-professional
+reader, and also because it places medicine and physicians in the true
+light, and holds forth to the world the wonderfully recuperative power
+of nature, and the vast importance of giving heed to the laws of health
+and to the voice of physiology.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_LXIV" id="CHAPTER_LXIV"></a>CHAPTER LXIV.</h2>
+
+<h3>GETTING INTO A CIRCLE.</h3>
+
+
+<p>The oddity of some of my captions may seem to require an apology; but I
+beg the doubtful reader to suspend any unfavorable decisions, till he
+has read the chapter which follows. He will not, either in the present
+instance or in any other, be introduced to a magic ring, or to the
+mysteries of modern "spiritualism." The circle into which my patient
+fell, was of a different description.</p>
+
+<p>A young mother from the west, about the year 1840, came to consult me
+with regard to her health. Not being able to receive her into my own
+family, I made arrangements for her reception in the immediate
+neighborhood, where she remained for a long time. She was a
+dyspeptic&mdash;if not of giant magnitude, but little short of it.</p>
+
+<p>I spent many an hour in endeavoring to set all right, both in mind and
+body. It was, however, much easier to set her head right, than her
+hands, feet, and stomach. She had been under the care of almost all
+sorts of medical men&mdash;hydropathic, homoeopathic, and allopathic. Some of
+them, from all these schools, had been men of good sense, while a much
+larger proportion of them had turned out to be fools, and had done her
+more harm than good. In short, like the woman in the New Testament, she
+had spent much on many physicians, and was nothing bettered by it, but
+rather made worse.</p>
+
+<p>Under such circumstances what ground was there for hope? What she most
+needed, it was easy to see, was a little more of resolution to carry out
+and complete what she believed to be her duty. I told her so. I told her
+how many times I had repeated to her the same directions; while she,
+after the lapse of a very few days,&mdash;sometimes only a day or two,&mdash;had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span>
+come round again, in her remarks and inquiries, to the very point whence
+she had first started. I told her how easy a thing this getting into a
+circle was, and how difficult it was to escape from it.</p>
+
+<p>Although she perfectly understood her condition, there was still a
+strange and almost unaccountable reaching forth for something beyond the
+plain path of nature, which I had faithfully and repeatedly pointed out
+to her. She wished for some shorter road, something mysterious or
+magical. She was, in short, a capital subject for humbuggery, had she
+not tried it already to her heart's content.</p>
+
+<p>Occasionally, I must confess, I felt somewhat disposed to put her on the
+"starvation plan," as Dr. Johnson calls it,&mdash;on a diet of two pints only
+of plain gruel (thin hasty pudding, rather) a day,&mdash;for she would have
+borne it much better than did Mr. Gray, of the preceding chapter. I am
+sorry I did not. However, I prescribed for her, in general, very well;
+and, except in the last-mentioned particular, have no reason for regret
+nor any call for confessions.</p>
+
+<p>She remained under my care several weeks&mdash;all the while in a mill-horse
+track or circle, beginning at the same point and coming round to the
+same result or issue, when I frankly told her, one day, that it was a
+great waste, both of time and money, for her to remain longer. I saw,
+more and more clearly, that all her thoughts were concentrated on her
+own dear self. <i>Her</i> troubles, <i>her</i> health, <i>her</i> concerns, <i>her</i>
+prospects in life and death, were, to her, of more importance than all
+the world besides. No woman, as good as she was,&mdash;for she was,
+professedly, a disciple of him who said to his followers, "Feed my
+lambs,"&mdash;whom I have ever seen, was so completely wrapped up in self,
+and so completely beyond the pale of the world of benevolence.</p>
+
+<p>My final advice to her, in addition to that general change of personal
+habits which, from the first, I had strongly recommended to her, was to
+return to her native city, and, after making her resolution and laying
+her plan, give herself no rest, permanently, till by personal appeal or
+otherwise she had brought all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span> the females within her reach into
+maternal associations, moral reform societies, and the like.</p>
+
+<p>On her return to her husband and children, she made an attempt to carry
+out the spirit of my prescription, and not without a good degree of
+success. But the great benefit which resulted from it&mdash;that, indeed,
+which it was my ultimate object to secure&mdash;was that it diverted her
+thoughts from their inward, selfish tendency, and placed her on better
+ground as to health than she had occupied for some time before.</p>
+
+<p>I saw her no more for ten or twelve years. Occasionally, it is true, I
+heard from her, that she was better. Yet she was never entirely well.
+She was never entirely beyond the circle in which she had so long moved.
+She returned, at times, to medical advice and medicine; but, so far as I
+could learn, with little permanent good effect. She died about twelve
+years after she left my "guardianship," an extreme sufferer, as she had
+lived; and a sufferer from causes that a correct education and just
+views of social life, and of health and disease, would, for the most
+part, have prevented.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_LXV" id="CHAPTER_LXV"></a>CHAPTER LXV.</h2>
+
+<h3>POISONING WITH MAPLE SUGAR.</h3>
+
+
+<p>A particular friend of mine purchased one day, at a stand in the city,
+two small cakes of maple sugar. It was early in the spring, and very
+little of the article had as yet been manufactured. My friend, in his
+eagerness, devoured them immediately. He observed, before eating them,
+that they had a very dark appearance; but the taste was correct, as far
+as he could judge, and he did not hesitate. He was one of those
+individuals, moreover, who are not greatly given to self-denial in the
+matter of appetite.</p>
+
+<p>The next day he had as sore a mouth as I ever saw. The inflammation
+extended not only to the back part of the mouth, but into the throat,
+and probably quite into the stomach, and was attended with a most
+distressing thirst, with loss of appetite, and occasional nausea. In
+short, it unfitted him for business the whole day; indeed it was many
+days before he recovered entirely.</p>
+
+<p>My own conclusion, after a careful investigation of the facts, was, that
+the sugar was cooled down in vessels of iron, which were, in some way,
+more or less oxydated or rusted, and that a small quantity of free acid
+having been, by some means unknown, developed in the sugar, it entered
+into a chemical combination with the metallic oxyde, to form a species
+of copperas&mdash;perhaps the genuine sulphate of iron itself.</p>
+
+<p>No medicine was given, nor was any needed. It was sufficient to let the
+system rest, till Nature, with the assistance of small quantities of
+water,&mdash;such as she was constantly demanding,&mdash;could eject the intruding
+foe. It required only a little patient waiting.</p>
+
+<p>There is scarcely a doubt that the sufferer learned, from his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span>
+experiment, one important lesson; viz., to let alone every thing which,
+by cooking, has been changed to a dark color. Beets are sometimes
+blackened by cooking in iron vessels, as well as sugar; and so are
+apples and apple-sauce, and sundry other fruits and vegetables.</p>
+
+<p>The word apple-sauce reminds me of an incident that recently occurred in
+my own family. A kind neighbor having sent us some apple-sauce, such of
+the family as partook of it freely, suffered, soon afterward, in a way
+that led to the suspicion of poison. This apple-sauce was quite
+dark-colored, but tasted well enough.</p>
+
+<p>We have seen, in Chapter XXVIII., that in the use of apple-sauce, or
+apple butter, or, indeed, any thing containing an acid, which has been
+in contact with the inner surface of red earthen ware, glazed with the
+oxyde of lead, people are sometimes poisoned; but for common, plain,
+apple-sauce, recently cooked, to be poisonous, is rather unusual.
+However, we can hardly be too careful in these matters. Serious evils
+have sometimes arisen from various kinds of complicated cookery, even
+when the healthiness of the vessels used was quite above suspi. A
+powerful argument this in favor of simplicity.</p>
+
+<p>It should also be remembered, with regard to sugar, that this is a
+substance whose use, even when known to be perfectly innoxious, is, at
+best, of doubtful tendency, beyond the measure which the Divine Hand has
+incorporated into the various substances which are prepared for our use.
+That sugar, in considerable quantities, leads to fulness, if not to
+fatness, is no proof of its healthfulness; since fatness itself is a
+sign of disease in man and all other animals, as has, of late, been
+frequently and fully demonstrated.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_LXVI" id="CHAPTER_LXVI"></a>CHAPTER LXVI.</h2>
+
+<h3>PHYSICKING OFF MEASLES.</h3>
+
+
+<p>The father of a large family came to me one day, and, with unwonted
+politeness, inquired after my health. Of course, I did not at first
+understand him, but time and patience soon brought every thing to light.
+His family, he said, were all sick with measles, except his wife, and he
+wished to ask me a question or two.</p>
+
+<p>The truth is, he wanted to consult me professionally, without paying a
+fee; and yet he felt a little delicacy about it. But I was accustomed to
+such things; for his was neither the first nor the hundredth application
+of the kind; so I was as polite as he was, in return.</p>
+
+<p>Another individual stood near me just at that moment, who supposed he
+had a prior claim to my attention; and I was about to leave Mr. M. for a
+moment, when he said, in a low voice, and in a fawning manner: "I
+suppose, doctor, it is necessary to physic off well for the measles; is
+it not? The old women all say it is; but I thought that, as I saw you,
+it might be well to ask."</p>
+
+<p>This species of robbery is so common, that few have any hesitancy about
+practising it. Mr. M., though passing for a pattern of honesty and good
+breeding, wherever he was known, was nevertheless trained to the same
+meanness with the rest of the neighborhood where I resided, and was
+quite willing&mdash;even though a faint consciousness of his meanness chanced
+to come over him now and then&mdash;to defraud me a little in the fashionable
+or usual manner.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps I may be thought fastidious on this point. But though I have
+been sponged,&mdash;I may as well again say robbed,&mdash;in this or a similar
+way, a hundred or a thousand times, I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span> believe I never complained so
+loudly before. Yet it is due to the profession of medicine, and to those
+who resort to it, that I should give my testimony against a custom which
+ought never to have obtained foothold.</p>
+
+<p>But to return to our conversation;&mdash;for I was never mean enough to
+refuse to give such information as was required, to the best of my
+abilities, even though I never expected, directly or indirectly, to be
+benefited by it;&mdash;I told him, at once, that if costiveness prevailed at
+the beginning of convalescence, in this disease, some gentle laxative
+might be desirable; but that, in other circumstances, no medicine could
+be required, the common belief to the contrary notwithstanding.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. M. seemed not a little surprised at this latter statement, and yet,
+on the whole, gratified. It was, to him, a new doctrine, and yet he
+thought it reasonable. He never could understand, he said, what need
+there was of taking "physic," when the body was already in a good
+condition.</p>
+
+<p>This physicking off disease is about as foolish as taking physic to
+prevent it&mdash;of which I have said so much in Chapter XI. and elsewhere. I
+do not, indeed, mean to affirm that it is quite as fatal; though I know
+not but it may have been fatal in some instances. Death from measles is
+no very uncommon occurrence in these days. Now how do we know whether it
+is the disease that kills or the medicine?</p>
+
+<p>And when we physic off, in the way above mentioned, how know we, that
+if, very fortunately, we do not kill, some other disease may not be
+excited or enkindled? You are aware, both from what has been said in
+these pages, and from your own observation, that measles are not
+unfrequently followed by dropsy, weak eyes, and other troubles. No
+individual, perhaps, is, by constitution, less inclined to dropsy than
+myself; yet he who has read carefully what I have noted in Chapter IV.,
+will not be confident of his own safety in such circumstances. Yet if
+they are endangered who are least predisposed to this or any other
+disease, where is the safety of those who inherit such a
+predisposition?</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_LXVII" id="CHAPTER_LXVII"></a>CHAPTER LXVII.</h2>
+
+<h3>TIC DOULOUREUX.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Some fifty years ago, I saw in a Connecticut paper, a brief notice of
+the death of an individual in Wellingworth, in that State, from a
+disease which, as the paper proceeded to state,&mdash;and justly too,&mdash;not
+one in a million had then ever felt, and which not many at that time had
+ever heard of; viz., <i>tic douloureux</i>.</p>
+
+<p>This notice, though it may have excited much curiosity,&mdash;it certainly
+arrested my own attention,&mdash;did not give us much light as to the nature
+of the disease. "What <i>is</i> tic douloureux?" I asked my friends; for at
+that time, of course, I knew nothing of the study of medicine. They
+could not tell me. "Why do medical men," I asked, "give us such strange
+names? Is it to keep up the idea of mystery, as connected with the
+profession, in order thus to maintain an influence which modest worth
+cannot secure?"</p>
+
+<p>It was largely believed at that time, by myself and many others, that
+science, like wealth,&mdash;especially medical science,&mdash;was aristocratical;
+that the learned world, though they saw the republican tendencies of
+things, were predisposed to throw dust in the people's eyes as long as
+they could. The fact that almost all our medicines, whether in the
+condition in which we see them labelled at the apothecary's shop, or as
+prescribed by the family physician, have Latin names,&mdash;was often quoted
+in proof of this aristocratic feeling and tendency.</p>
+
+<p>Now there was doubtless some foundation for this opinion. Medical men
+did then and still very generally do believe, that it is better, on the
+whole, for the mass of mankind to have nothing to do with these matters,
+except at the prescription of those who have given the best part of
+their lives to the study of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span> medicine and disease. That they are weapons
+of so much power, that even physicians&mdash;men who only partially
+understand the human constitution and their influence on it&mdash;are almost
+as likely to do harm with them as good, and that it is quite enough for
+society to bear the evils which are connected with the regular study and
+practice of the profession, without enduring a much larger host,
+inflicted by those who have other professions and employments, and must
+consequently be still more ignorant than their physicians. And may not
+this be one reason why a foreign language has been so long retained in
+connection with the names of diseases and medicines?</p>
+
+<p>But though physicians entertain the belief alluded to, and though it
+were founded in truth, it does not thence follow that mankind are to
+remain in ignorance of the whole subject of life and health, nor is it
+the intention of enlightened medical men that they shall. The latter are
+much more ready, as a general rule, to encourage among mankind the study
+of the most appropriate means of preventing disease, than they are
+willing to take the needful pains. In short, though physicians by their
+slowness to act, in this particular, are greatly faulty, the world as a
+mass are still more so.</p>
+
+<p>I was speaking, at first, of tic douloureux. This is a painful affection
+of a nerve or a cluster of nerves. When it first began to be spoken of,
+it was confined chiefly to an expansion of nerve at the side of the
+face, called in anatomical works <i>pes anserina</i>. But, of late years, it
+has been found to attack various nerves and clusters of nerves in
+different parts of the body. In truth, under the general name of
+neuralgia, which means about the same thing, we now have tic douloureux
+of almost every part of the human system, and it has become so common
+that instead of one in a million, we have probably one or two if not
+more in every hundred, who have suffered from it in their own persons.</p>
+
+<p>About the year 1840, I had a patient who was exceedingly afflicted with
+this painful disease. She was, at the same time, consumptive. The
+neuralgia was but a recent thing; the consumption had been of many
+years' standing, and was probably<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span> inherited. The physicians of her
+native region had exhausted their skill on her to no purpose.</p>
+
+<p>There was no hope of aid, in her case, from medicine. The only thing to
+be done was to invigorate her system, and thus palliate the neuralgia
+and postpone the consumption. She was accordingly placed under the most
+rigid restrictions which the code of physical law could demand. She was
+required to attend to exercise and bathing with great care; to avoid
+over anxiety and fretfulness; to drink water, and to eat the plainest
+food. It was not intended to interdict <i>nutritious</i> food; but only that
+which was <i>over-stimulating</i>.</p>
+
+<p>It required considerable time to show her and her friends the practical
+difference between nutrition and stimulation. They thought, as thousands
+have thought beside them, that without a stimulating diet she could not
+be properly nourished. But they learned at length that good bread of all
+sorts, rice, peas, beans, and fruits, especially the first two, while
+they were unstimulating, were even more nutritious than the more
+stimulating articles of flesh, fish, fowl, butter, and milk and its
+products.</p>
+
+<p>The treatment to which she was directed was at length pretty carefully
+followed. The Friends&mdash;of which religious connection she was a
+member&mdash;are generally thorough, when we gain their full confidence. Her
+health was so far restored, that at one period I entertained strong
+hopes of her ultimate recovery; or, at least of a recovery which would
+permit of her continuance some twenty or twenty-five years longer. But
+after seven or eight years of comfortable though not very firm health,
+she again declined. She died at forty years of age.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_LXVIII" id="CHAPTER_LXVIII"></a>CHAPTER LXVIII.</h2>
+
+<h3>COLD WATER IN FEVER.</h3>
+
+
+<p>My daughter, then about three years of age, was feverish; and as the
+lung fever was somewhat prevalent, the family became considerably
+alarmed.</p>
+
+<p>On examination, I found a strong tendency to the head. The eye was
+heavy, the head hot and painful, and the tongue thickly coated. The
+digestive system was disordered, and the skin was collapsed, inactive,
+and cold. The extremities, especially the feet, were particularly cold
+and pale.</p>
+
+<p>The days of hydropathy had now arrived; but I was not a full convert, as
+I have already told you, to the exclusive use of cold water in disease.
+However, a case was before me which obviously demanded it. So I
+proceeded to make frequent applications of Nature's drug to the top of
+her head, and to the temples, while I ordered warm and stimulating
+applications to the feet and ankles.</p>
+
+<p>This treatment had the effect to render her condition somewhat more
+comfortable during the day, but at evening the fever returned, and
+during the night was violent. The tendency to the head was so great as
+to cause delirium. The anxiety of the family became very great. In the
+morning, however, she was rather better, so that hope again revived.</p>
+
+<p>During the day the fever increased again, and towards evening and during
+the whole night was accompanied by restlessness and delirium. But we
+only persevered with the more earnestness in the use of what we believed
+to be the most rational treatment. She had, however, a very sick night.
+The next morning she was again better, though, as might have been
+expected, somewhat more feeble than she was twenty-four hours before.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Most parents, I know, and not a few wise medical men among us, would
+have resorted to powders and pills; but we only persevered with our cold
+applications to the head, and our stimulating draughts to the feet. The
+bowels were in a very tolerable condition, otherwise a very mild
+cathartic might possibly have been administered. We had very strong
+hopes,&mdash;at least I had,&mdash;that nature would be too strong for the
+disease, and that the fever would, ere long, begin to abate.</p>
+
+<p>In the afternoon the fever increased again, in some degree, and there
+was a slight delirium during the succeeding night. She slept a little,
+however, towards morning, after which she was evidently much better.
+This third day was passed away very comfortably, and she slept well
+during the succeeding night. The fourth morning she seemed to be quite
+restored.</p>
+
+<p>Now a case of fever treated with emetics, diaphoretics, etc., and
+followed up with the usual paraphernalia of customary medical practice,
+which should yield so promptly and so immediately, would be supposed to
+be cured by the medicine; and the cure would very probably be regarded
+as rather remarkable; and if there was any peculiarity in the treatment,
+if the diaphoretic powders, for example, had any new or strange name,
+the practice would, peradventure, be thought worth imitating in other
+apparently similar cases of disease.</p>
+
+<p>For myself, however, I simply regard it as one of Nature's own cures,
+unobstructed and unembarrassed by medicine. As the child was young and
+tenacious of life, she might very probably have recovered under the more
+common routine of medical treatment. But would there have been any
+advantage in such a recovery, over one which was equally rapid and
+perfect without the aid of medicine? Would there, in the latter case,
+have been no hazard to the constitution?</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_LXIX" id="CHAPTER_LXIX"></a>CHAPTER LXIX.</h2>
+
+<h3>COLD-TAKING AND CONSUMPTION.</h3>
+
+
+<p>In Chapter XXIII., I have given a full account of my partial recovery
+from consumption. I have even spoken of the postponement as if it were
+complete and final. More than twenty years had now passed away, and I
+had begun to indulge the hope that I should never have another relapse.</p>
+
+<p>As one element of this hope, I had nearly broken up the habit&mdash;once very
+strong&mdash;of taking cold, especially on my lungs. In truth, I believed all
+danger from this source to be entirely removed, and my particular
+susceptibility to any thing like acute pulmonary attacks forever at an
+end. I was confident, moreover, that the art of avoiding cold was an art
+which not only an individual, here and there, like myself, could
+acquire, but one which was within the reach of every one who would take
+the needful pains.</p>
+
+<p>On a certain occasion of this latter kind, I was under a conventional
+necessity of exposing myself, in an unusual degree, for several
+successive evenings, to circumstances which, at an earlier period of my
+life, would, almost inevitably, have been followed by a cold. Was it
+safe, in my present condition, to run the risk? I hesitated for some
+time, but finally decided to comply with the request which had been
+made, and take the responsibility. I believed my susceptibility to cold
+so entirely eradicated that there was little if any danger.</p>
+
+<p>But, as the event proved, I was quite mistaken; a severe cold came on,
+and left me in a condition not merely alarming, but immediately so. My
+lungs were greatly oppressed and my cough exceedingly severe and
+harassing; and it was followed with great debility and rapid emaciation.</p>
+
+<p>Ashamed of myself, especially as I had boasted, for so many<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span> years, of
+an entire freedom from all tendencies of this sort, I endeavored, for a
+few days, to screen myself entirely from the public eye and observation.
+But I soon found that inaction, especially confinement to the house,
+would not answer the purpose,&mdash;that I should certainly die if I
+persisted in my seclusion.</p>
+
+<p>What now should I do? I was too feeble to work much, although the season
+had arrived when labor in the garden was beginning to be needed. Trees
+were to be pruned and washed, and other things promptly attended to. The
+open air was also the best remedy for my enfeebled and irritated
+bronchial cavities. Whether there was, at this time, any ulceration of
+tubercles in my lungs, is, to say the least, very doubtful. However, I
+greatly needed the whole influence of out-of-door employment, or of
+travelling abroad; and, as it seemed to me, could not long survive
+without it.</p>
+
+<p>Accordingly I took my pruning knife in my hand, and walked to the
+garden. It was about a quarter of a mile distant, and quite unconnected
+with the house I occupied. At first, it was quite as much as I could do
+to walk to the garden and return without attempting any labor. Nor could
+I have done even this, had I not rested several times, both on the road
+and in the enclosure itself.</p>
+
+<p>It was a week before I was able to do more than merely walk to the
+garden and back, and perhaps prune a small fruit tree or shrub, and then
+return. But I persevered. It seemed a last if not a desperate resort;
+yet hope sometimes whispered that my hour had not yet come, that I had
+more work to perform.</p>
+
+<p>At length I began to perceive a slight increase of muscular strength. I
+could work moderately a quarter of an hour or more, and yet walk home
+very comfortably. In about two months, I had strength enough to continue
+my labors several hours, in the course of a whole day, though not in
+succession&mdash;perhaps two in the forenoon and two in the afternoon. In
+about three months, I was, so far as I could perceive, completely
+restored.</p>
+
+<p>It is to be remarked and remembered that, during the whole<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span> three
+months, I never took the smallest particle of medicine, either solid or
+fluid. My simple course was to obey, in the most rigid and implicit
+manner, all known laws, physical and moral. It was my full belief at
+that time,&mdash;it is still my belief,&mdash;that conformity to all the Creator's
+laws is indispensable to the best of health, in every condition of human
+life, but particularly so when we are already feeble and have a tendency
+to consumption.</p>
+
+<p>When it became known to my neighbors, who saw me day after day, reeling
+to my garden or staggering home, that I refused to take any medicine,
+there was a very general burst of surprise, and, in some cases, of
+indignation. "Why," said they, "what does the man mean? He must be
+crazy. As he is going on he will certainly die of a galloping
+consumption. Any one that will act so foolishly almost <i>deserves</i> to
+die."</p>
+
+<p>As soon as I found myself fairly convalescent, I returned gradually to
+all those practices on which I had so long relied as a means of
+fortifying myself, but which, since my <i>fall</i>, had been partially
+omitted. Among these was bathing, especially cold bathing. To the last,
+however, I returned very cautiously. Not for fear I should not be able
+to secure a reaction, but rather for fear Nature would have to spend
+more <i>vitality</i> during the process than she could well afford to spare.</p>
+
+<p>I have known cases of the latter kind. An aged minister in Cleveland,
+Ohio, who had long followed the practice of cold bathing every morning,
+came to me in Dec. 1851, when the cold weather was very intense, and
+told me that though he could, with considerable effort, get up a
+reaction in his system after the bath, he was afraid it <i>cost</i> too much.
+I advised him to suspend it a few weeks, which he did with evident
+advantage.</p>
+
+<p>There are, however, many other things to be done besides giving due
+attention to cold bathing, if we would harden ourselves fully against
+taking cold, to which I should be glad to advert were it not foreign to
+the plan I had formed, and the limits which, in this work, I have
+prescribed to myself.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_LXX" id="CHAPTER_LXX"></a>CHAPTER LXX.</h2>
+
+<h3>FREEZING OUT DISEASE.</h3>
+
+
+<p>I am well acquainted with one man of Yankee origin, who formerly made it
+a practice to freeze out his colds, as he called it. It is certainly
+better to prevent them, as I have all along and always taught. But this
+man's story is somewhat amusing, and by way of relief from our more
+sober subject, I will very briefly relate it.</p>
+
+<p>Whenever he fancied he had taken cold, he would go, at about nine
+o'clock in the evening, in such diminished clothing as would render him
+in a very little time, quite chilly, and remain out of doors, when the
+weather would possibly permit, till he was almost frozen, and then come
+in and go immediately to bed, and procure a reaction. This he called
+freezing out his colds. Whether it was the cold or the heat that
+restored him, may be a point not yet fully settled; but it was a
+well-known fact to his friends, though they insisted in protesting
+against the practice, that every vestige of his cold would frequently,
+if not always, immediately disappear.</p>
+
+<p>But it was a method of treatment which, as the event proved, was not
+without its hazards. I met with him a few years since, and on inquiring
+whether he continued to be as successful as formerly in freezing out his
+colds, he replied that for some time past he had not tried the plan,
+for, on a former occasion, after many successful experiments, he had
+failed in one, and had concluded to relinquish it. He made no farther
+confessions for himself, but his friends have since told me that in the
+case he faintly alluded to, he came very near dying under the process.
+He was sick with a fever, as the consequence, for a long time.</p>
+
+<p>A man in one of the Middle States, who is himself about half a
+physician, and who has in various ways done much for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span> his fellow-men as
+a philanthropist, is accustomed to pursue a course of treatment which,
+though slightly related to the former, is, nevertheless, founded on
+principle. He keeps the sick in a room whose temperature is very
+low,&mdash;little, if at all, above the freezing point,&mdash;in order that they
+may inhale a full supply of oxygen. For every one doubtless knows that
+the colder the air, the denser it is, and consequently, the greater the
+absolute quantity of oxygen inhaled at each breath. By compelling his
+patients, however weak and feeble, to breathe a cold atmosphere, he
+secured to them an increased and full supply of oxygen.</p>
+
+<p>To prevent his patients from suffering, in consequence of the external
+atmospheric cold, he keeps them in warm beds, and only suffers them to
+be out of bed a very short time, at long intervals. And while out of bed
+even, they are rubbed rapidly, in order to prevent any collapse of the
+skin from the cold. I knew him to keep a very delicate female, who was
+scrofulous if not consumptive, for several weeks of the coldest part of
+the winter, in a room whose temperature seldom exceeded 30&deg; to 40&deg;,
+scarcely permitting her to go out of it night or day, and what is still
+more curious, she slowly recovered under the treatment, and is
+now&mdash;seven or eight years afterwards&mdash;in the enjoyment of excellent
+health.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_LXXI" id="CHAPTER_LXXI"></a>CHAPTER LXXI.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE AIR-CURE.</h3>
+
+
+<p>The individual alluded to in the preceding chapter, once sent for me to
+come and aid him for a time. He was the proprietor of a somewhat
+dilapidated water-cure establishment, which he wished to convert into
+what he chose to denominate an air-cure. For though half a physician
+himself, he had usually employed men of education to assist him; but,
+not having been quite fortunate in his selection, in every instance, he
+was disposed to make trial of myself.</p>
+
+<p>In expressing to me his desires, he said he understood, perfectly well,
+my position. He well knew, in the first place, that I was not a
+hydropathist, but a regular, old-school physician, with this
+modification: that I had, for the most part, lost my faith in medicine,
+and relied chiefly on the recuperative efforts of Nature. He thought, on
+some points, as he said, a little differently from me; still, he
+supposed that wherein we could not agree we could at least agree to
+differ.</p>
+
+<p>The sum total of his wishes, in short, was, that I would aid him in such
+way and manner as might seem to me best. He believed air to be the most
+important and efficient remedial agent in the world. His ideas of the
+virtue of this &aelig;rial fluid were hardly exceeded by those of Mr.
+Thackrah, of Leeds, England, who believes that we subsist more on air
+than on food and drink.</p>
+
+<p>I was with this good man about six months, when, finding it impossible
+to carry out his plan, I left him. But I left him with regret. His
+purposes were generous in the extreme&mdash;I might even say noble. He loved
+to cure for the pleasure of curing&mdash;not for the emolument. In short, he
+seemed to have no<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span> regard to the emolument&mdash;not the slightest, and to be
+as nearly disinterested as usually falls to the human lot.</p>
+
+<p>But did he cure? you will perhaps inquire. Yes, if <i>anybody</i> cures.
+Persons came under his care who had been discharged by other
+physicians&mdash;both allopathic and hom&oelig;opathic&mdash;as incurable; and who
+yet, in a reasonable time, regained their health. They followed our
+directions, obeyed the laws of health, and recovered. You may call it
+what you please&mdash;either cure or spontaneous recovery. Miracle, I am
+quite sure, it was not.</p>
+
+<p>What, then, were the agencies employed in the air-cure? My friend
+believed that the judicious application of pure air, in as concentrated,
+and, therefore, as cool a state as possible, particularly to the
+internal surface of the lungs, was more important than every other
+agency, and even more important than all others. But then he did not
+forget the skin. He had his air bath, as well as his deep breathings; it
+was as frequently used, and was, doubtless, as efficacious.</p>
+
+<p>He also placed great reliance on good food and drink. Animal food he
+rejected, and condiments. I have neither known nor read of any
+vegetarian, of Britain or America, who carried his dietetic
+peculiarities to what would, by most, be regarded as an extreme, more
+than he. And yet his patients, with few exceptions, submitted to it with
+a much better grace than I had expected. Some of them, it is true, took
+advantage of his absence or their own, and made a little infringement
+upon the rigidity of his prescriptions, but these were exceptions to the
+general rule; and I believe the transgressors themselves regretted it in
+the end&mdash;fully satisfied that every indulgence was but a postponement of
+the hour of their discharge.</p>
+
+<p>One thing was permanently regarded as ultra. He did not believe in
+breakfasting; and therefore kept every patient, who wished to come under
+his most thorough treatment, from the use of food till about the middle
+of the day. This permitted of but two meals a day, which, however, is
+one more than has sometimes been recommended by O. S. Fowler, the
+phrenologist, and even by a few others.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The main error, however, of this air-cure practice,&mdash;if error there was
+in it,&mdash;consisted in the idea of its applicability to everybody, in
+every circumstance. For though it may be true that as large a proportion
+of inveterate cases of disease would disappear under such treatment as
+under any other, yet there are probably not a few to whom it would be
+utterly unadapted.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_LXXII" id="CHAPTER_LXXII"></a>CHAPTER LXXII.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE CLERGYMAN.</h3>
+
+
+<p>An Ohio clergyman, just setting out in his ministerial career, consulted
+me, one day, about his health and future physical prospects. His nervous
+system and cerebral centre had been over-taxed and partially prostrated;
+and his digestive and muscular powers were suffering from sympathy. In
+short, he was a run-down student, who, in order to be resuscitated,
+needed rest.</p>
+
+<p>It was not, however, the rest of mere inertia that he required, but rest
+from those studies to which his attention had been long and patiently
+confined. His bodily powers were, indeed, flagging with the rest; but
+then it was impossible for him to be restored without <i>some</i> exercise.
+In truth, it was not so much a <i>rest</i> of body, mind, or heart that he
+needed, as a <i>change</i>.</p>
+
+<p>I will tell you what a course he had been, for five or six years,
+pursuing. Though his father was reckoned among the wealthier farmers of
+Ohio, yet, having a large family to sustain and educate, he did not feel
+at full liberty to excuse his children from such co-operation with him
+as would not materially interfere with their studies. Hence they were
+required&mdash;and this son among the rest&mdash;not only to be as economical as
+possible, in all things, but also to earn as much as they could,
+especially during their vacations. They were not, of course, expected to
+do any thing which was likely to impair their health, but, on the
+contrary, to take every possible pains to preserve the latter, and to
+hold labor and study and every thing else in subserviency to it.</p>
+
+<p>The son for whom I was requested to prescribe, not only attended to his
+father's wishes and expectations, and endeavored<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span> to fulfil them, but
+went much farther than was intended, and did more than he ought. Besides
+keeping up with his class, he taught school a very considerable portion
+of the time, so that his mental apparatus, as I have already more than
+intimated, was continually over-taxed; and he had been a sufferer, more
+or less, for several years, when I met with him.</p>
+
+<p>My advice was that he should leave his studies, entirely, for two years,
+and labor moderately, in the meantime, on his father's farm. His
+principal objection to doing so, was, that he was already at an age so
+much advanced, that it seemed to him like a wrong done to society, to
+delay entering upon the duties of the ministry two whole years. But I
+reasoned the case with him as well as I could, and, among other things,
+pointed out to him the course pursued by his Divine Master.</p>
+
+<p>I have never met with him from that day to this; nor have I ever
+received from him&mdash;strange as it may seem&mdash;any communication on the
+subject. But I have been informed from other sources, that after
+laboring for a time with his father, he was settled as a minister in a
+neighboring village with greatly improved health and highly encouraging
+prospects. He is at the present time one of the main pillars,
+theologically, of the great State of New York, and, as I have reason for
+believing, is in the enjoyment of good health.</p>
+
+<p>It is easy to see that the time he spent on his father's farm, instead
+of being a loss to him, was, in the end, among the most important parts
+of the work of his education. How much better it was for him to recruit
+his wasted energies before he took upon him the full responsibilities of
+preacher and pastor in a large country church and congregation, than to
+rush into the ministry prematurely, with the prospect, amounting almost
+to a certainty, of breaking down in a few years, and spending the
+remnant of his days in a crippled condition,&mdash;to have the full
+consciousness that had he been wise he might have had the felicity of a
+long life of usefulness, and of doing good to the souls and bodies of
+mankind.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_LXXIII" id="CHAPTER_LXXIII"></a>CHAPTER LXXIII.</h2>
+
+<h3>HE MUST BE PHYSICKED, OR DIE.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Mr. S., a very aged neighbor of mine, fell into habits of such extreme
+inactivity of the alimentary canal, that instead of invoking the aid of
+Cloacin&agrave;, as Mr. Locke would say, every day, he was accustomed to weekly
+invocations only. There was, however, a single exception. In the month
+of June, of each year, he was accustomed to visit the seaside, some
+twenty miles or more distant, and remain there a few days, during which
+and for a short time afterward, his bowels would perform their wonted
+daily office.</p>
+
+<p>And yet, despite of all this, he got along very well during summer and
+autumn, for a man who was over seventy years of age. It was not till
+winter&mdash;sometimes almost spring&mdash;that his health appeared to suffer as
+the consequence of his costiveness. Nor was it certain, even then,
+whether his inconveniences,&mdash;for they hardly deserved the name of
+sufferings,&mdash;arose from his costiveness, or from the croakings of
+friends and his own awakened fears and anxieties. Nearly every one who
+knew of the facts in his case was alarmed, and many did not hesitate to
+cry out, even in his hearing, "He must be physicked, or die!" And their
+fears and croakings, by leading him to turn his attention to his
+internal feelings, greatly added to his difficulties.</p>
+
+<p>My principal aim, as his friend and physician, was to convince him that
+there was no necessity of anxiety on the subject, as long as none of the
+various functions of the system were impaired. As long as digestion,
+circulation, respiration, perspiration, etc., were tolerably well
+performed, and his general health was not on the decline, it was not
+very material, as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span> I assured him, whether his alvine movements were once
+a day, once in two days, or once a week.</p>
+
+<p>The various emunctories or outlets of the body should, undoubtedly, be
+kept open and free, so that every portion of worn-out or effete matter
+may be effectually got rid of. In order to have this done in the very
+best manner, it is indispensably necessary that we should eat, drink,
+breathe, sleep, and exercise the muscles and all the mental and moral
+powers daily. And yet we are to such an extent the creatures of habit,
+that we can, in all these respects, bring ourselves to almost any thing
+we choose, and yet pass on, for a time, very comfortably. Thus we may
+eat once, twice, thrice, or five times a day, and if possessed of a good
+share of constitutional vigor, we may even accustom ourselves to
+considerable variation from the general rule with regard to drinking,
+sleeping, exercise, temperature, etc. Healthy men have been able to
+maintain their health, in tolerable measure, for a long time, without
+drink, without exercise, and even without sleep. Of the truth of this
+last remark, I could give you, did time and space permit, many
+well-attested, not to say striking facts.</p>
+
+<p>I was not wholly successful in my attempts at quieting the mind and
+feelings of my aged patient or his friends. And yet his erratic habit
+was never entirely broken up. He lived to the age of fourscore without
+suffering much more from what are usually called the infirmities of age,
+than most other old men. It must not, however, be concealed that he
+possessed what has been sometimes denominated an iron constitution.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Locke strongly insists that children should be trained, from the
+very first, to diurnal habits of the kind in question; and I cannot help
+thinking that such habits should be secured very early&mdash;certainly at
+eight or ten years of age. Some of the healthiest men and women I have
+ever known were those who had either been trained or had trained
+themselves in this way. And yet I would not be so anxious to bring
+nature back to this rule when there have been large digressions, as to
+be found administering cathartics on every trifling occasion.</p>
+
+<p>An old man, who eats little and exercises still less, but has<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span> a good
+pulse, a good appetite, and a free perspiration, with a cheerful mind,
+need not take "physic" merely because his bowels do not move more than
+once a week; nor need those who are feverish, and who eat and exercise
+but little. The disturbance which will ensue, if medicine be taken, may
+be productive of more mischief, on the whole, than the absorption into
+the system of small portions of the retained excretions, or the small
+amount of irritation they produce&mdash;and probably will be so.</p>
+
+<p>It will be a solace to some to know that the alvine excretions of the
+system are not so much the remnants of our food, when that food is such
+as it should be, as a <i>secretion</i> from the internal or lining membrane
+of the bowels. Consequently, if this secretion is interrupted by
+disease, there will be a proportionally diminished necessity for alvine
+evacuations.</p>
+
+<p>Prof. &mdash;&mdash;, of Ohio, had been sick of fever, for a long time, and, on
+the departure of the disease, his bowels were left in such a condition
+that cathartics, or at least laxatives, began to be thought of; but his
+physician interdicted their use: His costiveness continued to the
+twenty-first day, without any known evil as the consequence. On this day
+nature rallied. Then followed a period of quiescence of fourteen days,
+and then another of seven days, after which he fell into his former
+diurnal habits. There was much croaking among the neighbors, on account
+of the treatment of his physician; but the results put all to silence.</p>
+
+<p>The case of Judge &mdash;&mdash;, in the interior of the same State (Ohio), was so
+much like that of Prof. &mdash;&mdash;, in all its essential particulars, that I
+need but to state the fact, without entering at all upon the details.</p>
+
+<p>J. W. G., a lawyer of Massachusetts, was sick with a lingering
+complaint, attended with more or less of fever, for several months.
+During this time there was one interval, of more than thirty days,
+during which his bowels did not move. And yet there was no evidence of
+any permanent suffering as the consequence.</p>
+
+<p>The principal use I would make of these facts, so far as the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span> mass of
+general readers is concerned, is the following: If, during feebleness
+and sickness, human nature will bear up, for a long time, under
+irregularities of this sort, is it needful that we should be alarmed and
+fly at once to medicine in cases <i>less</i> alarming&mdash;above all, in these
+cases, when, except in regard to costiveness, the health and habits are
+excellent? May we not trust much more than we have heretofore believed,
+in the recuperative efforts of Nature?</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_LXXIV" id="CHAPTER_LXXIV"></a>CHAPTER LXXIV.</h2>
+
+<h3>WHO HATH WOE? OR, THE SICK WIDOW.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Early in the year 1852, I received a letter, of which the following,
+with very slight needful alterations, is an extract. It was written from
+the interior of Massachusetts.</p>
+
+<p>"About three months ago, I took a long journey by stage-coach, which
+brought on, as I think, an internal inflammation. Since that time I have
+taken very little medicine. Please tell me whether it is right for me to
+bathe daily in, and drink freely of, cold water; and whether it is safe
+to make cold applications to the parts affected.</p>
+
+<p>"I take as much exercise as I can without producing irritation. I do
+not, by any means, indulge in the food which my appetite craves.</p>
+
+<p>"I am twenty-six years of age; was married and left a widow, while young
+and very ignorant, under circumstances the most deeply painful. I have a
+strong desire to get well if I can; though if I must give up the thought
+I am willing to die.</p>
+
+<p>"I should be very glad to see you, if you will take the trouble to come
+and see me. I should have made an effort to consult you, in person,
+before now, if I could have safely taken the journey."</p>
+
+<p>At the time of receiving this letter I was travelling in a distant
+State, and, as an immediate visit was wellnigh impracticable, I wrote
+her, requesting such farther information as might enable me to give her
+a few general directions, promising to see her on my return in the
+spring. In reply to my inquiries, I received what follows:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I have been, from childhood, afflicted with bunches in the throat.
+There is no consumptive tendency on either my father's or my mother's
+side; but I come, by the maternal side, from a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span> king's evil<a name="FNanchor_I_9" id="FNanchor_I_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_I_9" class="fnanchor">[I]</a> family. I
+am an ardent, impulsive creature, possessing a nervous, sanguine
+temperament; naturally cheerful and agreeable, but rendered, by
+sickness, irritable, capricious, and melancholic. I fear consumption so
+much, that were I convinced it was fully fastened upon me, I might be
+tempted, unless restrained by a strong moral influence, to commit a
+crime which might not be forgiven.</p>
+
+<p>"I have great weakness in the throat, and soreness in the chest, with a
+dull pain between the shoulders. My appetite is extraordinary;&mdash;I think
+it has increased since I have dieted. My flesh is stationary. I gain a
+few pounds, and then commit some wild freak and lose it. I am
+unaccountable to myself. I think, sir, that my mental disturbances
+impair my health.</p>
+
+<p>"I anticipate much pleasure from seeing you; for I see, by your letter,
+you understand me. I have always been thought inexplicable. I feel a
+universal languor. I am, at times, unconscious. I feel dead to all
+things; there seems a loss of all vitality; and sometimes there is a
+sense of suffocation. All these feelings are extreme, because I am, by
+my nature, so sensitive. I met the other day with a slight from a
+friend, a young lady, which caused grief so excessive that I have ever
+since been suffering from influenza."</p>
+
+<p>These lengthy extracts may not be very interesting to the general
+reader, except so far as they reveal to him some of the internal
+cogitations of a soul borne down with a load of suffering, which almost
+drove her to suicide. "Who hath woe,"&mdash;as Solomon says, with respect to
+a very different description of human character,&mdash;if not this poor
+widow?</p>
+
+<p>And yet it required a personal visit, and the conversation of a couple
+of hours, to fathom the depths of her woe, to the utmost. For there are
+secrets of the human heart, with which, of course, no stranger&mdash;not even
+the family physician&mdash;should presume to intermeddle; though to these
+depths, in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span> case of the half-insane sufferer of whom I am speaking,
+it was not necessary that I should go, in order to find out what I had
+all along suspected. Disease had been communicated several years before,
+of a kind which was much more communicable <i>then</i>, than it was
+eradicable now.</p>
+
+<p>Whenever, by the laws of hereditary descent, in their application to
+health and disease, our children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren
+suffer, we may recognize in it the hand of the great Creator; nor do we
+doubt, often, the wisdom of such laws nor their ultimate tendency to
+work out final good. But when we find a widow suffering many long years,
+from a disease to which a husband's weakness and wickedness has
+subjected her, what shall we say, especially when we have reason to fear
+that the evils in question, some of them, at least, will be terminable
+only, in their effects, with life itself?</p>
+
+<p>My patient is <i>patiently</i> wearing out her ills; and what she cannot wear
+out, she is learning to endure. Her case cannot be reached with
+medicine, at least with safety, and is only to be affected, so far as
+affected at all, by yielding the most unflinching obedience to the laws
+of God, physical and moral. She will not die of consumption; she will
+live on; but how much progress she may be able to make towards the land
+of life and health, is by no means certain. Her case is, at best, a
+trying one, and must compel us, whenever we reflect on the subject, to
+say, "Who hath woe, if not persons situated like this widow?"<a name="FNanchor_J_10" id="FNanchor_J_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_J_10" class="fnanchor">[J]</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_I_9" id="Footnote_I_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_I_9"><span class="label">[I]</span></a> She was not aware that king's evil, or scrofula, is
+oftentimes the parent of consumption.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_J_10" id="Footnote_J_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_J_10"><span class="label">[J]</span></a> Since this chapter was written, I have had the pleasure of
+learning from a reliable source that the young woman above referred to
+is now enjoying comparatively good health. She married a second time, a
+year or two afterwards; and by following out the course prescribed, and
+with the blessing of Heaven, she came at length to her present position
+of usefulness and happiness.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_LXXV" id="CHAPTER_LXXV"></a>CHAPTER LXXV.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE PENALTY OF SELF-INDULGENCE.</h3>
+
+
+<p>The thought that a minister of the gospel can be gluttonous is so
+painful that, after selecting as the caption to the present chapter, "A
+gluttonous minister," I concluded to modify it. Perhaps, after all, it
+might be as well in the end, to call things by their proper names.
+However, we will proceed, as we have set out, for this once.</p>
+
+<p>A minister about forty years of age came to me one day, deeply involved
+in all the midnight horrors of dyspepsia.</p>
+
+<p>On investigating his case, I found it one of the most trying I had ever
+met with. It was not only trying in itself, in the particular form and
+shape it assumed, but it had been rendered much more troublesome and
+unmanageable by injudicious medical treatment.</p>
+
+<p>My course was a plain one, and I proceeded cautiously to prescribe for
+him&mdash;not medicine, for in my judgment he needed none, but simply a
+return to the physical laws he had so long and so palpably violated.
+These laws I endeavored briefly to recall to his attention. As he was an
+intelligent man, I dealt with him in the most plain and direct manner.</p>
+
+<p>Some two or three weeks afterward he called on me again, saying that he
+was no better. I repeated my prescription, only more particularly. Still
+I was not, as I now think, sufficiently particular and definite, for
+want of time. Moreover, he still clung to the off-hand customs of
+empiricism,&mdash;that of looking at the tongue, feeling the pulse, and
+seeming "wondrous wise,"&mdash;and vainly hoped I would treat him in the same
+direct way, instead of requiring what he regarded as a more circuitous
+course.</p>
+
+<p>He called on me the third time. We had now ample<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span> leisure and
+opportunity for attempting to ferret out the causes which had operated
+to bring him into his present condition, some of which, it appeared, had
+been of long standing.</p>
+
+<p>I inquired, in the first place, concerning his exercise. This, he said,
+was taken very irregularly, chiefly in walking abroad on business,
+seldom or never in company. His mind, in all probability, was not
+directed, to any considerable extent, from its accustomed mill-horse
+track. His gait, too, when he walked, was staid and measured. It was
+never buoyant, lively, or playful. And as for amusement, he had none at
+all.</p>
+
+<p>His diet was still worse than his exercise. He had a large family, and
+resided in the midst of a dense population; and was so situated as to
+render his house, practically, a kind of ministerial thoroughfare. He
+probably entertained, at his hospitable table, more ministers, literary
+men, and students than any other three clergymen in the neighborhood.</p>
+
+<p>"Now," said he to me, "we have a good deal of table preparation to make,
+and Mrs. Y., who dearly loves to have things in pretty good order, sets
+a full table, with, a large variety. Well, this food must be eaten. It
+will never do for a minister who has a large family and lives on a
+moderate salary, to <i>waste</i> any thing. And, besides, as I ought to tell
+you, we sometimes, if not always, have a very considerable amount of
+rich food on the table."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you mean to intimate that the bountiful provision you make for
+others renders it necessary for you to overeat? Or have your remarks a
+reference to a supposed necessity of eating rich food?"</p>
+
+<p>"We are not, of course, absolutely compelled to <i>any</i> thing. My meaning
+is this: In order to meet the wants of those who are liable to call on
+us at almost any hour, <i>we prepare largely</i>. Then, to meet these varying
+and often very fastidious tastes, we must have <i>a large variety</i> of
+food, and it must be <i>highly seasoned</i>. And then, if it happens that our
+company is not as large as is expected, we have an extra quantity
+remaining, and I am tempted to aid in eating it up, the highly seasoned
+food among the rest."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"And you think, do you, that this highly seasoned food is the cause of
+your dyspepsia?"</p>
+
+<p>"Undoubtedly it is."</p>
+
+<p>"And do you expect to be cured of a disease which is produced by certain
+definable causes, like this, and yet be permitted to go on in the same
+way you have long gone? Do you suppose I have any power to grant you an
+immunity from the evil effects of high living while that high living is
+persisted in? Can you get rid of an effect till you first remove the
+cause?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, no, sir, not exactly. Such an expectation would be very
+unreasonable. But is there no medicine I can take that will <i>partially</i>
+restore me? Perhaps, at my age, entire restoration from such a hydra
+disease as dyspepsia is hardly to be expected; but can you not patch me
+up in part?"</p>
+
+<p>"What! and suffer you to go on sinning?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, yes, to some small extent. It is very hard, nay, it seems to me
+almost impossible, to break away from the routine of my family, at least
+as long as Mrs. Y. is fully determined to prepare for company according
+to the prevailing customs. I could submit to a different arrangement if
+she were ready for it."</p>
+
+<p>"I wish I could encourage you to pursue this compromising course of
+conduct. But it is not so. You must change your habits entirely, or you
+must continue to suffer. For if it were possible to patch you up, for a
+short time, while your present habits are continued, it would not be as
+well for you in the end: It would only add another head and horn,
+perhaps several others, to the monster that annoys you. No, sir; you
+must change your habits or give up the contest. There is no use in
+attempting to do any thing, in such a case as yours, with medicine."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, then, if it must be so, it must. I will try once more, and see
+what I can do."</p>
+
+<p>He left me with a downcast look, and, I suspected, with a heavy heart.
+At all events, my own heart was heavy, and seemed almost ready to bleed.
+Here was a father in our ministerial<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span> Israel,&mdash;one to whom multitudes
+looked up for the bread of spiritual life,&mdash;who was a perfect slave to
+his appetites; or, at least, to the conventionalisms of modern
+house-keeping. He groaned daily and hourly under bodily disease the most
+aggravated and severe. His eyes were red and swelled; the sides of his
+nose enlarged and inflamed, till he had the appearance of being about
+half a sot. He knew all about it, and yet refused to take the first step
+in the way of reformation.</p>
+
+<p>I saw him, by accident, once more, and would have spoken with him
+freely; but he seemed to shun every thing beyond a merely passing
+compliment. I saw how it was with him; and the reflections which arose
+in my mind gave me the most intense pain.</p>
+
+<p>Two or three weeks afterward, while in an intimate and confidential
+conversation with two of his very familiar friends, I ventured to
+predict his fall, with nearly as much particularity as if the events
+which were predicted had already taken place. I was asked how I dared to
+say such things, even in secret, of so good a man and such a father in
+the American Church. So I gave them, by way of reply, the principal
+facts in the case, as detailed above.</p>
+
+<p>Not many years passed ere this very minister was tried for a crime much
+more high-handed than gluttony, though sometimes the sequel to it; and
+not only tried, but silenced. The results of the trial were as shocking
+to most people as they were unexpected. Every one said: "How can it be?"</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Y. became a farmer, and is still so. But he is cured of his
+dyspepsia. Compelled, as I have reason to believe he is, to practise the
+most rigid economy, having very little temptation to unlawful
+indulgence, and having an abundance of healthful exercise in the open
+air, he has every appearance, externally, of a reformed man. His old
+friends would, I think, hardly know him. His skin is as clear, and his
+eyes and nose as physiologically correct in their appearance, as yours
+or mine. True, he is an old man, but he is not a gluttonous old man. He
+is a fallen man, but a healthy, and, I hope, a penitent one.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span> He has
+experienced a species of first resurrection, and has, I trust, the hope
+of a better one still.</p>
+
+<p>Now, had this man believed, in the first place, that the fault of his
+dyspepsia was not wholly chargeable on Mrs. Y., but also on
+himself,&mdash;had he clearly seen that he loved high living, and would not
+relinquish it,&mdash;he might have been reformed without a dreadful and
+scathing ordeal, and without disgracing the cause of his Divine Master,
+But alas! "the woman that thou gavest to be with me," as he said, was in
+fault; and so he did not reform himself.</p>
+
+<p>That his wife was in fault, most deeply, I do not deny. She knew her
+husband's weakness, and yet continued to place before him those
+temptations which she well knew were too strong for him. How she could
+do this, and persist in doing it, is, to me, a mystery. But she had her
+reward; at least, in part. For in the fall and retirement of her husband
+from public life, and in the consciousness&mdash;which was the most terrible
+of all&mdash;of his guilt, must not her sufferings have been terrible?</p>
+
+<p>It is indeed true that she may not have been wise enough&mdash;for this
+wisdom has not yet been made public property, in the fullest sense&mdash;to
+look at the subject in one point of view, which would be calculated to
+add to the poignancy of her anguish. So that we may be almost ready to
+say, in her case, "Ignorance is bliss." I refer, here, to the infliction
+of scrofula and nervousness, by high living, on the next generation.</p>
+
+<p>For while Mrs. Y. was bowing down to public opinion, and preparing rich
+viands for her guests, and practically compelling her husband and
+children to eat up what they had nibbled at and left, she was not only
+fastening dyspepsia upon the former and nervousness upon herself, but
+imparting more or less of a tendency to nervousness and scrofula upon
+the rest of her family. Of the two thousand children born in a day, in
+the United States, from two hundred to three hundred&mdash;perhaps nearer
+four hundred&mdash;come into the world with a scrofulous tendency; and of
+these, it is highly probable, that at least one hundred per day are
+manufactured at just such tables<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span> as those which were set by Mrs. Y. for
+the teachers of the religion of Jesus Christ.</p>
+
+<p>I have quoted the old adage, that "Ignorance is bliss;" but alas! is it
+not to trifle with the most solemn considerations? Can that be regarded
+as blissful which leaves a mother, who, in general, means to love and
+honor the Saviour, to destroy her husband and one or two of his
+children? There is little doubt that, besides shutting her husband out
+of the sacred enclosure, after she had destroyed his health, Mrs. Y. was
+the means of destroying at least one or two of her children. One of
+them, who was scrofulous, ran at last&mdash;a very common occurrence&mdash;into
+consumption, and perished early, in the beginning of active usefulness.</p>
+
+<p>I may be suspected of exaggeration, by some of my readers. Would to God,
+for humanity's sake and for Christ's sake, it were so! For though I
+cannot subscribe to the creed of those who profess to be willing to come
+into everlasting condemnation for the glory of God, yet, so long as
+opportunity for repentance shall last, I would willingly be convicted of
+untruth, if so that the falsehood might be made palpable to my mind,
+rather than believe what I am compelled to believe with regard to the
+murderous tendency on soul and body of our murderous modern cookery. Is
+it not true&mdash;the old adage, that while "God," in his mercy, "sends us
+meats, the Devil," in his malignity, "sends us cooks?"</p>
+
+<p>This unnatural cookery,&mdash;this mingling medicine with viands naturally
+healthful, and torturing the compounds thus formed into sources of
+irritation, has more to do with that sensuality which has come upon us
+like a flood,&mdash;much of it in new forms,&mdash;than many are aware. And I am
+much mistaken if modern societies for moral reform, popularly so called,
+might not thank the over-refined cookery of a gross and highly
+stimulating diet, for that necessity which impels to their own field of
+labor.</p>
+
+<p>One thing more might have been mentioned in its proper place&mdash;the
+tendency of high living to eruptions on the skin. These, in their
+various forms of pimple, carbuncle, boil, etc., are becoming<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span> quite the
+order of the day. Mr. Y.'s family had a full share of them, especially
+those of them who were scrofulous. I have already mentioned the
+appearance of Mr. Y.'s face, and have alluded to the change which took
+place after his fall. But I should have spoken of the eruptions on his
+face, which, at times, were such as almost made him ashamed to enter the
+pulpit.</p>
+
+<p>You will see, from the tenor of these remarks, that I have laid the
+guilt, in this sad affair, just where I believe it ought to rest. I have
+not sought to exculpate one individual or party, at the expense of
+another equally guilty, but rather to do justice to all.</p>
+
+<p>Only one thing remains, which is to confess my <i>own</i> guilt. Have I not
+great reason to fear that my advice was not sufficiently pointed and
+thorough? I might have gone to Mr. Y. and told him the truth, the whole
+truth. What if it had given offence? Would not the prospect of doing
+good, rather than of giving offence, have been worth something? In any
+event, I do regret most deeply my unfaithfulness, even though it arose
+from delicacy and diffidence, for that very delicacy and diffidence were
+far enough from being grounded on the love of God. They were grounded
+much more on the love of human approbation. No man was ever more free
+from it than our Saviour. Ought I not to have used the same plainness
+that he would have used? Had I rebuked Mrs. Y. as kindly and as
+faithfully as he rebuked Martha at Bethany, how much, for ought I can
+ever know, might have been saved, not only to the cause of health and
+conjugal happiness, but also to that of piety.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_LXXVI" id="CHAPTER_LXXVI"></a>CHAPTER LXXVI.</h2>
+
+<h3>DR. BOLUS AND MORPHINE.</h3>
+
+
+<p>A telegraphic communication was made to me one day, nearly as follows:
+"B. J. W. is very sick, and is not expected to live through the day.
+Please come on immediately."</p>
+
+<p>The distance was about one hundred and fifty miles, and the mode and
+means of conveyance neither very direct nor rapid for these latter
+times. It was more than probable that Mr. B. J. W. would be dead before
+I could reach the place. However, as he was a particular friend, and as
+there was some hope, I concluded to set out.</p>
+
+<p>Late in the evening,&mdash;or rather, in the night,&mdash;I arrived at the place,
+and found the young man still alive. He was, however, as it was easy to
+perceive, in a very critical condition. Glad to find him alive, but
+inclined to fall in with the general opinion that his case was a
+hopeless one, and withal greatly fatigued, I yielded to the demands of
+exhausted Nature, and slept a short time, when his physician arrived.</p>
+
+<p>Now I had been sent for, in part, as a special friend, and in part, as a
+medical counsellor. And yet there were difficulties. Dr. Bolus, the
+family physician, was just such a man&mdash;for reasons that might be
+given&mdash;as I dreaded to advise with, should my advice be needed. He was
+one who would be likely to think any important suggestion an impeachment
+of his own superior wisdom. Science, true science, is always modest, and
+does not fear any thing; because she loves, most of all things, <i>to be
+right</i>. But Dr. Bolus had not, as I think, enough of true science to
+make him feel or perceive the want of it. The ignorant are always
+self-confident in proportion to their ignorance.</p>
+
+<p>We examined the patient, as soon as possible, and retired for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span>
+consultation. Dr. Bolus gave a full history of the progress of the case,
+with a particular account of the treatment. I saw at once, both from the
+existing symptoms and Dr. Bolus's statement, that the tendency to the
+brain&mdash;so great as to keep up an almost constant delirium&mdash;was quite as
+likely to be caused by the enormous quantities of morphine and quinine,
+and other active medicines which had been administered, as to belong
+properly to the disease. I therefore advised a gradual reduction and
+ultimate discontinuance of the extra stimulants.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Bolus was opposed to the reduction I proposed, but finally consented
+to it, at least in part, and the patient evidently derived almost
+immediate benefit from it. When I had pushed my views with regard to the
+stimuli as far as I could, we separated, and as the distance at which
+the doctor resided was considerable, and as I was on the spot to watch
+the patient, he proposed not to call again till early in the morning of
+the following day.</p>
+
+<p>I was by no means satisfied with the compromise we had made. It had not
+accomplished its intended object. Dr. Bolus had, indeed, yielded a
+little, but not enough to satisfy me. I believed the amount of stimulus
+still given vastly too great, and was unwilling to continue it. In
+truth, I persuaded one of the attendants to omit the principal articles,
+whenever the hour came for administering them, assuring him that I would
+take all the responsibility.</p>
+
+<p>Of the other attendant I would have made the same requisition, but he
+being exceedingly attached to Dr. Bolus, would never have tolerated the
+slightest concealment, or departure from the strictest letter of the
+law.</p>
+
+<p>It was easy to see that the less stimulating treatment of each alternate
+two hours, during which it was entirely omitted, left behind it, on the
+patient's frame, a better influence than the more active treatment of
+the other two. And when the next medical consultation came, I pleaded
+for a still greater diminution of the stimulus. But, as I had
+unwillingly used a little duplicity,&mdash;a thing I now deeply regret,&mdash;in
+order to come at my conclusions against the stimulants, I was not
+willing to state, in full, the grounds of my opinion, and therefore
+could not prevail<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span> with Dr. Bolus to consent to any farther advances in
+the unstimulating plan.</p>
+
+<p>I was now, at length, compelled to leave for home; and the results, for
+the rest of the time, were reported to me through the kindness of the
+young man's friends. It is sufficient, perhaps, to say that he finally
+recovered; but it was not till the lapse of several months. In the mean
+time, a severe ulcer broke out on the lower part of his back, which
+caused much suffering, and appeared to retard very greatly the progress
+of his recovery.</p>
+
+<p>My errors in this case were numerous and great. Believing, as I did, in
+the outset, that Dr. Bolus and myself could never agree, I did wrong in
+consenting to a consultation with him. I ought to have been nothing but
+a visitor, or else to have entered fully into the spirit and duty of a
+counsellor. In the former case I might, indeed, have outraged every
+feeling of benevolence; in the latter I ought to have proposed my
+objections in full, and not to have compromised so as to submit to what
+I really believed to be radically and essentially wrong.</p>
+
+<p>For I did most fully believe all this; and in spite of every effort at
+concealment, my scepticism finally came out, and I was weak enough to
+speak of it, and openly to find fault with Dr. Bolus. A practical
+quarrel followed between Dr. Bolus and myself, in which the friends
+joined, or, at least, strongly sympathized.</p>
+
+<p>My own belief, then, was, and it still remains the same, that the
+violence of the young man's disease, especially the tendency to the
+brain, was chiefly, if not wholly, owing to the medicine administered;
+and that, from the very first, no active medicine&mdash;nothing but an
+exceedingly mild and cooling treatment&mdash;was required. It was even my
+belief that the ulcer was caused by the medicine.</p>
+
+<p>But, while I lost confidence in human nature, and especially in the
+human nature of some of my brethren of the medical profession, by this
+experiment, I became more thoroughly convinced than ever before of the
+great need of honest and benevolent as well as scientific men in this
+department, and of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span> general impotency and worse than impotency of
+much that is dignified with the name of medical treatment. I became most
+fully convinced, that in acute diseases as well as chronic, Nature,
+unembarrassed, will generally accomplish her own work, when left to
+herself and to good and careful nursing and attendance.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_LXXVII" id="CHAPTER_LXXVII"></a>CHAPTER LXXVII.</h2>
+
+<h3>BLEEDING AND BLISTERING OMITTED.</h3>
+
+
+<p>One of my neighbors had fallen down-stairs, and injured himself
+internally, in the right side of the chest; and a degree, greater or
+less, of inflammation had followed. The pain was constant, though not
+severe; but the soreness was considerable, and did not give promise of
+speedy amendment.</p>
+
+<p>My advice was to keep quiet, both in body and mind, and to avoid all
+kinds of exertion that could possibly affect the chest. I also advised
+the use of water, not only for drink, in small draughts, but, if the
+pain and soreness should be troublesome, as an external application to
+the part affected. The food was to be mild and unstimulating. A tendency
+to crowd around the fire was to be guarded against and prevented, by
+putting on, if necessary, an increased amount of clothing.</p>
+
+<p>Two days passed away with no great variation of the symptoms, either for
+better or worse. I was now fully convinced that I had taken the true
+course, because, otherwise, my patient must, by this time, have become
+worse. Accordingly, I persevered in my general let-alone plan for about
+two weeks, when the patient fully recovered.</p>
+
+<p>He was a slender boy, in the fifteenth year of his age, strongly
+inclined, by inheritance, to disease of the chest and brain; and this
+consideration, among others, led me to be extremely cautious about his
+treatment. The greater the danger the greater the necessity that what is
+done should be done right, or we shall defeat our own purposes.</p>
+
+<p>But the most remarkable fact in relation to this very interesting case
+is,&mdash;and it is chiefly for the sake of this fact that I have related the
+story,&mdash;that more than forty-eight hours had passed, after the
+occurrence of the accident, before it came<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span> into my mind that any thing
+could, by possibility, be done for the chest, in the way of bleeding,
+blistering, etc.,&mdash;so utterly irrational had this treatment, once so
+fashionable, come to be regarded, both by myself and a few others. How
+strange that I should not think of it in two whole days! Twenty years
+before, I should not have dared to pass through the first twenty-four
+hours, in such a case, without <i>thinking</i>, at least, of balsams and
+mustard poultices and the whole paraphernalia of external treatment, to
+say nothing of bleeding and blistering.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_LXXVIII" id="CHAPTER_LXXVIII"></a>CHAPTER LXXVIII.</h2>
+
+<h3>MEDICAL VIRTUES OF SLEEP.</h3>
+
+
+<p>My own child, a boy nine or ten years of age, and somewhat inclined to
+croup, was one evening wheezing considerably, and, as his mother
+thought, was threatened with an immediate attack, either from this or
+some other disease. Of course, there was not a little anxiety manifested
+in the family on his account, and we were deliberating what to do with
+him, when the late Dr. Shew, the hydropathist, chanced to come in.</p>
+
+<p>After a little general conversation, we turned our thoughts again to our
+little patient, and asked Dr. Shew what he would do with him if he were
+his patient. "If it were my case," said he, "I would give him a tepid
+bath&mdash;say at about the temperature of 80&deg; or 85&deg;." "Would you do nothing
+more?" "Nothing at all, except to put him early to bed."</p>
+
+<p>I was not committed to hydropathy, as I have before told you. I never
+have been, though I had a sort of general respect for Dr. Shew; and
+hence it was that, incidentally, I asked him the question which I did;
+and I was pleased with his reply. There was nothing suggested which was
+at all akin to violence. He did not propose a shower bath of any kind.
+He did not speak of hot bathing, which for that hour of the day might
+have induced too violent a perspiration. He did not propose vapor
+bathing or steaming. A tepid bath could, abstractly considered, do no
+harm. It would, at least, while away the time till nature could have
+opportunity to rally. And then, if the return to health should be
+attributed to the application of the tepid water, we had no special
+objection to it. We had no medical pride&mdash;most certainly I had
+none&mdash;that would lead me to fear lest I should add to the popularity of
+the cold-water system.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But it was rather late in the evening,&mdash;between seven and eight
+o'clock,&mdash;almost time for such a child to be in bed. In order to get up
+a tepid bath and make the application, so much time would be required
+that it would keep him from sleep till nine o'clock, and perhaps later;
+whereas, I had a very high opinion of the healing and renovating power
+of natural and healthy sleep. It struck me that to put the child to bed
+immediately, and let him have a good night's rest, would be a much wiser
+measure than to bathe him even in <i>tepid</i> water. So, after thanking Dr.
+Shew for his advice, I told him that, for the reasons above stated, we
+had concluded to omit the bath and put the child immediately to bed.</p>
+
+<p>On being put in bed and suitably covered, he went to sleep immediately,
+and fell into a gentle perspiration, and in about two hours his
+breathing was much better. It continued to improve till the next
+morning, when he arose, at the usual time, and was nearly well. Dr. Shew
+himself jocosely observed that the <i>sleep</i> cure had proved quite as
+successful as the <i>water</i> cure.</p>
+
+<p>Much, therefore, as I prize bathing of all sorts, in its proper place,
+it must never take the place of other and more important influences,
+whenever these influences can be brought to bear on the case. Indeed, no
+bathing of any kind can be desirable, any farther than as it serves to
+aid these natural processes. It has no magic or miraculous power. If we
+do not eat, drink, sleep, and wake, all the better for it; if the
+various offices of digestion, respiration, circulation, perspiration,
+and cerebral action are not thereby, as a whole thing, better performed,
+it might as well&mdash;nay, better&mdash;be omitted. Otherwise we waste time and
+trifle away vital energy.</p>
+
+<p>If all the functions of the body and all the faculties of the mind could
+be kept steadily employed, and in healthful proportion, it is obvious
+that a person could not be sick. Or, if one of these only should be
+deranged, and we should fall sick, as the consequence, what else, pray
+tell me, is needed, but to effect a speedy return of the faltering
+function or part to its proper post and duty?</p>
+
+<p>But sleep, more than all things else, whenever the usual<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span> hour has
+actually arrived, has the effect to facilitate a cure. We all know how
+wakeful some maniacs are, and how hurried and deranged all the movements
+of the muscular and nervous systems are apt to become, no less than
+those of the brain itself. And we all know, too, how much good it does
+such persons to be able to obtain good, sound, substantial, quiet sleep.
+It acts like a charm, and does more than charms can do, or mere
+medicine.</p>
+
+<p>Half the formality of having watchers by night in the sick room, does
+more harm than good. It were better, in many instances, to extinguish
+all the lights, except at certain set times and on particular occasions,
+and let the patient sleep. And yet I have as exalted an estimate of the
+importance of careful nursing as any other individual.</p>
+
+<p>For example of my meaning, in a case of seeming contradiction, I may say
+that I have taken all the needful care of a young man who was very sick,
+for more than thirty successive nights with the exception of two, and
+yet maintained my health, which, as you already know, was never very
+firm. And I have known those who could do this for three months. But
+they extinguish or hide their light, and acquire a habit of waking at
+certain times, so as never to neglect the wants of the patient.</p>
+
+<p>So true is it that sleep is the grand restorer as well as the great
+curer of disease, that its salutary influence in the case of various
+infantile complaints, has long been known and regarded. And one reason
+why infants should neither be nursed nor fed in the night, as many
+physiologists maintain, is, that it breaks in upon the soundness of the
+sleep, as experience has most abundantly proved. Sleep, in short, if not
+a "matchless" sanative, is at least a universal one.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_LXXIX" id="CHAPTER_LXXIX"></a>CHAPTER LXXIX.</h2>
+
+<h3>CURE BY DEEP BREATHING.</h3>
+
+
+<p>A young man, fifteen or sixteen years of age, who was in the habit of
+suffering from protracted colds, nearly the whole winter, till they
+seemed to terminate almost in consumption in the spring, came under my
+care about March 1st, 1854, and was treated as the nature of his case
+seemed to require, though with a few of what may be, by some, regarded
+as peculiarities.</p>
+
+<p>He was directed to rise in the morning at about six o'clock, which at
+that season of the year is about as early as any one can see well
+without lamp-light. At the moment of leaving his bed, he was required to
+wet his body all over, as quickly as possible, either with the hand or a
+sponge, or if preferred, with a coarse towel, and then wipe himself
+hastily and partially, so as to leave on the surface a little moisture,
+and yet not enough to cause, by evaporation, any sensations of
+chilliness. The water to be used was to be cold, or at such temperature
+as is usual at that season, when standing all night in a room without
+fire. This was to be followed by a rapid rubbing with <i>crash mittens</i>, a
+coarse towel, or the hand, as long as he could keep up a good reaction
+and a proper degree of vital warmth.</p>
+
+<p>Or, if rubbing the body increased the cough, and an assistant was
+required, in this case, a healthy man well charged, so to speak, with
+electricity, was always to be deemed preferable. In general, however,
+the young man found no difficulty in keeping himself warm, in this
+exercise, about half an hour.</p>
+
+<p>Whenever his strength began to flag, or a little before,&mdash;for I did not
+think it desirable to go farther than the mere borders of fatigue,&mdash;he
+was placed in bed and well covered, so as to be immediately warm. The
+room itself was kept as cool as possible,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</a></span> even in the coldest weather,
+the fire having been entirely removed at bedtime the night before, and
+the room well aired and ventilated.</p>
+
+<p>This method of placing him in a warm bed was called dry packing. In this
+dry pack he usually remained from half an hour to an hour. At the end of
+this period, he was required to get out of bed, and repeat the former
+course of rubbing the naked surface of the body a long time, in the cold
+air, though, in this case, without repeating the application of the cold
+water.</p>
+
+<p>Thus the forenoon passed away, with a few slight but unimportant
+variations. At twelve o'clock, this alternation of air-bathing with
+friction and dry-packing, ceased, and the patient was expected to put on
+his clothes and come to dinner. You will, perhaps, ask when and where he
+had his breakfast. No breakfast was allowed him. Nothing was to be
+taken, except small draughts of water, till twelve o'clock.</p>
+
+<p>Another operation, which had much more the appearance of peculiarity
+than any other part of the treatment, but which was deemed, more than
+all else, indispensable to his recovery, consisted in a series of deep
+inspirations or breathings. It may be described thus: The patient was
+required to draw as much air into his lungs as possible, and then
+immediately expel as much of it as possible. This was to be repeated and
+continued till a suitable degree of fatigue was induced. At first, it
+was only required as a species of amusement while in the dry pack; but
+subsequently it was demanded in other circumstances.</p>
+
+<p>I have usually required a person to begin the process by ten, twenty, or
+thirty deep inspirations, according to his strength of lungs and their
+irritability; for, at first, it often makes him cough. In the present
+case, I began with fifty, and gradually increased the number to one
+hundred. Sometimes, by way of experiment, and to pass away the time
+while in the dry pack, he went much farther; once to six hundred. In
+this case, however, the face became slightly flushed, the eyes reddened,
+and the whole arterial action became hastened. It<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</a></span> was evidently like
+"too much of a good thing," and was never repeated.</p>
+
+<p>The afternoon was spent in physical exercise, active amusement, reading,
+conversation, etc. The first consisted chiefly in sawing and splitting
+wood, and in walking abroad. The amusements were of various kinds. The
+reading was chiefly of the lighter sort, such as newspapers and
+magazines. The conversation&mdash;not always controllable&mdash;was the best we
+could furnish him. Some of the walks were long, extending to five or six
+miles.</p>
+
+<p>Music, both vocal and instrumental, was regarded as a most valuable
+amusement, and was not wholly overlooked. It had its difficulties, but
+most of them could be surmounted. As a devotional exercise, its soothing
+influence was almost always evoked.</p>
+
+<p>I have said that no breakfast was taken by this young man, and no drink
+used but cold water. The dinner was also without drink, and so was the
+supper. The first consisted of a very few kinds of coarse
+food,&mdash;generally not more than two or three at once,&mdash;such as coarse
+whole-meal bread, rice, potatoes, apples, etc., and was the principal
+meal. The supper was a lighter meal, both as respected quantity and
+quality, and was taken at about six o'clock. No condiments were allowed
+except salt, and very little of this; and no animal food, or the
+products of animals, except, occasionally, a little milk. Fruits, either
+raw or cooked, were frequently among the staples at dinner, but never at
+supper.</p>
+
+<p>This treatment, with slight variations, would be applicable to most
+persons suffering with lingering complaints, and to persons in health,
+as a means of invigorating their systems; but my present purpose is,
+chiefly, to speak of it as a remedial agency in the particular case of
+this young man.</p>
+
+<p>I had hoped to be able to effect a cure on him in about a month. But I
+was happily disappointed in finding him recover so fast that he was
+dismissed and sent home on the twenty-fifth day. Nor has his consumptive
+tendency ever again appeared with much severity. Since the spring of
+1856&mdash;now<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</a></span> between two and three years&mdash;it has not appeared at all.</p>
+
+<p>This method of cure, by deep breathing, consists simply in using the
+lungs freely, without overworking them. They may be overworked as well
+as used too little; though the danger is generally in the latter
+direction. They are made, most undoubtedly, for a great amount of
+action, in breathing, conversation, singing, reading, etc.; and yet, in
+all these respects, they are sadly neglected.</p>
+
+<p>Our ordinary conversation is such as hardly to exercise the lungs at
+all. We talk with the mouth and throat rather than the lungs. So is it,
+for the most part, with our singing. And, as for breathing, we only
+breathe a little way down, even when our dress is such as to form no
+impediment. Full breathing, except in making violent efforts, is hardly
+known.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_LXXX" id="CHAPTER_LXXX"></a>CHAPTER LXXX.</h2>
+
+<h3>SPIRIT-DOCTORING.</h3>
+
+
+<p>One of the most amusing incidents of my "Forty Years among Pills and
+Powders," is found at full length of detail in the following chapter.
+The amusement it affords has, however, a tinge of sadness.</p>
+
+<p>A young man came under my care in the early part of the year 1854, who,
+for the sake of convenience, I will call Thomas. He was about eighteen
+years of age, but as delicate, sensitive, and effeminate as a female
+directly from Broadway would have been, or as a plant reared in a
+hothouse. In truth, he had been reared very much like many females of
+the present day, in a manner entirely sedentary&mdash;the creature of
+over-tenderness and over-kindness.</p>
+
+<p>His disease was scrofula; but, with his scrofulous tendencies were
+conjoined some other difficulties, more obscure and still more
+unmanageable. His joints were enlarged; and in particular portions of
+his body were various watery swellings or sacs.</p>
+
+<p>As it was a scrofulous tendency that lay at the bottom or basis of his
+complaints, I proceeded to treat him accordingly. I was to have him
+under my care three months, during which time, it was believed,
+something might be done, if ever. At least, it was believed that a
+beginning might be made, if indeed the disease should prove to be at all
+curable.</p>
+
+<p>He was subjected to the treatment, with few variations, which is
+mentioned in the preceding chapter. He was not permitted, however, to do
+much in the way of deep breathing till his general health and strength
+could be improved by other measures. Warm water, in his case, was
+preferred, also, to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</a></span> cold, and was used in the form of a tub-bath, at
+five o'clock in the afternoon.</p>
+
+<p>Thomas had been with me about three weeks, without much variation of
+condition or prospects, when I received a long letter from his friends,
+the purport of which was that they had been favored with a communication
+from the "spirit world," which was attended with the appearance of so
+much truth and reality, that they were not at liberty wholly to
+disregard it. The communication purported to be made by the late Dr.
+Benjamin Rush, of Philadelphia.</p>
+
+<p>As these friends of Thomas well knew I was not a believer in this
+new-fangled spiritualism, they had taken much pains to satisfy me that I
+was to have for my venerable counsellor not a mere pretender, but the
+veritable Dr. Rush himself. As one evidence in the case, they had
+inquired through the "medium," who were the present associates of the
+good doctor in his new abode; who, nothing loath, had deigned to gratify
+their supposed curiosity, by giving them the names of five distinguished
+physicians, among whom were the elder and younger Dr. Ingalls, of
+Massachusetts, and Dr. Sanborn, of New Hampshire.</p>
+
+<p>And then, with regard to Thomas, he only said, at first, that he was
+very much interested in him, and that he would examine him and report.
+Soon after this, at another communication, he said his case was a
+difficult one, but he thought not incurable. He added, that he was
+already in very good hands, the best, perhaps, that could be found in
+this mundane sphere, but rather cautiously insinuated that there were
+symptoms in the case which I had not yet got hold of, but which would,
+if rightly apprehended, modify, in some of its particulars, my
+treatment. What it was in the case which I had not discovered, he did
+not say directly, but subsequently intimated that the young man's
+disease was not scrofula, as I had pronounced it, but dropsy of the
+joints.</p>
+
+<p>It was not long afterward that the mother paid us a visit, and brought,
+well written out, the substance, as she said it was, of quite a number
+of communications from Dr. Rush. Much was said in them about the
+necessity of exercise and a plain<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</a></span> diet. And, in general, so far as the
+mere treatment was concerned, the statements of the spiritual doctor
+accorded so well with those of the earthly one, that had I been a
+believer in these modern mysteries, I should have been highly gratified,
+not only on Thomas's account, but my own.</p>
+
+<p>But the spirit doctor urged a few variations in the treatment of the
+young man. Beside pressing a little harder than myself the use of green
+vegetables, and particularly of vegetable juices, he requested, with
+great apparent earnestness, that he might be permitted to occupy a room
+heated by a wood fire, rather than by coal. He also made a few other
+suggestions of less importance.</p>
+
+<p>His mother was a very good woman, save her great credulity. And even
+here, perhaps, I do her injustice, for there were some curious facts and
+coincidences. The venerable spirit doctor appeared to have possessed
+himself of certain secrets which it was extremely puzzling to conjecture
+how an impostor could have obtained.</p>
+
+<p>After spending a day or two with me, and giving me "much exhortation,"
+the mother returned to her friends. Of her safe arrival, as well as of
+certain changes that had been resolved on, the husband informed me, by a
+letter, which, so far as the case of Thomas is concerned, I copy entire.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Dear Sir:&mdash;By Mrs. P., in her recent visit to your place,
+you have been made acquainted with some of the
+manifestations of spirits, made to us through a young lady,
+a medium of our acquaintance.</p>
+
+<p>"The communications purporting to come from Dr. Rush (as he
+says in his last communication, tell Dr. &mdash;&mdash; that it is the
+veritable old Dr. Rush, the signer of the Declaration of
+Independence), and with such apparent earnestness and
+reality, we feel that, to us, they are something more than
+human or earthly, and of momentous account in this case of
+Thomas, and that we are not at liberty longer to disregard
+them. And though we have great confidence in yourself and
+your practice, we hope you will not think we are losing
+either when I say that we have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</a></span> decided to have Thomas
+return to &mdash;&mdash;, and commence following the prescriptions of
+this invisible personage. They appear to be harmless, and
+may be of great virtue; and much which pertains to them
+appears to be in harmony with your practice.</p>
+
+<p>"Again, in closing, I must say that these communications
+come to us with such force and apparent reality and truth,
+that I think it would not be doing justly, either to Thomas
+or our Creator, longer to disregard them.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"With much esteem, yours, etc., &mdash;&mdash; &mdash;&mdash;."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>In a somewhat extended postscript it was added: "We have witnessed other
+manifestations, of several of which we had ample proof of their
+correctness."</p>
+
+<p>On another small portion of a sheet which was appended to the former, I
+found, in pencil, the following:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"We have, this evening, had another conversation with Dr.
+Rush. His medium was in &mdash;&mdash; to-day, and was brought to us
+in order that she might speak to us (Mrs. P. and myself). We
+are directed to tell you this: that he wants Thomas to be
+under her (Mrs. P.) care; that there are no earthly
+physicians that can cure him; that we could not have placed
+him in better hands than with you. He (Dr. Rush) says he can
+and <i>will cure him</i>. He says he could cure him without our
+help, if he could impress him, but in that he has not yet
+succeeded. He says he has seen Thomas with rubbers on, and
+that he would have taken them off if he could. Says
+positively, he must not wear them. Be good enough, dear sir,
+to see that he does not wear them in coming home." He adds,
+in conclusion, "Tell Dr. &mdash;&mdash; to remove him from the room he
+now occupies, and place him in one with a wood fire, and
+where he will have no bed-fellow."</p></div>
+
+<p>Thus ended the communication. Thomas went home, according to request,
+and was, forthwith, put under the treatment of the spiritual doctor. All
+appeared to be going on very well for a short time; but after the lapse
+of about three weeks, I heard<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</a></span> of his death. No particulars were added,
+in the papers, but I afterwards learned that his death was rather
+sudden.</p>
+
+<p>I did not chance to fall in with Mr. P. for several months, and out of
+respect to his feelings and those of Mrs. P., I did not depart from my
+usual track to call on them or even write. At the end of the year,
+however, I visited them, and after the usual passing remarks, the
+following conversation took place.</p>
+
+<p>"It seems, then, that Dr. Rush with all his wisdom and skill could not
+save Thomas."</p>
+
+<p>"No; he said it was too late for any power of earth or heaven to cure
+him."</p>
+
+<p>"But he was very confident he could cure him?"</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps he spoke with more confidence than he really felt, in order to
+encourage us and lead us to exert ourselves."</p>
+
+<p>"Do I understand you? Do you mean to say that perhaps the spirit
+doctors, like the fleshly ones, in order to encourage the friends of the
+sick, will depart a little from the truth?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not exactly that. Rather this: we do not consider it a departure from
+the truth."</p>
+
+<p>"I am of a different opinion. In earth, or elsewhere, I call such a
+course as you intimate a species of white lying&mdash;quite common on earth,
+but which, till now, I did not suppose had found its way to the confines
+of the world spiritual."</p>
+
+<p>The conversation ended here, and was not afterward resumed. I have,
+indeed, witnessed a good deal of spiritual doctoring since that time,
+but it was of a somewhat different character from the foregoing.</p>
+
+<p>For example: I saw a family in the interior of Massachusetts, whose
+faith in spiritualism and spirit doctrine was perfect. The mistress of
+the house was the patient. The physician a young man who had been a
+mechanic, but who had very recently become convinced that it was his
+duty to attend the sick,&mdash;not to do anything for them, on his own
+responsibility, but only to suffer an old Indian physician to operate
+through him as a medium.</p>
+
+<p>The chief thing which Dr. H. did, so far as I observed, was to lay his
+hands on her, and sit for some time in that position.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</a></span> I am not sure
+that he did not prescribe a few very simple things, from time to time,
+such as a little weak tea, or the infusion of some domestic herb, from
+the garden. He was counted, everywhere (for his circuit was a large
+one), very successful; for his patients generally recovered. Their
+recovery, it is true, was often very slow.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_LXXXI" id="CHAPTER_LXXXI"></a>CHAPTER LXXXI.</h2>
+
+<h3>REMARKABLE CURE OF EPILEPSY.</h3>
+
+
+<p>When I was a lad, a man was employed by my father on his farm, who used
+occasionally to fall down in convulsions, lie for some time, not
+entirely still, but foaming at the mouth and agitated or rocked to and
+fro, as if in great distress; and yet, as I afterward learned,
+senseless. These attacks, they told me, were <i>falling sickness</i> fits.
+The man was weak in mind, and not vigorous in body, though, by diligence
+and perseverence, he could accomplish something in the progress of a
+whole day. He died but little beyond middle age.</p>
+
+<p>Since that time I have been intimately acquainted with several
+individuals who were subject to these attacks of epilepsy, some of whom
+were affected in one way, some in another. The cause, too, was as
+various as the manner of attack, and in a few instances was peculiar and
+remarkable. In general, their memory and intellectual faculties, as well
+as their bodily strength, became, ultimately, a good deal impaired. In
+my practice as a physician, I had very few of these cases, and none in
+which I could afford relief at first. The patients were, however, for
+the most part, of middle age, or at least beyond thirty years. Several
+had taken nitrate of silver or other minerals, till their skins were of
+a blue-black color.</p>
+
+<p>In the beginning of the year 1854, a young man about seventeen years of
+age, of scrofulous and nervous temperament and of great delicacy, came
+under my care, to be treated for this disease, whose history, from
+beginning to end, was remarkable. I will call him Samuel.</p>
+
+<p>When about twelve years of age he had difficulty with another boy,&mdash;an
+Irish or Scotch lad,&mdash;which ended in a personal affray, in which Samuel
+was worsted, and his head<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</a></span> severely injured. It was thought by some that
+a portion of the skull, which, by the violence of the blow it had
+received, had been forced in, ought to have been elevated by the
+trephine; but I believe no surgeon of reputation ever saw him. Being
+young, the depressed portion of skull gradually resumed its place, so
+that the depression could scarcely be seen.</p>
+
+<p>All, however, was not right within, for he was soon afterward attacked
+by epilepsy. Whether, at first, any connection between the disease and
+the bruised skull was suspected by the friends, I was not able to learn;
+but probably not. The attacks having been once commenced, were frequent
+and severe, and every year became more so. They were particularly
+frequent and severe during the winter and spring.</p>
+
+<p>The medical art was invoked in his behalf, especially in the region
+round about New Haven, Conn. He was not only treated by the regular
+physicians, of different kinds and schools, but by not a few empirics or
+quacks. By some of them he was evidently injured, and by none was he
+benefited. The tendency still continued to be downward, on the whole,
+and his friends were, at length, almost discouraged.</p>
+
+<p>All this while his diet appears to have been the usual diet of that part
+of New England in which he resided&mdash;-too stimulating, and too much
+refined by cookery. In general, too, his active and perverted appetite
+led him to excess in quantity; but, as his friends never thought of its
+being a morbid or diseased appetite, no strong efforts were made to
+control it. In truth, as he was feeble and growing, it was thought
+necessary that he should eat stimulating and highly seasoned food, and
+in large quantity. He was also accustomed to tea and coffee. All his
+appetites, as it afterwards appeared, were, to say the least, very
+active, though the gratification of <i>the third appetite</i> was wholly
+confined to solitude.</p>
+
+<p>No restriction, nor indeed any direction, so far as I could learn, had
+been made at this period, with regard to his mental food. Whatever he
+chose to read, he was indulged in, both as regards quantity and quality.
+And as usually happens, in the case of epileptic, and scrofulous people,
+he was quite too much<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</a></span> inclined to works of imagination, with which the
+age and country abound. It appears, also, that being regarded as quite
+unequal to the task of laboring in field or garden, he was thus, in
+large measure, deprived of two essentials of health and happiness,
+especially to epileptics; viz., air and exercise.</p>
+
+<p>In August, 1853, he went to an institution that had once been a
+water-cure establishment, but which had undergone many modifications,
+till it better deserved the name of College of Hygiene, than water cure.
+Here he remained several months.</p>
+
+<p>The peculiar treatment he received at this institution consisted, first,
+in a plain and unstimulating diet. Water was his only drink, and bread
+and fruits, with a few well-cooked vegetables, his only food. But, in
+the second place, he was subjected to a course of treatment not unlike
+that described in Chapter LXXIX, with the exception of the deep
+breathing and cold-bathing. The last, however, was, I believe, used
+occasionally.</p>
+
+<p>There was, indeed, one important addition made to the treatment above
+alluded to. This consisted in an exercise designed to expand and
+strengthen the lungs, by what was called <i>shaking down the air</i>. This
+exercise was practised very frequently, and was curious. I will describe
+it as well as I can.</p>
+
+<p>He was first required to inflate his chest as much as possible, and
+then, while retaining the air with all his might, rise on his toes, and
+suddenly drop on his heels, with a sort of jerk, several times in
+succession, till he could hold his breath and retain the air no longer,
+which was now suffered gradually to escape. A new recruit was then drawn
+in, and treated in the same manner. The exercise, as a whole, seemed to
+consist of a series of jumpings up and down, without quite raising the
+toes from the floor, and of deep sighing. The object aimed at was to
+shake down a large amount of good, pure air, into the cells of the
+lungs, and retain it there as long as possible; and then, to let out or
+force out the air, so as to empty the lungs as perfectly as possible.</p>
+
+<p>The warm bath was occasionally used at four o'clock in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</a></span> afternoon,
+but with doubtful effect. Exercise, especially mechanical exercise, was
+of much more service, and so was the gymnasium. He was, however,
+required to forbear all violence, in his exercises and amusements; nor
+was he allowed any severe studies. His reading was to be light, though
+not trifling.</p>
+
+<p>For several months next subsequent to his arrival at the institution, he
+appeared to improve. Instead of weekly, or semi-weekly, or still more
+frequent attacks, he suffered but rarely; and, in one instance, he was
+exempt from an attack for several weeks. But in December and January
+they became, once more, rather frequent. They had, however, usually been
+most frequent in winter and spring.</p>
+
+<p>He now began to be apprehensive of a return of his disease, in all its
+former violence; and the dread of February, March, and April had an
+influence on his system which was any thing but favorable&mdash;since fear,
+in these cases, is often worse than the evils which excite it. And,
+according to his faith, or rather according to his want of faith, so it
+was with him. The attacks became very frequent, sometimes daily; and, in
+one or two instances, twice a day.</p>
+
+<p>He came under my special and almost exclusive care, Feb. 1, 1854. I soon
+discovered that there was a close connection between excess and
+irregularity, in regard to his food and his paroxysms of disease. I saw,
+also, that a part of his food had been too stimulating. In justice,
+however, I ought to say that in the government of the other appetites,
+he had succeeded far better than I had expected, though his power to
+control himself was far from being perfect.</p>
+
+<p>While, therefore, I did not materially change the general treatment in
+other particulars, I determined to regulate his diet; and, with a view
+to this important end, to watch him, and even to deal out to him his
+daily rations, with just as much care and particularity as if he were a
+mere child. He ate but two meals a day, and these were taken at <i>twelve</i>
+and <i>six</i>; and then I always sat by him. I did not leave him, except for
+one single meal, for a period of fifty-five days.</p>
+
+<p>During the whole of this long period&mdash;long, I mean, to the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</a></span> patient&mdash;he
+not only had no attacks of his disease, but none of the giddiness or
+other symptoms which had formerly accompanied or preceded them. He did
+not, it is true, gain in flesh or strength during the time. In all this
+and in many more particulars he remained nearly stationary.</p>
+
+<p>Towards the close of March, his friends became desirous of taking him
+home. I was not without apprehension; but, hoping for the best, I
+submitted to their wishes as cheerfully as I could. He was among them
+for a short time; and was then, by my particular request, as well as in
+conformity with his own choice, placed on a farm.</p>
+
+<p>Nearly three months after his return to his friends, I received a letter
+from him, which I insert here, not only as a convenient nucleus around
+which to cluster certain suggestions I wish to make to the general
+reader, but also as a continuation of my patient's history. It was dated
+June 18, 1854.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"<span class="smcap">My Dear Physician</span>,&mdash;I am now at Mr. &mdash;&mdash;'s. Every thing
+seems to be in perfect accordance with the wishes of those
+who are concerned in the case. I can get as plain a diet as
+I please, and have nothing, so to say, to tempt me. I
+confine myself to a very small variety. I have had
+strawberries ever since I came here, which was June 7th. I
+eat sometimes nearly a pint at a meal. Sometimes I eat
+nothing but strawberries and dry bread. I have some sugar on
+the table, and sweeten the berries a little. I eat
+considerable potatoe&mdash;say two or three at dinner&mdash;sometimes
+a little more. I have had two dinners of asparagus, just
+boiled in a little water, and poured on to some crusts of
+toasted bread. It was good. I do not think I have had more
+than three things set on the table for me, at a time, while
+I have been here. I have bread, potatoes, and berries for
+dinner. For supper I have bread and berries, and sweetened
+bread, as it might be called. It is sweetened but a very
+little. Now don't I live plainly.</p>
+
+<p>"But I have left out some things that I have had. I had
+Graham mush a few days, but I like the bread better, as Mrs.
+&mdash;&mdash; makes such good bread. Mr. &mdash;&mdash; likes it better than<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[Pg 306]</a></span>
+superfine. I have had boiled rice&mdash;a few meals. I had one
+meal of bag-pudding&mdash;Indian&mdash;with a few whortleberries in
+it.</p>
+
+<p>"I have now given you an account of how I live. I eat at ten
+or half-past ten, A. M., and at four, P. M. So I do not have
+to go to bed with a meal of victuals on my stomach.</p>
+
+<p>"After I left you, and before I came here, I had, all the
+time, a great looseness of the bowels. It seemed to weaken
+me. Afterwards I thought it was caused, partly, by some very
+tart, dried apples, of which I ate freely at every meal.
+Aunt &mdash;&mdash;thought it was working at hoeing up turf around
+trees, for she said that working hard with her arms affected
+her in that way. My stomach did not seem quite right.
+Perhaps I strained it in coming home. The very next day
+after I came here, I commenced eating the ripe strawberries
+at meals, and have eaten them freely ever since. I sometimes
+eat nearly a pint at a meal. From the first they have seemed
+just the thing for me. They regulated my stomach and bowels,
+and they have strengthened them ever since.</p>
+
+<p>"I eat alone, and enjoy it capitally. I would not go back to
+the Institution (the Hygiene establishment) for a great
+deal, because there are so many things there to harass one's
+mind, or tempt him, at every corner of the street and almost
+every shop. Since I came here I have not tasted of any thing
+between meals, and have had no inclination to do so. I think
+there will be no trouble on that account.</p>
+
+<p>"I am busy out of doors a good deal of the time. I have hoed
+corn, piled cord-wood, driven team, picked strawberries,
+etc. At night I milk one cow. I go barefooted three or four
+hours in the middle of the day, use no flannels, dress very
+thin,&mdash;as little as I can get along with.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you wish me to learn to swim, if possible? There is a
+pond&mdash;a natural one&mdash;about a mile from this place. Will you
+not answer me soon, and give me your opinion on this and
+other subjects?</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"In love, yours, etc.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"<span class="smcap">Samuel.</span>"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+</div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>About a month later, viz., July 18, he wrote thus:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"<span class="smcap">My dear Doctor</span>:&mdash;Five months and a half without a symptom!
+I have not the slightest feeling to remind me of my old
+attacks. Should I not be thankful?</p>
+
+<p>"A short time since, I had a very sore stomach. It got out
+of order, I think, in consequence of eating too much. I
+broke off, went a day without nothing to eat; eat less now,
+and feel well. When Mrs. &mdash;&mdash; was here, she told me she
+thought I might eat all I craved. I did so, and suffered the
+consequences, though I cured myself.</p>
+
+<p>"There is a place here in the woods where raspberries are so
+thick that people get six quarts at a time. Apples are
+nearly ripe. Pears will soon succeed them.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Yours truly,<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"<span class="smcap">Samuel.</span>"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>Two weeks later than the above,&mdash;a little more than six months after the
+discontinuance of the epileptic attacks,&mdash;I received a letter from
+Samuel's guardian, in which he wrote as follows:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"We have continued the same course of diet as at your house;
+in short, have carried out your views perfectly as possible.
+Notwithstanding all this, he (Samuel) has lost flesh and
+strength; and, for the last few weeks, has fallen off
+greatly, in mental and physical vigor. He has run down in
+flesh to eighty pounds, is pale as this paper, coughs
+considerably, especially at night, yet does not expectorate
+very much. He had a spell of spitting blood, some five or
+six weeks ago, raised perhaps a gill. I do not think that it
+debilitated him very much at the time."</p></div>
+
+<p>Not far from this time Samuel was taken from the farm, and subjected to
+various changes in his habits, which were unauthorized, and which
+probably proved injurious. He took a large amount of cream,&mdash;an article
+which had not before been allowed him,&mdash;also a little fresh meat at his
+dinners. Instead<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[Pg 308]</a></span> of going without his breakfast, as before, he now
+appears to have taken breakfast; and in some instances, at least, to
+have used not only large quantities of cream at this early hour, but
+animal food likewise. There was a strong and increasing belief among his
+friends, that his food was not sufficiently nutritious, and that he was
+suffering for want of materials for blood; whereas the error lay in the
+other direction. His stomach and other digestive organs were overloaded
+and depressed by the large amount of nutriment he had for some time
+received. But more on this hereafter.</p>
+
+<p>He now appeared to be falling into what is called a galloping
+consumption, of which he died a few weeks afterward. There should have
+been a post mortem examination; but, from various causes, it was not
+attended to. At the time of his death he was about eighteen years of
+age.</p>
+
+<p>The treatment of this young man on the farm, was by no means what had
+been intended. The experiment of having him eat alone was hazardous, and
+I sternly protested against it. But the hours at which he chose to take
+his two meals, especially the first, were such as to preclude,
+practically, a better arrangement. There was no one that wished to eat
+at ten in the forenoon, but himself; and it was not customary for the
+family to convene for eating in the afternoon, till six. Now, although,
+abstractly considered, he selected the best hours for his meals, yet,
+taking society as it is, and human nature as <i>his</i> was, it would have
+been much better, in the result, had he eaten with the family at twelve
+and six. He would have eaten less, and yet would probably have been
+better nourished and better satisfied.</p>
+
+<p>No housekeeper who has the usual feelings of a housekeeper, will be
+content to set before a young man of seventeen or eighteen years of age,
+no more, for example, than one-sixth as much food as she would prepare
+for six such persons. It would seem to her almost like prisoner's fare.
+And then, few young men or old ones will content themselves with one
+sixth as much food when sitting alone, entirely unrestrained, as when in
+company, where pride or self-respect would have influence. And of one
+thing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[Pg 309]</a></span> we may, at least, be sure, viz., that Samuel, with his almost
+illimitable appetite, tempted by abundance and assured that he might,
+with safety, eat as much as that appetite craved, would never be the
+individual to stop short of fifty per cent more of carbon than his
+feeble machinery could appropriate; while every ounce of the surplus was
+burned up by his lungs, at an expense of that vital energy which should
+have been husbanded with the greatest care, and expended no faster than
+was indispensably necessary.</p>
+
+<p>His friends, no doubt, supposed&mdash;for such views greatly prevail&mdash;that he
+would not be likely to hurt himself on plain and simple food; and, in
+truth, that it was so light and unsubstantial that he needed a large
+amount of it to keep him alive.</p>
+
+<p>One or two individuals, largely interested in him, gave this as their
+opinion, more than once, and vainly believe, to the present day, that he
+ran down and died for want of proper nourishment. Whereas, we need
+nothing more than Samuel's own confessions, to show us, as clearly as
+the sunlight could possibly show us any thing, that it is much more
+likely that he perished from excess of nutrition than for the want of
+it.</p>
+
+<p>Let us look a little at particulars. It appears, most clearly, that
+Samuel always had before him a good supply of bread, of such excellent
+quality that he could make a full and agreeable meal of it. While under
+my special care, he could eat and enjoy a full meal of the driest bread;
+and he would even have proceeded beyond the limits of safety on it, had
+I permitted it, and this, too, without berries, sugar, or cream, to make
+it still more inviting, or without his "sweetened bread," as he called
+it, for a dessert. It is, moreover, by no means probable, that the
+morbid keenness of his appetite was at all diminished by being on a farm
+and in the open air much of the time.</p>
+
+<p>Observe, now, his living. Fruit, he says, he allowed himself always, at
+both dinner and supper, sometimes a pint at a meal. Dried apple-sauce,
+very "tart," as he called it, he appears to have had at every meal.
+Sugar, moreover, to sweeten his berries, etc., he always had on the
+table. Will one who has such an appetite as he had, eat moderately,
+with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[Pg 310]</a></span> fruit, sugar, and apple-sauce always before him,&mdash;and these
+regarded as a dessert, of which he may eat <i>ad libitum</i>, after having
+eaten a full and more than a full meal of bread? In potatoes, too, he
+indulged, as you will see by referring to his letter, in rather large
+quantity.</p>
+
+<p>Now the most healthy person in the world, would ere long have an acid
+stomach, as well as weakened lungs, who should undertake to live in this
+way; how much more a person who has long been feeble, especially in his
+lungs, nervous system, and even his digestive system, for that was
+active rather than strong.</p>
+
+<p>Indeed, there are many circumstances which favor the belief that he
+burned himself out by excess of stimulus, or, in chemical language, by
+excess of carbon. His thoughts seem to have been very largely on eating.
+It will be seen by the extracts I have made from his letters, that after
+speaking on any other needful topic, he would soon get back to the
+subject of eating. Observe, too, he says he feels no temptation to eat
+between his meals; but why? First, doubtless, because he eat to the full
+at his regular meals; and secondly, because the food was mostly, if not
+always, set away out of his reach.</p>
+
+<p>Another thing deserves consideration. Not only was he, but his friends
+also, inclined to the opinion that he would not, and perhaps could not,
+hurt himself on such things as plain dry bread; but they also appeared
+to believe, <i>practically</i>, at least,&mdash;and the belief is very
+common,&mdash;that the use of bread would atone for other transgressions.
+Thus, suppose he were to have, for once, a rich pudding to eat, or some
+baked beans, or sweetened rice pudding,&mdash;which, as you know, are of
+themselves very pure nutriments,&mdash;set before him, and he were to eat to
+the full, till the question should begin to arise in his own mind,
+whether he had not gone too far, it was apt to be thought, or rather
+<i>felt</i>, that an addition of plain bread, or some fruit, or a few cold
+potatoes, or some other vegetable, would be a correction for the
+preceding excess. Such, I say, is the virtue which, by a kind of
+tradition, is awarded to coarse and plain food, and to fruits, and even
+nuts. I know, indeed, that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[Pg 311]</a></span> this idea would hardly be defended in so
+many words; still, it is practically entertained.</p>
+
+<p>To make plainer a great dietetic error, I will explain my meaning. It is
+believed, for example, that a pound or two of greasy baked beans would
+not be so likely to hurt a person, if a little bread or fruit or potatoe
+or sauce were eaten after them, as if eaten alone,&mdash;a belief than which
+none can be more unfounded or dangerous.</p>
+
+<p>One more proof that Samuel was constantly inclined to excess in eating,
+is found in the fact that there was a continual tendency, in his
+stomach, to acidity, which was best relieved by a day of entire
+abstinence; and the same might be said of a tendency to relaxation of
+the bowels, and its correction. In short, if there be a plain truth
+fairly deducible from the facts in the case, it is that he was destroyed
+by a carbonaceous nutriment in too great proportion for his expenditure.</p>
+
+<p>It may have been feared by his friends, that he yielded, at this period,
+to <i>other propensities</i>. Indeed, one letter which I received after his
+death, more than intimated all this. The remark alluded to was as
+follows:&mdash;"I have had the fear that there was something unexplained
+about his case, as you say you once had." For various reasons, I am
+inclined to believe that the indulgence referred to had little to do
+with his comparatively sudden death. His whole soul was pivoted on that
+great central organ, the stomach. For this he lived, and for this,
+probably, he died.</p>
+
+<p>My own principal error, in relation to the case, was, in suffering him
+to go upon the farm with such unintelligent, though well-intentioned
+teachers. Lord Bacon and others have said, "A little knowledge is a
+dangerous thing;" and in nothing is the remark more applicable than to
+the first or pioneer knowledge of people on hygiene. From the very
+nature of the case it must be so. I ought either to have protested
+against the farm, <i>in toto</i>, or given such minute instructions that they
+could not have been easily mistaken. But I had my reasons, at the time,
+for the course I took, and I thought them quite sufficient. How easy it
+is, in this world, to find cause for misgivings!</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[Pg 312]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_LXXXII" id="CHAPTER_LXXXII"></a>CHAPTER LXXXII.</h2>
+
+<h3>SCARLATINA CURED BY LETTING ALONE.</h3>
+
+
+<p>At a certain season when scarlet fever was very prevalent among us, a
+member of my family was attacked with it slightly, and, as it was
+believed by almost everybody to be contagious, the case excited much
+alarm. The fact that in persons of my friend's age, it had, during the
+season, occasionally proved fatal, no doubt increased the apprehension
+and alarm, and led to many anxious fears about the treatment. Those who
+regarded my general method of treating disease as rather too "tame," and
+who supposed themselves in special danger of "taking the disease," were
+not only curious, but curiously inquisitive to know what I would do in
+my own family, to meet this supposed terrible malady.</p>
+
+<p>My first object was to quiet all fears, especially in the patient. It
+would have been easy&mdash;comparatively so&mdash;to do this, had it not been for
+the croakings of our neighbors. They told the sick person so many dismal
+stories of persons of her age&mdash;she was in middle life&mdash;who had died of
+scarlet fever, that it was not so easy to resist, wholly, the
+impressions. The most resolute and determined are apt to yield, in such
+circumstances.</p>
+
+<p>However, we did the best we could. We endeavored not only to keep her
+quiet in mind, but in body. All irregularities were carefully watched
+and guarded against; not by giving medicine to prevent evil, real or
+imaginary; not by prophylactics, as they are called; but by strictly and
+carefully obeying all the laws pertaining to the human, physical frame,
+so far as they were then understood.</p>
+
+<p>It was one object to keep the patient cool,&mdash;not, of course, chilly; for
+this would have been worse than a temperature a little too high. But
+excess of heat, in its application to the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[Pg 313]</a></span> surface, was dreaded as one
+of the worst of evils; and no pains were spared in attempts to keep the
+sick-room not only cool, but well ventilated. Her food, also, both for
+the sake of the general circulatory system, and for that, also, of the
+sympathizing skin, was not only cool, but unstimulating.</p>
+
+<p>In addition to all this, and in pursuance of the same general plan, a
+warm or rather a tepid bath was administered. But in applying this the
+greatest care was used. The water was only warmed just enough so as not
+to feel uncomfortable. It had so good an effect that it was repeated.</p>
+
+<p>The fever did not run so high as had been expected; and our
+apprehensions gradually disappeared. All went on well, and, in a few
+days, health was entirely restored. None of the neighbors sickened as
+the consequence, either of infection or of contagion.</p>
+
+<p>I do not mean, by the relation of this fact, to intimate that every case
+of scarlatina, treated in the same way, would be attended with similar
+results; for the powers of life are often fed by sicklier streams than
+in the present case. There is often a large amount, so to speak, of
+combustible matter in every "nook and corner," ready to be ignited by
+the burning flood, as it courses its way through the system. Yet, even
+then, the flame would be greatly diminished by keeping quiet. Who has
+not observed the difference, amid a general conflagration, between a
+most perfect stillness and a blustering or windy moment? The difference
+between perfect quiet of body and mind and great agitation and fear, in
+their effects on health and disease, is scarcely less striking, if not,
+indeed, more so.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[Pg 314]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_LXXXIII" id="CHAPTER_LXXXIII"></a>CHAPTER LXXXIII.</h2>
+
+<h3>IGNORANCE NOT ALWAYS BLISS.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Pope says of the freethinker, that he may be "all things in an hour." So
+may some people in their medical creed, at least, practically. They
+change their opinions with almost every change in the position of the
+weathercock. To-day they are very orthodox, medically; to-morrow they
+are ready to throw physicians and medicine to the four winds, if not to
+the dogs. Just as the freethinker is now very orthodox in religious
+matters, and in a day or an hour quite out at sea.</p>
+
+<p>My troubles with patients of this description have been numerous and
+great. They promise well, and probably <i>mean</i> well. But just as the new
+wad in a boy's pop-gun drives out the old one, in order to occupy its
+place, so the very next medical adviser, especially if he have much
+self-confidence, secures their entire trust, and I, for the time, seem
+to lose it. At least, mine is eclipsed. The people I am describing are
+of too easy virtue to be virtuous.</p>
+
+<p>And whence all this? It arises from ignorance&mdash;not very blissful
+ignorance, either. As well might Nebuchadnezzar's image, had it
+possessed sensation, been blissful, as such persons as these. Brass,
+iron, and clay may quite as easily unite to form a reliable compound, as
+these persons become settled in opinion with regard to a proper medical
+treatment.</p>
+
+<p>I had one patient of this description who harassed me for many years. It
+is true that he finally recovered; but I hardly know how. His recovery,
+when I reflect on it, leads me towards the belief that people oftener
+get well in spite of their medicine, than as the consequence of using
+it.</p>
+
+<p>He was originally a boot and shoe maker; and being exceedingly
+ambitious, he had neglected exercise, and worked too<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[Pg 315]</a></span> hard at the bench,
+as well as committed certain imprudences connected with diet, till he
+was almost a perfect wreck, from dyspepsia. He was about twenty-five
+years of age.</p>
+
+<p>At first, despite of his ignorance, I had hope of being able to put him
+upon the high road to health. He seemed unusually docile. But, as I have
+before said, virtue is sometimes too easy. He would believe in and
+follow me almost implicitly, for a little while; but when about half or
+perhaps two-thirds of the way to the land of health, he would become
+impatient, and either run to me anxiously or veer to somebody else. I
+have known him to start in pursuit of me when I was a full day's journey
+distant, and not easily found even then.</p>
+
+<p>But I have also known him go, with the same earnestness and anxiety, to
+another adviser, and follow his directions with the same care with which
+he had followed my own, and perhaps about as long. While following a
+person, however, he was, for a very short period at the first, entirely
+devoted to him and his principles, which, as far as it went, was
+undoubtedly favorable.</p>
+
+<p>Once he followed, for a time, a clairvoyant,&mdash;a female,&mdash;and took her
+medicine. She gave him, it is true, rather more medicine than he was
+willing to take, or even pay for; but as I gave him less than he
+desired, he thought it advisable to give her system a fair trial. I do
+not know whether he thought himself at all benefited by her
+prescriptions. Most certain it is that he did not long follow her, and
+that he came to me again some time afterwards, in the same condition as
+formerly.</p>
+
+<p>In another instance, he sought relief of the hydropathists. One of the
+most eminent of them had him under his care for a long time. I believe
+he even visited, and staid a week or two, at a Water Cure Institution.
+Yet he never acknowledged any benefit from this treatment. He finally
+tried to unite allopathy and hydropathy, and to invoke their combined
+forces. A meeting of myself and an eminent hydropathic practitioner was
+appointed and held, but even this did not result in his recovery.</p>
+
+<p>And yet he finally recovered, though I hardly know how. Such<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[Pg 316]</a></span> cases
+force me to the acknowledgment that human physical nature is tough, that
+we are machines made to live. Were it not so, this dyspeptic friend of
+mine must, at a comparatively early age, have sank to the grave, a
+victim of ignorance. He has, however, acquired wisdom in the school of
+experience.</p>
+
+<p>A brother of his, who was my patient in a similar complaint, and from
+similar causes, recovered in a very few months. But he was not a mere
+weathercock.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[Pg 317]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_LXXXIV" id="CHAPTER_LXXXIV"></a>CHAPTER LXXXIV.</h2>
+
+<h3>MEASLES WITHOUT SNAKEROOT AND SAFFRON.</h3>
+
+
+<p>In the early part of the year 1854, measles prevailed considerably, and
+was rather severe even under the most favorable circumstances. In our
+cities, such as New York and Boston, it destroyed a great number of
+valuable lives. It was by no means confined to children; it attacked
+adults, who had hitherto escaped it, as well as children.</p>
+
+<p>One of my most intimate female friends, who was over forty years of age,
+had often been exposed to it without taking it, and had begun to hope
+she should escape through life. The family to which she belonged had it,
+and in the end a blow fell on her. It alarmed her most fearfully. She
+declared, again and again, that she should not and could not survive it,
+and her fears greatly aggravated the severity of her symptoms.</p>
+
+<p>She was well acquainted with the most enlightened views on the subject
+of disease, and though her fears were great, she endeavored to pursue
+the proper course at first, which, as she knew, consisted mainly in
+supporting her strength as much as possible, in the most appropriate and
+healthful ways. She had no thought, it would seem, of taking medicine.</p>
+
+<p>But she had neighbors,&mdash;some of them of the gossiping kind,&mdash;who called
+on her frequently, to convince her of the necessity of <i>taking something
+to bring out the measles</i>, and to relate the pitiful story of Mr. and
+Mrs. Such-an-one, who perished because they would do nothing to save
+themselves, and to entreat her to take at least a little saffron and
+snakeroot tea. And they had some influence with her; not indeed at
+first, but after she became weakened by the disease. Drowning people, it
+is said, catch at straws.</p>
+
+<p>I was called to see her late one Saturday evening. She did<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[Pg 318]</a></span> not know, as
+she said, that any medicine was needed, but as she was considerably
+advanced in life, and many had sunk under the disease of late, and as
+she had such a continual feeling of depression and fainting, she thought
+it barely possible I might think it advisable to give her some little
+thing to make her feel more comfortable.</p>
+
+<p>There were indeed many things that required attention. Her feet were
+cold, unnecessarily so, and her room was not properly ventilated. Then
+she needed small draughts of water much oftener than she had been
+accustomed to receive them, or had dared to venture in their use. She
+needed no snakeroot and saffron, nor indeed any other form of herb tea.
+I gave particular orders with regard to the little things so needful in
+such cases, and in order to be on hand in case of alarm, I remained in
+the house till morning.</p>
+
+<p>More than once during the night, her courage nearly failed her, and I
+was summoned to her bedside. In one or two instances, she ventured to
+complain of me as neglectful of her case, because I gave her no
+medicine. But I cheered and encouraged her as well as I could. Her
+disease had made her a child, and she needed a child's treatment. I was
+not, indeed, without my fears, but I did not see how her condition could
+be alleviated by medicinal agents, unless they become necessary as a
+substitute for that faith in Nature, which she was accustomed to
+exercise when she had more strength. This faith, as I have already told
+you, did indeed sometimes fall a little below the proper standard, but
+the depression was in general but momentary.</p>
+
+<p>Early in the morning a near neighbor called, and kindly inquired how she
+did; and when assured that she was, as yet, no better, was unable longer
+to repress her feelings. "Why, in the case of <i>my</i> children," said she,
+"the measles never came out without giving them something, and they
+never would have done so to this day." Yet she had a large family. I
+might have asked her how she knew what Nature <i>could</i> have done unaided,
+since she gave her no opportunity to test her strength; but she was too
+ignorant to converse with on such subjects.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[Pg 319]</a></span> To have asked her how she
+knew whether her children got well in spite of the medicine they took,
+or on account of it, would have been but throwing pearls before swine,
+and I would not do it.</p>
+
+<p>It was very soon reported, all over the neighborhood, that Mrs. O. was
+in a very dangerous condition, and if she did not have some other
+doctor, would soon die. And, what was worst of all, the stories got back
+to Mrs. O. herself. And now came the tug of war; and had not the
+eruption, just at this time made its appearance, I do not know what the
+results might have been.</p>
+
+<p>Before noon, however, of this day (Sunday), every thing went right, and
+Mrs. O. was as blooming as she had been before pale and disconsolate. My
+good friend who had given me the morning homily, did not again make her
+appearance, and the neighbors in general who had dealt out their
+jeremiades so freely, kept themselves at a very respectful distance.</p>
+
+<p>The recovery was as rapid as could have been expected, even in the most
+vigorous young person. Nor was there any after-trouble, to require
+physic, or eye-water, or remedies for the dropsy. And,&mdash;what added to my
+own surprise, if not to that of the neighbors in general,&mdash;though she
+was a feeble woman, constitutionally, she recovered with as much
+rapidity as the most healthy and robust, and as well, to say the least,
+as if she had taken "<i>snakeroot and saffron</i>."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[Pg 320]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_LXXXV" id="CHAPTER_LXXXV"></a>CHAPTER LXXXV.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE CONSUMPTIVE PAIR.</h3>
+
+
+<p>A young man, recently married, called on me one day, and requested me to
+visit his family as soon as I could conveniently, for the purpose of
+having what he was pleased to call a general consultation.</p>
+
+<p>I called in due time, and found the case as follows: Both the husband
+and wife were descended from consumptive families, and though they had
+got along tolerably well till very recently, there were now, in them
+both, many evidences of approaching disease; and though consumptive
+people are said to be slow in admitting they have consumption, yet this
+young couple formed an exception to the general rule.</p>
+
+<p>In the bosom of the family, and possessed of their entire confidence, I
+had an ample opportunity for examining the case of this interesting
+couple. I found the tendency downward much more marked and rapid than I
+had expected, and I frankly told them so. Some of the circumstances
+were, indeed, rather peculiar. Consumptive people are generally sensual,
+while indulgence is peculiarly fatal to them. But here was a case more
+glaring than I had before seen. They had been married but about three
+months; nor were the indulgences of the table believed to be remarkable,
+as they were forbidden by a due regard to economy. They suffered much by
+excessive heat in their rooms, both by day and by night, and in several
+other ways, much more than by high living.</p>
+
+<p>But I endeavored to put all things right, and to convince them of the
+necessity of keeping them so. In a long, but very familiar series of
+conversations,&mdash;for the most part separately,&mdash;I endeavored to show them
+that conjugal life was a life of duty, as well as of enjoyment; and that
+consumptive people, in order<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[Pg 321]</a></span> to live out more than half their days,
+must forego a great many gratifications to which they might very
+naturally lay claim.</p>
+
+<p>The results of this conversation were probably worth a hundred-fold the
+expense they involved. This young couple are, to this hour, for aught I
+know, enjoying tolerable health; and their health is improving. Their
+children, though not strong, reap the full benefit of thorough parental
+reform; and their scrofulous tendencies seem every day more and more
+receding.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[Pg 322]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_LXXXVI" id="CHAPTER_LXXXVI"></a>CHAPTER LXXXVI.</h2>
+
+<h3>HOW TO CURE CHOLERA.</h3>
+
+
+<p>While cholera was prevailing in our large towns and cities, and a few
+cases were occurring and proving fatal in my own neighborhood, a friend
+of mine, who had till recently been a sea captain, complained, one day,
+of cholera symptoms, and begged to know what he could do to ward off the
+threatened disease.</p>
+
+<p>On inquiry I found he was more than half right, that cholera, surely
+enough, was already marking him for its victim. The rice-water
+discharges, so called, had actually commenced. Had he been any thing but
+a resolute tar, he would have gone on, most evidently, into severe if
+not fatal disease.</p>
+
+<p>I gave him the best advice I was able, with regard to diet, exercise,
+etc.,&mdash;probably the same, or about the same, that any thoughtful medical
+man, in the same circumstances, would have given. He was to be cheerful,
+quiet, and abstinent. For food, he was to use nothing but a little
+boiled rice,&mdash;at least, till the symptoms of cholera began to abate. He
+was especially directed to avoid all medicine.</p>
+
+<p>Several weeks passed away, during which I heard nothing from him. As I
+did not hear of his death, however, I concluded he must have recovered.
+One day, rather unexpectedly, I met him again, and inquired familiarly
+how he got along with his cholera? He laughed outright, but immediately
+added,&mdash;"Sit down, sir, and I will tell you the whole story."</p>
+
+<p>"After I left you," said he, "the thought struck me,&mdash;Why cannot I
+control the muscles of my system as well as my appetites and passions?
+Indeed, on occasions, I have done it, at least for a short time. These
+little rice-water evacuations cannot, in the nature of things, do much
+harm by being retained.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[Pg 323]</a></span> I can do what any man can. These frequent
+demands of nature seem to me very unreasonable. I will not yield to
+them. And, like a good sailor, I kept my word. For nearly a whole day I
+never permitted a single evacuation. Then, after yielding obedience, for
+once, to nature's clamorous demands, I again enforced my prohibitory
+law. My task, the second day, was less severe than it was the first, and
+on the third day I got along very comfortably. The fourth day I was
+well; and to-day you see me here."</p>
+
+<p>Whether he told me the truth, I do not know, of course; but I give the
+statement, as nearly as I can recollect, just as it was given to me. I
+have reason, however, for believing it to be true. The man is still
+alive, and is as likely to live for twenty or twenty-five years to come,
+as you or I, or any other individual.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Willard, of Troy, New York, under the full impression that the seat
+of human life is in the lungs, and not in the heart, and that even the
+blue color of the skin during the collapse of Asiatic cholera, is owing
+to an accumulation of unburnt carbon in the air cells of the lungs, made
+the experiment of trusting a few patients, in this disease, to the full
+influence of pure air, and nothing else. According to her account the
+experiments were most admirably successful. She cured every individual
+she experimented on (and it was a considerable number), and in a
+comparatively short period.</p>
+
+<p>It was my good fortune to escape cholera patients, with the single
+exception mentioned above. However, I am quite confident that, but for
+the alarm, which more than half paralyzes our efforts, we might much
+more frequently recover, under its deadly influences, especially if we
+begin the work of preparation in good season, and duly and faithfully
+persevere. There is much in enduring to the end.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[Pg 324]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_LXXXVII" id="CHAPTER_LXXXVII"></a>CHAPTER LXXXVII.</h2>
+
+<h3>OBSTINACY AND SUICIDE.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Without examining the term suicide, in regard to its various shades of
+meaning, I have placed it at the head of this chapter; for I think it
+properly belongs there. Of this, however, I leave the reader to judge
+when he has heard a statement of the facts in the case to which I have
+applied it.</p>
+
+<p>A young woman was admitted to the family where I was, to be treated for
+a nervous complaint so obstinate as to remind one who was not wholly
+insane nor strikingly imaginative, of the demoniacal possessions of
+eighteen hundred years ago. She would not eat; she would not drink; she
+would not or <i>could</i> not sleep. In short, she would not, if she could
+help it, do any thing which did not have an immediate bearing on her own
+well-being, for the moment. She was, in truth, one of the most selfish
+creatures in human shape I ever yet saw. If Dr. Johnson, who is said to
+have held that every sick person is a rascal, had seen her, I wonder
+what he would have said of the case.</p>
+
+<p>She was one of those young women who have never been governed, and hence
+cannot govern themselves. If she took it into her head to do or not to
+do a thing, she would be sure to carry her point, if not in one way, at
+least in another.</p>
+
+<p>How she came to consent to be placed under my care, I never knew; for
+all the neighbors and friends of the poor girl well understood that if
+she came there she would have to obey me; and yet that, if she <i>did</i>
+obey me, it would be the first instance in which she ever yielded to any
+mind or will but her own, either earthly or heavenly. Perhaps it was a
+last resort&mdash;a sort of desperation.</p>
+
+<p>I began my directions, however, as if I expected to be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">[Pg 325]</a></span> obeyed, and had
+no fears of any disinclination on her part. Some things which pleased
+her, she consented to attempt; others she would tell me she <i>could</i> not
+do. When I was quite confident nothing was wanting but a will, I
+sometimes asked for a reason; but it could, in no instance, be obtained.
+If I pressed her for an answer, or for a reason, she would either be
+silent or groan most dreadfully with pain!</p>
+
+<p>At length I saw that nothing could be obtained in this way, and that she
+must either attend to my directions, as far as was really in her power,
+or I could have nothing to do with her; and I told her so. She did not
+appear to care. Her alienation of feeling was so rapid that in a very
+few days she seemed almost to hate the very sight of me. Indeed, I
+believe she made statements to this effect to several of her friends.</p>
+
+<p>Her report, so unfavorable and so very strange, soon reached the ears of
+several very respectable people, who in wonder and surprise came to me,
+to learn what it meant, and among the rest came her minister. They made
+diligent though respectful inquiry whether the facts were as she
+represented them to be. I believe that, for the most part, they were
+satisfied with the treatment.</p>
+
+<p>But the girl herself was not satisfied. She could not leave the house
+without help; and yet it was easy to see that she was determined not to
+remain. She preferred, as she said, to die. Everybody seemed to pity
+her, despite of her unreasonableness, and the more for her
+unreasonableness. Her friends assured her that this treatment of mine
+afforded her the last chance of recovery, and begged her not to decide
+to leave us too hastily. It was all to no purpose, however; she said she
+preferred death in the street to a cure at my hands.</p>
+
+<p>There had been serious difficulty about her diet. I had strenuously
+forbidden the use of certain condiments which I thought injurious to
+her, but which she was resolutely determined to have. At first, a few
+things prepared to her taste had been smuggled in by certain psuedo
+friends; but this, when discovered, was absolutely prohibited.</p>
+
+<p>One evening, just at dark, some of her friends called to see<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">[Pg 326]</a></span> her and
+me. They found me in the sitting-room. We had a short conversation
+concerning the patient, in which they were made most distinctly to
+understand that they must either leave her to be treated wholly
+according to my discretion or remove her. They were left at a loss what
+course was best; but at length, in compliance with her clamors, they
+placed her in their carriage and carried her away.</p>
+
+<p>This was both the first and last patient that ever ran away from me, or
+that ever appeared to be desirous of doing so. On the whole, though no
+one pitied her more than myself, I was glad when she was gone. She was
+hardly worth curing. I never heard from her more, except vaguely, some
+time afterward, that she was dead, which was probably correct. Most
+certainly I could not have lived long, in her circumstances.</p>
+
+<p>I was very unwise in taking the charge of her, or, at least, in
+retaining her a moment after she refused to obey me. However, I had my
+reward. The public not being possessed of all the facts in the case,
+probably lost confidence in me. It was proper that they should. He who
+takes a viper to his bosom, must not be surprised if he suffers the
+natural consequences of his presumption.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">[Pg 327]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_LXXXVIII" id="CHAPTER_LXXXVIII"></a>CHAPTER LXXXVIII.</h2>
+
+<h3>HEALTH HOSPITALS.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Some of my friends, fully aware of my strong reliance on the
+recuperative powers of nature, and of my growing scepticism in regard to
+medicine, entered into combination and proposed to place me at the head
+of a hospital, in which I should have an opportunity, as they supposed,
+to test the superiority of my favorite practice.</p>
+
+<p>The buildings needful for the purpose, were to be furnished by one of
+the company, gratuitously. For the rest, a subscription was to have been
+started. The salary was to have been $1,000 a year. Matters were, in
+fine, carried so far that nothing remained but my own acceptance or
+non-acceptance, of the proposal, as there was no doubt that the
+subscription would readily succeed.</p>
+
+<p>But I saw, at the moment, so many difficulties, that after a careful
+consideration of the subject I was compelled to decline. Situated as I
+then was, and with very little self-confidence, perhaps the decision was
+right. And yet I have at times, ever since, regretted it. I was not then
+so fully aware as I now am, of the stern necessity of such institutions.</p>
+
+<p>Still later than this, I made an effort to establish a Hospital, on my
+own responsibility, and on my own plan. This was, simply, to receive
+patients at my house, and teach them, both by precept and example, <i>how
+to live.</i> In other words, I was to teach the art of preventing disease
+by obeying the physical and moral laws. Even disease itself was to be
+cured by obedience to these laws,&mdash;those of hygiene.</p>
+
+<p>At this time, I was residing in the country. Had I been in the crowded
+city, I might, perhaps, have succeeded. As it was, I found many
+difficulties. Just now, too, among other difficulties,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">[Pg 328]</a></span> my pecuniary
+condition became embarrassed, and I was anxious to be freed from debt
+before I begun a work which, at best, required a good deal of capital.
+Not to be able to labor wholly gratuitously would, as I thought, defeat
+my whole plan.</p>
+
+<p>In these circumstances, and after considerable delay, the whole thing
+was indefinitely postponed; and soon after, I removed to a region still
+less promising. I shall not, at present, if ever, repeat my attempts, at
+least on the plan of doing my work gratuitously. What costs little is,
+usually, little valued.</p>
+
+<p>And yet, such institutions are needed; and the time must come when they
+will succeed. Some eminent medical man who already possesses wealth,
+will perhaps make the trial. For myself, I prefer a more radical work. I
+prefer to throw my own make-weight, while I live, into the scale of
+early and correct physical education.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">[Pg 329]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_LXXXIX" id="CHAPTER_LXXXIX"></a>CHAPTER LXXXIX.</h2>
+
+<h3>DESTRUCTION BY SCROFULA.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Much is said in these days about scrofula, and much indeed should be
+said about it; for it has become a most frequent, not to say fatal,
+disease. For, if few die of it, immediately, it leads to, or renders
+more severe, numerous other diseases, which are more directly fatal. In
+truth, a scrofulous constitution not only prepares us for many other
+diseases, but renders them, when they assail us, much more severe than
+they otherwise would have been. Colds, fevers, and consumption, in
+particular, are not only more frequent in scrofulous people than in
+others, but also more intense or severe, as well as less manageable by
+medical skill.</p>
+
+<p>This disease itself, though often inherited, may, on the one hand, be
+greatly aggravated by improper treatment; or, by a proper course of
+living, may, on the other hand, be postponed many years, if not
+indefinitely. Living much in the open air, cheerfulness of mind, plain
+food and drink, and a proper regard to the skin, will do a vast deal
+towards arresting its progress, and in some instances will wholly
+prevent its doing us any harm. For though five millions of the
+inhabitants of the United States were probably born with a tendency to
+this formidable disease, and the same proportion&mdash;if not a greater&mdash;of
+each generation to come will be likely to have the same tendency, I do
+not believe it to be indispensably necessary that one-half of this
+number should die, as now they do, of consumption. I have not a doubt
+that two-thirds of them might, by proper management, be made to last
+many years, and some of them to what is usually called old age.</p>
+
+<p>It has been my lot to have a very great number of scrofulous patients,
+daring the last twenty-five years, from almost<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">[Pg 330]</a></span> every part of the United
+States. One of the worst cases I ever had was that of Mrs. &mdash;&mdash;, of New
+Hampshire. Her history, prior to the period when she came to me, is very
+briefly as follows.</p>
+
+<p>She was born of parents, who, at the time of her birth, were very near
+their dotage; in consequence of which, as it was believed, she held her
+existence by a very feeble tenure. At two and a half years of age, she
+was nearly destroyed by dysentery, or by the medicine given to arrest
+her disease, or by both. In addition to this and almost before she
+recovered, she had an attack of scarlet fever, which was very severe,
+and which was also probably treated freely by medicine. By this time
+there is no doubt that scrofula, at first slightly inherited, had become
+pretty well riveted on a constitution already but poorly prepared to
+endure it.</p>
+
+<p>In her seventeenth year, she was afflicted with a troublesome eruption,
+which was cured, or at least checked, by a wash of sugar of lead. (See
+Chapter XIII.) She was married at twenty-one; and though stinted in her
+growth, so as to be almost a dwarf, she seemed, at first, to be
+tolerably healthy. But in the course of a year she suffered from various
+complaints, to which scrofulous and otherwise debilitated females are
+subject in early conjugal life, for which she was treated&mdash;as I suppose
+very injudiciously&mdash;with active medicine, especially calomel.</p>
+
+<p>And now, as if to render what was already bad enough a great deal worse,
+she made use of a certain patent medicine, which had been greatly lauded
+in the public papers. She was also persuaded to make use of a more
+stimulating diet than before; which was doubtless to her great
+disadvantage, in such a feeble condition. Her diet, though it should
+have been <i>nourishing,</i> should have been <i>less stimulating</i> than usual,
+and not more so.</p>
+
+<p>Falling in with the famous Sylvester Graham, who was lecturing near her
+at the time, she was overpersuaded to change her habits very suddenly,
+especially her dietetic habits. From a highly seasoned diet, she was at
+once transferred to a very plain one, to which was added cold bathing
+and abundant exercise<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">[Pg 331]</a></span> in the open air. This change, though it caused
+great emaciation, appeared to restore her health entirely. Her appetite
+and general strength were such that she thought it almost impossible she
+could ever be sick again.</p>
+
+<p>But now a heavy domestic affliction befell her, which again very much
+reduced her; and, as she was wont to say afterward, "killed her." What
+it was, however, I was never informed. Being greatly depressed, she
+undoubtedly confined herself to the house too much, and in one instance
+when she ventured out, she unluckily exposed herself to a damp east
+wind, which appeared to give her cold. To remove this, and for other
+purposes, she fasted rigidly, for several days.</p>
+
+<p>It was at this time that she came, in part, under my care. But she was
+already so much diseased in mind and body, and so ignorant of any just
+principles of hygiene, as to be greatly liable to be led about by the
+fancy or whim of this friend or that&mdash;sometimes by Mr. Graham and
+others, who only relied on Nature; and at others, by those who went to
+the opposite extreme. I could do little for her to any valuable purpose,
+and was glad to send her to the elder Dr. Jackson, of Boston. Not,
+however, till I had given her to understand, in general, that aside from
+her scrofulous tendencies, I did not know what ailed her; and that, so
+far as I could understand her case, her safest course was to avoid
+medicine and depend almost wholly on a careful obedience to God's laws,
+physical and moral, especially to his laws of hygiene. I had not then
+fully learned how much she had been abused, in early life, by
+unnecessary dosing and drugging.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Jackson told her it was evident there was something in her case very
+much out of the way; but he would be honest with her, and confess that
+he did not know what it was. He proposed to have Dr. Putnam see her, and
+another physician at Lowell. He insisted, however, on a more nutritious
+diet.</p>
+
+<p>The last suggestion was heeded for awhile, but evidently to her
+disadvantage. Under the impression that in order to obtain more
+nutriment she must do so, she suddenly returned to the free use of
+flesh, butter, eggs, milk, etc., which, for a long<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">[Pg 332]</a></span> time, till now, she
+had refused. This course brought upon her much acidity of the stomach.
+She returned once more to the plain diet, and by avoiding extremes and
+letting alone medicine, according to the general tenor of my directions,
+she partly recovered, and seemed destined to still higher advance
+towards the land of health and life.</p>
+
+<p>But here, again, domestic trials, like a flood, came upon her, and
+brought her into great mental anxiety and embarrassment, as well as into
+that weak and vacillating condition which had once before existed, and
+which I have already described. To-day she would use her well-balanced,
+plain diet; to-morrow, perhaps, resort to the starvation system, for a
+few days. Then, in the fear of suffering from that, she would resort
+again, for a few days, to luxurious living.</p>
+
+<p>Now, too, she would adhere to and follow this physician, now that, and
+next, none at all; or, perchance, follow some quack. I was not in a
+situation to exert much influence over her, or it is possible she might
+still have been saved. She would, indeed, adhere to my general plan,
+when all else that promised more seemed to fail, and perhaps would have
+been more persevering, but for her friends. They wanted to have the
+"prophet" do "some great thing," and cure her as by magic or miracle.</p>
+
+<p>In saying these things, it is far enough from being my intention to be
+reproachful. She was not educated to a knowledge of herself; and she was
+by no means, at the present time, what she had been in her best days. It
+is not to be wondered at, therefore, that she acted like a wayward
+child; though it is greatly to be regretted, since, in her
+circumstances, it probably cut off every chance of her recovery.</p>
+
+<p>In the spring, two or three years after her first change of diet, a
+cough with which she had occasionally been troubled before, came on with
+renewed violence, and never after wholly left her. She remained in this
+condition till the opening of the next year, when her cough made still
+farther advances, and was attended with hectic fever. She died in the
+month of May following.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333">[Pg 333]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>A post mortem examination was made, which determined the case to have
+been what Dr. Jackson and myself and many others supposed, a case of
+scrofula or struma; though it was certainly attended with many curious
+and rather anomalous symptoms. Though there were no ulcers in the lungs,
+they were found full of tubercles; and so were the mesenteric glands,
+and the lining membrane of the alimentary canal. It was even said by the
+principal individual concerned in the examination, that her whole body
+was but a mass of disease. For myself, I was necessarily absent at the
+time, and therefore have no facts of my own to present.</p>
+
+<p>I never had a case, either before or since, in which my hands were so
+completely tied as in this. The patient probably had as much confidence
+in me as in anybody; and yet she would not long follow me implicitly and
+strictly, without yielding to the whims of her friends or her enemies,
+and halving the practice with some physician or quack, either known or
+unknown. Under the care of some good, common-sense physician, and with
+full faith in him on the part of all concerned, I am still of opinion,
+as I always have been, that she might have recovered and lived many
+years, and, perhaps, been able to do a vast amount of good.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334">[Pg 334]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XC" id="CHAPTER_XC"></a>CHAPTER XC.</h2>
+
+<h3>STARVING OUT DISEASE.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Dr. Johnson, one of the best British writers on dyspepsia, advises his
+medical brethren to starve out the disease, as the surest way of getting
+rid of it. He says he has by far the best success with those patients
+who submit to this course. It is not starvation, exactly, though it
+savors of it. He says, keep them on just two pints of Indian-meal
+gruel&mdash;by which he appears to mean thin hasty pudding&mdash;a day, and no
+more. If they are really afraid of starving, after the trial of a few
+weeks, let them eat a few times of something else; but they must soon
+return to the starvation plan.</p>
+
+<p>I have usually preferred cakes of Indian meal, or wheat meal unbolted
+and baked very hard, to gruel or pudding. The reason is, that I consider
+mastication very essential to good digestion, especially in the case of
+dyspeptics. I believe the small quantity of Indian meal that goes into
+two pints of gruel, or even of pudding, were it firmly baked, would hold
+out and sustain the health and strength of an individual much longer
+than gruel; and it will, by most persons, be preferred.</p>
+
+<p>One of my dyspeptic patients, a young man of great resolution, was put
+upon ten ounces a day of thin Indian-meal cake, or johnny cake; and it
+wrought wonders. The prescription was made about twenty years ago, and
+no young man under forty years of age, in Massachusetts, is more
+efficient, at the present time, than he.</p>
+
+<p>To another young man, similarly afflicted, I recommended eight ounces of
+the same kind of food. He was from a family that had long known me, and
+that appeared to confide in me. I have never heard from him since. My
+conjecture is that he refused to follow the directions, and hence did
+not wish to communicate<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335">[Pg 335]</a></span> with me any farther. He may be still a
+dyspeptic, as the consequence, though it is certainly possible he may
+have obeyed the prescription, to the saving of his health.</p>
+
+<p>Some have supposed that a quantity of food so small, is not sufficient
+to keep alive an ordinary adult; but they are mistaken. Much smaller
+quantities than eight ounces have proved sufficient for this purpose, in
+a great many instances. Three or four ounces have been found adequate to
+every want, in these circumstances.</p>
+
+<p>As I regard this as a highly important point, I will endeavor to
+establish it by two or three facts, which have come, in part, under my
+own observation. The first appeared in the <i>Boston Medical and Surgical
+Journal</i>, for 1851, and in several other papers. The other is from a
+Philadelphia paper, and is as reliable as the former. It is, however, of
+much later date; viz., December, 1853.</p>
+
+<p>Jervis Robinson,<a name="FNanchor_K_11" id="FNanchor_K_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_K_11" class="fnanchor">[K]</a> of Nantucket, was a ship-master, born in 1800. In
+1832, he became a most miserable dyspeptic. For three or four years he
+relied on the popular remedy of beef-steak three times a day, and with
+the usual consequences. It made him worse rather than better.</p>
+
+<p>In the year 1836, a friend of his who had heard lectures on dyspepsia,
+or had read on the subject, suggested a new remedy. It was three Graham
+crackers daily, one at each meal, without any drink at the time of
+eating. This, it was said, if persevered in long enough, would certainly
+effect a radical cure.</p>
+
+<p>But I prefer to let Mr. Robinson tell his own story, which he does in
+the following manner:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"The novelty as well as simplicity of this prescription, greatly
+interested my mind, and I laid the case before my friends. But they, as
+with one voice, endeavored to dissuade me from a course which they said
+would certainly destroy me. They were particularly afraid of the sudden
+change from a full flesh diet to one entirely vegetable.<a name="FNanchor_L_12" id="FNanchor_L_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_L_12" class="fnanchor">[L]</a> But I told
+them I might<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336">[Pg 336]</a></span> as well die in one way as another, and that I was resolved
+on the experiment.</p>
+
+<p>"At first I had no Graham crackers; I therefore used the common soft
+Graham bread cut in thin slices and thoroughly dried. Twenty-one ounces
+a week was my allowance. Of these I made three meals a day, at the hours
+of six, twelve, and six. Small as the allowance was, I spent half an
+hour in consuming it. Occasionally at evening, I omitted one-half of
+even these scanty rations.</p>
+
+<p>"My drink, for twenty-four hours, was one gill of water, divided into
+three equal parts, and one of them to be taken just two hours after each
+meal. I also used a cold shower-bath at rising in the morning, and
+walked a mile before breakfast, having retired at ten the previous
+evening.</p>
+
+<p>"Under this course, my flesh and strength wasted fast. I was weighed
+every week, and for the first three or four weeks, I lost half a pound a
+day. The daily loss then diminished somewhat, but was not entirely
+discontinued till the lapse of two months. At this time I had lost, in
+all, twenty pounds weight.</p>
+
+<p>"All this time the cry of starvation was heard from every quarter, and I
+must frankly own that, for a week or so, I was not myself wholly without
+fears. However, my head felt so much better, and my spirits so much
+revived, that I began to take courage. My bowels, moreover, which up to
+this time had rarely moved, and never to much purpose, now began to move
+more regularly, and in about three weeks they resumed their functions
+entirely, both as regarded time and quantity.</p>
+
+<p>"At the end of two months, I ceased to lose flesh, and remained, in this
+respect, about stationary for four weeks; but after this I began to
+gain. At first, the increase of weight was very slow indeed, but soon it
+became much more rapid, so that in two months more I gained nearly what
+I had lost, or at the average rate of five or six ounces a day. For a
+part of this time, however, the gain was half a pound a day, or nearly
+three times as much as the whole weight of my food, and more than the
+whole weight of my food and drink together.</p>
+
+<p>"I have said that I ate three ounces, by weight, of Graham<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_337" id="Page_337">[Pg 337]</a></span> bread,
+daily,&mdash;an ounce at each meal. But I afterwards procured the Graham
+crackers in Boston, and used them a part of the time. Of these, too, I
+continued frequently to omit half a cracker at evening. The water,
+also,&mdash;one-third of a gill,&mdash;was generally omitted at evening.</p>
+
+<p>"As to my appetite, during the experiment, I can truly say that, though
+I never in my life came to the table with a better appetite, I was never
+better satisfied with my meals when they were finished. After the first
+three weeks, I had little or no thirst. Nor had I, so far as I now
+recollect, any desire to eat between meals. In truth, food, except at my
+meals, was seldom thought of. But, on this subject, my mind had been
+made up at the outset. I will only add, on this point, that my bread,
+during the whole time, tasted better, far better, to me than the nicest
+cake formerly had.</p>
+
+<p>"As regards perspiration, my skin, after the first three or four weeks
+(during which it was dry and hard), became soft and moist. When I used
+much exercise, I perspired very freely. My sleep was sound and
+satisfying. Indeed, the whole "machinery," so far as I could judge,
+worked admirably during the latter part of the experiment, and at its
+close I could perform a good day's work at my trade.</p>
+
+<p>"I was about thirty years of age when I made the experiment. I am now
+above fifty. I have not always, nor indeed generally, been as rigid in
+my habits since that time. In one instance, however, I worked two weeks
+on a ship, at "sheathing," on but five ounces of food a day, and was
+never better in my life, and never felt less fatigue at night. In fact,
+I felt much better at night than I did in those instances in which I
+indulged myself in eating two pounds of food a day.</p>
+
+<p>"During a part of the time of my principal experiment, I kept a grocery.
+On leaving this, I established a Graham boarding-house, in which I
+continued for one year.</p>
+
+<p>"About a year after the termination of my experiment, I had occasion,
+for about three weeks, to work in a bake-house, where the mercury in the
+thermometer was at 90&deg;. While here, I ate twelve ounces of dry bread and
+two apples a day, and drank<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_338" id="Page_338">[Pg 338]</a></span> nothing. Yet I perspired as freely as ever,
+nor did I perceive any difference in the quality or the quantity of any
+other secretions or excretions."</p>
+
+<p>The reader will take notice that Mr. Robinson's principal or starvation
+experiment, lasted five months, or one hundred and fifty days. He will
+also observe that he left off the experiment with nearly or quite as
+much flesh as he had when he commenced, and with a very great increase
+of muscular strength.</p>
+
+<p>The above statement was so remarkable, that not a few medical men and
+others regarded it as a hoax. "To live on three ounces of bread, and yet
+be in daily employment," they said, "even though such employment were of
+a kind likely to call for very little muscular effort, is altogether
+incredible. And what renders the whole so much more unlikely, is, the
+yet more extraordinary assertion, that, part of the time, he gained more
+in weight than the whole amount eaten and drank."</p>
+
+<p>It was no wonder that medical and all scientific men were staggered at
+the account. I was in doubt myself, in regard to the functions of waste,
+and made a very rigid examination, in order to be certain of the facts,
+before I ventured to publish any thing. On one or two points, I
+afterward obtained Mr. Robinson's particular statement, as follows:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"In regard to the question you propose, I shall have to guess a little.
+So far as the fluids are concerned, however, I think it was about half a
+pint a day. The solids&mdash;for I weighed them this morning, and they appear
+to me about equal to those voided during the experiment&mdash;are fully half
+a pound."</p>
+
+<p>I also recently ascertained another curious fact. Mr. Robinson's
+eyesight, prior to the experiment, had, for many years, been very poor,
+but was perfectly restored during its progress. It appeared, also, that
+he had again resorted to the exclusive use of bread and water for food;
+but not in such small quantities as before. Mr. Robinson, of course, is
+now above sixty years old.</p>
+
+<p>One medical correspondent of the <i>Boston Medical and Surgical Journal</i>,
+pressed Mr. Robinson, very hard, for corroborative<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_339" id="Page_339">[Pg 339]</a></span> testimony concerning
+the facts just stated, to which Mr. Robinson very kindly replied, by
+sending him the certificate of his wife, Mrs. E. D. Robinson, whose
+veracity is undoubted. The certificate was as follows:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"The most of the facts which my husband has written, I well recollect,
+and will give my name as a voucher for the truth of them."</p>
+
+<p>A brother of Mr. Robinson, at Holmes' Hole, whom I called on, appeared
+to give full credence to the statements of the latter, although he was
+much opposed to the experiment, at the time it was made, and mortally
+detested all his bread and water tendencies.</p>
+
+<p>I will only add, that a medical man who was sceptical in regard to the
+whole matter, became finally convinced that the story bore the marks of
+truth, and made public his conviction, in the subjoined statements and
+reasonings.</p>
+
+<p>"It is no true philosophy to refuse credence to a statement of fact
+supported by competent evidence, simply on the ground that we cannot
+understand how it can be. That his system (Robinson's) absorbed a very
+considerable amount of weight from the moisture at all times existing in
+the atmosphere, I have no doubt&mdash;partly through the skin, but chiefly,
+as I apprehend, through the mucous membrane of the lungs. The fact that
+they are capable of transmitting such an amount of water in a very short
+time, as may be rendered evident by breathing on a cold, polished
+surface, is a pretty conclusive proof that they may, under favorable
+circumstances, be as active in absorption.</p>
+
+<p>"That the alvine evacuations are purely and entirely a secretion, to
+become an excretion, I have been satisfied for a number of years; and I
+am glad of this new and striking&mdash;I might say incontrovertible&mdash;proof
+that it is so. To be sure, all matters incapable of solution and
+digestion, pass off through the alimentary canal, but they are purely
+accidental. One of the most satisfactory proofs, to my mind, of the
+fact, has been the discharges from the bowels of a healthy infant. The
+whole of the milk is so digested that there is no residuary<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_340" id="Page_340">[Pg 340]</a></span> matter to
+pass through the canal, and yet the discharges are abundant."</p>
+
+<p>The case of Mary B. Adams, of Oakham, Mass., though differing
+considerably from that of Mr. Robinson, is, nevertheless, remarkable. I
+have dwelt so long on the preceding case, however, that I must study
+brevity. What I shall say, was published in the papers of some years
+since, and is from her own pen.</p>
+
+<p>"In June, 1840, I had an abscess in my throat, accompanied by slow
+fever, and in the fall, dysentery. In the autumn of the same year, I
+discontinued the use of animal food.</p>
+
+<p>"In 1842, I had an attack of spinal complaint, which lasted me three
+months. In the spring of 1843, I had lung fever, followed, for nearly
+two years, by a cough, and accompanied by a very indifferent appetite. A
+piece of bread three inches square and one inch thick would serve me for
+a meal. A hard fit of coughing, however, was sure to follow every meal.
+I also became very much emaciated. In the fall of 1844, I took some
+medicine which removed my cough.</p>
+
+<p>"Through the winter and spring of 1845, I had diarrh&oelig;a; and in the
+last of May, I was suddenly and completely prostrated. I had risen in
+the morning more unwell than usual, but before flight I was suffering
+intolerable pain through the kidneys and back; and it was not till the
+lapse of two weeks that I was able to walk about the house. All this
+while I was entirely destitute of an appetite, though my stomach
+continually craved acids. For six months, I lived almost wholly on
+fruit. Four good-sized apples a day,<a name="FNanchor_M_13" id="FNanchor_M_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_M_13" class="fnanchor">[M]</a> was all that I required. My
+drink was, for the most part, catnip tea. Sometimes I could take sugar
+and milk in my tea; at others, milk could not be borne. I drank four
+teacupfuls of it a day.</p>
+
+<p>"While I was at one period expectorating largely, I had custards made
+from the white of eggs, sweetened with loaf<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_341" id="Page_341">[Pg 341]</a></span> sugar, of which I took
+three table-spoonfuls, every twenty-four hours. I slept but little&mdash;not
+more than two hours in twenty-four.... My bowels were very costive; I do
+not suppose there were more than two or three natural evacuations during
+the whole of the six months I am describing."</p>
+
+<p>A more particular account of her diet, in 1846, is elsewhere given. It
+is in the following words: "During this year I took but little food, and
+that of the simplest. I lived chiefly on fruit, such as apples,
+currants, strawberries, gooseberries, and blueberries, and other acid
+fruits."</p>
+
+<p>Some years later than this, Miss Adams was still living very simply. "My
+food," she says, "is raised bread, and butter, apple or pumpkin pie, and
+fruit in small quantity. I do not require more than a third as much food
+as most females. In fact, I can eat but little of any thing. My food,
+even now, distresses me very much, unless I vomit it. I eat no animal
+food, and roots of every kind distress me. I drink tea; I cannot drink
+water; it seems, in swallowing it, more like a solid than a liquid."</p>
+
+<p>There would be no difficulty in adding largely to the list of cases of
+dyspepsia which have been cured on the starvation plan; but these must
+suffice for the present chapter.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_K_11" id="Footnote_K_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_K_11"><span class="label">[K]</span></a> For obvious reasons, I give real names and dates in this
+chapter.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_L_12" id="Footnote_L_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_L_12"><span class="label">[L]</span></a> Even Mr. Graham himself, whom he accidentally met, repeated
+to him the same caution!</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_M_13" id="Footnote_M_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_M_13"><span class="label">[M]</span></a> Or other fruits equal to them. The reader must not forget
+that she had already subsisted five years without animal food, and that
+what she took of vegetable food was a very small quantity&mdash;little more
+than was taken by Mr. Robinson.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_342" id="Page_342">[Pg 342]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XCI" id="CHAPTER_XCI"></a>CHAPTER XCI.</h2>
+
+<h3>DIETING ON MINCE PIE.</h3>
+
+
+<p>A recent letter from a patient of mine, contains the following
+statement: "I met, yesterday, with a poor dyspeptic. He said he felt
+very bad indeed, and that he had been <i>dieting</i> for a long time. I asked
+him what his diet had been. He said 'Bread and butter, for the morning
+meal; beef, etc., for dinner; and nothing at all, for supper, but a
+piece of mince pie and one or two glasses of cider.'"</p>
+
+<p>Admitting this to be dieting, it is, at least, such a kind of dieting as
+will not be likely, very soon, to cure dyspepsia. And yet to hundreds,
+if not thousands, <i>dieting</i> is little more than an increased attention
+to what they eat&mdash;I mean, from meal to meal. Yet no changes of food,
+even for the better, will compensate for this increased watchfulness
+over&mdash;I might perhaps say devotion <i>to</i>&mdash;the stomach. The Philippians,
+to whom Paul wrote so touchingly, are not the only people in the world
+whose god is their abdominal region. Such an anxious attention to the
+demands of an abnormal appetite, only tends to increase that
+determination of blood to the stomach, to prevent which all judicious or
+effective dieting is intended.</p>
+
+<p>Dyspepsia only renders her devotees&mdash;her very slaves&mdash;the more enslaved.
+With such, every attempt to cure the disease by dieting is still stomach
+worship. They must have their very medicine taste agreeably and <i>sit</i>
+well. At all events, they must and will have their minds continually
+upon it, and must and will be continually inquiring whether they may
+safely eat this article or that or the other.</p>
+
+<p>It would be almost true to affirm that the fall of man from primeval
+integrity, consists essentially in dyspepsia, and that every descendant
+of Adam and Eve is a dyspeptic. The attention<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_343" id="Page_343">[Pg 343]</a></span> of mankind generally, is
+directed too exclusively as well as too anxiously, to the inquiry, what
+they shall eat, and what they shall drink. That we must eat, and drink
+too, is quite obvious&mdash;nothing more so. That the Author of nature
+intended, also, that we should take pleasure in our eating and drinking,
+is scarcely less so. But does he secure to himself the most pleasure who
+thinks most about it? Most certainly there is pleasure&mdash;<i>much</i> pleasure
+in the anticipation of good. We may, by aid of imagination, then, feast
+upon the same dish half a dozen times. Yet, does not this&mdash;I repeat the
+idea&mdash;tend to determine an increased amount of blood and of nervous
+energy to the stomach, and to aggravate the disease? Let the reader
+ponder this question.</p>
+
+<p>My own most deliberate conviction is, that the stomach, in general, is
+best managed, and the greatest amount of gustatory enjoyment secured,
+when it is subjected most fully to good habits; that this organ, being
+blind and deaf, is best served when directed by the wiser head; or, to
+express the same truth in a better way, instead of asking the stomach at
+any time what it will have, <i>we should ask the head what is right</i>, and
+follow its directions. If the stomach is pleased, why, very well; if
+not, let it go without being pleased. Give it what you think is right,
+all things considered, and think no more about it. If it rebels, give it
+a smaller quantity. If it still complains, lessen still more the
+quantity, and perhaps diminish the frequency of your meals. There is no
+danger of starving to death, as every one must be convinced who has read
+carefully the two preceding chapters. When the system is really in a
+suffering condition for want of nutriment, then the stomach will be able
+to receive more, and dispose of it. If you give it what is right for it,
+there will be no want of appetite&mdash;at least, very long. Nay, more; the
+mere animal or gustatory enjoyment of that food which the head tells us
+is right, and to which we conscientiously adhere, will, in the end, be
+far greater than in the case of continual inquiry and anxiety and
+anticipation and agitation about it.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_344" id="Page_344">[Pg 344]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Dyspepsia, I know, has a great variety of causes&mdash;as many, almost, as it
+has forms. And yet I do not believe it can often be induced by other
+causes alone, as long as the stomach is treated correctly. Give to that
+organ, habitually, what is exactly right for it, both as regards quality
+and quantity, and I do not believe we shall hear any more, in this
+world, about dyspepsia.</p>
+
+<p>But he who would confine his stomach to food which his head tells him is
+right, will not surely put mince pie into it. He must know that such a
+strange compound, however agreeable, will in the end be destructive, not
+only of health, but of gustatory enjoyment.</p>
+
+<p>The mince pie dyspeptic is just the man for quackery to feed upon. He
+will keep his nerves in such a state as to render him liable to read
+about and swallow all the wonderful cures of the day&mdash;whether hunger
+cures, nutrition cures, clairvoyant cures, "spiritual" cures, or any
+other cures. Now it is great gain, when we have got beyond all these,
+when we simply put into our stomachs what is right, and think no more
+about it, leaving ourselves to the event; and this in sickness and
+health both.</p>
+
+<p>A man in the eastern part of Massachusetts,&mdash;an asthmatic,&mdash;told me he
+had spent six hundred dollars in fourteen years, on quack medicines, and
+that he was nothing bettered by them. That man, you may depend, is the
+slave of his feelings. No man who has been accustomed to dictate to his
+stomach what it shall have, and make it submit, would ever do this. A
+very poor woman, on the Green Mountains, assured me she had spent, or
+rather wasted, four hundred dollars in the same way. We must drop all
+this. I do not now say we must drop or lay aside all medicine, in all
+cases; that is quite another question. But I do say, we must rely on
+obedience to the laws of God, or on doing right, not on medicine. It
+will be time enough to rely on medicine when our family physician urges
+it upon us as indispensable.</p>
+
+<p>If I have a single regret with regard to the instruction I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_345" id="Page_345">[Pg 345]</a></span> have given
+my patients, from time to time, it is that I have not pressed upon them
+more forcibly and perseveringly, such views as are comprised in the
+foregoing reasonings and reflections. They are all-important to the
+dyspeptic, and by no means less important to the healthy than to the
+diseased.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_346" id="Page_346">[Pg 346]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XCII" id="CHAPTER_XCII"></a>CHAPTER XCII.</h2>
+
+<h3>GIANTS IN THE EARTH.</h3>
+
+
+<p>It is said of Job, and his friends who visited him to condole with him
+in his sufferings, that they sat down together and said nothing, for
+seven days and seven nights.</p>
+
+<p>Nearly twenty years ago, a man of gigantic frame, but haggard
+appearance, came to me, and after the usual compliments,&mdash;which were
+indeed very dry ones,&mdash;sat down by my side, and said nothing; and this
+for the very same reason which is assigned as the cause of the long
+silence of Job and his friends&mdash;his grief and his sufferings were very
+great.</p>
+
+<p>His disease, however, was very different in its nature from that of Job.
+It was more like insanity than small pox, or eruptive disease of any
+kind. But hear him tell his own story, which I solicited at his hands
+for the express purpose of publication:</p>
+
+<p>"My business, until I was twenty years of age, was farming. Since that
+time, it has been mechanical, and for the most part sedentary. From my
+youth, I ate animal food of all kinds, prepared in the usual manner.
+Twice a day I partook, more or less freely, of such vegetables as are in
+general use. Fruits, as they came in their season, I ate whenever and
+wherever I could lay hands on them, more especially apples; these last
+at almost all hours of the day, and almost without number. I was also in
+the habit of eating a luncheon at nine or ten o'clock in the morning,
+and just before going to bed.</p>
+
+<p>"My drinks, till 1830, were principally tea, coffee, cider, and beer;
+but sometimes I used rum, brandy, molasses and water, milk and water,
+etc. For twelve years previous to 1837, I used tobacco. From my youth, I
+have had a fondness for reading and study&mdash;have spent many hours in
+reading after the whole village were asleep.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_347" id="Page_347">[Pg 347]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"My health I considered good, compared with that of my acquaintances,
+and I was able to labor hard, although I was subject to dizziness and
+vomiting with such intensity that I could not walk or stand without
+assistance; and for a number of days, the complaint seemed to bid
+defiance to all medical aid. Here began the day of retribution, and
+bitterly have I suffered for my intemperance, both in eating and
+drinking. At length, my dizziness in some measure wore away, so that I
+returned to my work; but my system had received a shock that was not to
+be got rid of at once. And although my dizziness and inclination to
+vomit were in some measure removed, yet I grew weaker by degrees, so
+that by spring I was unable to perform my daily labor.</p>
+
+<p>"I continued to decline until summer, when I was attacked with a violent
+cough&mdash;from what cause I did not know. Some said it was the
+hooping-cough, some said it was <i>la grippe</i>. Suffice it to say, I took
+all the medicines prescribed by our family physician, followed all his
+good advice, and took all to no purpose. I was also persuaded to try the
+prescription of a celebrated physician in a neighboring town; but, alas!
+his prescription was tried in vain.</p>
+
+<p>"My cough and dizziness not having left me, I tried a respectable
+physician of Boston, who, with an honesty of heart that does credit to
+his profession, bid me buy a ninepence worth of liquorice, keep my mouth
+and throat moist by chewing a little of that, and let my cough have its
+course; 'For,' said he, 'though I should like to sell you medicine and
+give you medical advice, for the sake of the emolument, it will do you
+no good. Your disease will have its course, and you cannot help it.' I
+now thought my days were few; but, as a last resort, I repaired to you."</p>
+
+<p>He here enters into particulars which are not needful to my present
+purpose; and the detail, by one so intimately concerned, and withal so
+complimentary to me as his physician, would be fulsome. It is
+sufficient, perhaps, to add the following paragraphs.</p>
+
+<p>"Agreeably to your advice, I now began to reform, in good<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_348" id="Page_348">[Pg 348]</a></span> earnest. With
+a constitution broken down, and almost rotten with disease, it was no
+easy matter for me to cure myself; but to it I went, determined to
+overcome or die in the attempt.</p>
+
+<p>"I now began to think of eating what God created for man to eat. And now
+it was that my health began to return; and by the time I had practised
+the rules and prescriptions you laid down for me, about three months, my
+cough ceased, my dizziness left me, and my health and strength partly
+returned.</p>
+
+<p>"Since that time I have lived on bread made of wheat meal, rye and
+Indian bread, rice boiled or stewed, rice puddings, corn puddings,
+apples, potatoes, etc. I sleep soundly and sweetly, on a straw bed; rise
+at four in summer and five in winter, refreshed both in body and mind;
+do as much work as it is necessary for any man to do; am cheerful,
+happy, contented, and thankful to God for all his mercies; go to bed at
+nine and go to sleep without having the night mare or any thing else to
+disturb my rest. I ought to add that I eat no luncheon; and but about as
+much in a whole day, as I used to eat at one meal."</p>
+
+<p>As I have already intimated, it is about twenty years since I prescribed
+for this individual, at which time he had a wife and two or three
+children. The latter seemed to require not a little watching and dosing.
+Now, in 1858, he has a very large family, many of whom have either
+arrived at maturity or nearly so; and the whole family have, for many
+years, been strangers to dosing and drugging. Except the mother, they
+seem like a family of giants, so large are their frames, and so marked
+and strong are their muscles. They are pictures of health, so to speak;
+and if Mr. Barnum would exhibit them at his museum, or elsewhere, he
+might, for aught I know, retrieve his shattered fortunes.</p>
+
+<p>I know another great family, in New England, whose history, so far as
+physical inheritance is concerned, is not unlike that of the family just
+described. "There were giants in the earth in those days," hence appears
+to be applicable to the world since the flood, as well as to that which
+was before it.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_349" id="Page_349">[Pg 349]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XCIII" id="CHAPTER_XCIII"></a>CHAPTER XCIII.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE GREEN MOUNTAIN PATIENT.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Not many years since, I received a letter from a family in a retired
+village of the Green Mountains, begging me to visit one of their number,
+a young woman about twenty-seven years of age. She was a farmer's
+daughter, and had been, in early life, employed as is customary in such
+families in that region; but, for a few years past had been employed, a
+considerable portion of the time, in teaching in the district or public
+schools. It is probable she exchanged the employments of home for the
+labors of the pedagogue, on account of increasing ill health (though of
+this I am not quite certain), since nothing is more common or more
+hazardous. The daughters of our agriculturalists, who inherit, as she
+did, a scrofulous constitution, and who appear to be tolerably healthy
+while they remain at home, almost always break down within a few years
+after leaving the broom and duster.</p>
+
+<p>But whatever may have been the first cause or causes of her diseased
+condition, it is probable there had been both action and reaction. She
+was now, at the time I received her most piteous petition, quite ill,
+and had been so for a considerable time. However, in order to come at
+the case and the results, it may be as well to make a few extracts from
+the letters of her friends and herself. For, though they were not
+accustomed to such descriptions of a case as a medical man would be apt
+to give, yet, for popular perusal, they are, after all, the more useful.</p>
+
+<p>My first extract will be made from a long letter written by her brother.</p>
+
+<p>"The first attack of what we suppose to be her present disease, was a
+year ago last spring, and was believed to be the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_350" id="Page_350">[Pg 350]</a></span> result of taking
+severe colds repeatedly, while teaching school among the mountains of
+New Hampshire, and which ended in what Dr. K. (their family physician)
+called inflammation of the lungs, and was treated accordingly. There was
+much cough and expectoration of mucus. Though she partially recovered,
+so as to be able to teach again the ensuing summer, yet her cough was
+somewhat troublesome till autumn, when health seemed again to smile upon
+her.</p>
+
+<p>"Late in the fall, however, she had a very severe attack of
+diarrh&oelig;a,&mdash;caused, perhaps, by imprudence in diet, and sundry other
+deviations from a straight line,&mdash;which has been her constant companion
+ever since. (This was a period of eight months.) During all this time
+her food has passed almost without being dissolved. There is much pain
+in the stomach and bowels, unless mitigated by opiates, morphine or
+something analogous. But very little cough has attended her since the
+last attack of diarrh&oelig;a. There has been some pain and soreness in the
+right side; an eruption over the region of her stomach, swelling of the
+feet and ankles, whenever fatigued by walking, with pain and soreness in
+the left ankle.</p>
+
+<p>"I will now give you, briefly, her physician's views. He was called soon
+after the disease had taken hold of her, and made an examination of her
+case, which he then called dyspepsia, attended with a little
+inflammation of the right lung, or perhaps, said he, a slight filling up
+of the air passages, and he thought the lower part of her right lung
+might be somewhat indurated. 'Still,' said he, 'the case is not a
+serious one.' These were his very words. He said he could cure her; and,
+till very lately, he has always held out to her the language of hope.
+But now he speaks very differently; he says the case is a hopeless
+one&mdash;that of tubercular consumption; and he says he has always known it
+to be such!&mdash;and adds that there is, even now, a small cavity in her
+right lung, and that her lungs are passing off in her diarrh&oelig;a,
+without any inconvenience in breathing, or any disagreeable sensation in
+filling the lungs to fulness."</p>
+
+<p>It is difficult to believe that a medical man who has any regard for his
+own reputation, would tell such a downright falsehood,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_351" id="Page_351">[Pg 351]</a></span> as that above
+represented; and still more difficult to believe he would make the
+strange mistake of representing her lungs as passing off through the
+bowels! Why, they might almost as well pass though the moon! Probably my
+correspondent did not exactly and truly apprehend his meaning; at least,
+I would charitably hope so.</p>
+
+<p>The appeal for relief was so very urgent, and withal so humble, I
+visited and examined her, the family physician being present. I found
+the latter to be a timid invalid, for whom, before I left, I was
+requested to prescribe; which may account, in part, for his very
+inefficient practice. I also found him ignorant, in many particulars, of
+the first principles of his profession; and it was with extreme
+difficulty&mdash;like that of mingling oil with water&mdash;that we could unite on
+any thing reasonable or desirable. He still clung to medicine, as his
+sheet-anchor in the case, while I was for depending, mainly, on a strict
+conformity to the laws of health, and the restorative efforts of Nature.</p>
+
+<p>There were other difficulties. A part of the family still inclined to a
+reliance on him and his old system, while the rest were in favor of my
+general views, as far as they understood them. The patient herself
+sometimes inclined to one, and sometimes to the other. While in health,
+she had been a woman of much decision of character; but, in her present
+condition, she was weak and vacillating.</p>
+
+<p>But there was, at length, a partial blending of the inharmonious
+elements, and a prescription made out. It did not satisfy, however.
+There was so strong a leaning to nature, that, after my departure, Dr.
+K. gradually worked his way back to his old system of full medication,
+as a letter received a few weeks afterwards plainly indicated. For, as
+the great change in her treatment which we made, left her no mystical
+props to lean upon, and as Dr. K. was a little disposed to speak to her
+in a way which was calculated to increase her fears, it preyed upon her
+mind so much that, though her diseased tendencies gradually diminished,
+yet the continual croakings of her would-be friends, and the
+faithlessness of a half-sick and wholly sombre physician, more than
+counteracted every favorable tendency.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_352" id="Page_352">[Pg 352]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>In about two weeks after I saw her, she began to have more heat and pain
+in the stomach, with some other threatening symptoms,&mdash;probably induced
+by an attempt to use food prescribed for her, but which was too
+stimulating. Her physician now, to gratify both his own morbid feelings,
+and the clamor of her friends, ordered brandy and other stimulating
+drinks; also morphine and camphor powders, and a new relay of
+stimulating food.</p>
+
+<p>The sequel of the story, as related by a sister of the patient, is as
+follows:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Soon after I wrote you last (which was the letter containing an account
+of the strange resort to beef, brandy, morphine and camphor), she began
+to fail very fast, and Dr. K. informed her that she could live but a
+very short time. But she clung to life, and it was distressing to see
+her going down to the grave, while we were doing nothing to help her. We
+spoke to her about sending for you again; but she said you were a great
+way off, and if you could come at all, which was doubtful, it would be a
+long time before you could arrive; whereas, if she could not have help
+soon, she must be compelled to leave us. We asked her if she could think
+of any other physician that she would like to see? She replied, that she
+should like to see Dr. Q.,&mdash;an old physician about twenty miles distant.
+We sent for him immediately. He came, and with him her old physician,
+Dr. K.</p>
+
+<p>"I wish to say that she had taken but very little medicine before Dr. Q.
+came, except the morphine, camphor, and brandy. But the counselling
+physician said that would not do, and he could not help her unless she
+took three opium pills, eighteen drops of laudanum, and from six to nine
+drops of the chloride of iron, a day; and when she hesitated about being
+able to bear it, he told her to drink down the white part of two eggs in
+cold water, which would keep the medicine from hurting her.</p>
+
+<p>"We inquired if he would come again and see her: to which he replied in
+the affirmative. She proceeded to take his medicine for one day, but it
+quickly increased her diarrh&oelig;a. Instead<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_353" id="Page_353">[Pg 353]</a></span> of six movements a day, they
+were increased to thirty-five. Under these circumstances, her weakness
+increased so fast that she could help herself very little; and her feet,
+hands, and limbs were very much bloated. As Dr. Q. did not come,
+according to his agreement, we sent for her old physician. When he saw
+her, he said it was a wonder she had lived so long after taking Dr. Q.'s
+medicine."</p>
+
+<p>We are not told, in the letter from which the above is extracted, why
+her old physician, Dr. K., consented, in the first place, that she
+should take the medicine, if he regarded it as so very bad for her. But,
+then, he was a timid as well as a Janus-faced man, and probably said as
+he did because he did not know what else to say. But I will go on with
+the extracts, since they reveal another most astounding fact in regard
+to medical dishonesty.</p>
+
+<p>"He also (the family physician) told us that we must not expect Dr. Q.
+any more, for he told him expressly that he should not come again, as he
+could do nothing for her, and that if he had known how she was before he
+came, he never would have come so far in a case so hopeless. And, true
+to his engagement with Dr. K., but contrary to his promise, both to my
+sister and my father, separately, he never came again.</p>
+
+<p>"But the other doctor came again, and attended her as formerly. He gave
+her a powder of morphine, and some gum myrrh, and a little anise, which
+reduced the evacuations from thirty-three to three a day. But her
+distress was still very great, and her feet soon began to turn purple,
+and she began to bloat in her stomach and bowels. This continued till
+she was as full as she could be; and you could have heard her scream and
+groan as far as the road (a distance of three or four rods). The
+physician then applied ether, to relieve her distress, and gave
+twenty-five drops of laudanum, and a morphine powder, upon which her
+distress left her for a very short time, but soon returned, not to leave
+her again while she lived. Almost her last breath was a scream. She died
+in just eight days after Dr. Q. came to see her.</p>
+
+<p>"But I must close by saying that we think if our sister could<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_354" id="Page_354">[Pg 354]</a></span> have been
+a patient of yours, she would have been restored to health. But it is
+past, and we cannot recall it; and all I can now do, is to tender our
+thanks to you for your kindness and attention during our sister's
+sickness. I trust you will have life and health, long to pursue your
+noble vocation."</p>
+
+<p>I am afraid the patient reader of this long chapter, will be led to one
+conclusion which the writer would exceedingly regret; viz., that all
+medical counsel, in chronic disease, is of more than doubtful utility;
+and that it would be safer to leave it wholly to nature and to good
+nursing. There are medical men in the world who are honest as well as
+skilful, and who, because a case is difficult to manage, will not,
+chameleon-like, tell two or three different stories, and thus half ruin
+a profession that embraces so many noble and honorable-minded men; nor
+will they persist in a course of treatment which is evidently murdering
+their patients.</p>
+
+<p>It is hardly needful to say that the patient above described was
+murdered; but I am obliged to say, without doubt, that there was no
+necessity of her coming to such an untimely end. Her sister, it seems,
+thought that, had she fallen into my hands from the first, she might
+have been saved. I think so too. And yet, it might have been otherwise.
+In any event, she ought not, at the first, to have been treated for
+consumption, but for dyspepsia. Starvation, and a little mental
+quietude, with daily exercise, such as she could bear, in the open air,
+would have greatly changed her condition, when her diarrh&oelig;a first
+commenced.</p>
+
+<p>I never knew a case which was worse managed in my whole life. It is a
+wonder to me, when I think of it, that she so long survived under it.
+But it is a wonder, greater still, that medical men who are so
+unqualified for the duties of their profession as the physicians who
+were most concerned in the treatment of the above case appear to me to
+have been, do not feel compelled, by the remonstrances of their own
+consciences, to quit their profession, and do something for a living for
+which they are better prepared.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_355" id="Page_355">[Pg 355]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XCIV" id="CHAPTER_XCIV"></a>CHAPTER XCIV.</h2>
+
+<h3>CURE OF POISON FROM LEAD.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Cases of poisoning by lead are occurring in our country almost daily;
+and it becomes a matter of much importance to know how to treat them.
+Indeed, there are many who are so susceptible to the action of this
+deleterious agent, that the reception of a single tumbler of water
+brought through lead pipes, in a certain condition, into their stomachs,
+will cause serious disturbance. I have had one patient of this
+description&mdash;a Mr. E., of Worcester, Mass.</p>
+
+<p>Some twenty years ago, much of the water used in the village of Dedham,
+Mass., was conveyed to the village, for half a mile or so, in lead
+pipes. Many who drank the water were injured by it; some of them for
+life. A Mr. R., a printer, is believed to have lost his life, by disease
+which was either induced or aggravated by this cause. I have, myself,
+been called to prescribe for several, who were probably led into a state
+of ill health by this unhealthy water. One of the clergymen of the
+village suffered from it very greatly, though he is, as I believe, yet
+living.</p>
+
+<p>There is some difference of opinion as to the circumstances which most
+favor the action of the lead, or, rather, which cause its dissolution in
+the water. But, with regard to its danger, in certain circumstances,
+either known or unknown, there can be no doubt. Nor can we doubt that,
+in view of facts which exist, it is our duty to banish lead pipes, as
+much as possible, from common use.</p>
+
+<p>During the early part of the year 1855, Capt. J. H., near Boston, aged
+thirty-four years, of good natural constitution and comparatively
+healthy habits in general, had a slow typhoid<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_356" id="Page_356">[Pg 356]</a></span> fever, from which,
+however, he finally recovered, though not without a continued liability
+to a relapse. About this time, he began to use water brought to his
+kitchen in lead pipes.</p>
+
+<p>Late in the year 1856, he was taken down very suddenly, with fever and
+great debility, and in four or five days his upper and lower limbs
+became completely paralyzed. He was not able to stir so much as one of
+his hands. Indeed, the whole abdominal region seemed to be almost as
+inactive as his limbs; for very severe friction across the hips, and
+along the spine, down the legs, produced no sensation; and his bowels
+were so constipated, as to remain motionless from five or six days to a
+fortnight at a time, unless excited by medical agents.</p>
+
+<p>His case was examined by several eminent medical men in the vicinity of
+Boston, who gave it as their unanimous opinion, that the cause of his
+disease was the irritation of the water. Some of them prescribed for his
+case, but all to no apparent purpose.</p>
+
+<p>On the first day of November, he was sent to an electro-chemical bathing
+establishment, to be treated according to the usages of that
+institution. I was intimately acquainted with the establishment, and, in
+circumstances like his, was understood to regard it with favor. I was,
+therefore, from time to time, consulted in the case of Captain H. To
+give an impulse to the nervous and arterial systems of Capt. H., one
+bath was administered. The use of his limbs was restored, as if by
+magic. When he came out of the bath, he walked some twenty feet or more,
+to his bed, without assistance; and, to his great surprise, could raise
+his hands to his head. The second day's bath, and treatment with simple
+diet, not only restored sensation, but gave him a better use of his
+hands than he had enjoyed before for many months. His bowels, also,
+became immediately regular, and continued so.</p>
+
+<p>It is, however, to be confessed, that his recovery was not so rapid as
+at first seemed probable. The baths seemed to give an impulse; but it
+was reserved for a proper diet, suitable exercise, and good air, to work
+out, slowly, a perfect cure. How much was attributable to the baths,
+considered by themselves,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_357" id="Page_357">[Pg 357]</a></span> is not known. No medicine was given, from
+first to last, except the electricity.</p>
+
+<p>It should also be confessed, that no belief was entertained, by myself
+or my associates, of any mechanical power possessed by the electricity,
+of forcing the lead out of the system; though some individuals had
+believed in such a power. The most we claimed was, that the invisible
+agent had an immediate influence on the nerves, and a more remote one on
+the absorbent system.</p>
+
+<p>As a farther proof, if more proof had been needed, that the paralysis
+was induced by lead, some of the water from which he had drank was
+analyzed by Dr. Hayes, City Assayer for Boston, who pronounced it to be
+strongly impregnated with lead, and "utterly unfit for culinary
+purposes."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_358" id="Page_358">[Pg 358]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XCV" id="CHAPTER_XCV"></a>CHAPTER XCV.</h2>
+
+<h3>FAITH AND WORKS.</h3>
+
+
+<p>In the autumn of 1856, a fine young man, a clerk in a large mercantile
+house in Boston, came to me with complaints not unlike those of
+thousands of his own age and sex, and begged for relief; but was
+surprised when he learned that I treated all such cases as his without
+medicine. Added to the surprise, moreover, was a degree of mortification
+at the idea of attempting to cure himself by a change of habits,
+especially of dietetic habits, which, in a boarder in a family, might be
+observed. He would have been much better pleased to take medicine, so
+concentrated that a few drops or a few small boluses or pills could be
+taken a few times a day unperceived&mdash;than to run the risk of awakening
+suspicions of diseases to which he was unwilling to make confession.</p>
+
+<p>And herein, by the way, comes out the secret of such a wonderful
+imposition on our young men, by what I have elsewhere called land-sharks
+in the shape of physicians. The fondness of young men for secret
+cures,&mdash;or, at least, their money, which is the thing most wanted after
+all,&mdash;leads them, almost directly, into the mouths of these monsters.</p>
+
+<p>My young patient, however, had faith in me; and, after the first shock
+of surprise and the first feelings of mortification were over, resolved
+to follow my directions, and did so. He came to me, it is true, several
+times, and said he could not endure it; that he was losing flesh very
+fast, and that he was already so weak that he could scarcely walk to his
+desk. I comforted him as well as I could, told him there would be a
+change soon for the better, and kept him on through the tedious months
+of December, January, and February, when his strength began to return,
+and his flesh to be restored.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_359" id="Page_359">[Pg 359]</a></span> Between March and May, he gained
+twenty-one pounds; and in June, he was in as good health as he ever had
+been before in his life. And yet he took not a particle of any thing
+medicinal, from first to last.</p>
+
+<p>If you desire to know, in few words, what he <i>did</i> do, I will tell you.
+First, he took a long walk, regularly,&mdash;sufficiently long to induce a
+good deal of muscular fatigue,&mdash;as the last thing before he went to bed
+which was at an early hour. Secondly, he used a cold hand-bath, followed
+by much friction, daily. Thirdly, he abandoned tea and coffee (tobacco
+and rum he had never used), and drank only water. Fourthly, he abandoned
+all animal food and all concentrated substances and condiments, and
+lived simply on bread (unfermented), fruits, and a few choice
+vegetables.</p>
+
+<p>It was faith that served this young man,&mdash;not faith without works, but
+faith which is manifested by works. "According to your faith be it unto
+you," might be enjoined on every patient, under all circumstances. But
+the most remarkable thing connected with this case, is the fact that
+this young man had been brought up <i>in the lap of ease and
+indulgence</i>&mdash;an education which is as unfavorable to faith as it is to
+works.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_360" id="Page_360">[Pg 360]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XCVI" id="CHAPTER_XCVI"></a>CHAPTER XCVI.</h2>
+
+<h3>WORKS WITHOUT FAITH.</h3>
+
+
+<p>A female, in Worcester County, Massachusetts, nearly sixty years of age,
+having for many years been a sufferer from domestic afflictions, till,
+along with certain abuses of the digestive function, it had brought upon
+her a full load of dyspepsia, was at length subjected to a trio of
+evils, which capped the climax of her sufferings, reduced her to a very
+low condition, and laid her on her bed.</p>
+
+<p>While lying in this condition, a young woman who was her constant
+attendant, and who was acquainted with my no-medicine practice,
+recommended to her to send for me. She hesitated, for a time, on account
+of the expense; for, though by no means poor, she felt all the pangs of
+poverty in consequence of the hard and unworthy treatment of the
+individual who was to have justly executed the last will and testament
+of her husband.</p>
+
+<p>But I was at length sent for. I found her under the general care and
+oversight of a homoeopathic physician; but as he was ten or twelve miles
+distant and had not been informed of my visit, I did not see him. His
+practice, however, in the case, was similar to what I had usually met
+with in cases which had come under the care of physicians of the same
+school, and was, at most, as it appeared to me, negative. She had indeed
+been drugged by some one most fearfully, and her whole system was
+suffering as the consequence; but it was a physician who had preceded
+Dr. A., and who was of an entirely different school.</p>
+
+<p>I found no great difficulty in persuading her to ask Dr. A., when he
+should next call, to suspend his medicine a week or two; and, after
+ordering a warm bath two or three times a week, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_361" id="Page_361">[Pg 361]</a></span> certain changes in
+diet, with particular care about ventilation and temperature, left her,
+to call again the next week.</p>
+
+<p>On calling, at the time appointed, I was greatly disappointed in finding
+her with many better symptoms. There was indeed cough, which busy rumor
+had converted into an indication of galloping consumption; but I found
+no other symptom which belonged to that disease. The hom&oelig;opathic
+medicine had been suspended, and the warm bath had been applied with
+apparent success.</p>
+
+<p>I left, with the promise of calling again in ten days&mdash;but not sooner,
+unless they sent for me. At the end of the ten days, I called and found
+all things ajar again. Her female attendant had left her about a week
+before; and the new attendants&mdash;two of them&mdash;being destitute of faith in
+me, had found no great difficulty in persuading her that she had a fever
+of the lungs, and that she would die if she did not take a <i>little</i>
+medicine, and that she would do well to recall Dr. A., and take his
+medicine.</p>
+
+<p>When I arrived, at this third visit, I found her taking a small amount
+of hom&oelig;opathic medicine, but without appetite or strength, and
+evidently tending downward. It was too late to do any thing, especially
+when there was no faith in anything but pills and powders; and I left
+her to her native strength of constitution, her hom&oelig;opathic
+physician, her croaking nurses, and God, vainly mourning, all my way
+home, about the inefficiency of works without faith, especially in the
+case of the sick. This woman's case is recent, and it is possible that
+she may recover, in spite of pills, powders, croakings, and
+faithlessness. I have witnessed such things. Nature is tough.</p>
+
+<p>But while I lament the inefficiency of works, where faith is wanting, I
+have had one case which seems an exception to the general rule,
+"according to your faith," etc., which I take great pleasure in
+recording.</p>
+
+<p>In June, 18&mdash;, a young man from the interior of New England called on me
+while abroad on business, and desired to receive my advice concerning
+certain complaints, attended with great debility, and accompanied by
+hernia and varicocele, and,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_362" id="Page_362">[Pg 362]</a></span> in general, by dyspepsia. On examination, I
+found the case a very obstinate one, of long standing. The patient was a
+young man of twenty-two, a clerk in a country store, a man of some
+principle, and yet trained to find his chief happiness in the indulgence
+of his appetite, especially in what is called good eating.</p>
+
+<p>I gave him some general directions, promising him something still more
+specific as soon as I got home. In July, I gave him written directions,
+in full, and urged him to push the treatment as fast as possible, in
+order to get into a beginning state of convalescence, soon enough to
+take advantage of the naturally recuperative effects of autumn. If he
+could find himself recruiting in September, the month of October, I told
+him, would produce on him a very decided change.</p>
+
+<p>He went to work accordingly, but it was because it was a last resort,
+and he must do so. It was not because he had much faith in me. Some of
+his friends, it seems, had directed his attention this way; but when I
+came to talk of the starvation plan of cure, to which I so much
+inclined, both they and he revolted. However, he made a faint beginning.</p>
+
+<p>I had foreseen most of the difficulties I had to contend with, and was
+prepared to meet them. Thus, knowing full well that if I laid down the
+laws of diet in great strictness, either as regards, quality or
+quantity, he would be discouraged and do nothing at all, I permitted him
+to use almost all kinds of food, and only insisted on a rigid adherence
+to the great law, and avoiding medicine. These two points I made much
+of, and explained them fully.</p>
+
+<p>For example: I told him that all kinds of cookery or preparations which
+prevented the necessity of teeth labor, such as soaking in milk, forming
+into toast, mashing, or in any way softening, were wrong, and must be
+avoided. Also, that all additions to our food, whether of foreign
+bodies, such as pepper, mustard, vinegar, salt, etc., or of more
+concentrated substances, such as molasses, sugar, honey, butter, gravy,
+etc., should, for the same reason as well as others, be shunned as much
+as possible.</p>
+
+<p>When, therefore, said I, the question comes before your mind,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_363" id="Page_363">[Pg 363]</a></span> whether
+you may or may not eat a particular thing, consider first, whether its
+use would be a violation of the general laws I have laid down for you. I
+gave him many specific directions, at first, and yet continued to urge
+it upon him to reason for himself.</p>
+
+<p>But it seemed, for a long time, a hopeless case. He kept writing to me,
+to know if he might eat toast, bread and butter, soup, milk, etc., or to
+know why it was that he ought not to make additions of foreign or
+concentrated substances, as of pepper, mustard, molasses, syrup, etc. I
+have before me sixteen letters from him, in most of which his pleadings
+abound, up to the very last but one. This fifteenth letter, dated
+December 27, more than six months after my interview with him and first
+prescription, has the following inquiries:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Will a diet do for me that admits of any pastry?&mdash;of pies, of any kind?
+What <i>kind</i> of puddings, pies, and cake will answer? What kind of meats?
+What food shall I be obliged to avoid to keep my passions in check? What
+am I to eat this winter&mdash;next spring&mdash;next summer? How much at a time?
+Can I eat tripe&mdash;corned beef&mdash;oysters&mdash;lean pork steak? What kinds of
+meat and fish will do for me to eat? Any salt fish? Is milk bad in case
+of liver disease? Is there any objection to baked sour apples and milk,
+or to sour apples after using a little milk or bread? Will you allow me
+to eat any simple thing between meals?"</p>
+
+<p>And in this same letter, after six months' instruction, as aforesaid, he
+undertakes to tell me what his habits of living are, which, despite of
+all said and done, in the way of personal counsel and nearly twenty
+letters, strangely reads thus:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I use some milk three times a day, and almost always soak my toasted
+bread in milk. Since I have been out in the open air, I have usually had
+some wild game, or a piece of beef steak, or raw eggs, twice a day. My
+suppers, lately, have been toasted bread, of any convenient kind
+(usually Graham), with milk, about a tumbler full, at a time, or
+three-fourths full. I usually eat two apples, with or after each
+breakfast and dinner. I use considerable cream soaked into my bread,
+when I can obtain it, and some molasses. Now, which is the best for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_364" id="Page_364">[Pg 364]</a></span> me
+to use on my bread, at supper time&mdash;cream, milk, molasses, or a little
+butter?&mdash;or with my other meals? Is there any objection to my using all
+these now, in proper quantities? Will a little plain sauce do with my
+supper? Why do you so strongly object to cream toasts, or cream on
+bread? Is chewing gum from spruce trees injurious?&mdash;or birch bark? Any
+objections to eating two sour apples after breakfast and dinner?"</p>
+
+<p>Now the great difficulty with this young man was, that he had but little
+faith, either in me or in principles&mdash;though if I would direct him, from
+step to step, like a child, he would obey me, for the moment: though,
+like a child, too, he would forget my directions at almost the next
+moment, and ask for information on the very same point.</p>
+
+<p>Was not such a trial almost too great? However, he was destined to
+survive it, to live on in spite of it, notwithstanding my after fears.
+In March, 18&mdash;, he wrote me as follows:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"As I have been getting better all the while, and have troubled you with
+so many little queries from time to time, I thought I would delay this
+letter a while. My health has been constantly improving all winter, and
+I think I have not enjoyed as good health before for many years. People
+now say, 'How well you are looking!' and 'How fleshy you are!' I mean to
+live according to the '<i>laws</i>.'"</p>
+
+<p>In short, this young sufferer from dyspepsia in one of its worst forms,
+after more than half a year of works without faith, and of whining and
+complaining a part of the time, without either works or faith, is at
+last shouting victory! And a glorious victory it is! Would that the rest
+of our dyspeptics, with land by millions, might stand on as good a
+footing, with as good prospects before them, as this young man! And yet
+he might have come up to the same point long ago, had he used more
+common sense, and exercised but a little more faith and trust in just
+hygienic principles.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_365" id="Page_365">[Pg 365]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XCVII" id="CHAPTER_XCVII"></a>CHAPTER XCVII</h2>
+
+<h3>DISEASES OF LICENTIOUSNESS.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Not far from the end of July, 1857, I received the following, in a
+letter through the post office, as usual, and dated at Boston, but
+signed by a name probably fictitious.</p>
+
+<p>"It was with no small degree of interest that I noticed, in a book
+written by yourself,&mdash;I cannot recollect its name,&mdash;some remarks upon
+certain diseases which you called nameless; yet, through a dread to
+introduce so delicate a subject, I have neglected so to do, till it has
+become an imperative task. And now, laying aside all feelings of
+modesty, allow me to be familiar with you, as with a father, and to lay
+my case before you, assuring you that, however unfortunate I have been,
+it is not my fault, but has come upon me while living with my husband,
+having never betrayed <i>his</i> confidence."</p>
+
+<p>She then proceeded at once to describe her disease and sufferings, which
+were terrible. It appeared that she had not been of the number of those
+who, in circumstances akin to hers, so often fall into shark's mouths.
+She had taken but little medicine of any kind, except balsam copaiba.
+After the details of her symptoms and sufferings were finished, she
+added:</p>
+
+<p>"Now, if you are able to understand me, I wish to ask you whether, from
+the description I have given, you cannot prescribe something that will
+relieve me. If so, you can be assured that you will put your humble
+correspondent and her erring but repentant companion under great
+obligation to yourself, and that you will be rewarded for all your
+trouble and advice."</p>
+
+<p>As the result of this request, a correspondence followed, which
+continued several months. At first, the patient clung to the idea that
+she could not possibly be restored without minerals,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_366" id="Page_366">[Pg 366]</a></span> or at least
+without active medicine of some sort or other, she scarcely knew what.
+But she at length understood me, and followed, quite implicitly, my
+directions. There was indeed a little shrinking, at first, from the
+rigidity, or, as she would call it, the nakedness, of a diet which it
+was indispensable to use in order to purify her blood effectually; but
+she finally came bravely up to the mark, and probably reaped her reward
+in it.</p>
+
+<p>It is true, I did not hear from her till she came to the end of a very
+long road; but up to the last of our correspondence, she was slowly
+improving. My belief is that, before this time, she has fairly
+recovered, and with far less injury to the vital powers than if
+mercurial or other strong medicines had been used.</p>
+
+<p>And herein we are reminded of a crime that not only has no name, but
+deserves none. I allude to the act of communicating a disease so
+distressing to an innocent and unoffending female. We had an instance of
+this same crime in Chapter LXXIV. If there be such a thing as punishing
+too severely, I am sure it is not in cases like these. The individual in
+human shape, who, with eyes open, will run the risk of injuring those
+whom he professes to love better, if possible, than himself, deserves a
+punishment more condign and terrible than he to whom is so often awarded
+a halter or a guillotine.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_367" id="Page_367">[Pg 367]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XCVIII" id="CHAPTER_XCVIII"></a>CHAPTER XCVIII.</h2>
+
+<h3>CURIOUS AND INSTRUCTIVE FACTS.</h3>
+
+
+<p>It is morally impossible for any medical man who has kept his eyes open
+for forty years, not to have been struck with certain obvious and
+incontrovertible facts, of which I present a few specimens.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>Boston Medical and Surgical Journal</i>, a few years since, in an
+obituary notice of Dr. Danforth, who had long been an eminent
+practitioner in Boston, makes the following remarks:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Though considered one of the most successful practitioners, he rarely
+caused a patient to be bled. Probably, for the last twenty years of his
+practice, he did not propose the use of this remedy in a single
+instance. And he maintained that the abstraction of the vital fluid
+diminished the power of overcoming the disease. On one occasion, he was
+called to visit a number of persons who had been injured by the fall of
+a house frame, and, on arrival, found another practitioner engaged in
+bleeding the men. 'Doctor,' said the latter, 'I am doing your work for
+you.' 'Then,' said Dr. Danforth, 'pour the blood back into the veins of
+those men.'"</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Thomas Hubbard, of Pomfret, Conn., long a President of the Medical
+Society in that State, was, on the contrary, accustomed to bleed almost
+all his patients. Yet both of these men were considered as eminently
+successful in their profession. How is it that treatment so exactly
+opposite should be almost, if not quite, equally successful?</p>
+
+<p>There was a discussion in Boston, many years ago, between Dr. Watson,
+one of the most successful old-school practitioners of medicine, and a
+Thomsonian practitioner, whose name I have forgotten, in the progress of
+which the former made the open and unqualified declaration, that, in the
+course of four years'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_368" id="Page_368">[Pg 368]</a></span> practice, he had drawn one hundred gallons of
+human blood, and that he was then on the use of his thirty-ninth pound
+of calomel.</p>
+
+<p>Now both these men had full practice; and while one did little or
+nothing to break up disease or destroy the enemy, the other did a great
+deal; and yet both were deemed successful. Can we explain this any
+better than we can the facts in regard to Drs. Danforth and Hubbard?</p>
+
+<p>Let us look at the case of Dr. M., of Boston, a successful allopathic
+practitioner. In order to satisfy his curiosity, with regard to the
+claims of hom&oelig;opathy, he suddenly substituted the usual
+hom&oelig;opathic treatment for allopathy, and pursued it two whole years
+with entire success. Curiosity still awake, he again exchanged his
+infinitesimal doses of active medicine for similar doses, as regards
+size, of fine flour, and continued this, also, for two years. The latter
+experiment, as he affirms, was quite as successful as the former.</p>
+
+<p>Do not such facts as these point, with almost unerring certainty, to the
+inefficiency of all medical treatment? Do they not almost, if not quite,
+prove that when we take medicine, properly so called, or receive active
+medical treatment; we recover in spite of it? Is there any other
+rational way of accounting for the almost equal success of all sorts of
+treatment,&mdash;allopathic, botanic, hom&oelig;opathic, hydropathic,
+etc.,&mdash;when in the hands of good, sound, common sense, and conjoined
+with good nursing and attendance? Is it not that man is made to live,
+and is tough, so that it is not easy to poison him to death?</p>
+
+<p>But the most remarkable fact of this kind with which I am acquainted, is
+the case of Isaac Jennings, M.D., now of Ohio. He was educated at Yale
+College, in Connecticut. During the progress of his education, he served
+a sort of medical apprenticeship in the family of Prof. Eli Ives, of New
+Haven. He took his medical degree in 1812, and soon after this commenced
+the practice of his profession in Trumbull, in Fairfield County. Here,
+for eight years, he had ample opportunity to apply the principles with
+which, at the schools, he had been fully indoctrinated.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_369" id="Page_369">[Pg 369]</a></span> In the summer
+of 1820, he removed, by special request, to Derby, nine miles from New
+Haven. Up to his second year in Derby, he pursued the usual, or
+orthodox, course of practice. The distance from his former field of
+labor was not so great but that he retained a portion of his old friends
+in that region. He was also occasionally called to the town of
+Huntington, lying partly between the two.</p>
+
+<p>On meeting one day with Dr. Tisdale, of Bridgeport, an older physician
+than himself, he said to him, very familiarly, "Jennings, are you aware
+that we do far less good with our medicine than we have been wont to
+suppose?" He replied in the affirmative, and observed that he had been
+inclining to that opinion for some time. "Do you know," added Dr.
+Tisdale, "that we do a great deal more harm than good with medicine?"
+Dr. Jennings replied that he had not yet gone as far as that. Dr.
+Tisdale then proceeded to state many facts, corroborating the opinion he
+had thrown out concerning the impotency of medicine. These statements
+and facts were, to the mind of Dr. Jennings, like a nail fastened in a
+sure place.</p>
+
+<p>From this time forth his medical scepticism increased, till he came, at
+length, to give his doubts the test of experiment. Accordingly, he
+substituted for his usual medicaments, bread pills and colored water;
+and for many years&mdash;I believe five or six&mdash;gave nothing else. The more
+rigidly he confined himself to these potions, the better he found his
+success, till his business was so extended, and his reputation so great,
+as to exclude all other medical men from his own immediate vicinity.</p>
+
+<p>His great conscientiousness, as well as a desire of making known to his
+medical brethren what he believed to be true, and thus save them from
+the folly of dealing out that which he was assured was only a nuisance,
+especially under the shelter of what they supposed to be his example,
+led him, at length, to call a meeting of physicians, and reveal to them
+his discovery. The surprise was great; but greater or less, according to
+their tact for observation, and the length of their experience.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_370" id="Page_370">[Pg 370]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But the secret was now out, and Dr. Jennings soon began to lose
+practice. Instead of employing a man to give them bread pills and
+colored water, many chose to take care of themselves, and let the
+physician wholly alone; while a far greater number, though they dearly
+loved and highly respected Jennings, as an old friend and physician and
+an eminent Christian, began to seek medical counsel at other hands.</p>
+
+<p>The result was, that his business became so much diminished as to leave
+him without a full support, except from past earnings, and he began to
+make preparations for a removal to the West. But this his friends were
+unwilling to have him do, and they accordingly raised, by subscription,
+$300 a year, to induce him to remain. In a few years, however, the
+subscription failed to be renewed, and in 1839 or 1840 he removed to
+Ohio, where he still remains. He does a little business, and what he
+does is attended with great success; and yet, the number of those who
+follow him is small.</p>
+
+<p>Facts of similar import, in very great numbers, some more and some less
+striking, might be related, to almost any extent; but can it be
+necessary? Suffice it to say that some of the oldest physicians in
+Boston and its vicinity, the oldest physician in Cleveland, and some of
+the most intelligent ones in New York and Philadelphia, as well as
+elsewhere, are coming rapidly to the same conclusions with Dr. Jennings,
+and a few of them have already arrived there.</p>
+
+<p>It is from stumbling on such facts as these, together with my own long
+experience, all bearing in the same direction, that I have long since
+renounced dependence on medicine, properly so called, as a means of
+restoring the system, when out of order, to a state of health. In other
+words, I have ceased to employ poison to <i>cure</i> poison.</p>
+
+<p>But, lest it should still be thought I make too much of my own
+experience, and of the facts which have been adduced in this chapter, I
+subjoin another of kindred character, containing the written testimony
+of others, especially medical men, on the subject.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_371" id="Page_371">[Pg 371]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XCIX" id="CHAPTER_XCIX"></a>CHAPTER XCIX.</h2>
+
+<h3>ANTI-MEDICAL TESTIMONY.</h3>
+
+
+<p>A very large amount of testimony, going to show the inefficiency and
+inutility of medicine, might be presented; but I have limited myself to
+a selection of some of the more striking and important.</p>
+
+<p>Let me begin with Dr. Rush, of Philadelphia. In a published lecture of
+his, more than half a century ago, he made the following remark:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Dissections daily convince us of our ignorance of disease, and cause us
+to blush at our prescriptions. What mischief have we done under the
+belief of false facts and theories! We have assisted in multiplying
+diseases; we have done more; we have increased their mortality.... The
+art of healing is like an unroofed temple, uncovered at the top, and
+cracked at the foundation."</p>
+
+<p>Magendie, late a distinguished French physician and physiologist, says,
+as follows:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I hesitate not to declare,&mdash;no matter how sorely I shall wound our
+vanity,&mdash;that so gross is our ignorance of the real nature of the
+physiological disorders called diseases, that it would, perhaps, be
+better to do nothing, and resign the complaint we are called upon to
+treat, to the resources of nature, than to act, as we are frequently
+compelled to do, without knowing the why and the wherefore of our
+conduct, and at the obvious risk of hastening the end of our patient."</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Good, a learned and voluminous British writer, also says:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"The science of medicine is a barbarous jargon; and the effects of our
+medicines upon the human system, are, in the highest degree, uncertain,
+except, indeed, that they have already<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_372" id="Page_372">[Pg 372]</a></span> destroyed more lives than war,
+pestilence, and famine combined."</p>
+
+<p>Professor Clark, of the Harvard Medical School, in Boston, in an address
+of his, recently published, insists, again and again, that medicine
+never cures, and that it rarely, if ever, so much as <i>aids</i> nature;
+while he exalts, in an unwonted degree, the remedial effects of every
+hygienic influence. Let him who longer doubts, read this most remarkable
+production; and with the more care from the fact that it is a very fair
+exponent of the doctrines now held at the very fountain-head of medical
+orthodoxy.</p>
+
+<p>From a work entitled, "Memoirs of James Jackson, Jr.," late of Boston,
+written by his father, I have extracted the following. It is part of a
+letter, written from Europe, to his venerable father, the present elder
+Dr. James Jackson, of Boston.</p>
+
+<p>"But our poor pathology and worse therapeutics&mdash;shall we ever get to a
+solid bottom? Shall we ever have fixed laws? Shall we ever <i>know</i>, or,
+must we always be doomed to <i>suspect</i>, to <i>presume</i>? Is <i>perhaps</i> to be
+our qualifying word forever and for aye? Must we forever be obliged to
+hang our heads when the chemist and natural philosopher ask us for our
+laws and principles?... If honest, must we not acknowledge that, even in
+the natural history of disease, there is very much <i>doubtful</i>, which is
+received as <i>sure</i>? And in therapeutics, is it better yet, or worse?
+Have we judged&mdash;have we deduced our results, especially in the last
+science&mdash;from <i>all</i>, or from a selection of facts?</p>
+
+<p>"Do we know, for example, in how many instances such a treatment fails,
+for the one time it succeeds? Do we know how large a proportion of cases
+would get well without any treatment, compared with those that recover
+under it? Do not imagine, my dear father, that I am becoming a sceptic
+in medicine. It is, not quite as bad as that. I shall ever believe, <i>at
+least</i>, that the rules of <i>hygeia</i> must be and are useful, and that he
+only can understand and value them, who has studied pathology. Indeed, I
+may add that, to a certain extent, I have seen demonstrated<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_373" id="Page_373">[Pg 373]</a></span> the actual
+benefit of certain modes of treatment in acute diseases. But, is this
+benefit immense? When life is threatened, do we very often save it? When
+a disease is destined by <i>Nature</i> to be long, do we very often
+materially diminish it?"</p>
+
+<p>It is worthy of remark, that the discussions in the pages of the <i>Boston
+Medical and Surgical Journal</i>, for two or three years past, concerning
+the treatment of scarlatina, have usually resulted, practically, in
+favor of the no-medicine system. It clearly appears that the less our
+reliance on medicine, in this disease, the better. But what shall hinder
+or prevent our coming to similar results, in the investigation, in time
+to come, of other diseases?</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Reynolds, one of the most aged as well as most distinguished medical
+men of Boston, has been heard to affirm that if one hundred patients
+were to call on him during the day, and he could induce them to follow
+such directions as would keep them from injuring themselves from eating
+and drinking,&mdash;no matter what the disease,&mdash;he should be surprised at a
+mortality of more than three per cent of their number; and he should
+<i>not</i> be surprised if every one who implicitly followed his direction
+should finally recover.</p>
+
+<p>I will only add, in this place, the testimony of two or three
+distinguished individuals on this subject, whose opinion, though they
+were not medical men, will with many have weight, as it certainly ought.</p>
+
+<p>Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to Dr. Caspar Wistar, of Philadelphia,
+thus writes: "I have lived to see the disciples of Hoffman, Boerhaave,
+Stahl, Cullen, and Brown succeed each other, like the shifting figures
+of a magic lantern.... The patient treated on the fashionable theory,
+sometimes recovers in spite of the medicine. The medicine, therefore,
+restores him (!!!), and the doctor receives new courage to proceed in
+his experiment on the lives of his fellow-creatures!"</p>
+
+<p>Sir Walter Scott says, of Napoleon: He never obeyed the medical
+injunctions of his physician, Dr. O'Meara, and obstinately refused to
+take medicine. "Doctor," said he, "no physicking.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_374" id="Page_374">[Pg 374]</a></span> We are a machine made
+to live. We are organized for that purpose. Such is our nature. Do not
+counteract the living principle. Let it alone; leave it the liberty of
+defending itself; it will do better than your drugs. The watchmaker
+cannot open it, and must, on handling it, grope his way blindfold and at
+random. For once that he assists and relieves it, by dint of tormenting
+it with crooked instruments, he injures it ten times, and at last
+destroys it."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_375" id="Page_375">[Pg 375]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_C" id="CHAPTER_C"></a>CHAPTER C.</h2>
+
+<h3>AN ANTI-MEDICAL PREMIUM.</h3>
+
+
+<p>The Massachusetts Medical Society, in the year 1856, were authorized by
+an unknown individual to offer a premium of one hundred dollars for the
+best dissertation which should be presented to them, on or before April
+15, 1857, on the following subject, viz.: "<i>We would regard every
+approach towards the rational and successful prevention and management
+of disease without the necessity of drugs, to be an advance in favor of
+humanity and scientific medicine.</i>"</p>
+
+<p>A number of essays were accordingly presented, having, as is usual in
+such cases, various degrees of merit; but the preference was given to
+one written by Worthington Hooker, M. D., of New Haven, Conn. This essay
+is to be published in due time, and it is devoutly hoped there will be
+as little delay as possible in the circulation of so remarkable, and, as
+I have no doubt, valuable, an essay.</p>
+
+<p>The facts in connection with this essay, taken as an item in the history
+of human progress, are truly remarkable. The very title of the essay is
+at once peculiar and striking; but the main idea which it suggests to
+the mind is much more so. That a learned society, in the literary
+metropolis of New England, if not of the United States, should, at the
+present time, in any way or shape, encourage a discussion of the
+question, whether, in the practice of medicine, drugs can be dispensed
+with, was not an event to be expected or so much as dreamed of. It is,
+therefore, I repeat, very remarkable, and must have a deeper meaning
+than at first appears.</p>
+
+<p>What, then, let us inquire, is that meaning? Does it intimate that there
+is a belief,&mdash;a lurking belief, if you choose to call it so,&mdash;among our
+scientific medical men, that drugs might<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_376" id="Page_376">[Pg 376]</a></span> be entirely dispensed with?
+Or, does it rather imply a belief in the possibility of approximating to
+such a point,&mdash;with those approximations of two mathematical lines, of
+which we sometimes hear,&mdash;without the possibility of ever reaching it?</p>
+
+<p>It is by no means improbable, at least in my own view, that the essay
+intended by the Boston Society had its origin in a growing tendency,
+everywhere, among scientific medical men, to the belief that, in the
+most rational and successful practice of medicine, drugs are not
+indicated; and that they are only necessary on account of the ignorance
+or credulity of the community.</p>
+
+<p>The family practice of many sensible physicians, perhaps I might say of
+most, is strongly corroborative of this main idea. I can point to more
+than a score of eminent individuals, in this department, who never, or
+at most but seldom, give medicine in their own families; above all, they
+never take it themselves. It is indeed true, that some of them are
+hardly willing to own it, when questioned on the subject; but this does
+not alter the plain matter of fact.</p>
+
+<p>Thus Dr. S&mdash;&mdash;, ten miles from Boston, is subject to attacks of a
+species of neuralgia, which sometimes last two days; and yet, none of
+his family or friends or medical brethren have ever been able to
+persuade him to do any thing to mitigate his pain, except to keep quiet
+and abstain almost entirely from food; and a daughter of his assures me
+that she can scarcely recollect his giving a dose of medicine to any
+member of his family. Dr. H., seven miles from Boston, not only does the
+same, but frequently disappoints the expectations of his patients, by
+giving them no medicine. Yet both these individuals are exceedingly slow
+to be seen in company with those men of heterodoxy in medicine, who dare
+to advocate, everywhere and on all occasions, what they habitually
+practice on themselves and their families.</p>
+
+<p>What, then, I repeat it, can these things mean? Is there not reason for
+believing that the truly wise men of the medical profession, at the
+present time, are beginning to see, in certain facts which in the
+providence of God are forced upon<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_377" id="Page_377">[Pg 377]</a></span> them, that in the general management
+of disease, and as the general rule of treatment, no drugs or medicines
+are needful?</p>
+
+<p>There is a wide difference between that practice of our profession
+which, as a general rule, excludes medicine, and that which, as a
+general rule, includes it. And an entire change from the latter to the
+former, is, perhaps, too great to be expected immediately. Yet, in the
+progress of society towards a more perfect millennial state of things,
+must it not come?</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_378" id="Page_378">[Pg 378]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_CI" id="CHAPTER_CI"></a>CHAPTER CI.</h2>
+
+<h3>CONCLUDING REMARKS.</h3>
+
+
+<p>It is a notorious fact, that while the number of physicians and the
+expenditure for drugs and medicines is constantly increasing, in every
+civilized country where they have been much employed, diseases have been
+multiplied in proportion. Perhaps, too, they have, in a like proportion,
+become more fatal; but this does not so clearly appear. Nor is it quite
+so certain that acute diseases have been multiplied, as chronic ones.</p>
+
+<p>Another fact deserves to be placed by the side of this; viz., that in
+those countries, or portions of country, where no physicians have ever
+been in vogue, and very little medicine beyond a few herbs, and roots,
+and incantations, or charms, the health of the people is quite as good,
+and the longevity quite as great, all other things being equal, as in
+those countries and places where physicians and medicine have obtained a
+strong foothold.</p>
+
+<p>There is no evidence that the want of physicians before the flood,&mdash;if
+such a want or deficiency there was, which appears probable,&mdash;had any
+influence in shortening human life, since Methuselah, who lived at the
+end of the series, was the oldest of all. Nor does it appear at all
+probable that there were more diseases, or more fatal ones, at that
+early period, than since.</p>
+
+<p>One thought more. It is confidently expected that a better day than the
+present is yet to dawn upon our dark world. Not only is it predicted
+that the child shall die a hundred years old, by the highest authority,
+and that men, like the oak tree, shall live several hundred years, but
+profane writers no less<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_379" id="Page_379">[Pg 379]</a></span> than prophets and sacred ones, have expected
+and still expect it. The better time coming is, as it were, in
+everybody's mouth.</p>
+
+<p>But, is it probable that this better day will dawn on a world which, in
+respect to health and longevity, is going in the other direction? While
+nearly half our children die under ten years of age, and the mortality
+is increasing, are we tending towards the point when a child shall die a
+hundred years old? And are our physicians and our medicines likely to
+bring us there?</p>
+
+<p>If not, and if a radical change is desirable, when is it to be made?
+Shall we wait till we have run down a century or two longer, or shall we
+begin the work immediately? And if we are to begin it at once, on whom
+shall the work devolve?</p>
+
+<p>These are questions, I grant, more easily asked than answered.
+Nevertheless, they must soon be met; they cannot much longer be shuffled
+off. Would it not be the part of wisdom to meet them now, rather than
+postpone?</p>
+
+<p>Here, then, I leave the subject. Let it be pondered in the light of
+reason, common sense, conscience, and, above all, the truth of God. Let
+there be no immature or hasty decisions. Truth, in truthful hands, has
+nothing to fear.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_380" id="Page_380">[Pg 380]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_CII" id="CHAPTER_CII"></a>CHAPTER CII.</h2>
+
+<h3>A LAST CHAPTER.</h3>
+
+
+<p>William A. Alcott was born in Wolcott, Conn., August 6th, 1798. His
+father, a farmer in the rough mountain town, employed his son, as soon
+as he was old enough to be useful, in laboring on the farm, so that,
+from childhood, he was trained to habits of industry. His early
+employments were, in many respects, beneficial, and his feeble
+constitution was probably invigorated by this out-of-door work. The only
+apparent drawback was being kept at work too closely, with very little
+time left for amusement; and, as he was too conscientious to neglect the
+tasks assigned him, he plodded on, thus losing, in a great measure,
+while young, the natural and healthy relish of boys for athletic games
+and sports. As a natural consequence, his mind developed too rapidly. He
+early showed a great fondness for books, and the love of reading came to
+be his chief and almost only amusement.</p>
+
+<p>Till eight years of age he attended the district school, in summer and
+winter, but after this period his father employed him in farm labor
+constantly, except during the winter term. At the age of fourteen he had
+measles, from which he suffered greatly at the time, and in its
+consequences for several years. He grew rapidly, was, when a lad, tall
+and thin, and his strength, when young, and, indeed, through his whole
+life, lay chiefly in a strong will, combined with great energy and
+perseverance. To these qualities, doubtless, is owing the continuance of
+his life for many years.</p>
+
+<p>When little more than eighteen years of age, he commenced teaching,
+which was continued, during the winter, for several years; sometimes
+through the entire year. But a strong desire to improve and elevate the
+schools, led him to overtask himself.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_381" id="Page_381">[Pg 381]</a></span> Mr. Barnard's <i>Journal of
+Education</i>, speaks thus of his labors at this period: "The severity of
+his exertions and self-denials, joined to other causes, especially a
+feeble constitution, brought on him a most violent attack of erysipelas,
+from the effects of which, though he escaped with his life, he never
+entirely recovered."</p>
+
+<p>About this time he commenced the study of medicine, and the succeeding
+winter, 1825-6, attended medical lectures in New Haven, not so much with
+the design of making it a profession, as with the hope that it might
+prove an aid in fitting him to become a more thorough teacher. The
+following March he received a license to practice medicine and surgery.
+But his health was far from being good, and he was, himself, more
+apprehensive of a fatal result, than consumptive people usually are.</p>
+
+<p>However, he soon found an opportunity to engage in teaching again, and
+embraced it eagerly. But here he was destined to disappointment. His
+pulmonary tendencies, which had for ten years been increasing upon him,
+aggravated, no doubt, by hard study and improper diet of the preceding
+winter, now became very alarming. Beside a severe cough and great
+emaciation, he was followed by hectic fever, and the most exhausting and
+discouraging perspirations. He fought bravely to the last moment, but
+was finally compelled to quit the field, and endeavor to regain his
+health.</p>
+
+<p>For a time, he followed the soundest medical advice he could obtain;
+kept quiet, took a little medicine, ate nutritious food, and when his
+strength would permit, breathed pure air. This course was at length
+changed, for one of greater activity and less stimulus. He abandoned
+medicine, adopted for a time the "starvation system," or nearly that,
+and threw himself, by such aids as he could obtain, into the fields and
+woods, and wandered among the hills and mountains.</p>
+
+<p>In autumn, he was able to perform light horticultural labors, a few
+hours of the day, and to ride on horseback. For six months he rode
+almost daily in company with a physician; at the end of which period he
+commenced the practice of medicine,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_382" id="Page_382">[Pg 382]</a></span> in the place where he had last
+labored, and where he was born.</p>
+
+<p>After continuing in the practice a few years, and his health seeming to
+be restored, he ventured to return again to the work dearer to him than
+any other&mdash;that of teaching. But his labors seemed again to be slowly
+undermining his health, and, fearful of a relapse of the pulmonary
+tendencies, he abandoned for a time all hope of teaching permanently.</p>
+
+<p>The following year, he became connected with Rev. William C. Woodbridge,
+and continued to labor in the cause of education for several successive
+years.</p>
+
+<p>In Jan. 1833, he removed to Boston, and during the winter had a severe
+attack of bleeding at the lungs, and other dangerous symptoms. These,
+however, passed away; and the great change which, in 1830, had been made
+in his physical habits, seemed to be working one equally great in his
+constitutional tendencies. For while his labors were constant and often
+severe, there was a steady gain in health. The strength and elasticity
+of youth returned, and, to use his own words it was with him, now,
+"morning all day." The effects of an unfavorable climate, which he had
+feared, were apparently held in check, and he sometimes said that
+"Obedience gave him command over climate, in a great degree." Yet,
+during all these years when his health was apparently most firm, it was
+kept in this condition only by a rigid obedience to the laws of life and
+health, as he understood and expounded them. His precepts and practice
+were in harmony.</p>
+
+<p>In the spring of 1848, owing to some unusual exposure, a return of the
+cough and other symptoms of his old disease made their appearance.<a name="FNanchor_N_14" id="FNanchor_N_14"></a><a href="#Footnote_N_14" class="fnanchor">[N]</a>
+But, with care, and light labor in the garden, they gradually passed
+away, and his usual measure of health returned, and continued, with
+slight interruptions, till 1855. During this year he was confined to his
+room several months with a broken limb. The change, at his age, from
+exercise daily in the open air, to confinement without exercise<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_383" id="Page_383">[Pg 383]</a></span> nearly
+all winter, was very unfavorable, in its results, to his general health.
+The lungs, doubtless, suffered greatly, and were never able to resist,
+as before, the effects of exposure to sudden changes of temperature.</p>
+
+<p>Still he labored on from year to year, untiringly as ever, writing,
+lecturing, visiting schools, etc. During the last winter, his time was
+employed more exclusively in reading and writing, and he went out less
+than usual. His lungs were weak and very easily affected. A difficulty
+of breathing after much exertion was frequent. His feet and ankles were
+often much swollen, and there was a loss of strength and general
+debility quite new to him.</p>
+
+<p>These indications were not to be mistaken, and in the retirement of his
+own home he often spoke of the possibility and even probability, that
+his earthly labors were drawing to a close.</p>
+
+<p>On the 18th of March, he left home to be absent a few days, partly with
+the hope that being more in the open air might prove beneficial. On
+Friday of the following week, though scarcely able to be moved, he was
+brought home, having been prostrated by what appeared to be a violent
+attack of pleurisy, which terminated his earthly existence, on Tuesday,
+March 28, 1859.</p>
+
+<p>In many minds the question will naturally arise: What should induce such
+an apparently violent disease, in a person who so rigidly obeyed the
+laws of health? A satisfactory answer to this can be given only by
+supposing the acute disease to have been merely a finishing up or
+termination of that disease which for years had been held in check. His
+own views on the subject were in accordance with this conclusion, and
+the condition of the lungs, as shown by a post mortem examination,
+served to confirm it. The amount of disease found in the lungs was so
+great that the examination could not be as careful and satisfactory as
+would have been desirable.</p>
+
+<p>The hand that wrote this volume, and that would have drawn important
+lessons from this page of life, now moulders in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_384" id="Page_384">[Pg 384]</a></span> dust. To the reader
+it is left to gather from it instruction and motive and courage, for a
+like battle against evil, for a like victory over self, until he, too,
+shall accomplish his mission upon earth.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_N_14" id="Footnote_N_14"></a><a href="#FNanchor_N_14"><span class="label">[N]</span></a> See Chapter LXIX.</p></div>
+
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Forty Years in the Wilderness of Pills
+and Powders, by William A. Alcott
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+</pre>
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+</body>
+</html>
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Forty Years in the Wilderness of Pills and
+Powders, by William A. Alcott
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Forty Years in the Wilderness of Pills and Powders
+       Cogitations and Confessions of an Aged Physician
+
+Author: William A. Alcott
+
+Release Date: October 5, 2010 [EBook #34038]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WILDERNESS OF PILLS, POWDERS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Edwards, Josephine Paolucci and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net.
+(This file was produced from images generously made
+available by The Internet Archive.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: Engraved by J. C. Buttre, expressly for Fireside
+Lectures.
+
+Doct. W'm. A. ALCOTT.]
+
+FORTY YEARS
+
+IN THE WILDERNESS
+
+OF
+
+PILLS AND POWDERS;
+
+OR, THE
+
+COGITATIONS AND CONFESSIONS OF
+
+AN AGED PHYSICIAN.
+
+BOSTON:
+JOHN P. JEWETT AND COMPANY.
+
+NEW YORK:
+C. M. SAXTON AND COMPANY.
+ROCHESTER, NEW YORK: E. DARROW AND BROTHER.
+1859.
+
+Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1859, by
+JOHN P. JEWETT AND COMPANY,
+In the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the district of
+Massachusetts.
+
+LITHOTYPED BY COWLES AND COMPANY,
+17 WASHINGTON ST., BOSTON.
+
+Printed by Geo. C. Rand and Avery.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+The present volume was one of the last upon which its author was
+engaged, the facts having been gathered from the experience and
+observation of a long life. It was his design to publish them
+anonymously, but under the changed circumstances this is rendered
+impracticable.
+
+A short time previous to his death, the writer spoke of this work, and
+said, in allusion to the termination of his own somewhat peculiar
+case,--"This _last chapter_ must be added." In accordance with this
+desire, a brief sketch, having reference chiefly to his health and
+physical habits, with the closing chapter of his life, has been
+appended.
+
+Boston, June, 1859.
+
+
+
+
+TO THE READER.
+
+
+In the sub-title to the following work, I have used the word
+"Confessions"--not to mislead the reader, but because _to confess_ is
+one prominent idea of its author. It is a work in which confessions of
+the impotence of the healing art, as that art has been usually
+understood, greatly abound; and in which the public ignorance of the
+laws of health or hygiene, with the consequences of that ignorance, are
+presented with great plainness. The world will make a wiser use of its
+medical men than it has hitherto done, when it comes to see more clearly
+what is their legitimate and what their ultimate mission.
+
+These remarks indicate the main intention of the writer. It is not so
+much to enlighten or aid, or in any way directly affect the medical man,
+as to open the eyes of the public to their truest interests; to a just
+knowledge of themselves; and to some faint conception of their bondage
+to credulity and quackery. The reader will find that I go for science
+and truth, let them affect whom they may. Let him, then, suspend his
+judgment till he has gone through this volume once, and I shall have no
+fears. He may, indeed, find fault with my style, and complain of my
+literary or philosophic unfitness for the task I assigned myself; but he
+will, nevertheless, be glad to know my facts.
+
+Should any one feel aggrieved by the exposures I have made in the
+details which follow, let me assure him that no one is more
+exposed--nor, indeed, has more cause to be aggrieved--than myself. Let
+us all, then, as far as is practicable, keep our own secrets. Let us not
+shrink from such exposures as are likely, in a large measure, to benefit
+mankind, while the greatest possible inconvenience or loss to ourselves
+is but trifling.
+
+Some may wish that instead of confining myself too rigidly to naked fact
+and sober reasoning, I had given a little more scope to the imagination.
+But is not plain, "unvarnished" truth sometimes not only "stranger,"
+but, in a work like this, better also, than any attempts at "fiction"?
+
+THE AUTHOR.
+
+AUBURNDALE, March, 1859.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+CHAPTER.                                                PAGE.
+
+I. EDUCATIONAL TENDENCIES                                  1
+
+II. MY FIRST MEDICAL LESSON,                               6
+
+III. THE ELECTRICAL MACHINE,                               9
+
+IV. THE MEASLES, AND POURING DOWN RUM,                    11
+
+V. LEE'S PILLS AND DROPSY,                                13
+
+VI. THE COLD SHOWER BATH,                                 16
+
+VII. MY FIRST SICKNESS ABROAD,                            18
+
+VIII. LESSON FROM AN OLD SURGEON,                         20
+
+IX. LEE'S WINDHAM BILIOUS PILLS,                          23
+
+X. DR. SOLOMON AND HIS PATIENT.                           26
+
+XI. PHYSICKING OFF FEVER,                                 28
+
+XII. MANUFACTURING CHILBLAINS,                            31
+
+XIII. HOW TO MAKE ERYSIPELAS,                             34
+
+XIV. STUDYING MEDICINE,                                   38
+
+XV. NATURE'S OWN EYE WATER,                               41
+
+XVI. THE VIPER STORY,                                     43
+
+XVII. STRUCK WITH DEATH,                                  46
+
+XVIII. EFFICACY OF COLD SPRING WATER,                     51
+
+XIX. CHEATING THE PHYSICIAN,                              56
+
+XX. MEDICINAL EFFECTS OF STORY TELLING,                   58
+
+XXI. OSSIFIED VEINS,                                      61
+
+XXII. HE WILL DIE IN THIRTY-SIX HOURS,                    64
+
+XXIII. ABOUT TO DIE OF CONSUMPTION,                       72
+
+XXIV. MY JOURNEYMANSHIP IN MEDICINE,                      81
+
+XXV. MY TEMPERANCE PLEDGE,                                85
+
+XXVI. TRIALS OF A YOUNG PHYSICIAN,                        87
+
+XXVII. A DOSING AND DRUGGING FAMILY,                      90
+
+XXVIII. POISONING WITH LEAD,                              96
+
+XXIX. STANDING PATIENTS,                                 102
+
+XXX. KILLING A PATIENT,                                  105
+
+XXXI. A SUDDEN CURE,                                     109
+
+XXXII. GIGANTIC DOSES OF MEDICINE,                       112
+
+XXXIII. THE LAMBSKIN DISEASE,                            115
+
+XXXIV. MILK PUNCH FEVER,                                 120
+
+XXXV. MY FIRST CASE IN SURGERY,                          124
+
+XXXVI. EMILIA AND THE LOVE-CURE,                         127
+
+XXXVII. HEZEKIAH JUDKINS AND DELIRIUM,                   133
+
+XXXVIII. MY FIRST AMPUTATION,                            136
+
+XXXIX. MILK AS A REMEDY IN FEVERS,                       138
+
+XL. VIRTUES OF PUMPKIN SEED TEA,                         141
+
+XLI. BROKEN LIMBS AND INTEMPERANCE,                      144
+
+XLII. DYING FROM FILTHINESS,                             148
+
+XLIII. TAKING THE FEVER,                                 153
+
+XLIV. BLESSINGS OF CIDER AND CIDER BRANDY,               156
+
+XLV. THE INDIAN DOCTOR,                                  160
+
+XLVI. DYING OF OLD AGE AT FIFTY-EIGHT,                   163
+
+XLVII. DAUGHTERS DESTROYING THEIR MOTHER,                169
+
+XLVIII. POISONING WITH STRAMONIUM,                       172
+
+XLIX. CURING CANCER,                                     175
+
+L. SWELLED LIMBS,                                        179
+
+LI. SUDDEN CHANGES IN OLD AGE,                           182
+
+LII. AN OPIUM EATER,                                     185
+
+LIII. COFFEE AND THE LAME KNEE,                          188
+
+LIV. THE OPIUM PILL BOX,                                 193
+
+LV. BLEEDING AT THE LUNGS,                               196
+
+LVI. BUTTER EATERS,                                      201
+
+LVII. HOT HOUSES AND CONSUMPTION,                        206
+
+LVIII. POISONING BY A PAINTED PAIL,                      216
+
+LIX. ONE DROP OF LAUDANUM,                               218
+
+LX. MRS. KIDDER'S CORDIAL,                               220
+
+LXI. ALMOST RAISING THE DEAD,                            225
+
+LXII. FEMALE HEALTH AND INSANE HOSPITALS,                231
+
+LXIII. A GIANT DYSPEPTIC,                                236
+
+LXIV. GETTING INTO A CIRCLE,                             246
+
+LXV. POISONING WITH MAPLE SUGAR,                         249
+
+LXVI. PHYSICKING OFF MEASLES,                            251
+
+LXVII. TIC DOULOUREUX,                                   253
+
+LXVIII. COLD WATER IN FEVER,                             256
+
+LXIX. COLD-TAKING AND CONSUMPTION,                       258
+
+LXX. FREEZING OUT DISEASE,                               261
+
+LXXI. THE AIR CURE,                                      263
+
+LXXII. THE CLERGYMAN,                                    266
+
+LXXIII. HE MUST BE PHYSICKED OR DIE,                     268
+
+LXXIV. WHO HATH WOE? OR, THE SICK WIDOW,                 272
+
+LXXV. THE PENALTY OF SELF-INDULGENCE,                    275
+
+LXXVI. DR. BOLUS AND MORPHINE,                           282
+
+LXXVII. BLEEDING AND BLISTERING OMITTED,                 286
+
+LXXVIII. MEDICAL VIRTUES OF SLEEP,                       288
+
+LXXIX. CURE BY DEEP BREATHING,                           291
+
+LXXX. SPIRIT DOCTORING,                                  295
+
+LXXXI. REMARKABLE CURE OF EPILEPSY,                      301
+
+LXXXII. SCARLATINA CURED BY LETTING ALONE,               312
+
+LXXXIII. IGNORANCE NOT ALWAYS BLISS,                     314
+
+LXXXIV. MEASLES WITHOUT SNAKEROOT AND SAFFRON,           317
+
+LXXXV. THE CONSUMPTIVE PAIR,                             320
+
+LXXXVI. HOW TO CURE CHOLERA,                             322
+
+LXXXVII. OBSTINACY AND SUICIDE,                          324
+
+LXXXVIII. HEALTH HOSPITALS,                              327
+
+LXXXIX. DESTRUCTION BY SCROFULA,                         329
+
+XC. STARVING OUT DISEASE,                                334
+
+XCI. DIETING ON MINCE PIE,                               342
+
+XCII. GIANTS IN THE EARTH,                               346
+
+XCIII. THE GREEN MOUNTAIN PATIENT,                       349
+
+XCIV. CURE OF POISON FROM LEAD,                          355
+
+XCV. FAITH AND WORKS,                                    358
+
+XCVI. WORKS WITHOUT FAITH,                               360
+
+XCVII. DISEASES OF LICENTIOUSNESS,                       365
+
+XCVIII. CURIOUS AND INSTRUCTIVE FACTS,                   367
+
+XCIX. ANTI-MEDICAL TESTIMONY,                            371
+
+C. AN ANTI-MEDICAL PREMIUM,                              375
+
+CI. CONCLUDING REMARKS,                                  378
+
+CII. A LAST CHAPTER,                                     380
+
+
+
+
+FORTY YEARS IN THE WILDERNESS
+
+OF
+
+PILLS AND POWDERS.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+EDUCATIONAL TENDENCIES.
+
+
+I was born in a retired but pleasant part of New England, as New England
+was half a century ago, and as, in many places, despite of its canals,
+steamboats, railroads, and electromagnetic telegraphs, it still is.
+Hence I am entitled to the honor of being, in the most emphatic sense, a
+native of the land of "steady habits."
+
+The people with whom I passed my early years, though comparatively rude
+and uncultivated, were yet, in their manners and character, quite
+simple. Most of them could spell and read, and write their names, and a
+few could "cipher" as far as simple subtraction. To obtain the
+last-mentioned accomplishment, however, was not easy, for arithmetic was
+not generally permitted in the public schools during the six hours of
+the day; and could only be obtained in the occasional evening school, or
+by self-exertion at home.
+
+The majority of my townsmen also knew something of the dream-book and of
+palmistry, and of the influence of the moon (especially when first seen,
+after the change, over the right shoulder), not only on the weather and
+on vegetation, but on the world of humanity. They also understood full
+well, what troubles were betokened by the howling of a dog, the
+blossoming of a flower out of due season, or the beginning of a journey
+or of a job of work on Tuesday or Friday. Many of them knew how to tell
+fortunes in connection with a cup of tea. Nay, more, not a few of them
+were skilled in astrology, and by its aid could tell under what planet a
+person was born, and perchance, could predict thereby the future events
+of his life; at least after those events had actually taken place.
+
+Under what particular planet I was born, my friends never told me;
+though it is quite possible some of my sage grandmothers or aunts could
+have furnished the needful information had I sought it. They used to
+look often at the lines in the palms of my hands, and talk much about my
+dreams, which were certainly a little aspiring, and in many respects
+remarkable. The frequent prediction of one of these aged and wise
+friends I remember very well. It was, that I would eat my bread in two
+kingdoms. This prediction was grounded on the fact, that the hair on the
+top of my head was so arranged by the plastic hand of Nature as to form
+what were called two crowns; and was so far fulfilled, that I have
+occasionally eaten bread within the realms of Queen Victoria!
+
+According to the family register, kept in the cranium of my mother, I
+was born on Monday, which doubtless served to justify the frequent
+repetition of the old adage, and its application to my own case--"Born
+on Monday, fair of face." I was also born on the sixth day of the month,
+on account of which it was said that the sixth verse of the thirty-first
+chapter of Proverbs was, prospectively, a key to my character. It is
+certainly true that I have dealt out not a little "strong drink to him
+that" was "ready to perish;" and that few of my professional brethren
+have furnished a larger proportion of it gratuitously; or as Solomom
+says, have _given_ it.
+
+Whether there was any clear or distinct prophecy ever uttered that I
+would one day be a knight of the lancet, clad in full armor, is not
+certain. If there was, I presume it was unwritten. That I was to be
+distinguished in some way, everybody appeared to understand and
+acknowledge. I was not only at the head of all my classes at school, in
+spelling, reading, and writing, but exalted above most of my competitors
+and compeers by a whole head and shoulders. In ciphering, in
+particular, I excelled. I understood the grand rules of arithmetic, and
+could even work a little in the Rule of Three.
+
+That the thought of being a "doctor" did, in a sort of indefinable way,
+sometimes enter my head, even at that early period, I will not deny. One
+of my teachers, as I well remember, had medical books, into which bars
+and bolts could hardly prevent me from peeping. But there were a
+thousand lions in the way--or at least _two or three_. One was extreme
+indigence on the part of my parents. They came together nearly as poor
+as John Bunyan and his wife, or Sydney Smith and his companion. Or if,
+in addition to a knife, fork, and spoon, they had a looking-glass, an
+old iron kettle, an axe, and a hoe, I am sure the inventory of their
+property at first could not have extended much farther; and now that
+they had a family of four children, their wants had increased about as
+fast as their income.
+
+Besides, there was a confused belief in the public mind--and of course
+in mine--that medical men were a species of conjurors; or if nothing
+more, that they had a sort of mysterious knowledge of human character,
+obtained by dealing with the stars, or by reliance on some supernatural
+source or other. And to such a height as this I could not at that time
+presume to aspire; though I certainly did aspire, even at a very early
+period, to become a learned man.
+
+As a means to such an end, I early felt an ardent desire to become a
+printer. This desire originated, in part at least, from reading the
+autobiography of Dr. Franklin, of which I was exceedingly fond. It was a
+desire, moreover, which I was very slow to relinquish till compelled. My
+father, as we have seen, was a poor laborer, and thought himself unable
+either to give me any extra opportunities of education, or to spare me
+from the cultivation of a few paternal acres. Still, in secret, I I
+clung to the hope of one day traversing the lengths and breadths and
+depths and heights of the world of science.
+
+But for what purpose, as a final end? for, practically, the great
+question was, _cui bono_? As for becoming a lawyer, that, with me, was
+quite out of the question; for lawyers, even thus early, were generally
+regarded as bad men. All over the region of my nativity the word lawyer
+was nearly synonymous with liar; and to liars and lawyers the Devil was
+supposed to have a peculiar liking, not to say affinity. I had never at
+that time heard of but one honest lawyer; and him I regarded as a sort
+of _lusus naturae_ much more than as an ordinary human being. My friends
+would have been shocked at the bare thought of my becoming a lawyer, had
+the road to that profession been open to my youthful aspirations.
+
+The clerical profession was in some respects looked upon more favorably
+than the legal or the medical. I was scarcely "three feet high" when an
+aged and venerable grandmother said one day, _in my hearing_, and
+probably _for_ my hearing, "I always did hope one of my grandsons would
+be a minister." This, however, neither interested me much nor encouraged
+me; for (reader will you believe it?), as the doctor was regarded in
+those days as more than half a sorcerer, and the lawyer three-fourths
+devil, so the minister was deemed by many as almost half an idiot,
+except for his learning.
+
+I am not, by any means, trifling with you. It was the serious belief of
+many--I think I might say of most--that those boys who "took to
+learning" were by nature rather "weak in the attic," especially those
+who inclined to the ministry. It was a common joke concerning an idiot
+or half idiot, "send him to college."[A]
+
+In short, so strongly was this unfounded impression concerning the
+native imbecility of ministers, and in general of literary men, fastened
+on my mind as well as on the minds of most people, that I grew up nearly
+to manhood with a sort of confused belief that as a general rule they
+were below par in point of good, common sense. One prominent reason, as
+I supposed, why they were sent to college and wrought into that
+particular shape, was to bring them up to an equality with their
+fellows. Hence, I not only repelled with a degree of indignation the
+thought of becoming a minister, but felt really demeaned by my natural
+fondness for books and school; and like the poet Cowper, hardly dared,
+all my early lifetime, to look higher than the shoe buckles of my
+associates. Still, I could not wholly suppress the strong desire to
+_know_ which had penetrated and pervaded my soul, and which had been
+nurtured and fed not only by an intelligent mother but by a few books I
+had read. Perhaps the life of Franklin, already referred to, had as much
+influence with me as any thing of the kind. For along with the love of
+knowledge which was so much developed by this book, the love of doing
+good was introduced. The doctor says, somewhere, that he always set a
+high value on a doer of good; and it is possible, nay, I might even say
+probable, that this desire, which subsequently became a passion with me,
+had its origin in this very remark.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[A] To illustrate this point, and show clearly the state of the public
+opinion, I will relate an anecdote. A certain calf in the neighborhood,
+after long and patient trial, was pronounced too ignorant to be able to
+procure his own nourishment, or in other words, was said to be a fool.
+On raising the question, what should be done with him, a shrewd colored
+man who stood by, said, "Master, send him to college!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+MY FIRST MEDICAL LESSON.
+
+
+Straws, it is said, show which way the wind blows; and words, and things
+very small in themselves, sometimes show, much better than "two crowns,"
+or the "stars," what is to be the future of a person's life. The choice
+of a profession or occupation, were we but trained to the habit of
+tracing effects up to their causes, will doubtless often be found to
+have had its origin, if not in _straws_, at least in very small matters.
+
+When I was ten years of age, my little brother, of only two years, sat
+one day on the floor whittling an apple. The instrument in his hand was
+a Barlow knife, as it was then called. The blade was about two inches in
+length, but was worn very narrow. How his parents and other friends,
+several of whom were in the same room, came to let him use such a
+plaything, I cannot now conceive; but as the point was almost square,
+and the knife very dull, they do not seem hitherto to have had any
+fears.
+
+Suddenly the usual quiet of the family was disturbed a little by the
+announcement, "Somebody is going by;" an event which, as you should
+know, was quite an era in that retired, mountainous region. All hastened
+to the window to get a view of the passing traveller. The little boy
+scampered among the rest; but in crossing the threshold of a door which
+intervened, he stumbled and fell. A sudden shriek called to him one of
+our friends, who immediately cried out, "Oh dear, he has put out his
+eye!" and made a hasty but unsuccessful effort to extract the knife,
+which had penetrated the full length of its blade. The mother hastened
+to the spot, and drew it forth, though, as she afterward said, not
+without the exertion of considerable force. Its back was towards the
+child, and by pressing the ball of the eye downward, the instrument had
+been able to penetrate to the bottom of the cavity, and perhaps a little
+way into the bone beyond. The elasticity of the eyeball had retained it
+so as to render its extraction seemingly difficult.
+
+Most of those who were present, particularly myself and the rest of the
+children, were for a short time in a state of mental agony that bordered
+on insanity. Not knowing at first the nature of the wound, but only that
+there was an eye there, and brains very near it, we naturally expected
+nothing less than the loss of this precious organ of vision, if not of
+life. There was no practising physician or surgeon, just at that time,
+within five or six miles, and I do not remember that any was sent for.
+We probably concluded that he could do no good.
+
+The child's eye swelled, and for a few days looked very badly; but after
+the lapse of about two weeks the little fellow seemed to be quite well;
+and so far as his eyes and brain are concerned, I believe he has been
+well to this time, a period of almost half a century.
+
+Although we resided at a considerable distance from the village, and
+from any practising physician, there was near by a very aged and
+superannuated man, who had once been a medical practitioner. Our
+curiosity had been so much excited by the wonderful escape of the little
+boy from impending destruction, that we called on the venerable doctor
+and asked him whether it was possible for a knife to penetrate so far
+into the head without injuring the brain and producing some degree of
+inflammation. From Dr. C. we received a good deal of valuable
+information concerning the structure of the eye, the shape of the cavity
+in which it is placed, the structure and character of the brain, etc.
+
+This was a great treat to me, I assure you. It added not a little to the
+interest which was imparted by his instructions when he showed us, from
+the relics of better days, some of the bones of the skull, especially
+those of the frontal region, in which the eye is situated. Of course the
+sight of a death's head, as we were inclined to call it, was at first
+frightful to us; but it was a feeling which in part soon passed away. It
+was a feeling, most certainly, which in me was not abiding at all.
+Indeed, as the title to the chapter would seem to imply, I received in
+this dispensation of Providence and its accompaniments my first medical
+lesson; though without the remotest thought, at the time, of any such
+thing. I was only indulging in a curiosity which was instinctive and
+intense, without dreaming of future consequences.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+THE ELECTRICAL MACHINE.
+
+
+Two years after this, an aged man, a distant relation, came to reside in
+my father's family for a short time, and brought with him a small
+electrical machine. He was a person of some intelligence, had travelled
+much, and had been an officer in the army of the American Revolution. On
+the whole, he was just such a man as would be likely to become a
+favorite with children. He was, moreover, fully imbued with the
+expectation of being able to cure diseases by means of electricity;
+which in our neighborhood, at the least, was quite a novel, not to say a
+heterodox idea.
+
+Curiosity alone had no small share of influence in bringing my mind to
+the study of electricity; but a general desire to understand the subject
+was greatly strengthened by the hope of being able to apply this
+wonderful agent in the cure of disease. One of the most interesting
+phases of Christianity is that the love and practice of healing the
+bodily maladies of mankind are almost always seen in the foreground of
+the New Testament representations of our Saviour's doings; and it is no
+wonder that a youth who reverences his Bible, and has a little
+benevolence, should entertain feelings like those above mentioned.
+
+The owner of the machine had brought with him a book on the subject of
+curing by electricity. It was a volume of several hundred pages, and was
+written by T. Gale, of Northern New York. It had in it much that was
+mere theory, in a highly bombastic style; but it also professed to give
+with accuracy the details of many remarkable cures, in various forms and
+stages, of several difficult diseases; and some of these details I knew
+to be realities. One or two cases at or near Ballston Springs were
+those of persons of whom I had some knowledge; and one of them was a
+relative. This last circumstance, no doubt, had great influence on my
+mind.
+
+As I had in those days some leisure for reading, and possessed very few
+books, I read--and not only read but studied--Dr. Gale's work from
+beginning to end. It is scarcely too much to say, that I read it till I
+knew it almost "by heart;" and my heart assented to it. I believed a new
+dispensation was at hand to bless the world of mankind; and what
+benevolence I had, began to be directed in this particular channel. I do
+not mean to say, that at twelve years of age I began to be a physician,
+for I do not now recollect that either our aged friend or myself ever
+had a patient during the whole year he remained with us.
+
+Eight or ten subsequent years at the plough and hoe, and the absence of
+book, electrical machine, and owner, did much towards obliterating the
+impressions on this subject I had received. Still, I have no doubt that
+the affair as a whole had a tendency to lead my thoughts towards the
+study and practice of medicine, and even to inspire confidence in
+electricity as a curative agent. In other and fewer words, it was, as I
+believe, a part of my medical education.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+THE MEASLES AND POURING DOWN RUM.
+
+
+When I was about fourteen years of age, an event occurred which left a
+stronger impression on my mind than any of the foregoing; and hence in
+all probability did more to give my mind a medical bias and tendency.
+
+It was in the month of August. My father, assisted by two or three of
+his neighbors, was mowing a swamp meadow. It was an unusually wet
+season, and the water in many places was several inches deep,--in some
+few instances so deep that we were obliged to go continually with wet
+feet. To meet, and as it was by most people supposed to remove the
+danger of contracting disease, a bottle of rum was occasionally resorted
+to by the mowers, and offered to me; but at first I steadfastly refused
+it.
+
+At length, however, I began to droop. A feverish feeling and great
+languor came over me, and I was hardly able to walk. I was not then
+aware, nor were my friends, that I had been exposed to the contagion of
+measles, and therefore was not expecting it. I spoke of my ill health,
+but was consoled with the answer that I should soon get over it. But no;
+I grew worse, very fast. "Turn down the rum," said one of the mowers,
+"if you mean to work." But I hesitated. I was not fond of rum at any
+time, and just now I felt a stronger disinclination to it than ever
+before. "Turn down the rum," was repeated by the mowers, from time to
+time, with increased emphasis.
+
+At length wearied with their importunity; and, not over-willing to be
+the butt of their mirth and ridicule, I went to the spring, where the
+bottle of rum was kept, and, unperceived by any one, emptied a large
+portion of its contents on the ground. The mental agitation of
+temporary excitement dispelled in part my sufferings, and I proceeded
+once more to my work.
+
+In a very short time my noisy alcoholic prescribers went to the spring
+to pour rum down their _own_ throats. "What," said they, with much
+surprise, "has become of the rum?" "Have you drank it?" said they,
+turning to me. "Not a drop of it," I said. "But it is almost all gone,"
+they said; "and it is a great mystery what has become of it." "The
+mystery is easily cleared up," I said; "you told me to turn it down, and
+I have done so."--"Told you to turn it down!" said one of them, the most
+noisy one; "I told you to drink it."--"No," said I, "you told me to turn
+it down; and I have poured it down--my part of it--at the foot of the
+stump. If you have forgotten your direction to turn it down, I appeal to
+two competent witnesses."
+
+The joke passed off much better than I expected. For myself, however, I
+grew worse rapidly, and was soon sent home. My mother put me into bed,
+applied a bottle of hot water to my feet, and gave me hot drinks most
+liberally, and among the rest some "hot toddy." Her object was to sweat
+away a supposed attack of fever. Had she known it was measles that
+assailed me, or had she even suspected it, she would almost as soon have
+cut off her right hand as apply the sweating process. She would, on the
+contrary, have given me cooling drinks and pure air. She was not wholly
+divested of good sense on this point, neither was the prevailing public
+opinion.
+
+I suffered much, very much, and was for a part of the time delirious. At
+length an eruption began to be visible, and to assume the appearance
+which is usual in measles, both to my own relief and that of my parents
+and other friends. But the mistaken treatment, or the disease, or both,
+gave a shock to my already somewhat delicate constitution, from which I
+doubt whether I ever fully recovered. The sequel, however, will appear
+more fully in the next chapter.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+LEE'S PILLS, AND THE DROPSY.
+
+
+In consequence either of the disease or its mismanagement, I was left,
+on recovering from the measles, with a general dropsy. I might also say
+here, that at the recurrence of the same season, for many years
+afterwards, I was attacked with a complaint so nearly resembling measles
+that some who were strangers to me could hardly be diverted from the
+belief that it was the veritable disease itself.
+
+But to the dropsy. This disease, so unusual in young people, especially
+those of my sanguine and nervous temperament, alarmed both my parents
+and myself, and medical advice was forthwith invoked. Our family
+physician was an old man, bred in the full belief of the necessity in
+such cases of what are called "alteratives," which, in plain English,
+means substances so active as to produce, when applied to the body
+either externally or internally, certain sudden changes. Alteratives, in
+short, are either irritants or poisons.
+
+Our aged doctor was called in to see me; and after the usual
+compliments, and perhaps a passing joke or two,--for both of which he
+was quite famous,--he asked me to let him see my tongue. Next, he felt
+my pulse. All the while--a matter exceedingly important to success--he
+looked "wondrous wise." He also asked me sundry wondrous wise questions.
+They were at least couched in wondrous words of monstrous length.
+
+The examination fairly over, there followed a pause; not, indeed, an
+"awful pause," but one of a few seconds, or perhaps in all of half a
+minute. "Now," said he, "you must take one of Lee's pills every day, in
+roasted apple." There were other directions, but this was the principal,
+except to avoid taking cold. The pills, of course, contained a
+proportion of mercury or calomel, on the alterative effects of which,
+as I plainly perceived, he placed his chief dependence.
+
+I took the pills, daily, for about six weeks; but they produced very
+little apparent effect, except to spoil my appetite. What their remoter
+effects were on my constitution generally, is quite another question.
+Suffice it to say, for the present, that for his occasional calls and
+wondrous wise looks, and his Lee's pills, he made quite a considerable
+bill. We were, it is true, always glad to see him, for he was pretty
+sure to crack a joke or two during his stay, and he sometimes told a
+good story. Nor, after all, were his charges remarkably high. For coming
+two or three miles to see me, he only made a charge of fifty cents a
+visit.
+
+It was near the beginning of October, and I was "getting no better very
+fast." A young physician had in the mean time come into the place, and
+my friends were anxious to call him in as "counsel." He proposed
+digitalis, and the family physician consented to it. But it was all to
+no purpose; I was still a bloated mass, and extremely enfeebled.
+
+At length, after some two or three months of ill health and loss of
+time, and the expenditure of considerable money on physicians and
+medicine, our good family doctor proposed a tea made from certain sweet
+roots, such as fennel, parsley, etc. Of this I was to drink very freely.
+I followed his advice, and in a few days the dropsy disappeared. Whether
+it was ready to depart just at this precise time, or whether the tea
+hastened its departure, I never knew. In any event, one thing is
+certain; that, either with its aid or in spite of it, I got rid of the
+dropsy; and it nevermore returned.
+
+But it is one thing to get rid of an inveterate disease, and quite
+another to be restored to our wonted measure of health and strength. The
+disease or the medicine or both had greatly debilitated me. I tried to
+attend school, but was unable till January or February; nor even then
+was I at all vigorous. I was able in the spring to work moderately; but
+it was almost a whole year before I occupied the same ground,
+physically, as before. Indeed, I have very many doubts whether I ever
+attained to the measure of strength to which I might have attained had
+it not been for the expenditure of vital power in a long contest with
+Lee's pills and disease.
+
+One lesson I learned, during my long sickness, in moral philosophy. I
+allude to the power of associated habits. Thus I was accustomed to take
+my pills daily for a long time, in combination with the pulp of a
+certain favorite apple. By degrees this apple, before so congenial to my
+taste, became so exceedingly disgusting to me that I could hardly come
+in sight of it, or even of the tree on which it grew, without nausea;
+and this dislike continued for years. By the aid of a strong will,
+however, I at length overcame it, and the apple is now as agreeable to
+my taste, for any thing I know, as it ever was.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+THE COLD SHOWER-BATH.
+
+
+My long experience of ill health, and of dosing and drugging, had led me
+to reflect not a little on the causes of disease, as well as on the
+nature of medicinal agents; and I had really made considerable progress,
+unawares, in what I now regard as the most important part of a medical
+education. In short, I had gained something, even by the loss of so
+precious commodity as health. So just is the oft-repeated saying, "It is
+an ill wind that blows nobody any good."
+
+It was about this time that I began to reflect on bathing. What gave me
+the first particular impulses in this direction I do not now recollect,
+unless it was the perusal of the writings of Dr. Benjamin Rush and Dr.
+John G. Coffin. My attention had been particularly turned to cold shower
+bathing. I had become more than half convinced of its happy adaptation
+to my own constitution and to my diseased tendencies, both hereditary
+and acquired.
+
+But what could I do? There were in those times no fleeting shower-baths
+to be had; nor indeed, so far as I knew, any other apparatus for the
+purpose; and had there been, I was not worth a dollar in the world to
+buy it with; and I was hardly willing to ask for money, for such
+purposes of my father.
+
+I will tell you, very briefly, what I did. My father had several clean
+and at that time unoccupied stables, one of which was as retired as the
+most fastidious person could have wished. In one of these stables,
+directly overhead, I contrived to suspend by its two handles a corn
+basket, in such a way that I could turn it over upon its side and retain
+it in this position as long as I pleased. Into this basket, when
+suspended sideways, and slightly fastened, I was accustomed to set a
+basin or pail of water; and when I was ready for its reception, I had
+but to pull a string and overturn the basket in order to obtain all the
+benefits of a cold and plentiful shower.
+
+Here, daily, for almost a whole summer, I used my cold shower-bath, and,
+as I then thought and still believe, with great advantage. My
+consumptive tendencies were held at bay during the time very
+effectually. I was fortunate, indeed, in being able always, with the aid
+of a coarse towel and a little friction, to secure a pretty full
+reaction.
+
+This season of cold bathing was when I was about sixteen years of age. I
+shall ever look back to it as one of the most important, not to say most
+interesting, of my _experiences_. Indeed, I do not know that in any six
+months of my life I ever gained so much physical capital--thus to call
+it; by which I mean bodily vigor--as during these six months of the year
+1814.
+
+I may also add here, that it has been my lot all my life long to learn
+quite as much from experiment and observation as in any other way. The
+foregoing experience gave me much knowledge of the laws of hygiene.
+Sometimes, while reflecting on this subject, I have thought of the
+assurance of the Apostle John, that he who "doeth truth cometh to the
+light," and have wondered whether the good apostle, along with this
+highly important truth, did not mean to intimate that the natural
+tendency of holy living was to an increase of light and love and
+holiness. And then I have gone a step further, and asked myself whether
+it was not possible that the doing of _physical_ truth as well as
+_moral_, had the same tendency.
+
+I have alluded to experience, or experiment. It is sometimes said that
+medical men are very much inclined to make experiments on their
+patients. Now, although I have a few sad confessions of this sort to
+make hereafter, yet I can truly say, in advance, that while I have made
+comparatively few experiments on other people, I have probably, during
+the progress of a long life, made more experiments on myself, both in
+sickness and in health, than any other existing individual. Whether I
+have learned as much in this way as I ought, in such favored
+circumstances, is quite another question.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+MY FIRST SICKNESS ABROAD.
+
+
+When I was about half-way through my nineteenth year, a desire to see
+the world became so strong that I made up my mind to a little
+travelling. Accordingly, having provided myself with an employment which
+would, without a great deal of hindrance, enable me to earn my passing
+expenses, I set out on my journey.
+
+It was in the month of March, and near its close. The weather was mild,
+and the snow was fast disappearing--but not as yet the mud. In walking
+all day, my boots became soaked and my feet wet. The era of India
+rubbers had not then arrived. In truth, I went with my feet wet in the
+afternoon two or three days.
+
+On the evening of the third day I came to the house of the friends with
+whom I was desirous of stopping not only for the Sabbath's sake, which
+was now at hand, but to rest and recruit. The next morning I was quite
+sick, and my friends were alarmed. It was proposed to send for a
+physician; but against this I uttered my protest, and the plan was
+accordingly abandoned.
+
+The next purpose of my kind friends was to bring on a perspiration. They
+were accustomed in these cases to aim at sweating. This is indeed a
+violence to nature; but they knew no better. The mistress of the house
+was one of those self-assured women who cannot brook any interference or
+submit willingly to any modification of their favorite plans. Otherwise
+I should even then have preferred a gentle perspiration, longer
+continued. Yet on the whole, for the sake of peace, I submitted to my
+fate, and went through the fiery furnace which was prepared for me. More
+than even this I might say. I was cooler, much cooler, when I got
+through the fire than when I was in the midst of it!
+
+In three days I was, in a good measure, restored. I was, it is true,
+left very weak, but was free from fever. My strength rapidly returned;
+and on the fifth day I was able to set out for home, where in due time I
+safely arrived.
+
+During this excursion I learned one good lesson, if no more. This was,
+the danger of going day after day with wet feet. A vigorous person may
+go with wet or damp feet a little while, in the early part of the day,
+when in full strength, with comparative safety; but towards evening,
+when the vital forces are at ebb tide, or at least are ebbing, it is
+unsafe. The feeble especially should guard themselves in this direction;
+nor should those who may perchance at some future time be feeble,
+despise the suggestion.
+
+One important resolution was also made. This was never to use violent
+efforts to induce perspiration. Such a course of treatment I saw
+clearly, as I thought, must be contrary to the intentions of nature; and
+time and further observation and experiment have confirmed me in this
+opinion. There may of course be exceptions to the truth of such a
+general inference; but I am sure they cannot be very numerous. What
+though the forcing plan seems to have succeeded quite happily in my own
+case? So it has in thousands of others. So might a treatment still more
+irrational. Mankind are tough, and will frequently live on for a
+considerable time in spite of treatment which is manifestly wrong, and
+even without any treatment at all.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+LESSON FROM AN OLD SURGEON.
+
+
+Five or six miles from the place of my nativity a family resided whom I
+shall call by the name of Port. Among the ancestry of this family, time
+out of mind, there had been more, or fewer of what are usually called
+natural bone setters. They were known far and near; and no effort short
+of miraculous would have been sufficient to shake the confidence which
+ignorance and credulity had reposed in them.
+
+One or two of these natural bone setters were now in the middle stage of
+life, and in the full zenith of their glory. The name of the most
+prominent was Joseph. He was a man of some acquired as well as inherited
+knowledge; but he was indolent, coarse, vulgar, and at times profane.
+Had it not been for his family rank and his own skill as a surgeon, of
+which he really had a tolerable share, he would have been no more than
+at best a common man, and occasionally would have passed for little more
+than a common blackguard.
+
+I was in a shop one day conversing with Capt. R., when Dr. Port came in.
+"Capt. R., how are you?" was the first compliment. "Very well," said the
+captain, "except a lame foot." "I see you have one foot wrapped up,"
+said Dr. Port; "what is the matter with it?"--"I cut it with an axe, the
+other day," said he, "very badly."--"On the upper part of the foot?"
+said the doctor. "Yes, directly on the instep," said Capt. R. "Is it
+doing well?"--"Not very well," he replied; "and I came into town to-day
+partly to see and converse with you about it."--"Well, then, undo it and
+let me have a look at it."
+
+Wrapper after wrapper was now taken from the lame foot, till Dr. Port
+began to scowl. "You keep it too warm," said he. "A wound of this sort
+should be kept cool, if you don't wish to have it inflame. A slight
+wrapping is all that is needful." They came at length to the wound. "It
+does not look very badly," said Dr. Port; "but you must keep it cool.
+And then," added he with an oath, the very thought of which to this day
+almost makes me shudder, "You must keep your nasty, abominable ointments
+away from it. Remember one thing, Capt. R., whenever you have a new
+flesh wound, all you can possibly do with any hope of advantage is to
+bring the divided edges of the parts together and keep them there, and
+nature will take care of the rest."
+
+"Would you, then, do nothing at all but bind it up and keep it still?"
+said Capt. R. "Nothing at all," said he, "unless it should inflame; and
+then a little water applied to it is as good as any thing."--"But is
+there nothing of a healing nature I can use?" said the captain. "I have
+told you already," said he, with another strange oath, "that you don't
+want any thing healing on the outside, if you had a cart-load of
+medicaments. All wounds, when they heal at all, heal from the bottom;
+and of course all your external applications are useless, except so far
+as is necessary to protect the parts from fresh injury and keep them
+from the air."
+
+The crowd around looked as if they were amazed; but it was Dr. Port who
+said it, and therefore it must be swallowed. I was somewhat surprised
+with the rest. And I have not a doubt that what he said was to most of
+them an invaluable lecture. For myself, as a student of _man_, it was
+just what I needed. It set me to thinking. It was a lesson which I could
+never forget if I were to live a thousand years.
+
+It was a lesson, moreover, which I have repeated almost a thousand
+times, in circumstances not dissimilar. Indeed, I believe this very
+occurrence did much to turn my attention to the medical profession. I
+saw at once it was a rational thing; a matter of plain common sense; a
+thing of principle; and not on the one hand a bundle of mysteries, nor
+on the other a mere humbug.
+
+Dr. Port long ago paid the debt of nature; but not till he had made his
+mark on the age he lived in. If, indeed, he died as the fool dieth,--and
+thus it was said he _did_ die,--he was at least a means of teaching
+others to live right. He did great good by his frequent wise precepts,
+as well as not a little harm by his sometimes immoral example. For
+myself, I honor him because he was my teacher on a point of great
+practical importance, and because he was to thousands of over-credulous
+people a light and a benefactor.
+
+Although I had not at this time any very serious thoughts of becoming a
+physician and surgeon, yet I certainly inclined in that direction. My
+great poverty was the chief difficulty that lay in my way; but this
+difficulty at that time seemed insurmountable. Besides, I was wedded to
+my father's farm, and I did not see how the banns could very well be
+sundered.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+LEE'S WINDHAM BILIOUS PILLS.
+
+
+I was, at length, twenty-two years of age. I had about fifty dollars in
+my pocket, besides a few books. But what would this do towards giving me
+a liberal education? And yet, to an education in the schools, of some
+sort, either as a means to a profession, or as affording facilities for
+obtaining knowledge or communicating it to others, I certainly did
+aspire. But I seemed compelled for the present to plod on in the old
+way.
+
+There had been, but recently, a gold fever--not, it is true, of
+California, but of Carolina. The young men of the North, shrewd,
+intelligent, active, and ambitious Yankees, had flocked by hundreds, if
+not by thousands, from New England to the Southern States, to sell tin
+ware and clocks, especially the former. The trade at first had been very
+lucrative. Though many had been made poor by it, yet many more had been
+made rich. I do not say how honorably the trade had been conducted. To
+sell tin lanterns, worth fifty cents each, for silver, at fifty dollars,
+and tin toddy sticks, worth a New York shilling, for twelve dollars, did
+not in the final result redound much to our New England credit. Though
+it brought us gold, it did not permanently enrich us.
+
+A much better trade had now, in 1820, sprung up with the South. The
+North--the great nursery of America--had still a surplus of young men
+who wanted to go somewhere. A part of them found their way to Carolina
+and Georgia, and engaged during the winter, and occasionally through the
+year, in teaching; while another part labored on their canals and
+railroads and in their shops. This was to furnish the South with a
+commodity of real value, for which we received in return a fair
+compensation. Besides, it had a better effect than clock and tin
+peddling, both on the seller and buyer.
+
+To improve my pecuniary condition, and to acquaint myself with the
+world, I prepared to embark for the South. My purpose was to teach. It
+was the beginning of October, and yellow fever was said to be raging in
+Charleston, where I purposed to disembark. Was it, then, safe for me to
+go? Should the prospect of doing good, improving my mind, and bettering
+my condition in many other respects, weigh against the danger of
+disease; or was it preferable that I should wait?
+
+My numerous friends counselled me according to their various
+temperaments and prepossessions. The strong and vigorous in body and
+mind said, _Go on_; the feeble and timorous and trembling interposed
+their caution. But the vessel was ready and would soon sail; and I saw
+on board many of my acquaintances. The temptation was before me, and was
+great; the dangers, though many, were remote--the dangers of the sea
+excepted. For these, it is true, I was, like everybody else, entirely
+unprepared, having never before in my life crossed more than a single
+river. I was moreover exceedingly timid.
+
+One kind friend--kind, I mean, in general intention--who had been many
+years at the South, amid the ravages of the gold fever, as well as other
+fevers more or less yellow, whispered me just at this critical moment,
+"Take with you a box of Lee's Windham Bilious Pills; and as soon as you
+arrive at Charleston, make it your rule to swallow, every other day, one
+of these pills. That will prevent your getting the fever. I have often
+tried it, and always with success."
+
+My friend's words gave me more courage than his pills. I saw that he had
+been in the midst of sickness and had lived through it. Why might not I?
+My mind was soon made up to proceed on the journey.
+
+We sailed from New Haven in Connecticut, and were seventeen days on our
+passage. When we reached Charleston, either the yellow fever had spent
+itself or it had not recently been there, except in a few rare
+instances. I found no use for pills of any kind, except _such as grew on
+fruit-trees_--the apple, peach, orange, persimmon, etc., or such as
+were the products of the corn, potato, and rice fields; nor did I ever
+take any other while I remained in the South. A queer idea, I often said
+to myself, that of taking poison while a person is well, in order to
+prevent becoming sick! In any event, I did not do it.
+
+There was sickness in the country, however, if not in the city; and I
+was much and often exposed to it. But what then? How would one of Lee's
+pills defend me from it, even for two days? I preferred to eat and drink
+and sleep correctly, and then trust to my good fortune and to Him who
+controlled it, rather than to nauseous and poisonous medicine. And I had
+my choice, and with it a blessed reward. I was in the low country of
+North and South Carolina and Virginia six months or more, and often and
+again much exposed to disease, and yet I never had a sick day while I
+remained there. And yet, as I have before intimated, I never took a
+particle of medicine during the whole time.
+
+Once, indeed, I was beguiled into the foolish habit of using French
+brandy with my dinner, under the idea that it would promote digestion.
+But I did not continue it long; and I verily believe that it did me more
+harm than good while I used it; for I have at no other period of my life
+suffered so much from dyspeptic tendencies as during the summer which
+followed this temporary indulgence of brandy with my dinner.
+
+During my wanderings in the South, I had, much of the time, a fellow
+traveller, who, though he took no medicine, was less cautious than
+myself, and less fortunate. Perhaps his very recklessness served as a
+warning to me. In truth, without being much of a theologian, I have
+sometimes thought that the errors of mankind were intended in the divine
+plan--at least in part--for this very end. Happy, then, if this is so,
+are they who make a wise use of them!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+DR. SOLOMON AND HIS PATIENT.
+
+
+I have said that my fellow traveller was less cautious than myself, and
+have intimated much more. He was in some respects cautious, and yet in
+others absolutely reckless. When hot and thirsty, for example, instead
+of just rinsing out his mouth and swallowing a very little water, he
+would half-fill his stomach with some of that semi-putrid stuff, ycleped
+water, which you often find in Virginia and the Carolinas; and when
+hungry, he would eat almost any thing he could lay hold of, and in
+almost any quantity, as well as at almost any hours, whether seasonable
+or unseasonable.
+
+This course of conduct seemed to answer very well for a few months; but
+a day of retribution at last came. He was then in Norfolk, in Virginia.
+I had been absent from the place a few weeks, and on my return found him
+sick with a fever, and without such assistance as was absolutely and
+indispensably necessary. There were Yankees in the place in great
+numbers, and some of them were his personal acquaintances and friends;
+but they had hitherto refused to come near him, lest they should take
+the fever.
+
+I proceeded to take care of him by night and by day. At the suggestion
+of an old citizen, in whom I placed great confidence, Dr. Solomon was
+called in as his physician. There was some bleeding and drugging, and a
+pretty constant attendance for many weeks; but the young man finally
+recovered.
+
+If you ask what this chapter has to do with my medical confessions, I
+will tell you. Dr. Solomon was an old school physician, and made certain
+blunders, which I am about to confess for him. He prescribed--as very
+many of us his medical brethren formerly did, for the _name_ of a
+disease rather than for the disease itself, just as it now appeared.
+
+Thus, suppose the disease was typhus fever; in that case he seemed to
+give just about so many pills and powders every day, without much regard
+to the circumstances; believing that somehow or other, and at some time
+or other, good would come out of it. If his patient had sufficient force
+of constitution to enable him to withstand both the disease and the
+medicine, and ultimately to recover, Dr. S. had the credit of a cure;
+not, perhaps that he claimed it,--his friends awarded the honor. If the
+patient died, it was on account of the severity of the disease. Neither
+the doctor nor his medicine was supposed to be at fault. Some, indeed,
+regarded it as the mysterious work of Divine Providence.
+
+Dr. S. attended my young companion in pedestrianism a long time, and
+sometimes brought a student into the bargain. He probably kept his
+patient insane with his medicine about half the time, and greatly
+prolonged his disease and his sufferings. But he knew no better way. He
+was trained to all this. The idea that half a dozen careful visits,
+instead of fifty formal ones, and a few shillings' worth of medicine
+instead of some twenty or thirty dollars' worth, would give the young
+man a better prospect of recovery than his own routine of fashionable
+book-dosing and drugging, never for once, I dare say, entered his head.
+And yet his head was large enough to hold such a simple idea, had it
+been put there very early; and the deposit would have done much to make
+him--what physicians will one day become--a rich blessing to the world.
+
+Reader, are here no confessions of medical importance? If not, bear with
+me awhile, and you will probably find them. We have yet a long road to
+travel, and there are many confessions to be made in which I have a
+personal concern and responsibility, and, as you may perhaps conclude,
+no small share of downright culpability.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+PHYSICKING OFF FEVER.
+
+
+The eyes of my mind having just begun to be opened to the impotence of a
+mere routine of medication as a _substitute for nature_, rather than _as
+an aid to her enfeebled efforts_, I was prepared to make a wise use of
+other facts that came before me, especially those in which I had a
+personal concern and interest. Here is one of this description.
+
+On the morning of March 12, 1821, during the very period when I was
+watching over my sick friend, as mentioned in the preceding chapter, I
+took from the post-office a letter with a black seal. It contained the
+distressing intelligence of the death of a much-valued sister and her
+husband, both of whom, but a few months before, I had left in apparently
+perfect health.
+
+On a careful inquiry into the particulars, both by letter and, after my
+return, in other ways, I learned that the Connecticut River fever, as it
+was then and there called, having carried off several persons who were
+residing in the same house with my brother, the survivors were advised
+to do something to prevent the germination and development of such seeds
+of the disease as were supposed to be in their bodies and ready to burst
+forth into action. I do not know that any medical man encouraged this
+notion, the offspring of ignorance and superstition; but my brother and
+his wife had somehow or other imbibed it, and they governed themselves
+accordingly.
+
+Both of them took medicine--moderate cathartics--till they thought they
+had physicked off the disease; and all seemed, for a time, to be well,
+except that they complained still of great weakness and debility. It was
+not long, however, before they were both taken with the disease and
+perished; my brother in a very short time, and my sister more slowly.
+
+My sister, on being taken ill, had been removed to the house of her
+mother, in the hope that a change of air might do something for her; but
+all in vain. My mother and a few other friends who were with them as
+assistants sickened, but they all ultimately recovered. They, however,
+took no medicine by way of prevention.
+
+Now I do not presume to say, that my young friends were destroyed solely
+by medicine, for the assertion would be unwarranted. I only state the
+facts, and tell you what my convictions then were, and what they are
+still. My belief is, that though they might have sickened had they taken
+no medicine or preventive, yet their chance of recovery after they
+sickened was very much diminished by the unnecessary and uncalled-for
+dosing and drugging.
+
+The notion that we can physick off the seeds of disease, or by our
+dosing prevent their germination, is as erroneous as can possibly be,
+and is a prolific source of much suffering and frequent death. The best
+preventive of disease is good health. Now, physicking off generally
+weakens us, instead of giving strength. It takes away from our good
+health instead of adding to or increasing it. As a general rule, to
+which there are very few exceptions, all medicine, when disease is
+unusually common or fatal, is hazardous without sound medical advice,
+and not generally safe even then. It is fit only for extreme cases.
+
+You may be at a loss to understand how such facts and reflections as
+these could allure me to the study and practice of medicine as a
+profession. Yet they most certainly had influence. Not that I felt a
+very strong desire to deal out medicine, for to this I felt a repugnance
+which strengthened with increase of years and experience. What I most
+ardently desired was to know the causes of disease, and how far they
+were or were not within human control. Such a science as that of
+_hygiene_--nay, even the word itself, and the phrase _laws of
+health_--was at that time wholly unknown in the world in which I moved.
+There was, in truth, no way then to this species of knowledge, except
+through the avenues opened by a course of medical study. Hence it was
+that I blundered on, in partial though not entire ignorance, for some
+time longer, groping and searching for that light which I hardly knew
+how or whence to seek, except in pills and powders and blisters and
+tinctures.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+MANUFACTURING CHILBLAINS.
+
+
+At the period of my life to which we have at length arrived, I was for
+four or five months of every year a school teacher. This was, in no
+trifling degree, an educational process; for is it not well known that,
+
+    "Teaching we learn, and giving we retain?"
+
+It was at least an education in the great school of human nature.
+
+Every morning of one of these winter sessions of school keeping, Lydia
+Maynard, eight years of age, after walking about a mile, frequently in
+deep snow, and combating the cold northwest winds of one of the southern
+Green Mountain ranges, would come into the schoolroom with her feet
+almost frozen, and take her seat close to the stove, so as to warm them
+and be ready for school as quickly as possible. Here she would sit, if
+permitted to do so, till the bell rang for school.
+
+It was not long before I learned that she was a great sufferer from
+chilblains. Whether she inherited a tendency to this troublesome and
+painful disease, which was awakened and aggravated by sudden changes of
+temperature, or whether the latter were the original cause of the
+disease, I never knew with certainty. But I was struck with the fact
+that sudden warming was followed by such lasting and terrible
+consequences.
+
+And herein is one reason why I have opposed, from that day to this, the
+custom or habit, so exceedingly prevalent, of rushing to the fire when
+we are very cold, and warming ourselves as quickly as possible. I have
+reasoned; I have commanded; and in some few instances I have ridiculed.
+Every one knows it is hazardous to bring the ears or fingers or toes,
+or any other parts of the body, suddenly to the fire when really
+frozen,--that is, when the temperature is lowered down in the part to
+32 deg.; and yet, if it is only down to 33 deg., and the part not quite
+frozen, almost every one, young and old, will venture to the fire. Can
+there be such a difference in the effects when there is only a difference
+of one degree in temperature? No reflecting person will for one moment
+believe it. The trouble is we do not think about it.
+
+Sudden changes from heat to cold are little more favorable than when the
+change is in the other direction. Indeed, it often happens that children
+at school are subjected to both these causes. Thus, in the case of
+Lydia, suppose that after roasting herself a long time at the stove, she
+had gone to her seat and placed her feet directly over crevices in the
+floor, through which the cold wind found its way at almost freezing
+temperature. Would not this have greatly added to the severity of the
+disease?
+
+There are, it is true, other reasons against sudden changes of
+temperature, particularly the change from cold to heat, besides the fact
+that they tend to produce chilblains; but I cannot do more just now than
+barely advert to them. The eyes are apt to be injured; it renders us
+more liable than otherwise we should be to take cold. Occasionally it
+brings on faintness and convulsions, and still more rarely, sudden
+death. I will only add now, that sudden warming after suffering from
+extreme cold, whether we perceive it or not at the time, is very apt to
+produce deep and lasting injury to the brain and nervous system.
+
+But my main object in relating the story is answered if I have succeeded
+in clearly pointing out to the reader one of the avenues through which
+light found its way to my benighted intellect, and led me to reflection
+on the whole subject of health and disease. Here was obviously one cause
+of a frequent but most painful complaint. It was natural, perfectly
+natural, that by this time I should begin to inquire. Have all diseases,
+then, their exciting causes? Many certainly have; and if many, perhaps
+all. At least, how do we know but it may be so? And then again, if the
+causes of chilblains are within our control, and this troublesome
+disease might be prevented, or its severity mitigated if no more, why
+may it not be so with all other diseases?
+
+To revert for a moment to the case of Lydia Maynard. Though I was the
+cause, in a certain sense, of her suffering, yet it was a sin of
+ignorance. But it taught me much wisdom. It made me cautious ever
+afterward. I do not doubt but I have been a means of preventing a very
+considerable amount of suffering in this form, since that time, by
+pointing out the road that leads to it.
+
+Prevention is better than cure, was early my motto, and is so still. And
+from the day in which I began to open my eyes on the world around me,
+and to reason from effects up to their causes, I have been more and more
+confirmed in the belief that mankind as a race are to be the artificers
+of their own happiness or misery. All facts point in this direction,
+some of them with great certainty. And facts, everywhere and always, are
+stubborn things.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+HOW TO MAKE ERYSIPELAS.
+
+
+My periodical tendency to a species of eruptive disease closely
+resembling measles, was mentioned in Chapter IV. During the summer of
+1823 this affection became unusually severe, and seemed almost beyond
+endurance. The circumstances were as follows:--
+
+I had in charge a large and difficult school. The weather was very hot,
+and I was not accustomed to labor in summer within doors. Besides, my
+task was so difficult as to call forth all the energies of body and mind
+both; and the "wear and tear" of my system was unusually great. It was
+in the very midst of these severe labors, in hot and not well-ventilated
+air, that the eruption appeared. Perhaps it was aggravated by my diet,
+which, in "boarding around," was of course not the best.
+
+The eruption not only affected my body and reached to the extremities,
+but was accompanied by an itching so severe that I was occasionally
+compelled to lie awake all night. My general strength at last began to
+give way under it, and I sought the advice of our family physician.
+
+He advised me to use, as a wash to the irritated and irritable surface,
+a weak solution of corrosive sublimate. I hesitated; especially as I
+believed it to be, with him, an experiment. But on his repeated
+assurance, that if I would take special care of myself and avoid taking
+cold, there was no danger, I waived my objections, and proceeded to
+carry out his plan.
+
+The solution was applied, accordingly, to the letter of the doctor's
+directions. For many days no change appeared, either favorable or
+adverse. At length a most distressing headache came on and remained. My
+sufferings became so severe that I was obliged to postpone my school
+and return to my father's house.
+
+On the road, I observed that an eruption of a peculiar kind had
+appeared, particularly about the forehead, accompanied with small
+blisters. It was not here that I had applied the solution, but on the
+arms, chest, and lower limbs. Of course the corrosive sublimate, if at
+all operative, had affected me through the medium of the circulation and
+not by direct contact.
+
+Our physician came, pronounced the disease erysipelas, and without
+saying a word about the cause, prescribed; and I followed out carefully
+his prescription. But the disease had its course in spite of us both,
+and was very severe. It took away my sleep entirely for a day or two. It
+proved a means of removing the hair from one side of my head, and of so
+injuring the skin that it never grew again. Indeed, gangrene or
+mortification had actually commenced at several points. Suddenly,
+however, the pain and inflammation subsided, and I recovered.
+
+Now my physician never said that I was poisoned by the corrosive
+sublimate, probably for the two following reasons: 1, I never made the
+inquiry. 2, He would probably have ascribed the disease to taking cold
+rather than to the mercury, had I inquired. I do not believe I took
+cold, however. How it came to affect me so unfavorably I never knew with
+certainty; but that it was the medicine that did the mischief I never
+for one moment doubted. I suppose it was absorbed; but of the manner of
+its introduction to the system I am less certain than of the fact
+itself.
+
+But besides the absorption of the corrosive sublimate into the system,
+and its consequences--a terrible caution to those who are wont to apply
+salves, ointments, washes, etc., to the surface of the body
+unauthorized--I learned another highly important lesson from this
+circumstance. Active medicines, as I saw more plainly than ever before,
+are as a sword with two edges. If they do not cut in the right
+direction, they are almost sure to cut in the wrong.
+
+I must not close, however, without telling you a little more about the
+treatment of my disease. After I had left my school and had arrived at
+home, a solution of sugar of lead was ordered in the very coldest water.
+With this, through the intervention of layers of linen cloth, I was
+directed to keep my head constantly moistened. Its object, doubtless,
+was to check the inflammation, which had become exceedingly violent. Why
+the sugar of lead itself was not absorbed, thus adding poison to poison,
+is to me inconceivable. Perhaps it was so; and yet, such was the force
+of my constitution, feeble though it was, that I recovered in spite of
+both poisons. Or, what is more probable, perhaps the lead, if absorbed
+at all, did not produce its effects till the effects of the corrosive
+sublimate were on the wane; so that the living system was only
+necessitated to war with one poison at a time. Mankind are made to live,
+at least till they are worn out; and it is not always easy to poison a
+person to death, if we would. In other words, human nature is tough.
+
+Now I do not know, by the way, that any one but myself ever suspected,
+even for one moment, that this attack of erysipelas was caused by the
+corrosive sublimate. But could I avoid such a conclusion? Was it a hasty
+or forced one? Judge, then, whether it was not perfectly natural that I
+should be led by such an unfortunate adventure to turn my attention more
+than ever to the subject of preserving and promoting health.
+
+For if our family physician--cautious and judicious as in general he
+was--had been the unintentional cause of a severe attack from a violent
+and dangerous disease, which had come very near destroying my life, what
+blunders might not be expected from the less careful and cautious man,
+especially the beginner in medicine? And if medical men, old and young,
+scientific as well as unscientific, make occasional blunders, how much
+more frequently the mass of mankind, who, in their supposed knowledge of
+their own constitutions and those of their families, are frequently
+found dosing and drugging themselves and others?
+
+I do not mean to say that in the incipiency of my observations and
+inquiries my mind was mature enough--well educated enough, I mean--to
+pursue exactly the foregoing train of thought; but there was certainly a
+tendency that way, as will be seen more fully in the next chapter. The
+spell at least was broken, and I saw plainly that if "died by the
+visitation of God" _never_ means any thing, it _generally_ does not. And
+as it turned out that the further I pushed my inquiries the more I found
+that diseases were caused by transgression of physical and moral law,
+and hence not uncontrollable, why should it not be so, still farther on,
+in the great world of facts which I had not yet penetrated?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+STUDYING MEDICINE.
+
+
+My thoughts were now directed with considerable earnestness and
+seriousness, to the study of medicine. It is true that I was already in
+the twenty-fourth year of my age, and that the statute law of the State
+in which I was a resident required three years of study before receiving
+a license to practise medicine and surgery, and I should hence be in my
+twenty-seventh or twenty-eighth year before I could enter actively and
+responsibly upon the duties of my profession, which would be rather late
+in life. Besides, I had become quite enamored of another profession,
+much better adapted to my slender pecuniary means than the study of a
+new one.
+
+However, I revolved the subject in my mind, till at length, as I
+thought, I saw my path clearly. It was my undoubted duty to pursue the
+study of medicine. Still, there were difficulties which to any but men
+of decision of character were not easily got removed. Shall I tell you
+how they were gradually and successfully overcome?
+
+Our family physician had an old skeleton, and a small volume of anatomy
+by Cheselden, as well as a somewhat more extended British work on
+anatomy and physiology; all these he kindly offered to lend me. Then he
+would permit me to study with him, or at least occasionally recite to
+him, which would answer the letter of the law. Then, again, I could,
+during the winter of each year of study except the last, teach school,
+and thus add to my pecuniary means of support. And lastly, my father
+would board me whenever I was not teaching, and on as long a credit as I
+desired. Were not, then, all my difficulties practically overcome, at
+least prospectively?
+
+It was early in the spring of the year 1822 that I carried to my
+father's house an old dirty skeleton and some musty books, and commenced
+the study of medicine and surgery, or at least of those studies which
+are deemed a necessary preparation. It was rather dry business at first,
+but I soon became very much interested in the study of physiology, and
+made considerable progress. My connection with our physician proved to
+be merely nominal, as I seldom found him ready to hear a recitation.
+Besides, my course of study was rather desultory, not to say irregular.
+
+In the autumn of 1824, having occasion to teach school at such a
+distance as rendered it almost impracticable for me to continue my
+former connection as a student, I made arrangements for studying with
+another physician on terms not unlike those in the former case. My new
+teacher, however, occasionally heard me recite, especially in what is
+properly called the practice of medicine and in surgery. His
+instructions, though very infrequent, were of service to me.
+
+In 1825 I became a boarder in his family, where I remained about a year.
+Here I had an opportunity to consult and even study the various standard
+authors in the several departments which are usually regarded as
+belonging to a course of medical study. So that if I was not in due time
+properly qualified to "practise medicine and surgery in this or any
+other country," the fault was chiefly my own.
+
+However, in the spring of 1825, after I had attended a five months'
+course of lectures in one of the most famous medical colleges of the
+Northern States, I was regularly examined and duly licensed. _How_ well
+qualified I was supposed to be, did not exactly appear. It was
+marvellous that I succeeded at all, for I had labored much on the farm
+during the three years, taught school every winter and two summers, had
+two or three seasons of sickness, besides a severe attack of influenza
+(this, you know, is not regarded as a disease by many) while attending
+lectures, which confined me a week or more. And yet one of my fellow
+students, who was present at the examination, laughed at my studied
+accuracy!
+
+One word about my thesis, or dissertation. It was customary at the
+college where I heard lectures--as it probably is at all others of the
+kind--to require each candidate for medical license to read before the
+board, prior to his examination, an original dissertation on some topic
+connected with his professional studies. The topic I selected was
+pulmonary consumption; especially, the means of preventing it. It was,
+as may be conjectured, a slight departure from the ordinary routine, but
+was characteristic of the writer's mind, prevention being then, as it
+still is, and probably always will be, with him a favorite idea. I go so
+far, even, as to insist that it should be the favorite idea of every
+medical man, from the beginning to the end of his career. "The best part
+of the medical art is the art of avoiding pain," was the motto for many
+years of the _Boston Medical Intelligencer_; and it embraced a most
+important truth. When will it be fully and practically received?
+
+But I must recapitulate a little; or rather, I must go back and give the
+reader a few chapters of incidents which occurred while I was a student
+under Dr. W., my second and principal teacher. I will however study
+brevity as much as possible.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+NATURE'S OWN EYE WATER.
+
+
+When I began the study of medicine, my eyes were so exceedingly weak,
+and had been for about ten years, or indeed always after the attack of
+measles, that I was in the habit of shading them, much of the time, with
+green or blue glasses. My friends, many of them, strongly objected to
+any attempt to pursue the study of medicine on this very account. And
+the attempt was, I confess, rather hazardous.
+
+What seemed most discouraging in the premises was the consideration that
+I had gone, to no manner of purpose, the whole round of eye waters,
+elixir vitriol itself not excepted. Was there room, then, for a single
+gleam of hope? Yet I was resolutely, perhaps obstinately, determined on
+making an effort. I could but fail.
+
+Soon after I made a beginning, the thought struck me, "Why not make the
+experiment of frequently bathing the eyes in cold water?" At that very
+moment they were hot and somewhat painful; and suiting the action to the
+thought, I held my face for some seconds in very cold water. The
+sensation was indescribably agreeable; and I believe that for once in my
+life, at the least, I felt a degree of gratitude to God, my Creator, for
+cold water.
+
+The practice was closely and habitually followed. Whenever my eyes
+became hot and painful, I put my face for a short time in water, even if
+it were _twenty_ times a day. The more I bathed them, the greater the
+pleasure, nor was it many days before they were evidently less inflamed
+and less troublesome. Why, then, should I not persevere?
+
+I carried the practice somewhat further still. I found from experiment,
+that I could open my eyes in the water. At first, it is true, the
+operation was a little painful, and I raised, slightly, its temperature.
+Gradually, however, I became so much accustomed to it that the sensation
+was not only less painful, but even somewhat agreeable. In a few weeks I
+could bear to open my eyes in the water, and keep them open as long as I
+was able to hold my breath, even at a very low temperature.
+
+Perseverance in this practice not only enabled me to proceed with my
+studies, contrary to the expectation of my friends, and in spite, too,
+of my own apprehensions, but gave me in addition the unspeakable
+pleasure of finding my eyes gaining every year in point of strength, as
+well as clearness of sight. My glasses were laid aside, and I have never
+used any for that specific purpose since that time. Of course I do not
+mean by this to say that my eyes remain as convex as they were at
+twenty-five or thirty years of age, for that would not be true. They
+have most certainly flattened a little since I came to be fifty years of
+age, for I am compelled to wear glasses when I would read or write. I
+mean, simply, that they have never suffered any more from inflammation
+or debility, since I formed the habit of bathing them, even up to the
+present hour.
+
+The more I observe on this subject, the more I am persuaded--apart from
+my own experience--that pure water, at the lowest temperature which can
+be used without giving pain, is the best known eye medicine in the
+world, not merely for one, two, or ten in a hundred persons, but for
+all. I recommend it, therefore, at every opportunity, not only to my
+patients but to others. It may doubtless be abused, like every other
+good gift; but in wise and careful hands it will often accomplish almost
+every thing but downright miracles. We may begin with water a little
+tepid, and lower the temperature as gradually as we please, till we come
+to use it ice cold.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+THE VIPER STORY.
+
+
+I was, early in life, greatly perplexed in mind by the oft-recurring
+question, why it was that in the hands of common sense men, every known
+system of medicine--even one which was diametrically opposed to the
+prevailing custom or belief, like that of Hahnemann, seemed to be
+successful. Not only the botanic practitioner with his herbs, and the
+homoeopathist with his billionth dilutions, but even the no-medicine
+man[B] could boast of his cures, and, for aught I could see, of about an
+equal number--good sense and perseverance and other things being equal.
+And then, again, he that bled everybody, or almost everybody, if
+abounding in good sense, like the late Dr. Hubbard, of Pomfret, in
+Connecticut, was about as successful as those who, like Dr. Danforth,
+once an eminent practitioner of Boston, would bleed nobody, nor, if in
+his power to prevent it, suffer the lancet to be used by anybody else.
+
+While cogitating on this subject one day, the following anecdote from a
+surgical work--I think a French work--came under my eye, and at once
+solved the problem, and relieved me of my difficulty. It may probably be
+relied on.
+
+When the Abbe Fontana, a distinguished medical man and naturalist, was
+travelling, once, in some of the more northern countries of Europe, he
+was greatly surprised to find such a wonderful variety of applications
+to the bite of the viper, and still more to find them all successful, or
+at least about equally so. Even those that were in character
+diametrically opposed to each other, _all cured_. His astonishment
+continued and increased when he found at length that those who applied
+nothing at all recovered about as readily as any of the rest.
+
+In the sequel, as the result of diligent and scientific research, it
+turned out that the bite of this animal, however dangerous and fatal in
+hot climates, is scarcely dangerous at all in cold ones. Hence it was
+that all sorts of treatment appeared to cure. In other words, the
+persons who were bitten all recovered in spite of the applications made
+to their wounds, and generally in about the same period of time.
+
+Thus, as I began to suspect,--and the reader must pardon the suspicion,
+if he can,--it may be with our diversified and diverse modes of medical
+treatment. A proportion of our patients,--perhaps I should say a large
+proportion,--if well nursed and cared for and encouraged, would recover
+if let alone so far as regards medicine. And it is in proof of this
+view, that nearly as many recover under one mode of practice, provided
+that practice is guided by a large share of plain, unsophisticated
+sense, as another. And does not this fully account for a most remarkable
+fact?
+
+Hence it is, too,--and perhaps hence alone,--that we can account for the
+strange development in Boston, not many years since, during a public
+medical discussion; viz., that he who had given his tens of pounds of
+calomel to his patients, and taken from their arms his hogsheads of
+blood, had been on the whole about as successful a practitioner as he
+who had revolted from the very thought of both, and had adopted some of
+the various forms of the stimulating rather than the depleting system.
+
+"Is there, then, no choice between medication and no-medication? For if
+so, what necessity is there of the medical profession? Why not
+annihilate it at once?"
+
+My reply is,--and it would have been about the same when these
+discoveries began to be made,--that there is no occasion to give up the
+whole thing because it has been so sadly abused. Every mode of medical
+practice, not to say every medical practitioner from the very beginning,
+has been, of necessity, more or less empirical. The whole subject has
+been involved in so much ignorance and uncertainty, that even our wisest
+practitioners have been liable to err. They have been led, unawares, to
+prescribe quite too much for names rather than for symptoms; and their
+patients were often glad to have it so. And were the whole matter to
+come to an end this day, it might well be questioned whether the
+profession, as a whole, has been productive of more good than evil to
+mankind. But then, every thing must have its infancy before it can come
+to manhood. And it is a consolation to believe that the duration of that
+manhood always bears some degree of proportion to the time required in
+advancing from infancy to maturity.
+
+Medicine, then, as a science, is valuable in prospect. And then, too, it
+is worth something to have a set of men among us on whom we may fasten
+our faith; for, credulous as everybody is and will be in this matter of
+health and disease, till they can duly be taught the laws of hygiene,
+they will lean upon somebody; it is certainly desirable that they should
+rely on those whom they know, rather than upon strangers, charlatans,
+and conjurors, of whom they know almost nothing.
+
+But I shall have frequent occasion to revert to this subject in other
+chapters, and must therefore dismiss it for the present, in order to
+make room for other facts, anecdotes, and reflections.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[B] Of the hydropathist at that time I had not heard.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+STRUCK WITH DEATH.
+
+
+Throughout the region where I was brought up, and perhaps throughout the
+civilized world, the notion has long prevailed that in some of the last
+moments of a person's life, he is or may be "struck with death;" by
+which, I suppose the more intelligent simply mean that such a change
+comes over him as renders his speedy departure to the spirit-world
+inevitable.
+
+Now that we are really justified in saying of many persons who are in
+their last moments, that they are beyond the reach of hope, is doubtless
+true. When decomposition, for instance, has actually commenced, and the
+vital organs have already begun to falter, it would be idle to conceal
+the fact, were we able to do so, that life is about to be extinguished
+beyond the possibility of doubt.
+
+In general, however, it is never quite impossible for the sick to
+recover even after recovery _seems_ to be impossible. So many instances
+of this kind have been known, that we ought at least, to be exceedingly
+cautious about pronouncing with certainty, and to encourage rather than
+repel the application of the old saying, "as long as there is life,
+there is hope."[C]
+
+I had a lesson on this subject while a medical student, which was
+exceedingly instructive, and which, if I were to live a thousand years,
+I could never forget. It was worth more to me in practical life
+afterward, than all my books and recitations would have been without it.
+The facts were these:--
+
+My teacher of medicine used occasionally to take his students with him
+when he rode abroad on his professional visits. One day, it fell to my
+lot to bear him company. His patient was an aged farmer, a teamster
+rather, who had been for some time ill of a fever, and had not been
+expected to recover. Yet his case was not so desperate but that the
+physician was expected to continue his daily visits.
+
+On our arrival at the house of the sick man, we were met by a member of
+the family, who said, "Come in, doctor, but you are too late to do us
+any good. Mr. H. is struck with death; all the world could not save him
+now."
+
+We entered the room. There lay the patient almost gone, surely. So at
+least, at the first view, it appeared. It was a hot summer day, and
+hardly a breath of air was stirring. The friends were gathered around
+the bed, and there was less freedom of circulation in the air of the
+sick-room than elsewhere. It was almost enough to kill a healthy man to
+be shut up in such a stagnant atmosphere; what, then, must have been the
+effect on one so sick and feeble?
+
+The doctor beckoned them away from the bed, and requested them to open
+another window. They did it rather reluctantly; but then, _they did it_.
+The sufferer lay panting, as if the struggle was almost over. "Don't you
+think he is struck with death, doctor?" whispered one and another and
+another. Almost out of patience, the doctor at length replied: "Struck
+with death? What do you mean? No; he is no more struck with death than I
+am. He is struck much more with the heat and bad air. Raise another
+window."
+
+The window was raised. "Now," said he, "set that door wide open." It was
+quickly done. "Now bring me a bowl of water, and a teaspoon." The bowl
+of water was quickly brought. "Put a little water into his mouth with
+the teaspoon," said he. "O doctor," they replied, "it will only distress
+him; he is already struck with death."--"Try it then, and see."
+
+Tremblingly they now moistened his parched lips. "Put a little of it in
+his mouth, with the teaspoon," he said. They shuddered; the doctor
+persisted. "Why," said the attendant, "he has not been able to swallow
+any thing these two hours." "How do you know?" said he. "Why, he has
+been all the while struck with death."--"Nonsense! have you tried it?"
+"Tried it? oh, no; by no means."--"Why not?"--"Because we knew it would
+only distress him. He is too far gone to swallow, doctor; you may rely
+on it."
+
+The physician's patience was now well nigh exhausted, as well it might
+have been, and seizing the bowl and teaspoon with his own sacrilegious
+hands, "I will see," said he, "whether he is struck with death or not."
+
+He not only wetted his lips and tongue, as they had partially done
+before, but gradually insinuated a few drops of Nature's best and only
+drink, into the top of his throat. At last he swallowed! The doctor's
+hopes revived; while the family stood as if themselves struck, not with
+death, but with horror. At length, he swallowed again and again. In half
+an hour, he opened his eyes; before we left him, he had become quite
+sensible, and, had we encouraged it, might have spoken.
+
+To make my story as short as possible, the next day he could swallow a
+little gruel. The third day, he could be raised upon the bed. The
+fourth, though still weak, he was dressed and sat up an hour. In a
+fortnight, he was once more driving his team; and for ought I know to
+the contrary, unless debarred by reason of age, he may be driving it at
+this very moment!
+
+Going home together from our visit, already so fully described, the
+conversation turned on the silly notion which so extensively prevails
+about being struck with death. We talked of its origin, its influence,
+and its consequences. It had done no good in the world, while it had
+been the means, we could not doubt, of indirectly destroying thousands
+of valuable lives.
+
+OF ITS ORIGIN.--How came the notion abroad that a person can be struck
+with death, so affected that there is no possible return for him, to
+life and health? Struck! By whom? Is there a personage, spiritual but
+real, that strikes? Is it the Divine Being? Surely not. Is it an arch
+enemy? is it Satan himself?
+
+    "No day, no glimpse of day, to solve the knot."
+
+The doctor and I had, however, one conjecture concerning it, which, if
+it should not instruct the reader, may at least, afford him a little
+amusement. It certainly amused us.
+
+You have seen the old-fashioned New England Primer. It has been in
+vogue, I believe, a full century; perhaps nearer two centuries. It has
+done not a little to give shape to New England character. In its
+preliminary pages is a sort of alphabet of couplets, with cuts prefixed
+or annexed. One of the couplets reads thus:--
+
+    "Youth forward slips,
+    Death soonest nips."
+
+While at its left, is the representation of a skeleton, armed with a
+dagger, and pursuing a youth--a child rather--with the apparent
+intention of striking him through. Now I cannot say how this picture may
+have affected others, but to my medical teacher and myself, as we
+mutually agreed, it always brings up the idea of striking down a youth
+or child prematurely, and sending him away to the great congregation of
+the dead.
+
+Nor am I quite sure that this representation, innocent as may have been
+its intention, has not been the origin of a relentless and cruel
+superstition. I know certainly, that my own early notions about being
+struck with death, had, somehow or other, a connection with this
+picture; and why may it not be so with others?
+
+But the _influence_ and _consequences_ of this superstition must be
+adverted to for a moment. I said they affect and have affected
+thousands; perhaps I ought to have said millions. Under the confused and
+preposterously silly idea that Death, the personification of Satan or
+some other demon, has laid hold of the sick or distressed, and that it
+would be a sort of useless, not to say sacrilegious, work to oppose, or
+attempt to oppose, the grim messenger, we sometimes leave our sick
+friends in the greatest extremity, to suffer and perhaps die, when the
+gentle touch of a kind hand, a mere drop of water, or a breath of fresh
+air, might often bring them back again to life and health and happiness
+and usefulness.
+
+If this chapter should not be deemed a confession of medical impotence,
+it is at least a practical confession of medical selfishness or
+ignorance. If duly enlightened themselves, medical men ought long ago,
+to have rid society of this abominable superstition; and if not
+sufficiently enlightened to perceive its existence and evil tendency,
+they ought to have abandoned their profession.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[C] Dr. Livingstone, in his work of Travels and Researches in Africa,
+tells us that during his residence among the Backwains, a tribe in the
+African interior, two persons who had been hastily buried, perhaps
+"struck with death" in the first place, returned home "to their
+affrighted relatives." p. 143.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+EFFICACY OF COLD SPRING WATER.
+
+
+An aged man not far from where I was studying, had an attack of
+dysentery which was long and severe. Whether the fault of its long
+continuance lay in his own bad habits, or the injudicious use of
+medicine, or in both, we can inquire to better advantage by and by. I
+was not, however, very much acquainted with his physician, so as to be
+able in the premises to form a very correct opinion concerning him.
+
+The greatest puzzle with me, at that time, was why he should live so
+long after the disease appeared to have spent itself, without making any
+advances. The physician used to call on him day after day, and order
+tonic medicine of various kinds, all of which was given with great care
+and exactness. Every thing in fact, seemed to be put in requisition,
+except what were most needful of all, pure air and water. The former of
+these was, as is usual in such cases, neglected; the latter was
+absolutely interdicted.
+
+For this last, as not unfrequently happens at this stage of acute
+diseases, the poor man sighed from day to day as though his heart would
+break. But, no; he must not have it. The effect on his bowels, he was
+told, would be unfavorable. And such at that day was the general
+_theory_. It was not considered that a very small quantity at first, a
+few drops merely, would be a great relief, and might be borne, till by
+degrees a larger quantity would be admissible.
+
+After repeated efforts, and much begging and crying for a little water
+to cool his parched tongue, the old gentleman, one night dreamed that he
+drank from a certain cold spring, which really flowed at a remote corner
+of his farm and was a great favorite both with him and his whole family,
+and that it almost immediately restored him. Delighted with his dream,
+he no sooner fairly awaked than he called up his eldest son and sent him
+with a bottle, to the spring. He did not now _plead_, he _commanded_.
+The son returned in due time, with a bottle of water. He returned, it is
+true, with great fear and trembling, but he could do no less than obey.
+The demands and commands were peremptory, and the father was almost
+impatient.
+
+"Now, my son," said the father, "bring me a tumbler." It was brought,
+and the father took it. "Now," said he, "pour some of that water into
+it." Samuel could do no other way than submit to the lawfully
+constituted authority, though it was not without the most painful
+apprehensions with regard to the consequences, and he kindly warned his
+father of the danger. Nor were his sufferings at all diminished when the
+father, in a decided tone of voice, ordered him to fill the tumbler
+about half full.
+
+Whether he had at first intended to drink so large a draught and
+afterwards repented, is not known; but instead of swallowing it all at a
+draught, the son's distress was greatly mitigated when he saw that he
+only just tasted it, and then set down the tumbler. In a few minutes he
+drank a little more, and then after a short time a little more still. He
+was about half an hour drinking a gill of water. When that was gone, he
+ordered more; and persisted in this moderate way till morning. By ten
+o'clock, when his physician arrived, he had drunk nearly a quart of it,
+and was evidently better. There was a soft, breathy perspiration, as
+well as more strength.
+
+The physician no sooner saw him than he pronounced him better. "What
+have you been doing?" he said, rather jocosely. The sick man told him
+the simple story of his rebellion from beginning to end. The doctor at
+first shook his head, but when he came to reflect on the apparent good
+consequences which had followed, he only said: "Well, I suppose we must
+remember the old adage, 'Speak well of a bridge that carries you safe
+over,'" and then joined in the general cheerfulness.
+
+The patient continued to drink his spring water from day to day, and
+with increasing good effects. It acted almost like a charm; it was not
+only food and drink to him, but also medicine. Doubtless his great faith
+in it was not without its efficacy; still it was not to be denied that
+the water did him great and positive good.
+
+He soon found his newly discovered medicine not only more agreeable to
+his taste, but cheaper also than Huxham's tincture and quassia. He also
+found that his son's daily visits to the spring cost him less than Dr.
+Physic's daily rides of three or four miles. So that though he was
+greatly delighted to see the smiling face, and hear the stories and
+jolly laugh of the latter, he was glad when he proposed to call less
+frequently than he had done and to lay aside all medicine.
+
+He recovered in a reasonable time, and lived to a very advanced age. A
+friend of his and mine, found him in his eighty-sixth year, mowing
+thistles barefooted. Two or three years still later, I found him--it was
+during the cold month of January, 1852--in the woods with his hired man
+far from his house, assisting in cutting and loading wood; in which
+employment he seemed to act with much of the energy and not a little of
+the activity of his earlier years.
+
+I do not of course undertake to say that he owed his recovery from his
+long sickness, above described solely to drinking cold water, there are
+so many other circumstances to be taken into the account, in settling
+all questions like this, that such an assertion would be hazardous, not
+to say foolish. His fever at the time of making his experiment, had
+already passed away; and having great tenacity of life, it was but
+reasonable to expect nature would ere long, rally, if she _could_ rally
+at all. It is also worthy of remark, that though his physician was one
+of those men who place their chief reliance on the medicine they give,
+rather than on the recuperative powers of the system, yet to his credit
+be it said, he had in this instance departed from his usual routine, and
+given comparatively little.
+
+Perhaps we may explain the phenomenon of his recovery, as follows:
+nature long oppressed, yet by rest partially restored to her wonted
+energy, was now ready to rally as soon as she could get the opportunity;
+this the moderate draughts of water by their effects on the circulation
+enabled her to do; then, too, one consideration which I forgot to
+mention in its place, deserves to be noticed. When the sick man began
+the use of water, he laid aside (without the knowledge of his physician)
+most of what pills and powders and tinctures were prescribed him. And
+finally he had great faith in the water, as you have already seen;
+whereas he had lost all faith in drugging and dosing. And the efficacy
+of faith is almost sufficient in such cases, to work a cure, were this
+our only reliance. Of this we shall have an illustration in Chapter
+LXXVI.
+
+But though the water, as I now fully believe--and as I more than half
+believed when I heard of the facts at the time,--was fairly indicated,
+there is great hazard, in such circumstances in its use. Had this
+gentleman taken a large draught at first, or had he swallowed more
+moderate draughts with great eagerness, and a quick succession, it might
+have produced an ill effect; it might, even, have provoked a relapse of
+his dysentery and fever. Many a sick patient in the same circumstances,
+would have poured the cooling liquid into an enfeebled throat and
+stomach without the least restraint. And why did not he?
+
+I will give you one reason. He was early taught to govern himself. He
+told me, when eighty-eight years of age, he had made it a rule, all his
+life long, never to eat enough, but always to leave off his meals with a
+good appetite. He did not indeed, follow out with exactness the rule of
+the late Amos Lawrence: "Begin hungry and leave off hungrier," but he
+came very near it. He managed so as always to have a good appetite, and
+never in the progress of more than fourscore years, whether by night or
+day, to lose it. Such a man, if his mind is not too much reduced by long
+disease, can be safely trusted with cold spring water, even during the
+more painful and trying circumstances of convalescence from acute
+disease.
+
+Another thing deserves to be mentioned in this connection. He had not
+kept his bowels and nervous system, all his life long, under the
+influence of rum, tobacco, opium, coffee, tea, or highly seasoned food.
+He did not it is true, wholly deny himself any one of these, except
+opium and tobacco; but he only used them occasionally, and even then in
+great moderation. Nor was it from mere indigence, or culpable stinginess
+that he ate and drank, for the most part in a healthful manner. It
+seemed to be from a conviction of the necessity of being "temperate in
+all things;" and that such a course as he pursued tended to hardihood.
+As one evidence of a conviction of this kind, I have known his children
+and their school teacher to carry to the schoolroom for their dinner, a
+quantity of cold Indian cake--ycleped Johnny cake--and nothing else; nor
+was there an attempt at the slightest apology. Such a man would not be
+very likely to have an ulcerated alimentary canal, or bad blood; or to
+be injured by swallowing every five minutes a table-spoonful of cold
+water; no, nor to sink as quickly as other people under the depressing
+tendency of irritating or poisonous medicine.
+
+This last-mentioned fact concerning the use of water,--for it is a fact
+on which we can rely, and not one of those statements which Dr. Cullen
+was accustomed to call "false facts,"--was to me exceedingly
+instructive. It taught me more concerning the human constitution and the
+laws of health and disease than I had ever before learned from a single
+case of mere disease, in my whole life; and I endeavored to make a wise
+use of it--of which as I trust, I shall give some evidence in the very
+next chapter.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+CHEATING THE PHYSICIAN.
+
+
+It was by no means an uncommon thing with me, while studying medicine,
+to take long walks. One day, in the progress of one of these rambles, I
+came so near the family mansion of a young man with whom I had formerly
+been acquainted, that I thought I would, for once, go a little out of my
+way and make a call on him. And judge, reader, if you can, of my
+surprise, when I found him exceedingly sick. For residing, as we did,
+only a few miles apart, why had I not heard of it? Most people, in
+truth, would have called on some of the young doctors--for there were
+three or four of us together,--to take care of the sick man, especially
+by night. Young doctors, I grant--and this for various reasons which
+might be named, were it needful--are usually the very worst of watchers
+and nurses of the sick; but the public often appear to think otherwise,
+and even to prefer them.
+
+I found him under the care of an old school physician;--one who, though
+he otherwise prescribed very well, gave quite too much medicine; and
+like the old physician mentioned in the preceding chapter, mortally
+detested cold water; at least he detested its use in bowel complaints.
+The young man's case, however, was as yet wholly unlike that of the
+elderly gentleman of the foregoing chapter; and cold water at first, was
+not particularly needed; nor perhaps quite safe.
+
+Some few days afterward, I called again. Found my young friend rather
+less feverish, but no better; in fact, he was much worse, and was most
+obviously running down. I continued after this to call on him daily,
+till he too, like the old man before mentioned, began to beg for cold
+water. But his physician said, "No, not a drop," and with a good deal of
+emphasis.
+
+One day, while I was at his bedside, he turned to me, and with a most
+imploring look begged to know whether I believed a very little cold
+water would really hurt him. I told him no; but that a good deal
+doubtless would, and might even prove the means of his destruction.
+"Simple a thing as water is," I said, "it is to you, in circumstances
+like yours, a sword with two edges. If it should not cut away the
+disease, it would probably cut in the other direction, to the
+destruction of your health, if not of your life."
+
+My remarks had both awakened his curiosity and increased his desires for
+the interdicted beverage. I found I had gone too far, and I frankly told
+him so. I told him it was not in accordance with medical etiquette, nor
+even with the rules of good breeding, for one medical man to prescribe
+for another's patient without his knowledge. But this explanation did
+not satisfy him. Water was what he wanted; and as I had opened the
+budget and removed some of his fears, water he must have. He was
+willing, he said, to bear the responsibility.
+
+Water, then, in exceedingly small quantity at a time, was permitted; but
+it was to be given by stealth. The physician was not allowed to know it,
+or, at all events, he was not to know under whose encouragement he
+acted. His friends were very careful in regard to the quantity, and I
+had the happiness of finding him, in a few days, very much better. But,
+as I said in reflecting on the recovery of my aged friend before
+mentioned, it is not quite certain, after all, how much was effected by
+the water, and how much by the recuperative efforts of Nature herself.
+She might have been long waiting for that opportunity to rally, which
+the judicious introduction of the water, and the partial or entire
+discontinuance of other medicine, greatly facilitated.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+THE MEDICINAL EFFECTS OF STORY TELLING.
+
+
+My aged father sickened about this time, and remained in a low condition
+many months. I was at a distance so great, and in circumstances so
+peculiar, that I could not see him often enough to become his medical
+adviser. Besides, in my then unfledged condition as a disciple of Galen,
+I should not have regarded myself competent to the discharge of so
+weighty a responsibility, had I even been at home with him. The result
+was that he employed his family physician as usual, and went through, as
+might have been expected, with the whole paraphernalia of a dosing and
+drugging campaign.
+
+Among other troubles, or rather to cap the climax of his troubles, he
+was exceedingly low-spirited. Confined as he had been to the house
+almost all winter, and seeing nobody to converse with,--no new faces, I
+mean,--was it very strange that his mind turned, involuntarily, to his
+complaints, and preyed upon itself, and that he was evidently
+approaching the deep vortex of hypochondria? Medicine did him no good,
+and could do him none. It is true he had, after three months, almost
+left off its use; but the little to which he still clung was most
+evidently a source of irritation.
+
+My own occasional visits, as I soon found out, did him more good than
+any thing else. This gave me a needful hint. Near him was an old
+Revolutionary soldier, full of mirthfulness, and a capital story teller.
+Unknown to my father, and even to the family, I employed this old
+soldier to visit my father a certain number of evenings in each week,
+and tell stories to him.
+
+Sergeant K. complied faithfully with the terms of the contract, and was
+at my father's house three evenings of each week for a long time. This
+gave the old gentleman something else to think of besides himself, and
+it was easy to see, did him much good. During the progress of the fourth
+month his improvement became quite perceptible; and in another month he
+was nearly recovered.
+
+But, as I have repeatedly said of cold water, and indeed of all other
+remedial efforts or applications, whether external or internal, and
+whether moral, mental, or physical, too much credit should not be given,
+at least hastily, to a single thing. The opening spring was in my
+father's favor, as well as the story telling. The bow, so long retained
+in an unnatural position, on having an opportunity, sprung back and
+resumed its wonted condition. Still, I could never help awarding much
+credit to the Revolutionary soldier.
+
+Most persons must have observed the effects which cheerfulness in a
+medical man has on his patients. The good-natured, jolly doctor, who
+tells a story now and then, and cracks a joke and has occasionally a
+hearty laugh _with you_, or _at_ you, about something or nothing, will
+do you much more good, other things being equal, than the grave, staid,
+sombre practitioner, who thinks it almost a sin to smile, especially at
+the sick-bed or in the sick-room.
+
+I think story telling, as an art, should be cultivated, were it only for
+its good effects in sickness. But this is not all. Its prophylactic or
+preventive tendencies are much more valuable. Few people know how to
+tell a story of any kind; while others, in some few remarkable
+instances, such as I could name, will make a story of almost any thing,
+and bring it to bear upon the precise point or end they wish to
+accomplish. It is yet, in reality, a mooted point, which could make the
+deepest, or at least most abiding, impression, Daniel Webster by a
+Congressional oration, or Jacob Abbott by a simple story. If this is an
+indirect or incautious confession of medical imperfection or impotence,
+let me say as Patrick Henry once did, in Revolutionary days, "then make
+the most of it."
+
+While on this topic of story telling, I must not forget to allude to its
+moral effects. Lorenzo Dow, the eccentric preacher, is not the only
+pulpit occupant who has acquired the art of "clinching the nail," in
+his discourses by a well told story. It was quite a habit, in former
+times, with certain preachers of certain denominations of Christians,
+whose sermons were chiefly unwritten, to tell stories occasionally. And
+I appeal to Father Waldo, late chaplain in the United States Senate, to
+see whether the effects of these discourses were not as deep and as
+lasting, to say the least, as many of our modern sermons, which, while
+they smell much more of the lamp, fall almost lifeless upon the sleepy
+ears of thousands of those whom Whitfield by his more practical course
+would have converted.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+OSSIFIED VEINS.
+
+
+While I was studying medicine with my new or second master, I had
+several excellent opportunities for studying health and disease through
+the medium of the doctor's patients.
+
+One of them was a swaggering man of wealth, about sixty-three years of
+age. He had long lived very highly, had eaten a good deal of roast beef,
+and drunk a good deal of wine, and had almost swum in cider. He was in
+short, one of that class of men who "go off" in very many instances, at
+the grand climacterical period, some of them very suddenly.
+
+"Doctor," said the general, exhibiting himself in full size and the
+boldest relief, "I want to be bled."--"What do you want bleeding for?"
+said the doctor. "Oh," said he, "bleed me, and you will see. You will
+find my blood in a very bad state."--"Your blood, general, was always in
+a very bad state," said the shrewd son of Galen, with a sardonic grin.
+"None of your fun, doctor," was the prompt reply; "I must be bled. I
+have headache and giddiness half the time, and must have some blood
+taken."--"Very well," said Dr. S. "It shall be as you desire. Here, my
+son, bring me a bowl."
+
+An older student assisted, while I, glad of the privilege, kept aloof,
+and at a distance. The general's brawny arm was mauled a long time; and
+even then not much blood was obtained. At last the attempt was given up,
+and the man returned home, though not, as might have been expected, very
+well satisfied.
+
+When he was gone, I inquired of Dr. S., as modestly as I could, what
+serious difficulties he had to encounter in his attack on Gen. Upham's
+arm. "Why was it," said I, "that you could get no more blood?" "For the
+plainest reason in the world," he answered; "his veins were all
+ossified."
+
+I was quite satisfied at the time, with this answer; for I knew so well
+the habits of Gen. U. that I stood ready to believe almost any thing in
+regard to him, especially when it came from a highly respectable source.
+Yet I have often suspected since that time, that there was a serious
+mistake made. Ossified or bony arteries, even at this great distance
+from the heart, in such a man, ought not to excite surprise; but these
+would hardly be met with in attempting to open a vein, since the
+arteries are much more deeply imbedded in the flesh than the veins are.
+And as for ossified veins themselves, especially in the arm, they are
+seldom if ever heard of.
+
+You may wonder why I did not satisfy my curiosity at the time, by making
+diligent inquiry at the proper source of information; and I almost
+wonder too. But, in the first place, my curiosity did not rise so high
+on any occasion whatever, as it has since done. For, though I was
+hungering and thirsting for knowledge thirty years ago, my solicitude to
+know has so increased with increasing years that my present curiosity
+will admit of no comparison with the former. Secondly, I was exceedingly
+diffident. Thirdly, my mind was just then fully occupied with other
+things. And lastly, whenever I was in the company of Dr. S., both while
+I remained in the office and subsequently, it was only for a very short
+time, perhaps a single half hour, at best; and we had always so many
+other things to talk about, that Gen. U. and his _ossified veins_ never
+entered our minds.
+
+However, it was not many years afterward that I heard of the old
+general's death. Of the manner of his exit except that it was sudden, I
+never heard a word, up to this hour. It is by no means improbable that
+there was ossification about his heart, for he was a very fit subject
+for ossification of any parts that could be ossified. I do not know,
+indeed, that a post mortem examination was ever made; the family would
+doubtless have opposed it. The uses of the dead to the living are in
+general very little thought of.
+
+Such cases of disease are, however, a terrible warning to those who are
+following in the path of Gen. Upham. They may or may not come to just
+such an end as he did, but of one thing we may be well assured; viz.,
+that the wicked do not live out half their days, or, in other words,
+that sins against the body, even though committed in ignorance, can
+never wholly escape the heaven-appointed penalty of transgression. "The
+soul that sins must die." For no physical infraction of God's holy,
+physical laws, do we know of any atonement. We may indeed, be thankful
+if we find one in the moral world or anywhere else.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+HE'LL DIE IN THIRTY SIX HOURS.
+
+
+In the autumn of 1824, while a severe sickness was sweeping over one or
+two towns adjacent to that in which I resided, and considerable
+apprehension was felt lest the disease should reach us, the wife and
+child of my medical teacher, and myself, suddenly sickened in a manner
+not greatly dissimilar, and all of us suffered most severely.
+
+It was perfectly natural, in those circumstances, to suspect, as a cause
+of our sickness, the prevailing epidemic. And yet the symptoms were so
+unlike those of that disease, that all suspicions of this sort were soon
+abandoned. Besides, no other persons but ourselves, for many miles
+around, had any thing of the kind, either about that time or immediately
+afterward. I have said that the symptoms of disease in all three of us
+were not dissimilar. There was much congestion of the lungs and some
+hemorrhage from their organs, and occasionally slight cough, and in the
+end considerable tendency to inflammation of the brain. The last
+symptom, however, may have been induced at least, in part, by the large
+amount of active medicine we took.
+
+When the news of my own sickness reached my near relatives who resided
+only a few miles distant, they were anxious to pay such attention to me
+as the nature of the case appeared to require. But they soon tired; and
+it was found needful to employ an aged and experienced nurse to take the
+general charge, and under the direction of the physician, assume the
+entire responsibility of the case.
+
+This nurse was one of those conceited people whose aid, after all, is
+worth very little. He was as far from affording the kind of assistance
+I required as could possibly be. And yet his intentions were in the main
+excellent.
+
+The selection of physician was equally unfortunate. My teacher had
+nearly as much as he could do to take care of his wife and child. At his
+request, and in accordance with the wishes of my friends, their and my
+former physician were called in. When the danger became more imminent, a
+third was occasionally consulted. It was supposed, no doubt, that in the
+midst of counsellors there was safety.
+
+The counsels of our third man, or umpire, may have had influence; but
+his manners were coarse, and in many respects objectionable. He was in
+favor, also, of a highly stimulating treatment, which appeared to me to
+add fuel to the flame, for I soon began to be at a loss when called upon
+to recollect things and circumstances. He saw the tendency, and, partly
+by way of "showing off" his powers of diagnosis, as well as in part to
+gain applause should a case so desperate turn out favorably, said, in
+the hearing of my nurse, "He'll die in just thirty-six hours."
+
+Now, whatever his intentions were, and however honest his declaration,
+my nurse swallowed it at once, and was restless till he had an
+opportunity to divulge what he regarded as an important secret. It is by
+no means improbable that he entertained the usual impressions that a
+special preparation should be made for death, and that it was needful I
+should know my danger and attend to the subject before it was too late.
+
+In one of my most lucid intervals, therefore, he said to me, "Do you
+expect to recover from your disease?"--"Most certainly I do," was the
+reply. "Do you know what Dr. Thornton thinks about it?"--"Not certainly;
+but from his cheerful manner, I suppose he thinks favorably."--"Do you
+think you could bear to know the truth? For if it was unfavorable, would
+it not be too much for you in your enfeebled condition?"
+
+My heart was in my mouth, as the saying is, at this broad hint; and with
+a strong and earnest curiosity, I begged to know the worst, and to know
+it immediately. My attendant saw, in my agitation, his error, and would
+doubtless have receded had it been in his power; but it was too late;
+the die was cast; my curiosity was all on tiptoe, and I trembled, as a
+sailor would say, from stem to stern. "Well," said he, at length,
+putting on a face which of itself was enough to destroy some very feeble
+persons, "he says you cannot live more than thirty-six hours."
+
+My friend, in divulging what he deemed an important secret, doubtless
+felt relieved; but not so with me. My philosophy had disappeared with
+the progress of my disease, and I was now, in mind, a mere child. In
+short, I was so much agitated by the unexpected intelligence, that I
+sank at once under it, and remained in this condition for several hours.
+When I awoke from this delirium, the symptoms of my disease were more
+favorable, and from that day forth I began to recover.
+
+But the risk was too great for my enfeebled and diseased frame, and
+should not have been incurred. Dr. Thornton, though a physician of much
+reputation, was nevertheless a man of very little principle, and though
+respected for his medical tact and skill, was beloved by very few. He
+died, moreover, not many years afterward, as the fool dieth; viz., by
+suicidal hands. Nor do I know that as a man--a mere citizen--he had many
+mourners.
+
+The reader will pardon me, perhaps, for saying so many times, and with
+so much emphasis, that "it is an ill wind that blows nobody any good."
+But I must be allowed to repeat the saying here, and to observe that
+while I entirely disapprove of the course my attendant took in the
+present instance, I am by no means sure that the delirium into which I
+was thrown by his tattling propensity was not safer for me than a
+restless apprehension of danger would have been, especially when long
+continued; nor that it did not contribute, indirectly, to bring about my
+recovery.
+
+I was confined to the house by my sickness about five or six weeks, or
+till it was midwinter. And yet, all covered as the earth was when I
+first ventured forth, no Paradise could ever appear more beautiful to
+any son or daughter of Adam than did this terrestrial abode to me. And
+if ever I shed tears of devout gratitude to my Father in Heaven, it was
+on this very occasion.
+
+It was a long time, however, after I got out of doors, before I was
+strong enough, in body or mind, to attempt to perform much labor. At the
+time of being taken sick, I was teaching a public school; and as soon as
+I began to be convalescent my patrons began to be clamorous about the
+school. They were hardly willing to wait till my physicians and myself
+deemed it safe to make a beginning. Indeed, notwithstanding all my
+caution, I was hurried into the pedagogic chair quite too soon.
+
+But it is time for me to inform my readers what were the probable causes
+of my sickness; for I have already said, more than once, that to be able
+to do this is a matter of very great importance, both as it concerns
+ourselves and others; and it is a thing which can be done, at least to a
+considerable extent, whenever parents and teachers shall be wise enough
+to put their children and pupils upon the right track. I am well
+acquainted with a minister of the gospel, now nearly sixty years of age,
+who says he never had any thing ail him in his whole lifetime of which
+he could not trace out the cause.
+
+For some months before my sickness I had been curtailing my hours of
+sleep. I had resolved to retire at eleven and rise at four. But it had
+often happened that instead of retiring at exactly eleven and rising
+exactly at four, I had not gone to bed till nearly twelve, and had risen
+as early as half-past three. So that instead of sleeping five full
+hours, as had been my original intention, I had often slept but about
+four.
+
+How far this abridgment of my sleep had fallen in with other causes of
+debility, and thus prepared the way for severe, active disease, I cannot
+say. I was at this time tasking my energies very severely, for I was not
+only pursuing my professional studies with a good deal of earnestness,
+but at the same time, as has been already intimated, teaching a large
+and somewhat unmanageable district school. If ever a good supply of
+sleep is needful, whatever the quantum required may really be, I am sure
+it is in such circumstances.
+
+But then it should be remembered, in abatement of all this, that the
+symptoms of disease, in all the three cases which I have alluded to, as
+occurring in the family with which I was connected, were very much
+alike; whereas neither the mother nor the child had suffered, prior to
+the sickness, for want of sleep. Must we not, therefore, look for some
+other cause? Or if it is to be admitted that sleeplessness is
+exceedingly debilitating in its tendencies, must there not have been in
+addition some exciting cause still more striking? We will see.
+
+During the latter part of the autumn which preceded our sickness, the
+water of the well from which we were drinking daily had a very
+unpleasant odor, and a fellow student and myself often spoke of it. As
+it appeared to give offence, however, we gradually left off our remarks
+and complaints about the water, and only abstained, as much as we could
+conveniently, from its use.
+
+In the progress of the autumn, the well became nearly dry, and the
+offensive odor having become troublesome to others no less than to
+ourselves, it was very wisely concluded to draw out the water to the
+bottom, and thus find and remove the impurities. The task was
+exceedingly trying, but was at length accomplished.
+
+Besides other impurities, there were found at the bottom of the well,
+several toads in a state of putrefaction, and so very offensive that it
+was difficult to approach them, or even to approach the top of the well
+that contained them. They were of course removed as soon as possible,
+and every practicable measure was adopted which was favorable to
+cleanliness. This final clearing of the well was about two months before
+the sickness commenced.
+
+Now whether there was a connection between the use of this water and the
+sickness which followed, is a curious, and at the same time, a very
+important question. Against this belief, at least apparently so, is the
+fact that our disease resembled in no trifling degree, the prevailing
+disease in certain neighboring towns. Another fact is also worthy of
+consideration. The rest of the family drank freely of the water, why did
+not they sicken as well as we?
+
+But as a deduction from the force of these facts, it is to be observed
+that nobody else around us for several miles had the prevailing
+epidemic unless it was ourselves. And then as to the objection that only
+a part of the family sickened, it is to be recollected that in the case
+of some of them who sickened there might have been, nay, probably were,
+other debilitating causes in operation previously, to prepare the way;
+such as, for example, in my own case, the want of sufficient sleep.
+
+Thus far, then, though we arrive at nothing positive, we yet find our
+suspicions of a poisonous influence emanating from the putrid reptiles
+remaining. Indeed, it were impossible wholly to suppress them, and I
+will ask the candid reader's attention for a few moments to certain
+analogical evidence in the case, which, it is believed, will greatly aid
+the mind in coming to a right decision on the subject.
+
+An eruptive disease broke out in two families residing in a house in
+Eastern Massachusetts, a few years ago, which was observed to affect
+more or less, every member of the two families who had drunk water from
+the common family well, except two; and these last had drank but very
+little. On cleaning the well, the same species of reptiles which I have
+already mentioned, were found in it, in a state of decomposition, and
+highly offensive. No eruptive complaints of the same general kind
+prevailed at the time in the neighborhood, and those which I have
+mentioned disappeared soon after resuming the use of pure water.
+
+Another instance occurred in this same region, a few years afterward. In
+the latter case, however, the putrid animals were rats and mice, and the
+eruption, instead of having a diffused or miliary appearance, partook
+largely of the character of the common boil.
+
+Forty years ago a sickness broke out in Litchfield county in
+Connecticut, in a neighborhood where the wells were all very low; and
+the water which remained being in a cavity of rock, and continuing
+unchanged or nearly so, had at length become putrid. It was late in the
+autumn when the disease broke out, and it disappeared as soon as the
+wells were duly filled for the winter. It is true, I never heard in the
+latter case, any thing about putrid animals, but their existence and
+presence under such circumstances, would be natural enough.
+
+It has, I know, been sometimes said that putrid animal substances,
+however unpleasant their odor might be, were not poisonous. But this
+opinion is doubtless unfounded; and, for myself, I find it difficult to
+resist the belief that in all the foregoing cases, except the last, and
+very possibly in that too, animal putridity had influence.
+
+The practical lessons to be derived from the developments of the
+foregoing chapter are exceedingly numerous. I shall direct your
+attention for a few moments, to some of the more important.
+
+First, we learn the necessity of keeping our wells in a proper
+condition. Could it be even proved that dead reptiles never produce
+disease, it is at least highly desirable to avoid them. No reasonable
+person would be willing to drink water highly impregnated with their
+odor, even if it did not reach his own seat of sensation.
+
+Secondly, we should avoid the use of stagnant water, even though it
+should be free from animal impurities. Especially should we be cautious
+where there is a liability, or even a possibility, to impurity and
+stagnation both. Either of these causes may, as it is most fully
+believed, produce disease; but if so, what is not to be expected from a
+combination of the two?
+
+Our wells should be often cleaned. It is not possible, of course, to say
+with exactness, how often, but we shall hardly err in the line of
+excess. Very few wells are cleaned too often. Once a year, in ordinary
+cases, cannot be too much; nor am I quite sure that twice would be
+useless.
+
+It seems to me quite possible to exclude animals from our wells, would
+we but take the necessary pains; and this, too, without covering them
+closely at the top. I can not see how any toad, unless it be the
+tree-toad so called, could climb a well-curb three feet high. Other
+animals, however, might do so, and therefore I would keep a well as
+closely covered as possible.
+
+Many, I know, believe it desirable that the surface of the water in a
+well should be exposed to the air. I do not believe there is any
+necessity for this, though it is certainly desirable to avoid stagnation
+of the air at the bottom. Motion is essential, I might even say
+indispensable. I have sometimes thought the modern endless or chain pump
+as perfect a fixture as any other.
+
+Thirdly, we may learn from the details of the foregoing chapter, the
+necessity of having in our sick-chambers the right sort of nurses or
+attendants. There should be a class of persons educated to this service,
+as a profession; and most happily for the prospects of the great human
+family, such efforts are now being made; it is hoped and believed they
+will be crowned with success.
+
+One thing more may, as I think, be inferred from the story of my
+sickness as above:--the folly of multiplying physicians. In the present
+case, when the physician's own family was in a condition to demand a
+large share of his attention, if not to absorb all his energies, it may
+have been desirable to call in an additional medical man as counsellor.
+But the multiplication of counsel, besides adding to the danger of too
+much dosing and drugging, brings with it a host of ills too numerous to
+be mentioned in this place, and should be studiously avoided. My full
+belief is, that Dr. Thornton was a principal agent in creating the
+dangers he deprecated, and which came so near effecting my own
+destruction.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+ABOUT TO DIE OF CONSUMPTION.
+
+
+I have already mentioned more than once,--or at least done so by
+implication,--that I hold my existence, on this earth by a very feeble
+tenure. Consumption, by right of inheritance, made very early claims;
+and its demands, as I approached manhood, became more and more cogent,
+in consequence of measles, dropsy, Lee's Pills, and the injudicious use
+of medicine and many other errors. My employment, too, as school teacher
+had been far enough from favorable to health. While thus engaged from
+winter to winter, and sometimes from year to year; I was accustomed to
+have cold upon cold, till at length especially towards the close of
+winter and at the opening of the spring, I was often apparently on the
+verge of a rapid decline. A ramble up and down the country, with a
+summer or part of a summer on the farm or garden, did indeed for a time
+partially set me up again, so that I could return to my favorite
+employment of teaching in the autumn and during the winter; and thus
+time with me went on.
+
+A course of medical lectures which I heard in 1825-6, left me, in March,
+1826, in about as bad a state of health as school keeping usually had
+done. However I was too indigent, I might even say too destitute, to be
+idle. Scarcely was my license to practise medicine and surgery fairly in
+my pocket, than I found myself turning towards the district school
+again. Yet I did not continue it many weeks before my old enemy returned
+upon me with renewed strength; till I was at length compelled to abandon
+the school entirely. I had as much as I could do, in attempting to keep
+up a successful war with cough, night-sweats, purulent expectoration,
+and hectic fever.
+
+This was one of the darkest periods of my life. Destitute of money, and
+even somewhat in debt, yet too proud or self-relying to be willing to
+ask my friends to aid me; my hopes of usefulness defeated in two
+favorite fields of activity, teaching and medicine; and practically
+given up to linger out a year or two and then die, how could I avoid
+discouragement? Was it strange even, if I approached at times, the very
+borders of despair?
+
+For some time prior to this crisis--indeed at certain seasons all my
+life long,--I relied not a little on medicine, in various forms,
+especially in the shape of tonics. Strange that I should have done thus,
+when my general impressions were so unfavorable to its exhibition; and
+yet such inconsistencies have been, and may be again. Huxham's tincture,
+quassia, ale, and other bitter infusions and tinctures, had been
+successively invoked, and I still clung to ale. I also used some wine,
+and I attached a good deal of importance to a stimulating diet. But it
+was all to no purpose, the disease was marching on steadily, and
+appeared destined to triumph; and that, too, at no very distant period.
+
+In these circumstances, I repeat, what could be done? Nature's extremity
+is sometimes said to be God's opportunity. But without assuming that
+there was any special providence about it, I will say, that I was driven
+to desperation, nay almost to insanity or madness. I deemed myself on
+the very verge of a mighty precipice, beneath which yawned a gulf
+unfathomable. I must make a last mighty struggle, or perish
+irretrievably and forever.
+
+It was July 4th, the anniversary of American Independence; I sought and
+found a few moments of calm reflection, and began to interrogate myself.
+Why was I so dependent on the physician and the apothecary's shop, and
+so tremblingly alive to every external impression of atmospheric
+temperature, or purity? Why must I, at the early age of twenty-eight, be
+doomed to tread the long road of decline and death? Why can I not
+declare independence of all external remedial agents, and throw myself
+wholly on nature and nature's God? I know, full well, the laws of my
+being. If trust in these, and faithful and persevering obedience will
+not save me, nothing will. Thus I mused; but alas! it was to muse only.
+Though almost ready to take the critical step,--I will not say make the
+desperate plunge,--the fourth of July finally passed away, and found me
+still lingering, to use a Scripture expression, "between the porch and
+the altar."
+
+July the fifth at length arrived. And is it all over? I said to myself.
+Has the "glorious" _Fourth_ gone by and I have not acted up to the
+dignity of a well-formed and glorious resolution? Must I, alas! now go
+on to woe irretrievable? Must I go down to the consumptive's grave? Must
+I perish at less than thirty years of age, and thus make good the
+declaration that the wicked shall not live out half his days?
+
+A new thought came to me. "One of the South American provinces
+celebrated her Independence to day, the fifth. I will take the hint,--I
+will yet be free. I will escape from present circumstances. I will fly
+from my native home, and all that pertains to it. I will fly from
+myself,--It is done," I added, "and I go with the first conveyance."
+
+I could indeed walk a little distance, but it either set me to coughing,
+severely, or else threw me into a profuse perspiration which was equally
+exhausting. One favorable symptom alone remained, a good appetite and
+tolerable digestion. Had there been, in addition to the long train of
+troublesome and dangerous symptoms above mentioned, a loss of digestive
+power and energy, with colliquative diarrhoea, my hopes must have been
+forever abandoned.
+
+But I had made my resolution, and was prepared to execute it, let the
+consequences be what they might. With little more than a single change
+of clothing, I contrived to find a conveyance before night, quite beyond
+my immediate neighborhood. Fatigued, at length I stopped, and without
+much delay, committed myself to the friendship of Morpheus.
+
+On the top of a considerable eminence, in the very midst of a mountain
+range, one of the most delightful in all New England, only a few miles
+from the place of my lodging, was a tower some sixty or seventy feet
+high, which commanded a view of the surrounding country. I had often
+wished to enjoy the prospect which this tower afforded. Was there, now
+an opportunity? I had the leisure, had I the needful strength? Could I
+possibly reach it? And by what means?
+
+I rested for the remainder of the day and the night following, at the
+foot of the eminence, in order to prepare myself for the excursion of
+the following morning. It was as much as I could do, that night to take
+care of my irritable and irritated lungs. At length, however, I slept,
+and was refreshed. The only drawback upon my full renewal, was my usual
+night--or rather as I ought to say morning--perspiration, which was
+quite drenching and exhausting; though not much worse after all my fears
+than usual.
+
+God is good, I said to myself, when I saw from my chamber window the top
+of the hills I wished to climb, and perceived that the first rays of the
+morning sun were already falling upon them. By the middle of the
+forenoon I was at the foot of the mountain, and prepared to ascend it.
+After a little rest, I wound my way to the tower, and finally to its
+top, when I took a survey of what seemed to me like a new world. Here I
+renewed my declaration of independence with regard to those earthly
+props on which I had so long been wont to lean, and of dependence on
+God, and on his natural and moral enactments.
+
+Here, too, I formed my programme for the day and for the week. Distant
+from the point which I occupied not more than eight miles was a most
+interesting educational institution I had long wished to see; and near
+it was an old acquaintance, with, whom I might perhaps spend the
+Sabbath, which was now approaching. Could I carry out my plan? Had I the
+needful strength?
+
+My resolution was at length made; and no sooner made than begun to be
+executed. The public houses on the way were miserable things; but they
+were better far than none.
+
+They gave me a temporary home, such as it was. I reached the
+institution, had a partial view of it, and, half worn out with my week's
+labor, was glad to rest the seventh day, "according to the
+commandment," in the house of an old acquaintance.
+
+Monday morning came, and with the aid of the intervening Sabbath,
+brought to my attenuated and almost sinking frame a new recruit of
+strength. With a new object of interest some fifteen miles distant, I
+was once more on the road. I could now walk several miles a day without
+greatly increasing my cough, or ride in a stage coach many miles. Nor
+was the nightly perspiration, nor even that which was induced by
+exercise, any more distressing than it had been, if indeed it was as
+much so.
+
+In due time I reached my point of destination, and curiosity became
+fully gratified. What next? A few miles distant was a high mountain
+which I greatly desired to climb. I reached its base; but the heat was
+great, so dog-days like, that my courage failed me. I had the necessary
+strength, but dared not use it for such a purpose. Perhaps I acted
+wisely.
+
+Twelve miles in the distance still was my father's house, now grown from
+a few patrimonial acres to full New England size; viz., a hundred acres
+or more, and well cultivated. My wandering abroad had given me a little
+strength and very much courage. Why should it not? Was it not truly
+encouraging that while I was making a long excursion, chiefly on foot,
+in the heats of midsummer, my cough and hectic and night sweats should
+become no worse, while my muscular strength had very much increased?
+
+My mind's eye turned towards my father's house as a place of refuge. In
+a day or two I was in it; and in another day or two I was caparisoned as
+a laborer, and in the field. It is true that I did not at first
+accomplish a great deal; but I held the implements of husbandry in my
+hands, and spent a certain number of hours every day in attempting to
+work. Some of the workmen laughed about me, and spoke of the vast
+benefits to be derived from having a ghost in the field with them; but I
+held on in spite of their jokes. I had been accustomed of old to the
+labor of a farm, which greatly facilitated my efforts. Habit is
+powerful.
+
+Not many weeks passed ere I was able to perform half a day's work or
+more in a day. My consumptive tendencies, moreover, were far less
+exhausting and trying. In a word, I was better. The Rubicon was already
+passed. I did not, indeed, expect to get entirely well, for this would
+have been a hope too big for me. But I should not die, I thought,
+immediately. Drowning men, as you know, catch at straws; and this is a
+wise arrangement, for otherwise they would not often be saved by planks.
+
+One point, at least, I had gained. I was emancipated from slavery to
+external forms, especially medicated forms. But I had not only declared
+and found myself able to maintain independence of medicine, but I had
+acquired much confidence in nature and nature's laws. And this faith in
+the recuperative powers of nature was worth more to me than worlds would
+have been without it.
+
+Much was said, in those days, not only in books but by certain learned
+professors, about shaking off pulmonary consumption on horseback.
+Whether, indeed, this had often been done--for it is not easy, in the
+case of a joint application of various restorative agencies, such as
+air, light, full mental occupation etc., to give to each agency its just
+due--I am not quite prepared to say. But as soon as I was able to ride
+on horseback several miles a day, the question was agitated whether it
+was or was not advisable.
+
+In prosecuting this inquiry, another question came up. How would it do,
+thought I, to commence at once the practice of medicine? But
+difficulties almost innumerable--some of them apparently
+insurmountable--lay in my way. Among the rest, I had no confidence in my
+medical knowledge or tact; I was a better school-master. But teaching,
+as I had every reason to fear, would bring me down again, and I could
+not think of that: whereas the practice of medicine, on horseback, which
+at that time and in that region was not wholly out of date, might, as I
+thought, prove quite congenial.
+
+Besides being "fearful and unbelieving" in the matter, I was still in
+the depths of poverty. I had not even five dollars. In fact, during my
+excursion already described, I had lived on a few ounces of solid food
+and a little milk or ale each day, in order to eke out my almost
+exhausted finances; though, by the way, I do not know but I owed my
+partial final recovery in no small degree to this very starvation
+system. However, to become a practising physician, money would be
+indispensable, more or less. What could be done without it? My father
+had credit, and could raise money for me; but _would_ he? He had never
+wholly approved of my medical tendencies and course; and would it be
+right to ask him to aid me in an undertaking which he could not
+conscientiously approve?
+
+Just at this time our own family physician wanted to sell, and offered
+me his stand. His practice, he said, was worth a thousand dollars a
+year. He had an old dilapidated house and a couple of acres of miserable
+land, and a horse. These, he said, he would sell to me for so much. I
+might ride with him as a kind of apprentice or journeyman for six
+months, at the expiration of which time he would vacate the field
+wholly.
+
+The house, land, and horse were worth perhaps one-third the sum
+demanded, but probably not more. However, the price with me, made very
+little difference. One sum was much the same with another. For I was so
+anxious to live, that I was willing to pay almost any price which might
+be required by a reasonable man, and till that time, it had not entered
+my heart that a good man would take any serious advantage of a fellow
+being in circumstances so desperate. And then I was not only anxious to
+live, but very confident I should live. So strong was my determination
+to live on, and so confident was I in the belief that I should do so,
+that I was willing to incur a debt, which at any other period of my life
+would have discouraged me.
+
+There was another thing that tended to revive me and restore my courage.
+The more I thought of commencing business, and talked about living, the
+more I found my strength increasing. That talking about dying had a
+downward or down-hill tendency, I had long known; but that the tendency
+of talking up-hill was exactly the reverse, I had not fully and clearly
+understood.
+
+My father tried to dissuade me from a hasty decision, but it was to no
+purpose. To me, it seemed that the course I had proposed was my only
+alternative. "I must do it," I said to myself, "or die;" and life to me,
+as well as to others, was sweet. But although it was a course to which I
+seemed shut up, and which I must pursue or die, it was a step which I
+could not take unaided. I had not the pecuniary ability to purchase so
+much as a horse, or, had I needed one, hardly a good dog.
+
+It was at length proposed by my medical friend, the seller, to accept of
+a long credit for the amount due for the place and appurtenances,
+provided, however, I would get my father or some other good man to be my
+endorser. But here was a difficulty almost or quite insurmountable. My
+father had always said he would endorse for nobody. And as for asking
+any one else to endorse for me, I dared not.
+
+But I cannot dwell at this point. My father at length became my
+endorser, and the bargain was signed and sealed. It was indeed, a
+desperate effort, and I have a thousand times wondered how I could have
+ventured. Why! only one or two years before, I was miserable for several
+days because I was in debt to the extent of only two dollars for a
+much-needed article, and actually procured the money with considerable
+difficulty, and went and paid the debt to get rid of my anguish; whereas
+now, without much pain and without being worth fifty dollars in the
+world, I could be willing to contract a debt of from twelve to fifteen
+hundred dollars, and involve my good old father in the consequences
+besides. How entirely unaccountable!
+
+But mankind love life, and fear death. The scheme proposed was, as I
+believed, not only a dernier but a needful resort. It was a wrong step
+no doubt, but I did not then think so. I believed the end "sanctified"
+or at least sanctioned the means. How could I have done so? "What
+ardently we wish, we soon believe." I had most ardently wished, I now
+began to believe!
+
+My consumptive tendencies now receded apace, even before I was astride
+of my horse. The stimulus of the hope of life with a forgetfulness of
+myself, were better tonics than Huxham or ale or rich food. There was
+the expectation of living, and consequently the beginning of life. Mind
+has great power over even inert matter; how much more over the living
+animated machine!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+MY JOURNEYMANSHIP IN MEDICINE.
+
+
+Journeymen in medicine, though without the full responsibilities of the
+profession, have yet their difficulties. I had mine; and I had not only
+the ordinary complement of ordinary men, but some which were a little
+extra.
+
+For example, I was no horseman at all, and people around me knew it. At
+the first attempt to mount a new horse, and ride out with the old
+physician, of whom I had purchased my stand, to see his patients, I made
+an exhibition of my horsemanship which I shall not soon forget, and
+which I am sure certain wags and half-buffoons and common loungers who
+witnessed the scene _never_ will.
+
+My horse stood at the post all caparisoned, while I made ready. In
+setting off, I knew well I must submit to the ordeal of being gazed at
+and commented on by a crowd assembled in an adjoining store. It was a
+rainy day, and the crowd would doubtless be much larger than usual. Now
+my love of approbation was excessive; so great as at times to defeat
+entirely its object. So in truth, it proved on the present occasion.
+
+When I was ready to go forth on my journey, I mounted my horse and
+attempted to place my right foot in the stirrup. At this critical
+instant the gaping multitude in the grocery, presented themselves in
+quite a formidable column at the door to see the young doctor on his new
+horse. Their appearance threw my mind off its balance to an extent that
+prevented me from well-balancing my body, and with every possible
+exertion I could not get my feet firmly fixed in the stirrups. To add to
+my trouble, my horse was in haste and trotted off high and hard before I
+could muster presence of mind enough to check him. I rolled this way and
+that, till at length, down I came headlong. My hat went one way, and my
+whip another. A great shout was at once raised by the spectators, but
+being cured by this time, of my excessive diffidence, and not at all
+hurt, I could soon join in the laugh with the rest. I could most
+heartily adopt my old maxim, "It is an ill wind that blows nobody any
+good;" and I had learned by my fall at least, one thing, at least for
+the moment; viz., my excessive regard to human approbation.
+Thenceforward, I rode as I pleased.
+
+But before I enter upon the details and particular confessions of my
+professional career, it is needful that I should say something of those
+changes which were made about this time in my physical habits, by means
+of which I gained at least a temporary victory over my great enemy, the
+consumption. For it must not be supposed that because I could sit on a
+horse and ride six, eight, ten, or twelve miles a day, or work in the
+field or garden half the day, I was out of danger. I had, indeed, gained
+important victories, but there remained very much land yet to be
+possessed.
+
+Of my abandonment of all medicine, I have already told you. But I had
+also greatly changed my dietetic habits. During my excursion of the
+fifth of July, and subsequently, I had lived almost wholly on what might
+have been denominated the starvation system. The case was this: I
+started with less than five dollars in my pocket, and with too much
+pride to borrow more. That my money might hold out, therefore, though I
+took care to secure a good, clean bed by nights, even at the full market
+price (except when I was entertained occasionally, by particular
+friends), I almost went without food. Many a time was I satisfied,
+because I was determined to have it so, with a tumbler of milk and a
+couple of crackers for my breakfast, or even my dinner; and as for
+supper, I often dispensed with it wholly; and all this too, strange
+though it may seem, not only without the loss of strength, but with a
+slow, yet steady, increase.
+
+These dietetic changes, though they were a necessity, were continued and
+extended from principle. I had known, for a long time, what the laws of
+digestion, respiration, circulation, cleanliness, exercise, etc., were,
+but had not fully obeyed them. But I now set myself obeying them up to
+the full extent of my knowledge. I do not mean to affirm that my
+obedience was perfect and entire--wanting in nothing; but only that I
+made an attempt at sinless perfection. However, I speak here, of course,
+of the physical code; for to moral obligation, at that time, I do not
+mean, now, to refer.
+
+My diet was exceedingly plain and comparatively unstimulating. It
+consisted chiefly of bread, fruits, potatoes; and, once a day of salted
+meats. These last should have been exchanged for those which were not
+pickled, and which are of course less stimulating; but at that time I
+was not fully aware of their tone and tendency. My drink was water and a
+little tea; for cider I had long before abandoned.
+
+I paid particular attention to purity of air, and to temperance.
+Fortunately I resided in a house which from age and decrepitude, pretty
+effectually ventilated itself. But temperature, as I well knew, must be
+carefully attended to, particularly by consumptive people. While they
+avoid permanent chilliness, and even at times, the inhalation of very
+cold air on the one hand, it is quite indispensable that they should
+breathe habitually as cool an air as possible, and yet not be
+permanently chilly. This, by means of a proper dress, by night and by
+day, and proper fixtures for heating my room, I contrived to secure.
+
+Cleanliness, too, by dint of frequent bathing, received its full share
+of my attention. It was a rule from which I seldom if ever departed, to
+wet my body daily with cold water, and follow it up by friction. At home
+or abroad, wherever I could get a bowl of water I would have a hand
+bath.
+
+Need I say here that a medical man--one who rode daily on
+horseback--paid a proper regard to the laws of exercise? And yet I am
+well persuaded that not a few medical men exercise far too little.
+Riding on horseback, though it may sometimes shake off consumption, is
+not so good an exercise for the mass of mankind--perhaps not even for
+consumptive people themselves--as an alternation of walking with the
+riding. This, also, I took good care to secure.
+
+Physicians are usually either very greatly addicted to the habit of
+dosing and drugging for every little ill, real or imaginary, or
+particularly hostile to it. I have seldom found any such thing as a
+golden mean in this respect, among them. My feelings, saying nothing at
+present of the sober convictions of my head, led me almost to the
+extreme of no medicine, if extreme it can be called. I did not even
+retain my daily tumbler of ale.
+
+Though I began my medical career as an apprentice or journeyman, merely,
+and went abroad chiefly as the associate of my predecessor, I was soon
+called upon in his absence, and in other circumstances, to take the
+whole charge of patients; or at least to do so till a longer experience
+was available. Thus I was gradually inducted into an important office,
+without incurring a full and proportionate share of its
+responsibilities.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+MY TEMPERANCE PLEDGE.
+
+
+The subject of Temperance, in its present associated forms, had, at this
+time, just began to be agitated. At least, it had just begun to receive
+attention in the newspapers which I was accustomed to see. It could not
+be otherwise than that I should be deeply interested in its discussion.
+
+I had been brought up, as I have before intimated, to a pretty free use
+of cider and tea; but not of ardent spirits or coffee. Neither of these
+was regularly used in my father's family; though both occasionally were.
+But I had abandoned cider long before this time, because I found it had
+a tendency to produce, or at least to aggravate, those eruptive diseases
+to which I was greatly liable. Temperance, then, in the popular sense of
+the term, was, to me, an easy virtue.
+
+And yet as a temperance man--in the circle of my acquaintance--I stood
+nearly alone. No individual around me was ready to take the ground I
+occupied. Of this, however, I was not fully apprised, till a patient
+attempt to recruit the temperance ranks convinced me of the fact. But I
+will give you a full account of my enterprise, since it has a bearing on
+my subsequent history and confessions.
+
+With the aid of a Boston paper which I habitually read, I drew up the
+customary preamble, declaration, and pledge of a temperance society. It
+involved the great idea of total abstinence from spirituous liquors;
+though by the term spirituous liquors, as used at that day, was meant
+chiefly _distilled_ spirits. Having first affixed my own name to the
+paper I went to the most influential of my patrons and friends and asked
+them to sign it likewise. But, reader,--will you believe it?--not a
+single subscriber could I obtain far, or near. They all, with one
+consent, made excuse.
+
+The elder deacon of the most evangelical church in the place where I
+resided, had for his apology that he suffered seriously from a complaint
+for which his physicians had prescribed the daily use of gin, "Now,"
+said he, "though there is nothing in the pledge which goes to prohibit
+the use of spirits in a case like my own, yet as some might think
+otherwise and charge me with inconsistency, I must on the whole be
+excused from signing it."
+
+His son, who was also a deacon in the same church with the father,
+excused himself by saying he was young, and without influence, and it
+would be far better for the old people to put their names down first.
+"Perhaps," said he, "I may conclude to sign the paper by-and-by. I will
+consider well the matter, and if I conclude to sign it, I will let you
+know."
+
+Other leading men in the church as well as in the town affairs, refused
+to sign the pledge, because Deacon H. and son would not. It belonged to
+the deacons in the church, they said, to take the lead in all good
+things, and not to them. When _they_ had put _their_ names to the
+document, others would not long hesitate to follow.
+
+In short nobody would consent to sign the paper, and it remains to this
+day, just as it was when I drew it up; and it is now more than thirty
+years old. There it is, with my name attached to it, as large as life. I
+have been President, Vice President, Treasurer, Secretary, and "all
+hands too," of my would-be Temperance Society, from that day to this. I
+doubt whether many societies can be found which in thirty years have
+made so little change as the one under consideration.
+
+For about four years from the time of getting up the above-named
+temperance society, strange as the assertion may seem, I retained the
+right to use a little beer and a good deal of coffee. But in May, 1830,
+I abandoned all drinks but water, to which custom I have ever since
+adhered and in which I shall probably die.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+TRIALS OF A YOUNG PHYSICIAN.
+
+
+The poet Cowper, in his delineations of a candidate for the pulpit,
+prescribes, as one needful condition or qualification,
+
+    "That he is honest in the sacred cause."
+
+So, when I entered upon the medical profession, which I regarded as next
+of kin to sacred, I deemed honesty quite a high recommendation; and
+whatever in the abstract appeared to me to be right, I endeavored to
+pursue through the routine of every-day life. Alas, that I should ever
+have had occasion to doubt the policy of common honesty!
+
+I was called to see Mrs. ----. The case was an urgent one. There was no
+time for deliberation or consultation. I understood her case but very
+poorly; yet I knew that in order to success I must at least _seem_ to be
+wise. Besides, what was to be done must be done quickly; so I boldly
+prescribed. My prescription was entirely successful, and I left the
+house with flying colors. I left, moreover, with the full consciousness
+of having acted in the main like an honest man.
+
+A few days afterward I was sent for by Mrs. ----, who immediately filled
+my ears with the most piteous complaints, the sum total of which was
+that she was exceedingly _nervous_, and I told her so. Of course I did
+not complain of culpability or crime. But I told her, very plainly, that
+she needed no medicine--nothing but plenty of air and exercise, and less
+high-seasoned food. My great frankness gave offence, and impaired my
+reputation. She employed, in my stead, Dr. Robinson, who continued to
+attend her till his bill amounted to a sum sufficient to buy a good
+carriage and harness, and till his credit for skill was advanced in a
+degree corresponding.
+
+Mr. B.'s child was sick, and his wife besides. He came for my
+predecessor; but, not finding him at home,--though he still remained in
+the place,--he was compelled to Hobson's choice--myself or nobody; Dr.
+Robinson lived at too great a distance. I was accordingly employed, and
+was soon on the spot. The child was very sick; and for some little time
+after my arrival I was so much occupied in the performance of my duties
+that I paid no attention to any thing else. But having prescribed for
+both my patients, I sat down quietly to look over the newspaper.
+
+Presently I heard from Mrs. B. a deep groan. I was immediately at her
+bedside, anxious to know the cause. "Oh, nothing at all," she said,
+"except a momentary feeling of disappointment because Dr. ---- did not
+come." I said to her, "You can send for him now, madam, as soon as he
+returns. Do not think yourselves compelled to adhere to me, simply
+because you have been obliged to call me once. I will yield most
+cheerfully to the individual of your preference."
+
+Mrs. B. apologized. She knew I had done as well as I could, she said;
+and perhaps no one could have done better. "But little Leonora," said
+she, "is dreadfully sick; and I do very much want to see Dr. B. He has
+had more experience than you. These young doctors, just from the
+schools, what can they know, the best of them?"
+
+I saw her difficulties; but, as I have already intimated, I did not look
+so wise as Dr. B., nor had I so grave a face, nor so large an abdomen. I
+could neither tell so good a story, nor laugh so heartily; I could not
+even descend to that petty talk which is so often greatly preferred to
+silence or newspaper reading, not only by such individuals as Mrs. B.
+and her friends, but by most families. A physician must be a man of
+sympathy. He need not, however, descend to so low a level as that of
+dishonesty; but he must come down to the level of his people in regard
+to manners and conversation. He must converse with them in their own
+language. He must not only _seem_ to be devoted, unreservedly, to their
+interests, but must actually _be_ so. This confession is most cheerfully
+and sincerely and honestly made; and may he who reads it understand.
+
+On a certain occasion I was called to prescribe in a family where the
+disappointment was so great that the patient was actually made worse by
+my presence, and an unfavorable turn given to the disease. It may be
+said that people ought not to yield themselves up to the influence of
+such feelings; and it is certainly true that they ought not. But sick
+people are not always rational, nor even judicious. Dr. Johnson says:
+"Every sick man is a rascal;" but we need not go quite so far as that.
+Sickness changes us, morally, sometimes for the better, but much oftener
+for the worse; and in general it makes us much less reasonable.
+
+But it is far enough from being my intention to present a full account
+of the trials incident to the life of a young medical man; for, in order
+to do this, I should be obliged to carry you with me, at least mentally,
+to places which you would not greatly desire to visit. Physicians can
+seldom choose their patients; they are compelled to take them as they
+find them. They will sometimes be called to the vilest of the vile and
+the filthiest of the filthy.
+
+Their office is indeed a noble one; but is noblest of all when performed
+honestly, in the fear of God, with a view to do good, and not merely to
+please mankind and gratify their own ambition. Above all, they should
+not practise medicine for the mere love of money. A physician should
+have a heart overflowing with benevolence, and should feel it incumbent
+upon him, at every step in his professional life, not only to do good to
+his patients, but to all around him. He should be a guide to mankind,
+physically, for moral ends. He should let his light so shine, that they,
+seeing his good works, may be led to glorify the Father who is in
+heaven. His object should be to spread, by the good he performs, the
+everlasting gospel, just as truly as this should be the object of him
+who ministers in holy things at the altar. Such a physician, however, at
+first, I was not. Such, however, I soon aspired to be; such, as I trust,
+I at length became. Of this, however, the reader will judge for himself,
+by-and-by. "By their fruits ye shall know them."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+A DOSING AND DRUGGING FAMILY.
+
+
+For several months of the first year of my medical life, I was a boarder
+in a family, all of whom were sickly. Some of the number were even
+continually or almost continually under the influence of medicine, if
+not of physicians. Here my trials were various, and some of them severe.
+
+But I must give you a particular description of this family; for I have
+many things to say concerning it, some of which may prove instructive.
+
+Mr. L. had been brought up a farmer; but being possessed of a delicate
+constitution, had been subsequently converted into a country
+shop-keeper,--a dealer, I mean, in dry goods and groceries. As is usual
+in such cases, he was in the habit of keeping a small assortment of
+drugs and medicines. The circumstance of having medicine always at hand,
+and often _in_ hand, had led him, as it has thousands of others, into
+temptation, till he had formed and confirmed the habit of frequent
+dosing and drugging his frail system. But as usually happens in such
+cases, the more medicine he took, the more he seemed to require, and
+consequently the more he swallowed. One thing prepared the way for
+another.
+
+With Mrs. L. matters were still worse. In the vain belief that without a
+course of medication, _she could never have any constitution_, as she
+was wont to express it, her mother had begun to dose and drug her as
+early as at the age of twelve or fourteen years. And what had been thus
+early begun, had been continued till she was twenty-four, when she
+married Mr. L. But she was feebler, if possible, at twenty-four, than at
+fourteen, and believed herself under the necessity of taking medicine in
+order to be able to sit up a part of the day and perform a little
+light, but needful, family labor, such as sewing, mending, etc.
+
+When I first had a seat at their family table, it was by no means
+uncommon for Mr. and Mrs. L. to begin their meal, as soon as "grace" was
+over, with Stoughton's bitters, or some other supposed cordial, or
+strengthener of the appetite. As I not only refused to join them, but
+occasionally spoke a kind word against the custom into which they had
+fallen, the bitters at length fell into disuse; and it was found that
+their meals could be digested as well without the stimulus, as with its
+aid.
+
+But I was much less successful in preventing the torrent of medicine
+from producing its wonted ---- upon this family, at other times and
+seasons; for which Mr. L.'s business furnished such facilities. But you
+must not think of Mrs. L. as a mere tyro in this business of compounding
+medicine, nor in that of administering it, especially to herself. From
+the apothecary's shop of her husband, as well as from other sources, she
+selected one thing after another, not merely for the time, but for
+permanent purposes, till it was almost difficult to say which had the
+best assortment, she or her husband. And she not only had it on hand,
+but she took it, as freely, almost so, as her food and drink.
+
+More than even this should be affirmed. Had she at any time flagged in
+this work of self-destruction, she would have been brought up again to
+the line by her mother. For though the latter resided at a considerable
+distance, she paid Mrs. L. an occasional visit, and sometimes remained
+in the family several weeks. Whenever she did so, little was heard of in
+the usual hours of conversation,--especially at the table,--but Sarah's
+stomach, Sarah's nerves, and what was good for Sarah. It was enough to
+make one _sick at the stomach_, to witness the conversation even for a
+single day; and above all to be compelled to join in it.
+
+She was there once, in the early spring, and remained until the ground
+was fairly settled. No sooner could she get into the woods, and come to
+the naked surface of the earth, than the whole country around was laid
+under tribute to furnish roots "good for the blood." These were put
+into a beer to be prepared for Sarah. It was supposed by many,--and by
+this wondrous wise old lady, among the rest,--that the efficacy of these
+medicinal beers in cleansing the blood, must ever be in due proportion
+to the number of their respective ingredients. Thus, if twenty articles,
+"good for the blood," could be procured and boiled in the wort, the
+result would be a compound which would be worth twenty times as much, or
+at least be _many_ times as useful, in accomplishing its supposed
+specific purpose, as if only one kind of root had been obtained.
+
+It was a long time before I could break in upon this tissue of error, to
+any practical purpose. For so deeply imbedded in the human brain is the
+idea of purifying the blood by some such unnatural means, that one might
+almost as well think of building a railroad to the moon, as of
+overcoming it. They never thought--perhaps never knew--that the blood of
+the human body of to-day, will be little more the blood of the body
+to-morrow, than the river which flows by our door to-day will be the
+river of to-morrow; and that the one can no more be purified
+independently of any and all things else, than the other.
+
+But it is said to be a long road which never turns. Some good
+impressions had been made on this family, as we shall see hereafter.
+Not, indeed, until there had been much unnecessary suffering, and many
+an unwilling penalty paid for transgression, as well as much money
+uselessly expended for physicians and medicine. For though I was
+somewhat a favorite in the family, I was as yet young and inexperienced,
+and many a wiser head than mine was from time to time invoked, and much
+time and money lost in other ways, that might have been saved for better
+and nobler purposes.
+
+Among the items of loss, as well as of penalty, was that of offspring.
+These were generally still-born. One, indeed, lived about two weeks and
+then perished. The parents seemed to be written childless. Or rather,
+they seemed to have written themselves so. They seemed destined
+moreover, to follow their premature children, at no great distance, to
+an untimely grave. For nothing was more obvious--I mean to the medical
+observer--than at an age when everybody ought to be gaining in bodily no
+less than in mental and moral vigor, they were both of them growing
+feeble as well as irresolute.
+
+As a boarder, I left the family some time afterward, though I did not
+lose sight of it wholly; nor did they entirely forget or disregard the
+numerous hints I had given them. They made some progress every year. At
+length, however, I lost sight of them entirely, and only kept up a faint
+recollection of them by means of an occasional word of intelligence from
+the place where they resided, showing that they were still alive.
+
+One day, after the lapse of about eight years, as I was passing through
+a charming New England village, the stage-coach stopped to let the
+passengers dine, when, to my great surprise, on stepping out of the
+coach, whom should I see but my old friend Mr. L.? He was equally
+surprised, and perhaps equally rejoiced, to see me. The interview was
+utterly unexpected to us both.
+
+"How do you do?" said he, grasping my hand. I returned the compliment by
+inquiring after his own health and that of Mrs. L. It turned out that he
+had failed in his business a few months before, and that, as a
+consequence, he had been compelled to remove to the place where he now
+was, and engage in an employment which brought his skin into contact
+with the air, and his muscles into prolonged and healthful activity. It
+appeared also that both he and his family had long since banished the
+use of medicine. "And now," said he, "thank God I know what it is, once
+more, to enjoy health; I can not only eat, but work."
+
+It was Monday, the great _washing-day_ of Yankee house-keepers; and
+while we were talking together with so much earnestness, that, like
+Milton's first pair in innocence, we "forgot all time," a female
+approached, with her sleeves rolled up, greeted me with much cordiality
+and seized me by the hand. "Can this be Mrs. L.?" I asked. How changed!
+She was, it is true, like her husband, a little sunburnt; but then she
+was as she assured me, and, as I had every reason for believing to be
+true, comparatively healthy.
+
+While I was still in amazement, hardly knowing whether I was awake or
+dreaming, a little girl approached us. Though somewhat slender and
+delicate, she was only slightly diseased; rather, she was only
+predisposed to disease by inheritance; and mere predispositions no more
+destroy us, than a train of powder explodes without igniting. The girl
+was about four or five years old. "Who is this?" I inquired. "Not yours,
+most certainly," I added, turning to Mr. and Mrs. L. "We call her ours,"
+they said, "and yours; for we, no doubt, owe her life and health, in no
+small degree, to your instructions."--"This," said I, "is what I little
+expected to see; but you may thank God for it rather than me, since she
+lives by virtue of obedience to his laws, and not mine. Then you are not
+only pretty healthy yourselves," I added, "but you have a healthy
+child."--"We have two," said they. "The other is in the cradle; we will
+go and bring her."
+
+At this moment, the loud declaration, "The coach is ready, gentlemen,"
+reminded us that our conversation was at an end for the present, and we
+were obliged to separate. Not, however, till we had enjoyed a most
+luxurious mental repast in "the feast of reason, and the flow of soul,"
+with no abatement but the consciousness, on my part, of a little loss to
+the landlord, who had provided for the passengers a smoking dinner.
+
+This, reader, to speak somewhat paradoxically, was one of the proudest,
+and yet one of the humblest days of my life. To have been the
+Heaven-appointed instrument of such a marked change for the better in a
+human family, was more than could have been foreseen or even expected.
+It is more than has often fallen to my lot. True, I do not hesitate to
+regard it as an extreme case; and yet it is, in magnitude, just what I
+could show you in miniature, at various points in the same vicinity, and
+indeed, all over the country.
+
+Mr. and Mrs. L. still pursue the even tenor of their way, and have their
+reward in it. One of their two daughters,--buds of early
+promise,--though probably more or less scrofulous, hardly reached
+maturity, ere she descended to the tomb. The rest enjoy a tolerable
+degree of health. Of course, I do not speak of their health as greater
+than that of the average of mankind, notwithstanding their thorough
+reformation. It is much, all things considered, that it should be equal
+to that average.
+
+As for the mother of Mrs. L., who still occasionally visits the family,
+she looks on in silent amazement, hardly knowing whether to recommend
+any more beer, with all sorts of roots good for the blood in it, or
+whether to give up the pursuit. I believe, however, that she does not
+often presume to interfere with their habits. Perhaps she has
+learned--if not, she may possibly live long enough to acquire the
+lesson,--to "let well alone," as her children and grandchildren already
+have. I certainly hope she has. It will conduce greatly to her health
+and happiness, as well as make her a better citizen and better
+Christian.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+POISONING WITH LEAD.
+
+
+Nearly at the beginning of my practice in medicine, I was called to see
+a fine and hitherto healthy youth, twelve years old, but who had for
+several weeks before application was made to me, complained of a steady
+and sometimes severe pain in his bowels, attended with more or fewer
+febrile symptoms and a loss of appetite.
+
+In endeavoring to trace out carefully the causes of his disease, the
+first thing that attracted my attention was his employment. His father
+was a blacksmith, and being in moderate circumstances and destitute of
+any other help besides this son, had for a considerable time required
+him to perform the work of an adult, or nearly such. It had not been
+suspected at the time, that the work injured him, though he had
+sometimes complained of great fatigue, and of a slight weakness and
+uneasiness in the place where the pain had now become fixed. As the
+result of my investigations, I came to the conclusion that he had been
+overworked, and certain ligaments of the bowels had been weakened.
+
+My treatment in the case was at first mild and palliative, in the hope
+that after a few days of rest the trouble would disappear. Instead of
+this, however, it grew worse. At my special request, various counselling
+physicians were called in; but I do not know that they were of any
+service to me. No new light was thrown on the case, though we could all
+converse very learnedly on the subject.
+
+Like many other young practitioners, I was at that time apt to indulge
+in gloomy fears about poisons. I seldom had a case of acute disease,
+without suspecting their influence. I suspected poison now, and
+accordingly made search into every possible nook and corner whence such
+an influence could possibly have emanated. For a long time nothing could
+be found.
+
+One day, on examining a pot of pickled cucumbers which had hitherto
+escaped observation, I found that a part of its glazing had been
+destroyed by the acid. I no sooner saw this than I was ready to say,
+_eureka_ (I have found it), and to inform the family and my patient. It
+appeared that the pickles had been there for some time, and that the boy
+had eaten of them very freely. The parents and friends, though they had
+much confidence in the wisdom and skill of their physician, were very
+slow to believe in the injurious tendency of the pickles. They admitted
+the danger of such cases generally; but how could the boy be injured,
+and not the rest of them? they asked. They forgot, or did not know, that
+the poison would be more likely to affect one who was weakened in the
+abdomen from other causes, than those who were sound; especially when he
+took much more of it into his stomach than they did.
+
+In my suspicion about lead poisoning, I had very little sympathy from
+those around me. Even the counselling physicians had little confidence
+in any such existing cause of disease. They were nearly as ready as
+other people to leave the case in the dark, and to say, practically,
+"The finger of Providence is here;" or, in other words, It comes of some
+cause which God alone knows or _can_ know.
+
+How much of human ignorance--ay, and of human credulity and folly,
+too--is clustered round the well-known decision of many a court of
+inquest; viz., "Died by the visitation of God!" What do they mean by it?
+Do they suppose that since Satan or some other personage whom we call
+Death, is guilty of striking us down here and there, those who are not
+"struck with death" are struck down by the great Source of light and
+life?
+
+The far greater probability is, that they know not what they _do_ mean.
+Mankind are not addicted to thinking, especially on subjects of this
+sort. It is much easier, or at least much lazier, to refer all our ills
+and complaints, as well as their unfavorable terminations, to God or
+Satan, friend or foe,--to some agency exterior to themselves,--than to
+consider themselves as the probable cause, and proceed to make diligent
+search for their own errors.
+
+Thus it was, in a remarkable degree, in the region where it was my lot
+to meet and palliate and try to cure diseases. I say, here, _cure_; for
+the idea would hardly have found a lodgment, at that early period, in
+any human brain which could have been found in that region of rural
+simplicity, hardly in my own somewhat more highly enlightened cranium,
+that _medical men never cure_; and that when people get well, it is the
+result of the operations and efforts of nature, or of nature's God, who
+is doing the best thing possible to set matters right.
+
+It was even deemed by many as not only foolish, but almost sacrilegious,
+to say much about the causes of disease, and especially about lead. And
+then to talk about lead as connected with the use of their favorite red
+earthen, which had been in use time immemorial, and which had never, in
+all past time, killed anybody, as they supposed, was the dictate of
+almost any thing else rather than of good, sound, sober, common sense.
+
+You can hardly imagine, at this day, in the year 1859, what an air of
+incredulity the gaping countenances of the family and neighbors of my
+young friend and patient presented, when I told them stories of lead
+disease in different parts of the country, especially of such cases as
+were then recent and fresh in my memory. One of these stories may not be
+out of place in the present connection.
+
+About the year 1812, the people of Elizabethtown, Penn., put up what
+they called their apple butter in these same red earthen vessels,
+glazed, as almost everybody now knows, with an oxyde of lead. There had
+been a pottery established near the village that very year, and it was
+thought not a little patriotic to purchase and use its products, thus
+favoring the cause of home manufacture. Nearly every family, as it
+appeared in the sequel, had bought and used more or fewer of these
+vessels.
+
+This was, of course, some time in the autumn. In the progress of a few
+months a dreadful disease broke out in the village, which baffled the
+skill of the best physicians, and consigned some forty or fifty of the
+inhabitants to the grave. The cause, at first, was not at all suspected.
+At length, however, from a careful examination of facts, it was
+ascertained that the disease which had proved so fatal must have had its
+origin in the glazing of these vessels. The sickness abated only when it
+had attacked all whose bowels--already weakened by some other cause or
+causes--were duly prepared for the poisonous operation of the lead. It
+is indeed true that the physicians supposed the disease came to a stand
+on account of the overwhelming tendency of huge doses of calomel, which
+they gave to almost everybody who had used the apple butter; but of this
+there was no satisfactory evidence. It ceased, as I believe, and as I
+have already intimated, because--except in the case of those who were
+enfeebled by other causes, nature was too strong for it, or her
+recuperative powers too energetic.
+
+Now this story illustrates a case which, in magnitude or in miniature,
+is in our country of almost every-day occurrence; and the only reason
+why the results everywhere else are not like those at Elizabethtown, is
+simply this: that there is not so much of the poison used in any one
+village, at the same time, as there was at that place in the
+circumstances which have been mentioned. One is sick here, another
+there, and another elsewhere. In one, owing to peculiar predisposition
+or habit, it takes the shape of fever; in another, of palsy; in another,
+of eruptions or boils; in another, of bowel complaint. And as all these
+and many other diseases have been known before, and have been induced by
+other causes equally unobserved or obscure, we have fallen into the
+habit of supposing that these things must needs be, do what we will. In
+other words, God the Creator, is supposed to have made the world and
+appointed to us, for trial or otherwise, these various forms of disease;
+and they are for the most part dealt out to us arbitrarily; or, if not
+arbitrarily, by chance or hap-hazard.
+
+But to return to the young man. There was such a hostility of the public
+mind to the idea that his disease was induced or even aggravated by
+lead, that I receded in part from my suspicions. At least, I proceeded,
+with fresh energy and enthusiasm, to search for other and more probable
+or popular causes. Cause there must have been, of some sort, I was
+confident; while to all my efforts of this kind the friends of the boy
+stood opposed. They did not, it is true, say much against it; but then
+it was perfectly evident from all their conversation and conduct that
+they regarded it as not only idle, but presumptuous, perhaps wicked. How
+can it be, they seemed to say, by those looks and actions which so often
+speak louder than words, that this young doctor is always trying to
+ferret out the causes of disease, while Dr ---- (my predecessor) never
+attempted any such thing, but rather dissuaded us from it?
+
+Yet thus it was precisely. For three long months I was endeavoring to
+meet and obviate the symptoms of a disease which I secretly believed was
+induced by lead, but of which I had no such strong evidence as would
+have justified the positive affirmation that it was so, or prevented me
+from searching for other causes. This state of mind was by no means
+favorable to my success as a medical practitioner; for it somehow
+greatly impaired or weakened their general confidence in my wisdom and
+skill. Had I, on the other hand, "looked very wise," declared the
+disease to be so and so, with great pertinacity, and adhered, through
+good report and through evil, to my opinion, whenever it was assailed,
+and withal manifested no desire to receive medical counsel, I should
+have had a larger measure of their esteem, and a very much larger
+measure, as a professional man, of their confidence. They might then
+have thought me a very wise and good physician.
+
+A man who wishes to be greatly popular in the world must learn the ways
+of the world, and walk in them more or less, whether they are crooked or
+straight. He must not be over-modest, or over-honest; nor must he be
+over-solicitous to improve his own mind or heart, or encourage others,
+by precept or example, to walk in the way of improvement. He must not
+only make up his mind to take the world as it is, but to suffer it to
+remain so. The world does not like to be found fault with; it has a
+great deal of self-confidence.
+
+The young man, in the end, recovered; not, as I now believe, in
+consequence of the treatment, but in spite of it. Had he been nursed
+carefully from the first, and kept from every source of irritation, both
+external and internal, even from food, except a very little of the
+mildest sort, just enough to keep him from absolute starvation; and had
+his air been pure and his temper of mind easy, cheerful and hopeful, he
+would probably have recovered much sooner than he did, and with far
+better prospects for the future. But he had been frightened about
+himself, from the very first, by my own inquiries about poison,--which
+had unwarily been communicated to him,--and his fears never wholly
+subsided.
+
+How much wisdom from both worlds does it require in order to be a
+physician! The office of a medical man, I repeat, is one of the noblest
+under the whole heaven. The physician is, or should be, a missionary. Do
+you regard this assertion as extravagant or unfounded? Why, then, was it
+made an adjunct, and more than an adjunct, in the first promulgation of
+the gospel, and this, too, by the gospel's divine Author? Why is it that
+our success in modern times, in spreading the gospel, has been
+greater--other things being equal--in America or China, in proportion as
+its preachers have attended to the body as well as to the soul?
+
+At the time of my commencing the practice of medicine, I was no more fit
+for it than I was to preach the cross of Christ; that is, I was almost
+entirely unqualified for either profession. I was honest, sanguine,
+philanthropic, but I was uneducated. I knew very little, indeed, of
+human nature; still less did I know of the sublime art of becoming all
+things to all men, in the nobler and more elevated sense of the great
+apostle Paul. I would yield to no other compromise than such as he
+encourages, of course. Let us be honest and truthful, though the heavens
+fall.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX.
+
+STANDING PATIENTS.
+
+
+Medical men well know--should any such condescend to look over this
+volume--what is meant when I affirm that I was not long in securing to
+myself a good share of _standing patients_. They are the dread, not to
+say the curse, of the profession. And yet they abound. They are found
+throughout the length and breadth of the land, and in great numbers.
+
+They are a class of persons, not always of one sex, who hang
+continually, like an incubus, on the physician, and yet are forever a
+disadvantage to him. They are never well enough to let him alone, and
+yet seldom ill enough to require much medical advice or treatment. And
+yet, medicine they will have, of somebody, even if they go to the
+apothecary for it, without so much as the semblance of a medical
+prescription of any sort. But then, after all, they are seldom reduced
+to any such necessity. They usually have on hand prescriptions enough of
+some sort. A dearth of Yankee physicians--could such a thing possibly
+occur--would still leave us a supply of Indian doctors, mesmeric
+doctors, nutritive doctors, etc., etc., to say nothing of doctresses, in
+liberal abundance, ever ready to prescribe.
+
+When I succeeded Dr. ----, in the chair of medicine, surgery, etc., at
+----, I received, as if by contract, if not by inheritance, his whole
+stock of standing patients. They were not slow to _call on_, sometimes
+to _call in_, the new doctor. Nor was I often long in the house before
+comparisons began to be made between my predecessor and myself. They did
+not, of course, directly traduce or slander Dr. ----, but they were very
+careful to intimate that, having got his name up, he had grown careless
+about his patients, especially such of them as did not belong to his
+clique, political or sectarian; and that, on this account, they were
+almost willing to part with him, and to receive and accept as his
+substitute one who was not only younger and more active, but also less
+tinctured with conservatism and aristocracy!
+
+A very large amount of valuable time was spent during the first year of
+my practice as a physician, in endeavors to do good to these very
+devoted and loving and loyal patients; for if they did not always call
+me when I had occasion to pass their doors, I knew full well they
+expected me, and so I usually called. Besides, in many an instance I was
+sent for in post haste, with entreaties that I would come and see them
+immediately; and no atonement for neglect or even delay--if such neglect
+or delay was ventured--would suffice. And yet, despite of their fears of
+"monarchy and aristocracy," they were my most truly aristocratic
+patients. They expected me to come and go at their request, whether
+anybody else was attended to or not. And, to add to the vexation of the
+case, though they boasted of having paid most enormous bills to my
+predecessor, they never, if they could avoid it, paid any thing to me.
+
+Now, I do not suppose that every medical man has as large a share of
+these standing patients as fell to my unhappy lot; but from the
+knowledge I have acquired of mankind, and from the acquaintance I have
+necessarily formed with medical men, I do not think I err when I affirm
+that they are everywhere numerous, and that they are everywhere not only
+a pest to society at large, but particularly so to the physician.
+
+But the worst feature of the case is, that after all our efforts, we can
+seldom, if ever, cure them. They are always hanging upon us like an
+incubus; and yet like Solomon's daughters of the horseleech, are never
+satisfied. They take the medicine, and follow the advice, if they _like_
+it; or they take such parts of it as they choose, and reject the rest.
+Or they take the advice and follow us to-day, but get discouraged and
+abandon us, at least practically, to-morrow; especially if some smart
+young physician happens to come along, who has more than an average
+share of empiricism and pretension, and more than he has of real merit.
+
+I must here confess, among other confessions, that at first I was not a
+little deceived by their open countenances and concealed thoughts, and
+unintelligent and hence unconfiding professions. It was a long time
+before I relinquished the hope of doing them good; or at least a portion
+of them. But I was at length compelled. There was nothing on which to
+build. If a foundation seemed to be laid one day, it would disappear the
+next.
+
+One fundamental difficulty lay in the way of these persons to health, as
+it has to thousands of others. They were all the while talking or
+thinking about themselves, their ailments and woes and abuses and
+neglects. They were particularly inclined to turn their attention to
+their own diseased feelings. Now it may be pretty safe to say that no
+individual can fully recover from chronic disease,--nervous, stomachic,
+or glandular--who is always turning his thoughts inward, and watching
+his own feelings, and perhaps relating his woes to every one he meets
+with. We must learn to forget ourselves, at least a part of the time,
+and think of others, if we are in earnest to get rid of chronic disease.
+I do not say, of course, that everybody would recover of disease, even
+if they acted right in every particular; but this I _do_ say, that if
+every person who is ill would act wisely, and if their physicians, in
+every instance, were wise enough to take the best course, the number of
+these standing patients would soon dwindle to a very small remnant.
+Instead of thousands, or tens of thousands, it would soon be reduced to
+hundreds.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX.
+
+KILLING A PATIENT.
+
+
+President Lindsley, late of one of our south western colleges,--a very
+shrewd and observing, as well as learned and excellent individual--has
+been often heard to say that no half-educated young physician ever
+succeeded in obtaining a good run of professional business, and a fair
+medical reputation, without despatching prematurely to the other world,
+at least as many as half a dozen of his patients.
+
+It is said that most rules have their exceptions; and it is even
+affirmed by some, that the exceptions strengthen the rule. If this is
+so, perhaps the rule of Pres. L. may stand; though to many it seems at
+first exceedingly sweeping. One known exception to its universality may
+be worth mentioning, on which the reader may make his own comments, and
+from which he may draw his own inferences. I was so fortunate for one,
+as to attain to the eminence he mentions, without killing any thing
+_like_ half a dozen patients; at least, so far as I know.
+
+And yet, as I verily fear and most honestly confess, I _did_ kill one or
+two. Not, of course, with malice aforethought, for they were among my
+very best friends; and one in particular was a near and highly valued
+neighbor. Let me give you a few details concerning the latter. It may
+serve as a lesson of instruction, as well as a confession.
+
+He was about six feet high, with large vital organs; and though by no
+means possessed of a strong constitution, yet in virtue of a most rigid
+temperance, generally healthy. He was, however, subjected to the
+habitual influences of a most miserable cookery. Indeed, I never knew
+worse. Seldom, if ever, did he pass a single week--I might even say a
+single day--without having his alimentary organs irritated to
+subinflammation by more or fewer of what Dr. Dunglison, the
+physiologist, would call "rebellious" mixtures. I do not wonder, in
+truth, that he occasionally sickened. The wonder with me is, that he did
+not sicken and die long before he did. And though the blow that finished
+his perilous mortal career, was doubtless inflicted by my own hand, I do
+not hesitate to say that his "housekeeper" had nearly half destroyed him
+before I was called.
+
+It was a midsummer night, when the messenger came across an intervening
+field, and aroused me from my slumbers with the intelligence that Mr. M.
+was very sick, and wanted to have me come and see him immediately.
+Although it was fully twelve o'clock, and I had been so fully occupied
+during the preceding evening, that I had but just crawled into bed and
+begun my slumbers, I was instantly on my feet, and in about twelve
+minutes at the bedside of the sick man.
+
+He had been affected with a bowel complaint, as it appeared, for several
+days, during which his wife, who was one of those conceited women who
+know so much, in their own estimation, that nobody can teach them any
+thing, had dosed him with various things, such as were supposed to be
+good for the blood, or the stomach, among which was brandy and loaf
+sugar. Now his bowels, though they were inflamed, might have borne the
+sugar; but the brandy was a little too much for them. They had endured
+it for a time, it is true, but had at length yielded, and were in a
+worse condition than when she began her treatment. And what was worse,
+her alcoholic doses, frequently "inflicted," had heated the circulatory
+apparatus, and even the whole system, into a burning fever.
+
+It needed no very active imagination, in such circumstances, to make
+out, at least in prospect, a very "hard case." And as he who has a giant
+foe to contend with, arms himself accordingly, I immediately invoked the
+strongholds of the Materia Medica for the strongest doses which it could
+furnish, and these in no measured or stinted quantity. In short, I
+attacked the disease with the most powerful agents of which I could
+avail myself.
+
+I will not trouble the non-professional reader with the names of the
+various and powerful drugs which were laid under contribution in this
+trying and dangerous case, and which were most assiduously plied. It is
+sufficient, perhaps, to say that on looking over my directions--fairly
+written out as they were, and laid on a small stand near the
+sick-bed--you might have discovered that hardly a half-hour, by night or
+day, could pass, in which he was not required to swallow some very
+active or in other words poisonous medicinal agent or other. For though
+I was even then greatly opposed, in _theory_, to the exhibition of much
+medicine in disease, yet in _practice_ I could not free myself wholly
+from the idea that my prospects of affording aid, or rather of giving
+nature a chance of saving a patient, was nearly in proportion to the
+amount I could force into him of opium, calomel, nitrate of silver,
+carbonate of ammonia, etc.
+
+It was, in short, enough to kill a Samson or a Hercules; and I repeat
+that I verily fear that it did kill in the present instance; not,
+however, immediately. For several days and nights we watched over him,
+heating his brain, in our over-kindness, to a violent delirium on the
+one hand, or to a stupor almost like the sleep of death on the other.
+
+Not satisfied with our own murderous efforts, we at length applied for
+medical counsel. My predecessor was not so far off as to be quite beyond
+our reach, and was in due time on the spot. He, good man, sanctioned the
+deeds already done, and only made through the force of their
+prepossessions, an addition to the dark catalogue of demons which
+already assailed if they did not actually possess him.
+
+For the first time in my medical career, I suffered, here, from a loss
+of the confidence of my employers. A very mean man, who could gain
+notoriety in no other way, undertook to insinuate that I did not
+understand well my profession; and this story for a short time made an
+impression. However, there was soon a reaction in my favor, so that
+nothing was lost in the end. More than even this might be said--that I
+rose higher, as the result of the report.
+
+Mr. M. at length began to decline. Nature, though strongly entrenched in
+her citadel, and loth to "give up the ship," began to succumb to the
+powers of disease and the load of medicine; and he gradually descended
+to the tomb. His whole sickness was of little more than a week's
+duration.
+
+I was present at the funeral, but I could scarcely hold up my head, or
+look any person in the face. To my perturbed imagination every one who
+was but "three feet high" was ready to point at me the finger of scorn,
+and say, "You have killed that man." The heavens themselves seemed
+covered with thick darkness, and the green earth with sackcloth and
+ashes. "Never again," I said to myself a thousand times, "can I bear up
+under such sad and severe responsibilities."
+
+And yet--will the reader believe it?--no one circumstance of my whole
+medical life ever did more to establish my reputation than this. True, I
+had contended on the battle field, and had been beaten, but then it was
+thought I had contended against a powerful foe. Men sometimes think it
+honorable even to be beaten. I well remember an instance of this sort. A
+very great scoundrel heaped insults upon a worthy justice of the peace,
+till the latter seized him and held him down to the ground for a
+considerable time. The man was quite respectable afterward, and told the
+story to his own praise a thousand times over! He had measured lances
+with 'Squire H.! And though the 'Squire was too much for him, he
+obtained a town-wide reputation by the contest.
+
+You will see, more and more, as I proceed with these confessions, that
+it is not in him that willeth nor in him that runneth, to be acceptable
+as a physician, but in certain circumstances, partly within and partly
+beyond our control. You will see, however, that the best way in the end
+is, boldly and fearlessly to do right, and then trust in Him who loves
+right, and whose throne is in the Heavens, for the final issue. We may
+not always be popular in doing right--probably we shall _not_ be--but we
+shall, in any event, have a clear conscience.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI.
+
+A SUDDEN CURE.
+
+
+I was called one morning very early, to see a little girl, five or six
+years of age, who, it was said, was extremely sick, and without
+immediate aid could not probably long survive.
+
+She was one of a very numerous family, most of whom, though suffered to
+run almost wild, like so many rabbits, were comparatively healthy. I do
+not suppose they had ever called in a physician more than once or twice
+in a year. In truth, they had very little confidence in physicians;
+though in extremities, they were accustomed to call on them almost as
+much as other people. In any event Caroline was very sick now; and they
+loudly demanded aid. I was forthwith on the spot. Caroline was groaning
+most piteously. "Where is your distress?" I inquired. She gave no direct
+answer, but continued to groan and writhe, as if she were impaled. As I
+could obtain no reliable information from her, and could discover no
+special or exciting cause of her suffering, and as the case was urgent,
+I proceeded to do _something_, though, as I must honestly confess, it
+was to labor quite in the dark. One thing I knew, it is true; that there
+were spasms, and that it depended on a diseased condition of the brain
+and nervous system; but what the cause or causes were, I could hardly
+divine. Nor, in truth, had I time to ask many questions.
+
+Though the days of Hydropathy had not yet arrived, the world, even then,
+had a good deal of water in it, and physicians were sometimes wise
+enough to use it. It was demanded, as I thought, on the present
+occasion. It would, at least, by whiling away the time, give opportunity
+for further observation and reflection, and deeper investigation. There
+was a good fire in the kitchen, and I ordered a warm bath immediately.
+
+Every effort was made to hasten the process of warming the water, as
+well as to keep the patient quiet and within doors; for she raved like a
+maniac--partly indeed from a childish fear, but partly also from real
+bodily suffering. The family and neighborhood--for the latter were very
+largely collected together--were almost as much alarmed and distressed
+as the little patient, and this reacted on the patient to her increased
+disadvantage.
+
+As there were no special preparations in those days for bathing--I mean
+in the region of which I am now speaking--we used a large wash-tub. The
+water was soon ready, and was made rather warm, quite above 100 deg. of
+Fahrenheit. I had taken the precaution to have my patient already
+undressed, so as to lose no time. The very instant the bath was ready,
+she was plunged into it. It cost some trouble, for she resisted with
+almost superhuman strength, and uttered most terrific screams. But as
+the ox is dragged to the slaughter, she was dragged into the water and
+held in it.
+
+The effect was like magic. She had not been in the water twenty seconds
+before every thing was quiet; and I do not know that she has ever had
+another pang to the present hour. Certain it is that she seemed to be
+entirely cured by this single bath, and none of her spasms ever
+returned.
+
+The family were greatly delighted, and so were the neighbors. And was
+the physician, think you, an uninterested spectator? Had he been wholly
+destitute of the love of doing good, by relieving human distress, he
+must at least have been susceptible of receiving pleasure from general
+approbation.
+
+He certainly sought respectability as a physician. And this he was by
+degrees now attaining.
+
+It is hardly possible to refer the sudden quiet which followed in this
+instance from the application of warm water, to a mere coincidence, as
+if the system was ready, just at this very instant, to react or rally.
+The bath must have had something more than a mere imaginary or
+accidental effect, though its prescription may be said to have been
+empirical.
+
+Had the experiment in the present instance wholly failed, it is by no
+means improbable the physician would still have been on a par with other
+men. The _guess_ he made was his _only_ thought. He had nothing in
+reserve. But he was successful; he _guessed right_, and it built him up.
+His fame now began to spread far and wide, wafted, as it were, on the
+wings of every breeze. If he succeeded, it was supposed to be undeniable
+proof of his skill; if he failed, it was not supposed to be so much his
+fault as the result of circumstances; or, more properly, the severity of
+the disease. And even in the case of failure, as I have said elsewhere,
+he often gained credit; for he had boldly contended, at great odds, with
+a mighty because intangible antagonist!
+
+It is an old proverb,--but by no means the less true for its age,--that
+when a person is going down hill every one will give him a kick. But is
+it not equally true that when he is resolutely going up hill, they are
+equally ready to help him on? So at least I found it at this period of
+my progress.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII.
+
+GIGANTIC DOSES OF MEDICINE.
+
+
+Although I was opposed to the frequent and free use of medicine, I early
+fell into one habit which was as diametrically opposed to my general
+theory as could possibly have been. I refer to the habit of giving my
+patients, at least occasionally, most enormous doses of those more
+active preparations which should seldom, if ever, be administered in
+this way. As nearly as I can now recollect, I fell into this habit in
+the following manner:
+
+Among my standing patients, before mentioned, were several drunkards.
+Occasionally, however, they were more than standing or standard
+patients; they had attacks of mania, or as it is usually called in the
+case of drunkards, delirium tremens. In these circumstances, among these
+patients, I often had the most severe trials. Sometimes I could relieve
+them; but sometimes, too, I failed.
+
+One night, while endeavoring to relieve the sufferings of one of these
+patients in delirium tremens, almost to no purpose, the thought struck
+me, "What effect would a prodigious dose of calomel have on the poor
+creature? Can it kill him? I doubt it. I will venture on the trial."
+
+So, without communicating the slightest hint to any one around me of
+what I was about to do, I contrived to insinuate a hundred grains or
+more of this substance into the man's stomach, that like a chemical
+receiver took what was poured into it. Having succeeded in the
+administration of the dose, I waited patiently the issue.
+
+The medicine had, in due time, its full ordinary effect; but the degree
+of its cathartic effect was not in proportion to the largeness of the
+dose. Its activity hardly amounted to violence. It seemed, however, to
+quiet the brain and nerves as if by magic; nor am I aware that any
+injurious effects, either local or general, ever followed its
+exhibition. I had the full credit of a speedy and wonderful cure.
+
+Another fact. I was frequently called to prescribe for children who were
+threatened with the croup. One night, on being called to a child of some
+eight or ten months, I thought of large doses of calomel. Was there any
+great risk in trying one? I ventured. I gave the child almost a
+teaspoonful of this active cathartic. It was indeed a gigantic dose, and
+the treatment was bold if not heroic.
+
+For a couple of hours the patient breathed badly enough. There was
+evidently much oppression, not only of the lungs but of the nervous
+system. The parents and friends of the child grew uneasy. They were not,
+however, more uneasy than their physician. But I consoled myself by
+laboring to compose them. I preached to them long and loud, and to some
+extent with success.
+
+At the end of about two hours, the latter part of which had been marked
+by a degree of stupor which almost discouraged me, a gentle vomiting
+came on, followed by moderately cathartic effects; and the child
+immediately recovered its mental activity, and in a few days was well.
+
+Empirical as this practice was, I ventured on it again and again, and
+with similar success. At length the practice of giving giant doses in
+this disease became quite habitual with me, and I even extended it to
+other diseases. Not only calomel, but several other active medicines
+were used in the same bold and fearless manner. I do not know that I
+ever did any direct or immediate mischief in this way. On the contrary,
+I was regarded as eminently successful.
+
+And yet I should not now dare to repeat the treatment, however urgent
+might seem to be the demand, or recommend it to others. It might,
+perhaps, be successful; but what if it should prove otherwise? I could
+make no appeal to principle or precedent in justification of my conduct.
+It is true, I have met with one or two practitioners whose experience
+has been similar; but what are a few isolated cases, of even honest
+practice, in comparison with the deductions of wise men for centuries?
+There may be after consequences, in these cases, which are not foreseen.
+Sentence against an evil work, as Solomon says, is not always executed
+speedily.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+THE LAMBSKIN DISEASE.
+
+
+Should any medical man look through these pages, he may perchance amuse
+himself by asking where the writer obtained his system of classification
+of disease. It will not, certainly, be very easy to find such a disease
+as the lambskin disease in any of our modern nosologies. But he will
+better understand me when he has read through the chapter. He may be
+reminded, by its perusal and its quaint title, of the classification
+which is found in Whitlow's New Medical Discoveries, founded, as the
+doctor says, on the idea that "every disease ought to be named from the
+plant or other substance which is the principal exciting cause of such
+disease." It is as follows:
+
+    "The Mercurial Disease,
+    The Belladonna       do
+    The Stramonium       do
+    The Tobacco          do
+    The Cicuta           do
+    The Butter Cup       do
+    The Colchicum        do
+    The Colocynth        do
+    The Pork or Hog      do
+    The Vinegar          do
+    The Fool's Parsley   do
+    The Fox Glove        do
+    The Nux Vomica       do
+    The Quassia          do
+    The Opium            do
+    The Hellebore        do
+    The Salt             do
+    The Mineral Acid     do
+    The Acrid            do
+    The Putrid           do"
+
+If on examination the curious reader should find no such disease as the
+"Lambskin disease" in Dr. W.'s catalogue, he should remember that the
+list is by no means complete, and that there will be no objection to the
+addition of one more. And why, indeed, may I not coin terms as well as
+others? All names must have been given by somebody.
+
+But I will not dwell on the subject of nosology too long. I have
+something else to do in this chapter than merely to amuse. I have some
+thoughts to present on health and sickness,--thoughts, too, which seem
+to me of vast importance.
+
+A son of Mr. G., a farmer, had been at work in an adjoining town, all
+summer, with a man who was accustomed to employ a great number of hands
+in various occupations,--farming, road building, butchering, etc., etc.
+Of a sudden, young G., now about twenty years of age, was brought home
+sick, and I was sent for late at night--a very common time for calling
+the doctor--to come and see him.
+
+I found him exceedingly weak and sick, with strong tendencies to
+putridity. What could be the cause? There was no prevailing or epidemic
+disease abroad at the time, either where he had been laboring, or within
+my own jurisdiction; nor could I, at first, find out any cause which was
+adequate to the production of such effects as were before me.
+
+I prescribed for the young man, as well as I could; but it was all to no
+purpose. Some unknown influence, local or general, seemed to hang like
+an incubus about him, and to depress, in particular, his nervous system.
+In short, the symptoms were such as portended swift destruction, if not
+immediate. I could but predict the worst. And the worst soon came. He
+sunk, in a few days, to an untimely grave. I say _untimely_ with
+peculiar emphasis; for he had hitherto been regarded as particularly
+robust and healthy.
+
+His remains were scarcely entombed when several members of his father's
+family were attacked in a similar way. Another young man in the
+neighborhood, who had been employed at the same place with the deceased,
+and who had returned at the same time, also sickened, and with nearly
+the same symptoms. And then, in a few days more, the father and mother
+of the latter began to droop, and to fall into the same train of
+diseased tendencies with the rest. Of these, too, I had the charge.
+
+My hands were now fully occupied, and so was my head. Anxious as most
+young men are, in similar circumstances, not only to save their
+patients, but their reputation, and though the distance at which they
+resided was considerable, I visited both families twice a day, and
+usually remained with one of them during the night. I was afraid to
+trust them with others.
+
+Physically this constant charge was too much for me, and ought not to
+have been attempted. No physician should watch with his patients, by
+night or by day,--above all by night--any more than a general should
+place himself in the front of his army, during the heat of battle. His
+life is too precious to be jeoparded beyond the necessities involved in
+his profession.
+
+But while my hands were occupied, my mind was racked exceedingly with
+constant inquiry into the cause of this terrible disease,--for such to
+my apprehension it was becoming. The whole neighborhood was alarmed, and
+the paleness of death was upon almost every countenance.
+
+My doubts were at length removed, and the cause of trouble, as I then
+supposed and still believe, fully revealed. The disease so putrescent in
+its tendencies, had originated in animal putrefaction. The circumstances
+were as follows:--
+
+The individual with whom the young men who sickened had been residing
+and laboring, had laid aside, in his chamber, some time before, quite a
+pile of lambskins, just in the condition in which they were when removed
+from their natural owners, and had suffered them to lie in that
+condition until they were actually putrescent and highly offensive. The
+two young men, owing to the relative position of the chambers they
+occupied, were particularly exposed to the poisonous effluvia.
+
+I did not forget--I did not then forget--the oft inculcated and
+frequently received doctrine, that animal impurity is not apt to
+engender disease. It most certainly had an agency--a prominent one--in
+the case before us. Perhaps it has such an influence much more
+frequently than is generally supposed.
+
+One of my patients, in the family which I first mentioned,--a little boy
+two or three years old,--died almost as soon, after being seized with
+disease, as his elder brother had done. The rest, though severely sick,
+and at times given over to die, finally recovered. Some of them were
+sick, however, many months, and none of them, so far as I now
+recollect,--with perhaps a single exception,--ever enjoyed as good
+health afterward as before.
+
+I had in these families six or eight of the most trying cases I ever had
+in my life; and yet, with the exceptions before named, all recovered.
+How much agency my own labors as a medical man had in producing this
+result, I am at a loss to conjecture. As an attendant or nurse, I have
+no doubt my services were valuable. And it was because a good nurse is
+worth more than a physician that I so frequently ran the risk of
+watching over the sick so closely as considerably to impair my own
+health.
+
+The neighbors and friends of the two sick families, as I have already
+intimated, looked on in silent agony during the whole campaign;
+expecting, first that _their_ families, too, would soon be called to
+take their turn; and secondly, that I, the commander in chief, should be
+a sufferer, which of course would be a great public disadvantage. They
+were almost as much gratified as I, when we all came forth from the fire
+unscathed.
+
+On the whole, except as regards health, I was a gainer rather than a
+loser by the affair. I mean, of course, in the way of medical
+reputation. I was by this time fairly established as a powder and pill
+distributer, of the _first water_. In other words, I was beginning to be
+regarded as a good family physician, and to be sought for, not only
+within the narrow limits of my own native township, some four or five
+miles square, but also quite beyond these narrow precincts. Occasionally
+I had patients in three or four adjoining towns, and I was even
+occasionally called as counsel to other physicians. My ambition was
+high, perhaps higher than it ought to have been; but it had its checks
+and even its valleys of humiliation; so that on the whole I retained my
+sanity and a full measure of public confidence.
+
+And yet, in conclusion, I have to confess that besides exposing my own
+health, I made many medical blunders. I would not again run the risk to
+health or reputation which, during this long trial of several months, I
+certainly ran, for any sum of money which king Croesus or the
+Rothschilds could command. Nor do I believe an intelligent physician can
+do it, without being guilty of a moral wrong. Every one has his
+province; let him carefully ascertain what that is, and confine himself
+to it. The acting commander in an important military expedition has no
+right to place himself in the ranks of those who are about to leap a
+ditch, scale a wall, or charge bayonet. Paul has no right to labor in
+Athens when he knows perfectly well that he can do more good in
+Jerusalem, and the voice of God, by his Providence or otherwise, calls
+him thither. And "to him that knoweth to do good and doeth it not, to
+him it is sin."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV.
+
+MILK PUNCH FEVER.
+
+
+A certain young woman who had great general confidence in my skill,
+after I had stood by her many long hours in one of Nature's sorest
+trials, was left at length in a fair way to recover, except that she was
+exceedingly exhausted, and needed the most careful attendance on the
+part of those around her. She no longer needed any medicine, nothing but
+to be let alone. In other words, she needed nothing but good nursing and
+entire freedom from all care and responsibility.
+
+Being obliged at this juncture to leave her for nearly the whole night,
+I gave the best directions to her principal nurse of which I was
+capable, as well as the principal reasons on which it was founded. She
+seemed entirely submissive, and perhaps, in theory, was so. But in my
+zeal to make them understand that I was acting on common-sense
+principles, I committed one error, a very common one, indeed, but yet an
+error. It was that of reasoning with them with a view to make every
+thing particularly intelligible. One has authority, in these matters, as
+long as he takes the _attitude_ of authority, but the moment he descends
+to the general level of his patients, and in true republican style puts
+himself on a par with them, he begins to lose their confidence as a
+physician. You may not be sensible of a loss of this sort, nor even the
+physician. You may even think the reverse were more true. But you
+deceive yourself. Though your patients may love you better as a friend
+or even as a father, yet they have lost confidence in you medically, in
+nearly the same proportion. Strange indeed that it should be so; but so,
+according to my own observation, it ever has been. That a prophet is
+"without honor"--and most so in his own country and among his own
+personal friends--is as true now as it was eighteen hundred years ago.
+
+Had I told Mrs. D.'s attendants to do so or so, and left them without
+saying a word more, they would probably have done it. But I had
+condescended to reason with them about the matter; their belief that
+medical men dealt with the stars, and spoke with a species of
+supernatural authority, had been shaken; and they were emboldened to
+reason on the subject, and to hearken to the reasonings as well as to
+what had but the slightest resemblance thereto in others, during my
+absence.
+
+Having occasion to use all possible precaution against the supervention
+of milk fever in my patient, I left particular directions that nothing
+stimulating should be administered, and assigned several good,
+substantial reasons. No food was to be given, except a little bread and
+some plain chicken broth, with no condiment or dressing but a little
+salt; and this at intervals of about four hours. No drink--not a
+particle--was to be given, except frequent very small draughts of cold
+water.
+
+While I was absent Mrs. D.'s mother came into their family, not only to
+rejoice with them in an accession to their number, but to render them a
+little aid. She was one of those mothers whose kindness so often defeats
+their best and purest intentions. She was all eyes, ears, and attention,
+and _nearly all talk_. The daughter's treatment soon underwent a special
+scrutiny, and was found "wanting."
+
+"Has the doctor ordered my daughter no milk punch?" she said to the
+attendants. "Not a drop," they replied. She raised both hands in
+astonishment. "How, then," she asked, "can the ninny expect she can ever
+have any nourishment for that _boy_?" The attendants could not inform
+her. "The doctor," they said, "gave reasons," but they could not fully
+understand them.
+
+"He did not probably understand them himself," said she. "There are no
+reasons against it, I am confident. It is only a notion of his. These
+young doctors are always full of their book wisdom. Why, a little
+experience is worth a whole world full of theories. Now _I_ know--and so
+does every other person who has nursed children--that a little milk
+punch, in these cases, is necessary. Not a great deal, it is true; but a
+little, just enough to give the system strength. Nature is weak in these
+cases. I wish some of these young doctors themselves were obliged to
+endure the trials we have to endure, and we should see whether they
+could get along with no drink but cold water!"
+
+The rebellion soon reached the daughter's ears, who, till now, had
+confided in the "doctor's" prescription, and was doing well. She was
+soon as uneasy with things as they were, as her mother and the nurse and
+the neighbors. The husband was not of the clique; but then he was one of
+those good-natured men who leave every thing to their wives; and though
+they may not fully approve of every thing that is attempted, will yet do
+and refrain from doing many things for the sake of peace. He interposed
+no veto on the present occasion.
+
+The mother, in short, soon reigned "sole monarch," and proceeded to
+issue from her imperial throne, the sage decree that a little milk punch
+must be made. Judith, the nurse, was to have it prepared so and so, and
+she would herself administer it. Only just so many spoonfuls of rum must
+be added to the tumbler of milk and water, and just so much sugar. It
+must be weak, the decree said.
+
+Mrs. D. drank freely of the punch, because her mother told her that it
+would do her good. True, she asked after the first swallow, "what will
+the doctor say to this?" but her mother bade her be quiet, she would see
+to all that. "It is made very weak," said the mother, "on purpose for
+you; drink of it a little and often. It will be both food and drink to
+you. It will be good for the babe, dear child! how can these doctors
+wish to starve folks? I have no notion of starving to death, or having
+my children or grandchildren starved."
+
+It was now past midnight, and Mrs. D. had as yet slept but very little.
+Had she simply followed out my directions she might have slept an hour
+or two before midnight, and several hours in the aggregate afterward.
+This, though done by stealth and in short naps, would have given her
+more real rest and strength than a whole gallon of milk punch, and
+instead of kindling fever, would have carried off all tendencies of the
+kind.
+
+On my arrival, early the next morning, I found a good deal of headache,
+such as cold water and plain food and rest seldom, if ever, create. My
+fears were at once excited, and they were greatly strengthened when I
+saw her mother. But the blow had been struck, and could not be recalled.
+Mrs. D., in short, was already in the beginning stage of a fever which
+came within a hair's breadth of destroying her.
+
+It is indeed true that she finally recovered. No thanks, however, were
+due to the mother's over-kindness, nor to my own over-communicativeness.
+Had I done my duty, had I kept my own counsel, nobody, not even the
+mother herself, as I now verily believe, would have ventured to disobey
+my positive injunctions. And had this mother done, as she would have
+been done by in similar circumstances, all would probably have been well
+still. We should have saved a little reputation, and a good deal of
+health.
+
+I learned, I repeat, from this unexpected adventure, that it was wisdom
+to keep my own secrets. I do not say that I have always acted up to the
+dignity of this better knowledge, but I am justified in saying that I
+have sometimes profited from an acquaintance with human nature that cost
+me dear. It is no trifle to see an individual suffer from painful
+disease a couple of weeks, and jeopard the life of a child during the
+whole time, when a little knowledge how to refrain from speaking _ten
+words_ of a particular kind and cast, would have prevented every evil.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV.
+
+MY FIRST CASE IN SURGERY.
+
+
+My first surgical case of any magnitude, was that of a wounded foot.
+For, though I had been required to bleed patients many times,--and
+bleeding is properly a surgical operation,--yet it had become so common
+in those days, and was performed with so little science or skill, that
+it was seldom recognized as belonging to the department of surgery.
+
+One of my neighbors had struck his axe into the upper part of his foot,
+and cut it nearly through. Happening to be at home when the accident
+occurred, which was in my own immediate neighborhood, I was soon on the
+spot, and ready to afford assistance; and, as good luck would have it,
+the man was not at all weakened by loss of blood, at my arrival.
+
+My lesson from an old surgeon[D] was not yet forgotten. I still knew, as
+well as any one could have told me, that to put together the divided
+edges of the wound and keep them there, was half the cure. But how was
+this to be done? Slips of adhesion plaster would bring the divided edges
+of the wounded surface into their place, but would the deeper-seated and
+more tendinous parts unite while left without touching each other? Or
+should a few stitches be taken?
+
+The wound was lengthwise of the foot, and no tendons were divided. I
+made up my mind to dress it without any sewing, and acted accordingly.
+The bleeding soon ceased. When all was secured, the patient inquired
+what he should put on it, to cure it. Had he not raised the question, I
+might, perhaps, have followed out my own ultra tendencies, and left it
+without any application at all; but as it was, I concluded to order
+something on which he might fasten his faith,--something which, though
+it should do no good, would do no harm.
+
+"Nothing is better for a fresh wound," I said, "than the 'Balsam of
+Life.' Just send Thomas over to Mr. Ludlow's, and get a couple of ounces
+of his 'Balsam of Life.'" It was soon brought, and the surface of the
+wound and its bandages moistened with it. "Now," said I, "keep your foot
+as still as you can till I see you again. I will be in again before I go
+to bed."
+
+I called again at nine o'clock in the evening. All appeared well, only
+the patient had some doubts whether the Balsam of Life was just the
+right thing. Several of the neighbors had been in, as he said, and,
+though they admitted that the Balsam might be very good, they knew, or
+thought they knew, of something better. However, I succeeded in quieting
+most of his rising fears for the present, by assuring him that nothing
+in the wide world was equal, for its healing virtues, to the "Balsam."
+My voice here was law, for _I gave no reasons_!
+
+On making inquiry, afterward, with a view chiefly to gratify
+curiosity,[E] I found that the first individual who came in after I had
+left the house, assured them there was nothing so good for a fresh wound
+as a peach leaf. The next, however, insisted that the best way was to
+bind up the part in molasses. The third said the best way was to take
+just three stitches to the wound, and bind it up in the blood. The
+fourth said the most sovereign thing in the world, for a fresh cut, was
+tobacco juice!
+
+Now I could have told these various representatives of as many various
+public opinions, that all these things and many more which might have
+been named, are, in a certain sense, good, since any mere flesh wound,
+in the ordinary circumstances of ordinary life, will heal in a
+reasonable time, in spite of them. I could have told them, still
+further, that the Balsam of Life was probably little, if any, better
+than the other things proposed, any farther than as it secured more
+faith and confidence, and prevented the application of something which
+was worse. I could have assured them that all the external applications
+in the world are of no possible service, except to defend from cold air,
+and prevent external injuries, or reduce inflammation; and that the
+last-mentioned symptom, should it occur, would be best relieved by cold
+water. But what good would it have done? Just none at all, according to
+my own experience. Positive assurance--mere dogmatism--was much better.
+
+The wound did well as it was, though it might have done much better,
+could the patient's faith have been just as firmly fixed on nothing at
+all but Nature, as it was on _medicaments_. However, the tincture I
+proposed, which somebody had dignified with the name of Balsam of life,
+had done very little harm, if any, to the parts to which it had been
+applied, while it had done a great deal of good to the patient's mind,
+and the minds of his friends. It was nothing, I believe, but a compound
+tincture of benzoin. I have used it a great number of times, and with
+the same wonderful results. The patient always gets well, either on
+account of it, or in spite of it! Does it make much practical difference
+which?
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[D] See Chap. VIII.
+
+[E] Even such inquiries as these are usually of doubtful tendency. They
+weaken public confidence. There must be but one opinion of any value to
+the physician or his patients, and that must be _his own_!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI.
+
+EMILIA AND THE LOVE CURE.
+
+
+One young family on whom I was accustomed to call from time to time, was
+not only accustomed to send for me in the night, as did many others,
+but, what made it much worse for me, they resided some four or five
+miles distant, among the mountains. They were of that class of people
+who look every man on his own things, and never, as the apostle would
+enjoin, on the things of others. They knew very well that a physician,
+though he might be half a conjuror, required sleep; still, they were
+willing to finish their day's work, eat their supper, perform a large
+number of _et ceteras_, even if they did not call for the doctor till he
+had fairly taken off his boots to retire for the night. But there was
+one consolation in all this, that they paid me promptly; and medical
+men, as you know, like other men, work for pay. They cannot live wholly
+on air.
+
+In the same house with the family alluded to, was a young woman, about
+twenty-five years of age, who had been confined to her bed ten or twelve
+years. She was the only daughter of very indulgent parents, who had
+never, from her earliest years, thought they could do too much for her.
+In truth, this was the source of her feebleness. Some little ailment,
+indeed, there might have been at the outset, induced by pie, cake,
+preserves, pickles, or something which no truly kind parents should
+permit a child to take; though nothing more than might have been got rid
+of in its effects, by a little patient waiting. But instead of waiting a
+little, the anxious mother had dosed and drugged her. And these ill
+turns had been more and more frequent, just in proportion to the
+frequency with which she had been drugged for them; till, at twelve
+years of age, she was almost all the while complaining. And at
+fourteen, she was completely bedridden--a burden to herself and to
+others.
+
+"I wonder," said my principal employer, at about twelve o'clock, when I
+had attended to his own little family, and was about to leave, "whether
+you could do any thing for our Millie. She has tried almost all the
+doctors, to no purpose; but we have so much confidence here in your
+skill, that she sometimes speaks of trying you. She is hardly willing to
+'give up the ship' without another trial."
+
+This, as you must be aware, was a stirring appeal to my love of
+approbation; but it was too late at night to make a call on her at that
+moment. So, promising to come and see her shortly, I took my leave, and
+rode home, as usual, meditating.
+
+Now I had never seen Emilia, but from the account which I had received
+from the neighbors, as well as from the nature of the case, I knew very
+nearly how she was; and that the great difficulty in the way of recovery
+was the constant habit of watching herself and attending to every
+internal sensation. In other words, she was so completely wrapped up in
+self, that I could see no reasonable prospect of getting her mind out of
+the maze in which it had been so long involved.
+
+But I found time, a few days afterward, as I was employed again in the
+same neighborhood, to call and see her; and I ventured accordingly. She
+was sitting up in the bed, well bolstered, with a huge mass of clothing
+both on herself and on the bed. Then, at her right hand, was a stand
+half covered with bowls, saucers and tumblers; and near it a little
+closet or recess, in which were nearly an equal number of parcels of
+medicine, wrapped in papers ready to be used, when they were supposed to
+be necessary.
+
+I had no sooner entered the room, than she began to give me an account
+of her medicine, rather than of herself. So rapid was her enunciation,
+and so eager was she to tell me what she knew--not about the symptoms of
+her disease, but about the treatment--that it was a full quarter of an
+hour before I could reach the inmost recesses of her condition. "That,"
+said she, "is for canker in the mouth; that for sore throat; that is an
+eye wash I sometimes use, and that is a kind of bitters Dr. R. left for
+me, but which I have now nearly done taking--and they never did me any
+good," etc.
+
+When I found an opportunity, I endeavored to investigate, very fully and
+freely, what had hitherto been supposed to be a very remarkable case. I
+found, indeed, that the patient had a great many little troubles,
+dependent mainly on the state of a mind greatly harassed by constant
+reflex tendencies, not easily eradicable. But I did not find it easy to
+prescribe for her. She was one of those very inquisitive people who wish
+to know what every thing you give them is, and who have a very
+conscientious objection to every thing. However, I at last settled down
+on a course of treatment, and wrote it out in a fair hand, and left it
+at the bedside. Not, however, I repeat, till I had foolishly fallen into
+my former error, and told her all the whys and wherefores.
+
+This familarity into which she had drawn me, had already extracted
+one-half the virtue of my medicine; for that is no longer mysterious
+which the medical man openly and freely discusses. The freedom of
+thinking she had indulged in while I was present, had been extended to
+freedom of action; and the very medicine, whose virtues she had dared to
+discourse upon, she ventured to set aside, when her experience assured
+her it was not producing the effect she desired, and for which she
+supposed it was intended. So that what, from the first, I had feared,
+and more than I had feared, at length happened. She took my medicine,
+professedly,--that is, just when she pleased,--for about four weeks, to
+no manner of purpose whatever, except to deceive herself; for during the
+first and second weeks of its use, she imagined herself all the while
+getting better; while during the third week she began to doubt, and
+about the fourth week she came to the sage conclusion that she was just
+where she had been a month or two before.
+
+The great, abiding difficulties of her case--her want of simple,
+confiding trust in her physician, and her constant, anxious attention to
+her own internal sensations, were far enough from being overcome. She
+was, in short, very nearly where she was ten years before, except that
+she was in circumstances rather more difficult to be reached, and had
+become rather more sceptical about medicine.
+
+What should now be done? Must the case be abandoned? Or was there some
+other way, some _new_ way, by means, of which it could be reached? I was
+not quite willing to give her up as irrecoverable, and yet I saw nothing
+remaining which I could do. I revolved the thing in my mind, by night
+and by day. At last a plan struck me which I verily believed would
+succeed.
+
+A few miles distant was a young physician, just from the schools, who
+vainly, though naturally, supposed he knew almost every thing which was
+known, and who wanted business. As he had nothing to lose, even if he
+were to fail in a hundred trials, but every thing to gain could he
+effect one very remarkable cure, I proposed to the family to employ him.
+I knew well he would have one or two advantages over his older and more
+experienced brethren. He would not at once place himself on the same
+platform with his patient and the friends, by answering their numerous
+questions; and for this plain and simple reason: In the first place,
+that he _could_ not, and very probably knew his own weakness; secondly,
+he would have more of that blind faith in medicine which inspires the
+ignorant with confidence.
+
+But there was another thought beyond all this, a wheel within a wheel.
+The young physician might succeed better than I, in drawing her
+thoughts, and even her affections, away from herself; for he was a
+single man, and the patient, though sick, not destitute of charms,
+especially of that more tangible charm which, to _indigent_ young men,
+and especially young _medical_ men, so often eclipses all others. She,
+on her part, as I well knew, was not wholly resigned to the world of
+single blessedness, though her long-continued ill health had almost
+unfitted her for any thing else.
+
+It only required a little _management_ to bring about the desired
+result. Dr. Juvenis was soon employed; and, though he did not always
+reply to her questions, which were numerous, and often wholly
+irrelevant, yet according to my own secret anticipations, he gradually
+raised her hopes in another direction, and hence drew her attention in
+no small degree from herself. His reserve, too, served but to inspire
+her with confidence in his great wisdom. There was something deep beyond
+the exterior, she always thought, which did not come out to the full,
+vulgar gaze.
+
+The final result was a strong attachment on her part, which, though not
+reciprocated by him in a direct manner, was not by any means repelled.
+The virtues of the medicines were no longer discussed or doubted; and it
+was obvious to all that she was beginning to mend.
+
+It was now high time for me to abandon a field which was not only fully
+occupied, but _well_ occupied. The visits of the young physician were
+continued, at longer or shorter intervals, for years, till the young
+woman's health was nearly restored; and, as I subsequently learned, they
+were married. The more recent history of her life, I have not been able
+to ascertain, except that neither party gained as much by the new
+connection as had been expected,--a result which, alas! is by no means
+any thing new, and that there was, after some time, a relapse of
+disease.
+
+This artifice for restoring health to a bedridden patient, is not
+mentioned in a way of approbation, but of regret, or at least of
+confession. Yet, while it declares my weakness, it develops or at least
+confirms a well-known principle, which it concerns mankind, patients as
+well as physicians, most fully and clearly to understand. The medical
+efficiency of an agent is greatly enhanced when the mind can be made to
+go along with it.
+
+I have wished a thousand times, both by night and by day, that I had
+never commended Dr. Juvenis to the favorable notice and regard of this
+illiterate but confiding family. True, I had the good fortune thus to
+get rid of a most troublesome, standing _patient_. Had I a moral right
+thus to do? Did the end either sanction or sanctify the means? Grant
+that I saved, or seemed to save, the patient;--was she really saved?
+Was there any absolute gain in the end? These are questions which I
+cannot, as yet, fully settle. Most certainly she was not quite cured.
+
+What a mighty work for this fallen world education has yet to achieve;
+especially Physical Education! This, reader, let me say once for all,
+this physical education, under the guidance of Christianity, whose
+handmaid all true science should be, and to whose development and
+application all true religion should be directed, is our chief
+dependence. It is the lever by which we are to raise the world.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII.
+
+HEZEKIAH AND DELIRIUM TREMENS.
+
+
+One morning, about two o'clock, in the depth of winter, I was roused
+from my slumbers by a stranger's voice, requesting me to get up and go
+immediately along the sides of the mountain and see Hezekiah. "And who
+is Hezekiah?" I said, only half awake; "and where is the side of the
+mountain? And who are you with whom I am conversing?"
+
+The mystery was easily cleared up, and I mounted my horse and was soon
+on the road through the sides of the mountain. It was wild and
+unfrequented; nay, it was, in places, almost impassable, especially in
+the night. Mr. Judkins, the father of the sick man, not only resided
+quite beyond my usual range of practice, but almost out of the range of
+everybody else, squirrels and rabbits and wild fowls excepted.
+
+In passing along, I made many inquiries with regard to the particular
+condition of the young man, in order to prepare myself for a more rapid
+investigation of his case whenever I should arrive. But I sought in
+vain. The messenger's lips were almost wholly sealed. The cause, at that
+time, I did not at all understand; but I had, subsequently, great reason
+to believe he was silent and reserved by the special command of the
+patient's friends. All I could obtain from my guide, was that Hezekiah
+had an ill turn; that he was occasionally subject to ill turns, and that
+the family were greatly alarmed about him.
+
+On my arrival, I found a group of friends large enough, almost, for a
+train band, gathered so closely round the bed of the young man that he
+could hardly breathe. There was, also, a monstrous fire in the chimney,
+sufficient to heat well the whole house, had the heat been properly
+distributed. The air was, at best, greatly confined; but it was
+particularly so to the poor patient, who lay panting as if in a dying
+condition.
+
+Yet I soon saw, and, as it were, instinctively, that he was not likely
+to die immediately. Some adventitious cause was evidently operating to
+throw his brain and nervous system into an abnormal condition, nor was I
+long in determining what it was. The father was a farmer. He possessed
+immense orchards, and made great quantities of cider, and one of his
+neighbors owned a distillery. For every barrel of cider Mr. J. carried
+to the distillery, he received in return a certain amount of
+cider-brandy; and at the time when I was called to see Hezekiah, he had
+more than two barrels of this "precious commodity" in his cellar. At the
+close of autumn he had had three barrels.
+
+Why this deposit of an article so doubtful? And what had become of the
+one barrel which had disappeared? Not a member of the family would touch
+it, but Mr. J. himself, and Hezekiah. The women and children did,
+indeed, sometimes taste a little molasses toddy, as it was called. Mr.
+J. would prepare it and pass it round in the morning just before
+breakfast, in the hope and expectation that all would taste it; and they
+usually did so. It was not, however, quite a voluntary thing on their
+part, but a species of moral compulsion. Left entirely to themselves,
+they never would have tasted it.
+
+Now think, reader, of two persons in a family, with two or three barrels
+of brandy at their entire disposal, with the expectation of consuming
+it, or the far greater part of it, during autumn and winter. Why, three
+barrels are more than a quart a day, for every day of the year. Mr. J.
+drank freely; but not more freely than his son. The latter was treading
+in the steps of his father, with the almost certain prospect of going,
+in the end, quite beyond him.
+
+It was not difficult to prescribe for the young man. The far greater
+difficulty was to induce him to follow out the prescription. I was
+honest enough to tell the father what ailed the son, and what ought to
+be done, and to plead with him to change his own habits immediately. I
+could not, it is true, quite prevail, when I urged him to pour his
+brandy, the whole of it, into the street; for that, as he said and
+doubtless thought, would be a waste of property. But he _did_ promise to
+_sell_ it; though even this promise he never kept. He even continued to
+drink it; though as he always insisted, with great moderation. But the
+greatest drinkers we have among us, are usually the first to speak of
+their own moderation.
+
+The sequel of the story may easily be guessed. Hezekiah became a
+miserable creature, and ere he reached the age of fifty came to a most
+miserable end,--the drunkard's death, by the drunkard's mania. Mr. J.
+having inherited a strong constitution passed on to sixty-three, when,
+like a mighty tree with decayed trunk, a slight wind crushed him to the
+dust.
+
+His family, most of them, still survive; but they are daughters, and
+have not inherited the vices of their father, so much as his diseases.
+They have, at least, inherited the disease which drinking is so apt to
+entail on the next generation,--I mean scrofula. Several of Mr. J.'s
+elder daughters are already dead; and the younger ones--for he had a
+very large family--are feeble, and always will be so; and their children
+are still more feeble. Thus "earthward," and not heavenward, "all
+things" in the family of the drunkard have a tendency.
+
+How painful the reflection that I did not labor with this family, not
+only in season, as I certainly did, but also out of season, and try to
+save it! I had influence with them. My honest plainness at my first
+visit, above described, did not prevent them from calling on me again
+for counsel; though at first I had feared such a result. I was often in
+the family, but not so often as I might have been; nor was I so bold as
+I ought to have been. Shall I be able to render up my account of the
+intercourse I had with them, in the great day, with joy, or must it be
+with grief and shame?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII.
+
+MY FIRST AMPUTATION.
+
+
+It is easy in imagination, to be wise, especially at a distance. How
+many a surgical operation have I performed _on paper_; or still oftener,
+and with more assurance, in my own brain. The difficulties are much
+fewer than in the reality.
+
+A fine young man came to me, one day, with a crushed thumb. He had been
+at work on a wool-carding machine, and through the most inexcusable
+carelessness had suffered his thumb to be drawn in. On a careful
+examination, I found the wound to be very severe, and, as I believed,
+requiring amputation.
+
+But what could I do? I had no surgical instruments. Young medical men,
+in plain country places, are hardly expected to purchase these
+conveniences, except perhaps a lancet and the needful instruments for
+extracting teeth. I had, however, a keen penknife in my pocket, and
+without the smallest formality, I proceeded to separate the mangled
+thumb at the joint.
+
+It was a very painful process, and as I now fully believe, quite an
+unnecessary one. But young men are not apt to see things in the same
+light with those who have had experience. They are not half as ready to
+rely on nature. They are inclined to think art will do every thing;
+nature, almost nothing. They frequently love to use the lancet, the
+knife, the scalpel, and the trephine. Of this fondness, however, I knew
+comparatively little. In the present instance, I simply saw it to be a
+doubtful, and as I thought, a hopeless case to attempt to save the
+thumb; and therefore, without much reflection, I removed it.
+
+Now I shall never cease to feel a pang, whenever memory calls up this
+hasty act, as long as I live. Were life to be protracted to a thousand
+years, I should always reproach myself for it. And yet I am not aware
+that either the young man himself or his friends ever respected me the
+less for it. And so far was I from suffering in the eyes of society at
+large, I verily believe I was a gainer by it. But I respected myself
+less on account of it. I respect myself less to-day. I am fully
+conscious I was too hasty,--that had I waited a little, I might have
+been a means of saving his hand without much deformity. Nature, in such
+cases, left to herself, will work all but miracles, especially in the
+young, and in those who have a sound constitution.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIX.
+
+MILK, AS A REMEDY IN FEVERS.
+
+
+Early in my practice as a physician I had a patient, a little girl, who,
+after having been sick for many weeks with a fever, seemed at length to
+become stationary. She was not weak or sick enough to die, and yet she
+seemed not strong enough to recover. Her vitality was almost exhausted,
+and yet Nature was loth to give up.
+
+On this young patient, during her long sickness, I had tried a thousand
+things, to see if I could not give Nature a "start;" but all to no
+purpose. The wheels would not move. She would either vomit up every
+thing I gave her, or it would pass away as into a reservoir, unchanged.
+There appeared to be, I repeat, no vital action in the system.
+
+To check the vomiting or prevent it, I had tried various measures, both
+external and internal. I had used warm applications to her stomach, both
+dry and moist. I had tried frictions of the skin and fomentations of the
+abdomen, both simple and medicated. Electricity I believe I had not
+used. Cheerful conversation, music to some extent, and the society of
+pleasant faces had all been invoked. Still there she was, on her bed. It
+seemed next to impossible for her "chariot" to go either backward or
+forward.
+
+One day she asked for some milk. In an instant I determined to try it.
+So I took a teaspoonful of this fluid, warm from the animal, and gave it
+to her, only requiring her to swallow it very slowly. She not only
+obeyed me, but appeared to relish it. Nor was there any nausea
+afterward, nor any evidence of evil effects or evil tendencies.
+
+At the end of four hours, I gave her another teaspoonful of milk, in the
+same way and with similar effects. At the end of four hours more,
+another was given; and thus onward. In twenty-four hours I was able to
+increase, slightly, the dose. All this while there was no stomach
+sickness, in the smallest degree. In three or four days, she could bear
+a table-spoonful of the "new medicine," every four hours, or a quantity
+equal to two or three ounces a day. In a week or ten days, she could
+take nearly half a gill at once, and had gained considerable strength.
+She recovered in the end, though her recovery was very slow.
+
+But I had hardly used the milk three days, before I began to be
+denounced as an almost insane man, especially by those who were wont to
+set themselves up as the arbiters of public opinion, and who lived too
+remotely to witness the good effects of the course I was pursuing. The
+family, of course, though they disapproved of what I did, could say
+nothing against it, especially as it afforded the only ground of hope of
+recovery. The whole public mind, in that region, was affected by the
+belief that milk, in a fever, is heating and dangerous. "What a strange
+thing it is," said many an old woman, and not a few young ones, "that
+the doctor should give milk to a person sick with a fever! He will
+certainly kill the girl before he is through with her. If these young
+doctors are determined to make experiments, they ought surely to make
+them on themselves, and not on their patients."
+
+The public complaint involved one serious mistake, else it would have
+had the semblance of reason to justify it. As a general fact, milk is
+heating in a fever, and is consequently inadmissible. The mistake to
+which I allude consisted in the belief that the fever still existed,
+when it had wholly passed away and left nothing behind it but debility,
+or the consequences of the fever.
+
+But the evidence that milk did not hurt her, lay, after all, in the
+indisputable fact that she improved as soon as she began to use it, and
+under its moderate and judicious exhibition entirely recovered her
+health. Observe, however, that I do not say it cured her; although I
+might make this affirmation with as much confidence as can justly exist
+with regard to any thing belonging to the _materia medica_. All I say
+is, that after having hung in suspense for some time, neither growing
+better nor appearing likely to do so, she commenced the use of the milk
+as aforesaid; and almost as soon as she began to use it she began to be
+convalescent, and her improvement went on steadily, till it terminated
+in sound health.
+
+And yet our good friends, up and down the country, who uttered so many
+jeremiades about the folly of giving milk to a little girl in a fever,
+lived to witness her complete recovery, notwithstanding. She is now a
+mother in our New England Israel, and I believe a very healthy one.
+
+Whether I would venture to pursue exactly the same course in the same
+circumstances, were I to live my life over again, is not quite certain.
+And yet I certainly think it not only safe, but desirable in such cases,
+to do something. Why, I have occasionally, in circumstances of
+convalescence from fever, given things which, in themselves considered,
+are much more objectionable than a little milk, and with the most
+perfect success. I have even given pork, cabbage, cheese, and beans. It
+is true, I have been compelled to exercise a good deal of care in these
+cases, with regard to quantity. That which in the quantity of half a
+pound might destroy life, might in the quantity of half an ounce, be the
+one thing needful to the salvation, physically, of a valuable member of
+society.
+
+A man in New Haven County, in Connecticut, some fifty years ago, was for
+a long time suspended, as it were, between this world and the next, in
+consequence of being left in great debility after a long and dangerous
+fever. For several weeks, in fact, it was scarcely guessed, except in
+the softest whisper, whether the slightest movement or change in his
+system might not precipitate him at once into the eternal world. In this
+perilous condition, he one day asked for sweet cider, just from the
+press. His attendants very properly and naturally hesitated; but the
+physician, when he arrived and was made acquainted with his request,
+immediately said, "Yes; give him a teaspoonful of good, clean, sweet
+cider, every two hours." The cider was given, according to the
+commandment, and appeared to have a restorative effect. The man
+recovered in a reasonable time, and is, I believe, alive to this day.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XL.
+
+THE VIRTUES OF PUMPKIN-SEED TEA.
+
+
+Physicians are sometimes compelled by the force of circumstances, to
+visit the poor as well as the rich; albeit, they expect, so far as mere
+pecuniary compensation is concerned, that they are to have "their labor
+for their pains." They know well that honesty here, if nowhere else, is
+the best policy. Dr. Cullen, who became, as is well known, a giant in
+the profession, first attracted public attention from the act that he
+was often seen coming out of the hovels of the poor.
+
+My own lot for several years was to labor _chiefly_ for the poor. In a
+region where it had been customary for a medical man who had the whole
+control of the business to charge one thousand dollars a year, my
+charges scarcely exceeded three hundred. A few of the wealthy employed
+me, it is true, but not all; while I had all the poor. Indeed, it is
+among the poor, as a general rule, that sickness is most frequent and
+prevalent, not to say fatal.
+
+In one of these poor families, on a certain occasion, I had a long
+campaign and a hard one. First, I was obliged to travel a great distance
+to see them; secondly, I had a very severe disease to encounter;
+thirdly, there were several patients in the house; and the family,
+usually unprovided with sufficient space for a free circulation of the
+air, was still more incommoded when sick. Fourthly, the mistress of the
+house was exceedingly ignorant; and ignorance in a mother is, of itself,
+almost enough to insure the destruction of all patients over whom she
+has control.
+
+My chief source of trouble, in the present instance, was the injudicious
+conduct of the mother to the family; for all else could have been borne.
+She was almost incessantly trying to do something over and above what I
+had ordered or recommended. The neighbors, almost as weak as herself,
+would come in and say: "Why don't your doctor give such or such a thing?
+Mr. Blarney was sick exactly like Samuel, and they gave him a certain
+powder and he got right up in a very few days." This would usually be
+quite sufficient to make Mrs. ----very unhappy, at least till she had
+again seen me.
+
+Among the sick members of her family, was a daughter of about fifteen
+years of age. For this daughter, in particular, more than for the son
+Samuel, the good matrons of the neighborhood had their thousand
+remedies; and they regarded them all as infallible. With these, their
+favorite notions and doses, they were continually filling the ears of
+Mrs. ----.
+
+One day, when I had been the usual round of the family, and given all
+needful directions for the day, Mrs. ---- came to me and said: "Doctor,
+what do you think would be the effect of a little pumpkin-seed tea on my
+daughter Eunice? Do you think it would hurt her?"
+
+"Why, no; I suppose not," I said. "But for what purpose would you give
+her pumpkin-seed tea? Is she not doing as well as could be expected? And
+if so, is it not desirable to let well enough alone?"
+
+"To be sure she is doing very well," said Mrs. ----; "and I do not know
+but every thing is just as it should be. We certainly have great
+confidence in your treatment. But she is so feeble it seems as if
+something might be given which would make her gain strength faster. Why,
+she is very weak, doctor! Mrs. Gay and several others have thought a
+little pumpkin-seed tea might give her strength; but I do not like to
+order any thing new without first consulting you."
+
+I did not object to the pumpkin-seed tea, _administered in great
+moderation_. I did not say as I ought boldly to have said: "I shall be
+obliged, as your physician, at least till you choose to dismiss me, to
+pursue the course I have marked out for myself, since I shall have to
+bear the responsibility." In my modesty and even diffidence, I preferred
+to let the ignorant friends of the young woman dabble with this
+comparatively inoffensive article, rather than with something worse.
+Besides, I wished to have no clandestine movements, and had already
+rejected so many proposals to give this or that medicament, that I dared
+not do it longer. "Oh, yes," said I, "you may give her pumpkin-seed tea;
+but give it in moderation."
+
+The pumpkin-seed tea was given for the next twenty-four hours, I
+believe, with great exactness. But as there was no obvious or immediate
+advantage from using it during that time, it shared the fate which might
+have been expected. Like the wad in the child's pop-gun, which some new
+wad soon and effectually expels, the pumpkin-seed tea was thrown aside,
+and some other infallible cure proposed in its stead.
+
+Now, reader, do not suppose I deemed it at all derogatory to medical
+authority that pumpkin-seed tea should be proposed by a weak and silly
+mother for a darling daughter. Such a feeling as that would have placed
+me on the same level of human folly that she herself occupied. On the
+contrary, a medical man of any considerable experience among the sick
+and the friends of the sick, should think himself exceedingly fortunate
+when nothing worse is suggested by ignorance for his patients than
+_pumpkin-seed tea_!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLI.
+
+BROKEN LIMBS AND INTEMPERANCE.
+
+
+Wrestling for amusement, in the region where I practised medicine, was a
+very common occurrence, and certainly had its advantages. But there was
+one drawback upon its excellence, except to physicians. It involved a
+good deal of bone-breaking. One famous wrestler with whom I was well
+acquainted, broke, for his neighbors, an arm and a collar-bone; and in
+the end almost broke his own neck. He certainly injured it to an extent
+from which there was never an entire recovery. I shall mention him in
+another place.
+
+For more or fewer of these broken bones from wrestling, I was called on
+to prescribe. One case in particular may be worth a few moments'
+attention, especially as it brings with it certain medical confessions.
+
+I was sent for one evening, about nine o'clock, to visit a young man who
+had been injured, as it was said, by wrestling. On my arrival, I found
+him in great distress. He had delayed sending for aid so long that there
+was much inflammation, and consequent heat, swelling, tenderness, and
+pain.
+
+It was not easy, at first, to ascertain the exact character of the
+fractures; but on inquiry and examination, it appeared that while the
+patient was resting nearly or quite his whole weight on the fractured
+leg, his antagonist had struck or tripped with his foot so violently as
+to fracture both bones a little way above the ankle.
+
+It was rather a trying-case to me--for as yet I was, in the art of
+surgery, a mere tyro. But it was a case which would not admit of much
+delay; for the inflammation, already sufficiently great, was rapidly
+increasing. Nor would it do long to hesitate from mere modesty. I was
+among a class of people, who would, as I well knew, construe modesty,
+even though it should chance to be, as sometimes it is, an accompaniment
+of true science, into sheer ignorance; and this would deprive me, as a
+physician, of my principal lever. For who can lift up the down-fallen
+without having their full confidence.
+
+But I must explain. My patient with the fractured leg, though not in the
+usual acceptation of the term a drunkard, was, nevertheless, in the
+habit of drinking more or less of ardent spirit; and there were not
+wanting those who believed he was pretty well heated with liquor at the
+time his leg was broken. But, however this may have been, his frequent
+and excessive use of spirituous liquors had rendered his blood
+exceedingly impure; and I could not help shrinking, at first, from the
+task of having charge of him. Yet, it was a war from which there was no
+honorable discharge. There was no other surgeon within a reasonable
+distance, and why should I refuse to do my best for him? Somebody must
+assist him; and though the case was a troublesome one, why should I not
+take my share of troublesome cases among the rest?
+
+There was another consideration. As he was poor, any thing like
+reluctance would have been construed into a willingness to neglect him
+on account of his poverty--a suspicion from which I should, at that
+time, have shrunk as readily as from the charge of robbery or murder.
+
+But his associates were worse than he; and, with the exception of his
+own immediate relations, not an individual would be likely to call on or
+proffer him aid who was not half or two thirds of the time steeped in
+spirits. Has the surgeon or physician, in such circumstances, much
+reason to hope? And what is the hope of his patient? Can he reasonably
+expect, even with the aid of a skilful surgeon, ever to have a good leg?
+
+However, I did my duty, according to my best knowledge. I had the man
+laid in a proper position, then placed the divided bones as nearly in
+their natural position as possible, and bound them. I confess, here, to
+very great ignorance. Moreover, I repeat, it was a difficult case. And
+yet I think I succeeded very well for a beginner.
+
+Having properly placed the fractured bones and detained them there by
+suitable means, I gave due orders concerning the patient's management
+and treatment. I was particularly careful to interdict all stimulating
+or indigestible food, and all drink but water. My directions were
+written down with great care, and the strictest charge was given to his
+friends and family to see that they were faithfully regarded.
+
+But, alas, for the best person in the world with such attendants!
+Whenever his wife took care of him, things went on very well; but in
+other instances, almost every thing went wrong. His attendants gave him
+rum, opium, laudanum, or almost any thing that he called for. It is
+true--and I mention it to his credit--that he was often rather moderate
+in his use of interdicted articles; but then he took just about enough
+of these unnatural or extra stimulants, to prevent the healing process
+from going forward as fast as in a man of only thirty years might have
+been expected.
+
+Instead of being on his feet in a couple of months or so, he lay on his
+bed three months or more. And then, instead of having a good leg, it was
+not merely slightly crooked, but half an inch too short. And then, in
+addition,--and what was very hard to endure,--he charged the whole blame
+of its imperfection on the surgeon, and insisted that it was not "set"
+right!
+
+Now, while I confess to much awkwardness, and to the possibility that
+the limb was not managed as well as it might have been, I must maintain,
+notwithstanding, that such a charge was wholly misplaced and even
+gratuitous. Had he employed the best surgeon in the world, and had the
+leg received the best possible attention, it could not have been kept in
+its proper place with so much distilled spirits in the house, and so
+many slaves of the bottle! One might almost as well expect a leg to heal
+in the nether pit. Though I have never said, either by way of
+retaliating the abuse or otherwise, that his punishment was richly
+merited, I _might_ have said so. A man is hardly entitled to good health
+and a good frame who keeps such company as he did, whether in sickness
+or in health. God has so connected law and penalty, that he who should
+complain of the penalty would but insult the law given.
+
+Many cases of petty surgery as well as of severe and complicated
+disease, fell to my lot, which embarrassed me in a manner not unlike the
+foregoing; though in no one did I suffer quite so much from
+misrepresentation as in this. For at least twenty years, to my certain
+knowledge, my patient took pains to speak of me in terms of reproach,
+and to say that his leg was set badly; and all without the slightest
+evidence. I do not positively aver, I again say, that the surgery in the
+case was faultless; but whether it was so or not, neither he nor any
+living individual could know, unless it were a more skilful surgeon than
+myself; and no such surgeon, I am sure, ever saw him during the time I
+was in attendance.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLII.
+
+DYING FROM MERE FILTHINESS.
+
+
+The family of a wealthy farmer came under my hands, as physician, one
+autumn, in circumstances peculiarly painful and trying. Several of them
+had been taken suddenly and severely sick, and one or two were almost
+dead before they were fairly aroused to a sense of danger. They lived,
+however, quite remote from any village, and were strongly prejudiced
+against both physicians and medicine. But a fearful foe, in the shape of
+typhoid dysentery, now assailed them, and handled them so roughly that
+they laid aside their prejudices for the moment, and cried aloud for
+help.
+
+I was soon on the spot, but, oh, what a scene presented itself! As I
+have more than intimated, two of the family were already beyond hope.
+Others seemed likely to die. What was to be done for them, as I saw
+plainly, must be done quickly. On nearly every countenance I met with,
+both within the family and beyond its precincts, were the marks of
+consternation, and on some, of despair.
+
+In these circumstances--for desperate cases require a desperate
+remedy--I sought the counsels of an older physician. He came immediately
+and took a survey of the dreadful field of slaughter. On retiring with
+him for consultation, he immediately said; "There must be some local
+cause or causes for all this. Have you," he added, "been into the
+cellar?" When I replied in the negative, he said, "Then we must go there
+immediately."
+
+On speaking to the lady of the house, who was among the sick, by the way
+of asking permission, she objected, and with a good deal of promptitude
+and spirit. However, she at length yielded, and we made a thorough
+examination. The results of this examination were such as to confirm
+our suspicions. "We need not search further for the causes of a deadly
+disease," said Dr. B., and I thought so too.
+
+I have said already that the family was wealthy; but wealth need not
+include negligence, and still more filth. It was now September; and I am
+quite of opinion that the cellar had not been cleaned in one year,
+perhaps not in two. I had seen many farmers' cellars before, but I had
+never seen such an one as this. Nor do I believe my consulting physician
+ever had, though he was some twenty years older in medical practice than
+myself. Nor am I certain that what I may state will appear to you wholly
+reliable.
+
+In the first place there were, in abundance, cabbage leaves and stumps
+in a semi-putrid state. Next there were decayed potatoes, turnips,
+beets, and apples. Then there were in various parts of the cellar
+remnants of cider and vinegar, and cider lees--the latter in a most
+offensive condition. Finally, there were remnants of barrels of beef and
+pork, in a bad state--to say nothing of other casual filth--the whole
+contributing to such a stench as I had never before perceived in a
+cellar.
+
+The old physician who accompanied me had said, "We need not go farther;"
+but our determination was, on full and mature reflection, to know the
+worst and the whole, and we governed ourselves accordingly.
+
+Close to one corner of the kitchen was the well, the water in which was
+very low, and near to that the sink. And if the contents of the sink did
+not find their way, from day to day, into the well, thus adding impurity
+to putridity, it must have been in virtue of some unknown law which
+stood opposed to the great law of specific gravity and attraction. It is
+true that many speak of the earth as having a _cleansing_ power in such
+cases; but I know of no power which it possesses of cleaning sink water,
+while the latter is passing only five or six feet through it. The
+coarser parts may be strained out, but the essence must remain.[F]
+
+But our work was not yet finished. The vault, greatly neglected, was not
+far from the well; and so of the pigsty. Nor was it easy to resist the
+conviction that there was an underground communication between them.
+Then, finally, the house instead of standing on an elevation, greater or
+less,--a very common mode of building in New England,--stood in a sort
+of concavity, which contained also the barn and barnyard and
+woodpile;--connected with both of which was a large amount of decayed
+and decaying animal and vegetable matter.
+
+Now after such a review as this, he who could remain in doubt with
+regard to the cause of existing disease, especially on its assuming the
+form of bowel complaint with typhoid tendencies, must be much more
+ignorant of the laws of health and disease than I was. In fact the signs
+were unmistakable.
+
+We immediately made our report to the heads of the family, and
+recommended a most thorough cleansing, at once. It was easy to see that
+we gave great offence; indeed we had anticipated such a result. But we
+were not at all intimidated. We insisted on a work of immediate
+expurgation, which was finally effected, only we could not put pure
+water into the well. But we could and did require that the well water
+should not be used for any thing except washing clothes.
+
+The result was a decided and almost immediate improvement in the
+condition of the family, except the two already spoken of, and a very
+young child. These three died. Some of the rest lingered for weeks, and
+one or two for months; but they finally recovered.
+
+It is worthy of remark, moreover, that of the people of the
+neighborhood, though they had been excessively frightened and had not at
+first dared to come near the house, at least without holding their
+breath, not a person among them sickened. The disease began and ended
+over the foul cellar I have mentioned; nor has a similar disease ever
+since broken out there. The fair presumption is, that they have never
+since suffered such foul accumulations to remain through the hot season,
+on their premises.
+
+My honest and truly honorable course of conduct, in this instance, cost
+me something. Though I was a means of saving their lives, the survivors
+never thanked me for the exposure I made of their slovenliness. Perhaps
+I was wrong in reporting it abroad; but it was next to impossible to
+conceal the facts; and I, for once, did not attempt it. Physicians
+sometimes thus stand between the living and the dead, and must expect to
+give offence. They are, however, in duty bound to keep the secrets of
+their patients' faults as long as they can, unless the greater good of
+the public demands an exposition.
+
+But while I lost reputation in this particular family, I have not a
+doubt that I gained a strong hold, by this adventure, on the public mind
+and feelings. In truth, despite of even some trifling errors, I deserved
+it. I had, moreover, during the adventure, acquired a good deal of
+practical knowledge, of which, in the progress of my course as a medical
+man, I was glad to avail myself.
+
+This was doubtless an extreme case of disease from filthiness; but cases
+of the same general character are quite numerous. I have sometimes
+wished the public could have a history of these cases. There is an
+immense amount of neglect in the departments of cleanliness and
+ventilation; and the consequent suffering in the various forms of
+disease, is in similar degree and proportion.
+
+I will conclude this chapter with a single anecdote, which, were it
+necessary, could be substantiated by a very great number of living
+witnesses.
+
+Some fifteen or twenty years ago, a severe disease was accustomed to
+visit one of our New England factory villages, and to carry off more or
+fewer of its inhabitants. So regular and certain were its yearly visits
+and ravages, that not a few were disposed to regard it as a sort of
+necessary evil, or, perhaps, as a divine infliction. At length a very
+shrewd old gentleman told the people that the troublesome visitor was of
+human and not of divine origin; and that if they would attend properly
+to their cellars, sleeping-rooms, wells, etc., it would no more be heard
+of. At first, they were disposed to laugh at him; but the matter was
+talked of and agitated, till a work of general purgation was actually
+attempted and finally accomplished. The disease has never re-appeared.
+Was all this the result of mere accident? Do our diseases spring out of
+the ground? Are they the result of chance or hap-hazard? or, are they
+not the heaven-appointed penalties of transgression?
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[F] Farmers, in former times, while making cider, were very slovenly.
+When I observed a large amount of filth adhering to their boots and
+shoes as they carried the pumice from the vat to the press, I thought of
+the worms, insects, and dust, which were ground up and incorporated with
+the mass, I sometimes expressed surprise. "Oh," said they, "the cider
+will work itself clean!" If so, I thought, and still think, it must be
+by the operation of some law not yet discovered. It may work itself
+_clear_, perhaps; but to work itself _clean_, is quite another matter.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIII.
+
+TAKING THE FEVER.
+
+
+A large family, not much more careful of their habits or cleanly about
+their premises than the family alluded to in the foregoing chapter, had
+sickened one autumn, and one of them had died. Anxious to save the rest,
+I again acted as physician and nurse both, and effected my object; or,
+at least, appeared to do so. The rest of my patients ultimately
+recovered.
+
+But while thus watching these patients, by night and day, standing in
+the very front of the battle, I suddenly sickened. The circumstances, as
+nearly as I can recollect them, were the following:----
+
+Among the sick of this afflicted family was one unmarried man of rather
+eccentric and very unsociable habits, and exceedingly negligent both of
+his person and dress. His linen, and I think also his bed-clothes, were
+hardly changed once a month; at least as long as he was well. And then
+he had, of course, extended the same neglect to his sick chamber. Added
+to this, moreover, was a species of _necessity_ at this juncture; for so
+much distressed were the family, and so difficult was it to procure aid
+in the neighborhood, that a part of the neglect to which our old
+bachelor was subjected seemed unavoidable.
+
+I took notice of the neglect, spoke of it repeatedly, and labored
+assiduously to correct the evil. But the case seemed an almost forlorn
+one. I was morally obliged, as I then felt, to do a thousand things for
+him that usually fall to the lot of nurses and assistants. In some
+instances, I passed even whole nights in the family, in attendance on
+him and the other sick persons.
+
+My task was the more severe from the fact that a similar fever was
+prevailing in other parts of the town, and my labors beyond the
+precincts of this family were exceedingly fatiguing and severe. In
+truth, I was, in the end, greatly overworked and debilitated, and my
+system most admirably prepared for the reception of disease.
+
+For various reasons, some of which, have already been named, I often
+assisted in turning my bachelor-patient in his foul bed. It is true the
+process was so offensive that I avoided it whenever I could; but on
+occasions, I yielded to the pressure of necessity.
+
+One night, when I was greatly fatigued and exhausted, and at the bottom
+of my condition,--utterly unfit for exertion, even in a pure
+atmosphere,--I was stooping over Mr. V., to turn him in his bed, when I
+suddenly felt a sensation like that of receiving a blow externally on
+the chest and stomach. The thought struck me as quickly as the imaginary
+blow did--have I not taken the disease? I knew the laws of contagion;
+the only question was whether any contagion had been generated. My
+opinion was to the contrary; nevertheless, I could not wholly suppress
+my fears.
+
+A sensation of oppression which followed the imaginary blow, soon
+gradually passed away, though I felt, each succeeding day, more and more
+debilitated. Many a resolution was made to leave my patients, so far as
+personal manual care was concerned, and be much more than I had been, in
+the open air, though it was only made for a time--to be broken. At
+length, however, principle prevailed over sympathy and inclination, and
+I did as I ought to have done long before. It was, however, rather late,
+for the die was already cast. I was taken sick, and the symptoms of my
+disease were precisely like those of Mr. V.
+
+Perceiving now, most clearly, my condition, and that I was engaged in a
+war from which there could be no discharge, I made preparation for a
+long and severe sickness. First, I calmly and deliberately adjusted all
+my domestic concerns of a pecuniary kind, and made such arrangements as
+would, in case of my demise, render every thing intelligible. Then, in
+the second place, I made up my mind to submit, as cheerfully as I
+could, to my condition. I determined to keep quiet, and not indulge for
+a moment in any undue anxiety. I employed a physician,--my old
+master--but steadfastly, and almost obstinately determined not to take
+much medicine;--nor was there much prescribed.
+
+My disease proved to be much milder than was expected; but it had its
+regular course. I never wholly lost my muscular strength or my appetite.
+While I was sick, several of my nearest friends and patrons sickened in
+a similar way, only more severely; and one or two of them died. On my
+recovery, however, or about the same time, the most of them began also
+to recover, and the disease in general abated.
+
+Now, when I came to reflect coolly and carefully on the whole affair, I
+could not help perceiving that I richly deserved all I suffered. It was
+the just penalty of transgression. I had been fully and repeatedly
+warned not to watch with my patients, as those who turn back to Chapter
+XXIII, and those too who remember its contents, will perceive. It was
+fit, therefore, that I should feel the rod, even if I could not kiss the
+hand that had appointed it. The only wonder with me now is, that my
+punishment was not more severe.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIV.
+
+BLESSINGS OF CIDER AND CIDER BRANDY.
+
+
+Some of these blessings have been alluded to in Chapter XXXVI. But the
+subject is one of too much importance to be left in an unfinished state,
+and I have concluded to make it the principal topic of a separate
+chapter.
+
+A man came to me, one day, with sundry grievous complaints about his
+head and stomach. It was easy to see, at once, that they were not of
+mushroom growth, and that they could not be removed either in an hour or
+a day. However, I did the best I could with him, and charged him to
+follow, implicitly, my directions, which he promised faithfully to do. I
+told him, even, that he was in danger of a severe disease, but
+counselled him to do his utmost to escape it, if possible.
+
+He was, in the first place, a New England or Yankee farmer. Not quite
+satisfied with the products of his farm from the labors of the day, he
+coupled with them the night labors of managing a saw-mill and a
+distillery. And not satisfied with even these, he sometimes burned
+charcoal, which also involved more or less of nocturnal labor. In truth,
+these employments and avocations kept him up a great many nights during
+a considerable portion of the year, and were evidently wearing him out
+prematurely; for, though less than forty years of age, he had the
+appearance of being fifty or sixty.
+
+This severe tasking of his system, had led him greatly into temptation.
+Not only had he acquired the habit of chewing tobacco, as a solace in
+his seclusion and toil, but also of drinking very freely of cider and
+cider brandy; the last two of which, as might naturally be inferred from
+what has been said, he was accustomed to manufacture in large
+quantities. He was not a great eater, though I have no doubt he ate too
+much. But he did not take time to eat--he did not masticate any thing;
+almost every thing was swallowed in masses, and washed down with tea,
+coffee, or cider. Then, lastly and finally, he ate, as it were, by the
+job, when he _did_ eat; for his meals were very irregular and sometimes
+very infrequent.
+
+Another thing should be noticed. His cider and perhaps his tobacco,
+having leagued together, took away his appetite. Cider, as is well
+known, practically and in a gradual way, takes away the appetite, and so
+does coffee. Many a farmer will tell you that it is a matter of economy
+to give his laborers cider or coffee, since they will not eat so much.
+It is highly probable that brandy, and indeed all extra stimulants, have
+the same appetite-destroying effect.
+
+And as the result of his various irregularities and abuses, his
+digestive and nervous systems had become very much deranged and
+disordered, and I could hardly help foreboding evil concerning him. I
+prescribed for him as well as I could, and requested him to call on me
+in two or three days, and "report progress."
+
+On the next day but one, I was summoned to his bedside. My medicine had
+indeed appeared to afford him a little temporary relief, but it was only
+temporary. He was now much worse than ever before. I prescribed again;
+but it was with similar effect. Nature, somewhat relieved, as I then
+vainly imagined, seemed disposed to rally, but was unable. Every
+successive effort to rally, showed more and more clearly how much she
+had been crippled. At least she seemed to succumb either to the
+treatment or the disease, which last became in the end quite formidable.
+
+But though Nature had yielded, apparently vanquished, she still made
+occasional faint efforts, every two or three days, to regain the
+supremacy, or, in other words, to set things right; and sometimes we
+were led to indulge in hope. But the remissions of disease and of
+suffering were only temporary, and were succeeded, in every instance, by
+a worse condition of things than before. I called for sage medical
+counsel, but all to no permanent purpose. Downward he tended, step by
+step, and no human power or skill seemed likely to arrest his progress.
+
+In this downward course his constitution held out--for he was by nature
+exceedingly tenacious of life--till about the twenty-third day, when the
+vital forces began to retreat. He died on the twenty-fifth.
+
+One practical but general error deserves to be noticed, for want of a
+better place, in this very connection. Notwithstanding the great
+difficulty of convincing a person who habitually uses extra stimulants,
+narcotics, or any medicinal agents, all the way from rum, opium, and
+tobacco, down to tea, coffee, and saleratus, that they are injuring him
+at all, as long as he does not feel very ill, yet it ought to be clearly
+and fully known that every one who is thus addicted to unnatural habits,
+and _being_ thus addicted is seized with disease of any kind and from
+any cause whatever, is certain to have that disease with greater
+severity than if his habits had been, from the first, perfectly correct
+or normal. Nor is this all. Medical aid, whenever invoked under these
+circumstances, is more questionable as to its good tendencies. No
+medical man of any skill or observation but must feel, in such a case,
+most painfully, the terrible uncertainty of that treatment of the living
+machine which is quite enough so when the habits have been most
+favorable, by being most correct.
+
+One caution of quite another kind may be interposed here. My patient
+above had neglected to call on me for several days in the beginning of
+his disease, under the very general impression of ignorant people, that
+if he called a physician he should certainly be severely sick; for if he
+was not already very sick, any efforts to prevent disease would only
+serve to make him so.
+
+Now this is, as a general rule, a very great mistake. It would be much
+more safe to call a physician very early, than to wait till Nature is so
+much embarrassed and even crippled that we can place very little
+reliance on her efforts. Worse still is it for the physician, when
+called late, to load down the enfeebled system with medicine by way of
+atoning for past neglects. Thousands have made the mistake here alluded
+to, and have thus been a means of hastening on a fatal termination of
+the disease. It is not by any means improbable that such was the result
+in the foregoing instance.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLV.
+
+THE INDIAN DOCTOR.
+
+
+A little child about two years of age, severely afflicted with bowel
+complaint, came under my care during the first year of my medical
+practice, and proved the source of much difficulty.
+
+She was the child of a mother who had been trained to delicacies, in the
+usual fashionable way, and who had begun to carry out the same wretched
+course of education in her own family. In addition to a generally wrong
+treatment, the child had been indulged, for many weeks before I was
+called, with a large amount of green, or at least very unripe, fruit.
+
+It was at a season of the year when both children and adults were
+suffering from bowel complaints much more than at any other; but as the
+hot days and nights were expected soon to give way to the cooler and
+longer nights of October, I fastened my hopes of the child's final
+recovery, very largely, on the natural recuperative effects of the
+autumnal season. I did not attempt to give much medicine. My reliance
+was almost wholly on keeping up what I was wont to call a good
+centrifugal force, or in keeping the skin--the great safety valve of the
+system--in proper and healthful activity. Much that I ordered was in the
+way of bathing, local and general, especially warm bathing.
+
+The parents of the child were among my most confidential, not to say
+influential, friends. If there was a family within the whole of my
+medical circuit with whom my word was law, it was this. Yet after all
+they were ignorant, especially of themselves; and such people always
+were and always will be credulous. They would open their ears, not only
+to the thousand and one insinuations of malice and envy, which at times
+are ventured against a young physician,--especially if he is going
+ahead, and as they say "getting rich" too fast, and thus securing more
+than they believe to be his share of public popularity;--but to the
+still larger number, if possible, of weak criticisers in his practice.
+
+My friend's residence, moreover, was in a neighborhood contiguous to
+quacks and quackery, in the pretensions to which there were many
+believers. These dupes of ignorance and assurance were ever and anon
+filling the heads of my "patrons" with their stories of wonderful cures,
+in cases almost _exactly like that of my own little patient_, and urging
+the poor half-distracted parents to try something new--either medicine
+or physician. They would appeal to their feelings by asking them how
+they could be willing, as parents,--however great might be their
+confidence in me as a physician,--to let a darling child lie, day after
+day, and yet make no extra effort to save it.
+
+Their appeals were not wholly ineffective; indeed, what else could have
+been expected? My first suspicion of any thing radically wrong, arose
+from a decidedly unexpected effect from a little medicine I had
+previously ordered. It seemed quite clear to my mind that a neutralizing
+agent had been at work somehow, by design or otherwise. And yet I shrunk
+from making an inquiry. In the end, however, I found myself morally
+compelled to do so. The results were very nearly what I had feared, and
+what might have been expected.
+
+One of the _reliabilities_ of the wise ones of the neighborhood went by
+the name of the "Indian" doctor. Whether in addition to a very little
+Indian blood he was half or three-fourths Spanish, Portuguese, or
+Canadian, I never knew, for I never took pains to inquire. But he had
+Indian habits. He was at times intemperate and vicious. No one who knew
+him would have trusted him with a sixpence of his own honest earnings,
+at least any longer than he was within his sight or reach. Yet many
+people would and did trust him with their own lives and the lives of
+their children.
+
+There was one redeeming circumstance in connection with the history of
+this Indian doctor. He would never prescribe for the sick when in a
+state of intoxication. He knew, in this respect, his own weakness. But
+then it must be confessed he was not often free from intoxication. He
+was almost always steeped in cider or spirits. He was seldom, if ever,
+properly a sane or even a steady man.
+
+On pressing the parents of the sick child more closely than usual, they
+frankly owned that though they had not of themselves called in the
+Indian doctor, they had permitted Mrs. A. B. to invite him in, and had
+permitted the child to take a little of his medicine.
+
+The secret was now fully revealed, and it was no longer a matter of
+wonder with me, why poison did not work well against poison. The wonder
+was why, together, we had not killed the poor child. And yet it was by
+no means certain that the Indian's prescription was of much force, save
+the few drops of alcohol which it contained, for all his medicine was to
+be taken in alcohol.
+
+I stated to the parents the probable issues--that unless the child
+possessed more than ordinary tenacity of life, it must ultimately sink
+under the load it was compelled to sustain. But to our great
+surprise--certainly my own--it survived; and, though it was suspended
+for weeks between life and death, it finally recovered.
+
+The most mortifying circumstance of all was, that this miserable mongrel
+of a man had the credit of curing a child that only survived because it
+was tough and strong enough to resist the destructive tendency of two
+broadside fires--mine and his own. But medical men are compelled to put
+up with a great many things which, of course, they would not prefer.
+They must take the world as it is--as the world does the corps of
+physicians. They must calculate for deductions and drawbacks; and what
+they calculate on, they are pretty sure to experience. But, like other
+men with other severe trials, they have their reward.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVI.
+
+DYING OF OLD AGE, AT FIFTY-EIGHT.
+
+
+Within the usual limits assigned me in the daily routine of my
+profession, but on its very verge, there resided an individual of much
+general reputation for worth of character, but of feeble constitution
+and cachetic or deranged habits, for whom as well as for his numerous
+family I had frequently prescribed.
+
+He was at length, one autumn, unusually reduced in health and strength,
+and I was again sent for. There was evidently very little of real
+disease about him, and yet there was very great debility. All his bodily
+senses were greatly deranged, and all his intellectual faculties
+benumbed. His internal machinery--his breathing, circulation, and
+digestion--was all affected; but it seemed more the result of debility
+than any thing else. There was no violence or excess of action anywhere,
+except a slight increase of the circulation.
+
+The man was about fifty-eight years of age. Had he been ninety-eight or
+even eighty-eight, I should have had no difficulty in understanding his
+case. I should have said to myself, "Nature, nearly exhausted by the
+wear and tear of life, is about to give way;" or in other words, "The
+man is about to did (?die) of mere old age." But could he have been thus
+worn out at the age of fifty-eight?
+
+I gave him gentle, tonic medicine, but it did not work well. Without
+increasing his strength, it increased his tendencies to fever. Yet, as I
+well knew, depletion would not answer in a case like this, whether of
+bleeding, blistering, or cathartics. In these circumstances, I contrived
+to while away the time in a routine of that negative character which, in
+true medical language, means laboriously doing nothing.
+
+He was visited about twice a week. I heard patiently all his
+complaints, and endeavored to be patient under all my disappointments,
+for disappointments I had to encounter at nearly every step. No active
+treatment whatever would have the general effect I desired and intended.
+If I gave him but a single dose of elixir paregoric for his nervousness,
+it only added, nine times in ten, to the very woes it was intended to
+relieve. My policy--and I fully believe it was the only true policy--was
+to leave him to himself and to Nature, as much as possible.
+
+Though I have spoken here of what I regarded as the true policy in the
+case then under my care, yet, after all, the truest course would have
+been to call for consultation some wiser head than my own. Another
+individual, even though he were no wiser than I, might have aided me
+most essentially, in compliance with, and in confirmation of, the good
+old adage--"Two eyes see more than one."
+
+Why, then, did I not call on some inquiring and highly experienced
+physician? It was not that I was too proud to do so, nor that I was too
+jealous of my reputation. It was not that I feared any evil result to
+myself. It was rather because I did not, at first, think it really
+necessary; and then, subsequently, when I supposed it to be really
+needful, I feared my patient would grudge the expense. This fear, by the
+way, was grounded in something more than mere conjecture. The proposal
+had been practically made, and had been rejected.
+
+In this general way things went on for some time. The friends grew
+uneasy, as they should have done; and one or two of them, now that it
+was almost too late, spoke of another physician as counsel. My own
+readiness and more than readiness for this seemed to have the effect to
+quiet the patient, though it had the contrary effect on his friends.
+They appeared to construe my own liberality and the admixture of modesty
+and conscientiousness, which were conspicuous in my general behavior,
+into self-distrust, and hence began themselves to distrust me.
+
+The patient's state of mind--for he was a man whose habits of thinking
+and feeling approximated very closely to those of the miser--more than
+once reminded me of some doggerel verses I have seen, perhaps in an old
+almanac, which are so pertinent in illustration of the point in my
+patient's character which these remarks are intended to expose, that I
+have ventured to insert them:--
+
+    "The miser Sherdi, on his sick-bed lying,
+    Affrighted, groaning, fainting, wheezing, dying,
+      Expecting every hour to lose his breath,
+    Enters a Dervise: 'Holy Father, say,
+    As life seems parting from this sinful clay,
+      What can preserve me from the jaws of death?'
+
+    "'Sacrifice, dear son, good joints of meat,--
+      Of lamb and mutton for the priest and poor.
+    Nay, shouldst thou from the Koran lines repeat,
+      Those lines might possibly thy health restore,'
+
+    "'Thank you, good father, you have said enough;
+      Your counsels have already given me ease.
+    Now as my sheep are all a great way off,
+      I'll quote holy our Koran, if you please.'"
+
+At length my patient began, most evidently, to decline. There were
+various marks on him and in him, of approaching dissolution. When
+pressed, as I frequently was, to say definitely what the disease
+was--that is, to give it a name--under which Mr. ---- labored, I only
+replied that he was suffering from premature old age. This always
+awakened surprise, and led to much and frequent inquiry how it was that
+a man of fifty-eight years could be dying of mere old age. My
+explanations, whenever attempted,--for sometimes in my pride of
+profession I wholly evaded them,--were usually, in substance like the
+following:--
+
+"Mr. ---- was feeble by inheritance. He never had that firmness of
+constitution which several of his brothers now possess. Then, too, he
+was precocious. His body and mind, both of them, came to maturity very
+early; which, as you know, always betokens premature decay. Men live
+about four times as long, when not cut short by disease, as they are in
+reaching maturity. As he was apparently mature at fourteen or fifteen,
+he might very naturally be expected to wear out at or before sixty.
+
+"But then, in addition to this, he has all his lifetime labored too
+hard, not only from necessity, but from habit and choice. His ambition,
+it is well known, has been unlimited, except by his want of strength to
+accomplish. He has only ceased to labor hard when he had strength to
+labor no longer, or when it was so dark or so cold or so stormy as to
+prevent him.
+
+"Then of late years he has had the care and anxiety which are almost
+inseparable from the work of bringing up a numerous family. It is indeed
+true that he has not been called to that severest of all possible trials
+pertaining to the family, the pain of seeing that family or any of its
+members go materially wrong. Still he has had a world of care; of its
+effects none are aware who have not been called to the same forms of
+experience.
+
+"There is one thing more; Mr. ---- has, at times, taken a good deal of
+medicine: not alcohol, in any of its forms, I admit, but substances
+which for the time were, in their effects, almost equally bad for him.
+He has used tea immoderately, and even tobacco. His constant smoking has
+been very injurious to his nervous system, and along with other things
+has, doubtless, greatly hurried on the wheels of life."
+
+Remarks like these had their intended effect on a few individuals,
+especially such of them as were couched in language with which they were
+already familiar. On most, however, they fell lifeless and hopeless.
+What knew they about precocity and its effects on the after life? In
+short, it was quite doubtful then, and is still more doubtful with me
+now, whether, on the whole, any thing was gained by attempts at
+explanation. For example, when I spoke of my patient being worn out,
+prematurely, by overworking, it was asked by one man, "But how is this?
+Other men as well as Mr. ---- have worked too hard, and brought up large
+families, and perhaps taken a great deal of medicine, and smoked a vast
+amount of tobacco? Why are they not affected in this way as well as Mr.
+----?"
+
+It was not easy to make current the idea that Mr. ---- was about to die
+of old age; although partly from conviction, but partly, also, to
+conceal my ignorance, I still endeavored to promulgate it. It was the
+only apology I could make for suffering a man to run down and die,
+without appearing to those around him to be very sick.
+
+But he died, after some time, to my infinite mortification and great
+regret. I was invited to his funeral, as I was usually to the funerals
+of my patients. In this case, however, I contrived to be absent. So
+great was my consciousness of ignorance and so much ashamed was I of my
+ill success, that I felt as if the veriest ignoramus would be disposed
+to point at me, and to charge me with having been, practically, the
+murderer of the much-beloved head of a family, and a worthy and highly
+respected member of society. But, whether others would deem me culpable
+for my ignorance or not, I could not avoid the pangs of habitual
+condemnation.
+
+There were, I grant, a few extenuating circumstances in the case. One or
+two causes existed, of premature decline, on which, in a work like this,
+I cannot stop to expatiate. It was also very unfortunate for him that he
+was accustomed to look on the dark side of things, and to forebode ills,
+where, oftentimes, none existed.
+
+Notwithstanding my former ignorance and doubt, and numerous misgivings,
+in cases like the foregoing, I have of late years, on a maturer review,
+been obliged very frequently to confirm my earlier decisions. In the
+case which has been detailed in this chapter, I have, on the whole, come
+to a belief that my first judgment was nearly correct; and that the
+patient actually perished, as much as men ever do, of premature old age.
+It is, indeed, very possible that had I pursued a different course in
+several important particulars, his life might have been prolonged for a
+year or two. Men have a tendency to become what they are taken to be;
+and many a person has died much sooner for being taken to be near his
+end, and treated accordingly. If we would have our patients recover, we
+must take for granted that recovery is at least possible.
+
+In the case above, I believe I lost reputation, in large measure.
+Several shrewd people insisted, at the time and long afterward, that I
+ought to have had medical counsel. Mr. ----, they said, was too good a
+man to lose without a more persevering effort to raise him. They charged
+me with having got my name up, and having at the same time grown
+careless. Had he been properly doctored, they said, from the very first,
+they believed he might still have been alive to ornament and bless
+society.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVII.
+
+DAUGHTERS DESTROYING THEIR MOTHER.
+
+
+There are, of course, many ways of destroying or killing people. To
+kill, with malice aforethought, though sometimes done, is a much less
+frequent occurrence than killing in the heat of passion, or by
+carelessness; by leading into bad habits, or by the injudicious use of
+medicine.
+
+Then, again, there is such a thing as killing by omitting to keep alive.
+Thus we have sins of omission as well as of commission. If I leave a man
+in a mill-pond and suffer him to drown, or if I suffer him to take a
+dose of arsenic or Prussic acid, when I might, with the utmost ease, or
+even with considerable difficulty, prevent it,--is it not, in a
+practical sense, to destroy or kill him?
+
+It is certainly within the wide range of human possibility, that a
+daughter may, without bludgeon or pistol, and even without poison, kill
+her mother. And it is quite notorious and a plain matter of fact that
+many a mother kills her own children. It could be demonstrated that
+thousands, if not tens of thousands of children are destroyed every year
+by their own mothers; as truly so as if they had received at their hands
+a quantity of arsenic. Why, then, may not children sometimes kill their
+parents?
+
+I have known people, in very many instances, kill, in trying to save. I
+have even known the medical man do this, as may be seen by turning back
+to Chapter XXX. Then, too, I have known the attendants of the sick,
+though among their dearest friends, sometimes kill in this very way. In
+truth, such killing is not uncommon.
+
+One of the most painful instances of this last kind of killing came
+under my own immediate observation, and was in the range of my own
+practice.
+
+I was visiting a sick woman, whose only property lay in three or four
+lovely and loving children. Two of these, who were full-grown daughters,
+resided in her house and took care of her. She was severely afflicted
+with typhoid dysentery. Her daughters in turn watched over her, both by
+day and night, and would not suffer her to be left in the care of
+anybody else for a single minute. And, in general, their faithfulness
+was above all praise.
+
+One day, however, disliking the appearances of a part of my medicine,
+they mutually agreed to throw it into the fire; and the deed was done.
+They had supposed it to be calomel, as it had the color and general
+appearance of that drug, and to calomel they had a most inveterate and
+irreconcilable hatred. It was a hatred, however, which whether well or
+ill founded, very extensively prevails.
+
+At first, I could not help wondering at the results of my supposed doses
+of medicine; and indeed it was a long time before I began to suspect the
+true cause. For, while I verily believed I was employing the only thing
+which could help her,--one which I then thought _ought_ to help her,--I
+had the unspeakable mortification of finding her every day growing
+worse. What could be the possible cause, I often asked myself, of this
+downward tendency?
+
+While thus perplexed and pained, I accidentally learned that the main
+ingredient in my plan of treatment--the main pillar in my fabric--had
+been habitually withdrawn by her anxious but injudicious attendants. I
+no longer wondered at the threatening symptoms. My only wonder was, that
+things had not gone wrong with her at a much more rapid rate.
+
+The patient continued to sink from day to day, and to become more and
+more insensible. The daughters themselves saw her downward tendency, for
+it could not be concealed. I did not tell the young women of their error
+at first, although I did so afterwards. It was a most painful duty, but
+it was one from which I dared not shrink. I hoped and trusted it would
+be a means of saving some among the coming generations.
+
+I have never met with either of these daughters since that day--for one
+of them, at least, is still living--without blushing for their sake.
+They, on their part, appear to be equally affected and agitated. They
+almost adored their mother, and yet they inadvertently destroyed her.
+She might have perished, it is true, without their aid; but I rather
+think she would have slowly recovered.
+
+Let him that readeth understand: It is extremely hazardous for a second
+or third person to change the doses of a physician's medicine, either by
+the omission or addition of an ingredient. It would be safer--very much
+safer--to omit every thing, and leave the disease wholly to nature. The
+true course, however, in all cases, is to follow the prescription of the
+physician, to the best of our abilities, or else dismiss him.
+
+I might pause here a moment to animadvert on the unreasonableness of the
+vulgar prejudice which almost everywhere prevails against calomel. That
+this drug does great harm, in many instances, is most certain; but that
+it does more mischief to the human constitution when in the hands of
+judicious practitioners, than some half a dozen articles of the _materia
+medica_ I could name, about which complaint is seldom made, remains to
+be proved. Let us, if possible, prevent the necessity of using any of
+these two-edged weapons, by so living that disease cannot assail us, and
+then we shall not, of necessity, be exposed to the danger of medicinal
+agents, whether calomel or any thing else.
+
+My own principal error in relation to this interesting case, consisted
+in not telling the attendants of the sick woman, in the plainest
+language, what my medicines were and how much, in my own estimation,
+depended on their careful and proper exhibition; that if they should
+take away or suffer to be taken away, one faggot from the bundle, they
+would not only spoil their effect, but might, very probably, turn the
+edge of the sword against the very citadel of life itself. But from the
+extreme of explaining every thing, in sick families where I was called,
+I had passed over to that of explaining nothing. Truth here, as
+elsewhere, usually lies midway between extremes.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVIII.
+
+POISONING WITH STRAMONIUM.
+
+
+One of my patients was subject to repeated attacks of rheumatism. He was
+by no means a man of good and temperate habits, and never had been so.
+And even his rheumatic attacks, though they were now frequently excited
+by taking cold, or by a sudden strain, as well as by many other causes
+of no considerable magnitude, often had both a foundation or
+predisposition in his former and later intemperance.
+
+Let me here say, most distinctly and unequivocally, even at the risk of
+being charged with repetition, that a large proportion of even these
+casual or apparently accidental attacks of rheumatism, neuralgia, sick
+headache, etc., etc., with which our world--the fashionable part of it,
+at least--is half filled, instead of springing out of the ground, or
+coming upon us by the special appointment of high Heaven, have their
+origin in the intemperance, excess, or licentiousness of somebody. The
+cause may lie many years back, and may be almost forgotten; nay, it may
+be found in a preceding generation rather than the present. But it lies
+somewhere in the range of human agency. "Almighty man," as the poet has
+well said, "decrees it." Solomon never uttered a more palpable truth
+than when he said: "Because sentence against an evil work is not
+executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set
+in them to do evil."
+
+My rheumatic friend sent for me one day, to come and see him in great
+haste, for, as the messenger said, he could not long continue in such
+suffering. I found him in the greatest distress, and after making the
+usual temporary applications, I gave him what I had never given him
+before--a pretty full dose of tincture of stramonium. It had, in due
+time, its accustomed effect, and I left him, rather prematurely, to
+visit another patient in a somewhat distant part of the town, intending,
+however, to see him again in the evening.
+
+But I had not been absent more than an hour, before I was sent for in
+post-haste. As soon as possible I hastened to the spot. I found my
+patient in a state somewhat peculiar and not easily described. He was
+evidently affected by the stramonium; but how, I said to myself, can
+this be? I certainly did not give him an overdose. Besides, as I well
+knew, the effects, so long as I remained with him, had been decidedly
+favorable.
+
+The mystery was soon revealed. On finding himself much better, soon
+after my departure, he had resorted again to the stramonium bottle,
+which in my haste and contrary to my usual practice, I had left within
+his reach. The result was a degree of delirium that had alarmed his
+friends and induced them to send for me.
+
+By means of careful and persevering management, a partial recovery soon
+took place, though a train of incidental evils followed which it is not
+necessary here to enumerate. The patient was one of those ignorant and
+selfish individuals on whom a permanent cure can rarely be effected.
+
+This circumstance taught me one important lesson which ought to have
+been impressed on my mind long before. It was, not to leave medicine of
+any kind within reach of my patients or their friends. In many an
+instance, medicine thus left has been taken by others, under the belief
+that since it operated favorably in the case for which it had been
+prescribed by the physician, it would do so in another case which was
+vainly supposed to be just like it, when, in truth, it was not at all
+similar.
+
+To the custom of keeping medicine in the house, of any sort, I am
+equally opposed, and for similar reasons. There will generally be time
+enough to send for it when its presence is really needed. Such at least
+is the fact, ninety-nine times in a hundred. And as a set-off against
+the fact of its being thus useful once in a hundred times, we have to
+acknowledge the multiplied dangers to which we are exposed, of using it
+without prescription, and to which we are otherwise exposed by having it
+constantly before us in our houses.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIX.
+
+CURING CANCER.
+
+
+Theodore, a laborious young man, came to me one day, saying, "I am
+afraid I have a cancer on one side of my nose, and I wish you would look
+at it." Accordingly I made a careful examination of the sore, taking
+care to give him a little pain, and, at the same time, as a most
+indispensable ingredient, to look "wondrous wise;" after which the
+following conversation, in its essentials, took place between us:--
+
+"What makes you suspect this sore to be a cancer?"
+
+"There are various reasons. Many of the neighbors think it to be so.
+Then, too, it has a very strong resemblance to the cancer on Mrs.
+Miller's lip. And then, again, it burns and itches and smarts, just as
+people say cancers always do."
+
+"How long have you been troubled with it?"
+
+"It is three months or more since I first observed it; but it has given
+me very little uneasiness or trouble till within a few weeks."
+
+"What have you done for it?"
+
+"It would take a long time to tell you of all I have done for it. Every
+thing I could hear of, far or near, has been applied; from plasters of
+clay and chalk, to plasters of vitriol and other poisonous things. But I
+have used most a plaster made of chalk and the white of an egg. I do not
+know that any thing I have done has benefited it."
+
+"Perhaps you have not persevered in the use of any thing long enough.
+How long is it, pray, since you began to use the chalk and egg plaster?"
+
+"Oh, it is three weeks, or more."
+
+"And how long is it usual to wear it? do you know?"
+
+"Mrs. Lovejoy, who advised it, only said, 'Use it as long as it appears
+to do good.'"
+
+"Is it a favorite remedy with her?"
+
+"Very much so."
+
+"Has any one been really cured by it?"
+
+"Oh, yes. Mr. Browning, the gardener, was entirely cured by it; so, at
+least, people say."
+
+"Any one else?"
+
+"Yes, half a hundred or more have tried it."
+
+"But how many have been cured by it? That is my main inquiry."
+
+"That I cannot tell you. I have heard of no positive cure but that of
+Mr. Browning."
+
+"It is almost incredible, my dear sir, that any thing like fifty cases
+can have come within such a small range of population as the village or
+even the town in which Mrs. Lovejoy resides. Do you mean as you say?"
+
+"Well, then, a great many. I know of a dozen, most certainly; and I have
+heard of a great many more. I venture, at least, to say twenty."
+
+"And you have no positive knowledge of but one permanent cure among them
+all?"
+
+"Only one, I meant to say, that I can call by name. There must be many
+more, I am sure, but I have not their names."
+
+"Have you much confidence in a method of treatment that succeeds once in
+fifty times, or even once in twenty?"
+
+"Not much, I confess; but if it now and then succeed, that is something.
+You know that they who run in a race _all_ run, though but one receives
+the prize."
+
+"Are you quite sure there _is_ any gain or prize, after all?"
+
+"Do you mean to ask if I believe Mr. Browning was really cured?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"How could I doubt what I have seen and known?"
+
+"I do not expect you will doubt the existence of what you have seen and
+known. But the question before us is, what you _have_ seen and known.
+Mr. Browning had something on his face, and it got well; but do we know
+it was a cancer? Only a very small proportion of twenty sores suspected
+to be cancers ever prove to be such, and many of them get well after a
+little time, if they are let entirely alone; or, if not let entirely
+alone, they would probably still get well, in spite of the treatment. It
+is quite a marvel with me, not that one person, Mr. Browning, recovered
+in spite of the treatment, but that more did not."
+
+"This is to me a new way of reasoning on this subject, and yet I do not
+know but you are correct. I confess, that on reflection, I do not find
+positive evidence that any good has been done to Mr. Browning. It may be
+so, or it may not. And yet the story of his cure is told all over the
+neighborhood and for many miles around, and Mrs. Lovejoy gets great
+credit by it."
+
+"No doubt she does; and thousands obtain both credit and cash in a
+similar way. Much of the reputation of our wonderful cure-alls,
+advertised in the newspapers, comes in a similar way."
+
+"Do you really think so?"
+
+"It can be demonstrated."
+
+"Why, then, is it not oftener done?"
+
+"It has been done, again and again."
+
+"Are the public, then, fully determined to act against their own
+interest? Do they choose to be humbugged?"
+
+"It seems so."
+
+"But can you do nothing with my face?"
+
+"I can try. I will do what I can. But I must first tell you what I
+_cannot_ do. I cannot pronounce your disease to be cancer. I cannot say
+positively that my method of treatment will cure it. I cannot say,
+moreover, that somebody else cannot cure you, even if I cannot. If,
+however, I prescribe for you, you must consent to follow me for the time
+most implicitly, and let everybody else alone."
+
+"That I shall be both willing and glad to do."
+
+"You need not begin till you are fully satisfied in regard to the
+efficacy of Mrs. Lovejoy's plaster."
+
+"I am pretty well satisfied already. I see that science is modest but
+honest, and I prefer it to humbuggery."
+
+My prescription was an application of the common blistering ointment of
+the apothecary's shop. The part to which it was to be applied was quite
+denuded and tender; but I told the patient to stick a small piece of the
+plaster over it and wear it, and keep it as sore as he could for a month
+or more. He was, however, to call on me once a week,--or, perhaps, at
+first, twice,--that I might watch the effects. There was some danger of
+an absorption of the cantharides into the system, which might do more of
+general harm than would justify an attempt at local good.
+
+No man ever followed the prescription of his physician with more
+pertinacity and faithfulness than young Theodore. He adhered, without
+wavering, to plain and unstimulating food, and to water for drink. At
+the end of twenty-one days, all the fiery redness of the ulcer had
+passed away, and it had begun to wear a healthy appearance. "Now," said
+I, "you may take away your plasters, and let the sore get well, if it
+will."
+
+In about ten, or at most fourteen days more, the young man's nose was as
+well as any other part of his system. Whether the Spanish flies
+contained in the plaster had any thing to do with it, or whether it
+recovered its healthful condition in spite of them,--having just then
+got ready to heal,--I cannot, of course, positively determine. In any
+event, the case was a strong one, though not stronger, I confess, than
+that of dosing largely with calomel, as detailed in Chapter XXXII. And
+yet, as I have already told you, I should not dare to repeat that heroic
+treatment. Success is not always competent proof that a given course is
+correct;--at least, this is true with regard to the success of a
+particular formulary of medicine. There are very many things on earth to
+be known and thought of, as well as in heaven.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER L.
+
+SWELLED LIMBS.
+
+
+Not far from this period I was called to visit Mr. O. B., sixty-one
+years of age, a farmer by occupation. He had been for twenty or thirty
+years addicted to cider drinking very freely, according to the custom of
+the country; which habit, conjoined with full feeding, a diminished
+amount of exercise, and a lymphatic tendency by inheritance, had
+rendered him exceedingly corpulent. His legs had even fallen into a
+habit of swelling, especially at night, sometimes to a very alarming
+extent.
+
+His story concerning himself was essentially as follows: In getting into
+a wagon, some time before, he had detached a small portion of skin from
+one of his legs. Although the wound was slight, and was duly attended
+to, according to the usual method of the family, with cabbage leaves,
+and with considerable care and neatness, yet, instead of healing kindly,
+it had put on a very unhealthy appearance, and had, at length, even
+become extensively ulcerated. He was also habitually a sufferer from
+chronic rheumatism in his back and hips, partly constitutional and
+partly as the result of overstraining the parts, especially in
+wrestling.
+
+When I was called in to see him, it was about the last of June. His
+wounded leg was now evidently growing worse; and as the heat of the
+weather was increasing, and was for some time to come likely to
+increase, I could hardly help apprehending the most serious
+consequences. He had been in the habit of making greasy applications to
+it for a short time, but these at my special request were set aside
+immediately.
+
+He was also encouraged to keep his leg cool; to exercise his whole
+system moderately; to avoid exciting, above all, stimulating, food and
+drink; and to keep his mind quiet. In regard to drinks, particularly, he
+was directed to use none but water. He was also required to abstain
+wholly from pork, and all long-salted meats. He had also been, for
+almost half a century, a chewer of tobacco--a circumstance rather
+unfavorable to a rapid return of healthy action; but I did not think it
+expedient to interdict its use entirely at the very first; for I feared
+the change, at his advanced age, would be more than his system could
+well endure.
+
+In fact, I found it extremely difficult to persuade him to pursue the
+straight and narrow path which, letting alone his tobacco, I had deemed
+indispensably necessary. To encourage him to do so, I availed myself of
+a circumstance which, though in itself trifling, was nevertheless likely
+to have its influence. The thirteenth day of July was at hand, and would
+be the fortieth anniversary of his marriage. My proposal was that he
+should commence the change of habits that very day, and continue it
+precisely eighteen months.
+
+Although the danger to which he would be exposed by neglecting my
+prescription was neither immediate nor imminent; yet it was so
+considerable in prospect that I pressed him very hard to comply with my
+requirements, notwithstanding their seeming rigidity. And as a further
+inducement,--for he was not above the influence of pecuniary
+considerations,--I offered him a certain sum of money.
+
+I left him without much hope, after all, that he would follow out my
+suggestions and advice, so difficult is it, at the age of sixty, to make
+substantial and radical changes. But I was most happily disappointed. He
+began the work of reform on the very day appointed, and began it well;
+and though he did not adhere to the letter of my prescription entirely,
+he did quite as much as I had dared, even in my most sanguine moments,
+to expect. And though his leg did not at first improve much, it was
+something to find that during the very hottest weather of the season it
+did not grow worse.
+
+For three months he did not use, as he said, so much as fifty cents
+worth of pork, nor much salted food of any kind. He abandoned entirely
+all drinks but water, and all condiments with his food except a little
+salt. He subsisted almost wholly on bread, fruits, and vegetables, with
+a very little flesh or fish.
+
+At the end of three months he ventured abroad more than before; and as
+it was now near the middle of October, he consented to put on woollen
+stockings. But he made one change at this time which I had not intended.
+He returned to the use of one of his former greasy and worse than
+useless ointments. In the course of the month, however, in spite of the
+foul external application, his leg was entirely healed; and the swelling
+considerably abated. In short, at the close of the year he had entirely
+recovered.
+
+The friends and neighbors attributed the cure to the ointment. How very
+unreasonable! The ointment had been used during the spring, up to the
+time when he came under my direction, without any apparent benefit. What
+evidence then was there that it had been useful now? Why should not the
+change for the better be attributed to his increased exercise, the
+change of air and food, and the stimulus and warmth of woollen
+stockings? Had water, moreover, as his only drink, nothing to do with
+the cure?
+
+But while standing in the position I did, it was useless to decry the
+ointment or exalt my own treatment, since it would have been regarded as
+merely special pleading. Still, I did not shrink wholly from the
+statement of my honest convictions, whenever I was inquired of, even
+though I did not manifest a disposition to carry the war into Africa.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LI.
+
+SUDDEN CHANGES IN OLD AGE.
+
+
+Mrs. N. was about seventy years of age. In her early years she had
+possessed a sort of masculine constitution; and though embarrassed by
+poverty, had reared a large family of children, who were all well
+settled in the world. She resided with the youngest but one of them,
+where she did just as she pleased. In short, she had a good home, and,
+had she enjoyed health, might have been happy.
+
+But a change had come over her in point of health, which it was not so
+easy to account for at its outset as in its progress. For her first
+derelictions, at least, I know of no cause. But she had, at length,
+become reconciled to the use of tea, and as her spirits began to flag,
+she added to it strong coffee. From these she proceeded to the pipe.
+
+The more she increased her extra stimulants, the more she added to her
+troubles, and the greater was her necessity for additional stimulus.
+Laudanum was very soon on her list; at first, it is true, in very small
+quantities. Yet, as she grew older, she found a necessity, as she verily
+believed, for increasing the size of her dose from year to year, till,
+at the age of seventy, I found her in the full and free use of tea,
+coffee, tobacco, and laudanum,--the latter to the enormous extent of
+half an ounce a day,--and yet her complaints were more numerous than
+ever.
+
+She was a reasonable woman, and therefore I attempted to set forth, in
+their true colors, the realities of her condition. However, as I was not
+acting as her physician, but only as a friend, I had little hope of
+making any very permanent impressions. She knew the whole story as well
+as I or any one else could know it. The great difficulty under which she
+labored was a want of resolution to change her habits. Her irresolution
+was sustained by the belief--a very general one--that old people cannot
+make sudden changes in their physical habits with safety.[G] But she was
+unhappy in the condition she then was. She had no peace with conscience,
+nor, as I might almost venture to say,--for she was a religious woman by
+profession,--with God.
+
+I assured her that the real danger of sudden changes, at her age, had
+been greatly overrated; though danger there certainly was, in greater or
+less degree. But I pointed out to her the means of obviating what danger
+there was, and urged her, as a Christian, to make up her mind to meet
+it. Of course, I did not presume to urge her to cast every thing aside,
+and return to Nature's path at once; but to drop first one thing and
+then another. I counselled her to be thorough and determined, as far as
+she went; and when she abandoned a thing to make no reserve, but to be
+sure of not going too fast and too far at once.
+
+When I left her one day, after a somewhat protracted conversation, it
+was with many feelings of discouragement. I doubted very seriously
+whether, on the whole, she would move at all. The power of half an ounce
+of laudanum and a paper of tobacco daily, in paralyzing the human will,
+is very great. But she was one of those persons who cannot, or think
+they cannot, leave off a habit gradually, in the way I proposed. She
+must "go the whole figure," as it is said vulgarly, or do nothing at
+all.
+
+Judge then, if you can, of my surprise, when about two months afterward
+I learned, from a source which was perfectly reliable, that the very
+next day after I saw her, she abandoned the whole herd of extra
+stimulants, both solid and liquid, and betook herself to water. Nor had
+it, so far as I could learn, at all injured her.
+
+No sooner did I hear the news of her reformation, than I took my horse
+and made her a visit. There she was, nearly as well as ever she had been
+in her life, though perhaps a little paler and thinner. And oh, what
+rejoicing she had in her freedom! It would have done you good to see
+her. She had now no fears for the result. "True," she said, "I suffered
+for a few days, but the agony was soon over."
+
+One thing should be mentioned, since it doubtless added to the dangers,
+real and imaginary, of her condition and trial. It took place during the
+middle of a very cold winter--one of the coldest which we of the North
+ever experienced; scarcely, if at all, behind those of 1855-6 and
+1856-7.
+
+But all persons have not Mrs. N.'s faith, nor her deep-abiding religious
+principles. These, it is presumed, greatly aided her in the terrible
+conflict. No one ought to attempt such changes, at least in life's
+decline, unless most fully convinced of their importance and necessity.
+Yet, _with_ this conviction, and strong faith in addition, all becomes
+comparatively easy.
+
+Mrs. N. died a few years after her reform; but she died a free woman,
+and not a slave to her appetite. Some few there were of her acquaintance
+who appeared to think that the sudden changes to which she had subjected
+herself several years before, hastened her dissolution. But I do not
+believe there was a particle of evidence to be found that such was the
+fact. Reader, remember Mrs. N., and if you are in the road of error, and
+not more than seventy years of age, go and do likewise. If you have not
+_lived_ free, resolve at least to have the pleasure of dying so.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[G] This error has been met and refuted in the happiest manner, by the
+late lamented Dr. John C. Warren, of Boston, in his little work,
+entitled, "Hints for the Preservation of Health." Also, by Dr. Alcott's
+new work, "The Laws of Health."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LII.
+
+AN OPIUM EATER.
+
+
+Almost at the next door from me was an opium eater. He, like the female
+whose case was described in the preceding chapter, was not far from
+three score and ten, and was of industrious and, in many respects,
+temperate habits. And yet he was one of the most inveterate and
+abandoned voluntary slaves to the drug opium I have ever seen. He had
+used it largely thirty years.
+
+His case is the more singular from the fact that he became enslaved to
+it so very early. To use opium or laudanum at the present day, I grant
+is no uncommon occurrence. We may often find six, eight, or ten opium
+takers in a single township, if not a single village, or even a single
+neighborhood; and the number is rapidly increasing. Opium has not that
+offensive appearance to many that tobacco has, and a much larger amount
+of stimulus may be kept in a very small space, perhaps in the very
+corner of the smallest pocket.
+
+Another circumstance which rendered the case of my opium-taking neighbor
+somewhat striking, was his usual good health. I say, here, _usual_, for
+there were exceptions which will appear presently. Yet though he was
+nearly threescore and ten, this man had, while under the influence of
+his accustomed stimulus, as much elasticity and nearly as much strength
+as most men of thirty.
+
+How could this happen, you will naturally ask, if opium is such a deadly
+narcotic as some medical men proclaim it to be? How can a person, male
+or female, begin its use at forty and continue it to seventy years of
+age, and yet be, for the most part, strong and healthy?
+
+In the first place, we must remember the force of habit. We have seen
+how it is with alcoholic drinks and tobacco. I might tell you how it is
+with arsenic, which is beginning to be taken, it is said, by men and
+horses, both in the old world and the new. I might even give you the
+story of Mithridates, king of Pontus, who is said to have so accustomed
+himself to hemlock,--the most deadly poison of his time,--that in any
+ordinary dose, it would not affect him injuriously, or, at least, would
+not do so immediately.
+
+We must remember, in the second place, the active, industrious habits of
+this patient--of which, however, I have already spoken. He who is always
+or almost always in the open air, is less likely to suffer from the use
+of extra stimulants, and the penalty when it _does_ fall on his head, is
+much more likely to be deferred, than in the case of the sedentary and
+inactive. He was so hardy and withal so bold, that in the summer season
+he sometimes slept in the open air, under a tree.
+
+But, thirdly, he was descended from a very long-lived race or family.
+His father died at the age of ninety-seven. At the time of his decease
+he had been the progenitor of nineteen children, one hundred and five
+grandchildren, one hundred and fifty-five great grandchildren, and four
+of the fifth generation,--a posterity amounting in all, to two hundred
+and eighty-three. And what is most marvellous, nearly all of them were
+at that very moment living. In truth, he had several sons and daughters
+already between the ages of sixty-five and eighty. There was one of the
+brotherhood, whom I had seen, nearly eighty, and yet as active and
+elastic as the opium eater of seventy.
+
+One thing more: The latter, as we have seen, was a man of excellent
+habits in respect to nearly every thing but opium. He drank no ardent
+spirits, nor much coffee and tea; he used very little tobacco, and he
+ate in great moderation. He was an early riser and was in general
+cheerful. In short, but for his opium taking, he would have enjoyed a
+green old age.
+
+I have said he was usually healthy. When he was out of opium and could
+not obtain any, I have seen him sit and writhe in the most intense
+apparent anguish till the arrival of the accustomed stimulus, when the
+transformation would be as sudden as it was striking. In fifteen
+minutes, instead of writhing and groaning and almost dying, he might be
+found talking, laughing, and telling stories most merrily, to the
+infinite amusement of all around him.
+
+But he had troubles more abiding than this; at least, occasionally.
+After taking his opium for a long time, such a degree of costiveness
+would sometimes supervene, as seemed almost to defy the combined powers
+of both nature and art. In these circumstances, of course, the aid of
+the physician was usually invoked. It was on one of these occasions that
+I first became fully acquainted with his habits and tendencies.
+
+Once, when thus called to his bedside, I began to think he was not very
+far from the end of his career. The wheels of life seemed so completely
+obstructed, that I doubted whether they would ever start again. He
+himself declared, most positively and I doubt not in sincerity that he
+must die. But he lived on many years longer. He died at about
+seventy-five years of age--more than twenty years younger than his
+venerable and more temperate father.
+
+From this distinguished opium eater, and from his family, I learned two
+things: First, that Solomon was right when he spoke of the certainty of
+punishment, even though long deferred. Secondly, the certainty of the
+visitation, so to call it, of human transgression upon subsequent
+generations no less than on the individual transgressor. The fourth
+generation from the patriarch of ninety-seven was puny and
+feeble--exceedingly so; the fifth and sixth not only puny and feeble,
+but absolutely sickly, not to say dwarfish.
+
+Did I say I learned these important truths from this source? Not at all.
+I mean only, that I received from it a new confirmation of what I had
+fully believed long before, and concerning which, till compelled, most
+men--even some thinking men--appear to me not a little sceptical. They
+seem to think it reflects dishonor on our Maker. How this is, we shall
+perhaps see more fully in another place. Let it suffice, for the
+present, to say that the fact itself is fully established, whatever may
+be the deductions or its consequences.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LIII.
+
+COFFEE, AND THE LAME KNEE.
+
+
+Mr. W. was a distinguished minister of the gospel, and teacher of
+females. He could not at this time have been much less than seventy
+years of age. He was originally a man of iron constitution and of great
+mental activity.
+
+Of late it had been observed by some of the members of his family, that
+his mind had seasons of great inactivity, and it was even suspected he
+had, either in his sleep or at some other time, suffered from a slight
+attack of paralysis. His face seemed a little distorted, and one of the
+angles of his mouth a little depressed. There appeared to be a slight
+change even of his speech. It was recollected, too, that he inherited a
+tendency of this kind.
+
+Along with other difficulties was a lame knee. This he called
+rheumatism; but was it so? People are very fond of having a name for
+every thing; and yet names very often mislead. Prof. Ives, of the
+Medical College in Connecticut, was wont to say to his students,
+"Diseases, young gentlemen, are not creatures to whom we can give
+particular names, or assign particular marks of distinction. They are
+merely _modes of action_." My friend's over solicitude for a name to his
+complaint was therefore no new thing.
+
+I explained the matter as well as I could, very cautiously. I told him
+it was of little consequence about the name of his disease, provided we
+could ascertain the cause and remove it. "However," I said, "we will
+conclude to call it rheumatism." For though possessed of a good natural
+constitution, and, in general, of comparatively temperate habits, he had
+nevertheless set at defiance some of nature's laws, and was suffering
+under a just penalty.
+
+One member of his family, a favorite son, was suspicious of coffee. He
+himself had abandoned it long before, and had thus placed himself in a
+position to observe its effects on others. His father used it very
+strong, he said; and had used it in this way for a long time. He even
+ventured, at length, to express his fears to his father.
+
+"Nonsense, my son," said the father; "do you think coffee is powerful
+enough to give a man a lame knee? Why, the whole world--I mean the whole
+civilized world--use it; and do they all have stiff knees?"
+
+"Perhaps not," said the son; "but almost every coffee-drinker has,
+sooner or later, some ailment about him, that may very possibly have its
+origin in this source. Our troubles, as you yourself are accustomed to
+say, do not spring out of the ground. Coffee, as the best authorities
+tell us, is a slow poison; and if it is so, its effects must, at some
+time, be manifested."
+
+"Ay, a very slow poison this coffee must be, my son," said the
+half-indignant father; "for I have used it pretty freely forty years,
+and am not dead yet. But to be serious for a moment, Henry, do you
+really believe that such a small transgression as this, even if it could
+be proved to be a transgression at all, would be the cause of so much
+suffering?"
+
+"You admit, then, that your troubles may possibly be the result of
+transgression, and that they did not spring out of the ground."
+
+"Oh yes, I suppose it must be so; but there is such a strange
+disproportion between the transgression and the penalty, in the case you
+mention, that I cannot for one moment believe any thing about it. Why,
+what rational man in the world will believe that a little coffee, once a
+day, will entail upon a person severe rheumatism?"
+
+"To what larger transgression, my dear father, will you be more ready to
+refer it? You do not use tobacco, or rum, or opium; and I am happy in
+being able to say that you never did. You are no tea-drinker. You are no
+worshipper of the apothecary's shop. You have not, so far as I know,
+strained your knee, by over exertion, either in labor or amusement Yet,
+here you are a sufferer; and you have suffered for months. Now, how do
+you account for it?"
+
+"There is no possibility of accounting for it, my son, and why should we
+talk about it? If any thing can be done to cure it, I am sure I shall be
+glad; but though I admit that the complaint may have had a cause--and
+indeed _must_ have had--I do not think we shall ever be able to trace it
+out."
+
+The son still adhered to the opinion that the coffee was the cause of
+the father's sufferings; and there was reason for believing that the
+father was more than half convinced of it himself; only that he was too
+proud to confess it. He concluded by asking his father if he would like
+to consult me on the subject--to which he cheerfully consented.
+
+On a careful investigation of the case, I came to a full conclusion that
+the son was right in his conjectures; that the coffee was the principal
+source of his troubles; and that troubles still more serious might
+befall him unless he abandoned it; and accordingly I told him so.
+
+It was a severe trial. He was, in truth, a most inveterate
+coffee-drinker; and the greater his slavery to it had become, the
+greater his reluctance to believe it produced, on him, any injurious
+effects. He consented, at length, to leave off its use for two months,
+and see if it made any difference with him. Being, however, about half a
+convert to hydropathy, as was also his son, it was concluded, with my
+permission, to apply the cold _douche_ every day to his knee, by way of
+an adjunct to the abstinence plan. No change was made in his diet; as,
+in fact, very little was needed after the coffee had been removed. "But
+one thing is needful," at the same meal, had long been his motto; and he
+was never excessive in the use of even that.
+
+The coffee was laid aside, and resolution was put to the test. He
+suffered in his feelings for want of his accustomed stimulus during the
+first month; but during the second, very little. In about five weeks
+after I saw and had prescribed for him, I met him one day, by accident,
+and inquired about his lameness. "Very much better," said he, smiling;
+"but no thanks to you for it. It is the _douche_ which is curing me." I
+replied that I was not very solicitous to know the cause, provided he
+was cured.
+
+On a more particular inquiry I found that his lameness had nearly
+disappeared already; and what is more remarkable still, it never
+returned. As long as he lived he could walk up and down stairs nearly as
+well as I. He continued to be a water-drinker about ten years, when he
+died, as he had lived, rejoicing in his emancipation from slavery to
+coffee. He believed, most fully, in its evil effects and tendencies, and
+did not hesitate, for many years before he died, to acknowledge that
+belief. Neither his son nor myself had firmer faith in the connection of
+law with penalty, in these matters, that he. And his only regret, in
+this particular, seemed to be that he had suffered himself to remain,
+almost all his lifetime, in what he now regarded as utter ignorance. And
+yet, compared with most men of his day, he was quite enlightened.
+
+The case of Mr. W. was a pretty apt illustration of the truth of what I
+regard as the great or cardinal doctrine of temperance, faintly
+announced in Chapters XVIII., XXI., XXVIII, and elsewhere, viz., that,
+as a general rule, much more mischief is done to society at large by the
+frequent or at least habitual use of small quantities of poison, than by
+an equal aggregate quantity in much larger doses. I mean just this: The
+poisonous effects of Mr. W.'s coffee, though the amount daily taken was
+trifling, produced a greater aggregate of mischief, in the end, than if
+the same amount of poison had been applied in a very short time. A pint
+of rum drank in a single day will do much less mischief to the human
+constitution, than if divided into twenty _small_ doses and two of them
+are taken every day for ten days. In the first case the effect will be
+severe, but temporary; in the second, it will seem to be trifling, but
+there will be an accumulation of ill effects, a heaping up, as it were,
+of combustible matter in the system, till by and by when an igniting
+spark comes to be applied to the pile, lo! we have an explosion.
+
+Some of the hydropathists who knew the facts concerning Mr. W.,--for the
+case did not occur in a corner,--tried to make it appear, perhaps in
+all honesty, that he was cured by the cold _douche_. Now I have no
+disposition to deny, wholly, its good effects. I have given you the
+facts just as they were. Yet I have not a doubt that had he returned to
+his coffee, the same troubles or others of equal magnitude would have
+fallen to his lot again, despite the influences of the _douche_. In
+truth, I know of no sensible hydropathist who, in such a case, would
+rely upon the _douche_ alone; which is to concede, practically, all that
+I desire to claim.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LIV.
+
+THE OPIUM PILL BOX.
+
+
+The statements of the following chapter will include a confession of one
+of the principal faults of my life,--a fault, moreover, which, as a
+physician, I ought to have guarded against with the most assiduous and
+unwearied care. For no man more than the medical man, is bound to let
+his light shine--especially in the matter of general temperance, in such
+a manner that others may be benefited by it.
+
+When, in the beginning of my medical career, I attempted to establish a
+temperance society, though I was exceedingly free from the charge of
+using distilled liquors, according to the tenor and spirit of the
+pledge, yet exposed, as I was, to colds, and delicate in constitution,
+and above all, particularly liable, in the daily routine of business, to
+temptation, I was yet one of those who lay aside one stimulus and retain
+or resort to another. I did not, indeed, use my substitute with much
+freedom, at first. The example daily before me, which was alluded to in
+Chapter LII, was sufficient, one would think, to deter me from excess;
+and so it proved. All I did for some time, whenever I had been
+peculiarly exposed and feared I had taken cold, was to go and swallow a
+small pill--say about a grain--of opium.
+
+But as usually happens in such cases, though the pill seemed to remove
+all tendency to cold, or in other words to cure me for the time, the
+necessity for recurring to it became more and more frequent and
+imperious, till I was, at length, a confirmed opium taker. And
+yet--strange to say it--all the while I regarded myself as a rigid
+temperance man; nay, I was a violent opposer of the use even of opium as
+a daily stimulus, in the case of everybody but myself. My apology
+was--and here was the ground of self-deception--that I only used it as
+a medicine, or rather as a medical means of prevention.
+
+It is, however, quite obvious to my own apprehension now, that a
+substance is hardly entitled to the name of medicine, in any ordinary
+sense of the term, which is used nearly or quite every day. Yet to this
+stage of opium taking I soon arrived. Nay, I went even much farther than
+this, and was, at length, pretty well established in the wretched habit
+of using this poisonous drug three times a day.
+
+In the summer of 1830, while under the full habitual influence of opium,
+I had a slight attack of dysentery. It even went so far as to derange
+all my habits, and to break in, among the rest, upon my opium taking.
+Opium or laudanum was, indeed, included in the prescription of my
+physician,--for I did not wholly rely on my own judgment in the
+case,--but as a habitual daily stimulus, at certain fixed hours, it was,
+of course, omitted. As I began to recover, however, my old desire for
+the opium pill began to recur, at the accustomed former hours, and with
+all its wonted imperiousness.
+
+In a moment of reflection, reason resumed her throne, and the inquiry
+came up, whether I should ever again wear the chain which had been
+temporarily loosened. After a short debate, it was decided in the
+negative. But a second question soon came up, whether I could keep my
+resolution. This was a matter of serious inquiry, and it caused a
+somewhat lengthy mental discussion.
+
+During the discussion a new thought struck me. It was a child's thought,
+perhaps; and yet it was interesting, and not to be despised for its
+simplicity and childishness. It was that I would take my opium, what I
+had in the house, and after carefully enclosing it in my pill box, would
+make use of the box as a nucleus for the twine I was daily using. "When
+I am inclined to break my resolution," thought I, "nothing shall be done
+till I have unwound the ball of twine. I shall thus gain a little time
+for reflection; and perhaps before I come to the opium, I may permit
+reason to return and to mount the throne. The trial shall, at all
+events, be made."
+
+My resolution was carried into effect, and steadily adhered to. The
+opium was fairly entombed in the twine, where, for aught I know, it
+still remains. Most certainly I never saw it more; nor have I ever
+tasted any of the opium or laudanum family, from that day to the
+present, whether in sickness or in health.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LV.
+
+BLEEDING AT THE LUNGS.
+
+
+Having occasion to go to the metropolis, one day, I took the most
+expeditious public conveyance which the times and the season afforded.
+It was January, 1832. Railroad cars were not so much in vogue that I
+could step into one of them, and, unless in case of accident, be there
+in four or five hours, as I now could. It required something like
+twenty-four hours to perform the journey I proposed, especially in the
+winter.
+
+We started at three o'clock in the morning. It had recently snowed, the
+snow was deep, and the path was not well broken. Of course it was not
+daylight when we set out, and as it was cloudy, it proved, as is not
+unfrequent in such cases, to be the darkest time in the whole
+twenty-four hours. However, we did as well as we could--driver, horses,
+passengers, and all.
+
+Our company consisted of seven males and two females. The coach was
+small, and we filled it to the brim. The weather was by no means very
+cold for the season; at least, it was not extreme. There was a sound of
+rain,--the January thaw, perhaps, as we are wont to call it,--but as
+yet, fortunately for us, the storm had not begun.
+
+We had proceeded about ten miles, and the day had not yet dawned, when,
+in passing around the point of a hill and winding our way among the deep
+drifts, our driver and his charge missed the path, and we were
+precipitated down a steep bank. The horses stopped immediately. Every
+effort was made to rescue us from the stage-coach, which was lying on
+its side, deeply embedded in the snow. I was so situated at the first
+moment after the overturn, that most of the affrighted passengers made
+use of me as a stepping-stone in their endeavors to reach the door
+above, which was either opened or broken. At last we were all fairly
+outside of the coach; no one appeared to be seriously injured.
+
+As we were at a considerable distance from any dwelling-house, and as
+the stage-coach was somewhat broken, and the harnesses torn, it required
+a full hour to put things to rights, so as to enable us to proceed.
+Meanwhile, though the weather was not very cold, it was quite chilly.
+Some of the passengers stood still or sat still; others walked about.
+The day had broken when we renewed our journey.
+
+The sleighing here was better than at the place where we started. At the
+next stage-office we exchanged our coach for a huge sleigh, which was
+not only more commodious than the coach, but more easily drawn over the
+ground, especially for a short time.
+
+About noon it began to rain. Soon the travelling became worse again, and
+our progress was slow and tedious. To me, the tediousness of the journey
+was increased by a lame shoulder--the effect either of the overturn, or
+of being used as a stair when the passengers made their sudden exit, or
+of both. No bones were broken, nor joints dislocated; though there were
+several considerable bruises.
+
+Our other troubles were not yet over. In the midst of a violent rain,
+and at a considerable distance from any public house, our sleigh broke
+down, and we were obliged to send for a wagon. In making the exchange,
+moreover, we were more or less exposed to the storm. I for one became
+considerably wet, and did not get perfectly dry till we reached the
+metropolis.
+
+We arrived at evening at a large thoroughfare, forty miles or more from
+our point of destination, when, after procuring a comfortable supper and
+a good sleigh, with a new relay of horses, we set out to perform the
+remainder of our journey. This was fortunate and very expeditious. We
+reached our place of destination just before midnight, having travelled
+the last forty-two miles in little more than four hours. This was almost
+equal to railroad speed; but it was good sleighing, and we had with us,
+in the sleigh, the United States mail, which imposed on the driver a
+necessity of being as expeditious as the nature of the case would admit.
+For even then, we had been twenty-one hours in making our passage.
+
+I soon discovered that I had taken a severe cold during the journey; nor
+do I believe my opium itself would have saved me. My only medicine was a
+warm bed, into which I threw myself as soon as possible. In the morning
+I repaired as early as I could to a boarding-house, in which a friend to
+whom I had previously written, had made ready a place for me.
+
+I was at first quite ill; but in the hope that a few days of rest would
+restore me, I was not particularly anxious about myself, though some of
+my friends were so. Several individuals called to inquire after my
+health--nearly every one of whom pressed me to take medicine.
+
+The second day after my arrival I began to expectorate a little blood.
+Those who were familiarly acquainted with my consumptive tendencies
+became greatly alarmed. They thought me not only presumptuous, because I
+took nothing, but absolutely and carelessly ungrateful. And as I refused
+to dose myself, they pressed me to send for a physician.
+
+Yielding, at length, to their importunity, they called one of the oldest
+and best physicians in the metropolis. He was an eccentric man, but he
+had the full confidence of the better sort of people, and richly
+deserved it; and I knew I should not be advised by him hastily. He was
+acquainted with my peculiar views, at least in part. Besides, I should
+not be obliged to follow his counsel implicitly. I should still be my
+own physician. My disease had not, at least thus far, impaired my
+intellect or taken out of my hands my free agency.
+
+The doctor remained with me half an hour or so, during which time I made
+him acquainted, as perfectly as I could, with my whole case. My good
+friends, many of them, sat around waiting almost with impatience, to
+hear him bid them or me to do some great thing--for great men though
+some of them were, they were not great in matters pertaining to health
+and disease. They were born, several of them, in the eighteenth
+century.
+
+At length the time for prescription and departure had arrived, and my
+good brother and father of the lancet rose very deliberately, and said
+with great gravity, "You will be obliged to stay in your room a few
+days, and keep both your body and mind as quiet as possible. For the
+most part, it will be well to maintain a recumbent position. For food,
+use a little water gruel. In following this course, I think you will
+very soon find yourself convalescent." Then, with a sort of stiff bow,
+that every one who knew him could pardon in so excellent a man, he said,
+"Good-morning, sir,--Good-morning, gentlemen;" and was making the best
+of his way to the door of the chamber. "Will it not be needful for you
+to call again?" I said to him. "I shall be most happy to call," said he,
+"should it be necessary; but I doubt very much whether my advice will be
+any farther required."
+
+My friends were very much astonished that he did not prescribe active
+medicine. "What can it mean?" they asked again and again. For myself,
+too, I must confess that I was not a little disappointed. Not that I had
+any considerable attachment to pills and pill boxes,--such a confidence
+had gone by long before, as you know,--but I verily thought my
+particular tendencies to pulmonary consumption demanded a little
+tincture of digitalis, or something in the shape of strong medicine.
+
+But the physician knew my theories, better than he knew the power of
+that habit whose chains, in this respect, he had long ago escaped. For I
+learned afterwards, much better than I then knew, that so feeble was his
+faith in medicine, at least in all ordinary cases, that whenever the
+intelligence of his patients would at all warrant it, he prescribed, as
+he had for me, just nothing at all, but left every thing to be done by
+Nature and good common-sense attendants. This was, in fact, just what he
+attempted to do here. He doubtless supposed my friends were nearly as
+well informed in the matter as I was; and that I was as fully
+emancipated in practice as I was in theory.
+
+"How much drugging and dosing might be saved," I said to myself, when I
+came to reflect properly on the subject, "if mankind were duly trained
+to place a proper reliance on Nature and Nature's laws, instead of
+fastening all their faith on the mere exhibition of some mystic powder
+or pill or tincture--or, at best, a few drops of some irritant or
+poison. It is their ignorance that makes their physicians' and
+apothecaries' bills so heavy, and the grave-digger's calling so good and
+so certain."
+
+It is hardly necessary for me to say that I followed the advice which
+had been so wisely given, and which, after all, was but the echo of my
+own judgment, when that judgment was freely exercised. My friends were
+not satisfied at first; but when they saw that I was slowly recovering,
+they submitted with as good a grace as they could. The fact was that
+they had no court of appeal. They had selected a man who was at the head
+of his profession, and whose voice, in the medical world, and as a
+medical man, wherever he was known, was law. Had some young man given
+such "old woman's" advice, as they would most certainly have regarded
+it, they would have appealed to a higher court.
+
+No man ever did better, when placed in similar circumstances, with the
+aid of medicine, than I did without it. In two weeks, at farthest, I was
+as well as I had been at any time in ten years or even twenty. What more
+or greater could I have asked? What more could my friends have expected?
+What more could have been possible? Could Hippocrates or Galen have done
+more?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LVI.
+
+BUTTER EATERS.
+
+
+About the year 1833, I became somewhat intimately acquainted with the
+dietetic and general physical habits of a young woman in a family where
+I was a boarder, whose case will be instructive.
+
+She was about twenty-five years of age, and resided in a family that had
+adopted her as their own, her parents being unknown. She possessed a
+good natural constitution; and was, for the most part, of good habits.
+If there was any considerable defect of constitution, it consisted in a
+predominance of the biliary and lymphatic over the nervous and sanguine
+temperaments. Yet she was not wholly wanting in that susceptibility, not
+to say activity, which the sanguine temperament is wont to impart. But
+the same necessity which is so often the mother of invention, is also
+sometimes the progenitor of a good share of activity; and this was, in a
+remarkable degree, the lot of Miss Powell.
+
+Although her skin was not by any means fair, it was not a bad skin. It
+was firm in its structure, and very little susceptible of those slight
+but ever recurring diseased conditions in which persons of a sanguine
+temperament so often find themselves involved. Such I mean to say was
+her natural physical condition, when uninfluenced by any considerable
+practical errors.
+
+And yet I had not been many months one of her more intimate
+acquaintances, ere her face--hitherto so smooth and transparent--became
+as rough and congested as any drunkard's face ever was, only the
+eruption was more minute. It was what the common opinion of that region
+would have called a rash. It came on suddenly, was visible for a short
+time, and then gradually disappeared, leaving, in some instances, a
+branny substance, consisting of a desquamation of the cuticle.
+
+When the eruption had once fairly disappeared, her skin was as smooth as
+ever. Then again, however, in a little time, its roughness would return,
+to an extent which, to young ladies, is usually quite annoying. Young
+men, in general, are not so much disturbed by a little roughness of the
+skin, as the young of the other sex.
+
+My particular acquaintance with her habits and annoyances continued as
+many as four or five years. During this period there were several
+ebbings and flowings of this tide of eruptive disease. My curiosity,
+towards the end of this period, was so much excited that I sought and
+obtained of her an opportunity for conversation on the subject. The
+result was as curious as it was, to me, unexpected. It appeared, in the
+sequel, that she understood, perfectly well, the whole matter, and held
+the control of her cutaneous system in her own hands, nearly as much as
+if she had been a mere piece of mechanism. She had not sought for
+medical advice, because she knew the true method of cure for her
+complaints as well as anybody could have told her.
+
+In truth, she cured it about once a year, simply by omitting the cause
+which produced it. This she had found out was butter, salted butter, of
+course, eaten with her meals. She had somehow discovered that this
+article of food was the real cause of her disease, and that entire
+abstemiousness in this particular, would, in a reasonable time, remove
+it.
+
+I inquired why, after a long period of abstinence from butter, she ever
+returned to its use. Her reply was that she was too fond of it to omit
+it entirely and forever. She preferred to use it till the eruption began
+to be quite troublesome, which was sometimes many weeks; then abstain
+from it till she recovered, and then return to it. This gave her an
+opportunity to use it from one-third to one-half of the time; and this
+she thought greatly preferable to entire abstinence.
+
+At this time I did not press her to abandon wholly an article of food,
+which, though partially rejected, was yet slowly producing derangement
+of her digestive system, and might, in time, result in internal disease,
+which would be serious and irremediable. I did not do it; first, because
+I knew my advice would not be very acceptable; secondly, for want of
+that full measure of gospel benevolence which leads us to try to do
+good, even in places where we have no right to expect it will be
+received; and, lastly, no doubt for want of moral courage.
+
+Were I to live my life over again, particularly my medical life, I would
+pray and labor for a little more of what I am accustomed to call holy
+boldness. By this term I do not mean _meddlesomeness_,--for this is by
+no means to be commended,--but true Christian or apostolic boldness.
+
+Of late years the young woman above referred to has been in
+circumstances which, I have reason to believe, practically precluded the
+use of the offending article. I meet her occasionally, but always with a
+smooth face, which greatly confirms my prepossessions.[H] Happy would it
+be for a multitude of our race if their circumstances were such as to
+exclude this and many other articles of food and drink which are well
+known to injure them.
+
+One instance occurred in the very neighborhood of the foregoing, which,
+though I received it at second hand, is not a little striking, and is
+wholly reliable. A certain young mother--the wife of a merchant in easy
+circumstances, was so excessively fond of butter, that, though she was a
+dyspeptic, and knew it increased her dyspepsia, she used to eat it in a
+manner the most objectionable which could possibly have been devised.
+
+For example: she would take a ball of this article,--say half or
+three-quarters of a pound,--pierce it with the point of a firm stick,
+and having heated it, on all sides, over the fire, till the whole
+surface was softened, would then plunge it into a vessel of flour, in
+such a manner that the latter would adhere to it on all sides, till a
+great deal was absorbed by the butter. Having done this, she would again
+heat the surface of the ball and again dip or roll it in the flour. This
+alternate melting the surface of the ball and rolling it in flour, was
+continued till the whole became a mass of heated or scorched flour,
+entirely full of the melted butter, and as completely indigestible as it
+possibly could be, when she would leisurely sit down at a table and eat
+the whole of it.
+
+Did it make her sick?--you will ask. It did, indeed, and she expected it
+would. She would go immediately to bed, as soon as the huge bolus was
+swallowed, and lie there a day or two, perhaps two or three days.
+Occasionally such a surfeit cost her the confinement of a whole week.
+
+It is truly surprising that any Christian woman should thus make a beast
+of herself, for the sake of the momentary indulgence of the appetite;
+but so it is. I have met with a few such. Happily, however, conduct so
+low and bestial is not so frequent among females as males, though quite
+too frequent among the former so long as a single case is found, which
+could be prevented by reasoning or even by authority.
+
+There is one thing concerning butter which deserves notice, and which it
+may not be amiss to mention in this place. What we call butter, in this
+country,--what is used, I mean, at our tables,--is properly pickled or
+salted butter. Now, I suppose it is pretty well understood, that in some
+of the countries of Europe no such thing as salted or pickled butter is
+used or known. They make use of milk, cream, and a little fresh butter;
+but that is all. In the kingdom of Brazil, among the native population,
+at least, no such thing as butter, in any shape, has ever yet been
+known.
+
+Fresh butter is sufficiently difficult of digestion; but salted butter
+is much more so; and this is the main point to which I wish to call your
+attention. Why, what is our object in salting down butter? Is it not to
+prevent change? Would it not otherwise soon become acid and
+disagreeable? And does not salting it so harden or toughen it, or, as it
+were, fix it, that it will resist the natural tendency to decomposition
+or putrefaction?
+
+But will not this same "fixation," so to call it, prepare it to resist
+changes within the stomach as well as outside of it; or, in other words,
+prevent, in a measure, the work of digestion? Most unquestionably it
+will. And herein is the stronghold of objection to this article. Hence,
+too, the reason why it causes eruptions on the skin. The irritation
+begins on the lining membrane of the stomach. The latter is first coated
+with eruption; and, after a time, by what is called sympathy, the same
+tendency is manifested in the face.
+
+These things ought to be well understood. There is great ignorance on
+this subject, and what is known is generally the _ipse dixit_ of
+somebody. Reasons there are none for using salted butter. Or, if any,
+they are few, and frequently very flimsy and weak. Let us have hygiene
+taught us, were it only that we may know for ourselves the right and
+wrong of these matters.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[H] Since this was penned, the young woman has died of erysipelas. Can
+it be that she has been compelled, in this form, to pay a fearful
+penalty for her former abuses? One might think that twenty years of
+reformation would have worn out the diseased tendencies. Perhaps she
+recurred, in later years, unknown to the writer, to her former favorite
+article.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LVII.
+
+HOT HOUSES AND CONSUMPTION.
+
+
+If any individual in the wide world needs to breathe the pure
+atmospheric mixture of the Most High,--I mean a compound of gases,
+consisting, essentially, of about twenty parts of oxygen and eighty of
+nitrogen,--it is the consumptive person. Mr. Thackrah, a foreign writer
+on health, says, "That though we are eating animals, we are breathing
+animals much more; for we subsist more on air than we do on food and
+drink."
+
+And yet I know of no class of people, who, as a class, breathe other
+mixtures, and all sorts of impurities, more than our consumptive people.
+First, their employments are very apt to be sedentary. Under the
+impression that their constitutions are not equal to the servitude of
+out-of-door work, agricultural or mechanical, they are employed, more
+generally, within doors. They are very often students; for they usually
+have active, not to say brilliant minds. And persons who stay in the
+house, whether for the sake of study or anything else, are exceedingly
+apt to breathe more or less of impure air.
+
+Secondly, it is thought by many that since consumptive people are
+feeble, they ought to be kept very warm. Now I have no disposition to
+defend the custom of going permanently chilly, in the case of any
+individual, however strong and healthy he may be; for it is most
+certainly, in the end, greatly debilitating. It would be worse than
+idle--it would be wicked--for consumptive people to go about shivering,
+day after day, since it would most rapidly and unequivocally accelerate
+their destruction.
+
+And yet, every degree of atmospheric heat, whether it is applied to the
+internal surface of the lungs through the medium of atmospheric air, or
+externally to the skin, is quite as injurious as habitual cold; and
+this in two ways: First, it weakens the internal power to generate heat,
+which, no doubt, resides very largely in the lungs. Secondly, it takes
+from them a part of that oxygen or vital air which they would otherwise
+inhale, and gives them in return a proportional quantity of carbonic
+acid gas, which, except in the very small proportion in which the Author
+of nature has commingled it with the oxygen and nitrogen of the
+atmosphere, is, to every individual, in effect, a rank poison.
+
+Hence it is that those who have feeble lungs, or whose ancestors had,
+should pay much attention to the quality of the air they breathe,
+especially its temperature. And this they should do, not only for the
+_sake_ of its temperature, but also for the sake of its purity. Such a
+caution is always needful; but its necessity is increased in proportion
+to the feebleness of the lungs and their tendency to suppuration,
+bleeding, etc.
+
+I was once called to see a young woman (in the absence of her regular
+physician) who was bleeding at the lungs. She had bled occasionally
+before, and was under the general care of two physicians; but a sudden
+and more severe hemorrhage than usual had alarmed her friends, and, _in
+the absence of better counsel_, they sought, temporarily, the advice of
+a stranger.
+
+It was a cold, spring day, and in order to keep up a proper temperature
+in her room, I had no doubt that a little fire was needful. But instead
+of a heat of 65 deg. in the morning and something more in the afternoon, I
+found her sitting in a temperature, at ten o'clock in the forenoon, of
+not less than 75 deg. or 80 deg. On inquiry, I was surprised to find
+that the temperature of her room was seldom much lower than this, and
+that sometimes it was much higher. I was still more surprised when I
+ascertained that she slept at night in a small room adjoining her
+sitting-room, and that a fire was kept all night in the latter, for her
+special benefit.
+
+No wonder her cough was habitually severe! No wonder she was subject to
+hemorrhage, from the irritated vessels of the lungs! The wonder was that
+she was not worse. The greatest wonder of all was, however, that two
+sensible physicians should, for weeks if not for months, have
+overlooked this circumstance. For I could not learn, on inquiry, that a
+single word had been said by either of them on the subject.
+
+If you should be inclined to ask whether she had no exercise in the more
+open and pure air, either on horseback or in a carriage, the reply would
+be, none at all. Horseback exercise was even regarded as hazardous, and
+other forms of exertion had not been urged, or, that I could learn, so
+much as recommended.
+
+I was anxious to meet her physicians, that I might communicate my views
+and feelings directly to them; but as this was not convenient I gave
+such directions as the nature of the case seemed to require, requesting
+them to follow my advice till the arrival of her physicians, and then to
+lay the whole case before them. My advice was, to reduce the temperature
+of the sitting-room as low as possible, and yet not produce a sensation
+of chilliness, and to have her sleeping-room absolutely cold, taking
+care to protect her body, however, by proper covering. I also
+recommended exercise in the open air, such as she could best endure; and
+withal, a plain, unstimulating diet.
+
+What was done, I never knew for many months. At last, however, I met
+with a neighbor of the family, one day, who told me that the young
+woman's physicians entirely approved of my suggestions, and that by
+following them out for some time, she partially recovered her wonted
+measure of health.
+
+Whether she recovered entirely, I never knew. The far greater
+probability is, that she remained more comfortable through the summer
+and autumn, but that the injudicious management of the next winter and
+spring reduced her to her former condition, or to a condition much
+worse. People are exceedingly forgetful even of their dearest rights and
+interests. They may, perhaps, exert themselves in the moment of great
+and pressing danger; but as soon as the danger appears to be somewhat
+over they relapse into their former stupidity.
+
+There is, however, much reason for believing that consumptive people
+might often live on many years beyond their present scanty limit, could
+they be made to feel that their recovery depends, almost wholly, on a
+strict obedience to the laws of health, and not on taking medicine. If
+Miss H., by strict obedience, could recover from a dangerous condition,
+and enjoy six or eight months of tolerable health, is it not highly
+probable, to say the least, that a rigid pursuance of the same course
+would have kept her from a relapse into her former low and dangerous
+condition?
+
+It is in this way, as I suppose, that consumption is to be cured, if
+cured at all. It is to be _postponed_. In some cases it can be postponed
+one year; in some, five years; in some, ten, fifteen, or twenty; in a
+few, forty or fifty. It is in this respect with consumption, however, as
+it is with other diseases. In a strictly pathological sense, no disease
+is ever entirely cured. In one way or another its effects are apt to be
+permanent. The only important difference, in this particular, between
+consumption and other diseases, is, that since the lungs are vital
+organs, more essential to life and health than some other organs or
+parts, the injury inflicted on them is apt to be deeper, and more likely
+to shorten, with certainty, the whole period of our existence.
+
+Connected with this subject, viz., the treatment of consumption, there
+is probably much more of quackery than in any other department of
+disease which could possibly be mentioned. One individual who makes
+pretensions to cure, in this formidable disease, and who has written and
+spoken very largely on the subject, heralds his own practice with the
+following proclamation: "Five thousand persons cured of consumption in
+one year, by following the directions of this work." Another declares he
+has cured some sixty or seventy out of about one hundred and twenty
+patients of this description, for whom he has been called to prescribe.
+
+Now, if by curing this disease is meant the production of such changes
+in the system, that it is no more likely to recur than to attack any
+other person who has not yet been afflicted with it, then such
+statements or insinuations as the foregoing are not merely groundless,
+but absolutely and unqualifiedly false, and their authors ought to know
+it. For I have had ample opportunity of watching their practice, and
+following it up to the end, and hence speak what I know, and testify
+what I have seen. But if they only mean by cure, the _postponement_ of
+disease for a period of greater or less duration, then the case is
+altered; though, in that case, what becomes of their skill? No book
+worthy of the name can be consulted by a consumptive person without his
+deriving from it many valuable hints, which if duly attended to may
+assist him in greatly prolonging his days; and the same may be said of
+the prescriptions of the physician. Yet, I repeat, it is a misnomer, in
+either case, to call the improvement a cure.
+
+Consumptive people continue to live, whenever their lives are prolonged,
+as the consequence of what they do to promote their general health. One
+is roused to a little exercise, which somewhat improves his condition,
+and prolongs his days. Another is induced to pay an increased regard to
+temperature, and he lives on. Another abandons all medicine, and throws
+himself into the open arms of Nature, and thus prolongs, for a few
+months or a few years, his existence. If this is _cure_, then we may
+have all or nearly all of our consumptives cured, some of them a great
+many times over. Some few aged practitioners may be found to have cured,
+during the long years of their medical practice, more than five thousand
+persons of this description.
+
+There is no higher or larger sense than this in which any individual has
+cured five thousand, or five hundred, or even fifty persons a year, of
+consumption. On this, a misguided, misinformed public may reply: Many,
+indeed, revive a little, as the lamp sometimes brightens up in its last
+moments; but this very revival or flickering only betokens a more speedy
+and certain dissolution.
+
+On the other hand, predisposition to consumption no more renders it
+necessary that we should die of this disease in early life, at an
+average longevity of less than thirty years, than the loading and
+priming of a musket or piece of artillery renders it necessary that
+there should be an immediate or early explosion. Without an igniting
+spark there will be no discharge in a thousand years. In like manner, a
+person may be "loaded and primed" for consumption fifty years, if not
+even a hundred, without the least necessity of "going off," provided
+that the igniting spark can be kept away. Our power to protect life,
+both in the case of consumption and many more diseases, is in proportion
+to our power to withhold the igniting spark.
+
+And herein it is that medical skill is needful in this dreadful disease,
+and ought to be frequently and largely invoked. If the estimate which
+has been made by Prof. Hooker, of Yale College, that one in five of the
+population of the northern United States die of consumption, is correct,
+then not less than two millions of the present inhabitants of New
+England, New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, are destined, as things now
+are, to die of this disease. What a thought! Can it be so?
+
+Can it be that two millions of the ten millions now on the stage of
+action in the northern United States, are not only _predisposed_ to
+droop and die, but are laid under a constitutional necessity of so
+doing? Must the igniting spark be applied? Must the disease be "touched
+off" with hot or impure air, by hard colds, by excitements of body and
+mind, and in a thousand and one other ways? People are not wholly
+ignorant on this great subject. Would they but _do_ as well as they
+_know_, the fatal igniting spark would be much oftener and longer
+withheld; and, indeed, in many instances, would never prove the
+immediate cause of dissolution. The lamp of life would burn
+on--_sometimes, it may be, rather feebly_--till its oil was wholly
+exhausted, as it always ought. Man has no more occasion, as a matter of
+necessity, to die of consumption, than the lamp or the candle.
+
+This, if true,--and is it not?--should be most welcome intelligence in a
+country where, at some seasons and in particular localities, one-fourth
+of all who die, perish of this disease. In March, 1856, twenty-one
+persons out of eighty who died in Boston in a single week, were reported
+as having died of consumption; and in June of the same year, the
+proportion was nearly as great. In Newton, a few miles from Boston, the
+proportion for the last ten years has been also about one in four.
+
+But place the proportion for the whole northern United States, at one in
+five only, or even one in six. Yet even at this rate, the annual
+mortality for New York or New England, must be about twelve or fourteen
+thousand. Yet it seems to excite little if any surprise. But when or
+where has the cholera, the yellow fever, or the plague depopulated a
+country of three millions of people, for each succeeding year, at the
+rate of twelve thousand annually, or one hundred and twenty thousand
+every ten years?
+
+One reason why the statements I have made, of the possible postponement
+of consumptive disease, should be most welcome intelligence, is found in
+the fact that they inspire with the hope of _living_. The ordinary
+expectation that those who inherit a consumptive tendency must die
+prematurely, has been fatal to thousands. Mankind, in more respects than
+one, tend to become what they are taken to be. If we take them to be
+early destined to the tomb, they go there almost inevitably. There is, I
+grant, one most fortunate drawback upon this tendency. Most people who
+have the truly consumptive character, are disposed to disbelieve it.
+They are generally "buoyant and hopeful," which, in some degree,
+neutralizes the effect of sombre faces, and grave and prognosticating
+jeremiades.
+
+It will not be out of place to present the patient reader with an
+anecdote, which may or may not be true, but which I received as truth
+from the people of the neighborhood where the facts which it discloses
+are said to have occurred.
+
+In the eastern part of Connecticut, not many years since, a young man
+lay on his bed, very feeble and greatly emaciated, almost gone, as
+everybody supposed but himself, with pulmonary consumption. And yet, up
+to that very hour, the thought that his disease was consumption, had
+never obtained a lodgment in his own mind for a moment. On the contrary,
+he was still fondly hoping that sooner or later he should recover.
+
+It was fortunately about the middle of the forenoon one day,--an hour
+when his body and mind were in the best condition to endure it,--that
+his listening ear first caught from those around him the word
+_consumption_. Starting up, he said, "Do you think my disease is
+consumption?" They frankly told him their fears. "And do you think," he
+added, "that I must die?" They did not conceal longer their real
+sentiments.
+
+He was for a few moments greatly distressed, and seemed almost
+overpowered. At length, however, a reaction came, when, raising his head
+a little, he deliberately but firmly exclaimed, "I can't die, and I
+won't die." After a few moments' pause and reflection, he said, "I must
+be got up." His attendants protested against the effort, but it was to
+no purpose. Nothing would satisfy him but the attempt. He was bolstered
+up in his bed, but the effort brought on a severe fit of coughing, and
+he was obliged to lie down again.
+
+The next forenoon, at about the same hour, he renewed the request to be
+got up. The result was nearly as before. The process, however, was
+repeated from day to day, till at length, to the great joy and surprise
+of his friends, he could sit in his bed fifteen or twenty minutes. It is
+true that it always slightly increased the severity of his cough; but
+the paroxysm was no worse at the twentieth trial than at the first,
+while he evidently gained, during the effort, a little muscular
+strength. It was not many weeks before he could sit up in bed for an
+hour or more, with a good degree of comfort.
+
+"Now," said he, "I must be taken out of bed and placed in a chair." At
+first his friends remonstrated, but they at length yielded and made the
+attempt. It was too much for him; but he persevered, and after a few
+repeated daily efforts, as before, at length succeeded. Continuing to do
+what he could, from day to day, he was, ere long, able to sit up a
+considerable time twice a day.
+
+He now made a third advance. He begged to be placed in an open carriage.
+As I must be brief, I will only say that, after many efforts and some
+failures, he at length succeeded, and was able to ride abroad several
+miles a day, whenever the weather was at all favorable. Nor was his
+cough at all aggravated by it. On the contrary, as his strength
+increased, it became rather less harassing and exhausting.
+
+One more advance was made. He must be helped, as he said, upon a horse.
+It was doubtful, even to himself, whether he had strength enough to
+endure exercise in this form; but he was determined to try it. The
+attempt was completely successful, and it was scarcely a week before he
+could ride a mile or two without very much fatigue.
+
+The final result was such a degree of recovery as enabled him to ride
+about on horseback several miles a day for six years. He was never quite
+well, it is true, but he was comfortable, and, to some extent, useful.
+He could do errands. He could perform many little services at home and
+abroad. He could, at least, take care of himself. At the end of this
+period, however, his strength gave way, and he sank peacefully to the
+tomb. He was completely worn out.
+
+Now the principal lesson to be learned from this story is obvious.
+_Determination_ to live is almost equivalent to _power_ to live. A
+strong will, in other words, is almost omnipotent. Of the good effects
+of this strong determination, in case of protracted and dangerous
+disease of this sort, I have had no small share of experience, as the
+reader has already seen in Chapter XXIII.
+
+Another fact may be stated under this head. A young man in southern
+Massachusetts, a teacher, was bleeding at the lungs, and was yielding at
+length to the conviction--for he had studied the subjects of health and
+disease--that he must ere long perish from consumption. I told him there
+was no necessity of such a result, and directed him to the appropriate
+means of escape. He followed my directions, and after some time regained
+his health. Ten or twelve years have now passed away, and few young men
+have done more hard work during that time than he; and, indeed, few are
+able, at the present moment, to do more. It is to be observed, however,
+that he made an entire change in his dietetic habits, to which he still
+adheres. He avoids all stimulating food--particularly all animal
+food--and uses no drink but water.
+
+I did not advise him, while bleeding, to mount a hard-trotting horse,
+and trot away as hard as he could, and let the blood gush forth as it
+pleased. It is a prescription which I have not yet hazarded. I might do
+so in some circumstances, when I was sure of being aided by that almost
+omnipotent determination of which I have elsewhere spoken. I might do it
+occasionally; but it would be a rare combination of circumstances that
+would compel me. I might do it in the case of a resolute sea captain,
+who insisted on it, would not take _no_ for an answer, and would assume
+the whole responsibility. I might and would do it for such a man as Dr.
+Kane.
+
+I have, myself, bled slightly at the lungs; but while I did not, on the
+one hand, allow myself to be half frightened to death, I did not, on the
+other hand, dare to meet the hemorrhagic tendency by any violent
+measures; not even by the motion of a trotting horse. I preferred the
+alternative of moderate exercise in the open air, with a recumbent
+position in a cool room, having my body well protected by needful
+additional clothing, with deep breathing to expand gently my chest, and
+general cheerfulness. But I have treated on this subject--my own general
+experience--at sufficient length elsewhere.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LVIII.
+
+POISONING BY A PAINTED PAIL.
+
+
+A child about a week old, but naturally very sensitive and irritable,
+became, one night, unusually restless and rather feverish, with
+derangement of the bowels. The condition of the latter was somewhat
+peculiar, and I was not a little puzzled to account for it. There was
+nothing in the condition of the mother which seemed to me adequate to
+the production of such effects. She was as healthy as delicate females
+usually are in similar circumstances.
+
+The derangement of the child's bowels continued and increased, and I was
+more and more puzzled. Was it any thing, I said to myself, which was
+imbibed or received from the mother? Just at the time, I happened to be
+reading what Dr. Whitlaw, a foreign medical writer, says of the effects
+which sometimes follow when cows that are suckling calves feed on
+buttercup. The poison of the latter, as he says, instead of injuring the
+cow herself, affects, most seriously, the calf, and, in some few
+instances, destroys it. This led me to search more perseveringly than I
+had before done, for a cause of so much bowel-disturbance in my young
+patient.
+
+At length I found that a wooden pail, in which water was kept for family
+use, had been but recently painted inside; and that the paint used was
+prepared in part, from the oxyde of lead, usually called white lead. On
+this I immediately fastened the charge of poisoning.
+
+My suspicions were confirmed by the fact that the mother had been more
+thirsty and feverish than usual, during a few hours previous to the
+child's first manifestation of disease, and had allowed herself to drink
+very freely of water, which was taken from the very pail on which our
+suspicions now rested. Another fact of kindred aspect was, that the
+child recovered just in proportion as the mother left off drinking from
+the painted pail, and used water which was procured in vessels of whose
+integrity we had no doubt.
+
+Most people who had any knowledge of the facts in the case, said that
+the cause I assigned could not have been the true one, since it was
+inadequate to the production of such an effect. But the truth is, we
+know very little about poisons, in their action on the living body,
+whether immediate or remote. Till this time, although I had read on it
+as much as most medical men, yet I knew--practically knew--almost as
+little as the most illiterate. Yet the subject was one with which
+professional physicians should be familiarly acquainted, if nobody else
+is. Many an individual, as we have the most abundant reason for
+believing, loses his health, if not his life, from causes which appear
+to be equally slight. A Mr. Earle, of Massachusetts, cannot swallow a
+tumbler of water containing a few particles of lead, without being made
+quite sick by it. Nor is he alone in this particular. Such sensitiveness
+to the presence of a poisonous agency is by no means uncommon. It may be
+found to exist in some few individuals in every country, and almost
+every neighborhood.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LIX.
+
+ONE DROP OF LAUDANUM.
+
+
+A babe, not yet a day old, came under my care for treatment. What the
+symptoms were, except those of nervous irritation, I have now forgotten;
+but there was ample evidence of much disturbance in the system, and the
+parents and friends were exceedingly anxious about the results.
+
+Now it was one of those cases in which a large proportion of our medical
+men are exceedingly ignorant, and only guess out the cause or causes as
+well as they can. I was thus ignorant, and would not--and as an honest
+man, _could_ not--attempt to divine the cause or give a name to the
+disease. Yet I must needs, as I verily thought, prescribe something and
+somehow. So I took a single drop of laudanum, and diluted it well, and
+made the child swallow it.
+
+He soon became easy, quite too easy, and fell into a profound sleep. So
+deep and profound, in fact, was its sleep, or rather its _stupor_, that
+I began to be afraid it never would awake. How strange, I thought within
+myself, that a single drop of this liquid should produce so much effect!
+Yet it taught me wisdom. It taught me to let medicine alone--strong
+medicine, at least--in the diseases of very young children. It also
+taught me not to give too large doses to anybody, especially to those
+who had never taken any before. The first dose, for unperverted nature,
+must be very small indeed!
+
+How much my little patient was injured, permanently, by this act of
+unpardonable carelessness, I never knew. It may have laid the foundation
+for many ills which he has since experienced, some of which have been
+severe and trying. Or, if otherwise, it may have aggravated such ills as
+had their origin in other causes. Or, if nothing more, it may have
+contributed to a delicacy and sensitiveness and feebleness of
+structure, which can never, in all probability, be fully overcome, and
+which have more to do, even with our moral tendencies and character,
+than most of us are fully aware.
+
+How much would I give to be able to blot from my history such errors and
+defects of character as this! For, though I confess to nothing worse
+than haste and carelessness, in the present instance, yet a medical man,
+like the commander in the battle field or elsewhere, has no right to be
+careless. My aged, honored father gravely insisted, all his life long,
+that no accidents, as they are termed, in human life, ever take place,
+unless there is in the first place, carelessness, somewhere. Much more
+is it true that many an individual who sickens and loses his life, is
+the victim of carelessness; or, what is the same thing, want of
+attention, when great care and attention were necessary, and the issues
+of life and death were suspended, as it were, on a thread!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LX.
+
+MRS. KIDDER'S CORDIAL.
+
+
+Should you ever go to Boston, and pass along a certain street called
+Court Street, almost to its western extremity, you may probably see at
+your left hand, in large letters of various fantastical shapes, the
+words which I have placed at the head of this chapter; viz., "MRS.
+KIDDER'S CORDIAL." Sometimes, I believe, it is called her cholera
+cordial; but it is sufficiently well known, as I suppose, by the former
+name.
+
+But how is it known? Not merely by the sign I have mentioned, fastened
+up at the door of that aforesaid shop in Court Street, but by a host of
+advertisements in the public papers; and in other cities as well as
+Boston. You may find them in almost every public house, post-office,
+railroad depot, and grocery in New England; or, as I might perhaps say,
+in the whole Union.
+
+I once had a child severely sick, at a season of the year when not only
+the Asiatic cholera prevailed, but also the cholera morbus. She was
+teething at the time, which was doubtless one cause of her illness,--to
+which however, as I suppose, other causes may have been added. In any
+event, she was in a very bad condition, and required the wisest and most
+careful medical attention. There was also a young woman in the house who
+was ill in the same way, but not so ill as the child.
+
+At that time my residence was very near the metropolis, though, as I
+have already told you, Mrs. Kidder's cordial could be had almost
+everywhere. Having occasion to go to town, I fell in with an old friend
+who kindly inquired after the health of my family. When I had told him,
+he boldly and with true Yankee impertinence, asked what I had done for
+my family patients; to which I replied, with a frankness and simplicity
+which was fully equal to his boldness, "Nothing, as yet." "Do you mean
+to do nothing?" said he, with some surprise. I told him that I did not
+know what I might do in future, but that I saw no necessity of using any
+active medication at present. "Are you not aware," I added, "that
+physicians seldom take their own medicines or give them to their
+families?"
+
+"I know very well," said he, "that physicians theorize a good deal about
+these matters; but after all, experience is the best school-master.
+Should you lose that little girl of yours, simply because you are
+anxious to carry out a theory, will you not be likely to regret it? As
+yet you have lost no children, and therefore, though much older than
+myself, you have not had all the experience which has fallen to my lot;
+and experience is the best school-master."
+
+"True," I answered, "I am not too old to learn from that experience,
+which, in a certain sense, is the basis of all just knowledge,
+especially in medicine. What you call my theory, or at least all the
+theory I have, is grounded on this same experience; not, indeed, that of
+one man in one neighborhood, nor, indeed, in one nation. I have looked
+the world over."
+
+"And you have come to the very wise conclusion, it would seem," said he,
+"that medicine never does any good, and that you will never give it
+more, except to those who are determined to have it, or will not fasten
+their faith on any thing else."
+
+"Not exactly that," I replied. "I can think of a great number of cases
+in which I would give medicine. For example: suppose one of my children
+had by the merest accident taken a dose of poison, which, if retained,
+must inevitably destroy it, I would much sooner give that child an
+active emetic--which, of course, is medicine--than stand still and see
+it die."
+
+"Very well," said he, "your child and Miss L., are, in one point of
+view, poisoned. They will probably die, if you stand still and do
+nothing; at least I have not a doubt that the little girl will. Now take
+my advice, and do something before it is too late. Give up all your
+theories and fine-spun reasonings, and do as others do, and save your
+child."
+
+As I had but little time for conversation with him, even on a highly
+important and deeply interesting subject, above all to point out the
+difference between the two cases he mentioned. I was now about ready to
+say "Good-morning," and leave him. "Stop a moment," said he, "and go
+with me to the second shop beyond that corner, and get a bottle of Mrs.
+Kidder's cordial for your sick folks."
+
+Here I smiled. "Well," said he, "you may continue to smile; but you will
+mourn in the end. I have used Mrs. Kidder's cordial in my family a good
+deal, and I assure you it is no humbug. It is all it promises. Now just
+go with me, for once, and get a bottle of it. Depend upon it, you will
+never regret it."
+
+Although my good friend had not succeeded in changing my views by his
+many affirmations, nor by his strong appeal to his experience of the
+good effects of the cordial in his own family (for I well knew he had
+lost almost all his children), I consented to go with him to the shop,
+partly to get rid of him. When we arrived I bought a bottle of the
+cordial,--I believe for fifty cents,--put it in my pocket, and carried
+it home with me.
+
+When I reached home I put away the bottle, on a shelf in our family
+closet which was quite unoccupied, and inquired about the patients. The
+little girl was rather better, it was thought, but Miss L. was still
+weak and low. I told them about the adventure with the bookseller, but
+omitted to state that I had purchased the cordial.
+
+In a very few days, by dint of good care and attention, and the blessing
+of a kind Providence, the sick were both of them much better, and I
+could leave them for a whole day at a time. My business in town demanded
+my presence, and I repaired thither again. And who should I meet, on
+getting out of the omnibus, but my old friend, who had reasoned with me
+so patiently and perseveringly, in defence of Mrs. Kidder's cordial?
+
+He inquired, almost immediately, about my family; to which I joyfully
+replied, "Better, all better. They were better in less than two days
+after I last saw you;--yes, they were a little better that very
+evening."
+
+"I told you it would be so," said he. "I never knew the cordial to fail
+when taken in season. I have lost several children, it is true; but they
+did not take it soon enough. I am profoundly glad you were in season.
+Does it not operate like a charm?"
+
+"Exactly so," said I, "if it operates at all; exactly like a charm, or
+like magic. Shall I tell you the whole story?"
+
+"By all means," he replied; "let us have the whole of it; keep nothing
+back."
+
+"Well, then, I went home, and placed the bottle of cordial on a high and
+obscure shelf, where nobody would be likely to see it, and proceeded
+with our sick folks just as before. The bottle of cordial remained
+unknown, except to myself, and untouched, and is probably untouched to
+the present hour. So you see--do you not?--how like a charm it
+operates."
+
+"Just _like_ you, doctor. Well, as long as they recovered I do not care.
+But I shall always have full faith in the medicine. I know what I know;
+and if all the world were of your opinion I could not resist a full
+belief in the efficacy of Mrs. Kidder's Cholera Cordial."
+
+My friend was not offended with me, for he was, in the main, a sensible,
+rational man. He pitied me; but, I believe from that time forth, gave up
+all hopes of my conversion. I come to this conclusion because he has
+never uttered a syllable on the subject, in my hearing, from that day to
+this hour, though I have met with him probably fifty times.
+
+There can be no doubt that were we to place full faith in the
+recuperative efforts of nature, three-fourths of our medicine--perhaps I
+may just as well say nine-tenths--would be quite as useful were it
+disposed of in the way I disposed of Mrs. Kidder's cordial, as when
+swallowed. Nay, it is possible it might be much more useful. If a sick
+person can recover without it just as well as _with_ it, he certainly
+will get well more easily, even if it should not be more quickly, than
+if he had a load of foreign substance at his stomach to be disposed of.
+In other words, to get well in spite of medicine seems to me much less
+agreeable, after all that is said in its favor, than to get well in
+Nature's own way.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXI.
+
+ALMOST RAISING THE DEAD.
+
+
+So many people regarded it, and therefore I use the phrase as a title
+for my chapter. I have heard of families of children so large that it
+was not easy to find names for them all. My chapters of confession are
+short, but very numerous, and I already begin to find it difficult to
+procure titles that are _apropos_.
+
+Mary Benham was the second daughter, in an obscure and indigent family
+that resided only a little distance from my house, just beyond the
+limits of what might properly be called the village. I do not know much
+of her early history, except that she was precocious in mind, and
+scrofulous and feeble in body.
+
+The first time I ever heard any thing about her, was one night at a
+prayer-meeting. Mr. Brown, the minister, took occasion to observe, at
+the close of the meeting, in my hearing, that he must go to Mr. Benham's
+and see Mary, for she was very ill, and it was thought would not live
+through the night.
+
+She survived, however, as she had done many times before, and as she did
+many times afterward, in similar circumstances. More than once Mr. Brown
+had been sent for--though sometimes other friends were called, as Mr.
+Brown lived more than a mile distant--to be with her and pray with her,
+in what were supposed to be her last moments. But there was still a good
+deal of tenacity of life; and she continued to live, notwithstanding all
+her expectations and those of her friends.
+
+It appeared, on inquiry, that her nervous system was very much
+disordered, and also her digestive machinery. She was also taking, from
+day to day, a large amount of active medicine. Still no one appeared to
+doubt the propriety of such a course of treatment, in the case of a
+person so very sick as she was; for how, it was asked, could she live
+without it?
+
+In one or two instances I was sent for; not, indeed, as her physician,
+but as a substitute for the more distant or the absent minister. At
+these visits I learned something, incidentally, of her true physical
+condition. I found her case a very bad one, and yet, as I believed, made
+much worse by an injudicious use of medicine.
+
+Yet what could I do in the premises? I had not been asked to prescribe
+for her, nor even to give counsel as a supernumerary or consulting
+physician. Dr. M. paid her his weekly and semi-weekly visits, and
+doubtless supposed all the wisdom of the world added to his own would
+hardly improve her condition. I was, of course, by all the rules of
+medical etiquette, and even by the common law of politeness, obliged to
+bite my lips in silence. One thing, indeed, I ventured to do, which was
+to send her a small tract or two, in some of the departments of hygiene
+or health.
+
+Soon after this her physician died; and died, too, by his own
+confession, publicly made, of stomach disease,--at least, in part. He
+was a man of gigantic body and great natural physical force. His
+digestive apparatus was particularly powerful, and it had been both
+unwisely cultivated and developed in early life, and unwisely and
+wickedly managed afterward. For an example of the latter, he would,
+while abroad among his patients, sometimes go without his dinner, and
+then, on his return to his family and just as he was going to bed, atone
+for past neglect by eating enough for a whole day, and of the most solid
+and perhaps indigestible food. In this and other abusive ways he had
+been suicidal.
+
+But he was now gone to his final account, and on whose arm could Mary
+lean for medical advice? Her parents were too poor to pay a physician's
+bill. What had been paid to her former medical attendant--which, indeed
+was but a mere pittance--was by authority of the town. Mary felt all the
+delicacy she should have felt, in her circumstances, and perhaps more,
+for she refused for some time to ask for farther aid, preferring to
+groan her way alone.
+
+One evening, when I was present on a moral errand, she spoke of the
+great benefit she had derived from the perusal of the little books I had
+sent her, and modestly observed that, deprived as she was by the wise
+dispensation of Providence, of her old friend and physician, she had
+sometimes dared to wish she could occasionally consult me. I told her I
+hoped she would not hesitate a moment to send for me, whenever she
+desired, for if in a situation to comply with her requests, I would
+always do so immediately. She was about to speak of her poverty, when I
+begged her not to think of that. The only condition I should impose, I
+told her, was that she should do her very best to follow, implicitly, my
+directions. With this condition she did not hesitate to promise a full
+and joyful compliance.
+
+From that time forth I saw her frequently, since I well knew that even
+voluntary visits would be welcome. I found she had become convinced of
+the necessity of breathing pure air, and of ventilating her room every
+day. Nor did she neglect, as much as formerly, the great laws of
+cleanliness. Yet, alas! in this respect, the hard hand of necessity was
+upon her. She could not do all she wished. However, she could apply
+water to her person daily, if she could not to her clothing and bedding;
+so that, on the whole, she did not greatly suffer. Her mother did what
+she could, but she was old and decrepit.
+
+She had also made another advance. She had contrived to obtain, I hardly
+know from what source, but probably from the hands of kind friends, a
+small amount of good fruit to use daily, with one or more of her meals.
+This excluded a part or portion of that kind of food which was more
+stimulating and doubtful.
+
+But the greatest difficulty we had to encounter was to shake off the
+enormous load of narcotic medicine which had been so long prescribed for
+her that she seemed unable to live without it. Morphine, in particular,
+she had come to use in quantities which would have destroyed a person
+who was unaccustomed to its influence, and in frequently repeated
+doses. I told her she might as well die in one way as another; that the
+morphine, though it afforded a little temporary relief, was wearing out
+her vital energies at a most rapid rate, and that the safest, and, in
+the end, the easiest way for her was, to abandon it entirely. She
+followed my advice, and made the attempt.
+
+I have forgotten how long a time it required to effect a complete
+emancipation from her slavery to drugs; but the process was a gradual
+one, and occupied at least several months. In the end, however, though
+not without considerable suffering, she was perfectly free, not only
+from her slavery to morphine, but to all other drugs. All this time,
+moreover, she was as _well_, to say the least, as before; perhaps, on
+the whole, a little better.
+
+I now set myself, in good earnest, to the work of improving her physical
+habits. The laws of ventilation and cleanliness, to which her attention,
+as I have already intimated, had become directed, were still more
+carefully heeded. She was required to retire early and rise early, and
+to keep her mind occupied, though never to the point of fatigue, while
+awake. Her habits with regard to food and drink were changed very
+materially. The influence of the mind on the condition of the body was
+also explained to her, and the influence of temperature. In short, she
+was brought, as fast as possible, to the knowledge of physical law in
+its application to her circumstances, and encouraged to obey it.
+
+The recuperative powers of nature, even in unfavorable circumstances,
+were soon apparent. This greatly increased her docility and inspired her
+with faith and hope. The greatest trouble was in regard to muscular
+exercise. Much of this was needed; and yet how could it be obtained? She
+could not walk, and yet, in her indigence, she had no means of
+conveyance, except at the occasional invitation of some friend.
+
+But this even had its good tendencies. To take her up, as we would have
+taken a child, set her in a carriage and let her ride half a mile or a
+mile, was obviously of great service to her. She was far less fatigued
+by it than was expected; her subsequent sleep was far better; nor did
+any remote evil effects follow. This greatly increased her courage, and
+raised the hopes of her friends.
+
+She was at length able to be placed in the railroad cars, and with the
+aid of coaches, at embarking and disembarking, to travel about a good
+deal, to the distance of ten, twelve, or twenty miles; and all this with
+favorable effects. Her recovery, at no distant day, began to be
+regarded, by the most sceptical, as quite probable.
+
+My removal, a hundred miles or so from the village, just at this time,
+was, however, a misfortune to her. In one of her excursions, she
+received and accepted an invitation to spend a few months with a distant
+relative, where she came under the influence of one of the phases of
+modern quackery, by means of which her progress to the promised land of
+health was very considerably retarded. She even sickened, but afterward
+recovered.
+
+Sometime after this, as I subsequently learned, she partially regained
+her good condition of steady progress, and returned to her father's
+house. Finding herself, at length, able to do something for her support,
+she entered into the service of a neighboring family, at first with
+little compensation except her board, but subsequently at half pay or
+more. Her domestic duties were such as only taxed her system to a degree
+which she was able to endure without any injury.
+
+It was in this condition, that, after two or three years of absence, I
+found her and rejoiced with her. For, though she could no more be said
+to be restored to perfect health, than a vessel could be considered
+perfectly sound that is full of shot holes, yet her condition was far
+enough from being desperate, and was even comparatively excellent. I
+left her once more with the tear of gratitude to God on her cheek, and
+again, for many long years, neither saw her nor heard from her.
+
+At our next interview she brought with her a gentleman whom she
+introduced to me as her husband. The meeting was to me wholly
+unexpected, but most happy. She lived in this relation, but without
+progeny, a few years more, and then sank in a decline, to rise no more
+till the sound of the last trumpet.
+
+Of the particulars of her decline and death, I have never heard a word.
+Her scrofulous temperament and tendencies rendered her liable to
+numerous diseases of greater or less severity and danger, to some of
+which she probably fell a victim. It is, however, by no means impossible
+that her numerous cares and anxieties--for she was naturally very
+sensitive--may have hastened her exit.
+
+If I have any misgivings in connection with this protracted, but very
+interesting case, and consequently any confessions to make, it is with
+reference to the point faintly alluded to in a preceding paragraph.
+While I honor, as much as any man, the marriage relation,--for it is in
+accordance with God's own intention, and is the first institution of
+high Heaven for human benefit and happiness,--I must freely confess that
+in the present fallen condition of our race, it occasionally happens
+that an individual is found unfit for the discharge of its various
+duties, as well as for the endurance of some of its peculiar
+responsibilities. Such, as I believe, among others, was Mary Benham.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXII.
+
+FEMALE HEALTH, AND INSANE HOSPITALS.
+
+
+A female, about thirty-five years of age, and naturally of a melancholic
+temperament, was very frequently at my room for the purpose of
+conversing with me in regard to her health. Most of her complaints--for
+they were numerous--were grafted upon a strongly bilious habit, and were
+such as required in the possessor and sufferer, more than an ordinary
+measure of attention to the digestive organs and the skin. And yet both
+these departments, especially the latter, had been in her case,
+hitherto, utterly neglected. To speak plainly, and with some license as
+a physiologist, _she had no skin_. It was little more than a mere
+wrapper, so far as the great purposes of health were concerned. A dried
+and even tanned hide, could it have been fitted to her person with
+sufficient exactness, would have subserved nearly the same purposes.
+
+Perhaps you will excuse the tendency in the description of this case, to
+exaggeration, when you are informed that the treatment of themselves, in
+the particular here alluded to, by females especially, is one which
+habitually fills one with disgust, and sometimes with indignation.
+Persons of good sense, of both sexes, who from month to month, perhaps
+from year to year, never wash their skins, nor use much muscular
+exercise, ought to know that they must, sooner or later, experience the
+dreadful penalty attached to violated physical law, and from which there
+is, neither on earth nor in heaven, any possible escape. Can any one
+suppose, for a moment, that so curious and complicated an organ as the
+skin, and one of such considerable extent, has nothing to do?
+
+Nearly every living person has some idea, of greater or less intensity,
+of pores in the skin; at least, they use language which implies such an
+idea. They talk, often, of the necessity of keeping these pores open.
+But how is it to be done? Not certainly while they use little or no
+muscular exercise, by washing, once a day, their hands and faces merely,
+or, as some say, their fingers, their noses, and the tips of their
+chins. They may talk, on occasions, very boldly and flippantly, about
+_sweating_ away a cold, as they term it; but do they vainly suppose that
+the sweat vessels or sweating machinery has nothing to do, from day to
+day, which might prevent the necessity of resorting to these sweating
+processes?
+
+Miss L. appeared to be in utter ignorance of any laws of the skin, or of
+the digestive or muscular systems. And yet her thoughts had been turned,
+often and frequently, to her own feelings and sensations. She would
+talk, almost incessantly, if anybody would hear her, about her aches and
+pains, and could describe her whole train of feelings, from morning to
+evening, with a faithfulness and patience and minuteness that would have
+furnished a genius less than Defoe with material sufficient for quite a
+huge volume.
+
+Now I could have visited and counselled Miss L., at least once a week,
+with great profit to herself, had she been as intelligent, in general,
+as she was familiar with her own sensations. As things were, her
+confidence was rather more troublesome than agreeable; but she was,
+practically, a standing patient; and physicians, as you know, cannot
+choose. They must be, among mankind, like the Great Physician, as they
+who "_serve_;" not as those who are _to be served_, or accommodated. And
+they must serve those who come to them.
+
+Miss L. was evidently somewhat disappointed, when she found I was not
+disposed to give her any medicine. A little, she thought, might
+sometimes be useful; a great deal she did not believe in, of course.
+Experience had forced upon her some of the lessons of wisdom. However,
+she contrived to fasten a good deal of faith on the laws of health,
+which I continually held forth to her. In particular, I urged on her the
+necessity of endeavoring to keep up what I was wont to call a
+centrifugal tendency in her system. A good plump, healthful, ever
+active, and ever vigorous skin was, as I told her, our only hope in her
+case. As a means to this end, and also as a means of withdrawing her
+attention from the slavery of a constant attendance on her own
+sensations, I urged her to mingle with society much more, and go about
+doing good to others, on the great principle, "It is more blessed to
+give than to receive." I warned her, however, against the danger of
+falling into the habit of giving an account of herself--her woes and
+sorrows--to every one she might meet with, who should kindly inquire
+about her condition, since it would greatly retard her improvement, even
+if it did not keep up or renew her disease.
+
+Among other things, I ventured to suggest to her the importance of
+having something to do--something of a permanent nature. "We hear," I
+said, "of gentlemen at large, and you seem to be a lady at large. You
+have, in the usual acceptation of the phrase, nothing to do. Would it
+not be well for you to take charge of something or of somebody? You
+might, perhaps, assume the office of teacher, and take the charge of a
+few pupils; or even adopt a child or two as your own, where you might
+receive compensation. Or," as I finally added,--for I perceived she
+shrunk from all responsibilities of this kind,--"you might, perhaps,
+become the mistress of a family."
+
+On the last mentioned topic, I was also obliged, for obvious reasons, to
+speak with considerable caution. She was unsocial, timid, fearful of
+being burdened with cares--the very stuff, though she knew it not, that
+human life is made of, ay, and human happiness too. But I could not
+hesitate to make the trial. My suggestions, however, were of little
+avail. She went on for some time, in the old way, and made very little
+progress.
+
+I lost sight of her about this time, and never met her more. The sequel
+of her history I only know from report. It is painful in the extreme. It
+is, however, the history, in all its essential features, of thousands of
+selfish people, who, after all, by dint of numbers, force, and
+influence, contrive to rule the world.
+
+Being fully determined to have no cares or responsibilities connected
+with children or household, she not only refused to hearken to my
+advice, but also to one or more truly kind and promising offers of
+marriage. She pursued her selfish course undisturbed, unless by
+occasional misgivings, till her brain and nervous system suffered so
+severely that she began to approach the confines of insanity.
+
+It was, however, a considerable time before the silver cord was loosed,
+the golden bowl broken, and the wheel broken at the cistern. But the
+terrible result at length came. The demands of violated physical law are
+inexorable. She was conveyed, as a last resort, in the hope of cure, to
+an insane hospital. Here, after many and patient attempts to restore the
+crippled and broken down machinery to healthful motion, she ended her
+days.
+
+My female patients were not all equally unfortunate. One I had, whose
+case, if minutely described, would present an array of facts painful in
+the extreme. She, too, approached the dark regions of insanity; but she
+did not enter. She still lives, and is at once a useful and happy woman,
+and an excellent wife and housekeeper. As a means to her recovery,
+however, she pursued a course diametrically opposite to that pursued by
+Miss L. She did not shrink from care and responsibility; on the
+contrary, she submitted to both. First, she sought increased activity
+and usefulness in her father's family; and, secondly, in a family of her
+own.
+
+Concerning the last mentioned case, I have few misgivings, and equally
+few confessions to make. I call it a remarkable case; but it must not be
+revealed in its details, for other reasons besides its tediousness. In
+the case of Miss L., however, I have one deep and lasting regret.
+
+In the early part of my acquaintance with her, as a medical man, she
+probably had more confidence in my integrity and skill than in those of
+any other living individual. She had been early left an orphan; and I
+was among the first--perhaps the very first--to take the attitude
+towards her of a true father. Such kindness, and especially such
+paternal care, never fail to make their impression.
+
+    "Love, and love only, is the loan for love."
+
+At this early sympathizing period, had I been more faithful, I might,
+perhaps, have saved her. But I was remiss--disposed to delay. I waited,
+a thousand times, for a better opportunity. I waited till the favorable
+moment--ay, the _only_ moment--had passed by.
+
+Physicians often err here. God gives to many individuals the most
+unbounded confidence in medical men; and this remarkable provision of
+his has a deep meaning. It is not, however, to the intent that they
+should abuse the influence thus secured to them, by filling their
+patients' stomachs with pills and powders; but for such purposes,
+rather, as have been indicated by the general tenor of the foregoing
+remarks. It is that they may give them wise paternal counsel and sound
+physiological and pathological instruction.
+
+Such counsel and such instruction were indeed given to Miss L., but not
+to that extent which the nature of the case required, and which a little
+more moral courage and Christian plainness would have secured. She was
+worth saving, and I might, perchance, have been the honored instrument
+of saving her, and of thus rendering to society a most valuable service.
+That vital energy of hers which was expended in watching over her own
+internal feelings, might have been rendered a much more profitable
+investment.
+
+But the account is closed and sealed, to be agitated or questioned no
+more till the inquisitions of the last day. Let such considerations and
+reflections as this remark suggests to the human mind have their
+intended effect. Let us ever increase our zeal and watchfulness, that we
+may avoid such a course of conduct as makes confessions meet, or
+needful, or even salutary.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXIII.
+
+A GIANT DYSPEPTIC.
+
+
+There have been giants in the earth, in nearly every age, if not in
+every clime--giants mentally, and giants physically. Of course they may
+have been rare exhibitions, and may thus have elicited much attention;
+and some of them have attained to quite a memorable place in history.
+
+There have been and still are, on the earth, giants of other
+descriptions. We sometimes even meet with giant dyspeptics. Dyspepsia,
+at best, is formidable, many-headed, but not always gigantic. If
+gigantic size, in this case, were the general rule, what we now call
+giants would, of course, cease to be regarded as such.
+
+It may be thought that what I shall here call dyspeptic giants, or giant
+dyspeptics, were better designated as monsters, than giants. Be it so,
+for we will not quarrel about names; though a difficulty might be found
+in making the required distinction between giants and monsters; for is
+not every giant a monster?
+
+Not far from the year 1830, perhaps a little earlier, you might have
+seen, in connection with a certain private seminary of education, in New
+England, one of these giant dyspeptics. I do not mean, of course, that
+he had already attained to giant size, but only that what proved in the
+result to be gigantic was already a giant in miniature, and was rapidly
+advancing to one of magnitude.
+
+He had early been a cabin boy; and like many other cabin boys, had been
+gluttonous, and in some respects intemperate. Not by any means, that he
+had ever been guilty of downright intoxication; for of this I have no
+certain knowledge. My belief is, however, that he had gone very far in
+this direction, though he might not have--probably _had_ not--been
+justly chargeable with going quite to the last extremity.
+
+But why should such a young man be found at a seminary of learning? Was
+he with "birds of a feather?" Do not these attract each other?
+
+Mr. Gray, for that is the name I shall give to our young dyspeptic, had
+been recently subjected to the influences of one of those seasons of
+excitement well known in the religious world by the name of _revivals_;
+and what is not at all uncommon with the rude and uncultivated minds of
+even more hardened sailors than he, a great change had come over him. In
+short, he had the appearance, in every respect, of being a truly
+converted young man.
+
+Why this change of character had led him to this school-house, may not
+at first appear. Yet such a result is by no means unusual. This waking
+up the mind, by awakening the soul, and causing it to hunger and thirst
+after knowledge, has been observed long since, by those who have had
+their eyes open to what was going on around them.
+
+Young Gray was penniless, and his parents not only poor, but
+overburdened with the cares of a large family, so that they could give
+him no aid but by their prayers. He was not, however, to be discouraged
+by poverty. He agreed to ring the bell, sweep the hall, build fires,
+etc., for his board and tuition. As for clothing, he had none, or almost
+none. Charity, cold as her hand oftentimes is, supplied him with
+something. Dyspepsia had not, as yet, marred his visage or weakened his
+energies.
+
+In his connection with this seminary and others of kindred character,
+such as he could attend and yet pay his expenses by his labor, he
+became, ere long, able to teach others. Here was a new means of support,
+of which he eagerly availed himself. In whatever he undertook, moreover,
+he was singularly successful. He was in earnest. An earnest mind, in
+connection with an indomitable will--what may it not accomplish? It is
+every thing but omnipotent.
+
+"Heaven but persuades, almighty man decrees," as I have before said,
+assuming our old English poets as standard authority; but this saying
+has more in it than mere poetry. Or, if Heaven more than
+persuades--somewhat more--does not man still decree? But I am inclined,
+I see, to press this thought, perhaps in undue proportion to its
+magnitude. Whether or not it abates one half the guilt, I make the
+confession.
+
+For several years Gray pushed his devious course, through "thick and
+thin," sustaining himself chiefly by his teaching. In 1835, he was the
+private instructor of a wealthy family in Rhode Island; but so puzzling,
+not to say erratic, were some of his movements, that he was not very
+popular. Subsequently to this, he was found in another part of New
+England, editing a paper, and teaching at the same time a small number
+of pupils.
+
+All this while he paid great attention to physical education; but being
+either a charity scholar, or obliged to pay his way by his own
+exertions, he had not at command the needful time to render him thorough
+in any thing, even in his obedience, as he called it, to Nature's laws.
+Nearly all his studies were pursued by snatches, or, at least, with more
+or less irregularity.
+
+In nothing, however, was he more irregular than in his diet. This, to a
+person already inclined, as he certainly was, to dyspepsia, was very
+unfortunate. Perhaps, as generally happens in such cases, there was
+_action and reaction_. Perhaps, I mean, his dyspeptic tendencies led to
+more or less of dietetic irregularity; while the latter, whenever
+yielded to, had a tendency, in its turn, to increase his load of
+dyspepsia.
+
+There was, indeed, one apology to be found for his irregularity with
+regard to diet, in his extreme poverty. There were times when he was
+actually compelled to subsist on the most scanty fare; while his
+principles, too, restricted him to very great plainness. In one
+instance, for example, after he had finished his preparatory, course of
+study and entered college, he subsisted wholly on a certain quantity of
+bread daily; and as if not quite satisfied with even this restriction,
+while he needed his money so much more for clothing and books, he
+purchased stale bread--sometimes that which was imperfect--at a cheaper
+rate. Now a diet, exclusively of fine flour bread, and withal more or
+less sour or mouldy, is not very suitable for a dyspeptic, nor yet,
+indeed, for anybody whatever. However, he learned, at length, to improve
+a little upon this, by purchasing coarse, or Graham bread.
+
+Subsequently to this period, not being able, either alone or with the
+aid of friends, most of whom were poor, to pursue a regular academic
+course of instruction, he accepted the proposition that he should become
+an assistant teacher in the English department of a school in Europe.
+This, he feared, might postpone the completion of his studies, but would
+enable him, as he believed, to improve his mind, establish his health,
+and add greatly to his experience and to his knowledge of the world. It
+would also perfect him in teaching, so far at least as the mere
+inculcation of English grammar was concerned.
+
+His health was by no means improved by a residence of three or four
+years in Europe, but rather impaired. He returned to America, in the
+autumn of 1839, and as soon as he had partially recovered from the
+effects of a tedious and dangerous voyage, went to reside in the family
+of a near relative who was a farmer, with a view to learn, for the first
+time, what the labors of the farm would do for him.
+
+Here he often resorted to the same rigid economy which he had before
+practised, both at academy and college, and in Europe. The very best
+living he would allow himself was a diet exclusively of small
+potatoes--those, I mean, from which the larger ones had been separated
+for the use of others.
+
+This, his dyspeptic stomach would not long endure. His digestive and
+nervous systems both became considerably deranged; and even his skin,
+sympathizing with the diseased lining membrane of his stomach and
+intestines, became the seat of very painful boils and troublesome sores.
+These, while they indicated still deeper if not more troublesome
+disease, gave one encouraging indication--that the recuperative powers
+of the system were not as yet irrecoverably prostrated.
+
+He now came to me and begged to become my patient, and to reside
+permanently under my roof, so that he might not only receive such daily
+attention and counsel as the circumstances required, but also such
+food, air, exercise, and ablutions as were needful. He was accordingly
+admitted to the rights, privileges, and self-denials of the family.
+
+Here he spent a considerable time. While under my care, I made every
+reasonable exertion for his recovery which I would have made for a
+favorite child. Indeed, few children were ever more obedient or docile.
+He would sometimes say to me: "Doctor, I have no more power over myself
+than a child, and you must treat me _as you would_ a child." Nor was he
+satisfied till I restricted his every step, both with regard to the
+quantity and quality of his food, and the hours and seasons of bathing,
+exercise, reading, etc. It was to me a painful task, and I sometimes
+shrunk from it, for the moment. There was, however, no escape. I had
+embarked in the enterprise, and must take the consequences.
+
+At first, his improvement was scarcely perceptible, and I was almost
+discouraged. But at length, after much patience and perseverance, the
+suffering digestive organs began, in some measure, to resume their
+healthful condition, and the whole face of things to wear a different
+aspect. He left us to take charge of a public school.
+
+For some time after the opening of this school, his health seemed to be
+steadily improving, and the world around him began to have its charms
+again. He was in his own chosen, and, I might say, native element, which
+was to him a far more healthful stimulus than any other which could have
+been devised, whether by the physician or the physiologist.
+
+Nothing in this world is so well calculated to preserve and promote
+human health, as full and constant employment, of a kind which is
+perfectly congenial and healthful, and which we are fully assured is
+useful. In other words, the first great law of health is benevolence. It
+keeps up in the system that centrifugal tendency of the circulation of
+which I have already spoken, and which is so favorable for the rejection
+of all effete and irritating matters. It would have been next to
+impossible for our Saviour, with head, heart, and hands engaged as his
+were, to have sickened; nor was it till the most flagrant physiological
+transgressions had been long repeated, that even Howard the
+philanthropist sickened and died. Not the whole combined force of
+malaria and contagion could overcome him, till continual over-fatigue,
+persistent cold, and strong tea,--an almost matchless trio,--lent their
+aid to give the finishing stroke.
+
+Mr. Gray was a boarder with a gentleman who kept a grocery store, and
+who was glad to employ him on certain days and hours of vacation or
+recess, in taking care of the shop and waiting on his customers. Here
+the tempter again assailed him, in the form of foreign fruits, raisins,
+figs, prunes, oranges, dried fish, cordials, candy, etc. For some time
+past he had been wholly unaccustomed to these things; they had even been
+forbidden him, especially between his meals. As a consequence of his
+indulgences, and his neglect of exercise, his health again declined, and
+he came a second time under my care.
+
+He was partially restored the second time, but not entirely. His labors,
+which were teaching still, became more exhausting than formerly.
+Cheerfulness, hope, sympathy, conscious usefulness, and the force of
+many good habits, sustained him for a time, but not always. His great
+labors of body and mind, with a deep sense of responsibility, and the
+indulgences to which I have alluded, preyed upon him, and dyspepsia
+began once more her reign of tyranny.
+
+Doubtless he attempted too much here, for he was an enthusiast on the
+subject of common schools and common school instruction. And yet, under
+almost any circumstances of school-keeping, dyspepsia, nurtured as it
+was by every physical habit, would most certainly have assailed him.
+With regard to his food and drink he was very unwise. It contributed
+largely to an extreme of irritability, which was unfavorable, and which
+at the end of a single term compelled him to resign his place and seek
+some other employment.
+
+This was a grievous disappointment to Mr. Gray, and, as some of his
+friends believe, was the mountain weight that crushed him. The horrors
+of the abyss into which he believed he had plunged himself, were the
+more intolerable from the fact that he now, for the first time, began
+to despair of being able to consummate a plan by means of which both his
+sorrows and joys, especially the latter, would have been shared by
+another.
+
+Yet, even here, he did not absolutely despair. Hope revived when he
+found himself, a third time, my patient. I did all in my power to
+encourage him till I had at length, to my own surprise as well as his,
+the unspeakable pleasure of finding him again returning to the path of
+health and happiness. It is indeed true, that a capricious appetite
+still retained its sway, in greater or less degree, and whenever he was
+not awed by my presence, he would indulge himself in the use of things
+which he knew were injurious to him, as well as in the excessive, not to
+say gluttonous, use of such good things as were tolerated. He
+occasionally confessed his impotence, and begged us to keep every thing
+out of his way, even those remnants which were designed for the domestic
+animals!
+
+And yet, after all, strange to say, he absented himself very frequently,
+as if to seek places of retirement, where he could indulge his
+tyrannical appetite. I saw most clearly his danger, and spoke to him
+concerning it. I appealed to his fears, to his hopes, to his conscience.
+I reminded him of the love he bore to humanity, and the regard he had
+for Divinity.
+
+Once more, being partly recruited, he resumed his labors as a teacher.
+This was doubtless a wrong measure, and yet I was not aware of the error
+at the time, or I should not have encouraged the movement, or assisted
+him as I did in procuring a situation. But I then thought he had been
+punished so effectually for his transgressions, that he would at length
+be wise. Besides he was exceedingly anxious to be at work, and to avoid
+dependence, a desire in which his friends participated, and in regard to
+which they were so unwise as to express their over anxiety in his
+hearing.
+
+Three months in the school-house found him worse than ever before. He
+had attempted to board himself, to subsist on a very few ounces of
+"Graham wafers" at each meal, and to be an hour in masticating it. As an
+occasional compensation for this, however, a sort of _treating
+resolution_, he allowed himself to pick up the crusts and other
+fragments left about the school-house by his pupils, and when he had
+collected quite a pile of these, to indulge his appetite with them, _ad
+libitum_. Nor was this all. He erred in other particulars, perhaps in
+many.
+
+He came to my house a fourth time, but my situation was such that I
+could not well receive him. He staid only a day or two, but his
+residence with us was long enough to enable me to mark the progress of
+his case, and to deplore what I feared must be the final issue. From me
+he went to a friend in an adjoining State; not, however, till he had
+alluded to certain errors of his recent life that he had not yet
+devulged, even to his best friend. "Doctor," said he, "there are some
+things that I have not yet told you about."
+
+To me, also, it belongs, at this point of Gray's lamentable history, to
+make confession of great and glaring error. To have received the young
+man to my house, and to have devoted myself to the work of endeavoring
+again to raise him, would, most undoubtedly, have been a sacrifice to
+which few people in my circumstances would have thought themselves
+called. Yet, difficult as it was, the sacrifice might have been made.
+Had he been my only brother, I should, doubtless, have received him. The
+Saviour of mankind, in my circumstances, would probably have taken him
+in. Was I not his follower? And was I not bound to do what I believed he
+would do, in similar circumstances?
+
+His more distant friend, but more consistent Christian brother, opened
+wide his doors for his reception, and did the best he could for him. It
+was his intention, at first, to employ him, as I now think he ought to
+have been employed long before; viz., on a small farm. In this point of
+view this friend's house was particularly favorable. Yet there were
+offsets to this advantage. One thing in particular, cast a shade upon
+our efforts in his behalf. It was about April 1st, and the house and
+farm had an eastern aspect, and the easterly winds, which at that season
+so much prevailed, were very strong and surcharged with vapor at a low
+temperature. For a few days after his arrival he was worse than ever.
+
+This was discouragement heaped upon discouragement, and he began soon to
+sink under it. For a short time he was the subject of medical treatment.
+What was the character of the medicine he took, I never knew. At length
+there were signs of convalescence; but no sooner did his bodily health
+and strength begin to improve, than his mental troubles began to press
+upon him, till he was driven to the very borders of insanity. Indeed, so
+strong was the tendency to mental derangement that his relatives
+actually carried him, _per force_, to an insane hospital.
+
+But his residence at the hospital was very short. Provision having in
+the mean time been made for his reception in a private family, among his
+acquaintance, and the superintendent of the hospital having advised to
+such a course, he was remanded to the country, to familiar faces, and to
+a farm.
+
+On reaching the place assigned him, he became extremely ill,--worse, by
+far, than ever before,--so that, for several weeks, his life was
+despaired of. But by means of careful medical treatment, and a judicious
+and very simple diet, which at the hospital had been exchanged for a
+stimulating one, nature once more rallied, and in three or four weeks he
+appeared to be in a fair way for recovery. His strength increased, his
+mind became clear; his digestive function, though still erratic,
+appeared about to resume its natural condition, and to perform once more
+its wonted office; and the other troublesome symptoms were all gradually
+disappearing, except one;--he had still a very frequent pulse.
+
+But even this rapid arterial action was at length abating. From a
+frequency of the pulse equal to 100, 110, and sometimes 120 in a minute,
+it fell in two weeks to from 70 to 75; and this, too, under the
+influence of very mild and gentle treatment. There was no reduction of
+activity or power, by bleeding, or by blistering, or in any other way;
+on the contrary, as I have intimated, there was a general increase of
+strength and vigor, both of body, and mind. He did not even take
+digitalis or morphine. The prospect, therefore, was, on the whole, truly
+encouraging.
+
+And yet he had a set of friends--relatives, I should say, rather--who
+were not satisfied. It was strongly written on their minds that he was
+about to die; and they sternly insisted on removing him to his native
+home, that if he should die, he might die in the bosom of his own
+kindred. I was consulted; but I entered my most solemn protest against
+the measure, as both uncalled for and hazardous. It was to no purpose,
+however. In their over-kindness they determined to remove him; and the
+removal was effected. I ought also to say that though Mr. Gray highly
+appreciated their kindness, he was himself opposed to the measure, as
+one attended with much hazard.
+
+On the road to his paternal home, influenced in no small degree by
+mental excitement, his delirium returned, and with an intensity that
+never afterwards abated. He was, for about three weeks, a most
+inveterate and raving maniac, when, worn out prematurely with disease,
+he sunk to rise no more till the general resurrection.
+
+There was no post-mortem examination of this young man, though there
+should have been. Not that there was any lurking suspicion of
+peculiarity of disease, but because such examinations may always be made
+serviceable to the cause of medical science, while they cannot possibly
+injure either the dead or the living.
+
+I have been the more minute in my account of this man, because the case
+is an instructive one, both to the professional and non-professional
+reader, and also because it places medicine and physicians in the true
+light, and holds forth to the world the wonderfully recuperative power
+of nature, and the vast importance of giving heed to the laws of health
+and to the voice of physiology.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXIV.
+
+GETTING INTO A CIRCLE.
+
+
+The oddity of some of my captions may seem to require an apology; but I
+beg the doubtful reader to suspend any unfavorable decisions, till he
+has read the chapter which follows. He will not, either in the present
+instance or in any other, be introduced to a magic ring, or to the
+mysteries of modern "spiritualism." The circle into which my patient
+fell, was of a different description.
+
+A young mother from the west, about the year 1840, came to consult me
+with regard to her health. Not being able to receive her into my own
+family, I made arrangements for her reception in the immediate
+neighborhood, where she remained for a long time. She was a
+dyspeptic--if not of giant magnitude, but little short of it.
+
+I spent many an hour in endeavoring to set all right, both in mind and
+body. It was, however, much easier to set her head right, than her
+hands, feet, and stomach. She had been under the care of almost all
+sorts of medical men--hydropathic, homoeopathic, and allopathic. Some of
+them, from all these schools, had been men of good sense, while a much
+larger proportion of them had turned out to be fools, and had done her
+more harm than good. In short, like the woman in the New Testament, she
+had spent much on many physicians, and was nothing bettered by it, but
+rather made worse.
+
+Under such circumstances what ground was there for hope? What she most
+needed, it was easy to see, was a little more of resolution to carry out
+and complete what she believed to be her duty. I told her so. I told her
+how many times I had repeated to her the same directions; while she,
+after the lapse of a very few days,--sometimes only a day or two,--had
+come round again, in her remarks and inquiries, to the very point whence
+she had first started. I told her how easy a thing this getting into a
+circle was, and how difficult it was to escape from it.
+
+Although she perfectly understood her condition, there was still a
+strange and almost unaccountable reaching forth for something beyond the
+plain path of nature, which I had faithfully and repeatedly pointed out
+to her. She wished for some shorter road, something mysterious or
+magical. She was, in short, a capital subject for humbuggery, had she
+not tried it already to her heart's content.
+
+Occasionally, I must confess, I felt somewhat disposed to put her on the
+"starvation plan," as Dr. Johnson calls it,--on a diet of two pints only
+of plain gruel (thin hasty pudding, rather) a day,--for she would have
+borne it much better than did Mr. Gray, of the preceding chapter. I am
+sorry I did not. However, I prescribed for her, in general, very well;
+and, except in the last-mentioned particular, have no reason for regret
+nor any call for confessions.
+
+She remained under my care several weeks--all the while in a mill-horse
+track or circle, beginning at the same point and coming round to the
+same result or issue, when I frankly told her, one day, that it was a
+great waste, both of time and money, for her to remain longer. I saw,
+more and more clearly, that all her thoughts were concentrated on her
+own dear self. _Her_ troubles, _her_ health, _her_ concerns, _her_
+prospects in life and death, were, to her, of more importance than all
+the world besides. No woman, as good as she was,--for she was,
+professedly, a disciple of him who said to his followers, "Feed my
+lambs,"--whom I have ever seen, was so completely wrapped up in self,
+and so completely beyond the pale of the world of benevolence.
+
+My final advice to her, in addition to that general change of personal
+habits which, from the first, I had strongly recommended to her, was to
+return to her native city, and, after making her resolution and laying
+her plan, give herself no rest, permanently, till by personal appeal or
+otherwise she had brought all the females within her reach into
+maternal associations, moral reform societies, and the like.
+
+On her return to her husband and children, she made an attempt to carry
+out the spirit of my prescription, and not without a good degree of
+success. But the great benefit which resulted from it--that, indeed,
+which it was my ultimate object to secure--was that it diverted her
+thoughts from their inward, selfish tendency, and placed her on better
+ground as to health than she had occupied for some time before.
+
+I saw her no more for ten or twelve years. Occasionally, it is true, I
+heard from her, that she was better. Yet she was never entirely well.
+She was never entirely beyond the circle in which she had so long moved.
+She returned, at times, to medical advice and medicine; but, so far as I
+could learn, with little permanent good effect. She died about twelve
+years after she left my "guardianship," an extreme sufferer, as she had
+lived; and a sufferer from causes that a correct education and just
+views of social life, and of health and disease, would, for the most
+part, have prevented.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXV.
+
+POISONING WITH MAPLE SUGAR.
+
+
+A particular friend of mine purchased one day, at a stand in the city,
+two small cakes of maple sugar. It was early in the spring, and very
+little of the article had as yet been manufactured. My friend, in his
+eagerness, devoured them immediately. He observed, before eating them,
+that they had a very dark appearance; but the taste was correct, as far
+as he could judge, and he did not hesitate. He was one of those
+individuals, moreover, who are not greatly given to self-denial in the
+matter of appetite.
+
+The next day he had as sore a mouth as I ever saw. The inflammation
+extended not only to the back part of the mouth, but into the throat,
+and probably quite into the stomach, and was attended with a most
+distressing thirst, with loss of appetite, and occasional nausea. In
+short, it unfitted him for business the whole day; indeed it was many
+days before he recovered entirely.
+
+My own conclusion, after a careful investigation of the facts, was, that
+the sugar was cooled down in vessels of iron, which were, in some way,
+more or less oxydated or rusted, and that a small quantity of free acid
+having been, by some means unknown, developed in the sugar, it entered
+into a chemical combination with the metallic oxyde, to form a species
+of copperas--perhaps the genuine sulphate of iron itself.
+
+No medicine was given, nor was any needed. It was sufficient to let the
+system rest, till Nature, with the assistance of small quantities of
+water,--such as she was constantly demanding,--could eject the intruding
+foe. It required only a little patient waiting.
+
+There is scarcely a doubt that the sufferer learned, from his
+experiment, one important lesson; viz., to let alone every thing which,
+by cooking, has been changed to a dark color. Beets are sometimes
+blackened by cooking in iron vessels, as well as sugar; and so are
+apples and apple-sauce, and sundry other fruits and vegetables.
+
+The word apple-sauce reminds me of an incident that recently occurred in
+my own family. A kind neighbor having sent us some apple-sauce, such of
+the family as partook of it freely, suffered, soon afterward, in a way
+that led to the suspicion of poison. This apple-sauce was quite
+dark-colored, but tasted well enough.
+
+We have seen, in Chapter XXVIII., that in the use of apple-sauce, or
+apple butter, or, indeed, any thing containing an acid, which has been
+in contact with the inner surface of red earthen ware, glazed with the
+oxyde of lead, people are sometimes poisoned; but for common, plain,
+apple-sauce, recently cooked, to be poisonous, is rather unusual.
+However, we can hardly be too careful in these matters. Serious evils
+have sometimes arisen from various kinds of complicated cookery, even
+when the healthiness of the vessels used was quite above suspi. A
+powerful argument this in favor of simplicity.
+
+It should also be remembered, with regard to sugar, that this is a
+substance whose use, even when known to be perfectly innoxious, is, at
+best, of doubtful tendency, beyond the measure which the Divine Hand has
+incorporated into the various substances which are prepared for our use.
+That sugar, in considerable quantities, leads to fulness, if not to
+fatness, is no proof of its healthfulness; since fatness itself is a
+sign of disease in man and all other animals, as has, of late, been
+frequently and fully demonstrated.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXVI.
+
+PHYSICKING OFF MEASLES.
+
+
+The father of a large family came to me one day, and, with unwonted
+politeness, inquired after my health. Of course, I did not at first
+understand him, but time and patience soon brought every thing to light.
+His family, he said, were all sick with measles, except his wife, and he
+wished to ask me a question or two.
+
+The truth is, he wanted to consult me professionally, without paying a
+fee; and yet he felt a little delicacy about it. But I was accustomed to
+such things; for his was neither the first nor the hundredth application
+of the kind; so I was as polite as he was, in return.
+
+Another individual stood near me just at that moment, who supposed he
+had a prior claim to my attention; and I was about to leave Mr. M. for a
+moment, when he said, in a low voice, and in a fawning manner: "I
+suppose, doctor, it is necessary to physic off well for the measles; is
+it not? The old women all say it is; but I thought that, as I saw you,
+it might be well to ask."
+
+This species of robbery is so common, that few have any hesitancy about
+practising it. Mr. M., though passing for a pattern of honesty and good
+breeding, wherever he was known, was nevertheless trained to the same
+meanness with the rest of the neighborhood where I resided, and was
+quite willing--even though a faint consciousness of his meanness chanced
+to come over him now and then--to defraud me a little in the fashionable
+or usual manner.
+
+Perhaps I may be thought fastidious on this point. But though I have
+been sponged,--I may as well again say robbed,--in this or a similar
+way, a hundred or a thousand times, I believe I never complained so
+loudly before. Yet it is due to the profession of medicine, and to those
+who resort to it, that I should give my testimony against a custom which
+ought never to have obtained foothold.
+
+But to return to our conversation;--for I was never mean enough to
+refuse to give such information as was required, to the best of my
+abilities, even though I never expected, directly or indirectly, to be
+benefited by it;--I told him, at once, that if costiveness prevailed at
+the beginning of convalescence, in this disease, some gentle laxative
+might be desirable; but that, in other circumstances, no medicine could
+be required, the common belief to the contrary notwithstanding.
+
+Mr. M. seemed not a little surprised at this latter statement, and yet,
+on the whole, gratified. It was, to him, a new doctrine, and yet he
+thought it reasonable. He never could understand, he said, what need
+there was of taking "physic," when the body was already in a good
+condition.
+
+This physicking off disease is about as foolish as taking physic to
+prevent it--of which I have said so much in Chapter XI. and elsewhere. I
+do not, indeed, mean to affirm that it is quite as fatal; though I know
+not but it may have been fatal in some instances. Death from measles is
+no very uncommon occurrence in these days. Now how do we know whether it
+is the disease that kills or the medicine?
+
+And when we physic off, in the way above mentioned, how know we, that
+if, very fortunately, we do not kill, some other disease may not be
+excited or enkindled? You are aware, both from what has been said in
+these pages, and from your own observation, that measles are not
+unfrequently followed by dropsy, weak eyes, and other troubles. No
+individual, perhaps, is, by constitution, less inclined to dropsy than
+myself; yet he who has read carefully what I have noted in Chapter IV.,
+will not be confident of his own safety in such circumstances. Yet if
+they are endangered who are least predisposed to this or any other
+disease, where is the safety of those who inherit such a
+predisposition?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXVII.
+
+TIC DOULOUREUX.
+
+
+Some fifty years ago, I saw in a Connecticut paper, a brief notice of
+the death of an individual in Wellingworth, in that State, from a
+disease which, as the paper proceeded to state,--and justly too,--not
+one in a million had then ever felt, and which not many at that time had
+ever heard of; viz., _tic douloureux_.
+
+This notice, though it may have excited much curiosity,--it certainly
+arrested my own attention,--did not give us much light as to the nature
+of the disease. "What _is_ tic douloureux?" I asked my friends; for at
+that time, of course, I knew nothing of the study of medicine. They
+could not tell me. "Why do medical men," I asked, "give us such strange
+names? Is it to keep up the idea of mystery, as connected with the
+profession, in order thus to maintain an influence which modest worth
+cannot secure?"
+
+It was largely believed at that time, by myself and many others, that
+science, like wealth,--especially medical science,--was aristocratical;
+that the learned world, though they saw the republican tendencies of
+things, were predisposed to throw dust in the people's eyes as long as
+they could. The fact that almost all our medicines, whether in the
+condition in which we see them labelled at the apothecary's shop, or as
+prescribed by the family physician, have Latin names,--was often quoted
+in proof of this aristocratic feeling and tendency.
+
+Now there was doubtless some foundation for this opinion. Medical men
+did then and still very generally do believe, that it is better, on the
+whole, for the mass of mankind to have nothing to do with these matters,
+except at the prescription of those who have given the best part of
+their lives to the study of medicine and disease. That they are weapons
+of so much power, that even physicians--men who only partially
+understand the human constitution and their influence on it--are almost
+as likely to do harm with them as good, and that it is quite enough for
+society to bear the evils which are connected with the regular study and
+practice of the profession, without enduring a much larger host,
+inflicted by those who have other professions and employments, and must
+consequently be still more ignorant than their physicians. And may not
+this be one reason why a foreign language has been so long retained in
+connection with the names of diseases and medicines?
+
+But though physicians entertain the belief alluded to, and though it
+were founded in truth, it does not thence follow that mankind are to
+remain in ignorance of the whole subject of life and health, nor is it
+the intention of enlightened medical men that they shall. The latter are
+much more ready, as a general rule, to encourage among mankind the study
+of the most appropriate means of preventing disease, than they are
+willing to take the needful pains. In short, though physicians by their
+slowness to act, in this particular, are greatly faulty, the world as a
+mass are still more so.
+
+I was speaking, at first, of tic douloureux. This is a painful affection
+of a nerve or a cluster of nerves. When it first began to be spoken of,
+it was confined chiefly to an expansion of nerve at the side of the
+face, called in anatomical works _pes anserina_. But, of late years, it
+has been found to attack various nerves and clusters of nerves in
+different parts of the body. In truth, under the general name of
+neuralgia, which means about the same thing, we now have tic douloureux
+of almost every part of the human system, and it has become so common
+that instead of one in a million, we have probably one or two if not
+more in every hundred, who have suffered from it in their own persons.
+
+About the year 1840, I had a patient who was exceedingly afflicted with
+this painful disease. She was, at the same time, consumptive. The
+neuralgia was but a recent thing; the consumption had been of many
+years' standing, and was probably inherited. The physicians of her
+native region had exhausted their skill on her to no purpose.
+
+There was no hope of aid, in her case, from medicine. The only thing to
+be done was to invigorate her system, and thus palliate the neuralgia
+and postpone the consumption. She was accordingly placed under the most
+rigid restrictions which the code of physical law could demand. She was
+required to attend to exercise and bathing with great care; to avoid
+over anxiety and fretfulness; to drink water, and to eat the plainest
+food. It was not intended to interdict _nutritious_ food; but only that
+which was _over-stimulating_.
+
+It required considerable time to show her and her friends the practical
+difference between nutrition and stimulation. They thought, as thousands
+have thought beside them, that without a stimulating diet she could not
+be properly nourished. But they learned at length that good bread of all
+sorts, rice, peas, beans, and fruits, especially the first two, while
+they were unstimulating, were even more nutritious than the more
+stimulating articles of flesh, fish, fowl, butter, and milk and its
+products.
+
+The treatment to which she was directed was at length pretty carefully
+followed. The Friends--of which religious connection she was a
+member--are generally thorough, when we gain their full confidence. Her
+health was so far restored, that at one period I entertained strong
+hopes of her ultimate recovery; or, at least of a recovery which would
+permit of her continuance some twenty or twenty-five years longer. But
+after seven or eight years of comfortable though not very firm health,
+she again declined. She died at forty years of age.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXVIII.
+
+COLD WATER IN FEVER.
+
+
+My daughter, then about three years of age, was feverish; and as the
+lung fever was somewhat prevalent, the family became considerably
+alarmed.
+
+On examination, I found a strong tendency to the head. The eye was
+heavy, the head hot and painful, and the tongue thickly coated. The
+digestive system was disordered, and the skin was collapsed, inactive,
+and cold. The extremities, especially the feet, were particularly cold
+and pale.
+
+The days of hydropathy had now arrived; but I was not a full convert, as
+I have already told you, to the exclusive use of cold water in disease.
+However, a case was before me which obviously demanded it. So I
+proceeded to make frequent applications of Nature's drug to the top of
+her head, and to the temples, while I ordered warm and stimulating
+applications to the feet and ankles.
+
+This treatment had the effect to render her condition somewhat more
+comfortable during the day, but at evening the fever returned, and
+during the night was violent. The tendency to the head was so great as
+to cause delirium. The anxiety of the family became very great. In the
+morning, however, she was rather better, so that hope again revived.
+
+During the day the fever increased again, and towards evening and during
+the whole night was accompanied by restlessness and delirium. But we
+only persevered with the more earnestness in the use of what we believed
+to be the most rational treatment. She had, however, a very sick night.
+The next morning she was again better, though, as might have been
+expected, somewhat more feeble than she was twenty-four hours before.
+
+Most parents, I know, and not a few wise medical men among us, would
+have resorted to powders and pills; but we only persevered with our cold
+applications to the head, and our stimulating draughts to the feet. The
+bowels were in a very tolerable condition, otherwise a very mild
+cathartic might possibly have been administered. We had very strong
+hopes,--at least I had,--that nature would be too strong for the
+disease, and that the fever would, ere long, begin to abate.
+
+In the afternoon the fever increased again, in some degree, and there
+was a slight delirium during the succeeding night. She slept a little,
+however, towards morning, after which she was evidently much better.
+This third day was passed away very comfortably, and she slept well
+during the succeeding night. The fourth morning she seemed to be quite
+restored.
+
+Now a case of fever treated with emetics, diaphoretics, etc., and
+followed up with the usual paraphernalia of customary medical practice,
+which should yield so promptly and so immediately, would be supposed to
+be cured by the medicine; and the cure would very probably be regarded
+as rather remarkable; and if there was any peculiarity in the treatment,
+if the diaphoretic powders, for example, had any new or strange name,
+the practice would, peradventure, be thought worth imitating in other
+apparently similar cases of disease.
+
+For myself, however, I simply regard it as one of Nature's own cures,
+unobstructed and unembarrassed by medicine. As the child was young and
+tenacious of life, she might very probably have recovered under the more
+common routine of medical treatment. But would there have been any
+advantage in such a recovery, over one which was equally rapid and
+perfect without the aid of medicine? Would there, in the latter case,
+have been no hazard to the constitution?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXIX.
+
+COLD-TAKING AND CONSUMPTION.
+
+
+In Chapter XXIII., I have given a full account of my partial recovery
+from consumption. I have even spoken of the postponement as if it were
+complete and final. More than twenty years had now passed away, and I
+had begun to indulge the hope that I should never have another relapse.
+
+As one element of this hope, I had nearly broken up the habit--once very
+strong--of taking cold, especially on my lungs. In truth, I believed all
+danger from this source to be entirely removed, and my particular
+susceptibility to any thing like acute pulmonary attacks forever at an
+end. I was confident, moreover, that the art of avoiding cold was an art
+which not only an individual, here and there, like myself, could
+acquire, but one which was within the reach of every one who would take
+the needful pains.
+
+On a certain occasion of this latter kind, I was under a conventional
+necessity of exposing myself, in an unusual degree, for several
+successive evenings, to circumstances which, at an earlier period of my
+life, would, almost inevitably, have been followed by a cold. Was it
+safe, in my present condition, to run the risk? I hesitated for some
+time, but finally decided to comply with the request which had been
+made, and take the responsibility. I believed my susceptibility to cold
+so entirely eradicated that there was little if any danger.
+
+But, as the event proved, I was quite mistaken; a severe cold came on,
+and left me in a condition not merely alarming, but immediately so. My
+lungs were greatly oppressed and my cough exceedingly severe and
+harassing; and it was followed with great debility and rapid emaciation.
+
+Ashamed of myself, especially as I had boasted, for so many years, of
+an entire freedom from all tendencies of this sort, I endeavored, for a
+few days, to screen myself entirely from the public eye and observation.
+But I soon found that inaction, especially confinement to the house,
+would not answer the purpose,--that I should certainly die if I
+persisted in my seclusion.
+
+What now should I do? I was too feeble to work much, although the season
+had arrived when labor in the garden was beginning to be needed. Trees
+were to be pruned and washed, and other things promptly attended to. The
+open air was also the best remedy for my enfeebled and irritated
+bronchial cavities. Whether there was, at this time, any ulceration of
+tubercles in my lungs, is, to say the least, very doubtful. However, I
+greatly needed the whole influence of out-of-door employment, or of
+travelling abroad; and, as it seemed to me, could not long survive
+without it.
+
+Accordingly I took my pruning knife in my hand, and walked to the
+garden. It was about a quarter of a mile distant, and quite unconnected
+with the house I occupied. At first, it was quite as much as I could do
+to walk to the garden and return without attempting any labor. Nor could
+I have done even this, had I not rested several times, both on the road
+and in the enclosure itself.
+
+It was a week before I was able to do more than merely walk to the
+garden and back, and perhaps prune a small fruit tree or shrub, and then
+return. But I persevered. It seemed a last if not a desperate resort;
+yet hope sometimes whispered that my hour had not yet come, that I had
+more work to perform.
+
+At length I began to perceive a slight increase of muscular strength. I
+could work moderately a quarter of an hour or more, and yet walk home
+very comfortably. In about two months, I had strength enough to continue
+my labors several hours, in the course of a whole day, though not in
+succession--perhaps two in the forenoon and two in the afternoon. In
+about three months, I was, so far as I could perceive, completely
+restored.
+
+It is to be remarked and remembered that, during the whole three
+months, I never took the smallest particle of medicine, either solid or
+fluid. My simple course was to obey, in the most rigid and implicit
+manner, all known laws, physical and moral. It was my full belief at
+that time,--it is still my belief,--that conformity to all the Creator's
+laws is indispensable to the best of health, in every condition of human
+life, but particularly so when we are already feeble and have a tendency
+to consumption.
+
+When it became known to my neighbors, who saw me day after day, reeling
+to my garden or staggering home, that I refused to take any medicine,
+there was a very general burst of surprise, and, in some cases, of
+indignation. "Why," said they, "what does the man mean? He must be
+crazy. As he is going on he will certainly die of a galloping
+consumption. Any one that will act so foolishly almost _deserves_ to
+die."
+
+As soon as I found myself fairly convalescent, I returned gradually to
+all those practices on which I had so long relied as a means of
+fortifying myself, but which, since my _fall_, had been partially
+omitted. Among these was bathing, especially cold bathing. To the last,
+however, I returned very cautiously. Not for fear I should not be able
+to secure a reaction, but rather for fear Nature would have to spend
+more _vitality_ during the process than she could well afford to spare.
+
+I have known cases of the latter kind. An aged minister in Cleveland,
+Ohio, who had long followed the practice of cold bathing every morning,
+came to me in Dec. 1851, when the cold weather was very intense, and
+told me that though he could, with considerable effort, get up a
+reaction in his system after the bath, he was afraid it _cost_ too much.
+I advised him to suspend it a few weeks, which he did with evident
+advantage.
+
+There are, however, many other things to be done besides giving due
+attention to cold bathing, if we would harden ourselves fully against
+taking cold, to which I should be glad to advert were it not foreign to
+the plan I had formed, and the limits which, in this work, I have
+prescribed to myself.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXX.
+
+FREEZING OUT DISEASE.
+
+
+I am well acquainted with one man of Yankee origin, who formerly made it
+a practice to freeze out his colds, as he called it. It is certainly
+better to prevent them, as I have all along and always taught. But this
+man's story is somewhat amusing, and by way of relief from our more
+sober subject, I will very briefly relate it.
+
+Whenever he fancied he had taken cold, he would go, at about nine
+o'clock in the evening, in such diminished clothing as would render him
+in a very little time, quite chilly, and remain out of doors, when the
+weather would possibly permit, till he was almost frozen, and then come
+in and go immediately to bed, and procure a reaction. This he called
+freezing out his colds. Whether it was the cold or the heat that
+restored him, may be a point not yet fully settled; but it was a
+well-known fact to his friends, though they insisted in protesting
+against the practice, that every vestige of his cold would frequently,
+if not always, immediately disappear.
+
+But it was a method of treatment which, as the event proved, was not
+without its hazards. I met with him a few years since, and on inquiring
+whether he continued to be as successful as formerly in freezing out his
+colds, he replied that for some time past he had not tried the plan,
+for, on a former occasion, after many successful experiments, he had
+failed in one, and had concluded to relinquish it. He made no farther
+confessions for himself, but his friends have since told me that in the
+case he faintly alluded to, he came very near dying under the process.
+He was sick with a fever, as the consequence, for a long time.
+
+A man in one of the Middle States, who is himself about half a
+physician, and who has in various ways done much for his fellow-men as
+a philanthropist, is accustomed to pursue a course of treatment which,
+though slightly related to the former, is, nevertheless, founded on
+principle. He keeps the sick in a room whose temperature is very
+low,--little, if at all, above the freezing point,--in order that they
+may inhale a full supply of oxygen. For every one doubtless knows that
+the colder the air, the denser it is, and consequently, the greater the
+absolute quantity of oxygen inhaled at each breath. By compelling his
+patients, however weak and feeble, to breathe a cold atmosphere, he
+secured to them an increased and full supply of oxygen.
+
+To prevent his patients from suffering, in consequence of the external
+atmospheric cold, he keeps them in warm beds, and only suffers them to
+be out of bed a very short time, at long intervals. And while out of bed
+even, they are rubbed rapidly, in order to prevent any collapse of the
+skin from the cold. I knew him to keep a very delicate female, who was
+scrofulous if not consumptive, for several weeks of the coldest part of
+the winter, in a room whose temperature seldom exceeded 30 deg. to 40
+deg., scarcely permitting her to go out of it night or day, and what is
+still more curious, she slowly recovered under the treatment, and is
+now--seven or eight years afterwards--in the enjoyment of excellent
+health.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXI.
+
+THE AIR-CURE.
+
+
+The individual alluded to in the preceding chapter, once sent for me to
+come and aid him for a time. He was the proprietor of a somewhat
+dilapidated water-cure establishment, which he wished to convert into
+what he chose to denominate an air-cure. For though half a physician
+himself, he had usually employed men of education to assist him; but,
+not having been quite fortunate in his selection, in every instance, he
+was disposed to make trial of myself.
+
+In expressing to me his desires, he said he understood, perfectly well,
+my position. He well knew, in the first place, that I was not a
+hydropathist, but a regular, old-school physician, with this
+modification: that I had, for the most part, lost my faith in medicine,
+and relied chiefly on the recuperative efforts of Nature. He thought, on
+some points, as he said, a little differently from me; still, he
+supposed that wherein we could not agree we could at least agree to
+differ.
+
+The sum total of his wishes, in short, was, that I would aid him in such
+way and manner as might seem to me best. He believed air to be the most
+important and efficient remedial agent in the world. His ideas of the
+virtue of this aerial fluid were hardly exceeded by those of Mr.
+Thackrah, of Leeds, England, who believes that we subsist more on air
+than on food and drink.
+
+I was with this good man about six months, when, finding it impossible
+to carry out his plan, I left him. But I left him with regret. His
+purposes were generous in the extreme--I might even say noble. He loved
+to cure for the pleasure of curing--not for the emolument. In short, he
+seemed to have no regard to the emolument--not the slightest, and to be
+as nearly disinterested as usually falls to the human lot.
+
+But did he cure? you will perhaps inquire. Yes, if _anybody_ cures.
+Persons came under his care who had been discharged by other
+physicians--both allopathic and homoeopathic--as incurable; and who
+yet, in a reasonable time, regained their health. They followed our
+directions, obeyed the laws of health, and recovered. You may call it
+what you please--either cure or spontaneous recovery. Miracle, I am
+quite sure, it was not.
+
+What, then, were the agencies employed in the air-cure? My friend
+believed that the judicious application of pure air, in as concentrated,
+and, therefore, as cool a state as possible, particularly to the
+internal surface of the lungs, was more important than every other
+agency, and even more important than all others. But then he did not
+forget the skin. He had his air bath, as well as his deep breathings; it
+was as frequently used, and was, doubtless, as efficacious.
+
+He also placed great reliance on good food and drink. Animal food he
+rejected, and condiments. I have neither known nor read of any
+vegetarian, of Britain or America, who carried his dietetic
+peculiarities to what would, by most, be regarded as an extreme, more
+than he. And yet his patients, with few exceptions, submitted to it with
+a much better grace than I had expected. Some of them, it is true, took
+advantage of his absence or their own, and made a little infringement
+upon the rigidity of his prescriptions, but these were exceptions to the
+general rule; and I believe the transgressors themselves regretted it in
+the end--fully satisfied that every indulgence was but a postponement of
+the hour of their discharge.
+
+One thing was permanently regarded as ultra. He did not believe in
+breakfasting; and therefore kept every patient, who wished to come under
+his most thorough treatment, from the use of food till about the middle
+of the day. This permitted of but two meals a day, which, however, is
+one more than has sometimes been recommended by O. S. Fowler, the
+phrenologist, and even by a few others.
+
+The main error, however, of this air-cure practice,--if error there was
+in it,--consisted in the idea of its applicability to everybody, in
+every circumstance. For though it may be true that as large a proportion
+of inveterate cases of disease would disappear under such treatment as
+under any other, yet there are probably not a few to whom it would be
+utterly unadapted.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXII.
+
+THE CLERGYMAN.
+
+
+An Ohio clergyman, just setting out in his ministerial career, consulted
+me, one day, about his health and future physical prospects. His nervous
+system and cerebral centre had been over-taxed and partially prostrated;
+and his digestive and muscular powers were suffering from sympathy. In
+short, he was a run-down student, who, in order to be resuscitated,
+needed rest.
+
+It was not, however, the rest of mere inertia that he required, but rest
+from those studies to which his attention had been long and patiently
+confined. His bodily powers were, indeed, flagging with the rest; but
+then it was impossible for him to be restored without _some_ exercise.
+In truth, it was not so much a _rest_ of body, mind, or heart that he
+needed, as a _change_.
+
+I will tell you what a course he had been, for five or six years,
+pursuing. Though his father was reckoned among the wealthier farmers of
+Ohio, yet, having a large family to sustain and educate, he did not feel
+at full liberty to excuse his children from such co-operation with him
+as would not materially interfere with their studies. Hence they were
+required--and this son among the rest--not only to be as economical as
+possible, in all things, but also to earn as much as they could,
+especially during their vacations. They were not, of course, expected to
+do any thing which was likely to impair their health, but, on the
+contrary, to take every possible pains to preserve the latter, and to
+hold labor and study and every thing else in subserviency to it.
+
+The son for whom I was requested to prescribe, not only attended to his
+father's wishes and expectations, and endeavored to fulfil them, but
+went much farther than was intended, and did more than he ought. Besides
+keeping up with his class, he taught school a very considerable portion
+of the time, so that his mental apparatus, as I have already more than
+intimated, was continually over-taxed; and he had been a sufferer, more
+or less, for several years, when I met with him.
+
+My advice was that he should leave his studies, entirely, for two years,
+and labor moderately, in the meantime, on his father's farm. His
+principal objection to doing so, was, that he was already at an age so
+much advanced, that it seemed to him like a wrong done to society, to
+delay entering upon the duties of the ministry two whole years. But I
+reasoned the case with him as well as I could, and, among other things,
+pointed out to him the course pursued by his Divine Master.
+
+I have never met with him from that day to this; nor have I ever
+received from him--strange as it may seem--any communication on the
+subject. But I have been informed from other sources, that after
+laboring for a time with his father, he was settled as a minister in a
+neighboring village with greatly improved health and highly encouraging
+prospects. He is at the present time one of the main pillars,
+theologically, of the great State of New York, and, as I have reason for
+believing, is in the enjoyment of good health.
+
+It is easy to see that the time he spent on his father's farm, instead
+of being a loss to him, was, in the end, among the most important parts
+of the work of his education. How much better it was for him to recruit
+his wasted energies before he took upon him the full responsibilities of
+preacher and pastor in a large country church and congregation, than to
+rush into the ministry prematurely, with the prospect, amounting almost
+to a certainty, of breaking down in a few years, and spending the
+remnant of his days in a crippled condition,--to have the full
+consciousness that had he been wise he might have had the felicity of a
+long life of usefulness, and of doing good to the souls and bodies of
+mankind.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXIII.
+
+HE MUST BE PHYSICKED, OR DIE.
+
+
+Mr. S., a very aged neighbor of mine, fell into habits of such extreme
+inactivity of the alimentary canal, that instead of invoking the aid of
+Cloacina, as Mr. Locke would say, every day, he was accustomed to weekly
+invocations only. There was, however, a single exception. In the month
+of June, of each year, he was accustomed to visit the seaside, some
+twenty miles or more distant, and remain there a few days, during which
+and for a short time afterward, his bowels would perform their wonted
+daily office.
+
+And yet, despite of all this, he got along very well during summer and
+autumn, for a man who was over seventy years of age. It was not till
+winter--sometimes almost spring--that his health appeared to suffer as
+the consequence of his costiveness. Nor was it certain, even then,
+whether his inconveniences,--for they hardly deserved the name of
+sufferings,--arose from his costiveness, or from the croakings of
+friends and his own awakened fears and anxieties. Nearly every one who
+knew of the facts in his case was alarmed, and many did not hesitate to
+cry out, even in his hearing, "He must be physicked, or die!" And their
+fears and croakings, by leading him to turn his attention to his
+internal feelings, greatly added to his difficulties.
+
+My principal aim, as his friend and physician, was to convince him that
+there was no necessity of anxiety on the subject, as long as none of the
+various functions of the system were impaired. As long as digestion,
+circulation, respiration, perspiration, etc., were tolerably well
+performed, and his general health was not on the decline, it was not
+very material, as I assured him, whether his alvine movements were once
+a day, once in two days, or once a week.
+
+The various emunctories or outlets of the body should, undoubtedly, be
+kept open and free, so that every portion of worn-out or effete matter
+may be effectually got rid of. In order to have this done in the very
+best manner, it is indispensably necessary that we should eat, drink,
+breathe, sleep, and exercise the muscles and all the mental and moral
+powers daily. And yet we are to such an extent the creatures of habit,
+that we can, in all these respects, bring ourselves to almost any thing
+we choose, and yet pass on, for a time, very comfortably. Thus we may
+eat once, twice, thrice, or five times a day, and if possessed of a good
+share of constitutional vigor, we may even accustom ourselves to
+considerable variation from the general rule with regard to drinking,
+sleeping, exercise, temperature, etc. Healthy men have been able to
+maintain their health, in tolerable measure, for a long time, without
+drink, without exercise, and even without sleep. Of the truth of this
+last remark, I could give you, did time and space permit, many
+well-attested, not to say striking facts.
+
+I was not wholly successful in my attempts at quieting the mind and
+feelings of my aged patient or his friends. And yet his erratic habit
+was never entirely broken up. He lived to the age of fourscore without
+suffering much more from what are usually called the infirmities of age,
+than most other old men. It must not, however, be concealed that he
+possessed what has been sometimes denominated an iron constitution.
+
+Mr. Locke strongly insists that children should be trained, from the
+very first, to diurnal habits of the kind in question; and I cannot help
+thinking that such habits should be secured very early--certainly at
+eight or ten years of age. Some of the healthiest men and women I have
+ever known were those who had either been trained or had trained
+themselves in this way. And yet I would not be so anxious to bring
+nature back to this rule when there have been large digressions, as to
+be found administering cathartics on every trifling occasion.
+
+An old man, who eats little and exercises still less, but has a good
+pulse, a good appetite, and a free perspiration, with a cheerful mind,
+need not take "physic" merely because his bowels do not move more than
+once a week; nor need those who are feverish, and who eat and exercise
+but little. The disturbance which will ensue, if medicine be taken, may
+be productive of more mischief, on the whole, than the absorption into
+the system of small portions of the retained excretions, or the small
+amount of irritation they produce--and probably will be so.
+
+It will be a solace to some to know that the alvine excretions of the
+system are not so much the remnants of our food, when that food is such
+as it should be, as a _secretion_ from the internal or lining membrane
+of the bowels. Consequently, if this secretion is interrupted by
+disease, there will be a proportionally diminished necessity for alvine
+evacuations.
+
+Prof. ----, of Ohio, had been sick of fever, for a long time, and, on
+the departure of the disease, his bowels were left in such a condition
+that cathartics, or at least laxatives, began to be thought of; but his
+physician interdicted their use: His costiveness continued to the
+twenty-first day, without any known evil as the consequence. On this day
+nature rallied. Then followed a period of quiescence of fourteen days,
+and then another of seven days, after which he fell into his former
+diurnal habits. There was much croaking among the neighbors, on account
+of the treatment of his physician; but the results put all to silence.
+
+The case of Judge ----, in the interior of the same State (Ohio), was so
+much like that of Prof. ----, in all its essential particulars, that I
+need but to state the fact, without entering at all upon the details.
+
+J. W. G., a lawyer of Massachusetts, was sick with a lingering
+complaint, attended with more or less of fever, for several months.
+During this time there was one interval, of more than thirty days,
+during which his bowels did not move. And yet there was no evidence of
+any permanent suffering as the consequence.
+
+The principal use I would make of these facts, so far as the mass of
+general readers is concerned, is the following: If, during feebleness
+and sickness, human nature will bear up, for a long time, under
+irregularities of this sort, is it needful that we should be alarmed and
+fly at once to medicine in cases _less_ alarming--above all, in these
+cases, when, except in regard to costiveness, the health and habits are
+excellent? May we not trust much more than we have heretofore believed,
+in the recuperative efforts of Nature?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXIV.
+
+WHO HATH WOE? OR, THE SICK WIDOW.
+
+
+Early in the year 1852, I received a letter, of which the following,
+with very slight needful alterations, is an extract. It was written from
+the interior of Massachusetts.
+
+"About three months ago, I took a long journey by stage-coach, which
+brought on, as I think, an internal inflammation. Since that time I have
+taken very little medicine. Please tell me whether it is right for me to
+bathe daily in, and drink freely of, cold water; and whether it is safe
+to make cold applications to the parts affected.
+
+"I take as much exercise as I can without producing irritation. I do
+not, by any means, indulge in the food which my appetite craves.
+
+"I am twenty-six years of age; was married and left a widow, while young
+and very ignorant, under circumstances the most deeply painful. I have a
+strong desire to get well if I can; though if I must give up the thought
+I am willing to die.
+
+"I should be very glad to see you, if you will take the trouble to come
+and see me. I should have made an effort to consult you, in person,
+before now, if I could have safely taken the journey."
+
+At the time of receiving this letter I was travelling in a distant
+State, and, as an immediate visit was wellnigh impracticable, I wrote
+her, requesting such farther information as might enable me to give her
+a few general directions, promising to see her on my return in the
+spring. In reply to my inquiries, I received what follows:--
+
+"I have been, from childhood, afflicted with bunches in the throat.
+There is no consumptive tendency on either my father's or my mother's
+side; but I come, by the maternal side, from a king's evil[I] family. I
+am an ardent, impulsive creature, possessing a nervous, sanguine
+temperament; naturally cheerful and agreeable, but rendered, by
+sickness, irritable, capricious, and melancholic. I fear consumption so
+much, that were I convinced it was fully fastened upon me, I might be
+tempted, unless restrained by a strong moral influence, to commit a
+crime which might not be forgiven.
+
+"I have great weakness in the throat, and soreness in the chest, with a
+dull pain between the shoulders. My appetite is extraordinary;--I think
+it has increased since I have dieted. My flesh is stationary. I gain a
+few pounds, and then commit some wild freak and lose it. I am
+unaccountable to myself. I think, sir, that my mental disturbances
+impair my health.
+
+"I anticipate much pleasure from seeing you; for I see, by your letter,
+you understand me. I have always been thought inexplicable. I feel a
+universal languor. I am, at times, unconscious. I feel dead to all
+things; there seems a loss of all vitality; and sometimes there is a
+sense of suffocation. All these feelings are extreme, because I am, by
+my nature, so sensitive. I met the other day with a slight from a
+friend, a young lady, which caused grief so excessive that I have ever
+since been suffering from influenza."
+
+These lengthy extracts may not be very interesting to the general
+reader, except so far as they reveal to him some of the internal
+cogitations of a soul borne down with a load of suffering, which almost
+drove her to suicide. "Who hath woe,"--as Solomon says, with respect to
+a very different description of human character,--if not this poor
+widow?
+
+And yet it required a personal visit, and the conversation of a couple
+of hours, to fathom the depths of her woe, to the utmost. For there are
+secrets of the human heart, with which, of course, no stranger--not even
+the family physician--should presume to intermeddle; though to these
+depths, in the case of the half-insane sufferer of whom I am speaking,
+it was not necessary that I should go, in order to find out what I had
+all along suspected. Disease had been communicated several years before,
+of a kind which was much more communicable _then_, than it was
+eradicable now.
+
+Whenever, by the laws of hereditary descent, in their application to
+health and disease, our children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren
+suffer, we may recognize in it the hand of the great Creator; nor do we
+doubt, often, the wisdom of such laws nor their ultimate tendency to
+work out final good. But when we find a widow suffering many long years,
+from a disease to which a husband's weakness and wickedness has
+subjected her, what shall we say, especially when we have reason to fear
+that the evils in question, some of them, at least, will be terminable
+only, in their effects, with life itself?
+
+My patient is _patiently_ wearing out her ills; and what she cannot wear
+out, she is learning to endure. Her case cannot be reached with
+medicine, at least with safety, and is only to be affected, so far as
+affected at all, by yielding the most unflinching obedience to the laws
+of God, physical and moral. She will not die of consumption; she will
+live on; but how much progress she may be able to make towards the land
+of life and health, is by no means certain. Her case is, at best, a
+trying one, and must compel us, whenever we reflect on the subject, to
+say, "Who hath woe, if not persons situated like this widow?"[J]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[I] She was not aware that king's evil, or scrofula, is oftentimes the
+parent of consumption.
+
+[J] Since this chapter was written, I have had the pleasure of learning
+from a reliable source that the young woman above referred to is now
+enjoying comparatively good health. She married a second time, a year or
+two afterwards; and by following out the course prescribed, and with the
+blessing of Heaven, she came at length to her present position of
+usefulness and happiness.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXV.
+
+THE PENALTY OF SELF-INDULGENCE.
+
+
+The thought that a minister of the gospel can be gluttonous is so
+painful that, after selecting as the caption to the present chapter, "A
+gluttonous minister," I concluded to modify it. Perhaps, after all, it
+might be as well in the end, to call things by their proper names.
+However, we will proceed, as we have set out, for this once.
+
+A minister about forty years of age came to me one day, deeply involved
+in all the midnight horrors of dyspepsia.
+
+On investigating his case, I found it one of the most trying I had ever
+met with. It was not only trying in itself, in the particular form and
+shape it assumed, but it had been rendered much more troublesome and
+unmanageable by injudicious medical treatment.
+
+My course was a plain one, and I proceeded cautiously to prescribe for
+him--not medicine, for in my judgment he needed none, but simply a
+return to the physical laws he had so long and so palpably violated.
+These laws I endeavored briefly to recall to his attention. As he was an
+intelligent man, I dealt with him in the most plain and direct manner.
+
+Some two or three weeks afterward he called on me again, saying that he
+was no better. I repeated my prescription, only more particularly. Still
+I was not, as I now think, sufficiently particular and definite, for
+want of time. Moreover, he still clung to the off-hand customs of
+empiricism,--that of looking at the tongue, feeling the pulse, and
+seeming "wondrous wise,"--and vainly hoped I would treat him in the same
+direct way, instead of requiring what he regarded as a more circuitous
+course.
+
+He called on me the third time. We had now ample leisure and
+opportunity for attempting to ferret out the causes which had operated
+to bring him into his present condition, some of which, it appeared, had
+been of long standing.
+
+I inquired, in the first place, concerning his exercise. This, he said,
+was taken very irregularly, chiefly in walking abroad on business,
+seldom or never in company. His mind, in all probability, was not
+directed, to any considerable extent, from its accustomed mill-horse
+track. His gait, too, when he walked, was staid and measured. It was
+never buoyant, lively, or playful. And as for amusement, he had none at
+all.
+
+His diet was still worse than his exercise. He had a large family, and
+resided in the midst of a dense population; and was so situated as to
+render his house, practically, a kind of ministerial thoroughfare. He
+probably entertained, at his hospitable table, more ministers, literary
+men, and students than any other three clergymen in the neighborhood.
+
+"Now," said he to me, "we have a good deal of table preparation to make,
+and Mrs. Y., who dearly loves to have things in pretty good order, sets
+a full table, with, a large variety. Well, this food must be eaten. It
+will never do for a minister who has a large family and lives on a
+moderate salary, to _waste_ any thing. And, besides, as I ought to tell
+you, we sometimes, if not always, have a very considerable amount of
+rich food on the table."
+
+"Do you mean to intimate that the bountiful provision you make for
+others renders it necessary for you to overeat? Or have your remarks a
+reference to a supposed necessity of eating rich food?"
+
+"We are not, of course, absolutely compelled to _any_ thing. My meaning
+is this: In order to meet the wants of those who are liable to call on
+us at almost any hour, _we prepare largely_. Then, to meet these varying
+and often very fastidious tastes, we must have _a large variety_ of
+food, and it must be _highly seasoned_. And then, if it happens that our
+company is not as large as is expected, we have an extra quantity
+remaining, and I am tempted to aid in eating it up, the highly seasoned
+food among the rest."
+
+"And you think, do you, that this highly seasoned food is the cause of
+your dyspepsia?"
+
+"Undoubtedly it is."
+
+"And do you expect to be cured of a disease which is produced by certain
+definable causes, like this, and yet be permitted to go on in the same
+way you have long gone? Do you suppose I have any power to grant you an
+immunity from the evil effects of high living while that high living is
+persisted in? Can you get rid of an effect till you first remove the
+cause?"
+
+"Why, no, sir, not exactly. Such an expectation would be very
+unreasonable. But is there no medicine I can take that will _partially_
+restore me? Perhaps, at my age, entire restoration from such a hydra
+disease as dyspepsia is hardly to be expected; but can you not patch me
+up in part?"
+
+"What! and suffer you to go on sinning?"
+
+"Why, yes, to some small extent. It is very hard, nay, it seems to me
+almost impossible, to break away from the routine of my family, at least
+as long as Mrs. Y. is fully determined to prepare for company according
+to the prevailing customs. I could submit to a different arrangement if
+she were ready for it."
+
+"I wish I could encourage you to pursue this compromising course of
+conduct. But it is not so. You must change your habits entirely, or you
+must continue to suffer. For if it were possible to patch you up, for a
+short time, while your present habits are continued, it would not be as
+well for you in the end: It would only add another head and horn,
+perhaps several others, to the monster that annoys you. No, sir; you
+must change your habits or give up the contest. There is no use in
+attempting to do any thing, in such a case as yours, with medicine."
+
+"Well, then, if it must be so, it must. I will try once more, and see
+what I can do."
+
+He left me with a downcast look, and, I suspected, with a heavy heart.
+At all events, my own heart was heavy, and seemed almost ready to bleed.
+Here was a father in our ministerial Israel,--one to whom multitudes
+looked up for the bread of spiritual life,--who was a perfect slave to
+his appetites; or, at least, to the conventionalisms of modern
+house-keeping. He groaned daily and hourly under bodily disease the most
+aggravated and severe. His eyes were red and swelled; the sides of his
+nose enlarged and inflamed, till he had the appearance of being about
+half a sot. He knew all about it, and yet refused to take the first step
+in the way of reformation.
+
+I saw him, by accident, once more, and would have spoken with him
+freely; but he seemed to shun every thing beyond a merely passing
+compliment. I saw how it was with him; and the reflections which arose
+in my mind gave me the most intense pain.
+
+Two or three weeks afterward, while in an intimate and confidential
+conversation with two of his very familiar friends, I ventured to
+predict his fall, with nearly as much particularity as if the events
+which were predicted had already taken place. I was asked how I dared to
+say such things, even in secret, of so good a man and such a father in
+the American Church. So I gave them, by way of reply, the principal
+facts in the case, as detailed above.
+
+Not many years passed ere this very minister was tried for a crime much
+more high-handed than gluttony, though sometimes the sequel to it; and
+not only tried, but silenced. The results of the trial were as shocking
+to most people as they were unexpected. Every one said: "How can it be?"
+
+Mr. Y. became a farmer, and is still so. But he is cured of his
+dyspepsia. Compelled, as I have reason to believe he is, to practise the
+most rigid economy, having very little temptation to unlawful
+indulgence, and having an abundance of healthful exercise in the open
+air, he has every appearance, externally, of a reformed man. His old
+friends would, I think, hardly know him. His skin is as clear, and his
+eyes and nose as physiologically correct in their appearance, as yours
+or mine. True, he is an old man, but he is not a gluttonous old man. He
+is a fallen man, but a healthy, and, I hope, a penitent one. He has
+experienced a species of first resurrection, and has, I trust, the hope
+of a better one still.
+
+Now, had this man believed, in the first place, that the fault of his
+dyspepsia was not wholly chargeable on Mrs. Y., but also on
+himself,--had he clearly seen that he loved high living, and would not
+relinquish it,--he might have been reformed without a dreadful and
+scathing ordeal, and without disgracing the cause of his Divine Master,
+But alas! "the woman that thou gavest to be with me," as he said, was in
+fault; and so he did not reform himself.
+
+That his wife was in fault, most deeply, I do not deny. She knew her
+husband's weakness, and yet continued to place before him those
+temptations which she well knew were too strong for him. How she could
+do this, and persist in doing it, is, to me, a mystery. But she had her
+reward; at least, in part. For in the fall and retirement of her husband
+from public life, and in the consciousness--which was the most terrible
+of all--of his guilt, must not her sufferings have been terrible?
+
+It is indeed true that she may not have been wise enough--for this
+wisdom has not yet been made public property, in the fullest sense--to
+look at the subject in one point of view, which would be calculated to
+add to the poignancy of her anguish. So that we may be almost ready to
+say, in her case, "Ignorance is bliss." I refer, here, to the infliction
+of scrofula and nervousness, by high living, on the next generation.
+
+For while Mrs. Y. was bowing down to public opinion, and preparing rich
+viands for her guests, and practically compelling her husband and
+children to eat up what they had nibbled at and left, she was not only
+fastening dyspepsia upon the former and nervousness upon herself, but
+imparting more or less of a tendency to nervousness and scrofula upon
+the rest of her family. Of the two thousand children born in a day, in
+the United States, from two hundred to three hundred--perhaps nearer
+four hundred--come into the world with a scrofulous tendency; and of
+these, it is highly probable, that at least one hundred per day are
+manufactured at just such tables as those which were set by Mrs. Y. for
+the teachers of the religion of Jesus Christ.
+
+I have quoted the old adage, that "Ignorance is bliss;" but alas! is it
+not to trifle with the most solemn considerations? Can that be regarded
+as blissful which leaves a mother, who, in general, means to love and
+honor the Saviour, to destroy her husband and one or two of his
+children? There is little doubt that, besides shutting her husband out
+of the sacred enclosure, after she had destroyed his health, Mrs. Y. was
+the means of destroying at least one or two of her children. One of
+them, who was scrofulous, ran at last--a very common occurrence--into
+consumption, and perished early, in the beginning of active usefulness.
+
+I may be suspected of exaggeration, by some of my readers. Would to God,
+for humanity's sake and for Christ's sake, it were so! For though I
+cannot subscribe to the creed of those who profess to be willing to come
+into everlasting condemnation for the glory of God, yet, so long as
+opportunity for repentance shall last, I would willingly be convicted of
+untruth, if so that the falsehood might be made palpable to my mind,
+rather than believe what I am compelled to believe with regard to the
+murderous tendency on soul and body of our murderous modern cookery. Is
+it not true--the old adage, that while "God," in his mercy, "sends us
+meats, the Devil," in his malignity, "sends us cooks?"
+
+This unnatural cookery,--this mingling medicine with viands naturally
+healthful, and torturing the compounds thus formed into sources of
+irritation, has more to do with that sensuality which has come upon us
+like a flood,--much of it in new forms,--than many are aware. And I am
+much mistaken if modern societies for moral reform, popularly so called,
+might not thank the over-refined cookery of a gross and highly
+stimulating diet, for that necessity which impels to their own field of
+labor.
+
+One thing more might have been mentioned in its proper place--the
+tendency of high living to eruptions on the skin. These, in their
+various forms of pimple, carbuncle, boil, etc., are becoming quite the
+order of the day. Mr. Y.'s family had a full share of them, especially
+those of them who were scrofulous. I have already mentioned the
+appearance of Mr. Y.'s face, and have alluded to the change which took
+place after his fall. But I should have spoken of the eruptions on his
+face, which, at times, were such as almost made him ashamed to enter the
+pulpit.
+
+You will see, from the tenor of these remarks, that I have laid the
+guilt, in this sad affair, just where I believe it ought to rest. I have
+not sought to exculpate one individual or party, at the expense of
+another equally guilty, but rather to do justice to all.
+
+Only one thing remains, which is to confess my _own_ guilt. Have I not
+great reason to fear that my advice was not sufficiently pointed and
+thorough? I might have gone to Mr. Y. and told him the truth, the whole
+truth. What if it had given offence? Would not the prospect of doing
+good, rather than of giving offence, have been worth something? In any
+event, I do regret most deeply my unfaithfulness, even though it arose
+from delicacy and diffidence, for that very delicacy and diffidence were
+far enough from being grounded on the love of God. They were grounded
+much more on the love of human approbation. No man was ever more free
+from it than our Saviour. Ought I not to have used the same plainness
+that he would have used? Had I rebuked Mrs. Y. as kindly and as
+faithfully as he rebuked Martha at Bethany, how much, for ought I can
+ever know, might have been saved, not only to the cause of health and
+conjugal happiness, but also to that of piety.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXVI.
+
+DR. BOLUS AND MORPHINE.
+
+
+A telegraphic communication was made to me one day, nearly as follows:
+"B. J. W. is very sick, and is not expected to live through the day.
+Please come on immediately."
+
+The distance was about one hundred and fifty miles, and the mode and
+means of conveyance neither very direct nor rapid for these latter
+times. It was more than probable that Mr. B. J. W. would be dead before
+I could reach the place. However, as he was a particular friend, and as
+there was some hope, I concluded to set out.
+
+Late in the evening,--or rather, in the night,--I arrived at the place,
+and found the young man still alive. He was, however, as it was easy to
+perceive, in a very critical condition. Glad to find him alive, but
+inclined to fall in with the general opinion that his case was a
+hopeless one, and withal greatly fatigued, I yielded to the demands of
+exhausted Nature, and slept a short time, when his physician arrived.
+
+Now I had been sent for, in part, as a special friend, and in part, as a
+medical counsellor. And yet there were difficulties. Dr. Bolus, the
+family physician, was just such a man--for reasons that might be
+given--as I dreaded to advise with, should my advice be needed. He was
+one who would be likely to think any important suggestion an impeachment
+of his own superior wisdom. Science, true science, is always modest, and
+does not fear any thing; because she loves, most of all things, _to be
+right_. But Dr. Bolus had not, as I think, enough of true science to
+make him feel or perceive the want of it. The ignorant are always
+self-confident in proportion to their ignorance.
+
+We examined the patient, as soon as possible, and retired for
+consultation. Dr. Bolus gave a full history of the progress of the case,
+with a particular account of the treatment. I saw at once, both from the
+existing symptoms and Dr. Bolus's statement, that the tendency to the
+brain--so great as to keep up an almost constant delirium--was quite as
+likely to be caused by the enormous quantities of morphine and quinine,
+and other active medicines which had been administered, as to belong
+properly to the disease. I therefore advised a gradual reduction and
+ultimate discontinuance of the extra stimulants.
+
+Dr. Bolus was opposed to the reduction I proposed, but finally consented
+to it, at least in part, and the patient evidently derived almost
+immediate benefit from it. When I had pushed my views with regard to the
+stimuli as far as I could, we separated, and as the distance at which
+the doctor resided was considerable, and as I was on the spot to watch
+the patient, he proposed not to call again till early in the morning of
+the following day.
+
+I was by no means satisfied with the compromise we had made. It had not
+accomplished its intended object. Dr. Bolus had, indeed, yielded a
+little, but not enough to satisfy me. I believed the amount of stimulus
+still given vastly too great, and was unwilling to continue it. In
+truth, I persuaded one of the attendants to omit the principal articles,
+whenever the hour came for administering them, assuring him that I would
+take all the responsibility.
+
+Of the other attendant I would have made the same requisition, but he
+being exceedingly attached to Dr. Bolus, would never have tolerated the
+slightest concealment, or departure from the strictest letter of the
+law.
+
+It was easy to see that the less stimulating treatment of each alternate
+two hours, during which it was entirely omitted, left behind it, on the
+patient's frame, a better influence than the more active treatment of
+the other two. And when the next medical consultation came, I pleaded
+for a still greater diminution of the stimulus. But, as I had
+unwillingly used a little duplicity,--a thing I now deeply regret,--in
+order to come at my conclusions against the stimulants, I was not
+willing to state, in full, the grounds of my opinion, and therefore
+could not prevail with Dr. Bolus to consent to any farther advances in
+the unstimulating plan.
+
+I was now, at length, compelled to leave for home; and the results, for
+the rest of the time, were reported to me through the kindness of the
+young man's friends. It is sufficient, perhaps, to say that he finally
+recovered; but it was not till the lapse of several months. In the mean
+time, a severe ulcer broke out on the lower part of his back, which
+caused much suffering, and appeared to retard very greatly the progress
+of his recovery.
+
+My errors in this case were numerous and great. Believing, as I did, in
+the outset, that Dr. Bolus and myself could never agree, I did wrong in
+consenting to a consultation with him. I ought to have been nothing but
+a visitor, or else to have entered fully into the spirit and duty of a
+counsellor. In the former case I might, indeed, have outraged every
+feeling of benevolence; in the latter I ought to have proposed my
+objections in full, and not to have compromised so as to submit to what
+I really believed to be radically and essentially wrong.
+
+For I did most fully believe all this; and in spite of every effort at
+concealment, my scepticism finally came out, and I was weak enough to
+speak of it, and openly to find fault with Dr. Bolus. A practical
+quarrel followed between Dr. Bolus and myself, in which the friends
+joined, or, at least, strongly sympathized.
+
+My own belief, then, was, and it still remains the same, that the
+violence of the young man's disease, especially the tendency to the
+brain, was chiefly, if not wholly, owing to the medicine administered;
+and that, from the very first, no active medicine--nothing but an
+exceedingly mild and cooling treatment--was required. It was even my
+belief that the ulcer was caused by the medicine.
+
+But, while I lost confidence in human nature, and especially in the
+human nature of some of my brethren of the medical profession, by this
+experiment, I became more thoroughly convinced than ever before of the
+great need of honest and benevolent as well as scientific men in this
+department, and of the general impotency and worse than impotency of
+much that is dignified with the name of medical treatment. I became most
+fully convinced, that in acute diseases as well as chronic, Nature,
+unembarrassed, will generally accomplish her own work, when left to
+herself and to good and careful nursing and attendance.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXVII.
+
+BLEEDING AND BLISTERING OMITTED.
+
+
+One of my neighbors had fallen down-stairs, and injured himself
+internally, in the right side of the chest; and a degree, greater or
+less, of inflammation had followed. The pain was constant, though not
+severe; but the soreness was considerable, and did not give promise of
+speedy amendment.
+
+My advice was to keep quiet, both in body and mind, and to avoid all
+kinds of exertion that could possibly affect the chest. I also advised
+the use of water, not only for drink, in small draughts, but, if the
+pain and soreness should be troublesome, as an external application to
+the part affected. The food was to be mild and unstimulating. A tendency
+to crowd around the fire was to be guarded against and prevented, by
+putting on, if necessary, an increased amount of clothing.
+
+Two days passed away with no great variation of the symptoms, either for
+better or worse. I was now fully convinced that I had taken the true
+course, because, otherwise, my patient must, by this time, have become
+worse. Accordingly, I persevered in my general let-alone plan for about
+two weeks, when the patient fully recovered.
+
+He was a slender boy, in the fifteenth year of his age, strongly
+inclined, by inheritance, to disease of the chest and brain; and this
+consideration, among others, led me to be extremely cautious about his
+treatment. The greater the danger the greater the necessity that what is
+done should be done right, or we shall defeat our own purposes.
+
+But the most remarkable fact in relation to this very interesting case
+is,--and it is chiefly for the sake of this fact that I have related the
+story,--that more than forty-eight hours had passed, after the
+occurrence of the accident, before it came into my mind that any thing
+could, by possibility, be done for the chest, in the way of bleeding,
+blistering, etc.,--so utterly irrational had this treatment, once so
+fashionable, come to be regarded, both by myself and a few others. How
+strange that I should not think of it in two whole days! Twenty years
+before, I should not have dared to pass through the first twenty-four
+hours, in such a case, without _thinking_, at least, of balsams and
+mustard poultices and the whole paraphernalia of external treatment, to
+say nothing of bleeding and blistering.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXVIII.
+
+MEDICAL VIRTUES OF SLEEP.
+
+
+My own child, a boy nine or ten years of age, and somewhat inclined to
+croup, was one evening wheezing considerably, and, as his mother
+thought, was threatened with an immediate attack, either from this or
+some other disease. Of course, there was not a little anxiety manifested
+in the family on his account, and we were deliberating what to do with
+him, when the late Dr. Shew, the hydropathist, chanced to come in.
+
+After a little general conversation, we turned our thoughts again to our
+little patient, and asked Dr. Shew what he would do with him if he were
+his patient. "If it were my case," said he, "I would give him a tepid
+bath--say at about the temperature of 80 deg. or 85 deg." "Would you do
+nothing more?" "Nothing at all, except to put him early to bed."
+
+I was not committed to hydropathy, as I have before told you. I never
+have been, though I had a sort of general respect for Dr. Shew; and
+hence it was that, incidentally, I asked him the question which I did;
+and I was pleased with his reply. There was nothing suggested which was
+at all akin to violence. He did not propose a shower bath of any kind.
+He did not speak of hot bathing, which for that hour of the day might
+have induced too violent a perspiration. He did not propose vapor
+bathing or steaming. A tepid bath could, abstractly considered, do no
+harm. It would, at least, while away the time till nature could have
+opportunity to rally. And then, if the return to health should be
+attributed to the application of the tepid water, we had no special
+objection to it. We had no medical pride--most certainly I had
+none--that would lead me to fear lest I should add to the popularity of
+the cold-water system.
+
+But it was rather late in the evening,--between seven and eight
+o'clock,--almost time for such a child to be in bed. In order to get up
+a tepid bath and make the application, so much time would be required
+that it would keep him from sleep till nine o'clock, and perhaps later;
+whereas, I had a very high opinion of the healing and renovating power
+of natural and healthy sleep. It struck me that to put the child to bed
+immediately, and let him have a good night's rest, would be a much wiser
+measure than to bathe him even in _tepid_ water. So, after thanking Dr.
+Shew for his advice, I told him that, for the reasons above stated, we
+had concluded to omit the bath and put the child immediately to bed.
+
+On being put in bed and suitably covered, he went to sleep immediately,
+and fell into a gentle perspiration, and in about two hours his
+breathing was much better. It continued to improve till the next
+morning, when he arose, at the usual time, and was nearly well. Dr. Shew
+himself jocosely observed that the _sleep_ cure had proved quite as
+successful as the _water_ cure.
+
+Much, therefore, as I prize bathing of all sorts, in its proper place,
+it must never take the place of other and more important influences,
+whenever these influences can be brought to bear on the case. Indeed, no
+bathing of any kind can be desirable, any farther than as it serves to
+aid these natural processes. It has no magic or miraculous power. If we
+do not eat, drink, sleep, and wake, all the better for it; if the
+various offices of digestion, respiration, circulation, perspiration,
+and cerebral action are not thereby, as a whole thing, better performed,
+it might as well--nay, better--be omitted. Otherwise we waste time and
+trifle away vital energy.
+
+If all the functions of the body and all the faculties of the mind could
+be kept steadily employed, and in healthful proportion, it is obvious
+that a person could not be sick. Or, if one of these only should be
+deranged, and we should fall sick, as the consequence, what else, pray
+tell me, is needed, but to effect a speedy return of the faltering
+function or part to its proper post and duty?
+
+But sleep, more than all things else, whenever the usual hour has
+actually arrived, has the effect to facilitate a cure. We all know how
+wakeful some maniacs are, and how hurried and deranged all the movements
+of the muscular and nervous systems are apt to become, no less than
+those of the brain itself. And we all know, too, how much good it does
+such persons to be able to obtain good, sound, substantial, quiet sleep.
+It acts like a charm, and does more than charms can do, or mere
+medicine.
+
+Half the formality of having watchers by night in the sick room, does
+more harm than good. It were better, in many instances, to extinguish
+all the lights, except at certain set times and on particular occasions,
+and let the patient sleep. And yet I have as exalted an estimate of the
+importance of careful nursing as any other individual.
+
+For example of my meaning, in a case of seeming contradiction, I may say
+that I have taken all the needful care of a young man who was very sick,
+for more than thirty successive nights with the exception of two, and
+yet maintained my health, which, as you already know, was never very
+firm. And I have known those who could do this for three months. But
+they extinguish or hide their light, and acquire a habit of waking at
+certain times, so as never to neglect the wants of the patient.
+
+So true is it that sleep is the grand restorer as well as the great
+curer of disease, that its salutary influence in the case of various
+infantile complaints, has long been known and regarded. And one reason
+why infants should neither be nursed nor fed in the night, as many
+physiologists maintain, is, that it breaks in upon the soundness of the
+sleep, as experience has most abundantly proved. Sleep, in short, if not
+a "matchless" sanative, is at least a universal one.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXIX.
+
+CURE BY DEEP BREATHING.
+
+
+A young man, fifteen or sixteen years of age, who was in the habit of
+suffering from protracted colds, nearly the whole winter, till they
+seemed to terminate almost in consumption in the spring, came under my
+care about March 1st, 1854, and was treated as the nature of his case
+seemed to require, though with a few of what may be, by some, regarded
+as peculiarities.
+
+He was directed to rise in the morning at about six o'clock, which at
+that season of the year is about as early as any one can see well
+without lamp-light. At the moment of leaving his bed, he was required to
+wet his body all over, as quickly as possible, either with the hand or a
+sponge, or if preferred, with a coarse towel, and then wipe himself
+hastily and partially, so as to leave on the surface a little moisture,
+and yet not enough to cause, by evaporation, any sensations of
+chilliness. The water to be used was to be cold, or at such temperature
+as is usual at that season, when standing all night in a room without
+fire. This was to be followed by a rapid rubbing with _crash mittens_, a
+coarse towel, or the hand, as long as he could keep up a good reaction
+and a proper degree of vital warmth.
+
+Or, if rubbing the body increased the cough, and an assistant was
+required, in this case, a healthy man well charged, so to speak, with
+electricity, was always to be deemed preferable. In general, however,
+the young man found no difficulty in keeping himself warm, in this
+exercise, about half an hour.
+
+Whenever his strength began to flag, or a little before,--for I did not
+think it desirable to go farther than the mere borders of fatigue,--he
+was placed in bed and well covered, so as to be immediately warm. The
+room itself was kept as cool as possible, even in the coldest weather,
+the fire having been entirely removed at bedtime the night before, and
+the room well aired and ventilated.
+
+This method of placing him in a warm bed was called dry packing. In this
+dry pack he usually remained from half an hour to an hour. At the end of
+this period, he was required to get out of bed, and repeat the former
+course of rubbing the naked surface of the body a long time, in the cold
+air, though, in this case, without repeating the application of the cold
+water.
+
+Thus the forenoon passed away, with a few slight but unimportant
+variations. At twelve o'clock, this alternation of air-bathing with
+friction and dry-packing, ceased, and the patient was expected to put on
+his clothes and come to dinner. You will, perhaps, ask when and where he
+had his breakfast. No breakfast was allowed him. Nothing was to be
+taken, except small draughts of water, till twelve o'clock.
+
+Another operation, which had much more the appearance of peculiarity
+than any other part of the treatment, but which was deemed, more than
+all else, indispensable to his recovery, consisted in a series of deep
+inspirations or breathings. It may be described thus: The patient was
+required to draw as much air into his lungs as possible, and then
+immediately expel as much of it as possible. This was to be repeated and
+continued till a suitable degree of fatigue was induced. At first, it
+was only required as a species of amusement while in the dry pack; but
+subsequently it was demanded in other circumstances.
+
+I have usually required a person to begin the process by ten, twenty, or
+thirty deep inspirations, according to his strength of lungs and their
+irritability; for, at first, it often makes him cough. In the present
+case, I began with fifty, and gradually increased the number to one
+hundred. Sometimes, by way of experiment, and to pass away the time
+while in the dry pack, he went much farther; once to six hundred. In
+this case, however, the face became slightly flushed, the eyes reddened,
+and the whole arterial action became hastened. It was evidently like
+"too much of a good thing," and was never repeated.
+
+The afternoon was spent in physical exercise, active amusement, reading,
+conversation, etc. The first consisted chiefly in sawing and splitting
+wood, and in walking abroad. The amusements were of various kinds. The
+reading was chiefly of the lighter sort, such as newspapers and
+magazines. The conversation--not always controllable--was the best we
+could furnish him. Some of the walks were long, extending to five or six
+miles.
+
+Music, both vocal and instrumental, was regarded as a most valuable
+amusement, and was not wholly overlooked. It had its difficulties, but
+most of them could be surmounted. As a devotional exercise, its soothing
+influence was almost always evoked.
+
+I have said that no breakfast was taken by this young man, and no drink
+used but cold water. The dinner was also without drink, and so was the
+supper. The first consisted of a very few kinds of coarse
+food,--generally not more than two or three at once,--such as coarse
+whole-meal bread, rice, potatoes, apples, etc., and was the principal
+meal. The supper was a lighter meal, both as respected quantity and
+quality, and was taken at about six o'clock. No condiments were allowed
+except salt, and very little of this; and no animal food, or the
+products of animals, except, occasionally, a little milk. Fruits, either
+raw or cooked, were frequently among the staples at dinner, but never at
+supper.
+
+This treatment, with slight variations, would be applicable to most
+persons suffering with lingering complaints, and to persons in health,
+as a means of invigorating their systems; but my present purpose is,
+chiefly, to speak of it as a remedial agency in the particular case of
+this young man.
+
+I had hoped to be able to effect a cure on him in about a month. But I
+was happily disappointed in finding him recover so fast that he was
+dismissed and sent home on the twenty-fifth day. Nor has his consumptive
+tendency ever again appeared with much severity. Since the spring of
+1856--now between two and three years--it has not appeared at all.
+
+This method of cure, by deep breathing, consists simply in using the
+lungs freely, without overworking them. They may be overworked as well
+as used too little; though the danger is generally in the latter
+direction. They are made, most undoubtedly, for a great amount of
+action, in breathing, conversation, singing, reading, etc.; and yet, in
+all these respects, they are sadly neglected.
+
+Our ordinary conversation is such as hardly to exercise the lungs at
+all. We talk with the mouth and throat rather than the lungs. So is it,
+for the most part, with our singing. And, as for breathing, we only
+breathe a little way down, even when our dress is such as to form no
+impediment. Full breathing, except in making violent efforts, is hardly
+known.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXX.
+
+SPIRIT-DOCTORING.
+
+
+One of the most amusing incidents of my "Forty Years among Pills and
+Powders," is found at full length of detail in the following chapter.
+The amusement it affords has, however, a tinge of sadness.
+
+A young man came under my care in the early part of the year 1854, who,
+for the sake of convenience, I will call Thomas. He was about eighteen
+years of age, but as delicate, sensitive, and effeminate as a female
+directly from Broadway would have been, or as a plant reared in a
+hothouse. In truth, he had been reared very much like many females of
+the present day, in a manner entirely sedentary--the creature of
+over-tenderness and over-kindness.
+
+His disease was scrofula; but, with his scrofulous tendencies were
+conjoined some other difficulties, more obscure and still more
+unmanageable. His joints were enlarged; and in particular portions of
+his body were various watery swellings or sacs.
+
+As it was a scrofulous tendency that lay at the bottom or basis of his
+complaints, I proceeded to treat him accordingly. I was to have him
+under my care three months, during which time, it was believed,
+something might be done, if ever. At least, it was believed that a
+beginning might be made, if indeed the disease should prove to be at all
+curable.
+
+He was subjected to the treatment, with few variations, which is
+mentioned in the preceding chapter. He was not permitted, however, to do
+much in the way of deep breathing till his general health and strength
+could be improved by other measures. Warm water, in his case, was
+preferred, also, to cold, and was used in the form of a tub-bath, at
+five o'clock in the afternoon.
+
+Thomas had been with me about three weeks, without much variation of
+condition or prospects, when I received a long letter from his friends,
+the purport of which was that they had been favored with a communication
+from the "spirit world," which was attended with the appearance of so
+much truth and reality, that they were not at liberty wholly to
+disregard it. The communication purported to be made by the late Dr.
+Benjamin Rush, of Philadelphia.
+
+As these friends of Thomas well knew I was not a believer in this
+new-fangled spiritualism, they had taken much pains to satisfy me that I
+was to have for my venerable counsellor not a mere pretender, but the
+veritable Dr. Rush himself. As one evidence in the case, they had
+inquired through the "medium," who were the present associates of the
+good doctor in his new abode; who, nothing loath, had deigned to gratify
+their supposed curiosity, by giving them the names of five distinguished
+physicians, among whom were the elder and younger Dr. Ingalls, of
+Massachusetts, and Dr. Sanborn, of New Hampshire.
+
+And then, with regard to Thomas, he only said, at first, that he was
+very much interested in him, and that he would examine him and report.
+Soon after this, at another communication, he said his case was a
+difficult one, but he thought not incurable. He added, that he was
+already in very good hands, the best, perhaps, that could be found in
+this mundane sphere, but rather cautiously insinuated that there were
+symptoms in the case which I had not yet got hold of, but which would,
+if rightly apprehended, modify, in some of its particulars, my
+treatment. What it was in the case which I had not discovered, he did
+not say directly, but subsequently intimated that the young man's
+disease was not scrofula, as I had pronounced it, but dropsy of the
+joints.
+
+It was not long afterward that the mother paid us a visit, and brought,
+well written out, the substance, as she said it was, of quite a number
+of communications from Dr. Rush. Much was said in them about the
+necessity of exercise and a plain diet. And, in general, so far as the
+mere treatment was concerned, the statements of the spiritual doctor
+accorded so well with those of the earthly one, that had I been a
+believer in these modern mysteries, I should have been highly gratified,
+not only on Thomas's account, but my own.
+
+But the spirit doctor urged a few variations in the treatment of the
+young man. Beside pressing a little harder than myself the use of green
+vegetables, and particularly of vegetable juices, he requested, with
+great apparent earnestness, that he might be permitted to occupy a room
+heated by a wood fire, rather than by coal. He also made a few other
+suggestions of less importance.
+
+His mother was a very good woman, save her great credulity. And even
+here, perhaps, I do her injustice, for there were some curious facts and
+coincidences. The venerable spirit doctor appeared to have possessed
+himself of certain secrets which it was extremely puzzling to conjecture
+how an impostor could have obtained.
+
+After spending a day or two with me, and giving me "much exhortation,"
+the mother returned to her friends. Of her safe arrival, as well as of
+certain changes that had been resolved on, the husband informed me, by a
+letter, which, so far as the case of Thomas is concerned, I copy entire.
+
+     "Dear Sir:--By Mrs. P., in her recent visit to your place,
+     you have been made acquainted with some of the
+     manifestations of spirits, made to us through a young lady,
+     a medium of our acquaintance.
+
+     "The communications purporting to come from Dr. Rush (as he
+     says in his last communication, tell Dr. ---- that it is the
+     veritable old Dr. Rush, the signer of the Declaration of
+     Independence), and with such apparent earnestness and
+     reality, we feel that, to us, they are something more than
+     human or earthly, and of momentous account in this case of
+     Thomas, and that we are not at liberty longer to disregard
+     them. And though we have great confidence in yourself and
+     your practice, we hope you will not think we are losing
+     either when I say that we have decided to have Thomas
+     return to ----, and commence following the prescriptions of
+     this invisible personage. They appear to be harmless, and
+     may be of great virtue; and much which pertains to them
+     appears to be in harmony with your practice.
+
+     "Again, in closing, I must say that these communications
+     come to us with such force and apparent reality and truth,
+     that I think it would not be doing justly, either to Thomas
+     or our Creator, longer to disregard them.
+
+    "With much esteem, yours, etc., ---- ----."
+
+
+
+In a somewhat extended postscript it was added: "We have witnessed other
+manifestations, of several of which we had ample proof of their
+correctness."
+
+On another small portion of a sheet which was appended to the former, I
+found, in pencil, the following:--
+
+     "We have, this evening, had another conversation with Dr.
+     Rush. His medium was in ---- to-day, and was brought to us
+     in order that she might speak to us (Mrs. P. and myself). We
+     are directed to tell you this: that he wants Thomas to be
+     under her (Mrs. P.) care; that there are no earthly
+     physicians that can cure him; that we could not have placed
+     him in better hands than with you. He (Dr. Rush) says he can
+     and _will cure him_. He says he could cure him without our
+     help, if he could impress him, but in that he has not yet
+     succeeded. He says he has seen Thomas with rubbers on, and
+     that he would have taken them off if he could. Says
+     positively, he must not wear them. Be good enough, dear sir,
+     to see that he does not wear them in coming home." He adds,
+     in conclusion, "Tell Dr. ---- to remove him from the room he
+     now occupies, and place him in one with a wood fire, and
+     where he will have no bed-fellow."
+
+Thus ended the communication. Thomas went home, according to request,
+and was, forthwith, put under the treatment of the spiritual doctor. All
+appeared to be going on very well for a short time; but after the lapse
+of about three weeks, I heard of his death. No particulars were added,
+in the papers, but I afterwards learned that his death was rather
+sudden.
+
+I did not chance to fall in with Mr. P. for several months, and out of
+respect to his feelings and those of Mrs. P., I did not depart from my
+usual track to call on them or even write. At the end of the year,
+however, I visited them, and after the usual passing remarks, the
+following conversation took place.
+
+"It seems, then, that Dr. Rush with all his wisdom and skill could not
+save Thomas."
+
+"No; he said it was too late for any power of earth or heaven to cure
+him."
+
+"But he was very confident he could cure him?"
+
+"Perhaps he spoke with more confidence than he really felt, in order to
+encourage us and lead us to exert ourselves."
+
+"Do I understand you? Do you mean to say that perhaps the spirit
+doctors, like the fleshly ones, in order to encourage the friends of the
+sick, will depart a little from the truth?"
+
+"Not exactly that. Rather this: we do not consider it a departure from
+the truth."
+
+"I am of a different opinion. In earth, or elsewhere, I call such a
+course as you intimate a species of white lying--quite common on earth,
+but which, till now, I did not suppose had found its way to the confines
+of the world spiritual."
+
+The conversation ended here, and was not afterward resumed. I have,
+indeed, witnessed a good deal of spiritual doctoring since that time,
+but it was of a somewhat different character from the foregoing.
+
+For example: I saw a family in the interior of Massachusetts, whose
+faith in spiritualism and spirit doctrine was perfect. The mistress of
+the house was the patient. The physician a young man who had been a
+mechanic, but who had very recently become convinced that it was his
+duty to attend the sick,--not to do anything for them, on his own
+responsibility, but only to suffer an old Indian physician to operate
+through him as a medium.
+
+The chief thing which Dr. H. did, so far as I observed, was to lay his
+hands on her, and sit for some time in that position. I am not sure
+that he did not prescribe a few very simple things, from time to time,
+such as a little weak tea, or the infusion of some domestic herb, from
+the garden. He was counted, everywhere (for his circuit was a large
+one), very successful; for his patients generally recovered. Their
+recovery, it is true, was often very slow.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXXI.
+
+REMARKABLE CURE OF EPILEPSY.
+
+
+When I was a lad, a man was employed by my father on his farm, who used
+occasionally to fall down in convulsions, lie for some time, not
+entirely still, but foaming at the mouth and agitated or rocked to and
+fro, as if in great distress; and yet, as I afterward learned,
+senseless. These attacks, they told me, were _falling sickness_ fits.
+The man was weak in mind, and not vigorous in body, though, by diligence
+and perseverence, he could accomplish something in the progress of a
+whole day. He died but little beyond middle age.
+
+Since that time I have been intimately acquainted with several
+individuals who were subject to these attacks of epilepsy, some of whom
+were affected in one way, some in another. The cause, too, was as
+various as the manner of attack, and in a few instances was peculiar and
+remarkable. In general, their memory and intellectual faculties, as well
+as their bodily strength, became, ultimately, a good deal impaired. In
+my practice as a physician, I had very few of these cases, and none in
+which I could afford relief at first. The patients were, however, for
+the most part, of middle age, or at least beyond thirty years. Several
+had taken nitrate of silver or other minerals, till their skins were of
+a blue-black color.
+
+In the beginning of the year 1854, a young man about seventeen years of
+age, of scrofulous and nervous temperament and of great delicacy, came
+under my care, to be treated for this disease, whose history, from
+beginning to end, was remarkable. I will call him Samuel.
+
+When about twelve years of age he had difficulty with another boy,--an
+Irish or Scotch lad,--which ended in a personal affray, in which Samuel
+was worsted, and his head severely injured. It was thought by some that
+a portion of the skull, which, by the violence of the blow it had
+received, had been forced in, ought to have been elevated by the
+trephine; but I believe no surgeon of reputation ever saw him. Being
+young, the depressed portion of skull gradually resumed its place, so
+that the depression could scarcely be seen.
+
+All, however, was not right within, for he was soon afterward attacked
+by epilepsy. Whether, at first, any connection between the disease and
+the bruised skull was suspected by the friends, I was not able to learn;
+but probably not. The attacks having been once commenced, were frequent
+and severe, and every year became more so. They were particularly
+frequent and severe during the winter and spring.
+
+The medical art was invoked in his behalf, especially in the region
+round about New Haven, Conn. He was not only treated by the regular
+physicians, of different kinds and schools, but by not a few empirics or
+quacks. By some of them he was evidently injured, and by none was he
+benefited. The tendency still continued to be downward, on the whole,
+and his friends were, at length, almost discouraged.
+
+All this while his diet appears to have been the usual diet of that part
+of New England in which he resided---too stimulating, and too much
+refined by cookery. In general, too, his active and perverted appetite
+led him to excess in quantity; but, as his friends never thought of its
+being a morbid or diseased appetite, no strong efforts were made to
+control it. In truth, as he was feeble and growing, it was thought
+necessary that he should eat stimulating and highly seasoned food, and
+in large quantity. He was also accustomed to tea and coffee. All his
+appetites, as it afterwards appeared, were, to say the least, very
+active, though the gratification of _the third appetite_ was wholly
+confined to solitude.
+
+No restriction, nor indeed any direction, so far as I could learn, had
+been made at this period, with regard to his mental food. Whatever he
+chose to read, he was indulged in, both as regards quantity and quality.
+And as usually happens, in the case of epileptic, and scrofulous people,
+he was quite too much inclined to works of imagination, with which the
+age and country abound. It appears, also, that being regarded as quite
+unequal to the task of laboring in field or garden, he was thus, in
+large measure, deprived of two essentials of health and happiness,
+especially to epileptics; viz., air and exercise.
+
+In August, 1853, he went to an institution that had once been a
+water-cure establishment, but which had undergone many modifications,
+till it better deserved the name of College of Hygiene, than water cure.
+Here he remained several months.
+
+The peculiar treatment he received at this institution consisted, first,
+in a plain and unstimulating diet. Water was his only drink, and bread
+and fruits, with a few well-cooked vegetables, his only food. But, in
+the second place, he was subjected to a course of treatment not unlike
+that described in Chapter LXXIX, with the exception of the deep
+breathing and cold-bathing. The last, however, was, I believe, used
+occasionally.
+
+There was, indeed, one important addition made to the treatment above
+alluded to. This consisted in an exercise designed to expand and
+strengthen the lungs, by what was called _shaking down the air_. This
+exercise was practised very frequently, and was curious. I will describe
+it as well as I can.
+
+He was first required to inflate his chest as much as possible, and
+then, while retaining the air with all his might, rise on his toes, and
+suddenly drop on his heels, with a sort of jerk, several times in
+succession, till he could hold his breath and retain the air no longer,
+which was now suffered gradually to escape. A new recruit was then drawn
+in, and treated in the same manner. The exercise, as a whole, seemed to
+consist of a series of jumpings up and down, without quite raising the
+toes from the floor, and of deep sighing. The object aimed at was to
+shake down a large amount of good, pure air, into the cells of the
+lungs, and retain it there as long as possible; and then, to let out or
+force out the air, so as to empty the lungs as perfectly as possible.
+
+The warm bath was occasionally used at four o'clock in the afternoon,
+but with doubtful effect. Exercise, especially mechanical exercise, was
+of much more service, and so was the gymnasium. He was, however,
+required to forbear all violence, in his exercises and amusements; nor
+was he allowed any severe studies. His reading was to be light, though
+not trifling.
+
+For several months next subsequent to his arrival at the institution, he
+appeared to improve. Instead of weekly, or semi-weekly, or still more
+frequent attacks, he suffered but rarely; and, in one instance, he was
+exempt from an attack for several weeks. But in December and January
+they became, once more, rather frequent. They had, however, usually been
+most frequent in winter and spring.
+
+He now began to be apprehensive of a return of his disease, in all its
+former violence; and the dread of February, March, and April had an
+influence on his system which was any thing but favorable--since fear,
+in these cases, is often worse than the evils which excite it. And,
+according to his faith, or rather according to his want of faith, so it
+was with him. The attacks became very frequent, sometimes daily; and, in
+one or two instances, twice a day.
+
+He came under my special and almost exclusive care, Feb. 1, 1854. I soon
+discovered that there was a close connection between excess and
+irregularity, in regard to his food and his paroxysms of disease. I saw,
+also, that a part of his food had been too stimulating. In justice,
+however, I ought to say that in the government of the other appetites,
+he had succeeded far better than I had expected, though his power to
+control himself was far from being perfect.
+
+While, therefore, I did not materially change the general treatment in
+other particulars, I determined to regulate his diet; and, with a view
+to this important end, to watch him, and even to deal out to him his
+daily rations, with just as much care and particularity as if he were a
+mere child. He ate but two meals a day, and these were taken at _twelve_
+and _six_; and then I always sat by him. I did not leave him, except for
+one single meal, for a period of fifty-five days.
+
+During the whole of this long period--long, I mean, to the patient--he
+not only had no attacks of his disease, but none of the giddiness or
+other symptoms which had formerly accompanied or preceded them. He did
+not, it is true, gain in flesh or strength during the time. In all this
+and in many more particulars he remained nearly stationary.
+
+Towards the close of March, his friends became desirous of taking him
+home. I was not without apprehension; but, hoping for the best, I
+submitted to their wishes as cheerfully as I could. He was among them
+for a short time; and was then, by my particular request, as well as in
+conformity with his own choice, placed on a farm.
+
+Nearly three months after his return to his friends, I received a letter
+from him, which I insert here, not only as a convenient nucleus around
+which to cluster certain suggestions I wish to make to the general
+reader, but also as a continuation of my patient's history. It was dated
+June 18, 1854.
+
+     "MY DEAR PHYSICIAN,--I am now at Mr. ----'s. Every thing
+     seems to be in perfect accordance with the wishes of those
+     who are concerned in the case. I can get as plain a diet as
+     I please, and have nothing, so to say, to tempt me. I
+     confine myself to a very small variety. I have had
+     strawberries ever since I came here, which was June 7th. I
+     eat sometimes nearly a pint at a meal. Sometimes I eat
+     nothing but strawberries and dry bread. I have some sugar on
+     the table, and sweeten the berries a little. I eat
+     considerable potatoe--say two or three at dinner--sometimes
+     a little more. I have had two dinners of asparagus, just
+     boiled in a little water, and poured on to some crusts of
+     toasted bread. It was good. I do not think I have had more
+     than three things set on the table for me, at a time, while
+     I have been here. I have bread, potatoes, and berries for
+     dinner. For supper I have bread and berries, and sweetened
+     bread, as it might be called. It is sweetened but a very
+     little. Now don't I live plainly.
+
+     "But I have left out some things that I have had. I had
+     Graham mush a few days, but I like the bread better, as Mrs.
+     ---- makes such good bread. Mr. ---- likes it better than
+     superfine. I have had boiled rice--a few meals. I had one
+     meal of bag-pudding--Indian--with a few whortleberries in
+     it.
+
+     "I have now given you an account of how I live. I eat at ten
+     or half-past ten, A. M., and at four, P. M. So I do not have
+     to go to bed with a meal of victuals on my stomach.
+
+     "After I left you, and before I came here, I had, all the
+     time, a great looseness of the bowels. It seemed to weaken
+     me. Afterwards I thought it was caused, partly, by some very
+     tart, dried apples, of which I ate freely at every meal.
+     Aunt ----thought it was working at hoeing up turf around
+     trees, for she said that working hard with her arms affected
+     her in that way. My stomach did not seem quite right.
+     Perhaps I strained it in coming home. The very next day
+     after I came here, I commenced eating the ripe strawberries
+     at meals, and have eaten them freely ever since. I sometimes
+     eat nearly a pint at a meal. From the first they have seemed
+     just the thing for me. They regulated my stomach and bowels,
+     and they have strengthened them ever since.
+
+     "I eat alone, and enjoy it capitally. I would not go back to
+     the Institution (the Hygiene establishment) for a great
+     deal, because there are so many things there to harass one's
+     mind, or tempt him, at every corner of the street and almost
+     every shop. Since I came here I have not tasted of any thing
+     between meals, and have had no inclination to do so. I think
+     there will be no trouble on that account.
+
+     "I am busy out of doors a good deal of the time. I have hoed
+     corn, piled cord-wood, driven team, picked strawberries,
+     etc. At night I milk one cow. I go barefooted three or four
+     hours in the middle of the day, use no flannels, dress very
+     thin,--as little as I can get along with.
+
+     "Do you wish me to learn to swim, if possible? There is a
+     pond--a natural one--about a mile from this place. Will you
+     not answer me soon, and give me your opinion on this and
+     other subjects?
+
+     "In love, yours, etc.
+
+     "SAMUEL."
+
+
+
+About a month later, viz., July 18, he wrote thus:
+
+     "MY DEAR DOCTOR:--Five months and a half without a symptom!
+     I have not the slightest feeling to remind me of my old
+     attacks. Should I not be thankful?
+
+     "A short time since, I had a very sore stomach. It got out
+     of order, I think, in consequence of eating too much. I
+     broke off, went a day without nothing to eat; eat less now,
+     and feel well. When Mrs. ---- was here, she told me she
+     thought I might eat all I craved. I did so, and suffered the
+     consequences, though I cured myself.
+
+     "There is a place here in the woods where raspberries are so
+     thick that people get six quarts at a time. Apples are
+     nearly ripe. Pears will soon succeed them.
+
+     "Yours truly,
+
+     "SAMUEL."
+
+
+
+Two weeks later than the above,--a little more than six months after the
+discontinuance of the epileptic attacks,--I received a letter from
+Samuel's guardian, in which he wrote as follows:
+
+     "We have continued the same course of diet as at your house;
+     in short, have carried out your views perfectly as possible.
+     Notwithstanding all this, he (Samuel) has lost flesh and
+     strength; and, for the last few weeks, has fallen off
+     greatly, in mental and physical vigor. He has run down in
+     flesh to eighty pounds, is pale as this paper, coughs
+     considerably, especially at night, yet does not expectorate
+     very much. He had a spell of spitting blood, some five or
+     six weeks ago, raised perhaps a gill. I do not think that it
+     debilitated him very much at the time."
+
+Not far from this time Samuel was taken from the farm, and subjected to
+various changes in his habits, which were unauthorized, and which
+probably proved injurious. He took a large amount of cream,--an article
+which had not before been allowed him,--also a little fresh meat at his
+dinners. Instead of going without his breakfast, as before, he now
+appears to have taken breakfast; and in some instances, at least, to
+have used not only large quantities of cream at this early hour, but
+animal food likewise. There was a strong and increasing belief among his
+friends, that his food was not sufficiently nutritious, and that he was
+suffering for want of materials for blood; whereas the error lay in the
+other direction. His stomach and other digestive organs were overloaded
+and depressed by the large amount of nutriment he had for some time
+received. But more on this hereafter.
+
+He now appeared to be falling into what is called a galloping
+consumption, of which he died a few weeks afterward. There should have
+been a post mortem examination; but, from various causes, it was not
+attended to. At the time of his death he was about eighteen years of
+age.
+
+The treatment of this young man on the farm, was by no means what had
+been intended. The experiment of having him eat alone was hazardous, and
+I sternly protested against it. But the hours at which he chose to take
+his two meals, especially the first, were such as to preclude,
+practically, a better arrangement. There was no one that wished to eat
+at ten in the forenoon, but himself; and it was not customary for the
+family to convene for eating in the afternoon, till six. Now, although,
+abstractly considered, he selected the best hours for his meals, yet,
+taking society as it is, and human nature as _his_ was, it would have
+been much better, in the result, had he eaten with the family at twelve
+and six. He would have eaten less, and yet would probably have been
+better nourished and better satisfied.
+
+No housekeeper who has the usual feelings of a housekeeper, will be
+content to set before a young man of seventeen or eighteen years of age,
+no more, for example, than one-sixth as much food as she would prepare
+for six such persons. It would seem to her almost like prisoner's fare.
+And then, few young men or old ones will content themselves with one
+sixth as much food when sitting alone, entirely unrestrained, as when in
+company, where pride or self-respect would have influence. And of one
+thing we may, at least, be sure, viz., that Samuel, with his almost
+illimitable appetite, tempted by abundance and assured that he might,
+with safety, eat as much as that appetite craved, would never be the
+individual to stop short of fifty per cent more of carbon than his
+feeble machinery could appropriate; while every ounce of the surplus was
+burned up by his lungs, at an expense of that vital energy which should
+have been husbanded with the greatest care, and expended no faster than
+was indispensably necessary.
+
+His friends, no doubt, supposed--for such views greatly prevail--that he
+would not be likely to hurt himself on plain and simple food; and, in
+truth, that it was so light and unsubstantial that he needed a large
+amount of it to keep him alive.
+
+One or two individuals, largely interested in him, gave this as their
+opinion, more than once, and vainly believe, to the present day, that he
+ran down and died for want of proper nourishment. Whereas, we need
+nothing more than Samuel's own confessions, to show us, as clearly as
+the sunlight could possibly show us any thing, that it is much more
+likely that he perished from excess of nutrition than for the want of
+it.
+
+Let us look a little at particulars. It appears, most clearly, that
+Samuel always had before him a good supply of bread, of such excellent
+quality that he could make a full and agreeable meal of it. While under
+my special care, he could eat and enjoy a full meal of the driest bread;
+and he would even have proceeded beyond the limits of safety on it, had
+I permitted it, and this, too, without berries, sugar, or cream, to make
+it still more inviting, or without his "sweetened bread," as he called
+it, for a dessert. It is, moreover, by no means probable, that the
+morbid keenness of his appetite was at all diminished by being on a farm
+and in the open air much of the time.
+
+Observe, now, his living. Fruit, he says, he allowed himself always, at
+both dinner and supper, sometimes a pint at a meal. Dried apple-sauce,
+very "tart," as he called it, he appears to have had at every meal.
+Sugar, moreover, to sweeten his berries, etc., he always had on the
+table. Will one who has such an appetite as he had, eat moderately,
+with fruit, sugar, and apple-sauce always before him,--and these
+regarded as a dessert, of which he may eat _ad libitum_, after having
+eaten a full and more than a full meal of bread? In potatoes, too, he
+indulged, as you will see by referring to his letter, in rather large
+quantity.
+
+Now the most healthy person in the world, would ere long have an acid
+stomach, as well as weakened lungs, who should undertake to live in this
+way; how much more a person who has long been feeble, especially in his
+lungs, nervous system, and even his digestive system, for that was
+active rather than strong.
+
+Indeed, there are many circumstances which favor the belief that he
+burned himself out by excess of stimulus, or, in chemical language, by
+excess of carbon. His thoughts seem to have been very largely on eating.
+It will be seen by the extracts I have made from his letters, that after
+speaking on any other needful topic, he would soon get back to the
+subject of eating. Observe, too, he says he feels no temptation to eat
+between his meals; but why? First, doubtless, because he eat to the full
+at his regular meals; and secondly, because the food was mostly, if not
+always, set away out of his reach.
+
+Another thing deserves consideration. Not only was he, but his friends
+also, inclined to the opinion that he would not, and perhaps could not,
+hurt himself on such things as plain dry bread; but they also appeared
+to believe, _practically_, at least,--and the belief is very
+common,--that the use of bread would atone for other transgressions.
+Thus, suppose he were to have, for once, a rich pudding to eat, or some
+baked beans, or sweetened rice pudding,--which, as you know, are of
+themselves very pure nutriments,--set before him, and he were to eat to
+the full, till the question should begin to arise in his own mind,
+whether he had not gone too far, it was apt to be thought, or rather
+_felt_, that an addition of plain bread, or some fruit, or a few cold
+potatoes, or some other vegetable, would be a correction for the
+preceding excess. Such, I say, is the virtue which, by a kind of
+tradition, is awarded to coarse and plain food, and to fruits, and even
+nuts. I know, indeed, that this idea would hardly be defended in so
+many words; still, it is practically entertained.
+
+To make plainer a great dietetic error, I will explain my meaning. It is
+believed, for example, that a pound or two of greasy baked beans would
+not be so likely to hurt a person, if a little bread or fruit or potatoe
+or sauce were eaten after them, as if eaten alone,--a belief than which
+none can be more unfounded or dangerous.
+
+One more proof that Samuel was constantly inclined to excess in eating,
+is found in the fact that there was a continual tendency, in his
+stomach, to acidity, which was best relieved by a day of entire
+abstinence; and the same might be said of a tendency to relaxation of
+the bowels, and its correction. In short, if there be a plain truth
+fairly deducible from the facts in the case, it is that he was destroyed
+by a carbonaceous nutriment in too great proportion for his expenditure.
+
+It may have been feared by his friends, that he yielded, at this period,
+to _other propensities_. Indeed, one letter which I received after his
+death, more than intimated all this. The remark alluded to was as
+follows:--"I have had the fear that there was something unexplained
+about his case, as you say you once had." For various reasons, I am
+inclined to believe that the indulgence referred to had little to do
+with his comparatively sudden death. His whole soul was pivoted on that
+great central organ, the stomach. For this he lived, and for this,
+probably, he died.
+
+My own principal error, in relation to the case, was, in suffering him
+to go upon the farm with such unintelligent, though well-intentioned
+teachers. Lord Bacon and others have said, "A little knowledge is a
+dangerous thing;" and in nothing is the remark more applicable than to
+the first or pioneer knowledge of people on hygiene. From the very
+nature of the case it must be so. I ought either to have protested
+against the farm, _in toto_, or given such minute instructions that they
+could not have been easily mistaken. But I had my reasons, at the time,
+for the course I took, and I thought them quite sufficient. How easy it
+is, in this world, to find cause for misgivings!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXXII.
+
+SCARLATINA CURED BY LETTING ALONE.
+
+
+At a certain season when scarlet fever was very prevalent among us, a
+member of my family was attacked with it slightly, and, as it was
+believed by almost everybody to be contagious, the case excited much
+alarm. The fact that in persons of my friend's age, it had, during the
+season, occasionally proved fatal, no doubt increased the apprehension
+and alarm, and led to many anxious fears about the treatment. Those who
+regarded my general method of treating disease as rather too "tame," and
+who supposed themselves in special danger of "taking the disease," were
+not only curious, but curiously inquisitive to know what I would do in
+my own family, to meet this supposed terrible malady.
+
+My first object was to quiet all fears, especially in the patient. It
+would have been easy--comparatively so--to do this, had it not been for
+the croakings of our neighbors. They told the sick person so many dismal
+stories of persons of her age--she was in middle life--who had died of
+scarlet fever, that it was not so easy to resist, wholly, the
+impressions. The most resolute and determined are apt to yield, in such
+circumstances.
+
+However, we did the best we could. We endeavored not only to keep her
+quiet in mind, but in body. All irregularities were carefully watched
+and guarded against; not by giving medicine to prevent evil, real or
+imaginary; not by prophylactics, as they are called; but by strictly and
+carefully obeying all the laws pertaining to the human, physical frame,
+so far as they were then understood.
+
+It was one object to keep the patient cool,--not, of course, chilly; for
+this would have been worse than a temperature a little too high. But
+excess of heat, in its application to the surface, was dreaded as one
+of the worst of evils; and no pains were spared in attempts to keep the
+sick-room not only cool, but well ventilated. Her food, also, both for
+the sake of the general circulatory system, and for that, also, of the
+sympathizing skin, was not only cool, but unstimulating.
+
+In addition to all this, and in pursuance of the same general plan, a
+warm or rather a tepid bath was administered. But in applying this the
+greatest care was used. The water was only warmed just enough so as not
+to feel uncomfortable. It had so good an effect that it was repeated.
+
+The fever did not run so high as had been expected; and our
+apprehensions gradually disappeared. All went on well, and, in a few
+days, health was entirely restored. None of the neighbors sickened as
+the consequence, either of infection or of contagion.
+
+I do not mean, by the relation of this fact, to intimate that every case
+of scarlatina, treated in the same way, would be attended with similar
+results; for the powers of life are often fed by sicklier streams than
+in the present case. There is often a large amount, so to speak, of
+combustible matter in every "nook and corner," ready to be ignited by
+the burning flood, as it courses its way through the system. Yet, even
+then, the flame would be greatly diminished by keeping quiet. Who has
+not observed the difference, amid a general conflagration, between a
+most perfect stillness and a blustering or windy moment? The difference
+between perfect quiet of body and mind and great agitation and fear, in
+their effects on health and disease, is scarcely less striking, if not,
+indeed, more so.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXXIII.
+
+IGNORANCE NOT ALWAYS BLISS.
+
+
+Pope says of the freethinker, that he may be "all things in an hour." So
+may some people in their medical creed, at least, practically. They
+change their opinions with almost every change in the position of the
+weathercock. To-day they are very orthodox, medically; to-morrow they
+are ready to throw physicians and medicine to the four winds, if not to
+the dogs. Just as the freethinker is now very orthodox in religious
+matters, and in a day or an hour quite out at sea.
+
+My troubles with patients of this description have been numerous and
+great. They promise well, and probably _mean_ well. But just as the new
+wad in a boy's pop-gun drives out the old one, in order to occupy its
+place, so the very next medical adviser, especially if he have much
+self-confidence, secures their entire trust, and I, for the time, seem
+to lose it. At least, mine is eclipsed. The people I am describing are
+of too easy virtue to be virtuous.
+
+And whence all this? It arises from ignorance--not very blissful
+ignorance, either. As well might Nebuchadnezzar's image, had it
+possessed sensation, been blissful, as such persons as these. Brass,
+iron, and clay may quite as easily unite to form a reliable compound, as
+these persons become settled in opinion with regard to a proper medical
+treatment.
+
+I had one patient of this description who harassed me for many years. It
+is true that he finally recovered; but I hardly know how. His recovery,
+when I reflect on it, leads me towards the belief that people oftener
+get well in spite of their medicine, than as the consequence of using
+it.
+
+He was originally a boot and shoe maker; and being exceedingly
+ambitious, he had neglected exercise, and worked too hard at the bench,
+as well as committed certain imprudences connected with diet, till he
+was almost a perfect wreck, from dyspepsia. He was about twenty-five
+years of age.
+
+At first, despite of his ignorance, I had hope of being able to put him
+upon the high road to health. He seemed unusually docile. But, as I have
+before said, virtue is sometimes too easy. He would believe in and
+follow me almost implicitly, for a little while; but when about half or
+perhaps two-thirds of the way to the land of health, he would become
+impatient, and either run to me anxiously or veer to somebody else. I
+have known him to start in pursuit of me when I was a full day's journey
+distant, and not easily found even then.
+
+But I have also known him go, with the same earnestness and anxiety, to
+another adviser, and follow his directions with the same care with which
+he had followed my own, and perhaps about as long. While following a
+person, however, he was, for a very short period at the first, entirely
+devoted to him and his principles, which, as far as it went, was
+undoubtedly favorable.
+
+Once he followed, for a time, a clairvoyant,--a female,--and took her
+medicine. She gave him, it is true, rather more medicine than he was
+willing to take, or even pay for; but as I gave him less than he
+desired, he thought it advisable to give her system a fair trial. I do
+not know whether he thought himself at all benefited by her
+prescriptions. Most certain it is that he did not long follow her, and
+that he came to me again some time afterwards, in the same condition as
+formerly.
+
+In another instance, he sought relief of the hydropathists. One of the
+most eminent of them had him under his care for a long time. I believe
+he even visited, and staid a week or two, at a Water Cure Institution.
+Yet he never acknowledged any benefit from this treatment. He finally
+tried to unite allopathy and hydropathy, and to invoke their combined
+forces. A meeting of myself and an eminent hydropathic practitioner was
+appointed and held, but even this did not result in his recovery.
+
+And yet he finally recovered, though I hardly know how. Such cases
+force me to the acknowledgment that human physical nature is tough, that
+we are machines made to live. Were it not so, this dyspeptic friend of
+mine must, at a comparatively early age, have sank to the grave, a
+victim of ignorance. He has, however, acquired wisdom in the school of
+experience.
+
+A brother of his, who was my patient in a similar complaint, and from
+similar causes, recovered in a very few months. But he was not a mere
+weathercock.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXXIV.
+
+MEASLES WITHOUT SNAKEROOT AND SAFFRON.
+
+
+In the early part of the year 1854, measles prevailed considerably, and
+was rather severe even under the most favorable circumstances. In our
+cities, such as New York and Boston, it destroyed a great number of
+valuable lives. It was by no means confined to children; it attacked
+adults, who had hitherto escaped it, as well as children.
+
+One of my most intimate female friends, who was over forty years of age,
+had often been exposed to it without taking it, and had begun to hope
+she should escape through life. The family to which she belonged had it,
+and in the end a blow fell on her. It alarmed her most fearfully. She
+declared, again and again, that she should not and could not survive it,
+and her fears greatly aggravated the severity of her symptoms.
+
+She was well acquainted with the most enlightened views on the subject
+of disease, and though her fears were great, she endeavored to pursue
+the proper course at first, which, as she knew, consisted mainly in
+supporting her strength as much as possible, in the most appropriate and
+healthful ways. She had no thought, it would seem, of taking medicine.
+
+But she had neighbors,--some of them of the gossiping kind,--who called
+on her frequently, to convince her of the necessity of _taking something
+to bring out the measles_, and to relate the pitiful story of Mr. and
+Mrs. Such-an-one, who perished because they would do nothing to save
+themselves, and to entreat her to take at least a little saffron and
+snakeroot tea. And they had some influence with her; not indeed at
+first, but after she became weakened by the disease. Drowning people, it
+is said, catch at straws.
+
+I was called to see her late one Saturday evening. She did not know, as
+she said, that any medicine was needed, but as she was considerably
+advanced in life, and many had sunk under the disease of late, and as
+she had such a continual feeling of depression and fainting, she thought
+it barely possible I might think it advisable to give her some little
+thing to make her feel more comfortable.
+
+There were indeed many things that required attention. Her feet were
+cold, unnecessarily so, and her room was not properly ventilated. Then
+she needed small draughts of water much oftener than she had been
+accustomed to receive them, or had dared to venture in their use. She
+needed no snakeroot and saffron, nor indeed any other form of herb tea.
+I gave particular orders with regard to the little things so needful in
+such cases, and in order to be on hand in case of alarm, I remained in
+the house till morning.
+
+More than once during the night, her courage nearly failed her, and I
+was summoned to her bedside. In one or two instances, she ventured to
+complain of me as neglectful of her case, because I gave her no
+medicine. But I cheered and encouraged her as well as I could. Her
+disease had made her a child, and she needed a child's treatment. I was
+not, indeed, without my fears, but I did not see how her condition could
+be alleviated by medicinal agents, unless they become necessary as a
+substitute for that faith in Nature, which she was accustomed to
+exercise when she had more strength. This faith, as I have already told
+you, did indeed sometimes fall a little below the proper standard, but
+the depression was in general but momentary.
+
+Early in the morning a near neighbor called, and kindly inquired how she
+did; and when assured that she was, as yet, no better, was unable longer
+to repress her feelings. "Why, in the case of _my_ children," said she,
+"the measles never came out without giving them something, and they
+never would have done so to this day." Yet she had a large family. I
+might have asked her how she knew what Nature _could_ have done unaided,
+since she gave her no opportunity to test her strength; but she was too
+ignorant to converse with on such subjects. To have asked her how she
+knew whether her children got well in spite of the medicine they took,
+or on account of it, would have been but throwing pearls before swine,
+and I would not do it.
+
+It was very soon reported, all over the neighborhood, that Mrs. O. was
+in a very dangerous condition, and if she did not have some other
+doctor, would soon die. And, what was worst of all, the stories got back
+to Mrs. O. herself. And now came the tug of war; and had not the
+eruption, just at this time made its appearance, I do not know what the
+results might have been.
+
+Before noon, however, of this day (Sunday), every thing went right, and
+Mrs. O. was as blooming as she had been before pale and disconsolate. My
+good friend who had given me the morning homily, did not again make her
+appearance, and the neighbors in general who had dealt out their
+jeremiades so freely, kept themselves at a very respectful distance.
+
+The recovery was as rapid as could have been expected, even in the most
+vigorous young person. Nor was there any after-trouble, to require
+physic, or eye-water, or remedies for the dropsy. And,--what added to my
+own surprise, if not to that of the neighbors in general,--though she
+was a feeble woman, constitutionally, she recovered with as much
+rapidity as the most healthy and robust, and as well, to say the least,
+as if she had taken "_snakeroot and saffron_."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXXV.
+
+THE CONSUMPTIVE PAIR.
+
+
+A young man, recently married, called on me one day, and requested me to
+visit his family as soon as I could conveniently, for the purpose of
+having what he was pleased to call a general consultation.
+
+I called in due time, and found the case as follows: Both the husband
+and wife were descended from consumptive families, and though they had
+got along tolerably well till very recently, there were now, in them
+both, many evidences of approaching disease; and though consumptive
+people are said to be slow in admitting they have consumption, yet this
+young couple formed an exception to the general rule.
+
+In the bosom of the family, and possessed of their entire confidence, I
+had an ample opportunity for examining the case of this interesting
+couple. I found the tendency downward much more marked and rapid than I
+had expected, and I frankly told them so. Some of the circumstances
+were, indeed, rather peculiar. Consumptive people are generally sensual,
+while indulgence is peculiarly fatal to them. But here was a case more
+glaring than I had before seen. They had been married but about three
+months; nor were the indulgences of the table believed to be remarkable,
+as they were forbidden by a due regard to economy. They suffered much by
+excessive heat in their rooms, both by day and by night, and in several
+other ways, much more than by high living.
+
+But I endeavored to put all things right, and to convince them of the
+necessity of keeping them so. In a long, but very familiar series of
+conversations,--for the most part separately,--I endeavored to show them
+that conjugal life was a life of duty, as well as of enjoyment; and that
+consumptive people, in order to live out more than half their days,
+must forego a great many gratifications to which they might very
+naturally lay claim.
+
+The results of this conversation were probably worth a hundred-fold the
+expense they involved. This young couple are, to this hour, for aught I
+know, enjoying tolerable health; and their health is improving. Their
+children, though not strong, reap the full benefit of thorough parental
+reform; and their scrofulous tendencies seem every day more and more
+receding.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXXVI.
+
+HOW TO CURE CHOLERA.
+
+
+While cholera was prevailing in our large towns and cities, and a few
+cases were occurring and proving fatal in my own neighborhood, a friend
+of mine, who had till recently been a sea captain, complained, one day,
+of cholera symptoms, and begged to know what he could do to ward off the
+threatened disease.
+
+On inquiry I found he was more than half right, that cholera, surely
+enough, was already marking him for its victim. The rice-water
+discharges, so called, had actually commenced. Had he been any thing but
+a resolute tar, he would have gone on, most evidently, into severe if
+not fatal disease.
+
+I gave him the best advice I was able, with regard to diet, exercise,
+etc.,--probably the same, or about the same, that any thoughtful medical
+man, in the same circumstances, would have given. He was to be cheerful,
+quiet, and abstinent. For food, he was to use nothing but a little
+boiled rice,--at least, till the symptoms of cholera began to abate. He
+was especially directed to avoid all medicine.
+
+Several weeks passed away, during which I heard nothing from him. As I
+did not hear of his death, however, I concluded he must have recovered.
+One day, rather unexpectedly, I met him again, and inquired familiarly
+how he got along with his cholera? He laughed outright, but immediately
+added,--"Sit down, sir, and I will tell you the whole story."
+
+"After I left you," said he, "the thought struck me,--Why cannot I
+control the muscles of my system as well as my appetites and passions?
+Indeed, on occasions, I have done it, at least for a short time. These
+little rice-water evacuations cannot, in the nature of things, do much
+harm by being retained. I can do what any man can. These frequent
+demands of nature seem to me very unreasonable. I will not yield to
+them. And, like a good sailor, I kept my word. For nearly a whole day I
+never permitted a single evacuation. Then, after yielding obedience, for
+once, to nature's clamorous demands, I again enforced my prohibitory
+law. My task, the second day, was less severe than it was the first, and
+on the third day I got along very comfortably. The fourth day I was
+well; and to-day you see me here."
+
+Whether he told me the truth, I do not know, of course; but I give the
+statement, as nearly as I can recollect, just as it was given to me. I
+have reason, however, for believing it to be true. The man is still
+alive, and is as likely to live for twenty or twenty-five years to come,
+as you or I, or any other individual.
+
+Mrs. Willard, of Troy, New York, under the full impression that the seat
+of human life is in the lungs, and not in the heart, and that even the
+blue color of the skin during the collapse of Asiatic cholera, is owing
+to an accumulation of unburnt carbon in the air cells of the lungs, made
+the experiment of trusting a few patients, in this disease, to the full
+influence of pure air, and nothing else. According to her account the
+experiments were most admirably successful. She cured every individual
+she experimented on (and it was a considerable number), and in a
+comparatively short period.
+
+It was my good fortune to escape cholera patients, with the single
+exception mentioned above. However, I am quite confident that, but for
+the alarm, which more than half paralyzes our efforts, we might much
+more frequently recover, under its deadly influences, especially if we
+begin the work of preparation in good season, and duly and faithfully
+persevere. There is much in enduring to the end.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXXVII.
+
+OBSTINACY AND SUICIDE.
+
+
+Without examining the term suicide, in regard to its various shades of
+meaning, I have placed it at the head of this chapter; for I think it
+properly belongs there. Of this, however, I leave the reader to judge
+when he has heard a statement of the facts in the case to which I have
+applied it.
+
+A young woman was admitted to the family where I was, to be treated for
+a nervous complaint so obstinate as to remind one who was not wholly
+insane nor strikingly imaginative, of the demoniacal possessions of
+eighteen hundred years ago. She would not eat; she would not drink; she
+would not or _could_ not sleep. In short, she would not, if she could
+help it, do any thing which did not have an immediate bearing on her own
+well-being, for the moment. She was, in truth, one of the most selfish
+creatures in human shape I ever yet saw. If Dr. Johnson, who is said to
+have held that every sick person is a rascal, had seen her, I wonder
+what he would have said of the case.
+
+She was one of those young women who have never been governed, and hence
+cannot govern themselves. If she took it into her head to do or not to
+do a thing, she would be sure to carry her point, if not in one way, at
+least in another.
+
+How she came to consent to be placed under my care, I never knew; for
+all the neighbors and friends of the poor girl well understood that if
+she came there she would have to obey me; and yet that, if she _did_
+obey me, it would be the first instance in which she ever yielded to any
+mind or will but her own, either earthly or heavenly. Perhaps it was a
+last resort--a sort of desperation.
+
+I began my directions, however, as if I expected to be obeyed, and had
+no fears of any disinclination on her part. Some things which pleased
+her, she consented to attempt; others she would tell me she _could_ not
+do. When I was quite confident nothing was wanting but a will, I
+sometimes asked for a reason; but it could, in no instance, be obtained.
+If I pressed her for an answer, or for a reason, she would either be
+silent or groan most dreadfully with pain!
+
+At length I saw that nothing could be obtained in this way, and that she
+must either attend to my directions, as far as was really in her power,
+or I could have nothing to do with her; and I told her so. She did not
+appear to care. Her alienation of feeling was so rapid that in a very
+few days she seemed almost to hate the very sight of me. Indeed, I
+believe she made statements to this effect to several of her friends.
+
+Her report, so unfavorable and so very strange, soon reached the ears of
+several very respectable people, who in wonder and surprise came to me,
+to learn what it meant, and among the rest came her minister. They made
+diligent though respectful inquiry whether the facts were as she
+represented them to be. I believe that, for the most part, they were
+satisfied with the treatment.
+
+But the girl herself was not satisfied. She could not leave the house
+without help; and yet it was easy to see that she was determined not to
+remain. She preferred, as she said, to die. Everybody seemed to pity
+her, despite of her unreasonableness, and the more for her
+unreasonableness. Her friends assured her that this treatment of mine
+afforded her the last chance of recovery, and begged her not to decide
+to leave us too hastily. It was all to no purpose, however; she said she
+preferred death in the street to a cure at my hands.
+
+There had been serious difficulty about her diet. I had strenuously
+forbidden the use of certain condiments which I thought injurious to
+her, but which she was resolutely determined to have. At first, a few
+things prepared to her taste had been smuggled in by certain psuedo
+friends; but this, when discovered, was absolutely prohibited.
+
+One evening, just at dark, some of her friends called to see her and
+me. They found me in the sitting-room. We had a short conversation
+concerning the patient, in which they were made most distinctly to
+understand that they must either leave her to be treated wholly
+according to my discretion or remove her. They were left at a loss what
+course was best; but at length, in compliance with her clamors, they
+placed her in their carriage and carried her away.
+
+This was both the first and last patient that ever ran away from me, or
+that ever appeared to be desirous of doing so. On the whole, though no
+one pitied her more than myself, I was glad when she was gone. She was
+hardly worth curing. I never heard from her more, except vaguely, some
+time afterward, that she was dead, which was probably correct. Most
+certainly I could not have lived long, in her circumstances.
+
+I was very unwise in taking the charge of her, or, at least, in
+retaining her a moment after she refused to obey me. However, I had my
+reward. The public not being possessed of all the facts in the case,
+probably lost confidence in me. It was proper that they should. He who
+takes a viper to his bosom, must not be surprised if he suffers the
+natural consequences of his presumption.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXXVIII.
+
+HEALTH HOSPITALS.
+
+
+Some of my friends, fully aware of my strong reliance on the
+recuperative powers of nature, and of my growing scepticism in regard to
+medicine, entered into combination and proposed to place me at the head
+of a hospital, in which I should have an opportunity, as they supposed,
+to test the superiority of my favorite practice.
+
+The buildings needful for the purpose, were to be furnished by one of
+the company, gratuitously. For the rest, a subscription was to have been
+started. The salary was to have been $1,000 a year. Matters were, in
+fine, carried so far that nothing remained but my own acceptance or
+non-acceptance, of the proposal, as there was no doubt that the
+subscription would readily succeed.
+
+But I saw, at the moment, so many difficulties, that after a careful
+consideration of the subject I was compelled to decline. Situated as I
+then was, and with very little self-confidence, perhaps the decision was
+right. And yet I have at times, ever since, regretted it. I was not then
+so fully aware as I now am, of the stern necessity of such institutions.
+
+Still later than this, I made an effort to establish a Hospital, on my
+own responsibility, and on my own plan. This was, simply, to receive
+patients at my house, and teach them, both by precept and example, _how
+to live._ In other words, I was to teach the art of preventing disease
+by obeying the physical and moral laws. Even disease itself was to be
+cured by obedience to these laws,--those of hygiene.
+
+At this time, I was residing in the country. Had I been in the crowded
+city, I might, perhaps, have succeeded. As it was, I found many
+difficulties. Just now, too, among other difficulties, my pecuniary
+condition became embarrassed, and I was anxious to be freed from debt
+before I begun a work which, at best, required a good deal of capital.
+Not to be able to labor wholly gratuitously would, as I thought, defeat
+my whole plan.
+
+In these circumstances, and after considerable delay, the whole thing
+was indefinitely postponed; and soon after, I removed to a region still
+less promising. I shall not, at present, if ever, repeat my attempts, at
+least on the plan of doing my work gratuitously. What costs little is,
+usually, little valued.
+
+And yet, such institutions are needed; and the time must come when they
+will succeed. Some eminent medical man who already possesses wealth,
+will perhaps make the trial. For myself, I prefer a more radical work. I
+prefer to throw my own make-weight, while I live, into the scale of
+early and correct physical education.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXXIX.
+
+DESTRUCTION BY SCROFULA.
+
+
+Much is said in these days about scrofula, and much indeed should be
+said about it; for it has become a most frequent, not to say fatal,
+disease. For, if few die of it, immediately, it leads to, or renders
+more severe, numerous other diseases, which are more directly fatal. In
+truth, a scrofulous constitution not only prepares us for many other
+diseases, but renders them, when they assail us, much more severe than
+they otherwise would have been. Colds, fevers, and consumption, in
+particular, are not only more frequent in scrofulous people than in
+others, but also more intense or severe, as well as less manageable by
+medical skill.
+
+This disease itself, though often inherited, may, on the one hand, be
+greatly aggravated by improper treatment; or, by a proper course of
+living, may, on the other hand, be postponed many years, if not
+indefinitely. Living much in the open air, cheerfulness of mind, plain
+food and drink, and a proper regard to the skin, will do a vast deal
+towards arresting its progress, and in some instances will wholly
+prevent its doing us any harm. For though five millions of the
+inhabitants of the United States were probably born with a tendency to
+this formidable disease, and the same proportion--if not a greater--of
+each generation to come will be likely to have the same tendency, I do
+not believe it to be indispensably necessary that one-half of this
+number should die, as now they do, of consumption. I have not a doubt
+that two-thirds of them might, by proper management, be made to last
+many years, and some of them to what is usually called old age.
+
+It has been my lot to have a very great number of scrofulous patients,
+daring the last twenty-five years, from almost every part of the United
+States. One of the worst cases I ever had was that of Mrs. ----, of New
+Hampshire. Her history, prior to the period when she came to me, is very
+briefly as follows.
+
+She was born of parents, who, at the time of her birth, were very near
+their dotage; in consequence of which, as it was believed, she held her
+existence by a very feeble tenure. At two and a half years of age, she
+was nearly destroyed by dysentery, or by the medicine given to arrest
+her disease, or by both. In addition to this and almost before she
+recovered, she had an attack of scarlet fever, which was very severe,
+and which was also probably treated freely by medicine. By this time
+there is no doubt that scrofula, at first slightly inherited, had become
+pretty well riveted on a constitution already but poorly prepared to
+endure it.
+
+In her seventeenth year, she was afflicted with a troublesome eruption,
+which was cured, or at least checked, by a wash of sugar of lead. (See
+Chapter XIII.) She was married at twenty-one; and though stinted in her
+growth, so as to be almost a dwarf, she seemed, at first, to be
+tolerably healthy. But in the course of a year she suffered from various
+complaints, to which scrofulous and otherwise debilitated females are
+subject in early conjugal life, for which she was treated--as I suppose
+very injudiciously--with active medicine, especially calomel.
+
+And now, as if to render what was already bad enough a great deal worse,
+she made use of a certain patent medicine, which had been greatly lauded
+in the public papers. She was also persuaded to make use of a more
+stimulating diet than before; which was doubtless to her great
+disadvantage, in such a feeble condition. Her diet, though it should
+have been _nourishing,_ should have been _less stimulating_ than usual,
+and not more so.
+
+Falling in with the famous Sylvester Graham, who was lecturing near her
+at the time, she was overpersuaded to change her habits very suddenly,
+especially her dietetic habits. From a highly seasoned diet, she was at
+once transferred to a very plain one, to which was added cold bathing
+and abundant exercise in the open air. This change, though it caused
+great emaciation, appeared to restore her health entirely. Her appetite
+and general strength were such that she thought it almost impossible she
+could ever be sick again.
+
+But now a heavy domestic affliction befell her, which again very much
+reduced her; and, as she was wont to say afterward, "killed her." What
+it was, however, I was never informed. Being greatly depressed, she
+undoubtedly confined herself to the house too much, and in one instance
+when she ventured out, she unluckily exposed herself to a damp east
+wind, which appeared to give her cold. To remove this, and for other
+purposes, she fasted rigidly, for several days.
+
+It was at this time that she came, in part, under my care. But she was
+already so much diseased in mind and body, and so ignorant of any just
+principles of hygiene, as to be greatly liable to be led about by the
+fancy or whim of this friend or that--sometimes by Mr. Graham and
+others, who only relied on Nature; and at others, by those who went to
+the opposite extreme. I could do little for her to any valuable purpose,
+and was glad to send her to the elder Dr. Jackson, of Boston. Not,
+however, till I had given her to understand, in general, that aside from
+her scrofulous tendencies, I did not know what ailed her; and that, so
+far as I could understand her case, her safest course was to avoid
+medicine and depend almost wholly on a careful obedience to God's laws,
+physical and moral, especially to his laws of hygiene. I had not then
+fully learned how much she had been abused, in early life, by
+unnecessary dosing and drugging.
+
+Dr. Jackson told her it was evident there was something in her case very
+much out of the way; but he would be honest with her, and confess that
+he did not know what it was. He proposed to have Dr. Putnam see her, and
+another physician at Lowell. He insisted, however, on a more nutritious
+diet.
+
+The last suggestion was heeded for awhile, but evidently to her
+disadvantage. Under the impression that in order to obtain more
+nutriment she must do so, she suddenly returned to the free use of
+flesh, butter, eggs, milk, etc., which, for a long time, till now, she
+had refused. This course brought upon her much acidity of the stomach.
+She returned once more to the plain diet, and by avoiding extremes and
+letting alone medicine, according to the general tenor of my directions,
+she partly recovered, and seemed destined to still higher advance
+towards the land of health and life.
+
+But here, again, domestic trials, like a flood, came upon her, and
+brought her into great mental anxiety and embarrassment, as well as into
+that weak and vacillating condition which had once before existed, and
+which I have already described. To-day she would use her well-balanced,
+plain diet; to-morrow, perhaps, resort to the starvation system, for a
+few days. Then, in the fear of suffering from that, she would resort
+again, for a few days, to luxurious living.
+
+Now, too, she would adhere to and follow this physician, now that, and
+next, none at all; or, perchance, follow some quack. I was not in a
+situation to exert much influence over her, or it is possible she might
+still have been saved. She would, indeed, adhere to my general plan,
+when all else that promised more seemed to fail, and perhaps would have
+been more persevering, but for her friends. They wanted to have the
+"prophet" do "some great thing," and cure her as by magic or miracle.
+
+In saying these things, it is far enough from being my intention to be
+reproachful. She was not educated to a knowledge of herself; and she was
+by no means, at the present time, what she had been in her best days. It
+is not to be wondered at, therefore, that she acted like a wayward
+child; though it is greatly to be regretted, since, in her
+circumstances, it probably cut off every chance of her recovery.
+
+In the spring, two or three years after her first change of diet, a
+cough with which she had occasionally been troubled before, came on with
+renewed violence, and never after wholly left her. She remained in this
+condition till the opening of the next year, when her cough made still
+farther advances, and was attended with hectic fever. She died in the
+month of May following.
+
+A post mortem examination was made, which determined the case to have
+been what Dr. Jackson and myself and many others supposed, a case of
+scrofula or struma; though it was certainly attended with many curious
+and rather anomalous symptoms. Though there were no ulcers in the lungs,
+they were found full of tubercles; and so were the mesenteric glands,
+and the lining membrane of the alimentary canal. It was even said by the
+principal individual concerned in the examination, that her whole body
+was but a mass of disease. For myself, I was necessarily absent at the
+time, and therefore have no facts of my own to present.
+
+I never had a case, either before or since, in which my hands were so
+completely tied as in this. The patient probably had as much confidence
+in me as in anybody; and yet she would not long follow me implicitly and
+strictly, without yielding to the whims of her friends or her enemies,
+and halving the practice with some physician or quack, either known or
+unknown. Under the care of some good, common-sense physician, and with
+full faith in him on the part of all concerned, I am still of opinion,
+as I always have been, that she might have recovered and lived many
+years, and, perhaps, been able to do a vast amount of good.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XC.
+
+STARVING OUT DISEASE.
+
+
+Dr. Johnson, one of the best British writers on dyspepsia, advises his
+medical brethren to starve out the disease, as the surest way of getting
+rid of it. He says he has by far the best success with those patients
+who submit to this course. It is not starvation, exactly, though it
+savors of it. He says, keep them on just two pints of Indian-meal
+gruel--by which he appears to mean thin hasty pudding--a day, and no
+more. If they are really afraid of starving, after the trial of a few
+weeks, let them eat a few times of something else; but they must soon
+return to the starvation plan.
+
+I have usually preferred cakes of Indian meal, or wheat meal unbolted
+and baked very hard, to gruel or pudding. The reason is, that I consider
+mastication very essential to good digestion, especially in the case of
+dyspeptics. I believe the small quantity of Indian meal that goes into
+two pints of gruel, or even of pudding, were it firmly baked, would hold
+out and sustain the health and strength of an individual much longer
+than gruel; and it will, by most persons, be preferred.
+
+One of my dyspeptic patients, a young man of great resolution, was put
+upon ten ounces a day of thin Indian-meal cake, or johnny cake; and it
+wrought wonders. The prescription was made about twenty years ago, and
+no young man under forty years of age, in Massachusetts, is more
+efficient, at the present time, than he.
+
+To another young man, similarly afflicted, I recommended eight ounces of
+the same kind of food. He was from a family that had long known me, and
+that appeared to confide in me. I have never heard from him since. My
+conjecture is that he refused to follow the directions, and hence did
+not wish to communicate with me any farther. He may be still a
+dyspeptic, as the consequence, though it is certainly possible he may
+have obeyed the prescription, to the saving of his health.
+
+Some have supposed that a quantity of food so small, is not sufficient
+to keep alive an ordinary adult; but they are mistaken. Much smaller
+quantities than eight ounces have proved sufficient for this purpose, in
+a great many instances. Three or four ounces have been found adequate to
+every want, in these circumstances.
+
+As I regard this as a highly important point, I will endeavor to
+establish it by two or three facts, which have come, in part, under my
+own observation. The first appeared in the _Boston Medical and Surgical
+Journal_, for 1851, and in several other papers. The other is from a
+Philadelphia paper, and is as reliable as the former. It is, however, of
+much later date; viz., December, 1853.
+
+Jervis Robinson,[K] of Nantucket, was a ship-master, born in 1800. In
+1832, he became a most miserable dyspeptic. For three or four years he
+relied on the popular remedy of beef-steak three times a day, and with
+the usual consequences. It made him worse rather than better.
+
+In the year 1836, a friend of his who had heard lectures on dyspepsia,
+or had read on the subject, suggested a new remedy. It was three Graham
+crackers daily, one at each meal, without any drink at the time of
+eating. This, it was said, if persevered in long enough, would certainly
+effect a radical cure.
+
+But I prefer to let Mr. Robinson tell his own story, which he does in
+the following manner:--
+
+"The novelty as well as simplicity of this prescription, greatly
+interested my mind, and I laid the case before my friends. But they, as
+with one voice, endeavored to dissuade me from a course which they said
+would certainly destroy me. They were particularly afraid of the sudden
+change from a full flesh diet to one entirely vegetable.[L] But I told
+them I might as well die in one way as another, and that I was resolved
+on the experiment.
+
+"At first I had no Graham crackers; I therefore used the common soft
+Graham bread cut in thin slices and thoroughly dried. Twenty-one ounces
+a week was my allowance. Of these I made three meals a day, at the hours
+of six, twelve, and six. Small as the allowance was, I spent half an
+hour in consuming it. Occasionally at evening, I omitted one-half of
+even these scanty rations.
+
+"My drink, for twenty-four hours, was one gill of water, divided into
+three equal parts, and one of them to be taken just two hours after each
+meal. I also used a cold shower-bath at rising in the morning, and
+walked a mile before breakfast, having retired at ten the previous
+evening.
+
+"Under this course, my flesh and strength wasted fast. I was weighed
+every week, and for the first three or four weeks, I lost half a pound a
+day. The daily loss then diminished somewhat, but was not entirely
+discontinued till the lapse of two months. At this time I had lost, in
+all, twenty pounds weight.
+
+"All this time the cry of starvation was heard from every quarter, and I
+must frankly own that, for a week or so, I was not myself wholly without
+fears. However, my head felt so much better, and my spirits so much
+revived, that I began to take courage. My bowels, moreover, which up to
+this time had rarely moved, and never to much purpose, now began to move
+more regularly, and in about three weeks they resumed their functions
+entirely, both as regarded time and quantity.
+
+"At the end of two months, I ceased to lose flesh, and remained, in this
+respect, about stationary for four weeks; but after this I began to
+gain. At first, the increase of weight was very slow indeed, but soon it
+became much more rapid, so that in two months more I gained nearly what
+I had lost, or at the average rate of five or six ounces a day. For a
+part of this time, however, the gain was half a pound a day, or nearly
+three times as much as the whole weight of my food, and more than the
+whole weight of my food and drink together.
+
+"I have said that I ate three ounces, by weight, of Graham bread,
+daily,--an ounce at each meal. But I afterwards procured the Graham
+crackers in Boston, and used them a part of the time. Of these, too, I
+continued frequently to omit half a cracker at evening. The water,
+also,--one-third of a gill,--was generally omitted at evening.
+
+"As to my appetite, during the experiment, I can truly say that, though
+I never in my life came to the table with a better appetite, I was never
+better satisfied with my meals when they were finished. After the first
+three weeks, I had little or no thirst. Nor had I, so far as I now
+recollect, any desire to eat between meals. In truth, food, except at my
+meals, was seldom thought of. But, on this subject, my mind had been
+made up at the outset. I will only add, on this point, that my bread,
+during the whole time, tasted better, far better, to me than the nicest
+cake formerly had.
+
+"As regards perspiration, my skin, after the first three or four weeks
+(during which it was dry and hard), became soft and moist. When I used
+much exercise, I perspired very freely. My sleep was sound and
+satisfying. Indeed, the whole "machinery," so far as I could judge,
+worked admirably during the latter part of the experiment, and at its
+close I could perform a good day's work at my trade.
+
+"I was about thirty years of age when I made the experiment. I am now
+above fifty. I have not always, nor indeed generally, been as rigid in
+my habits since that time. In one instance, however, I worked two weeks
+on a ship, at "sheathing," on but five ounces of food a day, and was
+never better in my life, and never felt less fatigue at night. In fact,
+I felt much better at night than I did in those instances in which I
+indulged myself in eating two pounds of food a day.
+
+"During a part of the time of my principal experiment, I kept a grocery.
+On leaving this, I established a Graham boarding-house, in which I
+continued for one year.
+
+"About a year after the termination of my experiment, I had occasion,
+for about three weeks, to work in a bake-house, where the mercury in the
+thermometer was at 90 deg. While here, I ate twelve ounces of dry bread
+and two apples a day, and drank nothing. Yet I perspired as freely as ever,
+nor did I perceive any difference in the quality or the quantity of any
+other secretions or excretions."
+
+The reader will take notice that Mr. Robinson's principal or starvation
+experiment, lasted five months, or one hundred and fifty days. He will
+also observe that he left off the experiment with nearly or quite as
+much flesh as he had when he commenced, and with a very great increase
+of muscular strength.
+
+The above statement was so remarkable, that not a few medical men and
+others regarded it as a hoax. "To live on three ounces of bread, and yet
+be in daily employment," they said, "even though such employment were of
+a kind likely to call for very little muscular effort, is altogether
+incredible. And what renders the whole so much more unlikely, is, the
+yet more extraordinary assertion, that, part of the time, he gained more
+in weight than the whole amount eaten and drank."
+
+It was no wonder that medical and all scientific men were staggered at
+the account. I was in doubt myself, in regard to the functions of waste,
+and made a very rigid examination, in order to be certain of the facts,
+before I ventured to publish any thing. On one or two points, I
+afterward obtained Mr. Robinson's particular statement, as follows:--
+
+"In regard to the question you propose, I shall have to guess a little.
+So far as the fluids are concerned, however, I think it was about half a
+pint a day. The solids--for I weighed them this morning, and they appear
+to me about equal to those voided during the experiment--are fully half
+a pound."
+
+I also recently ascertained another curious fact. Mr. Robinson's
+eyesight, prior to the experiment, had, for many years, been very poor,
+but was perfectly restored during its progress. It appeared, also, that
+he had again resorted to the exclusive use of bread and water for food;
+but not in such small quantities as before. Mr. Robinson, of course, is
+now above sixty years old.
+
+One medical correspondent of the _Boston Medical and Surgical Journal_,
+pressed Mr. Robinson, very hard, for corroborative testimony concerning
+the facts just stated, to which Mr. Robinson very kindly replied, by
+sending him the certificate of his wife, Mrs. E. D. Robinson, whose
+veracity is undoubted. The certificate was as follows:--
+
+"The most of the facts which my husband has written, I well recollect,
+and will give my name as a voucher for the truth of them."
+
+A brother of Mr. Robinson, at Holmes' Hole, whom I called on, appeared
+to give full credence to the statements of the latter, although he was
+much opposed to the experiment, at the time it was made, and mortally
+detested all his bread and water tendencies.
+
+I will only add, that a medical man who was sceptical in regard to the
+whole matter, became finally convinced that the story bore the marks of
+truth, and made public his conviction, in the subjoined statements and
+reasonings.
+
+"It is no true philosophy to refuse credence to a statement of fact
+supported by competent evidence, simply on the ground that we cannot
+understand how it can be. That his system (Robinson's) absorbed a very
+considerable amount of weight from the moisture at all times existing in
+the atmosphere, I have no doubt--partly through the skin, but chiefly,
+as I apprehend, through the mucous membrane of the lungs. The fact that
+they are capable of transmitting such an amount of water in a very short
+time, as may be rendered evident by breathing on a cold, polished
+surface, is a pretty conclusive proof that they may, under favorable
+circumstances, be as active in absorption.
+
+"That the alvine evacuations are purely and entirely a secretion, to
+become an excretion, I have been satisfied for a number of years; and I
+am glad of this new and striking--I might say incontrovertible--proof
+that it is so. To be sure, all matters incapable of solution and
+digestion, pass off through the alimentary canal, but they are purely
+accidental. One of the most satisfactory proofs, to my mind, of the
+fact, has been the discharges from the bowels of a healthy infant. The
+whole of the milk is so digested that there is no residuary matter to
+pass through the canal, and yet the discharges are abundant."
+
+The case of Mary B. Adams, of Oakham, Mass., though differing
+considerably from that of Mr. Robinson, is, nevertheless, remarkable. I
+have dwelt so long on the preceding case, however, that I must study
+brevity. What I shall say, was published in the papers of some years
+since, and is from her own pen.
+
+"In June, 1840, I had an abscess in my throat, accompanied by slow
+fever, and in the fall, dysentery. In the autumn of the same year, I
+discontinued the use of animal food.
+
+"In 1842, I had an attack of spinal complaint, which lasted me three
+months. In the spring of 1843, I had lung fever, followed, for nearly
+two years, by a cough, and accompanied by a very indifferent appetite. A
+piece of bread three inches square and one inch thick would serve me for
+a meal. A hard fit of coughing, however, was sure to follow every meal.
+I also became very much emaciated. In the fall of 1844, I took some
+medicine which removed my cough.
+
+"Through the winter and spring of 1845, I had diarrhoea; and in the
+last of May, I was suddenly and completely prostrated. I had risen in
+the morning more unwell than usual, but before flight I was suffering
+intolerable pain through the kidneys and back; and it was not till the
+lapse of two weeks that I was able to walk about the house. All this
+while I was entirely destitute of an appetite, though my stomach
+continually craved acids. For six months, I lived almost wholly on
+fruit. Four good-sized apples a day,[M] was all that I required. My
+drink was, for the most part, catnip tea. Sometimes I could take sugar
+and milk in my tea; at others, milk could not be borne. I drank four
+teacupfuls of it a day.
+
+"While I was at one period expectorating largely, I had custards made
+from the white of eggs, sweetened with loaf sugar, of which I took
+three table-spoonfuls, every twenty-four hours. I slept but little--not
+more than two hours in twenty-four.... My bowels were very costive; I do
+not suppose there were more than two or three natural evacuations during
+the whole of the six months I am describing."
+
+A more particular account of her diet, in 1846, is elsewhere given. It
+is in the following words: "During this year I took but little food, and
+that of the simplest. I lived chiefly on fruit, such as apples,
+currants, strawberries, gooseberries, and blueberries, and other acid
+fruits."
+
+Some years later than this, Miss Adams was still living very simply. "My
+food," she says, "is raised bread, and butter, apple or pumpkin pie, and
+fruit in small quantity. I do not require more than a third as much food
+as most females. In fact, I can eat but little of any thing. My food,
+even now, distresses me very much, unless I vomit it. I eat no animal
+food, and roots of every kind distress me. I drink tea; I cannot drink
+water; it seems, in swallowing it, more like a solid than a liquid."
+
+There would be no difficulty in adding largely to the list of cases of
+dyspepsia which have been cured on the starvation plan; but these must
+suffice for the present chapter.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[K] For obvious reasons, I give real names and dates in this chapter.
+
+[L] Even Mr. Graham himself, whom he accidentally met, repeated to him
+the same caution!
+
+[M] Or other fruits equal to them. The reader must not forget that she
+had already subsisted five years without animal food, and that what she
+took of vegetable food was a very small quantity--little more than was
+taken by Mr. Robinson.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XCI.
+
+DIETING ON MINCE PIE.
+
+
+A recent letter from a patient of mine, contains the following
+statement: "I met, yesterday, with a poor dyspeptic. He said he felt
+very bad indeed, and that he had been _dieting_ for a long time. I asked
+him what his diet had been. He said 'Bread and butter, for the morning
+meal; beef, etc., for dinner; and nothing at all, for supper, but a
+piece of mince pie and one or two glasses of cider.'"
+
+Admitting this to be dieting, it is, at least, such a kind of dieting as
+will not be likely, very soon, to cure dyspepsia. And yet to hundreds,
+if not thousands, _dieting_ is little more than an increased attention
+to what they eat--I mean, from meal to meal. Yet no changes of food,
+even for the better, will compensate for this increased watchfulness
+over--I might perhaps say devotion _to_--the stomach. The Philippians,
+to whom Paul wrote so touchingly, are not the only people in the world
+whose god is their abdominal region. Such an anxious attention to the
+demands of an abnormal appetite, only tends to increase that
+determination of blood to the stomach, to prevent which all judicious or
+effective dieting is intended.
+
+Dyspepsia only renders her devotees--her very slaves--the more enslaved.
+With such, every attempt to cure the disease by dieting is still stomach
+worship. They must have their very medicine taste agreeably and _sit_
+well. At all events, they must and will have their minds continually
+upon it, and must and will be continually inquiring whether they may
+safely eat this article or that or the other.
+
+It would be almost true to affirm that the fall of man from primeval
+integrity, consists essentially in dyspepsia, and that every descendant
+of Adam and Eve is a dyspeptic. The attention of mankind generally, is
+directed too exclusively as well as too anxiously, to the inquiry, what
+they shall eat, and what they shall drink. That we must eat, and drink
+too, is quite obvious--nothing more so. That the Author of nature
+intended, also, that we should take pleasure in our eating and drinking,
+is scarcely less so. But does he secure to himself the most pleasure who
+thinks most about it? Most certainly there is pleasure--_much_ pleasure
+in the anticipation of good. We may, by aid of imagination, then, feast
+upon the same dish half a dozen times. Yet, does not this--I repeat the
+idea--tend to determine an increased amount of blood and of nervous
+energy to the stomach, and to aggravate the disease? Let the reader
+ponder this question.
+
+My own most deliberate conviction is, that the stomach, in general, is
+best managed, and the greatest amount of gustatory enjoyment secured,
+when it is subjected most fully to good habits; that this organ, being
+blind and deaf, is best served when directed by the wiser head; or, to
+express the same truth in a better way, instead of asking the stomach at
+any time what it will have, _we should ask the head what is right_, and
+follow its directions. If the stomach is pleased, why, very well; if
+not, let it go without being pleased. Give it what you think is right,
+all things considered, and think no more about it. If it rebels, give it
+a smaller quantity. If it still complains, lessen still more the
+quantity, and perhaps diminish the frequency of your meals. There is no
+danger of starving to death, as every one must be convinced who has read
+carefully the two preceding chapters. When the system is really in a
+suffering condition for want of nutriment, then the stomach will be able
+to receive more, and dispose of it. If you give it what is right for it,
+there will be no want of appetite--at least, very long. Nay, more; the
+mere animal or gustatory enjoyment of that food which the head tells us
+is right, and to which we conscientiously adhere, will, in the end, be
+far greater than in the case of continual inquiry and anxiety and
+anticipation and agitation about it.
+
+Dyspepsia, I know, has a great variety of causes--as many, almost, as it
+has forms. And yet I do not believe it can often be induced by other
+causes alone, as long as the stomach is treated correctly. Give to that
+organ, habitually, what is exactly right for it, both as regards quality
+and quantity, and I do not believe we shall hear any more, in this
+world, about dyspepsia.
+
+But he who would confine his stomach to food which his head tells him is
+right, will not surely put mince pie into it. He must know that such a
+strange compound, however agreeable, will in the end be destructive, not
+only of health, but of gustatory enjoyment.
+
+The mince pie dyspeptic is just the man for quackery to feed upon. He
+will keep his nerves in such a state as to render him liable to read
+about and swallow all the wonderful cures of the day--whether hunger
+cures, nutrition cures, clairvoyant cures, "spiritual" cures, or any
+other cures. Now it is great gain, when we have got beyond all these,
+when we simply put into our stomachs what is right, and think no more
+about it, leaving ourselves to the event; and this in sickness and
+health both.
+
+A man in the eastern part of Massachusetts,--an asthmatic,--told me he
+had spent six hundred dollars in fourteen years, on quack medicines, and
+that he was nothing bettered by them. That man, you may depend, is the
+slave of his feelings. No man who has been accustomed to dictate to his
+stomach what it shall have, and make it submit, would ever do this. A
+very poor woman, on the Green Mountains, assured me she had spent, or
+rather wasted, four hundred dollars in the same way. We must drop all
+this. I do not now say we must drop or lay aside all medicine, in all
+cases; that is quite another question. But I do say, we must rely on
+obedience to the laws of God, or on doing right, not on medicine. It
+will be time enough to rely on medicine when our family physician urges
+it upon us as indispensable.
+
+If I have a single regret with regard to the instruction I have given
+my patients, from time to time, it is that I have not pressed upon them
+more forcibly and perseveringly, such views as are comprised in the
+foregoing reasonings and reflections. They are all-important to the
+dyspeptic, and by no means less important to the healthy than to the
+diseased.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XCII.
+
+GIANTS IN THE EARTH.
+
+
+It is said of Job, and his friends who visited him to condole with him
+in his sufferings, that they sat down together and said nothing, for
+seven days and seven nights.
+
+Nearly twenty years ago, a man of gigantic frame, but haggard
+appearance, came to me, and after the usual compliments,--which were
+indeed very dry ones,--sat down by my side, and said nothing; and this
+for the very same reason which is assigned as the cause of the long
+silence of Job and his friends--his grief and his sufferings were very
+great.
+
+His disease, however, was very different in its nature from that of Job.
+It was more like insanity than small pox, or eruptive disease of any
+kind. But hear him tell his own story, which I solicited at his hands
+for the express purpose of publication:
+
+"My business, until I was twenty years of age, was farming. Since that
+time, it has been mechanical, and for the most part sedentary. From my
+youth, I ate animal food of all kinds, prepared in the usual manner.
+Twice a day I partook, more or less freely, of such vegetables as are in
+general use. Fruits, as they came in their season, I ate whenever and
+wherever I could lay hands on them, more especially apples; these last
+at almost all hours of the day, and almost without number. I was also in
+the habit of eating a luncheon at nine or ten o'clock in the morning,
+and just before going to bed.
+
+"My drinks, till 1830, were principally tea, coffee, cider, and beer;
+but sometimes I used rum, brandy, molasses and water, milk and water,
+etc. For twelve years previous to 1837, I used tobacco. From my youth, I
+have had a fondness for reading and study--have spent many hours in
+reading after the whole village were asleep.
+
+"My health I considered good, compared with that of my acquaintances,
+and I was able to labor hard, although I was subject to dizziness and
+vomiting with such intensity that I could not walk or stand without
+assistance; and for a number of days, the complaint seemed to bid
+defiance to all medical aid. Here began the day of retribution, and
+bitterly have I suffered for my intemperance, both in eating and
+drinking. At length, my dizziness in some measure wore away, so that I
+returned to my work; but my system had received a shock that was not to
+be got rid of at once. And although my dizziness and inclination to
+vomit were in some measure removed, yet I grew weaker by degrees, so
+that by spring I was unable to perform my daily labor.
+
+"I continued to decline until summer, when I was attacked with a violent
+cough--from what cause I did not know. Some said it was the
+hooping-cough, some said it was _la grippe_. Suffice it to say, I took
+all the medicines prescribed by our family physician, followed all his
+good advice, and took all to no purpose. I was also persuaded to try the
+prescription of a celebrated physician in a neighboring town; but, alas!
+his prescription was tried in vain.
+
+"My cough and dizziness not having left me, I tried a respectable
+physician of Boston, who, with an honesty of heart that does credit to
+his profession, bid me buy a ninepence worth of liquorice, keep my mouth
+and throat moist by chewing a little of that, and let my cough have its
+course; 'For,' said he, 'though I should like to sell you medicine and
+give you medical advice, for the sake of the emolument, it will do you
+no good. Your disease will have its course, and you cannot help it.' I
+now thought my days were few; but, as a last resort, I repaired to you."
+
+He here enters into particulars which are not needful to my present
+purpose; and the detail, by one so intimately concerned, and withal so
+complimentary to me as his physician, would be fulsome. It is
+sufficient, perhaps, to add the following paragraphs.
+
+"Agreeably to your advice, I now began to reform, in good earnest. With
+a constitution broken down, and almost rotten with disease, it was no
+easy matter for me to cure myself; but to it I went, determined to
+overcome or die in the attempt.
+
+"I now began to think of eating what God created for man to eat. And now
+it was that my health began to return; and by the time I had practised
+the rules and prescriptions you laid down for me, about three months, my
+cough ceased, my dizziness left me, and my health and strength partly
+returned.
+
+"Since that time I have lived on bread made of wheat meal, rye and
+Indian bread, rice boiled or stewed, rice puddings, corn puddings,
+apples, potatoes, etc. I sleep soundly and sweetly, on a straw bed; rise
+at four in summer and five in winter, refreshed both in body and mind;
+do as much work as it is necessary for any man to do; am cheerful,
+happy, contented, and thankful to God for all his mercies; go to bed at
+nine and go to sleep without having the night mare or any thing else to
+disturb my rest. I ought to add that I eat no luncheon; and but about as
+much in a whole day, as I used to eat at one meal."
+
+As I have already intimated, it is about twenty years since I prescribed
+for this individual, at which time he had a wife and two or three
+children. The latter seemed to require not a little watching and dosing.
+Now, in 1858, he has a very large family, many of whom have either
+arrived at maturity or nearly so; and the whole family have, for many
+years, been strangers to dosing and drugging. Except the mother, they
+seem like a family of giants, so large are their frames, and so marked
+and strong are their muscles. They are pictures of health, so to speak;
+and if Mr. Barnum would exhibit them at his museum, or elsewhere, he
+might, for aught I know, retrieve his shattered fortunes.
+
+I know another great family, in New England, whose history, so far as
+physical inheritance is concerned, is not unlike that of the family just
+described. "There were giants in the earth in those days," hence appears
+to be applicable to the world since the flood, as well as to that which
+was before it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XCIII.
+
+THE GREEN MOUNTAIN PATIENT.
+
+
+Not many years since, I received a letter from a family in a retired
+village of the Green Mountains, begging me to visit one of their number,
+a young woman about twenty-seven years of age. She was a farmer's
+daughter, and had been, in early life, employed as is customary in such
+families in that region; but, for a few years past had been employed, a
+considerable portion of the time, in teaching in the district or public
+schools. It is probable she exchanged the employments of home for the
+labors of the pedagogue, on account of increasing ill health (though of
+this I am not quite certain), since nothing is more common or more
+hazardous. The daughters of our agriculturalists, who inherit, as she
+did, a scrofulous constitution, and who appear to be tolerably healthy
+while they remain at home, almost always break down within a few years
+after leaving the broom and duster.
+
+But whatever may have been the first cause or causes of her diseased
+condition, it is probable there had been both action and reaction. She
+was now, at the time I received her most piteous petition, quite ill,
+and had been so for a considerable time. However, in order to come at
+the case and the results, it may be as well to make a few extracts from
+the letters of her friends and herself. For, though they were not
+accustomed to such descriptions of a case as a medical man would be apt
+to give, yet, for popular perusal, they are, after all, the more useful.
+
+My first extract will be made from a long letter written by her brother.
+
+"The first attack of what we suppose to be her present disease, was a
+year ago last spring, and was believed to be the result of taking
+severe colds repeatedly, while teaching school among the mountains of
+New Hampshire, and which ended in what Dr. K. (their family physician)
+called inflammation of the lungs, and was treated accordingly. There was
+much cough and expectoration of mucus. Though she partially recovered,
+so as to be able to teach again the ensuing summer, yet her cough was
+somewhat troublesome till autumn, when health seemed again to smile upon
+her.
+
+"Late in the fall, however, she had a very severe attack of
+diarrhoea,--caused, perhaps, by imprudence in diet, and sundry other
+deviations from a straight line,--which has been her constant companion
+ever since. (This was a period of eight months.) During all this time
+her food has passed almost without being dissolved. There is much pain
+in the stomach and bowels, unless mitigated by opiates, morphine or
+something analogous. But very little cough has attended her since the
+last attack of diarrhoea. There has been some pain and soreness in the
+right side; an eruption over the region of her stomach, swelling of the
+feet and ankles, whenever fatigued by walking, with pain and soreness in
+the left ankle.
+
+"I will now give you, briefly, her physician's views. He was called soon
+after the disease had taken hold of her, and made an examination of her
+case, which he then called dyspepsia, attended with a little
+inflammation of the right lung, or perhaps, said he, a slight filling up
+of the air passages, and he thought the lower part of her right lung
+might be somewhat indurated. 'Still,' said he, 'the case is not a
+serious one.' These were his very words. He said he could cure her; and,
+till very lately, he has always held out to her the language of hope.
+But now he speaks very differently; he says the case is a hopeless
+one--that of tubercular consumption; and he says he has always known it
+to be such!--and adds that there is, even now, a small cavity in her
+right lung, and that her lungs are passing off in her diarrhoea,
+without any inconvenience in breathing, or any disagreeable sensation in
+filling the lungs to fulness."
+
+It is difficult to believe that a medical man who has any regard for his
+own reputation, would tell such a downright falsehood, as that above
+represented; and still more difficult to believe he would make the
+strange mistake of representing her lungs as passing off through the
+bowels! Why, they might almost as well pass though the moon! Probably my
+correspondent did not exactly and truly apprehend his meaning; at least,
+I would charitably hope so.
+
+The appeal for relief was so very urgent, and withal so humble, I
+visited and examined her, the family physician being present. I found
+the latter to be a timid invalid, for whom, before I left, I was
+requested to prescribe; which may account, in part, for his very
+inefficient practice. I also found him ignorant, in many particulars, of
+the first principles of his profession; and it was with extreme
+difficulty--like that of mingling oil with water--that we could unite on
+any thing reasonable or desirable. He still clung to medicine, as his
+sheet-anchor in the case, while I was for depending, mainly, on a strict
+conformity to the laws of health, and the restorative efforts of Nature.
+
+There were other difficulties. A part of the family still inclined to a
+reliance on him and his old system, while the rest were in favor of my
+general views, as far as they understood them. The patient herself
+sometimes inclined to one, and sometimes to the other. While in health,
+she had been a woman of much decision of character; but, in her present
+condition, she was weak and vacillating.
+
+But there was, at length, a partial blending of the inharmonious
+elements, and a prescription made out. It did not satisfy, however.
+There was so strong a leaning to nature, that, after my departure, Dr.
+K. gradually worked his way back to his old system of full medication,
+as a letter received a few weeks afterwards plainly indicated. For, as
+the great change in her treatment which we made, left her no mystical
+props to lean upon, and as Dr. K. was a little disposed to speak to her
+in a way which was calculated to increase her fears, it preyed upon her
+mind so much that, though her diseased tendencies gradually diminished,
+yet the continual croakings of her would-be friends, and the
+faithlessness of a half-sick and wholly sombre physician, more than
+counteracted every favorable tendency.
+
+In about two weeks after I saw her, she began to have more heat and pain
+in the stomach, with some other threatening symptoms,--probably induced
+by an attempt to use food prescribed for her, but which was too
+stimulating. Her physician now, to gratify both his own morbid feelings,
+and the clamor of her friends, ordered brandy and other stimulating
+drinks; also morphine and camphor powders, and a new relay of
+stimulating food.
+
+The sequel of the story, as related by a sister of the patient, is as
+follows:--
+
+"Soon after I wrote you last (which was the letter containing an account
+of the strange resort to beef, brandy, morphine and camphor), she began
+to fail very fast, and Dr. K. informed her that she could live but a
+very short time. But she clung to life, and it was distressing to see
+her going down to the grave, while we were doing nothing to help her. We
+spoke to her about sending for you again; but she said you were a great
+way off, and if you could come at all, which was doubtful, it would be a
+long time before you could arrive; whereas, if she could not have help
+soon, she must be compelled to leave us. We asked her if she could think
+of any other physician that she would like to see? She replied, that she
+should like to see Dr. Q.,--an old physician about twenty miles distant.
+We sent for him immediately. He came, and with him her old physician,
+Dr. K.
+
+"I wish to say that she had taken but very little medicine before Dr. Q.
+came, except the morphine, camphor, and brandy. But the counselling
+physician said that would not do, and he could not help her unless she
+took three opium pills, eighteen drops of laudanum, and from six to nine
+drops of the chloride of iron, a day; and when she hesitated about being
+able to bear it, he told her to drink down the white part of two eggs in
+cold water, which would keep the medicine from hurting her.
+
+"We inquired if he would come again and see her: to which he replied in
+the affirmative. She proceeded to take his medicine for one day, but it
+quickly increased her diarrhoea. Instead of six movements a day, they
+were increased to thirty-five. Under these circumstances, her weakness
+increased so fast that she could help herself very little; and her feet,
+hands, and limbs were very much bloated. As Dr. Q. did not come,
+according to his agreement, we sent for her old physician. When he saw
+her, he said it was a wonder she had lived so long after taking Dr. Q.'s
+medicine."
+
+We are not told, in the letter from which the above is extracted, why
+her old physician, Dr. K., consented, in the first place, that she
+should take the medicine, if he regarded it as so very bad for her. But,
+then, he was a timid as well as a Janus-faced man, and probably said as
+he did because he did not know what else to say. But I will go on with
+the extracts, since they reveal another most astounding fact in regard
+to medical dishonesty.
+
+"He also (the family physician) told us that we must not expect Dr. Q.
+any more, for he told him expressly that he should not come again, as he
+could do nothing for her, and that if he had known how she was before he
+came, he never would have come so far in a case so hopeless. And, true
+to his engagement with Dr. K., but contrary to his promise, both to my
+sister and my father, separately, he never came again.
+
+"But the other doctor came again, and attended her as formerly. He gave
+her a powder of morphine, and some gum myrrh, and a little anise, which
+reduced the evacuations from thirty-three to three a day. But her
+distress was still very great, and her feet soon began to turn purple,
+and she began to bloat in her stomach and bowels. This continued till
+she was as full as she could be; and you could have heard her scream and
+groan as far as the road (a distance of three or four rods). The
+physician then applied ether, to relieve her distress, and gave
+twenty-five drops of laudanum, and a morphine powder, upon which her
+distress left her for a very short time, but soon returned, not to leave
+her again while she lived. Almost her last breath was a scream. She died
+in just eight days after Dr. Q. came to see her.
+
+"But I must close by saying that we think if our sister could have been
+a patient of yours, she would have been restored to health. But it is
+past, and we cannot recall it; and all I can now do, is to tender our
+thanks to you for your kindness and attention during our sister's
+sickness. I trust you will have life and health, long to pursue your
+noble vocation."
+
+I am afraid the patient reader of this long chapter, will be led to one
+conclusion which the writer would exceedingly regret; viz., that all
+medical counsel, in chronic disease, is of more than doubtful utility;
+and that it would be safer to leave it wholly to nature and to good
+nursing. There are medical men in the world who are honest as well as
+skilful, and who, because a case is difficult to manage, will not,
+chameleon-like, tell two or three different stories, and thus half ruin
+a profession that embraces so many noble and honorable-minded men; nor
+will they persist in a course of treatment which is evidently murdering
+their patients.
+
+It is hardly needful to say that the patient above described was
+murdered; but I am obliged to say, without doubt, that there was no
+necessity of her coming to such an untimely end. Her sister, it seems,
+thought that, had she fallen into my hands from the first, she might
+have been saved. I think so too. And yet, it might have been otherwise.
+In any event, she ought not, at the first, to have been treated for
+consumption, but for dyspepsia. Starvation, and a little mental
+quietude, with daily exercise, such as she could bear, in the open air,
+would have greatly changed her condition, when her diarrhoea first
+commenced.
+
+I never knew a case which was worse managed in my whole life. It is a
+wonder to me, when I think of it, that she so long survived under it.
+But it is a wonder, greater still, that medical men who are so
+unqualified for the duties of their profession as the physicians who
+were most concerned in the treatment of the above case appear to me to
+have been, do not feel compelled, by the remonstrances of their own
+consciences, to quit their profession, and do something for a living for
+which they are better prepared.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XCIV.
+
+CURE OF POISON FROM LEAD.
+
+
+Cases of poisoning by lead are occurring in our country almost daily;
+and it becomes a matter of much importance to know how to treat them.
+Indeed, there are many who are so susceptible to the action of this
+deleterious agent, that the reception of a single tumbler of water
+brought through lead pipes, in a certain condition, into their stomachs,
+will cause serious disturbance. I have had one patient of this
+description--a Mr. E., of Worcester, Mass.
+
+Some twenty years ago, much of the water used in the village of Dedham,
+Mass., was conveyed to the village, for half a mile or so, in lead
+pipes. Many who drank the water were injured by it; some of them for
+life. A Mr. R., a printer, is believed to have lost his life, by disease
+which was either induced or aggravated by this cause. I have, myself,
+been called to prescribe for several, who were probably led into a state
+of ill health by this unhealthy water. One of the clergymen of the
+village suffered from it very greatly, though he is, as I believe, yet
+living.
+
+There is some difference of opinion as to the circumstances which most
+favor the action of the lead, or, rather, which cause its dissolution in
+the water. But, with regard to its danger, in certain circumstances,
+either known or unknown, there can be no doubt. Nor can we doubt that,
+in view of facts which exist, it is our duty to banish lead pipes, as
+much as possible, from common use.
+
+During the early part of the year 1855, Capt. J. H., near Boston, aged
+thirty-four years, of good natural constitution and comparatively
+healthy habits in general, had a slow typhoid fever, from which,
+however, he finally recovered, though not without a continued liability
+to a relapse. About this time, he began to use water brought to his
+kitchen in lead pipes.
+
+Late in the year 1856, he was taken down very suddenly, with fever and
+great debility, and in four or five days his upper and lower limbs
+became completely paralyzed. He was not able to stir so much as one of
+his hands. Indeed, the whole abdominal region seemed to be almost as
+inactive as his limbs; for very severe friction across the hips, and
+along the spine, down the legs, produced no sensation; and his bowels
+were so constipated, as to remain motionless from five or six days to a
+fortnight at a time, unless excited by medical agents.
+
+His case was examined by several eminent medical men in the vicinity of
+Boston, who gave it as their unanimous opinion, that the cause of his
+disease was the irritation of the water. Some of them prescribed for his
+case, but all to no apparent purpose.
+
+On the first day of November, he was sent to an electro-chemical bathing
+establishment, to be treated according to the usages of that
+institution. I was intimately acquainted with the establishment, and, in
+circumstances like his, was understood to regard it with favor. I was,
+therefore, from time to time, consulted in the case of Captain H. To
+give an impulse to the nervous and arterial systems of Capt. H., one
+bath was administered. The use of his limbs was restored, as if by
+magic. When he came out of the bath, he walked some twenty feet or more,
+to his bed, without assistance; and, to his great surprise, could raise
+his hands to his head. The second day's bath, and treatment with simple
+diet, not only restored sensation, but gave him a better use of his
+hands than he had enjoyed before for many months. His bowels, also,
+became immediately regular, and continued so.
+
+It is, however, to be confessed, that his recovery was not so rapid as
+at first seemed probable. The baths seemed to give an impulse; but it
+was reserved for a proper diet, suitable exercise, and good air, to work
+out, slowly, a perfect cure. How much was attributable to the baths,
+considered by themselves, is not known. No medicine was given, from
+first to last, except the electricity.
+
+It should also be confessed, that no belief was entertained, by myself
+or my associates, of any mechanical power possessed by the electricity,
+of forcing the lead out of the system; though some individuals had
+believed in such a power. The most we claimed was, that the invisible
+agent had an immediate influence on the nerves, and a more remote one on
+the absorbent system.
+
+As a farther proof, if more proof had been needed, that the paralysis
+was induced by lead, some of the water from which he had drank was
+analyzed by Dr. Hayes, City Assayer for Boston, who pronounced it to be
+strongly impregnated with lead, and "utterly unfit for culinary
+purposes."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XCV.
+
+FAITH AND WORKS.
+
+
+In the autumn of 1856, a fine young man, a clerk in a large mercantile
+house in Boston, came to me with complaints not unlike those of
+thousands of his own age and sex, and begged for relief; but was
+surprised when he learned that I treated all such cases as his without
+medicine. Added to the surprise, moreover, was a degree of mortification
+at the idea of attempting to cure himself by a change of habits,
+especially of dietetic habits, which, in a boarder in a family, might be
+observed. He would have been much better pleased to take medicine, so
+concentrated that a few drops or a few small boluses or pills could be
+taken a few times a day unperceived--than to run the risk of awakening
+suspicions of diseases to which he was unwilling to make confession.
+
+And herein, by the way, comes out the secret of such a wonderful
+imposition on our young men, by what I have elsewhere called land-sharks
+in the shape of physicians. The fondness of young men for secret
+cures,--or, at least, their money, which is the thing most wanted after
+all,--leads them, almost directly, into the mouths of these monsters.
+
+My young patient, however, had faith in me; and, after the first shock
+of surprise and the first feelings of mortification were over, resolved
+to follow my directions, and did so. He came to me, it is true, several
+times, and said he could not endure it; that he was losing flesh very
+fast, and that he was already so weak that he could scarcely walk to his
+desk. I comforted him as well as I could, told him there would be a
+change soon for the better, and kept him on through the tedious months
+of December, January, and February, when his strength began to return,
+and his flesh to be restored. Between March and May, he gained
+twenty-one pounds; and in June, he was in as good health as he ever had
+been before in his life. And yet he took not a particle of any thing
+medicinal, from first to last.
+
+If you desire to know, in few words, what he _did_ do, I will tell you.
+First, he took a long walk, regularly,--sufficiently long to induce a
+good deal of muscular fatigue,--as the last thing before he went to bed
+which was at an early hour. Secondly, he used a cold hand-bath, followed
+by much friction, daily. Thirdly, he abandoned tea and coffee (tobacco
+and rum he had never used), and drank only water. Fourthly, he abandoned
+all animal food and all concentrated substances and condiments, and
+lived simply on bread (unfermented), fruits, and a few choice
+vegetables.
+
+It was faith that served this young man,--not faith without works, but
+faith which is manifested by works. "According to your faith be it unto
+you," might be enjoined on every patient, under all circumstances. But
+the most remarkable thing connected with this case, is the fact that
+this young man had been brought up _in the lap of ease and
+indulgence_--an education which is as unfavorable to faith as it is to
+works.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XCVI.
+
+WORKS WITHOUT FAITH.
+
+
+A female, in Worcester County, Massachusetts, nearly sixty years of age,
+having for many years been a sufferer from domestic afflictions, till,
+along with certain abuses of the digestive function, it had brought upon
+her a full load of dyspepsia, was at length subjected to a trio of
+evils, which capped the climax of her sufferings, reduced her to a very
+low condition, and laid her on her bed.
+
+While lying in this condition, a young woman who was her constant
+attendant, and who was acquainted with my no-medicine practice,
+recommended to her to send for me. She hesitated, for a time, on account
+of the expense; for, though by no means poor, she felt all the pangs of
+poverty in consequence of the hard and unworthy treatment of the
+individual who was to have justly executed the last will and testament
+of her husband.
+
+But I was at length sent for. I found her under the general care and
+oversight of a homoeopathic physician; but as he was ten or twelve miles
+distant and had not been informed of my visit, I did not see him. His
+practice, however, in the case, was similar to what I had usually met
+with in cases which had come under the care of physicians of the same
+school, and was, at most, as it appeared to me, negative. She had indeed
+been drugged by some one most fearfully, and her whole system was
+suffering as the consequence; but it was a physician who had preceded
+Dr. A., and who was of an entirely different school.
+
+I found no great difficulty in persuading her to ask Dr. A., when he
+should next call, to suspend his medicine a week or two; and, after
+ordering a warm bath two or three times a week, and certain changes in
+diet, with particular care about ventilation and temperature, left her,
+to call again the next week.
+
+On calling, at the time appointed, I was greatly disappointed in finding
+her with many better symptoms. There was indeed cough, which busy rumor
+had converted into an indication of galloping consumption; but I found
+no other symptom which belonged to that disease. The homoeopathic
+medicine had been suspended, and the warm bath had been applied with
+apparent success.
+
+I left, with the promise of calling again in ten days--but not sooner,
+unless they sent for me. At the end of the ten days, I called and found
+all things ajar again. Her female attendant had left her about a week
+before; and the new attendants--two of them--being destitute of faith in
+me, had found no great difficulty in persuading her that she had a fever
+of the lungs, and that she would die if she did not take a _little_
+medicine, and that she would do well to recall Dr. A., and take his
+medicine.
+
+When I arrived, at this third visit, I found her taking a small amount
+of homoeopathic medicine, but without appetite or strength, and
+evidently tending downward. It was too late to do any thing, especially
+when there was no faith in anything but pills and powders; and I left
+her to her native strength of constitution, her homoeopathic
+physician, her croaking nurses, and God, vainly mourning, all my way
+home, about the inefficiency of works without faith, especially in the
+case of the sick. This woman's case is recent, and it is possible that
+she may recover, in spite of pills, powders, croakings, and
+faithlessness. I have witnessed such things. Nature is tough.
+
+But while I lament the inefficiency of works, where faith is wanting, I
+have had one case which seems an exception to the general rule,
+"according to your faith," etc., which I take great pleasure in
+recording.
+
+In June, 18--, a young man from the interior of New England called on me
+while abroad on business, and desired to receive my advice concerning
+certain complaints, attended with great debility, and accompanied by
+hernia and varicocele, and, in general, by dyspepsia. On examination, I
+found the case a very obstinate one, of long standing. The patient was a
+young man of twenty-two, a clerk in a country store, a man of some
+principle, and yet trained to find his chief happiness in the indulgence
+of his appetite, especially in what is called good eating.
+
+I gave him some general directions, promising him something still more
+specific as soon as I got home. In July, I gave him written directions,
+in full, and urged him to push the treatment as fast as possible, in
+order to get into a beginning state of convalescence, soon enough to
+take advantage of the naturally recuperative effects of autumn. If he
+could find himself recruiting in September, the month of October, I told
+him, would produce on him a very decided change.
+
+He went to work accordingly, but it was because it was a last resort,
+and he must do so. It was not because he had much faith in me. Some of
+his friends, it seems, had directed his attention this way; but when I
+came to talk of the starvation plan of cure, to which I so much
+inclined, both they and he revolted. However, he made a faint beginning.
+
+I had foreseen most of the difficulties I had to contend with, and was
+prepared to meet them. Thus, knowing full well that if I laid down the
+laws of diet in great strictness, either as regards, quality or
+quantity, he would be discouraged and do nothing at all, I permitted him
+to use almost all kinds of food, and only insisted on a rigid adherence
+to the great law, and avoiding medicine. These two points I made much
+of, and explained them fully.
+
+For example: I told him that all kinds of cookery or preparations which
+prevented the necessity of teeth labor, such as soaking in milk, forming
+into toast, mashing, or in any way softening, were wrong, and must be
+avoided. Also, that all additions to our food, whether of foreign
+bodies, such as pepper, mustard, vinegar, salt, etc., or of more
+concentrated substances, such as molasses, sugar, honey, butter, gravy,
+etc., should, for the same reason as well as others, be shunned as much
+as possible.
+
+When, therefore, said I, the question comes before your mind, whether
+you may or may not eat a particular thing, consider first, whether its
+use would be a violation of the general laws I have laid down for you. I
+gave him many specific directions, at first, and yet continued to urge
+it upon him to reason for himself.
+
+But it seemed, for a long time, a hopeless case. He kept writing to me,
+to know if he might eat toast, bread and butter, soup, milk, etc., or to
+know why it was that he ought not to make additions of foreign or
+concentrated substances, as of pepper, mustard, molasses, syrup, etc. I
+have before me sixteen letters from him, in most of which his pleadings
+abound, up to the very last but one. This fifteenth letter, dated
+December 27, more than six months after my interview with him and first
+prescription, has the following inquiries:--
+
+"Will a diet do for me that admits of any pastry?--of pies, of any kind?
+What _kind_ of puddings, pies, and cake will answer? What kind of meats?
+What food shall I be obliged to avoid to keep my passions in check? What
+am I to eat this winter--next spring--next summer? How much at a time?
+Can I eat tripe--corned beef--oysters--lean pork steak? What kinds of
+meat and fish will do for me to eat? Any salt fish? Is milk bad in case
+of liver disease? Is there any objection to baked sour apples and milk,
+or to sour apples after using a little milk or bread? Will you allow me
+to eat any simple thing between meals?"
+
+And in this same letter, after six months' instruction, as aforesaid, he
+undertakes to tell me what his habits of living are, which, despite of
+all said and done, in the way of personal counsel and nearly twenty
+letters, strangely reads thus:--
+
+"I use some milk three times a day, and almost always soak my toasted
+bread in milk. Since I have been out in the open air, I have usually had
+some wild game, or a piece of beef steak, or raw eggs, twice a day. My
+suppers, lately, have been toasted bread, of any convenient kind
+(usually Graham), with milk, about a tumbler full, at a time, or
+three-fourths full. I usually eat two apples, with or after each
+breakfast and dinner. I use considerable cream soaked into my bread,
+when I can obtain it, and some molasses. Now, which is the best for me
+to use on my bread, at supper time--cream, milk, molasses, or a little
+butter?--or with my other meals? Is there any objection to my using all
+these now, in proper quantities? Will a little plain sauce do with my
+supper? Why do you so strongly object to cream toasts, or cream on
+bread? Is chewing gum from spruce trees injurious?--or birch bark? Any
+objections to eating two sour apples after breakfast and dinner?"
+
+Now the great difficulty with this young man was, that he had but little
+faith, either in me or in principles--though if I would direct him, from
+step to step, like a child, he would obey me, for the moment: though,
+like a child, too, he would forget my directions at almost the next
+moment, and ask for information on the very same point.
+
+Was not such a trial almost too great? However, he was destined to
+survive it, to live on in spite of it, notwithstanding my after fears.
+In March, 18--, he wrote me as follows:--
+
+"As I have been getting better all the while, and have troubled you with
+so many little queries from time to time, I thought I would delay this
+letter a while. My health has been constantly improving all winter, and
+I think I have not enjoyed as good health before for many years. People
+now say, 'How well you are looking!' and 'How fleshy you are!' I mean to
+live according to the '_laws_.'"
+
+In short, this young sufferer from dyspepsia in one of its worst forms,
+after more than half a year of works without faith, and of whining and
+complaining a part of the time, without either works or faith, is at
+last shouting victory! And a glorious victory it is! Would that the rest
+of our dyspeptics, with land by millions, might stand on as good a
+footing, with as good prospects before them, as this young man! And yet
+he might have come up to the same point long ago, had he used more
+common sense, and exercised but a little more faith and trust in just
+hygienic principles.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XCVII
+
+DISEASES OF LICENTIOUSNESS.
+
+
+Not far from the end of July, 1857, I received the following, in a
+letter through the post office, as usual, and dated at Boston, but
+signed by a name probably fictitious.
+
+"It was with no small degree of interest that I noticed, in a book
+written by yourself,--I cannot recollect its name,--some remarks upon
+certain diseases which you called nameless; yet, through a dread to
+introduce so delicate a subject, I have neglected so to do, till it has
+become an imperative task. And now, laying aside all feelings of
+modesty, allow me to be familiar with you, as with a father, and to lay
+my case before you, assuring you that, however unfortunate I have been,
+it is not my fault, but has come upon me while living with my husband,
+having never betrayed _his_ confidence."
+
+She then proceeded at once to describe her disease and sufferings, which
+were terrible. It appeared that she had not been of the number of those
+who, in circumstances akin to hers, so often fall into shark's mouths.
+She had taken but little medicine of any kind, except balsam copaiba.
+After the details of her symptoms and sufferings were finished, she
+added:
+
+"Now, if you are able to understand me, I wish to ask you whether, from
+the description I have given, you cannot prescribe something that will
+relieve me. If so, you can be assured that you will put your humble
+correspondent and her erring but repentant companion under great
+obligation to yourself, and that you will be rewarded for all your
+trouble and advice."
+
+As the result of this request, a correspondence followed, which
+continued several months. At first, the patient clung to the idea that
+she could not possibly be restored without minerals, or at least
+without active medicine of some sort or other, she scarcely knew what.
+But she at length understood me, and followed, quite implicitly, my
+directions. There was indeed a little shrinking, at first, from the
+rigidity, or, as she would call it, the nakedness, of a diet which it
+was indispensable to use in order to purify her blood effectually; but
+she finally came bravely up to the mark, and probably reaped her reward
+in it.
+
+It is true, I did not hear from her till she came to the end of a very
+long road; but up to the last of our correspondence, she was slowly
+improving. My belief is that, before this time, she has fairly
+recovered, and with far less injury to the vital powers than if
+mercurial or other strong medicines had been used.
+
+And herein we are reminded of a crime that not only has no name, but
+deserves none. I allude to the act of communicating a disease so
+distressing to an innocent and unoffending female. We had an instance of
+this same crime in Chapter LXXIV. If there be such a thing as punishing
+too severely, I am sure it is not in cases like these. The individual in
+human shape, who, with eyes open, will run the risk of injuring those
+whom he professes to love better, if possible, than himself, deserves a
+punishment more condign and terrible than he to whom is so often awarded
+a halter or a guillotine.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XCVIII.
+
+CURIOUS AND INSTRUCTIVE FACTS.
+
+
+It is morally impossible for any medical man who has kept his eyes open
+for forty years, not to have been struck with certain obvious and
+incontrovertible facts, of which I present a few specimens.
+
+The _Boston Medical and Surgical Journal_, a few years since, in an
+obituary notice of Dr. Danforth, who had long been an eminent
+practitioner in Boston, makes the following remarks:--
+
+"Though considered one of the most successful practitioners, he rarely
+caused a patient to be bled. Probably, for the last twenty years of his
+practice, he did not propose the use of this remedy in a single
+instance. And he maintained that the abstraction of the vital fluid
+diminished the power of overcoming the disease. On one occasion, he was
+called to visit a number of persons who had been injured by the fall of
+a house frame, and, on arrival, found another practitioner engaged in
+bleeding the men. 'Doctor,' said the latter, 'I am doing your work for
+you.' 'Then,' said Dr. Danforth, 'pour the blood back into the veins of
+those men.'"
+
+Dr. Thomas Hubbard, of Pomfret, Conn., long a President of the Medical
+Society in that State, was, on the contrary, accustomed to bleed almost
+all his patients. Yet both of these men were considered as eminently
+successful in their profession. How is it that treatment so exactly
+opposite should be almost, if not quite, equally successful?
+
+There was a discussion in Boston, many years ago, between Dr. Watson,
+one of the most successful old-school practitioners of medicine, and a
+Thomsonian practitioner, whose name I have forgotten, in the progress of
+which the former made the open and unqualified declaration, that, in the
+course of four years' practice, he had drawn one hundred gallons of
+human blood, and that he was then on the use of his thirty-ninth pound
+of calomel.
+
+Now both these men had full practice; and while one did little or
+nothing to break up disease or destroy the enemy, the other did a great
+deal; and yet both were deemed successful. Can we explain this any
+better than we can the facts in regard to Drs. Danforth and Hubbard?
+
+Let us look at the case of Dr. M., of Boston, a successful allopathic
+practitioner. In order to satisfy his curiosity, with regard to the
+claims of homoeopathy, he suddenly substituted the usual
+homoeopathic treatment for allopathy, and pursued it two whole years
+with entire success. Curiosity still awake, he again exchanged his
+infinitesimal doses of active medicine for similar doses, as regards
+size, of fine flour, and continued this, also, for two years. The latter
+experiment, as he affirms, was quite as successful as the former.
+
+Do not such facts as these point, with almost unerring certainty, to the
+inefficiency of all medical treatment? Do they not almost, if not quite,
+prove that when we take medicine, properly so called, or receive active
+medical treatment; we recover in spite of it? Is there any other
+rational way of accounting for the almost equal success of all sorts of
+treatment,--allopathic, botanic, homoeopathic, hydropathic,
+etc.,--when in the hands of good, sound, common sense, and conjoined
+with good nursing and attendance? Is it not that man is made to live,
+and is tough, so that it is not easy to poison him to death?
+
+But the most remarkable fact of this kind with which I am acquainted, is
+the case of Isaac Jennings, M.D., now of Ohio. He was educated at Yale
+College, in Connecticut. During the progress of his education, he served
+a sort of medical apprenticeship in the family of Prof. Eli Ives, of New
+Haven. He took his medical degree in 1812, and soon after this commenced
+the practice of his profession in Trumbull, in Fairfield County. Here,
+for eight years, he had ample opportunity to apply the principles with
+which, at the schools, he had been fully indoctrinated. In the summer
+of 1820, he removed, by special request, to Derby, nine miles from New
+Haven. Up to his second year in Derby, he pursued the usual, or
+orthodox, course of practice. The distance from his former field of
+labor was not so great but that he retained a portion of his old friends
+in that region. He was also occasionally called to the town of
+Huntington, lying partly between the two.
+
+On meeting one day with Dr. Tisdale, of Bridgeport, an older physician
+than himself, he said to him, very familiarly, "Jennings, are you aware
+that we do far less good with our medicine than we have been wont to
+suppose?" He replied in the affirmative, and observed that he had been
+inclining to that opinion for some time. "Do you know," added Dr.
+Tisdale, "that we do a great deal more harm than good with medicine?"
+Dr. Jennings replied that he had not yet gone as far as that. Dr.
+Tisdale then proceeded to state many facts, corroborating the opinion he
+had thrown out concerning the impotency of medicine. These statements
+and facts were, to the mind of Dr. Jennings, like a nail fastened in a
+sure place.
+
+From this time forth his medical scepticism increased, till he came, at
+length, to give his doubts the test of experiment. Accordingly, he
+substituted for his usual medicaments, bread pills and colored water;
+and for many years--I believe five or six--gave nothing else. The more
+rigidly he confined himself to these potions, the better he found his
+success, till his business was so extended, and his reputation so great,
+as to exclude all other medical men from his own immediate vicinity.
+
+His great conscientiousness, as well as a desire of making known to his
+medical brethren what he believed to be true, and thus save them from
+the folly of dealing out that which he was assured was only a nuisance,
+especially under the shelter of what they supposed to be his example,
+led him, at length, to call a meeting of physicians, and reveal to them
+his discovery. The surprise was great; but greater or less, according to
+their tact for observation, and the length of their experience.
+
+But the secret was now out, and Dr. Jennings soon began to lose
+practice. Instead of employing a man to give them bread pills and
+colored water, many chose to take care of themselves, and let the
+physician wholly alone; while a far greater number, though they dearly
+loved and highly respected Jennings, as an old friend and physician and
+an eminent Christian, began to seek medical counsel at other hands.
+
+The result was, that his business became so much diminished as to leave
+him without a full support, except from past earnings, and he began to
+make preparations for a removal to the West. But this his friends were
+unwilling to have him do, and they accordingly raised, by subscription,
+$300 a year, to induce him to remain. In a few years, however, the
+subscription failed to be renewed, and in 1839 or 1840 he removed to
+Ohio, where he still remains. He does a little business, and what he
+does is attended with great success; and yet, the number of those who
+follow him is small.
+
+Facts of similar import, in very great numbers, some more and some less
+striking, might be related, to almost any extent; but can it be
+necessary? Suffice it to say that some of the oldest physicians in
+Boston and its vicinity, the oldest physician in Cleveland, and some of
+the most intelligent ones in New York and Philadelphia, as well as
+elsewhere, are coming rapidly to the same conclusions with Dr. Jennings,
+and a few of them have already arrived there.
+
+It is from stumbling on such facts as these, together with my own long
+experience, all bearing in the same direction, that I have long since
+renounced dependence on medicine, properly so called, as a means of
+restoring the system, when out of order, to a state of health. In other
+words, I have ceased to employ poison to _cure_ poison.
+
+But, lest it should still be thought I make too much of my own
+experience, and of the facts which have been adduced in this chapter, I
+subjoin another of kindred character, containing the written testimony
+of others, especially medical men, on the subject.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XCIX.
+
+ANTI-MEDICAL TESTIMONY.
+
+
+A very large amount of testimony, going to show the inefficiency and
+inutility of medicine, might be presented; but I have limited myself to
+a selection of some of the more striking and important.
+
+Let me begin with Dr. Rush, of Philadelphia. In a published lecture of
+his, more than half a century ago, he made the following remark:--
+
+"Dissections daily convince us of our ignorance of disease, and cause us
+to blush at our prescriptions. What mischief have we done under the
+belief of false facts and theories! We have assisted in multiplying
+diseases; we have done more; we have increased their mortality.... The
+art of healing is like an unroofed temple, uncovered at the top, and
+cracked at the foundation."
+
+Magendie, late a distinguished French physician and physiologist, says,
+as follows:--
+
+"I hesitate not to declare,--no matter how sorely I shall wound our
+vanity,--that so gross is our ignorance of the real nature of the
+physiological disorders called diseases, that it would, perhaps, be
+better to do nothing, and resign the complaint we are called upon to
+treat, to the resources of nature, than to act, as we are frequently
+compelled to do, without knowing the why and the wherefore of our
+conduct, and at the obvious risk of hastening the end of our patient."
+
+Dr. Good, a learned and voluminous British writer, also says:--
+
+"The science of medicine is a barbarous jargon; and the effects of our
+medicines upon the human system, are, in the highest degree, uncertain,
+except, indeed, that they have already destroyed more lives than war,
+pestilence, and famine combined."
+
+Professor Clark, of the Harvard Medical School, in Boston, in an address
+of his, recently published, insists, again and again, that medicine
+never cures, and that it rarely, if ever, so much as _aids_ nature;
+while he exalts, in an unwonted degree, the remedial effects of every
+hygienic influence. Let him who longer doubts, read this most remarkable
+production; and with the more care from the fact that it is a very fair
+exponent of the doctrines now held at the very fountain-head of medical
+orthodoxy.
+
+From a work entitled, "Memoirs of James Jackson, Jr.," late of Boston,
+written by his father, I have extracted the following. It is part of a
+letter, written from Europe, to his venerable father, the present elder
+Dr. James Jackson, of Boston.
+
+"But our poor pathology and worse therapeutics--shall we ever get to a
+solid bottom? Shall we ever have fixed laws? Shall we ever _know_, or,
+must we always be doomed to _suspect_, to _presume_? Is _perhaps_ to be
+our qualifying word forever and for aye? Must we forever be obliged to
+hang our heads when the chemist and natural philosopher ask us for our
+laws and principles?... If honest, must we not acknowledge that, even in
+the natural history of disease, there is very much _doubtful_, which is
+received as _sure_? And in therapeutics, is it better yet, or worse?
+Have we judged--have we deduced our results, especially in the last
+science--from _all_, or from a selection of facts?
+
+"Do we know, for example, in how many instances such a treatment fails,
+for the one time it succeeds? Do we know how large a proportion of cases
+would get well without any treatment, compared with those that recover
+under it? Do not imagine, my dear father, that I am becoming a sceptic
+in medicine. It is, not quite as bad as that. I shall ever believe, _at
+least_, that the rules of _hygeia_ must be and are useful, and that he
+only can understand and value them, who has studied pathology. Indeed, I
+may add that, to a certain extent, I have seen demonstrated the actual
+benefit of certain modes of treatment in acute diseases. But, is this
+benefit immense? When life is threatened, do we very often save it? When
+a disease is destined by _Nature_ to be long, do we very often
+materially diminish it?"
+
+It is worthy of remark, that the discussions in the pages of the _Boston
+Medical and Surgical Journal_, for two or three years past, concerning
+the treatment of scarlatina, have usually resulted, practically, in
+favor of the no-medicine system. It clearly appears that the less our
+reliance on medicine, in this disease, the better. But what shall hinder
+or prevent our coming to similar results, in the investigation, in time
+to come, of other diseases?
+
+Dr. Reynolds, one of the most aged as well as most distinguished medical
+men of Boston, has been heard to affirm that if one hundred patients
+were to call on him during the day, and he could induce them to follow
+such directions as would keep them from injuring themselves from eating
+and drinking,--no matter what the disease,--he should be surprised at a
+mortality of more than three per cent of their number; and he should
+_not_ be surprised if every one who implicitly followed his direction
+should finally recover.
+
+I will only add, in this place, the testimony of two or three
+distinguished individuals on this subject, whose opinion, though they
+were not medical men, will with many have weight, as it certainly ought.
+
+Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to Dr. Caspar Wistar, of Philadelphia,
+thus writes: "I have lived to see the disciples of Hoffman, Boerhaave,
+Stahl, Cullen, and Brown succeed each other, like the shifting figures
+of a magic lantern.... The patient treated on the fashionable theory,
+sometimes recovers in spite of the medicine. The medicine, therefore,
+restores him (!!!), and the doctor receives new courage to proceed in
+his experiment on the lives of his fellow-creatures!"
+
+Sir Walter Scott says, of Napoleon: He never obeyed the medical
+injunctions of his physician, Dr. O'Meara, and obstinately refused to
+take medicine. "Doctor," said he, "no physicking. We are a machine made
+to live. We are organized for that purpose. Such is our nature. Do not
+counteract the living principle. Let it alone; leave it the liberty of
+defending itself; it will do better than your drugs. The watchmaker
+cannot open it, and must, on handling it, grope his way blindfold and at
+random. For once that he assists and relieves it, by dint of tormenting
+it with crooked instruments, he injures it ten times, and at last
+destroys it."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER C.
+
+AN ANTI-MEDICAL PREMIUM.
+
+
+The Massachusetts Medical Society, in the year 1856, were authorized by
+an unknown individual to offer a premium of one hundred dollars for the
+best dissertation which should be presented to them, on or before April
+15, 1857, on the following subject, viz.: "_We would regard every
+approach towards the rational and successful prevention and management
+of disease without the necessity of drugs, to be an advance in favor of
+humanity and scientific medicine._"
+
+A number of essays were accordingly presented, having, as is usual in
+such cases, various degrees of merit; but the preference was given to
+one written by Worthington Hooker, M. D., of New Haven, Conn. This essay
+is to be published in due time, and it is devoutly hoped there will be
+as little delay as possible in the circulation of so remarkable, and, as
+I have no doubt, valuable, an essay.
+
+The facts in connection with this essay, taken as an item in the history
+of human progress, are truly remarkable. The very title of the essay is
+at once peculiar and striking; but the main idea which it suggests to
+the mind is much more so. That a learned society, in the literary
+metropolis of New England, if not of the United States, should, at the
+present time, in any way or shape, encourage a discussion of the
+question, whether, in the practice of medicine, drugs can be dispensed
+with, was not an event to be expected or so much as dreamed of. It is,
+therefore, I repeat, very remarkable, and must have a deeper meaning
+than at first appears.
+
+What, then, let us inquire, is that meaning? Does it intimate that there
+is a belief,--a lurking belief, if you choose to call it so,--among our
+scientific medical men, that drugs might be entirely dispensed with?
+Or, does it rather imply a belief in the possibility of approximating to
+such a point,--with those approximations of two mathematical lines, of
+which we sometimes hear,--without the possibility of ever reaching it?
+
+It is by no means improbable, at least in my own view, that the essay
+intended by the Boston Society had its origin in a growing tendency,
+everywhere, among scientific medical men, to the belief that, in the
+most rational and successful practice of medicine, drugs are not
+indicated; and that they are only necessary on account of the ignorance
+or credulity of the community.
+
+The family practice of many sensible physicians, perhaps I might say of
+most, is strongly corroborative of this main idea. I can point to more
+than a score of eminent individuals, in this department, who never, or
+at most but seldom, give medicine in their own families; above all, they
+never take it themselves. It is indeed true, that some of them are
+hardly willing to own it, when questioned on the subject; but this does
+not alter the plain matter of fact.
+
+Thus Dr. S----, ten miles from Boston, is subject to attacks of a
+species of neuralgia, which sometimes last two days; and yet, none of
+his family or friends or medical brethren have ever been able to
+persuade him to do any thing to mitigate his pain, except to keep quiet
+and abstain almost entirely from food; and a daughter of his assures me
+that she can scarcely recollect his giving a dose of medicine to any
+member of his family. Dr. H., seven miles from Boston, not only does the
+same, but frequently disappoints the expectations of his patients, by
+giving them no medicine. Yet both these individuals are exceedingly slow
+to be seen in company with those men of heterodoxy in medicine, who dare
+to advocate, everywhere and on all occasions, what they habitually
+practice on themselves and their families.
+
+What, then, I repeat it, can these things mean? Is there not reason for
+believing that the truly wise men of the medical profession, at the
+present time, are beginning to see, in certain facts which in the
+providence of God are forced upon them, that in the general management
+of disease, and as the general rule of treatment, no drugs or medicines
+are needful?
+
+There is a wide difference between that practice of our profession
+which, as a general rule, excludes medicine, and that which, as a
+general rule, includes it. And an entire change from the latter to the
+former, is, perhaps, too great to be expected immediately. Yet, in the
+progress of society towards a more perfect millennial state of things,
+must it not come?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER CI.
+
+CONCLUDING REMARKS.
+
+
+It is a notorious fact, that while the number of physicians and the
+expenditure for drugs and medicines is constantly increasing, in every
+civilized country where they have been much employed, diseases have been
+multiplied in proportion. Perhaps, too, they have, in a like proportion,
+become more fatal; but this does not so clearly appear. Nor is it quite
+so certain that acute diseases have been multiplied, as chronic ones.
+
+Another fact deserves to be placed by the side of this; viz., that in
+those countries, or portions of country, where no physicians have ever
+been in vogue, and very little medicine beyond a few herbs, and roots,
+and incantations, or charms, the health of the people is quite as good,
+and the longevity quite as great, all other things being equal, as in
+those countries and places where physicians and medicine have obtained a
+strong foothold.
+
+There is no evidence that the want of physicians before the flood,--if
+such a want or deficiency there was, which appears probable,--had any
+influence in shortening human life, since Methuselah, who lived at the
+end of the series, was the oldest of all. Nor does it appear at all
+probable that there were more diseases, or more fatal ones, at that
+early period, than since.
+
+One thought more. It is confidently expected that a better day than the
+present is yet to dawn upon our dark world. Not only is it predicted
+that the child shall die a hundred years old, by the highest authority,
+and that men, like the oak tree, shall live several hundred years, but
+profane writers no less than prophets and sacred ones, have expected
+and still expect it. The better time coming is, as it were, in
+everybody's mouth.
+
+But, is it probable that this better day will dawn on a world which, in
+respect to health and longevity, is going in the other direction? While
+nearly half our children die under ten years of age, and the mortality
+is increasing, are we tending towards the point when a child shall die a
+hundred years old? And are our physicians and our medicines likely to
+bring us there?
+
+If not, and if a radical change is desirable, when is it to be made?
+Shall we wait till we have run down a century or two longer, or shall we
+begin the work immediately? And if we are to begin it at once, on whom
+shall the work devolve?
+
+These are questions, I grant, more easily asked than answered.
+Nevertheless, they must soon be met; they cannot much longer be shuffled
+off. Would it not be the part of wisdom to meet them now, rather than
+postpone?
+
+Here, then, I leave the subject. Let it be pondered in the light of
+reason, common sense, conscience, and, above all, the truth of God. Let
+there be no immature or hasty decisions. Truth, in truthful hands, has
+nothing to fear.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER CII.
+
+A LAST CHAPTER.
+
+
+William A. Alcott was born in Wolcott, Conn., August 6th, 1798. His
+father, a farmer in the rough mountain town, employed his son, as soon
+as he was old enough to be useful, in laboring on the farm, so that,
+from childhood, he was trained to habits of industry. His early
+employments were, in many respects, beneficial, and his feeble
+constitution was probably invigorated by this out-of-door work. The only
+apparent drawback was being kept at work too closely, with very little
+time left for amusement; and, as he was too conscientious to neglect the
+tasks assigned him, he plodded on, thus losing, in a great measure,
+while young, the natural and healthy relish of boys for athletic games
+and sports. As a natural consequence, his mind developed too rapidly. He
+early showed a great fondness for books, and the love of reading came to
+be his chief and almost only amusement.
+
+Till eight years of age he attended the district school, in summer and
+winter, but after this period his father employed him in farm labor
+constantly, except during the winter term. At the age of fourteen he had
+measles, from which he suffered greatly at the time, and in its
+consequences for several years. He grew rapidly, was, when a lad, tall
+and thin, and his strength, when young, and, indeed, through his whole
+life, lay chiefly in a strong will, combined with great energy and
+perseverance. To these qualities, doubtless, is owing the continuance of
+his life for many years.
+
+When little more than eighteen years of age, he commenced teaching,
+which was continued, during the winter, for several years; sometimes
+through the entire year. But a strong desire to improve and elevate the
+schools, led him to overtask himself. Mr. Barnard's _Journal of
+Education_, speaks thus of his labors at this period: "The severity of
+his exertions and self-denials, joined to other causes, especially a
+feeble constitution, brought on him a most violent attack of erysipelas,
+from the effects of which, though he escaped with his life, he never
+entirely recovered."
+
+About this time he commenced the study of medicine, and the succeeding
+winter, 1825-6, attended medical lectures in New Haven, not so much with
+the design of making it a profession, as with the hope that it might
+prove an aid in fitting him to become a more thorough teacher. The
+following March he received a license to practice medicine and surgery.
+But his health was far from being good, and he was, himself, more
+apprehensive of a fatal result, than consumptive people usually are.
+
+However, he soon found an opportunity to engage in teaching again, and
+embraced it eagerly. But here he was destined to disappointment. His
+pulmonary tendencies, which had for ten years been increasing upon him,
+aggravated, no doubt, by hard study and improper diet of the preceding
+winter, now became very alarming. Beside a severe cough and great
+emaciation, he was followed by hectic fever, and the most exhausting and
+discouraging perspirations. He fought bravely to the last moment, but
+was finally compelled to quit the field, and endeavor to regain his
+health.
+
+For a time, he followed the soundest medical advice he could obtain;
+kept quiet, took a little medicine, ate nutritious food, and when his
+strength would permit, breathed pure air. This course was at length
+changed, for one of greater activity and less stimulus. He abandoned
+medicine, adopted for a time the "starvation system," or nearly that,
+and threw himself, by such aids as he could obtain, into the fields and
+woods, and wandered among the hills and mountains.
+
+In autumn, he was able to perform light horticultural labors, a few
+hours of the day, and to ride on horseback. For six months he rode
+almost daily in company with a physician; at the end of which period he
+commenced the practice of medicine, in the place where he had last
+labored, and where he was born.
+
+After continuing in the practice a few years, and his health seeming to
+be restored, he ventured to return again to the work dearer to him than
+any other--that of teaching. But his labors seemed again to be slowly
+undermining his health, and, fearful of a relapse of the pulmonary
+tendencies, he abandoned for a time all hope of teaching permanently.
+
+The following year, he became connected with Rev. William C. Woodbridge,
+and continued to labor in the cause of education for several successive
+years.
+
+In Jan. 1833, he removed to Boston, and during the winter had a severe
+attack of bleeding at the lungs, and other dangerous symptoms. These,
+however, passed away; and the great change which, in 1830, had been made
+in his physical habits, seemed to be working one equally great in his
+constitutional tendencies. For while his labors were constant and often
+severe, there was a steady gain in health. The strength and elasticity
+of youth returned, and, to use his own words it was with him, now,
+"morning all day." The effects of an unfavorable climate, which he had
+feared, were apparently held in check, and he sometimes said that
+"Obedience gave him command over climate, in a great degree." Yet,
+during all these years when his health was apparently most firm, it was
+kept in this condition only by a rigid obedience to the laws of life and
+health, as he understood and expounded them. His precepts and practice
+were in harmony.
+
+In the spring of 1848, owing to some unusual exposure, a return of the
+cough and other symptoms of his old disease made their appearance.[N]
+But, with care, and light labor in the garden, they gradually passed
+away, and his usual measure of health returned, and continued, with
+slight interruptions, till 1855. During this year he was confined to his
+room several months with a broken limb. The change, at his age, from
+exercise daily in the open air, to confinement without exercise nearly
+all winter, was very unfavorable, in its results, to his general health.
+The lungs, doubtless, suffered greatly, and were never able to resist,
+as before, the effects of exposure to sudden changes of temperature.
+
+Still he labored on from year to year, untiringly as ever, writing,
+lecturing, visiting schools, etc. During the last winter, his time was
+employed more exclusively in reading and writing, and he went out less
+than usual. His lungs were weak and very easily affected. A difficulty
+of breathing after much exertion was frequent. His feet and ankles were
+often much swollen, and there was a loss of strength and general
+debility quite new to him.
+
+These indications were not to be mistaken, and in the retirement of his
+own home he often spoke of the possibility and even probability, that
+his earthly labors were drawing to a close.
+
+On the 18th of March, he left home to be absent a few days, partly with
+the hope that being more in the open air might prove beneficial. On
+Friday of the following week, though scarcely able to be moved, he was
+brought home, having been prostrated by what appeared to be a violent
+attack of pleurisy, which terminated his earthly existence, on Tuesday,
+March 28, 1859.
+
+In many minds the question will naturally arise: What should induce such
+an apparently violent disease, in a person who so rigidly obeyed the
+laws of health? A satisfactory answer to this can be given only by
+supposing the acute disease to have been merely a finishing up or
+termination of that disease which for years had been held in check. His
+own views on the subject were in accordance with this conclusion, and
+the condition of the lungs, as shown by a post mortem examination,
+served to confirm it. The amount of disease found in the lungs was so
+great that the examination could not be as careful and satisfactory as
+would have been desirable.
+
+The hand that wrote this volume, and that would have drawn important
+lessons from this page of life, now moulders in the dust. To the reader
+it is left to gather from it instruction and motive and courage, for a
+like battle against evil, for a like victory over self, until he, too,
+shall accomplish his mission upon earth.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[N] See Chapter LXIX.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Forty Years in the Wilderness of Pills
+and Powders, by William A. Alcott
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