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 afair 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, exceptsuch as grew on fruit-trees—theapple, 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!
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 medicalbrethren formerly did, for thenameof 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.
The eyes of my mind having just begun to be opened to the impotence of a mere routine of medication as asubstitute for nature, rather thanas 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 theywere 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 ofhygiene—nay, even the word itself, and the phraselaws 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 ofknowledge, 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.
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?"
"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 knowsit 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.
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 thatI 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 moreabout 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 educatedenough, 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"nevermeans any thing, itgenerallydoes 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?
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 carriedto 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.Howwell 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 customaryat 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 theBoston 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.
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 weretwentytimes 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.
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 homœopathist 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 thanfor 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.
[B]Of the hydropathist at that time I had not heard.
[B]Of the hydropathist at that time I had not heard.
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 recoveryseemsto 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. Theyshuddered; 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?