Forty Years in the Wilderness of Pills and Powders

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.