Forty Years in the Wilderness of Pills and Powders

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.