Forty Years in the Wilderness of Pills and Powders

Here he often resorted to the same rigid economy which he had before practised, both at academy and college, and in Europe. The very best living he would allow himself was a diet exclusively of small potatoes – those, I mean, from which the larger ones had been separated for the use of others.

This, his dyspeptic stomach would not long endure. His digestive and nervous systems both became considerably deranged; and even his skin, sympathizing with the diseased lining membrane of his stomach and intestines, became the seat of very painful boils and troublesome sores. These, while they indicated still deeper if not more troublesome disease, gave one encouraging indication – that the recuperative powers of the system were not as yet irrecoverably prostrated.

He now came to me and begged to become my patient, and to reside permanently under my roof, so that he might not only receive such daily attention and counsel as the circumstances required, but also such food, air, exercise, and ablutions as were needful. He was accordingly admitted to the rights, privileges, and self-denials of the family.

Here he spent a considerable time. While under my care, I made every reasonable exertion for his recovery which I would have made for a favorite child. Indeed, few children were ever more obedient or docile. He would sometimes say to me: "Doctor, I have no more power over myself than a child, and you must treat me as you would a child." Nor was he satisfied till I restricted his every step, both with regard to the quantity and quality of his food, and the hours and seasons of bathing, exercise, reading, etc. It was to me a painful task, and I sometimes shrunk from it, for the moment. There was, however, no escape. I had embarked in the enterprise, and must take the consequences.

At first, his improvement was scarcely perceptible, and I was almost discouraged. But at length, after much patience and perseverance, the suffering digestive organs began, in some measure, to resume their healthful condition, and the whole face of things to wear a different aspect. He left us to take charge of a public school.

For some time after the opening of this school, his health seemed to be steadily improving, and the world around him began to have its charms again. He was in his own chosen, and, I might say, native element, which was to him a far more healthful stimulus than any other which could have been devised, whether by the physician or the physiologist.

Nothing in this world is so well calculated to preserve and promote human health, as full and constant employment, of a kind which is perfectly congenial and healthful, and which we are fully assured is useful. In other words, the first great law of health is benevolence. It keeps up in the system that centrifugal tendency of the circulation of which I have already spoken, and which is so favorable for the rejection of all effete and irritating matters. It would have been next to impossible for our Saviour, with head, heart, and hands engaged as his were, to have sickened; nor was it till the most flagrant physiological transgressions had been long repeated, that even Howard the philanthropist sickened and died. Not the whole combined force of malaria and contagion could overcome him, till continual over-fatigue, persistent cold, and strong tea, – an almost matchless trio, – lent their aid to give the finishing stroke.

Mr. Gray was a boarder with a gentleman who kept a grocery store, and who was glad to employ him on certain days and hours of vacation or recess, in taking care of the shop and waiting on his customers. Here the tempter again assailed him, in the form of foreign fruits, raisins, figs, prunes, oranges, dried fish, cordials, candy, etc. For some time past he had been wholly unaccustomed to these things; they had even been forbidden him, especially between his meals. As a consequence of his indulgences, and his neglect of exercise, his health again declined, and he came a second time under my care.

He was partially restored the second time, but not entirely. His labors, which were teaching still, became more exhausting than formerly. Cheerfulness, hope, sympathy, conscious usefulness, and the force of many good habits, sustained him for a time, but not always. His great labors of body and mind, with a deep sense of responsibility, and the indulgences to which I have alluded, preyed upon him, and dyspepsia began once more her reign of tyranny.

Doubtless he attempted too much here, for he was an enthusiast on the subject of common schools and common school instruction. And yet, under almost any circumstances of school-keeping, dyspepsia, nurtured as it was by every physical habit, would most certainly have assailed him. With regard to his food and drink he was very unwise. It contributed largely to an extreme of irritability, which was unfavorable, and which at the end of a single term compelled him to resign his place and seek some other employment.

This was a grievous disappointment to Mr. Gray, and, as some of his friends believe, was the mountain weight that crushed him. The horrors of the abyss into which he believed he had plunged himself, were the more intolerable from the fact that he now, for the first time, began to despair of being able to consummate a plan by means of which both his sorrows and joys, especially the latter, would have been shared by another.

Yet, even here, he did not absolutely despair. Hope revived when he found himself, a third time, my patient. I did all in my power to encourage him till I had at length, to my own surprise as well as his, the unspeakable pleasure of finding him again returning to the path of health and happiness. It is indeed true, that a capricious appetite still retained its sway, in greater or less degree, and whenever he was not awed by my presence, he would indulge himself in the use of things which he knew were injurious to him, as well as in the excessive, not to say gluttonous, use of such good things as were tolerated. He occasionally confessed his impotence, and begged us to keep every thing out of his way, even those remnants which were designed for the domestic animals!

And yet, after all, strange to say, he absented himself very frequently, as if to seek places of retirement, where he could indulge his tyrannical appetite. I saw most clearly his danger, and spoke to him concerning it. I appealed to his fears, to his hopes, to his conscience. I reminded him of the love he bore to humanity, and the regard he had for Divinity.

Once more, being partly recruited, he resumed his labors as a teacher. This was doubtless a wrong measure, and yet I was not aware of the error at the time, or I should not have encouraged the movement, or assisted him as I did in procuring a situation. But I then thought he had been punished so effectually for his transgressions, that he would at length be wise. Besides he was exceedingly anxious to be at work, and to avoid dependence, a desire in which his friends participated, and in regard to which they were so unwise as to express their over anxiety in his hearing.

Three months in the school-house found him worse than ever before. He had attempted to board himself, to subsist on a very few ounces of "Graham wafers" at each meal, and to be an hour in masticating it. As an occasional compensation for this, however, a sort of treating resolution, he allowed himself to pick up the crusts and other fragments left about the school-house by his pupils, and when he had collected quite a pile of these, to indulge his appetite with them, ad libitum. Nor was this all. He erred in other particulars, perhaps in many.

He came to my house a fourth time, but my situation was such that I could not well receive him. He staid only a day or two, but his residence with us was long enough to enable me to mark the progress of his case, and to deplore what I feared must be the final issue. From me he went to a friend in an adjoining State; not, however, till he had alluded to certain errors of his recent life that he had not yet devulged, even to his best friend. "Doctor," said he, "there are some things that I have not yet told you about."

To me, also, it belongs, at this point of Gray's lamentable history, to make confession of great and glaring error. To have received the young man to my house, and to have devoted myself to the work of endeavoring again to raise him, would, most undoubtedly, have been a sacrifice to which few people in my circumstances would have thought themselves called. Yet, difficult as it was, the sacrifice might have been made. Had he been my only brother, I should, doubtless, have received him. The Saviour of mankind, in my circumstances, would probably have taken him in. Was I not his follower? And was I not bound to do what I believed he would do, in similar circumstances?

His more distant friend, but more consistent Christian brother, opened wide his doors for his reception, and did the best he could for him. It was his intention, at first, to employ him, as I now think he ought to have been employed long before; viz., on a small farm. In this point of view this friend's house was particularly favorable. Yet there were offsets to this advantage. One thing in particular, cast a shade upon our efforts in his behalf. It was about April 1st, and the house and farm had an eastern aspect, and the easterly winds, which at that season so much prevailed, were very strong and surcharged with vapor at a low temperature. For a few days after his arrival he was worse than ever.

This was discouragement heaped upon discouragement, and he began soon to sink under it. For a short time he was the subject of medical treatment. What was the character of the medicine he took, I never knew. At length there were signs of convalescence; but no sooner did his bodily health and strength begin to improve, than his mental troubles began to press upon him, till he was driven to the very borders of insanity. Indeed, so strong was the tendency to mental derangement that his relatives actually carried him, per force, to an insane hospital.

But his residence at the hospital was very short. Provision having in the mean time been made for his reception in a private family, among his acquaintance, and the superintendent of the hospital having advised to such a course, he was remanded to the country, to familiar faces, and to a farm.

On reaching the place assigned him, he became extremely ill, – worse, by far, than ever before, – so that, for several weeks, his life was despaired of. But by means of careful medical treatment, and a judicious and very simple diet, which at the hospital had been exchanged for a stimulating one, nature once more rallied, and in three or four weeks he appeared to be in a fair way for recovery. His strength increased, his mind became clear; his digestive function, though still erratic, appeared about to resume its natural condition, and to perform once more its wonted office; and the other troublesome symptoms were all gradually disappearing, except one; – he had still a very frequent pulse.

But even this rapid arterial action was at length abating. From a frequency of the pulse equal to 100, 110, and sometimes 120 in a minute, it fell in two weeks to from 70 to 75; and this, too, under the influence of very mild and gentle treatment. There was no reduction of activity or power, by bleeding, or by blistering, or in any other way; on the contrary, as I have intimated, there was a general increase of strength and vigor, both of body, and mind. He did not even take digitalis or morphine. The prospect, therefore, was, on the whole, truly encouraging.

And yet he had a set of friends – relatives, I should say, rather – who were not satisfied. It was strongly written on their minds that he was about to die; and they sternly insisted on removing him to his native home, that if he should die, he might die in the bosom of his own kindred. I was consulted; but I entered my most solemn protest against the measure, as both uncalled for and hazardous. It was to no purpose, however. In their over-kindness they determined to remove him; and the removal was effected. I ought also to say that though Mr. Gray highly appreciated their kindness, he was himself opposed to the measure, as one attended with much hazard.

On the road to his paternal home, influenced in no small degree by mental excitement, his delirium returned, and with an intensity that never afterwards abated. He was, for about three weeks, a most inveterate and raving maniac, when, worn out prematurely with disease, he sunk to rise no more till the general resurrection.

There was no post-mortem examination of this young man, though there should have been. Not that there was any lurking suspicion of peculiarity of disease, but because such examinations may always be made serviceable to the cause of medical science, while they cannot possibly injure either the dead or the living.

I have been the more minute in my account of this man, because the case is an instructive one, both to the professional and non-professional reader, and also because it places medicine and physicians in the true light, and holds forth to the world the wonderfully recuperative power of nature, and the vast importance of giving heed to the laws of health and to the voice of physiology.

CHAPTER LXIV

GETTING INTO A CIRCLE

The oddity of some of my captions may seem to require an apology; but I beg the doubtful reader to suspend any unfavorable decisions, till he has read the chapter which follows. He will not, either in the present instance or in any other, be introduced to a magic ring, or to the mysteries of modern "spiritualism." The circle into which my patient fell, was of a different description.

A young mother from the west, about the year 1840, came to consult me with regard to her health. Not being able to receive her into my own family, I made arrangements for her reception in the immediate neighborhood, where she remained for a long time. She was a dyspeptic – if not of giant magnitude, but little short of it.

I spent many an hour in endeavoring to set all right, both in mind and body. It was, however, much easier to set her head right, than her hands, feet, and stomach. She had been under the care of almost all sorts of medical men – hydropathic, homoeopathic, and allopathic. Some of them, from all these schools, had been men of good sense, while a much larger proportion of them had turned out to be fools, and had done her more harm than good. In short, like the woman in the New Testament, she had spent much on many physicians, and was nothing bettered by it, but rather made worse.

Under such circumstances what ground was there for hope? What she most needed, it was easy to see, was a little more of resolution to carry out and complete what she believed to be her duty. I told her so. I told her how many times I had repeated to her the same directions; while she, after the lapse of a very few days, – sometimes only a day or two, – had come round again, in her remarks and inquiries, to the very point whence she had first started. I told her how easy a thing this getting into a circle was, and how difficult it was to escape from it.

Although she perfectly understood her condition, there was still a strange and almost unaccountable reaching forth for something beyond the plain path of nature, which I had faithfully and repeatedly pointed out to her. She wished for some shorter road, something mysterious or magical. She was, in short, a capital subject for humbuggery, had she not tried it already to her heart's content.

Occasionally, I must confess, I felt somewhat disposed to put her on the "starvation plan," as Dr. Johnson calls it, – on a diet of two pints only of plain gruel (thin hasty pudding, rather) a day, – for she would have borne it much better than did Mr. Gray, of the preceding chapter. I am sorry I did not. However, I prescribed for her, in general, very well; and, except in the last-mentioned particular, have no reason for regret nor any call for confessions.

She remained under my care several weeks – all the while in a mill-horse track or circle, beginning at the same point and coming round to the same result or issue, when I frankly told her, one day, that it was a great waste, both of time and money, for her to remain longer. I saw, more and more clearly, that all her thoughts were concentrated on her own dear self. Her troubles, her health, her concerns, her prospects in life and death, were, to her, of more importance than all the world besides. No woman, as good as she was, – for she was, professedly, a disciple of him who said to his followers, "Feed my lambs," – whom I have ever seen, was so completely wrapped up in self, and so completely beyond the pale of the world of benevolence.

My final advice to her, in addition to that general change of personal habits which, from the first, I had strongly recommended to her, was to return to her native city, and, after making her resolution and laying her plan, give herself no rest, permanently, till by personal appeal or otherwise she had brought all the females within her reach into maternal associations, moral reform societies, and the like.

On her return to her husband and children, she made an attempt to carry out the spirit of my prescription, and not without a good degree of success. But the great benefit which resulted from it – that, indeed, which it was my ultimate object to secure – was that it diverted her thoughts from their inward, selfish tendency, and placed her on better ground as to health than she had occupied for some time before.

I saw her no more for ten or twelve years. Occasionally, it is true, I heard from her, that she was better. Yet she was never entirely well. She was never entirely beyond the circle in which she had so long moved. She returned, at times, to medical advice and medicine; but, so far as I could learn, with little permanent good effect. She died about twelve years after she left my "guardianship," an extreme sufferer, as she had lived; and a sufferer from causes that a correct education and just views of social life, and of health and disease, would, for the most part, have prevented.

CHAPTER LXV

POISONING WITH MAPLE SUGAR

A particular friend of mine purchased one day, at a stand in the city, two small cakes of maple sugar. It was early in the spring, and very little of the article had as yet been manufactured. My friend, in his eagerness, devoured them immediately. He observed, before eating them, that they had a very dark appearance; but the taste was correct, as far as he could judge, and he did not hesitate. He was one of those individuals, moreover, who are not greatly given to self-denial in the matter of appetite.

The next day he had as sore a mouth as I ever saw. The inflammation extended not only to the back part of the mouth, but into the throat, and probably quite into the stomach, and was attended with a most distressing thirst, with loss of appetite, and occasional nausea. In short, it unfitted him for business the whole day; indeed it was many days before he recovered entirely.

My own conclusion, after a careful investigation of the facts, was, that the sugar was cooled down in vessels of iron, which were, in some way, more or less oxydated or rusted, and that a small quantity of free acid having been, by some means unknown, developed in the sugar, it entered into a chemical combination with the metallic oxyde, to form a species of copperas – perhaps the genuine sulphate of iron itself.

No medicine was given, nor was any needed. It was sufficient to let the system rest, till Nature, with the assistance of small quantities of water, – such as she was constantly demanding, – could eject the intruding foe. It required only a little patient waiting.

There is scarcely a doubt that the sufferer learned, from his experiment, one important lesson; viz., to let alone every thing which, by cooking, has been changed to a dark color. Beets are sometimes blackened by cooking in iron vessels, as well as sugar; and so are apples and apple-sauce, and sundry other fruits and vegetables.

The word apple-sauce reminds me of an incident that recently occurred in my own family. A kind neighbor having sent us some apple-sauce, such of the family as partook of it freely, suffered, soon afterward, in a way that led to the suspicion of poison. This apple-sauce was quite dark-colored, but tasted well enough.

We have seen, in Chapter XXVIII., that in the use of apple-sauce, or apple butter, or, indeed, any thing containing an acid, which has been in contact with the inner surface of red earthen ware, glazed with the oxyde of lead, people are sometimes poisoned; but for common, plain, apple-sauce, recently cooked, to be poisonous, is rather unusual. However, we can hardly be too careful in these matters. Serious evils have sometimes arisen from various kinds of complicated cookery, even when the healthiness of the vessels used was quite above suspi. A powerful argument this in favor of simplicity.

It should also be remembered, with regard to sugar, that this is a substance whose use, even when known to be perfectly innoxious, is, at best, of doubtful tendency, beyond the measure which the Divine Hand has incorporated into the various substances which are prepared for our use. That sugar, in considerable quantities, leads to fulness, if not to fatness, is no proof of its healthfulness; since fatness itself is a sign of disease in man and all other animals, as has, of late, been frequently and fully demonstrated.

CHAPTER LXVI

PHYSICKING OFF MEASLES

The father of a large family came to me one day, and, with unwonted politeness, inquired after my health. Of course, I did not at first understand him, but time and patience soon brought every thing to light. His family, he said, were all sick with measles, except his wife, and he wished to ask me a question or two.

The truth is, he wanted to consult me professionally, without paying a fee; and yet he felt a little delicacy about it. But I was accustomed to such things; for his was neither the first nor the hundredth application of the kind; so I was as polite as he was, in return.

Another individual stood near me just at that moment, who supposed he had a prior claim to my attention; and I was about to leave Mr. M. for a moment, when he said, in a low voice, and in a fawning manner: "I suppose, doctor, it is necessary to physic off well for the measles; is it not? The old women all say it is; but I thought that, as I saw you, it might be well to ask."

This species of robbery is so common, that few have any hesitancy about practising it. Mr. M., though passing for a pattern of honesty and good breeding, wherever he was known, was nevertheless trained to the same meanness with the rest of the neighborhood where I resided, and was quite willing – even though a faint consciousness of his meanness chanced to come over him now and then – to defraud me a little in the fashionable or usual manner.

Perhaps I may be thought fastidious on this point. But though I have been sponged, – I may as well again say robbed, – in this or a similar way, a hundred or a thousand times, I believe I never complained so loudly before. Yet it is due to the profession of medicine, and to those who resort to it, that I should give my testimony against a custom which ought never to have obtained foothold.

But to return to our conversation; – for I was never mean enough to refuse to give such information as was required, to the best of my abilities, even though I never expected, directly or indirectly, to be benefited by it; – I told him, at once, that if costiveness prevailed at the beginning of convalescence, in this disease, some gentle laxative might be desirable; but that, in other circumstances, no medicine could be required, the common belief to the contrary notwithstanding.

Mr. M. seemed not a little surprised at this latter statement, and yet, on the whole, gratified. It was, to him, a new doctrine, and yet he thought it reasonable. He never could understand, he said, what need there was of taking "physic," when the body was already in a good condition.

This physicking off disease is about as foolish as taking physic to prevent it – of which I have said so much in Chapter XI. and elsewhere. I do not, indeed, mean to affirm that it is quite as fatal; though I know not but it may have been fatal in some instances. Death from measles is no very uncommon occurrence in these days. Now how do we know whether it is the disease that kills or the medicine?