Forty Years in the Wilderness of Pills and Powders

And when we physic off, in the way above mentioned, how know we, that if, very fortunately, we do not kill, some other disease may not be excited or enkindled? You are aware, both from what has been said in these pages, and from your own observation, that measles are not unfrequently followed by dropsy, weak eyes, and other troubles. No individual, perhaps, is, by constitution, less inclined to dropsy than myself; yet he who has read carefully what I have noted in Chapter IV., will not be confident of his own safety in such circumstances. Yet if they are endangered who are least predisposed to this or any other disease, where is the safety of those who inherit such a predisposition?

CHAPTER LXVII

TIC DOULOUREUX

Some fifty years ago, I saw in a Connecticut paper, a brief notice of the death of an individual in Wellingworth, in that State, from a disease which, as the paper proceeded to state, – and justly too, – not one in a million had then ever felt, and which not many at that time had ever heard of; viz., tic douloureux.

This notice, though it may have excited much curiosity, – it certainly arrested my own attention, – did not give us much light as to the nature of the disease. "What is tic douloureux?" I asked my friends; for at that time, of course, I knew nothing of the study of medicine. They could not tell me. "Why do medical men," I asked, "give us such strange names? Is it to keep up the idea of mystery, as connected with the profession, in order thus to maintain an influence which modest worth cannot secure?"

It was largely believed at that time, by myself and many others, that science, like wealth, – especially medical science, – was aristocratical; that the learned world, though they saw the republican tendencies of things, were predisposed to throw dust in the people's eyes as long as they could. The fact that almost all our medicines, whether in the condition in which we see them labelled at the apothecary's shop, or as prescribed by the family physician, have Latin names, – was often quoted in proof of this aristocratic feeling and tendency.

Now there was doubtless some foundation for this opinion. Medical men did then and still very generally do believe, that it is better, on the whole, for the mass of mankind to have nothing to do with these matters, except at the prescription of those who have given the best part of their lives to the study of medicine and disease. That they are weapons of so much power, that even physicians – men who only partially understand the human constitution and their influence on it – are almost as likely to do harm with them as good, and that it is quite enough for society to bear the evils which are connected with the regular study and practice of the profession, without enduring a much larger host, inflicted by those who have other professions and employments, and must consequently be still more ignorant than their physicians. And may not this be one reason why a foreign language has been so long retained in connection with the names of diseases and medicines?

But though physicians entertain the belief alluded to, and though it were founded in truth, it does not thence follow that mankind are to remain in ignorance of the whole subject of life and health, nor is it the intention of enlightened medical men that they shall. The latter are much more ready, as a general rule, to encourage among mankind the study of the most appropriate means of preventing disease, than they are willing to take the needful pains. In short, though physicians by their slowness to act, in this particular, are greatly faulty, the world as a mass are still more so.

I was speaking, at first, of tic douloureux. This is a painful affection of a nerve or a cluster of nerves. When it first began to be spoken of, it was confined chiefly to an expansion of nerve at the side of the face, called in anatomical works pes anserina. But, of late years, it has been found to attack various nerves and clusters of nerves in different parts of the body. In truth, under the general name of neuralgia, which means about the same thing, we now have tic douloureux of almost every part of the human system, and it has become so common that instead of one in a million, we have probably one or two if not more in every hundred, who have suffered from it in their own persons.

About the year 1840, I had a patient who was exceedingly afflicted with this painful disease. She was, at the same time, consumptive. The neuralgia was but a recent thing; the consumption had been of many years' standing, and was probably inherited. The physicians of her native region had exhausted their skill on her to no purpose.

There was no hope of aid, in her case, from medicine. The only thing to be done was to invigorate her system, and thus palliate the neuralgia and postpone the consumption. She was accordingly placed under the most rigid restrictions which the code of physical law could demand. She was required to attend to exercise and bathing with great care; to avoid over anxiety and fretfulness; to drink water, and to eat the plainest food. It was not intended to interdict nutritious food; but only that which was over-stimulating.

It required considerable time to show her and her friends the practical difference between nutrition and stimulation. They thought, as thousands have thought beside them, that without a stimulating diet she could not be properly nourished. But they learned at length that good bread of all sorts, rice, peas, beans, and fruits, especially the first two, while they were unstimulating, were even more nutritious than the more stimulating articles of flesh, fish, fowl, butter, and milk and its products.

The treatment to which she was directed was at length pretty carefully followed. The Friends – of which religious connection she was a member – are generally thorough, when we gain their full confidence. Her health was so far restored, that at one period I entertained strong hopes of her ultimate recovery; or, at least of a recovery which would permit of her continuance some twenty or twenty-five years longer. But after seven or eight years of comfortable though not very firm health, she again declined. She died at forty years of age.

CHAPTER LXVIII

COLD WATER IN FEVER

My daughter, then about three years of age, was feverish; and as the lung fever was somewhat prevalent, the family became considerably alarmed.

On examination, I found a strong tendency to the head. The eye was heavy, the head hot and painful, and the tongue thickly coated. The digestive system was disordered, and the skin was collapsed, inactive, and cold. The extremities, especially the feet, were particularly cold and pale.

The days of hydropathy had now arrived; but I was not a full convert, as I have already told you, to the exclusive use of cold water in disease. However, a case was before me which obviously demanded it. So I proceeded to make frequent applications of Nature's drug to the top of her head, and to the temples, while I ordered warm and stimulating applications to the feet and ankles.

This treatment had the effect to render her condition somewhat more comfortable during the day, but at evening the fever returned, and during the night was violent. The tendency to the head was so great as to cause delirium. The anxiety of the family became very great. In the morning, however, she was rather better, so that hope again revived.

During the day the fever increased again, and towards evening and during the whole night was accompanied by restlessness and delirium. But we only persevered with the more earnestness in the use of what we believed to be the most rational treatment. She had, however, a very sick night. The next morning she was again better, though, as might have been expected, somewhat more feeble than she was twenty-four hours before.

Most parents, I know, and not a few wise medical men among us, would have resorted to powders and pills; but we only persevered with our cold applications to the head, and our stimulating draughts to the feet. The bowels were in a very tolerable condition, otherwise a very mild cathartic might possibly have been administered. We had very strong hopes, – at least I had, – that nature would be too strong for the disease, and that the fever would, ere long, begin to abate.

In the afternoon the fever increased again, in some degree, and there was a slight delirium during the succeeding night. She slept a little, however, towards morning, after which she was evidently much better. This third day was passed away very comfortably, and she slept well during the succeeding night. The fourth morning she seemed to be quite restored.

Now a case of fever treated with emetics, diaphoretics, etc., and followed up with the usual paraphernalia of customary medical practice, which should yield so promptly and so immediately, would be supposed to be cured by the medicine; and the cure would very probably be regarded as rather remarkable; and if there was any peculiarity in the treatment, if the diaphoretic powders, for example, had any new or strange name, the practice would, peradventure, be thought worth imitating in other apparently similar cases of disease.

For myself, however, I simply regard it as one of Nature's own cures, unobstructed and unembarrassed by medicine. As the child was young and tenacious of life, she might very probably have recovered under the more common routine of medical treatment. But would there have been any advantage in such a recovery, over one which was equally rapid and perfect without the aid of medicine? Would there, in the latter case, have been no hazard to the constitution?

CHAPTER LXIX

COLD-TAKING AND CONSUMPTION

In Chapter XXIII., I have given a full account of my partial recovery from consumption. I have even spoken of the postponement as if it were complete and final. More than twenty years had now passed away, and I had begun to indulge the hope that I should never have another relapse.

As one element of this hope, I had nearly broken up the habit – once very strong – of taking cold, especially on my lungs. In truth, I believed all danger from this source to be entirely removed, and my particular susceptibility to any thing like acute pulmonary attacks forever at an end. I was confident, moreover, that the art of avoiding cold was an art which not only an individual, here and there, like myself, could acquire, but one which was within the reach of every one who would take the needful pains.

On a certain occasion of this latter kind, I was under a conventional necessity of exposing myself, in an unusual degree, for several successive evenings, to circumstances which, at an earlier period of my life, would, almost inevitably, have been followed by a cold. Was it safe, in my present condition, to run the risk? I hesitated for some time, but finally decided to comply with the request which had been made, and take the responsibility. I believed my susceptibility to cold so entirely eradicated that there was little if any danger.

But, as the event proved, I was quite mistaken; a severe cold came on, and left me in a condition not merely alarming, but immediately so. My lungs were greatly oppressed and my cough exceedingly severe and harassing; and it was followed with great debility and rapid emaciation.

Ashamed of myself, especially as I had boasted, for so many years, of an entire freedom from all tendencies of this sort, I endeavored, for a few days, to screen myself entirely from the public eye and observation. But I soon found that inaction, especially confinement to the house, would not answer the purpose, – that I should certainly die if I persisted in my seclusion.

What now should I do? I was too feeble to work much, although the season had arrived when labor in the garden was beginning to be needed. Trees were to be pruned and washed, and other things promptly attended to. The open air was also the best remedy for my enfeebled and irritated bronchial cavities. Whether there was, at this time, any ulceration of tubercles in my lungs, is, to say the least, very doubtful. However, I greatly needed the whole influence of out-of-door employment, or of travelling abroad; and, as it seemed to me, could not long survive without it.

Accordingly I took my pruning knife in my hand, and walked to the garden. It was about a quarter of a mile distant, and quite unconnected with the house I occupied. At first, it was quite as much as I could do to walk to the garden and return without attempting any labor. Nor could I have done even this, had I not rested several times, both on the road and in the enclosure itself.

It was a week before I was able to do more than merely walk to the garden and back, and perhaps prune a small fruit tree or shrub, and then return. But I persevered. It seemed a last if not a desperate resort; yet hope sometimes whispered that my hour had not yet come, that I had more work to perform.

At length I began to perceive a slight increase of muscular strength. I could work moderately a quarter of an hour or more, and yet walk home very comfortably. In about two months, I had strength enough to continue my labors several hours, in the course of a whole day, though not in succession – perhaps two in the forenoon and two in the afternoon. In about three months, I was, so far as I could perceive, completely restored.

It is to be remarked and remembered that, during the whole three months, I never took the smallest particle of medicine, either solid or fluid. My simple course was to obey, in the most rigid and implicit manner, all known laws, physical and moral. It was my full belief at that time, – it is still my belief, – that conformity to all the Creator's laws is indispensable to the best of health, in every condition of human life, but particularly so when we are already feeble and have a tendency to consumption.

When it became known to my neighbors, who saw me day after day, reeling to my garden or staggering home, that I refused to take any medicine, there was a very general burst of surprise, and, in some cases, of indignation. "Why," said they, "what does the man mean? He must be crazy. As he is going on he will certainly die of a galloping consumption. Any one that will act so foolishly almost deserves to die."

As soon as I found myself fairly convalescent, I returned gradually to all those practices on which I had so long relied as a means of fortifying myself, but which, since my fall, had been partially omitted. Among these was bathing, especially cold bathing. To the last, however, I returned very cautiously. Not for fear I should not be able to secure a reaction, but rather for fear Nature would have to spend more vitality during the process than she could well afford to spare.

I have known cases of the latter kind. An aged minister in Cleveland, Ohio, who had long followed the practice of cold bathing every morning, came to me in Dec. 1851, when the cold weather was very intense, and told me that though he could, with considerable effort, get up a reaction in his system after the bath, he was afraid it cost too much. I advised him to suspend it a few weeks, which he did with evident advantage.

There are, however, many other things to be done besides giving due attention to cold bathing, if we would harden ourselves fully against taking cold, to which I should be glad to advert were it not foreign to the plan I had formed, and the limits which, in this work, I have prescribed to myself.

CHAPTER LXX

FREEZING OUT DISEASE

I am well acquainted with one man of Yankee origin, who formerly made it a practice to freeze out his colds, as he called it. It is certainly better to prevent them, as I have all along and always taught. But this man's story is somewhat amusing, and by way of relief from our more sober subject, I will very briefly relate it.

Whenever he fancied he had taken cold, he would go, at about nine o'clock in the evening, in such diminished clothing as would render him in a very little time, quite chilly, and remain out of doors, when the weather would possibly permit, till he was almost frozen, and then come in and go immediately to bed, and procure a reaction. This he called freezing out his colds. Whether it was the cold or the heat that restored him, may be a point not yet fully settled; but it was a well-known fact to his friends, though they insisted in protesting against the practice, that every vestige of his cold would frequently, if not always, immediately disappear.

But it was a method of treatment which, as the event proved, was not without its hazards. I met with him a few years since, and on inquiring whether he continued to be as successful as formerly in freezing out his colds, he replied that for some time past he had not tried the plan, for, on a former occasion, after many successful experiments, he had failed in one, and had concluded to relinquish it. He made no farther confessions for himself, but his friends have since told me that in the case he faintly alluded to, he came very near dying under the process. He was sick with a fever, as the consequence, for a long time.

A man in one of the Middle States, who is himself about half a physician, and who has in various ways done much for his fellow-men as a philanthropist, is accustomed to pursue a course of treatment which, though slightly related to the former, is, nevertheless, founded on principle. He keeps the sick in a room whose temperature is very low, – little, if at all, above the freezing point, – in order that they may inhale a full supply of oxygen. For every one doubtless knows that the colder the air, the denser it is, and consequently, the greater the absolute quantity of oxygen inhaled at each breath. By compelling his patients, however weak and feeble, to breathe a cold atmosphere, he secured to them an increased and full supply of oxygen.

To prevent his patients from suffering, in consequence of the external atmospheric cold, he keeps them in warm beds, and only suffers them to be out of bed a very short time, at long intervals. And while out of bed even, they are rubbed rapidly, in order to prevent any collapse of the skin from the cold. I knew him to keep a very delicate female, who was scrofulous if not consumptive, for several weeks of the coldest part of the winter, in a room whose temperature seldom exceeded 30° to 40°, scarcely permitting her to go out of it night or day, and what is still more curious, she slowly recovered under the treatment, and is now – seven or eight years afterwards – in the enjoyment of excellent health.

CHAPTER LXXI

THE AIR-CURE

The individual alluded to in the preceding chapter, once sent for me to come and aid him for a time. He was the proprietor of a somewhat dilapidated water-cure establishment, which he wished to convert into what he chose to denominate an air-cure. For though half a physician himself, he had usually employed men of education to assist him; but, not having been quite fortunate in his selection, in every instance, he was disposed to make trial of myself.

In expressing to me his desires, he said he understood, perfectly well, my position. He well knew, in the first place, that I was not a hydropathist, but a regular, old-school physician, with this modification: that I had, for the most part, lost my faith in medicine, and relied chiefly on the recuperative efforts of Nature. He thought, on some points, as he said, a little differently from me; still, he supposed that wherein we could not agree we could at least agree to differ.

The sum total of his wishes, in short, was, that I would aid him in such way and manner as might seem to me best. He believed air to be the most important and efficient remedial agent in the world. His ideas of the virtue of this ærial fluid were hardly exceeded by those of Mr. Thackrah, of Leeds, England, who believes that we subsist more on air than on food and drink.

I was with this good man about six months, when, finding it impossible to carry out his plan, I left him. But I left him with regret. His purposes were generous in the extreme – I might even say noble. He loved to cure for the pleasure of curing – not for the emolument. In short, he seemed to have no regard to the emolument – not the slightest, and to be as nearly disinterested as usually falls to the human lot.

But did he cure? you will perhaps inquire. Yes, if anybody cures. Persons came under his care who had been discharged by other physicians – both allopathic and homœopathic – as incurable; and who yet, in a reasonable time, regained their health. They followed our directions, obeyed the laws of health, and recovered. You may call it what you please – either cure or spontaneous recovery. Miracle, I am quite sure, it was not.

What, then, were the agencies employed in the air-cure? My friend believed that the judicious application of pure air, in as concentrated, and, therefore, as cool a state as possible, particularly to the internal surface of the lungs, was more important than every other agency, and even more important than all others. But then he did not forget the skin. He had his air bath, as well as his deep breathings; it was as frequently used, and was, doubtless, as efficacious.

He also placed great reliance on good food and drink. Animal food he rejected, and condiments. I have neither known nor read of any vegetarian, of Britain or America, who carried his dietetic peculiarities to what would, by most, be regarded as an extreme, more than he. And yet his patients, with few exceptions, submitted to it with a much better grace than I had expected. Some of them, it is true, took advantage of his absence or their own, and made a little infringement upon the rigidity of his prescriptions, but these were exceptions to the general rule; and I believe the transgressors themselves regretted it in the end – fully satisfied that every indulgence was but a postponement of the hour of their discharge.

One thing was permanently regarded as ultra. He did not believe in breakfasting; and therefore kept every patient, who wished to come under his most thorough treatment, from the use of food till about the middle of the day. This permitted of but two meals a day, which, however, is one more than has sometimes been recommended by O. S. Fowler, the phrenologist, and even by a few others.

The main error, however, of this air-cure practice, – if error there was in it, – consisted in the idea of its applicability to everybody, in every circumstance. For though it may be true that as large a proportion of inveterate cases of disease would disappear under such treatment as under any other, yet there are probably not a few to whom it would be utterly unadapted.

CHAPTER LXXII

THE CLERGYMAN

An Ohio clergyman, just setting out in his ministerial career, consulted me, one day, about his health and future physical prospects. His nervous system and cerebral centre had been over-taxed and partially prostrated; and his digestive and muscular powers were suffering from sympathy. In short, he was a run-down student, who, in order to be resuscitated, needed rest.

It was not, however, the rest of mere inertia that he required, but rest from those studies to which his attention had been long and patiently confined. His bodily powers were, indeed, flagging with the rest; but then it was impossible for him to be restored without some exercise. In truth, it was not so much a rest of body, mind, or heart that he needed, as a change.

I will tell you what a course he had been, for five or six years, pursuing. Though his father was reckoned among the wealthier farmers of Ohio, yet, having a large family to sustain and educate, he did not feel at full liberty to excuse his children from such co-operation with him as would not materially interfere with their studies. Hence they were required – and this son among the rest – not only to be as economical as possible, in all things, but also to earn as much as they could, especially during their vacations. They were not, of course, expected to do any thing which was likely to impair their health, but, on the contrary, to take every possible pains to preserve the latter, and to hold labor and study and every thing else in subserviency to it.

The son for whom I was requested to prescribe, not only attended to his father's wishes and expectations, and endeavored to fulfil them, but went much farther than was intended, and did more than he ought. Besides keeping up with his class, he taught school a very considerable portion of the time, so that his mental apparatus, as I have already more than intimated, was continually over-taxed; and he had been a sufferer, more or less, for several years, when I met with him.