Kitabı oku: «Forty Years in the Wilderness of Pills and Powders», sayfa 19

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?

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?