Forty Years In The Wilderness Of Pills And Powders Part 26

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 appet.i.te.

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 appet.i.te, 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 quant.i.ty 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 a.s.sistance of small quant.i.ties 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 b.u.t.ter, 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 quant.i.ties, 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 pa.s.sing 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 fas.h.i.+onable 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 circ.u.mstances, 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 const.i.tution, 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 circ.u.mstances. 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 ma.s.s 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 const.i.tution 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 ma.s.s are still more so.

I was speaking, at first, of tic douloureux. This is a painful affection of a nerve or a cl.u.s.ter 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 cl.u.s.ters 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, b.u.t.ter, 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.