Forty Years In The Wilderness Of Pills And Powders Part 29

A minister about forty years of age came to me one day, deeply involved in all the midnight horrors of dyspepsia.

On investigating his case, I found it one of the most trying I had ever met with. It was not only trying in itself, in the particular form and shape it a.s.sumed, but it had been rendered much more troublesome and unmanageable by injudicious medical treatment.

My course was a plain one, and I proceeded cautiously to prescribe for him--not medicine, for in my judgment he needed none, but simply a return to the physical laws he had so long and so palpably violated.

These laws I endeavored briefly to recall to his attention. As he was an intelligent man, I dealt with him in the most plain and direct manner.

Some two or three weeks afterward he called on me again, saying that he was no better. I repeated my prescription, only more particularly. Still I was not, as I now think, sufficiently particular and definite, for want of time. Moreover, he still clung to the off-hand customs of empiricism,--that of looking at the tongue, feeling the pulse, and seeming "wondrous wise,"--and vainly hoped I would treat him in the same direct way, instead of requiring what he regarded as a more circuitous course.

He called on me the third time. We had now ample leisure and opportunity for attempting to ferret out the causes which had operated to bring him into his present condition, some of which, it appeared, had been of long standing.

I inquired, in the first place, concerning his exercise. This, he said, was taken very irregularly, chiefly in walking abroad on business, seldom or never in company. His mind, in all probability, was not directed, to any considerable extent, from its accustomed mill-horse track. His gait, too, when he walked, was staid and measured. It was never buoyant, lively, or playful. And as for amus.e.m.e.nt, he had none at all.

His diet was still worse than his exercise. He had a large family, and resided in the midst of a dense population; and was so situated as to render his house, practically, a kind of ministerial thoroughfare. He probably entertained, at his hospitable table, more ministers, literary men, and students than any other three clergymen in the neighborhood.

"Now," said he to me, "we have a good deal of table preparation to make, and Mrs. Y., who dearly loves to have things in pretty good order, sets a full table, with, a large variety. Well, this food must be eaten. It will never do for a minister who has a large family and lives on a moderate salary, to _waste_ any thing. And, besides, as I ought to tell you, we sometimes, if not always, have a very considerable amount of rich food on the table."

"Do you mean to intimate that the bountiful provision you make for others renders it necessary for you to overeat? Or have your remarks a reference to a supposed necessity of eating rich food?"

"We are not, of course, absolutely compelled to _any_ thing. My meaning is this: In order to meet the wants of those who are liable to call on us at almost any hour, _we prepare largely_. Then, to meet these varying and often very fastidious tastes, we must have _a large variety_ of food, and it must be _highly seasoned_. And then, if it happens that our company is not as large as is expected, we have an extra quant.i.ty remaining, and I am tempted to aid in eating it up, the highly seasoned food among the rest."

"And you think, do you, that this highly seasoned food is the cause of your dyspepsia?"

"Undoubtedly it is."

"And do you expect to be cured of a disease which is produced by certain definable causes, like this, and yet be permitted to go on in the same way you have long gone? Do you suppose I have any power to grant you an immunity from the evil effects of high living while that high living is persisted in? Can you get rid of an effect till you first remove the cause?"

"Why, no, sir, not exactly. Such an expectation would be very unreasonable. But is there no medicine I can take that will _partially_ restore me? Perhaps, at my age, entire restoration from such a hydra disease as dyspepsia is hardly to be expected; but can you not patch me up in part?"

"What! and suffer you to go on sinning?"

"Why, yes, to some small extent. It is very hard, nay, it seems to me almost impossible, to break away from the routine of my family, at least as long as Mrs. Y. is fully determined to prepare for company according to the prevailing customs. I could submit to a different arrangement if she were ready for it."

"I wish I could encourage you to pursue this compromising course of conduct. But it is not so. You must change your habits entirely, or you must continue to suffer. For if it were possible to patch you up, for a short time, while your present habits are continued, it would not be as well for you in the end: It would only add another head and horn, perhaps several others, to the monster that annoys you. No, sir; you must change your habits or give up the contest. There is no use in attempting to do any thing, in such a case as yours, with medicine."

"Well, then, if it must be so, it must. I will try once more, and see what I can do."

He left me with a downcast look, and, I suspected, with a heavy heart.

At all events, my own heart was heavy, and seemed almost ready to bleed.

Here was a father in our ministerial Israel,--one to whom mult.i.tudes looked up for the bread of spiritual life,--who was a perfect slave to his appet.i.tes; or, at least, to the conventionalisms of modern house-keeping. He groaned daily and hourly under bodily disease the most aggravated and severe. His eyes were red and swelled; the sides of his nose enlarged and inflamed, till he had the appearance of being about half a sot. He knew all about it, and yet refused to take the first step in the way of reformation.

I saw him, by accident, once more, and would have spoken with him freely; but he seemed to shun every thing beyond a merely pa.s.sing compliment. I saw how it was with him; and the reflections which arose in my mind gave me the most intense pain.

Two or three weeks afterward, while in an intimate and confidential conversation with two of his very familiar friends, I ventured to predict his fall, with nearly as much particularity as if the events which were predicted had already taken place. I was asked how I dared to say such things, even in secret, of so good a man and such a father in the American Church. So I gave them, by way of reply, the princ.i.p.al facts in the case, as detailed above.

Not many years pa.s.sed ere this very minister was tried for a crime much more high-handed than gluttony, though sometimes the sequel to it; and not only tried, but silenced. The results of the trial were as shocking to most people as they were unexpected. Every one said: "How can it be?"

Mr. Y. became a farmer, and is still so. But he is cured of his dyspepsia. Compelled, as I have reason to believe he is, to practise the most rigid economy, having very little temptation to unlawful indulgence, and having an abundance of healthful exercise in the open air, he has every appearance, externally, of a reformed man. His old friends would, I think, hardly know him. His skin is as clear, and his eyes and nose as physiologically correct in their appearance, as yours or mine. True, he is an old man, but he is not a gluttonous old man. He is a fallen man, but a healthy, and, I hope, a penitent one. He has experienced a species of first resurrection, and has, I trust, the hope of a better one still.

Now, had this man believed, in the first place, that the fault of his dyspepsia was not wholly chargeable on Mrs. Y., but also on himself,--had he clearly seen that he loved high living, and would not relinquish it,--he might have been reformed without a dreadful and scathing ordeal, and without disgracing the cause of his Divine Master, But alas! "the woman that thou gavest to be with me," as he said, was in fault; and so he did not reform himself.

That his wife was in fault, most deeply, I do not deny. She knew her husband's weakness, and yet continued to place before him those temptations which she well knew were too strong for him. How she could do this, and persist in doing it, is, to me, a mystery. But she had her reward; at least, in part. For in the fall and retirement of her husband from public life, and in the consciousness--which was the most terrible of all--of his guilt, must not her sufferings have been terrible?

It is indeed true that she may not have been wise enough--for this wisdom has not yet been made public property, in the fullest sense--to look at the subject in one point of view, which would be calculated to add to the poignancy of her anguish. So that we may be almost ready to say, in her case, "Ignorance is bliss." I refer, here, to the infliction of scrofula and nervousness, by high living, on the next generation.

For while Mrs. Y. was bowing down to public opinion, and preparing rich viands for her guests, and practically compelling her husband and children to eat up what they had nibbled at and left, she was not only fastening dyspepsia upon the former and nervousness upon herself, but imparting more or less of a tendency to nervousness and scrofula upon the rest of her family. Of the two thousand children born in a day, in the United States, from two hundred to three hundred--perhaps nearer four hundred--come into the world with a scrofulous tendency; and of these, it is highly probable, that at least one hundred per day are manufactured at just such tables as those which were set by Mrs. Y. for the teachers of the religion of Jesus Christ.

I have quoted the old adage, that "Ignorance is bliss;" but alas! is it not to trifle with the most solemn considerations? Can that be regarded as blissful which leaves a mother, who, in general, means to love and honor the Saviour, to destroy her husband and one or two of his children? There is little doubt that, besides shutting her husband out of the sacred enclosure, after she had destroyed his health, Mrs. Y. was the means of destroying at least one or two of her children. One of them, who was scrofulous, ran at last--a very common occurrence--into consumption, and perished early, in the beginning of active usefulness.

I may be suspected of exaggeration, by some of my readers. Would to G.o.d, for humanity's sake and for Christ's sake, it were so! For though I cannot subscribe to the creed of those who profess to be willing to come into everlasting condemnation for the glory of G.o.d, yet, so long as opportunity for repentance shall last, I would willingly be convicted of untruth, if so that the falsehood might be made palpable to my mind, rather than believe what I am compelled to believe with regard to the murderous tendency on soul and body of our murderous modern cookery. Is it not true--the old adage, that while "G.o.d," in his mercy, "sends us meats, the Devil," in his malignity, "sends us cooks?"

This unnatural cookery,--this mingling medicine with viands naturally healthful, and torturing the compounds thus formed into sources of irritation, has more to do with that sensuality which has come upon us like a flood,--much of it in new forms,--than many are aware. And I am much mistaken if modern societies for moral reform, popularly so called, might not thank the over-refined cookery of a gross and highly stimulating diet, for that necessity which impels to their own field of labor.

One thing more might have been mentioned in its proper place--the tendency of high living to eruptions on the skin. These, in their various forms of pimple, carbuncle, boil, etc., are becoming quite the order of the day. Mr. Y.'s family had a full share of them, especially those of them who were scrofulous. I have already mentioned the appearance of Mr. Y.'s face, and have alluded to the change which took place after his fall. But I should have spoken of the eruptions on his face, which, at times, were such as almost made him ashamed to enter the pulpit.

You will see, from the tenor of these remarks, that I have laid the guilt, in this sad affair, just where I believe it ought to rest. I have not sought to exculpate one individual or party, at the expense of another equally guilty, but rather to do justice to all.

Only one thing remains, which is to confess my _own_ guilt. Have I not great reason to fear that my advice was not sufficiently pointed and thorough? I might have gone to Mr. Y. and told him the truth, the whole truth. What if it had given offence? Would not the prospect of doing good, rather than of giving offence, have been worth something? In any event, I do regret most deeply my unfaithfulness, even though it arose from delicacy and diffidence, for that very delicacy and diffidence were far enough from being grounded on the love of G.o.d. They were grounded much more on the love of human approbation. No man was ever more free from it than our Saviour. Ought I not to have used the same plainness that he would have used? Had I rebuked Mrs. Y. as kindly and as faithfully as he rebuked Martha at Bethany, how much, for ought I can ever know, might have been saved, not only to the cause of health and conjugal happiness, but also to that of piety.

CHAPTER LXXVI.

DR. BOLUS AND MORPHINE.

A telegraphic communication was made to me one day, nearly as follows: "B. J. W. is very sick, and is not expected to live through the day.

Please come on immediately."

The distance was about one hundred and fifty miles, and the mode and means of conveyance neither very direct nor rapid for these latter times. It was more than probable that Mr. B. J. W. would be dead before I could reach the place. However, as he was a particular friend, and as there was some hope, I concluded to set out.

Late in the evening,--or rather, in the night,--I arrived at the place, and found the young man still alive. He was, however, as it was easy to perceive, in a very critical condition. Glad to find him alive, but inclined to fall in with the general opinion that his case was a hopeless one, and withal greatly fatigued, I yielded to the demands of exhausted Nature, and slept a short time, when his physician arrived.

Now I had been sent for, in part, as a special friend, and in part, as a medical counsellor. And yet there were difficulties. Dr. Bolus, the family physician, was just such a man--for reasons that might be given--as I dreaded to advise with, should my advice be needed. He was one who would be likely to think any important suggestion an impeachment of his own superior wisdom. Science, true science, is always modest, and does not fear any thing; because she loves, most of all things, _to be right_. But Dr. Bolus had not, as I think, enough of true science to make him feel or perceive the want of it. The ignorant are always self-confident in proportion to their ignorance.

We examined the patient, as soon as possible, and retired for consultation. Dr. Bolus gave a full history of the progress of the case, with a particular account of the treatment. I saw at once, both from the existing symptoms and Dr. Bolus's statement, that the tendency to the brain--so great as to keep up an almost constant delirium--was quite as likely to be caused by the enormous quant.i.ties of morphine and quinine, and other active medicines which had been administered, as to belong properly to the disease. I therefore advised a gradual reduction and ultimate discontinuance of the extra stimulants.

Dr. Bolus was opposed to the reduction I proposed, but finally consented to it, at least in part, and the patient evidently derived almost immediate benefit from it. When I had pushed my views with regard to the stimuli as far as I could, we separated, and as the distance at which the doctor resided was considerable, and as I was on the spot to watch the patient, he proposed not to call again till early in the morning of the following day.

I was by no means satisfied with the compromise we had made. It had not accomplished its intended object. Dr. Bolus had, indeed, yielded a little, but not enough to satisfy me. I believed the amount of stimulus still given vastly too great, and was unwilling to continue it. In truth, I persuaded one of the attendants to omit the princ.i.p.al articles, whenever the hour came for administering them, a.s.suring him that I would take all the responsibility.

Of the other attendant I would have made the same requisition, but he being exceedingly attached to Dr. Bolus, would never have tolerated the slightest concealment, or departure from the strictest letter of the law.

It was easy to see that the less stimulating treatment of each alternate two hours, during which it was entirely omitted, left behind it, on the patient's frame, a better influence than the more active treatment of the other two. And when the next medical consultation came, I pleaded for a still greater diminution of the stimulus. But, as I had unwillingly used a little duplicity,--a thing I now deeply regret,--in order to come at my conclusions against the stimulants, I was not willing to state, in full, the grounds of my opinion, and therefore could not prevail with Dr. Bolus to consent to any farther advances in the unstimulating plan.

I was now, at length, compelled to leave for home; and the results, for the rest of the time, were reported to me through the kindness of the young man's friends. It is sufficient, perhaps, to say that he finally recovered; but it was not till the lapse of several months. In the mean time, a severe ulcer broke out on the lower part of his back, which caused much suffering, and appeared to r.e.t.a.r.d very greatly the progress of his recovery.

My errors in this case were numerous and great. Believing, as I did, in the outset, that Dr. Bolus and myself could never agree, I did wrong in consenting to a consultation with him. I ought to have been nothing but a visitor, or else to have entered fully into the spirit and duty of a counsellor. In the former case I might, indeed, have outraged every feeling of benevolence; in the latter I ought to have proposed my objections in full, and not to have compromised so as to submit to what I really believed to be radically and essentially wrong.