Hard Cash Part 56

Osmond was amused at this, and repeated that the mania came of not being bled enough.

The discussion was turned into an unexpected quarter by the entrance of Jane Hardie, who came timidly in and said, "Oh, Mr. Osmond, I cannot let you go without telling you how anxious I am about Alfred. He is so thin, and pale, and depressed."

"Nonsense, Jane," said Mr. Hardie; "have we not all cause to be dejected in this house?" But she persisted gently that there was more in it than that; and his headaches were worse, and she could not be easy any longer without advice.

"Ah! those headaches," said Mr. Osmond, "they always made me uneasy. To tell the truth, Miss Hardie, I have noticed a remarkable change in him, but I did not like to excite apprehensions. And so he mopes, does he?

seeks solitude, and is taciturn, and dejected?"

"Yes. But I do not mind that so much as his turning so pale and thin."

"Oh, it is all part of one malady."

"Then you know what is the matter?"

"I think I do; and yours is a wise and timely anxiety. Your brother's is a very delicate case of hyperaesthetic character; and I should like to have the advice of a profound physician. Let me see, Dr. Wycherley will be with me to-morrow: may I bring him over as a friend?"

This proposal did not at all suit Mr. Hardie. He put his own construction on Alfred's pallor and dejection, and was uneasy at the idea of his being cross-questioned by a couple of doctors:

"No, no," said he; "Taff has fancies enough already. I cannot have you gentlemen coming here to fill his head with many more."

"Oh, he has fancies, has he?" said Osmond keenly. "My dear sir, we shall not say one word to _him:_ that might irritate him: but I should like _you_ to hear a truly learned opinion."

Jane looked so imploringly that Mr. Hardie yielded a reluctant a.s.sent, on those terms.

So the next day, by appointment, Mr. Osmond introduced his friend Dr. Wycherley: bland and bald with a fine bead, and a face naturally intelligent, but crossed every now and then by gleams of vacancy; a man of large reading, and of tact to make it subserve his interests.

A voluminous writer on certain medical subjects, he had so saturated himself with circ.u.mlocution, that it distilled from his very tongue: he talked like an Article, a Quarterly one; and so gained two advantages: 1st, he rarely irritated a fellow-creature; for if he began a sentence hot, what with its length, and what with its windiness, he ended it cool: item, stabs by polysyllables are p.r.i.c.ks by sponges. 2ndly, this foible earned him the admiration of fools; and that is as invaluable as they are innumerable.

Yet was there in the mother-tongue he despised one gem of a word he vastly admired: like most Quarterly writers. That charming word, the pet of the polysyllabic, was "OF."

He opened the matter in a subdued and sympathising tone well calculated to win a loving father, such as Richard Hardie--was not.

"My good friend here informs me, sir, you are so fortunate as to possess a son of distinguished abilities, and who is at present labouring under some of those precursory indications of incipient disease of the cerebro-psychical organs, of which I have been, I may say, somewhat successful in diagnosing the symptoms. Unless I have been misinformed, he has, for a considerable time, experienced persistent headache of a kephalalgic or true cerebral type, and has now advanced to the succeeding stage of taciturnity and depression, not* unaccompanied with isolation, and probably constipation: but as yet without hallucination, though possibly, and, as my experience of the great majority of these cases would induce me to say, probably he is not** undisturbed by one or more of those latent, and, at first, trifling aberrations, either of the intelligence or the senses, which in their preliminary stages escape the observation of all but the expert nosologist."

*Anglice, "accompanied."

**Anglice, "disturbed."

"There, you see," said Osmond, "Dr. Wycherley agrees with me: yet I a.s.sure you I have only detailed the symptoms, and not the conclusion I had formed from them."

Jane inquired timidly what that conclusion was.

"Miss Hardie, we think it one of those obscure tendencies which are very curable if taken in time----" Dr. Wycherley ended the sentence: "But no longer remediable if the fleeting opportunity is allowed to escape, and diseased action to pa.s.s into diseased organisation."

Jane looked awestruck at their solemnity; but Mr. Hardie, who was taking advice against the grain, turned satirical. "Gentleman," said he, "be pleased to begin by moderating your own obscurity; and then perhaps I shall see better how to cure my son's disorder. What the deuce are you driving at?"

The two doctors looked at one another inquiringly, and so settled how to proceed. Dr. Wycherley explained to Mr. Hardie that there was a sort of general unreasonable and superst.i.tious feeling abroad, a kind of terror of the complaint with which his son was threatened; _"and which,_ instead of the most remediable of disorders, is looked at as the most incurable of maladies:" it was on this account he had learned to approach the subject with singular caution, and even with a timidity which was kinder in appearance than in reality; that he must admit.

"Well, you may speak out, as far as I am concerned," said Mr. Hardie, with consummate indifference.

"Oh, yes!" said Jane, in a fever of anxiety; "pray conceal nothing from us."

"Well, then, sir, I have not as yet had the advantage of examining your son personally, but, from the diagnostics, I have no doubt whatever he is labouring under the first fore-shadowings of cerebro-psychical perturbation. To speak plainly, the symptoms are characteristic of the initiatory stage of the germination of a morbid state of the phenomena of intelligence."

His unprofessional hearers only stared.

"In one word, then," said Dr. Wycherley, waxing impatient at their abominable obtuseness, "it is the premonitory stage of the precursory condition of an organic affection of the brain."

"Oh!" said Mr. Hardie, "the brain!* I see; the boy is going mad."

* What a blessing there are a few English words left in all our dialects.

The doctors stared in their turn at the prodigious coolness of a tender parent. "Not exactly," said Dr. Wycherley; "I am habitually averse to exaggeration of symptoms. Your son's suggest to me 'the Incubation of Insanity,' nothing more."

Jane uttered an exclamation of horror; the doctor soothed her with an a.s.surance that there was no cause for alarm. "Incipient aberration"

was of easy cure: the mischief lay in delay. "Miss Hardie," said he paternally, "during a long and busy professional career, it has been my painful province to witness the deplorable consequences of the non-recognition, by friends and relatives, of the precedent symptoms of those organic affections of the brain, the relief of which was within the reach of well-known therapeutic agents if exhibited seasonably."

He went on to deplore the blind prejudice of unprofessional persons, who choose to fancy that other diseases creep, but Insanity pounces, on a man; which he expressed thus neatly: "that other deviations from organic conditions of health are the subject of clearly defined though delicate gradations, but that the worst and most climacteric forms of cerebro-psychical disorder are suddenly developed affections presenting no evidence of any antecedent cephalic organic change, and unaccompanied by a premonitory stage, or by incipient symptoms."

This chimera he proceeded to confute by experience: he had repeatedly been called in to cases of mania described as sudden, and almost invariably found the patient had been cranky for years; which he condensed thus: "His conduct and behaviour for many years previously to any symptom of mental aberration being noticed, had been characterised by actions quite irreconcilable with the supposition of the existence of perfect sanity of intellect."

He instanced a parson, whom he had lately attended, and found him as constipated and as convinced he was John the Baptist engaged to the Princess Mary as could be. "But," continued the learned doctor, "upon investigation of this afflicted ecclesiastic's antecedent history, I discovered that, for years before this, he had exhibited conduct incompatible with the hypothesis of a mind whose equilibrium had been undisturbed. He had caused a number of valuable trees to be cut down on his estate, without being able to offer a sane justification for such an outrageous proceeding; and had actually disposed of a quant.i.ty of his patrimonial acres, _'and which'_ clearly he never would have parted with had he been in anything resembling a condition of sanity."

"Did he sell the land and timber below the market price?" inquired Mr.

Hardie, perking up, and exhibiting his first symptoms of interest in the discussion.

"On that head, sir, my informant, his heir-at-law, gave me no information: nor did I enter into that cla.s.s of detail. You naturally look at morbid phenomena in a commercial spirit, but we regard them medically--and all this time most a.s.siduously visiting the sick of his parish and preaching admirable serious."

The next instance he gave was of a stockbroker suffering under general paralysis and a rooted idea that all the _specie_ in the Bank of England was his, and ministers in league with foreign governments to keep him out of it. "Him," said the doctor, "I discovered to have been for years guilty of conduct entirely incompatible with the hypothesis of undisordered mental functions. He had accused his domestics of peculation, and had initiated legal proceedings with a view of prosecuting in a court of law one of his oldest friends."

"Whence you infer that, if my son has not for years been doing cranky acts, he is not likely to be deranged at present."

This adroit twist of the argument rather surprised Dr. Wycherley.

However, he was at no loss for a reply. "It is not Insanity, but the Incubation of Insanity, which is suspected in your intelligent son's case: and the best course will be for me to enumerate in general terms the several symptoms of 'the Incubation of Insanity:'" he concluded with some severity. "After that, sir, I shall cease to intrude what I fear is an unwelcome conviction."

The parent, whose levity and cold reception of good tidings he had thus mildly, yet with due dignity, rebuked, was a man of the world, and liked to make friends, not enemies: so he took the hint, and made a very civil speech, a.s.suring Dr. Wycherley that, if he ventured to differ from him, he was none the less obliged by the kind interest he took in a comparative stranger: and would be very glad to hear all about the "Incubation of Insanity."

Dr. Wycherley bowed slightly and complied:

"One diagnostic preliminary sign of abnormal cerebral action is Kephalalgia, or true cerebral headache; I mean persistent headache not accompanied by a furred tongue, or other indicia significant of abdominal or renal disorder as its origin."

Jane sighed. "He has sad headaches."

"The succeeding symptom is a morbid affection of sleep. Either the patient suffers from Insomnia, or else from Hypersomnia, which we subdivide into sopor, carus, and lethargus; or thirdly from Kakosomnia, or a propensity to mere dozing, and to all the morbid phenomena of dreams."

"Papa," said Jane, "poor Alfred sleeps very badly: I hear him walking at all hours of the night."

"I thought as much," said Dr. Wycherley; "Insomnia is the commonest feature. To resume; the insidious advance of morbid thought is next marked by high spirits, or else by low spirits; generally the latter.

The patient begins by moping, then shows great la.s.situde and ennui, then becomes abstracted, moody, and occupied with a solitary idea."