Part 19 (2/2)

We are baffled and caught in the current, and bruised upon edges of shoals; As weeds or as reeds in the torrent of things are the wind-shaken souls.”_

Algernon Charles Swinburne.

I.

Perhaps I may have told you before, that at the time of which I speak, my Summer home--where I preferred to spend much more than half of the year--was on a sandy beach a few miles out of New York, and also that I had retired from active practice as a physician, even when I was in the city.

Notwithstanding these two facts, I was often called in consultation, both in and out of the city; and was occasionally compelled to take a case entirely into my own hands, through some accident or unforeseen circ.u.mstance.

It was one of these accidents which brought the patient whose story I am about to tell you, under my care.

I can hardly say now, why I retained the case instead of turning it over to some brother pract.i.tioner, as was my almost invariable habit; but for some reason I kept it in my own hands, and, as it was the only one for which I was solely responsible at the time, I naturally took more than ordinary interest in and paid more than usual attention to all that seemed to me to bear upon it.

As you know I am an ”old school” or ”regular” physician, although that did not prevent me from consulting with, and appreciating the strong points of many of those who were of other, and younger branches of the profession.

This peculiarity had subjected me, in times gone by, to much adverse criticism from some of my colleagues who belonged to that rigidly orthodox faction which appears to feel that it is a much better thing to allow a patient to die ”regularly”--as it were--than it is to join forces with one, who, being of us, is still not with us in theory and practice.

Recognizing that we were all purblind at best, and that there was and still is, much to learn in every department of medicine, it did not always seem to me that it was absolutely necessary to reject, without due consideration, the guesses of other earnest and careful men, even though they might differ from me in the prefix to the ”pathy” which forms the basis of the conjecture.

We are all wrong so often that it has never appeared to be a matter of the first importance--it does not present itself to my mind as absolutely imperative--that it should be invariably the same wrong, or that all of the mistakes should necessarily follow the beaten track of the ”old school.”

I had arrived at that state of beat.i.tude where I was not unwilling for a life to be saved--or even for pain to be alleviated, by other methods than my own.

I do not pretend that this exalted ethical status came to me all at once, nor at a very early stage of my career; but it came, and I had reaped the whirlwind of wrath, as I have just hinted to you.

So when my patient let me know, after a time, that he had been used to homeopathic treatment, I at once suggested that he send for some one of that school to take charge of his case.

He declined--somewhat reluctantly, I thought, still, quite positively.

But, in the course of events, when I felt that a consultation was due to him as well as to myself, I asked him if he would not prefer that the consulting physician should be of that school.

He admitted that he would, and I a.s.sured him that I should be pleased to send for any one he might name.

He knew no doctor here, he said, and left it to me to send for the one in whom I had the greatest confidence.

It is at this point my story really begins.

I stopped on my way uptown to arrange, with Dr. Hamilton, of Madison Avenue, a consultation that afternoon, at three o'clock. I told the doctor all that I, myself, knew at that time, of my patient's history.

Three weeks before I had been in a Fifth Avenue stage; a gentleman had politely arisen to offer his seat to a lady at the moment that the stage gave a sudden lurch which threw them both violently against each other and against the end of the stage.

He broke the fall for her; but he received a blow on the head, which member came in contact with the money-box, with a sharp crack.

Accustomed to the sight of pain and suffering as I was, the sound of the blow and his suddenly livid face gave me a feeling of sickness which did not wholly leave me for an hour afterward. Involuntarily I caught him in my arms--he was a slightly built man--and directed the driver to stop at the first hotel.

The gentleman was unconscious and I feared he had sustained a serious fracture of the skull. He was evidently a man of culture, and I thought not an American. I therefore wished, if possible, to save him a police or hospital experience.

By taking him into the first hotel I reasoned, we could examine him; learn who and what he was, where he lived, and, after reviving him, send him home in a carriage.

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