Part 22 (2/2)

He could do errands. He could perform many little services at home and abroad. He could, at least, take care of himself. At the end of this period, however, his strength gave way, and he sank peacefully to the tomb. He was completely worn out.

Now the princ.i.p.al lesson to be learned from this story is obvious.

_Determination_ to live is almost equivalent to _power_ to live. A strong will, in other words, is almost omnipotent. Of the good effects of this strong determination, in case of protracted and dangerous disease of this sort, I have had no small share of experience, as the reader has already seen in Chapter XXIII.

Another fact may be stated under this head. A young man in southern Ma.s.sachusetts, a teacher, was bleeding at the lungs, and was yielding at length to the conviction--for he had studied the subjects of health and disease--that he must ere long perish from consumption. I told him there was no necessity of such a result, and directed him to the appropriate means of escape. He followed my directions, and after some time regained his health. Ten or twelve years have now pa.s.sed away, and few young men have done more hard work during that time than he; and, indeed, few are able, at the present moment, to do more. It is to be observed, however, that he made an entire change in his dietetic habits, to which he still adheres. He avoids all stimulating food--particularly all animal food--and uses no drink but water.

I did not advise him, while bleeding, to mount a hard-trotting horse, and trot away as hard as he could, and let the blood gush forth as it pleased. It is a prescription which I have not yet hazarded. I might do so in some circ.u.mstances, when I was sure of being aided by that almost omnipotent determination of which I have elsewhere spoken. I might do it occasionally; but it would be a rare combination of circ.u.mstances that would compel me. I might do it in the case of a resolute sea captain, who insisted on it, would not take _no_ for an answer, and would a.s.sume the whole responsibility. I might and would do it for such a man as Dr.

Kane.

I have, myself, bled slightly at the lungs; but while I did not, on the one hand, allow myself to be half frightened to death, I did not, on the other hand, dare to meet the hemorrhagic tendency by any violent measures; not even by the motion of a trotting horse. I preferred the alternative of moderate exercise in the open air, with a rec.u.mbent position in a cool room, having my body well protected by needful additional clothing, with deep breathing to expand gently my chest, and general cheerfulness. But I have treated on this subject--my own general experience--at sufficient length elsewhere.

CHAPTER LVIII.

POISONING BY A PAINTED PAIL.

A child about a week old, but naturally very sensitive and irritable, became, one night, unusually restless and rather feverish, with derangement of the bowels. The condition of the latter was somewhat peculiar, and I was not a little puzzled to account for it. There was nothing in the condition of the mother which seemed to me adequate to the production of such effects. She was as healthy as delicate females usually are in similar circ.u.mstances.

The derangement of the child's bowels continued and increased, and I was more and more puzzled. Was it any thing, I said to myself, which was imbibed or received from the mother? Just at the time, I happened to be reading what Dr. Whitlaw, a foreign medical writer, says of the effects which sometimes follow when cows that are suckling calves feed on b.u.t.tercup. The poison of the latter, as he says, instead of injuring the cow herself, affects, most seriously, the calf, and, in some few instances, destroys it. This led me to search more perseveringly than I had before done, for a cause of so much bowel-disturbance in my young patient.

At length I found that a wooden pail, in which water was kept for family use, had been but recently painted inside; and that the paint used was prepared in part, from the oxyde of lead, usually called white lead. On this I immediately fastened the charge of poisoning.

My suspicions were confirmed by the fact that the mother had been more thirsty and feverish than usual, during a few hours previous to the child's first manifestation of disease, and had allowed herself to drink very freely of water, which was taken from the very pail on which our suspicions now rested. Another fact of kindred aspect was, that the child recovered just in proportion as the mother left off drinking from the painted pail, and used water which was procured in vessels of whose integrity we had no doubt.

Most people who had any knowledge of the facts in the case, said that the cause I a.s.signed could not have been the true one, since it was inadequate to the production of such an effect. But the truth is, we know very little about poisons, in their action on the living body, whether immediate or remote. Till this time, although I had read on it as much as most medical men, yet I knew--practically knew--almost as little as the most illiterate. Yet the subject was one with which professional physicians should be familiarly acquainted, if n.o.body else is. Many an individual, as we have the most abundant reason for believing, loses his health, if not his life, from causes which appear to be equally slight. A Mr. Earle, of Ma.s.sachusetts, cannot swallow a tumbler of water containing a few particles of lead, without being made quite sick by it. Nor is he alone in this particular. Such sensitiveness to the presence of a poisonous agency is by no means uncommon. It may be found to exist in some few individuals in every country, and almost every neighborhood.

CHAPTER LIX.

ONE DROP OF LAUDANUM.

A babe, not yet a day old, came under my care for treatment. What the symptoms were, except those of nervous irritation, I have now forgotten; but there was ample evidence of much disturbance in the system, and the parents and friends were exceedingly anxious about the results.

Now it was one of those cases in which a large proportion of our medical men are exceedingly ignorant, and only guess out the cause or causes as well as they can. I was thus ignorant, and would not--and as an honest man, _could_ not--attempt to divine the cause or give a name to the disease. Yet I must needs, as I verily thought, prescribe something and somehow. So I took a single drop of laudanum, and diluted it well, and made the child swallow it.

He soon became easy, quite too easy, and fell into a profound sleep. So deep and profound, in fact, was its sleep, or rather its _stupor_, that I began to be afraid it never would awake. How strange, I thought within myself, that a single drop of this liquid should produce so much effect!

Yet it taught me wisdom. It taught me to let medicine alone--strong medicine, at least--in the diseases of very young children. It also taught me not to give too large doses to anybody, especially to those who had never taken any before. The first dose, for unperverted nature, must be very small indeed!

How much my little patient was injured, permanently, by this act of unpardonable carelessness, I never knew. It may have laid the foundation for many ills which he has since experienced, some of which have been severe and trying. Or, if otherwise, it may have aggravated such ills as had their origin in other causes. Or, if nothing more, it may have contributed to a delicacy and sensitiveness and feebleness of structure, which can never, in all probability, be fully overcome, and which have more to do, even with our moral tendencies and character, than most of us are fully aware.

How much would I give to be able to blot from my history such errors and defects of character as this! For, though I confess to nothing worse than haste and carelessness, in the present instance, yet a medical man, like the commander in the battle field or elsewhere, has no right to be careless. My aged, honored father gravely insisted, all his life long, that no accidents, as they are termed, in human life, ever take place, unless there is in the first place, carelessness, somewhere. Much more is it true that many an individual who sickens and loses his life, is the victim of carelessness; or, what is the same thing, want of attention, when great care and attention were necessary, and the issues of life and death were suspended, as it were, on a thread!

CHAPTER LX.

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