Forty Years In The Wilderness Of Pills And Powders Part 21

Yielding, at length, to their importunity, they called one of the oldest and best physicians in the metropolis. He was an eccentric man, but he had the full confidence of the better sort of people, and richly deserved it; and I knew I should not be advised by him hastily. He was acquainted with my peculiar views, at least in part. Besides, I should not be obliged to follow his counsel implicitly. I should still be my own physician. My disease had not, at least thus far, impaired my intellect or taken out of my hands my free agency.

The doctor remained with me half an hour or so, during which time I made him acquainted, as perfectly as I could, with my whole case. My good friends, many of them, sat around waiting almost with impatience, to hear him bid them or me to do some great thing--for great men though some of them were, they were not great in matters pertaining to health and disease. They were born, several of them, in the eighteenth century.

At length the time for prescription and departure had arrived, and my good brother and father of the lancet rose very deliberately, and said with great gravity, "You will be obliged to stay in your room a few days, and keep both your body and mind as quiet as possible. For the most part, it will be well to maintain a rec.u.mbent position. For food, use a little water gruel. In following this course, I think you will very soon find yourself convalescent." Then, with a sort of stiff bow, that every one who knew him could pardon in so excellent a man, he said, "Good-morning, sir,--Good-morning, gentlemen;" and was making the best of his way to the door of the chamber. "Will it not be needful for you to call again?" I said to him. "I shall be most happy to call," said he, "should it be necessary; but I doubt very much whether my advice will be any farther required."

My friends were very much astonished that he did not prescribe active medicine. "What can it mean?" they asked again and again. For myself, too, I must confess that I was not a little disappointed. Not that I had any considerable attachment to pills and pill boxes,--such a confidence had gone by long before, as you know,--but I verily thought my particular tendencies to pulmonary consumption demanded a little tincture of digitalis, or something in the shape of strong medicine.

But the physician knew my theories, better than he knew the power of that habit whose chains, in this respect, he had long ago escaped. For I learned afterwards, much better than I then knew, that so feeble was his faith in medicine, at least in all ordinary cases, that whenever the intelligence of his patients would at all warrant it, he prescribed, as he had for me, just nothing at all, but left every thing to be done by Nature and good common-sense attendants. This was, in fact, just what he attempted to do here. He doubtless supposed my friends were nearly as well informed in the matter as I was; and that I was as fully emanc.i.p.ated in practice as I was in theory.

"How much drugging and dosing might be saved," I said to myself, when I came to reflect properly on the subject, "if mankind were duly trained to place a proper reliance on Nature and Nature's laws, instead of fastening all their faith on the mere exhibition of some mystic powder or pill or tincture--or, at best, a few drops of some irritant or poison. It is their ignorance that makes their physicians' and apothecaries' bills so heavy, and the grave-digger's calling so good and so certain."

It is hardly necessary for me to say that I followed the advice which had been so wisely given, and which, after all, was but the echo of my own judgment, when that judgment was freely exercised. My friends were not satisfied at first; but when they saw that I was slowly recovering, they submitted with as good a grace as they could. The fact was that they had no court of appeal. They had selected a man who was at the head of his profession, and whose voice, in the medical world, and as a medical man, wherever he was known, was law. Had some young man given such "old woman's" advice, as they would most certainly have regarded it, they would have appealed to a higher court.

No man ever did better, when placed in similar circ.u.mstances, with the aid of medicine, than I did without it. In two weeks, at farthest, I was as well as I had been at any time in ten years or even twenty. What more or greater could I have asked? What more could my friends have expected?

What more could have been possible? Could Hippocrates or Galen have done more?

CHAPTER LVI.

b.u.t.tER EATERS.

About the year 1833, I became somewhat intimately acquainted with the dietetic and general physical habits of a young woman in a family where I was a boarder, whose case will be instructive.

She was about twenty-five years of age, and resided in a family that had adopted her as their own, her parents being unknown. She possessed a good natural const.i.tution; and was, for the most part, of good habits.

If there was any considerable defect of const.i.tution, it consisted in a predominance of the biliary and lymphatic over the nervous and sanguine temperaments. Yet she was not wholly wanting in that susceptibility, not to say activity, which the sanguine temperament is wont to impart. But the same necessity which is so often the mother of invention, is also sometimes the progenitor of a good share of activity; and this was, in a remarkable degree, the lot of Miss Powell.

Although her skin was not by any means fair, it was not a bad skin. It was firm in its structure, and very little susceptible of those slight but ever recurring diseased conditions in which persons of a sanguine temperament so often find themselves involved. Such I mean to say was her natural physical condition, when uninfluenced by any considerable practical errors.

And yet I had not been many months one of her more intimate acquaintances, ere her face--hitherto so smooth and transparent--became as rough and congested as any drunkard's face ever was, only the eruption was more minute. It was what the common opinion of that region would have called a rash. It came on suddenly, was visible for a short time, and then gradually disappeared, leaving, in some instances, a branny substance, consisting of a desquamation of the cuticle.

When the eruption had once fairly disappeared, her skin was as smooth as ever. Then again, however, in a little time, its roughness would return, to an extent which, to young ladies, is usually quite annoying. Young men, in general, are not so much disturbed by a little roughness of the skin, as the young of the other s.e.x.

My particular acquaintance with her habits and annoyances continued as many as four or five years. During this period there were several ebbings and flowings of this tide of eruptive disease. My curiosity, towards the end of this period, was so much excited that I sought and obtained of her an opportunity for conversation on the subject. The result was as curious as it was, to me, unexpected. It appeared, in the sequel, that she understood, perfectly well, the whole matter, and held the control of her cutaneous system in her own hands, nearly as much as if she had been a mere piece of mechanism. She had not sought for medical advice, because she knew the true method of cure for her complaints as well as anybody could have told her.

In truth, she cured it about once a year, simply by omitting the cause which produced it. This she had found out was b.u.t.ter, salted b.u.t.ter, of course, eaten with her meals. She had somehow discovered that this article of food was the real cause of her disease, and that entire abstemiousness in this particular, would, in a reasonable time, remove it.

I inquired why, after a long period of abstinence from b.u.t.ter, she ever returned to its use. Her reply was that she was too fond of it to omit it entirely and forever. She preferred to use it till the eruption began to be quite troublesome, which was sometimes many weeks; then abstain from it till she recovered, and then return to it. This gave her an opportunity to use it from one-third to one-half of the time; and this she thought greatly preferable to entire abstinence.

At this time I did not press her to abandon wholly an article of food, which, though partially rejected, was yet slowly producing derangement of her digestive system, and might, in time, result in internal disease, which would be serious and irremediable. I did not do it; first, because I knew my advice would not be very acceptable; secondly, for want of that full measure of gospel benevolence which leads us to try to do good, even in places where we have no right to expect it will be received; and, lastly, no doubt for want of moral courage.

Were I to live my life over again, particularly my medical life, I would pray and labor for a little more of what I am accustomed to call holy boldness. By this term I do not mean _meddlesomeness_,--for this is by no means to be commended,--but true Christian or apostolic boldness.

Of late years the young woman above referred to has been in circ.u.mstances which, I have reason to believe, practically precluded the use of the offending article. I meet her occasionally, but always with a smooth face, which greatly confirms my prepossessions.[H] Happy would it be for a mult.i.tude of our race if their circ.u.mstances were such as to exclude this and many other articles of food and drink which are well known to injure them.

One instance occurred in the very neighborhood of the foregoing, which, though I received it at second hand, is not a little striking, and is wholly reliable. A certain young mother--the wife of a merchant in easy circ.u.mstances, was so excessively fond of b.u.t.ter, that, though she was a dyspeptic, and knew it increased her dyspepsia, she used to eat it in a manner the most objectionable which could possibly have been devised.

For example: she would take a ball of this article,--say half or three-quarters of a pound,--pierce it with the point of a firm stick, and having heated it, on all sides, over the fire, till the whole surface was softened, would then plunge it into a vessel of flour, in such a manner that the latter would adhere to it on all sides, till a great deal was absorbed by the b.u.t.ter. Having done this, she would again heat the surface of the ball and again dip or roll it in the flour. This alternate melting the surface of the ball and rolling it in flour, was continued till the whole became a ma.s.s of heated or scorched flour, entirely full of the melted b.u.t.ter, and as completely indigestible as it possibly could be, when she would leisurely sit down at a table and eat the whole of it.

Did it make her sick?--you will ask. It did, indeed, and she expected it would. She would go immediately to bed, as soon as the huge bolus was swallowed, and lie there a day or two, perhaps two or three days.

Occasionally such a surfeit cost her the confinement of a whole week.

It is truly surprising that any Christian woman should thus make a beast of herself, for the sake of the momentary indulgence of the appet.i.te; but so it is. I have met with a few such. Happily, however, conduct so low and b.e.s.t.i.a.l is not so frequent among females as males, though quite too frequent among the former so long as a single case is found, which could be prevented by reasoning or even by authority.

There is one thing concerning b.u.t.ter which deserves notice, and which it may not be amiss to mention in this place. What we call b.u.t.ter, in this country,--what is used, I mean, at our tables,--is properly pickled or salted b.u.t.ter. Now, I suppose it is pretty well understood, that in some of the countries of Europe no such thing as salted or pickled b.u.t.ter is used or known. They make use of milk, cream, and a little fresh b.u.t.ter; but that is all. In the kingdom of Brazil, among the native population, at least, no such thing as b.u.t.ter, in any shape, has ever yet been known.

Fresh b.u.t.ter is sufficiently difficult of digestion; but salted b.u.t.ter is much more so; and this is the main point to which I wish to call your attention. Why, what is our object in salting down b.u.t.ter? Is it not to prevent change? Would it not otherwise soon become acid and disagreeable? And does not salting it so harden or toughen it, or, as it were, fix it, that it will resist the natural tendency to decomposition or putrefaction?

But will not this same "fixation," so to call it, prepare it to resist changes within the stomach as well as outside of it; or, in other words, prevent, in a measure, the work of digestion? Most unquestionably it will. And herein is the stronghold of objection to this article. Hence, too, the reason why it causes eruptions on the skin. The irritation begins on the lining membrane of the stomach. The latter is first coated with eruption; and, after a time, by what is called sympathy, the same tendency is manifested in the face.

These things ought to be well understood. There is great ignorance on this subject, and what is known is generally the _ipse dixit_ of somebody. Reasons there are none for using salted b.u.t.ter. Or, if any, they are few, and frequently very flimsy and weak. Let us have hygiene taught us, were it only that we may know for ourselves the right and wrong of these matters.

FOOTNOTES:

[H] Since this was penned, the young woman has died of erysipelas. Can it be that she has been compelled, in this form, to pay a fearful penalty for her former abuses? One might think that twenty years of reformation would have worn out the diseased tendencies. Perhaps she recurred, in later years, unknown to the writer, to her former favorite article.

CHAPTER LVII.

HOT HOUSES AND CONSUMPTION.

If any individual in the wide world needs to breathe the pure atmospheric mixture of the Most High,--I mean a compound of gases, consisting, essentially, of about twenty parts of oxygen and eighty of nitrogen,--it is the consumptive person. Mr. Thackrah, a foreign writer on health, says, "That though we are eating animals, we are breathing animals much more; for we subsist more on air than we do on food and drink."

And yet I know of no cla.s.s of people, who, as a cla.s.s, breathe other mixtures, and all sorts of impurities, more than our consumptive people.

First, their employments are very apt to be sedentary. Under the impression that their const.i.tutions are not equal to the servitude of out-of-door work, agricultural or mechanical, they are employed, more generally, within doors. They are very often students; for they usually have active, not to say brilliant minds. And persons who stay in the house, whether for the sake of study or anything else, are exceedingly apt to breathe more or less of impure air.

Secondly, it is thought by many that since consumptive people are feeble, they ought to be kept very warm. Now I have no disposition to defend the custom of going permanently chilly, in the case of any individual, however strong and healthy he may be; for it is most certainly, in the end, greatly debilitating. It would be worse than idle--it would be wicked--for consumptive people to go about s.h.i.+vering, day after day, since it would most rapidly and unequivocally accelerate their destruction.

And yet, every degree of atmospheric heat, whether it is applied to the internal surface of the lungs through the medium of atmospheric air, or externally to the skin, is quite as injurious as habitual cold; and this in two ways: First, it weakens the internal power to generate heat, which, no doubt, resides very largely in the lungs. Secondly, it takes from them a part of that oxygen or vital air which they would otherwise inhale, and gives them in return a proportional quant.i.ty of carbonic acid gas, which, except in the very small proportion in which the Author of nature has commingled it with the oxygen and nitrogen of the atmosphere, is, to every individual, in effect, a rank poison.

Hence it is that those who have feeble lungs, or whose ancestors had, should pay much attention to the quality of the air they breathe, especially its temperature. And this they should do, not only for the _sake_ of its temperature, but also for the sake of its purity. Such a caution is always needful; but its necessity is increased in proportion to the feebleness of the lungs and their tendency to suppuration, bleeding, etc.

I was once called to see a young woman (in the absence of her regular physician) who was bleeding at the lungs. She had bled occasionally before, and was under the general care of two physicians; but a sudden and more severe hemorrhage than usual had alarmed her friends, and, _in the absence of better counsel_, they sought, temporarily, the advice of a stranger.

It was a cold, spring day, and in order to keep up a proper temperature in her room, I had no doubt that a little fire was needful. But instead of a heat of 65 in the morning and something more in the afternoon, I found her sitting in a temperature, at ten o'clock in the forenoon, of not less than 75 or 80. On inquiry, I was surprised to find that the temperature of her room was seldom much lower than this, and that sometimes it was much higher. I was still more surprised when I ascertained that she slept at night in a small room adjoining her sitting-room, and that a fire was kept all night in the latter, for her special benefit.

No wonder her cough was habitually severe! No wonder she was subject to hemorrhage, from the irritated vessels of the lungs! The wonder was that she was not worse. The greatest wonder of all was, however, that two sensible physicians should, for weeks if not for months, have overlooked this circ.u.mstance. For I could not learn, on inquiry, that a single word had been said by either of them on the subject.

If you should be inclined to ask whether she had no exercise in the more open and pure air, either on horseback or in a carriage, the reply would be, none at all. Horseback exercise was even regarded as hazardous, and other forms of exertion had not been urged, or, that I could learn, so much as recommended.

I was anxious to meet her physicians, that I might communicate my views and feelings directly to them; but as this was not convenient I gave such directions as the nature of the case seemed to require, requesting them to follow my advice till the arrival of her physicians, and then to lay the whole case before them. My advice was, to reduce the temperature of the sitting-room as low as possible, and yet not produce a sensation of chilliness, and to have her sleeping-room absolutely cold, taking care to protect her body, however, by proper covering. I also recommended exercise in the open air, such as she could best endure; and withal, a plain, unstimulating diet.

What was done, I never knew for many months. At last, however, I met with a neighbor of the family, one day, who told me that the young woman's physicians entirely approved of my suggestions, and that by following them out for some time, she partially recovered her wonted measure of health.