.*iir twii/rnrj.. $ %)jnv3-jo : iSF-CAtll ^UNMR% %ajvfc tOF-CAll! SCENES PRACTICE OF A NEW YORK SURGEON. Near the fire-place, where naught but a little ashes and well-charred l>ark remained, half-reclining in a large wooden chair, lay the beggar-boy. His cap had fallen on tlie ground, and his dark curling hair fell clustering over his extended arm, as his head rested on it. He had seemingly fallen asleep the niirht before, for his thin summer clothes were on. and his basket, yet filled with the fragments of broken feasts, remained untouched at his feet. I put my hand upon his l>eautiful head" it was icy cold ! PAGE 204 SCENES PRACTICE OF A NEW YORK SURGEON. EDWARD H. DIXON, M.D EDITOR OF TH* 80ALPBL. igbt ^lustration*, bp Engraved by N. (^A NEW YORK: DE WITT & DAYENPORT, PUBLISHERS, 160 & 162 NASSAU STREET. ENTEHKD according to Act of Congrat, in th year 1858, V) DE WITT AND DAVENPORT, In the Glerlt'i Office of the District Court of the United StaU for the Southern Diitrict at New York. W?H. TiK.o'i, Su^eotVp^. ~ J. D.'TOSRKY, Printer. " Q. W. ALKAXDIB, Binder MY MORXIXG AXD KVEXIXG STARS. "STELLA AND JULIA, WITHOUT WHOSE LIGHT MY SEA OP LIFE HAD BEEX PATHLESS, THKSE PAGES ARE DEDICATED BY THE AUTHOR. S32G61 PREFACE. AT the close of the sixth volume of a journal as original, and with an object as extraordinary, as the Scalpel, " a successful attempt," as one of our cotem- poraries has expressed it, "to popularise medicine by the attractions of tragedy, comedy, and the strategy of literature," when the entire charge of filling its pages and sustaining its large pecuniary outlay had rested for six years upon one man, immersed in the cares of an arduous surgical practice, and when its unfortunate title rendered it well nigh hopeless, even in the face of more than sixteen thousand notices of the press, to disabuse the public of its medical repul- siveness, and to convince them of its adaptedness to instruct the intellect and improve the heart the public may judge of the gratification of the Editor, at the request of Messrs. De Witt & Davenport, that he would permit the selection of a volume for popu- lar instruction and amusement from its pages. He at once acceded to the handsome terms offered by IV PREFACE. those gentlemen, and hopes that their anticipations will be realized. The didactic matter he is sure will be found unobjectional, however largely the kindness of the reader may be taxed by the manner in which it is conveyed. r To Dr. Dewees, of this city, for his beautiful Scenes in Northern and Southern Practice, to Dr. Richmond, of Jefferson, Ohio, for his Scenes in Western Prac- tice, the editor expresses his deep obligations. For the Scenes in City Practice and all the other arti- cles, he alone is responsible. In explanation of their defects, he can only say, they were often written at the midnight hour, after the toils of daily practice : or at the bedside, whilst watching with the objects which suggested them. It may interest the reader to know that the facts of every scene are actually true ; the words often differing very little from those used by the patient, on the occasion of the scene related ; it has been generously conceded that, by virtue of his profession, the surgeon is destitute of human sympathy ; so far as its more familiar manifestations are concerned, it ought to be so ; for tremulous hands and tear-blinded eyes are but illy calculated for surgical duties ; but I think it will be found that surgeons enjoy no immu- nity from the ordinary emotions of the body and heart. It may be thought that some of the scenes are too trivial and ephemeral to occupy the serious PREFACE. V attention of the reader ; and yet they are the every- day language of human life ; in the physical as in the moral world, nothing is lost ; the spark arises and scintillates for a moment, by the lightness of the ele- ments that produced it, and then falls, a little ashes, into the mass of its predecessors the bubble seeks the surface of the stream in obedience to the same law, reflects for an instant the sunlight, and its ele- ments are added to the great store-house of nature even the tear, as its sources in the o'ercharged heart are unlocked, and it falls to the earth, is not lost, but its salts are treasured there till given back, perhaps, in some form of beauty and gladness. Let me then hope that whatever truths, useful to humanity, may be found in these pages, will not perish, but live for a little while after the hand that sketched them has been resolved into its elements. EDWARD H. DIXON. 42 Fifth Avenue. CONTEXTS. SCENES IN CITY PRACTICE. THE CHOLERA OF '32 THE BROADWAY WORKWOMEN THE YOUNG MOTHER TUB LAST DAY'S WORK TERRY'S COURTSHIP 9 LEAVES PROM A MEDICAL LOG-BOOK. FISHING IN A FASHIOSABLE NEIGHBORHOOD FOR PRACTICE CLERICAL PATRONAGE FIRST VISIT TO .MRS. MACKF.KEL DESCRIPTION OF MBS. MACKEREL A MIDNIGHT SCENE AN IMPRESSIVE INTERVIEW 27 THE NERVE POWER. WHAT IS THF. NATtfllB OF THE SERVE POWER? ITS ACTION ON OCR BODIES UNDER THE VARIOUS STIMULI ITS POWER OVER THE CONTRACTION OF TUB MUSCLES THE INFLUENCE OF PROLONGED INSPIRATION IN CURING DISEASES AND GIVING STRENGTH TO THE BODY HOW DOES IT COMPARE WITH OTHER SYSTEMS OF CURE? 42 PATHOLOGY OF A LADY OP FASHION. DOrXG NOTHING EMPLOYMENT OF THE INTELLECT MENTAL PURSUITS ERRORS OF DRESS FASHION VIOLATES THE LAWS OF HEALTH 52 SCENES IN THE CABIN AND CHURCHYARD. TUB OLD MAN AND HIS DARLINGS 6G NATURE OP CONSUMPTION. KXERCISR IS LIFK INDOLENCE IS DEATH 69 ' SCENES IN SOUTHERN PRACTICE. KING DEATH IN HIS YELLOW ROBE THE PROUD MERCHANT THE LOVELY CREOLE FUNCTIONS OF THE SKIN. PAGE COLD FATAL TO INFANTS . . 92 WATERING-PLACE SNOBS. HOTEL CONVENTIONALITY, WITH SPECIMENS OF EACH GENUS AND SPKCIK3 . . 99 SKETCHES OF A WESTERN STUDENT'S LIFE. THE CAMP-MEETING A GRAPHIC SCENE A REVIVAL A SERMON LUDICROUS EVENT ZACCHEUS CAMP-MEETING WOLVES A MIDNIGHT ATTACK PECULIAR GENIUS OF THE TRUE METHODIST PREACHER, BY A BACKSLIDER . . . 125 THE SENSE OF FEELING. INFLUENCE OF TEMPERATURE ON HEALTH, AND EFFECT OF ATMOSPHERIC ELEC- TRICITY 188 SKETCHES OF WESTERN PRACTICE. THE BOTANIC MEDICAL BATTERY ENVIABLE POSITION OF DOCTORS THE PKSTI- LBNCB WALKS IN DARKNESS INSIDIOUS NATURE OF FEVERS A WESTERN DOCTOR'S MENAGE 147 WILL MEDICINE CURE CONSUMPTION ? ORIGIN OF CONSUMPTION THE STETHOSCOPE FORMATION OF TUBERCLES COUGH AN EARLY SYMPTOM BRONCHITIS 153 TOILETTE OF NEW YORK LADIES. WHAT ARE THE ACTUAL CONSEQUENCES OF COLD FEET? 167 SCENES IN COUNTRY PRACTICE. THE BAPTISM OF LOTE AND TRUST LOST FROM EARTH, FOUND IN HEAVEN THH IDIOT BOY AN IMPRESSIVE LESSON . . . 177 CAUSES AND EVILS OF CELIBACY. WIFE AND HUSBAND-HUNTERS, DIFFERENT CLASSES OF FORCED MARRIAGES . . 184 SCENES IN NORTHERN PRACTICE. SECRET CRIME BEGGARED YOUTH AND AGE LIFE A GOD-LESSON A MIND DISEASED HEART-CORRODING MEMORIES A SACRIFICE TO MEDICAL PEDANTRY SLEEP ENDS WHERE DEATH BEGINS A DEATH BY FROST 192 HOTEL AND CLUB-HOUSE LIFE IN NEW YORK. PERNICIOUS INFLUENCE ON THE MANSERS AND MORALS OF THE YOUNG THE ART OK FURNISHING A HOUSE WITH ECONOMY AND SIMPLE ELEGANCK . 206 CONTENTS. SKETCHES OF A WESTERN STUDENT'S LIFE. MY FIRST CASE THE POISONER A DEMON ........ 215 IMPORTANCE OF TRUTH IN EDUCATION. THE RIGHT OF DISCOVERY FAIRY STORIES CHILDREN SHOULD BEHOLD TRCTH IK THEIR PiP-ENIS ............. 222 SCENES IN" A WESTERN PHYSICIAN'S LIFE. WHAT IS MEMORY ? COLLEGE LIFE IN THE COUNTRY THE PIOUS STUDENT THE ORPHAN BETRAYED THE ROBIN'S NEST MATERNAL REFLECTIONS WHAT SCENES IN CITY PRACTICE. I. DEATH'S QUARTETTK is A GARRET DELIRIUM TREMENS . . 243 II. PRECARIOU3NESS OF MKDICAL LIFE IN NEW YORK A PROFESSIONAL MARTYR THB CURSE OF AN IRISH PRACTICE DEATH OF THK PHYSICIAN, AND HIS WIDOW AND CHILI) PARENTAL LOVE MERCANTILE AFFECTION THB LOVE OP MONEY . ........... 261 SCENES IN SOUTHERN PRACTICE. THB SUMMONS THK LITTLE LANDLORD THK QUEER PATIKNT SELF-DELUSION THK RECITAL JULIETTE THE RECONCILIATION AND DEATH . . . . ' . 269 REVOLUTIONARY HISTORY OF FORT LEE. STEPHEN BOCRDETTE BEAR MARKET GEN. WASHINGTON THE " FORT FIELD " ATTACK ON FORT WASHINGTON PUNCH IMPROVISED THE REBEL TOAST AND ITS CONSEQUENCES THB MIDNIGHT SUMMONS ANECDOTE OF KNIPHAUSEN . . 287 SCENES IN PRACTICE. THE FOUR IMPELLING POWERS TO EVIL INTEMPERANCE, AMBITION, ANIMAL PASSION, AND THE LOVE OF MONEY ILLUSTRATION OF THE LATTER BY AN AWFUL TRAGEDY 800 ON CROUP. WHAT IS CRUP ? ITS SYMPTOMS AND TREATMENT SKETCHES OF WESTERN PRACTICE. THE MOTHER HER CHARACTER THE PESTILENCE A COUNTRY CONSULTATION A TALE OF SORROW THE SINS OF PARENTS VISITED UPON THB CHILDREN THK DESERTED ONE THE ATONEMENT CHARACTER OF THE TRUE MOTHER MEDICAL HEROICS A PERFIDIOUS LETTER VALUE OF A POOR MAN'S CHILD THE MOTHBR'S DESTROYING ANGEL THE DRUNKARD'S HOME AND FAMILY RETRIBU- TTOS . .827 CONTEXTS. ON HOOPING COUGH. PAGE WHAT IS HOOPING CODGH? PERIOD OF OCCURRENCE FIRST SYMPTOMS RDBTLE CHARACTER OF THE CONTAGION PERIOD OF DURATION ITS USUAL ATTENDANTS MANNER OF TREATMENT HAS MEDICINE ANY POWER OVER IT? . . . 348 RECOLLECTIONS OF CITY PRACTICE. PRIVATION OUR TWO LODGERS A FAITHFUL SISTER FIRST AFFECTION AN UNWORTHY OBJECT THE ARTLESS VICTIM THE YOUNG MOTHER THE WEDDING -MATERNAL LOVE THB LEGACY THE CLOSING SCENE ..... 300 SCARLET FEVER. READFUL FATALITY HAS MEDICINE ANY CONTROL SCENES IN WESTERN PRACTICE. THE LAST DAY OF A COLLEGE LIFE SCHOOL TEACHING THB BSD OF A HYPOCRITB HIS EARLY HISTORY HIS TWO SONS HIS WIFB AND FAMILY DOMESTIC FELICITY THE BROKEN VOW THE BEAUTIFUL DAUGHTER SUICIDE THB WESTERN VAMPIRE THE DAUGHTER AND HER TWO IRISH BABIES BAGGING THE GAME. NEW AND LAUGHABLE CURE FOR ERYSIPELAS EARLY HISTORY OF FORT LEE. SECOND ARTICLE. THE ENGLISH NEIGHBORHOOD THE BAGLES 1 EYRIE THE NAVAL BALLHONOR TO WHOM HONOR IS DUE BRUIN'6 FEAST FEMALB INTREPIDITY SORNA DAY THB RUFFIAN SOLDIER THB INSULT AVENGED THB RUINED HOMESTEAD FISHING EXTRAORDINARY THE MIDNIGHT MARAUDERS DIVINE INTERPOSITION BRIGHTER PROSPECTS REBELS NO MORE ! A NATION'S BIRTH SCENES IN THE PRACTICE NEW YORK SUUGEOfl. THE CHOLERA OF '32 THB BROADWAY WORKWOMEN THE YOCTXO MOTHER THB LAST DAY'S WORK TERRY'S COURTSHIP. OF all men, the physician is most likely to discover the ' leading traits of character in his fellow-beings ; in no other condition than that of sickness, do they present themselves without those guards upon the countenance and tongue, that an artificial mode of life has rendered indispensable to their comfort, if not their existence, in city life more especially. , So universal is this habit of caution and hypocrisy in order to find out and flatter, or at least not to offend the weak- nesses of our fellows, that the cunning physician often culti- vates it with wonderful success in procuring wealth, and exciting the almost superstitious reverence of his patients for fancied skill. With ordinary powers of observation, and knowledge of the customary symptoms and consequences of the existing disease, and the use of inert medicines and sea- sonable anticipation and announcement of results he can often foretell with certainty, he soon gets up an envied reputation and secures the luxuries of life : but he never gets 1* 10 SCENES IN CITY PRACTICE. the love or the confidence of his patients. The secret recesses of the heart are never opened to his view : nor is it desirable, so far as regards his own comfort, that they should be. The confiding patient often hangs, as it were, / on the conscientious physician with oppressive weight ; if afflicted with a sympathizing soul and a light pocket, adieu to his happiness ; his heart will bleed for distresses, both bodily and pecuniary, that he cannot alleviate, and he often gives up in despair a profession which, on this very account, will so severely tax the nervous system as to render the best medical talent comparatively useless. The young phy- sician must fortunately begin practice with the children of poverty. Wealth and arrogance would season him to human woe : but hopeless poverty and helpless disease, when borne with a woman's patience, often break the heart long before the poor body finds the repose of the grave ! To witness this is the young physician's sad lot ; what wonder then that his habits often become gloomy and morose, when he is forced into the festive scene ? Instead of music and wine, he is far more familiar with the cry of anguish and the wretched substitutes for food, hastily prepared by hands but ill-spared from the needle ; the wan face of a dying mother or child is a sad contrast to the smile of love and beauty ; and if his heart be that of a true man, he feels guilty when compelled to mingle with the giddy throng, and utter the vapid and foolish remarks that so badly harmonize with his feelings. In the earlier part of our professional life, we were so situated as to afford us ample opportunity of studying human character, and soon learned the full extent of our misfortune in possessing a frank and unsuspicious nature. A levity, too often careless of the patient's feelings, elicited a degree of freedom that would never have been used before a more austere character ; an utter contempt for the pedan- try of our profession, which, with the weak-minded, often SCENES IN CITY PRACTICE. 11 deprived us of the respect necessary in the treatment of a tedious case, would nevertheless open the heart and mouth of the patient ; and on more than one occasion, the gravity of a medical consultation was often -utterly destroyed by a hearty peal of laughter, that did the patient more good than all the physic he had swallowed for weeks. In recalling from memory the scenes of our experience in drumming up practice, and by and by some of our student's life, we wish it distinctly understood, that they are literally true ; in fact, often scarcely differing from the actual words that were used, or may have been supposed to be used by the patient ; and never, we trust, whether for joy or sorrow, detailing an emotion to which some chord in unison with what is read, will not answer within the bosom of the reader. " Laugh and be merry," says the philosopher ; " it purgeth away the black bile from the secret chambers of the liver, it quickeneth the secretions, and lighteth up the human countenance ; it is, moreover, the most distinctive difference between man and a monkey." " Sorrow chasteneth the spirit and strengthens the bonds of human sympathy ; the crystal drop, as it falleth from the windows of the soul, gives evidence of the purity of the inner chamber, and leaves a far more lasting impression of the goodness of the human heart, than all the prayers of the righteous." He gave to misery all he had a tear. He gained from Heaven 'twas all he wished a friend." Grey understood it. In our own sex, we have often thought tears a better evidence of manhood, than all the sternness and compression of the muscles that could ever be thrown into the countenance ; and if laughter be the most d|stinctive active characteristic between man and the mon- key, its converse, the agony of grief, is not less so, for it shows a far higher moral emotion, and one equally generic : 12 SCENES IX CITY PRACTICE. it gives us, as we think, a reliable cudgel for Lord Monboddo and his foolish proselytes. Why is it that the soul refuses its profound sympathy with the uneducated and vulgar ? Often have I felt guilty of seeming neglect of a common mother's grief for her dead child, when I was only wondering whether she felt as some other one would, under similar circumstances, or as I could have felt for her had she wept less ; and yet there are scenes to which the grief of even the most refined and sin- cere for a child's death, are to myself as nothing : that gentle and trustful creature, who but yesterday laid the little being who but a short week before nestled closely to her Bosom, and gladdened the young mother's heart with its sweet smile in all the agony of her grief when the last fond kiss was imprinted on its cold and waxen lips never presented half so sad a picture to myself as the silent tear- less look of anguish, when her eye first met my gaze on the discovery of her husband's dreadful failing of drunkenness. 'Twas my first and painful scene ; twenty-five years have closed the grave over the sweet suffering child of sorrow, and him who swore to love and cherish her ; and now 'tis no matter how her heart was wrung. We will relate it just as it occurred ; it may benefit some erring creature, and save another heart from breaking. Mr. and his young wife took up their abode in apart- ments near my first residence. I owed my acquaintance to an introduction at a course of lectures, in which I was associated for the benefit of one of our dispensaries. Ana- tomy and physiology of the viscera were my subjects, and I observed from his excessive paleness, that he was afflicted with some internal congestion, or that his circulation at any rate was not of a high order. A great degree of curiositv on the subject of enlargement of the liver from the excessive use of brandy, with a desire to know the earliest indications rendering abstinence indispensable to preserve life, gave me THE DRUNKARD. 18 a hint of the reason of his listlessness, and the cause of his inattention to business. He was a lawyer, and had a few years before been actively occupied in the lower courts. Going home one night at a late hour from one of my mid- night visits, I observed him staggering before me in such a manner that I feared my aid would be necessary. He was excessively proud and tenacious of his character, and I therefore avoided his observation, walking slowly behind him until a violent fall compelled me to interfere, and raise him ; being obliged, indeed, almost to carry him to his house, a small and barely-decent residence, to which his habits had reduced him, and the rent for which, as I subse- quently learned, his delicate wife paid by painting maps and prints for the booksellers. My first impulse was to leave him as soon as I should hear the approach of the servant in answer to my summons. I did not anticipate the possibility of the absence of the single servant I knew they had some time kept ; but their poverty had obliged them to discharge her, and the bell was almost instantly answered by the gentle being who knew, poor child, the nature of the sum- mons. She was in her day-dress, and had not removed it, as she told me, for several nights ; having been obliged to watch the return of him who should have been her hope and her ark of refuge, and whose strong arm should have interposed between her and all harm. Alas I drunkenness had dimmed the lustre of that eye that once looked so kindly on her, and withered the arm that should have protected her, and naught remained for both but the quiet grave. We none of us imagined how near it was. Never shall I forget the look of heart-broken anguish with which her gaze met mine, as the flame of the hall light fell upon us. Those tears are imprinted on my very soul ; nor do I think any man, with a spark of humanity in him, would not have answered them in kind. I carried him to his chamber, and after examin- ing and dressing the wound on his forehead received from 14 SCENES IN CITY PRACTICE. his fall, and knowing that my absence would be most accep table to the true wife, I took my departure, begging her instantly to send for me in the event of any trouble or new misfortune. I did not repeat my visit, well knowing what her sufferings must have been, and that she wished to bear them unnoticed and alone. 'Twas some days before I again saw them ; and I fondly hoped, from a short appearance of renewed attention to business, and seeing his wife occasionally walking arm-in- arm with him, plainly but respectably clad, that he had turned over a new leaf in the blackened and defaced volume of his life. But, alas ! he soon relapsed into a lower state than ever ; and often staggered by my office, occasionally looking in, and uttering some maudlin nonsense. I was powerless ; he was like many others addicted to the loath- some vice, and had not mind enough to appeal to. He resented the least hint for reform ; and once gave me to understand I would do well to concentrate all my mental powers on my own business, assuring me (and God knows I felt the truth of the remark) I would find no superfluous ability. The poor fellow never forgave me for carrying him up stairs, though his suffering wife avoided mentioning my name to him unless in a medical light. A few months after the incident which brought me into this family, the cholera of '32 came on. It was soon appa- rent that the disease confined its most fatal ravages to the wretched and debilitated. None will forget the sickening and heart-rending scenes of that awful visitation. The Angel of Death did, indeed, spread his wing on the blast ; but he did not always fan away the demon of pain from the couch of poverty, as I have often remarked. True, the flight of the spirit was often fearfully speedy and painless in the wretched and intemperate, but the strong man strug- gled fearfully against the terrible and unknown enemy, and the nerves of the dying frame were racked, and let loose THE CHOLERA OF 1832. 15 the strong muscles, till they played terrible antics before the powerless physician. One often thought of the Laocoon, but looked in vain for the serpent. One evening, at five o'clock, or thereabouts, I had thrown myself exhausted from my horse into my office chair, after a visit to my little deaf mutes at the Asylum, and was indulging in my favorite luxury, a cup of green tea, which I preferred taking away from my family, for the simple reason, that no man whose heart was in his profession, could take time to make himself an acceptable guest at the tea-table, with such fearful music still ringing in his ears ; few of us, indeed, paid needful attention to our own personal comfort. Whatever be our quarrels, to our credit be it said, we shrink not when the "seals that close the pestilence" are removed, and the poor demand our aid. I was hastily sipping my tea, when my poor young friend, with his feeble body and sickly laugh, thrust his head into the office door, and carelessly asked how the cholera came on ; remarking, with the usual flippancy of the thoughtless, he supposed that we were "not particularly desirous of its disappearance." Poor man ! his remark grated upon my ears, for I knew the condition of his delicate wife, and that their chances would be at zero from the first, should they be attacked. Something about his face, that every experienced medical eye could at once detect, told me that the fiend was at work within him. I arose, and asking him to be seated, and take some tea, questioned him a little, and intended to advise a remedy. He soon detected my fears, and jeeringly desired me not to be " look- ing so sharply for business." Alas ! such business was not desirable ; our fees were mostly paid in tears. I made my evening visits, and on my return found a message from his wife, requesting my immediate presence, as her husband " had been attacked an hour before." Not one hour could have elapsed since his conversation with me ! Why prolong the tale ? Everything was done that three of us could 16 SCENES IN CITY PRACTICE. suggest ; one or other of us was with him till midnight, when he died ; his poor wife closed his eyes, herself as tear- less, and almost as corpse-like, as the cold form before her. Anticipating trouble, from her evident feebleness, I asked her condition. She replied calmly, and with that perfect self-possession, only to be accounted for when the soul, sub- dued by extreme sorrow, and triumphing over apprehension, looks for death as a boon from heaven ; "she was perfectly well, and as soon as we had performed the last sad offices, she would try and get some rest." The next day, on my return from the cemetery, where a few of the neighbors conveyed him, I called in to see the widow, and found her already past the first stage of the frightful disease. She had informed no one, and evidently wished to die. Oh ! how expressive was her sad smile when ' I questioned her. Again I summoned my brethren ; again we went through the hopeless routine. Scarce a groan escaped her, her only seeming anxiety being the trouble she gave us. Poor child of sorrow ! her young dream of life was indeed early clouded. Before midnight she also found rest in heaven. Surely the Great Author of Nature has decreed that there shall be the broadest contrasts in the nervous organ- isms of men and women, as well as the joy and sorrow so often depending upon them. How calm and peaceful is the soul in one how fierce and turbulent the still chafed spirit in another ? We have often thought that sleep tells the story of the soul with more truth than wakefulness. Look upon that placid brow, those lips parting as if in prayer for the loved one at her side it is the, first-born of luxury and innocence. The absence of every movement convinces us that the soul is at peace with itself, and like the warm and mellow earth under the dews of heaven, is waiting to give forth the breath of love as soon as the senses awake to con- sciousness. Again we see the knit brow, the oft-compressed TH E YOU X G HOT HE R. 17 lip, the harried respiration, the dilated nostril, and clenched hand, of that impetuous spirit, that seems under the influ- ence of some fearful dream of wrong or crime. She is, alas ! a child of sorrow and misfortune. Yet what is there within the human breast that often fascinates the soul with intense admiration for such a turbulent spirit, especially if it ani- mate a beautiful form ? Such predilections are true we fear of all who are accustomed to the study of that fearful poem human passion. Yet the history of the drama proves that the broadest contrasts delight its worshippers. Lady Macbeth, Desdemona, and Ophelia, with all the lesser and intermediate shades of character, were the work of one mas- ter spirit, and it is but reasonable to suppose the same influ- ences operate upon meaner minds. We confess a strange fascination for such studies, and think them the legitimate province of the practical physician. The incidents we shall now relate, will serve to show the influence of that loathsome spirit of selfishness and brutality upon a generous and noble nature, that actuates the bosoms of those who live upon the profits literally wrung from the heart's-blood of the poor sewing girls, employed by hun- dreds in those dens of death, the immense work-rooms that supply the Broadway shops with the finer articles of women's and children's clothing. I received both of them from my patient's own lips ; and although a more fiery or passionate soul never agitated the human breast, a nobler spirit never animated the form of woman. Alas ! the grave has effaced the memory of her errors, and brightened that of her vir- tues in the hearts of all who knew her. One of four sisters, daughters of a respectable citizen, who early in life became reduced in circumstances, she enjoyed no facilities for acquiring accomplishments other than those of a domestic character. She became a proficient in the use of the needle, and having a natural incentive to beauty of form, wherever visible, excelled in embroidery. Noble and 18 SCENES IN CITY PRACTICE. generous, she could not see her mother and father suffer, and soon turned her acquirements to account in ornamenting children's garments for the stores. Beautiful and graceful in person, with a fine constitution, and a glorious eagle eye, with nostrils denoting a fiery spirit, and lips on which the glad bee might have lingered, half baby's and half woman's, and a swan-like neck and bust, she did not suffer in health by this pursuit, and attracted the admiration of a young man, who shortly, and I could not but think too hastily for their mutual happiness, for they were very unlike, married her. In a few months he left her, and never returned. Ere long, it became apparent that she was likely to increase the cares and dimiuish the comforts of their humble home, by herself requiring those attentions she knew to be due to a sick father. This her generous nature would not allow ; and after continuing her employment most assiduously till a very late period of gestation, she sought the house of a poor, but kind woman, to pass the period of her accouchment. The extraordinary powers of her constitution, and an elastic spirit, greatly abridged the period, and in a couple of weeks she returned to her father's house with her infant, perfectly restored, with the addition of that nameless, yet apparent charm, that is so rare in the young mother whose occupa- tion is that of the needle. During her short absence, her family had so sensibly felt the want of the daily pittance she had brought from her labors, that she resolved instantly to resume .them. Leav- ing her baby to her mother's care, hastily bestowed in moments stolen from the needle, she left her home at seven o'clock in the morning, taking with her such nourishment as the house afforded, and in company with a sister who was employed in the same establishment, with fifty or sixty others, in a single room ! Seated in that polluted atmos- phere, they remained for twelve hours, with the eye of their task-mistress, and occasionally that of her husband, con- THE BROADWAY W K K W If E N . 19 stantly upon them. Profound silence was the rule, as these wretched and heartless people are well advised of its influ- ence in increasing the product of the work-room. Think of the weariness of soul that such an atmosphere, and such occupation and restraint, must produce upon the young girl, and wonder not at her pallid countenance. Yet, amidst all this, my poor patient retained, as she expressed it ia her usual style, " such glorious health," that she was the envy of all her companions. At the end of a few weeks the spring approached, and business increasing, the demand of the shops for the fine work of this establishment, warned the girls of the customary increase of hours ; they already worked twelve hours for fifty cents ! and no new hands were to be procured, for there was no more room. The additional labor was to be wrung from the sixty, with no increase of pay ! For twelve weary hours there they sat, with an interval of half an hour in which to snatch the morsel of food they had brought, and to merely straighten the body, for exercise was out of the question with sixty in^j one room. Every mother, every physician, will imagine the condition of my poor patient, on reflecting that she was a nursing mother, in full health, and had nourished her infant at seven o'clock in the morning. As she expressed it to me j " I used to bound from my seat to the desk for my half dol- lar, scattering the poor girls like a maniac. My sister could scarce keep up with me, as I rushed home to my baby boy, and (don't laugh at me) to my dinner, for I was very hungry, and liked not my bread and water lunch. Flinging my hat on the floor, with my child in my lap, and clinging ravenously to the breast, my dinner on a chair before me, and my feet on the bottom spoke, I devoured a quantity sufficient for a plowman. Only think of my con- dition ; my poor baby and myself half starved since morn- _ ing, and half a dozen towels about my breast to absorb his 20 SCENES IX CITY PRACTICE. dinner. I could not wait, even a moment. After we got through our respective performances, I either made some little article of dress for him, or helped my mother with her work till twelve o'clock, for I required no more than six hours' sleep, in consequence of the stupid life I led. One evening I had done more than my usual day's work (and I was admitted to be one of the most profitable hands in the room), and at the first stroke of seven o'clock I bounded with my work to the desk, when I thought I observed an unusual expression in our task-mistress's eyes ; they were very beautiful, and I used to gaze on them as though I were her lover. Never shall I forget the dialogue that followed. It was my last day in that workroom. " ' You seem to be in a hurry, Miss , even for you ; and you are not the most gentle in your movements.' " I can imagine the look of my poor patient ; for when offended, she was exceedingly dignified. I do not wonder at the conclusion, with such a commencement of the encounter. " ' Pardon me, madam ; I am unfortunately rather hasty, but you know my anxiety to reach home? She well knew my meaning, for she was herself the mother of five children. " ' Oh ! I beg your pardon, Mrs. ; I had forgotten you were married? " I could not account for the wicked sneer with which this was uttered ; yet at that very moment, such was my admiration for the beautiful, I was fascinated with the unwonted expression of her lovely eyes. " No sooner, however, had my ear caught the sneer, con- veying almost a doubt of my marriage, than my very soul was on fire ; and had there been a weapon at hand, I could not have answered for the consequences. In an instant my father's and mother's wants, and our dollar, were before me, and I choked down my rage. THE YOU XG MOT HER. 21 " ' You cannot go,' said she, ' till eleven o'clock ; there's over-work to-iiight, and will be for a month to come.' " ' But, madam, I cannot stay ; you know I am a mother, and have not seen my child since seven o'clock.' "I had unconsciously placed my hand on my breasts, which were exceedingly painful ; and when I thought of my own baby boy and hers (for she, too, had an infant), I actually forgot my rage, and awaited that sweet forgiving smile that I had often seen on her beautiful face. But the love of gold will harden even the soul of a mother. I do not wonder at my conduct, though I sometimes think I must have been really demented. She quietly assured me that she made no favorites, and I would have to remain. " My fingers were at the top of my dress, a cheap and slight muslin, and with one clutch I tore it from my dis- tended bosom ; and forgetting in my rage, father, mother, money, and all, I replied" Look ! you, too, are a mother ; would you have me stay T Not awaiting the answer, and spurning the half dollar, I hastily drew my shawl around me, and blinded by bitter tears of rage and wounded pride, sought my home and my child a solace for all ray grief." Alas ! poor M . I must be permitted to let her fur- ther history be resumed at a future time, and will give the following nearly in her own words : " At the same establishment there was a pretty and deli- cate girl, who was a capital workwoman, and much beloved by us all for her quiet dignity and gentleness. She was the only stay of a widowed and sick mother, and was herself afflicted with an ominous cough ; this cough was to me a most distressing affair ; it jarred my very soul, for I knew it to be a prelude to her death ; and then her poor old sick mother ! That thought, when I recollected my love for my own dear, good mother, and her patient, uncomplaining toil, would often actually choke me with grief. 22 SCENES IN CITY PRACTICE. " I used to bring candies and gum for her, because I knew she could not afford them. One day her paroxysms of coughing had been very violent, and she was pitied by all of us very much ; even our mistress, as she examined her beautiful work, and the unusual amount of it, wondered how she could have accomplished so much. Poor child ! it was her last : she had worked with desperation, to keep her situation, fearing she would lose it in consequence of her cough. " On that day, this dreadful exercise was so violent, that I felt relieved to see her untie and pin up her apron, as we all did when leaving off work, and deposit it in the closet. The next day her seat was vacant. Madam observed that ' the poor child was probably too ill to come ; and though she embroidered beautifully, she would not regret it if she stayed away for good, for that dreadful cough really made her nervous.' " Two more days elapsed, when our mistress desired one of us to call and see how she was, as her seat could not remain vacant, and there were many applicants for work. " I was requested to call, as my attachment for her was known. Nothing but ray poor boy had prevented my call- ing before, though she lived on the east side of the town, and I in the west : and you know how I must have felt at seven o'clock. I found her laid out and draped for her last rest, with her sick mother, surrounded by her kind and poor neighbors, and very clean but wretchedly poor apartments, happily unconscious ; her brain could not stand the shock, and she was mercifully crazed. " The next day, on unpinning her silk apron, the towel in which she had brought her dinner was found saturated with blood ; the violence of the cough was explained ; she had broken a blood-vessel !" It is often difficult to understand our Irish patients ; so strangely do the tragic and the comic seem to be combined TERRY'S COURTSHIP. 23 in their erratic natures. A scene I once witnessed, will never be erased from my memory. I have repeatedly had my gravity overcome by it upon some serious occasions, and have more than once been obliged to hide my face in my hands, to pass muster as a sane man. A young Irish girl, with a wild shriek and an och hone, and ah, murther, and hulla-loo a hulla-loo poor Terry ! Ah ! why did I tase ye ? burst into my office one evening, upsetting the servant, and actually laying hold of me with her hands, " Ah 1 Docther, Docther come now for the love of the mother that bore ye come this minute ; I've killed poor Terry, and never again shall I see him. Ah, murther ! murther ! why did I plague ye ?" Trying in vain to calm her, I hastily drew on my boots, and almost ran after her to a wretched tenement some quarter of a mile off, and found the object of my patient's solicitude alive and kicking, with his lungs in the best of order, standing on the stairs that led to his miserable chamber, with a broken scissors and a tea- cup in his hand, stirring busily the contents. It seems that he had been courting my fair guide, and after the period she had fixed for giving her final answer to his declaration, she had bantered him with a refusal, which her solicitude for his life plainly showed was far enough from her real intentions. Before she came for me, he had swallowed an ounce of laudanum, which he had procured of an injudicious druggist, and was now mixing a powder which he had obtained from another, who knowing of his love affair, it will be seen acted more judiciously, as Terry let slip enough to show what he wanted to do with the " rat's bane " for which he inquired ; and Biddy, a true daughter of Eve, had made no secret in the neighborhood that she valued her charms beyond the poor fellow's bid. As soon as she came near him, he by some in-opportune expression, re-excited her wrath, and she declared she wouldn't have him "if he went straight to the divil." 24 SCENES IN CITY PRACTICE. Poor Terry, in his red shirt and blue stockings, and an attitude of the grandest kind, but covering, as we soon found, a desperate purpose, flourished his tea-cup and stirred up its contents with the scissors, constantly exclaiming, " Ah ! Biddy, will ye have me ?" " Ye'll have me now, will ye not ?" " Divil a bit will I let the docther come near me till ye say yes ! shure, weren't we children together, and didn't we take our pataties and butther-milk out of the same bowl, and yer mother that's dead always said ye were to be my wife ! and now ye're kapin' company with that dirty blackguard, Jemmy O'Conner : divil taak him for a spalpeen ah 1 Biddy, will ye have me ?" Biddy's blood was up at this disrespectful mention of Jemmy's name, for he had a winning way with him, and she now declared with great earnestness " she would never have him ;" when, with an awful gulp, poor Terry rolled up his eyes, and with a most impassioned, yet ludicrous look at her, drained the cup, and fell upon his knees on the step ; Biddy fell down in strong hysterics ! The whole affair was so irresistibly ludicrous, that I could scarce forbear shout- ing with laughter. On observing the ounce bottle, however, labelled " laudanum," and looking into the bottom of the tea-cup and finding a white powder, I went to the druggist's on the corner to see what it was, and to send his boy for my stomach-pump, and procure a chemical remedy also, should it really prove to be arsenic. To my great relief, he informed me that he had given Terry a quantity of chalk and eight grains of tartar emetic I as he said he was already in possession of the ounce of laudanum, and all the neighbors knew that Biddy had dri- ven him almost mad by flirting with Jemmy O'Conner. The young man had judiciously told him that the powder would make the laudanum sure to operate effectually. Terry inquired carefully, " how long it would take," and bagged all for use when the refusal should come. "Ah 1 Terry, Terry 1 dear Terry ! I'll have ye. Yes, I will; and I don't care who hears mo. I always loved ye; but that divil's baby. Heir, always kept tellin' me ye d love me betther if I didn't give in to ye too soon. Ah ! Terry, dear Terry, only live, and I'll go to the end of the world for ye I" PAGR 25. BIDDY'S DESPAIR. 25 My course was now clear ; I was in for sport. Sending the druggist's clerk for my stomach-pump, in case the eme- tic should not operate, I awaited the result ; for eight grains of tartar emetic, taken at a dose, would almost vomit the potatoes out of a bag. As for Biddy, I let her lie, for I thought she suffered justly. My heart was always very ten- der towards the sex, and I generally expected a " fellow feelin'." In a short time it became evident that Terry's stomach was not so tough as his will ; and he began to intermingle long and portentous sighs with his prayers, and to perspire freely. I gave him a wide berth, for I knew what was com- ing ; and I was anxious Biddy should revive time enough to witness his grand effort, for I expected more fun. But Terry was tough, and held out. Shortly she revived, and suddenly starting up, ran towards him. " Ah ! Terry, Terry ! dear Terry ! I'll have ye. Yes, I will ; and I don't care who hears me. I always loved ye ; but that divil's baby, Meg, always kept tellin' me ye'd love me betther if I didn't give in to ye too soon. Ah ! Terry, dear Terry, only live, and I'll go to the end of the world for ye ! Ah ! what would my poor mother say if she was here ? Och ! hone, och ! hone ; docther, now, and what are ye doin' ? A purty docther ye are ; and ye pumped out yer own countryman, that didn't die sure, and he tnk twice as much as poor Terry. Up wid ye now, and use the black pipe ye put down the poor craythur's throat over the way last summer. I'd take it meself, if 'twould do ; but, God knows whether I'd be worth the throuble." As Terry had not yet cast up his accounts, and the sto- mach-pump, all bright and glittering, was at hand, I deter- mined to make a little more capital out of the case ; and thrusting the long, flexible India-rubber tube down poor Terry's throat, with his teeth separated by means of a stick, and his head between my knees, I soon had the satisfaction 2 26 SCENES IN CITY PRACTICE. of depositing the laudanum and emetic in the swill-pail, the only article of the toilet at hand. After years proved Terry and Biddy moat loving compa- nions. He never, even when drunk, more than threatened her " wid a batin';" and she never forgave "that divil's baby," poor Meg, for her cruel experiment on her herok and devoted Terry. LEAVES FROM THE MEDICAL LOO. 27 LEAVES FROM THE LOG-BOOK OF AN UNFLEDGED M 3 C U L A P I A N . J1SHISO IN A FASHIOSABLB NEIGHBORHOOD FOB PRACTICE CLERICAL PATROHAO* FIRST VISIT TO MRS. MACKEREL DESCRIPTION OF MBS. MACKEREL A MIDSIGHT BCEKB AM IMPKESSIVB ISTERY1EW. IT is instructive to compare the different views with which young men of different temperaments enter upon the study and practice of our arduous profession. To the quiet observer, who has been accustomed to realize the comfort- ing influence of that doubly-blessed apophthegm, " Blessed be those who expect nothing," &c., what can be more enter- taining and instructive than to watch the different phases and transmutations in the mental and bodily condition of two or three of his brethren, and to compare with her influ- ence upon himself, the manner in which Dame Fortune showers her kicks and coppers ? Of all earthly individuals, a medical man is so completely the child of chance, and hia success or failure depends upon such insignificant and often laughable combinations of circumstances and trifles, that it has always afforded us a fascinating occupation to look back upon the histories of a few of them, and to compare the results of their operations upon the public with those of an individual, whose mental constitution and good qualities we cannot define more particularly without incurring the impu- tation of favoritism. Accustomed as we have ever been to admire indepen- dence, even to a slight dash of obstinacy of character, we 28 LEAVES FROM THE MEDICAL LOS. may, perhaps, say, without impropriety, that we ars wont to view the character of the medical subject of the present sketch with some admiration, because of a slight resem- blance to a certain professional wolf we wot of. He has, to our knowledge, from the first, like that roving animal, laid his own course over the unknown regions of medical experience, and paid little or no attention to the charts of his predecessors. We hope often to give to our readers some of his descriptions of the little green islands in the great ocean of human life to which his erratic bark has guided him ; these have often presented over the social board, a charm to the medical Crusoe imagination, and we trust they will please a certain class of our readers. In the year 1830 I was sent forth, like our long-suffering and much-abused prototype old grandfather Xoah's crow, from that ark of safety, the old Duane street College. I pitched my tent and set up my trap, in what was then a fashionable up-town street, inhabited almost exclusively by merchants. I hired a modest house, and- had my arm-chair, my midnight couch (reader, did you never think what a melancholy thing a doctor's couch is ?), and my few books in my melancholy little office, and I confess that I now and then left an ampu- tating knife, or some other awful-looking instrument, on the table, to impress the poor women who came to me for advice. These little matters, although the " Academy." would frown upon them, I considered quite pardonable. God knows I would willingly have adopted their most approved method of a splendid residence and silver-mounted harness for my bays, but they were yet in dream-land eat- ing moonbeams, and my vicious little nag had nearly all his time to eat his oats and nurse his bad temper in his comfor- table stable : it always seemed he took particular pains to be obstinate and ungrateful. In this miserable way I read over my old books, watered my rose-bushes, sometimes with tears, drank my tea, and ate my toast, and now and then FISHIXG FOB PRACTICF.. 29 listened to the complaint of an unfortunate Irish damsel, with her customary account of " a pain and flutterin' about me heart." At rare intervals I ministered to some of her countrywomen in their fulfilment of the great command when placed iu the garden of Eden (what a dirty place it would have been had there been any Irish women there !) : And thus I spent nearly a year without a single call to any person of character in the neighborhood. I think I should have left it in despair, if it had not been for a lovely crea- ture up the street. She was the wife of a distinguished fish merchant down town, and with a wealthy neighbor came to my rescue when approaching actual despair. Very soothing were the occasional tokens of recognition this lovely lady vouchsafed to me. Mr. Tip Tape, also, her husband's friend, an eminent dry goods merchant, would now and then salute me in market, though his near-sightedness prevented his seeing me in Broadway. But more grateful than all to my feelings, was the confidence of Mrs. Mackerel when she con- descended to inquire at my very door, what I thought of the chances for life of a poor widow I was attending, and who had been accustomed to " do up " her laces and receive a bounty of broken victuals at her hospitable door, and per- haps to be remembered in the universal prayer for the wretched at the end of the service on Sundays. At an occasional period of remarkable amiability, the lovely crea- ture would condescend to inquire of the health of ray family. All this, however, I feared was preparatory to the anti- cipated necessity of calling me in to see Bridget or Molly, should the health of these interesting young ladies suffer in the service of her ladyship ; and I used to rehearse the impressive manner in which I would decline the proffered fee of a few shillings, in place of the check given the family physician for attending upon herself aud the little Mack- erels, and to imagine the liberal measure of her regrets in 30 LEAVES FROM THE MEDICAL LOG. her private circle at my poverty and unbecoming pride. Dear Mrs. Mackerel, how unjust I was ! It is true, more- over, and I ought to confess it, I used sometimes to try her patience. I would occasionally array myself in my best suit, and having rather a formidable exterior, enjoy the start with which the lady would recognize me, as my old wind-dried gig would rattle past her window a street where I had no occasion to go ; and I confess I used some- times purposely to go out of the way to buy my dinner, emerging from the market-hall, just round the corner from her elegant mansion, with a pair of chickens or a beef-steak, purposely held on a skewer at a right angle with the body, by the left hand, and the right one ready to give her a most impressive salutation as soon as she should raise her eyes. Alas ! poor dear Mrs. Mackerel I I even thus early suspected your unfortunate alliance, and pitied you heartily when the naughty sheriff came to to take away all those lovely little china Madonnas and dolls, and beautiful tea-cups, and embroidered cats and dogs, that used to 'be scattered in such elegant profusion about your classic parlors ; for I got there one night. I will tell you how, reader, if you'll give me time : you must take my reminiscences as they come fitfully. Before I was preferred to the distinguished honor of feel- ing the pulse of my charming patroness, I had received a most expressive inkling of an explosion of clerical wrath that was about to fall on my devoted head, and put me for a time out of the pale of fashionable religious patronage. My morning audiences with my Irish patients, were usually interrupted by the presence of the venerable sexton of a neighboring church ; a gentleman who evidently labored under a most impressive estimate of the oratorical and intel- lectual ability of his employer a worthy little man, who defended the doctrine of priestly supremacy in an edifice of some architectural pretension, the result of the paternal CLERICAL POLITY CONTUMACY. 31 beneficence of his commercial progenitor. That astute gen- tleman early perceived what parental affection so often pre- vents, viz., the inequality between the benevolent impulses of the heart, and the more mature product of the head of his clerical offspring. This prompted a pecuniary outlay, that the sagacious merchant perceived his commercial neigh- bors would have been disinclined to vest in a religious spe- culation, resting upon such an intellectual substratum. The sou was therefore duly installed into a beautiful little edi- fice, usually so important an adjunct to clerical success. Finding a pastor and an edifice prepared to their hand, our commercial friends could do no less than give their pecuni- ary support and the countenance of their families to the undertaking. I fondly supposed that my religious predilection for the plainer demonstrations of worship of my Quaker friends, would render any other contributions unnecessary, than the Epsom salts and Elixir Pro. with which my clerical neighbor was wont to reduce the grossuess and strengthen the reins and stomachs of his own and his sexton's household ; but I was soon given to understand that the pastor calculated upon material aid of a far more substantial character ; in short, that it was necessary I should make a selection from three pews which had been kindly proposed for the modest occu- pancy of myself and family. They were considerately chosen by the vestry near the door ; doubtless to facilitate my egress in case of my professional services being required during the service ; or possibly with a -benevolent eye to the facility with which I could cure the catarrhs, that might be consequent on a stray draft of air, that might perchance enter the only door of entrance immediately behind us. What influence a recent sight of my better half by Mrs. Mackerel might have had, in wishing to keep that lady away from her own contiguity Mr. Mackerel was in the vestry I will not pretend to determine. To do that lady 32 LEAVES FROM THE MEDICAL LOG. justice, however, she was a very lovely woman, and may therefore be supposed above the necessity of such selfish considerations. And yet, I cannot say, for it is natural to be partial to one's own, and I observed a marked increase of the deference with which she saluted me, after observing' the entrance of the mistress of my affections into the street-door of our modest mansion. Be that as it may, at the time the sexton made me the confidential communication about the pews, I was laboring most impressively under the incon- venient and unfashionable idea, of the necessity of close attention to the preservation of my professional character by paying for my bread and meat, rent and horse feed ; and had other delightful responsibilities of a more poetical character in prospect. I certainly saw no probability of fulfilling all these requisitions, and likewise enjoying the expensive lux- ury of an entire pew iu a fashionable church. I therefore entered into an explanation with my venerable friend, and gave him to understand that I could not think of incurring so great a responsibility. He heard me out very dispassion- ately, but quietly assured me it was " expected by the ves- try," and expressed himself very significantly that I " had better do it." I did not, however, accede to the proposi- tion ; and soon placed myself entirely outside the pale of clerical beneficence, by declining to draw a couple of teeth from two of the pastor's sons, being preferred to that digni- fied, and to me unwonted exercise of chirurgical skill, by a venerable medical gentleman who enjoyed the honor of attending the pastor's family. It was the last visit his rev- erence ever paid my modest office, and I soon had the satis- faction of being relieved from the espionage of his worthy cooperator, the sexton. I state these apparently trifling incidents, to show our aspiring young friends the path they are expected to travel, if they would attain the dignity of attending the families of gentlemen of a certain order of professional intellect, and that they are expected to take A VISIT TO II RS. MACKEREL. 33 sides on all questions involving religious and political specu- lations and pecuniary outlay in their respective neighbor- hoods. To return to the lovely Mrs. Mackerel. I will explain how it was that I was summoned to her ladyship's mansion, and even at my first visit enjoyed the pleasure of seeing that distinguished operator in South street, Mr. Mackerel, of the firm of Mackerel, Haddock & Dun. One bitter night in January, it happened most fortunately that I had been to a wedding party and returned very late, clad in the highest style of fashion ; a very unusual circumstance, to be sure, with me, but one which every young ^Esculapian should occasionally attend to, particularly if he has a fine figure. Just as I was about to retire, a furious ring at the front door made me feel particularly amiable. A servant announced the sudden alarming illness of Mrs. Mackerel, with the assurance that as the family physician was out of town, Mr. Mackerel would be obliged if I would immedi- ately visit her. As this was my first call in the neigbor- hood to any lady of position, I resolved to do my prettiest. Accordingly I soon found myself in the presence of the accomplished lady, having, I confess it, given my hair au extra touch as I entered the beautiful chamber. Never hav- ing had the pleasure of seeing Mr. Mackerel before, I had not hitherto been able to diagnosticate a very important item in professional attendance on married ladies ; I allude to that delicate matter, the precise position occupied by the gentleman in the domestic menage, and whether he had been accustomed to harmonize with Madam in her aesthetic pre- dilections for jewelry, Italian greyhounds, Honiton lace, and other elements of domestic happiness. A single glance, as he appeared at the hall door, convinced me that the gentle- man was but paired to his beautiful mate. He was, indeed, a very gross and obtuse person, presenting a marked simi- larity to a species of the article to which he owed his 34 LEAVES FROM THE MEDICAL LOG. ' reputed wealth, and the irreverent name I have given him. His entire physiognomy, all but the disposition of the eyes, presented a marked resemblance to a codfish ; the forehead and chin evinced the same disposition to retreat from the nose, and had the locality of the eyes been changed to the forehead in a well-developed specimen of one of those innocent victims as it lies on the market-stall, having escaped the process that renders so many of its sleek brethren the subject of commercial operations similar to those of Messrs. Mackerel, Haddock & Dun, their expressiveness would have admirably rivalled those of the senior partner of that most respectable concern. We are aware that Mr. Mackerel's personal peculiarities might have admitted of much simpler description, by the observation that he was utterly desti- tute of all point ; indeed, there would have been a double advantage in using that term, for it would have been equally expressive of his unwillingness to yield to the persuasive eloquence of his lovely wife, on the necessity of an equipage suited to their rank and condition. Mrs. Tip Tape had just procured a new one, and her own charms were greatly supe- rior to that lady's ; but Mr. M. remained deaf to her entreaties, even in all the ravishing eloquence of her mid- night toilette. Indeed, so obtuse was that human imperso- nation of his professional piscatorial coldness, that on his utter refusal to " point," a hysterical burst of grief and con- vulsive sobs, followed by speechlessness, was the cause of my being summoned to the bed-side of the patient ; this I subsequently learned from a mutual friend. Until I knew Mr. Mackerel's pecuniary embarrassments by the sad denah- ment of her existing illness, in the collapse of the firm of Mackerel, Haddock & Dun (when the latter article of their merchandise, in the opinion of a wag of a neighbor, became expressive of their unenviable notoriety), I was so impressed with his evident coolness and obduracy, that I confidently PECULIARITIES OF MRS. MACKEREL. 3o believed a post-mortem, should the opportunity offer, would actually disclose a single ventricle in the heart, and give a physiological clue to his wonderful resemblance to the arti- cle in which he dealt. Throughout the entire fortnight of my attendance, he displayed the most provoking indifference to the sufferings of the lady. Xow let me indulge in a little medico-physiologico-tnoral philosophy on ray interesting patient, for the especial benefit of aspiring mammas and their daughters. Mrs. Mackerel was not a bad-tempered woman ; she was only a beautiful fool ; nothing less, reader, or she would never have married Mr. Mackerel. Her charms would have procured her a husband of at least a tolerable exterior, and no one could well have been more stupid than Mr. Mackerel ; besides, he was only a fish-merchant, and fish are, at best, but a migratory sort of animal, as Mr. Mackerel soon proved : they are here now, and next minute nowhere. Mrs. Macke- rel did not balance, when making a choice, her prospective advancement in the circle of fashion, with the unavoidable iucumbrance of Mr. Mackerel's phlegm and personal appearance. Besides, he chewed and smoked ; and the combination of the united aroma of his favorite luxuries, and the articles of his merchandise, mnst certainly have been most uncongenial to the curve of such lips and such nostrils. Every day she would be mortified by his pre- sence ; and should she give an evening party, what could console her for such a partner ? As long as his ability to gratify her pride lasted, she had some consolation ; but when it was becoming rapidly apparent that the funds werj decreasing, Mrs. Mackerel's nerves took the alarm. When Mr. Tip Tape purchased his new establishment, matters became desperate ; that palpable evidence of prosperity and fashion had long been the lady's goal of ambition, and when a flat refusal followed her urgent appeal to add it to their existing glories, Mr. Mackerel's personal and intellec- 36 LEAVES FROM THE MEDICAL LOO. tnal deficiencies stood forth in all their genuine defor- mity. I was received by Mr. Mackerel in a manner that increased observation has since taught me is sufficiently indicative of the hysterical finale of a domestic dialogue. Mrs. and Mr. M., like some of their more humble neighbors, had just returned from a party ; and although it may not become me to say it, I trust that my little queen had not quite as many causes of mortification in her spouse, as poor Mrs. Mackerel. I neither smoked nor chewed ; besides, I actually kept my equipage, and a pill- box and lancet would have been a far more passable coat of arms, than an equally emblematic professional crest, upon the panels of the longed-for equipage of my luckless patient. It has been alleged by the admirers of tobacco, that it is a soul-sustaining solace in deep grief and financial or domes- tic embarrassments. We have even heard it asserted that it will greatly aid a professional diagnosis. To say the truth, I should judge from the intellectual developments of most of ray professional friends who use it, that their cere- bral efforts require a little help. Mr. Mackerel was evi- dently convinced of its power to sustain him, whether in grief or domestic annoyance. He used it with the utmost freedom of expectoration, and with the equally elegant and expressive position of his hands in his breeches' pockets, attempted an explanation of the lady's condition. Now Mr. Mackerel was sufficiently acute not to let me into the true cause of his wife's nervous attack, and his own collectedness ; and yet he felt it would not do to make too light of it. Mrs. M. was a well-educated woman, and he was thoroughly astonished at the first display of what he had sense enough to perceive was a violent hysterical paroxysm, and which she had probably given him to under- stand was an outburst of long-suppressed disgust ; he there- fore thought it would prove as well to give me a hint of the MRS. MACKEREL'S CHAMBER. 37 matter. He assured me that the lady had been in her usual health up to the period of her attack, and as he felt obliged to give some cause for the suddenness of my sum- mons, and the speechless condition of the patient, he said he supposed that the dancing, the warmth of the room, and the supper combined, must have produced exhaustion of the nervous system, &c., &c. Having often witnessed the incli- nation of ladies and gentlemen at supper-parties to make a " melody " (medley) in their stomachs, as one of my old English patients is wont ambitiously to express herself, I was fully prepared to realize the powers of ices and creams, cake, oranges, punch, chicken salad, oysters, champagne, and sugar plums, to produce such a consummation, and had almost concluded to dispatch the servant for an emetic of ipecac, before I had seen the patient ; this, however, I pru- dently avoided, and accompanied Mr. Mackerel to his wife's chamber. It is now, alas ! twenty-five years ago, and although the toils of professional life have, in some degree, chilled my admiration for the beautiful, I shall never forget the extreme beauty of my patient, and the strength of the instantaneous conviction, that it was to her unfortunate union that the hysterical attack was due. Aside from the improbability of excess of appetite, through the portal of such a mouth, being the cause (I speak with decision on my power to diag- nosticate this particular case, though I would not advise the precedent in similar ones), the lovely color of the cheeks and lips utterly forbade a conclusion favorable to Mr. Mackerel's solution. The roses and the lilies seemed contending for supremacy, and the entire effect was admirably heightened by the rose-tinted light reflected from the pink silk curtains, completely lining an exquisite lace exterior, beautifully edged with a tracery, " light as the foaming surf, that the wind severs from the broken wave." Although accustomed to self-con- trol, I found it somewhat difficult to command my feelings 38 LEAVES FROM THE MEDICAL LOG. as I placed my fingers on the wrist of the delicately-jewelled and exquisite hand. " All seemed calm as the sepulchre, or the thoughts in an angel's breast." I was nonplussed. Could any tumultuous passions ever have agitated that bosom so gently swelling in repose ? The canvas and marble of the sculptor might try in vain to emulate such perfection. Mr. Mackerel, on his entrance, had simply announced my presence to the lady ; no token of recognition on her part followed, nor did the slightest movement, or an additional breath seemingly indicate a knowledge of my presence. The lady continued profoundly passive whilst I felt the pulse, interrupted occasionally by Mr. Mackerel's expectoration, as he ejected the surplus of his delicious luxury, with that peculiar sound, the dynamics of which I could never quite understand, but which seems to be only attainable in its highest elegance by devoted tobacco chewers. Mr. Mack- erel's presence was by no means desirable, and it occurred to me that as it probably caused the silence of the patient, the only way I could get quit of him, and speech from her, was to ring for the servant and request her to perform some unimportant service, and to summon me should the lady desire to see me, as I knew she was quite aware of my pre- sence. I then withdrew with Mr. Mackerel. The curious questions, touching my medical sagacity as to his wife's condition, received about as satisfactory a solution as most of the questions that are put to me on the causes and treatment of disease, and when the gentleman was toler- ably befogged with opinions he could not quite as well under- stand as the respective qualities of. his merchandise, I was pleased to receive the anticipated summons ; requesting him to remain, as I should probably need his personal services to procure medicine, I again sought my patient. What an effort I made to preserve a calm professional exterior, as I ascended that stairway and opened that door ! The united influence of Ihe countenance and sarroundioes of MR. MACKEREL IS SOOTHED. 39 my patient, had given me a tumultuous agitation, even in the presence of Mr. Mackerel, when the eyes of my patient were closed ; but when she raised the drooping lids, and the full soul came welling up from the depths of those blue orbs, and with a sweet smile she regretted the consequence " of Mr. Mackerel's anxiety," and assured me she had only been over- come with the fatigue of the party, and would cheerfully take any domestic restorative I would direct, as she did not wish to cause any further trouble, I felt intuitively that the poor child had made up her mind to endure her fate, and feared that she had required my services for the first and last time. I remained a few minutes and took my leave, feeling that the most acceptable service I could render a well-bred woman whose infernal position had allowed her woman's nature to overcome her, would be to leave her alone with her own feelings. My impressions, however, were incorrect with regard to a future summons, as I had been fortunate enough to appease Mr. Mackerel's fears by my learned description of the action of the probable causes of his wife's attack. His own professional sagacity being constantly exercised ou the product of " bait," he lulled his suspicions to rest by the apparent innocence with which I answered his leading ques- tions, and arrived, like many others, at the conclusion most desirable to him, viz. that I was a fool ; a conviction quite as necessary, in some nervous cases, as its opposite, to the husband, if the physician wishes to retain possession of the patient. So pleased was Mr. Mackerel with the soothing influence of my short visit, that he very courteously waited on me to the outside of the door, and desired I would call in the morning, leaving me in no doubt of his friendly intentions, though not equally certain that their manifestation did not extend to the deposit of his surplus luxuries on my new coat. 40 LEAVES FROM THE MEDICAL LOG. Ill the morning, after my usual office diversions of investi- gating ' a pain and fluttcrin' about me heart," and " I'm kilt intirely," &c., &c., I called on Mrs. Mackerel, and had the pleasure of finding her quite composed and in conversation with her friend, Mrs. Tip Tape. Fortunately for me, I passed the critical examination of that lady unscathed by her sharp black eyes, and was pronounced quite an agreeable " person," as an acute Quaker lady subsequently informed me the lady always called me. Mrs. Tip Tape was the daughter of a retired milliner, and had formed an appropri- ate union with Mr. Tip Tape, the eminent dry-goods mer- chant. They will require a separate notice, as I subsequently received some "patronage" from them, and they were peo- ple of consideration in the neighborhood. Poor Mrs. Mackerel, notwithstanding her efforts to con- ceal it, had evidently received some cruel and stunning communication from her husband on the night of my sum- mons ; her agitated circulation during the fortnight of my attendance showed to my entire conviction, some persistent and hidden cause for her nervousness ; but her conduct was most unexceptionably that of a dignified woman, determined to bear to the utmost every discharge from the quiver of her relentless fate. Once, and once only, on my apologizing for the lateness of my evening visit, as I had been for the first time to take my little queen and our new gift an airing, she observed with a slight smile, " Your wife is, I hear, a great pet with you, Doctor." A slight tremor and a convulsive cough told me a story I had long suspected. I replied in a manner calculated to produce a comparison as little painful as possible, and directed the conversation in as cheerful a channel as occurred to me. That evening she assured me that she felt she should now rapidly recover, as Mr. Mackerel had concluded to take her to Saratoga for change of scene. I gladly assented, though I had not been asked for my opinion. I took my leave, and in a few days, MRS. MACKEREL RECOVERS. 41 a final oue, of the lovely Mrs. Mackerel ; the poor child departed for Saratoga. The ensuing week there was a sheriffs sale, and my diagnosis of the cause of her disease received confirmation not to be misunderstood. After the departure of the Mackerels, Mr. Tip Tape hon- ored me by requesting my professional advice. Either from the fact of my being under a temporary cloud, because Mrs. M. did not instantly recover, owing to my inability to pro- cure a carriage and horses, or because Mr. Mackerel was anticipating my bill, and wished to cheapen my services, or because they did not wish to have their own condescen- sion lessened by example, the Tip Tapes had held themselves magnificently aloof. Now, however, I seemed about to enjoy the full warmth of their patronage. The very next day after the Mackerels' departure, Mr. Tip Tape did me the honor to inquire after the health of my family ; and the following week, Master Tip Tape having fallen and bumped his nose on the floor, I had the felicity of soothing the anguish of his mamma in her magnificent boudoir, and holding to her lovely nose the smelling salts, and offering such consola- tion as her trying position required ; but of them anon. 42 THE NERVE POWER. THE NE11VE POWER. WHAT IS THE NATURE OF THE NERVE POWER ? ITS ACTION ON OUR BODIES UNDER TH3 VARIOUS STIMULI ITS POWER OVER THE CONTRACTION OF THE MUSCLES THE INFLU- ENCE OF PROLONGED INSPIRATION IN CURING DISEASES AND GIVING STRENGTH TO THE BOOT HOW DOES IT COMPARE WITH OTHER SYSTEMS OF CORE? The brain is the electric battery : the nerves the telegraph : the face the dial plate of the soul. WHAT, then, is the nature of this power that holds us in just relation with the universe? What is the origin of that force that marshals into life the plastic atoms of the insect, and sends it forth murmuring on its perfumed way into the glancing sunbeam ? What causes the forest to reecho with the voice of the feathered songster ? What is it that sends up from the depths of the troubled and frigid ocean the mighty breathings of the great leviathan, with his heat-pro- ducing heart ? What animates the ponderous elephant as he moves majestic over the plains ; or the lithe tiger and lordly lion, as they leap tremendous, and make the heart fal- ter in its beat by their unearthly roar ? We have watched with microscopic eye, the earliest indication of life in the egg or the womb, before the formation of a visible nerve ; we have seen the willing atoms obey the unchangeable law of creative power, with the same precision that the living and independent creature, under the influence of its nerves, per- forms its voluntary and appropriate actions. We feel that all our reliable investigations into the nature of the nerve THE NERVE POWER. 43 power, can only commence in the second stage of animal existence. We receive the palpitating creature perfect from the hand of nature. We interrogate and catechise its nervous con- vulsions, as we expose and subject its muscles and their ani- mating threads to our knife ; but we only approximate the truth in our experiments on animals. We must verify our observations by the appreciative and intelligent utterance of our own species, as sickness or casualty gives us the oppor- tunity to strengthen our theories by analogy, or prove them by facts. It is this necessity that gives the medical philoso- pher the character of impassive want of feeling, when he is entitled to esteem and respect for his quiet investiga- tion ; for he well knows, and by virtue of his daily pursuits has ever present to his remembrance, the conviction that he, too, is but another atom on the shore of time, to be swept into that great ocean of death beyond. Let us calmly, then, read with him from the page of nature, even her cry of agony, and endeavor to gather truths that may serve us in attaining the legitimate period of our limited existence, when we can calmly take our appointed chamber in the silent halls of fate. Although electricity will produce most of the phenomena of muscular life, even in the body recently dead, and upon muscles governed by a nerve detached from its natural con- nections with the still living animal, still there is one experi- ment that would seem conclusively to prove that electricity is not the sole power that governs our bodies. When a liga- ture is tightly drawn around a nerve, its functions, as a conductor of nerve power, are paralyzed ; it can no longer animate the muscle to motion, whilst it is still capable of conveying electricity ! This would seem to be conclusive, that some other property was possessed by the nerves ; moreover, mechanical and chemical irritants will cause con- tractions of those muscles governed by the nerve to which 44 THE NERVE POWER. the irritation is applied. This is the way that anatomists have discovered the functions of the various nerves. Even the criminal, when recently executed, and still possessing warmth and pliancy, can be made to exercise the muscles of respiration, and of the face and limbs ; and that, too, in a most emphatic and expressive manner, when the various nerves governing the muscles appropriated to perform those movements, are subjected to galvanic action. Our present object will be chiefly to show the influence of the natural stimuli on the nerves and contractility of the muscles and their power of preserving and restoring health, but in a special manner the influence of prolonged respira- tion, for several minutes at a time each day. We have observed enough, and are prepared to show from data, suffi- cient to prove to any intelligent observer, that it will prove more effective in restoring lost or failing health, than any other means whatever, even in the hands of the most consci- entious and intellectual man ; and that when compared to the various other suggestions that have been dignified with the names of systems or pathies, they shrink into immeasur- able littleness behind the hungry and heartless faces of the impostors who have palmed them upon a thoughtless world. If the person who reads this be easily smitten with a name, let him call it VENTUPATHY ; but think not that it is a new pathy. No, no ; it is as old as the moment when God breathed the breath of life into the nostrils of our great progenitor. Nor is it necessary that it should be prescribed by a solemn-looking gentleman in black, in cabalistic charac- ters and bad Latin, and purchased of an ignorant apothecary, or dispensed from a little bottle of attenuated falsehood, or soaked and drenched into your feeble carcass with a dirty wet sheet. It costs none of these humiliating sacrifices to ignorance and rascality. You take it from the same glori- ous source whence the eagle gets it, as he sails under its life-inspiring influence, on unwearied wing across the rolling THE NERVE POWER. 45 deep, and screams wildly his cry of delight to the great source of his power. From the moment when the first impression of the air on the infant's skin causes the first effort of the muscles that raise its ribs and let into its lungs the life-continuing and nerve-restoring fluid,- to the last sigh that escapes us in death, there is not a moment in which we are not reminded of the power of this great renovator of life. Let us but enter a close and unventilated room let us be for even a few moments engaged in animated conversation let any depressing emotion overtake us, and we are reminded by the involuntary sigh, that nature required more of her renova- tor. The sigh is but a long and convulsive inspiration, to make up for the partial inflation of the lungs, or the recep- tion into them of air too highly charged with the carbon exhaled from the lungs of the occupant of a close room or a large assemblage in a public congregation. The lassitude and exhaustion so invariably consequent on these occasions, is generally ascribed to weariness of the sub- ject or simple fatigue, which, with almost every one, signi- fies nothing beyond the simple word which expresses the feeling. Now, let us for one moment examine the steps nature takes to restore us after one of these periods of exhaustion. We do not desire quiet ; on the contrary relief is felt by walking. We cannot walk or use any of the muscles of the body, without an increased supply of air. " Let me have a good sniff of the air," says one. " How delightful is the glorious air," says another, &c., &c. Soon the sense of muscular exhaustion vanishes, the headache departs, the ideas become quicker, and the person, if he pos- sessed an inventive or inquiring mind, would have made a discovery of priceless value. He has only to reduce this lit- tle hint to a system, and he would be saved many a head- ache and fit of indigestion ; for the want of air, though it first shows itself in the debility of the muscles, will soon 46 THE XERVE POWER. reach the stomach, bowels and liver, and thus cut off the other great source of strength, viz. a wholesome digestion. The person will become a dyspeptic. Hear Dr. Carpenter, the physiologist : " There can be no question that in the living body, the energy of muscular contraction is determined by the supply of arterial blood which the muscle receives. It is well known that when a ligature is applied to a large artery in the human subject, there is not only the deficiency of sensibility in the surface, but also a partial or complete suspension of muscular power, until the collateral circulation is established " i. e. till other small vessels coming off from the trunk that is tied beyond, or on the heart side of the ligature, are forced to enlarge by the wants of the limb from which the blood has been cut off, and by the action of the heart. The influence of this supply of arterial blood is twofold. It supplies material for the nutrition of the tissues of the limb, to which the artery is distributed ; and it furnishes (what is, perhaps, more immediately necessary) the supply of oxygen, required for that change in the tissue, which, doubtless, accompanies every action of the body, and which is essential to the production of its contractile force. "As all this oxygen is taken through the lungs, we should expect to find a very close correspondence between the amount of muscular power developed in an animal, and the quantity of oxygen consumed in its respiration." All experience proves this. Look, for instance, at the inconceivable velocity of movement in the wings of insects and birds ; the bee and the mosquito the humming-bird and the sea-bird which remain, with few intervals, for an entire day on the wing I We know that they are rapid breathers, and we know that the muscles could not move without a constant renovation by oxygen. Of course the supply must be proportionate to the demand of their constant exertion. The heart itself, and all the chief muscles of organic life, as well as the great THE. VERVE POWER. 47 circular muscles which close the bowel and bladder, furnish two other examples of muscles in constant action ; and both equally dependent on a constant supply of blood ; the former will continue to move, and the latter to close the bowel, long after the muscles are powerless from diffi- cult breathing. This is a wise provision of nature, origi- nating in their greater irritability and capacity for stimula- tion, by blood containing less oxygen ; were they not so susceptible, often in cases of fainting, the person would die, because the heart's action cannot be entirely intermitted but a very few seconds, without imminent fear of death. Even in cases of apparently profound fainting, there is yet a little motion, and nature, by incapacitating the person from standing, gives the greatest facility for the blood to resume its flow, and the heart its action, because blood can flow along a horizontal tube, when, of course, it could not rise against its own gravity when the person has fainted. We have only to study the results of the moral emotion, familiarly called " low spirits," to see the influence of full inhalations on the heart's action. That organ is immedi- ately dependent on the blood for its stimulus to action, just in proportion as the blood demands a rapid transmission through its four chambers, as it passes through the lungs, precisely in proportion to the vigor of the heart's contrac- tion. It matters not whether the heart be deprived of blood from fainting, or poisoned with carbon ; in either case, it immediately responds to the unwonted condition. Dr. Cartwright, of New Orleans, hp.s lately been making some very remarkable experiments on the alligator, to prove the lungs to be the true motor power of the blood. They are of a most impressive character as detailed by him ; but it seems to ns quite unnecessary to prove what no one, since the time Harvey discovered the circulation of the blood, has denied the lungs, of course, furnish the power of the heart's action, by oxygenating its blood. By the power inherent in 43 THE NERVE POWER. the heart, it will still continue to contract, though more and more feebly for some time, even after the windpipe has been tied ; but, like a person deprived of food, it becomes weaker and weaker in its pulsations, till death occurs from starvation. A good deal of speculation has been spent upon the com- parative value, as a stimulant to the action of the heart, of the nerve power, when compared to the oxygen imparted by the lungs. Benjamin Brodie tried the experiment of tying all the great blood-vessels of the neck in a dog, and then cutting off the head, so that there could be no influence of the nerves of the brain, nor even of the nerves of respiration, exerted on the lungs ; nevertheless, this animal continued to breathe for two hours and a half, under the process of arti- ficial inflation of the lungs with a bellows ; so that it would seem that respiration was more immediately important to life than the nerves themselves. Of course, the organic nerves remained in this experiment, and the reader must remember that the heart has inherent life, derived from the Great First Cause, whilst in the womb and long before respiration can take place. It will, therefore, be remem- bered by the unprofessional reader, that the blood itself must contain the only stimulus for the heart's muscular action, before it becomes necessary for the movements of independent life. The heart can receive no direct stimulus from the oxygen of the air before birth, as the child when inclosed in the womb does not breathe at all ; it receives its oxygen and blood from the mother. It is only when increased motion requires extra stimulation, that we are obliged to breathe rapidly, as can soon be proved when we are compelled to flee from danger or pursuit. Here might come in legitimately the subject of alcoholic stimulation. Every physiologist knows that fat and spirit- ous drinks afford hydrogen for the lungs, and that gas, when associated with oxygen, forms the elements of the watery part of the blood, without which none of the more solid THE X E R V E POWER. 49 constituents could circulate throughout the body. We do not intend yet, however, to discuss the subject of spirituous drinks. Enough has been thoughtlessly written on that subject, to astonish the physiologist at the ignorance and boldness of the writers. Whoever ascends a hill without paying attention to his respiration, will find that he will be fatigued in a precise ratio with the deficiency of air he allows himself. In all the movements of mechanical life, and in running and swimming, the same will be found to be the case. Partial respiration only admits the inflation of the upper half, and perhaps a little more of each lung ; while the whole of each lobe was intended by nature to perform full duty, if the air-cells are not compressed with tubercular matter deposited between them, or solidified by other deposits from the blood, the result of neglected inflammation. It will, therefore, most assuredly be found, that sedentary people, such as sewing men and women, book-keepers, schoolmasters, and students, who are almost habitually poor breathers, measure less around the lungs, and are far more easily fatigued, than those whose avocations demand free exertions, more espe- cially in the open air. This is the secret of the benefit derived from riding on horseback and driving out in the morning air when the person has breakfasted, and the surface of the body is well protected, so as to diffuse the blood over the surface of the skin, and thus avoid loading the internal organs with it. Our cunning friends of the water-cure establishments well know this ; some of them are wise enough to compel their patients to run and go up hills ; and some patients who have been advised by honest physicians have had manly resolution enough to drive a cart or a stage-coach, and thus have whipped up the waning life-powers, exhausted by confinement or dissipation. Dr. James Stewart, the author of a beautiful little tract ou Consumption, informed me, that after his fortieth year, 3 * 50 THE NERVE POWER. when the bony framework of the body is usually supposed to be permanently set for life, he increased the capacity of his chest over three inches, by forcing himself to show to those patients whose lungs he was obliged to examine for life insurance, what he meant by a full inspiration. The reader will observe that those whose lives are to be insured, must have sound lungs as well as other organs ; and if they can- not inflate them fully, they are supposed to have disease, such as tubercles, or else condensation of the substance of the luugs, called hepatization (from HEPAR, the liver), because the lungs assume the solidity and appearance of liver. Some fifteen years since, when attending a Dr. Sutherland of this city, then often called " the breathing doctor," for a lingering consumptive affection, I witnessed the surprising results of prolonged respiration, in a number of patients afflicted with dyspepsia and numerous other complaints. Their sole treatment consisted in passing a handkerchief about the lower portion of the chest, for no other earthly reason than to convince them there was some peculiar art in the process ; and then slowly and fully inspiring air into the lungs, and as slowly expiring it. This process was contin- ued for several days, and the patient amused with the Doc- tor's earnest conversation, and then dismissed, with instruc- tions to continue the process for several weeks, and to resume it whenever the unpleasant symptoms returned. Hundreds have felt the benefit of this simple, yet most efficient passive exercise. It is the sole explanation of Ram- mage's breathing tube, and every other device of the kind ; they are all money traps. And what does prolonged respiration do, but send an increased supply of the life-force to every muscle in the body? What sustains the glorious eagle, as he sails on unwearied wing, bathed with that ocean of life-giving force, day after day, even to a hundred years of existence ? THE NERVE POWER. 51 I stand upon the mountain top and shout for freedom, 'mid the grand wild wind that wanders where it will. The air inspires me ; my muscles have gathered their life-force by the exertion ; my perception of God's goodness is quickened ; and as I feel the warm current of life run through my frame, my thoughts enlarge their sphere, my benevolence expands, and I scorn the contemptible trickery of my profession, and wonder that one can be found so base or so thoughtless as to oppose the instruction of the people in the laws that gov- ern their existence. Be strong, then, in mind and body ; be strong ; your muscular contraction governed by air and the nerve-power, is the great index of the human tempera- ment. It is printed by the finger of God upon the face of man, as the expression of his power over animate and inani- mate nature. It plows the ground ; it builds the ship ; it hurls back the oppressor. It yields up to the physiognomist the covert purpose of the villain, as its tell-tale lines lurk about the eye. It impresses the countenance of the upright man with his letter of credit and bond of sympathy with his fellows. Its absence, also, is expressive. It speaks to the lover the impression on the heart of his mistress. It tells the mother's new-found life, when she hears the first cry of her infant. It assures us of the Christian's hope when the lines of agony relax into peaceful radiance as the life-spark is restored to the great undiminished source whence it derived its being. 52 PATHOLOGY OF A LADY OF FASHION. THE PATHOLOGY OF A LADY OF FASHION. " But aching head, though on a sofa, may I never feel." BY pathology, we mean the systematized knowledge or science of disease. By a fashionable lady, we mean a woman who has been brought up, and lives in, the habits, practices, and pursuits of that portion of society, whose aim and end is to please and be pleased. If a man and woman were in their right moral and mental condition, to please and be pleased would be the true end of their existence ; but as mankind are not in their proper condition, their pleasures may be very injurious. Health, whether of miud or body, consists in the complete soundness of the organization, and the appropriate perform- ance of the functions. A flaw or defect in the one, or a failure in the other, is disease. As there are laws which, when obeyed, produce health, so there are laws which, when .complied with, produce disease. Fashion, which of all things may seem to be capricious and lawless, is subject to, and educes laws, as certainly as any other phase of society. Every human being is possessed of a triple nature, and each part requires its own culture and employment. The highest part is the spiritual, which gives the feelings or intentions. The next part is the mental, which gives the ideas or knowledge. The third part is the physical, the act- ing portion of our being. When each of these parts is in order, health and happiness are the result. When one of PATHOLOGY OF A LADY OF FASHION. 53 them is out of order, and still more, when all of them are, disease and misery are the inevitable results. The first element of fashionable life is the negative one of abjuring all labor the abstinence from doing anything for subsistence or use. Thus a fashionable lady would be ashamed to do anything in her kitchen-garden for the pur- pose of producing food, as planting corn, sowing turnips, hoeing or weeding a vegetable bed, or fruit-trees. She will attend to her flower-beds and blossom-trees, and do as much work as if she were in her kitchen-garden ; but it is not accounted labor. There is no necessity to do it. It is optional fashionable. She would not for the world be known to do anything in her kitchen, because that would be accounted labor neces- sary work ; but she would perform twice the quantity of actual work, in the arrangement of her drawing-room or boudoir, because that is entirely optional and conventional. To spend a day in the useful offices of washing and ironing, would be death to her reputation ; but to spend one-third of every day in the fatigues of the toilette, would be a mat of course and consequence. To be seen for a few hours in the occupation of shirt-mak- ing, or mending stockings, would be an unspeakable disgrace ; while to be engaged for weeks in curious netting, working lace, or embroidering, would be matter of proud satisfaction, and a laudable object of ambition. To paint, to color, or to whitewash any part of her house, would be a degradation never to be recovered ; but to paint flowers or scenes, per- sons or places, would be an art sought after, with the avidity and cupidity of a search for an El Dorado. Now, in all those employments which they disdain, there is a satisfaction in their performance, which is a source of mental, moral, and physical health to millions ; while in the occupations which they adopt, there is an emptiness in their course and a weariness and dissatisfaction at their end, 54 PATHOLOGY OF A LADY OF FASHION. which are a fruitful source of misery and disease to thousands. We were consulted some time ago by an elegant lady of fashionable life, on account of two of her beautiful daugh- ters, who were as sylph-like and symmetric as fashion could make them, but who showed too plainly that their forms and constitutions were as frail as debility could mar them, with- out actually manifesting some specific form of disease. " Oh, what shall I do for my beautiful girls !" exclaimed the mother. " Give them strength," I replied. " And how shall that be done ?" said she. " Let them make their own beds, carry their water up stairs arid down, and sweep their own rooms, and perchance the parlor and drawing-room, go to market 'and bring baskets of provisions home, garden, wash, and iron !" Looking at me with surprise, she said, " What sort of minds would they have, what sort of bodies ?" I answered, " They would have as healthy and happy ones as your servants. You now give all the health and happi- ness to your domestics. Be merciful to your daughters, and let them have a share." Work, without useful aim or end, is not occupation, nor employment. When the tread-mill was introduced as a mode of punishment, the wretched prisoners felt themselves more degraded by " doing nothing," as they called it, than by their crimes. How many ladies in fashionable life are doomed for years to feel the bitterness of " doing nothing !" What wonder if they are nervous, irritable and diseased. Useful work, or satisfactory employment, is as essential to the health of the mind, as to that of the body. The first and strongest principle of our nature, is that of rectitude, or what ought to be. Every human being is pos- sessed of this lofty, but awful feeling the deep sense of rectitude or propriety. A feeling which is never satisfied, is a perpetual source of misery, like hunger unappeased, or appetite uncatered for. Can any woman, surveying her PATHOLOGY OF A LADY OF FASHION. 55 body, or considering her mind, seriously and conscientiously conclude, that she is not called upon for any useful work, or necessary contribution to society ; and that to be adorned and admired is all her duty and her destiny ? This would exclude her from the republic of mind and morals, and class her with pet animals and flowers. The same error which leads her to avoid all the useful occupations, induces her to escape all the useful pursuits. That sort of knowledge, which can be usefully applied, and only usefully displayed, is an undesirable attainment in her estimation ; and therefore entirely neglected, or only so far sought as it may subserve the end of her being display. Science, therefore, or systematized knowledge, is not any part of her desire. The employment of the intellect, without a satisfactory direction, is one of the most common errors of the day. To obtain some knowledge of languages, without making them available, as means of instruction and improvement ; to acquire some skill in music, without intending to employ it as an instrument of emotional purity and elevation ; to attain to excellence in the arts of drawing and painting, without aiming to enrich our ideas and thoughts ; to julti- vate the powers of speech and writing, without using ',hem benevolently and didactically ; and to move elegantly and gracefully, without any other end or aim, than that of p leas- ing and being pleased, are as unsatisfactory mental at tain- ments and professions, as those of conjuring and fortune- telling. None of them affords the mind the slightest satis- faction on reflection. The mental pursuits, therefore, of a fashionable lady, however pleasant they may be for the passing moments, have no satisfaction at their termination ; and although they may delude with the promise of hope, they conclude with the payment of disappointment. Perhaps no pursuit is more vexatious than mere novel-reading. There is rarely 56 PATHOLOGY OF A LADY OF FASHION. anything to comprehend, but little to learn, and that often not worth the learning ; plenty to enjoy while reading, and an abundance to suffer when read. The minds and feelings of writers and readers of novels, are constantly upon the rack. Silken, silver, or golden, it may be, but it is the rack, and minds that are frequently racked, like bodies, are not capable of being in health. We never yet knew or heard of a novelist, whether writer or reader, who was of healthy mind or body. Nothing dis- qualifies any one so thoroughly for the enjoyments and duties of the world in which we live, as the living in imagi- nation in a world of an entirely different sort. The world of fiction is as far off the world of fact as Jupiter is from our planet. Now, those who thus artificially stimulate their minds and feelings, preternaturally wear and weaken their brains and nerves, the organs of sensibility, and become excitable, ner- vous and hysterical. They have been moved until mobility, not stability, is the law of their being. An ordinary im- pression, such as persons in good health and sense can easily employ, modify, or resist, overpowers them, and throws them into fits, or paroxysms of extravagant and uncontrollable emotion. Such persons are constantly disordered. Every change of temperature is to them an endurance, equal to that of persons in health, passing from one zone or region to another. The light of a bright sunny day blinds them ; darkness of a lowering cloudy day, buries them. The misfit of a dress is " horrid," the inconvenience of it is " dreadful." Plain, wholesome food is tasteless or distasteful. Everything, except the most exciting food, is either insipid or nauseous. The ordinary enjoyments of life are the dullest of all stu- pidities, and the ordinary inconveniences and accidents of life are the most unendurable of miseries. The blood which flows to the brain, gives out the caloric PATHOLOGY OF A LADY OF FASHION. 57 of its composition in the mode of galvanism, and it is either employed in the pursuits and occupations of life, or it accu- mulates and causes disease. If a lady living on tolerably substantial food, do little or nothing with her brain, except receive a succession of pleasing sensations, which require a very slight expenditure of the caloric of the blood, com- monly called " nervous fluid," she will undoubtedly suffer from what are vulgarly designated " nervous headaches" vapors and hysterics. The other organs of her body will suffer in like manner, if not properly employed. There being little expenditure of the blood by the muscles and brain, the fresh supplies from the stomach will be but slowly taken up, and the pro- cess of digestion will be very tardily carried on; for, as in political economy, so also in physiological economy, the sup- ply will be regulated by the demand. Indigestion, therefore, or dyspepsia, is an almost neces- sary concomitant of fashionable life, which is inevitably exposed to the evils of repletion and inaction. Perhaps nothing is more distressing than dyspepsia. To have no appetite, is almost equal in misery to having no desire ; but, in addition to the privation of appetite, there is the positive infliction of ill-assimilated chyle for the renewal of the blood, and by consequence a defectively organized condition of the blood, and degenerated sensation. For the same cause that the stomach is incapable of per- forming its functions rightly, the liver, spleen and pancreas, and the whole length of the intestines, are very liable to disease, yea, even the blood itself. Thus, every part of the body may have the sensations deranged. In health, there is a general pleasantness of feeling, or rather absence of feel- ing in the body, it being only an instrument of feeling for the mind. In disease, there is a constant sense of uneasi- ness, which makes us conscious of our organization a feel- ing which often amounts to intense agony. 3* y 58 PATHOLOGY OF A LADY OF FASHION. Some years ago, during an attack of epidemic influenza, we endured a species of torment which was so entirely new to us, and so incomprehensible, as well as inexplicable, that we could not solve the mystery of it, except by resorting to a greater mystery the malignant operation of evil spirits. The torment consisted in the consciousness of motion and sensation in every portion of the brain. We felt the circu- lation of the blood through the brain, as distinctly as we could feel the twisting of a worm in our hand, or the crawl- ing of an insect over our skin. An amiable and philosophic Methodist minister of our acquaintance was for some time afflicted with this disorder, but in a more aggravated form ; every part of his body being, in his own vivid and graphic words, " crawling and r creeping alive." He said, " I felt myself alive all over, and I often used to think that, let damnation be what it might, nothing could exceed the horror of being conscious of our own physical organization and functions, and the only proof to , my own mind that I was not damned, was, that I could pray." Now this is a feeling, or disorder, very commonly expe- rienced by fashionable ladies. Their blood is ill-assimilated and composed ; their brain and nerves are overcharged with their unspent caloric, in the form of galvanism, rendering them susceptible of the most complicated and acute sensa- tions ; and their disordered minds, distractedly directing, not controlling, their disordered brains, they are fearfully conscious of the ill-working of their organic machinery miserably sensitive in every part. In the most active, vivid, and creative state of the mind, we do not feel that we have a mind. We feel power and energy, but not substance. When the brain is in a good, healthy condition, the fit minister of the mind, there is no sensation of it as an instrument or machine. We may feel a glow, a thrill, an elevation, a grasping, or a soaring, but we do not feel a brain. The moment that we feel we have PATHOLOGY OF A LADY OF FASHION. 59 a brain, we are conscious of weakness, disorder and disa- bility. -, There are few fashionable ladies who are not miserably conscious of possessing not only a brain, but various parts of it, as well as many organs of the body. How constantly are they made sensible of the possession of a stomach, a liver, and bowels, a heart, and lungs, of kidneys, a bladder, and a womb. How common is it that they lead a life of miserable consciousness of being machines out of order, and often incapable of rectification and adjustment. From these general conditions we may descend to par- ticular ones, pointing out and applying the principles and practices of fashion, and tracing the necessary results. Thus the load of hair which is often worn, and the tight- ness with which it is arranged, becomes a frequent source of most distressing pains in the head, which are usually set down to rheumatism. The most ridiculous freak with regard to the hair, was that of shaving it off, to make an artificially high forehead. Some of the weaker of the sex found, to their dismay, in place of a pale intellectual fore- head, a dark unfeminine beard one of the last objects on a woman to attract the admiration of man, which most undoubtedly was the intention. The exposure of the neck and chest, so common in the ranks of fashion, is as injurious to the health of the body as to the purity of the soul. Diseases of the throat, the lungs, and the heart, are the necessary consequences, and thousands of the fairest of the fair are annually the victims of consumption from this cause alone. The joints and muscles of the epine are carefully preserved from every kind of laborious exercise, and thus, the circulation in them is very weak and scanty. This leads to diseases and dis- tortions of the spine, crooked shoulders, and unequal hips. The practice of tight-lacing, or dressing, obstructs the circulation in the muscles, and thus hinders their growth and 60 PATHOLOGY OF A LADY OF FASHION. development. The consequence of this is, that the whole of the trunk is weak, requiring support, and liable to give way upon being exposed to the ordinary endurances of domestic life. The occasional exhausting activity of a ball night, whatever it may do for the muscles of the legs, is of no service to those of the body. If they had their liberty, an occasional dance might do them good, but to exercise them in whalebone fetters is as absurd and cruel as to set priso- ners to dance in their manacles of iron. To diminish the space for the movement of the lungs, is to deprive them of a part of their function. Their office is to convert the blood returned from the veins, and the newly assimilated food from the stomach, into arterial blood. This is done by exposing small portions of blood at a time in very minute and exceedingly attenuated vessels, spread over large surfaces in the lungs, to the action of the atmosphere. A portion of the combustible materials of the blood chemically combines with the combusting portion of the atmosphere, and sets free a large amount of caloric, which combines with the blood, and gives it the property which is called vitality. If the lungs are prevented from spreading out their sur- faces to the action of the air, less of good blood is made than is required for the purposes of life, and the whole of the organization becomes feeble, and the functions defective. Those portions of the lungs which are obstructed in their functions, become debilitated and absorbed. There is there- fore less lung than is natural, and that is diseased. Hence there is a sufficient foundation laid for the supervention of consumption, dropsy, and diseases of the heart and lungs. If the lungs have not room enough to play, they will force other organs out of their place in their efforts to obtain it. The heart, deprived of comfortable space for its movements, will palpitate, and be irregular in its action, and diseased iu its substance. The stomach will be pressed down out of its PATHOLOGY OF A LADY OF FASHION. 61 place by the force of the superincumbent diaphragm, and the substance of the organ diseased, while its function of digestion will be disturbed. Indeed the whole of the viscera of the abdomen will be pressed out of place, and disturbed more or less. There are, however, two parts toward which the pressure is usually most injuriously directed the womb, and the last portion of the bowel. The cavity in which these organs are placed, is covered in with muscles, which are capable of, and intended for, contracting and dilating. They resist pressure to a certain extent, but after that they give way and stretch, losing their elasticity. Is it extraordinary that so many cases of prolapsus of the uterus and rectum should occur ? A fashionable pair of corsets will add to the weight of resis- tance in the abdomen from ten to thirty pounds : what wonder if something give way ? It would be a wonder if something do not. We cannot now consider the point of beauty involved in this matter ; but we merely remark, in passing, that the laws of beauty are laws of nature that is, of the God of nature and not of man ; and that these laws are, and must be in harmony with all other laws of nature. The very foun- dation of all science and philosophy most rigorously insists upon this harmony. It is the principle which guides us in our search for facts and truths. There is therefore no room for the argument, that the beauty of woman requires this pressure ; for this is to pass by unheeded the great prin- ciple, that we are to learn from nature, not to teach her. We may now point out some of the many reasons why a fashionable woman suffers so much more than a woman in the state of nature, in her conditions of wife and mother. A fashionable woman cannot have her maternal organs in a state of* health, and therefore all the functions appertaining to thos'e modes of her existence, will necessarily be accom- panied with inconvenience and pain. The functions of 62 PATHOLOGY OF A LADY OF FASHION. gestation, parturition, and lactation, are performed with debilitated and diseased organs ; and, from the necessity of the case, must be disordered and disturbed. Frdm our remarks in the previous part of this article, it will be perceived, that in those ladies who lead a fashionable life, the sensibility and excitability of every part is increased while the control over it is diminished. Thus, every func- tion which is not necessary to life, may depart from its normal condition to an unknown extent, multiplying and complicating the derangements of the whole, by the derange- ments of each, until reduction and restoration to order are improbable, if not impossible. The remedies of medicine in such a case, like the ordinances of a municipality in the case of a country in a state of revolution, are too local and ineffi- cient for the occasion. The whole condition and constitution need revision and renewal. The slightest acquaintance with the condition of persons in fashionable life, brings to our knowledge one of the great- est sources of misery with which they are afflicted, that of constipation of the bowels. As a cause and a consequence of disease, it is dreaded as much as it is endured. It is the ruin of many constitutions, families, and incomes, while it is the source of fortune to the pill-venders and medicine-men. This stream of misery turns the wheels of Fortune's golden manufactory for quacks and routinists, furnishing continual occasion for meddling with the doings of nature by those who think themselves entitled to be her directors and dicta- tors. The function of the bowels, like that of every other organ, depends upon the circulation ; and as this is a function of the blood-vessels, entirely involuntary, it might be supposed that we have no voluntary control over the function of the ' bowels. But we find that our voluntary actions have almost as much effect upon our involuntary functions, as though they were under our immediate control. Those per- PATHOLOGY OP A LADY OF FASHION. 63 sons who work and walk much in the open air, are rarely, if ever, constipated ; while those who lead formal and seden- tary lives are rarely, if ever, free from constipation. The function of the bowels is two-fold chemical and mechanical yet both depend upon the same agent for their performance caloric ; and both depend upon the same source of caloric the blood ; and the same mode of obtain- ing it from that source the circulation. Whatever there- fore increases the circulation of the blood in the bowels, assists their function ; whatever diminishes the circulation, obstructs it. Every time that a muscle is contracted, the circulation of the blood is quickened, and the number and size of the blood-vessels increased. The performance of the ordinary work of a house, requir- ing the frequent, if not almost the constant contraction of some of the muscles of the trunk, pressing upon the bowels, is one of the most certain means of procuring a good circu- lation in the bowels, and therefore of securing a proper performance of their function. Brisk walking and running, which require great action of the abdominal muscles, are serviceable from this cause, as well as from the increased action of the lungs, causing a greater general circulation. A fashionable lady is obliged to sit stiffly, and as still as possible, for elegance and effect. She may not walk fast, much less run that would be vulgar. She may not work that would be degrading. Her bowels must be externally compressed, and kept as much as possible at rest for appear- ance. They are generally kept warm enough to preserve their heat, and often much too warm for their health ; for, to keep any part so warm that it cannot give off caloric, is to prevent circulation and life. This is the cause of disease and death, in hot climates and seasons. A fashionable lady must necessarily be constipated, and of course have a poor and fickle appetite. She takes a great deal of nauseous medicine, and has a disagreeable 64 PATHOLOGY OF A LADY OF FASHION. odor emitted from her stomach, lungs, and skin ; for if her intestines do not perform their function properly, the stomach, lungs, skin, and bladder have to perform a part of it, in order to maintain life, and preserve as much of health as possible. The kitchen-maid and cook may have fine forms, agreeable skins and breath, and good health, while their mistress and her daughters are deprived of them all. Fashion is a deviation from the laws of health ; and those who will be votaries of fashion, must endure the penalties of her offences. The highest refinement of culti- vation does not necessarily require the omission of one of the laws of health, nor the commission of one of the sins of disease. The most cultivated intellect, the most refined manners, and the most thoroughly elegant person, may be compatible, and are, frequently, with excellent health. Sad indeed would be our condition if the progress of civi- lization, the improvement of manners, and the elevation of character, were to be obtained only at the enormous cost of our health. The laws of our bodies are a part of the great system, which secures the good of the whole by the good of each part. If we cannot act in harmony with uni- versal nature, we shall inevitably be entangled in some of her omnipotent machinery, and be injured, if not destroyed. A penalty implies an offense. Suffering is the proof, the demonstration of the commission of sin. If fashion inevit- ably entails suffering, then does it prove itself to be an offense. Were it not for the diseases produced by the prac- tices and customs of fashion, the great proportion of medical men would have nothing to live on, and perhaps nothing to do. A nervous and irritable lady, who can and does pay for medical attendance, may be worth from one to five hun- dred dollars a year to the profession. She is always ailing, incapable of being cured, susceptible of relief in various ways, and most unfortunately desirous of it. A skillful PATHOLOGY OF A LADY OF FASHION. 05 quack, regular or irregular, is the most suitable person to attend her, for science and philosophy do not suit her, and suited she must be. Happily for her, there are fashionable doctors as well as fashionable ladies. G6 SCENES IN CABIN AND CHURCHYARD, SCENES IN THE CABIN AND THE CHURCHYARD. THE OLD MAN AND HIS DARLINGS. SOLEMNLY, very solemnly did the tolling bell warn us of our approach to the old churchyard of , long before we emerged in the poor little rustic wagon from the forest road that led to it, from the humble cottage whence we had brought all that remained of the innocent and lovely M . The poor old childless and widowed grandfather rested his aged head on my shoulder, and never since God gave me breath have I felt the awful solemnity of my profession as I did that day. I had been summoned from the city to visit the poor young girl by a medical friend whose confidence I enjoyed from having performed several operations on his patients, and as my practice was then limited, I willingly yielded to my feelings and remained with her till the last sigh escaped her guileless bosom, and with the hand of her only protector on her forehead, she breathed her last at midnight, in the lovely month of June, 1839. Wretchedly ^ poor, she had sustained her poor old grandfather by her labor in a neighboring mill. The terrific force sometimes attained by the over-wrought machinery, caused a great stone to fly asunder by its centrifugal action, and a frag- ment striking her on the breast, injured the internal organs so fatally, that she died in spite of the earnest efforts of her I excellent physician and his friends. I found him affected even to tears at her bedside as he related to me the case, surrounded with three of his intimate friends, one of them THE OLD MAN AND HIS DARLINGS. 61 from a distance of twenty miles, and that, too, his third visit to the house of a pauper ! Such acts make us proud of our profession. I made up my mind to remain till all danger was over, or death had rendered our efforts of no further use. Our poor patient, but sixteen years of age,- was a beauti- ful girl, the child of sorrow and shame. Her mother, a simple country creature, the old man's only daughter, fell a victim to the arts of a village monster, who had been in consequence obliged to leave the town, and was at the time of her death an attendant on a gambling hell in our city. We were now about to place the body of her child by the side of his victim, who sank some years before under the finger of unchristian scorn continually pointed at her by the village righteous, with the precept of Christ before them, " Let him who is without sin cast the first stone." It was supposed by the medical gentleman who called me, that the extraordinary operation of elevating the breast-bone by means of the trephine, would relieve the terrible oppression of respiration, and afford room for the laboring heart and lungs to resume their natural movements. Her condition, however, was so low, that she expired before we could sufficiently elevate the circulation by wine to continue our efforts. Some spiculte of bone were immediately removed on my arrival, but she bore it so ill, that further explora- tions were omitted till next day : that night she died ; but I have no reason whatever to suppose an operation could have relieved her ; the blow was too violent, and had doubt- less produced injuries internally too serious for nature and art united to overcome. We are often charged as a body with too light an estimate of religious devotion. I know not, however, where the man can be found in our profession, who could have listened to the prayer of that poor old white-headed man of nearly eighty years, as he knelt in the only room of their little 68 SCENES -IN CABIN AND CHURCHYARD. cabin, and implored of Heaven, to save him his darling, the only tie that bound him to earth : "0 thou who didst raise the widow's son thou who didst anoint the eyes of the blind man and give him sight, look down from thy throne upon the wretched creature who ventures to implore thee, and upon thy servants, who would not, Heavenly Father, oppose thy righteous purpose ; yet, O God, most holy, most merciful, if it be consistent with thy blessed will, save me that poor child of sorrow, even her at whom, like Mary Magdalen, the finger of scorn was pointed, for the sins of one who is, I trust, in heaven ; for she was kind to us all, and injured no one but herself." Here a burst of tears choked his voice, which was unusually clear for his age. We were all of us unmanned, and that night we prayed in spirit if not in words ; but our efforts availed not, and it was destined by Heaven that the poor old man should finish his journey alone. It was touching, after the simple prayer had been pro- nounced, to see the old man, as his thin and snowy locks swayed gently in the evening breeze, quietly measure with his staff the distance between the newly-made grave and the next one, whose verdure alone for it was marked by no stone told that it long since received its occupant. Alas ! her only memorial was her shame and the love of an old father. He looked expressively at the old sexton as he took him by the hand and thanked him ; 't was all he had to give, even had not his old friend's tears assured him no other gift would have been acceptable. " You will put me there, Joe, will you ?" said he. " God knows whether I will live to do it, but our friend will see to it," he replied, putting his hand on the shoulder of the good young clergy- man, whose face attested the excellence of his heart. The old sexton, however, performed the same service for his schoolmate that he had for his children; and now, if he could stretch out his arms, he might embrace both his darlings. i - Wtl v- j m!r ' r the 8lm P le prayer had been pronounced, to see the old man, nn and snowy locks swayed gently in the evening breeze, quietly measure with in statt the distance between the newly-made grave and the next one, whose verdure aione for it was marked by no stone told that it long since received, its occupant . PAGE 68. NATURE OF CONSUMPTION. 69 NATURE OF CONSUMPTION EXERCISE IS LIFE INDOLENCE IS DEATH. FROM what point shall we start in this attempt to convey the idea of Consumption, where all is darkness to the general reader ? How shall we attempt to enlighten him ? Almost every one is quite satisfied, that pulmonary or lung con- sumption is the result of a common catarrh or cold ; and that to neglect that affection when of an obstinate character, is to run the imminent hazard of consumption ; and yet, that is very rarely, though sometimes, its exciting cause, we had almost said, never its originating one. Reader, we will assure you, even at the hazard of incurring your displeasure for seeming rudeness, that your own views of these matters, unless derived from patient thought, and the most comprehensive and philosophical observation of the other living animals that surround you, are worse than useless ; they originate in self-esteem and pride of opinion, and prevent your acquiring that knowledge that can prolong your existence, by attending to the de- mands of nature. Your natural and unperverted instincts are constantly endeavoring to convince you of the nature of your affliction, and the only means of combating it. Conceit and physic, from the hands of some ignorant doctor, or designing empiric, will destroy you air, warmth, nutritious food, water, and exercise, may save you. Suppose we succeed in showing you that there is a 70 NATURE OF CONSUMPTION. particular constitution of body, where a tendency to con- sumption is born with the child, and is almost absolutely certain to be developed and destroy him, under a proper combination of circumstances ? Suppose, moreover, we show from extensive observation and evidence, that if we can change these circumstances we may actually control the disease, and keep it at bay, till not unfrequently the person dies at an advanced life will not this be a point worth striving for ? Come with us then, reader read slowly and thoughtfully, and we hope to convince you of the utility of attending to the philosophy of your daily life, more espe- cially if you are threatened with this dreadful disease, so hopelessly incurable with medicine. What is the first want we experience in our entrance into this world ? Is it not air ? What the last ? Is it not the same ? What is the second want of our independent existence ? It is not food ? For surely a vigorous infant would survive many hours without it but leave it exposed to the cold air without sufficient protection, and it would soon die. It is air then first, warmth next, and food and sleep last ; water it imbibes with its mother's milk. It is a deficiency of air, warmth, and food, that causes the development of scrofula, which is the other term for pulmonary or tubercular consumption. This we shall proceed to prove from a few of the best authorities, and what is much better, from the reader's own observation. Before we go further, we would remark, that your child, or yourself, may seem to your own judgment, to possess in abundance all these requisites, and yet be afflicted with scrofula in some part of the system, or perhaps with tuber- cular consumption. Alas ! that we should have occasion to remind you of that subduing and sad thought, " the sins of the parents descend to the third and fourth generation." Hereditary disease is acknowledged by all as the great curse NATURE OP CONSUMPTION. 71 of the human family. Though surrounded with pure air and wholesome food, your lungs, from some organic defect, or from some vice of early education or dress, may have been so long crippled, that they cannot receive enough of air to build up the body with its intended power. The stomach, likewise, may have suffered from the incapacity of the lungs to keep it in health, and from improper indulgence and so it also becomes a disabled organ. Thus the very material of which the body is made, cannot be digested in quantity and variety sufficient for repairing its daily waste or its diseases, or for transmitting health to your posterity. If breath and food, the actual fuel of the system, be thus deficient, the energy of your nervous system will be im- paired, the heart will refuse to contract with sufficient power to drive on your impoverished blood, and deposits of tubercular or scrofulous matter may form in the bones, lungs, or some other parts of the body ; in short, bring you into the first stage of consumption. We have said that our first and last want is air : which of us acts as though he realized it ? No sooner does an infant make its appearance in the world, than the very first act of an ignorant nurse lays the foundation of an evil of the greatest consequence. If not bandaged to its very throat, its viscera are at all events so compressed as to cripple its lungs, by preventing the descent of its diaphragm. Its very first act to cry shows its great first and last want ; its persecutor does her utmost to deprive it of the very pabulum of its existence 1 What is more common than to cover the head of an infant? Of course it must breathe over and over again the poisonous carbonic acid it has just thrown out of its lungs I Within a few days we have been assured by a stupid nurse, that crackers boiled in milk were the proper nourishment for every child I She was strongly supported by a near 72 NATURE OF CONSUMPTION. relative, and we believe nothing is more common out of the very highest circle of intelligence. What must follow, but a struggle for life against the most barbarous ignorance ? When we pass in review all the lower tribes of animals, from the oyster and snail, whose temperature is only 55 degrees, and are nourished with white blood or albumen, upward to those which circulate red blood, it is shown con- clusively that the temperature, red globules of the blood, and muscular fibre, all increase in proportion to the powers of respiration and motion. Birds that fly rapidly have great heat, and respire freely. Ducks and geese have a temperature of 100 degrees to 107 degrees. The gull and swallow 111-J- degrees. In propor- tion, the lungs of these animals are much larger than those of man ; consequently his respiration and temperature are proportionally less. The heat of man is 97 degrees, while that of nearly all other red-blooded animals is four or five degrees higher. To show that exercise increases our temperature, it is observed that a man when asleep respires less frequently than when awake. The thermometer proves his temperature to be 95 degrees, or two degrees lower ; hence it is dan- gerous for invalids to sleep too lightly clothed, and this is the reason why cholera and pleurisies and inflammation of the lungs often attack people while asleep ; at four o'clock in the morning the temperature of the body falls from 3 to 4. All animals that breathe strongly are more highly organ- ized that is to say, they have more blood-vessels ; their flesh also is more nutritious as food. ALBUMEN is the most simple of all animal material, and all our food is reduced, by the wonderful power of the stomach, to that substance, whether we eat vegetable or animal food. The young animal of every species, however highly organized after birth, consists while within the X A T U 11 K F CONSUMPTION. 73 womb, mostly of albumen. The egg of which the chick is formed, contains little else, both the white and yolk being of that substance. All the larva of insects, and all crawling animals, such as turtles, lizards, frogs, that use little motion, consist almost entirely of albumen showing conclusively a simpler form of organization. Let ns explain all this. The serum or watery-looking part of the blood that rises in the bowl when a person is bled, is composed almost entirely of albumen : in consequence of its greater thinness, it can circulate in smaller vessels, and nourish parts where red blood, which consists of fibrin and red globules, cannot go. For instance, the latter could not go over the front of the eye or cornea, or in the white mem- branes or tendons : if it did it would obscure the sight, and probably not suit the free motion of the tendons, or too rea- dily admit of inflammation, and thus make them immovable, by causing them to adhere to the surrounding parts. Now the reader will please remember that albumen is the sole product of digestion ; that it goes into the blood as albu- men, and can only be changed from that state, by passing through the lungs this it begins to do immediately. A great vessel appropriated solely to it, gathers it up from the intestine just below the stomach, and conveys it into a vein on the left side of the neck : it is not yet red like blood, but creamy and white ; it passes at once into the vein, and mingles with the red blood which has been circulating through the lungs and body. In a few minutes it has passed through the lungs, and been subjected to the action of the air, and is then rapidly becoming FIBRIN, or the material of which muscle or red flesh is composed. When the young animal is born, its muscles are pale ; as it gains strength and breathes more freely, its motions increase, and they become red. Muscles are the red flesh of animals ; they are formed of 4 74 NATURE OF CONSUMPTION. this more highly vitalized albumen, and it is now called FIBRIN. The muscles are attached to the bones, and hav- ing powers of contraction precisely in proportion to the breathing and exercise used, cause a man to be considered strong or weak. The heart is a muscle as well as the calf of the leg ; one moves without the will, the other is obedient to it. We have said that muscles move the bones in all the motions we perform ; they do, and they likewise raise up the ribs, being subject to act both with and without our will ; thus they cause the air to rush in the lungs ; free motion demands free respiration, which demands nourishing food ; the breath and the food are the fuel, and cause animal heat ; HEAT AND MOTION ARE LIFE ; QUIET AND COLD ARE DEATH ; EXERCISE PRODUCES FIBRINE ; INDOLENCE ALBUMEN. All animals that breathe largely, have a more complex set of ribs than the inferior tribes. Most of these have no ribs. Man has twelve pairs, the ox thirteen, the horse eighteen, the elephant twenty ; their food being vegetable, they require complex organs, both of digestion and respira- tion, to sustain them in their labor, and increase their fibrine. Let us now return to oysters and snails, that are nour- ished with albumen. But what has all this to do with the formation of tubercular consumption, or scrofula ? Simply this : tubercles are composed entirely of albumen, and so are scrofular swellings and tumors of the neck, sometimes called king's evil ; caries of the vertebra? or back bone in children, called spine disease, and white swellings of the knee, as well as tubercular consumption, all are caused by deposits of albumen from the blood, in consequence of deficient exercise and breathing. They are all one and the same disease. Remember, reader, it is the nature of an oyster or snail to circulate albumen ; it is its proper blood ; but the more NATUBE OP CONSUMPTION. *5 highly organized animals must have a large portion of fibrin to form their muscle or red flesh, as well as their proper amount of albumen to nourish the white tissues. It is health in one, disease in the other. Why it should so often select the lungs, bowels, bones, and the surface of the inner lining of the abdomen, to be deposited in the form of tubercles, we do not know ; but we trust you will now see the necessity of extended observation throughout the various tribes of nature's kingdom, before venturing to form an opinion, and the immensely important consequence of attend- ing to your natural instincts. Indolence is a perversion of a natural instinct. Man should not imitate an oyster or a snail. We have said that consumption often descends to the children from the pare*nts. Many parents marry when actu- ally in the first stage of consumption. We have often every reason to believe, that a single year after marriage will circumscribe the existence of one of the parties ; yet this is no hindrance to the production of offspring ; of course, that offspring must actually have tubercular formations in some part of the body, or be so thoroughly predisposed to them, that it is sure to die, either of consumptive disease of the spine, bowels, or brain. Infants rarely die of actual lung consumption ; the taint derived from the parents shows itself in them mostly in spinal disease, or what is far more frequent, disease of the brain or bowels. The two latter are fortunately a great outlet of life for these diseased little creatures. We hope to be understood in thus expressing ourselves. If the lamentable ignorance of physiology per- mits the parents to marry, surely nature is merciful in cutting short the lives of as many of these diseased children as possible. Tubercles are small masses of an irregular shape and size, varying from a millet seed to a buck shot, and even 76 NATURE OF CONSUMPTION. larger ; they are very like cheese in appearance, and are mostly produced in consumption of the lungs, in the upper parts of these bodies, directly under the collar-bone. They are not organized that is to say, no blood-vessels can be traced into them. They are scattered about single and in groups, and are as foreign to all the uses of the lungs as so many gravel-stones. When nature will endure them no longer, the parts around and about them inflame, matter is formed, and then the tubercles being loosened, they are coughed up through the windpipe ; a person thus situated is in the second or suppurating stage of consumption. The common belief is that he is rarely cured ; but we believe if attentive to his natural instincts, he would often recover. Medicine and the lancet will destroy the only means he pos- sesses of healing the cavities left when the tubercles are coughed up. Exercise, warmth, and food will often cure them, as we know by observation. It is a remarkable fact, that many of the wild animals, when reduced to confinement, die of consumption ; thus illus- trating and proving that great point we wish to impress upon the reader. The keepers of menageries inform us that lions, monkeys, and parrots often die of consumption, and when examined show tubercles in their lungs. Mr. Youatt, in his work on cattle, gives the following account of the cause of this disease : "There is one striking fact, showing the injurious effect of heated and poisoned air on the pulmonary system. There are cow-houses in which the heat is intense, and the inmates are often in a state of profuse perspiration. The doors and windows must be sometimes opened, and the wind blows in cold enough upon those that are close to them, and one would naturally think could not fail to be injurious. No such thing. Those are the animals that escape ; but the others at the further end, NATURE OF C X S U M P T I X . 71 and on whom no wind blows, and where no perspiration is checked, are the first to have inflammation and con- sumption." Mr. Youatt might have added, that we often have these tubercles served up on our tables. The flesh of these animals is frequently exposed in our markets as prime beef. Tubercles, when not suppurating, seem to have little effect in preventing the fattening of cattle. We likewise eat them in solution in our puddings, and feed them to our children in the swill milk with which our city is so well supplied. The ourang outang died a few years since in this city, of consumption. Horses have it ; it is called farcy with fowls, the pip. We had occasion to observe some years since, the great frequency of scrofula, and particularly its obstinate attacks on the eyelids, in the children of the House of Refuge in this city ; the sleeping apartments of that institution were not properly ventilated, and nothing could be done with those afflicted until the patients were removed into an airy hospital, and allowed a generous diet. Enlarged tonsils are often of scrofulous origin ; we have often been obliged to remove them in patients with diseased lungs, because of the great difficulty they caused in breathing. A low, humid situation, bad and watery diet, with little beef or mutton, weary and monotonous employment, such as sewing, which deprives the poor girl of fresh air, and keeps the body in a bent position, thus also checking the free circu- ation, all produce scrofula and consumption. Who that has a heart to feel and a head to judge, but must be convinced, when considering the condition of these poor girls, as well as those employed in factories, and quite satisfied of the shocking results of weary and monotonous labor in the stifling atmosphere of a Lowell factory, for instance ? It may be desirable, as the political economists 78 NATURE OF CONSUMPTION. tell us, for reasons possibly very convincing to themselves, but God knows it is very opposite to the natural desires ; we can hardly think that a woman's qualities as wife or mother could be improved by such exercise. Some years since, on a visit to Lowell, we were struck with the unmistakable evidence of scrofular and uterine dis- ease in the faces of the factory inmates. There was scarcely a healthy face there. It is quite sickening to read the false- hoods we often see in print, respecting their ruddy complex- ions. There is still a relic of barbarism in use by American women although we are happy to see some of the more highly educated repudiate it we mean the corset, which has done much, we believe, to increase consumption. In a lecture delivered some eighteen years since on this subject, we find an expression of our feelings, which we have had no occasion to alter, from the observation of later years. " The lungs are the very citadel of life, and on their free- dom of action and integrity depends the full development of the functions of the future woman. How absurd, then, to begin in the very dawn of existence to incapacitate them for the fulfillment of their functions, to prevent their expansion, to shut out the very breath of life, that gives development and symmetry to the whole figure ! Monstrous, barbarous ignorance !" Look at nature as spread out before your view over the whole universe ; look at her thousand tribes of ever-moving, changing life ; behold them in their varied states of action and repose ; the birds of the air, the lambs that skip over the verdant meadow. Has she ever been known to oppose an obstacle to the fulfillment of her ends ? Could the eagle soar to the clouds, or the lark sing his matin lay, if the great process of life's renovation was checked within them ? NATURE OF CONSUMPTION. 79 We know that their muscular energy, their power of rising in air, depends upon their perfect freedom of respira- tion. The means of escaping pursuit, of obtaining food, is never denied them. We alone, with our high powers of reason, reserve to ourselves the skill of improving the forms of nature. More by far than personal consequences follow this mighty evil ; posterity has suffered ; the mind of the rising genera- tion, depending on its physical strength, must continue to suffer ; the children of weak and unhealthy parents, if they survive childhood, have the seeds of tubercular disease within them. If their early years should be spent under very questionable subjection to medical regimen, should they chance to survive adolescence, where is their experience of life ? That predominance of the nervous system always visi- ble in those whose early years have been spent entirely within doors, fostered by an education derived mostly from that mass of contemptible, filthy, and licentious trash, called the light literature of the day, has totally cut off all expe- rience of true life, all knowledge of useful facts ? The aching head, the prostrated body, are not capable of acquir- ing judgment or expansion. Do we talk of beauty ? I appeal to sculpture. The forms of classic art are the reverse of modern deformity. Not a modern shape is to be seen in all the sculpture of Italy. Graceful carriage ? It is a union of delicacy and strength ; the limbs are planted firmly in the successive steps, the chest expands freely, the head is erect, the eyes on a level with the horizon, and often elevated to the heavens. Is this a picture of life in the Broadway ? The tottering step, the panting or suppressed respiration, the immovable chest, the downcast lids are they not visible wherever we turn our eyes ? God forbid that the future generation of our country should inherit the taste of the present age ; we should fear the event of another 80 NATURE OF CONSUMPTION. revolution. We had intended to refer in this article to the proper method of inhaling those remedies that are known to alleviate the symptoms of consumption. Some very extraordinary results have certainly been attained by that process, and we doubt not that those who are capable of receiving any benefit from medicine, would find it with far greater certainty by that method, than by poisoning the stomach and injuring the digestion, thus destroying the powers of that great conservative organ which is, next to the lungs, the great source of life. KING DEATH IN HIS YELLOW ROBE. 81 SCENES IN SOUTHERN PRACTICE. KINO DEATH IS HIS YELLOW ROBE THB PROUD MERCHANT THB LOVELY CREOLE WIFE. THE days were very beautiful, though intensely hot, and the sun-dried air brought but little refreshment as it came sweeping off broad gulf and bay. It had not rained for forty days ! God help the fever-sick ! Green leaf of plant and tree was scathed the ground cracked open, and became an ashy dust, that rose whirlwind high in the parched air and the little birds no longer sang, for there was no early morning dew to sparkle, and bid welcome to the great red sun. Vegetable and animal life were oppressed ; plant-sap and blood were dried up by that fevered atmosphere. Is there any one who passed through this dreadful season of '39, that will cease to remember it ? Will he forget the weakening nights, the scorching days, and hub-high dust to graveyard, where coffins of unburied dead lay in offensive heaps, awaiting the time when officials and friends could find strength and heart to hide them in the yet undug earth ? To the piny woods ran some to the gulf and bay shore, to the north, to the highland plantations, fled others, in hopes of escaping the dread fever-pestilence that mowed them j down like cannon. When the frost came, some returned to tell how others had died when not far on their flight ; and how others, 82 SCENES IN SOUTHERN PRACTICE. whose safety seemed secured, had hid within them the seeds of the plague, and died most miserably, untented and unhoused. Some, when the fever first broke out, shut up their houses, and departed immediately, whilst others remained, hoping it would not rage high, and that they would escape. But in a few days such hopes were blighted, for all were fast losing relatives and friends. Young and old, new comer and the native, alike fell before the increasing pestilence. Some scarce lived six hours from the invasion ! In the night before, perhaps, they had made merry with their friends had carelessly passed the jest, that whoever died the others would bury ; and before the second night had come, their sportive speech was verified ! In one instance, five had so merrily jested ; on the fifth day but one remained to tell the tale. Where some two lived together, their friends, alarmed at seeing the windows remaining closed, would enter, and find the work of death was doing, or had been done. Life seemed a sport ! The wine-cup or card-table was sought to drown harrowing care ; and many died in rooms in which the grossest dissipation was entered into, to drive away the horrors of the scene. With many others I had fled to P , near the gulf, where a beautiful bay, on the shores of which the hotel was situated, offered both amusement and security. The rainless days and dewless nights were rapidly drying up all signs of vegetation ; here and there the wide-spreading bay tree remained triumphant in dark green leaf, whilst the tall pine and lowlier cedar, day by day were losing their color, and parching by the heat of the unrelenting sun. When forest and wood, streamlet and spring, withered and wasted, is it a wonder that man's blood should grow thick and fever-charged ? Yet, free from the infected cities, the traveller, when he arrived, would thank God for his escape, and bear bravely with the heat, for the bay waters KING DEATH IX HIS YELLOW ROBE. 83 were sparkling in the right merry sun, and the air did not bear the wing of the angel of death. But, alas I with some their rejoicings were too-early born, for the fatal seeds of the fever were ripening within them. Some drooped and died shortly after arrival ; others remained apparently secure, when of a sud'den, a pain, covering a spot not larger than a marble, would seize them in the back, head, or neck, or a singular death-like chill would crawl down their spines, taking away strength from marrow and muscle, whilst brain and bowel burnt as though in a kiln. Sometimes the unfortunate man would tell you he felt quite well, save for that pain in the back of his head ; indeed, his spirits were rather high, and he only thought he might be sick because his pulse "ran so fast." Then the pain would increase, the skin become fire-hot, unlike any other fever heat when touched. Yellow, and deeper yellow, would grow the skin, the lip-uncovered teeth become sordes dark, and the whole countenance in quickening changes tell how busily death worked within. Some would become offensive before they died, and retain their senses to the last ; whilst others would walk wildly about, raving like maniacs, and die with curse, incoherent prayer and speech, or ribald song, upon their blackened lips. When the vomit attacks, it is not thrown off as in bilious fevers, with sickness and convulsive effort it boils up, as some hot spring, from the stomach, running like coffee- grounds over the lips and chin, or is forcibly jetted out to the distance of several feet, plashing against wall or floor on its hearse-like course. The self-devotion, the true-hearted charity, the Christ acting feeling of many whom the fever had not attacked, cannot be appreciated unless witnessed ; and although some deserted their kindred and their friends when struck by the dread fever, and left them, in their flight for self-preser- 84 SCENES IN SOUTHERN PRACTICE. vation, to die with raving braiu aud parching throat, uncared for and uncoffined yet, thank God, there were others who, fearless and firm, and but too often victims, came alike to friend, to stranger, and to foe, administering to their fevered wants, and registering their latest wishes. Bands of gentlemen left their homes and their occupations, aud joined in this brotherhood charity, while the Sisters of Mercy, high in their catholic duty, came like angels to all classes who needed their service, and at the expense of health, and by forfeit of life, performed those duties which can never be for- gotten by the living, and were blessed by the dying. The day had been unusually hot, the sea breeze had failed, and the huge red disk of the sun, as it went down, gave still the promise of a morrow alike suffocating. We were sitting lazily enough at our doors for who had energy ? wondering if the next coming day would be alike stifling, and pitying the poor fever-sick of our distant city. Coming slowly along the bridge, that extended half a mile into the water of the fronting bay, we perceived Mr. D , with fishing-rod and basket in hand. He had been trailing in that hot sun since noon. His swar- thy countenance seemed a little flushed, and his eye was more restless than usual. He passed quietly to his rooms, followed by his servant, bowing austerely to those he knew. The world had prospered well with him a large fortune had been amassed, but not enjoyed, for the everlas- ting love of greater gain haunted him. He was an atheist gold his only god ! Life to him was all hereafter a starless blank. Yet, the man so grasping, so austere, and so hopeless, loved and was married to a most beautiful Creole, whose very soul he seemed to hold. She was a zealous Catholic, and by her ardent charity and womanly humanity had ren- dered softer the rough angles of her husband. In figure she was full but graceful, with luxuriant hair, which, when KING DEATH IN HIS YELLOW ROBE. 85 loosened,- covered her completely in its dark waving tresses, and eyes whose liquid light would cause one to cease in con- versation, and wonder alike at their beauty, and how her atheist husband could look into their soul-moving depths and not see the evidence of God within. Yet, so it was he loved her truly in his way, without sentiment, but with passion and pride of possession. She and his gold were his all. The next rooms to those of Mr. D were occupied by the celebrated Professor , of P , whose infirmity of health had caused him to seek a southern climate. We were still conversing together, when the servant, of Mr. D interrupted us, by desiring that the Doctor would imme- diately visit his master. Scarce an half hour had gone by since he had passed with fishing-rod in hand. After an absence of twenty minutes the Doctor returned. His coun- tenance was grave and thoughtful. " Mr. D." said he, " is ill ; he has the pain in the head, his pulse is 108, and yet he says he thinks it will pass away, as in other respects he feels well. But it will not pass away, save when he dies ! The first stage of the fever is upon him to-morrow the vomit will likely seize him, and in twenty-four hours after he will have died. Here, within a few feet, with his doom sealed, lay the rich man who just now with haughty mien had passed by. Thirty-nine days he had been absent from the infected city ! " My experience in this disorder," continued the doctor, slowly, " leads me to have no hope for the poor man, and yet I cannot say so to that loving wife ; poor thing, she will too soon know it." My room was upon the other side of D 's chamber, separated by a mere lath partition. Every deep breath he drew I could hear during the night the very steps of his Creole wife fell upon my ear. The next day broke the sun rose in his fire-chariot the fever-sick gasped, and prayed for 86 SCENES IN SOUTHERN PRACTICE. a change in vain ; the air was oven-hot. Ice smoked and melted over the sick man's head and bowels ; still the fever- fire remained. Cool drinks gave no refreshing respite to his parched throat the brain hammered on ; Death was at his forge burning up flesh and blood. The night at length came on, and the breeze that had failed during the long day, streamed gently into window and wide-open door. For a time the sick man roused up ; he seemed refreshed, and his breath, though rapid and oppressed, grew deep and deeper. Hope again sat radiant upon his poor wife's brow ! Alas ! how many have thus hoped, and hoped in vain ! The night wore on, and ten o'clock came. I was passing the door, when out rushed Mrs. D , and seizing hold of my arm, she cried, " Oh, God ! he is worse ; do something to save my husband !" Gently unloosing her grasp, and begging her to quiet her fears, I approached the bed. My God ! what a change a day had wrought. The features were sharp and haggard the skin tight-drawn and glazed over his forehead and cheek bones the natural swarthy complexion had become an orange yellow the eyes, with pupils contracted to their utmost, were widely open his fine teeth, covered with dark sordes, were exposed by the withdrawn lips, whilst up and down with every breath moved the dry black tongue. Two or three wax candles were casting long dismal shadows on the walls, and just above the sick man's head, upon the ceiling, waving to and fro, was the outline of funeral plume and streamer, foretelling the nigh coming of death. I took the scorching hand within my own, as D fixed his wild-staring eyes upon me. " I hope, Mr. D , you are better." " Hope, sir, hope !" he cried, whilst every word hissed from his dry mouth. " You do not hope you know that I am worse. I burn I am parching up." I felt his pulse it was quite natural ! perhaps a little KING DEATH IN HIS Y E L L AV ROBE. 87 more rapid, but soft like a young child's. In a few minutes I left him, and went to the doctor's chamber. I said to him I thought his patient was better. " How is his pulse ?" he simply replied. I answered him. " Then he dies. The forge will soon stop, and by ten o'clock to-morrow all will be over." Putting his arm through mine, the doctor walked with me to my chamber. " You think," continued he, taking a seat by the table, " that Death works fast in bis yellow raiments ; well, in this case he has not worked so rapidly as in some others that have fallen under my notice. In P , the fever, in the year '93, raged furiously ; all night the dead carts would roll heavily along, with men crying out, ' pass out your dead ;' and coffins would sometimes be lowered from upper stories of lodging-houses, so fearful of infection were the occupants of the lower rooms. One day, about 110011, I was hastily sent for to visit one of my patients. I found him walking up and down the parlor floor, a good deal agitated. " ' Ah, doctor,' he cried, ' my wife would send for you she is alarmed I am not sick, except an excruciating spot of pain in the back of my head.' I felt his pulse, it was over 100, and his countenance seemed changing while we were talking. In vain I persuaded him to go to bed. He had gone about two hours before into the centre of the infected district to obtain some money had not remained fifteen minutes, and returned home to dine with his little family. His speech became less coherent, and a most decided alteration of countenance had now taken place. Dinner was served, and taking a seat at the table he said he would eat a little rice. He raised the spoon to his mouth, when suddenly his teeth closed spasmodically on it, and with an out-stretching convulsive movement of his arms and hands, he fell sideways upon the floor. We quickly raised him, and laid him upon a sofa, but he was quite dead !" 88 SCENES IN SOUTHERN PRACTICE. At this moment the figure of the Creole wife glided in, her features pale as ashes, and her deep dark eyes wide open with terror ; upon the palm of her hand, she held a nap- kin, in the midst of whose dark folds lay a dark brown spot. " What is this, doctor ?" she cried, holding the cloth before his eyes. " My daughter," he answered, " it looks like coagulated blood." With a convulsive sob, she left the room. Presently she rushed in again, but the napkin was HO longer white, it was completely covered and ran down with a dark coffee-ground fluid. " What is that ?" she almost shrieked. The old man took the stained towel from her hand, and in a low voice said, " It is the black vomit, my poor child." Oh, what a sob of unutterable despair broke from that loving wife's pallid lips ! All night the work of death was going on ; splash, splash against wainscoat and wall, basin and floor, sounded the fatal vomit, as it was pumped from the sick man's stomach. Towards morning sleep came over me, and I dreamed of the plague of women weeping, men and little children dying like sheep ; when I awoke the sun was some hours high, and the air again oven-hot. At breakfast, none in that great crowd seemed merry, not even the very young, for all had heard of some dear one, dead or dying. It was now nine in the morning ; the sun was climbing into window and door, heating the room like a kiln. I entered D.'s room around the bed stood several of his friends, with two or three ladies. With her long dark hair, like a mourning veil, covering her figure as she lay with her head on the seat of a chair, knelt the stricken wife. The sun was now bright on the head of the bed, where lay the dying man, propped by his pillows, with the dark stained KING DEATH IN HIS YELLOW ROBE. 89 sheets in disordered rolls, over him. There lay the man, who, scarcely six-aud-thirty hours before, had passed along, with head erect and proud step, a miserable wreck, unrecog- nizable, and already offensive ! How fast was death claiming his victim ! The bright sunlight now touched his hair, and soon fell full upon his changing face, which grew darker and more terrible to look upon ; the lips, drawn back, exposed every tooth, whilst the bright gleam glanced upon their white crowns, as with wide-open mouth he labored on, and on, for breath, straining muscle of face and neck, in this great last battle for life. No longer the pulse beat at the wrist ; and as I laid -my ear upon his chest, his tired heart slowly throbbed cluck cluck. At this moment, wrapped in his morning gown, and with crossed arm, walked gently in the doctor. In an instant the dying man's wife heard the step, and springing up, with her long hair trailing over her feet, she clasped his knees, and sobbed : " Oh 1 doctor, why can you not, with your skill, save me my husband ?" The doctor quietly raising his finger on high, pushed back the hair from her broad forehead, saying, " The Lord alone can save !" Quietly putting my arm around her waist, I raised her ; " Come, dear madam," I whispered in her ear, " and be near him, for in after years it will comfort you much to know that you held his hand, and received his latest breath." With a shudder, and shrinking from me, she exclaimed, " Oh, God, / I cannot look upon him, he is too awful !" A low wailing sound, like some one in deepest grief, came from the dying man's mouth. " Do not distress him more," I said to her ; " he hears you, and it grieves him ; his brain is still alive. Ask for some sign." 90 SCEXES IN SOUTHERN PRACTICE. She seized his hand, aiid clasping it tight to her panting bosom, she cried in a voice that pierced our very souls, " Husband, dear husband, give me one little, little sign that you know 1 am by you, and that you heard me pray the live-long night by your side ?" And his black tongue uttered lol lol lol lol " Oh, he hears me," she again with agony cried : " one more sign, dearest, that you now think of your long-denied God, and that you have some little hope ?" Again the black and stiffening tongue moved to and fro, and lol, lol, hoarsely struck the ear. He had heard her ! Then with one short struggle all was over. We carried the widowed wife to an unoccupied room at the end of the gallery. Not a tear dropped from her eye ; she had grieved too much, and the heart-springs were dried. With a voice thrillingly calm, she said to me, " Tell me, do your Northern women shed tears when their husbands die ? for I cannot ; I cannot think enough ; yet he was very kind to me, and loved me well. 'Tis very strange I am so calm, when he is dead !" Fearing lest her brain might suffer, I told her I would tell her how, at the North, little children died in our sum- mers ; that one day full of health and promise, the next day they ailed and drooped ; and before long the dysentery would set in, and they gradually wasted away, with their sweet faces so wan and pale, and their little dry hands so hot in the palms, as they weakened on how their heart- stricken mothers watched their fading forms, and clung closer and closer to them, till robbed of blood and of every vital fluid, naught remained to clasp but the cold image of their loved one marbled in death. As I related these stories, a deep heavy sigh escaped from the desolate wife, and tears that refused to flow for her own . misfortunes, flowed like rain for those of another. She was saved. KING DEATH IN HIS YELLOW ROBE. 91 When the sun went down, we took the corpse and placed it in a plain pine coffin, covered with black muslin, and bore it through the wood, where a grave had been hastily dug. His head clerk read the service for the dead, but the night closing rapidly in, the print became obscure, and thus, with funeral service half read, was buried the once proud mer- chant. 92 FUNCTIONS OF THE SKIN. FUNCTIONS OF THE SKIN. COLD FATAL TO INFANTS. ON taking up our pen, in order to do something in tne way of instructing the people, by the examination of the human body, we were a little in doubt where to begin the dissection. . It is the most natural, we think, to commence with the skin, for there in dissection the scalpel first performs its office, and it is the part througli which, as an organ of sense, we hold the greatest amount of communication with sur- rounding objects. It is also the watchful sentinel that warns us of the contact of hurtful things, and like the military guard on duty, is the first to be encountered on the way to the citadel within. The skin is regarded as the peculiar seat of feeling, and we would treat of it as an organ of feeling only at the present time, reserving for future consideration the study of its other functions. While reflecting on this subject, a very natural desire arose to group with it the other organs of sense, and to present to our readers as plain an account as we could, of the nature of the five external senses, of the organs in which they are seated, the means whereby they may become deranged, and the natural methods of preventing and remedying those derangements. External Senses. The external senses are five in number : feeling, taste, smell, hearing, and sight. They are intended FUNCTIONS OF THE SKIX. to apprise man of the objects he should seek or slum. They receive and transmit to the brain, those impressions which will enable him to judge of the qualities of bodies in the material world. The acuteness of the senses should be carefully cultivated, for the purpose of assisting the intellect in its power of active and precise discrimination of these objects, and also to supply it with materials wherewith to act. The simple employment of the senses does not increase directly the amount of intelligence, any more than the employment of the muscles of the body ; both are put in operation by the action of the brain. They must be regarded, therefore, as mere instruments of the brain, adding nothing directly to its perfection. The idiot and man of genius, the savage and the civilized, have the senses equally developed, while the intellectual development is far from being equal ; indeed, in the savage, the majority of the senses are far more acute, than they are among those who have the benefits of the instruction of civilized life. Feeling and Touch. The organ of feeling is the skin ; that of touch is the hand. There are different degrees of delicacy in the touch ; the ends of the fingers possess it to the most perfect extent, while it is less in the palm. In both, motion is needed to perfect the sense of touch ; but from the imperfect development of it in the palm of the hand, a movement, such as grasping, is absolutely needed to convey the impression of the form of a body to the brain. It is by the transmission of a certain species of knowledge to the brain, that feeling, in common with the other senses, guards the safety of the individual. There are a number of curious facts recorded in different scientific works, which prove the truth of this assertion. In the " Medico-Chirurgical Transactions," there is an ac- count of a man whose hands up to the wrists, and whose feet, and legs half way to the knees, were perfectly insensible to any species of injury ; such as cutting, pinching, scratching, 94 FUNCTIONS OF THE SKIN. or burning. This man accidently put one of his feet into boiling water, but was not otherwise aware of the high temperature, than by finding the whole surface completely blistered on removing it. A French surgeon, M. Rullier, gives also an instance of a patient who was similarly affected in his lower limbs, who twice burned himself in his knees, which were placed in contact with a hot stove, with such severity, that large scars were formed, without his having been warned of his danger or his exposure, such was the destitution of sensibility in the parts exposed. In another case, a patient was insensible to the progress of a severe inflammation in the arm, which took place from an injury ; indeed, such was the insensibility of the limb, that he actually broke his arm, and thought from the crush, that he had broken the spade with which he was at work ! In order to maintain the faculty of feeling and the delicacy of touch, cleanliness, the usual appliances of the toilet, fine clothing of a supple texture, and the avoidance of those occupations which tend to thicken the epidermis, as the fine outer covering of the skin is called, are all abso- lutely necessary. This is evident from the effect which an exposure to those circumstances which destroy the suscep- tibility of the skin produces. The hardy and rough occupation of a laborer, blacksmith, and of such as are necessarily exposed constantly to the violence of a severe atmosphere, with insufficient clothing, and yet retain their ordinary health all such persons are destitute of the delicacy of physical feeling which characterizes others differ- ently situated. In anticipation it is necessary to remark, that great care should be used not to place the sense of feeling too far removed from the source of its natural impressions, for by such a course, an excessive amount of sensibility would be developed, often to a very serious extent. These remarks do not apply to the sense of touch, as this FUNCTIONS OF THE SKIN. 95 never can be made too acutely sensitive, and it is only by the constant exercise of this sense that its delicacy can be perfected. Blind persons, who are forced to exercise it constantly, and who direct their attention almost exclusively to it, acquire the greatest delicacy of touch, and are able to read with facility in a mode which imparts no impression of a distinct character to others, who have not cultivated the sense of touch. As to directions for the cultivation of the sense of touch, they are almost unnecessary, for every one knows that the hand and fingers should be properly preserved in their delicacy to maintain it in its perfection ; bruises and injuries of every kind impair this sense very essentially, but it is rarely altogether destroyed. Feeling appears to be most useful in giving us a know- ledge of temperature. It indicates with accuracy the degree of heat which is proper for the maintenance of health, with reference to the atmosphere with which we are surrounded, and to the condition of our own bodies. The nerves distributed over the skin, are for this purpose a much better thermometer than the ordinary philosophical instrument, and whenever there is a want of correspondence between the latter and the sense of feeling, it should always be from our own sensations that we should derive the information we need. The temperature of stone, wood, linen, or wool, may be found precisely the same when measured by a thermometer ; yet these various substances, when in contact with the skin, produce a very different impression in the sensation they produce, each possessing different powers of carrying off heat. It is on this account that a linen garment next the skin, is so much more cold to the sensation than one of wool. Another illustration may be found in an ordinary cellar, where the temperature differs but little throughout the year ; yet we will experience a feeling of cold or heat as we enter it, in the summer or 96 FUNCTIONS OF THE SKIN. I* winter, arising from the transition from the external tem- perature to which the skin has become accustomed. The sensation of cold thus produced is not less injurious than actual cold applied to the body, which is applicable by the thermometer. The practical inference to be drawn from what we have said, is, that the sensations of feeling relative to tempera- ture at all ages, should be strictly heeded as a rule of health, with reference to the employment of clothing. This fact is of the greatest importance to persons of a delicate constitu- tion, and liable to be easily chilled. Such persons should never wear linen next to the surface of the body, nor sleep between linen sheets. Indeed, we regard the introduction of fine cotton sheets as a very great improvement in domes- tic economy, more especially as regards health. When an individual wishes to harden himself, as it is termed, against the natural changes of temperature, he should always keep in mind that he is not to accomplish this object by undergoing pain, or any disagreeable sensation, but only by cautiously inuring himself to the causes which produce these disagreeable sensations. The effort should be gradually made^ and stopped whenever any decidedly unpleasant effects are produced ; in this manner, much greater progress will be made than by enduring pain for that can never be done, even for a moderate period, with impunity. New-born children should always be kept warm ; besides other ill effects, the impressions of cold are extremely pain- ful to the skin, scarcely covered with the epidermis, and the sudden change experienced by the child, which has just passed from a temperature of 97 degrees. Instinct, expe- rience, and statistical records all agree in the importance of warmth to the young child. One of the manifestations of the love of all animals to their young, is to protect them from the vicissitudes of the atmosphere, and to impart to FUNCTIONS OF THE SKIN. 91 their offspring warmth from their own bodies. Nature also appears to slum the production in winter of such as suffer the most from cold. There have been a number of experiments made within a few years, upon the heat of the human body, and the fol- lowing interesting facts have been established : 1st. That power of producing heat is at its minimum in a new-born child the temperature at the arm-pits being 80 degrees, while in the adult it is 96 degrees. It is obvious that the demand for heat must be the greatest at this early period of life, when the supply from the body itself is so limited. 2d. That the youngest children are those that chill the most easily, and that their mortality often depends upon this natural condition of the system. Varied and extensive experiments have been made upon the lower animals, which it is unnecessary here to detail ; but they all go to show how injurious cold is to the young of all animals. Every farmer knows the disastrous effects of a backward spring in the poultry yard. These positions are fully maintained by statistical re- searches on the relation existing between the mortality of infants, and the true state of the thermometer, which prove that the mortality of new-born children is greatly increased by cold. In order to protect infants from the effects of cold, nurses should not judge of the effect produced by a slight degree of low temperature on their own sensations, for this is not the proper criterion ; a pale and shrunken aspect, cold hands and arms, will often appear in infants, arising from cold, when no sensation is experienced by an adult. In this country, where parents are mostly over-careful in keeping their children too warm, the summer is much more to be dreaded than winter ; for the deaths among children at that period of life are much more numerous at that 98 FDNCTIOXS OF THE SKIN. The attempts to render the child accustomed to the air and to cold, must never be neglected, for it will probably happen, as he grows older, that from the impossibility of carefully watching him on all occasions, he will at times be accidentally exposed to the influence of atmospheric vicissi- tudes. FASHIONABLE FROG-TOOLS. WATERING-PLACE SNOBS. HOTEL COXVENTIONALITr, WITH SPECIMENS OF EACH GBHUS AND SPECIES. IF there be one place this side of a beggar's opera and dinner-party, as described in the graphic page of some Euro- pean traveller, that presents to the observer a complete microcosm of humanity, it is an American watering-place. A season at Saratoga, Newport, or Cape May, opens as large a page of nature as the moderate intellect of an ordinary observer can well digest during the next year's existence ; and if its owner do not lose his individuality, and find his skull and its contents gradually turned into a porridge-pot, and give occasion to some of our pathological brethren for a post-mortem and certificate of " Ramollise- ment Cerebri"* he may thank Heaven for blunting his perceptive faculties, and saving his carcass from so high a preferment before the kind offices of an undertaker, or the keeper of a lunatic asylum, at the least. A periodical mania seizes most of our citizens at the approach of the dog-days, and as soon as the corporation let loose the dread ministers of the law on the unfortunate canine family, two legged Puppydom takes the alarm, and rushes from the city, like one of their four-legged brethren, alarmed at the novel appendage of a tin-kettle to his caudal extremity, and a free course up Broadway. We have made this extraordinary moral affection the sub- * Softening of (he brain. 100 WATERING-PLACE SNOBS. ject of considerable observation, during the last twenty years of our practice, and have studied the epidemic, as it has appeared in various parts of our country ; and as the disease has become exceedingly common and of unvaried periodical return, the observations made on some of the vic- tims may not be without interest to our readers. It is true, our experience has not been very extensive at those more notorious places, where the infection has been attended with most alarming symptoms, because we have found it both necessary and agreeable, during the latter portion of our professional life, to share our duties and observations with two associates, for whose safety we have a little more consi- deration than our more enthusiastic brethren usually have for themselves. The disease is not generally fatal to them, not only because they are mostly free from the complication of pecuniary congestion, but because their morals and man- ners, in their latter days, generally lend peculiar force to that elegantly illustrative apothegm "I'ts hard to spoil" a a ah the albuminous contents of a calciferous and ovicular receptacle of gallinaceous vitality usually called by the vulgar an egg, Excuse us, sweet reader, for the coarse allusion, and give us credit in the very introduction of the proverb to such refined notice, for perfect liberality in including ourselves in the category ; for, with a French- man's fondness for fresh eggs (not old doctors), truth and our glass compels the assurance, we are no chicken ; indeed, we think, dear child, when you have allowed the fringes of those heavenly eyes to droop from their marble sills over the windows of the soul, till you come to the end of this miserable article, you will be convinced you are listening to the crowing of an old cock. Pray heaven, dearest, you do not in that malicious little head, mentally invest us with one of the more envied attributes of that strutting country representative of the true watering-place gentleman : we are not omnivorous in our admiration of the gentler sex ; FASHIONABLE FROG-TOOLS. 101 although we confess a strong penchant for Turkey, we usually take it cooked ; for we swear to you, dear children, however disagreeably the confession may revive former delightful and youthful memories, we have not of late years had our vanity flattered by much attention from your sex. Indeed, upon occasion of the last favor that gladdened our eyes, when we fondly hoped to regale our nose with the delightful odor of au enticing bouquet, delivered in the very presence of one who well knows our amiability, we were greeted with the flavor of rue and wormwood, cunningly dis- posed by some naughty little fingers, around a dead hornet ! True it is, however, dearest, we always suspected it came in return for one we confess at least to have seen, before it was sent to our young friend, containing a mouse ; but the little creature was only designed to typify gentle innocence, and was sent in a freak of invincible jocularity ; two or three having reached the hands of the same lovely creature, done up as wedding-cake, and if truth be all told, a couple as oyster patties. Besides, Shakspere says in his Twelfth Night, " true, my mouse of virtue," and in Hamlet it is bestowed by the king as a term of endearment on the newly-widowed queen though not too well deserved, it would seem, by that devoted lady as illustrative of her virtue. Well, then, our amiability and experience being taken for granted, we will enter upon our investigation of the tempo- rary diseases of the different classes, occupants of , with now and then the more interesting points of an indi- vidual. But first, en passant : as we are known to be so ^thoroughly pachydermatous, and utterly unsusceptible of all the gentler emotions, we never had the slightest reason to expect attention from any of the individual specimens we describe. We merely view them as a class of humanity, worthy the study of the reader of such a unique volume C.-3 is here presented and with no desire to cultivate an 102 WATERING-PLACE SNOBS. tinamiable dissatisfaction with any of the works of nature particularly that puffing genus, the batrachia, or its human synonym, the snob. The first point that strikes the observation of the practi- cal surgeon, as he dismounts from his vehicle, covered and begrimed with dust, is the extraordinary prevalence of the spinal affections, and near-sightedness ; the next, the con- templative and resigned expression of a number of gentlemen, usually in black, walking solitary and alone up and down the piazza, with their hands behind their backs. The first of these affections is an awful and hopeless dis- ease, very afflictive to the genus snob, wherever found and familiarly known to surgeons as the backward curvature of the spine. It is usually the consequence of pecuniary reple- tion, and is rarely observed before the patient's fortieth year, unless in times of speculation, when it has been known to occur at the twenty-fifth. Occasionally it is hereditary, when the abdominal projection that seems to have been intended by nature as a counterpoise to the backward cur- vature of the spine, is accompanied with the unfortunate condition of cerebral atrophy ; do not suppose, however, that the patient is destitute of brains ; a little conversation with the unfortunate individual will soon convince you of that extraordinary yet common phenomenon of the transpo- sition of the cerebral and abdominal contents, so well known to the immortal physiologist of Avon, when he makes one of his heroes say : " You carry your brains in your belly, and your g s in your head." The seniors amongst these afflicted individuals, or as they are sometimes affectionately called by their dutiful progeny, " the governors," are remarkably tenacious of their position, as they fondly term their acknowledged height upon the ladder of snobdom ; this is graduated entirely by the amount of their fortune : nothing under $100,000 and a carriage, FASHIONABLE FROG-POOLS. 103 will entitle them to the disease ; and they are sure to escape till that amount is obtained ; the affliction is progressively increased, and reaches its maximum at $1,000,000. A remarkable physiological peculiarity iu the afflicted offspring of this species of the snob, is the extraordinary smallness and insecurity of their legs, together with the approximation of the knee joints ; near-sightedness also prevails amongst these tender goslings to a remarkable extent ; you may know them by their eye-glasses, and the enormous bars of their checkered trowsers, not forgetting the angle at which their hats are adjusted. It has been suggested by unlettered observers, that the exceeding feebleness of their pins and eyes, is due to their own vices ; but this is a slander origi- nating in the minds of the vulgar. A gentleman should never do anything which another can possibly accomplish for him ; and although he may be obliged to sustain himself on his own legs, it is but proper that there should be a marked difference in the manner, between himself and those ordinary individuals who may require them for the more vulgar pur- poses of active locomotion. No doubt, the distinctive smalluess of the legs, is due to the refined quality of their material, and is a merciful provision of nature to match the slender cerebral and abdominal superstructure. Still it is somewhat remarkable, when we consider the brawny devel- opment of their progenitors, particularly if they have been accustomed to menial employment, or the more active duties of the loom, the spade, or the pick. The latter is produc- tive of an unsightly disease, the forward curvature of the back-bone or spine. This is very afflictive to the snob, more especially if his known employment has been calculated to produce such an anatomical peculiarity ; it revives unplea- sant memories of the lap-stone and jack-plane, and is prima- facie evidence of that horribly vulgar disease called industry : if known to have thus originated, the unfortunate possessor of the deformity may quite as well have the plague or the 1 04 WATERING-PLACE SNOBS. leprosy, for he is at once ostracized tabooed and pro- nounced unclean. Should he venture, in a thoughtless moment, to salute one of the victims afflicted with the oppo- site condition of the spinal column, the latter is generally seized with a spasmodic attack of coughing, or his immediate attention is suddenly arrested by a lady or gentleman on the other end of the piazza, to whose presence he immediately rushes as a refuge. If the offensive and plebeian salutation be made to a junior, he avails himself of his eye-glass ; this he levels with amazement against shoes or jack-plane, with the effect of setting him off at an angle, and producing a considerable increase in the curvature of his shoulders ; bringing his hand behind his back, and inducing a contem- plative abasement of his eyes. We have occasionally seen Shoes, worth $50,000, salute Sugar, $250,000, when the effect was peculiarly rapid, inducing the belief that poor Wax- end had been electrified ; on more than one such occasion, we addressed our utmost benevolence to his relief, but with very little success for some time ; the poor fellow, like Crusoe's man Friday, evidently mistrusting that we also were a cannibal, and would eat him up ; finally, however, on finding a supporter of $100,000 in Rags, he regained his self-possession, his curvature decreasing considerably. There is a complaint, observed amongst a large class of the frequenters of watering-places, that is productive of an inconvenient result in promenading on a narrow piazza. It is a disease peculiar to the dry goods snob, and consists in a constant tendency of the thumbs to contend for the posi- tion usually occupied by the palm ; this brings the hand at an inconvenient angle with the body ; and if the gentleman be very impressive in his religious or political disquisitions (the afflicted individuals are always addicted to the vice of denunciation on one or the other subject) he constantly invades your ribs with his knuckles, and you will do well to have a care of your eyes. When seated, and especially if F A 3 III X A I! I, K F II 1. - 1' L S . 105 in front of a circle of ladies, the same remarkable ten- dency is apparent : the individual grasping either thigh with that useful and economical measuring member the thumb, on the outer side ; this is peculiarly elegant and graceful. Several other less distinctly marked peculiarities, such as the rapid approximation of the hands, in the auctioneer, knocking off, as it were ; the latitudinarian flourishes of the entire arm in the shoemaker, as though drawing the wax- end ; a frequent graceful pronation of the hand, throwing jauntily outward the massive seal ring of the barkeeper (and sometimes of the bishop), indicate the pursuits that have led to these different afflictions in the gentlemen. The ladies, God bless them, with their refined perception, and intuitive tact, avoid all such illustrative demonstrations, by profound quiet ; the code of watering-place manners, recognizing nothing as so absolutely indicative of in-born aristocracy, as that elegant indifference to all surrounding things, evinced by the sleepy, voluptuous, half-closed eye, and the beautifully jewelled fingers of a hand elegantly dis- posed across the person in a loving embrace, with the charming little foot peeping from under the dress like a mouse. It has been suspected that such a disposition of things might indicate a degree of lightness of the brain, that would not admit of much mental effort. Be this as it may, there is no doubt of its peculiar acceptability to most Ame- rican gentlemen. A box of bon bons, an assortment of ribbons, laces, and jewelry, have been known to produce signs of vitality. An affection of the arms, of a very singular character, had a very short run in Broadway, and was occasionally noticed amongst a certain class at the watering-places, but it has now passed into the Bowery and Chatham street. It con- sisted of an angular contraction of the arm of the gentleman nearest the lady, the hand being disposed behind the back, 106 WATERING-PLACE SNOBS. like the wing of a trussed green goose ; the lady entered delightfully into the arrangement, and consented to be pushed along in a very loving manner, in a sort of let-me-go hold-me-fast way, quite enchanting. We must defer our observations on the watering-place literati, and wife and husband hunters, to another article ; they constitute extremely interesting varieties to the medi- cal psychologist. CAUSES OF EAHLY DECAY IX WOMAN. 107 WOMAN. WHAT ARE THE CAUSES OP EARLY DECAY IN AMERICAN WOMEN? " Truth is the body of God ; and Light is his shadow." WHETHER the proposition assumed to be true in this query be admitted or denied, it is probable the writer will receive credit for sincerity, in venturing to assert the existence of very extensive physical inferiority in that sex, who are the unquestioned arbiters of the success of every medical candi- date for popular favor. Her power to please, and the dread of her disapproba- tion, hold our sex in such absolute subjection, that the men- tor is too often merged into the lover, and even while fascinated by her presence, and trying to silence our hearts for our dereliction, her fragile form is bending under those unchangeable and inexorable laws to whose teachings we have failed to direct her, and the grave receives at once the object of our love, and the evidence of our neglect of a duty, more sacred than any other enjoined upon us by the Crea- tor. Yes : Man should be the teacher of woman ; he enjoys the privilege to guide her steps aright ; his is the strong arm and the judging head ; hers it is to illumine the path with the sunlight of her smile, to gladden his ear with the music of her voice, and to cheer him with the blest and refining influence of her presence. We do not believe it was the design of the Creator to invest her with the sterner attributes of a "Newton or a La 108 CAUSES OF EARLY DECAY IN WOMAN. Place, a Washington or a Shakspeare. It is glory enough for her to have nourished the philosopher with her blood, to have planted the seeds of virtue in his heart, and led his steps to an age when he becomes her protector and the ful- filler of his destiny. In thus expressing ourselves, shall we be told by some miscalled reformer, that we degrade the position of woman ? Who was the mother of Christ ? Who of the philosophers, heroes and poets who have shed lustre upon past ages ? They neither discovered the laws of motion of a universe, upheld expiring liberty, nor impressed the living page with the inmost emotions of the soul : they fulfilled their destiny ; let us not forget ours. Could we induce ourselves to believe the sole mission of the physican to be the administration of pills and potions, and to yield a servile obedience to the caprices of his employers (a bondage that dishonors and degrades him), our remarks would be impertinent. But we believe our pro- fession to be that of a teacher of the laws of our being. Our College Edifice is magnificent ; aye, as extensive as the earth ; our laboratory and cabinet, whatever it contains ; our pupils, mankind ; our text book, the page of nature. It is true we sell no diplomas, and minister with feebleness at her altar ; we cannot always keep our spirit to the desired height amidst the daily toil of professional life, but to the best of our perception we shall always speak the truth. If it were not for the present wretched state of their moral and physical education, and the too early development of the sexual passions, or that miserable spirit that presides over the hearts and money bags of too many of our species, our children might start on the race of life with far better prospects of reaching its natural termination : marriages would not be contracted before the age of reason, witli that absolute selfishness that now governs them. Scrofula would not mate with scrofula, insuring consumption to a line of CAUSES OF EARLY DECAY IV WOMAN. 109 diseased offspring. Insanity would not seek the altar as a certain introduction to the mad-house. Gout would not bequeath his aching toes and crutches to a line of cripples : nor Syphilis poison the secret springs of life in the unborn babe, till the mother in the agony of her spirit craves its death as the most merciful boon of Heaven. These thing have been called by worthy people " the mys- terious dispensations of Providence." But the nineteenth century, with her tables of statistics, and her flood of physio- logical light, will no longer permit us to soothe our con- sciences with such a delightful plaster for sins against light and knowledge. The sins of the parents are indeed visited on the third generation of them that know the right and still the wrong pursue. Is there no remedy for so great an evil ? Can man look upon the page of nature, and thence into the face of his Creator, and curse him for abandoning the work of his hands to premature destruction ? These bodies, so curiously and wonderfully fashioned, were not designed for the worm ere nature had asserted the power of continuing the species : or what is far more dreadful, for implanting the seeds of early death in our offspring. Let us examine the pages of our great teacher, and see if we can discover the causes of such frequent failures in attaining her end. So far as it concerns their original organic strength or life-force, males and females are brought into the world with equal chances of life, whatever the condition of health may be in the parents. Both sexes however, have, in our opinion, better chances of surviving, if the mother be healthy, even if the father be feeble ; for the development of the body depending upon the blood of the mother exclusively, health is more likely to exist at its birth, if the supply of the mate- rial be pure and plenty. The chances continue to be equal, so far as our observation goes, during the period of early infancy, or to be more accurate, before they can run. 110 CAUSES OF EARLY DECAY IN WOMAN. After this, boys enjoy by far the best chances of acquiring health until adult life, when casualties and dissipation, and subsequently the cares and anxieties attendant on the sup- port of a family, increase the mortality amongst males. It is probably for this reason that the number of male births exceed the female ones about four per cent. But we must shun statistics : however enticing to the medical philoso- pher and convincing to the reader, they will afford little aid in the views we take of the causes of the physical inferiority of our countrywomen. If it be true, then, that the chances of health for the two sexes are equal at the outset, and continue so till the period when they first attain the full use of their legs, we must show some very decided and indisputable causes for the dif- ference observable at puberty, or what we have yet to say, will serve but to show our own folly in making assertions we cannot substantiate. Let us look a little after their early training. We will take for example a sister and brother ; the girl of eight years, the boy of six. We give the girl two years start of the boy, to make her condition equal to his at the outset. Both have endured the torture of bandaging, pinning and tight dressing at birth ; both have been rocked, jounced upon the knee, pap'd, laudanum'd, paregoric'd, castor oil'd, and suffocated with a blanket over the head, sweltered with a cap and feather bed, roasted at a fire of anthracite, and poisoned with the foul air of an unventilated chamber, according to the universal formula of some superannuated doctor, or experienced nurse ; probably both, for these people usually hunt in couples and are very gracious to each other. We give the girl enough start, to make up for the benefit the boy has derived from chasing the cat, and an occasional tumble in the hall or yard, and the torture she had endured from her sampler, and being compelled to " sit up straight " and not be a " hoyden." Our little couple start for school, with such a minimum CAUSES OF EARLY- DECAY IN WOMAN. Ill of lungs as the unnatural life they have led will allow, and a stomach that is yet fresh enough to endure bad bread, plum cake, candies aud diseased milk. The reader will remember that nature is benificent, and will endure much abuse before she succumbs. Well they are off for school. Observe how circumspectly my little miss walks ; soon she chides her brother for being " rude." He, nothing daunted, starts full tilt after a stray dog or pig ; and though he often tumble in the mud, and his clothes get spoiled, the result is soon visible in increase of lungs and ruddy cheeks. He can- not run without more breath ; he cannot continue to run without increased dimensions and power of lungs ; he cannot have large lungs without good digestion ; he will feed well, and thrive apace. They are now at school, seated on a bench without a back, and often with their legs hanging down, so that the poor back-bone has no earthly support. Thus sits the wretched child with book in hand, from nine till twelve or one o'clock, and sometimes three. The boy, with the aid of sticking a pin now aud then in his neighbor, and occasionally falling asleep and tumbling from his bench, from pure nervous exhaustion, to the great relief of his half-stagnant blood- vessels and torpid nerves, endures it till another merciful pig or dog chase makes him feel that he is alive. But our unfortunate little miss is in a distressed con- dition. She is charged to walk " straight home," where she is allowed to select her dinner from those articles that afford the least nutrition, such as pastry, cake, rich puddings, aud apples. This, by the way, is her second meal of the same character, having taken one either at breakfast or lunch. Indeed, she requires no better food ; for she has had no exercise to consume the azote of the meat she ought to eat. Remember, that her muscles move her limbs, and are composed chiefly of azote ; and it is the red meat or muscle of beef and mutton that she would eat if she had any appe- 112 CAUSES OF EARLY DECAY IN WOMAN. tite for it, that is to say, if her stomach and bloodvessels would endure it : the fact is, the child has fever, and loathes meat. After dinner, she either sits down to her sampler, or the piano, and in all probability finishes the day's feeding with tea and preserves. She is then posted off to a feather-bed in an unventilated room, with the door shut for fear the little darling will take cold. A Nott's stove or furnace keeps the upper chambers from 85 to 100, and the feather-bed and the blankets, retaining all the heat of the body, swelter the wretched little creature till morning. What wonder that she gets spinal curvature, if not actual deposits of tubercles in the body of her vertebrae or lungs ? All this we have explained at length in the article on Consumption. "We have there shown, that although strongly predisposed to that form of scrofula, consumption, as well as spinal disease, can often be overcome by exercise, air and a strong meat diet ; and though a child be actually free of scrofula, that it may be produced by such a barbarous and wretched mode of life as we have painted above ; one that we grieve to* say, is extremely common in this city. Boys often escape these evils by parental neglect and a precious boon for them it is ; but the poor girls are deprived of nature's only method of keeping the pale-faced monster at bay. Now, if this picture be denied, take you two children of common parents, at a common country school, two miles from home, and if they have sufficient clothing, and good food, even though the benches have no backs, and the school- house be overheated and little better than a pig-pen, tell me, if at twelve years of age the girl cannot often wrestle with her brother, and ask no favors of him. As the period of puberty approaches, the constant depri- vation of her natural wants, of good air, plain nutritious food, and plenty of unrestrained exercise, becomes more apparent in its results : she is exceedingly awkward ; her CAUSES OF EARLY DECAY IN WOMAN. 113 face is pale and her eyelids swollen ; the tight dresses, those accursed women-killers, cripple the play of the heart and lungs, and do not allow the blood to circulate freely in the extremities : in short, she is literally a bread and butter girl, with a distressing consciousness of being all hands and feet. But now commences another and more serious diffi- culty : she is to enter upon a new and wonderful phase of her existence : nature is about to show her power in estab- lishing a function, which is the evidence of the greatest change in her physical and moral nature. This change, when healthfully established, is the assurance that the life-forces of her system have been silently accumulating till they are redundant. If she have been permitted to share the sports of her brothers, and to enjoy the comfort of a happy home and intellectual parents, her cheek may be invested witli the blush of modesty, and her eyes assume the language of love unconsciously to herself ; nature's great end is attained with so little disturbance of the nervous and circulating functions, that a few weeks produce an astonishing change in her appearance. But yesterday, she was a child ; pleased with a puppet or a doll ; now, she is a woman, prepared to sym- pathize and to love. Suppose, on the other hand, she be the unfortunate child of uneducated and vulgar parents, whose absurd ideas of gentility and education have dragged or driven her through early infancy in the manner we have endeavored to set forth. The period for the great change arrives, and the mother, totally uninformed of the rationale of the function, and knowing nothing but the fact that her child is still more wretched than before, sends for her physician. He, perhaps, almost equally ignorant with herself, or what is still worse, being a miserable time-server, sees the admirable facilities for " making a bill,'' and straightway commences a scene of deception and ignorance, that if it do not result in the death of his unfortunate patient, leaves her a miserable creature, 114 CAUSES OF EARLY DECAY IN WOMAN. with spinal curvature, or consumption, or still worse, by confinement and physic, destroys her only chance of restora- tion, and causes her, should she struggle through this eventful period of her life and become a mother, upon her second if not her first confinement, to drag out a wretched life, lying upon her couch from pure inability to stand up, a victim of prolapsus uteri. The truth is, nature has been utterly foiled in the proper attainment of her greatest end, by crippling her only method of producing the life-force. Air, food, and exercise of pro- per quality and quantity, and unrestrained song, laughter, and sport ; these are her means, and these she must have, or healthful puberty can never be established. If she finally break through all this cordon of ignorance, and attempt to invest her child with the crowning glory of womanhood, if the rose at last blooms faintly on her cheek, it is but too often the precursor of hysteria, and instead of being the delight of the social circle, she becomes a constant source of anxiety and misery to those who surround her. In short, she becomes " nervous," and that is an epitome of horrors often worse than death itself. So far we have spoken of the more palpable evils of her every-day existence, whose direct effect on her body is so apparent, that they are beginning to attract the notice of the thinking world. How shall we approach the subject of her intellectual being ? What can we say of her mental education as conducted in this city ? In the article on the " Pathology of a Fashionable Lady," we have given a picture of such startling truthfulness, that it is enough to rouse the attention even of a fashionable mother. It sickens the heart to contemplate the education of female children in this city. Should nature even triumph over all the evils we have enumerated, no sooner has the poor girl attained the age of puberty, than her mind and nervous system are placed upon the rack of novel reading CAUSES OP EARLY DECAY IN WOMAN. 115 and sentimental love-stories. There is just enough of truth in most of these mawkish productions, to excite the passions and distract the attention of the young girl from the love of nature and her teachings, and all rational ideas of real life, and to cause her to despise the (to her) commonplace parents, whose every hour may be occupied with considera- tion for her welfare. There is one firm in this city (very pious of course) who have done more to injure the morals of our young girls, by the publication of the overstrained and impure productions of the infamous school of modern French novelists, than they could atone for were their worthless and selfish bodies chained to a street sweeper's cart for a century ; the filth of the streets they ought to be sweeping, is not more noisome to the senses, than the immoral filth they have sown in the hearts of our children. Am I told by some thin- skinned fashionable, that such expressions are too severe ? What language can be too strong for such disgusting hypo- crisy ? We punish a poor wretch for the publication of an obscene book or print, and give honors and preferments to those who instil poison into the minds of our children, pre- pared with devilish ingenuity, and in every possible style of attraction, by a jaded libertine of the French Capital. Dickens and Bremer, Sedgwick and Child, may coun- teract, in some degree, the effect of the writings of such moral lepers, but when mothers praise such productions in the presence of their children, there is but too much reason to suppose they will be read by the curious girl, and their full effect produced. It is the premature excitement of the nervous and uterine system that we dread : the licentious characters presented in all the glowing tints of a depraved imagination, cannot fail injuriously to affect the youthful organism. Nothing can be more certain than the production by these works of a precocious evidence of puberty. The forces of the young 116 CAUSES OF EARLY DECAY IN WOMAN. heart and vascular system, are thus prematurely goaded into ephemeral action, by the stimulus of an imagination alter- nately moved to laughter and tears and sexual passion. A morbid centre is thus created in the system, whose pernicious action is manifest in the diversified forms of hysteria ; and nothing less than the total wreck of the youthful body, often follows this infernal hot-bed of the passions, this altar of sacrifice for the young. To this pernicious training, we may add the example of that insane passion for dress, that constantly leads the mother from attention to her offspring, and the instruction of her own mind in those great truths essential to the proper conduct of every family. It is impossible for a child to form elevated ideas of morality or correct taste, if constantly under the influence of a mother whose whole soul is absorbed in the set or color of a dress or a bonnet. On this subject it would be well for our countrywomen to notice the remarks of some of their own sex, whose for- tunes and inclinations have led them to the observance of foreign customs amongst those to whom wealth is no novelty. We have often heard our intelligent countrywomen remark, that no lady abroad, would be seen in such walking- dresses as we may constantly see in Broadway. It is true these dresses are never seen here upon those whose early training and associations have taught them better taste, but we are desirous that our countrywomen generally should be as celebrated for their good sense as they justly are for their beauty. If we are asked what this has to do with health, we reply, that extravagant and elaborate dress, not only incapacitates the body for natural and graceful movements, but by pre- occupying the mind, often exhausts the nervous system before the wearer leaves her house for needful exercise. And what is worse than all, the insanity of emulation in dress), too often deprives a household of those minor comforts and ornaments, CAUSES OF EARLY DECAY IX WOMAN. 117 upon which so much of our health and happiness depends. There is little doubt that a well-furnished and judiciously- selected library, and those other indispensable aids to the formation of a correct taste in children, good drawings, and casts of statues of artistic merit, might often be purchased by the exercise of a refined economy in dress, by the time her children were old enough to appreciate them, by many a mother who now sighs at her inability to compete in extra vagant dress, with a wealthy and vulgar neighbor. The constant changes of fashion in female dress, often afford the Broadway philosopher the most grotesque and ridiculous exhibitions of the skill of the cunning modistes who devise them ; their surprising ingenuity in contriving means for filling their pockets and unsettling the feeble intel- lects of their purchasers, is matter of astonishment, whilst the melancholy results of a close application to that death- distributing agent the needle, is visible in the pale cheeks of their wretched employes, who are sacrificed by thousands on the altar of cupidity and fashion. Some time before the death of a dear friend, whose charming pictures still speak his memory, and revive our delighted though sad recollection of his wit and companion- ship, we suggested, upon the appearance of some new and monstrous absurdities in the dress of both sexes, that he would allow his name, so intimately connected with refine- ment and correct taste, to be associated with some of the more eminent of the ladies, medical faculty, and others of our graver and accomplished citizens, in the formation of a society to reform the monstrous absurdities of dress. That we should depend upon the caprice of some mere Parisian ape of a tailor or modiste, who often retail to our innocent countrywomen some ingenious device to conceal a defective figure, or to display the contour of a voluptuous person, when we have before us the classical representations of the antique dress, and could so readily adapt them to the use and eutiro 118 CAUSES OF EARLY DECAY IN WOMAN. convenience of modern life, forms a humiliating reflection to a country of twenty millions of people, and one that boasts a model government. Every American woman should be above receiving the dictum of an ignorant and tasteless dress-maker ; she should be instructed in the anatomy and physiology of her system, and be perfectly able, at puberty, to give a correct outline of a classical figure, and its appropriate dress, on the black- board. She should then be instructed to cut her own dresses in a simple and elegant manner, and adapt them to her figure, so that not the least pressure should exist on any part of her person. Indeed, without a good knowledge of the pencil and the harmony of colors, her person and her house will present what is so frequent in this city, a grotesque arrangement of dress, suitable for a carnival or madhouse, and a drawing-room that would pass for a furniture store or a pawnbroker's shop. So much, in our own opinion, is due to an incorrect and servile taste in dress, that it is one of the principal causes of the early decay of our countrywomen. Our climate demands during one-third of the year, absolute warmth and dry feet ; and our fashionable countrywomen would consider them- selves disgraced by appearing in public, with a dress and shoes that every intelligent Englishwoman wears as a mat- ter of course. On the subject of music, dancing, and declamation, as connected with health, we could extend our ideas far beyond the limit of a single article. They have much to do with the physical inferiority of the present generation of women. The full use of the lungs is so absolutely connected with the preservation of health, that we consider vocal music insepa- rable from a true physiological education. The full inflation necessary for the sustained expression of the author's idea in vocal music, is the best possible stimulus that can be used within doors, for their healthy development, and the pre- CAUSES OF EARLY DECAY IX W il A X . 119 vention of scrofula or tubercular deposits ; many a young girl has been saved from consumption by early instruction in vocal music. Declamation, or the clear and distinct utterance in a loud and full voice, whilst standing erect (and with the lungs fully inflated, and filled as fast as exhausted), of the more elegant compositions in prose and verse, of English and French authors, is productive of the same result, and should never be neglected in the education of every young girl. There is not one American woman in a thousand, who can read elegantly or even correctly. What shall we say of the music of the opera ? "We are far from being insensible to its charms, and the refining influence it exerts upon the taste of the adult, but can by no means assent to its good influence upon the young girl. It is the highest expression of the language of passion, and as such, cannot but be adapted to that premature develop- ment of that system, so completely under the influence of passional emotion. That opera music is suggestive of higher thoughts and emotions, we freely admit, and believe that intellectual adults may enjoy it with propriety ; but we ought not to forget that those high intellectual abstractions that may refine the intellect of the adult, are produced by the action of two senses, equally suggestive of earlier and stronger emotions of a sensual character, in those whose years have not allowed the accumulation of material for thought and comparison. The piano, with judiciously selected vocal music, is not liable to so great an objection ; that instrument is certainly well adapted for early instruction in the rudiments of music and patience ; it is only to be regretted that it is so often made the means of injury to the health of the learner, by occupying too much of her attention, too frequently under the instruction of a teacher who seems utterly unsuspicious of the existence of fingers or wrist-joints, or that the back- bone is composed of vertebras. The bent position in which 120 CAUSES OF EARLY DECAY IN WOMAN. a delicate or scrofulous child is compelled to sit for hours, practising a distasteful task, when nature cries aloud for air, exercise and mirth (merely to please the aspirations of a vulgar mother, or needy and perhaps incompetent teacher, and when, frequently, there is not a reasonable hope of the wretched child attaining the age of puberty), forces upon us the conviction that it plays a prominent part in the early sacrifice of female life ; indeed we think it may fairly be classed with the needle in its pernicious results ; a single hour for a strong one, or a half hour for a delicate child, is all that should be devoted at one time, to this agreeable but dangerous instrument. Dancing, an accomplishment admirably adapted to the promotion of gracefulness and health, is too often made the means of developing impurity of taste in the young. That charming union of dignity and grace, so observable in the movements of that elegant dance of our ancestors, the min- uet, serves by contrast, to show the sensual and impure character of some of the others ; a few of the modern dances are also well adapted for the young. It is deeply to be regretted, that we have -so far forgotten our national dig- nity, as to import the lascivious dances of the French capital, for they are adapted neither to the health nor men- tal purity of our children. The excessive indulgence in the dance in overheated ball- rooms, is productive of some of the worst results brought under medical notice, and is one of the principal causes of ill health in our young women. If the other branches of education were invested with that charm that might be imparted to them by competent instructors, the dance would not hold the youthful mind in such absolute subjection. The nervous exhaustion attendant upon committing to memory long and absurd tasks, during those hours when the young girl should forget that there is a school, and which should be devoted entirely to exercise and pleasing diversion, and CAUSES OF EARLY DECAY IN WOMAN. 121 above all, to walking in the open air, causes her to seize, too often with a morbid and insane avidity, upon dancing, as the only real recreation she is permitted to enjoy ; consequently, that which is designed for a graceful accom- plishment and pleasing relaxation from more serious pur- suits, often occupies the mind exclusively, and proves equally degrading to her intellect, and injurious to her health. The oral system of instruction, the only method congenial to nature, should be adopted in every school desirous of improving the youthful mind and body, and elevating the intellect of the learner ; then the reasoning powers would be developed, and facts and beautiful and true analogies would fill the mind, instead of musty rules, and words often as unintelligible to the teacher as to the learner. Successfully to impart knowledge, the eloquence of the voice, the eye, the countenance of an intellectual teacher, who loves his subject and his pupil, and above all, who remembers the workings of his youthful mind, and has not forgotten that dark period of his own life, when he was condemned to the miserable punishment of standing before an ignorant automaton, with a lash or ferule in his hand; his young heart burning for sympathy and knowledge, and filled with rage against his persecutor ; that is necessary, that is electrical in its effect. But alas ! that would require educated and accomplished instructors, who fully appreciate their glorious calling, and above all, parents, to reward and honor them. That method, with hourly relaxation, during which the mind could be delighted and elevated by experiments in natural philosophy, and more especially chemistry and physiology, music, and drawing, that would cultivate memory, reason, judgment, and taste, that would refine the intellect and improve the heart. When the young girl enters society, too frequently at her sixteenth year, even if she have, to appearance, escaped the 122 CAUSES OF EARLY DECAY IN WOMAN. bodily evils we have enumerated, she is often hnrled into a scene of dissipation that speedily makes them evident, or she seals her fate by premature marriage and the cares of a family, before either her mind or her body is fitted for her own preservation, much less the guidance of children. Then follows the attendance of some illy-educated or designing but diploma'd quack, and she is taught to believe that his sense- less prescriptions will cure her, without amending her habits of life ; thus she settles down into a nervous invalid. All this we often hear imputed to our climate. Look at our revolutionary grandmothers, nay, our mothers ! for many of them are yet here. We honestly believe, on the honor of our manhood, and what little knowledge we have, that there is comparatively nothing in our climate to bring about the condition of our young women, nor even any defect in the original constitution of one-half of the victims of early disease, that might not be overcome, were it not for the errors of their early education, their early introduc- tion into society, and the fulsome adulations of our own sex. Society, in our country, is composed of boys and girls not men and women. The senseless and degrading flattery with which her ears are constantly filled, pre-occupies the mind of the poor girl in the whirl of fashion and dissipation, and robs her of the benefit of that keen instinct and delicate perception, she derives from her finer and more delicate organization ; but of this we deprive her by the errors of her early training. The fault is ours, not hers, but full sadly does she suffer for it. But we might protract this subject indefinitely, aye, even to the filling of a volume, and all we could say would go to prove, that as a nation we live too fast, we educate our children too superficially, and their nervous system at the expense of their intellect. Our great master, John Hunter, has told us, that "increased action is followed by diminished power," and this is as applicable to the arteries of a human CAUSES OF EARLY DECAY IN WOMAX. 123 being, as to the hose of an engine. There is a regular series of changes from the earliest infancy, to that period when we pay back the debt of nature, that show by their unvaried sequence in such as die in advanced age, that the intention of nature was, that we should not be resolved into our original elements, until the gradual decay of our facul- ties rendered us of little use to those who surround us. Not only other animals, but the vegetable kingdom, afford ample analogical proof, that a healthy maturity and natural decay, await those only who have not been forced to a pre- mature development. The majestic oak that strikes its roots deep into the earth, or "tosses its giant arms from the stormy promontory," and derives increasing strength from the storms of heaven the lordly and ponderous elephant that tramps over the plains of India the eagle that " sails athwart the skies and o'er the rolling deep," and that mighty monster that sports amid the billows, and whose vast bulk is nourished with hecatombs of living creatures, all derive length of days, majesty and power, from following the simple and natural dictates of our ever-watchful but inexorable mother. Man alone, with his lofty powers of reason, from the influence of unrestrained passion and diso- bedience to her laws, is subject by infinite odds, to a far greater number of casualties, that break the brittle thread of his existence, and cause him to water the earth with his tears, than any of the superior tribes of animals. We look with comparative calmness upon the face of the aged and virtuous parent, as it lies shrouded in the dignity of death ; our hearts may bleed, but we feel no shock ; reflection tells us, all the resources of joy and mirth are exhausted ; the life-spark has passed into the survivors ; in the beautiful language of Scripture, " being dead it yet speaketh." The body is about to " mingle with the atmos- phere and earth, whence it originated," and the spirit to return to its God. But oh ! when youth and vigor and 124 CAUSES OF EARLY DECAY IN WOMAN. hope are summoned, when death comes to them arrayed in the hideousness of disease, racking the bones, wasting the flesh sending fever through the blood, and playing its dread- ful experiments upon the fragile form of loveliness, which the kindness of parent, brother, friend, " has scarce suffered the winds of heaven to visit too roughly," tearing them from earth, its prospects of bliss, and the convulsive grasp of affection, then indeed, we have cause to shudder at the con- sequences of our departure from the beneficent laws of our Creator. A WESTERN C A II P - M E E T I X G . 125 SKETCHES OF A WESTERN STUDENT'S LIFE. THE CAMP-MEETING A GRAPHIC SCENE A REVIVAL A SERMOH LUDICROUS ] ZACCHEUS CAMP-MEETING WOLVES A MIDNIGHT ATTACK PECULIAR QESIUS OF THB TRUE METHODIST PREACHER, BY A BACKSLIDER. Ox a road that runs through a rough wood country, along a clear stream, towards Batavia, iu Western New York, at the junction of two small streams, may be found a sloping dell, shaded with beech and maple. There our Methodist friends had pitched their tents, and prepared for a camp meeting and there, as I had a medical vacation, I accom- panied them. It was a week before Conference, and all the big guns were on their way to the gathering at Rochester. On Thursday night, the whole forest was specked over with white tents ; the brush was cleared out ; the logs rolled into lines, and seats made with slabs and boards and green poles. Around the encampment, a rude brush fence was reared, to keep off the disciples of the adversary. At the bottom of this dell, the altar was located built of rude hemlock boards ; and directly in front of it, at the distance of forty feet, stood a beautiful young maple, with a round top and a very smooth, straight trunk. In clearing the ground, the devil had taken advantage of this tree to destroy the meet- ing, and instigated the brethren to spare it for its beauty. Who could be so wicked as to destroy such a beautiful young maple ? From all the hills and vales for twenty miles around, by Friday night, the brethren had come in, and the hale honest 126 SKETCHES OF WESTER X LIFE. faces of the old and the young sisters, lighted the throng with an air of goodness. There is a frankness and sincerity among Methodist women, that greatly endears them to me. I love frankness and a plain straightforwardness above all other gifts of Heaven. The tent coverings were all of white cotton and linen. All the food was cooked, and fires were only kept to cheer the evening, and make their tea. The air of the evenings was gentle and balmy as an angel's breath ; and the camp-fires flickered among the green trees, and lighted up the surrounding forest with a holy splendor. The singing in the wild wood, by these night fires, the white tents ranged in a vast circle, and each group or family by the tent door, and a clear light flashing upon the altar and the broad plain faces of the large circle of preachers, lighted up the whole scene with a wild enchantment, that I can never forget. The evenings were opened by prayer and singing, and then a sermon from some younger brother. They were saving the best bits for a Sabbath treat ; for a strong onset upon the citadel of Satan ; and a grand gather- ing of the saved into the fold of the Lord for a finale. My maternal grandfather was a Methodist preacher, and after serving his country in the war, caused by the tea-tax imposed by our wicked old mother, he emigrated to the head of the Susquehanna river, and engaged in fighting the battles of free grace. After planting small churches over a vast region of new country, and watering them with the best love of his strong heart, broken with age, and weighed down with want, he settled some miles from where our meeting occurred. His venerable remains, with those of his partner, sleep in a rude church-yard, marked by no stone, and remembered by but few. I always remember him with the deepest emotion ; my own spirit, like his, has always been full of wild-wood scenes, and camp-meeting fervor. This was the last camp-meeting that I ever attended, and what made it a particularly happy one to me was, that a COURTSHIP HOLY MEMORIES. 127 young woman attended it, that afterwards became my wife. Her figure was tall and graceful ; her eye a deep clear blue ; her hair a light brown, and combed smooth over the brow, which gave her sweet and smiling features a most charming simplicity. An hour was appointed for retirement in all the tents, but somehow after prayers were done, we sat up a long time to watch. Where love was proclaimed as free, our young spirits could see no harm in loving ; even after midnight, even when the camp-fires were out, and the lamps were dim amongst the trees, the lamp of love shone brightly in our hearts. Her old mother was always on hand, and as crafty as a hungry hawk ; she viewed me with no special regard, and frequently reproved her daughter for such late watching, warning her that her soul would miss of a blessing if she did not wait on the Lord. But nightly the sin of watching was repeated. We were to part in three days for the entire winter, and the thought of it was painful ; so we sat for hours locked in each other's arms, looking out on the dimly illumined trees, as the camp-fires flickered for a moment, and then smouldered and slept for ever. That may have been sin, and offensive to God, but those hours were pervaded with a fathomless blessing, the memory of which wakes a strange echo in my spirit, and now sends a wild thrill along my nerves, and big soul dew-drops coursing in the furrows along my cheeks. Those camp-fires have been extinguished for fifteen years, and my heart is yet full of life emotions. Four sons gather around my table, the fruit of our love, and the dear one sleeps far away in the gravel bed, and the green grass springs over that mound, around which my heart lingers with increasing emotion. Saturday night came, and every hour the excitement became intense the sermons more rousing, the prayers more fervent, the singing more stirring. Symptoms of strange excitement began to appear in many parts of the congregation ; the regular sermon had passed, and brother 128 SKETCHES OF WESTERN LIFE. B. was called on to exhort. He was a tall, lean man, with a large head, with nerves of fire and a tongue of flame. The wind was still not a leaf stirred ; the forest was flickering in the reflected light ; his voice was naturally sweet and clear, and after a while penetrated into the remotest corner of the vast circle where a human being could stand or sit. Much speaking in the open air had injured his lungs, and like George Whitfield, he was suffering dreadfully with the asthma. His first words were clear but feeble, and his breath labored with intense force to still the sense of suffo- cation. This painful movement soon gave way, and his notes became full and deep, and rang on the ear like the tones of powerful music. Floods of tears burst from his deep-blue eyes, as he painted the agonies of a lost soul, hurled from the presence of God ; he was seen floating on the surface of a burning lake, amid a darkness that was visible ; he lifted his despairing eyes towards a throne of light, and wailed out in a tone of loud despair, " How long, Lord ! how long shall I endure this dreadful torment !" and the finger of inexorable justice pointed him to the fiery flood, and uttered, " Eternity, eternity shall not see the duration of thy sufferings 1" The soul in despair sank into the boiling flood, and groaned away the slow revolving years. Suddenly a dreadful light illumined the vast cavern, and amid the red waves of the fire-flood, fragments of red-hot rock shot upwards ; some unseen force from beneath, hurled the damned spirits into the hot and stifling air, from which they fell with yells and shrieks upon the points of heated rock, breaking them into spiritual fragments, and as they sank beneath the heated flood, they wrote in letters of lurid light, " Lost 1 lost ! No hope ! no hope !" The frame of the preacher trembled under the reflection of his own picture, and as his own excitement increased, that of his hearers seemed to follow him, till the whole vast assembly swayed like a blast-smitten forest under his magic eloquence. A loud A REVIVAL THE POWER. 129 scream issued from the very heart of the congregation, and a noted rowdy, who had sought to disturb the meeting, fell stiffened to the earth. The falling became general ; on every hand, men and women, old and young, dropped as if mown down, by foe scythe of death, and four of his brethren lay stretched on the floor of the altar beside the exhausted speaker. One, a large man of a powerful frame, with light skin and red hair, rose to his feet, with his eyes closed, and moved up to the side of the speaker ; a heavenly smile played on his face ; he tried to shout, but could not ; he rocked to and fro on his feet for the space of a minute, as if held up by some powerful attraction, and then fell senseless at full length on the floor. His body was stiff, as most of them were. The speaker soon began to feel the effects of his tremendous power ; his silvery voice became fainter, his gestures milder ; a radiance of glory passed over his face, and he sank back exhausted upon the floor. Faint shouts broke from some one sitting in the congregation, then a chorus of shouts went up ; hands were clapped, and " Praise God," was breathed by a hundred voices over the assembly. The leaves, fire-lit on the trees, seemed to flutter with emotion, and all the air seemed stirred with a holy breath, and the sighs of angels seemed to kindle the ether into a spirit flame. The tall, pale, blue-eyed figure, that sat beside me in the tent, had leaned her head on my breast, and with my right hand clasped in hers, was lost in reverie. Whether in the body or out, I know not, but my physical being seemed lost, abstracted, and I was floating in a balmy sea of speechless joy. At this juncture, a sister began to sing the words beginning : " Come, Holy Ghost, all-quickening fire, Come, and my hallowed heart Inspire ; Sprinkled with the eternal blood, Now to myself thyself reveal, Thy mighty working let me feel And know that I am born of God." f>* 130 SKETCHES OF WESTERN LIFE. Her voice rang through the air like a tenor trumpet, and in a moment a thousand tongues seemed joined in the chorus of hallelujah, that pealed forth among the trees, over the altar, and died off in a joyous echo in the distant forest. The singing had not continued long, when a brother jumped to his feet, and shouted with a voice that bordered on the fierce, and rushing wildly forward, he seized the first man he met in his arms, and shouted till the woods rang again, Glory ! Glory ! Glory ! He rushed from person to person, repeating the salutation, till a large part of the audience were seen rushing into each other's arms, wildly embracing, weeping, and crying glory ! The marble brow that rested on my breast, was white as paper ; those blue eyes were closed, and the gently parted lips softly whispered in my ear, again and again, Jesus ! Jesus ! Jesus ! "Jesus can make a dying bed feel soft as downy pillows are." Fifteen years have elapsed since the scene described occurred, but at times I see those white tents, the camp-fires, the grave old forest, illumined with a living light. That silent soul- whisper I hear it still it rushes along my nerves like a stream of fire, and my body is pervaded by a sensation I cannot describe. That marble brow is cold now ; those deep-blue eyes are closed, and those whispering lips are silent for ever. This sympathetic excitement rushed through the congregation like a tempest, and continued for more than an hour. When it subsided, the groups retired to their tents, but no sleep came to the camp that night ; the people were too happy ; God had blessed them ; they sang, prayed, shouted, and clapped hands and groaned in the depths of their deep, delirious agony of joy. If such religious scenes are a delusion, then a lie may become ecstatic. One after another of these spiritual revellers fell asleep, till the voice of praise and thanksgiving was hushed in every tent ; and when the sun rose, with his broad round face bathed in smiling light, he darted his glancing beams on the PHYSIOLOGICAL E X I' L A X A T I N* . 131 camp where stillness reigned as in the house of death. I passed around from tent to tent, and that deep pervading joy still lingered oa many a face, and many a dreamer whis- pered the name of Jesus in his sleep, and clasped his hands in an ecstasy of prayer. The scene I have described is vulgarly called the " power," or a " spiritual outpouring ; " but much controversy exists in the world, as to what it should be called, and to what cause it should be assigned. Similar phenomena have been seen in all ages, and under the administration of the religious life of the noble-hearted John Wesley and his co-laborers, such scenes often occurred, sometimes with individuals, and sometimes with the entire multitude. To those sects who deny the power of the Spirit, such occurrences appear either a delusion or a mystery ; but candor demands that some explanation should be found, that will solve the problem in a more rational manner. True it is, that such an influence often sweeps through the entire community, changing the life-long character of individuals, and often of a still larger number, who steadily through life abide by the teachings of the gospel. Persons of a highly-wrought nervous temperament, of a scrofulous and consumptive diathesis, are certainly more likely to be affected with such influences, as well as evil ones ; but that, by no means, answers the objection that these influences are emotional only. If the speaker, at such an hour, should send out in his voice, from his eyes, his face, and his hands, the canine virus sufficient to penetrate every person present, instead of the scene described, we should see a multitude laboring under the horrible effects of hydro- phobia ; but if, instead of this, he emanates in his voice, from his eyes, his face, and his hands, a psychical and mental aura, deeply charged with the moral and spiritual element of a loving nature, sufficient to affect the masses, he, by an inevitable law, induces in them his own state of mind and 132 SKETCHES OF WESTERN LIFE. heart. Whether this aura is generated in the brain of a speaker, with powerful love elements within him, or is derived by influx from the invisible but exhaustless source of love from the Deity, is a question that I leave others to settle. "Whatever its source may be, it is certainly an all- pervading love force, that acts with wonderful power. When rightly understood, the phenomena of religious revivals may be found to accord with the highest elements of an enlightened mental and moral philosophy ; for it is true that John Wesley, by his individual labors, and the labors of those whom he impressed, elevated the intellectual and moral and spiritual characters of tens of thousands, nay, of millions of human beings. Love certainly works no ill to its neighbor, and such love scenes as described at this meet- ing, prove conclusively the assertion of the lady who affirmed that " nothing was half so sweet as love, and she could never get half enough of it." / Sabbath morning broke in with a cheerful face ; the morning prayers were said, and the congregation seated ; the altar filled with queer faces : for an assembly of Metho- dist preachers presents, to my eyes, one of the richest, most marked, and queerest collection of human heads and faces, that I have ever met in any place. The ten o'clock sermoii was assigned to the Presiding Elder, a stout, square-built man, his face rigged in fun and pervaded with a subtle roguery. He intended to preach the sermon of the meeting, but it was too late ; the master of the storm had passed through the camp of Israel ; the wild surge of excitement had stunned and prostrated the people ; they looked ex- hausted. Elder H. began to chop logic, and reason about love and righteousness, but why reason about that which the people had felt in such overpowering torrents ? He could demonstrate the law of God to be "perfect, convert- ing the soul," but he could not, with the blazing tongue of an archangel, suspend the sinner over the burning gulf by a PREACHING AGAINST TIME. 133 single hair, and cause him to hear the deep wild welter of the blazing waves beneath his feet, and feel that God would be just to clip that hair with the scissors of Divine ven- geance, and let the trembling soul drop into the gulf, red with a " darkness that was visible " as noonday, and groan away the years that have no end. Br. B. had spoiled the Elder's sermon. Our friend H. roused himself, for he felt that a load was on him. He labored like a foundering ves- sel, amid a heavy sea, battling the waves ; still he gestured like one beating against a vacuum. All the time our exhorter, who had rode on the storm the previous night, sat a little way off, looking up archly into his brother's face, smilingly, as if to say, " Now you cannot lift that load, brother ; the tempest-creating soul of faith, and fire, and tongue of flame, passed by last night, and you are only trying to find the footprints of the storm spirit." I feared all the time that he was enjoying the embarrassment of Brother H., for he was brim-full of mischief, and those sober- looking jolly old fellows, even to the oldest and gravest, love a joke, even at their own expense. A little incident soon turned the opening revival into a tempest of fun, that swept all seriousness from the hearts of the people. A short, black-eyed, curly-haired, laughing witch of a boy, had found himself crowded for room, before the opening service of the morning, and clambered, like Zaccheus, into the beautiful maple tree standing nearly in front of the altar. His glances soon began to annoy the speaker, and he called out to him, " Zaccheus, come down from that tree." He never moved, but the suppressed titter that swept through the crowd, showed clearly that every- body felt good-natured. This was natural, for the people had enjoyed a happy night, and the sun had ushered in a most smiling morning. Laughter is only the spoken lan- guage of joy. A little consultation followed among the clergy in the stand, and in a moment, a big, stout, burly, 134 SKETCHES OF WESTERN LIFE. black-eyed man appeared in front of the altar with an axe in his hand. It was Elder G. ; his hair a little grey, but the very man that a general would select for storming a redoubt, or leading an army of men to the cannon's mouth. He gave no time for parley, but glided quickly to the foot of the tree, and the next moment saw the glittering edge of the axe circling through the air in quick and rapid strokes. and before the multitude had time to think, the straight, round-topped maple waved for a moment, and fell with our hero to the ground. This most deeply amused the old joker in the stand, for he always had a smile on his face, and this time it grew deeper and broader, and almost became a laugh. He broke the silence, finally, and shouted in a triumphant voice, "Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit, shall be hewn down and cast into the fire. Brother G. has laid the axe at the root of the tree this time ;" and the good feeling of the crowd rose with the good feeling of the speaker, till all seriousness fled from their faces, and laughter and general mirth soon pervaded the assembly. The lad was not hurt, but was sadly taken aback. My first impulse was to kick the chopper for spoiling the beau- tiful tree, that had no hand in the fray, but as is usual, had become the victim. To get up in sight of the crowd, and walk through the encampment, was the largest load that the lad ever carried. His eye, black as a raven's, flashed and gleamed with the red fire of wounded pride and thwarted pleasure, that soon resolved itself into action. The crowd were all now gazing at the lad ; the ministers and ladies were smiling, and all seemed to go against him. He passed quickly to the left of the masses, and in less than no time, a platoon of a dozen of outsiders (visitors come to laugh) were around him. The meeting and ministers, with some truth, perhaps, began to fear an onset on the tents and the camp, for the b'hoys were all there, as it was Sun- day, and their force numbered a hundred or more resolute B R E A K I X G UP THE CAMP. 135 rascals, most of them young meii grown. Always prompt in danger, brother G., who had laid the axe at the root of the tree, ordered a justice and a posse to the spot, and an attempt was made to arrest some of the leaders. The jus- tice, a slim, feeble man, seized the curly-headed lad by the collar, and the rest of his assistants seized each their man. The whole encampment had laughed at the lad, and my sympathies were with him, and a burning desire seized me to aid in his escape. Mercy to a fallen foe, is the rule of all honorable warfare, and the biggest of all sinners, in my eye, is the man who sets the crowd to laughing at some unlucky culprit. Crucifixion is a mercy, compared to a tit- tering multitude. In two minutes the rowdies and posse were surrounded by a heated crowd, and as if by magic, the whole body bent its way towards a precipitous hill. The chaps in the centre pulled, and twenty or more on the out- side pushed resolutely against the crowd who were behind, with zeal for the Lord of hosts, and neither saw nor knew anything but victory. This impulse followed the struggling throng to the verge of the bank, and the posse began now to struggle fearfully to get away, but their enemy held them firmly and dragged them headlong over the bank, a precipi- tous descent of some fifteen feet. The head of the column disappeared like a body of men under the fire of a battery, and the tail began to think of escaping ; but the resolute few triumphed, and more than a hundred men tumbled in a mass down the dusty, muddy, rocky sides of the bank, into a broad wagon track, on the side of a steep hill. The culprits now broke away and ran over or knocked down whoever opposed them. The crowd in the camp was all hubbub and excitement, and our good old brother who was speaking, and understood well the temper of multitudes, stood paralyzed at the altar. He once broke out in an exclamation, " What under heaven are men made of !" as the crowd disappeared over the descent. The justice and posse returned, bearing 126 SKETCHES OF WESTERN LIFE. no trophies, but all covered with dust, as of a hotly-con- tested battle. The brother resumed his sermon, but it was in vain to essay to raise the multitude from the pitfall of impressions so serious and ludicrous. The sermon went on, but nobody heard. Another and another took the stand for the day, but the spirit of the meeting did not return. The rowdies, however, did return at night to the contiguous forest, and the yells and howls that beset the meeting, would have dis- turbed hell itself. Scouts were sent into the woods, and captured here and there a straggler, among whom was the curly-headed boy who had, by climbing the tree, been the cause, though unintentionally, of all the trouble. He was lodged in the inclosure below the altar, and remained quiet till about four o'clock at night, when sleep oppressed all eyes, when suddenly a gang of camp-meeting wolves issued from the forest, tore a board from the inclosure, and the lad leaped through the opening and disappeared iu the forest with the agility of a retreating Indian, carrying with him, however, a new pair of calf-skin boots, owned by a young clergyman who was to be married the next day. This nettled the Elder to the very quick, and he laughed almost aloud when he remarked, " The devil is too cunning for us this time." The Sabbath passed, the preach- ing ended, the prayers were said, but no progress could be made ; the new converts were wavering, and the strong rowdy who fell the night before, was now among the wild spirits of the woods, guiding them to victory. Monday morning came, and with it a warrant to arrest the black- eyed preacher who had chopped down the tree, on a charge of performing unnecessary labor on the Sabbath day. He went before the justice, and seeing no chance of escape from so plain a case, he paid his five dollars and returned to the camp to appeal to the brethren to refund the five, and the price of the stolen boots. The meeting closed at a little TRUE CHARACTER OF THE PREACHERS. 137 past noon, and as the multitude passed out of the gap in the brush fence, our presiding Elder appealed to them in the name of the stolen boots. "Brethren," said he, "let the devil see that God has as many friends here as he has ;" and they did so, to the tune of twenty dollars and five cents, which was duly paid over to the young brother, who was sure of his bride, and more sure of his missing boots. I love a noisy camp-meeting, and would go twenty miles on foot to attend one ; and in spite of the sympathy I felt for the victim of the axe, I would stand all night as senti- nel, wielding a rusty musket, provided it was unloaded, to protect these good people in their earnest, though boisterous mode of worship. I took a seat beside the exhorter, in a large wagon, and wended my way up hill and through dale, with a large number of preachers, to the house of Brother H., where the nuptials were to be solemnized. I parted with these friends at Rochester, in the great stone church, and have since beheld none of their faces. They are a brave, jolly, noble, generous set of men, who love good for its own sake, and labor for the race with a strong arm and moderate fare. The world may accuse them of mercenary views, but as a body, they have as much availa- ble talent as can be found in the same number of men on the globe, and might, in any of the professions, wield it for money or power ; but it is just as true that they are generally poor, and choose to be so for the sake of the gos- pel. I have awfully backslid since those joyous days not so much in heart as in doctrine but I love, with a deep affection, those brave and noisy spirits, and I hope some day to see them march in a body through the gates of the golden city, waving the palms of victory, and shouting their tri- umph through the streets of the New Jerusalem. They deserve a home in heaven. 138 THE SENSE OF FEELING. THE SENSE OF FEELIXG. INFLUENCE OP TEMPERATUF NOTWITHSTANDING the great importance of protecting infants from cold, they ought early to be accustomed to endure atmospheric changes. The experience of almost every intelligent person, will furnish him with instances where the greatest evils have arisen from a neglect to establish, at an early period of life, the habit of resisting atmospheric changes. Entire families, who have suffered their children to grow up surrounded constantly by artificial heat, have exhibited its serious effects in the constant lia- bility to various affections of the lungs and air-passages, the slightest exposure being sufficient to cause inflammation of the lungs, or that most dreaded of all diseases of childhood, the croup. Nor is the evil confined to childhood. The adult suffers from the neglect at the early period of life, which, like the neglect of the proper direction of the intellect in youth, leaves the effects throughout the whole duration of life. We are decided advocates for leaving the head of an infant uncovered ; at any rate, after the first month, caps should be altogether dispensed with, as not only unneces- sary, but absolutely injurious, from accumulating too much warmth about the head. The general clothing ought also to be lightened, and he ought to be kept from the 'fire, and washed with water at first warm, but by degrees decidedly cold. In this manner, the external covering of the skin will CLOSE ROOMS INJURIOUS. 139 be hardened, and its nerves become insensible to the cold. It must, however, be clearly understood, that this must be gradually effected ; and if the child experiences any pain from this course which makes him cry, it is a proof that the attempt is too suddenly made. When once these habits are established, they should be continued through life, for they are the most certain guarantees of health, and may be regarded as a species of resource kept in reserve, to be advantageously employed against causes of disease which cannot be removed. When arrived at puberty, an age when the faculty of producing heat is at the highest degree, when summer is more to be feared than winter, the youth, that he may not lose this valuable power of resisting cold and heat, should never in cold countries habituate himself to remain in close and heated apartments. If any one neglects to inure himself to the changes of the atmosphere, there remains nothing for him but to shun all exposure. He should be on his guard at the period of the changes of the seasons, and use particular care, while he at the same time changes the nature of his clothing. As old age approaches, the power to produce heat dimin- ishes, and between the age of forty and fifty years, a chilliness is apt to be experienced on the approach of winter, which the individual previously would have borne without experiencing any inconvenience. At a later period, the effects are evident in the increased mortality of old people, nothing being more common than the occurrence of many deaths among the aged during the prevalence of intensely cold weather, while the deaths among this class are compa- ratively few during warm weather. Thus it appears, that the susceptibility to cold increases at the two extremes of life. Great care should therefore be taken by aged persons, to guard themselves from the effects of cold, without any efforts to "harden," as the danger is imminent in such an 140 THE SENSE OF FEELING. attempt for their condition is far more irremediable than that of the infant. While treating of the skin as an organ of feeling, and of the condition of the atmosphere in making an impression on that organ, the electricity of this medium must not be passed over ; for this also, as well as temperature, reaches the sys- tem through the nerves of the skin, and finds its passage by means of the atmosphere. A brief consideration of the manner in which this fluid acts, and the appropriate mea- sures to prevent the evil consequences which sometimes result from it, may very properly be treated of under the head of feeling. All bodies possess electric properties, but in different degrees each one possessing its own capacity for that fluid " that is, a power to retain it, or to allow of its passage. The globe is an inexhaustible source of electricity, and it is on this account denominated the common reservoir. The electric fluid, as was just observed, exists in different quan- tities in various substances, and the excess or deficiency is distinguished by the terms positive and negative. In the ordinary state of bodies, and when it exists in equal propor- tions, electricity does not manifest itself by any sensible phenomena ; it is only when there is an excess and deficiency in two bodies that approach each other, that the presence of this fluid is made apparent to our senses. Heat and friction are usually employed to develop electricity, and to impart it to a body. In a free state, electricity of the same kind repels that of an opposite. The positive state always repels the positive, and the negative repels the body negatively electrified, while those of an opposite nature attract each other. An electrified body placed in contact with a body that can conduct electricity, imparts to it a portion of its electricity. The metals, many animal substances, except oils, conduct it ; glass, resins, silk, dry air, are bad conduc- tors. Those bodies in which electricity is developed, are EFFECTS OF ELECTRICITY. 141 said to be insnlated when there is no communication with a conducting body. When the equilibrium is perfect between the electric fluid of the globe and that of the atmosphere that is, when these two grand reservoirs possess an equal quantity, no electric phenomena are perceived, yet it possesses in organized matter some action ; this action is not here noticed, as it possesses no sensation, to consider which, in all its bearings, being the object of the present essay. *Where there exists a difference between the electricity of the globe and that of clouds, an electric action is often man- ifested by signs more or less marked, and which make an impression upon man to a greater or less extent. When the air is moist, and when the clouds are not at a great dis- tance from the earth, the electricity passes silently from the clouds, and no phenomena occur ; this will often be the case when there is a fog, or even a heavy dew. On the contrary, if the air continues dry in the space between the clouds and the earth, the equilibrium is established with a sudden con- cussion, accompanied with a bright light, giving rise to the phenomena of thunder and lightning. Distant, rumbling thunder, without a flash, is the electric explosion between two clouds, one above the other, which renders the explosion invisible from the earth, the cloud surcharged with electri- city discharging it into that where there exists a deficiency. When the electric fluid strikes the earth, it was formerly thought that a thunderbolt had fallen, and all the phe- nomena of electricity were referred to the noise ; even at the present day, this idea prevails among the ignorant, and pieces of stone of a peculiar form are regarded as the ^ bolt "itself. It will easily be understood that man, placed in the midst of these influences, would manifest some of their effects ; such is the case, as will be seen by a few facts, which prob- ably have fallen under the notice of most persons. If 142 EFFECTS OF ELECTRICITY. clouds, charged with electricity, remain for some time with- out parting with it to the earth either because they do not contain a sufficient quantity of this fluid for the explosion to take place, or because the equilibrium is in the process of being established between them some persons of nervous temperament experience an oppression of a very remarkable kind, which enables them to foretell an approaching storm, with thunder, without its being announced by any other sign. This oppression bears no resemblance to that pro- duced by heat it is accompanied by an internal commotion of a peculiarly disagreeable character, trembling of the limbs, a feeling of distress, and an anxiety of a painful nature. Others experience distress in the digestive organs, especially in the bowels ; sometimes there is diarrhoea, and even vomiting. Some have wandering pains in the joints, in the places of old healed wounds, on the stumps of amputated limbs, pains in the corns of the toes, when the thickening of . the skin is not old. These effects disappear when the equi- librium is about to be established ; and after the first explosions, a relief is experienced. Some persons have a frequency of pulse just before the storm arises, which continues until it ceases. It is very difficult to account for these facts ; but we know from the electrometer a delicate instrument for measuring the pres- ence of electricity that atmospheric electricity will be made apparent even when no other manifestation of its presence exists, and doubtless to the positive and negative conditions existing between the atmosphere and the human body, even to a very minute extent, that these phenomena are attributable. Several curious facts have been noticed from the earliest antiquity, connected with electricity, which were formerly referred to the interference of spiritual beings in the affairs of men. The most common was the appearance of a tuft or flame of light upon the spears of soldiers, which was REMEDIES FOR ITS EXCESSIVE ACTION. 148 regarded as an omeu of no small importance. The electri- city upon the tops of masts was formerly considered as spirits. " Fiery spirits or devils are such as commonly work by blazing stars, fire-drakes, etc." " Likewise they counter- feit suns and moons oftentimes, and sit on ships' masts," remarks old Burton, in his curious work, The Anatomy of Melancholy. Experience taught those who were more exposed to the effects of sudden electrical explosions from clouds, that these pointed bodies were useful for their protection ; and it is stated that in the reign of Louis XIV., sailors were in the habit of affixing a pointed sword to the mast. A learned priest, the Abbe Shiers, who died in 1703, in enumerating the superstitious practices of his time, mentions this as one which was always used during or before an expected storm. The immortal discovery of Franklin, however, explained the practice on philosophical principles. In tropical regions, in sultry weather, it is an occasional occurrence, when the air is extremely heated, to see the presence of electricity manifested by small tufts of light upon the various parts of the clothes the same appearance takes place at the extremities of the fingers, hair, etc. Such phenomena will only occur when the air is very dry, and the electric fluid is seeking a passage as it were, to the common reservoir, the earth. The evil effects of atmospheric electricity may be obviated by the general means which destroy the excessive suscepti- bility of the nervous system such as exercise, sleep taken in sufficient quantity, and at appropriate periods, absence of all stimulants of the brain, cold bathing, a country resi- dence, etc. Even at the time of the storm, the intensity of its effects may be obviated by avoiding too great a variety of food, and particularly of such as is of an opposite quality, the promotion of digestion by agreeable conversation, a walk in a cool apartment, etc. 144 NON-CONDUCTORS. Besides these effects, a man may experience such as arise from the concussion whenever his body becomes the medium of communication, or the conductor of electricity. The shock is oftentimes so severe as to kill him instantaneously, especially if his body is wet ; sometimes the fluid will glance along the body, leaving marks, and often burning it with great severity ; at other times, death has occurred without any shock whatever, apparently by the sudden vacuum occurring, whereby the individual has been suddenly deprived of breath ; the sensations described by those who have recovered, appear to warrant this conclusion. To prevent these effects, we must avail ourselves of the facts which science has demonstrated to us in the use both of conducting and non-conducting bodies. The ordinary lightning-rod, so much in use in this country, is the best instrument for silently conducting the electricity to the earth. The modern mode of covering the roofs of houses with metal, if this is connected with a tin leader reaching to the ground, is the next best method of protection by means of a conductor there being innumerable small edges and points on the roof, which serve to attract the electricity silently from the clouds. Stone is a bad conductor ; a seat upon the stone steps of a cellar for fearful persons, will afford sufficient assurance of safety. A feather bed is another safe place of refuge. Two equally opposite means could scarcely be found, and the most diverse peculiarity of taste could be satisfied in selecting a secure retreat from the terrors of a thunder- storm. The bedstead should be removed from the wall ; a seat should never be taken by a window, under a tree, or by a fire-place. The latter, especially, should be avoided for not only is the chimney liable to be struck from its being the highest part of the house, but when wood or bituminous coal is burned, it is coated with soot, a substance possessing great conducting properties. USE OF LIGHTS IX G-RODS. 145 Before the introduction of lightning-rods, lightning was often a cause of death, especially previous to the early part of the last century (when, in some parts of Europe, it was the custom to ring the bells during a thunder-storm, on account of a superstitious notion prevalent at that time), by the exposure of persons to the attraction of points, and the conducting power of moist ropes. During the night of the fifteenth of April, 1718, the lightning struck in Lower Brittany, in the space which separates Landerman from Saint-Paul-de-Leon, upon twenty-four steeples, and those particularly in which bells were rung for the purpose of averting such an occurrence. On the eleventh of July, 1819, while the bell in the village of Chateaux Yieux was tolling on the occasion of a funeral celebration, the lightning struck the steeple, killed nine persons on the spot, and wounded twenty-two. Statistics of such occurrences have been made in France, from which it appears that during the space of thirty-three years, the lightning struck three hundred and eighty-six steeples, and killed one hundred and three bell- ringers ! These results could only happen, while prejudices are maintained against the use of lightning conductors. In our own country, where conductors are in general use, these accidents are never heard of. It is dangerous, also, to fly kites during a thunder-storm, especially as the drops of water render the string wet, and which thereby becomes a conductor. It has been estimated, by a calculation founded upon the difference in the rapidity of the movement of the light and sound, that when the cloud is at the distance of nine hnn- dred and seventy-eight feet, a second, or one pulsation of the artery, may be counted between the flash and the noise; two thousand and seventy-six feet, when two are counted, and so on. If this estimate of the distance of electric bodies is of little utility in guarding against accidents, it will at least serve to re-assure timid persons, by proving to them 7 146 CURIOUS PHENOMENA. that when they have seen the light they need not fear the explosion. Some animals possess the power of imparting an electric shock, and employ it for the purpose of disabling their prey, or defending themselves from the attacks of an enemy. The torpedo, cramp-fish, and electrical eel, are among these. The last mentioned, gymnotus ekctricus, abounds in the rivers and stagnant pools in Columbia, S. A. It is of considerable size, being about six feet long. The electric shock is con- veyed through the hand, or any metallic conductor which touches the fish ; and a stroke of one of the largest kind would prove instant death to a man. The angler sometimes receives a shock from them through the wetted rod and fishing line. An old frequented road near Urutica, has been actually abandoned, on account of the danger experi- enced from crossing a ford, where the mules were, from the effects of concealed shocks, often paralyzed and drowned. This faculty has not been confined entirely to the lower animals. A very curious fact was related in the journals a few years since, where a young infant was found to possess the power of giving a severe shock to those who first handled it. A series of philosophical experiments were tried with this animated electrical machine. The child was placed in a cradle, which was put upon glass legs, and from the body a Leyden jar was charged, sparks were drawn, and many other of the usual phenomena of an electrical machine were exhibited. SKETCHES OF WESTERN PRACTICE. Hf SKETCHES OF WESTERN PRACTICE. HAVE you ever had a ride on the great western Mediter- ranean silver-surfaced and placid old Erie? She is one of that vast sisterhood of lakes, that stretches from the Far West, through a region of two thousand miles in extent, and loses its self-hood in the majestic Niagara. Her musical shores wash the whole northern boundary of Ohio ; and at short intervals, this glorious body of water is fed with rivers, some of which are worthy of the name, and others come creeping through a bed of rank weeds, for a distance of fifty miles, and mingle their turbid waters with this crystal fountain. Like all rivers skirted with marshes, a crop of bilious fevers are occasionally worked into being, from the fermenting mass of rotting vegetation found along their beds. It was on a main road running through a well- populated country two miles from the bed of one of these rivers, that I set myself down with my household gods, in a land of strangers. How I was to procure bread, or what I was to do, were shrouded in the mysterious future. Mem- ory came in to console me : for in spite of myself, the " Diary of a London Physician," that I had read in my - younger datrs, came with its racy pictures, flitting before my mind's eye ; and I knew not but I, too, might wish myself, my Mary, and my child, sleeping in the cold grave, to hide me from the persecution that seemed to follow me with such sleepless vigilance. There is an hour, even in the history of a physician, when 148 SKETCHES OP WESTERN PRACTICE. cliques the "old doctor" looking all the wiser for his specs and even fate, make their figures against us in vaiu. When pestilence walks unseen in the midst of the people, slaying its victims in every house, invading the altar and the office ; the proud mansion of the aristocrat, and the mud hovel of the peasant ; then, in spite of all foes, will the cool head and clear eye of a well-balanced judgment, triumph ; the common-sense act takes ou the charm of genius, and amid the general consternation, the fearless man becomes the oracle of the hour. To resist the mad impulse of heroic medication, and protect the sick from the hand of officious meddling, often constitute the highest duty of the > medical adviser to the sick and dying. About one mile from where I had located, on a high roll- ing ridge, in a highly-tilled region of country, and miles dis- tant from river or marsh, a fever was prevailing of the most fatal character. It was among a farming population, accus- tomed to wholesome diet and laborious habits. It had been raging for two months, and sad enough to tell, not a patient had been saved. All grades of doctors had been consulted, till some twenty of the best medical men of the region had been called in ; and numerous quacks had displayed their skill with like success. The location was marked by a single hotel and half a dozen dwellings ; and from this point, circling out the space of a mile, fifty persons had died with this fatal epidemic. The landlord lost his wife and four children, the last two of whom died two days after my arrival. ^These two, boys of ten and fourteen years, had passed through various hands ; the regulars had begun with them ; they were both salivated, their cheeks horribly ulcerated, artd their lips nearly eaten through by its violent action. So many had died under regular treatment, that a botanic had been called to finish up the job for these poor lads. From the sad effects of cathartics and emetics, they had passed rapidly THE BOTAXIC MEDICAL CATTERY. 149 under the influence of calomel,\and at about the eighteenth day had gone into the hands of this ignoramus. When I entered the room, I found the two patients and the doctor alone. On a large table were spread his implements of war- fare. Whiteroot and crawley (monatropia uniflora) tea ; number six ; a decoction of lobelia and sanguinaria ; and a wash of pepper and vinegar for the ulcers. They had fever, and took lobelia and sanguinaria to relieve it ; they were in a typhus state, and number six, pepper, myrrh, and brandy, were given to hold up their strength ; and then herb tea, hot and parching, to urge on sweating. These devilish imps in the shape of drugs, were poured into these poor lads once in ten or fifteen minutes. Death was not long in tak- ing advantage of such efficient assistance from the doctor ! and the scene closed in shrouds and coffins. In three days they were taking their long rest. I passed round with a neighboring physician to see his last patient. A lad of six- teen years lay stretched on a straw couch ; he had taken freely of the Samson of the drug shops, and it had taken full effect ; the palate and fauces were ulcerated the mouth swollen and painful the teeth loose and the right cheek and lower lip nearly eaten away, by that dreadful disease, so frequently seen after the injudicious use of Calomel. The physician, a young man of fine acquirements, a graduate from Philadelphia, felt deeply chagrined at the condition of his patient. He had merely intended to produce a mild action on the mouth ; and as he folded his hands upon his back, and drew a long breath, he quietly observed, " that is a dreadful case of gangrene ; Cancrum oris is a sad thing connected with such a fever." The patient had bled pro- fusely from the mouth and tonsils, and large masses of black, fqptid slime poured out from the mouth, and the fast-decay- ing face. Death, the doctor's only friend, in such a case, soon removed the sad sight from my friend's eyes, and he indeed felt that the " ways of providence are mysterious." 150 SKETCHES OF WESTERN PRACTICE. The resident physician was discouraged, and had fallen sick, and supposed himself a subject of fever ; he was, like all doctors, afraid of dying, and handled himself with extreme care. He had called counsel, and a mild laxative had been prescribed, and his head and face were profusely bathed in beet-juice, as the most cooling thing of the season ! It imparted a fine hue to his countenance, a glow that bor- dered on a beautiful crimson. This was a genuine specimen of the rooting tribe, and had passed all grades of employments, rising, like every true genius, till he had combined the trio of accomplishments, of priest, lawyer, and doctor. His build was fat and stout, his bowels of compassion were well rounded, his face round and jolly, with one eye archly given to strabismus, impart- ing to the face a certain laughing, mysterious shrewdness ; the whole temperament fiery, a glib tongue, and an eye that easily moistened at real or fictitious woe. He commenced his career as a Methodist exhorter, and taking religion with a natural ease, he was often enabled to enjoy the power; but the bent of his benevolence running too much in one direction, the brethren shrewdly suspected him of an imprudence that need not be mentioned. He entered the ofiice of a country practitioner, and his "boss" falling sick with fever, he mounted the horse, and was installed physician through the neighborhood ; and in three months his confidence in his knowledge of disease had so increased, that he started for the West, and settled as a botanic doctor in the vicinity of Cleveland. His religious traits still haunted him, and his benevolence inclining him to the merciful, he commenced preaching and doctoring in the locality, proclaiming to all the good news of restored health and universal redemption. Finding himself in command of a few hundred dollars, he removed to a new region and a new location ; adding to his already numerous vocations that of stump orator. He ENVIABLE POSITION OF DOCTORS. 151 informed me, that in the height of his glory, he had in a single day attended the birth of two children married a young couple made a stump speech at an election and preached a funeral sermon of one of his own patients ; and he laughed through his crooked eye in a manner that showed him equally pleased in each act of the drama. His pilgrim- age had taught him wordly wisdom ; his various fees had secured him a good home, a small farm, a commodious house, surrounded by out-houses, and a fine office, upon four corners in a country place ; and the whole set off by a large maple grove, in which, in the spring, I have often seen the jolly puke, gathering sap, and boiling it into sugar. We well understand that physicians have no political rights ; we may follow in the wake of the warrior, building his throne on a pyramid of skulls, and floating himself to glory and a throne on a sea of blood, and humbly bind up the cannon shots and sabre cuts which he makes ; we may staunch the blood of his bomb-mangled victims, but we are still the tools, merely, of all politicians, and all governments. Who ever heard of a physician's name in connection with any honorable or profitable office ? Onr hero did not acquiesce in this general tenor of our history ; and when that political whirlwind passed over the land, which carried Harrison to his long home through Washington, he embarked, soul and body, in the struggle ; built him a log-cabin, mounted it on a wagon, hoisted his flag on the cabin, adorned it with hog-yokes, plow-points, sap-troughs, bundles of catnep and tanzy, a barrel of cider, and some large Johnny- cakes, and started with an endless train with flying banners, for the point where the people were to gather together Gog and Magog. He was next heard of at Fort Meigs, addressing a vast army that no man could number, from whence he sailed to Buffalo, and with a broadsword belted to his waist, scattered his fire and fanaticism among the hosts of loaferdom that swarmed the wharves ; but strange to 152 SKETCHES OF WESTERN PRACTICE. tell, on his return home, he was defeated as a candidate for the legislature, and has since expressed a most decided > opinion that republics are ungrateful. v The next patient that fell sick of the fever, came into my hands ; I had no competitor, death had cleared the field ; for as their patients went to the grave, the confidence of the people went with the body. It was a lady about forty years of age, of light and fragile form, the mother of a large family, and her excellent character endeared her to all, and made her value to the family doubly felt. The terror that had shaken the nerves of both patient and physician had become extreme. This tremor I calmed by condemning all that my predecessors had done, and that fiat found a ready response in the hearts of the people. The symptoms were of the mildest character, the tongue but slightly furred, the pulse almost regular, rising but five or ten above the natural standard, and sinking a little below in the remissions. This was a universal characteristic ; and in all the cases where the treatment was mild, the fatal poi- son crept through the veins with such insidious stillness, that from day to day hope would whisper that the next day would find the patient convalescing ; but, alas ! you wonlcl awake from these hopes by the sudden sinking of the patient, and before the vital forces could be rallied, the spirit would have fled. I at once adopted a negative course of treatment ; the mildest drinks, laxatives, and constant attention to the patient's wants. For ten days she was cheerful, and the slight glow on her cheeks, for a few hours, would daily return to tell us that danger was within. She reached the twentieth day, when the awful gastric sinking came on, and on the twenty-first the patient sunk, and seemed hopelessly doomed. Counsel was called, and they prescribed prayer, and while the family were assembling for this last appeal, I gave the patient a grain of morphia and a good horn of THE PESTILENCE WALKS IX DARK X ESS. 153 brandy, to ensure the success of our spiritual endeavors ; and to the joy of all, the remedies seemed to work together for good. In the absence of all local congestions the patient was thoroughly roused by the stimulants, and in eight days and nights, she had taken a gallon of the best brandy we could procure, and from that point she rapidly rallied, and This recovery acted like magic oil the community, and the dozen or more cases that fell into my hands were more con- trollable, and ended in recovery. The tonic of restored confidence was all-powerful, and the community clustered around me as the oracle of their destiny ; my fortune was made, and a business from that hour secured, which never forsook me. About two months elapsed ; the fright had disappeared from the public mind, and autumn was far advanced, when a family noted for neatness were stricken down. Four young persons in a single house fell sick in a few days, and our hero of the cabin, whose name was Bell, was again on his feet. The love of the people for the " old doctor " had revived ; he was called, and began the treatment of the fever by a cathartic of calomel ; in ten days I was called to his assistance ; the specific effects of this substance were seen in two of the patients, and the two remaining ones had taken it, but were placed in my hands by his request. The first case, a young lady of great beauty, and much beloved, died on the twenty-second day with congestion of the bowels, preceded by frightful delirium and demoniac yells. The second sister died in two days after ; a sweet and confiding girl, with a form as perfect as a Yenus, and a skin as pure and white as Parian marble, and the rich red glow on her lovely cheek, surrounded by raven-black locks, and eyes as soft and spiritual as the angels' whisper, made her an object- of surpassing beauty as she lay on her dying pillow. Con- gestion of the lungs supervened, and the fever-consumed 7* 154 SKETCHES OF WESTERN PRACTICE. victim went to her long rest. The first brother was con- valescing, when this sister was carried by the door of his room ; his brain reeled, and in an hour his mind wandered ; in three days, congestion of the brain laid his manly form in the quiet grave, near the dwelling of his medical attendant. The second young man was yet able to rise from his bed, and his mother, a strict botanic, and a great friend to pepper, rose in the night and gave him a strong dose of pepper-tea, to keep up his strength. His case, next morn- ing,' showed signs of congestion of the mucous coats, and all at once his tongue became very red, resembling beef covered with varnish and dried. On the sixteenth day of his sick- ness, he was seized with sudden pain in the right side ; he groaned for a few moments, wished to get up, and a quart of venous blood was voided at a single passage, and when I arrived, his symptoms were all better; his skin moist, his pulse natural, and strange as it may seem, he floated quietly on in this condition for four days, and on the fatal twenty- first, he insisted on knowing if his sisters and brother were dead ; he fixed his mild blue eye on mine, and said with great earnestness, "I know they are dead ; tell me, do not deceive me ; tell me, it will not scare me." I told him : the next setting sun found him stretched on a board, and clad in his grave-clothes. It wounds me to write of this poor boy, he prayed so hard to live ; and was gentle and confid- ing, and so mild were his symptoms, that, but for the fatal pepper, he might probably have lived. This tragedy, rapid and frightful, totally confounded me, and for the benefit of the reader, I record the results of my observations. The cases exactly resembled all the others, and all of them ended in local congestions, and any attempt to give a stimu- us in such cases was fatal. These congestions did not occur in any case where I began the treatment. I gave no calomel, no active cathartics, the mildest febrifuges, and regulated the bowels mainly by enemas. This treatment did not dis- IN* SID 10 US NATURE OF FEVERS. 155 turb the vital forces, nor change essentially the character of the fever, which was a chemical action of a miasm that had entered the system through the lungs. All the cases, with- out exception, treated by active medication, were attended with congestions ; the calomel cathartics in two cases, and the pepper in a third, and a mental impression in a fourth on seeing his sister's dead body, seemed to my mind to give a fatal determination to these four cases. The cause of this fatal fever, I regard as local and mias- matic ; and this view is confirmed by the fact, that on the same locality, the succeeding year, all the inhabitants were subject to a black jaundice ; no one was confined by its effects, but dozens were as yellow as the pure Indian ; the symptoms were attended with great sleepiness, which lasted, together with the yellow hue of the skin, for the space of four weeks. I am satisfied that regions where no rank growth of vegetation occurs, often give out miasmatic influ- ences. Dr. Watson, of London, sustains this view of fevers, by some very satisfactory examples. From soils where no vegetation has existed for years, from sandy plains perco- lated by water, from water saturated with vegetable matter thrown into stagnant pools, fevers as fatal may arise, as those which seem to have their origin in a fenny region. But this fact is no more indisputably established, than the fact that certain localities, in certain seasons especially, have great power, by physical emanations from the earth, in pro- ducing most singular and varied phenomena, of a strictly nervous character. Leaving these suggestions for your consideration, I pass on to other and different scenes. My store of old watches came into play ; a gentleman wishing to sell out his land, divided it up into ten-acre lots. In one of these I invested all the wealth I possessed, which did not exceed a hundred dollars ; shouldered my axe, and by the aid of a brother, I soon prepared logs for the mill, sufficient to erect me a small 156 SKETCHES OF AV ESTER N PRACTICE. dwelling ; into which, in the lapse of eight months, I moved I was never happier than when preparing the lumber, and splitting the blocks of sand-stone for the foundation of my dwelling. One customer, whose wife I had carried through a lingering fever, furnished me a frame for my dwelling, and I fell in his debt for a pair of boots. Another furnished me nails and glass ; and for two years I fed my cow and raised my own corn to feed my gallant nag, which shared my toil and its profits. The profits of my first two years' labor barely sufficed to pay for my home and feed my family ; when the terrible drought of '46 appeared, I was forced to relin- quish the horse which I then hired, for my nag was dead. For five months I performed all my business on foot, often travelling six and ten miles to see my patients. The earth was parched and dry ; the streams were all dried up ; all classes of crops were shrivelled to a mere shadow ; and the country was deprived of half its animals during the year ; one half had been sold to find food for the other. These were trying times ; but what if the elements were unpropi- tious ? I had food and shelter for myself blessings about which I had often been in doubt and I was fully prepared to " let the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing." The first winter was one of great severity ; and so changeable was the climate, that the most hideous snow- storms were often succeeded by heavy rains, and the roads were often frozen up in a single night, leaving it neither possible to travel on horseback nor in a carriage. I had a patient some five miles distant, sick with "lung fever" (pneumonia), and in an attendance of forty days, I made thirty journeys on foot. His recovery added much to my reputation, and I received for my labor a new clock, a new overcoat (which I greatly needed), and a hive of bees. This toiling family of honey-makers, I prized highly, and for four years they furnished me with honey, when disease and fickleness left their dwellings vacant. Fur two shared \n\ years I f,.,i m y cow anfirst irregular, at last became regu- larly quickened flashing heat and chilly tremor vied with each other. / only appeared when my cheek was flushed ! One day my mother took my hand the palm was hot like fire she pressed it to her eyes, and bathed it silently with her tears. Then commenced the dewy sweats, and exhausted mornings, with capricious appetite. My clothes were now too large over my chest. Day by day I gradually wasted, and my breath grew short on slight exertion. One evening something salt welled up into my throat, and, with a slight cough, bright blood fell upon the cloth before me. I rose, locked my door, and bled alone ! Not even my mother dis- covered it. I was paler, but I said I had not slept well. CONSUMPTION. 281 " For a time the loss of blood gave me relief ; but soon the languor increased ; my flesh wasted, and the pulse hur- ried on, but with less strength. Then the chills became more severe, though the fever lasted not so long ; but the horrid sweats increased. I do not think the oppression was now so great, although my breath was shorter life and lung were accommodating each other ! but the pain in my shoulder became greater I called it rheumatism ! To my sur- prise, I became more cheerful hope seemed to hold out a saving hand. I began to think there was a limit to my dis- ease. But this lasted not long. My cheek burned with a deeper red, although my blood grew daily paler. Too well I knew that life's load was lightening ; yet my will strug- gled against conviction. " Now, doctor, you have my history. I am arrested here on my way to Juliette's home. I have written to her, to say that I will soon be with her, and that all shall be explained. Will she doubt me, when she sees the wreck that regret and disease have left ? Will she refuse her for- giveness when the dreadful secret is disclosed ?" He ceased speaking, and appeared much fatigued. Still was he calculating on time and strength, when it was impos- sible that two more days would be his ! Besides, the mor- row promised to be a day of storm ; heavy clouds obscured the heavens, the wind was very high, and rain would soon fall in torrents. A little fire was made in the hearth, as the night grew more inclement. The sofa was drawn up, and in a few minutes he fell asleep. He slept almost like a child, so easy were his breathings, although short. The fire-light alone brightened the chamber, whilst the storm without appeared fast increasing. But the inmates of the hotel cared not for the night ; sounds of music occa- sionally struck my ear, as I half-dozed by the side of the sick man. Surely, a great hotel is a heartless place ; it hath none of the sanctity of home life ! 282 SCENES IN SOUTHERN PRACTICE. The rain pelted the jarring window-frames the storm whistled, and died moaning away. The sick man seemed happy the changing sounds lulled him to sleep. A smile played over his mouth. Were the angels whispering to him as in childhood they do ? His thin white hand gently raised, and his arm motioned as though embracing some one, and "Juliette, loved one," breathed from his lips. A peal of thunder, like the roar of artillery, shook the house. With a faint cry he awoke. Fright was depicted in every feature. " Ah, heaven ! is that you, doctor ? Then it is not real." I took the poor sufferer's hand, as he laid his head upon my shoulder. The once proud strong man sobbed his heart seemed broken. " Dreams are only mine," he at length said. " I stood with her at the altar my arm was around her waist, and the first pure kiss seemed lingering on my lips when of a sudden the earth rent open, and I was left alone, struggling in a sea of blood ! I feel it here," he continued, placing his hand over his heaving breast ; it is of no use, I must die die, unblessed and unheard." For a while I thought the end was nigh come. How the cold sweat poured from his broad forehead ! Scarce a breath he drew, unless convulsive gaspings could be so called. The fire-light was nearly out the stump-ends of the logs welled and sang like a death bell. I felt very weak the storm alone seemed strong, as with plashing rain and fierce blast it howled on. I could not leave him. He lay half off the sofa, drooping and panting on my chest. The fire- light grew less and less. I called aloud to some one pas- sing the door ; but he heard it not, and went, humming a merry tune, by ! Then came over me that bitterness of heart, so often the companion of our professional life. I mentally cursed the gay man, and thought how close, hand "Call me George. Have you not been a brother to me? to me, a perfect stranger, whose wayward and rebellious feelinsrs have caused nothing but trouble and pain to you. Call rne George. No mother is here to call me thus. You have been all to ma" PACK 283. CONSUMPTION. 283 to hand, sported life near death. God help the traveller who sickens in these great gatherings of men ! At length he rallied, and placing him upon his cushions, I gave him a restorative lamp-light never seemed more like a friend. Pointing to me to be seated, he said in a half whisper " Doctor, how long can this last ? Tell me I must know." I was glad at the question, for there might be many things yet to be done by him ; and friends drink eagerly the hap- penings of the closing scene a message a mere " God's blessing," are deeply prized, when breathed by the loved djing. Have we not all felt it ? But a sad task it is to allot the hour of death to the yet young. " My dear friend," I answered, " if you have anything to prepare any writings, or message, or peace to make it should be soon done ; for I fear by this time to-morrow the burthen will have been laid down." " So soon," he cried, starting up ; " it cannot be it must not be. I will live I cannot give it up yet." I begged him to quiet himself, and to attend to what he could before he slept. " Sleep sleep ! my God 1 what, sleep, when my very soul is awake ? What, with every hour numbered, to waste a single one on sleep, when the body's want has ceased ? No, no ; no more sleep for me. Hush, waste not words ; my will is as strong as ever, though the muscles have wea- kened. It is the hour I have so long dreaded so fought against ; and yet I must most miserably perish, robbed of heart blood, with scarce a fragment left uncontaminated within my chest." He shuddered ; his old feelings were again rioting within. By degrees he became calm, and as I commenced, he seized my hand, pressed it fervently, and interrupted me. " Call me George. Have you not been a brother to me ? to me, a perfect stranger, whose wayward and rebellious feelings have caused nothing but trouble and pain to you. 284 SCENES IN SOUTHERN PRACTICE. Call me George. Xo mother is here to call me thus. You have been all to me." I told him that all physicians did daily do as I had done. " Yes," he exclaimed, " their mission is a high one yet so little prized, how little even thought of ! Even I did not appreciate their mighty value, till now, when too late to do aught but thank and God bless them to ask forgiveness when often I have passed them by, as though belonging to the common herd of men, ignorant of their sacrifices, their unseen humanity, and their Christianizing heart-influ- ences 1 But, doctor, my poor mother will cherish you her prayers will mingle your name with mine. She will never cease to remember the death-friend of her only child. When I am gone, doctor, tell her how dear she was to me tell her how the cradle has never left my heart, with her soft lullaby and mother-prayer that now, even now, when the damps of death chill my wasted blood, my heart still feels warmed by the strong memory of her affection for her dar- ling boy. Will you promise ?" I did so through my tears. For a while he seemed com- muning with himself the expression of his countenance was sacred. " Summon my servant," he suddenly exclaimed, " and bid him take horse, and ride like the wind to B . Let him tell her, Juliette, to come quick to me, that all may yet be explained for my sake. He was overcome, and panted like a sheep. " Now, doctor, fan the flame ; let it not go out till I have seen her by my side ; and then, world's care will be over." He slumbered heavily during the night the storm had abated, and his servant had left regardless of the weather. The morning broke bright as Hope itself the early bud and blossoms were weeping dewy tears of light. Here and CONSUMPTION. 285 there some torn-off branch, with scattered flower-leaves, lay on the earth, soon to be crushed and withered, whilst others grew happily on. Such is life ! George was evidently weaker than the night before, but he was composed. He constantly looked at his watch. His whole aim seemed in trying to be prepared for the expected arrival. Twelve o'clock passed, and he was very languid. I began to fear he could not last till the meeting. He avoided taking the stimulants as frequently as before ; he was nursing for his last trial. The sun was nigh set, when suddenly he cried, " She comes she comes 1" I listened, but could discover no sound. His ear was more acute, for in a minute the roll of a carriage rapidly driven broke on my ear. " Quick," he cried, leaning on his elbow, " give me the drink more ;" and he drank double the usual allow- ance. I went into the passage the servant was rapidly escorting a young lady. Putting out my hand silently I led her into the chamber, followed by her father. With out-stretched arms the dying man half raised from the sofa, as his loved one sank amidst an agony of his sobs into his embrace. No one moved for some time. Our tears flowed like rain At length, gently raising her from his breast, we placed her by his side. Her silken hair fell over his pillow, as she bent her ear to catch his voice. I had never before seen such beauty. Alas ! for heart-canker 1 " Can you now forgive me, dear Juliette ?" he faintly asked. " Do you not read the fatal secret that dashed the cup of joy from our lips ? Was this wretched body a fit mate for thine ?" " Oh, speak not thus to me, George. It was not the body I loved thy spirit mated mine. See, upon this hand I have ever worn the ring ; am I not thy spirit- bride ?" " Oh, Juliette," said the now happy man, "you are more 286 SCENES IN SOUTHERN PRACTICE. than bride to me ! thou art knowledge ! since through thee I began to learn a future life !" " Did you, dear George ?" she said " could you believe that within us, which rides from earth heavenward upon thought, could partake of the perishable nature of matter, which, ever changing, teaches destructibleness ? Matter belongeth to earth spirit hath but one affinity, and that is for its Maker, to whom it may render the account of its working whilst in the prison-house of the flesh !" A bright glow centered on the wan cheek of her listener the fervor of received truth beamed from his eyes ! " Speak to me, Juliette speak thus again," he gasped out. "The ills of my manhood are passing away. I feel chasing through every fibre of my brain the bright intelli- gence so lately learned. It must be true. God's will be done ! Oh, let me feel your hands, so full of human warmth fresh from the hearth of your pure heart. Oh, how differ- ent from other heat ! Tell me, doctor, how far cold am I ?" He stretched out his arm towards me. He was like ice to the elbow. " I know I know Death's frosts are stealing over me ; yet I feel your warm hands, Juliette, and your breath seems genial to my cold cheek. More drink. My sight loses you, dearest. It is of no use I fail I die. Bless mother Juliette." All was over. Again it is May the churchyard is green again. Two tombs lie together. One seems but freshly made, for te grass is trodden down by its side, and a few withered blos- soms, like those full blooming over the other, lie scattered around. On this new tomb is inscribed, "Juliette." HISTORY OF FORT LEE. 287 REVOLUTIONARY HISTORY OF FORT LEE. IT has been said of the American, and we fear with too much truth, that he has little attachment to his native place. The allurements of wealth and the love of change seem to engulf so much his attention, that he appears to reverence scarcely even that spot of earth that may be hallowed by the most tender associations. Without attempting to defend our countrymen, or to eulogize their enterprise or their bravery, we propose simply to contribute a few facts in relation to this beautiful and romantic suburb, with which we have been made familiar since our infancy, by those who were personally engaged in them during the exciting period of the Revolution. The spot is associated with the memory of a being we most revered on earth one to whose lips falsehood was unknown. We shall, however, commence twenty-five years anterior to that period, in order to trace its earlier history. The site of Fort Lee is not generally known to those who visit the place on excursions. Many suppose it to have been situated directly on the river, on the table-land upheld by the Palisades, as that glorious and stupendous bulwark of vertical rock is called that stretches some thirty miles up the noble Hudson. This is an error. There were two large cannon stationed there, upon a raised platform of earth, which is now distinctly visible in its outline, some three hundred feet from the Bluff, as the first great rock is called, that caps the ascent immediately behind the hotel. 288 HISTORY OF FORT LEE. There was also a small fort there called Fort Constitution, mounting three or four guns. These cannon were placed there to annoy the shipping, and to prevent them from ascending the river the prospective importance of which, as a channel of communication with West Point and the Canadas, General Washington could not fail to perceive. A ckevaux de frise, of considerable strength, had been con- structed of chains, and sunken posts, and timber, for the purpose of obstructing the navigation ; and this extended across the river from the shore directly beneath the batte- ries, to that in front of Fort Washington, on the other, or city side of the river. There were likewise two cannon a couple of miles further up the river. These defences were erected some time before Fort Lee. The prophetic eye of Washington, after the victory of the English on Long Island, seeing that the war could only be continued, with such miserable military stores and appointments as we possessed, by alternately retreating and fighting the enemy, selected the first great natural position for a fort that offered on the Jersey side. Brigadier-General Mercer was accordingly directed to occupy the position of Fort Lee, with the militia and such troops as could be gathered. It was named after General Lee, then in com- mand of a detachment of the army. Fort Lee was com- menced on the 12th of September, 1716, and was situated on the western side of the road that leads up the hill from the steamboat landing, about three hundred feet behind the Palisade rocks which skirt the river. Its southern bastion is situated directly behind the Episcopal Church. It was about a quarter of an acre in extent, and was surrounded by an embankment, still traceable, though nearly obliterated by the plough. Some four hundred acres comprising the sites of these two forts and the whole of the village proper, now above and below them, together with the landing and the hill on HISTORY OF FORT LEE. 289 which the hotel stands were purchased, about twenty years before the Revolution, by Stephen Bourdette, who, in connection with William Bayard, had received from tho King a grant of a large tract of land, comprising Weehaw- ken and Hoboken. The house is still standing at Weehaw- ken Hill, in which he lived. He was the great-uncle of the writer. He purchased the land at Fort Lee from an old slave who had been made a free man by his master, and lived in solitude by fishing and trapping the animals that abounded in the vast forest about that place. The father of Stephen, Etienne Bonrdette, was the son of a French gentleman who had left his native country many years before the Edict of Nantes caused the exodus of the Huguenots, and settled in one of the West India islands as a planter ; thus early, showing the indomitable family hatred of religious tyranny, that cannot permit other men to be their conscience-keepers. Etienne had been sent to New York by his father, to obtain an education, about eighty years before the war, or one hundred and sixty years ago. Stephen Bourdette, finding that the habits of his father, whose wife was then dead, and himself of a contemplative and religious character, led him to make constant excursions from the city (where he lived in Pine street, and cultivated hind) to the beautiful region of which we write purchased the- entire place, and erected a spacious stone house for him, directly in front of the old farm-house, now standing on the left of the brook which skirts the road, on the west end of the house now occupied by Robert Annette, proprietor of the hotel and landing. This exceedingly valuable and com- manding situation, we may here remark as an illustration of the primitive habits of those days, was given to an old man for constructing a few hundred yards of wall, to hold up the old road leading from Mr. Bourdette's house to the cow-pasture on the top of the hill. It is now richly worth 13 290 HISTORY OF FORT LEE. $100,000, and comprises the entire water front of the village. The stone house occupied by Etienne Bourdette, was the only one then standing on the place, and for nearly a mile north and south of it. It was the head-quarters of Wash- ington ; and after the death of Etienne, was left to his son Peter, and his wife, who had been living at Hackensack, and came to take charge of their father in his extreme old age ; he died there, aged eighty years. Peter Bourdette, with his excellent wife, a woman gifted with a noble soul and a most energetic and commanding character, came to the place about fifteen years before the war, and soon made it the abode of great comfort and hospitality. There the miserable and the afflicted always found a comforter, and were never turned empty away. There was no end to the requirements of hospitality, as such a thing as a hotel was unknown until within the memory of the writer. The social and gentlemanly farmer rarely visited the city, and delighted in learning the current news from the wayfarer. It was the custom of those days, for the farmer to have around him a number of slaves, and the master was always at leisure for a friendly chat. Although wild and mountainous, the land was very productive, and there was always abnndance of food for the hungry man and his horse. If a gentleman, he was invited to the table ; if not, the kitchen was ample, and the servants as fond of news as their master. Some idea may be formed of the wildness of the place, a hundred years ago, from the necessity of inclosing the sheep at night, in order to keep them from being devoured by the wolves. The mother of the writer, long after the Revolution, was standing with a sister in the garden, when a great bear came down from the forest on the hill, and scrambling on a cake of ice, was shot some few miles from the north of the city. The carcass was sold in Washington Market, which was often called by the country people, from HISTORY OF FORT LEE. . 291 that circumstance, the "Bear Market." The same sister, now living, reported the discovery of a large wildcat, as she returned from picking berries. It was shot by a brother the same day, and found to be a very fierce creature. The rattle-snake abounded. The writer met with one, a few years since, that was killed and preserved shortly after the Revolution. Foxes were a great pest, and were hunted and trapped to some profit by the negroes. It may be supposed, that very few social and educational opportunities were offered to the family of the farmer of such a wild region as existed ten miles from the city of New York a hundred years ago. Indeed there was not a house visible ; but boats and horses were plenty, and there were lithe limbs and strong arms to govern them. Both boys and girls owned their horses, and a ride over the hills, of ten miles, was a trifle to a revolutionary mother ; or an early breakfast in New York, after a row in a little egg- shell, starting before day-break over the waters of that noble river, waiting like a beautiful bride or a young mother, to bear her children on her ample bosom to some dear old familiar face in the city. We have before us, at this moment, the richly clasped and griffin-footed little wal- nut chest, that a great-aunt, who reached her eightieth year, served the tea from. It contained a compartment for tea, and by its side the old and quaint little silver spoons. They were the gift of a lover. The sister of this lady, the great-grandmother of the writer, was a devout Episcopalian, and illuminated with her pencil, with which she was skillful, a panel, with some scrip- tural device, over the clergyman's pew in the old Church da St. Esprit, which still stood, as well as the old family man- sion, within the memory of the writer, in Pine street. The great-grandfather on the maternal grandmother's side a Hollander left his farm, where Hanover square now is, to reside at Hackensack, in New Jersey ; and it was to visit 292 HISTORY OP FORT LEE. the relatives who remained in the city that the excursions from Fort Lee were made. A few curious books in natural history and botany, which were gathered up after the plundering of the old house at Fort Lee, still remain, and attest the intellectual habits and taste that governed Etienne in the choice of his abode. He was eminently religious. When the lightning would paint its notes upon the thunder cloud, and the storm-anthem would throw the grand diapason upon the ear, as it rever- berated from the rocky organ of the Palisades when the last notes would rumble away in the distance of the noble river the old man would bare his aged head, and walk forth in the midst of the storm. The mother of the writer, who would attempt to detain him, always received the reply : " Be still, my child, and listen to the voice of God !" The rock has often been pointed out to me on which he would sit ; and when the hollow murmur of the thunder could be faintly heard in the distance, a fine old sonorous voice might be heard, sometimes in French, but oftener in English, chant- ing the Episcopal service : "We praise Thee, God !" The man of fourscore years, the son and the grandson of ninety- four and ninety-five, and she from whose lips but lately closed, and to whom we owe life we write, of eighty five, owed that early life-force that led them so far beyond the allotted years of man, to the pure atmosphere of this roman- tic spot ; and two of the last generation, of sixty and seventy, still look upon the rising sun near the spot where they first saw its light. A hundred years has been attained by a neighbor, and eighty and ninety are frequent amongst the inhabitants. The toils of city life, and the cunning devices of man to cut short its brittle thread, will not permit many of their descendants to reach so distant a goal. But the son had his trials. Etienne, the father, died several years before the war, and the place was given by HISTORY OF FORT LEE. 293 the senior brother, who resided at Weehawken, and was always called by the English of the paternal name, i. e., Stephen, to his brother Peter, the grandfather of the writer. He, with his eldest son (also Peter), his excellent wife, Rachel Bush, and the mother of the writer, then seven years of age, and three other children, passed through the stormy period of the Revolution at their lovely mountain home. One day, early in November of It 76, with some of the younger children, my mother was summoned unexpectedly from school, in the English Neighborhood, as that large and beautiful portion of farming country which lies between Fort Lee and Hackensack is called ; and as she came in sight of the winding road that leads down the mountain to the river and the old farmhouse, hundreds of tents appeared on the high ground that commands the river. General Washington had issued his orders to General Mercer to summon all the available troops and erect a fort there, as early as the 6th of September, so as to command the river, in case Colonel Magaw should be obliged to retreat, and cross with the army from Fort Washington, then threatened by the British General Howe, Sir Henry Clinton, and Gen. Kniphausen, whose designs on that place were now palpable. Fort Lee was also intended as a depot for troops, in case a reinforcement should be necessary for the defence of that fort ; but how they were to be transported the writer could never understand, as there were no flat-boats, and the river is nearly two miles across, forbidding the use of floats. This post must have been first occupied between the 1st and 10th of November ; for the troops were there, and it was the 13th, when the illustrious Father of our Country first appeared at the old farm-house. It was a period of great gloom to our country ; for our means of payment prevented anything like permanent enlistment, and Washington was 294 HISTORY OF FORT LEE sadly disappointed at the impossibility of obstructing the river by chevauz de frise. As early as October 6th, three British vessels had passed the fort, receiving but little damage from the batteries on the heights ; and it was evi- dent that reinforcements of men for the British army could not be prevented passing up the river ; and thus the army at Fort Washington, under the brave Magaw, with all their munitions, could be more easily cut off by greatly superior numbers. Washington was the object of childish adoration by my mother, and her brother, a youth of sixteen, was a great favorite. On more than one occasion, he rowed to the city at midnight, and brought papers and intelligence of the anticipated movements of the army who threatened Fort Washington. The illustrious chief would retire to his room, and after perusing the papers, he would walk up to the fort, and inspect, through his glass, the movements at Fort Wash- ington, on the city side of the river. The site of that fort our readers will recognize by the flag-staff directly behind the great telegraph masts, where the wires cross the river. It is about eleven miles from the City Hall, and on the highest ground visible. One night, when my brave uncle was approaching the shore, after one of his night visits to the city to get the news for the General, and to convey some provisions to her poor friends from his excellent mother, who never forgot the needy, the wind prevented his signal from being heard by the sentinels who guarded the shore, and supposing an enemy to be approaching, a rifle ball cut his oar in two pieces. As he had but one left, he managed his boat with it as well as he could, and landed, at great risk of being shot, about a mile down the river, and made his way home on foot. On this occasion, the chief stood by while his mother ripped up the lining of his great coat, and receiving the papers, complimented him warmly for his bravery. So HISTORY OF FORT LEE. 295 attached was he to Washington, that he was continually importuning his mother to permit him to receive an appoint- ment near the beloved chief ; but she pointed to my mother and her still younger children, and asked him who would protect them if his father was shot, for his republicanism rendered him a marked man, and her sagacity assured her that in the event of the evacuation of Fort Lee, their situa- tion between the two armies would be almost desperate. As it proved entirely impossible to prevent the English from ascending the river by chevaux de frise, and as they had landed in full force on the Sound, it was very evident that they had the means of speedily cutting off all communi- cation with the city and the country north of the creek, which, with Harlem river, bound, the island of New York on its northern side. This creek on the Hudson is situated about three miles north of Fort Washington, then com- manded by the brave Col. Magaw. This post it was resolved to hold at all hazards. Congress passed a resolu- tion on the llth of October, to incur any possible expense to obstruct the river ; and as Fort Washington and the batteries of the Palisades were to aid this plan in its most essential and destructive features, there was a prospect of stirring times about the old house. The " Fort Field," as the grandchildren always called it since the war, was divided into streets, called after the most noted streets of the city. Broadway, Pearl street, &c., were chalked on pieces of bark, and tacked to posts. The streets were made by lines of tents, and many of the soldiers had constructed huts of stone, with fire-places, and doors opening to the south. Within the circuit of one of these, but four years since, we assembled a large family party my mother giving us, with great spirit, and a per- fect recollection, many incidents of the war. We drank from a well, now inclosed and quite perfect, which had been constructed by the soldiers, and looked out from our rocky 296 HISTORY OF FORT LEE. seats under a beautiful pine tree, over the glorious river, as it stretches away in its glistening course to the ocean. One of the huts, of unusual dimensions, fronting south, was devoted to the use of General Greene, and near it the great Chief met in council with the officers, when it was concluded to evacuate the fort. Here had been the slaughter-house, there, the powder- house, and here, the commissary's tent. On October 28th, the battle of White Plains took place, which was so nearly equal in its results as to give our countrymen some encouragement ; but our miserable appli- ances, and the determination of Gen. Howe to possess the command of the whole of iNew York Island, induced him to approach Fort Washington. He directed Gen. Kniphausen to cross the creek, and occupy the north-western end of the island, between Fort Washington and King's Bridge. Gen. Howe soon joined him, and Washington saw that Fort Washington would be the immediate object of attack. As Gen. Howe approached King's Bridge to cross the creek, three ships of war again passed up the river, notwith- standing the chevaux de frise and firing batteries. This was answered from the ships, and a ball cut off the tops of several trees just beyond the house, and ploughed up a con- siderable space in the road. It moved the hearty mirth of a favorite black servant, who was ascending the hill, and she shouted out at each fire, in great glee, " At 'em again, blue jacket ! " (alluding to the dress of our soldiers) and it was long a by-word amongst the black servants of the family . Gen. Washington now took measures to aid Magaw, in the event of attack, by transporting troops across the river ; though I could never learn that there were any boats of consequence there, or any means of con- structing them. Such was the force with which the British were assembled under Kniphausen, on the north, who had five thousand men, HISTORY OF FORT LEE. 297 besides an unknown number south, under Lords Cornwallis and Percy, and Lieut. Stirling, that Washington sent dis- cretionary orders to General Greene to direct Magaw to evacuate the fort and cross the river, should he judge it expedient ; but the brave Magaw was high in spirits with his two thousand, all told, against at least ten ! On the 13th, General Howe summoned him to surrender. General Washington was then at Hackensack, and he immediately returned, and late at night was crossing the river, my brave uncle delighted with an oar, to give Magaw the necessary instructions, when they met Generals Putnam and Greene, who were returning from a visit to that post, in order to make arrangements for reinforcement, if necessary. The British General resolved upon carrying the place by storm. The event is matter of history, though few know how awful a carnage occurred within ten miles of the spot where we write. The brave Col. Rawlings left six hundred of the enemy dead on the north side of the fort alone, and there were two hundred slain on the southern and eastern approaches to the fort. The accounts give little satisfac- tion, as it regards the loss of the Americans, though it could not have been at the utmost over three hundred, as there were but two thousand regular troops in the fort, and the prisoners were stated by Gen. Howe at two thousand six hundred a discrepancy which must have originated in esti- mating those only who were reguarly enlisted, without volunteers or recruits irregularly obtained. My uncle, who was on the ground after the battle, informed me that dozens of men lay dead, their bodies in heaps, so close was the attack on the northern side, under Rawlings. But this was the precipitous part. On the other sides, the ascent is but slight, and the overwhelming numbers and perfect military equipments of the enemy, will account for the victory. When the attack was at the highest, General Washington 13* 298 HISTORY OF FORT LEE. sent a boat over to request Magaw, if possible, to hold out till night, when he would send a reinforcement. He remained with my uncle on the Palisade rocks skirting the river, inspecting the movements of the belligerents; and when the flag was struck, handing his glass to his young companion, with looks of greatest dejection, he exclaimed : "Look, my boy, look! All is over. Alas 1 my poor country !" Descending the heights, Gen. Washington made immediate arrangements to evacuate Fort Lee, which was by no means as strong as Fort Washington, and the General saw the British would immediately invest it. Accordingly, Cornwallis, with six thousand men, crossed at Dobb's Ferry for that purpose, and advanced by a forced march. It would have been madness to attempt to fight such a force ; therefore the garrison moved off on the 18th of November, compelled to abandon their cannon, tents, and military stores. The impossibility of obtaining wagons was the cause of this sacrifice. My grandmother and the children were obliged to flee to the English Neighborhood, two miles off, so as to escape the immediate consequences of the free plunder that they knew was to come my grandfather and his son remain- ing, to collect, if possible, any property that might be spared. What valuables and money they possessed were buried, and they soon had occasion to summon all their fortitude. Some thousands of Hessians and mercenary soldiers devas- tated the place. A perfect saturnalia now commenced. A barrel of whiskey and another of sugar were rolled out of the cellar, and thrown into a rain-water cask standing at one corner of the house, in the court-yard. My good grand- mother's dairy-room yielded its aid, and a puncheon of milk punch was made, and stirred with a rail. My grandfather begged a British officer to try and preserve at least a single pail of milk for his children's evening meal. Overcome with HISTORY OF FORT LEE. 299 sympathy at the nature of the request, he was too much excited to carry out his benevolent intentions judiciously. Approaching a Hessian soldier, who was coming up the cellar steps with a flat vessel of milk (called a " keeler " in dairy phrase) on his head, he struck him slightly on the back with the flat side of his sword. The cowardly crea- ture jumped aside at his officer's frown, the bottom of the old vessel broke, and he became in a moment a personifica- tion of plenty literally flowing with milk. There was a shout of laughter, in which my grandfather was too much of a Frenchman' not to join. When the punch was prepared, my grandfather was impu- dently requested to drink the King's health, by those wretched creatures, the Hessian soldiers. They were using their shoes by way of drinking-cups 1 Several British officers were present, and it is but doing them justice to say that they seemed to sympathize with the inhabitants. One of them immediately stepped up to my grandfather, and advised him to go through with the formality only, as the soldiers continued loudly to call for him. There were hundreds of soldiers present. He said he feared it would be the cause of personal danger to him, if he refused ; but he had stern Huguenot blood in him, and replied that if he drank at all, he would say what he pleased. They immedi- ately made way for him to approach the puncheon ; and the officers, who well knew his boldness, surrounded him com- pletely. Uncovering his head, and dipping his hand into the liquor, which he only pretended to drink, he bowed to the name he was about to utter, rather than to the officers, and exclaimed in his clearest tones, throwing a Frenchman's kiss over the mountain where he had that morning taken, leave of his beloved and great friend, "The health of General Washington ! Confusion to King George, and destruction to his hireling Hessians 1" It was well for him that thft officers were attached to him, or he would have 300 HISTORY OF FORT LEE. been cut to pieces by the infuriated soldiers. Why he was not killed by some of them when their officers were absent, is to me a wonder ; for his fearless utterance was always exasperating. At the end of ten days, the British troops had evacuated the place, and were proceeding towards Newark, under Cornwallis. Washington had crossed the Passaic, on his way to New Brunswick ; and my grandfather and his son went in pursuit of the family, to bring them back to their mined household. My mother and the other children were brought over, and they were about being sent supperless to such beds as could be prepared for them out of the torn frag- ments, which the infuriated soldiery had not entirely destroyed, when my good grandmother appeared, coming down the hill on an old wood sled, drawn by a beau- tiful horse, the only living animal they now possessed, driven by a black man. All the cattle and other horses were of course carried off by the British troops ; and she had herself driven over this horse to the English Neighbor- hood, when the family fled from the old house, with a bag of flour and a few pounds of butter, and secreted him in the cellar of an old deserted house I have often seen. Here he remained for three days, without food or drink, and would have died but for the kindness of a British officer, who was attached to my grandfather, and to whom she communicated the hiding-place of her beautiful pet. He kindly went over, and fed him and gave him drink, during those three days, when the British had extended themselves from Fort Lee, and were foraging the southern portion of the English Neighborhood, where she, of course, could not venture to go. Hearing their mother below stairs, the children were clamorous for food ; for they had not eaten since morning. The poor little creatures were fain to content themselves with a raw turnip till some cakes could be hastily made for HISTORY OF FORT LEE. 301 them. The wholesome milk and the pet cows each one having its name and its owner were all gone ; and had it not been for the providence of a mother who combined all the affection of the woman with the firmness of a most determined man, they might have well-nigh starved to death ; for, as we have already said, there was no other house near, and the people for miles were robbed of all their food and cattle. " Bless God for all his mercies ! Here you are, and here are we all together ; and here is food, too," said this excel- lent woman to her husband. "I feared your tongue would cost you your life." She little knew how nearly true her anticipations had proved. My mother, who was but seven years of age, and her sister, mounted the old sled, and begged a turnip to appease their hunger. She had found her doll and her pet cat near the wood-pile, and seated herself on a log, perfectly happy, eating her turnip. " This is hard to bear," said my grandmother ; " but God will yet prosper our cause, if we follow the counsels of Washington." " Yes," said her husband ; and they now know my senti- ments," adding an expletive in French, which his feelings will pardon. " What's that ?" said she. " Some more imprudence, I dare say." A few days after, my uncle told her the story of the punch and the toast, to which she jocosely replied, looking nevertheless proudly at her husband : " Pity it is your father had not a little Dutch blood in him. These Frenchmen are always half crazy. Thank God, my son, your father was not killed before your eyes ! " The family were now in still greater danger than before, for they were entirely unprotected, as the entire American army were west of the Hackensack, and what was worse, 302 HISTORY OF FORT LEE. the country was continually ravaged by tories and robbers. What money and valuables they possessed were buried, and my grandfather abstracted from time to time only enough to procure bread for his family during the winter. It was useless to purchase many cattle, for he could not be sure of preserving them over a single night. The family managed to subsist during this hard winter ; but it was necessary for my uncle to visit the city, often at great risk of life, to pro- cure food ; and when I last saw him, at ninety years of age, firm and erect, with the voice and will of a lion, his immense features and grey hair adding great dignity to his appear- ance, I could not but think that the sage was right when he said, " Difficulty is good for man." An event occurred shortly after the evacuation of Fort Lee, which I have often felt would have graced the page of history, although it never probably occurred to its chief actor that it was worth recording ; for he never seemed to think it of much moment. Gen. Kniphausen continued in command of the fort and the division of the army on the northern part of the island of New York. But a few days elapsed after the family had returned, when they were alarmed by the rude midnight summons of a British officer, followed by several soldiers, and a demand that my grand- father should immediately cross the river to the fort. They were all dreadfully alarmed ; but the officer assured them he would be permitted to return before day, as Gen. Knip- hausen merely required some information, which would insure his safe return. This was equal to an assurance that he would be sent to one of the city prisons, as the family knew he would communicate nothing to the enemy, and that he had greatly exasperated the Hessians by the toast. It had now obtained general currency, and every one sup- posed him a doomed man. My uncle most earnestly begged to be permitted to accompany his father, but was not allowed. He was hurried off to the fort, none supposing HISTORY OF FORT LEE. 303 they would again see him in weeks or months, if ever. On his arriral at the fort, he was immediately introduced to Gen. Kniphauseu, who treated him very courteously, offering wine and refreshment. The General soon commenced the conversa- tion by alluding to the trouble my grandfather had already undergone, and made some remarks on the unequal nature of the contest. My grandfather replied that when a whole nation, were of one mind, and a country as extensive as America, he could scarcely believe it possible to subjugate them without years of sacrifice and expenditure. Gen. Kniphausen smiled, and asked if the recent results showed much determination on the part of the Americans. My grandfather had it on his tongue to refer him to Col. Raw- lings and the northern bastion of the fort, within the enclo- sure of which they were then sitting ; but prudence pre- vailed, and he was silent. Gen. Kniphausen was not a rude man, and made no further effort to prolong the conversa- tion ; but drawing from his pocket a heavy purse of gold, he threw it upon the table, and assured my grandfather that he would be pleased to extend to his family, in his present dangerous position on the lines, the aid and protection of a guard, and that he would be happy in return to receive some necessary information about the future movements M the army ; that as Gen. Washington had been his guest, he must possess more knowledge of the plan of action than any other person ; ending with the assurance that he would be pleased to possess his personal friendship, and in return he would supply his more immediate pecuniary necessities, pointing to the purse. My grandfather felt as though every drop of blood in his body had mounted to his face. He immediately arose, and walking towards the further entrance of the tent, replied : "Permit me, Gen. Kniphausen, to draw this conversation to a close ; and excuse me for the remark, that if you insist upon its further continuance, I cannot but feel it will be discreditable to both of us. I 304 HISTORY OF FORT LEE. have already been too long here ; but what could a man, seized at midnight, surrounded by a helpless family do, but yield to superior force ? I am ready to accompany your soldiers to your prison, for I suppose that is to be my fate?" " That is not the way, Mr. Bourdette," replied General Kniphausen. " I have no such intention. But you are a bold man thus to trifle with your family. I will return you to them for the present, but cannot always promise to be so lenient. " General Kniphausen," replied my grandfather, "it may save you and my helpless family further trouble should the chance of war again bring Gen. Washington under my roof, if I inform you that I am not advised of his intended movements. They will doubtless be dictated by the emer- gencies brought about by your superior numbers and appointments ; but I trust in God for my poor country, they will result in good. Good night, General. I am cer- tainly indebted to you for your clemency, and hope you will save yourself and me any future trouble of a character like the present." " Good night, Mr. Bourdette. You are a bold man ; and if your countrymen were all like you, we would have harder duty before us." My grandfather reached home in safety, and was awaited by the whole family, who had not slept since his depar- ture. But my pen betrays me, and I must close this tribute to the memory of the past. The family underwent many vicis- situdes during the subsequent six years of the war, which the reader will find recorded in another part of this volume. The old house was rebuilt shortly after the war, and its roof- tree a second time became grey with moss whilst it covered the venerable heads of its owners, and they recounted to their grandchildren the scenes they had witnessed, and again HISTORY OF FORT LEE. 305 made it the abode of comfort and hospitality. Often, as in my schoolboy days, I have sought the old mansion through the forest of Weehawken, and could see the venerable pair seated on the porch, and hear the echo of the woodman's axe and the tinkling of the cow-bell, I have thought, even in my early youth, that a life thus spent, and nearing its close, was far more congenial with nature and true dignity of charac- ter, than all the applause of popularity or the fawning syco- phancy of luxury and fashion. 306 SCENES IN PRACTICE. SCENES IN PRACTICE. THB FOUR IMPELLING POWERS TO EVIL INTEMPERANCE, AMBITION, ANIMAL PASSION, AND THE LOVE OP MONET ILLUSTRATION OF THE LATTER BY AN AWFUL TRAGEDY. A FEW years since, whilst visiting a country town to attend to an operation, my professional advice was sought by a man whose extraordinary countenance impressed me, in a greater degree than I ever remember to have been by any individual in the lower walks of life. I subsequently found that the occasion of his visit was to avail himself of my opinion as professional testimony, to assist in clearing up some points which went to implicate him in one of the most deliberate and awful murders in the whole catalogue of crime, ancient or modern. I took pains to ascertain the facts, and listened to nearly all the evidence during the first trial of two men, his son-in-law and nephew, who were exe- cuted as the murderers ; the first trial was then progress- ing in the village where my patient lived. Ambition, intemperance, the morbid state of sexual passion, and the love of money, I take to be the four greatest impelling powers to crime ; and my legal friends must forgive me if I consider their efforts to defend a criminal they know to be guilty, often prove them particularly liable to the former and the latter vices ; for such we have always considered the four. The love of money, however, as it is the meanest and vilest of human vices, is usually fostered to its most disgust- THE FOUR IMPELLING POWERS TO EVIL. 307 ing developments by the more cowardly whether lawyer, physician, merchant or murderer. The weak-minded of our clerical friends, usually nourish the vices of ambition and sensuality. The study of human motive in its action on temperament and organism, has ever been to us, the most fascinating pursuit ; and it will be observed that the mere medical and surgical relations of patient and physician, are always of secondary consequence in the sketches we present our readers. We shall now endeavor to place before the reader the chief characters implicated in the tragedy we are about to recount, and in the order of relation they seemed to us to occupy, from its inception in the love of money, to its fearful consummation in three murders and the execution, of two of the murderers ; how far a third was implicated, we will leave the reader to determine ; and whether the love of money does not require the cautions of the moralist and the best efforts of the essayist, as well as any other crime. Xo vice enables a man so effectually to play upon the weaknesses of his fellows ; especially when the devotee has accumulated enough of the powerful lever to control the weak and needy. The patient who sought my chamber before I had yet arisen from my bed, was a man of about fifty years, of me- dium height, remarkably well knit together, and plainly clad in black ; he was a small farmer living at W . The lower part of his features showed no peculiar trait, ex- cept penuriousness, denoted by thin and bloodless lips, and compressed nostrils. The extraordinary traits of character that enabled him to occupy a relation to the tragedy, we will leave the reader to determine, were shown in the eyes and forehead. The eyes were small, grey, and very near together ; the eyebrows near but distinct, and neither luxu- riant nor otherwise ; forehead of medium height and narrow ; cheek bones not prominent ; head small, and by no means flat, and not, as our phrenologists always say in villains, 308 SCENES IN PRACTICE. destitute of veneration. It was to the utter woodenness of the face, and the immobility of the eyes my attention was drawn ; the latter might, for all their expressiveness, have been made of glass, and the lids glued to them for the greater part of the time during which he was in my room : he looked as though no other passion but avarice found a dwelling-place in his soul. He was married, and had a family ; his domestic relations were neither marked by severity nor affection : indeed he was a wooden man, locking up his purposes within his own soul. The purpose for which he sought me was in reality a foolish one ; though he doubtless thought my evidence, being a stranger, and therefore supposed to be unprejudiced," might avail him if he could secure my private ear, and oper- ate upon me with a small bribe. But let the story be developed as it occurred : we will only request the reader to remember the personal appear- ance of our patient. The small hamlet in which he lived, was the -place of abode of a family consisting of a brother, near his own age, a very good-natured man, possessing some wealth in money and a farm, his wife and two small children ; an old bache- lor, who was also comfortably off in wealth, as boarder ; a young woman as " help," and a boy of some twelve years, also a servant, composed the rest of this family. Much attachment existed between the family and this bachelor, and it was generally supposed that in the event of the death of either, the survivor would inherit the wealth of the deceased. This prospective arrangement we must so far anticipate as to say, was supposed by all the neighbors to be a source of great jealousy and heart-burning between the brothers, viz. my patient and the head of the family. Of course the bachelor was not viewed with favor by my patient, whose visits to the household were few, but fre- quent and hypocritical enough to ascertain what money was AN AWFUL TRAGEDY. 309 on hand, and to judge where it and the will, if any existed, were kept. A son-in-law of my patient, and a nephew the former a man of family, a good-natured, blue-eyed creature of some thirty years ; the latter a small, good-looking, inoffensive, though lively and jocose youth of twenty-twolived near him, and were entirely under his influence. The reader has now all the actors, and the victims before him ; all are sufficiently characterized ; the only marked man being my patient. One morning, the whole hamlet were alarmed by the dis- covery that the brother and his wife, the bachelor and the servant boy, were found murdered by blows from a hatchet: the wife being in bed with half a candle in her hand ; the boy up stairs in bed ; the husband and the bachelor on the road a few rods from the house, and the body of one, I do not remember which, thrown into a hole in the road. The hired girl was not to be found, but the two children were alive and unharmed in a truckle-bed under another higher bedstead ; directly against which a door opened, so as to obscure it from view. The boy, we may here say, though dreadfully wounded, eventually recovered an idiot. Some money and papers were found, which it subsequently appeared were only a part of what were in the house : why any were left did not appear. From the moment of the dis- covery by the neighbors, a chain of circumstantial evidence commenced, criminating the two unfortunate young men, or the son-in-law and the nephew of the hardened man who consulted me, and who managed, whether guilty or not, to escape punishment, and to attain the most extraordinary influence over two human beings I have ever imagined possible. The first circumstance that arrested the attention of the neighbors, was the manner in which the son-in law received the intelligence of the murder. He was ploughing, and on 310 SCENES IN PRACTICE. the announcement that the whole family had been murdered, he uttered a mere exclamation of surprise and finished the furrow ! The nephew managed to appear somewhat horror- struck, and my patient also appeared a little shocked. They all assembled at the house where the tragedy had been enacted, and the jury proceeded to investigate the dark affair. Part of the candle was found, as we have already said, clutched in the hand of the murdered woman : all of them had been killed by blows from a hatchet, and her death-blow had been at once fatal. Whether she fell asleep with that bit of candle in her hand, or whether it had been placed there by the murderer to deceive, will never be known ; but the other half of the candle, or what was assumed to be such, because it was evidently recently divided, was found in a lantern near the place where the bachelor and the husband were found murdered. This was at a certain large hole in the road, for the filling up of which, the son-in-law had been negotiating with the mur- dered man, as he was road-master of that town. It was alleged, moreover, that he had been seen late on the evening of the murder, with another man, riding towards the house ; and tracks where a horse had been tied near by, having a very peculiarly marked shoe on one foot, were dis- covered ; the smith who shod the horse, testified it to belong to the son-in-law. What testimony was developed to induce suspicion of the nephew at that time, I have for- gotten, but both were imprisoned and indicted. Two trials were had ; and on the first, neither was con- victed, but on the second, it was proved that money had been paid by the son-in-law immediately after the murder, which was identified, from its peculiar character, to have been paid to the murdered brother of my patient, for pro- visions sold to a merchant. Both the son-in-law and nephew were sworn to as having been seen riding towards the house late at night : there was some other very extraordinary THE INVESTIGATION. 311 testimony respecting a letter, either as haying been actually sent on the next day, and either preserved by the person, or found undestroyed among the effects of the son-in-law, announcing some event what I cannot say connected with the murder and not known to have occurred till some lime after- u-d rfJ, proving conclusively that he must have been privy to it. One circumstance, and one only, arrested my attention as powerfully militating against him on the trial. Such was his inoffensive appearance, that till the moment I witnessed it, I believed he would be proved innocent. It is one that could only produce its full impression on the mind of an anatomist : to a lawyer it would be of no consequence. He had been allowed to sit among the members of the bar beside his counsel, and had taken a position of apparent ease, with one leg over the other, and his arm hanging over the back of the chair. A slight shade of paleness only overspread his face, and no one could suspect him, a young man, a father, and dwelling peacefully in a quiet hamlet, to be a murderer. When the blacksmith was brought forward, and swore that the tracks made by the prisoner's horse, where he had been tied to the fence, near the scene of the murder, had been identified as only possible to have been made by the peculiar shoe he had fitted to the animal, the prisoner convulsively contorted the arm that was hanging over the back of his chair, and actually turned the palm upwards ; and immediately twice snapped his thumb and finger together, as is common with vulgar people when expressing indifference. I imagined the tumultous move- ments of the poor heart, as he got the unexpected and terrible warning of his doom. His father sat by, and -perceptibly lost the color that healthy toil and innocence had allowed to mantle the furrows of his aged cheek. My heart ached for him. I looked to my patient with eager interest : not a movement betrayed the least quickening of his pulse, nor a breath of sympathy or alarm for his son-in- 312 SCENES IN PRACTICE. law, his nephew, or himself. Knowing the opinion of the lawyers with regard to his guilt, and with my previous opportunity to judge of his moral nature by his face, my interest became powerfully excited in the result of the trial. I would willingly have prolonged my stay, but my patient recovered, and my duties called me home. Both the younger men were convicted of murder, but my patient escaped. I but recently learned the following points in the history of the case ; they have convinced me of the correctness of my first impression as to who planned the murder. Other medical eyes than my own were upon my patient ; and his extraordinary influence over the doomed men, was the subject of much wonder. The anticipation that the pri- soners would make a full confession, was destined to be disappointed. My informant being a resident of the town and a medical man, had opportunities of ascertaining the facts, which he communicated to me. I have drawn my own conclusions from them. One of the gentlemen who defended the prisoners, was a young man of very prepossessing exterior and most respect- ably connected. His business had been of little pecuniary value up to the period of his being retained for this .case. So far as my ability to judge of the countenance extended, I should have supposed him very easily influenced by a wicked and designing man. Both he and my patient had free intercourse with the two prisoners, and it was observed by all who possessed any feeling for persons under such awful circumstances, that they maintained the utmost calm- ness and indifference : this was evidently kept up by the daily visits of my patient, whose influence over them seemed absolute. The young lawyer also was a constant visitor, and maintained before them a calm and indifferent exterior. It was known from their deportment and conversation, that they confidently anticipated a pardon ; to the last moment MAGNETIC POWER OF A DESIGNING MAN. 313 of their lives this idea was evidently kept ia full excite- ment ; and here lies the point which has always excited my astonishment. Whatever part my patient had in the planning of this awful murder may never be known ; but his astonishing influence over these two wretched men as well as over the young lawyer, has always amazed me, and classified him with the most remarkable men I ever saw or imagined. Here we find two young men, one a married -man and a father, never suspected of crime or known to be cruel, implicated by a series of circumstances of such irresistible power, as to cause a jury of their neighbors to condemn them to death, maintaining the utmost calmness to the last hour of their existence ; the father-in-law of one and uncle of the other, apparently unconcerned and almost indifferent, visiting them daily with his lawyer ; the wife and her little children and his father, seeking the condemned father and husband and son ; the day of execution rapidly approach- ing, and indifference and unconcern the only expression visible on the face of this wonderful man ; when he was to inherit the property of the murdered family,* and seemed, so far as the object and his countenance and deportment went, the only one capable of committing the murder ! The day before the execution, all confidently anticipated a solution of the mystery ; but the usual visits were paid to the prisoners, including, I believe, those of a friendly clergy- man, the same stolid apathy was visible on my patient's face, the same cheerfulness on those of the prisoners. All the sad arrangements had been made, the sound of the hammer in the erection of the gallows had rung in their ears ; they ate and drank and retired to rest as usual, uttering no sound of confession, and apparently easy and unconcerned. All who had looked upon their almost boyish faces, were astonished : how could such hearts and such * I believe, however, be did not inherit, became of the etcape of the two children. 14 314 SCENES IN PRACTICE. brains hold out and see the approach of such a doom without a sign ? The morning came ; the last meeting with wife and chil- dren had occurred ; all went their sorrowful way to the little cottage which had once sheltered in innocence, one whose name it was now a disgrace to bear. The aged father remained, with the old wagon that had once carried his light-hearted boy to school or the hay-field. For what was it kept in waiting now ? Great God ! why did not the feeble desolate heart stand still and release the poor old man ? The last prayer was said ; the habiliments of death were upon them ; the arms were pinioned ; the last minute had arrived ! Who passes the fatal summons to the con- demned ? Not the sheriff : he was at the cell-door ; but my patient ! In a tone of jocularity he summons them, " Come, come ;" and is accompanied by the young lawyer ! No unusual excitement was visible on the faces of the con- demned : they are evidently expecting a pardon ! Had they been assured of it ? See how closely the lawyer and the hard-hearted father-in-law stand near the ear of each prisoner ! The whole party step on to the fatal platform ; they whisper with unmoved faces to the prisoners, and look knowingly at each other ; there is a slight misgiving visible on the faces of the condemned. The vast assembly sway like the wind-moved forest. A moment the cap is drawn, the signal is given ; the lawyer and the unmoved, iron-faced patient step back, and confession is for ever impossible ! On the farm of the poor old father is a tomb that covers the remains of the unfortunate young men. They say he wished to be buried there ; and I know not, but I hope ere this his wish has been gratified. His two poor little grandchildren may gather wild flowers there ; for flowers, like love for a child, will bloom even on the grave of a murderer. My patient, I hope, will live till he is fit to die ; he could not die without repentance. He gathered up the property MON'EY, NOT THE CHIEF GOOD. 315 he possessed and departed for the West. His neighbors looked at him and shuddered as they passed ; and the two little children, who escaped their intended doom, and the graves of the murdered brother and his wife, and the kind old bachelor, were too near him ; the vacant face of the idiot boy, too, would now and then flit before him ; all were too near him ; but there was something still nearer : even he was uncomfortable. The young lawyer also removed. Men talked about him ; he was not acceptable in the social circle ; his first great lesson might be too suggestive of the next step in life, and what might that not be ? Reader, beware of money ! It is not the chief good : the love of God and man is better. 316 ON CROUP. ON CROUP. WHAT IS CROUP? ITS SYMPTOMS AXD TREATMENT. FEW subjects present greater interest to the American mother, than that sudden and violent inflammation of the delicate lining membrane of the wind-pipe in children, termed Croup. The extraordinary vicissitudes of our climate, with the known frequency of its occurrence near the ocean, and the surprising carelessness, and universal ignorance on the subject of dress, together with the prevalence of that deplorable method of heating our city houses with furnaces, and thus des- troyingthe constitution, gives no hope of the decrease of this terrible disease. Nevertheless, although far too common for the comfort of the parent's mind, it is by no means as fre- quent as those miserable parasites, the numerous quacks, both allopathic, homeopathic, and hydropathic, would have them believe. Many a slight catarrh, that a little warmth and care would remove, is made the subject of a domestic alarm and self-glorification by one of these harpies ; and the poor infant is drenched with emetics and slops, and parboiled with a warm bath, till exhausted nature comes to its relief, and it falls asleep from sheer exhaustion, and thus escapes its tormentor for a short time. But, alas ! the poor little crea- ture is now pronounced " subject to croup," and it must be carefully watched ; it would never do to let it go with one medical bout. The mother keeps a bright look-out for a " bark or a crow," and is constantly summoning the doctor. ON CROUP. 311 We are very far from wishing to foster carelessness heaven knows that the American city mother is often careless enough but it sickens us to see the daily misery endured by the poor, timid, young creature, who is victimized by some of these harpies. The first point to which we would direct the reader's attention, is the fact, that croup, properly so called, belongs exclusively to the wind-pipe, or that portion of it that lies between the top of that projecting bone, or rather cartilage, that is so plainly visible in men in the middle of the neck, and all that part of the wind-pipe below it down to the breast-bone. It is a sudden inflammation of the delicate lining membrane of the wind-pipe, produced by exposing the child to cold and damp air when perspiring more or less sensibly, or when going from a warm room into the cold air. The blood is driven from the skin by the cold air, and rushes to that lining membrane, and clogs up all its little blood- vessels ; thus closing up the wind-pipe, and producing spas- modic inspiration, and a sudden and harsh cough, like the hoarse crowing of a young cock. Generally speaking, this inflammation begins high up near the apparatus of the voice, or what we call the larynx, or the part that incloses the vocal chords ; it then travels downwards below the wind- pipe, where it is single and in the neck, and often runs on till it gets into the two branches that go off like the tines of a pitchfork, one to each lung, called the Bronchia. In bad cases, i. e., where the child is pre-disposed from peculiarity of constitution, or in those which are badly treated or neglected, a false membrane is formed around the inner part of the wind-pipe, partially stopping it up, and looking, when coughed up, or taken out of the dead body, very much like a boiled stick "of macaroni. As we shall have frequent occasion to speak of the formation of mem- branes and would avoid leading our readers astray, we take occasion to remark that the membrane formed in croup, 318 ON CROUP. never becomes regularly organized by blood-vessels, &c., as in some other diseases of longer continuance, where newly organized parts are necessary to form a wall round an abscess, and thus to stop the issue of the matter into parts where it would cause inflammation and death, as in the belly, for instance ; or when nature forms a little sack around a splinter of glass, or a leaden ball, that will remain for many years in the body. This croup membrane is not organized ; it does not grow from and fast to the natural lining membrane that belongs to the wind-pipo, but it is rather a mere mould, formed by the exudation of lymph from the small blood-vessels of the natural membrane, and merely sticks to it ; so that if the child could live long enough without its presence causing suffocation, it might gradually decay, and be coughed up piecemeal. There is a predomin- ance of the white or albuminous tissues in children. This is albuminous, but not organized. For these desperate cases, the operation of opening the wind-pipe has been proposed, so as to let the air enter below the obstruction, and thus preserve life till nature and medi- cine might have a longer chance. Although it has been successful, and may be resorted to in desperate cases with propriety, it does not depend upon any fixed principle, and is therefore unphilosophical ; because we can never ascertain the extent of this false membrane. It may exist far below the opening, which can only be made at the lowest in an infant a little below the middle of the neck, and it may therefore be found quite useless. We have ourselves been thus mortified, the case proving fatal after the operation. It was performed on the fifth day as a desperate remedy, in a case very much mismanaged by a quack, and at the request of the late Dr. Churchill, of this city, who was called in at that late period. We have given it this pro- minent mention, because it is frequently talked of by the young surgeon as a reliable resort, and may therefore hin- ON CROUP. 319 der the adoption of those powerful medical means which are not only justifiable, but imperative, in a desperate case. There is an inflammatory affection of the larynx, as we call it, i. e , the highest part of the wind-pipe, in which the apparatus of the voice exists, originating also mostly from atmospheric causes ; though sometimes from inhaling acrid fumes, and from that dreadful disease, syphilis. This is, for obvious reasons, far more frequent amongst grown persons, In its distinct form, it is almost unknown among children ; and yet the croup, we think, far oftener begins high up in the wind-pipe than low down ; still, as it goes almost always rapidly downwards, and spends its chief force there, it would seem to prefer, as it were, the wind-pipe proper. Why these two diseases should differ so widely in the selection of such different ages, and each one evince such an evident predilec- tion for its little space of the same continuous lining mem- brane of the wind-pipe, is indeed remarkable. This predilec- tion is probably the result of changes in the organization, necessary to the proper performance of the functions of the wind-pipe at the respective periods, as yet unknown to us. Dr. "Watson, of London, remarks " The interval that lies between the periods of weaning and puberty, is the time during which croup is chiefly to be apprehended. Compar- atively few cases of it occur during the first year of infantile life There are more in the second year than any other. This is, in all probability, connected with the change that ensues with regard to diet, upon the child being weaned. Dr. Cheyne, whose experience of croup was very extensive, says, the younger children are when weaned, the more liable they usually are to this malady. From the second year onward, the number of children affected with croup gradually decreases. Of ninety-one cases reported by Irwiu, only one was after the tenth year." General Washington is said to 820 ON CROUP. have died of croup ; his case, however, was probably com- plicated with general effusion throughout the mucous mem- brane of the lungs. We have never seen the disease beyond the fifth year in this city. Croup usually, but not always, begins with the symptoms of a common cold. Sometimes it comes on without any symptom calculated to attract attention. Usually, the child sneezes and coughs. Dr. Cheyne remarks, " hoarseness in very young children does not usually attend a common cold." It should, therefore, arrest the mother's attention when it exists, as it is an almost invariable attendant of the commencement ( and always of the progress ) of croup. When the disease is engrafted upon or grows out of a pro- tracted cold, some premonitory fever accompanies it ; the child is flushed, hot, and restless, and often starts out of its sleep with a cry, twisting its head round and round on its pillow in a peculiarly distressful way. The peculiarity of the inspiration, and the sudden, clanging, dog-like barking, and sometimes metallic ringing sound of the expiration or cough, is never to be forgotten. Then, again, comes the peculiar drawing in of the air, like the piston of a pump partly dry, and letting in the air to the partial vacuum below. Some call it, as we have before said, the crowing inspiration. There is no swelling in the throat, as of the tonsils in quinsy sore throat, and no difficulty of swallowing. This is enough to distinguish it from that disease, than which it is far more unmanageable and dangerous. The progress of the disease is well characterized by Dr. Watson. He alludes in our extract to those cases which are attended with the formation of the membrane we have spoken of ; but whether distinctly formed or not, the child when it dies, does so from the lodgment of mucus which it cannot cough up : " As the obstruction to the passage of air increases, the blood ceases to receive its proper quantity of oxygen, the skin grows dusky, the pulse feeble and irreg- ON CROUP. 321 ulai 1 , and the feet and legs cold. The cough also ceases to be loud and clanging ; it becomes husky, and inaudible at a short distance, and the voice sinks to a whisper ; the head is thrown back ; the nostrils dilate widely, and are in per- petual motion ; the face is pale and livid, and sometimes bloated ; the pupils often expand. In such cases death usually follows." A remarkable fact connected with croup is, the frequency of its occurrence at night. The child often goes to bed with no symptom whatever of the disease, and the first alarm of the mother is caused by the loud barking cough. Dr. Condie remarks, and we can testify to his accuracy from frequent observation, that cases presenting this pecu- liarity are not of the grave character of such as form more slowly ; they are scarce ever accompanied with the forma- tion of the false membrane. When the disease is to prove fatal, it often does so within two days, and is rarely protracted over five. Notwithstanding what we have said, when speaking of the value of a good case ' of croup to a quack, especially if it belong to a nervous mother addicted to " pathies" the dis- ease is assuredly very apt to recur. And indeed, why should it not ? One attack does not, like measles, or small-pox, or mumps, either add anything to the system, or take anything from it, necessary for its future immunity ; on the contrary, the susceptibility and the influence of the natural causes, cold and dampness, remain the same, gradually decreasing as years advance. All we meant by our caution applies to the quack. The humane and reliable physician will always give the mother full caution and instruction ; and we hope this article is sufficiently instructive on the symptons, and cautionary, to give no absurd reliance on domestic practice ; the disease is too awful and frequent, and causes too much anguish under the best of treatment, to excuse any careless- ness on the part of one who ventures to attempt public 14* 622 ON CROUP. instruction. We have earnestly endeavored to make this volume a powerful aid to humanity and true science, as well as a scourge to quackery. Empirics will always be found living in a glass house, and are equally transparent to all who rightly use their eyes and ears. The true physician carries his character in his face ; and when he opens his mouth, he cannot be mistaken, unless by some conceited fool who has his head filled with his own notions and " pathies." Some people absurdly suppose croup contagious, because it will sometimes attack two children in the same family, or several in the same neighborhood, at the same time ; but remember, the pro-disposition from natural constitution is generally the same in one family, and the character of the weather that generally causes the disease is, in the same neighborhood, of course the same. Dr. Allison, who wrote and observed with great accuracy, says it is particularly common with the children of washerwomen in Edinburgh. Many of them, as with us, dry their clothes in their small underground apartments, where their children sleep. What is still more conclusive, he has also observed that the disease is very frequent on Saturday night, " the only day on which it is customary for the lower orders in Edinburgh to wash their houses." The better classes in New York seem anxious to cultivate the disease, by leaving the child's chest exposed, and over-heating their apartments with that terrible engine of death, the furnace. The fatality of this disease will always depend in a greater degree than most others upon its early treatment ; but how vigorous, and of what character that treatment is to be, ought always to depend upon the constitution of the child ; but, unfortunately, it is usually characterized either by the prejudices of the physician, or the importunities of the mother. It is truly grateful to the benevolent and humane, that for once, popular and routine treatment may ON CROUP. 323 really be said, even in domestic hands, to produce more good than harm. With us in New York, and we believe throughout America, some preparation of that blessed root, ipecacuanha, for surely it is " a good gift of God " is usu- ally kept on hand by city mothers, and given, mostly with good effect, in colds. The simple syrup, in connection with the warm-bath, are remedies of sufficient power for most cases, and we have no doubt they have saved many an infant's life. The preparation called " Cox's Hive Syrup," is, however, quite another affair, and is fortunately not quite so popular. It contains tartar emetic, and is, therefore, far more active, and often very irritating to the intestines. The frequent use of this powerful medicine was most admirably hit off by Dr. Shearman, in that inimitably humorous article in Xo. G of the SCALPEL, entitled " Tartar Emetic; an excellent Sweating, Nauseating, and Vomiting Article for the Profession." " Whatever be the matter respecting which you are totally uncertain, tartar emetic is the remedy. The child must be put into warm water, and take a dose of tartar emetic. It will either make the child better or worse, or change the symptoms decidedly. The uncertainty or the child will be removed, and the disagreeable uncertainty terminated." But Cox's hive syrup and anti- rnonial wine, we hope are getting out of fashion. In two or three years more we hope to settle them. Inasmuch, therefore, as every mother is likely to try the remedy first, she had better do it during the very onset of the suspected attack. The symptoms of a common cold, will be her guide ; and the dose for an infant of the simple syrup, usually half a teaspoonfnl, to be repeated in half or three quarters of an hour, if it does not produce vomiting, or at least put the infant comfortably and sweetly asleep. After this trial of a second dose and warm covering, she will find a warm bath of five or ten minutes a remedy of 324 ON CROUP. great power. We do not think she should exceed these measures, without the advice of her family physician. Whether he is to be sent for or not, will depend very much upon the mother's observation of a previous attack, or upon her nervous temperament. We are far from advising her to tamper with her child, and think if she have confidence in her physician, she should summon him ; if not, discharge him as quickly as possible. So widely different is the estimate of medicines in this complaint in London and New York, that the sagacious Watson never speaks of ipecacuanha ! The lamented Beck, of whom it may truly be said, a more elegant scholar and a more correct observer never adorned the New York profes- sion, held it in exalted estimation, and every practical man here will cordially assent to his estimate of its curative power. But this difference is easily understood. The adoption of a remedy even as well tested as ipecacuanha, was unlikely with the English practitioner, who had been accustomed to look with reverence upon tartar emetic in the skillful hands of their hospital physicians, who for the most part, are men of great acumen. For the same reason, bleeding and calomel are included prominently in Dr. Watson's list of remedies. With us, at this day, bleeding is greatly restricted, and we hope will con- tinue so : leeching should exclusively take its place in chil- dren ; it is far more difficult to estimate the heart's action in a little struggling child by the pulse ; nay, we boldly assert it is impossible : feeling the pulse in them is nonsense, and reflects deserved ridicule on those who do it. There is no necessity to open a vein in a child's arm unless immediate suffocation is impending : leeches may with the greatest propriety be substituted in almost every case. The number for a child should be most carefully adapted to its size and the general strength of constitution, for the effect will be found quite as powerful as a general bleeding from the arm ON CROUP. 325 in an adult. K"o rule can be given as to the number ; from two leeches at the first year, to five, increasing one for every year, if the leeches are large, will draw quite as much as the case requires, in almost any instance ; indeed, if the emetic have been first tried, and the warm bath, or either separately, the leeches may prove a more active remedy than the physician expected ; they must, therefore, be carefully proportioned to a thoughtful estimate, and by no means used by the mother. The leeches should never be placed upon the neck with the view of drawing the blood directly from the affected part : we have known more than one child bled to death in this city by so doing ; every breath it draws fills the veins already turgid from the disease, and the leech bites cannot be stopped by pressure with cobweb or sponge used as a compress, because there is no bone to compress it against in the neck. Applied to the upper part of the breast-bone, from one to two inches from the disease, they produce far better effect, drawing the blood sufficiently near the part to exhaust the inflamed membrane, and allowing a firm com- pression to be made on each separate bite directly against the bone. We have been called upon in a case where the bleeding could only be stopped by passing a needle from one side the little wound to the other, and twisting a piece of fine silk under it : cutting off the surplus of the needle with plyers ; this hint should always be remembered by the young surgeon, as it is perfectly reliable. Of the use of calomel, we can only say that we heartily and entirely disapprove of it in every case not actually des- perate ; if the disease has lasted over four or five days, and is one of those where the membraneous formation is known to exist, it may be used with some prospect of benefit ; but not otherwise : the remedies enumerated, if judiciously used, will prevent the necessity of so questionable a measure in every case of the commencement of croup. Blisters are a 326 ON c R o u P . harsh and questionable remedy we would never use them Mustard plasters made by enclosing a paste of half mustard and half flour, moistened with vinegar, between old and well- worn muslin cloths, are an excellent and safe substitute. They act in a few minutes, and may be often renewed on the same spot, at half hours' interval. Were we speaking of quinsy sore throat, and inflammation of the tonsils, we should describe a peculiar spasmodic affection of the highest part of the wind-pipe, known as false croup a disease, how- ever, often fatal and intimately connected with croup, as described in this article. THE MOTHER. 32T SKETCHES OF WESTERN PRACTICE. THE MOTHER HER CHARACTER THB PESTILENCE A COCNTRT CONSULTATION A TALK OF SEDUCTION THE SINS OF PARENTS VISITED UPON THB CHILDREN THE DESERTED ATONEMENT. " The finger of God pressed rudely on the heartstrings of the seducer, and they shrivelled and charred under his burning touch." Now, my dear reader, will you be so good as to tell me what this world was made for ? What are we to learn from this " economy of sin and misery ?" What, from those long- drawn sighs and sounds of woe? those tears and heart- breakings that fill the earth ? Why does rum exist ? Why does sin deface the race, and fill the earth with mourning ? Is it because our good mother fell by apple-eating ; or is it a necessary constitution of things ! You tell us about the solids and gases which compose the body ; how they elect one another ; and how the chick gets his heart in motion, and the blood to circulating ; how the beard is of great use, and very masculine, and was only allowed to man ; that woman is almost an angel ; and yet how many bitter draughts and curses does she drink ? I see now the fragile form of that pale one who sat and sewed upon her bencb, and coughed her handkerchief fall of blood, and then died, with no one to love her ; and beside her I see the proud form of that olher glorious being who was wronged and left with a dear babe in her arms : the fire gleams from her speaking eye, as she tears open her dress, aud shows her aching 328 SKETCHES OF WESTERN PRACTICE. breasts to her hard-hearted mistress, full distended with that life-tide, that carries with it the young mother's soul to the soul of her new-born infant ! what a proud and holy thing is a mother's heart ? that first gush of love, that new and brilliant light that floods her soul, and makes it swell with angelic emotions when she folds in her arms the first ripe fruits of her maternal elements ? Do you ever see a mother without emotion ? if you do, you are the last of sin- ners, and deserve no forgiveness nor peace when your brow- is cold and your eye glazed. A mother, true and exalted, is the holiest being that walks the earth ; she knows no self ; but on her child she lavishes the burning flame of that newly kindled love, just lighted in her soul, and burning more and more intensely as she approaches the tomb. Did you ever see a young mother die, and with pale lips ask you, " Why her child did not cry ?" " if it was asleep ?" and you could not muster manhood to tell her it was dead ? Then your heart has not drunk the bitterest cup of all. ***** When you tell us about galvanism, and muscles, and the air we breathe, why not tell us why so many wrongs are heaped on the mother's heart ? why she drinks so many bitter draughts ? why this holiest fountain is polluted with the bitterest dregs ? why she quaffs so many cups of sorrow, and the moon beams so lovingly its soft and holy light among the clouds and the stars ; the sun shines out in the vault of heaven, and yet thousands of mothers mourn over the child of their love, and drink till death the cup of hate ? The quick intuitions of the spirit teach us by analogy ; and when we walk out under the clear old sky, we see the wheeling worlds sparkling in the deep blue vault of heaven. Why has God made all those countless orbs, and scattered them through the limitless fields of unmea- sured space ? Analogy tells us, that they must be the abodes of human spirits nurseries of the human race. The highest fact observed on our own plauet, is, that it is CHARACTER OF THE TRUE MOTHER. 329 the abode of man : the grand workshop of nature, where human spirits are individualized, is the most probable truth we can imagine in all those distant worlds. All over their vast fields, mothers are ushering the race into being, are mourning, loving, dying. Unnumbered myriads of mothers' hearts, each moment, palpitate with that new delight, and chant that heavenly song Hush my babe, lie still and slumber, Holy angels guard thy bed, Heavenly blessings without number Gently falling on thy head." Do you think women are treated in those planets as we treat ours ? Is the seducer permitted to hate the being he has ruined ? And do all women curse an erring sister ? and help trample her too confiding heart in the dust ? Hold on now. I am not going to write a lecture on woman's rights ; only going to ask a few plain questions, which any true man would like to answer. Do you think they are oppressed and wronged by labor too severe for their starved bodies, and driven to destruction to feed their children ? Are they deceived by flattery ? Is the dignity of their souls destroyed by an American education ? Are they kept as mere appendages, and decorated in plumes and tawdry tinsel, like so many parrots, to look at ? An incident will bring more clearly before the mind the ideas that I wish to present. After a week's absence in a distant city, I returned to my home, late at night, and when the family greeting had passed, necessity hurried me off to attend the wife and child of a wealthy neighbor. Doctor had been called in my absence, and wished me for counsel, as the mother and her youngest child were very ill with dysentery. One death had occurred in the neighbor- hood, in the practice of an old and prudent physician, and this was deemed sufficient cause to call a consultation. 330 SKETCHES OP WESTERN PRACTICE. When shown into the sick-room, I found the mother alone and quite comfortable. Her strength was yet good, although the dysenteric movements occurred at the short intervals of every half hour ; this, together with a high state of mental excitement, precluded all rest. Finding no tenderness of the abdomen, and a quick and cheerful eye, my prognosis was prompt that she would certainly recover. In another room lay a suffering child ; its mouth was dry and parched, its bowels sore to the touch, and badly bloated ; the discharges attended with a violent tenesmus, which wrung the little sufferer with anguish ; and his dull and leaden eye told the tale that his little frame must yield to the fatal enemy that had fastened on his vitals. As my credit was at stake, an old and very grave man was, at my suggestion, added to the consultation, from a neighboring village, to guard our reputation from the usual visitation of gossiping slander that always follows a fatal result in the country. He examined the child duly, and gave it as his opinion that the symptoms resembled those of Ipecac ! The fatal inflammation had already progressed very far, and no one could doubt that a large space of the small intestines was laboring under fatal ulceration, and how Ipecac could be supposed to range with such symptoms was not quite so clear. But death was ahead of the doctors, and the little sufferer passed quickly away to a better world. Now commenced one of those tragical scenes, that often occur in country practice, and most deeply evince a necessity of a system of popular instruction for the people, to acquaint them with the laws of health, and the only safe road to cure in all curable cases. Another child had died in the neighborhood, and it was time the doctor was changed again ; it was plain enough to the people, that we did not know much. The neighbors had decided on a change, and my friend asked me if I could advise him who to send for, MEDICAL HEROICS. 331 and I recommended the inventor of the " Chingvang " pills, informing him that he was a much wiser man than myself, and that the wife would get well without either of us. He came, and readily detected the fact that he was in luck, his patient and fees were both safe ; and I was floored of course. He invited me politely, as in duty bound, to call " when convenient," which I did ; and things went on swimmingly for two days, when suddenly the scale turned ; two other children were taken, vomiting both bile and blood, and manifesting, from the first, fatal symptoms. My friend was now in trouble ; and, on one of my friendly visits, on entering the apartment, his eye caught mine, and spoke as only the eye can speak, " my credit is gone too, the chil- dren will both die." The mother was slowly recovering, and as the children grew rapidly worse, the council of the neigh- borhood decided to call further aid. Another regular was called, and being one of the heroes, he advised (it is solemn truth, my dear reader) one hundred grains of calomel as a cathartic ! His reason was, that in a similar case he had given it and the child recovered. His medical brother thought it a little too heroic, and consented to his giving fifty grains, which was done ! Fresh blood in copious quan- tities, followed the operation, and the pains became more severe, and the little victim of disease and the doctor slipped from his suffering into the grave. One sick one remained, and it was high time that a new change occurred. A shrewd and simple old quack was curing cancers in the neighbor- hood, and sent word to the family that he could certainly cure the remaining child ; that after cleansing the bowels with pills made of butternut bark, aloes, camphor, and cay- enne pepper, he would feed the little fellow with tea made of " twist root," that would stop the discharges in a few hours. It may seem strange, but this trial was submitted to, and the wily old fool was called into the august presence 332 SKETCHES OF WESTERN PRACTICR. of three or four M.D.'s and a score of other counsellors I Such is the way we are obliged to proceed in the West, or we are called inhuman ; we are obliged to remain and see that the patient is not killed outright. He gave his pills, and as in the other case, fresh blood followed the raking of the pills over that inflamed and sensitive membrane which lines the bowels ; the child screamed with torture, and was only relieved from his horrible agony by enemas of morphine they were obliged to give. The twist root was duly admin- istered ; but its good effect was prevented by the anodynes, and the old cancer-killer escaped with a feather in his cap ; alleging that the child was killed by the morphine given in his absence. You may wish to know the virtues of "twist root," and what it is ; but I can only say, that it is probably nobody's business what it is, only it is an Indian remedy whose virtues would not be appreciated by the learned. By this time, another child in the neighborhood had fallen sick, and luckily passed, at the earliest appearance of disease, into the hands of the first physician called ; he used only mucilages and opiates, syrup of marshmallow, and the little patient finally recovered. But I set out to speak of the providence of God in per- mitting this economy of sin and misery. I will, therefore, glance back through a space of fifteen years, and show you a singular picture presented in the life of this father and mother, that may serve to illustrate the mysterious where- fore. She was beautiful ; a form well moulded by health, with good address, coupled with a subtle black eye, with a musical voice, and much benevolence in her smile, made her an agreeable companion, and a patient in whom one would feel a deep and lively interest. Time had drawn a veil before her heart, and a shadow had dimmed that lustrous eye ; but the common beholder would never know it ; the demon had gone in there and concealed himself. She was A PERFIDIOUS LETTER. 333 educated by a pious father ; a man of noble nature and of strong religious hopes ; he had many daughters, and this one, in an especial manner, was the darling of his earliest kopes, of all his prayers and heavenward aspirations. He had carefully educated her, and designed to bestow her in marriage on some true disciple of the cross, who should pass untainted through this selfish world, and labor iu the name of the blessed Redeemer, for the millions who perish for the bread of life. The parental heart is a wonderful mirror, and the good old man had dreamed of seeing his daughter, the noble com- panion of the sainted Harriet Newel and Mrs. Judson ; and her husband treading in the same noble path that was trod- den by the husbands of these great-souled women ; but his heart was doomed to a sore disappointment, and Providence had designed for her a different life. The heart of the proud Eugenia had been wooed and won by an industrious young mechanic ; their vows had been again and again repeated. Her faith seemed fixed as fate itself. Happy in his expectations, he had sought occupation in a neighboring village, to replenish his purse, and furnish means of subsis- tence in anticipation of their nuptials. His feet were swift to trace the path to the post-office, to receive, from time to time, from the hand of his faithful and devoted girl, her repeated assurances of love and affection. One day he had been excited by strange emotions, his heart beat too fast, and a painful foreboding warned him of coming ill. He eagerly grasped from the hand of the clerk a letter, on which was that familiar handwriting, that so often had told the tale of love ; it produced coldness in his hands, and a sweat came on his brow, and fear and faintness seemed to seize him ; he opened it and read his fate. The letter con- tained various charges, among which was that of licentious- ness, and a refusal, from the pious and saintly Eugenia, to fulfill her promises. She affirmed, with great calmness, tbat 334 SKETCHES OF WESTERN PRACTICE. she could never be happy with a man whose feet had gone to the house of her "whose steps take hold on hell." Guiltless of the crime, in a fit of indignation he tore the false letter into a thousand pieces, and retired to his shop, and took up a file and began rasping a piece of steel ; every stroke seemed to cross his heart, and his grief grew more bitter as reflection enabled him to trace in that bitter letter the work of an enemy's hand. His first thought was to fly to her presence, and reproach her with her perfidy ; but soon a feeling of indignation prevented him. Alternating thus between hope and fear, time rushed on, and the next mail brought him a line from the hand of his faithful mother, that Eugenia was married to young E . The shock was severe ; it fell like a hot thunderbolt on his heart, and he resolved never again to have faith in woman. Truth is stranger than fiction, for the most exalted imagination cannot conceive what a false heart will per- petrate. Young E. was tall and handsome, at least the ladies thought so ; his black eye was always sparkling, and his face was wreathed in smiles ; he drove a dashing pair of greys, with plated harness ; and prospectively he was rich, as his old father had made him his heir. Intemperance had converted the old man into a maniac ; his head was often, as he supposed, surrounded by crows and vultures, and mornings always found toads and snakes in his boots. The rum delirium was doing its work. Young E. saw with regret his father's drunkenness, but he vinwed with delight the broad fields, covered with short-horned Durhams. A few miles distant lived a poor, but warm-hearted family ; the father's hard toil had not been blest like his neighbor's, and the mother, with the meek heart of a Christian, had diligently endeavored to meet her share of the small list of wants, by her own toil ; a lovely and dear daughter had unfolded into womanhood, and like the gentle VALUE OF A POOR MAN ; S CHILD, 335 fawn she kept close to her mother's side, till necessity drove her into the cold world to labor for clothes and bread. Her form was slight, and a softly blushing cheek, and mild blue eyes, with flaxen locks, made up the stock of beauty of this artless and innocent rustic. She was pure as a dew-drop pendent from a rose-leaf. The dashing young farmer who drpve the grey horses, soon succeeded in winning the heart of this artless creature ; he seduced and deserted her, and she was about to become a mother ; and it was thus I became acquainted with the story. The distracted father sought redress in prosecution ; but how cold and heartless is the law ! a verdict of three hundred dollars was brought against the fiend, while he vindicated his virtue by bringing into court two other heartless scoundrels, to swear that the child might be theirs ! To make the cup bitter as hell to the poor, shrinking, friendless, betrayed one, money had been furnished them to proffer their blasphemous lie before the very face of heaven, and the lacerated heart of this dear heart-broken child. In three weeks from the court which declared him the father of the child of Miss L., the rich young rake stood beside the marriage altar with Eugenia ; the happy, chosen husband of her who had broken her vows with the mechanic on a charge of libertinism, anonymously made by this fiend in human shape, and of which he was as guiltless as the new-born babe who owed its existence to his rival. Time sped on, and brought with it changes in fortune to all concerned. The proud and soulless Eugenia, sat by her window, looking over the broad domain that she had married. The future was full of promise to the happy mother, and the wealth and splendor by which she was surrounded, seemed a solace for every grief ; but alas ! time is full of tricks, and laughs at human wisdom. This grey- headed old mocker, one day in the midst of sunshine and flowers, brought into her neighborhood the deluded young 336 SKETCHES OF WESTERN PRACTICE. artisan. His character had been assailed, and himself wheedled and fooled by a coquette ; and as the law has a kind of mathematical righteousness, that now and then relaxes its sternness to accommodate the craft, and mete out equal justice, he instituted a prosecution for breach of promise against the wife of the happy young man who had won his gay, accomplished, but fickle Eugenia. The rage of the old ladies rose on him, in one storm of vengeance. What ! sue a woman for a breach of promise, " when there was just as good fish in the sea as had ever been caught ;" and so thought the young plaintiff, for after having his fun, and exciting due attention to all the facts in the case, he withdrew the suit, to make way for the accouchment. "True love never runs smooth." But our poor stricken mourner, where was she ? About the time of the above- named occurrence, one night, mid the storm and the tem- pest, a carriage stopped at the door of the old log dwelling where dwelt the poor and the lowly. A few of the neighboring women were there, dressed with their clean aprons and best fixings they looked very knowing. The poor mother sat aside, with her clean cap on to be sure ; but to the eye of the most careless physician, the deep lines of sorrow could be traced on her cheek, that gave warning of the canker within. The torments of the damned have no terrors to a sensitive female like such an ordeal. The wretch who betrays her goes acquit ; but on her head is heaped the accumulated scorn of every tongue, and the heart of her own sex, that should surround her with every emblem of protection, is steeled against her, and in most cases, if she receive any sympathy, it is from the sterner sex. I blush to say it ; but woman is false to her own sex in an hour of such deep and bitter need. The poor bleeding sacrifice on the altar of treachery, sat weeping alone and in agony ; a mother's anguish was upon her ; she might die in the fearful struggle, but the whole deadly draught must be THE MOTHER'S DESTROYING ANGEL. 331 swallowed alone ; no smile to cheer her her mother could not smile, and save the kind words and soothing tones of the humble physician, the victim heard no cheering voice. On her marble brow stood the sweat like drops of blood ; a few hours elapsed, and the sun broke in the east ; its clear beams shot through the balmy air, and kissed the rain-drops from bough and leaf. All nature, the earth, the grass, the flowers, animals and man gave signs of gladness. In the low log dwelling, skirted by a beech wood, where the robins suug at sunrise, could have been seen the poor mother and her young daughter, now herself alas, a mother ! the doc- tor and the women were gone ; all was quiet. Behind some dingy curtains, with her infant folded to that bosom that now covered a betrayed and broken heart, lay the pale young mother ; the little downy cheek of her child rested on hers ; its warm breath rose over her face ; its tiny cry startled her heart, and she looked in its little sleepless face, and wondered if it was indeed hers ; her heart spoke in her bosom "it is yours," and when no eye but His who sees all tilings saw her, she raised the innocent, her "destroying angel " to her lips and kissed it. That bright ray of light that angels never feel a mother's love had gone into her heart. She loved her infant in spite of the world, and straining it to her breaking heart, she was compelled to be true to nature, though man, and nature, and friends were false. That creeping idea Miss is a mother went from tongue to tongue, and from ear to ear until the fatal tale crept into the ear the very heart of Eugenia, who, in about three months, was to drink a cup less full of bliss. A woman's heart is a mystery ; it is an instrument of matchless music, when played upon by skillful hands ; but the rude operator, the lying genius, draws nothing but painful discord from its sparkling depths. " I wonder," said Eugenia, to herself, as she picked up a piece of velvet cloth she was shap- 15 S38 SKETCHES OF WESTERN PRACTICE. ing into a strange form, much like a little cloak, " I wonder who that child looks like." A strange emotion in her soul gave her sudden pain, and she burst into a flood of tears : her woman's heart had guessed, what busy tongues were report- ing, that it resembled its father, and that she could see its resemblance to her husband. The proud Eugenia, the wife of a rich young husband, swallowed the bitter thought ; and though in the solitude of her chamber her brilliant black eyes were often wet with tears, none suspected her heart- canker. She too had played false, and been sued for a broken promise, a perjured vow. These two false beings had mingled their lives together, to produce a lie ; for of such treachery, truth, purity, sincerity, cannot be born. Every element of our own being is transmitted to our offspring, and in the subtle faithlessness of a daughter, or the inbred vice of the son, we see too clearly the moral crook- edness of the father, and the squirming vipers that so often nestled in the bosom of the mother. Every act of our lives is absorbed into our being, and somewhere in our eternal career, it will be given forth, stamping on the child a mark that defaces him for life. Let us pass over some sixteen years of such music as humanity yields our profession. On a bright sunny morning, a messenger called at my door, and requested me to attend a family sick with chills and fever. All were sick but the mother ; the old miller, three sons, and two girls ; and at this point of my narra- tive, I would drop some reflections on miasma, but that moral miasma that infests the human heart is more directly connected with the incidents which I am relating. Mrs. T. requested me on my return from the miller's family, to call on another that lived off from the main road, near the brink of the stream. Nothing like sublime scenery exists in this region of Ohio ; here some rude freaks of nature had im- parted a slight interest to the country. The stream had on either side rude bluffs, covered with timber, with narrow The mother sat on an old stool, with a pipe in her mouth over her shoulders ; it had once been parted ; her form her hair hung matt( fragile, her eye a light l>lu ith an open and generous face, hut obscured with filth ; the bony fingers of one han upporting her head, while the other was folded across her chest. PAGE 339. THE DRUNKARD'S HOME AND FAMILY. 339 valleys, with groups of sycamores. The stream moved across these narrow flats, and at some points left a space covered with trees, while the opposite shore rose abruptly from the stream. I passed from the main road through a narrow neck of woodland, and as I turned across a green meadow, I saw on the farther side, near the river, under the shade of some butternuts and sycamores, what I had been told was a human dwelling. The good woman, whose heart was full of humanity, had warned me of what I should meet, and begged me not to turn back, but to see the inside of that human dwelling. A rude old hut made of logs stood before me ; some bits of board were nailed across the window hole, from which hung a few old rags ; the door hung on wooden hinges ; I opened it by a wooden latch, and stepped in ; a window hole was also cut on the opposite side ; rags filled the squares where no glass had been for years, not a light of glass in either window. In one corner stood a rude old bedstead, with elm bark for a cord ; a coarse straw tick lay on it, over which was thrown half a cartload of old rags; nothing resembling a sheet or quilt could be seen ; the cupboard, a rude structure, had on it three or four plates, a tin cup and basin, a tea-cup or two, and some old spoons, and a few old knives and forks. This habitation for humanity had no chimney, only some stone jambs, without any hearth ; and on the log which crossed at that point, sat three children, with their feet in the ashes, covered with rags and filth. A lad of fourteen was shaking with a chill, his eye was black and searching ; a slim bony frame ; and not a word could I elicit from him ; a silent melancholy languor marked all his acts. The two others were younger, one a white tow- headed urchin, with blue eyes, and no breeches. The mother sat on an old stool, with a pipe in her mouth ; her hair hung matted over her shoulders ; it had once been parted ; her form was fragile, her eye a light blue, with an 340 SKETCHES OF WESTERN PRACTICE. open and generous face, but obscured with filth ; the bony fingers of one hand clenched the stump of a pipe, the other was folded across her chest. She smiled as I opened the door, and gave me the only chair in the dwelling ; a wooden frame, covered with rags. She seated herself and went on smoking, gazing meantime into a few embers, that flickered against the jambs. Not a broom or mop could be seen, the floor had scarcely ever been washed. The table but what use had these poor wretches for a table, for they had nothing to eat ? The father, in a drunken frolic, had attacked a young man with a stone, and smashed in his skull, and was lying in jail awaiting justice. I was glad he was gone, a human face, disfigured with rum, in the midst of such a group, would have belied the doctrine of Sweden- borg that hell is a state, and not a place. Reader, you see, in that broken-hearted, mildewed, blasted, loathsome thing on the stool, the young and inno- cent Miss L.; she that was so, before the foul and snaky demon had entered her dwelling and crushed her in his coil. Cut off from all human sympathy, she had married a drunkard ; she carried with her to his home, the drunkard's hell, the child you saw her kissing sixteen years ago. The poor lad had never known human joy, or human sympathy, or human love ; the delight of the human devil, who ruled this group of wretches, was to beat and kick him, and his poor mother had often shared the same fate in his defence. His origin was constantly before him ; abused, despised, hated, and oppressed, he revolved his dark fate eternally in his mind. He knew who his father was, though brutally forsaken ; a ray of light sometimes shot into his heart ; " My father is the wealthiest man in the county ; shall I always live thus ? what have I done, that he thus deserts me ? He aspires to political honors ; who knows but I too may yet go to Congress ?" All the year long, this human thing, created a little RETRIBUTION. 341 lower than the angels, watched over these children ; she fed them when she could, and smoked to drown her anguish. The mother's heart is a sacred sanctuary ; the brightest diamonds of the human soul sparkle in it. I would guard it with a " flaming sword," as God guarded the tree of life. How is this, my dear reader, I ask again ? Can you tell me how is it, why, in this land of light and Christian benevolence, the seduced one is doomed by the public curse, while the seducer marries into the best families ? Will you tell me Rum does much of this ; the neck of Rum shall be broken ; but the rich rake did the cruelest part of the hellish deed : shall not his neck be broken ? Return with me to the afflicted Eugenia. I took her infant in the little walnut box, and carried it to her bedside. I knew how proud she was, how unfeeling she had been ; I saw her heart break with anguish, and I forgave her freely, and wept with her, for she had a mother's heart, and her grief was a great one. The last child, a boy of sixteen, was now seized with the fatal disorder. Five doctors came together on Sunday, and they did not quarrel, for the frequent deaths had quieted their usual meanness, and they were humbled by the pestilence that walked unseen, and laughed their skill to scorn. The father came to me and said with a broken accent, " Cannot that lad be saved ? I cannot lose him, I cannot have him die." To whom, indeed, should he give his riches if he died ? To his first born ? I said firmly, " I fear I cannot save him ; if my brethren can do anything, I shall not oppose them, but do not torture him with medi- cines ; opium and mucilages may save him." I looked into the father's eye, it was full of misery ; no human eye sheds a dear light when the soul has drank up a deliberate wrong against a fellow-being, and it never will till God withdraws 342 SKETCHES OF WESTERN PRACTICE. his fiat : the face is the index to the soul, and shows its meanest and its loftiest attributes. I said to him, "There are many children worse than fatherless ; feed and console them." His lip quivered, for before his mind's eye stalked the ragged, bony, abused, forsaken boy that I saw in the cabin of the drunkard ; and the mother's haggard form was beside him. I had seen them but a week before, the child a withered outcast, the mother a blasted wreck. His father's every lineament was there. Two days after, the form of the last son passed to the narrow house, and lay beside the others. The invisible finger of God had pressed rudely upon the heart-strings of the seducer and deserter, and they shrivelled and cracked under his burning touch. He that forsook his child, and broke the heart of its mother, was himself forsaken, and felt the stroke of the invisible avenger. My soul refused to pity him. He was cursed with gold ! ! ON HOOPING COUCH. 343 ON HOOPING COUGH. WHAT IS HOOPING COUGH? HAS MEDICINB ANY POWKR OVBE IT? IN a former article we considered the subject of croup, or that rapid inflammation of the wind-pipe, characterized by- sudden and violent fits of coughing, and coming on at a few hours' notice, and perhaps invariably from atmospheric causes. We have now to consider a disease of a much more obscure and unmanageable character, and one that has been productive of no less anxiety, not only from its distressing and persistent nature, but from the quackery of those who are relied on to treat it. Whilst we are perfectly satisfied of the causes of croup, and know that judicious treatment will often cut short the attack and save life, we can by no means say the same of hooping cough ; for we unhesitatingly avow, that we not only do not know in what it originates, but that there is no medicine with which we are acquainted, that will have any regular and curative effect upon it. Hooping cough may occur at all periods of infant or adulfc life, and at all seasons of the year ; although experience proves it to be far less common during the two or three first months of infancy. It is unquestionably an infectious dis- ease ; although we may not be able to trace the first case occurring in a family or a village nay, although (and we ourselves have not a doubt of it) the first case may occur from atmospheric or other causes unknown to us, and with- out any communication with one who has the disease still this case will undoubtedly communicate the disease to an 344 ON HOOPING COU6H. immense proportion of all the children, or even adults, who nave not had it, and are brought into the same apartment with the subject who has it. We consider all speculations as regards the nature of the poison, whatever it may be, that causes the disease, to be worse than useless ; because they occupy time and observation, that may be more pro- fitably bestowed on the symptoms and consequences ; or, in other words, those other and secondary diseases of the lungs and head, which the violent fits of coughing so often produce. The disease commences with the ordinary symptoms of a common catarrh or cold, and it is often said by mothers, that " it turns into hooping cough." They say the same of measles and for the selfsame reason, or because it also begins with the symptoms of cold. Now, physicians often call this an absurd conclusion, because colds are not contagious, and measles and hooping cough are. Let the reader reflect for one moment upon the immense universality with which both measles and hooping cough appear over whole regions of country, and the absurdity of supposing that all its subjects could have had communication with local centres where the disease existed, and he will see at once that the mother is probably often perfectly correct in her conclusions ; indeed, we often cannot trace it to any source of contagion, for the good and sufficient reason, that there has really been no exposure. This is of no importance as it regards the fact of its infectious character, however it may otherwise be produced. Yery certain it is, that those children who have never had it, and in whom it is desirable to defer its occur- rence, either from the existence of winter, or the debility of the child, had better not be taken where it exists, for the chances are almost certain they will take it. After the child has been exposed eight or ten days, or a fortnight (and we have even known three weeks to elapse), it will, after having coughed more or less during this time, ON HOOPING COUGH. 345 begin to hoop. This hooping noise is produced by the urgent necessity the child has to draw iu or inspire air, after a great number of coughs, all, as it were outward or in other words, all attended with expiration. The hoop is undoubtedly produced by reason of the opening or glottis, and also the little branches of the windpipe (or, as we call its two great branches and its innumerable divisions, the bronchia? and their tubes), being more or less filled with mucus ; and thus the entrance of the air is rendered extremely difficult, and the great opening of the windpipe is affected with spasmodic closure, from the irritation of its nerves by the want of circulation in the blood-vessels. Now let us explain this spasm of the " glottis," as we call it. Where the child cannot, in consequence of the violence of the cough, draw in any fresh air, the blood becomes tempo- rarily poisoned for want of oxygen, and the consequent accu- mulation of carbonic acid ; and that becomes a powerful irritant to the opening of the windpipe, and causes it to close with spasmodic force. The same condition in this important opening will occur, in a less degree, on entering a small unventilated room where there is much carbonic acid gas, either from a charcoal or anthracite fire, or a great number of people ; it causes much of the coughing in assem- bly rooms, concert rooms, and churches to frequenting which habitually, so many persons owe their ill health. That the contagion of hooping cough is of a very subtle character, receives very extraordinary confirmation from the fact, that it may be communicated to a child within its mother's womb ; this is also a proof that it first poisons the blood, for it can only reach the child through the mother's blood. Dr. Watson, of London, upon more than one occa- sion, has observed the child to hoop almost the instant it was brought into the world ; he cites the special case of the child of one of his hospital nurses. The subject of contagion is a very curious one. The only point we feel 15* 346 ON IIOOPIXG COUGH. inclined to notice about it, is one that we have been accus- tomed to view as an original observation of our own, pub- lished some seven years since in our " Treatise on Diseases of the Sexual System," in reference to syphilis communi- cated to the child from the father, through the mother's blood ; and since very extensively claimed by others. It is this : that these diseases, in whatever kind of poison they originate, whether atmospheric, vegetable or animal, must require another entity, equally distinct, and both capable of being described, did we know what they are, in order to join with it and the two together, to produce the palpable disease, viz. -hooping cough, measles, small-pox, syphilis or what not. I consider this sufficiently proved by the fact, that some persons seem to be insusceptible of one or other of these infectious or contagious diseases, as is repeatedly observed by every practical man ; the only possible solution of which phenomenon must be, that the individual who is thus proved to be insusceptible of the particular disease, does not furnish the other item necessary to its production. This is a curious fact, and so far as we know, first mentioned in the work alluded to. When the system has once been infected with hooping cough, it very rarely occurs again ; the person, for the most part, enjoying an immunity ever after. This is not always true of any infectious disease, however ; for we have seen measles, hooping cough, mumps, scarlet fever, and small-pox every one of them taken the second time. The small- pox has appeared in this city, on a number of persons who were much pitted from previous attack. It is not singular, that in proportion as the mucus which is thrown off in the paroxysms of coughing, is thin and scanty, the cough should be more violent ; when it is thick and abundant, the air contained in the cells and bronchial tubes of the lungs, acts more readily upon the mucus, and forces it out in the violent expiration of the cough. During 04 T the fit of coughing, the little creature will instinctively fix its legs and catch hold of a table, the chimney-piece or its mother's gown, with the view of fixing its arms so as to bring their upper muscles, which are also attached to the ribs and collar-bone, in use, as temporary aids to assist in raising the ribs at the earliest possible moment, so that a supply of air may enter. Sometimes it becomes black in the face before this occurs ; all the cough being outwards, as it were, and no inspiration being possible : it is this, by pre- venting the return of blood from the head through the great jugular veins, sometimes causes dropsy of the head, and even apoplexy. The blood accumulates, and either throws out its watery part from the delicate vessels of the mem- branes of the brain, or else some larger vessel bursts, and the blood is effused under the skull. This is not, however, common ; and strange to say, without these violent conse- quences, the hooping cough is not usually a dangerous disease. Its period of duration is from six weeks to three months. It is usually most enduring and violent in winter and changeable weather ; for this reason mothers should be ex- tremely careful to avoid exposing a delicate child in the fall months, or in variable weather. The idea that as the child must have the disease at some time, the season is of no conse- quence, is therefore very wrong. A delicate child may recover in the summer, who would inevitably die of either the head symptoms or inflammation of the lungs in winter. Teething, from the determination of blood to the head during that process I now mean the earliest or first teeth- ing is a very dangerous complication. Convulsions often occur at that time ; scrofulous children are also often vic- tims to head and lung complications in hooping cough : indeed, all feeble children during their first two years, are far more seriously affected by it. Inflammation of the lungs and bronchitis, are its frequent 348 ON HOOPING COUGH. attendants, and these complaints often demand treatment, if the simple disease does not ; both these affections greatly increase the fever and general distress, and it is on their account that the child requires to be watched by a conscien- tious, but not a meddlesome physician. The mother who insists upon the constant administration of physic, is not only a fool, but she may have to charge her child's death to that folly. It will not be expected, in an article of a purely rational and cautionary character, addressed to the common sense of our readers, that we should go into the detail of these conse- quences of hooping cough and their treatment. Such a course would give a very poor idea of our estimate of their intellect, because they cannot be accurate judges of the derangements of the living force, and how far it can go to constitute disease requiring treatment. With regard to the propriety of any course of treatment designed, as physicians often absurdly say, " to cut short the disease," we emphati- cally assert all such pretensions to be absurd. It is evident enough, that every infectious and febrile disease, originating from a specific poison, must have its regular period of dura- tion i. e., it cannot be thrown out of the system, until it has exhausted its force upon it. When we have thus expressed ourselves, it is plain enough that any set method of treatment can find no favor in our eyes. Indeed we see no reason for mentioning any one medicine as more valuable than another ; or, indeed, any internal treatment whatever in the complaint. Nothing can be more amusing, than to hear some theoretical gentlemen, who boast of their "great experience," talk over their old see-saw practice of Sal Tartar and Cochineal, Ipecac, &c., &c. The younger and heroic gentlemen, who must be doing something, go in for Prnssic Acid and other Samsons of the materia medica, such as Calomel and Tartar Emetic ; but it is all a mere matter of money-getting. No medical treatment ON HOOPING COUGH. 349 whatever for the simple and uncomplicated disease, but a most jealous and religious attention to absolute warmth of dress, flannels to the skin, and thick shoes and woollen stockings, if the child walks should be the parent's sole duty. The atmosphere of the room should never be below *IO in winter, and in the summer all drafts of air, and the evening air, should be avoided. Gentle and repeated fric- tions with the hand of the mother, over the chest and spine, will always do good. The child should never be stripped entirely when washed ; only portions at a time should be rubbed with a little alcohol and water. Milk, eggs, and a little broth of mutton or beef, should form the diet. All syrups and other trash, derange the stomach and injure the child's capacity to recover from the paroxysms of coughing. The disease, under this treatment, will wear itself out in six weeks or three months, and that is the whole of the matter. So long as the child recovers readily from the paroxysms, it needs no physician. When other and more serious distress exists, that mother is either destitute of feeling, or stupid with ignorance, who does not call in an honest and intellec- tual medical man. 350 RECOLLECTIONS OF A SEXAGENARIAN. RECOLLECTIONS OF CITY PRACTICE. BY A SEXAGENARIAN. No thought conaes o'er the spirit with more subduing influence, than that which assures us we outlive the warmth of early friendships. Often, when I gather a few of the Autumn leaves, as they rustle by my footsteps in the old forest path, where I love to revive the memories of the past, I trace in their fading outline the hopes and aspirations of earlier life. But yesterday they danced in the sunbeam, whose rays had warmed them into being : now they have fulfilled the end of their existence, and as they are driven about by the chill autumnal wind, they remind me of the erratic course of my professional life, now long past its noon, and give me an expressive warning, that I, too, shall be soon called on to pay back my own contingent to that great laboratory, where all the old and familiar forms are remoulded ; but where, thank God, hope originates from despair. Yet there are some scenes I can never forget : their im- pression is ever and anon renewed, as I retrace the course of my youthful life. Like that magic ink to which the poor prisoner gives expression by the warmth of his own heart, and then by the feeble light that glimmers through his pri- son bars, endeavors to trace the characters that tell him he is still loved, though lost to the friend that traced them, I gladly seize at times on the slightest vibration of some RECOLLECTIONS OF A SEXAGENARIAN. 351 trembling heart-tone, that tells me of buried joys, and dwell with fondness upon the kind words of friendship, the dear old familiar face, "the eyes that shone, now dimmed and gone." I love to linger over these leaflets of memory, and pore over them as they take fitful form by the little warmth of sympathy that is yet left me, after sixty years' collision with a rude world. I retrace their dim outline through my own prison bars for what are we all but prisoners to our bodies, our passion and our absurd aspirations ! Great God ! when I look back on my eventful life, methinks it is some dream of a former and partially-recalled existence, flitting like the mere ghost of memory amidst the ruins of blighted affections and crushed aspirations. And yet my professional habits still cling to me. With so long experience in comparing my own weaknesses with those of my fellows, I am far from selfish. I even yet enjoy a melancholy satisfaction in hastening to relieve the sufferings of the poor of my neighborhood, though I know that my reward will be very small ; or, what is far more frequent, that I shall be paid with ingratitude, if not slan- der. Sometimes, there are bright spots in my horizon, and I think myself more than repaid by a new shirt or a couple of handkerchiefs the gift of some poor but grateful sew- ing girl. I treasure a few of these little presents with peculiar care ; but there is one * * * * Let me relate the history of her who gave it ; it may serve to warn some unhappy creature from trifling with the affections of the innocent. I commenced practice, as you have often heard me say, in P , nearly forty years since. My good mother and oh 1 how tenderly I loved her managed, with the wreck of her little fortune, to give me the best education that my erratic habits and the then celebrated University of P would afford, and soon after I graduated, a rapid consump- tion took her away from us. She left me, with an only 352 RECOLLECTIONS OF A SEXAGENARIAN. sister, to test my abilities in procuring a subsistence for both. My father had been dead since my infancy, and being the only male protector, I was not unacquainted with the requirements of domestic life. My poor father, after a failure in business, had managed, by a forced parsimony and over-exertions in a commercial agency, that probably cost him his life, to bequeath us a small house, in which my sister and I managed to subsist, by a continuance of the same severe restrictions in our expenditure, that we were obliged to submit to during our earlier years. As soon as we recovered from the desolating feeling of our mother's death, my sister and I made our plans for the grand battle with the hungry wolf. Our house afforded ample room for two gentlemen lodgers, who were contented to take their quiet morning and evening meals with us. They soon removed any remnant of the absurd professional pride I had begun to cultivate, by the deference and respect they showed my gentle sister, and their high estimation of my medical opinion. So sincere were they, that I soon felt their influ- ence in my small practice ; scarce a day elapsed, that some patient did not help my pocket and the professional dignity of my quiet office, by a consultation. Before the close of the year, I had the inexpressible satisfaction of restoring the younger of my mercantile friends, an only son, to the arms of a mother, after a long attack of typhus fever. She came on from a distant town to assist my sister and myself in nursing him. I was much attached to him. So highly- toned and gentlemanly a young man I had never before met with. When I willingly assumed those duties of a nurse, that I would not permit his delicate mother nor my sister to attend to, he used to take my hand and kiss it with all the tender- ness of a lover, as he would apologize for the trouble he gave me. One day, he begged me particularly not to lay RECOLLECTIONS OF A SEXAGENARIAN. 353 the letters I brought from the post-office, on the parlor table, as his mother had noticed that he received some with great regularity, in a delicate hand. He seemed very pen- sive when he made the request, and told me, with some impressiveness, he would have occasion, at some future time, for a further exercise of my friendship. On several occa- sions after this, on the receipt of these letters, which I reg- ularly brought him, I observed traces of tears. I did not obtrude my sympathy upon him, though God knows I had learned to feel deeply for him. Cut off by my poverty and morbid pride, from the society of my equals, and treated with the customary tender mercies of my seniors, I felt the value of my friend's kindness and courtesy. He was yet feeble, and had been barely able to sit at breakfast for two mornings, when, to our great surprise, he assured me he was obliged to go to a town in a distant part of the State, to attend to some special commercial business, which he only could transact; as he occupied the position of confidential clerk in a commercial house in the city, and although I was much surprised at the suddenness of this announcement, on the quiet assertion that the business could be attended to by no other, I yielded to his assurance of its necessity, and saw him on board the steamboat, with much anxiety and many cautions. The promised letter soon arrived, announcing his safe arrival and the assurance that he would again be " home " in a few days. I had noticed with pain and apprehension, my sister's sub- dued quiet, when our lodger left us, and was, I hardly know why, uneasy and jealous at the tenderness with which his mother took leave of her, and assured her she .should ever consider her as her own child, and me as her son. I was, moreover much impressed with the singular design of a very costly bracelet she fastened on my sister's arm as she left us ; four hearts set in brilliants on an azure ground, surrounded with a delicate border of gold, on which these words were 354 RECOLLECTIONS OF A SEXAGENARIAN. engraved " A mother's love for her child : once there was three : let me dream they are still here." She had lost her other two children a few years before. The gift and the sentiment were sufficiently delicate, and certainly it was worthy of my dear sister as well as of the giver, whose life was purity itself ; but somehow it made me very thoughtful, and when a couple of weeks more had elapsed, and our lodger did not return, and my sister seemed more subdued, and showed, to my apprehensive and jealous eye, that she suffered, I determined to call on the firm where my friend was employed, and ascertain when he would arrive. I was certainly both surprised and shocked to see him, the mere ghost of a man, occupying his accustomed position at the desk, in the private room of his employers. His embarrassment was evident, and after a hasty inquiry of his health, I was about retiring, when he hurriedly closed the door and begged me to be seated. I soon saw from his manner, that he was about to make a communication trying to his feelings, and as I had a tender regard for him, I begged him not to distress himself, adding, that although friendship would seem to demand that I should share his troubles, that I had perhaps better not become the possessor of his secret, and that my sister and I would always be glad to receive him, if we could do so with propriety. " Your sister ! my friend my brother ; it was she and her love for my mother, who prevented my seeking your counsel and your roof on my return ; indeed, had you not called, I should never have dared address you again." I now begged him to explain, as my sister's sadness and the connection of his trouble with her name, gave me a right to know what it was. He continued : " You remember my request about secreting those letters from my mother. You must have noticed my distress upon several occasions after I had received one." I answered bun that I had, and had RECOLLECTIONS OF A SEXAGENARIAN. 355 been very anxious for his evident grief ; but that I sup- posed they related to some tender secret I had no right to inquire into, if unsolicited to receive it. " Oh, my friend, my brother ! but I have no right to call you by that hallowed name ; you are noble : you are above an act of such damning villainy. When I confess to you my crime, what will your sister say ?" " In the name of heaven, my poor friend, let me know your grief, and I will aid you if possible. You are not, I trust in God, involved in pecuniary trouble with your firm ; are you a defaulter ? have you gambled ? Tell me all." " Oh, worse, worse 1 I am a murderer ! I have broken two hearts, and filled one grave. Help me, my friend, to repair the dreadful wrong I have done to her who is as innocent as heaven. Go with me to-night, and I will add the measure of your contempt for one who is not fit to address you longer. When you see her, you will know what a wretch you harbored under your roof, and how bold in my villainy I must have been, to venture to obtrude myself on the presence of your dear sister." My temper prompted me to reply to him sternly, but prudence and pride prevented ; for I only suspected my sister's affections to be slightly engaged to this bad though fascinating man, and my mother's spirit within me revolted at so vile a contamination of her blood. His melancholy face, yet pale from his dreadful sickness, had assumed an expression of intense abstraction ; with knit brow, half- closed eyes and compressed lips, he seemed looking into the future for the approach of his merited punishment. I felt for him ; such is my nature. Our interview had lasted nearly to the business hour, and as he was in no condition to face his employers, I took leave of him, telling him I would await his commands after dark in the evening. He gave me the number of his lodgings, and assured me he would be deeply grateful for my 356 RECOLLECTIONS OF A SEXAGENARIAN. professional aid ; my sympathy for his crime he would not ask. He need not have added the latter expression, for I never had any for the sin he had committed. I was detained at home in my office that evening, having lingered rather longer than usual over my tea, whilst observ- ing my sister's deportment on learning that our lodger had taken other apartments. I had observed quite enough for the obliteration of my hopes of happiness, for I felt that I never could consent to her union with a man for whom I could feel no respect. She was evidently attached to him ; there are a thousand ways in which the physician can judge of such things, that other men know nothing of ; whilst others think we are obtuse to all the more delicate apprecia- tions of feeling, we only seem to ignore them, because the occasion for their exercise is so frequent, that they are cal- culated to detract from the proper discharge of our more immediate duties. I merely told her, that the necessity of protecting a female relative, had made it necessary for him to take other apartments. I need have said no more to convey to her the entire affair. She perceived my embar- rassment, and, with a woman's instinct, read the whole ; she, too, had observed the letters, and now her estimate of their character was evidently confirmed. Poor girl! I noticed her paleness, her trembling voice, and the unusual strength of the tea she swallowed ; and whilst I mentally cursed the destroyer of her happiness, I mercifully spared her my presence. I could not question her on the subject, for my dear sister and I rather understood each other's sym- pathy by intuition, than by expression. No words of sisterly or brotherly endearment ever passed between us, and so sin- gular and reserved had been our habits, that our lips had never met in that holy kiss of brother's and sister's love, since the time when our poor mother folded our infant arms together, when she would bid us good night, and leave us in our little bed, to that sweet sleep she never allowed herself RECOLLECTIONS OF A SEXAGENARIAN. 357 till midnight ; for she alas ! my angel mother ! was occupied with the needle, to eke out our subsistence. * * Leaving my poor sister, I sought the apartments where our lodger had taken his unfortunate victim, under an assumed name, as his wife. They were barely decent lodg- ings, in the outskirts of the city, selected not for meanness for he was naturally extravagant but in order to avoid observation. Inquiring for Mr. Dullagher, I was introduced into a front room on the second floor ; whilst waiting, I heard my former lodger's voice and the words, " Don't be alarmed, dearest ; he is a gentleman in every respect." He entered almost immediately, and led the way into the cham- ber where the poor young creature lay. I was prepared to see an interesting person, for I knew his extraordinary admiration of female beauty ; but my ideas were far short of the reality. A woman may have features of faultless beauty ; she may resemble a Venus or an Eve of the statuary, but marble cannot look at you ; its dead and soulless eye cannot reflect the speaking glance, telling of cherished hope and blighted affection ; it cannot, like the living one, speak the bursting heart, whilst it looks tenderly, and with forgiving glance upon its destroyer, and seems to beg you to spare him rather than to pity her. Such a mournful and sweet face met my gaze, as I took the hand of my patient, whilst her destroyer leaned his pale forehead against the wall and audibly sobbed. I had never before seen so lovely a face. On my entrance, as I extended my hand to her, she neither wept nor looked ashamed of her position. She greeted me in silence; a moment elapsed, and as the sobs of her lover fell upon her ear, she turned eagerly towards him, whilst the very fountain of love seemed overflowing her woman's soul, as she rose up and extended her beautiful white arms to him. I thought of Mary at the tomb of the Saviour. Nor do I believe that he would have reproved her, had he stood before her in my place. 358 RECOLLECTIONS OF A SEXAGENARIAN. "Why do you weep, Frederick? I love you, and you used to say you asked no more of heaven. Our purposed marriage, too, ought surely to satisfy you that you have done me no wrong. I will now consent to it, whenever you please ; for now I believe it will comfort you, if I should have to leave you." " Oh, talk not so, my love my life ! You shall not die ! I was drunk with ridiculous, vulgar ambition. Oh, mon- strous ! to think that I could have refused you the wretched consolation of a name tarnished with dishonorable baseness ; that I could see her only friend her mother droop away under the disgrace of the gentle creature she had nourished through long years of chilling poverty, and see her drop into the grave a poor wilted and forsaken thing, and leave her dear child alone ! Oh God, pity me ! for I need it. What can wash me clear of this crime ?" His eloquent self-condemnation was too just to fail in exciting her tears ; she had joined them with his, for he had now sunk upon his knees at her bedside. She had raised herself in bed ; and as her loosened and beautiful black hair fell in a large mass over her eyes, it reminded me of the wing of the death angel. Nothing is so expressive as the lustre of the human eye, relieved by a mass of black hair ; and nothing so mournful, when we remember its effect in life, to see it drooping over those windows of the soul when they are closed in death. I withdrew into the front room, for I confess I had need of a moment's quiet, to compose myself. I had yet made no inquiry into the medical character of the case ; and although I neither knew nor anticipated why their gloomy forebod- ings should be realized, I know not why my own prognosis should have been a melancholy one. It may have been the consciousness of the great importance I have always attached to the influence of a happy state of the emotions, at so interesting a crisis of a woman's life it may have been her His e'oquent self-condemnation was too just to fail in exciting her tears; she had joined them -with his. for he had now sunk upon his knees at her bedside. She had raised herself in be;l ; and her loosened and beautiful black hair fell in a large mass over her eyes, it reminded ma of the win? of the death angel. PAGE 358- RECOLLECTIONS OF A SEXAGENARIAN. 359 evident delicacy I know not why it was; but from the moment my eye rested on that black tress of her hair, it was associated with her death pall. I returned to the bedside, and her satisfactory answers to my questions convinced me, that she was destined to pass her first great trial in a few days. I took my leave, with such cheering words of encouragement as ever spring to the lips of the physician, who will not consent to chill the warmth of his soul by the blighting influence of selfishness, promising to call frequently. The unfortunate young man walked forth with me ; his nerves were sadly shaken, and I begged him to retire ; but he said he had much to tell me. In a few words he informed me, that his illness had been caused by reckless exposure to typhus on board an emigrant ship, in conse- quence of the importunity of her poor mother, that he would do her child the melancholy justice of marriage, when she saw the result of her confidence in his intentions. He had deceived us all in her place of abode ; for she lived in a small town near the city of my residence so near, indeed, that he often made it the terminus of an afternoon's drive. It was on one of these pleasure excursions, that her angelic beauty attracted his gaze, as he rode through the village. Strange to say, in a few days, although educated with strict propriety, she allowed him to address her, under pretence of inquiring the way, as she was returning with some colored prints to a book-store, the owner of which' employed her mother to color them ; and as she was the only other member of the family, the duty of returning them fell upon her. Such was the address of this fascinating young man, that the poor mother fell into the snare, and allowed him to address her daughter. There were times, he told me, in which he would gladly have married her ; but on his enthu- siastic description of her, his friends ridiculed him, and he 360 RECOLLECTIONS OF A SEXAGENARIAN. finally steeled his heart, until the attack of illness that made us acquainted with his mother. During that attack, the letters he received from poor Ellen, so subdued his spirit by their tenderness, that he resolved to hasten to her the moment his recovery would allow, and make her his wife. The day on which, after his illness, he announced his sudden departure on the pretended commercial business, he received a letter, informing him of the greatly-increased illness of Ellen's mother, who had been for some months in a declin- ing state, in consequence of the melancholy condition and disgrace of her daughter. He arrived only in time to receive her last sigh, and to promise marriage and protec- tion to her he had so deeply injured. The poor girl's grief was terrible. As soon as her mother was buried, as she did not wish to remain in the village, she left their little cottage, under the protection of a trusty neighbor, who had been her mother's nurse and schoolmate, and came with her lover to the city. He informed me it was his design to ask my professional advice immediately, but he feared to expose himself to me, for he knew my esti- mation of his crime. He was now thoroughly subdued by grief and apprehen- sion for the dear girl he had so terribly injured ; he con- jured me to save her, by every term of endearment. I told him that I knew no reason why she should not recover from her confinement, like any other woman ; that a fatal event was very rare ; but, considering the unhappy influences of mental distress upon a delicate organism, where there was no experience, and evidently very gloomy apprehension of the result, that he should immediately grant her all the quiet that would follow from a marriage. He assented instantly; nor would he leave me until we together called upon a friend of mine, whose kind and excellent heart and soothing words had brought comfort to many a dying and friendless creature, whose death-bed I was destined to attend. Our RECOLLECTIONS OF A SEXAGENARIAN. 361 compact was a mutual one, and we freely commanded each other's services night and day. The marriage was appointed for next morning, before the business hour ; and the young man seemed to derive comfort from the arrangement. I bade him good night, and promised to be with him at eight o'clock. My sister was in waiting for me, and seemed more pensive than usual. Although I was extremely anxious to know the actual state of her attachment to this unfortunate young man, I knew it had not been openly professed ; I thought it best, therefore, to let the influence of a separation have its silent effect, and to divert her, as soon as possible, by a visit to your city during which I had, if you remember, the pleasure of forming your acquaintance. I therefore bade her good night, and retired to dream of man's injus- tice. At eight o'clock I was with them. My clerical friend arrived at the moment, and we found our couple in the humble parlor, quietly awaiting our arrival. Ellen looked very lovely, and the groom full of devotion and tenderness. A sweet bouquet bloomed upon the little table, and I noticed that the bride had been engaged embroidering a pretty design on a handkerchief that lay on the same table ; it was only partly finished, and she had evidently laid it down on our arrival. Every thing about the room, and herself, including her dress of deep mourning for her mother, was in perfect and beautiful order. On my expres- sing surprise at her industry at so early an hour, her lover observed that he never rode out to her little cottage, how- ever early, without finding her at her needle or in her little garden. Dear child I I often think of her sweet face and melting eyes, and that first association of the dark lock of her hair, that fell over them when I first saw her alas ! how ominons it was. After a short interview, our friend proceeded with the ceremony in the presence of myself and our remaining 16 362 RECOLLECTIONS OF A SEXAGENARIAN. lodger, who had been intrusted with the secret, and who was the only person to whom the groom felt willing to tell it. He was a quiet, well-disposed, and gentlemanly man, with no very strong emotions of any kind ; one of those excellent persons who slide easily through the world, and are sure of great esteem whilst living, and " a very respecta- ble funeral." My good friend, the clergyman, though a model of excellence, was not oppressed with that delicate appreciation of the sorrows of a woman's heart, that would have prevented him, if he had possessed it, approaching that altar of the soul that is ever sacred to the true physician. Accordingly, in his extemporaneous prayer, he was making rapid approaches towards that unfortunate woman of the Bible, who was the subject of those touching remarks of the Saviour. Fortunately I stood next him, and if his reve- rend elbow suffered by the manner in which the abductor muscles of my thumb and finger tried to approximate with that important joint between them, I can only say, I meant no disrespect for the cloth or the occasion but a holy sym- pathy for her who had elicited the evidently sincere inten- tion. My friend filled up the hiatus in his prayer, as well as might be expected on so awkward an occasion ; he subse- quently begged me never to allude to the circumstance, for the good man deemed it nothing short of sacrilege. I excused myself, on the ground of doctors being exceptions to all rules ; but I am fain to say, I never regretted my promptness in applying the bit to his reverence's tongue, by way of the nerves of his elbow ; and think I shall take the precaution to drill my clerical helpmate on a similar occa- sion, before his services are required. A few days only intervened, before I was summoned to attend my patient in her first great trial. I had seen her daily during the interval, and found her so quiet and com- paratively happy, that I anticipated no trouble : nor was there any. Her husband waited on her with the greatest RECOLLECTIONS OF A SEXAGENARIAN. 363 devotion and tenderness, and was so greatly agitated and depressed during the labor, that I was finally obliged to request my patient to entreat his absence. Never have I witnessed such relief as his countenance expressed, when I led bun to the bedside to behold his wife her face beaming with a mother's love for her first-born. I have often told my artist friends, that if they would ever know the pencil's highest aim, they must witness the change from the speech- less agony of child-birth, to that radiant soul-felt joy that steals over the young mother's face, "when she feels for the first time her first-born's breath." The face of my young patient was more beautiful than heaven. That smile 1 Oh, it must have been reflected from some angel's face, who came to call her away from her husband and child ; it was, like all other things so beautiful and bright, soon to fade for ever from earth. Let me hasten to the close ; for oh ! how near it was. No unpleasant symptom appeared till the third day, and even then, the slight febrile symptoms that prepare the pure fountain of nourishment for the child, did not excite my apprehension. All was still well, when, on the fourth day, a violent chill succeeded an unfortunate and uncontrollable burst of grief, at a prolonged view of her poor mother's picture the work of a young artist who had been sheltered in their humble abode. The nurse told me, that it was of near an hour's duration, and it had not yielded to her very judicious measures, when I arrived. The hus- band had been hastily summoned from his counting-house, and ran frantically to my office. I was fortunately at home, and in a few minutes at my patient's bedside. What mea- sures occurred to me were instantly put in practice, and I an once personally summoned a near friend, for I am natu- rally desponding in such cases, and all my gloomy first im- pressions were revived. Why prolong the sad narrative ? All that three of us could do for we had summoned a very eminent professional 364 RECOLLECTIONS OF A SEXAGENARIAN. brother was done. On the seventh day, it was evident the scene would soon be over. I can now relate it calmly, for 'tis more than thirty years since, and my own griefs have quieted me. It often happens, that a mother dying of those fatal fevers that follow child-birth, becomes insensible to maternal love ; but my young patient was an exception. During the inter- vals of her pain, she manifested the fondest attachment to her child. She barely allowed its occasional removal from her side, to give it food. Once, during my presence at her bedside, she placed her hand upon her breasts, from which the milk had quite disappeared, and looking mournfully at her infant, could not control her tears. Poor baby, thought I, it is well for him that he does not realize the difference ; for he will never receive his nourishment from that source. Upon remarking that he fed well, and all might yet end happily, she took my hand, and pressing it to her lips, she said, " You comforter ; but never no, Doctor ; I am sinking ; I feel it in my freedom from pain." J Twas, indeed, a fatal symptom. " I leave you and him" placing her hand upon her husband's head, who could not control his emotion "I go to join her. Be kind to him ; he loved me always yes, from the first moment. I feel it." He uttered an imprecation on himself ; she instantly checked him, with more energy than I thought she yet possessed. " Never, Frederick, my love ; use such a terri- ble expression. Be always calm calm calm !" She was exhausted by the exertion, and gasped for breath. "Be calm; your passions are your only fault ; your heart is good. Doctor, he is good. Remember the Saviour ; he was calm, and oh, how pure was his love for all ! Doctor, will you may I now, without selfishness, ask a boon of you, who are all goodness ? Do you know what he thinks of you ? how he loves you ? Next to me, Doctor, and his mother ; next to us." I replied, that her slightest wish, could I know RECOLLECTIONS OF A SEXAGENARIAN. 365 it, would be sacred to me. " Then, Doctor, when I am gone, take him and my dear child back to your roof and your heart. His mother never knew me, thank God ! I could not have looked at her." He cried out in his agony, " She would have loved you, my angel, my darling ; she would have worshipped you, but she would have despised me. Oh, God ! I am glad she knows not my baseness." The dying wife placed her hand on his mouth. " Doctor, you have a sister : will she love it ? Frederick has told me she was like a sister to him, and how she once valued a mother's love. Doctor, will you love it for your mother's sake and for my sake ? Take this little gift " (handing me the handkerchief she was at work upon the morning of her wedding ; you shall see it some day, my dear Doctor), "and when you look at it, remember the giver's prayer, and love my child." I received the gift, and placed it near my heart. My tears blinded me ; I felt the sacredness of the promise, and bowed my head as I told her her wish should ever be as near to me as the memory of the giver. Her husband's looks assured me of his sufferings and his gratitude. Believing that she was not yet near her end by a few hours, I knew that one thing remained for me to do, to make her departure happy ; and that was, the presence of woman ; she who was " last at his cross, and earliest at her Saviour's grave." I resolved, that however it would harrow her feelings, I would bring my dear sister to her, and let her receive the sacred gift of the- child from the hands of the dying mother. I pressed her thin cold hand to my lips, and hastened to my home, leaving her alone with her suffering and now tearless partner. On my way, my knowledge of my sister's affection for the fascinating man, who had caused all this misery, made me hesitate ; but I knew her noble nature, and that she had cultivated self-control till it made me revere her above all other woman. I resolved she should 366 RECOLLECTIONS OF A SEXAGENARIAN. know all ; that she should, with a woman's instinct, form her own ideas of the husband's attachment to his dying wife, and ever after be able to estimate correctly his real worth as a man. Bidding her hastily make her toilet, I placed her in my carriage, and for the first time in my adult life, addressed her with deep and expressed feeling ; for, as I said before, we had hitherto known each other by intuition not expression. " My dear sister," said I, " you are about to experience a severe trial. The wife of a dear friend is dying, and I wish you to receive from her hand an unpro- tected infant. I have already promised her you will, but she knows not of your coming." She turned pale, and I knew at once she had, with a woman's instinct, connected the whole subject with the absence of our lodger, and what I had told her of the necessity of its protection to a relative. In a moment, however, she answered me : "Go on, brother ; I have now but one wish to please you." I understood her meaning, and that she knew all. Pressing her for the first time to my heart, I observed she trembled, but instantly controlled herself, imputing it to the chill air. On our arrival, it was necessary to introduce her to the bed-side. Our patient was still conscious, but dying. The husband bowed his head and spoke not. Approaching the poor dying young creature, I said : " You begged me to receive your child, and asked me if my sister would love it. My mother's spirit whispered me, let my other child answer, I have therefore brought my sister to you." My sister kissed her now pale lips ; I raised the arm of the dying mother and placed it about her neck. She slightly drew the weeping girl to her, and distinctly said, " Bless you, my dear bless you ;" then, with much effort, she continued, " I never had a sister, but my dear mother would have been happier with you oh ! far happier. She loved her poor child, and will bless you for your kindness RECOLLECTIONS OF A SEXAGENARIAN. 367 You will love my child ; I know it, or you would not have come." My sister kissed her again and again. " Bless you, dear bless you. Where is he ? Where is Frederick ?" "Here, dearest," groaned the poor husband, "here. Yet Oh God ! canst thou not even yet ?" He was tearless ; his countenance showed the fearful agony of his soul. He placed his hand upon her heart, in doubt, for her eyes were now closed, and she seemed to have ceased breathing. Suddenly she opened them with evident intelli- gence, and fixed them steadily on the ceiling. I caught that peculiar look of the dying, I had several times before seen, when all on earth is passing away, and they seem to see into another state of existence. We stepped aside from her face, fearful of distracting her gaze from him at that sacred moment. To my great joy for my heart ached for him I heard the words distinctly uttered, " Dearest Frederick mother " * * All was over ; poor Ellen was at rest. Speechless with grief, we stood silent for some minutes. I closed those lovely eyes, and smoothed back that dark tress of hair that had excited my gloomy forebodings ; it was, indeed, her death pall. The poor husband was stupe- fied ; we did not leave him for some hours. And when my dear sister wrapped the little motherless child in her shawl, and took it to the carriage, I blessed God that she was left me, and that I had escaped the awful crime that had so humbled the soul of the unhappy young man, who had thus early filled two graves with the victims of his passion. After the last sad rites, he followed his motherless child to my house. A subdued and changed man is now my friend and brother. When years had chastened his spirit, and he had placed his dear mother by the side of his wife, I was perfectly willing to entrust my sister to his tender care. I reflected upon my own passionate nature, and that probab'' 368 RECOLLECTIONS OF A SEXAGENARIAN. I bad only escaped the same unhappiness by the force of a medical education, forbidding that awful crime by every appeal to my manhood, and pardoned him fully. Suffering had changed him. You know how I love him. You know his noble heart. God has given him wealth, and how many have been made glad by his bounty. Do you remember his beautiful boy ? his child our child. Oh, may God save him till this weary heart is at rest ! Man is born to cherish some living creature, and I can never love * * again. The preceding narrative is the written relation of scenes, occurring in the practice of a dear friend in another city. "Were it possible for the reader to listen to the events as detailed from the lips of our friend when the shutters are closed, and the sofa wheeled round, he would regret as keenly as the Editor does, the necessity of our acting as his amanuensis. All our entreaties have never been able to overcome his modesty and induce him to write ; we have vainly tried to catch the inspiration of his voice and manner, but, we fear, in vain. The conclusion of the sketch will explain to the astute reader the sacredness of his relation to the memory of the dead and the living characters and the delicacy of our task. To the readers this explanation is necessary; the publication of this volume having brought the Editor to confession. SCARLET FEVER, 3K9 SCARLET FEVER. WHAT ARK THE CAUSES OF ITS DREADFUL FATALITY HAS MEDICINE ANT CONTROL OVEB IT? " The simpler variety of scarlatina is only fatal through the officiousness of the doctor." Sydenham. THE existence of an atmospheric and infectious disease, depending upon unknown causes, of a very fatal character, attacking almost exclusively those in the very morning of life, is but too well adapted to enlist the sympathies of our hearts, to insure a right use of the head in the investiga- tion of the symptoms it produces, and its awfully fatal char- acter. As these are all the means we possess in determiu- ing the serious questions we propose to consider, it behooves us to be quite sure that we properly awaken the reasoning faculty of the general reader, and whilst we present him with no hypotheses to gratify pride of opinion, supply him with enough of such admitted facts as will insure an intelli- gent appreciation of the true merits of the question of its treatment, respecting which, it grieves us to say, there is a great variety of opinion in our profession. Indeed, we are well aware that this, as well as many other subjects chosen for popular instruction, have already subjected us to the aspersions of such as do not wish any disturbance of the public mind and their own quiet consciences. The radical reformer and the alarmist are great thorns in the sides of our medical bourgeoisie... The medical colleges and the 16* 370 SCARLET FEVER. academy ( ! ) may serve their purpose yet a little while, but the public mind is too much excited, and the desolate hearth- stone appeals too sensibly to the affections of the parent to allow this question any longer rest. It is far too serious, and our avowed object to aid the public to distinguish between the quack, with his collegiate shield of sheep's skin, and his century-beaten mill-horse track of medical rou- tine of practice is now too well understood to allow us a longer respite. There are two points in the history of this disease which most impressively arrest the attention of the physician, and they must be made to appeal with equal force to the general reader, even before we give the characteristic appearances and symptoms of the disease ; for on them depends the jus- tice of our strictures on the routine treatment of the day. It grieves us to be obliged to press them earnestly upon the attention, because we are aware they will excite the sad- dest memories in many a bereaved heart. These points are well settled, and somewhat familiar even to the popular mind, and we now intend to attempt their application. The first is, that in some seasons and districts, the disease shows itself from the very commencement, in a very mild form ; mothers calling it the " scarlet rash," and " scarla- tina ;" this latter being the name used by physicians to express the general disease itself and not the degree or type. Scarlet rash, alludes of course to the redness of the skin ; and scarlatina indicates, as parents suppose, a very simple affection quite different from scarlet fever, which they are apt to associate exclusively with the swollen and ulcerated throat that so often marks the fatal character of the higher type of the disease. This is entirely erroneous, and may lead to indifference and death. The disease being infectious, and generally attacking all the younger members of the family who have not had it, often affords sad oppor- tunities to prove that it originates always from one kind of SCARLET FEVER. 371 poison whatever it may be : one child will have so slight an attack, perhaps a mere redness of the skin, and no throat affection at all, that he will not even consent to go to bed ; whilst another will be attacked as early as the second day in the most virulent manner, with all the throat symptoms, and in a few days even two or three will, if subjected to the usual purgative, pass into a typhoid state, from which no stimulation can arouse him, and death by suffocation will rapidly close the scene. We have placed this admitted fact first, because it has everything to do with the remarks we shall have to make on the treatment of the disease, and our perhaps somewhat singular introduction. With regard to the manner of its origin, we have simply to say, we know nothing about it, any more than of measles or hooping cough ; still there is here also a fact, that in our own humble view, positively proves it to be of constant re-origina- tion in various parts of the country, notwithstanding its also proved infectious character. It is continually appear- ing, like the measles, in places hundreds of miles apart, where there is known to have been no intercourse whatever between the children, or the parents ; we mention the latter, because though adults rarely take it, in commercial life there is much travelling, and small pox it is proved may be even carried in a letter thousands of miles. The sphere of infec- tion in scarlet fever, there is good reason to suppose, does not extend beyond the sick room, or the exhalations of the affected person : it cannot be carried far by the clothing of a visitor ; the open air is known to dissipate it. There is nothing unreasonable or improbable in the idea, that a disease, originating entirely in atmospheric or deranged electric influences, may become so concentrated by receiving some new and essential element for its propagation from the system in which it is first hatched, as to become highly infectious to other systems brought within the influence of the exhalations of the sick ; indeed, as may be said of 372 SCARLET FEVER. small-pox and its more terribly contagious synonym, they must both have been thus concocted at their first appearance on earth : there must be two elements in them : and yet, in truth, we know neither the primary essential nature of scarlet fever nor its subsequent additions ; if we did, we might be able to treat it with more certainty. Let us, therefore, attend to its symptoms and see what we can deduce from them in regard to its treatment. Simple scarlatina, when severe enough to produce any symptoms sufficiently marked to attract notice, appears as a faint diffused redness of the skin, sometimes so slight as scarcely to exceed the hue of a healthy child's cheek; there may be slight chills, and sometimes shivering ; possibly a little nausea rarely vomiting in these mild cases. The eruption appears usually on the second or third day. You may always remark, that the later the eruption, the worse the attack ; of course all physicians of experience and most mothers, know, that if no eruption appear, or if it come very late, and only partially, the attack of any cutaneous complaint will be more serious ; the eruption, as we sup- pose, is nature's own method of throwing the poison or its influence out of the body. The disease may be distinguished from measles, which often prevails not only in a noticeable degree at the same seasons, but actually approximates in appearance to the eruption, in many cases, of mild scarlatina firstly, by the watery eyes, the sneezing and cough of measles ; and sec- ondly, by the usual appearance of the eruption. The measles are more of a raspberry color scarlatina, of that of a boiled lobster. The eruption of measles is generally in patches, more or less approximating the shape of a half circle, feeling rough under the finger, with patches of healthy skin between them. The scarlatina eruption is like a diffused blush, smooth to the touch, and merging into the general lobster shell eruption all over the skin. They both SCARLET FEVER. 373 begin on the face, and extend downwards. The eruption of measles begins almost always on the fourth day after the first appearance of the watery eyes and the hoarse cough, after which it begins to fade. The eruption of scarlet fever, on the contrary, has no definite period of duration, some- times appearing as late as the fourth or fifth, and disappear- ing by the eighth day ; this is its most usual course, but it is to the frequent derangement of this symptom that we look, as to the dial plate of the disease ; just as it behaves, jast so will the throat be affected ; it will escape entirely, be very slightly affected, or pass to a malignant state. From the fourth day, in most cases, the eruption becomes fainter, and the external or scarf skin (for the reader will remember the skin has three distinct layers) begins to scale off or desquamate, as we say; it comes off the body and face just like scales of bran, only of a finer texture, and by the seventh day, the patient presents a much better and smoother surface. Sometimes the thicker cuticle of the hands and feet will come off entire, like a glove or sock. All the symptoms of the mild variety of the disease, most , easily distinguished by the general observer, will be found to show themselves on the skin, and he is apt to suppose that the danger ends with its scaling off, or exfoliation, but he will soon see that the real danger is just then about to commence ; in these mild cases, dropsy and debility often destroy life where the fever excited no apprehension. First, however, of the second, or that appalling variety that strikes such terror to the parent's heart. This originates, as we have said, from the same poison; we have ample evidence, from the fact, that even when the first case in a family proves to be a malignant and fatal one, attended with all the worst throat symptoms, the child actually dying of suffocation as early as the fourth or fifth day, a brother or sister, or several of them, may take the mildest form and recover; and the reverse of this is just as often seen. This 314 SCARLET FEVER. extraordinary difference in the result is closely connected with the second impressive fact we alluded to in our intro- duction. It may be owing to some different organization of the skin, inappreciable by us, or the absence or presence of some element or balance of the living power in that individ- ual child, essential to the propagation of the severer form of the disease, in its malignant form, or sometimes its total failure to attack the body. On such hypotheses it is idle to speculate; but other and graver reflections arrest the atten- tion when we witness the routine treatment of these evidently dissimilar constitutions, and compare it with the often terrible results. That man who possesses even the meanest reflecting power, may well ask himself the question, how do I know when five or six children of similar bodily confirmation, but always of different constitutional power, are all subjected, on the first appearance of the symptoms, to the action of a purgative, and perhaps a violent one; how do I know that I shall not so prostrate one or more of them, that the sys- tem will not have power enough left it to throw out the eruption, and the throat may receive all the brunt of the disease ? We have known jalap and calomel, and salts and senna to be given in this city, and that by respectable phy- sicians, as a standard prescription, to a whole family ! and more than one instance in which three and four consecutive deaths have followed ! The action of a purgative medicine is well known to reduce the action of the heart, and lessen the eruption ! nay, if the imprudent routinist were asked why he gave it, he could only say that such was his inten- tion. Now, let us ask ourselves the question, what is the fever that precedes the redness of the skin ? Is it not increased action of the heart ? Is it not more than an hypothesis, is it not almost certain, that this increased action is meant by nature to throw the poison, whatever it be, out of the body SCARLET FEVER. 375 by meaus of this very redness and scaling of the skin ? What are measles, small pox and plague ? Let us see what aid we can derive in proving this, by investigating the malignant variety of scarlet fever; only called malignant because the disease spends its force on the throat, often suf- focating the child to death ; we repeat, it comes from the same poison ; never forget this, and then you will know how monstrous is the meddlesome ignorance of the routine prac- titioner. In this description of malignant scarlatina, we prefer presenting the observation of one of the most acute physi- cians of Europe, notwithstanding, we have been witness repeatedly to all the symptoms he enumerates ; indeed, there is not a physician of any experience who has not seen them again and again, in the dreadful epidemic visitations of the disease in this city: his remarks will show that others as well as ourself share the opinion of the miserable results of routine treatment. In scarlatina maligna, the rash is apt to come out late and imperfectly, and sometimes not at all ; and instead of being bright and florid, to present a bluish or livid tint ; sometimes it suddenly recedes, and then perhaps appears again; and occasionally it is diversified by purple spots. Only see how palpably nature shows she is struggling with her too feeble heart against a dreadfully depressing cause ! Redness, you will remember, is caused by the blood being rapidly propelled through the lungs by a strong heart, causing sufficient absorption of oxygen from the inhaled air; purple blotches show a want of this oxygen, or a predominance of carbon in the veins, which return the blood from the skin after it has performed its functions of exhalation of carbon and a supply of material for growth. When the patient begins to complain of soreness of the throat, and you look into the mouth and find the tonsils and throat of a dark red color, and especially if the eruption is not well out on the skin, look out for trouble. Such is 376 SCARLET FEVER. often the violence of the depressing cause in some cases, that the patient begins to sink or become typhoid on the very first day this redness of the throat commences! Death often occurs as early as the fourth day. Says Dr. Watson " Over this variety of the disease medicine has but little control." Add this expression to the acknowledged axiom of the great Sydenham at the head of this article, and then tell me, reader, if it is not time that some one had the independence to declare the truth, and protect the lives of hundreds of children in this city from the appalling conse- quences of diploma'd ignorance ! The symptoms of the throat affection are so well known to physicians, and treatment avails so little, that we shall pass them entirely by, and hasten to the consequences of the disease upon other parts of the system. One of the results of the excessive swelling about the neck, is pressure upon the great jugular veins which return the blood from the head. This causes congestion or fulness of the brain, and often delirium, ending in a rupture of some vessel within the skull, and consequent apoplexy. We have often, also, seen every symptom of dropsy of the brain. This is of slower accession, and allows a little more time for the action of remedies, for in the secondary symptoms there is far more certainty in their use. The offensive and poisonous discharge from the ulcera- tions of the throat pass into the bowels, for the patient has no strength to expectorate, and produces diarrhosa. The windpipe itself has often been attacked with ulceration, and the child suffocated in a spasmodic attack of coughing. If the child is delicate or scrofulous, and should survive the attack, the reader will readily comprehend additional debility should follow ; this will locate in one or more parts of the system. Swellings of the glands in the neck, of the eye-lids, and of the lips and nostrils and joints, are common consequences. Ulcerations of the SCARLET FEVER. 317 ear and nose, and ulcers on various parts of the body, may also follow. The most common result, however, is dropsy ; it usually shows itself beneath the skin, causing swelling of the limbs, and occasionally dropsy of the cavity of the belly. This symptom, Dr. Watson remarks, is most frequent in mild cases ; we have no doubt of it from our own observation. This affection is an excessively obstinate and persistent one, and the impertinent and officious interposition of the physi- cian often renders it utterly incurable. Warmth and nutritious food, with gentle frictions to the skin, are the only proper domestic remedies ; the humane and careful use of specific stimuli to the skin and kidneys, is admissible by the careful physician only ; no remedy can be conscien- tiously used by a parent. Dropsy is said to be almost inva- riably the consequence of too early exposure to cold, and usually comes on by the twentieth day ; after the fourth week there is little danger of it, the equilibrium of the cir- culation being by that time restored, and the new cuticle consolidated. People beyond the period of adolescence are rarely afflicted with it, nor are they, indeed, by any means as liable to scarlet fever ; few cases occur after 16 years. Dr. Watson remarks, that if asked for how long a time a person was capable of communicating the disease to another, he would always answer, " that he did not know." If he had lived here, he might know to a day, if he would believe some of our oracular brethren ; there is one order of them who never fail to answer every question asked of them, however absurdly impossible to suppose the knowledge attainable. Apartments will undoubtedly retain the infec- tion for weeks, as we know by personal observation ; but it is soon dissipated from the clothes of a person who has been near the sick. What we have said with regard to the treatment of this often formidable disease, originates in no captious desire to 878 SCARLET FEVER. find fault with our brethren. We conceive all, and more than we have said, to be richly merited by a large majority of the practitioners throughout our country. The insane desire of nine-tenths of those who employ a physician, to have "something done," has caused many a parent's heart to bleed. No medical man who respects himself will ever yield to such ignorant presumption. Instances have occurred in this city, in several cases under our own observation, of two, three, and four deaths in a single family, all of which had been subjected to severe medication ; and one of our citizens, heart-broken at the loss of four daughters, felt justly called on to give his views to the public on hearing the alleged fatal treatment contradicted by the physician. To our personal knowledge, they all had active mercurial purgatives, and several of them were very freely leeched ! and yet this very man insolently claims the highest position in the medical profession in this city. Yerily, if the chil- dren of his brethren were subjected to his treatment, we would require no society for the relief of their beggared offspring when they themselves were dead. From what we have noticed in twenty years' observation and conversation with thinking as well as heroic practition- ers, it is our solemn conviction that no treatment whatever for the milder variety, and no active medicine for the severer form, should be used. Absolute and unvarying warmth in bed to the full extent of comfort, ice to the head in cases of delirium supervening in the latter stages, and brandy and ammonia to keep up the force of the circulation if the pulse flags, and to keep out the eruption, are preeminently wise and necessary measures, never to be neglected by the physician. These are not medicines ; they are pure and simple agents, whose action is understood as plainly as that of fire and water. Ice constricts the blood-vessels within the membranes of the brain, by its application in a bladder outside : and brandy and ammonia are as pure natural stimuli as heat. There is SCARLET FEVER. 319 no speculation- about these agents, we know their power. As to the conditions that require them, that is another mat- ter. In the present aspect of the diploma market and col- legiate produce, we advise every parent to watch the natural indications of debility. Dullness of the eye, frequent sigh- ing, and general prostration of the -limbs, are not to be mis- taken ; they mean debility. If no pain in the head exist, the remedies had better be tried by the physician. It will not do to wait ; a day may decide the matter fatally. Dr. Watson considers laxative medicine and bleeding advisable. If the former be used, it must be extremely gentle, and watched with jealous care. We can scarcely conceive the lancet otherwise than dangerous in any case, and certainly have never ventured its application. In cases of great oppression of the brain, leeches have been used with benefit. It is barely a supposable possibility ; if applied at all, they should be placed on the back of the neck. We have used for ulceration of the throat, one drachm of the chlorate of potass to a pint of water as a drink ; a teaspoonful being slowly swallowed occasionally ; it cer- tainly improves for the time, and sometimes permanently, both the ulcers and the foul tongue. Gargling it is quite useless, as it cannot reach the disease if thus used. Blisters we consider to be totally inadmissible. Caustic to the throat has proved beneficial in our hands ; but it requires to be carefully used, and re-applied soon. Dr. Schneeman, a German physician, has lately recom- mended the novel treatment of rubbing the pores of the skin from head to foot actually every square inch of the body with the rind of fat pork, so as completely to fill them. It is alleged to be absolutely omnipotent treatment. We have not known it tried here. It is certainly contrary to every pre-conceived idea of the functions of the skin as an exhalant or eliminator of the poison of the disease. 380 SCARLET FEVER. Belladonna has been alleged to be so positive a prophy- lactic, or preventive of the disease, as to render its attack almost impossible. "We should certainly esteem ourself more than culpable, did we advance any opinion calculated to pre- vent the realization of so great a boon to poor humanity. For ourselves, we can most conscientiously assert, we have found it entirely inert, if we may judge from limited trials in family practice in past years. Yet so many high authorities assert its claim as almost a specific preventive, that we give the formula for its preparation, with the earnest hope that our conclusions will prove incorrect from too limited experience. Two grains of the fresh extract may be dissolved in an ounce of water, and two drops be given to a child of one year old, daily for ten days ; an additional drop for every year additional of age : not more than twelve drops should be given in a day to any one. We consider warmth to be so great a curative measure, that we again enforce it with all the impressiveness its importance demands. " Life is warm, death is cold." THE LAST DAY OF COLLEGE LIFE. 381 SCENES IN WESTERN PRACTICE. THE LAST DAT OF A COLLEGE LIFE SCHOOL TEACHING THE END OK A HYPOCRITE HIS EARLY HISTORY HIS TWO SONS HIS WIFE AND FAMILY DOMESTIC FELICITY THE BROKEN VOW THE BEAUTIFUL DAUGHTER SUICIDE THK WESTERN VAMPYRE THB DAUGHTER AND HER TWO IRISH BABIES. " A dark and melancholy work on a lightsome ground." EVERY thing has its last. The last words of great men of all men, are commonly remembered. The rolling year has its last day, and man's eye glances for the last time on the earth, his home, the faces of the loved ones, and dies. The last farewell has sad words within it, and few human hearts that have beat long enough to suffer, but have been pierced with the tones of a last word, a last sigh, a last grasp of the hand glance of the eye, that flashed from the soul its sorrow at parting. Why is the last of all things so universally mournful, and symbolled only by sighs and tears ? This element in human nature seems to culminate at last in the idea that all things will have an end, and the earth and sun fail, and the race be summoned to a last reckoning, to a final account, in presence of their great last Judge, and from His lips the last eternal word shall be spoken ; and here -human belief seems reversed, and the next condition is taken to be endless, that shall have no last, no star, no end. The beginning, the birth of all things, is joyous. It is the other pole of the last ; and joy beams as eternally in the eyes of the one, as sadness lives in the coming of the other. A new flower, a new tree, a new plant, a new resi- 882 SCENES IN WESTERN PRACTICE. dence, a new friend, a new child, a new thought, are all heralded with songs and thanksgiving ; the birth or begin- ning of all things has in it delight ; the stars sang together at the birth of the world, and the heavenly host sang their celestial anthems over the plains of Bethlehem at the birth of Christ. Every mother sings her sweetest song over the birth of her first child, and the gayest flowers, and the brightest hues, and the softest down are selected to adorn and crown the advent of a new spirit into the earth. But when that spirit takes its departure, and breathes its last sigh, the mother no longer hunts for adornments, but sombre hues and mournful tones become her spirit. The law of the universe seems to be a system of con- trasts, in which light is better known from its relation to darkness, and joy is made sweeter from its relation to sor- row ; the beauties and adornments of summer are shown in more lively colors from a contrast with the leafless, cold dirge of dying winter. We admire man in the greatness of his strength, in the pride of his beauty ; but it is not till we see him bowed with age, covered with sin, and marred with wrong, that he elicits our best thoughts, our holiest sympa- thies. Man, in the pride and splendor of perfect obedience, could never have commanded the sympathies of love ; but man in his anguish and despair, broken by crime, and over- whelmed with sorrow, elicited the spark from the celestial life that made Mary the mother of Jesus, and covered the world with a radiance of glory. Sin is terrible when con- trasted with holiness ; but the everlasting splendor that beams from purity is brighter when glaring by the side of the dark orb of sin. Bacon has well observed that,. "If you listen to the harp of David, you shall hear as many hearse-like airs as carols ; and the pencil of the Holy Ghost hath labored more in describing the afflictions of Job than the felicities of Solomon." Prosperity is not without many fears and distrusts, and THE LAST DAY OF COLLEGE LIFE. 383 adversity is not without comforts and hopes. We see in needle-work and embroidery, it is more pleasing to have a lively work upon a sad and solemn ground, than to have a dark and melancholy work on a lightsome ground. " Cer- tainly, virtue is like precious odors, the more precious when incensed or crushed ; for prosperity doth best discover vice, but adversity doth best discover virtue. Indeed, to carry out this thought to its boldest conclusions, is sin and imper- fection in this world an accident, the oversight of a woman in conflict with an appetite ? But is it not rather a neces- sary law of things, a stupendous system of reflected and contrasted images, the deformity and hatefulness of the one, mirroring more brightly to our souls the beauty and glory of the other ? The best elements of our manhood are struck into being in conflict with meanness and treachery, and the rack and the dungeon are often capable of giving to our spirits their brightest glow and intensest fire. A fallen man redeemed, comprehends more perfectly the heat of the fires through which he has passed, and the glories of his high estate, than one created on a level with him in goodness, without hav- ing labored to reach that state of perfection. The universe seems to have this law of contrast within it, and our earth, as she revolves through the cycles of her mighty destiny, has all the vicissitudes of cold and heat, sunshine and rain, summer and winter. Some parts of the earth seem doomed to perpetual frost, ice, and sterility, where the sturdy Norse- man beholds in the conflict of elements the god Thor smit- ing the Jotuns with the rod of his power ; while other regions are blooming with constant heat, and corrupting the air with her rotting beauty ; her vegetation blooms but to die, or to feed a life that is hardly worth the air that sus- tains it. Well, reader, we must leave these reflections for your thoughts to work upon, and return to our college life. This 384 SCENES IN WESTERN PRACTICE. train of thought is fit, you will say, when you read the tale that follows it. It was the last day of the last session of a medical col- lege, that had been raised in the forest and grew like the oak in size and strength, and flourished in its manly beauty, but was now about to die. Its life had braved the toils of twenty years, its founders were grey-haired or dead, and, like them, its last day had come. Its professors had uttered their last word of advice with trembling lips ; and the stu- dent, flushed with new life and new hope, was about passing into the world to work out a name and a history. Not a leaf dies but has its history ; not a flower blooms but can tell its tale ; not an insect flits through its day life, but has had its trials ; the sun shone on it, and the rain, cold and pitiless, killed him, and to-morrow his shining head and gilded wing is found on the withered stalk where he sung his last song. It was on the stone steps of the old time-honored temple that I was standing with a fellow-student, contriving how we should return to our homes, when our almost empty treasury contained barely enough to carry but one a distance of three hundred miles. The clouds had curtained all the heavens, and the winds were keen as the knife ; the white fleecy snow seemed merry with its death-life, and was float- ing from place to place, piling a drift here, and sailing in a white cloud there. We stood waiting for a " birth of Pro- vidence," for neither could dream what was to be done in our singular strait. While conning over our lot, not know- ing nor caring much what a day brought forth, a stranger, wrapped in an antique drab overcoat the capes, numerous and ample, covering him to his waist, and the skirts trailing in the snow approached us and inquired for R , saying that his cousin had notified him that such a person was at that place, and he wished to engage a teacher for two months, to supply the place of a young man who was SCHOOL TEACHING. 385 obliged to quit, to care for a sick father and sister. A bargain was struck on the instant, and drawing from my pocket the sum of six dollars, all the wealth I possessed, and handing it to my friend, I pressed his hand, and we parted. The face of the stranger was a curious compound of the droll, the devilish, and the odd. We toiled our way through the vast drifted heaps of snow that covered the face of the country, and concealed every thing from view, but houses, barns and haystacks. We found his home amid the rude hills of old Herkimer, and his cheerful blue-eyed wife wel- comed us to as happy a home as wealth and goodness, and fun and frolic could devise. My friend belonged to the race of gimlets that swarm up from old Connecticut, -and, like other thousands, he had wandered from home, and carved out a fortune for himself by trading horses and laying stone walls among the farmers in that primitive region. Ten years had elapsed, and he had risen by industry from a laborer to be owner of the soil and one of the sovereigns. A rude but manly heart beat under his old drab coat and red shirt. The next morning found me in an old school-house, on the very top of a high mountain ridge, surrounded by as unlovely a group of rude, coarse boys, relieved by a few mor.e decent girls, as ever cursed the heart of a schoolmaster. Snow was six feet deep, and above that was piled in vast ridges by the howling winds that swept nightly over the bleak summits of these barren hills. This rude group of human calves left a deep impression on my mind. The country had been settled many years, and civilization had worked inces- santly for humanity, through the church and the school- house ; but humanity had no more to hope from more than a dozen of these young men, than from a group of Saki Indians. Their heads were round, necks thick, shoulders broad, bodies short, and their minds more dull than the per- ceptions of some dogs. Scarce a winter ever passed here IT 386 SCENES IN WESTEBN PRACTICE. without a field-fight between the boys and teacher. An old Vermonter who lived near the school, informed me, that during the last ten years he had been hired by the district six times to take charge of the school, and cast out the devils that infested the boys, at the end of the supple hickory. Only a week had passed, before I crossed the track of a plot to seize and flog me, which was only pre- vented by a sudden irruption upon the leaders, with a valor- ous application of the lash, by the aid of which I worked them up in such pitiful specimens of disobedience, as set the whole town into a laugh at the boys. In numerous places at the East, in the oldest settled counties, I have observed these same animal tendencies in the rising generation, so marked and singular, that no observer of nature could fail to ask the cause of this rapid deterioration in our race of men. The rudeness of the paren- tal life in clearing up and subduing a new country, seems to embody itself in the children, and drag them headlong towards the scale of the brute. Another cause, more potent than all, which underlies the characters I have described is, that these children are the offspring of the lowest forms of uneducated young men and women, who have married in the Eastern towns and villages, and fled, with poverty and ignorance, into a new region, to find bread and a home in the forest, where ignorance finds freedom and conten- tion. No attentive observer of the progress of our race, can fail to see that our country towns, and villages, and cities, have in their population a vast multitude of these uncouth, shapeless, and stupid specimens of unblest humanity. The vast hordes of young men and women who enter married life, spurred on by passion, yet besotted in ignorance, as uncultivated as the savage, cannot fail to leave a posterity mentally degraded, physically imperfect, and monstrous in morality. The examination of some thousands of convicts THE END OF A HYPOCRITE. 387 in the various prisons of our States, clearly points to the above causes as prolific in results. A permanent and successful elevation of our race, can only be obtained by a rigid application of hereditary laws, and they must be so applied as to leave these specimens of crime, insanity, and disease, to perish with those who pos- sess them. That the existing generation modifies vastly the succeeding generations, is a settled principle. Laws which allow the sickly, the insane, the ignorant, the drunken, and imbruted of our race, to multiply their deformed and vicious imperfections, only strike at the best interests of humanity, and put far off the hope of the permanent progress of our species. We must leave the reader with these reflections, and return to the thread of our narrative. I had been summoned, in my turn, to watch with the father and sister of the teacher whose place I had taken, and the impressions of these night vigils are indelibly engraven on my memory. The home was a low farm-house, surrounded by a fine orchard, and a thrifty grove of young maples completely environed the house. It was a lovely spot, and nature seemed striving to mock the possessor with its peaceful and enduring beauties. My young friend showed me into the sick-room. The father, an old man, with gray locks and sunken cheeks, lay on a bed by the east window, that opened into the maple grove : a large tumor deformed the side of his neck ; his eye was dull and sorrowful ; his ill-formed yellow brow covered in part by his long gray hair ; his extremities were paralytic, and he was at this moment under the influence of nux vomica, which acted at periods of from fifteen to thirty minutes, and caused a sudden contraction of the muscles of the limbs, which drew them suddenly up towards his body, then, by a convulsive movement, they extended to their full length with great violence, throwing his attendants from the bed. 388 SCENES IN WESTERN PRACTICE. who were endeavoring to render the movements of his limbs less violent and painful. The medicine acted on no part of the system but the paralyzed extremities, and a post mortem examination showed the spinal cord in the lumbar region almost totally absorbed or destroyed by dis- ease, the sheath which envelopes it barely remaining. This medicine in its action on the brain transmitted motion across the diseased spine, while the will had ceased to move his limbs. He languished a few weeks and expired, and we consigned him to a grave in the yard, under the shade of the maple trees, a few feet from his house. His wife was already buried in the same place, and a daughter, of whom we shall speak as we pass. Our friend for whom we had performed the last sad rite, was born in Rhode Island, and grew up to manhood beneath the paternal roof, but could not set out in life till, like many others, he had perpetrated some act of perfidy, and planted deep in his soul the seeds of sin. He had wooed and won the aifections of the daughter of a wealthy merchant, and, much to the chagrin and sorrow of her parents, before the time appointed for their nuptials, she had become a mother. He fled into Con- necticut, and remained the space of eight months, and finally returned to his native place. He had visited his child, and bound up the young lady's broken heart by renewing his bro- ken promises, and, while professing to be making ready for the nuptial ceremony, he fled to the interior of New York, and purchased a forest farm, and married the daughter of a wealthy farmer. The betrayed and abandoned young woman, whom lie had left, had become the mother of a second son. He grappled manfully with the toils of life, and in a few years had cleared off the forest and provided him with a home and a shelter. His wife, a short, stout, black-eyed woman, sometimes proved, by a timely turmoil, her element of individuality. Their first child was a son, and grew up DOMESTIC FELICITY. 389 a surly, stubborn, immovable thing. When manhood was reached, he was a worthless dolt ; his nature had become fixed, and he seemed to dry down into a mass of petrified wilfulness. Life between the parents was a glorious contrast, with power which commanded obedience on the one side, and female wit and sagacity on the other, which eluded all restraint and overthrew all reliance, and rendered life a valiant battle for the victory. Somehow, these encounters always ended in a parley over the young lady left in New England and her two darling sons. The perfidy and wick- edness of her husband had become known to the wife, and she seemed, in her furious moods, to regard herself as the heaven-appointed avenger of injured innocence. The hus- band could never assert his rights or allude to duty, but he was pointed to the betrayed sister and deserted children. Sometimes he was bantered about her good looks, and at others he was invited to bring the boys home, as company for the others, and to aid him on the farm. Incessant sor- row harassed the life of the young farmer, and as age approached, he fell into fits of melancholy, and took to his bed. His tormentor never allowed him to rest, but was equal to any task, and rendered her kindness as terrible as her anger. When these fits of sorrow came over him, and, like Job, he was cursing the day that gave him birth, his watch- ful spouse would often call medical aid from a distance, and the first notice of his kind wife's attention, would be the presence of the doctor in the room of the heart-sick wretch. Her kindness and assiduity at such times were unbounded, and, to the eye of the stranger, she was the most devoted and tender of wives. On one of these visits of the unsuspecting physician, he rose from the bed, where he had taken refuge from her anger, to be seated by the fire, when the good woman threw a mantle over his shoul- 390 SCENES IN WESTERN PRACTICE. ders, kindly requesting " My dear" not to expose his feeble health. The strong man writhed and resisted under the torture of this burning lash, till life seemed a concentrated curse, full of judgments. In one of these stormy seas, when the waves ran high, they vowed eternal separation, and called on Heaven to slay them with his thunder if they broke the vow. Xantippe reminded her wretched spouse, that he would give out in less than three months, and receive the curse. And so it proved. They had become calm, like two tigers after a fast, and retired to rest as usual. The laws of nature, suspended for a time, came suddenly to a focus, and broke in deafening violence over the heads of the cul- prits, in a dreadful peal of thunder, and the quick-minded wife leaped, screaming for mercy, into the middle of the room. This birth of Providence kept peace in the bouse for some months. Their next child was a daughter, and on no human face did I ever see horror, anguish, and despair so palpably written. She was, when I saw her, a mother, and seemed in every feature of her face and character, to proclaim that she was born of her father's despair. She was a sad, silent, sorrowful, uncomplaining beiag, that seemed to have no emotions but her sorrows and her miseries. Heaven at last seemed to relent in its persecutions of the unhappy man, and his second daughter, a bright beauti- ful, and lovely child, became the idol of his life. He carried her with him to the field, and made her his companion in his walks and his rides. The child seemed to understand by instinct the sorrow of the old man's heart ; the sorrows, and sufferings, and tears, and repentance seemed centered in this angelic and lovely child. She seemed indeed born of his regrets. He bestowed on her all the riches of his heart, and educated her for a teacher. She grew up as lovely in her womanhood as in infancy, and was still the THE BEAUTIFUL DAUGHTER. 391 solace of her father's care ; an angel of mercy intervening between the sword of justice and the furies. It may be a mystery how so lovely a child could succeed to one so ugly and unhappy ; but the mystery will vanish, when we remember that " mind, like the Spirit of God, moulds the universe into its own image." Chastened and softened by sorrow, and purified by repentance, the change in his children followed the changes in his own mind. But the desolate father had only reared this lovely being to point a keener dagger to his own bleed- ing heart. She had spent many summers in teaching, and at last formed an attachment for a young man, whom they regarded as inferior to her in acquirements, and both the parents opposed the wishes of the child. She struggled, through a long summer, with her attachment and her duty, and finally dismissed her school, and resolved to follow the bent of her love. She procured a horse of her father, and started on horseback to a neighboring village, eight miles distant to procure her wedding garments. Her road lay along a gay and rapid stream ; the road was steep, and led over hills, and through valleys, and its banks were skirted with pine forests, and often in its course formed beautiful eddies as it turned against the bank. She tied her horse in the shade, descended to the stream, and glided beneath its crystal waves, and found her bridal conch on a bed of pebbles. Her little dog had followed her, and stayed all night by the horse ; his low, howling moan attracted James Brown from his work in the field near by ; he drew from the stream the body of her whom he had hoped to wed ! When the friends came in search of the body, they found him seated on the sand beside the corpse, a miserable maniac. The young people, from a distance of ten miles, came together in vast multitudes, to shed the tear of affec- tion over the sad fate of the lovely and accomplished Harriet Nichols. The stroke from the hand of the invisible S92 SCENES IN WESTERN PRACTICE. avenger crushed her mother's rebellious spirit, and in a few months, both were laid in the quiet shade of the young maples. The old man's cup was not yet full ; the bitterest drops were at the bottom. A younger sister, scarce less lovely than Harriet, who had baptized her love in a watery death, sank into a melancholy mood, and paled at last before the withering breath of consumption. While her father lay confined by his accumulating evils, she came down upon her last bed by his side ; and her cheek grew pale, and her lips thin, and her eyes grew bright as an angel's eyes ; while the hollow cough and the hectic flush, revealed the fire that burned to ashes the shell which held her bright young spirit. The females of the neighborhood came in, and their sym- pathy which is always right, if it had intelligence to guide it insisted on sending for a notable botanic. Ignorance lighted the funeral pile over the body of the poor victim, when the creature came. He was one of that swarm of vampires, that was the first fruits of the tribe of rooters that swarmed through the State of New York, under the paternal teaching of T and B . He was, like the multitude whom he deluded, utterly ignorant of the human organization, and above all the laws which controlled its vital forces. There was no staying his hand ; the sympathy of the females of the place was omnipotent, and their Paracelsus went to work. " Heat is life, and pepper is heat, and lobelia is pepper," rightly applied ; he cleansed the stomach, and then poured down his life-giving doses of pepper, and ginger, and bayberry bark, and three days sufficed to blow out the little glimmering taper of life. The hectic on her cheek grew brighter, her tongue grew dryer, her eye was the eye of a spirit, and at the hour of sunset, her breath grew shorter and shorter ; she looked out on the trees, turned her face to the setting sun, and lay still and cold for ever THE BOTANIC VAMPIRE. 393 Pardon me this incident, for I could not let it pass with- out alluding to the multitude of awful cases I have since witnessed of a similar nature. Quackery is ever the hand- maid of ignorance, and I have never been in a community as a physician, where ignorance did not or could not repeat this horrid scene. The poor girl had enjoyed, for some weeks, the kind care of one of the most judicious physicians, and to his had been added the advice of Prof. De L ; and nothing remained from the first, but to smoothe her pas- sage to a quiet grave. With here and there an exception, American women are easily deceived, and seek, instinctively, men on a level with them in ignorance, to tune the most complicated of instruments. Our medical colleges swarm with wretches unfit for any intelligent profession ; and, added to this vast supply from the regulars, is a rapidly increasing swarm from the eclectic schools, and this stream is swelled by a smaller, but more ignorant tribe from the Homoeopathic colleges, all swarm- ing like a band of locusts over the country, preying upon the ignorance, feeding the credulity, and taxing the empiri- cism of the masses, and especially the females. While the corpse of the daughter was awaiting interment, the old man, wearied of life, and tired of its struggle and of himself, sank slowly to the grave. The miserable, sorrowing, and wretched daughter, to whom I have alluded, was now left alone, with two brothers, as mistress of the house. She had married an Irishman, who had left her with two children, sons, to the charity of her father During his last day, he turned his eyes often on the dead body of the daughter, and then on the two boys left by their father, and, finally, calling to his bedside his youngest son, he commended to his care, his helpless sister and the two lads ; and in his broken slumbers he muttered the name of " Mary," the girl he had abandoned in his hour 17* 394 SCENES IN WESTERN PRACTICE. of strength and prosperity. The embers of life one by one went out, and at last he drew a long sigh, pronounced again the name of " Mary," and gave up the ghost. In two days we deposited the bodies of the father and daughter under the trees with the mother and sister. It was spring ; the graves were filled with water, into which we dropped the coffins, and the gravel rattled on the lids. You have before you, reader, a plain narrative of facts. My friend who wore the drab coat, an acute observer, who introduced me to this family, contended absurdly, as I then thought, that the children of these parents represented every moral and intellectual change through which the parents had passed. That such is the law of all reproduc- tion among human beings, is certain, I think. It is mind that moulds the universe, and it is no less mind that moulds and shapes the new being in the embryo state. In this we have a solution of the rapid degeneracy of our men and women of the present generation. The mothers during gestation, are loaded with toil and drudgery ; they have no vitality left to bestow on the child before birth, and obser- vation seems to indicate, that the brain of the male suffers more than his body, while the body of the female suffers more than the brain. The female brain, as a whole, is supe- rior to that of the male in form and fibre. A mother, with a family of six or twelve children, is the veriest slave on the earth, and from day to day, for twenty or thirty years, her energies are over-taxed, till she has no vitality for the daughter, nor brain for the son ; it is all consumed in toil, and watching, and anxiety. A race of men will never be born in America, till this load of care and slavish toil is removed from the mothers who rear the race ; the slave and the brute, in gestation, have more care and attention than our northern mothers. No angel in Pandemonium was so hideous as archangel fallen ; so the mother I have described, a thoroughly perverted being, lived only to curse BAGGING THE GAME. 395 and hate the traitor to God and nature whom she had married. Her instincts told her his baseness, and, in spite of herself, her woman's nature, which loves, in its upright state, nothing that is not pure, hated and reviled the wretch who had betrayed his friend, and forsaken his children. Step by step, the unerring laws of the human heart worked out a full and fearful cup of most bitter woe for his lips to taste, and drop by drop, did he drain it to the dregs. God works not by passing wonders, but in ever- lasting laws ; and as our minds are reared, thought by thought, and our moral nature by affection added to affec- tion, so must- we rear the race to goodness and greatness. A LAUGHABLE SCENE-BAGGING THE GAME. IP it were not for the relief of the feelings by scenes of mirthful ness, few would be able to endure our profession. Diseases of the mind, though often affording exhibitions of a character far from ludicrous, now and then assume a most diverting aspect, and the physician is often put to it to meet the protean phases " of the mind diseased." Never have I seen it in a more ludicrous aspect than once witnessed in the case of a spoiled and wayward patient, who was so fortu- nate as to be exceedingly rich and very ignorant. He was a miserable homunculus, with a villainous intellectual development, almost acephalous (his head indeed very muck resembled a frog's), and the end of a cocoa-nut with its three black spots was almost as intellectual as his face. He had a very wretched-looking little wife, and two children, 396 A LAUGHABLE SCENE. about a match for their parents ; all spoiled, sensual, pas- sionate and vulgar. These people, nevertheless, had a great reverence for me, and I was obliged by the necessities of a youthful practi- tioner to attend them, keeping a tight rein over their vaga- ries when occasion required. They quarrelled awfully, and often came to blows and scratches. One evening I was summoned to the lady's bedside in great haste ; she had as usual an attack of hysterics, in no way alleviated by the refrigerating influence of her potations ; for they had lately had a high time of it, and both were intoxicated when I arrived. Crimination and recrimination went high, and I began to be tired of the scene. A fortunate thought struck me. They had been at their usual game of scratching ; both of their faces showed the activity of the diversion. There had been a death from erysipelas at the next door, and as they knew the deceased most intimately, they were very much alarmed, when, with the view of carrying out my bright thought, I looked very anxious, and told the lady that the scratches looked very like erysipelas. I knew they would be at their customary diversion as soon as my back was turned, and I was resolved to prevent it, and get a good night's rest. Accordingly I affected the deepest regret at the omission in the case of the dead friend, of a practice I had formerly known of great efficacy in erysipelas, and informed them I was resolved when she died, that if another case occurred, I would by no means fail to try it. It consisted in continually fumigating the surface of the body with burned Indian meal, and covering the face with a mask to exclude the light. Their alarm was so thoroughly excited, that they gladly yielded to my suggestion, inquiring, with really distressing solicitude, if it was not too late. Assuring them I would do my best, I sent out for a couple of large salt sacks, and procured two of the prettiest look- ing masks I could get at Woodworth's ; two chairs were BAGGING THE GAME. 39t then placed in the sacks, and a pudding pan full of Indian meal under each chair, an opening being cut in each bag at the side to admit of the introduction of a hot brick, to pro- duce the fumes from the meal. Placing the beautiful couple with the greatest gravity, one in each sack at a respectful distance, and back to back, with the view of avoiding any fomentation of their bad passions by facilities for eyeing each other (and somewhat fearing, in truth, too close inspec- tion of my own countenance, for I found it hard work to contain myself), I tied the sacks loosely around their necks, and the masks behind their ears, and left them under the care of an Irish servant girl, and the diversion of their own eloquence. I departed in triumph, having fairly bagged my game, and telling them I anticipated an immediate call, which would detain me all night in the upper part of the city. I kept them so for the best part of two days, assur- ing them whenever I allowed an interval of a few hours for sleep, that it would be necessary to resume the fumigations on the least return of their anger, for it invariably produced an exceedingly alarming appearance in the scratches, and they should begin to cicatrize before the remedy was discon- tinued. The result was most fortunate, and by cultivating their good graces, I obtained such an ascendency over their feeble intellects, that I had only to threaten the bagging process to keep their hands off each other for several years after. 398 EARLY HISTORY OF FORT LEE. EARLY HISTORY OF FORT LEE. SECOND ARTICLE. IT may be thought, and perhaps justly, that when the events that connected this lovely and romantic spot with the history of our country had transpired, the future story of the solitary family that inhabited it, can afford little of interest to the reader ; and yet if there be any value in the example of industry and self-reliance, or anything noble in truth or integrity when blended with the ready sympathy of hearts o'erflowing with love to their fellows, and hands open to relieve distress wherever found, their history cannot be without interest. It has ever been the custom of the writer, to study man in his individual character, rather than in his more extended relations with masses of his fellows ; whatever interest he may secure to these pages, will depend entirely on such a comparatively humble sphere of observa- tion ; and, as his professional habits exclude him entirely from political and public life, he hopes the reader will tolerate a slight tribute to the memory of those from whom he inherited all of truth or affection that may be found in his rude character. Beattie, in his " Minstrel," may almost be supposed to have visited their glorious forest home, and to have gathered his inspiration from the frowning palisades, when he wrote " There, rocks on rocks, piled as by magic spell, Here scorched with lightning, there with ivy fe.^ Fenced from the north and west this savage dell y gree EARLY HISTORY OF FORT LEE. 399 Oft did the cliffs reverberate the sound Of parting fragments tumbling from on high ; And from the summit of that craggy mound, The perching eaglet oft was heard to cry, Or on resounding winga to shoot athwart the sky." As you ascend the road leading to the English Neighbor- hood, up the gorge that separates the palisades from the road, there may yet be seen a vast rock which was severed . by lightning, and for half a century bore the signet of the awful element that tore it assunder. I have looked on it with childish awe, as my mother described the fearful scene when it occurred. Thunder storms are here of awful gran- deur. I have often heard the grand legato of the storm anthem as it rolled away in the distance of the river, and seen the blinding flash of the lightning followed by the startling staccato thunder-clap as it was echoed back from the mountain wall. In the middle of the night, when all around was still as the sepulchre, the heart would leap, as the sleeper was startled by the "parting fragment tumbling from on high," as it was severed by the silently working moss of centuries, and fell thundering to the shore below, where ages before its huge kindred had gathered themselves to their graves. They lie about in vast masses, as though torn asunder by an earthquake. Indeed, philosophers tell us in their books, that the whole of the southern defile of the river is volcanic, and that it was originally a vast lake, liber- ated by a mighty convulsion of nature from its northern prison, where it had been confined by the rocky barrier for thousands of years. The perching eagle sits in solitary grandeur on the cliff, or " sails across the sky and o'er the rolling deep," watching its prey below, or screaming forth its note exultant as it approaches its mate with its quivering victim, in her rocky nest. There they yet dwell, a solitary pair, for they tolerate no interlopers, far beneath the branching limbs of the 400 EARLY HISTORY OF FORT LEE. gnarled cedars that o'erhang that portion of the cliff and obscure their nest from view. I have now in my possession a noble bald-head, shot by some creature who certainly must have been created for a butcher, whose progenitors found their home, probably for centuries, in the great cliff. No longer ago than last summer, when lying, musing on my childhood, reclining on that rock where the immortal father of our country stood with my uncle inspecting the progress of the battle of Fort Washington, one of his descendants sailed majestically over me so near that I could see his very eyes. The events related in a former article had transpired in the month of November, 1176 ; and at the close of the campaign, when the successes of the British had left them nothing more to desire in that quarter both Forts Washington and Lee, and all the contiguous country and city being in their bands several vessels were ordered up the river by Lord Howe to bring the troops to the "Southern division of the British army, for further operations in that section of our country. After the memorable scene and my grandfather's toast in the courtyard of his ruined house, and his midnight seizure by Gen. Kniphausen, and bold and defiant conduct at Fort Washington, it may appear extra- ordinary to the reader, to find my patriotic and determined grandmother escorted on board one of his Majesty's ships by several of the British officers to attend a ball ! Such, however, was the solitude of their mountain home, and so great the reverence these really fine men bore to her lofty and determined character, and their admiration of her social and enthusiastic husband, that it would have been rude to have refused their polite attention. Captain Wetherel, who had so kindly secreted and fed her beautiful pet in the old cellar in the English Neighborhood, waited on my grand- mother with a card of invitation ; it was accepted ; and as it was to be a grand affair, a messenger was despatched to EARLY HISTORY OP FORT LEE. 401 the city for high-heeled shoes, and the grand old hooped satin skirt, just now revived from its half century's sleep. My grandfather politely declined the invitation, because it would evidently have been less appropriate for a rebel male to have been seen on board of his majesty's ship than a woman ; who, however determined her spirit, as a descen- dant of mother Eve, may not be supposed to have been equally capable of resisting the festive scene. The barge, canopied, carpeted, and superbly cushioned, arrived at dusk to convey her to the ship, and the high-spirited Dutch woman was handed on board by a red-coated officer of that king, to whose utter confusion and discomfiture her French rebel husband had a few days previous drank that memorable toast. The ship was lying in the river opposite Manhattan- ville. The ball went off superbly ; my grandmother meet- ing several friends from the city side, and some from Hoboken ; her own mountain eyrie being the utmost confine of northern Jersey civilization. The bear, the wolf, and the wild-cat looked down from the rocky heights upon the only cultivated spot, " That spread its mildest beauty to the southern sun." The most courtly honors were shown her by the gallant English officers, and presents of confectionery thoughtfully placed in the barge by the gentlemen for the children. She was escorted home by several of the officers, and after the expression of their evidently heartfelt desire that the war would soon be amicably adjusted, they took their leave at midnight and went on board to sail, next day, for their new scene of action. The " adjustment " came, about as " amicably " as it ever will when power is to be wrenched from despotic rulers in Church or State. We had occasion to speak of the wild animals that abounded at Fort Lee : the bear that gave origin to the 402 EARLY HISTORY OF FORT LEE. original name of Washington Market, was shortly after- wards followed by another of the black-coated brethren ; he made his appearance during peach time, and with char- acteristic good taste, mounted a peach tree that had been blown over by the wind, but was full of luscious fruit ; here he was leisurely regaling himself, when the keen eye of a frequent visitor, a female relative from the city, detected him ; quick as thought she loaded the family rifle, and at the first shot brought him down I Think of that, ye deli- cate young ladies reclining on velvet ottomans and shutting out the light of heaven by heavy curtains lest it spoil your beauty ! A brave act which would have immortalized this glorious woman, remains to be chronicled. Norna Day was a woman worthy of the relationship of that family where she found friendship and a frequent home. When the accursed monster Cunningham (who subsequently met that well-deserved fate at Tyburn he had inflicted upon so many defenceless American prisoners, in the rear of the old reservoir in Chambers street,* where, with the aid of a negro executioner, he hung dozens of our countrymen at midnight), when this fiend of hell presided over one of the city prisons the identical building now occupied as the Hall of Records in the Park this noble-hearted woman was accustomed to importune the British officer in com- mand, for permits to go into the prisons with food for her unfortunate countrymen. One day she presented herself at the door of the old jail, and showing her permit, demanded admission. A wretched hireling jailor under Cunningham, rode through the stone hall, which then went directly through the building, and calling her by some outrageously insulting epithet, he attempted to ride over her ; she stepped adroitly aside, and with such an arm as would have made a knight in armor look well to his movements, she * Its site is now occupied by large marble buildings. EARLY HISTORY OF FORT LEE. 403 drew an immense carving knife, she always wore concealed under her dress, and with a single blow, directed at the thigh of the myrmidon she missed him and drove it to the very handle between the ribs of the horse ! his rider escaped by a miracle, having received but a slight wound in the thigh. Xorua and her slave passed by the falling animal, and dis- tributed her food to the suffering prisoners unmolested by the fiend Cunningham, who was probably, as was usual with him, drunk in his room ; on her return, the horse was lying dead on the porch. She continued to fulfill her benevo- lent mission during the entire period of British rule in the city, and undoubtedly saved a great number of lives. How few of our citizens are aware of the horrors that were enacted in Chambers street 1 Certainly several hun- dred of our wretched people were there immolated directly under the eyes of British authority. The only excuse I could ever find for my good grandmother for going to that ball, was her excellent heart ; she knew that the officers with whom she was accustomed to converse, were compelled to discharge a duty hateful to their feelings as men, and only tolerated because of the blinding results of a false education, received at the hands of hireling sycophants, under the despotic rule of a monarchical and priestly hier- archy. I believe that all who live away from the tyrannical influence of Church and State, and have systems healthfully organized, or a proper balance of mind and body, must be social and republican in their ideas. The British friends of my grandparents were only warped by education : they were good men, many of them fathers ; and more than once have I heard this noble woman say, that she has seen the tears fall from their eyes when discoursing on the " unhappy difficulties " between the two countries. The real goodness of humanity is the same under a red coat with gold buttons, or a homespun petticoat. They had for months left the lovely spot and the poor old 404 EARLY HISTORY OF FORT LEE. ruined house to its owners, who were now, after a severe winter, endeavoring to gain from the soil what little aid it might yield in supporting their young family. They had ventured in the spring, after the evacuation of the place, to replace their stolen cattle, and were obliged to depend con- siderably on the fish they obtained from the noble river for their food ; all the sheep and fowls were swept off by the marauding troops, and meat was a rarity ; they were glad to gather the fragments of the salt meat the soldiers had thrown out of the cellar and wantonly hacked with their swords and bayonets. One fine April morning, when her husband had gone to the mill to procure flour, my grandmother perceived a well- defined and extensive ripple rapidly approaching the little bay some hundreds or so of rods across, and whose waves almost kissed her roses and white lilies as they overhung its waters at the foot of the garden wall ; it was so per- fectly calm all over the vast river, that she knew from her keen and practised eye, that the ripple was caused by fish seeking the shore, either in pursuit of food or to avoid their native enemies of the deep water. The drawing of the seine (a long and narrow net floated by corks on its upper border, and sunk by bullets on its lower one) was practised by blacks. Fastening one end to the shore, and taking the net in a boat, they would row out, and making a large circuit, inclose the fish that might chance to be within its embrace, and gradually drawing in the circle sweep them on the shore. Such an operation would sometimes secure them very fine striped bass, and occasionally one of huge size : this was a great treat for tho family, and very necessary to their subsistence. There was no man but a black slave about the premises. My grandmother summoned him from the field where he was ploughing, and in a few minutes they had planted the net almost on the very spot where she had been handed EARLY HISTORY OF FORT LEE. 405 into the barge with her high heels and white satin hooped skirt, by the king's officer 1 Now she was dressed in her republican costume of linsey-woolsey petticoat, and stout leather shoes ; most likely clambering into the fish boat with very little aid from the slave ; he was to row and she " to pay out net," holding or resisting the pull caused by the " bellying of the net," as well and as long as she could ; till it was all out, if possible, and if not strong enough, being content with what she could manage. She used to relate with much satisfaction, that she braced her feet against the seat and held on till her hands were blistered, and paid out the whole net. They soon reached the shore, having succeeded in inclos- ing a large part of the ripple. On beholding their prize, as the silvery scales began to reflect the sunlight, they were surprised to find them shad ! this fish rarely seeking the shore in so large a river as the Hudson, and only in other rivers when they go to spawn. They were doubtless driven in by porpoises ; they counted out six hundred and odd ! My grandmother could now talk to her visitor about bear shooting without losing caste ; the exploit was indeed quite as great, and considerably more laborious. An event occurred during the spring of this year, that greatly impressed my grandmother with (what she always believed in) a superintending Providence. It was known to many persons employed in country trade in the city, that a thriving farmer lived up the river, in such seclusion as rendered it likely he was almost defenceless, and that he probably had wealth was surmised, from his house having been the temporary abode of Washington. An expedition was planned to rob, and probably murder him. Four des- peradoes ascended the river in a small boat, and arriving after midnight, one of them mounted the rude pile of logs and timber that served as a dock, to make fast their boat. It was low tide, and his companions observing he did not UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY Los Angeles This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. RECD YR 2 1304 iPHiiiiiiinii L 005 493 320 5 ^twCwiiH^ *. A\\tUNIVR%. Q I* 1