Treating A Case Actively

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Title:     Treating A Case Actively
Author: T. S. Arthur [More Titles by Arthur]

A PHYSICIAN'S STORY.

I WAS once sent for, in great haste, to attend a gentleman of respectability, whose wife, a lady of intelligence and refinement, had discovered him in his room lying senseless upon the floor. On arriving at the house, I found Mrs. H--in great distress of mind.

"What is the matter with Mr. H--?" I asked, on meeting his lady, who was in tears and looking the picture of distress.

"I'm afraid it is apoplexy," she replied. "I found him lying upon the floor, where he had, to all appearance, fallen suddenly from his chair. His face is purple, and though he breathes, it is with great difficulty."

I went up to see my patient. He had been lifted from the floor, and was now lying upon the bed. Sure enough, his face was purple and his breathing laboured, but somehow the symptoms did not indicate apoplexy. Every vein in his head and face was turgid, and he lay perfectly stupid, but still I saw no clear indications of an actual or approaching congestion of the brain.

"Hadn't he better be bled, doctor?" asked the anxious wife.

"I don't know that it is necessary," I replied. "I think, if we let him alone, it will pass off in the course of a few hours."

"A few hours! He may die in half an hour."

"I don't think the case is so dangerous, madam."

"Apoplexy not dangerous?"

"I hardly think it apoplexy," I replied.

"Pray, what do you think it is, doctor?"

Mrs. H--looked anxiously into my face.

I delicately hinted that he might, possibly, have been drinking too much brandy; but to this she positively and almost indignantly objected.

"No, doctor; _I_ ought to know about that," she said. "Depend upon it, the disease is more deeply seated. I am sure he had better be bled. Won't you bleed him, doctor? A few ounces of blood taken from his arm may give life to the now stagnant circulation of the blood in his veins."

Thus urged, I, after some reflection, ordered a bowl and bandage, and opening a vein, from which the blood flowed freely, relieved him of about eight ounces of his circulating medium. But he still lay as insensible as before, much to the distress of his poor wife.

"Something else must be done, doctor," she urged, seeing that bleeding had accomplished nothing. "If my husband is not quickly relieved, he must die."

By this time, several friends and relatives, who had been sent for, arrived, and urged upon me the adoption of some more active means for restoring the sick man to consciousness. One proposed mustard plasters all over his body; another a blister on the head; another his immersion in hot water. I suggested that it might be well to use a stomach-pump.

"Why, doctor?" asked one of the friends.

"Perhaps he has taken some drug," I replied.

"Impossible, doctor," said the wife. "He has not been from home to-day, and there is no drug of any kind in the house."

"No brandy?" I ventured this suggestion again.

"No, doctor, no spirits of any kind, nor even wine, in the house," returned Mrs. H--, in an offended tone.

I was not the regular family physician, and had been called in to meet the alarming emergency, because my office happened to be nearest to the dwelling of Mr. H--. Feeling my position to be a difficult one, I suggested that the family physician had better be called.

"But the delay, doctor," urged the friends. "No harm will result from it, be assured," I replied.

But my words did not assure them. However, as I was firm in my resolution not to do any thing more for the patient until Dr. S--came, they had to submit. I wished to make a call of importance in the neighbourhood, and proposed going, to be back by the time Dr. S--arrived; but the friends of the sick man would not suffer me to leave the room.

When Dr. S--came, we conversed aside for a few minutes, and I gave him my views of the case, and stated what I had done and why I had done it. We then proceeded to the bedside of our patient; there were still no signs of approaching consciousness.

"Don't you think his head ought to be shaved and blistered?" asked the wife, anxiously. Dr. S--thought a moment, and then said--"Yes, by all means. Send for a barber; and also for a fresh fly-blister, four inches by nine."

I looked into the face of Dr. S--with surprise; it was perfectly grave and earnest. I hinted to him my doubt of the good that mode of treatment would do; but he spoke confidently of the result, and said that it would not only cure the disease, but, he believed, take away the predisposition thereto, with which Mr. H--was affected in a high degree.

The barber came. The head of H--was shaved, and Dr. S--applied the blister with his own hands, which completely covered the scalp from forehead to occiput.

"Let it remain on for two hours, and then make use of the ordinary dressing," said Dr. S--. "If he should not recover during the action of the blister, don't feel uneasy; sensibility will be restored soon after."

I did not call again, but I heard from Dr. S--the result.

After we left, the friends stood anxiously around the bed upon which the sick man lay; but though the blister began to draw, no signs of returning consciousness showed themselves, further than an occasional low moan, or an uneasy tossing of the arms. For full two hours the burning plaster parched the tender skin of H--'s shorn head, and was then removed; it had done good service. Dressings were then applied; repeated and repeated again; but still the sick man lay in a deep stupor.

"It has done no good; hadn't we better send for the doctor?" suggested the wife.

Just then the eyes of H--opened, and he looked with half-stupid surprise from face to face of the anxious group that surrounded the bed.

"What in the mischief's the matter?" he at length said. At the same time, feeling a strange sensation about his head, he placed his hand rather heavily thereon.

"Heavens and earth!" He was now fully in his senses. "Heavens and earth! what ails my head?"

"For mercy's sake, keep quiet," said the wife, the glad tears gushing over her face. "You have been very ill; there, there, now!" And she spoke soothingly. "Don't say a word, but lie very still."

"But my head! What's the matter with my head? It feels as if scalded. Where's my hair? Heavens and earth! Sarah, I don't understand this. And my arm? What's my arm tied up in this way for?"

"Be quiet, my dear husband, and I'll explain it all. Oh, be very quiet; your life depends upon it." Mr. H--sank back upon the pillow from which he had arisen, and closed his eyes to think. He put his hand to his head, and felt it, tenderly, all over, from temple to temple, and from nape to forehead.

"Is it a blister?" he at length asked.

"Yes, dear. You have been very ill; we feared for your life," said Mrs. H--, affectionately; "there have been two physicians in attendance."

H--closed his eyes again; his lips moved. Those nearest were not much edified by the whispered words that issued therefrom. They would have sounded very strangely in a church, or to ears polite and refined. After this, he lay for some time quiet.

"Threatened with apoplexy, I suppose?" he then said, interrogatively.

"Yes, dear," replied his wife. "I found you lying insensible upon the floor, on happening to come into your room. It was most providential that I discovered you when I did, or you would certainly have died."

H--shut his eyes and muttered something, with an air of impatience; but its meaning was not understood. Finding him out of danger, friends and relatives retired, and the sick man was left alone with his family.

"Sarah," he said, "why, in the name of goodness, did you permit the doctors to butcher me in this way? I'm laid up for a week or two, and all for nothing."

"It was to save your life, dear."

"Save the--!"

"H-u-s-h! There! do, for mercy's sake, be quiet; every thing depends upon it."

With a gesture of impatience, H--shut his eyes, teeth, and hands, and lay perfectly still for some minutes. Then he turned his face to the wall, muttering in a low, petulant voice--"Too bad! too bad! too bad!"

I had not erred in my first and my last impressions of H--'s disease, neither had Dr. S--although he used a very extraordinary mode of treatment. The facts of the case were these:

H--had a weakness; he could not taste wine nor strong drink without being tempted into excess. Both himself and friends were mortified and grieved at this; and they, by admonition, and he, by good resolutions, tried to bring about a reform; but to see was to taste, to taste was to fall. At last, his friends urged him to shut himself up at home for a certain time, and see if total abstinence would not give him strength. He got on pretty well for a few days, particularly so, as his coachman kept a well-filled bottle for him in the carriage-house, to which he not unfrequently resorted; but a too ardent devotion to this bottle brought on the supposed apoplexy.

Dr. S--was right in his mode of treating the disease after all, and did not err in supposing that it would reach the predisposition. The cure was effectual. H--kept quiet on the subject, and bore his shaved head upon his shoulders with as much philosophy as he could muster. A wig, after the sores made by the blister had disappeared, concealed the barber's work until his own hair grew again. He never ventured upon wine or brandy again for fear of apoplexy.

When the truth leaked out, as leak out such things always will, the friends of H--had many a hearty laugh; but they wisely concealed from the object of their merriment the fact that they knew any thing more than appeared of the cause of his supposed illness.

[The end]
T S Arthur's short story: Treating A Case Actively

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