S. Weir Mitchell

“ She was, as I learned afterwards, a magnetic patient of the doctor, and had deserted her husband, a master mechanic, to follow this new light. The others were, like myself, strangers brought hither by mere curiosity. One of them was a lady in deep black, closely veiled. Beyond her, and opposite to me, sat the sergeant, and next to him the medium, a man named Brink. He wore a good deal of jewelry, and had large black side-whiskers—a shrewd-visaged, large-nosed, full-lipped man, formed by nature to appreciate the pleasant things of sensual existence. ”

“ A third kept open an ulcer on the leg, rubbing in a little antimonial ointment, which I bought at fifty cents, and sold him at five dollars a box.
A change in the hospital staff brought all of us to grief. The new surgeon was a quiet, gentlemanly person, with pleasant blue eyes and clearly cut features, and a way of looking at you without saying much. I felt so safe myself that I watched his procedures with just that kind of enjoyment which one clever man takes in seeing another at work. ”

“ At this present moment of time I am what the doctors call an interesting case, and am to be found in bed No. 10, Ward 11, Massachusetts General Hospital. I am told that I have what is called Addison’s disease, and that it is this pleasing malady which causes me to be covered with large blotches of a dark mulatto tint. However, it is a rather grim subject to joke about, because, if I believed the doctor who comes around every day, and thumps me, and listens to my chest with as much pleasure as if I were music all through—I say, if I really believed him, I should suppose I was going to die. ”

“ Now was the time to retrieve my character. “Gentlemen,” said I, “you have heard this very singular account. Trusting the spirits utterly and entirely as I do, it occurs to me that there is no reason why they may not, after all, have been right in their suspicions of this young person. Who can say that, overcome by remorse, he may not have seized the time of his father’s absence to replace the money?”
To my amazement, up gets a little old man from the corner. ”

“ Notwithstanding my strict attention to my own interests, I have been rather sorely dealt with by fate upon several occasions, where, so far as I could see, I was vigilantly doing everything in my power to keep myself out of trouble or danger. I may as well relate one of them, merely to illustrate of how little value a man’s intellect may be when fate and the prejudices of the mass of men are against him. ”

“ Often at night I would try with one lost hand to grope for the other. As, however, I had no pain in the right arm, the sense of the existence of that limb gradually disappeared, as did that of my legs also.
Everything was done for my neuralgia which the doctors could think of; and at length, at my suggestion, I was removed, as I have said, from the Stump Hospital to the United States Army Hospital for Injuries and Diseases of the Nervous System. It was a pleasant, suburban, old-fashioned country-seat, its gardens surrounded by a circle of wooden, one-story wards, shaded by fine trees. ”

“ Only a man of unusual force could have managed his own case as I did. I went out only at night, and in a week was well enough to travel. During this time I saw now and then that grinning little fellow. Sometimes he had an apple and was eating it. I do not know why he was worse to me than snakes, or the twitchy old woman with her wide eyes of glass, and that jerk, jerk, to right.
I decided to go back to Boston. I got to New York prudently in a roundabout way, and in two weeks’ time was traveling east from Albany.
I felt well, and my spirits began at last to rise to their usual level. ”

“ The hope proved illusory, as the stump was always too tender to bear any pressure. The hospital referred to was in charge of several surgeons while I was an inmate, and was at all times a clean and pleasant home. It was filled with men who had lost one arm or leg, or one of each, as happened now and then. I saw one man who had lost both legs, and one who had parted with both arms; but none, like myself, stripped of every limb. There were collected in this place hundreds of these cases, which gave to it, with reason enough, the not very pleasing title of Stump Hospital. ”

“ After all, a man never can quite stand off and look at himself as if he was the only person concerned. He must have an audience, or make believe to have one, even if it is only himself. Nor, on the whole, should I be unwilling, if it were safe, to let people see how great ability may be defeated by the crankiness of fortune.
I may add here that a stone inside of a snowball discourages the fellow it hits. ”

“ And as to the nervous system, the only parts really necessary to life are a few small ganglia. Were the rest absent or inactive, we should have a man reduced, as it were, to the lowest terms, and leading an almost vegetative existence. Would such a being, I asked myself, possess the sense of individuality in its usual completeness, even if his organs of sensation remained, and he were capable of consciousness? ”

“ I thought at times of traveling as a physiological lecturer, combining with it the business of a practitioner: scare the audience at night with an enumeration of symptoms which belong to ten out of every dozen healthy people, and then doctor such of them as are gulls enough to consult me next day. The bigger the fright the better the pay. I was a little timid, however, about facing large audiences, as a man will be naturally if he has lived a life of adventure, so that upon due consideration I gave up the idea altogether. ”

“ It is one of the absurd vagaries of the profession to discountenance the practice I have described, but I wish, for my part, I had never done anything more foolish or more dangerous. Of course it inclines a doctor to change his medicines a good deal, and to order them in large quantities, which is occasionally annoying to the poor; yet, as I have always observed, there is no poverty as painful as your own, so that I prefer to distribute pecuniary suffering among many rather than to concentrate it on myself. ”

“ We are thus kept endlessly informed as to the existence of parts, because the impressions which reach the brain are, by a law of our being, referred by us to the part from which they come. Now, when the part is cut off, the nerve-trunks which led to it and from it, remaining capable of being impressed by irritations, are made to convey to the brain from the stump impressions which are, as usual, referred by the brain to the lost parts to which these nerve-threads belonged. In other words, the nerve is like a bell-wire. ”

“ In a few moments I found the famous Bible hid away under Aunt Rachel’s mattress. The Bible bank was fat with notes, but I intended to be moderate enough to escape suspicion. Here were quite two thousand dollars. I resolved to take, just now, only one hundred, so as to keep a good balance. Then, alas! I lit on a long envelop, my aunt’s will. Every cent was left to Christ Church; not a dime to poor Pen or to me. I was in a rage. I tore up the will and replaced the envelop. To treat poor Pen that way—Pen of all people! There was a heap more will than testament, for all it was in the Bible. ”

“ The surgeon looked at the scar.
“So recently?” said he. “The scar looks older; and, by the way, doctor,”—to his junior,—“it could not have gone near the nerves. Bring the battery, orderly.”
In a few moments the surgeon was testing one after another, the various muscles. At last he stopped. “Send this man away with the next detachment. Not a word, my man. You are a rascal, and a disgrace to honest men who have been among bullets.” ”

“ The fractional entities of vitality are embraced in the oneness of the unitary Ego. Life,” she added, “is the garnered condensation of objective impressions; and as the objective is the remote father of the subjective, so must individuality, which is but focused subjectivity, suffer and fade when the sensation lenses, by which the rays of impression are condensed, become destroyed.” ”

“ The man on my right has consumption—smells of cod-liver oil, and coughs all night. The man on my left is a down-easter with a liver which has struck work; looks like a human pumpkin; and how he contrives to whittle jackstraws all day, and eat as he does, I can’t understand. I have tried reading and tried whittling, but they don’t either of them satisfy me, so that yesterday I concluded to ask the doctor if he couldn’t suggest some other amusement. ”

“ I often think of these gentlemen with affectionate interest, and wonder how many are lying under the wheat-fields of Virginia. One could see them any day sauntering along with their arms over their companions’ shoulders, splendidly indifferent to the ways of the people about them. ”

“ There were some three hundred cases of epilepsy, paralysis, St. Vitus’s dance, and wounds of nerves. On one side of me lay a poor fellow, a Dane, who had the same burning neuralgia with which I once suffered, and which I now learned was only too common. This man had become hysterical from pain. He carried a sponge in his pocket, and a bottle of water in one hand, with which he constantly wetted the burning hand. Every sound increased his torture, and he even poured water into his boots to keep himself from feeling too sensibly the rough friction of his soles when walking. ”

“ You ain’t no homeopath doctor, are you?”
With great presence of mind, I replied: “Well, ma’am, that depends upon what you want. Some of my patients like one, and some like the other.” I was about to add, “You pay your money and you take your choice,” but thought better of it, and held my peace, refraining from classical quotation.
“Being as that’s the case,” said the old lady, “I’ll just tell you my symptoms. You said you give either kind of medicine, didn’t you?” ”

“ This was all very fine, but the advice was good. I said: “Yes, I had better go. Run and get some one—a doctor. It is a fit of hysterics; there is no danger. I will write to you. You are quite mistaken.”
This was too feeble even for Pen, and she cried:
“No, never; I never want to see you again. You would kill me next.”
“Stuff!” said I, and ran down-stairs. I seized my coat and hat, and went to the tavern, where I got a man to drive me to Camden. I have never seen Pen since. As I crossed the ferry to Philadelphia I saw that I should have asked when the detective had been after me. ”

“ When such a fellow made a fuss, it was occasionally necessary to return his money if it was found impossible to bully him into silence. In one or two instances, where I had promised a cure upon prepayment of two or three hundred dollars, I was either sued or threatened with suit, and had to refund a part or the whole of the amount; but most people preferred to hold their tongues rather than expose to the world the extent of their own folly. ”

“ I asked, “what’s the truth about it?”
“Well,” he returned gravely, “I’m sorry to tell you it is a very dangerous malady.”
“Nonsense!” said I; “I don’t believe it”; for I thought it was only a doctor’s trick, and one I had tried often enough myself.
“Thank you,” said he; “you are a very ill man, and a fool besides. Good morning.” He forgot to ask for a fee, and I did not therefore find it necessary to escape payment by telling him I was a doctor.
Several weeks went by; my money was gone, my clothes were ragged, and, like my body, nearly worn out, and now I am an inmate of a hospital. ”

“ He wore a heavy black beard and mustache, and looked like the wolf in the pictures of Red Riding-hood which I had seen as a child.
“Your name’s Sanderaft?” said the man.
“Yes; that’s my name—Dr. Sanderaft.”
As he sat down he shook the snow over everything, and said coolly: “Set down, doc; I want to talk with you.”
“What can I do for you?” said I.
The man looked around the room rather scornfully, at the same time throwing back his coat and displaying a red neckerchief and a huge garnet pin. “Guess you’re not overly rich,” he said. ”

“ I grew weak all over.
“Cheer up a little,” said Stagers. “Take a nip of whisky. Things ain’t at the worst, by a good bit. You just get ready, and we’ll start by the morning train. Guess you’ll try out something smart enough as we travel along. Ain’t got a heap of time to lose.”
I was silent. A great anguish had me in its grip. I might squirm as I would, it was all in vain. Hideous plans rose to my mind, born of this agony of terror. I might murder Stagers, but what good would that do? As to File, he was safe from my hand. ”

“ I have so little surety of being myself that I doubt my own honesty in drawing my pension, and feel absolved from gratitude to those who are kind to a being who is uncertain of being enough himself to be conscientiously responsible. ”