Invalid

“ Recall to mind the rich men and women whom you have known; are not most of them invalids? A person of that class whose physical disabilities do not oblige him to take a periodical course of hygienic and medical treatment is as rare as is an invalid among the laboring classes. ”

“ Every physician of large experience must have seen cases of self-created, unresisted invalidism end with mysterious abruptness and the return of mental, moral and physical competence, under the influence of some call upon their sense of duty made by calamity, such as an acute illness in the household, financial ruin, or the death of a husband. ”

“ Says a writer in the Laws of Health: "If a man thinks he is an invalid he is one; if he thinks himself incompetent he is incompetent, and so through the whole list." By faith in Christ, as true and confiding as the trust of a child ”

“ The facts of mal-vitalization are as much to be attended to as those of mal-formation. If the woman with a twisted pelvis is to be considered an exempt, the woman with a defective organization should be recognized as belonging to the invalid corps. We shudder to hear what is alleged as to the prevalence of criminal practices; if back of these there can be shown organic incapacity or overtaxing of too limited powers, the facts belong to the province of the practical physician, as well as of the moralist and the legislator, and require his gravest consideration. ”

“ The sound of the wheels which slowly carried the invalid along the path grew less and less, the air sank into quietness, the bees hummed, and the leaves stirred, murmuring in that stillness of noon, which is almost greater than the stillness of night. ”

“ If the invalid of five years can smile at some of the anxieties and scrupulosities of his first season of retreat, much more clear-sighted must the ten years’ thinker be in regard to the snares and troubles of his early or midway term. If, amidst{211} the gain, as little as possible be lost, the privileges of our state may be such,—not as, indeed, to compare with those of health and a natural mode of life,—but as may satisfy a humble and rational hope that our season of probation is not lost, nor materially wasted. ”

“ And never, as all know, does ministering affection so abound as towards the injured. When injury and helplessness unite their claims, there is no end to the multitude of hearts that throng to defend and aid. They are far more than are needed; for few—extremely few—are those who venture or who like to send the enmity of public life into the retreats of privacy. Very rare, I believe, is the species of men who insult when all the world knows there can be no reply. Still, such cases are witnessed; and of their operation I have spoken.
The greater number of invalids are under no such liability ”

“ Moreover, an invalid should never become absorbed in herself, in her treatment, her medicine, and the progress of her malady; having found her doctor to be trustworthy, she should do as he tells her, and after his visit she should utterly decline to speak of herself ”

“ Then, if invalidism is to be accepted, meet it bravely and serenely as may be; and if death, then approach it loftily, for no one dies with his work undone, and no just-minded person can wish to survive his service. ”

“ THE FREEDOM OF ILL-HEALTH One of the greatest advantages of invalidism is that it frees us from petty obligations, unworthy pleasures, and meaningless conventions. The blessed freedom of ill-health is something few people appreciate ”

“ Only those who have known the situation can fully appreciate the restraint and constraint involved in such chronic invalidism, not only for the one who bears, but perhaps still more for the one who must watch, and sympathize, and shield, and protect, and as far as possible keep off the pressure and strain of the crowding, noisy, bustling, indifferent world. ”

“ Arden desirous to renounce her charge, considering also home to be the most appropriate place for invalids, being there more abundantly supplied with those attentions the nature of the indisposition might require. ”

“ That day wore itself out in storm and tempest, and the night came on like a fierce death-struggle; and the wind raved and shrieked at intervals all through the night; and again next day there were gloom and darkness, and a sky heaped up with masses of lead-coloured cloud; and again the torrential rain streamed from the housetops and splashed in the streets below; a dreary day to be endured even by the healthy and the happy—a day of painful oppression for an invalid. ”

“ But the formula, even in this shape, is not yet entirely adequate, for there are those who can not take part in the work of the world, who can only suffer—invalids, e. g., who are permanently incapacitated, and whose infirmities make them a constant drag on the healthy lives of their friends. ”

“ With that clear sense of Fate characteristic of them, they do not fight against the evil which they know has to be borne, 209 but wisely try to lighten it by such wiles and arts as are open to them, and set themselves to adorn the cross they must endure. One thing indeed, makes invalidism less terrible to them than to men ”

“ The Right to Live of Monsters, Idiots, or the Deformed.—The preceding remarks naturally lead us to the question whether children who are born invalids, deformed, or idiots, etc., should be necessarily condemned to live by the law, and whether special dispositions should not be made for such cases. ”

“ The disqualification of alienage is cause of challenge propter defectum, on account of personal objection, and, if voluntarily, or through negligence, or want of knowledge, such objection fails to be insisted on, the conclusion that the judgment is thereby invalidated is wholly inadmissible. ”

“ But the monotonous life led by invalids often makes them like children, inasmuch as they have neither of them any sense of proportion in events, and seem each to believe that the walls and curtains which shut in their world, and shut out everything else, must of necessity be larger than anything hidden beyond. ”

“ Where such divergences of opinion arise, men of activity (and women, no less) are apt, whatever may be their abstract respect for closet speculators, and reverence for sequestered sufferers, to speak with regret, or at least with respectful com{143}passion, of the warping influences of seclusion and illness, as particularly illustrated by the case in point. ”

“ ADVICE TO COOKS AND KITCHEN-MAIDS
Importance of Cooking.—A good cook has every reason to magnify the office she holds, for her work influences not only the comfort but also the health of the whole household, and mindful of this responsibility she will take care to study both the needs and tastes of those whose food she prepares. With invalids and people in delicate health this care is of the utmost importance. ”

“ Both minds must meet in such a transaction; and if one is so weak, unsound, and diseased that the party is incapable of understanding the nature and quality of the act to be performed, or its consequences, he is incompetent to assent to the terms a d conditions of the instrument, whether that state of his mind was produced by mental or physical disease, and whether it resulted from ordinary sickness, or from accident, or from debauchery, or from habitual and protracted intemperance. ”

“ Hence, to those who are struggling with disease and pain, with ignorance and defect, with vice, and with crime, but for the most part too separately, it is time to say that all these four evils are capable of being viewed together, and largely even treated together. ”

“ I have, throughout, treated the idea of a right residing in the injured person, and violated by the injury, not as a separate element in the composition of the idea and sentiment, but as one of the forms in which the other two elements clothe themselves. These elements are, a hurt to some assignable person or persons on the one hand, and a demand for punishment on the other. An examination of our own minds, I think, will show, that these two things include all that we mean when we speak of violation of a right. ”

“ The consequences, then, to the poor sufferer, whose offence is, at most, but an error of judgment or a weakness of the heart, are the same as if her imprudence were indeed a crime of the blackest dye. ”

“ What then must be the suffering of a child whose own will is its only law, and who has not learned what is right and wrong, nor even what is possible and impossible to be had, or done! We see its sufferings written on its anxious, irritated countenance. ”

“ It will, it is believed, be found, upon examination of the authorities, that wherever substantial mental suffering would be the natural and probable result of the act, there compensation for injury to feelings has been allowed, and that where no mental suffering would ordinarily result, or if resulting, would naturally be but trifling,and,being unaccompanied by visible signs of injury,would afford a wide scope for imaginative ills, there damages have been disallowed. ”

“ Is it truly possible to be willingly treated unjustly, or is all suffering of injustice the contrary involuntary, as all unjust action is voluntary? And is all suffering of injustice of the latter kind or else all of the former, or is it sometimes voluntary, sometimes involuntary? ”

“ But there is another way, also, in which the reason of man was capable of producing evil,—namely, by its liability to error: and error, when acted upon, produces disorder, mental and physical, or, in other words, evil; for disorder, derangement, or perversion of mind is, as shown in the preceding Section, the immediate cause of what we term evil. Man's reason is liable and very liable to error—and this, chiefly by mistaking appearances for realities. ”

“ But if one be born immoral, who is to blame? The individual himself, or the antecedents, including both parentage and circumstances? We pity the man who is congenitally tainted with disease, and we condemn that other man who is tainted in morals, though his condition is analogous and traceable to similar causes. ”

“ But whence the Cause of this strange Misconduct and Omission? It springs, as I take it, from Ignorance, or Inconsiderateness, or Partiality, or Passion, or from all together; but the most frequently of any, from false Tenderness, and blind Indulgence.
Every Man has his own way of judging, and generally abides by it right or wrong. I knew a Gentleman of refined Understanding, who frequently forfeited it, by a boundless injudicious Fondness for his Children. ”

“ See how, confounding the weakness and the folly of the human heart with direct and actual criminality, you have suffered the probable or the possible to usurp the place of the inevitably true; have been so carried away by prejudice or by passion as to sentence an innocent man!—see, I say, that your judgments are fallible and your tests are weak ”

“ If he find himself subject to any peculiar corporeal infirmity, hereditary tendency to disease, overbearing propensities towards indulgence, or excess, unbalanced passions, or morbid mental obliquity, he will be studiously solicitous, that the other party shall not be laboring under similar disqualifications. ”

“ Ignorance, fear, and disease may be such as to remove all quality of morality from an act. {106} Certain diseases or pathological conditions, especially of the nervous system, can take out of an act the elements of voluntariness and freedom that are necessary to make the act moral or immoral, provided, however, these pathological conditions are not brought on through the fault of the subject in which they exist. ”

“ It is in the line of man's primal duty of concealment. But if a man thus disabled were applying for a life-insurance policy, or were an applicant for re-enlistment in the army, or were seeking employment where bodily wholeness is a requisite, it would be his duty to make known his defect; and the concealment of it from the parties interested would be in the realm of the lie. ”

“ Under the classification of the unfit he places all those persons who, on account of mental, moral or physical defect, constitute a burden to society. These are, principally, the epileptic, the pauper, the insane and the criminal. ”

“ Therefore, without knowing particulars, I take upon me to assure all persons who think they have received indignities or injurious treatment, that they may depend upon it, as in a manner certain, that the offence is not so great as they themselves imagine. We are in such a peculiar situation, with respect to injuries done to ourselves, that we can scarce any more see them as they really are, than our eye can see itself. ”

“ Under such circumstances, if legislation be unwise, or loose, or inaccurate, it belongs to the infirmity of human nature in general, or to that personal carelessness and indifference, which is sometimes the foible of genius, as well as the accompaniment of ignorance and prejudice. ”

“ But this does not exclude such conduct as a course of persistent ill-treatment, though not amounting to personal violence, especially if such ill-treatment has in fact caused injury to health. But the person complaining must not be the author of his or her own wrong. ”

“ Physical defects excluded unmarried or pregnant women, the blind, halt, deaf, people above seventy years old and children under seven, dying people, and persons suffering from any loathsome disease. Intellectual defects prohibited the giving of evidence by those who could not read, could not count up to ten, and who did not know the names of the eight cardinal sins. ”

“ Such is the condition of our nature, that we cannot mortgage either our moral or our physical energies so as always to repel the accusations of our own hearts, which are sure, eventually, to reprove us for evils committed. ”

“ It states regarding “moral imbeciles” that they are persons “who from an early age display some permanent mental defect coupled with strong vicious or criminal propensities on which punishment has had little or no deterrent effect.” It specifically distinguishes them from the group of feeble-minded which require guardianship because of inability to care for themselves. ”