Sickbed

“ And great disorders have been and are caused with such sick when they leave the said hospital with little health and strength—some returning to their own houses, and some to those of others, where because of the little or no comfort, and the poor and injurious food, with wine, tobacco, buyo, and other similar things, and the continual temptations to associate with women of evil life, they relapse, so that their sickness has no cure. ”

“ It begins strong, and louder than a sick man can make; the second cry is lower, but not less doleful, but rather more so; the third yet lower, and soft, like the groaning of a sick man almost spent and dying.’ A person ‘well remembering the voice’ and coming to the sick man’s bed, ‘shall hear his groans exactly like’ those which he had before heard from the Cyhyraeth. ”

“ Such are the signs that for the first days foreshadow the end; but as the sickness begins to advance and gather violence, then indeed their eyes burn and their breath is fetched deep, heavy with broken moans, their flanks below heave with long-drawn sobs, black blood oozes from their nostrils, and their throat is blocked by their rough and swollen tongue. ”

“ The hair of the latter is then tugged instead of that of the patient and answers to the test quite as well. When the blame has thus been satisfactorily laid at the door of the ghost who is responsible for the sickness, the physician, who, as in other countries, is often an old woman, remonstrates with him on his ill behaviour. “Go back,” says she, “to your grave; what do you come here for? The soul of the sick man does not choose to be called by you, and will remain yet a long time in its body.” ”

“ Now, both these symptoms are in excess, and yet, by habit and some acquired power of conforming to them, I am scarcely aware of their existence. I have learned to look on them as my normal, natural condition. My cough on awaking in the morning—my hectic as night falls—only tell of the day’s dawn and decline. I fancy that this dreamy calm, this spirit of submissive waiting that I feel, is dependent on my infirmity; for how otherwise could I, if strong in mind and body, endure the thraldom of my present life? The watchful egotism of sickness demands the mind of sickness. ”

“ For a long time I have known that my sickness was like your own—the sickness that no doctor can cure. Through the long nights, when others slept, I have sat alone under the stars, and the voices of the darkness have taught me many things. ”

“ The numbness steadily ascended, and seven years from the day the malady first displayed itself the sickness had eaten its way into the patient's brain and had hardened it into stone exactly as it had hardened the muscles, flesh and skin of his body. Then death relieved the sufferer. ”

“ He should remember that the sick are sensitive and fastidious, that they love the sweet odors and the pure tints of flowers, and if his presence is not like the breath of the rose, if his hands are not like the leaf of the lily, his visit may be unwelcome, and if he looks behind him he may see a window thrown open after he has left the sick-chamber. ”

“ Every imagined sickness presupposes an actual: nevertheless there are imaginary causes of sickness. My alternation between health and sickness, between merry and mournful, soft and stern moods, had reached, in its rapidity and its contrasts, the maximum point; I could no longer, for want of breath, dictate a protocol, and as to the scenes of this biography I could not so much as conceive them; when on a ruddy, glowing winter evening, I sallied out and strode round through the rosy-tinted snow, and in this snow lighted on the word heureusement. ”

“ On the whole, it is very often remarked that an evil spirit dwells in a sick body.
In diseases this sympathy is still more striking. All severe illnesses, especially those of malignant nature and arising from the economy of the abdominal regions, announce themselves, more or less, by a strange revolution in the character. Even while the disease is still silently stealing through the hidden corners of our mechanism, and undermining the strength of nerve, the mind begins to anticipate by dark forebodings the fall of her companion. ”

“ These silent symptoms should be observed by the attendants, who should always see and know when their patients are sick. Some of these symptoms are, crying, [Pg 32] moaning, weakness, going to bed, or lying down, cough, changes in respiration, signs of fever, a flushed face, quick pulse, or chills, a pale face, vomiting, or diarrhœa, and loss of appetite.
Much insanity is associated with great physical disturbances which require careful nursing. The old and feeble, the paralytic and bedridden also require special attention and care. ”

“ These Symptoms were for the most part irregular Shiverings, the Pulse low, soft, slow, quick, unequal, concentrated; a Heaviness in the Head so considerable, that the sick Person could scarce support it, appearing to be seized with a Stupidity and Confusion, like that of a drunken Person; the Sight fixed, dull, wandering, expressing Fearfulness and Despair; the Voice slow, interrupted, complaining; the Tongue almost always white, towards the end dry, reddish, black, rough; the Face pale, Lead-coloured, languishing, cadaverous; a frequent Sickness at the Stomach ”

“ Let him see in the sick-chamber, where the outward and inward world seem alike to the sufferer to be crumbling asunder, how irresistible is the conviction of an upholding power, new-modelling all decaying things, and imbuing them{173} with immortality. If he himself can but learn what protracted sickness is, let him ponder well whether a superstition, however early and solemnly conveyed and cherished, could stand the stress,—not merely of pain, but of the questionings prompted by pain. ”

“ Her frame was fevered; the bed was fevered; and she arose and paced the room. This state of mind would inevitably bring on bodily illness, possibly an attack of the brain. She dreaded that; for there was no telling what she might reveal in her delirium. ”

“ The result is a sort of fever burning slowly in the veins, and an emaciation which wastes the strength away, and, in impetuous and uncontrollable spirits, like that of Essex, sometimes exhausts the powers of life altogether. The sickness, therefore, though of mental origin, becomes bodily and real; but then the sufferer is often ready, in such cases, to add a little to it by feigning. ”

“ The other particular is, that many people, having been well to the best of their own judgment, or by the best observation which they could make of themselves for several days, and only finding a decay of appetite, or a light sickness upon their stomachs,—nay, some whose appetite has been strong, and even craving, and only a light pain in their heads,—have sent for physicians to know what ailed them, and have been found, to their great surprise, at the brink of death, the tokens upon them, or the plague grown up to an incurable height. ”

“ If every sick prisoner in our land were questioned, and could and would answer truly, I believe all would reply (all who have minds) that their worst pangs are in the soul. For the moment,—for the hour,—no agony is, I know, to{167} be compared with some pains of body; but when the question is of months and years (including the seasons of delicious reaction from bodily pains) , I am confident that the peculiar misery of our condition—subjection to a besetting thought—will be owned to absorb all others. ”

“ After remarking that the grave symptoms set in quite unexpectedly, and go on rapidly increasing, he says:- "The patient now can lie down no longer; he sits up in bed and tosses restlessly from one position to another, and, with wrinkled brow, staring and anxious eyes, dusky skin, blue, parted lips, dilated nostrils, throbbing neck, and labouring chest, presents a picture of the most terrible distress that the worst of diseases can inflict. ”

“ Thus sickness reduces us to cave-dwellers or gorillas rampant, by perhaps just a day of pain no greater in compass than one’s little finger-nail,—soulful, strenuous, high-stepping beings though we are! Sad enough to think about; yet on the other hand, of all insupportables, the people whom sickness makes saints are the most contemptible. I know men and ladies, in health normal, human, unworthy, likable,—but give them so much as a cold in the head, and at once their smile smacks of Heaven, and their eyes are uplift with the watery mysticism of those about to be canonized. ”

“ A perpetual cough in another tickles my lungs and throat. I more unwillingly visit the sick in whom by love and duty I am interested, than those I care not for, to whom I less look. I take possession of the disease I am concerned at, and take it to myself. I do not at all wonder that fancy should give fevers and sometimes kill such as allow it too much scope, and are too willing to entertain it. ”

“ But at times the blue lips of the sick man stirred with a slight movement, as if in prayer, or as if he were cursing his loneliness and those dreadful drops of moisture which measured with even monotony the hours of his sickness. ”

“ And again, when sickness is to be cured, he tries to subdue the demons of disease—to neutralise their action or to entice them out of the body of the patient—by imitating in pantomime the symptoms of the particular complaint. ”

“ Magic-making in cases of sickness includes the blowing, sucking, and so forth, already described. The relatives of the patient will discourse at length on the story of the sickness, and the medicine-man will either announce who sent it himself or expound the sick person’s dreams and therefrom deduct the source of evil. ”

“ Sometimes in one day, a cruel malady would seize one occupant out of each one of the three or four little villages clustered on the hillside. A sharp pain attacked the lungs, and after a brief illness the resistless disease bore away the sufferer to the silent grave. ”

“ Don’t let me go home thinking I’ve done you harm. Answer! speak to me.’
‘I can’t speak to you,’ he murmured; ‘you’ve hurt me so that I shall lie awake all night choking with this cough. If you had it you’d know what it was; but you’ll be comfortably asleep while I’m in agony, and nobody near me. ”

“ Lord, behold, he whom thou lovest is sick. But here they are threatened to be brought upon his enemies as tokens of his wrath, and designed for their ruin. So that according to the temper of our spirits, under sickness, accordingly it is to us a blessing or a curse. But, whatever sickness may be to particular persons, it is certain that epidemical diseases raging among a people are national judgments, and are so to be accounted. He here threatens, [1.] Painful diseases (v. 35) , a sore botch, beginning in the legs and knees, but spreading, like Job's boils, from heat to foot. ”

“ It seems to me at times now as if those of us who remain had been very sick, and then, when we had become convalescent, had been ordered by some cruel fate to remain sitting in our sick-rooms forever. ”

“ So that these two, a disease and sickness, proceed from a violent concussion and perturbation of the health of the whole body; but a defect discovers itself, even when the body is in perfect health. But a disease of the mind is distinguishable only in thought from a sickness. But a viciousness is a habit or affection discordant and inconsistent with itself through life. Thus it happens, that in the one case a disease and sickness may arise from a corruption of opinions ”

“ From time to time he raised himself, and seeming to hold the disease in his joined hands, opened them at once into the air, blowing, as if he drove away some evil spirit. During those rites, an old woman in tears howled with great violence in the child's ears. ”

“ I said, “tell our host we’ve got to get Alex dry and warm. If you don’t I’ll undress her and rub her right here!”
I would have said more, but I couldn’t. A pain like a knife stabbed through my lungs, and before I could catch my breath stabbed neatly again. It’s the kind of pain you can’t describe; if you’ve felt it you know it, and if you haven’t, you can’t. I recognized it; it had struck me years before and laid me in a hospital for six weeks. Pneumonia!
There’s a kind of clan morality that controls us. ”

“ It is distressing to go into a lodge of some ten or twenty fires, and count twenty or twenty-five, some in the midst of the measles, others in the last stages of dysentery, in the midst of every kind of filth, of itself sufficient to cause sickness, with no means of alleviating their inconceivable sufferings, with perhaps one well person to look after the wants of two sick ones. ”

“ I shall take good care not to hold you fast by the coat-tails, for I know you will scramble out again pretty quick, and then, when you are lying sick unto death, you will say, 'I got this little bit of a cold in a dream.' But I warn you that a malignant fever will gnaw at your vitals, and years will pass before you recover yourself, and are a man again. ”

“ The turmoil of thought continued for several hours, throwing him back on many a heart-rending scene of death and sorrow—of remorse, penitence, and tenderness, producing bitter grief, and burning fever, which towards morning resolved itself into an attack of gout so violent, that every one was aroused save the aged visitant, and fears for the distant merged in alarm for the present sufferer. ”

“ Neither can the man who draws slow and catching breaths upon the bed of deadly sickness be said to have experience of it, for the mind weakened with disease can but submit without examining too closely that which it submits to. ”