CHAPTER XLIV.

BLESSINGS OF CIDER AND CIDER BRANDY.

Some of these blessings have been alluded to in Chapter XXXVI. But the subject is one of too much importance to be left in an unfinished state, and I have concluded to make it the principal topic of a separate chapter.

A man came to me, one day, with sundry grievous complaints about his head and stomach. It was easy to see, at once, that they were not of mushroom growth, and that they could not be removed either in an hour or a day. However, I did the best I could with him, and charged him to follow, implicitly, my directions, which he promised faithfully to do. I told him, even, that he was in danger of a severe disease, but counselled him to do his utmost to escape it, if possible.

He was, in the first place, a New England or Yankee farmer. Not quite satisfied with the products of his farm from the labors of the day, he coupled with them the night labors of managing a saw-mill and a distillery. And not satisfied with even these, he sometimes burned charcoal, which also involved more or less of nocturnal labor. In truth, these employments and avocations kept him up a great many nights during a considerable portion of the year, and were evidently wearing him out prematurely; for, though less than forty years of age, he had the appearance of being fifty or sixty.

This severe tasking of his system, had led him greatly into temptation. Not only had he acquired the habit of chewing tobacco, as a solace in his seclusion and toil, but also of drinking very freely of cider and cider brandy; the last two of which, as might naturally be inferred from what has been said, he was accustomed to manufacture in large quantities. He was not a great eater, though I have no doubt he ate too much. But he did not take time to eat--he did not masticate any thing; almost every thing was swallowed in masses, and washed down with tea, coffee, or cider. Then, lastly and finally, he ate, as it were, by the job, when he _did_ eat; for his meals were very irregular and sometimes very infrequent.

Another thing should be noticed. His cider and perhaps his tobacco, having leagued together, took away his appetite. Cider, as is well known, practically and in a gradual way, takes away the appetite, and so does coffee. Many a farmer will tell you that it is a matter of economy to give his laborers cider or coffee, since they will not eat so much. It is highly probable that brandy, and indeed all extra stimulants, have the same appetite-destroying effect.

And as the result of his various irregularities and abuses, his digestive and nervous systems had become very much deranged and disordered, and I could hardly help foreboding evil concerning him. I prescribed for him as well as I could, and requested him to call on me in two or three days, and "report progress."

On the next day but one, I was summoned to his bedside. My medicine had indeed appeared to afford him a little temporary relief, but it was only temporary. He was now much worse than ever before. I prescribed again; but it was with similar effect. Nature, somewhat relieved, as I then vainly imagined, seemed disposed to rally, but was unable. Every successive effort to rally, showed more and more clearly how much she had been crippled. At least she seemed to succumb either to the treatment or the disease, which last became in the end quite formidable.

But though Nature had yielded, apparently vanquished, she still made occasional faint efforts, every two or three days, to regain the supremacy, or, in other words, to set things right; and sometimes we were led to indulge in hope. But the remissions of disease and of suffering were only temporary, and were succeeded, in every instance, by a worse condition of things than before. I called for sage medical counsel, but all to no permanent purpose. Downward he tended, step by step, and no human power or skill seemed likely to arrest his progress.

In this downward course his constitution held out--for he was by nature exceedingly tenacious of life--till about the twenty-third day, when the vital forces began to retreat. He died on the twenty-fifth.

One practical but general error deserves to be noticed, for want of a better place, in this very connection. Notwithstanding the great difficulty of convincing a person who habitually uses extra stimulants, narcotics, or any medicinal agents, all the way from rum, opium, and tobacco, down to tea, coffee, and saleratus, that they are injuring him at all, as long as he does not feel very ill, yet it ought to be clearly and fully known that every one who is thus addicted to unnatural habits, and _being_ thus addicted is seized with disease of any kind and from any cause whatever, is certain to have that disease with greater severity than if his habits had been, from the first, perfectly correct or normal. Nor is this all. Medical aid, whenever invoked under these circumstances, is more questionable as to its good tendencies. No medical man of any skill or observation but must feel, in such a case, most painfully, the terrible uncertainty of that treatment of the living machine which is quite enough so when the habits have been most favorable, by being most correct.

One caution of quite another kind may be interposed here. My patient above had neglected to call on me for several days in the beginning of his disease, under the very general impression of ignorant people, that if he called a physician he should certainly be severely sick; for if he was not already very sick, any efforts to prevent disease would only serve to make him so.

Now this is, as a general rule, a very great mistake. It would be much more safe to call a physician very early, than to wait till Nature is so much embarrassed and even crippled that we can place very little reliance on her efforts. Worse still is it for the physician, when called late, to load down the enfeebled system with medicine by way of atoning for past neglects. Thousands have made the mistake here alluded to, and have thus been a means of hastening on a fatal termination of the disease. It is not by any means improbable that such was the result in the foregoing instance.