CHAPTER XLVIII.

POISONING WITH STRAMONIUM.

One of my patients was subject to repeated attacks of rheumatism. He was by no means a man of good and temperate habits, and never had been so. And even his rheumatic attacks, though they were now frequently excited by taking cold, or by a sudden strain, as well as by many other causes of no considerable magnitude, often had both a foundation or predisposition in his former and later intemperance.

Let me here say, most distinctly and unequivocally, even at the risk of being charged with repetition, that a large proportion of even these casual or apparently accidental attacks of rheumatism, neuralgia, sick headache, etc., etc., with which our world--the fashionable part of it, at least--is half filled, instead of springing out of the ground, or coming upon us by the special appointment of high Heaven, have their origin in the intemperance, excess, or licentiousness of somebody. The cause may lie many years back, and may be almost forgotten; nay, it may be found in a preceding generation rather than the present. But it lies somewhere in the range of human agency. "Almighty man," as the poet has well said, "decrees it." Solomon never uttered a more palpable truth than when he said: "Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil."

My rheumatic friend sent for me one day, to come and see him in great haste, for, as the messenger said, he could not long continue in such suffering. I found him in the greatest distress, and after making the usual temporary applications, I gave him what I had never given him before--a pretty full dose of tincture of stramonium. It had, in due time, its accustomed effect, and I left him, rather prematurely, to visit another patient in a somewhat distant part of the town, intending, however, to see him again in the evening.

But I had not been absent more than an hour, before I was sent for in post-haste. As soon as possible I hastened to the spot. I found my patient in a state somewhat peculiar and not easily described. He was evidently affected by the stramonium; but how, I said to myself, can this be? I certainly did not give him an overdose. Besides, as I well knew, the effects, so long as I remained with him, had been decidedly favorable.

The mystery was soon revealed. On finding himself much better, soon after my departure, he had resorted again to the stramonium bottle, which in my haste and contrary to my usual practice, I had left within his reach. The result was a degree of delirium that had alarmed his friends and induced them to send for me.

By means of careful and persevering management, a partial recovery soon took place, though a train of incidental evils followed which it is not necessary here to enumerate. The patient was one of those ignorant and selfish individuals on whom a permanent cure can rarely be effected.

This circumstance taught me one important lesson which ought to have been impressed on my mind long before. It was, not to leave medicine of any kind within reach of my patients or their friends. In many an instance, medicine thus left has been taken by others, under the belief that since it operated favorably in the case for which it had been prescribed by the physician, it would do so in another case which was vainly supposed to be just like it, when, in truth, it was not at all similar.

To the custom of keeping medicine in the house, of any sort, I am equally opposed, and for similar reasons. There will generally be time enough to send for it when its presence is really needed. Such at least is the fact, ninety-nine times in a hundred. And as a set-off against the fact of its being thus useful once in a hundred times, we have to acknowledge the multiplied dangers to which we are exposed, of using it without prescription, and to which we are otherwise exposed by having it constantly before us in our houses.