CHAPTER LXIV.

GETTING INTO A CIRCLE.

The oddity of some of my captions may seem to require an apology; but I beg the doubtful reader to suspend any unfavorable decisions, till he has read the chapter which follows. He will not, either in the present instance or in any other, be introduced to a magic ring, or to the mysteries of modern "spiritualism." The circle into which my patient fell, was of a different description.

A young mother from the west, about the year 1840, came to consult me with regard to her health. Not being able to receive her into my own family, I made arrangements for her reception in the immediate neighborhood, where she remained for a long time. She was a dyspeptic--if not of giant magnitude, but little short of it.

I spent many an hour in endeavoring to set all right, both in mind and body. It was, however, much easier to set her head right, than her hands, feet, and stomach. She had been under the care of almost all sorts of medical men--hydropathic, homoeopathic, and allopathic. Some of them, from all these schools, had been men of good sense, while a much larger proportion of them had turned out to be fools, and had done her more harm than good. In short, like the woman in the New Testament, she had spent much on many physicians, and was nothing bettered by it, but rather made worse.

Under such circumstances what ground was there for hope? What she most needed, it was easy to see, was a little more of resolution to carry out and complete what she believed to be her duty. I told her so. I told her how many times I had repeated to her the same directions; while she, after the lapse of a very few days,--sometimes only a day or two,--had come round again, in her remarks and inquiries, to the very point whence she had first started. I told her how easy a thing this getting into a circle was, and how difficult it was to escape from it.

Although she perfectly understood her condition, there was still a strange and almost unaccountable reaching forth for something beyond the plain path of nature, which I had faithfully and repeatedly pointed out to her. She wished for some shorter road, something mysterious or magical. She was, in short, a capital subject for humbuggery, had she not tried it already to her heart's content.

Occasionally, I must confess, I felt somewhat disposed to put her on the "starvation plan," as Dr. Johnson calls it,--on a diet of two pints only of plain gruel (thin hasty pudding, rather) a day,--for she would have borne it much better than did Mr. Gray, of the preceding chapter. I am sorry I did not. However, I prescribed for her, in general, very well; and, except in the last-mentioned particular, have no reason for regret nor any call for confessions.

She remained under my care several weeks--all the while in a mill-horse track or circle, beginning at the same point and coming round to the same result or issue, when I frankly told her, one day, that it was a great waste, both of time and money, for her to remain longer. I saw, more and more clearly, that all her thoughts were concentrated on her own dear self. _Her_ troubles, _her_ health, _her_ concerns, _her_ prospects in life and death, were, to her, of more importance than all the world besides. No woman, as good as she was,--for she was, professedly, a disciple of him who said to his followers, "Feed my lambs,"--whom I have ever seen, was so completely wrapped up in self, and so completely beyond the pale of the world of benevolence.

My final advice to her, in addition to that general change of personal habits which, from the first, I had strongly recommended to her, was to return to her native city, and, after making her resolution and laying her plan, give herself no rest, permanently, till by personal appeal or otherwise she had brought all the females within her reach into maternal associations, moral reform societies, and the like.

On her return to her husband and children, she made an attempt to carry out the spirit of my prescription, and not without a good degree of success. But the great benefit which resulted from it--that, indeed, which it was my ultimate object to secure--was that it diverted her thoughts from their inward, selfish tendency, and placed her on better ground as to health than she had occupied for some time before.

I saw her no more for ten or twelve years. Occasionally, it is true, I heard from her, that she was better. Yet she was never entirely well. She was never entirely beyond the circle in which she had so long moved. She returned, at times, to medical advice and medicine; but, so far as I could learn, with little permanent good effect. She died about twelve years after she left my "guardianship," an extreme sufferer, as she had lived; and a sufferer from causes that a correct education and just views of social life, and of health and disease, would, for the most part, have prevented.