Part 10

Some time ago, I had been on a visit to a neighbouring town, where I had been called to give my professional advice to a patient who had more faith to place in me than in his neighbouring practitioners. I was returning in the stage-coach, along with a number of other passengers, when my attention was directed to a poor woman sitting by me, with a young girl in her lap, apparently in great distress. The face of the invalid, who appeared to be about twelve years of age, was covered by a white napkin, which her mother, with a careful hand, lifted from time to time, to see how her daughter (for such she turned out to be) was affected by the motion of the vehicle. Two or three people around, from the same town, and who seemed to know the history of the pair, evinced a greater degree of anxiety and curiosity about the state of the poor girl than might have been expected from an ordinary case of illness. They spoke to each other in a low tone; and I could hear my own name mentioned in such a manner as indicated plainly that they did not know me. Though I had not been a professional man, and had not had my curiosity roused by the mention of my name, I could not have refrained from inquiring into the state of the little victim of so much disease, and the object of so much solicitude. Turning round, I asked the mother if she would allow me to remove the napkin, and look at her whose face it covered. She assented with a ready, anticipative willingness; and I lifted softly the white covering. The sight was extraordinary, even to me, who was in the habit of daily seeing strange faces, strangely marked by the powers of the fell fiends that feed on the lacerated feelings of pain-stricken mortals. The girl, though twelve years of age, was reduced to the size and weight of a child of half her little period of life. Her face was as white as the snow-coloured covering which shaded it; her eyelids were closed, as if she were in a deep slumber; her lips, wide apart, were as white as her cheek; and, notwithstanding of the change in all the natural lineaments of her countenance, there was such a regularity, or rather beauty of outline, lying in the calmness and composure of what one of fancy might conceive of a sleeping sylph, that I felt my sympathies more strongly roused by what may be termed the poetical accidents of the patient, than could have been effected by the mere aspect of a cruel disease.

As I sat looking at the face of the half-lifeless being, and musing a little on the supposed nature of her complaint, previously to an inquiry at her mother for the particulars of her case, I saw rise, on a sudden, and as if by the power of some heart-born impulse, a feeling throughout all the fine, attenuated muscles, that changed the angelic quietness of her countenance into the shrinking and contorted motions of a pain that seemed to bring despair on its wings, as a colleague to strike as soon as its own pang was inflicted. I could see, also, that there was mixed with the expression of pain an indication of terror, as if the poor victim apprehended some onset of the enemy that had already laid her so low, similar to what she had been already in the habit of experiencing. In an instant it came: the whole chest, throat, and face were grasped by a convulsive spasm, and a cough, shrill and piercing, as if the breath passed with difficulty through the windpipe, accompanied by the long drawback of apparent croop, that sounded like the yell of a strangling dog, struck our ears, and produced a feeling of consternation among those who were as yet better acquainted with her extraordinary case than I was. I had never experienced anything of the same kind; for the symptoms that separated her complaint, whatever it was, from the most painful diseases of the windpipe known to us, were at first sight apparent. The sound prevented me from getting intelligence from her mother, who was, besides, under such alarm and anxiety, that she paid little attention to those around her. The rattling of the coach was a great aggravation of the attack; and the noise of a grating wheel, not unlike that wrung from the poor victim, mixed with it, and rendered the scene frightful. After lasting about ten minutes, the harrowing symptoms stopped suddenly; in a few minutes, I saw again before me the same placid countenance, with the closed eyelids, and the same lifeless appearance I had witnessed before the attack came on.

I now got an account from the mother of the cause of her daughter's distress. About two months previously, the girl had been eating cherries; and one of the stones having been involuntarily thrown back into her throat, she had endeavoured to prevent the operation of swallowing it, from a fear that it would injure her, and thus produced an irregular action among the muscles of deglutition, which precipitated the hard substance into the windpipe. The first effects of this accident were grievous in the extreme; for the sensibility of that exquisitely tender part of the body roused the muscles to efforts of expectoration, and brought on fits of the most intense coughing, which lasted until the strength of the body having failed, the irritability of the passage died, through the pure inanition of the exhausted system. Every energy prostrated, she would be for a time quiet, until the _pabulum_ of the irritability was again supplied by the mysterious operation of nature, when the same painful spasms of the muscles were renewed, with another long fit of coughing--every re-drawn breath forcing its way with a shrill sound, and suggesting the fear that she was every moment on the eve of being choked. This was again succeeded by a calm, to be followed by a similar exacerbation; and thus was her life reduced to an alternation of agony and rest without peace; and all the time the reductive process of famine (for she could scarcely swallow a morsel without the greatest pain) went on, till she was reduced to a perfect skeleton. Having been the pride of her parents, as well from her beauty as her amiable mind and manners, she was watched night and day with a solicitude scarcely less painful than her own dreadful condition; and, as both the doctors of the small town seemed irresolute as to the course to be pursued, the victim was left lying on her back, and suffering those violent and incessant attacks, for the period of six weeks, without any effectual effort being made for her relief. At last, however, the urgent nature of the case, which interested almost all the inhabitants of the place, forced the medical men to try, at last, the only evident operation that could be of any service; and an incision was made into the windpipe, with a view to get hold of the stone. Whether it was that they had calculated on wrong data, in regard to the locality of the peccant and cruel intruder, or whether the operation was otherwise unskilfully performed, I know not; but the result was, that, after putting her to so intolerable pain, they were obliged to sew up the opening they had made, and again resign her to her miserable fate. Many of the neighbours got angry at this issue, and blamed the surgeons; but no one would lend a helping hand to pay the expense of bringing a more successful operator to the spot; so that all was vain reproof, with still the same fate to the interesting sufferer. At last, the mother, who could stand no longer the appalling sight of her daughter suffering worse than a thousand deaths, while a remedy on earth could be found, had come to the resolution of travelling by the coach to the residence of one who might, by an extensive experience, be supposed to be able to yield relief; and, having got a letter of introduction to Dr ---- (myself), she was thus far on her way to my residence.

I heard the poor woman's story; and, when I took the letter from her, and told her that I was the individual she was travelling to, I could discover that her face was on the instant lighted up with hope; even the poor sufferer on her knee lifted up her eyelids, and fixed her clear blue eyes on my face with a piteous supplication that I shall never forget. I told the mother that she should have come to me long before; but that she was not yet too late--for that I had strong hopes of being able to extricate the stone, and restore her child to health. My words fell on the ear of the patient; and I could see by the tear in her eye--the only indication she could give of her gratitude--for she was under a continual terror of moving a single muscle of her face--that she understood perfectly what I said. The passengers seemed to be as much moved as those more nearly interested, and turned their eyes on me as if I had been one gifted beyond ordinary mortals with the means of benefiting mankind. We got forward, luckily, without another attack of the ruthless foe that haunted the innocent victim with such unremitting hatred; and, on our arrival at our place of destination, I made arrangements for the mother and daughter being lodged in a friend's house not far from my own, that my patient might be as much as possible under my eye, until I deemed it a proper time (for she required strength) to perform the operation which I meditated.

I considered well what I had to do, and had no doubt of my success; but I was met by some untoward disadvantages. I found that there was no possibility of imparting to her strength--the incessant reductive workings of her spasms counteracting all my energies in this direction, and compelling me to a speedy application of my means of salvation. The prior wound had not been sufficiently cured, and the pain she had suffered under the mangling hands of her first tormentors left such a vivid impression on the tortured mind of the sufferer, that, anxious as she was to get the stone extracted, and to breathe again freely the air of heaven, she shuddered at the thought of being subjected to the knife of the operator. I used every seductive artifice to soothe her fears; I showed her the small instrument with which I would give her peace and health, and painted to her fancy the happiness she would again enjoy in romping among the green fields as in former days, freed from the terror of the slightest motion that now enslaved her. She lay and heard me, opened her eyes, sighed, and shut them again with a slight shake of her head, and a shudder, as if all arguments had failed; then, as I rose, threw after me a look of supplication, as if she wished me to try again to bring her to the point of resolution to free herself from the dreaded enemy that held her so firmly and securely in his grasp. She little knew that she was utterly powerless to resist--a child might have held her hands, while the operation was performed, against her will; but I wished to avoid compulsion; though I feared that, if she would not consent, I would be necessitated, from the gradual decay of the little remaining strength she had, to save her quickly, against her own fears of the means of her salvation.

In the afternoon of the same day I had appointed to perform the operation against her will, her mother came to me and said that the invalid had made signs to her that she would now submit herself to my power. I lost no time in getting my assistants, and waiting upon her before the resolution should depart; but, what was my disappointment to find that she had, in the meantime, been seized with an attack of coughing, so much more serious than any she yet had, that I expected every moment to see her die of suffocation. Her mother sat beside her, weeping and looking on her with an expression of agony; and the little sufferer presented to me such an appearance of emaciation and weakness, that I doubted if I could venture to touch her with a knife, even if her relentless foe allowed her once more to escape for a little time. The coughing and spasms again ceased; but she lay as one dead. I could scarcely feel a pulse in her, and her pale, beautiful face was as calm and benign as if she had been soothed by a divine aspiration, in place of being tortured the moment before by an agony that twisted every muscle of her countenance. She lay in this state about ten minutes, at the end of which time she again opened her eyes, and made a faint sign to her mother that she was prepared. I lost no time. In a moment I had made the incision; and so well had I calculated the locality of the stone, that I was able to seize it on the very first insertion of the nippers. I drew it out, and held it up to her eye. The sight of it operated like magic. She started up on her feet, and, running a few paces, while the blood flowed plentifully down her white throat, clapped her hands, and cried, "It's out--it's out!" She would have fallen instantly, for the impulse that had overcome her weakness was like a shock from a galvanic battery, that moves, and in an instant leaves all dead as before. I seized her, just as she was falling; and, having placed her again on the sofa, sewed up the wound. Before I left her, I saw her breathing freely the unobstructed air. Her blue eye was illuminated with joy; and such was the immediate effect of giving a free passage to the breath of life, that one might have marked the rapid change of returning health going on throughout her whole system. In a short time she recovered, and returned home.

I saw this interesting patient three years afterwards--a fine, blooming young woman.

THE HENWIFE.

I have often made observations on that extraordinary disease, hypochondria; and chiefly on the cases where it presents the phasis of a false conception of the existing condition of external circumstances affecting the patient, accompanied by a terror of their operation on his fortunes and prosperity. These are common. I conceive that they argue a lesser derangement of the cerebral functions, than where there occurs a total overturn of the conception of personal identity; and the conviction of _self_ passes into a belief that the patient is actually something else than himself--nay, something else than a man at all, and even something else than an organised being. In both cases, there is, of course, a false conviction, and so far they range under the same head; yet, as the conception of identity is among the first, and strongest, and steadiest of all the states or acts of the mind, it may be presumed to require a stronger deranging impulse to effect the overthrow of an idea that often remains unimpaired amidst the very wrecks of the intellect, than to produce those conditions of ordinary partial derangement of the rational or perceptive powers which daily come under our observation. Yet--and it is a curious feature of these pitiful states of the diseased mind, and one that argues ill for the superiority of man over the passing humours of a fluctuating temperament--wherever there is a false conception of identity, passing into an idea that the patient is something different from himself, he becomes an involuntary humorist; and, while the ordinary maniac brings tears to the eyes of the shuddering beholders, he, in his character of an animal or piece of inert matter, produces nothing but a tickling sensation of exquisite ludicrousness, passing often into broad laughter, certainly the greatest enemy of pity. Now, I approach a case of this kind with feelings entirely different; and, while I thus confess that I can contemplate no state of derangement but with pity, I shall leave a grave narrative of an extraordinary instance of false conviction--true in all its details[23]--to be read and relished according to the fancies and humours of the public.

[Footnote 23: We understand that another case of human incubation occurred, somewhere about the Crosscauseway or Simon Square, of Edinburgh, in Dr Gregory's time.--ED.]

In a large old land of houses in ---- Street, commonly known by the name of the Ark, and occupied by a number of small families in the lower grade of society, an old woman, Margaret B----, had lived for many years, chiefly upon the bounty of a noble family in the country, whom she had served in the capacity of poulterer--_vulgariter_, henwife. She had been for some time ailing; and I was requested by those who took an interest in her, to pay her occasionally a visit, in the course of my professional rounds in the neighbourhood of her dwelling. I could discover, for a time, no marked complaint about her. Living lonely, she had fallen into a lowness of spirits, which, as one of her neighbours informed me, was most effectually removed or ameliorated for a time, by a recurrence to the remembered employments of her former years. She was, in particular, curiously addicted to thinking and speaking of her former extensive establishment of fowls at ---- House; and made reference to speckled favourites by special name, as if she had treated them by distinctions of superiority, beauty, and utility, after the manner of fond mothers, who indulge a habit of fantastic favouritism among their children. I myself noticed this garrulous peculiarity; but, accustomed to all manner of eccentricities, as well healthy as morbid, I attributed her freaks to a foolish fancy, that sought for food among the cherished recesses of a fond memory of the past. By degrees, however, she underwent a considerable change; falling into moods of silent melancholy, which lasted for days, and rising from them to luxuriate, with a fervour that engrossed her whole soul, on the favourite theme, which seemed to present every day new attractions for her moody mind.

As I passed one day along the passage that led to her humble dwelling, her nearest neighbour, a favourite gossip, met me, and whispered, secretly and mysteriously, into my ear, that old Margaret, as she called her, had been, during the whole day, occupied with the regulation of an imagined establishment of her old favourites, the hens. She had been calling them to her by name; using all the technicalities of the domestic fowler's vocabulary; driving some of the more forward away, and endearingly encouraging the backward favourites to participate in the meal of scattered barley she threw upon the floor. The woman added, that she feared she was mad, and yet she laughed at the symptoms of her imputed insanity. I went forward, and, on opening the door, saw good evidence of the truth of my informant's story in the grain that lay about in every direction; but the occupation was gone, the industrious fowler had sunk into a fit of melancholy, and sat, with a drooping head and heavy eye, looking into the fire. She was dogged and silent; and, though I touched gently the irritable chord, I got no response: the illusion was gone, and had left nothing in her mind but the darkness of a morbid melancholy which I possessed no secret to remove.

This state of gloom lasted, I understood--for I could not get her visited in the meantime--for three days, during which she scarcely spoke to her neighbours, whose curiosity, roused by her previous conduct, supplied the place of the kindness which ought to have stimulated charitable attentions. At the end of that time, she awoke from her dream, and spoke with her accustomed sense on any subject that was started in her presence; but during the night she was heard again busy in her old occupation of feeding her feathered family; and several of the neighbours had even been at the pains to leave their beds, and listen to her one-sided dialogue and strange proceedings, as a matter of intense curiosity. I got a second report of these acts from the same neighbours, and very properly set the patient down for one of those unfortunate beings, too common in our land, who are afflicted with temporary derangement, which sometimes shows itself in the form of a fancied presence of some familiar object, and a passing into a condition or position occupied in some prior part of the life of the afflicted individual. These objects are too common to excite in us any particular curiosity; and, having made a report to those interested in her that I feared she was subject to temporary fits of insanity, I left to them the choice of the ordinary expedients in such cases.

Some weeks afterwards, the neighbour whom I had formerly seen, called and told me that the patient had not been attended to as her situation required, and that she had passed into a new condition, so extraordinary and incredible, that she could not trust her tongue to tell it to a rational being, and therefore urged me to come and witness for the truth of what no mortal would otherwise believe, by the evidence of my eyes. I asked her to explain what she meant; but she replied by a laugh, and went away, stating, that, unless I visited her soon, I might lose one of the most strange sights I had ever witnessed in the course of all my extended and long practice. I had seen so much of the wild vagaries of distempered minds, so many metamorphoses of fancied identities, and such extraordinary instances of imaginary metempsychoses, and other freaks in lunatics, that I felt no more curiosity on the subject of the woman's excited report than I do in ordinary cases; but, in about an hour afterwards, I found leisure to call and make a proper judgment of what might, after all, be a matter exaggerated by the clouds of ignorance.

As I proceeded up the stair, and along the passage, I observed several heads peeping out at me, and heard titters and whispers in all directions, as if the neighbours were all a-tiptoe with curiosity to enjoy the doctor's surprise at what he was to behold. The woman who had called me came running out from the middle of three or four old gossips like herself, and, holding away her head to conceal a suppressed laugh, perhaps mixed with a little affected shame, led the way before me to the patient's room. I was grave all the while, as becomes my profession; and I was besides displeased, as I ever am, when I see the misfortunes of my fellow-creatures made the subject of ill-timed mirth, merely because the most dreadful of all the visitations of man puts on grotesque appearances and ludicrous impersonations of fantastic characters.

When I entered, I observed no one in the room. The patient's seat by the fire was empty. A strange noise met my ear--"Cluck, cluck, cluck!" which the woman requested me to pause and listen to. It seemed to me a human imitation of the sounds of the feathered mother of a young brood in our barn-yards. I was astonished, and felt my curiosity rise as high as my conductress might desire. She proceeded to a dark corner of the room, where I saw a large tub half-filled with straw, with the poor victim sitting in it, in such a position that her head and shoulders only could be observed. I now ascertained that the strange sounds came from the occupant of the old seat of Diogenes; yet still my understanding was at fault. I stood and gazed at the spectacle before me, while my conductress seemed to enjoy my perplexity, and I heard the repressed laughter of those in the passage who had come near enough to listen to our proceedings.

"That is a strange seat, Margaret," said I. "What means this?"

I was answered by a repetition of the same extraordinary sounds--"Cluck, cluck, cluck!"

I looked gravely at the neighbour for a serious explanation. I could see no humour in the melancholy indications of drivelling madness, and added a stern expression to the gravity with which I intended to subdue a cruel and ill-timed levity. The woman felt awed and abashed, but it was only for a moment; she stooped down, and, putting her hands among the straw upon which the invalid sat, pulled out a couple of eggs. A louder repetition of the sounds, "cluck, cluck," followed, as if the incubator felt an instinctive parental anger at the temerity of the spoiler of her inchoate progeny. To satisfy her humour, the woman replaced the eggs, and the cluck ceased.[24]