Forty Years In The Wilderness Of Pills And Powders Part 35

In her seventeenth year, she was afflicted with a troublesome eruption, which was cured, or at least checked, by a wash of sugar of lead. (See Chapter XIII.) She was married at twenty-one; and though stinted in her growth, so as to be almost a dwarf, she seemed, at first, to be tolerably healthy. But in the course of a year she suffered from various complaints, to which scrofulous and otherwise debilitated females are subject in early conjugal life, for which she was treated--as I suppose very injudiciously--with active medicine, especially calomel.

And now, as if to render what was already bad enough a great deal worse, she made use of a certain patent medicine, which had been greatly lauded in the public papers. She was also persuaded to make use of a more stimulating diet than before; which was doubtless to her great disadvantage, in such a feeble condition. Her diet, though it should have been _nouris.h.i.+ng,_ should have been _less stimulating_ than usual, and not more so.

Falling in with the famous Sylvester Graham, who was lecturing near her at the time, she was overpersuaded to change her habits very suddenly, especially her dietetic habits. From a highly seasoned diet, she was at once transferred to a very plain one, to which was added cold bathing and abundant exercise in the open air. This change, though it caused great emaciation, appeared to restore her health entirely. Her appet.i.te and general strength were such that she thought it almost impossible she could ever be sick again.

But now a heavy domestic affliction befell her, which again very much reduced her; and, as she was wont to say afterward, "killed her." What it was, however, I was never informed. Being greatly depressed, she undoubtedly confined herself to the house too much, and in one instance when she ventured out, she unluckily exposed herself to a damp east wind, which appeared to give her cold. To remove this, and for other purposes, she fasted rigidly, for several days.

It was at this time that she came, in part, under my care. But she was already so much diseased in mind and body, and so ignorant of any just principles of hygiene, as to be greatly liable to be led about by the fancy or whim of this friend or that--sometimes by Mr. Graham and others, who only relied on Nature; and at others, by those who went to the opposite extreme. I could do little for her to any valuable purpose, and was glad to send her to the elder Dr. Jackson, of Boston. Not, however, till I had given her to understand, in general, that aside from her scrofulous tendencies, I did not know what ailed her; and that, so far as I could understand her case, her safest course was to avoid medicine and depend almost wholly on a careful obedience to G.o.d's laws, physical and moral, especially to his laws of hygiene. I had not then fully learned how much she had been abused, in early life, by unnecessary dosing and drugging.

Dr. Jackson told her it was evident there was something in her case very much out of the way; but he would be honest with her, and confess that he did not know what it was. He proposed to have Dr. Putnam see her, and another physician at Lowell. He insisted, however, on a more nutritious diet.

The last suggestion was heeded for awhile, but evidently to her disadvantage. Under the impression that in order to obtain more nutriment she must do so, she suddenly returned to the free use of flesh, b.u.t.ter, eggs, milk, etc., which, for a long time, till now, she had refused. This course brought upon her much acidity of the stomach.

She returned once more to the plain diet, and by avoiding extremes and letting alone medicine, according to the general tenor of my directions, she partly recovered, and seemed destined to still higher advance towards the land of health and life.

But here, again, domestic trials, like a flood, came upon her, and brought her into great mental anxiety and embarra.s.sment, as well as into that weak and vacillating condition which had once before existed, and which I have already described. To-day she would use her well-balanced, plain diet; to-morrow, perhaps, resort to the starvation system, for a few days. Then, in the fear of suffering from that, she would resort again, for a few days, to luxurious living.

Now, too, she would adhere to and follow this physician, now that, and next, none at all; or, perchance, follow some quack. I was not in a situation to exert much influence over her, or it is possible she might still have been saved. She would, indeed, adhere to my general plan, when all else that promised more seemed to fail, and perhaps would have been more persevering, but for her friends. They wanted to have the "prophet" do "some great thing," and cure her as by magic or miracle.

In saying these things, it is far enough from being my intention to be reproachful. She was not educated to a knowledge of herself; and she was by no means, at the present time, what she had been in her best days. It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that she acted like a wayward child; though it is greatly to be regretted, since, in her circ.u.mstances, it probably cut off every chance of her recovery.

In the spring, two or three years after her first change of diet, a cough with which she had occasionally been troubled before, came on with renewed violence, and never after wholly left her. She remained in this condition till the opening of the next year, when her cough made still farther advances, and was attended with hectic fever. She died in the month of May following.

A post mortem examination was made, which determined the case to have been what Dr. Jackson and myself and many others supposed, a case of scrofula or struma; though it was certainly attended with many curious and rather anomalous symptoms. Though there were no ulcers in the lungs, they were found full of tubercles; and so were the mesenteric glands, and the lining membrane of the alimentary ca.n.a.l. It was even said by the princ.i.p.al individual concerned in the examination, that her whole body was but a ma.s.s of disease. For myself, I was necessarily absent at the time, and therefore have no facts of my own to present.

I never had a case, either before or since, in which my hands were so completely tied as in this. The patient probably had as much confidence in me as in anybody; and yet she would not long follow me implicitly and strictly, without yielding to the whims of her friends or her enemies, and halving the practice with some physician or quack, either known or unknown. Under the care of some good, common-sense physician, and with full faith in him on the part of all concerned, I am still of opinion, as I always have been, that she might have recovered and lived many years, and, perhaps, been able to do a vast amount of good.

CHAPTER XC.

STARVING OUT DISEASE.

Dr. Johnson, one of the best British writers on dyspepsia, advises his medical brethren to starve out the disease, as the surest way of getting rid of it. He says he has by far the best success with those patients who submit to this course. It is not starvation, exactly, though it savors of it. He says, keep them on just two pints of Indian-meal gruel--by which he appears to mean thin hasty pudding--a day, and no more. If they are really afraid of starving, after the trial of a few weeks, let them eat a few times of something else; but they must soon return to the starvation plan.

I have usually preferred cakes of Indian meal, or wheat meal unbolted and baked very hard, to gruel or pudding. The reason is, that I consider mastication very essential to good digestion, especially in the case of dyspeptics. I believe the small quant.i.ty of Indian meal that goes into two pints of gruel, or even of pudding, were it firmly baked, would hold out and sustain the health and strength of an individual much longer than gruel; and it will, by most persons, be preferred.

One of my dyspeptic patients, a young man of great resolution, was put upon ten ounces a day of thin Indian-meal cake, or johnny cake; and it wrought wonders. The prescription was made about twenty years ago, and no young man under forty years of age, in Ma.s.sachusetts, is more efficient, at the present time, than he.

To another young man, similarly afflicted, I recommended eight ounces of the same kind of food. He was from a family that had long known me, and that appeared to confide in me. I have never heard from him since. My conjecture is that he refused to follow the directions, and hence did not wish to communicate with me any farther. He may be still a dyspeptic, as the consequence, though it is certainly possible he may have obeyed the prescription, to the saving of his health.

Some have supposed that a quant.i.ty of food so small, is not sufficient to keep alive an ordinary adult; but they are mistaken. Much smaller quant.i.ties than eight ounces have proved sufficient for this purpose, in a great many instances. Three or four ounces have been found adequate to every want, in these circ.u.mstances.

As I regard this as a highly important point, I will endeavor to establish it by two or three facts, which have come, in part, under my own observation. The first appeared in the _Boston Medical and Surgical Journal_, for 1851, and in several other papers. The other is from a Philadelphia paper, and is as reliable as the former. It is, however, of much later date; viz., December, 1853.

Jervis Robinson,[K] of Nantucket, was a s.h.i.+p-master, born in 1800. In 1832, he became a most miserable dyspeptic. For three or four years he relied on the popular remedy of beef-steak three times a day, and with the usual consequences. It made him worse rather than better.

In the year 1836, a friend of his who had heard lectures on dyspepsia, or had read on the subject, suggested a new remedy. It was three Graham crackers daily, one at each meal, without any drink at the time of eating. This, it was said, if persevered in long enough, would certainly effect a radical cure.

But I prefer to let Mr. Robinson tell his own story, which he does in the following manner:--

"The novelty as well as simplicity of this prescription, greatly interested my mind, and I laid the case before my friends. But they, as with one voice, endeavored to dissuade me from a course which they said would certainly destroy me. They were particularly afraid of the sudden change from a full flesh diet to one entirely vegetable.[L] But I told them I might as well die in one way as another, and that I was resolved on the experiment.

"At first I had no Graham crackers; I therefore used the common soft Graham bread cut in thin slices and thoroughly dried. Twenty-one ounces a week was my allowance. Of these I made three meals a day, at the hours of six, twelve, and six. Small as the allowance was, I spent half an hour in consuming it. Occasionally at evening, I omitted one-half of even these scanty rations.

"My drink, for twenty-four hours, was one gill of water, divided into three equal parts, and one of them to be taken just two hours after each meal. I also used a cold shower-bath at rising in the morning, and walked a mile before breakfast, having retired at ten the previous evening.

"Under this course, my flesh and strength wasted fast. I was weighed every week, and for the first three or four weeks, I lost half a pound a day. The daily loss then diminished somewhat, but was not entirely discontinued till the lapse of two months. At this time I had lost, in all, twenty pounds weight.

"All this time the cry of starvation was heard from every quarter, and I must frankly own that, for a week or so, I was not myself wholly without fears. However, my head felt so much better, and my spirits so much revived, that I began to take courage. My bowels, moreover, which up to this time had rarely moved, and never to much purpose, now began to move more regularly, and in about three weeks they resumed their functions entirely, both as regarded time and quant.i.ty.

"At the end of two months, I ceased to lose flesh, and remained, in this respect, about stationary for four weeks; but after this I began to gain. At first, the increase of weight was very slow indeed, but soon it became much more rapid, so that in two months more I gained nearly what I had lost, or at the average rate of five or six ounces a day. For a part of this time, however, the gain was half a pound a day, or nearly three times as much as the whole weight of my food, and more than the whole weight of my food and drink together.

"I have said that I ate three ounces, by weight, of Graham bread, daily,--an ounce at each meal. But I afterwards procured the Graham crackers in Boston, and used them a part of the time. Of these, too, I continued frequently to omit half a cracker at evening. The water, also,--one-third of a gill,--was generally omitted at evening.

"As to my appet.i.te, during the experiment, I can truly say that, though I never in my life came to the table with a better appet.i.te, I was never better satisfied with my meals when they were finished. After the first three weeks, I had little or no thirst. Nor had I, so far as I now recollect, any desire to eat between meals. In truth, food, except at my meals, was seldom thought of. But, on this subject, my mind had been made up at the outset. I will only add, on this point, that my bread, during the whole time, tasted better, far better, to me than the nicest cake formerly had.

"As regards perspiration, my skin, after the first three or four weeks (during which it was dry and hard), became soft and moist. When I used much exercise, I perspired very freely. My sleep was sound and satisfying. Indeed, the whole "machinery," so far as I could judge, worked admirably during the latter part of the experiment, and at its close I could perform a good day's work at my trade.

"I was about thirty years of age when I made the experiment. I am now above fifty. I have not always, nor indeed generally, been as rigid in my habits since that time. In one instance, however, I worked two weeks on a s.h.i.+p, at "sheathing," on but five ounces of food a day, and was never better in my life, and never felt less fatigue at night. In fact, I felt much better at night than I did in those instances in which I indulged myself in eating two pounds of food a day.

"During a part of the time of my princ.i.p.al experiment, I kept a grocery.

On leaving this, I established a Graham boarding-house, in which I continued for one year.

"About a year after the termination of my experiment, I had occasion, for about three weeks, to work in a bake-house, where the mercury in the thermometer was at 90. While here, I ate twelve ounces of dry bread and two apples a day, and drank nothing. Yet I perspired as freely as ever, nor did I perceive any difference in the quality or the quant.i.ty of any other secretions or excretions."

The reader will take notice that Mr. Robinson's princ.i.p.al or starvation experiment, lasted five months, or one hundred and fifty days. He will also observe that he left off the experiment with nearly or quite as much flesh as he had when he commenced, and with a very great increase of muscular strength.

The above statement was so remarkable, that not a few medical men and others regarded it as a hoax. "To live on three ounces of bread, and yet be in daily employment," they said, "even though such employment were of a kind likely to call for very little muscular effort, is altogether incredible. And what renders the whole so much more unlikely, is, the yet more extraordinary a.s.sertion, that, part of the time, he gained more in weight than the whole amount eaten and drank."

It was no wonder that medical and all scientific men were staggered at the account. I was in doubt myself, in regard to the functions of waste, and made a very rigid examination, in order to be certain of the facts, before I ventured to publish any thing. On one or two points, I afterward obtained Mr. Robinson's particular statement, as follows:--

"In regard to the question you propose, I shall have to guess a little.

So far as the fluids are concerned, however, I think it was about half a pint a day. The solids--for I weighed them this morning, and they appear to me about equal to those voided during the experiment--are fully half a pound."

I also recently ascertained another curious fact. Mr. Robinson's eyesight, prior to the experiment, had, for many years, been very poor, but was perfectly restored during its progress. It appeared, also, that he had again resorted to the exclusive use of bread and water for food; but not in such small quant.i.ties as before. Mr. Robinson, of course, is now above sixty years old.

One medical correspondent of the _Boston Medical and Surgical Journal_, pressed Mr. Robinson, very hard, for corroborative testimony concerning the facts just stated, to which Mr. Robinson very kindly replied, by sending him the certificate of his wife, Mrs. E. D. Robinson, whose veracity is undoubted. The certificate was as follows:--

"The most of the facts which my husband has written, I well recollect, and will give my name as a voucher for the truth of them."

A brother of Mr. Robinson, at Holmes' Hole, whom I called on, appeared to give full credence to the statements of the latter, although he was much opposed to the experiment, at the time it was made, and mortally detested all his bread and water tendencies.

I will only add, that a medical man who was sceptical in regard to the whole matter, became finally convinced that the story bore the marks of truth, and made public his conviction, in the subjoined statements and reasonings.

"It is no true philosophy to refuse credence to a statement of fact supported by competent evidence, simply on the ground that we cannot understand how it can be. That his system (Robinson's) absorbed a very considerable amount of weight from the moisture at all times existing in the atmosphere, I have no doubt--partly through the skin, but chiefly, as I apprehend, through the mucous membrane of the lungs. The fact that they are capable of transmitting such an amount of water in a very short time, as may be rendered evident by breathing on a cold, polished surface, is a pretty conclusive proof that they may, under favorable circ.u.mstances, be as active in absorption.