In thinking over the question of trembling, memory has become so excited, that wherever I seek a place of repose amongst my recollections, I still see people before me, trembling. The first, dimmest of these recollections is of an old uncle of mine, a veteran, who, while I was a child, used to take me on his knee to tell me about Napoleon’s battles, and I would look at his snuff-box shaking in his hands and could not understand why I must help him to steady his fingers, as he showed me the picture of the emperor on his medal. And behind him I see a simple, affectionate old lady who used to say tender words to me with her trembling voice. She was the godmother of my mother, and was always so indulgent with me when I played near her little work-table, and used to watch me contentedly over her spectacles, waiting till I had drawn the thread through the big-eyed needle, and telling me that her hands no longer obeyed her.
Then the trembling fit which came over me in the Alps when I had wandered through a glacier, risking my life at every step, and it seemed a miracle that I should have escaped the dreadful abyss which was ready to engulf me. Again, amongst the first recollections of my hospital life, I see the emaciated faces of trembling invalids poisoned with quinine or mercury; the convalescent, sitting up in bed, unable to steady the cup in their hand; the anæmic, who, from loss of blood, performed every movement tremblingly; the ravingly hysterical, who only found rest in sleep.
I recall again the times and places when I have hurried excitedly to fires, boiler-explosions, to the ruins of fallen buildings, and have seen men whose teeth chattered in consequence of burns received, strong workmen laid on stretchers who trembled from the effect of their contusions. I remember the night-watches, when we used to relieve each other in attendance on those unfortunate beings who had fallen a prey to tetanus, and whose life had to be prolonged by inhalations of chloroform. In the long, silent halls of the infirmaries I still see the pitiable look of those suffering from tabes dorsalis or paralysis agitans, who could not stand steadily, nor indeed erect themselves at all, as though a curse were agitating the muscles, over which the will had lost all control, and which at last became so rigid that even the bones of the skeleton were bent and deformed.
But let me turn away from these recollections of misery, now when I see crowding before me more cheerful pictures—of that solemn tremor with which I have seen parents overcome, who, at the wedding of their children, could no longer hold the glass in their hands, and stammered unintelligible words with tears in their eyes. I see young poets, too, who cannot steady the paper as they rise to read their verses to a merry company; and busy housewives with trembling lips, and faces beaming with satisfaction, who have to sit down because they cannot subdue their exultation at their success; and lastly, relatives who, with convulsive hands, embrace each other in the joy of meeting once more.
I have known men so nervous that they had to retire at the slightest emotion, lest they should betray an agitation which seemed ridiculous to them; and I have seen others support themselves with a hand on a table or chair that they might not tremble when they heard a moving speech or saw the representation of a tragedy at the theatre.
I remember onanists who, from fear of their trembling-fits, have been reduced to the humiliation of confessing their loathsome, degrading vice; love-sick friends who have been startled at the trembling of their hands, which altered the character of their writing; colleagues who have consulted me on account of a trembling which appeared after they were exhausted by mental work; and persons who, in consequence of a fright, were subject to trembling for the rest of their lives.
VII
But it is in delirium tremens that fear and trembling together form the most awful torture, the most horrible punishment of human nature. During my life as a physician I have only seen three such cases, and the faces of the wretches float before me, covered, as it were, with a veil of profound melancholy.
I shall condense the observations which I made into a single picture, so as not to detain the reader too long amongst such scenes of misery.
Generally, one is called in haste to a patient who is vomiting, or who is thought to be seized with insanity. One finds a wan, emaciated man, who looks at us indifferently, or answers with a few impolite words in a dull, rough voice. Relatives, wife and children, who stand frightened around the bed, tell us that he has been immoderate in drinking, and had been brought home intoxicated the night before; that he had grumbled the whole night long, and did not rise in the morning because of excessive fatigue; that he had felt sick all day and had had no appetite, and that he had then begun to vomit. When he shows his tongue, we see that it is covered with a thick, whitish coat, as in catarrh of the stomach.