During that second year, Dr. “Conrad” asked for volunteers for drug-provings among the students: A drug was prepared for each prover with directions for taking, and whatever symptoms were experienced while taking it were to be recorded in a little book, whether we thought them due to the drug or not. The provers were enjoined not to compare notes, but to turn in their reports at a stated time. I was one of six to volunteer.
For a few days I had only the slightest symptoms to record, but after that there developed an intestinal disturbance which gradually became pronounced. I began to get interested, wondering if it was really the drug that was responsible—those tiny tasteless powders—so, doubting it, kept on with the medicine. I suppose I was a little skeptical because of a rumour that they always gave some of the provers saccharum lactis, and that not infrequently records were turned in with a long string of symptoms, when the provers had only been given sac. lac. Naturally I did not want to attribute symptoms to drug action if I were not taking a real drug; so, though growing worse and worse, I kept on with the proving. The day came for our examination in pathology by the very professor who had solicited the provings—our skeptical pessimist. Uncomfortably ill by that time, I could hardly hold out to take the examination. Miss Wilkins had insisted that if I did not go to see Dr. “Conrad” immediately afterwards, she would go herself, so as I handed in my paper, I told him I was ill, and would like to call at his office in the afternoon. I added that I was one of the drug-provers, but was not sure whether this illness had anything to do with what I had been taking. He bent upon me those scrutinizing eyes, his face stern but kindly, and said, “Poor child, why didn’t you tell me before? How have you sat through the examination? Go home at once, and come to me at two o’clock.”
That afternoon I went to his office on Commonwealth Avenue—a luxurious place, a side of life that, as students, we saw only from the outside, our entrée in Boston houses being chiefly in those of the Lynches, the Sullivans, and O’Gradys. The kind, fatherly look he bent upon me as he drew me in his office and listened to my confused, embarrassed tale, was worth it all. Weak and in pain, I was unable to tell a clear story. He snatched my note-book, read the symptoms, looking up every few minutes, then read on, after which he gave me a soothing talk, and I have loved him ever since. Though commending my zeal, he deplored the fact that I had carried it to the extent of suffering so much.
“No one else did it—no one else did it,” he scolded, half to himself. “They turned in their worthless notes before the time was up, pretending they had taken the drugs faithfully when I knew they hadn’t; some of them got symptoms on taking sac. lac.—a good list of them! but you wanted to be sure yourself—that is the only way to get at the truth.”
Who would not have been willing to suffer to get this from the stern Dr. “Conrad?” Rigidly prescribing my diet and rest, he gave me some medicine and sent me home in his carriage, calling on me that evening to my delight. In two days I was as well as ever. I learned later that it was mercury that I had proved, but in so weak a potency that he had been surprised at the results.
That same year I experimented with atropine in my eyes (a silly, risky thing to do), applying it just to see how I would look with the pupils widely dilated, little knowing how it would incapacitate me for my work. Putting in a tiny bit just before starting for College one morning, by the time I got there I could not see to take notes or to read, and it was only a day or two before “exams”!
For one of the meetings of our College Society, I was given the subject materia medica to treat in any way I chose. Having just been reading the “medicated novels” of Dr. Holmes—“Elsie Venner” and “The Guardian Angel”—I thought it would be fun to take a case described in one of them, as given in the nurse’s report, ask the students to diagnose it and prescribe, leading them at the start to think it a bona fide case. The one I chose, I myself diagnosed as one of globus hystericus, and decided what remedy I would give, were she a real patient. Then it occurred to me that it would be interesting to know what our professor in materia medica would prescribe for such a case in real life; and that it would add to the interest if I could tell the students that I would give them Prof. S——’s prescription after they had submitted theirs.
I had no intention of deceiving the professor when I first thought of going to him, but growing bold on arrival, as I handed him the paper with the symptoms copied off verbatim, told him I was especially anxious to prescribe carefully for this case, as it had come into my hands from a prominent old school physician.
As he read, his eyes twinkled at the nurse’s phraseology; he looked up at me once or twice, curiously, as I sat there scared, then, at what I had done. Seeing my pencilled diagnosis with a question mark at the bottom, he said: