On arriving home, I told my mother of my inability to sleep. The first night on my arrival home I did not, because, arriving in the night, I could get no medicine; but the next day I spoke to my mother about the matter, as I have stated, and she procured me some medicine. This I took for a short time, when I discontinued it without any difficulty. I found that I needed it no longer.
After this, for some time, my main and only trouble was with my stomach. Although I had a good appetite, and was so hungry in my mind that I could not see victuals removed from the table, or scarcely a bone thrown away, without feeling pained at the loss; I could not eat very much, as my stomach seemed so diminutive that it would contain but a small quantity, and what I did take into it seemed to turn to lead within me, or rather into a pound of tenpenny nails, determined to cut and grind its way to the outside. That is, it did not sour; my food digested (slowly and painfully), but from some cause it hurt me continually. I gradually became able to eat more; grew somewhat fleshy, and looked well; but my stomach hurt me, nevertheless, all the time.
I did not apply for a pension within a reasonable time after coming home, because my mother thought I was young, and would soon recover my health.
Alas! never was prophecy so contradicted or hope so defeated. For a year I suffered from my stomach, keeping wonderfully well up in strength. At the end of a year or more, I became afflicted with constant headache, viz., about 9 o’clock A. M., the headache would come on and continue during the day. From the time I was liberated from Southern prisons (and in fact long before I was released), up to the setting in of the daily headache, I had been occasionally afflicted with it. Now, headache became one of the most direful curses. From this time forward, for a year or more, I was on the down-hill road. My stomach was much worse than ever, and my headache became worse in proportion with my stomach. My body was very much debilitated; I suffered fearfully, wretchedly. From the ravages made on my entire physical system by constant headaches, and the terrible agonies and torments of my stomach, my mind became debilitated. In my extremity, I cried to God, and asked him why He so afflicted me! My sufferings were so intolerable and continuous, that my face became the reflected image of agony. My mother, God bless her! who could not conceive the uncommon suffering I was enduring, and imagining that I might have some trouble on my mind, begged me, in alarm, not to look so pain-stricken; that persons were noticing the appalling expression of my countenance.
The reader will please remember that I was making my own living, during all this time, as a clerk. I tried different physicians and remedies without avail. Nothing seemed to benefit me, and I quit trying. At last a physician in the town where I resided, in whom I had but little confidence, and who for six months past had been endeavoring to get my consent to allow him to treat my case, induced me to place myself under his professional care. None of the rest had benefited me, and he could but fail, and might do me some good. I would die if there were not a change soon, and I could but do this at the worst under his treatment. Besides, I wanted present relief from the most distracting pain. I was suffering daily torment and torture, with a body weak and wasted, and a constitution whose resisting power, before persistent and repeated assaults, had at last given way; my mind was become greatly impaired, and my spirits had sunk into a black midnight of despair.
“’Tis no time now to stickle over means and remedies; let him cure me who can, or let me die if I must,” I thought. Nevertheless, in going into this physician’s office, I emphatically charged him not to administer to me any opium or morphia, as I had a horror of such things.
I perceived that he was going to use, in my case, what was a new instrument in the practice there at that time, viz., the hypodermic syringe. “Oh, have no fear,” he replied, holding up at the same time a phial of clear and colorless fluid; “this is no opium or morphia; it is one of the simplest and most harmless things in the world; but it is a secret, and no one in the town knows anything about it except myself.” On this assurance, I allowed him to inject a dose into my arm. This first dose was too large, and nearly killed me or scared me to death, and I determined not to go back to him again. And I would have adhered to my determination, had he not accosted me at a hotel, about two weeks thereafter, and asked me why I had remained away; and on my telling him the reason, he entreated me to come back, saying, that as soon as he had ascertained the right dose for me, he would certainly cure me. God in heaven knows I wanted to be cured, and reasonably. I recommenced taking the injections then, and allowed him full liberty to do what he could for me.
Contemporaneously with the injections, though not by prescription from this physician, but with his approval, I commenced taking carbonate of iron.
This preparation of iron had been prescribed by another physician for one of my sisters, who was suffering from neuralgia, and with good results; so I thought it might probably have a beneficial effect in the case of my headache and the generally debilitated condition of my system. I took about one or two injections a week; sometimes, perhaps, I may have taken one or two more. The number was varied by the frequency or infrequency of the severer headaches. I did not go every day. I had headache every day, but only submitted to the injection when it manifested itself more severely than usual. The iron I took three times a day after meals. I thus particularly notice the iron, because it had considerable to do in forming an estimation of the results of this doctor’s treatment, which I made at a certain time. I continued the hypodermical treatment, taking about the same number of injections for a couple of months, when I found myself getting better, and in a much more substantial condition of health than I had been for many a long day, or even year.
I felt, indeed, better; but I observed one peculiarity in my case that was not comforting. It raised my suspicions, not having unlimited confidence in my physician. But should my suspicions turn out well founded, I argued, the great improvement in my health has justified my treatment, and I cannot see yet that I am in any danger. Let me go on a little while longer, until my health becomes permanently established, and then I will drop this doctor and his treatment. I found that the taking of my medicine had settled down into something like regularity, and when the time came around that I was restless, lacking spirit, and unable to do anything to any purpose till I had an injection.