This sudden aphasia in old people is not uncommon, and may be due to several causes, that all in one way or other affect the so-called “speech centre” of the brain. As the “writing centre” is situated in the very near vicinity, it is not surprising that a lesion that affects one generally also affects the other. That Johnson’s right hand was not also paralysed at the same time is rather unusual, because the left side of the brain which controls the right side of the body also contains the speech centre; and it is supposed that it does so because man has for many thousands of years been accustomed to use his right hand more than his left, wherefore the left side of his brain would naturally be more ready to acquire new functions than the right, which only controls the comparatively awkward left hand. If this theory be true it would rather seem to show that men were accustomed to use their right hands long before they could speak; and this indeed is quite probable.
The exact lesion would appear to have been that one of the cerebral arteries that supplied the left side of Johnson’s brain had for some reason been thrown into a state of spasm, and caused temporary softening of the brain owing to interference with its blood-supply. If an artery had actually burst on the site of a tiny aneurysm, as occasionally happens in cases of arteriosclerosis, the old man would not have recovered so soon, even temporarily. As it was, he seems to have recovered sufficiently by July to pay a visit to Dr. Langton at Rochester. The shock and terror induced by an attack of aphasia are generally very dreadful. I remember one elderly lady, who had always been of a most gentle and virtuous way of living, who one day suddenly sat up in bed with a scream, clutching at her bedclothes and at her throat and uttering meaningless noises like an ape. Twelve hours later she had for a time recovered her power of speech, and after lying musing for half an hour, said in her customary gentle voice, “I should like some fish; they say fish is good for the brain.” She had somewhere read that fish contains a large amount of phosphorus, which is supposed to be good for the brain—by patent-medicine vendors. But I shall never forget the scream of that poor lady, nor the look of terror that came over her gentle face.
Johnson’s terror led him to write a prayer for his recovery, done in Latin verse. “The lines were not very good, but I knew them to be not very good, so concluded that I was not impaired in my faculties.” There you see at once the supreme passion of the man—Learning—coming out in what he thought to be the very article of death.
Then, “in order to rouse the vocal organs, I took two drams. Wine has been celebrated for the production of eloquence, so I put myself into violent motion and I think repeated it; but all was in vain.” It is hardly fair to comment upon this action of a man bemused with terror and aphasia that probably wine was the very worst thing he could have taken; for it tends to raise the blood-pressure. Not that it made much difference; Death was focussing his eyes on Dr. Johnson; the call was coming, and no earthly power could avert it.
But apparently even Boswell nods; for after telling of Johnson’s terrible illness in 1783 he goes on to tell how in 1784 he was able to put a woman on his back and carry her home. Well, one simply does not believe it; the thing is impossible; Boswell must have got his dates mixed a little; for to carry a woman, even though she were starving and the man a giant, is no small feat; and if the man were very old and had just recovered from an attack of aphasia, it would be absolutely incredible. Really, wonderful though we men are—in no way more wonderful than in our power of believing nonsense—we are not such terrible fellows as some say.
After the paralytic stroke all the devils in hell seem to have settled upon the poor old gentleman, with their gout, dropsy, and continual fear of death. Probably the gout was simply another manifestation of the defect of metabolism—faulty chemical physiological process, or dystrophy—that had caused his high blood-pressure. The asthma and oppression in his chest were probably due to a failing heart; and thence also doubtless came the dropsy; for dropsy is not a disease—it is a symptom of many things, generally cardiac or renal. And his cough became exceedingly troublesome, possibly due to congestion of the base of his lungs that would be caused in a way much the same as caused the dropsy; he was becoming “water-logged.”
A rather remarkable thing is that, once having become filled up with dropsy, he got rid of it apparently suddenly. If I remember rightly Dr. Johnson was taking squills at the time, and squills is still used for getting rid of fluid from the body, though it has been supplanted by more efficient drugs. One might perhaps think that hope told Johnson a flattering tale, but he says expressly that he got rid of twenty pints. Queer things happen in dropsy, and even such a pseudo-miracle as Johnson’s is not unknown. Once water-logged with dropsy, legs, belly, lungs and all, it would have seemed to require a miracle to get him emptied, and miracles seldom happen.
The really wonderful thing is, however, that a man of so gloomy a temperament as the Great Cham should have retained such comparative cheerfulness of spirits as he had even after an experience so depressing as an attack of aphasia. He must have been a remarkably brave old man, which is quite in accordance with his strongly masculine character. And this discovery of the wrong dating of one of the most remarkable things that Boswell tells of him only makes his conduct more heroic; for if what I surmise is true, Miss Williams must have been alive and quarrelsome, ready to give Sam the rough side of her tongue for daring to carry home a woman of abandoned character. Cynics have said that to marry a woman is to marry a conscience; but it is even more terrible when the woman is not a man’s wife, but, old, blind, deaf, and quarrelsome, is dependent on his generosity for a living. She may probably consider it her duty to look after his morals as strictly as though she were his wife.