CHAPTER XXVIII. THE ‘DREAM OF DEATH’
‘It was already near four o’clock ere I bethought me of making any preparation for my lecture. The day had been, throughout, one of those heavy and sultry ones that autumn so often brings in our climate, and I felt from this cause much oppressed and disinclined to exertion, independently of the fact that I had been greatly over-fatigued during the preceding week, some cases of a most trying and arduous nature having fallen to my lot—one of which, from the importance of the life to a young and dependent family, had engrossed much of my attention, and aroused in me the warmest anxiety for success. In this frame of mind I was entering my carriage to proceed to the lecture-room, when an unsealed note was put into my hands; I opened it hastily, and read that poor H——-, for whom I was so deeply interested, had just expired. I was greatly shocked. It was scarcely an hour since I had seen him; and from the apparent improvement since my former visit, I had ventured to speak most encouragingly, and had even made some jesting allusions to the speedy prospect of his once more resuming his place at hearth and board. Alas! how short-lived were my hopes destined to be! how awfully was my prophecy to be contradicted.
‘No one but him who has himself experienced it knows anything of the deep and heartfelt interest a medical man takes in many of the cases which professionally come before him. I speak here of an interest perfectly apart from all personal regard for the patient, or his friends; indeed, the feeling I allude to has nothing in common with this, and will often be experienced as thoroughly for a perfect stranger as for one known and respected for years. To the extreme of this feeling I was ever a victim. The heavy responsibility, often suddenly and unexpectedly imposed; the struggle for success, when success was all but hopeless; the intense anxiety for the arrival of those critical periods which change the character of a malady, and divest it of some of its dangers or invest it with new ones; the despondence when that period has come only to confirm all the worst symptoms, and shut out every prospect of recovery; and, last of all, that most trying of all the trying duties of my profession, the breaking to the perhaps unconscious relatives that my art has failed, that my resources are exhausted, and, in a word, that there is no longer a hope—these things have preyed on me for weeks, for months long, and many an effort have I made in secret to combat this feeling, but without the least success, till at last I absolutely dreaded the very thought of being summoned to a dangerous and critical illness. It may then be believed how very heavily the news I had just received came upon me; the blow, too, was not even lessened by the poor consolation of my having anticipated the result and broken the shock to the family. I was still standing with the half-opened note in my hands, when I was aroused by the coachman asking, I believe for the third time, whither he should drive. I bethought me for an instant, and said, “To the lecture-room.”
‘When in health, lecturing had ever been to me more of an amusement than a labour; and often, in the busy hours of professional visiting, have I longed for the time when I should come before my class, and divesting my mind of all individual details, launch forth into the more abstract and speculative doctrines of my art. It so chanced, too, that the late hour at which I lectured, as well as the subjects I adopted, usually drew to my class many of the advanced members of the profession, who made this a lounge after the fatigues of the morning.
‘Now, however, I approached this duty with fear and trembling; the events of the morning had depressed my mind greatly, and I longed for rest and retirement. The passing glance I threw at the lecture-room through the half-opened door showed it to be crowded to the very roof, and as I walked along the corridor I heard the name of some foreign physician of eminence, who was among my auditory. I cannot describe the agitation of mind I felt at this moment. My confusion, too, became greater as I remembered that the few notes I had drawn up were left in the pocket of the carriage, which I had just dismissed, intending to return on foot. It was already considerably past the usual hour, and I was utterly unable to decide how to proceed. I hastily drew out a portfolio that contained many scattered notes and hints for lectures, and hurriedly throwing my eye across them, discovered some singular memoranda on the subject of insanity. On these I resolved at once to dilate a little, and eke out, if possible, the materials for a lecture.
‘The events of the remainder of that day are wrapped in much obscurity to my mind, yet I well remember the loud thunder of applause which greeted me on entering the lecture-room, and how, as for some moments I appeared to hesitate, they were renewed again and again, till at last, summoning resolution, I collected myself sufficiently to open my discourse. I well remember, too, the difficulty the first few sentences cost me—the doubts, the fears, the pauses, which beset me at every step as I went on—my anxiety to be clear and accurate in conveying my meaning making me recapitulate and repeat, till I felt myself, as it were, working in a circle. By degrees, however, I grew warmed as I proceeded; and the evident signs of attention my auditory exhibited gave me renewed courage, while they impressed me with the necessity to make a more than common exertion. By degrees, too, I felt the mist clearing from my brain, and that even without effort my ideas came faster, and my words fell from me with ease and rapidity. Simile and illustration came in abundance, and distinctions which had hitherto struck me as the most subtle and difficult of description I now drew with readiness and accuracy. Points of an abstruse and recondite nature, which under other circumstances I should not have wished to touch upon, I now approached fearlessly and boldly, and felt, in the very moment of speaking, that they became clearer and clearer to myself. Theories and hypotheses which were of old and acknowledged acceptance I glanced hurriedly at as I went on, and with a perspicuity and clearness I never before felt exposed their fallacies and unmasked their errors. I thought I was rather describing events, things actually passing before my eyes at the instant, than relating the results of a life’s experience and reflection. My memory, usually a defective one, now carried me back to the days of my early childhood; and the whole passages of a life lay displayed before me like a picture. If I quoted, the very words of the author rushed to my mind as palpably as though the page lay open before me. I have still some vague recollection of an endeavour I made to trace the character of the insanity in every case to some early trait of the individual in childhood, when, overcome by passion or overbalanced by excitement, the faculties run wild into all those excesses which in after years develop eccentricities of character, and in some weaker temperaments aberrations of intellect. Anecdotes illustrating this novel position came thronging to my mind; and events in the early years of some who subsequently died insane, and seemed to support my theory, came rushing to my memory.
‘As I proceeded, I became gradually more and more excited; the very ease and rapidity with which my ideas suggested themselves increased the fervour of my imaginings, till at last I felt my words come without effort and spontaneously, while there seemed a commingling of my thoughts which left me unable to trace connection between them, though I continued to speak as fluently as before. I felt at this instant a species of indistinct terror of some unknown danger which hung over me, yet which it was impossible to avert or to avoid. I was like one who, borne on the rapid current of a fast-flowing river, sees the foam of the cataract before him, yet waits passively for the moment of his destruction, without an effort to save. The power which maintained my mind in its balance had gradually forsaken me, and shapes and fantasies of every odd and fantastic character flitted around and about me. The ideas and descriptions my mind had conjured up assumed a living, breathing vitality, and I felt like a necromancer waving his wand over the living and the dead. I paused; there was a dead silence in the lecture-room. A thought rushed like a meteor-flash across my brain, and bursting forth into a loud laugh of hysteric passion, I cried, “And I, and I too am a maniac!” My class rose like one man; a cry of horror burst through the room. I know no more.
‘I was ill, very ill, and in bed. I looked around me—every object was familiar to me. Through the half-closed window-shutter there streamed one long line of red sunlight; I felt it was evening. There was no one in the room, and as I endeavoured to recall my scattered thoughts sufficiently to find out why I was thus, there came an oppressive weakness over me. I closed my eyes and tried to sleep, and was roused by some one entering the room. It was my friend Dr. G———; he walked stealthily towards my bed, and looked at me fixedly for several minutes. I watched him closely, and saw that his countenance changed as he looked on me; I felt his hand tremble slightly as he placed it on my wrist, and heard him mutter to himself in a low tone, “My God! how altered!” I heard now a voice at the door, saying in a soft whisper, “May I come in?” The doctor made no reply, and my wife glided gently into the apartment. She looked deathly pale, and appeared to have been weeping; she leaned over me, and I felt the warm tears fall one by one upon my forehead. She took my hand within both of hers, and putting her lips to my ear, said, “Do you know me, William?” There was a long pause. I tried to speak, but I could not. I endeavoured to make some sign of recognition, and stared her fully in the face; but I heard her say, in a broken voice, “He does not know me now”; and then I felt it was in vain. The doctor came over, and taking my wife’s hand, endeavoured to lead her from the room. I heard her say, “Not now, not now”; and I sank back into a heavy unconsciousness.
‘I awoke from what appeared to have been a long and deep sleep. I was, however, unrefreshed and unrested. My eyes were dimmed and clouded, and I in vain tried to ascertain if there was any one in the room with me. The sensation of fever had subsided, and left behind the most depressing debility. As by degrees I came to myself, I found that the doctor was sitting beside my bed; he bent over me, and said, “Are you better, William?” Never until now had my inability to reply given me any pain or uneasiness; now, however, the abortive struggle to speak was torture. I thought and felt that my senses were gradually yielding beneath me, and a cold shuddering at my heart told me that the hand of death was upon me. The exertion now made to repel the fatal lethargy must have been great, for a cold, clammy perspiration broke profusely over my body; a rushing sound, as if of water, filled my ears; a succession of short convulsive spasms, as if given by an electric machine, shook my limbs. I grasped the doctor’s hand firmly in mine, and starting to the sitting posture I looked wildly about me. My breathing became shorter and shorter, my grasp relaxed, my eyes swam, and I fell back heavily in the bed. The last recollection of that moment was the muttered expression of my poor friend G———, saying, “It is over at last.”