While thus occupied, the debilitating air of the season weighed upon my health and spirits. I had been affected for about three days with what I regarded as the ordinary complaints of the season, when one night, after my family had retired, I found myself suddenly very ill—my symptoms being coldness, debility, and spasmodic pains. I believed myself to be attacked with cholera. I efficiently practised the artificial respiration in fresh air as before described. Gaining strength as I proceeded, I soon found a death-like coldness giving place to genial warmth. Violent exercise, with artificial breathing, was kept up some time, with such rests and full free breathings as nature required; after which, I slept, perspired profusely, and was well in the morning.
This was an occurrence which sunk deep into my mind; and the more so, as I could not speak much of it, for the truth was too improbable to be believed. But the successful issue of this, my first experiment upon the dreaded disease, prepared me to act with boldness and efficiency in a case which occurred in my own house about a week after.
On the 14th of August, 1849, Jane Phayre, an Irish woman in my service, of about twenty-five years of age, having been ill for four days with diarrhœa, was suddenly struck with what the French call cholera foudroyant—from fright. Alarmed by unwonted sounds near her window in a basement room, she mounted the window-seat to look out at the top sash, and found her face close to that of a man dying of cholera, who in his death-cramps was brought from a steamboat on a litter, and thus rested upon the pavement. The cover was lifted from his face, and the sight and the smell struck her with faintness and trembling; and with difficulty she reached her bed. I was called to go to her quickly by Eliza Fagan, who said that Jane was very bad. She had a clay-cold death-look, and a frightful blackness around her eyes. Her face, as I saw it, was livid, pinched in features, and corpse-like, and her pulse but a feeble flutter; and she seemed only to breathe from the top of her lungs. She tried, as she afterwards told me, to say, “I am dying,” but her speech was husky and inarticulate. She says her sight and hearing were gone; and while Eliza and I were dragging her out of doors, she could not see the window, and did not feel her feet. We placed her in an upright position, with her back resting against a board-wall, a fresh breeze blowing full in her face. Her senses were now partially restored. I told her to breathe violently, for she must get the bad air out of her lungs and the good air in; and I showed her how she must do it. At first she said, “I can’t, for something rises up in the inside.” When I told her, sternly, that her life depended on it, and she must, she tried to obey me. At first, it gave her severe headache, but as soon as deep breathing was fairly begun, while I was watching her face with intense anxiety, the color changed from the clay-cold death-look to the full flush of the warm hue of life, and she joyfully exclaimed, “Oh! I feel well!”
When the removal of carbonic acid gas had made way for oxygen to be brought to the yet uninjured lungs, the carbon of the venous blood ignited, the motive power was furnished, the blood was again moved forward into the arterial system, and the dammed up venous current, receiving the suction force, rushed on so violently as at times nearly to produce suffocation; but the struggle was soon over, and the lungs, free both from carbonic acid gas and an unnatural quantity of venous blood, once more received pure air—and to the relieved sufferer respiration became delightful—the circulation passed freely through an unbroken system—and THE CHOLERA WAS CURED.
Was there, in the whole wide world, another person besides myself who would have taken such a living corpse, dragged it out of doors, and set it upright, on feet which could not feel, with the expectation that it might breathe out death, breathe in life, and be restored? The result is a proof, a posteriori; that the theory on which the experiment was made is true.
Other cases occurred, where, under different circumstances, cures of cholera were effected. One, as instantaneous, and in some respects as remarkable as that of Jane Phayre, was that of my friend and former pupil, Mrs. Gen. Gould, of Rochester, who sent for me, believing herself to be dying of cholera. I have her letter, which, by permission, is published in my work on Respiration; and also a letter from her physician, Dr. Bloss, of Troy, testifying that her disease was cholera, and that he had little hope of her restoration. This letter is published in the appendix of a report on my theory, read in Buffalo, August 8th, 1851, to a convention of the New York State Association of Teachers.
In my journeying to New York city, to attend their previous convention in August, 1850, an accident obliged me to walk for some distance, in the middle of a hot day. The convention sat in Hope Chapel, which was poorly ventilated; and in the evening, I sat under a large gas-burner. On entering my room at the New-York Hotel, which was on the ground floor, situated where the only air was from a confined, central enclosure, I perceived at the only window a strong smell of fresh paint from the outer walls, so that I was obliged to close it. Being excessively fatigued, I slept heavily—till at early dawn I awaked to find myself in a dying state. Attempting to move my arms, they were like lead by my side—and my breath was but a feeble gasp. Without the knowledge of my theory—my bane, as many of my friends have thought—I should then have had no antidote. But I knew where was the destroying agent, and what was the only means by which I had a chance of removing it; and I used the little strength I had left to breathe deeper, and then to strive for a better position. Long and doubtful was the struggle. It was ten o’clock when, with tottering steps, I got into a carriage, and sought the free fresh air, which enabled me to take a little food. In the evening, I went into the Teacher’s Convention, having first ordered from my publisher a sufficient number of my books on Respiration to present one to each member; and then, at my request, a Committee of Investigation was appointed by the convention to report on my theory. They reported favorably to the succeeding convention at Buffalo, which adopted the report, and I published and circulated it. This committee I had been allowed to choose, and it consisted of my friend, Prof. Twiss—the first believer in the theory—and Mr. Fellows, that Professor of Natural Philosophy, who formerly assisted in making my apparatus.
Mr. Fellows carried the report to Buffalo, and when he read it in the convention, editors immediately came to him to request copies for the press. But, by the influence of physicians, they afterwards declined it when offered. It seemed to be the general plan of the regular faculty (in the Eastern, not the Western, States) to put the theory into a condition resembling the algide state of cholera, where it would die of coldness; but, by the aid of Divine Providence, it will, like its author, restore itself by its own inherent vitality—the vitality of immortal truth.