He still kept his fingers on the pulse, gazing into the sick man's eyes, till Mr. Wittingham could have boxed his ears, and at length he said,
"The draught must be repeated every two hours if you do not sleep, so that you had better have somebody sit up with you to give it you."
"I will have no such thing," said Mr. Wittingham, "I can't bear to have people pottering about in my room all night; I can take the draughts very well myself if they are put down by me."
"But they must be shaken before taken," said Mr. Slattery.
"Well, then, I can shake them," said Mr. Wittingham; and the worthy surgeon, finding his patient obstinate, gave up the point. He proceeded to ask a variety of questions, however, to which he received nothing but gruff and grumbling replies, the worthy gentleman principally insisting upon receiving something which would relieve the great pain he felt in his side. Thereupon Mr. Slattery undertook to explain to him all the various causes which might produce that pain; but the confused crowd of gall-bladders and gall-stones, and indurated livers, and kidneys, and ducts, and glands, conveyed very little tangible information to the mind of his hearer, and only served to puzzle, alarm, and irritate him. At length, however, the surgeon promised and vowed that he would send him all manner of remedies for his evils, and spoke in such a confident tone of his being better on the next day, or the day after, that he left him more composed. The housekeeper followed Mr. Slattery out of the room, but did not think fit to make any observation till they reached the foot of the stairs, when she touched Mr. Slattery gently on the arm and beckoned him into the dining-room, "He seems in a bad way, Sir," said the housekeeper.
"A case of jaundice, Mrs. Billiter," replied the surgeon, raising his eyebrows, "which is never very pleasant."
"But I want to know if there is any danger, Mr. Slattery," continued Mrs. Billiter, "it is very necessary that people should be aware."
"Why, there is always danger in every disease," answered the surgeon, who abominated a straightforward answer to such questions; but then, bethinking himself, and seeing that it might be better to be a little more explicit, he added, "Jaundice, even the green, or black jaundice, as it is sometimes called, which your master has, is not in itself by any means a dangerous disease; but there are accidents, which occur in the progress of an illness, that may produce very fatal results, sometimes in a moment. This is by no means uncommon in jaundice. You see the cause of that yellow, or green tint of the skin and eyes is this, either in consequence of biliary calculi, or the construction of the ducts leading from the gall-bladder, or pressure upon the gall-bladder itself. The bile is prevented from flowing, as it naturally does, into the intestinal canal."
"Lord 'a mercy," cried Mrs. Billiter, "what do I know of all such stuff? I never heard of people having canals in their inside before, or ducks either, except when they had eaten them roasted; and that I'll swear my master hasn't for the last two months. Gall he has, sure enough, and bitterness too, as the scripture says."
"Wait a moment, wait a moment, and you will see it all clearly directly," said the worthy surgeon. "As I have said, the bile being thus prevented from flowing in its natural course is absorbed into the vascular system; and, as long as it is deposited merely on the mucous membrane, showing itself, as we see, in the discolouration of the cuticle, no harm ensues; but the deposition of the smallest drop of bile on the membranes of the brain acts as the most virulent poison on the whole nervous system, and sudden death very frequently follows, sometimes in five minutes, sometimes in an hour or two. Now this was the reason why I wished you to sit up with him to-night; but, as he wont hear of it, it can't be helped; and one thing is certain, that even if you were there, you could do no good, should such a thing occur; for I know no remedial means any more than for the bite of a rattlesnake."