The siege of Paris, which city he left in one of the last trains before the blockade commenced, and the prolongation of the war, induced him to return home. In the United States he found offers from several publishers awaiting him, which would more than occupy him for a full year. There was a new edition of his “Therapeutics” demanded, and a revision of both “The Physical Life of Woman” and “The Transmission of Life.” A New England firm urgently pressed him to superintend the production of several hygienic works, and secured him as literary adviser to their house. He assumed the editorship of the “Half-Yearly Compendium of Medical Science,” and also of a “Physician's Annual,” besides undertaking a number of articles for the periodical press, both scientific and popular.
To this active literary life he devoted the year 1871; but at its close felt more strongly than ever that he must give himself several years of studious quiet, in order to accomplish his best. Refusing, therefore, any further engagements, he sailed for Europe again, late in 1871, and did not return this time until the spring of 1875. In this period, of more than three years, he visited almost all the principal cities of Europe, and enjoyed the friendship of many eminent men at London, St. Petersburg, Vienna, and Paris. Reading, visiting hospitals, and attending clinics, he accumulated a mass of material which he designed to work up into future literary enterprises.
With these collected stores he returned to the United States early in 1875, and set to work with his wonted energy. A new and much enlarged edition of the “Therapeutics” was sent to press; a “Handbook of Popular Medicine,” designed to give, in simple language, the domestic treatment of disease, the rules for nursing the sick, selected receipts for diet and medicinal purposes, and the outlines of anatomy and physiology, was put in the hands of a publisher; a Synopsis of Pharmacy and Materia Medica, a work of enormous labor, was well under way; and other literary projects were actively planned; when, suddenly, the summons came which, in an instant, with the shears of fate, slit the strand of this activity. The rest of the story may be told in the words of the biographer appointed by the Medical Society of the County of Philadelphia to prepare a memoir of his life:—
“While earnestly laboring to prepare for the press his literary collections, he suffered a severe blow by the sudden death of a person to whom he was deeply attached. Over-work and this emotional shock produced a result likely enough to occur in one of his ardent temperament. One afternoon, while engaged in writing, he fell, unconscious, from his chair, and for several days lay in a very critical condition. On recovering his powers, it was evident his brain had suffered a serious lesion. The old energy and love of labor had completely gone; even the capacity for work seemed absent. Marked melancholy followed, characterized before long by avoidance of friends and the loss of a desire of life. This occurred with increasing force until it led to his death, on July 1, 1876, through some toxic agent, the nature of which was not ascertained.
“Thus early, and thus sadly, terminated a career of unusual brilliancy and promise.
“It is probable that much that he has written will be read with pleasure and instruction by future generations; and the memory of his genial disposition, his entertaining conversation, and earnest sense of professional honor, will long be cherished by those of his contemporaries who enjoyed his friendship.”—Transactions of the Medical Society of the State of Pennsylvania, vol. xi, p. 720.
Various tributes were paid to his memory by the societies with which he was connected, and by the scientific journals to which he had been a contributor. One of these, after narrating some of the circumstances attending his decease, spoke as follows:—
“Thus did our unfortunate associate close his short but brilliant career. The emotions, the tender sentiments he has described with such a magical pen, he felt himself with an unmatched keenness. They mastered his whole frame with an intensity surpassing all romance. His descriptions of the passions, descriptions which have been the wonder of thousands, such is their fire and temper, were not rhetorical studies, but the ebullition of a soul sensitive to their lightest breath, and not shunning their wildest tempests.
“The genius which dictated the lines he has left us is not to be judged by the conventionalities which suit the cold temperaments of ordinary men; there is a strong vein of egotism in most devotion; but here was one who felt, 'all is lost, when love is lost.'”
This extract well sets forth the extraordinary depth of his sentiments, and the fervor of his feelings. It may be added that these mental traits were not generally ascribed to him by casual or ordinary associates. He was, in manners and bearing, evidently not one who sought friendships or displayed to the general gaze the current of his thoughts. Consequently, of intimates he had but few, and was considered by those whose intercourse with him was superficial, to be much more of an intellectual than of an emotional type of character.