MY PATIENTS STORY.
"Things are cruel and blind; their strength detains and deforms:
And the wearying wings of the mind still beat up the stream of their storms.
Still, as one swimming up stream, they strike out blind in the blast.
In thunders of vision and dream, and lightning of future and past.
We are baffled and caught in the current, and bruised upon edges of shoals;
As weeds or as reeds in the torrent of things are the wind-shaken souls."
Algernon Charles Swinburne.
I.
Perhaps I may have told you before, that at the time of which I speak, my Summer home—where I preferred to spend much more than half of the year—was on a sandy beach a few miles out of New York, and also that I had retired from active practice as a physician, even when I was in the city.
Notwithstanding these two facts, I was often called in consultation, both in and out of the city; and was occasionally compelled to take a case entirely into my own hands, through some accident or unforeseen circumstance.
It was one of these accidents which brought the patient whose story I am about to tell you, under my care.
I can hardly say now, why I retained the case instead of turning it over to some brother practitioner, as was my almost invariable habit; but for some reason I kept it in my own hands, and, as it was the only one for which I was solely responsible at the time, I naturally took more than ordinary interest in and paid more than usual attention to all that seemed to me to bear upon it.
As you know I am an "old school" or "regular" physician, although that did not prevent me from consulting with, and appreciating the strong points of many of those who were of other, and younger branches of the profession.