October 25.—The very day on which my family came up, Lady Hester took to her bed from illness, and never quitted it until March in the following year. She had now laboured under pulmonary catarrh for six or seven years, which, subsiding in the summer months, returned every winter, with increased violence, and at this time presented some very formidable symptoms.
November 9.—About six o’clock, just as I had dined, a servant came to say that her ladyship wished to see me. On going into her bed-room, which, as usual, was but faintly lighted, I ran my head against a long packthread, which crossed from the wall, where it was tied, to her bed, and was held in her hand. “Take care, doctor,” said she; “these stupid beasts can’t understand what I want: but you must help me. I want to pull out a tooth. I have tied a string to it and to the wall: and you, with a stick or something, must give it a good blow, so as to jerk my tooth out.”
Knowing her disposition, I said, “Very well, and that I would do as she wished. But, if you like,” added I, “to have it extracted secundem artem, I fancy I can do it for you.”—“Oh! doctor, have you nerve enough? and, besides, I don’t like those crooked instruments: but, however, go and get them.” I had seen in the medicine-chest a dentist’s instrument, and, returning with it, I performed the operation; with the result of which she was so much pleased, that she insisted upon having another tooth out. The relief was so instantaneous, that the second tooth was no sooner gone than she commenced talking as usual.
The cough with which Lady Hester had been so long indisposed occasionally assumed symptoms of water in the chest. Sudden starts from a lying posture, with a sense of suffocation, which, for a moment, as she described it, was like the gripe of a hand across her throat, made me very uneasy about her. Her strong propensity to bleeding, to which she had resorted four or five times a year for the last twenty years, had brought on a state of complete emaciation, and what little blood was left in her body seemed to have no circulation in the extremities, where her veins, on a deadly white skin, showed themselves tumefied and knotty.
It was difficult to reason with her on medical subjects, especially in her own case. She had peculiar systems, drawn from the doctrine of people’s stars. She designated her own cough as an asthma, and had, for some time, doctored herself much in her own way. Such is the balmy state of the air in Syria, that, had she trusted to its efficacy alone, and lived with habits of life like other people, nothing serious was to be dreaded from her illness. But she never breathed the external air, except what she got by opening the windows, and took no exercise but for about ten minutes or a quarter of an hour daily, when, on quitting her bed-room to go to the saloon, she made two or three turns in the garden to see her flowers and shrubs, which seemed to be the greatest enjoyment she had.
She prescribed almost entirely for herself, and only left me the duties of an apothecary; or, if she adopted any of my suggestions, it was never at the moment, but always some days afterwards, when it seemed to her that she was acting, not on my advice, but on the suggestions of her own judgment. She was accustomed to say, if any doubts were expressed of the propriety of what she was going to do, “I suppose I am grown a fool in my old age. When princes and statesmen have relied on my judgment, I am not going to give it up at this time of life.”
But it was not for herself alone that she thus obstinately prescribed; she insisted also upon doing the same for everybody else, morally as well as medically. One of the prominent features in her character was the inclination she had to give advice to all persons indiscriminately about their conduct, their interests, and their complaints: and, in this latter respect, she prescribed for everybody. I was not exempt, and I dreaded her knowing anything about the most trifling indisposition that affected me. Greatly addicted to empiricism, she would propose the most strange remedies; and, fond of the use of medicine herself, she would be out of humour if others showed an aversion to it. There was no surer way of securing her good graces than to put one’s self under her management for some feigned complaint, and then to attribute the cure to her skill. Hundreds of knaves have got presents out of her in this way. For they had but to say that, during their illness, they had lost an employment, or spent their ready money, no matter what—they were sure to be remunerated tenfold above their pretended losses. Let it however be said to her honour, that, among the number she succoured in real sickness, many owned with gratitude the good she had done: and no surer proof of this can be given than the universal sorrow that pervaded half the population of Sayda, when, in the course of this her illness, she was reported to be past recovery.
It was in compliance with this foible of hers that, when I returned to Dar Jôon, after being laid up with a bad leg, she would insist on my wearing a laced cloth boot, which she ordered to be made, unknown to me; on my washing the œdematous leg in wine with laurel leaves steeped in it; and on sitting always, when with her, with my leg resting on a cushion placed on a stool. Her tyranny in such matters was very irksome; for it was clothed in terms of so much feeling and regard, and of such commiseration for one’s overrated sufferings, that, to escape the accusation of ingratitude and bad breeding, it was impossible to avoid entire acquiescence in every one of her kind commands.
She was ever complaining that she could get nothing to eat, nothing to support a great frame like hers: yet she seldom remained one half hour, from sunrise to sunset, or from sunset to sunrise (except during sleep), without taking nourishment of some kind. I never knew any human being who took food so frequently: but, from that very frequency, it might be doubted whether she had a relish for anything. And may not this, in some measure, account for her frequent ill-humour? for nothing sours people’s temper more than an overloaded stomach, and nothing promotes cheerfulness more than a light one.
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