She was of opinion that more persons were killed by affections of the mind, than by intemperance, or by the sword; this she attempts to explain by some weak reasoning from a baseless theory; but the proofs which she adduces in support of the assertion are curious. Many persons she says, who in her own time had fallen under the King's displeasure, or even received a harsh word from him, had taken to their beds and died. It was not uncommon for wives who loved their husbands dearly, to die a few days after them; two such instances had occurred within the same week in the town in which she resided: and she adds the more affecting fact that the female slaves of the better kind (esclavas abiles) meaning perhaps those upon whom any care had been bestowed, were frequently observed to pine away as they grew up, and perish; and that this was still more frequent with those who had a child born to an inheritance of slavery. Mortified ambition, irremediable grief, and hopeless misery, had within her observation, produced the same fatal effect. The general fact is supported by Harvey's testimony. That eminent man said to Bishop Hacket that during the Great Rebellion, more persons whom he had seen in the course of his practice died of grief of mind than of any other disease. In France it was observed not only that nervous diseases of every kind became much more frequent during the revolution but cases of cancer also,—moral causes producing in women a predisposition to that most dreadful disease.
Our friend was fortunate enough to live in peaceful times, when there were no public calamities to increase the sum of human suffering. Yet even then, and within the limits of his own not extensive circle, he saw cases enough to teach him that it is difficult to minister to a mind diseased, but that for a worm in the core there is no remedy within the power of man.
He liked Doña Oliva for the humanity which her observations upon this subject implies. He liked her also for following the indications of nature in part of her practise; much the better he liked her for prescribing all soothing circumstances and all inducements to cheerfulness that were possible; and nothing the worse for having carried some of her notions to a whimsical extent. He had built an Infirmary in the air himself, others he said, might build Castles there.
It was not such an Infirmary as the great Hospital at Malta, where the Knights attended in rotation and administered to the patients, and where every culinary utensil was made of solid silver, such was the ostentatious magnificence of the establishment. The Doctor provided better attendance, for he had also built a Beguinage in the air, as an auxiliary institution; and as to the utensils he was of opinion that careful neatness was very much better than useless splendour. But here he would have given Doña Oliva's soothing system a fair trial, and have surrounded the patients with all circumstances that could minister to the comfort or alleviation of either a body or a mind diseased. The principal remedy in true medicine, said that Lady practitioner, is to reconcile the mind and body, or to bring them in accord with each other,—(componer el anima con el cuerpo:) to effect this you must administer contentment and pleasure to the mind, and comfort to the stomach and to the brain; the mind can only be reached by judicious discourse and pleasing objects; the stomach is to be comforted by restoratives; the brain by sweet odours and sweet sounds. The prospect of groves and gardens, the shade of trees, the flowing of water, or its gentle fall, music and cheerful conversation, were things which she especially advised. How little these circumstances would avail in the fiercer forms of acute diseases, or in the protracted evils of chronic suffering, the Doctor knew but too well. But he knew also that medical art was humanely and worthily employed, when it alleviated what no human skill could cure.
“So great,” says Dr. Currie, “are the difficulties of tracing out the hidden causes of the disorders to which this frame of ours is subject, that the most candid of the profession have allowed and lamented how unavoidably they are in the dark; so that the best medicines, administered by the wisest heads, shall often do the mischief they intend to prevent.” There are more reasons for this than Dr. Currie has here assigned. For not only are many of the diseases which flesh is heir to, obscure in their causes, difficultly distinguishable by their symptoms, and altogether mysterious in their effect upon the system, but constitutions may be as different as tempers, and their varieties may be as many and as great as those of the human countenance. Thus it is explained wherefore the treatment which proves successful with one patient, should fail with another, though precisely in the same stage of the same disease. Another and not unfrequent cause of failure is that the life of a patient may depend as much upon administering the right remedy at the right point of time, as the success of an alchemist was supposed to do upon seizing the moment of projection. And where constant attendance is not possible, or where skill is wanting, it must often happen that the opportunity is lost. This cause would not exist in the Columbian Infirmary, where the ablest Physicians would be always within instant call, and where the Beguines in constant attendance would have sufficient skill to know when that call became necessary.
A ship-captain, the Doctor used to say, when he approaches the coast of France from the Bay of Biscay, or draws near the mouth of the British Channel, sends down the lead into the sea, and from the appearance of the sand which adheres to its tallowed bottom, he is enabled to find upon the chart where he is, with sufficient precision for directing his course. Think, he would say, what an apparently impossible accumulation of experience there must have been, before the bottom of that sea, everywhere within soundings could be so accurately known, as to be marked on charts which may be relied on with perfect confidence! No formal series of experiments was ever instituted for acquiring this knowledge; and there is nothing in history which can lead us to conjecture about what time sailors first began to trust to it. The boasted astronomy of the Hindoos and Egyptians affords a feebler apparent proof in favour of the false antiquity of the world, than might be inferred from this practice. Now if experience in the Art of Healing had been treasured up with equal care, it is not too much to say that therapeutics might have been as much advanced, as navigation has been by preserving the collective knowledge of so many generations?1
1 The following fragments belong to the chapters which were to have treated on the Medical Science. They may therefore appropriately be appended to these chapters on Doña Oliva. I have only prefixed a motto from Butler.
“—The prince
Of Poets, Homer, sang long since,
A skilful leech is better far
Than half a hundred men of war.”
Such prescriptions as were composed of any part of the human body were reprobated by Galen, and he severely condemned Xenocrates for having introduced them, as being worse than useless in themselves, and wicked in their consequences. Yet these abominable ingredients continued in use till what may be called the Reformation of medicine in the Seventeenth Century. Human bones were administered internally as a cure for ulcers, and the bones were to be those of the part affected. A preparation called Aqua Divina was made by cutting in pieces the body of a healthy man who had died a violent death, and distilling it with the bones and intestines. Human blood was prescribed for epilepsy, by great authorities, but others equally great with better reason condemned the practice, for this among other causes, that it might communicate the diseases of the person from whom it was taken. Ignorant surgeons when they bled a patient used to make him drink the warm blood that he might not lose the life which it contained. The heart dried, and taken in powder was thought good in fevers, but consciencious practitioners were of opinion that it ought not to be used, because of the dangerous consequences which might be expected if such a remedy were in demand. It is not long since a Physician at Heidelberg prescribed human brains to be taken inwardly in violent fevers, and boasted of wonderful cures. And another German administered cat's entrails as a panacea!