“Thank you,” said he; “you are a very ill man, and a fool besides. Good morning.” He forgot to ask for a fee, and I did not therefore find it necessary to escape payment by telling him I was a doctor.
Several weeks went by; my money was gone, my clothes were ragged, and, like my body, nearly worn out, and now I am an inmate of a hospital. To-day I feel weaker than when I first began to write. How it will end, I do not know. If I die, the doctor will get this pleasant history, and if I live, I shall burn it, and as soon as I get a little money I will set out to look for my sister. I dreamed about her last night. What I dreamed was not very agreeable. I thought it was night. I was walking up one of the vilest streets near my old office, and a girl spoke to me—a shameless, worn creature, with great sad eyes. Suddenly she screamed, “Brother, brother!” and then remembering what she had been, with her round, girlish, innocent face and fair hair, and seeing what she was now, I awoke and saw the dim light of the half-darkened ward.
I am better to-day. Writing all this stuff has amused me and, I think, done me good. That was a horrid dream I had. I suppose I must tear up all this biography.
“Hello, nurse! The little boy—boy—”
“GOOD HEAVENS!” said the nurse, “he is dead! Dr. Alston said it would happen this way. The screen, quick—the screen—and let the doctor know.”
THE CASE OF GEORGE DEDLOW
The following notes of my own case have been declined on various pretests by every medical journal to which I have offered them. There was, perhaps, some reason in this, because many of the medical facts which they record are not altogether new, and because the psychical deductions to which they have led me are not in themselves of medical interest. I ought to add that a great deal of what is here related is not of any scientific value whatsoever; but as one or two people on whose judgment I rely have advised me to print my narrative with all the personal details, rather than in the dry shape in which, as a psychological statement, I shall publish it elsewhere, I have yielded to their views. I suspect, however, that the very character of my record will, in the eyes of some of my readers, tend to lessen the value of the metaphysical discoveries which it sets forth.
I am the son of a physician, still in large practice, in the village of Abington, Scofield County, Indiana. Expecting to act as his future partner, I studied medicine in his office, and in 1859 and 1860 attended lectures at the Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia. My second course should have been in the following year, but the outbreak of the Rebellion so crippled my father’s means that I was forced to abandon my intention. The demand for army surgeons at this time became very great; and although not a graduate, I found no difficulty in getting the place of assistant surgeon to the Tenth Indiana Volunteers. In the subsequent Western campaigns this organization suffered so severely that before the term of its service was over it was merged in the Twenty-first Indiana Volunteers; and I, as an extra surgeon, ranked by the medical officers of the latter regiment, was transferred to the Fifteenth Indiana Cavalry. Like many physicians, I had contracted a strong taste for army life, and, disliking cavalry service, sought and obtained the position of first lieutenant in the Seventy-ninth Indiana Volunteers, an infantry regiment of excellent character.
On the day after I assumed command of my company, which had no captain, we were sent to garrison a part of a line of block-houses stretching along the Cumberland River below Nashville, then occupied by a portion of the command of General Rosecrans.