I.
COLVIN ARMSTRONG tried to take up his pen with an air of happiness and relief, for it was the last chapter of his great work which he was about to commence. But the effort failed, and he leaned back in his chair, thoroughly tired out—too jaded to be brisk or energetic.
It was not his professional work that tired him. A London surgeon, with a magnificent reputation, he had more than enough to do; but he was only forty, and his constitution was of iron. Work agreed with him: it was Thought that utterly prostrated him at times. No sooner was his last engagement fulfilled, or his last patient despatched, than he retired to his library and gave himself up to the great psychological problem that racked his brains. Night brought a short relief: he slept from twelve till six; but morning renewed his wrestlings, and it was only the necessity of attending to his surgery that freed him from the incessant train of thought. Would that his head were as cool as his strong, firm hands!
It was the Mystery of Human Pain that was haunting him. Until two years back he had never given such questions a thought, but then the problem began to force itself upon him. How was it that so many suffered a living martyrdom, whilst he himself never knew a moment’s pain? How was it that, having no personal knowledge of pain, he nevertheless felt such an overpowering sympathy with those who suffered, and had such an instinctive inborn gift of giving relief? And then the larger, less personal questions: Was there any guiding hand allotting pain to innocent mortals? Were they really innocent? If there was design in it all, from whom came the design, and what was its purpose? Was it for good, or evil, or both? If no Providence guided humanity, what was the origin of pain? Why was it allowed to be? And so on, in an endless train of thought, one problem suggesting ten others, till the subject broadened out to the doors of Eternity itself, and the mind reeled before its own imaginings.
Vaccinating the Baby
Armstrong flew to his books for assistance, and primed himself with the ideas of the metaphysicians; but he was not satisfied, and a strong impulse led him to try his own hand at solving the mystery. Gradually, after much hard reading and thinking, he evolved a theory which, though far from satisfactory, seemed ampler and better than the ideas of the old philosophers; and then, slowly and laboriously, he committed it to paper. As the work grew, he became more convinced of the truth which seemed to lurk in his views, the foundation of real discovery on which his theses were based. Something of his marvellous insight into disease and distortion seemed to have entered into the book, and he was eager to give it to the world.