THE SURGEON'S TALES.
THE CHERRY-STONE.
I have always been anxious to avoid giving publicity to details of my profession which might harrow the feelings of mankind—than which, I believe, nothing is more easy of accomplishment by those who are, as I am, in the daily exercise of painful operations on the human body. Pain has been gifted to man as an inheritance, so ample, in so many forms and complexions, in so many directions, that we have only to think, and we feel it—we have only to look, and we see it—we have only to speak or act, and we rouse it. Yet so wonderfully are we constituted, that we do not hate it more than we love it; while we are all engaged in the general endeavours to banish it and conceal it, we have such a craving appetite for it, in the second-hand form of narrative, that we gloat over pictures of suffering with the feelings of an epicure, and seek and call for the stimulus of sighs, and groans, and tears, with an avidity only equalled by our desire of personal happiness. A final cause might be traced in this extraordinary feature of the human mind, if we were curious to know the ways of the Almighty, the modes he has had recourse to, to fit us for life, and prepare us for death; but this is not my object, nor, while I continue to draw pictures from life—charged with a moral that may instruct, truth that may edify, or results that may show there is good in evil, and wonderful deliverances from apparently irremediable wo—is it my desire to minister to the mysterious appetite for sorrow, according to its wants, or the abilities which a long experience might enable me to exercise with greater effect than many sensitive minds might approve.
Some time ago, I had been on a visit to a neighbouring town, where I had been called to give my professional advice to a patient who had more faith to place in me than in his neighbouring practitioners. I was returning in the stage-coach, along with a number of other passengers, when my attention was directed to a poor woman sitting by me, with a young girl in her lap, apparently in great distress. The face of the invalid, who appeared to be about twelve years of age, was covered by a white napkin, which her mother, with a careful hand, lifted from time to time, to see how her daughter (for such she turned out to be) was affected by the motion of the vehicle. Two or three people around, from the same town, and who seemed to know the history of the pair, evinced a greater degree of anxiety and curiosity about the state of the poor girl than might have been expected from an ordinary case of illness. They spoke to each other in a low tone; and I could hear my own name mentioned in such a manner as indicated plainly that they did not know me. Though I had not been a professional man, and had not had my curiosity roused by the mention of my name, I could not have refrained from inquiring into the state of the little victim of so much disease, and the object of so much solicitude. Turning round, I asked the mother if she would allow me to remove the napkin, and look at her whose face it covered. She assented with a ready, anticipative willingness; and I lifted softly the white covering. The sight was extraordinary, even to me, who was in the habit of daily seeing strange faces, strangely marked by the powers of the fell fiends that feed on the lacerated feelings of pain-stricken mortals. The girl, though twelve years of age, was reduced to the size and weight of a child of half her little period of life. Her face was as white as the snow-coloured covering which shaded it; her eyelids were closed, as if she were in a deep slumber; her lips, wide apart, were as white as her cheek; and, notwithstanding of the change in all the natural lineaments of her countenance, there was such a regularity, or rather beauty of outline, lying in the calmness and composure of what one of fancy might conceive of a sleeping sylph, that I felt my sympathies more strongly roused by what may be termed the poetical accidents of the patient, than could have been effected by the mere aspect of a cruel disease.
As I sat looking at the face of the half-lifeless being, and musing a little on the supposed nature of her complaint, previously to an inquiry at her mother for the particulars of her case, I saw rise, on a sudden, and as if by the power of some heart-born impulse, a feeling throughout all the fine, attenuated muscles, that changed the angelic quietness of her countenance into the shrinking and contorted motions of a pain that seemed to bring despair on its wings, as a colleague to strike as soon as its own pang was inflicted. I could see, also, that there was mixed with the expression of pain an indication of terror, as if the poor victim apprehended some onset of the enemy that had already laid her so low, similar to what she had been already in the habit of experiencing. In an instant it came: the whole chest, throat, and face were grasped by a convulsive spasm, and a cough, shrill and piercing, as if the breath passed with difficulty through the windpipe, accompanied by the long drawback of apparent croop, that sounded like the yell of a strangling dog, struck our ears, and produced a feeling of consternation among those who were as yet better acquainted with her extraordinary case than I was. I had never experienced anything of the same kind; for the symptoms that separated her complaint, whatever it was, from the most painful diseases of the windpipe known to us, were at first sight apparent. The sound prevented me from getting intelligence from her mother, who was, besides, under such alarm and anxiety, that she paid little attention to those around her. The rattling of the coach was a great aggravation of the attack; and the noise of a grating wheel, not unlike that wrung from the poor victim, mixed with it, and rendered the scene frightful. After lasting about ten minutes, the harrowing symptoms stopped suddenly; in a few minutes, I saw again before me the same placid countenance, with the closed eyelids, and the same lifeless appearance I had witnessed before the attack came on.
I now got an account from the mother of the cause of her daughter's distress. About two months previously, the girl had been eating cherries; and one of the stones having been involuntarily thrown back into her throat, she had endeavoured to prevent the operation of swallowing it, from a fear that it would injure her, and thus produced an irregular action among the muscles of deglutition, which precipitated the hard substance into the windpipe. The first effects of this accident were grievous in the extreme; for the sensibility of that exquisitely tender part of the body roused the muscles to efforts of expectoration, and brought on fits of the most intense coughing, which lasted until the strength of the body having failed, the irritability of the passage died, through the pure inanition of the exhausted system. Every energy prostrated, she would be for a time quiet, until the pabulum of the irritability was again supplied by the mysterious operation of nature, when the same painful spasms of the muscles were renewed, with another long fit of coughing—every re-drawn breath forcing its way with a shrill sound, and suggesting the fear that she was every moment on the eve of being choked. This was again succeeded by a calm, to be followed by a similar exacerbation; and thus was her life reduced to an alternation of agony and rest without peace; and all the time the reductive process of famine (for she could scarcely swallow a morsel without the greatest pain) went on, till she was reduced to a perfect skeleton. Having been the pride of her parents, as well from her beauty as her amiable mind and manners, she was watched night and day with a solicitude scarcely less painful than her own dreadful condition; and, as both the doctors of the small town seemed irresolute as to the course to be pursued, the victim was left lying on her back, and suffering those violent and incessant attacks, for the period of six weeks, without any effectual effort being made for her relief. At last, however, the urgent nature of the case, which interested almost all the inhabitants of the place, forced the medical men to try, at last, the only evident operation that could be of any service; and an incision was made into the windpipe, with a view to get hold of the stone. Whether it was that they had calculated on wrong data, in regard to the locality of the peccant and cruel intruder, or whether the operation was otherwise
unskilfully performed, I know not; but the result was, that, after putting her to so intolerable pain, they were obliged to sew up the opening they had made, and again resign her to her miserable fate. Many of the neighbours got angry at this issue, and blamed the surgeons; but no one would lend a helping hand to pay the expense of bringing a more successful operator to the spot; so that all was vain reproof, with still the same fate to the interesting sufferer. At last, the mother, who could stand no longer the appalling sight of her daughter suffering worse than a thousand deaths, while a remedy on earth could be found, had come to the resolution of travelling by the coach to the residence of one who might, by an extensive experience, be supposed to be able to yield relief; and, having got a letter of introduction to Dr —— (myself), she was thus far on her way to my residence.
I heard the poor woman's story; and, when I took the letter from her, and told her that I was the individual she was travelling to, I could discover that her face was on the instant lighted up with hope; even the poor sufferer on her knee lifted up her eyelids, and fixed her clear blue eyes on my face with a piteous supplication that I shall never forget. I told the mother that she should have come to me long before; but that she was not yet too late—for that I had strong hopes of being able to extricate the stone, and restore her child to health. My words fell on the ear of the patient; and I could see by the tear in her eye—the only indication she could give of her gratitude—for she was under a continual terror of moving a single muscle of her face—that she understood perfectly what I said. The passengers seemed to be as much moved as those more nearly interested, and turned their eyes on me as if I had been one gifted beyond ordinary mortals with the means of benefiting mankind. We got forward, luckily, without another attack of the ruthless foe that haunted the innocent victim with such unremitting hatred; and, on our arrival at our place of destination, I made arrangements for the mother and daughter being lodged in a friend's house not far from my own, that my patient might be as much as possible under my eye, until I deemed it a proper time (for she required strength) to perform the operation which I meditated.
I considered well what I had to do, and had no doubt of my success; but I was met by some untoward disadvantages. I found that there was no possibility of imparting to her strength—the incessant reductive workings of her spasms counteracting all my energies in this direction, and compelling me to a speedy application of my means of salvation. The prior wound had not been sufficiently cured, and the pain she had suffered under the mangling hands of her first tormentors left such a vivid impression on the tortured mind of the sufferer, that, anxious as she was to get the stone extracted, and to breathe again freely the air of heaven, she shuddered at the thought of being subjected to the knife of the operator. I used every seductive artifice to soothe her fears; I showed her the small instrument with which I would give her peace and health, and painted to her fancy the happiness she would again enjoy in romping among the green fields as in former days, freed from the terror of the slightest motion that now enslaved her. She lay and heard me, opened her eyes, sighed, and shut them again with a slight shake of her head, and a shudder, as if all arguments had failed; then, as I rose, threw after me a look of supplication, as if she wished me to try again to bring her to the point of resolution to free herself from the dreaded enemy that held her so firmly and securely in his grasp. She little knew that she was utterly powerless to resist—a child might have held her hands, while the operation was performed, against her will; but I wished to avoid compulsion; though I feared that, if she would not consent, I would be necessitated, from the gradual decay of the little remaining strength she had, to save her quickly, against her own fears of the means of her salvation.