CHAPTER LIX.
ONE DROP OF LAUDANUM.
A babe, not yet a day old, came under my care for treatment. What the symptoms were, except those of nervous irritation, I have now forgotten; but there was ample evidence of much disturbance in the system, and the parents and friends were exceedingly anxious about the results.
Now it was one of those cases in which a large proportion of our medical men are exceedingly ignorant, and only guess out the cause or causes as well as they can. I was thus ignorant, and would not—and as an honest man, could not—attempt to divine the cause or give a name to the disease. Yet I must needs, as I verily thought, prescribe something and somehow. So I took a single drop of laudanum, and diluted it well, and made the child swallow it.
He soon became easy, quite too easy, and fell into a profound sleep. So deep and profound, in fact, was its sleep, or rather its stupor, that I began to be afraid it never would awake. How strange, I thought within myself, that a single drop of this liquid should produce so much effect! Yet it taught me wisdom. It taught me to let medicine alone—strong medicine, at least—in the diseases of very young children. It also taught me not to give too large doses to anybody, especially to those who had never taken any before. The first dose, for unperverted nature, must be very small indeed!
How much my little patient was injured, permanently, by this act of unpardonable carelessness, I never knew. It may have laid the foundation for many ills which he has since experienced, some of which have been severe and trying. Or, if otherwise, it may have aggravated such ills as had their origin in other causes. Or, if nothing more, it may have contributed to a delicacy and sensitiveness and feebleness of structure, which can never, in all probability, be fully overcome, and which have more to do, even with our moral tendencies and character, than most of us are fully aware.
How much would I give to be able to blot from my history such errors and defects of character as this! For, though I confess to nothing worse than haste and carelessness, in the present instance, yet a medical man, like the commander in the battle field or elsewhere, has no right to be careless. My aged, honored father gravely insisted, all his life long, that no accidents, as they are termed, in human life, ever take place, unless there is in the first place, carelessness, somewhere. Much more is it true that many an individual who sickens and loses his life, is the victim of carelessness; or, what is the same thing, want of attention, when great care and attention were necessary, and the issues of life and death were suspended, as it were, on a thread!