Forty Years in the Wilderness of Pills and Powders / Cogitations and Confessions of an Aged Physician

by William A. Alcott

Mary Benham was the second daughter, in an obscure and indigent family that resided only a little distance from my house, just beyond the limits of what might properly be called the village. I do not know much of her early history, except that she was precocious in mind, and scrofulous and feeble in body.

The first time I ever heard any thing about her, was one night at a prayer-meeting. Mr. Brown, the minister, took occasion to observe, at the close of the meeting, in my hearing, that he must go to Mr. Benham's and see Mary, for she was very ill, and it was thought would not live through the night.

She survived, however, as she had done many times before, and as she did many times afterward, in similar circumstances. More than once Mr. Brown had been sent for—though sometimes other friends were called, as Mr. Brown lived more than a mile distant—to be with her and pray with her, in what were supposed to be her last moments. But there was still a good deal of tenacity of life; and she continued to live, notwithstanding all her expectations and those of her friends.

It appeared, on inquiry, that her nervous system was very much disordered, and also her digestive machinery. She was also taking, from day to day, a large amount of active medicine. Still no one appeared to doubt the propriety of such a course of treatment, in the case of a person so very sick as she was; for how, it was asked, could she live without it?

In one or two instances I was sent for; not, indeed, as her physician, but as a substitute for the more distant or the absent minister. At these visits I learned something, incidentally, of her true physical condition. I found her case a very bad one, and yet, as I believed, made much worse by an injudicious use of medicine.

Yet what could I do in the premises? I had not been asked to prescribe for her, nor even to give counsel as a supernumerary or consulting physician. Dr. M. paid her his weekly and semi-weekly visits, and doubtless supposed all the wisdom of the world added to his own would hardly improve her condition. I was, of course, by all the rules of medical etiquette, and even by the common law of politeness, obliged to bite my lips in silence. One thing, indeed, I ventured to do, which was to send her a small tract or two, in some of the departments of hygiene or health.

Soon after this her physician died; and died, too, by his own confession, publicly made, of stomach disease,—at least, in part. He was a man of gigantic body and great natural physical force. His digestive apparatus was particularly powerful, and it had been both unwisely cultivated and developed in early life, and unwisely and wickedly managed afterward. For an example of the latter, he would, while abroad among his patients, sometimes go without his dinner, and then, on his return to his family and just as he was going to bed, atone for past neglect by eating enough for a whole day, and of the most solid and perhaps indigestible food. In this and other abusive ways he had been suicidal.

But he was now gone to his final account, and on whose arm could Mary lean for medical advice? Her parents were too poor to pay a physician's bill. What had been paid to her former medical attendant—which, indeed was but a mere pittance—was by authority of the town. Mary felt all the delicacy she should have felt, in her circumstances, and perhaps more, for she refused for some time to ask for farther aid, preferring to groan her way alone.

One evening, when I was present on a moral errand, she spoke of the great benefit she had derived from the perusal of the little books I had sent her, and modestly observed that, deprived as she was by the wise dispensation of Providence, of her old friend and physician, she had sometimes dared to wish she could occasionally consult me. I told her I hoped she would not hesitate a moment to send for me, whenever she desired, for if in a situation to comply with her requests, I would always do so immediately. She was about to speak of her poverty, when I begged her not to think of that. The only condition I should impose, I told her, was that she should do her very best to follow, implicitly, my directions. With this condition she did not hesitate to promise a full and joyful compliance.

From that time forth I saw her frequently, since I well knew that even voluntary visits would be welcome. I found she had become convinced of the necessity of breathing pure air, and of ventilating her room every day. Nor did she neglect, as much as formerly, the great laws of cleanliness. Yet, alas! in this respect, the hard hand of necessity was upon her. She could not do all she wished. However, she could apply water to her person daily, if she could not to her clothing and bedding; so that, on the whole, she did not greatly suffer. Her mother did what she could, but she was old and decrepit.