My doubts were at length removed, and the cause of trouble, as I then supposed and still believe, fully revealed. The disease so putrescent in its tendencies, had originated in animal putrefaction. The circumstances were as follows:—
The individual with whom the young men who sickened had been residing and laboring, had laid aside, in his chamber, some time before, quite a pile of lambskins, just in the condition in which they were when removed from their natural owners, and had suffered them to lie in that condition until they were actually putrescent and highly offensive. The two young men, owing to the relative position of the chambers they occupied, were particularly exposed to the poisonous effluvia.
I did not forget—I did not then forget—the oft inculcated and frequently received doctrine, that animal impurity is not apt to engender disease. It most certainly had an agency—a prominent one—in the case before us. Perhaps it has such an influence much more frequently than is generally supposed.
One of my patients, in the family which I first mentioned,—a little boy two or three years old,—died almost as soon, after being seized with disease, as his elder brother had done. The rest, though severely sick, and at times given over to die, finally recovered. Some of them were sick, however, many months, and none of them, so far as I now recollect,—with perhaps a single exception,—ever enjoyed as good health afterward as before.
I had in these families six or eight of the most trying cases I ever had in my life; and yet, with the exceptions before named, all recovered. How much agency my own labors as a medical man had in producing this result, I am at a loss to conjecture. As an attendant or nurse, I have no doubt my services were valuable. And it was because a good nurse is worth more than a physician that I so frequently ran the risk of watching over the sick so closely as considerably to impair my own health.
The neighbors and friends of the two sick families, as I have already intimated, looked on in silent agony during the whole campaign; expecting, first that their families, too, would soon be called to take their turn; and secondly, that I, the commander in chief, should be a sufferer, which of course would be a great public disadvantage. They were almost as much gratified as I, when we all came forth from the fire unscathed.
On the whole, except as regards health, I was a gainer rather than a loser by the affair. I mean, of course, in the way of medical reputation. I was by this time fairly established as a powder and pill distributer, of the first water. In other words, I was beginning to be regarded as a good family physician, and to be sought for, not only within the narrow limits of my own native township, some four or five miles square, but also quite beyond these narrow precincts. Occasionally I had patients in three or four adjoining towns, and I was even occasionally called as counsel to other physicians. My ambition was high, perhaps higher than it ought to have been; but it had its checks and even its valleys of humiliation; so that on the whole I retained my sanity and a full measure of public confidence.
And yet, in conclusion, I have to confess that besides exposing my own health, I made many medical blunders. I would not again run the risk to health or reputation which, during this long trial of several months, I certainly ran, for any sum of money which king Croesus or the Rothschilds could command. Nor do I believe an intelligent physician can do it, without being guilty of a moral wrong. Every one has his province; let him carefully ascertain what that is, and confine himself to it. The acting commander in an important military expedition has no right to place himself in the ranks of those who are about to leap a ditch, scale a wall, or charge bayonet. Paul has no right to labor in Athens when he knows perfectly well that he can do more good in Jerusalem, and the voice of God, by his Providence or otherwise, calls him thither. And "to him that knoweth to do good and doeth it not, to him it is sin."