CHAPTER XLVI.
DYING OF OLD AGE, AT FIFTY-EIGHT.
Within the usual limits assigned me in the daily routine of my profession, but on its very verge, there resided an individual of much general reputation for worth of character, but of feeble constitution and cachetic or deranged habits, for whom as well as for his numerous family I had frequently prescribed.
He was at length, one autumn, unusually reduced in health and strength, and I was again sent for. There was evidently very little of real disease about him, and yet there was very great debility. All his bodily senses were greatly deranged, and all his intellectual faculties benumbed. His internal machinery—his breathing, circulation, and digestion—was all affected; but it seemed more the result of debility than any thing else. There was no violence or excess of action anywhere, except a slight increase of the circulation.
The man was about fifty-eight years of age. Had he been ninety-eight or even eighty-eight, I should have had no difficulty in understanding his case. I should have said to myself, "Nature, nearly exhausted by the wear and tear of life, is about to give way;" or in other words, "The man is about to did (?die) of mere old age." But could he have been thus worn out at the age of fifty-eight?
I gave him gentle, tonic medicine, but it did not work well. Without increasing his strength, it increased his tendencies to fever. Yet, as I well knew, depletion would not answer in a case like this, whether of bleeding, blistering, or cathartics. In these circumstances, I contrived to while away the time in a routine of that negative character which, in true medical language, means laboriously doing nothing.
He was visited about twice a week. I heard patiently all his complaints, and endeavored to be patient under all my disappointments, for disappointments I had to encounter at nearly every step. No active treatment whatever would have the general effect I desired and intended. If I gave him but a single dose of elixir paregoric for his nervousness, it only added, nine times in ten, to the very woes it was intended to relieve. My policy—and I fully believe it was the only true policy—was to leave him to himself and to Nature, as much as possible.
Though I have spoken here of what I regarded as the true policy in the case then under my care, yet, after all, the truest course would have been to call for consultation some wiser head than my own. Another individual, even though he were no wiser than I, might have aided me most essentially, in compliance with, and in confirmation of, the good old adage—"Two eyes see more than one."
Why, then, did I not call on some inquiring and highly experienced physician? It was not that I was too proud to do so, nor that I was too jealous of my reputation. It was not that I feared any evil result to myself. It was rather because I did not, at first, think it really necessary; and then, subsequently, when I supposed it to be really needful, I feared my patient would grudge the expense. This fear, by the way, was grounded in something more than mere conjecture. The proposal had been practically made, and had been rejected.