CHAPTER V.
LEE'S PILLS, AND THE DROPSY.
In consequence either of the disease or its mismanagement, I was left, on recovering from the measles, with a general dropsy. I might also say here, that at the recurrence of the same season, for many years afterwards, I was attacked with a complaint so nearly resembling measles that some who were strangers to me could hardly be diverted from the belief that it was the veritable disease itself.
But to the dropsy. This disease, so unusual in young people, especially those of my sanguine and nervous temperament, alarmed both my parents and myself, and medical advice was forthwith invoked. Our family physician was an old man, bred in the full belief of the necessity in such cases of what are called "alteratives," which, in plain English, means substances so active as to produce, when applied to the body either externally or internally, certain sudden changes. Alteratives, in short, are either irritants or poisons.
Our aged doctor was called in to see me; and after the usual compliments, and perhaps a passing joke or two,—for both of which he was quite famous,—he asked me to let him see my tongue. Next, he felt my pulse. All the while—a matter exceedingly important to success—he looked "wondrous wise." He also asked me sundry wondrous wise questions. They were at least couched in wondrous words of monstrous length.
The examination fairly over, there followed a pause; not, indeed, an "awful pause," but one of a few seconds, or perhaps in all of half a minute. "Now," said he, "you must take one of Lee's pills every day, in roasted apple." There were other directions, but this was the principal, except to avoid taking cold. The pills, of course, contained a proportion of mercury or calomel, on the alterative effects of which, as I plainly perceived, he placed his chief dependence.
I took the pills, daily, for about six weeks; but they produced very little apparent effect, except to spoil my appetite. What their remoter effects were on my constitution generally, is quite another question. Suffice it to say, for the present, that for his occasional calls and wondrous wise looks, and his Lee's pills, he made quite a considerable bill. We were, it is true, always glad to see him, for he was pretty sure to crack a joke or two during his stay, and he sometimes told a good story. Nor, after all, were his charges remarkably high. For coming two or three miles to see me, he only made a charge of fifty cents a visit.
It was near the beginning of October, and I was "getting no better very fast." A young physician had in the mean time come into the place, and my friends were anxious to call him in as "counsel." He proposed digitalis, and the family physician consented to it. But it was all to no purpose; I was still a bloated mass, and extremely enfeebled.
At length, after some two or three months of ill health and loss of time, and the expenditure of considerable money on physicians and medicine, our good family doctor proposed a tea made from certain sweet roots, such as fennel, parsley, etc. Of this I was to drink very freely. I followed his advice, and in a few days the dropsy disappeared. Whether it was ready to depart just at this precise time, or whether the tea hastened its departure, I never knew. In any event, one thing is certain; that, either with its aid or in spite of it, I got rid of the dropsy; and it nevermore returned.