open their windows? That was the time when so many were dying of
tuberculosis that it was called “the great white plague.” It was as
mysterious and terrible as the Black Death, which, we read, once carried
off half the people of England, because this “white plague” was an enemy
that never withdrew. No one knew what caused the trouble, but they
thought it must be due to a chill of some kind, so they carefully shut
out the fresh air. Every child to-day knows that they were shutting out
the one thing that could cure them. But do you know that it was Edward
Trudeau who taught us that? He was really the discoverer of the
importance of fresh air as a cure for many ills, and, still better, as a
means of keeping well. Besides this, he lived the life of a true hero.
Listen to his story and see if you will not say with me that his was as
brave a fight as that of any hero of battle. And his victory was one in
which the whole world has a share.
Though Edward Trudeau was born with his father’s love of the open, most
of his early life, as we have said, was spent in big cities. When he was
a child of three, his grandfather, Dr. Berger, a French physician who
had earned renown not only in his own country but also in New York, took
him and his older brother to Paris, where they lived for fifteen years.
Here he was like a wood-bird in a cage, looking at a strange life and
strange people through the bars.
Sometimes the bits of life he saw were very gay and fascinating, for
this was the time of the Second Empire, when the capital was always
a-flutter over some occasion of royal pomp or brilliant celebration.
Napoleon III (whom Victor Hugo wittily dubbed “Napoleon the Little” in
contrast with his uncle, Napoleon the Great) tried to make the splendor
and glitter of extravagant display take the place of the true glory of
great deeds. One of his “big brass generals,” who was always quite
dazzling in gold lace and gleaming decorations, lived on the first
floor, immediately below Dr. Berger’s apartment, and Edward Trudeau
felt, as he watched from the window this ideal figure of military power
dash up to the porte-cochère on his spirited horse, all splendid, too,
in gold trappings, that here truly was one of the great race of heroes.
He trembled with delight when the great man took notice of his small,
hero-worshiping self, and they became friends after a fashion. But
General Bazaine was, as events proved, much more within his capabilities
when sitting tall on a prancing, gold-caparisoned horse at a royal
review of the troops than when leading the forces of France against the
German army. When the Franco-Prussian War came in 1870 it was largely
through his tactical blunders, and cowardly treachery, perhaps, that
Sedan was surrounded and the French army obliged to surrender to the
victorious Germans. When Edward Trudeau read in the papers the news of
the French defeat his heart was sad over the fall of his boyish idol,
but the truth entered his soul that the real victors of real battles are
not always those magnificent ones who look most unconquerable.
Another vivid memory of his childhood days in Paris brought home the
same truth. One day, as he watched at the window, he was thrilled to see
a gorgeous equerry from the Palais Royal ride up in state to his door
and hand a parcel to the butler. This package, he learned, contained the
Cross of the Legion of Honor which the emperor had sent to his
grandfather. Afterward, he noticed that his grandfather always wore a
little red ribbon in his buttonhole. But when the small boy questioned
him in regard to the reason for his wearing the decoration, he only
smiled quizzically and said, “_Pour faire parler les curieux, mon
enfant_” (“To give the curious a chance to talk, my child”). As for
himself, this modest French physician preferred to let his deeds alone
speak of what he had done.
The small boy who could scarcely remember the time when he did not live
in France and whose relatives were all French did not forget for a
moment that he was an American. The toy boats which he sailed in the
fountains of the Tuileries all bore the Stars and Stripes. And his
favorite playmates at the Lycée Bonaparte, where he went to school, were
hardy American boys whose parents were living in Paris.
During the years at the French school the vague, inner yearning for a
freer, more natural life, found vent in many pranks and covert rebellion
not only against the class routine, but also, more openly, against the
established order of things on the playground. Here some of the
delicately aristocratic French boys were much disconcerted by the blunt
and wholly effectual way in which Edward Trudeau and his chums, the
Livingston lads, settled questions by argument straight from the
shoulder.
When he returned to New York at eighteen, Edward could speak only broken
English, but he felt so truly American that he wondered why his cousins
laughed when he said, “Ze English is so hard a language to prononciate.”
Then came his “wander years” in which he tried, with a deep, unsatisfied
longing after he knew not what, to find his proper niche in life.
Something of the memory of the stirring day when the American lads in
Paris had thrilled over the news of the capture of the privateer
_Alabama_ by the United States cruiser _Kearsarge_ off the coast of
France led him to think that he wanted to enter the Navy. So he went to
a preparatory school at Newport, as the United States Naval Academy had
been, on account of the war, removed from Annapolis to that city,
together with the historic old ship _Constitution_, which furnished
quarters for the cadets.
At the very moment when he was prepared to enter the academy, Fate
decided otherwise. His only brother, Francis, whose delicate health had
always been a cause of much anxiety, became alarmingly ill. Though
Edward was several years younger, he had always, as far back as he could
remember, tried, at school and on the playground, to take care of this
frail brother. He learned to know by the signs of the paling face and
blue lips when the weak heart was missing its proper beat, and he was
always at hand to say: “Steady, old fellow, steady! Let’s drop out of
the game and rest up a bit.”
Most of the thrashings that he had dealt out to the school bullies were
given on his brother’s account. But if Frank was not able to hold his
own when it came to fisticuffs, in other encounters Edward learned to
rely on the strong character and high ideals of this brother, who seemed
a tower of strength when it came to battles of the spirit against
doubts, fears, and wild gusts of temptation.
Now these two, who were so closely united by the strong double bond of
mutual dependence and protection, had come to the great parting of the
ways. The white plague had Francis in its terrible grip. During the last
months of the hopeless struggle Edward watched with him night and day,
drinking strong green tea to keep himself awake, and, by the doctor’s
orders, carefully keeping all the windows closed, since the outside air
was supposed to aggravate the painful cough.
The man who was to cure many by the simple means of fresh air learned
his first lesson in that sick-room where he watched the one he loved
best struggle for breath, and where he himself caught the seeds of the
dread disease. This first great sorrow was really the first stage on his
great journey of discovery--the discovery of a new world of life,
restored to many who believed that they were nearing the “Valley named
of the Shadow.” But how often is it true that the seeker after El Dorado
searches for one thing and finds another. How often must the fortunate
ones who at last arrive at the great goal travel by ways they know not.
Edward Trudeau had not yet found his lifework. He studied for a few
months at the school of mines before he realized that he was not
destined to be an engineer. This was but one of many false starts.
Indeed, his early path was strewed with so many bits of wreckage from
his spasmodic trials and failures that when one of his friends announced
to a group at the Union Club that he had entered the College of
Physicians and Surgeons, a fellow-member said, “I bet five hundred
dollars he never graduates.” And not one of the companions who knew and
loved him so well was ready to take up the bet.
These merry companions of his youth, who thought they knew Edward
Trudeau better than he knew himself, loved him well; for he ever had the
gift of friendship with man and beast. Dogs and horses at once felt his
comprehending hand and heart. And as for the human kind--were they great
masters of finance like Edward H. Harriman, gay young men about town
like the Livingstons, or sturdy mountain guides like Paul Smith and
Fitz-Greene Halleck--all and each were not only boon companions when the
opportunity served, but lifelong friends whom neither time nor
circumstance could change. When Dr. Trudeau used to say with feeling,
“No one ever had better friends than I have,” we always thought, as we
looked into his kindly eyes, so alive with understanding sympathy and
ready cheer, “How true it is that the best way to win a friend is to be
one.”
The best friend of all from beginning to end, however, was Miss
Charlotte Beare, who became his wife as soon as he had graduated from
the medical school and had spent six months as
[Illustration: _Photo by Wm. Distin_
Edward L. Trudeau]
house physician in The Strangers’ Hospital. When he wrote, toward the
close of his life, a record of what his experiences had meant, he gave
the book this dedication:
TO MY DEAR WIFE
EVER AT MY SIDE
EVER CHEERFUL AND HOPEFUL AND HELPFUL
THROUGH THESE LONG YEARS
DURING WHICH
“PLEASURE AND PAIN
HAVE FOLLOWED EACH OTHER
LIKE SUNSHINE AND RAIN.”
It was through his love for her, he said, that he was able to keep
steadily at work during his college days, when close application to
study and the confinement of city life were telling not only upon his
health but also wearing away the inner soul that ever craved, with a
deeper and more poignant longing, the freedom of open spaces and the
breath of the life-giving woods.
It was a very different story from those light-hearted, familiar ones
where “they married and lived happily ever after.” The rain followed the
sunshine very soon after the young doctor had returned from his
wedding-trip and settled down to practice in New York. After months of
struggle against what he thought was a sort of stubborn malaria,
together with the old rebellion against a shut-in life, the doctor who
had worked so bravely to fit himself to cure others came face to face
with the truth that he himself had a disease which no doctor could cure.
The world seemed dark indeed when he thought he must soon leave his
loved wife, the little Charlotte and baby Ned, and all that he had hoped
to accomplish in the future.
He little realized that he had but reached the second stage in the
journey that was to prepare him in a way he could not understand to be
the “Beloved Physician,” one destined to save many who, like him, had
met death face to face and trembled before the thought of separation
from those they loved.
A faint light seemed to shine in the blackness of the night that had
closed about him when the resolve came to go away from the city into the
still woods--where he had felt the keenest joy in “mere living” on brief
hunting-trips to the Adirondacks. His dear wife should be spared seeing
the terrible, hopeless fight, and he should before the end have a bit of
that free life for which his tired spirit longed. And so, though it
meant separation, perhaps forever, from those he loved best, he prepared
to go to Paul Smith’s hunting-lodge, which was forty-two miles from the
nearest railroad in the heart of a still country of mountain lakes and
vast, untroubled forest.
It took three days for the sick man to make the journey. His friend Lou
Livingston, who accompanied him, tried in vain to persuade him to give
up going to such a rough, remote place. A mattress and pillows were
arranged in the two-horse stage, in which they had to travel the
forty-two miles of rough mountain road to the hunting-lodge, and the
sick man was made as comfortable as possible; but when at sunset he
caught sight of the house through the pines he was too weak with fever
and the jolting of the long trip to stand or walk. A hearty, mountain
guide picked him up as if he had been an infant, carried him up to his
room, and, as he laid him on his bed, remarked comfortingly:
“That’s nothing, Doctor! You don’t weigh no more than a dried
lambskin.”
The invalid might well have been depressed by these words, but the magic
of the country had already begun its work. He ate a hearty meal with the
keenest relish he had known in weeks and fell asleep like a tired child.
“When I thought I had come to the end, it proved but the turn in the
road,” said Dr. Trudeau. “I went to the mountains to die--I found there
the beginning of a new life.”
As the weeks passed and left him not losing ground, but actually gaining
day by day, the truth gradually dawned upon him that fresh air and rest
were doing what doctors despaired of.
After proving what a few months could accomplish, and finding that even
a short visit to his home meant an alarming setback, Dr. Trudeau and his
wife decided that they must go to the mountain country to live. Can you
imagine what spending a winter in the Adirondacks meant at that time,
when the only houses were hunting-lodges and the cabins of the guides?
Once, when making the journey to their winter quarters, the family was
caught in a blizzard. When the sweat of their struggling horses was
turned to a firm casing of ice and they all had hard work to keep faces
and ears from freezing, they left the cutter, put blankets on the
horses, wrapped the children in buffalo-robes and buried them in the
snow, while the men tramped ahead and made a track up the hill for the
weary horses. At last, when it was clear that the animals could go no
farther, Paul Smith set off to the hut of a guide for fresh horses. As
he left the little family buried in the snow, he said with his hearty
laugh which seemed to put new life in the anxious travelers:
“Doctor, don’t you know Napoleon said, ‘The dark regions of Russia is
only fit for Russians to inhabit’?”
Altogether these Napoleons were three days making the journey through
the snow to their winter haven at Paul Smith’s hunting-lodge.
For several years Dr. Trudeau lived with his family in this wilderness
where he had found health and happiness. His skill as a physician was
given mostly to caring for the lumbermen and guides for miles about and
for their dogs and horses. Of course there were, too, the people of the
summer camps. And the story of his cure led a New York doctor to send a
few patients to try the same life. The number of these people increased,
and gradually the colony of health-seekers began to grow.
One day, when Dr. Trudeau was on the side of Mount Pisgah, near Saranac
Lake, he fell asleep while leaning on his gun and dreamed a dream. He
saw as in a vision the forest on the shore of the lake melt away, and
the whole slope covered with houses, built, as it were, inside out, so
that most of the life of the people could go on in the open. As he said
years later, when he was making an address at the twenty-fifth
anniversary of the building of the Adirondack Cottage Sanitarium at
Saranac Lake, “I dreamed a dream of a great sanitarium that should be
the everlasting foe of tuberculosis, and lo, the dream has come true!”
But Dr. Trudeau was a man who knew that, if good dreams are to come
true, one must have the faith to pray as if there were no such thing as
work, and the steady resolution to work as if there were no such thing
as prayer. Much faith and much hard work went into the beginnings of
that City of the Sick near Lake Saranac.
There was the time of small things, when the chosen spot, with its scant
grass and huge boulders, looked more like a pasture for goats than a
building-site. Faith, however, can not only move mountains, it can turn
them into building material; faith, too, can move the hearts of men and
make many work together as one for a great cause. The guides whose
families the Beloved Physician had tended without price gave sixteen
acres on the sheltered plateau where he had seen his dream city arise.
“We shall build not a great hospital where many are herded together, but
cottages where those who seek refuge here may each have his zone of pure
air and something of the rest and freedom of home,” said Dr. Trudeau. He
talked to his friends, he talked to friends of his friends--to all who
would pause in their busy lives to listen. His glowing faith kindled
enthusiasm in other hearts. Day by day, not only through the large gifts
of the few who could give much, but also through the small gifts of the
many who could give but little, the fund grew. The doctor’s dream became
a reality.
When we hear the stories of the heroes of old--the men of might, the
grand of soul--does it seem as if our little day gives no chance for
great deeds? Look at the Beloved Physician of Saranac, with his frail
body, his cheerful smile, his unconquerable hope. See him going about
with loving care among those whom life seemed to have broken and cast
aside. See him in his little laboratory struggling hour after hour,
through weeks and months and years, with no apparatus save that of his
own contriving, with no training in scientific method, to lure the germs
of the white plague within the field of his microscope, and force them
to give up the secret of their terrible power. Surely there is no
heroism greater than that of such brave, patient labor against all odds,
against all ills, in spite of sorrow and loss and the fear of failure.
I like to picture this hero, with his genius for taking pains, at work
over his test-tubes when his famous patient, Robert Louis Stevenson,
came to visit the laboratory. Dr. Trudeau held out a little tube of
liquid with the words,
[Illustration: The first of the sanitarium cottages built in 1885; known
as “The Little Red”]
“Here is our enemy fairly entrapped at last. This little scum is
consumption, the cause of more human suffering than anything else.”
The discoverer of “Treasure Island” turned pale with disgust and backed
out of the laboratory with these words, “Yes, Doctor, I know you have a
lantern at your belt, but I don’t like the smell of your oil!”
The brilliant imagination of the great writer failed to understand the
steady light of the imagination that seeks patiently after scientific
truth in spite of discouragements and years of fruitless work.
In the last public address which Trudeau made, in 1910, before a
gathering of physicians and surgeons, he said these words which show
that he had caught the gleam of Stevenson’s lantern:
Let us not quench our faith nor turn from the vision which, whether
we own it or not, we carry, as Stevenson’s lantern-bearers, hidden
from the outer world; and, thus inspired, many will reach the goal;
and if for most of us our achievements must fall short of our
ideals, if, when age and infirmity overtake us, we come not within
sight of the castle of our dreams, nevertheless, all will be well
with us; for, as Stevenson tells us rightly, “to travel hopefully
is better than to arrive, and the true success is to labor.”
One of Trudeau’s most cherished possessions was a fine copy in bronze of
Mercié’s statue “_Gloria Victis_,” given him by one of his patients. The
sculptor created this statue in 1871, after the crushing blow inflicted
on France by the German arms, to console and inspire the French people
with the hope of triumph through defeat. It shows a young gladiator who
has received his death-wound while facing the foe, lifted up and borne
onward by a splendid Victory with outstretched wings. He has fought the
fight and still holds his sword in his lifeless hand. In losing his life
he wins his victory, that of one of the “faithful failures” who marched
toward the new day whose dawn is not for them but for those who come
after.
Dr. Trudeau, ever in the grip of the enemy that could be held at bay,
but never conquered, labored year after year to save the lives of
others. Many he was able to cure through rest and the life-giving air of
the place he had found and made to be the battle-ground against
tuberculosis. In many more he succeeded in arresting the disease and
giving years of useful life, with restrictions--days and nights in the
open, eternal watchfulness. And always, so conditioned himself, he
worked, while often laboring for every breath he drew, to find the real
cure--a something that would be able to destroy the terrible germs. He
never lived to find it, but he prepared the way for others, who will go
on with his work and carry it to success.
Shortly before his death, in November, 1915, Dr. Trudeau tried to
explain what the statue “_Gloria Victis_” had meant to him:
“It typifies,” he said, “many victories I have seen won in Saranac Lake
by those whom I had learned to love; the victory of the spirit over the
body; the victories that demand acquiescence in worldly failure, and in
the supreme sacrifice of life itself as a part of their achievement; the
victory of the Nazarene, which ever speaks its great message to the
ages.”
“THE PROPHET-ENGINEER”: GEORGE WASHINGTON GOETHALS
A man went down to Panama,
Where many a man had died,
To slit the sliding mountains
And lift the eternal tide:
A man stood up in Panama,
And the mountains stood aside.
PERCY MAC KAYE.
When a boy has a name like George Washington Goethals he must have
something out of the ordinary about him to let it pass with his
companions on the playground. Should he prove a weakling, should the
other boys discover any flaw in the armor of his self-confidence, such a
name would be a mockery and a misfortune.
Is there any one who cannot recall certain rarely uncomfortable moments
of his childhood when he wished that the fates had provided him with a
Christian name that the other chaps couldn’t send back and forth like a
shuttlecock, with a new derisive turn at each toss? One expects to
endure a certain amount of “Georgie Porgie” nonsense, which has the
excuse of rime if not of reason, but when one also has a last name that
nobody ever heard of before, he finds himself wishing sometimes that he
had been born a Johnson or a Smith.
“I don’t believe that I quite like our name,” remarked little George
Goethals in the confidence of the family circle one evening. “It is a
bit queer, isn’t it?”
“It’s a name to be proud of, son,” was the reply. “It’s a name to live
up to. For more than a thousand years it has been borne by strong, brave
men. It belongs to the history of more than one country and century, and
the way it was won makes a pretty story.”
“Tell me the story!” begged the boy, breathlessly, his eyes dark with
interest.
“In the days when knights were bold, a man named Honorius, whose courage
was as finely tempered as his sword, went with the Duke of Burgundy from
Italy into France. In a fierce battle with the Saracens he received a
terrible blow on the neck which would have felled most men to the
ground, but his strength and steel withstood the shock and won for him a
nickname of honor--Boni Coli (good neck). Later, when he was rewarded
for his valor by a grant of land in the north country which is now
Holland and Belgium, this name was changed after the Dutch fashion into
_Goet Hals_ (_good_ or _stiff neck_), and became the family name of all
that man’s descendants, who made it an honored name in Holland. When
your ancestors came to America they hoped that it would become an
honored name in the new country, and it must be your part to help bring
that to pass.”
The boy’s eyes grew thoughtful. “For more than a thousand years it has
been the name of brave men,” he repeated to himself. “But it is an
American name now, isn’t it?” he added anxiously.
“Yes, son, it is just as American as it can be made,” his father
returned with a laugh. “We call it Gō´thals,--there is nothing more
truly American than a thing that has _go_, you know,--and we’ve given
you the name of the first American to go with it.”
“I’ll show that an American Goethals can be as brave as any Dutch one,”
George boasted.
“Strong hearts and brave deeds speak for themselves, son,” he was
reminded, “and they are understood everywhere, whether the people speak
Dutch, English, or Chinese.”