‘It was already near four o’clock ere I bethought me of making any
preparation for my lecture. The day had been, throughout, one of those
heavy and sultry ones that autumn so often brings in our climate, and I
felt from this cause much oppressed and disinclined to exertion,
independently of the fact that I had been greatly over-fatigued during
the preceding week, some cases of a most trying and arduous nature
having fallen to my lot--one of which, from the importance of the life
to a young and dependent family, had engrossed much of my attention, and
aroused in me the warmest anxiety for success. In this frame of mind I
was entering my carriage to proceed to the lecture-room, when an
unsealed note was put into my hands; I opened it hastily, and read that
poor H-----, for whom I was so deeply interested, had just expired. I
was greatly shocked. It was scarcely an hour since I had seen him; and
from the apparent improvement since my former visit, I had ventured to
speak most encouragingly, and had even made some jesting allusions to
the speedy prospect of his once more resuming his place at hearth and
board. Alas! how short-lived were my hopes destined to be! how awfully
was my prophecy to be contradicted.
‘No one but him who has himself experienced it knows anything of the
deep and heartfelt interest a medical man takes in many of the cases
which professionally come before him. I speak here of an interest
perfectly apart from all personal regard for the patient, or his
friends; indeed, the feeling I allude to has nothing in common with
this, and will often be experienced as thoroughly for a perfect stranger
as for one known and respected for years. To the extreme of this feeling
I was ever a victim. The heavy responsibility, often suddenly and
unexpectedly imposed; the struggle for success, when success was all but
hopeless; the intense anxiety for the arrival of those critical periods
which change the character of a malady, and divest it of some of its
dangers or invest it with new ones; the despondence when that period has
come only to confirm all the worst symptoms, and shut out every prospect
of recovery; and, last of all, that most trying of all the trying duties
of my profession, the breaking to the perhaps unconscious relatives that
my art has failed, that my resources are exhausted, and, in a word, that
there is no longer a hope--these things have preyed on me for weeks, for
months long, and many an effort have I made in secret to combat this
feeling, but without the least success, till at last I absolutely
dreaded the very thought of being summoned to a dangerous and critical
illness. It may then be believed how very heavily the news I had just
received came upon me; the blow, too, was not even lessened by the poor
consolation of my having anticipated the result and broken the shock to
the family. I was still standing with the half-opened note in my hands,
when I was aroused by the coachman asking, I believe for the third time,
whither he should drive. I bethought me for an instant, and said, “To
the lecture-room.”
‘When in health, lecturing had ever been to me more of an amusement than
a labour; and often, in the busy hours of professional visiting, have I
longed for the time when I should come before my class, and divesting my
mind of all individual details, launch forth into the more abstract and
speculative doctrines of my art. It so chanced, too, that the late hour
at which I lectured, as well as the subjects I adopted, usually drew to
my class many of the advanced members of the profession, who made this a
lounge after the fatigues of the morning.
‘Now, however, I approached this duty with fear and trembling; the
events of the morning had depressed my mind greatly, and I longed for
rest and retirement. The passing glance I threw at the lecture-room
through the half-opened door showed it to be crowded to the very roof,
and as I walked along the corridor I heard the name of some foreign
physician of eminence, who was among my auditory. I cannot describe the
agitation of mind I felt at this moment. My confusion, too, became
greater as I remembered that the few notes I had drawn up were left in
the pocket of the carriage, which I had just dismissed, intending to
return on foot. It was already considerably past the usual hour, and I
was utterly unable to decide how to proceed. I hastily drew out a
portfolio that contained many scattered notes and hints for lectures,
and hurriedly throwing my eye across them, discovered some singular
memoranda on the subject of insanity. On these I resolved at once to
dilate a little, and eke out, if possible, the materials for a lecture.
‘The events of the remainder of that day are wrapped in much obscurity
to my mind, yet I well remember the loud thunder of applause which
greeted me on entering the lecture-room, and how, as for some moments I
appeared to hesitate, they were renewed again and again, till at last,
summoning resolution, I collected myself sufficiently to open my
discourse. I well remember, too, the difficulty the first few sentences
cost me--the doubts, the fears, the pauses, which beset me at every step
as I went on--my anxiety to be clear and accurate in conveying my
meaning making me recapitulate and repeat, till I felt myself, as it
were, working in a circle. By degrees, however, I grew warmed as I
proceeded; and the evident signs of attention my auditory exhibited gave
me renewed courage, while they impressed me with the necessity to make a
more than common exertion. By degrees, too, I felt the mist clearing
from my brain, and that even without effort my ideas came faster, and my
words fell from me with ease and rapidity. Simile and illustration came
in abundance, and distinctions which had hitherto struck me as the most
subtle and difficult of description I now drew with readiness and
accuracy. Points of an abstruse and recondite nature, which under other
circumstances I should not have wished to touch upon, I now approached
fearlessly and boldly, and felt, in the very moment of speaking, that
they became clearer and clearer to myself. Theories and hypotheses which
were of old and acknowledged acceptance I glanced hurriedly at as I went
on, and with a perspicuity and clearness I never before felt exposed
their fallacies and unmasked their errors. I thought I was rather
describing events, things actually passing before my eyes at the
instant, than relating the results of a life’s experience and
reflection. My memory, usually a defective one, now carried me back to
the days of my early childhood; and the whole passages of a life lay
displayed before me like a picture. If I quoted, the very words of the
author rushed to my mind as palpably as though the page lay open before
me. I have still some vague recollection of an endeavour I made to trace
the character of the insanity in every case to some early trait of the
individual in childhood, when, overcome by passion or overbalanced by
excitement, the faculties run wild into all those excesses which in
after years develop eccentricities of character, and in some weaker
temperaments aberrations of intellect. Anecdotes illustrating this novel
position came thronging to my mind; and events in the early years of
some who subsequently died insane, and seemed to support my theory, came
rushing to my memory.
‘As I proceeded, I became gradually more and more excited; the very ease
and rapidity with which my ideas suggested themselves increased the
fervour of my imaginings, till at last I felt my words come without
effort and spontaneously, while there seemed a commingling of my
thoughts which left me unable to trace connection between them, though I
continued to speak as fluently as before. I felt at this instant a
species of indistinct terror of some unknown danger which hung over me,
yet which it was impossible to avert or to avoid. I was like one who,
borne on the rapid current of a fast-flowing river, sees the foam of the
cataract before him, yet waits passively for the moment of his
destruction, without an effort to save. The power which maintained my
mind in its balance had gradually forsaken me, and shapes and fantasies
of every odd and fantastic character flitted around and about me. The
ideas and descriptions my mind had conjured up assumed a living,
breathing vitality, and I felt like a necromancer waving his wand over
the living and the dead. I paused; there was a dead silence in the
lecture-room. A thought rushed like a meteor-flash across my brain, and
bursting forth into a loud laugh of hysteric passion, I cried, “And I,
and I too am a maniac!” My class rose like one man; a cry of horror
burst through the room. I know no more.
‘I was ill, very ill, and in bed. I looked around me--every object was
familiar to me. Through the half-closed window-shutter there streamed
one long line of red sunlight; I felt it was evening. There was no one
in the room, and as I endeavoured to recall my scattered thoughts
sufficiently to find out why I was thus, there came an oppressive
weakness over me. I closed my eyes and tried to sleep, and was roused by
some one entering the room. It was my friend Dr. G------; he walked
stealthily towards my bed, and looked at me fixedly for several minutes.
I watched him closely, and saw that his countenance changed as he looked
on me; I felt his hand tremble slightly as he placed it on my wrist, and
heard him mutter to himself in a low tone, “My God! how altered!” I
heard now a voice at the door, saying in a soft whisper, “May I come
in?” The doctor made no reply, and my wife glided gently into the
apartment. She looked deathly pale, and appeared to have been weeping;
she leaned over me, and I felt the warm tears fall one by one upon my
forehead. She took my hand within both of hers, and putting her lips to
my ear, said, “Do you know _me_, William?” There was a long pause. I
tried to speak, but I could not. I endeavoured to make some sign of
recognition, and stared her fully in the face; but I heard her say, in a
broken voice, “He does not know _me_ now”; and then I felt it was in
vain. The doctor came over, and taking my wife’s hand, endeavoured to
lead her from the room. I heard her say, “Not now, not now”; and I sank
back into a heavy unconsciousness.
‘I awoke from what appeared to have been a long and deep sleep. I was,
however, unrefreshed and unrested. My eyes were dimmed and clouded, and
I in vain tried to ascertain if there was any one in the room with me.
The sensation of fever had subsided, and left behind the most depressing
debility. As by degrees I came to myself, I found that the doctor was
sitting beside my bed; he bent over me, and said, “Are you better,
William?” Never until now had my inability to reply given me any pain or
uneasiness; now, however, the abortive struggle to speak was torture. I
thought and felt that my senses were gradually yielding beneath me, and
a cold shuddering at my heart told me that the hand of death was upon
me. The exertion now made to repel the fatal lethargy must have been
great, for a cold, clammy perspiration broke profusely over my body; a
rushing sound, as if of water, filled my ears; a succession of short
convulsive spasms, as if given by an electric machine, shook my limbs. I
grasped the doctor’s hand firmly in mine, and starting to the sitting
posture I looked wildly about me. My breathing became shorter and
shorter, my grasp relaxed, my eyes swam, and I fell back heavily in the
bed. The last recollection of that moment was the muttered expression of
my poor friend G------, saying, “It is over at last.”
‘Many hours must have elapsed ere I returned to any consciousness. My
first sensation was feeling the cold wind across my face, which seemed
to come from an open window. My eyes were closed, and the lids felt as
if pressed down by a weight. My arms lay along my side, and though the
position in which I lay was constrained and unpleasant, I could make no
effort to alter it; I tried to speak, but I could not.
‘As I lay thus, the footsteps of many persons traversing the apartment
broke upon my ear, followed by a heavy dull sound, as if some weighty
body had been laid upon the floor; a harsh voice of one near me now
said, as if reading, “William H------, aged thirty-eight years; I
thought him much more.” The words rushed through my brain, and with the
rapidity of a lightning flash every circumstance of my illness came
before me; and I now knew that I had died, and that for my interment
were intended the awful preparations about me. Was this then death?
Could it be that though coldness wrapped the suffering clay, passion and
sense should still survive, and that while every external trace of life
had fled, consciousness should still cling to the cold corpse destined
for the earth? Oh, how horrible, how more than horrible, the terror of
the thought! Then I thought it might be what is termed a trance; but
that poor hope deserted me as I brought to mind the words of the doctor,
who knew too well all the unerring signs of death to be deceived by its
counterfeit, and my heart sank as they lifted me into the coffin, and I
felt that my limbs had stiffened, as I knew this never took place in a
trance. How shall I tell the heart-cutting anguish of that moment, as my
mind looked forward to a futurity too dreadful to think upon--when
memory should call up many a sunny hour of existence, the loss of
friends, the triumph of exertion, and then fall back upon the dread
consciousness of the ever-buried life the grave closed over; and then I
thought that perhaps sense but lingered round the lifeless clay, as the
spirits of the dead are said to hover around the places and homes they
have loved in life ere they leave them for ever, and that soon the lamp
should expire upon the shrine when the temple that sheltered it lay
mouldering and in ruins. Alas! how fearful to dream of even the
happiness of the past, in that cold grave where the worm only is a
reveller! to think that though
“Friends, brothers, and sisters are laid side by side, Yet none have ere
questioned, nor none have replied;”
yet that all felt in their cold and mouldering hearts the loves and
affections of life, budding and blossoming as though the stem was not
rotting to corruption that bore them. I brought to mind the awful
punishment of the despot who chained the living to the dead man, and
thought it mercy when compared to this.
‘How long I lay thus I know not, but the dreary silence of the chamber
was again broken, and I found that some of my dearest friends were come
to take a farewell look at me ere the coffin was closed upon me for
ever. Again the horror of my state struck me with all its forcible
reality, and like a meteor there shot through my heart the bitterness of
years of misery condensed into the space of a minute. And then I
remembered how gradual is death, and how by degrees it creeps over every
portion of the frame, like the track of the destroyer, blighting as it
goes, and said to my heart, All may yet be still within me, and the mind
as lifeless as the body it dwelt in. Yet these feelings partook of life
in all their strength and vigour; there was the will to move, to speak,
to see, to live, and yet all was torpid and inactive, as though it had
never lived. Was it that the nerves, from some depressing cause, had
ceased to transmit the influence of the brain? Had these winged
messengers of the mind refused their office? And then I recalled the
almost miraculous efficacy of the will, exerted under circumstances of
great exigency, and with a concentration of power that some men only are
capable of. I had heard of the Indian father who suckled his child at
his own bosom, when he had laid its mother in her grave; yet was it not
the will had wrought this miracle? I myself have seen the paralytic limb
awake to life and motion by the powerful application of the mind
stimulating the nervous channels of communication, and awakening the
dormant powers of vitality to their exercise. I knew of one whose heart
beat fast or slow as he did will it. Yes, thought I, in a transport, the
will to live is the power to live; and only when this faculty has
yielded with bodily strength need death be the conqueror over us.
‘The thought of reanimation was ecstatic, but I dared not dwell upon it;
the moments passed rapidly on, and even now the last preparations were
about to be made, ere they committed my body to the grave. How was the
effort to be made? If the will did indeed possess the power I trusted
in, how was it to be applied? I had often wished to speak or move during
my illness, yet was unable to do either. I then remembered that in those
cases where the will had worked its wonders, the powers of the mind had
entirely centred themselves in the one heart-filling desire to
accomplish a certain object, as the athlete in the games strains every
muscle to lift some ponderous weight. Thus I knew that if the heart
could be so subjected to the principle of volition, as that, yielding to
its impulse, it would again transmit the blood along its accustomed
channels, and that then the lungs should be brought to act upon the
blood by the same agency, the other functions of the body would be more
readily restored by the sympathy with these great ones. Besides, I
trusted that so long as the powers of the mind existed in the vigour I
felt them in, that much of what might be called latent vitality existed
in the body. Then I set myself to think upon those nerves which preside
over the action of the heart--their origin, their course, their
distribution, their relation, their sympathies; I traced them as they
arose in the brain, and tracked them till they were lost in millions of
tender threads upon the muscle of the heart. I thought, too, upon the
lungs as they lay flaccid and collapsed within my chest, the life-blood
stagnant in their vessels, and tried to possess my mind with the
relation of these two parts to the utter exclusion of every other
endeavoured then to transmit along the nerves the impulse of that
faculty my whole hopes rested on. Alas! it was in vain. I tried to heave
my chest and breathe, but could not; my heart sank within me, and all my
former terrors came thickening around me, more dreadful by far as the
stir and bustle in the room indicated they were about to close the
coffin.
‘At this moment my dear friend B------ entered the room.
He had come many miles to see me once more, and they made way for him to
approach me as I lay. He placed his warm hand upon my breast, and oh the
throb it sent through my heart! Again, but almost unconsciously to
myself, the impulse rushed along my nerves; a bursting sensation seized
my chest, a tingling ran through my frame, a crashing, jarring
sensation, as if the tense nervous cords were vibrating to some sudden
and severe shock, took hold on me; and then, after one violent
convulsive throe which brought the blood from my mouth and eyes, my
heart swelled, at first slowly, then faster, and the nerves
reverberated, clank! clank! responsive to the stroke. At the same time
the chest expanded, the muscles strained like the cordage of a ship in a
heavy sea, and I breathed once more.
‘While thus the faint impulse to returning life was given, the dread
thought flashed on me that it might not be real, and that to my own
imagination alone were referable the phenomena I experienced. At the
same instant the gloomy doubt crossed my mind it was dispelled; for I
heard a cry of horror through the room, and the words, “He is alive! he
still lives!” from a number of voices around me. The noise and confusion
increased.
I heard them say, “Carry out B------ before he sees him again; he has
fainted!” Directions and exclamations of wonder and dread followed one
upon another; and I can but call to mind the lifting me from the coffin,
and the feeling of returning warmth I experienced as I was placed before
a fire, and supported by the arms of my friend.
‘I will only add that after some weeks of painful debility I was again
restored to health, having tasted the full bitterness of death.’