the narratives are exaggerated and that an element of invention is
possible and, indeed, probable in many of them. There is an impression
also that some of the circumstances detailed have been misinterpreted
or misapplied or have been modified by events which have followed
later and to which they have been adapted as an afterthought. Above
all I am reluctant to believe that the dying, in the solemn and
supreme moment of passing away from the earth, can be occupied by the
trivialities—and, indeed, I would say by the paltry tricks—which are
accredited to their action in this book.
It is only fair to point out that the volume now discussed is written
by an eminent man of science who has been trained all his life in
methods of precision, in the judicial examination of reported facts
and in the close scrutiny of evidence. Further it may be said that the
terms “incredible” and “impossible” would have been applied a few years
ago to any account of the telephone or of wireless telegraphy, while
the same expressions would assuredly be employed by a medical man when
told, not so long since, that there was a ray capable of making a
human body so transparent as to render visible not only the bones but
the details of their internal construction.
In common with others who have been for many years on the staff of a
large hospital, I have seen much of death and have heard even more from
those who have been in attendance on the dying. In this experience of
a lifetime I have never met with a single circumstance which would
confirm or support the propositions advanced by M. Flammarion. This is
obviously no argument. It is merely a record of negative experience.
The only two events, within my personal knowledge, which bear even
remotely upon the present subject are the following.
I was, as a youth, on a walking tour in the south of England with
a cousin. We put up one night at a certain inn. In the morning my
companion came down to breakfast much excited and perturbed. He
declared that his father was dead, that in a vivid dream he had seen
him stretched out dead upon the couch in his familiar bedroom at home.
He had awakened suddenly and noted that the hour was 2 A.M. That his
father had expired at that moment he was assured, so assured that he
proposed to return home at once, since his mother was alone. Inasmuch
as the journey would have occupied a whole day, I suggested that,
before starting, he should telegraph and seek news of his father.
With great reluctance he consented to this course and the telegram
was dispatched. A reply was received in due course. It was from the
father himself expressing surprise at the inquiry and stating that he
was never better in his life. Nothing, it transpired, had disturbed
the father’s rest at 2 A.M. on this particular night. Nothing untoward
happened. My uncle lived for many years, and finally died one
afternoon, and not, therefore, at 2 A.M.
The other incident is associated with an actual death and with a
strange announcement, but the announcement is not to be explained by
any of the theories propounded by M. Flammarion. The facts are these.
I was on a steamship which was making a passage along that coast known
in old days as the Spanish Main. We put in at Colon, and remained
there for about a day and a half. I took advantage of this break in
the voyage to cross the Isthmus by train to Panama. The names of those
who were travelling by the train had been telegraphed to that city,
which will explain how it came about that on reaching the station I was
accosted by one of the medical officers of the famous American hospital
of the place. He begged me to see with him a patient under his care.
The sick man was an Englishman who was travelling for pleasure, who was
quite alone and who had been taken ill shortly after his arrival on
the Pacific. He was the only Englishman, he said, on that side of the
Isthmus.
I found the gentleman in a private ward. He was a stranger to me, was
very gravely ill, but still perfectly conscious. I had nothing fresh
to suggest in the way of treatment. The case was obviously hopeless,
and we agreed that his life could not be extended beyond a few days
and certainly not for a week. It was a satisfaction to feel that the
patient was as well cared for as if he had been in his own home in
England. I returned to Colon. Travelling with me was a retired general
of the Indian Army. He had remained at Colon during my absence. I told
him my experience. He did not know the patient even by name, but was
much distressed at the thought of a fellow-countryman dying alone in
this somewhat remote part of the world. This idea, I noticed, impressed
him greatly.
Two days after my return from Panama we were on the high seas, having
touched at no port since leaving Colon. On the third day after my
visit to the hospital the general made a curious communication to me.
The hour for lunch on the steamer was 12.15. My friend, as he sat
down to the table, said abruptly, “Your patient at Panama is dead.
He has just died. He died at 12 o’clock.” I naturally asked how he
had acquired this knowledge, since we had called nowhere, there was
no wireless installation on the ship, and we had received no message
from any passing vessel. Apart from all this was the question of time,
for the death, he maintained, had only just occurred. He replied, “I
cannot say. I was not even thinking of the poor man. I only know that
as the ship’s bell was striking twelve I was suddenly aware that he
had, at that moment, died.” The general, I may say, was a man of sturdy
common sense who had no belief in the supernatural, nor in emanations
from the dying, nor in warnings, nor in what he called generally “all
that nonsense.” Telepathy—in which also he did not believe—was out of
the question, since he and the dead man were entirely unknown to one
another. My friend was merely aware that the news had reached him. It
was useless for me to say that I did not think the patient could have
died so soon, for the general remained unmoved. He only knew that the
man was dead whether I expected the event or whether I did not.
When we reached Trinidad I proposed to go ashore to ascertain if any
news had arrived of the death at Panama. The general said it was
waste of time. The man was dead, and had died at noon. Nevertheless,
I landed and found that a telegram had appeared in which the death of
this lonely gentleman was noted as having taken place on the day I
have named. The hour of his death was not mentioned, but on my return
to England I was shown by his relatives the actual cablegram which had
conveyed to them the news. It stated that he had died at Panama on that
particular day at twelve o’clock noon. No coincidence could have been
more precise.
The general, to whom the event was as mysterious as it was unique
in his experience, ventured one comment. He said that during his
long residence in India he had heard rumours of the transmission of
news from natives in one part of India to natives in another, which
reports—if true—could not be explained by the feats of runners nor by
any system of signalling, since the distances traversed were often
hundreds of miles. We were both aware of the rumour, current at the
time, that the news of the defeat at Colenso was known in a certain
Indian bazaar a few hours after the guns had ceased firing. This,
we agreed, was assuredly an example of loose babble—started by a
native who hoped to hear of the failure of the British—and that this
gossip had become, by repetition, converted into a prophecy after the
occurrence.
For my own part I must regard the Panama incident as nothing but a
remarkable coincidence of thought and event. My friend was inclined to
regard it as an example of the sudden transmission of news of the kind
suggested by his Indian experience. Why he of all people should have
been the recipient of the message was beyond his speculation, since he
had no more concern with the happenings at Panama than had the captain
of the ship, to whom I had also spoken of the occurrence.
A further subject of some interest, suggested by M. Flammarion’s work,
may be touched upon. In the contemplation of the mystery of death it
may be reasonable to conjecture that at the moment of dying, or in the
first moment after death, the great secret would be, in whole or in
part, revealed. There are those who believe that after death there is
merely the void of nonexistence, the impenetrable and eternal night
of nothingness. Others conceive the spirit of the dead as wandering,
somewhere and somehow, beyond the limits of the world. It is this
belief which has induced many a mother, after the death of her child,
to leave the cottage door open and to put a light in the window with
some hope that the wandering feet might find a way home. Others, again,
hold to the conviction that those who die pass at once into a new state
of existence, the conditions of which vary according to the faith of
the believer.
In the face of the great mystery it would be thought that those who
have returned to life after having been, for an appreciable time,
apparently dead might have gained some insight into the unknown that
lies beyond. Cases of such recovery are not uncommon, and not a few
must have come within the experience of most medical men of large
practice. I have watched certain of such cases with much interest.
Among them the most pronounced example of apparent lifelessness was
afforded by the following occasion.
A middle-aged man, in good general health, was brought into the theatre
of the London Hospital to undergo an operation of a moderate degree
of severity. The administration of an anæsthetic was commenced, but
long before the moment for operating arrived the man collapsed and
appeared to be dead. His pulse had stopped, or at least no pulse could
be detected, the heartbeat could not be felt, he had ceased to breathe,
all traces of sensation had vanished, and his countenance was the
countenance of the dead. Artificial respiration was at once employed,
injections of various kinds were given, electricity was made extended
use of, while the heat of the body was maintained by hot bottles
liberally disposed.
The man remained without evidence of life for a period so long that
it seemed to be impossible that he could be other than dead. In the
intense anxiety that prevailed, and in the excitement aroused, I have
no doubt that this period of time was exaggerated and that seconds
might have been counted as minutes; but it represented, in my own
experience, the longest stretch of time during which a patient has
remained apparently without life. Feeble indications of respiration
returned and a flutter at the wrist could again be felt, but it was
long before the man was well enough to be moved back to the ward, the
operation having been, of course, abandoned.
I determined to watch the recovery of consciousness in this instance,
for here was a man who had been so far dead that, for a period almost
incredible to believe, he had been without the signs and evidences of
life. If life be indicated by certain manifestations, he had ceased to
live. He was, without question, apparently dead. It seemed to me that
this man must have penetrated so far into the Valley of the Shadow of
Death that he should have seen something of what was beyond, some part,
at least, of the way, some trace of a path, some sight of a country.
The door that separates life from death was in his case surely opening.
Had he no glimpse as it stood ajar?
He became conscious very slowly. He looked at me, but I evidently
conveyed no meaning to his mind. He seemed gradually to take in the
details of the ward, and at last his eye fell upon the nurse. He
recognized her, and after some little time said, with a smile, “Nurse,
you never told me what you heard at the music hall last night.” I
questioned him later as to any experience he may have had while in the
operating theatre. He replied that, except for the first unpleasantness
of breathing chloroform, he remembered nothing. He had dreamed nothing.
At a recent meeting (1922) of the British Medical Association at
Glasgow Sir William MacEwen reports an even more remarkable case of
a man who was brought into the hospital as “dead.” He had ceased to
breathe before admission. An operation upon the brain was performed
without the use of an anæsthetic of any kind. During the procedure
artificial respiration was maintained. The man recovered consciousness
and, looking round with amazement at the operating theatre and
the strange gathering of surgeons, dressers and nurses, broke his
death-like silence by exclaiming, “What’s all this fuss about?” It is
evident from cases such as these that no light upon the mystery is
likely to be shed by the testimony of those who have even advanced so
far as to reach at least the borderland of the “undiscovered country.”
I might conclude this fragment with some comment on the Fear of
Death. The dread of death is an instinct common to all humanity. Its
counterpart is the instinct of self-preservation, the resolve to live.
It is not concerned with the question of physical pain or distress,
but is the fear of extinction, a dread of leaving the world, with its
loves, its friendships and its cherished individual affairs, with
perhaps hopes unrealized and projects incomplete. It is a dread of
which the young know little. To them life is eternal.
The adventure is before them. Death and old age are as far away as the
blue haze of the horizon. It is about middle age that the realization
dawns upon men that life does not last for ever and that things must
come to an end. As the past grows vaster and more distant and the
future lessens to a mere span, the dread of death diminishes, so that
in extreme old age it may be actually welcomed.
Quite apart from this natural and instinctive attitude of mind there is
with many a poignant fear of death itself, of the actual act of dying
and of the terror and suffering that may be thereby involved. This
fear is ill-founded. The last moments of life are more distressing to
witness than to endure. What is termed “the agony of death” concerns
the watcher by the bedside rather than the being who is the subject
of pity. A last illness may be long, wearisome and painful, but the
closing moments of it are, as a rule, free from suffering. There may
appear to be a terrible struggle at the end, but of this struggle the
subject is unconscious. It is the onlooker who bears the misery of it.
To the subject there is merely a moment—
“When something like a white wave of the sea
Breaks o’er the brain and buries us in sleep.”
Death is often sudden, may often come during sleep, or may approach so
gradually as to be almost unperceived. Those who resent the drawbacks
of old age may take some consolation from the fact that the longer a
man lives the easier he dies.
A medical friend of mine had among his patients a very old couple who,
having few remaining interests in the world, had taken up the study
and arrangement of their health as a kind of hobby or diversion. To
them the subject was like a game of “Patience,” and was treated in
somewhat the same way. They had made an arrangement with the doctor
that he should look in and see them every morning. He would find them,
in the winter, in a cosy, old-fashioned room, sitting round the fire in
two spacious arm-chairs which were precisely alike and were precisely
placed, one on the right hand and one on the left. The old lady, with a
bright ribbon in her lace cap and a shawl around her shoulders, would
generally have some knitting on her knees, while the old gentleman, in
a black biretta, would be fumbling with a newspaper and a pair of horn
spectacles.
The doctor’s conversation every morning was, of necessity, monotonous.
He would listen to accounts of the food consumed, of the medicine taken
and of the quantity of sleep secured, just as he would listen to the
details of a game of “Patience.” Now and then there would be some
startling “move,” some such adventure as a walk to the garden gate or
the bold act of sitting for an hour at the open window. After having
received this report he would compliment the lady on her knitting and
on the singing of her canary and would discuss with the gentleman such
items of news as he had read in the paper.
On one morning visit he found them as usual. The wife was asleep, with
her spectacles still in place and her hands folded over her knitting.
The canary was full of song. The midday beef tea was warming on the
hob. The old gentleman, having dealt with his health, became very
heated on the subject of certain grievances, such as the noise of the
church bells and the unseemly sounds which issued from the village
inn. He characterized these and like disturbances of the peace as
“outrages which were a disgrace to the country.” After he had made his
denunciation he said he felt better.
“Your wife, I see, is asleep,” said the doctor. “Yes,” replied the
old man; “she has been asleep, I am glad to say, for quite two hours,
because the poor dear had a bad night last night.” The doctor crossed
the room to look at the old lady. She was dead, and had, indeed, been
dead for two hours. Such may be the last moments of the very old.
Quite commonly the actual instant of death is preceded, for hours
or days, by total unconsciousness. In other instances a state of
semi-consciousness may exist up to almost the last moment of life. It
is a dreamy condition, free of all anxiety, a state of twilight when
the familiar landscape of the world is becoming very indistinct. In
this penumbra friends are recognized, automatic acts are performed,
and remarks are uttered which show, or seem to show, both purpose and
reason. It is, however, so hazy a mental mood that could the individual
return to life again no recollection of the period would, I think,
survive. It is a condition not only free from uneasiness and from any
suspicion of alarm, but is one suggestive even of content.
I was with a friend of mine—a solicitor—at the moment of his death.
Although pulseless and rapidly sinking, he was conscious, and in
the quite happy condition just described. I suggested that I should
rearrange his pillows and put him in a more comfortable position. He
replied, “Don’t trouble, my dear fellow; a lawyer is comfortable in any
position.” After that he never spoke again.
In connexion with this semi-somnolent state it is interesting to note
how certain traits of character which have been dominant during life
may still survive and assert themselves—it may be automatically—in
those whose general consciousness is fading away in the haze of death.
The persistence of this ruling passion or phase of mind was illustrated
during the last moments of an eminent literary man at whose death-bed
I was present. This friend of mine had attained a position of great
prominence as a journalist. He had commenced his career as a reporter,
and the reporter’s spirit never ceased to mark the intellectual
activities of his later life. He was always seeking for information,
for news, for some matter of interest, something to report. His
conversation, as one acquaintance said, consisted largely of questions.
He always wanted to know. When he was _in extremis_, but still capable
of recognizing those around him, the dire sound of rattling in his
throat commenced. He indicated that he wanted to speak to me. I went to
his bedside. He said, in what little voice remained, “Tell me: Is that
the death rattle?” I replied that it was. “Thank you,” he said, with a
faint shadow of a smile; “I thought so.”
X
THE IDOL WITH HANDS OF CLAY
The good surgeon is born, not made. He is a complex product in any
case, and often something of a prodigy. His qualities cannot be
expressed by diplomas nor appraised by university degrees. It may be
possible to ascertain what he knows, but no examination can elicit what
he can do. He must know the human body as a forester knows his wood;
must know it even better than he, must know the roots and branches of
every tree, the source and wanderings of every rivulet, the banks of
every alley, the flowers of every glade. As a surgeon, moreover, he
must be learned in the moods and troubles of the wood, must know of
the wild winds that may rend it, of the savage things that lurk in
its secret haunts, of the strangling creepers that may throttle its
sturdiest growth, of the rot and mould that may make dust of its very
heart. As an operator, moreover, he must be a deft handicraftsman and a
master of touch.
He may have all these acquirements and yet be found wanting; just as
a man may succeed when shooting at a target, but fail when faced by
a charging lion. He may be a clever manipulator and yet be mentally
clumsy. He may even be brilliant, but Heaven help the poor soul who has
to be operated upon by a brilliant surgeon. Brilliancy is out of place
in surgery. It is pleasing in the juggler who plays with knives in the
air, but it causes anxiety in an operating theatre.
The surgeon’s hands must be delicate, but they must also be strong. He
needs a lace-maker’s fingers and a seaman’s grip. He must have courage,
be quick to think and prompt to act, be sure of himself and captain of
the venture he commands. The surgeon has often to fight for another’s
life. I conceive of him then not as a massive Hercules wrestling
ponderously with Death for the body of Alcestis, but as a nimble man in
doublet and hose who, over a prostrate form, fights Death with a rapier.
These reflections were the outcome of an incident which had set me
thinking of the equipment of a surgeon and of what is needed to fit
him for his work. The episode concerned a young medical man who had
started practice in a humble country town. His student career had been
meritorious and indeed distinguished. He had obtained an entrance
scholarship at his medical school, had collected many laudatory
certificates, had been awarded a gold medal and had become a Fellow of
the Royal College of Surgeons. His inclination was towards surgery.
He considered surgery to be his _métier_. Although circumstances had
condemned him to the drab life of a family doctor in a little town, he
persisted that he was, first and foremost, a surgeon, and, indeed, on
his door-plate had inverted the usual wording and had described himself
as “surgeon and physician.” In his hospital days he had assisted
at many operations, but his opportunities of acting as a principal
had been few and insignificant. In a small practice in a small town
surgical opportunities are rare. There was in the place a cottage
hospital with six beds, but it was mostly occupied by medical cases, by
patients with rheumatism or pneumonia, by patients who had to submit to
the surgical indignity of being poulticed and of being treated by mere
physic. Cases worthy of a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons were
very few, and even these seldom soared in interest above an abscess or
a broken leg.
Just before the young doctor settled down to practise he married. It
was a very happy union. The bride was the daughter of a neighbouring
farmer. She had spent her life in the country, was more familiar with
the ways of fowls and ducks than with the ways of the world, while a
sunbonnet became her better than a Paris toque. She was as pretty as
the milkmaid of a pastoral picture with her pink-and-white complexion,
her laughing eyes and her rippled hair.
Her chief charm was her radiant delight in the mere joy of living.
The small world in which she moved was to her always in the sun, and
the sun was that of summer. There was no town so pretty as her little
town, and no house so perfect as “the doctor’s” in the High Street.
“The doctor’s” was a Georgian house with windows of many panes, with a
fanlight like a surprised eyebrow over the entry and a self-conscious
brass knocker on the door. The house was close to the pavement, from
which it was separated by a line of white posts connected by loops of
chain. Passers-by could look over the low green wooden blinds into
the dining-room and see the table covered with worn magazines, for
the room was intended to imitate a Harley Street waiting-room. They
could see also the bright things on the sideboard, the wedding-present
biscuit box, the gong hanging from two cow horns and the cup won at
some hospital sports. To the young wife there never was such a house,
nor such furniture, nor such ornaments, nor, as she went about with a
duster from room to room, could there be a greater joy than that of
keeping everything polished and bright.