AN UNWELCOME VISITOR IN CRUCES--THE CHOLERA--SUCCESS
OF THE YELLOW DOCTRESS--FEARFUL SCENE AT THE
MULE-OWNER'S--THE BURYING PARTIES--THE CHOLERA
ATTACKS ME.
I do not think I have ever known what it is to despair, or even to
despond (if such were my inclination, I have had some opportunities
recently), and it was not long before I began to find out the bright
side of Cruces life, and enter into schemes for staying there. But it
would be a week or so before the advent of another crowd would wake
Cruces to life and activity again; and in the meanwhile, and until I
could find a convenient hut for my intended hotel, I remained my
brother's guest.
But it was destined that I should not be long in Cruces before my
medicinal skill and knowledge were put to the test. Before the
passengers for Panama had been many days gone, it was found that they
had left one of their number behind them, and that one--the cholera. I
believe that the faculty have not yet come to the conclusion that the
cholera is contagious, and I am not presumptuous enough to forestall
them; but my people have always considered it to be so, and the poor
Cruces folks did not hesitate to say that this new and terrible plague
had been a fellow-traveller with the Americans from New Orleans or
some other of its favoured haunts. I had the first intimation of its
unwelcome presence in the following abrupt and unpleasant manner:--
A Spaniard, an old and intimate friend of my brother, had supped with
him one evening, and upon returning home had been taken ill, and after
a short period of intense suffering had died. So sudden and so
mysterious a death gave rise to the rumour that he had been poisoned,
and suspicion rested for a time, perhaps not unnaturally, upon my
brother, in whose company the dead man had last been. Anxious for many
reasons--the chief one, perhaps, the position of my brother--I went
down to see the corpse. A single glance at the poor fellow showed me
the terrible truth. The distressed face, sunken eyes, cramped limbs,
and discoloured shrivelled skin were all symptoms which I had been
familiar with very recently; and at once I pronounced the cause of
death to be cholera. The Cruces people were mightily angry with me
for expressing such an opinion; even my brother, although it relieved
him of the odium of a great crime, was as annoyed as the rest. But by
twelve o'clock that morning one of the Spaniard's friends was attacked
similarly, and the very people who had been most angry with me a few
hours previously, came to me now eager for advice. There was no doctor
in Cruces; the nearest approach to one was a little timid dentist, who
was there by accident, and who refused to prescribe for the sufferer,
and I was obliged to do my best. Selecting from my medicine chest--I
never travel anywhere without it--what I deemed necessary, I went
hastily to the patient, and at once adopted the remedies I considered
fit. It was a very obstinate case, but by dint of mustard emetics,
warm fomentations, mustard plasters on the stomach and the back, and
calomel, at first in large then in gradually smaller doses, I
succeeded in saving my first cholera patient in Cruces.
For a few days the terrible disease made such slow progress amongst us
that we almost hoped it had passed on its way and spared us; but all
at once it spread rapidly, and affrighted faces and cries of woe soon
showed how fatally the destroyer was at work. And in so great request
were my services, that for days and nights together I scarcely knew
what it was to enjoy two successive hours' rest.
And here I must pause to set myself right with my kind reader. He or
she will not, I hope, think that, in narrating these incidents, I am
exalting my poor part in them unduly. I do not deny (it is the only
thing indeed that I have to be proud of) that I _am_ pleased and
gratified when I look back upon my past life, and see times now and
then, and places here and there, when and where I have been enabled to
benefit my fellow-creatures suffering from ills my skill could often
remedy. Nor do I think that the kind reader will consider this feeling
an unworthy one. If it be so, and if, in the following pages, the
account of what Providence has given me strength to do on larger
fields of action be considered vain or egotistical, still I cannot
help narrating them, for my share in them appears to be the one and
only claim I have to interest the public ear. Moreover I shall be
sadly disappointed, if those years of life which may be still in store
for me are not permitted by Providence to be devoted to similar
usefulness. I am not ashamed to confess--for the gratification is,
after all, a selfish one--that I love to be of service to those who
need a woman's help. And wherever the need arises--on whatever distant
shore--I ask no greater or higher privilege than to minister to it.
After this explanation, I resume more freely the account of my labours
in Cruces.
It was scarcely surprising that the cholera should spread rapidly, for
fear is its powerful auxiliary, and the Cruces people bowed down
before the plague in slavish despair. The Americans and other
foreigners in the place showed a brave front, but the natives,
constitutionally cowardly, made not the feeblest show of resistance.
Beyond filling the poor church, and making the priests bring out into
the streets figures of tawdry dirty saints, supposed to possess some
miraculous influence which they never exerted, before which they
prostrated themselves, invoking their aid with passionate prayers and
cries, they did nothing. Very likely the saints would have got the
credit of helping them if they had helped themselves; but the poor
cowards never stirred a finger to clean out their close, reeking huts,
or rid the damp streets of the rotting accumulation of months. I think
their chief reliance was on "the yellow woman from Jamaica with the
cholera medicine." Nor was this surprising; for the Spanish doctor,
who was sent for from Panama, became nervous and frightened at the
horrors around him, and the people soon saw that he was not familiar
with the terrible disease he was called upon to do battle with, and
preferred trusting to one who was.
It must be understood that many of those who could afford to pay for
my services did so handsomely, but the great majority of my patients
had nothing better to give their doctress than thanks. The best part
of my practice lay amongst the American store and hotel keepers, the
worst among the native boatmen and muleteers. These latter died by
scores, and among them I saw some scenes of horror I would fain
forget, if it were possible. One terrible night, passed with some of
them, has often haunted me. I will endeavour to narrate it, and should
the reader be supposed to think it highly coloured and doubtful, I
will only tell him that, terrible as it seems, I saw almost as fearful
scenes on the Crimean peninsula among British men, a few thousand
miles only from comfort and plenty.
It was late in the evening when the largest mule-owner in Cruces came
to me and implored me to accompany him to his kraal, a short distance
from the town, where he said some of his men were dying. One in
particular, his head muleteer, a very valuable servant, he was most
selfishly anxious for, and, on the way thither, promised me a large
remuneration if I should succeed in saving him. Our journey was not a
long one, but it rained hard, and the fields were flooded, so that it
took us some time to reach the long, low hut which he called his home.
I would rather not see such another scene as the interior of that hut
presented. Its roof scarcely sheltered its wretched inmates from the
searching rain; its floor was the damp, rank turf, trodden by the
mules' hoofs and the muleteers' feet into thick mud. Around, in dirty
hammocks, and on the damp floor, were the inmates of this wretched
place, male and female, the strong and the sick together, breathing
air that nearly choked me, accustomed as I had grown to live in impure
atmosphere; for beneath the same roof the mules, more valuable to
their master than his human servants, were stabled, their fore-feet
locked, and beside them were heaps of saddles, packs, and harness. The
groans of the sufferers and the anxiety and fear of their comrades
were so painful to hear and witness, that for a few minutes I felt an
almost uncontrollable impulse to run out into the stormy night, and
flee from this plague-spot. But the weak feeling vanished, and I set
about my duty. The mule-owner was so frightened that he did not
hesitate to obey orders, and, by my directions, doors and shutters
were thrown open, fires were lighted, and every effort made to
ventilate the place; and then, with the aid of the frightened women, I
applied myself to my poor patients. Two were beyond my skill. Death
alone could give them relief. The others I could help. But no words of
mine could induce them to bear their terrible sufferings like men.
They screamed and groaned, not like women, for few would have been so
craven-hearted, but like children; calling, in the intervals of
violent pain, upon Jesu, the Madonna, and all the saints of heaven
whom their lives had scandalised. I stayed with them until midnight,
and then got away for a little time. But I had not long been quiet,
before the mule-master was after me again. The men were worse; would I
return with him. The rain was drifting heavily on the thatched roof,
as it only does in tropical climates, and I was tired to death; but I
could not resist his appeal. He had brought with him a pair of tall,
thick boots, in which I was to wade through the flooded fields; and
with some difficulty I again reached the kraal. I found the worst
cases sinking fast, one of the others had relapsed, while fear had
paralysed the efforts of the rest. At last I restored some order; and,
with the help of the bravest of the women, fixed up rude screens
around the dying men. But no screens could shut out from the others
their awful groans and cries for the aid that no mortal power could
give them. So the long night passed away; first a deathlike stillness
behind one screen, and then a sudden silence behind the other, showing
that the fierce battle with death was over, and who had been the
victor. And, meanwhile, I sat before the flickering fire, with my last
patient in my lap--a poor, little, brown-faced orphan infant, scarce a
year old, was dying in my arms, and I was powerless to save it. It may
seem strange, but it is a fact, that I thought more of that little
child than I did of the men who were struggling for their lives, and
prayed very earnestly and solemnly to God to spare it. But it did not
please Him to grant my prayer, and towards morning the wee spirit
left this sinful world for the home above it had so lately left, and
what was mortal of the little infant lay dead in my arms. Then it was
that I began to think--how the idea first arose in my mind I can
hardly say--that, if it were possible to take this little child and
examine it, I should learn more of the terrible disease which was
sparing neither young nor old, and should know better how to do battle
with it. I was not afraid to use my baby patient thus. I knew its fled
spirit would not reproach me, for I had done all I could for it in
life--had shed tears over it, and prayed for it.
It was cold grey dawn, and the rain had ceased, when I followed the
man who had taken the dead child away to bury it, and bribed him to
carry it by an unfrequented path down to the river-side, and accompany
me to the thick retired bush on the opposite bank. Having persuaded
him thus much, it was not difficult, with the help of silver arguments
to convince him that it would be for the general benefit and his own,
if I could learn from this poor little thing the secret inner workings
of our common foe; and ultimately he stayed by me, and aided me in my
first and last _post mortem_ examination. It seems a strange deed to
accomplish, and I am sure I could not wield the scalpel or the
substitute I then used now, but at that time the excitement had
strung my mind up to a high pitch of courage and determination; and
perhaps the daily, almost hourly, scenes of death had made me somewhat
callous. I need not linger on this scene, nor give the readers the
results of my operation; although novel to me, and decidedly useful,
they were what every medical man well knows.
We buried the poor little body beneath a piece of luxuriant turf, and
stole back into Cruces like guilty things. But the knowledge I had
obtained thus strangely was very valuable to me, and was soon put into
practice. But that I dreaded boring my readers, I would fain give them
some idea of my treatment of this terrible disease. I have no doubt
that at first I made some lamentable blunders, and, may be, lost
patients which a little later I could have saved. I know I came
across, the other day, some notes of cholera medicines which made me
shudder, and I dare say they have been used in their turn and found
wanting. The simplest remedies were perhaps the best. Mustard
plasters, and emetics, and calomel; the mercury applied externally,
where the veins were nearest the surface, were my usual resources.
Opium I rather dreaded, as its effect is to incapacitate the system
from making any exertion, and it lulls the patient into a sleep which
is often the sleep of death. When my patients felt thirsty, I would
give them water in which cinnamon had been boiled. One stubborn attack
succumbed to an additional dose of ten grains of sugar of lead, mixed
in a pint of water, given in doses of a table-spoonful every quarter
of an hour. Another patient, a girl, I rubbed over with warm oil,
camphor, and spirits of wine. Above all, I never neglected to apply
mustard poultices to the stomach, spine, and neck, and particularly to
keep my patient warm about the region of the heart. Nor did I relax my
care when the disease had passed by, for danger did not cease when the
great foe was beaten off. The patient was left prostrate;
strengthening medicines had to be given cautiously, for fever, often
of the brain, would follow. But, after all, one great conclusion,
which my practice in cholera cases enabled me to come to, was the old
one, that few constitutions permitted the use of exactly similar
remedies, and that the course of treatment which saved one man, would,
if persisted in, have very likely killed his brother.
Generally speaking, the cholera showed premonitory symptoms; such as
giddiness, sickness, diarrhoea, or sunken eyes and distressed look;
but sometimes the substance followed its forecoming shadow so quickly,
and the crisis was so rapid, that there was no time to apply any
remedies. An American carpenter complained of giddiness and
sickness--warning signs--succeeded so quickly by the worst symptoms of
cholera, that in less than an hour his face became of an indigo tint,
his limbs were doubled up horribly with violent cramps, and he died.
To the convicts--and if there could be grades of wretchedness in
Cruces, these poor creatures were the lowest--belonged the terrible
task of burying the dead; a duty to which they showed the utmost
repugnance. Not unfrequently, at some fancied alarm, they would fling
down their burden, until at last it became necessary to employ the
soldiers to see that they discharged the task allotted to them.
Ordinarily, the victims were buried immediately after death, with such
imperfect rites of sepulture as the harassed frightened priests would
pay them, and very seldom was time afforded by the authorities to the
survivors to pay those last offices to the departed which a Spaniard
and a Catholic considers so important. Once I was present at a
terrible scene in the house of a New Granada grandee, whose pride and
poverty justified many of the old Spanish proverbs levelled at his
caste.
It was when the cholera was at its height, and yet he had
left--perhaps on important business--his wife and family, and gone to
Panama for three days. On the day after his departure, the plague
broke out in his house, and my services were required promptly. I
found the miserable household in terrible alarm, and yet confining
their exertions to praying to a coarse black priest in a black
surplice, who, kneeling beside the couch of the Spanish lady, was
praying (in his turn) to some favourite saint in Cruces. The sufferer
was a beautiful woman, suffering from a violent attack of cholera,
with no one to help her, or even to take from her arms the poor little
child they had allowed her to retain. In her intervals of comparative
freedom from pain, her cries to the Madonna and her husband were
heartrending to hear. I had the greatest difficulty to rout the stupid
priest and his as stupid worshippers, and do what I could for the
sufferer. It was very little, and before long the unconscious Spaniard
was a widower. Soon after, the authorities came for the body. I never
saw such passionate anger and despair as were shown by her relatives
and servants, old and young, at the intrusion--rage that she, who had
been so exalted in life, should go to her grave like the poor, poor
clay she was. Orders were given to bar the door against the convict
gang who had come to discharge their unpleasant duty, and while all
were busy decking out the unconscious corpse in gayest attire, none
paid any heed to me bending over the fire with the motherless child,
journeying fast to join its dead parent. I had made more than one
effort to escape, for I felt more sick and wretched than at any
similar scene of woe; but finding exit impossible, I turned my back
upon them, and attended to the dying child. Nor did I heed their
actions until I heard orders given to admit the burial party, and then
I found that they had dressed the corpse in rich white satin, and
decked her head with flowers.
The agitation and excitement of this scene had affected me as no
previous horror had done, and I could not help fancying that symptoms
were showing themselves in me with which I was familiar enough in
others. Leaving the dying infant to the care of its relatives (when
the Spaniard returned he found himself widowed and childless), I
hastened to my brother's house. When there, I felt an unpleasant chill
come over me, and went to bed at once. Other symptoms followed
quickly, and, before nightfall, I knew full well that my turn had come
at last, and that the cholera had attacked me, perhaps its greatest
foe in Cruces.