Silenus, of the mythologists, was a demigod, who became the nurse, the
preceptor, and finally the attendant, of Bacchus. He was represented as a
fat, bloated old fellow, riding on an ass, and drunk every day in the
year.
I knew a "bright and shining light" in the medical profession who turned
out a modern Silenus. This was Dr. G., of Plymouth, Conn. His father had
given him the best medical education which this country afforded. He was a
gentleman of superior address, as well as talent, tall, straight, and
handsome as an Apollo, with a dark, flashing eye, a massive brow, shaded
by a profusion of jet-black locks. How long he had practised medicine I do
not know. Throughout the county he had an excellent professional
reputation, particularly as a surgeon. His instruments were numerous, and
of the best and latest improvements. Alas that such a man should be lost
to the community, and to humanity! But his appetite for intoxicating drink
knew no bounds. His thirst was as insatiable as Tantalus'.
When I first knew him, he still was in practice, but the better portion of
the community had ceased to trust him. He never was sober for a day. He
occupied then a little office in the square, containing a front and a back
room. In the latter were his few medicines,--there was no apothecary in
town,--and a number of large glass jars, containing excellent anatomical
and foetal specimens. This room was not finished inside, and the walls
were full of nails, projecting through from the clapboards outside.
One day a Mr. Hotchkiss went after him, hoping to find the doctor
sufficiently sober to prescribe for a patient, in a case of emergency.
"What do you suppose I found him doing?" said Mr. Hotchkiss to me.
"Hiding from the snakes in his back room?" I suggested.
"No, sir; he had the tremens, and with his coat off, his hair standing
every way, his eyes glaring like a demon's, he had his case of forceps
strewn over the floor, and was diving at the ends of the clapboard nails,
which he called devils, that came through the boards, in the back office."
"Ah, there you are! Another devil staring at me!" he shouted; and with the
bright, gleaming forceps he dove at a nail, wrenched it from the wall, and
flinging it on the floor, he stamped on it, crying, "Another dead devil!
Come on. Ah, ha! there you are again!" and he dove at another. When he
broke a forceps he flung it on the floor, and caught a new pair. I tried
to stop him, but he only accused me of being leagued with his evil majesty
to destroy him.
[Illustration: A DOCTOR KILLING THE DEVILS.]
[Illustration: PAYING FOR HIS WINE.]
Another day, after having pawned nearly all his instruments for money
with which to buy liquor to appease his raving appetite, he was seen to
unseal one of the jars containing a foetal specimen, pour out a quantity
of the diluted alcohol in which it had long been preserved, and drink it
down with the avidity of a starving man.
His last instrument and case pawned, he sold the coat from his back to buy
liquors. He could no longer get practice, no longer pay his board, and he
became an outcast from all respectable society, and a frequenter of
bar-rooms. A poor and simple old woman in the remote part of the town took
compassion on him, and gave him a home. But nothing could chain his
uncontrollable passion for intoxicating drinks.
[Illustration: A BAR-ROOM DOCTOR.]
The last time I saw him was in the month of December. He was in a grocery,
warming himself by the store fire. He wore a crownless hat, a woman's
shawl over his shoulders, and a pair of boy's pants partially covered his
legs; no stockings covered his ankles, and a pair of old, low shoes
encased his feet. The light had fled from his once beautiful, lustrous
eyes; great wrinkles furrowed his once manly brow; his hair, once dark and
glossy as the raven's wing, was now streaked with gray, uncombed and
unkempt, hanging, knotted and snarled, over his neck and bloated face.
"Don't you recollect me?" he asked, with a shaking voice and a distressing
effort at a smile. Ah, it was sickening to the senses.
Alas! Such another wreck may I never behold. What power shall awaken him
from his awful condition, and
"Picture a happy past,
Gone from his sight,
Bring back his early youth,
Cloudless and bright;
Tell how a mother's eye
Watched while he slept,
Tell how she prayed for him,
Sorrowed and wept.
"Point to the better land,
Home of the blest,
Where she has passed away,
Gone to her rest.
O'er the departed one
Memory will yearn;
God, in his mercy, grant
He may return."