Of the great caution with which truth must often be handled, I
can not give you a better illustration than the following from
my own experience. A young man, accompanied by his young wife,
came from a distant place, and sent for me to see him at his
hotel. He wanted his chest examined, he told me. Did he wish to
be informed of what I might discover? He did. I made the _ante
mortem_ autopsy desired. Tubercles; cavities; disease in
full blast; death waiting at the door. I did not say this, of
course, but waited for his question. “Are there any tubercles?”
he asked presently. “Yes, there are.” There was silence for a
brief space, and then like Esau, he lifted up his voice and
wept; he cried with a great and exceedingly bitter cry, and
then the twain, husband and wife, with loud ululation and
passionate wringing of hands, shrieked in wild chorus like the
_keeners_ of an Irish funeral, and would not be soothed or
comforted. The fool! He had brought a letter from his physician,
warning me not to give an opinion to the patient himself, but
to write it to him, the medical adviser, and this letter the
patient had kept back, determined to have my opinion from my
own lips, not doubting that it would be favorable. In six weeks
he was dead, and I never questioned that his own folly and my
telling him the naked truth killed him before his time.
Truth is the breath of life to human society. It is the food of
the immortal spirit. Yet a single word of it may kill a man as
suddenly as a drop of prussic acid. An old gentleman was sitting
at a table when the news that Napoleon had returned from Elba
was told him. He started up, repeated a line from a French play,
which may be thus Englished:
“The fatal secret is at length revealed,” and fell senseless
in apoplexy. You remember the story of the old man who expired
on hearing that his sons were crowned at the Olympic games.
A worthy inhabitant of a village in New Hampshire fell dead
on hearing that he was chosen town clerk.--OLIVER WENDELL
HOLMES, JR.
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