_THE ACHIEVEMENTS OF DR. PERKINS_.
It might be hardly fair to say that Doctor Perkins, a former resident
of the village, was a quack; he may be described in milder phrase
as an irregular practitioner. He belonged to none of the accepted
schools, but treated his patients in accordance with certain theories
of his own. The doctor had a habit of relating remarkable stories of
his own achievements, and the most wonderful of these was his account
of an attempt that he once made to cure a man named Simpson of
consumption by the process of transfusion of blood. The doctor,
according to his own story, determined to inject healthy blood into
Simpson's veins.
As no human being was willing to shed his blood for Simpson, the
doctor bled Simpson's goat; and opening a vein in Simpson's arm, he
injected about two quarts of the blood into the patient's system.
Simpson immediately began to revive, but, singular to relate, no
sooner had his strength returned than he jumped out of bed; and
twitching his head about after the fashion of a goat, he made a savage
attempt to butt the doctor. That medical gentleman, after having
Simpson's head plunged against his stomach three or four times, took
refuge in the closet; whereupon Simpson banged his head against the
panel of the door a couple of times, and would probably have broken
it to splinters had not his mother-in-law entered at that moment and
diverted his attention. One well-directed blow from Simpson floored
her, and then, while she screamed for help, Simpson frolicked around
over the floor, making assiduous efforts to nibble the green flowers
in the ingrain carpet. When they called the hired man in and tied him
down on the bed, an effort was made to interview him, but the only
answer he could give to such questions as how he felt and when he
wanted his medicine was a "ba-a" precisely like that of a goat, and
then he would strain himself in an effort to butt a hole in the
headboard. The condition of the patient was so alarming, and Mrs.
Simpson was so indignant, that Dr. Perkins determined to undo the evil
if possible. So he first bled Simpson freely, and then, by heavily
bribing Simpson's Irishman, he procured fresh blood from him, and
injected Simpson the second time. Simpson recovered, but he shocked
his old Republican friends by displaying an irresistible tendency to
vote the Democratic ticket, and made his mother-in-law mad by speaking
with a strong brogue. He gradually gave up butting, and never indulged
in it in a serious manner but once, and that was on a certain Sunday,
when, one of the remaining corpuscles of goat's blood getting into his
brain just as he was going into church, he butted the sexton halfway
up the aisle, and only recovered himself sufficiently to apologize
just as the enraged official was about to floor him with a hymn-book.
[Illustration: SIMPSON'S CASE]
But the doctor did not succeed with private practice in Millburg,
and so one day he made up his mind to try to get out of poverty by
inventing a patent medicine. After some reflection he concluded that
the two most frequent and most unpopular forms of infirmity were
baldness of head and torpidity of the liver, and he selected compounds
recommended by the pharmacopoeia as the remedies which he would sell
to the public. One he called "Perkins' Hair Vigor," and the other
"Perkins' Liver Regulator." Procuring a large number of fancy bottles
and gaudy labels, he bottled the medicines and advertised them
extensively, with certificates of imaginary cures, which were written
out for him by a friend whose liver was active and whose hair was
abundant.
It is not at all unlikely that Perkins would have achieved success
with his enterprise but for one unfortunate circumstance: he was
totally unfamiliar with the preparations, excepting in so far as
the pharmacopoeia instructed him; and as ill-luck would have it, in
putting them up he got the labels of the liver regulator on the hair
vigor bottles, and the labels of the latter on the bottles containing
the former. Of course the results were appalling; and as Doctor
Perkins had requested the afflicted to inform him of the benefits
derived from applying the remedies, he had not sold more than a few
hundred bottles before he began to hear from the purchasers.
One day, as he was coming out of his office, he observed a man sitting
on the fire-plug with a shotgun in his hand and thunder upon his
brow. The man was bare-headed, and his scalp was covered with a shiny
substance of some kind. When he saw Perkins, he emptied one load of
bird-shot into the inventor's legs, and he was about to give him the
contents of the other barrel, when Perkins hobbled into the office and
shut the door. The man pursued him and tried to break in the door with
the butt of the gun. He failed, and Perkins asked him what he meant by
such murderous conduct.
"You come out here, and I'll show you what I mean, you scoundrel!"
said the man. "You step out here for a minute, and I'll blow the head
off of you for selling me hair vigor that has gummed my head up so
that I can't wear a hat and can't sleep without sticking to the
pillow-case. Turned my scalp all green and pink, too. You put your
head out of that door, and I'll give you more vigor than you want, you
idiot! I expect that stuff'll soak in and kill me."
Then the man took his seat again on the fire-plug, and after reloading
the barrel of his gun put on a fresh cap and waited. Perkins remained
inside and sent a boy out the back way for the mail. The first letter
he opened was from a woman, who wrote:
"My husband took one dose of your liver regulator and immediately went
into spasms. He has had fits every hour for four days. As soon as he
dies I am coming on to kill the fiend who poisoned him."
A clergyman in Delaware wrote to ask what were the ingredients of the
liver regulator. He feared something was wrong, because his aunt had
taken the medicine only twice, when she began to roll over on the
floor and howl in the most alarming manner, and she had been in a
comatose condition for fifteen hours.
A man named Johnson dropped a line to say that after applying the hair
vigor to his scalp he had leaned his head against the back of a chair,
and it had now been in that position two days. He feared he would
never be released unless he cut up the chair and wore the piece
permanently on his head. He was coming to see Perkins in reference to
the matter when he got loose, and he was going to bring his dog with
him.
A Mr. Wilson said that his boy had put some of the vigor on his face
in order to induce the growth of a moustache, and that at the present
moment the boy's upper lip was glued fast to the tip of his nose and
his countenance looked as if it had been coated with green varnish.
There were about forty other letters, giving the details of sundry
other cases of awful suffering and breathing threatenings and
slaughter against Mr. Perkins. Just as Mr. Perkins was finishing
these epistles a friend of his came rushing in through the back door
breathless, and exclaimed,
"By George, Aleck, you better get over the fence and leave town as
quick as you can. There's thunder to pay about those patent medicines
of yours. Old Mrs. Gridley's just gone up on that liver regulator,
after being in convulsions for a week. Thompson's hired girl is lying
at the last gasp, four of the Browns have got the awfulest-looking
heads you ever saw from the hair vigor, and about a dozen other people
are up at the sheriff's office taking out warrants for your arrest.
The people are talking of mobbing you, and the crowd out here on the
pavement are cheering a green-headed man with a gun who says he's
going to bang the head off of you. Now, you take my advice and skip.
It'll be sudden death to stay here. Leave! that's your only chance."
Then Doctor Perkins got over the fence and ran for the early train,
and an hour later the mob gutted his office and smashed the entire
stock of remedies. Perkins is in Canada now, working in a saw-mill.
He is convinced that there is no money for him in the business of
relieving human suffering.