AN EPICURE OF PAIN.
I pity the unfortunate who, in their necessities, find only the
succour of the civil authorities, without the intervention of
Christian charity. In reports presented to the public, philanthropy
may and will exaggerate the care which it lavishes on the
unfortunate, but things will not be so in reality.—_Balmez._
He loves not to be prodigal of men’s lives, but thriftily improves
the objects of his cruelty, spending them by degrees, and
epicurizing on their pain.—_Thos. Fuller._
The institution and maintenance of such public charities as hospitals
for the gratuitous relief of sickness all over Europe are directly due
to Christianity; no other religion or policy, except Buddhism in its
prime, ever blessed the world with such a form of charity. It has
become a recognised idea in our day that a poor sick man has a right to
be restored to health at the hands of a Christian people. That there
are misuses of it is well known, many persons seeking to participate in
this benevolence who could afford to obtain medical aid at their own
expense; yet the public is so convinced that at any cost it is bound to
remove the burden of illness from the shoulders of the poor, that it is
ready to wink at the abuse of its kindness in this way. The physicians
and surgeons attached to the greater hospitals are much sought after by
very well-to-do, not to say opulent, persons, who use every mean device
to obtain consultations gratuitously. Many such persons have been known
to attire themselves in the clothes of their servants, and to send
their children in charge of their cooks, to obtain advice and medicine
which would have entailed expense if obtained privately. This is one of
the ways in which such institutions are robbed.
It is possible that the treatment of the ills to which humanity is
subject may in course of time be considerably improved, in consequence
of the patient investigation that has long been carried out on every
form of disease at our hospitals. At present physiology and pathology
so entirely occupy the attention of the doctors, that treatment is
relegated to the distant future. A French physician spoke the truth
when he said, “The object of the scientific practitioner is to make a
good diagnosis in life, and then verify it on the post-mortem table.”
It is not to be denied that the art of making a good diagnosis has been
brought to considerable perfection of late; but whether we are more
successful than the doctors of former times in _curing_ these
well-diagnosed diseases is very doubtful. Now a general hospital,
frequented by thousands of “cases,” is to the inquiring physician what
an Alpine valley is to the botanist, or a Brazilian forest to an
entomologist. It is there that orders, genera, and species are to be
found. Diseases for classification in all their variations are met with
amongst the crowds applying for treatment. The great object is to get
the crowds; they come for one thing, the doctors for another. Very good
and kind and clever at curing folk, no doubt they often are, but
primarily the object of calling the crowd together is precisely that
which the herbarium supplies to the botanist, and the nest of drawers
to the entomologist.
The hospital professor is like Linnæus, who so curiously expressed
himself when he had achieved success:—
“God hath so led me, that what I desired and could not attain has been
my greatest blessing;
“God hath given me interesting and honourable service, yea! that which
in all the world I most desired;
“He hath lifted me up among the _mæcenates scientiarum_, yea! among the
princes of the kingdom, and into the King’s house;
“He hath lent me the largest herbarium in the world, my best delight.
“He hath honoured me with the honorary title of _arkiater_, with the
star of a knight, with the shield of a nobleman, and with a name in the
world of letters, etc.”
The only difference being that the great botanist thanked God for his
herbarium, while our hospital man of science has generally little
thought of God when making up his case book, unless it be to think,
with Helmholtz, how much more perfect organs he could have devised had
he been consulted at creation.
Elsworth often thought that all their diagnosis and classification did
little for the cure of disease; and that, as the labourer said of his
landlord’s claret, “You didn’t get any forrarder with it all!”
“Some day we shall arrive at the treatment stage,” they said; “at
present all is chaos in that direction. We have not diagnosed enough,”
they urge. “We must diagnose a good deal more in every part of the
world; then meet in congress, then keep up discussion in a hundred
societies, and, in the course of a century or so, we may begin to try
to cure people; but it is too early yet. Meanwhile, we can diagnose.
And take our fees? Why, certainly!”
Mr. Crowe was lecturer on physiology and pathology; that is to say, he
taught the students what the human body is in its normal state, and
what happened to it when subject to disease. He claimed that the only
gate to the true knowledge of a doctor’s work was the branch of science
which formed his speciality; and, as the examiners seemed to take the
same view, Mr. Crowe occupied a considerable share of the students’
time and attention. St. Bernard’s made a great fuss with Mr. Crowe, and
grudged no expenditure on his department. He could have all sorts of
costly and curious apparatus on application, because, in the present
rage for experiment, it was found to pay. He had a beautiful laboratory
for his work in the medical school, and in the hospital, fine new
chambers attached to the post-mortem room, where he kept his
microscopes, and made sections with the utmost patience and skill. Here
he often spent whole nights alone; here it was more than rumoured the
most gruesome things went on in secret, for, in the vaults below, there
was a small menagerie. No one was supposed to have access to this
inquisition-chamber, except he was either in Mr. Crowe’s employ, or in
his completest confidence, for of late unpleasant discussions had taken
place, and the subscribing public had made it pretty well known that
they did not support St. Bernard’s for this sort of work. Thus, great
care had to be exercised, and all Mr. Crowe’s familiars were cautioned
to mind what they were about. The tabbies and the lap-dogs of the
neighbourhood could venture abroad with less danger of being pressed
for service at St. Bernard’s, and the porters had to go to Seven Dials
for their purchases. These porters were characters in their way. Long
service in this line of business had left its marks upon them. They
were scarred and furrowed about the hands and arms with bites, cuts,
and scratches, which had healed badly, and, to the skilled observer,
sufficiently stamped them with the trade mark of the hospital. They
were brutalized by their ghoul-like work, and, if given the opportunity
of doing a stroke of business, would stick at nothing in the way of
subjects, which did not actually jeopardize their necks.
Mr. Crowe was forty-two years old, of middle height, dark, and inclined
to leanness. He had a decidedly malevolent aspect. His face was not
that of the libertine, the schemer, or the man of pleasure; but a
perfect pitilessness, an utter dissociation from any genial or loving
characteristics, was boldly recorded on the lines of his face, and the
very carriage of his body. Hard was not the word for it, cruel was not
wide enough to comprehend his character. Disregard of all pain in
others, contempt for those who professed to care for what troubled
others; these were the distinguishing traits of Mr. Malthus Crowe’s
moral character, and his face advertised it. Mr Crowe was rapidly
becoming an authority in his branches of science, and accordingly
brought much kudos to St. Bernard’s. Had not physiology been invented
in these latter days, it is difficult to imagine what the world could
have done for Mr. Crowe. He loved pain; he reverenced and esteemed it
(in others, of course). He had inflicted it in every form, and watched
its effects learnedly without flinching, both in animals and man. He
always described it as a tonic—Nature’s great nerve bracer—but he
never took it himself if he could help it. He declared the world could
not get on without it.
He had married in early life the daughter of an Italian engineer, who
lived at Cernobbio, on Lake Como. Having been in the habit of taking
his long vacation tour in Switzerland and Italy, he had formed the
acquaintance of several hospital surgeons of kindred tastes to his own,
and had frequently visited them at Milan and Genoa, and compared notes
on matters of mutual interest. One of these _confrères_ had introduced
him to his family, and so he met Olympia Casatelli, and, having some
reason to think her prospects good, had married her, notwithstanding
she was a Catholic, though her pronounced Garibaldian sentiments had
left her without any very ardent attachment to the religion of her
baptism.
Olympia was deeply imbued with the new Italian patriotism, and
cordially detested the “rule of the monk.” Passionate in her love for
her country, she eagerly caught at Mr. Crowe’s atheistic and
revolutionary notions, and, repellent as he appeared to most women, he
succeeded in winning her love, more by his professed sympathy with the
cause of Italian independence, and his hatred of the Bourbon and
Austrian, than by his own personal attractions. Downright ugliness in a
clever man is often an additional attraction, even to a handsome woman;
and Mr. Crowe’s science and revolutionary sympathies found their way to
Olympia’s heart, during an autumn holiday he passed at the lakes. She
must have loved him very much, or thought she did, or she could never
have torn herself away from the beloved mountains and the blissful lake
to bury herself in a wilderness of brick in the heart of London.
However, she had not been married a year ere she began to pine for her
picturesque home by the waterfall in the midst of the vineyard at
Cernobbio.
She soon found that her husband’s interest in Italy was merely that of
a destroyer—he cared only to upset the old order of things everywhere,
loved anarchy for the sake of pulling down something venerated by
Christian folk, and was insusceptible of sympathy with patriotism. Soon
poor Olympia was disillusioned; her husband was absorbed so completely
in his unpleasant branch of science, that she had little of his
company, and gradually was entirely neglected. She had few friends
in London, and none of the resources that would have helped an
Englishwoman similarly situated. It was not long before Mr. Crowe threw
off his mask. He cared for her less even than he cared for her country:
it was plain that he had married for money, and had not realized his
expectations. Working as he was doing for European fame, engaged in
researches which could only indirectly bring him reward, it was irksome
in the extreme for him to have to devote valuable time to patients and
pupils, for the sake of earning a living. He had trusted to a good
marriage to liberate him from these necessities. Never a very ardent
lover, he showed disgust when his neglected wife sought a miserable
refuge from her grief in narcotics. She gradually neglected her
personal appearance, and declined her food, occupying herself with
painting and music, but not sufficiently to absorb herself in these
pursuits; she slowly wasted, and ultimately lost her health completely.
Then her sleep forsook her, and she took chloral by her husband’s
suggestion. Its fascination held her in a bondage, from which she had
no sufficient energy to escape, and in mind and body the beautiful
Olympia, so recently the flower of her mountain home, became a wreck,
Her very presence soon became an annoyance to her husband, and for days
together he would absent himself from the house. She was so irksome to
him, that had he any deity in his pantheon who could have assisted him,
he would have prayed for her death. The sole deity he acknowledged was
the one who only helps those who help themselves; and at times a dark
thought occurred to him that some day he should be compelled to come to
his own assistance—the methods of carrying out such an idea were all
too easy and too safe for a man with his knowledge and in his position.