BLESSINGS OF CIDER AND CIDER BRANDY.
Some of these blessings have been alluded to in Chapter XXXVI. But the
subject is one of too much importance to be left in an unfinished state,
and I have concluded to make it the principal topic of a separate
chapter.
A man came to me, one day, with sundry grievous complaints about his
head and stomach. It was easy to see, at once, that they were not of
mushroom growth, and that they could not be removed either in an hour or
a day. However, I did the best I could with him, and charged him to
follow, implicitly, my directions, which he promised faithfully to do. I
told him, even, that he was in danger of a severe disease, but
counselled him to do his utmost to escape it, if possible.
He was, in the first place, a New England or Yankee farmer. Not quite
satisfied with the products of his farm from the labors of the day, he
coupled with them the night labors of managing a saw-mill and a
distillery. And not satisfied with even these, he sometimes burned
charcoal, which also involved more or less of nocturnal labor. In truth,
these employments and avocations kept him up a great many nights during
a considerable portion of the year, and were evidently wearing him out
prematurely; for, though less than forty years of age, he had the
appearance of being fifty or sixty.
This severe tasking of his system, had led him greatly into temptation.
Not only had he acquired the habit of chewing tobacco, as a solace in
his seclusion and toil, but also of drinking very freely of cider and
cider brandy; the last two of which, as might naturally be inferred from
what has been said, he was accustomed to manufacture in large
quantities. He was not a great eater, though I have no doubt he ate too
much. But he did not take time to eat--he did not masticate any thing;
almost every thing was swallowed in masses, and washed down with tea,
coffee, or cider. Then, lastly and finally, he ate, as it were, by the
job, when he _did_ eat; for his meals were very irregular and sometimes
very infrequent.
Another thing should be noticed. His cider and perhaps his tobacco,
having leagued together, took away his appetite. Cider, as is well
known, practically and in a gradual way, takes away the appetite, and so
does coffee. Many a farmer will tell you that it is a matter of economy
to give his laborers cider or coffee, since they will not eat so much.
It is highly probable that brandy, and indeed all extra stimulants, have
the same appetite-destroying effect.
And as the result of his various irregularities and abuses, his
digestive and nervous systems had become very much deranged and
disordered, and I could hardly help foreboding evil concerning him. I
prescribed for him as well as I could, and requested him to call on me
in two or three days, and "report progress."
On the next day but one, I was summoned to his bedside. My medicine had
indeed appeared to afford him a little temporary relief, but it was only
temporary. He was now much worse than ever before. I prescribed again;
but it was with similar effect. Nature, somewhat relieved, as I then
vainly imagined, seemed disposed to rally, but was unable. Every
successive effort to rally, showed more and more clearly how much she
had been crippled. At least she seemed to succumb either to the
treatment or the disease, which last became in the end quite formidable.
But though Nature had yielded, apparently vanquished, she still made
occasional faint efforts, every two or three days, to regain the
supremacy, or, in other words, to set things right; and sometimes we
were led to indulge in hope. But the remissions of disease and of
suffering were only temporary, and were succeeded, in every instance, by
a worse condition of things than before. I called for sage medical
counsel, but all to no permanent purpose. Downward he tended, step by
step, and no human power or skill seemed likely to arrest his progress.
In this downward course his constitution held out--for he was by nature
exceedingly tenacious of life--till about the twenty-third day, when the
vital forces began to retreat. He died on the twenty-fifth.
One practical but general error deserves to be noticed, for want of a
better place, in this very connection. Notwithstanding the great
difficulty of convincing a person who habitually uses extra stimulants,
narcotics, or any medicinal agents, all the way from rum, opium, and
tobacco, down to tea, coffee, and saleratus, that they are injuring him
at all, as long as he does not feel very ill, yet it ought to be clearly
and fully known that every one who is thus addicted to unnatural habits,
and _being_ thus addicted is seized with disease of any kind and from
any cause whatever, is certain to have that disease with greater
severity than if his habits had been, from the first, perfectly correct
or normal. Nor is this all. Medical aid, whenever invoked under these
circumstances, is more questionable as to its good tendencies. No
medical man of any skill or observation but must feel, in such a case,
most painfully, the terrible uncertainty of that treatment of the living
machine which is quite enough so when the habits have been most
favorable, by being most correct.
One caution of quite another kind may be interposed here. My patient
above had neglected to call on me for several days in the beginning of
his disease, under the very general impression of ignorant people, that
if he called a physician he should certainly be severely sick; for if he
was not already very sick, any efforts to prevent disease would only
serve to make him so.
Now this is, as a general rule, a very great mistake. It would be much
more safe to call a physician very early, than to wait till Nature is so
much embarrassed and even crippled that we can place very little
reliance on her efforts. Worse still is it for the physician, when
called late, to load down the enfeebled system with medicine by way of
atoning for past neglects. Thousands have made the mistake here alluded
to, and have thus been a means of hastening on a fatal termination of
the disease. It is not by any means improbable that such was the result
in the foregoing instance.