THE INDIAN DOCTOR.
A little child about two years of age, severely afflicted with bowel
complaint, came under my care during the first year of my medical
practice, and proved the source of much difficulty.
She was the child of a mother who had been trained to delicacies, in the
usual fashionable way, and who had begun to carry out the same wretched
course of education in her own family. In addition to a generally wrong
treatment, the child had been indulged, for many weeks before I was
called, with a large amount of green, or at least very unripe, fruit.
It was at a season of the year when both children and adults were
suffering from bowel complaints much more than at any other; but as the
hot days and nights were expected soon to give way to the cooler and
longer nights of October, I fastened my hopes of the child's final
recovery, very largely, on the natural recuperative effects of the
autumnal season. I did not attempt to give much medicine. My reliance
was almost wholly on keeping up what I was wont to call a good
centrifugal force, or in keeping the skin--the great safety valve of the
system--in proper and healthful activity. Much that I ordered was in the
way of bathing, local and general, especially warm bathing.
The parents of the child were among my most confidential, not to say
influential, friends. If there was a family within the whole of my
medical circuit with whom my word was law, it was this. Yet after all
they were ignorant, especially of themselves; and such people always
were and always will be credulous. They would open their ears, not only
to the thousand and one insinuations of malice and envy, which at times
are ventured against a young physician,--especially if he is going
ahead, and as they say "getting rich" too fast, and thus securing more
than they believe to be his share of public popularity;--but to the
still larger number, if possible, of weak criticisers in his practice.
My friend's residence, moreover, was in a neighborhood contiguous to
quacks and quackery, in the pretensions to which there were many
believers. These dupes of ignorance and assurance were ever and anon
filling the heads of my "patrons" with their stories of wonderful cures,
in cases almost _exactly like that of my own little patient_, and urging
the poor half-distracted parents to try something new--either medicine
or physician. They would appeal to their feelings by asking them how
they could be willing, as parents,--however great might be their
confidence in me as a physician,--to let a darling child lie, day after
day, and yet make no extra effort to save it.
Their appeals were not wholly ineffective; indeed, what else could have
been expected? My first suspicion of any thing radically wrong, arose
from a decidedly unexpected effect from a little medicine I had
previously ordered. It seemed quite clear to my mind that a neutralizing
agent had been at work somehow, by design or otherwise. And yet I shrunk
from making an inquiry. In the end, however, I found myself morally
compelled to do so. The results were very nearly what I had feared, and
what might have been expected.
One of the _reliabilities_ of the wise ones of the neighborhood went by
the name of the "Indian" doctor. Whether in addition to a very little
Indian blood he was half or three-fourths Spanish, Portuguese, or
Canadian, I never knew, for I never took pains to inquire. But he had
Indian habits. He was at times intemperate and vicious. No one who knew
him would have trusted him with a sixpence of his own honest earnings,
at least any longer than he was within his sight or reach. Yet many
people would and did trust him with their own lives and the lives of
their children.
There was one redeeming circumstance in connection with the history of
this Indian doctor. He would never prescribe for the sick when in a
state of intoxication. He knew, in this respect, his own weakness. But
then it must be confessed he was not often free from intoxication. He
was almost always steeped in cider or spirits. He was seldom, if ever,
properly a sane or even a steady man.
On pressing the parents of the sick child more closely than usual, they
frankly owned that though they had not of themselves called in the
Indian doctor, they had permitted Mrs. A. B. to invite him in, and had
permitted the child to take a little of his medicine.
The secret was now fully revealed, and it was no longer a matter of
wonder with me, why poison did not work well against poison. The wonder
was why, together, we had not killed the poor child. And yet it was by
no means certain that the Indian's prescription was of much force, save
the few drops of alcohol which it contained, for all his medicine was to
be taken in alcohol.
I stated to the parents the probable issues--that unless the child
possessed more than ordinary tenacity of life, it must ultimately sink
under the load it was compelled to sustain. But to our great
surprise--certainly my own--it survived; and, though it was suspended
for weeks between life and death, it finally recovered.
The most mortifying circumstance of all was, that this miserable mongrel
of a man had the credit of curing a child that only survived because it
was tough and strong enough to resist the destructive tendency of two
broadside fires--mine and his own. But medical men are compelled to put
up with a great many things which, of course, they would not prefer.
They must take the world as it is--as the world does the corps of
physicians. They must calculate for deductions and drawbacks; and what
they calculate on, they are pretty sure to experience. But, like other
men with other severe trials, they have their reward.