After we left, the friends stood anxiously around the bed upon which
the sick man lay; but though the blister began to draw, no signs of
returning consciousness showed themselves, further than an
occasional low moan, or an uneasy tossing of the arms. For full two
hours the burning plaster parched the tender skin of H--'s shorn
head, and was then removed; it had done good service. Dressings were
then applied; repeated and repeated again; but still the sick man
lay in a deep stupor.
"It has done no good; hadn't we better send for the doctor?"
suggested the wife.
Just then the eyes of H-- opened, and he looked with half-stupid
surprise from face to face of the anxious group that surrounded the
bed.
"What in the mischief's the matter?" he at length said. At the same
time, feeling a strange sensation about his head, he placed his hand
rather heavily thereon.
"Heavens and earth!" He was now fully in his senses. "Heavens and
earth! what ails my head?"
"For mercy's sake, keep quiet," said the wife, the glad tears
gushing over her face. "You have been very ill; there, there, now!"
And she spoke soothingly. "Don't say a word, but lie very still."
"But my head! What's the matter with my head? It feels as if
scalded. Where's my hair? Heavens and earth! Sarah, I don't
understand this. And my arm? What's my arm tied up in this way for?"
"Be quiet, my dear husband, and I'll explain it all. Oh, be very
quiet; your life depends upon it." Mr. H-- sank back upon the
pillow from which he had arisen, and closed his eyes to think. He
put his hand to his head, and felt it, tenderly, all over, from
temple to temple, and from nape to forehead.
"Is it a blister?" he at length asked.
"Yes, dear. You have been very ill; we feared for your life," said
Mrs. H--, affectionately; "there have been two physicians in
attendance."
H-- closed his eyes again; his lips moved. Those nearest were not
much edified by the whispered words that issued therefrom. They
would have sounded very strangely in a church, or to ears polite and
refined. After this, he lay for some time quiet.
"Threatened with apoplexy, I suppose?" he then said,
interrogatively.
"Yes, dear," replied his wife. "I found you lying insensible upon
the floor, on happening to come into your room. It was most
providential that I discovered you when I did, or you would
certainly have died."
H-- shut his eyes and muttered something, with an air of
impatience; but its meaning was not understood. Finding him out of
danger, friends and relatives retired, and the sick man was left
alone with his family.
"Sarah," he said, "why, in the name of goodness, did you permit the
doctors to butcher me in this way? I'm laid up for a week or two,
and all for nothing."
"It was to save your life, dear."
"Save the--!"
"H-u-s-h! There! do, for mercy's sake, be quiet; every thing depends
upon it."
With a gesture of impatience, H-- shut his eyes, teeth, and hands,
and lay perfectly still for some minutes. Then he turned his face to
the wall, muttering in a low, petulant voice--"Too bad! too bad! too
bad!"
I had not erred in my first and my last impressions of H--'s
disease, neither had Dr. S-- although he used a very extraordinary
mode of treatment. The facts of the case were these:
H-- had a weakness; he could not taste wine nor strong drink
without being tempted into excess. Both himself and friends were
mortified and grieved at this; and they, by admonition, and he, by
good resolutions, tried to bring about a reform; but to see was to
taste, to taste was to fall. At last, his friends urged him to shut
himself up at home for a certain time, and see if total abstinence
would not give him strength. He got on pretty well for a few days,
particularly so, as his coachman kept a well-filled bottle for him
in the carriage-house, to which he not unfrequently resorted; but a
too ardent devotion to this bottle brought on the supposed apoplexy.
Dr. S-- was right in his mode of treating the disease after all,
and did not err in supposing that it would reach the predisposition.
The cure was effectual. H-- kept quiet on the subject, and bore his
shaved head upon his shoulders with as much philosophy as he could
muster. A wig, after the sores made by the blister had disappeared,
concealed the barber's work until his own hair grew again. He never
ventured upon wine or brandy again for fear of apoplexy.
When the truth leaked out, as leak out such things always will, the
friends of H-- had many a hearty laugh; but they wisely concealed
from the object of their merriment the fact that they knew any thing
more than appeared of the cause of his supposed illness.