"I can add nothing which will make the description more accurate,"
answered Ezra Jennings. "From first to last the fever assumed no
specific form. I sent at once to two of Mr. Candy's medical friends
in the town, both physicians, to come and give me their opinion of the
case. They agreed with me that it looked serious; but they both strongly
dissented from the view I took of the treatment. We differed entirely in
the conclusions which we drew from the patient's pulse. The two
doctors, arguing from the rapidity of the beat, declared that a lowering
treatment was the only treatment to be adopted. On my side, I admitted
the rapidity of the pulse, but I also pointed to its alarming feebleness
as indicating an exhausted condition of the system, and as showing a
plain necessity for the administration of stimulants. The two doctors
were for keeping him on gruel, lemonade, barley-water, and so on. I was
for giving him champagne, or brandy, ammonia, and quinine. A serious
difference of opinion, as you see! a difference between two physicians
of established local repute, and a stranger who was only an assistant in
the house. For the first few days, I had no choice but to give way to my
elders and betters; the patient steadily sinking all the time. I made a
second attempt to appeal to the plain, undeniably plain, evidence of the
pulse. Its rapidity was unchecked, and its feebleness had increased.
The two doctors took offence at my obstinacy. They said, 'Mr. Jennings,
either we manage this case, or you manage it. Which is it to be?' I
said, 'Gentlemen, give me five minutes to consider, and that plain
question shall have a plain reply.' When the time expired, I was ready
with my answer. I said, 'You positively refuse to try the stimulant
treatment?' They refused in so many words. 'I mean to try it at once,
gentlemen.'--'Try it, Mr. Jennings, and we withdraw from the case.' I
sent down to the cellar for a bottle of champagne; and I administered
half a tumbler-full of it to the patient with my own hand. The two
physicians took up their hats in silence, and left the house."
"You had assumed a serious responsibility," I said. "In your place, I am
afraid I should have shrunk from it."
"In my place, Mr. Blake, you would have remembered that Mr. Candy had
taken you into his employment, under circumstances which made you his
debtor for life. In my place, you would have seen him sinking, hour by
hour; and you would have risked anything, rather than let the one man on
earth who had befriended you, die before your eyes. Don't suppose that
I had no sense of the terrible position in which I had placed myself!
There were moments when I felt all the misery of my friendlessness, all
the peril of my dreadful responsibility. If I had been a happy man, if I
had led a prosperous life, I believe I should have sunk under the task I
had imposed on myself. But I had no happy time to look back at, no past
peace of mind to force itself into contrast with my present anxiety and
suspense--and I held firm to my resolution through it all. I took an
interval in the middle of the day, when my patient's condition was at
its best, for the repose I needed. For the rest of the four-and-twenty
hours, as long as his life was in danger, I never left his bedside.
Towards sunset, as usual in such cases, the delirium incidental to
the fever came on. It lasted more or less through the night; and then
intermitted, at that terrible time in the early morning--from two
o'clock to five--when the vital energies even of the healthiest of us
are at their lowest. It is then that Death gathers in his human harvest
most abundantly. It was then that Death and I fought our fight over
the bed, which should have the man who lay on it. I never hesitated
in pursuing the treatment on which I had staked everything. When wine
failed, I tried brandy. When the other stimulants lost their influence,
I doubled the dose. After an interval of suspense--the like of which I
hope to God I shall never feel again--there came a day when the rapidity
of the pulse slightly, but appreciably, diminished; and, better
still, there came also a change in the beat--an unmistakable change to
steadiness and strength. THEN, I knew that I had saved him; and then I
own I broke down. I laid the poor fellow's wasted hand back on the bed,
and burst out crying. An hysterical relief, Mr. Blake--nothing more!
Physiology says, and says truly, that some men are born with female
constitutions--and I am one of them!"