"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

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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!"




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