The Medical Wisdom of Mark Twain
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
THE MEDICAL WISDOM OE MARK TWAIN By LOUIS J. BRAGMAN, M.D. SYRACUSE, N.Y. SEARCH through the works of needed for his father, who up until the time of Mark Twain for material touching his death was prostrated every spring with on medical topics reveals a wealth “sun-pain,” an acute form of headache, of references, all the more inter- nerve-racking in character, and a complete esting for the extreme diversity of content. obstacle to any kind of labor. AWhether to be found in the swift stroke of His wife was a frequent source of solici- a maxim by “Pudd’nhead Wilson,” or in tude, as she was an invalid the greater share the casual reminiscences of his boyhood of her life. A fall when she was about days, or in the well-rounded phrases of one eighteen had left her paralyzed. Despite who has seen and pondered much, there arc persistent treatment she had remained always to be gleaned ideas of more than unable to Finally a widely-heralded passing worth for the physician. For he quack healer was summoned. Inasmuch dealt with medical matters as with other as he, in miraculously short order, restored subjects, purely in the light of an absorbing her power of locomotion, it is not too pre- phase of human activity. sumptuous to state that there could have There is but narrow ground for specula- been no organic disturbance. However, this tion in attempting to derive the source of episode was bound to leave an impression his medical wit and wisdom. Discerning no upon the anxious husband and to direct the particular contact with the healing profes- trend of his later thoughts. sion other than that which is encountered One of his daughters suffered from epi- by any cosmopolite, one is compelled lepsy and was treated for a time by Kellgren, to fall back on the medical experiences who was popularizing in London what were that occurred directly within his own called the Swedish movements. Although at family circle. first he was strongly enthusiastic, Mark He himself was of a high-strung and Twain later admitted that her progress undoubted neurotic make-up, as is evi- was discouragingly slow. Her death in her denced by many events in his colorful early twenties following a convulsive seizure career. He often fell into states of pessimism, was a severe blow to him. and once declared that around 1866 he had He survived her by only four months. felt so despondent that he put a loaded “He was tired, and with Jean’s death his pistol to his head, but found the final strength snapped.” courage to pull the trigger lacking. These scant items truly provide a slim It was furthermore his lot to bear the background for his many ventures into the constant harrowing burden of chronic bron- medical sphere. Perhaps it was, after all, chial colds and rheumatism. Of angina merely the universal interest that notes on pectoris, which terminated his life at the health and illness always arouse that age of seventy-four, he remarked: “This is prompted his pen on these occasions. The such a mysterious disease. If we only had truth remains that he left behind many a bill of particulars, we’d have something medical facts and fancies of worthy and to swear at.” enduring caliber. He was well acquainted with the ways of the family doctor, as will be seen in his The Mind of Man various comments on the stern allopathic Insanity. The murder of the Empress days of his youth, with the inevitable heavy of Austria1 by an obscure, “mangy tramp” dosings. Medical attention was frequently caused him to express the opinion that: No man has a wholly undiseased mind; that the insane, we should run out of building one way or another all men are mad . materials.” All the whole list of desires, predilections, aver- Brain versus Mind. In a philosophical sions, cares, griefs, regrets, remorses, are discourse5 attempting to prove that man is incipient madness, and ready to grow, spread, an automaton, he submitted the viewpoint and consume when the occasion comes. There that “A man’s brain is so constructed that are no healthy minds, and nothing saves any it can originate nothing whatever. It can only man but accident—the accident of not having use material obtained from the outside. It is his malady put to the supreme test. merely a machine and it works automati- Of the relation between psychosis and cally, not by will power.” crime he wrote2: As an example of the materialistic nature Insanity is certainly on the increase in the of the mind, he argued to this effect:5 “A world, and crime is dying out. Formerly if you cracked skull has resulted in a crazy mind. killed a man, it was possible that you were Why should that happen if the mind is insane—but now, if you, having friends and spiritual, and independent of physical influ- money, kill a man, it is evidence that you are a ences? . When you have a pain in your lunatic. In these days, too, if a person of good foot, you do not feel it until the nerve reports family and high social standing steals any- the hurt to your brain. Yet the brain is thing, they call it kleptomania, and send him the seat of the mind.” to the lunatic asylum. If a person of high social Mental Telegraphy. He was a firm standing squanders his fortune in dissipation, believer in the workings of the phenomena and closes his career with strychnine or a bullet, described under this head. He himself “Temporary Aberration” is what was the invented the phrase which later was altered trouble with him. to read “mental telepathy.”6 Is not this insanity plea becoming rather common? Is it not so common that the reader I have never seen any mesmeric or clair- confidently expects to see it offered in every voyant performances which were in the least criminal case that comes before the court? . degree convincing . but I am forced to Of late years it does not seem possible for a man believe that one human mind (still inhabiting to so conduct himself, before killing another the flesh) can communicate with another over man, as not to be manifestly insane. If he talks any sort of a distance and without any artificial about the stars, he is insane. If he weeps over a preparation of “sympathetic conditions” to great grief, his friends shake their heads, and act as a transmitting agent. fear that he is “not right” . Really, what The Decline ofi the Mind. A note on this we want now, is not laws against crime, but a topic recalls an old controversy:6 “Is it law against insanity. true that the sun of a man’s mentality In a similar vein he dedicated one of his touches noon at forty and then begins to books “To the Late Cain”3: wane towards setting? Dr. Osler is charged Not on account of respect for his memory, for with saying so.” it merits little respect; not on account of sym- pathy with him, for his bloody deed placed him Clini cal Obs erv ations without the pale of sympathy; but out of a mere The Black Death. While journeying human commiseration for him that it was his through the Orient4 he came in contact misfortune to live in a dark age that knew not with the ravages of the bubonic affliction. the beneficent Insanity Plea. “The plague,” he related, “carries with it a He summed up his attitude on the impor- terror which no other disease can excite, for tant problem with the following witticism:4 of all diseases known to man it is the “The way it is now, the asylums can hold deadliest . ‘Fifty-two fresh cases—all the sane people, but if we tried to shut up fatal’: It is the Black Death alone that slays like that.” It was truly malignant with its Teratisms. He has described here a “terrors that creep into a man’s heart veritable pathological side-show, of which at such a time until they themselves breed he himself was an eye-witness:20 the fatal sign in the armpit, and then the If you would see the very heart and home of delirium with confused images . and cripples and human monstrosities, go straight then the sudden blank of death.” to Constantinople. A beggar in Naples who The following especially vivid passage can show a foot which has all run into one which he thought worthy of quoting at horrible toe, with a shapeless nail on it, has a length is by Kinglake, an English traveler fortune—but such an exhibition as that would who was in Cairo during an epidemic of not provoke any notice in Constantinople . the Black Death:4 How could he stand against the three-legged woman, and the man with his eye in his cheek? The parched mouth is a sign—his mouth is How would he blush in the presence of the man parched; the throbbing brain—his brain does with fingers on his elbows? Where would he throb; the rapid pulse—he touches his own hide himself when the dwarf with seven fingers wrist (for he dare not ask counsel of any man on each hand, no upper lip, and his under jaw lest he be deserted), he touches his wrist, and gone, came down in his majesty? Bismillah! feels how his frighted blood goes galloping out The cripples of Europe are a delusion and a of his heart.