University of Virginia Library

8. CHAPTER VIII.

The French character has been supposed to surpass
all others in flexibility—in the power of adapting
itself to circumstances, even the most adverse
and uncomfortable, and surely no people have been
more fully tried. I think it was a practical philosopher
of that race who asserted that a change of condition,
however severe, ceased to be keenly felt
after the first three months. The truth of this
remark has been questioned, but I believe many,
who have emigrated to these new countries, will be
ready to confirm it by their own experience. It
appears to me indeed that we must partake, in no
slight degree, of the mobility of the French character,
in order to maintain even a moderate share of
spirits and resolution, under a change of situation
which is certainly what, in their superfine phrase,
is termed vraiment desolant, though it must be confessed

that to say in plain English, desolating, too
much might be implied. No English word that I
can remember does express precisely this compulsory
uprooting of all ancient memories, and the substitution
of new and not very attractive associations
in their honored place.

I know not whether we may not push still further
our claim to the philosophical character, and consider
ourselves as surpassing our prototype; for the
French in their lowest estate have usually contrived
so to place themselves as never to lack that elixir
of life—society. A faithful friend or two—and
they are too imaginative a people not to be tender
and faithful in friendship—a friend or two and
something to talk about, rank next to shelter and
before food in their estimate of the comforts of
life. But the emigrant to the wilderness must
dispense even with society, as well as almost every
thing else which he has been accustomed to consider
essential to happiness, and it is only after a weary
interval of solitary rule that he may hope for neighbors
and de quoi causer.

And happy would it be if even this were the
worst. But what would the lively Frenchman say
of his lot if he had witnessed, as so many of us have,
the complete prostration of his family by agues? if
he and his wife and his children, his man-servant
and his maid-servant, and the good neighbor who
tried to alleviate their sufferings, should be successively

deprived of health, and reduced to a state of
the most dispiriting helplessness, until scarce a hand
retained power to draw water for the sick?

Such things are experienced annually by many
of the settlers in the Western country; and, to
finish the picture to the life, we must add the entire
failure of the supply of quinine, on which alone
we can rely for relief. This medicine, which acts
like a charm on intermittents, is sometimes not to
be procured in the interior at any price, and many
lives are doubtless lost in consequence.

The cures wrought by means of this powerful
agent are wonderful, and yet there exists a violent
prejudice against its use. Agues are often suffered
to “run,” as we phrase it, the whole year round, in
preference to curing them in two or three days with
quinine, and it is perhaps only when the miserable
patient is reduced to the last extreme of pallor and
emaciation, and the grave seems opening to receive
its prey, that the cure will be resorted to. A thousand
prescriptions are in circulation, each of which
is infallible in the estimation of a circle of believers,
though experience is constantly demonstrating their
fallacy. Mountain flax, prickly-ash, bark, bitter
root, Cayenne pepper, laudanum, raw eggs, strong
coffee, wormwood, hop tea,—but I might fill a
page with the names of nauseous bitters, narcotics
and stimulants which we are solicited to try, rather
than subject ourselves to the terrific array of evils
which are supposed to follow in the wake of the

only true elixir. These are, dimness of sight,
palpitation of the heart, obscurity of intellect, and
general debility, even to the entire loss of the use
of the limbs.

Now, it so happens that some or all of these are,
in different degrees, the natural consequence of the
agues themselves, and we have never seen them so
severely experienced as in a case where not a particle
of quinine had been used. But all this is as
nothing in refutation of a popular prejudice; and
one of our neighbors has been twice in articulo
mortis under his own prescriptions, when his
friends have taken advantage of his nearly insensible
state to send for a physician who administered
quinine every hour for some time, to the evident
saving of life in both cases.

But what is, in fact, the result of a class of diseases
which requires the frequent exhibition of this
powerful agent? Disastrous, undoubtedly; and it
seems really marvellous that any who have experienced
the disorder can suppose otherwise. The
effect of an ordinary course of agues—say from
six weeks to three months if no quinine be used,
—is of a most discouraging character. The sight
is usually a good deal affected, at least for the time,
and, I almost fear, for life. There is a constant
sense of feebleness, as well of mind as of body;—
a confusion of ideas and a sombre view of ordinary
circumstances. The limbs are prone to stiffness
and inability, and the fearful shrinking or quivering

sensation about the heart, is, as I can avouch, most
depressing.

Why then is it that this condition, which I have
described with all care and accuracy according to
general as well as personal experience,—why is it
that such a train of ills does not drive away the
population in despair? What an inconsistency
does it seem for such as can at any sacrifice strike
the tent and remove to more fortunate regions, to
remain a month in such an atmosphere? This
has occurred to me a thousand times, yet I, like
the rest, am content to live on, with the aid of that
which supports all the world under every variety
of difficulty and misfortune—hope. Every body
hopes this particular fit is to be positively the last
visit of the foul fiend. If we can only get through
to-day—if the shake does not dislocate the neck-bone,
or the fever set the house on fire,—we feel
sure that we have had it so long, or we have had
it so hard, or we have been so little subject to
it,—that it is not likely to return. This is
certainly the most violent shake or the most delirious
fever;—there is more perspiration, or
less headache; or in some respect this attack
differs from all that have preceded it; so that we
feel confident there has been a change in the system,
and any change must be for the better. And
many times these prognostics at a venture prove true
as if by miracle. An ague will quit one as suddenly
and as inexplicably as it came on, without the use

of remedies, whether of diet or medicine, and one
may feel nothing of it for a year, perhaps for life.
The consequences wear away, and we forget them.
We look around us, through a translucent atmosphere,
at a stout and even ruddy population; we
see on every side a fertile and smiling country,
abounding in natural resources and improving with
unsurpassed rapidity,—a country where population
is wealth;—and we ask ourselves, Is it really
best to fly—to leave behind so many advantages,
—and to lessen, even by our mite, the comforts of
those who remain? Can we elude disease? And,
since disease and death are every where, are the
hopeless pulmonary ills of the seaboard less to be
dreaded than these curable intermittents? All old
people who have weathered the storm tell us that
these troubles are concomitants only of new settlements,
and that we shall see them diminish year
by year,—to be replaced, however, by the less frequent
but more fatal diseases of older countries.

Thus we live on, content to bear the ills we have,
perhaps from a sense that there are ills every where;
and that after all there may be worse things even
than agues. Nine out of ten ague patients (as I
suppose) are'able to eat with good appetite as soon
as the fit is over, and many continue about their
ordinary business during all the time, save that
absolutely occupied in shaking and burning. Those
who have the complaint in this form generally keep
up their spirits, and can, of course, be the more

readily cured. Others see the matter in a different
light, because they suffer agonies of pain, and perhaps
rave during the long hours of fever. But
there are few cases so desperate that they cannot be
cured, at least temporarily, although again it must
be confessed that it takes but a breath to call back
the tormentor. The quivering of an aspen leaf will
set one shaking from sympathy.

Among the rather novel remedies may be reckoned
a cold shower-bath once or twice a day, which
one may well believe would frighten away ague or
any thing else; and among those sanctioned by the
learned, bleeding in the cold stage, which has been
found successful in many cases. But neither of
these modes is popular with us. We stick to
thoroughwort,—balmony,—soot tea,—“number
six,”—and the like; and avoid, as if for the very
life, all “pothecary medicines.” Yet if a petticoated
professor of the healing art—a female physician
so called—should prescribe the most deadly drugs,
(purchased at the nearest druggist's,) or tell a man
that his liver was grown fast to his side, and that he
must release it by reaching upward while leaning
on his elbow in bed,—or if she should pronounce
oracularly that a dose of centipeds procured from
beneath a fallen tree whose head should lie toward
the east would cure “the spinevantosey that comes
in the breast,”—she will find supporters who
would not employ an educated physician on any
account. I have been assured, with all seriousness,

that the hepatic experiment alluded to had been
tried with signal success; the patient having had
the satisfaction of “hearing it tear” very distinctly.
Happily this order of practitioners is not numerous,
and from the general intelligence of the people, may
be expected rather to diminish than to increase.

Of all the prominent curative theories of the day,
that of the disciples of Hahnemann is, I think,
the only one which we have not tried in some
shape. It may be thought from what has been
said, that we must be an imaginative community,
and ought therefore to be good homœopathic subjects;
but we have an instinctive disrespect for
every thing weak—except indeed coffee, which
we take only in the “decillionth potence.” And
besides, it would never do to cure the ague by
medicines which might be rendered destructive by
much shaking. It would be safer indeed, upon the
principle similia similibus curantur, to shake the
patient soundly, without exhibiting a single globule
or pellet of medicine, since we should thus
avoid all danger of “drug-sickness” from over-dosing.

After all, though I believe homœopathy to be in
advance of our present degree of Western civilization,
I wish all my countrymen were converts to
the doctrine that “it is impossible to give (or take)
doses too small.” They are terribly apt to err on
the other side.