University of Virginia Library

16. LETTER XVI.

You see by the papers, I presume, the official accounts
of the cholera in Paris. It seems very terrible
to you, no doubt, at your distance from the scene, and
truly it is terrible enough, if one could realize it, anywhere;
but many here do not trouble themselves about
it, and you might be in this metropolis a month, and
if you observed the people only, and frequented only
the places of amusement, and the public promenades,
you might never suspect its existence. The weather
is June-like, deliciously warm and bright; the trees
are just in the tender green of the new buds, and the
public gardens are thronged all day with thousands of
the gay and idle, sitting under the trees in groups,
laughing and amusing themselves, as if there were no
plague in the air, though hundreds die every day.
The churches are all hung in black; there is a constant
succession of funerals; and you cross the biers
and hand-barrows of the sick, hurrying to the hospitals
at every turn, in every quarter of the city. It is
very hard to realize such things, and, it would seem,
very hard even to treat them seriously. I was at a
masque ball at the Théatre des Varietés, a night or
two since, at the celebration of the Mi-Careme, or
half-lent. There were some two thousand people, I
should think, in fancy dresses, most of them grotesque
and satirical, and the ball was kept up till seven in the
morning, with all the extravagant gayety, noise, and
fun, with which the French people manage such matters.
There was a cholera-waltz, and a cholera-galopade,
and one man, immensely tall, dressed as a personification
of the Cholera itself, with skeleton armor,
bloodshot eyes, and other horrible appurtenances of a
walking pestilence. It was the burden of all the
jokes, and all the cries of the hawkers, and all the
conversation; and yet, probably, nineteen out of twenty
of those present lived in the quarters most ravaged
by the disease, and many of them had seen it face to
face, and knew perfectly its deadly character!

As yet, with few exceptions, the higher classes of
society have escaped. It seems to depend very much
on the manner in which people live, and the poor have
been struck in every quarter, often at the very next
door to luxury. A friend told me this morning, that
the porter of a large and fashionable hotel, in which
he lives, had been taken to the hospital; and there
have been one or two cases in the airy quarter of St.
Germain, in the same street with Mr. Cooper, and

nearly opposite. Several physicians and medical students
have died too, but the majority of these live with
the narrowest economy, and in the parts of the city
the most liable to impure effluvia. The balls go on
still in the gay world; and I presume they would go
on if there were only musicians enough left to make
an orchestra, or fashionists to compose a quadrille. I
was walking home very late from a party the night before
last, with a captain in the English army. The
gray of the morning was just stealing into the sky;
and after a stopping a moment in the Place Vendome,
to look at the column, stretching up apparently unto
the very stars, we bade good morning, and parted.
He had hardly left me, he said, when he heard a frightful
scream from one of the houses in the Rue St. Honoré,
and thinking there might be some violence going
on, he rang at the gate and entered, mounting the
first staircase that presented. A woman had just
opened a door, and fallen on the broad stair at the top,
and was writhing in great agony. The people of the
house collected immediately; but the moment my
friend pronounced the word cholera, there was a general
dispersion, and he was left alone with the patient.
He took her in his arms, and carried her to a coach-stand
without assistance, and driving to the Hotel Dieu,
left her with the Sœurs de Charite. She has since
died.

As if one plague was not enough, the city is still
alive in the distant fauxbourgs with revolts. Last
night, the rappel was beat all over the town, the national
guard called to arms, and marched to the Porte
St. Denis, and the different quarters where the mobs
were collected.

Many suppose there is no cholera except such as is
produced by poison; and the Hotel Dieu, and the other
hospitals, are besieged daily by the infuriated mob,
who swear vengeance against the government for all
the mortality they witness.

I have just returned from a visit to the Hotel Dieu
— the hospital for the cholera. Impelled by a powerful
motive, which it is not now necessary to explain, I
had previously made several attempts to gain admission
in vain; but yesterday I fell in fortunately with
an English physician, who told me I could pass with
a doctor's diploma, which he offered to borrow for me
of some medical friend. He called by appointment at
seven this morning, to accompany me on my visit.

It was like one of our loveliest mornings in June —
an inspiriting, sunny, balmy day, all softness and
beauty — and we crossed the Tuileries by one of its
superb avenues, and kept down the bank of the river
to the island. With the errand on which we were
bound in our minds, it was impossible not to be struck
very forcibly with our own exquisite enjoyment of life.
I am sure I never felt my veins fuller of the pleasure
of health and motion; and I never saw a day when
everything about me seemed better worth living for.
The splendid palace of the Louvre, with its long fa
çade of nearly half a mile, lay in the mellowest sunshine
on our left; the lively river, covered with boats,
and spanned with its magnificent and crowded bridges
on our right; the view of the island, with its massive
old structures below, and the fine gray towers of the
church of Notre Dame rising, dark and gloomy, in the
distance, rendered it difficult to realize anything but
life and pleasure. That under those very towers,
which added so much to the beauty of the scene, there
lay a thousand and more of poor wretches dying of a
plague, was a thought my mind would not retain a
moment.

Half an hour's walk brought us to the Place Notre
Dame, on one side of which, next this celebrated
church, stands the hospital. My friend entered, leaving
me to wait till he had found an acquaintance of
whom he could borrow a diploma. A hearse was
standing at the door of the church, and I went in for
a moment. A few mourners, with the appearance of
extreme poverty, were kneeling round a coffin at one
of the side altars; and a solitary priest, with an attendant
boy, was mumbling the prayers for the dead.
As I came out, another hearse drove up, with a rough
coffin, scantily covered with a pall, and followed by one
poor old man. They hurried in, and I strolled around
the square. Fifteen or twenty water-carriers were
filling their buckets at the fountain opposite, singing
and laughing; and at the same moment four different
litters crossed toward the hospital, each with its two
or three followers, women and children, friends or relatives
of the sick, accompanying them to the door,
where they parted from them, most probably for ever.
The litters were set down a moment before ascending
the steps; the crowd pressed around and lifted the
coarse curtains; farewells were exchanged, and the
sick alone passed in. I did not see any great demonstration
of feeling in the particular cases that were before
me; but I can conceive, in the almost deadly certainty
of this disease, that these hasty partings at the
door of the hospital might often be scenes of unsurpassed
suffering and distress.

I waited, perhaps, ten minutes more. In the whole
time that I had been there, twelve litters, bearing the
sick, had entered the Hotel Dieu. As I exhibited the
borrowed diploma, the thirteenth arrived, and with it
a young man, whose violent and uncontrolled grief
worked so far on the soldier at the door, that he allowed
im to pass. I followed the bearers to the
ward, interested exceedingly to observe the first treatment
and manner of reception. They wound slowly
up the stone staircase to the upper story, and entered
the female department — a long low room, containing
nearly a hundred beds, placed in alleys scarce two feet
from each other. Nearly all were occupied, and those
which were empty my friend told me were vacated by
deaths yesterday. They set down the litter by the
side of a narrow cot, with coarse but clean sheets, and
a Sœur de Charité, with a white cap, and a cross at her
girdle, came and took off the canopy. A young woman,
of apparently twenty-five, was beneath, absolutely
convulsed with agony. Her eyes were started from
the sockets, her mouth foamed, and her face was of
a frightful, livid purple. I never saw so horrible a
sight. She had been taken in perfect health only
three hours before, but her features looked to me
marked with a year of pain. The first attempt to lift
her produced violent vomiting, and I thought she
must die instantly. They covered her up in bed, and
leaving the man who came with her hanging over her
with the moan of one deprived of his senses, they went
to receive others, who were entering in the same manner.
I inquired of my companion how soon she would
be attended to. He said, “possibly in an hour, as the
physician was just commencing his rounds.” An hour
after this I passed the bed of this poor woman, and she
had not yet been visited. Her husband answered my
question with a choking voice and a flood of tears.

I passed down the ward, and found nineteen or
twenty in the last agonies of death. They lay perfectly
still, and seemed benumbed. I felt the limbs
of several, and found them quite cold. The stomach
only had a little warmth. Now and then a half groan
escaped those who seemed the strongest; but with the
exception of the universally open mouth and upturned
ghastly eye, there were no signs of much suffering. I
found two who must have been dead half an hour,
undiscovered by the attendants. One of them was an
old woman, nearly gray, with a very bad expression of
face, who was perfectly cold — lips, limbs, body, and
all. The other was younger, and looked as if she had
died in pain. Her eyes appeared as if they had been
forced half out of the sockets, and her skin was of the
most livid and deathly purple. The woman in the

next bed told me she had died since the Sœur de
Charité had been there. It is horrible to think how
these poor creatures may suffer in the very midst of
the provisions that are made professedly for their relief.
I asked why a simple prescription of treatment
might not be drawn up by the physicians, and administered
by the numerous medical students who were
in Paris, that as few as possible might suffer from delay.
“Because,” said my companion, “the chief
physicians must do everything personally, to study
the complaint.” And so, I verily believe, more human
lives are sacrificed in waiting for experiments,
than ever will be saved by the results. My blood
boiled from the beginning to the end of this melancholy
visit.

I wandered about alone among the beds till my
heart was sick, and I could bear it no longer; and
then rejoined my friend, who was in the train of one
of the physicians, making the rounds. One would
think a dying person should be treated with kindness.
I never saw a rougher or more heartless manner than
that of the celebrated Dr. — , at the bedsides of
these poor creatures. A harsh question, a rude pulling
open of the month, to look at the tongue, a sentence
or two of unsuppressed commands to the students
on the progress of the disease, and the train
passed on. If discouragement and despair are not
medicines, I should think the visits of such physicians
were of little avail. The wretched sufferers turned
away their heads after he had gone, in every instance
that I saw, with an expression of visibly increased distress.
Several of them refused to answer his questions
altogether.

On reaching the bottom of the Salle St. Monique,
one of the male wards, I heard loud voices and laughter.
I had noticed much more groaning and complaining
in passing among the men, and the horrible
discordance struck me as something infernal. It proceeded
from one of the sides to which the patients
had been removed who were recovering. The most
successful treatment has been found to be punch, very
strong, with but little acid, and being permitted to
drink as much as they would, they had become partially
intoxicated. It was a fiendish sight, positively.
They were sitting up, and reaching from one bed to
the other, and with their still pallid faces and blue lips,
and the hospital dress of white, they looked like so
many carousing corpses. I turned away from them
in horror.

I was stopped in the door-way by a litter entering
with a sick woman. They set her down in the main
passage between the beds, and left her a moment to
find a place for her. She seemed to have an interval
of pain, and rose up on one hand, and looked about
her very earnestly. I followed the direction of her
eyes, and could easily imagine her sensations. Twenty
or thirty death-like faces were turned toward her from
the different beds, and the groans of the dying and the
distressed came from every side. She was without a
friend whom she knew, sick of a mortal disease, and
abandoned to the mercy of those whose kindness is
mercenary and habitual, and of course without sympathy
or feeling. Was it not enough alone, if she
had been far less ill, to imbitter the very fountains of
life, and kill her with mere fright and horror? She
sank down upon the litter again, and drew her shawl
over her head. I had seen enough of suffering, and I
left the place.

On reaching the lower staircase, my friend proposed
to me to look into the dead-room. We descended to
a large dark apartment below the street-level, lighted
by a lamp fixed to the wall. Sixty or seventy bodies
lay on the floor, some of them quite uncovered, and
some wrapped in mats. I could not see distinctly
enough by the dim light, to judge of their discoloration.
They appeared mostly old and emaciated.

I can not describe the sensation of relief with which
I breathed the free air once more. I had no fear of
the cholera, but the suffering and misery I had seen,
oppressed and half smothered me. Every one who
has walked through an hospital, will remember how
natural it is to subdue the breath, and close the nostrils
to the smells of medicine and the close air. The
fact, too, that the question of contagion is still disputed,
though I fully believe the cholera not to be contagious,
might have had some effect. My breast
heaved, however, as if a weight had risen from my
lungs, and I walked home, blessing God for health
with undissembled gratitude.

P.S. — I began this account of my visit to the Hotel
Dieu yesterday. As I am perfectly well this morning,
I think the point of non-contagion, in my own case at
least, is clear. I breathed the same air with the dying
and the diseased for two hours, and felt of nearly a
hundred to be satisfied of the curious phenomena of
the vital heat. Perhaps an experiment of this sort,
in a man not professionally a physician, may be considered
rash or useless; and I would not willingly be
thought to have done it from any puerile curiosity. I
have been interested in such subjects always; and I
considered the fact that the king's sons had been permitted
to visit the hospital, a sufficient assurance that
the physicians were seriously convinced there could
be no possible danger. If I need an apology, it may
be found in this.