CHAPTER XV. HOW DAN TOOK HIS MEDICINE.

While in this irritable and pugnacious temper it chanced most fortunately that the doctor did not happen to fall in with Rich; and when he did, being in a different state of mind, matters wore quite another aspect.

The doctor was remarkably fond of music, and no mean performer himself upon the clarionet. Being at meeting for the first time since the arrival of Rich on the Sabbath when Deacon Starkweather made his exit, he was mightily tickled with the whole proceedings; said the deacon ought to have his head shaved, and a blister drawn on it, and was consequently inclined to feel more kindly disposed towards Rich. While his prejudices were thus somewhat weakened, he was introduced to the latter by Perk, and was so much charmed with the modest appearance, intelligence, and address of Rich, that he received him with all the cordiality of a parent.

"This young gentleman, Mr. Perkins," said the doctor to Perk the next morning, "is a very[Pg 171] different person from the great majority of those who profess to study medicine, having some respect for age and experience, and as amendable to counsel as he is intelligent and refined in his manners."

The doctor was not dependent upon his practice for a living, having inherited an ample property from his grandfather. His library was large, consisting of all the medical works then esteemed, and a complete set of the instruments then used in this country. It is safe to say that the doctor consulted the length of his purse in the choice of books, rather than his mental needs, as Rich, after looking over, found a great portion of them with the leaves still uncut, although they had been ten, and some of them twenty, years in the doctor's possession.

Most physicians at that period were provided with more or less bones for the study of anatomy, generally of the limbs, as they were most liable to be broken or dislocated: very few went beyond this. Dr. Ryan, however, had not even all these—only the bones of the lower extremities; but the deficiency was in some manner supplied by plates contained in the anatomical works in his library; indeed, he felt very little interest in surgery, dreading nothing so much as being called to set a bone, amputate a limb, or reduce a dislocation, and frequently advised his patients to send for Dr. Slaughter, who excelled as a surgeon.

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In the course of his long practice, he had rendered many cripples for life by sheer carelessness in bandaging limbs that had been properly set, and once made a blunder that would have proved fatal to one less beloved.

He was called to a man who had recently moved into the place, who was afflicted with a tumor in his ham; the doctor, after examining, shoved his lancet into it. To his terror and astonishment, the blood spurted in his face; he had cut an artery! The new lights represented that he was so frightened the patient bled to death while he sent for his instruments. It was not so; yet not much better. The doctor clapped his thumb on the artery, and instructed the family to arrest the blood, in the meanwhile sent for his instruments and took up the artery; but the coats of the artery, where he applied the ligature, being diseased, sloughed in the night; and in a short time the ligature came away, and the man bled to death.

It was an old false aneurism, in which so many concentric layers of coagulum had accumulated that no pulsation could be perceived. Had the doctor inquired into the history of it, he would have found that it had pulsated in the past; but neglecting to do this, and unable to perceive the throb of the artery, he mistook it for an abscess. Notwithstanding his lack of surgical skill, he was versed in the properties and operation of [Pg 173]medicines, a close observer, could detect the nature of disease, and had acquired a great amount of experimental knowledge.

He made an agreement with Rich to superintend his studies, permit him the use of his library, with opportunities to visit patients, for thirty dollars a year.

It was now that Rich began to realize the deep-seated affection cherished for him by his scholars. There were many young men, the sons of farmers, from nineteen to twenty-one, who attended the academy in the winter term; in March they came together, and cut up the whole year's stock of wood for Mrs. Clemens, and put it under cover, thus relieving Rich, and affording him time for study. Dan Clemens and his mates also performed their part in smaller matters, so that Rich had really no more to do than sufficed for exercise.

There could not be a greater contrast than existed between Rich, earnest, ambitious, still farther stimulated by the pressure of poverty, and the genial old doctor, who loved a good story and a good joke, had an abundance of this world's goods, and cared very little whether his practice increased or decreased, so that it was not intruded upon by the new lights.

Yet they were great friends. Rich loved the doctor, though soon made aware of his deficiencies, and treated him with the greatest deference; while the latter obstinately shut his eyes to the fact,[Pg 174] often brought to view by his fellow-physician, Dr. Slaughter, that he was nourishing a most thorough-going radical and new light in his own bosom, although never obtruding his heresies; for if ever there was a boy bound to go to the root of principles, that boy was Rich.

Mrs. Clemens was a lady after the doctor's own heart. She was intelligent, refined, benevolent, and universally esteemed. Like most persons in delicate health, she was fond of having a physician round her, consulted the doctor in respect to every trifling indisposition, and was very conservative in her notions. She had one weak point, as who has not. This was a perfect passion for reading medical works and practising upon herself and the members of her family—a sentiment fostered by her delicate state of health.

This rendered it quite difficult for her to keep a hired girl, for though they liked her, and received good wages, they were not fond of the medicines she insisted upon their taking to keep them from being sick. Next to the Holy Scriptures, she reverenced Buchan's Domestic Medicine,—a copy of which, elegantly bound, lay on her table beside the Bible,—abhorred innovations in medical practice, and would much rather have died under the hands of a regular physician than been cured by a quack.

"Doctor," she said, one day, "how mysterious it seems, that my dear husband, who was a great,[Pg 175] stout, healthy man, the very picture of health, and used to take care of me just like a baby, should be in his grave, and I still spared!"

"Invalids, ma'am, live the longest of any people in the world."

"How can that be, doctor?"

"Because they take care of themselves."

The good lady, indeed, took excellent care of herself; but she was sadly tried in regard to taking care of her son Dan.

Dan was a robust, red-cheeked boy, sound to the core, of fearless, sanguine temperament, and it was the hardest work in the world for Dan to sit on a bench and apply himself to study. Nothing but their attachment to Rich would have induced him and his sworn friends, Ned Baker and Frank Merrill, to attempt and accomplish it. But much as Dan loved his mother, he did abhor medicine, and to be coddled up.

Richardson was often placed between the two horns of a dilemma, as Mrs. Clemens invariably appealed to him when Dan proved refractory.

One morning his mother insisted that he had taken cold, and Dan as stoutly maintained the negative.

"Daniel, you must wear your great coat to school; your face is flushed, and I think you are feverish."

"It's always flushed, mother. I haven't one mite of cold, and I can't stand it to wear a coat this pleasant morning."

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"Yes, you must, dear; your tongue is coated. I'll ask Mr. Richardson."

But Rich, who had overheard the conversation, made a bolt for the door, and escaped that time. In the course of an hour, Betty Gookins, the help, came in, bringing in her hand a garment.

"Only look here, ma'am. I went to pump a pail of water, and I couldn't, cause Dan's coat was in the pump-nose."

"O, dear, how that boy does try me! Well, I shall soon be in my grave."

But as the good lady had said the same for the last thirty years, there was evidently hope in the case. Dan, however, was not to escape so easily the watchful care of his mother. That night, when he came in to supper, he was regaled with the odor of salts and senna simmering in the corner.

"O, dear!" he said to himself; "have I got to take that awful, sickish, nasty stuff?"

The next morning, about half an hour before school-time, Rich wanted Dan.

"The poor child is not well, Mr. Richardson, and has gone into the unfinished room to take some medicine. He says he can take it better if he is alone, and nobody looking at him. I wish he didn't dislike to take medicine so much; if it was not such a trial to him, I should give him 'picra.'"

When Rich entered the room, Dan had got up[Pg 177] a brick in the hearth, and was administering the salts and senna to the cross-sill beneath. He started like a guilty thing when the door opened, but, seeing who it was, completed his purpose.

"What are you about, Daniel?"

"Taking salts and senna, sir."

"Is that the way you always take them?"

"I never took any so before; but this is the way I mean to take them for the future. I expect to pour gallons into this hole."

"Are you well enough to get me a big log out of the wood-pile?"

"Certainly, Mr. Richardson. I never was weller in my life."

"But your mother said yesterday that your tongue was coated."

"So it was. I had been breaking a pan of cream. Mother don't like to have her cream disturbed after it is set. I licked the cream off my lips, but left it on my tongue."

"I think your mother'll have the best of it if she gives you salts and senna. She thinks highly of assaf?tida, and may give you that."

"I never will take that; I'll leave home first."

The next evening, as Rich was passing through the kitchen with an armful of wood for his evening fire, he noticed Mrs. Clemens seated before the fire, in her lap a pair of old-fashioned kitchen bellows, on a chair beside her a skillet full of hot coals, a roll of sheep-skin, a junk of Burgundy[Pg 178] pitch, and a knife. After cutting from the skin a piece of the right size for a plaster, she placed on it a piece of the pitch, put both on the flat side of the bellows, made the knife hot in the coals, and spread the plaster; while Dan, with no very joyous expression of countenance, sat awaiting the result.

"I am going to put this plaster between Daniel's shoulders, Mr. Richardson," said she; "it is a sovereign remedy for a cold; doesn't open the pores like a sweat, and expose one to take more cold."

The next morning the good lady declared the plaster had worked wonders; that Daniel's cold was very much better, and would soon be well.

"Perhaps I had better take it off, my son, wipe it, and wipe the perspiration from your back. The plaster will draw better, and it will prevent its itching and annoying you in school."

"O, no, mother; I shall be late. It don't itch one mite."

And he rushed from the house.

"It is very singular," replied his mother, looking after him, "my plasters always itch, and are very troublesome. I think they don't do much good except they itch."

Mrs. Clemens would have been less surprised had she known that the plaster began to itch the moment Dan was warm in bed. After enduring it awhile, he pulled it off and tucked it up [Pg 179]chimney. So he told Frank Merrill, with whom, on the way to school, he shared some guava jelly given him by his mother, after taking the salts and senna, to take the taste out of his mouth.