The Autobiography of a Quack And The Case Of George Dedlow

S >> S. Weir Mitchell >> The Autobiography of a Quack And The Case Of George Dedlow


"Calf?" said he. "You ain't none. It's took off."

"I know better," said I. "I have pain in both legs."

"Wall, I never!" said he. "You ain't got nary leg."

As I did not believe him, he threw off the covers, and, to my horror,
showed me that I had suffered amputation of both thighs, very high up.

"That will do," said I, faintly.

A month later, to the amazement of every one, I was so well as to be
moved from the crowded hospital at Chattanooga to Nashville, where
I filled one of the ten thousand beds of that vast metropolis of
hospitals. Of the sufferings which then began I shall presently speak.
It will be best just now to detail the final misfortune which here fell
upon me. Hospital No. 2, in which I lay, was inconveniently crowded with
severely wounded officers. After my third week an epidemic of hospital
gangrene broke out in my ward. In three days it attacked twenty persons.
Then an inspector came, and we were transferred at once to the open air,
and placed in tents. Strangely enough, the wound in my remaining arm,
which still suppurated, was seized with gangrene. The usual remedy,
bromine, was used locally, but the main artery opened, was tied, bled
again and again, and at last, as a final resort, the remaining arm was
amputated at the shoulder-joint. Against all chances I recovered, to
find myself a useless torso, more like some strange larval creature than
anything of human shape. Of my anguish and horror of myself I dare not
speak. I have dictated these pages, not to shock my readers, but to
possess them with facts in regard to the relation of the mind to the
body; and I hasten, therefore, to such portions of my case as best
illustrate these views.

In January, 1864, I was forwarded to Philadelphia, in order to enter
what was known as the Stump Hospital, South street, then in charge
of Dr. Hopkinson. This favor was obtained through the influence of my
father's friend, the late Governor Anderson, who has always manifested
an interest in my case, for which I am deeply grateful. It was thought,
at the time, that Mr. Palmer, the leg-maker, might be able to adapt some
form of arm to my left shoulder, as on that side there remained five
inches of the arm-bone, which I could move to a moderate extent. The
hope proved illusory, as the stump was always too tender to bear any
pressure. The hospital referred to was in charge of several surgeons
while I was an inmate, and was at all times a clean and pleasant home.
It was filled with men who had lost one arm or leg, or one of each, as
happened now and then. I saw one man who had lost both legs, and one
who had parted with both arms; but none, like myself, stripped of every
limb. There were collected in this place hundreds of these cases, which
gave to it, with reason enough, the not very pleasing title of Stump
Hospital.

I spent here three and a half months, before my transfer to the United
States Army Hospital for Injuries and Diseases of the Nervous System.
Every morning I was carried out in an arm-chair and placed in the
library, where some one was always ready to write or read for me, or to
fill my pipe. The doctors lent me medical books; the ladies brought me
luxuries and fed me; and, save that I was helpless to a degree which was
humiliating, I was as comfortable as kindness could make me.

I amused myself at this time by noting in my mind all that I could learn
from other limbless folk, and from myself, as to the peculiar feelings
which were noticed in regard to lost members. I found that the great
mass of men who had undergone amputations for many months felt the usual
consciousness that they still had the lost limb. It itched or pained, or
was cramped, but never felt hot or cold. If they had painful sensations
referred to it, the conviction of its existence continued unaltered
for long periods; but where no pain was felt in it, then by degrees the
sense of having that limb faded away entirely. I think we may to some
extent explain this. The knowledge we possess of any part is made up
of the numberless impressions from without which affect its sensitive
surfaces, and which are transmitted through its nerves to the spinal
nerve-cells, and through them, again, to the brain. We are thus kept
endlessly informed as to the existence of parts, because the impressions
which reach the brain are, by a law of our being, referred by us to
the part from which they come. Now, when the part is cut off, the
nerve-trunks which led to it and from it, remaining capable of being
impressed by irritations, are made to convey to the brain from the stump
impressions which are, as usual, referred by the brain to the lost parts
to which these nerve-threads belonged. In other words, the nerve is like
a bell-wire. You may pull it at any part of its course, and thus ring
the bell as well as if you pulled at the end of the wire; but, in any
case, the intelligent servant will refer the pull to the front door,
and obey it accordingly. The impressions made on the severed ends of
the nerve are due often to changes in the stump during healing, and
consequently cease when it has healed, so that finally, in a very
healthy stump, no such impressions arise; the brain ceases to correspond
with the lost leg, and, as les absents ont toujours tort, it is no
longer remembered or recognized. But in some cases, such as mine
proved at last to my sorrow, the ends of the nerves undergo a curious
alteration, and get to be enlarged and altered. This change, as I have
seen in my practice of medicine, sometimes passes up the nerves toward
the centers, and occasions a more or less constant irritation of the
nerve-fibers, producing neuralgia, which is usually referred by
the brain to that part of the lost limb to which the affected nerve
belonged. This pain keeps the brain ever mindful of the missing part,
and, imperfectly at least, preserves to the man a consciousness of
possessing that which he has not.

Where the pains come and go, as they do in certain cases, the subjective
sensations thus occasioned are very curious, since in such cases the
man loses and gains, and loses and regains, the consciousness of the
presence of the lost parts, so that he will tell you, "Now I feel my
thumb, now I feel my little finger." I should also add that nearly every
person who has lost an arm above the elbow feels as though the lost
member were bent at the elbow, and at times is vividly impressed with
the notion that his fingers are strongly flexed.

Other persons present a peculiarity which I am at a loss to account for.
Where the leg, for instance, has been lost, they feel as if the foot
were present, but as though the leg were shortened. Thus, if the thigh
has been taken off, there seems to them to be a foot at the knee; if the
arm, a hand seems to be at the elbow, or attached to the stump itself.

Before leaving Nashville I had begun to suffer the most acute pain in
my left hand, especially the little finger; and so perfect was the idea
which was thus kept up of the real presence of these missing parts that
I found it hard at times to believe them absent. Often at night I would
try with one lost hand to grope for the other. As, however, I had no
pain in the right arm, the sense of the existence of that limb gradually
disappeared, as did that of my legs also.

Everything was done for my neuralgia which the doctors could think of;
and at length, at my suggestion, I was removed, as I have said, from
the Stump Hospital to the United States Army Hospital for Injuries
and Diseases of the Nervous System. It was a pleasant, suburban,
old-fashioned country-seat, its gardens surrounded by a circle of
wooden, one-story wards, shaded by fine trees. There were some three
hundred cases of epilepsy, paralysis, St. Vitus's dance, and wounds of
nerves. On one side of me lay a poor fellow, a Dane, who had the same
burning neuralgia with which I once suffered, and which I now learned
was only too common. This man had become hysterical from pain. He
carried a sponge in his pocket, and a bottle of water in one hand, with
which he constantly wetted the burning hand. Every sound increased his
torture, and he even poured water into his boots to keep himself from
feeling too sensibly the rough friction of his soles when walking. Like
him, I was greatly eased by having small doses of morphia injected under
the skin of my shoulder with a hollow needle fitted to a syringe.

As I improved under the morphia treatment, I began to be disturbed by
the horrible variety of suffering about me. One man walked sideways;
there was one who could not smell; another was dumb from an explosion.
In fact, every one had his own abnormal peculiarity. Near me was a
strange case of palsy of the muscles called rhomboids, whose office it
is to hold down the shoulder-blades flat on the back during the motions
of the arms, which, in themselves, were strong enough. When, however, he
lifted these members, the shoulder-blades stood out from the back like
wings, and got him the sobriquet of the "Angel." In my ward were also
the cases of fits, which very much annoyed me, as upon any great change
in the weather it was common to have a dozen convulsions in view at
once. Dr. Neek, one of our physicians, told me that on one occasion
a hundred and fifty fits took place within thirty-six hours. On my
complaining of these sights, whence I alone could not fly, I was placed
in the paralytic and wound ward, which I found much more pleasant.

A month of skilful treatment eased me entirely of my aches, and I then
began to experience certain curious feelings, upon which, having nothing
to do and nothing to do anything with, I reflected a good deal. It was
a good while before I could correctly explain to my own satisfaction
the phenomena which at this time I was called upon to observe. By the
various operations already described I had lost about four fifths of my
weight. As a consequence of this I ate much less than usual, and could
scarcely have consumed the ration of a soldier. I slept also but little;
for, as sleep is the repose of the brain, made necessary by the waste
of its tissues during thought and voluntary movement, and as this latter
did not exist in my case, I needed only that rest which was necessary to
repair such exhaustion of the nerve-centers as was induced by thinking
and the automatic movements of the viscera.

I observed at this time also that my heart, in place of beating, as it
once did, seventy-eight in the minute, pulsated only forty-five times in
this interval--a fact to be easily explained by the perfect quiescence
to which I was reduced, and the consequent absence of that healthy and
constant stimulus to the muscles of the heart which exercise occasions.

Notwithstanding these drawbacks, my physical health was good, which, I
confess, surprised me, for this among other reasons: It is said that a
burn of two thirds of the surface destroys life, because then all the
excretory matters which this portion of the glands of the skin evolved
are thrown upon the blood, and poison the man, just as happens in an
animal whose skin the physiologist has varnished, so as in this way to
destroy its function. Yet here was I, having lost at least a third of my
skin, and apparently none the worse for it.

Still more remarkable, however, were the psychical changes which I
now began to perceive. I found to my horror that at times I was less
conscious of myself, of my own existence, than used to be the case. This
sensation was so novel that at first it quite bewildered me. I felt like
asking some one constantly if I were really George Dedlow or not; but,
well aware how absurd I should seem after such a question, I refrained
from speaking of my case, and strove more keenly to analyze my feelings.
At times the conviction of my want of being myself was overwhelming and
most painful. It was, as well as I can describe it, a deficiency in the
egoistic sentiment of individuality. About one half of the sensitive
surface of my skin was gone, and thus much of relation to the outer
world destroyed. As a consequence, a large part of the receptive central
organs must be out of employ, and, like other idle things, degenerating
rapidly. Moreover, all the great central ganglia, which give rise to
movements in the limbs, were also eternally at rest. Thus one half of me
was absent or functionally dead. This set me to thinking how much a man
might lose and yet live. If I were unhappy enough to survive, I might
part with my spleen at least, as many a dog has done, and grown fat
afterwards. The other organs with which we breathe and circulate the
blood would be essential; so also would the liver; but at least half of
the intestines might be dispensed with, and of course all of the limbs.
And as to the nervous system, the only parts really necessary to life
are a few small ganglia. Were the rest absent or inactive, we should
have a man reduced, as it were, to the lowest terms, and leading an
almost vegetative existence. Would such a being, I asked myself, possess
the sense of individuality in its usual completeness, even if his organs
of sensation remained, and he were capable of consciousness? Of course,
without them, he could not have it any more than a dahlia or a tulip.
But with them--how then? I concluded that it would be at a minimum,
and that, if utter loss of relation to the outer world were capable of
destroying a man's consciousness of himself, the destruction of half
of his sensitive surfaces might well occasion, in a less degree, a like
result, and so diminish his sense of individual existence.

I thus reached the conclusion that a man is not his brain, or any one
part of it, but all of his economy, and that to lose any part must
lessen this sense of his own existence. I found but one person who
properly appreciated this great truth. She was a New England lady, from
Hartford--an agent, I think, for some commission, perhaps the Sanitary.
After I had told her my views and feelings she said: "Yes, I comprehend.
The fractional entities of vitality are embraced in the oneness of
the unitary Ego. Life," she added, "is the garnered condensation of
objective impressions; and as the objective is the remote father of the
subjective, so must individuality, which is but focused subjectivity,
suffer and fade when the sensation lenses, by which the rays of
impression are condensed, become destroyed." I am not quite clear that
I fully understood her, but I think she appreciated my ideas, and I felt
grateful for her kindly interest.

The strange want I have spoken of now haunted and perplexed me so
constantly that I became moody and wretched. While in this state, a
man from a neighboring ward fell one morning into conversation with the
chaplain, within ear-shot of my chair. Some of their words arrested my
attention, and I turned my head to see and listen. The speaker, who wore
a sergeant's chevron and carried one arm in a sling was a tall, loosely
made person, with a pale face, light eyes of a washed-out blue tint, and
very sparse yellow whiskers. His mouth was weak, both lips being almost
alike, so that the organ might have been turned upside down without
affecting its expression. His forehead, however, was high and thinly
covered with sandy hair. I should have said, as a phrenologist, will
feeble; emotional, but not passionate; likely to be an enthusiast or a
weakly bigot.

I caught enough of what passed to make me call to the sergeant when the
chaplain left him.

"Good morning," said he. "How do you get on?"

"Not at all," I replied. "Where were you hit?"

"Oh, at Chancellorsville. I was shot in the shoulder. I have what the
doctors call paralysis of the median nerve, but I guess Dr. Neek and
the lightnin' battery will fix it. When my time's out I'll go back to
Kearsarge and try on the school-teaching again. I've done my share."

"Well," said I, "you're better off than I."

"Yes," he answered, "in more ways than one. I belong to the New Church.
It's a great comfort for a plain man like me, when he's weary and sick,
to be able to turn away from earthly things and hold converse daily with
the great and good who have left this here world. We have a circle in
Coates street. If it wa'n't for the consoling I get there, I'd of wished
myself dead many a time. I ain't got kith or kin on earth; but this
matters little, when one can just talk to them daily and know that they
are in the spheres above us."

"It must be a great comfort," I replied, "if only one could believe it."

"Believe!" he repeated. "How can you help it? Do you suppose anything
dies?"

"No," I said. "The soul does not, I am sure; and as to matter, it merely
changes form."

"But why, then," said he, "should not the dead soul talk to the living?
In space, no doubt, exist all forms of matter, merely in finer, more
ethereal being. You can't suppose a naked soul moving about without a
bodily garment--no creed teaches that; and if its new clothing be of
like substance to ours, only of ethereal fineness,--a more delicate
recrystallization about the eternal spiritual nucleus,--must it not then
possess powers as much more delicate and refined as is the new material
in which it is reclad?"

"Not very clear," I answered; "but, after all, the thing should be
susceptible of some form of proof to our present senses."

"And so it is," said he. "Come to-morrow with me, and you shall see and
hear for yourself."

"I will," said I, "if the doctor will lend me the ambulance."

It was so arranged, as the surgeon in charge was kind enough, as usual,
to oblige me with the loan of his wagon, and two orderlies to lift my
useless trunk.

On the day following I found myself, with my new comrade, in a house in
Coates street, where a "circle" was in the daily habit of meeting. So
soon as I had been comfortably deposited in an arm-chair, beside a large
pine table, the rest of those assembled seated themselves, and for some
time preserved an unbroken silence. During this pause I scrutinized
the persons present. Next to me, on my right, sat a flabby man, with
ill-marked, baggy features and injected eyes. He was, as I learned
afterwards, an eclectic doctor, who had tried his hand at medicine
and several of its quackish variations, finally settling down on
eclecticism, which I believe professes to be to scientific medicine what
vegetarianism is to common-sense, every-day dietetics. Next to him sat
a female-authoress, I think, of two somewhat feeble novels, and much
pleasanter to look at than her books. She was, I thought, a good deal
excited at the prospect of spiritual revelations. Her neighbor was a
pallid, care-worn young woman, with very red lips, and large brown eyes
of great beauty. She was, as I learned afterwards, a magnetic patient of
the doctor, and had deserted her husband, a master mechanic, to follow
this new light. The others were, like myself, strangers brought hither
by mere curiosity. One of them was a lady in deep black, closely veiled.
Beyond her, and opposite to me, sat the sergeant, and next to him the
medium, a man named Brink. He wore a good deal of jewelry, and had large
black side-whiskers--a shrewd-visaged, large-nosed, full-lipped man,
formed by nature to appreciate the pleasant things of sensual existence.

Before I had ended my survey, he turned to the lady in black, and asked
if she wished to see any one in the spirit-world.

She said, "Yes," rather feebly.

"Is the spirit present?" he asked. Upon which two knocks were heard in
affirmation. "Ah!" said the medium, "the name is--it is the name of a
child. It is a male child. It is--"

"Alfred!" she cried. "Great Heaven! My child! My boy!"

On this the medium arose, and became strangely convulsed. "I see,"
he said--"I see--a fair-haired boy. I see blue eyes--I see above you,
beyond you--" at the same time pointing fixedly over her head.

She turned with a wild start. "Where--whereabouts?"

"A blue-eyed boy," he continued, "over your head. He cries--he says,
'Mama, mama!'"

The effect of this on the woman was unpleasant. She stared about her for
a moment, and exclaiming, "I come--I am coming, Alfy!" fell in hysterics
on the floor.

Two or three persons raised her, and aided her into an adjoining room;
but the rest remained at the table, as though well accustomed to like
scenes.

After this several of the strangers were called upon to write the names
of the dead with whom they wished to communicate. The names were spelled
out by the agency of affirmative knocks when the correct letters were
touched by the applicant, who was furnished with an alphabet-card upon
which he tapped the letters in turn, the medium, meanwhile, scanning his
face very keenly. With some, the names were readily made out. With one,
a stolid personage of disbelieving type, every attempt failed, until at
last the spirits signified by knocks that he was a disturbing agency,
and that while he remained all our efforts would fail. Upon this some of
the company proposed that he should leave; of which invitation he took
advantage, with a skeptical sneer at the whole performance.

As he left us, the sergeant leaned over and whispered to the medium, who
next addressed himself to me. "Sister Euphemia," he said, indicating the
lady with large eyes, "will act as your medium. I am unable to do more.
These things exhaust my nervous system."

"Sister Euphemia," said the doctor, "will aid us. Think, if you please,
sir, of a spirit, and she will endeavor to summon it to our circle."

Upon this a wild idea came into my head. I answered: "I am thinking as
you directed me to do."

The medium sat with her arms folded, looking steadily at the center
of the table. For a few moments there was silence. Then a series of
irregular knocks began. "Are you present?" said the medium.

The affirmative raps were twice given.

"I should think," said the doctor, "that there were two spirits
present."

His words sent a thrill through my heart.

"Are there two?" he questioned.

A double rap.

"Yes, two," said the medium. "Will it please the spirits to make us
conscious of their names in this world?"

A single knock. "No."

"Will it please them to say how they are called in the world of
spirits?"

Again came the irregular raps--3, 4, 8, 6; then a pause, and 3, 4, 8, 7.

"I think," said the authoress, "they must be numbers. Will the spirits,"
she said, "be good enough to aid us? Shall we use the alphabet?"

"Yes," was rapped very quickly.

"Are these numbers?"

"Yes," again.

"I will write them," she added, and, doing so, took up the card and
tapped the letters. The spelling was pretty rapid, and ran thus as she
tapped, in turn, first the letters, and last the numbers she had already
set down:

"UNITED STATES ARMY MEDICAL MUSEUM, Nos. 3486, 3487."

The medium looked up with a puzzled expression.

"Good gracious!" said I, "they are MY LEGS--MY LEGS!"

What followed, I ask no one to believe except those who, like myself,
have communed with the things of another sphere. Suddenly I felt a
strange return of my self-consciousness. I was reindividualized, so to
speak. A strange wonder filled me, and, to the amazement of every one,
I arose, and, staggering a little, walked across the room on limbs
invisible to them or me. It was no wonder I staggered, for, as I briefly
reflected, my legs had been nine months in the strongest alcohol. At
this instant all my new friends crowded around me in astonishment.
Presently, however, I felt myself sinking slowly. My legs were going,
and in a moment I was resting feebly on my two stumps upon the floor. It
was too much. All that was left of me fainted and rolled over senseless.

I have little to add. I am now at home in the West, surrounded by every
form of kindness and every possible comfort; but alas! I have so
little surety of being myself that I doubt my own honesty in drawing
my pension, and feel absolved from gratitude to those who are kind to
a being who is uncertain of being enough himself to be conscientiously
responsible. It is needless to add that I am not a happy fraction of
a man, and that I am eager for the day when I shall rejoin the lost
members of my corporeal family in another and a happier world.