'She's Had the Doctor!'
I
YESTERDAY I had the doctor. I was, and still am, suffering from what is commonly called a cold, although the experimental school which my niece attends records her absences resulting therefrom as ‘absences due to simple, respiratory infections.’ I hesitated for some time before I gave my sanction to the telephone call which should summon the doctor to my bedside. As a matter of fact, given my heritage and training, hesitation before so grave an act as calling in medical aid is not only meet and right, but inevitable. I pause instinctively to consider my resources, both financial and practical. I pause, too, before the peculiar emotional excitement which should accompany such an unusual step, although I may say that that unique excitement is in these latter days doomed to frustration from its very inception.
Several of my friends who were kind enough to interest themselves in my condition had little patience with my hesitation; in fact, they quite frankly accused me not only of an unbecoming willfulness but also of a sad lack of intelligence. They said that no person in his senses neglected a cold nowadays; that colds were known to be mere cloaks for all manner of insidious human ills; that home remedies (like the molasses and vinegar cough syrup which I had surreptitiously concocted in my kitchenette after my grandmother’s secret recipe) were fit only to be laughed at; that to refuse professional care for a cold implied a deplorable lack of social conscience; that only a serious temperature could possibly explain the highly emotional state I must be in even to question the advisability of calling a physician.
This last argument overpowered if it did not convince me. The doctor was called. And in the interim between his summons and his arrival I lay in my bed, and, since participation therein was forevermore denied me, I reviewed those ‘highly emotional states’ into which whole families had been plunged in the days of my childhood and youth by the merest conjecture of calling the doctor.
There were, first of all, disquieting financial considerations to face. A doctor’s call in rural Maine in the nineties, indeed at the beginning of the new century, cost one dollar. Needless to say, an office interview, which allowed one fifty cents’ worth of advice and medicine, was invariably chosen if the patient could transport himself or be transported in safety. A recent examination of an account book kept by my father for the years between 1886 and 1902 shows that all doctor’s bills for a large and increasing family over that period of sixteen years amounted to $105 and no cents. This sum had paid for six babies at $8.00 each, which fee included two aftervisits to the mother — the charge now for a reputable permanent wave and an extra ‘set’; five cases of measles, during which epidemic the doctor’s advice had, in four calls at $1.00 each, supplemented my mother’s versatility, common sense, and no small store of medical knowledge; one serious case of rheumatic fever which had cost $31, yet brought full value in social prestige and prominence since we ‘ had the doctor’ daily for a full month; one broken leg at $7.00, and six vaccinations at fifty cents each. The remaining $12 had been expended on medicine and on sick-room accessories. In view of the fact that I and my four brothers and sisters waxed fat and prospered at the cost of approximately less than $1.40 a year each for medical service, is it any wonder that I (and perhaps others of similar nurture) ponder and consider well the calling of a doctor?
Secondly, among country families of my generation, there were the even more disquieting questions concerning the reason for such a momentous decision — in other words, the patient himself. Was his condition in any way alarming, or even serious? His coated longue, bad breath, and hot forehead surely betokened fever. Was it a normal run accompanying indiscretions in eating — at Thanksgiving, for instance, or during the pig-killing season, or the green-apple harvest? Would it after twenty-four hours flee before ‘a good dose of physic’ and hot sweats, and honestly betray its absence by moist hands and forehead and by renewed appetite? Or was it the prefacing sign of chicken pox or measles, which would show themselves in due time and which could doubtless be helped on by hot feet-soakings and judicious bowls of steaming pennyroyal tea? Were there portentous symptoms with which the practised, intelligent New England housewife felt herself incapable to deal — such, for example, as pleurisy which would not yield to mustard plasters, or rheumatism which would not stay below the waistline where all safe and sane rheumatism belonged ?
If even a doubtful affirmative answered these last and more momentous questionings, the decision was made to have the doctor, regardless of cost. And thereupon, when conjecture gave place to certainty, what excitement ensued! The ‘highly emotional state’ engendered by mere suggestion became concentrated into an intensity shared by every member of the family.
The patient, who had heretofore presumably remained in ignorance of the deliberations in his behalf, must be quietly informed. If one of the children, he was too full of the importance he would gain among his fellows to feel any twinge of fear. If the mother, she would at first pooh-pooh the announcement with proper scorn, then affect a becoming resignation in which was concealed no little gratification in that the doctor was actually coming to see her when there was no baby on the way! If the father, he more than anyone else must be most casually notified, for men, then as now, were more likely than women to be overanxious as to affairs of their earthly tabernacles and less likely to be assuaged by the sense of their social superiority.
‘I think, Father, we’d best have the doctor look in on you. He sees old Mrs. Bowden on every other Saturday, so it won’t be a mite out of his way.’
The patient informed, the family turned to the domestic and the social ramifications of a move so drastic. Clean bedding and night clothes were procured, aired before stoves or fireplaces, and carried to the patient’s room to effect there a swift metamorphosis. A reasonable tidying of the house ensued so that the doctor might cherish no misgivings as to the healthful surroundings of his patient. In lieu of a bathroom, clean towels were placed on the shelf by the kitchen sink, clean tumblers, a pitcher of fresh water covered with a clean napkin, two or three of the best silver spoons polished to the highest degree of brightness, an unused cake of soap in a flowered sauce dish. Meanwhile the more dramatic members of the household adroitly manufactured ways and means by which the neighbors might be properly informed and fittingly impressed. Articles and commodities long since borrowed were now returned; or questions concerning an impending church entertainment were hastily conceived; or sudden household needs were as suddenly discovered. So that by afternoon, when the mistresses of neighboring homes met on the village street or in the various marts of trade, hushed and prophetic voices would greet anxious eyes with the pregnant words, ‘She’s had the doctor!’
The local Hippocrates usually took his time in arriving. This interim was nervously, yet not unpleasantly, passed in straightening chairs and walking from one room to another, in anxious surmises, recollections of similar cases, prognostications of the ways and means of dealing with possible contagion. One’s simple world became involved. Children might even be excused from bad spelling lessons at school on the ground that untoward circumstances prevailed at home.
When the doctor came at last, he always brought with him through the side or back door a wholesome, if unhygienic, smell of the barn in which he had harnessed his horse. In the winter he was redolent of this smell, compounded of hay, harnesses, old lap robes, grain bins, manure; in the summer, or if perchance he came on foot in any season, he was but reminiscent of it. It was a part of him, and we liked it. He always divested himself of his outer apparel in the kitchen, after which ceremony he washed his hands, which he had previously rubbed together, if the weather were at all cold, over the kitchen stove. One member of the family always held a clean towel for him, like an acolyte at the Lavabo. While he washed, he commented on the weather or on general business or farming conditions. Washed, he was not disinclined to confidences. That ominous seal of secrecy, so securely set over the lips of modern physicians, was not so irritatingly in evidence thirty or forty years ago. We heard of old Mrs. Bowden’s third yet not fatal shock, of the Closson twins’ curious succession of ringworms, each twin being identically afflicted, and of Mr. Hosea Perkins’s shingles, which had actually met around his waist without dire result. Although we had heard of these visitations through neighborhood gossip, they took upon themselves incomparable charm and value when they were retailed by the doctor himself. Before he went in to see his patient, he always looked paternally upon all the younger members of the household. Quite naturally, since each represented eight dollars to him, he felt an interest in each, and each in him.
Preliminary rites successfully performed, the mother of the family, in a clean apron (unless perchance she were the patient, in which case the female member next in seniority took charge), escorted the doctor into the sick room. The door was then discreetly closed. Without, the family waited. Within, time being no object, the doctor joked and questioned, thumped and listened, took pulse and temperature, felt hands, feet, and forehead, scrutinized the skin of chest and back for telltale eruptions.
‘Let’s see your tongue!’ said the doctor. O lost, delectable command!
Then, for those who waited, came the dramatic moment of the return from the sick room, the doctor first, Mother close behind him. Followed a colloquy in subdued tones by the dining-room table, the doctor advisory, yet deferential and coöperative. Rural New England housewives were themselves physicians thirty years ago. Their knowledge and experience were rightly reckoned with and depended upon.
More rites ensued at the kitchen sink. The doctor’s black chest was opened; pink, brown, or white pills were placed in sauce dishes; pink powders were unfolded, shaken into clean tumblers of water, and carefully stirred. Butter dishes were placed over the tumblers. Directions and admonitions were given.
‘I’ll look round again in the morning,’ said the doctor, if the case was serious. Or, ‘Send for me again if he don’t seem so well to you. You’ll know the signs.’
II
Mothers did know the signs, and the cures for them as well. Such knowledge was a part of the rural New England heritage. Children of my day, teneris ab annis, absorbed medicinal lore with the round of the seasons. In the spring we were fed sulphur and molasses for a tonic on the mystic principle of three mornings and skip three; in the summer we were solemnly warned and as solemnly believed that chokecherries followed within three hours by milk would cause horrible swellings and almost certain death; in the winter we wore beneath our red flannel undershirts a bag of camphor or of sulphur against all manner of lurking ills.
That superstition played its delightful part in many of our tenets, as in those of our mothers who handed them down to us, is undeniable. But at all events it lent drama to our days and doubtless banished as many fears from our minds as it inculcated within them. A horsehair, tied into as many knots as one has warts or freckles, inserted into a bottle of water, and secreted with due ceremony within some dark, damp, and cool place, there to remain for nine days, is guarantee of nothing at all save a thoroughly delightful and thrilling occupation. Yet what Maine country child would be without its memory? A horse-chestnut in one’s pocket is surely no proof against rheumatism; and yet the fact that I, who come from a sadly rheumatic family, have carried one about with me for lo, these thirty years has at least afforded me a fund of delicious humor — in itself armor-proof against most adversities of body, mind, and spirit. Moreover, that humor became suddenly speculative when last winter, the chestnut forgotten for a fortnight, I was smitten with rheumatic pains — the swift retaliation of Æsculapius! One’s dirty stocking, in color necessarily black, pulled from one’s leg at bedtime and bound, still warm, around a sore throat, with the heel accurately placed against the Adam’s apple, can hardly be seriously credited as a sure cure; and yet I have known many an improvement to result therefrom, or at least thereafter.
Pleasing ruminations on these things recall the statements of old Robert Burton and of the great Galen himself. The former, although skeptical of such charms, says in his inimitable Anatomy that ’they are not altogether to be neglected,’ since in his own experience he has known ague to be cured by a spider wrapped in silk and sealed in a nutshell which was then suspended around the patient’s neck. The latter, although he stoutly declares that there is no medical reason to account for the virtue of such amulets, is puzzled by the fact that they seemingly act ‘by some marvelous antipathy unknown to man.’ And, superstition quite set aside, there were in sober fact sound remedies known and applied by rural and village housewives which substantially conserved the family exchequer and made from any infrequent visit of a doctor a dies magnus atque memorabilis.
In most constant use as New England winters wore on and treacherous January thaws wrought their havoc (in spite of red flannel chest protectors worn by young and old) were the various plasters for colds that threatened the lungs. Mustard and white flour, mixed with water to a stiff paste and spread between two pieces of soft old cotton, an outer covering of flannel for the side exposed to the air, fashioned the chief among these in most families. I can still feel the cold sliminess of this plaster as it was administered by firm hands and pinned securely to my high-necked nightdress — a sensation too soon to be followed by burning and itching indescribable. Lard and mustard were likewise utilized, although this mixture was felt to be less potent if more comfortable. Pork rind and pepper had their adherents also. In cases of deep sore throat, which one’s soiled stocking had failed to cure and which threatened the bronchial region, thick and unwieldy collars were made of slabs of salt pork, plentifully sprinkled with pepper, and wrapped in cotton cloth. Such applications as these harbored within themselves not only physical effects but moral and spiritual as well. To wake early on a dark winter morning with the loathsome smell of pork rind and pepper in one’s nostrils, to endure the wretched sensation of cold and concentrated grease encircling one’s neck and mingling with one’s back hair, to lie with resignation until the accomplishment of morning duties at last made attention possible — such moral and spiritual exercise as this, if successfully weathered, made one fit to be numbered among the saints and brought in its wake at least a partial immunity against the many lesser irritations of life.
For throat and chest ailments there were also the various oils and greases, rubbed into the afflicted parts with energy, not to say gusto. Goose or duck’s grease and hen’s oil were, in my home at least, the most reliable of these. Some households preferred skunk’s grease, but in our own an æsthetic streak in my mother forbade its use even though it was quite odorless and known to be efficacious in the extreme. A trapper of my youth, named Reuben Gray, did a thriving business in skunks once the snow was on the ground. Knowing the haunts of these creatures in various barn cellars and woodsheds, he might be seen on most week-day mornings, preceded by the worst smell known to mankind and carrying by the tail one or more of his means of livelihood. He charged nothing for his extermination and was regarded generally as a most useful citizen.
Poultices were also made in goodly number, flaxseed poultices for sore and swollen eyelids, poultices of boiled onions for swollen joints, abscesses of all kinds, sore fingers. The bread and milk poultice, however, easily bore the palm among these. Made of such basic elements of human sustenance, it was possessed of a fundamental dignity absent from onions or flaxseed. Perhaps, indeed, my early respect for it added to the delight with which I recently read in a book of saints’ lives the story of the angel from Heaven who with his own holy yet practical hands milked a stray cow on the Northumberland hills in order to administer such aid to Saint Cuthbert of Durham, sorely beset by a swollen knee. The bread Cuthbert himself supplied from his own wallet, and the cure, no less miraculous because effected through earthly and material means, was complete.
Earache was a common monster of my childhood. This was often treated by a small piece of cotton soaked in hot laudanum and placed as far as possible within the ear. A rather more dramatic cure was that practically ensured by a raisin of the old-fashioned seeded variety which was heated very hot and pressed into the suffering member. I can still see my mother in the dead of night with a raisin on the point of a long hatpin which she held over a kerosene lamp, while in her other hand was the bit of cotton which was to follow the raisin and close the entrance. This means of comfort and relief retained and disseminated within the ear a welcome heat (I assume on the principle of a fireless cooker), and one almost immediately fell asleep.
Hot raisins were also employed for toothache. Held against the gum or aching tooth, they often produced great relief. They also, it must be admitted, afforded pleasure by subsequent eating. In ancient days, when the animal kingdom was more closely allied with the healing of human ills than was the vegetable, the prescription, accredited to Galen, of a small frog, boiled in water and vinegar and held steaming hot against the aching tooth, was known to work similar wonders.
For chapped hands and sundry small cuts and bruises there was mutton tallow instead of the cold creams and various salves of to-day. For coughs there were syrups of wild cherry bark and white pine balsam, the ingredients for which we gathered ourselves in the spring and summer. There was also a delectable syrup of New Orleans molasses and vinegar which emitted, as it simmered in a saucepan on the stove, the richest and most alluring of odors. Nor must the use of slippery elm be omitted. This fragrant cream-white powder mixed with lard and boiled with sugar and lemon juice, in fresh rain water, made a syrup calculated to soothe irritated membranes and alleviate the most stubborn of coughs.
Neuralgia was minimized by a hop pillow heated in the oven and held against the painful surface wherever it might be. Burns were immediately covered by a lather of soft soap, by white of egg, or by a paste made of lard and common baking soda. Cuts were dosed with stinging arnica, in the face of which ordeal one was trained to smile stoically. The bottle of spirits of nitre stood next to that of witchhazel in most cellarways or on most pantry shelves, ready for insect bites and stings and for poison-ivy rash.
For fevers there were all manner of teas, concocted and administered to induce a sweat and thus to banish the dangerous temperatures. One was also liberally dosed with bowls of such mixtures for colds or for pains in the stomach. For the latter, ginger tea was invincible. Tansy and pennyroyal, sometimes catnip, were steeped and used for children who exhibited early signs of children’s diseases — chicken pox, measles, scarlet fever. Clam water produced a major perspiration and on the coast was much employed.
There was a persistent rumor current in my childhood that families more rurally situated than we ourselves utilized, especially to bring out measles, a brew made from dried sheep’s pellets gathered on the hillsides and known vulgarly as ‘nanny-plum tea.’ My mother with disgust termed this an old wives’ tale and steadfastly refused to give it credence. But it is of interest at least in suggesting the superstitious survival of the ancient faith in the curative properties of the refuse of animals.
III
I was here aroused from these soothing reflections by the advent of the doctor. I heard him apologizing for his lateness because of his hospital rounds and his attendance upon a Free Baby Clinic lately installed in our upto-date midst. My radiators being of the new, concealed sort and his gloves being both clean and warm, he neither rubbed his hands nor washed them in my perfectly appointed bathroom. When he came into my room, he brought with him both the appearance and the odor of complete sanitation. He was kind, if professional, and gracious, if taciturn, although my questions concerning his other patients left me unsatisfied.
He tells me by means of his stethoscope that my lungs are completely clear. By means of the latest nose appliances he has detected some inflammation of my sinuses, and a tiny light irradiating my throat has convinced us both that it is sore. His advice is to remain in bed with hourly inhalations and with quarts of cold water and fruit juices for at least three days.
I have no fever at all, although when he left me I think he suspected a mild, feverless delirium. For his face was quizzical, even perplexed and disturbed, when I asked him if, in his opinion, any good would result from wrapping my stocking around my throat at bedtime.
It was, I grant, a foolish question. Upon deliberation I could have convinced myself of its futility. For where to-day, at least among our respectable circles, could a black stocking, either cotton or woolen, and sufficiently soiled, be found?