Diary of a tour through Southern India, Egypt, and Palestine, in the years 1821 and 1822 / By a field-officer of cavalry [i.e Sir D. Mackworth].

  • Mackworth, Digby, Sir, 1789-1852.
Date:
1823
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Diary of a tour through Southern India, Egypt, and Palestine, in the years 1821 and 1822 / By a field-officer of cavalry [i.e Sir D. Mackworth]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    25/750 (page 13)
    was a native of India. At about two o’clock in the afternoon the convulsions became stronger^ and all power of swallowing medicine was lost: a cure was clearly hopeless ; but with a view to diminish the violence of the paroxysms, the patient was blooded, and a warm bath pre¬ pared, into which he was plunged, though the instant he saw it he screamed most violently, struggled, and shook with extreme terror. After having been immersed for a short time, he was taken out, laid on his bed, and not again re¬ moved from it, as it was deemed useless to ad¬ minister any further remedy. Nothing was done from this time, but the occasionally wiping from his mouth the foam which collected there during the violence of the paroxysms. To these were now added, a sense of oppression on the chest, and a painful difficulty of breathing, which de¬ noted the further progress of the disorder. All this time, during sufferings which I have rarely seen equalled in a man, and never before in a child, John only once permitted a word of complaint, and it was but a slight one, to escape his lips. He said, It is very sore to die.” In the moments of intermission from acute pain, he sometimes begged his mother to read to him out of a little book containing stories from the Bible ; at other times he wished her to sing some of his favorite hymns ; his poor mother being, as may be supposed in such circumstances, quite inca-