Woman, her diseases and remedies : a series of letters to his class / by Charles D. Meigs.

  • Meigs, Charles D. (Charles Delucena), 1792-1869.
Date:
1859
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Woman, her diseases and remedies : a series of letters to his class / by Charles D. Meigs. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    exciting life motions in due intensity everywhere within your economy, you shall in vain try to find the point so big as a pin, that is not in consummate order and health and perfection; and when that shall come to be the case, when the red tint of the butter pear shall glow on your cheek again, and the cherry turn pale in comparison with your lip, you shall seem as charming as you really are, and I will say, after good old Ambrose Pare', ' I cured her, and God healed her.' And, now, I must bid you good morning; for it is time to visit some persons who are really sick, which, thank Heaven, you are not. Stop, stop, doctor, a word before you go. I assure you that for more than two years I have been most unhappy, nay, most wretched, in the contemplation of a present and a prospective ill-health. No- thing has pleased me—nothing given me the hope of true enjoyment. I have been even sensible that I was daily losing a naturally good and placable temper; and becoming what a lady should never become, unamiable, acdriatre, tracasseuse! I believe that I have been in some sense like Lady Macbeth—not in the wickedness, I hope, but in the phantasy: there is a pretty Shakspeare lying on the table; do open it, doctor, at Act V. Scene iv., and read it for me. Macbeth.—How does your patient, doctor ? Doctor. Not so sick, my lord, As she is troubled with thick-coming fancies, That keep her from her rest. M. Cure her of that: Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased; Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow; Raze out the written troubles of the brain; And, with some sweet oblivious antidote, Cleanse the stuff'd bosom of that perilous stuff, Which weighs upon the heart ? D. Therein the patient Must minister to himself. M.—Throw physic to the dogs, I'll none of it:— Come, put mine armor on.— There, Miss Helen—there is your quotation. I hope you will minister to yourself, and follow the last line, ' Come, put mine armor on.' Depend upon it, doctor, I shall try to follow your advice. I can- not say that the conversation I have had with you has enabled me to understand as clearly as I think you do, what ails me, and what I re- quire for the re-establishment of my lost health and spirits. Perhaps, indeed, a long preliminary study is requisite to the understanding of those points, that you characterize by such very hard words, as en— en—end-angium, was it not? and hasmatosis? yes, hematosis, and