Prologue
Martin Hesselius, the German
physician
Though carefully
educated in medicine and surgery, I have never practised either. The study of each
continues, nevertheless, to interest me profoundly. Neither idleness nor caprice caused my
secession from the honourable calling which I had just entered. The cause was a very
trifling scratch inflicted by a dissecting knife. This trifle cost me the loss of two
fingers, amputated promptly, and the more painful loss of my health, for I have never been
quite well since, and have seldom been twelve months together in the same place.
In my wanderings I
became acquainted with Dr. Martin Hesselius, a wanderer like myself, like me a physician,
and like me an enthusiast in his profession. Unlike me in this, that his wanderings were
voluntary, and he a man, if not of fortune, as we estimate fortune in England, at least in
what our forefathers used to term "easy circumstances." He was an old man when I
first saw him; nearly five-and-thirty years my senior.
In Dr. Martin
Hesselius, I found my master. His knowledge was immense, his grasp of a case was an
intuition. He was the very man to inspire a young enthusiast like me with awe and delight.
My admiration has stood the test of time and survived the separation of death. I am sure
it was well-founded.
For nearly twenty years
I acted as his medical secretary. His immense collection of papers he has left in my care,
to be arranged, indexed, and bound. His treatment of some of these cases is curious. He
writes in two distinct characters. He describes what he saw and heard as an intelligent
layman might, and when in this style of narrative he had seen the patient either through
his own hall-door, to the light of day, or through the gates of darkness to the caverns of
the dead, he returns upon the narrative, and in the terms of his art and with all the
force and originality of genius, proceeds to the work of analysis, diagnosis and
illustration.
Here and there a case
strikes me as of a kind to amuse or horrify a lay reader with an interest quite different
from the peculiar one which it may possess for an export. With slight modifications,
chiefly of language, and of course a change of names, I copy the following. The narrator
is Dr. Martin Hesselius. I find it among the voluminous notes of cases which he made
during a tour in England about sixty-four years ago.
It is related in series
of letters to his friend Professor Van Loo of Leyden. The professor was not a physician,
but a chemist, and a man who read history and metaphysics and medicine, and had in his day
written a play.
The narrative is,
therefore, if somewhat less valuable as a medical record, necessarily written in a manner
more likely to interest an unlearned reader.
These letters, from a
memorandum attached, appear to have been returned on the death of the professor in 1819 to
Dr. Hesselius. They are written, some in English, some in French, but the greater part in
German. I am a faithful, though I am conscious by no means a graceful translator, and
although here and there I omit some passages and shorten others, and disguise names, I
have interpolated nothing.
Chapter I
Dr. Hesselius relates how he met the Reverend Mr. Jennings
The Rev. Mr. Jennings
is tall and thin. He is middle-aged, and dresses with a natty, old-fashioned, high-church
precision. He is naturally a little stately, but not at all stiff. His features, without
being handsome, are well formed, and their expression extremely kind but also shy.
I met him one evening
at Lady Mary Heyduke's. The modesty and benevolence of his countenance are extremely
prepossessing.
We were but a small
party, and he joined agreeably enough in the conversion. He seems to enjoy listening very
much more than contributing to the talk, but what he says is always to the purpose and
well said. He is a great favourite of Lady Mary's, who it seems consults him upon many
things and thinks him the most happy and blessed person on Earth. Little knows she about
him.
The Rev. Mr. Jennings
is a bachelor, and has, they say, sixty thousand pounds in the funds. He is a charitable
man. He is most anxious to be actively employed in his sacred profession, and yet though
always tolerably well elsewhere, when he goes down to his vicarage in Warwickshire to
engage in the actual duties of his sacred calling, his health soon fails him, and in a
very strange way. So says Lady Mary.
There is no doubt that
Mr. Jennings' health does break down in, generally, a sudden and mysterious way, sometimes
in the very act of officiating in his old and pretty church at Kenlis. It may be his
heart, it may be his brain. But so it has happened three or four times or oftener that
after proceeding a certain way in the service, he has on a sudden stopped short, and after
a silence, apparently quite unable to resume, he has fallen into solitary, inaudible
prayer, his hands and his eyes uplifted, and then pale as death, and in the agitation of a
strange shame and horror, descended trembling, and got into the vestry-room, leaving his
congregation, without explanation, to themselves. This occurred when his curate was
absent. When he goes down to Kenlis now, he always takes care to provide a clergyman to
share his duty, and to supply his place on the instant should he become thus suddenly
incapacitated.
When Mr. Jennings
breaks down quite, and beats a retreat from the vicarage, and returns to London where, in
a dark street off Picadilly, he inhabits a very narrow house, Lady Mary says that he is
always perfectly well. I have my own opinion about that. There are degrees of course. We
shall see.
Mr. Jennings is a
perfectly gentlemanlike man. People, however, remark something odd. There is an impression
a little ambiguous. One thing which certainly contributes to it, people I think don't
remember, or, perhaps, distinctly remark. But I did, almost immediately. Mr. Jennings has
a way of looking sidelong upon the carpet, as if his eye followed the movements of
something there. This, of course, is not always. It occurs now and then. But often enough
to give a certain oddity, as I have said, to his manner, and in this glance traveling
along the floor there is something both shy and anxious.
A medical philosopher,
as you are good enough to call me, elaborating theories by the aid of cases sought out by
himself, and by him watched and scrutinised with more time at command, and consequently
infinitely more minuteness than the ordinary practitioner can afford, falls insensibly
into habits of observation, which accompany him everywhere, and are exercised, as some
people would say, impertinently, upon every subject that presents itself with the least
likelihood of rewarding inquiry.
There was a promise of
this kind in the slight, timid, kindly but reserved gentleman whom I met for the first
time at this agreeable little evening gathering. I observed, of course, more than I here
set down, but I reserve all that borders on the technical for a strictly scientific paper.
I may remark that when
I here speak of medical science I do so, as I hope some day to see it more generally
understood, in a much more comprehensive sense than its generally material treatment would
warrant. I believe the entire natural world is but the ultimate expression of that
spiritual world from which, and in which alone, it has its life. I believe that the
essential man is a spirit, that the spirit is an organized substance, but as different in
point of material from what we ordinarily understand by matter, as light or electricity
is; that the material body is, in the most literal sense, a vesture, and death
consequently no interruption of the living man's existence but simply his extrication from
the natural body -- a process which commences at the moment of what we term death, and the
completion of which, at furthest a few days later, is the resurrection "in
power."
The person who weighs
the consequences of these positions will probably see their practical bearing upon medical
science. This is, however, by no means the proper place for displaying the proofs and
discussing the consequences of this too generally unrecognized state of facts.
In pursuance of my
habit, I was covertly observing Mr. Jennings, with all my caution -- I think he perceived
it -- and I saw plainly that he was as cautiously observing me. Lady Mary happening to
address me by name, as Dr. Hesselius, I saw that he glanced at me more sharply, and then
became thoughtful for a few minutes.
After this, as I
conversed with a gentleman at the other end of the room, I saw him look at me more
steadily, and with an interest which I thought I understood. I then saw him take an
opportunity of chatting with Lady Mary, and was, as one always is, perfectly aware of
being the subject of a distant inquiry and answer.
This tall clergyman
approached me by-and-by, and in a little time we had got into conversation. When two
people who like reading and know books and places, having traveled, wish to discourse, it
is very strange if they can't find topics. It was not accident that brought him near me,
and led him into conversation. He knew German and had read my Essays on Metaphysical
Medicine, which suggest more than they actually say.
This courteous man,
gentle, shy, plainly a man of thought and reading, who moving and talking among us was not
altogether of us, and whom I already suspected of leading a life whose transactions and
alarms were carefully concealed, with an impenetrable reserve from not only the world but
his best beloved friends, was cautiously weighing in his own mind the idea of taking a
certain step with regard to me.
I penetrated his
thoughts without his being aware of it, and was careful to say nothing which could betray
to his sensitive vigilance my suspicions respecting his position, or my surmises about his
plans respecting myself.
We chatted upon
indifferent subjects for a time but at last he said:
"I was very much
interested by some papers of yours, Dr. Hesselius, upon what you term Metaphysical
Medicine. I read them in German, ten or twelve years ago; have they been translated?"
"No, I'm sure they
have not -- I should have heard. They would have asked my leave, I think."
"I asked the
publishers here a few months ago to get the book for me in the original German, but they
tell me it is out of print."
"So it is, and has
been for some years. But it flatters me as an author to find that you have not forgotten
my little book, although," I added, laughing, "ten or twelve years is a
considerable time to have managed without it. But I suppose you have been turning the
subject over again in your mind, or something has happened lately to revive your interest
in it."
At this remark,
accompanied by a glance of inquiry, a sudden embarrassment disturbed Mr. Jennings,
analogous to that which makes a young lady blush and look foolish. He dropped his eyes and
folded his hands together uneasily, and looked oddly, and would have said guiltily, for a
moment.
I helped him out of his
awkwardness in the best way, by appearing not to observe it, and going straight on I said:
"Those revivals of interest in a subject happen to me often. One book suggests
another, and often sends me back a wild-goose chase over an interval of twenty years. But
if you still care to possess a copy, I shall be only too happy to provide you; I have
still got two or three by me -- and if you allow me to present one I shall be very much
honoured."
"You are very good
indeed," he said, quite at his ease again, in a moment: "I almost despaired -- I
don't know how to thank you."
"Pray don't say a
word. The thing is really so little worth that I am only ashamed of having offered it, and
if you thank me any more I shall throw it into the fire in a fit of modesty."
Mr. Jennings laughed.
He inquired where I was staying in London, and after a little more conversation on a
variety of subjects he took his departure.