Remondino, Chapter IX

Philosophical Considerations Relating to Eunuchism and Medicine.

Dumas, in his "History of the Two Centuries" and his "History of the Century of Louis the XIV," gives some very interesting medical touches. Le Sage, in his "Adventures of Gil Blas," gives us food for speculating on medical philosophy in connection with the interesting subject of how to make the profession remunerative. Dickens's ideas of the doctor, as given in his works, are life touches. Witness his description of the little doctor who superintended little David Copperfield's advent into the world, or of Dr. Slammer of the army; they represent his view of the professional character. Fontenelle, probably, was right in ascribing the fact of his becoming a centenarian, and maintaining a stomach with the force and resistance that are the peculiar characteristics and attributes of a chemical retort, to the fact that when sick it was his practice to throw the doctor's physic out of the window as the doctor went out of the door, as in his day a man required the constitution of a rhinoceros and the stomach of an ostrich, with the external insensibility of a crocodile, to withstand the ordinary doctor of the period and his medications. Napoleon believed that Baron Larrey was the most virtuous, intelligent, useful, and unselfish man in existence; in fact, it is doubtful if any man of his time commanded from this truly great man so much admiration or respect, either for bravery, courage, intelligence, or activity, as the great and simple-minded Larrey. As observed by Napoleon of his bravest general, -poor marshal Ney, the bravest of the brave, the rear guard of the grand army, the last man to leave Russian soil, -Ney was a lion in action, but a fool in the closet. All his generals had some great distinguishing characteristic, beyond which was a barren waste, a vacuity, but too apparent to a man of Napoleon's discernment. But the cool, unflinching bravery of Larrey, that did not require the stimulus of the fight or the phrenzy of strife to bring it to the surface and keep it alive; bravery and intelligence alike active under showers of shot and shell or in the thunders of charging squadrons; in the face of infective epidemics or contagiousness, walking about in these scenes in which his own life was as much at stake as that of the meanest soldier, with the same cool exercise of his intelligence that he exhibited in the organization and superintendence of his hospitals in the time of peace; always the same, untiring, unmurmuring, brave, studious, observing, unflinching in his duties, unselfish; whether in the burning sands of Egypt or the snowy steppes of Russia, in the marshy plains of Italy or in the highlands of Spain, he always found him the same, and his notes and observations, from his first government service on the Newfoundland coast to his last, always showed him the same laborer and student in the field of medicine. And yet at St. Helena we find Napoleon refusing to take remedies for internal disease whose real nature was unknown, and only toward the end did he consent to take anything, and then only when seeing that the end was approaching, and more from a kindly desire to express his appreciation of the services of his attendants, and not to wound their feelings, than from any hope of assistance. Napoleon had not neglected the study of medicine any more than he had the study of every other science. This is evident from the instance related as taking place during the march of the grand army from the confines of Poland into Russia, in 1812, when dysentery became very prevalent, of his inviting several of his favorite guard to his own table, where he experimented on each particular grenadier with a specific form of diet, so as to determine its cause and possible remedy. He did not look upon our knowledge of pathology and out skill in diagnosis as being sufficiently advanced or perfect to make him feel but that a treatment for an obscure disease like his own would be pretty much a matter of guess-work. Charles Reade, in his "Man and Wife," shows an intimate knowledge of medical science where he philosophizes on the effects of an irregular life and of over-physical training. His logic is sound science. Defoe and Cervantes show a like intelligent insight as to medicine; and it was not without reason that Sydenham, the English Hippocrates, advised a student of medicine who entered his office as a student to begin the study of medicine by the careful study of "Don Quixote," remarking that he found it a work of great value, which he still often read. The works of Bacon and of Adam Smith on "Moral Sentiments;" the famous treatise on the "Natural History of Man," by the Rev. John Adams; the later works of Buckle, Spencer, Darwin, Draper, Lecky, and other robust wielders of the Anglo-Saxon pen, as well as the works of Montaigne, Montesquieu, La Fontaine, and Voltaire, are all works that the medical man could probably read with more profit than loss of time. In fact, either Hume, Macaulay, or any philosophical work on history will furnish to the physician additional knowledge of use in his profession. No physician can afford to neglect any study that in any manner adds to his knowledge of the natural history of man, as therein is to be found the foundation of our knowledge as to what constitutes health, and as to what are the causes that lead humanity to diverge from the paths of health into those of physical degeneracy and mental and bodily disease.

We have in medicine many sayings which pass for truisms, which are, after all, misleading. We say, for instance, keep the feet warm and the head cool; this will not always either keep you comfortable or well, as we know that in neuralgias it is absolutely necessary, either for comfort or to get well, to keep the head warm. While so much stress is laid on the necessity of keeping the head cool, a thing a person is sure to look after whenever the head becomes uncomfortably warm, and to which can be ascribed but few ailments or deaths, we hear comparatively nothing about the thermometric condition of the perineum, which, from the varying temperatures in which it is at times plunged, produces more beginnings for diseases in the future, during youth and our prime, as well as it quite often causes the sudden ending of life in more advanced periods. People who carefully observe the rule of keeping their heads cool and their feet warm will stand with out-spread legs and uplifted coat-tails with their backs to a blazing grate, and then, going outside, incontinently sit down on a stone or iron door-step, or, stepping into a carriage or other vehicle, they sit down on a cold oil-cloth or leather cushion, without the least knowledge of the harm or danger that they are liable to incur. They little dream of the prostatic troubles that in wait for the unwary sitter on cold places, ready to pounce upon him like the treacherous Indian lying in ambush, -troubles that carry in their train all the battalions of urethral, bladder, kidney disease and derangments, and subsequent blood disorganization, which often begin in a chilled perineum, and, in conjunction with the local disease that may result, end in handing us over to Father Charon for ferriage across the gloomy Styx long before our life's journey is half over. It is true, neither the savage of Africa or America nor the nomads of Asia are subject to any of these troubles; but with us, hampered with all the benefits of the dress, diet, habits, and luxuries of civilization, and with a civilized prostatic gland, it is quite otherwise. Herein, again, comes that connection between religion, morality, and medicine, that existed with so much benefit to mankind, but from which we of later days have, in our greater wisdom, seen fit to separate; although, inconsistently as it may seem, the present age has done more than any previous epoch in practically demonstrating the intimate and inseparable relation existing between the physical and moral nature of man. The persistent priapism which oftentimes results from riding with a wet seat and the inordinate morbid sensibility of the sexual organs that may result from the same cause or from spinal irritation are not to be allayed by any homily on morality or on the sanctifying attempts at keeping the animal passions under subjection, any more than will prayers or offering to all the gods of Olympus restore the eunuchized, either through foolish civilized dress and customs or through excessive indulgence. We must mix medicine with our religion and make the clergy into physicians, or ordain our physicians into full-fledged clergymen.