CONFESSIONS OF A NEURASTHENIC
WEBMASTER'S NOTE: This work is presented for historical interest and subject background only. Many of the conclusions, attitudes, and treatments discussed here are those of an "expert" of another era, many of which have been overturned by science or are not acceptable in today's world.
CHAPTER XVI.
TAKES A COURSE IN A MEDICAL COLLEGE.
Yes, I had thought of something entirely new. I would take a medical course and would then know for myself whether I suffered from a complication of diseases or whether it was true, as many had tried to convince me, that there was nothing the matter with me. A medical education, too, would be an embellishment that every one could not boast of. I had the necessary time and means to take a course in medicine, having no one dependent upon me. If there had been family cares on my hands, the case would have been different. So I matriculated in a St. Louis medical college during the middle of a term and began the study of the healing art.
Now, reader, please do not be shocked too badly if, in this connection, I mention a few slightly uncanny things. I have always noticed, however, that most people do not raise much of a fuss over a diminutive shocking semi-occasionally, provided the act comes about as a natural course of events. There[Pg 102] were many things about the college and clinic rooms that were, to me, gruesome and repulsive. The dissecting-room, with its stench and debris from dead bodies, was the crucial test for me. I wonder now that I stayed with it as long as I did.
For my dissecting partner I had an uncouth cow-puncher from southern Texas. There were in the college a number of these broad-hatted and rather illiterate fellows from the southwest trying to get themselves metamorphosed into doctors. (I would often feel for their prospective patients.) This man who assisted me on the “stiff,” as they call the dissecting material, did the cutting and I looked up the points of anatomy. I preferred to do the literary rather than the sanguinary part of the work. One evening—we did this work at night—we were to dissect and expose all the muscles of the head, so as to make them look as nearly as possible like the colored plates in the anatomy. We were expected to learn the names of all these structures. The memorizing of these terms was no small task, for I remember that one little muscle even bore this outlandish name: levator labii superioris[Pg 103] alaquae nasi. Anglicized, this would mean that the function of the muscle was to raise the upper lip and dilate the nostril. My companion said that he “didn’t see no sense in being so durned scientific.” Accordingly he went to work and cut all the flesh off the head and stacked it up on the slab. When the demonstrator of anatomy came by to test our knowledge and to see our work, he asked: “What have you here?” My friend very promptly answered: “A pile of lean meat.” This student went by the not very euphonious name of “Lean Meat” from that date.
A trick of the students was to place fingers and toes in pockets of unsuspecting visitors to the dissecting-room. There was no end to these ghoulish acts. A student while in a hilarious mood one night did a decapitating operation on one of the bodies. His loot was the head of an old man with patriarchal beard and he carried it around from one place of debauchery to another, exhibiting it to gaping crowds of a rather unenviable class of citizenship.
I mention these things merely that the reader may imagine the morbid effect they might have[Pg 104] upon one of my temperament. Being a freshman, I was to get in the way of lectures only anatomy, physiology, microscopy and osteology. This interpreted meant body, bugs, and bones. But I wanted to acquire medical lore rapidly, so I listened to every lecture that I could, whether it came in my schedule or not. Soon I began to manifest symptoms of every disease I heard discussed. I would one day have all the signs of pancreatic disease; perhaps the next I would display unmistakable evidences of ascending myelitis; next, my liver would be the storm center, and so on. My shifting of symptoms was gauged by the lecturers to whom I listened.
At my room one evening I was walking the floor wrapped in deepest gloom. No deep-dyed pessimist ever felt as I did at that moment, for I had just discovered that I had an incurable heart disease. I had often feared as much, but now I had it from a scientific source that my heart was going wrong. I could tell by the way I felt. My room-mate noticed me. He was another Western bovine-chaser, a good fellow in his way, but according[Pg 105] to my standard, devoid of all the finer qualities that go to make a gentleman.
“What in thunder’s the matter with you, feller?” he blurted out. I told him of the latest affliction that had beset me. What this fellow said would not look well in print. My exasperation at his conduct, together with thoughts of my new disease, caused me to lash the pillow sleeplessly that night. I decided to go early in the morning and see Dr. Cardack, professor of chest diseases, and at least have him concur in my self-diagnosis.
The doctor had not yet arrived at his office. I must have been very early, for it seemed to me that he would never come. When he did arrive I was given a very affable greeting but only a superficial examination. I felt a little hurt to think that he did not seem to regard my case with the significance which I thought it deserved. The afflicted are always close observers in whatever concerns themselves. Professor Cardack had a peculiar smile on his big, kind face when he asked:—
“Have you been listening to my lectures on diseases of the heart?”
“Yes, sir;” was my response.
[Pg 106]“Did you hear my lecture on mitral murmurs yesterday?” he asked.
“I did,” I had to admit.
“And did you read up on the subject?” was further interrogated.
“Y-yes,” and my tones implied a little guilt, although I could not tell why.
“I thought so,” continued the doctor; “some of the boys from our college were in last night to have their hearts examined, and I am expecting quite a number in again this evening. Every year when I begin my course of lectures on the heart the boys call singly and in droves to see me and have my assurance that they have no cardiac lesions. I have never yet found one of them to have a crippled heart. Like you, they all have a slight neurosis, coupled with a self-consciousness, that makes them think the world revolves around them and their little imaginary ailments.”
I felt somewhat ashamed, but with it came a sense of relief. “Misery loves company,” and I was glad in my mortification to think that I had not been the only one to make a fool of myself.
[Pg 107]The old doctor gave me the usual advice about exercise. He said: “Go home when this term has closed and go to work at something during your vacation. Work hard and for a purpose, if possible, but don’t forget to work. If you can’t do any better, dig ditches and fill them up again. Forget yourself! Forget that you have a heart, a stomach, a liver, or a sympathetic nervous system. Live right, and those organs will take care of themselves all right. That’s why the Creator tried to bury them away beyond our control.”
This little talk, coming as it did from an acknowledged authority, made a strong impression upon me. I resolved to act upon the suggestions given me. By the way, it is scarcely necessary for me to state that I never went back to the medical college again.
