Roseburg review. [volume] (Roseburg, Or.) 1885-1920, 1885-03-06

pain. 1 am now taxing three drains
and half at bedtime, and one more at
early morning. I haVeoften started from
my sleep at midnight with a strange
dread of impending death which ! can
not describe, and found my hand cold
and no pulse at the wrist. | can now
barely walk hundred yards without
sitting or lying down. The irritab; lity
of the bra n is charged with a feeling
of indescribable agony if attempt to
get up an incline or stair. Super
added to this is a horrible sensat on of
strangulation, which is nearly always
present when I assume the upright
position.
Another three months have gone; it
is now the bleak December. The end
must be very nigh. In the beginning
of November was prevailed upol to
see Philadelphia physician-a special
ist. His specialism was heart disease
/ did not tell him how much chloral
was taking. don't know that had
very much hope of life when / went to
see this man, but if / had any l left it
AL at his house. and. brought away with
me despair, He examined no part of
the body but the region of the heart,
and treated the head symptoms as only
secondary. Shall | ever forget how
deity his little white fingers glided
over other parts of my chest and set
tied on the region of the heart! "Here
is where your trouble is,n he said; a
little enlargement of the right side
nothing to signify | heard his in
struct onsa and received his prescription,
kindly rendered, like one in a dream.
All doubt was now at an end, every ray
of hope banished; l was literally con-
demned to death. 81 take an interest
in your case he said, .sand will watch
it. | thanked him for formality' &
sake, although his words brought me
about as much comfort as they would
have done spoken by a hangman
to the wretch he would soon have
to operate on officially. 1t was
as though he had said: go home and
die, my boy; I'll have much pleasure in
watching the symptoms and duly re-
cording them for the benefit of the pro-
fession. y dragged myself YEARLY
back to the railroad depot, but felt nc
longer the slightest interest in any
thing that was happening around me.
/ was in the world, but no longer of the
world. Not until had reached home
and retired for the night did begin to
feel the whole horror of my situation.
Now it was the awful uncertainty oi
the kind of death | should die that hurt
me most. / knew | should de linger.
ingly and in the full possession of my
senses. feeling the ebbing of my heart s
pulse and counting my latest breath.
As to any future state, had no hope al
ALL I had lost all belief in the exist
ence of benefcent Creator. / be-
lieyed in the doctrine of chance, and
looked upon the existence of soul as
mere poetry and romance. / felt quite
convinced that nothing could exist in
dependent of matter; that height and
depth, and up and down, the points oi
the compass, weight, sight and sound,
thought itself, and every principle OF
so-called fundamental truth, had nc
existence in the abstract, or .'beyond
an earth y / believed in the after ex.
istence for the merely material part oi
my body, but that would be sublunary.
Matter can not die, ] reasoned, and
shall live again-live again in the sun
ny air, in the dew that distils from the
clouds live again in trees, in flowers,
and, perhaps, in some other form oil
animal life, and here, amid all my
gloomy speculations, came the ridicu-
lous thought: 81 shouldn't like to be a
centipede, though, nor a beetle, nor
anything creepy" For what was
life but changep What was change but
motion the result of force, force heat
in another form? And what was heat?
So scared away, and got lost in the
realms of the abstruse. But it will be
thus seen that there was no alteration
of intellect, no wandering of hallucina-
ton. The brain was clear, though in
high state of exaltation, and my rea-
son was similar to and the conclusions
arrived at the same as those of many
schools of philosophy-notably those
of Germany. And now there began to
dawn in my mind feeling from which
/ at first recoiled with horror. / con-
stantly saw in the distance the dread
necessity of suicide, for the time !
knew would soon come when | could
bear no more. As a further source oi
comfort to me my medical adviser had
given me little book, of which he was
the author-a book on disease of the
right side of the heart, and which de.
scribed very minutely the different
modes of exit from this world specially
prepared for the poor wretches SO af
tlicted. This book was bible to me fol
many days. The easiest style seemed
to be to live all your life with contin.
ual congestive headache, and expire
some fine morning in fit. Then the. {
was sudden death by heart cramp oil
paralysis. Oh. it was merry volume
For the first fortnight in Decembel
never less than five drains of the hy
drate of chloral was my nightly dose
From the time arose in the morning
my suferings were extreme. / hal
now lost all power of reading, writing
or speaking aloud, any attempt to dc
either was excruciating brain agony
and if persevered in fainting followed
l could hardly move my head from the
pillows or sit erect, while my eye
seemed starting from their sockets if
attempted to walk. But toward nigh
well, if all of mental, all of bodily
suffering I ever have endured in my
lie could be compressed into one hour
it would not exceed the torment | thel
underwent. Every vein in my bod.
seemed swollen to double the size ane
inflamed along the whole length, whil
the restlessness was so distressing tina
| could not lie for five minutes in an,
one position. Add to this that tim
seemed indefinitely long minutes a
hours and hours as days and you vii
have some faint notion of my experienc
of the ..grand remedy for sleeplessnes
that had no after effects.
Then came day when my landlad
took fright and went of her own accor,
for a medical man to come and see me