Wessington Springs herald. (Wessington Springs, Aurora County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1883-1891, 1885-02-06
necessitate a double dose. wheI all is

AACSCNOlUdUC d uOhCAo uOoos WAVl - AZ
quiet, a drink and
Three months moro have passed
away. After my friends death made
strenuous efforts to reduce my dose of
choral, and continued the sane for
more than a month. What nights OF
sleepless agony, what days OF lestless
pain! l am now taking three lrams
and a half at bedtime, and one more at
earl morning. Ihave often started from
my sleep at midnight with q strange
dread OF impending death which l can
not describe, and found my hand cold
and no pulse at the wrist. I CAP now
barely walk a hundred yards without
sitting or lying down. The irritgbility
of the brain is charged with q feeling
of indescribable agony if l attempt to
get up an incline or stair. Super
added to this is a horrible sensation of
strangulation, which is nearly always
present when l the UPRIGHT
position.
Another three months have go4e; it
is nov the bleak December. ThA end
must be very nigh. In the beginning
of November l was prevailed upon to
see a Philadelphia physician-a special
list. His specialism was heart disease.
| did not tell him how much chloral I
was taking. Idon't know that I had
very much hope of life when | went to
see this man, but if I had any l left it
all 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 l eve 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" he said; a
little enlargement of the right side
nothing to signify" 1 heard his in
structions and received his prescription,
kindly rendered, like one in a dream.
All doubt was now at an end, every ray
of hope banished; 1 was literally con.
demned to death. 81 take an interest
in your case," he said, land will watch
it." I thanked him for formality's
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: $50 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." I dragged myself YEARLY
back to the railroad depot, but 1 felt NO
longer the slightest interest in any
thing that was happening around me.
| was in the world, but no longer of the
world. Not until l had reached home
and retired for the night did 1 begin to
feel the whole horror of my situation.
Now it was. the awful uncertainty OF
the kind of death 1 should die that hurt
me most. l knew l should die linger.
ingly and in the full possession of my
senses. feeling the ebbing of my hearts
pulse and counting my latest breath.
AS to any future state, | had no hope at
all. l had lost all belief in the exist
ence of a beneficent Creator. l be-
lieved in the doctrine of chance, and
looked upon the existence of soul as
mere poetry and romance. l felt quite
convinced that nothing could exist in
dependent of matter; that height and
depth, and up and down. the points OF
thescompass, weight, sight and sound,
thought itself, and every principle OF
so-called fundamental truth, had nc
existence in the abstract, or '.beyond
an earth" I believed in the after ex-
istence for the merely material part OF
my body, but that would be sublunary.
Matter can not die, l 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 of
animal life, and here, amid all my
gloomy spcculaticns, came the ridicu-
lous thought: 81 shouldn't like to be a
oentiRede' though; !, nor D.. a beetle, nor
lifebut change? What was change but
motion the result of force, force heat
in another form? And what was heat?
So l 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
a high state OF cxaltation, and my rea-
son was similar to and the conclusions
arrived at the same as those of many
schools of plilosophy-notably those
of Germany. And now there began to
dawn in my mind Affecting from which
l at first rec1iled with horror. I con-
stantly saw in the distance the dread
necessity Of suicide, for the time I
knew would soon come when I could
bear no more. AS a further source of
comfort to me my medical adviser had
given me q little book, of which he was
the author-a book on disease of the
right side of the heart, and which de-
scribed very infinitely the different
modes of exit from this world specially
prepared for the poor wretches so at
tlicted. This book was bible to me for
many days. The easiest style. seemed
to be to live all your life with contin-
ual congestive headache, and expire
some fine morning in a fit. Then there
was sudden death by heart cramp or
paralysis. Oh, it was a merry volume!
For. the first fortnight in December
never less than five drains of the ny
drate of choral was my nightly dose.
From the time | arose in the moving
my sutferings were extreme. [ had
now lost all power Of reading, writing
or speaking aloud, any attempt to do
either was excruciating brain agony,
and if ~persevered in fainting followed.
1 could hardly move my head from the
pillows or sit erect. while NV owes