The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1892-08-19
MEDICINE FICTION.
Some Great Writers Have Pat Great
Nonsense in Their Books.

Some Great Writers Have Pat Great
Nonsense In Their Books.
From the British Medical Journal
We laughed when Mark Twain proposed
to deliver course of lectures upon ohemis-
try before the Royal Society, adding that
he was in position TO do this with greater
freedom, because he knew nothing whatever
about the science, but the public do not
laugh at but take in all seriousness the
medical incidents aHd opinions scattered
up and down the pages Of the novels aud
poems which so commonly deal with medi-
cal matters. One OF the strange medical
things in Monte Cristo" is the way in
which the old revolutionist Nortjer man
ages to live on, paralyzed in every part Of
his body except his eyelids, which he winks
only. Yet the old fellow reasons acu6ely,
and finds no difficulty whatever in swallow
ing food or drink. Dumas seemed aDso-
lutely unaware that such a paralytio condi-
ton as he describes in Nortier's
damage of the most serious
kind. Elsewhere Dumas made guillotinsd
head speak and weep. In one of mis- tales in
the volume "Les mile ct I'm Fantomes"
there is a story of man engaged In max
ing experiments on heads fresh from the
guillotine in the reign of terror. Then
there was Krook, the Lord Chancellor" in
BLEAK House." who went off the earthly
stage by spontaneous combustion. Dickens
might we'll be excused for falling into an
error which was at that time comonly be-
lieved in by people who ought to know bet
ter. Bulwer Lytton went in for medical
marvels in ''Zanoni, +" bat as he was a stu
dent of mystic lore, and actually learned
magic from professed thaumaturgist, the
Able Constant, his wonders were at
tr buted not so much to his lRnor~
ance of medical science as to his
belief in the elixir of life and the trans
mutation of metals. 1t is not surpris-
ing that even George Eliot, with all her
knowledge of the innermost workings OK the
human mind, should have lost her way
when dealing with the morbid changes of
mind and brain. Tito's father, Baldassare,
had been O great scholar, but after long
illness his memory, upon recovery became
q perfect blank. He could recall nothing
of his scholarship. though ne had not for
gotten who be was.
With all this Baldassare is not represented
as having lost his reason; he remembers his
past life, but he eau no longer read or write
or recall any of his scholarship for which he
had been SO distinguished. 1t was not
amnesia nor agraphia with which be was
afflicted 1t was form of cerebral disease
known only TO the eminent novelist. Wllkle
Collins made speciality OF this medical
knowledge, and il was upon this account
that he was induced to undertake an anti
vivisecsion novel, which he published under
the name Of Heart and Science" The
work was equally unsatisfactory both to
the persons who inspired it and TO the gen
eral public. Wilkie Collins effort In this
direction was a complete failure, and his
medical men and his wonderful drugs could
never have existed outside his own imag-
ination.
In Dickens "Tale Of Two Cities )" where
Sydney Carton substitutes himself for the
condemned Evremonde, we have Fremont
lions Of the chloroform which was TO be dis
covered fifty years later-the chloroform OF
popular imagination, however, and by no
means the CHCI OF the pharmacopceia. The
poets are, If possible, even worse offenders
in the matter OF their death scenes than the
novelsts. A man pulls two-drachm vial
Of some poison from his breast. swallows
the contents, proceeds 60 make 2OO-line
speech withouta panR or gasp, staggers
gracefully backward b cJnveniently
placed seat, drops upon 10. clasps the region
OF the heart with both hands aud dies after
liz 10 eonvulsiye movement Of the legs.
Heart disease, too, carries Off heroines Ia
fashion quite unknown % doctors, and,
although 10 IL d the variety known as
"broken heart" has characteristics which
NUT NOS he generally associated with tract
ursof 20 important an organ.