Читать книгу Forty Years in the Wilderness of Pills and Powders - William A. Alcott - Страница 10

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Straws, it is said, show which way the wind blows; and words, and things very small in themselves, sometimes show, much better than "two crowns," or the "stars," what is to be the future of a person's life. The choice of a profession or occupation, were we but trained to the habit of tracing effects up to their causes, will doubtless often be found to have had its origin, if not in straws, at least in very small matters.

When I was ten years of age, my little brother, of only two years, sat one day on the floor whittling an apple. The instrument in his hand was a Barlow knife, as it was then called. The blade was about two inches in length, but was worn very narrow. How his parents and other friends, several of whom were in the same room, came to let him use such a plaything, I cannot now conceive; but as the point was almost square, and the knife very dull, they do not seem hitherto to have had any fears.

Suddenly the usual quiet of the family was disturbed a little by the announcement, "Somebody is going by;" an event which, as you should know, was quite an era in that retired, mountainous region. All hastened to the window to get a view of the passing traveller. The little boy scampered among the rest; but in crossing the threshold of a door which intervened, he stumbled and fell. A sudden shriek called to him one of our friends, who immediately cried out, "Oh dear, he has put out his eye!" and made a hasty but unsuccessful effort to extract the knife, which had penetrated the full length of its blade. The mother hastened to the spot, and drew it forth, though, as she afterward said, not without the exertion of considerable force. Its back was towards the child, and by pressing the ball of the eye downward, the instrument had been able to penetrate to the bottom of the cavity, and perhaps a little way into the bone beyond. The elasticity of the eyeball had retained it so as to render its extraction seemingly difficult.

Most of those who were present, particularly myself and the rest of the children, were for a short time in a state of mental agony that bordered on insanity. Not knowing at first the nature of the wound, but only that there was an eye there, and brains very near it, we naturally expected nothing less than the loss of this precious organ of vision, if not of life. There was no practising physician or surgeon, just at that time, within five or six miles, and I do not remember that any was sent for. We probably concluded that he could do no good.

The child's eye swelled, and for a few days looked very badly; but after the lapse of about two weeks the little fellow seemed to be quite well; and so far as his eyes and brain are concerned, I believe he has been well to this time, a period of almost half a century.

Although we resided at a considerable distance from the village, and from any practising physician, there was near by a very aged and superannuated man, who had once been a medical practitioner. Our curiosity had been so much excited by the wonderful escape of the little boy from impending destruction, that we called on the venerable doctor and asked him whether it was possible for a knife to penetrate so far into the head without injuring the brain and producing some degree of inflammation. From Dr. C. we received a good deal of valuable information concerning the structure of the eye, the shape of the cavity in which it is placed, the structure and character of the brain, etc.

This was a great treat to me, I assure you. It added not a little to the interest which was imparted by his instructions when he showed us, from the relics of better days, some of the bones of the skull, especially those of the frontal region, in which the eye is situated. Of course the sight of a death's head, as we were inclined to call it, was at first frightful to us; but it was a feeling which in part soon passed away. It was a feeling, most certainly, which in me was not abiding at all. Indeed, as the title to the chapter would seem to imply, I received in this dispensation of Providence and its accompaniments my first medical lesson; though without the remotest thought, at the time, of any such thing. I was only indulging in a curiosity which was instinctive and intense, without dreaming of future consequences.