Wrist, if you please.--I was on his right side, but he presented his left wrist, crossing it over the other.--I begin to count, holding watch in left hand.One, two, three, four,--What a handsome hand! wonder if that splendid stone is a carbuncle.--One, two, three, four, five, six, seven,--Can't see much, it is so dark, except one white object.--One, two, three, four,--Hang it! eighty or ninety in the minute, I guess.--Tongue, if you please.--Tongue is put out.Forget to look at it, or, rather, to take any particular notice of it;--but what is that white object, with the long arm stretching up as if pointing to the sky, just as Vesalius and Spigelius and those old fellows used to put their skeletons? Idon't think anything of such objects, you know; but what should he have it in his chamber for? As I had found his pulse irregular and intermittent, I took out a stethoscope, which is a pocket-spyglass for looking into people's chests with your ears, and laid it over the place where the heart beats.I missed the usual beat of the organ.--How is this?--I said,--where is your heart gone to?--He took the stethoscope and shifted it across to the right side; there was a displacement of the organ.--I am ill-packed,--he said;--there was no room for my heart in its place as it is with other men.--God help him!
It is hard to draw the line between scientific curiosity and the desire for the patient's sake to learn all the details of his condition.I must look at this patient's chest, and thump it and listen to it.For this is a case of ectopia cordis, my boy,--displacement of the heart; and it is n't every day you get a chance to overhaul such an interesting malformation.And so I managed to do my duty and satisfy my curiosity at the same time.The torso was slight and deformed; the right arm attenuated,--the left full, round, and of perfect symmetry.It had run away with the life of the other limbs,--a common trick enough of Nature's, as I told you before.If you see a man with legs withered from childhood, keep out of the way of his arms, if you have a quarrel with him.He has the strength of four limbs in two; and if he strikes you, it is an arm-blow plus a kick administered from the shoulder instead of the haunch, where it should have started from.
Still examining him as a patient, I kept my eyes about me to search all parts of the chamber and went on with the double process, as before.--Heart hits as hard as a fist,--bellows-sound over mitral valves (professional terms you need not attend to).--What the deuse is that long case for? Got his witch grandmother mummied in it?
And three big mahogany presses,--hey?--A diabolical suspicion came over me which I had had once before,--that he might be one of our modern alchemists,--you understand, make gold, you know, or what looks like it, sometimes with the head of a king or queen or of Liberty to embellish one side of the piece.--Don't I remember hearing him shut a door and lock it once? What do you think was kept under that lock? Let's have another look at his hand, to see if there are any calluses.
One can tell a man's business, if it is a handicraft, very often by just taking a look at his open hand.Ah! Four calluses at the end of the fingers of the right hand.None on those of the left.Ah, ha! What do those mean?
All this seems longer in the telling, of course, than it was in fact.While I was making these observations of the objects around me, I was also forming my opinion as to the kind of case with which I had to deal.
There are three wicks, you know, to the lamp of a man's life: brain, blood, and breath.Press the brain a little, its light goes out, followed by both the others.Stop the heart a minute and out go all three of the wicks.Choke the air out of the lungs, and presently the fluid ceases to supply the other centres of flame, and all is soon stagnation, cold, and darkness.The "tripod of life" a French physiologist called these three organs.It is all clear enough which leg of the tripod is going to break down here.I could tell you exactly what the difficulty is;--which would be as intelligible and amusing as a watchmaker's description of a diseased timekeeper to a ploughman.It is enough to say, that I found just what Iexpected to, and that I think this attack is only the prelude of more serious consequences,--which expression means you very well know what.
And now the secrets of this life hanging on a thread must surely come out.If I have made a mystery where there was none, my suspicions will be shamed, as they have often been before.If there is anything strange, my visits will clear it up.
I sat an hour or two by the side of the Little Gentleman's bed, after giving him some henbane to quiet his brain, and some foxglove, which an imaginative French professor has called the "Opium of the Heart." Under their influence he gradually fell into an uneasy, half-waking slumber, the body fighting hard for every breath, and the mind wandering off in strange fancies and old recollections, which escaped from his lips in broken sentences.
--The last of 'em,--he said,--the last of 'em all,--thank God! And the grave he lies in will look just as well as if he had been straight.Dig it deep, old Martin, dig it deep,--and let it be as long as other folks' graves.And mind you get the sods flat, old man,--flat as ever a straight-backed young fellow was laid under.
And then, with a good tall slab at the head, and a foot-stone six foot away from it, it'll look just as if there was a man underneath.
A man! Who said he was a man? No more men of that pattern to bear his name! --Used to be a good-looking set enough.--Where 's all the manhood and womanhood gone to since his great-grandfather was the strongest man that sailed out of the town of Boston, and poor Leah there the handsomest woman in Essex, if she was a witch?
--Give me some light,--he said,--more light.I want to see the picture.
