Read Ebook: Doctor Jones' Picnic by Chapman S E Samuel E

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Ebook has 947 lines and 51548 words, and 19 pages

"I thank you, Dr. Jones, with all my heart. Come right in with me," and Barton led the way to his wife's room. Half an hour later the Doctor came from the sick room, went out, jumped into the cage and mounted to the globe. He returned in a few moments and said: "I have here medicine, Mr. Barton, that is certain to do your wife a great amount of good. And I am quite positive that it will work a perfect cure. Her symptoms point so unmistakably and pronouncedly to a certain remedy that I feel safe in assuring you of immediate relief. I shall be much surprised if you do not see less pain, burning, restlessness, thirst--in short, a decidedly better night than she has known for months."

Constance House was not prepared with sleeping accommodations for so large a company of visitors, and at ten o'clock they mounted to the ship for the night. At seven o'clock on the following morning they all descended again and partook of the substantial breakfast prepared for them by Jennie, with the help of a half-breed Indian girl.

The surprise and delight of the family was immeasurable at the palliative effects of Dr. Jones' medicine. Mrs. Barton had rested quite comfortably nearly all night, a thing that she had not done in many months. Barton grasped the Doctor's hand when he first appeared in the morning, and could not speak for emotion.

"That is all right, Mr. Barton; just what I expected."

"Doctor, you have inspired me with a degree of hope that I never expected to know again. Do you really think you can cure her?"

"Mr. Barton, I will just reiterate what I said to you last night: I have seen some astonishing cures done by the remedy indicated by the symptoms, and in what we call a 'high potency.' I cannot stop to explain all this to you, but you can rest assured that it is the only help or hope for your wife. Anxious though I am to be off toward our destination, yet I am going to stop over and study your wife's symptoms more closely, and leave you medicines with written directions as to their use."

The joy of the Barton family was unbounded at this announcement of the benevolent Doctor.

After breakfast, Denison, Fred, and Will decided to accompany the Barton boys up the river that flowed near Constance House, visiting their traps.

"What game do you have in this country?" asked Denison.

"We have reindeer, bear, wolves, foxes, hare, marten, otter, and in the spring and summer we have an abundance of geese, ducks, etc.," replied Joe, the elder of the boys. Sam was the younger of the brothers, and they were aged twenty-three and twenty-one years respectively. The voyagers were surprised at the correctness of their speech and other indications of education.

"Our mother is an educated woman, and has taken great pains with our education," said Sam in reply to a remark of Denison upon the subject. "And she has done as much for father. Our long winter nights we always spend in reading, music, and sometimes in such games as chess, backgammon, drafts, etc. Mother is a most splendid mathematician. She is also quite a linguist. But I am afraid that mother's days of teaching are over in this world. Dr. Jones is exceedingly kind, but do you really think that he has any hopes of curing her?" And the two sons looked anxiously into Denison's face as they awaited his reply.

"Well," replied Denison slowly, as if carefully weighing his words, "I have known Dr. Jones more than twenty years very intimately, and I tell you candidly that you may rely implicitly upon his word. He is a physician of remarkable skill, and to my positive knowledge has cured several cases of cancer that had been, like your mother's, given up as incurable. So I should hope a great deal if he gives you encouragement."

"God is good, and has heard our prayers," said Sam.

While this party spent the day until the middle of the afternoon paddling from trap to trap, capturing three otters, and catching several dozen beautiful trout and black bass, the Doctor and the Professor ascended with Mr. Barton to the ship. As he passed through the elegant rooms of the cabin, and saw the wonderful degree of comfort, and even luxury, that our voyagers were enjoying, he cried out, like the Queen of Sheba, "The half was never told!" And the wonderful metal of which everything was composed where practicable--aluminum--excited his special interest.

"Without this metal you could never have made the trip," he declared. But when he had mounted the spiral stairway, and was standing in the observatory, for some time he was speechless. As his eye ran up the shining mast, then off over the glistening sides of the globe to the earth, three hundred feet below, then away over the trackless wastes of Labrador, he finally exclaimed, "This, gentlemen, is too wonderful for me. I cannot give expression to my feelings. If you had told me that you were visitors from Venus or Mars, I should be obliged to believe you."

And so they sat and discussed for an hour or more the object of the expedition, and the probability of success. All agreed that, so far as human thought and judgment could foresee, failure was hardly possible. They descended to the cabin. The aluminum mast especially attracted the attention of the old sailor.

"And you intend erecting this magnificent spar at the North Pole!" he exclaimed, all his sailor instincts thoroughly aroused. "How do you intend to manage that business, Doctor?"

"We shall be governed in that matter entirely by circumstances," replied Dr. Jones. "I do not know what we may find there, and so cannot say exactly what we may have to do. But I shall consider the trip a partial failure if I do not leave this stately shaft, exactly to the quarter of an inch, standing at the North Pole, with that aluminum flag flying at its peak, there to float till time shall be no more."

"Well, Doctor, I am a thoroughbred British subject, and can't help wishing that it was the Union Jack that you were going to leave there; but you deserve all the honor of the occasion, and I am glad to bid you Godspeed," said Barton heartily.

"Thank you," replied Dr. Jones, "now let us go down and see further about your wife's case. I must be off to-morrow morning, bright and early."

The Doctor and Barton repaired to the sick chamber. After nearly an hour they left the house, walked down to the river bank, and talked long and earnestly concerning the treatment of Mrs. Barton.

"I will tell you just what I am doing for your wife, and the grounds I have for hope. I think, under the circumstances, that an expos? of the rationale of my treatment is due you, for two reasons, first, because I desire to give you a reason for the hope that is within me, and so make you as happy and comfortable as possible by filling you up with a lively faith; secondly, because I delight in instructing intelligent people in what I conceive to be the only rational and scientific system of medicine known to man.

"In this pocket-case book, you will observe that I have taken Mrs. Barton's symptoms very carefully and minutely:

"1. A fearful and apprehensive state of mind. She cannot tolerate being left alone.

"2. Intolerable thirst for cold water. Drinks often, and but a sip or two at a time.

"3. The pains are very sharp, lancinating, and burning.

"4. She is always worse at night, from twelve o'clock until two or three, A.M. The pains then are intolerable, and burning like red-hot iron, so that you are obliged to hold her in your arms to prevent her doing herself injury.

"5. Great restlessness.

"6. Skin yellow, or straw-colored, dry and wrinkled.

"7. Very emaciated and weak.

"There are quite a number of other symptoms of less importance, but all are found under but one drug in all the earth, and that drug is arsenic. Do not be alarmed at the name, for the doses I give are absolutely immaterial and can do no harm. But they do possess a curative power that is truly miraculous and past the comprehension of man. What gives me greater hope and confidence in your wife's case is the fact that she has never been under the surgeon's knife. Operations for cancer not only do no good whatever, but they reduce the patient's chances of cure, so that after the second or third one the case is rendered absolutely incurable. And another thing greatly in her favor is that she has taken but little medicine, and so I have been able to get a clear picture of the case. And I must strictly forbid the use of any drugs whatever, internally or externally, except what I give you."

"But, Doctor, the terrible odor!" said Barton, "Must I not use the disinfectant as I have been doing?"

"No; nothing but washing with warm castile soap-suds, two or three times daily. The odor will all disappear within a few days."

"Well, that is astonishing! And is arsenic the remedy for all cases of cancer?"

"Not by any manner of means. That is the great mistake of the medical world in all ages. They are continually on the lookout for specifics, or medicines that cure all cases of any given disease, irrespective of symptoms. Every case must be taken upon its individual merits, and differentiated upon symptomatology alone. And a drug must be prescribed that is indicated by the symptoms. Anything more or less than this is unscientific, and a contrariety to one of God's most beautiful and universal laws--'Similia similibus curanter,'--'Like cures like.' That is to say, arsenic is the remedy for your wife, because, when taken in material doses, it always produces symptoms identical with those manifested in her case. Hence I meet them with immaterial doses of that drug. Had her symptoms been different, then I should have been obliged to seek and find, if possible, a drug capable of causing this different set of symptoms, whatever they might have been. Now this rule of law holds good throughout all the field of medicine, except that which is purely surgical. Do you catch the idea?"

"I do, Doctor, I do; and I declare that it looks very reasonable as you put it. I like the theory, and if it always holds good in practice, then it is certainly one of the most beneficent of God's laws."

"Thousands of times, Barton, in an active practice of more than twenty-five years, I have tested this law; and I tell you, as an honest man, and one who expects to answer for the deeds done in the body at the bar of God, that it never failed me once. I have failed many times because I could not read aright the symptoms of the case; or when it was an incurable affair, rendered so by drugs and surgery," said Dr. Jones with great earnestness. "But come, I have given you quite a medical lecture. Let's look up the girls and see what they are about."

A Messenger from the Skies.

Mrs. Jones and Mattie had found Jennie to be a lovely, intelligent, and more than ordinarily educated girl. While unused to society, yet there was an honest straightforwardness about her that was very charming. The two ladies became easily intimately acquainted with her. Her whole soul was devoted to her mother, and the hope that Dr. Jones had inspired shone from her eyes. She became quite cheerful and merry. And the effect upon the poor invalid was not less visible. She insisted upon sitting in her easy chair by the fireplace, and joined in the conversation.

Sing, meantime, had installed himself as the presiding genius of the kitchen, and he and the half-breed Indian girl were getting along famously together.

"How long have you lived in this place, Mrs. Barton?" asked Mrs. Jones.

"Twenty-three years," replied she.

"Well, have you not found it a very monotonous existence?"

"I did at first; but as my children were born, my mind and heart were so taken up by them that time did not hang heavily upon our hands. I really believe that we are much happier than the majority of people in the towns and cities."

"O, if mother can but get well, it seems to me that I shall never be discontented again in Constance House!" exclaimed Jennie, her eyes filling with tears.

"My poor girl does long sometimes to see the great world," said Mrs. Barton, stroking the head of Jennie, who was sitting upon a stool at her feet. "Well, my dear girl, I believe that God, in his infinite mercy, has sent us help directly from the skies; for I must say that last night, as I lay the first time for many weary months free from pain and awful burning and restlessness, that I thanked God as I had never done before; and my faith went out to Him so that I felt a great peace settle upon me. He has blessed the means being used. I shall recover, my darling girl."

Jennie, in a paroxysm of joy, threw herself at her mother's feet, and buried her face in her lap, weeping as she had never done in her life. At this juncture the Doctor, Professor Gray, and Mr. Barton entered the room.

"Tut, tut," said the Doctor, seeing the tears streaming down the faces of the four women, "what sort of business is this? You ought to all be laughing instead of crying. There is nothing to cry about, I assure you."

"Doctor," said Mrs. Barton, extending her hand to him, "you do not understand. We are rejoicing, and this is just our poor woman's way of doing it."

"I see, I see," said the jovial Doctor. "Well, now wipe away your tears, and give God all glory. He has sent me, a poor weak mortal, simply as a messenger to administer that which will save you from a loathsome disease and death. All glory be unto Him."

He then began singing softly and reverently, the others joining:

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