Cottage scenes during the cholera : $b being extracts from a diary written in July and August, 1832Coppard, William Isaac
Religion
Cottage scenes during the cholera : $b being extracts from a diary written in July and August, 1832
Coppard, William Isaac
Cholera -- Great Britain; Coppard, William Isaac, -1865 -- Diaries
_August_ 20. Amongst others, I visited Betty Heard, at Underwood, a poor
industrious woman, aged seventy-two. She was quite alone—no one had been
near her—creeping about the cottage in great pain: she could hardly
stand, but refused to go to bed. She had taken some precautions to check
the premonitory attack. She stood near her spinning-wheel, and when she
perceived I was looking at it, she shook her head, and said, “Ah! sir,
that is of no use to me now. When I can use it, I get but a very small
matter to live upon! and now”—She could not finish the sentence; but sat
down and cried like a child. How gladly did I avail myself of the
subscription fund to relieve this helpless creature. In a short time, a
proper nurse was with her. Page’s children better; the cramp had
subsided.
A messenger came to me, requesting my immediate attendance at old Mrs.
Cocker’s. She was in a room below, harassed with incessant sickness,
&c., and in great pain. Her agitation of mind at the time of her
daughter’s death on Saturday, caused a shock from which she had by no
means recovered. Mr. Richard Langworthy {72} had seen her, and
administered a dose of calomel; but the progress of the disorder was
astonishingly rapid. She fainted: her son Elias was with her, and we
supported her as well as we could. When she revived, her countenance
assumed the common character of the collapsed stage of the disease. With
much difficulty, we carried the poor sufferer up stairs; two women were
sent for, and they assisted in putting her in bed. Having become a
little easier, she requested me to pray with her. From that moment, when
not in extreme pain, she was incessantly occupied in that sacred duty.
On the first indication of sickness, she said she had the cholera, and
she knew “she should not get over it.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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