Four Years in France: or, Narrative of an English Family's Residence there during that Period; Preceded by some Account of the Conversion of the Author to the Catholic FaithBeste, Henry Digby
Religion
Four Years in France: or, Narrative of an English Family's Residence there during that Period; Preceded by some Account of the Conversion of the Author to the Catholic Faith
Beste, Henry Digby
France -- Description and travel
On the fourth day of the malady, the delirium commenced. Roche was one
of those physicians who never find out that they are in the wrong: he
added the epithet "nervous," to his former definition of the fever, and
ordered a calming draught at night. He called three times a day: he felt
the pulse of his patient: if the delirium had failed to alarm him, the
pulse might have indicated the typhus, by the "subsaltus tendonis," a
weak tremulous motion in the wrist, close by the pulse. From this fourth
day of his illness, I began to watch every night by the bed-side of
Kenelm till two o'clock in the morning: for several years past I had
been accustomed not to retire to rest till after midnight; to sit up an
hour or two longer was therefore no great fatigue. Antoine, who was
directed to go to bed at eight in the evening, then relieved me for the
rest of the night. We adopted this arrangement, not foreseeing how long
the illness would last, though the period of the typhus is well known to
be thirty days. Kenelm's brother and sisters attended and served him
during the day, without fear of contagion, the existence of which was
positively denied by Roche, and which indeed was not to be apprehended
in a case of "nervous catarrhal fever." The care of his mother extended
to every moment of the day and night: her chamber was the next room to
the salon in which her son lay: on the least noise she was at his
bed-side. What she endured of toil, seemingly beyond human strength, and
how her maternal feelings were tortured, will appear in the sequel.
One of the symptoms of the malady was the induration of the belly: it
became hard and tight like a drum or inflated bladder; this proceeded
from the meteorized state of the bowels; and the vapour or fumes,
ascending thence to the brain, as in the case of drunkenness, caused
delirium. It was attempted to relieve this induration by emollient
fomentations. Kenelm's delirium was not so entire, but that his
attention might be directed by those around him to any object that might
require it: he spoke French or English, according to the nation of the
person whom he addressed; and it was remarkable, that he talked French
without hesitating or correcting his phrases, as he was wont to do in
health: the delirium in this also resembling drunkenness, which, in its
earlier stage, gives a firm and ready elocution.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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