Life in the sick-room : $b EssaysMartineau, Harriet
Science
Life in the sick-room : $b Essays
Martineau, Harriet
Conduct of life; Sick
I will not dwell on the reflection. A glimpse into this hell ought to
suffice, (though we to whom imagery comes unbidden, and cannot be
banished at will, have to bear much more than occasional glimpses;) a
glimpse ought to suffice to set all to work to procure for every one of
these sufferers, bread and warmth, if possible, and as soon as
possible; but above everything, and without the loss of an hour, an
entrance upon their spiritual birthright. Every man, and every woman,
however wise and tender appearing and designing to be, who for an hour
helps to keep closed the entrance to the region of ideas,--who stands
between sufferers and great thoughts, (which are the angels of
consolation sent by God to all to whom he has given souls,) are, in so
far, ministers of hell,--not themselves inflicting torment, but
intercepting the influences which would assuage or overpower it. Let the
plea be heard of us sufferers who know well the power of ideas,--our
plea for the poor,--that, while we are contriving for all to be fed and
cherished by food and fire, we may meanwhile kindle the immortal
vitality within them, and give them that ethereal solace and sustenance
which was meant to be shared by all, “without money and without price.”
It seems but just (if we may venture so to speak), that there should be
the renovating power in ideas that I have described, for our worst
sufferings arise from an unmitigated power of ideas in another sort. I
am not qualified by experience to speak of severe continued bodily
torment, but all testimony seems to concur with all our experience,
that there is no such instrument of torture as a besetting thought. The
mere description of the suffering, given by those who know it, seems to
have wrought upon the general mind, for a kind of shudder goes round
when it is mentioned, though it can no more be conceived of by the gay
and occupied, than the continual dropping of water on the head can be
imagined by him whose transactions with the element consist in a plunge
bath every morning. It is known, however, that herculean men have shrunk
to shadows under the infliction, that it has reduced heroes to tremble
at the whispering wind, or the striking of the clock, that it turns the
raven-hair gray, lets down genius into idiocy, and starves the most
vigorous life into an atrophy. How then are the sick to meet this woe,
which comes upon them with force exactly proportioned to their weakness!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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