Volume 1

Biographic clinics / by George M. Gould.

  • George M. Gould
Date:
1903-
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Biographic clinics / by George M. Gould. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    73/234 page 67
    Carlyle also quickly saw through the nonsense of the Gully water-cure. The diagnostician who from the hundreds of references made to his symptoms by Car¬ lyle would seek to gather any definiteness of pathologic finding will fail. Picturesque, passionate, terrible as they are, they are even more indefinite. At first it was more clearly stomachal, if we may trust that his loca¬ tion of this organ was topographically correct. “ Like a rat gnawing at the pit of his stomach,” are his words. But the complaints of “ nervousness,” of “ coorsed nervous disorders,” of “ stupidity,” “ sickness of body and mind,” “ hypochondria,” “ sleeplessness,” “ dull¬ ness,” “ weakness,” etc., make one wonder just what organ was the most affected. “ Bile,” “ bilious,” and “ derangement of the liver ” are so commonly repeated that if one could by any possibility learn what lay peo¬ ple mean by such words we might stop to consider the blameworthiness of the poor liver. The pretty nearly certain thing is that to Carlyle and such complainers the “ liver ” and the “ stomach ” were mythical scape¬ goats upon which all vague miseries could be laid and both properly and improperly cursed. The sad thing is that the sorrows were not got rid of by this pro¬ cedure. In fact it is perhaps true that when Carlyle complained of bile, he should have complained of lack of bile. The drugs he took during most of his life would imply this without the strange and strabismic allusion to the “ ‘ pipeclay state ’ too common with
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