Sketches New and Old

  CURING A COLD--[Written about 1864]

  It is a good thing, perhaps, to write for the amusement of the public,but it is a far higher and nobler thing to write for their instruction,their profit, their actual and tangible benefit. The latter is the soleobject of this article. If it prove the means of restoring to health onesolitary sufferer among my race, of lighting up once more the fire ofhope and joy in his faded eyes, or bringing back to his dead heart againthe quick, generous impulses of other days, I shall be amply rewarded formy labor; my soul will be permeated with the sacred delight a Christianfeels when he has done a good, unselfish deed.

  Having led a pure and blameless life, I am justified in believing that noman who knows me will reject the suggestions I am about to make, out offear that I am trying to deceive him. Let the public do itself the honorto read my experience in doctoring a cold, as herein set forth, and thenfollow in my footsteps.

  When the White House was burned in Virginia City, I lost my home, myhappiness, my constitution, and my trunk. The loss of the two firstnamed articles was a matter of no great consequence, since a home withouta mother, or a sister, or a distant young female relative in it, toremind you, by putting your soiled linen out of sight and taking yourboots down off the mantelpiece, that there are those who think about youand care for you, is easily obtained. And I cared nothing for the lossof my happiness, because, not being a poet, it could not be possible thatmelancholy would abide with me long. But to lose a good constitution anda better trunk were serious misfortunes. On the day of the fire myconstitution succumbed to a severe cold, caused by undue exertion ingetting ready to do something. I suffered to no purpose, too, becausethe plan I was figuring at for the extinguishing of the fire was soelaborate that I never got it completed until the middle of the followingweek.

  The first time I began to sneeze, a friend told me to go and bathe myfeet in hot water and go to bed. I did so. Shortly afterward, anotherfriend advised me to get up and take a cold shower-bath. I did thatalso. Within the hour, another friend assured me that it was policy to"feed a cold and starve a fever." I had both. So I thought it best tofill myself up for the cold, and then keep dark and let the fever starveawhile.

  In a case of this kind, I seldom do things by halves; I ate prettyheartily; I conferred my custom upon a stranger who had just opened hisrestaurant that morning; he waited near me in respectful silence until Ihad finished feeding my cold, when he inquired if the people aboutVirginia City were much afflicted with colds? I told him I thought theywere. He then went out and took in his sign.

  I started down toward the office, and on the way encountered anotherbosom friend, who told me that a quart of salt-water, taken warm, wouldcome as near curing a cold as anything in the world. I hardly thought Ihad room for it, but I tried it anyhow. The result was surprising. Ibelieved I had thrown up my immortal soul.

  Now, as I am giving my experience only for the benefit of those who aretroubled with the distemper I am writing about, I feel that they will seethe propriety of my cautioning them against following such portions of itas proved inefficient with me, and acting upon this conviction, I warnthem against warm salt-water. It may be a good enough remedy, but Ithink it is too severe. If I had another cold in the head, and therewere no course left me but to take either an earthquake or a quart ofwarm saltwater, I would take my chances on the earthquake.

  After the storm which had been raging in my stomach had subsided, and nomore good Samaritans happening along, I went on borrowing handkerchiefsagain and blowing them to atoms, as had been my custom in the earlystages of my cold, until I came across a lady who had just arrived fromover the plains, and who said she had lived in a part of the countrywhere doctors were scarce, and had from necessity acquired considerableskill in the treatment of simple "family complaints." I knew she musthave had much experience, for she appeared to be a hundred and fiftyyears old.

  She mixed a decoction composed of molasses, aquafortis, turpentine, andvarious other drugs, and instructed me to take a wine-glass full of itevery fifteen minutes. I never took but one dose; that was enough; itrobbed me of all moral principle, and awoke every unworthy impulse of mynature. Under its malign influence my brain conceived miracles ofmeanness, but my hands were too feeble to execute them; at that time, hadit not been that my strength had surrendered to a succession of assaultsfrom infallible remedies for my cold, I am satisfied that I would havetried to rob the graveyard. Like most other people, I often feel mean,and act accordingly; but until I took that medicine I had never reveledin such supernatural depravity, and felt proud of it. At the end of twodays I was ready to go to doctoring again. I took a few more unfailingremedies, and finally drove my cold from my head to my lungs.

  I got to coughing incessantly, and my voice fell below zero; I conversedin a thundering bass, two octaves below my natural tone; I could onlycompass my regular nightly repose by coughing myself down to a state ofutter exhaustion, and then the moment I began to talk in my sleep, mydiscordant voice woke me up again.

  My case grew more and more serious every day. A Plain gin wasrecommended; I took it. Then gin and molasses; I took that also. Thengin and onions; I added the onions, and took all three. I detected noparticular result, however, except that I had acquired a breath like abuzzard's.

  I found I had to travel for my health. I went to Lake Bigler with myreportorial comrade, Wilson. It is gratifying to me to reflect that wetraveled in considerable style; we went in the Pioneer coach, and myfriend took all his baggage with him, consisting of two excellent silkhandkerchiefs and a daguerreotype of his grandmother. We sailed andhunted and fished and danced all day, and I doctored my cough all night.By managing in this way, I made out to improve every hour in thetwenty-four. But my disease continued to grow worse.

  A sheet-bath was recommended. I had never refused a remedy yet, and itseemed poor policy to commence then; therefore I determined to take asheet-bath, notwithstanding I had no idea what sort of arrangement itwas. It was administered at midnight, and the weather was very frosty.My breast and back were bared, and a sheet (there appeared to be athousand yards of it) soaked in ice-water, was wound around me until Iresembled a swab for a Columbiad.

  It is a cruel expedient. When the chilly rag touches one's warm flesh,it makes him start with sudden violence, and gasp for breath just as mendo in the death-agony. It froze the marrow in my bones and stopped thebeating of my heart. I thought my time had come.

  Young Wilson said the circumstance reminded him of an anecdote about anegro who was being baptized, and who slipped from the parson's grasp,and came near being drowned. He floundered around, though, and finallyrose up out of the water considerably strangled and furiously angry, andstarted ashore at once, spouting water like a whale, and remarking, withgreat asperity, that "one o' dese days some gen'l'man's nigger gwyne toget killed wid jis' such damn foolishness as dis!"

  Never take a sheet-bath-- never. Next to meeting a lady acquaintance who,for reasons best known to herself, don't see you when she looks at you,and don't know you when she does see you, it is the most uncomfortablething in the world.

  But, as I was saying, when the sheet-bath failed to cure my cough,a lady friend recommended the application of a mustard plaster to mybreast. I believe that would have cured me effectually, if it had notbeen for young Wilson. When I went to bed, I put my mustard plaster--which was a very gorgeous one, eighteen inches square--where I couldreach it when I was ready for it. But young Wilson got hungry in thenight, and here is food for the imagination.

  After sojourning a week at Lake Bigler, I went to Steamboat Springs, and,besides the steam-baths, I took a lot of the vilest medicines that wereever concocted. They would have cured me, but I had to go back toVirginia City, where, notwithstanding the variety of new remedies Iabsorbed every day, I managed to aggravate my disease by carelessness andundue exposure.

  I finally concluded to visit San Francisco, and the first day I gotthere a lady at the hotel told me to
drink a quart of whisky everytwenty-four hours, and a friend up-town recommended precisely the samecourse. Each advised me to take a quart; that made half a gallon. I didit, and still live.

  Now, with the kindest motives in the world, I offer for the considerationof consumptive patients the variegated course of treatment I have latelygone through. Let them try it; if it don't cure, it can't more than killthem.