Elbow-Room: A Novel Without a Plot

  CHAPTER XXVI.

  _THE ACHIEVEMENTS OF DR. PERKINS_.

  It might be hardly fair to say that Doctor Perkins, a former residentof the village, was a quack; he may be described in milder phraseas an irregular practitioner. He belonged to none of the acceptedschools, but treated his patients in accordance with certain theoriesof his own. The doctor had a habit of relating remarkable stories ofhis own achievements, and the most wonderful of these was his accountof an attempt that he once made to cure a man named Simpson ofconsumption by the process of transfusion of blood. The doctor,according to his own story, determined to inject healthy blood intoSimpson's veins.

  As no human being was willing to shed his blood for Simpson, thedoctor bled Simpson's goat; and opening a vein in Simpson's arm, heinjected about two quarts of the blood into the patient's system.Simpson immediately began to revive, but, singular to relate, nosooner had his strength returned than he jumped out of bed; andtwitching his head about after the fashion of a goat, he made a savageattempt to butt the doctor. That medical gentleman, after havingSimpson's head plunged against his stomach three or four times, tookrefuge in the closet; whereupon Simpson banged his head against thepanel of the door a couple of times, and would probably have brokenit to splinters had not his mother-in-law entered at that moment anddiverted his attention. One well-directed blow from Simpson flooredher, and then, while she screamed for help, Simpson frolicked aroundover the floor, making assiduous efforts to nibble the green flowersin the ingrain carpet. When they called the hired man in and tied himdown on the bed, an effort was made to interview him, but the onlyanswer he could give to such questions as how he felt and when hewanted his medicine was a "ba-a" precisely like that of a goat, andthen he would strain himself in an effort to butt a hole in theheadboard. The condition of the patient was so alarming, and Mrs.Simpson was so indignant, that Dr. Perkins determined to undo the evilif possible. So he first bled Simpson freely, and then, by heavilybribing Simpson's Irishman, he procured fresh blood from him, andinjected Simpson the second time. Simpson recovered, but he shockedhis old Republican friends by displaying an irresistible tendency tovote the Democratic ticket, and made his mother-in-law mad by speakingwith a strong brogue. He gradually gave up butting, and never indulgedin it in a serious manner but once, and that was on a certain Sunday,when, one of the remaining corpuscles of goat's blood getting into hisbrain just as he was going into church, he butted the sexton halfwayup the aisle, and only recovered himself sufficiently to apologizejust as the enraged official was about to floor him with a hymn-book.

  SIMPSON'S CASE]

  But the doctor did not succeed with private practice in Millburg,and so one day he made up his mind to try to get out of poverty byinventing a patent medicine. After some reflection he concluded thatthe two most frequent and most unpopular forms of infirmity werebaldness of head and torpidity of the liver, and he selected compoundsrecommended by the pharmacopoeia as the remedies which he would sellto the public. One he called "Perkins' Hair Vigor," and the other"Perkins' Liver Regulator." Procuring a large number of fancy bottlesand gaudy labels, he bottled the medicines and advertised themextensively, with certificates of imaginary cures, which were writtenout for him by a friend whose liver was active and whose hair wasabundant.

  It is not at all unlikely that Perkins would have achieved successwith his enterprise but for one unfortunate circumstance: he wastotally unfamiliar with the preparations, excepting in so far asthe pharmacopoeia instructed him; and as ill-luck would have it, inputting them up he got the labels of the liver regulator on the hairvigor bottles, and the labels of the latter on the bottles containingthe former. Of course the results were appalling; and as DoctorPerkins had requested the afflicted to inform him of the benefitsderived from applying the remedies, he had not sold more than a fewhundred bottles before he began to hear from the purchasers.

  One day, as he was coming out of his office, he observed a man sittingon the fire-plug with a shotgun in his hand and thunder upon hisbrow. The man was bare-headed, and his scalp was covered with a shinysubstance of some kind. When he saw Perkins, he emptied one load ofbird-shot into the inventor's legs, and he was about to give him thecontents of the other barrel, when Perkins hobbled into the office andshut the door. The man pursued him and tried to break in the door withthe butt of the gun. He failed, and Perkins asked him what he meant bysuch murderous conduct.

  "You come out here, and I'll show you what I mean, you scoundrel!"said the man. "You step out here for a minute, and I'll blow the headoff of you for selling me hair vigor that has gummed my head up sothat I can't wear a hat and can't sleep without sticking to thepillow-case. Turned my scalp all green and pink, too. You put yourhead out of that door, and I'll give you more vigor than you want, youidiot! I expect that stuff'll soak in and kill me."

  Then the man took his seat again on the fire-plug, and after reloadingthe barrel of his gun put on a fresh cap and waited. Perkins remainedinside and sent a boy out the back way for the mail. The first letterhe opened was from a woman, who wrote:

  "My husband took one dose of your liver regulator and immediately wentinto spasms. He has had fits every hour for four days. As soon as hedies I am coming on to kill the fiend who poisoned him."

  A clergyman in Delaware wrote to ask what were the ingredients of theliver regulator. He feared something was wrong, because his aunt hadtaken the medicine only twice, when she began to roll over on thefloor and howl in the most alarming manner, and she had been in acomatose condition for fifteen hours.

  A man named Johnson dropped a line to say that after applying the hairvigor to his scalp he had leaned his head against the back of a chair,and it had now been in that position two days. He feared he wouldnever be released unless he cut up the chair and wore the piecepermanently on his head. He was coming to see Perkins in reference tothe matter when he got loose, and he was going to bring his dog withhim.

  A Mr. Wilson said that his boy had put some of the vigor on his facein order to induce the growth of a moustache, and that at the presentmoment the boy's upper lip was glued fast to the tip of his nose andhis countenance looked as if it had been coated with green varnish.

  There were about forty other letters, giving the details of sundryother cases of awful suffering and breathing threatenings andslaughter against Mr. Perkins. Just as Mr. Perkins was finishingthese epistles a friend of his came rushing in through the back doorbreathless, and exclaimed,

  "By George, Aleck, you better get over the fence and leave town asquick as you can. There's thunder to pay about those patent medicinesof yours. Old Mrs. Gridley's just gone up on that liver regulator,after being in convulsions for a week. Thompson's hired girl is lyingat the last gasp, four of the Browns have got the awfulest-lookingheads you ever saw from the hair vigor, and about a dozen other peopleare up at the sheriff's office taking out warrants for your arrest.The people are talking of mobbing you, and the crowd out here on thepavement are cheering a green-headed man with a gun who says he'sgoing to bang the head off of you. Now, you take my advice and skip.It'll be sudden death to stay here. Leave! that's your only chance."

  Then Doctor Perkins got over the fence and ran for the early train,and an hour later the mob gutted his office and smashed the entirestock of remedies. Perkins is in Canada now, working in a saw-mill.He is convinced that there is no money for him in the business ofrelieving human suffering.