Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, No. 729, December 15, 1877

I turned into the darkness, but not before I had seen that until now I had never known her, my love, my promised wife. I had known a beautiful statue, not the beautiful woman who, with eyes upraised to his, stood in the subdued light looking up to Gordon Frazer. All the coldness, all the stately calm had gone, fallen from her as a mantle falls – a mantle which had hidden the fullness of her loveliness, and had concealed from me a tender grace and beauty I had never till now beheld. I have never seen her since.

Some time afterwards I met a friend who had seen a good deal of the Frazers. He was loud in admiration of Mrs Frazer's beauty and of her devotion to her husband. 'He was out in the Crimea, you know, and was reported dead; but he was only wounded. Some Russian family, to whose house he had managed to be sent, had tended him with kindly care after even his own doctors had given up hope, and had pulled him through his danger. Mrs Frazer told me,' continued my friend, 'how one evening when standing on a terrace at Genoa, she heard his voice; and thinking it was a reproach from the grave (for she was going to marry another fellow), she got brain-fever, and was near dying. The fact was, the yacht in which a friend had brought him from Constantinople touched at Genoa, and he had actually spent the day doing the palaces! When she heard his voice, he was returning to the Peri, which lay about two miles from the shore. Romantic story, isn't it? But Gordon takes her devotion coolly enough; the love seems more on her side than on his. I cannot understand that.'

Understand it? Yes, I could. Hers was one of those great-souled natures who like to give rather than to take, to pour out all the wealth and beauty of their being on the idol which they have clothed in all the glory of their own imaginings. God grant she may live on to the end, happy in her womanly idol-worship!

As for me, the dream I dreamt upon the Pincian Hill, before the cross of golden light shone over the city roofs, was never realised. No rustle of woman's garments makes low music in the old oak-panelled rooms; no children's voices wake the echoes under the avenues of arching limes. The old Devon manor-house stands as yet without a mistress.

NARCOTISM

In these days of medical knowledge, when so many merciful means for the alleviation of pain are known, it follows as a matter of course that great abuse of sleep-producing agents exists. We would therefore say a few words of caution as to the pernicious practice of people making use of chloral, chlorodyne, chloroform, and other kindred agents without medical advice. It is, we think, little known to how great an extent this evil exists. To come across a lady who is constantly more or less under the influence of chlorodyne, is by no means uncommon; every trifling ailment or passing malaise being an excuse for a few drops of that narcotic. Chloral is also extensively and improperly used; the more so because, unfortunately at the time of its first introduction as a sleep-producing agent, it was most erroneously stated to be perfectly harmless, and many are still under this impression.

The real truth is, that no narcotic of any kind whatever is harmless, but on the contrary, invariably pernicious when taken otherwise than by the advice and under the treatment of a medical man. True, sleeplessness is one of the most trying things a person can suffer from; but then there are other means of combating the enemy than by dosing one's self with chloral or any such agent; and thus making an infirmity chronic, which would in all probability have been only a temporary evil. Rely upon opiates for sleep, and sleep will not come without them. Thus a bad habit is formed; the bodily strength is undermined, the digestive powers enfeebled, the mind and intellect weakened and enervated, and the unfortunate sufferer becomes a slave, bound hand and foot to a habit that it is almost impossible to shake off. Sleeplessness often comes from want of sufficient fresh air and exercise, from over-mental work, mental distress, from too great a quantity of stimulants taken during the day, and from various other causes, which a little care as to diet and regimen would quickly overcome. Taking short naps during the day; too much tea and coffee drinking, especially shortly before bedtime – all these are apt to cause sleeplessness. In many cases a light and simple supper taken shortly before retiring to rest, and attention to the feet being thoroughly warm, will insure a good night's sleep when more energetic means have failed.

In those terrible abodes of suffering, our cancer hospitals, the method of all others most resorted to, and most efficacious for the alleviation of pain, is the sub-cutaneous (under-the-skin) injection of morphia. In sciatica, neuralgia, and other painful nervous affections, this remedy is often exceedingly beneficial, when used under competent medical advice and supervision; but like every other good thing it is open to great abuse, and often made use of merely as a soothing narcotic by the irritable, excitable, and discontented. A long train of evils follows; but with these we are not called upon to deal here. What we want now to lay before the reader is a plain statement as to the prompt treatment called for in a case of over-narcotism from too strong a dose of injected morphia. Coldness of the extremities, lividity of the countenance, profuse cold sweat, and loss of power over the limbs, insensibility, very deep breathing, and contraction of the pupils of the eyes to such an extent that they resemble a black pin-head, result.

What then is to be done? Time is precious, and perhaps half an hour or more may elapse before medical aid can be obtained. Taking it for granted that the patient is in a recumbent position, the first thing to be done is to raise the head, to sponge the face and chest copiously with fresh cold water, to rub the limbs steadily and strongly, to put hot-water applications to the feet and to the sides of the body, if it feel cold to the touch. Place strong smelling-salts to the nose; lay the head on one side with the mouth open, so that the tongue may not fall back and prevent respiration; give brandy-and-water, if the patient can possibly swallow it; but if the narcotism be severe, this will be impossible, and it is wisest to abstain from attempts which may result in fluid going the wrong way. In fact do everything to keep the body warm and the breathing unimpeded, and strive to rouse the unconscious faculties into action.

Supposing, however, that the narcotism be very excessive, and the breathing be slow, irregular, and low, then if medical aid be not forthcoming, it would be well to resort to artificial respiration; by no means a difficult matter to manage, if only any one present has a slight amount of knowledge on the subject. The following is Dr Sylvester's method, and is advantageous from its simplicity: 'Place the patient on the back, inclined a little upwards from the feet by raising and supporting the head on a cushion, placing support also under the shoulder-blades. Draw out the tongue and keep it forward, so as to leave the air-passages free. Remove all clothing from the neck, chest, and abdomen. Stand by the patient's head, take firm hold of the arms just above the elbows, and draw them gently and steadily upwards above the head, keeping them stretched upwards for two or three seconds. Then turn down the arms, and press them firmly and steadily against the sides of the chest for two or three seconds. Repeat these movements alternately, deliberately, and perseveringly, until a spontaneous effort at respiration is perceived; immediately upon which, proceed to try by every possible means to induce circulation and warmth.' However, should the case of narcotism be not a severe one, such extreme measures as artificial respiration will not be called for, and in all probability, after the use of those simpler remedies at first named, sickness will occur, and this may be taken as a sign that the worst of the evil is over.

And here let us once more emphatically state that in this and all other cases we assume that a medical man is sent for, and that our suggestions only refer to what is to be done until he appears upon the scene. Nothing is so annoying and so productive of harm as for a non-professional person to be constantly making this and that suggestion as to the treatment of a sufferer, when a medical man is giving his best thought and skill to the case; but on the other hand it is well for people – more especially women – to know what to do when thrown upon their own resources.

Cases of poisoning from over-doses of opiates are of course only one class of such-like accidents; and the accidental swallowing of irritant poisons, embrocations, &c. often occur, and call for the utmost promptitude of action and presence of mind on the part of those present.

In the less densely populated parts of the country, it is a positive necessity that people should be able to rely upon themselves in cases of emergency, for if a doctor is many miles distant, and it takes several hours to fetch him, one might almost as well be without him, where sharp practice is called for. To produce vomiting, one of the best emetics we happen to know of is an American one. It consists of a table-spoonful of common treacle (molasses it is called across the water) and as much powdered alum stirred into it as the sticky compound can be made to contain. Now alum is such a valuable drug in many ways that it ought to be kept in every household medicine-chest; and treacle is not usually hard to get. We have never seen this remedy tried in a case of poisoning, but we have seen its effect in croup; and anything more decided and imperious in its action it would be difficult to imagine. Such a dose might freely be given in any case of poisoning; and after the emetic has acted freely, we would give some soothing mixture, such as thickened milk. There are various things which have the power to a certain extent of protecting the coats of the stomach from the action of irritant poisons; if the poison be an acid, the scrapings off a white-washed wall or chalk and milk are good. Milk almost stiffened with common brown sugar is one of them; sweet oil taken to nauseation is another.

In all cases of poisoning, loss of time is the one great thing to be avoided; and the nearest remedy at hand is the best one to make use of. Mustard and water, strong and plenty of it, is a capital emetic. Of croup, that enemy of juvenile humanity, we must now speak a few words; and we know of no better remedy than the American one above described, combined with a hot bath and a hot blanket to roll the child well up in afterwards.

The ignorance of the poor as to the treatment and still more the prevention of the diseases of children is something appalling, and there can be no doubt that thousands of little lives are annually sacrificed to this Moloch.

'I can't tell what ails my child, ma'am,' said a labourer's wife to the writer of this, one bitter day last winter, 'he's carrying on so strange: crowing like a cock, and turning his-self almost black in the face every nows and again.'

The infant in question was comfortably seated on a nice cold door-step, and breathing as if he had swallowed a baby's rattle by mistake. 'Your child has the croup,' I said, picking up the unfortunate little creature and carrying it to the fireside; 'and if you don't do something for him at once, he'll very likely die.'

However something was done for him, and he didn't die; but he had a kick for his life all the same, and very little more door-step would have finished him. Yet this poor woman was not an unloving mother; she was only ignorant, and in her ignorance, assisting her child into the grave she would have shed such bitter tears over.

From croup to diphtheria is a natural progression, and we would wish to say a few, a very few words on this terrible disease; not as to its treatment by the amateur nurse, for it is of the greatest importance that such cases should have close medical care. It is then on the subject of the operation called tracheotomy– that is, the making an outward incision in the windpipe below the seat of the disease, and inserting a tube for the purpose of respiration, that we would speak – not to discuss it in its medical aspect, but simply to say a word or two to nervous mothers who would shrink from the idea of the surgeon's knife touching a sick child under any circumstances whatever. Surely there can be no more pitiful sight to look upon than a child dying of diphtheria – the eyes wild with fear, looking appealingly for help from one troubled face to another; the little hand thrust into the mouth in helpless, useless effort to dislodge the terrible leather-like substance that is clogging up the throat, and making each breath a sound so painful that for days and weeks to come it will not cease to sound in our ears. What more agonising sight can the sick-room give us to gaze upon? And yet doctors have told us of cases in which a mother has had such an overpowering dread of the surgeon's knife, that even when things come to such a state as this, she has positively refused to allow of any attempt at alleviation of her child's agony by a simple operation!

Now it is on this head we wish to say a few words of encouragement and counsel. Tracheotomy is in the first place a chance– a very slight chance in most cases – but still a chance for life; but if it does not save life, it spares the child a death of awful suffering. The pain of the operation itself is so momentary as not to be worth considering, and relief is instantaneous. We are not speaking of recovery, but simply of the difference between such a death as that described above and the quiet 'falling asleep' of the child upon whom tracheotomy has been performed; and this is what the writer saw – the frightened appealing eyes; the pitiful effort at self-help; and then the instant relief given by firm and skilful hands; and four-and-twenty hours later, the quiet painless death; the boy smiling up into our faces as the pure spirit fled to that place of rest and peace where 'there shall be no more pain.' It was not a thing to be seen and forgotten.

LIFE IN A MILITARY PRISON

BY A PRISON CHAPLAIN

In an address lately delivered at Birmingham, Professor Tyndall says: 'I met some few years since in a railway carriage the governor of one of our largest prisons. He was evidently an observant and reflective man. He told me that the prisoners in his charge might be divided into three classes. The first class consisted of persons who ought never to have been in prison. External accident, and not internal taint, had brought them within the grasp of the law, and what had happened to them might happen to most of us. They were essentially men of sound moral stamina, though wearing the prison garb. Then came the largest class, formed of individuals possessing no strong bias moral or immoral, plastic to the touch of circumstances, which would mould them into either good or evil members of society. Thirdly came a class – happily not a large one – whom no kindness could conciliate and no discipline tame. They were sent into this world labelled "Incorrigible," wickedness being stamped as it were upon their organisations.'

As a matter of fact, there is a distinction made, and rightly made, between the inmates of military prisons. They are divided into first, second, and third classes; which you may call bad, worse, and worst, if you are of the despairing type of philanthropist; or good, better, and best, if you are a great believer in human nature, even in imprisoned human nature. The first class wear a red stripe on the arm, and being the best conducted, are given less work to do and more food. Class number two are marked with a yellow stripe; while the third or lowest class are distinguished by a white badge. A stranger might perhaps shrink from all who wear white stripes as from 'incorrigibles;' but some in the third class may be really very little more 'incorrigible' than himself, for every prisoner, no matter what his character may be, except in very special cases, is placed in the third class on his reception. He then, by good conduct, becomes eligible for promotion into the second class, and subsequently into the first. Rule one hundred and sixty-six of the Regulations for Military Prisons, lays down that 'the first class will be composed of those prisoners who, from their quiet orderly habits and general good conduct under punishment, may appear deserving of being promoted from the second class after some experience has been gained of their characters. Prisoners in either the first or the second class will also be liable to be removed to a lower class for misconduct.' Though the first class of prisoners are employed during the same hours as those prescribed for the second class, the labour is of a less severe description: picking oakum or drill being substituted for the deservedly hated crank and shot exercise. Another privilege enjoyed by the first class is, that they are never deprived of their bed, whereas, 'all prisoners on reception are to sleep for the first week in the same manner as a soldier on guard – that is, on a board without undressing – and subsequently, the third-class prisoners are to sleep as on guard every other night; and the second-class prisoners in the same manner every third night: the prisoners of the first class being alone exempted from this rule.' First and second class prisoners are employed in this prison – which is no Castle of Indolence – at drill, shot exercise, the crank, cleaning the passages and other parts of the premises from six o'clock A.M. to six o'clock P.M.; and those of the third class from six o'clock A.M. to eight o'clock P.M.; with the exception of regular times for parades, chapel, and meals.

'If any man will not work neither let him eat,' is a motto strictly adhered to by the authorities; for no prisoner is allowed meat-dinner who is not employed at hard labour. Those not so engaged are only given porridge and bread-and-milk. When labouring at hard work, prisoners have a meat-dinner every Tuesday and Thursday. Eight ounces of beef without bone and one pint of soup is the allowance. The first class have an additional meat-dinner on Sundays. There is, we see, considerable advantage to be gained by the prisoner, to reward his ambition, should it prompt him to move upward into a higher class. Now this is no trifling matter, for the very essence of good prison discipline is the subordination of mere punishment to reformation; and this system of classification tends not only to preserve a man's self-respect, but to fan the spark of hope that otherwise might be extinguished in his breast.

The justly celebrated novel Never too late to Mend has made the public in some degree familiar with the 'silent system' of prison discipline. This system has been found not to work when sentences are for a long period. Speech is discovered to be more than a luxury, being essential to the mental health of prisoners. None now are condemned to the silent system except those who are imprisoned for only a short time. And how great is the punishment of not being allowed to speak, is proved to the chaplain by this one fact. Nowhere are prayers so diligently responded to and hymns sung with such will, if without musical taste, as in the chapel of a military prison, for prisoners recognise the service as an opportunity of convincing themselves that they have not become dumb. Until this explanation was given by the governor, I was full of admiration for religion, afterwards discovered to be more loud-sounding than genuine.

Prisoners condemned to solitary confinement are forced to turn to the wall on the approach of visitors or the superior officers of the prison. 'Has my face assumed any terrific aspect? Am I so much worse-looking than usual?' This is the thought that naturally comes into one's mind on walking through a military prison for the first time. Each man takes a quick glance at your Gorgon head, and then, fast as lightning, turns his back to you and his face to the wall, until your apparently baneful or bewitching influence has passed.

Another humiliation to which prisoners have to submit is that of having their hair frequently cut short. A man must sink very low indeed before he lose altogether personal vanity. It would seem as if there were a peacock as well as an angel and a beast in each of us. For this reason the regulation that requires the hair of all prisoners of the third class to be cropped every fortnight is no slight punishment. It is especially felt by those who leave the prison without having been promoted to the second and first classes, in which a prisoner's hair is permitted to grow during the last fortnight of imprisonment. How can a man shew himself in respectable society, or take off his hat to a lady, when that common act of courtesy would reveal the fact that his hair was cut by – government?

Some may desire to know whether flogging has or has not been entirely abolished. To the question, we answer: 'Yes; except for aggravated breaches of prison discipline.' Nor is it easy to see in what other way such cases can be dealt with. A man, let us suppose in a fit of sulky stubbornness, does not attempt to pick his oakum. He is brought before the governor, and sentenced to lose his supper and bed; that is, to be obliged to sleep on the floor. On going back to his cell he says to himself: 'What can I do now to avenge myself on the authorities?' and he acts on the impulse that seizes him, which is to break the window and destroy everything in his cell. Probably this sort of stubborn ill-conditioned character is a coward; and if this be the case, nothing is found to bring him to his senses so well as twenty-five lashes administered in the presence of the governor and medical officer.

The punishments which we should like to see abolished, if others without equal or greater disadvantages could be discovered, are the crank and shot-drill. 'What is the crank?' may be asked by happy people who have never had to do with prisons in any way. It is, we answer, a Sisyphus' wheel that the prisoner is forced to turn twelve or fourteen thousand times each day, for no other reason than because the useless monotonous exercise is sufficiently hateful to him to be a real punishment. 'To what purpose is this waste?' we may ask. Why is this wheel not made to pump water or grind corn or do some other useful work? Why should a man be degraded into a machine, and made to turn a wheel merely for the sake of turning it? Will he not in this way lose all self-respect? Yes; these are the unanswerable arguments against the crank. But then its very uselessness is urged as an argument for its retention. Suppose, for instance, that prisoners are employed in gardens where vegetables are cultivated for barrack-use, what will be the consequence? That soldiers will desire to abandon their own profession for Adam's calling, and for this purpose will designedly get into prison. If, again, the crank-wheel be utilised in any way, men will feel that they are useful members of society, and will probably prefer their new work to the dull routine and irksome duties of barrack-life. Almost the same remarks are applicable to shot-drill, or the very humiliating process of lifting six times each minute for three hours per diem a thirty-six pound cannon-ball, for no other reason than to put it down again three paces from where it originally lay. Nothing can be more fatiguing and worrying than this process of putting the shot there and back, there and back, there and back! But then we must again remark, that to make prisons very comfortable is absolutely to make them useless.

Almost all the inmates of military prisons are sentenced for such crimes as these: Desertion – the commonest crime of all – making away with kit, breaking out of barracks, insubordination. How is desertion to be stopped? This is now a very difficult problem with the authorities, and almost all officers give it as their opinion that the plague of desertion can only be stayed by again having recourse to the system lately abolished of branding the letter D on the deserter's side. In the absence of this Nota bene, there is nothing to prevent a soldier from enlisting over and over again in different corps, in order to get a bounty and new kit on each occasion.

As regards insubordination, when you speak to a prisoner on the folly of having resisted or disobeyed a non-commissioned officer, he will generally give an answer somewhat as follows: 'Well, sir, when I came back from foreign service I had a little money, and with this I drank with some comrades more than was good for me. There is a corporal [or sergeant] in the barrack-room who is always down on me; and upon that day, having had a little too much, I could not stand his going on at me; and so I – though indeed I tried to help myself doing so – just struck him between his eyes.' There is no doubt that nine out of every ten soldiers in military prisons have got into trouble through drink. A soldier was once overheard describing the advantages of the Cape as a station in these words: 'Drink is cheap, and you are always dry.' Men of this stamp fill our military prisons.

In some cases the crime of insubordination is provoked by the petty bullying and offensive manner of non-commissioned officers, though their superiors do their best to check them. Officers are now easily accessible, and are ready to give the youngest private an impartial hearing. In all respects the position of a British soldier is now greatly improved. Indeed it is not too much to say that life in a military prison now is quite as endurable as was existence out of it to the well-conducted soldier of forty years ago.

DESOLATE

Like a funereal pall,
Darkness lies over all;
Weirdly the owl doth call
From her lone steep.
Sadly the night-wind blows
Over December snows;
Vain 'tis my eyes to close —
I cannot sleep.

Thy voice is in my ear;
Once more thy words I hear,
Bringing now hope now fear,
But always love;
And thy sweet face doth rise
Radiant with starry eyes,
Cloudless as summer skies
In heaven above.

Once more at night's soft noon,
Under the pensive moon
Of a long vanished June,
With thee I stray:
As when in days of old
All my heart's love I told,
And to my pleading bold
Thou saidst not nay.

When thou wast by my side,
Calmly the days did glide;
Like an unruffled tide
My life did flow.