to his "Honoured father and mother," he told them: "I apprehend I am too busy in prescribing and meddling in the doctor's sphere, when any of you complain of ails in your letters. But as I always employ a physician myself when any disorder arises in my family, and submit implicitly to his orders in every thing, so I hope you consider my advice, when I give any, only as a mark of my good-will, and put no more of it in practice than happens to agree with what your doctor directs." He refers also, as an object-lesson, to Lord Chatham, of whom "it is said that his constitution is totally destroyed and gone, partly through the violence of the disease, and partly by his own continual quacking with it." During the last year of his life, too, he drew up a "Plan for a Medical School." In another way, too, Franklin proved that his girds at physicians and medicine did not wholly represent his real opinion. "In 1751," his autobiography states," Dr. Thomas Bond, a particular friend. of mine, conceived the idea of establishing a hospital in Philadelphia, . . but the proposal, being a novelty in America, and at first not well understood, he met with but small success. At length he came to me, with the compliment, that he found there was no such thing as carrying a public-spirited project through without "Some Account of the Pennsylvania Hospital," from which it is learned that his subscription was twenty-five pounds, and that for a number of years he was one of the board of governors. He also succeeded in obtaining a grant of funds from the Assembly, by a shrewd bit of management, and long after he declared: "I do not remember any of my political manœuvres, the success of which gave me, at the time, more plea Excellence, De desis que vous en avès temoigné de connoitre les avantages que l'on peut retives da la decouverte du Magnetisme animal me fait esperer que vous aires la bontés de vous affuer vous même de la réalité des cures que ja fan aver vous ave outre le malades que j'en ai plusieurs autres pourront Je vou frapper; j'aurai l'hornew presente vendredy prochain mois 3 de canons à midy, Si votre Pasttone vent sa donner la peine de venis LETTER FROM FRIEDRICH ANTON MESMER TO BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. my being concerned in it. . . . I enquir'd into the nature and probable utility of his scheme, and receiving from him a very satisfactory explanation, I not only subscrib'd to it myself, but engag'd heartily in the design of procuring subscriptions from others. Previously, however, to the solicitation, I endeavour'd to prepare the minds of the people by writing on the subject in the newspapers, which was my usual custom in such cases, but which he had omitted." Not content with these newspaper articles, Franklin later drew up, and published in pamphlet form, sure, or wherein, after thinking of it, I more easily excus'd myself for having made use of cunning." Nothing, perhaps, better showed his attitude toward all quacks than a service he rendered in 1784. Mesmer, after being discredited in Vienna, chiefly at the hands of Franklin's friend Ingenhousz, came to Paris in 1778, and began the practice of his pretended cure-all; but with very slight success, Franklin himself then happening to be the moment's fashion. In time, however, his séances became, in the words of one writer, the pricked, and Mesmer disappeared, to die long after, "quite forgotten." Another charlatan with whom Franklin came in contact about this time was the pretended Count Cagliostro, who later was to win a notoriety as great as Mesmer's, in connection with the diamond-necklace affair, but who, at this time, was still an obscure doctor. He was recommended to Franklin by his friend Brillon during an illness, but jo sorois doublement. honoré, Si vous le dine?. aver de Votre Excelleme whether he ever treated him with his "secret remedy" for the gravel is not known. The tendency to form gravel, or stone, for which Franklin needed medical aid, was probably inherited, for his father, Josiah, had died of the trouble, and his brother John had been a long sufferer from it. With Franklin it seems to have first developed in 1783, when his grandson Temple notified Vergennes that "My grandfather's 'gravel' has now turned into the gout which prevents his appearing at Court to-day as he intended"; and Franklin apologized to the minister because," being now disabled by the stone, which in the easiest carriage gives me pain, . . . I find I can no longer pay my devoirs personally at Versailles, which I hope will be excused." A little later he wrote to John Jay: It is true, as you have heard, that I have the Meimen ORIGINAL IN THE AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY, PHILADELPHIA. of whom Franklin was named first, and such well-known men and scientists as Le Roy, De Bory, Guillotin, and Lavoisier associated with him. After investigation they made a report which, in Jefferson's words, gave the 'compound of fraud and folly " its "deathwound." Mesmer's thesis that in mankind there was "but one nature, one distemper, and one remedy," received humorous, though destructive, treatment at the hands of these scientists. The commission, recognizing the "action of the imagination upon the animal frame," and the consequent "nervous influence over disease," were able to repeat all Mesmer's alleged cures, not by his methods, but by simply making his patients believe that they were employing his methods. More destructive still, they pointed out that there was nothing new in the alleged science, all Mesmer's experiments and processes having been practised fully a century before he claimed their discovery. The bubble was stone, but not that I had thoughts of being cut for it. It is as yet very tolerable. It gives me no pain but when in a carriage on the pavement, or when I make some sudden quick movement. If I can prevent its growing larger, which I hope to do by abstemious living and gentle exercise, I can go on pretty comfortably with it to the end of my journey, which can now be at no great distance. I am cheerful, enjoy the company of my friends, sleep well, have sufficient appetite, and my stomach material to the preservation of health. I thereperforms well its functions. The latter is very fore take no drugs lest I should disorder it. You may judge that my disease is not very grievous, since I am more afraid of the medicines than of the malady. As this extract indicates, Franklin took his suffering cheerily. “As to myself," he told content with one's situation is the comparing it with a worse. Thus, when I consider how many terrible diseases the human body is liable to, I comfort myself that only three incurable ones have fallen to my share, viz.: the gout, the stone, and old age; and these have not yet deprived me of my natural cheerfulness, delight M. De Montgolfier a thomade) in books, and enjoyment Your prévenir que Li le temur continue à être Savorable, il Sepropose defaire demain ? vendred y entre hun et dix heurend uncatin rue de Montreuil, l'expérience de Sa muchime, LETTER FROM JACQUES-ÉTIENNE MONTGOLFIER TO BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. one friend, "I continue as hearty as at my For my own part, I do not find that I grow any older. Being arrived at seventy, and considering that by travelling farther in the same road I should probably be led to the grave, I stopped short, turned about, and walked back again; which done these four years, you may now call me sixty-six. Advise these old friends of ours to follow my example; keep up your spirits, and that will keep up your bodies; you will no more stoop under the weight of age than if you had swallowed a handspike. His manner of attaining such a frame of mind was simple. "One means of becoming of social conversation." This cheerfulness was not merely assumed on paper, and those who met the doctor in his years of pain all tell the same story. Little Miss Adams, who saw him several times in 1784, says in her journal that "he is now near 80 years old, and looks in good health," and adds that "Dr. F. has something so venerable in his appearance that he inspires one with respect. I never saw an old man more so." Miss Deborah Logan, who saw him still later, says: "He was fat, square-built, and wore his own hair, thin and grey: but he looked healthy and vigorous. His head was remarkably large in proportion to his figure, and his countenance mild, firm and expressive." Manasseh Cutler, who, in meeting him," felt as if I was going to be introduced to the presence of an European Monarch," remarked: "But how my ideas changed, when I saw a short, fat, trunched old man, in a plain Quaker dress, with a bald pate, and short white locks. . . . His voice was low, but his countenance open, frank, and pleasing." During ten years of almost constant suffering, Franklin continued to visit among his friends whenever he was able, and received callers, even when so ill that, as upon one occasion, he had to have them "shown up into his bedchamber, where he sat in his nightgown, his feet wrapped up in flannels and resting on a pillow, he having for three or four days been much afflicted with the gout and the gravel." Nor did he cease to entertain, and Jefferson describes a dinner that shows how his sense of humor was ever motion very well." "I came to Havre de Grâce uppermost, suffer as he might. He had a party to dine with him one day at Passy, of whom one half were Americans, the other half French, and among the last was the Abbé [Raynal]. During the dinner he [the Abbé] got on his favorite theory of the degeneracy of animals, and even of man, in America, and urged it with his usual eloquence. The Doctor at length noticing the accidental stature and position of his guests, at table, "Come," says he, "M. l'Abbé, let us try this question by the fact before us. We are here one half Americans, and one half French, and it happens that the Americans have placed themselves on one side of the table, and our French friends are on the other. Let both parties rise, and we will see on which side nature has degenerated." It happened that his American guests were Carmichael, Harmer, Humphreys, and others of the finest stature and form; while those of the other side were remarkably diminutive, and the Abbé himself particularly, was a mere shrimp. He parried the appeal, however, by a complimentary admission of exceptions, among which the Doctor himself was a conspicuous one. An amusing assistant to the royal commission, in giving a quietus to mesmerism, was the invention, just at the time that craze was highest, of the balloon, with a consequent shifting of interest by the fickle Paris public. Franklin himself followed the experiments of Montgolfier, the inventor, with the closest attention, not merely because of his scientific interest, but as well because of a personal one. "The progress made in the management of balloons," he told a correspondent, "has been rapid. Yet I fear it will hardly become a common carriage in my time, though being easiest of all voitures it would be extremely convenient to me, now that my malady forbids the use of old ones over a pavement." The pain all motion gave Franklin at one time threatened to cause his continuance in France, even after the Congress had consented to his return; for his French friends insisted that he could not bear the journey, and the sufferer himself hesitated. The difficulty was finally overcome by the kindness of Marie Antoinette. "When I was at Passy," Franklin recorded, "I could not bear a wheel carriage; and being discouraged from my project of descending the Seine in a boat, by the difficulties and tediousness of its navigation in so dry a season, I accepted the offer of one of the King's litters, carried by large mules." "I found the motion . . . did not much incommode me. It was one of the Queen's, carried by two very large mules," "which walked steadily and easily, so that I bore the in a litter," he wrote a friend from Portsinstead of being hurt by the journey or mouth, "and hither in the packet boat; and, voyage, I really find myself very much better, not having suffered so little for the time these two years past." "I was not in the least inconvenienced by the voyage, but my children and my friend Mr. Veillard were very sick." In this connection it is interesting to note that Franklin was apparently never a victim to seasickness in any of his eight ocean crossings. His voyage to America appears to have benefited him as much as travel always did; he accepted public offices and fulfilled their duties, and he seemed, indeed, to take pride in what strength yet remained to him, for, in showing a friend a book, "so large that it was with but the greatest difficulty the Doctor was able to raise it from the low shelf and lift it on to the table, with that senile ambition common to old people he insisted on doing it himself, and would permit no person to assist him, merely to show us how much strength he had remaining." Yet evidences of his physical disabilities were not wanting. As president of Pennsylvania, he had to be carried to the state-house in a litter, and in the Federal Convention he had all his speeches read by his colleague James Wilson, "it being inconvenient to the Doctor to remain on his feet." In 1788 a material change occurred in his health, of which he sent word to Ingenhousz: You may remember the cutaneous malady I formerly complained of, and for which you and Dr. Pringle favored me with prescriptions and advice. It vexed me near fourteen years, and was at the beginning of this year as bad as ever, covering almost my whole body, except my face and hands; when a fit of the gout came on, without very much pain, but a swelling in both feet, which at last appeared also in both knees, and then in my hands. As these swellings increased and extended, the other malady diminished, and at length disappeared entirely. Those swellings have some time since begun to fall, and are now almost gone; perhaps the cutaneous disease may return, or perhaps it is worn out. I may hereafter let you know what happens. I am on the whole much weaker than when it began to leave me. Another twelvemonth "found me very ill with a severe fit of the stone, which followed a fall I had on the stone steps that lead into my garden, wherebye I was much bruised and my wrist sprained so as to render me incapable of writing for several weeks." From the consequences of this fall the doctor did not recover, and henceforth was obliged to spend the most of his time in bed. Of his health he wrote, late in 1789: I can give you no good account. I have a long time been afflicted with almost constant and grievous pain, to combat which I have been obliged to have recourse to opium, which indeed has afforded me some ease from time to time, but then it has taken away my appetite and so impeded my digestion that I am become totally emaciated, and little remains of me but a skeleton covered with a skin. His friends urged him to have an operation performed, but he refused, and John Adams stated: "On the question, for example, whether to be cut for the stone. The young, with a longer prospect of years, think these over-balance the pain of the operation. Dr. Franklin, at the age of eighty, thought his residuum of life not worth that price. I should have thought with him, even taking the stone out of the scale." In April, 1790, Franklin was seized with the illness which terminated his life, an account of which was drawn up by his attending doctor, John Jones. The stone, with which he had been afflicted for several years, had for the last twelve months confined him chiefly to his bed; and during the extremely painful paroxysms, he was obliged to take still, in the intervals of pain, he not only large doses of laudanum to mitigate his tortures amused himself with reading and conversing cheerfully with his family, and a few friends who visited him, but was often employed in doing business of a public as well as private nature, with various persons who waited on him for that purpose: and in every instance displayed, not only that readiness and disposition of doing good, which was the distinguishing characteristic of his life, but the fullest and clearest possession of his uncommon mental abilities; and not unfrequently indulged himself in those "jeux d'esprit" and entertaining anecdotes, which were the delight of all who heard him. seized with a feverish indisposition, without any About sixteen days before his death he was particular symptoms attending it, till the third or left breast, which increased till it became exfourth day, when he complained of a pain in the tremely acute, attended with a cough and laboriseverity of his pain drew forth a groan of comous breathing. During this state when the plaint, he would observe-that he was afraid he did not bear them as he ought-acknowledged his grateful sense of the many blessings he had received from that Supreme Being, who had raised him from small and low beginnings to such high doubt but his present afflictions were kindly inrank and consideration among men-and made no tended to wean him from a world, in which he was no longer fit to act the part assigned him. In this frame of body and mind he continued till five days before his death, when his pain and difficulty of breathing entirely left him, and his family were flattering themselves with the hopes of his recovitself in his lungs, suddenly burst, and discharged ery, when an imposthumation, which had formed a great quantity of matter, which he continued to throw up while he had sufficient strength to do it; but, as that failed, the organs of respiration became gradually oppressed-a calm lethargic state succeeded-and, on the 17th of April, 1790, about eleven o'clock at night, he quietly expired, closing a long and useful life of eighty-four years and three months. According to John Adams, "it was the opinion of his own physician, Dr. Jones, he fell a sacrifice at last, not to the stone, but to his own theory, having caught the violent cold which finally choked him, by sitting for some hours at a window, with the cold air blowing upon him." "Nine men in ten are suicides," asserted Poor Richard. (To be continued.) |