Dr. Wiltse’s Account

Published November, 1889

A Case of Typhoid Fever With Subnormal Temperature and Pulse. By A. S. Wiltse, M.D., Skiddy, Kansas.

Mr. President and Gentlemen:— There may or may not be an abundance of literature upon this disease. If there is, I confess I have not seen even a modicum of it, and if it were very common I think I should have fallen in with at least a portion of it. If there be not, then there ought to be, and I haste to contribute my humble share. A few words of explanation: I shall write this article from the stand-point of the patient, only making such suggestions as to diagnosis, symptoms and treatment as any medical man when called upon to act in the role of patient may fairly be allowed to make. I give the address in full of the excellent physicians who attended me, purposely in order that any of you may address them upon the subject if you desire. Again: By the advice and at the special request of several well known physicians, I have dwelt particularly upon certain remarkable psychological phenomena which occured to me during my sickeness.

This I should not have done without their expressed wish, as it might appear, to some, more in place for a religious convocation than a medical society, or in a psychological than a medical journal. But our profession may be said to be onerous as regards matters of science, and as I act upon the advice of medical journalists wiser, by far, than I, I trust I shall be spared any unkind criticisms. What I relate shall be strictly true. To say typhoid fever with subnormal temperature, that is to say, in reality, fever with no fever sounds paradoxical, but I think there is no reasonable doubt of the identity of the disease, for in my case every marked symptom of typhoid was present except the low muttering delirium and actual rise of temperature. Each symptom appeared in its proper time. Epistaxis, indeed, was slight, so very slight, indeed, that had the disease appeared in any but a physician it would probably have passed unnoticed being a mere stain of the nasal cavities on one occasion only and appearing early in the disease. Rose-colored spots over the abdomen, disappearing upon pressure, were abundant, as were sudamina also. Still, from the fact that the disease lacks the very element from which typhus and typhoid derive their names, one might, I think, with much show of justice, contend for a specific name for this disease, for there is, really, much in a name in medicine. I believe, however, that fewer practitioners will be led into error of diagnosis and treatment, and thus humanity be better served, for the present, at least, by leaving the name as it is, than by being ultrascientific in the matter of nomenclature.

I have no literature upon the disease, and cannot, therefore, cite any authorities. The disease is, in my opinion, a very rare and very formidable one, and is, of course, liable to occur in any one’s practice, and should, therefore, be as thoroughly understood as possible.

On the 22nd day of June, 1889, I was seized with nausea severe enough to cause me to prescribe an emetic “a la Roman” for myself, as I supposed the nausea to be due to a small amount of schmier-kæse I had eaten for breakfast. The stomach was emptied by merely thrusting the finger down the throat, but the nausea continued until late in the afternoon, when the temperature rose half a degree, at which point it continued that day and the next falling then to normal. The next day I walked eight or ten miles to attend patients as I did also on the day but one following.

On the fifth or sixth day following I rode four miles to the residence of Dr. S. W. Cooper, of Wartburg, Tennessee, and, in consultation with Dr. S. H. Raines, of Kismet, Tennessee, sat up most of the night with three of his children, sick of typhoid fever of the ordinary type. This routine of affairs was continued for two or three days, when I found myself too ill to attend to my service, and telling my family that I believed I had typhoid fever, I called Drs. Cooper and Raines who found my temperature one-half a degree below normal, pulse somewhat slow and weak, bowels tympanitic, tenderness and gurgling in the right iliac. I might as well explain before going farther that since my recovery I have no data whatever, outside of memory, for reference, I am somewhat crippled in regard to dates. Also that for many years my left shoulder has been a little lower than my right one, and I have at time suspected cardiac disease from sometimes feeling a dull pain in that region, but as counter-irritation promptly relieves it, and it is but slight, anyway, I have given it very little attention. Some three years ago Dr. Arthur Hume, of Owasso, Mich., examined me and could find nothing abnormal about the heart, although the chest was one and a-half inches larger on the left side than on the right. Although I am a right-handed man, I have always carried weights on the left shoulder, even from childhood, and cannot carry weight upon the right from mere force of habit. Some twenty years ago, I failed to pass for life insurances being examined for the company of Dr. Hamilton, of Chattanooga, Tennessee, who remarked that I was a perfect man physically for aught he could find to the contrary, except that my heart was strangely slow, giving then through several daily examinations only sixty beats per minute, while my temperature would suggest eighty or eighty-five.

These facts may partly account for the marked cardiac trouble in my case, and thus set the reader right as to the real nature of the disease per se. If there is organic trouble with my heart, most likely the cardiac symptoms were greater in my case than would occur in a patient who should possess a healthy heart.

Undoubtedly, however, much cardiac weakness belongs to the disease in question.

My physicians agreed with me as to the probability of my having typhoid fever, and I was put upon a liquid diet, with digitalis for the cardiac weakness.

Toward the end of the second week it was a matter of doubt in my mind whether I was sick at all, and I told my physicians that if it was typhoid fever it was an improved style, and I should claim a patent on it. But I felt weak and ill at ease, and was prone to seek my couch frequently during the day, but only for a few minutes at a time, as I was so restless and nervous that I could not remain long in any condition of rest.

About this time, the Cumberland Plateau Medical Society met at my residence, and Dr. A. Jones, of Deer Lodge, Tenn., was asked to assist in my case. My disease was thoroughly overhauled by the Society, and all agreed in the diagnosis: Typhoid fever with subnormal temperature and pulse. The temperature then being two degrees below normal, and pulse forty beats per minute, weak, and so irregular that it was difficult to count it with precision. By this time, opium was demanded quite constantly for the control of the bowels.

From the very outset of the disease, I suffered slight neuralgic pains through the shoulders and neck, as well as a great amount of ill-defined distress in the precordial region.

In a few days the pulse was falling, sometimes as low as 32, and the temperature to 3° below normal. I was still able to walk about the room, and passed a goodly portion of my time sitting or lying upon the porch, although I was compelled often to go to bed on account of being cold. I was as greedy of blankets and overcoats as Southey’s Harry Gill, although my teeth did not chatter like his. There was a peculiarity about this coldness that it may be serviceable to mention. I was not chilly, in the usual sense of the word, but my skin seemed to have dissolved partnership with the rest of my body, and to have gone into the refrigerating business on its own hook. It had a clammy, dead feel, and was decidedly cold to the touch, even of my own hand, and, I have no doubt, felt colder still to the hands of well people.

Hot lapstones to my feet and back would, indeed, produce free perspiration, but this seemed only to increase the evil by the evaporation and discomfort it brought about. On the ninth of August my sister came to visit me from Michigan, and I met her upon the porch, where I stood and talked for some time, when she noticed that I turned suddenly pale, and although I noticed little changes save some additional cardiac distress, I was hustled off to bed. I think it was upon that night that while sleeping, some kind of horrible sensation of suffocation seized me, and I rose to a sitting posture even before fairly awake. It was an awful distress, not to be described, but was something as if heart, breath and all the machinery of life had suddenly clogged and was about to stop. I rallied both sense and strength in a few minutes, for, fortunately, the terrible feeling passed off. But, believing I had suffered from a small heart clot, I sent for Dr. Raines, who came very hurriedly and armed for the occasion, even though I had sent him no word of the symptoms, for he had, it seemed, been fearing and watching for it. He sat by me the rest of the night administering brandy and ammonia at intervals, and I had no more trouble sleeping that night, although the same thing in still more alarming form happened to me again only a night or two later.

I began to think I did not want a patent on my new kind of typhoid fever.

As to happenings about this time, my memory is indistinct. I recollect advising my family to telegraph for my brother at Chattanooga, telling my family that I was in great danger, although I believed I should recover, as I had work which I thought must be finished, and from that moment until the Sunday following, I know nothing. On Sunday, I was seized with a strange numbness of the whole body. My flesh seemed to me to quiver and flutter in small and independent sections. At the same time, all my faculties were roused to their utmost. This is death, I exclaimed, unless we can conquer it! I felt that I had not time to describe my symptoms to the physicians, and in the extremity of my need, I ordered my own treatment. I sent a messenger to empty the church and hurry as many as could or would come to rub me, changing relays as often as any were fatigued, that I might borrow all the vital energy I could from others. I also had cloths wrung out of very hot water applied constantly, so hot that they were sharply painful. My mind was so clear that I watched the faces of those who were rubbing me and ordered the changes of relay as I saw fatigue in their faces. I cheered and encouraged them by announcing any favorable symptoms I felt, but as to the issue for that day my memory, even to this hour, is at fault, for it seems to me that I recovered from the paroxysm, while the fact is that I sank into unconsciousness, and although I talked rationally during the Monday and Tuesday following, I have not the slightest recollection of those two days. They are blanks in the calendar of my life.

An exactly similar attack came on Wednesday. Again my faculties rose to the occasion, so that my recollection of even the minutiæ of those hours is as clear as that of any point of my life. The attack was sudden and desperate, and fearing to lose the precious moments it would take to tell the physician present what was necessary for him to be told, I cried out my commands with the energy and haste of a commander in battle. The same principles of treatment as on the Sunday previous, with the additional precaution of insulating my couch by placing the posts in glass tumblers, that, if possible, I might lose no spark of electricity. An hour or so of hard work on the part of my friends, and the convulsions were gone, but so, also, was the pulse and most of my strength.

I now concluded that all effort to save my life was only ‘love’s labor lost.’ The signs of dissolution were fast following each other—hiccough, inability to swallow, stiffness of the limbs, numbness of the whole body, and I knew by the faces of my friends, as well as that of the kind-hearted physician, that they believed me in a dying condition. I asked about my pulse, being too weak to get the one hand over to the other to find out for myself. I looked closely at the doctor’s face as he went through the form of taking my pulse, and, bless his dear, kind heart, he told me a whopper, and I knew it, and politely reminded him to that effect, and asked for facts. Then I got them: my pulse was gone, and so had been for some time. I asked if I was perfectly in possession of my mind, so that what I might say should be worthy of being relied upon. Being answered in the decided affirmative, I bade adieu to family and friends, giving such advice and consolation to each and all as I deemed best, conversed upon the proofs pro and con of immortality, and called upon each and all to take testimony for themselves by watching the action of my mind, in the bodily state in which they saw me, and finally, as my pupils fell open, and vision began to fail, and my voice to weaken, feeling a sense of drowsiness come over me, with a strong effort, I straightened my stiffened legs, got my arms over the breast, and clasped the fast stiffening fingers, and soon sank into utter unconsciousness.

I passed about four hours in all without pulse or perceptible heart-beat, as I am informed by Dr. S. H. Raines, who was the only physician present. During a portion of this time several of the bystanders thought I was dead, and such a report being carried outside, the village church bell was tolled. Dr. Raines informs me, however, that by bringing his eyes close to my face, he could perceive an occasional short gasp, so very light as to be barely perceptible, and that he was upon the point, several times, of saying, ‘He is dead,’ when a gasp would occur in time to check him.

He thrust a needle deep into the flesh at different points from the feet to the hips, but got no responses.

Although I was pulseless about four hours, this state of apparent death lasted only about half-an-hour.

As this paper has been engaged for publication in whole and in part by several different papers and one Medical Journal, I shall, for their convenience, divide it into three parts: The first including the symptoms, as described, down to the time of my apparent death, with the treatment, which consisted mainly in opiates for the control of bowels, digitalis, ammonia carb., and alcoholic stimulants for the heat and heart failures. We began early in the case with alcoholic stimulants, which I am well satisfied was a mistake. In this opinion I am supported by the physicians who attended me, and by at least one writer upon the subject. No blame can attach to the physicians, however, as none of us had ever seen such a case, and in a country practice large libraries are not to be reached just any day, and as above stated, the literature of this disease is meagre.

I would advise alcohol to be reserved until late in the disease, lest, as in my case, when the most urgent need comes, the stomach will be so wearied with it as to reject it entirely, and thus we shall lose the good of one of the strongest allies. The low temperature is a leading feature of the disease, and I think alcohol in the early stages adds to the evil, and I presume quinine would do the same.

No quinine was used in my case.

I would advise external heat and friction, with flannel blankets next to the skin to avoid loss of heat. Cotton and linen sheets should not be used on account of their thievish conducting powers.

For the heart-failure, digitalis, carbonate of ammonia, etc., and in view of the great danger of heart-clot, the patient should be closely watched by a trained nurse while sleeping, and should assume any upright posture as little as possible, in short, not at all, as it absolutely endangers life.

If neuralgic pains are severe, of course, anodynes are indicated. In my own case they were not severe enough to merit attention, although the opiates for the bowel may be responsible for this fact.

As to the treatment of the convulsions, I had rather be advised than to advise. I have serious doubts of the advisability of administering narcotics, as it seems to me that anything of that nature would have been fatal. Valerian, bromide of potassium, or something in that line, would, I think, do good. But the friction and heat must not be neglected.

[Note—In the next number of the Journal, the remainder of this paper, detailing the curious psychological phenomena, which were experienced by the author, will be given.—Editors St. Louis Medical and Surgical Journal]

Published December, 1889.

A Case of Typhoid Fever with Subnormal Temperature and Pulse:
Psychological Phenomena

In approaching this part of my subject I am aware that I am treading upon dangerous ground. I shall offer no theories, but try to place those, who may wish to do so, in possession of as many facts as possible as their ground of survey, thrusting that all may aim sincerely at the only goal of science, namely, fact—which is only another name for truth or ultimate knowledge. For convenience of expression please bear in mind I shall write as if all were things of actual occurrence.

I lost, I believe, all power of thought or knowledge of existence in absolute unconsciousness. Of course, I need not guess at the time so lost as in such a state a minute or a thousand years would appear the same. I came again into a state of conscious existence and discovered that I was still in the body, but the body and I had no longer any interests in common. I looked in astonishment and joy for the first time upon myself—the me, the real Ego, while the not me closed it upon all sides like a sepulchre of clay.

With all the interests of a physician, I beheld the wonders of my bodily anatomy, intimately interwoven with which, even tissue for tissue, was I the living soul of that dead body. I learned that the epidermis was the outside boundary of the ultimate tissues, so to speak, of the soul. I realized my condition and reasoned calmly thus. I have died as men term death and yet I am as much a man as ever. I am about to get out of the body. I watched the interesting process of the separation of soul and body. By some power, apparently not my own, the ego was rocked to and fro, laterally, as a cradle is rocked by which process its connection with the tissues of the body was broken up. After a little time the lateral motion ceased, and along the soles of the feet beginning at the toes, pressing rapidly to the heels, I felt and heard, as it seemed, the snapping of innumerable small cords. When this was accomplished I began slowly to retreat from the feet, toward the head as a rubber cord shortens. I remember reaching the hips and saying to myself, ‘Now, there is no life below the hips.’ I can recall no memory of passing through the abdomen and chest, but recollect distinctly when my whole self was collected into the head, when I reflected thus: I am all in the head now, and I shall soon be free. I passed around the brain as if I were hollow, compressing it and its membrane, slightly, on all sides, toward the center and peeped out between the sutures of the skull, emerging like the flattened edges of a bag of membranes. I recollect distinctly how I appeared to myself something like a jelly fish as regards color and form. As I emerged, I saw two ladies sitting at my head, I measured the distance between the head of my cot and the knees of the lady opposite my head and concluded there was room for me to stand, but felt considerable embarrassment as I reflected that I was about to emerge naked before her, but comforted myself with the thought that in all probability she could not see me with her bodily eyes, as I was a spirit. As I emerged from the head I floated up and down and laterally like a soap-bubble attached to the bowl of a pipe until I at last broke loose from the body and fell lightly to the floor, where I slowly rose and expanded into the full stature of a man. I seemed to be translucent, of a bluish case and perfectly naked. With a painful sense of embarrassment I fled toward the partially opened door to escape the eyes of the two ladies whom I was facing as well as others whom I knew were about me, but upon reaching the door I found myself clothed, and, satisfied upon that point I turned and faced the company. As I turned, my left elbow came in contact with the arm of one of two gentlemen, who were standing in the door. To my surprise, his arm passed through mine without apparent resistance the severed parts closing again without pain as air reunites. I looked quickly up at his face to see if he had noticed the contact, but he gave me no sign only stood and gazed towards the couch I had just left. I directed my gaze in the direction of his, and saw my own dead body. It was lying just as I had taken so much pains to place it partially upon the right side the feet close together and the hands clasped across the breast. I was surprised at the paleness of the face. I had not looked in a glass for some days and had imagined that I was not as pale as most very sick people are. I congratulated myself upon the decency with which I had composed the body and thought my friends would have little trouble on that score.

I saw a number of persons sitting and standing about the body and particularly noticed two women apparently kneeling by my left side and I knew that they were weeping.

I have since learned that they were my wife and my sister, but I had no conception of individuality. Wife, sister, or friend were as one to me. I did not remember of any conditions of relationship, at least I did not think of any. I could distinguish sex, but nothing further.

I now attempted to gain the attention of the people with the object of comforting them as well as assuring them of their own immortality. I bowed to them playfully and saluted with my right hand. I passed about among them also, but found that they gave me no heed. Then the situation struck me as humerous and I laughed outright.

They certainly must have heard that, I thought, but it seemed otherwise, for not one lifted their eyes from my body. It did not once occur to me to speak and I concluded the matter by saying to myself: “They see only with the eyes of the body. They can not see spirits. They are watching what they think is me, but they are mistaken. That is not I. This is I and I am as much alive as ever.“

I turned and passed out at the open door, inclining my head and watched where I set my feet as I stepped down on to the porch.

I crossed the porch, descended the steps, walked down the path and into the street. I never saw that street more distinctly than I saw it then. I took note of the redness of the soil and of the washes the rain had made. I took a rather pathetic look about me, like one who is about to leave his home for a long time. Then I discovered that I had become larger than I was in earth life and congratulated myself thereupon. I was somewhat smaller in the body than I just liked to be, but in the next life I thought I am to be as desired.

My clothes, I noticed, had accomodated themselves to my increased stature and I fell to wondering where they came from and how they got on to me so quickly and without my knowledge. I examined the fabric and judged it to be of some kind of Scotch material, a good suit, I thought, but not handsome; still, neat and good enough. The coat fits loosely too, and that is well for summer. How well I feel, I thought. Only a few moments ago I was horribly sick and distressed. Then came that change, called death, which I have so much dreaded. It is passed now and here am I still a man, alive and thinking, yes, thinking as clearly as ever, and how well I feel, I shall never be sick again. I have no more to die, and in sheer exuberance of spirits I danced a figure and fell again to to looking at my form and clothes.

Suddenly I discovered that I was looking straight seam down the back of my coat. How is this, I thought, how do I see my back? and I looked again, to reassure myself, down the back of the coat, on down the back of my legs to the very heels. I put my hand to my face and felt for my eyes. They are where they should be, I thought. Am I like an owl that I can turn my head half way round? I tried the experiment and failed.

No! Then it must be that having been out of the body, but a few moments, I have yet the power to use the eyes of my body, and I turned about and looked back in at the open door, where I could see the head of my body in a line with me. I discovered then a small cord, like a spider’s web, running from my shoulders back to my body and attaching to it at the base of the neck in front.

I was satisfied with the conclusion that by means of that cord, I was using the eyes of my body and turning, walked down the street.

I had walked but a few steps when I again lost my consciousness, and when I again awoke found myself in the air, where I was upheld by a pair of hands, which I could feel pressing lightly against my sides. The owner of the hands, if they had one, was behind me, and was shoving me through the air at a swift but pleasant speed. By the time I fairly realized the situation I was pitched away and floated easily down a few feet, alighting gently upon the beginning of a narrow, but well built roadway, inclined upward at an angle of something less than 45°.

I looked up and could see sky and clouds above me at the usual height. I looked down and saw the tops of green trees and thought: It is as far down to the tree tops as it is high to the clouds.

As I walked up the road, I seemed to face the north. I looked over the right side of the road and under it could see the forest, but discovered naught to support the roadway, yet I felt no fear of its falling. I examined the material of which it was built. It was built of milky quartz and fine sand. I picked up one of the gravels and looked at it particularly. There had been a recent rain upon it and the coolness was refreshing to me. I noticed that, although the grade was steep, I felt no fatigue in walking, but my feet seemed light, and my step buoyant as the step of childhood, and as I walked I again reverted to my late condition of illness and rejoiced in my perfect health and strength. Then a sense of great lonliness came over me and I greatly desired company, so I reasoned thus: Some one dies every minute. If I wait twenty minutes the chances are great that some one in the mountains will die, and thus I shall have company. I waited, and while so doing surveyed the scenery around me. To the east was a long line of mountains, and the forest underneath me extended to the mountains, up their sides and out on to the mountain top. Underneath me lay a forest-clad valley, through which ran a beautiful river full of shoals, which caused the water to ripple in white sprays. I thought the river looked much like the Emerald River, and the mountains, I thought, as strongly resembled Waldron’s Ridge. On the left of the road was a high bluff of black stone and it reminded me of Lookout Mountain, where the railroad passes between it and the Tennessee River. Thus memory, judgement and imagination, the three great faculties of the mind, were intact and active.

I waited for company, what I judged to be twenty minutes; but no one came. Then I reasoned thus: It is probable that when a man dies he has his individual road to travel and must travel it alone. As no two men are exactly alike, so, most likely, no two travel the same road into the other world. I reflected that as external existence was now assured, I had no need to hurry, and so walked very leisurely along, now stopping and looking at the scenery, or looking back over the road if, perchance, some one might come along and occasionally turning and walking backward, and thus watching the road behind me for company I so strongly desired. I thought certainly some one from the other world would be out to meet me, though strangely enough, I thought of no person whom above others I desired to see. Angels or fiends, one, I said, will come out to meet me—I wonder which it will be? I reflected that I had not believed all the Church tenets, but had written and taught verbally a new and, I believe, a better faith. But I reasoned, I knew nothing, and where there is room for doubt there is room for a mistake. I may, therefore, be on my wayto a terrible doom. A great fear and doubt came over me and I was beginning to be very miserable, when a face so full of ineffable love and tenderness appeared to me for an instant as set me to rights upon that score.

Suddenly I saw at some distance ahead of me three prodigious rocks blocking the road, at which sight I stopped, wondering why so fair a road should be thus blockaded, and while I considered what I was to do, a great and dark cloud, which I compared to a cubic acre in size, stood over my head. Quickly it became filled with living, moving bolts of fire, which darted hither and thither through the cloud. They were not extinguished by contact with the cloud, for I could see them in the cloud as one see fish in deep water.

The cloud became concave on the under surface like a great tent and began slowly to revolve upon its perpendicular axis. When it had turned three times, I was aware of a presence, which I could not see, but which I knew was entering into the cloud from the southern side. The presence did not seem, to my mind, as a form, because it filled the cloud like some vast intelligence. He is not as I, I reasoned: I fill a little space with my form, and when I move the space is left void, but he may feel immensity at his will, even as he fills this cloud. Then from the right side and from the left of the cloud a tongue of black vapor shot forth and rested lightly upon either side of my head, and as they touched me thoughts not my own entered into my brain.

These, I said, are his thoughts and not mine; they might be in Greek or Hebrew for all power I have over them. But how kindly am I addressed in my mother tongue that so I may understand all his will.

Yet, although the language was English, it was so eminently above my power to reproduce that my rendition of it is as far short of the original as any translation of a dead language is weaker than the original, for instance, the expression. This is the road to the eternal world, did not contain over four words, neither did any sentence in the whole harrangue, and every sentence had it been written must have closed with a period, so complete was the sense. The following uis as near as I can render it, without more careful painstaking than I have time for now, as this article must be ready by a certain date.

“This is the road to the eternal world. Yonder rocks are the boundary between the two worlds and the two lives. Once you pass them, you can no more return into the body. If your work was to write the things that have been taught you, waiting for mere chance to publish them, if your work was to talk to private individuals in the privacy of friendship—if this was all, it is done, and you may pass beyond the rocks. If, however, upon consideration you conclude that it shall be to publish as well as to write what you are taught, if it shall be to call together the multitude and teach them, it is not done, and you can return into the body.“

The thoughts ceased and the clouds passed away, moving slowly toward the mountain in the east. I turned and watched it for some time when, suddenly, and without having felt myself moved, I stood close to and in front of the three rocks. I was seized with a strong curiosity then to look into the next world.

There were four entrances, one very dark one at the left between the wall of black rocks and the left hand one of the three rocks, a low archway, between the left hand and the middle rock and a similar one between that and the right hand rock and a very narrow pathway running around the right hand rock at the edge of the roadway.

I did not examine the opening at the left—I know not why, unless it was because it appeared dark, but I knelt at each of the low archways and looked through. The atmosphere was green and everything seemed cool and quiet and beautiful. Beyond the rocks, the roadway, the valley, and the mountian range curved gently to the left, thus shutting off the view at a short distance. If I were only around there, I thought, I should soon see angels or devils or both, and as I thought this, I saw the forms of both as I had often pictured them in my mind. I looked at them closely and discovered that they were not realities, but the mere shadowy forms in my thoughts and that any form might be brought up in the same way. What a wonderful world, I exclaimed, mentally, where thought is so intensified as to take a visible form. How happy shall I be in such a realm of thought as that.

I listened at the archway for any sound of voice or of music, but could hear nothing. Solid substances, I thought, are better media of sound than air. I will use the rocks as media, and I rose and placed my left ear to first one rock and then the other throughout, but could hear nothing.

Then suddenly I was tempted to cross the boundary line. I hesitated and reasoned thus: I have died once and if I go back, soon or late, I must die again. If I stay some one else will do my work, and so the end will be as well and as surely accomplished and shall I die again? I will not, but now that I am so near I will cross the line and stay, and so determining I moved cautiously along the rocks. There was danger of falling over the side of the road for the pathway around was but narrow. I thought not of the archways. I placed my back against the rock and walked sideways.

I reached the exact center of the rock, which I knew by a carved knob in the rock marked the exact boundary. Here, like Cæsar at the Rubicon, I halted and parleyed with conscience. It seemed like taking a good deal of responsibility, but I determined to do it, and advanced the left foot across the line. As I did so, a small, densely black cloud appeared in front of me and advanced toward my face. I knew that I was to be stopped. I felt the power to move or to think leaving me. My hands fell powerless at my side, my shoulders and head drooped forward, the cloud touched my face and I knew no more.

Without previous thought and without apparent effort on my part, my eyes opened. I looked at my hands and then at the little white cot upon which I was lying, and realizing that I was in the body, in astonishment and disappointment, I exclaimed—What in the world has happned to me? Must I die again?

I was extremely weak, but strong enough to relate the above experience despite all the injunctions to quiet. Soon afterward I was seized with vomiting, severe and uncontrollable. About this time Doctor J. H. Sewel, of Rockwood, Tenn., called upon a friendly visit, not knowing I was sick. I was hiccoughing terribly and in consultation he said, ‘Nothing short of a miracle, I fear, can save him.’ He suggested creosote, which was tried and seemed to do some good, though as a patient. I can’t see how, for if ever anything tasted villainous, it did. I was given very hot water to drink, filling the stomach until I could stand it no longer, but must throw it overboard, and this repeated a few times put a quietus to the vomiting.

I had great distress for breath, requiring to be fanned constantly in the face for several days, which condition ceased abruptly, so that from its giving me breath it suddenly seemed to fill me with air to the extent of choking, and I called on them to desist, not did I experience any more trouble for breath.

I got injections of brandy and milk; digitalis and ammonia sustained the heart despite its constant tendency to failure. I was treated to alcohol baths, kept awake during the worst attacks of heart failure, was enjoined to absolute quiet, kept in hot flannels, and fed a little nourishing food at short intervals, and wine given me every two hours. I was not allowed to raise my head or hand without help, as the least exertion or excitement lowered both pulse and temperature.

After many days it seems to me, the temperature began to creep up and soon ran above normal, but only a little, wavered back and forth for a few days and settled at a half degree below where it remained normal during the greater part of convalescence, when it mounted to normal, the pulse mounted to above fifty for keeps, as boys say at marbles, then went to seventy-six and I made a rapid and good recovery, for having traveled some hundreds of miles during the interval, as I close this paper my pulse stands at 84 and is strong, just eight weeks from ‘the day I died,’ as some of my neighbors speak of it.