It was now that the physician began to attend to me daily, as if he did not expect me to live, and it was in that way that I learned of how the abcess in my lungs, when it had somewhat subsided, had created a certain amount of scar tissue adhering to the walls of the entry to my stomach, causing these walls to pull away and form a sac, which he called a diverticulum and which unavoidably, as the sac increased in size, filled with slivers of food. And when the particles of food decomposed there, the sac expanded still further until it had grown to the size of a tobacco pouch and had caused a foul odor and much pain and vomiting. As a joke, the physician told me that the best cure was starvation, for no matter how little I ate or what I ate, there was bound to be some small particle that would be drawn into this ever enlarging pouch. For several days thereafter I did indeed wrestle with the temptation to cure myself by starvation, but after a while I was able to overcome this test also and thus agreed to follow the physician’s instructions and attempted to keep food from entering the sac by laying myself in such a position as to place the sac at a level higher than the entry to my stomach, with the mouth of the sac pointed downward, which is to say, by lying on my right side with my head and shoulders on the floor and my hips and legs on the cot. Thus I was able to take a small amount of nourishment, mainly in the form of dry crumbly cereals so that the few grains which, despite these precautions, nevertheless got into the sac, could be drawn out daily by the physician with his rubber tube and pump.
But the cure for one affliction is frequently the cause of another, and because my diet was now restricted wholly to sips of water and bits of dry cereal, I soon developed the symptoms that accompany the absence of acid in the stomach, abdominal pain, headache, ringing in the ears, and constant drowsiness, a condition which additionally led quickly to pernicious anemia, which brought with it extreme weakness, breathlessness and heart palpitations. My skin all over my body, such of it as was not inflamed with boils and various sores, was a lemonish color, and my feet and hands had puffed out grotesquely. It now seemed to me that I would surely succumb to the temptation to die, for to live meant only to contract yet another, more nearly fatal disease whose cure seemed to be a still worse disease. When I slept, which was only in brief spasms, I had furious dreams, and though I wished for those among the dead to appear to me there and to advise me and I often cried out the name of my wife or of John Bethel or of my parents, none from the dead came to me then. Only the living appeared to me, in my sleep as much as when I was awake, my physician, my jailor, occasionally a curious prisoner who might have heard my groans, until I was no longer able to tell when I was not sleeping from when I was not awake, for in both states did these people appear to me in wildly threatening postures with their faces horribly distorted, as if they themselves had contracted all my diseases and had grown as grotesque to look upon as had I myself.
Now there came upon my body a great fever, which lasted for about ten days and nights and brought with it profuse night sweats and continuous headache, and when it had abated, left me weaker even than before, with certain of my other afflictions somewhat worsened, such as the neuralgic pains in my face and the coughing and the various symptoms of the pernicious anemia. The physician who had taken a sort of scientific interest in my case, for it presented him with many ongoing puzzles, could not at first diagnose this fever, until there had followed several more episodes of about ten days each, coming as if in waves, each one leaving me afterwards weaker than before. These waves, he said, were characteristic of undulant fever, an uncommon disease among the population as a whole but not uncommon among those who are known to deal with the dead, for it is contracted and spread chiefly by having come into contact with a similarly infected body or carcass, but because the germ often lies dormant for years, it is very difficult to trace the path of contagion. Thus, since my calling long ago had been as a coffin-maker, the physician had swiftly concluded that I doubtless at some time long before my imprisonment had dealt with an infected corpse, and it was only now, in my weakened condition, that the disease had made itself known to me. There was no cure for the disease that the physician knew of, but the symptoms could be treated as they appeared, and because he was interested in the course of the disease and in containing its spread, he determined to stay close to me and treat me as kindly as he could. He thought that he might thereby learn something about the disease so as to be able to devise preventive measures against its future occurrence, especially among the prison population.
From my own perspective, that of the sufferer rather than that of the detached observor and attendant, the wave-like ebbs and flows of the fever created in my life a paradoxical series of troughs of easefulness, for when my body temperature rose, the numerous pains I had been experiencing throughout my body would seem to diminish, so that the higher the fever went and the longer it lasted, by that much was I released from the pain of my boils and other skin afflictions and the neuralgia and the lung abcess and the pain of hunger caused by the diverticulum and the several other related agonies of that time, so that I came to welcome the approach of each new wave, each new undulation, of the fever. Though afterwards I was left each time as weak as a newborn babe, I was able for a few hours to experience considerable clarity of mind, and despite the inflammation of my tongue and my infected gums and teeth, I was able to speak with a remarkable clarity.
During the attacks of fever, however, I was not aware of anyone who happened to be in my presence, nor was I aware of the passage of time, so that I had to be shown with a calendar how long each wave had lasted and told, with notes from the physician, for I could not understand his speech due to my deafness, who had attended me and what had been done for my comfort, information I desired so as to be able, during my periods of lucidity following the wave, to show my gratitude. In this way I learned of the physician’s sustained efforts to cool my body by applying alcohol soaked sponges and the regular baths he provided for the removal of the stools and urine that I emitted while feverish and unable to care for such functions myself. I also learned that my jailor, too, and even his superior officers had taken an interest in my condition and had posted an assistant jailor to keep watch over me, so that at no time was I without someone keeping vigil.
During the first few onslaughts of fever, I felt as if I were in a dream, although I knew I was not sleeping, and there came to me numerous faces from among the dead, and they would speak soothingly to me, as if to strengthen me in my resolve not to resist life so as to keep my penance. In this way I was encouraged by my father and my uncle, and also my first wife and on another occasion my second wife, both of whom knew from their own lives how difficult and painful it often is not to resist living. There also came to me Justice Hale, who had died during the second year of my imprisonment and who now appreciated the wisdom of a faith that in his life time he had merely been willing to tolerate (which raised him above his brother judges, however, for none there were among them, except Justice Hale, who had been willing even to tolerate dissenters), and he too encouraged me in my resolve to exchange my life for John Bethel’s death, for he reminded me of the foolishness of my desire in the beginning of my imprisonment to bring my case to a legal point.