J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 4 by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
page 44 of 138 (31%)
page 44 of 138 (31%)
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lancet had left, and this, no doubt, had effected his sudden and almost
preternatural restoration to an existence from which all thought he had been for ever removed. The man was still speechless, but he seemed to understand the physician when he forbid his repeating the painful and fruitless attempts which he made to articulate, and he at once resigned himself quietly into his hands. I left the patient with leeches upon his temples, and bleeding freely--apparently with little of the drowsiness which accompanies apoplexy; indeed, Dr. D---- told me that he had never before witnessed a seizure which seemed to combine the symptoms of so many kinds, and yet which belonged to none of the recognized classes; it certainly was not apoplexy, catalepsy, _nor delirium tremens_, and yet it seemed, in some degree, to partake of the properties of all--it was strange, but stranger things are coming. During two or three days Dr. D---- would not allow his patient to converse in a manner which could excite or exhaust him, with any one; he suffered him merely, as briefly as possible, to express his immediate wants, and it was not until the fourth day after my early visit, the particulars of which I have just detailed, that it was thought expedient that I should see him, and then only because it appeared that his extreme importunity and impatience were likely to retard his recovery more than the mere exhaustion attendant upon a short conversation could possibly do; perhaps, too, my friend entertained some hope that if by holy confession his patient's bosom were eased of the perilous stuff, which no doubt, oppressed it, his recovery would be more assured and rapid. It was, then, as I have said, upon the fourth day after my first professional call, that I found myself once more in the dreary chamber of want and sickness. The man was in bed, and appeared low and restless. On |
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