1,99 €
Mehr erfahren.
- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
In "Doctor Hudson's Secret Journal," Lloyd C. Douglas intricately weaves a tale that explores the complex interplay of faith, science, and human emotion through the lens of medical ethics in the early 20th century. The narrative, presented as a series of journal entries, delves into the life of Dr. Hudson, a physician navigating the moral dilemmas of his profession, while grappling with personal convictions and the societal expectations of his time. Douglas employs a rich and evocative literary style that melds introspective prose with profound ethical reflections, offering readers a glimpse into the evolving landscape of medicine intertwined with spiritual inquiry. Lloyd C. Douglas, a former pastor and successful novelist, was deeply influenced by his background in theology and his experiences in a changing society. His encounters with both the moral quandaries faced by medical professionals and the questions of faith and healing within his community shaped the development of this work. Drawing on his own life experiences and the cultural currents of his era, Douglas presents a narrative that is both personal and universal, highlighting the struggles between divine intervention and human action. "Doctor Hudson's Secret Journal" is a compelling read for anyone intrigued by the moral dilemmas inherent in the medical field. Douglas's nuanced exploration of the human spirit offers profound insights into the challenges faced by those striving to balance professional duty with personal beliefs. This book is not only a testament to his literary prowess but also a thought-provoking reflection on the nature of healing and the ethical responsibilities that accompany it. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - A succinct Introduction situates the work's timeless appeal and themes. - The Synopsis outlines the central plot, highlighting key developments without spoiling critical twists. - A detailed Historical Context immerses you in the era's events and influences that shaped the writing. - A thorough Analysis dissects symbols, motifs, and character arcs to unearth underlying meanings. - Reflection questions prompt you to engage personally with the work's messages, connecting them to modern life. - Hand‐picked Memorable Quotes shine a spotlight on moments of literary brilliance. - Interactive footnotes clarify unusual references, historical allusions, and archaic phrases for an effortless, more informed read.
Das E-Book können Sie in Legimi-Apps oder einer beliebigen App lesen, die das folgende Format unterstützen:
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021
Ähnliche
Doctor Hudson's Secret Journal
Table of Contents
Introduction
At the heart of Doctor Hudson’s Secret Journal lies the quiet but unrelenting struggle of a healer to reconcile the measurable demands of medicine with a deliberately hidden ethic of self-forgetful service, to weigh success against responsibility, knowledge against humility, and public authority against private conviction, while charting a path by which the habit of helping may reshape not only clinical decisions but the whole architecture of a life, asking whether true beneficence can flourish in secrecy and whether a vocation can be preserved from vanity when every day brings fresh invitations to influence, to intervene, and to be seen.
Published in the late 1930s, this novel by Lloyd C. Douglas is part of the tradition often called inspirational fiction, grounded in the everyday realities of medical practice in its time. It stands in close conversation with Douglas’s earlier bestseller Magnificent Obsession, yet it can be read on its own. Eschewing sensational case histories, the book channels the moral drama of professional life into a sustained meditation on purpose and responsibility. Readers encounter not a medical thriller, but reflective storytelling that uses the hospital, the consultation room, and the rhythms of a physician’s days as arenas for testing an ethic of self-giving.
Douglas frames the narrative as a personal record kept by a respected doctor, inviting readers into a workshop of motives, methods, and disciplined habits. Rather than advancing through high-stakes plot turns, the book unfolds in episodes and considerations that reveal how convictions are shaped by practice. The voice is lucid, measured, and earnest, with the immediacy of a journal and the patience of a teacher. Expect a contemplative pace and a tone that blends clinical observation with moral self-examination, always centering the narrator’s developing philosophy and the tangible choices it requires, rather than any single revelation or melodramatic crisis.
The themes are enduring. Vocation, first of all: what it means to regard a profession as a calling rather than a career. The journal wrestles with responsibility and power, the ethics of influence, and the possibility of doing good without public acknowledgment. It probes stewardship of time and talent, the education of desire, and the difficult boundary between benevolence and pride. These questions do not arrive as abstractions; they are pursued as practical matters—how to use money, position, and skill; how to measure success; how to help without harm; how to seek excellence without centering the self.
Though the book reflects its era, its concerns remain contemporary. In a culture alert to visibility and performance, the journal explores the discipline of unobtrusive service and the resilience required to maintain it. Readers attentive to medical ethics will recognize tensions around triage, confidentiality, and the physician’s role in communities; readers outside medicine will find a broader meditation on character formation and purposeful living. The narrative invites examination of motives behind philanthropy and achievement, suggesting that the deepest transformations occur offstage, in the slow apprenticeship of habit, attention, and quietly chosen acts that resist the allure of display.
Form and content reinforce each other. The journal device creates intimacy without exhibitionism, granting access to deliberations rather than dramatized confession. Entries typically move from observation to principle to practice, modeling a manner of thought that refuses cynicism but does not romanticize suffering. The prose favors clarity over ornament and earns its authority through consistency rather than crescendo. Instead of building toward a single decisive twist, the book assembles a mosaic of decisions whose cumulative weight becomes visible over time, rewarding patient readers with a sense of moral architecture and the lived texture of a disciplined inner life.
For newcomers to Douglas, this volume offers a clear entry into a body of work that treats conscience, faith, and public life with seriousness and hope. Those who know Magnificent Obsession will notice thematic continuities; others can approach this as a self-contained meditation on the doctor’s art and the art of living. Taken on its own terms, Doctor Hudson’s Secret Journal promises a reflective reading experience—one that trades spectacle for substance and invites readers to ask how quiet convictions might reorder a life, a vocation, and the communities touched by both, long after the pages of a private record are closed.
Synopsis
Doctor Hudson's Secret Journal is presented as the private record of a renowned physician who sets down the principles governing his work and inner life. He writes to clarify his motives, discipline his impulses, and define a code of conduct that reconciles skill with service. The entries combine concise case notes, reflections on responsibility, and meditations on a guiding law he calls his secret. The journal’s tone is sober and practical, not confessional, and it treats successes and failures alike as lessons. From the outset, he signals that the purpose is not publicity but integrity, a safeguard against self-deception while pursuing demanding medical work.
Early entries trace his path from a driven student to a young practitioner impatient to make his mark. He describes overconfidence, the lure of reputation, and the shock of discovering how little fame helps at a bedside. A chance encounter with a wise counselor, and a series of humbling experiences, push him to reexamine what truly empowers a physician. He adopts an experimental posture toward character, testing small disciplines as he would a treatment. He gradually becomes convinced that unseen motives shape outcomes as surely as clinical judgments do, and that a physician’s influence depends on self-mastery more than applause.
The secret he articulates centers on quiet, unadvertised service extended without expectation of return and with strict anonymity. He records modest trials of the principle, often unrelated to medicine, and notes surprising, indirect benefits that follow. These results are not treated as miracles but as consistent effects of a moral law he resolves to obey. He sets down rules to keep the practice clean of vanity: give promptly, conceal the source, refuse repayment, and never trade kindness for advantage. As the tests scale up, his confidence grows, along with an awareness that power misused for display quickly evaporates.
Parallel to these ethical experiments, the journal chronicles the steady enlargement of his work. He takes on complex cases, improves techniques, and helps organize a modern hospital with better standards of care. Administrative burdens test his patience, but he learns that institutions, like individuals, need discipline and purpose. He resists publicity that would attach his name to advances he believes belong to the team or to providence. In discussion of medical crises, he emphasizes preparation, teamwork, and calm rather than heroics. Throughout, the same principle governs: competence is strengthened by secrecy, and service acquires force when the self is sidelined.
Personal passages note marriage, family obligations, and the tension between domestic affections and public demands. He insists that the secret must not become a burden to those he loves, so he shields them from its details. The journal records late hours, canceled holidays, and the careful partitioning of income to sustain quiet benefactions without alarming household accounts. He reflects on moral boundaries in clinical decisions, the sanctity of patient trust, and the costs of maintaining tactful silence. Recognitions and honors arrive; he declines or redirects them, believing that acceptance would blur motives and weaken the ethical discipline he is cultivating.
Mid-career entries confront resistance. Colleagues dismiss his reticence as affectation, and a public controversy threatens to damage the hospital. He declines to defend himself by exposing gifts or strategies that might vindicate him, because disclosure would violate the principle on which his work rests. The journal documents the pressure to compromise and his choice to accept temporary misunderstanding rather than abandon secrecy. The crisis tests his administrative resilience and his fidelity to process. In time, the system he has built proves sound, though the account avoids triumphalism. He marks the episode as evidence that character can stabilize enterprises more firmly than negotiation can.
Teaching becomes central as he mentors younger physicians and nurses in habits that underwrite excellent care. Without naming his method, he transmits its effects: punctuality, gratitude, discretion, and the refusal to exploit patients’ stories. He describes coaching sessions, postmortems on difficult cases, and the creation of funds to assist trainees and families in distress. The journal stresses rigorous competence as the first charity, with material aid following quietly. He outlines practical tests for choosing beneficiaries, guarding against sentimentalism, and remaining accountable to one’s own conscience. The tone remains instructional rather than inspirational, keeping the focus on reproducible habits rather than charisma.
Near the journal’s culmination, a sequence of demanding cases and a private emergency require him to apply the secret at a cost he carefully notes but does not dramatize. He condenses his experience into guiding propositions, arguing that power accrues to those who divert it from self to need; that concealment protects both giver and recipient; and that expectancy, not bargaining, is the right posture. He revisits early missteps, contrasts them with later steadiness, and acknowledges limits that no principle can erase. The entries grow spare, almost aphoristic, as he records what endures when reputation, energy, and control inevitably diminish.
The final pages reaffirm the journal’s purpose and audience: a future reader who might require a practical pattern for aligning skill with service without forfeiting humility. He avoids summarizing his career, preferring to restate the central message: disciplined, anonymous beneficence strengthens professional power and enlarges outcomes beyond calculation. He suggests that influence moves most freely when names are forgotten and credits untallied. The book closes by pointing outward, implying that the method, if faithfully practiced, can outlive its author in institutions, practices, and lives quietly altered. The tone is steady and unadorned, consistent with a life oriented toward usefulness rather than display.
Historical Context
Doctor Hudson's Secret Journal unfolds across the decades straddling the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, primarily in the American Midwest and Great Lakes region. The narrative atmosphere evokes prosperous lakeside towns and emerging big city teaching hospitals, where electricity, telephones, streetcars, and standardized time reorder daily life. Urbanization and immigration transform neighborhoods, while sharp class lines shape access to medical care. Within this setting, the ethics of a newly professionalizing medical corps meet the realities of crowded hospital wards and private practice among elites. The book’s time frame aligns with 1890 to the mid 1920s, a period of rapid scientific advance and expanding public health administration.
During the Progressive Era, roughly 1890 to 1920, American cities pursued sweeping public health reforms. Municipal sanitation campaigns built sewers and filtration plants, such as the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal opened in 1900 to reverse the Chicago River and protect Lake Michigan water. The Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 and the Meat Inspection Act addressed adulteration and interstate commerce in medicines and food. New York’s Tenement House Act of 1901 tightened housing standards, while the United States Public Health Service and the Children’s Bureau were reorganized in 1912 to expand surveillance and maternal and child welfare. The novel reflects this milieu through its sustained emphasis on prevention, hygiene, and civic medicine.
Between 1904 and the early 1930s, American medical education was reshaped by reforms culminating in the Flexner Report of 1910. Commissioned by the American Medical Association’s Council on Medical Education and funded by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Abraham Flexner’s Bulletin Number Four surveyed 155 medical schools and condemned most proprietary institutions for weak laboratories, minimal clinical exposure, and lax admissions. It championed the Johns Hopkins model established in the 1890s by figures such as William Osler, William Welch, William Halsted, and Howard Kelly, emphasizing rigorous prerequisites, full time clinical faculty, and laboratory based science. In the decade after 1910, dozens of schools closed or merged; by the mid 1930s only about 66 remained. Philanthropy from the Rockefeller General Education Board and later the Rockefeller Foundation underwrote university based medical centers and teaching hospitals in cities like Baltimore, New York, and Cleveland. The National Board of Medical Examiners, founded in 1915, and strengthened state licensing laws aligned education with standardized examinations. These advances improved care but narrowed entry. Of the seven historically Black medical schools operating in 1910, only Howard and Meharry were recommended for continued support, and many women’s programs disappeared. The book mirrors these transformations in its portrait of demanding training, the aura of elite hospital service, and the moral pressure placed on physicians to justify their social standing through competence and selfless practice. It also echoes the era’s gatekeeping, registering anxiety about who gains access to the healing vocation and how authority should be used in a society struggling with inequality.
The influenza pandemic of 1918–1920 constituted the deadliest acute public health crisis of the era, killing an estimated 50 million people worldwide and approximately 675,000 in the United States. Cities experimented with closures of schools, churches, and theaters; St. Louis acted early while Philadelphia’s Liberty Loan parade in September 1918 became infamous for accelerating transmission. Hospitals improvised overflow wards and mobilized volunteer nurses as staff fell ill. Physicians contended with secondary bacterial pneumonia absent effective antivirals or antibiotics. In the novel’s world, crowded wards, triage, and the stoic endurance of caregivers reflect the pandemic’s culture of urgency and duty, crystallizing a code of service under extreme constraint.
World War I, from 1914 to 1918 with United States entry in April 1917, transformed medical practice through mass trauma care. Innovations included widespread use of X ray localization, antiseptic wound management, triage systems, and the modern blood transfusion made practical by sodium citrate anticoagulation in 1915 and organized transfusion services by 1917–1918. Surgeons such as Harold Gillies pioneered reconstructive techniques for facial injuries in British and Allied hospitals, while attention to shell shock foreshadowed modern psychiatry. American base hospitals, staffed by university units, created new models of teamwork and record keeping. The novel’s reverence for disciplined, collaborative medicine derives from these wartime templates of coordinated, sacrificial care.
The period saw the consolidation of the hospital as the central site of scientific medicine. The American College of Surgeons, founded in 1913, launched the Hospital Standardization Program in 1918, requiring organized medical staff, accurate records, laboratories, and aseptic surgical suites. X rays, discovered by Wilhelm Röntgen in 1895, became routine diagnostic tools by the 1910s; radium therapy entered cancer clinics; and anesthesia and sterile technique matured into dependable standards. Charity wards coexisted with private rooms, formalizing class distinctions within the same institution. Doctor Hudson’s milieu relies on this institutional order, dramatizing managerial governance, case conferences, and ethical tensions at the bedside where hospital policy meets the suffering of individuals.
The Great Depression after the 1929 market collapse strained hospitals and patients alike. Admissions fell as families deferred care, while unpaid bills and charity cases soared. In 1929 the Baylor plan in Dallas introduced a prepaid hospital subscription for schoolteachers, an early Blue Cross model that spread nationally in the 1930s. The Social Security Act of 1935 expanded federal public health grants but excluded comprehensive medical insurance, keeping access dependent on private means, philanthropy, and local relief. Lloyd C. Douglas wrote the novel in 1939 amid these realities; its ethic of discreet beneficence and personal responsibility resonates with civic campaigns and Community Chest drives that kept clinics open during fiscal crisis.
As a social and political critique, the book exposes the moral economy of early twentieth century medicine, where scientific authority, class privilege, and charitable duty intersect. It portrays unequal access to care and the dependence of the poor on benevolence, pressing physicians to confront whether their prestige serves the public or only patrons. The narrative’s insistence on anonymous service criticizes the commercialization of healing and the display culture of philanthropy. By acknowledging the gatekeeping wrought by professional reform yet defending a universal ethic of care, the work implicitly challenges exclusions by gender, race, and income, and demands that institutions be judged by humane outcomes rather than status.
Doctor Hudson's Secret Journal
AUTHOR'S FOREWORD
SHORTLY after the quiet appearance of Magnificent Obsession, eleven years ago, the author became aware that he had not completed his task.
The letters which began to pour in were not of the sort usually referred to as "fan mail." Nobody wanted an autograph, a photograph, or a lock of hair. Not many bothered to remark that they had been entertained by the story. But they all asked questions and most of the questions were serious, wistful, and challenging.
The theme of the novel had derived from a little handful of verses midway of the Sermon on the Mount[1], but all references to the enchanted passage were purposely vague, the author feeling that a treasure hunt in Holy Writ would probably do his customers no harm. Within the first twelve months after publication, more than two thousand people had written to inquire, "What page of the Bible did the sculptor carry in his wallet?" We left off counting these queries, but they have continued to come, all through these intervening years.
Second in importance to this inquiry was a very searching question, phrased in terms ranging all the way from polite hinting to forthright impudence: "Do you honestly believe in this thing—or were you just writing a story?" After a while, letters began to arrive from persons who said they had tried it, and it worked; though they were careful not to be too specific in reporting their adventures, aware that if they told they would be sorry. A few lamented the cost of unrewarded experiments and denounced the whole idea as a lot of hooey.
The task of dealing sympathetically with this strange correspondence became a grave responsibility. No stock letter, done on a mimeograph, would serve the purpose. It was necessary that individual replies be sent to all earnest inquirers. One dared not risk the accusation that, having advocated an expensive and venturesome technique for generating personal power, the author was thereafter too busy or lazy to care whether anybody benefited by such investments. It was interesting to observe how wide a variety of people came forward with questions. A single post might contain inquiries from a high school boy, a college professor, a farmer's wife, a physician, a pious old lady, an actress, a postman, a preacher, and a sailor. Some of the questions were practically unanswerable, but it wasn't quite fair to limit one's reply to a laconic "I don't know." Frequently one's counsel was pitiably inadequate, but not because it was coolly casual or thoughtlessly composed. I suppose that if all of these letters were compiled and printed they would fill several volumes as large as the novel which evoked them.
A third question, which began to show up promptly, inquired, "Is the complete text of Doctor Hudson's journal available in print?" The correct answer to that was "No." It not only wasn't in print; it had not been written. Occasionally someone would counter, "How were you able to quote from Doctor Hudson's journal, if there never was any such thing?"—an amusingly artless question, to be sure; but an obviously honest tribute to the realism of a document which had no existence in fact.
Readers of Magnificent Obsession will recall that, early in the story, an eminent brain surgeon. Doctor Wayne Hudson, lost his life by drowning. Among his effects there was found a journal containing some amazing memoirs. Because of the singular nature of these experiences. Doctor Hudson had concealed his story in a baffling code, hoping by this means to insure it against a hasty perusal by persons who might view it with careless indifference or a half-contemptuous incredulity.
Throughout the novel, "quotations" from and adversions to this laboriously decoded journal provided the explanation of young Merrick's belief and behaviour as he endeavoured to follow in his mentor's footsteps. And perhaps it is not an unreasonable request if the people who have found a measure of inspiration in those brief and detached fragments from the Hudson journal should want to see the whole of it.
This book is related to Magnificent Obsession as an overture rather than a sequel. Therefore it may be read without any bewilderment by persons unacquainted with the novel.
But it is only natural if, during the belated composition of this journal, the author should have visualized an audience largely composed of those to whom Doctor Hudson is no stranger. I find myself surveying this audience—however widely scattered over the earth—as an assembly of people friendly to one another—and to me. I feel that we are somehow related in a common cause, a common quest. In this audience there are many hundreds of gracious souls to whom I am indebted for confidences and comradeships which have enriched my life and emphasized for me the significance of spiritual forces.
I am particularly hopeful that this book may be approved by my friends of the clergy who were primarily responsible for the wide distribution of the novel. Too frequently one hears discrediting criticism of the ministers on the ground that they are too much occupied with the material success of their own denominations; that they are inhospitable to new evaluations of enduring verities; that they are more concerned with "churchianity" than Christianity. This indictment is, for the most part, unfair.
In Magnificent Obsession there was no talk about the importance of attending religious services or supporting religious institutions in any manner whatsoever. Nobody in the book ever put his nose inside a church, except on one occasion when Bobby Merrick went to hear his friend. Doctor McLaren, by special and urgent invitation.
This attitude was not intended to convey a feeling of disregard for religious organizations on the part of the author. The Church was conspicuously and wilfully omitted from the story for the reason that in almost all of the "religious" novels the Church serves as the axis on which the plot spins. It was my hope to interest not only the people who rely upon the Church for their moral and spiritual instruction but to suggest a way of life to many others—seldom approached in this manner—who have never looked to the Church for answers to their riddles.
It was with some trepidation that the author adopted this course, for he had spent most of his life in the service of the Church; his closest friends were church people; he hoped they would take no offence; he wondered if they would understand. And they understood.
In spite of the fact that Magnificent Obsession had almost nothing to do with the Church, plus the fact that most of the people in the novel were distinctly worldly, and some were addicted to debatable habits, and a few were shockingly profane, it was the clergy of America and the British Empire who carried that novel to success. They may have wished that it contained fewer cuss-words and cocktails, but they had the sportsmanship to overlook the frailties it admitted and approve the faith it upheld. It was well worth the bother of writing a novel—just to find that out.
FACSIMILE OF FIRST PAGE OF THE HUDSON JOURNAL
TRANSLATION:
Reader I consider you my friend and commend your perseverance. Having achieved the ability to read this book, you have also the right to possess it. My reasons for doing this in cipher will be made plain as you proceed.
BRIGHTWOOD HOSPITAL, DETROIT, MICHIGANOctober sixth, 1913, 11 p.m.
THIS has been an eventful day. We formally opened our new hospital this afternoon. The city's medical profession was ably represented and many of our well-to-do philanthropists came for tea and a tour of inspection.
Everybody commented on our astounding luck in disposing of the shabby old building in Cadillac Square[2] for a quarter of a million. Lucky, they said, that our site had been chosen for the new skyscraping office building. And what a lucky dog I was, added the mayor, that this exquisitely landscaped four-acre tract came onto the market just as we had begun to look for a new location.
I nodded an appreciative assent to all of these pleasant comments on my good luck, but felt rather traitorous; for it wasn't luck. Nothing that has happened to me since June of 1905 could be properly called luck. I am in the grip of something that I don't understand; but, whatever it is, there's nothing capricious about it.
But if I had blurted out some such remark to the mayor or good old Mrs. Arlington, or Nick Merrick, there would have been a lot of explaining to do (or dodge) so I cheerfully agreed with them that I was lucky. Had I told them the whole story about our acquirement of the new hospital, they would have thought me stark mad.
Billy Werner called up from New York, about four, to offer congratulations and regret he could not be here. He said, "We're square now, Doc, except for the interest on that loan." And I said, "Don't ever try to pay that back, Billy. It might upset the apple-cart."
Frequently, during these past few years, I have fairly burned with desire to confide in someone. The weight of my secrets has been almost crushing at times. But I have this load to carry alone as long as I live. The strange events which have come to pass through my private investments do not permit of an airing: their good results might be jeopardized. I know a few other people whom I suspect of bearing the same sort of burden, but we can't discuss it. I often wonder if it is not more difficult to suppress a great exaltation than to conceal a secret sorrow.
An hour ago, Nancy Ashford paused at my office door to say good night. She was drooping a little with fatigue from the day's unusual excitements.
"Well," she said, wearily, "you have put over a great project."
I wanted to invite her in and tell her how we got this new hospital. It wouldn't have taken very long. She knows the beginning of the story. I needed only to say, "Nancy, do you remember the woman we had with us for six months, the one with the broken neck?"
And Nancy would have replied, "Of course—Mrs. Werner—and her husband was sore about the bills."
I would have gone on from there. Mrs. Werner had had the best room in the hospital and a deal of extra attention, much of which was unnecessary but expensive. Everybody assumed that the Werners were wealthy. He had a big store downtown, and they lived in a beautiful home. There was a rumour that they were extravagant. She was always travelling about, and he was reputed a gambler.
It wasn't my job to supervise hospital statements, but Werner's must have been pretty high. When he was billed for the surgery, the amount was not excessive, but it was in the same general bracket with the other expenses of his wife's illness. I was not informed, until some time afterwards, that when he paid the bill he made quite a scene, protesting that he had been overcharged.
About that time there was a story afloat about town that Werner was in serious straits financially. He had offended the president of his bank and had been unreasonably cocky with almost everybody else. He had no one to turn to in his emergency. Perhaps his irascibility, in his dealings with us, was all of a piece with his other blunders. But—once upon a time he had been able to build up a fine business. Something had happened to him. He needed to be rehabilitated.
One morning, in The Free Press, I noticed a conspicuous advertisement of Werner's home for sale at a cruel sacrifice. On impulse, I went down to his office immediately. He was reluctant to see me and greeted me with a glum grunt and a surly scowl. I told him I had come to lend him twenty thousand—the amount he had asked for his house. He could put that into his business, and perhaps save his home. He was suspicious, and wanted to know what rate of interest I expected. I said I didn't want any interest because I intended to use it for another purpose. He asked me if I was feeling well, and brought me a drink of water.
Of course, that small loan wouldn't have been a drop in his dry bucket, considered as mere dollars and cents. But the fact that I had volunteered to let him have it when he was all but on the rocks, and it seemed like pouring so much money into a rat-hole—and he knew that I knew it—had the effect of a shot of strychnine.
He paced up and down the room, for a minute or two, and then snapped out, "Thanks, Doc. You'll not regret it."
"Not if you keep it a secret," I replied. "This must not be told.[1q]"
I made no effort to keep track of his activities but it was evident that Werner had gone at it again with tremendous energy. Perhaps he plunged recklessly. I do not know the details of that story. But soon he was enlarging his store and in command of his mercantile field. Three years after that, he organized the company that put up the new office building. Because he had conceived the project, his board of directors deferred to his judgment in many matters including the selection of a site. He urged the purchase of our old hospital.
So—that's the way we got the new hospital. But I couldn't recite any of this even to Nancy, who would have been stirred and mystified by the story. I can hear the way she would have murmured, "Well—of all things!"
I did not detain her. I simply smiled, nodded, and told her to go to bed; that she had earned a good night's rest. A remarkable woman. Sometimes I wonder how much she knows about my odd investments. She has witnessed my signature, occasionally, on papers that must have excited her curiosity. Perhaps she thinks I am living a double life. I should like to set her mind at ease about that. But it is impossible. My lips are sealed. She will have to draw her own conclusions.
* * * * *
I suppose I should be content with the rewards of my dynamic discovery, even if not permitted to disclose it to others. It has brought me innumerable satisfactions; an excellent rating in a difficult field of surgery, a position of influence in civic affairs, a comfortable home, and—above all—the enduring gratitude of a large number of persons whose lives have been reconditioned through these investments.
But it is a lonesome sensation, sometimes, to feel that one is in league with a catalytic force as versatile as electricity, prompt as dynamite, stirring as a symphony, warm as a handclasp—but available only on condition that one does not tell. To confide what one has done to achieve this peculiar power might be very costly, not only to oneself but to others whose welfare is integrally related to one's own success.
Not to confide it, especially to one's close and trusted friends, seems unconscionably selfish; yet there is no way—so far as I know—for confiding the theory unless one divulges the practice, which would necessitate a narrative of specific events.
But for a long time I have had it in mind to record at least a few of these facts for the guidance and encouragement of someone who might wish to experiment with this thing after I am gone. To record some of these events in a private journal and deposit the book in my safe would seem entirely feasible, except for the risk that the book might fall into the hands of some person who would read it without imagination or the slightest glimmer of sympathetic understanding. Hence my decision to write the book in cipher. I do not think that anyone will go through the drudgery of decoding it unless he is interested in the contents. Whenever he finds that the job isn't worth the bother, the reader can quit. And the sooner he quits, the safer the secret.
I would give a good deal to know—at this writing—what sort of person will have the time, patience, and disposition to translate this book. I hope he will not be in too much of a hurry to learn the secret. I intend to approach the matter with a deliberation that may exasperate my reader. But if he isn't concerned enough to persevere, he probably would not know how to use the secret even if he discovered it.
If you have got this far, my friend, perhaps you will have decided that I am crazy. This will be incorrect. I have contrived to lay hold upon a principle that has expanded my life and multiplied my normal energies. I have a consuming curiosity to know more about this thing; and if you are still engaged in deciphering this book you share this curiosity. If I am crazy for writing it, you are equally crazy for reading it. I warn you that if you go much farther, it will get you, as it got me. But I am not crazy.
Eventually the time may come, though I shall not live to see it, when mental aberrations are regarded with the same sympathy now bestowed upon physical disabilities. As the matter stands at present, while it is no disgrace to have an ailment of the heart, you are viewed with aversion if there is anything wrong with your head. I understand this feeling; and, to a considerable extent, share it myself.
Of course, when I am dealing professionally with a brain tumour, my patient's mental disorder does not offend or annoy me, for I have a scientific interest in his dementia as an inevitable concomitant to the pressure on his brain. Indeed, the phenomena of his lunacy sometimes aid me in defining the field of the pressure.
But—professional curiosity aside—I am very uncomfortable in the society of people whose minds are upset. I dislike hysterics. I have a strong distaste for exhibitionism in any of its manifestations. I have no use for the mentality that hankers to be unique. I have no patience at all with eccentrics who go chasing about after ridiculous isms and fantastic ologies. I like normal people and I should like to be considered normal myself.
When a man tells me that his Aunt Alicia roused suddenly in the middle of the night, dressed, packed a bag, and took a train, at the behest of some esoteric hunch that her bankrupt nephew was on the brink of a tragedy, and arrived at the nick of time to talk him out of his revolver and into a new resolution, I instinctively add this fellow's name to the list of those with whom I shall not be going on a canoe-trip around the world.
I try to avoid the balmy, the monomaniacs, the religious fanatics, the obsessed, except in my hospital where it is my business to see them. I would walk a mile to escape a conversation with somebody who had gone in for spiritualism, astrology, yogism, or an expectation of the return of Christ by a week from Tuesday. I take no stock in magic. Belief in the supernatural comes hard with me. I automatically shy off at reports of miracles, both classic and contemporary.
And the reason I am so tiresomely insistent upon the orderly and conservative nature of my own mind, and my distaste for persons with odd kinks, quirks, maggots, crotchets, hallucinations, and various benign psychoses, is that I want the reader of this journal to believe that I am as sane as anybody he knows. I insist on this, at the outset, my friend, for I shall be documenting some very strange events.
It is broad daylight now, and we are both weary. I have to be in the operating chamber at ten, and I assume that you, too, have something important to do. It is unlikely that an idle person would have access to this book.
AT HOMEOctober tenth, 1913, 9.30 p.m.
IT all began on a fine June morning in 1905. Nothing has been the same since. Life took on a new meaning, that day.
It was the first anniversary of my wife's death. I had found it hard to reconcile myself to that loss, and the recurrence of the date revived in sharp detail the whole pitiful story of Joyce's unwilling departure and my unspeakable desolation.
For some time it had been in my mind to order a suitable marker for her grave. I had been tardy about it, hoping that my financial circumstances might improve. But there was no sign of such improvement. My affairs were growing more dismaying.
Restless and lonely, I resolved to visit some concern dealing in memorial stones and see whether I could afford to honour my dear girl's grave with a little monument. It was while engaged in this errand that I came by the secret of personal power.
Joyce and I had been very companionable. Not only were we naturally congenial, but her long illness had bound us together in a tender intimacy hardly to be achieved under any other circumstance. During the last year of her life, which we spent in Tucson, I made no attempt to do anything but keep her comfortable and amused. I tried to stand between her and all the little jars and irks and shocks. When the baby cried, I promptly found out what she wanted and got it for her. I have been doing that ever since, and if she isn't a spoiled child she has every right to be.
I loved my wife no more for her devotion to me than my own sympathy for her. I think we love best those whom we serve most zealously. It is an ennobling experience to love anyone in need of tender ministries. The time comes when nothing else matters much but the happiness of one's beloved.
There are plenty of afflictions more difficult to deal with than pulmonary tuberculosis. The patient is usually hopeful, cheerful, wistful. As physical vitality ebbs, the psychical forces flow with the strength and speed of a harvest tide.
If it ever becomes your destiny to entertain an invalid over any considerable length of time, it will be to your advantage if the patient's disability has not struck him below the belt. Your heart and lung people are optimists.
Of course I couldn't help knowing that Joyce was doomed. Had she been only one-tenth as sweet and patient, my sense of obligation to her would have kept me by her side. But I sincerely enjoyed that final year with her. We read innumerable books, lounged in the sun, swam in the pool, played together like children; and all this at a period of my career when—under normal conditions—I should have been working eighteen hours of every twenty-four to get a start in my profession.
Once in a while I would be swept by a surge of dismay over my inability to do anything at all when it was so obvious that I should have been going forward with my vocation. But these misgivings gripped me less frequently and more feebly as the days passed. The sunshine was genial, the air was sedative, my excuse for indolence was valid. I almost forgot I wanted to be a doctor.
Even now, after more than nine years, I cannot bring myself to the point of relating the events of Joyce's last hours, the sad and all but interminable journey home, the funeral, and—afterwards—the enervating depression; the feeling that life was barely worth the bother; the almost sickening aversion to the thought of resuming the old routine in the clinic.
