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Sunday, November 16, 2003I am the cat. It is not, exactly, that I have something to ask of You! No- I ask nothing of anyone - but, if You have by some chance, in some celestial barn, a little white mouse, or a saucer of milk, I know someone who would relish them. Wouldn’t You like someday to put a curse on the whole race of dogs? If so I should say, Amen. The rest of the poems are just as representative of their respective animals. Check it out. And then, there was this passage from a biography of Martha Washington that I’ve been reading, that’s too good not to be shared. It’s a letter from a physician who was called to Mount Vernon when George Washington took ill. He arrived late. The body had already been laid out on the dining room table. But, in the spirit of Frankenstein, he was undaunted: When the great and excellent man died, Thomas Law....and his lady....called on me to visit the General as a friend and physician, for he was dying of croup. I departed in the fullest confidence of being able to relieve him, by tracheotomy. When we arrived to my unspeakable grief, we found him laid out a stiffend corpse... The weather was very cold, and he remained in a frozen state, for several days. I proposed to attempt his restoration, in the following manner. First to thaw him in cold water, then to lay him in blankets, and by degrees and by friction to give him warmth, and to put into activity the minute blood vessels, at the same time to open a passage to his lungs by the trachea, and to inflate them with air, to produce an artificial respiration, and to transfuse blood into him from a lamb. Now, that might have been politically motivated. CLARIFICATION: The doctor never did get to test his experiment. Better heads prevailed. posted by Sydney on 11/16/2003 05:36:00 PM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
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