Reference
X955/1/42
Title
To Mrs Sarah Colenutt
Date free text
18 Aug 1887
Production date
From: 1887 To: 1887
Scope and Content
Admiralty
My dear friend,
I am very glad to hear of George’s engagement. So the world rolls on. Willies’ wife expects to present him with something in about a month or six weeks.
I am much distressed about your husband. Hobbes, the great philosopher, said that compassion was nothing more than a lively feeling of the possibility of the suffering we compassionate being someday our own. This cannot be true, for I have already had nine months blasted by stomachic derangement to such a degree that I have longed intensely for the end of life. No tongue can tell the mental agony I have gone through. Doctors cannot help you. How can they? Abernethy (1), the famous old physician, says that the stomach with many persons decays with years; gets old, in fact, and what medicine can renew old age? This is the most sensible thing I have read on the subject. He adds that the only remedy is to be extremely particular in quantity ; not to trust the appetite as a guide to this matter; to eat and drink nothing found to disagree; never to eat and drink together, and to take or rather to sip water three hours after meals. It is curious that this advice of Abernethy.s remains unchanged law to the present day. My doctor tells me just the same, adding that water should be hot, and no liquid food should ever be gulped. I have found no shadow of relief except through these simple rules, and even they have only power to mitigate. Abernethy resolutely restricted many of his patients to 12 and 16 oz. of solid food daily of the most nourishing kind, and quotes Cornaro, an Italian gentleman, whose life I have in my little library. His health broke down when he was about 33, and he had the wit to discover what was wrong. He lived in perfect health on 12oz. daily and 2oz of wine till he was about 100 years old. But, as I observed before, nothing but a miracle can heal or restore an organ debilitated through age. This is the case with me and my friend Richard.
With best love
Ever affectionately,
W. Hale White
1) May be Abernethy, John (1764–1831), surgeon
Level of description
item