Martyrs of Science by S. Henry Berthoud

Author:S. Henry Berthoud [Berthoud, S. Henry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Black Coat Press
Published: 2014-04-12T00:00:00+00:00

Jean swilled another glass of champagne and continued his story.

“After the fatal days whose details I have just related, nothing could extract Salomon from the profound melancholy into which the accident suffered by his daughter had thrown him. As for the poor mother, she put all her faith in God; she spent almost every day at the church, invoking the Virgin on behalf of her child.

“Diane explained her husband’s preoccupation to herself by the desire that was devouring him to cure little Marie and return her sight to her. Salomon, she said to herself, is studying the causes of the evil in order to be able to combat it effectively and triumph over it.

“It was not the same with Salomon’s neighbors, for they accused him of madness—and, in fact, one could not abstain from sharing that supposition in the presence of the changes that overtook the behavior of Marie’s father. Pale and thin, his complexion wan and his hair unkempt, dressed in a negligent fashion, there was a strange gaze in his distracted eye that only belongs to the insane. Six months had aged him ten years. Already, white hairs were mingled with the long curls that fell in disorder about his neck, and profound wrinkles were hollowed it on his once-cheerful and expansive forehead.

“Furthermore, in the midst of that absolute forgetfulness of real life and the gravest interests, an unprecedented activity devoured him. He did not have a minute to devote to the duties of his profession, the concerns of his business or the direction of the community of which he was an alderman. He scarcely remembered that he was a husband and father, but spent his days and nights consuming himself in meditation and study. He continually undertook long and distant journeys. He left for Germany, for England, for Italy, suddenly and without any apparent reason.

“Before separating himself from them, he scarcely fond time negligently to embrace his wife and his daughter—his daughter, who could no longer see him and held out her arms to him, weeping.

“When he quit his house and family like that he often forgot to take the necessary underwear; often, he even set off without any money—but he never neglected to take the witch’s cooking-pot. It accompanied him on his slightest excursions; he was scarcely able to consent to be separated from it when he was only leaving the house for a few hours. Always hunched over that instrument of evil, he seemed to be attached to it by a magical power.

“The abandonment to which Salomon yielded his fortune did not take long to bear fruit. The neglected pharmacy gradually lost customers, and an accident soon discredited it.

“One day, when Diane’s husband chance to be at his counter, a local resident brought in a prescription written by one of the city’s most renowned physicians. Salomon prepared the medicament personally. An hour later, the invalid, who had previously only experienced a slight indisposition, died in the most frightful agony.

“The medical examiners summoned declared that a pharmaceutical error committed by Salomon had killed the unfortunate victim of culpable distraction.

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