Term Paper on "Mark Twain: The Influence Psychology and Medicine"

Term Paper 15 pages (4576 words) Sources: 1+

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Mark Twain: The Influence Psychology and Medicine Had on His Writing

Mark Twain is much, much more than just the high successful and revered author of Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer and his other novels. Indeed, in his brilliant career he wrote about highly important social and political issues in America - most of which has not been noticed by the general public, the reading public in this country.

Hence, this paper will focus on the writings, thoughts, proposals and musings Mark Twain engaged in with reference to medicine and psychology. It will also focus on what writers and critics have had to say about Twain's interest in and writing about medicine and psychology.

And in the interest of consistency, this paper will always refer to the real person, Samuel Clemens, as the author, Mark Twain, even though the writer and the man are often two distinct characters and during his youth, which will be discussed, he surely was Samuel Clemens.

Medicine and Mark Twain

Twain and warts - strange medicine indeed There was nothing grim or death-like about Twain's letter to the editor of the New York Sun, titled "How to Remove Warts and Tattoo Marks," reprinted in the ANQ journal (Scharnhorst, 2004). In the letter, published in April, 1889, Twain starts out explaining that there are "three hundred and sixty-eight ways" of removing warts. The one he tried first, after getting "wartier and wartier," was to drive a needle down "into the basement of the wart," then put a candle flame to the other end of the needle, and let the needle become red hot.

The hot needle "proceeded to cook the wart," and then to finish the job, Twain again drove the needle in and cooked it until the roots of the wart were also cooked. "Twenty-four hours later the wart would become soft and flabby," and could be removed with "a single wipe" of his hand.

Twain in medicine in general

It is dreadful to think of you in ill health...Lord save us all from old age and broken health and a hope-tree that has lost the faculty of putting out blossoms" - Mark Twain's letter to an old newspaper colleague, Joe Goodman, quoted in Patrick Ober's book, Mark Twain and Medicine: 'Any Mummy will cure', on page 244.

In exploring the fascinating and lively Mark Twain health issue subjects, and locating the appropriate research, author Patrick K. Ober offers a very worthy book; his work is rich with detailed information and thoughtful analysis regarding Twain's interest in - and antipathy for - the practice of medicine. It would seem that Ober perhaps even aspires to be thought of as a writer (like Twain) who commands respect yet invokes humor through narrative, allegory, and irony.

Indeed, in his Introduction, Ober explains that his book is presented for "three interrelated audiences" and that it has "three overlapping goals in mind" - and he uses some patented Twain-like humor in describing those three audiences: they are (1) "Mark Twain enthusiasts" who need to know more about how Twain "loved to use the imagery of medicine"; (2) "those who periodically and innocently subject themselves to the care of physicians...and those who find themselves functioning in the role of physicians"; (3) those who need to know that "Twain wrote some funny stuff about measles" but otherwise "might have little interest in the history of Mark Twain."

It is well-known that death and disease were part of the human landscape during the time the West was being settled, in the early to late 19th Century. Ober notes (p. 24) that the Hannibal Gazette (June 3, 1847) reported that "25% of children in that area were expected to die before their first birthday." Further, some 50% of children during that era "would be in their graves by the age of twenty-one."

And it is also well documented that Twain himself was lucky to live through his young years, as three of his parents' first five children died prior to reaching eleven years of age, and Twain was not very strong as an infant. Twain "was scrawny, sickly, and puny...the type of runt who had little chance to make it out of childhood."

At the age of seven, Ober writes, Twain was "so ill" and came "so near to going to heaven" that it is a wonder he lived. Ober quotes Twain (p. 25) as recalling his dance with near-death: "I had begun to die; the family were grouped for the function; they were familiar with it; so was I."

Twain's writing about Doctor Joseph McDowell, from the St. Louis and Hannibal areas - whom Ober goes to great lengths to describe ("the highly peculiar Dr. McDowell" who was a "medical legend" and "highly respected" yet "a man of extremes") - is classic Twain in every sense. "He was a good doctor...and he had a good heart, but one had to know him a year to get over hating him, two years to learn to endure him..." (92).

Twain story based on fictionalizing Dr. McDowell

In quoting from Twain's Autobiography, author Ober offers the reader some tasty phrases, not just on McDowell, but by inference, which is important to understand when reading Twain, on the state of medical science during that period in America's history.

McDowell had been called to help a lady who "was very ill and had been given up by her doctors," Twain wrote. The doctor had "a quarter of an acre of gingerbread under his arm, and while he looked meditatively about he broke hunks from his cake, munched them, and let the crumbs dribble down his breast to the floor."

The ill lady "laid pale and still" as the family sobbed and kneeled around her bed. One by one, McDowell sniffed medicine bottles and tossed them out a window, then he laid the gingerbread slab on the woman's breast "and said roughly: 'What are the idiots sniveling about? There's nothing the matter with this humbug. Put out your tongue!'"

Just as the "angry mourners" began to "upbraid the doctor for his cruel behavior," he interrupted them with the retort that "...there is nothing the matter with the woman - nothing the matter but laziness." He also critiqued her "damned society training..." At which time "the dying woman rose up in bed" and "poured out upon the doctor her whole insulted mind - just a volcanic irruption, accompanied by thunder and lightning, whirlwinds and earthquakes..." And more. And in the end, "it brought the reaction he was after and she got well." critic's analysis of Ober's book

While this book is well-stocked with excerpted Twain tales like the one above, and it is certainly well-researched and well-written, it is "overwhelmed" by Twain's personality, according to an article in Journal of American Culture (Browne, 2004). "Though the subject is nominally Mark Twain and medicine, it really is about the humor that Twain used in dealing with medicine and doctors," Browne writes.

The book is therefore a two-strike triumph," since it offers readers both Twain and his world of medicine, and both add up to "a hilarious recapitulation of Twain's life in, against, and humorous treatment of, illness," Browne asserts.

It also worth noting that the book, and Browne's analysis of it, shows clearly that Twain had a contempt for doctors, no doubt because his wife Livy was ill much of her life, and his daughters Susy and Jane suffered from numerous illnesses. Twain "devoted much of his life to chasing cures for his favorite people and to hatred of the medical profession, and humanity in general for not providing the help he needed," Browne contends.

Twain himself had gout, Ober reports, and though "each flare of the disease caused misery," "it never threatened his survival." There was no surviving though, for his daughter Jean: she died on Christmas Eve, 1909, "from a seizure in her bathtub," Ober writes on page 245. And he quotes a very bitter Twain: "How poor I am, who was once so rich!" And he continues on page 246: "In her loss I am almost bankrupt, and my life is bitterness, but I am content: for she has been enriched with the most precious of all gifts - that gift which makes all other gifts mean and poor - death." Four months later, Twain died, "disconsolate and devoid of hope."

In Twain's book What is Man? And Other Essays, he writes about how, the night before her death, Jean was "all flushed with splendid health" (82), and how Twain walked his daughter to her room and she said, "I can't kiss you good night father: I have a cold, and you could catch it."

But the next morning, when Twain learned of his daughter's sudden death, he then knew "what the soldier feels when a bullet crashes through his heart." There was "the fair young creature, stretched upon the floor and covered with a sheet...as if asleep." Twain had a way of speaking about his contempt… READ MORE

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