Pitigrilli: Cocaine

“Calm down, calm down, my love,” Maud said to him again. “He’s feverish. Should we give him a morphine injection, doctor?”

“It’s not necessary,” the doctor replied. “We shall now give him the blood test. As a result,” the physician explained while he tied two cords round the patient’s arm to make his veins swell, “we shall know for certain that he’s not suffering from typhoid. I’m more than convinced of it already. There’s no swelling of the spleen, and there’s no rash.”

In spite of the fever Tito still understood something of what was said and had brief flashes of lucidity. When he heard the word rash he said: “There’s no rash, but there are the bacteria. Who knows how many thousands of millions I’ve swallowed.”

When the vein had swollen the doctor pricked it with a syringe, extracted some blood, put it into a sterile tube, and took it away.

The doctor came back next day (Tito had slept excellently) and announced that the result was negative. None of the various kinds of typhoid or paratyphoid A or paratyphoid B were present.

“So we can be satisfied on that point,” he said. “It’s not typhoid. To make still more certain we can, if we like, apply the urine test, Ehrlich’s so-called diazo reagent.”

“Let us do so, then.”

“Certainly. In the meantime go on eating and persist with the enemas.”

Tito still believed himself to be under the hallucinatory influence of cocaine. He knew that the treatment for the disease from which he was suffering was to leave the organism alone as much as possible but, though they tormented him with those jets of water and forced him to eat, he did not die. In fact he felt better. He was undergoing exactly the opposite of what was scientifically prescribed for typhoid, but his condition did not deteriorate.

“The diazo reagent has been negative too,” the doctor announced triumphantly on his fourth visit. “In any case, we excluded typhoid from the outset. And I note with pleasure that there has been a distinct improvement.”

“Yes,” said Maud. “He’s very agitated in the morning and the evening, but he’s calm in the afternoon.”

“It’s as if the bacteria took an afternoon rest,” Tito remarked.

“But he still has a temperature.”

“It’ll go down,” the doctor promised, as he put on his overcoat.

After he left, Nocera said to Maud: “I don’t see any improvement. To me he seems to be just the same as on the first day.”

“Shall we get another opinion?”

“That’s what I should do.”

Tito had no objection. He would have agreed if they had suggested sending for an electrician or giving him vitriol to drink.

Another doctor came. He was a typical physician of the old school. He remained standing by the bed with his arms crossed over his belly as if he were leaning on a windowsill. He felt the patient’s pulse, looked at his tongue, consulted his watch and a thermometer, and went through the usual exorcistic routine.

“Who’s your doctor?” he asked.

Nocera mentioned a name. The doctor made a grimace that betrayed what he thought.

“And what did he say?”

“A blood infection. Septicemia.”

“Rubbish,” said the doctor. “This gentleman has…”

The patient thought he saw the word “typhoid” forming on the doctor’s lips. But what he said was: “Mediterranean fever.”

“What did you say?”

“Malta fever.”

“Is it serious?”

“No. Serotherapy works wonders in these cases. What we need is Wright’s vaccine. We must act speedily. The first thing to do is to stop the previous treatment. I’ll go and get the vaccine and I’ll be back in an hour.”

This serious-minded doctor read the medical press and fell in love with the latest methods. A patient of his had died of Mediterranean fever six months before, and since then he had seen nothing but Mediterranean fever in all his patients.

“It’s perfectly simple,” he explained to Tito. “I shall inject several thousand million attenuated bacteria into your blood. Do you see this test tube? It contains three thousand million.”

The patient behaved like a martyr. He allowed himself to be injected without betraying the slightest feeling, either on his face or in the place where the needle went in. He simply said: “You’ve injected me with the bacteria of Malta fever, doctor, haven’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Now, assuming for the sake of argument that I did not have that disease, that would have given it to me, wouldn’t it?”

“Of course.”

“So if your diagnosis is mistaken and I have typhoid, for instance, I should now have two diseases.”

“Certainly. But you haven’t got typhoid.”

“I know, I know,” the patient hastily added. It was just a hypothesis, an amusing hypothesis.”

So Tito now knew he had two diseases, typhoid and Malta fever. If I don’t die of the one I’ll die of the other, he said to himself.

His temperature, which had dropped, rose again, and he had bad pains all over his body.

“It’s nothing,” said the serious doctor. Those are the reactions invariably produced by Wright’s vaccine in these cases. It’s all perfectly normal and shows that my diagnosis was correct. It’s a very good omen.”

Maud and Nocera were not very satisfied with either of these doctors.

“As the first doctor was wrong, the second may be wrong too. The first one diagnosed a disease and made tests which satisfied him he was right. The second one diagnosed another disease and made tests which satisfied him that he was right too. I’d have a third opinion, and I’d call in the most famous doctor in the city.”

Before evening fell the famous, infallible medical luminary, that high priest of science, the greatest doctor in Turin appeared in Tito’s room.

He shook hands in a dignified manner with the other two doctors and said: “It’s typhoid. Even a dentist could see that.”

“Impossible,” exclaimed the first doctor.

“Have you tried Vidal’s test?”

“Yes.”

“How many times?”

“Once.”

“That’s not enough,” the luminary exclaimed. “Do it again.”

At last Tito was being treated by a doctor, obviously sent by destiny, who would cure him. Again he had blood extracted from a vein. This time the result was positive: one per cent.

“So it is typhoid?” he said.

“Yes,” all three doctors agreed.

And Tito said to himself: So far they haven’t cured me because they did not diagnose my disease. Now that they have recognized it they’ll prescribe the correct treatment, and I shall get better.

“You mustn’t have anything to eat,” the famous doctor said.

And Tito said to himself: I knew very well that if you have typhoid you mustn’t eat.

“And no more enemas.”

Tito was secretly delighted. He knew very well that the bowels must be left alone.

In fact the famous doctor turned to the other two and said: “If you give him an enema you’ll kill him. Even a midwife would know that.”

All the same Tito said to himself, they gave me twenty-four and I’m still alive. And they were just like the Niagara Falls.

“He must have cold baths to bring down his temperature. Do you understand?”

“Yes, doctor,” Maud, Nocera and the landlady replied.

“Afterwards he must be put back to bed immediately. We’ll come back tomorrow.”

And they left.

The patient felt he was coming back to life. It was not surprising that treatment for the wrong disease should be ineffective. But when the diagnosis was correct… And in this case there was no doubt that it was correct, for he was very well aware of having drunk a whole tube of bacteria culture on which the word “typhoid” was written.