Elias Nason, The Life and Times of Charles Sumner: His Boyhood, Education and Public Career.

[241] “Fire.” “When can you apply it?” said Mr. Sumner. “To-morrow, if you please,” answered the doctor. “Why not this afternoon?” continued the other; and that afternoon it was done by the moxa,¹ and afterwards repeated, without the use of chloroform. The diagnosis and the treatment of this case are, on account of their unusual interest, here given in the words of this distinguished physiologist and practitioner as presented by him in a public lecture:--

When, in 1857, I saw Mr. Charles Sumner for the first time, he presented to me at once symptoms which I could not but recognize as dependent upon an irritation of some fibres of a sympathetic nerve, and a paralysis of others. As you know, he received a terrible blow upon the head. His spine as he was sitting had been bent in two places, the cranium fortunately resisting. This bending of the spine in two places had produced there the effects of a sprain. When I saw him in Paris he had recovered altogether from the first effects of the blow. He suffered only from the two sprains of the spine, and perhaps a slight irritation of the spinal cord itself. He had two troubles at that time. One was that he could not make use of his brain at all. He could not read a newspaper, could not write a letter. He was in a frightful state as regards the activity of the mind, as every effort there was most painful to him. It seemed to him at times as if his head would burst: there seemed to be some great force within pushing the pieces