When they sweated
him for Bright's disease to remove the fat from the kidneys, Dan Cullen
contended that the sweating was hastening his death; while Bright's
disease, being a wasting away of the kidneys, there was therefore no fat
to remove, and the doctor's excuse was a palpable lie. Whereupon the
doctor became wroth, and did not come near him for nine days.
Then his bed was tilted up so that his feet and legs were elevated. At
once dropsy appeared in the body, and Dan Cullen contended that the thing
was done in order to run the water down into his body from his legs and
kill him more quickly. He demanded his discharge, though they told him
he would die on the stairs, and dragged himself, more dead than alive, to
the cobbler's shop. At the moment of writing this, he is dying at the
Temperance Hospital, into which place his staunch friend, the cobbler,
moved heaven and earth to have him admitted.
Poor Dan Cullen! A Jude the Obscure, who reached out after knowledge;
who toiled with his body in the day and studied in the watches of the
night; who dreamed his dream and struck valiantly for the Cause; a
patriot, a lover of human freedom, and a fighter unafraid; and in the
end, not gigantic enough to beat down the conditions which baffled and
stifled him, a cynic and a pessimist, gasping his final agony on a
pauper's couch in a charity ward,--"For a man to die who might have been
wise and was not, this I call a tragedy.
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