Narcotics cannot still the Tooth: Emily Dickinson and Anaesthesia
Early in October, 1846, Eben H. Frost sat with his jaw sagging open, as his dentist, Dr. William T.G. Morton, applied the necessary torsion to rip a decayed molar from his jaw. What was extraordinary about this otherwise unnoteworthy scene was the fact that the patient did not writhe, scream or groan as the extraction took place. Nor had he lurched back in the dentist’s chair with the customary exclamations of horror as Dr. Morton approached his face brandishing the appropriate instrument, and there was not even a whimper as the medical gentleman swabbed the blood from his gums and lip. The reason, of course, was that Eben H. Frost had been anaesthetised, and Dr. William T.G. Morton was hoping to become fantastically wealthy as a result of his study.
Dr. Morton had realised that ether might work as a general anaesthetic when a colleague, Dr. Charles T. Jackson, told him that he had been using the clear, cooling, volatile liquid topically to ease pain in the teeth and gums of his patients, and that students at Harvard University were known to soak their handkerchiefs with it and sniff them in order to achieve a high. Morton started experimenting on invertebrates and small mammals, many of which died in the process, but this did not deter him from anaesthetising his dog, who also appeared to be dead for some time before recovering unchanged, apart from a certain aversion to the ether bottle, and, presumably, to his master. Eben H. Frost must have given his dentist a bit of a fright, too, when he remained unresponsive after the extraction, but this was effectively remedied by a glassful of cold water in the face.
Narcotics had been used by doctors with varying degrees of effectiveness from time immemorial. Mandrake was used to knock patients out, but they too often never awoke. Opium, in its enormously popular form, tincture of laudanum, blunted some of the pain of extractions and internal operations, and then addicted its users. At the cruder end of the spectrum, commanders of Naval vessels got their drummer boys to rap out a military tattoo close to the earholes of men whose limbs were being amputated, in a kindly effort to distract them from the pain. But ether, whilst it can cause a degree of respiratory distress, and has long been superseded now, knocked patients out completely, and gave them a more than reasonable chance of awakening with no memory of their recent trauma.
It was time for Dr. Morton to demonstrate his discovery to the world. He did so in the amphitheatre of the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, successfully anaesthetising another patient and excising a tumour from his jaw. The rest of Morton’s life was consumed with legal wranglings and lawsuits as he tried to patent and profit from a discovery that others had clearly had a hand in making. These events occurred approximately 94 miles from Emily Dickinson’s home in Amherst, and they would change the course of medicine forever, saving millions from unspeakable pain and misery.
*
Sixteen years later, in 1862, with the use of anaesthetic ether now an established medical procedure, Dickinson began a poem with a simple sentence, ending with a full-stop. This was unusual for her, but the sentence itself at first glance seems to express a conviction that countless poets, philosophers and theologians had expressed before her:
“This World is not conclusion.”
She might have had Henry Vaughan’s stupendous, visionary poem, ‘The World’, in mind, with its assertion that “I saw Eternity the other night… / And round beneath it, Time in hours, days, years, / Driv’n by the spheres / Like a vast shadow mov’d; in which the world / And all her train were hurl’d.” It sounds like it might be the beginning of a doctrinal statement - an expression of the faith we know Dickinson struggled and failed to attain. An evangelist might wishfully find some sort of hope for Dickinson’s eternal soul in that sentence; she is admitting that life must go on after death, or that the facts of our material existence are not the be-all and end-all. Dickinson has already forewarned us that it can’t be as simple as that, however, by leaving out the definite article, and drawing attention to the ambiguity of the last word of the sentence. A process - a life - reaches a “conclusion”. So does a scientist at the end of an experiment. In fact, it is a sentence which seems calculated to provoke a question: “Conclusion - to what?” We could propose several different answers. This World is not the conclusion to the Creator’s experiment. Science cannot reach ultimate conclusions about the nature of this world. Worldly or empirical considerations are not the only ones which should preoccupy us when we try to reach conclusions about our ethical behaviour. The next sentence seems to confirm that Dickinson has recent scientific controversies in mind:
“A Species stands beyond -
Invisible, as Music -
But positive, as Sound -”
Dickinson, one of the more scientifically-informed poets of the nineteenth century, uses the language of science in order to suggest its limitations. “Species” already had a long history before Darwin published On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, less than three years before this poem was written. Initially used simply to denote a vaguely-defined “type” of plant, animal or other organism, it came to acquire a more specific meaning when John Ray proposed in 1686 that an organism of a given species would always produce offspring of the same species. Rival scientific factions had also debated theories of the fixity of mutability of species long before Darwin; Darwin merely offered an explanation of how species might change over time. But Dickinson’s “Species” is a shadowy figure, unknowable yet somehow imaginable, which “stands” waiting for us at some portal beyond “This World”: the angels of Christian mythology, or human beings resurrected and transformed - or perhaps something totally other, such as the entities which are the origin of utterly terrifying ghost stories. Whatever it is, “Species” specifically denotes that it is something radically other, irreconcilably distinct from us, incomprehensible to human thought.
Yet science itself was increasingly making incursions into the world of the “invisible”. Static electricity was already understood, the Voltaic cell had been invented, and the language of “positive” and negative charges would have been taught to Dickinson - who seems to have favoured the study of scientific electives - in school. She teeters on the brink of considering the possibility that Death, the “undiscovered country” of Hamlet, may not always be an impenetrable mystery to science, but not for long:
“It beckons, and it baffles -
Philosophy, dont know -
And through a Riddle, at the last -
Sagacity, must go -”
The verbs emphasise the ghostlike, supernatural status of this “Species”; its disconcerting, uncanny presence destabilises Dickinson’s grammar. Science and philosophy can only be agnostic in the face of its mystery, which is best approached through the language of poetry - particularly in one of her own favoured verse forms, the “Riddle”. But unlike the “Riddles” and “puzzles” of another genre which is about to experience a surge in popularity in the later nineteenth century - the detective story - there is no possibility of a solution, either through scientific endeavour or self-sacrifice. Conventional wisdom itself must be rejected. None of us are sages. Sherlock Holmes will be able to say how Sir Charles Baskerville died, but not where he has gone now.
“To guess it, puzzles scholars -
To gain it, Men have borne
Contempt of Generations
And Crucifixion, shown -”
None of us are sages, but there is courage in the attempt to understand. Darwin was already enduring the contempt of a significant proportion of his generation as Dickinson wrote this. But if science struggles to maintain its authority in the face of death’s mystery, so does religion:
“Faith slips - and laughs, and rallies -
Blushes, if any see -
Plucks at a twig of Evidence -
And asks a Vane, the way -”
We know from a later poem that there was a weather-vane outside Dickinson’s window, the “Forefinger” of which would occasionally come into view from where she sat writing, if the direction of the wind was right. To ask it “the way” is to ignore the Apostle Paul’s warning to the Ephesians not to be “carried about by every wind of doctrine”. Faith coyly selects its “Evidence” to suit itself - a “twig” of it will do - whereas science, ideally, amasses it before reaching its conclusion. If we allow the pun to do its work, we cannot avoid the suggestion that faith itself is not exempt from the condemnation of the Preacher in the Book of Ecclesiastes when he insists that “all is vanity”.
Much Gesture, from the Pulpit -
Strong Hallelujahs roll -
The religious revivals which swept New England during Dickinson’s early life hinged on the idea that their converts received certitude of salvation, and confidence that the descriptions of the Heavenly realm in the Bible were literally true. The man (because it always was) in the pulpit gesticulated wildly under the influence of this certitude, and was buoyed into greater feats of oratory by the “Hallelujahs” of those in his audience who shared it. Anyone who has ever been in this situation and remained untouched by the enthusiasm whilst others are swept away by it will recognise the weary resignation in Dickinson’s voice - the result of a constant pressure to yield to that certitude and conform to its dogmas.
Karl Marx had already written that “Religion is the opiate of the masses” in 1844, but we have no evidence that Dickinson was aware of this. It was not, however, a new idea even then. In 1797, the Marquis de Sade has his Juliet reprove King Ferdinand for oppressing his people and fearing “the eye of genius”. That, she insists, is “why you encourage ignorance. This opium you feed your people, so that, drugged, they do not feel their hurts, inflicted by you.” The early German Romantic ‘Novalis’ developed the idea in 1798: “Their so-called religion acts merely as an opiate: irritating, numbing, calming their pain out of weakness.” “Faith” might be the anaesthetic which lulls us into thinking we have reached a “conclusion” about what lies beyond “this world”, but all the while, what it is really doing is blunting our appreciation of what science really can comprehend: the things of “this world”.
The concluding lines of Dickinson’s poem put us back into Dr. Morton’s dentist’s chair, with the ether-soaked handkerchief hovering in front of our faces as we attempt to contemplate metaphysics. The opiate can give us the certitude of oblivion, and even a degree of freedom from pain, but it cannot give us solid facts. And even then, Dickinson has a surprise for us. She is only using the dentist’s vocabulary - the situation is rather different:
“Narcotics cannot still the Tooth
That nibbles at the soul -”
Doubt, inquisitiveness, pain - all of these have this in common: they gnaw at the soul like rodents. We can face realities, or we can reach for the narcotics and let ourselves be gnawed away. It’s as true a statement in the context of modern drug-culture, or modern conspiracy theories, as it was during the transitory religious revivalism of Dickinson’s time. The “Tooth” is also that unanswerable question: “What happens to me and my loved ones after death?” I have seen people doing it: shouting “Hallelujah” at the tops of their lungs, as if they could force that impossible certitude upon themselves, desperate for their anodyne. And all the time, the “Tooth” nibbles on, nightmarish, incomprehensible, strangely animal - a Species in its own right.
We have a choice whether or not we take those narcotics and let the Tooth nibble on. Dickinson’s poetry gives us another option – it’s there in her exquisite attention to sound and rhythm, in her evident joy at the arrival of Bobolinks and Robins, in her determination to keep the Sabbath in her own garden. We can embrace this World. And if we do that, there is a moral imperative that we must treasure and conserve it, and not be anaesthetised to the threats it faces as a result of our own activity - the fact, for example, that Hemlock trees are facing extinction because of an aphid imported to the United States by horticulturalists, and that the best hope for their species is the introduction of the Hemlock Woolly Adelgid’s natural beetle predators.
Accept that although this world is not conclusion, this world is all that we can know, and we are ethically bound to listen to science.
Dr. Morton had realised that ether might work as a general anaesthetic when a colleague, Dr. Charles T. Jackson, told him that he had been using the clear, cooling, volatile liquid topically to ease pain in the teeth and gums of his patients, and that students at Harvard University were known to soak their handkerchiefs with it and sniff them in order to achieve a high. Morton started experimenting on invertebrates and small mammals, many of which died in the process, but this did not deter him from anaesthetising his dog, who also appeared to be dead for some time before recovering unchanged, apart from a certain aversion to the ether bottle, and, presumably, to his master. Eben H. Frost must have given his dentist a bit of a fright, too, when he remained unresponsive after the extraction, but this was effectively remedied by a glassful of cold water in the face.
Narcotics had been used by doctors with varying degrees of effectiveness from time immemorial. Mandrake was used to knock patients out, but they too often never awoke. Opium, in its enormously popular form, tincture of laudanum, blunted some of the pain of extractions and internal operations, and then addicted its users. At the cruder end of the spectrum, commanders of Naval vessels got their drummer boys to rap out a military tattoo close to the earholes of men whose limbs were being amputated, in a kindly effort to distract them from the pain. But ether, whilst it can cause a degree of respiratory distress, and has long been superseded now, knocked patients out completely, and gave them a more than reasonable chance of awakening with no memory of their recent trauma.
It was time for Dr. Morton to demonstrate his discovery to the world. He did so in the amphitheatre of the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, successfully anaesthetising another patient and excising a tumour from his jaw. The rest of Morton’s life was consumed with legal wranglings and lawsuits as he tried to patent and profit from a discovery that others had clearly had a hand in making. These events occurred approximately 94 miles from Emily Dickinson’s home in Amherst, and they would change the course of medicine forever, saving millions from unspeakable pain and misery.
*
Sixteen years later, in 1862, with the use of anaesthetic ether now an established medical procedure, Dickinson began a poem with a simple sentence, ending with a full-stop. This was unusual for her, but the sentence itself at first glance seems to express a conviction that countless poets, philosophers and theologians had expressed before her:
“This World is not conclusion.”
She might have had Henry Vaughan’s stupendous, visionary poem, ‘The World’, in mind, with its assertion that “I saw Eternity the other night… / And round beneath it, Time in hours, days, years, / Driv’n by the spheres / Like a vast shadow mov’d; in which the world / And all her train were hurl’d.” It sounds like it might be the beginning of a doctrinal statement - an expression of the faith we know Dickinson struggled and failed to attain. An evangelist might wishfully find some sort of hope for Dickinson’s eternal soul in that sentence; she is admitting that life must go on after death, or that the facts of our material existence are not the be-all and end-all. Dickinson has already forewarned us that it can’t be as simple as that, however, by leaving out the definite article, and drawing attention to the ambiguity of the last word of the sentence. A process - a life - reaches a “conclusion”. So does a scientist at the end of an experiment. In fact, it is a sentence which seems calculated to provoke a question: “Conclusion - to what?” We could propose several different answers. This World is not the conclusion to the Creator’s experiment. Science cannot reach ultimate conclusions about the nature of this world. Worldly or empirical considerations are not the only ones which should preoccupy us when we try to reach conclusions about our ethical behaviour. The next sentence seems to confirm that Dickinson has recent scientific controversies in mind:
“A Species stands beyond -
Invisible, as Music -
But positive, as Sound -”
Dickinson, one of the more scientifically-informed poets of the nineteenth century, uses the language of science in order to suggest its limitations. “Species” already had a long history before Darwin published On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, less than three years before this poem was written. Initially used simply to denote a vaguely-defined “type” of plant, animal or other organism, it came to acquire a more specific meaning when John Ray proposed in 1686 that an organism of a given species would always produce offspring of the same species. Rival scientific factions had also debated theories of the fixity of mutability of species long before Darwin; Darwin merely offered an explanation of how species might change over time. But Dickinson’s “Species” is a shadowy figure, unknowable yet somehow imaginable, which “stands” waiting for us at some portal beyond “This World”: the angels of Christian mythology, or human beings resurrected and transformed - or perhaps something totally other, such as the entities which are the origin of utterly terrifying ghost stories. Whatever it is, “Species” specifically denotes that it is something radically other, irreconcilably distinct from us, incomprehensible to human thought.
Yet science itself was increasingly making incursions into the world of the “invisible”. Static electricity was already understood, the Voltaic cell had been invented, and the language of “positive” and negative charges would have been taught to Dickinson - who seems to have favoured the study of scientific electives - in school. She teeters on the brink of considering the possibility that Death, the “undiscovered country” of Hamlet, may not always be an impenetrable mystery to science, but not for long:
“It beckons, and it baffles -
Philosophy, dont know -
And through a Riddle, at the last -
Sagacity, must go -”
The verbs emphasise the ghostlike, supernatural status of this “Species”; its disconcerting, uncanny presence destabilises Dickinson’s grammar. Science and philosophy can only be agnostic in the face of its mystery, which is best approached through the language of poetry - particularly in one of her own favoured verse forms, the “Riddle”. But unlike the “Riddles” and “puzzles” of another genre which is about to experience a surge in popularity in the later nineteenth century - the detective story - there is no possibility of a solution, either through scientific endeavour or self-sacrifice. Conventional wisdom itself must be rejected. None of us are sages. Sherlock Holmes will be able to say how Sir Charles Baskerville died, but not where he has gone now.
“To guess it, puzzles scholars -
To gain it, Men have borne
Contempt of Generations
And Crucifixion, shown -”
None of us are sages, but there is courage in the attempt to understand. Darwin was already enduring the contempt of a significant proportion of his generation as Dickinson wrote this. But if science struggles to maintain its authority in the face of death’s mystery, so does religion:
“Faith slips - and laughs, and rallies -
Blushes, if any see -
Plucks at a twig of Evidence -
And asks a Vane, the way -”
We know from a later poem that there was a weather-vane outside Dickinson’s window, the “Forefinger” of which would occasionally come into view from where she sat writing, if the direction of the wind was right. To ask it “the way” is to ignore the Apostle Paul’s warning to the Ephesians not to be “carried about by every wind of doctrine”. Faith coyly selects its “Evidence” to suit itself - a “twig” of it will do - whereas science, ideally, amasses it before reaching its conclusion. If we allow the pun to do its work, we cannot avoid the suggestion that faith itself is not exempt from the condemnation of the Preacher in the Book of Ecclesiastes when he insists that “all is vanity”.
Much Gesture, from the Pulpit -
Strong Hallelujahs roll -
The religious revivals which swept New England during Dickinson’s early life hinged on the idea that their converts received certitude of salvation, and confidence that the descriptions of the Heavenly realm in the Bible were literally true. The man (because it always was) in the pulpit gesticulated wildly under the influence of this certitude, and was buoyed into greater feats of oratory by the “Hallelujahs” of those in his audience who shared it. Anyone who has ever been in this situation and remained untouched by the enthusiasm whilst others are swept away by it will recognise the weary resignation in Dickinson’s voice - the result of a constant pressure to yield to that certitude and conform to its dogmas.
Karl Marx had already written that “Religion is the opiate of the masses” in 1844, but we have no evidence that Dickinson was aware of this. It was not, however, a new idea even then. In 1797, the Marquis de Sade has his Juliet reprove King Ferdinand for oppressing his people and fearing “the eye of genius”. That, she insists, is “why you encourage ignorance. This opium you feed your people, so that, drugged, they do not feel their hurts, inflicted by you.” The early German Romantic ‘Novalis’ developed the idea in 1798: “Their so-called religion acts merely as an opiate: irritating, numbing, calming their pain out of weakness.” “Faith” might be the anaesthetic which lulls us into thinking we have reached a “conclusion” about what lies beyond “this world”, but all the while, what it is really doing is blunting our appreciation of what science really can comprehend: the things of “this world”.
The concluding lines of Dickinson’s poem put us back into Dr. Morton’s dentist’s chair, with the ether-soaked handkerchief hovering in front of our faces as we attempt to contemplate metaphysics. The opiate can give us the certitude of oblivion, and even a degree of freedom from pain, but it cannot give us solid facts. And even then, Dickinson has a surprise for us. She is only using the dentist’s vocabulary - the situation is rather different:
“Narcotics cannot still the Tooth
That nibbles at the soul -”
Doubt, inquisitiveness, pain - all of these have this in common: they gnaw at the soul like rodents. We can face realities, or we can reach for the narcotics and let ourselves be gnawed away. It’s as true a statement in the context of modern drug-culture, or modern conspiracy theories, as it was during the transitory religious revivalism of Dickinson’s time. The “Tooth” is also that unanswerable question: “What happens to me and my loved ones after death?” I have seen people doing it: shouting “Hallelujah” at the tops of their lungs, as if they could force that impossible certitude upon themselves, desperate for their anodyne. And all the time, the “Tooth” nibbles on, nightmarish, incomprehensible, strangely animal - a Species in its own right.
We have a choice whether or not we take those narcotics and let the Tooth nibble on. Dickinson’s poetry gives us another option – it’s there in her exquisite attention to sound and rhythm, in her evident joy at the arrival of Bobolinks and Robins, in her determination to keep the Sabbath in her own garden. We can embrace this World. And if we do that, there is a moral imperative that we must treasure and conserve it, and not be anaesthetised to the threats it faces as a result of our own activity - the fact, for example, that Hemlock trees are facing extinction because of an aphid imported to the United States by horticulturalists, and that the best hope for their species is the introduction of the Hemlock Woolly Adelgid’s natural beetle predators.
Accept that although this world is not conclusion, this world is all that we can know, and we are ethically bound to listen to science.
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