Bridgeton Pioneer

The Blind Clairvoyant Who Described the Doctor's Brain Before He Died.

"Do I believe in clairvoyants?" said a well-known citizen of Rahway, formerly a medical student, yesterday. "I cannot say that I do, but I was once almost ready to believe in them. In the year 1845 the building at the southeast corner of Barclay and Church street, New York, which is now a factory, was occupied as a private boarding-house. As the location suited my convenience, I engaged a room there, and took possession of it one Saturday about the middle of January. Among my fellow-boarders was Dr. Hathaway, a surgeon of the United States army, who had been on duty at the hospital on Staten Island. During my first evening at the house a young lady visitor was present who was introduced to me simply as Mary. She was blind. I had listened but a short time to the conversation of these people before I learned that they were almost monomaniacs on the subject of mesmerism, and I afterward learned that the blind girl, Mary, was a clairvoyant subject of Dr. Le Grande, a well-known physician, who professed to cure diseases by mesmerism.

"Before retiring that night I went out to a restaurant in Park row for a plate of oysters. When I returned to the boarding-house, having been gone a little over half an hour, the front door, which I had carefully fastened, was wide open, lights were glancing about, and there were sounds of confusion in the upper part of the house. I was told that Dr. Hathaway had had a fit, and that Dr. Van Buren, Dr. Parker, and another physician, whose name I cannot now recall, had been sent for, and were in attendance. Finding I could be of no service, I went to bed, and next morning the landlady informed me that the doctor's fit was a slight attack of apoplexy, unaccompanied with paralysis, and that he would probably be all right in a few days. He was not all right, however, either in a few days or a few weeks.

"Before the end of the month I moved up-town, but about the latter part of March, having business down town, I called at my old boarding-place. I found Dr. Hathaway seated in his room in an invalid chair, not quite cheerful, but apparently not ailing much, although he complained of a pain in the right side of his head. As I was leaving the house the landlady drew me into her room and asked me what I thought of Dr. Hathaway's case. My reply was: 'The doctor is doing well. If he will get out and take moderate exercise, he will soon be entirely well.'

"She shook her head mournfully and said: 'He will never go out again. He will never leave that room alive.'

"'What reason have you for such a melancholy supposition?' I asked.

"'Mary says so.'

"'What? Has Mary been here frightening you with her flummery?' I said.

"'No; Mary has not been in the house since the night you met her here,' she replied. 'At Dr. Hathaway's request I went to consult her at Dr. Le Grande's office. She went into a trance and examined Dr. Hathaway. She says that the inside of his skull on the right side is all sore and ulcerated and that there are three lumps on the right side of his brain as large as hickory nuts; that he will never get over it; that it will all be over with him by the first of May, and that you will be present at the post-mortem examination.'

"'Me?'

"'You.'

"'What suggested such an idea as that?'

"'I don't know; she sometimes takes great interest in strangers she casually meets. She knows a great deal about your future.'

"The fortune-telling charlatan!' I thought. Of course I was too polite to express this opinion aloud, and after a few commonplace remarks took my leave.

"During the next month my mind was otherwise so much occupied that I almost forgot the afflicted physician; but on the last day of April, when I sat down to my dinner, I was startled to find on my plate a note announcing Dr. Hathaway's death and inviting me to a post-mortem examination at 10 o'clock next morning. When I entered the death chamber at the appointed hour I found several eminent physicians and surgeons assembled there. Dr. Mott, who was demonstrator of anatomy at the University of New York, was conducting the autopsy. When the top of the cranium was removed from the brain, and handed round for inspection, what was my surprise to see that the lining membrane on the right side had been extensively inflamed, just exactly as the blind clairvoyant had described; and further, upon cutting into the substance of the brain on the right side, three large tubercles were found, a rare and remarkable pathological condition.

"That was very remarkable."

"Yes, but at the funeral I chanced to ride in the same carriage with a relative of the deceased, who told me that a sister of Dr. Hathaway had died some years before, after suffering about the same length of time with similar symptoms, and that the same pathological conditions had been found on post-mortem examination." - New York Sun.