Here's a Story Based on a Subject of Wide
Human Appeal and Containing
a Horrifying Climax
The Case of Dr. Johnstone
By BURTON PETER THOM
I HAVE just read of the death of Robert Belmore Johnstone.
With one or two exceptions, all of the metropolitan dailies printed accounts of his life and work. Many of the medical journals will also doubtless contain editorial obituaries as they appear within the next few weeks.
For, as is well known, Dr. Johnstone was one of the foremost physicians in the English speaking world before he was overtaken by the horrible misfortune at the height of his career. That he was great in the science of medicine, one of the greatest of researchers and investigators, the peer of Magendie, Bernard, or Virchow is true. That he was a noble man, as we understand that word to mean a high and gracious soul, is also true. I, who knew him better perhaps than anyone else can testify to that.
But that he suddenly became insane six years ago and that he died a few days ago is not true. Dr. Johnstone was the sanest man I ever knew, and when he was declared insane he was already dead.
To the reader and to those who knew him this statement is both a paradox and a mystery. Yet nevertheless it is true. The solution to this paradox and mystery I alone know. The time has now come, I believe, when it should be told. The facts as they occurred I shall set down here in the form of a story because I believe they will find more credence than if they were embodied in a monograph and read before a medical society or a society for psychical research,
It is difficult to begin, however, because I have no experience in writing fiction, which is the mode whereby this narrative is told. Also, for that reason, I am obliged to divest the telling of all scientific terms which appeals to me very much like writing about some disease in the form of a novel.
THE fame of the physician is not wide; nor does it last. Who remembers the famous physicians of a hundred years ago—Laennec, Cooper, Abernethy, Rush? Except to their professional brethren, and not all of them, they have been long forgotten.
So it is with Johnstone. Thousands remember him now because of personal contact; but many thousands never heard of him, and fifty years hence his name and his achievements in solving some of the abstruse problems of pathology, his researches in physiology, will, except to the learned few, mean almost less than nothing.
Yet, during the years of his activity, he did much work that will last. But of his greatest victory that ended in—no, I will not say defeat, for defeat means failure and he did not fail—I will tell so that if in the future, that which he proved, is proved again, the credit of it—the glory of it—will go to him.
It was while I was an interne at the Neurological Hospital that I became acquainted with Dr. Johnstone. He was chief of the visiting staff and he had a room fitted up as a laboratory where he did his experimental and research work. Because of his position at the hospital the internes were told off from time to time to assist him. Since my tendencies were, and still are I may say, all directed toward the experimental and research side of medicine rather than the practical or clinical side, I perhaps showed more enthusiasm than the other interne assistants and this common bond of interest soon made us very good friends.
When my interneship at the hospital expired and I started out to practice for myself I continued to act as his assistant. It was through his influence that a year later I gave up private practice altogether and devoted myself exclusively to research, when I was appointed a research fellow in pathology at the Stoneman Institute, a whole time appointment which I still hold.
My duties there made it impossible for me to work with him as I had formerly, but while I was now doing research independently, I never failed to take the opportunity to work with my teacher (for so I regarded him) whenever the chance came. His vast knowledge and keen insight into the vagaries of disease and the wealth of suggestions that he was always ready to give freely, made association with him of immense value to me in my own investigations. You can therefore readily understand my regard for hm, not only as a scientist but as a man.
Unlike many men of high scientific attainments, whose lives are spent in the pursuit of knowledge, Dr. Johnstone was not a pedant. Nor was he a stark materialist as many of his calling often are. It seemed to me that his mind was so fine and subtle, so penetrative that he could see with the eyes of the spirit things which were denied to those who boasted of their materialism. For I have often noted that those who are steeped in science to the exclusion of all else not infrequently miss the true cause of things.
It could be truly said that Dr. Johnstone was the most eminent physiologist of his time; for none had delved more deeply into the mechanism of life; yet, unlike some that I can name, he did not believe that the life of an individual—man or beast—was simply the sum of his endocrine reactions. To him life was infinitely more than a chemical reaction. He believed that every living creature had a soul, a spirit, a pneuma as the old Greeks called it, that motivated its physical structure and was as much a part of it as the tissue planes of which its body was composed.
I am aware, and doubtless Dr. Johnstone was also aware, that the Theosophists and other more ancient cults hold to this belief, but I do not wish to infer that Dr. Johnstone was a mystic or given over to occultism as many who believe as he did are very prone to be. He saw it only through the cold light of reason. For when reason illuminates the spirit as well as the intellect it shows many things which others cannot see.
Researchers in medicine rarely discuss these things. Some deny with vehemence that the soul exists; to others—and they are the majority—it is a matter of indifference. But Johnstone was not of this number. The subject inter-
