Mark Twain: The Influence Psychology

Mark Twain: The Influence Psychology and Medicine Had on His Writing

Mark Twain is much, much more than just the high successful and revered author of Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer and his other novels. Indeed, in his brilliant career he wrote about highly important social and political issues in America - most of which has not been noticed by the general public, the reading public in this country.

Hence, this paper will focus on the writings, thoughts, proposals and musings Mark Twain engaged in with reference to medicine and psychology. It will also focus on what writers and critics have had to say about Twain's interest in and writing about medicine and psychology.

And in the interest of consistency, this paper will always refer to the real person, Samuel Clemens, as the author, Mark Twain, even though the writer and the man are often two distinct characters and during his youth, which will be discussed, he surely was Samuel Clemens.

Medicine and Mark Twain

Twain and warts - strange medicine indeed There was nothing grim or death-like about Twain's letter to the editor of the New York Sun, titled "How to Remove Warts and Tattoo Marks," reprinted in the ANQ journal (Scharnhorst, 2004). In the letter, published in April, 1889, Twain starts out explaining that there are "three hundred and sixty-eight ways" of removing warts. The one he tried first, after getting "wartier and wartier," was to drive a needle down "into the basement of the wart," then put a candle flame to the other end of the needle, and let the needle become red hot.

The hot needle "proceeded to cook the wart," and then to finish the job, Twain again drove the needle in and cooked it until the roots of the wart were also cooked. "Twenty-four hours later the wart would become soft and flabby," and could be removed with "a single wipe" of his hand.

Twain in medicine in general

It is dreadful to think of you in ill health...Lord save us all from old age and broken health and a hope-tree that has lost the faculty of putting out blossoms" - Mark Twain's letter to an old newspaper colleague, Joe Goodman, quoted in Patrick Ober's book, Mark Twain and Medicine: 'Any Mummy will cure', on page 244.

In exploring the fascinating and lively Mark Twain health issue subjects, and locating the appropriate research, author Patrick K. Ober offers a very worthy book; his work is rich with detailed information and thoughtful analysis regarding Twain's interest in - and antipathy for - the practice of medicine. It would seem that Ober perhaps even aspires to be thought of as a writer (like Twain) who commands respect yet invokes humor through narrative, allegory, and irony.

Indeed, in his Introduction, Ober explains that his book is presented for "three interrelated audiences" and that it has "three overlapping goals in mind" - and he uses some patented Twain-like humor in describing those three audiences: they are (1) "Mark Twain enthusiasts" who need to know more about how Twain "loved to use the imagery of medicine"; (2) "those who periodically and innocently subject themselves to the care of physicians...and those who find themselves functioning in the role of physicians"; (3) those who need to know that "Twain wrote some funny stuff about measles" but otherwise "might have little interest in the history of Mark Twain."

It is well-known that death and disease were part of the human landscape during the time the West was being settled, in the early to late 19th Century. Ober notes (p. 24) that the Hannibal Gazette (June 3, 1847) reported that "25% of children in that area were expected to die before their first birthday." Further, some 50% of children during that era "would be in their graves by the age of twenty-one."

And it is also well documented that Twain himself was lucky to live through his young years, as three of his parents' first five children died prior to reaching eleven years of age, and Twain was not very strong as an infant. Twain "was scrawny, sickly, and puny...the type of runt who had little chance to make it out of childhood."

At the age of seven, Ober writes, Twain was "so ill" and came "so near to going to heaven" that it is a wonder he lived. Ober quotes Twain (p. 25) as recalling his dance with near-death: "I had begun to die; the family were grouped for the function; they were familiar with it; so was I."

Twain's writing about Doctor Joseph McDowell, from the St. Louis and Hannibal areas - whom Ober goes to great lengths to describe ("the highly peculiar Dr. McDowell" who was a "medical legend" and "highly respected" yet "a man of extremes") - is classic Twain in every sense. "He was a good doctor...and he had a good heart, but one had to know him a year to get over hating him, two years to learn to endure him..." (92).

Twain story based on fictionalizing Dr. McDowell

In quoting from Twain's Autobiography, author Ober offers the reader some tasty phrases, not just on McDowell, but by inference, which is important to understand when reading Twain, on the state of medical science during that period in America's history.

McDowell had been called to help a lady who "was very ill and had been given up by her doctors," Twain wrote. The doctor had "a quarter of an acre of gingerbread under his arm, and while he looked meditatively about he broke hunks from his cake, munched them, and let the crumbs dribble down his breast to the floor."

The ill lady "laid pale and still" as the family sobbed and kneeled around her bed. One by one, McDowell sniffed medicine bottles and tossed them out a window, then he laid the gingerbread slab on the woman's breast "and said roughly: 'What are the idiots sniveling about? There's nothing the matter with this humbug. Put out your tongue!'"

Just as the "angry mourners" began to "upbraid the doctor for his cruel behavior," he interrupted them with the retort that "...there is nothing the matter with the woman - nothing the matter but laziness." He also critiqued her "damned society training..." At which time "the dying woman rose up in bed" and "poured out upon the doctor her whole insulted mind - just a volcanic irruption, accompanied by thunder and lightning, whirlwinds and earthquakes..." And more. And in the end, "it brought the reaction he was after and she got well." critic's analysis of Ober's book

While this book is well-stocked with excerpted Twain tales like the one above, and it is certainly well-researched and well-written, it is "overwhelmed" by Twain's personality, according to an article in Journal of American Culture (Browne, 2004). "Though the subject is nominally Mark Twain and medicine, it really is about the humor that Twain used in dealing with medicine and doctors," Browne writes.

The book is therefore a two-strike triumph," since it offers readers both Twain and his world of medicine, and both add up to "a hilarious recapitulation of Twain's life in, against, and humorous treatment of, illness," Browne asserts.

It also worth noting that the book, and Browne's analysis of it, shows clearly that Twain had a contempt for doctors, no doubt because his wife Livy was ill much of her life, and his daughters Susy and Jane suffered from numerous illnesses. Twain "devoted much of his life to chasing cures for his favorite people and to hatred of the medical profession, and humanity in general for not providing the help he needed," Browne contends.

Twain himself had gout, Ober reports, and though "each flare of the disease caused misery," "it never threatened his survival." There was no surviving though, for his daughter Jean: she died on Christmas Eve, 1909, "from a seizure in her bathtub," Ober writes on page 245. And he quotes a very bitter Twain: "How poor I am, who was once so rich!" And he continues on page 246: "In her loss I am almost bankrupt, and my life is bitterness, but I am content: for she has been enriched with the most precious of all gifts - that gift which makes all other gifts mean and poor - death." Four months later, Twain died, "disconsolate and devoid of hope."

In Twain's book What is Man? And Other Essays, he writes about how, the night before her death, Jean was "all flushed with splendid health" (82), and how Twain walked his daughter to her room and she said, "I can't kiss you good night father: I have a cold, and you could catch it."

But the next morning, when Twain learned of his daughter's sudden death, he then knew "what the soldier feels when a bullet crashes through his heart." There was "the fair young creature, stretched upon the floor and covered with a sheet...as if asleep." Twain had a way of speaking about his contempt for the lack of worthy cures between the lines, as he did on page 92 of "The Death of Jean" in What is Man? And Other Essays; the bitterness he expressed in many articles and book passages can be understood when on realizes how the lack of medical competencies adversely affected his family.

The funeral [for Jean] has begun...The scene is the library in the Langdon homestead. Jean's coffin stands where her mother and I stood, forty years ago, and were married; and where Susy's coffin stood thirteen years ago; where her mother's stood five years and a half ago; and where mine will stand after a little time." A little time indeed: Twain died on April 21, 1910.

Another health issue: Twain on smoking and the University of Rochester's use of Twain's writing

In his What is Man? And Other Essays book (pp. 216-219), one hundred and fifty years before there would be any reliable information on the link between cancer and tobacco use, Twain talks about superstitions and interesting habits regarding tobacco, and quips, "...me, who came into the world asking for a light." He pokes fun at those who thinks they know what a good cigar should taste like, and explains the "danger" into going into "rich people's houses," since their cigars, when smoked, develop "a dismal black ash and burn down the side and smell, and will grow hot to the fingers..."

As for his own tastes, Twain wrote that he liked "French, Swiss, German, and Italian domestic cigars, and would have never cared to inquire what they are made of..."

Meanwhile, health-related studies nearly two hundred years after Twain wrote that essay tapped into the author's literature. Indeed, in October, 1991, the Brown University Digest of Addiction Theory and Application published an article ("Mark Twain enlightens us about smoking cessation") that reported how doctors at the University of Rochester used Twain's writing to "encourage (or discourage) patients to quit smoking."

The study - conducted by members of the Human Motivation Program (HMP) at the University of Rochester - utilized a "self-determination theory from Twain's story, 'The Facts Concerning the Recent Carnival of Crime in Connecticut'." In the story, Twain's conscience appears as a "malformed but nimble dwarf who goads the rebellious Twain" into proper behavior. His Aunt Mary is the Authority Figure, who tries to get him to quit smoking his cigars.

Meanwhile, the three characters in the story, the Conscience, the Authority Figure, and the Rebellious Self (the real Twain), are part of a parable that the HMP used to illustrate that "many smokers are struggling with their Consciences over the advisability of their health behaviors. A controlling and punitive Authority Figure such as an Aunt Mary [in Twain's story] or a family physician" could cause the Rebellious Self to rebel even further, and reject any good judgment that self may have earlier exhibited.

Did the Twain-inspired model work? "Authors conclude that the...model is promising but not a panacea; 'it is not guaranteed to work, but then nothing is'," the study concluded. "It does, however," the report states, "proceed from the patient's frame of reference and, as such, we believe it holds the greatest likelihood for success."

Twain, however, would probably spin around in his grave were he to hear that one of his published stories was plugged into a seemingly pseudo-scientific research project to get people to quit doing something he loved - smoking cigars (or cigarettes, for that matter).

Summary on Twain and his views (humorous and cryptic) about medicine from a variety of his quotations

It should be mentioned that Twain was born during the Andrew Jackson presidency, and in that era, medical practices were basically unregulated. "Licensure laws were almost non-existent, and any citizen could practice medicine," according to an article in the journal, American College of Physicians ("The Pre-Flexnerian Reports: Mark Twain's Criticism of Medicine in the United States") (Ober, 1997).

The regularly practice medicine at that time ("allopathic") was also in competition with practitioners employing at least twenty-four other sects. The therapies offered by allopathic medicine - even though allopathic doctors proclaimed themselves "the norm" - had "no proven advantage over the so-called "quackery."

Twain, meanwhile, "doubted the competence and intentions of physicians as a group even as he maintained confidence in the abilities of his own physicians.

Ober quotes Twain from numerous speeches and books to illustrate his undying cynicism toward doctors (especially those who were not his own). From the Unabridged Mark Twain (Budd, 1982), the author and humorist seemed to be saying that the natural course of a sickness might be better than whatever treatment a doctor might offer:

During Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday the twins grew steadily worse; but then the doctor was summoned south to attend his mother's funeral and they got well in forty-eight hours."

Another excerpt that illustrates Twain's ability to take his skepticism and lack of faith towards doctors and medicine, and turn it into cryptic humor is found in the Unabridged Mark Twain as well. In this passage Twain rips into the pretentiousness and pseudo-intellectualism of the current medical jargon by pretending to be a doctor offering advice to a female patient.

Without going into much detail, madam - for you would probably not understand it anyway - I concede that great care is going to be necessary here; otherside exudation of the aesophagus is nearly sure to ensue...followed by ossification and extradition of the maxilaris superioris, which must decompose the grandular surfaces of the great infusorial ganglionic system..."

From the Autobiography of Mark Twain, the author writes about the common situation of a man practicing medicine without having any formal medical education:

Every old woman was a doctor and gathered her own medicines in the woods, and knew how to compound doses that would stir the vitals of a cast-iron dog." Twain also writes in the Autobiography of Mark Twain about the "Indian Doctor" who was "a grave savage." He was a "remnant of his tribe, deeply read in the mysteries of nature and the secret properties of herbs; and most backwoodsmen had a high faith in his powers and could tell of wonderful cures achieved by him."

Also from his autobiography, he was less kind to medicine then he was in the paragraph above, as he dumped his literary scorn upon the various medical treatments of his day, treatments which featured the most popular and yet the largely ineffective allopathic methods:

Castor oil was the principal beverage. The dose was half a dipperful, with half a dipperful of New Orleans molasses added to help it down and make it taste good, which it never did." And after trying "calomel" and then "rhubarb" and finally "jalap," Twain wrote that the doctor "bled the patient and put mustard plasters on him." As to the system, it was "dreadful" and yet, "the death rate was not heavy."

Twain wrote a letter in 1900 that very poignantly and pointedly reflected his thoughts on the medical practices of his earlier years:

The physician's grotesque system - the emptying of miscellaneous and harmful drugs into a person's stomach to remove ailments which in many cases the drugs could not reach at all..." In many cases, he continued, "the drug either retarded the cure, or the disease was cured by nature in spite of the nostrums."

In many cases, Twain's writing about medicine shows that he studied the various approaches carefully, perhaps interviewing patients who had received the many kinds of attempts at therapy that were commonplace, especially in the early 19th Century. In his usual cryptic humorous style, he writes (in Collected Tales, Sketches, Speeches and Essays) (Sheldon, 1958):

If a citizen was inclined to take salts by the ton, ipecac by the barrel, mercury by the quart, or quinine by the load, and thus be cured of his ailment or his sublunary existence by the wholesale, he was at perfect liberty to invite the services of a medicus of the allopathic style..."

In Mark Twain Speaking he is quoted (at the University of Iowa) (Fatout, 1976) as to his childhood remembrances regarding cures his mother provided. "I can remember when the cold water cure was first talked about. I was then about nine years old, and I remember how my mother used to stand me up naked in the back yard every morning and throw buckets of cold water on me." She did it, he continued, "just to see what effect it would have."

Twain and psychology

Phrenology: "the study of the conformation of the skull based on the belief that it is indicative of mental faculties and character" - Merriam Webster Online.

Whether Phrenology falls perfectly into the category of "psychology" or "medicine" - or in some middle ground between the two - it is worthy of a close look in terms of the medical and psychological explorations in this paper.

It's well-known that Mark Twain took a dim view of the work of Lorenzo Niles Fowler, who was, according to an article in the journal, Skeptical Inquirer (Lopez, 2002), a "great celebrity of the day," who "rode to fame" on one of the leading trends of the day, phrenology. Lopez writes that the belief in phrenology "colored much of the country's thinking at that time regarding what motivated human behavior."

In other words, for many Americans, the "totality of human experience could be explained" at that time by the conformation of the human skull. And indeed, many people believed that they could "discover the ideal mate" and learn "what qualities should be sought in an employee" through phrenology. Fowler, and his brother Orson Squire Fowler, "rose to prominence as heads of a phrenological empire based at the Phrenological Institute in New York City."

The Fowlers performed phrenological readings on clients, and "trained the next generation of phrenologists." The institute housed "a huge collection of skulls," which were used as a museum (open to the public) and for research. The fame of the Fowlers was so great that it was author Lopez writes, "fashionable to have a reading done" by the brothers; indeed, it was so fashionable that celebrities like Clara Barton and Julia Ward Howe had "their heads examined" by the Fowlers.

The Fowlers were not content just to rake in money and celebrity status from phrenology, though: they managed a large publishing house with literature about phrenological solutions, as well as an "eclectic collection" of self-help books on subjects like homeopathy, poetry, hydropathy, how to build a home, photography, poetry and feminism.

Enter Mark Twain - who had some experience with phrenology, having seen phrenologists in Hannibal giving demonstrations when he was a boy - a brilliant man fully aware that phrenologists "had used...generic readings to appease their clients," and hence, to profit off people's naivete.

Using his classic understatement for emphasis, Twain (in his autobiography) wrote, and was quoted by Lopez, the following about phrenologists:

It is not at all likely, I think, that the traveling expert ever got any villager's character quite right, but it is a safe guess that he was always wise enough to furnish his clients character charts that would compare favorably with George Washington's." Twain wrote that though "it was a long time ago," he still recalled that "no phrenologist ever came across a skull in our town that fell mush short of the Washington standard."

Did the readings cause any suspicion in Twain's town? "...the voice of the doubter was not heard in the land," he wrote.

Meanwhile, Twain conducted his own hands-on research on the veracity of Fowler's claims and his skills by visiting Fowler's London office (using a pseudonym) and paying for a reading. Excerpts of Twain's report on that reading - again quoted by Lopez in the Skeptical Inquirer - follows: