The Shocking Case of the Napping Keeper
A Seattle hospital patient, presumed to be suffering from narcotic poisoning, is jolted back to 'life' by a doctor’s electric battery—only for the doctors to realize they had the wrong man.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
It is reported to some of the chief physicians in the hospital in our town that the other day there was a man in one of the wards in a most comatose condition. The nurse declared that he had been in a fever for hours and he had been in a dead turn. The doctor said the patient was suffering from the effect of a large dose of laudanum. He ordered his assistants to take a powerful electric battery and apply it to the patient until he returned to consciousness. The doctors went into the hospital and, while the nurse stopped for a few moments in the laundry, they reached the man, placed the battery on the bed, and the patient quickly threw the vine around it. When everything was ready, they turned the crank. A second later, the patient bounded about four feet into the air, and as he came down upon the bed, a second shock sent him up the patient until he screamed: 'Wow-wow-wow! Oh, lord, suffer no more! Oh! Oh! Thunder and murder! Another one of them will kill me! O Merciful Moses, don't do that again!' When he came down the fourth time, the doctor turned off the current with the remark that they guessed that was about enough. Then the doctors asked the patient how he felt and attempted to feel his pulse. But the patient, furious with rage, said: 'You diabolical scoundrels, what do you mean by mashing me in that manner, say?' 'Now keep calm,' said the doctor, 'it is all right, you will be better directly.' 'But it isn't all right. I have a mind to knock your head off for blowing up with that infernal machine! What did you do it for, anyway?' 'My friend, don't excite yourself,' said the doctor. 'You've been in a very bad way, and we ran the current through you to bring you back to life. Why, you were more dead than you were alive. You have been for 24 hours in narcotic poisoning, no doubt. We have saved you from an early grave. It was the closest shave I ever saw.' 'Well, well, if this don't beat all the you take me for the man in ward 4? Why, I'm one of the keepers of the asylum, and I lay down on this bed for a nap! The fellow you're after is over yonder. Well, now, I have heard of foolishness in my life, but this takes the rag right off. And I give you warning that if ever you come around with your apparatus again, trying experiments on me, I'll wrench your brain-pan for you.' Then the doctors moved off in search of the right man, while the keeper went out to hunt a dog to kick in order to relieve his feelings.
“I have heard of foolishness in my life, but this takes the rag right off.”
Medical mishaps and 'hospital humor' were common fodder for 19th-century papers, reflecting both a fascination with the new 'wonders' of electricity as a cure-all and a cynical view of institutional care. While the specific ward-hopping antics of 1876 are long gone, the anxiety surrounding the quality of care and the impersonality of large hospitals remains a persistent theme in Seattle's healthcare landscape today.
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