Genre:

Novel, Serial, Abstract

Publications abstracted:

Hawthorne 1850

Subjects:

Medical Practitioners, Medical Treatment, Religion

    Chillingworth tells Hester Prynne that his care for the 'miserable priest', Dimmesdale, is worth more than the 'richest fee that ever physician earned from monarch' and that it saved the priest's life. Later, Chillingworth asserts that, despite the coldness of his character, he is 'a man thoughtful for others'. Hester claims responsibility for turning him into a 'fiend'. Watching him gather herbs on his departure, she wonders what powers of evil he will display (227). These include the possibility that 'the earth, quickened to an evil purpose by the sympathy of his eye' should 'greet him with poisonous shrubs' and his conversion of a 'wholesome growth' into 'something deleterious and malignant at his touch' (228). Hester remembers the time 'when he used to emerge at eventide from the seclusion of his study' in their home and 'sit down [...] in the light of her nuptial smile' (229).