Dr. Hudson

Dr. Hudson is the physician responsible for assessing Mr. Brandon’s condition and directing his care after a lightning strike left him mentally disturbed. His treatment decisions carry consequences beyond medicine: they remove Brandon from Posey Brandon’s household, offer the prospect of recovery, and later supply the magistrate with information relevant to the inquiry into Jeremiah Taunton’s death. The novel presents him as a practical authority whose clinical judgments are cautious, changeable, and entangled with the household’s wish to be rid of a difficult dependent.

Medical Judgment and the Farm Plan

Dr. Hudson initially gives James Duke two opinions about Brandon’s prospects. He thinks Brandon might someday recover his senses and recommends fresh air, walking, and exercise. To provide these, he proposes placing him with Jeremiah Taunton’s family, about five miles outside town. The farmer and his quiet, generous wife would take Brandon in for extra money and keep him clean while he benefited from country air. The plan is offered as a possible route toward improvement, not as a promise of cure.

Hudson’s second opinion concerns what should happen if the farm arrangement fails. If Brandon does not thrive or becomes dangerously agitated, Hudson considers placing him in Williamsburg, Virginia, at the Public Hospital for Persons of Insane and Disordered Minds. He describes its institutional treatment as including plunge baths, drugs, bleeding, salves, and exercise yards, presenting it as a model Boston ought to emulate. His account situates his practice within a period when care could mean either supervised domestic residence or confinement and bodily treatment in an asylum.

The recommendations also serve James Duke’s interests. The next day, Duke reports that Hudson has ruled out books on the grounds that they might cause brain fever, even in someone who had not been struck by lightning. Hudson plans to take Brandon to the farm the following Monday. The doctor’s bill crackles in Duke’s breast pocket as he considers the expense a small price for getting Brandon out of the way. Hudson’s medical authority therefore enables a change that is framed as treatment but welcomed by Duke as relief from an unwanted household burden.

Monitoring Brandon’s Decline and Recovery

The farm placement does not produce an uncomplicated improvement. Hudson later tells James that Brandon has become ill from a cause other than his mental derangement: he coughs continuously, cannot keep food down, and has grown thin and weak. Confined to bed and unable to rise, Brandon requires a day nurse, whom James hires to spare the farmer’s wife extra work. Hudson prescribes two fresh eggs beaten into warm milk with a spoonful of rum. He allows for the possibility that Brandon may recover as the weather warms, but does not assure the household that he will.

That uncertainty changes the atmosphere of James and Posey’s meeting. Posey had hoped Brandon would make a generous exit, and the report of his serious physical illness brings her relief. She has brought James a small packet, but, deciding the moment is no longer appropriate, slips it back up her sleeve. Hudson’s update thus has effects beyond the patient’s bedside: Brandon’s uncertain survival alters Posey’s private plans and the emotional terms of her conversation with James.

Hudson’s next report reverses the immediate expectation of decline. Brandon has rallied enough to eat heartily and drink heavily; his mental disturbance seems more settled, and Hudson thinks he has passed a crisis. He recognizes the doctor, asks after Posey’s health, and praises the farmer and his wife. Though he still objects to milk and bread, Hudson anticipates that chicken might be tried in a week and thinks Brandon may soon return home. He declares that the day nurse is no longer necessary, and nods toward James as he does so, explicitly connecting the improvement to the end of that expense.

Recovery raises a practical problem for Posey rather than resolving her situation. She questions whether she can care for Brandon in her cramped home, where the air is less bracing than in the country, especially if his derangement continues. Hudson does not insist on an immediate return. He proposes waiting to see whether Brandon continues to improve; for that night, Brandon may sleep on the farmhouse porch for fresh air, and, if stronger in a week, may prove little trouble. Hudson also offers the possibility of sending the nurse with him if there is doubt. His willingness to keep observing Brandon reflects genuine uncertainty, though he adds that following the case would be easier if Brandon were nearby.

The Taunton Inquiry

Hudson’s account of Brandon’s condition later becomes relevant to the magistrate’s investigation of Jeremiah Taunton’s death. Asked whether Brandon was sick or well, what his illness was like, whether he was strong, and whether he bore Taunton a grudge, Hudson identifies the lightning strike Brandon sustained two years earlier as the source of his mental disturbance. He describes him as having babbled, been confused, and suffered from suspicions.

Hudson also supplies a recent change in Brandon’s condition: the day before the inquiry, he appeared a little better and said he wished to go home soon. The magistrate asks whether the preacher could have hated Taunton because of the bread and milk, then strangled him during a fit in the night. Hudson’s testimony gives the magistrate a medical history and a measure of Brandon’s recent state, but the supplied account does not show Hudson confirming that Brandon committed the killing. His role is to describe illness and observed behavior while the legal question remains open.

Narrative Role and Limits

Hudson links the domestic plot around Posey and James with the later public scrutiny of Taunton’s death. His decisions first move Brandon into a farm family’s care, then keep the possibility of his return alive as his body and mind fluctuate. The same observations that guide treatment—confusion, suspicion, recognition, appetite, and a wish to go home—later become evidence considered by the magistrate.

The character is defined chiefly through professional judgments and their consequences rather than through a developed private life. The narrative shows how a diagnosis can shape a person’s movement between household, farm, and proposed institution, while also showing that the patient’s changing condition resists a settled outcome. Hudson’s reports are cautious: Brandon may recover, may fail to thrive, may be able to return, or may still need support. That qualified language preserves uncertainty at the center of both his medical care and the inquiry that follows.