THE DOCTOR'S 
 RECREATION SERIES 
 
 CHARLES WELLS MOULTON 
 
 General Editor 
 
 J 
 
 VOLUME FOUR
 
 A^S^I./SMANfie. ^tMJl. 
 
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 PROI-. Bii.LRofH^' Surgical CLtjfic 
 
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 J
 
 A Book About 
 DOCTORS 
 
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 Aullior of "Silit Sral Earb ?B!inin." "ffihc fifol 
 
 61j»UtB." "A Vaak About Vjata^na." 
 
 ttt.. rtr. 
 
 1904 
 
 THE SAALFIELD PUBLISHING CO. 
 
 NEW YORK AKRON, 0. CHICAGO 
 
 /••. :•• .• 
 
 • • • • 
 * • »• •• 
 
 »v >.» :»'
 
 COPYHGHT, 1904, 
 
 THE SAALFIELD PUBLISHING COMPANY 
 
 Tmi 
 
 wchner companv 
 
 Aknon, o.
 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 Something about Sticks, and rather less about Wigs . . S 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 Early English Physicians l8 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 Sir Thomas Browne and Sir Kenelm Digby 38 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 Sir Hans Sloane S' 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 The Apothecaries and Sir Samuel Garth 63 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 Quacks 82 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 John Radcliffe Ill 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 The Doctor as a bon-vivant 144 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 Fees 163 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 Pedagogues turned Doctors 183 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 The Generosity and Parsimony of Physicians .... 202 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 Bleeding 225 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 Richard Mead 239 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. ,. 
 Imagination as a Remedial Power 255 
 
 43434G 
 
 I 
 
 \$ 
 
 r/\jio 
 
 1 
 

 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 Imagination and Nervous Excitement — Mesmer . . . 280 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 Make way for the Ladies! 287 
 
 CHAPTER XVIL 
 Messenger Monsey . 311 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 Akensidc 327 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 Lettsoni 335 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 A few More Quacks 345 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 St. John Long 356 
 
 CHAPTER XXIL 
 The Quarrels of Physicians 374 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 The Loves of Physicians 393 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 Literature and Art 4^1 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 Number Eleven— a Hospital Story 442 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 Medical Buildings 462 
 
 CHAPTER XXVn. 
 The Country Medical Man .: .. ..; . • 478
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Prof. Billroth 's Surgical Clynic * . Frontispiece 
 
 From the Original Painting by A. F. Seligmann. 
 
 The Founders of the Medical Society of 
 
 London 228 
 
 From the Original Painting. 
 
 An Accident* 258 
 
 From the Original Painting by Dagnan- Vouveret. 
 
 The Anatomist 374 
 
 From the Original Painting by Max. 
 •Original by courtesy of William Wood & Co., New York.
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 The writer of this volume has endeavoured to col- 
 lect, in a readable and attractive form, the best of 
 those medical Ana that have been preserved by tra- 
 dition or literature. In doing so, he has not only 
 done his best to combine and classify old stories, but 
 also cautiously to select his materials, so that hia 
 work, while affording amusement to the leisure hours 
 of Doctors learned in their craft, might contain no 
 line that should render it unfit for the drawing-room 
 table. To effect this, it has been found necessary to 
 reject many valuable and characteristic anecdotes— 
 some of them entering too minutely into the mysteries 
 and technicalities of medicine and surgery, and some 
 being spiced with a humour ill calculated to please 
 the delicacy of the nineteenth century. 
 
 Much of the contents of this volume has never be- 
 fore been published, but, after being drawn from a 
 variety of manuscript sources, is now for the first 
 time submitted to the world. It would be difficult to 
 enumerate all the persons to whom the writer is in- 
 debted for access to documents, suggestions, critical 
 notes, or memoranda. He cannot, however, let the 
 present occasion go by without expressing his grati- 
 tude to the College of Physicians, for the prompt ur- 
 banity with which they allowed him to inspect the 
 treasures of their library. To Dr. Munk, the learned 
 librarian of the College — who for many years, in the
 
 IV. PREFACE. 
 
 scant leisure allowed him by the urgent demands of 
 an extensive practice, has found a dignified pastime 
 in antiquarian and biographic research— the writer's 
 best thanks are due. With a liberality by no means 
 always found iu a student possessed of "special in- 
 formation,'' the Doctor surrendered his precious 
 stores to the use of a comparative stranger, appar- 
 ently without even thinking of the value of his gift. 
 But even more than to the librarian of the College 
 of Physicians the writer is indebted for assistance to 
 his very kind friend Dr. Diamond, of Twickenham 
 House— a gentleman who, to all the best qualities of 
 a complete physician, unites the graces of a scholarly 
 mind, an enthusiasm for art, and the fascinations of 
 a generous nature.
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS, 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 SOMETHING ABOUT STICKS, AND RATHER LESS ABOUT 
 WIGS. 
 
 Properly treated and fully expanded, this sub- 
 ject of "the stick" would cover all the races 
 of man in all regions and all ages; indeed, 
 it would hide every member of the human family. 
 Attention could be called to the respect accord- 
 ed in every chapter of the world's history, sacred and 
 profane, to the rahdos — to the fasces of the Roman 
 lictors, which every school-boy honours (often uncon- 
 sciously) with an allusion when he says he will lick, 
 or vows he won't be licked,— to the herald's staff of 
 Hermes, the caduceus of Mercury, the wand of ^s- 
 culapius, and the rods of Moses and the contending 
 sorcerers— to the mystic bundles of nine twigs, in 
 honour of the nine muses, that Dr. Busby loved to 
 wield, and which many a simple English parent be- 
 lieves Solomon, in all his glory, recommended as an 
 element in domestic jurisdiction— to the sacred wands
 
 6 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 of savage tribes, the staffs of our constables and 
 sheriffs, and the highly polished gold sticks and black 
 rods that hover about the anterooms of St. James's 
 cr Portsoker.. .The "ule of thumb has been said to be 
 the government of this world. And what is this 
 tturab.buta shprt stii'k, a sceptre, emblematic of a 
 sovereign authority .vhich none dares to dispute? 
 "The stick," says the Egyptian proverb, "came down 
 from heaven." 
 
 The only sticks, however, that we here care to 
 speak about are physicians' canes, barbers' poles, and 
 the twigs of rue which are still strewn before the pris- 
 oner in the dock of a criminal court. Why should 
 they be thus strung together ? 
 
 The physician's cane is a very ancient part of his 
 insignia. It is now disused, but up to very recent 
 times no doctor of medicine presumed to pay a pro- 
 fessional visit, or even to be seen in public, without 
 this mystic wand. Long as a footman's stick, smooth 
 and varnished, with a heavy gold knob or cross-bar at 
 the top, it was an instrument with which, down to the 
 present century, every prudent aspirant to medical 
 practice was provided. The celebrated "gold-headed 
 cane" which Radcliffe, Mead, Askew, Piteairn and 
 Baillie successively bore is preserved in the College of 
 Physicians, bearing the arms which those gentlemen 
 assumed, or were entitled to. In one respect it de- 
 viated from the physician's cane proper. It has a 
 cross-bar almost like a crook; whereas a physician's 
 wand ought to have a knob at the top. This knob in 
 olden times was hollow, and contained a vinaigrette, 
 which the man of science always held to his nose when 
 he approached a sick person, so that its fumes might
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 7 
 
 protect him from the noxious exhalations of his pa- 
 tient. We know timid people who, on the same plan, 
 have their handkerchiefs washed in camphor-water, 
 and bury their faces in them whenever they pass the 
 corner of a dingy street, or cross an open drain, or 
 come in contact with an ill-looking man. AVhen How- 
 ard, the philanthropist, visited Exeter, he found that 
 the medical officer of the county gaol had caused a 
 clause to be inserted in his agreement with the mag- 
 istrates, exonerating him from attendance and ser- 
 vices during any outbreak of the gaol fever. Most 
 likely this gentleman, by books or experience, had 
 been enlightened as to the inefficacy of the vinai- 
 grette. 
 
 But though the doctor, like a soldier skulking from 
 the field of battle, might with impunity decline visit- 
 ing the wretched captives, the judge was forced to do 
 his part of the social duty to them — to sit in their 
 presence during their trial in a close, fetid court; to 
 brow-beat them when they presumed to make any 
 declaration of their innocence beyond a brief "not 
 guilty"; to read them an energetic homily on the con- 
 sequences of giving way to corrupt passions and evil 
 manners ; and, finally, to order them their proper ap- 
 portionments of whipping, or incarceration, or ban- 
 ishment, or death. Such was the abominable condi- 
 tion of our prisons, that the poor creatures dragged 
 from them and placed in the dock often by the nox- 
 ious effluvia of their bodies made seasoned criminal 
 lawyers turn pale— partly, perhaps, through fear, 
 but chiefly through physical discomfort. Then arose 
 the custom of sprinkling aromatic herbs before the 
 prisoners— so that if the health of his Lordship and
 
 8 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 the gentlemen of the long robe suffered from the 
 tainted atmosphere, at least their senses of smell 
 might be shocked as little as possible. Then, also, 
 came the chaplain's bouquet, with which that rever- 
 end officer was always provided when accompanying 
 a criminal to Tyburn. Coke used to go circuit carry- 
 ing in his hand an enormous fan furnished with a 
 handle, in the shape of a goodly stick— the whole 
 forming a weapon of offence or defence. It is not 
 improbable that the shrewd lawyer caused the end of 
 this cumbrous instrument to be furnished with a 
 vinaigrette. 
 
 So much for the head of the physician's cane. The 
 stick itself was doubtless a relic of the conjuring par- 
 aphernalia with which the healer, in ignorant and 
 superstitious times, worked upon the imagination of 
 the credulous. Just as the IJ which the doctor affixes 
 to his prescription is the old astrological sign (ill- 
 drawn) of Jupiter, so his cane descended to him from 
 Hermes and Mercurius. It was a relic of old jugglery, 
 and of yet older religion— one of those baubles which 
 we know well where to find, but which our conserva- 
 tive tendencies disincline us to sweep away without 
 some grave necessity. 
 
 The charming-stick, the magic ^Esculapian wand of 
 the Medicine-man, differed in shape and significance 
 from the pole of the barber-surgeon. In the "British 
 Apollo," 1703, No. 3, we read:— 
 
 "I'd know why he that selleth ale 
 Hangs out a chequer'd part per pale: 
 And why a barber at port-hole 
 Puts forth a parti-coloured pole?
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTOES. 
 
 "In ancient Rome, when men loved fighting, 
 And wounds and scars took much delight in, 
 Man-menders then had noble pay — 
 Which we call surgeons to this d?y. 
 'Twas order'd that a huge long pole. 
 With basin deck'd, should grace the hole. 
 To guide the wounded, who unlopt 
 Could walk, on stumps the other hopt; 
 But when they ended all their wars, 
 And men grew out of love with scars. 
 Their trade decaying, to keep swimming. 
 They joined the other trade of trimming; 
 And to their poles, to publish either. 
 Thus twisted both their trades together." 
 
 The principal objection that can be made to this 
 answer is that it leaves the question unanswered, 
 after making only a very lame attempt to answer it. 
 Lord Thurlow, in a speech delivered in the House of 
 Peers on 17th of July, 1797, opposing the surgeons' 
 incorporation bill, said that, "By a statute still in 
 force, the barbers and surgeons were each to use a 
 pole. The barbers were to have theirs blue and white, 
 striped with no other appendage; but the surgeons', 
 which was the same in other respects, was likewise to 
 have a gallipot and a red rag, to denote the particular 
 nature of their vocation." 
 
 But the reason why the surgeon's pole was adorned 
 with both blue and red seems to have escaped tha 
 Chancellor. The chirurgical pole, properly tricked, 
 ought to have a line of blue paint, another of red, and 
 a third of white, winding round its length, in a reg- 
 ular serpentine progression — the blue representing 
 the venous blood, the more brilliant colour the arter- 
 ial, and the white thread being symbolic of the band- 
 age used in tying up the arm after withdrawing the 
 ligature. The stick itself is a sign that the operator
 
 10 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 possesses a stout staff for his patients to hold, con- 
 tinually tightening and relaxing their grasp during 
 the operation— accelerating the flow of the blood by 
 the muscular action of the arm. The phlebotomist's 
 staff is of great antiquity. It is to be found amongst 
 his properties, in an illuminated rji:sr.l of the time of 
 Edward the First, and in an engraving of the 
 "Comenii Orbis Pictus." 
 
 Possibly in ancient times the phj'sician's cane and 
 the surgeon's club were used more actively. For 
 many centuries fustigation was believed in as a sov- 
 ereign remedy for bodily ailment as well as moral 
 failings, and a beating was prescribed for an ague as 
 frequently as for picking and stealing. This process 
 Antonius Musa employed to cure Octavius Augustus 
 of Sciatica. Thomas Campanella believed that it had 
 the same effect as colocynth administered internally. 
 Galen recommended it as a means of fattening people. 
 Gordonius prescribed it in certain cases of nervous 
 irritability— "Si sit juvenis, et non vult obedire, flag- 
 elletur frequenter et fortiter." In some rural dis- 
 tricts ignorant mothers still flog the feet of their chil- 
 dren to cure them of chilblains. And there remains 
 on record a case in which club-tincture produced ex- 
 cellent results on a young patient to whom Desault 
 gave a liberal dose of it. 
 
 In 1792, when Sir Astley Cooper was in Paris, he 
 attended the lectures of Desault and Chopart in the 
 Hotel Dieu. On one occasion, during this part of 
 his student course, Cooper saw a young fellow, of 
 some sixteen years of age, brought before Desault 
 complaining of paralysis in his right arm. Suspect- 
 ing that the boy was only shamming, "Abraham,"
 
 A. BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 11 
 
 Desault observed, unconcernedly, "Otez votre 
 chapeau. " 
 
 Forgetting his paralytic story, the boy instantly 
 obeyed, and ancovered his head. 
 
 "Donnez moi un baton!" screamed Desault; and 
 he beat the boy unmercifully. 
 
 "D'ou venez vous?" inquired the operator when 
 the castigation was brought to a close. 
 
 "Faubourg de St. Antoine," was the answer. 
 
 "Oui, je le crois," replied Desault, with a shrug- 
 speaking a truth experience had taught him— "tous 
 les coquins viennent de ce quartier la. ' ' 
 
 But enough for the present of the barber-surgeon 
 and his pole. "Tollite barberum," — as Bonnel 
 Thornton suggested, when in 1745 (a year barbarous 
 in more ways than one), the surgeons, on being dis- 
 joined from the barbers, were asking what ought to 
 be their motto. 
 
 Next to his cane, the physician's ^vig was the most 
 important of his accoutrements. It gave profound 
 learning and wise thought to lads just out of their 
 teens. As the horse-hair skull-cap gives idle Mr. 
 Briefless all the acuteness and gravity of aspect which 
 one looks for in an attorney-general, so the doctor's 
 artificial locks were to him a crown of honour. One 
 of the Dukes of Holstein, in the eighteenth century, 
 just missed destruction through being warned not to 
 put on his head a poisoned wig which a traitorous 
 peruke-maker offered him. To test the value of the 
 advice given him, the Duke had the wig put upon th« 
 head of its fabricator. Within twelve minutes the 
 man expired! "We have never heard of a physician
 
 12 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 finding death in a wig; but a doctor who found the 
 means of life in one is no rare bird in history. 
 
 "Each son of Sol, to make him look more big. 
 Had on a large, grave, decent, three-tailed wig ; 
 His clothes full-trimmed, with button-holes behind, 
 Stiff were the skirts, with buckram stoutly lined; 
 The cloth-cut velvet, or more reverend black. 
 Full-made, and powder'd half-way down his back; 
 Large decent cuffs, which near the ground did reach, 
 With half a dozen buttons fix'd on each. 
 Grave were their faces — fix'd in solemn state. 
 These men struck awe ; their children carried weight, 
 In reverend wigs old heads young shoulders bore. 
 And twenty-five or thirty seemed threescore." 
 
 The three-tailed wig was the one worn by Will At- 
 kins, the gout doctor in Charles the Second's time 
 (a good specialty then!). "Will Atkins lived in the 
 Old Bailey, and had a vast practice. Ilis nostrums, 
 some of which were composed of thirty different in- 
 gredients, were wonderful— but far less so than his 
 wig, which was combed and frizzled over each cheek. 
 When Will walked about the town, visiting his pa- 
 tients, he sometimes carried a cane, but never wore a 
 hat. Such an article of costume would have disar- 
 ranged the beautiful locks, or. at least, have obscured 
 their glory. 
 
 "Physic of old her entry made 
 Beneath th' immense full-bottom's shade; 
 While the gilt cane, with solemn pride. 
 To each sagacious nose applied, 
 Seem'd but a necessary prop 
 To bear the weight of wig at top." 
 
 One of the most magnificent wigs on record was 
 that of Colonel Dalmahoy, which was celebrated in a 
 song beginning:— 
 
 "If you would see a noble wig, 
 And in that wig a man look big,
 
 A BUUK ABOUT DOCTORS. 13 
 
 To Ludgate Hill repair, my joy, 
 And gaze on Col'nel Dalmahoy." 
 
 On Ludgate Hill, in close proximity to the Hall of 
 the Apothecaries in Water Lane, the Colonel vend- 
 ed drugs and nostrums of all sorts — sweetmeats, 
 washes for the complexion, scented oil for the hair, 
 pomades, love-drops, and charms. Wadd, the humor- 
 ous collector of anecdotes relating to his profession, 
 records of him- — 
 
 "Dalmahoy sold infusions and lotions, 
 Decoctions, and gargles, and pills ; 
 Electuaries, powders, and potions. 
 Spermaceti, salts, scammony, squills. 
 
 "Horse-aloes, burnt alum, agaric, 
 
 Balm, benzoine, blood-stone, and dill; 
 Castor, camphor, and acid tartaric. 
 With specifics for every ill. 
 
 "But with all his specifics in store. 
 
 Death on Dalmahoy one day did pop; 
 And although he had doctors a score, 
 Made poor Dalmahoy shut up his shop." 
 
 The last silk-coated physician was Henry Revell 
 Reynolds, M. D., one of the physicians who attended 
 George III. during his long and melancholy aflSiction. 
 Though this gentleman came quite down to living 
 times, he persisted to the end in wearing the costume 
 —of a well-powdered wig, silk coat, breeches, stock- 
 ings, buckled shoes, gold-headed cane, and lace ruffles 
 —with which he commenced his career. He was the 
 Brummel of the Faculty, and retained his fondness 
 for delicate apparel to the last. Even in his grave- 
 clothes the coxcombical tastes of the man exhibited 
 themselves. His very cerements were of "a good 
 make."
 
 14 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 "Here well-dressed Reyiiolds lies. 
 As great a beau as ever; 
 We may perhaps see one as wise, 
 But sure a smarter never." 
 
 Whilst Brocklesby's wig is still bobbing about in 
 the distance, we may as well tell a good story of him. 
 He was an eccentric man, with many good points, one 
 of which was his friendship for Dr. Johnson. The 
 Duchess of Richmond requested Brocklesby to visit 
 her maid, who was so ill that she could not leave her 
 bed. The physician proceeded forthwith to Rich- 
 mond House, in obedience to the command. On ar- 
 riving there he was shown up-stairs by the invalid's 
 husband, who held the post of valet to the Duke. The 
 man was a very intelligent fellow, a character with 
 whom all visitors to Richmond House conversed 
 freely, and a vehement politician. In this last char- 
 acteristic the Doctor resembled him. Slowly the phy- 
 sician and the valet ascended the staircase, discussing 
 the fate of parties, and the merits of ministers. They 
 became excited, and declaiming at the top of theiu 
 voices entered the sick room. The valet— forgetful 
 of his marital duties in the delights of an intellectual 
 contest — poured in a broadside of sarcasms, ironical 
 inquiries, and red-hot declamation; the doctor— with 
 true English pluck — returning fire, volley for volley. 
 The battle lasted for upwards of an hour, when the 
 two combatants walked down-stairs, and the man of 
 medicine took his departure. When the doctor ar- 
 rived at his door, and was stepping from his carriage, 
 it flashed across his mind that he had not applied his 
 finger to his patient's pulse, or even asked her how 
 she felt herself! 
 
 Previous to Charles II. 's reign physicians were in
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTOES. 15 
 
 the habit of visiting their patients on horse-back, sit- 
 ting sideways on foot-cloths like women. Simeon Fox 
 and Dr. Argent were the last Presidents of the Col- 
 lege of Physicians to go their rounds in this undigni- 
 fied manner. With the "Restoration" came the car- 
 riage of the London physician. The Lex Talionis 
 says, "For there must now be a little coach and two 
 horses; and, being thus attended, haif-a-piece, their 
 usual fee, is but ill-taken, and popped into their left 
 pocket, and possibly may cause the patient to send 
 for his worship twice before he will come again to 
 the hazard of another angel." 
 
 The fashion, once commenced, soon prevailed. In 
 Queen Anne's reign, no physician with the slightest 
 pretensions to practice could manage without his 
 chariot and four, sometimes even six, horses. In our 
 own day an equipage of some sort is considered so 
 necessary an appendage to a medical practitioner, 
 that a physician without a carriage (or a fly that can 
 pass muster for one) is looked on with suspicion. He 
 is marked down mauvais sujet in the same list with 
 clergjTnen without duty, barristers without chambers, 
 and gentlemen whose Irish tenantry obstinately re- 
 fuse to keep them supplied with money. On the 
 whole the carriage system is a good one. It protects 
 stair carpets from being soiled with muddy boots (a 
 great thing!), and bears cruelly on needy aspirants 
 after professional employment (a yet greater thing! 
 and one that manifestly ought to be the object of all 
 professional etiquette!). If the early struggles of 
 many fashionable physicians were fully and courage- 
 ously written, we should have some heart-rending 
 stories of the screwing and scraping and shifts by
 
 16 A BOOK ^VBOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 which their first equipages were maintained. Who 
 hasn't heard of the darling doctor who taught sing- 
 ing under tlie moustachioed and bearded guise of an 
 Italian Count, at a young ladies' school at Clapham, 
 in order that he might make his daily West-end calls 
 between 3 p. m. and 6 p. m. in a well-built brougham 
 drawn by a fiery steed from a livery stable? There 
 was one noted case of a young physician who pro- 
 vided himself with the means of figuring in a brough- 
 am during the llay-fair morning, by condescending 
 to the garb and duties of a flyman during the hours 
 of darkness. He used the same carriage at both 
 periods of the four-and-twenty hours, lolling in it by 
 daylight, and sitting on it by gaslight. The poor 
 fellow forgetting himself on one occasion, so far as 
 to jump in when he ought to have jumped on, or 
 jump 0)1 when he ought to have jumped m, he pub- 
 lished his delicate secret to an unkind world. 
 
 It is a rash thing for a young man to start his car- 
 riage, unless he is sure of being able to sustain it for a 
 dozen years. To drop it is sure destruction. We re- 
 member an ambitious Phaeton of Hospitals who as- 
 tonished tlie world— not only of his profession, but 
 of all London— with an equipage fit for an ambassa- 
 dor—the vehicle and the steeds being obtained, like 
 the arms blazoned on his panels, upon credit. Six 
 years afterwards he was met by a friend crushing the 
 mud on the ilarylebone pavements, and with a char- 
 acteristic assurance, that even adversity was unable 
 to deprive him of, said that his health was so much 
 deranged that his dear friend, Sir James Clarke, had 
 prescribed continual walking exercise for him as the 
 only means of recovering his powers of digestion.
 
 A BOOK ^VBOUT DOCTORS. 17 
 
 His friends— good-natured people, as friends always 
 are — observed that "it was a pity Sir James hadn't 
 given him the advice a few years sooner— prevention 
 being better than cure." 
 
 Though physicians began generally to take to car- 
 riages in Charles II. 's reign, it may not be supposed 
 that no doctor of medicine before that time exper- 
 ienced the motion of a wheeled carriage. In "Stowe's 
 Survey of London" one may read:— 
 
 "In the year 1563, Dr. Langton, a physician, rid in 
 a ear, with a gown of damask, lined with velvet, and 
 a coat of velvet, and a cap of the same (such, it seems, 
 doctors then wore), but having a blue hood pinned 
 over his cap; which was (as it seems) a customary 
 mark of guilt. And so came through Cheapside on a 
 market-day." 
 
 The doctor's offence was one against public morals. 
 He had loved not wisely— but too well. The same 
 generous weakness has brought learned doctors, since 
 Langton 's day, into extx'emely ridiculous positions. 
 
 The cane, wig, silk coat, stockings, side-saddle, and 
 carriage, of the old physician have been mentioned. 
 We may not pass over his muff in silence. That hQ 
 might have his hands warm and delicate of touch, 
 and so be able to discriminate to a nicety the qualities 
 of his patient's arterial pulsations, he made his 
 rounds, in cold weather, holding before him a large 
 fur muff, in which his fingers and fore-arm were 
 concealed. 
 
 4—2
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 EARLY ENGLISH PHYSICIANS. 
 
 "Medicine is a science which hath been, as we have said, more 
 professed than laboured, and yet more laboured than ad- 
 vanced ; the labour having been, in my judgment, rather in 
 circle than in progression. For I find much iteration, and 
 small progression." — Lord Bacon's Advancement of Learn- 
 ing. 
 
 The British doctor, however, does not make 
 his first appearance in sable dress and full-bot- 
 tomed wig. Chaucer's physician, who was "groundit 
 in Astronomy and Magyk Naturel," and whose 
 "study was but lytyl in the Bible," had a far smarter 
 and more attractive dress. 
 
 "In sanguyn and in perse he clad was al, 
 Lined with taffata and with sendal." 
 
 Taffeta and silk, of crimson and sky-blue colour, 
 must have given an imposing appearance to this wor- 
 thy gentleman, who, resembling many later doctors 
 in his disuse of the Bible, resembled them also in his 
 love of fees. 
 
 "And yit he was but csy of dispence. 
 He kepte that he won in pestelence; 
 For gold in physik is a cordial; 
 Therefore he lovede gold in special.''
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 19 
 
 Amongst our more celebrated and learned English 
 physicians was John Phreas, born about the com- 
 mencement of the fifteenth century, and educated at 
 Oxford, where he obtained a fellowship on the found- 
 ation of Balliol College. His M. D. degree he ob- 
 tained in Padua, and the large fortune he made by 
 the practice of physic was also acquired in Italy. He 
 was a poet and an accomplished scholar. Some of his 
 epistles in j\IS. are still preserved in the Balliol Li- 
 brary and at the Bodleian. His translation of Dio- 
 dorus Siculus, dedicated to Paul II., procured for him 
 from that pontitY the fatal gift of an English bish- 
 opric. A disappointed candidate for the same pre- 
 ferment is said to have poisoned him before the day 
 appointed for his consecration. 
 
 Of Thomas Linacre, successively physician to 
 Henry VII., Henry VIII., Edward VI., and Princess 
 Mary, the memory is still green amongst men. At his 
 request, in conjunction with the representations of 
 John Chambre, Pernandus de Victoria, Nicholas 
 Halswell, John Praunces, Robert Yaxley (physi- 
 cians), and Cardinal Wolsey, Henry VIII. granted 
 letters patent, establishing the College of Physicians, 
 and conferring on its membei"s the sole privilege of 
 practicing, and admitting persons to practice, within 
 the city, and a circuit of seven miles. The college 
 also was empowered to license practitioners through- 
 out the kingdom, save such as were graduates of Ox- 
 ford and Cambridge — who were to be exempt from 
 the jurisdiction of the new college, save within Lon- 
 don and its precincts. Linacre was the first President 
 of the College of Physicians. The meetings of the
 
 20 A BOOK ABO IT DOCTORS. 
 
 learned corporation were held at Linacre's private 
 house, No. 5, Kniglit-Rider Street, Doctors' Com- 
 mons. This house (on which the Physician's arms, 
 granted by Christopher Barker, Garter King-at-arms, 
 Sept. 20, 1546, may still be seen,) was bequeathed to 
 the college by Linacre, and long remained their prop- 
 erty and abode. The original charter of the brother- 
 hood states: "Before this period a great multitude of 
 ignorant persons, of whom the greater part had no 
 insight into physic, nor into any other kind of learn- 
 ing — some could not even read the letters and the 
 book— so far forth, that common artificers, as smiths, 
 weavers and women, boldly and accustomably took 
 upon them great cures, to the high displeasure of God, 
 great infamy of the Faculty, and the grievous hurt, 
 damage, and destruction of many of the king's liege 
 people." 
 
 Linacre died in the October of 1524. Caius, writ- 
 ing his epitaph, concludes, "Fraudes dolosque mire 
 perosus, fidus amicis, omnibus juxta charus; aliquot 
 annos antequam obierat Presbyter factus; plenua 
 annes, ex hac vita migravit, multum desideratus. " 
 His motive for taking holy orders towards the latter 
 part of his life is unknown. Possible he imagined the 
 sacerdotal garb would be a secure and comfortable 
 clothing in the grave. Certainly he was not a pro- 
 found theologian. A short while before his death he 
 read the New Testament for the first time, when so 
 great was his astonishment at finding the rules of 
 Christians widely at variance with their practice, 
 that he threw the sacred volume from him in a pas- 
 sion, and exclaimed, "Either this is not the gospel, 
 or we are not Christians."
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 21 
 
 Of the generation next succeeding Linacre's was 
 John Kaye, or Key (or Caius, as it has been long pe- 
 'dantically spelt). Like Linacre (the elegant writer 
 and intimate friend of Erasmus), Caius is associated 
 with letters not less than medicine. Born of a re- 
 spectable Norfolk family, Caius raised, on the foun- 
 dation of Gonvil Hall, the college in the University 
 of Cambridge that bears his name— to which Eastern 
 Counties' men do mostly resort. Those who know 
 Cambridge remember the quaint humour with which, 
 in obedience to the founder's will, the gates of Caius 
 are named. As a president of the College of Physi- 
 cians, Caius was a zealous defender of the rights of 
 his order. It has been suggested that Shakespeare's 
 Dr. Caius, in "The IMerry Wives of Windsor," was 
 produced in resentment towards the president, for 
 his excessive fervor against the surgeons. 
 
 Caius terminated his laborious and honourable 
 career on July the 29th, 1573, in the sixty-third year 
 of his age.* He was buried in his college chapel, in 
 a tomb constructed some time before his decease, and 
 marked with the brief epitaph— "Fui Caius." In 
 the same year in which this physician of Edward VI., 
 Mary, and Elizabeth died, was born Theodore Tur- 
 quet de Mayerne, Baron Aulbone of France, and Sir 
 Theodore Mayerne in England. Of Mayerne mention 
 will be made in various places of these pages. There 
 is some difficulty in ascertaining to how many 
 
 * In Dr. Moussett's "Health's Improvement; or Rules con- 
 cerning Food" is a curious passage relating to this eminent 
 physician's decay.
 
 22 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 crowned heads Ihis lucky courtier was appointed phy- 
 sician. After leaving France and permanently fixing 
 himself in England, he kept up his connection with 
 the French, so that the list of his monarch-patients 
 may be said to comprise two French and three Eng- 
 lish sovereigns— Henry IV. and Louis XIII. of 
 France, and James I., Charles I., and Charles II. of 
 England. Mayerne died at Chelsea, in the eighty- 
 second year of his age, on the 15th of March, 1655. 
 Like John Hunter, he was buried in the church of St. 
 Martin 's-in-the-Fields. His library went to the Col- 
 lege of Physicians, and his wealth to his only daugh- 
 ter, who was married to the IMarquis of Montpouvil- 
 lon. Though Mayerne was the most eminent physi- 
 cian of his time, his prescriptions show that his en- 
 lightenment was not superior to the prevailing ig- 
 norance of the period. He recommended a monthly 
 excess of wine and food as a fine stimulant to the sys- 
 tem. His treatise on Gout, written in French, and 
 translated into English (1676) by Charles II. 's phy- 
 sician in ordinary. Dr. Thomas Sherley, recommends 
 a clumsy and inordinate administration of violent 
 drugs. Calomel he habitually administered in scru- 
 ple doses. Sugar of lead he mixed largely in his con- 
 serves; pulverized human bones he was very fond of 
 prescribing; and the principal ingredient in his gout- 
 powder was "raspings of a human skull unburied." 
 But his sweetest compound was his "Balsam of 
 Bats," strongly recommended as an unguent for hy- 
 pochondriacal persons, into which entered adders, 
 bats, suckling whelps, earth-worms, hog's grease, the 
 marrow of a stag, and the thigh-bone of an ox. After
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 23 
 
 such a specimen of the doctor's skill, possibly the 
 reader will not care to study his receipts for canine 
 madness, communicated to the Royal Society in 1687, 
 or his "Excellent and well-approved Receipts and 
 Experiments in Cookery, with the best way of Pre- 
 serving." Nor will the reader be surprised to learn 
 that the great physician had a firm belief in the efS- 
 cacy of amulets and charms. 
 
 But the ignorance and superstition of which May- 
 erne was the representative were approaching the 
 close of their career; and Sir Theodore's court celeb- 
 rity and splendour were to become contemptible by 
 the side of the scientific achievements of a contem- 
 porary. The grave closed over Mayerne in 1655 ; but 
 in the December of 1652, the College of Physicians 
 had erected in their hall a statue of Harvey, who died 
 on the third of June, 1657, aged seventy-nine years. 
 
 "The circling streams, once thought but pools of blood 
 (Whether life's fuel, or the body's food), 
 From dark oblivion Harvey's name shall save." 
 
 Aubrey says of Harvey — "He was not tall, but of 
 the lowest stature; round-faced, olivaster (like waint- 
 scott) complexion: little eie— round, very black, full 
 of spirit; his haire was black as a raven, but quite 
 white twenty years before he dyed. I remember he 
 was wont to drink coffee, which he and his brother 
 Eliab did, before coffee-hou.ses were in fashion in 
 London. He was, as all the rest of his brothers, very 
 cholerique; and in his younger days wore a dagger 
 (as the fashion then was) ; but this doctor would be 
 apt to draw out his dagger upon every slight occa- 
 sion. He rode on horse-back with a foot-cloath to visit
 
 24 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 his patients, his man following on foot, as the fashion 
 then was, was very decent, now quite discontinued." 
 
 Harvey's discovery dates a new era in medical and 
 surgical science. Its influence on scientific men, not 
 only as a stepping-stone to further discoveries, but 
 as a power rousing in all quarters a spirit of philo- 
 sophic investigation, was immediately perceptible. A 
 new class of students arose, before whom the foolish 
 dreams of medical superstition and the darkness of 
 empiricism slowly disappeared. 
 
 Of the physicians* of what may be termed the 
 Elizabethan era, beyond all others the most sagacious 
 and interesting, is William Bulleyn. He belongs to 
 a bevy of distinguished Eastern Counties' physicians. 
 Dr. Butts, Henry VIII. 's physician, mentioned in 
 StrjTse's "Life of Cranmer," and made celebrated 
 amongst doctors by Shakespeare's "Henry the 
 Eighth," belonged to an honourable and gentle fam- 
 ily sprinkled over Norfolk, Suffolk, and Cambridge- 
 shire. The butcher king knighted him by the style of 
 William Butts of Norfolk. Caius was born at Nor- 
 wich; and the eccentric William Butler, of whom 
 Mayerne, Aubrey, and Fuller tell fantastic stories, 
 was born at Ipswich, about the year 15-35. 
 
 William Bulleyn was born in the isle of Ely; but 
 it is with the eastern division of the county of Suf- 
 folk that his name is especially associated. Sir Wil- 
 liam Bulleyn, the Sheriff of Norfolk and Suffolk in 
 
 * To the acquirements of the Elizabethan physicians in 
 everj' department of learning, save the sciences immediately 
 concerning their own profession, Lord Bacon bears emphatic 
 testimony — "For you shall have of them antiquaries, poets, 
 humanists, statesmen, merchants, divines."
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 25 
 
 the fifteenth year of Henry VII., and grandfathei 
 of the unfortunate Anne Boleyn, was one of the mag- 
 nates of the doctor's family— members of which are 
 still to be found in Ipswich and other parts of East 
 Anglia, occupying positions of high respectability. 
 In the reigns of Edward VI., ilary, and Elizabeth, no 
 one ranked higher than William Bulleyn as botanist 
 and physician. The record of his acuteness and 
 learning is found in his numerous works, which are 
 amongst the most interesting prose writings of the 
 Elizabethan era. If Mr. Bohn, who has alreadj^ done 
 so much to render old and neglected authors popular, 
 would present the public with a well-edited reprint 
 of Bulleyn 's w-orks,he would make a valuable addition 
 to the services he has already conferred on literature. 
 After receiving a preliminary education in the Uni- 
 versity of Cambridge, Bulleyn enlarged his mind by 
 extended travel, spending much time in Germany and 
 Scotland. During the reign of Queen Mary he prac- 
 ticed in Norwich; but he moved to Blaxhall, in Suf- 
 folk (of which parish it is beUeved his brother was 
 for some years rector). Alluding to his wealthy 
 friend, Sir Thomas Kushe, of Oxford, he says, with 
 a pun, "I myself did know a Rushe, growing in the 
 fenne side, by Orford, in Suffolke, that might have 
 spent three hundred marks by year. Was not this a 
 rush of estimation? A fewe sutche rushes be better 
 than many great trees or bushes. But thou doste not 
 know that countrey, where sometyme I did dwell, at 
 a place called Blaxall, neere to that Rushe Bushe. I 
 would all rushea within this realme were as riche in 
 value." (The ancient family still maintain their con-
 
 26 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 nection with the county.) Speaking of the rushes 
 near Orford, in Suffolk, and about the isle of Ely, 
 Bulleyn says, "The playne people make mattes and 
 horse-collars of the greater rushes, and of the smaller 
 they make lightes or candles for the winter. Rushes 
 that growe upon dry groundes be good to strewe in 
 halles, chambers, and galleries, to walk upon— de- 
 fending apparell, as traynes of gownes and kirtles, 
 from the drst." 
 
 He tells of the virtues of Suffolk sage (a herb that 
 the nurses of that county still believe in as having 
 miraculous effects, when administered in the form of 
 "sage-tea"). Of Suffolk hops (now but little grown 
 in the county) he mentions in terms of high praise — 
 especially of those grown round Framlingham Castle, 
 and "the late house of nunnes at Briziarde." "I 
 know in many places of the country of Suft'olke, 
 where they brew theyr beere with hoppes that growe 
 upon theyr owne groundes, as in a place called Bri- 
 ziarde, near an old famous castle called Framingham, 
 and in many other places of the country." Of the 
 peas of Orford the following mention is made: — "In 
 a place called Orforde, in Suffolke, betwene the ha- 
 ven and the mayne sea, wheras never plow came, nor 
 natural earth was, but stones onely, infinite thousand 
 ships loden in that place, there did pease grow, whose 
 roots were more than iii fadome long, and the coddes 
 did grow uppon clusters like the keys of ashe trees, 
 bigger than fitches, and less than the fyeld peason, 
 very sweete to eat upon, and served many pore people 
 dwelling there at hand, which els should have per- 
 ished for honger, the scarcity of bread was so great.
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 27 
 
 In so much that the playne pore people did make very 
 much of akornes ; and a sickness of a strong fever did 
 sore molest the commons that yere, the like whereof 
 was never heard of there. Now, ^^'hether th' occasion 
 of these peason, in providence of God, came through 
 some shipwracke with much misery, or els hy miracle, 
 I am not able to determine thereof; but sowen by 
 man's hand they were not, nor like other pease."* 
 
 In the same way one has in the Doctor's "Book of 
 Simples" pleasant gossip about the more choice 
 productions of the garden and of commerce, showing 
 that horticulture must have been far more advanced 
 at that time than is generally supposed, and that the 
 luxuries imported from foreign countries were largely 
 consumed throughout the country. Pears, apples, 
 peaches, quinces, cherries, grapes, raisins, prunes, 
 barberries, oranges, medlars, raspberries and straw- 
 berries, spinage, ginger, and lettuces are the good 
 things thrown upon the board. 
 
 Of pears, the author says: "There is a kynd of 
 peares growing in the city of Norwich, called the 
 black freere's peare, very delicious and pleasaunt, 
 and no lesse profitable unto a hoate stomacke, as I 
 heard it reported by a ryght worshipful phisicion of 
 the same city, called Doctour Manfield." Other pears, 
 too, are mentioned, "sutch as have names as peare 
 Robert, peare John, bishop's blessyngs, with other 
 prety names. The red warden is of greate vertue, 
 
 * The tradition of this timely and unaccountable growth of 
 peas still exists amongst the peasants in the neighbourhood of 
 Orford. J. C. J.
 
 28 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 conserved, roasted or baken to quench cboller." The 
 varieties of the apple especially mentioned are "the 
 costardes, the greene cotes, the pippen, the queene 
 aple." 
 
 Grapes are spoken of as cultivated and brought to 
 a high state of perfection in Suffolk and other part^ 
 of the country. Ilemp is humorously called "gallow 
 grasse or neckweede. ' ' The heartesease, or paunsie, is 
 mentioned by its quaint old name, "three faces in one 
 hodde. " Parsnips, radishes, and carrots are offered 
 for sale. In the neighborhood of London, large 
 quantities of these vegetables were grown for the 
 London market; but Bullej'n thinks little of them, 
 describing them as "more plentiful than profytable." 
 Of figs— "Figges be good agaynst melancholy, and 
 the falling evil, to be eaten. Figges, nuts, and herb 
 grace do make a sufficient medicine against poison or 
 the pestilence. Figges make a good gargarism to 
 cleanse the throates." 
 
 The double daisy is mentioned as growing in 
 gardens. Daisy tea was employed in gout and rheu- 
 matism—as herb tea of various sorts still is by the 
 poor of our provinces. With daisy tea (or bellis-tea) 
 "I, Bulleyn, did recover one Belliser, not onely from 
 a spice of the palsie, but also from the quartan. And 
 afterwards, the same Belliser, more unnatural than a 
 viper, sought divers ways to have murthered me, tak- 
 ing part against me with my mortal enemies, accom- 
 panied with bloudy ruffins for that bloudy purpose." 
 Parsley, also, was much used in medicine. And as it 
 was the custom for the doctor to grow his own herbs 
 in his garden, we may here see the origin of the old
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 29 
 
 nursery tradition of little babies being brought by 
 the doctor from the parsley bed.* 
 
 Scarcely less interesting than "The Book of Sim- 
 ples" is Bulleyn's "Dialogue betweene Soarenes and 
 Chirurgi." It opens with an honourable mention of 
 many distinguished physicians and ehirurgians. Dr. 
 John Kaius is praised as a worthy follower of Lin- 
 acre. Dr. Turner's "booke of herbes will always 
 grow greene." Sir Thomas Eliot's " 'castel of 
 health' cannot decay." Thomas Faire "is not deade, 
 but is transformed and chaunged into a new nature 
 immortal." Androwe Borde, the father of "Merry 
 Andrews," "wrote also wel of physicke to profit the 
 common wealth withal." Thomas Pannel, the trans- 
 lator of the Schola Saternitana, "hath play'd ye 
 good servant to the commonwealth in translating 
 good bookes of physicke." Dr. "William Kunyngham 
 "hath wel travailed like a good souldiour agaynst the 
 ignorant enemy." Numerous other less eminent 
 practitioners are mentioned— such as Buns, Edwards, 
 Hatcher, Frere, Langton, Lorkin, Wendy — educated 
 at Cambridge; Gee and Simon Ludford, of Oxford; 
 Huyck (the Queen's physician), Bartley, Carr; Mas- 
 ters, John Porter, of Norwich; Edmunds of York, 
 Robert Baltrop, and Thomas Calfe, apothecary. 
 
 "Soft ehirurgians," says Bulleyn, "make foul 
 
 sores." He was a bold and courageous one. "Where 
 
 the wound is," runs the Philippine proverb, "the 
 
 plaster must be." Bulleyn was of the same opinion; 
 
 but, in dressing a tender part, the surgeon is directed 
 
 to have "a gladsome countenance," because "the 
 
 * The classical reader who is acquainted with the signifi- 
 cations of the Greek XeXmov, will not be at a loss to ac- 
 count for this medicinal use of the crisp green leaves.
 
 30 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 paciente should not be greatly troubled." For bad 
 surgeons he has not less hostility than he has for 
 "Petty Foggers, in cases of the law, 
 Who make mountayncs of molhils, and trees of a straw." 
 
 The stale of medicine in p]lizabeth's reign may be 
 discovered by a survey of the best recipes of this 
 physician, who, in sayracity and learning, was far 
 superior to Sir Theodore Mayerne, his successor by a 
 long interval. 
 
 "An Embrocation.— An embrocation is made after 
 this manner : — IJ. Of a decoction of mallowes, vyolets, 
 barly, quince seed, lettice leaves, one pint; of barly 
 meale, two ounces ; of oyle of vyolets and roses, of 
 each, an ounce and half; of butter, one ounce; and 
 then seeth them all together till they be like a broathe, 
 puttyng thereto, at the ende, four yolkes of eggs; 
 and the maner of applying them is with peeces of 
 cloth, dipped in the aforesaid decoction, being 
 actually hoate." 
 
 "A Good Emplastcr.— You shall mak a plaster with 
 these medicines following, which the great learned 
 men themselves have used unto their paeienfes: — 1>. 
 Of hulled beanes, or beane flower that is without the 
 brane, one pound; of mallow-leaves, two handfuls; 
 seethe them in lye, til they be well sodden, and after- 
 warde let them be stamped and incorporate with four 
 ounces of meale of lint or flaxe, two ounces of meale 
 of lupina; and forme thereof a plaster ^vith goat's 
 grease, for this openeth the pores, avoideth the mat- 
 ter, and comforteth also the member; but if the place, 
 after a daye or two of the application, fall more and 
 more to blackness, it shall be necessary to go further, 
 even to sacrifying and incision of the place."
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 31 
 
 Pearl electuaries and pearl mixtures were very 
 fashionable medicines with the wealthy down to the 
 commencement of the eighteenth century. Here we 
 have Bulleyn's recipe for 
 
 " Electuarium de Gemmis.—Teike two drachms of 
 white perles; two little peeces of saphyre; jacinth, 
 corneline, emerauldes, granettes, of each an ounce; 
 setwal, the sweate roote doronike, the rind of pome- 
 citron, mace, basel seede, of each two drachms; of 
 redde corall, amber, shaving of ivory, of each two 
 drachms ; rootes both of white and red behen, ginger, 
 long peper, spicknard, folium indicum, saffron, 
 cardamon, of each one drachm; of troch, diarodon, 
 lignum aloes, of each half a small handful ; cinnamon, 
 galinga, zurubeth, which is a kind of setwal, of each 
 one draohm and a half ; thin pieces of gold and sylver, 
 of each half a scruple ; of musk, half a drachm. Make 
 your electuary with honey emblici, which is the fourth 
 kind of mirobalans with roses, strained in equall 
 partes, as much as will suffice. This healeth cold dis- 
 eases of ye braine, harte, stomack. It is a medicine 
 proved against the tremblynge of the harte, faynting 
 and souning, the weaknes of the stomacke, pensivenes, 
 solitarines. Kings and noble men have used this for 
 their comfort. It causeth them to be bold-spirited, 
 the body to smell wel, and ingendreth to the face good 
 coloure. ' ' 
 
 Truly a medicine for kings and noblemen ! During 
 
 the railway panic in '46 an unfortunate physician 
 
 prescribed for a nervous lady: — 
 
 B. Great Western, 350 shares. 
 Eastern Counties \ , , _„„ 
 North Middlesex r~^ *°S°- 
 Mft. Haust. I. Om. noc. cap.
 
 32 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 This direction to a delicate gentlewoman, to swal- 
 low nightly two thousand four hundred and fifty rail- 
 way shares, was regarded as evidence of the physi- 
 cian's insanity, and the management of his private 
 affaii-s was forthwith taken out of liis hands. But 
 assuredly it was as rational a prescription as Bull- 
 eyn's "Electuarium de Gemmis." 
 
 "A Precious Water.— lake nutmegges, the roote 
 called doronike, which the apothecaries have, setwall, 
 gatangall, mastike, long peper, the bark of pomecit- 
 ron, of mellon, sage, bazel, marjorum, dill, spiknard, 
 wood of aloes, cubebe, cardamon, called graynes of 
 paradise, lavender, peniroyall, mintes, sweet catamus, 
 germander, enulacampana, rosemary, stichados, and 
 quinance, of eche lyke quantity; saffron, an ounce 
 and half; the bone of a harte's heart grated, cut, and 
 stamped ; and beate your spyces grossly in a morter. 
 Put in ambergrice and musk, of each half a drachm. 
 Distil this in a simple aqua vita?, made with strong 
 ale, or sackeleyes and aniseedes, not in a common 
 styll, but in a serpentine; to tell the vertue of this 
 water against eolde, phlegme, dropsy, heavines of 
 minde, comming of melancholy, I cannot well at thys 
 present, the excellent virtues thereof are sutch, and 
 also the tyme were to long." 
 
 The cure of cancers has been pretended and at- 
 tempted by a numerous train of knaves and simple- 
 tons, as well as men of science. In the Elizabethan 
 time this most terrible of maladies was thought to be 
 influenced by certain precious waters— i. e. precious 
 messes. 
 
 "Many good men and women," says BuUeyn, 
 "wythin thys realme have dyvers and sundry medi-
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 33 
 
 cines for the canker, and do help their neighboures 
 that bee in perill and daunger whyche he not onely 
 poore and needy, having no money to spende in chir- 
 urgie. But some do well where no chirurgians be 
 neere at hand; in such cases, as I have said, many 
 good gentlemen and ladyes have done no small pleas- 
 ure to poore people; as that excellent knyght, and 
 worthy learned man, Syr Thomas Eliot, whose works 
 be immortall. Syr William Parris, of Cambridge- 
 shire, whose cures deserve prayse; Syr William Gas- 
 coigne, of Yorkshire, that helped many soare eyen; 
 and the Lady Tailor, of Huntingdonshire, and the 
 Lady Darrell of Kent, had many precious medicines 
 to comfort the sight, and to heale woundes withal, 
 and were well seene in herbes. 
 
 "The commonwealth hath great want of them, and 
 of theyr medicines, whyeh if they had come into my 
 handes, they should have bin written in my booke. 
 Among al other there was a knight, a man of great 
 worshyp, a Godly hurtlesse gentleman, which is de- 
 parted thys lyfe, hys name is Syr Anthony Heven- 
 ingham. This gentleman learned a water to kyll a 
 canker of hys owne mother, whych he used all hys 
 lyfe, to the greate helpe of many men, women, and 
 chyldren. ' ' 
 
 This water "learned by Syr Anthony Hevening- 
 ham" was, Bulleyn states on report, composed 
 thus:— 
 
 "Precious Water to Cure a Canker-.— Take dove's 
 foote, a herbe so named, Arkangell ivy wyth the ber- 
 ries, young red bryer toppes, and leaves, whyte roses, 
 theyr leaves and buds, red sage, selandyne, and wood- 
 bynde, of eohe lyke quantity, cut or chopped and put
 
 34 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 into pure cleane whyte wyne, and clarified hony. 
 Then breake into it alum glasse and put in a little 
 of the pouder of aloes hepatica. Destill these togeth- 
 er softly in a limbecke of glasse or pure tin; if not, 
 then in limbecke wherein aqua vita is made. Keep 
 this water close. It will not onely Ivyll the canker, 
 if it be duly washed therewyth ; but also two droppea 
 dayly put into the eye wyll sharp the syght, and 
 breake the pearle and spottes, specially if it be 
 dropped in with a little fenell water, and close the 
 eys after." 
 
 There is reason to wish that all empirical applica- 
 tions, for the cure of cancer, were as harmless as this. 
 
 The following prescription for pomatum differs but 
 little from the common domestic receipts for lip-salve 
 in use at the present day: — 
 
 "Sickness. — How make you pomatum? 
 
 "Health.— Take the fat of a young kyd one pound, 
 temper it with the water of musk roses by the space 
 of foure dayes; then take five apples, and dresse them, 
 and cut them in pieces, and lard them with cloves, 
 then boyle them altogeather in the same water of 
 roses, in one vessel of glasse ; set within another ves- 
 sel ; let it boyle on the fyre so long until all be white ; 
 then wash them ^\•ith ye same water of muske roses; 
 this done, kepe it in a glass; and if you wil have it 
 to smel better, then you must put in a little civet or 
 musk, or of them both, and ambergrice. Gentilwomen 
 doe use this to make theyr faces smoth and fayre, for 
 it healeth cliftes in the lyppes, or in any other place 
 of the hands and face." 
 
 The most laughable of all Bulleyn's receipts is one 
 in which, for the cure of a child suffering under a
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 35 
 
 certain nervous malady, he prescribes "a smal yong 
 mouse rosted." To some a "rested mouse" may 
 seem more palatable than the compound in which 
 snails are the principal ingredient. "Snayles," says 
 BuUejTi, "broken from the shell es and sodden in 
 whyte wyne with oyle and sugar are very holsome, 
 because they be hoat and moist for the straightnes of 
 the lungs and cold cough. Snails stamped with cam- 
 phory, and leven wil draw forth prycks in the flesh." 
 So long did this belief in the virtue of snails retain 
 its hold on Suffolk, that the writer of these pages re- 
 members a venerable lady (whose memory is cher- 
 ished for her unostentatious benevolence and rare 
 w'orth) who for years daily took a cup of snail broth, 
 for the benefit of a weak chest. 
 
 One minor feature of BuUeyn's works is the num- 
 ber of receipts given in them for curing the bites of 
 mad dogs. The good man's horror of Suffolk witches 
 is equal to his admiration of Suffolk dairies. Of the 
 former he says, "I dyd know wji;hin these few yeres 
 a false witch, called I\I. Line, in a towne of Suft'olke 
 called Derham, which with a payre of ebene beades, 
 and certain charmes, had no small resort of foolysh 
 women, when theyr chyldren were syck. To thys 
 lame wyteh they resorted, to have the fairie charmed 
 cind the spyrite conjured away; through the prayers 
 of the ebene beades, whych she said came from the 
 Holy Land, and were sanctifyed at Rome. Through 
 whom many goodly cures were don, but my chaimce 
 was to burn ye said beades. Oh that damnable* 
 witches be suffred to live unpiinished and so many 
 blessed men burned; witches be more hurtful in this 
 realm than either quarten or pestilence. I know in
 
 36 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 a towne called Kelshall in Suffolke, a mtch, whose 
 name was M. Didge, who with certain Ave Marias 
 upon her ebene beades, and a waxe candle, used this 
 charme for S. Anthonies fyre, having the sycke body 
 before her, holding up her hande, saying— 
 
 'There came two aiigcb out of the North-east, 
 One brought fyre, the other brought frost, — 
 Out fyre, and in frost I' 
 
 I could reherse an hundred of sutch knackes, of these 
 holy gossips. The fyre take them all, for they be 
 God's enemyes." 
 
 On leaving Blaxhall in Suffolk, Bulleyn migrated 
 to the north. For many years he practised with suc- 
 cess at Durham. At Sliields he owTied a considerable 
 property. Sir Thomas, Baron of Hilton, Commander 
 of Tinmouth Castle under Philip and Mary, was his 
 patron and intimate friend. His first book, entitled 
 "Government of Health," he dedicated to Sir Thomas 
 Hilton ; but the MS., unfortunately, was lost in a ship- 
 wreck before it was printed. Disheartened by this 
 loss, and the death of his patron, Bulleyn bravely set 
 to work in London, to "revive his dead book." 
 Whilst engaged on the laborious work of recomposi- 
 tion, he was arraigned on a grave charge of murder. 
 "One William Hilton," he says, telling his own story, 
 "brother to the sayd Syr Thomas Hilton, accused me 
 of no less cryme then of most cruel murder of his 
 owne brother, who dyed of a fever (sent onely of 
 God) among his owne f rends, fynishing his lyfe in 
 the Christian fayth. But this William Hilton caused 
 me to be arraigned before that noble Prince, the 
 Duke's Grace of Norfolke, for the same; to this end to 
 have had me dyed shamefully ; that with the covetous
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 37 
 
 Ahab he might have, through false witnes and per- 
 jury, obtayued by the counsel of Jezabell, a wine- 
 yard, by the pryce of blood. But it is wrytten, Testis 
 niendax peribit, a fals witnes shal com to naught; 
 his wicked practise was wisely espyed, his folly de- 
 rj'-ded, his bloudy purpose letted, and fynallye I was 
 with justice delivered." 
 
 This occurred in 1560. His foiled enemy after- 
 wards endeavoured to get him assassinated; but he 
 again triumphed over the machinations of his adver- 
 sary. Settling in London, he obtained a large prac- 
 tice, though he was never enrolled amongst the phy- 
 sicians of the college. His leisure time he devoted to 
 the composition of his excellent works. To the last 
 he seems to have kept up a close connection with the 
 leading Eastern Counties families. His "Comforta- 
 ble Regiment and Very "VVholsome order against the 
 moste perilous Pleurisie," was dedicated to the Right 
 Worshipful Sir Robart Wingfelde of Lethryngham, 
 Knight. 
 
 William Bulleyn died in London, on the 7th of 
 January, 1576, and was buried in the church of St. 
 Giles's, Cripplegate, in the same tomb wherein his 
 brother Richard had been laid thirteen years before; 
 and wherein John Fox, the martyrologist, was in- 
 terred eleven years later. 
 
 434346
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 SIR THOMAS BROWNE AND SIR KENELM DIGBY. 
 
 Amongrst the physicians of the seventeenth century- 
 were three Brownes— father, son, and grandson. The 
 father wrote the "Religio Medici," and the "Pseu- 
 doxia Epidemica"— a treatise on viilgar eiTors. The 
 son was the traveller, and author of ' ' Travels in Hun- 
 garia, Servia, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Thessaly, Austria, 
 Styi-ia, Carinthia, Camiola, Friuli &c, " and the 
 translator of the Life of Themistocles in the English" 
 version of "Plutarch's Lives" undertaken by Dryden. 
 He was also a phj^ician of Bartholomew's, and a 
 favourite physician of Charles II., who on one occa- 
 sion said of him, "Doctor Browne is as learned as 
 any of the college, and as well bred as any of the 
 court." The grandson was a Fellow of the 'Roya\ 
 Society, and, like his father and grandfather, a Fel- 
 low of the Royal College of Physicians; but he was 
 by no means worthy of his distinguished progenitors. 
 Alike unknown in literature, science, and art, he was 
 a miserable sot, and was killed by a fall from his 
 horse, between Southfleet and Gravesend, when in a 
 state of intoxication. He was thus cut off in the July
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 39 
 
 of 1710, having survived his father not quite two 
 years. 
 
 The author of the ' ' Religio Medici ' ' enjoys as good 
 a chance of an immortality of fame as any of his 
 contemporaries. The child of a London merchant, 
 who left him a comfortable fortune, Thomas Browne 
 was from the beginning of his life (Oct. 19, 1605) to 
 its close (Oct. 19, 1682), well placed amongst the 
 wealthier of those who occupied the middle way of 
 life. Prom Winchester College, where his schoolboy 
 days were spent, he proceeded to the Univer.sity of 
 Oxford, becoming a member of Broadgates Hall, i. e., 
 Pembroke College— the college of Blackstone, Shen- 
 stone, and Samuel Johnson. After taking his B.A. 
 and M.A. degrees, he turned his attention to medi- 
 cine, and for some time practised as a physician in 
 Oxfordshire. Subsequently to this he travelled over 
 different parts of Europe, visiting France, Italy, and 
 Holland, and taking a degree of Doctor in Physic at 
 Leyden. Returning to England, he settled at Nor- 
 wich, married a rich and beautiful Norfolk lady, 
 named Mileham ; and for the rest of his days resided 
 in that ancient city, industriously occupied with an 
 extensive practice, the pursuits of literature, and the 
 education of his children. When Charles II. visited 
 Norwich in 1671, Thomas BroT\Tie, M.D., was 
 knighted by the royal hand. This honour, little as a 
 man. of letters would now esteem it, was highly prized 
 by the philosopher. He thus alludes to it in his " An- 
 tiquities of Norwich"— "And it is not for some won- 
 der, that Norwich ha'ving been for so long a time so 
 considerable a place, so few kings have visited it ; of 
 whichnumber among so many monarchs since theCon-
 
 40 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 quest we find but four; viz., King Henry III., Ed- 
 ward I., Queen Elizabeth, and our gracious sovereign 
 now reigning, King Charles II., of which I had a 
 particular reason to take notice." 
 
 Amongst the Norfolk people Sir Thomas was very 
 popular, his suave and unobtrusive mannei-s securing 
 him many friends, and his philosophic moderation of 
 temper sa\'ing him from ever making an enemy. 
 The honour conferred on him was a subject of con- 
 gratulation — even amongst his personal friends, 
 when his back was turned. The Rev. John White- 
 foot, M.A., Rector of Ileigham, in Norfolk, in his 
 "Minutes for the Life of Sir Thomas Browne," says, 
 that had it been his province to preach his funeral 
 sermon, he should have taken his text from an un- 
 canonical book— "I mean that of Syracides, or Jesus, 
 the son of Syrach, commonly called Ecclesiasticus, 
 which, in the 38th chapter, and the first verse, hath 
 these words, 'Honour a phj''sician with the honour 
 due unto him; for the uses which you may have of 
 him, for the Lord hath created him; for of the Most 
 High Cometh healing, and he shall receive Honour 
 of the King' (as ours did that of Imighthood from 
 the present King, when he was in this city). 'The 
 skill of the physician shall lift up his head, and in 
 the sight of great men shall he be in admiration'; so 
 was this worthy person by the greatest man of this 
 nation that ever came into this country, by whom also 
 he was frequently and personally visited." 
 
 Widely and accurately read in ancient and modern 
 literature, and possessed of numerous accomplish- 
 ments, Sir Thomas Browne was in society diffident 
 almost to shyness. "His modesty," says \Miitefoot,
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 41 
 
 "was visible in a natural habitual blush, which was 
 increased upon the least occasion, and oft discovered 
 without any observable cause. Those who knew him 
 only by the briskness of his writings were astonished 
 at his gravity of aspect and countenance, and free- 
 dom from loquacity." As was his manner, so was 
 his dress. ' ' In his habit of cloathing he had an aver- 
 sion to all finery, and affected plainness both in fash- 
 ion and ornaments." 
 
 The monuments of Sir Thomas and his lady are in 
 the church of St. Peter's, Mancroft, Norwich, where 
 they were buried. Some years since Sir Thomas 
 Brovsme's tomb was opened for the purpose of sub- 
 mitting it to repair, when there was discovered on 
 his cofKn a plate, of which Dr. Diamond, who hap- 
 pened at the time to be in Norwich, took two rub- 
 bings, one of which is at present in the writer's cus- 
 tody. It bears the following interesting inscrip- 
 tion: — "Amplissimus vir Dr. Thomas Browne Miles 
 Medicinae Dr. Annos Natus et Denatus 19 Die Men- 
 sis Anno Dmi., 1682— hoc loculo indormiens coi-poris 
 spagyriei pulvere plumbum in aurum convertit. " 
 
 The "Religio Medici" not only created an unpre- 
 cedented sensation by its erudition and polished 
 style, but it shocked the nervous guardians of ortho- 
 doxy by its boldness of inquiry. It was assailed for 
 its infidelity and scientific heresies. According to 
 Coleridge's view of the "Religio Medici," Sir Thomas 
 Browne, "a fine mixture of humourist, genius, and 
 pedant," was a Spinosist without knowing it. "Had 
 he," says the poet, "lived nowadays, he would prob- 
 ably have been a very ingenious and bold infidel in 
 his real opinions, though the kindness of his nature
 
 42 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 would have kept him aloof from vulgar, prating, ob-* 
 trusive infidelity." 
 
 Amongst the advei-se critics of the "Religio Me- 
 dici" was the eccentric, gallant, brave, credulous, per- 
 severing, frivolous. Sir Kenelm Digby. A Ma'cenas, 
 a Sir Philip Sydney, a Dr. Dee, a Beau Fielding, and 
 a Dr. Kitchener, all in one, this man is chief of those 
 extravagant characters that astonish the world at 
 rare intervals, and are found nowhere except in ac- 
 tual life. No novelist of the most advanced section 
 of the idealistic school would dare to create such a 
 personage as Sir Kenelm. The eldest son of the ill- 
 fated Sir Everard Digby, he was scarcely three years 
 old when his father atoned on the scaffold for his 
 share in the gunpowder treason. Fortunately a por- 
 tion of the family e.state was entailed, so Sir Kenelm, 
 although the offspring of attainted blood, succeeded 
 to an ample revenue of about £3000 a-year. In 1618 
 (when only in his fifteenth year) he entered Glouces- 
 ter Hall, now ^\'orcester College, Oxford. In 1621 
 'he commenced foreign travel. He attended Charles 
 I. (then Prince of Wales) at the Court of Madrid; 
 and returning to England in 1623, was knighted by 
 James I. at Hinchinbroke, the house of Lord Mon- 
 tague, on the 23rd of October in that year. From 
 that period he was before the world as courtier, cook, 
 lover, warrior, alchemist, political intriguer, and man 
 of letters. He became a gentleman of the bedcham- 
 ber, and commissioner of the navy. In 1628 he ob- 
 tained a naval command, and made his brilliant ex- 
 pedition against the Venetians and Algerians, whose 
 galleys he routed off Scanderon. This achievement 
 is celebrated by his client and friend, Ben Jonson:—
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 43 
 
 "Though, happy Muse, tnou know my Digby well. 
 Yet read in him these Hnes : he doth excel 
 In honour, courtesy, and all the parts 
 Court can call hero, or man could call his arts. 
 He's prudent, valiant, just, and temperate; 
 In him all virtue is beheld in state; 
 And he is built like some imperial room 
 For that to dwell in, and be still at home. 
 His breast is a brave palace, a broad street, 
 Where all heroic, ample thoughts do meet ; 
 Where nature such a large survey hath ta'en. 
 As other souls, to his, dwelt in a lane: 
 Witness his action done at Scanderoon 
 Upon his birthday, the eleventh of June." 
 
 Returning from war, he became once more the stu- 
 dent, presenting in 1632 the library he had purchased 
 of his friend Allen, to the Bodleian Library, and de- 
 voting his powers to the mastery of controversial 
 divinity. Having in 1636 entered the Church of 
 Rome, he resided for some time abroad. Amongst 
 his works at this period were his "Conference with a 
 Lady about the Choice of Religion," published in 
 1638. and his "Letters between Lord George Digby 
 and Sir Kenelm Digby, Knt., concerning Religion," 
 not published till 1651. It is difficult to say to which 
 he was most devoted— his King, his Church, literature, 
 or his beautiful and frail wife, Venetia Stanley, 
 whose charms fascinated the many admirers on whom 
 she distributed her favours, and gained her Sir 
 Kenelm for a husband when she was the discarded 
 mistress of Richard, Earl of Dorset. She had borne 
 the Earl children, so his Lordship on parting settled 
 on her an annuity of £500 per annum. After her 
 marriage, this annuity not being punctually paid, 
 Sir Kenelm sued the Earl for it. Well might Mr. 
 Lodge say, "By the frailties of that lady much of the 
 noblest blood of England was dishonoured, for she
 
 44 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 was the daughter of Sir Edward Stanley, Knight of 
 the Bath, grandson of the great Edward, Earl of 
 Derby, by Lucy, daughter and co-heir of Thomas 
 Percy, Earl of Northumberland." Such was her 
 unfair fame. "The fair fame left to Posterity of 
 that Truly Noble Lady, the Lady Venetia Digby, late 
 wife of Sir Kenelm Digby, Knight, a Gentleman Ab- 
 solute in all Numbers," is embalmed in the clear 
 verses of Jonson. Like Helen, she is preserved to us 
 by the sacred poet. 
 
 "Draw first a cloud, all save her neck. 
 And out of that make day to break; 
 Till like her face it do appear, 
 And men may think all light rose there." 
 
 In other and more passionate terms Sir Kenelm 
 painted the same charms in his "Private Memoirs." 
 
 But if Sir Kenelm was a chivalric husband, he was 
 not a less loyal subject. How he avenged in France 
 the honour of his King, on the body of a French no- 
 bleman, may be learnt in a curious tract, "Sir Ken- 
 elme Digby 's Honour ]\Iaintained. By a most cour- 
 ageous combat which he fought with Lord Mount le 
 Ros, who by base and slanderous words reviled our 
 King. Also the true relation how he went to the 
 Iving of France, who kindly intreated him, and sent 
 two hundred men to guard him so far as Flanders. 
 And now he is returned from Banishment, and to 
 his eternall honour lives in England." 
 
 Sir Kenelm 's "Observations upon Religio Medici," 
 are properly characterized by Coleridge as those of 
 a pedant. They were written whilst he was kept a 
 prisoner, by order of the Parliament, in "Winchester 
 House; and the author had the ludicrous folly to 
 assert that he both read the "Religio Medici"
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 45 
 
 throTigh for the first time, and wrote his bulky criti- 
 cism upon it, in less than twenty-four hours. Of all 
 the claims that have been advanced by authors for 
 the reputation of being rapid worlonen, this is per- 
 haps the most audacious. For not only was the task 
 one that at least would require a month, but the im- 
 pudent assertion that it was accomplished in less than 
 a day and night was contradicted by the title-page, 
 in which "the observations" are described as "occa- 
 sionally written." Beckford's vanity induced him 
 to boast that "Vathek" wds composed at one sitting 
 of two days and three nights; but this statement- 
 outrageous falsehood though it be — was sober truth 
 compared with Sir KeneLm's brag. 
 
 But of all Sir Kenelm's vagaries, his Sympathetic 
 Powder was the drollest. The composition, revealed 
 after the Knight's death by his chemist and steward, 
 George Hartman, was effected in the following man- 
 ner: — English vitriol was dissolved in warm water; 
 this solution was filtered, and then evaporated till a 
 thin scum appeared on the surface. It was then left 
 undisturbed and closely covered in a cool place for 
 two or three days, when fair, green, and large crys- 
 tals were evolved. "Spread these crystals," contin- 
 ues the chemist, "abroad in a large fiat earthen dish, 
 and expose them to the heat of the sun in the dog- 
 days, turning them often, and the sun will calcine 
 them white; when you see them all white without, 
 beat them grossly, and expose them again to the sun, 
 securing them from the rain ; when they are well cal- 
 cined, powder them finely, and expose this powder 
 again to the sun, turning and stirring it often. Con- 
 tinue this until it be reduced to a white powder,
 
 46 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 which put up in a glass, and tye it up close, axid 
 keep it in a dry place." 
 
 The \Trtues of this powder were unfolded by Sir 
 Kenelm, in a French oration delivered to "a solemn 
 assembly of Nobles and Learned Men at Montpellicr, 
 in France." It cured wounds in the following man- 
 ner:— If any piece of a wounded person's apparel, 
 having on it the stain of blood that had proceeded 
 from the \\x)und, was dipped in water holding in solu- 
 tion some of this sympathetic powder, the woimd 
 of the injured person would forthwith commence a 
 healing process. It mattered not how far distant the 
 sufferer was from the scene of operation. Sir Kenelm 
 gravely related the case of his friend Mr. James 
 Howel, the author of the "Dendrologia," translated 
 into Fi'ench by Mons. Baudoin. Coming accident- 
 ally on two of his friends whilst they were fighting 
 a duel with swords, Howel endeavoured to separate 
 them by grasping hold of their weapons. The result 
 of this interference was to show the perils that 
 
 "Environ 
 The man who meddles with cold iron." 
 
 His hands were severely cut, insomuch that some four 
 or five days afterwards, when he called on Sir Ken- 
 elm, with his wounds plastered and bandaged up, he 
 said his surgeons feared the supervention of gan- 
 grene. At Sir Kenelm 's request, he gave the Imight 
 a garter which was stained with his blood. Sir 
 Kenelm took it, and without saying what he was about 
 to do, dipped it in a solution of his powder of vitriol. 
 Instantly the sufferer started. 
 
 "What ails you?" cried Sir Kenelm. 
 
 "I know not what ails me," was the answer; "but
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 47 
 
 I find that I feel no more pain. Methinks that a 
 pleasing kind of f reshnesse, as it were a cold napkin, 
 did spread over my hand, which hath taken away 
 the inflammation that tormented me before." 
 
 "Since that you feel," rejoined Sir Kenelm, "al- 
 ready so good an effect of my medicament, I advise 
 you to cast away all your plaisters. Only keep the 
 wound clean, and in moderate temper 'twixt heat 
 and cold." 
 
 Mr. Howel went away, sounding the praises of his 
 physician; and the Duke of Buckingham, hearing 
 what had taken place, hastened to Sir Kenelm 's house 
 to talk about it. The Duke and Knight dined togeth-- 
 er; when, after dinner, the latter, to show his guest 
 the wondrous power of his powdei-, took the garter 
 out of the solution, and dried it before the fire. 
 Scarce!}' was it dry, when Mr. Howel's servant ran 
 in to say that his master's hand was worse than ever 
 —burning hot, as if "it were betwixt eoales of fire." 
 The messenger was dismissed with the assurance that 
 ere he reached home his master would be comfortable 
 again. On the man retiring, Sir Kenelm put the 
 garter back into the solution — the result of which 
 was instant relief to Mr. Ilowel. In six days the 
 wounds were entirely healed. This remarkable case 
 occurred in London, during the reign of James the 
 First. "King James," says Sir Kenelm, "required a 
 punctuall information of what had passed touching 
 this cure; and, after it was done and perfected, his 
 Majesty would needs know of me how it was done- 
 having drolled with me first (which he could do with 
 a very good grace) about a magician' and sorcerer." 
 On the promise of inviolable secrecy, Sir Kenelm
 
 48 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 communicated the secret to his Majesty ; ' ' whereupon 
 his Majesty made sundry proofs, whence he received 
 singular satisfaction." 
 
 The secret was also communicated by Sir Kenelm 
 to Mayeme, through whom it was imparted to the 
 Duke of Mayerne— "a long time his friend and pro- 
 tector." After the Duke's death, his surgeon com- 
 municated it to divers people of quality; so that, ere 
 long, every country-barber was familiar with the dis- 
 covery. The mention made of Mayerne in the lecture 
 is interesting, as it settles a point on which Dr. Aikin 
 had no information; viz.,— Whether Sir Theodore's 
 Barony of Aubonne was hereditary or acquired? Sir 
 Kenelm says, "A little while after the Doctor went to 
 France, to see some fair territories that he had pur- 
 chased near Geneva, which was the Barony of Au- 
 bonne." 
 
 For a time the Sympathetic Powder was very gen- 
 erally believed in ; and it doubtless did as much good 
 as harm, by inducing people to throw from their 
 wounds the abominable messes of grease and irritants 
 which were then honoured with the name of plaisters. 
 "What is this?" asked Abernethy, when about to 
 examine a patient with a pulsating tumour, that was 
 pretty clearly an aneurism. 
 
 "Oh! that is a plaister," said the family doctor. 
 
 "Pooh!" said Abernethy, taking it off, and pitch- 
 ing it aside. 
 
 "That was all very well," said the physician, on 
 describing the occurrence ; ' ' but that ' pooh ' took sev- 
 eral guineas out of my pocket. ' ' 
 
 Fashionable as the Sympathetic Powder was for 
 several years, it fell into complete disrepute in this
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 49 
 
 country before the death of Sir Kenelm. Hartman, 
 the Knight's attached servant, could, of his own ex- 
 perience, say nothing more for it than, when dis- 
 solved in water, it was a useful astringent lotion in 
 cases of bleeding from the nose; but he mentions a 
 certain "Mr. Smith, in the city of Augusta, in Ger- 
 many, who told me that he had a great respect for 
 Sir D. K.'s books, and that he made his sympatheticall 
 powder every year, and did all his chiefest cures with 
 it in green wounds, with much greater ease to the 
 patient than if he had used ointments or plaisters." 
 In 1643 Sir Kenelm Digby was released from the 
 confinement to which he had been subjected by the 
 Pai-liament. The condition of his liberty was that 
 he forthwith retired to the Continent— having pre- 
 viously pledged his word as a Christian and a gen- 
 tleman, in no way to act or plot against the Parlia- 
 ment. In France he became a celebrity of the high- 
 est order. Returning to England with the Restora- 
 tion, he resided in "the last fair house westward in 
 the north portico of Covent Garden," and became 
 the centre of literary and scientific society. He was 
 appointed a member of the council of the Royal So- 
 ciety, on the incorporation of that learned body in 
 the year 1663. His death occurred in his sixty-seconJ 
 year, on the 11th of June, 1665 ; and his funeral took 
 place in Christ's Church, within Newgate, where, 
 several years before, he had raised a splendid tomb 
 to the memory of the lovely and abandoned Venetia. 
 His epitaph, by the pen of R. Ferrar, is concise, 
 and not too eulogistic for a monumental inscrip- 
 tion:—
 
 50 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 "Under this tomb the matchless Digby lies — 
 Digby the great, the valiant, and the wise ; 
 This age's wonder for his noble parts, 
 Skill'd in six tongues, and learned in all the arts. 
 Born on the day he died — the Eleventh of June — 
 And that day bravely fought at Scanderoon. 
 It's rare that one and the same day should be 
 His day of birth, and death, and victory." 
 
 After his death, wdth the approval of his son, was 
 published (1669), "The Closet of the Eminently 
 Learned Sir Kenelme Digbie, Kt., Opened: "VSTiereby 
 is discovered Several ways for making of Metheglin, 
 Sider, Cherry- Wine, &e.; together with excellent 
 Directions for Cookery: as also for Preserving, Con- 
 serving, Candying, &c." The frontispiece of this 
 Tvork is a portrait of Sir Kenelm, with a shelf over 
 his head, adorned with his five principal works, enti' 
 tied, "Plants," "Sj-m. Powder," "His Cookery," 
 "Rects. in Physiek, &c," "Sr. K. Digby of Bodyes." 
 
 In Sir Kenelm 's receipts for cookery the gastro- 
 nome would find something to amuse him, and more 
 to arouse his horror. Minced pies are made (as they 
 still are amongst the homely of some counties) of 
 meat, raisins, and spices, mixed. Some of* the sweet 
 dishes verj' closely resemble what are still served on 
 English tables. The potages are well enough. But 
 the barley-puddings, pear-puddings, and oat-meal 
 puddings give ill promise to the ear. It is recom- 
 mended to batter up a couple of eggs and a lot of 
 brown sugar in a cup of tea;— a not less impious 
 profanation of the sacred leaves than that committed 
 by the Highlanders, mentioned by Sir Walter Scott, 
 who, ignorant of the proper mode of treating a pound 
 of fragrant Bohea, served it up in— melted butter I
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 SIB HANS SLOANE. 
 
 The lives of three physicians— Sydenham, Sir Haas 
 Sloane, and Heberden— completely bridge over the 
 iincertain period between old empiricism and modern 
 science. The son of a wealthy Dorsetshire sqtiire, 
 Sydenham was born in 1624, and received the most 
 important part of his education in the University of 
 Oxford, where he was created Bachelor of Medicine 
 14th April, 1648. Settling in London about 1661, 
 he was admitted a Licentiate of the Royal College of 
 Phj'sicians 25th June, 1665. Subsequently he ac- 
 quired an M.D. degree at Cambridge, but this step 
 he did not take till 17th May, 1676. He also studied 
 physic at ^Montpellier ; but it may be questioned if 
 his professional success was a consequence of hia 
 labours in any seat of learning, so much as a result 
 of that knowledge of the world which he gained in 
 the Civil war as a captain in the Parliamentary army. 
 It was he who replied to Sir Richard Blackmore'g 
 inquiry after the best course of study for a medical 
 student to pursue— "Read Don Quixote; it is a very 
 good book— I read it still." Medical critics have felt
 
 52 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 it incumbent on themselves to explain away this mem- 
 orable answer— attributing it to the doctor's cynical 
 temper rather than his scepticism with regard to 
 medicine. When, however, the state of medical sci- 
 ence in the seventeenth century is considered, one has 
 not much difficulty in believing that the shrewd phy- 
 sician meant exactly what he said. There is no ques- 
 tion but that as a practitioner he was a man of many 
 doubts. The author of the capital sketch of Syden- 
 ham in the "Lives of British Physicians" says— "At 
 the commencement of his professional life it is 
 handed down to us by tradition, that it was his or- 
 dinary custom, when consulted by his patients for 
 the first time, to hear attentively the story of their 
 complaints, and then say, 'Well, I will consider of 
 your ca.se, and in a few days will order something 
 for you.' But he soon discovered that this deliberate 
 method of proceeding was not satisfactory, and that 
 many of the persons so received forgot to come again ; 
 and he was consequently obliged to adopt the usual 
 practice of prescribing immediately for the diseases 
 of those who sought his advice." A doctor who feels 
 the need for such deliberation must labour under 
 considerable perplexity as to the proper treatment 
 of his patient. But the low opinion he expressed to 
 Blackmore of books as instructors in medicine, he 
 gave publicly with greater decorum, but almost as 
 forcibly, in a dedication addressed to Dr. Mapletoft, 
 where he says, ' ' The medical art could not be learned 
 so well and so surely as by use and experience; and 
 that he who would pay the nicest and most accurate 
 attention to the symptoms of distempers would suc^ 
 ceed best in finding out the true means of cure."
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 53 
 
 Sydenham died in his house, in Pall Mall, on the 
 29th of December, 1689. In his last years he was a 
 martyr to gout, a malady fast becoming one of the 
 good things of the past. Dr. Forbes Winslow, in his 
 "Physic and Physicians"— gives a picture, at the 
 same time painful and laughable, of the doctor's suf- 
 ferings. "Sydenham died of the gout; and in the 
 latter part of his life is described as visited with that 
 dreadful disorder, and sitting near an open window, 
 on the ground floor of his house, in St. James's 
 Square, respiring the cool breeze on a summer's eve- 
 ning, and reflecting, with a serene countenance and 
 great complacency, on the alleviation to human mis- 
 ery that his skill in his art enabled him to give. 
 Whilst this divine man was enjoying one of these 
 delicious reveries, a thief took away from the table, 
 near to which he was sitting, a silver tankard filled 
 with his favourite beverage, small beer, in which a 
 sprig of rosemary had been immersed, and ran off 
 with it. Sydenham was too lame to ring his bell, and 
 too feeble in his voice to give the alarm. ' ' 
 
 Heberden, the medical friend of Samuel Johnson, 
 was born in London in 1710, and died on the 17th of 
 May, 1801. Between Sydenham and Heberden came 
 Sir Hans Sloane, a man ever to be mentioned hon- 
 ourably amongst those physicians who have contrib- 
 uted to the advancement of science, and the amelior- 
 ation of society. 
 
 Pope says: — 
 
 "'Tis strange the miser should his cares employ. 
 To gain those riches he can ne'er enjoy; 
 Is it less strange the prodigal should waste 
 His wealth to purchase what he ne'er can taste? 
 Not for himself he sees, or hears, or eats.
 
 54 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 Artists must chuse his pictures, music, meats; 
 He buys for Topham drawings and designs, 
 For Pembrol<e statues, dirty gods, and coins ; 
 Rare monl^ish manuscripts, for Hearne alone. 
 And books for Mead, and butterflies for Sloane." 
 Pope's Moral Essays, Epistle IV. 
 
 Hans Sloane (the seventh and youngest child of 
 Alexander Sloane, receiver-general of taxes for the 
 county of Down, before and after the Civil war, and 
 a commissioner of array, after the restoration of 
 Charles II.) was born at Killileagh in 1660. An 
 Irishman by birth, and a Scotchman by descent, he 
 exhibited in no ordinary degree the energy and po- 
 liteness of either of the sister countries. After a 
 childhood of extreme delicacy he came to England, 
 and devoted himself to medical study and scientific 
 investigation. Having passed through a course of 
 careful labour in London, he visited Paris and Mont- 
 pellier, and, returning from the Continent, became 
 the intimate friend of Sydenham. On the 21st of 
 January, 1685, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal 
 Society; and on the 12th of April, 1687, he became a 
 Fellow of the College of Physicians. In the Sep- 
 tember of the latter year he sailed to the West Indies, 
 in the character of physician to the Duke of Albe- 
 marle, who had been appointed Governor of Jamaica. 
 His residence in that quarter of the globe was not of 
 long duration. On the death of his Grace the doctor 
 attended the Duchess back to England, arriving once 
 more in London in the July of 1689. From that time 
 he remained in the capital— his professional career, 
 his social position, and his scientific reputation being 
 alike brilliant. From 1694 to 1730, he was a physi- 
 cian of Christ's Hospital. On the 30th of November, 
 1693, he was elected Secretary of the Royal Society.
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTOES. 55 
 
 In 1701 lie was made an M.D. of Oxford ; and in 1705 
 lie was elected into the fellowship of the College of 
 Physicians of Edinburgh. In 1708 he was chosen a 
 Fellcrw of the Royal Academy of Sciences of Paris. 
 Four years later he was elected a member of the 
 Royal Society of Berlin. In 1719 he became presi- 
 dent of the College of Physicians; and in 1727 he 
 was created President of the Royal Society (on the 
 death of Sir Isaac Newton), and was appointed phy» 
 sician to King George II. In addition to these hon- 
 ours, he won the distinction of being the first* medi- 
 cal practitioner advanced to the dignity of a baron- 
 etcy. 
 
 In 1742, Sir Hans Sloane quitted his professional 
 residence at Bloomsbury; and in the society of his 
 library, museum, and a select number of scientific 
 friends, spent the last years of his life at Chelsea, 
 the manor of which parish he had purchased in 1722. 
 
 In the Gentleman's Magazine for 1748, there is a 
 long but interesting account of a visit paid by the 
 
 * The learned Librarian of the College of Physicians in a 
 letter to me, elicited by the first edition of "The Book About 
 Doctors," observes on this point: "Sir Hans Sloane is com- 
 monly stated to have been the first medical baronet, but I 
 think incorrectly. Sir Edmund Greaves. .\I. D., a Fellow of 
 the College, vvno died nth Nov., i68o, is said, and I am dis- 
 posed to think with truth, to have been created a Baronet at 
 Oxford in 1645. Anthony A. Wood it is true calls him a 
 'pretended baronet,' but he was acknowledged to be a true 
 and veritable one by his colleagues of our college, and con- 
 sidering the jealousy of physicians, which is not quite so 
 great by the way as you seem to think, this is no small testi- 
 mony in favour of my belief. In the Sth edition of Guillim's 
 Heraldry he is made to be the 4S0th baronet from the first in- 
 stitution of the order, and is placed between William de Borcel 
 of Amsterdam and George Carteret of Jersey. If you think 
 the matter worthy of investigation you may turn to Nash's 
 Worcestershire, vol. i., p. 198."
 
 56 A BOOK .VBOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 Prince and Princess of Wales to the Baronet's mu- 
 seum. Sir Hans receivecl his royal guest.s and enter- 
 tained them with a banquet of curiosities, the tables 
 being eleveriy shifted, so that a succession of 
 "courses," under glass cases, gave the charm of va- 
 riety to the labours of observation. 
 
 In his old age Sir Hans became sadly penurious, 
 grudging even the ordinary expenses of hospitality. 
 His intimate friend, George Edwards, P.R.S., gives, 
 in his "Gleanings of Natural History," some par- 
 ticulars of the old Baronet, which present a stronger 
 picture of his parsimony than can be found in the 
 pages of his avowed detractors. 
 
 "Sir Hans, in the decline of his life, left London 
 and retired to his manor-house, at Chelsea, whcra 
 he resided about fourteen years before he died. 
 After his retirement at Chelsea, he requested it as 
 a favour to him ( though I embraced it as an honour 
 due to myself), that I would visit him every week, 
 in order to divert him for an hour or two with the 
 common news of the town, and with everything par- 
 ticular that should happen amongst his acquaintance 
 of the Royal Society, and other ingenious gentlemen, 
 many of whom I was weekly conversant with; and 
 I seldom missed drinking coffee with him on a Sat- 
 urday, during the whole time of his retirement at 
 Chelsea. He was so infirm as to be wholly confined 
 to his house, except sometimes, though rarely, taking 
 a little air in his garden in a wheeled chair ; and this 
 confinement made him very desirous to see any of his 
 old acquaintance, to amuse him. He was strictly 
 careful that I should be at no expense in my jour- 
 neys from London to Chelsea to wait on him, knowing
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 57 
 
 that I did not superabound in the gifts of fortune. 
 He would calculate what the expense of eoach-hire, 
 waterage, or any other little charge that might attend 
 on my journeys backward and forward would amount 
 to, and would oblige me annually to accept of it, 
 though I would willingly have declined it." 
 
 Such generosity speaks of a parsimonious temper 
 and habit more forcibly than positive acts of stingi- 
 ness would. 
 
 On the death of Sir Hans Sloane, on the 11th of 
 January, 1753, his museum and library passed into 
 the hands of the nation for a comparatively small 
 sum of money, and became the nucleus of our British 
 Museum. 
 
 The Royal Society of Sir Hans Sloane 's time dif- 
 fered widely from the Royal Society of the present 
 day. The reader of Mr. Charles Weld's history of 
 that distinguished fraternity smiles a painful smile 
 at the feeble steps of its first members in the direc- 
 tion of natural science. The eiBcacy of the divining 
 rod, and th: merits of Sir Kenebn Digby's sjinpa- 
 thetic powder, were the subjects that occupied the 
 attention of the philosophers of Charles II. 's reign. 
 Entries such as the following are the records of their 
 proceedings:— 
 
 "June 5. — Col. Tuke related the manner of the 
 rain like corn at Norwich, and Mr Boyle and Mr Eve- 
 lyn were entreated to sow some of those rained seeds 
 to try their product. 
 
 "Magneticall cures were then discoursed of. Sir 
 Gilbert Talbot promised to bring what he knew of 
 sympathetica! cures. Those that had any powder
 
 58 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 of sympathy were desired to bring some of it at the 
 next meeting. 
 
 "Mr Boyle related of a gentleman, who, having 
 made some experiments of the ayre, essayed the 
 quicksilver experiment at the top and bottom of a 
 hill, when there was found three inches difference. 
 
 "Dr Charleton promised to bring in that white 
 powder, which, put into water, heates that. 
 
 "The Duke of Buckingham promised to cause 
 charcoal to be distilled by his chymist. 
 
 "His Grace promised to bring into the society a 
 piece of a unicorne's horn. 
 
 "Sir Kenelme Digby related that the calcined pow- 
 der of toades reverberated, applyed in bagges upon 
 the stomach of a pestiferate body, cures it by several 
 applications." 
 
 "June i5. — Colonel Tuke brought in the history 
 of rained seedes, which were reported to have fallen 
 downe from heaven in Warwickshire and ShroD- 
 ghire, &c. 
 
 "That the dyving engine be going forward with 
 all speed, and the treasurer to procure the lead and 
 moneys. 
 
 "Ordered, that Friday next the engine be tried 
 at Deptford." 
 
 "June 26.— Dr Ent, Dr Clarke, Dr Goddard, and 
 Dr Whistler, were appointed curators of the propo- 
 sition made by Sir G. Talbot, to torment a man pres- 
 ently with the sjTnpatheticall powder. 
 
 "Sir G. Talbot brought in his experiments of the 
 sympathetick cures." 
 
 It is true that these passages relate to transactions 
 of the Roj'al Society that occurred long before Sir
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 59 
 
 Hans was one of the body. But even in his time the 
 advances made towards greater enlightenment were 
 few and feeble, when compared with the strides of 
 science during the last century. So simple and child- 
 ish were the operations and speculations of the So- 
 ciety in the first half of the eighteenth century, that 
 even Sir John Hill was able to cover them with ridi- 
 cule. 
 
 Sir Hans had two medical successors in the presi- 
 dentship of the Royal Society— Sir John Pringle, 
 Bart., elected Nov. 30, 1772, and William Hyde Wol- 
 laston, M.D., elected June 29, 1820. The last-men- 
 tioned physician had but a brief tenure of the dignity, 
 for he retired from the exalted post on Nov. 30, 1820, 
 in favor of Sir Humphrey Davy, Bart. 
 
 Humphrey Davy (the son of the Penzance wood- 
 carver, who was known to his acquaintances as "Lit- 
 tle Carver Davy") was the most acute natural phil- 
 osopher of his generation, and at the same time about 
 the vainest and most eccentric of his eountiymen. 
 With all his mental energy, he was disfigured by a 
 moral pettiness, which, to a certain extent, justified 
 Wordsworth's unaccustomed bitterness in "A Poet's 
 Epitaph":— 
 
 "Physician art thou? one all eyes; 
 Philosopher? a fingering slave. 
 One that would peep and botanize 
 Upon his mother's grave ! 
 
 "Wrapt closely in thy sensual fleece, 
 
 O turn aside — and take, I pray, 
 
 That he below may rest in peace, 
 
 Thy ever-dwindling soul away !" 
 
 At the summit of his success, Davy was morbidly 
 sensitive of the humility of his extraction. That his 
 father had been a respectable mechanic — that his
 
 60 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 mother, on her husband's death, had established her- 
 self as milliner in Penzance, in order to apprentice 
 her son to an apothecary in that town— that by his 
 own intellects, in the hard battle of life, he had raised 
 himself from obscure poverty to a brilliant eminence 
 —were to him facts of shame, instead of pride. In 
 contradiction to this moral cowardice, there was in 
 him, on some points, an extravagant eccentricity, 
 w'hich, in most men, would have pointed to impervi- 
 ousness to ridicule. The demands of society, and 
 the labours of his laboratory, of course left him with 
 but little leisure. He, however, affected not to have 
 time enoucrh for the ordinary decencies of the toilet. 
 Cold ablutions neither his constitution nor his phil- 
 osophic temperament required, so he rarely washed 
 himself. And, on the plea of saving time, he iised to 
 put on his clean linen over his dirty — so that he has 
 been known to wear at the same time five shirts and 
 five pairs of stockings. On the rare occasions when 
 he divested himself of his superfluous integuments, 
 he caused infinite perplexity to his less intimate 
 friends, who could not account for his rapid transi- 
 tion from corpulence to tenuity. 
 
 The ludicrousness of his costume did not end there. 
 Like many other men of powerful and excitable 
 minds, he was very fond of angling; and on the banks 
 of the Thames he might be found, at all unsuitable 
 seasons, in a costume that must have been a source of 
 no common merriment to the river nymphs. His 
 coat and breeches were of green cloth. On his head 
 he wore a hat that Dr. Paris describes as "having 
 been originally intended for a coal-heaver, but as 
 having, when in its raw state, been dyed green by
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 61 
 
 some sort of pigment." In this attire Davy flattered 
 himself that he resembled vegetable life as closely as 
 it was possible for mortal to do. 
 
 But if his angling dress was droll, his shooting 
 costume was more so. His great fear as an angler was 
 that the fish should escape him; his greatest anxiety 
 as a bearer of a gun was to escape being shot. In 
 the one character, concealment was his chief object 
 —in the other, revelation. So that he might be seen 
 from a distance, and run fewer chances of being fired 
 into by accident, he was accustomed on shooting ex- 
 cursions, to crown himself with a broad-brimmed 
 hat, covered with scarlet. It never struck him that, 
 in our Protestant England, he incurred imminent 
 peril of being mistaken for a cardinal, and knocked 
 over accordingly. 
 
 Naturally, Davy was of a poetical temperament; 
 and some of his boyish poetry possesses merit that 
 unquestionably justifies the anticipation formed by 
 his poet-friends of the flights his more mature muse 
 would take. But when his intellect became absorbed 
 in the pursuits by which he rendered inestimable 
 service to his species, he never renewed the bright 
 imaginings of his day-spring. 
 
 On passing (in 1809) through the galleries of the 
 Louvre, he could find nothing more worthy of ad- 
 miration that the fine frames of the pictures. "What 
 an extraordinary collection of fine frames!" he ob- 
 served to the gentleman who acted as his guide, 
 amidst the treasures of art gathered from every part 
 of the Continent. His attention was directed to the 
 "Transfiguration"; when, on its being suggested to 
 him that he was looking at a rather well-executed pic-
 
 62 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 ture, he said, coldly, "Indeed! I am glad I have seen 
 it." In the same way, the statues were to him simply 
 blocks of material. In the Apollo Belvidere, the 
 Laocoon, and the Venus dei ]\Iediei, he saw no beauty; 
 but when his eyes rested on the Antinous, treated in 
 the Egyptian style, and sculptured in alabaster, he 
 made an exclamation of delight, and cried, "Gracious 
 powers, what a beautiful stalactite!" 
 
 More amusing than even these criticisms, is a story 
 told of Lady Davy, who accompanied her husband 
 to Paris. She was walking in the Tuileries garden, 
 wearing the fashionable London bonnet of the day- 
 shaped like a cockle-shell. The Parisians, who just 
 then were patronizing bonnets of enormous dimen- 
 sions, were astounded at the apparition of a head- 
 dress so opposed to their notions of the everlasting 
 fitness of things; and with the good breeding for 
 which they are and have long been proverbial, they 
 surrounded the daring stranger, and stared at her. 
 This was sufficiently unpleasant to a timid English 
 lady. But her discomfort had only commenced. Ere 
 another minute or two had elapsed, one of the inspec- 
 tors of the garden approached, and telling her Lady- 
 ship that no cause of rasscmblcment could be per- 
 mitted in that locality, requested her to retire. 
 Alanned and indignant, she appealed to some officers 
 of the Imperial Guard, but they could afford her no 
 assistance. One of them politely offered her his arm, 
 and proposed to conduct her to a carriage. But by 
 the time she had decided to profit by the courtesy, 
 such a crowd had gathered together, that it was 
 found necessary to send for a guard of infantry, and 
 remove la belle Anglaisc, surrounded with bayonets.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE APOTHECARIES AND SIR SAMUEL GARTH. 
 
 Baldwin Hamey, whose manuscript memoirs of 
 eminent physicians are among the treasures of the 
 College, praises Winston because he treated his apoth- 
 ecary as a master might a slave. "Heriliter imper- 
 avit," says the Doctor. The learned Thomas Win- 
 ston, anatomy lecturer at Gresham College, lived to 
 the age of eighty years, and died on the 24th of 
 October, 1655. He knew, therefore, apothecaries in 
 the day of their humility— before prosperity had 
 encouraged them to compete with their professional 
 superiors. 
 
 The apothecaries of the Elizabethan era com- 
 pounded their medicines much as medicines are com- 
 pounded at the present— as far as manipulation and 
 measuring are concerned. Prescriptions have altered, 
 but shop-customs have undergone only a very slight 
 change. The apothecaries' table of weights and 
 measures, still in use, was the rule in the sixteenth 
 century, and the sjonbols (for a pound, an ounce, a 
 drachm, a scruple, a grain, &c.) remain at this day 
 just what they were three hundred years ago.
 
 64 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 Our good friend, William Bulleyn, gave the fol-- 
 lowing excellent rules for an apothecary's life and 
 conduct:— 
 
 "tue apoticakye. 
 
 "1.— Must fyrst serve God, forsee the end, be 
 elenlj^, pity the poore. 
 
 "2.— Must not be suborned for money to hurt man- 
 kynde. 
 
 "3.— His place of dwelling and shop to be clenly 
 to please the sences withal. 
 
 "4.— His garden must be at hand with plenty of 
 herbes, seedes, and rootes. 
 
 "5.— To sow, set, plant, gather, preserve and kepe 
 them in due tyme. 
 
 "6.— To read Dioscorides, to know ye natures of 
 plants and herbes. 
 
 "7.— To invent medicines to chose by coloure, tast, 
 odour, figure, &c. 
 
 "8.— To have his morters, stilles, pottes, filters, 
 glasses, boxes, cleane and sweete. 
 
 "9.— To have charcoals at hand, to make decoc- 
 tions, syrupes, &c. 
 
 "10. — To kepe his cleane ware closse, and cast 
 away the baggage. 
 
 "11.— To have two places in his shop— one most 
 cleane for the phisik, and a baser place for the chir- 
 urgie stuff. 
 
 "12.— That he neither increase nor d-minish the 
 physician's bill (t. e. prescription), and kepe it for 
 his own discharge. 
 
 "13.— That he neither buy nor sel rotten drugges. 
 
 "14.— That he peruse often his wares, that they 
 corrupt not.
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 65 
 
 "15.— That he put not in quid pro quo (i. e., use 
 one ingredient in the place of another, when dispens- 
 ing a physician's prescription) without advysement. 
 
 "16.— That he may open wel a vein for to helpe 
 pleuresy. 
 
 "17.— That he meddle only in his vocation. 
 
 "18.— That he delyte to reede Nicolaus Myrepsus, 
 Valerius Cordus, Johannes Placaton, the Lubik, &c. 
 
 "19.— That he do remember his ofBce is only to be 
 ye physician's cooke. 
 
 "20. — That he use true measure and waight. 
 
 "21.— To remember his end, and the judgment of 
 God: and thus I do commend him to God, if he be 
 not covetous, or crafty, seeking his own lucre before 
 other men's help, succour, and comfort." 
 
 The apothecaries to whom these excellent direc- 
 tions were given were only tradesmen— grocers who 
 paid attention to the commands of physicians. They 
 were not required to have any knowledge of the med- 
 ical science, beyond what might be obtained by the 
 perusal of two or three writers ; they were not to pre- 
 sume to administer drugs on their own judgment and 
 responsibilitj'— or to perform any surgical operation, 
 except phlebotomy, and that only for one malady. The 
 custom was for the doctors to sell their most valuable 
 remedies as nostrums, keeping their composition a se- 
 cret to themselves, and themselves taking the price 
 paid for them by the sick. The commoner drugs were 
 vended to patients by the drug-merchants (who in- 
 variably dealt in groceries for culinary use, as well 
 as in medicinal simples), acting under the directions 
 of the learned graduates of the Faculty. 
 
 In the fourth year of James I., a charter was ob- 
 
 *-5
 
 66 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 tained, that "Willed, ordained, and granted, that all 
 and singular the Freemen of the Mystery of Grocers 
 and Apothecaries of the City of London .... 
 should and might be . . . one body corporate 
 and politique, in deed, fact, and name, by the namo 
 of Warden and Commonalty of the Mystery of Gro- 
 cers of the Citj' of London." But in the thirteenth 
 year of the same king, the apothecaries and grocers 
 were disunited. At the advice of Theodore de May- 
 erne and Henry Atkins, doctors in physick, another 
 charter was granted, constituting drug-venders a dis- 
 tinct company. Amongst the apothecaries mentioned 
 in this charter are the names of the most respectable- 
 families of the country. Gideon de Laune, one of this 
 fii-st batch of apothecaries, amassed a very large for- 
 tune in his vocation, and founded a family at Shar- 
 sted, in Kent, from which several pei-sons of distinc- 
 tion draw part of their origin; and not a few of De 
 Laune 's brethren were equally lucky. 
 
 At their first foundation as a company the apothe- 
 caries were put completely under control of the Col- 
 lege of Physicians, who were endowed with dangerous 
 powers of inspecting their wares and punishing their 
 malpractices. But before a generation had passed 
 away, the apothecaries had gained such a firm foot- 
 ing in society that the more prosperous of them could 
 afford to laugh at the censures of the College; and 
 before the close of a century they were fawned upon 
 by young physicians, and were in a position to quarrel 
 with the old. 
 
 The doctors of that day knew so little that the 
 apothecaries found it easy to know as much. A 
 knowledge of the herbals, an acquaintance with the in-
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 67 
 
 gredients and doses of a hundred empirical com- 
 pounds and systems of maltreating eruptive fevers, 
 gout, and consumption, constituted all the medical 
 learning of such men as Mayerne or Gibbons. To 
 pick up that amount of information was no hard task 
 for an ambitious apothecary. 
 
 Soon the leading apothecaries began to prescribe on 
 their own responsibility, without the countenance of 
 a member of the College. If they were threatened 
 with censure or other punishment by a regular phy- 
 sician, they retorted by discontinuing to call him in 
 to consultations. Jealousies soon sprang up. Starv- 
 ing graduates, with the diplomas of Oxford and Cam- 
 bridge and the certificates of the College in their pock- 
 ets, were embittered by having to trudge the pave- 
 ments of London, and see the mean medicine-mixers 
 (who had scarce scholarship enough to construe a 
 Latin bill) dashing by in their carriages. Ere long 
 the heartburnings broke out in a paper warfare, an 
 rancorous and disreputable as any squabble embalmed 
 in literature. The scholars called the rich tradesmen 
 thieves, sw'indlers, and unlettered blockheads. The 
 rich tradesmen taunted the scholars with discontent, 
 falsehood, and ignorance of everything except Latin 
 and Greek. 
 
 Pope took the side of the physicians. Like John- 
 son, Parr, and all men of enlightenment and sound 
 scholarship, he had a high opinion of the Faculty. It 
 is indeed told of him, on questionable authority, that 
 on his death-bed, when he heard the bickerings of Dr. 
 Burton and Dr. Thompson, each accusing the other of 
 maltreating his patient, he levelled with his last 
 breath an epigram at the two rivals—
 
 68 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 "Dunces, rejoice, forgive all censures past — 
 The greatest dunce has killed your foe at last." 
 
 To Dr. Arbuthnot he wroto— 
 
 "Friend to my life, which did not you prolong, 
 The world had wanted many an idle song." 
 
 His feeble health, making his life a long disease, 
 
 never allowed him vigour and confidence enough to 
 
 display ingratitude to the Faculty, and illustrate the 
 
 truth of the lines— 
 
 "God and the doctor we alike adore. 
 But only when in danger, not before; 
 The danger o'er, both are alike requited, 
 God is forgotten, and the doctor slighted." 
 
 His habitual tone, when speaking of the medical 
 profession, was that of warm admiration and affec- 
 tion. In the "Imitations of Horace" he says— 
 
 "Weak though I am of limb, and short of sight, 
 Far from a lynx, and not a giant quite, 
 I'll do what Mead and Cheselden advise, 
 To keep these limbs, and to preserve these eyes." 
 
 It is true that he elsewhere ridicules Mead's fond- 
 ness for rare books and Sloane's passion for butter- 
 flies; but at the close of his days he wrote in a con- 
 fidential letter to a friend of the Faculty, "They are 
 in general the most amiable companions and the best 
 friends, as well as the most learned men I know. ' ' 
 
 In the protracted dissensions between the physi- 
 cians and the apothecaries Pope was a cordial sup- 
 porter of the former. When he accused, in the "Es- 
 say on Criticism," the penny-a-lining critics of ac- 
 quiring their slender knowledge of the poetic art from 
 the poets they assailed, he compared them to apothe- 
 caries whose scientific information was pilfered from 
 the prescriptions they were required to dispense.
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTOKS. 69 
 
 "Then Criticism the Muse's handmaid proved, 
 To dress her charms and make her more beloved: 
 But following wits from that intention stray'd. 
 Who could not win the mistress, woo'd the maid; 
 Against the poets their own arms they tum'd, 
 Sure to hate most the men from whom they leam'd. 
 So modern 'Pothecaries, taught the art 
 By Doctors' bills to play the Doctor's part. 
 Bold in the practice of mistaken rules. 
 Prescribe, apply, and call their masters fools." 
 
 The origin of tlie memorable Dispensarian Cam-i 
 paign between the College of Physicians and the 
 Company of Apothecaries is a story that can be 
 briefly told. The younger physicians, impatient at 
 beholding the prosperity and influence of the apothe-' 
 caries, and the older ones indignant at seeing a class 
 of men they despised creeping into their quarters and 
 craftily laying hold of a portion of their monopoly, 
 concocted a scheme to reinstate themselves in public 
 favour. Without a doubt many of the physicians who 
 countenanced this scheme gave it their support from 
 purely charitable motives; but it cannot be questioned 
 that as a body the dispensarians were actuated in 
 their humanitarian exertions by a desire to lower 
 the apothecaries, and raise themselves in the e.yes of the 
 world. With all its genuine and sterling benevolence, 
 the medical profession, by the unworthy and silly 
 conduct of its obscure members, has repeatedly laid 
 itself open to the charge of trading on its reputation 
 for humanity. In .Smollett's time, as his novels show, 
 the recognized mode emploj'ed by unknown doctors 
 to pufl: themselves into notoriety and practice, was ta 
 get up little hospitals and infirmaries, and advertise 
 to the charitable for aid in the good task of ameliorat- 
 ing the condition of the poor. And half the peddling 
 little charitable institutions, infirmaries, dispensaries,
 
 70 
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 or hospitals, that at the present time rob the rich and 
 do harm to the poor in every quarter of London, 
 originated in "the friends" of young physicians and 
 surgeons conspiring together to get them "the po- 
 sition of bi'iug attached to an hospital staff." In 1687, 
 the physicians at a college-meeting, voted "that all 
 members of the College, whether Fellows, Candidates, 
 or Licentiates, should give their advice gratis to all 
 their sick neighbouring poor, when desired, within 
 the city of London, or seven miles round." 
 
 To give prescriptions to the very poor, unaccom- 
 panied with the means of getting them disp.-ised, is 
 of little use. Sir Astley Cooper used to see in the 
 vicinity of his residence the slips of paper, marked 
 with his pen, which it was his wont to distribute 
 gratuitously to indigent applicants. The fact was, 
 the poor people, finding it beyond their means to pay 
 the druggist for dispensing Ihem, threw them away in 
 disgust. It was just the same in 1687. The poor folk 
 carried their prescriptions to the apothecaries, to 
 learn that the trade charge for dispensing them was 
 beyond their means. The physicians asserted that the 
 demands of the drug-venders were extortionate, and 
 were not reduced to meet the finances of the appli- 
 cants, to the end that the undertakings of benevo- 
 lence might prove abortive. This was of course ab- 
 surd. The apothecaries knew their own interests bet- 
 ter than so to oppose a system which at least rendered 
 drug-consuming fashionable with the lower orders. 
 Perhaps they regarded the poor as their peculiar field 
 of practice, and felt insulted at having the same 
 humble people — for whom they had pompously pre- 
 scribed and put up boluses at two-pence apiece— now
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 71 
 
 entering their shops with papers dictating what the 
 two-penny bolus was to be composed of. But the 
 charge preferred against them was groundless. In- 
 deed, a numerous body of the apothecaries expressly 
 offered to sell medicines ' ' to the poor within their re- 
 spective parishes, at such rates as the committee of 
 physicians should think reasonable." 
 
 But this would not suit the game of the physicians. 
 "A pi'oposal was started by a committee of the Col- 
 lege, that the College should furnish the medicines 
 of the poor, and perfect alone that charity which the 
 apothecaries refused to concur in; and after divers 
 methods inei-'ectually tried, and much time wasted 
 in endeavouring to bring the Apothecaries to terms of 
 reason in relation to the \)00i\ an instrument was 
 subscribed by divers charitably disposed members of 
 the College, now iu number about fifty, wherein they 
 obliged themselves to pay ten pounds apiece towards 
 the preparing and delivering medicines at their in- 
 trinsic value." Such was the version of the affair 
 given by the College r.pologists. The plan was acted 
 upon; and a dispensary v.-as eventually established 
 (some nine years after the vote of 1687) in the Col- 
 lege of Physicians, Warwick Lane, where medicines 
 were vended to the poor at cost price. 
 
 This measure of the Colkge was impolitic and un- 
 justifiable. It was unjust to that important division 
 of the trade who were ready to vend the medicines 
 at rates to be fixed by the College authorities— for 
 it took altogether out of their hands the small amount 
 of profit which they, as dealers, could have realized on 
 those terms. It was also an eminently unmse course. 
 The College sank to the level of the Apothecaries'
 
 72 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 Hall, becoming an emporium for the sale of medi- 
 cines. It was all very well to say that no profit was 
 made on such sale— the censorious world would not 
 believe it. The apothecaries and their friends denied 
 that such was the fact, and avowed that the benevo- 
 lent dispensarians were bent only on underselling 
 and ruining them. 
 
 Again, the movement introduced dissension within 
 the walls of the College. Many of the first physicians, 
 with the conservatism of success, did not care to of- 
 fend the apothecaries, who were continually calling 
 them in, and paying them fees. They therefore joined 
 in the cry against the dispensary. The profession 
 was split up into dispensarians and anti-dispensar- 
 ians. The apothecaries combined and agreed not to 
 recommend the dispensarians. The anti-dispensarians 
 repaid this ill service by refusing to meet dispensar- 
 ians in consultation. Sir Thomas Millington, the 
 president of the College, Edward Hulse, Hans Sloane, 
 John Woodward, Sir Edmund King, and Samuel 
 Garth were amongst the latter. Of them the last- 
 named was the man who rendered the most efficient 
 service to his party. 
 
 Garth is perhaps the most cherished by the present 
 generation of all the physicians of Pope's time. He 
 was a Whig without rancour, and a boii-vivant with- 
 out selfishness. Full of jest and amiability, he did 
 more to create merriment at the Kit-Kat club than 
 either Swift or Arbuthnot. He loved wine to excess ; 
 but then wine loved him too, ripening and warming 
 his wit, and leaving no sluggish humour behind. His 
 practice was a good one, but his numerous patients 
 prized his ion-mots moi-e than his prescriptions. His
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 73 
 
 enemies averred that he was not only an epicure, but 
 a profligate voluptuary and an infidel. Pope, how- 
 ever, wrote of him after his death, ' ' If ever there was 
 a good Christian, without knowing himself to be so, 
 it was Dr. Garth." Pope had honoured him when 
 alive by dedicating his second pastoral to him. 
 
 "Accept, O Garth, the muse's early lays. 
 That adds this wreath of ivy to thy bays; 
 Hear what from love unpractised hearts endure, 
 From love, the sole disease thou canst not cure." 
 
 A good picture of Garth the politician is found in 
 the "Journal to Stella." "London, Nov. 17, 1711," 
 Avrites Swift— "This is Queen Elizabeth's birthday, 
 usually kept in this town by apprentices, &c. ; but the 
 Whigs designed a mighty procession by midnight, and 
 had laid out a thousand pounds to dress up the pope, 
 devil, cardinals, Sacheverel, &c., and carry them with 
 torches about and burn them. They did it by contri- 
 bution. Garth gave five guineas; Dr. Garth I mean, 
 if ever you heard of him. But they were seized last 
 night by order from the Secretary. . . . Tho 
 figures are now at the Secretary 's OfSce at Whitehall. 
 I design to see them if I can." 
 
 A Whig, but the friend of Tories, Garth cordially 
 disliked Sir Richard Blackmore, a member of his own 
 profession and political party. Blackmore was an 
 anti-dispensarian, a bad poet, and a pure and rigid 
 moralist. Naturally Garth abominated him, and 
 sneered at him for his pomposity and bad scholarship. 
 It is to be regretted that Garth, with the vulgarity of 
 the age, twitted him with his early poverty, and with 
 having been— a schoolmaster. To ridicule his enemy 
 Garth composed the following verses :— .
 
 74 a book about doctors. 
 
 "to the merry poetaster, at Sadler's 
 
 }IALL, IN CIIEAPSIDE. 
 
 "Unwieldy pedant, let thy awkward muse 
 With censures praise, with flatteries abuse; 
 To lash, and not be felt, in thee 's an art. 
 That ne'er mad'st any but thy school-boys smart. 
 Then be advised and scribble not again — 
 Thou 'rt fashion'd for a flail and not a pen. 
 
 If B I's immortal wit thou would'st decry, 
 
 Pretend 'tis he that wrote thy poetry. 
 
 Thy feeble satire ne'er can do him wrong — 
 
 Thy poems and thy patients live not long." 
 
 Garth's death, as described by William Ayre, was 
 characteristic. He was soon tired of an invalid's suf- 
 fering and helplessness, the ennui and boredom of the 
 sick-room afflicting him more than the bodily pain. 
 "Gentlemen," said he to the crowd of weeping friends 
 who stood round his bed, "I wish the ceremony of 
 death was over." And so, sinking lower in the bed, 
 he died without a struggle. He had previously, on 
 being informed that his end was approaching, ex- 
 pressed pleasure at the intelligence, because he was 
 tired of having his shoes pulled off and on. The man- 
 ner of Garth's e.xit reminds one of the death of Rab- 
 elais, also a physician. The presence of officious 
 friends troubled him ; and when he saw his doctors 
 consulting together, he raised his head from his pil- 
 low and said with a smile, "Dear gentlemen, let me 
 die a natural death." After he had received extreme 
 unction, a friend approached him, and asked him how 
 he did. "I am going on my journey," was the an- 
 swer— "they have greased my boots already." 
 
 Garth has, apart from his literary productions, one 
 great claim on posterity. To him Dryden owed hon- 
 ourable interment. When the great poet died, Garth 
 caused his body to be conveyed to the College of Phy-
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 75 
 
 sicians, and started a public subscription to defray 
 the expenses of the funeral. He pronounced an ora- 
 tion over the deceased at the College in Warwick 
 LanCj and then accompanied it to Westminster Ab- 
 bey. 
 
 Of the stories preserved of Garth's social humour 
 some are exquisitely droll. Writing a letter at a cof- 
 fee-house, he found himself overlooked by a curious 
 Irishman, who was impudently reading every word 
 of the epistle. Garth took no notice of the imperti- 
 nence, until he had finished and signed the body of 
 the letter, when he added a postscript, of unques- 
 tionable legibility: "I would write you more by thig 
 post, but there's a d tall impudent Irishman look- 
 ing over my shoulder all the time." 
 
 "What do you mean, sir?" roared the Irishman in 
 a fury. ' ' Do you think I looked over your letter ? ' ' 
 
 "Sir," replied the physician, "I never once opened 
 my lips to you. ' ' 
 
 "Ay, but you have put it down, for all that." 
 
 " 'Tis impossible, sir, that you should know that, 
 for you have never once looked over my letter. ' ' 
 
 Stumbling into a Presbyterian church one Sun- 
 day, for pastime, he found a pathetic preacher shed- 
 ding tears over the iniquity of the earth. 
 
 "What makes the man greet?" asked Garth of a 
 bystander. 
 
 "By my faith," was the answer, "and you too 
 would greet if you were in his place and had as little 
 to say." 
 
 "Come along, my dear fellow," responded Garth 
 to his new acquaintance, "and dine with me. You are 
 too good a fellow to be here. ' '
 
 76 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 At the Kit-Kat he once stayed to drink long after 
 he had said that he must be off to see his patients. Sir 
 Richard, more humane than the physician, or possi- 
 bly, like the rest of the world, not disinclined to be 
 virtuous at another's expense, observed, "Really, 
 Garth, you ought to have no more wine, but be off to, 
 see those poor devils." 
 
 "It's no great matter," Garth replied, "whether I 
 see them to-night or not, for nine of them have such 
 bad constitutions, that all the physicians in the world 
 can't save them; and the other six have such good 
 constitutions, that all the physicians in the world can't 
 kill them." 
 
 Born of a respectable north-country family. Garth 
 was educated first at a provincial school, and then at 
 Cambridge. lie was admitted a Fellow of the Col- 
 lege of Physicians on June 26, 1692, just when the 
 quarrel of the Physicians and Apothecaries was wax- 
 ing to its hottest, i. c. between the College edict of 
 1687, ordaining gratuitous advice, and the creation 
 of the dispensary in 1696. As a young man he saw 
 that his right place was with the dispensarians— and 
 he took it. For a time his great poem, "The Dispen- 
 sary," covered the apothecaries and anti-dispensar- 
 ians with ridicule. It rapidly passed through numer- 
 ous editions— in each of which, as was elegantly ob- 
 served, the world lost and gained much. To say that 
 of all the books, pamphlets, and broad-sheets thrown 
 out by the combatants on both sides, it is by far the 
 one of the greatest merit, would be scant justice, when 
 it might almost be said that it is the only one of them 
 that can now be read by a gentleman without a sense 
 of annoyance and disgust. There is no point of view
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 77 
 
 from which the medical profession appears in a more 
 humiliating and contemptible light than that which 
 the literature of this memorable squabble presents to 
 the student. Charges of ignorance, dishonesty, and 
 extortion were preferred on both sides; and the dis- 
 pensarian physicians did not hesitate to taunt their 
 brethren of the opposite camp with playing corruptly 
 into the hands of the apothecaries — prescribing enor- 
 mous and unnecessary quantities of medicine, so that 
 the drug-venders might make heavy bills, and, as a 
 consequence, recommend in all directions such com- 
 placent superiors to be called in. Garth's poem, un- 
 fair and violent though it is, seldom offends against 
 decency. As a work of art it cannot be ranked high, 
 and is now deservedly forgotten, although it has many 
 good lines, and some felicitous satire. Johnson right- 
 ly pointed to the secret of its success, though he took 
 a one-sided and unjust view of the dissensions which 
 called it forth. "The poem," observes the biographer, 
 "as its subject was present and popular, co-operated 
 with passions and prejudices then prevalent; and, 
 with such auxiliaries to its intrinsic merit, was uni- 
 versally and liberally applauded. It was on the side 
 of charity against the intrigues of interest, and of reg- 
 ular learning against licentious usurpation of medical 
 authority. ' ' 
 
 Sir Samuel Garth (knighted by the sword of IMarl." 
 borough) died January 18, 1718-19, and was buried at 
 Harrow-on-the-Hill. 
 
 But he lived to see the apothecaries gradually 
 emancipate themselves from the ignominious regula- 
 tions to which they consented, when their vocation 
 was first separated from the grocery trade. Four
 
 78 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 years after his death they obtained legal acknowledg- 
 ment of their right to dispense and sell medicines 
 without the prescription of a physician ; and six years 
 later the law again decided in their favour, with re- 
 gard to the physicians' right of examining and con- 
 demning their drugs. In 1721, Mr. Rose, an apothe- 
 cary, on being prosecuted by the College for prescrib- 
 ing as well as compounding medicines, carried the 
 matter into the House of Lords, and obtained a fa- 
 vourable decision. And from 1727, in which year Mr. 
 Goodwin, an apothecary, obtained in a court of law a 
 considerable sum for an illegal seizure of his wares 
 (by Drs. Arbuthnot, Bale, and Levit), the physicians 
 may be said to have discontinued to exercise their 
 privileges of inspection. 
 
 Arbuthnot did not exceed Garth in love to the 
 apothecaries. His contempt for, and dislike of, the 
 fraternity, inspired him to write his "Essay on an 
 Apothecary." He thinks it a pity that, to prevent 
 the country from being overrun with apothecaries, 
 it should not be allowed to anatomize them, for the 
 improvement of natural knowledge. He ridicules 
 them for pedantically "dressing all their discourse 
 in the language of the Faculty." 
 
 "At meals," he says, "they distributed their wine 
 with a little hnnph, dissected a widgeon, cohobated 
 their pease-porridge, and amalgamated a custard. A 
 morsel of beef was a bolus; a grillard was sacrificed; 
 eating was mastication and deglutition; a dish of 
 steaks was a compound of many powerful ingredients ; 
 and a plate of soup was a very exalted preparation. 
 In dress, a suit of eloaths was a system, a loophole 
 a valve, and 'a surtout an integument. Cloth was a
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 79 
 
 texture of fibres spread into a drab or kersey; a small 
 rent in it was cutaneous; a thread was a filament; 
 and the waistband of the breeches the peritoneum." 
 
 The superior branch of the Faculty invited in many 
 ways the same satire. Indeed, pedantry was the preva^ 
 lent fault of the manners of the eighteenth century. 
 The physician, the divine, the lawyer, the parliament- 
 man, the country gentleman, the author by profession 
 —all had peculiarities of style, costume, speech, or in^ 
 tonation, by which they were well pleased they should 
 be recognised. In one respect this was well ; men were 
 proud of being what they were, and desired to be 
 known as belonging to their respective vocations. They 
 had no anxiety to be free from trade-marks. The 
 barrister's smirk, the physician's unctuous smiles, the 
 pedagogue 's frown, did not originate in a mean desire 
 to be taken for something of higher mark and es- 
 teem than they really were. 
 
 From the time when Bulleyn called him the phy- 
 sician's cook, down to the present generation, the 
 pure apothecary is found holding a very subordinate 
 position. His business is to do unpleasant drudgery 
 that a gentleman finds it unpleasant to perform, but 
 which cannot be left to the hands of a nurse. The 
 questions to be considered previous to becoming an 
 apprentice to an apothecary, put in Chemberlaine's 
 "Tyrocinium Medicum," well describe the state of 
 the apothecary's pupil. "Can you bear the thoughts 
 of being obliged to get up out of your warm bed, on 
 a cold winter's night, or rather morning, to make up 
 medicines which your employer, just arrived through 
 frost and snow, prescribes for a patient taken sud- 
 denly or dangerously iU?— or, supposing that your
 
 80 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 master is not in sufficient business to keep a boy to take 
 out medicines, can you make up your mind to think 
 it no hardship to take them to the patient after you 
 have made them up?" &c., &c. When such services 
 were expected from pupils studying for admittance! 
 to the craft, of course boys with ample means, or 
 prospects elsewhere, did not as a rule desire to become 
 apothecaries. 
 
 Within the last fifty years changes have been affect- 
 ed in various departments of the medical profession, 
 that have rendered the apothecary a feature of the 
 past, and transferred his old functions to a new la- 
 bourer. Prior to 1788, it is stated on authority there 
 were not in all London more than half-a-dozen drug- 
 gists who dispensed medicines from physicians' pre- 
 scriptions. Before that time, the apothecaries— the 
 members of the Apothecaries' Company— were al- 
 most the sole compounders and preparers of dinigs. 
 At the present time it is exceptional for an apothecary 
 to put up prescriptions, imless he is acting as the 
 family or ordinary medical attendant to the patient 
 prescribed for. As a young man, indeed, he some- 
 times condescends to keep an open shop ; but as soon 
 as he can get on without "counter" business, he 
 leavc.3 the commercial part of his occupation to the 
 druggist,as beneath his dignity. The dispensing chem- 
 ists and druggists, whose shops, flashing with blue 
 bottles (last remnant of empiric charlatanry), bright- 
 en our street corners and scare our horses at night, 
 are the apothecaries of the last century. The apothe- 
 cary himself— that is, the member of the Company— 
 is hardly ever found as an apothecary pur et simple. 
 He enrolls himself at "the hall" for the sake of being
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 81 
 
 able to sue ungrateful patients for money due to him. 
 But in the great majority of eases he is also a Fellow 
 or Member of the College of Surgeons, and acts as a 
 general practitioner; that is, he does anything and 
 everything— prescribes and dispenses his prescrip- 
 tions; is at the same time physician, surgeon, ac- 
 coucheur, and dentist. Physic and surgery were di- 
 vided at a very early date in theory, but in prac- 
 tice they were combined by eminent physicians till a 
 comparatively recent period. And yet later the phy- 
 sician performed the functions of the apothecary, just 
 as the apothecary presumed to discharge the offices 
 of physician. It was not derogatory to the dignity 
 of a leading physician, in the reign of Charles the 
 Second, to keep a shop, and advertise the wares vend- 
 ed in it, announcing in the same manner their prices. 
 Dr. Mead realized large sums by the sale of worthless 
 nostrums. And only a few years since, a distin- 
 guished Cambridge physician, retaining as an octo- 
 genarian the popularity he had achieved as a young 
 man, in one of our eastern counties, used to sell his 
 "gout tincture"— a secret specific against gout— at 
 so many shillings per bottle. In many respects the 
 general practitioner of this century would consider 
 his professional character compromised if he adopted 
 the customs generally in vogue amongst the physicians 
 of the last.
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 QUACKS. 
 
 "So then the subject being so variable, hath made the art by 
 consequence more conjectural; an art being conjectural hath 
 made so much the more place to be left for imposture. For 
 almost all other arts and sciences are judged by acts or mas- 
 terpieces, as I may term them, and not by the successes and 
 events. The lawyer is judged by the virtue of his pleading, 
 and not by the issue of the cause. The master of the ship 
 is judged by the directing his course aright, and not by the 
 fortune of the voyage. But the physician, and perhaps the 
 politician, hath no particular acts demonstrative of his 
 ability, but is judged most by the event; which is ever but 
 as it is taken : for who can tell, if a patient die or recover, 
 or if a state be preserved or ruined, whether it be art or 
 accident? and therefore many times the impostor is prized, 
 and the man of virtue taxed. Nay, we see the weakness and 
 credulity of men is such, as they will often prefer a mounte- 
 bank or li'itch before a learned physician." — Lord Bacon's 
 "Advancement of Learning." 
 
 The history of quackery, if it were written on a 
 
 scale that should include the entire number of those 
 
 frauds which may be generally classed under the head 
 
 of humbug, would be the history of the human race 
 
 in all ages and climes. Neither the benefactors nor 
 
 the enemies of mankind would escape mention; and 
 
 a sear(?hing scrutiny would show that dishonesty has 
 
 played as important, though not as manifest, a part 
 
 in the operations of benevolence, as in the achieve-
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 83 
 
 ments of the cle\'il. But a more confined use of the 
 word must satisfy us on the present occasion. We 
 are not ahout to enter on a philosophic inquiry into 
 the causes that contributed to the success of Mahom- 
 et and Cromwell, but only to chronicle a few of the 
 most humorous facts connected with the predecessors 
 of Dr. Townsend and Mr. Morrison. 
 
 In the success that has in every century attended 
 the rascally enterprises of pretenders to the art of 
 medicine, is found a touching evidence of the sorrow, 
 credulity, and ignorance of the generations that have 
 passed, or are passing, to the silent home where the 
 pain and joj', the simplicity and cunning, of this 
 world are alike of insignificance. The hope that to 
 the last lurks in the breast of the veriest wretch un- 
 der heaven's canopy, whether his trials come from 
 broken health, or an empty pocket, or wronged affec- 
 tion, speaks aloud in saddest tones, as one thinks of 
 the multitudes who, worn with bodily malady and 
 spiritual dejection, ignorant of the source of their 
 sufferings, but thirsting for relief from them, have 
 gone from charlatan to charlatan, giving hoarded 
 money in exchange for charms, cramp-rings, warm- 
 ing-stones, elixirs, and trochees, warranted to cure 
 every ill that flesh is heir to. The scene, from another 
 point of view, is more droll, but scarcely less mourn- 
 ful. Look away for a few seconds from the throng 
 of miserable objects who press round the empiric's 
 stage ; wipe out for a brief while the memory of their 
 woes, and regard the style and arts of the practi- 
 tioner who, with a trunk full of nostrums, bids dis- 
 ease to vanish, and death to retire from the scenes of 
 his triumph. There he stands — a lean, fantastic man.
 
 84 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 voluble of tonnrue, empty-headed, full of loud words 
 and menaces, prating about kings and princes who 
 have taken him by the hand and kissed him in grati- 
 tude for his benefits showered upon them— dauntless, 
 greedy, and so steeped in falsehood that his crazy- 
 tainted brain half believes the lies that flow from his 
 glib tongue. Are there no such men amongst us now 
 —not standing on carts at the street-corners, and sell- 
 ing their wares to a dingy rabble, but having their 
 seats of exchange in honoured places, and vending 
 their prescriptions to crowds of wealthy clients? 
 
 In the feudal ages medicine and quackery were 
 the same, as far as any principles of science are con- 
 cerned. The only difference between the physician 
 and the charlatan vras, that the former was a fool 
 and the latter a rogue. Men did not meddle much 
 with the healing art. A few clerks devoted them- 
 selves to it, and in the exercise of their spiritual and 
 medical functions discovered how to get two fleeces 
 from a sheep at one shearing ; but the care of the sick 
 was for the most part left to the women, who then, as 
 in every other period of the world's history, prided 
 themselves on their medical cunning, and, with the 
 exception of intrigue, preferred attending on the sick 
 to any other occupation. From the time of the Ref- 
 ormation, however, the number of lady doctors rap- 
 idly diminished. The fair sex gradually relinquished 
 the ground they had so long occupied, to men, who, 
 had the monastic institutions continued to exist, would 
 have assumed the priestly garb and passed their days 
 in sloth. Quackery was at length fairly taken out 
 of the hands of women and the shelter of domestic 
 life, and was practised, not for love, and in a super-
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 85 
 
 stitious belief in its efficacy, but for money, and fre- 
 quently with a perfect knowledge of its worthlessness 
 as a remedial system. 
 
 As soon as the printing-press had become an insti- 
 tution of the country, and there existed a considerable 
 proportion of the community capable of x-eading, the 
 empirics seized hold of Caxton's invention, and made 
 it subservient to their honourable ends. The adver- 
 tising system was had recourse to in London, during 
 the Stuart era, scarcely less than it is now. Hand- 
 bills were distributed in aU directions by half-starved 
 wretches, whose withered forms and pallid cheeks 
 were of themselves a sufficient disproof of the asser- 
 tions of their employers. 
 
 The costume, language, style, and artifices of the 
 pretenders to physic in the seventeenth century were 
 doubtless copied from models of long standing, and 
 differed little in essentials from those of their prede- 
 cessors. Professions retain their characteristics with 
 singular obstinacy. The doctor of Charles the Sec- 
 ond's London transmitted all his most salient features 
 to the quack of the Regency. 
 
 Cotgrave, in his "Treasury of Wit and Language," 
 published 1655, thus paints the poor physician of his 
 time: — 
 
 "My name is Pulsefeel, a poor Doctor of Physick, 
 That does wear three pile velvet in his hat, 
 Has paid a quarter's rent of his house before-hand, 
 And (simple as he stands here) was made doctor beyond sea. 
 I vow, as I am right worshipful, the taking 
 Of my degree cost me twelve French crowns, and 
 Thirty-five pounds of butter in Upper Germany. 
 I can make your beauty, and preserve it, 
 Rectifie your body and maintaine it, 
 Clarifie your blood, surfle your cheeks, perfume 
 Your skin, tinct your hair, enliven your eye,
 
 86 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 Heighten your appetite; and as for Jellies, 
 
 Dentifrizcs, Dyets, Minerals, Fricasses, 
 
 Pomatums. Fumes, Italia masks to sleep in, 
 
 Either to moisten or dry the superficies. Faugh ! Galen 
 
 Was a goose, and Paracelsus a Patch, 
 
 To Doctor Pulsefeel." 
 
 This picture would serve for the portrait of Dr. 
 Pulsefeel in the eighteenth and nineteenth, as well aa 
 the seventeenth century. How it calls to mind the 
 image of Oliver Goldsmith, when, with a smattering 
 of medical knowledge, a cane, and a dubious diploma, 
 he tried to pick out of the miseries and ignorance of 
 his fellow-creatures the means of keeping body and 
 soul together! He too, poet and scholar thougii he 
 was, would have sold a pot of rouge to a faded beauty, 
 or a bottle of hair-dye, or a nostrum warranted to 
 cure the bite of a mad dog. 
 
 A more accurate picture, however, of the charlatan, 
 is to be found in "The Quack's Academy; or, The 
 Dvmce's Directory," published in 1678, of which the 
 following is a portion :— 
 
 "However, in the second place, to support this 
 title, there are several things very convenient: of 
 which some are external accoutrements, others inter- 
 nal qualifications. 
 
 "Your outward requisites are a decent black suit, 
 and (if your credit will stretch so far in Long Lane) 
 a plush jacket; not a pin the worse though thread- 
 bare as a tailor's cloak— it shows the more reverend 
 antiquity. 
 
 "Secondly, like ilercury, you must always carry a 
 eaduceus or conjuring japan in your hand, capt with 
 a civet-box ; with which you must walk with Spanish 
 gravity, as in deep contemplation upon an arbitra- 
 ment between life and death.
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 87 
 
 "Thirdly, a convenient lodging, not forgetting a 
 hatch at the door; a chamber hung with Dutch pic- 
 tures, or looking-glasses, belittered with empty bot- 
 tles, gallipots, and vials filled with tapdroppings, or 
 fair water, coloured with saunders. Any sexton will 
 furnish your Avindow with a skull, in hope of your 
 custom; over wliich hang up the skeleton of a mon- 
 key, to proclaim your skill in anatomy. 
 
 "Fourthly, let your table be never without some 
 old musty Greek or Arabick author, and the 4th book 
 of Cornelius Agrippa's 'Occult Philosophy,' wide 
 open to amuse spectators; with half-a-dozen of gilt 
 shillings, as so many guineas received that morning 
 for fees. 
 
 "Fifthly, fail not to oblige neighbouring ale-houses, 
 to recommend you to inquirers ; and hold correspond- 
 ence with all the nurses and midwives near you, to 
 applaud your skill at gossippings." 
 
 The directions go on to advise loquacity and impu- 
 dence, qualities which quacks of all times and kinds 
 have found most useful. But in cases where the prac- 
 titioner has an impediment in his speech, or cannot 
 by training render himself glib of utterance, he is 
 advised to persevere in a habit of mysterious silence, 
 rendered impressive by grave nods of the head. 
 
 When Dr. Pulsefeel was tired of London, or felt a 
 want of country air, he concentrated his powers on 
 the pleasant occupation of fleecing rustic simplici- 
 ty. For his journeys into the provinces he provided 
 himself with a stout and fast-trotting hack— stout, 
 that it might bear without fatigue weighty parcels of 
 medicinal composition ; and fleet of foot, so that if an 
 ungrateful rabble should commit the indecorum of
 
 88 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 stoning their benefactor as an impostor (a mishap 
 that would occasionally occur), escape might be ef- 
 fected from the infatuated and excited populace. In 
 his circuit the doctor took in all the fairs, markets, 
 wakes, and public festivals ; not, however, disdaining 
 to stop an entire week, or even month, at an assize 
 town, where he found the sick anxious to benefit by 
 his wisdom. 
 
 His plan of making acquaintance with a new place 
 was to ride boldly into the thickest crowd of a fair or 
 market, with as much speed as he could make without 
 imperilling the lives of by-standers; and then, when 
 he had checked his steed, inform all who listened that 
 he had come straight from the Duke of Bohemia, or 
 the most Serene Emperor of Wallachia, out of a de- 
 sire to do good to his fellow-creatures. He was bom 
 in that very town,— yes, that very town in which he 
 then was speaking, and had left it when an orphan 
 child of eight years of age, to seek his fortune in the 
 world. He had found his way to London, and been 
 crimped on board a vessel bound for Morocco, and so 
 had been carried off to foreign parts. His adven- 
 tures had been wonderful. He had \nsited the Sultan 
 and the Great Mogul. There was not a part of the 
 Indies with which he was not familiar. If any one 
 doubted him, let his face be regarded, and his bronze 
 complexion bear witness of the scorching suns he had 
 endured. He had cured hundreds— ay, thousands— 
 of emperors, kings, queens, princes, margravines,' 
 grand duchesses, and generalissimos, of their diseases. 
 He had a powder which would stay the palsy, jaun- 
 dice, hot fever, and cramps. It was expensive; but 
 that he couldn't help, for it was made of pearls, and
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 89 
 
 the dried leaves of violets brought from the very mid- 
 dle of Tartary ; still he could sell a packet of the med- 
 icine for a crown— a sum which would just pay him 
 back his outlaid money, and leave him no profit. But 
 he didn't want to make money of them. He was their 
 fellow-townsman; and in order to find them out and 
 cure them he had refused offers of wealth from the 
 king of Mesopotamia, who wanted him to accept a for- 
 tune of a thousand gold pieces a month, tarry with 
 the Mesopotamians, and keep them out of Death's 
 clutches. Sometimes this harangue was made from, 
 the back of a horse ; sometimes from a rude hustings, 
 from which he was called mou7itebank. He sold all 
 kinds of medicaments: dyes for the hair, washes for 
 the complexion, lotions to keep young men youthful ; 
 rings which, when worn on the fore-finger of the 
 right hand, should make a chosen favourite desperate-- 
 ly in love with the wearer, and when worn on the 
 same finger of the left hand, should drive the said 
 favourite to commit suicide. Nothing could surpass 
 the impudence of the fellow's lies, save the admiration 
 with which his credulous auditors swallowed his as- 
 sertions. There they stood,— stout yeomen, drunken 
 squires, merry peasant girls, gawky hinds, gabbling 
 dames, deeming themselves in luck's way to have lived 
 to see such a miracle of learning. Possibly a young 
 student home from Oxford, with the rashness of in- 
 experience, would smile scornfully, and in a loud 
 voice designate the pretender a quack— a quacksalvar 
 (kwabzalver), from the liniment he vended for the 
 cure of wens. But such an interruption, in ninety 
 and nine cases out of every hundred, was condemned 
 by the orthodox friends of the young student, and he
 
 90 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 was warned that he would come to no j^ood if he went 
 on as he had begun— a contemptuous unbeliever, and 
 a mocker of wise men. 
 
 The author of the "Discourse de I'Origine des 
 Moeurs, Fraudes, et Impostures des Ciarlatans, avec 
 leur Decouverte, Paris, 1662," says, "Premierement, 
 par ce mot de Ciarlatans, j'entens eeux que les Ital- 
 iens appellent Saltambaci, basteleurs, bouffons, ven- 
 deurs de bagatelles, et generalement toute autre per- 
 sonne, laquelle en place publique montee en banc, a 
 terre, ou a cheval, vend medeeines, baumes, huilles ou 
 poudres, composees pour guerir quelque infirmite. 
 louant et exaltant sa drogue, avec artifice, et mille 
 faux sermens, en racontant mille et mille merveilles. 
 
 Mais c'est chose plaisante de voir I'artifice dont se 
 servent ces medecins de banc pour vendre leur drogue, 
 quand avec mille faux sermens ils aSirment d 'avoir 
 appris leur secret du roi de Dannemarc, au d'tin 
 prince de Transilvanie." 
 
 The great quack of Charles the Second's London 
 was Dr. Thomas Saffold. This man (who was origin^ 
 ally a weaver) professed to cure every disease of the 
 human body, and also to foretell the destinies of his 
 patients. Along Cheapside, Fleet-street, and the 
 Strand, even down to the sacred precincts of White- 
 hall and St. James's, he stationed bill-distributors, 
 who showered prose and poetry on the passers-by — 
 just as the agents (possibly the poets) of the Messrs. 
 Moses east their literature on the town of Queen 
 Victoria. When this great benefactor of his species 
 departed this life, on May the 12th, 1691, a satirical
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 91 
 
 broadsheet called on the world to mourn for the loss 
 
 of one— 
 
 "So skilled in drugs and verse, 'twas hard to show it, 
 Whether was best, the doctor or the poet." 
 
 The ode continues:— 
 
 "Lament, ye damsels of our London city, 
 (Poor unprovided girls) tho' fair and witty, 
 Who, maskt, would to his house in couples come. 
 To understand your matrimonial doom; 
 To know what kind of men you were to marry, 
 And how long time, poor things, you were to tarry; 
 Your oracle is silent, none can tell 
 On whom his astrologick mantle fell : 
 For he when sick refused all doctors' aid. 
 And only to his pills devotion paid! 
 Yet it was surely a most sad disaster. 
 The saucy pills at last should kill their master." 
 
 EPITAPH. 
 
 "Here lies the corpse of Thomas Saflold, 
 By death, in spite of physick, baffled; 
 Who, leaving off his working loom. 
 Did learned doctor soon become. 
 To poetry he made pretence. 
 Too plain to any man's own sense; 
 But he when living thought it sin 
 To hide his talent in napkin; 
 Now death does doctor (poet) crowd 
 Within the limits of a shroud." 
 
 The vocation of fortune-teller was exercised not 
 only by the quacks, but also by the apothecaries, of 
 that period. Garth had ample foundation, in fact, 
 for his satirical sketch of Horoscope's shop in the sec- 
 ond canto of "The Dispensary." 
 
 "Long has he been of that amphibious fry. 
 Bold to prescribe and busie to apply; 
 His shop the gazing vulgars' eyes employs, 
 With foreign trinkets and domestick toys. 
 Here mummies lay most reverendly stale, 
 And there the tortoise hung her coat of mail. 
 Not far from some huge shark's devouring head 
 The flying fish their finny pinions spread; 
 Aloft in rows large poppy-heads were strung.
 
 92 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 And near a scaly alligator hung; 
 
 In this place, drugs in musty heaps decay'd, 
 
 In that, dry'd bladders and drawn teeth were laid. 
 
 "An inner room receives the num'rous shoals 
 Of such as pay to be reputed fools; 
 Globes stand by globes, volumes by volumes lye. 
 And planetary schemes amuse the eye. 
 The sage, in velvet chair, here lolls at ease. 
 To promise future health for present fees. 
 Then, as from Tripod, solemn shams reveals. 
 And what the stars know nothing of reveals. 
 
 "One asks how soon Panthea may be won, 
 And longs to feel the marriage fetters on; 
 Others, convinced by melancholy proof. 
 Enquire when courteous fates will strike them off; 
 Some by what means they may redress the wrong, 
 When fathers the possession keep too long; 
 And some would know the issue of their cause, 
 And whether gold can solder up its flaws. 
 ****** 
 
 "Whilst Iris his cosmetick wash would try, 
 To make her bloom revive, and lovers die; 
 Some ask for charms, and others philters choose. 
 To gain Corinna, and their quartans lose." 
 
 Queen Anne's weak eyes caused her to pass from 
 one empiric to another, for the relief they all prom- 
 ised to give, and in some cases even persuaded that 
 they gave her. She had a passion for quack oculists ; 
 and happy was the advertising scoundrel who gained 
 her ^Majesty's favour with a new collyrium. For, of 
 course, if the greatest personage in the land said that 
 Professor Bungalo was a wonderful man, a master 
 of his art, and inspired by God to heal the sick, there 
 was no appeal from so eminent an authority. How 
 should an elderly lady with a crown on her head be 
 mistaken ? Do we not hear the same arguments every 
 day in our own enlightened generation, when 
 the new Chiropodist, or Rubber, or inventor of a spe- 
 cific for consumption, points to the social distinctions
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 93 
 
 of his dupes as conclusive evidence that he is neither 
 supported by vulgar ignorance, nor afraid to meet 
 the most searching scrutiny of the educated? Good 
 Queen Anne was so charmed with two of the many 
 knaves who by turns enjoyed her countenance, that 
 she had them sworn in as her own oculists in ordi- 
 nary; and one of them she was even so silly as to 
 knight. This lucky gentleman was William Reade, 
 originally a botching tailor, and to the last a very ig- 
 norant man, as his "Short and Exact Account of all 
 Diseases Incident to the Eyes" attests; yet he rose to 
 the honour of knighthood, and the most lucrative and 
 fashionable physician's practice of his period. Surely 
 every dog has his day. Lazarus never should despair ; 
 a turn of fortune may one fine day pick him from the 
 rags which cover his nakedness in the kennel, and 
 put him to feast amongst princes, arrayed in purple 
 and fine linen, and regarded as an oracle of wisdom. 
 It was true that Sir William Reade was unable to 
 read the book which he had written (by the hand of 
 an amanuensis), but I have no doubt that many 
 worthy people who listened to his sonorous voice, bC" 
 held his lace ruffles and gold-headed cane, and saw 
 his coach drawn along to St. James's by superb horses, 
 thought him in every respect equal, or even superior, 
 to Pope and Swift. 
 
 When Sir William was knighted he hired a poet, 
 who lived in Grub Street, to announce the fact to pos- 
 terity and "the town," in decasyllabic verse. The pro- 
 duction of this bard, "The Oculist, a Poem," was 
 published in the year 1705, and has already (thanks 
 to the British Museum, which like the nets of fisher- 
 men receiveth of "all sorts") endowed with a century
 
 94 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 and a half of posthumous renov\Ti ; and no one can 
 deny that so much fame is due, both to the man who 
 bought, and the scribbler who sold the following 
 strain:— 
 
 "Whilst Britain's Sovereign scales such worth has weighed, 
 And Anne herself her smiling favours paid, 
 That sacred hand does your fair chaplet twist. 
 Great Reade her own entitled Oculist. 
 With this fair mark of honour, sir, assume 
 No common trophies from this shining plume; 
 Her favours by desert are only shared — 
 Her smiles are not her gift, but her reward. 
 Thus in your new fair plumes of Honour drest. 
 To hail the Royal Foundress of the feast; 
 When the great Anne's warm smiles this favourite raise, 
 'Tis not a royal grace she gives, but pays." 
 
 Queen Anne's other "sworn oculist," as he and 
 
 Reade termed themselves, was Roger Grant, a cobbler 
 
 and Anabaptist preacher. He was a prodigiously vain 
 
 man, even for a quack, and had his likeness engraved 
 
 in copper. Impressions of the plate were distributed 
 
 amongst his friends, but were not in all cases treated 
 
 with much respect; for one of those who had been 
 
 complimented with a present of the eminent oculist's 
 
 portrait, fixed it on a wall of his house, having first 
 
 adorned it with the following lines :— 
 
 "See here a picture of a brazen face. 
 
 The fittest lumber of this wretched place. 
 A tinker first his scene of life began; 
 That failing, he set up for cunning man; 
 But wanting luck, puts on a new disguise, 
 And now pretends that he can mend your eyes; 
 But this expect, that, like a tinker true. 
 Where he repairs one eye he puts out two." 
 
 The charge of his being a tinker was preferred 
 against him also by another lampoon writer. "In his 
 stead up popped Roger Grant, the tinker, of whom a 
 friend of mine once sung. —
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 95 
 
 "'Her Majesty sure was in a surprise, 
 Or else was very short-sighted; 
 When a tinker was sworn to look after her eyes, 
 And the mountebank Reade was knighted.' " 
 
 This man, aceordinor to the custom of his class, was 
 in the habit of publishing circumstantial and minute 
 accounts of his cures. Of course his statements were 
 a tissue of untruths, vnth just the faintest possible 
 admixture of what was not altogether false. His plan, 
 was to get hold of some poor person of imperfect vis- 
 ion, and, after treating him with medicines and half- 
 crowns for six weeks, induce him to sign a testi- 
 monial to the effect that he had been born stone-blind, 
 and had never enjoyed any visual power whatever, 
 till Providence led him to good Dr. Grant, who had 
 cured him in little more than a month. This certifi-* 
 cate the clergyman and churchwardens of the parish, 
 in which the patient had been known to wander about 
 the streets in mendicancy, were asked to attest; and 
 if they proved impregnable to the cunning represen- 
 tations of the importunate suitors, and declined to 
 give the evidence of their handwriting, either on the 
 ground that they had reason to question the fact of 
 the original blindness, or because they were not thor- 
 oughly acquainted with the particulars of the case, 
 Dr. Grant did not scruple to sign their names himself, 
 or by the hands of his agents. The modus operandi 
 with which he carried out these frauds may be learned 
 by the curious in a pamphlet, published in the year 
 1709, and entitled "A Full and True Account of a 
 Miraculous Cure of a Young Man in Newington that 
 was Born Blind." 
 
 But the last century was rife with medical quacks. 
 The Rev. John Hancocke, D.D., Rector of St. Mar-
 
 96 A BOUK ABOUT DOCTOKS. 
 
 garet's, Lothbury, London, Prebendary of Canter- 
 bury, and chaplain to the Duke of Bedford, preached 
 up the water-cure, which Pliny the naturalist de- 
 scribed as being in his day the fashionable remedy in 
 Rome. He published a work in 1723 that immediately 
 became popular, called "Febrifugum Magnum; or, 
 Common Water the best Cure for Fevers, and prob- 
 ably for the Plague." 
 
 The good man deemed himself a genius of the high- 
 est order, because he had discovered that a draught 
 of cold water, under certain circumstances, is a pow- 
 erful diaphoretic. Ilis pharmacopeia, however, con- 
 tained another remedy— namely, stewed prunes, which 
 the Doctor regarded as a specific in obstinate eases 
 of blood-spitting. Then there was Ward, with his fa- 
 mous pill, whose praises that learned man, Lord Chief 
 Baron Reynolds, sounded in every direction. There 
 was also a tar-water mania, which mastered the clear 
 intellect of Henry Fielding, and had as its principal 
 advocate the supreme intellect of the age, Bishop 
 Berkeley. In volume eighteen of the Gentleman' >>' 
 Magazine is a list of the quack-doctors then practis- 
 ing; and the number of those named in it is almost as 
 numerous as the nostrums, which mount up to 202. 
 These accommodating fellows were ready to fleece eve- 
 ry rank of society. The fashionable impostor sold 
 his specific sometimes at the rate of 2s. &d. a pill, while 
 the humbler knave vended his boluses at 6d. a box. 
 To account for society tolerating, and yet more, warm- 
 ly encouraging such a state of things, we must remem- 
 ber the force of the example set by eminent physicians 
 in vending medicines the composition of which they 
 kept secret. Sir Hans Sloane sold an eye-salve; and
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 97 
 
 Dr. Mead had a favourite nostnim— a powder for the 
 bite of a mad dog. 
 
 The close of the seventeenth century was not in 
 respect of its quacks behind the few preceding gen- 
 erations. In 1789 Mr. and Mrs. Loutherbourg became 
 notorious for curing people without medicine. God, 
 they proclaimed, had endowed them with a miracu- 
 lous power of healing the impoverished sick, by look- 
 ing upon them and touching them. Of course every 
 one who presumed to doubt the statement was re- 
 garded as calling in question the miracles of holy 
 writ, and was exclaimed against as an infidel. The 
 doctor's house was besieged with enormous crowds. 
 The good man and his lady refused to take any fee 
 whatever, and issued gratuitous tickets amongst the 
 mob, which would admit the bearers into the Louther- 
 bourgian presence. Strange to say, however, these 
 tickets found their way into the hands of venal people, 
 who sold them to others in the crowd (who were tired 
 of waiting) for sums varying from two to five guineas 
 each; and ere long it was discovered that these bar- 
 terers of the healing power were accomplices in the 
 pay of the poor man's friend. A certain Miss Mary 
 Pratt, in all probability a puppet acting in obedience 
 to Loutherbourg 's instructions, wrote an account of 
 the cures performed by the physician and his wife. 
 In a dedicatory letter to the Archbishop of Cjinter- 
 bury. Miss Pratt says:— "I therefore presume when 
 these testimonies are searched into (which will cor- 
 roborate with mine) your Lordship will compose a 
 form of prayer, to be used in all churches and chap- 
 els, that nothing may impede or prevent this inestima- 
 ble gift from having its free course; and publick
 
 98 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 thanks may be offered up in all churches and chapels, 
 for such an astonishing proof of God's love to this 
 favoured land." The publication frankly states that 
 "Mr. De Loutherbourg, who lives on Hammersmith 
 Green, has received a most glorious power from the 
 Lord Jehovah— viz. the gift of healing all manner of 
 diseases incident to the human body, such as blind- 
 ness, deafness, lameness, cancers, loss of speech, pal- 
 sies." But the statements of "cases" are yet more 
 droll. The reader will enjoy the perusal of a few of 
 them. 
 
 "Case of Thomas Eohinson.— Thomas Robinson was 
 sent home to his parents at the sign of the Ram, a pub- 
 lic-house in Cow Cross, so ill with what is called the 
 king's evil, that they applied for leave to bring him 
 into St Bartholomew's Hospital." (Of course he 
 was discharged as "incurable," and was eventually 
 restored to health by Mr. Loutherbourg.) "But 
 how," continues Miss Pratt, "shall my pen paint in- 
 gratitude? The mother had procured a ticket for 
 him from the Finsbury Dispensary, and with a shame- 
 ful reluctance denied having seen Mr De Louther- 
 bourg, waited on the kind gentleman belonging to 
 the dispensary, and, amazing! thanked them for relief 
 which they had no hand in ; for she told me and fifty 
 more, she took the drugs and medicines and threw 
 them away, reserving the phials, &c. Such an im- 
 position on the public ought to be detected, as she de- 
 prived other poor people of those medicines which 
 might have been useful ; not only so— robbed the Lord 
 of Life of the glory due to him only, by returning 
 thanks at the dispensary for a cure which they had 
 never performed. The lad is now under Mr De
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 99 
 
 Loutherbourg's care, who administered to him be- 
 fore me yesterday in the public healing-room, amongst 
 a large concourse of people, amongst whom was some 
 of the first families in the kingdom." 
 
 "Case.— Mary Ann Hughes.— Her father is chair- 
 man to her Grace the Duchess of Rutland, who lives at 
 No. 37, in Ogle Street. She had a most violent fever, 
 fell into her knee, went to Middlesex Hospital, where' 
 they made every experiment in order to cui'e her— 
 but in vain; she came home worse than she went in, 
 her leg contracted and useless. In this deplorable 
 state she waited on Mrs De Loutherbourg, who, with 
 infinite condescension, saw her, administered to her, 
 and the second time of waiting on Mrs De Louther- 
 bourg she was perfectly cured. ' ' 
 
 "Case. — Mrs Hook.— Mrs Hook, Stableyard, St 
 James's, has two daughters born deaf and dumb. She 
 waited on the lady above-mentioned, who looked on 
 them with an eye of benignity, and healed them. (I 
 heard them both speak.)" 
 
 Mary Pratt, after enumerating several cases like the 
 foregoing, concludes thus: 
 
 "Let me repeat, with horror and detestation, the 
 wickedness of those who have procured tickets of ad- 
 mission, and sold them for five and two guineas a- 
 piece!— whereas this gift was chiefly intended for 
 the poor. Therefore i\Ir De Loutherbourg has retired 
 from the practice into the country (for the present), 
 ha\ing suffered all the indignities and contumely 
 that man could suft'er, joined to ungrateful behav- 
 iour, and tumultuous proceedings. I have heard peo-' 
 pie curse him and threaten his life, instead of return- 
 ing him thanks ; and it is my humble wish that pray-
 
 100 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 ers may be put up in all churches for his great gifts to 
 multiply." 
 
 "Finis. 
 
 "Report says three thousand persons have waited 
 for tickets at a time." 
 
 Forming a portion of this interesting work by Miss 
 Pratt is a description of a case which throws the 
 Loutherbourgian miracles into the shade, and is ap- 
 parently cited only for the insight it affords into the 
 state of public feeling in Queen Anne's time, as con- 
 trasted with the sceptical enlightenment of George 
 III.'s reign: — 
 
 "I hope the public will allow me to adduce a case 
 which history will evince the truth of. A girl, whose 
 father and mother were French refugees, had her hip 
 dislocated from her birth. She was apprentice to a 
 milliner, and obliged to go out about the mistress's 
 business ; the boys used to insult her for her lamenes^ 
 
 continuallj'-, as she limped very much 
 
 Providence directed her to read one of the miracles 
 performed by our blessed Saviour concerning the 
 withered arm. The girl exclaimed, 'Oh, madam, was 
 Jesus here on earth he would cure me.' Her mistress 
 answered, 'If you have faith, his power is the same 
 now.' She immediately cried, 'I have faith!' and 
 the bone flew into its place with a report like the noise 
 of a pistol. The girl's joy was ecstatic. She jumped 
 about the room in raptures. The servant was called, 
 sent for her parents, and the minister under whom 
 she sat. They spent the night praising God. Hun- 
 dreds came to see her, amongst whom was the Bishop 
 of London, by the command of her Majesty Queen
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 101 
 
 Anne (for in those days people were astonished at 
 this great miracle.) " ; - •■ • ; . 
 
 Dr. Loutherbourg was not the -first qu-aek to lieece 
 the good people of Hammefsmith, .In tbe;b72Hd 
 paper of the Spectator, dated July" 26, 1714, there is 
 a good story of a consummate artist, who surrounded 
 himself with an enormous crowd, and assured them 
 that Hammersmith was the place of his nativity ; and 
 that, out of strong natural affection for his birth- 
 place, he was willing to give each of its inhabitants a 
 present of five shillings. After this exordium, the 
 benevolent fellow produced from his cases an im- 
 mense number of packets of a powder warranted to 
 cure everything and Idll nothing. The price of each 
 packet was properly five shillings and sixpence ; but 
 out of love for the people of Hammei-smith the good 
 doctor offered to let any of his audience buy them at 
 the rate of sixpence apiece. The multitude availed 
 themselves of this proposition to such an extent that it 
 is to be feared the friend of Hammersmith's humanity 
 suffered greatly from his liberality. 
 
 Steele has transmitted to us some capital anecdotes 
 of the empirics of his day. One doctor of Sir Rich- 
 ard's acquaintance resided in Moore Alley, near 
 Wapping, and proclaimed his ability to cure cata- 
 racts, because he had lost an eye in the emperor's 
 service. To his patients he was in the habit of dis- 
 playing, as a conclusive proof of his surgical prowess, 
 a muster-roll showing that either he, or a man of his 
 name, had been in one of his imperial Majesty's regi- 
 ments. At the sight of this document of course mis- 
 trust fled. Another man professed to treat ruptured 
 children, because his father and grandfather were
 
 102 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 born bursten. But more humorous even than either 
 'of these gentlemen was another friend of Sir Kieh- 
 ar(l''s, who announced to the public that "from eight 
 to twelve and fro-n two till six, he attended for the 
 good of the public to bleed for threepence." 
 
 The fortunes which pretenders 'to the healing art 
 have amassed would justify a belief that empiricism, 
 under favourable circumstances, is the best trade to 
 be found in the entire list of industrial occupations. 
 Quaclis have in all ages found staunch supporters 
 amongst the powerful and affluent. Dr. Myersbach, 
 whom Lettsom endeavoured to drive back into ob- 
 scurity, continued, long after the publication of the 
 "Observations," to make a large income out of the 
 credulity of the fashionable classes of English society, 
 AVithout learning of any kind, this man raised himself 
 to opulence. His degree was bought at Erfurth for 
 a few shillings, just before that university raised the 
 prices of its academical distinctions, in consequence 
 of the pleasant raillery of a young Englishman, who 
 paid the fees for a Doctor's diploma, and had it duly 
 recorded in the Collegiate archives as having been 
 presented to Anglicus Ponto; Ponto being no other 
 than his mastiff dog. With such a degree Myersbach 
 set up for a philosopher. Patients crowded to his 
 consulting-room, and those who were unable to come 
 sent their servants with descriptions of their cases. 
 But his success was less than that of the inventor of 
 Ailhaud's powders, which ran their devastating 
 course through every country in Europe, sending to 
 the silence of the grave almost as many thousands as 
 were destroyed in all Napoleon's campaigns. Tissot, 
 in his "Avis au Peuple," published in 1803, attacked
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 103 
 
 Ailhaud with characteristic vehemence, and put an 
 end to his destructive power ; but ere this took place 
 the charlatan had mounted on his slaughtered 
 myriads to the possession of three baronies, and was 
 figuring in European courts as the Baron de Castelet. 
 
 The tricks which these practitioners have had re- 
 course to for the attainment of their ends are various. 
 Dr. Katterfelto, who rose into eminence upon the evil 
 wind that brought the influenza to England in the 
 year 1782, always travelled about the country in a 
 large caravan, containing a number of black cats. 
 This gentleman's triumphant campaign was brought 
 to a disastrous termination by the mayor of Shrews- 
 bury, who gave him a taste of the sharp discipline 
 provided at that time by the law for rogues and 
 vagabonds.— "The "Wise Man of Liverpool," whose 
 destiny it was to gull the canny inhabitants of the 
 North of England, used to traverse the country in a 
 chariot drawn by sis horses, attended by a perfect 
 army of outriders in brilliant liveries, and affecting 
 all the pomp of a prince of the royal blood. 
 
 The quacks who merit severe punishment the least 
 of all their order are those who, while they profess 
 to exercise a powerful influence over the bodies of 
 their patients, leave nature to pursue her operations 
 pretty much in her own way. Of this comparatively 
 harmless class was Atwell, the parson of St. Tue, who, 
 according to the account given of him by Fuller, in 
 his English ^\'orthies, "although he now and then 
 used blood-letting, mostly for all diseases prescribed 
 milk, and often milk and apples, which (although 
 contrary to the judgments of the best-esteemed 
 practitioners) either by virtue of the medicine, or
 
 104 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 fortune of the physician, or fancy of the patient, re- 
 covered many out of desperate extremities." At well 
 won his reputation by acting: on the same principle 
 that has brought a certain degree of popularity to the 
 homoeopathists— that, namely, of letting things run 
 their own course. The higher order of empirics have 
 always availed themselves of the wonderful faculty 
 possessed by nature of taking good care of herself. 
 Simple people who enlarge on the series of miraculous 
 cures performed by their pet charlatan, and find in 
 them proofs of his honesty and professional worth, do 
 not reflect that in ninety-and-nine cases out of every 
 hundred where a sick person is restored to health, the 
 result is achieved by nature rather than art, and 
 would have been arrived at as speedily without as 
 with medicine. Again, the fame of an ordinary 
 medical practitioner is never backed up by simple 
 and compound addition. His cures and half cures 
 are never summed up to magnificent total by his em- 
 ployers, and then flaunted about on a bright banner 
 before the eyes of the electors. 'Tis a mere matter 
 of course that ho (although he is quite wrong, and 
 knows not half as much about his art as any great 
 lady who has tested the efficacy of the new system on 
 her sick poodle) should cure people. 'Tis only the 
 cause of globules which is to be supported by docu- 
 mentary evidence, containing the case of every young 
 lady who has lost a severe headache under the benign 
 influence of an infinitesimal dose of flour and water. 
 Dumoulin, the physician, observed at his death 
 that "he left behind him two great physicians. Regi- 
 men and River AVater." A due appreciation of the 
 truth embodied in this remark, coupled with that
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 105 
 
 masterly assurance, without which the human family 
 is not to be fleeced, enabled the French quack, Villars, 
 to do good to others and to himself at the same time. 
 This man, in 1723, confided to his friends that his 
 uncle, who had recently been killed by an accident at 
 the advanced age of one hundred years, had be- 
 queathed to him the recipe for a nostrum which would 
 prolong the life of any one who used it to a hundred 
 and fifty, provided only that the rules of sobriety 
 were never transgressed. Whenever a funeral passed 
 him in the street he said aloud, "Ah! if that unfortu- 
 nate creature had taken my nostrum, he might be 
 carrying that coffin, instead of being carried in it." 
 This nostrum was composed of nitre and Seine water^ 
 and was sold at the ridiculously cheap rate of five 
 francs a bottle. Those who bought it were directed to 
 drink it at certain stated periods, and also to lead reg- 
 ular lives, to eat moderately, drink temperately, take 
 plenty of bodily exercise, go to and rise from bed 
 early, and to avoid mental anxiety. In an enormous 
 majority .of cases the patient was either cured or bene- 
 fitted. Some possibly died, who, by the ministrations 
 of science, might have been preserved from the grave. 
 But in these eases, and doubtless they were few, the 
 blunder was set down to Nature, who, somewhat un- 
 justly, was never credited with any of the recoveries. 
 The world was charitable, and the doctor could say— 
 
 "The grave my faults does hide, 
 The world my cures does see; 
 What youth and time provide, 
 Are oft ascribed to me." 
 
 Anyhow Villars succeeded, and won the approbation 
 
 not only of his dupes, but of those also who were 
 
 sagacious enough to see the nature of his trick. The
 
 106 A BOOIC ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 Abbe Pons declared him to be the superior of the mar- 
 shal of the same name. "The latter," said he, "kills 
 men— the former prolongs their existence." At length 
 Villars' secret leaked out; and his patients, unwise in 
 coming to him, unwisely deserted him. His occupa- 
 tion was gone. 
 
 The displeasure of Villars' dupes, on the discovery 
 of the benevolent hoax played upon them, reminds 
 us of a good story. Some years since, at a fashion- 
 able watering-place, on the south-east coast of Eng- 
 land, resided a young surgeon— handsome, well-bred, 
 and of most pleasant address. He was fast rising 
 into public favour and a good practice, when an eccen- 
 tric and wealthy maiden lady, far advanced in years, 
 sent for him. The summons of course was promptly 
 obeyed, and the young practitioner was soon listening 
 to a most terrible story of suffering. The afBicted 
 lady, according to her own account, had a year before, 
 during the performance of her toilet, accidental!}' 
 taken into her throat one of the bristles of her tooth- 
 brush. This bristle had stuck in the top of the gullet, 
 and set up an irritation which, she was convinced, 
 was killing her. She had been from one surgeon of 
 eminence to another, and everywhere in London and 
 in the country the Faculty had assured her that she 
 was only the victim of a nervous delusion— that her 
 throat was in a perfectly healthy condition— that the 
 disturbance existed only in her own imagination. 
 "And so they go on, the stupid, obstinate, perverse, 
 unfeeling creatures," concluded the poor lady, "say- 
 ing there is nothing the matter with me, while I am— 
 dying— dying— dying!" "Allow me, my dear lady," 
 said the adroit surgeon in reply, "to inspect for my-
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 107 
 
 self— carefully— the state of your throat." The in- 
 spection was made gravely, and at much length. ' ' My 
 
 dear Miss ," resumed the surgeon, when he had 
 
 concluded his examination, "you are quite right, and 
 Sir Benjamin Brodie and Sir James Clark are wrong. 
 I can see the head of the bristle low down, almost out 
 of sight; and if you'll let me run home for my instru- 
 ments, I'll forthwith extract it for you." The adroit 
 man retired, and in a few minutes re-entered the 
 room, armed with a very delicate pair of forceps, into 
 the teeth of which he had inserted a bristle taken 
 from an ordinary tooth-brush. The rest can be 
 imagined. The lady threw back her head ; the forceps 
 were introduced into her mouth; a prick— a scream! 
 and 'twas all over; and the surgeon, with a smiling 
 face, was holding up to the light, and inspecting with 
 lively curiosity, the extracted bristle. The patient 
 was in raptures at a result that proved that she was 
 right, and Sir Benjamin Brodie wrong. She im- 
 mediately recovered her health and spirits, and went 
 about everywhere sounding the praises of "her 
 saviour," as she persisted in calling the dexterous 
 operator. So enthusiastic was her gratitude, she 
 offered him her hand in marriage and her noble 
 fortune. The fact that the young surgeon was al- 
 ready married was an insuperable obstacle to this ar- 
 rangement. But other proofs of gratitude the lady 
 lavishly showered on him. She compelled him to 
 accept a carriage and horses, a service of plate, and a 
 new house. Unfortunately the lucky fellow could not 
 keep his own counsel. Like foolish Samson with 
 Delilah, he imparted the secret of his cunning to the 
 wife of his bosom; she confided it to Louise Clarissa,
 
 108 A BOOK ABOXJT DOCTORS. 
 
 her especial friend, who had been her bridesmaid ; 
 Louise Clarissa told it under vows of inviolable 
 secrecy to six other particular friends; and the six 
 other particular friends— base and unworthy girls! — 
 told it to all the world. Ere long the story came 
 round to the lady herself. Then what a storm arose ! 
 She was in a transport of fury! It was of no avail 
 for the surgeon to remind her that he had unques- 
 tionably raised her from a pitiable condition to health 
 and happiness. That mattered not. He had tricked, 
 fooled, bamboozled her! She would not forgive him, 
 she would pursue him with undying vengeance, she 
 would ruin him ! The writer of these pages is happy 
 to know that the surgeon here spoken of, whose pros- 
 perous career has been adorned by much genuine 
 benevolence, though unforgiven, was not ruined. 
 
 The ignorant are remarkable alike for suspicion 
 and credulity ; and the quack makes them his prey by 
 lulling to sleep the former quality, and artfully arous- 
 ing and playing upon the latter. Whatever the field 
 of quackery may be, the dupe must ever be the same. 
 Some years since a canny drover, from the north of 
 the Tweed, gained a high reputation throughout the 
 Eastern Counties for selling at high prices the beasts 
 intrusted to him as a salesman. At Norwich and 
 Earl Soham, at Bury and Ipswich, the story was the 
 same— Peter M'Dougal invariably got more per head 
 for "a lot" than even his warmest admirers had 
 calculated he would obtain. He managed his busi- 
 ness so well, that his brethren, unable to compete with 
 him, came to a conclusion not altogether supported by 
 the facts of the case, but flattering to their own self- 
 love. Clearly Peter could only surpass them by such
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 109 
 
 a long distance, through the agency of some charm 
 or witch's secret. They hinted as much; and Peter 
 wisely accepted the suggestion, with a half-assenting 
 nod of cunning, and encouraged his mates to believe 
 in it. A year or so passed on, and it was generally 
 allowed that Peter M'Dougal was in league on hon- 
 ourable terms with the unseen world. To contend 
 with him was useless. The only line open to his 
 would-be imitators was to buy from him participa- 
 tions in his mysterious powers. "Peter," at length 
 said a simple southern, at the close of lialesworth 
 cattle-fair, acting as spokesman for himself and four 
 other conspirators, "lets us into yer secret, man. 
 Yer ha' made here twelve pun a yead by a lot thai; 
 aren't woth sex. How ded yer doo it? We are all 
 owld friens. Lets us goo to 'Th' Alter 'd Case,' an I 
 an my mets uU stan yar supper an a dead drunk o' 
 whiskey or rom poonch, so be yar jine bans to giv us 
 the wink." Peter's eyes twinkled. He liked a good 
 supper and plenty of hot grog at a friend's expense. 
 Indeed, of such fare, like Sheridan with wine, he waa 
 ready to take any given quantity. The bargain was 
 made, and an immediate adjournment effected to the 
 public-house rejoicing in the title of "The Case is 
 Altered." The supper was of hot steak-pudding, 
 made savoury with pepper and onions. Peter 
 M'Dougal ate plentifully and deliberately. Slowly 
 also he drank two stiff tumblers of whiskey punch, 
 smoking his pipe meanwhile without uttering a word. 
 The second tumbler was followed by a third, and as he 
 sipped the latter half of it, his entertainers closed 
 round him, and intimated that their part of the con- 
 tract being accomplished, he, as a man of honour,
 
 110 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 ought to fulfill his. Peter was a man of few words, 
 and without any unnecessary prelude or comment, he 
 stated in one laconic speech the secret of his profes- 
 sional success. Laying down his pipe by his empty 
 glass, and emitting from his gray eyes a light of 
 strange humour, he said drily, "Ye'd knoo hoo it was 
 I cam to mak sae guid a sale o' my beasties? Weel, 
 I ken it was .joost this— 7 fund a fule!" 
 
 The drover who rises to be a capitalist, and the 
 lawyer who mounts to the woolsack, ascend by the 
 same process. They know how to find out fools, and 
 how to turn their discoveries to advantage. 
 
 It is told of a Barbadoes physician and slaveholder, 
 that having been robbed to a serious extent in his 
 sugar-works, he discovered the thief by the following 
 ingenious artifice. Having called his slaves together, 
 he addressed them thus:— "My friends, the great 
 serpent appeared to me during the night, and told 
 me that the person who stole my money should, at this 
 instant — tliis very instant — have a parrot's feather 
 at the point of his nose." On this announcement, the 
 dishonest thief, anxious to find out if his guilt had 
 declared itself, put his finger to his nose. "Man," 
 cried the master instantly, " 'tis thou who hast 
 robbed me. The great serpent has just told me so." 
 
 Clearly tliis piece of quackery succeeded, because 
 the quack had "fund a fule."
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 JOHN RADCLIPPE. 
 
 Radcliffe, the Jacobite partisan, the physician with- 
 out learning, and the luxurious ion-vivant, who 
 grudged the odd sixpences of his tavern scores, was 
 born at Wakefield in Yorkshire, in the year 1650. 
 His extraction was humble, his father being only a 
 well-to-do yeoman. In after life, when he lived on 
 intimate terms with the leading nobility of the 
 country, he put in a claim for aristocratic descent; 
 and the Earl of Derwentwater recognized him as a 
 kinsman deriving his blood from the Radcliffes of 
 Dilston, in the county of Northumberland, the chiefs 
 of which honourable family had been knights, barons, 
 and earls, from the time of Henry IV. It may be re- 
 membered that a similar countenance was given to 
 Burke's patrician pretensions, which have been re- 
 lated by more than one biographer, with much 
 humorous pomp. In Radcliffe 's case the Heralds in- 
 terfered with the Earl's decision; for after the phy- 
 sician's decease they admonished the University of 
 Oxford not to erect any escutcheon over or upon his 
 monument. But though Radcliffe was a plebeian, he
 
 112 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 contrived, by his shrewd humour, arrogant simplicity, 
 and immeasurable insolence, to hold both Wings and 
 Tories in his grasp. The two factions of the aristoc- 
 racy bowed before him— the Tories from affection to 
 a zealous adherent of regal absolutism; and the 
 Whigs, from a superstitious belief in his remedial' 
 skill, and a fear that in their hours of need he would 
 leave them to the advances of Death. 
 
 At the age of fifteen he became a member of the 
 University College, Oxford; and having kept his 
 terms there, he took his B. A. degree in 1669, and was 
 made senior-scholar of the college. But no fellow- 
 ship falling vacant there, he accepted one on the 
 foundation of Lincoln College. His M. B. degree he 
 took in 1675, and forthwith obtained considerable 
 practice in Oxford. Owing to a misunderstanding 
 with Dr. Marshall, the rector of Lincoln College, Rad- 
 cliffe relinquished a fellowship, which he could no 
 longer hold, without taking orders, in 1677. He did 
 not take his M. D. degree till 1682, two years after 
 which time he went up to London, and took a house in 
 Bow Street, next that in which Sir Godfrey Kneller 
 long resided; and with a facility which can hardly be 
 credited in these days, when success is achieved only 
 by slow advances, he stept forthwith into a magnifi- 
 cent income. 
 
 The days of mealy-mouthed suavity had not yet 
 come to the Faculty. Instead of standing by each 
 other with lip-service, as they now do in spite of all 
 their jealousies, physicians and surgeons vented their 
 mutual enmities in frank, honest abuse. Radcliffe's 
 tongue was well suited for this part of his business ; 
 and if that unruly member created for him enemies,
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 113 
 
 it could also contend with a legion of adversaries at 
 the same time. Foulks and Adams, then the first 
 apothecaries in Oxford, tried to discredit the young 
 doctor, but were ere long compelled to sue for a cessa- 
 tion of hostilities. Luff, who afterwards became 
 Professor of Physic in the University, declared that 
 all "Radcliffe's cures were performed only by guess- 
 work"; and Gibbons, with a sneer, said, "that it was 
 a pity that his friends had not made a scholar of the 
 young man." In return Radeliffe always persisted 
 in speaking of his opponent as Nurse Gibbons — be- 
 cause of his slops and diet drinks, whereas he (Rad- 
 eliffe the innovator) preached up the good effects of 
 fresh air, a liberal table, and cordials. This was the 
 Dr. Gibbons around whom the apothecaries rallied, to 
 defend their interests in the great Dispensarian con- 
 test, and whom Garth in his poem ridicules, under the 
 name of "Mirmillo," for entertaining drug- ven- 
 ders: — 
 
 "Not far from that frequented theatre, 
 Where wandering punks each night at five repair, 
 Where purple emperors in buskins tread, 
 And rule imaginary worlds for bread; 
 Where Bentley, by old writers, wealthy grew. 
 And Briscoe lately was undone by new ; 
 There triumphs a physician of renown, 
 To none, but such as rust in health, unknown. 
 * * * * * * 
 
 The trading tribe oft thither throng to dine, 
 And want of elbow-room supply in wine." 
 
 Gibbons was not the only dangerous antagonist that 
 Radeliffe did battle with in London. Dr. Whistler, 
 Sir Edmund King, Sir Edward Hannes, and Sir 
 Richard Blackmore were all strong enough to hurt 
 him and rouse his jealousy. Hannes, also an Oxford 
 man, was to the last a dangerous and hated rival. 
 
 4— «
 
 114 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 He opened his campaign in London with a carriage 
 and four horses. The equipage was so costly and 
 imposing that it attracted the general attention of 
 the town. "By Jove! Kadeliffe," said a kind friend, 
 "Hannes's horses are the finest I have ever seen." 
 "Umph!" growled Radcliffe savagely, "then he'll be 
 able to sell them for all the more." 
 
 To make his name known Hannes used to send his 
 liveried footmen running about the streets with di- 
 rections to put their heads into every coach they met 
 and inquire, with accents of alarm, if Dr. Hannes was 
 in it. Acting on these orders, one of his fellows, after 
 looking into every carriage between WTiitehall and 
 the Royal Exchange, without finding his employer, 
 ran up Exchange Alley into Garraway's Coffee-house, 
 which was one of the great places of meeting for the 
 members of the medical profession. (Apothecaries 
 used regularly to come and consult the physicians, 
 while the latter were over their wine, paying only 
 half fees for the advice so given, without the patients 
 being personally examined. Batson's coffee-house in 
 Corn-hill was another favourite spot for these Galenic 
 re-unions. Sir AVilliam Blizard being amongst the lasi 
 of the medical authorities who frequented that hos- 
 telry for the purpose of receiving apothecaries.) 
 "Gentlemen, can your honours tell me if Dr. Hannes 
 is here ? ' ' asked the man, running into the very centre 
 of the exchange of medicine-men. "\Vho wants Dr. 
 Hannes, fellow?" demanded Radcliffe, who happened 
 
 to be present. "Lord A and Lord B , your 
 
 honour!" answered the man. "No, no, friend," re- 
 sponded the doctor slowly, and with pleasant irony,
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 115 
 
 "you are mistaken. Those lords don't want your 
 master— 'tis he who wants them." 
 
 But Ilannes made friends and a fine income, to the 
 deep chagrin of his contemptuous opponent. An in- 
 cessant feud existed between the two men. The viru- 
 lence of their mutual animosity may be estimated by 
 the following story. When the poor little Duke of 
 Gloucester was taken ill, Sir Edward Hannes and 
 Blackmore (famous as Sir Richard Blackmore, the 
 poet) were called in to attend him. On the case tak- 
 ing a fatal turn, Radcliffe was sent for; and after 
 roundly charging the two doctors with the grossest 
 mismanagement of a simple attack of rash, went on, 
 "It would have been happy for this nation had you, 
 sir, been bred up a basket-maker— and you, sir, had 
 remained a country schoolmaster, rather than have 
 ventured out of your reach, in the practice of an art 
 which you are an utter stranger to, and for your 
 blunders in which you ought to be whipped with one 
 of your own rods. ' ' The reader will not see the force 
 of this delicate speech if he is not aware that Hannes 
 was generally believed to be the son of a basket- 
 maker, and Sir Richard Blackmore had, in the period 
 of his early poverty, like Johnson and Oliver Gold- 
 smith, been a teacher of boys. Whenever the ' ' Amen- 
 ities of the Faculty" come to be published, this con- 
 sultation, on the last illness of Jenkin Lewis's little 
 friend, ought to have its niche in the collection. 
 
 Towards the conclusion of his life, Radcliffe said 
 that, "when a young practitioner, he possessed 
 twenty remedies for every disease; and at the close 
 of his career he found twenty diseases for which he 
 had not one remedy." His mode of practice, how-
 
 116 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 ever, as far as anything is known about it, at the 
 outset was the same as that which he used at the con- 
 clusion of his career. Pure air, cleanliness, and a 
 wholesome diet were amonpst his most important pre- 
 scriptions; though he was so far from running coun- 
 ter to the interests of the druggists, that his apothe- 
 cary, Dandridge, whose business was almost entirely 
 confined to preparing the doctor's medicines, died 
 worth 50,000i. For the imaginary maladies of his 
 hjTiochondriacal male and fanciful female patients 
 he had the greatest contempt, and neither respect 
 for age or rank, nor considerations of interest, could 
 always restrain him from insulting such patients. 
 In 1686 he was appointed physician to Princess Anne 
 of Denmark, and was for some years a trusted ad- 
 viser of that roj^al lady; but he lacked the compliant 
 temper and imperturbable suavity requisite for a 
 court physician. Shortly after the death of Queen 
 ]\Iary, the Princess Anne, having incurred a fit of 
 what is by the vulgar termed "blue devils," from 
 not paying proper attention to her diet, sent in all 
 haste to her physician. Radcliffe, when he received 
 the imperative summons to hurry to St. James's was 
 sitting over his bottle in a tavern. The allurements 
 of Bacchus were too strong for him, and he delayed 
 his visit to the distinguished sufferer. A second mes- 
 senger arrived, but by that time the physician was so 
 gloriously ennobled with claret, that he discarded all 
 petty considerations of personal advantage, and flatly 
 refused to stir an inch from the room where he was 
 experiencing all the happiness humanity is capable 
 of. "Tell her Royal Highness," he exclaimed, bang- 
 ing his fist on the table, "that her distemper is noth-
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 117 
 
 ing but the vapours. She's in as good state of health 
 as any woman breathing— only she can't make up 
 her mind to believe it." 
 
 The next morning prudence returned with sobri- 
 ety; and the doctor did not fail to present himself 
 at an early hour in the Princess's apartment in St. 
 James's Palace. To his consternation he was stopped 
 in the ante-room by an ofScer, and informed that he 
 was dismissed from his post, which had already been 
 given to Dr. Gibbons. Anne never forgave the sar- 
 casm about "the vapours." It so rankled in her 
 breast, that, though she consented to ask for the Doc- 
 tor's advice both for herself and those dear to her, 
 she never again held any cordial communication with 
 him. Radcliffe tried to hide the annoyance caused 
 him by his fall, in a hurricane of insolence towards 
 his triumphant rival : Nurse Gibbons had gotten a 
 new nursery— Nurse Gibbons was not to be envied 
 his new acquisition— Nurse Gibbons was fit only to 
 look after a woman who merely fancied herself ill. 
 
 Notwithstanding this rupture with the Court, Rad- 
 cliffe continued to have the most lucrative practice 
 in town, and in all that regarded money he was from 
 first to last a most lucky man. On coming to town 
 he found Lower, the Whig physician, sinking in pub- 
 lic favour— and Thomas Short, the Roman Catholic 
 doctor, about to drop into the grave, ^^^listle^, Sir 
 Edmund King, and Blackmore had plenty of pa- 
 tients. But there was a "splendid opening," and so 
 cleverly did Radcliffe sUp into it, that at the end of 
 his first year in town he got twenty guineas per diem. 
 The difference in the value of money being taken 
 into consideration, it may be safely affirmed that no
 
 118 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 living physician makes more. Occasionally the fees 
 presented to him were very large. He cured Ben- 
 tinck, afterwards Earl of Portland, of a diarrha?a, 
 and Zulestein, afterwards Earl of Rochford, of an 
 attack of congestion of the hrain. For these services 
 William III. presented him with 500 guineas out of 
 the privy-purse, and offered to appoint him one of 
 his physicians, with £200 per annum more than he 
 gave any other of his medical officers. Radcliffe 
 pocketed the fee, but his Jacobite principles pre- 
 cluded him from accepting the post. "William, how- 
 ever, notwithstanding the opposition of Bidloe and 
 the rest of his medical servants, held Radcliffe in 
 such estimation that he continually consulted him; 
 and during the first eleven years of his reign paid 
 him, one year with another, 600 guineas per annum. 
 And when he restored to health "William, Duke of 
 Gloucester (the Princess of Denmark's son), who in 
 his third year was attacked with severe convulsions, 
 Queen ]\Iary sent him, through the hand of her Lord 
 Chamberlain, 1000 guineas. And for attending the 
 Earl of Albemarle at Namur he had 400 guineas and 
 a diamond ring, 1200 guineas fi'om the treasury, and 
 an offer of a baronetcy from the King. 
 
 For many years he was the neighbour of Sir God- 
 frey Kneller, in Bow Street. A dispute that occurred 
 between the two neighbours and friends is worth 
 recording. Sir Godfrey took pleasure in his garden, 
 and expended large sums of money in stocking it with 
 exotic plants and rare flowers. Radcliffe also enjoyed 
 a garden, but loved his fees too well to expend them 
 on one of his own. He suggested to Sir Godfrey 
 that it would be a good plan to insert a door into the
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 119 
 
 boundary wall between their gardens, so that on idle 
 afternoons, when he had no patients to visit, he might 
 slip into his dear friend's pleasure-grounds. Kneller 
 readily assented to this proposition, and ere a week 
 had elapsed the door was ready for use. The plan, 
 however, had not been long acted on when the painter 
 was annoyed by Radcliffe's servants wantonly injur- 
 ing his parterres. After fruitlessly expostulating 
 against these depredations, the sufferer sent a mes- 
 sage to his friend, th;'eatening, if the annoyance re- 
 curred, to brick up the wall. "Tell Sir Godfrey," 
 answered Radcliffe to the messenger, "that he may 
 do what he likes to the door, so long as he does not 
 paint it." When this vulgar jeer was reported to 
 KneUer, he replied, with equal good humour and 
 more wit, "Go back and give my service to Dr. Rad- 
 cliffe, and tell him, I'll take anything from him— but 
 physic." 
 
 Radcliffe was never married, and professed a de- 
 gree of misogyny that was scarcely in keeping with 
 his conduct on certain occasions. His person was 
 handsome and imposing, but his manners were little 
 calculated to please women. Overbearing, truculent, 
 and abusive, he could not rest without wounding the 
 feelings of his companions with harsh jokes. Men 
 could bear with him, but ladies were like Queen Anne 
 in vehemently disliking him. King "William was not 
 pleased with his brutal candour in exclaiming, at the 
 sight of the dropsical ancles uncovered for inspec- 
 tion, "I would not have your Majesty's legs for your 
 three kingdoms"; but "William's sister-in-law repaid 
 a much slighter offence with life-long animosity. In 
 1693, however, the doctor made an offer to a citizen's
 
 120 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 daughter, who had beauty and a fortune of £15,000. 
 As she was only twenty-four years of age, the doctor 
 was warmly congratulated by his friends when he in- 
 formed them that he, though well advanced in middle 
 age, had succeeded in his suit. Before the wedding- 
 day, however, it was discovered that the health of the 
 lady rendered it incumbent on her honour that she 
 should marry her father's book-keeper. This mishap 
 soured the doctor's temper to the fair sex, and his 
 sarcasms at feminine folly and frailty were innum- 
 erable. 
 
 He was fond of declaring that he wished for an 
 Act of Parliament entitling nurses to the sole and 
 entire medical care of women. A lady who consulted 
 him about a nervous singing in the head was advised 
 to "curl her hair with a ballad." His scorn of 
 women was not lessened by the advances of certain 
 disorderly ladies of condition, who displayed for him 
 that morbid passion which medical practitioners have 
 often to resist in the treatment of hysterical patients. 
 Yet he tried his luck once again at the table of love. 
 "There's no fool so great as an old fool." In the 
 summer of 1709, Radcliffe, then in his sixtieth year, 
 started a new equipage; and having arrayed himself 
 in the newest mode of foppery, threw all the town 
 into fits of laughter by paying his addresses, with 
 the greatest possible publicity, to a lady who pos- 
 sessed every requisite charm— (youth, beauty, 
 wealth)— except a tenderness for her aged suitor. 
 Again was there an unlucky termination to the doc- 
 tor's love, which Steele, in No. 44 of The Taller, rid- 
 iculed in the following manner:— 
 
 "This day, passing through Covent Garden, I was
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 121 
 
 stopped in the Piazza by Pacolet, to observe what 
 he called The Triumph of Love and Youth. I turned 
 to the object he pointed at, and there I saw a gay 
 gilt chariot, drawn by fresh prancing horses, the 
 coachman with a new cockade, and the lacqueys with 
 insolence and plenty in their countenances. I asked 
 immediately, 'WTiat young heir, or lover, owned that 
 glittering equipage?' But my companion inter- 
 rupted, 'Do not you see there the mourning 
 iEsculapius ? ' ' The mourning ? ' said I. ' Yes, Isaac, ' 
 said Pacolet, "he is in deep mourning, and is the 
 languishing, hopeless lover of the divine Hebe, the 
 emblem of Youth and Beauty. That excellent and 
 learned sage you behold in that furniture is the 
 strongest instance imaginable that love is the most 
 powerful of all things. 
 
 " 'You are not so ignorant as to be a stranger to 
 the character of .-Esculapius, as the patron and most 
 successful of all who profess the Art of Medicine. 
 But as most of his operations are owing to a natural 
 sagacity or impulse, he has very little troubled him- 
 self with the Doctrine of Drugs, but has always given 
 Nature more room to help herself than any of her 
 learned assistants ; and consequently has done great^jr 
 wonders than in the power of Art to perform; for 
 which reason he is half deified by the people, and 
 has ever been courted by all the world, just as if he 
 were a seventh son. 
 
 " 'It happened that the charming Hebe was re- 
 duc'd, by a long and violent fever, to the most ex- 
 treme danger of Death; and when aU skill failed, 
 they sent for ^-Esculapius. The renowned artist was 
 touched with the deepest compassion, to see the faded
 
 122 A BOOK .VBOUT DOCTOKS. 
 
 charms and faint bloom of Hebe ; and had a generous 
 concern, too, in beholding a struggle, not between 
 Life, but rather between Youth, and Death. All his 
 skill and his passion tended to the recovery of Ilebe, 
 beautiful even in sickness; but, alas! the unhappy 
 physician knew not that in all his care he was only 
 sharpening darts for his own destruction. In a word, 
 his fortune was the same with that of the statuary 
 who fell in love with an image of his own making; 
 and the unfortunate /Esculapius is become the pa- 
 tient of her whom he lately recovered. Long before 
 this, .Ssculapius was far gone in the unnecessary and 
 superfluous amusements of old age, in the increase 
 of unwieldy stores, and the provision in the midst 
 of an incapacity of enjoyment, of what he had for a 
 supply of more wants than he had calls for in Youth 
 itself. But these low considerations are now no more ; 
 and Love has taken place of Avarice, or rather is 
 become an Avarice of another kind, which still urges 
 him to pursue what he does not want. But behold 
 the metamorphosis: the anxious mean cares of an 
 usurer are turned into the languishments and com- 
 plaints of a lover. "Behold," says the aged 
 ^Esculapius, "I submit; I own, great Love, thy em- 
 pire. Pity, Hebe, the fop you have made. What 
 have I to do with gilding but on Pills? Yet, Fate ! 
 for thee I sit amidst a crowd of painted deities on 
 my chariot, buttoned in gold, clasp 'd in gold, without 
 having any value for that beloved metal, but as it 
 adorns the person and laces the hat of the dying lover. 
 I ask not to live, Hebe ! Give me but gentle death. 
 Eutnanasia, Euthanasia! that is all I implore."' 
 When /Esculapius had finished his complaint, Pacolet
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 123 
 
 went on in deep morals on the uncertainty of riches, 
 with this remarkable explanation— '0 wealth! how 
 impatient art thou ! And how little dost thou supply 
 us with real happiness, when the usurer himself can- 
 not forget thee, for the love of what is foreign to his 
 felicity, as thou art ! ' " 
 
 Seven days after the Tatler resumed the attack, 
 but with less happy effect. In this picture, the jus- 
 tice of which was not questioned, even by the Doc- 
 tor's admirers, the avarice of the veteran is not less 
 insisted on as the basis of his character, than his 
 amorousness is displayed as a ludicrous freak of 
 vanity. Indeed, love of money was the master-defect 
 of Radcliffe's disposition. Without a child, or a 
 prospect of offspring, he screwed and scraped in 
 every dii-eetion. Even his debaucheries had an alloy 
 of discomfort that does not customarily mingle in the 
 dissipations of the rich. The flavour of the money 
 each bottle cost gave ungrateful smack to his wine. 
 He had numerous poor relations, of whom he took, 
 during his life, little or no notice. Even his sisters 
 he kept at arm's distance, lest they should show their 
 affection for him by dipping their hands in his pock- 
 ets. It is true, he provided liberally for them at his 
 death— leaving to the one (a married lady— Mrs. 
 Hannah Redshaw) a thousand a year for life, and to 
 the other (a spinster lady) an income of half that 
 amount as long as she lived. But that he treated 
 them \vith unbrotherly neglect there is no doubt. 
 
 After his decease, a letter was found in his closet, 
 directed to his unmarried sister, Millicent Radcliffe, 
 in which, with contrition, and much pathos, he bids 
 her farewell. "You will find," says he, in that epis-
 
 124 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 tie, "by my will that I have taken better care of you 
 than perhaps you might expect from my former 
 treatment of you; for which, with my dying breath, 
 I most heartily ask pardon. I had indeed acted the 
 brother's part much better, in making a handsome 
 settlement on you while living, than after my de- 
 cease; and can plead nothing in excuse, but that the 
 love of money, which I have emphatically known to 
 be the root of all evil, was too predominant over me. 
 Though, I hope, I have made some amends for that 
 odious sin of covetousness, in my last dispositions of 
 those worldly goods which it pleased the great Dis- 
 penser of Providence to bless me with." 
 
 WTiat made this meanness of disposition in money 
 mattei-s the more remarkable was, that he was capable 
 of occasional munificence, on a scale almost beyond 
 his wealth, and also of a stoical fortitude under any 
 reverse of fortune that chanced to deprive him of 
 some of his beloved guineas. 
 
 In the year 1704, at a general collection for prop- 
 agating the Gospel in foreign parts, he settled on 
 the Society established for that purpose £50 per 
 annum for ever. And this noble gift he unostenta- 
 tiously made under an assumed name. In the same 
 year he presented £520 to the Bishop of Norwich, 
 to be distributed among the poor non-juring clergy; 
 and this donation he also desired should be kept a 
 secret from the world. 
 
 His liberality to Oxford was far from being all of 
 the post-mortem sort. In 1687 he presented the 
 chapel of University College with an east window, 
 representing, in stained glass, the Nativity, and hav- 
 ing the following inscription:— "D.D. Johan Rad-
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 125 
 
 cliffe, M.D., hujus Collegii quondam Soeius, Anno 
 Domini mdclxxxvii." In 1707 he gave Sprat, Bishop 
 of Rochester, bills for £300, drawn under the assumed 
 name of Francis Andrews, on Waldegrave the gold- 
 smith, of Russell Street, Covent Garden, for the re- 
 lief of distressed Scotch Episcopal clergy. 
 
 As another instance of how his niggard nature 
 could allow him to do good by stealth, and blush to 
 find it fame, his liberality to James Drake, the Tory 
 writer, may be mentioned. Drake was a physician, 
 as well as a political author. As the latter, he was 
 well liked, as the former he was honestly hated by 
 Radcliffe. Two of a trade— where one of the two is 
 a John Radcliffe — can never agree. Each of the two 
 doctors had done his utmost to injure the reputation 
 of the other. But when Drake, broken in circum- 
 stances by a political persecution, was in sore dis- 
 tress from want of money, Radcliffe put fifty guineas 
 into a lady's hands, and begged her to convey it to 
 Drake. "Let him," said Radcliffe, with the delicacy 
 of a fine heart, "by no means be told whence it comes. 
 He is a gentleman, and has often done his best to 
 hurt me. He could, therefore, by no means brook 
 the receipt of a benefit from a person whom he had 
 used all possible means to make an enemy." 
 
 After such instances of Ratcliffe's generosity, it 
 may seem unnecessary to give more proofs of the ex- 
 istence of that quality, disguised though it was by 
 miserly habits. His friend Nutley, a loose rollicking 
 gentleman about town, a barrister without practice, 
 a man of good family, and no fortune, a jovial dog, 
 with a jest always on his lips, wine in his head, and 
 a death's-head grinning over each shoulder [such
 
 126 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 bachelors may still be found in London] , was in this 
 case the object of the doctor's benevolence. Driven 
 by duns and tippling to the borders of distraction, 
 Nutley crept out of his chambers under the cover of 
 night to the "Mitre Tavern," and called for "a bot- 
 tle." "A bottle" with Nutley meant "many bot- 
 tles." The end of it was that the high-spirited gen- 
 tleman fell down in a condition of well! in a 
 
 condition that Templars, in this age of earnest pur- 
 pose and decent morals, would blush to be caught in. 
 Mr. Nutley was taken hold of by the waiters, and 
 carried up-stairs to bed. 
 
 The next morning the merry fellow is in the sad- 
 dest of all possible humours. The memory of a few 
 little bills, the holders of which are holding a parlia- 
 ment on his stair-case in Pump-eourt ; the recollection 
 that he has not a guinea left— either to pacify those 
 creditors with, or to use in paying for the wine con- 
 sumed over night; a depressing sense that the prom- 
 inent features of civilized existence are tax-gatherers 
 and sheriff's ofScers; a head that seems to be falling 
 over one side of the pillow, whilst the eyes roll out 
 on the other;— all these afflict poor Mr. Nutley! A 
 knock at the dooi', and the landlady enters. The 
 landlady is the Widow Watts, daughter of the widow 
 Bowles, also in the same line. As now, so a hundred 
 and fifty years ago, ladies in licensed victualling cir- 
 cles played tricks with their husbands' night-caps— 
 killed them with kindness, and reigned in their stead. 
 The widow Watts has a sneaking fondness for poor 
 Mr. Nutley, and is much affected when, in answer to 
 her inquiry how "his honour feels his-self," he begins 
 to sob like a child, narrate the troubles of his in-
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 127 
 
 fancy, the errors of his youth, and the sorrows of his 
 riper age. Mistress Watts is alarmed. Only to think 
 of Mr. Nutley going on like that, talking of his blessed 
 mother who had been dead these twenty years, and 
 vowing he'd kill himself, because he is an outcast, 
 and no better than a disgrace to his family. "To 
 think of it! and only yesterday he were the top of 
 company, and would have me drink his own honour- 
 able health in a glass of his own wine." Mistress 
 Watts sends straightway for Squire Nutley 's friend, 
 the Doctor. When Radcliffe makes his appearance, 
 he sees the whole case at a glance, rallies Billy Nut- 
 ley about his rascally morals, estimates his assertion 
 that "it's only his liver a little out of order" exactly 
 at its worth, and takes his leave shortly, saying to 
 himself, "If poor Billy could only be freed from the 
 depression caused by his present pecuniary difficul- 
 ties, he would escape for this once a return of the 
 deliri . . ." At the end of another half hour, a 
 goldsmith's man enters the bed- room, and puts into 
 Nutley 's hand a letter and a bag of gold containing 
 200 guineas. The epistle is from Radcliffe, beg- 
 ging his friend to accept the money, and to al- 
 low the donor to send him in a few days 300 
 more of the same coins. Such was the physician's 
 prescription, iu dispensing which he condescended to 
 act as his own apothecary. Bravo, doctor!— who of 
 us shall say which of the good deeds— thy gift to 
 Billy Nutley or thy princely bequest to Oxford— has 
 the better right to be regarded as the offspring of 
 sincere benevolence? Some— and let no "fie!" be 
 cried upon them — will find in this story more to make 
 them love thy memory than they have ever found in
 
 128 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 that noble library whose dome stands up amidst the 
 towers, and steeples, and sacred walls of beloved 
 Oxford. 
 
 It would not be hard to say which of the two gifts 
 has done the greater good. Poor Will Nutley took 
 his 500 guineas, and had "more bottles," went a few 
 more times to the theatres in lace and velvet and 
 brocade, roared out at a few more drinking bouts, 
 and was carried off by [his biographer calls it "a 
 violent fever"] in the twenty-ninth year of his age. 
 And possibly since Willy Nutley was Willy Nutley, 
 and no one else, this was the best possible termina- 
 tion for him. That Radeliffe, the head of a grave 
 profession, and a man of fifty-seven years of age, 
 should have conceived an enthusiastic friendship for 
 a youngster of half his age, is a fact that shows us 
 one of the consequences of the tavern life of our 
 great-grandfathers. It puts us in mind of how Field- 
 ing, ere he had a beard, burst into popularity with 
 the haunters of coffee-houses. When roist'^-"ing was 
 in fashion, a young man had many chances which he 
 no longer possesses. After the theatres were closed, 
 he reeled into the hostels of the town, singing snatches 
 with the blithe, clear voice of youth, laughing and 
 jesting with all around, and frequently amongst that 
 "all" he came in contact with the highest and most 
 powerful men of the time. A boy-adventurer could 
 display his wit and quality to statesmen and leaders 
 of all sorts; whereas now he must wait years before 
 he is even introduced to them, and years more ere he 
 gets an invitation to their formal dinners, at which 
 Barnes Newcome cuts as brilliant a figure as the best 
 and the strongest.
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 129 
 
 Throughout his life Radcliffe was a staunch and 
 manly Jacobite. He was for "the king"; but neither 
 loyalty nor interest could bind him to higher con- 
 siderations than those of attachment to the individual 
 he regarded as the rightful head of the realm. In 
 1688, when Obadiah Walker tried to wheedle him 
 into the folly of becoming a Romanist, the attempt 
 at perversion proved a signal failure. Nothing can 
 be more truly manly than his manner of rejecting 
 the wily advances of the proselytizing pervert. "The 
 advantages you propose to me," he writes, "may be 
 very great, for all that I know; God Almighty can 
 do very much and so can the king; but you'll pardon 
 me if I cease to speak like a physician for once, and, 
 with an air of gravity, am very apprehensive that I 
 may anger the one in being too complaisant to the 
 other. Tou cannot call this pinning my faith to any 
 man's sleeve; those that know me are too well ap- 
 prized of my quite contrary tendency. As I never 
 flattered a man myself, so 'tis my firm resolution 
 never to be wheedled out of my real sentiments— 
 which are, that since it has been my good fortune 
 to be educated according to the usage of the Church 
 of England, established by law, I shall never make 
 myself so unhappy as to shame my teachers and in- 
 structors by departing from what I have imbibed 
 from them." 
 
 Thus was Walker treated when he abused his posi- 
 tion as head of Univei-sity College. But when the 
 foolish man was deprived of his oflSce, he found a 
 good friend in him whom he had tried to seduce from 
 the Church in which he had been reared. Prom the 
 time of his first coming to London from Oxford, on 
 
 4—9
 
 130 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 the abdication of James the Second, up to the time 
 of his death, Walker subsisted on a handsome allow- 
 ance made to him out of Radcliffe's purse. When, 
 also, the discarded principal died, it was the doctor 
 who gave him an honourable interment in Pancras 
 churchyard, and years afterwards erected a monu- 
 ment to his memory. 
 
 As year, passed on, without the restitution of the 
 proscribed males of the Stuart House, Radcliffe's 
 political feelings became more bitter. He was too 
 cautious a man to commit himself in any plot having 
 for its object a change of djmasty; but his ill-humour 
 at the existing state of things vented itself in con- 
 tinual sarcasms against the chiefs of the Whig party 
 with whom he came in contact. He professed that he 
 did not wish for practice amongst the faction to 
 which he was opposed. He had rather only preserve 
 the lives of those citizens who were loyal to their 
 king. One of the immediate results of this affectation 
 was increased popularity with his political antago- 
 nists. WTienever a Whig leader was dangerously ill, 
 his friends were sure to feel that his only chance of 
 safety rested on the ministrations of the Jacobite 
 doctor. Radcliffe would be sent for, and after swear- 
 ing a score of times that nothing should induce him 
 to comply with the summons, would make his appear- 
 ance at the sick-bed, where he would sometimes tell 
 the sufferer that the devil would have no mercy on 
 those who put constitutional governments above the 
 divine right of kings. If the patient recovered, of 
 course his cure was attributed to the Tory physician ; 
 and if death was the result, the same cause was 
 pointed to.
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 131 
 
 It might be fancied that, rather than incur a charge 
 of positively killing his political antagonists, Ead- 
 cliffe would have left them to their fates. But this 
 plan would have served him the reverse of well. If 
 he failed to attend a WTiig's death-bed to which he 
 had been summoned, the death was all the same at- 
 tributed to him. "He might," exclaimed the indig- 
 nant survivors, "have saved poor Tom if he had 
 liked ; only poor Tom was a "Whig, and so he left him 
 to die." He was charged alike with killing Queen 
 Mary, whom he did attend in her dying illness — and 
 Queen Anne, whom he didn't. 
 
 The reader of the Harleian MS. of Burnet's "His- 
 tory" is amused with the following passage, which 
 does not appear in the printed editions: — "I will 
 not enter into another p^o\^nce, nor go out of my own 
 profession, and so wiU say no more of the physician's 
 part, but that it was universally condemned; so that 
 the Queen's death was imputed to the unskilfulness 
 and wilfulness of Dr Radcliffe, an impious and 
 vicious man, who hated the Queen much, but virtue 
 and religion more. He was a professed Jacobite, and 
 was, by many, thought a very bad physician; but 
 others cried him up to the highest degree imaginable. 
 He was called for, and it appeared but too evident 
 that his opinion was depended on. Other physicians 
 were called when it was too late; aU symptoms were 
 bad, yet still the Queen felt herself well." 
 
 Radcliffe 's negative murder of Queen Anne was 
 yet more amusing than his positive destruction of 
 Mary. "When Queen Anne was almost in extremis, 
 Radcliffe was sent for. The Queen, though she 
 never forgave him for his drunken ridicule of her
 
 132 A BOOK .VBOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 vapours, had an exalted opinion of his professional 
 talents, and had, more than once, winked at her ladies, 
 consulting him about the health of their royal mis- 
 tress. Now that death was at hand, Ladj^ JIasham 
 sent a summons for the doctor; but he was at Car- 
 shalton, sick of his dying illness, and returned answer 
 that it would be impossible for him to leave his coun- 
 try-seat and wait on her ^Majesty. Such was the ab- 
 surd and superstitious belief in his mere presence, 
 that the Queen was populai'ly pictured as having died 
 because he was not present to see her draw her last 
 breath. ^Miom he liked he could kill, and whom he 
 liked could keep alive and well. Even Arbuthnot, a 
 brother physician, was so tinctured with the popular 
 prejudice, that he could gravely tell Swift of the 
 pleasure Radcliffe had "in preserving my Lord Chief 
 Justice Holt's wife, whom he attended out of spite 
 to her husband, who wished her dead." 
 
 It makes one smile to read Charles Ford's letter 
 to the sarcastic Dean on the subject of the Queen's 
 last illness. "She continued ill the whole day. In 
 the evening I spoke to Dr Arbuthnot, and he told me 
 that he did not think her distemper was desperate. 
 Radcliffe was sent for to Carshalton about noon, by 
 order of council; but said he had taken physic and 
 coiild not come. In all probahility he had saved her 
 life; for I am told the late Lord Gower had been often 
 in the condition with the gout in the head, and Rad- 
 cliffe kept him alive many years after." The author 
 of Gulliver must have grinned as he read this sen- 
 tence. It was strange stuff to write about "that 
 puppy Radcliffe" (as the Dean calls the physician 
 in his journal to Stella) to the man who coolly sent
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. ' 133 
 
 out word to a Dublin mob that he had put off an 
 eclipse to a more suitable time. The absurdity of 
 Ford's letter is heightened by the fact that it was 
 written before the Queen's death. It is dated July 
 31, 1714, and concludes with the following post- 
 script:— "The Queen is something better, and the 
 council again adjourned till eight in the morning." 
 Surely the accusation, then, of negative woman- 
 slaughter was preferred somewhat prematurely. The 
 next day, however, the Queen died ; and then arose a 
 magnificent hubbub of indignation against the im- 
 pious doctor. The poor man himself sinking into 
 the grave, was at that country-seat where he had en- 
 tertained his medical friends with so many noisy 
 orgies. But the cries for vengeance reached him in 
 his retreat. "Give us back our ten days!" screamed 
 the rabble of London round Lord Chesterfield's car- 
 riage. "Give us back our Queen!" was the howl 
 directed against Radcliffe. The accused was a mem- 
 ber of the House of Commons, having been elected 
 M.P. for the town of Buckingham in the previous 
 year; and positively a member (one of Radcliffe 's 
 intimate personal acquaintances) moved that the 
 physician should be summoned to attend in his place 
 and be censured for not attending her late Majesty. 
 To a friend the doctor wrote from Carshalton on 
 August 7, 1714:— "Dear Sir,— I could not have 
 thought so old an acquaintance, and so good a friend 
 as Sir John always professed himself, would have 
 made such a motion against me. God knows my will 
 to do her Majesty any service has ever got the start 
 of my ability, and I have nothing that gives me 
 greater anxiety and trouble than the death of that
 
 Tdi ■ A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 great and glorious Princess. I must do that justice 
 to the physicians that attended her in her illness, 
 from a sight of the method that was taken for her 
 preservation, transmitted to me by Dr Mead, as to 
 declare nothing was omitted for her preservation; 
 but the people about her (the plagues of Egypt fall 
 upon them!) put it out of the power of physick to 
 be of any benefit to her. I know the nature of attend- 
 ing crowned heads to their last moments too well to 
 be fond of waiting upon them, without being sent 
 for by a proper authority. You have heard of par- 
 dons signed for physicians before a sovereign's de- 
 mise. However, as ill as I was, I would have went to 
 the Queen in a horse-litter, had either her JIajesty, 
 or those in commission next to her, commanded me so 
 to do. You may tell Sir John as much, and assure 
 him, from me, that his zeal for her Majesty will not 
 excuse his ill usage of a friend uho has drunk many 
 a hundred bottles with him, and cannot, even after 
 this breach of good understanding, that was ever pre- 
 served between us, but have a very good esteem for 
 him." 
 
 So strong was the feeling against the doctor, that 
 a set of maniacs at large formed a plan for his as- 
 sassination. Fortunately, however, the plot was made 
 known to him in the following letter:— 
 
 "Doctor,— Tho' I am no friend of yours, but, on 
 the contrary, one that could wish your destruction 
 in a legal way, for not preventing the death of our 
 most excellent Queen, whom you had it in your 
 power to save, yet I have such an aversion to the 
 taking away men's lives unfairly, as to acquaint you 
 that if you go to meet the gentlemen you have ap-
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 135 
 
 pointed to dine with at the 'Greyhound,' in Croydon, 
 on Thursday next, you will be most certainly mur- 
 thered. I am one of the persons engaged in the con- 
 spiracy, with twelve more, who are resolved to sacri- 
 fice you to the Ghost of her late Majesty, that cries 
 aloud for Mood; therefore, neither stir out of doors 
 that day, nor any other, nor think of exchanging 
 your present abode for your house at Hammersmith, 
 since there and everywhere else we shall be in quest 
 of you. I am touched with remorse, and give you 
 this notice; but take care of yourself, lest I repent 
 of it, and give proofs of so doing, by having it in my 
 power to destroy you, who am your sworn enemy. 
 -N. G." 
 
 That thirteen men could have been found to med- 
 itate such a ridiculous atrocity is so incredible, that 
 one is inclined to suspect a hoax in this epistle. 
 Eadcliffe, however, did not see the letter in that light. 
 Panic-struck, he kept himself a close prisoner to his 
 house and its precincts, though he was very desirous 
 of paying another visit to London — the monotony of 
 his rural seclusion being broken only by the custom- 
 ary visits of his professional associates who came 
 down to comfort and drink with him. The end, how- 
 ever, was fast approaching. The maladies under 
 which he suffered were exacerbated by mental dis- 
 quiet; and his powers suddenly failing him, he ex- 
 pired on the 1st of November, 1714, just three months 
 after the death of the murdered Queen, of whose 
 vapours he had spoken so disrespectfully. 
 
 His original biographer (from whose work all his 
 many memoirs have been taken) tells the world that
 
 136 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 the great physician '■'fell a victim to the ingratitude 
 of a thankless world, and the fury of the gout." 
 
 Radcliffe was an ignorant man, but shrewd enough 
 to see that in the then existing state of medical sci- 
 ence the book-learning of the Faculty could be but 
 of little service to him. He was so notoriously defi- 
 cient in the literature of his profession, that his 
 warmest admirers made merry about it. Garth hap- 
 pily observed that for Radcliffe to leave a library 
 was as if a eunuch sliould found a seraglio. Nor was 
 Radcliffe ashamed to admit his lack of lore. Indeed, 
 he was proud of it; and on the inquiry being made 
 by Bathurst, the head of Trinity College, Oxford, 
 where his stuc^y was, he pointed to a few vials, a skele- 
 ton, and an herbal, and answered, "This is Rad- 
 cliffe 's library." Mead, who rose into the fii'st fa- 
 vour of the town as the doctor retired from it, was an 
 excellent scholar; but far from assuming on that 
 ground a superiority to his senior, made it the means 
 of paying him a graceful compliment. The first time 
 that Radcliffe called on Mead when in town he found 
 his young friend reading Hippocrates. 
 
 "Do you read Hippocrates in Greek?" demanded 
 the visitor. 
 
 "Yes," replied Mead, timidly fearing his scholar- 
 ship would offend the great man. 
 
 "I never read him in my life," responded Rad- 
 cliffe, sullenly. 
 
 "You, sir," was the rejoinder, "have no occasion 
 —you are Hippocrates himself." 
 
 A man who could manufacture flattery so promptly 
 and courageously deserved to get on. Radcliffe swal- 
 lowed the fly, and was glad to be the prey of the ex-
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 137 
 
 pert angler. Only the day before, Mead had thrown 
 in his ground-bait. As a promising young man, Rad- 
 eliflfe had asked him to a dinner-party at Carsbalton, 
 with the hospitable resolve of reducing such a prom- 
 ising young man to a state of intoxication, in the 
 presence of the assembled elders of his profession. 
 Mead, however, was not to be so managed. He had 
 strong nerves, and was careful to drink as little as 
 he could without attracting attention by his absti- 
 nence. The consequence was that Mead saw magnate 
 after magnate disappear under the table, just as he 
 had before seen magnum after magnum disappear 
 above it ; and still he retained his self-possession. At 
 last he and his host were the only occupants of the 
 banqueting-room left in a non-recumbent position. 
 Radcliffe was delighted with his youthful acquaint- 
 ance—loved him almost as well as he had loved Billy 
 Nutley. 
 
 "Mead,"criedtheenthusiastic veteran to the young 
 man, who anyhow had not fallen from his chair, "you 
 are a rising man. You will succeed me." 
 
 "That, sir, is impossible," Mead adroitly answered; 
 "You are Alexander the Great, and no one can suc- 
 ceed Radcliffe; to succeed to one of his kingdoms is 
 the utmost of my ambition." 
 
 Charmed with the reply, Radcliffe exclaimed, 
 
 "By , I'll recommend you to my patients." 
 
 The promise was kept; and Mead endeavoured to 
 repay the worldly advancement with spiritual coun- 
 cil. "I remember," says Kennett {vide Lansdowne 
 MSS., Brit. Mus.), "what Dr Mede has told to sev- 
 eral of his friends, that he fell much into the favour 
 of Dr Radcliffe a few years before his death, and
 
 138 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 visited him often at Carshalton, where he observed 
 upon occasion that there was no Bible to be found 
 in the house. Dr Mede had a mind to supply that 
 defect, without taking any notice of it ; and therefore 
 one day carried down with him a very beautiful Bible 
 that he had lately bought, which had lain in a closet 
 of King \\"illiam for his Majesty's own use, and left 
 it as a curiosity that he had picked up by the way. 
 "When Dr Mede made the last visit to him he found 
 that Dr R. had read in it as far as the middle of the 
 Book of Exodus, from whence it might be inferred 
 that he had never before read the Scriptures; as I 
 doubt must be inferred of Dr Linacre, from the ac- 
 count given by Sir John Cheke." 
 
 The allusion to "the kingdom of Alexander the 
 Great" reminds one of Arbuthnot's letter to Swift, in 
 which the writer concludes his sketch of the proposed 
 map of diseases for Martinus Scriblerus with— "Then 
 the great diseases are like capital cities, with their 
 symptoms all like streets and suburbs, with the roads 
 that lead to other diseases. It is thicker set with 
 towns than any Flanders map you ever saw. Rad- 
 cliffe is painted at the corner of the map, contending 
 for the universal empire of this world, and the rest 
 of the physicians opposing his ambitious designs, 
 with a project of a treaty of partition to settle 
 peace." 
 
 As a practitioner, Radcliffe served the public as 
 well as he did his own interests. The violent meas- 
 ures of bleeding, and the exhibition of reducing medi- 
 cines, which constituted the popular practice even to 
 the present generation, he regarded with distrust in 
 some cases and horror in others. There is a good story
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 139 
 
 told of him, that well illustrates his disapproval of 
 a kill-or-cure system, and his hatred of Nurse Gib- 
 bons. John Bancroft, the eminent surgeon, who re- 
 sided in Russell Street, Covent Garden, had a son at- 
 tacked with inflammation of the lungs. Gibbons was 
 caUed in, and prescribed the most violent remedies, 
 or rather the most virulent irritants. The child be- 
 came rapidly worse, and RadclifEe was sent for. "I 
 can do nothing, sir," observed the doctor, after visit- 
 ing his patient, "for the poor little boy's preservation. 
 He is killed to all intents and purposes. But if you 
 have any thoughts of putting a stone over him, I'll 
 help you to an inscription." The offer was accepted, 
 and over the child's grave, in Covent Garden church- 
 yard, was placed a stone sculptured with a figure of 
 a child laying one hand on his side, and saying, "Hie 
 dolor," and pointing with the other to a death's head 
 on which was engraved, ' ' Ibi medicus. ' ' This is about 
 the prettiest professional libel which we can point to 
 in aU the quarrels of the Faculty. 
 
 The uses to which the doctor applied his wealth 
 every one knows. Notwithstanding his occasional acts 
 of munificence, and a loss of £5000 in an East Indian 
 venture, into which Betterton, the tragedian, seduced 
 him, his accumulations were very great. In his will, 
 after liberally providing for the members of his family 
 and his dependents, he devoted his acquisitions to the 
 benefit of the University of Oxford. From them have 
 proceeded the Radcliffe Library, the Radcliffe Infir- 
 mary, the Radcliffe Observatory, and the Radcliffe 
 Travelling Fellowships. It is true that nothing haa 
 transpired in the history of these last-mentioned en- 
 dowments to justify us in reversing the sentiment of
 
 140 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 Johnson, who remarked to Boswell : "It is wonderful 
 how little good Radcliffe's Travelling Fellowships 
 have done. I know nothing that has been imported by 
 them." 
 
 After lying in state at his own residence, and again 
 in the University, Radcliffe's body was interred, with 
 great pomp, in St. Mary's Church, Oxford. The roy- 
 al gift of so large an estate (which during life he 
 had been unable thoroughly to enjoy) to purchase a 
 library, the contents of which he at no time could 
 have read, of course provoked much comment. It 
 need not be said that the testator's memory was, for 
 the most part, extolled to the skies. lie had died rich 
 —a great virtue in itself. He was dead ; and as men 
 like to deal out censure as long as it can cause pain, 
 and scatter praise when it can no longer create hap- 
 piness, Radcliffe, the physician, the friend of suffer- 
 ing humanity, the benefactor of ancient and Tory Ox- 
 ford, was spoken of in "most handsome terms." One 
 could hardly believe that this great good man, this 
 fervent Christian and sublime patriot, was the same 
 man as he whom Steele had ridiculed for servile van- 
 ity, and to bring whom into contempt a play was writ- 
 ten, and publicly acted, only ten years before, to the 
 intense delight of the Duchess of Marlborough, and 
 the applauding maids of honour. 
 
 The philosophic Mandeville, far from approving 
 the behaviour of the fickle multitude, retained his 
 old opinion of the doctor, and gave it to the world 
 in his "Essay on Charity and Charity Schools." 
 "That a man," writes Mandeville, "with small skill in 
 physic, and hardly any learning, should by vile arts 
 get into practice, and lay up great wealth, is no
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 141 
 
 mighty wonder; but that he should so deeply work 
 himself into the good opinion of the world as to gain 
 the general esteem of a nation, and establish a repu- 
 tation beyond all his contemporaries, with no other 
 qualities but a perfect knowledge of mankind, and 
 a capacity of making the most of it, is something ex- 
 traordinary. 
 
 " If a man arrived to such a height of glory should 
 be almost distracted with pride— sometime give his 
 attendance on a servant, or any mean person, for noth- 
 ing and at the same time neglect a nobleman that 
 gives exhorbitant fees— at other times refuse to leave 
 his bottle for his business, without any regard to the 
 quality of the persons that sent for him, or the dan- 
 ger they are in ; if he should be surly and morose, af- 
 fect to be an humourist, treat his patients like dogs,* 
 though people of distinction, and value no man but 
 what would deify him, and never call in question tha 
 certainty of his oracles; if he should insult all the 
 world, affront the first nobility, and extend his inso- 
 lence even to the royal family ; if to maintain, as well 
 as to increase, the fame of his sufSciency, he should 
 scorn to consult his betters, on what emergency so- 
 ever, look down with contempt on the most deserv- 
 ing of his profession, and never confer with any other 
 physician but what will pay homage to his genius, 
 creep to his humour, and ever approach him with all 
 the slavish obsequiousness a court flatterer can treat 
 a prince with; if a man in his life-time should dis- 
 cover, on the one hand, such manifest symptoms of su- 
 perlative pride, and an insatiable greediness after 
 wealth at the "ame time ; and, on the other, no regard 
 to religion or affection to his kindred, no compassion
 
 142 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 to the poor, and hardly any humanity to his fellow- 
 creatures; if he gave no proofs that he loved his coun- 
 try, had a public spirit, or was a lover of the arts, of 
 books, or of literature— what must we judge of his 
 motive, the principle he acted from, when, after his 
 death, we find that he has left a trifle among his rela- 
 tions who stood in need of it, and an immense treas- 
 ure to a University that did not want it. 
 
 "Let a man be as charitable as it is possible for 
 him to be, without forfeiting his reason or good sense, 
 can he think otherwise, but that this famous phy- 
 sician did, in the making of his will, as in everything 
 else, indulge his darling passion, entertaining hia 
 vanity with the happiness of the contrivance?" 
 
 This severe portrait is just about as true as the like- 
 ness of a man, painted by a conscientious enemy, usu- 
 ally is. Eadcliffe was not endowed with a kindly 
 nature. "Mead, I love you," said he to his fascinat- 
 ing adulator ; ' ' and I '11 tell you a sure secret to make 
 your fortune— use all mankind ill." Eadcliffe car- 
 ried out his rule by wringing as much as possible 
 from, and returning as little as possible to, his fellow- 
 men. He could not pay a tradesman's bill without a 
 sense of keen suffering. Even a poor pavior, who had 
 been employed to do a job to the stones before the doc- 
 tor's house in Bloomsbury Square (whither the physi- 
 cian removed from Bow Street), could not get his 
 money without a contest. "Why, you rascal!" cried 
 the debtor, as he alighted from his chariot, "do you 
 pretend to be paid for such a piece of work? Why, 
 you have spoiled my pavement, and then covered it 
 over with earth to hide the bad work. ' '
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 143 
 
 "Doctor," responded the man, dryly, "mine is not 
 the only bad work the earth hides. ' ' 
 
 Of course, the only course to pursue with a creditor 
 who could dun in this sarcastic style was to pay, and 
 be rid of him. But the doctor made up for his own 
 avarice by being ever ready to condemn it in others. 
 
 Tyson, the miser, being near his last hour, magnan- 
 imously resolved to pay two of his 3,000,000 guineas 
 to Radcliffe, to learn if anything could be done for his 
 malady. The miserable old man came up with his 
 wife from Hackney, and tottered into the consulting- 
 room in Bloomsbury Square, with two guineas in his 
 hand— 
 
 "You may go, sir," exclaimed Radcliffe, to the 
 astonished wretch, who trusted he was unknown— 
 
 "you may go home, and die, and be , without a 
 
 speedy repentance; for both the grave and the devil 
 are ready for Tyson of Haeknej', who has grown rich 
 out of the spoils of the public and the tears of orphans 
 and widows. You'll be a dead man, sir, in ten days." 
 There are numerous stories extant relative to Rad' 
 cliffe's practice; but nearly all those which bear the 
 stamp of genuineness are unfit for publication in thq 
 present polite age. Such stories as the hasty-pudding 
 one, re-edited by the pleasant author of "The Gold- 
 headed Cane," can be found by the dozen, but the 
 cumbrous workmanship of Mr. Joseph Miller is mani- 
 fest in them all.
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE DOCTOR AS A BON-VIVANT. 
 
 "\^^lat must I do, sir?" inquired an indolent bon- 
 vivant of Abernethy. 
 
 "Live on sixpence a day, and earn it, sir," was the 
 stern answer. 
 
 Gabriel Fallopius, who has given his name to a 
 structure with which anatomists are familiar, gave the 
 same reproof in a more delicate manner. With a 
 smile he replied in the words of Terence, 
 
 "Otio abundas Antipho,"— "Sir, you're as lazy as 
 Hall's dog." 
 
 But, though medical practitioners have dealt in 
 sayings like these, to do them bare justice, it must be 
 admitted that their preaching has generally been con- 
 tradicted by the practice. When medicine remained 
 very much in the hands of the ladies, the composition 
 of remedies, and the making of dinners, went on in 
 the same apartment. Indeed hunger and thirst were 
 but two out of a list of diseases that were ministered 
 to by the attendants round a kitchen table. The same 
 book held the receipts for dishes and the recipes for 
 electuaries. In many an old hall of England the
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 145 
 
 manual still remains from which three centuries ago 
 the lady of the house learned to dress a boar's head or 
 cure a cold. Most physicians would now disdain to 
 give dietetic instruction to a patient beyond the most 
 general directions ; but there are cases where, even in 
 these days, they stoop to do so, with advantage to 
 themselves and their patients. 
 
 "I have ordered twelve dinners this morning," e 
 cheery little doctor said to the writer of these pages, 
 on the white cliffs of a well-known sea-side town. 
 
 "Indeed— I did not know that was your business." 
 
 "But it is. A host of rich old invalids come down 
 here to be medicinally treated. They can't be happy 
 without good living, and yet are so ignorant of the sci- 
 ence and art of eating, that they don't know how to 
 distinguish between a luxurious and pernicious diet, 
 and a luxurious and wholesome one. They flock to 
 the 'Duke's Hotel,' and I always tell the landlord 
 what they are to have. Each dinner costs three or 
 four guineas. They'd grudge them, and their con- 
 sciences would be uneasy at spending so much money, 
 if they ordered their dinners themselves. But when 
 they regard the fare as medicine recommended by the 
 doctor, there is no drawback to their enjoyment of it. 
 Their confidence in me is unbounded." 
 
 The bottle and the board were once the doctor's two 
 favourite companions. More than one eminent physi- 
 cian died in testifying his affection for them. In the 
 days of tippling they were the most persevering of 
 tavern-haunters. No wonder that some of them were 
 as fat as Daniel Lambert, and that even more died 
 sudden deaths from apoplexy. The obesity of Dr. 
 Stafford was celebrated in an epitaph:— 
 
 4—10
 
 146 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 "Take heed, O good traveller, and do not tread hard, 
 For here lies Dr. Stafford in all this churchyard." 
 
 Dr. Beddoes was so stout that the Clifton ladies 
 used to call him their "walking feather-bed." 
 
 Dr. Flemyng weighed twenty stone and eleven 
 pounds, till he reduced his weight by abstinence from 
 the delicacies of the table, and by taking a quarter of 
 au ounce of common Castile soap every night. 
 
 Dr. Cheyne's weight was thirty-two stone, till he 
 cured himself by persevering in a temperate diet. 
 Laughing at two unwieldly noblemen whose corpu- 
 lence was the favourite jest of all the wits in the 
 court, Louis XV. said to one of them, ' ' I suppose you 
 take little or no exercise." 
 
 "Your Majesty will pardon me," replied the bulky 
 duke, "for I generally walk two or three times round 
 my cousin every morning." 
 
 Sir Theodore Mayerne, who, though he was the 
 most eminent physician of his time, did not disdain to 
 write "Excellent and Well- Approved Receipts in 
 Cookery, with the best way of Preserving," was killed 
 by tavern wine. He died, after returning from sup- 
 per in a Strand hotel ; his immediate friends attribu- 
 ting his unexpected death to the quality of the bever- 
 age, but others, less charitable, setting it down to the 
 quantity. 
 
 Not many years ago, about a score surgeons were 
 dining together at a tavern, when, about five minutes 
 after some very "particular port"hadbeensentround 
 for the first time, they all fell back in their chairs, 
 afiflicted in various degrees with sickness, vertigo, and 
 spasm. A more pleasant sight for the waiters can 
 hardly be conceived. One after one the gentlemen
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 147 
 
 were conveyed to beds or sofas. Unfortunately for 
 the startling eiJect which the story would otherwise 
 have produced, they none of them expired. The next 
 day they remembered that, instead of relishing the 
 "particular port," they had detected a very unpleas- 
 ant smack in it. The black bottles were demanded 
 from the trembling landlord, when chemical analysis 
 soon discovered that they had been previously used 
 for fly-poison, and had not been properly cleansed. A 
 fine old crust of such a kind is little to be desired. 
 
 It would perhaps have been well had old Butler 
 (mentioned elsewhere in these volumes) met with a 
 similar mishap, if it had only made him a less obsti- 
 nate frequenter of beer-shops. He loved tobacco, 
 deeming it 
 
 "A physician 
 Good both for sound and sickly; 
 
 'Tis a hot perfume 
 
 That expels cold Rheume, 
 And makes it flow down quickly." 
 
 It is on record that he made one of his patients 
 smoke twenty-five pipes at a sitting. But fond though 
 he was of tobacco, he was yet fonder of beer. He in- 
 vented a drink called "Butler's Ale," afterwards 
 sold at the Butler's Head, in Mason's Alley, Basing- 
 hall Street. Indeed, he was a sad old scamp. Nightly 
 he would go to the tavern, and drink deeply for 
 hours, till his maid-servant, old Nell, came between 
 nine and ten o'clock and fetched him home, scolding 
 him all the way for being such a sot. But though 
 Butler liked ale and wine for himself, he thought 
 highly of water for other people. "^Tien he occupied 
 rooms iu the Savoy, looking over the Thames, a gen- 
 tleman afflicted with an ague came to consult him.
 
 148 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 Butler tipped the wink to his servants, who flung the 
 sick man, in the twinkling of an eye, slap out of the 
 window into the river. We are asked to believe that 
 "the surprise absolutely cured" the patient of his 
 malady. 
 
 The physicians of Charles the Second's day were 
 jolly fellows. They made deep drinking and intrigue 
 part of their profession as well as of their practice. 
 Their books contain arguments in favour of indul- 
 gence, which their passions suggested and the taste of 
 the times approved. Tobias Whitaker and John 
 Archer, both physicians in ordinary to the merry 
 monarch, were representative men of their class. 
 Whitaker, a Norfolk man, practised with success at 
 Norwich before coming up to London. He published 
 a discourse upon waters, that proved him very ignor- 
 ant on the subject ; and a treatise on the properties of 
 wine, that is a much better testimony to the soundness 
 of his iinderstanding. Prefixed to his "Elenchus of 
 opinions on Small-Pox," is a portrait that represents 
 him as a well-looking fellow. That he was a sincere 
 and discerning worshipper of Bacchus, is shown by 
 his "Tree of Humane Life, or the Bloud of the Grape. 
 Proving the possibilitie of maintaining humane life 
 from infancy to extreame old age without any sick- 
 nesse by the use of Wine." In this work (sold, by the 
 way, in the author's shop, Pope's Head Alley) we 
 read of wine,— "This is the phisick that doth not dull, 
 but sets a true edge upon nature, after operation 
 leaveth no venomous contact. Sure I am this was 
 ancient phisick, else what meant Avicenna, Rhasis, 
 and Averroes, to move the body twice every month 
 with the same ; as it is familiar to Nature, so they used
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 149 
 
 it faniiliarlj\ As for my own experience, though I 
 have not lived yet so long as to love exeesse, yet have 
 I seene such powerful effects, both on my selfe and 
 others, as if I could render no other reason, they were 
 enough to persuade me of its excellencie, seeing ex- 
 tenuate withered bodies by it caused to be f aire, fresh, 
 plumpe, and fat, old and infirme to be young and 
 sound, when as water or small-beer drinkers looke like 
 apes rather than men. ' ' 
 
 John Archer, the author of "Every Man his own 
 Doctor," and "Secrets Disclosed," was an advocate 
 of generous diet and enlightened sensuality. His 
 place of business was "a chamber in a Sadler's howse 
 over against the Black Horse nigh Charing-cross," 
 where his hours of attendance for some years were 
 from 11 A. M. to 5 p. m. each day. On setting up a 
 house at Knightsbridge, where he resided in great 
 style, he shortened the number of hours daily passed 
 in London. In 1684 he announced in one of his works 
 — "For these and other Directions you may send to 
 the Author, at his chamber against the Mews by Char- 
 ing-cross, who is certainly there from twelve to four, 
 at other times at his house at Knightsbridge, being a 
 mile from Charing-cross, where is good air for cure of 
 consumptions, melancholy, and other infirmities." 
 He had also a business established in Winchester 
 Street, near Gresham College, next door to the Fleece 
 Tavern. Indeed, physician-in-ordinary to the King 
 though he was, he did not think it beneath him to 
 keep a number of apothecaries' shops, and, like Whit- 
 aker, to live by the sale of drugs as well as fees. His 
 cordial dyet drink was advertised as costing 2s. 6d. 
 per quart ; for a box containing 30 morbus pills, the
 
 150 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 charge was 5s. ; 40 corroborating pills were to be had 
 for the same sum. Like Dr. Everard, he recom- 
 mended his patients to smoke, saying that "tobacco 
 smoke purified the air from infectious malignancy by 
 its fragrancy, sweetened the breath, strengthened the 
 brain and memory, and revived the sight to admir- 
 ation." He sold tobacco, of a superior quality to the 
 ordinary article of commerce, at 2s. and Is. an ounce. 
 "The order of taking it is like other tobacco at any 
 time ; its virtues may be perceived by taking one pipe, 
 after which you will spit more, and your mouth will 
 be dryer than after common tobacco, which you may 
 moisten by drinking any warm drink, as coffee, &c., 
 or with sugar candj% liquorish, or a raisin, and you 
 will find yourself much refreshed." 
 
 Whilst Whitaker and Archer were advising men to 
 smoke and drink, another physician of the Court was 
 inventing a stomach-brush, in some respects much like 
 the bottle-brush with which fly-poison ought to be 
 taken from the interior of black bottles before wine is 
 committed to them. This instrument was pushed 
 down the gullet, and then poked about and turned 
 round, much in the same way as a chimney-sweeper's 
 brush is handled by a dexterous operator on soot. It 
 was recommended that gentlemen should thus sweep 
 out their insides not oftener than once a week, but not 
 less frequently than once a month. The curious may 
 find not only a detailed description but engraved like- 
 ness of this remarkable stomach-brush in the Gentle- 
 man's Magazine, vol. xx., for the year 1750. 
 
 It would be unfair to take leave of Dr. Archer with- 
 out mentioning his three inventions, on which he 
 justly prided himself not a little. He constructed a
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 151 
 
 hot steam-bath, an oven "which doth with a small 
 faggot bake a good quantity of anything," and "a 
 compleat charriot that shall with any ordinary horse 
 run swift with four or five people within, and there 
 is place for more without, all which one horse can as 
 easily draw as two horses. ' ' In these days of vapour 
 baths, bachelors' kettles, and broughams, surely Dr. 
 Archer ought to have a statue by the side of Jenner 
 in Trafalgar Square. 
 
 The doctors of Anne's time were of even looser 
 morals than their immediate predecessors. In tav- 
 erns, over wine, they received patients and apothecar- 
 ies. It became fashionable (a fashion that has lasted 
 down to the present day) for a physician to scratch 
 down his prescriptions illegibly; the mode, in all 
 probability, arising from the fact that a doctor's hand 
 was usually too unsteady to write distinctly. 
 
 Freind continually visited his patients in a state of 
 intoxication. To one lady of high rank he came in 
 such a state of confusion that when in her room he 
 could only grumble to himself, "Drunk— drunk- 
 drunk, by God!" Fortunately the fair patient was 
 suffering from the same malady as her doctor, who (as 
 she learnt from her maid on returning to conscious- 
 ness) had made the above bluff comment on her case, 
 and then had gone away. The next day, Freind was 
 sitting in a penitent state over his tea, debating what 
 apology he should offer to his aristocratic patient, 
 when he was relieved from his perplexity by the ar- 
 rival of a note from the lady herself enclosing a hand- 
 some fee, imploring her dear Dr. Freind to keep her 
 secret, and begging him to visit her during the course 
 of the day.
 
 152 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 On another occasion Freind wrote a prescription 
 for a member of an important family, when his facul- 
 ties were so evidently beyond his control that Mead 
 was sent for. On arriving, Mead, with a characteris- 
 tic delicacy towards his professional friend, took up 
 the tipsy man's prescription, and having looked at it, 
 said, " Ton my honour, Dr. Freind can write a bet- 
 ter prescription when drunk than I can when sober." 
 
 Gibbons— the "Nurse Gibbons" of our old friend 
 Radcliffe— was a deep drinker, disgusting, by the 
 grossness of his debaucheries, the polite and epicur- 
 ean Garth. But Gibbons did something for English 
 dinner-tables worth remembering. He brought into 
 domestic use the mahogany with which we have so 
 many pleasant associations. His brother, a West In- 
 dian Captain, brought over some of the wood as bal- 
 last, thinking it might possibly turn to use. At first 
 the carpenters, in a truly conservative spirit, refused 
 to have anything to do with the "new wood," saying 
 it was too hard for their tools. Dr. Gibbons, however, 
 had first a candle-box and then a bureau made for 
 Mrs. Gibbons out of the condemned material. The 
 bureau so pleased his friends, amongst whom was the 
 Duchess of Buckingham, that her Grace ordered a 
 similar piece of furniture, and introduced the wood 
 into high life, where it quickly became the fashion. 
 
 Of Radcliffe's drunkenness mention is made else- 
 where. As an eater, he was a gourmand, not a gour- 
 met. When Prince Eugene of Savoy came over to 
 England on a diplomatic mission, his nephew, the 
 Chevalier de Soissons, fell into the fashion of the 
 town, roaming it at night in search of frays— a roar- 
 ing, swaggering mohock. The sprightly Chevalier
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 153 
 
 took it into his head that it would be a pleasant thing 
 to thrash a watchman; so he squared up to one, and 
 threatened to kill him. Instead of succumbing, the 
 watchman returned his assailant's blows, and gave 
 him an awful thrashing. The next day, what with the 
 mauling he had undergone, and what with delirium 
 tremens, the merry roisterer was declared by his phy- 
 sician, Sieur Swartenburgh, to be in a dying state. 
 Radcliffe was called in, and acting on his almost in- 
 variable rule, told Prince Eugene that the young man 
 must die, because Swartenburgh had maltreated him. 
 The prophecy was true, if the criticism was not. The 
 Chevalier died, and was buried amongst the Ormond 
 family in Westminster Abbey— it being given out to 
 the public that he had died of small-pox. 
 
 Prince Eugene conceived a strong liking for Rad- 
 cliffe, and dined with him at the Doctor's residence. 
 The dinner Radcliffe put before his guest is expres- 
 sive of the coarseness both of the times and the man. 
 On the table the only viands were barons of beef, jig- 
 gets of mutton, legs of pork, and such other ponder- 
 ous masses of butcher's stuff, which no one can look 
 at without discomfort, when the first edge has been 
 taken off the appetite. Prince Eugene expressed him- 
 self delighted with "the food and liquors!" 
 
 George Fordyce, like Radcliffe, was fond of sub- 
 stantial fare. For more than twenty years he dined 
 daily at Dolly's Chop-house. The dinner he there 
 consumed was his only meal during the four-and- 
 twenty hours, but its bulk would have kept a boa-con- 
 strictor happy for a twelvemonth. Four o'clock was 
 the hour at which the repast commenced, when, punc- 
 tual to a minute, the Doctor seated himself at a table
 
 154 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 specially reserved for him, and adorned with a silver 
 tankard of strong ale, a bottle of port-wine, and a 
 measure containing a quarter of a pint of brandy. 
 Before the dinner was first put on, he had one light 
 dish of a broiled fowl, or a few whitings. Having 
 leisurely devoured this plate, the doctor took one glass 
 of brandy, and asked for his steak. The steak was 
 always a prime one, weighing one pound and a half. 
 When the man of science had eaten the whole of it, he 
 took the rest of his brandy, then drank his tankard of 
 heady ale, and, lastly, sipped down his bottle of port. 
 Having brought his intellects, up or down, to the 
 standard of his pupils, he rose and walked down to 
 his house in Essex Street to give his six o'clock lecture 
 on Chemistry. 
 
 Dr. Beauford was another of the eighteenth-century 
 physicians who thought temperance a vice that hadn't 
 even the recommendation of transient pleasure. A 
 Jacobite of the most enthusiastic sort, he was not less 
 than Freind a favourite with the aristocracy who 
 countenanced the Stuart faction. As he was known to 
 be very intimate with Lord Barrymore, the Doctor 
 was summoned, in 1745, to appear before the Privy- 
 Council, and answer the questions of the custodians of 
 his Majesty's safety and honour. 
 
 "You know Lord Barrymore?" said one of the 
 Lords of Council. 
 
 "Intimately — most intimately," — was the answer. 
 
 "You are continually with him?" 
 
 ' ' We dine together almost daily when his Lordship 
 is in town." 
 
 "What do you talk about?" 
 
 "Eating and drinking."
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 155 
 
 "And what else?" 
 
 ' ' Oh, my lord, we never talk of anything except eat- 
 ing and drinking — drinking and eating." 
 
 A good deal of treasonable sentiment might have 
 been exchanged in these discussions of eating and 
 drinking. "God send this crum-well down!" was the 
 ordinary toast of the Cavalier during the glorious 
 Protectorate of Oliver. And long afterwards, English 
 gentlemen of Jacobite sympathies, drinking "to the 
 King," before they raised the glass to their lips, put it 
 over the water-bottle, to indicate where the King was 
 whose prosperity they pledged. 
 
 At the tavern in Finch Lane, where Beauford re- 
 ceived the apothecaries who followed him, he drank 
 freely, But never was known to give a glass from his 
 bottle to one of his clients. In this respect he resem- 
 bled Dr. Gaskin of Plymouth, a physician in fine prac- 
 tice in Devonshire at the close of the last century, who 
 once said to a young beginner in his profession, 
 "Young man, when you get a fee, don't give fifteen 
 shillings of it back to your patient in beef and port- 
 wine." 
 
 Contemporary with Beauford was Dr. Barrowby— 
 wit, scholar, political partisan, and toper. Barrowby 
 was the hero of an oft-told tale, recently attributed in 
 the newspapers to Abernethy. When canvassing for 
 a place on the staff of St. Bartholomew's Hospital, 
 Barrowby entered the shop of one of the governors, a 
 grocer on Snow-hill, to solicit his influence and vote. 
 The tradesman, bursting with importance, and antici- 
 pating the pleasure of getting a very low bow from a 
 gentleman, strutted up the shop, and, with a mixture
 
 156 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 of insolent patronage and insulting familiarity, cried, 
 "Well, friend, and what is your business?" 
 
 Barrowby paused for a minute, cut him right 
 through with the glance of his eye, and then said, 
 quietly and slowly, "I want a pound of plums." 
 
 Confused and blushing, the grocer did up the 
 plums. Barrowby put them in his pocket, and went 
 away without asking the fellow for his vote. 
 
 A good political story is told of Barrowby, the in- 
 cident of which occurred in 1749, eleven years after 
 his translation of Astruc's "Treatise" appeared. 
 Lord Trentham (afterwards Lord Gower) and Sir 
 George Vandeput were contesting the election for 
 Westminster. Barrowby, a vehement supporter of 
 the latter, was then in attendance on the notorious Joe 
 Weatherby, master of the "Ben Jonson's Head," in 
 Russell Street, who lay in a perilous state, emaciated 
 by nervous fever. Mrs. Weatherby was deeply afflic- 
 ted at her husband's condition, because it rendered 
 him unable to vote for Lord Trentham. Towards the 
 close of the polling days the Doctor, calling one day 
 on his patient, to his great astonishment found him 
 up, and almost dressed by the nurse and her assist- 
 ants. 
 
 "Hey-day! what's the cause of this?" exclaims 
 Barrowby. "Why are you up without my leave?" 
 
 "Dear Doctor," says Joe, in a broken voice, "I am 
 going to poll." 
 
 "To poll!" roars Barrowby, supposing the man to 
 hold his wife's political opinions, "you mean going to 
 the devil ! Get to bed, man, the cold air will kill you. 
 If you don't get into bed instantly you'll be dead 
 before the day is out."
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 157 
 
 "I'll do as you bid me, doctor," was the reluctant 
 answer. ' ' But as my wife was away for the morning, 
 I thought I could get as far as Covent Garden 
 Church, and vote for Sir George Vandeput." 
 
 "How, Joe, for Sir George?" 
 
 "Oh, yes, sir, I don't go with my wife. I am a Sir 
 George's man." 
 
 Barrowby was struck by a sudden change for the 
 better in the man's appearance, and said, ""Wait a 
 minute, nurse. Don't pull off his stockings. Let me 
 feel his pulse. Humph— a good firm stroke! You 
 took the pills I ordered you?" 
 
 "Yes, sir, but they made me feel very ill." 
 
 "Ay, so much the better; that's what I wished. 
 Nurse, how did he sleep ? ' ' 
 
 "Charmingly, sir." 
 
 "Well, Joe," said Barrowby, after a few seconds' 
 consideration, "if you are bent on going to this elec- 
 tion, your mind ought to be set at rest. It's a fine 
 sunny day, and a ride will very likely do you good. 
 So, bedad, I'll take you with me in my chariot." 
 
 Delighted with his doctor's urbanity, Weatherby 
 was taken off in the carriage to Covent Garden, re- 
 corded his vote for Sir George Vandeput, was brought 
 back in the same vehicle, and died two hours after- 
 wards, amidst the reproaches of his wife and her 
 friends of the Court party. 
 
 Charles the Second was so impressed with the power 
 of the Medical Faculty in influencing the various in- 
 trigues of political parties, that he averred that Dr. 
 Lower, Nell Gwynn's physician, did more mischief 
 than a troop of horse. But Barrowby was prevented, 
 by the intrusion of death, from rendering effectual
 
 158 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 service to his party. Called away from a dinner-table, 
 where he was drinking deeply and laughing much, to 
 see a patient, he got into his carriage, and was driven 
 off. When the footman opened the door, on arriving 
 at the house of sickness, he found his master dead. A 
 fit of apoplexy had struck him down, whilst he was 
 still a young man, and just as he was ascending to the 
 highest rank of his profession. 
 
 John Sheldon was somewhat addicted to the pleas- 
 ures of the table. On one occasion, however, he had 
 to make a journey fasting. The son of a John Shel- 
 don, an apothecary who carried on business in the 
 Tottenham Court Road, a few doors from the Black 
 Horse Yard, Sheldon conceived in early life a strong 
 love for mechanics. At Harrow he was birched for 
 making a boat and floating it. In after life he had a 
 notable scheme for taking whales with poisoned har- 
 poons ; and, to test its merit, actually made a voyage 
 to Greenland. He was moreover the first Englishman 
 to make an ascent in a balloon. He went with 
 Blanchard, and had taken his place in the car, when 
 the aeronaut, seeing that his machine was too heavily 
 weighted, begged him to get out. 
 
 ' ' If you are my friend, you will alight. My fame, 
 my all, depends on success," exclaimed Blanchard. 
 
 "I won't," bluntly answered Sheldon, as the bal- 
 loon manifested symptoms of rising. 
 
 In a furious passion, the little air-traveller ex- 
 claimed, ' ' Then I starve you ! Point du chicken, by 
 Gar, you shall have no chicken." So saying, he flung 
 the hamper of provisions out of the car, and, thus 
 lightened, the balloon went up. 
 
 Abernethy is said to have reproved an over-fed
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 159 
 
 alderman for his excesses at table in the following 
 manner. The civic footman was ordered to put a 
 large bowl under the sideboard, and of whatever he 
 served his master with to throw the same quantity into 
 the bowl as he put on the gourmand's plate. After 
 the repast was at an end, the sated feaster was re- 
 quested to look into the bowl at a nauseous mess of 
 mock turtle, turbot, roast-beef, turkey, sausages, 
 cakes, wines, ale, fruits, cheese. 
 
 Sir Richard Jebb showed little favour to the diges- 
 tion thinking it was made to be used— not nursed. 
 Habitually more rough and harsh than Abernethy in 
 his most surly moods, Jebb offended many of his 
 patients. "That's my way," said he to a noble in- 
 valid, astonished at his rudeness. ' ' Then, ' ' answered 
 the sick man, pointing to the door, "I beg you'll make 
 that your way." 
 
 To all questions about diet Jebb would respond 
 tetchily or carelessly. 
 
 ' ' Pray, Sir Richard, may I eat a muffin ? ' ' asked a 
 lady. 
 
 "Yes, madam, 'tis the best thing you can take." 
 
 "Oh, dear! Sir Richard, I am glad of that. The 
 other day you said it was the worst thing in the world 
 for me. ' ' 
 
 "Good, madam, 1 said so last Tuesday. This isn't a 
 Tuesday— is it?" 
 
 To another lady who asked what she might eat he 
 said contemptuously, "Boiled turnips." 
 
 "Boiled turnips!" was the answer; "you forget, 
 Sir Richard— I told you I could not bear boiled tur- 
 nips. ' ' 
 
 "Then, madam," answered Sir Richard, sternly, as
 
 160 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 if his sense of the moral fitness of things was 
 offended, "you must have a d d vitiated appe- 
 tite." 
 
 Sir Richard's best set of dietetic directions con- 
 sisted of the following negative advice, given to an 
 old gentleman who put the everlasting question, 
 "\Miat may I eat?" "My directions, sir, are simple. 
 You must not eat the poker, shovel, or tongs, for they 
 are hard of digestion ; nor the bellows ; but anything 
 else you please." 
 
 Even to the King, Sir Richard was plain-spoken. 
 George the Third lamented to him the restless spirit 
 of his cousin. Dr. John Jebb, the dissenting minister. 
 "And please your Majesty," was the answer, "if my 
 cousin were in heaven he would be a reformer." 
 
 Dr. Babington used to tell a story of an Irish gentle- 
 man, for whom he prescribed an emetic, saying, "My 
 dear doctor, it is of no use your giving me an emetic. 
 I tried it twice in Dublin, and it would not stay on 
 my stomach either time. ' ' Jebb 's stomach would have 
 gone on tranquilly, even when entertaining an emetic. 
 
 Jebb, with all his bluntness, was a mean lover of the 
 atmosphere of the Court. His income was subject to 
 great fluctuations, as the whims of his fashionable em- 
 ployers ran for or against him. Sir Edward "Wil- 
 mont's receipts sank from £3000 to £300, in conse- 
 quence of his having lost two ladies of quality at the 
 Court. Jebb's revenue never varied so much as this, 
 but the £15,000 (the greatest sum he ever made in one 
 year) often fell off by thousands. This fact didn't 
 tend to lessen his mortification at the loss of a great 
 patient. "When George the Third dismissed him, and 
 took Sir George Baker in his place, he nearly died of
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 161 
 
 chagrin. And when he was recalled to attend the 
 royal family in the measles, he nearly died of delight. 
 This ruling passion exhibited itself strongly in death. 
 When he was on his death-bed, the Queen, by the hand 
 of a German lady, wrote to inquire after his condi- 
 tion. So elated was the poor man with this act of 
 royal benignity, that he grasped the letter, and never 
 let go his hold of it till the breath of life quitted his 
 attenuated body. 
 
 This chapter has been for the most part on the 
 feasting of physicians. We'll conclude it with a few 
 words on their fasts. In the house of a Strand grocer 
 there used to be a scientific club, of which the princi- 
 pal members were— W. Heberden, M.D., J. Turton, 
 M.D., G. Baker, M.D., Sir John Pringle, Sir William 
 Watson, and Lord C. Cavendish who officiated as 
 president. Each member paid sixpence per evening 
 for the use of the grocer's dining-room. The club 
 took in one newspaper, and the only refreshment al- 
 lowed to be taken at the place of meeting was— water. 
 
 The most abstemious of eminent physicians was Sii 
 Hans Sloane, the president of the Royal Society and 
 of the College of Physicians, and (in a certain sense) 
 the founder of the British Museum. A love of money 
 made him a hater of all good things, except money 
 and his museum. He gave up his winter soirees in 
 Bloomsbury Square, in order to save his tea and bread 
 and butter. At one of these scientific entertainments 
 Handel offended the scientific knight deeply by lay- 
 ing a muffin on one of his books. "To be sure it was 
 a gareless trick," said the composer, when telling the 
 story, "bud it tid no monsdrous mischief; pode it but 
 the old poog-vorm treadfully oud of sorts. I offered
 
 162 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 my best apologies, but the old miser would not have 
 done with it. If it had been a biscuit, it would not 
 liave mattered ; but muffin and pudder. And I said, 
 Ah, mine Gotd, that is the rub!— it is the pudder! 
 Now, mine worthy friend, Sir Hans Sloane, you have 
 a nodable excuse, you may save your doast and pud- 
 der, and lay it to that unfeeling gormandizing Ger- 
 man ; and den I knows it will add something to your 
 life by sparing your hurse." 
 
 The eccentric Dr. GIjti of Cambridge, rarely dined, 
 but used to satisfy his hunger at chance times by cut- 
 ting slices off a cold joint (a constant ornament of the 
 side-table in his study), and eating them while stand- 
 ing. To eat such a dinner in such an attitude would 
 be to fare little better than the ascetic physician who 
 used twice a week to dine off two Abernethy biscuits, 
 consumed as he walked at the pace of four miles an 
 hour. However wholesome they may be, the hard 
 biscuits, known as Abernethies (but in the construc- 
 tion of which, by-the-by, Abernethy was no more con- 
 cerned than were "Wellington and Blucher in making 
 the boots that bear their names), are not convivial 
 cates, though one would rather have to consume them 
 than the calomel sandwiches which Dr. Curry (popu- 
 larly called Dr. Calomel Curry) used to give his 
 patients.
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 FEES. 
 
 From the earliest times the Leech (Leighis), or 
 healer, has found, in the exercise of his art, not only a 
 pleasant sense of being a public benefactor, but also 
 the means of private advancement. The use the 
 churchmen made of their medical position throughout 
 Christendom (both before and after that decree of the 
 council of Tours, a.d. 1163, which forbade priests and 
 deacons to perform surgical operations in which cau- 
 teries and incisions were employed), is attested by the 
 broad acres they extracted, for their religious corpor- 
 ations, as much from the gratitude as from the super- 
 stition of their patients. And since the Reformation, 
 from which period the vocations of the spiritual and 
 the bodily physician have been almost entirely kept 
 apart, the practitioners of medicine have had cause to 
 bless the powers of sickness. A good story is told of 
 Arbuthnot. When he was a young man (ere he had 
 won the patronage of Queen Anne, and the friendship 
 of Swift and Pope), he settled at Dorchester, and en- 
 deavoured to get practice in that salubrious town. 
 Nature obviated his good intentions: he wished to
 
 164 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 minister to the afilicted, if they were rich enough to 
 pay for his ministrations, but the place was so healthy 
 that it contained scarce half-a-dozen sick inhabitants. 
 Arbuthnot determined to quit a field so ill-adapted for 
 a display of his philanthropy. ""Where are you off 
 to?" cried a friend, who met him riding post towards 
 London. "To leave your confounded place," was the 
 answer, "for a man can neither live nor die there." 
 But to arrive at wealth was not amongst Arbuthnot 's 
 faculties; he was unable to use his profession as a 
 trade; and only a few weeks before his death he 
 wrote, "I am as well as a man can be who is gasping 
 for breath, and has a house full of men and women 
 unprovided for." 
 
 Arbuthnot 's ill-luck, however, was quite out of the 
 ordinary rule. Fuller says (1662), "Physic hath 
 promoted many more, and that since the reign of 
 King Henry VIII. Indeed, before his time, I find a 
 doctor of physic, father to Reginald, first and last 
 Lord Bray. But this faculty hath flourished much 
 the three last fifty years; it being true of physic, 
 what is said of Sylla, 'suos divitiis explevit.' Sir 
 William Butts, physician to King Henry VIII., Doc- 
 tor Thomas Wendy, and Doctor Hatcher, Queen Eliz- 
 abeth's physician, raised worshipful families in Nor- 
 folk, Cambridge, and Lincolnshire, having borne the 
 office of Sheriflf in this county." Sir William Butts 
 was rewarded for his professional services by Henry 
 VIII. with the honour of Knighthood, and he at- 
 tended that sovereign when the royal confirmation 
 was given, in 1512, to the charter of the barber-sur- 
 geons of London. Another eminent phj-sician of the 
 same period, who also arrived at the dignity of
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 165 
 
 knighthood, was John Ayliffe, a sheriff of London, 
 and merchant of Blackwell-Hall. His epitaph 
 records:— 
 
 "In surgery brought up in youth, 
 A knight here lieth dead; 
 A knight and eke a surgeon, such 
 As England seld' hath bred. 
 
 "For which so sovereign gift of God, 
 
 Wherein he did excell, 
 King Henry VIII. called him to court. 
 
 Who loved him dearly well. 
 
 "King Edward, for his service sake^ 
 Bade him rise up a knight ; 
 A name of praise, and ever since 
 He Sir John Ayliffe hight." 
 
 This mode of rewarding medical services was not 
 unfrequent in those days, and long before. Ignor- 
 ance as to the true position of the barber in the mid- 
 dle ages has induced the popular and erroneous belief 
 that the barber-surgeon had in olden times a con- 
 temptible social status. Unquestionably his art has 
 Leen elevated during late generations to a dignity it 
 did not possess in feudal life; but it might be argued 
 with much force, that the reverse has been the case 
 with regard to his rank. Surgery and medicine were 
 arts that nobles were proud to practise for honour, 
 and not unfrequently for emolument. The reigns of 
 Elizabeth and her three predecessors in sovereign 
 power abounded in medical and surgical amateurs. 
 Amongst the fashionable empirics BuUeyn mentions 
 Sir Thomas Elliot, Sir Philip Paris, Sir William Gas- 
 goyne. Lady Taylor and Lady Barrel, and especially 
 that "goodly hurtlesse Gentleman, Sir Andrew Hav- 
 eningham, who learned water to kill a canker of his 
 own mother." Even an Earl of Derby, about this
 
 166 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 time, was celebrated for his skill in chirurgcric and 
 bone-setting, as also was the Earl of Ilerfurth. The 
 Scots nobility were enthusiastic dabblers in such mat- 
 ters; and we have the evidence of Buchanan and 
 Lindsay as to James IV. of Scotland, "quod vulnera 
 scientissime tractaret," to use the former authority's 
 words, and in the language of the latter, that he was 
 ■'such a cunning chirurgcon, that none in his realm 
 who used that craft but would take his counsel in all 
 their proceedings." The only art which fashionable 
 people novi^-a-days care much to meddle with is liter- 
 ature. In estimating the difference between the po- 
 sition of an eminent surgeon now, and that which he 
 would have occupied in earlier times, we must remem- 
 ber that life and hereditary knighthood are the high- 
 est dignities to which he is now permitted to aspire ; 
 although since this honour was first accorded to him 
 it has so fallen in public estimation, that it has almost 
 ceased to be an honour at all. It can scarcely be ques- 
 tioned that if Sir Benjamin Brodie were to be ele- 
 vated to the rank of a Baron of the realm, he would 
 still not occupy a better position, in regard to the 
 rest of society, than that which Sir William Butts 
 and Sir John Ayliffe did after they were knighted. 
 A fact that definitely fixes the high esteem in which 
 Edward III. held his medical officers, is one of his 
 grants— "Quod Willielmus Holme Sirurgicus Regis 
 pro vita sua possit, fugare, capere, et asportare omni- 
 modas feras in quibuseunque forestis, chaccis parcis 
 et warrennis regis." Indeed, at a time when the 
 highest dignitaries of the Church, the proudest bish- 
 ops and the wealthiest abbots, practised as physicians,
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 167 
 
 it followed, as a matter of course, that everything 
 pertaining to their profession was respected. 
 
 From remote antiquity the fee of the healer has 
 been regarded as a voluntary offering for services 
 gratuitously rendered. The pretender to the art al- 
 ways stuck out for a price, and in some form or other 
 made the demand which was imprinted on the pill- 
 boxes of Lilly's successor, John Case, 
 
 "Here's fourteen pills for thirteen pence, 
 Enough in any man's own con-sci-ence." 
 
 But the true physician always left his reward to 
 be measured by the gratitude and justice of the ben- 
 efited. He extorted nothing, but freely received that 
 which was freely given. Dr. Doran, with his charac- 
 teristic erudition, says, "Now there is a religious rea- 
 son why fees are supposed not to be taken by physi- 
 cians. Amongst the Christian martyrs are reckoned 
 the two eastern brothers, Damian and Cosmas. They 
 practised as physicians in Cilicia, and they were the 
 first mortal practitioners who refused to take recom- 
 pense for their work. Hence they were called 
 Anargyri, or 'without money.' All physicians are 
 pleasantly supposed to follow this example. They 
 never take fees, like Damian and Cosmas; but they 
 meekly receive what they know will be given out of 
 Christian humility, and with a certain or uncertain 
 reluctance, which is the nearest approach that can 
 be made in these times to the two brothers who were 
 in partnership at Egea in Cilieia." 
 
 But, with all due respect to our learned writer, 
 there is a much better reason for the phenomenon. 
 Self-interest, and not a Christian ambition to resem- 
 ble the charitable Cilician brothers, was the cause of
 
 168 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 physicians preferring a system of gratuities to a sys- 
 tem of L'gal rights. They could scarcely have put 
 in a claim without defining the amount claimed; and 
 they soon discovered that a rich patient, left to his 
 generosity, folly, and impotent anxiety to propitiate 
 the mysterious functionary who presided over his 
 life, would, in a great majority of cases, give ten, or 
 even a hundred times as much as they in the wildest 
 audacity of avarice would ever dare to ask for. 
 
 Seleucus, for having his son Antiochus restored to 
 health, was fool enough to give sixty thousand crowns 
 to Erasistratus : and for their attendance on the Em- 
 peror Augustus, and his two next successors, no less 
 than four physicians received annual pensions of two 
 hundred and fifty thousand sesterces apiece. Indeed, 
 there is no saying what a sick man will not give his 
 doctor. The "cacoethes donandi" is a manifestation 
 of enfeebled powers which a high-minded physician 
 is often called upon to resist, and an unprincipled one 
 often basely turns to his advantage. Alluding to this 
 feature of the sick, a deservedly successful and hon- 
 ourable practitioner, using the language of one of 
 our Oriental pro-consuls, said with a laugh to the 
 writer of these pages, "I wonder at my moderation." 
 
 But directly health approaches, this desirable 
 frame of mind disappears. "When the devil was sick 
 he was a very different character from what he was 
 on getting well. 'Tis so with ordinary patients, not 
 less than Satanic ones. The man who, when he is in 
 his agonies, gives his medical attendant double fees 
 three times a day (and vows, please God he recover, 
 to make his fortune by trumpeting his praises to the 
 world), on becoming convalescent, grows irritable,
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 169 
 
 suspicious, and distant,— and by the time he can re- 
 sume his customary occupations, looks on his dear 
 benefactor and saviour as a designing rascal, bent on 
 plundering him of his worldly possessions. Euricus 
 Cordus, who died in 1535, seems to have taken the 
 worst possible time for getting his payment; but it 
 cannot be regretted that he did so, as his experiences 
 inspired him to write the following excellent epi- 
 gram: — 
 
 "Tres medicus fades habet; unam quando rogatur, 
 Angelicam; mox est, cum juvat, ipse Deus. 
 Post ubi curato, poscit sua proemia, morbo, 
 Horridus apparet, terribilisque Sathan." 
 
 "Three faces wears the doctor: when first sought, 
 An angel's — and a God's the cure half wrought: 
 But when, that cure complete, he seeks his fee, 
 The Devil looks then less terrible than he." 
 
 Illustrative of the same truth is a story told of 
 Bouvart. On entering one morning the chamber of 
 a French JIarquis, whom he had attended through a 
 very dangerous iUness, he was accosted by his noble 
 patient in the following terms:— 
 
 "Good day to you, Mr. Bouvart; I feel quite in 
 spirits, and think my fever has left me." 
 
 "I am sure it has," replied Bouvart, dryly. "The 
 very first expression you used convinced me of it." 
 
 "Pray, explain yourself." 
 
 "Nothing is easier. In the first days of your ill- 
 ness, when your life was in danger, I was your dear- 
 est friend; as you began to get better, I was your 
 good Bouvart; and now I am Mr. Bouvart: depend 
 upon it you are quite recovered." 
 
 In fact, the affection of a patient for his physician 
 is very like the love a candidate for a borough has
 
 170 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 for an individual elector— he is very grateful to him, 
 till he has got all he wants out of him. The medical 
 practitioner is unwise not to recognize this fact. 
 Common prudence enjoins him to act as much as pos- 
 sible on the maxim of "accipe dum dolet"— "take 
 your fee while your patient is in pain." 
 
 But though physicians have always held themselves 
 open to take as much as they can get, their ordinary 
 remuneration has been fixed in divers times by cus' 
 torn, according to the locality of their practice, the 
 rank of their patients, the nature of the particular 
 services rendered, and such other circumstances. In 
 China the rule is "no cure, no pay," save at the Im- 
 perial court, where the physicians have salaries thai 
 are cut off during the continuance of royal indispo- 
 sition. For their sakes it is to be hoped that the Em- 
 peror is a temperate man, and does not follow the 
 example of George the Fourth, who used to drink 
 Maraschino between midnight and four o'clock in 
 the morning ; and then, when he awoke with a furred 
 tongue, from disturbed sleep, used to put himself 
 under the hands of his doctors. Formerly the med- 
 ical ofScers of the English monarch were paid by 
 salary, though doubtless they were offered, and were 
 not too proud to accept, fees as well. Coursus de 
 Gungeland, Edward the Third's apothecary, had a 
 pension of sixpence a-day— a considerable sum at 
 that time ; and Ricardus Wye, the surgeon of the same 
 king, had twelve-pence a day, and eight marks per 
 annum. "Duodecim denarios per diem, et octo mar- 
 cas per annum, pro vadiis suis pro vita." In the 
 royal courts of Wales, also, the fees of surgeons and 
 physicians were fixed by law— a surgeon receiving,
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 171 
 
 as payment for curing a slight wound, only the blood- 
 stained garments of the injured person ; but for heal- 
 ing a dangerous wound he had the bloody apparel, 
 his board and lodging during the time his services 
 were required, and one hundred and eighty pence. 
 
 At a very early period in England a doctor looked 
 for his palm to be crossed with gold, if his patient 
 happened to be a man of condition. In Henry 
 VIII. 's reign a Cambridge physician was presented 
 by the Earl of Cumberland with a fee of £1— but this 
 was at least double what a commoner would then have 
 paid. Stow complains that while in Holland half-a- 
 crown was looked upon as a proper remuneration for 
 a single visit paid by a skilled physician, the medical 
 practitioners of London scorned "to touch any metal 
 but gold." 
 
 It is no matter of uncertainty what the physician's 
 ordinary fee was at the close of the sixteenth and 
 the commencement of the seventeenth century. It 
 was ten shillings, as is certified by the following ex- 
 tract from "Physick lies a-bleeding: the Apothecary 
 turned Doctor"— published in 1697: — 
 
 "Gallipot — Good sir, be not so unreasonably pas- 
 sionate and I'll tell you. Sir, the Pearl Julep will 
 be 6s. 8d., Pearls being dear since our dipt money 
 was bought. The Specific Bolus, 4s. 6d., I never 
 reckon less; my master in Leadenhall Street never 
 set down less, be it what it would. The Antihysterick 
 Application 3s. 6d. (a common one is but 2s. 6d.), 
 and the iVnodyne Draught 3s. 4d.— that's all, sir; a 
 small matter and please you, sir, for your lady. My 
 fee is what you please, sir. All the bill is hut 18s. 
 
 "Trweman- Faith, then, d'ye make a but at it!
 
 172 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 I do suppose, to be very genteel, I must give you a 
 crown. 
 
 "Gallipot— li your worship please; I take it to be 
 a fair and an honest bill. 
 
 "Trueman— Do you indeed? But I wish you had 
 called a doctor, perhaps he would have advised her to 
 have forebore taking anything, as yet at least, so I 
 had saved 13s. in my pocket." 
 
 "Physick lies a-bleeding" was written during the 
 great Dispensarian War, which is touched upon in 
 another part of these pages; and its object was to 
 hold up physicians as models of learning and probity, 
 and to expose the extortionate practices of the apoth- 
 ecaries. It must therefore be read with caution, and 
 with due allowance for the license of satire, and the 
 violence of a party statement. But the statement 
 that 10s. was the customary fee is clearly one that 
 may be accepted as truthful. Indeed, the unknown 
 and needy doctors were glad to accept less. The 
 author of "The Dispensarians are the Patriots of 
 Britain," published in 1708, represents the humbler 
 physicians being nothing better than the slaves of 
 the opulent apothecaries, accepting half their right 
 fee, and taking instead 25 or 50 per cent, of the 
 amount paid for drugs to the apothecary. "They 
 (the powerful traders)," says the writer, "offered 
 the Physicians 5s. and 10s. in the pound, to excite 
 their industry to prescribe the larger abundance to 
 all the disorders." 
 
 But physicians daily received more than their ten 
 shillings at a time. In confirmation of this, a good 
 anecdote may be related of Sir Theodore Mayerne. 
 Sir Theodore Mayerne, a native of Geneva, was phy-
 
 A BOOK ABOXJT DOCTORS. 173 
 
 sician to Henry IV. and Louis XIII. of France, and 
 subsequently to James I., Charles I., and Charles II. 
 of England. As a physician, who had the honour of 
 attending many crowned heads, he ranks above Caius, 
 who was physician to Edward VI., Mary, and Eliza- 
 beth—Ambrose Pare, the inventor of ligatures for 
 severed arteries, who was physician and surgeon to 
 Henry II., Francis II., Charles IX., and Henry III. 
 of France— and Sir Henry Halford, who attended 
 successively George III., George IV., "William IV., 
 and Victoria. It is told of Sir Theodore, that when a 
 friend, after consulting him, foolishly put two broad 
 gold pieces (six-and- thirty shillings each) on the 
 table, he quietly pocketed them. The patient, who, 
 as a friend, expected to have his fee refused, and 
 therefore (deeming it well to indulge in the magnifi- 
 cence of generosity when it would cost him nothing) 
 had absurdly exhibited so large a sum, did not at all 
 relish the sight of its being netted. His countenance, 
 if not his tongue, made his mortification manifest. 
 "Sir," said Sir Theodore, "I made my will this 
 morning; and if it should appear that I refused a 
 fee, I might be deemed non compos." 
 
 The "Levamen Infirmi," published in 1700, shows 
 that a century had not, at that date, made much dif- 
 ference in the scale of remuneration accorded to sur- 
 geons and physicians. "To a graduate in physick," 
 this authority states, "his due is about ten shillings, 
 though he commonly expects or demands twenty. 
 Those that are only licensed physicians, their due is 
 no more than six shillings and eight-pence, though 
 they commonly demand ten shillings. A surgeon's 
 fee is twelve-pence a mile, be his journey far or near;
 
 174 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 ten groats to set a bone broke, or out of joint; and 
 for letting blood one shilling; the cutting off or am- 
 putation of any limb is five pounds, but there is no 
 settled price for the cure." These charges are much 
 the same as those made at the present day by country 
 surgeons to their less wealthy patients, with the ex- 
 ception of a fee for setting a bone, or reducing a dis- 
 location, which is absurdly out of proportion to the 
 rest of the sums mentioned. 
 
 Mr William Wadd, in his very interesting "Mem- 
 orabilia," states, that the physicians who attended 
 Queen Caroline had five hundred guineas, and the 
 surgeons three hundred guineas each; and that Dr. 
 Willis was rewarded for his successful attendance on 
 his Majesty King George III., by £1500 per annum 
 for twenty years, and £650 per annum to his son for 
 life. The other physicians, however, had only thirty 
 guineas each visit to "Windsor, and ten guineas each 
 visit to Kew. 
 
 These large fees put us in mind of one that ought 
 to have been paid to Dr. King for his attendance on 
 Charles the Second. Eveh-n relates-" 1685, Feb. 4. 
 I went to London, hearing his JIajesty had ben, the 
 Monday before (2 Feb.), surprised in his bed-cham- 
 ber with an apoplectic fit; so that if, by God's provi- 
 dence, Dr King (that excellent chirurgeon as well as 
 physitian) had not been actually present, to let his 
 bloud (having his lancet in his pocket), his Majesty 
 had certainly died that moment, which might have 
 ben of direful consequence, there being nobody else 
 present with the king save this doctor and one more, 
 as I am assured. It was a mark of the extraordinary 
 dexterity, resolution, and presence of mind in tho
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 175 
 
 Dr to let liim bloud in the very paroxysm, without 
 staying the coming of other physicians, which reg- 
 ularly should have ben done, and for want of which 
 he must have a regular pardon, as they tell me." 
 For this promptitude and courage the Privy-Council 
 ordered £1000 to be given to Dr. King— but he never 
 obtained the money. 
 
 In a more humourous, but not less agreeable man- 
 ner, Dr. Hunter (John Hunter's brother), was dis- 
 appointed of payment for his professional services. 
 On a certain occasion he was suffering under such 
 severe indisposition that he was compelled to keep 
 his bed, when a lady called and implored to be admit- 
 ted to his chamber for the benefit of his advice. After 
 considerable resistance on the part of the servants, 
 she obtained her request ; and the sick physician, sit- 
 ting up in his bed, attended to her case, and pre- 
 scribed for it. "What is your fee, sir?" the lady 
 asked when the work was done. The doctor, with the 
 prudent delicacy of his order, informed his patient 
 that it was a rule with him never to fix his fee ; and, 
 on repeated entreaty that he would depart from his 
 custom, refused to do so. On this the lady rose from 
 her seat, and courteously thanking the doctor, left 
 him— not a little annoyed at the result of his squeam- 
 ishness or artifice. 
 
 This puts us in mind of the manner in which an 
 eminent surgeon not long since was defrauded of a 
 fee, under circumstances that must rouse the indigna- 
 tion of every honourable man against the delinquent. 
 Mr. received, in his consulting room, a gentle- 
 man of military and prepossessing exterior, who, 
 after detailing the history of his sufferings, implored
 
 176 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 the professional man he addressed to perform for 
 him a certain difficult and important operation. The 
 surgeon consented, and on being asked what remun- 
 eration he would require, said that his fee was a hun- 
 dred guineas. 
 
 "Sir," replied the visitor with some embarrass- 
 ment, "I am very sorry to hear you say so. I feel 
 sure my case without you will terminate fatally ; but 
 I am a poor half-pay officer, in pecuniary difficulties, 
 and I could not, even if it were to save my soul, raise 
 half the sum you mention." 
 
 ''My dear sir," responded the surgeon frankly, 
 and with the generosity which is more frequently 
 found amongst medical practitioners than any other 
 class of men, "don't then disturb yourself. I can- 
 not take a less fee than I have stated, for my char- 
 acter demands that I should not have two charges, 
 but I am at libei-ty to remit my fee altogether. Allow 
 me, then, the very great pleasure of attending a re- 
 tired officer of the British army gratuitously." 
 
 This kindly offer was accepted. Mr. not only 
 
 performed the operation, but visited his patient 
 daily for more than three weeks without ever ac- 
 cepting a guinea— and three months after he had 
 restored the sick man to health, discovered that, in- 
 stead of being in necessitous circumstances, he was 
 a magistrate and deputy-lieutenant for his county, 
 and owner of a fine landed estate. 
 
 "And, by !" exclaimed the fine-hearted sur- 
 geon—when he narrated this disgraceful affair, "I'll 
 act exactly in the same way to the next poor man who 
 gives me his word of honour that he is not rich 
 enough to pay me."
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTOKS. 177 
 
 The success of Sir Astley Cooper was beyond that 
 of any medical practitioner of modern times; but it 
 came very gradually. His earnings for the first nine 
 years of his professional career progressed thus: — 
 In the first year he netted five guineas ; in the second, 
 twenty-six pounds; in the third, sixty- four pounds; 
 in the fourth, ninety-six pounds ; in the fifth, a hun- 
 dred pounds; in the sixth, two hundred pounds; in 
 the seventh, four hundred pounds; in the eighth, six 
 hundred and ten pounds; and in the ninth, the year 
 in which he secured his hospital appointment, eleven 
 hundred pounds. But the time came when the pa- 
 tients stood for hours in his ante-rooms waiting to 
 have an interview with the great surgeon, and after 
 all, their patients were dismissed without being ad- 
 mitted to the consulting-room. Sir Astley 's man. 
 Charles, with all the dignity that became so eminent 
 a man's servant, used to say to these disappointed 
 applicants, in a tone of magnificent patronage, when 
 they reappeared the next morning after their effect- 
 less visit, "I am not at all sure that we shall be able 
 to attend to-day to you, gentlemen, for ive are exces- 
 sively busy, and our list is perfectly full for the day ; 
 but if you'll wait I will see what can be done for 
 you!" 
 
 The highest amount that Sir Astley received in 
 any one yoar was £21,000. This splendid income was 
 an exceptional one. For many years, however, he 
 achieved more than £15,000 per annum. As long as 
 he lived in the City after becoming celebrated he 
 made an enormous, but fluctuating, revenue, the state 
 of the money-market having an almost laughable 
 effect on the size of the fees paid him. The capital-
 
 178 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 ists who visited the surgeon in Broad Street, in three 
 cases out of four, paid in cheques, and felt it beneath 
 their dignity to put pen to paper for a smaller sum 
 than five guineas. After Sir Astley moved to the 
 West End he had a more numerous and at the same 
 time more aristocratic practice ; but his receipts were 
 never so much as they were when he dwelt within 
 the Lord Mayor's jurisdiction. His more distin- 
 guished patients invariably paid their guineas in 
 cash, and many of them did not consider it incon-. 
 sistent with patrician position to give single fees. 
 The citizens were the fellows to pay. Mr. William 
 Coles, of Mincing Lane, for a long period paid Sir 
 Astley £600 a year, the visits of the latter being prin- 
 cipally made to Mr. Cole's seat near Croydon. An- 
 other "City man," who consulted the surgeon in 
 Broad Street, and departed without putting down 
 any honorarium whatever, sent a cheque for £63 10s.. 
 with the following characteristic note:— 
 
 "Dear Sib— When I had first the pleasure of see- 
 ing you, you requested, as a favour, that I would con- 
 sider your visit on the occasion as a friend. I now, 
 sir, must request you will return the compliment by 
 accepting the enclosed draft as an act of friendship. 
 It is the profit on £2000 of the ensuing loan, out of 
 a small sum Sir P. Baring had given, of appropri- 
 ating for your chance." 
 
 The largest fee Sir Astley Cooper ever received 
 was paid him by a West Indian millionaire named 
 Hyatt. This gentleman having occasion to undergo 
 a painful and perilous operation, was attended by 
 Drs. Lettsom and Nelson as physicians, and Sir Astley 
 as chirurgeon. The wealthy patient, his treatment
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 179 
 
 having resulted most successfully, was so delighted 
 that he fee'd his physicians with 300 guineas each. 
 "But you, sir," cried the grateful old man, sitting 
 up in his bed, and speaking to his surgeon, "shall 
 have something better. There, sir— take that." The 
 that was the convalescent's night-cap, which he flung 
 at the dexterous operator. "Sir," replied Sir Astley, 
 picking up the cap, "I'll pocket the affront." It 
 was well he did so, for on reaching home he found in 
 the cap a draft for 1000 guineas. This story has 
 been told in various ways, but all its tellers agree as 
 to the amount of the prize. 
 
 Catherine, the Empress of Russia, was even more 
 munificent than the West Indian planter. When Dr. 
 Dimsdale, for many years a Hertford physician, and 
 subsequently the parliamentary representative of that 
 borough, went over to Russia and inoculated the Em- 
 press and her son, in the year 1768, he was rewarded 
 with a fee of £12,000, a pension for life of £500 per 
 annum, and the rank of Baron of the Empire. But 
 if Catherine paid thus handsomely for increased se- 
 curity of life, a modern emperor of Austria put dowi/ 
 a yet more royal fee for his death-warrant. When 
 on his death-bed the Emperor Joseph asked Quarin 
 his opinion of his case, the physician told the monarch 
 that he could not possibly live forty-eight hours. In 
 acknowledgment of this frank declaration of the 
 truth, the Emperor created Quarin a Baron, and gavo 
 him a pension of more than £2000 per annum to 
 support the rank with. 
 
 A goodly collection might be made of eccentric 
 fees given to the practitioners of the healing art. 
 William Butler, who, in his moroseness of manner,
 
 180 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 was the prototype of Abernethy, found {vide Puller's 
 "English Worthies") more pleasure in "presents 
 than money; loved what was pretty rather than what 
 was costly; and preferred rarities to riches." The 
 number of physicians is large who have won the 
 hands of heiresses in the discharge of their profes- 
 sional avocations. But of them we purpose to speak 
 at length hereafter. Joshua Ward, the Thames 
 Street drysalter, who made a fortune by his "Drop 
 and Pill," 
 
 "Of late, without the least pretence to skill, 
 Ward's grown a famed physician by a pill," 
 
 was so successfully puffed by Lord Chief Baron 
 Reynolds and General Churchill, that he was called 
 in to prescribe for the king. The royal malady dis- 
 appeared in consequence, or in spite, of the treat- 
 ment ; and Ward was rewarded with a solemn vote of 
 the House of Commons, protecting him from the 
 interdictions of the College of Physicians; and, as an 
 additional fee, he asked for, and obtained, the privi- 
 lege of driving his carriage through St. James's Park. 
 The pertinacity with which the members of the 
 medical profession cling to the shilling of "the 
 guinea" is amusing. When Erskine used to order 
 "The Devil's Own" to charge, he would cry out 
 "Six-and-eightpence!" instead of the ordinary word 
 of command. Had his Lordship been colonel of a 
 volunteer corps of physicians, he would have roused 
 them to an onward march by "A guinea!" Some- 
 times patients object to pay the extra shilling over 
 the sovereign, not less than their medical advisers 
 insist on having it. "We surgeons do things by 
 guineas," we recollect a veteran hospital surgeon
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 181 
 
 saying to a visitor who had put down the largest cur- 
 rent gold piece of our present coinage. The patient 
 (an irritable old gentleman) made it a question of 
 principle; he hated humbug— he regarded "that shill- 
 ing" as sheer humbug, and he would not pay it. A 
 contest ensued, which terminated in the eccentric pa- 
 tient paying, not the shilling, but an additional sov- 
 ereign. And to this day he is a frequent visitor of 
 our surgical ally, and is well content to pay his two 
 sovereigns, though he would die rather than counte- 
 nance "a sham" by putting down "a guinea." 
 
 But of all the stories told of surgeons who have 
 grown fat at the expense of the public, the best is 
 the following one, for which Mr. Alexander Kellet, 
 who died at his lodgings in Bath, in the year 1788. 
 is our authority. A certain French surgeon residing 
 in Georgia was taken prisoner by some Indians, who. 
 having acquired from the French the art of larding 
 their provisions, determined to lard this particular 
 Frenchman, and then roast him alive. During the 
 culinary process, when the man was half larded, the 
 operators were surprised by the enemy, and their 
 victim, making his escape, lived many days in the 
 woods on the bacon he had in his skin. 
 
 If full reliance may be placed on the following hu- 
 morous vei'ses, it is not imknown for a physician 
 to be paid in commodities, without the intervention 
 of the circulating medium, or the receipt of such 
 creature comforts as Johnson's friendly apothecary 
 was wont to accept in lieu of cash: — 
 
 "An adept in the sister arts. 
 Painter, poet, and musician, 
 Employ'd a doctor of all parts. 
 Druggist, surgeon, and physician.
 
 182 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 "The artist with M.D. agrees, 
 
 If he'fl attend him when he grew sick, 
 Fully to liquidate his fees 
 With painting, poetry, and music. 
 
 "The druggist, surgeon, and physician. 
 So often physick'd, bled, prescribeid, 
 That painter, poet, and musician 
 
 (Alas! poor artist!) sunk — and died. 
 
 "But ere death's stroke, 'Doctor,' cried he, 
 
 'In honour of your skill and charge. 
 Accept from my professions three — 
 A hatchment, epitaph, and dirge.' " 
 
 A double fee for good news has long been a rule 
 
 in the profession. A father just presented with an 
 
 heir, or a lucky fellow just made one, is expected to 
 
 bleed freely for the benefit of the Faculty. 
 
 "Madam scolded one day so long. 
 She sudden lost all use of tongue! 
 The doctor came — with hum and haw, 
 Pronounc'd th' affection a lock'd jaw! 
 
 "'What hopes, good sir?' — 'Small, small, I see!' 
 The husband slips a double fee ; 
 'What, no hopes, doctor?' — 'None, I fear;' 
 Another fee for issue clear. 
 
 "Madam deceased — 'Pray, sir, don't grieve!' 
 'My friends, one comfort I receive — 
 A lock'd jaw was the only case 
 From which my wife could die — in peace.' "
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 PEDAGOGUES TURNED DOCTORS. 
 
 In the church of St. Mary Magdalen, Taunton, is 
 a monumental stone engraved with the following in- 
 scription :— 
 
 "Qui medicus doctus, prudentis nomine clarus, 
 Eloquii splendor, Pieridumque decus, 
 Virtutis cultor, pietatis vixit amicus; 
 Hoc jacet in tumulo, spiritus alta tenet." 
 
 It is in memory of John Bond, M.A., the learned 
 commentator on Horace and Persius. Educated at 
 Winchester school, and then at New College, Oxford, 
 he was elected master of the Taunton Grammar-school 
 in the year 1579. For many years he presided over 
 that seminary with great efiSciency, and sent out into 
 the world several eminent scholars. On arriving, 
 however, at the middle age of life, he relinquished 
 the mastership of the school, and turned his attention 
 to the practice of medicine. His reputation and suc- 
 cess as a physician were great — the worthy people of 
 Taunton honouring him as "a wise man." He died 
 August 3, 1612. 
 
 More than a century later than John Bond, school- 
 master and physician, appeared a greater celebrity
 
 184 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 in the person of James Jurin, who, from the position 
 of a provincial pedagogue, raised himself to be re- 
 garded as first of the London physicians, and con- 
 spicuous amongst the philosophers of Europe. Jurin 
 was born in 1684, and received his early education 
 at Christ's Hospital— better kno^^^l to the public as 
 the Bluecoat school. After graduating in arts at 
 Cambridge, he obtained the mastership of the gram- 
 mar-school of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, January, 1710. 
 In the following year he acquired the high academic 
 distinction of a fellowship on the foundation of Trin, 
 ity College; and the year after (1712) he published 
 through the University press, his edition of Vare- 
 nius's Geography, dedicated to Bentley. In 1718 
 and 1719 he contributed to the Philosophical Trans- 
 actions the essays which involved him in controversies 
 with Keill and Senac, and were, in the year 1732, 
 reprinted in a collected form, under the title of 
 "Physico-Mathematical Dissertations." Another of 
 his important contributions to science was "An Essay 
 on Distinct and Indistinct Vision," added to Smith's 
 "System of Optics." Voltaire was not without good 
 reason for styling him, in the Journal de Savans, 
 "the famous Jurin." 
 
 Besides working zealously in his school, Jurin de- 
 livered lectures at Newcastle, on Experimental Phil- 
 osophy. He worked very hard, his immediate object 
 being to get and save money. As soon as he had laid 
 by a clear thousand pounds, he left Newcastle, and re- 
 turning to his University devoted himself to the study 
 of medicine. From that time his course was a pros- 
 perous one. Having taken his M.D. degree, he settled 
 in London, became a Fellow of the College of Phy-
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 185 
 
 sicians, a Fellow of the Royal Society (to which dis- 
 tinguished body he became secretary on the resigna^ 
 tion of Dr. Ilalley in 1721), and a Physician of Guy's 
 Hospital, as well as Governor of St. Thomas's. The 
 friend of Sir Isaac Newton and Bentley did not lack 
 patients. The consulting-rooms and ante-chambers 
 of his house in Lincoln's Inn Fields received many 
 visitors; so that he acquired considerable wealth, and 
 had an estate and an imposing establishment at Clap- 
 ton. Nichols speaks of him in one of his volumes as 
 "James Jurin, M.D., sometime of Clapton in Hack- 
 ney." It was, however, at his town residence that 
 he died, March 22, 1750, of what the Gentleman's 
 Magazine calls "a dead palsy," leaving by his will a 
 considerable legacy to Christ's Hospital. 
 
 One might make a long list of Doctors Pedagogic, 
 including poor Oliver Goldsmith, who used to wince 
 and redden with shame and anger when the canf 
 phrase, "It's all a holiday at Peckham," saluted his 
 ears. Between Bond and Jurin, however, there were 
 two tutors turned physicians, who may not be passed 
 over without especial attention. Only a little prior to 
 Jurin they knew many of his friends, and doubtless 
 met him often in consultation. They were both au- 
 thors—one of rare wit, and the other (as he himself 
 boasted ) of no wit ; and they hated each other, as lit- 
 erary men know how to hate. In every respect, even 
 down to the quarters of town which they inhabited, 
 lliey were opposed to each other. One was a brilliant 
 talker and frequented St. James's; the other was a 
 pompous drone, and haunted the Mansion-house: a 
 Jacobite the one, a Whig the other. The reader sees
 
 1S6 A BOOK ABOUT D0CT0B3. 
 
 that these two worthies can be none other than Ar- 
 buthnot and Blackmore. 
 
 A wnly, courtly, mirth-loving Scotchman, Arbuth- 
 not had all the best qualities that are to be ordinarilj 
 found in a child of North Britain. Everybody knew 
 him— nearly every one liked him. His satire, that 
 was only rarely tinctured with bitterness— his tongue, 
 powerful to mimic, flatter, or persuade— his polished 
 manners and cordial bearing, would alone have made 
 him a favourite with the ladies, had he not been what 
 he was— one of the handsomest men about town. (Of 
 course, in appearance he did not approach that mag- 
 nificent gentleman. Beau Fielding). In conversation 
 he was frank without being noisy; and there hung 
 about him— tavern-haunting wit though he was— an 
 air of simplicity, tempering his reckless fun, that was 
 very pleasant and very winning. Pope, Parnell, Garth, 
 Gay, were society much more to his taste than the 
 stately big-wigs of Warwick Hall. And next to drink- 
 ing wine with such men, the good-humoured doctor 
 enjoyed flirting with the maids of honour, and taking 
 part in a political intrigue. No wonder that Swift 
 valued him as a priceless treasure— "loved him," as 
 he wrote to Stella, "ten times as much" as jolly, tip- 
 pling Dr. Freind. 
 
 It was arm in arm with him that the Dean used to 
 peer about St. James's, jesting, snarling, laughing, 
 causing dowagers to smile at "that dear Mr. Dean," 
 and young girls, up for their first year at Court- 
 green and unsophisticated— to blush with annoyancd 
 at his coarse, shameless badinage ; bowing to this great 
 man (from whom he hoped for countenance), staring 
 insolently at that one (from whom he was sure ol
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 187 
 
 nothing but enmity 1, quoting Martial to a mitred 
 courtier (because the prelate couldn't understand 
 Latin), whispering French to a youthful diplomatist 
 (because the boy knew no tongue but English), pre- 
 paring impromptu compliments for "royal Anna" 
 (as our dear worthy ancestors used to call Mrs. Mash- 
 am 's intimate friend), or with his glorious blue eyes 
 sending a glance, eloquent of admiration and homage^ 
 at a fair and influential supporter; cringing, fawn- 
 ing, flattering— in fact, angling for the bishopric he 
 was never to get. With Arbuthnot it was that Swift 
 tried the dinners and wine of every hotel round 
 Covent Garden, or in the city. From Arbuthnot it 
 was that the Dean, during his periods of official exile, 
 received his best and surest information of the bat- 
 tles of the cliques, the scandals of the Court, the con- 
 tentions of parties, the prospects of ministers, and 
 (most important subject by far) the health of the 
 Queen. 
 
 Some of the most pleasant pictures in the "Journal 
 to Stella" are those in which the kindly presence of 
 the Doctor softens the asperity of the Dean. Most 
 readers of these pages have accompanied the two 
 "brothers" in their excursion to the course the day 
 before the horse-races, when they overtook Miss For- 
 rester, the pretty maid of honour, and made her ac- 
 company them. The lady was taking the air on her 
 palfrey, habited in the piquant riding-dress of the 
 period— the natty three-cornered cocked hat, orna- 
 mented with gold lace, and perched on the top of a 
 long flowing periwig, powdered to the whiteness of 
 snow, the long coat cut like a coachman's, the waist- 
 coat flapped and faced, and lastly the habit-skirt. One
 
 188 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 sees the belle at this time smiling archly, with all the 
 power of beauty, and shaking the handle of her whip 
 at the divine and the physician. So they took her 
 with them (and they weren't wrong in doing so). 
 Then the old Queen came by, gouty and hypochon- 
 driac. Ofif went the hats of the two courtiers in the 
 presence of her Majesty. The beauty, too, raised her 
 little three-cornered cock-boat (rising on her stirrup 
 as she did so), and returned it to the summit of the 
 flowing wig, with a knowing side-glance, as much as 
 to say, "See, sirs, we women can do that sort of thing 
 quite as gracefully as the lords of the creation." (Oh, 
 Mr. Spectator, how could you find it in you to quar- 
 rel with that costume?) Swift was charmed, and 
 described enough of the scene to make that foolish 
 Stella frantically jealous; and then, prudent, canny 
 love-tyrant that he was, added with a sneer— "I did 
 not like her, though she be a toast, and was dressed 
 like a man." And you may be sure that poor little 
 Stella was both fool enough and wise enough both to 
 believe and disbelieve this assurance at the same 
 time. 
 
 Arbuthnot owed his success in no degree whatever 
 to the influence of his family, and only in a very slight 
 degree to his professional knowledge. His father 
 was only a poor episcopalian clergyman, and his M.D 
 degree was only an Aberdeen one. He rose by his 
 wit, rare conversational powers, and fascinating ad- 
 dress, achieving eminence at Court because he was 
 the greatest master of fence with the weapon that is 
 most used in courts— the tongue. He failed to get a 
 living amongst rustic boors, who appreciated no effort 
 of the human voice but a fox-hunter's whoop. Dor-
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 189 
 
 Chester, where as a young man he endeavoured to es 
 tablish himself in practice, refused to give him an 
 income, but it doubtless maintained more than one 
 aull empiric in opulence. In London he met with a 
 different reception. For a time he was very poor, and 
 resorted to the most hateful of all occupations— the 
 personal instruction of the ignorant. How long he 
 was so engaged is uncertain. Something of Gold- 
 smith's "Peckham" sensibility made him not care 
 in after-life to talk of the days when he was a teacher 
 of mathematics— starving on pupils until he should 
 be permitted to grow fat on patients. 
 
 The patients were not long in coming. The literary 
 reputation he obtained by his "Examination of Dr 
 Woodward's Account of the Deluge," elicited by 
 Woodward's "Essay towards a Natural History of 
 the Earth," instead of frightening the sick from him, 
 brought them to him. Accidentally called in to Prince 
 George of Denmark, when his Royal Highness wa9 
 suddenly taken ill at Epsom, he made himself so 
 agreeable that the casual introduction became a per- 
 manent connection. In 1709, on the illness of Hannes 
 (a physician who also understood the art of rising in 
 spite of obstacles) he was appointed physiciaji-in-or- 
 dinary to Queen Anne. 
 
 To secure the good graces of his royal patient, and 
 rise yet higher in them, he adopted a tone of affection 
 for her as a person, as well as loyal devotion to her 
 as a queen. The fall of Radcliffe warned him that 
 he had need of caution in dealing with the weak- 
 minded, querulous, crotchety, self-indulgent invalid. 
 
 "What's the time?" asked the Queen of him one 
 day.
 
 190 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 " Whatever it may please your Majesty," answered 
 the court-physician, with a graceful bow. 
 
 After all, the best testimony of a man's merit is 
 
 the opinion held of him by those of his acquaintance 
 
 who know him intimately— at home as well as abroad. 
 
 By all who came within the circle of Arbuthnot's 
 
 privacy he was respected as much as loved. And hi? 
 
 associates were no common men. Pope, addressing 
 
 him as "the friend of his life," says:— 
 
 "Why did I write? what sin, to me unknown, 
 Dipp'd me in inlv? — my parents' or my own? 
 As yet a child, nor yet a fool to fame, 
 I lisp'd in numbers, for the numbers came. 
 I left no calling for this idle trade. 
 No duty broke, no father disobey'd. 
 The muse but served to ease some friend, not wife. 
 To help me through this long disease, my life, 
 To second, Arbuthnot ! thy art and care, 
 And teach the being you preserved to bear." 
 
 Pope's concluding wish — 
 "Oh, friend ! may each domestic bliss be thine," 
 was ineffectual. Arbuthnot's health failed under hia 
 habits of intemperance, and during his latter years he 
 was a terrible sufferer from asthma and melancholy. 
 After the Queen's death he went for the benefit of 
 his health on the continent, and visited his brother, 
 a Paris banker. Returning to London he took a house 
 in Dover Street, from which he moved to the residence 
 in Cork Street, Burlington Gardens, where he died 
 Feb. 27, 1734 — 5. He died in straitened circum- 
 stances; for unlike his fellow-countryman. Colonel 
 Chartres, he had not the faculty of saving. But with 
 failing energies, an excruciated frame, and the heart- 
 burden of a family unprovided for, he maintained a
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 191 
 
 pliilosophic equanimity, and displayed his old un- 
 varying consideration for all who surrounded him. 
 
 Arbuthnot's epitaph on Colonel Chartres (almost 
 as well known as Martinus Seriblerus) is a good speci- 
 men of his humour: — 
 
 "Here continueth to rot, 
 
 The Body of Francis Chartres. 
 
 Who, with an indefatigable constancy, 
 
 And inimitable Uniformity of life. 
 
 Persisted, 
 
 In spite of Age and Infirmities, 
 
 In the practice of every Human Vice, 
 
 Excepting Jrrodigality and Hypocrisy: 
 
 His insatiable Avarice exempting him from the First, 
 
 His matchless impudence from the Second. 
 
 Nor was he more singular in the Undeviating Pravity 
 
 Of his manners, than successful 
 
 In accumulating Wealth : 
 
 For, without Trade or Profession, 
 
 Without trust of public money. 
 
 And without bribe-worthy service. 
 
 He acquired, or more properly created, 
 
 A ministerial estate. 
 
 He was the only person of this time 
 
 Who could cheat without the Mask of Honesty, 
 
 Retain his primaeval meanness when possessed of 
 
 Ten thousand a-year: 
 
 And having duly deserved the Gibbet for what he did. 
 
 Was at last condemned to it for what he could not do. 
 
 Oh, indignant reader ! 
 
 Think not his life useless to mankind: 
 
 Providence connived at his execrable designs. 
 
 To give to After-age a conspicuous 
 
 Proof and Example 
 
 ■Of how small estimation is exorbitant Wealth 
 
 In the sight of God, by His bestowing it on 
 
 The most unworthy of Mortals." 
 
 The history of the worthy person whose reputation 
 is here embalmed is interesting. Beginning life as an 
 ensign in the army, he was drummed out of his regi- 
 ment, banished Brussels, and ignominiously expelled 
 from Ghent, for cheating. As a miser he saved, and 
 as a usurer he increased, the money which he won
 
 192 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 as a blackleg and card-sharper. Twice was he con- 
 demned to death for heinous offences, but contrived to 
 purchase pardon; and, after all, he was fortunate 
 enough to die in his own bed, in his native country, 
 Scotland, a. d. 1731, aged sixty-two. At his funeral 
 the indignant mob, feeling that justice had not been 
 done to the dear departed, raised a riot, insulted the 
 mourners, and, when the coffin was lowered into the 
 grave, threw upon it a magnificent collection of dead 
 dogs! 
 
 In a similar and scarcely less magnificent vein of 
 humour, Arbuthnot wrote another epitaph— on a grey- 
 hound :— 
 
 "To the memory of 
 
 Signer Fido, 
 
 An Italian of Good Extraction : 
 
 Who came into England, 
 
 Not to bite us, like most of his countrymen. 
 
 But to gain an honest livelihood: 
 
 He hunted not after fame, 
 
 Yet acquired it : 
 
 Regardless of the Praise of his Friends, 
 
 But most sensible of their love: 
 
 Tho' he liv'd amongst the great, 
 
 He neither learn'd nor flatter'd any vice: 
 
 He vfiLS no Bigot, 
 
 Tho' he doubted of none of the thirty-nine articles; 
 
 And if to follow Nature, 
 
 And to respect the laws of Society, 
 
 Be Philosophy, 
 
 He was a perfect Philosopher, 
 
 A faithful Friend, 
 
 An agreeable Companion, 
 
 A loving Husband, 
 
 Distinguished by a numerous Offspring, 
 
 All of which he lived to see take good courses; 
 
 In his old age he retired 
 
 To the House of a Qergyman in the Country, 
 
 Where he finished his earthly Race, 
 
 And died an Honour and an Example to the whole Species. 
 
 Reader, 
 
 This stone is guiltless of Flattery, 
 
 For he to whom it is inscribed
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 193 
 
 Was not a man, 
 But a 
 Greyhound." 
 
 In the concluding lines there is a touch of Sterne. 
 They also call to mind Byron's epitaph on his dog. 
 
 These epitaphs put the writer in mind of the liter- 
 ary ambition of the eminent Dr. James Gregory of 
 Edinburgh. His great aim was to be the Inscriptor 
 (as he styled it) of his age. No distinguished person 
 died without the doctor promptly striking off his char- 
 acteristics in a mural legend. For every statue erect- 
 ed to heroes, real or sham, he composed an inscrip- 
 tion, and interested himself warmly to have it adopt- 
 ed. Amongst the public monuments on which his 
 compositions may be found are the Nelson Monument 
 at Edinburgh, and the Duke of Wellington 's shield at 
 Gibraltar. On King Robert Bruce, Charles Edward 
 Stuart, his mother, Sir James Poulis de Collington, 
 and Robertson the historian, he also produced com- 
 memorative inscriptions of great excellence. As a 
 very fair specimen of his style the inscription on the 
 Scott Flagon is transcribed:— 
 
 "Gualterum Scott, 
 
 De Abbotsford, 
 
 Virum summi Ingenii 
 
 Scriptorem Elegantem 
 
 Poetarum sui seculi facile Principem 
 
 Patriae Decus 
 
 Ob varia ergo ipsam merita 
 
 In civium suorum numerum 
 
 Grata adscripsit Civitas Edinburgensis 
 
 Et hoc Cantharo donavit 
 
 A. D. MDCCCXIIL" 
 
 Sir Richard Blackmore, the other pedagogue phy- 
 sician, was one of those good, injudicious mortals who 
 always either praise or blame too much— usually the 
 latter. The son of a Wiltshire attorney, he was edu- 
 
 4— IS
 
 194 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 cated at "Westminster School and Oxford, taking his 
 degree of M.A. June, 1676, and residing, in all, thir- 
 teen years in the university, during a portion of which 
 protracted period of residence he was (though Dr. 
 Johnson erroneously supposed the reverse) a laborious 
 student. On leaving Oxford he passed through a 
 course of searching poverty, and became a schoolmas- 
 ter. In this earlier part of his life he travelled in 
 France, Germany, the Low Countries, and Italy, and 
 took his doctor's degree in the University of Padua. 
 On turning his attention to medicine, he consulted 
 Sydenham as to what authors he ought to read. ' ' Don 
 Quixote," replied the veteran. A similar answer 
 has been attributed to Lord Erskine on being asked 
 by a law student the best literary sources for acquir- 
 ing legal knowledge and success. The scepticism 
 of the reply reminds one of Garth, who, to an anxious 
 patient inquiring what physician he had best call in 
 in case of his (Garth's) death, responded, "One is 
 e'en as good as t'other, and surgeons are not less 
 knowing." 
 
 As a poet, Blackmore failed, but as a physician he 
 was for many years one of the most successful men 
 in his profession. Living at Sadler's Hall, Gheapside, 
 he was the oracle of all the wealthiest citizens, and 
 was blessed with an affluence that allowed him to drive 
 about town in a handsome equipage, and make an im- 
 posing figure to the world. Industrious, honourable, 
 and cordially liked by his personal friends, he was by 
 no means the paltry fellow that Dryden and Pope 
 represented him. Johnson, in his brilliant memoir, 
 treated him very unfairly, and clearly was annoyed 
 that his conscience would not allow him to treat him
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 195 
 
 worse. On altogether insufQeient grounds the doctor 
 argued that his knowledge of ancient authors was 
 superficial, and for the most part derived from sec- 
 ondary sources. Passages indeed are introduced to 
 show that the ridicule and contempt showered on the 
 poet by his adversaries, and re-echoed by the laugh- 
 ing world, were unjust; but the effect of these admis- 
 sions, complete in themselves, is more than counter- 
 balanced by the sarcasms (and some of them vulgar 
 sarcasms too) which the biographer, in imitation of 
 Colonel Codrington, Sir Charles Sedley, and Colonel 
 Blount, directs against the city knight. 
 
 A sincerely religious man, Blackmore was offender) 
 with the gross licentiousness of the drama, and all 
 those productions of the poets which constituted tht 
 light literature of the eighteenth century. To his 
 ■eternal honour, Blackmore was the first man who hac^ 
 the courage to raise his voice against the evil, and 
 give utterance to a manly indignation at the insults 
 offered nightly in every theatre to public decency 
 Unskilled in the use of the pen, of an age when he 
 could not hope to perfect himself in an art to which 
 he had not in youth systematically trained himself, 
 and immersed in the cares of an extensive practice, 
 he set himself to work on the production of a poem' 
 which should elevate and instruct, not vitiate and 
 deprave youthful readers. In this Spirit "Prince 
 Arthur" was composed and published in 1695, when 
 the author was between forty and fifty years of age. 
 It was written, as he frankly ack-nowledged, "by such 
 catches and starts, and in such occasional uncertain 
 hours as his profession afforded, and for the greatest 
 part in coffee-houses, or in passing up and down
 
 196 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 streets." The wits laughed at him for writing "to 
 the rumbling of his chariot- wheels, " but at this date, 
 ridicule thrown on a man for doing good at odd scraps 
 of a busy day, has a close similarity to the laughter of 
 fools. Let any reader compare the healthy gentle- 
 manlike tone of the preface to "Prince Arthur," with 
 the mean animosity of all the virulent criticisms and 
 sarcasms that were directed against the author and 
 his works, and then decide on which side truth and 
 good taste lie. 
 
 Blackmore made the fatal error of writing too 
 much. His long poems wearied the patience of those 
 who sympathized with his goodness of intention. What 
 a list there is of them, in Swift's inscription, "to be 
 put under Sir Richard's picture !" 
 
 "See, who ne'er was, or will be half read, 
 Who first sung Arthur, then sung Alfred,' 
 Praised great Eliza "in God's anger. 
 Till all true Englishmen cried, hang her ! 
 * * * * 
 
 Then hiss'd from earth, grown heavenly quite. 
 
 Made every reader curse the light.' 
 
 Mauled human wit in one thick satire ;* 
 
 Next, in three books, spoil'd human nature;" 
 
 Ended Creation "at a jerk, 
 
 And of Redemption 'made damn'd work: 
 
 Then took his muse at once, and dipp'd her 
 
 Full in the middle of the Scripture. 
 
 What wonders there the man grown old did ! 
 
 Sternhold himself he out-sternholded ; 
 
 Made David * seem so mad and freakish, 
 
 All thought him just what thought king Achish. 
 
 ' Two heroic Poems, folio, twenty books. 
 
 ' An heroic Poem, in twelve books. 
 
 ' Hymn to Light. 
 
 ' Satire against Wit. 
 
 ' Of the Nature of Man. 
 
 ' Creation, in seven books. 
 
 ' Redemption, in six books. 
 
 • Translation of all the Psalms.
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 197 
 
 No mortal read his Solomon,' 
 But judged R'oboam his own son. 
 Moses'" he served, as Moses Pharaoh, 
 And Deborah as she Sisera : 
 Made Jeremyi' full sore to cry, 
 And Job '■ himself curse God and die." 
 Nor is this by any means a complete list of Sir 
 Richard's works; for he was also a voluminous med- 
 ical writer, and author of a "History of the Conspir- 
 acy against the Person and Government of King Wil- 
 liam the Third, of glorious memory, in the year 
 1695." 
 
 Dryden, unable to clear himself of the charge of 
 pandering for gain to the licentious tastes of the age, 
 responded to his accuser by calling him an "ass," a 
 "pedant," a "quack," and a "canting preacher." 
 "Quack Maurus, though he never took degrees 
 In either of our universities. 
 Yet to be shown by some kind wit he looks, 
 Because he play'd the fool, and writ three books. 
 But if he would be worth a poet's pen, 
 He must be more a fool, and write aeain; 
 For all the former fustian stuff he wrote 
 Was dead-born doggerel, or is quite forgot : 
 His man of Uz, stript of his Hebrew robe. 
 Is just the proverb, and 'as poor as Job.' 
 One would have thought he could no longer jog; 
 But Arthur was a level. Job's a bog. 
 There though he crept, yet still he kept in sight; 
 But here he founders in, and sinks downright. 
 
 * * * * 
 
 At leisure hours in epic song he deals, 
 Writes to the rumbling of his coach's wheels. 
 
 * * * * 
 
 Well, let him go — 'tis yet too early day 
 
 To get himself a place in farce or play; 
 
 We know not by what name we should arraign him. 
 
 For no one category can contain him. 
 
 A pedant, canting preacher, and a quack. 
 
 Are load enough to break an ass's back. 
 
 Canticles and Ecclesiastes. 
 '° Canticles of Moses, Deborah. &c. 
 " The Lamentations. 
 " The Whole Book of Job. in folio.
 
 198 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 At last, grown wanton, he presumed to write, 
 Traduced two kings, their kindness to requite; 
 One made the doctor, and one dubbed the knight." 
 
 The former of the kings alluded to is James the 
 Second, Blackmore having obtained his fellowship of 
 the College of Physicians, April 12, 1687, under the 
 new charter granted to the college by that monarch: 
 the latter being "William the Third, who, in recogni- 
 tion of the doctor's zeal and influence as a Whig, not 
 less than of his eminence in his profession, made him 
 a physician of the household, and knighted him. 
 
 Pope says :— 
 
 "The hero William, and the martyr Charles, 
 One knighted Blackmore, and one pension'd Quarles." 
 
 The bard of Twickenham had of course a few ill 
 
 words for Blackmore. In the Dunciad he says:— 
 
 "Ye critics, in whose heads, as equal scales, 
 I weigh what author's heaviness prevails; 
 Which most conduce to soothe the soul in slumbers, 
 My H ley's periods, or my Blackmore's numbers." 
 
 Elsewhere, in the same poem, the little wasp of 
 poetry continues his hissing song:— 
 
 "But far o'er all, sonorous Blackmore's strain, 
 Walls, steeples, skies, bray back to him again. 
 In Tot'nham fields, the brethren, with amaze, 
 Prick all their ears up, and forget to graze; 
 
 'Long Cnancery Lane retentive rolls the sound. 
 And courts to courts return it round and round; 
 Thames wafts it thence to Rufus' roaring hall, 
 And Hungerford re-echoes bawl for bawl ; 
 All hail him victor in both gifts and song. 
 Who sings so loudly, and who sings so long." 
 
 Such being the tone of the generals, the reader can 
 
 imagine that of the petty scribblers, the professional 
 
 libellers, the coffee-house rakes, and literary amateurs 
 
 of the Temple, who formed the rabble of the vast 
 
 army against which the doctor had pitted himself, in
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 199 
 
 defence of public decency and domestic morality. Un- 
 der the title of ' ' Commendatory Verses, on the author 
 of the two Arthurs, and the Satyr against Wit, by 
 come of his particular friends," were collected, in 
 the year 1700, upwards of forty sets of ribald verses, 
 taunting Sir Richard with his early poverty, with his 
 having been a school-master, with the unspeakable 
 baseness of— living in the city. The writers of these 
 wretched dirty lampoons, that no kitchen-maid could 
 in our day read without blushing, little thought what 
 they were doing. Their obscene stupidity has secured 
 for them the lasting ignominy to which they imagined 
 they were consigning their antagonist. What a crew 
 they are!— with chivalric Steel and kindly Garth, for- 
 getting their better natures, and joining in the mis- 
 erable riot ! To " The City Quack "; " The Cheapside 
 Knight"; "The Illustrious Quack, Pedant, Bard"; 
 "The Merry Poetaster of Sadler's Hall"— such are 
 the titles by which they address the doctor, who had 
 presumed to say that authors and men of wit ought tu 
 find a worthier exercise for their intellects than the 
 manufacture of impure jests. 
 
 Colonel Codrington makes his shot thus— 
 
 "By Nature meant, by Want a Pedant made, 
 
 Blackmore at first profess'd the whipping trade; 
 
 * * * * 
 
 In vain his drugs as well as Birch he try'd — 
 His boys grew blockheads, and his patients dy'd. 
 Ne.xt he turn'd Bard, and, mounted on a cart, 
 Whose hideous rumbling made Apollo start, 
 Burlesqued the Bravest, Wisest son of Mars, 
 In ballad rhymes, and all the pomp of Farce. 
 
 * * * « 
 
 The same dull sarcasms about killing patients and 
 whipping boys into blockheads are repeated over and
 
 200 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 over again. As if to show, with the greatest possible 
 force, the pitch to which the evil of the times had 
 risen, the coarsest and most disgusting of all these 
 lampoon-writers was a lady of rank— the Countess 
 of Sandwich. By the side of her Ladyship, Af ra Behn 
 and Mistress Manley become timid blushing maidens. 
 A better defence of Sir Richard than the Countess's 
 attack on him it would be impossible to imagine. 
 
 And after all— the slander and the maledictions- 
 Sir Richard Blackmore gained the victory, and the 
 wits who never wearied of calling him "a fool" were 
 defeated. The preface to "Prince Arthur" provoked 
 discussion; the good sense and better taste of the 
 country were roused, and took the reformer's side of 
 the controversy. Pope and his myrmidons, it was 
 true, were still able to make the ieau monde merry 
 about the city knight's presumption— but they could 
 not refute the city knight's arguments; and they 
 themselves were compelled to shape their conduct, as 
 writers, in deference to a new public feeling which he 
 was an important instrument in calling into existence. 
 "Prince Arthur" appeared in 1695, and to the com- 
 motion caused by its preface may be attributed much 
 of the success of Jeremy Collier's "Short View of the 
 Immorality and Profaneness of the Stage," which 
 was published some three years afterwards. 
 
 As a poet Sir Richard Blackmore can command on- 
 ly that praise which the charitable bestow on good- 
 ness of intention. His muse was a pleasant, well- 
 looking, right-minded young lady, but nothing more. 
 But it must be remembered, before we measure out 
 our criticisms on his productions, that he never arro- 
 gated to himself the highest honours of poesy. "I
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 201 
 
 am a gentleman of taste and culture, and though T 
 cannot ever hope to build up the nervous lines of Dry- 
 den, or attain the polish and brilliance of Congreve, 
 I believe I can write what the generation sorely needs 
 —works that intelligent men may study with improve- 
 ment, devout Christians may read without being of- 
 fended, and pure-minded girls may peruse without 
 blushing from shame. 'Tis true I am a hard-worked 
 doctor, spending my days in coffee-houses, receiving 
 apothecaries, or driving over the stones in my car- 
 riage, visiting my patients. Of course a man so cir- 
 cumstanced must fail to achieve artistic excellence, 
 but still I'll do my best." Such was the language 
 with which he introduced himself to the public. 
 
 His best poem. The Creation, had such merit that 
 his carping biographer, Johnson, says, "This poem, if 
 he had written nothing else, would have transmitted 
 him to posterity one of the first favourites of the Eng- 
 lish muse"; and Addison designated the same poem 
 "one of the most useful and noble productions in our 
 English verse." 
 
 Of Sir Richard's private character Johnson re- 
 marks— "In some part of his life, it is not known 
 when, his indigence compelled him to teach a school^ 
 a humiliation with which, though it certainly lasted 
 but a little while, his enemies did not forget to re- 
 proach him when he became conspicuous enough to ex- 
 cite malevolence; and let it be remembered, for his 
 honour, that to have been a schoolmaster is the only 
 reproach which all the perspicacity of malice, ani- 
 mated by wit, has ever fixed upon his private life."
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 THE GENEROSITT AND THE PAESIMONT OP 
 PHYSICIANS. 
 
 Of the generosity of physicians one need say noth- 
 ing, for there are few who have not experienced or 
 witnessed it; and one had letter say nothing, as no 
 words could do justice to such a subject. This writer 
 can speak for at last one poor scholar, to whose sick- 
 bed physicians have come from distant quarters of 
 the town, day after day, never taking a coin for their 
 precious services, and alwaj'S in their graceful benevo- 
 lence seeming to find positive enjoyment in their un« 
 paid labour. In gratitude for kindness shown to him- 
 self, and yet more for beneficence exhibited to those 
 whom he loves, that man of the goose-quill and 
 thumbed books would like to put on record the names 
 of certain members of "the Faculty" to whom he is 
 
 so deeply indebted. Ah, dear Dr. and Dr. 
 
 and Dr. , do not start!— your names shall not be 
 
 put down on this cheap common page. Where they 
 are engraved, you know! 
 
 Cynics have been found in plenty to rail at physi- 
 cians for loving their fees ; and one might justly retort
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTOES. 203 
 
 on the Cynics, that they love nothing hut their fees. 
 Who doesn't love the sweet money earned by his la- 
 bour—be it labour of hand or brain, or both? One 
 thing is sure— that doctors are underpaid. The most 
 successf al of them in our own time get far less than 
 their predecessors of any reign, from Harry the 
 Eighth downwards. And for honours, though the 
 present age has seen an author raised to the peerage, 
 no precedent has as yet been established for ennobling 
 eminent physicians and surgeons. 
 
 Queen Elizabeth gave her physician-in-ordinary 
 £100 per annum, besides diet, wine, wax, and other 
 perquisites. Her apothecary, Hugo Morgan, must too 
 have made a good thing out of her. For a quarter's 
 bill that gentleman was paid £83 7s. 8d., a large sum 
 in those days; but then it was for such good things. 
 What Queen of England could grudge eleven shill* 
 ings for "a confection made like a manus Christi, with 
 bezoar stone and unicorn's horn"?— sixteen pence 
 for "a royal sweetmeat with incised rhubarb"?— 
 twelve pence for "Rosewater for the King of Na- 
 varre's ambassador"?— six shillings for "a conserve 
 of barberries, with preserved damascene plums, and 
 other things for Mr. Raleigh"?— two shillings and 
 sixpence for "sweet scent to be used at the christening 
 of Sir Richard Knightley's son"? 
 
 Coytier, the physician of Charles the XI. of France, 
 was better paid by far. The extent to which he 
 fleeced that monarch is incredible. Favour after fa- 
 vour he wrung from him. When the royal patient 
 resisted the modest demands of his physician, the lat- 
 ter threatened him with speedy dissolution. On this 
 menace the king, succvunbing to that fear of death
 
 204 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 which characterized more than one other of his fam- 
 ily, was sure to make the required concession. Theo- 
 dore Hook's valet, who was a good servant in the first 
 year of his service, a sympathizing friend in the sec- 
 ond, and a hard tyrant in the third, was a timid slave 
 compared with Coytier. Charles, in order to be freed 
 from his despotism, ordered him to be dispatched. The 
 ofiSeer, intrusted with the task of carrying out the roy- 
 al wishes, waited on Coytier, and said, in a most gen- 
 tlemanlike and considerate manner, ' ' I am very sorry, 
 my dear fellow, but I must kill you. The king can't 
 stand you any longer." "All right," said Coytier, 
 with perfect unconcern, "whenever you like. What 
 time would it be most convenient for you to kill me? 
 But still, I am deuced sorry for his Majesty, for I 
 know by occult science that he can't outlive me more 
 than four days." The ofScer was so struck with the 
 announcement, that he went away and forth^vith im- 
 parted it to the king. "Liberate him instantly— don't 
 hurt a hair of his head!" cried the terrified monarch. 
 And Coytier was once again restored to his place in 
 the king 's confidence and pocket. 
 
 Henry Atkins managed James the First with some 
 dexterity. Atkins was sent for to Scotland, to attend 
 Charles the First (then an infant), who was danger- 
 ously ill of a fever. The king gave him the handsome 
 fee of £6000. Atkins invested the money in the pur- 
 chase of the manor of Clapham. 
 
 RadeliflPe, with a rare effort of generosity, attended 
 a friend for a twelvemonth gratuitously. On making 
 his last visit his friend said, "Doctor, here is a purse 
 in which I have put every day's fee; and your good- 
 ness must not get the better of my gratitude. Take
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 205 
 
 your money." Radcliffe looked, made a resolve to 
 persevere in benevolence, just touched the purse to 
 reject it, heard the chink of the gold pieces in it, and 
 put the bag into his pocket. "Singly, .sir, I could 
 have refused them for a twelvemonth ; but, all togeth- 
 er, they are irresistible," said the doctor, walking off 
 with a heavy prize and a light heart. 
 
 Louis XIV. gave his physician and his surgeon 
 75,000 crowns each, after successfully undergoing a 
 painful and at that time novel operation. By the 
 side of such munificence, the fees paid by Napoleon I. 
 to the Faculty who attended Marie Louise in March, 
 1811, when the Emperor's son was born, seem insuf- 
 ficient. Dubois, Corvisart, Bourdier, and Ivan were 
 the professional authorities employed, and they had 
 among them a remuneration of £4000, £2000 being the 
 portion assigned to Dubois. 
 
 Even more than fee gratefully paid does a humor- 
 ous physician enjoy an extra fee adroitly drawn from 
 the hand of a reluctant payer. Sir Richard Jebb was 
 once paid three guineas by a nobleman from whom 
 he had a right to expect five. Sir Richard dropped 
 the coins on the carpet, when a servant picked them 
 up and restored them— three, and only three. Instead 
 of walking off Sir Richard continued his search on 
 the carpet. "Are all the guineas found?" asked his 
 Lordship looking round. "There must be two still 
 on the floor," was the answer, "for I have only 
 three." The hint of course was taken and the right 
 sum put down. An eminent Bristol doctor accom- 
 plished a greater feat than this, and took a fee from— 
 a dead commoner, not a live lord. Coming into his pa- 
 tient 's bed-room immediately after death had taken.
 
 206 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 place, he found the right hand of the deceased tightly 
 clenched. Opening the fingers he discovered with- 
 in them a guinea. "Ah, that was for me— clearly," 
 said the doctor putting the piece into his pocket. 
 
 Reminding the reader, in its commencement, of Sir 
 Richard Jebb's disappointment at the three-guinea 
 fee, the following story may here be appropriately 
 inserted. A physician on receiving two guineas, when 
 he expected three, from an old lady patient, who was 
 accustomed to give him the latter fee, had recourse to 
 one part of Sir Richard's artifice, and assuming that 
 the third guinea had been dropt through his careless- 
 ness on the floor, looked about for it. "Nay, nay," 
 said the lady with a smile, "you are not in fault. It 
 is I who dropt it." 
 
 There is an abundance of good stories of physicians 
 fleecing their lambs. To those that are true the com- 
 ment may be made— "Doubtless the lambs were all 
 the better for being shorn." For the following anec- 
 dote we are indebted to Dr. Moore, the author of "Ze- 
 luco." A wealthy tradesman, after drinking the Bath 
 waters, took a fancy to try the eflfect of the Bristol hot 
 wells. Armed with an introduction from a Bath phy- 
 sician to a professional brother at Bristol, the invalid 
 set out on his journey. On the road he gave way ta 
 his curiosity to read the doctor's letter of intro- 
 duction, and cautiously prying into it read these in- 
 structive words: "Dear sir, the bearer is a fat Wilt- 
 shire clothier— make the most of him.'' 
 
 Benevolence was not a virtue in old Monsey's line;_ 
 but he could be generous at another's expense, when 
 the enjoyment his malignity experienced in paining 
 one person counterbalanced his discomfort at giving
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 207 
 
 pleasure to another. Strolling through Oxford mar- 
 ket he heard a poor woman ask the price of a piece of 
 meat that lay on a butcher's stall. 
 
 "A penny a pound!" growled the man to whom 
 the question was put, disdaining to give a serious 
 answer to such a poverty-stricken customer. 
 
 "Just weigh that piece of beef, my friend," said 
 Monsey, stepping up. 
 
 "Ten pounds and a half, sir," observed the butcher, 
 after adjusting the scales and weights. 
 
 "Here, my good woman," said Monsey, "out with 
 your apron, and put the beef into it, and make haste 
 home to your family." 
 
 Blessing the benevolent heart of the eccentric old 
 gentleman, the woman did as she was bid, took pos- 
 session of her meat, and was speedily out of sight. 
 
 "And there, my man," said Monsey, turning tc 
 the butcher, "is tenpence halfpenny, the price of youi 
 beef." 
 
 "Wiat do you mean?" demanded the man. 
 
 "Simply that that's all I'll pay you. Tou said the 
 meat was a penny a pound. At that price I bought 
 it of you— to give to the poor woman. Good morn- 
 ing!" 
 
 A fee that Dr. Fothergill took of Mr. Grenville was 
 earned without much trouble. Fothergill, like Lett- 
 som, was a Quaker, and was warmly supported by his 
 brother sectarians. In the same way Mead was 
 brought into practice by the Nonconformists, to whom 
 his father ministered spiritually. Indeed, Mead's sat- 
 irists affirmed that when his servant (acting on in- 
 structions) had called him out from divine service, 
 the parson took his part in the "dodge" by asking
 
 208 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 the congregation to pray for the bodily and ghostly 
 welfare of the patient to whom his son had just been 
 summoned. Dissenters are remarkable for giving 
 staunch support, and thorough confidence, to a doctor 
 of their own persuasion. At the outbreak of the Amer- 
 ican war, therefore Grenville knew that he could not 
 consult a better authority than the Quaker doctor, 
 Fothergill, on the state of feeling amongst the Quaker 
 colonists. Fothergill was consequently summoned 
 to prescribe for the politician. The visit took the form 
 of an animated discussion on American affairs, which 
 was brought to a conclusion by Grenville 's putting five 
 guineas into the physician's hand, saying— "Really, 
 doctor, I am so much better, that I don't want 
 you to prescribe for me." With a canny significant 
 smile Fothergill, keeping, like a true Quaker, firm 
 hold of the money, answered, "At this rate, friend, 
 I -will spare thee an hour now and then. ' ' 
 
 Dr. Glynn, of Cambridge, was as benevolent as he 
 was eccentric. His reputation in the fen districts 
 as an ague doctor was great, and for some years he 
 made a large professional income. On one occasion 
 a poor peasant woman, the widowed mother of an 
 only son, trudged from the heart of the fens into Cam- 
 bridge, to consult the doctor about her boy, who was 
 ill of an ague. Her manner so interested the phy- 
 sician, that though it was during an inclement win- 
 ter, and the roads were almost impassable to car- 
 riages, he ordered horses, and went out to see the sick 
 lad. After a tedious attendance, and the exhibition 
 of much port wine and bark (bought at the doctor's 
 expense), the patient recovered, and Glynn took his 
 leave. A few days after the farewell visit, the poor
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTOBS. 209 
 
 ■woman again presented herself in the consulting 
 room. 
 
 "I hope, my good woman," said Glynn, "your sod 
 is not ill again 1 ' ' 
 
 ' ' No, sir, he was never better, ' ' answered the wom- 
 an, gratefully; "but we can't get no rest for thinking 
 of all the trouble that you have had, and so my boy 
 resolved this morning on sending you his favourite 
 magpie." 
 
 In the woman's hand was a large wicker basket, 
 which she opened at the conclusion of the speech, af- 
 fording means of egress to an enormous magpie, that 
 hopped out into the room, demure as a saint and bold 
 as a lord. It was a fee to be proud of ! 
 
 The free-will offerings of the poor to their doctors 
 are sometimes very droll, and yet more touching. They 
 are presented with such fervour and simplicity, and 
 such a sincere anxiety that they should be taken as 
 an expression of gratitude for favours past, not for 
 favours to come. The writer of these pages has known 
 the humble toilers of agricultural districts retain for 
 a score of years the memory of kind services done to 
 them in sickness. He could tell of several who, at the 
 anniversary of a particular day (when a wife died, 
 or child was saved from fever, or an accident crushed 
 a finger or lacerated a limb), trudge for miles ovei 
 the country to the doctor's house, and leave there a 
 little present— a pot of honey, a basket of apples, a 
 dish of the currants from the bush which "the doc- 
 tor" once praised, and said was fit for a gentleman's 
 garden. 
 
 Of eminent physicians Dr. Gregory of Edinburgh 
 was as remarkable for his amiability as for his learn-
 
 210 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTOKS. 
 
 ing. It was his custom to receive from new pupils 
 at his own house the fees for the privilege of attend- 
 ing his lectures. "Whilst thus engaged one day, he left 
 a student in his consulting-room, and went into an 
 adjoining apartment for a fresh supply of admission 
 tickets. In a mirror the doctor saw the student rise 
 from his seat, and sweep into his pocket some guineas 
 from a heap of gold (the fees of other students) that 
 lay on the consulting-room table. Without saying 
 a word at the moment, Dr. Gregory returned, dated 
 the admission ticket, and gave it to the thief. He then 
 politely attended him to the door, and on the threshold 
 said to the young man, with deep emotion, "I saw 
 what you did just now. Keep the money. I know 
 what distress you must be in. But for God's sake 
 never do it again— it can never succeed." The pupil 
 implored Gregory to take back the money, but the 
 doctor said, "Your punisliment is this, you must keep 
 it— now you have taken it." The reproof had a salu- 
 tary effect. The youth turned out a good and honest 
 man. 
 
 An even better anecdote can be told of this good 
 physician's benevolence. A poor medical student, ill 
 of typhus fever, sent for him. The summons was at- 
 tended to, and the visit paid, when the invalid prof- 
 fered the customary guinea fee. Dr. Gregory turned 
 away, insulted and angry. "I beg your pardon. Dr. 
 Gregory," exclaimed the student, apologetically, "I 
 
 didn't know your rule. Dr. has always taken 
 
 one." "Oh," answered Gregory, "he has— has he? 
 Look you, then, my young friend; ask him to meel 
 me in consultation, and then offer him a fee; or stay 
 —offer me the fee first." The directions were duly
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 211 
 
 acted upon. The consultation took place, and the fee 
 was offered. "Sir," exclaimed the benevolent doctor. 
 ' ' do you mean to insult me ? Is there a professor who 
 would in this University degrade himself so far as to 
 take payment from one of his brotherhood— and a 
 junior?" The confusion of the man on whom this 
 reproof was really conferred can be imagined. He 
 had the decency, ere the day closed, to send back to 
 the student all the fees he had taken of him. 
 
 Amongst charitable physicians a high place must 
 be assigned to Brocklesby, of whom mention is made 
 in another part of these pages. An ardent Whig, he 
 was the friend of enthusiastic Tories as well as of the 
 members of his own body. Burke on the one hand, 
 and Johnson on the other, were amongst his intimate 
 associates, and experienced his beneiicenee. To the 
 latter he offered a hundred-a-year for life. And when 
 the Tory writer was struggling with the heavy bur- 
 den of increasing disease, he attended him with af- 
 fectionate solicitude, taking no fee for his services — 
 Dr. Heberden, Dr. Warren, Dr. Butler, and Mr. 
 Cruikshank the surgeon, displaying a similar liberal- 
 ity. It was Brocklesby who endeaTored to soothe the 
 mental agitation of the aged scholar's death-bed, by 
 repeating the passage from the Roman satirist, in 
 which occurs the line:— 
 
 "Fortem posce animum et mortis terrore carentem." 
 
 Burke's pun on Brocklesby 's name is a good in- 
 stance of the elaborate ingenuity with which the great 
 Whig orator adorned his conversation and his speeches. 
 Pre-eminent amongst the advertising quacks of 
 the day was Dr. Rock. It was therefore natural that 
 Brocklesby should express some surprise at being ac-
 
 212 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 costed by Burke as Dr. Rock, a title at once infamous 
 and ridiculous. "Don't be offended. Your name is 
 Rock," said Burke, with a laugh; "I'll prove it al- 
 gebraically: Brock — 'b^=Rock; or. Brock less b 
 makes Rock." Dr. Brocklesby, on the occasion of giv- 
 ing evidence in a trial, had the ill fortune to offend 
 the presiding judge, -who, amongst other prejudices 
 not uncommon in the legal profession, cherished a 
 lively contempt for medical evidence. "Well, gentle- 
 men of the jury," said the noble lawyer in his sum- 
 ming up, "what's the medical testimony? First we 
 have a Dr. Rocklesby or— Brocklesby. What does he 
 say? First of all he swears— he's a physician." 
 
 Abernethy is a by-word for rudeness and even bru- 
 tality of manner; but he was as tender and generous 
 as a man ought to be, as a man of great intelligence 
 usually is. The stories current about him are nearly 
 all fictions of the imagination; or, where they have 
 any foundation in fact, relate to events that occurred 
 long before the hero to whom they are tacked by anec- 
 dote-mongers had appeared on the stage. He was ec- 
 centric — but his eccentricities always took the direc- 
 tion of common sense; whereas the extravagances at- 
 tributed to him by popular gossip are frequently those 
 of a heartless buffoon. His time was precious, and 
 he rightly considered that his business was to set his 
 patients in the way of recovering their lost health— 
 not to listen to their fatuous prosings about their mal- 
 adies. He was therefore prompt and decided in check- 
 ing the egotistic garrulity of valetudinarians. This 
 candid expression of his dislike to unnecessary talk 
 had one good result. People who came to consult him 
 took care not to offend him by bootless prating. A
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 213 
 
 lady on one occasioa entered his consulting-room, 
 and put before him an injured finger, without saying 
 a word. In silence Abernethy dressed the wound, 
 when instantly and silently the lady put the usua) 
 fee on the table, and retired. In a few days she called 
 again, and offered the finger for inspection. "Bet- 
 ter?" asked the surgeon. "Better," answered the 
 lady, speaking to him for the first time. Not another 
 word followed during the rest of the interview. Three 
 or four similar visits were made, at the last of which 
 the patient held out her finger free from bandages and 
 perfectly healed. "Well?" was Abernethy 's mono- 
 syllabic inquiry. "Well," was the lady's equally brief 
 answer. "Upon my soul, madam," exclaimed the de- 
 lighted surgeon, "you are the most rational woman I 
 ever met with." 
 
 To curb his tongue, however, out of respect to 
 Abernethy 's humour, was an impossibility to John 
 Philpot Curran. Eight times Curran (personally un- 
 known to Abernethy) had called on the great sur- 
 geon; and eight times Abernethy had looked at the 
 orator's tongue (telling him, by-the-by, that it was 
 the most unclean and uttei'ly abominable tongue in 
 the world), had curtly advised him to drink less, and 
 not abuse his stomach with gormandizing, had taken 
 a guinea, and had bowed him out of the room. On 
 the ninth visit, just as he was about to be dismissed 
 in the same summary fashion, Curran, with a flash of 
 his dark eye, fixed the surgeon, and said— "Mr. 
 Abernethy, I have been here on eight different days, 
 and I have paid you eight different guineas ; but you 
 have never yet listened to the symptoms of my com- 
 plaint. I am resolved, sir, not to leave the room till
 
 214 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 you satisfy me by doing so." With a good-natured 
 laugh, Abernethy, half suspecting that he had to deal 
 with a madman, fell back in his chair and said— "Oh ! 
 very well, sir; I am ready to hear you out. Go on, 
 give me the whole— your birth, parentage, and educa- 
 tion. I wait your pleasure. Pray be as minute and 
 tedious as you can." With perfect gravity Curran 
 began — "Sir, my name is John Philpot Curran. My 
 parents were poor, but I believe honest people, of the 
 province of Munster, where also I was born, at New- 
 market, in the county of Cork, in the year one thou- 
 sand seven hundred and fifty. My father being em- 
 ployed to collect the rents of a Protestant gentleman 
 of small fortune, in that neighbourhood, procured my 
 admission into one of the Protestant free-schools, 
 where I obtained the first rudiments of my education. 
 I was next enabled to enter Trinity College, Dublin, 
 in the humble sphere of a sizar—" And so he went 
 steadily on, till he had thrown his auditor into convul- 
 sions of laughter. 
 
 Abernethy was very careful not to take fees from 
 patients if he suspected them to be in indigent circum- 
 stances. Mr. George Macilwain, in his instructive and 
 agreeable "Memoirs of John Abernethy," mentions a 
 case where an old officer of parsimonious habits, but 
 not of impoverished condition, could not induce Aber- 
 nethy to accept his fee, and consequently forbore 
 from again consulting him. On another occasion, 
 when a half-pay lieutenant wished to pay him for a 
 long and laborious attendance, Abernethy replied, 
 "Wait till you're a general; then come and see me, 
 and we'll talk about fees." To a gentleman of small 
 means who consulted him, after having in vain had
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 215 
 
 recourse to other surgeons, lie said — "Tour recovery 
 will be slow. If you don't feel much pain, depend 
 upon it you are gradually getting round; if you do 
 feel much pain, then come again, hut not else. I don't 
 want your money." To a hospital student (of great 
 promise and industry, but in narrow circumstances), 
 who became his dresser, he returned the customary fee 
 of sixty guineas, and requested him to expend them in 
 the purchase of books and securing other means of 
 improvement. To a poor widow lady (who consulted 
 him about her child), he, on saying good-bye in a 
 friendly letter, returned all the fees he had taken 
 from her imder the impression that she was in good 
 circumstances, and added £50 to the sum, begging her 
 to expend it in giving her child a daily ride in the 
 fresh air. He was often brusque and harsh, and more 
 than once was properly reproved for his hastiness and 
 want of consideration. 
 
 "I have heard of your rudeness before I came, sir," 
 one lady said, taking his prescription, "but I was not 
 prepared for such treatment. What am I to do with 
 this?" 
 
 "Anything you like," the surgeon roughly an- 
 swered. "Put it on the fire if you please." 
 
 Taking him at his word, the lady put her fee on 
 the table, and the prescription on the fire ; and making 
 a bow, left the room. Abernethy followed her into the 
 hall, apologizing, and begging her to take back the fee 
 or let him write another prescription; but the lady 
 would not yield her vantage-ground. 
 
 Of operations Abernethy had a most un-surgeon- 
 like horror— "like Cheseklen and Hunter, regarding 
 them as the reproach of the profession." "I hope,
 
 216 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 sir, it will not be long, ' ' said a poor woman, suffering 
 under the knife. "No, indeed," earnestly answered 
 Abernethy, "that would be too horrible." This 
 humanity, on a point on which surgeons are popu- 
 larly regarded as being devoid of feeling, is very gen- 
 eral in the profession. William Cooper (Sir Astley's 
 uncle) was, like Abernethy, a most tender-hearted 
 man. He was about to amputate a man's leg, in the 
 hospital theatre, when the poor fellow, terrified at the 
 display of instruments and apparatus, suddenly 
 jumped off the table, and hobbled away. The stu- 
 dents burst out laughing; and the surgeon, much 
 pleased at being excused from the performance of a 
 painful duty, exclaimed, "By God, I am glad he's 
 gone!" 
 
 The treatment which one poor fellow received from 
 Abernethy may at first sight seem to militate against 
 our high estimate of the surgeon's humanity, and dis- 
 like of inflicting physical pain. Dr. , an eminent 
 
 physician still living and conferring lustre on his pro- 
 fession, sent a favourite man-servant with a brief 
 note, running— "Dear Abernethy, Will you do me 
 the kindness to put a seton in this poor fellow's neck? 
 Yours sincerely, ." The man, who was accus- 
 tomed and encouraged to indulge in considerable 
 freedom of speech with his master's friends, not only 
 delivered the note to Abernethy, but added, in an ex- 
 planatory and confiding tone, "You see, sir, I don't 
 get better, and as master thinks I ought to have s 
 seton in my neck, I should be thankful if you'd put it 
 in for me." It is not at all improbable that Aber- 
 nethy resented the directions of master and man. 
 Anyhow he inquired into the invalid's case, and then
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 217 
 
 taking out his needles did as he was requested. The 
 operation was attended with a little pain, and the man 
 howled, as only a coward can howl, under the tempor- 
 ary inconvenience. "Oh! Lor' bless you! Oh, have 
 mercy on me! Yarra— yarra— yarr ! Oh, doctor- 
 doctor— you'll kill me!" In another minute the sur- 
 geon's work was accomplished, and the acute pain 
 having passed away, the man recovered his self-pos- 
 session and impudence. 
 
 "Oh, well, sir, I do hope, now that it's done, it'll dc 
 me good. I do hope that." 
 
 "But it won't do you a bit of good." 
 "What, sir, no good?" cried the fellow. 
 "No more good," replied Abernethy, "than if I 
 had spat upon it." 
 
 "Then, sir— why— oh, yarr! here's the pain again 
 —why did you do it?" 
 
 "Confound you, man!" answered the surgeon test- 
 ily. "Why did I do it?— why, didn't you ask me to 
 put a seton in your neck?" 
 
 Of course the surgical treatment employed by Aber- 
 nethy in this case was the right one; but he was so 
 nettled with the fellow's impudence and unmanly 
 lamentations, that he eovild not forbear playing off 
 upon him a barbarous jest. 
 
 If for this outbreak of vindictive humour the 
 reader is inclined to call Abernethy a savage, let his 
 gift of £50 to the widow lady, to pay for her sick 
 child 's carriage exercise, be remembered. Apropos of 
 £50, Dr. Wilson of Bath sent a present of that sum to 
 an indigent clergyman, against whom he had come in 
 the course of practice. The gentleman who had en- 
 gaged to convey the gift to the unfortunate priest
 
 21ii A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 said, "Well, then, I'll take the money to him to-mor- 
 row." "Oh, my dear sir," said the doctor, "take it 
 to him to-night. Only think of the importance to a 
 sick man of one good night's rest!" 
 
 Side by side with stories of the benevolence of "the 
 Faculty," piquant anecdotes of their stinginess might 
 be told. This writer knew formerly a grab-all-you- 
 can-get surgeon, who was entertaining a few profes- 
 sional brethren at a Sunday morning's breakfast, 
 when a patient was ushered into the ante-room of the 
 surgeon's bachelor chambers, and the surgeon him- 
 self was called away to the visitor. Unfortunately he 
 left the folding-doors between the breakfast-room and 
 the ante-room ajar, and his friends sitting in the for- 
 mer apartment overheard the following conversation : 
 
 "Well, my friend, what's the matter?"— the sur- 
 geon's voice. 
 
 The visitor's voice— "Plaze, yer honner, I'm a pore 
 Hirish labourer, but I can spill a bit, and I read o' 
 yer honner 's moighty foine cure in the midical jarnal 
 — the Lancet. And I've walked up twilve miles to 
 have yer honner cure me. My complaint is " 
 
 Surgeon's voice, contemptuously— "Oh, my good 
 man, you've made a mistake. You'd better go to 
 the druggist's shop nearest your home, and he'll do 
 for you all you want. You couldn't pay me as I 
 require to be paid." 
 
 Visitor's voice, proudly and triumphantly— "Och, 
 an' little ye know an Irish gintleman, dochter, if ye 
 think he'd be beholden to the best of you for a feavor. 
 Here's a bit o' gould — nocht liss nor a tin shillin' 
 piece, but I've saved it up for ye, and ye '11 heve the 
 whole, tho' its every blissed farthing I hev."
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 219 
 
 The surgeon's voice altered. The case was gone 
 into. The prescription was written. The poor Irish 
 drudge rose to go, when the surgeon, with that deli- 
 cate quantity of conscience that rogues always have 
 to make themselves comfortable upon, said, "Now, 
 you say you have no more money, my friend. Well, 
 the druggist will charge you eighteenpence for the 
 medicine I have ordered there. So there's eighteen- 
 pence for you out of your half-sovereign." 
 
 "We may add that this surgeon was then, at a mod- 
 erate computation, making three thousand a year. 
 We have heard of an Old Bailey barrister boasting 
 how he wrung the shillings (to convert the sovereigns 
 already paid \vith his brief into guineas) from the 
 grimed hands of a prisoner actually standing in the 
 dock for trial, ere he would engage to defend him. 
 But compared with this surgeon the man of the long 
 robe was a disinterested friend of the oppressed. 
 
 A better story yet of a surgeon who seized on his 
 
 fee like a hawk. A clergyman of shire, fell from 
 
 a branch of a high pear-tree to the grass-plot of the 
 little garden that surrounded his vicarage-house, and 
 sustained, besides being stunned, a compound fracture 
 of the right arm. His wife, a young and lovely crea- 
 ture, of a noble but poor family, to whom he had been 
 married only three or four years, was terribly 
 alarmed, and without regulating her conduct by con- 
 siderations of her pecuniary means, dispatched a tele- 
 graphic message to an eminent London surgeon. In 
 the course of three or four hours the surgeon made 
 his appearance, and set the broken limb. 
 
 "And what, sir," the young wife timidly asked of
 
 220 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 the surgeon, when he had come down-stairs into her 
 little drawing-room, "is your fee?" 
 
 "Oh, let's see — distance from town, hundred miles. 
 Yes. Then my fee is a hundred guineas!" 
 
 Turning deadly pale with fright (for the sum was 
 ten times the highest amount the poor girl had 
 thought of as a likely fee) she rose, and left the 
 room, saying, ' ' Will you he kind enough to wait for a 
 few minutes?" 
 
 Luckily her brother (like her husband, a clergy- 
 man, with very moderate preferment) was in the 
 house, and he soon made his appearance in the draw- 
 ing-room. "Sir," said he, addressing the operator, 
 "my sister has just now been telling me the embar- 
 rassment she is in, and I think it best to repeat her 
 story frankly. She is quite inexperienced in money 
 matters, and sent for you without ever asking what 
 the ordinary fee to so distinguished a surgeon as your- 
 self, for coming so far from London, might be. "Well, 
 sir, it is right you should know her circumstances. 
 My brother-in-law has no property but his small liv- 
 ing, which does not yield him more than £400 per 
 annum, and he has already two children. My sister 
 has no private fortune whatever, at present, and all 
 she has in prospect is the reversion of a trifling sum— 
 at a distant period. Poverty is the only stigma that 
 time has fixed upon my family. Now, sir, under the 
 circumstances, if professional etiquette would allow 
 of your reducing your fee to the straitened finances 
 of my sister, it really would— would be—" 
 
 "Oh, my dear sir," returned the surgeon, in a rich, 
 unctuous voice of benevolence, "pray don't think I'm 
 a shark. I am really deeply concerned for your poor
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 221 
 
 sister. As for my demand of a hundred guineas, 
 since it would be beyond her means to satisfy it, why, 
 my dear sir, I shall be only too delighted to be allowed 
 — to take a hundred pounds!" 
 
 The fee-loving propensities of doctors are well il- 
 lustrated by the admirable touches of Froissart's 
 notice of Guyllyam of Harseley, who was appointed 
 physician to Charles the Sixth, King of France, dur- 
 ing his derangement. The writer 's attention was first 
 called to Friossart's sketch of the reno\\Tied mad- 
 doctor by his friend Mr. Edgar— a gentleman whose 
 valuable contributions to historical literature have 
 endeared his name to both young and old. Of the 
 measures adopted by Guyllyam for the king's cure 
 the readers of Froissart are not particularly in- 
 formed; but it would appear, from the physician's 
 parting address to the "dukes of Orlyance, Berrey, 
 Burgoyne, and Burbone, ' ' that his system was, in its 
 enlightened humanity, not far behind that adopted at 
 the present day by Dr. ConoUy and Dr. Forbes 
 Winslow. But, however this may be, Guyllyam 's 
 labours must be regarded as not less consonant with 
 sound nosological views than those of the afflicted 
 monarch's courtiers, until it can be shown that his 
 treatment was worse than leaving Nature to herself. 
 "They," says Froissart, "that wei'e about the kynge 
 sente the kynge 's oif rynge to a town called Aresneche, 
 in the countie of Heynaulte, between Cambrey and 
 Valancennes, in the whiche towne there was a churche 
 parteyning to an Abbey of Saynt Waste in Arrasce 
 wherein there lyeth a saynte, called Saynt Acquayre, 
 of whom there is a shrine of sylver, which pylgrimage 
 is sought farre and nere for the malady of the fran-
 
 222 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS 
 
 sey; thyder was sent a man of waxc, representynge 
 the Frenche Kynge, and was humbly offred to the 
 Saynt, that he might be meane to God, to asswage 
 the kynge 's malady, and to sende him helthe. In 
 lykewise the kynge 's offrynge was sent to Saynt Her- 
 myer in Romayes, which saynt had meryte to heal the 
 fransey. And in lykewise offrynges were sent into 
 other places for ye same en tent." 
 
 The conclusion of Guyllyam's attendance is thus 
 described:— "Trewe it is this sycknesse that the kyng 
 took in the voyage towards Bretagne greatly abated 
 the ioye of the realme of France, and good cause why, 
 for when the heed is sicke the body canne have no 
 ioye. No man durste openly speke thereof, but kepte 
 it privy as moehe as might be, and it was couertly 
 kept fro the queene, for tyll she was delyuered and 
 churched she knewe nothynge thereof, which tyme 
 she had a doughter. The physician, myster Guyll- 
 yam, who had the chefe charge of healynge of the 
 kynge, was styll aboute hym, and was ryght dyligent 
 and well acquyted hymselfe, whereby he gate bothe 
 honour and profyte; for lytell and l}1;ell he brought 
 the kynge in good estate, and toke away the feuer and 
 the heate, and made hym to haue taste and appetyte 
 to eate and drinke, slepe and rest, and knowledge of 
 every thynge; howebeit, he was very feble, and lytell 
 and lytell he made the kynge to ryde a huntynge and 
 on hawkynge; and whanne tydynges was knowen 
 through France howe the kynge was well mended, and 
 had his memory again, every man was ioyfull and 
 thanked God. The kynge thus beyng at Crayell, de- 
 syred to se the quene his wyfe and the dolphyn his 
 Sonne; so the quene came thyder to hym, and the
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 223 
 
 chylde was brought thyder, the kynge made them 
 good chere, and so lytell and lytell, through the helpe 
 of God, the kynge reeouered his helthe. And when 
 mayster Guyllyam sawe the kynge in so good case he 
 was ryght ioyfull, as reasone was, for he hade done 
 a fayre cure, and so delyuered him to the dukes of 
 Orlyance, Berrey, Burgoyne, and Burbone, and sayd : 
 'My lordes, thanked be God, the kynge is nowe in 
 good state and helth, so I delyuer him, but beware 
 lette no mane dysplease hym, for as yet his spyrytes 
 be no fully ferme nor stable, but lytell and lytell he 
 shall waxe stronge; reasonable dysporte, rest, and 
 myrthe shall be moste profytable for hym; and 
 trouble hym as lytell as may be with any counsayles, 
 for he hath been sharpely handeled with a bote 
 malady.' Than it was consydred to retaygne this 
 mayster Guyllyam, and to gyve hym that he shulde 
 be content with all, whiche is the ende that all phy- 
 sicians requyre, to haue gyftes and rcwardes; he was 
 desyred to abyde styll about the kynge, but he ex- 
 cused hymselfe, and sayd howe he was an olde im- 
 potent man, and coulde note endure the maner of 
 courts, wherfore he desyred to returne into his owne 
 countrey. Whan the counsayle sawe he wolde none 
 otherwyse do, they gaue him leaue, and at his depart- 
 ing gave him a thousand crownes, and retayned hym 
 in wages with four horses whansover he wolde resorte 
 to the courte; howbeit, I beleve he never came there 
 after, for whan he retournd to the cytie of Laon, 
 there he contynued and dyed a ryche man : he left 
 behynde him a xxx thousand frankes. All his dayes 
 he was one of the greatest nygardes that ever was: 
 all his pleasure was to get good and to spende noth-
 
 224 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 ynge, for in his bowse he neuer spente past two souses 
 of Parys in a day, but wolde eate and drinke in other 
 mennes bowses, where as be myght get it. With this 
 rodde lyghtly all pliysicyons are heaten."* 
 
 The humane advice given by Guyllym countenances 
 the tradition that cards were invented for the amuse- 
 ment of his royal patient. 
 
 * Froissart's Chronicles, translated by John Bouchier, Lord 
 Bemers.
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 BLEEDING. 
 
 Fashion, capricious everywhere, is especially so in 
 surgery and medicine. Smoking we are now taught 
 to regard as a pernicious practice, to be abhorred 
 as James the First abhorred it. Yet Dr. Archer, and 
 Dr. Everard in his "Panacea, or a Universal Medi- 
 cine, being a discovery of the wonderful virtues of 
 Tobacco" (1659), warmly defended the habit, and for 
 long it was held by the highest authorities to be an 
 efficacious preservative against disease. What would 
 schoolboys now say to being flogged for not smoking ? 
 Yet Thomas Hearne, in his diary (1720-21) writes— 
 "Jan. 21, I have been told that in the last great 
 plague in London none that kept tobacconists' shops 
 had the plague. It is certain that smoking was looked 
 upon as a most excellent preservative. In so much, 
 that even children were obliged to smoak. And I re- 
 member that I heard formerly Tom Rogers, who was 
 yeoman beadle, say, that when he was that year, when 
 the plague raged, a school-boy at Eton, all the boys of 
 that school were obliged to smoak in the school every 
 morning, and that he was never whipped so much in 
 his life as he was one morning for not smoaking. ' ' 
 
 4-15
 
 226 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 Blood-letting, so long a popular remedy with physi- 
 cians, has, like tobaeeo-smoking for medicinal pur- 
 poses, fallen into disuse and contempt. From Hippo- 
 crates to Paracelsus, who, with characteristic daring, 
 raised some objections to the practice of venesection, 
 doctors were in the habit of drawing disease from the 
 body as vintners extract claret from a cask, in a ruddy 
 stream. In the feudal ages bleeding was in high 
 favour. Most of the abbeys had a "flebotomaria" or 
 "bleeding-house," in which the sacred inmates under- 
 went bleedings (or "minutions" as they were 
 termed) at stated periods of the year, to the strains of 
 psalmody. The brethren of the order of St. Victor 
 underwent five munitions annually— in September, 
 before Advent, before Lent, after Easter, and at Pen- 
 tecost. 
 
 There is a good general view of the superstitions 
 and customs connected with venesection, in " The Sal- 
 erne Schoole," a poem of which mention continually 
 occurs in the writings of our old physicians. The 
 poem commences with the following stanza:— 
 
 "The 'Salerne Schoole' doth by these lines impart 
 All health to England's king, and doth advise 
 From care his head to keepe, from wrath his hart. 
 Drink not much wine, sup light and soon arise. 
 When meat is gone long sitting breedeth smart; 
 And afternoon still waking keep your eies. 
 « * * * 
 
 Use three physicians still — first Doctor Quiet, 
 Next Doctor Merriman and Doctor Dyet. 
 
 "Of bleeding many profits grow and great 
 The spirits and sences are renew'd thereby, 
 
 Thogh these mend slowly by the strength of meate, 
 But these with wine restor'd are by-and-by; 
 
 By bleeding to the marrow commeth heate, 
 
 It maketh cleane your braine, releeves your eie. 
 
 It mends your appetite, restoreth sleepe.
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 227 
 
 Correcting humors that do waking keep; 
 
 All inward parts and sences also clearing, 
 
 It mends the voice, touch, smell, and taste, and hearing. 
 
 "Three special months, September, Aprill, May, 
 There are in which 'tis good to ope a vein — 
 
 In these three months the moon beares greatest sway, 
 Then old or young, that store of blood containe. 
 
 May bleed now, though some elder wizards say. 
 Some dales are ill in these, I hold it vaine; 
 
 September, Aprill, May have daies apeece. 
 
 That bleeding do forbid and eating geese, 
 
 And those are they, forsooth, of May the first, 
 
 Of t'other two, the last of each are worst. 
 
 "But yet those daies I graunt, and all the rest, 
 
 Haue in some cases just impediment. 
 As first, if nature be with cold opprest. 
 
 Or if the Region, He, or Continent, 
 Do scorch or freez, if stomach meat detest. 
 
 If Baths you lately did frequent, 
 Nor old, nor young, nor drinkers great are fit. 
 Nor in long sickness, nor in raging fit, 
 Or in this case, if you will venture bleeding. 
 The quantity must then be most exceeding. 
 
 "When you to bleed intend, you must prepare 
 
 Some needful things both after and before: 
 Warm water and sweet oyle both needfull are, 
 
 And wine the fainting spirits to restore; 
 Fine binding cloths of linnen, and beware 
 
 That all the morning you do sleepe no more; 
 Some gentle motion helpeth after bleeding, 
 And on light meals a spare and temperate feeding 
 To bleed doth cheare the pensive, and remove 
 The raging furies bred by burning love. 
 
 "Make your incision large and not too deep, 
 That blood have speedy yssue with the fume; 
 So that from sinnews you all hurt do keep. 
 
 Nor may you (as I toucht before) presume 
 In six ensuing houres at all to sleep, 
 
 Lest some slight bruise in sleepe cause an apostume; 
 Eat not of milke, or aught of milke compounded, 
 Nor let your brain with much drinke be confounded; 
 Eat no cold meats, for such the strength impayre, 
 And shun all misty and unwholesome ayre. 
 
 "Besides the former rules for such as pleases
 
 228 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 Of letting bloud to take more observation; 
 
 * * * * 
 
 To old, to young, both letting blood displeases. 
 
 By yeares and sickness make your computation. 
 First in the spring for quantity you shall 
 Of bloud take twice as much as in the fall; 
 In spring and summer let the right arme bloud, 
 The fall and winter for the left are good." 
 
 Wadd mentions an old surgical writer who dividea 
 his chapter on bleeding under such heads as the fol- 
 lowing:—!. What is to limit bleeding? 2. Qualities 
 of an able phlebotomist ; 3. Of the choice of instru- 
 ments; 4. Of the band and bolster; 5. Of porringers; 
 6. Circumstances to be considered at the bleeding of a 
 Prince. 
 
 Simon Harward's "Phlebotomy, or Treatise of Let- 
 ting of Bloud; fitly serving, as well for an advertise- 
 ment and remembrance to all well-minded chirurg- 
 ians, as well also to give a caveat generally to all men 
 to beware of the manifold dangers which may ensue 
 upon rash and unadvised letting of bloud," published 
 in the year IGOl, contains much interesting matter on 
 the subject of which it treats. But a yet more amus- 
 ing work is one that Nicholas Gyer wrote and pub- 
 lished in 1592, under the following title: — 
 
 "The English Phlebotomy; or, Method and Way of 
 Healing by Letting of Bloud." 
 
 On the title-page is a motto taken from the book of 
 Proverbs— "The horse- leach hath two daughters, 
 which erye, 'give, give.' " 
 
 The work affords some valuable insight into the 
 social status of the profession in the sixteenth cen- 
 tury. 
 
 In his dedicatory letter to Master Reginald Scot, 
 Esquire, the author says that phlebotomy "is greatly.
 
 •lOUl 1)()C-1<1K 
 
 Hig bloud to lake tn 
 
 * • 
 
 • fall and. winter tor the left ar 
 
 i.Aving::— 1. "W' imit bleeding 
 
 of 
 
 mc, 
 
 G. Circ. 
 
 Prince, 
 
 Simon Ha: '''<my, or, Trenti^. .f ^vt- 
 
 ting of Bloud; ell for ai 
 
 menf and rc-nii'u.l. • - 'I-immiu.;.,; 
 
 m:^.^S \'^V^P^^^ ^^'' T'^^ M^PI€A1. SociSTr 
 to beware of th. :.s<3^ London 
 upon r. 
 
 in the ; .. . - -, 
 the subject of whici 
 ing work is our 
 lished in 1592, i.„ .. 
 
 "TheEneUshPhl.i y of 
 
 II r 
 
 U,^ ...^ ..... 1..^.. f^'• bo"\ of 
 
 Proverbs— "The he , ers, 
 
 .,:■.■ ,.w. I. ...f-. ,..,;,,i.t into the 
 
 ■ocjal gtatuB of the ith cen- 
 
 !3 dedicf ^ ^'inald Scot, 
 
 :, the an "ia greatly
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 229 
 
 abused by vagabund horse-leacbes and travailing 
 tinkers, who find work almost in every village through 
 whom it comes (having in truth neither knowledge, 
 nor witte, nor honesty), the sober practitioner and 
 cunning chirurgian liveth basely, is despised, and ac- 
 counted a very abject amongst the vulgar sort." Of 
 the medical skill of Sir Thomas Eliot, and Drs. Bul- 
 leyn. Turner, Penie, and Coldwel, the author speaks 
 in terms of warm eulogy, but as for the tinkers afore- 
 mentioned, he would regard them as murderers, and 
 "truss them up at Tyborne." 
 
 Gyer, who indulges in continual reference to the 
 "Schola Salerni, " makes the following contribution 
 to the printed metrical literature on Venesection:— 
 
 "Certaine very old English verses, concerning the veines and 
 letting of bloud, taken out of a very auncient paper book 
 of Phisicke notes: — 
 "Ye maisters that usen bloud-letting, 
 And therewith getten your living; 
 Here may you learn wisdome good, 
 In what place ye shall let bloud. 
 For man, in woman, or in child, 
 For evils that he wood and wild. 
 There beene veynes thirty-and-two, 
 For wile is many, that must he undo. 
 Sixteene in the head full right, 
 And si.xteene beneath I you plight. 
 In what place they shall be found, 
 I shall you tell in what stound. 
 Beside the eares there beene two. 
 That on a child mote beene undoe; 
 To keep his head from evil turning 
 And from the scale withouten letting. 
 And two at the temples must bleede, 
 For stopping and aking I reedc; 
 And one is in the mid forehead. 
 For Lepry or for sawcefleme that mote bleede. 
 Above the nose forsooth is one, 
 That for the frensie mote be undone. 
 Also when the eien been sore. 
 For the red gowt evermore. 
 And two other be at the eien end.
 
 230 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 If thy bleeden them to amend. 
 
 And the arch that comes thorow smoking, 
 
 I you tell withouten leasing. 
 
 And at the whole of the throat, there beene two. 
 
 That Lepry and straight breath will undoo. 
 
 In the lips foure there beene. 
 
 Able to bleede I tell it be deene. 
 
 Two beneath, and above also 
 
 I tell thee there beene two. 
 
 For soreness of the mouth to bleede, 
 
 When it is flawne as I thee reede. 
 
 And two in the tongue withouten lie, 
 
 Mote bleede for the quinancie. 
 
 And when the tongue is aught aking, 
 
 For all manner of swelling. 
 
 Now have I tolde of certaine, 
 
 That longer for the head I weene, 
 
 And of as many I will say, 
 
 That else where there beene in fay. 
 
 In every arme there beene fife. 
 
 Full good to blede for man and wife, 
 
 Cephalica is one I wis. 
 
 The head veyne he cleaped is. 
 
 The body above and the head; 
 
 He cleanseth for evil and qued. 
 
 In the bought of the arme also. 
 
 An order there must he undoo ; 
 
 Basilica his name is. 
 
 Lowest he sitteth there y wis ; 
 
 Forsooth he cleanseth the liver aright. 
 
 And all other members beneath I twight. 
 
 The middle is between the two, 
 
 Corall he is clipped also 
 
 That veine cleanseth withouten doubt; 
 
 Above and beneath, within and without. 
 
 For Basilica that I of told, 
 
 One braunched veine ety up full bold. 
 
 To the thomb goeth that one braunch; 
 
 The cardiacle he wil staunch, 
 
 That there braunch full right goeth, 
 
 To the little finger withouten oth; 
 
 Saluatell is his name. 
 
 He is a veine of noble fame; 
 
 There is no veine that cleanseth so clene. 
 
 The stopping of the liver and splene. 
 
 Above the knuckles of the feet, 
 
 With two veines may thou meet. 
 
 Within sitteth Domestica, 
 
 And without Saluatica.
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 231 
 
 All the veines thee have I told, 
 
 That cleanseth man both yong and old. 
 
 If thou use them at thy need, 
 
 These foresaid evils they dare not dread; 
 
 So that our Lord be them helping, 
 
 That all hath in his governing. 
 
 So mote it be, so say all wee, 
 
 Amen, amen, for charitee." 
 
 To bleed on May-day is still the custom with ig- 
 norant people in a few remote districts. The system 
 of vernal minutions probably arose from that ten- 
 dency in most men to repeat an act (simply because 
 they have done it once) until it has become a habit, 
 and then superstitiously to persevere in the habity 
 simply because it is a habit. How many aged people 
 read certain antiquated journals, as they wear ex- 
 ploded garments, for no other reason than that they 
 read the same sort of literature, and wore the same 
 sort of habiliments, when young. To miss for once 
 the performance of a periodically recurring duty, 
 and so to break a series of achievements, would worry 
 many persons, as the intermitted post caused Dr. John- 
 son discomfort till he had returned and touched it. 
 As early as the sixteenth century, we have Gyer com- 
 bating the folly of people having recourse to periodic 
 venesections. "There cometh to my minde," he says, 
 "a common opinion among the ignorant people, which 
 do certainly beleeve that, if any person be let bloud 
 one yere, he must be let bloud every yere, or else he 
 is (I cannot tell, nor they neither) in how great dan- 
 ger. Which fonde opinion of theirs, whereof soever 
 the same sprong first, it is no more like to be true, 
 than if I should say: when a man hath received a 
 great wound by chaunce in any part of his body,
 
 232 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 whereby he loseth much bloud ; yet after it is healed, 
 he must needs have the like wounde againe there the 
 next yeare, to avoid as much bloud, or els he is in 
 daunger of great sickness, yea, and also in hazard to 
 lose his life." 
 
 The practitioners of phlebotomy, and the fees paid 
 for the operation, have differed widely. In the mid- 
 dle of the last century a woman used the lancet with 
 great benefit to her own pocket, if not to her pa- 
 tients, in Marshland, in the county of Norfolk. What 
 her charge was is unkno^\Ti, probably, however, only 
 a few pence. A distinguished personage of the same 
 period (Lord Radnor) had a great fondness for let- 
 ting the blood (at the point of an amicable lancet— 
 not a hostile sword) of his friends. But his Lord- 
 ship, far from accepting a fee, was willing to remun- 
 erate those who had the courage to submit to his sur- 
 gical care. Lord Chesterfield, wanting an additional 
 vote for a coming division in the House of Peers, 
 called on Lord Radnor, and, after a little introduc- 
 tory conversation, complained of a distressing head- 
 ache. 
 
 "You ought to lose blood then," said Lord Rad- 
 nor. 
 
 "Gad— do you indeed think so? Then, my dear 
 lord, do add to the service of your advice by perform- 
 ing the operation. I know you are a most skilful sur- 
 geon." 
 
 Delighted at the compliment, Lord Radnor in a 
 trice pulled out his lancet-case, and opened a vein in 
 his friend's arm. 
 
 "By-the-by," asked the patient, as his arm was
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 233 
 
 being adroitly bound up, "do you go down to the 
 House to-day?" 
 
 "I had not intended going," answered the noble 
 operator, "not being suflBciently informed on the 
 question which is to be debated; but you, that have 
 considered it, which side will you vote on?" 
 
 In reply, Lord Chesterfield unfolded his view of 
 the ease; and Lord Radnor was so delighted with 
 the reasoning of the man (who held his surgical 
 powers in such high estimation), that he forthwith 
 promised to support the wily earl's side in the di- 
 vision. 
 
 "I have shed my blood for the good of my coun- 
 try," said Lord Chesterfield that evening to a party 
 of friends, who, on hearing the story, were convulsed 
 with laughter. 
 
 Steele tells of a phlebotomist who advertised, for 
 the good of mankind, to bleed at "threepence per 
 head." Trade competition has, however, induced 
 practitioners to perform the operation even without 
 "the threepence." In the Stamford Mercury for 
 March 28, 1716, the following announcement was 
 made:— "Whereas the majority of apothecaries in 
 Boston have agreed to pull down the price of bleed- 
 ing to sixpence, let these certifie that Mr Clarke, 
 apothecary, will bleed anybody at his shop gratis." 
 
 The readers of Smollett may remember in one of 
 his novels the story of a gentleman, who, falling 
 down in his club in an apoplectic fit, was immediate- 
 ly made the subject of a bet between two friendly 
 bystanders. The odds were given and accepted 
 against the sick man's recovery, and the wager was 
 duly registered, when a suggestion was made by a
 
 234 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 more humane spectator that a surgeon ought to he 
 sent for. "Stay," exclaimed the good fellow inter- 
 ested in having a fatal result to the attack, "if he is 
 let hlood, or interfered with in any way, the bet 
 doesn't hold good." This humorous anecdote may be 
 found related as an actual occurrence in Horace Wal- 
 pole's works. It was doubtless one of the "good 
 stories" current in society, and was so completely 
 public property, that the novelist deemed himself 
 entitled to use it as he liked. In certain recent books 
 of "ana" the incident is fixed on Sheridan and the 
 Prince Regent, who are represented as the parties to 
 the bet. 
 
 Elsewhere mention has been made of a thousand 
 pounds ordered to be paid Sir Edmund King for 
 promptly bleeding Charles the Second. A nobler fee 
 was given by a French lady to a surgeon, who used 
 his lancet so clumsily that he cut an artery instead 
 of a vein, in consequence of which the lady died. 
 On her death-bed she, with charming humanity and 
 irony, made a will, bequeathing the operator a life- 
 annuity of eight hundred livres, on condition "that 
 he never again bled anybody so long as he lived." 
 In the Journal Encylopedique of Jan. 15, 1773, a 
 somewhat similar story is told of a Polish princess, 
 who lost her life in the same way. In her will, made 
 in extremis, there was the following clause:— "Con- 
 vinced of the injury that my unfortunate accident 
 will occasion to the unhappy surgeon who is the cause 
 of my death, I bequeath to him a life annuity of 
 two hundred ducats, secured by my estate, and for- 
 give his mistake from my heart : I wish this may in-
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 235 
 
 demnify him for the discredit which my sorrowful 
 catastrophe will bring upon him." 
 
 A famous French Marechal reproved the clumsi- 
 ness of a phlebotomist in a less gratifying manner. 
 Drawing himself away from the bungling operator, 
 just as the incision was about to be made, he displayed 
 an unwillingness to put himself further in the power 
 of a practitioner, who, in affixing the fillet, had given 
 him a blow with the elbow in the face. 
 
 My Lord, ' ' said the surgeon, ' ' it seems that you 
 are afraid of the bleeding. ' ' 
 
 "No," returned the Marechal, "not of the bleed- 
 ing—but the bleeder." 
 
 Monsieur, brother of Louis XIV., had an insupera- 
 ble aversion to the operation, however dexterous might 
 be the operator. At Marly, while at table with the 
 ICing, he was visited with such ominous symptoms, 
 that Fochon, the first physician of the court, said— 
 "You are threatened with apoplexy, and you cannot 
 be too soon blooded." 
 
 But the advice was not acted on, though the King 
 entreated that it might be complied with. 
 
 "You will find," said Louis, "what your obstinacy 
 will cost you. We shall be awoke some of these nights 
 to be told that you are dead." 
 
 The royal prediction, though not fulfilled to the 
 letter, soon proved substantially true. After a gay 
 supper at St. Cloud, Monsieur, just as he was about 
 to retire to bed, quitted the world. He was asking 
 M. de Ventadour for a glass of liqueur sent him by the 
 Duke of Savoy, when he dropped down dead. Any- 
 how Monsieur went out of this life thinking of 
 something nice. The Marquis of Hertford, with all
 
 236 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 his deliberation, could not do more. 
 
 The excess to which the practice of venesection waa 
 carried in the last century is almost beyond belief. 
 The Mercure de France (April, 1728, and December, 
 1729) gives the particulars of the illness of a woman 
 named Gignault. She was aged 2-1 years, was the 
 wife of an hussar, and resided at St. Sauge, a town 
 of the Nivernois. Under the direction of Monsieur 
 Theveneau, Seigneur de Palmery, M.D., of St. Sauge, 
 she was bled three thousand nine hundred and four 
 times in nine months {i. c. from the 6th of September, 
 1726, to the 3rd of June, 1727). By the 15th of July, 
 in the same year, the bleedings numbered four thou- 
 sand five hundred and fifty-five. From the 6th of 
 September, 1726, to the 1st of December, 1729, the 
 blood-lettings amounted to twenty-six thousand two 
 hundred and thirty. Did this really occur? Or was 
 the editor of the Mercure de France the original Bar- 
 on Munchausen ? 
 
 Such an account as the above ranges us on the side 
 
 of the German physician, who petitioned that the use 
 
 of the lancet might be made penal. Garth 's epigram 
 
 runs:— 
 
 "Like a pert skuller, one physician plies, 
 And all his art and all his skill he tries; 
 But two physicians, like a pair of oars, 
 Conduct you faster to the Stygian shores." 
 
 It would, however, be difficult to imagine a quicker 
 method to destroy human life than that pursued by 
 Monsieur Theveneau. A second adviser could hard- 
 ly have accelerated his movements, or increased his 
 determination not to leave his reduced patient a 
 chance of recovery. 
 
 "A rascal," exclaimed a stout, asthmatic old gen-
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 237 
 
 tlemau, to a well-dressed stranger on Holborn Hill— 
 "a rascal has stolen my hat. I tried to overtake him 
 —and I'm— so— out of breath— I can't stir another 
 inch." The stranger eyed the old gentleman, who 
 was panting and gasping for hard life, and then 
 pleasantly observing, "Then I'm hanged, old boy, if 
 I don't have your wig," scampered off, leaving his 
 victim bald as a baby. M. Theveneau was the two 
 thieves in one. He first brought his victim to a state 
 of helplessness, and then "carried out his little sys- 
 tem." It would be difficult to assign a proper pun- 
 ishment to such a stupid destroyer of human life. 
 Formerly, in the duchy of Wurtemberg, the public 
 executioner, after having sent out of the world a cer- 
 tain number of his fellow-creatures, was dignified 
 with the degree of doctor of p-hysic. It would not be 
 otherwise than well to confer on such murderous phy- 
 sicians as M. Theveneau the honorary rank of hang- 
 man extraordinary. 
 
 The incomes that have been realized by blood-letting 
 alone are not less than those which, in the present 
 day, are realized by the administration of chloroform. 
 An eminent phlebotomist, not very many years since, 
 made a thousand per annum by the lancet. 
 
 About blood-letting— by the lancet, leeches, and 
 cupping (or boxing, as it was called in Elizabeth's 
 days, and much later)— the curious can obtain many 
 interesting particulars in our old friend BuUeyn's 
 works. 
 
 To open a vein has for several generations been 
 looked on as beneath the dignity of the leading pro- 
 fessors of medicine or surgery. In some cases 
 phlebotomy was practised as a sort of specialty by
 
 238 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 surgeons of recognised character: but generally, at 
 the close of the last century, it was left, as a branch of 
 practice, in the hands of the apothecary. The occa- 
 sions on which physicians have of late years used the 
 lancet are so few, that it is almost a contribution to 
 medical gossip to bring up a new instance. One of 
 the more recent cases of a notability being let blood 
 by a physician, was when Sir Lucas Pepys, on Oct. 2, 
 1806, bled the Princess of Wales. On that daj'^, as 
 her Royal Highness was proceeding to Norbury Park, 
 to visit ]Mr. Locke, in a barouche drawn by four 
 horses, the carriage was upset at Leatherhead. Of 
 the two ladies who accompanied the Princess, one 
 (Lady Sheffield) escaped without a bruise, but the 
 other (Miss Cholmondley) was thrown to the ground 
 and killed on the spot. The injuries sustained by the 
 Princess were very slight, but Sir Lucas Pepys, 
 who luckily happened to be in the neighbourhood at 
 the time of the accident, bled her on his own respon- 
 sibility, and with his own hand.
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 EICHAED MEAD. 
 
 "Dr. Mead," observed Samuel Johnson, "lived 
 more in the broad sunshine of life than almost any 
 man. ' ' 
 
 Unquestionably the lot of Richard Mead was an 
 enviable one. "Without any high advantages of birtb 
 or fortune, or aristocratic connection, he achieved 
 a European popularity ; and in the capital of his own 
 country had a social position that has been surpassed 
 by no member of his profession. To the sunshine 
 in which Mead basked, the lexicographer contributed 
 a few rays; for when James published his Medicinal 
 Dictionary, the prefatory letter to Mead, affixed to 
 the work, was composed by Johnson in his most fe- 
 licitous style. 
 
 "Sir,— That the Medicinal Dictionary is dedicated 
 to you, is to be imputed only to your reputation for 
 superior skill in those sciences which I have endeav- 
 oured to explain and t« facilitate ; and you are, there-, 
 fore, to consider the address, if it be agreeable to you, 
 as one of the rewards of merit ; and, if otherwise, as 
 one of the inconveniences of eminence.
 
 240 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 "However you shall receive it, my design cannot 
 be disappointed; because this public appeal to your 
 judgment will show that I do not found my hopes 
 of approbation upon the ignorance of my readers, and 
 that I fear his censure least whose knowledge is the 
 most extensive. I am, sir, your most obedient humble 
 servant,— R. James." 
 
 But the sunshine did not come to Mead. He at- 
 tracted it. Polished, courtly, adroit, and of an equa- 
 ble temper, he seemed pleased with everybody, and 
 so made everybody pleased with him. Throughout 
 life he was a Whig— staunch and unswerving, not- 
 withstanding the charges brought against him by ob- 
 scure enemies of being a luke-warm supporter of the 
 constitutional, and a subservient worshipper of the 
 monarchical, party. And yet his intimate friends were 
 of the adverse faction. The overbearing, insolent, 
 prejudiced Radcliffe forgave him his scholarship and 
 politics, and did his utmost to advance his inter- 
 ests. 
 
 Mead's family was a respectable one in Buck- 
 inghamshire. His father was a theological writer, 
 and one of the two ministers of Stepney, but was 
 ejected from his preferment for non-conformity on 
 the 24th of August, 1662. Fortunately the dispos- 
 sessed clerk had a private fortune on which to main- 
 tain his fifteen children, of whom Richard, the elev- 
 enth, was born on the eleventh of August, 1673. The 
 first years of Richard's life were spent at Stepney, 
 where the Rev. Matthew Mead continued to minister 
 to a noncomformist congregation, keeping in house Mr. 
 John Nesbitt, afterwards a conspicuous nonconform- 
 ist minister, as tutor to his children. In 1683 or 1684,
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 241 
 
 it being suspected tliat Mr. Mead was concerned in 
 (certain designs against the government, the worthy 
 man had to quit his flock and escape from the emis- 
 saries of power to Holland. During the father's resi- 
 dence abroad, Richard was sent to a classical school 
 kept in Clerkenwell Close, by the nonconformist, 
 Thomas Singleton, who had formerly been second 
 master of Eton. It was under this gentleman's tu- 
 ition that the boy acquired a sound and extensive 
 knowledge of Latin and Greek. In 1690 he went to 
 Utrecht; and after studying there for three years, 
 proceeded to Leyden, where he studied botany and 
 physic. His academical studies concluded, he trav- 
 elled with David Polhill and Dr. Thomas Pellet, after- 
 wards President of the College of Physicians, through 
 Italy, stopping at Florence, Padua, Naples, and 
 Rome. In the middle of 1696 he returned to Lon- 
 don, with stores of information, refined manners, and 
 a degree of Doctor of Philosophy and Physic, con- 
 ferred on him at Padua, on the sixteenth of August, 
 1695. Settling at Stepney, and uniting himself close- 
 ly with the nonconformists, he commenced the prac- 
 tice of his profession, in which he rapidly advanced 
 to success. On the ninth of May, 1703, before he was 
 thirty years of age, he was chosen physician of St. 
 Thomas's Hospital, in Southwark. On obtaining this 
 preferment he took a house in Crutched Friars, and 
 year by year increased the sphere of his operations. 
 In 1711 he moved to Austin Friars, to the house just 
 vacated by the death of Dr. Howe. The consequences 
 of this step taught him the value, to a rising doctor, 
 of a house with a good reputation. Many of Howe's 
 patients had got into a habit of coming to the house
 
 242 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 as much as to the physician, and Mead was only too 
 glad to feel their pulses and flatter them into good 
 humour, sound health, and the laudable custom of 
 paying double fees. He was appointed Lecturer on 
 Anatomy to the Company of Barbers and Surgeons. 
 
 He kept himself well before the public, as an au- 
 thor, with his "Mechanical Account of Poisons," pub- 
 lished in 1702; and his treatise (1704), "De Imperio 
 Solis et Lunse in Corpora humana, et Morbis inde 
 oriundis." He became a member of the Royal So- 
 ciety; and, in 1707, he received his M.D. diploma 
 from Oxford, and his admission to the fellowship of 
 the College of Physicians. 
 
 It has already been stated how Radcliffe engaged 
 to introduce Mead to his patients. When Queen 
 Anne was on her death-bed, the young physician was 
 of importance enough to be summoned to the couch 
 of dying royalty. The physicians who surrounded 
 the expiring queen were afraid to say what they all 
 knew. The Jacobites wanted to gain time, to push 
 off the announcement of the queen's state to the last 
 possible moment, so that the Hanoverians should 
 not be able to take steps for quietly securing the suc- 
 cession which they desired. Mead, however, was too 
 earnest a "Whig to sacrifice what he believed to be the 
 true interests of the country to any considerations of 
 the private advantage that might be derived by cur- 
 rying favour with the Tory magnates, who, hovering 
 about the Court, were debating how they could best 
 make their game. Possibly his hopes emboldened him 
 to speak the truth. Anyhow, he declared, on his first 
 visit, that the queen would not live an hour. Charles 
 Ford, writing to Swift, said, "This morning when
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 243 
 
 I went there before nine, they told me she was just 
 expiring. That account continued above three hours, 
 and a report was carried to town that she was actually 
 dead. She was not prayed for even in her own chap- 
 el at St. James's; and, what is more infamous (I) 
 stocks arose three per cent, upon it in the city. Be- 
 fore I came away, she had recovered a warmth in 
 her breast and one of her arms; and all the doctors 
 agreed she would, in all probability, hold out till to- 
 morrow — except Mead, who pronounced, several hours 
 before, she could not live two minutes, and seems un- 
 easy it did not happen so." This was the tone uni- 
 versally adopted by the Jacobites. According to them, 
 poor Queen Anne had hard measure dealt out to her 
 by her physicians; — the Tory Radcliffe negatively 
 murdered her by not saving her ; the Whig Mead ear- 
 nestly desired her death. Certainly the Jacobites 
 had no reason to speak well of Mead, for the ready 
 courage with which he stated the queen's demise to 
 be at hand gave a disastrous blow to their case, and 
 did much to seat George I. quietly on the throne. 
 Miss Strickland observes, "It has always been con- 
 sidered that the prompt boldness of this political phy- 
 sician (i. e. Mead) occasioned the peaceable procla- 
 mation of George I. The queen's demise in one hour 
 was confidently predicted by her Whig doctor. He 
 was often taunted afterwards with the chagrin his 
 countenance expressed when the royal patient, on 
 being again blooded, recovered her speech and 
 senses. ' ' 
 
 On the death of Radcliffe, the best part of his em- 
 pire descended to Mead, who, having already reaped 
 the benefit of occupying the nest which Howe va-
 
 244 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 catad at the summons of death, wisely resolved to 
 take possession of Radcliffe's vacated mansion in 
 Bloomsbury Square. This removal from Austin 
 Friars to the more fashionable quarter of town was 
 effected without delay. Indeed, Radcliffe was not 
 buried when Mead entered his house. As his practice 
 lay now more in the "West than the East end of town, 
 the prosperous physician resigned his appointment 
 at St. Thomas's, and, receiving the thanks of the grand 
 committee for his services, was presented with the 
 staff of a governor of the charity. Radcliffe's prac- 
 tice and house were not the only possessions of that 
 sagacious practitioner which Mead contrived to ac- 
 quire. Into his hands also passed the doctor's gold- 
 headed cane of ofSce. This wand became the proper- 
 ty successively of Radcliffe, Askew, Pitcairn, and 
 Baillie, the arms of all which celebrated physicians 
 are engraved on its head. On the death of Dr. Baillie, 
 Mrs. Baillie presented the cane, as an interesting pro- 
 fessional relic, to the College of Physicians, in the li- 
 brary of which august and learned body it is now pre- 
 served. Some years since the late respected Dr. Mac- 
 michael made the adventures of this stick the subject 
 of an agreeable little book, which was published undei* 
 the title of "The Gold-Headed Cane." 
 
 The largest income Mead ever made in one year 
 was £7000. For several years he received between 
 £5000 and £6000 per annum. When the great de- 
 preciation of the currency is taken into account, one 
 may affirm, with little fear of contradiction, that no 
 living physician is at the present time earning as 
 much. Mead, however, made his income without any 
 avaricious or stingy practices. In every respect he
 
 i. BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 245 
 
 displayed that generosity which has for generations 
 been the glorious distinction of his profession. At 
 home his fee was a guinea. When he visited a pa- 
 tient of good rank and condition, in consultation or 
 otherwise, he expected to have two guineas, or even 
 more. But to the apothecaries who waited on him 
 at his coffee-houses, he charged (like Radcliffe) only 
 half-a-guinea for prescriptions, written without see- 
 ing the patient. His evening coffee-house was Bat- 
 son's, frequented by the profession even down to Sir 
 "William Blizard; and in the forenoons he received 
 apothecaries at Tom's, near Covent Garden. In 
 Mead's time the clergy, as a body, were unable to pay 
 the demands which professional etiquette would have 
 required the physician to make on them if he had 
 any. It is still the humane custom of physicians and 
 eminent surgeons not to accept fees from curates, 
 half-pay ofQcers in the army and navy, and men of 
 letters; and no one has more reason than the writer 
 of these pages to feel grateful for the delicacy with 
 which they act on this rule, and the benevolent zeal 
 with which they seem anxious to drown the sense ol 
 obligation (which a gratuitous patient necessarily ex- 
 periences) in increased attention and kindness, as if 
 their good deeds were a peculiar source of pleasure 
 to themselves. 
 
 But in the last century the beneficed clergy were in 
 a very different pecuniary condition from that which 
 they at present enjoy. Till the Tithe Communication 
 Act passed, the parson (unless he was a sharp man 
 of business, shrewd and unscrupulous as a horse-job- 
 ber, and ready to have an unintermittent war with 
 his parishioners) never received anj'thing like what
 
 246 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 he was entitled to of the produce of the land. Often 
 he did not get half his dues; and even when he did 
 obtaiij a fair tithe, liis receipts were small compared 
 with what his successor in the present generation 
 has from the same source. Agriculture was then in 
 such a backward state, and land was so ill-cultivated, 
 that the rector of a large parish of good land was 
 justly entitled only to a sum that a modern rent- 
 charge holder would regard with painful surprise if 
 told that he might take nothing more for his share in 
 the fruits of the earth. The beneficed clergy were 
 a comparatively poor body. The curate perhaps was 
 not in a worse state than he is in now, for the simple 
 reason that a worse can hardly be. To add to the 
 impoverished appearance of the clerical profession, 
 there existed in every capital and country town the 
 luckless nonconforming clergy, bereft of the emolu- 
 ments of their vocation, and often reduced to a con- 
 dition scarcely— if at all— removed from begging. 
 The title of Reverend was still affixed to their names 
 —their costume was still that of their order— and' 
 by large masses of the people they were regarded with 
 more reverence and affection than the well-fed Vicars 
 of Bray, who, with mealy mouths and elastic con- 
 sciences, saw only the butter on one side of their 
 bread, and not the dirt on the other. Archbishop 
 Sancroft died on his little farm in Suffolk, having 
 for years subsisted on about fifty pounds a-year. 
 "When such was the fate of an Archbishop of Canter- 
 bury, the straits to which the ejected vicars or dis- 
 abled curates were brought can be imagined— but 
 scarcely described. In the great towns these unfor- 
 tunate gentlemen swarmed, gaining a wretched sub-
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 247 
 
 sistence as ushers in schools, tutors, secretaries— not 
 unfrequently as domestic servants. 
 
 In such a condition of the established church, the 
 rule of never taking money from "the cloth" was 
 almost invariably observed by the members of the 
 medical profession. 
 
 Mead once— and only once — departed from this 
 rule. Mr. Robert Leake, a fellow of St. John's Col- 
 lege, Cambridge, called on the doctor and sought his 
 advice. The patient's ill-health had been in a great 
 degree effected by doctoring himself — that is, exhibit- 
 ing, according to his own notions of medical practice,' 
 some of Dr. Cheyne's prescriptions. 
 
 "Do as I tell you," said Mead, "and I'll set you up 
 again. ' ' 
 
 For a time Leake cheerfully obeyed; but soon— al- 
 though his case was progressing most favourably— he 
 had the bad taste to suggest that a recurrence to some 
 of Cheyne's prescriptions would be advisable. Mead, 
 of course, was not pleased with such folly, but con- 
 tinued his attendance till his patient's health was re- 
 stored. Leake then went through the form of asking 
 to what amount he was in the physician's debt. 
 
 "Sir," answered Mead, "I have never yet, in the 
 whole course of my practice, taken or demanded the 
 least fee from any clergyman; but, since you have 
 been pleased, contrary to what I have met with in any 
 other gentleman of your profession, to prescribe to me 
 rather than follow my prescriptions, when you had 
 committed the care of your recovery to my skill and 
 trust, you must not take it amiss, nor will, I hope, 
 think it unfair, if I demand ten guineas of you." 
 
 With much reluctance, and a wry face, Leake paid
 
 248 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 the money, but the doctor subsequently returned him 
 more than half of it. 
 
 Of course Mead did not gain the prize of his pro- 
 fession without a few rough contests with competitors 
 in the race of honour. "Woodward, the Professor of 
 Physic at the Gresham College, attacked him with 
 bitterness in his "State of Physic and Diseases," and 
 made himself even more obnoxious in his personal de- 
 meanour to him in public. Some insult offered to him 
 by Woodward so infuriated Mead, that the latter drew 
 his sword and ordered his adversary to defend him- 
 self. The duel terminated in Mead's favour, as far 
 as martial prowess was concerned, for he disarmed 
 "Woodward and ordered him to beg for his life. 
 
 "Never, till I am your patient," answered "Wood- 
 ward, happily. 
 
 The memory of this /Esculapian battle is preserved 
 in an engraving in Ward's "Lives of the Gresham 
 Professors." The picture is a view of Gresham Street 
 College, with a gateway entering from Broad Street, 
 marked 25, within which Woodward is represented 
 as kneeling and submissively yielding his sword to 
 Mead. Ward was one of Mead's warmest friends, 
 and certainly on this occasion displayed his friend- 
 ship in a very graceful and effective manner. 
 
 The doctor would gladly have never had to deal 
 with a more dangerous antagonist than Woodward; 
 but the time came when he had to run for safety, and 
 that too from a woman. He was in attendance by the 
 bed-side of the Duke of Marlborough, who was suf- 
 fering from indisposition, when her Grace— the cele- 
 brated Sarah— flew into a violent rage at some remark 
 which the physician had dared to make. She even
 
 A BOOK ^VBOUT DOCTORS. 249 
 
 threatened him with personal chastisement, and was 
 proceeding to carry out her menaces, when Mead, 
 recognizing the peril of his position, turned and 
 fled from the room. The duchess ran after him, and, 
 pursuing him down the grand staircase, vowed she 
 would pull off his wig, and dash it in his face. The 
 doctor luckily was a better runner than her Grace, 
 and escaped. 
 
 Envj' is the shadow of success, and detraction is 
 the echo of its voice. A host of pamphleteers, with 
 just courage enough to print lies, to which they had 
 not the spirit to affix their obscure names, hissed 
 their malignity at the fortimate doctor. The members 
 of tlie Faculty, accustomed though they are to the 
 jealousies and animosities which are important under- 
 currents in every fraternity, would in these days 
 scarcely credit the accounts which could be given ot 
 the coarseness and baseness of the anonymous rascals 
 who lampooned Mead. It is painful to know that 
 some of the worst offenders were themselves phy- 
 sicians. In 1722, appeared "The Art of getting into 
 Practice in Physick, here at present in London. Id 
 a letter to that very ingenious and most learned Phy- 
 sician (Lately come to Town), Dr Timothy Van- 
 bustle, M.D.— A.B.C.," the writer of this satire at- 
 tributes to the dead Radcliffe the practices to which 
 Hannes was accused of having resorted. "Thus the 
 
 famous R fe, 'tis said, on his first arrival, had 
 
 half the porters in town employed to call for him at 
 all the coffee-houses and public places, so that his 
 name might be known." The sting of the publica- 
 tion, the authorship of which by a strange error has 
 been attributed to Mead, is throughout directed at
 
 250 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 him. It is more than suggested that he, to creep up 
 into practice, had associated in early life with "wom- 
 en, midwives, nurses, and apothecaries," and that he 
 had interested motives for being very gentle ' ' in tak^ 
 ing fees of the clergy, of whatsoever sect or opinion." 
 Here is a stab that the reader of the foregoing pages 
 can appreciate: "As to Nostrums, I cannot much 
 encourage you to trade in these if you would propose 
 to get universal business ; for though they may serve 
 to make you known at first, particularly in such a 
 way, yet it will not promote general business, but on 
 the contrary. I rather therefore would advise you 
 to court, flatter, and chime in with the chief in Play, 
 and luckily a noted practitioner shotdd drop, do you 
 be as sure and ready to get into his house as he is into 
 his coffin.'' 
 
 More scandal of this sort may be found in "An 
 account of a Strange and Wonderful Dream. Dedi- 
 cated to Doctor M— d," published 1719. It is insin- 
 uated in the dream that his Latin writings were not 
 his own composition. The troubles of his domestic 
 life are dragged before the public. "It unluckily 
 happen 'd that, just as Mulso discovered his wife's 
 intrigues, his effects were seized on by his creditors, 
 his chariot and horses were sold, and he himself re- 
 duced to the state of a foot-quack. In this condition 
 he had continued to this day, had he not been re- 
 trieved from poverty and contempt by the recommen- 
 dation of a physician of great note. Upon this he 
 spruced up, looked gay, roU'd about in a chariot. At 
 this time he fell ill of the scrihendi cacoethes, and, by 
 the help of two mathematicians and an usher, was 
 delivered of a book in a learned language."
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 251 
 
 Mead did not long occupy Radcliffe's house in 
 Bloomsbury Square. In 1719 he moved to the impos- 
 ing residence in Ormond Street, to which in 1732 he 
 added a gallery for the accommodation of his library 
 and museum. 
 
 Of ilead's various contributions to medical litera- 
 ture it is of course not the province of this work to 
 speak critically. The Medica Sacra is a literary cu- 
 riosity, and so is the doctor's paper published in 1735, 
 in which he recommends a compound of pepper and 
 lichen cinereus terrestris as a specific against the bite 
 of a mad dog. Dampier, the traveller, used this lichen 
 for the same purpose. The reader need not be re- 
 minded of the popularity attained by this antidote, 
 dividing the public favour, as it did, with Dr. 
 James's Turpeth Mineral, and the Musk and Cinna- 
 bar. 
 
 Mead was married twice. His first wife was Ruth 
 Marsh, the daughter of a pious London tradesman. 
 She died in 1719, twenty years after her marriage, 
 leaving behind her four children— three daughters, 
 who all married weU, and one son, William Mead. 
 If any reliance is to be placed on the statements of 
 the lampoon writers, the doctor was by no means for- 
 tunate in this union. He married, however, a second 
 time— taking for his bride, when he was more than 
 fifty years old, Anne, the daughter of Sir Rowland 
 Alston, of Odell, a Bedfordshire baronet. 
 
 One of the pleasant episodes in Mead's life is his 
 conduct towards his dear friend and political an- 
 tagonist, Freind— the Jacobite physician, and Mem- 
 ber of Parliament for Launceston. On suspicion of 
 being concerned in the Atterbury plot, Freind was
 
 252 A BOOK ABOUa DOCTORS. 
 
 committed to the Tower. During his confinement, 
 that lasted some months, he employed himself calmly 
 on the composition of a Latin letter, "On certain 
 kinds of Small-Pox," and the "History of Physic, 
 from the time of Galen to the Commencement of the 
 Sixteenth Century." Mead busied himself to obtain 
 his friend's release; and, being called to attend Sir 
 Robert Walpole, pleaded so forcibly for the prisoner, 
 that the minister allowed him to be discharged on 
 bail— his sureties being Dr. Mead, Dr. Ilulse, Dr. 
 Levet, and Dr. Hale. To celebrate the termination of 
 Freind 's captivity. Mead called together on a sudden 
 a large party in Ormond Street, composed of men of 
 all shades of opinion. Just as Freind was about to 
 take his leave for his own residence in Albemarle 
 Street, accompanied by Arbuthnot, who resided in 
 Cork Street, Burlington Gardens, Mead took him 
 aside into a private room, and presented him with 
 a case containing the fees he had received from the 
 Tory doctor's patients during his imprisonment. 
 They amounted to no less than five thousand guin- 
 eas. 
 
 Mead's style of living was very liberal. From the 
 outset to the close of his career he was the companion 
 of men whom it was an honour to treat hospitably. 
 He was the friend of Pope, Newton, and Bentley. His 
 doors were always open to every visitor who came 
 from a foreign country to these shores, with any claim 
 whatever on the goodwill of society. To be at the 
 same time a patron of the arts, and a liberal enter- 
 tainer of many guests, demands no ordinary expendi- 
 ture. Mead died comparatively poor. The sale of his 
 library, pictures, statues, and curiosities, realized
 
 A BOOK ABOTJT DOCTORS. 253 
 
 about £16,000, and he had other property amounting 
 to about £35,000 ; but, after the pajinent of his debts, 
 not more than £20,000 remained to be divided amongst 
 his four children. His only son, however, was amply 
 provided for, having entered into the possession of 
 £30,000 under wall of Dr. Mead's unmarried brother 
 Samuel, an eminent barrister, and a Commissioner of 
 the Customs. 
 
 Fortunate beyond fortunate men, Mead had the 
 great misfortune of living too long. His sight failed, 
 and his powers underwent that gradual decay which 
 is the saddest of all possible conclusions to a vigor- 
 ous and dignified existence. Stories might be ferreted 
 up of the indignities to which he submitted at the 
 hands of a domineering valet. Long, however, before 
 he sunk into second childhood, he excited the ridicule 
 of the town by his vanity, and absurd pretensions to 
 be a lady-killer. The extravagances of his amorous 
 senility were whispered about; and, eventually, some 
 hateful fellow seized hold of the unpleasant rumours, 
 and published them in a scandalous novelette, called 
 "The Cornutor of Seventy-five; being a genuine nar- 
 rative of the Life, Adventures, and Amours of Don 
 Eicardo Eoneywater, Fellow of the Royal College of 
 Physicians at Madrid, Salamanca, and Toledo, and 
 President of the Academy of Sciences in Lapland ; 
 containing, amongst other most diverting particulars, 
 
 his intrigue with Donna Maria W s, of Via Vin- 
 
 culosa— a?!£fZice, Fetter Lane— in the city of Madrid. 
 Written, originally, in Spanish, by the Author of Don 
 Quixot, and translated into English by a Graduate of 
 the College of ]Mecca, in Arabia." The "Puella fab- 
 ri," as Greenfield designates the damsel who warmed
 
 254 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 the doctor's aged heart, was the daughter of a black- 
 smith in Fetter Lane; and to please her, Head- 
 long past threescore years and ten— went to Paris, 
 and learnt dancing, under Dupre, giving as an ex- 
 cuse that his health needed active muscular exer- 
 cise. 
 
 Dr. Mead died on February 16, 1754, in his eighty- 
 first year. He was buried in the Temple Church, by- 
 the side of his brother Samuel. His memory has 
 been honoured with busts and inscriptions— in West- 
 minster Abbey, and the College of Physicians. 
 
 Mead was not the first of his name to enter the 
 medical profession. William George Meade was an 
 eminent physician at Tunbridge Wells; and dying 
 there on the 4th of November, 1652, was buried at 
 Ware, in Hertfordshire. This gentleman left £5 a- 
 year for ever to the poor ; but he is more remarkable 
 for longevity than generosity. He died at the extra- 
 ordinary age of 148 years and nine months. This 
 is one of the most astonishing instances of longevity 
 on record. Old Parr, dying at 152 years of age, ex- 
 ceeded it only by 4 years. The celebrated Countess 
 Desmond was some years more than 140 at the time 
 of her death. Henry Read, minister of Hardwicke, 
 Co. Northampton, numbered only 132 years ; and the 
 Lancashire woman (the Cricket of the Hedge) did 
 not outlive the 141st year. But all these ages become 
 insignificant when put by the side of the 169 years 
 to which Henry Jenkins protracted his earthly so- 
 journ-
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 IMAGINATION AS A REMEDIAL POWEB. 
 
 Astrology, alchemy, the once general belief in the 
 healing effects of the royal touch, the use of charma 
 and amulets, and mesmerism, are only various exhibi- 
 tions of one superstition, having for their essence the 
 same little grain of truth, and for their outward ex- 
 pression different forms of error. Disconnected as 
 they appear at first sight, a brief examination dis- 
 covers the common features which prove them to be 
 of one family. By turns they have— each of them— 
 given humiliating evidence of the irrational extrava- 
 gances that reasoning creatures are capable of commit- 
 ting; and each of them, also, has conferred some 
 benefits on mankind. The gibberish of Geber, and 
 the alchemists who preceded and followed him, led to 
 the study of chemistry, the utility and importance of 
 which science we have only begun rightly to appre- 
 ciate ; and a curiosity about the foolishness of astrolo- 
 gy led Sir Isaac Newton to his astronomical inquiries. 
 Lord Bacon says— "The sons of chemistry, while they 
 are busy seeking the hidden gold— whether real or 
 not— have by turning over and trying, brought much
 
 256 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 profit and convenience to mankind." And if the de- 
 lusions of talismans, amulets, and charms, and the im- 
 postures of Mesmer, have had no greater consequences, 
 they have at least afforded, to the observant and re- 
 flective, much valuable instruction with regard to the 
 constitution of the human mind. 
 
 In the history of these superstitions we have to 
 consider the universal faith which men in all ages 
 have entertained in planetary influence, and which, 
 so long as day and night, and the moon and tides en- 
 dure, few will be found so ignorant or so insensible as 
 to question. The grand end of alchemy was to trans- 
 mute the base metals into gold ; and it proposed to 
 achieve this by obtaining possession of the different 
 fires transmitted by the heavenly bodies to our planet, 
 and subjecting, according to a mysterious system, the 
 comparatively worthless substances of the mineral 
 world to the forces of these fires. 
 
 "Now," says Paracelsus, in his "Secrets of Al- 
 chemy," "we come to speake of a manifold spirit or 
 fire, which is the cause of variety and diversity of 
 creatures, so that there cannot one be found right like 
 another, and the same in every part; as it may be 
 seen in metals, of which there is none which hath an- 
 other like itself; the Sun produceth his gold; the 
 Moon produceth another metal far different, to wit, 
 silver; Alars another, that is to say, iron; Jupiter pro- 
 duceth another kind of metal to wit, tin; Venus an- 
 other, which is copper ; and Saturn another kind, that 
 is to say, lead : so that they are all unlike, and several 
 one from another; the same appeareth to be as well 
 amongst men as all other creatures, the cause where- 
 of is the multiplicity of fire Where
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 257 
 
 there is no great mixture of the elements, the Sun 
 bringeth forth; where it is a little more thick, the 
 Moon; where more gross, Venus; and thus, according 
 to the diversity of mixtures, are produced divers met- 
 als ; so that no metal appeared in the same mine like 
 another. ' ' 
 
 This, which is an extract from Turner's translation 
 of Paracelsus 's "Secrets of Alchemy" (published in 
 1655), may be taken as a fair sample of the jargon of 
 alchemy. 
 
 The same faith in planetary influence was the 
 grand feature of astrology, which regarded all nat- 
 ural phenomena as the effects of the stars acting upon 
 the earth. Diseases of all kinds were referable to 
 the heavenly bodies ; and so, also, were the properties 
 of those herbs or other objects which were believed 
 in as remedial agents. In ancient medicine, phar- 
 macy was at one period only the application of the 
 dreams of astrology to the vegetable world. The herb 
 which put an ague or madness to flight, did so by rea- 
 son of a mystic power imparted to it by a particular 
 constellation, the outward signs of which quality were 
 to be found in its colour or aspect. Indeed, it was not 
 enough that "a simple," impregnated with curative 
 power by heavenly beams, should be culled ; but it had 
 to be culled at a particular period of the year, at a 
 particular day of the month, even at a particular 
 hour, when the irradiating source of its efficacy was 
 supposed to be affecting it with a peculiar force ; and, 
 moreover, it had to be removed from the ground or 
 the stem on which it grew with a particular instru- 
 ment or gesture of the body— a disregard of which 
 forms would have obviated the kindly influence of 
 
 4—17
 
 258 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 the particular star, without whose benignant aid the 
 physician and the drug were alike powerless. 
 
 Medical practitioners smile now at the mention of 
 these absurdities. But many of them are ignorant 
 that they, in their daily practice, help to perpetuate 
 the observance of one of these ridiculed forms. The 
 sign which every member of the Faculty puts before 
 his prescriptions, and which is very generally inter- 
 preted as an abbreviation for Recipe, is but the as- 
 trological symbol of Jupiter. 
 
 It was on this principle that a belief became preva- 
 lent that certain objects, either of natural formation 
 or constructed by the instruments of art, had the pow- 
 er of counteracting noxious agents. An intimate con- 
 nection was supposed to exist between the form or 
 colour of an external substance and the use to which 
 it ought to be put. Red objects had a mysterious in- 
 fluence on inflammatory diseases ; and yellow ones had 
 a similar power on those who were discoloured with 
 jaundice. Edward II. 's physician, John of Gaddes- 
 den, informs us, "When the son of the renowned 
 King of England lay sick of the small-pox, I took 
 care that everything round the bed should be of a red 
 colour, which succeeded so completely that the Prince 
 was restored to perfect health without a vestige of a 
 pustule remaining." Even as late as 1765, this was 
 put in practice to the Emperor Francis I. The ear- 
 liest talismans were natural objects, with a more or 
 less striking external character, imagined to have been 
 impressed upon them by the planets of whose influ- 
 ence they were especially susceptible, and of whose 
 virtues they were beyond all other substances the re- 
 cipients. The amulet (which differs little from the
 
 ig were 
 
 daily pract 
 
 which is very ^ 
 •■ Recip*. 
 
 An Accident 
 
 •iXa. ToK. ■£ 

 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 259 
 
 talisman, save in that it must be worn suspended upon 
 the person it is to protect, whereas the talisman might 
 be kept by its fortunate possessor locked up in his 
 treasure-house ) had a like origin. 
 
 But when once a superstitious regard was paid to 
 the external marks of a natural object, it was a short 
 and easy step to produce the semblances of the revered 
 characters by an artificial process, and then be- 
 stow on them the reverential feelings which had pre- 
 viously been directed to their originals. The ordi- 
 nary course taken by a superstition in its degradation 
 is one where its first sentiment becomes lost to sight, 
 and its form is dogmatically insisted on. It was so 
 in that phase of feticism which consisted in the blind 
 reliance put on artificial talismans and amulets. The 
 original significance of the talisman— the truth which 
 was embodied in it as the emblem of the unseen pow- 
 ers that had produced it, in accordance with natural 
 operations — was forgotten. The rows of lines and 
 scratches, and the variegations of its colour, were only 
 thought of; and the cunning of man— ever ready to 
 make a god for himself — was exerted to improve upon 
 them. In the multitude of new devices came inscrip- 
 tions of mystic numbers, strange signs, agglomera- 
 tions of figures, and scraps from sacred rituals- 
 Abraxas and Abracadabra, and the Pi-fo-fum non- 
 sense of the later charms. 
 
 Creatures that were capable of detecting the influ- 
 ence of the planetary system on that portion of Na- 
 ture which is unquestionably affected by it, and of 
 imagining its presence in inanimate objects, which, 
 to use cautious language, have never been proved by 
 science to be sensible of such a power, of course mag-
 
 260 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 nified its consequences in all that related to the human 
 intellect and character. The instant in which a man 
 entered the world was regarded as the one when he was 
 most susceptible. Indeed, a babe was looked upon 
 as a piece of warm and pliant wax : and the particular 
 planet which was in the ascendant when the nurse 
 placed the new child of Adam ainoiigst the people of 
 earth stamped upon it a distinctive charactery. To 
 be born under a particular star was then an ex- 
 pression that meant something. On the nature of the 
 star it depended whether homunculus, squealing out 
 its first agonies, was to be morose or gentle, patient 
 or choleric, lively or saturnine, amorous or vindictive 
 —a warrior or a poet— a dreamer or a man of ac- 
 tion. 
 
 Laughing at the refinements of absurdity at which 
 astrology had arrived in his day, the author of "Hu- 
 dibras" says:— 
 
 "There's but the twinkling of a star 
 Between a man of peace and war; 
 A thief and justice, fool and knave, 
 A huffing officer and slave; 
 A craft)- lawyer and a pickpocket, 
 A great philosopher and a blockhead ; 
 A formal preacher and a player, 
 A learned physician and manslayer. 
 As if men from stars did suck 
 Old age, diseases, and ill-luck, 
 Wit, folly, honour, virtue, vice, 
 Travel and women, trade and dice ; 
 And draw, with the first air they breathe, 
 Battle and murder, sudden death. 
 Are not these fine commodities 
 To be imported from the skies, 
 And vended here amongst the rabble 
 For staple goods and warrantable?" 
 
 Involved in this view of the universe was the doc- 
 trine that some exceptional individuals were born far
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 261 
 
 superior to the mass of their fellow-creatures. Ab- 
 surd as astrology was, still, its postulates having once 
 been granted, the logic was unassailable which argued 
 that those few on whose birth lucky stars had shone 
 benignantly, had a destiny and an organization dis- 
 tinct from those of ordinary mortals. The dicta of 
 modern liberalism, and the Transatlantic dogma that 
 "all men are by nature born equal," would have ap- 
 peared to an orthodox believer in this planetary re- 
 ligion nothing better than the ravings of madness or 
 impiety. Monarchs of men, whatever lowly station 
 they at first occupied in life, were exalted above oth- 
 ers because they possessed a distinctive excellence 
 imparted to them at the hour of birth by the silent 
 rulers of the night. It was useless to strive against 
 such authority. To contend with it would have been 
 to wrestle with the Almighty— ever present in hia 
 peculiarly favoured creatures. 
 
 Rulers being such, it was but natural for their ser- 
 vile worshippers to believe them capable of imparting 
 to others, by a glance of the eye or a touch of the 
 hand, an infinitesimal portion of the virtue that dwelt 
 within them. To be favoured with their smiles was 
 to bask in sunshine amid perfumes. To be visited 
 with their frowns was to be chilled to the marrow, 
 and feel the hail come down like keen arrows from 
 an angry sky. To be touched by their robes was to 
 receive new vigour. Hence came credence in the 
 miraculous power of the imposition of royal, or oth- 
 erwise sacred hands. Pyrrhus and Vespasian cured 
 maladies by the touch of their fingers; and, long be- 
 fore and after them, earthly potentates and spiritual 
 directors had, both in the East and the West, to
 
 262 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 prove their title to authority by displaying the same 
 faculty. 
 
 In our own country more than in any other region 
 of Christendom this superstition found supporters. 
 From Edward the Confessor down to Queen Anne, 
 who laid her healing hands on Samuel Johnson, it 
 flourished; and it was a rash man who, trusting to 
 the blind guidance of human reason dared to question 
 that manifestation of the divinity which encircles 
 kingship. Doubtless the gift of money made to each 
 person who was touched did not tend to bring the 
 cure into dis-esteem. It can be easily credited that, 
 out of the multitude who flocked to the presence of 
 Elizabeth and the Stuart kings for the benefit of their 
 miraculous manipulations, there were many shrewd 
 vagabonds who had more faith in the coin than in 
 the touch bestowed upon them. The majority, how- 
 ever, it cannot be doubted, were as sincere victims 
 of delusion as those who, at the close of the last cen- 
 tury, believed in the efficacy of metallic tractors, and 
 those who now unconsciously expose their intellectual 
 infirmity as advocates of electro-biology and spirit- 
 rapping. The populace, as a body, unhesitatingly 
 believed that their sovereigns possessed this faculty 
 as the anointed of the Lord. A story is told of a 
 Papist, who, much to his astonishment, was cured of 
 the king's evil by Elizabeth, after her final rupture 
 with the court of Rome. 
 
 "Now I perceive," cried the man, "by plain ex- 
 perience that the excommunication against the Queen 
 is of no effect, since God hath blessed her with such a 
 gift." 
 
 Nor would it be wise to suppose that none were
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 263 
 
 benefited by the treatment. The eagerness with which 
 the vulgar crowd to a sight, and the intense excite- 
 ment with which London mobs witness a royal proces- 
 sion to the houses of Parliament, or a Lord Mayor's 
 pageant on its way from the City to Westminster, 
 may afford us some idea of the inspiriting sensations 
 experienced by a troop of wretches taken from their 
 kennels to Whitehall, and brought into personal con- 
 tact with their sovereign— their ideal of grandeur! 
 Such a trip was a stimulus to the nervous system, 
 compared with which the shock of a galvanic battery 
 would have been but the tickling of a feather. And, 
 over and above this, was the influence of imagination, 
 which in many ways may become an agent for re- 
 storing the tone of the nervous system, and so en- 
 abling Nature to overcome the obstacles of her healthy 
 action. 
 
 Montaigne admirably treated this subject in his 
 essay, "Of the Force of Imagination"; and his an- 
 ecdote of the happy results derived by an unfortunate 
 nobleman from the use of a flat gold plate, graven 
 with celestial figures, must have occurred to many of 
 his readers who have witnessed tlie beneficial effects 
 which are frequently produced by the practices of 
 quackery. 
 
 ''These apes' tricks," says Montaigne, "are the 
 main cause of the effect, our fancy being so far se- 
 duced as to believe that such strange and uncouth for- 
 malities must of necessity proceed from some abstruse 
 science. Their very inanity gives them reverence and 
 weight. ' ' 
 
 And old Burton, touching, in his "Anatomy of Mel-
 
 264 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 ancholy," on the power of imagination, says, 
 quaintly :— 
 
 "How can otherwise blear eyes in one man cause 
 the like affection in another? Why doth one man's 
 ya^raing make another man yawn ? "\Miy do witches 
 and old women fascinate and bewitch children; but, 
 as Wierus, Paracelsus, Cardan, Migaldus, Valleriola, 
 Caesar Vanninus, Campanella, and many philosophers 
 think, the forcible imagination of one party moves 
 and alters the spirits of the other. Nay more, they 
 cause and cure, not only diseases, maladies, and sev- 
 eral infirmities by this means, as 'Avicenna de Anim. 
 1. 4, sect. 4,' supposeth in parties remote, but move 
 bodies from their places, cause thunder, lightning, 
 tempests; which opinion Alkindus, Paracelsus, and 
 some others approve of. ' ' 
 
 In this passage Burton touches not only on the ef- 
 fects of the imagination, but also on the impression 
 which the nervous energy of one person may create 
 upon the nervous sensibility of another. That such 
 an impression can be produced, no one can question 
 who observes the conduct of men in their ordinary 
 relations to each other. By whatever term we christen 
 it — endeavouring to define either the cause or its ef- 
 fect—we all concur in admitting that decision of char- 
 acter, earnestness of manner, enthusiasm, a com- 
 manding aspect, a piercing eye, or a strong will, exer- 
 cise a manifest control over common natures, whether 
 they be acting separately or in masses. 
 
 Of the men who, without learning, or an ennobling 
 passion for truth, or a high purpose of any kind, 
 have, unaided by physical force, commanded the at- 
 tention and directed the actions of large numbers of
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 265 
 
 their fellow creatures, Mesmer is perEaps the most 
 remarkable in modern history. But we will not speak 
 of him till we have paid a few minutes' attention to 
 one of his predecessors. 
 
 The most notable forerunner of Mesmer in this 
 country was Valentine Greatrakes, who, in Charles 
 the Second's reign, performed "severall marvaillous 
 cures by the stroaking of the hands." He was a gen- 
 tleman of condition, and, at first, the dupe of his own 
 imagination rather than a deliberate charlatan. He 
 was born on the 14th of February, 1628, on his 
 father's estate of Affane, in the County of Waterford, 
 and was, on both sides, of more than merely respect- 
 able extraction, his father being a gentleman of good 
 repute and property, and his mother being a daughter 
 of Sir Edward Harris, Knt, a Justice of the King's 
 Bench in Ireland. The first years of his school-life 
 were passed in the once famous Academy of Lismore ; 
 but when he had arrived at thirteen years of age his 
 mother (who had become a widow), on the outbreak 
 of the rebellion, fled with him and his little brothers 
 and sisters to England, where the fugitive family 
 were hospitably entertained by Mr. Edmund Harris, 
 a gentleman of considerable property, and one of the 
 justice's sons. After concluding his education in the 
 family of one John Daniel Getseus, a High-German 
 minister of Stock Gabriel, in the County of Devon, 
 Valentine returned to Ireland, then distracted with 
 tumult and armed rebellion ; and, by prudently join- 
 ing the victorious side, re-entered on the possession of 
 his father's estate of Affane. He served for six years 
 in Cromwell's forces (from 1650 to 1656) as a lieu- 
 tenant of the Munster Cavalrv, under the command
 
 266 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 of the Earl of Orrery. Valentine's commission was 
 in the carl's regiment; and, from the time of entering 
 the army till the close of his career is lost sight of, he 
 seems to have enjoyed the patronage and friendship 
 of that nobleman's family. 
 
 When the Munster horse was disbanded in 1656, 
 "Valentine retired to Affane, and for a period occupied 
 himself as an active and influential country gentle- 
 man. He was made Clerk of the Peace for the County 
 of Cork, a Register for Transplantation, and a Justice 
 of the Peace. In the performance of the onerous 
 duties which, in the then disturbed state of Ireland, 
 these offices brought upon him, he gained deserved 
 popularity and universal esteem. He was a frank 
 and commanding personage, of pleasant manners, gal- 
 lant bearing, fine figure, and singularly handsome 
 face. With a hearty and musical voice, and a national 
 stock of high animal spirits, he was the delight of all 
 festive assemblies, taking his pleasure freely, but 
 never to excess. Indeed, Valentine was a devout man, 
 not ashamed, in his own household, and in his bearing 
 to the outer world, to avow that it was his intention to 
 serve the Lord. But, though he had all the purity of 
 Puritanism, there was in him no taint of sectarian 
 rancour or uncharitableness. When an anonymous 
 writer aspersed his reputation, he responded— and no 
 one could gainsay his words— with regard to his pub- 
 lic career:— "I studied so to acquit myself before God 
 and man in singleness and integrity of heart, that, to 
 the comfort of my soul, and praise of God that 
 directed me, I can with confidence say I never took 
 bribe nor reward from any man, though I had many 
 and great ones before me (when I was Register for
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 267 
 
 Transplantation) ; nor did I ever connive at or suffer 
 a malefactor to go unpunished, if the person were 
 guilty of any notorious crime (when I had power), 
 nor did I ever take the fee belonging to my office, if I 
 found the person were injured, or in want ; nor did I 
 ever commit any one for his judgment and conscience 
 barely, so it led him not to do anything to the disturb- 
 ance of the civil peace of the nation ; nor did I take 
 anything for my fee when he was discharged— for I 
 bless God he has taken away a persecuting spirit from 
 me, who would persuade all men to be Protestants, 
 those principles being most consonant to Truth and 
 the Word of God, in my judgment, and that profes- 
 sion which I have ever been of, and still am. . . . 
 Yet (though there were orders from the power that 
 then was, to all Justices of the Peace, for Transplant- 
 ing aU Papists that would not go to church), I never 
 molested any one that was known or esteemed to be 
 innocent, but suffered them to continue in the English 
 quarters, and that without prejudice. So that I can 
 truly say, I never injured any man for his conscience, 
 conceiving that ought to be informed and not en- 
 forced. ' ' 
 
 On the Restoration, Valentine Greatrakes lost his 
 offices, and was reduced to the position of a mere pri- 
 vate gentleman. His estate at Affane was a small one; 
 but he laboured on it with good results, introducing 
 into his neighbourhood a more scientific system of 
 agriculture than had previously been known there, 
 and giving an unprecedented quantity of employment 
 to the poor. Perhaps he missed the excitement of 
 public business, and his energies, deprived of the vent 
 they had for many years enjoyed, preyed upon his
 
 268 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 sensitive nature. Anyhow, he became the victim of 
 his imagination, which, acting on a mind that had 
 been educated in a school of spiritual earnestness and 
 superstitious introspection, led him into a series ol 
 remarkable hallucinations. He first had fits of pen- 
 siveness and dejection, similar to those which tor- 
 mented Cromwell ere his genius found for itself a 
 more fit field of display than the management of a 
 brewery and a few acres of marsh-land. Ere long he 
 had an impulse, or a strange persuasion in his own 
 mind (of which he was not able to give any rational 
 account to another), which did very frequently sug- 
 gest to him that there was bestowed on him the gift of 
 curing the King's Evil, which for the extraordinari- 
 ness of it, he thought fit to conceal for some time, but, 
 at length communicated to his wife, and told her, 
 "That he did verily believe that God had given him 
 the blessing of curing the King's Evil; for, whether 
 he were in private or publiek, sleeping or waking, still 
 he had the same impulse; but her reply was to him, 
 that she conceived this was a strange imagination." 
 Such is his statement. 
 
 Patients either afflicted with King's Evil, or pre- 
 sumed to be so, were in due course brought before him ; 
 and, on his touching them, they recovered. It may be 
 here remarked that in the days when the Royal Touch 
 was believed in as a cure for scrofula, the distinctions 
 between strumous and other swellings were by no 
 means ascertained even by physicians of repute ; and 
 numbers of those who underwent the manipulation of 
 Anointed Rulers were suffering only from aggravated 
 boils and common festering sores, from which, as a 
 matter of course, nature would in the space of a few
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 269 
 
 weeks have relieved them. Doubtless many of Valen- 
 tine's patients were suffering, not under scrofulous 
 affections, but comparatively innocent tumours; for 
 his cures were rapid, complete, and numerous. A 
 second impulse gave him the power of curing ague; 
 and a third inspiration of celestial aura imparted to 
 him command, under certain conditions, over all 
 human diseases. His modes of operation were var- 
 ious. When an afiflicted person was laid before him, 
 he usually offered up a prayer to God to help him, to 
 make him the humble instrument of divine mercy. 
 And invariably when a patient derived benefit from 
 his treatment, he exhorted him to offer up his thanks 
 to his Heavenly Father. After the initiatory suppli- 
 cation the operator passed his hands over the affected 
 part of the sick person's body, sometimes over the 
 skin itself and sometimes over the clothes. The man- 
 ipulations varied in muscular force from delicate tick- 
 ling to violent rubbing, according to the nature of the 
 evil spirits by which the diseased people were tor- 
 mented. Greatrakes 's theory of disease was the scrip- 
 tural one : the morbific power was a devil, which had 
 to be expelled from the frame in which it had taken 
 shelter. Sometimes the demon was exorcised by a few 
 gentle passes; occasionally it fled at the verbal com- 
 mand of the physician, or retreated on being gazed at 
 through the eyes of the mortal it tormented ; but fre- 
 quently the victory was not gained till the healer 
 rubbed himself — like the rubber who in our own day 
 makes such a large income at Brighton— into a red 
 face and a copious perspiration. Henry Stubbe, a 
 famous physician in Stratford-upon-Avon, in his
 
 ::7U A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 "Miraculous Conformist," published in 1666, gives 
 the following testimony:— 
 
 ^^ Proofs that lie revives the Ferment of the Blood. 
 —Mr Bromley's brother, of Upton upon Severne, 
 after a long quartane Ague, had by a Metastasis of 
 the Disease such a ehilnesse in the habit of the body, 
 that no clothes could possibly warme him; he wore 
 upon his head many spiced caps, and tenne pounds 
 weight of linen on his head. Mr Greatarick stripped 
 him, and rubbed him all over, and immediately he 
 sweat, and was hot all over, so that the bath never 
 heated up as did the hand of Mr Greatarick's; this 
 was his own expression. But Mr Greatarick causing 
 him to cast off all that multitude of caps and cloaths, 
 it was supposed that it frustrated the happy effect, 
 for he felt the recourse of his disease in some parts 
 rendered the cure suspicious. But as often as Mr 
 Greatarick came and rubbed him he would be all 
 in a flame againe for half-an-hour : the experiment 
 whereof was frequently practised for five or six dayes 
 atRagly." 
 
 Greatrakes himself also speaks of his more violent 
 curative exertions making him very hot. But it was 
 only occasionally that he had to labour so vehemently. 
 His eye, the glance of which had a fascinating effect 
 on people of a nervous organization, and his fantastic 
 ticklings, usually produced all the results required by 
 his mode of treatment. 
 
 The fame of the healer spread far and wide. Not 
 only from the most secluded parts of Ireland, but 
 from civilized England, the lame and blind, the deaf, 
 dumb, and diseased, made pilgrimages to the Squire 
 of Affane. His stable, barn, and malt-house were
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 271 
 
 crowded with wretches imploring his aid. The de- 
 mands upon his time were so very many and great, 
 that he set apart three days in the week for the recep- 
 tion of patients; and on those days, from six in the 
 morning till six in the evening, he ministered to his 
 wretched clients. He took no fee but gratitude on the. 
 part of those he benefited, and a cheering sense that 
 he was fulfilling the commands of the founder of his 
 religion. The Dean of Lismoi'e cited him to appear 
 before the ecclesiastical court, and render an account 
 of his proceedings. He went, and on being asked if 
 he had worked any cures, replied to the court that 
 they might come to his house and see. The judge 
 asked if he had a licence to practise from the ordinary 
 of the diocese ; and he replied that he knew of no law 
 which prohibited any man from doing what good he 
 could to others. He was, however, commanded by the 
 court not to lay his hands again on the sick, until he 
 had obtained the Ordinary's licence to do so. He 
 obeyed for two days only, and went on again more 
 earnestly than ever. 
 
 Let a charlatan or an enthusiast spread his sails, 
 the breeze of fashion is always present, and ready to 
 swell them. The Earl of Orrery took his quondam 
 lieutenant by the hand, and persuaded him to go over 
 to England to cure the Viscountess Conway of a vio- 
 lent headache, which, in spite of the ablest physicians 
 of England and France, she had suffered from for 
 many years. Lord Conway sent him an urgent invi- 
 tation to do so. He complied, and made his way to 
 Rugby, in Warwickshire, where he was unable to give 
 relief to his hostess, but was hospitably entertained 
 for a month. His inability to benefit Lady Conway
 
 272 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 did not injure his reputation, for he did not profess to 
 be able to cure every one. An adverse influence— 
 such as the sins of a patient, or his want of faith- 
 was enough to counteract the healing power. In the 
 jargon of modern mesmerism, which practically was 
 only a revival of Greatrakes's extravagances, the phy- 
 sician could affect only those who were susceptible. 
 But though Lady Conway was beyond the reach of his 
 mysterious agency, the reverse was the case with 
 others. The gentry and commonalty of Warwickshire 
 crowded by thousands to him ; and he touched, prayed 
 over, and blessed them, and sent them away rejoicing. 
 From Rugby he went to Worcester, at the request of 
 the Lord Mayor and Aldermen of that city ; and f ron\ 
 Worcester he was carried up to London. Lord Ar- 
 lington commanded him to appear at Whitehall, and 
 mumble in his particular fashion for the amusement 
 of Charles II. A man who could cure gout by a touch 
 would have been an acquisition to such a court as then 
 presided over English manners. 
 
 In London he immediately became a star. The 
 fashion of the West, and the wary opulence of the 
 East, laid their offerings at his feet. For a time he 
 ruled from Soho to Wapping. Mr. Justice Godfrey 
 gave him rooms for the reception of patients in his 
 mansion in Lincoln 's-inn-Fields; and thither flocked 
 the mob of the indigent and the mob of the wealthy 
 to pay him homage. Mr. Boyle (the brother of the 
 Earl of Orrery), Sir William Smith, Dr. Denton, Dr. 
 Fairclough, Dr. Faber, Sir Nathaniel Hobart, Sir 
 John Godolphin, Dr. Wilkins, Dr. Whichcot, and Dr. 
 Cudworth, were amongst his most vehement support- 
 ers of the sterner sex. But the majority of his ad-
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 273 
 
 mirers were ladies. The Countess of Devonshire en- 
 tertained him in her palace; and Lady Ranelagh fre- 
 quently amused the guests at her routs with Mr. Val- 
 entine Greatrakes, who, in the character of the lion 
 of the season, performed with wondrous results on 
 the prettiest or most hysterical of the ladies present. 
 It was held as certain by his intimate friends that the 
 curative property that came from him was a subtle 
 aura, effulgent, and of an exquisitely sweet smell, that 
 could only be termed the divine breath. "God," sayf 
 Dr. Henry Stubbe, "had bestowed upon Mr. Greate- 
 rick a peculiar temperament, or composed his body of 
 some particular ferments, the effluvia whereof, being 
 introduced sometimes by a light, sometimes by a vio- 
 lent friction, should restore the temperament of the 
 debilitated parts, re-invigorate the blood, and dissi- 
 pate all heterogeneous ferments out of the bodies of 
 the diseased by the eyes, nose, mouth, hands, and feet. 
 I place the gift of healing in the temperament or com- 
 posure of his body, because I see it is necessary that 
 he touch them. Besides, the Right Honourable the 
 Lord Conway observed one morning, as he came into 
 his Lordship's chamber, a smell strangely pleasant, 
 as if it had been of sundry flowers ; and demanding of 
 his man what sweet water he had brought into the 
 room, he answered. None; whereupon his Lordship 
 smelled upon the hand of Mr. Greaterick, and found 
 the fragrancy to issue thence; and examining his 
 bosom, he found the like scent there also." Dean 
 Rust gave similar testimony; and "Sir Amos Mere- 
 dith, who had been Mr. Greaterick 's bed-fellow," did 
 the like. 
 Amongst the certificates of cures performed, which 
 
 4—18
 
 274 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 Greatrakes published, are two to which the name of 
 Andrew Marvell is affixed, as a spectator of the strok- 
 ing. One of them is the following:— 
 
 "Mr Nicholson's Certificate. 
 "I, Anthony Nicholson, of Cambridge, Bookseller, 
 have been affected sore with pains all over my body, 
 for three-and-twenty years last past, have had advice 
 and best directions of all the doctors there ; have been 
 at the bath in Somersetshire, and been at above one 
 hundred pounds expense to procure ease, or a cure of 
 these pains ; and have found all the means I could be 
 advised or directed to ineffectual for either, till, by 
 the advice of Dr Benjamin Whichcot and Dean Rust, 
 
 I applyed myself to Mr Greatrake's for help upon 
 Saturday was sevenight, being the latter end of 
 March, and who then stroked me ; upon which I was 
 very much worse, and enforced to keep my bed for 
 five or six days ; but then being stroked twice since, 
 by the blessing of God upon Mr Greatrake's endeav- 
 ours, I am perfectly eas'd of all pains, and very 
 healthy and strong, insomuch as I intend (God will- 
 ing) to return home towards Cambridge to-morrow 
 morning, though I was so weak as to be necessitated to 
 be brought up in men's arms, on Saturday last about 
 
 II of the clock, to Mr Greatrake's. Attested by me 
 this tenth day of April, 1666. I had also an hard 
 swelling in my left arm, whereby I was disabled from 
 using it ; which being taken out by the said Mr Great- 
 rake 's, I am perfectly freed of all pain, and the use 
 thereof greatly restored. 
 
 "Anthony Nicholson. 
 "In the presence of Andrew Marvell, Jas. Fair- 
 clough, Tho. Alured, Tho. Pooley, W. Popple."
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 275 
 
 There were worse features of life in Charles the 
 Second's London than the popularity of Valentine 
 Greatrakes; but his triumph was of short duration. 
 His professions were made the butts of ridicule, to 
 which his presence of mind and volubility were unable 
 to respond with effect. It was asserted by his ene- 
 mies that his system was only a cloak under which he 
 ofifended the delicacy of virtuous women, and roused 
 the passfions of the unchaste. His tone of conversa- 
 tion was represented as compounded of the blasphemy 
 of the religious enthusiast and the blasphemy of the 
 profligate. His boast that he never received a fee for 
 his remedial services was met by flat contradiction, 
 and a statement that he received presents to the 
 amount of £100 at a time from a single individual. 
 This last accusation was never clearly disposed of; 
 but it is probable that the reward he sought (if he 
 looked for any) was restoration, through Court in- 
 fluence, to the commission of magistrates for his 
 county, and the lost clerkship of the peace. The tide 
 of slander was anyhow too strong for him, and he re- 
 tired to his native country a less honoured though 
 perhaps a not less honest man than he left it. Of his 
 sincerity at the outset of his career as a healer there 
 can be little doubt. 
 
 Valentine Greatrakes did unconsciously what many 
 years after him Mesmer did by design. He in his re- 
 markable career illustrated the power which a de- 
 termined man may exercise over the will and nervous 
 life of another. 
 
 As soon as the singular properties of the loadstone 
 were discovered, they were presumed to have a strong 
 medicinal effect ; and in this belief physicians for cen-
 
 276 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 turies— and indeed almost down to present times- 
 were in the habit of administering pulverized magnet 
 in salves, plaisters, pills, and potions. It was not till 
 the year 1660 that it was for the first time distinctly 
 recorded in the archives of science, by Dr. Gilbert, of 
 Colchester, that in a state of pulverization the load- 
 stone no longer possessed any magnetic powers. But 
 it was not till some generations after this that medical 
 practitioners universally recognized the fact that 
 powder of magnet, externally or internally adminis- 
 tered, was capable of producing no other results than 
 the presence of any ordinary ferruginous substance 
 would account for. But long after this error had 
 been driven from the domains of science, an unrea- 
 sonable belief in the power of magnets applied ex- 
 ternally to the body held its ground. In 1779-80, the 
 Royal Society of j\Iedicine in Paris made numerous 
 experiments with a view to arrive at a just apprecia- 
 tion of the influence of magnets on the human system, 
 and came to the conclusion that they were medicinal 
 agents of no ordinary efScacy. 
 
 Such was the state of medical opinion at the close 
 of the last century, when Perkins's tractors, which 
 were supposed to act magnetically, became the fash- 
 ion. Mr. Perkins was a citizen of Connecticut, and 
 certainly his celebrated invention was worthy of the 
 'cutest people on the 'varsal earth. Barnum's 
 swindles were modest ventures by comparison. The 
 entire world, old and new, went tractor-mad. Every 
 valetudinarian bought the painted nails, composed of 
 an alloy of various metals (which none but Perkins 
 could make, and none but Perkins sell), and tickled
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 277 
 
 with their sharp ends those parts of his frame which 
 were regarded as eenti-es of disease. 
 
 The phenomena apparently produced by these in- 
 struments were astounding, and misled every observer 
 of them; until Dr. Haygarth of Bath proved by a 
 process to which objections was impossible, that they 
 were referable not to metal points, but to the mental 
 condition of those who used them. "Robert Thomas," 
 says Dr. Haygarth in his interesting work, "aged 
 forty-three, who had been for some time under the 
 care of Dr. Lovell, in the Bristol Infirmary, with a 
 rheumatic affection of the shoulder, which rendered 
 his arm perfectly useless, was pointed out as a proper 
 object of trial by Sir. J. AY. Dyer, apothecary to the 
 house. Tuesday, April 19th, having everything in 
 readiness, I passed through the ward, and, in a way 
 that he might suspect nothing, questioned him re- 
 specting his complaint. I then told him that I had 
 an instrument in my pocket which had been very 
 serviceable to many in his state; and when I had 
 explained to him how simple it was, he consented to 
 undergo the operation. In six minutes no other effect 
 was produced than a warmth upon the skin, and I 
 feared that this coup d'essai had failed. The next 
 day, however, he told me that 'he had received so 
 much benefit that it had enabled him to lift his hand 
 from his knee, which he had in vain several times at- 
 tempted on Monday evening, as the whole ward wat- 
 nessed.' The tractors I used being made of lead, I 
 thought it advisable to lay them aside, lest, being 
 metallic points, the proof against the fraud might be 
 less complete. Thus much, however, was proved, that 
 the patent tractors possessed no specific power inde-
 
 278 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 pendent of simple metals. Two pieces of wood, 
 properly shaped and painted, were next made use of ; 
 and in order to add solemnity to the farce, Mr. Barton 
 held in his hand a stop-watch, whilst Mr. Lax minuted 
 the effects produced. In four minutes the man raised 
 his hand several inches ; and he had lost also the pain 
 in his shoulder, usually experienced when attempting 
 to lift anything. He continued to undergo the opera- 
 tion daily, and with progressive good effect; for on 
 the twenty-fifth he could touch the mantel-piece. On 
 the twenty-seventh, in the presence of Dr. Lovell and 
 Mr. J. P. Noble, two common iron nails, disguised 
 with sealing-wax, were substituted for the pieces of 
 mahogany before used. In three minutes he felt 
 something moving from his arm to his hand, and soon 
 after he touched the board of rules which hung a foot 
 above the fire-place. This patient at length so far 
 recovered that he could carry coals and use his arm 
 sufficiently to help the nurse; yet, previous to the 
 use of the spurious tractors, he could no more lift 
 his hand from his knee than if a hundredweight were 
 upon it, or a nail driven through it— as he declared in 
 the presence of several gentlemen, whose names I 
 shall have frequent occasion to mention. The fame 
 of this case brought applications in abundance; in- 
 deed, it must be confessed that it was more than suffi- 
 cient to act upon weak minds, and induce a belief that 
 these pieces of wood and iron were endowed with some 
 peculiar virtues." 
 
 The result of Dr. Haygarth's experiments was the 
 overthrow of Perkins, and the enlightenment of the 
 public as to the real worth of the celebrated metallic 
 tractors. In achieving this the worthy physician
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 279 
 
 added some interesting facts to the science of psy- 
 chology. But of course his influence upon the 
 ignorant and foolish persons he illuminated was only 
 transient. Ere a few short years or even months were 
 over, they had embraced another delusion— not less 
 ridiculous, but more pernicious.
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 IMAGINATION AND NERVOUS EXCITEMENT. MESMER. 
 
 At a very early date the effects of magnetic inflU' 
 ences, and the ordinary phenomena of nervous excite- 
 ment, were the source of much confusion and perplex- 
 ity to medical speculators, who, with an unsound 
 logic that is perhaps more frequent than any other 
 form of bad reasoning, accounted for what they could 
 not understand by pointing to what they were only 
 imperfectly acqiiainted with. The power of the load- 
 stone was a mystery; the nervous phenomena pro- 
 duced by a strong will over a weak one were a mys- 
 tery :— clearly the mysterious phenomena were to be 
 attributed to the mysterious power. In its outset ani- 
 mal magnetism committed no other error than this. 
 Its wilder extravagances were all subsequent to this 
 assumption, that two sets of phenomena, which it has 
 never yet been proved are nearly allied, were con- 
 nected, the one with the other, in the relation of cause 
 and effect, or as being the offspring of one immediate 
 and common caiise. 
 
 To support this theory, Mesmerism called into its 
 service the old astrological views regarding planetary 
 influence. But it held also that the subtle fluid, so
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 281 
 
 transmitted to the animal life of our planet, was cap- 
 able of being passed on in greater or less volumes of 
 quantity and intensity. Nervous energy was only 
 that subtle fluid which was continually passing and 
 repassing in impalpable currents between the earth 
 and the celestial bodies; and when, by reason of the 
 nervous energy within him, any one exercised control 
 over another, he was deemed only to have infused 
 him with some of his own stock of spiritual aura. 
 Here was a new statement of the old dream which had 
 charmed the poets and philosophers of buried centur- 
 ies; and as it was a view which did not admit of posi- 
 tive disproof, it was believed by its eicited advocates 
 to be proved. 
 
 One of the tirst British writers on animal magnet- 
 ism was William Maxwell, a Scotch physician, who 
 enunciated his opinions with a boldness and perspicac- 
 ity which do him much credit. The first four of his 
 twelve conclusions are a very good specimen of his 
 work : — 
 
 "Conclusio 1.— Anima non solum in corpore pro- 
 prio visibili, sed etiam extra corpus est, nee corpore 
 organico circumscribitur. 
 
 ^^ Conclusio 2.— Anima extra corpus proprium, com- 
 muniter sic dictum, operatur. 
 
 "Conclusio .3. — Ab omni corpore radii corporales 
 fluunt, in quibus anima sua pnesentia, operatur; 
 bisque energiam et potentiam operandi largitur. Sunt 
 vero radii hi non solum corporales, sed et diversarum 
 partium. 
 
 "Conclusic 4. — Radii hi, qui ex animalium corpori- 
 bus emittuntur, spiritu vitali gaudent, per quem 
 animffi mutationes dispensantur. "
 
 282 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 The sixty-fifth of the aphorisms with which Max- 
 well concludes his book is an amusing one, as giving 
 the orthodox animal-magnetic view of that condition 
 of the affections which we term love, and also as il- 
 lustrating ■ the connection between astrology and 
 charms. 
 
 "Aphorism 65. — Imaginatione vero producitur 
 amor, quando imaginatio exaltata unius imaginationi 
 alterius dominatur, eamque fingit sigillatque; atque 
 hoc propter miram imaginationis volubilitatem vicis- 
 sim fieri potest. Hinc incantationes effectiim nancis- 
 cuntur, licet aliqualem forsan in se virtutem possid- 
 eant, sine imaginatione tamen haec virtus propter uni- 
 versalitatem distribui nequit." 
 
 Long before animal magnetism was a stock subject 
 of conversation at dinner-parties, there was a vague 
 knowledge of its pretensions floating about society, 
 and a curiosity to know how far its principles were 
 reconcilable with facts, animated men of science and 
 lovers of the marvellous. Had not this been the state 
 of public feeling, the sensations created by Sir Ken- 
 elm Digby's sympathetic cures, Greatrake's adminis- 
 trations, Leverett's manual exercises, and Louther- 
 bourg's manipulations, would not have been so great 
 and universal. 
 
 But the person who turned the credulity of the pub- 
 lic on this point to the best account was Frederick 
 Anthony Mesmer. This man did not originate a 
 single idea. He only traded on the old day-dreams 
 and vagaries of departed ages ; and yet he managed to 
 fix his name upon a science ( ?), in the origination or 
 development of which he had no part whatever ; and, 
 by daring charlatanry, he made it a means of grasping
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTOBd. 283 
 
 enormous wealth. Where this man was born is uncer- 
 tain. Vienna, Werseburg in Swabia, and Switzer- 
 land, contend for the honour of having given him to 
 the world. At Vienna he took his M.D. degree, hav- 
 ing given an inaugural dissertation on "The Influence 
 of the Planets upon the Human Body." His course 
 of self-delusion began with \ising magnets as a means 
 of cure, when applied externally; and he had reso- 
 lutely advanced on the road of positive knavery, When, 
 after his quarrel with his old instructor, Maximilian 
 Hel, he threw aside the use of steel magnets, and pro- 
 duced, by the employment of his fingers and eyes, 
 greater marvels than had ever followed the applica- 
 tion of the loadstone or Perkins's tractors. As his 
 prosperity and reputation increased, so did his audac- 
 ity—which was always laughable, when it did not dis- 
 gust by its impiety. 
 
 On one occasion. Dr. Egg Von Ellekon asked him 
 why he ordered his patients to bathe in river, and not 
 in spring water 1 ' ' Because, ' ' was the answer, ' ' river 
 water is exposed to the sun's rays." "True," was 
 the reply, "the water is sometimes warmed by the 
 sun, but not so much so that you have not sometimes 
 to warm it still more. Why then should not spring 
 water be preferable?" Not at all posed, Mesmer an- 
 swered, with charming candour, "Dear doctor, the 
 cause why all the water which is exposed to the rays 
 of the sun is superior to all other water is because it 
 is magnetized. I myself magnetized the sun some 
 twenty years ago." 
 
 But a better story of him is told by Madame Cam- 
 pan. That lady's husband was attacked with pul- 
 monary inflammation. Mesmer was sent for, and
 
 284 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 found himself called upon to stem a violent malady, 
 not to gull the frivolous Parisians, who were then 
 raving about the marvels of the new system. He felt 
 his patient's pulse, made certain inquiries, and then, 
 turning to JIadame Campan, gravely assured her that 
 the only way to restore her husband to health was to 
 lay in his bed, by his side one of three things— a 
 young woman of brown complexion, a black hen, or an 
 old bottle. "Sir," replied Madame Campan, "if the 
 choice be a matter of indifference, praj' try the empty 
 bottle." The bottle was tried, but Mons. Campan 
 grew worse. Madame Campan left the room, alarmed 
 and anxious, and, during her absence, Mesmer bled 
 and blistered his patient. This latter treatment was 
 more efficacious. But imagine Madame Campan's 
 astonishment, when on her husband's recovery, Mes- 
 mer asked for and obtained from him a written cer- 
 tificate that he had been cured by Mesmerism ! 
 
 It is instructive to reflect that the Paris which made 
 for a short day Mesmer its idol, was not far distant 
 from the Paris of the Reign of Terror. In one year 
 the man received 400,000 francs in fees; and posi- 
 tively the French government, at the instigation of 
 Maurepas, offered him an annual stipend of 20,000 
 francs, together with an additional 10,000 to support 
 an establishment for patients and pupils, if he would 
 stay in France. One unpleasant condition was at- 
 tached to this offer: he was required to allow three 
 nominees of the Crown to watch his proceedings. So 
 inordinately high did Mesmer rate his claims, that he 
 stood out for better terms, and like the dog of the 
 fable, by endeavoring to get too much, lost what he 
 might have secured. Ere long the Parisians recovered
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 285 
 
 something of common sense. The enthusiasm of the 
 hour subsided: and the Royal Commission, composed 
 of some of the best men of science to be found in the 
 entire world, were enabled to explain to the public 
 how they had been fooled by a trickster, and betrayed 
 into practices scarcely less offensive to modesty than 
 to reason. In addition to the public report, another 
 private one was issued by the commissioners, urging 
 the authorities, in the name of morality, to put a stop 
 to the mesmeric mania. 
 
 Mesmer died in obscurity on the 5th of March, in 
 the year 1815. 
 
 Animal magnetism, under the name of mesmerism, 
 has been made familiar of late years to the ears of 
 English people, if not to their understandings, by the 
 zealous and indiscreet advocacy which its absurdities 
 have met with in London and our other great cities. 
 It is true that the disciples have outrun their master 
 —that Jlesmer has been out-mesmerized ; but the same 
 criticisms which have been here made on the system of 
 the arch-charlatan may be applied to the vagaries of 
 his successors, whether they be dupes or rogues. To 
 electro-biologists, spirit-rappers, and table-turners the 
 same arguments must be used as we employ to mes- 
 merists. They must be instructed that phenomena 
 are not to be referred to magnetic influence, simply 
 because it is difficult to account for them; that it is 
 especially foolish to set them down to such a cause, 
 when they are manifestly the product of another 
 power ; and that all the wonders which form the stock 
 of their conversation, and fill the pages of the Zoist, 
 are to be attributed, not to a lately discovered agency, 
 but to nervous susceptibility, imagination, and bodily
 
 286 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 temperament, aroused by certain well-known stimu- 
 lants. 
 
 They will doubtless be disinclined to embrace this 
 explanation of their marvels, and will argue that it is 
 much more likely that a table is made by ten or twelve 
 gentlemen and ladies to turn rapidly round, without 
 the application of muscular force, than that these 
 ladies and gentlemen should delude themselves into an 
 erroneous belief that such a phenomenon has been 
 produced. To disabuse them of such an opinion, they 
 must be instructed in the wondrous and strangely del- 
 icate mechanism of the human intellect and affections. 
 And after such enlightenment they must be hope- 
 lessly dull or perverse if they do not see that the meta- 
 physical explanation of "their cases" is not only the 
 true one, but that it opens up to view far more aston- 
 ishing features in the constitution of man than any 
 that are dreamt of in the vain philosophy of mesmer- 
 ism. It is humiliating to think that these remarks 
 should be an appropriate comment on the silliness of 
 the so-called educated classes of the nineteenth cen- 
 tury. That they are out of place, none can advance, 
 when one of the most popular pulpit orators of Lon- 
 don has not hesitated to commit to print, in a work 
 of religious pretensions, the almost blasphemous sug- 
 gestion that table-turning is a phenomenon conse- 
 quent upon the first out-poured drops of ' ' the seventh 
 vial ' ' having reached the earth.
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 MAKE WAY FOR THE LADIES ! 
 
 "For in all times, in the opinion of the multitude, witches and 
 old women and impostors have had a competition with phy- 
 sicians. And what followeth? Even this, that physicians 
 say to themselves, as Solomon expresseth it upon a higher 
 occasion, 'If it befall to me as befalleth to the fools, why 
 should I labour to be more wise?'" — Lord Bacon's Ad- 
 vancement of Learning. 
 
 It is time to say sometliing about the ladies as phy- 
 sicians. Once they were the chief practitioners of 
 medicine ; and even to recent times had a monopoly of 
 that branch of art over which Dr. Locock presides. 
 The question has lately been agitated whether certain 
 divisions of remedial industry ought not again to be 
 set aside for them ; and the patronage afforded to the 
 lady who (in spite of the ridicule thrown on her, and 
 the rejection of her advances by various medical 
 schools to which she applied for admission as a stu- 
 dent), managed to obtain a course of medical instruc- 
 tion at one of the London schools, and practised for 
 a brief time in London previous to her departure for 
 a locality more suited to her operations, would seem 
 to indicate that public feeling is not averse to the
 
 288 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 thought of employing— under certain conditions and 
 for certain purposes— female physicians. 
 
 Of the many doctresses who have flourished in 
 England during the last 200 years, only a few have 
 left any memorial of their actions behind them. Of 
 the wise women (a class of practitioners, by-the-by, 
 still to be found in many rural villages and in certain 
 parts of London) in whom our ancestors had as much 
 confidence as we of the present generation have in 
 the members of the College of Physicians, we question 
 if twoscore, including ]\Iargaret Kennix and Mrs. 
 \voodhouse, of the Elizabethan era, could be rescued 
 from oblivion. Some of them wrote books, and so, by 
 putting their names "in print," have a slight hold on 
 posthumous reputation. Two of them are immortal- 
 ized by mention in the records of the "Philosophical 
 Transactions for 1694." These ladies were Mrs. Sarah 
 Hastings and Mrs. French. The curious may refer 
 to the account there given of the ladies' skill; and 
 also, for further particulars relative to Sarah Hast- 
 ings, a glance may be given to M. de la Cross's "Me- 
 moirs for the Ingenious," published in the month of 
 July, 1693. We do not care to transcribe the passages 
 into our own pages ; though, now that it is the fashion 
 to treat all the unpleasant details of nursing as mat- 
 ters of romance, we presume there is nothing in the 
 cases mentioned calculated to shock public delicacy. 
 
 A most successful "wise woman" was Joanna 
 Stephens, an ignorant and vulgar creature, who, just 
 before the middle of the last century, proclaimed 
 that she had discovered a sovereign remedy for a pain- 
 ful malady, which, like the smallpox, has become in 
 the hands of modern surgery so manageable that ere
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 289 
 
 long it will rank as little more than "a temporary 
 discomfort." Joanna was a courageous woman. She 
 went straightway to temporal peers, bishops, duchess- 
 es, and told them she was the woman for their money. 
 They believed her, testified to the marvellous cures 
 which she had effected, and allowed her to make use 
 of their titles to awe sceptics into respect for her 
 powers. Availing herself of this permission, she pub- 
 lished books containing lists of her cures, backed up 
 by letters from influential members of the nobility and 
 gentry. 
 
 In the April number of the Gentleman's Magazine 
 for the year 1738, one reads— "Mrs. Stephens has 
 proposed to make her medicine publick, on consid- 
 eration of £5000 to be raised by contribution and 
 lodged with Mr. Drummond, banker; he has received 
 since the 11th of this month about £500 on that ac- 
 count." By the end of the month the banker had in 
 his hands £720 8s. Gd. 
 
 This generous offer was not made until the inventor 
 of the nostrums had enriched herself by enormous 
 fees drawn from the credulity of the rich of every 
 sect and rank. The subscription to pay her the 
 amount she demanded for her secret was taken up en- 
 thusiastically. Letters appeared in the Journals and 
 Magazines, arguing that no humane or patriotic man 
 could do otherwise than contribute to it. The move- 
 ment was well whipped up by the press. The Bishop 
 of Oxford gave £10 10s; Bishop of Gloucester, £10 
 IDs.; The Earl of Pembroke, £50; Countess of Delo- 
 raine, £5 5s. ; Lady Betty Jermaine, £21 ; Lady Vere 
 Beauclerc, £10 10s. ; Earl of Godolphin, £100 ; Duch- 
 ess of Gordon, £5 5s. : Viscount Lonsdale, £52 10s. ; 
 
 4-19
 
 290 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 Duke of Rutland, £50 ; the Bishop of Salisbury, £25 ; 
 Sir James Lowther, Bart., £25 ; Lord Cadogan, £2 26-. ; 
 Lord Cornvvallis, £20; Duchess of Portland, £21; Earl 
 of Clarendon, £25; Lord Lymington, £5; Duke of 
 Leeds, £21; Lord Galloway, £30; General Churchill 
 (Spot Ward's friend), £10 10s.; Countess of Hunt- 
 ingdon, £10 10s. ; lion. Frances Woodhouse, £10 10s. ; 
 Sir Thomas Lowther, Bart., £5 5s. ; Duke of Rich- 
 mond, £30; Sir George Saville, Bart., £5 5s. 
 
 These were only a few of the noble and distinguished 
 dupes of Joanna Stephens. Mrs. Crowe, in her 
 profound and philosophic work, "Spiritualism, and 
 the Age we live in, ' ' informs us that ' ' the solicitude ' ' 
 about the subject of table-turning "displayed by 
 many persons in high places, is the best possible sign 
 of the times; and it is one from which she herself 
 hopes that the period is arrived when we shall receive 
 fui'fcher help from God." Hadn't Joanna Stephens 
 reason to think that the period had arrived when she 
 and her remedial system would receive further help 
 from God? What would not Read (we do not mean 
 the empiric oculist knighted by Queen Anne, but the 
 cancer quack of our own time) give to have such a 
 list of aristocratic supporters ? What would not Mrs. 
 Doctor Goss (who in this year, 1861, boasts of the 
 patronage of "ladies of the highest distinction") 
 give for a similar roll of adherents? 
 
 The agitation, however, for a public subscription 
 for Joanna Stephens was not so successful as her 
 patrician supporters anticipated. They succeeded in 
 collecting £1356 3s. But Joanna stood out: her se- 
 cret should not go for less than £5000. "No pay, no 
 cure!" was her cry. The next thing her friends did
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 291 
 
 was to apply to Parliament for the required sum — 
 and, positively, their request was granted. The na- 
 tion, out of its taxes, paid what the individuals of its 
 wealthy classes refused to subscribe. A conunission 
 was appointed by Parliament, that gravely inquired 
 into the particulars of the cures alleged to be per- 
 formed by Joanna Stephens; and, finding the evi- 
 dence in favour of the lady unexceptionable, they 
 awarded her the following certificate, which ought to 
 be preserved to all ages as a valuable example of sen- 
 atorial wisdom: — 
 
 The Certificate required by the Act op 
 Parliament. 
 
 March 5, 1739. 
 "We, whose names are underwritten, being the 
 major part of the Justices appointed by an Act of 
 Parliament, entitled, 'An Act for providing a Reward 
 to Joanna Stephens, upon proper discovery to be 
 made by her, for the use of the Publick, of the Medi- 
 cines prepared by her ' —do certify, that the 
 
 said Joanna Stephens did, with all convenient speed 
 after the passing of the said Act, make a discovery 
 to our satisfaction, for the use of the publick, of the 
 said medicines, and of her method of preparing the 
 same; and that we have examined the said medi- 
 cines, and of her method of preparing of the same, 
 and are convinced by experiment of the Utility, Ef- 
 ficacy, and Dissolving Power thereof. 
 
 "Jo. Cant, Tho. Oxford, 
 
 Hakdwicke, C, Ste. Poyntz, 
 
 Wilmington, P., Stephen Hales, 
 
 Godolphin, C. p. S., Jo. Gardiner, 
 Dorset, Sim Burton,
 
 292 a book about doctors. 
 
 Montague, Peter Shaw, 
 
 Pembroke, D. Hartley, 
 
 Baltimore, W. Cheselden, 
 
 Cornburt, C. Hawkins, 
 
 M. Gloucester, Sam. Sharp." 
 
 "Wten such men as Cheselden, Hawkins, and 
 Sharp could sign such a certificate, we need feel no 
 surprise at the conduct of Dr. Nesbit and Dr. Pellet 
 (Mead's early friend, who rose to be president of 
 the College of Physicians). These two gentlemen, 
 who were on the commission, having some scruples 
 about the words "dissolving power," gave separate 
 testimonials in favour of the medicines. St. John 
 Long's cause, it may be remembered, was advocated 
 by Dr. Ramadge, a Fellow of the College. 
 
 The country paid its money, and obtained Joanna's 
 prescriptions. Here is a portion of the lady's state- 
 ment : — 
 "A full Discovery of the Medicines given by me, 
 
 Joanna Stephens, and a particular account of my 
 
 method of preparing and giving the same. 
 
 "My medicines are a Powder, a Decoction, and 
 Pills. 
 
 "The Powder consists of egg-shells and snails— 
 both calcined. 
 
 "The Decoction is made by boiling some herbs (to- 
 gether with a ball which consists of soap, swine 's- 
 cresses burnt to a blackness, and honey) in water. 
 
 "The Pills consist of snails calcined, wild car- 
 rot seeds, burdock seeds, ashen keys, hips and hawes 
 — all burnt to a blackness— soap and honey. 
 
 "The powder is thus prepared :— Take hen's egg- 
 shells, well drained from the whites, dry and clean;
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTOES. 293 
 
 crush them small with the hands, and fill a crucible of 
 the twelfth size (which contains nearly three pints) 
 with them lightly, place it on the fire till the egg- 
 shells be calcined to a greyish white, and acquire an 
 acrid, salt taste : this will take up eight hours, at least. 
 After they are thus calcined, put them in a dry, 
 clean earthen pan, which must not be above three 
 parts full, that there may be room for the swelling 
 of the egg-shells in stacking. Let the pan stand un- 
 covered in a dry room for two months, and no long- 
 er ; in this time the egg-shells will become of a mild- 
 er taste, and that part which is sufBciently calcined 
 will fall into a powder of such a fineness, as to pass 
 through a common hairsieve, which is to be done ac- 
 cordingly. 
 
 "In like manner, take garden snails, with their 
 shells, cleaned from the dirt; fill a crucible of the 
 same size with them whole, cover it, and place it on 
 the fire as before, till the snails have done smoak- 
 ing, which will be in about an hour— taking care that 
 they do not continue in the fire after that. They are 
 then to be taken out of the crucible, and immediately 
 rubbed in a moi-tar to a fine powder, which ought to 
 be of a very dark-grey colour. 
 
 "Note. — If pit-coal be made use of, it will be proper — in 
 order that the fire may the sooner burn clear on the top — that 
 large cinders, and not fresh coals, be placed upon the tiles 
 which cover the crucibles. 
 
 ' ' These powders being thus prepared, take the egg- 
 shell powder of six crucibles, and the snail-powder 
 of one; mix them together, and rub them in a mor- 
 tar, and pass them through a cjT)ress sieve. This 
 mixture is immediately to be put up into bottles, 
 whicli must be close stopped, and kept in a dry place
 
 294 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 for use. I have generallj' added a small quantity 
 of swine 's-cresses, burnt to a blackness, and 
 nibbed fine; but this was only with a view to dis- 
 "Tuise it. 
 
 "The egg-shells may be prepared at any time of the 
 year, but it is best to do them in summer. The snails 
 ought only to be prepared in May, June, July, and 
 August; and I esteem those best which are done in 
 the first of these months. 
 
 "The decoction is thus prepared :— Take four 
 ounces and a half of the best Alicant soap, beat it in 
 a mortar with a large spoonful of swine 's-cresses 
 burnt to a blackness, and as much honey as will 
 make the whole of the consistence of paste. Let this 
 be formed into a ball. Take this ball, and green 
 camomile, or camomile flowers, sweet fennel, parsley, 
 and burdock leaves, of each an ounce (when there 
 are not greens, take the same quantity of roots) ; slice 
 the ball, and boil them in two quarts of soft water 
 half an hour, then strain it off, and sweeten it with 
 honey. 
 
 "The pills are thus prepared:— Take equal quanti- 
 ties by measure of snails calcined as before, of wild 
 carrot seeds, burdock seeds, ashen keys, hips and 
 hawes, all burnt to a blackness, or, which is the same 
 thing, till they have done smoaking; mix them to- 
 gether, rub them in a mortar, and pass them through 
 a cypress sieve. Then take a large spoonful of this 
 mixture, and four ounces of the best Alicant soap, 
 and beat them in a mortar with as much honey as 
 will make the whole of a proper consistence for pills ; 
 sixty of which are to be made out of every ounce of 
 the composition."
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 295 
 
 Five thousand pounds for such stuff as this!— and 
 the time was coming when the nation grudged an in- 
 adequate reward to Jenner, and haggled about the 
 purchase of Hunter's Museum ! 
 
 But a more remarkable case of feminine success in 
 the doctoring line was that of Mrs. Mapp, who was 
 a contemporary of Mrs. Stephens. Under the patron- 
 age of the Court, "Drop and Pill" Ward (or "Spot" 
 Ward, as he was also called, from a mole on his cheek) 
 was astonishing London with his cures, and his gor- 
 geous equipage which he had the royal permission 
 to drive through St. James Park, when the attention 
 of the fashionable world was suddenly diverted to 
 the proceeding of "Crazy Sally of Epsom." She 
 was an enormous, fat, ugly, drunken woman, known 
 as a haunter of fairs, about which she loved to reel, 
 screaming and abusive, in a state of roaring intoxica- 
 tion. This attractive ladj"- was a bone-setter; and 
 so much esteemed was she for skill in her art, that 
 the town of Epsom offered her £100 if she would re- 
 side there for a year. The following passage we take 
 from the Gentleman's Magazine for 1736 : "Saturday 
 31. In the Daily Advertiser, July 28, Joshua Ward, 
 Esq., having the queen's leave, recites seven extraor- 
 dinary cases of persons which were cured by him, 
 and examined before her Majesty, June 7, objections 
 to which had been made in the Grub Street Journal, 
 June 24. But the attention of the public has been 
 taken off from the wonder-working Mr. Ward to a 
 strolling woman now at Epsom, who calls herself 
 Crazy Sally; and had performed cures in bone-set- 
 ting to admiration, and occasioned so great a resort.
 
 296 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 that the town offered her 100 guineas to continue 
 there a year." 
 
 "Crazy Sally" awoke one morning and found her- 
 self famous. Patients of rank and wealth flocked in 
 from every quarter. Attracted by her success, an Ep- 
 som swain made an offer of marriage to Sally, which 
 she like a fool accepted. Her maiden name of Wallin 
 (she was the daughter of a AViltshire bone-setter of 
 that name) she exchanged at the altar for that of 
 Mapp. If her marriage was not in all respects fortu- 
 nate, she was not burdened with much of her hus- 
 band's society. He lived with her only for a fort- 
 night, during which short space of time he thrashed 
 her soundly twice or thrice, and then decamped with 
 a hundred guineas of her earnings. She found con- 
 solation for her wounded affections in the homage 
 of the world. She became a notoriety of the first 
 water, and every day some interesting fact appeared 
 about her in the prints and public journals. In one 
 we are told "the cures of the woman bone-setter of 
 Epsom are too many to be enumerated : her bandages 
 are extraordinary neat, and her dexterity in reducing 
 dislocations and setting fractured bones wonderful. 
 She has cured persons who have been twenty years 
 disabled, and has given incredible relief in the most 
 difficult cases. The lame come daily to her, and she 
 gets a great deal of money, persons of quality who 
 attend her operations making her presents." 
 
 Poets sounded her praises. Vide Gentleman's 
 Magazine, August, 1736 : 
 
 "On Mrs Mapp, the famous Bone-setter op Ep- 
 som. 
 "Of late, without the least pretence to skill.
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 297 
 
 Ward's grown a fam'd physician by a pill ; 
 Yet he can but a doubtful honour claim, 
 While envious Death oft blasts his rising fame. 
 Next travell'd Taylor fills us with surprise, 
 Who pours new light upon the blindest eyes; 
 Each journal tells his circuit through the land. 
 Each journal tells the blessings of his hand; 
 And lest some hireling scribbler of the town 
 Injure his history, he writes his own. 
 We read the long accounts with wonder o'er; 
 Had he wrote less, we had believed him more. 
 Let these, O Mapp, thou wonder of the age I 
 With dubious arts endeavor to engage; 
 While you, irregularly strict to rules. 
 Teach dull collegiate pedants they are fools; 
 By merit, the sure path to fame pursue — 
 For all who see thy art must own it true." 
 
 • Mrs. Mapp continued to reside in Epsom, but she 
 visited London once a week. Her journeys to and 
 from the metropolis she performed in a chariot 
 drawn by four horses, with servants wearing splen- 
 did liveries. She used to put up at the Grecian Cof- 
 fee-House, where Sir Hans Sloane witnessed her op- 
 erations, and was so favourably impressed by them, 
 that he put under her charge his niece, who was 
 suffering from a spinal affection, or, to use the exact 
 and scientific language of the newspapers, "whose 
 back had been broke nine years, and stuck out two 
 inches." The eminent lady went to the playhouse 
 in Lincoln 's-Inn-Fields to see the Husband's relief 
 acted. Her presence not only produced a crowded 
 house, but the fact that she sate between Taylor the 
 quack oculist on one side, and Ward the drysaHer on 
 the other, gave occasion for the production of the fol- 
 lowing epigram, the point of which is perhaps almost 
 as remarkable as its polish :— 
 
 "While Mapp to the actors showed a kind regard, 
 On one side Taylor sat, on the other Ward; 
 When their mock persons of the drama came.
 
 298 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 Both IVard and Taylor thought it hurt their fame; 
 VVonder'd how Mapp could in good humour be, 
 'Zoons!' crys the manly dame, 'it hurts not me; 
 Quacks without art may either blind or kill, 
 But demonstration proves that mine is skill.' " 
 
 On the stage, also, a song was sung in honour of 
 Mrs. Mapp, and in derision of Taylor and Ward. It 
 ran thus:— 
 
 "You surgeons of London, who puzzle your pates, 
 To ride in your coaches, and purchase estates, 
 Give over for shame, for pride has a fall. 
 And the doctress of Epsom has out-done you all. 
 
 Dr-ry down, &c. 
 
 "What signifies learning, or going to school. 
 When a woman can do, without reason or rule. 
 What puts you to nonplus, and baffles your art; 
 For petticoat practice has now got the start. 
 
 Dcrry down, &c. 
 
 "In physic, as well as in fashions, we find 
 The newest has always its run with mankind; 
 Forgot is the bustle 'bout Taylor and Ward, 
 And Mapp's all the cry, and her fame's on record. 
 
 Derry down, &c. 
 
 "Dame Nature has given a doctor's degree — 
 She gets all the patients, and pockets the fee; 
 So if you don't instantly prove her a cheat, 
 She'll loll in her carriage, whilst you walk the street. 
 
 Derry down, Sc." 
 
 On one occasion, as this lady was proceeding up the 
 Old Kent Road to the Borough, in her carriage and 
 four, dressed in a loosely-fitting robe-de-chambre, and 
 manifesting by her manner that she had partaken 
 somewhat too freely of Geneva water, she found her- 
 self in a very trying position. Iler fat frame, in- 
 decorous dress, intoxication, and dazzling equipage, 
 were in the eyes of the mob such sure signs of roy- 
 alty, that she was immediately taken for a Court
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 299 
 
 lady, of German origin and unpopular repute, whose 
 word was omnipotent at St. James's. 
 
 Soon a crowd gathered round the carriage, and, 
 with the proper amount of swearing and yelhng, 
 were about to break the windows with stones, when 
 the spirited occupant of the vehicle, acting very much 
 as Nell Gwyn did on a similar occasion, rose from 
 her seat, and letting down the glasses, exclaimed, 
 with an imprecation more emphatic than polite, 
 
 " ! Don 't you know me ? I am Mrs. Mapp, the 
 
 bone-setter ! ' ' 
 
 This brief address so tickled the humour of the 
 mob, that the lady proceeded on her way amidst deaf- 
 ening acclamations and laughter. 
 
 The Taylor mentioned as sitting on one side of 
 Mrs. Mapp in the playhouse was a notable character. 
 A cunning, plausible, shameless blackguard, he was 
 eminently successful in his vocation of quack. Dr. 
 King, in his "Anecdotes of his own Times," speaks of 
 him with respect. "I was at Tunbridge, " says the 
 Doctor, "with Chevalier Taylor, the oculist. He 
 seems to understand the anatomy of the eye perfectly 
 well ; he has a fine hand and good instruments, and 
 performs all his operations with great dexterity ; but 
 he undertakes everything (even impossible cases), 
 and promises everything. No charlatan ever appeared 
 with fitter and more excellent talents, or to great- 
 er advantage ; he has a good person, is a natural ora- 
 tor, and has a faculty of learning foreign languages. 
 He has travelled over all Europe, and has always with 
 him an equipage suitable to a man of the first qual- 
 ity ; and has been introduced to most of the sovereign
 
 300 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 princes, from whom he has received many marks of 
 their liberalitj' and esteem." 
 
 Dr. King, in a Latin inscription to the mountebank, 
 says:— 
 
 "Hie est, hie vir est, 
 
 Quern docti, indoctique omnes impen^c mirantur, 
 
 Johannes Taylor; 
 
 Ccecigenorum, ccECorum, coeciuiiuum, 
 
 Quot quot sunt ubique, 
 
 Spes unica — Solamen — Salus." 
 
 The Chevalier Taj'lor (as he always styled him- 
 self), in his travels about the country, used to give 
 lectures on "The Eye," in whatever place he tarried. 
 These addresses were never explanatory of the anato- 
 my of the organ, but mere absurd rhapsodies on it 
 as an ingenious and wonderful contrivance. 
 
 Chevalier's oration to the university of Oxford, 
 which is still extant, began thus:— 
 
 "The eye, most illustrious sons of the muses, most 
 learned Oxonians, whose fame I have heard celebrated 
 in all parts of the globe— the eye, that most amazing, 
 tTiat stupendous, that comprehending, that incompre- 
 hensible, that miraculous organ, the eye, is the Pro- 
 teus of the passions, the herald of the mind, the inter- 
 preter of the heart, and the window of the soul. 
 The eye has dominion over all things. The world 
 was made for the eye, and the eye for the world. 
 
 "My subject is Light, most illustrious sons of lit- 
 erature—intellectual light. Ah ! my philosophical, 
 metaphysical, my classical, mathematical, mechanical, 
 my theological, my critical audience, my subject is 
 the eye. You are the eye of England ! 
 
 "England has two eyes— Oxford and Cambridge. 
 They are the two eyes of England, and two intellect-
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 301 
 
 ual eyes. Tou are the right eye of England, tjie elder 
 sister in science, and the first fountain of learning 
 in all Europe. "What filial joy must exult in my bos- 
 om, in my vast circuit, as copious as that of the sun 
 himself, to shine in my course, upon this my native 
 soil, and give light even at Oxford! 
 
 ' ' The eye is the husband of the soul ! 
 
 "The eye is indefatigable. The eye is an angelic 
 incxilty. The eye in this respect is a female. The 
 eye is never tired of seeing; that is, of taking in, as- 
 similating, and enjoying all Nature's vigour." 
 
 When the Chevalier was ranting on in this fashion 
 at Cambridge (of course there terming Oxford the 
 left eye of England), he undertook to express every 
 passion of the mind by the eye alone. 
 
 "Here you have surprise, gentlemen ; here you have 
 delight ; here you have terror ! ' ' 
 
 "Ah!" cried an undergraduate, "there's no merit 
 in that, for you tell us beforehand what the emotion 
 is. Now next time say nothing— and let me guess 
 what the feeling is you desire to express." 
 
 "Certainly," responded the Doctor, cordially; 
 "nothing can be more reasonable in the way of a 
 proposition. Now then, sir, what is this?" 
 
 "Oh, veneration, I suppose." 
 
 "Certainly— quite right— and this?" 
 
 "Pity." 
 
 "Oi course, sir: yon see it's impossible for an ob- 
 servant gentleman like yourself to misunderstand the 
 language of the eye," answered the oculist, whose 
 plan was only to assent to his young friend's deci- 
 sions. 
 
 In the year 1736, when the Chevalier was at the
 
 302 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 height of his fame, he received the following humor- 
 ous letter: — 
 
 "DoMiNE,— tu, qui in oculis hominum versaris, 
 et quamcuiKjue tractas rem, acu tangis, salvo! Tu, 
 (jui, instar Phtubi, lumen orbi, et orbes luminibus 
 reddis, iterum salve ! 
 
 "Cum per te Gallia, per te nostra; academia?, duo 
 regni lumina, clarius iutuentur, cur non ad urbem 
 Edinburgi, cum toties ubique erras, cursum tendisT 
 nam qua'dam ccecitas cives illic invasit. Ipsos magis- 
 tratus Gutia Serena occupaAdt, videntur enim -iidere, 
 sed nihil vident. Idcirco tu istam Scoticam Nebulam 
 ex oculis remove, et quodcunque latet in tenebris, in 
 lucem prefer. Illi violenter carcerem, tu oculos leni- 
 ter reclude; illi lucem Porteio ademerunt, tu illis lu- 
 cem resrtitue, et quamvis fingant so dupliciter videre, 
 fac ut simpliciter tantum oculo irretorto conspiciant. 
 Peractoque cursu, ad Angliam redi artis tuai plenus, 
 Toriosque (ut vulgo vocantur) qui adhuc ca?cutiant 
 et hallucinantur, illuminato. Ab ipsis clericis, si qui 
 sint coeci ductores, nubem discute; immo ipso Sole 
 lunaque, ci;m laborant eclipsi, qave, instar tui ipsius, 
 transit per varias regiones obumbrans, istam molem 
 caliginis amoveto. Sic eris Sol Mundi, sic ei"is non 
 solum nomine Sartor, sed re Oculorum omnium resar- 
 citor; sic omuis Charta Publica tuam Claritudinem 
 celebrabit, et ubicunque frontem tuam ostendis, nemo 
 non te, vir speetatissime, admirabitur. Ipse lippus 
 scriptor hujus epistoke maxime gauderet te Medicum 
 Illustrissimum, cum omnibus tuis oculatis testibua, 
 Vindsoriae videre. — Vale." 
 
 The Chevalier had a son and a biographer in the 
 person of John Taylor, who, under the title of "John
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 303 
 
 Taylor, Junior," succeeded to his father's trumpet, 
 and blew it with good effect. The title-page of his 
 biography of his father enumerates some half-hun- 
 dred crowned or royal heads, to whose eyes the 
 "Chevalier John Taylor, Opthalmiater Pontifical, 
 Imperial, and Royal," administered. 
 
 But this work was feeble and contemptible com- 
 pared with the Chevalier's autobiographic sketch of 
 himself, in his proposal for publishing which he 
 speaks of his loves and adventures, in the following 
 modest style:— 
 
 ' ' I had the happiness to be also personally known to 
 two of the most amiable ladies this age has produced 
 —namely, Lady Inverness and Lady Mackintosh; 
 both powerful figures, of great abilities, and of the 
 most pleasing address— both the sweetest prattlers, 
 the prettiest reasoners, and the best judges of the 
 charms of high life that I ever saw. When I first be- 
 held these wonders I gazed on their beauties, and 
 my attention was busied in admiring the order and 
 delicacy of their discourse, &c. For were I com- 
 manded to seek the world for a lady adorned with 
 every accomplishment that man thinks desirable in 
 the sex, I could only be determined by finding their 
 resemblance 
 
 " I am perfectly acquainted with the history of Per- 
 sia, as well before as since the death of Thamas Kou- 
 li Khan; well informed of the adventures of Prince 
 Heraclius; was personally known to a minister he 
 sent to Moscow in his first attempt to conquer that 
 country; and am instructed in the cruel manner of 
 putting out the eyes of conquered princes, and of cut-
 
 304 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 ting away the eyelids of soldiers taken ir war, to make 
 them unfit for service. 
 
 "I have lived in many convents of friars of differ- 
 ent orders, been present at their creation to various 
 degrees, and have assisted at numberless entertain- 
 ments upon those occasions. 
 
 "I have been in almost every female nunnery in 
 all Europe (on account of my profession), and could 
 write many volumes on the adventures of these relig- 
 ious beauties. 
 
 "I have been present at the making of nuns of 
 almost every order, and assisted at the religious feasts 
 given on those occasions. 
 
 ' ' I have met with a very great variety of singular 
 religious people called Pilgrims. 
 
 "I have been present at many extraordinary di- 
 versions designed for the amusement of the sovereign, 
 viz. hunting of different sorts of wild beasts, as in 
 Poland; bull-fighting, as in Spain. 
 
 "I am well acquainted with all the various pun- 
 ishments for different crimes, as practised in every 
 nation— been present at the putting of criminals to 
 death by various ways, viz. striking off heads, break- 
 ing on the wheel, &c. 
 
 "I am also well instructed in the different ways of 
 giving the torture to extract confession— and am no 
 stranger to other singular punishments, such as im- 
 paling, burying alive with head above ground, &c. 
 
 "And lastly, I have assisted, have seen the manner 
 of embalming dead bodies of great personages, and 
 am well instructed in the manner practised in some 
 nations for preserving them entire for ages, with
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 305 
 
 little alteration of figure from what they were when 
 first deprived of life. . . . 
 
 "All must agree that no man ever had a greater 
 variety of matter worthy to be conveyed to posterity. 
 I shall, therefore, give my best care to, so to paint my 
 thoughts, and give such a dress of the story of my 
 life, that tho' I shall talk of the Great, the Least shall 
 not find cause of offence." 
 
 The occasion of this greart man issuing so modest a 
 proposal to the public is involved in some mystery, i 
 It would seem that he determined to publish his own 
 version of his adventures, in consequence of being 
 dissatisfied with his son's sketch of them. John 
 Taylor, Junior, was then resident in Hatton Garden, 
 living as an eye-doctor, and entered into an arrange- 
 ment with a publisher, without his father's consent, to 
 write the Chevalier's biography. Affixed to the in- 
 decent pamphlet, which was the result of this agree- 
 ment, are the following epistolary statements: — 
 
 "My Son,— If you should unguardedly have suf- 
 fered your name at the head of a work which must 
 make us all contemptible, this must be printed in it 
 as the best apology for yourself and father : — 
 
 "to the printer. 
 
 Oxford, Jan. lo, 1761. 
 "My dear and only son having respectfully repre- 
 sented to me that he has composed a work, intitled 
 My Life and Adventures, and requires my consent 
 for its publication, notwithstanding I am as yet a 
 stranger to the composition, and consequently can be 
 no judge of its merits, I am so well persuaded that my 
 son is in every way incapable of saying aught of his 
 father but what must redound to his honour and rep- 
 
 4—30
 
 306 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 utation, and so perfectly convinced of the goodness of 
 his heart, that it does not seem possible I should err 
 in my judgment, by giving my consent to a publica- 
 tion of the said work. And as I have long been em- 
 ployed in writing my own Life and Adventures, 
 which will with all expedition be published, 'twill 
 hereafter be left with all due attention to the candid 
 reader, whether the Life of the Father written by the 
 son, or the Life of the Father %vritten by himself, best 
 deserves approbation. 
 
 "The Chevalier Taylor, 
 "Opthalmiater, Pontifical, Imperial, and RoyaL 
 
 <<• • • rpjig above is a true copy of the letter 
 my Father sent me. All the answer I can make to the 
 bills he sends about the town and country is, that I 
 have maintained mj'' mother these eight years, and do 
 this at the present time ; and that, two years since, I 
 was concerned fo" him, for which I have paid near 
 £200. 
 
 "As witness my hand, 
 
 "John Taylor, Oculist." 
 
 "Hatton Garden." 
 
 It is impossible to say whether these differences 
 were genuine, or only feigned by the two quacks, in 
 order to keep silly people gossiping about them. Cer- 
 tainly the accusations brought against the Chevalier, 
 that he had sponged on his son, and declined to sup- 
 port his wife, are rather grave ones to introduce into 
 a make-believe quarrel. But, on the other hand, 
 when the Chevalier's autobiography appeared it was 
 prefaced with the following dedicatory letter to his 
 son:— 
 
 "My deab Son,— Can I do ill when I address to
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 307 
 
 you the story of your father's life? Whose name can 
 be so proper as your own to be prefixed to a work of 
 this kind ? You who was born to represent me living, 
 when I shall cease to be— born to pursue that most 
 excellent and important profession to which I have 
 for so many j'ears labored to be useful— born to de- 
 fend my cause and support my fame— may I not 
 presume, my son, that you will defend your father's 
 cause ? May I not affirm that you, my son, will sup- 
 port your father's fame? After having this said, 
 need I add more than remind you— that, to a father, 
 nothing can be so dear as a deserving son— nor state 
 so desirable as that of the man who holds his succes- 
 sor, and knows him to be worthy. Be prosperous. Be 
 happy. 
 
 "I am, your affectionate Father, 
 
 "The Chevalier John Taylor." 
 
 This unctuous address to "my lion-hearted boy" is 
 equalled in drollery by many passages of the work 
 itself, which (in the language of the title-page) "con- 
 tains all most worthy the attention of a Traveller— 
 also a dissertation on the Art of Pleasing, with the 
 most interesting observations on the Force of Preju- 
 dice; numberless adventures, as well amongst nuns 
 and friars as with persons in high life; with a de- 
 scription of a great variety of the most admirable re- 
 lations, which, though told in his well-known peculiar 
 manner, each one is strictly true, and within the Che- 
 valier's own observations and knowledge." 
 
 Apart from the bombast of his style, the Cheval- 
 ier's "well-known peculiar manner" was remarkable 
 for Kttle besides tautology and a fantastic arrange- 
 ment of words. In his orations, when he aimed at
 
 308 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 sublimity, he indulged in short sentences each of 
 which commenced with a genitive case followed by an 
 accusative; after which came the verb succeeded by 
 the nominative. Thus, at such crises of grandilo- 
 quence, instead of saying, "I will lecture on the won- 
 ders of the eye," he would invert the order to, "Of 
 the eye on the wonders lecture will I." By doing 
 this, he maintained that he surpassed the finest per- 
 iods of Tully! There is a letter in Nichols's "Liter- 
 ary Anecdotes," in which a lecture given by this 
 mountebank at Northampton is excellently described. 
 "The doctor," says the writer, "appeared dressed in 
 black, with a long light flowing ty'd wig; ascended a 
 scalfold behind a large table raised about two feet 
 from the ground, and covered with an old piece of 
 tapestry, on which was laid a dark-coloured cafoy 
 chariot-seat with four black bunches (used upon 
 hearses) tyed to the corners for tassels, four large 
 candles on each side of the cushion, and a quart de- 
 canter of drinking water, with a half-pint glass, to 
 moisten his mouth." 
 
 The fellow boasted that he was the author of forty- 
 five works in different languages. Once he had the 
 audacity to challenge Johnson to talk Latin with him. 
 The doctor responded with a quotation from Horace, 
 which the charlatan took to be the doctor's own com- 
 position. "He said a few words ivcll enough," John- 
 son said magnanimously when he repeated the story 
 to Boswell. "Taylor," said the doctor, "is the most 
 ignorant man I ever knew, but sprightly; Ward, the 
 dullest." 
 
 John Taylor, Junr., survived his father more than 
 fifteen years, and to the last had a lucrative business
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 309 
 
 in Hatton Garden. Plis father had been oculist to 
 George the Second ; but this post, on the death of the 
 Chevalier, he failed to obtain, it being given to a 
 foreign protege of the Duke of Bedford's. He made 
 a great noise about the sufferings of the poor, and 
 proposed to the different parishes of London to at- 
 tend the paupers labouring under diseases of the eye 
 at two guineas a-year for each parish. He was an il- 
 literate, vulgar, and licentious scoundrel; and yet 
 when he died, on the 17th September, 17S7, he was 
 honoured with a long memoir in the Gentleman's 
 Magazine, as one "whose philanthropy was exerted 
 so fully as to class him with a Han way or a Howard." 
 
 If an apology is needed for giving so much space, in 
 a chapter devoted to the ladies, to the John Taylors, 
 it must be grounded on the fact that the Chevalier 
 was the son of an honest widow woman who carried 
 on a respectable business, as an apothecary and doc- 
 tress, at Norwich. In this she resembled Mrs. Blood, 
 the wife of the Colonel of that name, who for years 
 supported herself and son at Romford, by keeping an 
 apothecary's shop under tlie name of "Weston. Col- 
 onel Blood was also himself a member of the Faculty. 
 For some time, whilst meditating his grand coup, he 
 practised as a doctor in an obscure part of the City, 
 under the name of Ayliffe. 
 
 Two hundred years since the lady practitioners of 
 medicine in the provinces not seldom had working 
 for them pupils and assistants of the opposite sex, 
 and this usage was maintained in secluded districts 
 till a comparatively recent date. In Houghton's Col- 
 lection, Nov. 15, 1695, is the following advertisement, 
 — "If any Apothecary's Widow that keeps a shop in
 
 310 A BOOK AliOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 the country wants a journeyman that has lived 25 
 years for himself in London, and has had the conver- 
 sation of the eminent physicians of the colledge, I can 
 help to such an one."
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 MESSENGER MONSET. 
 
 Amongst the celebrities of the medical profession, 
 who have left no memorial behind them more durable 
 or better known than their wills in Doctors' Com- 
 mons, was Messenger Monsey, the great-grandfather 
 of our ex-Chancellor, Lord Cranworth. 
 
 "We do not know whether his Lordship is aware of 
 his descent from the eccentric physician. Possibly he 
 is not, for the Monseys, though not altogether of a 
 plebeian stock, were little calculated to throw eclat 
 over the genealogy of a patrician house. 
 
 Messenger Monsey, who used with a good deal of 
 unnecessary noise to declare his contempt of the an- 
 cestral honours which he in reality possessed, loved to 
 tell of the humble origin of his family. The first 
 Duke of Leeds delighted in boasting of his lucky pro- 
 genitor, Jack Osborn, the shop lad, who rescued his 
 master's daughter from a watery grave, in the 
 Thames, and won ber hand away from a host of noble 
 suitors, who wanted— literally, the young lady's pin- 
 money. She was the only child of a wealthy pin- 
 maker carrying on his business on London Bridge,
 
 312 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 and the jolly old fellow, instead of disdaining to be- 
 stow his heiress on a 'prentice, exclaimed, "Jack won 
 her, and he shall wear her!" Dr. Monsey, in the hey- 
 day of his social fame, told his friends that the first of 
 his ancestors of any note was a baker, and a retail 
 dealer in hops. At a critical point of this worthy 
 man's career, when hops were "down" and feathers 
 were "up," to raise a small sum of money for imme- 
 diate use he ripped open his beds, sold the feathers, 
 and stuffed the tick with unsaleable hops. Soon a 
 change in the market occurred, and once more oper- 
 ating on the couches used by himself and children, he 
 sold the hops at a profit, and bought back the feath- 
 ers. "That's the way, sir, by which my family hop- 
 ped from obscurity!" the doctor would conclude. 
 
 We have reason for thinking that this ancestor was 
 the physician's great-grandfather. As is usually 
 found to be the case, where a man thinks lightly of 
 the advantages of birth. Messenger was by no means 
 of despicable extraction. Ilis grandfather was a man 
 of considerable property, and married Elizabeth Mes- 
 senger, co-heir of Thomas Messenger, lord of Whit- 
 well Manor, in the county of Norfolk, a gentleman by 
 birth and position; and his father, the Rev. Robert 
 Monsey, a Norfolk rector, married JIary, the daugh- 
 ter of Roger Clopton, rector of Downham. Of the 
 antiquity and importance of the Cloptons amongst 
 the gentle families of England this is no place to 
 speak; but further particulars relative to the Monsey 
 pedigree may be found by the curious in Bloomfield's 
 "History of Norfolk." On such a descent a Celt 
 would persuade himself that he represented kings 
 and rulers. Monsey, like Sydney Smith after him,
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTOKti. 313 
 
 preferred to cover the whole question with jolly, 
 manly ridicule, and put it out of sight. 
 
 Messenger Monsey was born in 1693, and received 
 in early life an excellent education; for though his 
 father at the Revolution threw his lot in with the non- 
 jurors, and forfeited his living, the worthy clergyman 
 had a sufficient paternal estate to enable Mm to rear 
 his only child without any painful considerations of 
 cost. After spending five years at St. Jlary's Hall, 
 Cambridge, IMessenger studied physic for some time 
 under Sir Benjamin Wrench, at Norwich. Starting 
 on his own account, he practised for a while at Bury 
 St. Edmunds, in Suffolk, but with little success. He 
 worked hard, and yet never managed in that prosper- 
 ous and beautiful country town to earn more than 
 three hundred guineas in the same year. If we exam- 
 ined into the successes of medical celebrities, we 
 .should find in a great majority of cases fortune was 
 won by the aspirant either annexing himself to, and 
 gliding into the confidence of, a powerful clique, or 
 else by his being through some lucky accident thro\\Ti 
 in the way of a patron. Monsey 's rise was of the lat- 
 ter sort. He was still at Bury, with nothing before 
 him but the prospect of working all his days as a 
 country doctor, when Lord Godolphin, son of Queen 
 Anne's Lord Treasurer, and grandson of the great 
 Duke of Marlborough, was seized, on the road to 
 Newmarket, with an attack of apoplexy. Bury was 
 the nearest point where medical assistance could be 
 obtained. Monsey was summoned, and so fascinated 
 his patient with his conversational powers that his 
 Lordship invited him to London, and induced him to 
 relinquish his country practice.
 
 314 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 From that time Monsey's fortune was made. He 
 became to the Whigs very much what, in the previous 
 generation, Radcliffe had been to the Tories. Sir 
 Robert Walpole genuinely loved him, seizing every 
 opportunity to enjoy his society, and never doing 
 anything for him ; and Lord Chesterfield was amongst 
 the most zealous trumpeters of his medical skill. 
 Lively, sagacious, well-read, and brutally sarcastic, 
 he had for a while a society reputation for wit 
 scarcely inferior to Swift's; and he lived amongst 
 men well able to judge of wit. Garriek and he were 
 for many years intimate friends, until, in a contest of 
 jokes, each of the two brilliant men lost his temper, 
 and they parted like Roland and Sir Leoline— never 
 to meet again. Garriek probably would have kept 
 his temper under any other form of ridicule, but he 
 never ceased to resent Monsey's reflection on his 
 avarice to the Bishop of Sodor and ]\Ian. 
 
 "Garriek is going to quit the stage," observed the 
 Bishop. 
 
 "That he'll never do," answered Monsey, making 
 use of a Norfolk proverb, "so long as he knows a 
 guinea is cross on one side and pile on the other." 
 
 This speech was never forgiven. Lord Bath en- 
 deavoured to effect a reconciliation between the di- 
 vided friends, but his amiable intention was of no 
 avail. 
 
 "I thank you," said Monsey; "but why will your 
 Lordship trouble yourself with the squabbles of a 
 Merry Andrew and quack doctor?" 
 
 When the tragedian was on his death-bed, Monsey 
 composed a satire on the sick man, renewing the 
 attack on his parsimony. Garriek 's illness, however.
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 315 
 
 terminating fatally, the doctor destroyed his verses, 
 
 but some scraps of them still remain to show their 
 
 spirit and power. A consultation of physicians was 
 
 represented as being held over the actor:— 
 
 "Seven wise physicians lately met. 
 To save a wretched sinner; 
 Come, Tom, said Jack, pray let's be quick, 
 
 Or I shall lose my dinner. 
 * * * * 
 
 "Some roared for rhubarb, jalap some, 
 And some cried out for Dover; 
 Lets give him something, each man said — 
 Why e'en let's give him — over." 
 
 After much learned squabbling, one of the sages 
 
 proposed to revive the sinking energies of the poor 
 
 man by jingling guineas in his ears. The suggestion 
 
 was acted upon, when— 
 
 "Soon as the fav'rite sound he heard. 
 
 One faint effort he try'd ; 
 He op'd his eyes, he stretched his hands. 
 He made one grasp— and dy'd." 
 
 Though, on the grave closing over his antagonist, 
 Mousey suppressed these lines, he continued to cher- 
 ish an animosity to the object of them. The spirit in 
 which, out of respect to death, he drew a period to 
 their quarrel, was much like that of the Irish peasant 
 in the song, who tells his ghostly adviser that he for- 
 gives Pat Malone with all his heart (supposing deatli 
 should get the better of him)— but should he recover, 
 he means to pay the rascal off roundly. Sir Walter 
 Scott somewhere tells a story of a Highland chief, in 
 his last moments declaring that he from the bottom of 
 his heart forgave his old enemy, the head of a hostile 
 clan— and concluding this Christian avowal with a 
 final address to his son— "But may all evil light upon 
 ye, Ronald, if ye e'er forgie the heathen."
 
 316 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 Throug'li Lord Godolphin's interest, Monsey was 
 appointed physician to Chelsea College, on the death 
 of Dr. Smart. For some time he continued to reside 
 in St. James's: but on the death of his patron he 
 moved to Chelsea, and spent the last j'ears of his life 
 in retirement— and to a certain extent banishment— 
 from the great world. The hospital offices were then 
 filled by a set of low-bom scoundrels, or discharged 
 servants, whom the ministers of various Cabinets had 
 had some reason of their own for providing for. The 
 surgeon was that Mr. Ranby who positively died of 
 rage because Henry Fielding's brother (Sir John) 
 would not punish a hackney coachman who had been 
 guilty of the high treason of— being injured and 
 abused by the plaintiff. With this man Monsey had 
 a tremendous quarrel ; but though in the right, he 
 had to submit to Ranby 's powerful connections. 
 
 This affair did not soften his temper to the other 
 functionaries of the hospital with whom he had to 
 associate at the hall table. His encounter with the 
 venal elector who had been nominated to a Chelsea 
 appointment is well known, though an account of it 
 would hurt the delicacy of these somewhat prudish 
 pages. Of the doctor's insolence the following is a 
 good story:— 
 
 A clergyman, who used to bore him with pompous 
 and pedantic talk, was arguing on some point with 
 Monsey, when the latter exclaimed:— 
 
 "Sir, if you have faith in your opinion, will you 
 venture a wager upon it ? " 
 
 "I could— but I won't," was the reply. 
 
 "Then," rejoined Monsey, "you have very little 
 wit, or very little money." The logic of this retort
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 317 
 
 puts one in mind of the eccentric actoi who, under 
 somewhat similar circumstances, asked indignantly, 
 "Then, sir, how dare you advance a statement in a 
 public room which you are not prepared to substan- 
 tiate with a bet?" 
 
 Monsey was a Unitarian, and not at all backward to 
 avow his creed. As he was riding in Hyde Park with 
 a Mr. Robinson, that gentleman, after deploring the 
 eorrupt morals of the age, said, with very bad taste, 
 "But, Doctor, I talk with one who believes there is no 
 God." "And I," retorted Monsey, "with one who 
 believes there are three." Good Mr. Robinson was so 
 horrified that he clapped spurs to his horse, galloped 
 off, and never spoke to the doctor again. 
 
 Monsey 's "WMggism introduced him to high society, 
 but not to lucrative practice. Sir Robert "Walpolo 
 always extoled the merits of his "Norfolk Doctor," 
 but never advanced his interests. Instead of cover- 
 ing the great minister with adulation, Monsey treated 
 him like an ordinary individual, telling him when his 
 jokes were poor, and not hesitating to worst him in 
 argument. "How happens it," asked Sir Robert, 
 over his wine, "that nobody will beat me at billiards, 
 or contradict me, but Dr. Monsey?" "Other peo- 
 ple," put in the doctor, "get places— I get a dinner 
 and praise." The Duke of Grafton treated him even 
 worse. His Grace staved off paying the physician his 
 bill for attending him and his family at Windsor, 
 with promises of a place. ^\%en "the little place" 
 fell vacant, Monsey called on the duke, and reminded 
 him of his promise. "Ecod— ecod— ecod," was the 
 answer, "but the Chamberlain has just been here to 
 tell me he has promised it to Jack ." When the
 
 318 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 disappointed applicant told the lord-chamberlain 
 what had transpired, his Lordship replied, "Don't, 
 for the world, tell his Grace; but before he knew I 
 had promised it, here is a letter he sent me, soliciting 
 for a third person." 
 
 Amongst the vagaries of this eccentric physician 
 was the way in which he extracted his own teeth. 
 Round the tooth sentenced to be drav\Ti he fastened 
 securely a strong piece of catgut, to the opposite end 
 of which he affixed a bullet. "With this bullet and a 
 full measure of powder a pistol was charged. On the 
 trigger being pulled, the operation was performed 
 effectually and speedily. The doctor could only 
 rarely prevail on his friends to permit him to remove 
 their teeth by this original process. Once a gentle- 
 man who had agreed to try the novelty, and had even 
 allowed the apparatus to be adjusted, at the last 
 moment exclaimed, "Stop, stop, I've changed my 
 mind!" "But I haven't, and you're a fool and a 
 coward for your pains," answered the doctor, pulling 
 the trigger. In another instant the tooth was ex- 
 tracted, much to the timid patient's delight and 
 astonishment. 
 
 At Chelsea, to the last, the doctor saw on friendly 
 terms all the distinguisihed medical men of his day. 
 Cheselden, fonder of having his horses admired than 
 his professional skill extolled, as Pope and Freind 
 knew, was his frequent visitor. He had also his loves. 
 To Mrs. Montague, for many years, he presented a 
 copy of verses on the anniversary of her birth-day. 
 But after his quarrel with Garrick, he saw but little 
 of the lady, and was rarely, if ever, a visitor at her 
 magnificent house in Portman Square. Another of
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 319 
 
 his flames, too, was Miss Berry, of whom the loss still 
 seems to be recent. In his old age, avarice— the very 
 same failing he condemned so much in Garrick— de- 
 veloped itself in Monsey. In comparatively early life 
 his mind was in a flighty state about money matters. 
 For years he was a victim of that incredulity which 
 makes the capitalist imagine a great and prosperous 
 country to be the most insecure of all debtors. He 
 preferred investing his money in any wild specula- 
 tion to confiding it to the safe custody of the funds. 
 Even his ready cash he for long could not bring him- 
 self to trust in the hands of a banker. When he left 
 town for a trip, he had recourse to the most absurd 
 schemes for the protection of his money. Before set- 
 ting out, on one occasion, for a journey to Norfolk, 
 incredulous with regard to cash-boxes and bureaus, 
 he hid a considerable quantity of gold and notes in 
 the fireplace of his study, covering them up artistic- 
 ally with cinders and shavings. A month afterwards, 
 returning (luckily a few days before he was expec- 
 ted), he found his old house-maid preparing to enter- 
 tain a few friends at tea in her master's room. The 
 hospitable domestic was on the point of lighting the 
 fire, and had just applied a candle to the doctor's 
 notes, when he entered the room, seized on a pail of 
 water that chanced to be standing near, and, throw- 
 ing its contents over the fuel and the old woman, ex- 
 tinguished the fire and her presence of mind at the 
 same time. Some of the notes, as it was, were injured, 
 and the Bank of England made objections to cashing 
 them. 
 
 To the last Monsey acted by his own rules instead 
 of by those of other people. He lived to extreme old
 
 320 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 age, dying in his rooms in Chelsea College, on Decem- 
 ber 26th, 1788, in his ninety-fifth year; and his will 
 was as remarkable as any other feature of his career. 
 To a young lady mentioned in it, with the most lav- 
 ish encomiums on her wit, taste, and elegance, was 
 left an old battered suuff-box— not worth sixpence; 
 and to another young lady, whom the testator says he 
 intended to have enriched with a handsome legacy, he 
 leaves the gratifying assurance that he changed his 
 mind on finding her "a pert, conceited minx." After 
 inveighing against bishops, deans, and chapters, he 
 left an annuity to two clergymen who had resigned 
 their preferment on account of the Athanasian doc- 
 trine. He directed that his body should not be in- 
 sulted with any funeral ceremony, but sihould un- 
 dergo dissection; after which, the "remainder of my 
 carcase" (to use his own words) "may be put into a 
 hole, or crammed into a box with holes, and thrown 
 into the Thames." In obedience to this part of the 
 will, Jlr. Forster, surgeon, of Union Court, Broad 
 Street, dissected the body, and delivered a lecture on 
 it to the medical students in the theatre of Guy's 
 Hospital. The bulk of the doctor's fortune, amount- 
 ing to about £16,000, was left to his only daughter 
 for life, and after her demise, by a complicated entail, 
 to her female descendants. This only child, Charlotte 
 Monsey, married William Alexander, a linen-draper 
 in Cateaton Street, City, and had a numerous family. 
 One of her daughters married the Rev. Edmund 
 Rolfe, rector of Cockley Clay, Norfolk, of which 
 union Robert Monsey Rolfe, Baron Cranworth of 
 Cranworth, county of Norfolk, is the offspring. 
 Before making the above-named and final disposi-
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 321 
 
 tion of his body, the old man found vent for his fero- 
 cious cynicism and vulgar infidelity in the following 
 epitaph, which is scarcely less characteristic of the 
 society in which the writer had lived, than it is of the 
 writer himself:— 
 
 "mounsey's epitaph, vfkitten by himself." 
 
 "Here lie my old bones; my vexation now ends; 
 I have lived much too long for myself and my friends. 
 As to churches and churchyards, which men may call holy, 
 'Tis a rank piece of priestcraft, and founded on folly. 
 What the next world may be never troubled my pate; 
 And be what it may, I beseech you, O fate, 
 When the bodies of millions rise up in a riot, 
 To let the old carcase of Mounsey be quiet." 
 
 Unpleasant old scamp though he in many respects 
 was, Monsey retains even at this day so firm a hold of 
 the affections of all students who like ferreting into 
 the social history of the last century, that no chance 
 letter of his writing is devoid of interest. The follow- 
 ing specimen of his epistolary style, addressed to his 
 fair patient, the accomplished and celebrated Mrs. 
 Montague (his acquaintance with which lady has 
 already been alluded to), is transcribed from the 
 original manuscript in the possession of Dr. Dia- 
 mond :— 
 
 "4th of March, a minute past 12. 
 
 "Dear Madame, 
 
 "Now dead men's ghosts are getting out 
 of their graves, and there comes the ghost of a doctor 
 in a white sheet to wait upon you. Tour Tokay is got 
 into my head and your love into my heart, and they 
 both join to club their thanks for the pleasantest day 
 I have spent these seven years; and to my comfort I 
 find a man may be in love, and be happy, provided 
 he does not go to book for it. I could have trusted
 
 322 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 till the morning to show my gratitude, but the Tokay 
 wou'd have evaporated, and then I might have had 
 nothing to talk of but an ache in my head and pain 
 in my heart. Bacchus and Cupid should always be 
 together, for the young gentleman is very apt to be 
 silly when he's alone by himself; but when old toss- 
 pot is with him, if he pretends to fall a whining, he 
 hits him a cursed knock on the pate, and says: 'Drink 
 about, you . . . . ' 'No, Bacchus, don't be in a passion. 
 Upon my soul you have knocked out one of my eyes ! ' 
 'Eyes, ye scroundrel? AVhy, you have never had one 
 
 since you were born Apollo would have couched 
 
 you, but your mother said no; for then, says she, "he 
 can never be blamed for his shot, any more than tihe 
 people that are shot at." She knew 'twould bring 
 grist to her mill ; for what with those who pretended 
 they were in love and were not so, and those who were 
 really so and wouldn't own it, I shall find rantum 
 scantum work at Cyprus, Paphos, and Cythera. 
 Some will come to acquire what they never had, and 
 others to get rid of what they find very troublesome, 
 and I shall mind none of 'em. ' You see how the god- 
 dess foresaw and predicted my misfortunes. She 
 knew I was a sincere votary, and that I was a martyr 
 to her serene influence. Then how could you use me 
 60 like an Hyrcanian tygress, and be such an infidel 
 to misery; that though I hate you mortally, I wish 
 you may feel but one poor half-quarter-of-an-hour 
 before you slip your breath— how shall I rejoice at 
 your horrid agonies! Nee enim lex justior ulla Quam 
 necis artifices arte perire swd— Remember Me. 
 
 "My ills have disturbed my brain, and the revival 
 of old ideas has set it a-boyling, that, till I have
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 323 
 
 skim'd off the froth, I can't pretend to say a word for 
 myself; and by the time I have cleared off the scum, 
 the little grudge that is left may be burnt to the bot- 
 tom of the pot. 
 
 "My mortal injuries have turned my mind. 
 And I could hate myself for being blind 
 But why should I thus rave of eyes and looks? 
 All I have felt is fancy — all from Books. 
 I stole my charmers from the cuts of Quarles, 
 And my dear Clarissa from the grand Sir Charles. 
 But if his mam or Cupid live above, 
 Who have revenge in store for injured love, 
 O Venus, send dire ruin on her head, 
 Strike the Destroyer, lay the Victress dead ; 
 Kill the Triumphress, and avenge my wrong 
 In height of pomp, while she is warm and young. 
 Grant I may stand and dart her with my eyes 
 While in the fiercest pangs of life she lies. 
 Pursue her sportive soul and shoot it as it flies. 
 And cry with joy — There Montague lies flat, 
 Who wronged my passion with her barbarous Chat, 
 And was as cruel as a Cat to Rat, 
 As cat to rat — ay, ay, as cat to rat. 
 And when you got her up into your house, 
 Clinch yr, fair fist, and give her such a souse : 
 There, Hussy, take you that for all your Prate, 
 Your barbarous heart I do a-bo-mi-nate. 
 I'll take your part, my dearest faithful Doctor! 
 I've told my son, and see how he has mockt her ! 
 He'll fire ht- soul and make her rant and rave ; 
 See how she groans to be old Vulcan's slave. 
 The fatal bow is bent. Shoot, Cupid, shoot. 
 And there's your Montague all over soot. 
 Now say no more my little Boy is blind. 
 For sure this tyrant he has paid m kind. 
 She fondly thought to captivate a lord. 
 A lord, sweet queen? 'Tis true, upon my word. 
 And what's his name? His name? Why — 
 And thought her parts and wit the feat had done. 
 But he had parts and wit as well as she. 
 Why then, 'tis strange those folks did not agree. 
 Agree? Why, had she lived one moment longer. 
 His love was strong, but madam's grew much stronger. 
 
 Hiatus valde deAenduj. 
 So for her long neglect of Venus' altar 
 I changed Cu's Bowstring to a silken Halter;
 
 324 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 I made the noose, and Cupid drew the knot. 
 Dear mam ! says he, don't let her lie and rot, 
 She is too pretty. Hold your tongue, you sot ! 
 The pretty blockhead? None of yr. rogue's tricks. 
 Ask her, she'll own she's turned of thirty-six. 
 I was but twenty when I got the apple, 
 And let me tell you, 'twas a cursed grapple. 
 Had I but staid till I was twenty-five, 
 I'ad surely lost it, as you're now alive! 
 Paris had said to Juno and Minerva, 
 Ladies, I'm yours, and shall be glad to serve yer; 
 I must have bowed to wisdom and to power. 
 -"Vnd Trov had stood it to this very hour, 
 Homer had never wrote, nor wits had read 
 Achilles' anger or Patroclus dead. 
 We gods and goddesses had lived in riot. 
 And the blind fool had let us all be quiet. 
 Mortals had never been stunn'd with !!!!!!! — 
 Nor Virgil's wooden horse play'd Hocus Focus. 
 Hang the two Bards ! But Montague is pretty. 
 Sirrah, you lie; but I'll allow she's witty. 
 Well ! but I'm told she was so at fifteen, 
 .'Xy, and the veriest so that e'er was seen. 
 Why that I own ; and I myself 
 
 "But, hold ! as in all probability I am going to tell 
 a parcel of cui-sed lies, I'll travel no further, lay 
 down my presumptuous pen, and go to bed; for it's 
 half-past two, and two hours and an half is full long 
 enough to write nonsense at one time. You see what 
 it is to give a Goth Tokay: you manure your land 
 with filth, and it produces Tokay; you enrich a man 
 with Tokay, and he brings forth the froth and filth 
 of nonsense. You will learn how to bestow it better 
 another time. I hope what you took yourself had a 
 better, or at least no bad, effect. I wish you had 
 wrote me a note after your first sleep. There wou'd 
 have been your sublime double-distilled, treble-refined 
 wit. I shouldn't have known it to be yours if it 
 could 'have been anybody's else. 
 
 "Pray don't show these 'humble rhimes to R— y. 
 That puppy will write notes upon 'em or perhaps
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 325 
 
 paint 'em upon sign-posts, and make 'em into an in- 
 vitation to draw people to see the Camel and Drome- 
 dary—for I see he can make anything of anything; 
 but, after all, why should I be afraid? Perhaps he 
 might make something of nothing. I have wrote in 
 heroics. Sure the wretch will have a reverence for 
 heroics, especially for such as he never saw before, 
 and never may again. Well, upon my life I will go 
 to bed— 'tis a burning shame to sit up so. I lie, for 
 my fire is out, and so will my candle too if I write a 
 word more. 
 "So I will onlj' make my mark. X 
 
 "God eternally bless and preserve you from such 
 writers." 
 
 "March 5th, 12 o'clock. 
 
 ■ ■ Dear Mes. Montague, 
 
 "My fever has been so great that I have not had 
 any time to write to you in such a manner as to try 
 and convince you that I had recovered my senses, and 
 I could write a sober line. Pray, how do you do after 
 your wine and its effects on you, as well as upon me? 
 You are grown a right down rake, and I never expect 
 you for a patient again as long as we live, the last 
 relation I should like to stand to you in, and which 
 nothing could make bearable but serving you, and 
 that is a J 'ay pays for all my misery in serving you 
 ill. 
 
 ' ' I am called out, so adieu. ' ' 
 
 "March 6th. 
 
 ' ' How do you stand this flabby weather ? I tremble 
 to hear, but want to hear of all things. If you have 
 done with my stupid West India Ly., pray send 'em, 
 for they go to-morrow or next day at latest. 'Tis
 
 326 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 •hardly worth while to trouble Ld L with so much 
 chaff and so little wheat— then why you? 
 
 "Very true. 'Tis a sad thing to have to do with a 
 fool, who can't keep his nonsense to himself. You 
 know I am a rose, but I have terrible prickles. Dear 
 madam, adieu. Pray God I may hear you are well, or 
 that He will enable me to make you so, for you must 
 not be sick or die. I'll find fools and rogues enough 
 to be that for you, that are good for nothing else, and 
 hardly, very hardly, good enougih for that. Adieu, 
 Adieu! I say Adieu, Adieu. 
 
 "M. M." 
 
 Truly did Dr. Messenger Monsey understand the 
 art of writing a long letter about nothing.
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 AKENSIDE. 
 
 There were two Akensides— Akenside the poet, and 
 Akenside the man; and of the man Akenside there 
 were numerous subdivisions. Remarkable as a poet, 
 he was even yet more noteworthy a private individual 
 in his extreme inconsistency. No character is more 
 commonplace than the one to which is ordinarily ap- 
 plied the word contradictory; but Akenside was a 
 curiosity from the extravagance in which this form 
 of "the commonplace" exihibited itself in his dis- 
 position and manners. 
 
 By turns he was placid, irritable, simple, affected, 
 gracious, haughty, magnanimous, mean, benevolent, 
 harsh, and sometimes even brutal. At times he was 
 marked by a childlike docility, and at other times his 
 vanity and arrogance displayed him almost as a mad- 
 man. Of plebeian extraction, he was ashamed of his 
 origin, and yet was throughout life the champion of 
 popular interests. Of his real humanity there can 
 be no doubt, and yet in his demeanour to the un- 
 fortunate creatures whom, in his capacity of a hos- 
 pital-physician, he had to attend, he was always 
 supercilious, and often cruel.
 
 328 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 Like Byron, he was lame, one of his legs being 
 shorter than the other ; and of this personal disfigure- 
 ment he was even more sensitive than was the author 
 of "Childe Harold" of his deformity. When his 
 eye fell on it he would blush, for it reminded him of 
 the ignoble condition in which he waa born. His 
 father was a butcher at Newcastle-upon-Tyne; and 
 one of his cleavers, falling from the shop-block, had 
 irremediabh' injured the poet's foot, when he was 
 still a little child. 
 
 Akenside was not only the son of a butcher— but, 
 worse still, a Nonconformist butcher; and from an 
 early period of his life he was destined to be a sec- 
 tarian minister. In his nineteenth year he was sent 
 to Edinburgh to prosecute his theological studies, the 
 expenses of this educational course being in part de- 
 frayed by the Dissenters' Society. But he speedily 
 discovered that he had made a wrong start, and per- 
 suaded his father to refund the money the Society 
 had advanced, and to be himself at the cost of edu- 
 cating him as a physician. The honest tradesman 
 was a liberal and affectionate parent. Mark remained 
 three years at Edinburgh, a member of the Medical 
 Society, and an industrious student. On leaving 
 Edinburgh he practised for a short time as a surgeon 
 at Newcastle; after which he went to Leyden, and 
 having spent three months in that university took 
 his degree of doctor of physic. May 16, 1744. At 
 Leyden he became warmly attached to a fellow- 
 student named Dyson; and wonderful to be related, 
 the two friends, notwithstanding one was under 
 heavy pecuniary obligations to the other, and they 
 were very unlike each other in some of their principal
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 329 
 
 characteristics, played the part of Pylades and 
 Orestes, even into the Valley of Death. Akenside 
 was poor, ardent, and of a nervous, poetic tempera- 
 ment. Dyson was rich, sober, and matter-of-fact, a 
 prudent place-holder. He rose to be clerk of the 
 House of Commons, and a Lord of the Treasury; but 
 the atmosphere of political circles and the excitement 
 of public life never caused his heart to forget its eai-ly 
 attachment. Whilst the poet lived Dyson was his 
 munificent patron, and when death had stepped in 
 between them, his literary executor. Indeed, he al- 
 lowed him for years no less a sum than £300 per 
 annum. 
 
 Akenside was never very successful as a physician, 
 although he thoroughly understood his profession, 
 and in some important particulars advanced its 
 science. Dyson introduced him into good society, 
 and recommended him to all his friends; but the 
 greatest income Akenside ever made was most proba- 
 bly less than what he obtained from his friend 's gen- 
 erosity. Still, he must have earned something, for 
 he managed to keep a carriage and pair of horses; 
 and £300 per annum, although a hundred yeai-s ago 
 that sum went nearly twice as far as it would now, 
 could not have supported the equipage. His want of 
 patients can easily be accounted for. He was a vain, 
 tempestuous, crotchety little man, little qualified to 
 override the prejudices which vulgar and ignorant 
 people cherish against lawyers and physicians who 
 have capacity and energy enough to distinguish 
 themselves in any way out of the ordinary track of 
 their professional duties. 
 
 He was admitted, by mandamus, lO a doctor's de-
 
 330 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 gree at Cambridge ; and became a fellow of the Royal 
 Society, and a fellow of the Royal College of Phy- 
 sicians. He tried his luck at Northampton, and 
 found he was not needed there ; he became an inhabi- 
 tant of Ilampstead, but failed to ingratiate himself 
 with the opulent gentry who in those days resided in 
 that suburb; and lastly fixed himself in Bloomsbury 
 Square (setat. 27), where he resided till his death. 
 After some delay, he became a physician of St. 
 Thomas's Hospital, and an assistant physician of 
 Christ's Hospital— read the Gulstonian Lectures be- 
 fore the College of Physicians, in 1755— and was also 
 Krohnian Lecturer. In speeches and papers to 
 learned societies, and to various medical treatises, 
 amongst which may be mentioned his "De Dysen- 
 taria Commentarius, " he tried to wheedle himself 
 into practice. But his efforts were of no avail. Sir 
 John Hawkins, in his absurd Life of Dr. Johnson, 
 tells a good story of Saxby's rudeness to the author 
 of the "Pleasures of Imagination." Saxby was a 
 custom-house clerk, and made himself liked in society 
 by saying the rude things which other people had the 
 benevolence to feel, but lacked the hardihood to utter. 
 One evening, at a party, Akenside argued, with much 
 warmth and more tediousness, that physicians were 
 better and wiser men than the world ordinarily 
 thouglit. 
 
 ' ' Doctor, ' ' said Saxby, ' ' after all you have said, my 
 opinion of the profession is this: the ancients en- 
 deavoured to make it a science, and failed; and the 
 moderns to make it a trade, and succeeded." 
 
 He was not liked at St. Thomas's Hospital. The 
 gentle Lettsom, whose mild poetic nature had sur-
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 331 
 
 rounded the author of "The Pleasures of Imagina- 
 tion" with a halo of romantic interest, when he en- 
 tered himself a student of that school, was shocked at 
 finding the idol of his admiration so irritable and im- 
 kindly a man. He was, according to Lettsom's remi- 
 niscences, thin and pale, and of a strumous counte- 
 nance. Ilis injured leg was lengthened by a false 
 heel. In dress he was scrupulously neat and delicate, 
 always having on his head a well-powdered white wig, 
 and by his side a long sword. Any want of respect to 
 him threw him into a fit of anger. One amongst the 
 students who accompanied him on a certain occasion 
 round the wards spat on the floor behind the physi- 
 cian. Akenside turned sharply on his heel, and de- 
 manded who it was that dared to spit in his face. To 
 the poor women who applied to him for medical ad- 
 vice he exhibited his dislike in the most offensive and 
 cruel manner. The students who watched him 
 closely, and knew the severe disappointment his affec- 
 tions had suffered in early life, whispered to the 
 novice that the poet-physician's moroseness to his 
 female patients was a consequence of his having felt 
 the goads of despised love. The fastidiousness of the 
 little fellow at having to come so closely in contact 
 with the vulgar rabble, induced him sometimes to 
 make the stronger patients precede him with brooms 
 and clear a way for him through the crowd of dis- 
 eased wretches. Bravo, my butcher's boy ! This story 
 of Akenside and his lictors, pushing back the un- 
 sightly mob of lepers, ought to be read side by side 
 with that of the proud Duke of Somerset, who, when 
 on a journey, used to send outriders before him to
 
 332 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 clear the roads, and prevent vulgar eyes from looking 
 at him. 
 
 On one occasion Akenside ordered an unfortunate 
 male patient of St. Thomas's to take boluses of bark. 
 The poor fellov/ complained that he could not swal- 
 low them. Akenside was so incensed at the man's 
 presuming to have an opinion on the subject, that he 
 ordered him to be turned out of the hospital, saying, 
 "He shall not die under my care." A man who 
 would treat his poor patients in this way did not de- 
 serve to have any rich ones. These excesses of folly 
 and brutality, however, ere long reached the ears of 
 honest Richard Chester, one of the governors, and 
 that good fellow gave the doctor a good scolding, 
 roundly telling him, "Know, thou art a servant of 
 this charity." 
 
 Akenside 's self-love received a more humorous stab 
 than the poke administered by Riehard Chester's 
 blunt cudgel, from Mr. Baker, one of the surgeons at 
 St. Thomas's. To appreciate the full force of the 
 story, the reader must recollect that the jealousy, 
 which still exists between the two branches of the 
 medical profession, was a century since so violent 
 that even considerations of interest failed in some 
 cases to induce eminent surgeons and phy.sicians to 
 act together. One of Baker's sons was the victim 
 of epilepsy, and frequent fits had impaired his facul- 
 ties. Baker was naturally acutely sensitive of his 
 child's misfortune, and when Akenside had the bad 
 taste to ask to what study the affiicted lad intended to 
 apply, the father answered, "I find he is not capable 
 of making a surgeon, so I have sent him to Edinburgh 
 to make a physician of him." Akenside felt this sar-
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 333 
 
 casm so much, that he for a long time afterward re- 
 fused to hold any intercourse with Baker. 
 
 But Akenside had many excuses for his irritability. 
 He was very ambitious, and failed to achieve that suc- 
 cess which the possession of great powers warranted 
 him in regarding as his due. It was said of Garth 
 that no physician understood his art more, or his 
 trade less ! and this, as Mr. Bucke, in his beautiful 
 "Life of Arkenside," remarks, was equally true of 
 the doctor of St. Thomas's. He had a thirst for 
 human praise and worldly success, and a tempera- 
 ment that caused him, notwithstanding all his sar- 
 casms against love, to estimate at their full worth the 
 joys of married life; yet he lived all his days a poor 
 man, and died a bachelor. Other griefs also contrib- 
 uted to sour his temper. His lot was cast in times that 
 could not justly appreciate his literary excellences. 
 His sincere admiration of classic literature and art 
 and manners was regarded by the coarse herd of rich 
 and stupid Londoners as so perfectly ridiculous, that 
 when Smollett had the bad taste to introduce him 
 into Peregrine Pickle, as the physician who gives a 
 dinner after the manner of the ancients, the applause 
 was general, and every city tradesman, with scholar- 
 ship enough to read the novel, had a laugh at the ex- 
 pense of a man who has some claims to be regarded 
 as the greatest literary genius of his time. The pol- 
 ished and refined circles of English life paid homage 
 to his genius, but even in them he failed to meet with 
 the cordial recognition he deserved. Johnson, though 
 he placed him above Gray and Mason, did not do him 
 justice. Bos well didn't see much in him. Horace 
 Walpole differed from the friend who asked him to
 
 334 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 admire the "Pleasures of Imagination." T'he poets 
 and wits of his own time had a high respect for his 
 critical opinion, and admitted the excellence of his 
 poetry— but almost invariably with some qualifica- 
 tion. And Akenside was one who thirsted for the 
 complete assent of the applauding world. He died 
 after a brief illness in his forty-ninth year, on the 
 23rd of June, 1770; and we doubt not, when the 
 Angel of Death touched him, the heart that ceased to 
 beat was one that had known much sorrow. 
 
 Akenside 's poetical career was one of unfulfilled 
 promise. At the age of twenty-three he had written 
 "The Pleasures of the Imagination." Pope was so 
 struck with the merits of the poem, that when Dods- 
 ley consulted him about the price set on it by the 
 author (£120), he told him to make no niggardly 
 offer, for it was the work of no every-day writer. But 
 he never produced another great work. Impressed 
 with the imperfections of his achievement, he occu- 
 pied himself with incessantly touching and re-touch- 
 ing it up, till he came to the unwise determination of 
 re-writing it. He did not live to accomplish this sui- 
 cidal task; but the portion of it which came to the 
 public was inferior to the original poem, both in 
 power and art.
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 LETTSOM. 
 
 High amongst literary, and higher yet amongst 
 benevolent, physicians must be ranked John Coakley 
 Lettsom, formerly president of the Philosophical 
 Society of London. A "West Indian, and the son of a 
 planter, he was born on one of his father's little 
 islands, Van Dyke, near Tortola, in the year 1744. 
 Though bred a Quaker, he kept his heart so free from 
 sectarianism, and his life so entirely void of the for- 
 mality and puritanic asceticism of the Friends, that 
 his ordinary acquaintance marvelled at his continu- 
 ing to wear the costume of the brotherhood. At six 
 years of age he was sent to England for education, 
 being for that purpose confided to the protection of 
 Mr. Pothergill, of Warrington, a Quaker minister, 
 and younger brother of Dr. John Fothergill. After 
 receiving a poor preparatory education, he was ap- 
 prenticed to a Yorkshire apothecary, named Sutcliffe, 
 who, by industry and intelligence, had raised himself 
 from the position of a weaver to that of the first med- 
 ical practitioner of Settle. In the last century a West 
 Indian was, to the inhabitants of a provincial district, 
 a rare curiosity; and Sutcliffe 's surgery, on the day
 
 336 A BOOK AJ30UT DOCTOES. 
 
 that Lettsom entered it in his fifteenth year, was sur- 
 rounded by a dense crowd of gaping rustics, anxious 
 to see a young gentleman accustomed to walk on his 
 head. This extraordinary demonstration of curiosity 
 was owing to the merry humour of Suteliffe's senior 
 apprentice, who had informed the people that the 
 new pupil, who would soon join him, came from a 
 country where the feet of the inhabitants were placed 
 in an exactly opposite direction to those of English- 
 men. 
 
 Sutcliffe did not find his new apprentice a very 
 handy one. "Thou mayest make a physician, but I 
 think not a good apothecary," the old man was in the 
 habit of saying; and the prediction in due course 
 turned out a correct one. Having served an appren- 
 ticeship of five years, and walked for two the wards 
 of St. Thomas's Hospital, where Akenside was a phy- 
 sician, conspicuous for supercilious manner and want 
 of feeling, Lettsom returned to the "West Indies, and 
 settled as a medical practitioner in Tortola. He prac- 
 tised there only five months, earning in that time the 
 astonishing sum of £2000 ; when, ambitious of achiev- 
 ing a high professional position, he returned to 
 Europe, visited the medical schools of Paris and 
 Edinburgh, took his degree of M.D. at Leyden on the 
 20th of June, 1769, was admitted a licentiate of the 
 Royal College of Physicians of London in the same 
 year, and in 1770 was elected a fellow of the Society 
 of Antiquaries. 
 
 Prom this period till his death, in 1815 (Nov. 20), 
 he was one of the most prominent figures in the scien- 
 tific world of London. As a physician he was a most 
 fortunate man; for without any high reputation for
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 337 
 
 professional acquirements, and with the exact reverse 
 of a good preliminary education, he made a larger in- 
 come than any other physician of the same time. Dr. 
 John Pothergill never made more than £5000 in one 
 year; but Lettsom earned £3600 in 1783— £3900 in 
 1784-£4015 in 1785-and £4500 in 1786. After that 
 period his practice rapidly increased, so that in some 
 years his receipts were as much as £12,000. But 
 although he pocketed such large sums, half his 
 labours were entirely gratuitous. Necessitous clergy- 
 men and literary men he invariably attended with 
 unusual solicitude and attention, but without ever 
 taking a fee for his services. Indeed, generosity was 
 the ruling feature of his life. Although he burdened 
 himself with the public business of his profession, was 
 so incessantly on the move from one patient to 
 another that he habitually knocked up three pairs of 
 horses a-day, and had always some literary work or 
 other upon his desk, he nevertheless found time to do 
 an amount of labour, in establishing charitable insti- 
 tutions and visiting the indigent sick, that would by 
 itself have made a reputation for an ordinary person. 
 To give the mere list of his separate benevolent 
 services would be to write a book about them. The 
 General Dispensary, the Pinsbury Dispensary, the 
 Surrey Dispensary, and the Margate Sea-bathing In- 
 firmary, originated in his exertions; an'd he was one 
 of the first projectors of— the Philanthropic Society, 
 St. Georges-in-the-Pields, for the Prevention of 
 Crimes, and the Reform of the Criminal Poor; the 
 Society for the Discharge and Relief of Persons Im- 
 prisoned for Small Debts ; the Asylum for the Indi- 
 gent Deaf and Dumb ; the Institution for the Relief 
 
 4—22
 
 338 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 and Employment of the Indigent Blind ; and the 
 Royal Humane Society, for the recovery of the appar- 
 ently drowned or dead. And year by year his pen 
 sent forth some publication or other to promote the 
 ivelfare of the poor, and succour the afllieted. Of 
 course there were crowds of clever spectators of the 
 world's work, who smiled as the doctor's carriage 
 passed them in the streets, and said he was a deuced 
 clever fellow to make ten thousand a-year so easily; 
 and that, after all, philanthropy was not a bad trade. 
 But Lettsom was no calculating humanitarian, with a 
 tongue discoursing eloquently on the sufferings of 
 mankind, and an eye on the sharp look-out for his 
 own interest. What he was before the full stare of 
 the world, that he was also in his own secret heart, 
 and those private ways into which hypocrisy cannot 
 enter. At the outset of his life, when only twenty- 
 three years old, he liberated his slaves— although they 
 constituted almost his entire worldly wealth, and he 
 was anxious to achieve distinction in a profession 
 that offers peculiar difficulties to needy aspirants. 
 And when his career was drawing to a close, he had 
 to part with his beloved countryseat because he had 
 impoverished himself by lavish generosity to the un- 
 fortunate. 
 
 There was no sanctimonious affectation in the 
 man. He wore a drab coat and gaiters, and made the 
 Quaker's use of Thou and Thee; but he held himself 
 altogether apart from the prejudices of his sect. A 
 poet himself of some respectability, he delighted in 
 every variety of literature, and was ready to shake 
 any man by the hand— Jew or Gentile. He liked pic- 
 tures and works of sculpture, and spent large sums
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 339 
 
 upon them; into the various scientific movements of 
 the time he threw himself with all the energy of his 
 nature; and he disbursed a fortune in surrounding 
 himself at Camberwell with plants from the tropics. 
 He liked good wine, but never partook of it to excess, 
 although his enemies were ready to suggest that he 
 was always glad to avail himself of an excuse for get- 
 ting intoxicated. And he was such a devoted admirer 
 of the fair sex, that the jealous swarm of needy men 
 who envied him his prosperity, had some countenance 
 for their slander that he wa.s a Quaker debauchee. 
 He married young, and his wife outlived him ; but as 
 a husband he was as faithful as he proved in every 
 other relation of life. 
 
 Saturday was the day he devoted to entertaining 
 his friends at Grove Hill, Camberwell; and rare par- 
 ties there gathered round him— celebrities from every 
 region of the civilized world, and the best "good fel- 
 lows" of Loudon. Boswell was one of his most fre- 
 quent guests, and, in an ode to Charles Dilly, cele- 
 brated the beauties of the physician's seat and his 
 humane disposition :— 
 
 "My cordial Friend, still prompt to lend 
 
 Your cash when I have need on't; 
 We both must bear our load of care — 
 At least we talk and read on't. 
 
 "Yet are we gay in ev"ry way, 
 
 Not minding where the joke lie; 
 On Saturday at bowls we play 
 At Camberwell with Coakley. 
 
 "Methinks you laugh to hear but half 
 
 The name of Dr. Lettsom ; * 
 
 From him of good — talk, liquors, food— 
 His guests will always get some.
 
 340 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 "And guests has he, in ev'ry degree, 
 Of decent estimation : 
 His liberal mind holds all mankind 
 As an extended Nation. 
 
 "O'er Lettsom's cheer we've met a peer — 
 A peer — no less than Lansdowne ! 
 Of whom each dull and envious skull 
 Absurdly cries — 'The man's down !' 
 
 "Down do they say? How then, I pray. 
 His king and country prize him! 
 Through the whole world known, his peace alone 
 Is sure t' immortalize him. 
 
 "Lettsom we view a Quaker true, 
 'Tis clear he's so in one sense: 
 His spirit, strong, and ever young, 
 Refutes pert Priestley's nonsense. 
 
 "In fossils he is deep, we see; 
 
 Nor knows Beasts, Fishes, Birds ill; 
 With plants not few, some from Pelew, 
 And wondrous Mangel Wurzel ! 
 
 "West India bred, warm heart, cool head, 
 The city's first physician ; 
 By schemes humane — want, sickness, pain, 
 To aid in his ambition. 
 
 "From terrace high he feasts his eye. 
 When practice grants a furlough ; 
 And, while it roves o'er Dulwich groves. 
 Looks down — even upon Thurlow." 
 
 The concluding line is an allusion to the Lord 
 Chancellor's residence at Dulwich. 
 
 In person, Lettsom was tall and thin— indeed, 
 almost attenuated: his face was deeply lined, indi- 
 cating firmness quite as much as benevolence ; and his 
 complexion was of a dark yellow hue. His eccentric- 
 ities were numerous. Like the founder of his sect, he 
 would not allow even respect for royalty to make an 
 alteration in his costume which his conscience did not 
 approve; and George III., who entertained a warm
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 341 
 
 regard for him, allowed him to appear at Court in 
 the ordinary Quaker garb, and to kiss his hand, 
 though he had neither powder on his head, nor a 
 sword by his side. Lettsom responded to his sover- 
 eign's courtesy by presenting him with some rare and 
 unpurchasable medals. 
 
 Though his writings show him to have been an en- 
 lightened physician for his time, his system of prac- 
 tice was not of course free from the violent measures 
 which were universally believed in during the last 
 century. He used to say of himself, 
 
 "When patients sick to me apply, 
 
 I physics, bleeds and sweats 'em; 
 Then — if they choose to die, 
 What's that to me — I lets 'em."— (I. Lettsom.) 
 
 But his prescriptions were not invariably of a kind 
 calculated to depress the system of his patient. On 
 one occasion an old American merchant, who had been 
 ruined by the rupture between the colonies and the 
 mother country, requested his attendance and pro- 
 fessional advice. The unfortunate man was seventy- 
 four years of age, and bowed down with the weight of 
 his calamities. 
 
 "Those trees, doctor," said the sick man, looking 
 out of his bed-room window over his lawn, "I 
 planted, and have lived to see some of them too old 
 to bear fruit; they are part of my family: and my 
 children, still dearer to me, must quit this residence, 
 which was the delight of my youth, and the hope of 
 my old age. ' ' 
 
 The Quaker physician was deeply affected by these 
 pathetic words, and the impressive tone with which 
 they were uttered. He spoke a few words of comfort, 
 and quitted the room, leaving on the table as his pre-
 
 342 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 scription— a cheque for a large sum of money. Nor 
 did his goodness end there. lie purchased the house 
 of his patient's creditors, and presented it to him for 
 life. 
 
 As Lettsom was travelling in the neighbourhood of 
 London, a highwayman stopped his carriage, and, 
 putting a pistol into the window, demanded him to 
 surrender his money. The faltering voice and hesi- 
 tation of the robber showed that he had only recently 
 taken to his 'perilous vocation, and his appearance 
 showed him to be a young man who had moved in the 
 gentle ranks of life. Lettsom quickly responded that 
 he vras sorry to see such a well-looking young man 
 pursuing a course which would inevitably bring him 
 to ruin ; that he would give him freely all the money 
 he had about him, and would try to put him in a 
 better way of life, if he liked to call on him in the 
 course of a few days. As the doctor said this, he 
 gave his card to the young man, who turned out to 
 be another victim of the American war. He had only 
 made one similar attempt on the road before, and 
 had been driven to lawless action by unexpected 
 pennilessness. Lettsom endeavoured in vain to pro- 
 cure aid for his protege from the commissioners for 
 relieving the American sufferers; but eventually the 
 Queen, interested in the young man's case, presented 
 him with a commission in the army; and in a brief 
 military career, that was cut short by yellow fever 
 in the "West Indies, he distinguished himself so much 
 that his name appeared twice in the Gazette. 
 
 On one of his benevolent excursions the doctor 
 found his way into the squalid garret of a poor 
 woman who had seen better days. "With the language
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 343 
 
 and deportment of a lady she begged the physician to 
 give her a prescription. After inquiring carefully 
 into her case, he wrote on a slip of paper to the over- 
 seers of the parish— 
 
 "A shilling per diem for Mrs Moreton. Money, 
 not physic, will cure her. 
 
 "Lettsom." 
 
 Of all Lettsom's numerous works, including his 
 contributions to the Gentleman's Magazine, under the 
 signature of "Mottles," the anagram of his own 
 name, the one most known to the general reader, is 
 the "History of some of the Effects of Hard Drink- 
 ing." It concludes vrith a scale of Temperance and 
 Intemperance, in imitation of a thermometer. To 
 each of the two conditions seventy degrees are al- 
 lotted. Against the seventieth (or highest) degree of 
 'iemperanee is marked "Water," under which, at 
 distances of ten degrees, follow "Milk-and- Water," 
 "Sm'all Beer," "Cyder and Perry," "Wine," "Por- 
 ter," "Strong Beer." The tenth degree of Intem- 
 perance is "Punch"; the twentieth, "Toddy and 
 Crank"; the thirtieth, "Grog and Brandy-and 
 Water"; the fortieth, "Flip and Shrub"; the fiftieth, 
 "Bitters infused in Spirits, Usquebaugh, Hysteric 
 Water"; the sixtieth, "Gin, Aniseed, Brandy, Rum, 
 and Whisky, ' ' in the morning ; the seventieth, like the 
 sixtieth, only taken day and night. Then follow, in 
 tabular order, the vices, diseases, and punishments of 
 the different stages of Intemperance. The mere 
 enumeration of them ought to keep the most con- 
 firmed toper sober for the rest of his days: — 
 
 "Fices.— Idleness, Peevishness, Quarrelling, Fight-
 
 344 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 ing, Lying, Swearing, Obscenity, Swindling, Perjury, 
 Burglary, Murder, Suicide. 
 
 "Diseases.— Sickness, Tremors of the Hands in the 
 Morning, Bloatetlness, Inflamed Eyes, Red Nose and 
 Face, Sore and Swelled Legs, Jaundice, Pains in the 
 Limbs, Dropsy, Epilepsy, Melancholy, Madness, 
 Palsy, Apoplexy, Death. 
 
 " Punishments.— Debt, Black Eyes, Rags, Hunger, 
 Hospital, Poor-house, Jail, "Whipping, the Hulks, 
 Botany Bay, Gallows!" 
 
 This reads like Hogarth's Gin Lane.
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 A FEW MORE QUACKS. 
 
 The term quack is applicable to all who, by pompous pre- 
 tences, mean insinuations, and indirect promises, endeavour 
 to obtain that confidence to which neither education, merit, 
 nor experience entitles them. — Samuel Parr's Definition. 
 
 Of London's modern quacks, one of the most daring 
 was James Graham, M. D., of Edinburgh, who in- 
 troduced into England the juggleries of Mesmer, 
 profiting by them in this country scarcely less than 
 his master did on the Continent. Ilis brother mar- 
 ried Catherine Macaulay, the author of the immortal 
 History of England, which no one now-a-days reads; 
 the admired of Horace Walpole; the lady whose statue 
 during her life-time, was erected in the chancel of the 
 church of St. Stephen's, Walbrook. Graham's sister 
 was married to Dr. Arnold, of Leicester, the author 
 of a valuable book on Insanity. 
 
 With a little intellect and more knavery. Dr. 
 Graham ran a course very similar to Mesmer. Emerg- 
 ing from obscurity in or about the year 1780, he 
 established himself in a spacious mansion in the 
 Royal Terrace, Adelphi, overlooking the Thames, and 
 midway between the Blackfriars and Westminster
 
 346 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 Bridges. The river front of the house was orna- 
 mented with classic pillars; and inscribed over the 
 principal entrance, in gilt letters on a white com- 
 partment, was "Templum .(Esculapio Sacrum." The 
 "Temple of Health," as it was usually spoken of in 
 London, quickly became a place of fashionable resort. 
 Its spacious rooms were supplied with furniture made 
 to be stared at— sphjmxes, dragons breathing flame, 
 marble statues, paintings, medico-electric apparatus, 
 rich curtains and draperies, stained glass windows, 
 stands of armour, immense pillars and globes of glass, 
 and remarkably arranged plates of burnished steel. 
 Luxurious couches were arranged in the recesses of 
 the apartments, whereon languid visitors were invited 
 to rest; whilst the senses were fascinated with strains 
 of gentle music, and the perfumes of spices burnt in 
 swinging censers. The most sacred shrine of the 
 edifice stood in the centre of "The Great Apollo 
 Apartment," described by the magician in the fol- 
 lowing terms:— "This room is upwards of thirty feet 
 long, by twenty wide, and full fifteen feet high in 
 the ceiling; on entering which, words can convey no 
 adequate idea of the astonisdiment and awful 
 sublimity which seizes the mind of every spectator. 
 The first object which strikes the eye, astonishes, ex- 
 pands, and ennobles the soul of the beholder, is a 
 magnificent temple, sacred to health, and dedicated 
 to Apollo. In this tremendous edifice are combined 
 or singly dispensed the irresistible and salubrious in- 
 fluences of electricity, or the elementary fire, air, and 
 magnetism; three of the greatest of those agents of 
 universal principles, which, pervading all created be- 
 ing and substances that we are acquainted with, con-
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 347 
 
 nect, animate, and keep together all nature;— or, in 
 other words, principles which constitute, as it were, the 
 various faculties of the material soul of the universe : 
 the Eternally Supreme Jehovah Himself being the 
 essential source— the Life of that Life— the Agent of 
 those Agents— the Soul of that Soul— the All-creat- 
 ing, all-sustaining, all-blessing God!— not of this 
 world alone— not of the other still greater worlds 
 which we know compose our solar system! Not the 
 creator, the soul, the preserver of this world alone— 
 or of any of those which we have seen roll with unin- 
 terrupted harmony for so many thousands of years ! 
 —not the God of the millions of myriads of worlds, 
 of systems, and of various ranks and orders of beings 
 and intelligences which probably compose the aggre- 
 gate of the grand, the vast, the incomprehensible sys- 
 tem of the universe!— but the eternal, infinitely wise, 
 and infinitely powerful, infinitely good God of the 
 whole— the Great Sun of the Universe!" 
 
 This blasphemy was regarded in Bond Street and 
 Mayfair as inspired wisdom. It was held to be wicked 
 not to believe in Dr. Graham. The "Temple" was 
 crowded with the noble and wealthy; and Graham, 
 mingling the madness of a religious enthusiast with 
 the craft of a charlatan, preached to his visitors and 
 prayed over them with the zeal of Joanna Southcote. 
 He composed a form of prayer to be used in the Tem- 
 ple, called "the Christian's Universal Prayer," a 
 long rigmarole of spasmodic nonsense, to the printed 
 edition of which the author afSxed the following note : 
 "The first idea of writing this prayer was suggested 
 by hearing, one evening, the celebrated Mr Fischer 
 play on the hautboy, with inimitable sweetness, his
 
 348 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 long-winded variations on some old tunes. I was de- 
 sirous to know what effect that would have when ex- 
 tended to literary composition. I made the experi- 
 ment as soon as I got home, on the Lord 's Prayer, and 
 wrote the following in bed, before morning:" 
 
 About the "Temple of Health" there are a few 
 other interesting particulars extant. The woman 
 who ofiSciated in the "Sanctum Sanctorum" was the 
 fair and frail Emma— in due course to be the wife of 
 Sir "William Hamilton, and the goddess of Nelson. 
 The charges for consulting the oracle, or a mere ad- 
 mission in the Temple, were thus arranged . ' ' The 
 nobility, gentrj-, and others, who apply through the 
 day, viz., from ten to six, must pay a guinea the first 
 consultation, and half a guinea every time after. No 
 person whomsoever, even personages of the first rank, 
 need expect to be attended at their own houses, unless 
 confined to bed by sickness, or to their room through 
 extreme weakness; and from those whom he attends 
 at their houses two guineas each visit is expected. 
 Dr Graham, for reasons of the highest importance 
 to the public as well as to himself, has a chymical 
 laboratory and a great medicinal cabinet in his own 
 house; and in the above fixed fees either at home or 
 abroad, every expense attending his advice, medi- 
 cines, applications, and operations, and influences, 
 are included — a few tedious, complex, and expensive 
 operations in the Great Apollo apartment only ex- 
 cepted." 
 
 But the humour of the man culminated when he 
 bethought himself of displajdng the crutches and 
 spectacles of restored patients, as trophies of his vic- 
 tories over disease. "Over the doors of the prin-
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DUGTORS. 349 
 
 cipal rooms, under the vaulted compartments of the 
 ceiling, and in each side of the centre arches of the 
 hall, are placed walking-sticks, ear-trumpets, visual 
 glasses, crutches, &c., left, and here placed as most 
 honourable trophies, by deaf, weak, paralytic, and 
 emaciated persons, cripples, &c., who, being cured, 
 have happily no longer need of such assistances." 
 
 Amongst the furniture of the "Temple of Health" 
 was a celestial bed, provided with costly draperies, 
 and standing on glass legs. Married couples, who 
 slept on this couch, were sure of being blessed with a 
 beautiful progeny. For its use £100 per night was 
 demanded, and numerous persons of rank were fool- 
 ish enough to comply with the terms. Besides his 
 celestial bed and magnetic tomfooleries, Graham 
 vended an ' ' Elixir of Life, ' ' and subsequently recom- 
 mended and superintended earth-bathing. Any one 
 who took the elixir might live as long as he wished. 
 For a constant supply of so valuable a medicine, 
 £1000, paid in advance, was the demand. More than 
 one nobleman paid that sum. The Duchess of Devon- 
 shire patronized Graham, as she did every other 
 quack who came in her way; and her folly was coun- 
 tenanced by Lady Spencer, Lady Clermont, the 
 Comtesse de Polignac, and the Comtesse de Chalon. 
 
 Of all Dr. Graham's numerous writings one of the 
 most ridiculous is "A clear, full, and faithful Por- 
 traiture, or Description, and ardent Recommendation 
 of a certain most beautiful and spotless Virgin Prin- 
 cess, of Imperial descent! To a certain youthful 
 Heir- Apparent, in the possession of whom alone his 
 Royal Highness can be truly, permanently, and su- 
 premely happy. Most humbly dedicated to his Royal
 
 350 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 Highness, George, Prince of Wales, and earnestly 
 recommended to the attention of the Members of both 
 Houses of Parliament." "When George the Third was 
 attacked for the first time with mental aberration, 
 Graham hastened down to Windsor, and obtaining 
 an interview there witli the Prince Regent, with 
 thrilling earnestness of manner assured his Royal 
 Iliglmess that he would suffer in the same way as his 
 father xinless he married a particular princess that he 
 (Dr. Graham) was ready to introduce to him. On 
 the Prince inquiring the name of the lady, Graham 
 answered, "Evangelical Wisdom." Possibly the 
 royal patient would have profited, had he obeyed the 
 zealot's exhortation. The work, of which we have 
 just given the title, is a frantic rhapsody on the beau- 
 ties and excellence of the Virgin Pi'incess Wisdom, 
 arranged in chapters and verses, and begins thus: — 
 "chap. I. 
 
 "Hear! all ye people of the earth, and understand; 
 give ear attentively, ye kings and princes, and be 
 admonished; yea, learn attentively, ye who are the 
 rulers and the judges of the people. 
 
 "2. Let the inhabitants of the earth come before 
 me with all the innocency and docility of little chil- 
 dren; and the kings and governors, with all purity 
 and simplicity of heart. 
 
 "3. For the Holy Spirit of Wisdom! or celestial 
 discipline! flees from duplicity and deceit, and from 
 haughtiness and hardness of heart; it removes far 
 from the thoughts that are without understanding; 
 and will not abide when unrighteousness cometh in." 
 
 The man who was fool enough to write such stuff 
 as this had, however, some common sense. He de-
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 351 
 
 tected the real cause of the maladies of half those 
 who consulted him, and he did his utmost to remove 
 it Like the French quack Villars, he preached up 
 "abstinence" and "cleanliness." Of the printed 
 "general instructions" to his patients. No. 2 runs 
 thus:— "It wnll be unreasonable for Dr Graham's 
 patients to expect a complete and lasting cure, or 
 even great alleviation of their peculiar maladies, un- 
 less they keep their body and limbs most perfectly 
 clean with frequent washings, breathe fresh open air 
 day and night, be simple in the quality and moderate 
 in the quantity of their food and drink, and totally 
 give up using deadly poisons and weakeners of both 
 body and soul, and the canker-worms of estates, 
 called foreign tea and coffee, red port wine, spirit- 
 uous liquors, tobacco and snuff, gaming and late 
 hours, and all sinful and unnatural and excessive 
 indulgence of the animal appetites, and of the dia- 
 bolical and degrading mental passions. On practis- 
 ing the above rules, and a widely-open window day 
 and night, and on washing with cold water, and going 
 to bed every night by eight or nine, and rising by 
 four or five, depends the very perfection of bodily 
 and mental health, strength, and happiness." 
 
 Many to whom this advice was given thought that 
 ill-health, which made them unable to enjoy any- 
 thing was no worse an evil than health brought on 
 terms that left them nothing to enjoy. During his 
 career Graham moved his "Temple of Health" from 
 the Adelphi to Pali-Mall. But he did not prosper in 
 the long-run. His religious extravagances for a while 
 brought him adherents, but when they took the form 
 of attacking the Established Church, they brought on
 
 352 A BOOK -VBOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 him an army of adversaries. He came also into ku- 
 miliating collision with the Edinburgh authorities. 
 
 Perhaps the curative means employed by Graham 
 were as justifiable and beneficial as the remedies of 
 the celebrated doctors of ^Miitworth in Yorkshire, 
 the brothers Taylor. These gentlemen were farriers, 
 by profession, but condescended to prescribe for their 
 own race as well, always, however, regarding the 
 vocation of brute-doctor as superior in dignity to 
 that of a physician. Their system of practice was a 
 vigorous one. They made no gradual and insidious 
 advances on disease, but opened against it a bom- 
 bardment of shot and shell from all directions. They 
 bled their patients by the gallon, and drugged them 
 by the stone. Their druggists, Ewbank and Wallia 
 of York, used to supply them with a ton of Glauber's 
 salts at a time. In their dispensary scales and 
 weights were regarded as the bugbears of ignoble 
 minds. Every Sunday morning they bled gratis any 
 one who liked to demand a prick from their lancets. 
 Often a hundred poor people were seated on the sur- 
 gery benches at the same time, waiting for venesec- 
 tion. When each of the party had found a seat the 
 two brothers passed rapidly along the lines of bared 
 arms, the one doctor deftly applying the ligature 
 above the elbow, and the other immediately opening 
 the vein, the crimson stream from which was directed 
 to a wooden trough that ran round the apartment 
 in wliich the operations were performed. The same 
 magnificence of proportion characterized their ad- 
 ministration of kitchen physic. If they ordered a 
 patient broth, they directed his nurse to buy a large 
 leg of mutton, and boil it in a copper of water down
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 353 
 
 to a strong decoction, of wliicli a quart should be 
 administered at stated intervals. 
 
 "Wlien the little Abbe de Voisenon was ordered by 
 his physician to drink a quart of ptisan per hour he 
 was horrified. On his next visit tHie doctor asked, 
 
 "■^Tiat effect has the ptisan produced?" 
 
 "Not any," answered the little Abbe. 
 
 "Have you taken it all?" 
 
 "I could not take more than half of it." 
 
 The physician was annoyed, even angry that his 
 directions had not been carried out, and frankly said 
 
 BO. 
 
 "Ah, my friend," pleaded the Abbe, "how could 
 you desire me to swallow a quart an hour?— I hold 
 hut a pint!" 
 
 This reminds us of a story we have heard lold of an 
 irascible physician who died, after attaining a vener- 
 able age, at the close of the last century. The story 
 is one of those which, told once, are told many times, 
 and affixed to new personages, according to the 
 whim or ignorance of the narrator. 
 
 "Your husband is very ill— very ill— liigh fever," 
 observed the Doctor to the poor labourer's wife; 
 "and he's old, worn, emaciated : his hand is as dry as 
 a Suffolk cheese. You ulust keep giving him water 
 —as much as he'll drink; and, as I am coming back 
 to-night from Woodb ridge, I'll see him again. There 
 —don't come snivelling about me!— my heart is a 
 deuced deal too hard to stand that sort of thing. 
 But, since you want something to cry about, just lis- 
 ten—your husband isn't going to die yetl There, 
 now you're disappointed. Well, you brought it on
 
 354 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 yourself. Mind lots of water— as muck as he'll 
 drink." 
 
 The doetor was ashamed of the feminine tender- 
 ness of his heart, and tried to hide it under an affec- 
 tation of cynicism, and a manner at times verging on 
 brutality. Heaven bless all his descendants, scat- 
 tered over the whole world, but all of them brave 
 and virtuous! A volume might be written on his 
 good qualities; liis only bad one being extreme iras- 
 cibility. His furies were many, and sprung from 
 divers visitations; but nothing was so sure to lash 
 him into a tempest as to be pestered with idle ques- 
 tions. 
 
 "Water, sir?" whined Molly Meagrim. "To be 
 sure, your honour— water he shall have, poor dear 
 soul ! But, your honour, how much water ought I 
 to give him ? ' ' 
 
 "Zounds, woman! haven't I told you to give him 
 as much as he'll take?— and you a.sk me how much! 
 How much? — give him a couple of pails of water, if 
 he'll take 'em. Xow, do you hear me, you old fool? 
 Give him a couple of pails." 
 
 "The Lord bless your honour— yes," whined 
 Molly. 
 
 To get beyond the reach of her miserable voice the 
 Doctor ran to his horse, and rode off to Woodbridge. 
 At night as he returned, he stopped at the cottage 
 to inquire after the sick man. 
 
 "He's bin took away, yer honour," said the wo- 
 man, as the physician entered. "The water didn't 
 fare to do him noan good — noan in the lessest, sir. 
 Only then we couldn't get down the right quantity, 
 though we did our best. "We got down better nor a
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTOKS. 355 
 
 pail and a half, when he slipped out o' our hands. 
 Ah, yer honour ! if we could but ha ' got him to swal- 
 ler the rest, he might still be alive ! But we did our 
 best, Doctor!" 
 
 Clumsy empirics, however, as the Taylors were, 
 they attended people of the first importance. The 
 elder Taylor was called to London to attend Thur- 
 low, Bishop of Durham, the brother of Lord Chan- 
 cellor Thurlow. The representative men of the Fac- 
 ulty received him at the bishop's residence, but he 
 would not commence the consultation till the arrival 
 of John Hunter. "I won't say a word till Jack Hun- 
 ter comes," roared the "\\Tiitworth doctor; "he's the 
 only man of you who knows anj'thing. ' ' When Hun- 
 ter arrived, Taylor proceeded to his examination of 
 the bishop's state, and, in the course of it, used some 
 ointment which he took from a box. 
 
 "What's it made of?" Hunter asked. 
 
 "That's not a fair question," said Taylor, turning 
 to the Lord Chancellor, who happened to be present. 
 "No, no, Jack. I'll send you as much as you please, 
 but I won't tell you what it's made of."
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 ST. JOHN LONG. 
 
 In the entire history of charlatanism, however, it 
 would be difScult to point to a career more extraor- 
 dinary than the brilliant though brief one of St. John 
 Long, in our own cultivated London, at a time scarce- 
 ly more than a generation distant from the present. 
 Though a pretender, and consummate quack, he was 
 distinguished from the vulgar herd of cheats by the 
 possession of enviable personal endowments, a good 
 address, and a considerable quantity of intellect. 
 The son of an Irish basket-maker, he was born in or 
 near Doneraile, and in his boyhood assisted in his 
 father's humble business. His artistic talents, which 
 he cultivated for some time without the aid of a 
 drawing-master, enabled him, while still quite a lad, 
 to discontinue working as a rush-weaver. For a lit- 
 tle while he stayed at Dublin, and had some inter- 
 course with Daniel Richardson the painter; after 
 which he moved to Limerick county, and started on 
 his o^vn account as a portrait-painter, and an in- 
 structor in the use of the brush. That his education 
 was not superior to what might be expected in &
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 357 
 
 clever youth of such lowly extraction, the following 
 advertisement, copied from a Limerick paper of Feb- 
 ruary 10, 1821, attests:— 
 
 "Mr John Saint John Long, Historical and Por- 
 trait Painter, the only pupil of Daniel Richardson, 
 Esq., late of Dublin, proposes, during his stay in 
 Limerick, to take portraits from litalian Head to 
 whole length; and parson desirous of getting theirs 
 done, in liistorical, hunting, shooting, fishing, or any 
 other character; or their family, grouped in one or 
 two paintings from life-size to miniature, so as to 
 make an historical subject, choseing one from his- 
 tory. 
 
 "The costume of the period from whence it would 
 be taken will be particularly attended to, and the 
 character of each proserved. 
 
 "He would take views in the country, terms per 
 agreement. Specimens to be seen at his Residence, 
 No. 116, Georges Street, opposite the Club-house, and 
 at Mr James Dodds, Paper-staining Warehouse, 
 Georges Street. 
 
 "Mr Long is advised by his several friends to give 
 instructions in the Art of Painting in Oils, Opeak, 
 Chalk, and Water-colours, &c., to a limited number 
 of Pupils of Respectability two days in each week 
 at stated hours. 
 
 "Gentlemen are not to attend at the same hour 
 the Ladies attend at. He will supply them in water- 
 colours, &c." 
 
 How the young artist acquired the name of St. 
 John is a mystery. When he blazed into notoriety, 
 his admirers asserted that it came to him in company 
 with noble blood that ran in his veins; but more un-
 
 358 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 kind observers declared that it was assumed, as being 
 likely to tickle the ears of his credulous adherents. 
 Ilis success as a provincial art-professor was consid- 
 erable. The gentry of Limerick liked his manly bear- 
 ing and livelj' conversation, and in'sated him to their 
 houses to take likenesses of their wives, flirt with 
 their daughtei-s, and accompany their sons on hunt- 
 ing and shooting excursions. Emboldened by good 
 luck in his own country, and possibly finding the 
 patronage of the impoverished aristocracy of an Irish 
 pro\'ince did not yield him a sufficient income, he 
 detennined to try his fortune in England. Acting 
 on this resolve, he hastened to London, and with in- 
 gratiating raannei-s and that persuasive tongue which 
 nine Irishmen out of ten possess, he managed to get 
 introductions to a few respectable drawing-rooms. 
 He even obtained some employment from Sir Thomas 
 Lawrence, as colour-grinder and useful assistant in 
 the studio; and was elected a member of the Royal 
 Society of Literature, and also of the Royal Asiatic 
 Society. But like many an Irish adventurer, before 
 and after him, he found it hard work to live on his 
 impudence, pleasant manners, and slender profes- 
 sional acquirements. He was glad to colour anatom- 
 ical drawings for the professors and pupils of one 
 of the minor surgical schools of London; and in 
 doing so picked up a few pounds and a very slight 
 knowledge of the structure of the human frame. 
 The information so obtained stimulated him to fur- 
 ther researches, and, ere a few more months of star- 
 vation had passed over, he deemed himself qualified 
 to cure all the bodily ailments to which the children 
 of Adam are subject.
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 359 
 
 He invented a lotion or liniment endowed with the 
 remarkable faculty of distinguishing between sound 
 and unsound tissues. To a healthy part it was as 
 innocuous as water; but when applied to a surface 
 under which any seeds of disease were lurking, it 
 became a violent irritant, creating a sore over the 
 seat of mischief, and stimulating nature to throw 
 off the morbid virus. He also instructed his patients 
 to inhale the vapour which rose from a certain mix- 
 ture compounded by him in large quantities, and 
 placed in the interior of a large mahogany case, 
 which very much resembled an upright piano. In 
 the sides of this piece of furniture were apertures, 
 into which pipe-stalks were screwed for the benefit 
 of afilicted mortals, who, sitting on easy lounges, 
 smoked away like a party of Turkish elders. 
 
 With these two agents St. John Long engaged to 
 combat every form of disease— gout, palsj', obstruc- 
 tions of the liver, cutaneous affections; but the mal- 
 ady which he professed to have the most complete 
 command over was consumption. His success in sur- 
 rounding himself ^rith patients was equal to his au- 
 dacity. He took a large house in Harley Street, and 
 fitted it up for the reception of people anxious to 
 consult him; and for some seasons every morning 
 and afternoon (from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.) the public 
 way was blocked up with carriages pressing to his 
 door. The old and the young alike flocked to him; 
 but nine of his patients out of every ten were ladies. 
 For awhile the foolish of every rank in London 
 seemed to have but one form in which to display 
 their folly. Needy matrons from obscure suburban 
 villages came with their guineas to consult the new
 
 360 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 oracle; and ladies of the liigliest rank, fashion, and 
 wealth, hastened to place themselves and their daugh- 
 ters at the mercy of a pretender's ignorance. 
 
 Unparalleled were the scenes which the reception- 
 rooms of that notorious house in Ilarley Street wit- 
 nessed. In one room were two enormous inhalers, 
 with flexible tubes running outwards in all directions, 
 and surrounded by dozens of excited women— ladies 
 of advajiced years, and young girls giddy with the 
 excitement of their first London season— pufBng 
 from their lips the medicated vapour, or waiting till 
 a mouth-piece should be at liberty for their pink 
 lips. In another room the great magician received 
 his patients. Some he ordered to persevere in inhal- 
 ation, others he divested of their i-aiment, and rubbed, 
 his miraculous liniment into their backs, between 
 their shoulders or over their bosoms. Strange to say, 
 these lavations and frictions— which invariably took 
 place in the presence of third persons, nurses or in- 
 valids—had very different results. The fluid, which, 
 as far as the eye could discern, was taken out of the 
 same vessel, and was the same for all, would instan- 
 taneously produce on one lady a burning excoriation, 
 wliich had in due course to be dressed with cabbage- 
 leaves ; but on another would be so powerless that she 
 could wash in it, or drink it copiously, like ordinary 
 pump- water, with impunity. "Yes," said the wiz- 
 ard, ' ' that was his system, and such were its effects. 
 If a girl had tubercles in her lungs, the lotion applied 
 to the outward surface of her chest would produce 
 a sore, and extract the virus from the organs of res- 
 piration. If a gentleman had a gouty foot, and 
 washed it in this new water of Jordan, at the cost
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 361 
 
 of a little temporary irritation the vicious particles 
 would leave the affected part. But on any sound 
 person who bathed in it the fluid would have no 
 power whatever." 
 
 The news of the wonderful remedy flew to every 
 part of the kingdom ; and from every quarter sick 
 persons, wearied of a vain search after an alleviation 
 of their sufferings, flocked to London with hope re- 
 newed once more. St. John Long had so many ap- 
 plicants for attention that he was literally unable to 
 give heed to all of them; and he availed himself of 
 this excess of business to select for treatment those 
 cases only where there seemed every chance of a sat- 
 isfactory result. In this he was perfectly candid, 
 for time after time he declared that he would take no 
 one under his care who seemed to have already gone 
 beyond hope. On one occasion he was called into the 
 country to see c^ gentleman who was in the last stage 
 of consumption; and after a brief examination of 
 the poor fellow's condition, he said frankly — 
 
 "Sir, you are so ill that I cannot take you under 
 my charge at present. You want stamina. Take 
 hearty meals of beefsteaks and strong beer; and if 
 you are better in ten days, I'll do my best for you 
 and cure you." 
 
 It was a safe offer to make, for the sick man lived 
 little more than forty-eight hours longer. 
 
 But, notwithstanding the calls of his enormous 
 practice, St. John Long found time to enjoy himself. 
 He went a great deal into fashionable society, and 
 was petted by the great and high-born, not only be- 
 cause 'he was a notoriety, but because of his easy 
 manners, imposing carriage, musical though hesitat-
 
 362 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 ing voice, and agreeable disposition. He was tall 
 and slig'lit, but strongly built ; and bis countenance, 
 tbin and firmly set, altboug'b frank in expression, 
 caused beboldei-s to tbink higbly of bis intellectual 
 refinement, as well as of bis decision and energy. 
 Possibly bis personal advantages bad no sligbt influ- 
 ence with his feminine applauders. But he possessed 
 other qualities yet more fitted to secure their esteem 
 —an Irish impetuosity of temperament and a sin- 
 cere sympathy with the unfortunate. lie was an 
 excellent horseman, hunting regularly, and riding 
 superb borees. On one occasion, as he was cantering 
 round the Park, he saw a man strike a woman, and 
 without an instant's consideration he pulled up, 
 leaped to the ground, seized the fellow bodily, and 
 ■with one enormous effort flung him slap over the 
 Park rails. 
 
 But horse-exercise was the only masculine pastime 
 he was very fond of. He was very temperate in his 
 habits; and although Irish gentlemen used to get 
 tipsy, he never did. Painting, music, and the society 
 of a few really superior women, were the principal 
 sources of enjojTnent to which this brilliant charla- 
 tan bad recourse in bis leisure hours. Many were 
 the ladies of rank and girls of gentle houses who 
 would have gladly linked their fortunes to bim and 
 his ten thousand a j^ar.* But though numerous mat- 
 
 * A writer in tlie Gentleman's Magasine for 1843 observes : 
 — ''In England, after Sir Astley, whose superiority of mind 
 or de.xterity of hand stood uncontested, another practitioner 
 in that category of the Faculty of which it has been said. 
 'Periculis nostris, et experimenta per mortes agunt medici,' 
 the once famous St John Long was, I believe, the most 
 largely requited. I had some previous knowledge of him, and 
 in 1830 he showed me his pass-book with his bankers, Sir
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 363 
 
 rimonial overtures wei-e made to him, he persevered 
 in his bachelor style of life; and although he was 
 received with peculiar intimacy into the privacy of 
 female society, scandal never even charged him with 
 a want of honour or delicacy towards women, apart 
 from his quackery. Indeed, he broke off his profes- 
 sional connection with one notorious lady of rank, 
 rather than gratify her eccentric wish to have her 
 likeness taken by him in that remarkable costume— 
 or no costume st all— in which she was wont to re- 
 ceive her visitors. 
 
 In the exercise of his art he treated women unscru- 
 pulously. Amidst the crowd of ladies who thronged 
 his reception-rooms he moved, smiling, courteous, 
 and watchful, listening to their mutual eonlidencea 
 about their maladies, the constitutions of their rela- 
 tions, and their family interests. Every stray sen- 
 tence the wily man caught up and retained in his 
 memory, for future use. To induce those to become 
 his patients who had nothing the matter with them, 
 and consequently would go to swell the list of his 
 successful cases, he used the most atrocious artifices. 
 
 "Ah, Lady Emily, I saw your dear sister," he 
 would say to a patient, "yesterday— driving in the 
 Park— lovely creature she is! Ah, poor thing!" 
 
 Claude Scott and Co., displaying a series of credits from 
 July, i8jo, to July, 1830, or a single year's operations, to the 
 extent of £13,400. But the delusion soon vanished. One act 
 of liberality on his part at that period, however, I think it 
 fair to record. To a gentleman who had rendered him 
 some literary aid, which his defective education made indis- 
 pensable, he presented double, not only what he was assured 
 would be an ample remuneration, but what exceeded fourfold 
 the sum his friend would have been satisfied with, or had 
 expficled."
 
 364 A BOOK 2VBOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 "Poor thing, Mr. Long!— why, Catherine is the 
 picture of health!" 
 
 "Ah," the adroit fellow would answer, sadly, "you 
 tliink so— so does she— and so does every one besides 
 myself who sees her; but— but— unless prompt re- 
 medial measures are taken that dear girl, ere two 
 short years have flown, will be in her grave." This 
 mournful prophecy would be speedily conveyed to 
 Catherine's ears; and, under the influence of that 
 nervous dread of death which almost invariably tor- 
 ments the youthful and healthy, she would implore 
 the great p'hysician to save her from her doom. It 
 was not difficult to quiet her anxious heart. Attend- 
 ance at 41, Ilarley Street, for six weeks, during 
 which time a sore was created on her breast by the 
 corrosive liniment, and cured by the application of 
 cabbage-leaves and nature's kindly processes, ena- 
 bled her to go out once more into the world, sounding 
 her saviour's praises, and convinced that she might 
 all her life long expose herself to the most trying 
 changes of atmosphere, without incurring any risk 
 of chest-affection. 
 
 But Mr. Long had not calculated that, although 
 nine hundred and ninety-nine constitutions out of 
 every thousand would not be materially injured by 
 his treatment, he would at rare intervals meet with 
 a patient of delicate organization, on whom the ap- 
 plication of 'his blistering fluid would be followed by 
 the most serious consequences. In the summer of the 
 year 1830, two young ladies, of a good Irish family, 
 named Cashin, came to London, and were inveigled 
 into the wizard's net. They were sisters; and the 
 younger of them, being in delicate health, called on
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 365 
 
 Mr. Long, accompanied by her elder sister. The or- 
 dinary course of inhalation and rubbing was pre- 
 scribed for the invalid; and ere long, frightened by 
 the quack's prediction that, unless she was subjected 
 to immediate treatment, She would fall into a rapid 
 consumption, the other young lady submitted to have 
 the corrosive lotion rubbed over her back and shoul- 
 ders. The operation was performed on the 3rd of Au- 
 gust. Forthwith a violent inflammation was estab- 
 lished: the wound, instead of healing, became daily 
 and hourly of a darker and more unhealthy aspect; 
 unable to bear the cabbage-leaves on the raw and 
 suppurating surface, the sufferer induced her nurse 
 to apply a comforting poultice to the part, but no 
 relief was obtained from it. St. John Long was sent 
 for, and the 14th (just eleven days after the exhi- 
 bition of the corrosive liniment), he found his victim 
 in a condition of extreme exhaustion and pain, and 
 suffering from continued sickness. Taking these 
 symptoms as a mere matter of course, he ordered her 
 a tumbler of mulled wine, and took his departure. 
 On the following day (Sunday, 15th) he called again, 
 and offered to dress the wound. But the poor girl, 
 suddenly waking up to the peril of 'her position, 
 would not permit him to touch her, and, raising her- 
 self with an effort in her bed, exclaimed— 
 
 "Indeed, Mr. Long, you shall not touch my back 
 again— you very well know that when I became your 
 patient I was in perfect health, but now you are kill- 
 ing me!" Without losing his self-command at this 
 pathetic appeal, he looked into her earnest eyes, and 
 said, impressively— 
 
 "Whatever inconvenience you are now suffering,
 
 366 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 it will be of short duration, for in two or three days 
 you will be in better health than you ever were in 
 your life." 
 
 But his words did not restore her confidence. The 
 next day (the 16th) Mr., now Sir Benjamin, Brodie 
 M'as sent for, and found on the wretched girl's back 
 an inflamed surface about the size of a plate, having 
 in the centre a spot as large as the palm of his hand, 
 which was in a state of mortification. The time for 
 rescue was past. Sir Benjamin prescribed a saline 
 draught to allay the sickness; and within twenty- 
 four houi-s Catherine Cashin, who a fortnight before 
 had been in perfect health and high spirits— an un- 
 usually lovely girl, in her 25th year— lay upon her 
 bed in the quiet of death. 
 
 An iiproar immediately ensued; and there was an 
 almost universal cry from the intelligent people of 
 the country, that the empiric should be punished. 
 A coroner's inquest was held; and, in spite of the 
 efforts made by the charlatan's fashionable adher- 
 ents, a verdict was obtained from the jury of man- 
 slaughter against St. John Long. Every attempt 
 was made by a set of influential persons of high 
 rank to prevent the law from taking its ordinaiy 
 course. The issue of tlie warrant for the apprehen- 
 sion of the offender was most mystei-iously and scan- 
 dalously delayed : and had it not been for the energj' 
 of Mr. Wakley, who, in a long and useful career of 
 public service, has earned for himself much unde- 
 served obloquy, the affair would, even after the ver- 
 dict of the coroner's jury, have been hushed up. 
 Eventually, however, on Saturday, October 30, St. 
 John Long was placed in the dock of old Bailey,
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 367 
 
 charged with the manslaughter of Miss Cashin. In- 
 stead of deserting him in his hour of need, his ad- 
 mirers—male and female— presented themselves at 
 the Central Criminal Court, to encourage him by 
 their sympathy, and to give evidence in his favour. 
 The carriages of distinguished membei-s of the no- 
 bility brought fair freights of the first fashion of 
 May-fair down to the gloomy court-house that ad- 
 joins Newgate; and belles of the fii-st fashion sat all 
 through the day in the stifling atmosphere of a 
 crowded court, looking languishingly at their hero 
 in the dock, who, from behind his barrier of rue and 
 fennel, distributed to them smiles of grateful recog- 
 nition. The Judge (Mr. Justice Park) manifested 
 throughout the trial a strong partisanship with the 
 prisoner; and the Marchioness of Ormond, who was 
 accommodated with a seat on the bench by his Lord- 
 ship's side, conversed with him in whispers during 
 the proceedings. The summing up was strongly in 
 favour of the accused; but, in spite of the partial 
 judge, and an array of fashionable witnesses in fav- 
 our of the prisoner, the jury returned a verdict of 
 guilty. 
 
 As it was late on Saturday when the verdict was 
 given, the judge deferred passing sentence till the 
 following Monday. At the opening of the court on 
 that day a yet greater crush of the heau monde was 
 present; and the judge, instead of awarding a term 
 of imprisonment to the guilty man, condemned him 
 merely to pay a fine of £250, or to be imprisoned till 
 such fine was paid. Mr. St. John Long immediately 
 took a roll of notes from his pocket, paid the mulct, 
 and leaving the court with his triumphant friends.
 
 368 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 accepted a seat in Lord Sligo's curricle, and drove 
 to the west end of the town. 
 
 The scandalous sentence was a fit conclusion to the 
 absurd scenes which took place in the court of the 
 Old Bailey, and at the coroner's inquest. At one or 
 the other of these inquiries the witnesses advanced 
 thousands of outrageous statements, of which the 
 following may be taken as a fair specimen:— 
 
 One young lady gave evidence that she had been 
 cured of consumption by Mr. Long's liniment; she 
 knew she had been so cured, because she had a very 
 bad cough, and, after the rubbing in all the ointment, 
 the cough went away. An old gentleman testified 
 that he had for years suffered from attacks of the 
 gout, at intervals of from one to three months; he 
 was convinced Mr. Long had cured him, because he 
 had been free from gout for five weeks. Another 
 gentleman had been tortured with headache; Mr. 
 Long applied his lotion to it— the humour which 
 caused his headache came away in a clear limpid 
 discharge.' A third gentleman affirmed that Mr. 
 Long's liniment had reduced a dislocation of his 
 child's hip-joint. The Marchioness of Ormond, on 
 oath, stated that she knew that Miss Cashin's back 
 was rubbed with the same fluid as she and her daugh- 
 ters had used to wash their hands with ; but she ad- 
 mitted that she neither saw the back rubbed, nor saw 
 the fluid with which it was rubbed taken from the 
 bottle. Sir Francis Burdett also bore testimony to 
 the harmlessness of Mr, Long's system of practice. 
 Mr. Wakley, in the Lancet, asserted that Sir Francis 
 Burdett had called on Long to ask him if his liniment 
 would give the Marquis of Anglesea a leg, in the
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 369 
 
 place of the one he lost at Waterloo, if it were ap- 
 plied to the stump. Long gave an encouraging an- 
 swer; and the lotion was applied, with the result of 
 producing not an entire foot and leg— but a gi-eat 
 toe! 
 
 Miss Cashin's death was quickly followed by an- 
 other fatal case. A Mrs. Lloyd died from the effects 
 of the corrosive lotion; and again a coroner's jury 
 found St. John Long guilty of manslaughter, and 
 again he was tried at the Old Bailey— but this sec- 
 ond trial terminated in his acquital. 
 
 It seems scarcely creditable, and yet it is true, that 
 these exposures did not have the effect of lessening 
 'his popularity. The respectable organs of the Press 
 — the Times, the Chronicle, the Herald, the John, 
 Bull, the Lancet, the Examiner, the Spectator, the 
 Standard, the Globe, Blackwood, and Fraser, com- 
 bined in doing their best to render him contemptible 
 in tlie eyes of his supporters. But all their efforts 
 were in vain. His old dupes remained staunch ad- 
 herents to him, and every day broug'ht fresh converts 
 to their body. With unabashed front he went every- 
 where, proclaiming himself a martyr in the cause of 
 humanity, and comparing his evil treatment to the 
 persecutions that Galileo, Harvey, Jenner, and Hun- 
 ter underwent at the hands of the prejudiced and 
 ignorant. Instead of uncomplainingly taking the 
 lashes of satirical writers, he first endeavored to bully 
 them into silence, and swaggering into newspaper 
 and magazine ofSees asked astonished editors how 
 they dared to call him a quack. Finding, however, 
 that this line of procedure would not improve his 
 position, he wrote his defence, and published it in an 
 
 4—24
 
 370 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 octavo volume, together with numerous testimonials 
 of his worth from grateful patients, and also a letter 
 of cordial support from Dr. Ramadge, M.D., Oxon., 
 a fellow of the College of Physicians. In a ridicu- 
 lous and ungrammatical epistle, defending this per- 
 nicious quack, who had been convicted of manslaugh- 
 ter, Dr. Ramadge displayed not less anxiety to 
 blacken the reputation of his own profession, than 
 he did to clear the fame of the charlatan whom he 
 designated "a guiltless and a cruelly persecuted in- 
 dividual!!!" The book itself is one of the most in- 
 teresting to be found in quack literature. On the 
 title-page is a motto from Pope— "No man deserves 
 a monument who could not be wrapped in a winding- 
 sheet of papers written against him"; and amongst 
 pages of jargon about humoral pathology, it contains 
 confident predictions that if his victims had contin- 
 ued in his system, they would have lived. The author 
 accuses the most eminent surgeons and physicians of 
 his time of gross ignorance, and of having conspired 
 together to crush him, because they were jealous of 
 his success and envious of his income. He even sug- 
 gests that the same saline draught, prescribed by Sir 
 Benjamin Brodie, killed Miss Cashin. Amongst, 
 those whose testimonials appear in the body of the 
 work are the then Lord Ingestre (his enthusiastic 
 supporter), Dr. Macartney, the Machioness of Or- 
 mond, Lady Harriet Kavanagh, the Countess of 
 Buckinghamshire, and the Marquis of Sligo. The 
 Marchioness of Ormond testifies how Mr. Long had 
 miraculously cured her and her daughter of "head- 
 aches," and her youngest children of "smart at- 
 tacks of feverish colds, one with inflammatory
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 371 
 
 sore throat, the others with more serious bad symp- 
 toms." The Countess of Buckinghamshire says she 
 is cured of "headache and lassitude"; and Lord 
 Ingestre avows his belief that Mr. Long's system is 
 "preventive of disease," because he himself is much 
 less liable to catch cold than he was before trying it. 
 
 Numerous pamphlets also were written in defence 
 of John St. John Long, Esq., M.R.S.L., and M.R.A.S. 
 An anonymous author (calling himself a graduate 
 of Trinity College, Cambridge, and Member of the 
 Middle Temple), in a tract dated 1831, does not hes- 
 itate to compare the object of his eulogy with the 
 author of Christianity. "But who can wonder at 
 Mr Long's persecutions? The brightest character 
 that ever stept was persecuted, even unto death! 
 His cures were all perverted, but they were not the 
 less complete; they were miraculous, but they were 
 not the less certain ! ' ' 
 
 To the last St. John Long retained his practice ; but 
 deati removed him from the scene of his triumphs 
 while he was still a young man. The very malady, 
 his control over which he had so loudly proclaimed, 
 brought his career— in which knavery or self-delu- 
 sion, doubtless both, played a part— to an end. He 
 died of consumption, at the age of thirty-seven years. 
 Even in the grave his patients honoured him, for 
 they erected an elegant and costly monument to his 
 memory, and adorned it with the following inscrip- 
 tion. 
 
 "It is the fate of most men 
 
 To have many enemies, and few friends. 
 
 This monumental pile 
 
 Is not intended to mark the career, 
 
 But to shew 
 
 How much its inhabitant was 'espected
 
 372 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 By those who knew his worth, 
 
 And the benefits 
 
 Derived from his remedial discovery. 
 
 He is now at rest. 
 
 And far beyond the praises or censures 
 
 Of this world. 
 
 Stranger, as you respect the receptacle of the dead 
 
 (As one of the many who will rest here), 
 
 Read the name of 
 
 John Saint John Long 
 
 without comment." 
 
 Notwithstanding the exquisite drollery of this in- 
 scription, in speaking of a plebeian quack-doctor 
 (who, by the exercise of empiricism, raised himself 
 to the possession of £5000 per annum, and the inti- 
 mate friendship of numbers of the aristocracy) as 
 the victim of "many enemies and few friends," it 
 cannot be said to be open to much censure. Indeed, 
 St. John Long's worshippers were for the most part 
 of that social grade in which bad taste is rare, though 
 weakness of understanding possibly may not be un- 
 common. 
 
 The sepulchre itself is a graceful structure, and 
 occupies a prominent position in the Kensal Green 
 cemetery, by the side of the principal carriage-way, 
 leading from the entrance-gate to the chapel of the 
 burial-ground. Immediately opposite to it, on the 
 other side of the gravel drive, stands, not inappro- 
 priately, the flaunting sepulchre of Andrew Ducrow, 
 the horse-rider, "whose death," the inscription in- 
 forms us, "deprived the arts and sciences of an emi- 
 nent professor and liberal patron." When any 
 cockney bard shall feel himself inspired to write an 
 elegy on the west-end grave-yard, he will not omit 
 to compare John St, John Long's tomb with that of 
 "the liberal patron of the arts and sciences," and
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 373 
 
 also with the cumbrous heap of masonry which cov- 
 ers the ashes of Dr. ilorrison, hygeist, which learned 
 word, being inteipreted, means "the inventor of 
 Morrison's pills." 
 
 To give a finishing touch to the memoir of this 
 celebrated charlatan, it may be added that after his 
 death his property became the subject of tedious lit- 
 igation; and amongst the claimants upon it was a 
 woman advanced in years, and of an address and 
 style that proved her to belong to a very humble 
 state of life. This woman turned out to be St. John 
 Long's wife. He had married her when quite a lad, 
 had found it impossible to live with her, and conse- 
 quently had induced her to consent to an amicable 
 separation. This discovery was a source of great 
 surprise, and also of enlightenment to the numerous 
 high-born and richly-endowed ladies who had made 
 overtures of marriage to the idolized quack, and, 
 much to their surprise, had had their advances adroit- 
 ly but firmly declined. 
 
 There are yet to be found in English society, ladies 
 —not silly, frivolous women, but some of those on 
 whom the world of intellect has put the stamp of its 
 approval — who cherish such tender reminiscences of 
 St. John Long, that they cannot mention his name 
 ^rithout their eyes becoming bright with tears. Of 
 course this proves nothing, save the credulity and 
 fond infatuation of the fair ones who love. The 
 hands of women decked Nero's tomb \vith flowers.
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 THE QUARRELS OP PHYSICIANS. 
 
 For many a day authors have had the reputation 
 of being more sensitive and quarrelsome than any 
 other set of men. Trutli to tell, they are not always 
 so amiable and brilliant as their works. There is 
 in them the national churlishness inducing them to 
 nurse a contempt for every one they don't person- • 
 ally know, and a spirit of antagonism towards nearly 
 every one they do. But to say this is only to say that 
 they are made of British oak. Unfortunately, how- 
 ever, they carry on their contentions in a manner 
 that gives them a wide publicity and a troublesome 
 duration of fame. Soldiers, when they quarrelled 
 in the last century, shot one another like gentlemen, 
 at two paces' distance, and with the crack of their 
 pistols the whole noise of the matter ceased. Au- 
 thors, from time immemorial, have in their angry mo- 
 ments rushed into print, and lashed their adversa- 
 ries with satire, rendered permanent by aid of the 
 printer's devil,— thus letting posterity know all the 
 secrets of their folly, whilst the merciful grave put 
 an end to all memorial of the extravagances of their
 
 'vy.ii XX u 
 
 For mar. 
 of beinsr ' 
 
 other - : 7>£ ANAro.Mrsr 
 
 so am 
 
 in the 
 
 nurse a c 
 
 ally know, 
 
 every one 
 
 they are made i 
 
 ev" '' ' 
 
 tL, 1 
 
 duration of fame 
 
 in the last cent---'- 
 
 at two paces' ■ 
 
 pistols the whole n \ Au- 
 
 th' ■ '-— '•• ■- 
 
 IT' 
 
 i the, 
 
 1 the 
 
 I put 
 
 11 Tnemo .f their
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 375 
 
 friends. There was less love between Radcliffe and 
 Hannes, Freind and Blackmore, Gibbons and Garth, 
 than between Pope and Dennis, Swift and Grub 
 Street. But we know ail about the squabbles of the 
 writers from their poems; whereas only a va^e tra- 
 dition, in the form of questionable anecdotes, has 
 come down to us of the animosities of the doctors— 
 a tradition which would long ere this have died out, 
 had not Garth — author as well as physician— written 
 the "Dispensary," and a host of dirty little apoth- 
 ecaries contracted a habit of scribbling lampoons 
 about their professional superiors. 
 
 Luckily for the members of it, the Faculty of Med- 
 icine is singularly barren of biographies. The career 
 of a physician is so essentially one of confidence, 
 that even were he to keep a memorial of its interest- 
 ing occurrences, his son wouldn't dare to sell it to 
 a publisher as the "Revelations of a Departed Phy- 
 sician." Long ere it would be decent or safe to print 
 such a diary, the public would have ceased to take 
 an interest in the writer. Pettigrew 's ' ' Life of Lett- 
 som," and Macil wain's "Memoirs of Abernethy," 
 are almost the only two passable biographies of emi- 
 nent medical practitioners in the English language; 
 and the last of these does not presume to enter fully 
 on the social relations of the great surgeon. The 
 lives of Hunter and Jenner are meagre and un- 
 worthily executed, and of Bransby Cooper's Life of 
 his uncle little can be said that is not in the language 
 of emphatic condemnation. 
 
 From this absence of biographical literature the 
 medical profession at least derives this advantage— 
 the world at large knows comparatively little of their
 
 376 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 petty feuds and internal differences than it would 
 otherwise. 
 
 The few memorials, however, that we have of the 
 quarrels of physicians are of a kind that makes us 
 wish we had more. Of the great battle of the apoth- 
 ecaries with the physicians we have already spoken 
 in the notice of Sir Samiiel Garth. To those who 
 are ignorant of human nature it may appear incredi- 
 ble that a body, so lovingly united against common 
 foes, should have warred amongst them.selves. Yet 
 such was the ease. A London druggist once put up 
 at the chief inn of a provincial capital, whither he 
 had come in the course of his annual summer ride. 
 The good man thought it would hurt neither his 
 health nor his interests to give "a little supper" to 
 the apothecaries of the town with whom he was in the 
 habit of doing business. Under the influence of this 
 feeling he sallied out from "The White Horse," and 
 spent a few hours in calling on his friends — a.sking 
 for orders and delivering invitations. On returning 
 to his inn, he ordered a supper for twelve— as eleven 
 medical gentlemen had engaged to sup with him. 
 When the hour appointed for the repast was at hand, 
 a knock at the door was followed by the appearance 
 of guest A, with a smile of intense benevolence and 
 enjoyment. Another rap— and guest B entered. A 
 looked blank— every trace of happiness suddenly 
 vanishing from his face. B stared at A, as much as 
 
 to say, ' ' You be ! " A shuffled with his feet, 
 
 rose, made an apology to his host for leaving the 
 room to attend to a little matter, and disappeared. 
 Another rap— and C made his bow of greeting. "I'll 
 try to be back in five minutes, but if I'm not, don't
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 377 
 
 wait for me," cried B, hurriedly seizing his hat and 
 rushing from the apartment. C, a cold-blooded, 
 phlegmatic man, sat down unconcernedly, and was 
 a picture of sleeping contentment till the entry of 
 D, when his hair stood on end, and he fled into the 
 inn-yard, as if he were pursued by a hyena. E 
 knocked and said, "How d' you do?" D sprung 
 from his chair, and shouted, "Good-bye!" And so 
 it went on till, on guest No. 11 joining the party— 
 that had received so many new comers, and yet never 
 for an instant numbered more than three— No. 10 
 jumped through the window, and ran down the street 
 to the bosom of his family. The hospitable druggist 
 and No. 11 found, on a table provided for twelve, 
 quite as much supper as they required. 
 
 Next morning the druggist called on A for an ex- 
 planation of his conduct. "Sir," was the answer, 
 "I could not stop in the same room with such a 
 scoundrel as B." So it went straight down the line. 
 B had vowed never to exchange words with C. C 
 would be shot rather than sit at the same table with 
 such a scoundrel as D. 
 
 "You gentlemen," observed the druggist, with a 
 smile to each, "seem to be almost as well disposed 
 amongst yourselves as your brethren in London; 
 only they, when they meet, don't run from each 
 other, but draw up, square their elbows, and fight 
 like men." 
 
 The duel between Mead and Woodward, as it is 
 more particularly mentioned in another part of these 
 volumes, we need here only to allude to. The con- 
 test between Cheyne and Wynter was of a less bloody 
 character. ChejTie was a Bath physician, of great
 
 378 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 practice and yet greater popularity— dying in 1743, 
 at the age of seventy-two. At one time of his life 
 he was so prodigiously fat that he weighed 32 stone, 
 he and a gentleman named Tantley being the two 
 stoutest men in Somersetshire. One day, after din- 
 ner, the former asked the latter what he was think- 
 ing about. 
 
 "I was thinking," answered Tantly, "how it will 
 be possible to get either you or me into the grave 
 after we die." 
 
 Cheyne was nettled, and retorted, "Six or eight 
 stout fellows will do the business for me, but you 
 must be taken at twice." 
 
 ChejTie was a sensible man, and had more than one 
 rough passage of arms with Beau Nash, when the 
 beau was dictator of the pump-room. Nash called 
 the doctor in and asked him to prescribe for him. 
 The next day, when the phj^ician called and in- 
 quired if his prescription had been followed, the 
 beau languidly replied:— 
 
 "No, i' faith, doctor, I haven't followed it. Ton 
 honour, if I had I should have broken my neck, for 
 I threw it out of my bed-room window." 
 
 But ChejTie had wit enough to reward the inven- 
 tor of the white hat for this piece of insolence. One 
 day he and some of his learned friends were enjoying 
 themselves over the bottle, laughing with a heartiness 
 unseemly in philosophers, when, seeing the beau 
 draw near, the doctor said:— 
 
 "Hush, we must be grave now, here's a fool com- 
 ing our way. ' ' 
 
 Oheyne became ashamed of his obesity, and ear- 
 nestly set about overcoming it. He brought himself
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 379 
 
 down by degrees tx) a moderate diet, and took daily 
 a large amount of exercise. The result was that he 
 reduced himself to under eleven stone, and, instead 
 of injiiring his constitution, found himself in the 
 enjoyment of better health. Impressed with the value 
 of the discovery lie had made, he wrote a book urging 
 all people afflicted with chronic maladies to imitate 
 him and try the effects of temperance. Doctors, not- 
 withstanding their precepts m favour of moderation, 
 neither are, nor ever have been, averse to the pleas- 
 ures of the table. Many of them warmly resented 
 Cheyne's endeavours to bring good living into dis- 
 repute, possibly deeming that their interests were 
 attacked not less than their habits. Dryden wrote, 
 
 "The first physicians by debauch were made. 
 Excess began, and sloth sustained the trade; 
 By chase our long-Iiv'd fathers earned their food, 
 Toil strung their nerves and purified their blood; 
 But we, their sons, a pamper'd race of men. 
 Are dwindled down to threescore years and ten. 
 Better to hunt in fields for health unbought, 
 Than fee the doctor for a nauseous draught; 
 The wise for cure on exercise depend, 
 God never made his work for man to mend." 
 
 Dr. Wynter arose to dispose of Cheyne in a sum- 
 mary fashion. Wynter had two good reasons for 
 hating Cheyne : Wynter was an Englishman and 
 loved wine, Cheyne was a Scotchman and loved 
 milk. 
 
 Dr. Wynter to Dr. Cheyne. 
 "Tell me from whom, fat-headed Scot, 
 Thou didst thy system learn ; 
 From Hippocrate thou hadst it not. 
 Nor Celsus, nor Pitcairn. 
 
 "Suppose we own that milk is good. 
 And say the same of grass; 
 The one for babes is only food. 
 The other for an ass.
 
 380 A BOOK ABOI'T DOCTORS. 
 
 "Doctor, one new prescription try 
 (A friend's advice forgive), 
 Eat grass, reduce thyself, and die, 
 Thy patients then may live." 
 
 Cheyne responded, with more wit and more good 
 manners, in the following fashion :— 
 
 "Dr. Cheyne to Dr. Wynter. 
 
 "My system, doctor, is my own. 
 No tutor I pretend; 
 My blunders hurt myself alone. 
 But yours your dearest friend. 
 
 "Were you to milk and straw confin'd, 
 Thrice happy might you be; 
 Perhaps you might regain your mind, 
 And from your wit be free. 
 
 "I can't your kind prescription try. 
 But heartily forgive; 
 'Tis natural you should wish me die, 
 That you yourself may live." 
 
 The concluding two lines of Cheyne 's answer were 
 doubtless little to the taste of his unsuccessful op- 
 ponent. 
 
 In their contentions physicians have not often had 
 recourse to the duel. With tliem an appeal to arms 
 has rarely been resorted to, but when it has been de- 
 liberately made the combatants have usually fought 
 with decision. The few duels fought between women 
 have for the most part been characterized by Ameri- 
 can ferocity. Madame Dunoyer mentions a case of 
 a duel with swords between two ladies of rank, who 
 would have killed each other had they not been sep- 
 arated. In a feminine duel on the Boulevard St. An- 
 toine, mentioned by De la Colombeire, both the prin- 
 cipals received several wounds on the face and bos- 
 om—a most important fact illustrative of the pride 
 the ^air sex take in those parts.* Sometimes ladies 
 
 * Vide Millingen's "History of Duelling."
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 381 
 
 have distinguished themselves by fig'hting duels with 
 men. Mademoiselle Dureux fought her lover Anti- 
 notti in an open street. The actress Maupin chal- 
 lenged Dumeny, but he declined to give her satisfac- 
 tion ; so the lady stripped him of watch and snuff-box, 
 and bore them away as trophies of victory. The same 
 lady, on another occasion, having insulted in a ball- 
 room a distinguished personage of her own sex, was 
 requested by several gentlemen to quit the entertain- 
 ment. She obeyed, but forthwith challenged and 
 fought each of the meddlesome cavaliers — and killed 
 them all! The slaughter accomplished, she returned 
 to the ball-room, and danced in the presence of her 
 rival. The Marquise de Nesle and the Countess Po- 
 lignac, under the Regency, fought with pistols for the 
 possession of the Due de Richelieu. In or about the 
 year 1827, a lady of Chateauroux, whose husband 
 had received a slap in the face, called out the offend- 
 er, and severely wounded him in a duel fought with 
 swords. The most dramatic affair of honour, how- 
 ever, in the annals of female duelling occurred in 
 the year 1828, when a young French girl challenged 
 a garde du corps who had seduced her. At the meet-, 
 ing the seconds took the precaution of loading with- 
 out ball, the fair principal of course being kept 
 in ignorance of the arrangement. She fired first and 
 saw her seducer remain unhurt. Without flinching, 
 or changing colour, she stood watching her adversary, 
 whilst he took a deliberate aim (in order to test her 
 courage), and then, after a painful pause, fired into 
 the air. 
 
 Physicians have been coupled with priests, as 
 beings holding a position between the two sexes. In
 
 382 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 the Lancashire factories they allow women and cler- 
 gymen the benefit of an entree— because they don't 
 understand business. Doctors and ladies could hard- 
 ly be coupled together by the same consideration; 
 but they might be put in one class out of respect 
 to that gentleness of demeanour and suavity of voice 
 which distinguish the members of the medical profes- 
 sion, in common with well-bred women. 
 
 Gentle though they be, physicians have, however, 
 sometimes indulged in wordy wrangling, and then 
 had recourse to more sanguinary arguments. 
 
 The duel between Dr. Williams and Dr. Bennet was 
 one of the bloodiest in the eighteenth century. They 
 first battered each other with pamphlets, and then ex- 
 changed blows. Matters having advanced so far. Dr. 
 Bennet proposed that the fig'ht should be continued 
 in a gentlemanly style— with powder instead of fists. 
 The challenge was declined; whereupon Dr. Bennet 
 called on Dr. Williams, to taunt him with a charge 
 of cowardice. No sooner had he rapped at the door, 
 than it was opened by Williams himself, holding in 
 his hand a pistol loaded with swan-^ot, which he, 
 without a moment's parley, discharged into his ad- 
 versary's breast. Severely wounded, Bennet retired 
 across the street to a friend 's house, followed by Wil- 
 liams, who fired another pistol at him. Such was the 
 demoniacal fury of Williams, that, not contented 
 with this outrage, he drew his sword, and ran Bennet 
 through the body. But this last blow was repaid. 
 Bennet managed to draw his rapier, and give his fe- 
 rocious adversary a home-thrust— his sword entering 
 the breast, coming out through the shoulder-blade, 
 and snapping short. Williams crawled back in the
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 383 
 
 direction of his house, but before he could reach it 
 fell down dead. Bennet lived only four hours. A 
 pleasant scene for the virtuous capital of a civilized 
 and Christian people! 
 
 The example of Dr. Bennet and Dr. Williams was 
 not lost upon the physicians of our American cousins. 
 In the August of 1830, a meeting took place, near 
 Philadelpnia, between Dr. Smith and Dr. Jeffries. 
 They exchanged shots at eight paces, without inflict- 
 ing any injury, when their friends interposed, and 
 tried to arrange the difficulty; but Dr. Jeffries swore 
 that he would not leave the ground till some one had 
 been killed. The pi-incipals were therefore put up 
 again. At che second exchange of shots Dr. Smith's 
 right arm was broken, when he gallantly declared 
 that, as he was wounded, it would be gratifying to 
 his feelings, to be killed. Third exchange of shots, 
 and Dr. Smith, firing with his left arm, hits his man 
 in the thigh, causing immense loss of blood. Five 
 minutes were occupied in bandaging the wound; 
 when Dr. Jeffries, properly primed with brandy, re- 
 quested that no further obstacles might be raised 
 between him and satisfaction. For a fourth time the 
 mad men were put up— at the distance of six feet. 
 The result was fatal to both. Dr. Smith dropped dead 
 with a baU in his heart. Dr. Jeffries was shot through 
 the breast, and survived only a few hours. The con- 
 duct of Dr. Jeffries during those last few hours was 
 admirable, and most delightfully in keeping with 
 the rest of the proceeding. On seeing his antagonist 
 prostrate, the doctor asked if he was dead. On being 
 assured that his enemy lived no longer, he observed, 
 "Then I die contented." He then stated that he had
 
 384 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 been a school-mate with Dr. Smith, and that, during 
 the fifteen years throughout which they had been on 
 terms of great intimacy and friendship, he had val- 
 ued him highly as a man of science and a gentle- 
 man. 
 
 One of the latest duels in which an English physi- 
 cian was concerned as a principal was that fought on 
 the 10th of May, 183.3, near Exeter, between Sir John 
 Jeffcott and Dr. Hennis. Dr. Ilennis received a 
 wound, of which he died. The affair was brought 
 in'to the Criminal Court, and was for a short time 
 a cause celebre on the "western circuit; but the mem- 
 ory of it has now almost entirely disappeared. 
 
 As we have already stated, duels have been rare in 
 the medical profession. Like the ladies, physicians 
 have, in their periods of anger, been content with 
 speaking ill of each other. That they have not lost 
 their power of courteous criticism and judicious 
 abuse, any one may learn, who, for a few hours, 
 breathes the atmosphere of their cliques. It is good 
 to hear an allopathic physician perform his duty to 
 society by frankly stating his opinion of the character 
 and conduct of an eminent homceopathic practitioner. 
 Perhaps it is better still to listen to an apostle of 
 homoeopathy, when he takes up his parable and curses 
 the hosts of allopathy. "Sir, I tell you in confi- 
 dence," observed a distinguished man of science, tap- 
 ping his auditor on the shoulder, and mysteriously 
 wihispering in his ear, "I know things about that man 
 that would make him end his days in penal servi- 
 tude." The nest day the auditor was closeted in the 
 considting-room of that man, when that man said— 
 quite in confiden'Ce, pointing as he spoke to a strong
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 385 
 
 box, and jingling a buncli of keys in liis pocket— "I 
 have papers in that box, whie'h, properly used, would 
 tie a certain friend of ours up by the neck." 
 
 Lettsom, loose-living man though he was for a mem- 
 ber of the Society of Friends, had enough of the 
 Quaker element in him to be very fond of contro- 
 versy. He dearly loved to expose quackery, and in 
 some eases did good service in that way. In the 
 Medical Journal he attacked, a. d. 1806, no less a man 
 than Brodum, the proprietor of the Nervous Cordial, 
 avowing that that precious compound had killed thou- 
 sands; and also stating that Brodum had added to 
 the crime of wholesale murder the atrocities of hav- 
 ing been bom a Jew, of having been a shoe-black in 
 Copenhagen, and of having at some period of his 
 chequered career carried on an ignoble trade in or- 
 anges. Of course Brodum saw his advantage. He 
 immediately brought an action against Phillips, the 
 proprietor of the Medical Journal, laying his dam- 
 ages at £5000. The lawyers anticipated a harvest 
 from the case, and were proceeding not only against 
 Phillips, but various newsvendors also, when a news- 
 paper editor stept in between Phillips and Brodum, 
 and contrived to settle the dispute. Brodum 's terms 
 were not modest ones. He consented to withdraw his 
 actions, if the name of the author was given up, and 
 if the author would whitewash him in the next num- 
 ber of the Journal, under the same signature. Lett- 
 som consented, paid the two attorneys' bills, amount- 
 ing to £390, and wrote the required puff of Brodum 
 and his Nervous Cordial. 
 
 One of the singular characters of Dublin, a genera- 
 tion ago, was John Brenan, M.D., a physician who 
 
 4—25
 
 386 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 edited the Milesian Magazine, a scurrilous publica- 
 tion of the satirist class, that flung dirt on every one 
 dignified enough for the mob to take pleasure in see- 
 ing him bespattered with filth. The man certainly 
 was a great blackguard, but was not destitute of 
 wit. How he carried on the war with the members 
 of his own profession the following song will show: — 
 
 "THE DUBLIN DOCTORS. 
 
 "My gentle muse, do not refuse 
 To sing the Dublin Doctors, O ; 
 For they're the boys 
 Who make the joys 
 Of grave-diggers and proctors, O. 
 
 We'll take 'em in procession, O, 
 We'll take 'em in succession, O; 
 
 But how shall we 
 
 Say who is he 
 Shall lead the grand procession, O? 
 
 Least wit and greatest malice, O, 
 Least wit and greatest malice, O, 
 
 Shall mark the man 
 
 Who leads the van, 
 As they march to the gallows, O. 
 
 First come then, Doctor Big Paw, O, 
 Come first then, Doctor Big Paw, O; 
 
 Mrs Kilfoyle 
 
 Says you would spoil 
 Its shape, did you her wig paw, O. 
 
 Come next, dull Dr Labat, O, 
 Come next, dull Dr Labat, O ; 
 
 Why is it so, 
 
 You kill the doe. 
 Whene'er you catch the rabbit, O? 
 
 Come, Harvey, drunken dandy, O, 
 Come, Harvey, drunken dandy, O ; 
 
 Thee I could paint 
 
 A walking saint, 
 If you lov'd God like brandy, O.
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 387 
 
 Come next, Doctor Drumsnuffle, O, 
 Come next, Doctor Drumsnuffle, O; 
 
 Well stuffed with lead. 
 
 Your leather head 
 Is thick as hide of Buffaloe. 
 
 Come next, Colossus Jackson, O, 
 Come next. Colossus Jackson, O ; 
 
 As jack-ass mute, 
 
 A burthen brute, 
 Just fit to trot with packs on, O. 
 
 Come next, sweet Paddy Rooney, O, 
 Come next; sweet Paddy Rooney, O ; 
 
 Tho' if you stay 
 
 Till judgment's day. 
 You'll come a month too soon-y, O. 
 
 Come next, sweet Breeny Creepmouse, O, 
 Come next, sweet Breeny Creepmouse, O ; 
 
 Thee heaven gave 
 
 Just sense to shave 
 A corpse, or an asleep mouse, O. 
 
 For I say, creep-mouse Breeny, O, 
 For I say, creep.-mouse Breeny, O ; 
 
 Thee I can't sing 
 
 The fairy's king. 
 But I'll sing you their Queen-y O ; 
 
 For I say, Dr Breeny, O, 
 For I say, Dr Breeny. O ; 
 
 If I for once 
 
 Called you a dunce, 
 I'd shew a judgment weeny, O. 
 
 Come, Richards dull and brazen, O, 
 Come, Richards dull and brazen, O; 
 
 A prosperous drone, 
 
 You stand alone, 
 For wondering sense to gaze on, O. 
 
 Then come, you greasy blockhead, O, 
 Then come, you greasy blockhead, O; 
 
 Balked by your face, 
 
 We quickly trace. 
 Your genius to your pocket, O. 
 
 Come, Crampton, man of capers, O,
 
 388 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 Come, Crampton, man of capers, O ; 
 
 t * * * 
 
 And come, long Doctor Renney, O, 
 And come, long Doctor Renney, O ; 
 
 If sick I'd fee 
 
 As soon as thee, 
 Old Arabella Denny, O. 
 
 Come, Tandragee Ferguson, O, 
 Come, Tandragee Ferguson, O ; 
 
 Fool, don't recoil. 
 
 But as your foil 
 Bring Ireland or Puke Hewson, O. 
 
 Come, ugly Dr Alman, O, 
 Come, ugly Dr Alman, O ; 
 
 But bring a mask. 
 
 Or do not ask, 
 When come, that we you call man, O. 
 * * * * 
 
 Come, Boyton, king of dunces, O, 
 Come, Boyton, king of dunces, O ; 
 
 Who call you knave 
 
 No lies receive, 
 Nay, that your name each one says, O. 
 
 Come, CoUes, do come, Aby, O, 
 Come, Colles, do come, Aby, O ; 
 Tho' all you tell, 
 You'll make them well. 
 You always 'hould say may be, O. 
 
 Come, beastly Dr Toomy, O, 
 Come, beastly Dr Toomy, O ; 
 
 if impudence 
 
 Was common sense 
 As you no sage ere knew me, O. 
 
 Come, smirking, smiling Beattie, O, 
 Come, smirking, smiling Beattie, O ; 
 
 In thee I spy 
 
 An apple eye 
 Of cabbage and potaty, O. 
 
 Come, louse-bit Nasom Adams, O, 
 Come, louse-bit Nasom Adams, O ; 
 In jail or dock
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 389 
 
 Your face would shock 
 It thee as base and bad damns, 0. 
 
 Come next, Frank Smyth on cockney, O, 
 Come next, Frank Smyth on cockney, O; 
 
 Sweet London's pride, 
 
 I see you ride, 
 Despising all who flock nigh, O. 
 
 And bring your partner Bruen, O, 
 And bring your partner Brucn, O; 
 
 And with him ride 
 
 All by your side, 
 Like two fond turtles cooing, O. 
 
 Come next. Spilsberry Deegan, O, 
 Come next, Spilsberry Deegan, O; 
 
 With grace and air 
 
 Come kill the fair, 
 Your like we'll never, see 'gain, O. 
 
 Come, Harry Grattan Douglass, O, 
 Come, Harry Grattan Douglass, O ; 
 
 A doctor's name 
 
 I think you claim. 
 With right than my dog pug less, O. 
 
 Come, Oronoko Harkan, O, 
 Come, Oronoko Harkan, O; 
 
 I think your face 
 
 Is just the place 
 God fbc'd the blockhead's mark on, O. 
 
 Come, Christ-denying Taylor, O, 
 Come, Christ-denying Taylor, O ; 
 
 Hell made your phiz 
 
 On man's a quiz. 
 But made it for a jailor, O. 
 
 Come, Packwood, come, Carmichael, O, 
 Come, Packwood, come, Carmichael, O; 
 
 Your cancer-paste, 
 
 The fools who taste. 
 Whom it kills not does nigh kill, O. 
 
 Come next, Adonis Harty, O, 
 
 Come next. Adonis Harty, O ; 
 
 Your face and frame
 
 yyU A BOOK ABOUT DOCTOES. 
 
 Shew equal claim, 
 Tam Veneri quam Marti, O. 
 
 Here ends my song on Doctors, O, 
 Here ends my song on Doctors, O; 
 
 Who, when all damn'd 
 
 In hell are cramm'd, 
 Will beggar all the Proctors, O." 
 
 Brenan (to do him justice) was as ready to fell a 
 professional antagonist and brother with a bludgeon, 
 hunting-whip, or pistol, as he was to scarify him 
 \vith doggerel. He was as bold a feUow as Dr. Walsh, 
 the Hibernian yEsculapius, who did his best to lay 
 Dr. Andrew ilarshall down amongst the daisies and 
 the dead men. Andrew ilarshall, when a divinity- 
 student at Edinburgh, was insulted (whilst officiat- 
 ing for Stewart, the humanity professor) by a young- 
 ster named Macqueen. The insolence of the lad was 
 punished by the professor (pro tern.) giving him a 
 caning. Smarting with the indignity offered him, 
 Macqueen ran home to his father, imploring ven- 
 geance; whereupon the irate sire promptly sal- 
 lied forth, and entering Marshall's lodgings, ex- 
 claimed:— 
 
 "Are you the scoundrel that dared to attack my 
 son?" 
 
 "Draw and defend yourself!" screamed the di- 
 vinity student, springing from his chair, and pre- 
 senting a sword-point at the intruder's breast. Old 
 Macqueen, who had expected to have to deal only 
 with a timid half-starved usher ready to crouch 
 whiningly under personal eastigation, was so aston- 
 ished at this reception that he turned and fled precipi- 
 tately. This little affair happened in 1775. As a 
 physician Andrew Marshall was not less valiant than
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 391 
 
 he tad been when a student of theology. On Walsh 
 challenging him, he went out and stood up at ten 
 paces like a gentleman. Walsh, a little short fellow, 
 invisible when looked at side-ways, put himself in 
 the regular attitude, shoulder to the front. Mar- 
 shall disdained such mean prudence, and faced his 
 would-be murdered with his cheeks and chest inflated 
 to the utmost. Shots were exchanged. Dr. Andrew 
 Marshall receiving a ball in his right arm, and Dr. 
 Walsh, losing a lock of hair— snipped off by his op- 
 ponent's bullet, and scattered by the amorous breeze. 
 Being thus the gainer in the affair. Dr. Andrew Mar- 
 shall made it up with his adversary, and they lived on 
 friendly terms ever afterwards. Why don't some 
 of our living medici bury the hatchet with a like ef- 
 fective ceremony? 
 
 An affair that ended not less agreeably was that 
 in which Dr. Brocklesby was concerned as principal, 
 where the would-be belligerents left the ground with- 
 out exchanging shots, because their seconds could not 
 agree on the right number of paces at which to stick 
 up their man. When Akenside was fool enough to 
 challenge Ballow, a wicked story went about that 
 the fight didn't come off because one had determined 
 never to fight in the morning, and the other that he 
 would never fight in the afternoon. But the fact 
 was— Ballow was a paltry mean fellow, and shirked 
 the peril into which his ill-manners had brought him. 
 The lively and pleasant author of "Physic and Phy- 
 sicians," countenancing this unfair story, reminds us 
 of the off-hand style of John Wilkes in such little 
 affairs. When asked by Lord Talbot "How many
 
 392 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 times they were to fire?" the brilliant demago^e re- 
 sponded— 
 
 "Just as often as your Lordship pleases— I have 
 brought a bag of bullets and a flask of gunpowder 
 with me."
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 THE LOVES OP PHYSICIANS. 
 
 Honour 'has flowed to physicians by the regular 
 channels of professional duty in but scant allowance. 
 Their children have been frequently ennobled by mar- 
 riage or for political services. Sir Hans Sloane's 
 daughter Elizabeth, and manor of Chelsea, passed 
 into the Cadogan family, the lady marrying the sec- 
 ond Baron Cadogan. Like Sir Hans, Dr. Huck San- 
 ders left behind him two daughters, co-heiresses of 
 his wealth, of whom one (Jane) was ennobled through 
 wedlock, the tenth Earl of Westmoreland raising her 
 to be his second wife. Lord Combermere married 
 the heiress of Dr. Gibbings, of Cork. In the same 
 way Dr. Marwood's property came to the present Sir 
 Marwood Elton by the marriage of his grandfather 
 with Frances, the daughter and heiress of the Dev- 
 onshire doctor. On the other hand, as instances of 
 the offspring of physicians exalted to the ranks of 
 the aristocracy for their political services, the Lords 
 Sidmouth, Denman, and Kingsdown may be men- 
 tioned. Henry Addington, created Viscount Sid- 
 mouth, of the county of Devon, was the eldest son of
 
 394 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 Anthony Addington, M.D., of Reading— the physi- 
 cian who objected to fighting any brother physician 
 w'ho had not graduated at either Oxford or Cam- 
 bridge. Dr. Anthony was the enthusiastic toady of 
 the great Earl of Chatham. Devoted to his own in- 
 terests and the Pitt family, he rose from the humble 
 position of keeper of a provincial lunatic asylum to 
 eminence in the medical profession. Coming up to 
 town in 1754, under the patronage of Pitt, he suc- 
 ceeded in gaining the confidence of the Court, and 
 was, with Dr. Richard "Warren, Dr. Francis Willis, 
 Dr. Thomas Gisborne, Sir Lucas Pepys, and Dr. Hen- 
 ry Revell Reynolds, examined, in 1782, by the com- 
 mittee appointed to examine "the physicians who at- 
 tended his illness, touching the state of his Majesty's 
 health." He took a very hopeful view of the king's 
 case ; and on being asked the foundation of his hopes, 
 alluded to his experience in the treatment of the in- 
 sane at Reading. The doctor had himself a passion 
 for political intrigue, which descended to his son. 
 The career of this son, who raised himself to the 
 Speaker's chair in the House of Commons, to the dig- 
 nity of First Minister of the Crown, and to the peer- 
 age of the realm, is matter of history. 
 
 Lord Denman was closely connected with the med- 
 ical profession by family ties: his father being Dr. 
 Denman, of Mount Street, Grosvenor Square, the au- 
 thor of a well-kno\\Ti work on a department of his 
 profession; his uncle being Dr. Joseph Denman of 
 Bakewell; and his two sisters having married two 
 eminent physicians, Margaret being the wife of Sir 
 Richard Croft, Bart., and Sophia the wife of Dr. Bail- 
 lie. Lord Kingsdown's medical ancestor was his
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 395 
 
 grandfather, Edward Pemberton, M.D., of Warring- 
 ton. 
 
 But though the list of the ennobled descendants 
 of medical practitioners might be extended to the lim- 
 its of a volume, the writer of these pages is not aware 
 of any case in which a doctor has, by the exercise 
 of his calling, raised himself to the peerage. As yet, 
 the dignity of a baronetcy is the highest honour con- 
 ferred on the most illustrious of the medical faculty, 
 Sir Hans Sloane being the first of the order to whom 
 that rank was presented. More than once a physi- 
 cian has won admission into the noblesse, but the bat- 
 tle resulting in such success has been fought in the 
 arena of politics or the bustle of the law courts. Syl- 
 vester Douglas deserted the counter, at which he com- 
 menced life an apothecary, and after a prolonged 
 servitude to, or warfare with, the cliques of the House 
 of Commons, had his exertions rewarded and his am- 
 bition gratified with an Irish peerage and a patrician 
 wife. On his elevation he was of course taunted with 
 the humility of his origin, and by none was the re- 
 proach flung at him with greater bitterness than it 
 was by a brother parvenu and brother poet. 
 
 "What's his title to be?" asked Sheridan, as he 
 was playing at cards; "what's Sylvester Douglas to 
 be called?" 
 
 "Lord Glenbervie," was the answer. 
 
 ' ' Good Lord ! ' ' replied Sheridan ; and then he pro- 
 ceeded to fire off an impromptu, which he had that 
 morning industriously prepared in bed, and w'hich 
 he subsequently introduced into one of 'his best satiric 
 pieces.
 
 396 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 "Glenbcrvie, Glenbervie, 
 
 What's good for the scurvy? 
 For ne'er be your old trade forgot. 
 
 In your arms rather quarter 
 
 A pestle and mortar, 
 And your crest be a spruce gallipot." 
 
 The brilliant partizan and orator displayed more 
 wit, if not better taste, in his ridicule of Addington, 
 who, in allusion to the rise of his father from a hum- 
 ble position in the medical profession, was ordinarily 
 spoken of by political opponents as "The Doctor." 
 On one occasion, when the Scotch members who us- 
 ually supported Addington voted in a body with the 
 opposition, Sheridan, with a laug'h of triumph, fired 
 off a happy mis-quotation from Macbeth,— "Doctor, 
 the Thanes fly from thee. ' ' 
 
 Henry Bickersteth, Lord Langdale, was the luck- 
 iest of physicians and lawyers. He used the medical 
 profession as a stepping-stone, and the legal profes- 
 sion as a ladder, and had the fortune to win two of 
 the brightest prizes of life— wealth and a peerage— 
 without the humiliation and toil of serving a political 
 party in the House of Commons. The second son of 
 a provincial surgeon, he was apprenticed to his fath- 
 er, and educated for the paternal calling. On being 
 qualified to kill, he became medical attendant to the 
 late Earl of Oxford, during that nobleman's travels 
 on the Continent. Returning to his native town, Kir- 
 by Lonsdale, he for awhile assisted his father in the 
 management of his practice ; but resolved on a differ- 
 ent career from that of a country doctor, he became 
 a member of Caius College, Cambridge, and devoted 
 himself to mathematical study with such success that, 
 in 1808, when he was twenty-eight years old, he be-
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTOES. 397 
 
 came Senior Wrangler and First Smith's prizeman. 
 As late as the previous year he was consulted medi- 
 cally by his father. In 1811 he was called to the bar 
 by the Inner Temple, and from that time till his ele- 
 vation to the Mastership of the Rolls he was both the 
 most hard-working and hard-worked of the lawyers 
 in the Equity Courts, to which he confined his prac- 
 tice. In 1827 he became a bencher of his Inn; and, 
 in 1835, although he was a staunch and zealous lib- 
 eral, and a strenuous advocate of Jeremy Bentham's 
 opinions, he was offered a seat on the judicial bench 
 by Sir Robert Peel. This offer he declined, though 
 he fully appreciated the compliment paid him by 
 the Tory chieftain. He had not, however, to wait 
 long for his promotion. In the following year (1836) 
 he was, by his own friends, made Master of the Rolls, 
 and created a peer of the realm, with the additional 
 honour of being a Privy-Councillor. His Lordship 
 died at Tunbridge Wells, in 1851, in his sixty-eighth 
 year. It would be difficult to point to a more enviable 
 career in legal annals than that of this medical law- 
 yer, who won the most desirable honours of his pro- 
 fession without ever sitting in the House of Commons, 
 or acting as a legal adviser of the Crown— and when 
 he had not been called quite twenty-five years. To 
 give another touch to this picture of a successful 
 life, it may be added, that Lord Langdale, after rising 
 to eminence, married Elizabeth, daughter of the Earl 
 of Oxford, to whom he had formerly been travelling 
 medical attendant. 
 
 Love has not unfrequently smiled on doctors, and 
 elevated them to positions at which tihey would never 
 have arrived by their professional labours. Sir Lucas
 
 J98 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTOES. 
 
 Pepys, who married the Countess De Rothes, and Sir 
 Henry Halford, whose wife was a daughter of the 
 eleventh Lord St. John of Blestoe, are conspicuous 
 amongst the more modem instances of medical prac- 
 titioners advancing their social condition by aristo- 
 cratic alliances. Not less fortunate was the farcical 
 Sir John Hill, who gained for a bride the Honoura- 
 ble Miss Jones, a daughter of Lord Ranelagh— a no- 
 bleman whose eccentric opinion, that the welfare of 
 the country required a continual intermixture of the 
 upper and lower classes of society, was a frequent ob- 
 ject of ridicule with the caricaturists and lampoon- 
 writers of his time. But the greatest prize ever made 
 by an ^Slsculapius in the marriage-market was that 
 acquired by Sir Hugh Smithson, who won the hand of 
 Percy's proud heiress, and was created Duke of 
 Northumberland. The son of a Yorkshire baronet's 
 younger son, Hugh Smithson was educated for an 
 apothecary— a vocation about the same time followed 
 for several years by Sir Thomas Geery Cullum, be- 
 fore he succeeded to the family estate and dignity. 
 Hugh Smithson 's place of business was Hatton Gar- 
 den, but the length of time that he there presided over 
 a pestle and mortar is uncertain. In 1736 he became 
 a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, but he with- 
 drew from that learned body, on the books of which 
 his signature may be found, in the year 1740. A few 
 months after this secession, Sir Hugh led to the altar 
 the only child and heiress of Algernon Seymour, 
 Duke of Somerset. There still lives a tradition that 
 the lady made the offer to Sir Hugh immediately after 
 his rejection by a famous belle of private rank and 
 modest wealth. Another version of the story is that.
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 399 
 
 when she heard of his disappointment, she observed 
 publicly, "that the disdainful beauty was a fool, and 
 that no Other woman in England would be guilty of 
 like folly. ' ' On hearing this, the baronet, a singular- 
 ly handsome man, took courage to sue for that to 
 which men of far higher rank would not have pre- 
 sumed to aspire. The success that followed his dar- 
 ing, of course, brought upon him the arrows of envy. 
 He had won so much, however, that he could, with- 
 out ill-humour, bear being laughed at. On being 
 created Duke of Northumberland in 1766, he could 
 afford to smile at a proposition that his coronet 
 should be surrounded with senna, instead of straw- 
 berry-leaves; for, however much obscure jealousy 
 might affect to contemn him, he was no fit object for 
 disdain— but a gentleman of good intellect and a 
 lordly presence, and (though he had mixed drugs 
 behind a counter) descended from an old and hon- 
 ourable family. The reproach of being a Smithson, 
 and no Percy, had more force when applied to the 
 second duke in the Anti-Jacobin, than it had when 
 hurled vindictively at the ex-doctor himself by the 
 mediocrities of the beau monde, whom he had beaten 
 on their own ground by superior attractions and ac- 
 complishments. 
 
 "Nay," quoth the Duke, "in thy black scroll 
 
 Deductions I espye — 
 For those who, poor, and mean, and low, 
 
 With children burthen'd lie. 
 
 "And though full sixty thousand pounds 
 My vassals pay to me. 
 From Cornwall to Northumberland, 
 Through many a fair countree; 
 
 "Yet England's church, its king, its laws. 
 Its cause I value not.
 
 400 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 Compared with this, my constant text, 
 A penny saved is got. 
 
 "No drop of princely Percy's blood 
 Through these cold veins doth run; 
 With Hotspur's castles, blazon, name, 
 I still am poor Smithson." 
 
 Considering the opportunities that medical men 
 have for pressing a suit in love, and the many tempta- 
 tions to gentle emotion that they experience in the 
 aspect of feminine suffering, and the confiding grati- 
 tude of their fair patients, it is perhaps to be won- 
 dered at that only one medical duke is to be found 
 in the annals of the peerage. When Swift's Stella 
 vas on her death-bed, her physician said, encourag- 
 ingly — "Madam, you are certainly near the bottom of 
 the hill, but we shall endeavour to get you up once 
 more," the naive reply of the poor lady was, "Doc- 
 tor, I am afraid I shall be out of breath before I get 
 to the top again." Not less touching was the fear 
 expressed by Steele's merry daughter to her doctor, 
 that she should "die before the holidays." Both Stel- 
 la and Sir Richard's child had left their personal 
 charms behind them when they so addressed their 
 physicians; but imagine, my brother, what the effect 
 of such words would be on your susceptible heart, 
 if they came from the lips of a beautiful girl. 
 Would you not (think you) try to win other such 
 speeches from her ?— and if you tried, dear sir, surely 
 you would succeed ! 
 
 Prudence would order a physician, endowed with 
 a heart, to treat it in the same way as Dr. Glynn 
 thought a cucumber ought to be dressed— to slice it 
 very thin, pepper it plentifully, pour upon it plenty 
 of the best vinegar, and then— throw it away. A doc-
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 401 
 
 tor has qiiite enough work on his hands to keep the 
 affections of his patients in cheek, without having to 
 mount guard over his own emotions. Thackeray says 
 that girls make love in the nursery, and practise the 
 arts of coquetry on the page-boy who brings the coals 
 upstairs— a hard saying for simple young gentlemen 
 triumphing in the possession of a first love. The 
 writer of these pages could point to a fair dame, who 
 enjoys rank amongst the highest and wealth equal to 
 the station assigned her by the heralds, who not only 
 aimed tender glances, and sighed amorously to a 
 young waxen-faced, blue-eyed apothecary, but even 
 went so far as to write him a letter proposing an 
 elopement, and other merry arrangements, in which 
 a carriage, everlastingly careering over the country 
 at the heels of four horses, bore a conspicuous part. 
 The silly maiden had, like Dinah, "a fortune in 
 silvyer and gold," amounting to £50,000, and her 
 blue-eyed Adonis was twice her age ; but fortunately 
 he was a gentleman of honour, and, without divulg- 
 ing the mad proposition of the young lady, he induced 
 her father to take her away for twelve months' 
 change of air and scene. Many years since the 
 heroine of this little episode, after she had become 
 the wdfe of a very great man, and the mother of 
 children who bid fair to become ornaments to their 
 illustrious race, expressed her gratitude cordially to 
 this Joseph of the doctors, for his magnanimity in 
 not profiting by the absurd fancies of a child, and the 
 delicacy with "which he had taken prompt measures 
 for her happiness ; and, more recently, she manifested 
 her good will to the man who had offered her what is 
 generally regarded as the greatest insult a woman can 
 
 4—26
 
 402 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 experience, by procuring a commission in the army 
 for his eldest son. 
 
 The embarrassments Sir John Eliot suffered under 
 from the emotional overtures of his fair patients are 
 well known. St. John Long himself had not more ad- 
 mirers amongst the elite of high-born English ladies. 
 The king had a strong personal dislike to Sir John, 
 —a dislike possibly heightened by a feeling that it 
 was sheer impudence in a doctor to capture without 
 an effort the hearts of half the prettiest women 
 amongst his subjects— and then shrug his shoulders 
 with chagrin at his success. Lord George Germain 
 had hard work to wring a baronetcy out of his Majes- 
 ty for this victim of misplaced affection. 
 
 "Well," said the king, at last grudgingly prom- 
 ising to make Eliot a baronet— "my Lord, since you 
 desire it, let it be; but remember he shall not be my 
 physician." 
 
 "No, sir," answered Lord George— "he shall be 
 your Majesty's baronet, and my physician." 
 
 Amongst other plans Sir John resorted to, to scare 
 away his patients and patronesses, he had a death's- 
 head painted on his carriage-panels; but the result 
 of this eccentric measure on his practice and on his 
 sufferings was the reverse of what he desired. One 
 lady — the daughter of a noble member of a Cabinet 
 —ignorant that he was otherwise occupied, made 
 him an offer, and on learning to her astonishment 
 that he was a married man, vowed that she would not 
 rest till she had assassinated his wife. 
 
 Poor Radcliffe's loves were of a less flattering sort, 
 though they resembled Sir John Eliot's in respect of 
 being instances of reciprocity all on one side. But the
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 403 
 
 amorous follies of Radcliffe, ludicrous though they 
 became under the touches of Steele's pen, are dig- 
 nified and manly when compared with the senile 
 freaks of Dr. Mead, whose highest delight was to comb 
 the hair of the lady on whom, for the time being, his 
 affections were set. 
 
 Dr. Cadogan, of Charles the Second's time, was, 
 like Sir John Eliot, a favourite with the ladies. His 
 wont was to spend his days in shooting and his even- 
 ings in flirtation. To the former of these tastes the 
 following lines refer: — 
 
 "Doctor, all game you either ought to shun, 
 Or sport no longer with the unsteady gun; 
 But like physicians of undoubted skill, 
 Gladly attempt what never fails to kill. 
 Not lead's uncertain dross, but physic's deadly pill." 
 
 Whether he was a good shot we cannot say ; but he 
 was sufficiently adroit as a squire of dames, for he 
 secured as his wife a wealthy lady, over whose prop- 
 erty he had unfettered control. Against the money, 
 however, there were two important points figuring 
 under the head of "set-off"— the bride was old and 
 querulous. Of course such a woman was unfitted to 
 live happily with an eminent physician, on whom 
 bevies of court ladies smiled whenever he went west 
 of Charing Cross. After spending a few months in 
 alternate fits of jealous hate and jealous fondness, 
 the poor creature conceived the terrible fancy that 
 her husband was bent on destroying her with poison, 
 and so ridding his life of her execrable temper. One 
 day, when surrounded by her friends, and in the 
 presence of her lord and master, she fell on her 
 back in a state of hysterical spasms, exclaiming: — 
 
 "Ah! he has killed me at last. I am poisoned!"
 
 •iOi A BOOK -VBOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 "Poisoned!" cried the lady-friends, turning up the 
 whites of their eyes. "Oh! gracious goodness!— you 
 have done it, doctor!" 
 
 "What do you accuse me of?" asked the doctor, 
 with surprise. 
 
 "I accuse you— of— killing me— ee," responded 
 the wife, doing her best to imitate a death-strug- 
 gle. 
 
 "Ladies," answered the doctor, with admirable 
 nonchalance, bowing to Mrs. Cadogan's bosom asso- 
 ciates, "it is perfectly false. You are quite welcome 
 to open her at once, and then you'll discover the 
 calumny." 
 
 John Hunter administered a scarcely less startling 
 reproof to his wife, who, though devoted in her at- 
 tachment to him, and in every respect a lady worthy 
 of esteem, caused her husband at times no little vexa- 
 tion by her fondness for society. She was in the habit 
 of giving enormous routs, at which authors and ar- 
 tists, of all shades of merit and demerit, used to as- 
 semble to render homage to her literary powers, 
 which were very far from common-place. A lasting 
 popularity has attested the excellence of her song:— 
 
 "My mother bids me bind my hair 
 With bands of rosy hue; 
 Tie up my sleeves with ribbons rare, 
 And lace my boddice blue. 
 
 " 'For why,' she cries, 'sit still and weep, 
 
 While others dance and play?' 
 Alas ! I scarce can go or creep. 
 While Lubin is away. 
 
 " 'Tis sad to think the days are gone. 
 
 When those we love are near ; 
 I sit upon this mossy stone, 
 And sigh when none can hear.
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 405 
 
 "And while I spin my flaxen thread, 
 And sing my simple lay, 
 The village seems asleep or dead. 
 Now Lubin is away." 
 
 John Hunter had no sympathy with his wife 's poet- 
 ical aspirations, still less with the society which those 
 aspirations led her to cultivate. Grudging the time 
 which the labours of practice prevented him from 
 devoting to the pursuits of his museum and labora- 
 tory he could not restrain his too irritable temper 
 when Mrs. Hunter's frivolous amusements deprived 
 him of the quiet requisite for study. Even the fee 
 of a patient who called him from his dissecting in- 
 struments could not reconcile him to the interruption. 
 "I must go," he would say reluctantly to his friend 
 Lynn, when the living summoned him from his in- 
 vestigations among the dead, "and earn this d d 
 
 guinea, or I shall be sure to want it to-morrow." 
 Imagine the wrath of such a man, finding, on his re- 
 turn from a long day's work, his house full of musical 
 professors, connoisseurs, and fashionable idlers— in 
 fact, all the confusion and hubbub and heat of a 
 grand party, which his lady had forgotten to inform 
 him was that evening to come off ! Walking straight 
 into the middle of the principal reception-room, he 
 faced round and surveyed his unwelcome guests, who 
 were not a little surprised to see him— dusty, toil- 
 worn, and grim— so unlike what "the man of the 
 house" ought to be on such an occasion. 
 
 ' ' I knew nothing, ' ' was his brief address to the as- 
 tounded crowd— "I knew nothing of this kick-up, 
 and T ought to have been informed of it beforehand ; 
 but, as I have now returned home to study, I hope the 
 present company will retire."
 
 406 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 Mrs Hunter's drawing-rooms were speedily empty. 
 
 One of the drollest love stories in medical ana is 
 that which relates to Dr. Thomas Dawson, a century 
 since alike admired by the inhabitants of Hackney 
 as a pulpit orator and a physician. Dawson was 
 originally a Suffolk worthy, unconnected, however, 
 •with the eccentric John Dawson, who, in the reign 
 of Charles the Second, was an apothecary in the pleas- 
 ant old town of Framlingham, in that county. His 
 fathei; a dissenting minister, had seven sons, and 
 educated six of them for the Nonconformist pulpit. 
 Of these six, certainly three joined the Established 
 Church, and became rectors— two of the said three, 
 Benjamin and Abraham, being controversial writers 
 of considerable merit. Thomas Dawson adhered to 
 the tenets of his father, and, combining the vocations 
 of divine and physic-man, preached on Sundays, and 
 doctored during the rest of the week. He was Mead 
 and Mead's father in one: though the conditions of 
 human existence, which render it impossible for one 
 person to be in two places at the same time, pre- 
 vented him from leaving chapel to visit his patients, 
 and the next minute urging the congregation to offer 
 up a prayer for the welfare of the unfortunate suffer- 
 ers. Amongst the doctor's circle of acquaintance 
 Miss Corbett of Hackney was at the same time the 
 richest, the most devout, and the most afflicted in 
 bodily health. Ministering to her body and soul, Dr. 
 Dawson had frequent occasions for visiting her. One 
 day he found her alone, sitting with the large fam- 
 ily Bible before her, meditating on perhaps the grand- 
 est chapter in all the Old Testament. The doctor 
 read the words to which the forefinger of her right
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 407 
 
 hand pointed— the words of Nathan to David: 
 "Thou art the man." The doctor took the hint; and 
 on the 29th of May, 1758, he found a wife— and the 
 pious lady won a husband. The only offspring of 
 this strange match was one son, a Mr. Dawson, who 
 still resides at a very advanced age of life in the 
 charming \aUage of Botesdale, in Suffolk. When 
 the writer of these pages was a happy little boy, mak- 
 ing his first acquaintance with Latin and Greek, at 
 the Botesdale Grammar School, then presided over 
 by the pious, manly, and gentle , he was an es- 
 pecial pet with Mr. Dawson. The worthy gentleman's 
 little house was in the centre of a large garden, 
 densely stocked with apple and other fruit trees ; and 
 in it he led a very retired life, visited by only a very 
 few friends, and tended by two or three servants— 
 of whom one, an ancient serving man, acted as a 
 valet, gardener, and groom to an antique horse which 
 constituted Mr. Dawson's entire stud. The small 
 urchin before-mentioned had free access at all times 
 to the venerable gentleman, and used to bring him the 
 gossip of the town and school, in exchange for ap- 
 ples and other substantial gifts. Thin and attenu- 
 ated, diminutive, so as to be little more than a 
 dwarf, with vagrant eager eye, hooked as to his nose, 
 and with a long beard, snowy-white, streaming over 
 his waistcoat, the octogenarian used to receive his 
 fair-haired child-visitor. May he be happy— as may 
 all old gentlemen be, who are kind to little schoolboys, 
 and give them apples and "tips!" 
 
 The day that Abernethy was married he went dowTi 
 to the lecture-room to deliver his customary instruc- 
 tion to his pupils. His selection of a wife was as ju-
 
 408 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 dicious as his marriage was happy; and the funny 
 
 stories for long current about the mode in which he 
 made his offer are IcnowTi to be those most delusive 
 of fabrications, fearless and extreme exaggerations 
 of a little particle of the truth. The brutality of 
 procedure attributed to the great surgeon by current 
 rumour was altogether foreign to his nature. The 
 Abernethy biscuit was not more audaciously pinned 
 upon his reputation, than was the absurd falsehood 
 that when he made his offer to his future wife he had 
 only seen her once, and then wrote saying he should 
 like to marry her, but as he was too busy to "make 
 love, ' ' she must entertain his proposal without further 
 preliminaries, and let him know her decision by the 
 end of the week. 
 
 Of Sir John Eliot the fortunate, mention has al- 
 ready been made in this chapter. Let us now speak 
 of John Eliot, the luckless hero of a biography pub- 
 lished in 1787, under the title of "A Narrative of 
 the Life and Death of John Eliot, M.D., containing 
 an account of the Rise, Progress, and Catastrophe of 
 his unhappy passion for Miss Mary Boydell." A 
 native of Somersetshire, John Elliot wrote a tragedy 
 when only twelve years of age, and after serving an 
 apprenticeship to a London apothecary, fell in love 
 with one Miss Mary Boydell, a niece of a city alder- 
 man. The course of this gentleman 's love ran smooth- 
 ly till he chanced, by evil fortune, to read an an- 
 nouncement in a newspaper, that a Miss Boydell had, 
 on the previous day, been led to the altar by some 
 gentleman— not called Dr. John Elliot, certainly not 
 himself. Never doubting that the Miss Boydell of 
 the newspaper was his Miss Boydell, the doctor,
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 409 
 
 ■without making any further inqiiiries after the per- 
 fidious fair one, sold his shop and fixtures, and ran 
 off from the evil city of heartless women, to com- 
 mune with beasts of the field and birds of the air in 
 sylvan retirement. Not a little chagrined was Miss 
 Boydell at the sudden disappearance of her ideal 
 apothecary, whom her uncle, the alderman, stigma- 
 tized in round, honest, indignant language, as a big 
 blackguard. After twelve years spent in wandering, 
 "a forlorn wretch, over the kingdom," Dr. Elliott 
 returned to London, set up once more in business, 
 and began, for a second time, to drive a thriving 
 trade, when Delilah again crossed his path. "One 
 day," he says, telling his own story, "entering my 
 shop (for I had commenced again the business of 
 apothecary) I found two ladies sitting there, one of 
 whom I thought I could recognize. As soon as she 
 observed me, she cried out, 'Mr. Elliot! Mr. Elliot!' 
 and fell back in a swoon. The well-known voice 
 struck me like a shock of electricity— my affections 
 instantly gushed forth— I fell senseless at her feet. 
 When I eame to myself, I found Miss Boydell sitting 
 by my side." And his Miss Boydell was Miss Boy- 
 dell still— innocent of wedlock. 
 
 Imogens being proved true, and Alonzo having 
 come to life, the youthful couple renewed the en- 
 gagement entered into more than twelve years be- 
 fore. The wedding-day was fixed, the wedding- 
 clothes were provided, when uncle (the alderman), 
 distrustful that his niece's scranny lover would make 
 a good husband, induced her at the last moment to 
 jilt him, and marry Mr. Nicols, an opulent book- 
 seller. The farce was now to wear an aspect of
 
 4IO A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 tragedy. Infuriated at being, after all, really de- 
 ceived, Dr. Elliot bought two brace of pistols, and 
 bound them together in pairs. One pair he loaded 
 only with powder; into the other he put the proper 
 quantum of lead, as well as the pernicious dust. 
 Armed with these weapons, he lay in wait for the 
 destroyer of his peace. After some days of watching 
 he saw her in Prince's Street, walking with the tri- 
 umphant Nicols. Rushing up, he fired at her the 
 two pistols (not loaded with ball), and then snatch- 
 ing the other brace from his pocket, was proceeding 
 to commit suicide, when he was seized by the bystand- 
 ers and disarmed. 
 
 The next scene in the drama was the principal court 
 of the Old Bailey, w-ith Dr. Elliot in the dock, charged 
 with an attempt to murder Miss Boydell. The jury, 
 being satisfied that the pistols were not loaded with 
 ball, and that the prisoner only intended to create 
 a startling impression on Miss Boydell 's mind, ac- 
 quitted liim of that charge, and he was remanded 
 to prison to take his trial for a common assault. Be- 
 fore this second inquiry, however, could come off, the 
 poor man died in Newgate, July 22, 1787, of a broken 
 heart— or jail fever. Ere his death, he took a cruel 
 revenge of the lady, by writing an autobiographic 
 account of his love experiences, in which appeared 
 the following passage:— "Fascinated as I was by the 
 charms of this faithless woman, I had long ceased to 
 be sensible to these defects, or rather my impassioned 
 imagination had converted them into perfections. 
 But those who did not labour under the power of 
 this magic were struck by her ungraceful exterior, 
 and mine ears have not unfrequently been shocked to
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 411 
 
 hear the tongue of indifference pronounce that the 
 object of my passion was ugly and deformed. Add 
 to this, that Miss Boydell has long since ceased to 
 boast the bloom of youth, and then let any person, 
 impartial and unprejudiced, decide whether a passion 
 for her, so violent as that I have manifested, could 
 be the produce of a slight and recent acquaintance, 
 or whether it must not rather be the consequence of 
 a long habit and inveterate intimacy." Such was 
 the absurd sad story of John Elliot, author of "The 
 l\redical Almanack," "Elements of the Branches of 
 Natural Philosophy," and "Experiments and Obser- 
 vations on Light and Colours." 
 
 The mournful love-story of Dr. John Elliot made a 
 deep impression on the popular mind. It is found al- 
 luded to in ballads and chap-books, and more than 
 one penny romance was framed upon it. Not improb- 
 ably it suggested the composition of the following 
 parody of Monk Lewis's "Alonzo the Brave and the 
 Fair Imogene," which appeared at the close of the 
 last century, during the first run of popularity which 
 that familiar ballad obtained:— 
 
 "GILES BOLUS THE KN.WE AND BROWN 
 SALLY GREEN. 
 
 "a romance by m. g. lewis. 
 
 "A Doctor so grave and a virgin so bright, 
 
 Hob-a-nobbed in some right marasquin; 
 They swallowed the cordial with truest delight, 
 Giles Bolus the knave was just five feet in height. 
 
 And four feet the brown Sally Green. 
 
 " 'And as,' said Giles Bolus, 'to-morrow I go 
 To physic a feverish land. 
 At some sixpenny hop, or perhaps the mayor's show, 
 You'll tumble in love with some smart city beau, 
 And with him share your shop in the Strand.'
 
 412 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 "'Lord! how can you think so?' Brown Sally Green said, 
 
 'You must know mighty little of me; 
 For if you be living, or if you be dead. 
 I swear, 'pon my honour, that none in your stead. 
 
 Shall husband of Sally Green be. 
 
 "'And if e'er I by love or by wealth led aside 
 
 Am false to Giles Bolus the knave; 
 God grant that at dinner so amply suppH'd, 
 Over-eating may give me a pain in the side, 
 May your ghost then bring rhubarb to physic the bride, 
 
 And send her well-dosed to the grave.' 
 
 "To Jamaica the doctor now hastened for gold, 
 Sally wept till she blew her nose sore; 
 Yet scarce had a twelvemonth elaps'd, when behold I 
 A brewer quite stylish his gig that way roU'd, 
 And stopped it at Sally Green's door. 
 
 "His barrels, his bungs, and his brass-headed cane. 
 
 Soon made her untrue to his vows; 
 The stream of small beer now bewildered her brain; 
 He caught her while tipsy — denials were vain — 
 
 So he carried her home as his spouse. 
 
 "And now the roast-beef had been blest by the priest, 
 To cram now the guests had begun ; 
 Tooth and nail, like a wolf, fell the bride on the feast 
 Nor yet had the clash of her knife and fork ceased. 
 When a bell (t'was the dustman's) toll'd one. 
 
 "Then first, with amazement, brown Sally Green found. 
 That a stranger was stuck by her side. 
 His cravat and his ruffles with snuff were embrown'd; 
 He ate not — he drank not — but, turning him round. 
 Sent some pudding away to be fried. 
 
 "His wig was turned forwards, and wort was his height. 
 His aoron was dirty to view; 
 The women (oh! wondrous) were hushed at the sight, 
 The cats as they eyed him drew back (well they might). 
 For his body was pea-green and blue. 
 
 "Now, as all wish'd to speak, but none knew what to say, 
 They look'd mighty foolish and queer : 
 At length spoke the lady with trembling — T pray. 
 Dear sir, that your peruke aside you would lay. 
 And partake of some strong or small beer.'
 
 A BODK -UJOUT DOCTORS. 413 
 
 "The bride shuts her fly-trap— the stranger complies. 
 
 And his wig from his phiz deigns to pull. 
 Adzooks ! what a squall Sally gave through surprise ! 
 Like a pig that was stuck, how she opened her eyes, 
 
 When she recognized Giles's bare skull. 
 
 "Each miss then exclaimed, while she turn'd up her snout, 
 
 'Sir, your head isn't fit to be seen !' — 
 The pot-boys ran in, and the pot-boys ran out, 
 And couldn't conceive what the noise was about. 
 
 While the doctor addressed Sally Green. 
 
 "'Behold me, thou jilt-flirt! behold me!' he cri'd — 
 
 'I'm Bolus, whom some call the 'knave I' 
 God grant, that to punish your falsehood and pride, 
 You should feel at this moment a pain in your side. 
 Quick, swallow this rhubarb ! — I'll physic the bride, 
 
 And send her well-dosed to the grave !' 
 
 "Thus saying, the physic her throat he forced down, 
 
 In spite of whate'er she could say : 
 Then bore to his cnariot the maiden so brown, 
 Nor ever again was she seen in that town, 
 
 Or the doctor who whisked her away. 
 
 "Not long lived the brewer, and none since that time 
 To inhabit the brew-house presume; 
 For old women say that by order sublime 
 There Sally Oreen suffers the pain of her crime. 
 And bawls to get out of the room. 
 
 "At midnight four times in each year does her sprite 
 
 With shrieks make the chamber resound. 
 1 won't take the rhubarb !' she squalls in affright. 
 While a cup in his left hand, a draught in his right, 
 
 Giles Bolus pursues her around. 
 
 "With wigs so well powdered, twelve doctors so grave, 
 
 Dancing hornpipes around them are seen ; 
 They drink chicken-broth, and this horrible stave. 
 Is twanged through each nose, 'To Giles Bolus the knave. 
 
 And his patient the sick Sally Green.' " 
 
 In the court of love, Dr. Van Buchell, the empiric, 
 may pass muster as a physician. ^VTien that droll 
 charlatan lost his first wife, in 1775, he paid her the 
 compliment of preserving her body with great care. 
 Dr. Hunter, with the assistance of Mr. Cruikshank, in-
 
 414 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 jected the blood-vessels of the corpse with a car- 
 mine fluid, so that the cheeks and lips had the hue 
 of healthy life ; the cavities of the boily were artistic- 
 ally packed with the antiseptics used by modern em- 
 balmers; and glass eyes were substituted in place of 
 the filmy balls which Death had made his own. 
 Decked in a dainty apparel of lace and finest linen, 
 the body was then placed in a bed of thin paste of 
 plaster of Paris, which, crystallizing, made a most or- 
 namental couch. The case containing this fantastic 
 horror had a glass lid, covered with a curtain; and 
 as Van Buehell kept it in his ordinary sitting-room, 
 he had the pleasure of introducing his visitors to the 
 lifeless form of his "dear departed." For several 
 years the doctor lived very happily with this slough 
 of an immortal soul— never quarrelling with it, never 
 being scolded by it— on the whole, enjoying an 
 amount of domestic tranquility that rarely falls to 
 one man's lot. Unwisely he made in advanced years 
 a new alliance, and manifested a desire to be on with 
 the new and the old love at the same time. To this 
 Mrs. Van Buehell (No. 2) strongly objected, and in- 
 sisted that the quaint coffin of ^Mrs. Van Buehell (No. 
 1) should be removed from the parlour in which she 
 was expected to spend the greatest part of her days. 
 The eccentric mode in which Buehell displayed his 
 affection for his first wife was scarcely less repulsive 
 than the devotion to the interests of anatomical sci- 
 ence which induced Rondeletius to dissect the dead 
 body of his own child in his theatre at Montpel- 
 ier. 
 
 Are there no more loves to be mentioned ? Yes ; let
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 415 
 
 these concluding pages tell an interesting story of the 
 last generation. 
 
 Fifty years ago the picturesque, sunny town of 
 Holmnook had for its physician one Dr. Kemp, a 
 grave and reverend ^sculapius, punctilious in eti- 
 quette, with an imposing formality of manner, accu- 
 rate in costume, in every respect a courtier of the 
 old school. Holmnook is an antique market-town, 
 square and compact, a capital in miniature, lying at 
 the foot of an old feudal castle, in which the Bigods 
 once held sway. That stronghold of moated towers 
 was three centuries since the abode of a mighty Duke; 
 Surrey, the poet earl, luckless and inspired, was born 
 within its walls. The noble acres of the princely 
 house fell into the hands of a parvenu— a rich, grasp- 
 ing la^v3'■er; — that was bad. The lawyer died and 
 went to his place, lea\ing the land to the poor;— that 
 "was better. And now the produce of the rich soil, 
 which whilom sent forth a crop of mailed knights, 
 supports a college of toil and time-worn peasants, 
 saving their cold thin blood from the penury of the 
 poor-house, and sheltering them from the contumelies 
 of— Guardians of the Poor. Hard by the college, 
 housing these ancient humble children of man, is a 
 school, based on the same beneficent foundation, 
 where the village lads are taught by as ripe a scholar 
 and true a gentleman as ever came from the banks of 
 Isis; and round which temple of learning they play 
 their rough, noisy games, under the observation of 
 the veterans of the bourg— the almsmen and alms- 
 women who sit in the sun and on benches before their 
 college, clad in the blue coats of the charity, and 
 feeling no shame in them, though the armorial badge
 
 416 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 of that old lawyer is tacked upon them in red cloth. 
 
 Holmnook is unlike most other English towns of its 
 size, abounding as it does in large antique mansions, 
 formerly inhabited by the great officers and depend- 
 ents on the ducal household, who in many cases were 
 blood relations of the duke himself. Under the ca- 
 pacious windows of these old houses, in the streets, 
 and round the market-square, run rows of limes, 
 spreading their cool shade over the pinnacles of ga- 
 bled roofs, and flinging back bars across the shining 
 shingle which decorates the plaster walls of the older 
 houses. In the centre of the town stands an enor- 
 mous church, large enough to hold an entire army 
 of Christians, and containing many imposing tombs 
 of earls and leaders, long since gone to their ac- 
 count. 
 
 Think of this old town, its venerable dwellings- 
 each by itself suggesting a romance. Hear the cooing 
 and lazy flapping of pigeons, making continual holi- 
 day round the massive chimneys. Observe, without 
 seeming to observe, the mayor's pretty daughter sit- 
 ting at the open oriel window of the Guild-hall, mer- 
 rily singing over her needle-work, and wondering if 
 her bright ribbon has a good effect on passers below. 
 Heed the jingle of a harpsichord in the rector's par- 
 lour. Be pleased to remember that the year is 1790 
 —not 1860. Take a glass of stinging ale at "The 
 Knight of Armour" hostelry— and own you enjoy it. 
 Take another, creaming good-naturedly up under 
 your lip, and confess you like it better than its prede- 
 cessor. See the High Sheriff's carriage pass through 
 the excited town, drawn by four enormous black 
 horses, and having three Bacchic footmen hanging on
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 417 
 
 behind. Do all this, and then you'll have a faint no- 
 tion of Holmnook, its un-English picturesqueness, its 
 placid joy, and experience of pomp. 
 
 Who is the gentleman emerging from the mansion 
 on the causeway, in this year 1790— with white pe- 
 ruke and long pig-tail, snuff-coloured coat and velvet 
 collar, tight dark nether garments, silk stockings, and 
 shoes with buckles, volumes of white shirt-frill rising 
 up under his chin? As he taps his shoes on his door- 
 step you can see he is proud of his leg, a pleasant 
 pride, whether one has reason for it or not ! 
 
 Seventy years of age, staid, decorous, and thor- 
 oughly versed in the social proprieties of the old 
 world, now gone clean from us, like chivalry or chart- 
 ism. Dr. Kemp was an important personage in Holm- 
 nook and its vicinity. An eclat was his that a coun- 
 try doctor does not usually possess. For he was of 
 gentle blood, being a cadet of an old and wealthy fam- 
 ily on the other side of the country, the representa- 
 tive of which hailed him "cousin," and treated 
 him with the intimacy of kinship— the kinship of 
 1790. 
 
 Michael Kemp's youth had been spent away from 
 Holmnook. Doubtless so polite and dignified a gen- 
 tleman had once aimed at a brighter lot than a rural 
 physician's. Doubtless he had a history, but he kept 
 it to himself. He had never married! The rumour 
 went that he had been disappointed— had under- 
 taken the conquest of a high-born lady, who gave an- 
 other ending to the game; and having conquered 
 him, went off to conquer others. Ladies could do 
 such things in the last century— when men had hearts. 
 
 Anyhow, Michael Kemp, M.D., was an old baeh- 
 
 4—27
 
 418 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTOBS. 
 
 elor, of spotless honour, and a reputation that scan- 
 dal never dared to trifle with. 
 
 A lady, much respected by the simple inhabitants 
 of Holmsnook, kept his house. 
 
 Let us speak of her— fair and forty, comely, with 
 matronly outlines, but graceful. Pleasant of voice, 
 cheerful in manner, active in benevolence. Mistress 
 Alice was a great favourite; no christening or wed- 
 ding could go off without her for miles around. The 
 doctor's grandest patients treated her as an equal; 
 for apart from her personal claims to respect and 
 good-will, she was, it was understood, of the doctor 's 
 blood— a poor relation, gentle by birth as she was by 
 education. Mistress Alice was a great authority 
 amongst the Holmnook ladies, on all matters pertain- 
 ing to dress and tast€. Her own ordinary costume 
 was an artistic one. A large white kerchief, made so 
 as to sit like a jacket, close and high round the 
 throat, concealed her fair arms and shoulders, and 
 reached down to the waist of her dress, which, in 
 obedience to the fashion of the time, ran close be- 
 neath her arms. In 1790 a lady's waist at Holmnook 
 occupied just about the same place where the drapery 
 of a London belle's Mazeppa harness offers its first 
 concealment to its wearer's charms. But it was on 
 her foot-gear that Mistress Alice devoted especial 
 care. The short skirts of that day encouraged a 
 woman to set her feet off to the best advantage. Mis- 
 tress Alice wore natty high-heeled shoes and clocked 
 stockings— bright crimson stockings with yellow 
 clocks. 
 
 Do you know what clocked stockings were, ladies? 
 This writer is not deeply learned on such matters,
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 419 
 
 but having seen a pair of Mistress Alice's stockings, 
 he can tell you that they had on either side, extend- 
 ing from the heel upwards some six inches, flowers 
 gracefully embroidered with a light yellow silk on the 
 crimson ground. And these wreaths of broidery were 
 by our ancestors called clocks. This writer could tell 
 something else about Mistress Alice's apparel. She 
 had for grand evenings of high festivity white kid 
 gloves reaching up to the elbow, and having a slit at 
 the tips of the forefinger and thumb of each hand. 
 It was an ordinary fashion long syne. So, ladies 
 could let out the tips of those digits to take a pinch 
 of snuff! 
 
 One night Michael Kemp, M.D., Oxon., was called 
 up to come with every possible haste to visit a sick 
 lady, urgently in want of him. The night-bell was 
 rung Aaolently, and the messenger cried to the doctor 
 over and over from the pavement below to make good 
 speed. The doctor did his best to comply; but, as 
 ill-luck would have it, after he had struck a light the 
 candle illumined by it fell down, and left the doctor 
 in darkness. This was very annojnng to the good 
 man, for he could not reconcile it to his conscience 
 to consume time in lighting another, and yet it was 
 hard for such a decorous man to make his hasty toilet 
 in the dark. 
 
 He managed, however, better than he expected. 
 His peruke came to hand all right; so did the tight 
 inexpressibles; so did the snuff-coloured coat with 
 high velvet collar ; so did the buckled shoes. Bravo ! 
 
 In another five minutes the active physician had 
 groped his way down-stairs, emerged from his stately 
 dwelling, and had run to his patient's house.
 
 420 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 In a trice he was admitted; in a twinkle he was 
 up the stairs; in another second he was by the sick 
 lady's bedside, round which were seated a nurse and 
 three eminent Holmnook gossips. 
 
 He was, however, little prepared for the recep- 
 tion he met with— the effect his appearance pro- 
 duced. 
 
 The sick lady, struggling though she was vath se- 
 vere pain, laughed outright. 
 
 The nurse said, "Oh my !— Doctor Kemp !" 
 
 Gossip No. 1 exclaimed, "Oh, you'll kill me!" 
 
 Gossip No. 2 cried, ' ' I can 't believe my eyes ! ' ' 
 
 Gossip No. 3 exploded with— "Oh, Doctor Kemp, 
 do look at your stockings ! ' ' 
 
 And the doctor, obeying, did look at his stockings. 
 One was of black silk— the other was a crimson one, 
 with yellow clocks. 
 
 Was there not merry talk the next day at Holm- 
 nook! Didn't one hear blithe hearty laughter at eve- 
 ry street corner — at every window under the limes? 
 
 What did they laugh about? What did they sayT 
 
 Only this, fair reader— 
 
 "Honi soil qui mal y pense." 
 
 God bless thee, Holmnook! The bells of thy old 
 church-tower are jangling in my ears though thou art 
 a hundred miles away. I see the blue heavens kissing 
 thy limes 1
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 LITEBATUEE AND ABT. 
 
 The old proverb says, "Every man is a physician or 
 a fool by forty." Sir Henry Halford happening to 
 quote the old saw to a circle of friends, Canning, 
 with a pleasant humour smiling in his eyes, inquired, 
 "Sir Henry, mayn't he be both?" 
 
 John Locke, according to academic registration, 
 was not a physician till he was past forty. Bom in 
 1632, he took his M.B. degree Feb. 6th, 1674. To 
 what extent he exercised his profession is still a mat- 
 ter of dispute ; but there is no doubt that he was for 
 some period an active practitioner of it. Of his let- 
 ters to Hans Sloane, that are still extant, the follow- 
 ing is one :— 
 
 "Deae Sm,— 
 
 ' ' I have a patient here sick of the fever at 
 this season. It seems not violent; but I am told 'tis 
 a sort that is not easily thrown off. I desire to know 
 of you what your fevers in town are, and what meth- 
 ods you find most successful in them? I shall be 
 obliged by your favour if you will give me a word or
 
 422 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 two by to-morrow's post, and direct it to me, to be 
 left at Mr Harrison's, in the 'Crown,' at Harlow. 
 "I am. Sir, 
 
 "Your most humble servant, 
 
 "J Locke." 
 
 Popularly the name of Locke is as little associated 
 with the profession of medicine as that of Sir James 
 ^Mackintosh, who was a practising physician, till am- 
 bition and poverty made him select a more lucrative 
 vocation, and turn his energies to the bar. 
 
 Distinguished amongst literary physicians was An- 
 drew Borde, who studied Medicine at Oxford and 
 ]\Iontpelier, and it is said acted as a physician in the 
 service of Henry the Eighth. Borde 's career has hith- 
 erto been a puzzle to anti(iuaries who, though inter- 
 ested in it, have been able to discover only little about 
 it. It was his whim to sign himself Andrew Perfora- 
 tus (his name really signifying "a cottage,"— "bor- 
 darius=a cottager"). In the same way after him 
 Robert Fludd, the Rosicrucian doctor, adopted for 
 his signature Robertus de Fluctibus. In his works 
 he occasionally gives the reader a glimpse of his 
 personal adventures; and from contemporary litera- 
 ture, as well as tradition, we lea in enough to feel jus- 
 tified in believing that he created the cant term "Mer- 
 ry Andrew." 
 
 Of his freaks, about the most absurd was his con- 
 duct when acting as foreman of a jury in a small 
 borough town. A prisoner was charged with steal- 
 ing a pair of leather breeches, but though appear- 
 ances were strongly against the accused (who was a 
 notorious rogue), the evidence was so defective that 
 to return a verdict of guilty on the charge was be^
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 423 
 
 yond the logic and conscience of the twelve good men 
 and true. No course seemed open to them but to ac- 
 quit the knave; when Andrew Borde prevailed on 
 them, as the evidence of stealing the leather breeches 
 was so defective, to bring him in guilty of man- 
 slaughter. 
 
 It is needless to say that the jurymen took An- 
 drew's advice, and finding a verdict to the best of 
 those abilities with which it had pleased God to bless 
 them, astonished the judge and the public, not less 
 than the prisoner, with the strange conclusion at 
 which they had arrived. 
 
 Anthony a Wood and Hearne tell us the little that 
 has hitherto been known of this eccentric physician. 
 To that little an important addition may be made 
 from the following letter, never before published, the 
 original of which is in the State-Paper Office. The 
 epistle is penned to Henry the Eighth's minister, 
 Thomas Cromwell. 
 
 "Jesus. 
 
 "Offering humbly salutacyon with dew reverance. 
 I certyffy yor mastershepp that I am now in Skot- 
 londe in a lyttle universite or study namyd Glasko, 
 where I study and practyce physyk as I have done 
 in dyverse regyons and servj'ces for the sustentacyon 
 off my lyvyng, assewring you that in ye parts that I 
 am yn ye king's grace hath many hundred and in 
 manner all men of presence (except some skolastycall 
 men) that be hys adversarys. I resortt to ye 
 Skotysh king's howse and to ye erle of Aryn, namyd 
 Hamylton, and to yo Lord Evyndale, namyd Stuerd, 
 and to many lords and lards as well spyrytuall as 
 temporal, and truly I know their myuds, for they
 
 424 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 takyth me for a Skotysh man's sone, for I name my 
 selff Karre, and so ye Karres kallyth me cosyn, 
 thorow ye which I am in the more favor. Shortly to 
 conclude; trust you no Skott for they wyll yowse 
 flatterying wordes and all j's falshold. I suppose 
 Teryly that you have in Ynglond by hundred and 
 thowsand Skotts and innumerable other alyons, which 
 doth (specyally ye Skotts) much harme to the king's 
 leege men throw their evyll wordes, for as I went 
 thorow Ynglond I mett and was in company off many 
 rurall felows, Englishmen that love nott our gracyose 
 kyng. Wold to Jesu that some were ponyshed to 
 geve others example. "Wolde to Jesu also that you 
 had never an alyen in yor realme, specyally Skotts, 
 for I never knew alyen good for Ynglond except they 
 knew proffytt and lucre should eome to them so. In 
 all parts of Chrystyndome that I have travylled in I 
 know nott V Englishmen inhabytants except only 
 scholers for learning. I pray to Jesu that alyens do 
 in Ynglond no more harme to Ynglonde, and yff I 
 myght do Ynglonde any servyce, specyally to my 
 soveryn lord the kjTig and to you, I would do ytt to 
 spend and putt my lyfe in danger and jeberdy as far 
 as any man. God be my judge. You have my hartt 
 and shall be sure of me to the uttermost of my pore 
 power, for I am never able to make you amends, for 
 when I was in greatt thraldom, both bodyly and 
 goastly, you of yor gentylnes sett me att liberte. 
 Also I thank yor mastershepp for yor grett kyndnes 
 that you have shewed me att Bysshopps Waltham, 
 and that you gave me lycense to come to you ons in 
 a qwarrtter. as sone as I come home I intende to come 
 to you to submytt my selff to you to do with me what
 
 A BOOK ABOUT D0CT0B8. 425 
 
 you wyll. for for lak of wytt paradventter I may 
 in this wrettyng say that shall nott content you. but 
 god be my judge I mene trewly both to my sover- 
 eyngne lord the kyng and to you. when I was kept 
 in thrawldom in ye charterhouse and know neither 
 ye kyngs noble acts nor you, then stultycyusly throw 
 synstrall wordes I dyd as man of the others doth, 
 butt after I was att lyberte manyfestly I aparsevyd ye 
 ignorance and blyndnes that they and I wer yn. for 
 I could never know no thynge of no maner of matter 
 butt only by them, and they wolde cawse me wrett 
 full incypyently to ye prior of London when he was 
 in ye tower before he was putt to exicuyon. for ye 
 which I trustt yor mastershepp hath pardonyd me, 
 for god knoweth I was keppt in prison straytly, and 
 glad I was to wrett att theyr request, but I wrott 
 nothyng that I thought shold be agenst my prince 
 nor you nor no other man. I pray god that you may 
 provyde a good prior for that place of London, for 
 truly there be many wylfuU and obstynatt yowng 
 men that stondeth to much in their owne consaytt 
 and vryll nott be reformyd butt playth ye chyldryn, 
 and a good prior wolde so serve them lyke chyldryn. 
 News I have to wrett to you butt I yntende to be with 
 ou shortly, for I am half wery off this baryn 
 contry, as Jesu Chrj'st kno'wth, who ever keppe you 
 in helthe and honor, a myle from Edynborough, the 
 fyrst day off Aprj'U, by the hand of yor poer skoler 
 and servantt,— Andrew Boorde Freest." 
 
 Literary physicians have, as a rule, not prospered 
 as medical practitioners. The public harbour towards 
 them the same suspicious and unfavourable preju- 
 dices as they do to literary barristers. A man, it is
 
 426 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTOKS. 
 
 presumed, cannot be a master of two trades at the 
 same time, and where he professes to carry on two it 
 is usually concluded that he understands neither. 
 To display the injustice of such vie^vs is no part of 
 this writer's work, for the task is in better hands- 
 time and experience, who are yearly adding to the 
 cases that support the converse proposition that if a 
 man is really a proficient in one subject, the fact is of 
 itself a reason for believing him a master of a second. 
 
 Still, the number of brilliant writers who have en- 
 rolled themselves in the medical fraternity is remark- 
 able. If they derived no benefit from their order, 
 they have at least generously conferred lustre upon 
 it. Goldsmith— though no one can say on what his 
 claim to the title of doctor rested, and though in his 
 luckless attempts to get medical employment he un- 
 derwent even more humiliation and disgrace than fell 
 to his lot as the drudge of JIi-s. GrifBths- is one of 
 the most pleasant associations that our countrymen 
 have in connection with the history of "the Faculty." 
 Smollett, like Goldsmith, tried ineffectually to escape 
 from literary drudgery to the less irksome and more 
 profitable duties that surround the pestle and mortar. 
 Of Garth, Blackmore, Arbuthnot, and Akenside, 
 notice has already been taken. 
 
 Anything like a complete enumeration of medical 
 men who have made valuable contributions to belles 
 lettres would fill a volume, by the writing of which 
 very little good would be attained. By no means the 
 least of them was Armstrong, whoso portrait Thom- 
 son introduced into the "Castle of Indolence." 
 
 "With him was sometimes joined in silken walk 
 (Profoundly silent — for they never spoke).
 
 A BOOK .VBOUT DOCTORS. 427 
 
 One shyer still, who quite detested talk; 
 If stung by spleen, at once away he broke 
 To grove of pine and broad o'ershadowing oak. 
 
 There, inly thrilled, he wandered all alone, 
 And on himself his pensive fury woke: 
 
 He never uttered word, save when first shone 
 
 The glittering star of eve — 'Thank Heaven, the day is done.' " 
 
 His medical writings, and his best known poem, 
 "The Art of Health, " had he ^vritten nothing else, 
 would in all probability have brought him patients, 
 but the licentiousness of "The Economy of Love" 
 effectually precluded him from ever succeeding as a 
 family physician. Amongst Armstrong's poet 
 friends was Grainger, the amiable and scholarly phy- 
 sician who enjoyed the esteem of Percy and Samuel 
 Johnson, Shenstone and Sir Joshua. Soon after the 
 publication of his translation of the "Elegies of 
 Tibullus," (1758), Grainger went to the island of St. 
 Christopher's, and established himself there as a 
 physician. The scenery and industrial occupations 
 of the island inspired him to write his most important 
 poem, ""'The Sugar-Cane," which, in escaping such 
 derision as was poured on Blaekmore's effusions, 
 owed its good fortune to the personal popularity of 
 the author rather than its intrinsic merits. The fol- 
 lowing sample is a fair one :— 
 
 "Destructive on the upland groves 
 The monkey nation preys : from rocky heights. 
 In silent parties they descend by night. 
 And posting watchful sentinels, to warn 
 When hostile steps approach, with gambols they 
 Pcu! o'er the cane-grove. Luckless he to whom 
 That land pertains ! in evil hour, perhaps, 
 And thoughtless of to-morrow, on a die 
 He hazards millions; or, perhaps, reclines 
 On luxury's soft lap, the pest of wealth; 
 And, inconsiderate, deems his Indian crops 
 Will amply her insatiate wants supply.
 
 428 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 "From these insidious droles (peculiar pest 
 Of Liamigia's hills) would'st thou defend 
 Thy waving wealth, in traps put not thy trust, 
 However baited : treble every watch. 
 And well with arms provide them ; faithful dogs, 
 Of nose sapfacious, on their footsteps wait. 
 With these attack the predatory bands; 
 Quickly, th' unequal conflict they decline. 
 And chattering, fling their ill-got spoils away. 
 So when, of late, innumerous Gallic hosts. 
 Fierce, wanton, cruel, did by stealth invade 
 The peaceable American's domains. 
 While desolation mark'd their faithless rout; 
 No sooner Albion's martial sons advanc'd, 
 Than the gay dastards to their forests fled. 
 And left their spoils and tomahawks behind. 
 
 "Nor with less haste the whiskcr'd vermin race, 
 A countless clan, despoil the low-land cane. 
 
 "These to destroy, &c." 
 
 When the poem was read in MS. at Sir Joshua's 
 house, the lines printed in italics were not part of the 
 production, but in their place stood — 
 
 "Now, Muse, let's sing of rats." 
 The immediate effect of such bathos was a burst of 
 inextinguishable laughter from the auditors, whose 
 sense of the ridiculous was by no means quieted by 
 the fact that one of the company, slyly overlooking 
 the reader, discovered that "the word had originally 
 been mice, and had been altered to rats, as more dig- 
 nified." 
 
 Above the crowd of minor medical litterateurs are 
 conspicuous, Moore, the author of "Zeluco"; Dr. 
 Aikin, one of whose many works has been already re- 
 ferred to; Erasmus Darwin, author of "The Botanic 
 Garden"; Jlason Good, the translator of "Lucre- 
 tius," and author of the "Study of Medicine"; Dr. 
 Ferriar, whose "Illustrations of Sterne" just doubled 
 the value in the market of "Burton's Anatomy of 
 Melancholy"; Cogan, the author of "Life and Opin-
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTOES. 429 
 
 ions of John Buncle, jun."; Dr. Harrington, of Bath, 
 editor of the "Nugae Antiquae"; Millingen, who 
 wrote "The Curiosities of Medical Practice," and 
 "The History of Duelling"; Dr. Paris, whose "Life 
 of Sir Humphrey Davy," unsatisfactory as it is in 
 many places, is still a useful book, and many of whose 
 other writings will long remain of great value ; Wadd, 
 the humourous collector of "Medical Ana"; Dr.Merri- 
 man, the late contributor to the Gentleman's Maga- 
 zine and Notes and Queries; and Pettigrew, the 
 biographer of Lettsom. If the physicians and sur- 
 geons still living, who have openly or anonymously 
 written with good effect on subjects not immediately 
 connected with their profession, were placed before 
 the reader, there would be found amongst them many 
 of the most distinguished of their fraternity. 
 
 Apropos of the Dr. Harrington mentioned above, a 
 writer says— "The Doctor for many years attended 
 the Dowager Lady Trevor, relict of Lord Trevor, £ind 
 last surviving daughter of Sir Richard Steele. He 
 spoke of this lady as possessing all the wit, humour, 
 and gaiety of her father, together vrith most of his 
 faults. She was extravagant, and always in debt; 
 but she was generous, charitable, and humane. She 
 was particularly partial to young people, whom she 
 frequently entertained most liberally, and delighted 
 them with the pleasantry and volubility of her dis- 
 course. Her person was like that which her pleasant 
 father described himself in the Spectator, with his 
 short face, &c. A little before her death (which was 
 in the month of December) she sent for her doctor, 
 and, on his entering her chamber, he said, 'How fares 
 your Ladyship?' She replied, 'Oh, my dear Doctor,
 
 430 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 ill fare! I am going to break up before the holi- 
 days!' This agreeable lady lived many years in 
 Queen's Square, Bath, and, in the summer months, at 
 St. Ann's Hill, Surrey, the late residence of Rt. Hon. 
 Chas. James Fox. ' ' 
 
 Wolcot, better known as Peter Pindar, was a med- 
 ical practitioner, his father and many of his ances- 
 tors having followed the same calling in Devonshire 
 and Cornwall, under the names of Woolcot, Wolcott, 
 Woolacot, Walcot, or Wolcot. After acquiring a 
 knowledge of his profession in a somewhat irregular 
 manner Wolcot found a patron in Sir William Tre- 
 lawny, Bart., of Trelawny, co. Cornwall, who, on go- 
 ing out to assume the governorship of Jamaica, took 
 the young surgeon with him to act as medical officer 
 to his household. In Jamaica Wolcot figured in more 
 characters tlian one. He was the governor's grand- 
 master of the ceremonies, private secretary, and chap- 
 lain. When the King of the Mosquitoes waited on 
 the new governor to express his loyal devotion to the 
 King of England's representative, Wolcot had to en- 
 tertain the royal guest— no difficult task as long as 
 strong drink was in the way. 
 
 His Majesty— an enormously stout black brute- 
 regarded intoxication as the condition of life most 
 fit for kings. 
 
 "Champagne the courtier drinks, the spleen to chase. 
 The colonel Burgundy, and port his Grace." 
 
 The autocrat of the Mosquitoes, as the greatest only 
 are, in his simplicity sublime, was contented with 
 rum or its equivalent. 
 
 "Mo' drink for king! Mo' drink for king!" he 
 would bellow, dancing round the grand-master of the
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 431 
 
 governor 's household. 
 
 "King," the grand-master would reply, "you are 
 drunk already." 
 
 "No, no; king no drunk. Mo' drink for king! 
 Broder George" {i. e. George III.) "love drink!" 
 
 Grand-Master.— "BToder George does not love 
 drink: he is a sober man." 
 
 Autocrat.— "But King of Musquito love drink. 
 Me will have mo' drink. Me love drink like devil. 
 Me drink whole ocean!" 
 
 The different meagre memoirs of Peter Pindar are 
 conflicting as to whether he ever received ordination 
 from the hands of the Bishop of London. It seems 
 most probable that he never did. But, consecrated or 
 not, there is no doubt that he officiated as a colonial 
 rector for some time. Droll stories of him as a parish 
 priest used to circulate amongst his friends, as well 
 as amongst his enemies. He read prayers and 
 preached whenever a congregation appeared in his 
 church, but three Sundays out of every four not a 
 soul came to receive the benefit of his ministrations. 
 
 The rector was an admirable shot, and on his way 
 from his house to church used to amuse himself with 
 shooting pigeons, his clerk— also an excellent shot- 
 walking behind with a fowling-piece in his hand, 
 and taking part in the sport. Having reached the 
 sacred edifice, his reverence and attendant opened 
 the church door and waited in the porch ten minutes 
 for the advent of worshippers. If none had present- 
 ed themselves at the end of ten minutes, the pastor 
 beat a retreat. If only a few black Christians strag- 
 gled up, the rector bought them off with a few coin.s 
 and then went home. One cunning old negro, who
 
 432 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTOES. 
 
 saw that the parson's heart was more with the wild- 
 fowl of the neighboring bay than bent on the dis- 
 charge of his priestly functions, after a while pre- 
 sented himself every Sunday, when the following in- 
 terview and arrangement were regularly repeated:— 
 
 "WTiat do you come here for, blaekee?" the par- 
 son would exclaim. 
 
 "Why, massa, to hear your good sermon and all 
 de prayer ob de church." 
 
 "Would not a bit or two do you more goodY" 
 
 "Yes, massa doctor— me lub prayer much, but me 
 lub money too." 
 
 The "bit or two" would then be paid, and the de- 
 votee would retire speedily from the scene. For an 
 entire twelve-month was this black-mail exacted. 
 
 On his return to England, AVolcot, after a few un- 
 successful attempts to establish himself in practice, 
 relinquisbed the profession of physic as well as that 
 of divinity, and, settling himself in London, made 
 both fame and a good income by his writings. As a 
 political satirist he was in his day almost without a 
 rival, and the popularity of his numerous works 
 would have placed a prudent man in lasting aflBu- 
 ence. Improvidence, however, necessitated him to 
 sell the copyright of his works to Messrs. Robinson, 
 Golding, and Walker for an annuity of £250, pay- 
 able half-yearly, during the remainder of his life. 
 Loose agreements have alwaj's been the fashion be- 
 tween authors and publishers, and in the present case 
 it was not clearly stated what "copyright of his 
 works" meant. The publishers interpreted it as the 
 copyright of both what the author had written at 
 the time of making the agreement, and also of what
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 433 
 
 he should subsequently write. Wolcot, however, de- 
 clared that he had in the transaction only had regard 
 to his prior productions. After some litigation and 
 more squabbling, the publishers consented to take 
 Wolcot 's view of the case; but he never forgave them 
 the discomfort they had caused him. His rancour 
 against "the trade" increased with time, and in- 
 spired some of his most violent and unjust verses:— 
 
 "Fired with the love of rhyme, and, let me say. 
 Or virtue, too, I sound the moral lay; 
 Much like St. Paul (who solemnly protests 
 He battled hard at Ephesus with beasts), 
 I've fought with lions, monkeys, bulls, and bears. 
 And got half Noah's ark about my ears ; 
 Nay, more (which all the courts of justice know), 
 Fought with the brutes of Paternoster Row." 
 
 For medicine Peter Pindar had even less respect 
 than Garth had. He used to say "that he did not 
 like the practice of it as an art. He was entirely ig- 
 norant, indeed, whether the patient was cured by 
 the vis medicatrix natures, or the administration of a 
 little pill, which was either directly or indirectly to 
 reach the part affected." And for the practitioners 
 of the art held in such low esteem, he cherished a 
 contempt that he would at times display with true 
 Pindaric warmth. In his two-act farce, "Physic 
 and Delusion; or Jezebel and the Doctors," the dia- 
 logue is carried on in the following strain : — 
 
 "Blister.— By God, old prig! 
 Another word, and by my wig 
 
 "Bolus. — Thv wig? Great accoucheur, well said, 
 
 'Tis of more value than thy head ; 
 
 And 'mongst thy customers — poor ninnies ! 
 
 Has helped thee much to bag thy guineas." 
 
 Amongst Peter Pindar's good services to the world 
 
 was the protection he afforded to Opie (or Oppy, as 
 
 4-28
 
 434 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 • 
 
 it was at one time less euphoniously spelt and pro- 
 nounced) the artist, when he was a poor country 
 clown, rising at three o'clock in the summer morn- 
 ings, to pursue his art ^^ath rude pieces of chalk and 
 charcoal. Wolcot presented the boy with his first 
 pencils, colours, and canvas, and put him in the 
 way to paint portraits for the magnificent remuner- 
 ation of half-a-guinea, and subsequently a guinea 
 a-head. And it was to the same judicious friend that 
 Opie, on leaving the provinces, owed his first success 
 in London. 
 
 Wolcot used to tell some droll stories about his 
 artist friend. Opie's indiscreet manner was a source 
 of continual trouble to those who endeavoured to 
 serve him; for, priding himself on being "a rough 
 diamond," he took every pains that no one should 
 fail to see the roughness. A lady sitter was anxious 
 that her portrait should be "very handsome," and 
 frankly told the painter so. ''Then, madam," was 
 the reply, "you wish to be painted otherwise than 
 you are. I see you do not want your own face." 
 iNot less impudent was he at the close of his first year 
 in London, in taking out writs against several sitters 
 who were rather tardy in their payments. 
 
 Opie was not the only artist of celebrity deeply in- 
 debted to Peter Pindar. Bone, the painter in enamel, 
 found an efficient friend in the same discerning lover 
 of the arts. In this respect AVolcot was worthy of 
 the profession which he deserted, and affected to de- 
 spise; and his name will ever be honourably men- 
 tioned amongst those physicians who have fostered 
 art, from the days of picture-loving Mead, down to 
 those of the writer's very kind friend, Dr. Diamond,
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 435 
 
 who gathered from remote quarters "The Diamond 
 Collection of Portraits," which may be seen amongst 
 the art treasures of Oxford. 
 
 One of the worthies of Di*. Diamond's family was 
 Robertus Fludd, or De Fluctibus, the writer of Ros- 
 icrucian celebrity who gave Sterne more than one 
 lesson in the arts of eccentricity. Sir Thomas Fludd 
 of Milgate, Bearsted, co. Kent (grandson of David 
 Fludd, alias Lloyd of Morton, in Shropshire), had 
 five sons and a daughter. Of this offspring, one son, 
 Thomas, purchased Gore Court, and fixed there a 
 family, the vicissitudes of which may be learnt by a 
 reference to Hasted 's Kent. From this branch of 
 the Fludds descended Dr. Diamond, who, amongst 
 other curious family relics, possesses the diploma of 
 Robertus de Fluctibus. 
 
 When Robertus de Fluctibus died, Sept. 8, 1637, 
 in Coleman St., London, his body, under the protec- 
 tion of a herald of arms, was conveyed to the family 
 seat in Kent, and was then buried in Bearsted 
 Church, under a stone which he had before laid for 
 himself. The monument over his ashes was ordered 
 by him in his last will to be made after that of Wil- 
 liam Camden in the Abbey at Westminster. The in- 
 scription which marks his resting-place declares his, 
 rather than our, estimate of his intellectual greats 
 ness; 
 
 Magnificus non hxc sub odoribus urna vaporat, 
 
 Crypta tegit cineres nee speciosa tuos. 
 
 Quod mortale minus, tibi te committimus unum; 
 
 Ingenii vivent hie monumenta tui 
 
 Nam tibi qui similis scribit, moriturque, sepulchrum 
 
 Pro tota aeternum posteritate facit. 
 
 More modest, and at the same time more humorous.
 
 436 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 is the epitaph, in Ilendon Church, of poor Thomas 
 Crossfield, whose name, alike as surgeon and politi- 
 cian, has passed from among men :— 
 
 "Underneath Tom Crossfield lies, 
 Who cares not now who laughs or cries. 
 He always laughed, and when mellow 
 Was a harum scarum sort of fellow. 
 To none gave designed offence, 
 So — Honi soil qui mat y pensc." 
 
 Amongst the medical poets there is one whom all 
 scholarly physicians jealously claim as of their body 
 —John Keats; he who, dying at Rome, at the age of 
 twenty-si.x, wished his epitaph to be, "Here lies one 
 whose name was writ in water." After serving his 
 apprenticeship under an Edmonton surgeon, the 
 author of "Endyinion" became a medical student at 
 St. Thomas's hospital. 
 
 Mention here, too, may be made of Dr. Macnish, the 
 author of "The Anatomy of Drunkenness," and 
 "The JModern Pythagorean"; and of Dr. Moir, the 
 poet, whose death, a few years since, robbed the 
 world of a simple and pathetic writer, and his per- 
 sonal acquaintance of a noble-hearted friend. 
 
 But of all modern English poets who have had an 
 intimate personal connection with the medical pro- 
 fession, the greatest by far is Crabbe— 
 
 "Nature's sternest painter, yet the best." 
 In 1754 George Crabbe was born in the old sea- 
 faring town of Aldborough, in the county of Suffolk. 
 His father, the collector of salt-duties, or salt-master 
 of the town, was a churlish sullen fellow at the best 
 of times ; but, falling upon adversity in his old days, 
 he became the heau-ideal of a domestic tjTant. He 
 was not, however, without his respectable points.
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTOES. 437 
 
 Though a poor man, he did his best to educate his 
 children above the ranks of the very poor. One of 
 them became a thriving glazier in his native town; 
 another went to sea, and became captain of a Liver- 
 pool slave-ship ; and a third, also a sailor, met with 
 strange vicissitudes— at one time enjoying a very 
 considerable amount of prosperity, and then suffering 
 penury and persecution. A studious and a delicate 
 lad, George, the eldest of the party, was designed 
 for some pursuit more adapted to his disposition and 
 physical powers than the avocations of working me- 
 chanics, or the hard duties of the marine service. 
 "When quite a child, he had, amongst the inhabitants 
 of Aldborough, a reputation for mental superiority 
 that often did him good service. On one occasion he 
 chanced to offend a playmate— his senior and "mas- 
 ter," as boys and savages term it— and was on the 
 point of receiving a good thrashing nigh the roaring 
 waves of old ocean, when a third boy, a common ac- 
 quaintance, exclaimed in a voice of affright:— 
 
 "Tar marn't middle a' him; lit him aloone— he ha' 
 got I'arning." 
 
 The plea was admitted as a good one, and the fu- 
 ture bard, taking his benefit of clergy, escaped the 
 profanation of a drubbing. 
 
 George was sent to two respectable schools, the onfe 
 at Bungay, in Suffolk, and the other (the better of 
 the two) at Stowmarket, in the same county. The 
 expense of such an education, even if it amounted 
 to no more than £20 per annum, was no small under- 
 taking for the salt-master of a fishing-village; for 
 Aldborough— now a handsome and much frequented 
 provincial watering-place— was in 1750 nothing bet-
 
 438 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 ter than a collection of huts, whose humble inhabi- 
 tants possessed little stake in the commonweal beyond 
 the right of sendiflg to parliament two members to 
 represent their interests and opinions. On leaving 
 school, in his fourteenth year, George was appren- 
 ticed to a country doctor of a very rough sort, who 
 plied his trade at Wickham Brook, a small village 
 near Bury St. Edmunds. It is a fact worthy of note, 
 as throwing some light on the state of the profession 
 in the provinces, that the apprentice shared the bed 
 of his master's stable-boy. At AVickham Brook, how- 
 ever, the lad did not remain long to endure such in- 
 dignity. He was removed from that scene of trial, 
 and placed under the tutelage of Mr. Page, a surgeon 
 of Woodbridge, a gentleman of good connections and 
 polite tastes, and through the marriage of his daugh- 
 ter with the late famous ^Vlderman Wood, an ances- 
 tor of a learned judge, who is not more eminent as 
 a lawyer than beloved as a man. 
 
 It was during his apprenticeship to Mr. Page of 
 Woodbridge that Crabbe made his first important 
 efforts in poetry, publishing, in the year 1772, some 
 fugitive pieces in Whehle's Magazine, and in 1775 
 "Inebriety, a poem, in three parts. Ipswich: printed 
 and sold by C. Punchard, bookseller, in the Butter- 
 market." While at Woodbridge, too, his friend Lev- 
 ett, a young surgeon of the neighborhood, took him 
 over to Framlingham, introducing him to the fam- 
 ilies of that picturesque old town. William Springall 
 Levett was at that time engaged to Alethea Brereton, 
 a lady who, under the 7iom de plume of "Eugenia 
 Acton," wrote certain novels that created a sensation 
 in their brief day. Amongst them were ' ' Vicissitudes
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTOES. 439 
 
 of Genteel Life," "The Microcosm," and "A Tale 
 without a Title. ' ' The love-making of Mr. Levett and 
 Miss Eugenia de Acton was put a stop to by the 
 death of the former, in 1774. The f ollo^ving epitaph, 
 transcribed from the History of Framlingham, the 
 work of the able antiquarian, Mr. Richard Green, is 
 interesting as one of Crabbe's earlier compositions. 
 
 "What ! though no trophies peer above his dust, 
 Nor sculptured conquests deck his sober bust; 
 What ! tfiough no earthly thunders sound his name. 
 Death eives him conquest, and our sorrows fame ! 
 One sigh reflection heaves, but shuns e.xcess, 
 More should we mourn him, did we love him less." 
 
 Subsequently Miss Brereton married a gentleman 
 named Le^\^s, engaged in extensive agricultural oper- 
 ations. However brief her literary reputation may 
 have been, her pen did her good service; for, at a 
 critical period of her husband's career, it brought 
 her sums of much-needed money. 
 
 Mr. Levett 's romance closed prematurely together 
 with his life, but through him Crabbe first became 
 acquainted %\dth the lovely girl whom he loved 
 through years of trial, and eventually made his wife. 
 Sarah Elmy was the niece of John Tovell, yeoman, 
 not gentleman— YiQ would have scorned the title. Not 
 that the worthy man was wTithout pride of divers 
 kinds, or that he did not hold himself to be a gentle- 
 man. He believed in the Tovells as being one of the 
 most distinguished families of the country. A Tov- 
 ell, by mere right of being a Tovell, could thrash 
 more Frenchmen than any Englishman, not a Tovell, 
 could. WTien the good man said, "I am nothing 
 more than a plain yeoman, ' ' he never intended or ex- 
 pected any one to believe him, or to regard his words
 
 440 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 in any other light than as a playful protest against 
 being deemed "a plain yeoman," or that modem hy- 
 brid, ' ' a gentleman farmer. ' ' 
 
 He was a well-made, handsome, pleasant fellow- 
 riding a good horse with the hounds— loving good 
 cheer— enjoying laughter, without being very par- 
 ticular as to the cause of it— a little too much ad- 
 dicted to carousing, but withal an agreeable and use- 
 ful citizen ; and he lived at Parham Lodge, a house 
 that a peer inhabited after him, without making any 
 important alterations in the place. 
 
 On Crabbe's first introduction to Parham Lodge 
 he was received with cordiality; but when it was seen 
 that he had fallen in love with the squire's niece, it 
 was only natural that "his presumption" should not 
 at first meet the approval either of Mrs. Tovell or her 
 husband. But the young people plighted troth to 
 each other, and the engagement was recognized by 
 the lady's family. It was years, however, before the 
 wedding bells were set ringing. Crabbe's appren- 
 ticeship to Mr. Page finished, he tried ineffectually to 
 raise the funds for a regular course of hospital in- 
 struction in London. Returning to Aldborough, he 
 furnished a shop with a few bottles and a pound's 
 worth of drugs, and set up as "an apothecary." Of 
 course it was only amongst the poor of his native 
 town that he obtained patients, the wealthier inhab- 
 itants of the borough distrusting the knowledge of a 
 doctor who had not walked the hospitals. In the 
 summer of 1778, however, he was appointed surgeon 
 to the Warwickshire militia, then stationed at Ald- 
 borough, and in the following winter, on the War- 
 wickshire militia being moved and replaced by the
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 441 
 
 Norfolk militia, he was appointed surgeon to the lat- 
 ter regiment also. But these posts were only tem- 
 porary, and conferred but little emolument on their 
 holder. At length poverty drove the poet from his 
 native town. The rest of his career is matter of no- 
 toriety. Every reader knows how the young man 
 went to London and only escaped the death of Otway 
 or Chatterton by the generous patronage of Burke, 
 how through Burke's assistance he was ordained, be- 
 came the Duke of Rutland's chaplain, obtained com- 
 fortable church preferment, and for a long span en- 
 joyed an amount of domestic happiness that was as 
 great and richly deserved as his literary reputation. 
 Crabbe's marriage with Sarah Elmy eventually 
 conferred on him and his children the possession of 
 Parham Lodge, which estate, a few years since, passed 
 from them into the hands of wealthy purchasers. 
 The poet also succeeded to other wealth through the 
 same connection, an old-maid sister of John Tovell 
 leaving him a considerable sum of money. "I can 
 screw Crabbe up and down like an old fiddle," this 
 amiable lady was fond of saying; and during her 
 life she proved that her boast was no empty one. 
 But her will was a handsome apology for all her lit- 
 tle tiffs.
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 NUMBER ELEVEN— A HOSPITAL STOET. 
 
 "Then, sir," said Mrs. Mallet, "if you'll only not 
 look so frightened, I'll tell you how it was. It is now 
 twenty years ago that I was very unfortunate. I 
 was not more than thirty years of age, but I was old 
 enough to have just lost a good husband and a dear 
 little babe; and then, when I hadn't a sixpence in 
 my pocket, I caught the fever, and had to go to a 
 hospital. I wasn't used to trouble; for although I 
 was nothing better than a poor man's child, I had 
 known all my life nothing but kindness. I never 
 had but one mistress,— my lady, who when she was 
 the most beautiful young lady in all Devonshire, took 
 me out of a village school, and raised me to be her 
 maid; and her maid I was for twelve years— first 
 down in Devonshire, and afterwards up in London, 
 when she married (somewhat against the will of her 
 family) a thorough good gentleman, but a poor one, 
 who after a time took her out to India, where he be- 
 came a judge, and she a grand lady. My dear mis- 
 tress would have taken me out to India with her, only 
 she was then too poor to pay for my passage out, and
 
 • A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 443 
 
 bear the expense of me there, where labour can be 
 got so cheap, and native servants can live on a hand- 
 ful of rice a day. She, sir, is Lady Burridge— the 
 same who gave me the money to start in this house 
 v/ith, and whose carriage you saw yesterday at my 
 door. 
 
 "So my mistress went eastward, and I was left 
 behind to marry a young man I had loved for some 
 few years, and who had served during that time as 
 clerk to my lady's husband. I was a young woman, 
 and young women, to the end of the chapter, will 
 think it a brave thing to fall in love. I thought my 
 sweetheart was a handsomer and cleverer man than 
 any other of his station in all London. I wonder 
 how many girls have thought the same of their fa- 
 vourites ! I went to church one morning with a flut- 
 tering heart and trembling knees, and came out un- 
 der the porch thinking that all my life would ever 
 afterwards be brighter, and lighter, and sunnier than 
 it had been before. "Well ! in dancing into that pretty 
 blunder, I wasn't a bigger fool than lots of others. 
 
 "And if a good husband is a great blessing (and 
 she must be a paltry woman who can say nay to that), 
 I was born to luck; for my husband was kind, good, 
 and true— his temper was as sweet at home as his 
 manners were abroad— he was hard-working and 
 clever, sober and devout; and— though you may 
 laugh at a woman of my age talking so like a romance 
 —I tell you, sir, that if my life had to come all over 
 again, I'd rather have the mischance of marrying 
 my dear Richard, that the good fortune of wedding a 
 luckier man. 
 ' ' There 's no doubt the game turned out ill for me.
 
 444 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 At first it seemed as if it would be just otherwise, for 
 my husband had good health, plenty of work, and 
 sufficient pay. so that, when my little girl came, her 
 sweet face brought no shadow of anxiety with it, and 
 we hoped she would be followed in due course by 
 half-a-dozen more. But ere the dear babe had learned 
 to prattle, a drear change came over the happy pros- 
 pect. The fever crept over the gentle darling, and 
 after she had suffered for a week or more, lying on 
 my arms, God raised her from me into his happy 
 home, where the beauty of summer reigns for ever, 
 and the coldness of winter never enters. Richard 
 and I took the body of our babe to the burial-ground, 
 and saw it covered up in the earth which by turns 
 gives all we get, and takes away from us all we have ; 
 and as we walked back to our deserted home, arm- 
 in-arm, in the light of the summer's evening, we 
 talked to each other more solemnly and tenderly than 
 we had done for many a day. And the next morning 
 he went back to his work in the office, from which he 
 had absented himself since our child's death; and I 
 encouraged him to cheer up, and not to give way to 
 sorrow when I was not nigh to comfort him, but toil 
 bravely and hopefully, as a man should ; and in so 
 advising him, I do not blush to say that I thought 
 not only of what was best for his spirits, but also 
 of what our necessity required — for we were only 
 poor people, not at any time beforehand in the world, 
 and now reduced by the cost of our little one's illness 
 and funeral ; and, sir, in this hard world we women, 
 most times, have the best of it, for when the house 
 is full of sorrow, we have little else to do but weep, 
 but the men have to grieve and toil too.
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 445 
 
 "But poor Richard could not hold up his head. 
 He came back from work that day pale and faint, 
 and in the evening he had a chill and a heat-fit, that 
 let me know the fever which had killed our little one 
 had passed into him. The next day he could not 
 leave his bed, and the doctor (a most kind man, who 
 was always making rough jokes in a rough voice- 
 just to hide his womanliness) said to me, 'If your 
 husband goes down to his master's chambers in the 
 Temple to-day, he had better stop at the coffin-mak- 
 er's, in the corner of Chancery Lane, and leave his 
 measure. ' But Richard 's case was not one for a jest, 
 and he rapidly became worse than the doctor fancied 
 he would be when he made that light speech. He 
 was ill for six weeks, and then began slowly to mend ; 
 he got on so far as to sit up for two days for half- 
 an-hour while he had his tea, and we were hoping 
 that soon he would be able to be moved into the coun- 
 try—to my sister's, whose husband was an engineer 
 at Stratford ; but, suddenly, he had a relapse, and on 
 the morning that finished the tenth week from his 
 being seized, his arms let go their hold on my neck — 
 and I was left alone ! 
 
 "All during my babe's and Richard's long illness 
 my sister Martha had behaved like a true sister to 
 me. She was my only sist«r, and, to the best of my 
 knowledge, the only relation I had in the world- and 
 a good one she was; from girl to woman her heart 
 always rung out clear like a bell. She had three 
 young children, but even fear of contagion reaching 
 them could not keep her from me in my trouble. She 
 kept making the journey backwards and forwards, 
 at least once a week, in the carrier's cart; and,
 
 446 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 though she had no money to spare, she brought me, 
 with her husband's blessing, presents of wine, and 
 jellies, and delicate meat, to buy which, I knew right 
 well, she and her husband and her children must 
 have pinched themselves down to scanty rations of 
 bread and water. Her hands helped mine to put the 
 flowers in poor Richard 's cofSn ; she bore me up while 
 I followed it, pale and trembling, to the grave; and 
 when that horrible day was coming to an end, and 
 she was about to return home, she took me into her 
 arms, and covering me with kisses and caressings, 
 and a thousand gentle sayings, as if I had been a 
 child of her own, instead of her sister and a grown 
 woman, she made me promise to come down to her 
 at Stratford at the end of the week, and stay with 
 her till God should give me strength and spirits and 
 guidance, to work for myself again. 
 
 "But that promise was not kept. Next morning 
 the rough-tender doctor came in, out of his mere 
 goodness, to give me a friendly look, and a 'God 
 speed you,' and found me, too, sickening for an ill- 
 ness. I knew, sir, he had made the discovery before 
 his lips confessed a word ; for when he had taken my 
 wrist and felt my pulse, and looked up into my worn 
 face, he turned pale, as if almost frightened, and 
 such a look of grief came on his eyes and lips that 
 he could not have said plainer, 'My poor woman! my 
 poor woman ! what I feared from the beginning, and 
 praj'ed God not to permit, has come to pass at last.' 
 
 ' ' Then I fairly broke down and cried bitterly ; and 
 I told the doctor how sore afflicted I was— how God 
 had taken my husband and babe from me— how all 
 my little means had been consumed in the expenses
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 447 
 
 of nursing— how the little furniture in my rooms 
 would not pay half what I owed to honest folk— and 
 how, even in my unspeakable wretchedness, I could 
 not ask the Almighty to take away my life, for I 
 could not rest in death if I left the world without 
 paying my just debts. Well, sir, the doctor sate down 
 by me, and said, in his softest and simplest way :— 
 
 " 'Come, come, neighbour, don't you frighten 
 yourself. Be calm, and listen to me. Don't let the 
 thought of debts worry you. What little I have done 
 in the way of business for your poor child and hus- 
 band I never wish to be paid for— so there's your 
 greatest creditor disposed of. As for the others, 
 they won't trouble you, for I'll undertake to see that 
 none of them shall think that you have wronged 'em. 
 I wish I could do more, neighbor; but I ain't a rich 
 man, and I have got a wife and a regiment of little 
 ones at home, who wcn't help, in the long run, to 
 make me richer— although I am sure they'll make 
 me happier. But now for yourself; you must go to 
 the fever-hospital, to have your illness out; the phy- 
 sician who'll take care of you there is the cleverest 
 in all London; and, as he is an old friend of mine, 
 I can ask him to pay especial attention to you. You'll 
 find it a pleasant, cheerful place, much more cool and 
 comfortable than your rooms here ; the nurses are all 
 of them good people; and while lying on your bed 
 there you won't have to fret yourself with thinking 
 how you are to pay for the doctors, and medicine, 
 and kitchen physic' 
 
 "I was only too thankful to assent to all the doc- 
 tor said; and forthwith he fetched a coach, put me 
 into it, and took me off to the fever-hospital, to which
 
 448 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 his influence procured me instant admittance. With- 
 out delay I was conveyed to a large and comfortable 
 bed, which, with another similar bed parallel to it, 
 was placed against the wall at the end of a long gal- 
 lery, containing twenty other beds. The first day of 
 my hospital life I spent tranquilly enough; the lan- 
 guor of extreme exhaustion had soothed me, and my 
 malady had not robbed me of my senses. So I lay 
 calmly on my couch and watched all the proceedings 
 and arrangements of the great bed-room. I noticed 
 how clean and white all the beds looked, and what 
 kindly women the nurses were; I lemarked what a 
 wide space there was down the middle of the room 
 between the two rows of beds, and again what large 
 intervals there were between the beds on each side; 
 I observed, too, that over every bed there was a ven- 
 tilator set in the wall, and beneath the ventilator a 
 board, on which was pinned a paper, bearing, in a 
 fiUed-up printed form, the number of the bed to 
 which it belonged, the date when the occupant was 
 admitted to the ward, the names of the physician 
 and nurse under whose charge she was, the medicine 
 she was taking, and the diet on which she was put. 
 It made me smile, moreover, to note how the nurses, 
 when giving physic or nourishment, or otherwise at- 
 tending to their charges, would frequently address 
 them by the numbers on their boards, instead of their 
 names. 
 
 " 'Nurse, dear,' I asked, with a smile, when my 
 attendant came near me, ' what 's my name ? ' 
 
 " 'Oh, dear!' said she, looking up at the board 
 which had already been fixed over my head, 'your 
 name is Number Eleven, '
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 449 
 
 "It would be hard for me to give you, sir, any no- 
 tion of how these words, Number Eleven, took pos- 
 session of my mind. This was the more strange, be- 
 cause the nurse did not usually call me by them ; for 
 she was a motherly creature, and almost always ad- 
 dressed me as 'poor dear,' or 'poor child'; and the 
 doctors who had the charge of me spoke to me as 
 'friend,' or 'old friend,' or 'neighbor.' But all the 
 same for that, I always thought of myself as Num- 
 ber Eleven ; and ere many days, if any one had asked 
 me what my name was, I could not for the life of 
 me have remembered Abigail Mallet, but should have 
 answered Number Eleven. The patient in the next 
 bed to me was Number Twenty-two; she was, like 
 myself, a poor woman who had just lost a husband 
 and child by the fever, and both of us were much 
 struck, and then drawn to each other, by discover- 
 ing how we had suffered alike. We often inter- 
 changed a few words during the sorrowful hours of 
 the long, hot nights, but our whisperings always 
 turned on the same subject. 'Number Eleven,' I 
 used to hear her poor thin lips murmur, 'are you 
 thinking of your baby, dear ? ' ' To be sure, darling, ' 
 I would answer; 'I am awake, and when I am awake, 
 I am always thinking of her.' Then most times she 
 would inquire, 'Number Eleven, dear, which do you 
 think of most— the little one or her father?' Where- 
 to I would reply, 'I think of both alike, dear, for 
 whenever I look at her, a fair young angel in heaven 
 —she seems to be lying in her father's arms.' And 
 after we had conversed so. No. 22 would be qiiiet for 
 a few minutes ; and often, in the silence of the night, 
 I could at such times hear that which informed me 
 
 4—29
 
 450 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 the poor woman was weeping to herself— in such a 
 way that she was happier for her tears. 
 
 "But my malady progressed unfavourably. Each 
 succeeding night was worse to endure ; and the morn- 
 ing light, instead of bringing refreshment and hope, 
 only gave to me a dull, gloomy consciousness that I 
 had passed hours in delirium, and that I was weaker 
 and heavier in heart, and more unlikely than ever to 
 hold my head up again. They cut all the hair off my 
 head, and put blisters at the back of my nock; but 
 the awful weight of sorrow and the gnawing heat 
 kept on my brain all the same. I could no longer 
 amuse myself with looking at what went on in the 
 ward ; I lost all care for the poor woman who lay in 
 the next bed ; and soon I tossed to and fro, and 
 heeded nothing of the outer world except the burn- 
 ing, and aching, and thirst, and sleeplessness that 
 encased me. 
 
 "One morning I opened my eyes and saw the doc- 
 tor standing between me and No. 22, talking to the 
 nurse. A fit of clearness passed over my under- 
 standing, such as people suffering under fever often 
 experience for a few seconds, and I heard the phy- 
 sician say softly to the nurses, 'We must be careful 
 and do our best, sister, and leave the rest to God. 
 They are both very ill; this is now the fourth day 
 since either of them recognized me. They must have 
 more wine and brandy to help them through. Here, 
 give me their boards.' On this, the nurse took down 
 the boards, and handed them, one after the other, to 
 the physician, and he, taking a pen from a clerk, 
 who always attended him, wrote his directions on the 
 papers, and handed them back to the nurse. Having
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTOBS. 451 
 
 heard and seen all this, I shifted in my bed, and after 
 a few weak efforts to ponder on my terrible condi- 
 tion, and how awful a thing it is to die, I fell back 
 into my former state of delirium and half-eonscious- 
 ness. 
 
 "The next distinct memory I have of my illness 
 was when I opened my eyes and beheld a wooden 
 screen standing between me and the next bed. My 
 head felt as if it had been put into a closely fitting 
 cap of ice; but apart from this strange sensation, I 
 was free from pain. My body was easy, and my 
 mind was tranquil. My nurse was standing at the 
 foot of my bed, looking towards me with an expres- 
 sion of solemn tenderness; and by her side was an- 
 other woman— as I afterwards found out, a new 
 nurse, unaccustomed to the ways of the hospital. 
 
 ' ' ' What is that screen there for ? ' asked the novice. 
 
 "My nurse lowered her voice, and answered slow- 
 ly, 'Number Eleven, poor soul, is dying; she'll be 
 dead in half an hour; and the screen is there so that 
 Number Twenty-Two mayn't see her.' 
 
 " 'Poor soul !' said the novice, 'may God have mercy 
 upon her ! ' 
 
 "They spoke scarcely above a whisper, but I heard 
 them distinctly; and a solemn gladness, such as I 
 used to feel, when I was a young girl, at the sound 
 of church music, came over me at learning that I 
 was to die. Only half an hour, and I should be with 
 baby and Richard in heaven! Mixed with this 
 thought, too, there was a pleasant memory of those 
 I had loved and who had loved me— of sister Martha 
 and her husband and children, of the doctor who 
 had been so good to me and brought me to the hos-
 
 452 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 pital, of my lady in India, of many others; and I 
 silently prayed the Almighty with my dying heart 
 to protect and bless them. Then passed through me 
 a fluttering of strange, soft fancies, and it was re- 
 vealed to me that I was dead. 
 
 "By-and-by the physician came his round of the 
 ward, stepping lightly, pausing at each bed, speaking 
 softly to nurses and patients, and, without knowing 
 it, making many a poor woman entertain kinder 
 thoughts than she had ever meant to cherish of the 
 wealthy and gentle. When he came to the end of 
 the ward, his handsome face wore a pitiful air, and 
 it was more by the movement of his lips than by the 
 sound of his mouth that I knew what passed from 
 him to the nurse. 
 
 " 'Well, sister, well,' he said, 'she sleeps quietly at 
 last. Poor thing! I hope and believe the next life 
 will be a fairer one for her than this has been.' 
 
 " 'Her sister has been written to,' observed the 
 nurse. 
 
 " 'Quite right; and how is the other?' 
 
 " 'Oh, No. 22 is just the same— quite still, not mov- 
 ing at all, scarcely breathing, sir!' 
 
 " 'Um!— you must persevere. Possibly she'll pull 
 through. Good-bye, sister.' 
 
 ' ' Late in the evening my sister Martha came. She 
 was dressed in black, and led with her hand Rhoda, 
 her eldest daughter. Poor Martha was very pale, 
 and worn, and ill; when she approached the bed on 
 which I lay, she seemed as if she would faint, and she 
 trembled so painfully that my kind nurse led her 
 behind the screen, so that she might recover herself 
 out of my sight. After a few seconds— say two min-
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 453 
 
 utes — she stood again at the foot of my bed— calmer, 
 but with tears in her eyes, and such a mournful love- 
 liness in her sweet face as I had never seen before. 
 
 " 'I shouldn't have known her, nurse,' she said, 
 gazing at me for a short space and then withdrawing 
 her eyes— 'she is so much altered.' 
 
 " 'Ah, dear!' answered the nurse, 'sickness alters 
 people much— and death more.' 
 
 " 'I know it, nurse— I know it. An^ she looks 
 very calm and blissful— her face is so full of rest- 
 so full of rest ! ' 
 
 "The nurse fetched some seats, and made Martha 
 and Rhoda sit down side by side; and then the good 
 woman stood by them, ready to afford them all com- 
 fort in her power. 
 
 " 'How did she bear her illness ?' inquired Martha. 
 
 " 'Like an angel, dear,' answered the nurse. 'She 
 had a sweet, grateful, loving temper. Whatever I 
 did for her, even though my duty compelled me to 
 give her pain, she was never fretful, but always con- 
 cealed her anguish and said, ' ' Thank you, dear, thank 
 you, you are very good; God will reward you for 
 all your goodness"; and as the end came nigher I 
 often fancied that she had reasonable and happy 
 moments, for she would fold her hands together, and 
 say scraps of prayers which children are taught.' 
 
 " 'Nurse,' replied my sister after a pause, 'she and 
 I were the only children of our father, and we were 
 left orphans very young. She was two years older 
 than I, and she always thought for me and did for 
 me as if she had been my mother. I could fill whole 
 hours with telling j'ou all the goodness and forbear- 
 ance and love she displayed to me, from the time I
 
 454 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 was little or no bigger than my child here. I was 
 often wayward and peevish, and gave her many hours 
 of trouble, but though at times she could be hot to 
 others she never spoke an unkind word to me. There 
 was no sacrifice that she would not have made for me ; 
 but all the return I ever made was to worry her with 
 my evil jealous temper. I was continually imagining 
 unchristian things against her: that she slighted me; 
 that, because she had a mistress who made much of 
 her, she didn't care for me; that she didn't think 
 my children fit to be proud of. And I couldn't keep 
 all these foolish thoughts in my head to myself, but 
 I must needs go and speak them out to her, and ir- 
 ritate her to quarrel with me. But she always re- 
 turned smooth words to my angry ones, and I had 
 never a fit of my unjust temper but she charmed me 
 out of it, and showed me my error in such a way that 
 I was reproved, without too much humiliation, and 
 loved her more than ever. Oh! dear friend, dear 
 good nurse, if you have a sister, don't treat her, as 
 1 did Abigail, with suspicion and wicked passion ; for 
 should you, all the light speeches of your froward- 
 ness will return to you, and lie heavy on your heart 
 when hers shall beat no more.' 
 
 "When Martha had said this she cried very bit- 
 terly; and as I lay dead on my bed, and listened to 
 her unfair self-reproaches, I longed to break the icy 
 bonds that held me, and yearned to clasp her to my 
 breast. Still, though I could neither move nor utter 
 a sound, it thriUed me with gladness to see how she 
 loved me. 
 
 " 'Mother,' said little Rhoda, softly, 'don't cry. 
 We shan't be long away from Aunt and her baby,
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 455 
 
 for when this life is done we shall go to them. You 
 know, mother, you told me so last night.' 
 
 "It was not permitted to me to hear any more. A 
 colder chill came over my brain— and, wrapt in un- 
 consciousness and deep stillness, I lay upon my bed. 
 
 "My next recollection is of beholding the gray 
 dawn stream in through the half-opened windows, 
 and of wondering, amid vague reminiscences of my 
 previous sensations, how it was that a dead person 
 could take notice of the world it moved in when alive. 
 It is not enough to say that my experience of the last 
 repose was pleasant to me ; I was rejoiced and greatly 
 delighted by it. Death, it seemed then, was no state 
 of cold decay for men to shudder at with affright- 
 but a condition of tranquility and mental comfort. 
 I continued to muse on this remarkable discovery 
 for an hour and more, when my favourite nurse re- 
 appeared to relieve the woman who had taken the 
 night-watch, and approached me. 
 
 " 'Ah!' she surprised me by saying, as a smile of 
 congratulation lighted her face, 'then you are alive 
 this morning, dear, and have your handsome eyes 
 wide open.' 
 
 "This in my opinion was a singularly strange and 
 inappropriate address ; but I made no attempt to re- 
 spond to it, for I knew that I was dead, and that the 
 dead do not speak. 
 
 " 'Why, dear heart,' resumed the nurse, kneeling 
 by my side and kissing me, 'can't you find your 
 tongue? I know by your eyes that you know me; 
 the glassy stare has left them. Come, do say a word, 
 and say you are better.' 
 
 "Then a suspicion flashed across my brain, and
 
 456 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 raising my right lir.nd slightly, I pointed to the bed 
 of No. 22, and asked, 'How is .she?— how is she?' 
 
 " 'Don't frighten yourself, dear,' answered the 
 nurse, 'she isa'L there. She has been moved. She 
 doesn't have that bed r.ny longer!' 
 
 " 'Then it is she who is dead, nurse; and all the 
 rest was a dream? It is she who is dead?' 
 
 " 'Hush, hush, dear! sl.e has gone to rest—' 
 
 "Yes! it was all clear to me. Not I but my un- 
 fortunate companion had died ; and in my delirious 
 fancy I had regarded the friends who came to see 
 her, and convey her to the grave, as my sister Mar- 
 tha and her little daughter Rhoda. I did not im- 
 part to the nurse the delusion of which I had been 
 the victim; for, as is often the case with the sick, I 
 ■was sensitive with regard to the extreme mental sick- 
 ness into which I had fallen, and the vagaries of my 
 reason. So I kept my secret to the best of my pow- 
 er; and having recognised how much better I was, 
 how the fever had quitted my veins and the weight 
 had left my head, I thanked God in my heart for all 
 his mercies, and once more cherished a hope that he 
 might see fit to restore me to health. 
 
 "My recovery was rapid. At the end of a fort- 
 night I was moved into the convalescents' ward, and 
 wa8 fed up with wine and meat in abundance. I had 
 every reason to be thankful for all the kindness be- 
 stowed on me in the hospital, and all the good effect 
 God permitted that kindness to have. But one thing 
 troubled me very much and cut me to' the quick. Ever 
 since I had been in the hospital my sister had neither 
 been to see me, nor sent to inquire after me. It was 
 no very diiScult business to account for her neglect
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 457 
 
 of me. She had her good qualities (even in the height 
 of my anger I could not deny that), but she was of 
 a very proud high temper. She could sacrifice any- 
 thing but her pride for love of me. I had gone into 
 an hospital, had received public charity, and she hadn't 
 courage to acknowledge a sister who had sunk so low 
 as that ! But if she was proud so was I ; I could 
 be as high and haughty as she ; and, what was more, 
 I would show her that I could be 50 ! What, to leave 
 her own sister — her only sister — who had worked 
 for her when she was little, and who had loved 
 her as her own heart ! I would resent it ! Perhaps 
 fortune might yet have a turn to make in my favour ; 
 and if so I would in my prosperity remember how 
 I had been treated in my adversity. I am filled with 
 shame now, when I think on the revengeful imagi- 
 nations which followed each other through my breast, 
 I am thankful that when my animosity was at its 
 height my sister did not present herself before me ; 
 for had she done so, I fear that, without waiting for 
 an explanation from her, I should have spoken hasty 
 words that (however much I might have afterwards 
 repented them, and she forgiven them) would have 
 rendered it impossible for us to be again the same as 
 we were before. I never mentioned to any one — 
 nurse or patient — in the convalescent ward, the secret 
 of my clouded brows, or let out that I had a friend 
 in the world to think of me or to neglect me. Hour 
 after hour I listened to women and girls and young 
 children, talking of home pleasures and longing to be 
 quite well, and dismissed from the confinement of 
 the hospital, and anticipating the pleasure which 
 their husbands, or mothers, or sisters, or children.
 
 458 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 would express at welcoming them again ; but I never 
 gave a word of such gossip; I only hearkened, and 
 compared their hopes with my desolation, morosely 
 and vindictively. Before I was declared perfectly 
 restored I got very tired of my imprisonment; in- 
 deed the whole time I was in the convalescent ward 
 my life was wearisome, and without any of the pleas- 
 ures which the first days of my sickness had had. 
 There was only one inmate of the ward to which I 
 was at first admitted, as yet, amongst the con- 
 valescents; none of them knew me, unless it was by 
 my number— a new one now, for on changing my 
 ward I had changed my number also. The nurses I 
 didn't like so well as my first kind attendant; and 
 I couldn't feel charitably, or in any way as a Christ- 
 ian ought to feel, to the poor people by whom I was 
 surrounded. 
 
 "At length the day came for my discharge. The 
 matron inquired of me where I was going; but I 
 would not tell her; I would not acknowledge that I 
 had a sister— partly out of mere perverseness, and 
 partly out of an angry sense of honour; for I was a 
 country-bred woman, and attached to the thought of 
 'going into a hospital' a certain idea of shame and 
 degradation, such as country people attach to 'going 
 on the parish', and I was too proud to let folk know 
 that my sister had a sister in an hospital, when she 
 clearly flinched from having as much said of her. 
 
 "Well, finding I was not in a communicative hu- 
 mour, the matron asked no more questions; but, giv- 
 ing me a bundle containing a few articles of wearing 
 apparel, and a small donation of money, bade me 
 farewell; and ^\^thout saying half as much in the
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 459 
 
 way of gratitude as I ought to have said, I walked 
 out from the hospital garden into the wide streets of 
 London. I did not go straight to my old lodgings, 
 or to the house of the doctor who had been so kind 
 to me ; but I directed my steps to an inn in Holborn, 
 and took a place in the stage-cart for Stratford. As 
 I rode slowly to my sister's town I thought within 
 myself how I should treat her. Somehow my heart 
 had softened a great deal towards her during the 
 few last days; a good spirit within me had set me 
 thinking of how she had helped me to nurse my hus- 
 band and baby— how she had accompanied me when 
 I followed them to their graves— how she and her 
 husband had sacrificed themselves so much to assist 
 me in my trial ; and the recollection of these kind- 
 nesses and proofs of sisterly love, I am thankful to 
 know, made me judge Martha much less harshly. 
 Tes ! yes ! I would forgive her ! She had never of- 
 fended me before! She had not wronged me seven 
 times, or seventy times seven, but only once I After 
 all, how much she had done for me ! Who was I, that 
 I should forget all that she had done, and judge her 
 only by what she had left undone ? 
 
 ' ' The stage-cart reached Stratford as the afternoon 
 began to close into evening ; and when I alighted from 
 it, I started off at a brisk pace, and walked to my sis- 
 ter's cottage that stood on the outskirts of the town. 
 Strange to say, as I got nearer and nearer to her 
 door my angry feelings became fainter and fainter, 
 and all my loving memories of her strong affection for 
 me worked so in me that my knees trembled beneath 
 me, and my eyes were blinded with tears— though, 
 if I had trusted my deceitful, wicked, malicious
 
 460 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 tongue to speak, I should still have declared she was a 
 bad, heartless, worthless, sister. 
 
 "I reached the threshold, and paused on the step 
 before it, just to get my breath and to collect as 
 much courage and presence of mind as would let 
 Martha know that, though I forgave her, I still was 
 fully aware she might have acted more nobly. When 
 I knocked, after a few seconds, little Rhoda's steps 
 pattered down the passage, and opened the door. 
 Why, the child was in black ! ^Miat did that mean ? 
 Had anything happened to Martha or her husband, 
 or little Tommy ? But before I could put the question 
 Rhoda turned deadly white, and ran back into the 
 living-room. In another instant I heard Tommy 
 screaming at the top of his voice; and in a trice I 
 was in the room, with Martha's arms flung round 
 my neck, and her dear blessed eyes covering me with 
 tears. 
 
 "She was very ill in appearance; white and hag- 
 gard, and, like Rhoda and Tommy, she too was dressed 
 in black. For some minutes she could not speak a 
 word for sobbing hysterically; but when at last I had 
 quieted her and kissed Rhoda, and cossetted Tommy 
 till he had left off screaming, I learnt that the mourn- 
 ing Martha and her children wore was in my hon- 
 our. Sure enough Martha had received a notice from 
 the hospital of my death; and she and Rhoda had 
 not only presented themselves at the hospital, and 
 seen there a dead body which they believed to be 
 mine, but they had also, with considerable expense, 
 and much more loving care, had it interred in the 
 Stratford churchyard, under the impression that in 
 so doing they were offering me the last respect which
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 461 
 
 it would be in their power to render me. The worst 
 of it was that poor Martha had pined and sorrowed so 
 for me that she seemed likely to fall into some severe 
 illness. 
 
 ' ' On inquiry it appeared that the morning when I 
 and No. 22 were so much worse, and the doctor altered 
 the directions of our boards, the nurse by mistake 
 put the No. 22 board over my bed, and my board (No. 
 11) over the bed of the poor woman who had died. 
 The consequence was that, when the hospital clerk 
 was informed that No. 11 had died, he wrote to the 
 doctor who placed me in the hospital, informing him 
 of my death, and the doctor communicated the sad in- 
 telligence to my sister. 
 
 "The rest of the story you can fill up, sir, for your- 
 self, and without my assistance you can imagine how 
 it was that, while in a state of extreme exhaustion, 
 and deeming myself dead, I heard my sister, in a 
 strong agony of sorrow and self-reproach, say to my 
 nurse, 'Oh, dear friend— dear good nurse— if you 
 have a sister, don't treat her, as I did Abigail, with 
 suspicion and wicked passion ; for should you, all the 
 light speeches of j'our frowardness will return to you, 
 and lie heavy on your heart when hers shall beat no
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 MEDICAL BUILDINGS. 
 
 The medical buildings of London are seldom or 
 never visited by the sight-seers of the metropolis. 
 Though the science and art of nursing have recently 
 been made sources of amusement to the patrons of 
 circulating libraries, the good sense and delicacy of 
 the age are against converting the wards of an hos- 
 pital into galleries for public amusement. In the last 
 century the reverse was the case. Fashionable idlers 
 were not indeed anxious to pry into the mysteries of 
 Bartholomew's, Guy's, and St. Thomas's hospitals; 
 for a visit to those magnificent institutions was as- 
 sociated in their minds with a risk of catching fevers 
 or the disfiguring small-pox. But Bethlehem, de- 
 voted to the entertainment and cure of the insane, 
 was a favourite haunt with all classes. "Pepys," 
 "The London Spy," "The Tatler," and "The Rake's 
 Progress," give us vivid pictures of a noisy rout of 
 Pall Mall beaus and belles, country fly-catchers, and 
 London scamps, passing up and down the corridors 
 of the great asylum, mocking its unhappy inmates 
 with brutal jests, or investigating and gossiping about
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 463 
 
 their delusions and extravagances with unfeeling cu- 
 riosity. Samuel Johnson enlivened himself with an 
 occasional stroll amongst the lunatics, just as he pe- 
 riodically indulged himself with witnessing a hang- 
 ing, a judicial flogging, or any other of the pleasant 
 spectacles with which Hogarth's London abounded. 
 Boswell and he once strolled through the mansions 
 of the insane; and on another occasion, when he vis- 
 ited the same abode with Murphy, Foote, and Wed- 
 derburne (afterwards Lord Loughborough), the phi- 
 losopher's "attention was arrested by a man who 
 was very furious, and who, while beating his straw, 
 supposed it was William, Duke of Cumberland, whom 
 he was punishing for his cruelties in Scotland in 
 1746." Steele, when he took three schoolboys (imag- 
 ine the glee of Sir Richard's schoolboy friends out 
 ■with him for a frolic) in a hackney coach to show 
 them the town, paid his respects to "the lions, the 
 tombs. Bedlam, and the other places, which are en- 
 tertainments to raw minds because they strike forci- 
 bly on the fancy." In the same way Pepys "stept 
 into Bedlam, and saw several poor miserable crea- 
 tures in chains, one of whom was tnad with making 
 verses," a form of mental aberration not uncommon 
 in these days, though we do not deem it necessary 
 to consign the victims of it to medical guardian- 
 ship. 
 
 The original Bethlehem hospital was established 
 by Henry VIII., in a religious house that had been 
 founded in 1246, by Simon Fitz-Mary, Sheriff of 
 London, as an ecclesiastical body. The house was sit- 
 uated at Charing-cross, and very soon the king began 
 to find it (when used for the reception of lunatics)
 
 464 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 disagreeably near liis own residence. The asyliua was 
 therefore removed, at a "cost nigh £17,000," to 
 Bishopgate Without, where it remained till 1814, and 
 the inmates were removed to the present noble hos- 
 pital in St. George's Fields, the first stone of which 
 was laid April 18tJi, 1812. 
 
 One of the regulations of old Bedlam has long since 
 been disused. The harmless lunatics were allowed 
 to roam about the country with a tin badge— the star 
 of St. Bethlehem — on the right arm. Tenderness 
 towards those to whom the Almighty has denied rea<- 
 son is a sentiment not confined to the East. Wherever 
 these poor creatures went they received alms and 
 kindly entreatment. The ensign on the right arm 
 announced to the world their lamentable eonditiou 
 and their need of help, and the appeal was always 
 mercifully responded to. Aubrey thus describes their 
 appearance and condition:— 
 
 '■'Till the breaking out of the Civil Wars Tom o' 
 Bedlams did travel about the country. They had 
 been poor distracted men, but had been put into Bed- 
 lam, where recovering some soberness, they were li- 
 centiated to go a-begging, i. e. they had on their left 
 arm an armilla of tin, about four inches long; they 
 could not get it off. They wore aboui their necks 
 a great horn of an ox in a string of baudry, which, 
 when they came to an house for alms, they did wind, 
 and they did put the drink given them into this horn, 
 whereto they did put the stopple. Since the wars 
 I do not remember to have seen any one of them." 
 
 The custom, however, continued long after the ter- 
 mination of the Civil War. It is not now the humane 
 practice to label our fools, so that society may at once
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 465 
 
 recognise them and entertain them with kindness. 
 They still go at large in our public ways. Facilities 
 are even given them for effecting an entrance into 
 the learned professions. Frequently they are docket- 
 ed with titles of respect, and decked with the robes 
 of office. But however gratifying this plan may be 
 to their personal vanity it is not unattended with 
 cruelty. Having about them no external mark of 
 their sad condition, they are often, through careless- 
 ness and misapprehension— not through hardness of 
 heart— chastised with undue severity. "Poor Tom, 
 thy horn is dry," says Edgar, in "Lear." Never 
 may the horn of mercy be dry to such poor wretches ! 
 
 It is needless to say that Easter holiday-makers 
 are no longer permitted in swanns, on the payment 
 of two-pence each, to race through the St. Bethlehem 
 galleries, insulting with their ribaldry the most pitia- 
 ble of God's afflicted creatures. A useful lesson, how- 
 ever, is taught to the few strangers who still, as mere- 
 ly curious observers, obtain admission for a few min- 
 utes within the walls of the asylum— a lesson con- 
 veyed, not by the sufferings of the patients, so much 
 as by the gentle discipline, the numerous means of 
 innocent amusement, and the air of quiet content- 
 ment, which are the characteristics of a well-managed 
 hospital for the insane. 
 
 Not less instructive would it be for many who now 
 know of them only through begging circulars and 
 charity dinners, to inspect the well- ventilated, cleanly 
 —and it may be added, c/ieer/'ul— dwellings of the 
 impoverished sick of London. The principal hospit- 
 als of the capital, those, namely, to which medical 
 schools are attached, are eleven in number— St, 
 
 4— so
 
 466 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 George's, the London (at Mile End), University Col- 
 lege, King's, St. Mary's, Westminster, Middlesex, 
 and Charing-cross, are for the most part dependent 
 on voluntary contributions for support, the West- 
 minster Hospital (instituted 1719) being the first 
 hospital established in this kingdom on the voluntary 
 system. The three other hospitals of the eleven have 
 large endowments, Bartholomew's and Guy's being 
 amongst the wealthiest benevolent foundations of the 
 country. 
 
 Like Bethlehem, St. Thomas's Hospital was origi- 
 nally a religious house. At the dissolution of the mon- 
 asteries it was purchased by the citizens of London, 
 and, in the year 1552, was opened as an hospital for 
 the sick. At the commencement of the last century 
 it was rebuilt by public subscription, three wards 
 being erected at the cost 6f Thomas Frederick, and 
 three by Guy, the founder of Guy's Hospital. 
 
 The first place of precedency amongst the London 
 Hospitals is contended for by St. Bartholomew's and 
 Guy's. They are both alike important by their 
 wealth, the number of patients entertained within 
 their walls, and the celebrity of the surgeons and phy- 
 sicians with whom their schools have enriched the 
 medical profession ; but the former, in respect of an- 
 tiquity, has superior claims to respect. Headers re- 
 quire no introduction to the founder of Bartholo- 
 mew's, for only lately Dr. Doran, in his "Court 
 Pools," gave a sketch of Rahere— the minstrel and 
 jester, who spent his prime in the follies and vices 
 of courts, and his riper years in the sacred offices 
 of the religious vocation. He began life a buffoon, 
 and ended it a prior— presiding over the establish-
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 467 
 
 ment to the creation of which he devoted the wealth 
 earned by his abused wit. The monk chronicler says 
 of him: "When he attained the flower of youth he 
 began to haunt the households of noblemen and the 
 palaces of princes ; where, under every elbow of them, 
 he spread their cushions with apeings and flatter- 
 ings, delectably anointing their eyes— by this manner 
 to draw to him their friendships. And yet he was 
 not content with this, but often haunted the king's 
 palace; and, among the press of that tumultuous 
 court, enforced himself with jollity and carnal suav- 
 ity, by the which he might draw to him the hearts 
 of many one." But the gay adventurer found that 
 the ways of mirth were far from those of true glad- 
 ness; and, forsaking quips, and jeers, and wanton 
 ditties for deeds of mercy, and prayer, and songs of 
 praise, he long was an ensample unto men of holy 
 living; and "after the years of his prelacy (twenty- 
 two years and six months), the 20th day of Sep- 
 tember (a. d. 1143), the clay-house of this world for- 
 sook, and the house everlasting entered." 
 
 In the church of St. Bartholomew may still be seen 
 the tomb of Dr. Francis Anthony, who, in spite of 
 the prosecutions of the College of Physicians, en- 
 joyed a large practice, and lived in pomp in Bar- 
 tholomew Close, where he died in 1623. The merits 
 of his celebrated nostrum, the aurum potabile, to 
 which Boyle gave a reluctant and qualified approval, 
 are alluded to in the inscription commemorating his 
 services: — 
 
 "There needs no verse to beautify thy praise, 
 Or keep in memory thy spotless name. 
 Religion, virtue, and thy skill did raise 
 A three-fold pillar to thy lasting fame.
 
 468 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 Though poisonous envy ever sought to blame 
 
 Or hide the fruits of thy intention, 
 Yet shall all they commend that high design 
 Of purest gold to make a medicine. 
 
 That feel thy help by that thy rare inventioa" 
 
 Boyle's testimony to the good results of the aurum 
 potabile is interesting, as his philosophic mind formed 
 a decided opinion on the efficacy of the preparation 
 by observing its operation in two cases— persons of 
 great note. "Though," he says, "I have long been 
 prejudiced against the aurum potabile, and other 
 boasted preparations of gold, for most of which I 
 have no great esteem, yet I saw such extraordinary 
 and surprising effects from the tincture of gold I 
 spake of (prepared by two foreign physicians) upon 
 persons of great note, mth whom I was particularly 
 acquainted, both before they fell sick and after their 
 dangerous recovery, that I could not but change my 
 opinion for a very favourable one as to some prepara- 
 tions of gold." 
 
 Attached to his priory of St. Bartholomew 's, Rahere 
 founded an hospital for the relief of poor and sick 
 persons, out of which has grown the present insti- 
 tution, over the principal gateway of which stands, 
 burly and with legs apart— like a big butcher watch- 
 ing his meat-stall— an effigy of Henry VIII. Another 
 of the art treasures of the hospital is the staircase 
 painted by Hogarth. 
 
 If an hospital could speak it could tell strange tales 
 — of misery slowly wrought, ambition foiled, and fair 
 promise ending in shame. Many a toilworn veteran 
 has entered the wards of St. Bartholomew's to die 
 in the very couch by the side of which in his youth he 
 daily passed— a careless student, joyous with the
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 469 
 
 spring of life, and little thinking of the storm and 
 unkind winds rising up behind the smiles of the near- 
 er future. Scholars of gentle birth, brave soldiers 
 of proud lineage, patient women whose girlhood, spent 
 in luxury and refinement, has been followed by 
 penury, evil entreatment, and destitution, find their 
 way to our hospitals— to pass from a world of grief 
 to one where sorrow is not. It is not once in awhile, 
 but daily, that a physician of any large charitable 
 institution of London reads a pathetic tale of strug- 
 gle and defeat, of honest effort and bitter failure, 
 of slow descent from grade to grade of misfortune— 
 in the tranquil dignity, the mild enduring quiet, and 
 noiseless gratitude of poor sufferers— gentle once in 
 fortune, gentle still in nature. One hears unpleasant 
 stories of medical students, their gross dissipations 
 and coarse manners. Possibly these stories have their 
 foundation in fact, but at best thej' are broad and 
 unjust caricatures. This writer in his youth lived 
 much amongst the students of our hospitals, as he did 
 also amongst those of our old universities, and he 
 found them simple and manly in their lives, zealous 
 in the pursuit of knowledge, animated by a profes- 
 sional esprit of the best sort, earnestly believing in 
 the dignity of their calling, and characterised by a 
 singular ever-lively compassion for all classes of the 
 desolate and distressed. And this quality of mercv, 
 which unquestionably adorns in an eminent degree 
 the youth of our medical schools, he has always re- 
 garded as a happy consequence of their education, 
 making them acquainted, in the most practical and 
 affecting manner, with the sad vicissitudes of human 
 existence.
 
 470 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 Guy's hospital was the benevolent work of a Lon- 
 don bookseller, who, by perseverance, economy, and 
 lucky speculation, amassed a very large fortune. 
 Thomas Guy began life with a stock of about £200, 
 as a stationery and bookseller in a little corner house 
 between Cornhill and Lombard-st., taking out his 
 freedom of the Stationers' Company in 1668. He was 
 a thrifty tradesman, but he won his wealth rather 
 by stock-jobbing than by the sale of books, although 
 he made important sums by his contract with the Uni- 
 versity of Oxford for their privilege of printing bi- 
 bles. Maitland informs us, "England being engaged 
 in an expensive war against Prance, the poor seamen 
 on board the royal navy, for many years, instead of 
 money received tickets for their pay, which those ne- 
 cessitous but very useful men were obliged to dispose 
 of at thirty, forty, and sometimes fifty in the hun- 
 dred discount. Mr. Guy, discovering the sweets of this 
 traffick, became an early dealer therein, as well as in 
 other government securities, by which, and his trade, 
 he acquired a very great estate." In the South-sea 
 stock he was not less lucky. He bought largely at the 
 outset, held on till the bubble reached its full size, 
 and ere the final burst sold out. It may be ques- 
 tioned whether Guy's or Rahere's money was earned 
 the more honourably, — whether to fawn, flatter, and 
 jest at the table of princes was a meaner course of ex- 
 ertion than to drive a usurious trade with poor sail- 
 ors, and fatten on a stupendous national calamity. 
 But however basely it may have been gathered to- 
 gether, Guy's wealth was well expended, in alleviat- 
 ing the miseries of the same classes from whose suf- 
 ferings it had been principally extracted. In his old
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 471 
 
 age Guy set about building his hospital, and ere his 
 death, in 1724, saw it completed. On its erection 
 and endowment he expended £238,292 16s. 5d. To 
 his honour it must be stated that, notwithstanding 
 this expenditure and his munificent contributions to 
 other charities, he had a considerable residue of 
 property, which he distributed amongst his poor re- 
 lations. 
 
 Of the collegiate medical buildings of London, the 
 one that belongs to the humblest department of the 
 profession is the oldest, and for that reason— apart 
 from its contents, which are comparatively of little 
 value— the most interesting. Apothecaries' Hall, in 
 Water Lane, Blackfriars, was built in 1670. Possibly 
 the size and imposing aspect of their college stimu- 
 lated the drug-vendors to new encroachments on the 
 prescriptive and enacted rights of the physicians. 
 The rancour of "The Dispensary" passes over the 
 merits (graces it has none) of the structure, and des- 
 ignates it by mentioning its locality — 
 
 "Nigh where Fleet Ditch descends in sable streams, 
 To wash his sooty Naiads in the Thames, 
 There stands a structure on a rising hill, 
 Where tyros take their freedom out to kill." 
 
 Amongst the art-treasures of the hall are a portrait 
 of James I. (who first established the apothecaries 
 as a company distinct from the grocers), and a bust 
 of Delaune, the lucky apothecary of that monarch's 
 queen, who has already been mentioned in these 
 pages. 
 
 The elegant college of the physicians, in Pall Mall 
 east, was not taken int« use till the 25th of June, 1825, 
 the doctors migrating to it from Warwick Hall, which 
 is now in the occupation of the butchers of Newgate
 
 472 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 Market. Had the predecessors of the present tenants 
 been "the surgeons," instead of "the physicians," 
 the change of masters would have given occasion for 
 a joke. As it is, not even the consolation of a jest can 
 be extracted from the desecration of an abode of 
 learning that has many claims on our affection. 
 
 In "The Dispensary," the proximity of the col- 
 lege dome to the Old Bailey is playfully pointed 
 at:— 
 
 "Not far from that most celebrated place, 
 Where angry justice shows her awful face, 
 Where little villains must submit to fate. 
 That great ones may enjoy the world in state, 
 There stands a dome, majestic to the sight, 
 And sumptuous arches bear its oval height; 
 A golden globe, placed high with artful skill. 
 Seems, to the distant sight, a gilded pill : 
 This pile was, by the pious patron's aim. 
 Raised for a use as noble as its frame. 
 Nor did the learn'd society decline 
 The propagation of that great design ; 
 In all her mazes. Nature's face they view'd. 
 And, as she disappear'd, their search pursued. 
 Wrapt in the shade of night, the goddess lies. 
 Yet to the learn'd unveils her dark disguise, 
 But shuns the gross access of vulgar eyes." 
 
 The Warwick Lane college was erected on the col- 
 lege at Amen Corner (to which the physicians re- 
 moved on quitting their original abode in Knight- 
 Rider Street), being burnt to the ground in the great 
 fire of 1666. Charles II. and Sir John Cutler were 
 ambitious of having their names associated with the 
 new edifice, the chief fault of which was that, like 
 all the other restorations following the memorable 
 conflagration, it was raised near the old site. Charles 
 became its pious patron, and Sir John Cutler its 
 munificent benefactor. The physicians duly thanked 
 them, and honoured them with statues. Cutler's efiigy
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 473 
 
 having inscribed beneath it, ' ' Oninis Cutleri cedat la- 
 bor Amphitheatre." 
 
 So far, so good. The fun of the affair remains to 
 be told. On Sir John's death, his executors, Lord 
 Radnor and Mr. Boulter, demanded of the college 
 £7000, which covered in amount a sum the college 
 had borrowed of their deceased benefactor, and also 
 the sum he pretended to have given. Eventually the 
 executors lowered their claim to £2000 (which, it is 
 reasonable to presume, had been lent by Sir John), 
 and discontinued their demand for the £5000 given. 
 Such being the stuff of which Sir John was made, well 
 might Pope exclaim: — 
 
 "His Grace's fate sage Cutler could foresee, 
 And well (he thought) advised him, 'Live like me.' 
 As well his Grace replied, 'Like you. Sir John? 
 That I can do when all I have is gone.' " 
 
 In consideration of the £5000 retained of the nig- 
 gard's money, the physicians allowed his statue to 
 remain, but they erased the inscription from beneath 
 it. 
 
 The Royal College of Surgeons m London was 
 not incorporated till the year 1800— more than half 
 a century after the final disruption of the surgeons 
 from the barbers— and the college in Lincoln's Inn 
 Fields was not erected till 1835. Its noble museum, 
 based on the Hunterian Collection, which the nation 
 purchased for £15,000, contains, amongst its treas- 
 ures, a few preparations that are valuable for their 
 historical associations or sheer eccentricity, rather 
 tlian for any worth from a strictly scientific point 
 of view. Amongst them are Martin Van Buchell's 
 first wife, whose embalmment by William Hunter has 
 already been mentioned ; the intestines of Napoleon,
 
 474 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 showing the progress of the disease which was even- 
 tually fatal to him; and the fore-arms (preserved in 
 spirits) of Thomas Beaufort, third son of John of 
 Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster. 
 
 The writer had recently submitted to his notice, 
 by Dr. Diamond of Twickenham, a very interesting 
 and beautifully penned manuscript, relating to these 
 remains, of which the following is a copy:— 
 
 "Bury St Edmunds. 
 "Joseph Pater scripsit, when thirteen years of age. 
 
 "On the 20th of February, 1772, some labourers, 
 employed in breaking up part of the old abbey 
 church, discovered a leaden coffin, which contained 
 an embalmed body, as perfect and entire as at the 
 time of its death; the features and lineaments of the 
 face were perfect, which were covered with a mask of 
 emblaming materials. The very colour of the eyes 
 distinguishable; the hairs of the head a brown, in- 
 termixed with some few gray ones; the nails fast 
 upon the fingers and toes as when living; stature 
 of the body about six feet tall, and genteelly form- 
 ed. The labourers, for the sake of the lead (which 
 they sold to Mr Faye, a plummer, in this town, for 
 about 15s), stript the body of its coffin, and threw it 
 promiscuously amongst the rubbish. From the place 
 of its interment it was soon found to be the remains 
 of Thomas Beaufort, third son of John de Gaunt, 
 Duke of Lancaster, by his third duchess. Lady Cath- 
 erine Swineford, relict of Sir Otho de Swineford, 
 of Lincolnshire. He took the name of Beaufort from 
 the place of his birth, a castle of the duke's, in 
 France. He was half-brother to King Henry IV., 
 created Duke of Exeter and Knight of the Garter;
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 475 
 
 in 1410, Lord Chancellor of England ; in 1412, High 
 Admiral of England, and Captain of Calais; he com- 
 manded the Rear-Guard of his nephew King Henry 
 the Fifth's army at the battle of Agincourt, on the 
 25th of October, 1415 ; and in 1422, upon the death of 
 King Henry the Fifth, was jointly with his brother, 
 Henry, Cardinal Bishop of Winchester, appointed by 
 the Parliament to the government, care, and education 
 of the royal infant, Henry the Sixth. He married 
 Margaret, daughter of Sir Thomas Nevil, by whom he 
 had issue only one son, who died young. He was a 
 great benefactor to this church, died at East Green- 
 wich, 1427, in the 5th year of King Henry ye Sixth, 
 and was interred in this Abbey, near his duchess (as 
 he had by his will directed), at the entrance of the 
 Chapel of our Lady, close to the wall. On the 24th of 
 February following, the mangled remains were en- 
 closed in an oak coffin, and buried about eight feet 
 deep, close to the north side of the north-east pillar, 
 which formerly assisted to support the Abbey bel- 
 fry. Before its re-interment, the body was mangled 
 and cut with the most savage barbarity by Thomas 
 Gery Cullum, a young surgeon in this town, lately 
 appointed Bath King-at-Arms. The skull sawed in 
 pieces, where the brain appeared it seemed somewhat 
 ■wasted, but perfectly contained in its proper mem- 
 branes; the body ript open from the neck to the bot- 
 tom, the cheek cut through by a saw entering at the 
 mouth; his arms chopped off below the elbows and 
 taken away. One of the r.rms the said Cullum con- 
 fesses to have in spirits. The crucifix, supposed to be 
 a very valuable one, is missing. It is believed the 
 body of the duchess was found (within about a foot
 
 476 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 of the Duke's) on the 24th of February. If she was 
 buried in lead she was most likely conveyed away 
 clandestinely the same night. In this church several 
 more of the antient royal blood were interred, whose 
 remains are daily expected to share the same fate. 
 Every sensible and humane mind reflects with horror 
 at the shocking and wanton inhumanity with which 
 the princely remains of the grandson of the victorious 
 King Edward the Third have been treated— worse 
 than the body of a common malefactor, and 345 years 
 after his death. The truth of this paragraph having 
 been artfully suppressed, or very falsely represented 
 in the county newspapers, and the conveyance of pub- 
 lic intelligence rendered doubtful, no method could 
 be taken to convey a true account to the public but by 
 this mode of offering it." 
 
 The young surgeon whose conduct is here so warm- 
 ly censured was the younger son of a Suffolk baronet. 
 On the death of his brother he succeeded to the family 
 estate and honours, and having no longer any necessi- 
 ty to exert himself to earn money, relinquished med- 
 ical practice. He was born in 1741 and died in 1831. 
 It is from him that the present baronet, of Hawstead 
 Place and Hardwicke House, in the county of Suffolk, 
 is descended. 
 
 The fore-arms, now in the custody of the College of 
 Surgeons, were for a time separated. One of them 
 was retained by Mr. Cullum, and the other, becom- 
 ing the property of some mute inglorious Barnum, 
 was taken about to all the fairs and wakes of the coun- 
 ty, and exhibited as a raree-show at a penny a peep. 
 The vagrant member, however, came back after a
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 477 
 
 while to Mr. Cullum, and he presented both of the mu- 
 tilated pertions to their present possessors.
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 THE COUNTRY MEDICAL MAN. 
 
 The country doctor, such as we know him— a well- 
 read and observant man, skilful in his art, with a lib- 
 eral love of science, and in every respect a gentleman 
 —is so recent a creation, that he may almost be 
 spoken of as a production of the present century. 
 There still linger in the provinces veteran represent- 
 atives of the ignorance which, in the middle of the 
 last century, was the prevailing characteristic of the 
 rural apothecary. Even as late as 1816, the law re- 
 quired no medical education in a practitioner of the 
 healing art in country districts, beyond an appren- 
 ticeship to an empiric, who frequently had not iu- 
 formation of any kind, beyond the rudest elements 
 of a druggist's learning, to impart to his pupils. 
 Men who commenced business under this system are 
 still to be found in every English county, though in 
 most cases they endeavour to conceal their lack of 
 scientific culture under German or Scotch diplomas- 
 bought for a few pounds. 
 
 Scattered over these pages are many anecdotes of 
 provincial doctors in the sixteenth and seventeenth
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 479 
 
 centuries, from which a truthful but not complimen- 
 tary picture of their order may be obtained. Indeed, 
 they were for the most part vulgar drunken knaves, 
 with just learning enough to impose on the foolish 
 crowds who resorted to them. The most brilliant of 
 the fraternity in Henry the Eighth's reign was An- 
 drew Borde, a Winchester practitioner. This gentle- 
 man was author and buffoon, as well as physician. 
 He travelled about the country from market to fair, 
 and from fair to market, making comic orations to 
 the crowds who purchased his nostrums, singing songs, 
 and enlivening the proceedings when they were be- 
 coming dull with grimaces of inexpressible drollery. 
 It was said of Sir John Hill, 
 
 "For physic and farces 
 
 His equal there scarce is; 
 His farces are physic. 
 His physic a farce is." 
 
 Borde 's physic doubtless was a farce; but if his 
 wit resembled physic, it did so, not (like Hill's) by 
 making men sick, but by rousing their spirits and 
 bracing their nerves with good hearty laughter. Eve- 
 rywhere he was known as "Merry Andrew," and his 
 followers, when they mounted the bank, were proud 
 to receive the same title. 
 
 Mr. H. Fleetwood Sheppard communicated in the 
 year 1855, some amusing anecdotes to "Notes and 
 Queries" about the popular Dorsetshire doctor— little 
 Dr. Grey. Small but warlike, this gentleman, in the 
 reign of James the First, had a following of well- 
 born roisterers that enabled him to beard the High 
 Sheriff at the assizes. He was always in debt, but 
 as he always carried a brandy-flask and a brace of 
 loaded pistols in his pocket or about his neck, he neith-
 
 480 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 er experienced the mental harass of impecuniosity 
 nor feared bailififs. In the hour of peril he blew a 
 horn, which he wore suspended to his person, and the 
 gentlemen of his body-guard rallied round him, vow- 
 ing they were his "sons," and would die for him. 
 Says the MS.— "This Doctor Grey was once arreste 
 by a pedler, who coming to his house knocked at ye 
 dore as yey (he being desirous of Hobedyes) useth 
 to doe, and ye pedler having gartars upon his armes, 
 and points, &c., asked him whether he did wante any 
 points or gartars, &c., pedler like. Grey hereat be- 
 gan to storme, and ye other tooke him by ye arme, and 
 told him that he had no neede be so angry, and 
 holdinge him fast, told him y he had ye kinge's proces 
 for him, and showed him his warrant. 'Hast thou?' 
 quoth Grey, and stoode stil awhile; but at length, 
 catchinge ye fellowe by both ends of his collar before, 
 held him fast, and drawinge out a great rundagger, 
 brake his head in two or three places." 
 
 Again, Dr. Grey "came one day at ye assizes, wheare 
 ye sheriffe had some sixty men, and he wth his twen- 
 ty sonnes, ye trustyest young gentlemen and of ye best 
 sort and rancke, came and drancke in Dorchester be- 
 fore ye sheriffe, and bad who dare to touch him; and 
 so after awhile blew his horn and came away." On 
 the same terms who would not like to be a Dorsetshire 
 physician? 
 
 In 1569 {vide "Roberts' History of the Southern 
 Counties") Lyme had no medical practitioner. And 
 at the beginning of the seventeenth century Sir Sy- 
 monds D 'Ewes was brought into the world at Coxden 
 Hall, near Axminster, by a female practitioner, who 
 deformed him for life by her clumsiness. Yet more,
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 481 
 
 Mrs. D'Ewes set out with her infant for London, when 
 the babe, unable to bear the jolting of the carriage, 
 screamed itself into a violent illness, and had to 
 be left behind at Dorchester under the care of another 
 doctress — Mrs. Margaret Waltham. And two genera- 
 tions later, in 1665, the Rev. Giles Moore, of Essex, 
 had to send twenty-five miles for an ordinary medical 
 man, who was paid 12s. per visit, and the same dis- 
 tance for a physician, whose fee was £1— a second 
 physician, who came and stayed two days, being paid 
 £1 10s. 
 
 Of the country doctors of the middle and close of 
 the last century, Dr. Slop is a fair specimen. They 
 were a rude, vulgar, keen-witted set of men, possess- 
 ing much the same sort of intelligence, and disfigured 
 by the same kind of ignorance, as a country gentleman 
 expects now to find in his farrier. They had to do 
 battle with the village nurses at the best on equal 
 terms, often at a disadvantage ; masculine dignity and 
 superior medical erudition being in many districts 
 of less account than the force of old usage, and the 
 sense of decorum that supported the lady practition- 
 ers. Mrs. Shandy had an express provision in her 
 marriage settlement, securing her from the ignorance 
 of country doctors. Of course, in respect to learn- 
 ing and personal acquirements, the rural practition- 
 ers, as a class, varied very much, in accordance with 
 the intelligence and culture of the district in which 
 their days were spent, with the class and character 
 of their patients, and with their own connections and 
 original social condition. On his Yorkshire living 
 Sterne came in contact \rith a rought lot. The "Whit- 
 worili Taylors were captains and leaders of the army
 
 482 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 in which Dr. Slop was a private. The original of 
 the last-mentioned woi'thy was so ill-read that he 
 mistook Lithopivdii Senonensis Icon for the name 
 of a distinguished surgical authority, and, under this 
 erroneous impression, quoted Lithopaedus Senonensis 
 with the extreme of gravity. 
 
 This Lithopa'dus Senonensis story is not without 
 its companions. A prescription, in which a physi- 
 cian ordered extract, rad valer., and immediately 
 under it, as an ingredient in the same mixture, a 
 certain quantity of tinctura cjusdem, sorely per- 
 plexed the poor apothecary to who it was sent to be 
 dispensed. Tinctura ejusdem! AVhat could it be? 
 Ejusdeni! In the whole pharmacopcEia such a drug 
 was not named. Nothing like it was to be found on 
 any label in his shop. At his wits' end, the poor fel- 
 low went out to a professional neighbour, and asked, 
 in an off-hand way, "How are you off for Tinctura 
 Ejusdem? I am out of it. So can you let me have 
 a little of yours." The neighbour, who was a suf- 
 ficiently good classical scholar to have idem, eadem, 
 idem at his tongue's end, lamented that he too was 
 "out of the article," and sympathizingly advised his 
 confrere, without loss of time, to apply for some at 
 Apothecaries' Hall. What a delightful blunder to 
 make to a friend, of all the people in the world ! The 
 apothecary must have been a dull as well as an un- 
 lettered fellow, or he would have known the first great 
 rule of his art — "When in doubt— I7se water!" A 
 more awkward mistake still was that made by the 
 young dispenser, who, for the first time in his life, 
 saw at the end of a prescription the words pro re 
 nata. What could they mean? pro re natal What
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 483 
 
 could pro re natd have to do wnth a mixture sent to 
 a lady who had just presented her husband with an 
 heir. With the aid of a Latin Dictionary, the novice 
 rendered pro re natd "for the thing born." Of 
 course. Clearly the mixture was for the baby. And 
 in c. trice the compound to be taken by an adult, as 
 circumstances should indicate a necessity for a dose, 
 was sent off for the "little stranger." 
 
 May not mention here be made of thee, ancient 
 friend of childhood, Roland Trevor ? The whole coun- 
 try round, for a circle of which the diameter meas- 
 ured thirty fair miles, thou wert one of the most pop- 
 ular doctors of East Anglia. Who rode better horses ? 
 Who was the bolder in the hunt, or more joyous 
 over the bottle? Cheery of voice, with hearty laugh- 
 ter rolling from purple lips, what company thou wert 
 to festive squires ! The grave some score years since 
 closed over thee, when ninety-six years had passed 
 over thy head— covering it with silver tresses, and 
 robbing the eye of its pristine fire, and the lip of its 
 mirthful curl. The shop of a country apothecary 
 had been thy only Alma Mater; so, surely, it was no 
 fault of thine if thy learning was scanty. Still, in 
 the pleasant vales of Loes and Wilford is told the 
 story of how, on being asked if thou wert a believer in 
 phrenology, thou didst answer with becoming gravity, 
 "I never keep it, and I never use it. But I think it 
 highly probable that, given frequently and in liberal 
 doses, it would be very useful in certain cases of ir- 
 regular gout." 
 
 Another memory arises of a country doctor of the 
 old school. A huge, burly, surly, churlish old fellow 
 was Dr. Standish. He died in extremely advanced
 
 484 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTOKS. 
 
 age, having lived twenty-five years in the present 
 century. A ferocious radical, he was an object of con- 
 siderable public interest during the period of political 
 excitement consequent on the French Revolution. 
 Tom Paine, the Thetford breeches-maker of whom the 
 world has heard a little, was his familiar friend 
 and correspondent. It was rumoured throughout the 
 land that "govei'nment" had marked the doctor out 
 for destruction. 
 
 "Thar sai," tlie humbler Suffolk farmers used to 
 gossip amongst themselves, "thar sai a pieter-taikin 
 chap hav guv his poortright to the King. And Billy 
 Pitt ha 'sin it. And oold King Georgic lia' swaren as 
 how that sooner nor later he'll hav his hid" {i. e. 
 head). 
 
 The "upper ten" of Holmnook, and the upper ten- 
 times-ten of the distance round about Plolmnook, 
 held themselves aloof from such a dangerous charac- 
 ter. But the common folk believed in and admired 
 him. There was somethin<T of romance about a man 
 whom George III. and Billy Pitt were banded together 
 to destroy. 
 
 Standish was a man of few words. "Down with 
 the bishops!" "Up with the people!" were his stock 
 sentiments. He never approached nearer poetry than 
 when (yellow being then the colour of the extreme 
 liberal party in his district) he swore "there worn't 
 a flower in the who' o' crashun warth lookin' at but 
 a sunflower, for that was yallow, and a big un. ' ' 
 
 The man had no friends in Holmnook or the neigh- 
 bourhood ; but every evening for fifty years he sate, 
 in the parlour of the chief inn, drinking brandy-and- 
 water, and smoking a "churchwarden." His wife—
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 485 
 
 (his wooing must have been of a queer sort) —a quiet, 
 inoflfensive little body, sometimes forgot she was but 
 a woman, and presumed to have an opinion of her 
 own. On such occasions Standish thrashed her 
 soundly with a dog-whip. In consequence of one of 
 these castigations she ran away from her tyrant. 
 Instead of pursuing her. Dr. Standish merely in- 
 serted the following advertisement in the county pa- 
 per:— 
 
 "Dr Standish to all whom it may concern.— Dr 
 Standish 's wife having run away, he wants a house- 
 keeper. Dr Standish doesn't want good looks in a 
 woman : but she must know how to hold her tongue 
 and cook a plain joint. He gives ten pounds. Mrs 
 Standish needn't apply— she's too much of a lady." 
 
 But poor Mrs. Standish did apply, and, what is 
 more, obtained the situation. She and her lord never 
 again had any quarrel that obtained publicity; and 
 so the affair ended more happily than in all proba- 
 bility it would have done had Sir Creswell Creswell's 
 court been then in existence. Standish 's practice lay 
 principally amongst the mechanics and little farmers 
 of the neighborhood. j\Iuch of his time was there- 
 fore spent in riding his two huge lumbering horses 
 about the country. In his old age he indulged him- 
 self in a gig (which, out of respect to radical politics, 
 he painted with a flaring yellow paint) ; but, at the 
 commencement of the present century, the by-roads 
 of Suffolk— now so good that a London brougham 
 drawn by one horse ean with ease whisk over the worst 
 of them at the rate of ten miles an hour— were so 
 bad that a doctor could not make an ordinary round 
 on them in a wheeled carriage. Even in the sad-
 
 486 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTOKS. 
 
 die he ran frequent risk of being mired, unless his 
 horse had an abundance of bone and pluck. 
 
 Standish's mode of riding was characteristic of the 
 man. Straight on he went, at a lumbering six miles 
 an hour trot— dash, dosh, dush !— through the mud- 
 dy roads, sitting loosely in his seat, heavy and shape- 
 less as a sack of potatoes, looking down at his brown 
 corduroy breeches and his mahogany top-boots (the 
 toes of which pointed in directly opposite direc- 
 tions), wearing a pei-pctual scowl on his brows, and 
 never either rising in his stirrups or fixing himself 
 to the saddle with his knees. Not a word would 
 he speak to a living creature in the way of civil 
 greeting. 
 
 "Doctor, good morning to you," an acquaintance 
 would cry out; " 'tis a nice day!" 
 
 "Ugh!" Standish would half grunt, half roar, 
 trotting straight on— disli, dosh, dush! 
 
 "Stop, doctor, I am out of sorts, and want some 
 physic," would be the second form of address. 
 
 "Then why the didn't you say so, instead 
 
 of jawing about the weather?" the urbane phy- 
 sician would say, checking his horse. 
 
 Standish never turned out an inch for any way- 
 farer. SuUen and overbearing, he rode straight on 
 upon one side of the road ; and, however narrow the 
 way might be, he never swerved a barley-corn from 
 his line for horse or rider, cart or carriage. Our 
 dear friend Charley Halifax gave him a smart lesson 
 in good manners on this point. Charley had brought 
 a well-bred hackney, and a large fund of animal spir- 
 its, down from Cambridge to a title for orders in 
 mid-Suffolk. He had met Standish in the cottages
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 487 
 
 of some of his flock, aud afterwards meeting else- 
 where, had greeted him, and had no greeting in re- 
 turn. It was not long ere Charley learnt all about 
 the clownish apothecary, and speedily did he devise 
 a scheme for humbling him. The next time he saw 
 Standish in the distance, trotting on towards him, 
 Charley put his heels to his horse, and charged the 
 man of drugs at full gallop. Standish came lumber- 
 ing on, disdaining to look before him and ascertain 
 who was clattering along at such a pace. On arriv- 
 ing within six feet of Standish 's horse, Halifax fell 
 back on his curb-rein, and pulled up sharp. Aston- 
 ished, but more sensible than his master, Standish 's 
 horse (as Charley knew would be the case) suddenly 
 came to a dead stop, on which Standish rolled over 
 its head into the muddy highway. As he rolled over, 
 he threw out a volley of oaths. "Ah, doctor," cried 
 Charley, good-humoredly, ' ' I said I would make you 
 speak to me." Standish was six feet high, and a pow- 
 erful man. For a few moments, on recovering his 
 legs, he looked as if he contemplated an assault on the 
 young parson. But he thought better of it; and, 
 climbing into his seat once more, trotted on, without 
 another word— dish, dosh, dush! The incident didn't 
 tend to soften his feelings toward the Established 
 Church. 
 
 The country doctor of the last century always went 
 his rounds on horseback booted and spurred. The 
 state of the roads rendered any other mode of trav- 
 elling impracticable to men who had not only to use 
 the highways and coach-roads, but to make their way 
 up bridle-paths, and drifts, and lanes, to secluded 
 farmsteads and outlying villages. Even as late as
 
 488 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 the last generation, in Suffolk, where now people 
 drive to and fro at the rate of twelve miles an hour, 
 a doctor (whom the writer of these pages has reason 
 to think of with affection) was more than once mired, 
 on a slightly-built blood horse, so effectually, that 
 he had to dismount ere the animal could be extri- 
 cated; and this happened in roads that at the pres- 
 ent time are, in all seasons, firm as a garden walk. 
 
 Describing the appearance of a country doctor of 
 this period, a writer observes— " ^^'^len first I saw 
 him, it was on Frampton Green. I was somewhat 
 his junior in years, and had heard so much of him 
 that I had no small curiosity to see him. He was 
 dressed in a blue coat and yellow buttons, buckskins, 
 well-polished jockey-boots, with handsome silver 
 spurs, and he carried a smart whip with a silver 
 handle. His hair, after the fashion, was done up in 
 a club, and he wore a broad-brimmed hat." Such was 
 the appearance of Jenner, as he galloped across the 
 vale of Gloucester, visiting his patients. There is 
 little to remind us of such a personage as this in the 
 statue in Trafalgar Square, which is the slowly-offered 
 tribute of our gratitude to Edward Jenner for his im- 
 perishable services to mankind. The opposition that 
 Jenner met with in his labours to free our species 
 from a hideous malady that, destroying life and ob- 
 literating beauty, spared neither the cottage nor the 
 palace, is a subject on which it is painful to reflect. 
 The learned of his own profession and the vulgar of 
 all ranks combined to persecute and insult him; and 
 when the merit of his inestimable discovery was ac- 
 knowledged by all intelligent persons, he received
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 489 
 
 from his country a remuneration that was little better 
 than total neerlect. 
 
 While acting as an apprentice to a country sur- 
 geon he first conceived the possibility of checking 
 the ravages of small-pox. A young servant woman, 
 who accidentally said that she was guarded from that 
 disease by having "had cow-pox," first apprized him 
 that amongst the servants of a rural population a be- 
 lief existed that the virus from the diseased cow, on 
 being absorbed by the human system, was a pre- 
 ventive against small-pox. From that time, till the 
 ultimate success of his inquiries, he never lost sight 
 of the subject. 
 
 The ridicule and misrepresentation to which he 
 was subjected are at this date more pleasant for ua 
 to laugh at than, at the time, they were for him to 
 bear. The ignorant populace of London was instruct- 
 ed that people, on being vaccinated, ran great risks 
 of being converted into uembers of the bovine fam- 
 ily. The appearance of hair covering the whole body, 
 of horns and a tail, followed in many cases the op- 
 eration. The condition of an unhappy child was pa- 
 thetically described, who, brutified by vaccine ichor, 
 persisted in running on all-fours and roaring like a 
 bull. Dr. Woodville and Dr. Moseley opposed Jenner, 
 the latter with a violence that little became a scien- 
 tific inquirer. Numerous were the squibs and cari- 
 catures the controversy called forth. Jenner was 
 represented as riding on a cow— an animal certainly 
 not adapted to show the doctor ("booted and 
 spurred" as we have just seen him) off to the best 
 advantage. Of Moseley the comic muse sung:
 
 490 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 "Oh, Moseley ! thy book, nightly phantasies rousing, 
 
 Full oft makes me quake for my heart's dearest treasure; 
 For fancv, in dreams, oft presents them all browsing 
 
 On commons, just like little Nebuchadnezzar. 
 There, nibbling at thistle, stand Jem, Joe, and Mary, 
 
 On their foreheads, O horrible ! crumpled horns bud : 
 There Tom with his tail, and poor William all hairy, 
 
 Reclined in a corner, are chewing the cud." 
 
 If London was unjust to him, the wdseacres of 
 Gloucestershire thought that burning was his fit pun- 
 ishment. One dear old lady, whenever she saw him 
 leaving his house, used to run out and attack him 
 with indescribable vivacity. "So your book," cried 
 this charming matron, in genuine Gloucestershire dia- 
 lect, "is out at last. Well! I can tell you that there 
 bean't a copy sold in our town, nor shan't neither, 
 if I can help it." On hearing, subsequent to the 
 publication of the book (a great offence to the old 
 lady!), some rumours of vaccination failures, the 
 same goodie bustled up to the doctor and cried, with 
 galling irony, "Shan't us have a general inoculation 
 now?" 
 
 But Jenner was compensated for this worthy 
 woman's opposition in the enthusiastic support of 
 Rowland Hill, who not only advocated vaccination in 
 his ordinary conversation, but from the pulpit used to 
 say, after his sermon to his congregation, wherever he 
 preached, "I am ready to vaccinate to-morrow morn- 
 ing as many children as you choose; and if you wish 
 them to escape that horrid disease, the small-pox, you 
 will bring them." A Vaccine Board was also estab- 
 lished at the Surrey Chapel— i. e. the Octagon Chap- 
 el, in Blackfriars Road. 
 
 "My Lord," said Rowland Hill once to a noble- 
 man, "allow me to present to your Lordship my
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 491 
 
 friend, Dr. Jenner, who has been the means of saving 
 more lives than any other man." 
 
 "Ah!" observed Jenner, "would that I, like you, 
 could say— souls." 
 
 There was no cant in this. Jenner was a simple, 
 unaffected, and devout man. His last words were, 
 "I do not marvel that men are grateful to me, but 
 I am surprised that they do not feel gratitude to God 
 for making me a medium of good." 
 
 Of Jenner 's more sprightly humour, the following 
 epigrams from his pen (communicated to the writer 
 of these pages by Dr. E. D. Jloore of Salop), are good 
 specimens. 
 
 "to my SPANISH CIGAR. 
 
 "Soother of an anxious hour! 
 
 Parent of a thousand pleasures! 
 Wilh gratitude I owe thy power 
 
 And place thee 'mongst my choicest treasures. 
 Thou canst the keenest pangs disarm 
 
 Which care obtrudes upon the heart ; 
 At thy command, my little charm, 
 
 Quick from the bosom they depart." 
 
 "on the death of JOHN AND BETTV COLE. 
 
 "Why, neighbours, thus mournfully sorrow and fret? 
 Here lie snug and cosy old John and his Bet; 
 Your sighing and sobbing ungodly and rash is. 
 For two knobs of coal that have now gone to ashes." 
 
 "on miss jenner and miss EMILY WORTHINGTON TEARING 
 THE "globe" newspaper. 
 
 "The greatest curse that hath a name 
 Most certainly from woman came. 
 Two of the se.K the other night — 
 Well arm'd with talons, venom, spite, — 
 Pull'd caps, you say? — a great wonder! 
 By Jove, they pull'd the globe asunder!" 
 
 Dr. Jenner was very fond of scribbling currente 
 
 calamo such verses as these. The following specimens 
 
 of his literarj' prowess have, we believe, never before 
 
 been published.
 
 492 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 HANNAH BALL. — A SONG. 
 
 "Farewell, ye dear lasses of town and of city, 
 Sweet ladies, adieu to you all ! 
 Don't show a frown, though I tune up a ditty 
 In praise of fair Hannah Ball. 
 
 "T'other eve, as I rambled her snug cottage by. 
 Sly Cupid determined my fall. 
 The rogue, 'stead of darts, shot the beams of her eye. 
 
 The eye of my fair Hannah Ball. 
 
 "So sweetly she look'd, when attired so fine. 
 In her Dunstable hat and her shawl. 
 Enraptured I cried — ' 'Tis a Goddess divine.' 
 'No indeed' — she replied — 'Hannah Ball.' 
 
 "The bosom of Delia, tho' whiter than snow. 
 Is no more than black velvet pall — 
 Compared with my Hannah's — I'd have you to know — 
 The bosom of fair Hannah Ball. 
 
 "The honey the bee from her jessamine sips 
 You'd swear was as bitter as gall, 
 Could you taste but the sweets that exhale from the lips, 
 From the lips of the fair Hannah Ball. 
 
 "What's rouge, or carmine, or the blush of the rose? 
 Why, dead as the lime on the wall. 
 Compared with the delicate colour that glows 
 On the cheek of my fair Hannah Ball. 
 
 "When David melodiously play'd to appease 
 The troubled emotions of Saul, 
 Were his sounds more enchanting — ah, tell me, than these? 
 'Hannah. Ball, oh ! the fair Hannah Ball.' 
 
 "Near yonder fair copse as I pensively rove 
 In an eve, when the dews 'gin to fall ; 
 To my sighs how kind echo responds from the grove — 
 'Hannah Ball, oh ! the fair Hannah Ball.' 
 
 "With graces so winning see Rossi advance 
 
 But what's all his grace? — Why a sprawl — 
 With my Hannah compared, as she skims through the dance — 
 The lovely, the fair Hannah Ball. 
 
 "The song of the Mara — tho' great is her skill, 
 Believe me's no more than a squall. 
 Compared with the rapturous magical trill 
 Of my charming, my fair Hannah Ball.
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 493 
 
 "For oft in the meads at the close of the day, 
 Near yon murmuring rivulet's fall, 
 Have I heard the soft nightingale's soul-piercing lay, 
 And thought 'twas my fair Hannah Ball. 
 
 "To her eyes in Love's language I've told a soft tale, 
 But, alas ! they replied not at all ; 
 Yet bashfulness oft will our passions conceal; 
 Oh ! the modest, the fair Hannah Ball. 
 
 "Ye Gods ! would you make the dear creature my wife. 
 With thanks would I bow to you all ; 
 How smoothly would then run the wheels of my life. 
 With my charming, my fair Hannah Ball. 
 
 "But should my petition be flung from the skies, 
 I'll take the bare bodkin or awl ; 
 Yes! the cold seal of Death shall be fix'd on my eyes, — 
 What's Life without fair Hannah Ball." 
 
 This is a happy little satire on a vilage scandal. 
 The Methodist parson and Roger were amongst the 
 doctor's rustic neighbours. 
 
 On a quarrel between Butler, the Methodist parson of Framp- 
 ton, and Roger his clerk. Butler accused the clerk of steal- 
 ing his liquors, and the clerk accused Butler of stealing his 
 bacon. 
 
 "Quoth good parson Butler to Rogers his clerk, 
 'How things come to light that are done in the dark I 
 Mv wine is all pilfer'd, — a sad piece of work, — 
 But a word with chee, Richard — I see thou'rt no Turk.' 
 
 " 'What evil befall us !' — quoth Dick in reply, 
 Whilst contempt methodistical glanced from his eye, — 
 'My bacon's slipt off too — alas, sir! 'tis true, 
 And the fact seems to whisper that — you are no Jew.' " 
 
 The most daring of Jenner's epigrams, out of the 
 
 scores that we have perused, is the following— 
 
 ON READING ADAM SMITH. 
 
 "The priests may exclaim against cursing and s^vearing, 
 And tell us such things are quite beyond bearing; 
 But 'tis clear as the day their denouncing's a sham; 
 For a thousand good things may be learnt from Adam." 
 
 Babbage, in his "Decline of Science in England,"
 
 494 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 has remarked that "some of the most valuable names 
 which adorn the history of English science have been 
 connected with this (the medical) profession." Of 
 those names many have belonged to country doc- 
 tors ; amongst which Jenner has a conspicuous place.* 
 
 Jenner was a bright representative of that class 
 of medical practitioners— sagacious, well-instructed, 
 courageous, and self-dependent in intellect— who, at 
 the close of the last century, began to spring up in all 
 parts of the country, and have rapidly increased in 
 number; so that now the prejudiced, vulgar, pedantic 
 doctors of Sterne's and Smollett's pages are extinct- 
 no more to be found on the face of the earth than are 
 the drunken squires who patronized and insulted 
 them. 
 
 Of such a sort was Samuel Parr, the father of the 
 
 * Medical readers will be amused with the following letter, 
 written by Dr. Jenner, showing as it does the excess of caution 
 with which he prepared his patients for the trifling operation 
 of vaccination. 
 
 "Sir, 
 
 "I was absent from home when your obliging letter of 
 the 24th November arrived; but I do not think this is likely 
 to occur again for some time, and I shall therefore be very 
 happy to take your little family under my care at the time you 
 mention — the latter end of January. Our arrangements must 
 be carefully made, as the children must be met here by proper 
 subjects for transferring the Vaccine Lymph; for on the ac- 
 curacy of this part of the process much depends. It may be 
 necessary to observe also, that among the greatest impedi- 
 ments to vaccination (indeed the greatest) is an eruptive state 
 of the skin on the child intended to receive the infection. On 
 this subject I wrote a paper so long ago as the year 1804, and 
 took much pains to circulate it; but I am sorry to say the 
 attention that has been paid to it by the Faculty in general 
 has been by no means equal to its importance. This is a rock 
 on which vaccination has been often wreck'd ; but there is 
 no excuse, as it was so clearly laid down in the chart. 
 "I am, Sir, your obedient 
 
 "and very humble servant, 
 
 "Edward Jenner."
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 495 
 
 famous classic scholar and Whig politician of the 
 same name. The elder Parr was a general practition- 
 er at Harrow, "a man" (as his son described him) 
 "of a very robust and vigorous intellect." Educated 
 in his early years at Harrow School, Samuel Parr 
 (the son) was taken from that splendid seminary 
 at the age of fourteen years and apprenticed to his 
 father. For three or four years he applied himself 
 to the mastery of the elements of surgical and med- 
 ical knowledge— dispensing medicines, assisting at op- 
 erations, and performing all the duties which a coun- 
 try doctor's pupil was expected to perform. But he 
 had not nerve enough for the surgical department 
 of the profession. "For a physician," he used to say, 
 "I might have done well, but for a surgeon never." 
 His father consequently sent him to Cambridge, and 
 allowed him to turn his intellects to those pursuits 
 in which Nature had best fitted him to excel. Dr. 
 Parr's reminiscences of this period of medical in- 
 struction were nearly all pleasant— and some of them 
 were exquisitely droll. At that early age his critical 
 taste and faculty caused him to subject the prescrip- 
 tions that came under his notice to a more exact scrut- 
 iny than the dog-Latin of physicians usually under- 
 goes. 
 
 "Father," cried the boy, glancing his eye over a 
 prescription, "here's another mistake in the gram- 
 mar!" 
 
 "Sam," answered the irritable sire, "d the 
 
 prescription, make up the medicine." 
 
 Laudanum was a preparation of opium just then 
 coming into use. Mr. Parr used it at first sparingly 
 and cautiously. On one occasion he administered a
 
 496 A BOOK ABOxrr doctors. 
 
 small quantity to a patient, and the next day, pleased 
 with the effects of the dose, expressed his intention 
 (but hesitatingly) to repeat it. 
 
 "You may do that safely, sir," said the son. 
 
 "Don't be rash, boy. Beginners are always too 
 bold. How should you know what is safe?" asked 
 the father. 
 
 "Because, sir," was the answer, "when I made 
 up the prescription yesterday, I doubled the dose." 
 
 ' ' Doubled the dose ! How dared you do that ? " ex- 
 claimed the angry senior. 
 
 "Because, sir," answered little Sam, coolly, "I saw 
 you hesitate." 
 
 The father who would not feel pride in such a son 
 would not deserve to have him. 
 
 Though Parr made choice of another profession he 
 always retained a deep respect for his father's calling 
 and the practitioners of it; medical men forming a 
 numerous and important portion of his acquaintance. 
 In his years of ripest judgment he often declared that 
 "he considered the medical professors as the most 
 learned, enlightened, moral, and liberal class of the 
 community." 
 
 How many pleasant reminiscences this writer has 
 of country surgeons— a class of men interesting to an 
 observer of manners, as they comprise more distinct 
 types of character than any other professional body. 
 Hail to thee. Dr. Agricola ! more yeoman than savant, 
 bluff, hearty, and benevolent, hastening away from 
 fanciful patients to thy farm, about which it is thy 
 pleasure, early and late, to trudge, vigilant and 
 canny, clad in velveteen jacket and leathern gaiters, 
 armed with spud-stick or double-barrel gun, and look-
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 497 
 
 ing as unlike Andrew Borde or Dr. Slop as it is pos- 
 sible to conceive mortal! What an eccentric, pious, 
 tyrannical, most humane giant thou art ! When thou 
 wast mayor of thy borough, what lawless law didst 
 thou maintain ! With thine own arm and oaken stick 
 didst thou fustigate the drunken poacher who beat his 
 wife ; and the little children, who made a noise in the 
 market-square on a Sunday, thou didst incarcerate 
 (for the sake of public morality) in "the goose- 
 house" for two hours; but (for the sake of mercy) 
 thou didst cause to be served out to each prisoner one 
 large gingerbread bun— to soften the hardships of 
 captivity. When the ague raged, and provisions were 
 scarce in what the poor still refer to as "the bad 
 year," what prescriptions didst thou, as parish doc- 
 tor, shower down on the fever-ridden?— Mutton and 
 gin, beef and wine— such were thy orders ! The par- 
 sons said bravo ! and clapt thee on the back ; but the 
 guardians of the poor and the relieving officers were 
 up in arms, and summoned thee before a solemn tri- 
 bunal at the union-house— "the board!" in fact. 
 What an indignant oath and scream of ridicule didst 
 thou give, when an attorney (Sir Oracle of "the 
 board") endeavoured to instil into thy mind the first 
 principles of supply and demand, and that grandest 
 law of political economy— to wit, if there are too 
 many poor people in a neighbourhood, they must be 
 starved out of it into one where they will not be in 
 the way; and if there are too many poor people in the 
 entire world, they must be starved out of that also 
 into another, where there'll be more room for them! 
 And what was thy answer to the chairman's remark, 
 "Doctor, if mutton and gin are the only medicines 
 
 i— 82
 
 498 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTOBS. 
 
 that will cure the sick poor, you must supply them 
 yourself, in accordance with your contract"? .What 
 was thy answer? Why, a shower of butchers' and 
 vintners' bills, pulled from the pockets of thy ancient 
 gray coat— bills all receipted, and showing that, be- 
 fore asking the ratepayers for a doit, thou hadst ex- 
 pended every penny of thy salary of £150 on mutton 
 and gin, beef and wine— for the sick poor! What a 
 noble answer to a petty taunt! The chairman 
 blushed. The attorney hurried away, saying he had 
 to be present at an auction. The great majority of 
 "the board" came to a resolution, engaging to sup- 
 port you in your schemes for helping the poor through 
 the bad year. But the play was not yet at an end. 
 Some rumours of what had occurred at the board 
 reaching the ears of a few poor peasants, they made 
 bold to thank thee for thy exertions in their behalf. 
 How didst thou receive them? — With a violent har- 
 rangue against their incorrigible laziness and dishon- 
 esty—an assurance that half their sufferings sprung 
 from their own vices— and a vehement declaration 
 that, far from speaking a good word for them to the 
 guardians, thou didst counsel the sternest and cruel- 
 lest of measures. 
 
 A man of another mould and temper was the writ- 
 er's dear friend, Felix. Gentle and ardent, tranqiiil 
 as a summer evening, and unyielding as a rock, 
 modest but brave, unobtrusive but fearless, he had a 
 mind that poets only could rightly read. Delicate in 
 frame, as he was refined in intellect, he could not 
 endure rude exertion or vulgar pleasure. Active in 
 mind, he still possessed a vein of indolence, thor- 
 oughly appreciating the pleasure of dreaming the
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 499 
 
 whole day long on a sunny chair in a garden, sur- 
 rounded with bright flowers and breathing a per- 
 fumed air. In the hot season the country people used 
 to watch their doctor traversing the country in his 
 capacious phaeton. Alone, without a servant by his 
 side, he held the reins in his hands, but in his reveries 
 altogether forgot to use them. Sometimes he would 
 fall asleep, and travel for miles in a state of uncon- 
 sciousness, his great phlegmatic horse pounding the 
 dust at the rate of five miles an hour. The somni- 
 driverous doctor never came to harm. His steed 
 knew how to keep on the left-hand side of the road, 
 under ordinary circumstances passing all vehicles 
 securely, but never thinking of overtaking any; and 
 the country people, amongst whom the doctor spent 
 his days, made his preservation from bodily harm an 
 object of their especial care. Often did a rustic way- 
 farer extricate the doctor's equipage from a perilous 
 position, and then send it onwards without disturbing 
 the gentleman by waking him. The same placid, 
 equable man was Felix in society, that he was on these 
 professional excursions — nothing alarming or excit- 
 ing him. It was in his study that the livelier elements 
 of his nature came into play. Those who, for the first 
 time, conversed with him in private on his micro- 
 scopic and chemical pursuits, his researches in his- 
 tory, or his labours in speculative or natural philos- 
 ophy, caught fire from his fire and were inspired with 
 his enthusiasm. 
 
 Felix belonged to a class daily becoming more num- 
 erous ; Miles was of a species that has already become 
 rare— the army surgeon. The necessities of the long 
 war caused the enrolment of numbers of young men
 
 500 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTOKS. 
 
 in the ranks of the medical profession, whose learning 
 was not their highest recommendation to respect. An 
 old navy surgeon, of no small wit, and an infinite 
 capacity for the consumption of strong liquors— wine, 
 brandy, whisky, usquebaugh (anything, so long as it 
 was strong)— gave a graphic description to this 
 writer of his examination on things pertaining to sur- 
 gery by the Navy Board. 
 
 "Well," said the narrator, putting down his empty 
 glass and filling it again with Madeira— "I was shown 
 into the examination-room. Large table, and half-a- 
 dozen old gentlemen at it. 'Big- wigs, no doubt,' 
 thought I; 'and sure as my name is Symonds, they'll 
 pluck me like a pigeon. ' 
 
 " 'Well, sir, what do you know about the science of 
 your profession ? ' asked the stout man in the chair. 
 
 " 'More than he does of the practice, I'll be bound,' 
 tittered a little wasp of a dandy— a West End ladies' 
 doctor. 
 
 ' ' I trembled in my shoes. 
 
 " 'Well, sir,' continued the stout man, 'what would 
 you do if a man was brought to you during action 
 with his arms and legs shot off? Now, sir, don't keep 
 the Board waiting! What would you do? Make 
 haste!' 
 
 " 'By Jove, sir!' I answered— a thought just strik- 
 ing me— 'I should pitch him overboard, and go on to 
 some one else I could be of more service to.' 
 
 "By ! every one present burst out laughing; 
 
 and they passed me directly, sir— passed me di- 
 rectly!" 
 
 The examiners doubtless felt that a young man 
 who could manifest such presence of mind on such an
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 501 
 
 occasion, and so well reply to a terrorizing question, 
 might be trusted to act wisely on other emergencies. 
 
 Many stories of a similar kind are very old 
 acquaintances of most of our readers. 
 
 "What"— an examiner of the same Board is re- 
 ported to have said to a candidate— "would you have 
 recourse to if, after having ineffectually tried all the 
 ordinary diaphoretics, you wanted to throw your 
 patient, in as short a time as possible, into a profus6 
 perspiration?" 
 
 "I should send him here, sir, to be examined," was 
 the reply. 
 
 Not less happy was the audacity of the medical 
 student to Abernethy. 
 
 "What would you do," bluntly inquired the sur- 
 geon, "if a man was brought to you with a broken 
 leg?" 
 
 "Set it, sir," was the reply. 
 
 "Good— very good— you're a very pleasant, witty 
 young man ; and doubtless you can tell me what mus- 
 cles of my body I should set in motion if I kicked you, 
 as you deserve to be kicked, for your impertinence." 
 
 "You would set in motion," responded the youth, 
 with perfect coolness, "the flexors and extensors of 
 my right arm; for I should immediately knock you 
 down. ' ' 
 
 If the gentlemen so sent forth to kill and cure were 
 not overstocked with professional learning, they soon 
 acquired a knowledge of their art in that best of all 
 schools— experience. At the conclusion of the great 
 war they were turned loose upon the country, and 
 from their body came many of the best and most suc- 
 cessful practitioners of every county of the kingdom.
 
 502 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 The race is fast dying out. A Waterloo banquet of 
 medical officers, serving in our army at that memora- 
 ble battle, would at the present time gather together 
 only a small number of veterans. This writer can re- 
 member when they were pentiful; and, in company 
 with two or three of the best of their class, he spent 
 many of the happiest days of his boyhood. An aroma 
 of old camp life hung about them. They rode better 
 horses, and more boldly, than the other doctors round 
 about. However respectable they might have become 
 with increased years and prosperity, they retained 
 the military knack of making themselves especially 
 comfortable under any untoward combination of ex- 
 ternal circumstances. To gallop over a bleak heath, 
 through the cold fog of a moonless December night ; to 
 sit for hours in a stifling garret by a pauper's pallet; 
 to go for ten days without sleeping on a bed, without 
 undressing, and with the wear of sixteen hours out of 
 every twenty-four spent on horseback— were only 
 features of "duty," and therefore to be borne man- 
 fully, and with generous endurance, at the time— and, 
 in the retrospect, to be talked of with positive con- 
 tentment and hilarity. They loved the bottle, too— 
 as it ought to be loved: on fit occasions drinking any 
 given quantity, and, in return, giving any quantity 
 to drink; treating claret and the thinner wines with 
 a levity at times savouring of disdain ; but having a 
 deep and unvarying affection for good sound port, 
 and, at the later hours, very hot and very strong 
 whisky and water, ivith a slice of lemon in each tumb- 
 ler. How they would talk during their potations! 
 What stories and songs! George the Fourth (even 
 according to his own showing) had scarce more to do
 
 A BOOK ABOXn" DOCTOBS. 503 
 
 in bringing about the victory at Waterloo than they. 
 Lord Anglesey's leg must have been amputated 
 thrice ; for this writer knew three surgeons who each— 
 separately and by himself— performed the operation. 
 But this sort of boasting was never indulged in before 
 the — th tumbler. 
 
 May a word not be here said on the toping country 
 doctor? Shame on these times! ten years hence one 
 will not be able to find a bibulous apothecary, though 
 search be made throughout the land from Dan to 
 Beersheba! Sailors, amongst the many superstitions 
 to which they cling with tenacity, retain a decided 
 preference for an inebrious to a sober surgeon. Not 
 many years since, in a fishing village on the eastern 
 coast, there flourished a doctor in great repute 
 amongst the poor; and his influence over his humble 
 patients literally depended on the fact that he was 
 sure, once in the four-and-twenty hours, to be hand- 
 somely intoxicated. Charles Dickens has told the 
 public how, when he bought the raven immortalised in 
 "Barnaby Rudge," the vendor of that sagacious bird, 
 after enumerating his various accomplishments and 
 excellences, concluded, "But, sir, if you want him to 
 come out very strong, you must show him a drunk 
 man." The simple villagers of Flintbeach had a firm 
 faith in the strengthening effects of looking at a tipsy 
 doctor. They always postponed their visits to Dr. 
 Mutchkin till evening, because then they had the ben- 
 efit of the learned man in his highest intellectual con- 
 dition. '-Dorn't goo to he i' the mornin', er can't 
 doctor noways to speak on tills er's had a glass," was 
 the advice invariably given to a stranger not aware 
 of the doctor's little peculiarities.
 
 504 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 Mutchkin was unquestionably a shrewd fellow, 
 althougli he did his best to darken the light with 
 which nature had endowned him. One day, accom- 
 panied by his apprentice, he visited a small tenant 
 farmer who had been thrown on his bed with a smart 
 attack of bilious fever. After looking at his patient's 
 tongue and feeling his pulse, he said somewhat 
 sharply :— 
 
 "Ah! 'tis no use doing what's right for you, if you 
 will be so imprudent." 
 
 "Goodness, doctor, what do you mean ? "responded 
 the sick man; "I have done nothing imprudent." 
 
 "What!— nothing imprudent? Why, bless me, 
 man, you have had green peas for dinner." 
 
 "So I have, sir. But how did you find that out?" 
 
 "In your pulse— in your pulse. It was very fool- 
 ish. Mind, you mayn't commit such an indiscretion 
 again. It might cost you your life." 
 
 The patient, of course, was impressed with Mutch- 
 kin's acuteness, and so was the apprentice. When the 
 lad and his master had retired, the former asked :— 
 
 "How did you know he had taken peas for dinner, 
 sir? Of course it wasn't his pulse that told you." 
 
 "Why, boy," the instructor replied, "I saw the 
 pea-shells that had been thrown into the yard, and I 
 drew my inference." 
 
 The hint was not thrown away on the youngster. 
 A few days afterwards, being sent to call on the same 
 case, he approached the sick man, and, looking very 
 observant, felt the pulse. 
 
 "Ah!— um— by Jove!" exclaimed the lad, mimick- 
 ing his master's manner, "this is very imprudent. It
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 505 
 
 may cost you your life. Why, man, you've eaten 
 a horse for your dinner." 
 
 The fever patient was so infuriated with what he 
 naturally regarded as impertinence, that he sent a 
 pathetic statement of the insult offered him to Mutch- 
 kin. On questioning his pupil as to what he meant by 
 accusing a man, reduced with sickness, of having con- 
 sumed so large and tough an animal, the doctor was 
 answered— 
 
 "Why, sir, as I passed through from the yard I 
 saw the saddle hanging up in the kitchen." 
 
 This story is a very ancient one. It may possibly 
 be found in one of the numerous editions of Joe Mil- 
 ler's facetiae. The writer has, however, never met 
 with it in print, and the first time he heard it. Dr. 
 Mutchkin, of Plintbeach, was made to figure in it in 
 the matter above described. 
 
 The shrewdness of Mutchkin 's apprentice puts us 
 in mind of the sagacity of the hydropathic doctor, 
 mentioned in the "Life of Mr Assheton Smith." A 
 gentleman devoted to fox-hunting and deep potations 
 was induced, by the master of the Tedworth Hunt, to 
 have recourse to the water cure, and see if it would 
 not relieve him of chronic gout, and restore something 
 of the freshness of youth. The invalid acted on the 
 advice, and in obedience to the directions of a hydro- 
 pathic physician, proceeded to swathe his body, upon 
 going to his nightly rest, with wet bandages. The air 
 was chill, and the water looked— very— cold. The 
 patient shivered as his valet puddled the bandages 
 about in the cold element. He paused, as a schoolboy 
 does, before taking his first "header" for the year on
 
 506 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 a keen May morning ; and during the pause much of 
 his noble resolve oozed away. 
 
 "John," at last he said to his valet, "put into that 
 
 d water half a dozen bottles of port wine, to 
 
 warm it. ' ' 
 
 John having carried out the direction, the band- 
 ages, saturated with port wine and water, were placed 
 round the corpulent trunk of the invalid. The next 
 morning the doctor, on paying his visit and inspect- 
 ing the linen swathes, instead of expressing astonish- 
 ment at their discoloration with the juice of the grape, 
 observed, with the utmost gravity: — 
 
 "Ah, the system is acting beautifully. See, the 
 port wine is already beginning to leave you !" 
 
 A different man from Dr. Mutchkin was jovial Am- 
 brose Harvey. Twenty years ago no doctor through- 
 out his county was more successful— no man more be- 
 loved. By natural strength of character he gained 
 leave from society to follow his own humours without 
 let, hindrance, or censure. Ladies did not think the 
 less highly of his professional skill because he visited 
 them in pink, and left their bedsides to ride across the 
 country with Lord Cheveley's hounds. Six feet high, 
 handsome, hearty, well-bred, Ambrose had a welcome 
 wherever there was joy or sickness. To his little wife 
 he was devotedly attached and very considerate ; and 
 she in return was very fond, and— what with woman 
 is the same thing— very jealous of him. lie was 
 liked, she well knew, by the country ladies, many of 
 whom were so far her superiors in rank and beauty 
 and accomplishments, that it was only natural in the 
 good little soul to entertain now and then a suspicious 
 curiosity about the movements of her husband. Was
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 507 
 
 it nothing but the delicate health of Lady Ellin that 
 took him so frequently to Hove Hall ? How it came 
 about, from what charitable whisperings on the part 
 of kind friends, from what workings of original sin 
 in her own gentle breast, it would be hard to say; but 
 'tis a fact that, when Hove Hall was mentioned, a 
 quick pain seized the little wife's heart and colour 
 left her cheek, to return again quickly, and in in- 
 creased quantity. The time came when she discov- 
 ered the groundlessness of her fears, and was deeply 
 thankful that she had never, in any unguarded 
 moment, by clouded brow, or foolish tears, or sharp 
 reply, revealed the folly of her heart. Just at the 
 time that Mrs. Ambrose was in the midst of this trial 
 of her affection, Ambrose obtained her permission to 
 drive over to a town twelve miles distant, to attend 
 the hunt dinner. The night of that dinner was a 
 memorable one with the doctor's wife. Ambrose had 
 promised to be home at eleven o'clock. But twelve 
 had struck, and here he had not returned. One o 'clock 
 — two o'clock! No husband! The servants had been 
 sent to bed four hours ago; and Mrs. Ambrose sate 
 alone in her old wainscotted parlour, with a lamp by 
 her side, sad, and pale, and feverish— as wakeful as 
 the house-dog out of doors, that roamed round the 
 house, barking out his dissatisfaction at the prolonged 
 absence of his master. 
 
 At length, at half-past two, a sound of wheels was 
 at the door, and in another minute Ambrose entered 
 the hall, and greeted his little wife. Ah, Mrs. Ellis, 
 this writer will not pain you by entering into details 
 in this part of his story. In defence of Ambrose, let 
 it be said that it was the only time in all his married
 
 508 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 
 
 life that he paid too enthusiastic homage to the god 
 of wine. Something he mumbled about being tired, 
 and having a headache, and then he walked, not over- 
 steadily, upstairs. Poor Mrs. Ambrose! It was not 
 any good asking him, what had kept him out so late. 
 Incensed, frightened, and jealous, the poor little lady 
 could not rest. She must have one doubt resolved. 
 Where had her husband been all this time ? Had he 
 been round by Kove Hall? Had she reflected, she 
 would have seen his Bacchic drowsiness was the best 
 possible evidence that he had not come from a lady's 
 drawing-room. But jealousy is love's blindness. A 
 thought seized the little woman's head; she heard the 
 step of Ambrose's man in the kitchen, about to retire 
 to rest. Ah, he could tell her. A word from him 
 would put all things right. Quick as thought, with- 
 out considering her own or her husband's dignity, the 
 angry little wife hastened down-stairs, and entered 
 the kitchen where John was paying his respects to 
 some supper and mild ale that had been left out for 
 him. As evil fortune would have it, the step she had 
 taken to mend matters made them worse. 
 
 "Oh, John," said the lady, telling a harmless fib, 
 "I have just come to see if cook left you out a good 
 supper. ' ' 
 
 John— most civil and trustworthy of grooms— rose, 
 and posing himself on his heels, made a respectful 
 obeisance to his mistress, not a little suiprised at her 
 anxiety for his comfort. But, alas ! the potations at 
 the hunt-dinner had not been confined to the gentle- 
 men of the hunt. John had, in strong ale, taken as 
 deep draughts of gladness as Ambrose had in wine. 
 At a glance his mistress saw the state of the ease, and
 
 A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS. 509 
 
 in her fright, losing all caution, put her question 
 point-blank, and with imperious displeasure— "John, 
 where have you and your master been?— tell me in- 
 stantly." 
 
 An admirable servant— honest and well-intentioned 
 at all times— just then confused and loquacious- 
 John remembered him how often his master had im- 
 pressed upon him that it was his duty not to gossip 
 about the places he stopped at in his rounds, as pro- 
 fessional secrecy was a virtue scarcely less necessary 
 in a doctor's man-servant than in a doctor. Acting 
 on a muddle-headed reminiscence of his instructions, 
 John reeled towards his mistress, endeavouring to 
 pacify her with a profusion of duteous bobbings of 
 the head, and in a tone of piteous sympathy, and with 
 much incoherence, made this memorable answer to her 
 question: "I'm very sorrj-, mum, and I do hope, 
 mum, you won 't be angry. I alius wish to do you my 
 best duty— that I do, mum— and you're a most good, 
 affable missus, and I, and cook, and all on us are very 
 grateful to you." 
 
 "Never mind that. ^Vhere have you and your mas- 
 ter been ? That 's my question. ' ' 
 
 "Indeed, mum— I darnatellye, it would bes goodas- 
 meplace \vi' master. I dare not say where we ha' 
 been. For master rekwested me patikler not to de- 
 wulge." 
 
 But thou hadst not wronged thy wife. It was not 
 iMae to hurt any living thing, dear friend. All who 
 knew thee will bear witness that to thee, and such as 
 thee, Crabbe pointed not hit, bitter lines:— 
 
 "But soon a loud and hasty summons calls, 
 Shakes the thin roof, and echoes round the walls ;
 
 510 A BOOK ABOUT* DOCTORS. 
 
 Anon a figure enters, quaintly neat, 
 All pride and business, bustle and conceit, 
 With looks unalter'd by these scenes of woe. 
 With speed that entering speaks his haste to go; 
 He bids the gazing throng around him fly, 
 And carries Fate and Physic in his eye; 
 A potent quack, long versed in human ills. 
 Who first insults the victim whom he kills. 
 Whose murd'rous hand a drowsy bench protect. 
 And whose most tender mercy is neglect. 
 Paid by the Parish for attendance here. 
 He wears contempt upon his sapient sneer. 
 In haste he seeks the bed where misery lies, 
 Impatience mark'd in his averted eyes; 
 And, some habitual queries hurried o'er, 
 Without reply, he rushes to the door; 
 His drooping patient, long inured to pain, 
 And long unheeded, knows remonstrance vain; 
 He ceases now the feeble help to crave 
 Of man. and mutely hastens to the grave." 
 
 THE END.
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Abernethy, Dr. John, 48, 158, 159. 
 
 180, 213. 214. 216, 375, 407. 
 Abernethy, Biscuit, 162. 
 Addlngton, Dr. Anthony. 394. 
 Agrlcola, Dr., 496. 
 Agrlppa. Cornelius. 87. 
 Alkin, Dr.. 48, 428. 
 Allhauds Powder. 102. 
 Akenslde, Dr., 327. 381. 
 Albeniarle, Duke of, 54, 118. 
 Alexander, William, 320. 
 Allan, 43. 
 
 Alston, Sir Richard. 257. 
 Aiured, Thomas, 274. 
 Andrew, Merry, 29, 422. 
 Anne, Queen, 92. 93. 94. 118. 117, 
 
 119, 131, 163, 189. 242. 262. 
 Anthony. Dr. i^rancis, 467. 
 Antiochus, 168. 
 Arbuthnot, Dr., 62. 72. 132. 138. 144, 
 
 163, 186, 187, 190. 191. 192. 
 Archer, Dr. John, 148, 149, 150, 225. 
 Argent, Dr., 17. 
 Armstrong, Dr.. 426. 
 Arnold, Dr., 345. 
 Askew, Dr., 10. 244. 
 Atkins, Dr. Henry, 66, 204. 
 Atkins, Will, 15. 
 Aubrey. John. 25. 464. 
 Augustus, 13. 168. 
 Ayliffe. Sir John. 165. 166. 
 Ayre, William. 74. 
 Bacon, Lord, 82. 255. 2S7. 
 Ballllc. Dr.. 10. 244. 394. 
 Baker. Dr. 161. 332. 
 Ballow, Mr., 381. 
 Baltrop, Dr. Robert. 29. 
 Bancroft. Dr. John. 139. 
 Barber — surgeons, 12. 
 Baring. Sir F.. 178. 
 Barrowby. Dr., 155. 156. 
 Barrymore. Lord, 154. 
 Bartley, Dr., 29. 
 Barton. Mr., 278. 
 Bayle. Dr.. 78. 
 Beauclerc. Lady Vere. 289. 
 Bcautord, Dr.. 154, 155. 
 Beauford. Thomas. 474. 
 Beckford. 45. 
 Bcddoes, Dr.. 116. 
 Bedford. Duke of. 96, 309. 
 Behn, Afra, 200. 
 Bennet, Dr., 3.S2. 
 Bentham, Jeremy. 397. ■ 
 Bentley. 184. 185. 252. 
 Berkeley. Bishop, 96. 
 Berry, Miss, 318. 
 BettertoD, 138, 
 
 Bickersteth, Dr. Henry, 39fl> 
 
 Bidloe. Dr., '18. 
 
 Blackmore, Sir Richard. 39. 61, 73, 
 
 74, 113, 115, 117, 186, 193, 
 
 376, 427. 
 Bleeding, 225. 
 
 Blizard. Sir William, 114, 245. 
 Blood. Mrs., 309. 
 Blount, Col.. 195. 
 Bohn. Mr.. 26. 
 Bond, John. M. A.. 183. 
 Borcel. William de, 55. 
 Borde, Andrew, 29. 423, 479. 
 Boswell. James, 140, 308. 333, 339, 
 
 463. 
 Boulter. Mr.. 473. 
 Bourdier, Dr., 20S. 
 Bouvart, Dr.. 169. 
 Boydeli, Mary. 408. 
 Boyle. Mr., 57, 58, 272, 467. 
 Brennen. Dr. John. 386. 
 Brocklesby. Dr.. 16. 211. 381. 
 Brodie, Sir Benjamin, 107, 166. 366, 
 
 370. 
 Bruce. Robert. 193. 
 Browne, Sir Thomas. 38. 
 Buckle, Mr., x;3. 
 Buckingham, Duchess of, 152. 
 Buckingham. Duke of. 47. 68. 
 Buckinghampshlre. Countess of. 370. 
 Bulieyn. Richard. 37. 
 Bulleyn, Dr. William, 25. 26, 29, 37, 
 
 64, 165. 229. 
 Bungalo. Prof., 92. 
 Buns. Dr., 29. 
 Burke. Edmund. 211, 441. 
 Burnet, Gilbert. 131. 
 Burton, Dr., 67. 
 Burton, Robert. 263, 428. 
 Barton, Sim, 292. 
 Busby. Dr.. 9. 
 Butler. Dr.. 211. 
 Butler, Samuel. 260. 
 Butler. Dr. William. 25, 179. 
 Butts. Sir William, 25. 164. 166. 
 Byron. Lord, 193. 328. 
 Cadogan. Lord, 290 393. 
 Cains. 22. 
 Calfe. Thomas. 29. 
 Chambre. Dr. John. 21. 
 Campan. Madame. 283. 
 Campanella, Thomas, 13. 264. 
 Cane. 11. 
 Canker, 33. 
 Canning. 421. 
 Cardan, 264. 
 Caroline, Queen. 174. 
 Carr, Dr., 28,
 
 512 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Carrtflges, 17. 
 Carteret. George, 66. 
 Case, John. 167. 
 Cashln. Catherine, 364. 370. 
 Catherine, Empresa, 179. 
 Cavendish. Lord C. 181. 
 Cbalon, Comtesse de 3-19. 
 Charles I.. 23, 42. 173, 204. 
 
 11., 15, 17, 23, 3S. 40, 57, 
 148, 1B7, 173, 174. 234, 
 472. 
 
 VI., 221. 
 
 IX., 173. 
 
 XI., 203. 
 Charleton. Dr.. 6S. 
 Chartres, Francis. 191, 
 Chatham, Earl of, 384, 
 Chaucer, 20. 
 Cheke, Sir John, 138. 
 Cbemberllne, TJ. 
 Chesflden, Dr., 68, 215, 292. 
 Chester. Richard. 332. 
 Chesterfield. Lord, 233. 314. 
 Cheyne, Dr.. 146. 247, 377, 399. 
 Cholmondley', Miss, 238. 
 Churchill. General, 180, 290. 
 Clarke, Mr.. 233. 
 Clarke. Sir James. 18, 107. 
 Clermont, Lady, 349. 
 Clopton. Roger. 312. 
 Coakley, Dr.. 339. 
 Codrlngton. Col., 195, 190. 
 Cogan, Dr., 428, 
 Coke 11. 
 
 Coldwell, Dr., 229, 
 Coleridge. S. T., 41. 
 Coles, William, 178. 
 Collier. Jeremy. 200. 
 ColUngton, Sir James. 193. 
 Colombelre, De la, 380. 
 Combermer. Lord, 393. 
 Congreve. 201. 
 ConoUy. Dr.. 221. 
 Conway, Lady. 271, 272. 
 Conway. Lord, 273. 
 Cooper, Sir Astley, 13, 70 177. 382. 
 
 375. 
 Cooper, Bransby, 375, 
 Cooper, Dr. William, 216, 
 Cordus, Eurlcus, 168. 
 Cordus, Valerius, 65. 
 CornwalUs. Lord, 290. 
 Corvlsart, Dr., 205. 
 Cotgrare. 85. 
 Coytler, Dr., 203. 
 Crabbe, George, 438. 
 Cranworth. Lord. 311, 320, 
 Creswell. Sir Creawell, 485, 
 Croft, Sir Richard, 394. 
 Cromwell, 83. 
 Crossfleld. Thomas, 435. 
 Crowe. Mrs., 290. 
 Crulkshank, George, 413, 
 " Dr., 211. 
 
 Cudwortb, Dr., 272. 
 
 Cullum, Sir Thomas Geery, 398. 
 
 Cumberland. Karl of, 171. 
 
 Curran, John I'hllpot. 213. 
 
 Curray, Dr. ■Calomel," 162. 
 
 Cutler, Sir John, 472. 
 
 Dalmaboy, Colonel. 15. 
 
 Darrell, Lady, 33, 165. 
 
 Darwin, Dr. Erasmus, 428. 
 
 Davy. Sir Humphrey, 89, 60, 61, 62. 
 
 429. 
 Davy, Lady, 62. 
 Dawson, John, 406. 
 Dawson. Dr. Thomas, 406. 
 Dee, Dr., 42. 
 Delaune, 471. 
 Denman. Dr. Joseph, 394. 
 Denman, Lord, 393, 394. 
 Dennis, 375. 
 Denton, Dr.. 272. 
 Derby. Edward. Earl of, 44, 165. 
 De Rothes, Countess, 398. 
 Derwentwater, Earl of. 111. 
 Desault. 13. 
 
 Desmond. Countess of. 254. 
 Devonshire, Duchess. 349. 
 D'Ewes. Sir Symonds. 480. 
 Diamond, Dr.. 41. 321. 4.'!4. 
 Dickens, Charles. B03. 
 Digby, Sir Everard, 42. 
 Dlgby, Sir Kenelm, 38, 67, 68, 2S2. 
 DlUy, Charles 339. 
 Dlmsdale. Dr.. 179. 
 DIoscorldes, 64. 
 Dodds. J.imes, 357. 
 Dodsley. 328. 
 Doran, John. 167, 466. 
 Dorset, Richard, Earl of, 343. 
 Douglas, Sylvester, ^1)5. 
 Drake. Dr. James. 125. 
 Drydcn John, 38. 74. 194. 197. 201. 
 
 379. 
 Dnbols. Dr.. 205. 
 Ducrow. Andrew. 372. 
 Dumeny. .381. 
 DumouUn, Dr.. 104. 
 Dunoyer. Madame, 380. 
 Dureui Madame. 381. 
 Dwyer,'j. W.. 277. 
 Dyson, Dr.. 328. 
 Edmunds, Dr., 29. 
 Edward I.. 40. 
 
 " II.. 258. 
 
 " III.. 166. 170, 476. 
 VI.. 21, 173. 
 Edwards, Dr., 29. 
 Edwards. George, 56. 
 Eliot, Sir John, 402, 403. 408. 
 Elizabeth. Queen, 40. 164, 173. 203. 
 Elliot, Sir Thomas, 29, 33, 165, 229. 
 Elmy. Sarah. 438. 
 Elton. Sir Marwood, 393. 
 Embrocations. 30. 
 But, Dr., 58.
 
 IXDEX. 
 
 bV6 
 
 EraaiBtratus, ICS. 
 
 Erstlne. 180. 194. 
 
 Kugene. Prince. 153. 
 
 Evelyn. John. 57. 174. 
 
 Everard. Dr.. 150, 225. 
 
 Faber, Dr., 272. 
 
 Falrclough. Dr. James, 272, 274. 
 
 Falre. Thomas. 29. 
 
 Falloplus. Gabriel, 144. 
 
 Fees. 163. 
 
 Ferriar. Dr.. 428. 
 
 FieidinB. Beaa. 42. 186. 
 
 Fielding. Henry. 96. 316. 
 
 Fielding. Sir John. 316. 
 
 Flemyng. Dr.. 146. 
 
 Fludd. Dr. Robert. 422. 439. 
 
 Fludd Dr. Thomas. 435. 
 
 Foote. Samuel. 463. 
 
 Ford. Charles. 132. 
 
 Fordyce. Dr. George, 153. 
 
 Forstcr, Dr.. 320. 
 
 Fotherglll. Dr. John, 207. 335. .3.37. 
 
 Fox. Charles James, 430. 
 
 Fox. Simeon. 17. 
 
 Francis II., :V3. 
 
 French. Mrs.. 2S8. 
 
 Frere, Dr.. 29. 
 
 Frelnd. Dr.. 152. 188. 251. 252. 318. 
 
 375. 
 Froissart. 221. 
 Fuller. Thomas. 25. 180. 
 Gaddesden. John of, 25S. 
 Galen. 13. 
 GaUleo. 369. 
 Gardiner. Joseph. 292. 
 Garrick, David. 314. 
 Garth. Sir Samuel. 63. 92. 113. 152. 
 
 186. 194. 109. 333, 375. ."ITS. 
 
 433. 472. 
 Gascoigne. Sir William. 33. 165. 
 Gasiiln. Dr.. 1.55. 
 Gay, John. 186. 
 Gebcr, 255. 
 Gee, Dr., 29. 
 George I.. 243. 
 
 III.. 160, 173. 174, 340, 350. 
 
 431. 
 IV.. 170. 173. 
 Germain. Lord George, 402. 
 Getseus. John Daniel. 265. 
 Gibbons. Dr., 113, 117, 139, l,^ 
 
 375. 
 Gilbert. Dr.. 276. 
 Gisborne. Dr. Thomas. 394. 
 Gioueester. Duke of, 118. 
 Glynn. Dr.. 162. 208, 400. 
 Ooddard. Dr., 88. • 
 Godolphin Sir John. 272, 313. 31S. 
 Goldsmith. Oliver. 86. 115, 185. 189. 
 
 426. 
 Good. Dr. Mason. 428. 
 Goodwin. Mr.. 78. 
 Gordonius. 13. 
 Gout. S3. 
 
 Qower. Lord. 156. 
 4— SS 
 
 Grafton. Duke of. 317. 
 
 Graham, Dr. James, 345, 350, 951. 
 
 Grainger. 427. 
 
 Grant. Roger. 94. 95. 
 
 Gray, Thomas, 333. 
 
 Greatrakes. Valentine. 265-273. 
 
 Greaves, Sir Edmund. 55. 
 
 Green. Richard. 439. 
 
 Gregory. Dr. James. 193, 209. 
 
 Grenville. lord. 207. 
 
 Grey. Dr.. 479. 
 
 Griffith. Mrs.. 426. 
 
 GuDgeiand. Coursus de. 170. 
 
 Guy. Thomas. 466. 470. 
 
 Guyllyam. Dr., 221. 
 
 Gwynn. Neil. 157. 
 
 Oyer. Nicholas. 228. 
 
 Hale. Dr.. 252. 
 
 Hales. Stephen. 291. 
 
 Halford, Sir Henry. 173. 393. 421. 
 
 Halifai. Charley. 486. 
 
 Halley. Dr.. 185. 
 
 Hamey. Baldwin. 6.^. 
 
 Hamilton. Sir Willie m. 348. 
 
 Hancock. The Eev. John. 95. 
 
 Handel. 161. 
 
 Hannes. Sir Edward. 113. 114. 115. 
 
 249. 375. 384. 
 Harrington. Dr.. 429. 
 Harris, Sir Edward, 285. 
 Harris. Edmund, 285. 
 Hartley. Dr. D., 292. 
 Hartman, George, 45. 
 Harvey, Dr. John. 24. 369. 
 Harvey. Dr. Ambrose. 506. 
 Harward. Simeon. 228. 
 Hastings. Mrs. .Sarah. 288. 
 Hiitcher. Dr.. 29. 164. 
 Haveningh.im. Sir .Viithony. 33, 165. 
 Hawkins. Dr. C. 292. 
 Hawkins. Sir John. 330. 
 Ilaygarth. Dr., 277. 
 Hearne. Thomas. 225. 423. 
 Heberden. Dr. W., 51. US. 161. 211. 
 Hel, Dr. Majlmlllan, 283. 
 Henry 111., 40. 173. 
 
 " IV., 23. 173. 
 
 " VII.. 21. 
 
 VIII., 21. 161. 171. 422. 468. 
 Hernclius. I'riuce. 303. 
 Herturth. Enrl of, 106. 
 Hermes. 9. 11. 
 Hertford Marquis of. 2.35. 
 Hill. Sir John. 59. .398. 479. 
 Hill. Sir Rowland. 400. 
 Hilton. Sir Thomas. 36. 
 Hilton. William. 38. 
 Hippocrates. 226. 
 Ilobart. Sir Nathaniel. 272. 
 Hogarth. 463. 468. 
 Hook. Mrs.. 99. 
 Horace. 308. 
 Howe. Dr.. 212. 
 Howell. James. 46. 
 Hughes, Mary Aao. 99.
 
 514 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Hulse, Dr. Edward. 72. 232. 
 Hunter. Dr. John. 23, 215, 295, 355, 
 
 36D. 376, 405, 413. 
 Hunter, Dr. WfUiam, 175. 
 Huyck, Dr., 29. 
 Hyatt. Mr., 178. 
 Ingestre, Lord, 370. 
 Inverness, Lady, 303. 
 Ivan, Dr., 203. 
 
 Jumea I., 42, 47, 173, 204, 225, 471, 
 479. 
 
 " II., 198. 
 
 " IV., 166. 
 Jcmes, Dr., 251. 
 Jebb, Dr. .John. 160. 
 Jcbb Sir Ulchard, 159. 160, 205. 
 Jeffcott. Sir John, 384. 
 Jeffries, Dr., 383. 
 Jenkins, Henry. 254. 
 Jenner. Dr. Edward, 295, 389 375. 
 
 488. 
 Jermaine. Lady Betty, 289. 
 Jobuson. Samaol, 16. 39. r,:!. 67. 115, 
 140. 194, 201. 2"2. 239. 262. 
 308, 330. 333. 427, 463. 
 Jonsou, Ben. 42, 44. 
 Joseph, Emperor, 179, 
 Jurln, Dr. James. 184. 
 Katterfeits, Dr.. 103. 
 Kavanaugh, Lady Harriet, 370. 
 Kaye, John, 22, 29. 
 Keats, John, 438. 
 Keill. 184. 
 
 Kellet, Alexander 181. 
 Kemp. Dr. Mitchell, 415. 
 Kennlx. Margaret, 298. 
 King, Sir Edm.ind, 72, 113, 117, 2;:l. 
 King, Dr., 299. 
 Kingsdown. Lord. 393. 394. 
 Kitchener. Dr.. 42. 
 Kahn, ThamasUouU. 303. 
 Kneller. Sir Godfrey. 118. 119. 
 Knlghtley, Sir nii'hard. 20.^ 
 Kunyngham. Dr. William, 29. 
 Lambert. Daniel. 145. 
 Langdale. Lord. 396. 
 Langton. Dr.. 19, 29. 
 Lawrence, Sir Thomas, .358. 
 Lai, Mr.. 27.8. 
 Leake Robert. 2-17. 
 Lettso'm, Dr. John Coaklcy. 178. 207. 
 
 335. 375. 385. 
 Levlt, John. 78, 252. 
 Levitt. Willlnm Sprlngall. 438. 
 Lewis.' Jenkin. 115. 
 Lewis, M. O.. 411. 
 Linacre. 22. 29. 13S. 
 Lloyd, Mrs., 369. 
 Locke Dr. John. 421. 
 Lococi. Dr.. 2S7. 
 Lodge. Edmund, 43. 
 Long, John St. John. 366. 402. 
 Louis XIH., 23. 17:t. 
 
 " XIV., 206, 236. 
 
 Louie XV., 146. 
 
 Loutherbourg. Mr. and Mrs., 97, 98, 
 
 99, 100. 101. 
 Lovell, Dr., 277. 
 Lovkin, Dr., 29. 
 Lower. Dr., Ku. 
 Lowther, Sir J:ime9. 290. 
 Ludtord. Dr. Simon, 29. 
 Luff. Dr., 113. 
 Macartney, Dr., 370. 
 Maciuilay, Catherine. 345. 
 M'Dougal, Peter, 108. 109. ilO. 
 Macllwaln. Gonrgp. 214. 375. 
 Mackintosh, Lady. 303. 
 Macnish. Dr., 436. 
 Maecenas, 48. 
 Mahomet. S3. 
 Mandeville. 140. 
 Manfleld, Dr., 28. 
 Manley Mis., 200. 
 Mapletoft, Dr.. 52. 
 Mapp, Mrs.. 295. 
 Marie Louise. 205. 
 Marlborough, Tlukc of. 77. 248, 313. 
 
 " Duchess of. 140. 
 
 Marshall, Dr., 112. 389. 
 Martial, 186. 
 Marvel. Andrew. 272. 
 Mary. Queen. 17.1. 
 Marwood, Dr., r03. 
 Masham. Lady, 132. 137. 
 Mason, William, 333. 
 Masters, Dr., 29. 
 Maunln. 381. 
 
 Maxwell. Dr. William. 281. 
 Mayerne, Sir Theodore, 23. 25, 48, 
 
 66, 146, 170. 
 Mead. The Rev. Matthew. 210. 
 Mead, Dr. Richard. 10. 68, 81, 9T, 
 
 134, 136, 137, 142, l.')2. 207, 
 
 239. 292. 377. 403. 434. 
 Meade, Dr. William G., 254. 
 Meagrim, Molly, 354. 
 Mereuriua, 11. 
 Mercury. 9. 
 
 Meredith, Sir Amos, 373. 
 Mesmer Dr. I-^rcderlck Anthony, 256, 
 
 264, 265. 275, 280. 345. 
 Messenger. Elizabeth, 312. 
 Messenger. Thomas, 312. 
 MIgaldus. 264. 
 Miller. Joseph, 143. 
 Mlllingen. Dr.. 382. 429. 
 Mllllngton, .Sir Thomas. 72. 
 Molr. Dr.. 436. 
 Uonsey. Dr. Messenger. 311. 
 Monsey, Dr. Robert. 312. 
 Montague, Lord, 42. 
 
 " Mrs., 318, 321. 
 
 Montaigne. 263. 
 Moore. Dr. E. D., 491. 
 Moore, Rev. Giles, 481. 
 Moore, Dr. John. 428. 
 UorguD, Hugo, 203.
 
 INDEX. 
 
 515 
 
 Morrison. Mr.. S3. 
 
 Morrison's pills. 373. 
 
 Moselc.v. Dr.. 4S9. 
 
 Mou-ssett. Dr., 23. 
 
 Munchausen. 236. 
 
 Murphy. Arthur. 463. 
 
 Wusa. AntLinlus. 13. 
 
 Mutchliln. Dr.. 503. 
 
 M.versbach. Dr., 102. 
 
 Myrepsus, Nicholas, 66. 
 
 Napoleon. 205. 
 
 Nash. Beau. 378. 
 
 Nelson. Dr.. 178. 
 
 Nelson. Lord. 193. 
 
 Ne.sbltt. Dr., 240. 292. 
 
 Neslp. Blarquise de. 381. 
 
 New (on. Sir Isaac, 1S5. 252. 255. 
 
 Nicholson. Anthony, 273. 
 
 Noble, J. P.. 277. 
 
 Nnrtliumberland. Earl of. 44. 
 
 Nutley. Billy. 125. 
 
 Ople. John. 433. 
 
 Ormoud, Marchioness. 36S. 370. 
 
 Orrey. Ejrl of. £116. 271. 
 
 Osborn. Jack. 311. 
 
 PaKC. Mr.. 4"8. 
 
 Palnn-ry. Dr.. 230. 
 
 Paiinell.' Dr. Thomas. 29, 
 
 Paracel.sus. 226. 2.'=,8, 257. 284, 
 
 Pare. Ambrose. 173. 
 
 Park. Judt'o 367. 
 
 Parnell. ISO.' 
 
 Parr. Sin-.uel. fi7. .345, 494. 
 
 Paris. Sir Philip. 165. 
 
 Paris, Kir William, 33, 66. 
 
 Pe(!:;i;oj'ues. 183. 
 
 Peele. Sir Robert, 397. 
 
 Pellett, Dr. Thonja.i. 241, 292. 
 
 Pembcrton, Dr. Edward. 305. 
 
 Penie. Dr., 229. 
 
 Pepys. Sir Lucas. 238. .304. .397, 
 
 Pepys. Samuel. 465. 
 
 Percy. Thoma,"i. 44, 427. 
 
 Perkins's tractors, 276, 283. 
 
 Pettl(!rew. Dr., 376. 
 
 Phillips, 285. 
 
 Phr"aH. Dr. John. 20, 
 
 Pindar. Peter. 430. 
 
 Pitcairn, Dr., 20. 244. 
 
 PlRcnlon. .Tohannes, 65. 
 
 Plasters, 30. 
 
 Pelhlll. David. 241. 
 
 Poliftnr.c. Cnuntey,^. 381. 
 
 Pooley ThoniaK. 274. 
 
 Pope, Alesaniler, 53. 67. 68, 93. 186. 
 
 190, 194. 198, 200, 252. 318, 
 
 334. 370. 473. 
 Popple, W., 274. 
 Porter, Dr. John. 20. 
 Portland, Earl of, IIR. 
 Pratt, Slnry, 117, HS. 99. 100. 
 Precious water, 30. 
 Princle, Sir John, 50, 161. 
 Quacka, S2. 
 
 Quarin. Dr., 179. 
 
 Quarrels, 374. 
 
 B. 11. 
 
 Radclltfe, Dr. John, 10. Ill, 152. 
 
 153. 204, 242, 243, 244, 249. 
 
 314. 375. 403. 
 Radnor, Lord. 232, 473. 
 Rahere, Dr., 468. 
 Raleigh, Sir Walter, 203. 
 Ramadge. Dr.. 370. 
 Ranby. Mr,. 316. 
 Ranelagh. Lady. 273. 
 Ranelagh. Lord. .SOS. 
 Read. Henry, 254. 
 Reade. Sir William, 93, 95. 
 Redshaw. Mrs. Hannah. 123. 
 Reynolds. Baron, i;6, 180. 
 Reynolds. Dr. Henry Revelle, 16, 
 
 394. 
 Reynolds. Sir Joshua. 427. 
 Richardson. Daniel. 3.%6. 357. 
 Richelieu. 381. 
 Robertson, Willam, 193. 
 Koblnson, Mr.. 317. 
 Robinson. Thomas. 98, 
 Rochford. Earl of. US. 
 Rock, Dr.. 212. 
 Rogers. Tom. 22.1. 
 r.nlfe. The Key. Edmund. .320. 
 Rolfe. Robert Mousey. 320. 
 :Sose. Mr.. 78. 
 Rushe, Sir Thomas. 26. 
 Rust, Dean. 273. 274. 
 Rutland, Duke of. 441. 
 Saftord. Dr. Thomas. 9(1. 91. 
 Sally, Crazy, 209. 
 Saudcrs, Dr. Buck, 393, 
 Savllle. Sir George. 280. 
 Savoy. Duke of. 235. 
 Saxby, Dr.. 330. 
 Scott, Claude and Co., 303. 
 Scott, Reginald. •-I'!!. 
 Seott, Sir Walter. ,50. 315, 
 .Sedley. Sir Charles. 195. 
 Seieuciis, lOS. 
 Seymour. Algernon, 398. 
 Shandy. Mrs., 481. 
 Sharp. Dr. Sam. 292. 
 Shaw. Peter. L'92. 
 SheUield, Lady. 2:i.S. 
 Sheldon. Dr. .Tohn. 183, 
 Sheustone, :!0. 427. 
 Sheppard. II. Fleetwood. 479. 
 Sheridan. R. B.. 395. 
 Shirley, Dr. Thomas. 23. 
 Short. Dr. Tliomas. 117. 
 Sldmouth. Lord. 393. 
 Sligo. Lord. 368. 370. 
 Sloane. Sir Hans. 51. 68. 72. 96, 1«1. 
 
 297. 393. 395, 421. 
 Slop. Dr.. 4S1. 
 Smart. Dr.. 316. 
 Smith. Adam. 493. 
 Smith, Sir WllUam, 272,
 
 516 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Smith. Dr.. 3S3. 
 
 SmltbsoD. Sir Hugb. 39S. 
 
 Smr.ll,.tt. T. G.. B9. 233. 333. 42«. 
 
 Sols.'ious, Chevailcr. 152. 
 
 .S' iuers^et. Duke of. 398. 
 
 Southcole. Joanna, 347. 
 
 Spt'ncpr. Lady. 349. 
 
 Sprnl. Bishop. 129. 
 
 StHlIrjrd. Dr.. 145, 146. 
 
 Staudlsh, Dr.. 484. 
 
 Stouley. Sir Edward. 44. 
 
 Stanley. Vcnetla. 43. 
 
 Steele. Sir Richard. 101. 120. lon. 
 
 400, 428. 463. 
 Stephens. Joanna. 2S,S, 2S9. 
 Sterne, Lnurencc 193. 428. 4S1. 
 Slovve. John. 19,' 171. 
 Mrlckland. Agnes, 243. 
 Stunrt, Charles Edward, 193. 
 Stubbe, Dr. Henry. 168, 273. 
 Sutcllffe. Dr., 335. 
 Swartenburgh. Dr. Sleur. 153. 
 Swift. Jonathan. 72, 73, 93, 132. l.';0. 
 
 1S7. I8.S. 197. 314. 375. 4IX). 
 Sydenham. Dr.. 51. 52. 
 Sydney. Sir PblUr. 42. 
 Sympathetlr powder. 45. 
 Talliir. Lady. 33. 165. 
 Talbot, Sir G., 58. 381. 
 Tantley. .378. 
 Tatler, The, 126. 
 Taylor. Chevalier, 297. 299. 310, 352. 
 
 355. 
 Taylor, John. Jr.. 302. 
 Thackeray. 401. 
 Tbeveneau, Dr., 238. 
 Thompson. Dr., 67. 
 Thornton, Bonnel, 14. 
 Thurlow, Bishop. 355. 
 Thurlow. Lord. 12. 
 Tissot, 102. 
 Tovell. John. 439. 
 Townsend. Dr.. 83. 
 Trelawny. Sir William. 430. 
 Trevor, Lord. 429. 
 Tlike. Col., 37. 58. 
 Turner, Dr., 29, 229. 
 Turton. Dr. J.. 161. 
 Tysnn of Hackney. 143. 
 Vallerlola. 264. 
 V.in Bochell. Dr.. 413. 
 Taudepat, Sir George, 1S6. 
 
 Vannlnus. 264. 
 
 Ventadour. M. De, 235. 
 
 Vespaalan, 261. 
 
 Victoria, Dr. Fernandus de, 21. 
 
 Victoria, Queen, 173. 
 
 VlUars, 105. 106, 107 351. 
 
 VoD Elliliou. Dr., 283. 
 
 Wadd. Dr. William, 174, 22S. 
 
 Wakley, .Mr.. 366. 
 
 Walker. Obadlah. 129, 130. 
 
 Walpole. Horace, 234. 333. 
 
 Walpole. Kobert. 252. 314. 
 
 Walsh. Dr.. 380. 
 
 Waltham. Mrs. Margaret 481. 
 
 Ward, 24S. 295. 297. 308. 
 
 Ward's pills. 96. 
 
 Warren, Dr.. 211. :>n4. 
 
 Wat.son. Sir William. 161. 
 
 Weathcrby. Jo.. 156. 
 
 Wedderburne, 465. 
 
 Weld. Charles. ,57. 
 
 Wellington, Duke of. 193. 
 
 Wendy. Dr. Thomas, 20. 164. 
 
 Whichot. Dr. Benjamin. 272. 274. 
 
 Whistler. Dr.. 113. 117. 
 
 Whltaker. Dr. Tobias, 14S. 
 
 Whltefnod. The KeT. John, 40. 
 
 WIerus, 264. 
 
 Wigs. 15. 
 
 Wilkes. John, 381. 
 
 Wllklns. Dr., 272. 
 
 William III., US, 119, 138, 198. 
 
 IV., 173. 
 Williams. Dr.. 382. 
 Willis. Dr.. 174. 394. 
 Wilson, 217, 
 
 WlngBeld, Sir Robert. 37. 
 Wlnslow, Dr. Forbes. 53. 321. 
 Winston, Dr. Thomas, 63. 
 Wolcot. John, 430. 
 WollastoD. Dr. William Hyde. 59. 
 Wolsey, Cardinal. 21. 
 Wood. Anthony S, .''15. 423. 
 Woodhouse. The Hon. rrancla. 298. 
 Woodhouse. Mrs.. 288. 
 Woodvllle. Dr.. 489. 
 Woodward. Dr. John. 72. 248. C7V. 
 Wordsworth. William. 59. 
 Wrench. Sir B. njamln. 313. 
 Wyntcr. Dr.. 377. 379. 
 Yaxley. Dr. Robert. 21.
 
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