THE DOCTOR'S RECREATION SERIES CHARLES WELLS MOULTON General Editor J VOLUME FOUR A^S^I./SMANfie. ^tMJl. e&frf*.^- r . -j-. -!■ V woci? i ccs-^f. PROI-. Bii.LRofH^' Surgical CLtjfic ttt^wti. J A Book About DOCTORS irii^i «B 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>' 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: '''