LOCKE AND SYDENHAM
&c.
' Knowledge and Wisdom, far from being one,
Have ofttimes no connexion. Knowledge dwells
In heads replete with thoughts of other men ;
Wisdom in minds attentive to their own.
Knowledge is proud, that he has learnt so much ;
Wisdom is humble, that he knows no more:
THE UMKAI
FOR
EDMONSTON AND DOUGLAS.
LONDON HAMILTON, ADAMS, AND CO.
CAMBRIDGE, MACMILLAN AND CO.
GLASGOW, JAMES MACLEHOSE.
LOCKE AND SYDENHAM
&c. &c.
BY JOHN BROWN, M.D.
F. R. S. E.
EDITION
EDINBURGH
EDMONSTON AND DOUGLAS
1866
TO JAMES SYME, F.R.S.E.
SURGEON IX ORDINARY TO THE QUEEN IN SCOTLAND
PROFESSOR OK CLINICAL SURGERY IN THE
UNIVERSITY OK EDINBURGH
WITH THE AFFECTIONATE REGARDS OF HIS OLD APPRENTICE.
1 CSG593
VERAX
CAPAX SAGAX
PERSPICAX EFF1CAX
TEN AX.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
PREFACE, i
INTRODUCTORY, 9
LOCKE AND SYDENHAM, 33
DR. ANDREW COMBE, 135
DR. HENRY MARSHALL AND MILITARY HYGIENE, 165
ART AND SCIENCE : A 7 CONTRASTED PARALLEL, . 225
OUR GIDEON GRAYS, 243
DR. ANDREW BROWN AND SYDENHAM, . . 261
FREE COMPETITION' IN MEDICINE, ... 277
EDWARD FORBES 1 285
DR. ADAMS OF BANCHORY, 297
HENRY VAUGHAN, . 309
EXCURSUS ETHICUS, . . . . . . 357
PREFACE.
THESE occasional Papers appeared, with a
few exceptions, in the early editions of HOR^E
SUBSECIV^E, and were afterwards excluded as
being too professional for the general reader.
They have been often inquired for since, and
are now reprinted with some fear that they
may be found a sort of compromise of flesh and
fowl, like the duck-billed Platypus neither one
thing nor the other not medical enough for
the doctors, and too medical for their patients.
If they are of any use, it will be in confirming
in the old, and impressing on the young prac-
titioners of the art of healing, the importance
of knowledge at first hand ; of proving all
things, and holding fast only that which is
good ; of travelling through life and through
its campaigns, as far as can be, like Caesar
ii Preface.
relictis impedimentis neither burdened over-
much with mere word-knowledge, nor led cap-
tive by tradition and routine, nor demoralized
by the pestilent lusts of novelty, notoriety, or
lucre.
This is one great difficulty of modern times ;
the choosing not only what to know, but what
to trust ; what not to know, and what to forget.
Often when I see some of our modern Admirable
Crichtons leaving their university, armed cap-a-
pie, and taking the road, where they are sure to
meet with lions of all sorts, I think of King Jamie
in his full armour ' Naebody daur meddle
wi' me, and,' with a helpless grin, ' I daur
meddle wi' naebody.' Much of this excess of
the material of knowledge is the glory of our
age, but much of it likewise goes to its hind-
rance and its shame, and forms the great diffi-
culty with medical education. Every man ought
to consider all his lecture-room knowledge as
only so much outside of himself, which he must,
if it is to do him any good, take in mode-
rately, silently, selectly ; and by his own gastric
juice and chylopoietics, turn, as he best can, in
Preface. iii
succum et sanguinem. The muscle and the cin-
eritious matter, the sense and the power, will
follow as matters of course.
And every man who is in earnest, who looks
at nature and his own proper work, with his
own eyes, goes on through life demolishing as
well as building up what he has been taught,
and what he teaches himself. He must make
a body of medicine for himself, slowly, steadily,
and with a single eye to the truth. He must
not on every emergency run off to his Cyclo-
p<zdias, or, still worse, to his Manuals.
For in physic, as in other things, men are apt
to like ready-made knowledge ; which is gener-
ally as bad as ready-made shoes, or a second-
hand coat.
Our ordinary senses, our judgment and our
law of duty, must make up the prime means
of mastering and prosecuting with honour and
success, the medical, or indeed any other pro-
fession founded upon the common wants of man-
kind. Microscopes, pleximeters, the nice tests of
a delicate chemistry, and all the transcendental
aonaratus of modern refinement, must always be
iv Preface.
more for the few than for the many. Therefore
it is that I would insist more and more on imme-
diate, exact, intense observation and individual
judgment, as the mainstays of practical medi-
cine. From the strenuous, life-long, truth-loving
exercise of these, let no amount of science, how-
ever exquisite, decoy the student ; and let him
who has them, not greatly long after, as he will
not greatly miss, these higher graces of the pro-
fession. What will make a valuable physician
or surgeon now, and enable him when he dies
to bequeath some good thing to his fellow-men,
must in the main be the same as that which
made Hippocrates and Sydenham, Baillie and
Gregory, what we glory and rejoice to think
they were.
Therefore, my young friend, trust neither too
much to others, nor too much to yourself ;
but trust everything to ascertained truth to
principles ; and as chemists can do nothing
without a perfect balance, so see to it that
your balance, that weighing faculty which God
has given you, is kept true in a state, as
Locke would say, of ' absolute indifferency,'
Preface. v
turning only to the touch of honest weight.
See that dust does not gather on its agate plate
and studs, clogging its free edge. See that no
one loads it, that you don't load it yourself for
we are all apt to believe that which we desire,
and put down its results, as on soul and con-
science, at all hazards letting it tell the truth,
the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
One can fancy the care with which such men
as Newton, Bishop Butler, Dr. Wollaston, or
our own Faraday, would keep their mental
balance in trim in what a sacred and inmost
place, away from all ' winds of doctrine,' all
self-deceit and ' cunning craftiness,' all rust, all
damp, all soiling touch, all disturbing influ-
ences, acting as truly as anything either of the
Oertlings, or Staudinger, or the exquisite Bianchi
could turn out, 1 turning sweetly and at once,
as theirs do, for big weights with the -g^rth, and
with small with the Tfnnjth of a grain. And to
keep up our joke, we need not be always pon-
dering ; we should use what the chemists call
1 A friend says, ' put in Liebrich and Jung, and that a good
balance should turn with nnnjTsth of a Troy grain' !
vi Preface.
the arrestment, by which the balance is relieved
and rests. We will weigh and judge all the
better that we are not always at it ; we may
with advantage take a turn at rumination, con-
templation, and meditation, all different and all
restful, as well as useful ; and don't let us out
of idleness or super-consciousness take to ever-
lasting weighing of ourselves.
As far as you can, trust no other man's scales,
or weights, or eyes, when you can use your own,
and let us in a general way look with both our
eyes.
It was a great relief to reflecting mankind,
when the stereoscope showed us the use of
having two eyes, and that human nature had
not been all its days carrying number two as a
fox-hunter does his extra horse-shoe, in case of
losing number one.
We see solidity by means of our two eyes ;
we see, so to speak, on both sides of a body ;
and we find, what indeed was known before,
that the ultimate image, or rather the idea of
external objects, is a compromise of two images,
a tertium quid, which has no existence but in
Preface. vii
the brain, somewhere, I suppose, in the optic
Chiasma.
Now there is such a thing as stereoscopic
thinking, the viewing subjects as well as ob-
jects with our two eyes. Some men of in-
tense nature shut one of the eyes of the mind,
as a sportsman does his actual eye when he aims
at his game, because then there is a straight
line between his eye and his object ; but for the
general purpose of understanding and master-
ing the true bulk and projection, the where-
abouts and relations of a subject, it is well to
look with both eyes ; and so it comes to pass
that the focus of one man's mental vision differs
from that of another, probably in some respects
from that of all others, and hence the allowance
which we should make for other men when they
fail to see not only things, but thoughts, exactly
as we do. We will find, when we look through
their stereoscope, we don't see their image as
they do, it may be double, it may be distorted
and blurred. I have long thought that upon
the deepest things in man's nature those that
bind him to duty, to God, and to eternity, no
viii Preface.
man receives the light, no man sees ' into the
life of things,' exactly as any other does, and
that as each man of the millions of the race
since time began, has his own essence, that
which makes him himself, and qua that, dis-
tinct from all else, so ultimate truth, when it
lies down to rest and be thankful on the optic
Thalami of the soul, has in it a something in-
communicable, unintelligible to all others. No
two men out of ten thousand, gazing at a rain-
bow, see the same bow. They have each a
glorious arch of their own, and while they agree
as to what each says of it, still doubtless there
is in each of those ten thousand internal glories
within the veil, in the chamber of imagery,
some touch, some tint, which differentiates it
from all the rest. But to return : look with both
eyes, and think the truth as you would speak
and act it. It is the rarer virtue, I suspect. '
When the English nobility were overwhelm-
ing Canova with commissions, and were igno-
rant of the existence of their own Flaxman, the
generous Italian rebuked them by saying, ' You
English see with your ears ;' and there is much
Preface. ix
of this sort of seeing in medicine as well as in
art and fashion.
I end with the weighty words of one who I
rejoice is still a living honour to our art ; a man
uniting much of the best of Locke and Syden-
ham with more of himself, and whose small
volumes contain the very medulla medicines ;
a man who has the courage to say, ' I was
wrong,' ' I do not know ;' and ' I shall wait
and watch.'
' I make bold to tell you my conviction, that
during the last thirty-six years the practice of
medicine has upon the whole' (taking in the
entire profession) 'gone backwards, and that
year after year it is still going backwards.
Doubtless in the meantime there has been a
vast increase of physiological and pathological
knowledge ; but that knowledge has not been
brought to bear, in anything like the degree it
might and ought to have been, upon the prac-
tice of medicine ; and simply for this reason,
that the mass of the profession has never been
taught what the practice of medicine means.
' Had the same office (the settling the kind
3
x Preface.
and amount of professional education) been
committed to Gregory, and Heberden, and
Baillie, they would, I am persuaded, have
made the indispensable subjects of education very
few, and the lectures very feiu too.
' They would have made the attendance upon
the sick in hospitals a constant, systematic,
serious affair. 1 As for the " ologies," they would
have thrown them all overboard, or recom-
mended them only to the study of those who
had time enough, or capacity enough, to pursue
them profitably.' These are golden words ; put
them in your scales, and read off and register
their worth. You will observe that it is the
'practice, not the study it is the inner art, not
the outer science of medicine which is here
referred to as being retrograde. We question
very much if there is as much skill, in its proper
sense, now as then. There is to be sure the
1 We wish we saw more time, and more handiwork, more
mind spent upon anatomy and surgery, especially clinical
surgery. There is a great charm for the young in the visi-
bility of surgical disease and practice, in knowledge at tha
finger-ends, and the principles and performance of a true sur-
gery constitute one of the best disciplines for the office of the
physician proper.
Preface. xi
immense negative blessing of our deliverance
from the polypharmacy and nimia diligentia
of our forefathers, and therefore very likely
more of the sick get well now than then.
But this is not the point in question ; that is
whether the men who practise medicine, taken
in the slump, have the ability and practical nous
that they had five-and-thirty years ago.
Diagnosis has been greatly advanced by the
external methods of auscultation, the micro-
scope, chemical analysis, etc. and there is (I
sometimes begin to fear we must say was) a
better understanding of and trust in the great
restorative powers of nature. The recognition
of blood poisons, and of many acute diseases,
being in fact the burning out of long-slumber-
ing mischief, the cleansing away of the perilous
stuff manufactured within, or taken in from
without, as seen in a fit of gout ; in all this we
have gained more than we have lost (we always
lose something), but is the practical power over
disease commensurate with these enlargements ?
is our sagacity up to our science ?
The raw ' prentice' lad, whom Gideon Gray
xii Preface.
had sent up from Middlemas to the head of
Caddon Water, to deliver the herd's wife, and
who, finding her alone, and sinking from uterine
haemorrhage, and having got the huge flaccid
deadly bag to contract once more, imprisoned
it in a wooden bicker or bowl, with a tight
binder over it, leaving his hands free for other
work, this rough and ready lad has probably
more of the making of a village Abercrombie,
than the pallid and accomplished youth who
is spending his holidays at the next farm, and
who knows all for and against Dr. R. Lee's
placental and cardiac claims, and is up to the
newest freak of the Fallopian tubes and their
fimbrice, or the very latest news from the ovisac
and the corpora lutea.
To be sure, there may be boys who can both
know everything, and do the one thing that is
needed, but the mental faculties, or capacities
rather, that are cultivated, and come out strong
in the cramming system, are not those on which
we rely for safe, ready, and effectual action.
We are now, in our plans of medical educa-
tion, aiming too much at an impossible vmxi-
Preface. xiii
mum of knowledge in all, meanwhile missing
greatly that essential minimum in any, which,
after all, is the one thing we want for making a
serviceable staff of doctors for the community.
Sagacity, manual dexterity, cultivated and in-
telligent presence of mind, the tactus eruditus, a
kind heart, and a conscience, these, if there at
all, are always at hand, always inestimable ; and
if wanting, ' though I speak with the tongues
of men and of angels, I am as sounding brass,
or a tinkling cymbal ; and . though I under-
stand all mysteries, and all knowledge, I am
nothing.' I can profit my patient and myself
nothing.
In the words of Dr. Latham : l
' In our day there is little fear that students
will be spoiled by the recommendation of their
instructors to be content with a scanty know-
ledge, and trust to their own sagacity for the
rest. They are not likely to suffer harm by
having Sydenham held up as an example for
imitation. The fear is of another kind (and it
is well grounded), namely, that many men of
1 Clinical Medicine, Lect. I.
xiv Preface.
the best abilities and good education will be de-
terred from prosecuting physic as a profession,
in consequence of the necessity indiscriminately
laid upon all for impossible attainments'
And again :
'Let us take care then what we are about,
and beware how we change the character of
the English practitioner of physic. He is
sound and unpretending, and full of good sense.
What he wants is a little more careful, and
a somewhat larger instruction in what bears
directly upon the practical part of his profes-
sion. Give it him (indeed we are giving it
him), and he will become more trustworthy
and more respected every day. But for all that
is beyond this, we may recommend it, but -we
must not insist upon it ; we must leave it for
each man to pursue according to his leisure,
his opportunities, and his capacity, and not
exaggerate it into a matter of necessity for all.
When too much is exacted, too little will be
learned ; excess on the one hand naturally
leads to defect on the other.' *
Preface. xv
I am almost ashamed of slipping into this
volume the rambling paper on Vaughan, my only
excuse, and it is none, being that the gentle and
heavenly-minded Silurist was a country surgeon.
Perhaps a better excuse would be, that I like
to show that our medicus may be not only, like
Locke, at once a good physician and meta-
physician, or, like Adams, equally great as a
scholar and a domestic ' leech,' but that he may
be a poet too ; and, moreover, that we hard-
worked family doctors, when the day's work is
over, and our books posted, our letters answered,
and our newspaper duly studied, may take up
our Tennyson, our Wordsworth, our Dryden, our
Cowper, our Shakspere, or our Scott, and
read ourselves pleasantly asleep in our arm-
chair. May this be not seldom the fate of our
' Henry Vaughan' !
J.B.
23, RUTLAND STREET,
April 15, i860.
INTRODUCTORY.
T N that delightful and provoking book, ' THE
DOCTOR, etc.,' Southey says : ' " Prefaces," said
Charles Blount, Gent, " Prefaces," according to this
flippant, ill-opinioned, and unhappy man, " ever
were, and still are, but of two sorts, let the mode
and fashions vary as they please, let the long
peruke succeed the godly cropt hair; the cravat,
the ruff ; presbytery, popery ; and popery, presby-
tery again, yet still the author keeps to his old
and wonted method of prefacing; when at the
beginning of his book he enters, either with a
halter round his neck, submitting himself to his
reader's mercy whether he shall be hanged or no,
or else, in a huffing manner, he appears with the
halter in his hand, and threatens to hang his
reader, if he gives him not his good word. This,
with the excitement of friends to his undertaking,
and some few apologies for the want of time,
books, and the like, are the constant and usual
i c Introductory.
shams of all scribblers, ancient and modern." This
was not true then,' says Southey, 'nor is it now.'
I differ from Southey, in thinking there is some
truth in both ways of wearing the halter. For
though it be neither manly nor honest to affect
a voluntary humility (which is after all a sneaking
vanity, and would soon show itself if taken at its
word), any more than it is well-bred, or seemly to
put on (for it generally is put on) the ' huffing
manner,' both such being truly ' shams,' there
is general truth in Mr. Blount's flippances.
Every man should know and lament (to himself
mainly) his own shortcomings should mourn over
and mend, as he best can, the ' confusions of his
wasted youth ; ' he should feel how ill he has put
out to usury the talent given him by the Great
Taskmaster how far he is from being ' a good
and faithful servant ; ' and he should make this
rather understood than expressed by his manner
as a writer ; while at the same time, every man
should deny himself the luxury of taking his hat
off to the public, unless he has something to say,
and has done his best to say it aright ; and every
man should pay not less attention to the dress
in which his thoughts present themselves, than he
would to that of his person on going into company.
Bishop Butler, in his Preface to his Sermons, in
which there is perhaps more solid living sense
Introdiictory. 1 1
than in the same number of words anywhere else,
after making the distinction between ' obscurity' and
' perplexity and confusion of thought,' the first
being in the subject, the others in its expression,
says, ' confusion and perplexity are, in writing,
indeed without excuse, because any one may, if
he pleases, know whether he understands or sees
through what he is about, and it is unpardonable
in a man to lay his thoughts before others, when
he is conscious that he himself does not know
whereabouts he is, or how the matter before him
stands. It is coming abroad in disorder, which he
ought to be dissatisfied to find himself in at home.'
There should therefore be in his Preface, as in
the writer himself, two elements. A writer should
have some assurance that he has something to say,
and this assurance should, in the true sense, not
the Milesian, be modest.
My objects, -in this volume of odds and ends,
are, among others
I. To give my vote for going back to the old manly
intellectual and literary culture of the days of Syden-
ham and Arbuthnot, Heberden and Gregory ; when
a physician fed, enlarged, and quickened his entire
nature ; when he lived in the world of letters as a
freeholder, and reverenced the ancients, while, at
the same time, he pushed on among his fellows,
1 2 Introductory,
and lived in the present, believing that his profes-
sion and his patients need not suffer, though his
horce subseciva were devoted occasionally to mis-
cellaneous thinking and reading, and to a course of
what is elsewhere called ' fine confused feeding,'
or though, at his bye-hours he be, as his Gaelic his-
torian says of Rob Roy, a man ' of incoherent trans-
actions specially in general.' For system is not
always method, much less progress.
II. That the study in himself and others of the
human understanding, its modes and laws as objec-
tive realities, and his gaining that power over men-
tal action, in himself and others, which alone comes
from knowledge at first-hand, is one which every
physician should not only begin in youth, but con-
tinue all his life long, and which in fact all men of
sense and original thought do make, though it may
lie in their minds, as it were, unformed and with-
out a tongue.
III. That physiology and the laws of health are
the interpreters of disease and cure, over whose
porch we may best inscribe hinc sanitas. That it
is in watching Nature's methods of cure 1 in our-
selves, and in the lower animals, and in a firm
i <"That there is no curing diseases by art, without first
knowing how they are to Le cured by nature," was the observa-
tion of an ancient physician of great eminence, who very early
in my life superintended my medical education, and by this
Introdzictory . 1 3
faith in the self-regulative, recuperative powers of
nature, that all our therapeutic intentions and means
must proceed, and that we should watch and obey
this truly Divine voice and finger, -with reverence
and godly fear, as well as with diligence and worldly
wisdom humbly standing by while He works,
guiding, not stemming or withdrawing His current,
and acting as His ministers and helps. Not, how-
ever, that we should go about making every man,
and above all, every woman, his and her own
and everybody else's doctor, by making them swal-
low a dose of science and physiology, falsely so
called. There is much mischievous nonsense talked
and acted on, in this direction. The physiology
to be taught in schools, and to our clients the
public, should be the physiology of common sense,
rather than that of dogmatic and minute science ;
and should be of a kind, as it easily may be,
which will deter from self-doctoring, while it guides
in prevention and conduct; and will make them
axiom all my studies and practice have been regulated. ' Grant
on Fevers, Lond. 1771. An admirable book, and to be read
still, as its worth, like that of nature, never grows old, natiiram
non pati senium. We would advise every young physician
who is in practice, to read this unpretending and now little-
known book, especially the introduction. Any ' ancient physi-
cian,' and the greater his eminence and his age the better, so
that the eminence be real, who takes it up, will acknowledge
that the author had done what he said, made ' this axiom' the
rule of his life and doctrine.
1 4 Introductory.
understand enough of the fearful and wonderful
machinery of life, to awe and warn, as well as to
enlighten.
Much of the strength and weakness of Homoeo-
pathy lies in the paltry fallacy, that every mother,
and every clergyman, and " loose woman," as a wise
friend calls the restless public old maid, may know
when to administer aconite, arsenicum, and nux, to
her child, his entire parish, or her ' circle.' Indeed
here, as elsewhere, man's great difficulty is to strive
to walk through life, and through thought and prac-
tice, in a straight line ; to keep in media in that
golden mean, which is our true centre of gravity, and
which we lost in Eden. We all tend like children,
or the blind, the old, or the tipsy, to walk to one
side, or wildly from one side to the other : one ex-
treme breeds its opposite. Hydropathy sees and
speaks some truth, but it is as in its sleep, or with
one eye shut, and one leg lame ; its practice does
good, much of its theory is sheer nonsense, and yet
it is the theory that its masters and their constituents
doat on.
If all that is good in the Water-Cure, and in
Rubbing, and in Homoeopathy, were winnowed from
the false, the useless, and the worse, what an im-
portant and permanent addition would be made to
our' operative knowledge ! to our powers as healers !
and here it is, where I cannot help thinking that we
Introductory. 1 5
have, as a profession, gone astray in our indiscrim-
inate abuse of all these new practices and nostrums :
they indicate, however coarsely and stupidly, some
want in us. There is in them all something good,
and if we could draw to us, instead of driving away
from us, those men whom we call, and in the main
truly call, quacks, if we could absorb them with a
difference, rejecting the ridiculous and mischievous
much, and adopting and sanctioning the valuable
little, we and the public would be all the better off.
Why should not ' the Faculty' have under their con-
trol and advice, and at their command, rubbers, and
shampooers, and water men, and milk men, and grape
men, and cudgelling men, as they have cuppers, and
the like, instead of giving them the advantage of
crying out ' persecution,' and quoting the martyrs of
science from Galileo doVnwards.
IV. As my readers may find to their discontent,
the natural, and, till we get into ' an ampler sether
and diviner air,' the necessary difference between
speculative science and practical art is iterated and
reiterated with much persistency, and the necessity
of estimating medicine more as the Art of healing
than the Science of diseased action and appearances, 1
1 When the modern scientific methods first burst on our
medical world, and especially, -when morbid anatomy in con-
nexion with physical signs (as distinguished from purely vital
symptoms, an incomplete but convenient distinction), the stetho-
scope, microscope, etc., it, as a matter of course, became the
1 6 Introductory.
and its being more teachable and better by example
than by precept, insisted on as one of the most
urgent wants of the time. But I must stick to this.
Regard for, and reliance on a person, is not less
necessary for a young learner, than belief in a prin-
ciple, or an abstract body of truth ; and here it is
that we have given up the good of the old apprentice-
ship system, along with its evil. This will remedy,
rage to announce, with startling minuteness, what was the
organic condition of the interior as if a watchmaker would
spend most of his own time and his workmen's in debating on
the beautiful ruins of his wheels, instead of teaching himself and
them to keep the totum quid clean and going, winding it up
before it stopped. Renowned clinical professors would keep
shivering, terrified, it might be dying, patjents sitting up while
they exhibited their powers in auscultation and pleximetry, etc. ,
the poor students, honest fellows, standing by all the while and
supposing this to be their chief end ; and the same eager, ad-
mirable, and acute performer, after putting down everything in
a book, might be seen moving on to the lecture-room, where
he told the same youths -what they would find on dissection, with
more of minuteness than accuracy, deepening their young won-
der into awe, and begetting a rich emulation in all these arts
of diagnosis, while he forgot to order anything for the cure or
relief of the disease ! This actually happened in a Parisian
hospital, and an Englishman, with his practical turn, said to the
lively, clear-headed professor, ' But what are you going to give
him?' 'Oh!' shrugging his shoulders, 'I quite forgot about
that ;' possibly little was needed, or could do good, but that
little should have been the main thing, and not have been
shrugged at. It is told of another of our Gallic brethren, that
having discovered a specific for a skin disease, he pursued it
with such keenness on the field of his patient's surface, that he
perished just when it did. On going into the dead-house, our
Introductory. 1 7
and is remedying itself. The abuse of huge classes of
mere hearers of the law, under the Professor, has
gone, I hope, to its utmost, and we may now look
for the system breaking up into small bands of doers
acting under the Master, rather than multitudes of
mere listeners, and not unoften sleepers.
Connected with this, I cannot help alluding to the
crying and glaring sin of publicity, in medicine, as
conqueror examined the surface of the subject with much in-
terest, and some complacency not a vestige of disease or life,
and turning on his heel, said, ' // est mart guri /' Cured
indeed ! with the disadvantage, single, but in one sense infinite,
of the man being dead ; dead, with the advantage, general, but
at best finite, of the scaly tetter being cured.
In a word, let me say to my young medical friends, give
more attention to steady common observation the old Hippo-
cratic d/rp/^eta, exactness, literal accuracy, precision, niceness of
sense ; what Sydenham calls the natural history of disease.
Symptoms- axe. universally available ; they are the voice of nature ;
signs, by which I mean more artificial and refined means of
scrutiny the stethoscope, the microscope, etc. are not always
within the power of every man, and with all their help, are
additions, not substitutes. Besides, the best natural and un-
assisted observer the man bred in the constant practice of keen
discriminating insight is the best man for all instrumental
niceties ; and above all, the faculty and habit of gathering
together the entire symptoms, and selecting what of these are
capital and special ; and trusting in medicine as a tentative art,
which even at its utmost conceivable perfection, has always to
do with variable quantities, and is conjectural and helpful more
than positive and all-sufficient, content with probabilities, with
that measure of uncertainty which experiences teaches us attaches
to everything human and conditioned. Here are the candid
and wise words of Professor Syme : ' In performing an opera-
B
1 8 Introductory.
indeed in everything else. Every great epoch brings
with it its own peculiar curse as well as blessing, and
in religion, in medicine, in everything, even the most
sacred and private, this sin of publicity now-a-days
most injuriously prevails. Every one talks of every-
thing and everybody, and at all sorts of times,
forgetting that the greater and the better the inner
part, of a man, is, and should be private much of
it more than private. Public piety, for instance,
tion upon the living body, we are not in the condition of a
blacksmith or carpenter, who understands precisely the qualities
of the materials upon which he works, and can depend on
their being always the same. The varieties of human constitu-
tion must always expose our proceedings to a degree of uncer-
tainty, and render even the slightest liberties possibly productive
of the most serious consequences ; so that the extraction of a
tooth, the opening of a vein, or the removal of a small tumour,
has been known to prove fatal. Then it must be admitted that
the most experienced, careful, and skilful operator may commit
mistakes ; and I am sure that there is no one of the gentlemen
present who can look back on his practice and say he has never
been guilty of an error.' This is the main haunt and region of
his craft. This it is that makes the rational practitioner. Here
again, as in religion, men now-a-days are in search of a sort of
fixed point, a kind of demonstration and an amount of certainty
which is plainly not intended ; for from the highest to the
lowest of these compound human knowledges, ' probability^
as the great and modest Bishop Butler says, ' is the rule of
life ;' it suits us best, and keeps down our always budding self-
conceit and self-confidence. Symptoms are the body's mother-
tongue ; signs are in a foreign language ; and there is an entic-
ing absorbing something about them, which, unless feared and
understood, I have sometimes found standing in the way of the
others, which are the staple of our indications, always at hand,
and open to all.
Introductory. 1 9
which means too much the looking after the piety of
others and proclaiming our own the Pharisee, when
he goes up to the temple to pray, looking round and
criticising his neighbour the publican, who does not
so much as lift up his eyes even to heaven the
watching and speculating on, and judging (scarcely
ever with mercy or truth) the intimate and unspeak-
able relations of our fellow-creatures to their infinite
Father, is often not co-existent with the inward life of
God in the soul of man, with that personal state,
which alone deserves the word^zV/y.
So also in medicine, every one is for ever looking
after, and talking of everybody else's health, and ad-
vising and prescribing either his or her doctor or
drug, and that wholesome modesty and shamefaced-
ness, which I regret to say is now old-fashioned, is
vanishing like other things, and is being put off, as
if modesty were a mode, or dress, rather than a con-
dition and essence. Besides the bad moral habit
this engenders, it breaks up what is now too rare,
the old feeling of a family doctor there are now as
few old household doctors as servants the familiar,
kindly, welcome face, which has presided through
generations at births and deaths ; the friend who
bears about, and keeps sacred, deadly secrets which
must be laid silent in the grave, and who knows the
kind of stuff his stock is made of, their 'constitu-
tions,' all this sort of thing is greatly gone, especi-
2O Introductory.
ally in large cities, and much from this love of change,
of talk, of having everything explained, 1 or at least
named, especially if it be in Latin, of running from
one ' charming' specialist to another ; of doing a little
privately 2 and dishonestly to one's-self or the children
with the globules ; of going to see some notorious
great man without telling or taking with them their
old family friend, merely, as they say, ' to satisfy their
mind,' and of course, ending in leaving, and affront-
ing, and injuring the wise and good man. I don't
1 Dr. Cullen's words are weighty : ' Neither the acutest genius
nor the soundest judgment will avail in judging of a particular
science, in regard to which they have not been exercised. 7
have been obliged to please my patients sometimes -with reasons,
and I have found that any "will pass, even with able divines and
acute lawyers the same will pass with the husbands as with the
wives. '
2 I may seem too hard on the female doctors, but I am not
half so hard or so bitter as the old Guy (or, as his accomplished
and best editor M. Reveille-Parisfe, insists on calling him, Gui)
Patin. I have afterwards called Dr. J. H. Davidson our Scot-
tish Guy Patin ; and any one who knew that remarkable man,
and knows the Letters of the witty and learned enemy of Maza-
rin, of antimony, and of quacks, will acknowledge the likeness.
Patin, speaking of a certain Mademoiselle de Label, who had
interfered with his treatment, says, ' C'est un sot animal
qu'une femme qui se mele de notre metier. ' But the passage is
so clever and so characteristic of the man, that I give it in full :
' Noel Falconet a porte lui-meme la kttre a Mademoiselle de
Label ; son fils est encore malade. Elle ne m'a point voulu
croire ; et au lieu de se servir de mes remedes, elle lui a donne
des siens, qiio agnito recessi. C'est un sot animal qu'une femme
qui se mele de notre metier : cela n'appartient qu'a ceux qui
ont un haut-de-chausses et la tete bien faite. J'avois fait saigner
Introductory. i \
say these evils are new, I only say they are large and
active, and are fast killing their opposite virtues.
Many a miserable and tragic story might be told of
mothers, whose remorse will end only when they
'themselves lie beside some dead and beloved child,
whom they, without thinking, without telling the
father, without ' meaning anything,' have, from some
such grave folly, sent to the better country, leaving
themselves desolate and convicted. Publicity, itch-
ing ears, want of reverence for the unknown, want of
et purger ce malade ; il se portoit mieux ; elle me dit ensuite
que mes purgatifs lui avoient fait mal, et qu'elle le purgeoit de
ses petits remedes, dont elle se servoit a Lyon autrefois. Quand
j'eus reconnu par ces paroles qu'elle ne faisait pas grand etat de
mes ordonnances, je la quittai la et ai pratique le precepte, sinite
mortuos sepelire mortuos. Peut etre pourtant qu'il en rechap-
pera, ce que je souhaite de tout mon coeur ; car s'il mouroit,
elle diroit que ce seroit moi qui 1'aurois tue. Elle a temoigne
a Noel Falconet qu'elle avoit regret de m' avoir fache, qu'elle
m'enverroit de 1' argent (je n'en ai jamais pris d'eux). Feu M.
Hautin disoit : Per monachos et monachas, cognatos et cognatas,
vicinos et victims, medicus non facit res suas. Ce n'est pas a
faire a une femme de pratiquer la methode de Galien, res est
sublimioris intelligentice ; il faut avoir 1'esprit plus fort. Mtilier
est animal dimidiati intellecttis ; il faut qu'elles filent leur que-
nouille, ou au moins, comme dit Saint taul, contineant se in
silentio. Feu M. de Villeroi, le grand secretaire d'Etat, qui
avoit une mauvaise femme (il n'etoit pas tout seul, et la race
n'en est pas morte), disoit qu'en latin une femme etoit mulier,
c'est-a"-dire mule hier, mule demain, mule touj ours.' **
1 Salomon a dit quelque part : // n'y a fas de malice au-dessus de celle
fune femme. Erasme mil a cote cette reflexion : Vous observerez gu'il
n'y avait pas encore de moines (R. P- }
2 2 Introdiictory.
trust in goodness, want of what we call faith, want of
gratitude and fair dealing, on the part of the public ;
and on the part of the profession, cupidity, curiosity,
restlessness, ambition, false trust in self and in science,
the lust and haste to be rich, and to be thought
knowing and omniscient, want of breeding and good
sense, of common honesty and honour, these are the
occasions and results of this state of things.
I am not, however, a pessimist, I am, I trust, a
rational optimist, or at least a meliorist. That as a
race, and as a profession, we are gaining, I don't
doubt ; to disbelieve this, is to distrust the Supreme
Governor, and to miss the lesson of the time, which
is, in the main, enlargement and progress. But we
should all do our best to keep what of the old is
good, and detect, and moderate, and control, and
remove what of the n^w is evil. In saying this, I
would speak as much to myself as to my neighbours.
It is in vain, that yvwOi creavrbv (know thyself) is for
ever descending afresh and silently from heaven like
dew ; all this in vain, if eycoye yiyvwo-/<co (I myself
know, I am as a god, what do I not know !) is for ever
speaking to us from the ground and from ourselves.
Let me acknowledge and here the principle or
habit of publicity has its genuine scope and power
the immense good that is in our time doing by
carrying Hygienic reform into the army, the factory,
and the nursery down rivers and across fields. I
Introductory. 23
see in all these great good ; but I cannot help also
seeing those private personal dangers I have spoken
of, and the masses cannot long go on improving if
the individuals deteriorate.
There is one subject which may seem an odd one
for a miscellaneous book like this, but one in which I
have long felt a deep and deepening concern. To
be brief and plain, I refer to man-midwifery, in all
its relations, professional, social, statistical, and moral.
I have no space now to go into these fully. I may,
if some one better able does not speak out, on some
future occasion try to make it plain from reason and
experience, that the management by accoucheurs, as
they are called, of natural labour, and the separation
of this department of the human economy from the
general profession, has been a greater evil than a good;
and that we have little to thank the Grand Monarque
for, in this as in many other things, when, to conceal
the shame of the gentle La Valliere, he sent for M.
Chison instead of the customary sage-femme.
Any husband or wife, any father or mother, who
will look at the matter plainly, may see what an inlet
there is here to possible mischief, to certain unseem-
liness, and to worse. Nature tells us with her own
voice what is fitting in these cases ; and nothing but
the omnipotence of custom, or the urgent cry of
peril, terror, and agony, what Luther calls miser-
rima miseria, would make her ask for the presence of
24 Introductory.
a man on such an occasion, when she hides herself,
and is in travail. And as in all such cases, the evil
reacts on the men as a special class, and on the pro-
fession itself.
It is not of grave moral delinquencies I speak, and
the higher crimes in this region ; it is of affront to
Nature, and of the revenge which she always takes
on both parties, who actively or passively disobey
her. Some of my best and most valued friends are
honoured members of this branch ; but I believe all
the real good they can do, and the real evils they can
prevent in these cases, would be attained, if instead
of attending, to their own ludicrous loss of time,
health, sleep, and temper, some 200 cases of delivery
every year, the immense majority of which are natural,
and require no interference, but have nevertheless
wasted not a little of their life, their patience, and
their understanding they had, as I would always
have them to do, and as any well-educated resolute
doctor of medicine ought to be able to do, confined
themselves to giving their advice and assistance to
the midwife when she needed it.
I know much that may be said against this igno-
rance of midwives ; dreadful effects of this, etc. ; but
to all this I answer, Take pains to educate carefully,
and io_pay well, and treat well these women, and you
may safely regulate ulterior means by the ordinary
general laws of surgical and medical therapeutics.
Introductory. 2 5
Why should not 'Peg Tamson, Jean Simson, and
Alison Jaup' 1 be sufficiently educated and paid to
enable them to conduct victoriously the normal ob-
stetrical business of ' Middlemas' and its region,
leaving to ' Gideon Gray' the abnormal, with time to
cultivate his mind and his garden, or even a bit of
farm, and to live and trot less hard than he is at
present obliged to do 1 Thus, instead of a man in
general practice, and a man, it may be, with an area
of forty miles for his beat, sitting for hours at the bed-
side of a healthy woman, his other patients meanwhile
doing the best or the worst they can, and it may be,
as not unfrequently happens, two or more labours
going on at once ; and instead of a timid, ignorant,
trusting woman to whom her Maker has given
enough of *' sorrow,' and of whom Shakspeare's Con-
stance is the type, when she says, ' I am sick, and
capable of fears ; I am full of fears, subject to fears ;
I am a woman, and therefore naturally born to fears'
being in this hour of her agony and apprehension
subjected to the artificial misery of fearing the doctor
may be too late, she might have the absolute security
and womanly hand and heart of one of her own sex.
This subject might be argued upon statistical
grounds, and others; but I peril it chiefly on the
whole system being unnatural. Therefore, for the
sake of those who have borne and carried us, and
1 Vide Sir Walter Scott's Surgeon's Daughter.
26 Introductory.
whom we bind ourselves to love and cherish, to
comfort and honour, and who suffer so much that
is inevitable from the primal curse, for its own
sake, let the profession look into this entire subject
in all its bearings, honestly, fearlessly, and at once.
Child-bearing is a process of health ; the exceptions
are few indeed, and would, I believe, be fewer if we
doctors would let well alone.
One or two other things, and I am done. I
could have wished to have done better justice to
that noble class of men our country practitioners,
who dare not speak out for themselves. They are
underpaid often not paid at all underrated, and
treated in a way that the commonest of their patients
would be ashamed to treat his cobbler. How is
this to be mended? It is mending itself by the
natural law of starvation, and descent per deliquium.
Generally speaking, our small towns had three times
too many doctors, and, therefore, each of their
Gideon Grays had two-thirds too little to live on;
and being in this state of chronic hunger they were
in a state of chronic anger at each other not less
steady, with occasional seizures more active and
acute ; they had recourse to all sorts of shifts and
meannesses to keep soul and body together for
themselves and their horse, whilst they were acting
with a devotion, and generally speaking, with an
intelligence and practical beneficence, such as I
Introductory, 2 7
know, and I know them well, nothing to match.
The gentry are in this, as in many country things,
greatly to blame. They should cherish, and reward,
and associate with those men who are in all essen-
tials their equals, and from whom they would gain
as much as they give ; but this will right itself as
civilized mankind return, as they are doing, to the
country, and our little towns will thrive now that
lands change, lairds get richer, and dread the city
as they should.
The profession in large towns might do much for
their friends who can do so little for themselves.
I am a voluntary in religion, and would have all
State churches abolished ; but I have often thought
that if there was a class that ought to be helped by
the State, it is the country practitioners in wild dis-
tricts ; or what would be better, by the voluntary
association of those in the district who have means
in this case creeds would not be troublesome.
However, I am not backing this scheme. I would
leave all these things to the natural laws of supply
and demand, with the exercise of common honesty,
honour, and feeling, in this, as in other things.
The taking the wind out of the rampant and
abominable quackeries and patent medicines, by
the State withdrawing altogether the protection and
sanction of its stamp, its practical encouragement
(very practical), and giving up their large gains
2 & Introductory.
from this polluted and wicked source, would, I am
sure, be a national benefit. Quackery, and the
love of being quacked, are in human nature as
weeds are in our fields ; but they may be fostered
into frightful luxuriance, in the dark and rich soil
of our people, and not the less that Her Majesty's
superscription is on the bottle or pot.
I would beg the attention of my elder brethren
to what I have said on Medical Reform and the
doctrine of free competition. I feel every day more
and more its importance and its truth. I rejoice
many ways at the passing of the new Medical Bill,
and the leaving so much to the discretion of the
Council ; it is curiously enough almost verbatim,
and altogether in spirit, the measure Professor Syme
has been for many years advocating through good
and through bad report, with his characteristic
vigour and plainness. Holloway's Ointment, or
Parr's Pills, or any such monstra horrenda, attain
their gigantic proportions and power of doing mis-
chief, greatly by their having Governmental sanction
and protection. Men of capital are thus encour-
aged to go into them, and to spend thousands a
year in advertisements, and newspaper proprietors
degrade themselves into agents for their sale. One
can easily see how harmless, if all this were swept
away, the hundred Holloways, who would rise up
and speedily kill nobody but each other, would
Introductory. 29
become, instead of one huge inapproachable mono-
polist ; this is the way to put down quackery, by
ceasing to hold it up. It is a disgrace to our
nation to draw, as it does, hundreds of thousands
a year from these wages of iniquity.
I had to apologize for bringing in ' Rab and his
Friends.' I did so, remembering well the good I
got then, as a man and as a doctor. It let me see
down into the depths of our common nature, and
feel the strong and gentle touch that we all need,
and never forget, which makes the whole world kin ;
and it gave me an opportunity of introducing, in a
way which he cannot dislike, for he knows it is
true, my old master and friend, Professor Syme,
whose indenture I am thankful I possess, and whose
first wheels I delight in thinking my apprentice-
fee purchased, thirty years ago. I remember as
if it were yesterday, his giving me the first drive
across the west shoulder of Corstorphine Hill. On
starting, he said, ' John, we'll do one thing at a
time, and there will be no talk.' I sat silent and
rejoicing, and can remember the very complexion
and clouds of that day and that matchless view :
Dunmyat and Benlcdi resting couchant at the gate of
the Highlands, with the blue Grampians, immane
pecus, crowding down into the plain.
This short and simple story shows, that here, as
even-where else, personally, professionally, and pub-
30 Introductory.
licly, reality is his aim and his attainment. He is
one of the men they are all too few who desire
to be on the side of truth more even than to have
truth on their side ; and whose personal and private
worth are always better understood than expressed.
It has been happily said of him, that he never
wastes a word, or a drop of ink, or a drop of
blood ; and his is the strongest, exactest, truest,
immediatest, safest intellect, dedicated by its pos-
sessor to the surgical cure of mankind, I have ever
yet met with. He will, I firmly believe, leave an
inheritance of good done, and mischief destroyed, of
truth in theory and in practice established, and of
error in the same exposed and ended, such as no
one since John Hunter has been gifted to bequeath
to his fellow-men. As an instrument for discovering
disease, I have never seen his perspicacity equalled ;
his mental eye is achromatic, and admits into the
judging mind a pure white light, and records an
undisturbed, uncoloured image, undiminished and
unenlarged in its passage; and he has the moral
power, courage, and conscience, to use and devote
such an inestimable instrument to its right ends. I
need hardly add, that the story of 'Rab and his
Friends' is in all essentials strictly matter of fact.
, There is an odd sort of point, if it can be called
a point, on which I would fain say something and
that is an occasional outbreak of sudden, and it may
Introductory. 3 1
be felt, untimely humourousness. I plead guilty to
this, sensible of the tendency in me of the merely
ludicrous to intrude, and to insist on being attended
to, and expressed : it is perhaps too much the way
with all of us now-a-days, to be for ever joking.
Mr. Punch, to whom we take off our hats, grate-
ful for his innocent and honest fun, especially in
his John Leech, leads the way ; and our two great
novelists, Thackeray and Dickens, the first espe-
cially, are, in the deepest and highest sense, humor-
ists, the best, nay, indeed the almost only good
thing in the latter, being his broad and wild fun ;
Swiveller, and the Dodger, and Sam Weller, and
Miggs, are more impressive far to my taste than
the melo-dramatic, utterly unreal Dombey, or his
strumous and hysterical son, or than all the later
dreary trash of Bleak House, etc.
My excuse is, that these papers are really what
they profess to be, done at bye-hours. Duke est
desipere, when in its fit place and time. Moreover,
let me tell my young doctor friends, that a cheerful
face, and step, and neckcloth, and button-hole, and
an occasional hearty and kindly joke, a power of
executing and setting agoing a good laugh, are stock
in our trade not to be despised. The merry heart
does good like a medicine. Your pompous man, and
your selfish man, don't laugh much, or care for laugh-
ter; it discomposes the fixed grandeur of the one,
32 Introductory.
and has little room in the heart of the other, who is
literally self-contained. My Edinburgh readers will
recall many excellent jokes of their doctors ' Lang
Sandie Wood,' Dr. Henry Davidson our Guy Patin
and better, etc.
I may give an instance, when a joke was more
and better than itself. A comely young wife, the
' cynosure' of her circle, was in bed, apparently
dying from swelling and inflammation of the throat,
an inaccessible abscess stopping the way ; she could
swallow nothing ; everything had been tried. Her
friends were standing round the bed in misery and
helplessness. ' Try her wi 1 a compliment,' said her
husband, in a not uncomic despair. She had genuine
humour as well as he; and as physiologists know,
there is a sort of mental tickling which is beyond and
above control, being under the reflex system, and in-
stinctive as well as sighing. She laughed with her whole
body and soul, burst the abscess, and was safe.
Humour, if genuine (and if not, it is not humour),
is the very flavour of the spirit, its savour, its rich and
fragrant ozmazome having in its aroma something of
everything in the man, his expressed juice : wit is but
the laughing flower of the intellect or the turn of
speech, and is often what we call a ' gum-flower,' and
looks well when dry. Humour is, in a certain sense,
involuntary in its origin, and in its effect : it is sys-
temic, and not local.
LOCKE AND SYDENHAM.
' Us n'&oient pas Savans, mats Us Itoient Sages.'
' PHILOSOPHIA dividitur in SCIENTIAM et HABITUM ANIMI :
imam illam qui didicit, et favenda et vitanda pracepit,
nondum SAPIENS est, nisi in ea qua didicit, animus ejus trans-
fguratits est'
LOCKE AND SYDENHAM.
T^HE studies of Metaphysics and Medicine have
more in common than may perhaps at first
sight appear. These two sciences, as learnt, taught,
and practised by the two admirable men we are
about to speak of, were in the main not ends in
themselves, but means. The one, as Locke pur-
sued it, is as truly a search after truth and matter
of fact, as the other ; and neither Metaphysics nor
Medicine is worth a rational man's while, if they do
not issue certainly and speedily in helping us to
keep and to make our minds and our bodies whole,
quick, and strong. Soundness of mind, the just
use of reason what Arnauld finely calls droiture
de r&me and the cultivation for good of our
entire thinking nature, our common human under-
standing, is as truly the one great end of the Philo-
sophy of Mind, as the full exercise of our bodily
functions, and their recovery and relief when de-
ranged or impaired, is of the Science of Medicine^
36 Locke and Sydenham.
the Philosophy of Healing ; and no man taught
the world to better purpose than did John Locke,
that Mental science, like every other, is founded
upon fact upon objective realities, upon an induc-
tion of particulars, and is in this sense as much a
matter of proof as is carpentry, or the doctrine of
projectiles. The Essay on Htiman Understanding
contains a larger quantity of facts about our minds,
a greater amount of what everybody knows to be
true, than any other book of the same nature. The
reasonings may be now and then erroneous and
imperfect, but the ascertained truths remain, and
may be operated upon by all after-comers.
John Locke and Thomas Sydenham, the one
the founder of our analytical philosophy of mind,
and the other of our practical medicine, were not
only great personal friends, but were of essential use
to each other in their respective departments; and
we may safely affirm, that for much in the Essay
on Human Understanding we are indebted to its
author's intimacy with Sydenham, ' one of the mas-
ter builders at this time in the commonwealth of
learning,' as Locke calls him, in company with
' Boyle, Huygens, and the incomparable Mr. New-
ton :' And Sydenham, it is well known, in his
dedicatory letter to their common friend Dr. Maple-
toft, prefixed to the third edition of his Observa-
tiones Medicce, expresses his obligation to Locke
Locke and Sydenham. 37
in these words : ' Nosti praeterea, quam huic
meae methodo suffragantem habeam, qui earn in-
timius per omnia perspexerat, utrique nostrum
conjunctissimum Dominum Johannem Lock; quo
quidem viro, sive ingenio judicioque acri et sub-
acto, sive etiam antiquis (hoc est optimis) moribus,
vix superiorem quenquam inter eos qui nunc sunt
homines repertum iri confido, paucissimos certe
pares.' Referring to this passage, when noticing
the early training of this ingenium judiciumque acre
et subactum, Dugald Stewart says, with great truth,
' No science could have been chosen, more happily
calculated than Medicine, to prepare such a mind
for the prosecution of those speculations which have
immortalized his name ; the complicated and fugi-
tive, and often equivocal phenomena of disease,
requiring in the observer a far greater proportion of
discriminating sagacity than those of Physics, strictly
so called ; resembling, in this respect, much more
nearly, the phenomena about which Metaphysics,
Ethics, and Politics are conversant.' And he
shrewdly adds, ' I have said that the study of
Medicine forms one of the best preparations for the
study of Mind, to such an understanding as Locke's.
To an understanding less comprehensive, and less
cultivated by a liberal education, the effect of this
study is like to be similar to what we may have
in the works of Hartley, Darwin, and Cabanis ;
38 Locke and Sydenham.
to all of whom we may more or less apply the sar-
casm of Cicero on Aristoxenus the musician, who
attempted to explain the nature of the soul by
comparing it to a harmony ; Hie ab artifitio suo non
recessit?
The observational and only genuine study of
mind not the mere reading of metaphysical books,
and knowing the endless theories of mind, but the
true study of its phenomena has always seemed to
us (speaking qua media} one of the most important,
as it certainly is the most studiously neglected, of
the accessary disciplines of the student of medicine.
Hartley, Mackintosh, and Brown were physi-
cians ; and we know that medicine was a favourite
subject with Socrates, Aristotle, Bacon, Descartes,
Berkeley, and Sir William Hamilton. We wish
our young doctors kept more of the company of
these and suchlike men, and knew a little more of
the laws of thought, the nature and rules of evi-
dence, the general procedure of their own minds in
the search after the proof and the application of
what is true, than we fear they generally do. 1
1 Pinel states, with much precision, the necessity there is for
physicians to make the mind of man, as well as his body,
their especial study. ' L'histoire de 1'entendement humain,
pourroit-elle etre ignoree par le medecin, qui a non-seule-
ment a decrire les vesanies ou maladies morales, et a indiquer
toutes leurs nuances, mais encore, que a besoin de porter la
logique la plus severe pour e'viter de donner de la realite a
Locke and Sydenham. 39
They might do so without knowing less of their
Auscultation, Histology, and other good things,
and with knowing them to better purpose. We
wonder, for instance, how many of the century of
graduates sent forth from our famous University
every year armed with microscope, stethoscope,
uroscope, pleximeter, etc., and omniscient of rales
and rhonchi sibilous and sonorous; crepitations moist
and dry ; bruits de rape, de stie, et de soufflet ; blood
plasmata, cytoblasts and nucleated cells, and great
in the infinitely little, we wonder how many of
these eager and accomplished youths could ' un-
sphere the spirit of Plato,' or are able to read with
moderate relish and understanding one of the Tus-
culan Disputations, or have so much as even heard
of Butler's Three Sermons on Human Nature, Ber-
keley's Minute Philosopher, or of a posthumous
Essay on the Conduct of the Understanding^ of which
Mr. Hallam says, ' I cannot think any parent or
instructor justified in neglecting to put this little
treatise in the hands of a boy about the time that
de termes abstraits, pour proceder avec sagesse des idees
simples a des idees complexes, et qui a sans cesse sous ses
yeux des ecrits, ou le defaut de s'entendre, la seduction de
1'esprit de systeme, et 1'abus des expressions vagues et inde-
terminees ont amene de milliers des volumes et des disputes
interminables ?' Methodes d'ltudier en Midccine.
1 There is a handsome reprint of this ' pith of sense ' put forth
the other day by Bell & Daldy.
40 Locke and Sydenham.
the reasoning faculties become developed,' and
whose admirable author we shall now endeavour
to prove to have been much more one of their
own guild than is generally supposed.
In coining to this conclusion, we have been mainly
indebted to the classical, eloquent, and conclusive
tract by Lord Grenville, 1 entitled, Oxford and Locke;
to Lord King's Life of his great kinsman ; to Wood's
Athena and Fasti Oxonienses; to the letters from
Locke to Drs. Mapletoft, Molyneux, Sir Hans Sloane,
and Boyle, published in the collected edition of his
works ; to Ward's Lives of the Gresham Professors ;
and to a very curious collection of letters of Locke,
Algernon Sidney, the second Lord Shaftesbury, and
others, edited and privately printed by Dr. Thomas
Forster ; and to a Medical Commonplace Book, and
many very interesting letters on medical subjects, by
his great kinsman, in the possession of the Earl of
Lovelace, and to which, by his Lordship's kindness,
we have had access ; some of the letters are to
Fletcher of Saltoun, on the health of his brother's
wife, and, for unincumbered good sense, rational
trust in nature's vis medicatrix, and wholesome fear
of polypharmacy and the nimia diligentia of his
time, might have been written by Dr. Combe or Sir
James Clark.
Le Clerc, in his Eloge upon Locke in the Biblio-
1 See Note A.
Locke and Sydenham. 41
theque Choisie (and in this he has been followed by
all subsequent biographers), states, that when a stu-
dent at Christ Church, Oxford, he devoted himself
with great earnestness to the study of Medicine, but
that he never practised it as his profession, his chief
object having been to qualify himself to act as his
own physician, on account of his general feebleness
of health, and tendency to consumption. To show
the incorrectness of this statement, we give the follow-
ing short notice of his medical studies and practice ;
it is necessarily slight, but justifies, we think, our
assertion in regard to him as a practitioner in
medicine.
LOCKE was born in 1632 at Wrington, Somerset-
shire, on the 2 gth of August, the anniversary, as Dr.
Forster takes care to let us know, of the Decollation
of St. John the Baptist eight years after Sydenham,
and ten before Newton. He left Westminster School
in 1651, and entered Christ Church, distinguishing
himself chiefly in the departments of medicine and
general physics, and greatly enamoured of the bril-
liant and then new philosophy of Descartes.
In connexion with Locke's university studies,
Anthony Wood, in his autobiography, has the fol-
lowing curious passage : *' I began a course of'
chemistry under the noted chemist and rosicrucian
Peter Sthael of Strasburg, a strict Lutheran, and a
great hater of women. The club consisted of ten,
42 Locke and Sydenham.
whereof were Frank Turner, now Bishop of Ely,
Benjamin Woodroof, now Canon of Christ Church,
and John Locke of the same house, now a noted
writer. This same John Locke was a man of a
turbulent spirit, clamorous, and never contented ;
while the rest of our club took notes from the mouth
of their master, who sat at the upper end of a long
table, the said Locke scorned to do this, but was for
ever prating and troublesome.' This misogynistical
rosicrucian was brought over to Oxford by Boyle,
and had among his pupils Sir Christopher Wren, Dr.
Wallis, and Sir Thomas Millington. The fees were
three pounds, one-half paid in advance.
Locke continued through life greatly addicted to
medical and chemical researches. He kept the first
regular journal of the weather, and published it from
time to time in the Philosophical Transactions, and in
Boyle's History of the Air. He used in his observa-
tions a barometer, a thermometer, and a hygrometer.
His letters to Boyle are full of experiments and
speculations about chemistry and medicine ; and in a
journal kept by him when travelling in France is this
remarkable entry : ' M. Toinard produced a large
bottle of muscat ; it was clear when he set it on the
table, but when the stopper was drawn, a multitude
of little bubbles arose. It comes from this, that the
included air had liberty to expand itself: query ,
ivhethcr this be air new generated. Take a bottle of
Locke and Syden/iam. 43
fermenting liquor, and tie a bladder over its mouth,
how much new air will this produce, and has this the
quality of common air T We need hardly add, that
about a hundred years after this Dr. Black answered
this capital query, and in doing so, transformed the
whole face of chemistry.
We now find that, in contradiction to the generally
received account, ' sour' Anthony Wood, who was
an Oxford man and living on the spot, says in his
spiteful way, ' Mr. Locke, after having gone through
the usual courses preparatory to practice, entered
upon the physic line, and got some business at Ox-
ford.' Nothing can be more explicit than this, and
more directly opposed to Le Clerc's account of his
friend's early life, which, it may be remembered, was
chiefly derived from notes furnished by the second
Lord Shaftesbury, whose information must necessarily
have been at second or third hand. In 1666, Lord
Ashley, afterwards the first Lord Shaftesbury, came
to Oxford to drink the water of Astrop ; he was suf-
fering from an abscess in his chest, the consequence
of a fall from his horse. Dr. Thomas, his lordship's
attendant, happening to be called out of town, sent
his friend Locke, then practising there, who examined
into his complaints, and advised the abscess to be
opened ; this was done, and, as the story goes, his
lordship's life was saved. From this circumstance
took its origin the well-known friendship of these two
44 Locke and Sydcnham.
famous men. That their connexion at first was
chiefly that of patient and doctor, is plain from the
expression, ' He, the Earl, would not suffer him to
practise medicine out of his house, except among
some of his particular friends,' implying that he was
practising when he took him.
In 1668, Locke, then in his thirty-sixth year, accom-
panied the Earl and Countess of Northumberland to
the Continent, as their physician. The Earl died on
his journey to Rome, leaving Locke with the Coun-
tess in Paris. When there, he attended her during a
violent attack of what seems to have been tic-dou-
loureux, an interesting account of which, and of the
treatment he adopted, was presented by the late Lord
King to the London College of Physicians and read
before them in 1829. By the great kindness of the
late Dr. Paris, President of the College, we had access
to a copy of this medical and literary curiosity, which
besides its own value as a plain, clear statement of
the case, and as an example of simple skilful treat-
ment, is the best of all proofs that at that time Locke
was a regular physician. We cannot give it higher
praise, or indicate more significantly its wonderful
superiority to the cases to be found in medical authors
of the same date, than by saying that in expression,
in description, in diagnosis, and in treatment, it
differs very little from what we have in our own best
works.
. Locke and Sydenham. 45
After the Earl's death, Locke returned to England,
and seems to have lived partly at Exeter House with
Lord Shaftesbury, and partly at Oxford. It was in
1670, at the latter place, that he sketched the first
outline of his immortal Essay, the origin of which he
has so modestly recorded in his Epistle to the Reader.
Dr. Thomas, and most probably Dr. Sydenham, were
among the ' five or six friends meeting at my cham-
ber,' who started the idea of that work, ' which has
done more than any other single work to rectify pre-
judice, to undermine established errors, to diffuse a
just mode of thinking, to excite a fearless spirit of
inquiry, and yet to contain it within the boundaries
nature has set to the human faculties. If Bacon first
discovered the rules by which knowledge is to be
advanced, Locke has most contributed by precept
and example to make mankind at large observe them,
and has thus led to that general diffusion of a health-
ful and vigorous understanding, which is at once the
greatest of all improvements, and the instrument by
which all other improvements must be accomplished.'
About this time, Locke seems to have been made
a Fellow of the Royal Society. In 1674, he took
the degree of Bachelor of Medicine ; he never was
Doctor of Medicine, though he generally passed
among his friends as Dr. Locke.
In 1675, he went abroad for his health, and appar-
ently, also, to pursue his medical studies. He re-
46 Locke and Syden/iam.
mained for some time at Montpellier, then the most
famous of the schools of medicine. He attended
the lectures of the celebrated Barbeyrac, to whose
teaching Sydenham is understood to have been so
much indebted. When there, and during his resi-
dence abroad, he kept a diary, large extracts from
which are for the first time given by Lord King. 1
The following is his account of the annual ' capping'
at Montpellier. { The manner of making a Doctor
of Physic is this : ist, a procession in scarlet robes
and black caps the professor took his seat and
after a company of fiddlers had played a certain time,
he made them a sign to hold, that he might have an
opportunity to entertain the company, which he did
in a speech against innovations the musicians then
took their turn. The Inceptor or candidate then
began his speech, wherein I found little edification,
being chiefly complimentary to the chancellor and
professors, who were present. The Doctor then put
on his head the cap that had marched in on the
1 Lord King refers to numerous passages in Locke's Diaries
exclusively devoted to medical subjects, which he has refrained
from publishing, as unlikely to interest the general public ; and
Dr. Forster gives us to understand that he has in his possession
' some ludicrous, sarcastic, and truly witty letters to his friend
Furley on medicine, his original profession ;' but which letters
the Doctor declines giving to the public ' in these days of absurd
refinement.' We would gladly forswear our refinement to have
a sight o*f them ; anything that Locke considered worth the
writing down about anything is likely to be worth the reading.
L ocke and Sydenham. 4 7
beadle's staff, in sign of his electorship put a ring
upon his finger girt himself about the loins with a
gold chain made him sit down beside him that
having taken pains he might now take ease, and
kissed and embraced him in token of the friendship
which ought to be amongst them.'
From Montpellier he went to Paris, and was a
diligent student of anatomy under Dr. Guenelon,
with whom he was afterwards so intimate, when
living in exile at Amsterdam.
In June 1677, when in Paris, he wrote the fol-
lowing jocular letter to his friend Dr. Mapletoft, then
physic professor at Gresham College. This letter,
which is not noticed in any life of Locke that we
have seen, is thus introduced by Dr. Ward : ' Dr.
Mapletoft did not continue long at Gresham, and yet
longer than he seems to have designed, by a letter to
him, written by the famous Mr. John Locke, dated
from Paris, 22d June 1677, in which is this passage :
" If either absence (which sometimes increases our
desires) or love (which we see every day produces
strange effects in the world) have softened you, or
disposed you towards a liking for any of our fine new
things, 'tis but saying so, and I am ready to furnish
you, and should be sorry not to be employed ; I
mention love, for you know I have a particular
interest of my own in it. When you look that way,
nobody will be readier, as you may guess, to throw
48 Locke and Sydcnhani.
an old shoe after you, much for your own sake, and
a little for a friend of yours. But were I to advise,
perhaps I should say that the lodgings at Gresham
College were a quiet and comfortable habitation."
By this passage,' continues Ward, ' it seems probable
that Dr. Mapletoft had then some views to marriage,
and that Mr. Locke was desirous, should it so fall
out, to succeed him. But neither of these events
happened at the time, for the Doctor held his pro-
fessorship till the loth October 1679, an d, m Novem-
ber following, married Rebecca, the daughter of Mr.
Lucy Knightley of Hackney, a Hamburg merchant.'
And we know that on the loth of May that same
year, Locke was sent for from Paris by Lord Shaftes-
bury, when his Lordship was made President of Sir
William Temple's Council, half a year after which
they were both exiles in Holland. As we have
already said, there is something very characteristic
in this jocular, pawky, affectionate letter.
There can be little doubt from this, that so late as
1677, when he was forty-five years of age, Locke
was able and willing to undertake the formal teaching
of medicine.
It would not be easy to say how much mankind
would have at once lost and gained how much the
philosophy of mind would have been hindered, and
how much that of medicine would have been ad-
vanced, had John Locke's lungs been as sound as
Locke and Sydenham. 49
his understanding, and had he ' stuck to the physic
line,' or had his friend Dr. Mapletoft ' looked that
way' a little earlier, and made Rebecca Knightley his
wife two years sooner, or had Lord Shaftesbury
missed the royal reconcilement and his half-year's
presidency.
Medicine would assuredly have gained something
it still lacks, and now perhaps more than ever, had
that ' friend of yours,' having thrown the old shoe
with due solemnity and precision after the happy
couple, much for their sakes and a little for his own,
settled down in that quiet, comfortable, baccalaurian
habitation, over-against the entrance into Bishopsgate
Street ; and had thenceforward, in the prime of life,
directed the full vigour of that liberal, enlightened,
sound, humane, and practical understanding, to the
exposition of what Lord Grenville so justly calls
' the large and difficult' subject of medicine. What
an amount of gain to rational and effective medicine
what demolition of venerable and mischievous
error what fearless innovations what exposition of
immediately useful truth what an example for all
future labourers in that vast and perilous field, of the
best method 'of attaining the best ends, might not have
been expected from him of whom it was truly said
that ' he knew something of everything that could be
useful to mankind ! ' It is no wonder then, that,
looking from the side of medicine, we grudge the loss
50 Locke and Sydenham.
of the Locke ' Physic Lectures,' and wish that we
might, without fable, imagine ourselves in that quaint,
steep-roofed quadrangle, with its fifteen trees, and its
diagonal walks across the green court ; and at eight
o'clock, when the morning sun was falling on the
long legs and antennae of good Sir Thomas's gilded
grasshoppers, and the mighty hum of awakening Lon-
don was beginning to rise, might figure to ourselves
the great philosopher stepping briskly through the
gate into his lecture-room his handsome, serious
face, set ' in his hood, according to his degree in the
university, as was thought meet for more order and
comeliness sake,' and there, twice every week in the
term, deliver the ' solemn Physic Lecture,' in the
Latin tongue, in dutiful accordance with the ' agree-
ment, tripartite, between the mayor, commonalty,
and citizens of London the wardens and common-
alty of the mystery of mercers, and the Lecturers in
Gresham House ;' and again, six hours later, read the
same ' solemn lecture,' we would fancy with more of
relish and spirit, in the ' English tongue,' ' forasmuch,'
so the worthy Founder's will goes, ' as the greater
part of the auditory is like to be of such citizens and
others as have small knowledge, or none at all, of
the Latin tongue, and for that every man, for his
health's sake, will desire to have some knowledge of
the art of physic.'
We have good evidence, from the general bent
Locke and Sydenham. 5 1
and spirit of Locke's mind, and from occasional
passages in his letters, especially those to Dr.
Molyneux, that he was fully aware of the condi-
tion of medicine at that time, and of the only
way by which it could be improved. Writing to
Dr. Molyneux, he says, 'I perfectly agree with
you concerning general theories the curse of the
time, and destructive not less of life than of science
they are for the most part but a sort of wak-
ing dream, with which, when men have warmed
their heads, they pass into unquestionable truths.
This is beginning at the wrong end, men laying the
foundation in their own fancies, and then suiting
the phenomena of diseases, and the cure of them,
to these fancies. I wonder, after the pattern Dr.
Sydenham has set of a better way, men should
return again to this romance-way of physic. But
I see it is more easy and more natural for men to
build castles in the air of their own than to sun>ey
well those that are on the ground. Nicely to observe
the history of diseases in all their changes and cir-
cumstances is a work of time, accurateness, attention,
and judgment, and wherein if men, through pre-
possession or oscitancy, mistake, they may be con-
vinced of their error by unerring nature and matter
of fact. What we know of the works of nature,
especially in the constitution of health and the
operations of our own bodies, is only by the sensible
5 2 Locke and Sydenham.
effects, but not by any certainty we can have, of the
tools she uses, or the ways she works by. 1
Exact, patient, honest, ' nice ' observation, is
neither easy nor common ; as Buffon says : ' II
y a une espece de force de gdnie, et de courage
d'esprit, a pouvoir envisager sans s'e'tonner, la
Nature dans la multitude innombrable de ses pro-
ductions, et a se croire capable de les comprendre
et de les comparer ; il y a une espece de gout, a
les aimer, plus grand que le gout qui n'a pour but,
que des objets particuliers, et 1'un peut dire, que
1'amour et 1'etude de la Nature, suppose dans
1'esprit deux qualite's qui paroissent opposees, les
grandes vues d'un gdnie ardent, qui embrasse tout
d'un coup-d'ceil, et les petites attentions d'un in-
stinct laborieux, que ne s'attache qu'a un seul
point'
Gaubius calls it ' masculum illud observandi
studium veteribus tantopere excultum ;' and Dr.
Samuel Brown, heu nimiuni brevis cevi decus et desi-
derium ! thus enforces the same truth : ' Few
people are aware of the difficulty of the art of
simple observation ; to observe properly in the
simplest of the physical sciences requires a long
and severe training. No one knows this so feel-
ingly as the great discoverer. Faraday once said
that he always doubts his own observations. Mit-
scherlich said it required fourteen years to discover
Locke and Sydenham. 53
and establish a single new fact in chemistry. An
enthusiastic student one day betook himself to
Cuvier with a new muscle he supposed he had
discovered. The master bade his scholar return
to him with the same discovery in six months ! '
But we must draw this notice of Locke in his
character of Doctor to a close. In the Philosophical
Transactions for 1697, there is an account by him
of an odd case of hypertrophied nails, which he had
seen at La Charite' when in Paris, and he gives
pictures of the hornlike excrescences, one of them
upwards of four inches long. The second Lord
Shaftesbury, who was Locke's pupil, and for whom
he chose a wife, in a letter to Furley, who seems to
have been suffering from a relapse of intermittent
fever, explains, with great distinctness and good
sense, ' Dr. LockJs and all our ingeniouse and
able doctors' method' of treating this disease with
the Peruvian bark ; adding, ' I am satisfied, that
of all medicines, if it be good of its kind, and pro-
perly given, it is the most innocent and effectual,
whatever bugbear the world makes of it, especially
the tribe of inferior physicians, from whom it cuts
off so much business and gain.' We now con-
clude our notices of Locke's medical history
which, however imperfect, seem to us to warrant
our original assertion with the following weighty
sentence taken from the ' Fragment on Study'
54 Locke and Sydenham.
given by Lord King, and which was written when
Locke was at his studies at Oxford. It accords
curiously with what we have already quoted from
Dugald Stewart: 'Physic, polity, and prudence
are not capable of demonstration, but a man is
principally helped in them, i, By the history of
matter of fact ; and 2, By a sagacity of inquiring
into probable causes, and finding out an analogy in
their operations and effects. Whether a certain
course in public or private affairs will succeed well
whether rhubarb will purge, or quinquina cure
an ague, can be known only by experience.' l
SYDENHAM, the prince of practical physicians, whose
character is as beautiful and as genuinely English as
his name, did for his art what Locke did for the
1 The all -accomplished, and, in the old sense, 'the admir-
able' Dr. Thomas Young, puts this very powerfully in the
preface to his Introduction to Medical Literature. ' There is,
in fact, no study more difficult than that of physic : it exceeds,
as a science, the comprehension of the human mind ; and those
who blunder onwards, without attempting to understand what
they see, are often nearly on a level with those who depend too
much upon imperfect generalizations.' ' Some departments of
knowledge defy all attempts to subject them to any didactic
method, and require the exercise of a peculiar address, a judg-
ment, or a taste, "which can only be formed by indirect means.
It appears that physic is one of those departments in which
there is frequent necessity for the exercise of an incommunicable
faculty of judgment, and a sagacity which may be called tran-
scendental, as extending beyond the simple combination of all that
can be taught by precept?
Locke and Sydenham. 55
philosophy of mind he made it, in the main, obser-
vational ; he made knowledge a means, not an end.
It would not be easy to over-estimate our obligations
as a nation to these two men, in regard to all that is
involved in the promotion of health of body and
soundness of mind. They were among the first in
their respective regions to show their faith in the in-
ductive method, by their works. They both pro-
fessed to be more of guides than critics, and were the
interpreters and servants of Nature, not her diviners
and tormentors. They pointed out a way, and them-
selves walked in it ; they taught a method, and used
it, rather than announced a system or a discovery;
they collected and arranged their visa before settling
their cogitata a mean-spirited proceeding, doubtless,
in the eyes of the prevailing dealers in hypotheses,
being in reality the exact reverse of their philosophy.
How curious, how humbling, to think that it was not
till this time, that men in search of truth were brought
to see that ' it is not the insufficiency or incapacity
of man's mind, but the remote standing or placing
thereof, that breedeth mazes and incomprehensions ;
for as the sense afar off is full of mistaking, but is
exact at hand, so is it of the understanding, the remedy
whereof is not to quicken or strengthen the organ, but to
go nearer to the object.' Well might this greatest of
Lord Chancellors now even say, as he does in the
context (he is treating of medicine) ' Medicine is a
56 Locke and Sydenham.
science which hath been more professed than laboured,
more laboured than advanced, the labour being in
my judgment more in a circle than in progression : I
find much iteration but small addition ;' and he was
right in laying much of this evil condition to the dis-
continuance of ' the ancient and serious diligence of
Hippocrates.' This serious diligence, this d/c/oi&i'a
or nicety of observation by which the ' divine old
man of Cos' achieved so much, was Sydenham' s
master-principle in practice and in speculation. He
proclaimed it anew, and displayed in his own case its
certain and inestimable fruits.
It appears to us one of the most interesting, as it
is certainly one of the most difficult and neglected
departments of medical literature, to endeavour to
trace the progress of medicine as a practical art, with
its rules and instruments, as distinguished from its
consolidation into a systematic science with its doc-
trines and laws, and to make out how far these two,
which conjoined form the philosophy of the subject,
have or have not harmonized with, and been helpful
to each other, at different periods of their histories.
Much might be done to make such an inquiry instruc-
tive and attractive, by marking out the history of
medicine into several great epochs, and taking, as
representative of each, some one distinguished arts-
man or practitioner, as well as teacher or discoverer.
We might have Hippocrates and his epoch, Syden-
L ocke and Sydenham. 5 7
ham and his, John Hunter, Pinel, Laennec and theirs.
These great men differed certainly widely enough in
character and in circumstances, but agreed all in this,
their possessing in large measure, and of rare quality,
that native sagacity, that power of keen, serious,
choice, patient, continuous, honest observation, which
is at once a gift and a habit ; that instinct for seeking
and finding, which Bacon calls ' experientia literata,
sagacitas potius et odoratio qucedam venatica, quam
sciential that general strength and soundness of un-
derstanding, and that knack of being able to apply
their knowledge, instantly and aright, in practice,
which must ever constitute the cardinal virtues of
a great physician, the very pith and marrow of his
worth.
Of the two first of these famous men, we fear there
survives in the profession little more than the names;
and we receive from them, and are made wiser and
better by inheriting, their treasures of honest and ex-
quisite observation, of judicious experience, without,
we fear, knowing or caring much from whom it has
come. 'One man soweth, and another reapeth.'
The young forget the old, the children their fathers ;
and we are all too apt to reverse the saying of the
wise king, ' I praised the dead that are already
dead, more than the living th'at are yet alive.'
As we are not sufficiently conscious of, so we
assuredly are not adequately grateful for, that accu-
58 Locke and Sydenham.
mulated volume of knowledge, that body of practical
truth, which comes down as a heritage to each one
of us, from six thousand years of human endeavour ;
and which, like a mighty river, is moving for ever
onwards widening, deepening, strengthening, as it
goes ; for the right administration and use of whose
untold energies and wealth, we, to whom it has thus
far descended, are responsible to Him from whom it
comes, and to whom it is hastening responsible to
an extent we are too apt to forget, or to underrate.
We should not content ourselves with sailing victori-
ously down the stream, or with considering our portion
of it merely ; we should go up the country oftener
than we do, and see where the mighty feeders come
in, and learn and not forget their names, and note
how much more of volume, of momentum, and power,
the stream has after they have fallen in.
It is the lot of the successful medical practitioner,
who is more occupied with discerning diseases and
curing them, than with discoursing about their essence,
and arranging them into systems, who observes and
reflects in order to act rather than to speak, it is the
lot of such men to be invaluable when alive, and to
be forgotten soon after they are dead ; and this not
altogether or chiefly from any special ingratitude or
injustice on the part of mankind, but from the very
nature of the case. Much that made such a man
what the community to their highest profit found him
Locke and Sydenham. 59
to be, dies, must die with him. His inborn gifts, and
much of what was most valuable in his experience,
were necessarily incommunicable to others, this de-
pending somewhat on his forgetting the process by
which, in particular cases, he made up his mind, and
its minute successive steps, from his eagerness to
possess and put in action the result, and likewise from
his being confident in the general soundness of his
method, and caring little about formally recording to
himself his transient mental conditions, much less
announcing them articulately to others ; but mainly,
we believe, because no man can explain directly to
another man how he does any one practical thing,
the doing of which he himself has accomplished, not
at once, or by imitation, or by teaching, but by re-
peated personal trials, by missing much, before ulti-
mately hitting.
You may be able to expound excellently to your
son the doctrines of gunnery, or read him a course of
lectures upon the principles of horsemanship, but you
cannot transfer to him your own knack as a dead-
shot, or make him keep his seat over a rasping fence.
He must take pains to win these for himself, as you
have done before him. Thus it is that much of the
best of a man like Sydenham, dies with him.
It is very different with those who frequent the
field of scientific discovery. Here matters are re-
versed. No man, for instance, in teaching anatomy
60 Locke and Sydcnham.
or physiology, when he comes to enounce each new
subordinate discovery, can fail to unfold and to en-
hance the ever-increasing renown of that keen black-
a-vised little man, with his piercing eye, ' small and
dark, and so full of spirit / his compact broad fore-
head, his self-contained peremptory air, his dagger at
his side, and his fingers playing with its hilt, to whom
we owe the little book, De motu cordis et sanguinis
drculatione. This primary, capital discovery, which
no succeeding one can ever supersede or obscure, he
could leave consummate to mankind ; but he could
not so leave the secret of his making it ; he could not
transmit that combination of original genius, inven-
tion, exactness, perseverance, and judgment, which
enabled him, and can alone enable any man, to make
such a permanent addition to the fund of scientific
truth. But what fitted Harvey for that which he
achieved, greatly unfitted him for such excellence in
practice as Sydenham attained. He belonged to the
science more than to the art. His friend Aubrey
says of him, that ' though all his profession would
allow him to be an excellent anatomist, I have never
heard of any who admired his therapeutic way.' A
mind of his substance and mettle, speculative and
arbitrary, passing rapidly and passionately from the
particular to the general, from multiformity to unity,
with, moreover, a fiery temper and an extemporane-
ous dagger as its sting, was not likely to take kindly
Locke and Sydenham. 01
to the details of practice, or make a very useful or
desirable family doctor. Sydenham, again, though
his works everywhere manifest that he was gifted with
ample capacity and keen relish for abstract truth,
moved habitually and by preference in the lower, but
at the time the usefuller sphere of everyday practice,
speculating chiefly in order to act, reducing his gene-
ralizations back to particulars, so as to answer some
immediate instance, the result of which was the
signallest success of ' his therapeutic way.' We have
had in our own day two similar examples of the man
of science and the man of art ; the one, Sir Charles
Bell like Harvey, the explorer, the discoverer, the
man of genius and science, of principles and laws,
having the royal gifts of invention and eloquence
was not equally endowed with those homelier, but in
their degree not less rare qualities, which made Dr.
Abercrombie, our Scottish Sydenham, what he was,
as a master in the diagnosis and treatment of disease.
The one pursued his profession as a science, to be
taught, to be transmitted in its entireness the other
as an art to be applied. The one was, in the old
phrase, luciferous ; the other frugiferous.
One great object we have in now bringing for-
ward the works and character of Sydenham, is to
enforce the primary necessity, especially in our day,
of attending to medicine as the art of healing, not
less than as the science of diseases and drugs. We
62 Locke and Sydenham.
want at present more of the first than of the second.
Our age is becoming every day more purely scien-
tific, and is occupied far more with arranging sub-
jects and giving names, and remembering them, than
with understanding and managing objects. There
is often more knowledge of words than of things.
We have already stated our notion, that to the
great body of modern physicians, Sydenham is little
more than a name, and that his works, still more
than those of his companion Locke, are more
spoken of than read. This is owing to several
causes ; partly to their being buried in Latin, which
men seem now-a-days ashamed to know: partly to
much in them being now scientifically obsolete and
useless ; partly from their practical value being im-
paired by our ignorance of his formulas of cure ;
and greatly also, we fear, from what Baglivi calls
' an inept derision and neglect of the ancients,'
which is more prevalent than seemly. We include
ourselves among these ; for until we got Dr. Green-
hill's edition, we had never read seriously and
thoroughly these admirable tracts, which were all
of an occasional character, and were forced from
their author by the importunity of friends, or the
envious calumny of enemies, often in the form of
familiar letters.
We had, when at college, picked up like our
neighbours the owrrent commonplaces about Syden-
Locke and Sydenham. 63
ham ; such as that he went by the name of ' the
Prince of English physicians;' that Boerhaave (of
whom by the way we knew quite as little, unless
it were a certain awful acquaintance with his ugly,
squab, and gilded visage, which regarded us grimly
from above a druggist's door, as we hurried along
the Bridges to the University) was wont to take
his hat off, whenever he mentioned his name, and
to call him ' Anglice lumen, Artis Phozbum, veram
Hippocratici veri speciem : ' that his life was written
by Samuel Johnson in the Gentleman's Magazine,
and was one of his earliest and worst paid perfor-
mances : that he was a Whig, and went into the
field as a Parliament man. Moreover, that when
asked by Sir Richard Blackmore what he would
advise him for medical reading, he replied, 'Read
Don Quixote, Sir,' an answer as full of sense as
wit, and the fitness and wisdom of which it would
be not less pleasant than profitable to unfold at
length. We had been told also, in a very general
way by our teachers, that Sydenham had done some
things for his profession, which, considering the dark
age in which he worked, were highly to his credit ;
that his name was well connected with the history
and management of the small-pox ; the nature of
epidemics, the constitutions of years, dropsies, etc.,
and that he had recorded his own sufferings from
the gout in a clever and entertaining way.
64 Locke and Sydenham.
All this was true, but by no means the whole
truth. Not only are his observations invaluable to
any one engaged in tracing the history of medicine
as a practical art, and as an applied science ; in
marking in what respects it is changed, and in what
unchanged ; in how much it is better now than
then, and in what little it is not so good. In addi-
tion to all this, they are full of valuable rules for
the diagnosis and treatment of disease ; and we can
trace to him as their origin, many of our most com-
mon and important therapeutic doctrines. They
everywhere manifest how thoroughly he practised
what he taught, how honestly he used his own
' method,' that of continued, close, serious obser-
vation. But we confess, after all, our chief delight
is from the discovery he makes in his works of his
personal character the exemplar he furnishes in
himself of the four qualities Hippocrates says are
indispensable in every good physician learning,
sagacity, humanity, probity. This personality gives
a constant charm to everything he writes, the
warmth of his large, humane, practical nature is
felt throughout.
Above all, we meet with a habitual reference to
what ought to be the supreme end of every man's
thoughts and energies the two main issues of all
his endeavours, the glory of God and the good of
men. Human life was to him a sacred, a divine,
Locke and Sydenham. 65
as well as a curious thing, and he seems to have
possessed through life, in rare acuteness, that sense
of the value of what was at stake, of the perilous
material he had to work in, and that gentleness and
compassion for his suffering fellow-men, without
which no man be his intellect ever so transcen-
dent, his learning ever so vast, his industry ever so
accurate and inappeasable need hope to be a great
physician, much less a virtuous and honest man.
This characteristic is very striking. In the midst
of the most minute details, and the most purely
professional statements, he bursts out into some
abrupt acknowledgment of ' The Supreme Judge,'
' The true Archiater and Archeus.' We may give
one among many such instances. He closes his
observations on The Epidemic Cough and Pleurisy
Peripncumony of 1675, w i tn this sudden allusion
to the Supreme Being : ' Qui post sequentur morbi,
solus novit, Qui novit omnia.' And again, after
giving his receipt for the preparation of his laudanum
liquidum, so much of Spanish wine, of opium, of
saffron, of cinnamon, and cloves, he adds, ' Pro-
fecto non hie mini tempero, quin gratulabundus
animadvertam, DEUAI omnipotentem TTO.VTWV Ao>r?)pa
eawi/ non aliud remedium, quod vel pluribus malis
debellandis par sit, vel eadem efficacius extirpet,
humano generi in miseriarum solatium concessisse,
quam opiata.'
66 Locke and Sydenham.
If we may adapt the simple but sublime saying
of Sir Isaac Newton, Sydenham, though diligent
beyond most other 'children' in gathering his
pebbles and shells on the shore of the great deep,
and in winning for mankind some things of worth
from the vast and formless infinite, was not uncon-
scious of the mighty presence beside which he was
at work ; he was not deaf to the strong music of
that illimitable sea. He recognised in the midst of
the known, a greater, an infinite, a divine unknown ;
behind everything certain and distinct, he beheld
something shadowy and unsearchable, past all find-
ing out ; and he did not, as many men of his class
have too often done, and still do, rest in the mere
contemplation and recognition of the TI fleibv. This
was to him but the shadow of the supreme sub-
stance, o 6cos. How unlike to this fervour, this
reverence and godly fear, is the hard, cool, noncha-
lant style of many of our modern men of science,
each of whom is so intent on his own little pebble,
so bent upon finding in it something no one else
ever found, so self-involved and self-sufficient, that
his eyes and his ears are alike shut to the splendours
and the voices the brooding darkness, and the
'look that threatens the profane' of the liberal
sea, from out whose abyss it has been flung, and
' Which doth with its eternal motion make
A sound like thunder everlastingly.'
Locke and Sydcnham. 67
. This habit of Sydenham's mind is strikingly shown
in the first sentence of his Preface to the first edition
of his Medical Observations : ' Qui medicinae dat
operarn, hsec secum ut ssepe perpendat oportet :
Primo, se de aegrorum vita ipsius curse commissa,
rationem aliquando SUPREMO JUDICI redditurum.
Deinde quicquid artis aut scientisa Divino beneficio
consecutus est, imprimis, ad SUMMI NUMINIS laudem,
atque humani generis salutem, esse dirigendum :
indignum autem esse, ut coelestia ilia dona, vel
avaritiae, vel ambitus officio inserviant Porro, se
non ignobilis alicujus aut contemnendi animalis
curam suscepisse; ut enim, humani generis pretium
agnoscas, UNIGENITUS DEI FILIUS, homo factus est
adeoque naturam assumptam sua dignatione nobili-
tavit. Denique, nee se communi sorte, exemptum
esse, sed iisdem legibus mortalitatis, iisdem casibus
et oerumnis, obnoxium atque expositum, quibus alii
quilibet ; quo diligentius et quidem teneriori cum
affectu, ipse plane o/zoioTra^s osgrotantibus opem
ferre conetur.'
When it is the free outcome of an earnest, sin-
cere, and ample nature, this sudden reference to
Divine things this involuntary Oh altitudo ! in
the midst of a purely technical exposition, has an
effect, and moves the hearer far beyond any mere
elaborate and foreseen argumentation. When a
youth is told beforehand what you mean to make
68 Locke and Sydenham.
him believe, and, above all, what you mean to
insist that he must feel you have much of him
against you. You should take him before he is
aware ; and, besides, if this burst of emotion is the
expression of an inward restraint, carried to its ut-
most, and then forced into utterance ; if the speaker
has resisted being moved, and is moved in spite of
himself, then is he surest to move those upon whom
he is acting. The full power of lightning is due to
speed and concentration you have it in the Teuto-
nic Blitz, gone as soon as come.
Such of our readers (a fast-lessening band !) as
were pupils of that remarkable man and first-rate
teacher, Dr. John Barclay, must remember well
his sudden bursts of this kind, made all the more
memorable, that he disliked formal moralizing upon
his favourite science. There was one occasion
when he never failed to break out. It was when
concluding his description of the bones of the skull.
His old pupils knew what was coming, the new
ones were set a wondering; all saw some sup-
pressed emotion working within him, his language
was more close and rapid ; that homely, sensible,
honest face, was eager with some unacknowledged
central feeling, and after finishing the Sella Turcica,
and the clinoid processes, he threw down the sphe-
noid bone, and the time being up, and his hand on
the open door of that well-known arena in which
Locke and Sydenham. 69
he moved, he seemed as if leaving; indeed, we
believe he intended then to leave, when turning
round upon the class, with a face serious almost to
anger, and a voice trembling with feeling, he said,
' Yes, gentlemen ! there is a God, omnipotent,
omniscient, and eternal] as he vanished under the
gallery into his room. Depend upon it, this single
sentence made a deeper impression on his hearers
than any more elaborate demonstration after the
manner of Paley. The ardent old man did not
linger among particulars, but passed at once, and
with a sort of passionate fervour, to the full abso-
lute assertion.
Two examples of these brief lightnings, which at
one flash ' unfold both earth and heaven,' occur to us
now. Dr. Dick, in his System of Theology, at the
close of his lecture on the Immensity and Omnipre-
sence of the Deity, pictures a man about to commit
some great sin, as shutting himself in his room, or
going into the depths of an unfrequented wood, so as
to get absolutely by himself, and then turning and
looking and looking again to make sure 'let him
turn and look again /'
And John Foster, in that intense bit of spiritual
vivisection, the Preface to Doddridge's Rise and Pro-
gress, when minuting the process of a step-by-step
descent into the deepest meditative wickedness and
impiety, the very ' superfluity of naughtiness,' repre-
70 Locke and SydenJiain.
sents the person as speaking his last thought aloud,
and starting at his own voice, and his desperate sin,
and then exclaiming, ' If any one were within hear-
ing !' If any -one were within hearing! as if some
One had not all the while been within hearing.
The following are a few quotations, taken at random,
from Sydenham's various treatises and letters, in
which we may see what he himself was as a practi-
tioner, and what were his views as to the only way in
which Medicine, as an art, could be advanced.
In his Epistle to Dr. Mapletoft, prefixed to the
Observations Medico:, his first publication, when he
was forty-two years of age, he gives his friend a long
and entertaining account of his early professional life,
and thus proceeds : ' Having returned to London, I
began the practice of Medicine, which when I studied
curiously with most intent eye \intentoadmodumoculo]
and utmost diligence, I came to this conviction,
which to this day increases in strength, that our art
is not to be better learned than by its exercise and
use ; and that it is likely in every case to prove true,
that those who have directed their eyes and their
mind, the most accurately and diligently, to the
natural phenomena of diseases, will excel in eliciting
and applying the true indications of cure. With this
thread as my guide, I first applied my mind to a
closer observation of fevers, and after no small amount
of irksome waiting, and perplexing mental agitations,
Locke and Sydenkam. 7 r
\vhich I had to endure for several years, I at last fell
upon a method by which, as I thought, they might be
cured, which method I some time ago made public,
at the urgent request of my friends.'
He then refers to the persecution and calumnies
he had been exposed to from the profession, who
looked upon him as a pestilent fellow, and a setter
forth of strange doctrines ; adopting the noble saying
of Titus Tacitus in reply to Metellus : ' Facile est
in me dicere, cum non sim responsurus ; tu didicisti
maledicere ; ego, conscientia teste, didici maledicta
contemnere. Si tu linguae tuse dominus es, et quic-
quid lubet effutias ; ego aurium mearum sum dominus,
ut quicquid obvenerit audiant inoffensae.' 1 It is easy
to speak against me when I make no reply ; you have
learned to speak evil ; I, my conscience bearing me
witness, have learned to despise evil speaking. You
are master of your tongue, and can make it utter
what you list ; I am master of my ears, and can make
them hear without being offended.
And, after making the reference we have already
1 Sydenham here quotes from memory, as Bacon, and many
other men of that time, whose minds were full of the classics,
often did, and none of the commentators have discovered the
exact passage. The remark is in Beyerlinck, Magn. Theatr,
Vit. Human., torn. vi. page 60, H. (Lugd. 1666, folio), referred
to by Dr. Greenhill. It is as follows : ' Tacitus Lucio Metello
ei in Senatu maledicenti respondit, " Facile est in me dicere,
quia non responsurus sum, potentia ergo tua, non mea patientia
est accusanda." ' Seneca is referred to by Beyerlinck.
7 2 Locke and Sydenham.
mentioned, to his method having had the sanction
and assistance of Locke, he thus concludes in regard
to the ultimate success of his newly discovered way,
'As concerns the future, I cast the die, not over-
careful how it may fall, for, since I am now no longer
young, and have, by the blessing of the Almighty, a
sufficient provision for the remainder of my journey
(tantum mihi est viatici, quantum restat vice), I will do
my best to attain, without trouble to myself or others,
that measure of happiness so beautifully depicted by
Politian :
" Felix ille animi, divisque simillimus ipsis,
Quern non mendaci resplendens gloria fuco
Sollicitat, non fastosi mala gaudia luxus.
Sed tacitos sinit ire dies, et panptre cultu
Exigit innoctue tranquilla silentia vita" '
We shall now give more fully his peculiar views,
and in order to render him due honour for originat-
ing and acting upon them, we must remember in the
midst of what a mass of errors and prejudices, of
theories actively mischievous, he was placed, at a
time when the mania of hypothesis was at its height,
and when the practical part of his art was overrun
and stultified by vile and silly nostrums. We must
have all this in our mind, or we shall fail in estimat-
ing the amount of independent thought, of courage
and uprightness, and of all that deserves to be called
magnanimity and virtue, which was involved in his
thinking and writing and acting as he did.
Locke and Sydenht
73
' The improvement of physic, in my opinion, de-
pends, ist, Upon collecting as genuine and natural a
description or history of diseases as can be procured ;
and, 2tt, Upon laying down a fixed and complete
method of cure. With regard to the history of diseases,
whoever considers the undertaking deliberately will
perceive that a few such particulars must be attended
to : isf, All diseases should be described as objects
of natural history, with the same exactness as is done
by botanists, for there are many diseases that come
under the same genus and bear the same name, that,
being specifically different, require a different treat-
ment. The word carduus or thistle, is applied to
several herbs, and yet a botanist would be inaccurate
and imperfect who would content himself with a
generic description. Furthermore, when this distri-
bution of distempers into genera has been attempted,
it has been to fit into some hypothesis, and hence
this distribution is made to suit the bent of the author
rather than the real nature of the disorder. How
much this has obstructed the improvement of physic
any man may know. In writing, therefore, such a
natural history of diseases, every merely philosophical
hypothesis should be set aside, and the manifest and
natural phenomena, however minute, should be noted
with the utmost exactness. The usefulness of this
procedure cannot be easily overrated, as compared
with the subtle inquiries and trifling notions of modern
74 Locke and Sydenkain.
writers ; for can there be a shorter, or indeed any
other way, of coming at the morbific causes, or of
discovering the curative indications, than by a certain
perception of the peculiar symptoms r \ By these steps
and helps it was that the father of physic, the great
Hippocrates, came to excel ; his theory (flew/Ha) being
no more than an exact description or view of Nature.
He found that Nature alone often terminates diseases,
and works a cure with a few simple medicines, and
often enough with no medicines at all. If only one
person in every age had accurately described, and
consistently cured, but a single disease, and made
known his secret, physic would not be where it now
is ; but we have long since forsook the ancient method
of cure, founded ripon the knowledge of conjunct causes,
insomuch that the art, as at this day practised, is
rather the art of talking about diseases than of curing
them. I make this digression in order to assert, that
the discovering and assigning of remote causes, which
now-a-days so much engrosses the minds and feeds
the vanity of curious inquirers, is an impossible at-
tempt, and that only immediate and conjunct causes
fall within the compass of our knowledge.' Or as he
elsewhere pithily states it : ' Cognitio nostra, in
rerum cortice, omnis ferme versatur, ac ad TO 6 sive
quod res hoc modo se habeat, fere tantum assurgit ;
TO Stem, sive rerum causas, nullatenus attingit.'
His friend Locke could not have stated the case
Locke and Sydenham. 75
more clearly or sensibly. It is this doctrine of ' con-
junct causes,' this necessity for watching the action
of compound and often opposing forces, and the
having to do all this not in a machine, of which if
you have seen one, you have seen all, but where each
organism has often much that is different from, as
well as common with all others. Here you must
mend your watch while it is going, you must shoot
your game on the wing. It is this which takes medi-
cine out of the category of exact sciences, and puts
it into that which includes politics, ethics, navigation,
and practical engineering, in all of which, though
there are principles, and those principles quite within
the scope of human reason, yet the application of
these principles must, in the main, be left to each
man's skill, presence of mind, and judgment, as to
the case in hand.
It is in medicine as in the piloting of a ship rules
may be laid down, principles expounded, charts ex-
hibited ; but when a man has made himself master
of all these, he will often find his ship among breakers
and quicksands, and must at last have recourse to
his own craft and courage. Gaubius, in his admirable
chapter, De disciplina Medici, thus speaks of the
reasonable certainty of medicine as distinguished from
the absolute certainty of the exact sciences, and at
the same time gives a very just idea of the infinite
(as far as concerns our limited powers of sense and
7 6 Locke and Sydenham.
judgment) multiplicity of the phenomena of disease :
' Nee vero sufficit medicum communia modo intueri ;
oportet et euiiris homini propria, quae quidem diversitas
tarn immensa occurrit ut nulla observationum vi ex-
hauriri possit. Sola denique contemplatione non
licet acquiescere, inque obscuris rebus suspendere
judicium, donee lux affulgeat. Actionemexigitoffidwn.
Captanda hinc agendi occasio, quiz sizpe prceceps, per
conjecturam cogit determinare, quod per scientiam sat
cito nequit. Audiant hsec obtrectatores, et cum
didicerint sdentias puras, ab iis quas applicatas vocant,
contemplativas a practids, distinguere, videant quo
jure medicinam pras aliis, ut omnis certi expertem,
infament.'
It would not be easy to put more important truth
into clearer expression. Conjecture, in its good
sense, as meaning the throwing together of a number
of the elements of judgment, and taking what upon
the whole is the most likely, and acting accordingly,
has, and will ever have, a main part to play in any
art that concerns human nature, in its entireness and
in action. When in obscure and dangerous places,
we must not contemplate, we must act, it may be on
the instant. This is what makes medicine so much
more of an art than a science, and dependent so
much more upon the agent than upon his instruc-
tions ; and this it is that makes us so earnest in our
cautions against the supposition that any amount of
Locke and Sydenham. 77
scientific truth, the most accurate and extensive, can
in medicine supersede the necessity of the recipient
of all this knowledge having, as Richard Baxter says,
by nature ' a special sagacity, a naturally searching
and conjecturing turn of mind.' Moreover, this
faculty must be disciplined and exercised in its
proper function, by being not a hearer only, but also
a doer, an apprentice as well as a student, and by
being put under the tutorage of a master who exer-
cises as well as expounds his calling.
This native gift and its appropriate object have
been so justly, so beautifully described by Hartley
Coleridge in his Life of Fothergill, that we cannot
refrain from closing our remarks on this subject by
quoting his words. Do our readers know his Bio-
graphia Borealis ? If they do, they will agree with
us in placing it among the pleasantest books in our
language, just such a one as Plutarch, had he been
an Englishman, would have written : ' There are
certain inward gifts, more akin to genius than to
talent, which make the physician prosper, and de-
serve to prosper ; for medicine is not like practical
geometry, or the doctrine of projectiles, an applica-
tion of an abstract, demonstrable science, in which
a certain result may be infallibly drawn from certain
data, or in which the disturbing forces may be cal-
culated with scientific exactness. It is a tentative
art, to succeed in which demands a quickness of
78 Locke and Sydcnham.
eye, thought, tact, invention, which are not to be
learned by study, nor, unless by connatural aptitude,
to be acquired by experience ; and it is the posses-
sion of this sense, exercised by a patient observation,
and fortified by a just reliance on the ins medicatrix,
the self-adjusting tendency of nature, that constitutes
the true physician or healer, as imagination consti-
tutes the poet, and brings it to pass, that sometimes
an old apothecary, not far removed from an old
woman, and whose ordinary conversation savours, it
may be, largely of twaddle, who can seldom give a
rational account of a case or its treatment, acquires,
and justly, a reputation for infallibility, while men of
talent and erudition are admired and neglected ; the
truth being, tJiat there is a great deal that is mysterious
in whatever is practical?
But to return to our author. He was the first to
point out what he called the varying ' constitutions'
of different years in relation to their respective
epidemics, and the importance of watching the type
of each new epidemic before settling the means of
cure. In none of his works is his philosophic spirit,
and the subtlety and clearness of his understanding,
shown more signally than in his successive histories
of the epidemics of his time. Nothing equal to them
has ever appeared since ; and the full importance of
the principles he was the first to lay down, is only
now beginning to be acknowledged. His confession
Locke and Sydenham. 79
as to his entirely failing to discover what made one
epidemic so to differ from another, has been amply
confirmed by all succeeding observers. He says,
' I have carefully examined the different constitutions
of different years as to the manifest qualities of the
air, yet I must own I have hitherto made no progress,
having found that years, perfectly agreeing as to their
temperature and other sensible properties, have pro-
duced very different tribes of diseases, and vice versa.
The matter seems to stand thus : there are certain
constitutions of years that owe their origin neither to
heat, cold, dryness, nor moisture, but upon a certain
secret and inexplicable alteration in the bowels of the
earth, whence the air becomes impregnated with
such kinds of effluvia as subject the human body to
distempers of a certain specific type.'
As to the early treatment of a new epidemic, he
says, ' My chief care, in the midst of so much
darkness and ignorance, is to wait a little, and pro-
ceed very slowly, especially in the use of powerful
remedies, in the meantime observing its nature and
procedure, and by what means the patient was re-
lieved or injured ;' and he concludes by regretting
the imperfection of his observations, and hoping that
they will assist in beginning a work that, in his judg-
ment, will greatly tend to the advantage of mankind.
Had his successors followed in his track with equal
sagacity and circumspection, our knowledge of these
80 Locke and Sydenham.
destructive and mysterious incursions of disease,
would, in all likelihood, have been greatly larger and
more practical than it is now.
.Sydenham is well known to have effected a revolu-
tion in the management of the small-pox, and to
have introduced a method of treatment upon which
no material improvement has since been made. We
owe the cool regimen to him. Speaking of the pro-
priety of attending to the wishes of the sufferer, he
says, with equal humanity and good sense, ' A per-
son in a burning fever desires to drink freely of some
small liquor ; but the rules of art, built upon some
hypothesis, having a different design in view, thwart
the desire, and instead thereof, order a cordial. In
the meantime the patient, not being suffered to drink
what he wishes, nauseates all kinds of food, but art
commands him to eat. Another, after a long illness,
begs hard, it may be, for something odd, or ques-
tionable ; here, again, impertinent art thwarts him
and threatens him with death. How much more
excellent the aphorism of Hippocrates " Such food
as is most grateful, though not so wholesome, is to
be preferred to that which is better, but distasteful."
Nor will this appear strange, if it be considered that
the all-wise Creator has formed the whole with such
exquisite order, that, as all the evils of nature emi-
nently conspire to complete the harmony of the whole
work, so every being is endowed with a Divine direc-
Locke and Sydenham. 8 1
tion or instinct, which is interwoven with its proper
essence, and hence the safety of mankind was pro-
vided for, who, notwithstanding all our doctoring,
had been otherwise in a sad enough plight.' Again
' He would be no honest and successful pilot who
were to apply himself with less industry to avoid
rocks and sands, and bring his vessel safely home,
than to search into the causes of the ebbing and the
flowing of the sea, which, though very well for a
philosopher, is foreign to him whose business it is to
secure the ship. So neither will a physician, whose
province it is to cure diseases, be able to do so,
though he be a person of great genius, who bestows
less time on the hidden and intricate method of
nature, and adapting his means thereto, than on
curious and subtle speculations.'
The following is frank enough : ' Indeed, if I
may speak my mind freely, I have been long of
opinion that I act the part of an honest man and a
good physician as often as I refrain entirely from
medicines, when, upon visiting the patient, I find him
no worse to-day than he was yesterday ; whereas, if I
attempt to cure the patient by a method of which
I am uncertain, he will be endangered both by the
experiment I am going to make on him and by the
disease itself; nor will he so easily escape two dangers
as one.
1 That practice, and that alone, will bring relief
F
82 Locke and Sydenham.
to the sufferer, which elicits the curative indications
from the phenomena of the diseases themselves, and
confirms them by experience, by which means the
great Hippocrates made himself immortal. And had
the art of medicine been delivered by any one in
this wise, though the cure of a disease or two might
come to be known to the common people, yet the
art in its full extent would then have required men
more prudent and skilful than it does now, nor would
it lose any of its credit ; for as there is in the opera-
tions of Nature (on the observations of which a true
medical praxis is founded) more of nicety and
subtlety than can be found in any art supported on
the most specious hypotheses, so the science of
Medicine which Nature teaches will exceed an ordi-
nary capacity in a much greater degree than that
which mere' philosophy teaches.'
There is much profound truth in this. Observa-
tion, in its strict sense, is not every man's gift, and
but few men's actual habit of mind. Newton used
to say, that if in any one way he differed from other
men, it was in his power of continued attention of
faithful, unbroken observation ; his ladder had all
its steps entire, and he went up with a composed,
orderly foot. It requires more strength and fineness
of mind, more of what deserves to be called genius,
to make a series of genuine observations in Medicine,
or any other art, than to spin any amount of nice
Locke and Sydenham. 83
hypotheses, or build any number of ' castdla in aere,'
as Sydenham calls them. The observer's object
and it is no mean one is
' To know ivhat 's what, and that 's as high
As Metaphysic wit can fly.'
Sydenham adds, ' Nor will the publication of such
observations diminish but rather increase the reputation
of our art, which, being rendered more difficult, as well
as more useful, only men of sagacity and keen sound
judgment would be admitted as physicians' How true
to the sayings of his great master in his Novum
Organum, ' Nature is only subdued by submission.'
' The subtil ty of nature is far beyond that of sense,
or of the understanding, and the specious meditations
and theories of mankind are but a kind of insanity,
only there is no one to stand by and observe it !'
There is a very remarkable passage in Sydenham's
Treatise of the Dropsy, in which, after quoting this
curious passage from Hippocrates, ' Certain phy-
sicians and philosophers say that it is impossible for
any man to understand medicine without knowing
the internal structure of man ; for my part, I think
that what they have written or said of nature pertains
less to the medical than the pictorial art,' he asserts
not only his own strong conviction of the importance
of a knowledge of minute anatomy to the prac-
titioner, but also his opinion that what Hippocrates
meant, was to caution against depending too much
84 Locke and Sydenham.
on, and expecting too much help from anatomical
researches, to the superseding of the scrupulous
observation of living phenomena, of successive ac-
tions. 1 ' For in all diseases, acute and chronic, it
must be owned there is an inscrutable TI Oeiov, a
specific property which eludes the keenest anatomy.'
He then goes on to say, that as Hippocrates cen-
sured the abuse of anatomy, so in his own day, there
were many who, in like manner, raised hopes for
Physic from discoveries in Chemistry, which, in the
1 As far as the cure of diseases is concerned, Medicine has
more to do with human Dynamics than Statics, for whatever be
the essence of life and as yet this ri Oeiov, this nescimus qiiid
divinum, has defied all scrutiny it is made known to us chiefly
by certain activities or changes. It is the tendency at the pre-
sent time of medical research to reverse this order. Morbid
anatomy, microscopical investigations, though not confined to
states or conditions of parts, must regard them fully more than
actions and functions. This is probably what Stahl means
when he says, ' Ubi Physicus desinit, Mediais incipit ;' and in
the following passage of his rough Tudesque Latin, he plainly
alludes to the tendency, in his day, to dwell too much upon the
materials of the human body, without considering its actions
'utvivms.' 1 The passage is full of the subtilty and fire and
depth of that wonderful man. ' Undique hinc materiiz adver-
titur animus, et qute crassius in sensum impingit conformatio,
et mutua proportio corporea consideratur ; motuum ordo, vis,
et absoluta magis in materiam ener s ia, tempora ejus, gradus,
vices, maxime autem omnium, fines obiter in animum admit-
tuntur.' The human machine has been compared to a watch,
and some hope that in due time doctors will be as good at their
craft as watchmakers are at theirs ; but watchmakers are not
called on to mend their work while it is going ; this makes all
the difference.
L ocke and Sydenham . 8 5
nature of things, never could be realized, and which
. only served to distract from the true Hippocratic
method of induction ' for the chief deficiency of
medicine is not a want of efficacious medicine. Who-
ever considers the matter thoroughly, will find that the
principal defect on the part of physic proceeds, not
from a scarcity of medicines to answer particular inten-
tions, but from the want of knowing the intentions to be
answered, for an apothecary's apprentice can tell me
what medicine will purge, vomit, or sweat, or cool ;
but a man must be conversant with practice who is
able to tell me when is the properest time for ad-
ministering any of them.'
He is constantly inculcating the necessity of getting
our diagnostic knowledge at first-hand, ridiculing
those descriptions of disease which the manufacturers
of ' Bodies of medicine,' ' Hand-books,' and such like,
make up in their studies, and which are often er compo-
sitions than portraits, or at the best bad copies, and
which the young student will find it hard enough to
identify in real life. There is too much of this we
fear still ; and Montaigne, who rejoices in having a
sly hit at his cronies the doctors, might still say with
some reason, ' Like him who paints the sea, rocks,
and heavens, and draws the model of a ship as he
sits safe at his table ; but send him to sea, and he
knows not how or where to steer ; so doctors often-
times make such a description of our maladies as a
86 Locke and Sydenham.
town-crier does of a lost dog or donkey, of such a
colour and height, such ears, etc. ; but bring the very
animal before him, and he knows it not for all that'
Everywhere our author acknowledges the vis medi-
catrix naturce, by which alone so many diseases are
cured, and without or against which none, and by
directing and helping which medicine best fulfils its
end, ' For I do not think it below me or my art to
acknowledge, with respect to the cure of fevers and
other distempers, that when no manifest indication
pointed out to me what should be done, I have con-
sulted my patient's safety and my own reputation,
most effectually, by doing nothing at all. But it is
much to be lamented that abundance of patients are
so ignorant as not to know, that it is sometimes as
much the part of a skilful physician to do nothing,
as at others to apply the most energetic remedies,
whence they not only deprive themselves of fair and
honourable treatment, but impute it to ignorance
or negligence.'
We conclude these extracts with a picturesque de-
scription. It is a case of ' the hysterics' in a man :
' I was called not long since to an ingenious gentle-
man who had recovered from a fever, but a few days
before he had employed another physician, who
blooded and purged him soundly, and forbade him
the use of flesh. When I came I found him up, and
heard him talking sensibly. I asked why I was sent
Locke and Sydenham. 87
for, to which one of his friends replied with a wink,
Wait and you'll see. Accordingly, sitting down and
entering into discourse with the patient, I perceived
his under lip was thrust outwards, and in frequent
motion, as happens to peevish children, who pout
before they cry, which was succeeded by the most
violent fit of crying, with deep convulsive sobs. I
conceived this was occasioned partly by his long
illness, partly by the previous evacuations, and partly
by emptiness ; / therefore ordered him a roast chicken,
and a pint of Canary.' Felix tile 1
His shrewdness and humour are shown in the
story Dr. Paris tells in his Pharmacologia.
' This great physician, Sydenham, having long
attended a gentleman of fortune with little or no
advantage, frankly avowed his inability to render
him any further service, adding at the same time,
that there was a physician of the name of Robert-
son, at Inverness, who had distinguished himself by
the performance of many remarkable cures of the
same complaint as that under which his patient
laboured, and expressing a conviction that, if he
applied to him, he would come back cured. This
was too encouraging a proposal to be rejected ; the
gentleman received from Sydenham a statement of
his case, with the necessary letter of introduction,
and proceeded without delay to the place in ques-
tion. On arriving at Inverness, and anxiously
88 Locke and Sydenham.
inquiring for the residence of Dr. Robertson, he
found to his utter dismay and disappointment that
there was no physician of that name, nor ever had
been in the memory of any person there. The
gentleman returned, vowing eternal hostility to the
peace of Sydenham, and on his arrival at home,
instantly expressed his indignation at having been
sent on a journey of so many hundred miles for no
purpose. " Well," replies Sydenham, " are you
better in health?" " Yes, I am now quite well; but
no thanks to you." " No," says Sydenham, " but
you may thank Dr. Robertson for curing you. I
wished to send you a journey with some object of
interest in view; I knew it would be of service to
you ; in going, you had Dr. Robertson and his
wonderful cures in contemplation ; and in return-
ing, you were equally engaged in thinking of scold-
ing me.'"
In making these selections we have done our
author great injustice, partly from having to give
\hern either in Swan's translation or our own, and
thereby losing much of the dignity and nerve the
flavour, or what artists would call the crispness of
the original ; partly also from our being obliged to
exclude strictly professional discussions, in which, as
might be expected, his chief value and strength lie.
We know nothing in medical literature more
finished than his letter to Dr. Cole on the hysteri-
Locke and Sydenham. 89
cal passion, and his monograph of the gout. Well
might Edward Hannes, the friend of Addison, in his
verses on Sydenham, thus sing :
' Sic te scientem non faciunt libri
Et dogma pulchrum ; sed sapientia
Enata rebus, mensque facti
Experiens, animusque felix.'
It would not be easy to over-estimate the perma-
nent impression for good, which the 'writings, the
character, and the practice of Sydenham have made
on the art of healing in England, and on the Conti-
nent generally. In the writings of Boerhaave, Stahl,
Gaubius, Pinel, Bordeu, Haller, and many others, he
is spoken of as the father of rational medicine ; as
the first man who applied to his profession the Ba-
conian principles of interpreting and serving nature,
and who never forgot the master's rule, ' Non fin-
gendum aut excogitandum, sed inveniendum, quid
natura aut faciat aut ferat.' He was what Plato
would have called an ' artsmanj as distinguished
from a doctor of abstract science. But he was by
no means deficient in either the capacity or the
relish for speculative truth. Like all men of a large
practical nature, he could not have been what he
was, or done what he did, without possessing and
often exercising the true philosophizing faculty. He
was a man of the same quality of mind in this re-
spect with Watt, Franklin, and John Hunter, in
go Locke and Sydenham.
whom speculation was not the less genuine that it
was with them a means rather than an end.
This distinction between the science and the art or
craft, or as it was often called the cunning of medi-
cine, is one we have already insisted upon, and the
importance of which we consider very great, in the
present condition of this department of knowledge
and practice. We are now-a-days in danger of ne-
glecting our art in mastering our science, though
medicine in its ultimate resort must always be more
of an art than of a science. It being the object of
the student of physic to learn or know some thing
or things, in order to be able safely, effectually and
at once, to do some other thing; and inasmuch as
human nature cannot contain more than its fill, a
man may not only have in his head much scientific
truth which is useless, but it may shut out and
hinder and render altogether ineffectual, the active,
practical, workmanlike faculties, for whose use his
knowledge was primarily got. It is the remark of a
profound thinker, that ' all professional men labour
under a great disadvantage in not being allowed to be
ignorant of what is useless ; every one fancies that he
is bound to receive and transmit whatever is believed
to have been known.'
' It appears to be possible,' says Dr. Thomas
Young, in his Life of Parson, ( that a memory may in
itself be even too retentive for real practical utility,
Locke and Sydenham, 9 1
as if of too microscopic a nature ; and it seems to
be by a wise and benevolent, though by no means
an obvious arrangement of a Creative Providence,
that a certain degree of oblivion becomes a most useful
instrument in the advancement of human knowledge,
enabling us readily to look back on the prominent
features only of various objects and occurrences, and
to class them, and reason upon them, by the help of
this involuntary kind of abstraction and generaliza-
tion, with incomparably greater facility than we could
do if we retained the whole detail of what had been
once but slightly impressed on our minds. It is thus,
for example, in physic, that the experienced practi-
tioner learns at length to despise the relation of in-
dividual symptoms and particular cases, on which
alone the empiric insists, and to feel the value of
the Hippocratic system of " attending more to the
prognostic than the diagnostic features of disease ;"
which, to a younger student, appears to be perfect
imbecility.'
This subject of art and science is hinted at, with
his usual sagacity, by Plato, in a singular passage in
his Theaetetus : ' Particulars,' he says, ' are infinite,
and the higher generalities give no sufficient direc-
tion in medicine ; but the pith of all sciences, that
which makes the artsman differ from the inexpert, is
in the middle propositions, which, in every particular
knowledge, are taken from tradition and inexperi-
92 Locke and Sydenkam.
ence.' 1 It would not be easy to convey in fewer
words, more of what deserves the name of the philo-
sophy of this entire subject, and few things would
be more for the advantage of the best interests of
all arts and sciences, and all true progress in human
knowledge and power, than the taking this passage
and treating it exegetically, as a divine would say,
bringing out fully its meaning, and illustrating it
by examples. Scientific truth is to the mind of a
physician what food is to his body ; but, in order to
his mind being nourished and growing by this food,
it must be assimilated it must undergo a vital in-
ternal change must be transformed, transmuted, and
lose its original form. This destruction of former
identity this losing of itself in being received into
the general mass of truth is necessary in order to
1 Being anxious to see what was the context of this remark-
able passage, which Bacon quotes, as if verbatim, in his Advance-
ment of Learning, we hunted through the Thesetetus, but in vain.
We set two friends, throughbred Grecians, upon the scent, but
they could find no such passage. One of them then spoke to
Sir William Hamilton, and he told him that he had marked
that passage as not being a literal translation of any sentence in
Plato's writings. He considered it a quotation from memory,
and as giving the substance of a passage in the Philebus, which
occurs in the 6th and 7th of the forty-two sections of that Dia-
logue. Perhaps the sentence which comes nearest to the words
of Bacon is the last in the 6th section, beginning with the words
ol. 5 vvv T&V &v6p<j)ir&v cr&fpot. To. 5 fj-tcra avrovs K<pe<jyfi, of
which he speaks, seem to be equivalent to ' the middle propo-
sitions.'
Locke and Sydenham. 93
bring abstract truth into the condition of what Plato
calls ' the middle propositions,' or, as Mr. Mill calls
them, the generalia of knowledge. 1 These are such
truths as have been appropriated, and vitally adopted,
by the mind, and which, to use Bacon's strong words,
have been ' drenched in flesh and blood,' have been
turned ' in succum et sanguinem;' for man's mind
cannot, any more than his body, live on mere ele-
mentary substances ; he must have fat, albumen,
and sugar ; he can make nothing of their elements,
bare carbon, azote, or hydrogen. And more than
this, as we have said, he must digest and disintegrate
1 The following we give as a sort of abstract of a valuable
chapter in Mill's Logic on ' The Logic of Art :' An art, or a
body of art, consists of rules, together with as much of the
speculative propositions as comprises the justification of those
rules. Art selects and arranges the truths of science in the
most convenient order for practice, instead of the order most
convenient for thought science following one cause to its
various effects, while art traces one effect to its multiplied and
diversified causes and conditions. There is need of a set of in-
termediate scientific truths, derived from the higher generalities of
science, and destined to serve as the generalia or first principles
of art. The art proposes for itself an end to be gained, defines
the end, and hands it over to science. Science receives it, studies
it as a phenomenon or effect, and having investigated its causes
and conditions, sends it back to art, with a rationale of its cause
or causes, but nothing more. Art then examines their combin-
ations, and according as any of them are or are not in human
power, or within the scope of its particular end, pronounces
upon their utility, and forms a rule of action. The rules of art
do not attempt to comprise more conditions than require to be
attended to in ordinary cases, and therefore are always imperfect.
94 Locke and Sydenham.
his food before it can be of any use to him. In this
view, as in another and a higher, we may use the
sacred words, ' That which thou sowest is not
quickened except it die ; except a corn of wheat fall
into the ground and die, it abideth alone ; but if it
die, it bringeth forth much fruit ;' for, as it is a law
of vegetable life, that a seed does not begin to pass
into a new form, does not begin to grow into a plant,
until its own nature is changed, and its original con-
dition is broken up, until it ' dies ' in giving birth to
something better, so is it with scientific truth, taken
into or planted in the mind, it must die, else it
abides alone it does not germinate.
Had Plato lived now, he might well have said,
' particulars are infinite.' Facts, as such, are merely
so many units, and are often rather an encumbrance
to the practical man than otherwise. These ' middle
propositions' stand mid-way between the facts in
their infinity and speculative truth in its abstract in-
ertness; they take from both what they need, and
they form a tertium quid, upon which the mind can
act practically, and reason upon in practice, and
form rules of action. 1 Sydenham, Hippocrates, Aber-
1 Locke thus puts it : ' As a help to this, I think it may be
proposed that, for the saving the long progression of the thoughts
to remote and first principles in every case, the mind should pro-
vide itself several stages ; that is to say, intermediate principles,
which it might have recourse to in the examining those positions
that come in its way. These, though they are not self-evident
L ocke and Sydenham. 9 5
nethy, Pott, Hunter, Baillie, Abercrombie, and such
like, among physicians, are great in the region of
the ' middle propositions' They selected their par-
ticulars their instances, and they made their higher
generalities come down, they appropriated them, and
turned them into blood, bone, and sinew.
The great problem in the education of young men
for the practice of medicine in our times, is to know
how to make the infinity of particulars, the prodigi-
ous treasures of mere science, available for practice
how the art may keep pace with, and take the maxi-
mum of good out of the science. We have often
thought that the apprenticeship system is going too
much into disrepute. It had its manifest and great
evils; but there was much good got by it that is not
principles, yet if they have been made out from them by a wary
and unquestionable deduction, may be depended on as certain
and infallible truths, and serve as unquestionable truths to prove
other points depending on them by a nearer and shorter view
than remote and general maxims. These may serve as land-
marks to show what lies in the direct way of truth, or is quite
besides it. ... Only in other sciences great care is to be
taken that they establish those intermediate principles with as
much caution, exactness, and indifferency, as mathematicians
use in the settling any of their great theorems. When this is
not done, but men take up the principles in this or that science
upon credit, inclination, interest, etc., in haste, without due
examination and most unquestionable proof, they lay a trap for
themselves, and as much as in them lies captivate their under-
standings to mistake, falsehood, and error.' Of the Conduct of
the Understanding, pp. 53, 54. London, 1859.
96 Locke and Sydenham.
to be got in any other way. The personal authority
and attachment, the imitation of their master the
watching his doings, and picking up the odds and
ends of his experience the coming under the in-
fluence of his mind, following in his steps, looking
with his eyes, and unconsciously accumulating a
stock of knowledge, multifarious it might be, the
good of which was not fully known till after-years
explained and confirmed its worth. There were
other practical things besides jokes learned and
executed in the apprentices' room, and there were
the friendships for life, on which so much, not merely
of the comfort, but the progress of a physician de-
pends. Now, everything, at least most, is done in
public, in classes ; and it is necessarily with .the
names of things rather than the things themselves,
or their management, that the young men have
chiefly to do. The memory 1 is exercised more
1 Professor Syme, in his Letter to Sir James Graham on the
Medical Bill, in which, in twelve pages, he puts the whole of this
tiresome question on its true footing, makes these weighty ob-
servations : ' As a teacher of nearly twenty-five years' standing,
and well acquainted with the dispositions, habits, and powers of
medical students, I beg to remark, that the system of repeated
examinations on the same subject by different Boards, espe-
cially if protracted beyond the age of twenty two, is greatly
opposed to the acquisition of sound and useful knowledge.
Medicine, throughout all its departments, is a science of obser-
vation ; memory alone, however retentive, or diligently assisted
by teaching, is unable to afford the qualifications for practice,
Locke and Sy den ham. 97
than the senses or the judgment ; and when the
examination comes, as a matter of course the student
returns back to his teacher as much as possible of
what he has received from him, and as much as pos-
sible in his very words. He goes over innumerable
names. There is little opportunity even in anatomy
for testing his power or his skill as a workman, as an
independent observer and judge, under what Sir
James Clark justly calls ' the demoralizing system of
cramming? He repeats what is already known ; he
is not able to say how all or any of this knowledge
may be turned to practical account. Epictetus
cleverly illustrates this very system and its fruits :
' As if sheep, after they have been feeding, should
present their shepherds with the very grass itself
which they had cropped and siuallowed, to show how
much they had eaten, instead of concocting it into wool
and milk?
and it is only by digesting the facts learned, through reflection,
comparison, and personal research, that they can be appropri-
ated with improving effect ; but when the mind is loaded with
the minutiae of elementary medical and collateral study, it is in-
capable of the intense and devoted attention essential to attaining
any approach to excellence in practical medicine and surgery.
It has accordingly always appeared to me, that the character of
medical men depends less upon what passes diiring the period even
of studentship than upon the mode in which they spend the next
years, when, their trials and examinations being over, the whole
strength of a young and disciplined intellect may be preparing
itself for the business of life.'
98 Locke and Sydenham.
Men of the 'middle propositions' are not clever,
glib expounders of their reasons ; they prefer doing
a thing to speaking about it, or how it may be done.
We remember hearing a young doctor relate how, on
one occasion when a student, he met with the late
Dr. Abercrombie, when visiting a man who was
labouring under what was considered malignant
disease of the stomach. He was present when that
excellent man first saw the patient along with his
regular attendant. The doctor walked into the room
in his odd, rapid, indifferent way, which many must
recollect ; scrutinized all the curiosities on the
mantlepiece ; and then, as if by chance, found him-
self at his patient's bedside ; but when there his eye
settled upon him intensely ; his whole mind was
busily at work. He asked a few plain questions ;
spoke with great kindness, but briefly ; and, coming
back to consult, he said, to the astonishment of the
surgeon and the young student, ' The mischief is all
in the brain, the stomach is affected merely through
it. The case will do no good ; he will get blind and
convulsed, and die.' He then, in his considerate,
simple way, went over what might be done to palli-
ate suffering and prolong life. He was right. The
man died as he said, and on examination the brain
was found softened, the stomach sound. The young
student, who was intimate with Dr. Abercrombie,
ventured to ask him what it was in the look of the
Locke and Sydenham. 99
man that made him know at once. ' I can't tell you,
I can hardly tell myself; but I rest with confidence
upon the exactness and honesty of my past observa-
tions. I remember the result, and act upon it ; but
I can't put you, or, without infinite trouble, myself,
in possession of all the steps.' 'But would it not be
a great saving if you could tell others?' said the
young doctor. ' // would be no such thing; it would
be the worst thing that could happen to you; you would
not know how to use it You must follow in the
same road, and you will get as far, and much farther.
You must miss often before you hit You can't tell
a man how to hit ; you may tell him what to aim at.'
' Was it something in the eye T said his inveterate
querist ' Perhaps it was,' he said good-naturedly ;
' but don't you go and blister every man's occiput,
whose eyes are, as you think, like his.' 1
1 This is very clearly stated by Dr. Mandeville, the acute and
notorious author of the Fable of the Bees, in his Dialogues OH
the Hypochondria, one of his best works, as full of good sense
and learning as of wit. ' If you please to consider that there
are no words in any language for an hundredth part of all the
minute differences that are obvious to the skilful, you will soon
find that a man may know a thing perfectly well, and at the
same time not be able to tell you why or how he knows it. The
practical knowledge of a physician, or at least the most consider-
able part of it, is the result of a large collection of observations
that have been made on the minutiae of things in human bodies
in health and sickness ; but likewise there are such changes and
differences in these minutiae as no language can express : and
when a man has no other reason for what he does than the
ioo Locke and Sydeiihaui.
It would be well for the community, and for the
real good of the profession, if the ripe experience,
the occasional observations of such men as Syden-
ham and Abercrombie formed the main amount of
medical books, instead of Vade-Mecums, Compen-
diums, and Systems, on the one hand, and the ardent
but unripe lucubrations of very young men.
It is said that facts are what we want, and every
periodical is filled with papers by very young physi-
cians made up of practical facts. What is fact ? we
would ask ; and are not many of our new facts little
else than the opinions of the writers about certain
phenomena, the reality, and assuredly the importance
of which, is by no means made out so strongly as the
opinions about them are stated? 1 In this intensely
scientific age, we need some wise heads to tell us
what not to learn or to unlearn, fully as much as
what to learn. Let us by all means avail ourselves
of the unmatched advantages of modern, science, and
judgment he has formed from such observations, it is impossible
he can give you the one without the other that is, he can never
explain his reasons to you, unless he could communicate to you
that collection of observations of which his skill is the product.' 1
1 Louis, in the preface to the first edition of his Researches
on Phthisis, says ' Few persons are free from delusive men-
tal tendencies, especially in youth, interfering with true obser-
vation ; and I am of opinion that, generally speaking, we ought
to place less reliance on cases collected by very young men ; and,
above all, not intrust the task of accumulating' fads to them ex-
clusively. '
L ocke and Sydenham . i o i
of the discoveries which every day is multiplying
with a rapidity which confounds ; let us convey into,
and carry in our heads as much as we safely can, of
new knowledge from Chemistry, Statistics, the Micro-
scope, the Stethoscope, and all new helps and
methods ; but let us go on with the old serious diligence,
the expcrientia as well as the experimenta the
forging, and directing, and qualifying the mind as
well as the furnishing, informing, and what is called
accomplishing it. Let us, in the midst of all the
wealth pouring in from without, keep our senses and
our understandings well exercised on immediate work.
Let us look with our own eyes, and feel with our own
fingers. 1
1 We all know Cullen's pithy saying, that there are more
false facts than theories in medicine. In his Treatise on the
Materia Medica, which was given to the world when its author
was in his seventy-seventh year, we came upon the full state-
ment of the many mistakes and untruths which are drawn from
' false experience.' These he divides into eight classes :
1st, In respect to those supposed remedies, which, from their
nature, and their being placed at a distance from the human
body, cannot be supposed to have any action upon it. Such
are charms, inodorous amulets, sympathetic powders, etc.
2(f, Another instance of false experience is with respect to the
virtues imputed to substances which, when taken into the body,
pass through it unchanged, such as mountain crystal, gems, and
precious stones, which formerly had a place in our dispensatories.
3</, Whenever to substances obviously inert, or such as have
little power of changing the human body, we find considerable
effects imputed. Thus when the excellent Linnaeus tel's us he
preserved himself from gout by eating every year plentifully of
IO2 Locke and Sydenham.
One natural consequence of the predominance in
our days of the merely scientific element, is, that the
elder too much serves the younger. The young man
teaches and talks, and the old man learns and is
strawberries ! (Here we suspect the Swede was wiser and
righter than the Scot.)
Afh, When medicines are said to cure what we have no
evidence ever existed. As when Dr. Boerhaave says certain
medicines correct an atrabilis, a condition he nowhere proves
the existence of.
The 5//& refers to solvents of the stone taken by the mouth, to
many emmenagogues and diuretics.
The 6th, where effects that do really take place are im-
puted to medicines employed, when they are due to the spon-
taneous operations of the animal economy, or of nature, as we
commonly speak ; and he instances the vegetables mentioned in
the Materia Medica as Vulneraries.
The *]th and Sf/i are instances of false experience from mis-
takes concerning the real nature of the disease treated, and of
the drug employed. It is curious to us who are seventy years
older, and it may be wiser (in the main) to note how perma-
nently true much of this still is, and how oddly and significantly
illustrative of the very fallacies classified by himself, is the little
that is not true.
Then follows what we had chiefly in view in this quotation.
Dr. Cullen, after stating that these false experiences of writers
upon the Materia Medica were mistakes of judgment, and not
made under any consciousness of falsehood, reprobates with
much severity the manufacture of facts in medicine, which have,
for reasons of various kinds, been obtruded on the public by
persons aware of their being false, or which, at least, they have
never proved to be true; and he ends with this remarkable
statement, the moral of which is not peculiar to 1789 : ' This
leads me to observe, that a very fertile source of false facts has
been opened for some time past. There is in some young phy-
sicians the vanity of being the authors of observations, which
Locke and Sydenham. 103
mute. 1 This is excellent when it is confined to the
statement of discovery, or the constantly evolving
laws of knowledge, or of matter. But the young
men have now almost the whole field to themselves.
Chemistry and Physiology have become, to all men
above forty, impossible sciences ; they dare not
meddle with them ; and they keep back from giving
to the profession their own personal experience in
matters of practice, from the feeling that much of
their science is out of date ; and the consequence is,
that, even in matters of practice, the young men are
in possession of the field. Fruit is pleasantest and
every way best when it is ripe ; and practical observa-
tion, to be worth anything, must be more of a fruit
than a blossom, and need not be plucked when green.
' Plutarch,' says old Heberden, ' has told us that
the life of a vestal virgin was divided into three por-
tions : in the first she learned the duties of her pro-
fession, in the second she practised them, and in the
third she taught them to others.' This he main-
tained, and we cordially agree with him, was no bad
model for the life of a physician, and he followed it
are often too hastily made, and sometimes perhaps entirely dressed
in the closet. We dare not at present be too particular, but the
next age will discern many instances of perhaps the direct false-
hoods, and certainly the many mistakes in fact, produced in the
present age concerning the powers and virtues of medicine. '
Treatise on the Materia Medico, chap. ii. article iv. pp. 142-153.
1 See Note B.
104 Locke and Sydenham.
himself, as shown by his motto prefixed to his Clas-
sical Commentaries, Fe/xov KGU /ca/^veiv OUKCTI Swa-
George filius may explain to the admiring George
pater, the merits and arcana of his Prichett rifle,
or his Deane and Adams' revolver, any scientific
improvement the youngster may teach his 'governor,'
but don't let him go further, and take to giving him
instructions in the art of finding and bagging his
game. This is exactly where we are so apt to go
wrong in medicine, as well as in fowling.
Let it not be supposed that we despair of Medicine
gaining the full benefit of the general advance in
knowledge and usefulness. Far from it. We believe
there is more of exact diagnosis, of intelligent, effec-
tual treatment of disease, that there are wider views
of principles directer, ampler methods of discovery,
at this moment in Britain than at any former time ;
and we have no doubt that the augmentation is still
proceeding, and will defy all calculation. But we
are likewise of opinion, that the office of a physician,
in the highest sense, will become fully more difficult
than before, will require a greater compass and
energy of mind, as working in a wider field, and
using finer weapons ; and that there never was more
necessity for making every effort to strengthen and
clarify the judgment and the senses by inward dis-
cipline, and by outward exercise, than when the
Locke and Sydenham. 105
importance and the multitude of the objects of which
they must be cognisant, are so infinitely increased.
The middle propositions must be attended to, and
filled up as the particulars and the higher generali-
ties crowd in.
It would be out of place in a paper so desultory
as the present, to enter at large upon the subjects
now hinted at the education of a physician the
degree of certainty in medicine its progress and
prospects, and the beneficial effects it may reason-
ably expect from the advance of the purer sciences.
But we are not more firmly persuaded of anything
than of the importance of such an inquiry, made
largely, liberally, and strictly, by a man at once
deep, truthful, knowing, and clear. How are we
to secure for the art of discerning, curing, and
preventing disease, the maximum of good and the
minimum of mischief, in availing ourselves of the
newest discoveries in human knowledge ?
To any one wishing to look into this most inter-
esting, and at the present time, vital question, we
would recommend a paper by Dr. Sellar, admirable
equally in substance and in expression, entitled,
' On the signification of Fact in Medicine, and on
the hurtful effects of the incautious use of such
modern sources of fact as the microscope, the
stethoscope, chemical analysis, statistics, etc. ;' it
may be found in No. 177 of the Edinburgh Medical
io6 Locke and Sydenham.
and Surgical Journal. We merely give a sample
or two, in which our readers will find, in better
words, much of what we have already asserted.
' Medicine still is, and must continue for ages to fa,
an empirico-rationalism? ' A sober thinker can
hardly venture to look forward to such an advanced
state of chemical rationalism as would be sufficient
for pronouncing a priori that sulphur would cure
scabies, iodine goitre, citric acid the scurvy, or
carbonate of iron neuralgia. 1 ' Chemistry promises
to be of immediate service in the practice of medi-
cine, not so much by offering us a rational chemical
pathology, but by enlarging the sources from which
our empirical rules are to be drawn.' Here we have
our 'middle propositions.' 'The great bulk of
practical medical knowledge is obviously the fruit of
individual minds, naturally gifted for excellence in
medicine;' but the whole paper deserves serious
continuous study. We would also, in spite of some
ultraisms in thought and language, the overflowings
of a more than ordinarily strong, and ardent, and
honest mind, recommend heartily the papers of Dr.
Forbes, which appeared at the close of the British
and Foreign Medical Review, in which he has, with
what we cannot call else or less than magnanimity,
spoken so much wholesome, though, it may be,
unpalatable truth ; and, finally, we would send every
inquiring student who wishes to know how to think
Locke and Sydenham. 107
and how to speak on this subject at once with power,
clearness, and compactness, and be both witty and
wise, to Dr. Latham's little three volumes on Clini-
cal Medicine. The first two lectures in the earliest
volume are 'lion's marrow,' the very pith of sense
and sound-mindedness. We give a morsel 'The
medical men of England do and will continue to
keep pace with the age in which they live, however
rapidly it may advance. I wish to see physicians
still instituted in the same discipline, and still reared
in fellowship and communion with the wisest and
best of men, and that not for the sake of what is
ornamental merely, and becoming to their charac-
ter, but because I am persuaded that that discipline
which renders the mind most capacious of wisdom
and most capable of virtue, can hold the torch and
light the path to the sublimest discoveries in every
science. It was the same discipline which contributed
to form the minds of Newton and of Locke, of Harvey
and of Syden/iain.'
He makes the following beautiful remark in leading
his pupils into the wards of St. Bartholomew's : ' In
entering this place, even this vast hospital, where
there is many a significant, many a wonderful thing,
you shall take me along with you, and I will be your
guide. Biit it is by your own eyes, and your ears and
your own minds, and (I may add] by your own hearts,
that you must observe, and learn, and profit. I can
loS Locke and Sydenham.
only point to the objects, and say little else than " See
here and see there" '
This is the great secret, the coming to close
quarters with your object, having immediate, not
mediate cognisance of the materials of study, appre-
hending first, and then doing your best to comprehend.
For, to adapt Bacon's illustration, which no one need
ever weary of giving or receiving, a good practical
physician is more akin to the working-bee than to
the spider or the ant. Instead of spinning, like the
schoolmen of old, endless webs of speculation out of
their own bowels, in which they were themselves
afterwards as frequently caught and destroyed as any
one else, or hoarding up, grain after grain, the know-
ledge of other men, and thus becoming ' a very
dungeon of learning,' in which (HibernicS) they lose
at once themselves and their aim they should rather
be like the brisk and public-hearted bee, who, by
divine instinct, her own industry, and the accuracy of
her instrument, gathers honey from all flowers. ' For-
mica colligit et utitur, ut faciunt empirici ; aranea ex
se fila educit neque a particularibus materiam petit ;
apis denique caeteris se melius gerit, haec indigesta a
floribus mella colligit, deinde in viscerum cellulas
concocta maturat, iisdem tandem insudat donee ad
integram perfectionem perduxerit.'
We had intended giving some account of the bear
ing that the general enlightenment of the community
L ocke and Sydenham. 1 09
has upon Medicine, and especially of the value of
the labours of such men as Dr. Andrew Combe, Dr.
Henry Marshall, Sir James Clark, and others, in the
collateral subjects leading into, and auxiliary to pure
Medicine, but we have no space to do them any
measure of justice. The full importance, and the
full possibility of the prevention of disease in all its
manifold, civil, moral, and personal bearings, is not
yet by any means adequately acknowledged ; there
are few things oftener said, or less searched into, than
that prevention is better than cure.
Let not our young and eager doctors be scandalized
at our views as to the comparative uncertainty of
medicine as a science : such has been the opinion of
the wisest and most successful masters of the craft.
Radcliffe used to say, that ' when young, he had fifty
remedies for every disease ; and when old, one
remedy for fifty diseases.' Dr. James Gregory said,
' Young men kill their patients ; old men let them
die.' Gaubius says, ' Equidem candide dicam, plura
me indies, dum in artis usu versor, dediscere quam
discere, et in crescente setate, minui potius quam
augeri, scientiam,' meaning by ' scientia ' an abstract
systematic knowledge. And Bordeu gives as the
remark of an old physician, 'J'dtois dogmatique a
vingt ans, observateur k trente, a. quarante je fus
empirique ; je n'ai point de systeme k cinquante.'
And he adds, in reference to how far a medical man
i io Locke and Sydenham.
must personally know the sciences that contributed
to his art, ' Iphicrates, the Athenian general, was
hard pressed by an orator before the people, to say
what he was, to be so proud : " Are you a soldier, a
captain, an engineer : a spy, a pioneer, a sapper, a
miner?" "No," says Iphicrates, "I am none of
these, but I command them all." So if one asks me,
Are you an empiric, a dogmatist, an observer, an
anatomist, a chemist, a microscopist 1 I answer, No,
but I am captain of them all.'
And to conclude these desultory notes in the
opening words of the Historia Vita et Mortis,
' Speramus enim et cupimus futurum, ut id pluri-
morum bono fiat ; atque ut medici nobiliores animos
nonnihil erigant, neque toti sint in curarum sordibus,
neque solum pro necessitate honorentur, sed fiant
demum omnipotentice et dementia divince administri!
' Etsi enim,' as he pathetically adds, ' nos Christiani
ad terrain promissionis perpetuo aspiremus et anhe-
lemus ; tamen interim itinerantibus nobis, in hac
mundi eremo, etiam calceos istos et tegmina (corporis
scilicet nostri fragilis) quam minimum atteri, erit
signum divini favoris.' 1
1 ' For it is our earnest hope and desire, that the efficacy of
medicine may be infinitely increased, and that physicians may
bear themselves more erect and nobly, and not be wholly taken
up with sordid gains and cares, nor be honoured from necessity
alone, but may at length become the executors of Divine omni-
potence and mercy ; for, though we who are Christians do
Locke and Sydcn/iam. 1 1 1
We have left ourselves no space to notice Dr.
Greenhill's collected edition of Sydenham's Latin
works. It is everything that the best scholarship,
accuracy, and judgment could make it. We regret
we cannot say so much for Dr. R. G. Latham's trans-
lation and Life. The first is inferior as a whole to
Swan's, and in parts to Pechey's and Wallis's : and the
Life, which might have contained so much that is new,
valuable, and entertaining, is treated with a curious in-
felicity and clumsiness, that is altogether one of the
oddest, most gauche and limping bits of composition
we ever remember having met with ; and adds another
to the many instances to which Bishop Lowth and
Cobbett are exceptions, of a grammarian writing, if
not ungrammatically, at least without elegance, and
occasionally without clearness. It is one thing to
know, and often quite another to do the right thing.
We cannot close these notices of Sydenham with-
out thanking Dr. Latham for printing in the Appendix
to his second volume, the manuscript preserved in
the public library of the University of Cambridge,
and referred to in the Biographia Britannica, under
Sydenham's name. Dr. Latham states that it is in
without ceasing long for, and pant after the land of promise,
we cannot fail to regard it as a token of the favour of God,
when, as we travel through this wilderness of the world, these
shoes and garments of our frail bodies are rendered, as little as
may be, subject to decay.'
1 1 2 Locke and Sydenham.
a more modern handwriting than that of the author's
time, and is headed Theologia Rationalis, by Dr.
Thomas Sydenham. This is all that is known, but
we think it bears strong internal evidence of being
authentic. The following note upon it, by a kind
friend, 1 who is well able to judge, gives a just esti-
mate of this remarkable relic :
' I have looked with much interest over the frag-
ment you point out in Sydenham's works. I think it
is quite misnamed. It should be Ethica Rationalis,
or Naturalis, since its avowed aim is not to examine
closely the foundations of natural theology, but rather
" the question is, how far the light of Nature, if
closely adverted to, may be extended toward the
making of good men" This question is closely pur-
sued throughout, and leads to the result that there is
an order in man's nature, which leads to a threefold
set of obligations, according to the common divi-
sion, towards God, society, and one's-self. This is
the plan according to which the fragment is blocked
out. The perfections and providence of God are
discussed solely as laying a foundation for man's
duties ; and these, adoration, prayer, submission,
confession of sin are summed up in pages 312, 313.
Next follow the duties to society, very speedily de-
spatched ; and those to self discussed more at length,
such as temperance, truth, modesty, prudent enjoy-
1 Rev. John Cairns, D.D.
Locke and Sydenham. 1 1 3
ment in subservience to reason. With the same
ethical aim the question of immortality is discussed,
solely as a help to virtue and to the predominance
of reason. In arguing this from immateriality, the
author is entangled in the usual difficulty about the
souls of the brutes, but escapes by the Cartesian denial
of their true thinking power ; and more satisfactorily
by urging the sentimental argument from men's desire
of immortality, and the more strictly moral one, from
unequal retribution. All this, I think, bears out the
view I have taken. There is not, perhaps, so much
originality in the views of the author as general
soundness and loftiness of moral tone, with that fine
power of illustration which you have noticed. I
agree with you in seeing much of the spirit both of
Locke and Butler : of Locke, in the spirit of obser-
vation and geniality; of Butler, in the clear utter-
ances as to the supremacy of reason, and the neces-
sity of living according to our true nature, not to
speak of other agreements in detail. 1 think the
paper well deserves a cordial recognition, though it
hardly reaches out, perhaps in any one direction, be-
yond the orthodox ethics of the seventeenth century.'
We give at random some extracts from the Theo-
logia Rationalis : ' Nor indeed can I entertain any
thoughts more derogatory from the majesty of this
Divine Being, than not supposing him to be a free
agent ; but having once put all his works out of his
H
1 14 Locke and Sydenham.
own hands, to be concluded within the limits of his
own establishing hath determined irrational beings
to act in some uniform course, suitable to the good
of themselves and the whole. And tho' he hath set
up certain lights in intellectual natures, wh ch may
direct them to pursue ends suitable to their natures,
yet having given these a liberty of will incident to the
very nature of reasonable beings, he retains his power
of inclining or not inclining such intellectual natures
to pursue courses leading to their welfare.'
' Also, from the same consideration (the excellence
of my mind above my body) it is that I am neither
to thinke, speake, or act anything that is indecorous
or disgracefull to this Divine inmate, whose excellency
above my body Nature hath tacitly pointed out, by
impressing upon me a verecundia, or being ashamed
of many actions of my body, w ch therefore I hide
from those of my own species. But now, forasmuch
as I consist likewise of a body w cb is submitted to the
same conditions with other animals, of being nou-
rished and propagating my kind, and, likewise, w ch
wants many other conveniences of clothing, housing,
and the like, which their nature requires not; all
those likewise are to be respected by me, according
to my several wants ; but still with a subservience to
my reason, which is my superior part, and acts flow-
ing from the same, my chiefest business ; as an em-
bassador who is sent into a foreign country, is not
Locke and Sydcnham. 1 1 5
sent to eat and to drink, tho' he is enforced to do
both.'
'When I consider that the infinite Governour of
the universe hath so made me, that in my intellect
I have some small glympses of his being, whilst I
cann't but apprehend that immensity of power and
wisdom w ch is in him, and doth appear in whatsoever
I see, and this I must apprehend, even if I endeavour
not to do it, it being closely riveted, and as it were
co-essential to my nature ; or if I have gotten of it
by hearsay onely, it being so fitted to my nature,
that I must needs believe it, w ch two make up the
same thing. Now how can I think that this Divine
Being, that hath admitted me to this little acquaint-
ance w th him, will let the laying down of my body
perfectly break off this acquaintance, and not rather
that the throwing of this load of corruption will put
my soul into a condition more suitable to its own
nature, it being much more difficult to think how
such a noble substance as the soul should be united
to the body, than how it should subsist separately
from it But add to this, that I have not only
faculties of knowing this Divine Being, but in
complyance with him, I have adored him with all
the attention I could screw up my heavy mind
unto, and have endeavoured to yield obedience to
those lawes w ch he hath written upon my nature ;
that I who have done this (supposing that I have
1 1 6 Locke and Sydenham.
done it), should extinguish when my body dies, is
yet more unlikely. Moreover I consider that this
Maker of the universe hath brought his ends so
together, that he hath implanted no affections upon
the meanest animal, but hath made objects to an-
swer them ; as he that hath made the eye hath made
colours, and he that hath made the organs of hear-
ing hath likewise made sounds, and so of an infinite
number of other affections, not only in animals, but
even in those natures inferior to them all, w 011 have
objects suited to them ; and if they had not, there
would be a flaw even in the constitution of the
universe, w ch can't be charged upon the infinitely
wise Creator. But now that there should be found
in mankind a certain appetite or reaching out after
a future happiness, and that there should be no
such thing to answer to it, but that this cheat
should be put upon the rational part of man, w h
is the highest nature in the globe where we live, is
to me very improbable.'
We subjoin, with Mr. Black's kind permission, a
portion of the Life of Sydenham, in the last edition
of his admirable Encyclopaedia ; it contains, I believe,
all the old and some new facts :
' SYDENHAM, THOMAS the greatest name in
English practical medicine was born in 1624 at
Winford Eagle, Dorsetshire, where his father, William
L ocke and Sydenham. 1 1 7
Sydenham, had a fine estate. He was a commoner
of Magdalen Hall, Oxford, 1642, but was obliged
to leave that city when it became a royal garrison,
not having taken up arms for the king, as the
students of those days generally did. In 1649,
after the garrison delivered up Oxford to the Par-
liamentary forces, he returned to Magdalen Hall,
and was created Bachelor of Physic on the Pem-
brokean creation, when Lord Pembroke became
Chancellor of the University, and honorary degrees
were conferred. This was in April 1648. He had
not previously taken any degree in arts. He then,
on submitting to the authority of the visitors ap-
pointed by the Parliament, was made by them (at
the intercession of a relative) Fellow of All Souls,
in the room of one of the many ejected Royalists.
He continued for some years earnestly prosecuting
his profession, and left Oxford without taking any
other degree. He was also, according to his own
account, in a letter to Dr. Gould, fellow-commoner
of Wadham College in the year Oxford surrendered.
It is not easy to understand why he went to
Wadham, as he was not a fellow but a fellow-
commoner equivalent to a gentleman-commoner
in Cambridge unless it was that, on returning to
Magdalen Hall, he found himself, as a Parlia-
mentarian, more at home in Wadham where the
then head was John Wilkins, Cromwell's brother-in-
1 1 8 Locke and Sydenham.
law a man of genius and of a keen scientific spirit,
and afterwards and still famous as Bishop of Chester
one of the founders of the Royal Society, which
first met at Oxford ; and author, among other
works, of a discourse on a Universal Language and
of an Inquiry as to the best Way of Travelling to
the Moon; a man of rare parts and worth, and of
a liberality in religion and science then still rarer,
being, according to Anthony Wood, an 'excellent
mathematician and experimentist, and one as well
seen in the new philosophy as any of his time ;
such a man would be sure to cordialize with Syden-
ham, who was of the Baconian or genuine Empiric
school ; and who, in the " new philosophy," saw the
day-spring of all true scientific progress. It is not
clear when Sydenham settled in London, or more
properly speaking in Westminster; it certainly was
before 1661. In 1663 he was admitted a licentiate
of the College of Physicans of London, he never
was a fellow; his degree of doctor of medicine
was taken at Cambridge in 1676, long after he was
in full practice, his college being Pembroke ; his
diploma is signed by Isaac Barrow. His reason
probably for taking a Cambridge degree may have
been that his eldest son was a pensioner at that
college.
' Sydenham's elder brother, William, was a distin-
guished soldier and politician during the Common-
Locke and Sydenluim. 1 19
wealth. This, along with his own likings, and his
love of the new philosophy, prevented him during the
reigns of the second Charles and James, from enjoy-
ing court favour. It has often been doubted whether
Sydenham actually served in the army of the Parlia-
ment ; but from an anecdote known generally as Dr.
Lettsom's, but which appears first in a curious old
controversial book by Dr. Andrew Brown, the Vindi-
catory Schedule, published two years after Sydenham's
death, it is made quite certain that he did.
' Before settling in London he seems, on the autho-
rity of Desault, to have visited Monrpellier, and to
have attended the lectures of the famous Barbeyrac.
After this he devoted himself to his profession, and
became the greatest physician of his time, in spite of
the court, and of the College of Physicians ; by one
of whose fellows Lister he was called " a miserable
quack." He suffered for many of the later years of
his life from the gout, his description of which has
become classical, and died in his house, Pall-Mail
or as he spells it, Pell-Mell in 1689. He lies
buried in St. James's, Westminster, with the following
noble because true inscription : " Prope hunc locum
sepultus est Thomas Sydenham, medicus in omne cevum,
nobilis, natus erat A.D. 1624 : vixit annos 65." His
works, which became rapidly popular during his life-
time, and to an extraordinary extent soon after his
death there were upwards of twenty-five editions in
1 20 Locke and Sydenham,
less than a hundred years consist chiefly of occa-
sional pieces, extorted from him by his friends, and
often in the form of letters ; none of them are formal
treatises, and all are plainly the result of his own im-
mediate reflection and experience. One is greatly
struck at the place he occupies in the writings of all
the great medical authors at the end of the seven-
teenth and beginning of the eighteenth centuries.
Morton, Willis, Boerhaave, Gaubius, Bordeu, etc.,
always speak of him as second in sagacity to 'the
divine Hippocrates' alone. Boerhaave never men-
tioned him in his class without lifting his hat, and
called him Anglice lumen, artis PJioebum, veram Hip-
pocratid viri speciem. His simple, manly views of the
nature and means of medicine as an art seem to have
come upon the profession like revelations ; it was as
if the men in Plato's cavern, who had been all their
lives with their backs to the light, studying their own
shadows, had suddenly turned round and gazed on
the broad face of the outer world, lying in sunshine
before them.
' All Sydenham's works are in Latin, and though
from his education and tastes, and the habits of his
time, and also from the composition of the Processus
Integri brief notes left by him for his sons' use,
and published after his death there is little doubt
he could have written them in that tongue, there
seems every likelihood that he was assisted in doing
Locke and Sydenham. 1 2 1
so by his friends Drs. Mapletoft and Havers. There
are three English translations one by Dr. Perhey,
another by Dr. Swan, to which is prefixed a life by
Samuel Johnson, among his earliest performances,
and published by Cave, and the last, the Sydenham
Society's edition, by Dr. Latham.'
The following hitherto unpublished letters I had
the good fortune to find in the British Museum. The
first must have been written two months later than
the one quoted at page 47, and refers to the same
subjects :
Letter from JOHN LOCKE to Dr. MAPLETOFT.
PARIS, gih Aug. 1677.
DEAR SIR, I had noe sooner don my letter on
the other side, but I found it answered by yours of
July 25, and though it hath satisfied me that you are
very well, and given me new proofs that you are very
much my friend, yet it hath put new doubts into me,
and methinkes I see you going to loose yourself. I
will say noe worse of it, not knowing how far the
matter is gon, else I would aske you whether the
men, young, old, or middle aged, each of which is
sure to meet you with the homes of a dilemma. I
see you are, whatever you think, hot upon the scent ;
and if you have noething else to defend you, but
1 22 Locke and Sydenham.
those maxims you build on, I feare the chase will
lead you where yourself will be caught. For be as
grave and steady as you please, resolve as much as
you will, never to goe out of your way or pace, for
never an hey trony nony whatsoever, you are not one
jot the safer for all this steadiness. For, believe it,
sir, this sorte of game having a designe to be caught,
will hunt just at the pursuer's rate, and will goe no
further before them than will just serve to make you
follow ; and let me assure you upon as good authority
as honest Tom Bagnall's, that vivus vidensque pereo,
is the lamentable ditty of many an honest gentleman.
But if you or the Fates (for the poor Fates are still
to be accused in the case), if your mettle be up, and
as hard as Sir Fr. Drake, you will shoot the desperate
gulph ; yet consider that though the riches of Peru
lie that way, how will you can endure the warme navi-
gation of the Mare de Zur, which all travellers assure
us is nicknamed pacificiim.
But hold, I goe too far. All this, perhaps, not-
withstanding your ancient good principles, will be
heresie to you by that time it comes to England, and
therefore, I conjure you by our friendship to burne
this as soon as you have read it, that it may never
rise up in judgment against me.
I see one is never sure of one's-self, and the time
may come when I may resigne myself to the empire
of the soft sex, and abominate myself for these miser-
L ockc and Sydenham. 1 2 3
able errors. However, as the matter now stands, I
have discharged my conscience, and pray do not let
me suffer for it. For I know your lovers are a sort
of people that are bound to sacrifice everything to
your mistresses. But to be serious with you, if your
heart does hang that way, I wish you good luck.
May Hymen be as kinde to you as ever he was to
anybody, and then, I am sure, you will be much
happier than any forlorne batchelor can be. If it be
like to be, continue your care of my interest in the
case (to get him his chair in Gresham), and remember
it is for one that knows how to value the quiet and
retirement you are going to quit. You have no more
to do for me than lovers use to doe upon their own
account, viz., keepe the matter as secret and private
as you can, and then when it is ripe and resolved,
give me but notice and I shall quickly be with you,
for it is by your directions I shall better governe
my motives than by the flights of thrushes and field-
fares.
Some remains of my cough, and something like a
charge is fallen into my hands lately here, will, if
noething else happen, keepe me out probably longer
than the time you mention. But not knowing whether
the aire of France will ever quite remove my old
companion or noe, I shall neglect that uncertainty
upon the consideration of soe comfortable an import-
ance ; and for the other affaire I have here, if you
1 24 Locke and Sydenham.
please to let me hear from you sometimes how mat-
ters are like to goe, I shall be able to order that
enough to come at the time you shall thinke sea-
sonable. Whatever happens, I wish you all the hap-
piness of one or t'other condition. I am perfectly,
dear Sir, your most humble and obedient servant.
To DR. MAPLETOFT,
at Gresham CMege.
In the same MS. volume in which I found this
letter, is a case-book of Locke's, in his own neat
hand, written in Latin (often slovenly and doggish
enough), and which shows, if there were any further
need, that he was in active practice in 1667. The
title in the Museum volume is ' Original Medical
Papers by John Locke, presented by Wm. Seward,
Esq. ;' and its contents are
1. Hy drops.
2. Rheumatismus.
3. Hydrops.
4. Febris Inflammatoria,
To us now it seems curious to think of the author
of the Essay on Human Understanding recording all
the aches and doses, and minute miseries of an an-
cilla culinaria virgv, and to find that after a long
and anxious case he was turned off, when, as he
says, his impatient patient alio advocate medico erump-
Locke and Sydenham. 1 2 5
The copy of a Letter of DR. THO. SYDENHAM to DR.
GOULD, the original of which was communicated to
me by DR. MEAD, Octob. i, 1743.
SIR, I conceive that the Salivation, though raised
by Mercury, in your variolous Patient doeth noe
more centra-indicate the giving of Paregoricke, than
if the same had come on of its own accord in a con-
fluent Pox; and therefore it will be convenient for
you to give him every night such a quieting medicine
as this : R Hy Cerasor nigrorum ii, and gut
xiiii : Syr de Mecon ss. But if it shall happen, y'
the Mercury shall at any time exert its operation by
stooles, you may repeat it oftener as there should be
occasion, after the same manner as it ought to be
don. In the first Days of Mercuriall Unctions where
when Diarrhoea comes on, there is noe course so
proper as to turn the operation of the Mercury
upwards, and thereby cause a laudable salivation as
y e giving of Laudanum till the Looseness is stopt.
As to what you are pleassed to mention concerning
success, which yourself and others have had in the
trying of my Processus, 1 can only say this, that I
have bin very careful to write nothing but what was
the product of careful observation, soe when the
scandall of my person shall be layd aside in my
grave, it will appear that I neither suffered myselfe to
be decieved by indulging to idle speculations, nor
126 L ocke and Sydenham.
have decieved others by obtruding anything to them
but downright matter of fact. Be pleased to doe me
the favour to give my humble service to Mr. Vice-
Chancellor your warden, whose father, Bp. of Bristoll,
was my intimate friend and countryman. I myself
was once a fellow-commoner of your house (Wadham
College, Oxford), but how long since I would be
glad to know from you, as I remember it was in the
year Oxford surrendered, though I had one of
Magdalen Hall some time before.
THOMAS SYDENHAM.
PELL MELL,
Deer. 10, 1667.
There is interesting matter in this letter besides its
immediate subjects, and some things, I rather think,
unknown before of Sydenham's College life. It is
the only printed bit of English by its author, except
a letter to the Honourable Robert Boyle, quoted in
Latham's Life.
' The real physician is the one who cures : the
observation, which does not teach the art of healing,
is not that of a physician, it is that of a naturalist.'
Broussais.
Locke and Sydenham. \ 2 7
NOTE A. P. 40.
LORD GRENVILLE.
THE reader, we are sure, will not be impatient of the follow-
ing extracts from Lord Grenville's Tract, entitled Oxford and
Locke, already mentioned. It is now rare, and is not likely to
be ever reprinted separately. It would not be easy to imagine
anything more thoroughly or more exquisitely done than this
tract ; it is of itself ample evidence of the accuracy of Lord
Brougham's well-known application to its author of Cicero's
words : ' Erant in eo flurimtz litene, nee ece vulgares sed in-
teriores qu&dam et recondite, divina memoria, summa verborum
gravitas et elegantia, atqiie Juzc omnia viliz decorabat dignitas et
integritas. Quantum pondtis in verbis I Qiiam nihil non con-
sidcratum, exibat ex ore ! Sileamus de illo ni augeannis dolorem?
Our extracts are from the First Chapter, ' Of Locke's Medical
Studies:'
' In the printed Life of Locke, commonly prefixed to his
works, we are told that he applied himself at the university
with great diligence to the study of medicine, "not with any
design of practising as a physician, but principally for the benefit
of his own constitution, which was but weak." The self-taught
scholar, says the ItalLn proverb, has an ignorant master ; and
the patient who prescribes for himself, has not often, I believe,
a very wise physician. No such purpose is ascribed to Locke
by Le Clerc, from whom our knowledge of his private history is
principally derived. Nor can we believe that such a man chose
for himself in youth that large and dim cult study, with no view
to the good of others, but meaning it to begin and end only
with the care of his own health.
128 Locke and SydenJmm.
' From the very first dawn of reviving letters to the present
moment, there never has been a period in this country, when
the great masters of medicine among us have not made manifest
the happy influence of that pursuit, on the cultivation of all the
other branches of philosophy. And accordingly we find, that
while Locke was still proceeding, as it is termed, in the acade-
mical course of that noble science, he was already occupied in
laying the foundations of the Essay on the Human Understand-
ing, which, as we learn from Le Clerc, was commenced in
1670.
' Mr. Stewart thinks it matter of praise to Locke, that in
that work "not a single passage," he says, "occurs, savouring
of the Anatomical Theatre, or of the Chemical Laboratory."
This assertion is not to be too literally taken. Certainly no
trace of professional pedantry is to be found in that simple and
forcible writer. He had looked abroad into all the knowledge
of his time, and in his unceasing endeavours to make his pro-
positions and his proofs intelligible and perspicuous to all, he
delighted to appeal to every topic of most familiar observation.
Among these some reference to medical science could scarcely
have been avoided. Nor has it been entirely so. Mr. Stewart
himself has elsewhere noticed Locke's "homely" illustration of
the nature of secondary qualities, by the operation of manna on
the human body. A more pleasing example of medical allusion
is to be found in one of the many passages where Locke points
out to us how often men whose opinions substantially agree, are
heard wrangling about the names and watchwords of parties
and sects, to which they respectively attach quite different
significations. He tells us of a meeting of physicians, at which
he- himself was present. These ingenious and learned men
debated long, he says, " whether any liquor passed through the
filaments of the nerves," until it appeared, on mutual explana-
tion, that they all admitted the passage of some fluid and subtle
matter through those channels, and had been disputing only
whether or not it should be called a liquor, " which, when con-
sidered, they thought not worth contending about. "
' In his Letters on Toleration, and in his Essay on the Conduct
of the Understanding, his two most valuable, because most
Locke and Sydenham. 1 29
practical works, he indulges much more freely in such allusions.
It is frequently by their aid that, in the first of those admirable
productions, he ridicules his unequal adversary's project of en-
forcing universal conformity by moderate and lenient persecution.
In one place he compares him to a surgeon using his knife on
the sick and sound alike, on bad subjects and on good, without
their consent, but, as he assures them, always solely for their
own advantage ; and in another place to an empiric, prescrib-
ing, says Locke, his " hiera picra" (HIS HOLY BITTERS), to be
taken in such doses only as shall be sufficient for the cure, with-
out once inquiring in what quantities of that poisonous drug
such sufficiency is at all likely to be found. Again, we find
him illustrating in a similar way the proper conduct to be pur-
sued by a mind devoting itself in any case to a genuine search
for truth. A diligent and sincere, a close and unbiased exami-
nation, he powerfully insists upon as "the surest and safest"
method for that purpose. Would not this, he asks, be the
conduct of a student in medicine wishing to acquire just notions
of that science, "or of the doctrines of Hippocrates, or any
other book in which he conceived the whole art of physic to be
infallibly contained ? " These, and many other passages of a
like description, are beauties, surely, not blemishes, in Locke's
powerful composition, and certainly in no degree less valuable,
for bearing some tincture of the current in which that great
man's thoughts and studies had been so long carried forward.'
This Hiera Picra still survives under the name of Hickery
Pickery; and appears in the London Pharmacopoeia of 1650,
as thus composed :
B Cinnamon.
Lignum aloes.
Asarum root.
Spikenard.
Mastick.
Saffron, aa. 3vj.
Aloes (unwashed), ^xijss.
Clarified honey, Ibiv. giij.
Mix Ft. elect, sec. art.
I
130 Locke and Sydenham,
NOTE B.-P. 103.
THE ELDER SERVING THE YOUNGER.
BORDEU puts this well, in his candid, lively, and shrewd way.
The whole passage is full of his peculiar humour and sense.
Bordeu was in many respects a sort of French Sydenham, like
and unlike, as a Frenchman is like and unlike an Englishman.
He was himself, to use his own phrase, one ' des medecins les
plus senses.' It is no good sign of our medical tastes that he is
so little known.
'Les Serane, pere et fils, etoient medecins de 1'hopital de
Montpellier. Le fils etoit un theoricien leger, qui savoit par
coeur et qui redisoit continuellement tous les documens de
I'inflammation, comme ces enfans qui vous repetent sans cesse
et avec des airs plus ou moins niais, La tigale ayant chante tottt
r&te, etc., Maitre corbeau sur un arbre perche, etc. Serane pere
etoit un bon homme qui avoit ete instruit par de grands maitres.
II avoit appris d trailer les fluxions de poitrine avec 1'emetique ;
il le donnoit pour le moins tous les deux jours, avec ou sans
1'addition de deux onces de manne. C'etoit son grand cheval
de bataille. Je le lui ai vu lacher plus de mille fois, et partout
et pour tout. Le fils se proposa de convertir le pere et de le
mettre a la mode ; c'est-a-dire, lui faire craindre la phlogose,
Verftisme, les dechirures des petits vaisseaux. Le cher pere
tomba dans une espece d'indecision singuliere : il ne savoit oil
donner de la tete. II tenoit pourtant ferme contre la saignee ;
mais lorsqu'il etoit aupres d'un malade, il murmuroit et s'en
alloit sans rien ordonner. Je 1'ai vu a plusieurs reprises, apo-
stropher son fils avec vivacite et lui crier, lorsqu'il auroit voulu
donner 1'emetique, Man fil, m'abes gastat ! (Mon fils, vous
niavez gate, !) Jamais cette scene singuliere ne sortira de ma
memoire. Je lui ai bien de 1'obligation, et les malades de I'ho-
pital lui avoient aussi beaucoup. Us guerissoient sans etre
presque saignes, parce que le vieux Serane n'aimoit pas la
saignee ; et sans prendre 1'emetique parce que le jeune Serane
avoit prouve a son pere que ce remede augmente I'inflammation.
Les malades guerissoient, etj'en faisois mon profit. J' en con-
Locke and Sydenham. 1 3 1
cluois que les saignees que Serane le fils multiplioit lorsqu'il
etoit seul, etoient tout au moins aussi inutiles que 1'emetique
reitere auquel Serane le pere etoit trop attache. D'apres cette
aventure (jointe a celle que je viens de rapporter, et a plusieurs
autres de la meme espece), je crus voir bien sensiblement, et je
me crois aujourd'hui en droit de publier, qu'on multiplie trop
les remedes et que les meilleurs deviennent perfides a force de
les presser. Cette profusion de medicamens rend la maladie
meconnoissable, et forme un obstacle sensible a la guerison.
La fureur de trailer les maladies en faisant prendre drogues sur
drogues ayant gagne les tetes ordinaires, les medecins sont au-
jourd'hui plus necessaires pour le,s empecher et les defendre, que
pour les ordonner. Les pratiques nationales, les observations des
medecins les plus senses, se ressentent plus ou moins du penchant
invincible qu'ont les homines a donner la preference a de cer-
taines idees, sur d'autres, tout aussi bien fondees que celles
qu'ils preferent. Je le declare sans passion, et avec la modestie
a laquelle mes foibles connoissances me condamnent ; lorsqueje
regarde derriere moi, j'ai honte d' avoir tant insiste, tantot sur
les saignees, tantot sur les purgatifs et les emetiques. Tous les
axiomes rappeles ci-dessus, et dont on abuse tous les jours, sont
detniits par de beaucoup plus vrais, et malheureusement trop peu
connus. II me semble entendre crier la Nature: "Ne vous
pressez point ; laissez-moi faire ; vos drogues ne guerissent
point, surtout lorsque vous les entassez dans le corps des
malades ; c'est moi seule qui gueris. Les momens qui vous
paroissent les plus orageux sont ceux ou je me sauve le mieux,
si vous ne m'avez pas ote mes forces. II vaut mieux que vous
m'abandonniez toute la besogne que d'essayer des remedes
douteux.
' Un hasard heureux commen9a a moderer en moi le brulant
desir d'instrumenter, ou de faire voir aux assistans ebahis et aux
malades eux-memes, la cause de la maladie dans un grand
etalage de palettes et de bassins. J'etois fort jeune encore, et
le quatrieme medecin d'un malade attaque de la fievre, de la
douleur de cote et du crachement de sang ; je n'avois point
d'avis a donner. Un des trois consultans proposa une troisieme
saignee (c'etoit le troisieme jour de la maladie) ; le second
1 3 2 Locke and Sydcnham.
proposa 1'emetique combine avec un purgatif ; et le troisieme,
un vesicatoire aux jambes. Le debat ne fut pas petit, et per-
sonne ne voulut ceder. J'aurois jure qu'ils avoient tous raison.
Enfin, on aura peine a croire que par une suite de circonstan-
ces inutiles a rapporter, cette dispute iriteressa cinq ou six
nombreuses families, partagees comme les medecins, et qui pre-
tendoient s'emparer du malade; elle dura, en .un mot, jusques
passe le septieme de la maladie. Cependant, malgre les
terribles menaces de mes trois maitres, le malade reduit a la
boisson et a la diete guerit tres-bien. Je suivis cette guenson
parce que j'etois reste seul : je la trouvai tracee par 1'ecole de
Cos, et je m'ecriai, c'etoit done la route qu'il falloit prendre!'
Recherches sur le Tissu Muqucux, 1767.
NOTE C. P. 86.
THE WISDOM OF DOING NOTHING.
The reader will mark the coincidence of thought, and even
expression, between Locke and his friend :
' I commend very much the discretion of Mrs. Furley, that
she would not give him precipitates 1. Because physick is
not to be given to children upon every little disorder. 2. Phy-
sick for the worms is not to be given upon every bare suspi-
cion that there may be worms. 3. If it were evident that he
had worms, such dangerous medicines are not to be given till
after the use of other and more gentle and safe remedys. If he
continue still dull and melancholy, the best way is to have him
abroad to walke with you every day in the air ; that, I believe,
may set him right without any physic, at least if it should not,
'tis not fit to give him remedys till one has well examined what
is the distemper, unless you think (as is usually doune), that at
all hazard something is to be given ; a way, I confess, I could
never thinke reasonable, it being better in my opinion to doe no
thing, than to doe amiss. ' Locke to Furley in Forster.
Locke and Sydenham. \ 3 3
BOOKS CONSULTED.
I. Bibliotheque Choisie, tome vi. : 1716. 2. Oxford and
Locke ; by Lord Grenville : London, 1829. 3. Life of John
Locke; by Lord King. 4. Original Letters of John Locke,
Algernon Sidney, and Lord Shaftesbury ; edited by T. For-
ster; 2d edition : London, privately printed, 1847. 5. Ward's
Lives of the Professors of Gresham College. 6. Thomae Syden-
ham, M.D., Opera omnia ; ediSit G. A. Greenhill, M.D. :
Londini, impensis Societatis Sydenhamianae, 1844. 7. The
Works of Thomas Sydenham, M.D. ; with a Life of the
Author; by R. G. Latham, M.D., 2 vols. : primed for the
Sydenham Society. 8. MSS. Letters and Common-place
Books of John Locke, in the possession of the Earl of
Lovelace.
DR. ANDREW COMBE.
' . . . Valetudinis conservationem, qua sine dubio primum est
hujus vita bonum, et cceterorum omnitim fund amentum. Animus
enim adeb a temperamento et organorum corporis dispositione
pendet, ut si ratio aliqua possit inveniri, qua homines sapientiores
et ingeniosiores reddat quant hactenus fuerunt, credam illam in
Medicina quizri debere. ' RENATUS DESCARTES De Methodo, vi.
1 Ovid observes that there are more fine days than cloudy ones
in the year
" Si nnmeres anno soles et nubilti tote,
Invenies nitidum scepius esse diem"
It may be said likewise, that the days wherein men enjoy their
health are in greater number than those -wherein they are sick.
But there is perhaps as much misery in fifteen days' sickness, as
there is pleasure in fifteen years' health? BAYLE, under the
word PERICLES.
' Eunt 'homines mirari alta montium, ingentes fiuctus marts,
altissimos lapsus fiurninum, oceani ambitum et gyros siderum
seipsos relinquunt nee admiranlur.' 1 ST. AUSTIN.
DR. ANDREW COMBE.
"\ \ TE do not know a worthier subject for an essay
in one of our larger Medical Journals, than
to determine the just position of such a man as Dr.
Combe in the history of Medicine showing what it
was in theory and in practice, in its laws as a science,
and in its rules as an art when he made his appear-
ance on its field, and what impression his character
and doctrines have made upon the public as requir-
ing, and upon his brethren as professing to furnish,
the means of health. The object of such an essay
would be to make out how far Dr. Combe's principles
of inquiry, his moral postulates, his method of cure,
his views of the powers and range of medicine as a
science, estimative, rather than exact, his rationale of
human nature as composite and in action, how far
all these influences may be expected to affect the
future enlargement, enlightenment, and quickening
of that art which is, far excellence, the art of life,
and whose advance, in a degree of which we can,
138 Dr. Andrew Combe.
from its present condition, form little conception,
was believed by one of the greatest intellects of any
age (Descartes) to be destined t3 play a signal part
in making mankind more moral, wiser, and happier,
as well as stronger, longer-lived, and healthier. The
cause of morality of everything that is connected
with the onward movement of the race is more de-
pendent upon the bodily health, upon the organic
soundness of the human constitution, than many poli-
ticians, moralists, and divines seem ready to believe.
Dr. Combe was not, perhaps, what is commonly
called a man of genius ; that is, genius was not his
foremost and most signal and efficient quality. He
made no brilliant discovery in physiology or thera-
peutics, like some of his contemporaries. He did
not, as by a sudden flash of light, give form, and
symmetry, and meaning to the nervous system, as
did Sir Charles Bell, when he proved that every
nerve is double ; that its sheath, like the Britannia
Bridge, contains two lines, carrying two trains an
up and a down ; the sensory, as the up, bringing
knowledge from without of all sorts to the brain ;
the motory, as the down, carrying orders from the
same great centre of sensation and will. Neither
did he, like Dr. Marshall Hall, render this discovery
more exquisite, by adding to it that of the excito-
motor nerves the system of reflex action, by which,
with the most curious nicety and art (for Nature is
Dr. Andrew Combe. 139
the art of God), each part of our frame, however dis-
tinct in function, different in structure, and distant
from the others, may intercommunicate with any or
every part, as by an electric message, thus binding
in one common sympathy of pleasure and pain, the
various centres of organic and animal life with each
other, and with the imperial brain. Neither did he,
as Laennec, open the ear, and through it the mind
of the physician, to a new discipline, giving a new
method and means of knowledge and of cure. Nor,
finally, did he enrich practical medicine, as Dr.
Abercrombie and others have done, with a selection
of capital facts, of ' middle propositions,' from per-
sonal experience and reflection, and with the ma-
tured results of a long-exercised sagacity and skill in
diagnosis and in treatment. He did not do all this
for various reasons, but mainly and simply because
his Maker had other and important work for him,
and constituted and fitted him accordingly, by a spe-
cial teaching from within and from without, for its
accomplishment, vouchsafing to him what is one of
God's best blessings to any of his creatures an
innate perception of law, a love of first principles, a
readiness to go wherever they lead, and nowhere
else. He discovered for to him it had all the sud-
denness of a first sight that all the phenomena of
disease, of life, and of health, everything in the entire
round of the economy of man's microcosm, move
140 Dr. Andrew Combe.
according to certain laws, and fixed modes of pro-
cedure laws which are ascertainable by those who
honestly seek them, and which, in virtue of their rea-
sonableness and beneficence, and their bearing, as it
were, the ' image and superscription' of their Divine
Giver, carry with them, into all their fields of action,
the double burden of reward and punishment ; and
that all this is as demonstrable as the law of gravita-
tion, which, while it shivers an erring planet in its
anger, and sends it adrift to ' hideous ruin and com-
bustion,' at the same moment, and by the very same
force, times the music of the spheres, compacts a
dew-drop, and guides, as of old, Arcturus and his
sons. This is Dr. Combe's highest his peculiar dis-
tinction among medical writers. He burns, as with
a passionate earnestness, to bring back the bodily
economy of man to its allegiance to the Supreme
Guide. He shows in his works, and still more im-
pressively in his living and dying, the divine beauty
and power and goodness that shine out in every, the
commonest, and what we call meanest instance, of
the adaptation of man by his Maker to his circum-
stances, his duties, his sufferings, and his destiny.
This may not be called original genius, perhaps ; we
are sorry it is as yet too original ; but in the calm eye
of reason and thoughtful goodness, and we may in
all reverence add, in the eye of the all-seeing Un-
seen, it is something more divinely fair, more to be
Dr. Andrew Combe. 141
desired and honoured, than much of what is gene-
rally called genius. It is something which, if acted
upon by ten thousand men and women for five-and-
twenty years, with the same simplicity, energy, con-
stancy, and intelligence, with which, for half his life-
time, it animated Dr. Combe, would so transform
the whole face of society, and work such mighty
changes in the very substance, so to speak, of human
nature, in all its ongoings, as would as much tran-
scend the physical marvels and glories of our time,
and the progress made thereby in civilisation and
human wellbeing, as the heavens are higher than the
earth, and as our moral relations, our .conformity to
the will and the image of God are more than any ad-
vance in mere knowledge and power man's highest
exercise and his chief end. We are not so foolish as
to think that in recognising the arrangements of this
world, and all it contains, as being under God's law,
Dr. Combe made a discovery in the common sense of
the word ; but we do say that he unfolded the length
and breadth, the depth and height of this principle
as a practical truth, as a rule of life and duty, beyond
any men before him. And thus it was, that though
he did not, like the other eminent men we have men-
tioned, add formally to the material of knowledge, he
observed with his own eyes more clearly, and ex-
plained the laws of healthy, and through them, of
diseased action, and promulgated their certain re-
142 Dr. Andrew Combe.
wards and punishments more convincingly than any
one else. He made this plainer than other men, to
every honest capacity, however humble. He showed
that man has an internal, personal activity, implanted
in him by his Creator, for preserving or recovering
that full measure of soundness, of wholeness, of
consentaneous harmonious action, of well-balanced,
mutually concurring forces, that ' perfect diapason,'
which constitutes health, or wholth, and for the use
or abuse of which he, as a rational being, is answer-
able on soul and conscience to himself, to his fellow-
men, and to his Maker.
Dr. Combe has so beautifully given his own ac-
count of this state and habit of mind and feeling,
this principled subjection of everything within him
to God's will, as manifested in his works and in his
creatures, that we quote it here.
' The late Rev. Mr. of stopped me one
day, to say that he had read my Physiology with
great satisfaction, and that what pleased him greatly
was the vein of genuine piety which pervaded every
page, a piety uncontaminated by cant. Some of my
good friends who have considered me a lax observer
of the outward forms of piety, might laugh at this.
Nevertheless, it gave me pleasure, because in my
conscience I felt its truth. There is scarcely a single
page in all my three physiological works, in which such
a feeling was not active as I wrote. The unvarying
Dr. Andrew Combe. 143
tendency of my mind is to regard the whole laws of
the animal economy, and of the universe, as the
direct dictates of the Deity ; and in urging compli-
ance with them, it is with the earnestness and reve-
rence due to a Divine command that I do it. I almost
lose the consciousness of self in the anxiety to attain the
end ; and where I see clearly a law of God in our
own nature, I rely upon its efficiency for good with a
faith and peace which no storm can shake, and feel
pity for those who remain blind to its origin, wisdom,
and beneficence. I therefore say it solemnly, and
with the prospect of death at no distant day, that I
experienced great delight, when writing my books,
in the consciousness that I was, to the best of my
ability, expounding " the ways of God to man," and
in so far fulfilling one of the highest objects of human
existence. God was, indeed, ever present to my
thoughts.' Life, p. 401.
This was the secret of his power over himself and
others He believed and therefore he spake; he
could not but speak, and when he did, it was out of
the abundance of his heart. Being impressed and
moved, he became of necessity impressive and mo-
tive. Hence if there be not in his works much of
the lightening of genius, resolving error into its con-
stituent elements by a stroke, unfolding in one glance
both earth and heaven, and bringing out in bright
relief some long-hidden truth if he but seldom
144 Dr. Andrew Combe.
astonish us with the full-voiced thunder of eloquence ;
there is in his pages, everywhere pervading them as
an essence, that still small voice, powerful but not by
its loudness, which finds its way into the deeper
and more sacred recesses of our rational nature, and
speaks to our highest interests and senses the voice
of moral obligation calling us to gratitude and obe-
dience. His natural capacity and appetite for know-
ledge, his love of first principles, his thoughtful
vivacity, his unfeigned active benevolence, his shrewd-
ness, his affections, his moral courage and faithfulness,
his clear definite ideas, his whole life, his very suffer-
ings, sorrows, and regrets, were all, as by a solemn
act of his entire nature, consecrated to this one
absorbing end. Thus it was that he kept himself
alive so long, with a mortal malady haunting him for
years, and was enabled to read to others the lessons
he had learned for himself in the valley of the shadow
of death.
We have been struck, in reading Dr. Combe's
works, and especially his Memoir by his brother, by
the resemblance, not merely in principles and rules,
and in the point from which they view their relations
to their profession, but in more special characteristics
of temperament and manner, between him and the
illustrious Sydenham, and the still more famous
' divine old man of Cos.' We allude to the continual
reference by them to Nature, as a regulating power
Dr. Andrew Combe. 145
in the human body ; their avoiding speculations as to
essence, and keeping to the consideration of conjunct
causes ; their regarding themselves as the expounders
of a law of life, and the interpreters and ministers of
Nature. This one master idea, truly religious in its
character, gives to them a steady fervour, a calm per-
sistent enthusiasm or ' entheasm ' (Iv and 0eos), which
we regret, for the honour and the good of human
nature, is too rare in medical literature, ancient or
modern. The words ' Nature,' and ' the Almighty,'
' the Supreme Disposer,' etc., occur in Sydenham's
works as frequently and with the same reference as
they do in Dr. Combe's.
The following passage from Sydenham, on Nature,
will illustrate our meaning : ' I here [in the conclu-
sion of his observations on the fever and plague of
1665 and 1666] subjoin a short note, lest my opinion
of Nature be taken in a wrong sense. In the fore-
going discourse, I have made use of the term Nature,
and ascribed various effects to her, as I would there-
by represent some one self-existent being, everywhere
diffused throughout the machine of the universe,
which, being endowed with reason, governs and
directs all bodies such an one as some philosophers
seem to have conceived the soul of the world to be.
But I neither affect novelty in my sentiments or ex-
pressions ; I have made use of this ancient word in
these pages, if I mistake not, in a qualified sense ;
K
146 Dr. Andrew Combe.
for by Nature I always mean a certain assemblage of
natural causes, which, though destitute of reason and
contrivance, are directed in the wisest manner while
they perform their operations and produce their
effects ; or, in other words, the Supreme Being, by
whose power all things are created and preserved,
disposes them all in such manner, by his infinite
wisdom, that they proceed to their appointed func-
tions with a certain regularity and order, performing
nothing in vain, but only what is best and fittest for
the whole frame of the universe and their own pecu-
liar nature, and so are moved like machines, not by
any skill of their own, but by that of the artist.'
And Hippocrates briefly says, ' Nature in man is
the aggregate of all things that concur to perfect health.
and the foundation of all right reasoning and practice
in physic' J exactly the same great truth which Dr.
Combe and Sir John Forbes, thousands of years
afterwards, are abused by their brethren for proclaim-
ing; and the old Ephesian cry is raised loud and
long among the craftsmen, who, like Demetrius and
his crew, are less filled with reason than with wrath.
As we have already said, Dr. Combe was distin-
guished neither as a discoverer nor as a practitioner.
Owing to feeble health, he was not permitted the
opportunity of being the latter, though he possessed
some of the highest qualities of a great physician ;
1 See Note, p. 161.
Dr. Andrew Combe. 147
and the evenness of his powers probably would have
prevented him from making any one brilliant hit as
the former : for it is our notion, for which we have
not space here to assign the reasons, that original
geniuses in any one department, are almost always
odd J that is, are uneven, have some one predomi-
nant faculty lording it over the rest. So that, if we
look back among the great men in medicine, we
would say that Dr. Combe was less like Harvey, or
even Sydenham, than Locke, who, though not gene-
rally thought so, was quite as much of a physician
during his life, as of a philosopher and politician.
It was not merely in their deeper constitutional
qualities their love of truth, and of the God of
truth their tendency towards what was immediately
and mainly useful their preferring observation to
speculation, but not declining either, as the help and
complement of the other; their choosing rather to
study the mind or body as a totum quid, a unit, active
and executive, and as a means to an end, than to
dogmatize and dream about its transcendental con-
stitution, or its primary and ultimate condition ; their
valuing in themselves, and in others, soundness of
1 ' We usually say that man is a genius, but he has some
whims and oddities. Now, in such a case, we would speak
more rationally, did we substitute therefore for hit. He is a
genius, therefore he is whimsical.' Dr. John Aitkin. To be
sure, it is one thing to have genius, and another to be one, the
difference being between possessing, and being possessed by.
148 Dr. Andrew Combe.
mind and body, above mere strength and quickness ;
their dislike to learned phrases, and their attachment
to freedom political, religious, and personal it was
not merely in these larger and more substantial
matters that John Locke and Andrew Combe were
alike : they had in their outward circumstances and
histories some curious coincidences.
Both were grave, silent, dark-haired, and tall ; both
were unmarried, both were much in the company of
women of culture, and had much of their best plea-
sure from their society and sympathy, and each had
one of the best of her sex to watch over his declin-
ing years, and to close his eyes ; to whose lot it fell,
in the tender words of Agricola's stern son-in-law
' assidere valetudini, fovere deficientem, satiari vultu,
complexu! Moreover, both were educated for medi-
cine, but had to relinquish the active practice of it
from infirm health, and in each the local malady was
in the lungs. Both, by a sort of accident, came in
close contact with men in the highest station, and
were their advisers and friends we refer to Lord
Shaftesbury, and to the Third William and Leopold,
two of the wisest and shrewdest of ancient or modern
kings. They resided much abroad, and owed, doubt-
less, not a little of their largeness of view, and their
superiority to prejudice, to having thus seen mankind
from many points. Both had to make the art of
keeping themselves alive the study of their health
Dr. Andrew Combe. 149
a daily matter of serious thought, arrangement, and
action. They were singularly free from the foibles
and prejudices of invalids ; both were quietly humor-
ous, playful in their natures, and had warm and deep,
but not demonstrative affections ; and to each was
given the honour of benefiting their species to a
degree, and in a variety of ways, not easily esti-
mated. Locke, though he may be wrong in many
of his views of the laws and operations of the human
mind, did more than any one man ever did before
him, to strengthen and rectify, and restore to healthy
vigour, the active powers of the mind observation,
reason, and judgment ; and of him, the weighty and
choice words of Lord Grenville are literally true : 'With
Locke commenced the bright era of a new philosophy,
which, whatever were still its imperfections, had for
its basis clear and determinate conceptions ; free inquiry
and unbiassed reason for its instruments, and for its
end truth, truth unsophisticated and undisguised,
shedding its pure light over every proper object of
the human understanding, but confining itself with
reverential awe within those bounds which an all-wise
Creator has set to our inquiries.' While, on the
other hand, Dr. Combe, making the body of man his
chief study, did for it what Locke did for the mind ;
he explained the laws of physiology, rather than the
structure of the organs ; he was more bent upon
mastering the dynamics than the statics of health and
150 Dr. Andrew Combe.
disease ; but we are too near his time, too imperfectly
aware of what he has done for us, to be able to
appreciate the full measure or quality of the benefit
he has bestowed upon us and our posterity, by his
simply reducing man to himself bringing him back
to the knowledge, the acknowledgment, and the
obedience of the laws of his nature.
Dr. Combe's best-known publications are, his
Principles of Physiology applied to Health and Educa-
tion, his Physiology of Digestion, and his Treatise on
the Physiological and Moral Management of Infancy.
The first was the earliest, and is still the best ex-
position and application of the laws of health. His
Digestion is perhaps the most original of the three.
It is not so much taken up as such treatises, how-
ever excellent, generally are with what to eat and
what not to eat, as with how to eat anything and
avoid nothing, how so to regulate the great ruling
powers of the body, as to make the stomach do its
duty upon whatever that is edible is submitted to it.
His book on the Management of Infancy is to us the
most delightful of all his works : it has the sim-
plicity and mild strength, the richness and vital
nutriment of 'the sincere milk' that first and
best-cooked food of man. This lactea tibertas per-
vades the whole little volume ; and we know of
none of Dr. Combe's books in which the references
to a superintending Providence, to a Divine Father,
Dr. Andrew Combe. 151
to a present Deity, to be loved, honoured, and
obeyed, are so natural, so impressive, so numerous,
and so child-like. His Observations on Mental
Derangement have long been out of print. We
sincerely trust that Dr. James Coxe, who has so
well edited the last edition of his uncle's Physiology,
may soon give us a new one of this important work,
which carries his principles into an important region
of human suffering. Apart altogether from its
peculiar interest as an application of Phrenology to
the knowledge and cure of Insanity it is, as Dr.
Abercrombie, who was not lavish of his praise,
said, 'full of sound observation and accurate think-
ing, and likely to be very useful.'
There is, by the by, one of Dr. Combe's papers,
not mentioned by his brother, which we remember
reading with great satisfaction and profit, and which
shows how he carried his common sense, and his
desire to be useful, into the minutest arrangements.
It appears in Chambers^ Journal for August 30,
1834, and is entitled, 'Sending for the Doctor;'
we hope to see the nine rules therein laid down, in
the next edition of the Life.
We shall now conclude this curious survey of
Dr. Combe's relations, general and direct, to medi-
cine, by earnestly recommending the study of his
Memoirs to all medical men, young and old, but
especially the young. They will get not merely
152 Dr. Andrew Combe.
much instruction of a general kind, from the con-
templation of a character of singular worth, beauty,
and usefulness, but they will find lessons every-
where, in their own profession, lessons in doctrine
and in personal conduct; and they will find the
entire history of a patient's life and death, given
with a rare fulness, accuracy, and impressiveness ;
they will get hints incidentally of how he managed
the homeliest and most delicate matters ; how, with
order, honesty, and an ardent desire to do good, he
accomplished so much, against and in spite of so
much. We would, in fine, recommend his letter
to Sir James Clark on the importance of Hygiene
as a branch of medical education (p. 311); his
letter to the same friend on medical education
(p. 341), in regard to which we agree with Sir
James, that the medical student cannot have a
better guide during the progress of his studies ; a
letter on the state of medical science (p. 400) ;
his remarks on the qualifications for the super-
intendent of a lunatic asylum ; and, at p. 468,
on scepticism on the subject of medical science.
These, and his three admirable letters to Dr.
Forbes, would make a choice little book. We
conclude with a few extracts taken from these
papers at random. It would be difficult to put
more truth on their subjects into better words.
'I have always attached much less importance
Dr. Andrew Combe. 153
than is usually done, to the abstract possibility or
impossibility of finishing the compulsory part of
professional education, within a given time, and
have long thought that more harm than good has
been done by fixing too early a limit The intelli-
gent exercise of medicine requires not only a greater
extent of scientific and general attainments, but also
readier comprehensiveness of mind, and greater accu-
racy of thinking and maturity of judgment, than
perhaps any other profession ; and these are qualities
rarely to be met with in .early youth. So generally
is this felt to be the case, that it is an all but uni-
versal practice for those who are really devoted to
the profession, to continue their studies for two or
three years, or even more, after having gone through
the prescribed curriculum, and obtained their, diplo-
mas ; and those only follow a different course who
are pressed by necessity to encounter the responsi-
bilities of practice, whether satisfied or not with
their own qualifications; and if this be the case,
does it not amount to a virtual recognition, that
the period now assigned by the curriculum is too
short, and ought to be extended? In point of fact,
this latter period of study is felt by all to be by far
the most instructive of the whole, because now the
mind is comparatively matured, and able to draw
its own inferences from the facts and observations
of which it could before make little or no use;
154 D r - Andrew Combe.
and it is precisely those who enter upon practice too
early who are most apt to become routine practi-
tioners, and to do the least for the advancement
of medicine as a science.' P. 343.
'The only thing of which I doubt the propriety
is, requiring the study of logic and moral philo-
sophy at so early an age. For though a young
man before eighteen may easily acquire a suffi-
cient acquaintance with one or two books on these
subjects, such as Whately and Paley, to be able to
answer questions readily, I am quite convinced that
his doing so will be the result merely of an intel-
lectual effort in which memory will be exercised
much more than judgment, and that the subjects
will not become really useful to him like those
which he feels and thoroughly understands, but
will slip from him the moment his examination is
at an end, and probably leave a distaste for them
ever after. To logic, so far as connected with the
structure of language, there can be no objection at
that age ; but as an abstract branch of science, I
regard it, in its proper development, as fit only for
a more advanced period of life. The whole basis
and superstructure of moral philosophy, too, imply
for their appreciation a practical knowledge of
human nature, and of man's position in society,
of his proper aims and duties, and of his political
situation, which it is impossible for a mere youth
Dr. Andrew Combe. 155
to possess; and, in the absence of acquaintance
with, and interest in the real subjects, to train the
mind to the use of words and phrases descriptive of
them (but, to him, without correct meaning) is
likely to be more injurious than beneficial. A man
must have seen and felt some of the perplexities of
his destiny, and begun to reflect upon them in his
own mind, before he can take an intelligent interest
in their discussion. To reason about them sooner,
is like reasoning without data; and besides, as the
powers of reflection are always the latest in arriving
at maturity, we may fairly infer that Nature meant the
knowledge and experience to come first.' P. 348.
Sir William Hamilton, who differs so widely
from Dr. Combe in much, agrees with him in
this, as may be seen from the following note in
his edition of Reid, p. 420. 1
1 As a corollary of this truth (' Reflection does not appear in
children. Of all the powers of the mind, it seems to be of the
latest growth, whereas consciousness is coeval with the earliest'),
Mr. Stewart makes the following observations, in which he is
supported by every competent authority in education. The
two northern universities have long withdrawn themselves from
the reproach of placing Physics last in their curriculum of arts.
In that of Edinburgh, no order is prescribed ; but in St.
Andrews and Glasgow, the class of Physics still stands after
those of mental philosophy. This absurdity is, it is to be ob-
served, altogether of a modern introduction. For, when our
Scottish universities were founded, and long after, the philo-
sophy of mind was taught by the professor of physics. ' I ap-
prehend,' says Mr. Stewart, 'that the study of the mind should
form the last branch of the education of youth ; an order which
156 Dr. Andrew Combe.
'If there is one fault greater than another, and
one source of error more prolific than another, in
medical investigations, it is the absence of a consis-
tent and philosophic mode of proceeding ; and no
greater boon could be conferred upon medicine, as a
science, than to render its cultivators familiar ivith
the laws or principles by which inquiry ought to be
directed. I therefore regard what I should term a
system of Medical Logic as of inestimable value in
the education of the practitioner ; but I think that
the proper time for it would be after the student
had acquired a competent extent of knowledge, and
a certain maturity of mind.' P. 350.
Nature herself seems to point out, by what I have already re-
marked with respect to the development of our faculties. After
the understanding is well stored with particular facts, and has
been conversant with particular scientific pursuits, it will be
enabled to speculate concerning its own powers with additional
advantage, and will run no hazard in indulging too far in such
inquiries. Nothing can be more absurd, on this as well as
on many other accounts, than the common practice which is
followed in our universities [in some only], of beginning a course
of philosophical education with the study of logic. If this order
were completely reversed ; and if the study of logic were delayed
till after the mind of the student was well stored with particular
facts in physics, in chemistry, in natural and civil history, his
attention might be led with the most important advantage, and
without any danger to his power of observation, to an examina-
tion of his own faculties, which, besides opening to him a new
and pleasing field of speculation, would enable him to form an
estimate of his own powers, of the acquisitions he has made, of
the habits he has formed, and of the further improvements of
which his mind is susceptible.' H.
Dr. Andrew Combe. 157
'The one great object ought to be the due
qualification of the practitioner; and whatever will
contribute to that end ought to be retained, whether
it may happen to agree with or differ from the curii-
cula of other universities or licensing bodies. The
sooner one uniform system of education and equality of
privileges prevails throughout the kingdom, the better
for all parties' P. 359.
' The longer I live, the more I am convinced that
medical education is too limited and too hurried,
rather than too extended; for, after all, four years
is but a short time for a mind still immature to be
occupied in mastering and digesting so many sub-
jects and so many details. Instead of the curriculum
being curtailed, however, I feel assured that ulti-
mately the period of study will be extended. Sup-
posing a young man to be engaged in the acquisition
of knowledge and experience till the age of twenty-
three instead of twenty-one, can it be said that he
will then be too old for entering upon independent
practice 1 or that his mind is even then fully matured,
or his stock of knowledge such as to inspire full
confidence? It is in vain to say that young men
will not enter the profession if these additions are
made. The result would inevitably be to attract a
higher class of minds, and to raise the character of
the whole profession.' P. 360.
' The bane of medicine and of medical education at
158 Dr. Andrew Combe.
present is its partial and limited scope. Branches of
knowledge, valuable in themselves, are studied almost
always separately, and without relation to their general
bearing upon the one grand object of the medical
art, viz., the healthy working or restoration of the
whole bodily and mental functions. We have abun-
dance of courses of lectures on all sorts of subjects,
but are nowhere taught to group their results into
practical masses or principles. The higher faculties
of the professional mind are thus left in a great mea-
sure unexercised. The limited and exclusive know-
ledge of the observing powers is alone sought after,
and an irrational experience is substituted for that
which alone is safe, because comprehensive and true
in spirit. The mind thus exercised "within narrow
limits, becomes narrowed and occupied with small
things. Small feelings follow, and the natural result
is that place in public estimation which narrow-minded-
ness and cleverness in small things deserve. The pro-
fession seeks to put down quacks, to obtain medical
reform by Act of Parliament, and to acquire public
influence ; and a spirit is now active which will bring
forth good fruit in due time. An Act of Parliament
can remedy many absurdities connected with the pri-
vileges of old colleges and corporations, and greatly
facilitate improvement ; but the grand reform must
come from within, and requires no Act to legalize its
appearance. Let the profession cultivate their art in
Dr. Andrew Combe. 159
a liberal and comprehensive spirit, and give evidence
of the predominance of the scientific over the trade-
like feeling, and the public will no longer withhold
their respect or deny their influence.' P. 400.
' If you ask, Why did not God effect his aim with-
out inflicting pain or suffering on any of us ? That
just opens up the question, Why did God see fit to
make man, man, and not an angel 1 I can see why
a watchmaker makes a watch here and a clock there,
because my faculties and nature are on a par with
the watchmaker's ; but to understand why God made
man what he is, I must have the faculties and com-
prehension of the Divine Being ; or, in other words,
the creature must be the equal of the Creator in in-
tellect before he can understand the cause of his own
original formation. Into that, therefore, I am quite
contented not to inquire.' P. 403.
' I should say that the province of Hygiene is to
examine the relations existing between the human
constitution on the one hand, and the various exter-
nal objects or influences by which it is surrounded
on the other ; and to deduce, from that examination,
the principles or rules by which the highest health
and efficiency of all our functions, moral, intellectual,
and corporeal, may be most certainly secured, and
by obedience to which we may, when once diseased,
most speedily and safely regain our health. But per-
haps the true nature of Hygiene will be best ex-
160 Dr. Andrew Combe.
hibited by contrasting what at present is taught, with
what we require at the bedside of the patient, and yet
are left to pick up at random in the best way we can.'
P. 312.
' Hygie'ne, according to my view, really forms the
connecting link by which all the branches of profes-
sional knowledge are bound together, and rendered
available in promoting human health and happiness ;
and, in one sense, is consequently the most important
subject for a course of lectures, although very oddly
almost the only one which has not been taught sys-
tematically ; and I consider the absence of the con-
necting principle as the main cause why medicine has
advanced so slowly, and still assumes so little of the
aspect of a certain science, notwithstanding all the
talent, time, and labour devoted to its cultivation.'
P. 319.
Dr. Andrew Combe. 161
NOTE. P. 146.
VIS MEDICATRIX NATURE.
DR. ADAMS, in his Preliminary Discourse to the Sydenham
Society's Edition of the Genuine Works of Hippocrates, trans-
lated and annotated by him a work, as full of the best common
sense and judgment, as it is of the best learning and scholarship
has the following passage :
' Above all others, Hippocrates was strictly the physician of
experience and common sense. In short, the basis of his
system was a rational experience, and not a blind empiricism,
so that the Empirics in after ages had no good grounds for
claiming him as belonging to their sect.
' One of the most distinguishing characteristics, then, of the
Hippocratic system of medicine, is the importance attached in
it to prognosis, under which was comprehended a complete ac-
quaintance with the previous and present condition of the
patient, and the tendency of the disease. To the overstrained
system of Diagnosis practised in the school of Cnidos, agreeably
to which diseases were divided and subdivided arbitrarily into
endless varieties, Hippocrates was decidedly opposed ; his own
strong sense and high intellectual cultivation having, no doubt,
led him to the discovery, that to accidental varieties of diseased
action there is no limit, and that what is indefinite cannot be re-
duced to science.
' Nothing strikes one as a stronger proof of his nobility of
soul, when we take into account the early period in human
cultivation at which he lived, and his descent from a priestly
order, than the contempt which he everywhere expresses for
ostentatious charlatanry, and his perfect freedom from all
1 62 Dr. Andrew Combe.
popular superstition. 1 Of amulets and complicated machines
to impose on the credulity of the ignorant multitude, there is no
mention in any part of his works. All diseases he traces to
natural causes, and counts it impiety to maintain that any one
more than another is an infliction from the Divinity. How
strikingly the Hippocratic system differs from that of all other
nations in their infantine state, must be well known to every
person who is well acquainted with the early history of medi-
cine. His theory of medicine was further based on the physical
philosophy of the ancients, more especially on the doctrines
then held regarding the elements of things, and the belief in the
existence of a spiritual essence diffused through the whole works
of creation, which was regarded as the agent that presides over
the acts of generation, and which constantly strives to preserve
all things in their natural state, and to restore them when they
are preternaturally deranged. This is the principle which he
called Nature, and which he held to be a vis medicatrix.
"Nature," says he, or at least one of his immediate followers
says, " is the physician of diseases." '
STAHL, in one of his numerous short occasional Tracts,
ScheJiasmata, as he calls them, in which his deep and fiery
nature was constantly finding vent, thus opens on the doctrine
of ' Nature,' as held by the ancients. Besides the thought, it is
1 ' This is the more remarkable, as it does not appear to have been the
established creed of the greatest literary men and philosophers of the age,
who still adhered, or professed to adhere, to the popular belief in the
extraordinary interference of the gods with the works of Nature and the
affairs of m-nkind. This, at least, was remarkably the case with Socrates,
whose mind, like that of most men who make a great impression on the
religious feelings of their age, had evidently a deep tinge of mysticism.
See Xenoph. Memor. \. i. 6-9 ; Ibid. iv. 7. 7 ; also Grote's History of
Greece, vol i. p. 499. The latter remarks, " Physical and astronomical
phenomena are classified by Socrates among the divine class, interdicted
to human study." (Mem. i. i. 13.) He adds, in reference to Hippo-
crates, " On the other hand, Hippocrates, the contemporary of Socrates,
denied the discrepancy, and merged into one the two classes of phe-
nomenathe divine and the scientifically determinable which the latter
had put asunder. Hippocrates treated all phenomena as at once both
Jivine and scientifically determinable.' '
Dr. Andrew Combe. 163
a good specimen of this great man's abrupt, impetuous, preg-
nant, and difficult expressions :
' Notanter Hippocrates 6. Epidem. 5. 'Aircu'Sevros ^ <f>tj<ris
tovffa /ecu ov (j.a.6ov<ra, TO, Stoira iroitfi. Cum a nullo informata
sit NATURA, neque quicqiiam didicerit, ea tamen, quibus opus est,
efficit. Efficere et operari, dicit ; neque incongrua et aliena, sed
quae necasaria sint, quse conveniant : Operari autem ipsam per
se, non ex consilio (intellige, alieno) lin. praeced. monet. Effec-
tivuni hoc & operativum Principium, ri]v <pii<nv, appellat, rb
S-qfuovpyiicbv r)/j,Qv atriov circumscribit Galen, de Placit. Hipp. $F
Platan. L 9. hunc eundem locum attingens. De hac Natura
prolixius idem Galenus lib. de Natur. facult. assent, quod ilia,
sitis viribus usa, qua noxia surtt, expellere noverit, qua utilia,
ttsiii sert'are. Quod idem et lib. i. cap. s. de diff, Febb. repetit.
Sapientissimam ipsam esse, itidem adstruit lib. de arte. Et
oinnia facere salulis homimim causa, in Comm. ad nostrum
locum interpretatur. Neque hoc tantum de statu Corporis
Ilumani trattquillo, et sibi constante, intelligendum, sed monent
etiam iidem, Naturam hactenus dictam, consulere corpori in
dubiis rebus, ingruente nocumentorum periculo, imo actuales,
noxas illatas, ita depellere, corrigere, exterminare, resarcire, ut
propterea Hippocrates, paulo ante sententiam hactenus citatam,
diserte affirmet, Naturam mederi morbis. In quam ipsam
assertionem, ut satis fuse consentit Galenus, ita notabilia sunt
ejus verba, quod Natura ma him sentiens, gestiat magnopere
mederi. Et Corn. CJstis, lib. 3. c. i. Repugnante Natura, ait,
nihil proficit Medicina. Imo nee deficiente eadem, ut Hipp. lib.
de arte monet, quicquam obtinet Medica ars, sed perit ceger.
Dies deliciat, neque haec charta capiat, si plerosque tantum, qui
comparent, testes Medicos Practices scriptores, citare liberet.
Nimirum QUOD tale Actrvum et Effectivum, Gubernans, dirigens,
regens, Principium in Corpore Vivo prsesto sit, tarn in statu sano
quam concusso, agens, vigilans, propugnans, omnes agnoscunt.
' Ut undique NATURA, hoc sensu, ut Effectivum quoddam,
et quidem icvptus tale, Principium asseratur, quod, arbitrarie,
agere non agere, recte aut perperam Organa sua actuare, iisque
non magis uti, quam abuti queat.
' Adornarunt hanc Doctrinse Medicse partem complures, turn
164 Dr. Andrew Combe.
Antiquiores, turn propiornm temporum Doctores, sed non eodem
omnes successu, nee forte eadem intentione. Prolixiores fuer-
unt Veteres, in illis dvvd/j.e<riv, als SioKi/cetrat r6 fwoy, ut ipsam
<f>vaiv Hippocratis describit Galenus lib. de Crisibus, et 1. 5. de
Sympt. Caus. Facidtatem Corporis noslri Rectricem optima jure
Natures nomine insigniendam, decernit. Sed inundavit hinc
Facultatim variarum, congeries, & omnem Physiologies anti-
quioris paginam ade6 absolvit, ut nihil offenderetur, quam merae
Facilitates, Vitalis, Natural is, Animalis, Genitalis, Rationalis,
Expultrix, Relentrix, Attractrix, Locomotrix, Coctrix, Excrcttix,
Sanguifica, Chylifica, &c. &c.'
To the Homoeopathic delusion, or shall we call it 'persuasion,'
whose chief merit and mischief it is to be ' not anything so much
as a nothing which looks like a something, ' we owe the recogni-
tion, in a much more practical way than before, of the self-
regulating principle in living bodies the physician inside the
skin. It is hardly necessary to state, that the best modern
exposition of this doctrine, and its relation to therapeutics, is to
be found in SIR JOHN FORBES' courageous, thoughtful, and
singularly candid little book, Art and Nature in the Cure of
Disease.
Many years ago, a countryman called on a physician in York.
He was in the depths of dyspeptic despair, as often happens
with the chawbacons. The doctor gave him some plain advice
as to his food, making a thorough change, and ended by writing
a prescription for some tonic, saying, ' Take that, and come
back in a fortnight.' In ten day Giles came in, blooming and
happy, quite well. The doctor was delighted, and not a little
proud of his skill. He asked to see what he had given him.
Giles said he hadn't got it. ' Where was it ? ' 'I took it, Sir. '
' Took it ! what have you done with it ? ' 'I ate it, Sir ! you
told me to take it ! ' We once told this little story to a Homoeo-
pathic friend, adding, ' Perhaps you think the iron in the ink
may be credited with the cure ? ' ' Well,' said my much-believ-
ing friend, 'there is no saying.' No saying, indeed! and no
thinking either ! such matters lie at least in the region of the
non-knowable.
DR. HENRY MARSHALL AND
MILITARY HYGIENE.
' To labour diligently, and to be content J says the son of Sirach,
' is a sweet life.'
' My greatest delight has been to promote a melioration of the
condition of soldiers, and in the prosecution of this important object,
I hope 1 have done some good.'' DR. MARSHALL.
DR. HENRY MARSHALL AND
MILITARY HYGIENE.
'"TWENTY-FIVE years ago, the British soldier
(taking ninety-nine out of a hundred) was a man
who, when in the eye of the law a minor, had in a
fit of passion, or when drunk, or from idleness, want,
or to avoid civil punishment, sold his personal liberty,
his life in one word, himself to the State without
reservation. In return for this, he got a bounty of
^3, IDS., which was taken back as soon as he was
attested, to pay for his outfit his kit, as it is called,
and he enjoyed an annuity of is. id. a day, out of
which, after paying his share of the mess, his shoes,
etc., there remained of daily surplus about 3d. The
State provided lodging and medical attendance, and
the name, but little else, of religious and general edu-
cation. In return, he put his will in the hands of
the State, and was bound, at any time, and upon any
ground, to destroy any other man's life, or lose his
1 68 Dr. Marshall
own, at the word of command. 1 He was, as rapidly
as possible, drilled into that perfect man-slaying in-
strument, that consummate destroyer, that we and
our enemies know him to be. And having no hope,
no self-respect, no spiritual progression, nothing to
look forward to, he sank into the sullen, stupid, in-
domitable human bull-dog. He lived in hopeless
celibacy, shut out from the influence of any but the
worst of the other sex. He became proverbially
drunken, licentious, and profane. He knew his
officer only to obey him, and often to hate and de-
spise him. Memory and hope died within him ; for
what had he to remember but his own early follies
and fatal enlistment, or to anticipate but the chances
1 Every one knows Herr Diogenes Teufelsdrock's account of
this in that fantastic and delightful book Sartor Resartus :
' What, speaking in quite unofficial language, is the net purport
and upshot of soldiers and of war ? To my own knowledge, for
example, there dwell and toil in the British village of Drum-
drudge, usually some five hundred souls. From these, by
certain "natural enemies of the French, there are necessarily
selected, during the French war, say thirty able-bodied men.
Drumdrudge, at her own expense, has suckled and nursed
them ; she has, not without difficulty and sorrow, fed them up
to manhood, and even trained them to crafts, so that one can
weave, and another build, another hammer or stitch, and the
weakest can stand under thirty pounds avoirdupois. Neverthe-
less, amid much weeping and swearing, they are selected, all
dressed in red, and shipped away at the public charges, some
two thousand miles, or say only to the south of Spain, and fed
and scourged there till wanted. And now to that same spot in
the south of Spain are thirty French handicraftsmen from a
and Military Hygiene. 1 69
of his being killed, or dying wretchedly of disease, or
being turned off a stupid, .helpless, and friendless old
man 1 No wonder that he was, as is proved by the
greater frequency of suicide in military than in civil
life, more miserable and less careful of himself than
other men. His daily routine was somewhat as
follows : He was drummed out of bed at five o'clock,
his room being a large common dormitory, where
three or four blackguards might make all the rest
comfortless and silent He rushed out of doors to
the pump, and washed himself out of his hands,
there being no basin provided for him, as he best
could, and went to drill; breakfasted substantially,
then out to parade, where he must be in proper trim,
pipe-clay immaculate ; then through the everlasting
French Drumdrudge, in like manner wending ; till at length,
after infinite effort and expense, the two parties actually meet,
and thirty stand confronting thirty, each with a gun in his hand.
Straightway the word " fire" is given, and they blow the souls
out of one another ; and in place of sixty brisk, useful workmen,
the world has sixty dead carcasses which it must bury, and anew
shed tears for. Had these men any quarrel? Busy as the
devil is, not the smallest ; they lived far enough apart, nay, in
so wide a world, there was even unconsciously, by commerce,
some mutual helpfulness between them. How then ? Simple-
ton ! Their governors had fallen out, and instead of shooting
one another, had the cunning to make their poor blockheads
shoot. In that fiction of the English Smollett, it is true, the
final cessation of war is perhaps prophetically shadowed forth
when the "two natural enemies " (France and Britain) in person
take each a tobacco-pipe filled with brimstone, light the smae,
and smoke in each other's faces till one or both give in.'
i 70 Dr. Marshall
round of ' Attention ! Eyes right ! Stand at ease,'
etc. Dinner at one o'clock, of broth and boiled
meat, and after that nothing to do till nine at night,
or to eat till breakfast next morning.
Can there be any wonder that the subjects of this
system became so often drunkards, and ran into all
sorts of low dissipation, ruining themselves, soul and
body? Much of this evil is of course inherent and
necessary ; it is founded in the constitution of man
that such should be, in the main, the result of such
an unnatural state of things. But within these five-
and-twenty years there have been numerous improve-
ments. The soldier is now a freer, happier, healthier
man, more intelligent and moral, and certainly not
less efficient than he ever was since the institution of
a standing army.
In an admirable speech in February last, when
moving the estimates for the army, Mr. Sidney Her-
bert made the following remark : ' He did not
believe that at any period had the soldier been more
comfortable than at the present moment ;' he might
safely have said as comfortable as at the present
moment. After showing that, by strict and con-
tinuous vigilance in this department, in eighteen years,
since 1835, 'the pattern year of economy,' there had
been a reduction of ^132,766, as compared with the
estimate of that year, while, for the smaller sum, we
maintained 21,000 men more, the cost of each man
and Military Hygiene. \ 7 1
being 42, 153. nd. in 1835, anc ^ in the present year
^40, 35. 6d., ;io of this being for the cost of the
officers, making the expense of each private ^30,
35. 6d. ; after making this exposition of the greater
economy in the production and maintenance of our
soldiers, Mr. Herbert went on to show that this had
been effected not only without in any way curtailing
their comforts, but with an immense increase in their
material and moral wellbeing. We shall mention
some of the more marked causes and proofs of this
gratifying and remarkable improvement in the condi-
tion of the army, as regards the intelligence, morality,
health, and general condition of the common soldier.
ist, The Good-Conduct Pay has been increased to
^65,000 a year. Formerly, every man got an in-
crease of pay for long service ; now he gets id. a day
added to his pay at the end of every five years it
was at first seven provided he has been clear of the
defaulter's books for two years, and he carries one-
half of it to his pension, in addition to the amount he
is entitled to for length of service. This scheme is
working well
zd, Barrack Libraries have been instituted, and
with signal benefit. There are now 150 libraries,
with 117,000 volumes, and 16,000 subscribers, the
men giving a penny a month.
3</, Regimental Schools, remodelled by Mr. Her-
bert, whose plans were excellently carried out by
172 Dr. Marshall
Lord Panmure. After encountering much prejudice
and objection, this plan is going on prosperously.
There are now employed with different corps, sixty,
trained masters and sixteen assistants, a class of men
very different from the old schoolmaster-sergeant. In
the 77th Regiment, the school-roll amounts to 538
adults; the 35th, to 371; the Sad, to 270. This
attendance is voluntary, and is paid for; the only
compulsory attendance being in the case of recruits,
so long as drilling lasts.
4th, Savings 1 Banks, established in 1844. In 1852,
the number of depositors was 9447 ; the amount de-
posited, ; 1 1 1, 9 20.
$th, Diminution of Punishments. In 1838, the
number of corporal punishments was 879; in 1851,
206; and in 1852 the return being for the troops
at home, and half the force on foreign stations
they were as low as 96, and all this without the
slightest relaxation of discipline. In 1838, the num-
ber of persons tried by courts-martial was in propor-
tion to the entire effective force as i in n|. Now,
it is only i in 16.
6th, Increased Longevity. There never were so
few deaths 'per annum as at present. At the Mau-"
ritius and Ceylon the mortality has fallen from 43 T 'fr
to 22 j per 1000 nearly one-half; and at Hong-
Kong, too famous for its deadly climate, more than
one-half 150 to 69 ; while, in the East and West
and Military Hygiene. 1 73
Indies and the Cape, in spite of pestilence and war,
the diminution of deaths is most strongly marked.
Add to all this, that unlimited service the legal
sanction of a man selling himself for life no longer
exists, having been abolished in 1847 thanks to
Lord Panmure's courage and wisdom ; and we have
an amount of misery, degradation, and crime pre-
vented, and of comfort, health, and workmanlike
efficiency gained, which it would be no easy matter
to estimate at its full value and degree. In the case
of such an immense public benefit, it is well to do
our best to discover in what quarter, and in what
measure, as a nation, whom all this concerns so
deeply, our gratitude and praise are due. To what,
and to whom, do we owe all this 1
The what is not far to seek. Under God, we owe
this change for the better, like so many others which
we are enjoying and forgetting, to that mighty agent
which is in our day doing such wonders, and which
will yet do more and greater the spirit of the age
public opinion of which, when so manifestly working
out the highest interests of man, we may condition-
ally, and with reverence, say, in the words of 'the
Book of Wisdom,' that it is the very breath of the
power of God an understanding spirit kind to
man, ready to do good, one only, yet manifold, not
subject to hurt, which cannot be letted.' This great
social element, viewless, impalpable, inevitable, un-
\
1 7 4. Dr. Marshall
tamable as the wind ; vital, elastic, all-penetrating,
all-encompassing as the air we breathe, the very soul
of the body politic, is like the great laws of nature
of which, indeed, it is itself one for ever at its
work; and like its Divine Author and Guide goes
about continually doing good. Without it, what
could any man, any government, do for the real
good of mankind 1 It cannot be letted. If you are
against it, get out of its way as you best can, and
stand aside and wonder at its victorious march. But
why not rather go with it, and by it? This is that
tide in the affairs of men a Deo ad Deum that
onward movement of the race in knowledge, in
power, in worth, and in happiness, which has glad-
dened and cheered all who believe, and who,
through long ages of gloom, and misery, and havoc,
have still believed that truth is strong, "next to the
Almighty that goodness is the law of His universe,
and happiness its end, and who have faith in
' That God which ever lives and loves,
One God, one law, one element,
And one far-off Divine event,
To which the whole creation moves.'
It is a tide that has never turned ; unlike the poet's,
it answers the behest of no waning and waxing orb,
it follows the eye of Him who is without variable-
ness or the shadow of turning. And no man has
yet taken it at its flood. It has its flux and reflux,
and Military Hygune. 175
its ebb and flow, its darkness and its bright light, its
storm and calm ; and, as a child who watched the
rising tide, and saw the wave in the act of with-
drawing itself, might, if it saw no more, say the sea
was retreating, so with the world's progress in
liberty, happiness, and virtue ; some may think its
best is over, its fulness past, its ebb far on ; but let
the child look again let the patriot be of good cheer,
and watch for the next wave, it may be a ninth,
curling his monstrous head and hanging it how it
sweeps higher up the beach, tosses aside as very
little things, into ruin and oblivion, or passes clear
over them, the rocks and the noisy bulwarks of
man's device, which had for long fretted and turned
aside and baffled all former waves ; and to the his-
toric eye, these once formidable barriers may be seen
far down in the clear waters, undisturbing and undis-
turbed the deep covering them, it may be seen
what they really were, how little or how big. If our
readers wish to imagine how the power of public
opinion, this tide of time, deals with its enemies and
with its friends how it settles its quarrels and attains
its ends, and how, all at once and unexpectedly, it
may be seen flowing in, without let or hindrance,
' Whispering how meek and gentle it can be,'
let him go down to the sea-shore, and watch the
rising tide, coming on lazily at first, as if without
aim or pith, turned aside by any rock, going round
176 Dr. Marshall
it, covering it by and by, swayed and troubled by
every wind, shadowed by every passing cloud, as if
it were the ficklest of all things, and had no mind of
its own ; he will, however, notice, if he stays long
enough, that there is one thing it is always doing, the
one thing it most assuredly will do, and that is, to
move on and up, to deepen and extend. So is it
with the advance of truth and goodness over our
world. Whatever appearances may be, let us rest
assured the tide is making, and is on its way to its
fulness.
We are aware that in speaking of such matters,
it is not easy to avoid exaggeration both in thought
and expression ; but we may go wrong, not less by
feeling and speaking too little, than by feeling and
speaking too much. It is profane and foolish to
deify public opinion, or, indeed, anything ; but it
is not right, it is not safe to err on the other side, to
ignore and vilipend. In one sense, public opinion
is a very commonplace subject ; in another, it is one
of the chiefest of the ways of God, one of the most
signal instruments in his hand, for moving on to
their consummation his undisturbed affairs. There
never was a time in the world's history, and there
never was a nation, in which this mighty agent made
head as it is doing now, and in ours. Everywhere
and over every department of human suffering and
need, it is to be found arising with healing under its
and Military Hygiene. 1 77
wings. That it goes wrong and does wrong is merely
to say that it works by human means ; but that in the
main it is on the right road and on the right errand,
and that thus far it is Divine, and has in it the very
breath of the power of God, no man surely who
discerns the times and the seasons will deny ; to use
the eloquent words of Maurice : ' In a civilized
country above all, in one which possesses a free
press there is a certain power, mysterious and in-
definite in its operations, but producing the most
obvious and mighty effects, which we call public
opinion. It is vague, indefinite, intangible enough,
no doubt ; but is not that the case with all the
powers which affect us most in the physical world ?
The further men advance in the study of nature, the
more these incontrollable, invincible forces make
themselves known. If we think with some of mys-
terious affinities, of some one mighty principle which
binds the elements of the universe together, why
should we not wonder, also, at these moral affinities,
this more subtle magnetism, which bears witness that
every man is connected by the most intimate bonds
with his neighbour, and that no one can live inde-
pendently of another V
We believe that in the future, and it may be not
very far-off history of our world, this associative
principle, this attractive, quickening power, is des-
tined to work wonders in its own region, to which
M
1 78 Dr. Marshall
the marvels of physical science in our days will be
as nothing. Society, as a great normal institute of
human nature, is a power whose capacities in its own
proper sphere of action, such as it now exhibits, or
has ever exhibited, and such as it is destined here-
after to exhibit, are to each other as is the weight,
the momentum of a drop of water, to the energy of
that drop converted into steam and compressed and
set a-working. We believe this will be one of the
crowning discoveries and glories of our race, about
which, as usual, we have been long enough, and of
which, when it comes, every one will say, ' How did
we never discover that before ? how easy ; how
simple ! ' Society is of the essence of unfallen man ;
it is normal ; it preceded and will survive the loss
of Eden ; it belongs to the physiology of human
nature. Government, be it of the best, must always
have to do (and the more strictly the better) with its
pathology with its fall. Were original sin abolished
to-morrow, the necessity, the very materials of Govern-
ment would cease. Society and all her immense
capabilities would once more be at home, and full
of life, and go on her way rejoicing. Education, reli-
gion, and many other things, all belong by right and
by natural fitness to Society ; and Government has
been trying for thousands of years to do her work and
its own, and has, as a matter of course, bungled both.
But we have less to do at present with this wonder-
and Military Hygiene. 1 79
working power, than with those who were the first
to direct and avail themselves of it, for forwarding
and securing the welfare of the common soldier
who had been so long shut out from its bene-
ficent impulse.
These men, simple-minded, public-hearted, indus-
trious, resolute, did not work for gratitude they
would not have worked the worse, however, with it.
They are gone elsewhere, where no gratitude of ours
can affect them ; but it is not the less right, and good,
and needful for that great creature, the public, to be
made to feel this gratitude, and to let it go forth in
hearty acknowledgment. This is a state of mind
which blesses quite as much him who gives, as him
who receives ; and nothing would tend more to keep
the public heart right, and the public conscience
quick and powerful, than doing our best to discover
what we owe, and to whom ; and as members of the
body politic, let our affection and admiration take
their free course. One of the best signs of our times
is the extension, and deepening, and clarifying of
this sense of public duty, of our living not for our-
selves, of what we owe to those who have served
their generation the practical recognition, in a word,
not only that we should love our neighbours as our-
selves, but that, according to the interpretation of
the word reserved for the Divine Teacher, every man
is our neighbour.
i8o Dr. Marshall
The difficulties in the way of any amelioration in
the moral condition and bodily comforts of the soldier,
must of necessity be great, and all experience con-
firms this. A body of men such as, in a country
like ours, a standing army with service for life, and
pay below the wages of the labouring classes, must
unavoidably consist of, is one the reform of which
might deter and dishearten any man, and excuse
most. How often have we been told that flogging
was a necessary evil ; that unlimited service was the
stay of the army; that knowledge would make the
men discontented, useless, and mischievous ! ' Sol-
diers,' said Mr. Pulteney in 1732, 'are a body of
men distinct from the body of the people ; they are
governed by different laws. Blind obedience is their
only principle.' Bruce, in his Institutions of Military
Law, 1717, gives what we doubt not was a true
account of the composition of European armies in
his day : ' If all infamous persons, and such as have
committed capital crimes, heretics, atheists, (!) and
all dastardly and effeminate men, were weeded out
of the army, it would soon be reduced to a pretty
moderate number, the greater part of the soldiery
being men of so ignoble, disingenuous tempers, that
they cannot be made obedient to the allurements of
rewards ; nay, coercion being, generally speaking,
the surest principle of all vulgar obedience. There
is, therefore,' he grimly adds, ' another part of military
and Military Hygiene. 1 8 1
institution fitted to such men's capacities, and these
are the various punishments' (and such a catalogue
of horrors !)' 'awarded to their crimes, which, as
goads, may drive these brutish creatures who will not
be attracted.' ] We are now at last trying the principle
of attraction, and are rinding it succeeds here, as
it does elsewhere keeping all things sweet and
strong, from the majestic ordinances of heaven, to
the guidance of a village school. It is too true that
Lord Melville in 1808, in his place in the House of
Lords, when opposing Mr. Wyndham's most humane
and judicious Army Bill, said, i the worst men make
the best soldiers;' 1 and if we look back on the history
of the army, the degradations, the miseries, and hard-
ships of the common soldier, we cannot help inferring
that this monstrous dogma had been even improved
upon, so as to reduce to their lowest the character-
istics of humanity, and resolve his entire nature into
a compound of strength and stupidity. With such
opinions as Lord Melville's prevailing in civil, and
not less in military life, it was no easy matter to set
up as a military reformer. If the worst man made
the best soldier, it was a contradiction in terms to
think of making the man in any degree better. The
1 This was not the principle of one of the greatest of men
and of soldiers. Cicero says of Julius Caesar, there was never
an ITO in his commands, but only a VENI, as if he scorned to
be less or more than their leader.
1 82 Dr. Marshall
converse was the logical sequence ; to find the worst
man, and by all means make him a worser still.
Things are changed, and have been changing ; and
that humane spirit, that sense of responsibility as
regards the happiness and welfare of our fellow-men
on which we have already enlarged, and which is one
of the most signal blessings of our time, has pene-
trated into this region, and Lord Melville's dogma is
in the fair way of being overthrown and reversed.
It is now no longer legal for a British subject to sell
himself, body and soul, for life. For this we have
mainly to thank Lord Panmure, one of the ablest
and best secretaries the War Office has ever seen.
But while we most heartily acknowledge the great
services of Lord Hardinge, Lord Grey, Mr. Ellice,
Sir George Arthur, Sir Charles Napier, Colonel Lind-
say, Lord Panmure, Mr. Sidney Herbert, and many
others, in urging and carrying out all these ameliora-
tions and reforms ; and while we cannot easily over-
rate the value of the labours of Lieutenant-Colonel
Tulloch and Dr. Graham Balfour in working out the
vital statistics of the army, and demonstrating their
practical bearing on the prevention of misery and
crime and death, and the increased comfort and
efficiency of the service ; we are, we feel sure, only
saying what every one of these public-spirited men
will be readiest to confirm, that to the late Dr. Henry
Marshall is due the merit of having been the first
and Military Hygiene. \ 8
in this great field, the sower of the seed the setter
agoing of this current of research and reform which
has achieved so much. There is not one of these
many improvements which he did not, in his own
quiet, but steady and unflinching way, argue for, and
urge, and commend, and prove, many years before
they were acknowledged or taken up by the higher
authorities. We find him, when a mere lad, at the
Cape, in the beginning of the century, making out
tables of the diseases of the soldiers, of the compara-
tive health of different stations, and ages, and climates;
investigating the relation of degradation, ignorance,
crime, and ill-usage, to the efficiency of the army and
to its cost ; and from that time to the last day of his
life devoting his entire energies to devising and doing
good to the common soldier. And all this, to say
the least of it, without much assistance from his own
department (the medical), till the pleasant time came
when the harvest was to be reaped, and the sheaves
taken victoriously home.
'Have you seen Marshall's Miscellany '?' said a
friend to Lord Panmure, when he was Secretary at
War. 'Seen it!' exclaimed he, 'why, Marshall's
book is my Bible in all that relates to the welfare of
the soldier.' And it is not less honourable to our
late Commander-in-Chief than to Dr. Marshall, that
when presented by the author with a copy of this
book, his Lordship said, 'Your book should be in
1 84 Dr. Marshall
the hands of every array surgeon, and in every orderly-
room in the service.' Any man who knows what the
army is and was, and what the prejudices of the best
military men often were, and who has also read
thoroughly the work we refer to, and has weighed
well all it is for, and all it is against, and all that it
proves, will agree with us in saying, that for Lord
Hardinge to express, and for Dr. Marshall to deserve,
such a compliment, is no small honour to both.
Dr. Marshall, to have done so much good, made
the least noise about it of any public man we ever
knew. He was eminently quiet in'all his ways; the
very reverse of your loud man ; he made no spas-
modic efforts, he did nothing by fits or starts, nothing
for effect ; he flowed on incredibili lenitate, with a
ceaseless and clear but powerful flow. He was a
philosopher without knowing it, and without many
others knowing it ; but, if to trace effects up to their
causes, to bring good out of evil, and order out of
confusion, to increase immensely the happiness of
his fellow-men, be wisdom, and the love of it, then
was this good man a philosopher indeed.
Henry Marshall was born in the parish of Kilsyth
in 1775. His father was a man of singular simplicity
and worth, and besides his own excellent example,
and in spite of his slender means, he gave both his
sons a college education. In May 1803, Henry
became surgeon's mate in the royal navy, a service
and Military Hygtine. 185
he left in September 1804; and in January 1805
was appointed assistant-surgeon to the Forfarshire
regiment of militia. In April 1806, he became
assistant-surgeon to the first battalion of the 8gth
regiment, which embarked in February 1807 for
South America, thence to the Cape of Good Hope
and Ceylon. In May 1809, he was appointed assis-
tant-surgeon to the 2d Ceylon Regiment, and in
April 1813, was promoted to be surgeon of the ist
Ceylon Regiment. In December of the same year
he was removed to the staff, but continued to serve
in the island till the spring of 1821, when he returned
home ; and soon after his arrival he was appointed
to the staff of North Britain, his station being
Edinburgh.
We shall now give a short account of his principal
writings, and of the effect they had in attaining the
great object of his long and active life, which, in his
own words, was ' to excite attention to the means
which may meliorate the condition of the soldier,
and exalt his moral and intellectual character.'
1817. ' Description of the Laurus Cinnamomum]
read before the Royal Society at the request of Sir
Joseph Banks, and published in the Annals of Philo-
sophy of that year.
1821. ' Notes on the Medical Topography of the
interior of Ceylon, and on the Health of the Troops
employed in the Provinces during the years 1815 to
1 86 Dr. Marshall
1820, with brief Remarks on the prevailing Diseases.'
London, 1821. 8vo, pp. 228. The great merit of
this little -book consisted in the numerical statistics it
contains regarding the mortality and diseases of the
troops a new feature in medical works at the time it
was published.
His next publication was in 1823. ' Observations
on the Health of the Troops in North Britain, during
a period of Seven years, from 1816 to 1822.' London
Medical and Physical Journal. The numerical por-
tion of these observations was an attempt, and at the
same time a novel one, to collect and arrange the facts
illustrative of the amount of sickness and the ratio
of mortality among a body of troops for a specific
period.
In November 1823, Dr. Marshall was removed
from Edinburgh to Chatham, and in April 1825, was
appointed to the recruiting depot, Dublin. In 1826,
he published ' Practical Observations on the Inspec-
tion of Recruits, including Observations on Feigned
Diseases.' Edin. Med. and Surgical Journal, vol.
xxvi. p. 225.
1828. 'Hints to Young Medical Officers of the
Army on the Examination of Recruits and the
Feigned Disabilities of Soldiers.' London, 1828.
8vo, pp. 224. The official documents contained in
this volume are interesting, in as far as they show
the difficulty of the duty of selecting recruits, and the
and Military Hygilnc. 1 8 7
\ ery limited information the authorities, both military
and medical, appear to have had on the subject. It
is full of interest even to the general reader, opening
up one of the most singular and most painful manifesta-
tions of human character, and affording the strongest
proofs of the inherent misery and degradation of the
life of the British common soldier. In reading it, it
is difficult to know which to wonder most at the de-
spair and misery that must prompt, the ingenuity that
can invent, and the dogged resolution that can carry
out into prolonged execution, and under every species
of trial, the endless fictions of every conceivable kind
therein described; or the shrewdness, the professional
sagacity, and the indomitable energy with which Dr.
Marshall detects, and gives to others the means of
detecting, these refuges of lies. This was the first,
and still is the best work in our language on this
subject ; the others are mere compilations, in-
debted to Dr. Marshall for their facts and practical
suggestions.
In January 1828, Sir Henry (afterwards Viscount)
Hardinge was appointed Secretary at War. One of
the numerous important subjects connected with the
administration of the war department which early
engaged his attention, was the large and rapidly
increasing pension list. For a period of several
months he laboured hard to obtain information on
the practical working of the existing pensioning
1 88 Dr. Marshall
warrants, chiefly from the unsatisfactory documents
found at Chelsea Hospital. He soon discovered
many abuses in the system then in operation. As a
means of helping him to abate the abuses in ques-
tion, he directed a Medical Board to assemble, of
which Dr. Marshall was appointed a member, the
specific duty of the Board being as follows : ' For
the purpose of revising the regulations which relate
to the business of examining and deciding upon the
cases of soldiers recommended for discharge from
the service.' 'The object of the proposed inquiry is
to ascertain what description of disabilities ought to
be pensioned, and what not.' The pension list at
this time stood as follows :
19,065 pensioners, at 6d. a day, average age thirty-one
years ; alleged causes of being discharged, inju-
ries or bad health.
16,630 at gd. a day, for service and disability combined.
21,095 a t Is - a day. f r length of service and wounds.
i, loo at is. gd., blind.
27,625 no causes of disability assigned.
85,515
The list had increased greatly during a period of
peace, and it was annually increasing. The mean
rate of pension was io|d., and the annual amount
,1,436,663 ; the annual rate of mortality among the
pensioners being about four per cent.
During the sitting of the Board, Dr. Marshall col-
lected some practical information on the pensioning
and Military Hygiene. 189
question ; and on returning to Dublin, in December
1828, he drew up a comprehensive scheme for pen-
sioning soldiers, upon what he considered improved
principles. Under the title of ' Cursory Observa-
tions on the Pensioning of Soldiers,' he forwarded his
scheme to Lord Hardinge ; and he had the satisfac-
tion of finding that a new pension warrant was made,
founded on the same principles as his ' Scheme,'
namely, isf, length of service ; 2d, wounds received
before the enemy ; 3^, greatly impaired health after
fifteen years' service ; 4//i, anomalous disabilities,
special cases, which require to be particularly con-
sidered. By Mr. Wyndham's Act of 1806, every
man who was discharged as disabled, was entitled to
a pension for life, without reference to the time he
had served ; and, by the subsequent amendments
and alterations, disabilities and not service consti-
tuted the chief claim for a pension. This mode of
obtaining a pension -opened a wide door for fraud of
various kinds.
The Pensioning Warrant of the Secretary at War
went through a number of editions, both in manu-
script and in print.
In 1829, Dr. Marshall published ' Observations on
the Pensioning of Soldiers.' United Service Journal,
1829, part ii. p. 317. This paper has a peculiar in-
terest, inasmuch as it gives an account of the frauds
which had been committed in the army by the
190 Dr. Marshall
erasure and alteration of figures, and which had only
lately been discovered. The falsification of records
by this means was found, upon investigation, to have
been practised to a considerable extent in almost
every regiment in the service.
1829. ' Historical Notes on Military Pensions.'
United Service Journal.
1830. ' Notes on Military Pensions.' United Ser-
vice Journal.
Early in 1830, Dr. Marshall communicated to
Lord Hardinge a paper on the abuse of intoxicating
liquors by the European troops in India, and on the
impolicy of uniformly and indiscriminately issuing
spirit rations to soldiers. An abstract of this paper
was subsequently published under the following
title :
1830. 'Observations on the Abuse of Spirituous
Liquors by the European Troops in India, and of the
Impolicy of uniformly and indiscriminately issuing
Spirit Rations to Soldiers.' Edinburgh Med. and
Surg. Journal, vol. xli. p. i o.
Lord Hardinge carried into effect the suggestions
contained in this paper with remarkable promptitude ;
indeed, it would be difficult to praise too highly his
Lordship's conduct in this matter, whether in regard
to his discrimination in perceiving and appreciating
the evils of the usage, his firmness in abolishing it at
once, or his wisdom and courage in surmounting the
and Military Hygiene. \ 9 1
prejudices of a large portion of all ranks in the army.
Within a week after he received it, he had commenced
measures to abolish the indiscriminate issue of spirit
rations to soldiers on board ship and on foreign sta-
tions. So long as a quantity of spirits, amounting to
about six or seven ounces (in India it was the 2oth
part of a gallon), formed part of the regular diet or
daily ration of a soldier which he was obliged to
swallow or to throw away, what rational hope could
be entertained that the exertions of commanding
officers, however well directed, would have much
effect in checking drunkenness 1 The indiscriminate
daily use of spirits is not necessary for the efficiency
or health of troops in any climate, and their abuse is
a fertile source of disabilities, diseases, and crimes,
both moral and military. To drink daily nearly half
a pint of spirits was then a part of the duty of a
soldier; and that this duty might be effectually exe-
cuted, it was the usage of the service, in many sta-
tions, to have it performed under the superinten-
dence of a commissioned officer, who certified to his
commanding officer that he had witnessed each man
drink his dram or ration of spirits. Perhaps a more
successful plan for converting temperate men into
drunkards could not have been invented.
During 1829, Dr. Marshall was attached to the
War Office, and in 1830, he was promoted to the
rank of deputy-inspector of hospitals by Lord Har-
1 92 Dr. Marshall
dinge. Here ended his active service in the army,
and he was placed on half-pay.
Shortly after the promulgation of the instructions
for the guidance of medical officers in the duty of
examining recruits, which were drawn up by Dr.
Marshall, and were the result of a most laborious
and difficult inquiry, it occurred to Lord Hardinge,
that the publication of this document, together with
the pensioning warrant, and other relative papers,
accompanied by a suitable commentary, would be
useful, in the form of a small volume, for the infor-
mation of officers of the army ; with this object, Dr.
Marshall published in
1832. 'On the Enlisting, the Discharging, and
the Pensioning of Soldiers, with the Official Docu-
ments on these Branches of Military Duty.' London,
1832. 8vo, pp. 243.
In the summer of this year, Dr. Marshall married
Anne, eldest daughter of James Wingate, Esq. of
Westshiels. This union was, as we often said, the
best earthly blessing of a long and happy life.
1833. 'Contributions to Statistics of the Army,
with some Observations on Military Medical Returns.
No. I.' Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal,
vol. xl. p. 36.
It would be a work of supererogation for us to say
one word in favour of military statistics, as a means
of illustrating the condition of an army. For some
and Milita ry Hyg ibne. 193
time, however, after the publication of this paper, the
utility of condensing and arranging medical returns
was but very partially recognised ; and Dr. Marshall's
' array' of figures was laughed and sneered at by some
who ought to have known better.
1833. 'Contributions to Statistics of the Army.
No. II.' Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal,
vol. xl. p. 307.
1834. 'Sketch of the Geographical Distribution
of Diseases.' Edinburgh Med. and Surgical Journal,
vol. xxxviii. p. 330.
1834. 'Abstract of the Returns of the Sick of the
Troops belonging to the Presidency of Fort-George,
Madras, for the years 1827 to 1830.' Edinburgh
Med. and Surgical Journal, vol. xxxix. p. 133.
1834. 'On the Mortality of the Infantry of the
French Army.' Edinburgh Med. and Surgical Jour-
nal, vol. xlii. p. 34.
1835. ' Observations on the Influence of a Tropi-
cal Climate upon the Constitution and Health of
natives of Great Britain.' Edinburgh Medical and
Surgical Journal, vol. xliv. p. 28.
1835. ' Contributions to Statistics of the British
Army. No. III.' Edinburgh Medical and Surgical
Journal, vol. xliv. p. 353.
In 1835, Dr. Marshall, along with Sir A. M.
Tulloch (who has done such excellent service since)
was appointed to investigate the statistics of the
N
194 r - Marshall
sickness, mortality, and invaliding of the British
army. Their report on the sickness, mortality, and
invaliding among the troops in the West Indies was
laid before Parliament the following year.
This report produced a change which was nothing
short of a revolution in this department of military
polity ; it destroyed the old established notion of
seasoning. The period of service in Jamaica used
to be nine or ten years ; this is now divided
between it and the Mediterranean stations and
British America. The reason alleged for keeping
them so long in so notoriously unhealthy a station,
was the military and medical fallacy, that Europeans
by length of residence became 'seasoned.' This
fallacy, which had been the source of so much
misery, and crime, and death, and expense, was
completely dissipated by these statistical returns,
from which it was found that (as in every other case)
mortality depended upon age, and that young soldiers
lived longer there than older ones, however ' sea-
soned ' by residence or disease. The annual mor-
tality of the troops in Jamaica was thirteen in the
hundred by the medical returns, but the actual mor-
tality amounted to about two per cent, more, a mor-
tality of which we may give some idea, by stating
that a soldier serving one year in Jamaica encoun-
tered as much risk of life as in six such actions as
Waterloo, there one in forty fell, in Jamaica one in
and Military Hygiene. 195
seven annually. No wonder that the poor soldier,
knowing that eight or nine years must elapse before
he left this deadly place, and seeing a seventh com-
rade die every year, lost all hope, mind and body
equally broken down, and sank into drunkenness
and an earlier grave. He eventually concluded, that
it is a glorious climate where a man is always ' dry '
and has always plenty to drink. Another evil pointed
out by this able report, was that produced by the use
of salted provisions. This practice was immediately
changed. It also brought to light a curious and im-
portant fact, that in the barracks situated at Maroon
Town, Jamaica, 2000 feet above the sea, the annual
mortality was only 32 per 1000, while at Up-Park
Camp, nearly on the level of the sea, it was 140 per
1000. The knowledge of this extraordinary, but till
the report, undiscovered fact, 1 has been acted upon
with eminent benefit ; so much so, that, had it been
known during the seventeen years previously, the
lives of 1387 men, and ,27,740, might have been
saved. We never met with a more remarkable in-
stance of the practical effects of statistics. 8
1837. ' Contribution to Statistics of the Sickness
and Mortality which occurred among the Troops
1 See Note at the end of this Paper.
2 Any one wishing a fuller account of this memorable experi-
ment and its results, will find it in an admirable paper by Sir
A. M. Tulloch, K.C.B., read before the Statistical Society in
1847.
196 Dr. Marshall
employed on the Expedition to the Scheldt, in the
year 1809.' Edinburgh Med. and Surgical Journal,
vol. xlviii. p. 305.
1839. 'Contribution to Statistics of Hernia among
Recruits for the British, and Conscripts for the
French Army.' Edinburgh Medical and Surgical
Journal, vol. 1. p. 15.
1839. ' On the Enlisting, Discharging, and Pen-
sioning of Soldiers, with the Official Documents on
these branches of Military Duty.' Second Edition.
Edinburgh, 1839.
1846. 'Military Miscellany.' 8vo. London,
1846.
This most entertaining and effective book is a com-
plete epitome of its author's mind and character ; it
has something of everything that was peculiar to him.
Although dissuaded by his military friends with only
one exception from publishing it, as being likely to
produce dissatisfaction in the ranks, and offend com-
manding-officers : no such effect followed, but the
reverse. It is, as its name denotes, not so much a
treatise, as a body of multifarious evidence, enabling
any man of ordinary humanity and sense to make
up his mind on the various questions handled in it,
Recruiting enlistment moral and physical qualities
of recruits duration of engagement suicide in the
army, its greater frequency than in civil life, and the
reason of this punishments rewards vices and
and Military Hygibne. 1 9 7
virtues of soldiers pensions education ; these, and
such like, are the subjects which are not so much
discussed, as exhibited and proved. At the time the
Miscellany came out, many things concurred in rapidly
promoting its great end. The public mind having
been enlightened on the evils of flogging in the army,
and of perpetual service, was bestirring itself in its
own rough and vague but energetic way ; there was
a 'clamour' on these subjects; Dr. Fergusson's
eloquent and able though somewhat exaggerative
' Notes and Reminiscences of Professional Life,' pub-
lished after his death, advocated much the same
views as Dr. Marshall, and three elaborate and power-
ful articles in the Times on these two books and their
subjects, written with great ability and tact, had ex-
cited the attention of the nation when this was
brought to its operative point, by one of those de-
plorable incidents out of which not seldom comes
immediate and great good ; the sort of event which
beyond all others rouses the British people and makes
it act as one man, and in this case fortunately they
were well informed before being roused. The first
of the three articles in the Times appeared on the 2d
of July 1846, and straightway, as a practical lecture
concludes by the exhibition of a crucial and decisive
experiment, on the nth of the same month a
soldier died at Hounslow, apparently from the effects
of punishment inflicted in the previous month. This
198 Dr. Marshall
sealed the fate of the flogging system. The idea of
Frederick John White of the 7th Hussars, 'a brave
fellow, who walked away whistling,' and was said to
be ' gentlemanly, affable, and mild,' dying of flogging
at John Bull's very door, was too much for John and
his family, and one of the things he could stand no
longer. The Commander-in-Chief instantly directed
that henceforth fifty lashes should be the maximum.
At the time, much of this result was attributed, in the
public prints and in Parliament, to Dr. Marshall's
book. Next session of Parliament more was done
for bettering the lot of the common soldier. 1 The
present Lord Panmure introduced a bill into Parlia-
ment, limiting the period for which a soldier enlists
to twelve years in the cavalry and ordnance, and ten
in the infantry, instead of as formerly for life, which,
after considerable discussion, was passed ; continual
reference was made in the debates to the Miscellany,
and its author had the satisfaction of witnessing the
1 The sale of spirituous liquors in canteens was abolished at this
time, and with the very best results. Colonel the Hon. James
Lindsay, M.P., has the merit of having contributed mainly to
the removal of this crying evil. His speech on moving for an
inquiry into the canteen system, is a model of the manner in
which such subjects should be handled clear, compact, soldier-
like. He makes the following just, but often overlooked dis-
tinction ' He believed it would not be difficult to show, that
though an habitual drunkard and an habitual drinker were two
different things, the one was as great an expense to the country
as the ether.'
and Al Hilary Hygtine. 1 99
completion of those cardinal ameliorations. We can-
not convey a juster idea of this homely, unpretending
volume, than in the generous words of a distinguished
Belgian physician (M. Fallot) : ' C'est 1'ouvrage d'un
homme posse'dant parfaitetnent la matiere, ayant passe
la plus grande partie de sa vie a e'tudier le caractere,
les mceurs et les besoins des soldats au milieu des-
quels il vivait et au bien-etre desquels il avait voue
son existence. Ayant autant d'eleVation dans les
vues que d'independance dans 1'esprit, il a apergu les
deYauts partout ou ils existaient, et a eu le courage
de les mettre a nu et de les signaler. A ceux qui
craindraient que le me'moire ne fut trop se'rieux ou
trop monotone, je dois dire que la foule d' anecdotes
piquantes, de citations heureuses et opportunes, dont
le memoire est seme", reposent et distraient agrdable-
ment 1'esprit du lecteur.'
Dr. Marshall's last publication on military subjects
was in 1849 'Suggestions for the Advancement of
Military Medical Literature.' These were his parting
words for the service he had devoted the energies of
a long lifetime to a sort of legacy bequeathed to
those who were going forward in the same good
work. He was then labouring under a mortal dis-
ease, one of the most painful and terrible to which
our flesh is heir of its real nature and only termina-
tion he was, with his usual sagacity, aware from the
first, and yet with all this, we never got a kinder wel-
2OO Dr. Marshall
come, never saw one more cheerful, or more patient
in listening to what concerned only others. He used
to say, ' This is bad, very bad, in its own way as bad
as can be, but everything else is good : my home is
happy ; my circumstances are good ; I always made
a little more than I spent, and it has gathered of
course; my life has been long, happy, busy, and I
trust useful, and I have had my fill of it ; I have lived
to see things accomplished, which I desired, ardently
longed for fifty years ago, but hardly hoped ever to
see.' With that quiet, rational courage, which was
one of his chief but hidden qualities, he possessed
his soul in patience in the midst of intense suffering,
and continued to enjoy and to use life for its best
purposes to the last
Of religion, and especially of his own religion, he
was not in the. habit of speaking much ; when he did,
it was shortly and to the purpose, and in a way which
made every one feel that the root of the matter was
in him. His views of God, of sin, and of himself,
and his relation to his Maker and the future, were of
the simplest and most operative kind. When in
Ceylon, and living much alone, away from religious
books and ordinances, and religious talk, and contro-
versy, and quarrel, away also from that religiosity
which is one of the curses of our time, he studied
his New Testament, and in this, as in every other
matter, made up his mind for himself. Not that he
and Military Hygilne. 201
avoided religious conversation, but he seemed never
to get over the true sacredness of anything connected
with his own personal religion. It was a favourite
expression of his, that religion resolved itself into
wonder and gratitude intelligent wonder; humble
and active gratitude such wonder and such gratitude
as the New Testament calls forth.
Dr. Marshall, as may readily be supposed, was not
what the world calls a genius ; had he been one, he
probably would not have done what he did. Yet he
was a man of a truly original mind ; he had his own
way of saying and doing everything ; he had a knack
of taking things at first-hand ; he was original, inas-
much as he contrived to do many things nobody else
had done ; a sort of originality worth a good deal of
' original genius.' And like all men of a well-mixed,
ample, and genial nature, he was a humorist of his
own and that a very genuine kind ; his short stories,
illustrative of some great principle in morals or in
practical life, were admirable and endless in number ;
if he had not been too busy about more serious
matters, he might have filled a volume with anec-
dotes, every one of them at once true and new, and
always setting forth and pointing some vital truth.
Curiously enough, it was in this homely humour, that
the strength and the consciousness of strength, which
one might not have expected from his mild manner
and his spare and fragile frame, came out ; his satire,
2O2 Dr. Marshall
his perfect appreciation of the value and size of
those he had in view, and his ' pawky ' intuition into
the motives and secret purposes of men, who little
thought they were watched by such an eye, was
one of the most striking, and gravely comic bits of
the mental picturesque ; it was like Mind looking
at and taking the measure and the weight of Body,
and Body standing by grandly unconscious and dis-
closed ; and hence it was that, though much below
the average height, no one felt as if he were little
he was any man's match. His head and eye settled
the matter ; he had a large, compact, commanding
brain, and an eye singularly intelligent, inevitable,
and calm.
Dr. Marshall died on the 5th May 1851, at Edin-
burgh, where he had for many years lived. Though
out of the service, he was constantly occupied with
some good work, keeping all his old friends, and
making new and especially young ones, over whom
he had a singular power ; he had no children, but he
had the love of a father for many a youth, and the
patience of a father too. In his married life, to use
his own words, ' I got what I was in search of for
forty years, and I got this at the very time it was
best for me, and I found it to be better and more
than I ever during these forty long years had hoped
for.'
Had such a man as Dr. Marshall appeared in
and Military Hygiene. 203
France, or indeed anywhere else than in Britain, he
would have been made a Baron at the least He
did not die the less contented that he was not ; and
we must suppose, that there is some wise though
inscrutable final cause why our country, in such
cases, makes virtue its own and only reward, and is
leonum arida nutrix, a very dry nurse indeed.
Besides the publications we have mentioned, in
connexion with military statistics and hygiene, Dr.
Marshall published a history and description of
Ceylon, which, after all the numerous works on ' the
utmost Indian isle, remains at once the shortest,
the fullest, and the best. He also published on the
coco-nut tree, and a sketch of the geographical dis-
tribution of disease, besides many other occasional
papers, in all of which he makes out something at
once new and true. In the well-weighed words of
Dr. Craigie : 'He was the first to show how the
multiplied experience of the medical officers of the
British Army at home and abroad, by methodical
arrangement and concentration, might be applied by
the use of computation, to furnish exact and useful
results in medical statistics, medical topography, the
geographical relations of diseases, medical hygiene,
and almost every other branch of military medicine.
Dr. Marshall must indeed be regarded as the father
and founder of military medical statistics, and of tJieir
varied applications' We end our notice of this truly
204 Dr. Marshall
excellent public servant, with his own dying words :
' In many respects, I consider myself one of the
most fortunate individuals who ever belonged to the
medical department of the army. Through a long life
I have enjoyed almost uninterrupted good health,
and my duties have been a pleasure to me. Having
generally had some literary undertaking on hand,
more or less connected with military hygiene, I have
enjoyed much intellectual gratification. " To labour
diligently, and to be content (says the son of Sirach),
is a sweet life." My greatest delight has been to
promote a melioration of the condition of soldiers,
and in the prosecution of this important object, I
hope I have done some good. I have much reason
to be grateful to Divine Providence for the many
blessings I have enjoyed, and continue to enjoy.
Although my elementary education was extremely
limited, my professional instruction defective, and my
natural talents moderate, I have no reason to com-
plain of my progress and standing in the service.
Every step of advancement which I gained in the
army was obtained without difficulty. When I look
back upon my progress in life, it seems to me that I
have been led " in a plain path," and that my steps
have been " ordered." '
We had intended giving some account of the
medical military worthies who preceded Dr. Mar-
shall, but we have left ourselves no space.
and Military Hygiene. 205
Among them may be reckoned Sir John Pringle,
the earliest and one of the best ; * Drs. Brocklesby,
the generous friend of Burke and Johnson; D.
Monro ; R. Somerville ; R. Jackson, whose system
of arrangement and discipline for the medical depart-
ment of the army is most valuable and judicious, and
far in advance of its date, 1805 ; Cheyne, Lempriere,
and Fergusson. All these reformers, differing as they
often did in the specific objects and expedients they
each had in view, agreed in the great, but then im-
perfectly known and recognised principle, that pre-
vention is not only better, but easier and cheaper
than cure that health is more manageable than
1 Sir John Pringle was truly what his epitaph in Westminster
Abbey calls him, egregius vir a man not of the common herd ;
a man in advance of his age. He is our earliest health
reformer, the first who in this country turned his mind and that
of the public to hygiene as a part of civil polity. In the Library
of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, there were
deposited by him, in 1781, a year before his death, ten large
folios of MSS., entitled 'Medical Annotations,' forming the
most remarkable record we have ever seen of the active intelli-
gence and industry of a physician in the course of an immense
London practice. Among other valuable matter, these volumes
contain a ' Treatise on Air, Climate, Diet, and Exercise,' as
subjects concerning public as well as personal health, which
indicates, in a very interesting manner, the infantile condition
of this science at that time, and the author's singularly liberal,
sagacious, and practical opinions. This treatise is contiriued
from time to time through many volumes, and must have been
many years in writing. It is much to be regretted, that by the
terms of his gift of these MSS., the College is forbidden ever to
publish any of them. When a history of vital statistics and
206 Dr. Marshall
disease and that in military, as in civil life, by dis-
covering and attending to the laws by which God
regulates the course of nature, and the health of his
rational creatures, immense evils may be prevented
with the utmost certainty, which evils, if once in-
curred, no skill and art can countervail ; in the one
case, nature in her courses fights for, in the other
against us ; serious odds 1
When and how is the world to be cured of its
passion for the game of war ? As to the when, we
may safely say it is not yet come. In her voyage
down the great stream, our world has not yet slid
into that spacious and blessed Pacific, where
hygiene is written, as we trust it may soon be, and we know of
only one man (Dr. Farr) who can fulfil this task, this treatise,
dating nearly too years back, will deserve its due, as the herald
of so much after good.
Besides being, what only one other Scotchman, we believe,
ever has been (the Earl of Morton), President of the Royal
Society, he was Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University
of Edinburgh ; and his observations on the diseases of the army,
so famous in his day, with his discourse on some late im-
provements in preserving the health of mariners, may still be
read with advantage for their accurate description, their humane
spirit, and plain good sense, and stand out in marked contrast
to the error, ignorance, and indifference then prevalent in all
matters concerning the prevention of disease. His greatest glory
in his own day is his least now, his epitaph bearing on its front
that he was the man
' Quern celcissima Wallise Princessa
Regina serenissima,
Ipsius denique Regis Majestas,
Medicum sibi comprobavit'
and Military Hygilne. 207
' Birds of calm sit brooding on the charmed wave. '
\Ve have no more got this length than we have that
to which a friend of the author of The New Moral
World so eagerly looked forward, when she asked
him
' When shall we arrive at that state of pudity,
When we shall all walk about in our native nudity ? '
We fear we cannot yet dispense altogether either
with our clothes or our cartridges. We cannot afford
to beat all our swords into ploughshares. But we as
firmly believe that we are on our way to this, and
that the fighting peace-men are doing much good.
The idea of peace, as a thing quite practicable, is
gaining the ear of the public, and from thence it will
find its way into its brain, and down to its heart, and
thence out in act by its will. We have no doubt that
the time is coming when, for a great trading nation
like ours, supplying a world with knowledge, calico,
and tools, to keep an immense army and navy will
be as manifestly absurd and unbusiness-like, as it
would be for a bagman from Manchester, or a traveller
from 'The Row,' to make his rounds among his
customers, armed cap-a-pie, soliciting orders with his
circular in one hand, and a Colt's revolver in the
other. As to the how, chiefly in three ways : First,
By the commercial principle of profit and loss, of a
heavy balance against, coming to influence the trans-
actions of nations, as it has long done those of
2 oS Dr. Marshall
private and social life free-trade, mutual connexion
and intercourse, the proof, publicly brought out, that
the interest of the body-politic is also that of every
one of its members, and the good of the whole that
also specially of each part the adoption, not merely
in theory, but in practice, of a law of nations, by the
great leading powers, and the submitting disputes
regarding territory, commerce, and all the questions
arising out of active multifarious trading among the
nations, to reason and fixed rules, and settling them
by the arbitration of intelligent humane men, instead
of by the discharge of a park of artillery. Secondly,
By the art of war being by scientific discovery so
advanced in the degree and the immediateness of its
destructiveness, so certain utterly to destroy one of
the sides, or it may be both, that it would come to
be as much abolished among well-bred, enlightened
nations as the duel would be among civilized men
were it certain that one or both of the combatants
must be extinguished on the spot. ' Satisfaction '
would not be so often asked by nations or indivi-
duals, and dissatisfaction not so often expressed, were
this accomplished. Thirdly, and chiefly, By nations
not only becoming shrewder and more truly aware of
their own interests and of what ' pays ' or such
' dead shots ' as to make the issue of any war rapid
and fatal, but most of all by their growing, in the
only true sense, better, more under the habitual
and Military Hygiene. 209
influence of genuine virtue, more informed with the
knowledge, and the fear, and the love of God and of
His laws.
Since finishing this paper, we have seen a copy of
the new statistical report on the sickness and mor-
tality of the British army, submitted on the 3ist of
March to the Secretary at War, and presented the
other day to Parliament. It does infinite credit to
the energy, and accuracy, and judgment, of Sir A.
M. Tulloch and Dr. Graham Balfour, by whom it
has been prepared ; and is one of the most valuable
results yet obtained from that method of research
of which Dr. Marshall was, as we have seen, the ori-
ginator. It is not easy to make an abstract of what
is itself the concentrated essence of an immense
number of voluminous reports the two valuable
public servants above mentioned have always heartily
acknowledged their obligations to Dr. Marshall, and
they conclude their prefatory notice by saying,
' The death of Dr. Marshall, inspector-general of hos-
pitals, has deprived us of the valuable aid previously
afforded by that officer, in the medical details, for
which his long acquaintance with the statistics of his
profession so well qualified him.' We shall make
a few random extracts, to show how well grounded
Mr. Sidney Herbert's statement is, that the common
soldier never was better off than now. The report
begins with enumerating the improvements in the
o
2io Dr. Marshall
condition of the soldier since their last report in
1841. We have already mentioned the chief of
these. During seven years upwards of ^16,000
have been expended in the purchase of books for
barrack libraries, and it is found that the numbers
who avail themselves of this new source of occupa-
tion are every year on the increase, and thus much
of the time formerly wasted in the canteen, to the
injury alike of health and morals, is now devoted to
reading. Great improvements have been made in
the construction and ventilation of barracks and the
means of ablution. The good-conduct pay is found
to work excellently. Prior to 1837, the maximum of
pay to a private could never exceed is. 2d. per day
in the infantry, is. 5d. in the cavalry, exclusive of
beer-money, even after twenty years' service and the
best character; but by the operation of the good-
conduct warrants, a soldier by the same service may
now obtain is. 4d. a day in infantry, and is. yd. in
cavalry. This has greatly added to the comforts of
old soldiers, some of whom, being" married, could only
support their families by restricting their personal
expenditure to an extent hardly compatible with
health. The evening meal of coffee or tea and
bread, which had been adopted by a few corps in
1837, is now general, and with, as might be ex-
pected, the best results. Suicide in the cavalry is
more than double that in the infantry, being annually
and Military Hygiene. 2 1 1
as 5 '8 in every 10,000 is to 2-2. This seems strange,
as the cavalry is a more popular service and better
paid, and the men of a higher class, and, one would
think, the duties more interesting. The report gives
the conjecture, that this may arise from so many of
them being men of broken fortunes, who enlist when
rendered destitute by extravagance. In the Foot
Guards suicide is very rare, but the mortality from
disease is very great. The deaths among them annu-
ally per 1000, are at the rate of 20-4; in the infantry
of the line, 17*9; cavalry, 13*6; and in the civil
population of large towns, n'9- In the household
cavalry the mortality is still less : owing to their
living better lives, and having larger pay and more
comfort, and less exposure and better accommoda-
tion, their average per 1000 is only ii-i; but this
result is also materially owing to a weeding process,
by which those who exhibit traces of constitutional
disease, or who are injuring their health and bringing
discredit on the corps by dissipation, are from time to
time discharged 216 of these mauvais sujets having
been weeded out during the ten years to which the
report refers.
' Such a weeding,' the reporters very truly observe,
' cannot fail to have a very beneficial effect both on
their moral and physical condition, and, if practicable,
would be of vast benefit also in other branches of the
sendee.' The difficulty originates in this, that in the
2 1 2 Dr. Marshall
line the rate of pay is less than the average wages of
the labouring classes, while in the Horse Guards it
is greater.
Under the head of fevers, we find this extraordinary
proof of the fatality of typhus in the troops of the
United Kingdom : in the cavalry, of those attacked,
i in 3 4- dies ; in the Foot Guards, i in 3! ; in the
infantry, i in 4 which is quite as high as the mortality
of the remittent or yellow fever in the West Indies.
Nothing can be more satisfactory than the report
on corporal punishments.
' This description of punishment has now become so
rare, that in the Foot Guards only one instance has oc-
curred in every 1000 men annually; in the Regiments
of the Line the proportion was five times as great.
The large number of recruits in the latter, particularly
after their return from foreign service, may be assigned
as one cause for this difference, as also their being
dispersed over the country, and in many instances in
quarters where no facilities exist for imprisonment.
The establishment of military prisons, to which offen-
ders may be sent from all parts of the country, has of
late provided a remedy for this, which will be likely
to render the contrast less striking in future years.
The admissions in the Dragoon Guards and Dragoons,
are 3 per 1000 annually, being a mean between the
Foot Guards and Infantry of the Line.
' We have no means of comparing the proportion
and Military Hygiene. 213
during the period included in this Report with that
of the previous seven years, except for the Cavalry,
in which will be found a decrease in the admissions
from 8 to 3 per thousand of the mean strength
annually; so rare, indeed, is this description of
punishment in the present day, that it may almost
be considered extinct, except as regards a few in-
corrigibles, who are unfortunately to be found in the
ranks of every regiment, and who are probably
equally numerous in civil life. The following Table
exhibits the gradual decrease in this description of
punishment among the several classes of troops in
this country for each year since 1837 :
i
1838
1839
TS 4
|84I
1842
1843
1844
,S 4?
iS 4 r,
1
H
Number Punished
Dragoon Guards)
and Dragoons, J
14
14
29
17
24
76
7
28
3
ii
iS
Foot Guards,
4
1
7
3
9
4
S
!
6
i
4
Infantry of the)
Line, . . . f
68
<J~
S6
4 6
56
59
7 6
toy
15'
27
768
Ratio per 1000 Punished
Dragoon Guards )
and Dragoons, (
Foot Guards,
= '5
q
"'7
5 '5
2'2
3"-
o.
4'5
6
3' 2
I'2
i '3
I'O
4'5
I'O
3'9
I '2
2'0
'2
3'4
I - o
Infantry of the )
Line, . . .)"
57
6-9
5'9
4 '9
4-6
4'3
3'S
4'3
6-9
i'4
4'S
'This reduction in corporal punishment extends
not merely to the troops at home, but to the whole
Army, as will be seen by the following Summary,
prepared from the returns fonvarded annually to the
Adjutant-General's Department from every Regiment
in the Service :
214
Dr. Marshall
Years.
Effective
Strength in each
Year.
Sentenced to i R ati P er I00
Corporal i Sentenced to
Punishment, j Corporal
i Punishment.
I8 3 8
96,907
9 88
I0'2
1839
1840
103,152
"2,653
935
93 *
g;i
1841
116,369
866
7 '4
1842
120,313
88 1
73
1843
123,452
700
5-6
1844
125,105
695
5 '5
1845
125,252
696
5 '5
1846
126,501
519
'Thus, instead of 10 men in every thousand
throughout the army having undergone corporal pun-
ishment, as was the case in 1838, the proportion in
1846 was only 4 per thousand. And not only has
there been this great reduction in the frequency, but
a corresponding alteration has taken place in the
severity also. Even so late as 1832, the number of
lashes which might be awarded by a General Court-
Martial was unlimited, and in 1825, it is on record
that one man was sentenced to 1900, of which he
received 1200. From 1832 to 1837, the maximum
number of lashes inflicted by the sentence of such
Courts became gradually reduced as follows :
1832
800
1833
500
1834
600
1835
500
1836
400
<837
>oo
'After 1836 no higher number could be awarded,
even by a General Court-Martial, than 200 lashes;
and Military Hygiene. 2 1 5
while a District Court-Martial was limited to 150,
and a Regimental one to 100. Since 1847 the
maximum of this description of punishment has been
limited to 50 lashes ; but the effect of that restriction
on the admissions into hospital will fall to be con-
sidered rather in a subsequent Report than on the
present occasion.
' When this amelioration commenced, grave appre-
hensions were entertained that it would give rise to
such relaxation of discipline as to cause a consider-
able increase in the description of offences for which
corporal punishment had usually been awarded, and
that transportation and capital punishment would
become more frequent ; but never were apprehensions
less warranted by the result, as will be seen by the
following abstract of the Table prepared from the
Adjutant-General's Return, No. xn. of Appendix :
' In 1838, out of 96,907 men, there were 9944
Courts-Martial; 441 general, and 4813 district; sen-
tenced to death, 14; transportation, 221; while in
1846, out of 126,591, there were 9212 Courts-Martial,
whereof there were 200 general and 3959 district;
sentenced to death, i ; transportation, 114.'
All this has occurred without any relaxation of dis--
cipline, the army never having been in a more efficient
state than at present
This paper was written in 1853. Since that time
much has been done in carrying out genuine army
216 Dr. Marshall
reform and hygiene. The Crimean War, with its
glory and its havoc, laid bare and made intolerable
many abuses and wants. Above all, it fixed the eyes
of their country on the miseries, the wrongs, and the
virtues of the common soldier. Whatever may be
said by history of our skill in the art of war, as dis-
played during that campaign, one thing was tried and
not found wanting in that terrible time the stout-
ness, the endurance, the 'bottom,' of our race,
what old Dr. Caius calls 'the olde manly hardnes,
stoute courage, and peinfulnes of Englande.' 1
We need not say how much more the nation loved
and cared for these noble fellows, when it saw that to
these, the cardinal virtues of a soldier, were added,
in so many instances, the purest devotion, patience,
intelligence, and a true moral greatness. It is the
best test, as it is the main glory and chief end of a
true civilisation, its caring for the great body of the
people. This it is which distinguishes our time from
all others, and the common soldier is now sharing
in this movement, which is twice blessed.
But all great and true generals, from King David,
Hannibal, Caesar, Cromwell, the great Frederic, etc.,
down to our own Sir Colin, have had their men's
comforts, interests, and lives at heart. The late Lord
Dunfermline magni parentis filius hand degener
1 From his ' Booke or Counseil against the disease called the
Sweate, made by Jhon Caius, Doctour in Phisicke, 1552.'
and Military Hygiene. 2 1 7
when speaking, with deep feeling and anger, to the
writer, about the sufferings of the men, and the
frightful blunders in the Crimea, told the following
story of his father, the great and good Sir Ralph
Abercromby. After his glorious victory, the dying
general was being carried on a litter to the boat of
the ' Foudroyant,' in which he died. He was in great
pain from his wound, and could get no place to rest.
Sir John Macdonald (afterwards adjutant-general)
put something under his head. Sir Ralph smiled
and said, ' That is a comfort ; that is the very
thing. What is it, John]' 'It is only a soldier's
blanket, Sir Ralph.' ' Only a soldier's blanket, Sir !'
said the old man, fixing his eye severely on him.
' Whose blanket is it?i ' One of the men's.' ' I wish
to know the name of the man whose this blanket is ;'
and everything paused till he was satisfied. ' It is
Duncan Roy's of the 42d, Sir Ralph.' ' Then see
that Duncan Roy gets his blanket this very night;'
and, wearied and content, the soldier's friend was
moved to his death-bed. ' Yes, Doctor,' said Lord
Dunfermline, in his strong, earnest way, ' the whole
question is in that blanket in Duncan getting his
blanket that very night.'
I cannot conclude these remarks more fitly, than
by quoting the following evidence, given before the
Commissioners on the sanitary state of the Army, by
Dr. Balfour, the worthy pupil of Dr. Marshall, and now
218 Dr. Marshall
medical officer of the Royal Asylum, Chelsea ; any ,
man may see from it what good sense, good feeling,
and sanitary science, may accomplish and prevent.
' On the retirement of Dr. Marshall, I was associ-
ated with Colonel Tulloch in the preparation of the
subsequent reports. In the course of that duty I
was much struck with the great amount of mortality
generally, and the large proportion of it which ap-
peared to be caused by preventible disease. I subse-
quently had the opportunity of verifying my opinion
on this point, by watching the results which followed
the adoption of various sanitary measures which we
recommended in our report, and which were carried
out to a greater or less extent. The results obtained
from these changes fully confirmed my previous
opinions, and led me to continue to make the sub-
ject my special study.
' Is the present diet of the soldier well calculated
to produce this effect ? I think not ; it would scarcely
be possible to devise anything worse calculated for the
purpose, than the diet of the soldier was when I first
joined the service. He had then two meals a day,
breakfast and dinner ; and the period between dinner
and breakfast the following day was nineteen hours.
His dinner consisted of perpetual boiled beef and
broth. Subsequently the introduction of the evening
meal, which had been pressed upon the attention of
the military authorities by the medical officers for
and Military Hygiene. 2 1 9
many years, effected a very great improvement In
other respects, his diet, as laid down by regulation,
continues the same as at that period. It is mono-
tonous to a degree. I have frequently seen, in a
barrack-room, soldiers, and especially the older ones,
leave the broth untouched.
Would it be possible to improve the soldiers' diet
by infusing into it greater variety 1 ? I know practi-
cally it is quite possible to do so. When I was
appointed to the Royal Military Asylum, I found the
system of feeding the boys pretty much the same as
that in the army, but not quite so monotonous, as
they had baked mutton on Sundays, suet pudding
three days in the week, and boiled beef on the other
three days : the meat was always boiled, but they did
not get broth, the liquor being thrown away. They
had abundance of food, their dinner consisting, on
meat days, of eleven ounces of meat, without bone,
which is more than is given to the soldier ; but they
did not eat it with relish, and quantities of food were
taken away to the hog-tub. The boys were pale and
feeble, and evidently in a very low state of health.
Mr. Benjamin Phillips, a very high authority on scro-
fulous disease, told me, that when he examined the
school, while engaged in preparing his work on scro-
fula for publication, he found the boys lower in point
of physique than almost any school he had examined,
even including those of the workhouses. After a care-
22O
Dr. Marshall
ful examination of the dietaries of almost all the prin-
cipal schools established for children in England and
Scotland, I prepared a scale of diet, which was sanc-
tioned by the Commissioners in December 1848,
and, with a few slight modifications, is now in use at
the asylum. The chief points I kept in view were,
to give a sufficient amount of food in varied and
palatable forms, and without long intervals of fasting.
The following are the old and the present scales of
dietaries :
' ROYAL MILITARY ASYLUM, CHELSEA.
DIET TABLE OF THE BOYS OF THE ASYLUM IN 1848.
Days of
Week.
Breakfast at
8 A.M.
Dinner at
Supper at
6P.M.
Sunday . "|
Tuesday . !
and
Thursday . J
Cocoa \ oz.
Sugar \ oz.
Milk gill
Bread 5 oz.
Beef . . . 1 1 oz.
Potatoes . 8 ,,
Bread . . <; ,,
Table-beer \ pt.
1 Bread
Is z -
f Milk
Jfpt
Monday . 1
Wednesday 1
and
Friday . . j
Ditto . -
Suet . . 2 oz.
Flour . . 8 ,,
Potatoes . 8
Bread . . 5 ,,
Table-beer \ pt.
1
\ Do.
I
J
Saturday .
j
Rt. Mutton, 1 1 oz.
Potatoes . 8 ,,
Bread . . 5
Beer . . . | pt.
},
Children under eight years of age have 8 oz. of meat instead of
ind 4 oz of bread instead of 5 oz
and Military Hygilne. 2 2 1
' DIET TABLE OF THE BOYS OF THE ASYLUM IN JULY 1857.
Days of
Week.
Breakfast at
8A.M.
Dinner at i P.M.
At half-past
3 P.M.
Supper at
8 I'.M.
r
Docoa i oz.
T ., fbeef . 6oz.
I
Sunday <{
Sugar J ,,
Milk |gill
Bread 5 oz.
stew < > P * atoes 8
[onions J ,,
Pud- j flour . 2 ,,
1
[ Bread
[2*02.
Bread
5oz.
Milk
ding I suet . i , ,
Bread . . . 2\
J
|pt
f
Boiled beef . 6 oz.
-^
Monday .
J
Broth . . . J pt.
Greens ... 6 oz.
"
I
Bread . . . 2j
r
Xoast mutton 6 oz.
1
Tuesday .
-i
Yorkshire (flour 4
pudding (suet j ,,
Bread . . . 2\
j-
1
Wednesday
r
T . , fbeef . 6 oz.
! potatoes 6 ,,
[ onions \ ,,
Bread . . . 2\ ,,
i-
Roast mutton 8 oz.
-j
Rice f rice . 2 ,,
Thursday .
Dud- < milk . pt.
} >
M
ding [_ sugar . \ oz.
1
.
Bread . . . 2\
J
Stewed beef . 6 oz.
1
Friday
Rice . . . 3
Treacle . . \ ,,
1
Bread . . . 2^ ,,
J
r
Boiled beef . 6 oz.
]
Saturday .
-
Potatoes . . 6
Broth . . . i pt.
-
,,
i
Bread ... 2^ oz.
J
Children under eight to have 4 oz. of meat instead of 6 oz.
222 Dr. Marshall
'Did the improvement in the dietary greatly in-
crease its cost? On the contrary, it saved nearly
^300 a year in the feeding of the establishment. By
introducing a greater variety, the boys took the whole
of their food with relish, and I was able to get them
into good condition by distributing the same amount
of meat over seven days that they previously had in
four.
' Were the results satisfactory 1 The results were
far beyond my expectation. Comparing the sickness
and mortality in the establishment for the ten years
previous to my appointment, and for the eight years
and a half that have passed since these alterations
were introduced, I find that the sickness has been re-
duced by about one-third, and the annual mortality has
fallen from 97 per 1000 of the strength on the aver-
age of ten years to 4-9 per 1000 on the average of
eight years and a half. This is not entirely attribu-
table to the change of diet, though that was a most
important means. At the same time there were
other improvements introduced, such as increased
space in the dormitories, improved ventilation, and
abundant means of cold bathing all of which are
most important elements in preserving health.
' I may mention another point with regard to health,
that on the average of the ten years the proportion of
boys reported unfit for military service by the surgeon
was 1 2 -4 per 1000 annually, principally on account of
and Military Hygiene. 223
scrofulous cicatrices on the neck that would have pre-
vented them wearing the military stock, and during
the eight years and a half it has been reduced to 4-55
per 1000. // is now very little more than one-third of
what it used to be.'
224 D?' Marshall and Military Hygiene .
NOTE P. 195.
EXTRACT from a work entitled 'Plans for the Defence of
Great Britain and Ireland, by Lieutenant-Colonel Dironi,
D. Q. M. G. in North Britain, 1797.'
' In the island of Jamaica, in the West Indies, where the
troops are generally unhealthy in the garrisons along the coast,
and were particularly so in the years 1750 and 1751* a calamity
doubly alarming, as the island was threatened with an attack
by the combined forces of France and Spain, the late eminent
Sir Alexander Campbell determined to try a new experiment
for the accommodation of the troops. He chose an elevated
situation on the mountains behind Kingston, called Stony Hill,
where there was good water, a free circulation of air, and a
temperature of climate in general ten degrees cooler than in the
low country along the coast. The wood, which was cleared
from the hill, and the soil, which was clay, were the chief
materials used in constructing the barracks. The igth and
38th Regiments were sent there on their arrival from America,
and ground was allotted them for gardens. They enjoyed a
degree of robust health very unusual in that climate. When
not upon duty or under arms, they were employed in their
gardens, or in amusements, the whole day long. Their wives
and children enjoyed equal happiness ; and, in the course of
two years, this military colony, for so it appeared, had not at
any time a greater, if even so great, a proportion of men sick
as they would have had in Europe ; and there is reason to
believe that during that time they had nearly as many children
born in the regiment as they had lost men by death.'
The author was at this time adjutant-general in Jamaica.
ART AND SCIENCE
Hepl yfrfffi* Txvr)Trfpi ri> bv eTTHrrri/jn). ARIST. AN. POST,
ii. xix. 4.
QtupijTiKrjs fi.lv (e7rtcrr?7/i?js) re'Xos dX^eta' irpaKTiKTJs o' lypov.
ARIST.
Per spccidatkam scimns nt sciaimts ; per praclicam scimns nt
operemnr. A VERROES.
ART AND SCIENCE.
"\ 1 TE give these thoughts with this caution to our
readers as well as to ourselves, that they do
not run them out of breath. There is always a temp-
tation to push such contrasts too far. In fact, they
are more provocatives to personal independent thought
than anything else ; if they are more, they are mis-
chievous. Moreover, it must always be remembered
that Art, even of the lowest and most inarticulate
kind, is always tending towards a scientific form to
the discovery and assertion of itself; and Science, if
it deserves the name, is never absolutely barren, but
goes down into some form of human action becomes
an art. The two run into each other. Art is often
the strong blind man, on whose shoulders the lame and
seeing man is crossing the river, as in Bewick's tail-
piece. No artsman is literally without conscious
and systematized, selected knowledge, which is
science ; and no scientific man can remain absolutely
inoperative ; but of two men one may be predomi-
228
Art and Science.
nantly the one, and another the other. The word
Science, in what follows, is used mainly in the sense
of information, as equivalent to a body of ascertained
truths as having to do with doctrines. The word
Art is used in the sense of practical knowledge and
applied power. The reader will find some excellent
remarks on this subject, in Thomson's Laws of
Thought, Introduction, and in Mill's Logic, book vi.
chap. xi.
IN MEDICINE,
ART
Looks to symptoms and occa-
sions.
Is therapeutic and prognostic.
Has a method.
Is ante mortem.
Looks to function more than
structure.
Runs for the stomach-pump.
Submits to be ignorant of
much.
Acts.
SCIENCE
Looks to essence and cause.
Is diagnostic.
Has a system.
Is post mortem.
Looks vice versa.
Studies the phenomena of
poisoning.
Submits to be ignorant of
nothing.
Speaks.
Science and Art are the offspring of light and
truth, of intelligence and will ; they are the parents
of philosophy that its father, this its mother. Art
comes up out of darkness, like a flower, is there
before you are aware, its roots unseen, not to be
meddled with safely ; it has grown from a seed, itself
once alive, perishing in giving birth to its child. It
A rt and Science. 229
draws its nourishment from all its neighbourhood,
taking this, and rejecting that, by virtue 'of its elective
instinct knowing what is good for it ; it lives upon
the debris of former life. It is often a thing with-
out a name, a substance without an articulate form,
a power felt rather than seen. It has always life,
energy automatic energy. It goes upon its own
feet, and can go anywhere across a country, and
hunts more by scent than sight. Science goes upon
wheels, and must have a road or a rail. Art's leaves
and stem may be harsh and uncomely ; its flower
when its does flower is beautiful, few things in this
world more so. Science comes from the market ; it
is sold, can be measured and weighed, can be handled
and gauged. It is full of light ; but is lucid rather
than luminous ; it is, at its best, food, not blood,
much less muscle the fuel, not the fire. It is taken
out of a nursery, and is planted as men plant larches.
It is not propagated by seed ; rather by bud, often
by cutting. Many stick in leafy branches of such
trees, and wonder like children, why they don't
grow; they look well at first, 'but having no root
they wither away.' You may cover a hillside with
such plantations. You must court the sowing of the
winds, the dropping of the acorns, the dung of birds,
the rain, the infinite chances and helps of time, before
you can get a glen feathered with oak-coppice or
birks. You will soon sell your larches ; they are
230 A rt and Science.
always in demand ; they make good sleepers. You
will not get a walking-stick out of them, a crutch for
your old age, or a rib for a 74. You must take them
from a wind-sown, wind-welded and heartened tree.
Science is like cast-iron ; soon made, brittle, and
without elasticity, formal, useless when broken. Art
is like malleable iron ; tough, can cut, can be used
up ; is harder and has a spring. Your well-informed,
merely scientific men, are all alike. Set one agoing
at any point, he brings up as he revolves the same
figures, the same thoughts, or rather ghosts of
thoughts, as any ten thousand others. Look at
him on one side, and, like a larch, you see his whole;
every side is alike. Look at the poorest hazel, hold-
ing itself by its grappling talons on some grey rock,
and you never saw one like it ; you will never see
one like it again ; it has more sides than one ; it has
had a discipline, and has a will of its own ; it is self-
taught, self-sufficient.
Wisdom is the vital union of Art and Science ; an
individual result of the two : it is more excellent than
either ; it is the body animated by the soul ; the will,
knowing what to do, and how to do it ; the members
capable of fulfilling its bidding ; the heart nourishing
and warming the whole ; the brain stimulating and
quickening the entire organism.
Art arid Science.
231
SCIENCE AND ART, A CONTRASTED
PARALLEL.
ART
SCIENCE
Knows little of its birth.
Knows its birth; registers it,
and its after history.
Knows more of its progeny.
Has often no progeny at all.
Invents.
Discovers.
Uses the imperative.
Uses the indicative.
Is founded on experience.
Is antecedent to experience.
Teaches us to do.
Teaches us to know.
Is motive and dynamical.
Is statical and has no feet.
Is eductive and conductive.
Is inductive and deductive.
Involves knowledge.
Evolves it
Buys it, making of it what it
Makes it up, and sells it.
likes, and needs, and no
more.
Mas rules.
Has laws.
Is synthetical more than ana-
Is the reverse.
lytical.
Is regulative and administra-
Is legislative and judicial ; says
tive, and shows the h<rw,
what ; says little as to how,
cares less about the why.
but much as to why.
Eats ; makes muscles, and
Makes food, cooks it, serves it
brains, and bones, and teeth,
up.
and fingers of it, without
very well knowing how.
Is strong in organic life, and
Is strong in animal life, and
dwells in the non-ego.
dwells in the ego.
Is unconscious.
Is conscious.
Is a hand that handles tools ;
Is a sword, or a knife, or a
is executive.
pen, or, in a word, an in-
strument
Does something, and could do
Says something, and can say
it again.
it again.
Is gold.
Is coin.
Apprehends.
Comprehends.
Art and Science.
ART
Is endogenous, and grows from
within.
Is often liferented ; dies with its
Forges the mind.
Makes knowledge a means.
Is a master, and keeps ap-
prentices.
Holds by the will.
Is effect.
Is great in rb 6V t. 1
Is science embodied material-
ized.
Is the outflowing of mind into
nature.
Is man acting on nature.
Gives form, excellency, and
beauty, to the rude material
on which it operates.
Uses one eye.
SCIENCE
Is exogenous, and grows from
without.
Is transmissible.
Furnishes it.
Makes it an end.
Is a teacher, and has scholars.
Holds by the understanding.
Is cause.
Is great in -rb Sidri.
Is art spiritualized.
Is the inflowing of nature into
mind.
Is nature speaking to man.
Gives form, excellency, and
beauty, to the otherwise
uninformed intelligence in
which it resides.
Uses the other.
WISDOM
Uses both, and is stereoscopic, discerning solidity as well as
surface, and seeing on both sides ; its vision being the unum quid
of two images.
My friend, Dr. Adams of Banchory, tells me that
Bacon somewhere calls Science and Art a pair
of Cyclops, and that Kant calls them twin Poly-
phemes.
1 'Apx^l "yotp TO STI' Kal fl TOVTO <j>alvoiro tipKOvrus, ovdtv
irpoffderiffei TOV 5i6rt Principium est enim scire rem ita esse ;
quod si satis sit perspicuum, cur ita sit non magnopere desidera-
bitur. ARIST. ETH. A. iv.
A rt and Science. 233
It may be thought that I have shown myself, in
this parallel and contrast, too much of a partisan for
Art as against Science, and the same may be not
unfairly said of much of the rest of this volume : it
was in a measure on purpose ; the general tendency
being counteractive of the purely scientific and posi-
tive, or merely informative current of our day. We
need to remind ourselves constantly, that this kind
of knowledge puffeth up, and that it is something
quite else which buildeth up. 1 It has been finely
said that Nature is the Art of God, and we may as
truly say that all art in the widest sense, as practical
and productive is his science. He knows all that
goes to the making of everything, for He is himself,
in the strictest sense, the only maker. He knows
what made Shakspere and Newton, Julius Cassar and
Plato, what we know them to have been, and they
are his by the same right as the sea is, and the
strength of the hills, for He made them and his
hands formed them, as well as the dry land. This
making the circle for ever meet, this bringing Omega
eternally round to Alpha, is, I think, more and more
revealing itself as a great central, personal, regulative
truth, and is being carried down more than ever into
the recesses of physical research, where Nature is
fast telling her long-kept secrets, all her tribes speak-
ing each in their own tongue the wonderful works of
1 Advancement of Learning, pp. 8-n. Pickering's Ed.
234 Art and Science.
God the sea is saying, It is not in me, everything
is giving up any title to anything like substance,
beyond being the result' of the one Supreme Will.
The more chemistry, and electrology, and life, are
searched into by the keenest and most remorseless
experiment, the more do we find ourselves admitting
that motive power and force, as manifested to us, is
derived, is in its essence immaterial, is direct from
Him in whom we live and move, and to whom, in a
sense quite peculiar, belongeth power.
Gravitation, we all allow, is not proveable to be
inherent in matter; it is ab extra; and as it were,
the attraction of his offspring to the infinite Parent,
their being drawn to Him the spirit, the vis motiva,
returning to Him who gave it.
The Dynamical Theory, as it is called, tends this
way. Search into matter, and try to take it at the
quick ere it is aware, the nearer you are to it the less
material it seems ; it as it were recedes and shrinks
like moonlight vanishing as soon as scanned, and
seems, as far as we can yet say, and as old Boscovich
said, little else than a congeries of forces. Matter
under the lens, is first seen as made up of atoms
swimming in nothing; then further on, these atoms
become themselves translucent, and, as if scared,
break up and disappear. So that, for anything we
are getting to know, this may be the only essence of
matter, that it is capable of being acted upon, so as
A rt and Science. 235
to re-act ; and that here, as well as in all that is more
usually called spiritual and dynamical, God is all in
all, the beginning, as he certainly is the ending ; and
that matter is what it is, simply by his willing it, and
that his willing it to be, constitutes its essence. 1
1 The doctrine of the unity of nature, however difficult of
physical proof by experiment, and we might a priori expect
it to be very difficult, for in such a case we must go up against
the stream, instead of, as in analytics, going with it, it is a
secret of nature, and she refuses stoutly to give it up, you can
readily split the sunbeam into its spectrum, its chemical and
electric rays ; you cannot so readily gather them up into one,
but metaphysically, it has always seemed to me more than
probable. If God is one, as we believe, and if he made all
worlds out of nothing by his word, then surely, the nearest
thing to the essence of all nature, when she came from God,
the materies materia:, must partake of his unity, or in words used
elsewhere (Preface to Dr. Samuel Brown's Lectures and Essays],
and somewhat altered : ' If we believe that matter and all
created existence is the immediate result of the will of the Su-
preme, who of old inhabited his own eternity, and dwelt alone ;
that he said "fiat!" etfit, that Nature is for ever uttering to
the great I AM, this one speech " THOU ART!" is not the
conclusion irresistible, that matter thus willed, resulting, as it
does, in an external world, and, indeed, in all things visible and
invisible, must partake of the absolute unity of its Author, and
must, in any essence which it may be said to possess, be itself
necessarily ONE, being by the same infinite Will made what we
find it to be, multiform and yet one :
"One God, one law, one element."'
In reference to this doctrine, Faraday, and indeed all advanced
chemists and physicists, indicate that they are, as children used
to say in their play, 'getting warm,' and nearing this great
consummation, which will be the true philosophy of material
science, its education from the multiple and complex, into the
simple and one-fold.
236 A rt and Science.
The more the microscope searches out the mole-
cular structure of matter, the thinner does its object
become, till we feel as if the veil were not so much
being withdrawn, as being worn away by the keen
scrutiny, or rent in twain, until at last we come to
the true Shechinah, and may discern through it, if
our shoes are off, the words ' I AM,' burning, but not
consumed.
There is a Science of Art, and there is an Art of
Science the Art of Discovery, as by a wonderful
instinct, enlarging human knowledge. Some of the
highest exercises of the human spirit have been here.
All primary discoverers are artists in the sciences
they work in. Newton's guess that the diamond
was inflammable, and many instances which must
occur to the reader, are of the true artsman kind ; he
did it by a sort of venatic sense knowing somewhat,
and venturing more coming events forecasting their
shadows, but shadows which the wise alone can
interpret. A man who has been up all night, while
the world was asleep, and has watched the day-spring,
the light shooting and circulating in the upper heavens,
knows that the sun is coming, that ' the bright pro-
cession' is 'on its way.' It shines afar to him, be-
cause he has watched it from his Fesole, and presaged
the dawn. The world in general has not been an
early riser ; it is more given to sit late ; it frequents
the valleys more than the mountain-tops. Thus it is,
A rt and Science. 237
that many discoveries, which to us below seem
mysterious, as if they had a touch of witchcraft about
them, are the plain, certain discoveries of sagacious
reason higher up. The scientific prophet has done
all this, as Ruskin says, by 'the instinctive grasp
which the healthy imagination 1 has of possible truth ;'
but he got the grasp and the instinct, and his means,
from long rigorous practice with actual truth.
We ought to reverence these men, as we stand
afar off on the plain, and see them going up 'the
1 The part which imagination plays in all primary discoveries
might be here enlarged on, were there room. Here, as every-
where else, the difficulty is to keep the mean, and avoid too
much wing, or too little. A geologist or chemist without
imagination, is a bird without wings ; if he wants the body of
common sense, and the brain of reason, he is like a butterfly ; he
may be a 'child of the sun,' and his emblazoned wings be 'rich
as an evening sky,' but he is the sport of every wind of doctrine,
he nutters to and fro purposeless, is brilliant and evanescent as
the flowers he lives on. Rather should he be like the seraphim,
' who had six wings, with twain he covered his feet, with twain
he covered his face, and with twain he did fly ; ' reverence,
modesty, and caution a habit of walking humbly are as much
part of a great philosopher as insight and daring. But I believe
there has been no true discoverer, from Galileo and Kepler, to
Davy, Owen, and our own Goodsir the Nimrods of ' possible
truth' without wings; they have ever had as their stoutest,
stanchest hound, a powerful and healthy imagination to find
and 'point' the game. None of these men remained within
the positive known, they must hypothesize, as Warburton calls
it ; they must, by a necessity of their nature, reach from the
known out into the unknown. The great thing is to start from
.1 truth ; to have a punctum stans from which to move.
238 Art and Science.
mount,' and drawing nearer into the darkness where
God dwells : they will return with a message for us.
This foretelling, or power of scientific anticipation,
is, as we have said, the highest act of scientific man,
and is an interpenetration of 'Emo-n^r/ and Te^vij.
Such a view as I have given, is in harmony with
revelation, and unites with it in proclaiming the
moral personality, not less than the omnipotence of
God, who thus, in a sense quite literal, 'guides all
the creatures with his eye, and refreshes them with
his influence, making them feel the force of his
Almightiness.' (Jeremy Taylor.) 1 Every one must
remember the sublimely simple shutting up of the
Principia, as by 'a sevenfold chorus of hallelujahs
and harping symphonies.' The humility of its author
has a grandeur in it greater than any pride ; it is as
if that lonely, intrepid thinker, who had climbed the
heavens by that ladder he speaks of in such modest
and homely phrase (patient observation, in which, if
in anything, he thought he excelled other men, the
never missing a step), after soaring ' above the wheel-
ing poles,' had come suddenly to 'heaven's door,'
and at it looked in, and had prostrated himself before
'the thunderous throne.' 8
There is here the same strength, simplicity, and
r6 irav, fiftfav TOV TrdvTos u
T# overly, oOrws Kal d/g. RESP. AD ORTHOD.
2 Milton, Vacation Exercise, anno tztalis 19.
A rt and Science. 239
stern beauty and surprise, as of lightning and thunder,
the same peremptory assertion and reiteration of the
subject, like 'harpers harping upon their harps,' and
the same main burden and refrain, as in the amazing
chorus which closes Handel's ' Messiah.' We give
it for its own grandeur, and for its inculcation of the
personality of God, so much needed now, and without
which human responsibility, and moral obligation,
and all we call duty, must be little else than a dream.
' Hie omnia regit non ut anima mundi, sed ut
universorum dominus. Et propter dominium suum,
dominus deus Tl.avroKpa.TMp dici solet. Nam deus
est vox relativa et ad servos refertur : et deitas est
dominatio dei, non in corpus proprium, uti sentiunt
quibus deus est anima mundi, sed ifi servos. Deus
summus est ens aeternum, infinitum, absolute per-
fectum : sed ens utcunque perfectum sine dominio
non est dominus deus. Dicimus enim deus meus,
deus vester, deus Israelis, deus deorum, et dominus
dominorum : sed non dicimus aeternus meus, seternus
vester, aeternus Israelis, aeternus deorum ; non dicimus
infinitus meus, vel perfectus meus. Hae appellationes
relationem non habent ad servos. Vox deus passim
significat dominum : sed omnis dominus non est
deus. Dominatio entis spiritualis deum constituit,
vera verum, summa summum, ficta fictum. Et ex
dominatione vera sequitur deum verum esse vivum,
240 Art and Science.
intelligentem et potentem ; ex reliquis perfectionibus
summum esse, vel summe perfectum. ^Eternus est
et infinitus, omnipotens et omnisciens, id est, durat
ab aeterno in asternum, et adest ab infinite in infini-
tum : omnia regit ; et omnia cognoscit quae fiunt aut
fieri possunt. Non est ceternitas et infinitas, scd
tzternus ct infinitus ; non est duratio et spatium, scd
durat et adest. Durat semper, et adest ubique, et
existendo semper et ubique, durationem et spatium
constituit. . . .
' Hunc (Deum) cognoscimus solummodo per pro-
prietates ejus et attributa, et per sapientissimas et
optimas rerum structuras et causas finales, et admir-
amur ob perfectiones ; veneramur autem et colimus
ob dominium. Colimus enim ut servi, et deus sine
dominio, providentia, et causis finalibus nihil aliud
est quam fatum et natura. A caeca necessitate meta-
physica, quae utique eadem est semper et ubique,
nulla oritur rerum variatio. Tota rerum condita-
rum pro locis ac temporibus diversitas, ab ideis et
voluntate entis necessario existentis solummodo oriri
potuit.' Prindpia, Ed. 3 tia> pp. 528-29 ; London,
1726.
' Nous accordons a la raison le pouvoir de nous
demontrer 1'existence du Createur, de nous instruire
de ses attributs infinis et de ses rapports avec 1'en-
semble des etres ; mais par le sentiment nous entrons
en quelque sorte en commerce plus intime avec lui,
A rt and Science. 2 4 1
et son action sur nous est plus immediate et plus
pre'sente. Nous professons un dgal eloignement et
pour le mysticisme qui, sacrifiant la raison au senti-
ment et 1'homme a Dieu, se perd dans les splendeurs
de 1'infini et pour le panthe'isme, qui refuse a Dieu
les perfections mgmes de 1'homme, en admettant sous
ce nom on ne sait quel etre abstrait, prive* de con-
science et de libertd. Grace a cette conscience de
nous-memes et de notre libre arbitre, sur laquelle se
fondent a la fois et notre me'thode et notre philoso-
phic tout entiere, ce dieu abstrait et vague dont nous
venons de parler, le dieu du panthe'isme devient a
jamais impossible, et nous voyons a sa place la Provi-
dence, le Dieu libre et saint que le genre humain
adore, le tegislateur du monde moral, la source en
m6me temps que 1'objet de cet amour insatiable du
beau et du bien qui se mele au fond de nos ames
a des passions d'un autre ordre.' Dictionnaire des
Sciences Philosophiques, par une Socie'te' des Profes-
seurs et Savans. Preface, pp. viii. ix.
OUR GIDEON GRAYS.
' Agricolam laudal
Sub galli canlum consultor ubi ostia puisai. '
'/ would rather go back to Africa than practise again at
Peebles' MUNGO PARK.
OUR GIDEON GRAYS. 1
TT might perhaps have been better, if our hard-
headed, hard-hitting, clever, and not over-man-
suete friend ' Fuge Medicos' 1 had never allowed those
' wild and stormy writings' of his to come into print,
and it might perhaps also have been as well, had we
told him so at once ; but as we are inclined to be
optimists when a thing is past, we think more good
than evil has come out of his assault and its repulse.
' F. M.' (we cannot be always giving at full length
his uncouth Hoffmannism) has, in fact, in his second
letter, which is much the better, answered his first,
and turned his back considerably upon himself, by
abating some of his most offensive charges ; and our
1 The following short paper from the Scotsman was occa-
sioned by a correspondence in that newspaper, in which doctors
in general, and country doctors in particular, were attacked and
defended. It is reprinted here as a record of the amazing facts
brought out by Dr. Alison's Association. In the attack by
' Fuge Medicos,' consisting of two long letters, there was much
ability with not much fairness, and not a little misapplied energy
of language, and sharpness of invective.
246 Our Gideon Grays.
country doctors in their replies have shown that
they have sense as well as spirit, and can write like
gentlemen, while they of the town have cordially and
to good purpose spoken up for their hard-working
country brethren.
We are not now going to adjudicate upon the
strictly professional points raised by ' F. M.,' whether,
for instance, bleeding is ever anything but mischiev-
ous ; whether the constitution, or type of disease,
changes or not ; whether Dr. Samuel Dickson of
' the Fallacies' is an impudent quack or the Newton
of medicine ; whether Dr. Wilkinson is an amiable
and bewildered Swedenborgian, with much imagina-
tion, little logic, and less knowledge, and a wonderful
power of beautiful writing, or the herald of a new
gospel of health. We may have our own opinions
on these subjects, but their discussion lies out of our
beat ; they are strictly professional in their essence,
and ought to remain so in their treatment. We are
by no means inclined to deny that there are ignorant
and dangerous practitioners in the country, as well as
in the city. What we have to say against ' F. M.'
and in favour of the class he has attacked is, that
no man should bring such charges against any large
body of men, without offering such an amount and
kind of proof of their truth, as, it is not too much to
say, it is impossible for any mere amateur to pro-
duce, even though that amateur were as full of will
Our Gideon Grays. 247
and energy as ' F. M. ;' and unless he can do so, he
stands convicted of something very like what he him-
self calls ' reckless, maleficent stupidity.' It is true,
' F. M.' speaks of ' ignorant country doctors ;' but
his general charges against the profession have little
meaning, and his Latin motto still less, if ignorance
be not predicated of country doctors in general.
One, or even half a dozen worthless, mischievous
country doctors, is too small an induction of par-
ticulars, to warrant ' F. M.' in inferring the same
qualities of some 500 or more unknown men. But
we are not content with proving the negative : we
speak not without long, intimate, and extensive know-
ledge of the men who have the charge of the lives of
our country population, when we assert, that not only
are they as a class fully equal to other rural profes-
sional men in intelligence, humanity, and skill, and
in all that constitutes what we call worth, but that,
take them all in all, they are the best educated, the
most useful, the most enlightened, as they certainly
are the worst paid and hardest-worked country
doctors in Christendom. Gideon Gray, in Scott's
story of the Surgeon's Daughter, is a faithful type of
this sturdy, warm-hearted, useful class of men, ' under
whose rough coat and blunt exterior,' as he truly says,
'you find professional skill and enthusiasm, intelli-
gence, humanity, courage, and science.'
Moreover, they have many primary mental quali-
248 Our Gideon Grays.
ties in which their more favoured brethren of the city
are necessarily behind them self-reliance, presence
of mind, simplicity and readiness of resource, and a
certain homely sagacity. These virtues of the mind
are, from the nature of things, more likely to be fully
brought out, where a man must be self-contained
and everything to himself; he cannot be calling in
another to consult with him in every anxious case, or
indulge himself in the luxury of that safety which has
waggishly been expounded as attaching more to the
multitude of counsellors than to the subject of their
counsel. Were this a fitting place, we could relate
many instances of this sagacity, decision, and tact,
as shown by men never known beyond their own
countryside, which, if displayed in more public life,
would have made their possessors take their place
among our public great men.
Such men as old Reid of Peebles, Meldrum of
Kincardine, Darling of Dunse, Johnston of Stirling,
Clarkson (the original of Gideon Gray) and Anderson
of Selkirk, Robert Stevenson of Gilmerton, Kirkwood
of Auchterarder, and many as good these were not
likely to be the representatives of a class who are
guilty of ' assaults upon life,' ' who are let loose upon
some unhappy rural district, to send vigorous men
and women to their graves,' who 'in youth have
been reckless and cruel, given to hanging sparrows
and cats, and fit for no humane profession/ etc. etc.
Our Gideon Grays. 249
Now, is there either good sense, good feeling, or
good breeding, in using these unmeasured terms
against an entire class of men? Assuming as from
the subtlety and hairsplitting character of his argu-
ments, and the sharpness and safety of his epithets,
we are entitled to do that 'F. M.' belongs to an-
other of the learned professions, we ask, ' What
would he say if a ' Fuge Juiidicos' were to rise up,
who considered that the true reading in Scripture
should be, ' The devil was a lawyer from the begin-
ning,' asserting that all country lawyers in Scotland
were curses to the community, that it would be well
if the Lord Advocate ' would try half a dozen every
year,' for devouring widows' houses, and other local
villanies ; and, moreover, what would he think of
the brains and the modesty of an M.D. making an
assault upon the legal profession on purely profes-
sional questions, and settling, ab extra, and off-hand
and for ever, matters which the wisest heads ab intra
have left still in doubt ? The cases are strictly
parallel; and it is one of the worst signs of our
times, this public intermeddling of everybody, from
the Times down to ' F. M.,' with every science, pro-
fession, and trade. Sydney Smith might now say of
the public, what he said of the Master of Trinity,
' Science is his forte, omniscience is \i\sfoible? Every
profession, and every man in it, knows something
more and better than any non-professional man can,
250 Our Gideon Grays.
and it is the part of a wise man to stick to his trade.
He is more likely to excel in it, and to honour and
wonder at the skill of others. For it is a beautiful
law of our nature that we must wonder at everything
which we see well done, and yet do not know how it
is done, or at any rate know we could not do it.
Look at any art, at boot-closing, at a saddler at his
work, at basket-making, at our women with their
nimble and exact fingers somebody is constantly
doing something which everybody cannot do, and
therefore everybody admires. We are afraid ' F. M.'
does not know many things he could not do.
We repeat that our Gideon Grays are, as a class,
worthy and intelligent, skilful and safe, doing much
more good than evil. 1 They deserve well of, and
live in the hearts of the people, and work day and
night for less than anybody but themselves and their
wives are likely ever to know, for they are most of
them unknown to the Income-tax collectors. They
are like the rest of us, we hope, soberer, better read,
more enlightened, than they were fifty years ago ;
they study and trust Nature more, and conquer her
by submission ; they bleed and blister less, and are
more up to the doctrine that prevention is the best
of all cures. They have participated in the general
acknowledgment among the community, thanks to
the two Combes and others, and to the spirit of the
1 Note, p. 257.
Our Gideon Grays. 2 5 1
age, of those divine laws of health which He who
made us implanted in us, and the study and obedi-
ence of which is a fulfilling of His word. We can
only hope that our clever and pancratic friend,
' F. M.,' if on his autumn holidays in Teviotdale or
Lochaber, he has his shoulder or his lower jaw dis-
located, or has a fit of colic or a hernia, or any of
those ills which even his robust self is heir to, may
have sense left him to send for Gideon Gray, and
to trust him, and, making a slight alteration on his
HorTmannism, may be led to cry lustily out, in worse
Latin and with better sense ' Fuge pro Medico?
Run for the Doctor !
As already said, all of us who have been much in
the country know the hard life of its doctors how
much they do, and for how little they do it ; but we
daresay our readers are not prepared for the follow-
ing account of their unremunerated labour among
paupers :
In 1846, a voluntary association of medical men
was formed in Edinburgh, with the public-hearted
Dr. Alison as chairman. Its object was to express
their sympathy with their brethren in the remote
country districts of Scotland, in regard to their un-
remunerated attendance on paupers, and to collect
accurate information on this subject. The results
of their benevolent exertions may be found in the
Appendix to the First Report of the Board of Super-
252 Oiir Gideon Grays.
vision. It is probably very little known beyond
those officially concerned ; we therefore give some
of its astounding and lamentable revelations. The
queries referred to the state and claims of the
medical practitioners in the rural districts of Scot-
land, in relation to their attendance upon the per-
manent or occasional parochial poor. Out of 325
returns, 94 had received some remuneration for
attendance and outlay. In one of these instances,
the remuneration consisted of three shillings for twelve
years' attendance on seventy constant, and thirteen occa-
sional fatipers ; a fine question in decimals what
would each visit come to? But worse remains. One
man attended 400 paupers for eight years, and never
received one farthing for his skill, his time, or his
drugs. Another has the same story to tell of 350,
some of them thirty miles off ; he moderately cal-
culates his direct loss, from these calls on his time
and his purse, at ^"70 a year. Out of 253 who
report, 208 state that, besides attending for nothing,
they had to give on occasions food, wine, and clothes,
and had to pay tolls, etc. 136 of the returns contain
a more or less definite estimate, in money value, of
their unrequited labours ; the sum-total given in by
them amounts to thirty-four thousand four hundred
and ffty-seven pounds in ten years I being at the rate
of ^238 for each / They seem to have calculated
the amount of medical attendance, outlay, and drugs,
Our Gideon Grays. 253
for each pauper annually, at the very moderate
average of four shillings.
Is there any other country on the face of the earth
where such a state of matters can be found ? Such
active charity, such an amount of public good, is not
likely to have been achieved by men whose lives
were little else than the development of a juvenile
mania for hanging sparrows and cats. We believe
we are below the mark when we say, that over head,
the country doctors of Scotland do one-third of their
work for nothing, and this in cases where the receiver
of their attendance would scorn to leave his shoes or
his church seats unpaid.
We are glad to see that ' F. M.' reads Sir William
Hamilton. We doubt not he does more than read
him, and we trust that he will imitate him in some
things besides his energy, his learning, and his hardi-
hood of thought. As to his and other wise men's
pleasantries about doctors and their drugs, we all
know what they mean, and what they are worth ;
they are the bitter-sweet joking human nature must
have at those with whom it has close dealings its
priests, its lawyers, its doctors, its wives and hus-
bands ; the very existence of such expressions proves
the opposite ; it is one of the luxuries of disrespect.
But in 'F. M.Y hands these ancient and harmless
jokes are used as deadly solemnities "upon which
arguments are founded.
254 O ur Gideon Grays.
To part pleasantly with him, nevertheless, we give
him three good old jokes : The Visigoths abandoned
an unsuccessful surgeon to the family of his deceased
patient, ' ut quod de eo facere voluerint, habeant potes-
tatem? Montaigne, who is great upon doctors, used
to beseech his friends, that if he felt ill they would let
him get a little stronger before sending for the doctor !
Louis the Fourteenth, who, of course, was a slave to
his physicians, asked his friend Moliere what he did
with his doctor. ' Oh, Sire,' said he, ' when I am ill
I send for him. He comes, we have a chat, and
enjoy ourselves. He prescribes. I don't take it
and I am cured !'
We end with four quotations, which our strong-
headed friend 'F. M.,' we are sure, will cordially
relish :
' In Juvene Theologo conscientias detrimentum,
In Juvene Legista bursse decrementum,
In Juvene Medico coemeterii incrementum.'
' To imagine Nature incapable to cure diseases, is
blasphemy ; because that would be imputing imper-
fection to the Deity, who has made a great provision
for the preservation of animal life.' SYDENHAM.
' When I consider the degree of patience and at-
tention that is required to follow nature in her slow
manner of proceeding, I am no longer surprised that
men of lively parts should be always repeating, " con-
traria adhibenda? But Hippocrates says : " Con-
Our Gideon Grays. 255
traria paulatim adhibere oportet, et interquiescere.
Periculosius censeo inddere in medicum, qui nesciat
quiescere, quam qui nesciat contraria adhibere, nam qui
nescit quiesccre, nescit occasiones contraria adhibendi ;
quare nescit contraria adhibere, Qui nescit contraria
adhibere, tamen, si prudens est, scit quiescere, atque si
prodesse non potest, tamen non obest. Prcestantissimus
vero est medicus eruditus pariter ac prudens, qui novit
festinare lente; pro ipsius morbi urgentia, auxiliis
instare, atque in occasione uti maxime opporttmis, alioque
qttiescere." ' GRANT ON FEVERS, page 311.
' Philosophi qui vitse rationem doceant, vitiis
eripiant oerumnas, metus, angustias, anxietates,
tristitias impotentias expugnent tranquillitati, hilari-
tati avTapKfta vindicent' STAHL.
I don't know who ' Quis' was, but the Hudibrastics
are vigorous :
THE COUNTRY SURGEON.
Luckless is he, whom hard fates urge on
To practise as a country surgeon
To ride regardless of all weather,
Through frost, and snow, and hail together
To smile and bow when sick and tired
Consider' d as a servant hired.
At every quarter of the compass,
A surly patient makes a rumpus,
Because he is not seen the first
(For each man thinks his case the worst).
And oft at two points diametric
Called to a business obstetric.
256 Our Gideon Grays.
There lies a man with broken limb,
A lady here with nervous whim,
Who, at the acme of her fever,
Calls him a savage if he leave her.
For days and nights in some lone cottage
Condemned to live on crusts and pottage,
To kick his heels and spin his brains,
Waiting, forsooth, for labour's pains ;
And that job over, happy he,
If he squeeze out a guinea fee.
Now comes the night, with toil opprest,
He seeks his bed in hope of rest ;
Vain hope, his slumbers are no more,
Loud sounds the knocker at the door,
A farmer's wife at ten miles' distance,
Shouting, calls out for his assistance ;
Fretting and fuming in the dark,
He in the tinder strikes a spark,
And, as he yawning heaves his breeches,
Envies his neighbour blest with riches.
Quis.
Rdin. Ann. Register, 181;
Our Gideon Grays. 257
NOTE. P. 250.
I HAVE to thank his son, Dr. Henry Anderson, who now
reigns in his stead, for the following notes of an ordinary day's
work of his father, whose sister was Mungo Park's wife. Sel-
kirk is the 'Middlemas' of Sir Walter.
' Dr. Anderson practised in Selkirk for forty-five years, and
never refused to go to any case, however poor, or however deep
in his debt, and however far off. One wife in Selkirk said to
her neighbours, as he passed up the street, "There goes my
honest doctor, that brought a' my ten bairns into the world,
and ne'er got a rap for ane o' them."
' His methodical habits, and perfect arrangement of his time,
enabled him to overtake his very wide practice, and to forget
no one. He rose generally at six every morning, often sooner,
and saw his severe cases in the town early, thus enabling him
to start for his long journeys ; and he generally took a stage to
breakfast of fifteen or twenty miles.
' One morning he left home at six o'clock, and after being
three miles up the Yarrow, met a poor barefoot woman, who
had walked from St. Mary's Loch to have two teeth extracted.
Out of his pocket with his "key" (she, of course, shouting
" Murder ! murder ! mercy !") ; down sat the good woman ; the
teeth were out at once, and the doctor rode on his journey, to
breakfast at Eldinhope, fourteen miles up, calling on all his
patients in Yarrow as he rode along. After breakfast, by Dry-
hope, and along St. Mary's Loch, to the famed Tibby's, whose
son was badly, up to the head of the Loch of the Lows, and
over the high hills into Ettrick, and riding up the Tima to
Dalgliesh, and back down the Ettrick, landed at "Gideon's o'
258 Our Gideon Grays.
the Singlie " to dinner ; and just when making a tumbler of
toddy, a boy was brought into the kitchen, with a finger torn
off in a threshing-mill. The doctor left after another tumbler,
and still making calls about Ettrickbridge, etc. , reached home
about eight, after riding fifty miles ; not to rest, however, for
various messages await his return ; all are visited, get medicines
from him, for there were no laboratories in his days, then home
to prepare all the various prescriptions for those he had seen
during the long day. He had just finished this when off he was
called to a midwifery case, far up Ale Water.
' To show how pointed to time he was, one day he had to go
to Buccleugh, eighteen miles up the Ettrick, and having to ride
down the moors by Ashkirk, and then to go on to St. Boswell's
to see old Raeburn, he wished a change of horse at Riddell
fixed one o'clock, and one of his sons met him at a point of
the road at the very hour, though he had ridden forty miles
through hills hardly passable.
' I have seen him return from the head of Yarrow half frozen,
and not an hour in bed till he had to rise and ride back the
same road, and all without a murmur.
' It was all on horseback in his day, as there was only one
gig in the county ; and his district extended west up the valleys
of Ettrick and Yarrow about twenty miles ; south in Ale Water
seven to ten miles ; the same distance east ; and north about
fourteen miles by Tweedside, and banks of the Gala and Cad-
don. His early rising enabled him also to get through his other
work, for he made up all his books at that time, had accounts
ready, wrote all his business letters, of which he had not a few.
' In coming home late in the night from his long journeys,
he often slept on horseback for miles together. In fine, he was
the hardest-worked man in the shire ; always cheerful, and
always ready to join in any cheerful and harmless amusement,
as well as every good work ; but he killed himself by if, bringing
on premature decay. '
He was many years Provost of the Burgh, took his full share
of business, was the personal adviser of his patients, and had
more curatorships than any one else in the county. What a
Our Gideon Grays. 259
pattern of active beneficence, bringing up three sons to his pro-
fession, giving his family a first-rate education, and never getting
anything for the half of his everyday' s work! We can fancy
we see the handsome, swarthy, ruddy old man coming jogging
(his normal pace) on his well-known mare down the Yarrow
by Black Andro (a wooded hill), and past Foulshiels (Mungo
Park's birthplace), after being all night up the glen with some
' crying wife,' and the cottagers at Glower-ower-'im, blessing
him as he passed sound asleep, or possibly wakening him out of
his dreams, to come up and 'lance' the bairn's eye-tooth.
Think of a man like this a valuable, an invaluable public
servant, the king of health in his own region having to start
in a winter's night ' on-cling o' snavv' for the head of Ettrick, to
preside over a primiparo.us herd's wife, at the back of Boods-
beck, who was as normal and independent as her cows, or her
husband's two score of cheviots j to have to put his faithful and
well-bred mare (for he knew the value of blood) into the byre,
the door of which was secured by an old harrow, or possibly in
the course of the obstetric transaction by a snow-drift ; to have
to sit idle amid the discomforts of a shepherd's hut for hours,
no books, except perhaps a ten-year-old Belfast Almanac or the
Fourfold State (an admirable book), or a volume of ballads, all
of which he knew by heart, when all that was needed was,
' Mrs. Jaup,' or indeed any neighbour wife, or her mother.
True, our doctor made the best of it, heard all the clavers of
the country, took an interest in all their interests, and was as
much at home by the side of the ingle, with its bit of 'licht'
or cannel coal, as he would be next day at Bowhill with the
Duchess. But what a waste of time, of health ! what a waste
of an admirable man ! and, then, with impatient young men,
what an inlet to mischievous interference, to fatal curtailing of
attendance !
DR. ANDREW BROWN AND
SYDENHAM.
' Physick of its own nature has no. more uncertainty or conjec-
turalness than these other noble professions of War, Law, Politicks,
Navigation, in all which the event can be no more predicted or
ascertained than in Physick, and all that the Artist is accomptable
for is the rational and prudent conduct that nothing be overdone
or undone." 1 Epilogue to the Five Papers lately passed betwixt
the two Physicians, Dr. O. and Dr. E. , containing some re-
marks pleasant and profitable, concerning the usefulness of
VOMITING and PURGING in FEVERS, by ANDREW BROWN,
M.D.
DR. ANDREW BROWN AND
SYDENHAM.
A HUNDRED and ninety years ago, Dr. Andrew
Brown, the laird of Dolphinton, was a well-
known and indeed famous man in Edinburgh, and
not unknown in London and the general medical
world. Who now has ever heard of him ? Sic tran-
sit. To us in Edinburgh he is chiefly memorable as
having been the ancestor of Dr. Richard Mackenzie,
who perished so nobly and lamentably in the Crimea ;
and whose is one of the many graves which draw our
hearts to that bleak field of glory and havoc. We
who were his fellows, are not likely to see again em-
bodied so much manly beauty, so much devotion to
duty, so much zeal, honour, and affection.
But to the profession in Scotland, his great great
grandfather ought to be better known than he is, for
he was the first to introduce here the doctrines of
Sydenham, and to recommend the use of antimonial
264 Dr. Andrew Brown
emetics in the first stage of fever. This he did in a
little book, called ' A Vindicatory Schedule concern-
ing the new cure of Fevers, containing a disquisition,
theoretical and practical, of the new and most effec-
tual method of cureing continual fevers, first invented
and delivered by the sagacious Dr. Thomas Syden-
hani.' Edin. 1691.
This book, and its author's energetic advocacy of
its principles by his other writings and by his prac-
tice, gave rise to a fierce controversy; and in the
library of the Edinburgh College of Physicians, there
is a stout shabby little volume of pamphlets on both
sides ' Replies,' and ' Short Answers,' and ' Refu-
tations,' and ' Surveys,' and ' Looking-Glasses,' ' De-
fences,' ' Letters,' ' Epilogues,' etc., lively and furious
once, but now resting together as quietly and as dead
as their authors are in the Old Greyfriars church-yard,
having long ceased from troubling. There is much
curious, rude, vigorous, hard-headed, bad-Englished
stuff in them, with their wretched paper and print, and
general ugliness ; much also to make us thankful that
we are in our own now, not their then. Such tearing
away with strenuous logic and good learning, at mere
clouds and shadows, with occasional lucid intervals
of sense, observation, and wit, tending too frequently
to wut.
Brown was a Whig, and a friend of Andrew Fletcher
and King William ; and in his little book on ' The
and Sydenham. 265
Character of the True Publick Spirit,' besides much
honest good sense and advanced politics, there is a
clever and edifying parallel drawn between the dis-
eases of the body politic and those of the body
natural, and also an amusing classification of doc-
tors; 1 but for .all this, and much more excellent
matter, I have no space here. Dr. Brown thus de-
scribes his going up to London to visit Sydenham,
and see his practice :
' But in the year 1687, perusing the first edition of
his Schedula Monitoria, where he delivers, as con-
firmed by manifold experience, not only a new, but
a quite contrarie method to the common, of curing
Continual Fevers : I did long hesitate, thinking that
either he, or all other Physicians, were grossly de-
ceived about the cure of Fevers ; if not, as their
patients used to be, they were in an high delirium ;
and lest the preconceived opinion that I had of the
man's ingenuity should so far impose upon my cre-
dulity, as to draw me into an error likeways with
him, and make me to experiment that method, when
I knew not but I might run the hazard to sacrifice
some to my temerity, nothing could settle my tossed
thoughts below the sight and knowledge of the thing
itself.
' Presently, therefore, hastening to London, and
having met with the man, and exposed the occasion
1 Note, page 275.
266 Dr. Andrew Brown
of my coming, I found all these tokens concerning
him and his practice, that use to beget unwarry per-
sons and prudent people making serious inquiry,
trust, and knowledge. Then after some months spent
in this society, returning home as much overjoyed
as I had gotten a treasure, I presently set myself to
that practice : which has proved so successful to
me, that since that time, of the many fevers that I
have treated, none were uncured, except my Lord
Creichton, whose case is related here ; and another
woman, whose dangerous circumstances made her
condition hopeless.'
There is a well-known story of Sydenham, which
goes by the name of ' The Lettsom Anecdote.' Dr.
Latham says it was communicated by Dr. Lettsom
to the Gentleman's Magazine of August 1801, and
was copied by him from the fly-leaf of a copy of the
Methodus curandi febris, which had been in the pos-
session of Dr. Sherson's family for fifty years. He
then quotes the story. I was much surprised and
pleased to find the original in Dr. Brown's Vindica-
tory Schedule ; it differs in some respects from the
second-hand one, and no one after reading it can
have any doubts that Sydenham bore arms for the
Commonwealth.
Dolphinton (as he was called by his townsmen)
writes as follows :
' Neither can it go well away with good men, to
and Sydenham, 267
think, that this great man, so oft by strange and
special Providences pluckt out of the very jaws of
death, has been preserved for an imposture, so dis-
male to mankind : Tho' I cannot stay to reckon
all the dangers among the calamities of the late civil
warrs (where he was an actor), that passed with great
difficulty over his head, as his being left in the field
among the dead, and many other dangers he met
with : yet there is one that, representing rather a
miracle than a common providence, cannot be passed
over, which, as I had from his own mouth, is thus, at
the same time of these civil warrs, where he dis-
charged the office of a captain, he being in his
lodging at London, and going to bed at night, with
his cloaths loosed, a mad drunk fellow, a souldier,
likewise in the same lodging, entering the room, with
one hand gripping him by the breast of his shirt,
with the other discharged a loaden pistol in his
bosome, yet, O strange ! without any hurt to him,
most wonderfully indeed, by such a narrow sheild as
the edge of the souldier's hand, was his breast
defended ; for the admirable providence of God
placed and fixed the tottering hand that gripped the
shirt into that place and posture, that the edge there-
of and all the bones of the metacarpe that make up
the breadth of the hand, were situate in a right line
betwixt the mouth of the pistol and his breast, and
so the bullet discharged neither declining to the one
268 Dr. Andrew Brown
side nor to the other, but keeping its way thorrow
all these bones, in crushing them lost its force, and
fell at his feet. O ! wonderful situation of the hand,
and more wonderful course of the bullet ! by any
industry or art never again imitable ! And moreover
within a few days the souldier, taken with a fever
arising from so dangerous and complicat a wound,
died ; surely Providence does not bring furth so
stupendous miracles, but for some great and equiva-
lent end.'
We may take the Doctor's facts without homo-
logating his conclusions. There is nothing here
indicating on what side Sydenham served, but all the
probabilities from family connexion, from his own
incidental expressions and other circumstances, and
his having to flee from Oxford, the headquarters of
the Royalists, etc., go to make it more than likely
that he was what his laborious, ineffectual, and latest
biographer calls, in his unwieldly phrase, a 'Parlia-
mentarian.'
This passage is followed by a remarkable statement
by Dr. Brown, as to the persecution of Sydenham by
his brethren. This is peculiarly valuable as coming
from one personally acquainted with the great phy-
sician, having heard these things 'from his own
mouth,' and being published two years after his
death. Dr. Latham cannot now have any doubt
as to the envy and uncharitableness of the profession,
and Sydenkam . 269
and the endeavour of his 'collegiate brethren' to
banish him out of 'that illustrious society' for ' medi-
cinal heresie.' . I give the entire passage, as I have
never before seen it noticed.
' And further can it be thought that this great
man, who in all the course of his life gave so full
evidence of an ingenuous, generous, and perspicatious
spirit, would or could die an imposter and murderer
of mankind (which imputation to deserve, he fre-
quently professed, would be more heavy to him than
any punishment could be), for he it was, despising
the blandishments of the world, popular applause,
riches, and honour, yea his own health wasted with
intense and assiduous meditations and thoughtfulness,
that liberally sacrificed them all for the publick good :
In so far, that after he had long weighed and expended
the common and received methods of curing most
diseases, and therefore had forsaken and relinquished
them as vain and improper, and after his intimate
search into the bowels of nature he had discovered
others more aposite and powerful ; He thereby only
gained the sad and unjust recompence of calumny
and ignominy ; and that from the emulation of some
of his collegiate brethren, and others, whose indigna-
tion at length did culminat to that hight, that they
endeavored to banish him, as guilty of medicinal
heresie, out of that illustrious society ; and by the
whisperings of others he was baulked the imployment
270 Dr. Andrew Brown
in the Royal Family, where before that he was called
among the first physicians.'
He then names those who had publicly given in
their adhesion to the new doctrines Dr. Goodal,
Dr. Brady, Dr. Paman, Dr. Cole, Dr. Ettmuller of
Leipsic, Dr. Doleus, physician to the Landgrave
of Hesse, Dr. Spon of Lyons, Dr. Michelthwait of
London, Dr. Morton, and Dr. Harris ; all these
before 1691.
Amid the dreary unreadable rubbish in this old
bundle, there is a most characteristic onslaught by
the famous Dr. George Cheyne upon Dr. Oliphant,
Dolphinton's friend and defender ; it is his pugilistic,
honest, reckless style, and is valuable for the testi-
mony he (at this time) a free-thinker in religion,
and a mathematical and mechanical physician (he
is defending Dr. Pitcairn) gives to the strictly Divine
origin of animal species. ' All animals, of what kind
soever, were originally and actually created at once
by the hand of Almighty God, it being impossible to
account for their production by any laws of mechanism :
and that every individual animal has, in minimis,
actually included in its loins all those who shall de-
scend from it, and every one of these again have all
their offspring lodged in their loins, and so on ad
infinitum; and that all these infinite numbers of
animalcules may be lodged in the bigness of a pin's
head.' Our own Owen would relish this intrepid
and Sydenham. 2 7 1
and robust old speculator. But the jewel of this old
book is a letter from a physician at London, appended
to Dr. Oliphant's answer to the pretended refutation
of his defence. I am sure my readers will agree
with the Doctor, that it is 'neither impertinent nor
tedious,' and that it must have been written ' by one
whose wit and good humour are equal to his learning
and ingenuity.'
There was one man in London, a young Scotch
physician, who could have written this, and we may
say, Aut Arbuthnot, auf quis ? All the chances are
in favour of its being that famous wit and admirable
man, of whom Pope says, ' Swift said " he could do
everything but walk ;'" and Pope himself thinks he
was ' as good a doctor as any man for one that is ill,
and a better doctor for one that is well.' He had
shortly before this gone up to London from Aber-
deen, and had published in 1697, his examination of
Dr. Woodward's Account of the Deluge.
' DEAR SIR, I thank you for the present of your
small Treatise about Vomiting in Fevers, but at the
same time I approve of your reasons, you must give
me leave to condemn your conduct : I know you
begin to storm at this ; but have a little patience.
There was a physician of this town, perhaps the most
famous in his time, being called to his patient, com-
plaining (it may be) of an oppression at his stomach ;
he would very safely and cautiously order him a
272 Dr. Andrew Brown
decoction of carduus, sometimes hot water ; I don't
know but he would allow now and then fat mutton
broth too. The patient was vomited, and the doctor
could justifie himself that he had not omitted that
necessary evacuation ; this was his constant practice.
Being chid by his collegues, who well knew he
neglected antimony, not out of ignorance or fear,
he would roguishly tell them, " Come, come, gentle-
men, that might cure my patient, but it would kill
the distemper, and I should have less money in my
pocket. A pretty business indeed, a rich citizen
overgorges himself, which by management may be
improved into a good substantial fever, worth at least
twenty guineas ; and you would have me nip the
plant in the bud, have a guinea for my pains, and
lose the reputation of a safe practitioner to boot."
The gentleman had reason, all trades must live.
Alas ! our people here are grown too quick-sighted,
they will have antimonial vomits, and a physician
dares not omit them, tho' it is many a good fee out
of his pocket. Join, I say, with these wise gentle-
men ; they wish well to the Faculty ; procure an
order of the Colledge, and banish antimony the city
of Edinburgh, and the liberties thereof. 'Tis a bar-
barous thing in these hard times to strangle an infant
distemper ; they ought no more to be murdered than
young cattle in Lent. Let it be as great a crime to
kill a fever with an antimonial vomit, as to fish in
and Sydenham. 273
spawning time. The Dutch physicians are like the
rest of their nation wise ; they banish that heathenish
Jesuitical drug, that would quickly reduce their prac-
tice to a narrow compass in the hopefulest distemper
of the countrey. These rogues that dream of nothing
but specificks and panaceas, I would have them all
hang'd, not so much for the folly of the attempt, as
the malice of their intention ; rascals, to starve so
many worthy gentlemen, that perhaps know no other-
wise to get their livelihood. Will the glasiers ever
puzle themselves to make glass malleable, would the
knitters ever so much as have dreamed of a stocking-
loom, or the young writers petition'd to have informa-
tions printed ; all those are wise in their generation,
and must the physicians be the only fools 1
'We all know here there is no danger in anti-
tnonial vomits, but this is inter nos ; you must not tell
your patient so, let him believe as I said before, that
antimonial vomits are dangerous, deleterial, break the
fibres of the stomach, etc., and that you cannot safely
give them. So shall you be stiled a cautious, safe
physician, one that won't spoil the curll of a man's
hair to pull him out of the river. We have some
dangerous dogs here, that in a quinsy, when a man
is ready to be chock'd, will blood him forty ounces
at once ; is not this extreamly hazardous 1 They cut
off limbs, cut for the stone ; is this safe ? I tell you
the reputation of a wary safe physician is worth all
274 Dr. Andrew Brown
the parts of his character besides. Now I hope you
will allow I have reason for what I said.
' I have seen the Melius Inquirendum, and am too
well acquainted with the stile and spelling, not to
know that it is Dr. Eyzat's ; but here I must be with
you again, how come you to write against one that
says two drams of emetick wine is a sufficient doze
for a man ? Suffer not such things to come abroad ;
they will imagine you are not got so far as the cir-
culation of the blood in Scotland; write seriously
against such people. Fy upon't, I will never allow
them to be above the dispensation of ballads and
doggrel, etc. I am, Sir, yours, etc.
'LONDON, August^, 1699.'
Nothing can be finer than the edge of this, nothing
pleasanter than its pleasantry ; that about murdering
young cattle in Lent, and the ' curll,' is Charles Lamb
all over; we know no one now-a-days who could
write thus, except the author of Esmond.
and Sydenhani.
75
NOTE. P. 265.
CLASSIFICATIONS OF DOCTORS.
I. THOSE who drive the trade of ban companionrie and good,
fellowship. 2. The high-flown bigots in religion or State.
3. Hangers-on of great families, ' as having been domesticks ! '
4. Those of 'a gentile meen.' Here is Dr. Beddoes' more
elaborate latrologia, or Linnoean method of physicians, like
Baron Born's of the Monks.
i. The philanthropic Doctor, having two varieties, a and
/3, the shy and the renegado. 2. The bullying D. , with Rad-
cliffe at their head. 3. The Bacchanalian D. 4. The solemn
D. 5. The club-hunting D. 6. The Burr D., centaurea cal-
citrapa. 7. The wheedling D. , with the variety of the Adonis
wheedling D. 8. The case-coining D. 9. The good-sort-
of-man D., with variety, and the gossiping good-sort-of-man
D., who 'fetches and carries scandal.' 10. The sectarian
D. ; variety o, the inspired sectarian D.
Beddoes concludes this Decade of Doctors, with notandiim
cst in toto hoc genere naturam mirabiles edere lusus. This is
applicable to all the species, there being mules and hybrids,
and occasionally monsters magnificent and dreadful, lil^e Para-
celsus.
Hartley Coleridge in his pleasant Life of Fothergill, after
alluding to this latrology, has the following on the exoteric
qualifications of a doctor :
' Of these exoteric qualifications, some are outward and
visible ; as a good gentlemanly person, not alarmingly handsome
(for the Adonis Doctor, though he has a fair opening to a
276 Dr. A. Brown and SydenJiam.
wealthy marriage, seldom greatly prospers in the way of busi-
ness), with an address to suit that is to say, a genteel self-
possession and subdued politeness, not of the very last polish
a slow, low, and regular tone of voice (here Dr. Fothergill's
Quaker habits must have been an excellent preparative), and
such an even flow of spirits as neither to be dejected by the
sight of pain and the weight of responsibility, nor to offend the
anxious and the suffering by an unsympathetic hilarity. The
dress should be neat, and rather above than below par in
costliness.
' In fine, the young physician should carry a something of
his profession in his outward man, but yet so that nobody
should be able to say what it was.'
FREE COMPETITION IN MEDICINE.
' That doctors are sometimes fools as well as other people, is not,
in the present times, one of those profound secrets which is known
only to the learned ; it very seldom happens that a man trusts his
health to another, merely because that other is an M. D. The
person so trusted has almost always either some knowledge, or
some craft, which would procure him nearly the same trust,
though he was not decorated with any such title ! Adieu ! my
dear doctor ; I am afraid I shall get my lug (ear) in my lufe
(hand), as ^ve say, for what I have written? ADAM SMITH to
DR. CULLEN, September 20, 1774.
' Lawyers, soldiers, tax-gatherers, policemen, are appendages of
a state, and some account should be taken of them by the civil
power. The clergy are officers of the church, and if the church is
a divine institution, they skotild have her license. Doctors are the
ministers of physical humanity at large, and should for a thou-
sand good reasons be left under the jurisdiction of the leviathanic
man whom they serve, yet under this condition that they shall be
answerable to the civil power for bodily injuries culpably inflicted
upon any of its subjects' COVENTRY DICK.
FREE COMPETITION IN MEDICINE.
T HAVE long thought that it was nonsense and
worse, the avowed and universal exception of
the craft of healing from the action of Adam Smith's
law of free competition, introducing legislative enact-
ment and license into the public relations of medicine,
thus constituting a virtual monopoly. I may be per-
mitted to express this in an extract from a Review of
Professor Syme and Dr. Burt's Letters to Lord Pal-
merston, on Medical Reform. 1
' And now for a closing word for ourselves. Mr.
Syme's scheme is, as we have fully stated, the best,
the simplest, and the least objectionable, if it be wise
and necessary for the State to do anything in the
matter. There is much in this if; and after consi-
deration of this difficult and little understood subject,
we are inclined to hold, that Adam Smith's law of
free competition is absolute, and applies to the
doctors of the community as well as to its shoe-
1 Edinburgh Medical Journal, December 1857.
2 So Free Competition in Medicine.
makers. In a letter to Dr. Cullen, published for the
first time by Dr. John Thomson, in his life of that
great physician, written before the publication of The
Wealth of Nations, he, with excellent humour, argu-
ment, and sense, asserts that human nature may be
allowed safely, and with advantage, to choose its
own doctor, as it does its own wife or tailor. We
recommend this sagacious letter to the serious atten-
tion of all concerned. We give some specimens;
its date is 1774: "When a man has learned his
lesson well, it surely can be of little importance
where, or from whom he has learnt it. ... In the
Medical College of Edinburgh, in particular, the
salaries of the professors are insignificant, and their
monopoly of degrees is broken in upon by all other
universities, foreign and domestic. I require no other
explication of its present acknowledged superiority
over every other society of the same kind in Europe.
... A degree can pretend to give security for no-
thing but the science of the graduate, and even for
that it can give but very slender security. For his
good sense and discretion, qualities not discoverable by
an academical examination, it can give no security
at all. . . . Had the Universities of Oxford and
Cambridge been able to maintain themselves in the
exclusive privilege of graduating all the doctors who
could practise in England, the price of feeling a pulse
might have by this time risen from two and three
Free Competition in Medicine. 281
guineas" (would that "Time would run back and
fetch that age of gold !") "the price which it has now
happily arrived at, to double or triple that sum. . . .
The great success of quackery in England has been
altogether owing to the real quackery of the regular
physicians. Our regular physicians in Scotland have
little quackery, and no quack, accordingly, has ever
made his fortune among us."
' Dr. Thomson did not find in Dr. Cullen's papers
any direct replies to the arguments of his friend ; but
in a Latin discourse pronounced two years after-
wards, at the graduation, he took occasion to state
in what respects the principles of free competition,
though applicable to mechanical trades, do, in his
opinion, not extend to the exercise of the profession
of medicine. His argument is conducted temper-
ately, and by no means confidently. He remarks,
with sagacity and candour, " that there are some who
doubt whether it is for the interest of society, or in
any way proper, to make laws or regulations for pre-
venting unskilled or uneducated persons from engag-
ing in the practice of medicine ; and it is very obvious,
that neither in this nor in most other countries, are
effectual measures adopted for this purposed His argu-
ment is the common, and we think unsound one,
that mankind can judge of its carpenter, but not
of its doctor; and that in the one case, life is at
stake, and not in the other, a fallacy easily exposed
282 Free Competition in Medicine.
a floor may fall in and kill dozens, from bad joinery,
as well as a man die from mala praxis. We believe
that the same common sense regulates, or at least
may regulate, the choice of your family doctor, as
it does the choice of your architect, engineer, or
teacher.
' If a man choose his architect or engineer from
his own personal knowledge of their respective arts
and sciences, he must either choose himself, and
forget his stair, or make very sure of choosing the
wrong man ; in this, as in so many things, we de-
pend on testimony and general evidence of capacity
and worth.
' In a word, our petition to Parliament is, Make
a clean sweep ; remove every legislative enactment
regarding the practice of medicine ; leave it as free,
as unprotected, as unlicensed, as baking or knife-
grinding; let our Colleges of Physicians and Sur-
geons, Faculties, and Worshipful Companies, make
what terms they like for those who choose to enter
them; let the Horse Guards, let the Customs, let
the Poor Law Boards, let the Cunard Company,
demand and exact any qualification they choose for
the medical men they employ and pay, just as Lord
Breadalbane may, if he like, require red hair and
Swedenborgism, in his Lordship's surgeon to his slate
quarries at Easdale. Give the principle its full
swing, and, by so doing, be assured we would lose
Free Competition in Medicine. 283
some of our worst Quacks ; but we would not lose
our Alisons, our Symes, our Christisons, Begbies,
and Kilgours, or our Brodies, Lathams, Brights, Wat-
sons, and Clarks ; and we would, we are persuaded,
have more of the rough-and-readies, as Dr. Burt
calls them. Gideon Gray would have an easier
mind, and more to feed himself and his horse on,
and his life would be more largely insured for his
wife and children. And if from the corporate bodies,
who are trying to live after they are dead, the ancient
cry of compensation rises up wild and shrill, give the
Belisarii their pence, and let them be contemptible
and content.'
But let there be no interference, under the name
of qualification or license, with free trade in medical
knowledge and skill. There is in the body politic,
as in the body natural, a self-regulating power to
which we ought to take heed, and trust its instincts,
and not our own contrivances. This holds in reli-
gion, in public morals, in education; and we will
never prosper as we might till we take the advice
Henry Taylor relates that an old lady of rank gave
to her anxious daughter-in-law, when asked by her
what she would advise as to the education of chil-
dren : ' I would advise, my dear, a little wholesome
neglect.'
EDWARD FORBES.
' Nature never did betray
The heart tkat loved her ; "'tis her privilege,
Through all the years of this our life, to lead
from joy to joy : for she can so inform
The mind that is within its, so impress
With quietness and beauty, and so feed
With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues,
Rash judgments, nor the sneers ofselfisl men,
Nor greetings -where no kindness is, nor all
The dreary intercourse of daily life,
Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb
Our cheerful faith, that all which we behold
Is full of blessings. '
WORDSWORTH.
EDWARD FORBES. J
\\T E have too long delayed noticing the memoir
of this delightful man the gifted teacher,
the consummate naturalist. Indeed, it is so long
now since we read it, and so long since all the world
has done so, that we cannot and need not go into
the details of his life and history, or into any minute
criticism of the treatment of their theme by his two
biographers, Dr. George Wilson and Mr. Geikie.
It is an interesting and a likeable book, loose in its
texture in the first half, from the natural tendency, on
the part of its genial author, to expatiate and efflo-
resce ; and deficient necessarily in personality in
the second, which, however, is most ably and
thoroughly done from its writer's point of view,
just, painstaking, and full of" excellent science.
Mr. Geikie's genius is mainly geological, and it is
well that it is so ; but he writes with clearness
and force ; and judgment in its own place is always
1 From The Scotsman.
288 Edward Forbes.
better than genius out of it. There are exquisite
bits, perfect flowers for fragrance and beauty in
Dr. Wilson's sketch. The account of Edinburgh
College life, and all about that great and primary
man, that master in natural history, Professor
Jameson, a man of rare purity, and force of life
and purpose, and most genuinely good, is quick
with our lost friend's fine play of fancy, and his
affectionate humour ; but it labours, as we all to
our sorrow know, under the loss of his revision.
The first chapter, on the Isle of Man and its tail-
less cats, is out of all proportion, and with its in-
formation and fun, is more suited to the Odds and
Ends of a Manx historian of the Knickerbocker
breed, than to the work of a steady biographer.
The next chapter, on Edward Forbes's infant and
boyish years, is finely done, developing with a tender
and firm touch the natural bent of his mind, and
showing how truly ' the child is father of the man.'
Edward Forbes was one of four men who studied
together at Edinburgh, all bound together closely,
but each curiously different from the rest. Samuel
Brown, George Wilson, and John Goodsir were the
others. The last, in many respects the greatest,
certainly the completest and most satisfying, still
lives, one of the main glories of our medical school, a
man who will leave a name not unworthy to be placed
alongside of John Hunter's. He has no speciality,
Edward Forbes. 289
but is a true discerner and discoverer of nature, a
teacher of what he himself knows. It is impossible
to overrate his influence in our medical school in
grounding the students in a genuine anatomy, and
in basing speculation of the widest, the most daring,
and transcendental kind upon downright matter of
fact.
Edward Forbes was a child of nature, and he lived
in her presence and observance. She was his Alma
Mater to the end. He enjoyed science ; this was
the chief end to him of life ; its bloom, and its fruit,
and its own exceeding great reward.
' George Wilson made science enjoyable to others ;
he illustrated, adorned, and commended it ; standing,
as it were, with his face to the world, he told what
of the mystery and truth of science it could or cared
to know and its fa'cetice too, for he was an inveterate
wag, having more wit than humour, and less imagi-
nation than fancy.
Samuel Brown was his typical reverse. He stood
with his back to the public, intent at the high altar
of his service, bent on questioning, on divination,
and on making nature reveal her secret. He worked
up the stream ; his was that science of sciences, which
is philosophy proper. He desired to bring knowledge
to a point, to draw all multiformity into the focus of
unity.
Goodsir advances it as a whole, and makes it our
T
290 Edward Forbes.
inheritance, while he enriches it with something from
the stores of his other brethren.
In an eloquent and tender eloge upon Dr. Samuel
Brown, in the North British Review for February
1857, there is quoted from his private journal, with
which he whiled away his long hours of languor, soli-
tude, and pain, the following portrait of his former
colleague and companion, written on hearing of his
sudden death. Surely if there is much matter like
this in that journal, the world would like to have
more of it some day.
' Edward Forbes is dead and buried before me ;
died this day week, was buried on Thursday. " He
behaved at the close with his old composure, con-
siderateness, and sweetness of nature," writes Dr.
John. This is a great public loss, a pungent public
grief too ; but to us, his friends, it is " past the blas-
phemy of grief." Surely it is " wondrous in our eyes."
Not forty yet ; his work sketched out largely, rather
than done : his proper career, as the Edinburgh
Professor of Natural History, just opened, and that
with unusual brilliancy of circumstance, Edinburgh,
young and old, proud to receive him as her new
great man, the Naturalists of Scotland rising up to
call the Manxman blessed " The pity of it, oh the
pity of it !"
' We began our public career almost together. He
in his twenty-fifth, I in my twenty-third year, de-
Edward Forbes. 29 1
livered at Edinburgh a joint course of lectures on the
Philosophy of the Sciences, he the graphic or static,
I the principial or dynamic hemisphere of the round.
Tall for his strength, slightly round-shouldered,
slightly in-bent legs, but elegant, with a fine round
head and long face, a broad, beautifully arched fore-
head, long dim-brown hair like a woman's, a slight
moustache, no beard, long-limbed, long-fingered,
lean, such was one of the most interesting figures
ever before an Edinburgh audience. His voice was
not good, his manner not flowing, not even easy.
He was not eloquent, but he said the right sort of
thing in a right sort of way ; and there was such an
air of mastery about him, of genius, of geniality, of
unspeakable good-nature, that he won all hearts, and
subdued all minds, and kept all imaginations prisoners
for life. Nobody that has not heard him can con-
ceive the charm.
' In natural history his labours are acknowledged
by his peers ; and it is not for a chemist to say a
word. Yet I fancy he has made no memorable dis-
covery, initiated no critical movement. It is by the
width of his views he has told, and by his personal
influence. In short, he is a first-rate naturalist, near-
sighted and far-sighted, and eminently disposed and
able to reduce the chaos of observation to order, and
to discern the one soul of nature in all her manifold
body of members; but he has not shown himself inven-
292 Edward Forbes.
tive like Linnseus or Cuvier, or even Buffon. His true
greatness was cumulative ; and if he had lived as
long, he might have rivalled Humboldt. As it is, he
was not a philosopher, nor a great discoverer but
he was a consummate and philosophical naturalist,
wider than any man alive in his kind. Add to that
noble distinction, that he was much of an artist, not
a little of a man of letters, something of a scholar, a
humorist, the very most amiable of men, a perfect
gentleman, and a beautiful pard-like creature, and
you have our Hyperion, gone down, alas, ere it was
yet noon ! After all, what a combination of charms,
what a constellation of gifts, what a man ! Edward
Forbes was a sweet, wise, broad and sunny, great
kind of man, else I do not know a nobleman when I
see him.
' As for religion, I can only say he never talked
infidelities even in our rash youth. He always abided
by the church, though he rarely frequented its taber-
nacles. He was a kind of half-intellectual, half-
agsthetical believer. Theology somehow did not lie
in his way ; and he was (as I conceive) sincere
rather than earnest, in religion. There lay his great
defect ; since all are but fragments after all that can
be said even of a Shakspeare. He wanted intensity of
character, depth of soul, spirituality ; and it is curi-
ous in a man so large.
' And in connexion with this lay one of the secrets
Edward Forbes. 293
of Forbes's boundless popularity. He was a con-
formist, ran against no man or thing. He joined
no new cause ; he assailed no old one ; nay, he even
assailed no new one. All were welcome to him,
therefore, and he to all. Even in Natural Histon
he brought no agitating or perplexing news, per-
plexing men with the fear of change. He sailed
nobly with the wind and tide of ordinary progress,
not needing to carry a single gun, but the foremost
of this peaceful fleet. This was all very delightful
and wise ; yet let a word be said for the men of war,
John Kepler and the rest ; and also let a distinction
betwixt the two orders of men be remembered. To
forget such distinctions is to confound the morality
of criticism. He of Nazareth, not to be profane,
brought " not peace, but a sword," the Divine
image of " the greater sort of greatness." '
This is to the life, delicate and keen, like a
Holbein or Van Eyck. The description of his per-
son is curiously accurate, the fine round head,
the long face, the long dim-brown hair like a
woman's, etc.
To conclude, there is material in this volume for
a short and compact life of Forbes. You feel you
know him and hear him ; see him singing, or rather
crooning his odd genial songs ; playing with his
subject, with everything, making his pen laugh out
of those droll tail-pieces and overflowings of fun,
294 Edward Forbes.
clever, but vague, feeble in outline, but full of the
man. We have had a melancholy pleasure in giving
ourselves up to this book; and thinking how much
the world has gained in him and lost.
The differences between natural history and analy-
tical science are sufficiently distinct where they are
farthest from each other ; but as is the case in all
partitions of knowledge, they get less marked where
they approach at the 'marches.' Therefore it is
hardly fair to say that Edward Forbes was merely a
master in natural history, not also in science proper,
the truth rather being that he was more of the first
than of the second. The difference of the two know-
ledges is very much the difference between listen-
ing to what nature spontaneously says to you, that
philosophy, which, as Bacon has it, ' repeats the words
of the universe itself with the utmost fidelity, and is
written as it were by dictation of the universe,' and
between putting questions to her, often very cross-
questions"; putting her, in fact, to the torture, and
getting at her hidden things. The one is more of the
nature of experience, of that which is a methodized
record of appearances ; the other more of experi-
ment of that which you, upon some hypothesis,
expect to find, and has more to do with intimate
composition and action. Still this parallelism must
not be run out of breath ; both of them have chiefly
to do with the truth of fact, more than with the
Edward Forbes. 295
truth of thought about fact, or about itself, which is
philosophy, or with the truth of imagination, which is
ideal art, fabricated by the shaping spirit from fact,
and serving for delectation. The world is doing such
a large business in the first two of these departments,
natural history and pure science, that we are
somewhat in danger of forgetting altogether the
third, which is of them all the greatest, and of
misplacing and misinterpreting the fourth.
Science is ultimately most useful when it goes
down into practice becomes technical, and is util-
ized ; or blossoms into beauty, or ascends into philo-
sophy and religion, and rests in that which is in
the highest sense good, spiritual, and divine, leaving
the world wiser and happier, as well as more power-
ful and knowing, than it found it.
We end by quoting from this memoir the fol-
lowing noble passage, by that master of science and
of style, our own Playfair, in his account of Dr.
Hutton. It is singularly appropriate.
' The loss sustained by the death of this great
naturalist was aggravated to those who knew him by
the consideration of how much of his knowledge had
perished with himself, and notwithstanding all that he
had written, how much of the light collected by a life
of experience and observation was now completely
extinguished. It is indeed melancholy to reflect, that
with all who make proficiency in the sciences, founded
296 Edward Forbes.
on nice and delicate observations, something of this
sort must invariably happen. The experienced eye,
the power of perceiving the minute differences and
fine analogies which discriminate or unite the objects
of science, and the readiness of comparing new
phenomena with others already treasured up in the
mind, these are accomplishments which no rules
can teach, and no precepts can put us in possession
of. This is a portion of knowledge which every man
must acquire for himself; nobody can leave as an
inheritance to his successor. It seems, indeed, as
if nature had in this instance admitted an exception,
to the will by which she has ordained the perpetual
accumulation of knowledge among civilized men, and
had destined a considerable portion of science con-
tinually to grow up, and perish with individuals.'
DR. ADAMS OF BANCHORY.
SCENE. A hut in the wilds of Braemar ; a big gamekeeper fast
sinking from a gunshot wound in the lower part of the
thigh.
DR. ADAMS, loquitur. ' Get a handkerchief, and the spurtle 1
(the porridge- stick}, 'and new for a pad for our tourniquet.
This will do J putting his little Elzevir Horace down tipon the
femoral Gamekeeper's life saved, and by good guidance, the leg
too.
DR. ADAMS OF BANCHORY.
"\ \ 7"E little thought when, a few weeks ago, we in-
troduced some suggestions from Dr. Adams
as to the propriety of instituting in our universities
a chair of medical history, by calling him the most
learned of Scottish physicians, that we should soon
have to change ' is ' into was.
When we last saw him, though he looked older than
his years, and weather-worn, he was full of vigour and
of heart, and seemed to have in him many days of
victorious study.
To see so much energy and understanding cut
sheer through in its full current, not dwindling away
by natural waste, is little less startling than it would
be to see his own silver and impetuous Dee, one
moment rolling in ample volume, and the next
vanished. For, common though it be, there is no-
thing more strange, nothing, in a certain true sense,
more against nature, than the sudden extinguishment
of so much intellect, knowledge, and force.
Dr. Adams was not a mere scholar, not merely
300 Dr. Adams of Banchory.
patient, ingenious, and perspicacious in the study of
language. His was likewise a robust, hardy, eager
nature, hungering after knowledge of every sort, and
in the structure of his mind and its bent more
like the Scaligers and Bentleys of old than the
mighty but mere word-mongers among the Germans.
He was made of the same-tough and fervid material
as were George Buchanan and Florence Wilson,
Andrew Melville, and the huge, turbulent, 1 and
intrepid Dempster, men who were great scholars,
and a great deal more ; shrewd, and full of public
spirit, men of affairs as well as of letters.
It is this intermixture of shrewdness and fervour
with hard-headedness and patient endurance of men-
tal toil, so peculiarly Scotch in its quality and in its
flavour, which makes a man like the country surgeon
of Banchory-Ternan worthy of more than a passing
notice.
Francis Adams was born in the parish of Lum-
phanan on Deeside. His father was a gardener,
and his elder brother is still a farmer in that parish.
In a memorandum of his literary life now before
1 Here is this formidable worthy's portrait by Matthaeus
Peregrinus, as quoted by Dr. Irving in his Literary Scotchmen
of the Last Four Centuries: ' Moribus ferox fuit, apertus
omnino, et simulandi nescius, sive enim amore, sive odio
aliquem prosequeretur utrumque palam ; consuetudine jucun-
dissimus, amicis obsequentissimus, ita inimicis maxime infensus,
acceptasque injurias tenax, earn aperte agnoscens et repetens.'
Dr. Adams of Banchory. 301
us, he says : ' As far as I can think, my classical
bent was owing to a friendship which I formed, when
about fifteen years old, with a young man a few years
older than myself, who had enjoyed the benefits of
an excellent education at Montrose, which gave
him a superiority over myself that roused me to
emulation.
' In my early years I had been shamefully mistaught.
I began by devoting seventeen hours a day to the
study of Virgil and Horace, and it will be readily be-
lieved that such intense application soon made up for
any early deficiencies.
' I read each of these six or seven times in succes-
sion. Having mastered the difficulties of Latin litera-
ture, I naturally turned my attention to Greek as
being the prototype of the other.
' It was the late Dr. Kerr of Aberdeen who drew
my attention to the Greek literature of medicine, and
at his death I purchased a pretty fair collection of the
Greek medical authors which he had made. How-
ever, I have also read almost every Greek work
which has come down to us from antiquity, with the
exception of the ecclesiastical writers ; all the poets,
historians, philosophers, orators, writers of science,
novelists, and so forth. My ambition always was to
combine extensive knowledge of my profession with
extensive erudition.'
This was no ordinary boy of fifteen who could, ex
302 Dr. Adams of Banchory.
proprio motu, work seventeen hours a day to make up
to his friend.
He settled early in life in the beautiful and secluded
village of Banchory-Ternan, to use his own words,
' with its glassy river and magnificent hills rising in
front and behind like another Tempe, with its Peneus
flowing between Ossa and Olympus.' Here he spent
his days in the arduous and useful profession of
a country surgeon, out in all weathers and at all
hours, having the lives, the births, and the deaths of
a wild outlying region on his hands. This work he
did so thoroughly that no one could, with a shadow
of justice, say that his learning lessened his readiness
and his ability for the active duties of his calling,
in the full round of its requirements. He was an
attentive, resolute, wise practitioner, just such a man as
we would like to fall into the hands of, were we need-
ing his help. He was always up to the newest know-
ledge of the time, but never a slave to any system, or
addicted to swear by any master. The whole cast of
his mind was thoroughly free and self-sustained. If
he had any idols, they were among the mighty and
the dead ; but even they were his companions and
familiar daimons, rather than his gods. The follow-
ing is a list of Dr. Adams' principal publications, and
if we consider that, during all this time, he was
fighting for a livelihood, educating his family, and
involved in his multifarious and urgent duties, they
Dr. Adams of Banchory. 303
furnish one of the most signal instances of the pur-
suit and mastery of knowledge under difficulties, to
be found even among our Scottish worthies :
1. Translation of Hero and Leander, from the
Greek of Musaeus, with other Poems, English and
Latin. Aberdeen, 1826.
2. Hermes Philologus, or the connexion of the
Greek and Latin. London, 1826. This made him
many literary friends, among others, Edmund H.
Barker, author of Dr. Parr's Life, and Dr. Anthon of
New York.
3. Various Papers of Greek Prosody, etc., in the
Classical Journal.
4. On the Administration of Hellebore among the
Ancients.
5. On the Nervous System of Galen and other
Ancient Authors, 1829, in which the originality of
Sir Charles Bell's doctrines was attacked.
6. On the Toxicological Doctrines of the Ancients.
7. On the Treatment of Malignant Ulcers of the
Face.
8. Notices of Greek, Latin, and Arabic Medical
Authors. For Barker's Edition of Lempriere.
9. Paulus ^gineta. Translation of the first
volume, 1834. This was a losing concern as to
money ; but it placed him, per satium, in the first
rank of learned and judicious physicians ; it was an
amazing tour de force for an Aberdeen surgeon, and
304 -Dr. Adams of BaiicJiory.
will ever remain a memorial of his indomitable mental
pluck and strong sense. The Sydenham Society gave
its character as follows : ' Replete with learning, and
comprising the most complete view which has ever
been given of the knowledge professed by the Greeks,
Romans, and Arabians, it will form a lasting monu-
ment of the industry and erudition of its author, and
an honour to his country.'
10. Several Reviews in Forbes' British and Foreign
Review, 1842-66.
n. Case of Dislocation of the Knee-joint, with
Dissection.
12. English and Greek Dictionary (Dunbar's),
almost entirely done by him. The appendix, con-
taining scientific explanation of the Greek names of
minerals, plants, and animals, is out of sight the
most valuable existing in any language.
13. Paulus ^Egineta, translated from the Greek.
3 vols., 1845-6-7. Sydenham Society.
14. A Series of Papers on Uterine Haemorrhage.
15. Case of a Woman bitten by an Adder.
1 6. A series of Papers on the Construction of the
Placenta.
17. On the Treatment of Burns.
1 8. Hippocrates, translated from the Original.
2 vols., 1849. Sydenham Society.
19. Theophilus de Fabric! Assisted by Dr.
Greenhill. Oxon. 1842.
Dr. Adams of Banckory. 305
20. Arundines Devae : a Collection of Original
Poems.
Since that time there have been frequent commu-
nications by him to the journals on medical subjects,
and a pleasant paper on the study of ornithology,
read before the British Association at Aberdeen.
Nothing can better illustrate his keen appetite for
knowledge of all sorts than this curious and touching
record of his own observation son the birds of Banchory,
and his son's on those of Cashmere. You see what
a quick and loving eye the father had kept, during
his busy and learned life, upon the natural objects he
met with in his rides, and the training he had given
his son in such studies at home, which enabled him
to turn his Indian observations to good account.
This modest but remarkable paper contains not only
the ornithological notes, but an admirable pleading
for this department of natural history as a branch of
liberal education, and a valuable gymnastic for the
senses and the mind, and ends with an eloquent, and
we think well-founded protest, against the scientific
ultraism of the day, the useful information, and
cramming mania. We wish we had space to give
some of his words of admonition and warning. The
following are Dr. Adams' remarks, in the memo-
randum already referred to, on his two great works :
' I began the translation of SEgineta in the end of
Nov. 1827, and finished it on 28th April 1829. 1
u
306 Dr. Adams of Banehory.
never, at any period of my life, undenvent so much
drudgery, and during three months I sat up late and
rose early, and snatched every minute I could from
the duties of my profession. At that time my practice,
though not lucrative, was extensive, especially in the
obstetric line ; I managed, however, to work at my
translation ten hours a day. I finished the translation
of Hippocrates in about four months. The certainty
of attaining a fair remuneration for the trouble it cost
me, and that it would not be a light hid under a
bushel, made this by far the most delightful task I
ever engaged in. The reception of it was everything I
could desire. It cost me some professional sacrifices,
but this was amply made up by the delight and mental
improvement it conferred on me.'
Such is a hasty and imperfect sketch of the character
and works of this remarkable man, who well deserved
the title of doctissimus medicorum Britannorum.
Some years ago, when travelling through that noble
and beautiful region, we went across from the inn at
Banehory to introduce ourselves to the translator of
the divine old man of Cos. We found him at break-
fast, ready for his ride up the Feugh, and amusing
himself with pencilling down a translation of an ode
of Horace into Greek verse !
He was a thorough Aberdonian, hard-headed and
warm-hearted, canny and yet independent, a man of
thought and action, not less than a man of vocables
Dr. Adams of Banchory. 307
and learning ; in politics an old and thorough Liberal ;
generous in his praise of others, and not unamusingly
fond of their praise of himself. By the sheer force of his
intellect, by the extent and exactness of his erudition,
he became the cherished friend of such men as Sir
John Forbes, Dean Milman, Sir W. Hamilton, and
many of the famous Continental scholars ; and he
leaves in his own profession no equal in the com-
bination of honest, deep, and broad learning, with
practical sagacity and enlightened experience.
HENRY VAUGHAN.
"Ocra TTI -po<r</nAv} TO.VTO. XoyifctrQe. ST. PAUL.
HENRY VAUGHAN.
<VX .THAT do you think of Dr. Channing, Mr.
Coleridge?' said a brisk young gentleman
to the mighty discourser, as he sat next him at a
small tea-party. ' Before entering upon that ques-
tion, Sir,' said Coleridge, opening upon his inquirer
those ' noticeable grey eyes,' with a vague and placid
stare, and settling himself in his seat for the night,
'I must put you in possession of my views, in extenso,
on the origin, progress, present condition, future
likelihoods, and absolute essence of the Unitarian
controversy, and especially the conclusions I have,
upon the whole, come to on the great question of
what may be termed the philosophy of religious dif-
ference.' In like manner, before telling our readers
what we think of Henry Vaughan, the Silurist, or of
'V.,' or of Henry Ellison, the Bornnatural, or of
E. V. K., it would have been very pleasant (to our-
selves) to have given, in extenso, our views de Re
Poet led, its nature, its laws and office, its means and
311
312 Henry Vaughan.
ends ; and to have made known how much and how
little we agreed on these points with such worthies
as Aristotle and Plato, Horace and Richard Baxter,
Petronius Arbiter and Blaise Pascal, Ulric von
Hiitten and Boileau, Hurdis and Kurd, Dr. Arnold
and Montaigne, Harris of Salisbury and his famous
uncle, Burke and 'John Buncle,' Montesquieu and
Sir Philip Sidney, Dr. Johnson and the two Wartons,
George Gascoyne and Spenser's friend Gabriel Har-
vey, Puttenham and Webbe, George Herbert and
George Sand, Petrarch and Pinciano, Vida and Julius
Caesar Scaliger, Pontanus and Savage Landor, Leigh
Hunt and Quinctilian, or Tacitus (whichever of the
two wrote the Dialogue De Oratoribus, in which
there is so much of the best philosophy, criticism,
and expression), Lords Bacon and Buchan and Dr.
Blair, Dugald Stewart and John Dryden, Charles
Lamb and Professor Wilson, Vinet of Lausanne and
John Foster, Lord Jeffrey and the two brothers Hare,
Drs. Fuller and South, John Milton and Dr. Drake,
Dante and ' Edie Ochiltree,' Wordsworth and John
Bunyan, Plutarch and Winkelman, the Coleridges,
Samuel, Sara, Hartley, Derwent, and Henry Nelson,
Sk Egerton Bridges, Victor Cousin and ' the Doctor,'
George Moir and Madame de Stael, Dr. Fracastorius
and Professor Keble, Martinus Scriblerus and Sir
Thomas Browne, Macaulay and the Bishop of Cloyne,
Collins and Gray and Sir James Mackintosh, Hazlitt
Henry Vaughan. 313
and John Ruskin, Shakspere and Jackson of Exeter,
Dallas and De Quincey, and the six Taylors, Jeremy,
William, Isaac, Jane, John, Edward, and Henry.
We would have had great pleasure in quoting what
these famous women and men have written on the
essence and the art of poetry, and to have shown
how strangely they differ, and how as strangely at
times they agree. But as it is not related at what
time of the evening our brisk young gentleman
got his answer regarding Dr. Channing, so it like-
wise remains untold what our readers have lost and
gained in our not fulfilling our somewhat extensive
desire.
It is with poetry as with flowers or fruits, and the
delicious juices of meats and fishes ; we would all
rather have them, and smell them, and taste them,
than hear about them. It is a good thing to know
all about .1 lily, its scientific ins and outs, its botany,
its archaeology, its aesthetics, even its anatomy and
' Organic radicals,' but it is a better thing to look at
itself, and 'consider' it how it grows
' White, radiant, spotless, exquisitely pure. '
It is one thing to know what your peach is, that it is
the fruit of a rosal exogen, and is of the nature of a
true drupe, with its carpel solitary, and its style pro-
ceeding from the apex, that its ovules are anatropal,
and that its putamcn separates sponte sud from the
314 Henry Vaughan,
sacrocarp ; to know, moreover, how many kinds of
peaches and nectarines there are in the world, and
how happy the Canadian pigs must be of an evening
munching the downy odoriferous drupes under the
trees, and what an aroma this must give to the result-
ing pork, 1 it is another and a better thing to pluck
the peach, and sink your teeth into its fragrant flesh.
We remember only one exception to this rule. Who
has ever yet tasted the roast pig of reality which
came up to the roast pig of Charles Lamb 1 Who
can forget ' that young and tender suckling, under a
moon old, guiltless as yet of the stye, with no ori-
ginal speck of the amor immunditice the hereditary
failing of the first parent, yet manifest, and which, when
prepared aright, is, of all the delicacies in the mundus
edibilis, the most delicate obsoniorum facile princeps
whose fat is not fat, but an indefinable sweetness
growing up toward it the tender blossoming of fat
fat cropped in the bud taken in the shoot in the
first innocence, the cream and quintessence of the
child-pig's yet pure food the lean not lean, but a
kind of animal manna ccelestis cibus ille angeloriim
or rather, shall we say, fat and lean (if it must be
so) so blended and running into each other, that
both together make but one ambrosial result.' But
1 We are given to understand that peach-fed pork is a poor
pork after all, and goes soon into decomposition. We are not
sorry to know this.
Henry Vaughan. 315
here, as elsewhere, the exception proves the rule,
and even the perusal of 'Original' Walker's delicious
schemes of dinners at Lovegrove's, with flounders
water-zoutched, and iced claret, would stand little
chance against an invitation to a party of six at '
BJackwall, with 'Tom Young of the Treasury' as
Prime Minister.
Poetry is the expression of the beautiful by words
the beautiful of the outer and of the inner world ;
whatever is delectable to the eye or the ear, the
every sense of the body and of the soul it presides
over veras dulcedines rcrum. It implies at once a
vision and a faculty, a gift and an art. There must
be the vivid conception of the beautiful, and its fit
manifestation in numerous language. A thought
may be poetical, and yet not poetry ; it may be a
sort of mother liquor, holding in solution the poeti-
cal element, but waiting and wanting its precipitation,
its concentration into the bright and compacted
crystal. It is the very blossom and fragrancy and
bloom of all human thoughts, passions, emotions,
language ; having for its immediate object its very
essence pleasure and delectation rather than truth ;
but springing from truth, as the flower from its fixed
and unseen root. To use the words of Puttenham
in reference to Sir Walter Raleigh, poetry is a lofty,
insolent (unusual) and passionate thing.
It is not philosophy, it is not science, it is not
316 Henry Vaugkan.
morality, it is not religion, any more than red is or
ever can be blue or yellow, or than one thing can
ever be another ; but it feeds on, it glorifies and
exalts, it impassionates them all. A poet will be the
better of all the wisdom, and all the goodness, and
all the science, and all the talent he can gather into
himself, but qua poet he is a minister and an inter-
preter of TO KaAov, and of nothing else. Philosophy
and poetry are not opposites, but neither are they
convertibles. They are twin sisters ; in the words
of Augustine : ' PHILOCALIA et PHILOSOPHIA prope
similiter cognominattz sunt, et quasi gentiles inter se
videri volunt et sunt. Quid est enim Philosophia ?
amor sapientice. Quid Philocalia ? amor pulchritu-
dinis. Germance igitur istcz sunt prorsus, et eodem
parente procreate? Fracastorius beautifully illustrates
this in his Naugeritts, sive De Poetica Dialogus. He
has been dividing writers, or composers, as he calls
them, into historians, or those who record appear-
ances ; philosophers, who seek out causes; and poets,
who perceive and express veras pulchritudines rerum,
quicquid maximum et magnificum, quicquid pulcherri-
mum, quicquid dulcissimum ; and as an example, he
says, if the historian describe the ongoings of this
visible universe, I am taught ; if the philosopher
announce the doctrine of a spiritual essence per-
vading and regulating all things, I admire ; but if the
poet take up the same theme, and sing
Henry Vaughan. 317
Principle calum ac terras, camposque Itquentes,
Lucentemque globum Luna, Titaniaqiie astra
Spiritus intus alii, totamque infusa per artus
Metis agitat molem, et magno se corpore miscet.
1 Si inquam, eandem rem, hoc facto referat mihi, non
admirabor solum, sed adamabo : et dimnum nestio quid,
in animum mihi immissum existimabo?
In the quotation which he gives, we at once detect
the proper tools and cunning of the poet : fancy
gives us liquentes campos, titania astra, lucentem globum
lunce, and phantasy or imagination, in virtue of its
royal and transmuting power, gives us intus alit
infusa per artus and that magnificent idea, magno se
corpore miscet this is the divinum nescio quid the
proper work of the imagination the master and
specific faculty of the poet that which makes him
what he is, as the wings make a bird, and which, to
borrow the noble words of the Book of Wisdom, ' is
more moving than motion, is one only, and yet
manifold, subtle, lively, clear, plain, quick, which
cannot be letted, passing and going through all
things by reason of her pureness; being one, she
can do all things ; and remaining in herself, she
maketh all things new.'
The following is Fracastorius' definition of a man
who not only writes verses, but is by nature a poet :
' Est autem ille natura poeta, qui aptus est veris rerum
pulchritiidinibus capi monerique; ct qui per illas loqui
et scribere potest /' and he gives the lines of Virgil,
318 Henry Vanghan.
' Ant sicubi nignun
Ilicibus crebrls sacra nemus accubet umbra, '
as an instance of the poetical transformation. All
that was merely actual or informative might have
been given in the words sicubi nemus, but phantasy
sets to work, and videte, per quas pulchritudines, nan us
depinxit; addens ACCUBET, ET NIGRUM crebris iliribus
et SACRA UMBRA ! quam ob rem, rede Pontanus dicebat,
finem esse poette, apposite dicere ad admirationem, sim-
pliciter, et per universalem bene dicendi ideam. This
is what we call the beau-ideal, or KO.T ^o\rjv, the
ideal what Bacon describes as ' a more ample great-
ness, a more exact goodness, and a more absolute
variety than can be found in the nature of things,
the world being in proportion inferior to the soul,
and the exhibition of which doth raise and erect the
mind by submitting the shews of things to the desires
of the mind.' It is ' the wondrous and goodly pa-
terne' of which Spenser sings in his 'Hymne in
honour of Beautie :'
' What time this world's great Workmaister did cast
To make al things such as we no\\ behold,
// seems tliat he before his eyes had plast
A goodly Paterne, to whose perfect mould
He fashioned them, as comely as he could,
That now so faire and seemly they appeare,
As nought may be amended any wheare.
' That wondrous Paterne wheresoere it bee,
Whether in earth layd up in secret store,
Or else in heaven, that no man may it see,
Henry Vaughan. 319
With sinfull eyes, for feare it to deflore,
Is perfect Beautie, which all men adore
That is the thing that giveth pleasant grace
To all things fair.
' For through infusion of celestial powre
The duller earth it quickneth with delight,
And life-ftill spirits pi ivily doth powre
Through all the parts, that to the looker's sight
They seeme to please. '
It is that ' loveliness' which Mr. Ruskin calls ' the
signature of God on his works,' the dazzling print-
ings of His fingers, and to the unfolding of which he
has devoted, with so much of the highest philosophy
and eloquence, a great part of the second volume of
Modern Painters.
But we are as bad as Mr. Coleridge, and are
defrauding our readers of their
fruits and flowers, their peaches
and lilies.
Henry Vaughan, ' Silurist,'
as he was called, from his
being born in South Wales,
the country of the Silures, was
sprung from one of the most
ancient and noble families of the
Principality. Two of his ances-
tors, Sir Roger Vaughan and Sir
David Gam, fell at Agincourt.
sic sedebat. Jt is said that Shakspere visited
Scethrog, the family-castle in Brecknockshire; and
320 Henry Vaughan.
Malone guesses that it was when there that he fell in
with the word ' Puck.' Near Scethrog, there is Cwn-
Pooky, or Pwcca, the Goblin's Valley, which be-
longed to the Vaughans; and Crofton Croker gives,
in his Fairy Legends, a facsimile of a portrait, drawn
by a Welsh peasant, of a Pwcca, which (whom ?) he
himself had seen sitting on a milestone, 1 by the road-
side, in the early morning, a very unlikely personage,
one would think, to say,
1 We confess to being considerably affected when we look
at this odd little fellow, as he sits there with his innocent
upturned toes, and a certain forlorn dignity and meek sadness,
as of ' one who once had wings. ' What is he ? and whence ?
Is he surface or substance ? is he smooth and warm ? is he
glossy, like a blackberry ? or has he on him ' the raven down
of darkness,' like an unfledged chick of night? and if we
smoothed him, would he smile ? Does that large eye wink ?
and is it a hole through to the other side ? (whatever that may
be ;) or is that a small crescent moon of darkness swimming
in its disc ? or does the eye disclose a bright light from within,
where his soul sits and enjoys bright day ? Is he a point of
admiration whose head is too heavy, or a quaver or crotchet
that has lost his neighbours, and fallen out of the scale ? Is he
an aspiring Tadpole in search of an idea ? What have been,
and what will be, the fortunes of this our small Nigel (Nigellus) ?
Think of 'Elia' having him sent up from the Goblin Valley,
packed in wool, and finding him lively ! how he and ' Mary'
would doat upon him, feeding him upon some celestial, unspeak-
able pap, 'sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes, or Cytherea's
breath.' How the brother and sister would croon over him
'with murmurs made to bless,' calling him their 'tender novice'
' in the first bloom of his nigritude,' their belated straggler from
the 'rear of darkness thin," their little night-shade, not deadly,
their infantile Will-o'-the-wisp caught before his sins, their 'poor
Blot,' 'their innocent Blackness,' their 'dim Speck.'
Henry Vaughan. 321
' I go, I go ; look how I go !
Swifter than arrow from the Tartar's bow. '
We can more easily imagine him as one of those
Sprites
' That do ran
By the triple Hecat's team,
From the presence of the Sun,
Following darkness like a dream.'
Henry, our poet, was born in 1621, and had a
twin-brother, Thomas. Newton, his birth-place, is
now a farm-house on the banks of the Usk, the
scenery of which is of great beauty. The twins
entered Jesus College, Oxford, in 1638. This was
early in the Great Rebellion, and Charles then kept
his Court at Oxford. The young Vaughans were hot
Royalists ; Thomas bore arms, and Henry was im-
prisoned. Thomas, after many perils, retired to
Oxford, and devoted his life to alchemy, under the
patronage of Sir Robert Murray, Secretary of State
for Scotland, himself addicted to these studies. He
published a number of works, with such titles as
' Anthroposophia Theomagica, or a Discourse of the
Nature of Man, and his State after Death, grounded
on his Creator's Proto-chemistry ;' ' Magia Adamica,
with a full discovery of the true Ccelum terroe, or the
Magician's Heavenly Chaos and the first matter of
all things.
Henry seems to have been intimate with the
famous wits of his time : ' Great Ben,' Cartwright,
x
322 Huiry Vaughan.
Randolph, Fletcher, etc. His first publication was
in 1 646 : ' Poerns, with the Tenth Satyre of Juvenal
Englished, by Henry Vaughan, Gent.' After taking
his degree in London as M.D., he settled at his
birthplace, Newton, where he lived and died the
doctor of the district. About this time he prepared
for the press his little volume, ' Olor Iscanus, the
Swan of Usk,' which was afterwards published by his
brother Thomas, without the poet's consent. We
are fortunate in possessing a copy of this curious
volume, which is now marked in the Catalogues as
'fiariss.' It contains a few original poems ; some of
them epistles to his friends, hit off with much vigour,
wit, and humour. Speaking of the change of times,
and the reign of the Roundheads, he says,
' Here's brotherly Ruffs and Beards, and a strange sight
Of high monumental Hats, tane at the fight
Of eighty-eight ; while every Burgesse foots
The mortal Pavement in eternall boots.'
There is a line in one of the letters which strikes
us as of great beauty :
' Feed on the vocal silence of his eye.'
And there is a very clever poem Ad Amicuin
Foeneratorem, in defiance of his friend's demand of
repayment of a loan.
There is great richness and delicacy of expression
in these two stanzas of an epithalamium :
' Blessings as rich and fragrant crown your heads,
As the mild heaven on roses sheds,
Henry Vaughan. 323
When at their cheeks (like pearls) they weare
The clouds that court them in a tear.
' Fresh as the houres may all your pleasures be,
And healthfull as Eternitie ! .
Sweet as the flowre's first breath, and close
As th' unseen spreadings of the Rose
When she unfolds her curtained head,
And makes her bosome the Sun's bed ! '
The translations from Ovid, Boece, and Cassimir,
are excellent.
The following lines conclude an invitation to a
friend :
' Come then ! and while the slow isicle hangs
At the stiffe thatch, and Winter's frosty pangs
Benumme the year, blithe as of old let us
Mid' noise and war, of peace and mirth discusse.
This portion thou wert born for. Why should we
Vex at the time's ridiculous miserie ?
An age that thus hath fooled itself, and will,
Spite of thy teeth and mine, persist so still.
Let's sit then at this fire ; and, while wee steal
A revell in the Town, let others seal,
Purchase, and cheat, and who can let them pay,
Till those black deeds bring on the darksome day.
Innocent spenders wee ! a better use
Shall wear out our short lease, and leave the obtuse
Rout to their husks. They and their bags at best
Have cares in earnest. Wee care for a jest ! '
When about thirty years of age, he had a long and
serious illness, during which his mind underwent an
entire and final change on the most important of all
subjects; and thenceforward he seems to have lived
' soberly, righteously, and godly.'
324 Henry VaugJian.
In his Preface to the ' Silex Scintillans] he says,
' The God of the spirits of all flesh hath granted me
a further use of mine than I did look for in the body ;
and when I expected and had prepared for a message
of death, then did he answer me with life, I hope
to his glory, and my great advantage ; that I may
flourish not with leafe only, but with some fruit also.'
A.nd he speaks of himself as one of the converts of
' that blessed man, Mr. George Herbert.'
Soon after, he published a little volume, called
'Flares Solitudinis} partly prose and partly verse.
The prose, as Mr. Lyte justly remarks, is simple and
nervous, unlike his poetry, which is occasionally de-
formed with the conceit of his time.
The verses entitled ' St. Paulinus to his wife
Theresia,' have much of the vigour and thoughtful-
ness and point of Cowper. In 1655, he published a
second edition, or more correctly a re-issue, for it was
not reprinted, of his Silex Srintillans, with a second
part added. He seems not to have given anything
after this to the public, during the next forty years of
his life.
He was twice married, and died in 1695, aged 73,
at Newton, on the banks of his beloved Usk, where he
had spent his useful, blameless, and, we doubt not,
happy life; living from day to day in the eye of
Nature, and in his solitary rides and walks in that
wild and beautiful country, finding full exercise for
Henry Vaugluin. 325
that fine sense of the beauty and wondrousness of all
visible things, ' the earth and every common sight,'
the expression of which he has so worthily embodied
in his poems.
In < The Retreate,' he thus expresses this passion-
ate love of Nature
' Happy those early dayes, when I
Shin'd in my Angell-infancy !
Before I understood this place
Appointed for my second race,
Or taught my soul to fancy ought
But a white, Celestiall thought ;
When yet I had not walkt above
A mile or two from my first love,
And looking back, at that short space,
Could see a glimpse of his bright face;
When on some gilded Cloud or flowre
My gazing soul would dwell an houre,
And in those weaker glories spy
Some shadows of eternity ;
Before I taught my tongue to wound
My Conscience with a sinfule sound,
Or had the black art to dispence
A sev'rall sinne to ev'iy sence,
But felt through all this fleshly dresse
Bright shootes of everlastingnesse.
O how I long to travell back,
And tread again that ancient track !
That I might once more reach that plaine,
Where first I left my glorious traine ;
From whence th' Inlightned spirit sees
That shady City of Palme trees.'
To use the words of Lord Jeffrey as applied to
Shakspere, Vaughan seems to have had in large
326 Henry Vaughan.
measure and of finest quality, ' that indestructible
love of flowers, and odours, and dews, and clear
waters, and soft airs and sounds, and bright skies,
and woodland solitudes, and moonlight, which are
the material elements of poetry ; and that fine sense
of their '.indefinable relation to mental emotion which
is its essence and its vivifying power.'
And though what Sir Walter says of the country
surgeon is too true, that he is worse fed and harder
wrought than any one else in the parish, except it be
his horse ; still, to a man like Vaughan, to whom the
love of nature and its scrutiny was a constant pas-
sion, few occupations could have furnished ampler
and more exquisite manifestations of her magnifi-
cence and beauty. Many of his finest descriptions
give us quite the notion of their having been com-
posed when going his rounds on his Welsh pony
among the glens and hills, and their unspeakable
solitudes. Such lines as the following to a Star
were probably direct from nature on some cloudless
night :
' Whatever 'tis, whose beauty here below
Attracts thee thus, and makes thee stream and flow,
And winde and curie, and wink and smile,
Shifting thy gate and guile.'
He is one of the earliest of our poets who treats
external nature subjectively rather than objectively,
in which he was followed by Gray (especially in his
Henry Vaughan. 327
letters) and Collins and Cowper, and in some mea-
sure by Warton, until it reached its consummation,
and perhaps its excess, in Wordsworth.
We shall now give our readers some specimens
from the reprint of the Silex by Mr. Pickering, so
admirably edited by the Rev. H. F. Lyte, himself a
true poet, of whose careful life of our author we have
made very free use.
THE TIMBER.
' Sure thou didst flourish once ! and many Springs,
Many bright mornings, much dew, many showers
Past o'er thy head : many light Hearts and Wings,
Which now are dead, lodg'd in thy living bowers.
And still a new succession sings and flies ;
Fresh groves grow up, and their green branches shoot
Towards the old and still enduring skies ;
While the low Violet thriveth at their root.
But thou beneath the sad and heavy Line
Of death dost waste all senseless, cold and dark ;
Where not so much as dreams of light may shine,
Nor any thought of greenness, leaf or bark.
And yet, as if some deep hate and dissent,
Bred in thy growth betwixt high winds and thec,
Were still alive, thou dost great storms resent,
Before they come, and know'st how near they be.
Else all at rest thou lyest, and the fierce breath
Of tempests can no more disturb thy ease ;
But this thy strange resentment after death
Means only those who broke in life thy peace.'
This poem is founded upon the superstition that a
tree which had been blown down by the wind gave
328 Henry Vaughan.
signs of restlessness and anger before the coming of
a storm from the quarter whence came its own fall.
It seems to us full of the finest phantasy and expres-
THE WORLD.
' I saw Eternity the other night
Like a great Ring of pure and endless light,
All calm as it was bright ;
And round beneath it, Time in hours, days, years,
Driv'n by the spheres
Like a vast shadow mov'd, in which the world
And all her train were hurl'd.'
There is a wonderful magnificence about this; and
what a Bunyan-like reality is given to the vision by
' the other night /'
MAN.
' Weighing the stedfastness and state
Of some mean things which here below reside,
Where birds like watchful Clocks the noiseless date
And Intercourse of times divide,
Where Bees at night get home and hive, and flowrs,
Early as well as late,
Rise with the Sun, and set in the same bowrs :
I would, said I, my God would give
The staidness of these things to man ! for these
To His divine appointments ever cleave,
And no new business breaks their peace ;
The birds nor sow nor reap, yet sup and dine,
The flowres without clothes live,
Yet Solomon was never drest so fine.
Man hath still either toyes or Care ;
He hath no root, nor to one place is ty*d,
Henry Vaughan. 329
But ever restless and Irregular
About this Earth doth run and ride.
He knows he hath a home, but scarce knows where ;
He says it is so far,
That he hath quite forgot how to "go there.
He knocks at all doors, strays and roams :
Nay hath not so much wit as some stones have,
Which in the darkest nights point to their homes
By some hid sense their Maker gave :
Man is the shuttle, to whose winding quest
And passage through these looms
God order'd motion, but ordain'd no rest. '
There is great moral force about this ; its measure
and words put one in mind of the majestic lines of
Shirley, beginning
' The glories of our earthly state
Are shadows, not substantial things.'
COCK-CROWING.
' Father of lights ! what Sunnie seed,
What glance of day hast thou confin'd
Into this bird ? To all the breed
This busie Ray thou hast assign'd ;
Their magnetisme works all night,
And dreams of Paradise and light.
Their eyes watch for the morning-hue,
Their little grain expelling night
So shines and sings, as if it knew
The path unto the house of light.
It seems their candle, howe'er done,
Was tinn'd and lighted at the sunne.'
This is a conceit, but an exquisite one.
33 Henry Vaughan.
PROVIDENCE.
' Sacred and secret hand !
By whose assisting, swift command
The Angel shewd that holy Well,
Which freed poor Hagar from her fears,
And turn'd to smiles the begging tears
Ofyong, distressed Ishmael. '
There is something very beautiful and touching in
the opening of this on Providence, and in the ' yong
distressed Ishmael.'
THE DAWNING.
' Ah ! what time wilt thou come ? when shall that crie,
The Bridegroome's Comming ! fill the sky ?
Shall it in the Evening run
When our words and works are done ?
Or will thy all-surprizing light
Break at midnight,
When either sleep, or some dark pleasure
Possesseth mad man without measure ?
Or shall these early, fragrant hours
Unlock thy bowres ?
And with their blush of light descry
Thy locks crown'd with eternitie ?
Indeed, it is the only time
That with thy glory doth best chime ;
All now are stirring, ev'ry field
Full hymns doth yield ;
The whole Creation shakes off night,
And for thy shadow looks the light.'
This last line is full of grandeur and originality.
THE LAW AND THE GOSPEL.
' Lord, when thou didst en Sinai pitch,
And shine from Paran, when a firie Law,
Henry Vaughan. 331
Pronounc'd with thunder and thy threats, did thaw
Thy People's hearts, when all thy weeds were rich,
And Inaccessible for light,
Terrour, and might ;
How did poore flesh, which after thou didst weare,
Then faint and fear !
Thy Chosen flock, like leafs in a high wind,
Whisper 'd obedience, and their heads inclin'd.'
The idea in the last lines, we may suppose, was
suggested by what Isaiah says of the effect produced
on Ahaz and the men of Judah, when they heard that
Rezin, king of Syria, had joined Israel against them.
' And his heart was moved, and the heart of his people,
as the trees of the wood are moved by the winds?
HOLY SCRIPTURES.
' Welcome, dear book, soul's Joy and food ! The feast
Of Spirits ; Heav'n extracted lyes in thee.
Thou art life's Charter, The Dove's spotless nest
Where souls are hatch'd unto Eternitie.
In thee the hidden stone, the Manna lies ;
Thou art the great Elixir rare and Choice ;
The Key that opens to all Mysteries,
The Word in Characters, God in the Voice. '
This is very like Herbert, and not inferior to him.
In a poem having the odd mark of ' f,' and which
seems to have been written after the death of some
dear friends, are these two stanzas, the last of which
is singularly pathetic :
' They are all gone into the world of light !
And I alone sit lingring hete !
332 Henry Vaughan.
Their very memory is fair and bright,
And my sad thoughts doth clear.
He that hath found some fledg'd bird's nest may know
At first sight if the bird be flown ;
But what fair Dell or Grove he sings in now,
That is to him unknown.'
Referring to Nicodemus visiting our Lord :
THE NIGHT. (JOHN m. 2.)
' Most blest believer he !
Who in that land of darkness and blinde eyes
Thy long expected healing wings could see,
When thou didst rise ;
And, what can never more be done,
Did at midnight speak with the Sun !
O who will tell me where
He found thee at that dead and silent hour ?
What hallow'd solitary ground did bear
So rare a flower;
Within whose sacred leaves did lie
The fulness of the Deity ?
No mercy-seat of gold,
No dead and dusty Cherub, nor carved stone,
But his own living works, did my Lord hold
And lodge alone ;
Where trees and herbs did watch and peep,
And wonder, while the Jews did sleep.
Dear night ! this world's defeat ;
The stop to busie fools ; care's check and curb ;
The day of Spirits ; my soul's calm retreat
Which none disturb !
Christ's 1 progress and his prayer time ;
The hours to which high Heaven doth chime.
1 Mark L 35 ; Luke xxi. 37.
Henry Vaughan. 333
God's silent, searching flight :
When my Lord's head is filled with dew, and all
His locks are wet with the clear drops of night ;
His still, soft call ;
His knocking time ; the soul's dumb watch,
When spirits their Fair Kindred catch.
Were all my loud, evil days,
Calm and unhaunted as is Thy dark Tent,
Whose peace but by some Angel's wing or voice
Is seldom rent ;
Then I in Heaven all the long year
Would keep, and never wander here.'
At the end he has these striking words
' There is in God, some say,
A deep but dazzling darkness '
This brings to our mind the concluding sentence
of Mr. Ruskin's fifth chapter in his second volume
' The infinity of God is not mysterious, it is only
unfathomable ; not concealed, but incomprehensi-
ble ; it is a clear infinity, the darkness of the pure, un-
searchable sea. 1 Plato, if we rightly remember, says
' Truth is the body of God, light is His shadow.'
DEATH.
' Though since thy first sad entrance
By just Abel's blood,
'Tis now six thousand years well nigh,
And still thy sovereignty holds good ;
Yet by none art thou understood.
We talk and name thee with much ease,
As a tryed thing,
And every one can slight his lease,
As if it ended in a Spring,
Which shades and bowers doth rent-free bring.
334 Henry Vaughan.
To thy dark land these heedless go,
But there was One
Who search'd it quite through to and fro,
And then, returning like the Sun,
Discover'd all that there is done.
And since His death we throughly see
All thy dark way ;
Thy shades but thin and narrow be,
Which his first looks will quickly fray :
Mists make but triumphs for the day.'
THE WATER-FALL.
' With what deep murmurs, through time's silent stealth,
Doth thy transparent, cool and watry wealth
Here flowing fall,
And chide and call,
As if his liquid, loose Retinue staid
Lingring, and were of this steep place afraid.'
THE SHOWER.
' Waters above ! Eternal springs !
The dew that silvers the Dove's wings !
O welcome, welcome to the sad !
Give dry dust drink, drink that makes glad.
Many fair Evenings, many flowers
Sweetened with rich and gentle showers,
Have I enjoyed, and down have run
Many a fine and shining Sun ;
But never, till this happy hour,
Was blest with such an evening shower ! '
What a curious felicity about the repetition of
: drink' in the fourth line.
Henry Vaughan. 335
' Isaac's Marriage' is one of the best of the pieces,
but is too long for insertion.
'THE RAINBOW'
has seldom been better sung :
' Still young-and fine ! but what is still in view
We slight as old and soil'd, though fresh and new.
How bright wert thou, when Shem's admiring eye
Thy burnisht, flaming Arch did first descry !
When Terah, Nahor, Haran, Abram, Lot,
The youthful world's gray fathers in one knot,
Did with intentive looks watch every hour
For thy new light, and trembled at each shower !
When thou dost shine darkness looks white and fair,
Forms turn to Musick, clouds to smiles and air :
Rain gently spends his honey-drops, and pours
Balm on the cleft earth, milk on grass and flowers.
Bright pledge of peace and Sunshine ! the sure tye
Of thy Lord's hand, the object 1 of His eye !
When I behold thee, though my light be dim,
Distant and low, I can in thine see Him
Who looks upon thee from His glorious throne,
And mindes the Covenant 'twixt All and One. '
What a knot of the grey fathers !
'Terah, Nahor, Haran, Abram, Lot!'
Our readers will see whence Campbell stole, and
how he spoiled in the stealing (by omitting the word
' youthful '), the well-known line in his ' Rainbow '
' How came the world's grey fathers forth
To view the sacred sign. '
1 Gen. ix. 16.
336 Henry Vaughan.
Campbell did not disdain to take this, and no one
will say much against him, though it looks ill, occur-
ring in a poem on the rainbow ; but we cannot so
easily forgive him for saying that ' Vaughan is one of
the harshest even of the inferior order of conceit,
having some few scattered thoughts that meet our
eye amidst his harsh pages, like wild-flowers on a
barren heath.'
' Rules and Lessons ' is his longest and one of his
best poems; but we must send our readers to the
book itself, where they will find much to make them
grateful to ' The Silurist,' and to Mr. Pickering, who
has already done such good service for the best of
our elder literature.
We have said little about the deep godliness, the
spiritual Christianity, with which every poem is pene-
trated and quickened. Those who can detect and
relish this best, will not be the worse pleased at our
saying little about it. Vaughan's religion is deep,
lively, personal, tender, kindly, impassioned, tem-
perate, central. His religion grows up, effloresces
into the ideas and forms of poetry as naturally, as
noiselessly, as beautifully as the life of the unseen
seed finds its way up into the ' bright consummate
flower.'
Of ' IX. Poems by V.,' we would say with the
Quarterly, /3aia p\v, aAAa TOAA. They combine
Henry Vaiighan. 337
rare excellences; the concentration, the finish, the
gravity of a man's thought, with the tenderness, the
insight, the constitutional sorrowfulness of a woman's
her purity, her passionateness, her delicate and
keen sense and expression. We confess we would
rather have been the author of any one of the nine
poems in this little volume, than of the somewhat
tremendous, absurd, raw, loud, and fuliginous ' Festus,'
with his many thousands of lines and his amazing
reputation, his bad English, bad religion, bad philo-
sophy, and very bad jokes his 'buttered thunder'
(this is his own phrase), and his poor devil of a
Lucifer we would, we repeat (having in this our
subita ac sceva indlgnatio run ourselves a little out of
breath), as much rather keep company with 'V.' than
with Mr. Bailey, as we would prefer going to sea for
pleasure, in a trim little yacht, with its free motions,
its quiet, its cleanliness, to taking a state berth in
some Fire-King steamer of one thousand horse
power, with his mighty and troublous throb, his
smoke, his exasperated steam, his clangour, and fire
and fury, his oils and smells.
Had we time, and were this the fit place, we could,
we think, make something out of this comparison of
the boat with its sail and its rudder, and the unseen,
wayward, serviceable winds playing about it, inspir-
ing it, and swaying its course, and the iron steamer,
with its machinery, its coarse energy, its noises and
Y
338 Henry Vazighan.
philosophy, its ungainly build and gait, its perilous-
ness from within ; and we think we could show how
much of what Aristotle, Lord Jeffrey, Charles Lamb,
or Edmund Burke would have called genuine poetry
there is in the slender 'V.,' and how little in the
big 'Festus.' We have made repeated attempts,
but we cannot get through this poem. It beats us.
We must want the Festus sense. Some of our best
friends, with whom we generally agree on such mat-
ters, are distressed .for us, and repeat long passages
with great energy and apparent intelligence and
satisfaction. Meanwhile, having read the six pages
of public opinion at the end of the third and People's
edition, we take it for granted that it is a great per-
formance, that, to use one of the author's own words*
there is a mighty ' somethingness' 1 about it and we
can entirely acquiesce in the quotation from The
Sunday Times, that they ' read it with astonishment,
and closed it with bewilderment.' It would appear
from these opinions, which from their intensity,
variety, and number (upwards of 50), are curious
signs of the times, that Mr. Bailey has not so much
improved on, as happily superseded the authors of
Job and Ecclesiastes, of the Divine Comedy, of
Paradise Lost and Regained, of Dr. Faustus, Hamlet,
and Faust, of Don Juan, the Course of Time, St.
Leon, the Jolly Beggars, and the Loves of the
Angels.
Henry Vaughan. 339
He is more sublime and simple than Job more
royally witty and wise, more to the quick and the
point than Solomon more picturesque, more in-
tense, more pathetic than Dante more Miltonic (we
have no other word) than Milton more dreadful,
more curiously blasphemous, more sonorous than
Marlowe more worldly-wise and clever, and intel-
lectually svelt than Goethe. More passionate, more
eloquent, more impudent than Byron more ortho-
dox, more edifying, more precocious than Pollok
more absorptive and inveterate than Goodwin ; and
more hearty and tender, more of love and manhood
all compact than Burns more gay than Moore
more /xvpiavous than Shakspeare.
It may be so. We have made repeated and reso-
lute incursions in various directions into its torrid
zone, but have always come out greatly scorched and
stunned and affronted. Never before did we come
across such an amount of energetic and tremendous
words, going ' sounding on their dim and perilous
way,' like a cataract at midnight not flowing like a
stream, nor leaping like a clear waterfall, but always
among breakers roaring and tearing and tempesting
with a sort of transcendental din ; and then what
power of energizing and speaking, and philosophizing
and preaching, and laughing and joking and love-
making, in vacua ! As far as we can judge, and as
far as we can keep our senses in such a region, it
34 Henry Vaughan.
seems to us not a poem at all, hardly even poetical
but rather the materials for a poem, made up of
science, religion, and love, the (very raw) materials
of a structure as if the bricks and mortar, and lath
and plaster, and furniture, and fire and fuel and meat
and drink, and inhabitants male and female, of a
house were all mixed ' through other' in one enorm-
ous imbroglio. It is a sort of fire-mist, out of which
poetry, like a star, might by curdling, condensation,
crystallization, have been developed, after much
purging, refining, and cooling, much time and pains.
Mr. Bailey is, we believe, still a young man, full of
energy full, we doubt not, of great and good aims ;
let him read over a passage, we daresay he knows
it well, in the second book of Milton on Church
Government, he will there, among many other things
worthy of his regard, find that ' the wily subtleties
and refluxes of man's thoughts from within,' which is
the haunt and main region of his song, may be
'painted out and described' with 'a solid and treat-
able smoothness' If he paint out and describe after
this manner, he may yet more than make up for this
sin of his youth ; and let him take our word for it
and fling away nine-tenths of his adjectives, and in
the words of Old Shirley
' Compose his poem clean without 'em.
A row of stately SUBSTANTIVES would march
Like Switzers, and bear all the fields before 'em ;
Henry Vaughan. 341
Carry their weight ; show fair, like Deeds enroll'd ;
Not Writs, that are first made and after filed.
Thence first came up the title of Blank Verse ;
You know, sir, what Blank signifies ; when the sense,
First framed, is tied with adjectives like points,
Hang 'I, 'tis pedantic vulgar poetry.
Let children, ivhen they versify, stick Jure
And there, these piddling -words for want of matter.
Poets write masculine numbers. '
Here are some of V.'s Roses
THE GRAVE.
' I stood within the grave's o'ershadowing vault ;
Gloomy and damp it stretch'd its vast domain ;
Shades were its boundary ; for my strain'd eye sought
For other limit to its width in vain.
Faint from the entrance came a daylight ray,
And distant sound of living men and things ;
This, in th' encountering darkness pass'd away,
That, took the tone in which a mourner sings.
I lit a torch at a sepulchral lamp,
Which shot a thread of light amid the gloom ;
And feebly burning 'gainst the rolling damp,
I bore it through the regions of the tomb.
Around me stretch'd the slumbers of the dead,
Whereof the silence ached upon my ear ;
More and more noiseless did I make my tread,
And yet its echoes chill'd my heart with fear.
The former men of every age and place,
From all their wand' rings gather'd, round me lay ;
The dust of wither' d Empires did I trace,
And stood 'mid Generations pass'd away.
I saw whole cities, that in flood or fire,
Or famine or the plague, gave up their breath ;
342 Henry Vaughan.
Whole armies whom a day beheld expire,
Swept by ten thousands to the arms of Death.
I saw the old world's white and wave-swept bones,
A giant heap of creatures that had been ;
Far and confused the broken skeletons
Lay strewn beyond mine eye's remotest ken.
Death's various shrines the Urn, the Stone, the Lamp-
Were scatter'd round, confused, amid the dead;
Symbols and Types were mould'ring in the damp,
Their shapes were waning and their meaning fled.
Unspoken tongues, perchance in praise or wo,
Were character'd on tablets Time had swept ;
And deep -were half their letters hid below '
The thick small dust of those they once had wept.
No hand was here to wipe the dust away ;
No reader of the writing traced beneath ;
No spirit sitting by its form of clay ;
No sigh nor sound from all the heaps of Death.
One place alone had ceased to hold its prey ;
A form had press 'd il and was there nc more ;
The garments of the Grave beside it lay,
Where once they wrapped him on the rocky floor.
He only -with returning footsteps broke
Tl? eternal calm "wherewith the Tomb was bound ;
Among the sleeping Dead alone He woke,
And bless 1 d iui!h oittstntcKd hands the host around.
Well is it that such blessing hovers here,
To soothe each sad survivor of the throng,
Who haunt the portals oflht solemn sphere,
And pour their wo the loaded air along.
They to the 7>erge have follow' 1 d what they love,
And on M insuperable threshold stand ;
With cherished names its speechless calm reproru,
And stretch in the abyss their ungrasp 'd hand.
Henry Vaughan. 343
But vainly there they seek their soul's relief,
And of th' obdurate Grave its prey implore ;
Till Death himself shall medicine their grief,
Closing their eyes by those they wept before.
All that have died, the Earth's whole race, repose
Where Death collects his Treasures, heap on heap ;
O'er each one's busy day, the nightshades close ;
Its Actors, Sufferers, Schools, Kings, Armies sleep.'
The lines in italics are of the highest quality, both
in thought and word ; the allusion to Him who by
dying abolished death, seems to us wonderfully fine
sudden, simple it brings to our mind the lines
already quoted from Vaughan :
1 But there was One
Who search'd it quite through to and fro,
And then, returning like the Sun,
Discover'd all that there is done. '
What a rich line this is !
' And pour their wo the loaded air along.'
' The insuperable threshold ! '
Do our readers remember the dying Corinne's
words? Je mourrais seule-au reste, ce moment se
passe de secours; nos amis ne peuvent nous suivre
que jusqitau seuil de la vie. Z,d, commencent des
pensees dont le trouble et la profondeur ne sauraient se
confier.
We have only space for one more verses entitled
' Heart' s-Ease.'
344 Henry Vaughan.
HEART'S-EASE.
' Oh, Heart's-Ease, dost thou lie within that flower ?
How shall I draw thee thence ? so much I need
The healing aid of thine enshrined power
To veil the past and bid the time good speed !
I gather it it withers on my breast ;
The heart's-ease dies when it is laid on mine ;
Methinks there is no shape by Joy possess'd,
Would better fare than thou, upon that shrine.
Take from me things gone by oh, change the past
Renew the lost restore me the decay'd ;
Bring back the days whose tide has ebb'd so fast
Give form again to the fantastic shade !
My hope, that never grew to certainty,
My youth, that perish'd in its vain desire,
My fond ambition, crush' d ere it could be
Aught save a self-consuming, wasted fire :
Bring these anew, and set me once again
In the delusion of Life's Infancy
I was not happy, but I knew not then
That happy I was never doom'd to be.
Till these things are, and powers divine descend
Love, kindness, joy, and hope, to gild my day,
In vain the emblem leaves towards me bend,
Thy Spirit, Heart's-Ease, is too far away ! '
We would fain have given two poems entitled
' Bessy ' and ' Youth and Age.' Everything in this
little volume is select and good. Sensibility and
sense in right measure, proportion and keeping,
and in pure, strong, classical language ; no intem-
perance of thought or phrase. Why does not ' V.'
write more ?
Henry Vaughan. 345
We do not very well know how to introduce our
friend Mr. Ellison, ' The Bornnatural,' who addresses
his ' Madmoments to the Lightheaded of Society at
large.' We feel as a father, a mother, or other near
of kin would at introducing an ungainly gifted and
much-loved son or kinsman, who had the knack of
putting his worst foot foremost, and making himself
imprimis ridiculous.
There is something wrong in all awkwardness, a
want of jAture somewhere, and we feel affronted even
still, p.'ter we have taken the Bornnatural 1 to our
Jxjart, and admire and love him, at his absurd gra-
tuitous self-befoolment. The book is at first sight
one farrago of oddities and offences coarse foreign
paper bad printing italics broad-cast over every
page the words run into each other in a way we are
glad to say is as yet quite original, making such ex-
traordinary monsters of words as these beingsriddle
sunbeammotes gooddeed midjune summerair
selffavour seraphechoes puredeedprompter bark-
skeel, etc. Now we like Anglo-Saxon and the poly-
gamous German, 2 but we like better the well of
1 In his Preface he explains the title Bornnatural, as meaning
' one who inherits the natural sentiments and tastes to which he
was born, still artunsullied and customfree.'
2 ex. gr. Konstantinopolitanischerdudcls<.T.ckspfeifergeselle.
Here is a word as long as the sea-serpent but, like it, having
a head and tail, being what lawyers call unum quid not an up
and down series of infatuated phocce, as Professor Owen some-
346 Henry Vaughan.
English undefiled a well, by-the-bye, much oftener
spoken of than drawn from ; but to fashion such
words as these words are, is as monstrous as for a
painter to compose an animal not out of the elements,
but out of the entire bodies of several, of an ass, for
instance, a cock, and a crocodile, so as to produce
an outrageous individual, with whom even a duck-
billed Platypus would think twice before he frater-
nized ornithorynchous and paradoxical though he
be, poor fellow.
And yet our Bornnatural's two thick and closely
small-printed volumes are as full of poetry as is an
' impassioned grape ' of its noble liquor.
He is a true poet. But he has not the art of
singling his thoughts, an art as useful in composition
as in husbandry, as necessary for young fancies as
young turnips. Those who have seen our turnip
fields in early summer, with the hoers at their work,
will understand our reference. If any one wishes to
read these really remarkable volumes, we would ad-
vise them to begin with ' Season Changes ' and
' Emma, a Tale.' We give two Odes on Psyche,
which are as nearly perfect as anything out of Milton
or Tennyson.
The story is the well-known one of Psyche and
what insolently asserts. Here is what the Bornnatural would
have made of it
ACcnstantiiiopolitanbagpiperontofhisappreniiceship.
Henry Vaughaii. 347
Cupid, told at such length, and with so much beauty,
pathos, and picturesqueness by Apuleius, in his
' Golden Ass.' Psyche is the human soul a beauti-
ful young woman. Cupid is spiritual, heavenly love
a comely youth. They are married, and live in
perfect happiness, but, by a strange decree of fate, he
comes and goes unseen, tarrying only for the night ;
and he has told her, that if she looks on him with her
bodily eye, if she tries to break through the darkness
in which they dwell, then he must leave her, and for
ever. Her two sisters Anger and Desire, tempt
Psyche. She yields to their evil counsel, and thus it
fares with her :
ODE TO PSYCHE.
' I . Let not a sigh be breathed, or he is flown !
With tiptoe stealth she glides, and throbbing breast,
Towards the bed, like one who dares not own
Her purpose, and half shrinks, yet cannot rest
From her rash Essay : in one trembling hand
She bears a lamp, which sparkles on a sword ;
In the dim light she seems a wandering dream
Of loveliness : 'tis Psyche and her Lord,
Her yet unseen, who slumbers like a beam
Of Moonlight, vanishing as soon as scann'd !
2. One Moment, and all bliss hath fled her heart,
Like windstole odours from the rosebud's cell,
Or as the earthdashed dewdrop which no art
Can e'er replace : alas ! we learn full well
How beautiful the Past when it is o'er,
But with seal'd eyes we hurry to the brink,
348 Henry Vaughan.
Blind as the waterfall : oh, stay thy feet,
Thou rash one, be content to know no more
Of bliss than thy heart teaches thee, nor think
The sensual eye can grasp a form more sweet
3. Than that which for itself the soul should chuse
For higher adoration ; but in vain !
Onward she moves, and as the lamp's faint hues
Flicker around, her charmed eyeballs strain,
For there he lies in undreamt loveliness !
Softly she steals towards him, and bends o'er
His slumberlidded eyes, as a lily droops
Faint o'er a folded rose : one caress
She would but dares not take, and as she stood,
An oildrop from the lamp fell burning sore !
4. Thereat sleepfray'd, dreamlike the God takes Wing
And soars to his own skies, while Psyche strives
To clasp his foot, and fain thereon would cling,
But falls insensate ;
Psyche ! thou shouldst have taken that high gift
Of Love as it was meant, that mystery
Did ask thy faith, the Gods do test our worth,
And ere they grant high boons our heart would sift !
5. Hadst thou no divine Vision of thine own ?
Didst thou not see the Object of thy Love
Clothed with a Beauty to dull clay unknown ?
And could not that bright Image, far above
The Reach of sere Decay, content thy Thought ?
Which with its glory would have wrapp'd thee round,
To the Gravesbrink, untouched by Age or Pain !
Alas ! we mar what Fancy's Womb has brought
Forth of most beautiful, and to the Bound
Of Sense reduce the Helen of the Brain ! '
What a picture ! Psyche, pale with love and fear,
bending in the uncertain light, over her lord, with
Henry Vaughan. 349
the rich flush of health and sleep and manhood on
his cheek, ' as a lily droops faint o'er a folded rose /'
We remember nothing anywhere finer than this.
ODE TO PSYCHE.
' I. Why stand'st thou thus at Gaze
In the faint Tapersrays,
With strained Eyeballs fixed upon that Bed ?
Has he then flown away,
Lost, like a Star in Day,
Or like a Pearl in Depths unfathomed ?
Alas ! thou hast done very ill,
Thus with thine Eyes the Vision of thy Soul to kill !
2. Thought's! thou that earthly Light
Could then assist thy Sight,
Or that the Limits of Reality
Could grasp Things fairer than
Imagination's Span,
Who communes with the Angels of the Sky,
Thou graspest at the Rainbow, and
Wouldst make it as the Zone with which thy Waist is
spanned !
3. And what find'st thou in his Stead ?
Only the empty Bed !
Thou sought'st the Earthly and therefore
The heavenly is gone, for that must ever soar !
4. For the bright World of
Pure and boundless Love
What hast thou found ? alas ! a narrow room !
Put out that Light,
Restore thy Soul its Sight,
For better 'tis to dwell in outward Gloom
Than thus, by the vile Body's eye,
To rob the Soul of its Infinity !
350 Henry Vanghan.
5. Love, Love has Wings, and he
Soon out of Sight will flee,
Lost in far Ether to the sensual Eye,
But the Soul's Vision true
Can track him, yea, up to
The Presence and the Throne of the Most High :
For thence he is, and tho' he dwell below,
To the Soul only he his genuine Form will show ! '
Mr. Ellison was a boy of twenty-three when he
wrote this. That, with so much command of ex-
pression and of measure, he should run waste and
formless and even void, as he does in other parts of
his volumes, is very mysterious and very distressing.
How we became possessed of the poetical Epistle
from ' E. V. K. to his Friend in Town,' is more easily-
asked than answered. We avow ourselves in the
matter to have acted for once on M. Proudhon's
maxim ' La propriete c'est le vol.' 1 We merely say, in
our defence, that it is a shame in ' E. V. K.,' be he
who he may, to hide his talent in a napkin, or keep
it for his friends alone. It is just such men and such
poets as he that we most need at present, sober-
minded and sound-minded and well-balanced, whose
genius is subject to their judgment, and who have
genius and judgment to begin with a part of the
poetical stock in trade with which many of our
living writers are not largely furnished. The Epistle
is obviously written quite off-hand, but it is the
off-hand of a master, both as to material and work-
manship. He is of the good old manly, classical
Henry Vaugkan. 351
school. His thoughts have settled and cleared them-
selves before forming into the mould of verse. They
are in the style of Stewart Rose's vers de societe, but
have more of the graphic force and deep feeling and
fine humour of Crabbe and Cowper in their sub-
stance, with a something of their own which is to us
quite as delightful. But our readers may judge.
After upbraiding, with much wit, a certain faithless
town-friend for not making out his visit, he thus
describes his residence :
' Though its charms be few,
The place will please you, and may profit too ;
My house, upon the hillside built, looks down
On a neat harbour and a lively town.
Apart, 'mid screen of trees, it stands, just where
We see the popular bustle, but not share.
Full in our front is spread a varied scene
A royal ruin, grey or clothed with green,
Church spires, tower, docks, streets, terraces, and trees,
Back'd by green fields, which mount by due degrees
Into brown uplands, stretching high away
To where, by silent tarns, the wild deer stray.
Below, with gentle tide, the Atlantic Sea
Laves the curved beach, and fills the cheerful quay,
Where frequent glides the sail, and dips the oar,
And smoking steamer halts with hissing roar.'
Then follows a long passage of great eloquence,
truth, and wit, directed against the feverish, affected,
unwholesome life in town, before which he fears
' Even he, my friend, the man whom once I knew,
Surrounded by blue women and pale men,'
has fallen a victim ; and then concludes with these
lines, which it would not be easy to match for every-
352 Henry Vaughan.
thing that constitutes good poetry. As he writes he
chides himself for suspecting his friend ; and a-, that
moment (it seems to have been written on Christmas
day) he hears the song of a thrush, and forthwith he
' bursts into a song,' as full-voiced, as native, as sweet
and strong, as that of his bright-eyed feathered friend :
' But, hark that sound ! the mavis ! can it be ?
Once more ! It is. High perched on yon bare tree,
He starts the wondering winter with his trill ;
Or by that sweet sun westering o'er the hill
Allured, or for he thinks melodious mirth
Due to the holy season of Christ's birth.
And hark ! as his clear fluting fills the air,
Low broken notes and twitterings you may hear
From other emulous birds, the brakes among ;
Fain would they also burst into a song ;
But winter warns, and muffling up their throats,
They liquid for the spring preserve their notes.
O sweet preluding ! having heard that strain,
How dare I lift my dissonant voice again ?
Let me be still, let me enjoy the time,
Bothering myself or thee no more with rugged rhyme. '
This author must not be allowed to ' muffle up his
throat,' and keep his notes for some imaginary and
far-off spring. He has not the excuse of the mavis.
He must give us more of his own ' clear fluting.' Let
him, with that keen, kindly and thoughtful eye, look
from his retreat, as Cowper did, upon the restless,
noisy world he has left, seeing the popular bustle,
not sharing it, and let his pen record in such verses
as these what his understanding and his affections
think and feel and his imagination informs, and we
shall have something in verse not unlike the letters
Henry Vaughan. 353
from Olney. There is one line which deserves to be
immortalized over the cherished bins of our wine-
fanciers, where repose their
' Dear prisoned spirits of the impassioned grape.'
What is good makes us think of what is better, as
well, and it is to be hoped more, than of what is
worse. There is no sweetness so sweet as that of
a large and deep nature ; there is no knowledge so
good, so strengthening as that of a great mind, which
is for ever filling itself afresh. ' Out of the* eater
comes forth meat ; out of the strong comes forth
sweetness.' Here is one of such l dulcedines vitret*
the sweetness of a strong man :
' Now came still evening on, and twilight grey
Had in her sober livery all things clad ;
Silence accompany'd ; for beast and bird,
They to their grassy couch, these to their nests,
Were slunk, all but the wakeful nightingale ;
She all night long her amorous descant sung ;
Silence was pleased : now glow'd the firmament
With living saphirs ; Hesperus that led
The starry host rode brightest, till the moon,
Rising in clouded majesty, at length
Apparent queen unveil'd her peerless light,
And o'er the dark her silver mantle threw.'
Were we inclined to do anything but enjoy this and
be thankful giving ourselves up to its gentleness,
informing ourselves with its quietness and beauty,
we would note the simplicity, the neutral tints, the
quietness of its language, the ' sober livery ' in which
its thoughts are clad. In the first thirty-eight words,
354 Henry Vaugkan.
twenty-nine are monosyllables. Then there is the
gradual way in which the crowning phantasy is intro-
duced. It comes upon us at once, and yet not
wholly unexpected ; it ' sweetly creeps ' into our
' study of imagination ; ' it lives and moves, but it
is a moving that is 'delicate ;' it flows in upon us
incredibili lenitate. ' Evening ' is a matter of fact,
and its stillness too a time of the day ; and
' twilight' is little more. We feel the first touch of
spiritual life in ' her sober livery,' and bolder and
deeper in ' all things clad? Still we are not deep, the
real is not yet transfigured and transformed, and we
are brought back into it after being told that ' Silence
accompanied,' by the explanatory ' for,' and the bit
of sweet natural history of the beasts and birds. The
mind dilates and is moved, its eye detained over the
picture ; and then comes that rich, ' thick warbled
note ' ' all but the wakeful nightingale ; ' this fills and
informs the ear, making it also ' of apprehension
more quick,' and we are prepared now for the great
idea coming ' into the eye and prospect of our soul '
SILENCE WAS PLEASED ! There is nothing in all
poetry above this. Still, evening and twilight grey
are now Beings, coming on, and walking over the
earth like queens, 'with Silence,'
' Admiration's speaking'st tongue,'
as their pleased companion. All is ' calm and free,'
and 'full of life ;' it is a ' Holy Time.' What a pic-
Henry Vaughan. 355
ture ! what simplicity of means ! what largeness and
perfectness of effect! what knowledge and love of
nature ! what supreme art ! what modesty and sub-
mission ! what self-possession ! what plainness, what
selectness of speech ! ' As is the height, so is the
depth. The intensities must be at once opposite
and equal. As the liberty, so the reverence for law.
As the independence, so must be the seeing and the
service, and the submission to the Supreme Will. As
the ideal genius and the originality, so must be the
resignation to the real world, the sympathy and the
intercommunion with Nature.' Coleridge's Posthu-
mous Tract, 'T/ie Idea of Life:
Since writing the above, our friend ' E.V.K.' has
shown himself curiously unaffected by ' that last in-
firmity of noble minds,' his 'clear spirit' heeds all
too little its urgent 'spur.' The following sonnets
are all we can pilfer from him. They are worth the
stealing :
AN ARGUMENT IN RHYME:.
i.
' Things that now are beget the things to be,
As they themselves were gotten by things past ;
Thou art a sire, who yesterday but wast
A child like him now prattling on thy knee ;
And he in turn ere long shall offspring see.
Effects at first, seem causes at the last,
Yet only seem ; when off their veil is cast,
All speak alike of mightier energy,
Received and pass'd along. The life that flows
Through space and time, bursts in a loftier source.
;56 Henry Vaughtin.
What 's spaced and timed is bounded, therefore shows
A power beyond, a timeless, spaceless force,
Templed in that infinitude, before
Whose light-veil'd porch men wonder and adore.
n.
Wonder ! but for we cannot comprehend
Dare not to doubt. Man, know thyself! and know
That, being what thou art, it must be so.
We creatures are, and it were to transcend
The limits of our being, and ascend
Above the Infinite, if we could show
All that He is, and how things from Him flow.
Things and their laws by Man are grasp'd and kenn'd,
But creatures must no more ; and Nature's must
Is Reason's choice ; for could we all reveal
Of God and acts creative, doubt were just.
Were these conceivable, they were not real.
Here, ignorance man's sphere of being suits,
'Tis knowledge self, or of her richest fruits.
in.
Then rest here, brother ! and within the veil
Boldly thine anchor cast. W r hat though thy boat
No shoreland sees, but undulates afloat
On soundless depths ? securely fold thy sail.
Ah ! not by daring prow and favouring gale
Man threads the gulfs of doubting and despond,
And gains a rest in being unbeyond.
Who roams the furthest, surest is to fail ;
Knowing nor what to seek, nor how to find.
Not far but near, about us, yea within,
Lieth the infinite life. The pure in mind
Dwell in the Presence, to themselves akin ;
And lo ! thou sick and health imploring soul,
He stands beside thee touch, and thou art whole.'
EXCURSUS ETHICUS.
Verius cogitatur Dens quam dicitur, et verius est quam cogi-
tatur. AUGUSTINE.
In these two things, viz., an equal indifferency for all truth
/ mean the receiving it in the love of it as truth, but not loving it
for any other reason before we know it to be true ; and in the ex-
amination of our principles, and not receiving any for such, nor
building on them, until we are fully convinced, ay rational
creatures, of their solidity, truth, and certainty consists that
freedom of the understanding which is necessary to a rational
creature, and without which it is not truly an understanding.
JOHN LOCKE.
EXCURSUS ETHICUS.
"\ T 7"E have named the excellent works at the close
of this paper more with the view of recom-
mending them to the study of such of our readers as
may be so inclined, than of reviewing them in the
technical sense, still less of going over exactly the
same ground which they have already so well occu-
pied and enriched. Our object in selecting their
names out of many others, is, that they are good
and varied, both as to time, and view, and character,
and also that we may be saved referring to them
more particularly.
Our observations shall be of a very miscellaneous
and occasional kind perhaps too much so for the
taste or judgment of our readers ; but we think that
a rambling excursion is a good and wholesome thing,
now and then.
System is good, but it is apt to enslave and con-
fine its maker. Method in art is what system is in
science ; and we, physicians, know, to our sad and
859
360 Excursus Etkicus.
weighty experience, that we are more occupied with
doing some one thing, than in knowing many other
things. System is to an art, what an external skeleton
is to a crab, something it, as well as the crab, must
escape from, if it mean to grow bigger : more of a
shield and covering than a support and instrument
of power. Our skeletons are inside our bodies, and
so generally ought our systems to be inside not
outside our minds.
Were we, for our own and our readers' satisfaction
and entertainment, or for some higher and better
end, about to go through a course of reading on the
foundation of general morals, in order to deduce
from them a code of professional ethics, to set
ourselves to discover the root, and ascend up from it
to the timber, the leaves, the fruit, and the flowers
we would not confine ourselves to a stinted brows-
ing in the ample and ancient field we would, in
right of our construction, be omnivorous, trusting to
a stout mastication, a strong digestion, an eclectic
and vigorous chylopoietic staff of appropriators and
scavengers, to our making something of everything.
We would not despise good old Plutarch's morals, or
anybody else's, because we know chemistry, and
many other things, better than he did ; nor would we
be ashamed to confess that our best morality, and our
deepest philosophy of the nature and origin of human
duty, of moral good and evil, was summed up in the
Excursus Etkicus. 361
golden rules of childhood, ' Love thy neighbour as
thyself.' ' Whatsoever ye would that men should do
unto you, do ye even so to them.' ' Every man is
thy neighbour.' ' Love is the fulfilling of the law.'
' Ye owe no man anything, but to love one another.'
This is the true birthplace of the word ought, that
which we owe to some one, and of duty, that which
is due by us ; and likewise of moral, that which
should be customary, and ethical in the same sense ;
the only custom, which it will always be a privilege,
as well as a duty to pay the only debt which must
always be running up.
It is worth remembering that names too often
become the ghosts of things, and ghosts with a devil
or a fool, instead of the original tenant inside. The
word manners means literally nothing else, and ought
never to be anything else, than the expression, the
embodiment, the pleasant flower, of an inward mos or
moral state. We may all remember that the Contes
Moraux of Marmontel which were, many of them,
anything but moral were translated so, instead of
Tales illustrative of Manners.
To go on with our excursus erraticus.
Were we going to take ourselves and our company
into the past, and visit the habitats of the great
moralists, and see the country, and make up our
minds as to what in it was what, and how much to us
it was worth, we would not keep to one line, we
362 Excursus Etkicus.
would expatiate a little and make it a ramble, not a
journey, much less an express train, with no stoppages,
we would, moreover, take our own time, choose
our own roads, and our own vehicles, we would stay
where, and as long as we found entertainment, good
lodging, and good fare, and did not lose our time
or ourselves, and we would come home, we hope,
not informed merely, but in better health and spirits,
more contented, more active, more enlightened, more
ready for our daily work. We would begin at the
beginning, and start early. In search of what is
man's normal sense of duty, and how he fs to do it,
we would take our company to that garden, planted
eastward in Eden, where were all manner of fruits,
pleasant to the eye, and good for food ; that garden
which every one believes in we don't mean geo-
graphically or geologically, but really, as a fact
in the history of the race, and relics of which
its sounds, its fragrance and beauty he meets still
everywhere within him and around him, ' like the re-
membrance of things to come,' we would there find
the law, the primal condition, under which the species
were placed by its Maker how the infinite and the
finite, God and his children, giving and receiving,
faith and works, met together, and kept in tune
how, and by whom, man was made upright, in mind
as well as body and what was that first of the
many inventions he found out, when he took of the
Excursus Ethicus. 363
tree of the knowledge of good as well as of evil, and
did eat.
Then we would move on to a wild mountain in
Arabia, standing at this day as it did on that, and
joining the multitude of that peculiar people whom
we still see in the midst of us in our busy world
unchanged, the breed still unmixed and out of the
bickering flame, the darkness, and the splendour, and
' as it were the very body of heaven in its clearness,'
the sight so exceeding terrible, we might hear those
ten commandments, which all of us have by heart,
not all in our hearts. Lest we should fail with fear,
we would go on into the sunlight of Canaan, and
forward many centuries, and in the ' Sermon on the
Mount,' sitting down among the multitudes, hear
our code of laws revised and re-issued by their
Giver, and find its summary easily carried away,
Love to God, love to man, loving our neighbour as
ourselves.
Then might we go back and visit the Shepherd
King, and carry off his io4th, 105, and upth Psalms,
and being there, we would take a lesson in morals
from his son's life that wisest and foolishest of men
and carry off with us his pithy ' Proverbs.'
Next we would intercept Paul's letter to his friends
at Rome, and make an extract of its ist chapter, and
its 1 2th and i3th, and end by copying it all ; and
having called on James the Less and the Just,
364 Excursus Ethicus.
we would get his entire epistle by heart, and shut up
this, our visit to the Holy Land, with the sound of
the last verse of the second last chapter of the
Apocalypse ringing in our ears.
We would then find Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle,
and all those noble old fellows, busy at their work,
showing us how little and how much man, with the
finest organization, and the best discipline, can do
for himself in the way of lifting himself from the
ground, and erecting himself above himself, by his
sheer strength ; and we would not fail to admire the
courage, and the deep moral intensity and desire, the
amazing beauty and energy of expression, the ampli-
tude and depth of their ideas, as if minds were once
giant as well as bodies. But we would not tarry with
them, we would wish rather to take them with us,
and get Socrates to study the Sermon on the Mount,
and Plato the Pauline Epistles, where he would meet
his fellow, and more than his match, in subtlety and
in sense, in solid living thought, in clear and passion-
ate utterance, in everything that makes thought felt,
and feeling understood, and both motive and effectual.
Then would we hurry over the dreary interval of the
middle passage of the dark ages, where Aristotle's
blind children of the mist might be seen spinning
ropes, not out of themselves, like the more intelligent
and practical spider, but out of the weary sand
ropes, signifying nothing; and we might see how,
Excursus Ethicus. 365
having parted with their senses, they had lost them-
selves, and were vox et prceterea nihil.
But we must shorten our trip. We would cool
ourselves, and visit old Hobbes of Malmesbury in
his arctic cave, and see him sitting like a polar bear,
muttering protests against the universe, nursing his
wrath as the only thing with which to warm and
cheer that sullen heart, and proclaiming that self-
love is every kind of love, and all that in man is
good. We would wonder at that palace of ice, sym-
metrical, beautiful, strong but below zero. We
would come away before we were benumbed, ad-
miring much his intrepid air, his keen and clean
teeth, his clear eye, his matchless vigour of grip,
his redeeming love for his cubs, his dreary mistake
of absolute cold for heat, frozen mercury burning as
well as molten gold. Leaving him, after trying to get
him to give up his cold fishy diet, his long winters of
splendid darkness, and come and live with us like a
Christian, we would go to an English country-house,
to Lady Masham's, at the Gates, the abode of com-
fort, cheerfulness, and thoughtful virtue ; and we
would there find John Locke, ' communing with the
man within the breast,' and listening reverently, but
like a man ; and we would carry off from her lady-
ship's table her father's (Cudworth) huge magazine
of learning, strong intellect, and lofty morality his
treatise 'concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality.'
366 Excursiis Ethicus.
Then we might call for Locke's pupil, Lord Shaftes-
bury, the great man and the courtier, but the philo-
sopher too, having glimpses of better things, and
coming very close to what we are in search of a
special moral faculty ; and we would find our friend
Dr. Henry More in his laboratory, dreaming in his
odd Platonic way, of a ' boniform facility.'
Next, we would set sail across the Atlantic, and
reach in the evening the mild skies of the 'vex't
Bermoothes,' and there find the beautiful-souled
Berkeley dreaming of ideal universities in the far
west of a new world, peopled with myriads as
happy, as intelligent, as virtuous as himself; dream-
ing, too, of his pancratic 'Tar Water,' and in
' Siris ' ascending from his innocent nostrum, by a
Jacob's ladder of easy grade, to Plato's heaven. And
being in the neighbourhood, we might as well visit
New England, and among its hedgerows and elms,
and quiet old villages, forget we are in New Hamp-
shire not in old and see in his study a country
clergyman, with a thoughtful, contented look, and an
eye rich with a grave enthusiasm Jonathan Edwards
'whose power of subtle argument, perhaps un-
matched, certainly unsurpassed among men, was
joined with a personal character which raised his
piety to fervour.' We might watch him with his
back to the wall of his room, his right heel turning
diligently in a hole of its own making in the floor,
Excursus EtJiicus. 367
and the whole man absorbed in thought ; J and we
would bring off what he thought of the ' Nature of
True Virtue, and God's chief end in the Creation ; '
and we would find that, by a mental process as
steady as that of the heel by his intrepid excogita-
tion, his downright simplicity of purpose, and the
keen temper of his instrument, he had, to borrow an
exquisite illustration, pierced through the subsoil
the gravel, the clay, and rocks down to the fresh
depths of our common nature, and brought up, as
from an Artesian well, his rich reward and ours, in
the full flow of the waters of virtue not raised, per
saltum, by pump or high pressure, but flowing, pleno-
rivo, by a force from within.
On our return, we might fall in with an ardent, but
sensible Irishman, 2 teaching moral philosophy at
Glasgow, and hitting, by a sort of felicity, on what
had been before so often missed, and satisfying man-
kind, at least, with the name of a moral sense as
distinct as our sense of bitter and sweet, soft and
hard, light and darkness. Then might we take a
turn in his garden with Bishop Butler, and hear
his wise and weighty, his simple and measured
words : ' Nations, like men, go at times deranged.'
1 Some years ago, an intelligent New England physician
told us that this was the great metaphysician's habit and
attitude of study, and that he had often seen the hole which the
molar heel made during years of meditation.
2 Hutcheson.
368 Excursus Ethicus.
' Everything is what it is, and not another thing.'
' Goodness is a fixed, steady, immoveable principle
of action.' ' Reason, with self-love and conscience,
are the chief or superior principles in the nature of
man ; and they, if we understand our true happiness,
always lead us the same way.' ' Duty and interest
are perfectly coincident, for the most part, in this
world ; and in every instance, if we take in the
future and the whole.' We would carry off all his
sermons, and indeed everything he had written, and
distribute his sermons on the Love of God, on Self-
Decaf, The Love of our Neighbour, and The Ignor-
ance of Man, all along our road, to small and great.
'"We would look in on the author of the History of
the Ethical Sciences, on his return, perhaps tired and
dispirited, from a speech on the principles of natural
and immutable law, in ' the House,' when all had
been asleep but himself and the reporters ; and we
would listen for hours to his unfolding the meanings
which others, and which he himself, attached to that
small word ought; and hear him call it ' this most
important of words:' and we would come away
charmed with the mild wisdom of his thoughts, and
the sweet richness of his words.
We would merely leave our cards at Jeremy
Bentham's, that despiser of humbug in others, and
unconscious example of it in himself, and we would
bring off his Deontological Faculty. Neither would
Excursus EtJiicus. 369
we care to stay long with that hard-headed, uncom-
fortable old man of Kcenigsberg, losing himself,
from excess of strictness, in the midst of his meta-
physics ; and we would with pity and wonder hear
him announce that dreadful ' categorical imperative '
of his, which has been said, with equal wit and truth,
to be, ' at its best, but a dark lantern, till it borrows
a utilitarian farthing candle a flaming sword that
turns every way but drives no whither ' proclaiming
a paradise lost, but in no wise pointing the way to a
paradise to be regained.
And before settling at home, we would look in and
pay our respects in our own town, to a beneficent,
benevolent, enlightened, and upright man, 1 with
whom we could agree to differ in some things, and
rejoice to agree in many ; and we would bring away
from him all that he could tell us of that ' con-
scientiousness ' the bodily organ of the inward
sense of personal right and wrong, upon the just
direction of which no one knows better than he
does depend the true safety, and dignity, and
happiness of man.
But after all our travel, we would be little the
better or the wiser, if we ourselves did not inwardly
digest and appropriate, as ' upon soul and con-
science,' all our knowledge. We would much better
not have left home. For it is true, that not the light
i George Combe.
370 Excursus Ethicus.
from heaven, not the riches from the earth, not the
secrets of nature, not the minds of men, or of our-
selves, can do us anything but evil, if our senses, our
inward and outward senses, are not kept constantly
exercised, so as to discern for ourselves what is good
and evil in us and for us. We must carry the lights
of our own consciousness and conscience into all
our researches, or we will, in all likelihood, loose our
pains.
As we have been, however, on our travels, qua
media, as well as general tourists, we shall give the
names of some of our best medical moralists : The
Oath and Law of Hippocrates, and above all, his
personal character, and the whole spirit of his writ-
ings and practice Stahl Sydenham's warning and
advice to those who purpose giving themselves to the
work of medicine the four things he would have
them to weigh well, the two admirable academic
sermons of Gaubius, De Regimine Mentis quod Medi-
corum est Gregory on the Duties of a Physician
Dr. Denman's Life, by his son, the Lord Chief-Justice,
and Dr. Gooch's not Dr. Hope's, for reasons we
might, but do not, give Dr. Baillie's character, per-
sonal and professional Dr. Abercrombie's, and the
books we have put at the end of this paper.
Dr. Percival's Ethics is a classical book, in its best
sense ; sensible, sound, temperate, clear thoughts,
Excursus Ethicus. 3 7 1
conveyed in natural, clear, persuasive language. Its
title is somewhat of a blunder, at first it was Medical
Jurisprudence and Ethics means at once more and
less than what it is made by him to represent.
The Duties of a Physician would have been less
pedantic, and more correct and homely. There is a
good deal of the stiffness of the old school about the
doctor ; he speaks in knee-breeches and buckles,
with a powdered wig, and an interminable silk
waist-coat, a gold-headed cane at his side, and his
cocked hat under his arm. To us, however, this is
a great charm of the book, and of such books. There
may be stiffness and some Johnsonian swell about
them ; some words bigger than the thoughts, like a
boy in his father's coat ; some sentences in which
the meaning ends sooner than its voice, and the
rummel resounds after having parted company with
the gumption; but with all this, there is a temperance,
and soundness, and dignity of view a good breed-
ing, and good feeling, a reticence and composure,
which, in this somewhat vapouring, turbulent, unman-
nerly age of ours, is a refreshing pleasure, though too
often one of memory.
We are truly glad to see, from a modest note by
Dr. Greenhill, the editor, that he is engaged on a
work on medical morals. He will do it well and
wisely, we have no doubt. The profession is deeply
indebted to him for his edition of Sydenham the
372 Excursus Etkiciis.
best monument the Society called by his name could
raise to that great man ; and also for his Life of
Hippocrates, in Smith's Dictionary, besides other
contributions to medical philosophy and biography.
We have placed Fuller's Holy and Profane State
on our list, specially on account of its chapters on
' The Good Physician,' ' The Life of Paracelsus,' the
' True Gentleman,' and the ' Degenerous,' and like-
wise that we might tempt our readers to enjoy the
whole of this delightful little book, and as much else
of its author as they can get hold of. They will
thank us for this, if they do not already know him,
and they will excuse us, if they do. Dr. Fuller is
a man who, like Dr. South and Sidney Smith, is so
intensely witty, that we forget, or do not notice, that
he is not less eminently wise ; and that his wit is the
laughing blossom of wisdom. Here are some of his
sententiolcE vibrantes : ' The Good Physician hansels
not his new experiments on the bodies of his patients,
letting loose mad recipes into the sick man's body, to
try how they and nature will fight it out, while he
stands by and enjoys the battle, except in desperate
cases, when death must be expelled by death. Lest
his apothecary should oversee, he oversees his apothe-
cary. He trusteth not the single witness of the
water, if better testimony may be had. For reasons
drawn from the urine alone are as brittle as the
urinal. He brings not news, with a false spy, that
Excursus Ethicus. 373
the coast is clear, till death surprises the sick man.
I know physicians love to make the best of their
patient's estate ; first, say they, it is improper that ad-
jutores vita should be nunrii mortis ; secondly, none
with their goodwill will tell bad news ; thirdly, their
fee may be the worse for it ; fourthly, it is confessing
their art beaten ; fifthly, it will poison their patient's
heart with grief. So far well ; but they may so order
it, that the party may be informed wisely, and not
outed of this world before he is provided for another.'
We give the last sentence of his Life of Para-
celsus (Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Paracelsus
Bombast, ab Hohenheim), that renowned and ill-
understood medley of evil and good, darkness and
light, quackery and skill: 'In a word, he boasted
of more than he could do ; did more cures seemingly
than really, more cures really than lawfully ; of more
parts than learning, of more fame than parts ; a
better physician than a man, a better chirurgeon
than physician.'
Here are the chief points of the ' degenerous
gentleman,' they are like mottos to the chapters on
the physiology of the noble rake in all ages : ' He
goes to school to learn in jest, and play in earnest.
His brother's serving-men, which he counts no mean
preferment, admit him into their society ; coming to
the university, his study is to study nothing ; at the
inns of court, pretending to learn law, he learns to
3/4 Excursus Ethicus.
be lawless, and grows acquainted with the " roaring
boys" Through the mediation of a scrivener, he is
introduced to some great usurer,' etc. etc.
Sir Thomas Browne's Religio Medici, though full
of true morality, of subtle and profound thought,
and most pathetic touches, as well as of his own
peculiar, grave, antique humour, and quaint expres-
sion as odd often as the root of an orchis, and, in its
expression, as richly emblazoned with colours, as
whimsically gibbous as its flower has less to do
with our immediate subject than his Christian
Morals, which are well worth the perusing. Here is
a sample : ' Live up to the dignity of thy nature ;
pursue virtue virtuously : desert not thy title to a
Divine particle have a glimpse of incomprehen-
sibles, and thoughts of things that thoughts but
tenderly touch. Lodge immaterials in thy head,
ascend until invisibles fill thy spirit with spirituals,
with the mysteries of faith, the magnalities of religion,
and thy life with the honour of God.'
This is good wholesome advice at any time, and
not the least so now, when sensible things are cross-
questioning us more keenly and urgently than ever,
when matter is disclosing fresh wonders every day,
and telling her secrets in crowds ; and, when we are
too apt to be absorbed in her to forget that there
is something else than this earth that there is more
than meets the eye and the ear that seeing is not be-
Excursus Ethicus, 375
lieving, and that it is pleasant, refreshing, and whole-
some, after the hurry and heat and din of the day,
its flaring lights and its eager work, to cool the eye
and the mind, and rest them on the silent and clear
darkness of night ' sowed with stars thick as a
field.' Let us keep everything worth keeping, and
add, not substitute ; do not let us lose ourselves in
seeking for our basic radical, or our primary cell ;
let us remember that the analytic spirit of the age
may kill as well as instruct, may do harm as well as
good ; that while it quickens the pulse, strengthens
the eye and the arm, and adds cunning to the fingers,
it may, if carried to excess, confuse the vision, stupify
and madden the brain ; and, instead of directing,
derange and destroy.
We have no book in our language to compare
with Simon's Deontologie Medicale, for largeness of
view, and earnestness and power of treatment ; it is
admirable in substance and in form, and goes through
the whole duty of the physician with great intelli-
gence, liveliness, and tact. It has what all first-
rate French writers have the charm of definite
ideas and definite expression, the ' maniere incisive '
which we so much want. Had we room, we would
gladly have quoted his remarks on style its nature
and its value to the physician ; he himself exemplifies
what he teaches.
376 Excursus Ethicus.
On this subject, we would direct attention like-
wise to the able and clever article in the British and
Foreign Review.* We cannot help quoting Buffon's
words ; they illustrate themselves. They are from
his Remarques sur le Style: ' Les ouvrages bien
Merits sont les seuls qui passeront a la posterite, la
quantitd des connaissances, la singularite cles faits, la
nouveaute' meme des decouvertes, ne sont pas de
stars garants de I'immortalite ; si les ouvrages qui les
contiennent ne roulent que sur de petits objets, s'ils
sont dents sans gout, noblesse, et sans genie, ils
pe'riront parce les connaissances, les faits, les de-
couvertes s'enlevent aisement, se transportent, gag-
nent meme a etre mises en ceuvre par des mains plus
habiles. Les chases sont hors de Fhomme, le style c'est
Fhomme meme. 1 Apples of gold are best set in
pictures of silver great thoughts and natural
thoughts should be greatly and naturally said : they
1 On a very different, but by no means inconsiderable subject,
we quote this cordial and wise passage from the same article.
Speaking of the odium medicum, ' the true remedy for profes-
sional jealousies is frequent intercommunication, a good dinner
at the Royal would heal the professional feuds of a large town.
The man of science who thinks he practises his profession for the
sheer love of it, may smile at the sensualness of the means, and
it may not be the remedy he requires ; but most practitioners
are men of the m&ier, and like a dinner of the craft as well as
others. We wish there were a medical guild in every large
town, with an ample dinner fund good fellowship would in-
crease and abound, and with it unity of purpose, honour, public
and personal esteem. '
Excursus Ethicus. 377
are indeed neither, if not. Lord Jeffrey said to a
young friend of great genius, but addicted to long
and odd words, and to coining a word now and then,
' My friend, when you have a common thing to say,
say it in a common way, and when you have an
uncommon thing, it will find its own way of saying
itself.' Let no one despise style. If thought is the
gold, style is the stamp which makes it current, and
says under what king it was issued. There is much
in what Buffon says Style is the man himself. Try
to put Horace, or Tacitus, Milton, Addison, or
Goldsmith, Charles Lamb, or Thackeray, into other
words, and you mar, and likely kill the thought
they cease to be themselves.
But how am I to get a good style? Not by
imitating or mimicking any one. Not by trying to
think or to write like any one, but to think and write
with him. It is with style as with manners and
good-breeding. Keep good company, and do your
best, and you will write and speak and act like
a gentleman, because you think and feel and live
with gentlemen. If you would write like the ancient
masters, read them and relish them be their son,
not their ape. Our medical writers now-a-days,
with a few signal exceptions, write ill. They are
slovenly, diffuse, often obscure, and curiously in-
volved. The reasons are : first, the enormous
amount of merely professional knowledge a man
378 Excursus Ethicus.
is expected to master before he writes on any sub-
ject, and the absorbing nature of the new methods ;
secondly, and as a consequence, the ignorance of
general literature, and the much less association by
men of medicine with men of letters, now than in
olden times. Arbuthnot was not the worse physician,
and all the better writer, from his being the com-
panion of those famous wits whose good genius and
doctor he was ; and his Treatises on Airs and Aliments
are all the better of being the work of a man who
took his share in Martinus Scriblerus, and wrote the
History of John Bull.
Currie, 1 Aikin, Gregory, Heberden, Cullen, Fer-
riar, Gooch, are all the more powerful, and all
the more permanent as medical authorities, from
their having learned, by practice and by example, to
write forcibly, clearly, compactly, and with dignity
and grace.
The turbid, careless style, constipated, or the
i Do our young readers know Currie's Life by his son? if
not, let them get it. They will see one of the noblest, purest
intellects our profession has ever had, ardently humane, grave
and energetic, tinged with a secret, pensive melancholy, and
they will find much of the best knowledge and advice for their
conduct in life. His letters to his son when a student at Edin-
burgh College, may be read alongside of Collingwood's from
his ship to his daughters, and his Jasper Wilson' 1 ! Letter to Mr.
Pitt is one sustained burst of eloquent and earnest patriotism, of
sound political philosophy, and strong sense ; it was flung off
at a heat, and was his only appearance in public affairs.
Excursiis Ethicus. 379
reverse, by which much of our medical literature is
characterized, is a disgrace to our age, and to the
intelligence, good taste, and good breeding of our
profession, and mars inconceivably the good that
lies concealed and bungled within it. No man has
a right to speak without some measure of preparation,
orderliness, and selectness. As Butler says, ' Confu-
sion and perplexity of writing is indeedwithout excuse,
because any one, if he pleases, may know whether
he understands and sees through what he is about :
and it is unpardonable for a man to lay his thoughts
before others, when he is conscious that he himself
does not know whereabouts he is, or how the matter
before him stands. // is coming abroad in disorder,
which he ought to be ashamed to find himself in at
home! Whately, in reply to a youth who asked him
how to write clearly, answered, ' Think clearly.' This
is the secret.
We might, had space permitted, have gone more
particularly into the higher moralities of physicians,
and into some of the more miscellaneous conditions
which interpenetrate morals, manners, and etiquette ;
for etiquette, with all its littlenesses and niceties, is
founded upon a central idea of right and wrong ;
and on the Tightness or wrongness of that idea,
depends the true significance and worth of the
merest punctilio.
We might likewise have said some few things en
380 Excursus Ethicus.
the public and professional religion of a doctor, and
its relation to his personal ; and something, also, of
that religiosity which, besides its ancient endemic
force, as old as our race, is at present dangerously
epidemic a pseudo-activity, which is not only not
good, but virulently bad, being at once as like and
as opposite to the true, as hemlock is to parsley.
We are anxious to persuade our young friends,
who, having 'passed,' and settled down, are waiting
for practice, not merely to busy themselves for the
next seven or eight barren years, in their own imme-
diate circle we are sure they will not suspect us of
wishing them to keep from what is their highest duty
and greatest pleasure but to persuade them, when
they have some leisure, and long evenings, and few
' cases,' to read the works of such men as Berkeley,
Butler, Paley, Baxter, Tucker, Barrow, Locke, Prin-
cipal Campbell, Reid, Dugald Stewart, Mackintosh,
Whately, Alexander Knox, etc. ; to keep up their
classical knowledge, and go over Horace's Art of
Poetry, Cicero's Epistles and Philosophical Treatises,
Seneca, Epictetus, Marc Antonine, Quintilian, and
such like not to mention a more sacred book, which
they ought to read all their lives, and use every day,
as the perfect rule of duty, the lamp to their feet, the
light to their eyes.
We may be thought to be making too much of
these things. It would be difficult to do so, when
Excursus Ethicus. 38 1
we consider what we, as physicians, are supposed to
possess practising, as we do, not merely one of the
arts of life, making an honourable living and enabling
our fellow-men to do the same but constantly
watching at that awful janua vitce et mortis, our main
duty being to keep men alive. Let us remember
what is involved in the enjoyment and in the loss of
life that perilous and inestimable something, which
we all know how much we ourselves prize, and for
which, as we have the word, long ago, of a person-
age 1 more distinguished for his talents than his
virtues, uttered in a Presence where even he dared
not tell a lie direct, that ' all that a man hath he will
give,' so let it be our endeavour, as its conservators,
to give all that we have, our knowledge, our affec-
tions, our energies, our virtue (aperr/, vir-tus, the very
essence or pith of a man), in doing our best to make
our patients healthy, long-lived, and happy.
We conclude with two quotations, the first from
the mouth of one 2 of the best men of our profession
one of the greatest of public benefactors one of
the truest and most genial of friends and of whose
merits we would say more, were he not still, to our
great comfort, in the midst of us, for we agree with
the ancients in this, as in some other things, that it
is not becoming to sacrifice to our heroes //// after
i Job ii. 4 .
a Dr. Henry Marshall, who died soon after this was \vrittea.
382 Excursus Etkicus.
sunset : ' My religion consists mainly of wonder and
gratitude' This is the religion of paradise and of
childhood. It will not be easy to find a better, even
in our enlightened days ;' only it must be a rational
wonder, a productive gratitude the gratitude, that
of a man who does not rest contented with the emo-
tion, but goes at once into the motive, and that a
motive which really moves and the wonder, that of
a man who, in reverencing God, knows him, and in
honouring all men, respects himself.
The next is the admonition we have already
referred to, by Sydenham. Our readers will find, at
its close, the oldest and best kind of homoeopathy a
kind which will survive disease and the doctors, and
will never, as may be said of the other, cure nothing
but itself.
' He who gives himself to the study and work of
medicine ought seriously to ponder these four things
ist, That he must, one day, give an account to the
Supreme Judge of the lives of the sick committed to
his care, zdly, That whatsoever of art, or of science,
he has by the Divine goodness attained, is to be
directed mainly to the glory of the Almighty, and the
safety of mankind, and that it is a dishonour to him-
self and them, to make these celestial gifts subser-
vient to the vile lusts of avarice and ambition.
Moreover, ^dly, that he has undertaken the charge
of no mean or ignoble creature, and that in order to
Excursus Ethicus. 383
his appreciating the true worth of the human race,
he should not forget that the only-begotten Son of
God became a man, and thus far ennobled, by his
own dignity, the nature he assumed. And, lastly,
that as he is himself not exempted from the common
lot, and is liable and exposed to the same laws of
mortality, the same miseries and pains, as are all the
rest ; so he may endeavour the more diligently, and
with a more tender affection, as being himself a
fellow-sufferer (6/ioio7ra^s), to help them who are
sick.'
For to take a higher, the highest example, we
must 'be touched with a feeling of the infirmities' of
our patients, else all our skill and knowledge will go
but half-way to relieve or cure.
BOOKS REFERRED TO.
I. Percival's Medical Ethics; new edition, with Notes, by
Dr. Greenhill. 2. Code of Medical Ethics; by the American
Medical Association. 3. Richard Baxter's Compassionate
Counsel to Students of Physic. 4. Sir Thomas Browne's Re
ligio Medici, and Christian Morals. 5. Gaubius de Regimine
Mentis quod Medicorum est. 6. Fuller's 'Good Physician,'
and ' Life of Paracelsus, ' in his ' Holy and Profane State.'
7. Simon, Deontologie Medicale, ou des Devoirs et des Droits
de Meclecins. 8. Gisborne, Gregory, and Ware, on the Duties
of a Physician. 9. Hufeland on the Relations of the Physician
to the Sick, to the Public, and to his Colleagues. 10. British
and Foreign Medical Journal for April 1846, Art. IX. n. Dr.
Aikin's Letters to his Son on the Choice of a Profession and
the Conduct of Life.
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