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THE DOCTOR.




[Illustration: HENRY VIII. RECEIVING THE BARBER-SURGEONS.]




  THE DOCTOR IN HISTORY,
  LITERATURE, FOLK-LORE, ETC.


  EDITED BY
  WILLIAM ANDREWS, F.R.H.S.,
  AUTHOR OF "BYGONE ENGLAND,"
  "OLD CHURCH LORE," ETC.


  HULL:
  WILLIAM ANDREWS & CO., THE HULL PRESS.
  LONDON:
  SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, HAMILTON, KENT, & CO., LTD.

  1896.




Preface.


In the following pages I have attempted to bring together from the pens of
several authors who have written expressly for this book, the more
interesting phases of the history, literature, folk-lore, etc., of the
medical profession.

If the same welcome be given to this work as was accorded to those I have
previously produced, my labours will not have been in vain.

WILLIAM ANDREWS.

  THE HULL PRESS,
    HULL, _November 11th, 1895_.




Contents.


  BARBER-SURGEONS. By William Andrews, F.R.H.S.                    1

  TOUCHING FOR THE KING'S EVIL. By William Andrews, F.R.H.S.       8

  VISITING PATIENTS                                               22

  ASSAYING MEAT AND DRINK. By William Andrews, F.R.H.S.           24

  THE GOLD-HEADED CANE. By Tom Robinson, M.D.                     32

  MAGIC AND MEDICINE. By Cuming Walters                           42

  CHAUCER'S DOCTOR OF PHYSIC. By W. H. Thompson                   70

  THE DOCTORS SHAKESPEARE KNEW. By A. H. Wall                     76

  DICKENS' DOCTORS. By Thomas Frost                               90

  FAMOUS LITERARY DOCTORS. By Cuming Walters                     102

  THE "DOCTOR" IN TIME OF PESTILENCE. By William E. A.
  Axon, F.R.S.L.                                                 125

  MOUNTEBANKS AND MEDICINE. By Thomas Frost                      140

  THE STRANGE STORY OF THE FIGHT WITH THE SMALL-POX.
  By Thomas Frost                                                153

  BURKERS AND BODY-SNATCHERS. By Thomas Frost                    167

  REMINISCENCES OF THE CHOLERA. By Thomas Frost                  181

  SOME OLD DOCTORS. By Mrs. G. Linnæus Banks                     192

  THE LEE PENNY                                                  209

  HOW OUR FATHERS WERE PHYSICKED. By J. A. Langford, LL.D.       216

  MEDICAL FOLK-LORE. By John Nicholson                           234

  OF PHYSICIANS AND THEIR FEES, with some Personal
  Reminiscences. By Andrew James Symington, F.R.S.N.A.           252

  INDEX                                                          285




THE DOCTOR IN HISTORY, LITERATURE, AND FOLK-LORE.




Barber-Surgeons.

BY WILLIAM ANDREWS, F.R.H.S.


The calling of the barber is of great antiquity. We find in the Book of
the Prophet Ezekiel (v. 1) allusions to the Jewish custom of the barber
shaving the head as a sign of mourning.

In the remote past the art of surgery and the trade of barber were
combined. It is clear that in all parts of the civilized world, in bygone
times, the barber acted as a kind of surgeon, or to state his position
more precisely, he practised phlebotomy.

Barbers appear to have gained their experience from the monks whom they
assisted in surgical operations. The clergy up to about the twelfth
century had the care of men's bodies as well as of their souls, and
practised surgery and medicine. The operations of surgery involved the
shedding of blood, and it was felt that this was incompatible with the
functions of the clergy. After much consideration and discussion, in 1163
the council of Tours, under Pope Alexander III., forbade the clergy to act
as surgeons, but they were permitted to dispense medicine.

The edict of Tours must have given satisfaction to the barbers, and they
were not slow to avail themselves of the opportunities the change afforded
them. In London, and we presume in other places, the barbers advertised
their blood-letting in a most objectionable manner. It was customary to
put blood in their windows to attract the attention of the public. An
ordinance was passed in 1307, directing the barbers to have the blood
"privily carried into the Thames under pain of paying two shillings to the
use of the Sheriffs."

At an early period in London the barbers were banded together, and a gild
was formed. In the first instance it seems that the chief object was the
bringing together of the members at religious observances. They attended
the funerals and obits of deceased members and their wives. Eventually it
was transformed into a semi-social and religious gild, and subsequently
became a trade gild.

In 1308, Richard le Barber, the first master of the Barbers' Company, was
sworn at the Guildhall, London. As time progressed, the London Company of
Barbers increased in importance.

In the first year of the reign of Edward IV. (1462) the barbers were
incorporated by a royal charter, and it was confirmed by succeeding
monarchs.

A change of title occurred in 1540, and it was then named the Company of
Barber-Surgeons. Holbein painted a picture of Henry VIII. and the
Barber-Surgeons. The painting is still preserved, and may be seen at the
Barber-Surgeons' Hall, Monkwell Street, London. We give a carefully
executed wood engraving of the celebrated picture. Pepys calls this "not a
pleasant though a good picture." It is the largest and last painting of
Holbein. In the _Leisure Hour_ for September 1895, are some interesting
details respecting it, that are well worth reproducing. "It is painted,"
we are told, "on vertical oak boards, being 5ft. 11in. high by 10ft. 2in.
long. It seems to have been begun about 1541, and finished after
Holbein's death in 1543, and it has evidently been altered since its first
delivery. The tablet, for instance, was not always in the background, for
the old engraving in the College of Surgeons has a window in its place,
showing the old tower of St. Bride's, and thus indicating Bridewell as the
site of the ceremony. The outermost figure to the left, too, is omitted,
and, according to some critics, the back row of heads are all
post-Holbeinic. The names over the heads appear to have been added in
Charles I.'s time, and it is significant that only two portraits in the
back row are so distinguished." The king is represented wearing his robes,
and is seated on a chair of state, holding erect his sword of state, and
about him are the leading members of the fraternity. "The men whose
portraits appear in the picture," says the _Leisure Hour_, "are not
nonentities. The first figure to the king's right, with his hands in his
gown, is Dr. John Chambre, king's physician, Fellow and Warden of Merton,
and happy in his multitudinous appointments, both clerical and lay. Behind
him is the Doctor Butts of Shakespeare's 'Henry VIII.'--the Sir William
Butts who was the king's and Princess Mary's physician, and whose wife is
known by Holbein's splendid portrait of her. Behind Butts is Alsop, the
king's apothecary. To the king's left the first figure is Thomas Vicary,
surgeon to Bartholomew's Hospital, serjeant-surgeon to the king, and
author of 'The Anatomie of the Bodie of Man.' Next to him is Sir John
Ayleff, an exceptionally good portrait. Then come in the undernamed:
Nicholas Simpson, Edmund Harman (one of the witnesses to the king's will),
James Monforde (who gave the company the silver hammer still used by the
Master in presiding at the courts), John Pen (another fine portrait),
Nicholas Alcocke, and Richard Ferris (also serjeant-surgeon to the king).
In the back row the only names given are those of Christopher Salmond and
William Tilley."

In the reign of Henry VIII. an enactment as follows was in force:--"No
person using any shaving or barbery in London shall occupy any surgery,
letting of blood, or other matter, except of drawing teeth." Laws were
made, but they could not be, or at all events were not, enforced. Disputes
were frequent. The barbers acted often as surgeons, and the surgeons
increased their income by the use of the razor and shears. At this period
vigorous attempts were made to confine each to their legitimate work.

The barber's pole, it is said, owes its origin to the barber-surgeons.
Much has been written on this topic, but we believe that the following are
the facts of the matter. We know that in the days of old bleeding was a
frequent occurrence, and during the operation the patient used to grasp a
staff, stick, or pole which the barber-surgeon kept ready for use, and
round it was bound a supply of bandages for tying the arm of the patient.
The pole, when not in use, was hung at the door as a sign. In course of
time a painted pole was displayed instead of that used in the operation.

Lord Thurlow addressing the House of Lords, July 17th, 1797, stated, "by a
statute, still in force, barbers and surgeons were each to use a pole [as
a sign]. The barbers were to have theirs blue and white, striped, with no
other appendage; but the surgeons', which was to be the same in other
respects, was likewise to have a gully-pot and a red rag, to denote the
particular nature of their vocations."

The Rev. J. L. Saywell has a note on bleeding in his "History and Annals
of Northallerton" (1885):--"Towards the early part of this century,"
observes Mr. Saywell, "a singular custom prevailed in the town and
neighbourhood of Northallerton (Yorkshire). In the spring of the year
nearly all the robust male adults, and occasionally females, repaired to a
surgeon to be bled, a process which they considered essentially conduced
to vigorous health." The charge for the operation was one shilling.

Parliament was petitioned, in 1542, praying that surgeons might be exempt
from bearing arms and serving on juries, and thus be enabled without
hindrance to attend to their professional duties. The request was granted,
and to the present time medical men enjoy the privileges granted so long
ago.

In 1745, the surgeons and the barbers separated by Act of Parliament. The
barber-surgeons lingered for a long time, the last in London, named
Middleditch, of Great Suffolk Street, in the Borough, only dying in 1821.
Mr. John Timbs, the popular writer, left on record that he had a vivid
recollection of Middleditch's dentistry.




Touching for the King's Evil.

BY WILLIAM ANDREWS, F.R.H.S.


The practice of touching for the cure of scrofula--a disease more
generally known as king's evil--prevailed for a long period in England.
Edward the Confessor who reigned from 1042 to 1066, appears to be the
first monarch in this country who employed this singular mode of
treatment.

About a century after the death of Edward the Confessor, William of
Malmesbury compiled his "Chronicle of the Kings of England," and in this
work is the earliest allusion to the subject. Holinshed has placed on
record some interesting details respecting Edward the Confessor. "As it
has been thought," says Holinshed, in writing of the king, "he was
inspired with the gift of prophecy, and also to have the gift of healing
infirmities and disease commonly called the king's evil, and left that
virtue, as it were, a portion of inheritance to his successors, the kings
of this realm." The first edition of the "Chronicle" was published in
1577, and from it Shakespeare drew much material for his historical
dramas. There is an allusion to this singular superstition in _Macbeth_,
which it will be interesting to reproduce.

Malcolm and Macduff are in England, "in a room in the King's palace" (the
palace of King Edward the Confessor):--

    "_Malcolm._ Comes the King forth I pray you?

    _Doctor._   Aye, sir! There are a crew of wretched souls
                That stay his cure: their malady convinces
                The great assay of art; but at his touch--
                Such sanctity hath heaven given his hand--
                They presently amend.

    _Malcolm._ I thank you, Doctor.

    _Macduff._ What's the disease he means?

    _Malcolm._ 'Tis called the evil:
                A most miraculous work in this good King;
                Which often, since my here-remain in England,
                I've seen him do. How he solicits heaven,
                Himself best knows: but strangely visited people
                All swoln and ulcerous, pitiful to the eye,
                The mere despair of surgery, he cures,
                Hanging a golden stamp about their necks,
                Put on with holy prayers: and 'tis spoken,
                To the succeeding royalty he leaves
                The healing benediction. With this strange virtue,
                He hath a heavenly gift of prophecy,
                And sundry blessings hang about his throne
                That speak him full of grace."

History does not furnish any facts respecting touching by the four kings
of the House of Normandy. It is generally believed that the Norman
monarchs did not practise the rite.

Henry II., the first of the Plantagenet line, emulated the Confessor. We
know this fact from a record made by Peter of Blois, the royal chaplain,
in which it is clearly stated that the king performed certain cures by
touch. John of Gaddesden, in the days of Edward II., wrote a treatise in
which he gave instructions for several modes of treatment for the disease,
and if they failed, recommended the sufferers to seek cure by royal touch.
Bradwardine, Archbishop of Canterbury, lived in the reigns of Edward III.
and Richard II., and from his statements we learn that both kings kept up
the observance.

Henry IV., the first king of the House of Lancaster, touched for the evil.
This we learn from a "Defence to the title of House of Lancaster," written
by Sir John Fortesque, Lord Chief Justice of the Court of King's Bench. He
speaks of the practice as "belonging to the kings of England from time
immemorial." This pamphlet is preserved among the Cottonian manuscripts in
the British Museum.

The earliest king of the House of Tudor, Henry VII., was the first to give
a small gold piece, known as a touch-piece, to those undergoing the
ceremony.

During the reign of the next monarch, Henry VIII., little attention
appears to have been given to the subject. It was at this period largely
practised in France. Cardinal Wolsey, when at the Court of Francis I., in
1527, witnessed the king touch two hundred people. On Easter Sunday, 1686,
Louis XIV. is recorded to have touched 1,600. He used these words:--"_Le
Roy te touche, Dieu te guéisse._" ("The King touches thee. May God cure
thee!")

Coming back to the history of our own country, and dealing with the more
interesting passages bearing on this theme, we find that in the reign of
Queen Elizabeth, William Clowes, the Court Surgeon, believed firmly in the
efficacy of the royal touch. "The king's queen's evil," he says, "is a
disease repugnant to nature, which grievous malady is known to be
miraculously cured and healed by the sacred hands of the Queen's most
Royal Majesty, even by Divine inspiration and wonderful work and power of
God, above man's will, act, and expectation." In this reign, under the
title of "_Charisma; sive Donum Sanationis_," a book was published by
William Fookes bearing testimony to the cures effected by royal touch on
all sorts and conditions of people from various parts of the country.

The Stuarts paid particular attention to the practice. No fewer than
eleven proclamations published during the reign of Charles I. are
preserved at the State Paper Office, and chiefly relate to the times the
afflicted might attend the court to receive the royal touch. In course of
time the king's pecuniary means became limited, and he was unable to
present gold touch-pieces, so silver was substituted, and many received
the rite of touch only.

During the Commonwealth we have not any trace of Cromwell touching for the
malady. During the rising in the West of England, the Duke of Monmouth,
who claimed to be the rightful heir to the throne, touched several persons
for the evil, and, said a newspaper of the time, with success. One of the
charges made against him on his trial at Edinburgh for high treason, was,
that he had "touched children of the King's Evil." Two witnesses proved
the charge, having witnessed the ceremony at Taunton.

No sooner had another Stuart obtained the English crown than the ceremony
was again performed. During the first year of the reign of Charles II.,
six thousand seven hundred and twenty-five persons were brought to His
Majesty to be healed. The ceremony was often performed on a Sunday. Evelyn
and Pepys were witnesses of these proceedings, and in their Diaries have
recorded interesting particulars. Under date of 6th July, 1660, "His
Majesty," writes Evelyn, "began first to touch for ye evil, according to
custome thus: Sitting under his state in the Banqueting House, the
chirurgeons cause the sick to be brought or led up to the throne, where,
they kneeling, ye king strokes their faces and cheeks with both his hands
at once, at which instant a chaplaine in his fermalities says:--'He put
his hands upon them and healed them.' This he said to every one in
particular. When they have been all totched, they come up again in the
same order; and the other chaplaine kneeling, and having an angel of gold
strung on white ribbon on his arme, delivers them one by one to His
Majestie, who puts them about the necks of the touched as they passe,
while the first chaplaine repeats 'That is ye true light which came into
ye world.' Then follows an epistle (as at first a gospel) with the
liturgy, prayers for the sick, with some alteration, and then the Lord
Chamberlain and the Comptroller of the Household bring a basin, ewer, and
towel, for his Majesty to wash."

Samuel Pepys witnessed the ceremony on April 13th, 1661, and refers to it
in his Diary. "Went to the Banquet House, and there saw the King heal, the
first time I ever saw him do it, which he did with great gravity, and it
seemed to me to be an ugly office and a simple one."

In Evelyn's Diary on March 28th, 1684, there is a record of a serious
accident, "There was," he writes, "so great a concourse of people with
their children to be touched for the evil, that six or seven were crushed
to death by pressing at the chirurgeon's door for tickets."

According to Macaulay, Charles II. during his reign touched nearly a
hundred thousand persons. In the year 1682 he performed the rite eight
thousand five hundred times.

No person was allowed to enter the King's presence for the purpose of
receiving the rite without first obtaining a certificate from the minister
of his parish from whence he came, nor unless he had not previously been
touched. A proclamation of Charles II., dated January 9th, 1683, ordered a
register of the certificates to be made. Here is a record drawn from the
Old Town's Book of Birmingham:--

    "March 14th, 1683, Elizabeth, daughter of John and Anne Dickens, of
    Birmingham, in the county of Warwick, was certified for in order to
    obtayne his Majesty's touch for her cure.

      HENRY GROVE, Minister.
      JOHN BIRCH,  }
      HENRY PATER, }  Churchwardens."

We cull from the churchwardens' accounts of Terling, Essex, the following
item:--

    "1683 Dec{r}. Pd. for his Majestie's order for touching 00.00.06."

A page in the register book of Bisley, Surrey, is headed thus,
"Certificates for the Evill commonly called the kings Evill." Two entries
occur as follow:--

    "Elizabeth Collier and Thomas Collier the children of Thomas Collier,
    Senior, had a certificate from the minister and churchwardens of
    Bisley, August 7th 1686."

    "Sarah Massey, the daughter of Richard Massey, had a certificate from
    the minister and churchwardens of Bisley, 1st April 1688."

Old parish accounts often contain entries similar to the following, from
Ecclesfield, Yorkshire:--

    "1641. Given to John Parkin wife towards her
           trauell to London to get cure of his Matie.
           for the disease called Euill which her
           soone Thom is visited withall              0. 6. 8."

"The following extracts," says a contributor to _The Reliquary_ of
January, 1894, "from the Minute Books of the Corporation of the city of
York, show that general belief in the virtue of the touching by the King
was unshaken at the end of the seventeenth century. It must be borne in
mind that these Minutes do not record the acts of individuals, but were
those of the Corporation of what was at that time one of the most
important cities in the country, and that it was in administering Poor Law
Relief that the grants were made.

In Vol. 38 of the Corporation Records, fo. 74b, under the date of February
28th, 1671, is the following:--

    "Ordered that Elizabeth Trevis haue x{s} given her for charges in
    carrying her daughter to London to be touched for the Evill."

A few years later, on March 12th, 1678 (fo. 156b), occurs the
following:--

    "Anne Thornton to haue x{s} for goeing to London to be touched for the
    euill."

And again on March 3, 1687 (fo. 249b), ten shillings was granted for
"carrying of Judith Gibbons & her Child & one Dorothy Browne to London to
be touched by his Majestie in order to be healed of the Kings Evil."

The Records of the Corporation of Preston, Lancashire, contain at least
two references to this matter. In the year 1682 the bailiffs were
instructed to "pay unto James Harrison, bricklayer, 10s. towards carrying
his son to London, in order to the procuring of His Majesty's touch."

Five years later, when James II. was at Chester, the council passed a vote
that "the Bailiff pay unto the persons undermentioned each of them 5s.
towards their charge in going to Chester to get his Majesty's
touch:--Anne, daughter of Abel Mope; ---- daughter Richard Letmore."

It is recorded that James II. touched eight hundred persons in the choir
of the Cathedral of Chester.

The ceremony cost, we learn from Macaulay, about £10,000 a year, and the
amount would have been much greater but for the vigilance of the royal
surgeons, whose business it was to examine the applicants, and to
distinguish those who came for the cure, and those who came for the gold.

William III. declined to have anything to do with a ceremony he regarded
as an imposture. "It is a silly superstition," he said, when he heard that
at the close of Lent his palace was besieged by a crowd of sick. "Give the
poor creatures some money, and send them away." On one occasion only was
he induced to lay his hand on a sufferer. "God give you better health," he
said, "and more sense."

The next to wear the crown was Queen Anne, and she revived the rite. In
the _London Gazette_ of March 12th, 1712, appeared an official
announcement that the queen intended to touch for the evil. In Lent of
that year, Dr. Johnson, then a child, went up to London with his mother in
the stage coach that he might have the benefit of the royal touch. He was
then between two and three years of age. "His mother," writes Boswell,
"yielding to the superstitious notion which, it is wonderful to think,
prevailed so long in this country as to the virtue of regal touch (a
notion to which a man of such inquiry and such judgment as Carte, the
historian, could give credit), carried him to London, where he was
actually touched by Queen Anne. Mrs. Johnson, indeed, as Mr. Hector
informed me, acted by the advice of the celebrated Sir John Floyer, then a
physician in Lichfield. Johnson used to talk of this very frankly, and
Mrs. Piozzi has preserved his very picturesque description of the scene as
it remained upon his fancy. Being asked if he could remember Queen Anne,
'He had,' he said, 'a confused but somehow a sort of solemn recollection
of a lady in diamonds and a long black hood.' This touch, however, was
without any effect." The malady remained with Dr. Johnson to his death.

[Illustration: TOUCH-PIECE OF CHARLES II. (GOLD).]

After the death of Queen Anne, no other English sovereign kept up the
custom, although the service remained in the "Book of Common Prayer" as
late as 1719.

The latest instance we have found of the ceremony being performed was in
October, 1745, when Charles Edward, at Holyrood House, touched a child.

[Illustration: (GOLD). TOUCH-PIECES OF JAMES II. (SILVER).]

In the preceding pages we have referred to "touch pieces," and it will not
be without interest to direct attention to some of the more notable
examples. A small sum of money was given by Edward I., and it has been
suggested that it was probably presented in the form of alms. Henry VII.
gave a small gold coin known as the angel noble. It was of about six
shillings and eight pence in value, and was a current coin of the period,
and the smallest gold coin issued. On one side of the coin was a figure of
the angel Michael overcoming the dragon, and on the other a ship on the
waves. During the residence of Charles II. on the continent, those who
visited him to receive the royal rite had to give him gold, but after the
Restoration, "touch-pieces" were made expressly for presentation at the
healings. They were small gold medals resembling angels, but they were not
equal in value to the angels previously given. However they met a want
when gold was in great demand. James II. had two kinds of touch pieces,
one of gold and the other of silver, but they were not half the size of
those given by Charles II. Queen Anne gave a touch-piece a little larger
than that of James II. The touch-piece presented by this Queen to Dr.
Johnson may, with other specimens, be seen in the British Museum.

[Illustration: TOUCH-PIECE OF ANNE (GOLD).]

In a carefully-compiled article in the _Archæological Journal_, vol. x.,
p. 187-211, will be found some interesting particulars of touch-pieces,
and to it we are indebted for the few details we have given bearing on
this part of our subject.




Visiting Patients.


The doctor made his daily rounds, before the reign of Charles II., on
horseback, sitting sideways on foot-clothes. He must have cut an
undignified figure as he rode through the streets of London and our chief
towns.

A change came after the Restoration, and we meet with the physicians
making their visits in a carriage and pair. It seems that increased fees
were expected with the introduction of the carriage. A curious note
appears on this subject in _Lex Talionis_. "For there must now be a little
coach and two horses," says the author, "and, being thus attended,
half-a-piece their usual fee is but ill taken, and popped into their left
pocket, and possibly may cause the patient to send for his worship twice
before he will come again in the hazard of another angel." The carriage
was popular, and physicians vied with each other in making the greatest
display.

In the days of Queen Anne, a doctor would even drive half-a-dozen horses
attached to his chariot, and not fewer than four was the general rule.

In our own time the doctor's carriage and pair is to be seen in all
directions. It is now driven for use and not for display as in the days of
Queen Anne.

We have seen the bicycle used by doctors of good standing, and we predict
the time is not far distant when it will be more generally ridden by
members of the medical profession.




Assaying Meat and Drink.

BY WILLIAM ANDREWS, F.R.H.S.


From the time of our earliest Norman king down to the days of James I.,
the chief people of the land partook of their food in fear. Treachery was
a not infrequent occurrence, and poison was much used as a means of taking
life. As a precaution against murder, assayers of food, drink, etc., were
appointed. Doctors usually filled the office, and by their unremitting
attention to their duties crime was to a great extent prevented. In a
royal household the physician acted as assayer.

Let us imagine ourselves in an old English home, the palace of a king, or
the stronghold of a leading nobleman. The cloth is laid by subordinate
servants, but not without considerable ceremony. Next a chief officer of
the household sees that every article on the table is free from poison.
The bread about to be consumed is cut, and, in the presence of the "taker
of assay," is tasted, and the salt is also tested. The knives, spoons,
and table linen are kissed by a responsible person, so that assurance
might be given that they were free from poison. Then the salt dish is
covered with a lid, and the bread is wrapped in a napkin, and afterwards
the whole table is covered with a fair white cloth. The coverlet remains
until the head of the household comes to take his repast, and then his
chief servant removes the covering of the table. If any person attempted
to touch the covered bread or the covered salt after the spreading of the
coverlet, they ran the risk of a severe flogging, and sometimes even death
at the hands of a hangman.

The time of bringing up the meats having arrived, the assayer proceeds to
the kitchen, and tests the loyalty of the steward and cook by compelling
them to partake of small quantities of the food prepared before it is
taken to the table. Pieces of bread were cut and dipped into every mess,
and were afterwards eaten by cook and steward. The crusts of closed pies
were raised, and the contents tasted; small pieces of the more substantial
viands were tasted, and not a single article of food was suffered to leave
the kitchen without being assayed. After the ceremony had been completed,
each dish was covered, no matter if hot or cold, and these were taken by
servitors to the banqueting hall, a marshal with wand of office preceding
the procession. The bearers on no account were permitted to linger on the
way, no matter if their hands were burnt they must bear the pain, far
better to suffer that than be suspected of tampering with the food. On no
pretext were the covers to be removed until the proper time, and by the
servants appointed for that purpose. If very hot, the bearers might
perhaps protect their hands with bread, which was to be kept out of sight.

We produce from the Rev. Charles Bullock's interesting volume entitled
"How they Lived in the Olden Time," a picture of bringing in the dinner.
It will be observed that the steward, bearing his staff of office, heads
the procession.

Each dish as it was brought to the table was again tasted in the presence
of the personage who purposed partaking of it. This entailed considerable
ceremony, and took up much time. To render the delay as little unpleasant
as possible to the guests, music was usually performed.

[Illustration: BRINGING IN THE DINNER.]

In the stately homes of old England, as a mark of respect to the
distinguished visitor, it was customary to assign to him an assayer.
History furnishes a notable instance of an omission of the official. When
Richard II. was at Pontefract Castle, we gather from _Hall's Chronicle_,
edition 1548, folio 14, that Sir Piers Exton intended poisoning the King,
and, to use the chronicler's words, forbade the "esquire whiche was
accustumed to serve and take the assaye beefore Kyng Richarde, to again
use that manner of service." According to Hall, the King "sat downe to
dyner, and was served withoute curtesie or assaye; he much mervaylyng at
the sodayne mutacion of the thynge, demanded of the esquire why he did not
do his duty." He replied that Sir Piers had forbidden him performing the
duties pertaining to his position. The King immediately picked up a
carving-knife, struck upon the head of the assayer, and exclaimed, "The
devil take Henry of Lancaster and thee together."

Paul Hentzner, a German tutor, visited England in 1598, and wrote a
graphic account of his travels in the country, which were translated into
English by Horace Walpole. The work contains a curious account of the
ceremonies of laying the cloth, etc., for Queen Elizabeth at Greenwich
Palace. The notice is rather long, but is so entertaining and informing
that it well merits reproduction. "A gentleman," it is stated, "entered
the room bearing a rod, and along with him another who had a table-cloth,
which, after they had both kneeled three times, with the utmost
veneration, he spread upon the table, and after kneeling again, they both
retired. Then came two others, one with the rod again, and the other with
a salt-cellar and a plate of bread: when they had kneeled, as the others
had done, and placed what was brought upon the table, they, too, retired
with the same ceremonies performed by the first. At last came an unmarried
lady (we were told she was a Countess), and along with her a married one,
bearing a tasting-knife; the former was dressed in white silk, who when
she prostrated herself three times in the most graceful manner, approached
the table, and rubbed the plates with bread and salt with as much care as
if the Queen had been present; when they had waited there a little time,
the Yeomen of the Guard entered bareheaded, clothed in scarlet, with a
golden rose upon their backs, bringing in at each turn a course of
twenty-four dishes, served in plate, most of it gilt; these dishes were
received by a gentleman in the same order they were brought, and placed
upon the table, while the lady-taster gave to each guard a mouthful to
eat, for fear of poison. During the time that this guard, which consists
of the tallest and stoutest men that can be found in all England, being
carefully selected for this service, were bringing dinner, twelve trumpets
and two kettle-drums made the hall ring for half-an-hour together. At the
end of the ceremonial, a number of unmarried ladies appeared, who, with
particular solemnity, lifted the meat off the table and conveyed it into
the Queen's inner and more private chamber, where, after she had chosen
for herself, the rest goes to the ladies of the Court."

[Illustration: ASSAYING WINE.]

Drink as well as food had to be assayed twice, once in the buttery and
again in the hall. The butler drank of the wine in the buttery, and then
handed it to the cup-bearer in a covered vessel. When he arrived at the
hall, he removed the lid of the cup, and poured into the inverted cover a
little of the wine, and drank it under the eye of his master. We give an
illustration, reproduced from an ancient manuscript, of an assayer tasting
wine. The middle of the twelfth century is most probably the period
represented.

In the ancient assay cup, it is related on reliable authority, a charm was
attached to a chain of gold, or embedded in the bottom of the vessel.
This was generally a valuable carbuncle or a piece of tusk of a narwhal,
usually regarded as the horn of the unicorn, and which was believed to
have the power of neutralising or even detecting the presence of poison.

Edward IV. presented to the ambassadors of Charles of Burgundy a costly
assay cup of gold, ornamented with pearls and a great sapphire, and, to
use the words of an old writer, "in the myddes of the cuppe ys a grete
pece of a Vnicornes horne."

The water used for washing the hands of the great had to be tasted by the
yeoman who placed it on the table, to prove that no poison was contained
in the fluid. This ceremony had to be performed in the presence of an
assayer.




The Gold-headed Cane.

BY TOM ROBINSON, M.D.


The stick takes many forms. It is the sceptre of kings, the club of a
police constable, the baton of a field marshal. The mace is but a stick of
office, being ornamental and merely symbolical.

In history we may go back to the pilgrim's staff, which was four feet
long, and hollow at the top to carry away relics from the Holy Land. It
was also used to carry contraband goods, such as seeds, or silk-worms'
eggs, which the Chinese, Turks, or Greeks forbade to be exported. It is
occasionally used for eluding the customs now. Some people smuggle
diamonds into the United States in that way.

Prometheus' reed, or marthex, in which he conveyed fire to "wretched
mortals," as Aeschylus tells us, is a well-known fable.

An enormous amount of interest centres around the walking stick, and there
are few families in which we do not find an old stick handed down
generation after generation. Such an inheritance was at one time a common
possession of those who belonged to the medical profession.

[Illustration: DR. RADCLIFFE'S CANE.]

The College of Physicians possesses at the present time the gold cane
which Radcliffe, Mead, Askew, Pitcairn, and Baillie successively carried
about with them, and which Mrs. Baillie presented to that learned body.
The drawing here given is a representation of this cane, and it will be
seen that it has not a gold knob, but consists of an engraved handle or
crook. It is, I think, quite clear that the custom which the doctors of
the last century always followed in carrying their stick about with them,
even to the bed-side, was due entirely to the fact that the handle of the
cane could be, and was, filled with strong smelling disinfectants, such as
rosemary and camphor. The doctor held this against his nose obviously for
two reasons. One, to destroy any poison which might be floating about in
the air but chiefly to prevent him smelling unpleasant odours. This stick
was as long as a footman's, smooth and varnished.

A belief in the protective power of camphor and other pleasant-smelling
herbs is still in existence, and we know quite a number of individuals who
carry about with them bags of camphor during the prevalence of an
epidemic.

Before Howard exposed the deadly sanitary state of the prisons of this
country, it was the custom to sprinkle aromatic herbs before the
prisoners, so powerful was the noxious effluvium which exhaled from their
filthy bodies. The bouquet which the chaplain always carried when
accompanying a prisoner to Tyburn, was used for the same defensive
purpose.

The stick of the physician's cane was probably a relic of the legerdemain
of the healer, who in superstitious times worked upon the ignorance of the
credulous. The modern conjuror always uses a wand in his entertainment.
These baubles die hard, because there is a strong conservative instinct in
the race which clings with tremendous tenacity to anything which has the
sanction of antiquity.

The barber's pole is still seen even in London, and is striped blue and
white, emblems of the phlebotomist, and symbolical of the blue venous
blood, which was so ungrudgingly given by the sufferers from almost all
maladies. The white stripe represented the bandage used to bind up the
wound on the arm.

The practice of the bleeders continued in fashion in England until the
beginning of this century. John Coutsley Lettsom, who possessed high
literary attainments, and who was President of the Philosophical Society
of London, and who entertained at his house at Grove Hill, Camberwell,
many of the most distinguished men of his time, including Boswell and Dr.
Johnson, and whose writings shew he was an enlightened physician, was bold
in his treatment of disease, and a heroic bleeder. He used to say of
himself:--

    "When patients sick to me apply,
      I physics, bleeds, and sweats 'em
    Then if they choose to die,
      What's that to me--I lets 'em."

The wig also constituted an essential part of the dress of the older
physicians. It was a three tailed one, and this with silk stockings,
clothes well trimmed, velvet coat with stiff skirts, large cuffs and
buckled shoes, made quite an imposing show, and when they rode in their
gilt carriages with two running footmen, as was the custom, no one would
be better recognised. It is interesting to contrast the dress and mode of
practice of the modern physician with those who built up the honourable
calling of medicine. It is so easy to laugh at those who practised the art
of medicine before modern scientific investigation had laid naked so many
of the secrets of physiology, pathology, and vital chemistry. Slowly but
surely as the true nature and progress of disease has become known, so
have all the adventitious and unnecessary surroundings of dress
disappeared, and now we may meet the most eminent of our doctors, clad in
the same garments as a man on Change. All this was inevitable, but running
through the whole history of medicine is a magnificent desire on the part
of those who have made a mark, and of all its humbler followers to "go
about doing good." The difficulties are enormous, the labour is colossal,
but there could be no convictions were there no perplexities. Credulity is
the disease of a feeble intellect. Accepting all things and understanding
nothing, kills a man's intellect and checks all scientific investigation.
The physician has to knock at the temple of the human frame, and patiently
pick up the knowledge which nature always gives to those who love her
best. But the investigator must approach his subject with humility, and
with the recognition that there is a limit to the human intellect, and
that behind and above this big round world is a supreme being, that around
the intellect is the atmosphere of spiritual convictions from which our
highest and best impulses spring, that the universe not only embraces
material phenomena, but it also includes the sublime and the moral
attributes, which no man has, or ever will, weigh in the physical balance
or distil from a retort.

The union of Intellect and Piety will grow stronger as the world grows
older. When men began to think, they began to doubt, but when men have
thought more deeply they will cease to doubt.

An idea is in the air that the study of science has a tendency to make men
sceptical. This is an error. For surely the study of Nature in any of its
manifold aspects has a direct tendency to lead us into the inscrutable.
Amongst those who demonstrate the ennobling influence of science let us
only name Boyle, Bacon, Kepler, and Newton. If we would select a few names
from the number of medical celebrities of the past who have felt this
elevating influence, the following will readily occur to us, Linacre,
Sydenham, Brodie, Astley Cooper, Graves Watson, and Abernethy. The latter,
who is chiefly remembered as a coiner of quaint sayings and personal
originality, had, notwithstanding his biting wit, a deep sense of the
nobility and the sacredness of his calling, as the following extract from
a lecture which he delivered at the Royal College of Surgeons will prove.
He says:--"When we examine our bodies we see an assemblance of organs
formed of what we call matter, but when we examine our minds, we feel that
there is something sensitive and intelligible which inhabits our bodies.
We naturally believe in the existence of a first cause. We feel our own
free agency. We distinguish right and wrong. We feel as if we were
responsible for our conduct, and the belief in a future state seems
indigenous to the mind of man."

The noiseless tread of time will cause many doctors whose names are now
household words to be forgotten, but we may rest assured that the wreath
of memory will cluster round the brows of these grand, noble workers in
the field of medicine who have shown by their daily life that they never
flinched from the arduous duties, aye and the dangers of their profession,
but steadfastly plodded on. Originality, integrity, and honesty are
attributes which grace the life of any man, and although the history of
medicine claims no monopoly of these virtues, for they serve all men
alike, yet they are the handmaids of greatness; without them no human
being will ever win that true success which enables us to look back upon
such lives and say, "Here are examples which show us the possibilities of
the race." Doctors ought to be great burden lifters. Their mission is to
carry into the chamber of disease--and even of death itself--that calm
courage, that buoyant hope, which has around it a halo of sympathy and of
encouragement.

The public are loyal to the profession of medicine, and seldom do we hear
of any members of that calling who abuse their high privileges. Their work
is an absorbing work; it says to a man:--"You have placed in your hands
the lives of the human race. You are the true soldier whose business it
is to give life and health and happiness to those with whom you come in
contact. You must not lean upon the baubles of your calling, so as to
inspire confidence, but you must night and day let the one abiding thought
be concentrated upon the good of humanity," and there is no field of
professional experience which has given us so many men who have as nobly
done their duty as the doctors of the past and of the present day. We seem
to be on the threshold of a new era in the treatment of disease, and
already do we find an increase in the average lives of the race. No one
need despair of the future in that direction; indiscretion and ignorance
kill more human beings than plague, pestilence, or famine. The public must
help to tear away the veil which hides the _Truth_, by not worshipping at
the foot of Quackery, Chicanery, or Superstition.

The medical profession has so far escaped the pernicious tendency of
modern thought, which tendency is to hamper every institution. This is a
noteworthy fact; our hospitals, medical schools, College of Physicians,
and College of Surgeons are not cramped and hindered by legislative
interference; but unostentatiously, silently, and with a never-failing
sense of their responsibilities, do they educate and pass through their
gates the doctors of the future--and no man dare point his finger at any
one of these, and say he does not do his duty.




Magic and Medicine.

BY CUMING WALTERS.


Coleridge once said that in the treatment of nervous cases "he is the best
physician who is the most ingenious inspirer of hope." The great "faith
cures" are worked by such physicians, and the dealers in magic at all
times and in all parts achieved their successes by inspiring hope in their
patients. The more credulous the invalid the more easy the cure, no matter
what remedy is applied. Is it surprising, then, to find that among the
more childlike races, or that among the infant civilizations, magic often
supersedes medicine, or is combined with it? Ceremonies which impress the
mind and act upon the imagination considerably aid the physician in his
treatment of susceptible persons. Paracelsus himself combined astrology
with alchemy and medicine, and his host of followers often went further
than their master, and relied more upon magic than upon specific remedies.
It was the crowd of charlatans, astrologers, wonder-workers, and their
sort who substituted magic for medicine, and who had so great an influence
in England three centuries ago, that Ben Jonson scourged with the lash of
his satire in "The Alchemist," the impostor described as

                  "A rare physician,
    An excellent Paracelsian, and has done
    Strange cures with mineral physic. He deals all
    With spirits, he; he will not hear a word
    Of Galen, or his tedious recipes."

There has generally been sufficient superstition in all races to make
amulets the popular means of averting calamity and preserving from
sickness. The Greeks, the Romans, the Jews, the Turks, and the Arabs, to
say nothing of less civilized races, have thoroughly believed that disease
can be charmed away by the simple expedient of wearing a token, or
carrying a talisman. The magical formula of Abracadabra, written in the
form of a triangle, sufficed to cure agues and fevers; the Abraxas stones
warded off epidemics; the coins of St. Helena served as talismans, and
cured epilepsy. So strong was the belief in these magical protectors in
the fourth century that the clergy were forbidden, under heavy penalties
to make or to sell the charms, and in the eighth century the Christian
Church forbade amulets to be longer worn. In this connection it may be
mentioned that the custom of placing the wedding-ring upon the fourth
finger of the left hand owes its origin to the ancients who resorted to
magic for the cure of their ailments. The Greeks and the Romans believed
that the finger in question contained a vein communicating directly with
the heart, and that nothing could come in contact with it without giving
instant warning to the seat of life. For this reason they were accustomed
to stir up mixtures and potions with this "medicated finger," as it was
called, and when the ring became the symbol of marriage that finger was
chosen of all others for the wearing of it. Thus do we unknowingly keep
alive the superstitions of other times.

The Hindoos, whose books on the healing art date back to 1500 B.C.,
regarded sickness as the result of the operation of malevolent deities who
were either to be propitiated by prayers, offerings, charms, and
sacrifices, or to be overcome with the aid of friendly gods. The early
Greeks when suffering from disease were cured, not by means of medicine,
but by religious observances, and particularly by the "temple-sleep," in
which they dreamt dreams which the priests interpreted, and in which were
found the suggestions for remedy. It was Hippocrates, in 460 B.C., who
first proclaimed that disease was not of supernatural origin, and that it
could not be combated or cured by magic. But for many centuries later in
Europe the Black Art had greater sway than rational treatment. In Sweden
it is even now common for the lower classes to ascribe sickness to the
visitation of spirits (Nisse), who must be mollified by pouring liquor
into a goblet and mixing with it the filings of a bride-ring, or filings
of silver, or of any metal that has been inherited. The mixture is taken
to the place where the man is supposed to have caught his illness, and is
poured over the left shoulder, not a syllable being uttered the while.
After the performance of this ceremony the invalid may hope to recover.

Consecrated grave-mould is supposed by many primitive races to have
particular properties as a medicine. The Shetlander who has a "stitch in
his side," cures himself by applying to the affected part, some dry mould
brought from a grave, and heated, care being taken to remove the mould and
to return it before the setting of the sun. In the neighbouring isles of
Orkney, magic is also resorted to as a remedy for disease. Perhaps the
least harmful of the rites is the washing of a cat in the water which had
previously served for an invalid's ablutions, the confident belief being
that the disease would by this means be transferred to the animal. This
custom of "substitution" is found in many races, and is one of the most
interesting subjects introduced to the student of folk-lore.

In Tibet, for example, when all ordinary remedies have failed, the Lamas
make a dummy to represent the sick person, and they adorn the image with
trinkets. By ceremonies and prayers the sickness of the patient is laid
upon the dummy, after which it is taken out and burned, the Lamas
appropriating the ornaments as a reward. Sir Walter Scott tells of a
similar case which occurred in Scotland. Lady Katharine Fowlis made a
model in clay of a person whom she wished to afflict, and shot at the
image in the hope that the wound would be transferred to the real person.
We have only to turn to Scott's "Demonology and Witchcraft" to find
hundreds of instances of the unshaken belief of the Highlanders in mystic
potions, pills, drugs, and drops; and not even wholesale burnings of the
dealers in white magic could induce the people to forsake their
superstitions. Bessie Dunlop told the Court, before which she was
arraigned, of the magic elixirs given to her by Thome Reid, who had been
killed in battle centuries before, but had appeared to her as an
apparition, and begged her to fly with him to Elf-land. By means of his
medicines she cured the most stubborn diseases, obtained the reputation of
a wise woman, and grew so rich that the eye of the law was drawn upon her,
and, after her confession was made, she was ordered to be burnt. As Scott
said, in one of his chapters, the Scottish law did not acquit those who
accomplished even praiseworthy actions, and "the proprietor of a patent
medicine who should in those days have attested his having wrought such
miracles as we see sometimes advertised might have forfeited his life."

The idea of sacrificing something, or someone, to appease the anger of the
powers who bring affliction upon mankind, is extremely common, and by no
means confined to savage nations or to very ancient times. At the time of
the Black Plague in the fourteenth century the fanaticism of the French
led them to sacrifice 12,000 Jews by torture and burning, these
Israelites being deemed the cause of the affliction. In the "Ingoldsby
Legends" may be read a ghastly account of a similar sacrifice in Spain, in
order to secure the good-will of the over-ruling powers on behalf of the
Queen. Even in comparatively modern times the practice of sacrificing in
order to cure or avert disease has not been unknown, and this in civilized
lands, too. The sacrifices in these cases have, of course, been of animals
only, but the germ of the old and worse ritual is found in the custom. In
1767, the people of Mull, in consequence of a disease among the cattle,
agreed to perform an incantation. They carried to the top of Carnmoor a
wheel and nine spindles of oakwood. Every fire in the houses was
extinguished; and the wheel was then turned from east to west over the
nine spindles long enough to produce fire by friction. They then
sacrificed a heifer, which they cut in pieces and burnt while yet alive.
Finally they lighted their own hearths from the pile, while an old man
repeated the words of incantation. This custom is prevalent in Ireland, in
various parts of Scotland, and even in England and Wales it has been
practised with variations and some modification. In Cornwall, in 1800, a
calf was burnt alive to arrest the murrain. Mr. Laurence Gomme has traced
the custom back to the sacrifice of animals for human sickness, for in
1678 four men were actually prosecuted for "sacrificing a bull in a
heathenish manner for the recovery of the health of Custane Mackenzie." In
Ireland a cure for small-pox consisted in sacrificing a sheep to a wooden
image, wrapping the skin about the sick person, and then eating the sheep.

In Scotland strange and weird customs linger, and Sir H. G. Reid in his
entertaining volume, "'Tween Gloamin' and the Mirk," has related how he
himself, during infancy, underwent a mysterious cure for the "falling
sickness." He was carried secretly away to a lonely hut on the distant
moor, and the party were admitted to a long, low-roofed apartment, dimly
lighted from two small windows. In one corner sat an old woman, wrinkled
and silent, busily knitting; a huge peat-fire blazed on the open hearth,
shooting heavy sparks up through the hole in the roof, and filling the
apartment with smoke. No word was spoken, and the scene must have been as
eerie as the lover of mystery or the believer in witchcraft could have
desired. "I was placed on a three-legged stool in the middle of the
floor" (the writer continues); "the old woman rose, and with the aid of
immense tongs, took deliberately from the fire seven large smooth round
stones, they were planted one by one in an irregular circle about me; with
her dull dark eyes closed, and open white palms outstretched, the
enchantress muttered some mystic words; it was over--the tremulous patient
was taken up as 'cured!'" In Scotland the belief in witches who have power
both to cure and to cause maladies is so deeply founded that it would be
rash to deny its continued existence. These creatures are credited with
opening graves for the purpose of taking out joints of the fingers and
toes of dead bodies, with some of the winding-sheet, in order to prepare
powders. In Kirkwall a small portion of the human skull was taken from the
graveyard and grated to a powder in order to be used in a mixture for the
cure of fits; while in Caithness the patient was made to drink from a
suicide's skull, and the beverage so taken was regarded as a sovereign
specific for epilepsy. In 1643 one John Drugh was indicted for this
despoiling of corpses for some such purpose. The Australian aborigines
had a belief not altogether dissimilar to this. They rubbed weak persons
with the fat of a corpse, and thought that the strength, courage, and
valour of the dead man was communicated to the body subjected to the
treatment. Analogies may be found among savage tribes all over the world,
and the culmination is found in the devouring of enemies, not out of
revenge, but because the widespread primitive idea prevails that by eating
the flesh and by drinking the blood of the slain, a man absorbs the nature
or the life of the deceased into his own body. In other words, cannibalism
has a medical origin which the most depraved superstition suggested and
fortified.

The Lhoosai, a savage hill-tribe in India, teach their young warriors to
eat a piece of the liver of the first man they kill in order to strengthen
their hearts, and here we see the development of the magic power of the
medicines which is not only efficacious for the body, but for the spirit.

When Coleridge was a little boy at the Blue Coat School, he relates in his
Table Talk, there was a "charm for one's foot when asleep," which he
believed had been in the school since its foundation in the time of King
Edward VI. Its potency lay in the words--

    "Crosses three we make to ease us,
    Two for the thieves, and one for Christ Jesus."

The same charm served for cramp in the leg, and Coleridge quaintly adds:
"Really, upon getting out of bed, where the cramp most frequently
occurred, pressing the sole of the foot on the cold floor, and then
repeating this charm, I can safely affirm that I do not remember an
instance in which the cramp did not go away in a few seconds." Charms like
this, by which a simple method of cure is invested with marvel, are common
enough among primitive races, and not infrequently provide the key to the
solution of the mystery of the magician's triumph. The cunning leaders,
priests, or medicine-men of ignorant nations maintain their ascendency by
ascribing to miracle the simplest feats they perform.

The superstitious red man is completely at the mercy of the medicine-man
who claims to possess supernatural powers, and who assumes the ability to
work marvellous cures by magic. Each North American Indian carries with
him a medicine bag obtained under very curious circumstances. When he is
approaching manhood he sets forth in search of the patent drug which is to
shield him from all danger, and act as an all-powerful talisman. He lies
down alone in the woods upon a litter of twigs, eats and drinks nothing
for several days, and at last falls asleep from sheer exhaustion. Then he
dreams--or should do so--and whatever bird, or beast, or reptile, forms
the subject of his dream, he must seek as his medicine. He goes forth upon
the quest directly his strength has returned, and when he has discovered
the animal of his vision, he turns its skin into a pouch, and wears it
ever afterwards round his neck. In peace or war he will never part with
this talisman; it is the treasure of his life, a sacred possession, a
charm against all maladies, and a protection from foes. It is scarcely
necessary to add, after this, that the medicine-man of the tribe is held
in highest honour, and regarded as a worker of veritable miracles. All
things are possible to him. By his prayers, his rites, and his
incantations he causes the sun to shine, the rain to descend, the rivers
to deepen, the plants to thrive. A traveller tells us that a drought had
withered the maize fields, and the medicine-man was sent for to compel
the rain to fall. On the first day one Wah-ku, or the Shield, came to the
front, but failed; so did Om-pah, or the Elk. On succeeding days another
was tried, but without success; but at last recourse was made to
Wak-a-dah-ha-Ku, or the White Buffalo Hair, who possessed a shield
coloured with red lightnings, and carried an arrow in his hand. Much was
expected of him, and the people were not disappointed. "Taking his station
by the medicine-lodge," we are told, "he harangued the people, protesting
that for the good of his tribe he was willing to sacrifice himself, and
that if he did not bring the much desired rain he was content to live for
the rest of his life with the old women and the dogs. He asserted that the
first medicine-man had failed because his shield warded off the rain
clouds; the second, who wore a head-dress made of a raven's skin, because
the raven was a bird that soared above the storm, and cared not whether
the rain came or stayed; and the third who wore a beaver skin, because the
beaver was always wet and required no rain. But as for him, the red
lightnings on his shield would attract the rain-clouds, and his arrow
would pierce them, and pour the water over the thirsty fields. It chanced
that as he ended his oration, a steamer fired a salute from a twelve
pounder gun. To the Indians the roar of the cannon was like the voice of
thunder, and their joy knew no bounds. The successful medicine-man was
loaded with valuable gifts; mothers hastened to offer their daughters to
him in marriage; and the elder medicine-men hastened from the lodge to
enrol him in their order.... Just before sunset his quick eyes discovered
a black cloud which, unobserved by the noisy multitude, swiftly came up
from the horizon. At once he assumed his station on the roof of the lodge,
strung his bow, and made ready his arrow; arrested the attention of his
fellows by his loud and exultant speech; and as the cloud impended over
the village, shot his arrow into the sky. Lo, the rain descended in
torrents, wetting the rain-maker to the skin, but establishing in
everybody's mind a firm and deep conviction of his power."

The influence of the medicine-man in time of sickness is illustrated in
the narrative of Mr. Kane, who wrote "The Wanderings of an Artist." He
heard a great noise in one of the villages, and found that a handsome
Indian girl was extremely ill. The medicine-man sat in the middle of the
room, crossed-legged and naked; a wooden dish filled with water was before
him, and he had guaranteed to rid the girl of her disease which afflicted
her side. He commenced by singing and gesticulating in a violent manner,
the others who surrounded him beating drums with sticks. This lasted
half-an-hour. Then the medicine-man determined on a radical cure of the
patient, for he darted suddenly upon the girl, dug his teeth into her side
(for she was undressed), and shook her for several minutes. This increased
her agony, but the medicine-man declared he had "got it," and held his
hands to his mouth. After this he plunged his hands into a bowl of water,
leaving the spectators to believe that he had torn out the disease with
his teeth, and was now destroying it by drowning. Eventually he withdrew
his hand from the bowl, and it was found that he held a piece of cartilage
between the finger and thumb. This was cut in two, and half cast into the
fire, half into the water. So ended the operation, and Mr. Kane records
that though the doctor was perfectly satisfied, the patient seemed, if
anything, to be worse for the treatment.

The belief in magic was ingrained in the Egyptians, who, notwithstanding
that the art of medicine was far advanced with them, preferred to trust in
the workers of miracles and enchantments. In his recent collection of
Egyptian Tales, Mr. Flinders-Petrie is able to supply a striking instance
of this credulity. A man named Dedi was said to have such powers over life
and death that he could restore the head that had been smitten from the
body. He was brought before the King, who desired to put this marvellous
power to the test, and the story thus proceeds:--"His Majesty said, 'Let
one bring me a prisoner who is in prison that his punishment may be
fulfilled.' And Dedi said, 'Let it not be a man, O King, my lord; behold
we do not even thus to our cattle.' And a duck was brought unto him, and
its head was cut off. And the duck was laid on the west side of the hall,
and its head on the east side of the hall. And Dedi spake his magic
speech. And the duck fluttered along the ground, and its head came
likewise; and when it had come part to part the duck stood and quacked.
And they brought likewise a goose before him, and he did even so unto it.
His Majesty caused an ox to be brought, and its head cast on the ground.
And Dedi spake his magic speech. And the ox stood upright behind him, and
followed him with his halter trailing on the ground." This story prepares
us in every way for the information that the Egyptians, despite their
great knowledge of the curative powers of herbs and drugs, preferred to
rely upon enchanters, soothsayers, and magicians in their time of illness
and peril.

Professor Douglas, in his "Society in China," devotes a very interesting
and entertaining chapter to medicine as regarded and practised by the
Celestials. From this we learn that while there are plenty of doctors in
the land, they are one and all the merest empirics, who prey on the folly,
the ignorance, and the dread of the uneducated people. The failure to cure
any disease brings no odium upon the quack, though when the late Emperor
"ascended on a dragon to be a guest on high," or, in other words, died of
small-pox, his physicians who could not save him from that distinction
were deprived of honours and rewards. The Chinese are centuries behind
other nations in medicine, and they have not yet learnt that the blood
circulates in the body, or that a limb may be removed with beneficial
effects in case of some diseases or accidents. They believe that arteries
and veins are one and the same, and that the pulses communicate with the
various organs of the body. The object of the physician is to "strengthen
the breath, stimulate the gate of life, restore harmony." "The heart is
the husband, and the hinges are the wife," and they must be brought into
agreement, or evil arises. Good results may be obtained, it is believed,
by such tonics as dog-flesh, dried red-spotted lizard-skins,
tortoise-shell, fresh tops of stag-horns, bones and teeth of dragons (when
obtainable), shavings of rhinoceros-horns, and such like. For dyspepsia
the doctor has no nostrum, but he thrusts a needle into the patient's
liver and expects him to be immediately cured. When cholera or any other
pestilence sweeps over the land, the Chinese feel the helplessness of
their physicians, so they resort to charms, and to the offering of gifts
to the gods by way of staying the plague. Hydrophobia is common among the
half-starved curs which infest the streets, and the cure for it--quite
unknown to Pasteur--is the curd of the black pea dried and pulverised,
mixed with hemp oil, and formed into a large ball; this is to be rolled
over the wound, then broken open, and kept on rolling until it has lost
its hair-like appearance. To complete the cure the patient must abstain
from eating "anything in a state of decomposition." He might just as well
be told not to poison himself. If, by the way, the prescription does not
work, but hydrophobia continues, the patient is strongly commended to try
the effect of "the skull, teeth, and toes of a tiger ground up, and given
in wine in doses of one-fifth of an ounce." While the tiger is being
caught, however, a fatal result may occur, but of course the Chinese
doctor is not to be blamed for that. He has done his best, and the fault
is obviously the tiger's. The Chinese believe in astrology, the
philosopher's stone, and the elixir of life. A plant known as ginseng is
said to greatly prolong and sweeten existence, and sometimes as much as a
thousand taels of silver are given for a pound's weight of the precious
root. It will be seen, therefore, from such facts as these that a Galen in
China would have a vast revolution to undertake, and that a thousand
Galens at least would be required to overcome the prejudices and uproot
the superstitions of the race. The great value which the Chinese attach to
the bones, horns, tusks, and eyes of animals may be judged from various
tonics and remedies which are in great request among all classes. A dose
of tigers' bones inspires courage; an elephant's eye burnt to powder and
mixed with human milk is a sovereign remedy for inflammation of the eye;
pulverised elephants' bones cure indigestion; a preparation of elephants'
ivory is the recognised cure for diabetes; and the same animal's teeth may
be used for epilepsy. But if the patient cannot eat rice his case is
abandoned as hopeless, and not even the physician who deals most
extensively in magic pills, ointments, and decoctions will attempt to save
the obstinate person's life.

The medicine-men of the Eskimos were called angekoks, and enjoyed the
unlimited confidence of the people. They were said to have equal power
over heaven and earth, this world and the next. This made them useful as
friends and dangerous as enemies. The Eskimo, therefore, set out upon no
enterprise without consulting the angekoks, who granted blessings,
exorcised demons, and gave charms against disease. These medicine-men have
a profound belief in themselves, and though they resort to jugglery and
ventriloquism to deceive their visitors, they appear to have no idea that
they are perpetrating an imposture. Their particular powers, they think,
are derived from more than human sources. Dr. Nansen, in his "Eskimo
Life," points out that it has always been to the interests of the
medicine-men and the priests to sustain and mature superstitions or
religious ideas. "They must therefore themselves appear to believe in
them; they may even discover new precepts of divinity to their own
advantage, and thereby increase both their power and their revenues." The
Greenlanders believe that the angekoks work with the help of ministering
spirits, called _tôrnat_, who are often none other than the souls of dead
persons, especially of grandfathers; but not infrequently the _tôrnat_ are
supposed to be the souls of departed animals, or of fairies. The angekok
is assumed to have several of these councillors always at hand. They
render help in the time of danger, and may even act as avengers or
destroyers. In the latter case they show themselves as ghosts, and so
frighten to death the persons against whom vengeance is directed.
Therefore, as Dr. Nansen reports, the angekoks are the wisest and also the
craftiest of all Eskimos. They assert that they have the power of
conversing with spirits, of travelling in the under-world, of conjuring
up powerful spirits, and of obtaining revelations. "They influence and
work upon their countrymen principally through their mystic exorcisms and
_seances_, which occur as a rule in the winter, when they are living in
houses. The lamps are extinguished, and skins hung before the windows. The
angekok himself sits upon the floor. By dint of making a horrible noise so
that the whole house shakes, changing his voice, bellowing and shrieking,
ventriloquising, groaning, moaning, and whining, beating on drums,
bursting forth into diabolical shrieks of laughter and all sorts of other
tricks, he persuades his companions that he is visited by the various
spirits he personates, and that it is they who make the disturbance." They
cure diseases by reciting charms, and "give men a new soul." He demands
large fees, not for himself, he explains, but for the spirits whose agent
he is. Apparently these spirits have similar ideas to the London
consulting physician.

Mr. Theodore Bent, in his "Ruined Cities of Mashonaland," gives a specimen
of the credulity excited by the medicine-men. The explorer desired to
interview a chief, Mtoko by name, but permission was refused. The reason,
he afterwards ascertained, was that the chief's father had died shortly
after another white man's visit, and the common belief was that he had
been bewitched. The chief thought that the "white lady" who ruled over the
nation to which Mr. Bent belonged had sent him purposely to cast a glamour
over him. It may be remembered that the ill-fated Lobengula refused to
have his portrait taken because he believed that by means of the image of
himself he could be magically infected with a dread disease. This idea of
substitution, which has already been referred to, is akin to that of the
belief in witchcraft during the middle ages--namely, that the witches
could, by sticking pins into the wax image of a person, bring upon that
person agonising maladies. The dreadful results of such beliefs among
savage tribes is told by the two hospital nurses who a year or so ago
produced a lively book, "Adventures in Mashonaland." One morning a native
entered their camp, bringing a tale of horror. A chief called Maronka,
whose kraal was about forty miles away, had boiled his family alive. He
had been convinced by the native doctors that after death the souls of the
chiefs passed into the bodies of lions. His medicine-men had "smelt out"
his own family as witches, and boiling alive was the requisite punishment.
Mr. Rider Haggard has told many such stories as this in his books on South
Africa. The Zulu doctors were in the habit, not only of "smelling out"
witches and evil spirits, but of sprinkling the soldiers with medicine, in
order to "put a great heart into them," and ensure their victory in
battle.

Customs like these gave Charles Dickens his opportunity of writing two of
his most scathing satires "The Noble Savage" and "The Medicine Man of
Civilisation." He refused to subscribe to the popular and amiable
sentiment that the African barbarian was an interesting survival, or that
the Ojibbeway Indian was picturesque. After a severe indictment of them,
Dickens instanced their customs in medicine as a proof of their
irremediable depravity. "When the noble savage finds himself a little
unwell," he wrote, "and mentions the circumstance to his friends, it is
immediately perceived that he is under the influence of witchcraft. A
learned personage, called an Imyanger, or Witch Doctor, is sent for to
Nooker the Umtargartie, or smell out the witch. The male inhabitants of
the kraal being seated on the ground, the learned doctor, got up like a
grizzly bear, appears and administers a dance of the most terrific nature,
during the exhibition of which remedy he incessantly gnashes his teeth,
and howls,--'I am the original physician to Nooker the Umtargartie. Yow,
yow, yow! No connection with any other establishment. Till, till, till!
All other Umtargarties are feigned Umtargarties, Boroo, Boroo! but I
perceive here a genuine and real Umtargartie, Hoosh, Hoosh, Hoosh! in
whose blood, I, the original Imyanger and Nookerer, will wash these bear's
claws of mine!' All this time the learned physician is looking out among
the attentive faces for some unfortunate man who owes him a cow, or who
has given him any small offence, or against whom, without offence, he has
conceived a spite. Him he never fails to Nooker as the Umtargartie, and he
is instantly killed." This is no burlesque, and I have given the record in
Dickens's inimitable language because it most vividly sets before us the
custom of the medicine-men of barbarous races. But the medicine-men of
Longfellow's description, the men who came to appease and console
Hiawatha, who

    "Walked in silent, grave procession,
    Bearing each a pouch of healing,
    Skin of beaver, lynx, or otter,
    Filled with magic roots and simples,
    Filled with very potent medicines,"

--these may be accepted as the milder type of magicians who, among a
primitive people, claimed not only to be able to heal the living, but to
restore the dead.

Mr. Austine Waddell, in his exhaustive work on the Buddhism of Tibet,
tells us that a very popular form of Buddha is as "the supreme physician"
or Buddhist Æsculapius, the idea of whom is derived from an ancient legend
of the "medicine-king" who dispensed spiritual medicine. The images of
this Buddha are worshipped as fetishes, and they cure by sympathetic
magic. The supplicant, after bowing and praying, rubs his finger over the
eye, knee, or particular part of the image corresponding to the affected
part on his own body, and then applies the finger carrying this hallowed
touch to the afflicted spot. Mr. Waddell says that this constant friction
is rather detrimental to the features of the god; whether it is beneficial
to the man's body is of course largely a matter of faith and
circumstances. As might be expected, talismans to ward off evils from
malignant planets and demons, whence come all diseases, are in great
request. The eating of the paper on which a charm has been written is
considered by the Tibetan to be the easiest and most certain method of
curing a malady, and the spells which the Lamas use in this way are called
"za-yig," or edible letters. A still more mystical way of applying these
remedies, according to Mr. Waddell, is by the washings of the reflection
of the writing in a mirror, a habit common in other quarters of the globe.
In Gambia, for instance, this treatment is relied upon by the natives. A
doctor is called in, he examines the patient, and then sits down at the
bedside and writes in Arabic characters on a slate some sentences from the
Koran. The slate is then washed, and the dirty infusion is drunk by the
patient. In Tibet, Chinese ink is smeared on wood, and every twenty-nine
days the inscription reflected in a mirror. The face of the mirror during
the reflection is washed with beer, and the drainings are collected in a
cup for the patient's use. This is a special cure for the evil eye. The
medicine-men of Tibet can also supply charms against bullets and weapons,
charms for the clawing of animals, charms to ward off cholera, and even
charms to prevent domestic broils. This is surely evidence of high
civilisation.

It would be hopeless to endeavour to exhaust this subject. Only a few
selected instances can be given to illustrate how large a part magic has
played, and still plays, in the healing art. Medicine is by no means freed
of its superstitions yet, and the success of quack advertisements of the
day abundantly proves that the civilised public is still prone to believe
that universal remedies are obtainable, and that miracles can be wrought.

Modern medical science, as one of its great exponents has pointed out,
plays a waiting game when miracles are spoken of, and when magic is
claimed to supersede specific remedies. "When it is asked to believe in
the violent and erratic violation of laws of matter and force, science
stands on an impregnable rock, fenced round by bulwarks of logical fact,
and flanked by the bastions of knowledge of nature and her constitution."
And as exact knowledge spreads, Prospero will have no alternative but to
break his staff, and bury it fathoms deep.




Chaucer's Doctor of Physic.

BY W. H. THOMPSON.


In the "Canterbury Tales" we have an inimitable gallery of fourteenth
century portraits, drawn from life, with all a great master's delicacy of
finish and touch. And in none of these pictures does Chaucer excel himself
more than in that of his "Doctor of Physic." We may take it for granted
that the portrait is no mere fanciful one, with its pre-Raphaelite
minuteness of detail, sketched with the poet's own peculiar skill. With
what mischievous and yet altogether playful and good-natured humour is the
man of medicine presented to us!

    "With us there was a doctour of phisike
    In all this world ne was there none like him
    To speak of phisike and of surgerie."

What manner of man was this paragon of medical knowledge? In personal
appearance he was somewhat of an exquisite. "Clothes are unspeakably
significant" saith the immortal Teufelsdrockh, and every practitioner who
has his _clientele_ largely yet to make knows the importance of being
well dressed. Chaucer's grave graduate was apparelled in a purple surcoat,
and a blue and white furred hood.

    "In sanguine and in perse he clad was all
    Lined with taffata and with sendall,"

and yet no luxurious sybarite by any means was he,

    "Of his diet measureable was he,
    For it was no superfluity,
    But of great nourishing and digestable."

A man of simple habits, even perhaps given to holding his purse strings
somewhat tightly.

    "He was but easy of expense,
    He kept that he won in pestilence."

For, as the poet adds with his characteristic merry sly humour,

    "Gold in physic is a cordial,
    Therefore he loved gold in special."

The science of medicine since Chaucer's day has made extraordinary
advances, and it is only fair to judge his doctor by contemporary
standards. To-day, we fear, he would be largely regarded as little better
than a charlatan and a quack. It is true, he was acquainted with all the
authorities, ancient and modern, from Æsculapius and Galen down to
Gaddesden, the author of the "Rosa Anglica," the great English book of
fourteenth century medicine. But this last named luminary of physic would
aid him very little on the road to true knowledge. This medical "Rose,"
which Leland calls a "large and learned work," only serves to illustrate
the impotence of the professors of the healing arts at that period. This
is the recipe of Gaddesden for the small-pox. "After this (the appearance
of the eruption) cause the whole body of your patient to be wrapped in red
scarlet cloth, and command everything about the bed to be made red. This
is an excellent cure. It was in this manner I treated the son of the noble
king of England when he had the small-pox, and I cured him without leaving
any marks." To cure epilepsy, he orders the patient "and his parents" to
fast three days, and then go to church. "The patient must first confess,
and he must have mass on Friday and Saturday, and then on Sunday the
priest must read over the patient's head the gospel for September, in the
time of vintage after the feast of the Holy Cross. After this the priest
shall write out this portion of the gospel reverently, and bind it about
the patient's neck, and he shall be cured." If epilepsy was to be
exorcised by such a remedy as this, we venture to assert that it must have
been largely a case of faith-healing.

[Illustration: GEOFFREY CHAUCER.

(_From Harleian M.S.--4866 fol. 91._)]

Seeing then that such was the condition of the science of medicine in
Chaucer's days, we must take with a good deal of reservation his statement
that his doctor

    "Knew the cause of every malady
    Were it of cold, or hot, or moist, or dry,
    And where engendered, and of what humour."

Anyhow, some of the remedies prescribed for the "sick man," and the
"drugs," which his friends the apothecaries were so ready to supply, would
have seemed extraordinary enough to us.

The poet tells us the doctor's study was but "little in the Bible," and
that though a "perfect practitioner," the ground of his scientific
knowledge was astronomy, _i.e._, astrology; the "better part of medicine,"
as Roger Bacon calls it. In dealing with his patients he was guided by
"natural magic."

To this practice Chaucer alludes in another of his poems, the "House of
Fame."

    "And clerks eke, which con well,
    All this magic naturell,
    That craftily do her intents,
    To make in certain ascendents,
    Images--lo through which magic,
    To make a man be whole or sick."

So that in spite of what appears to us the charlatanry in his make up, the
doctor was supposed to be a person of importance in the eyes of his fellow
pilgrims, with quite the standing of an accredited medical man of to-day,
is evidenced by the manner in which mine host Bailly addresses him. Master
Bailly was no particular respecter of persons, indeed, on the contrary, he
was somewhat of a Philistine; yet he was all respect to this man of
medicine. It is as "Sir" Doctor of Physic, the host addresses him; also
declaring him to be a "proper man," and like a prelate. After the story of
chicanery related by the Canon's Yeoman, it is to the physician he looks
to tell a tale of "honest matter." Such is his bearing towards him
throughout.

The doctor's contribution to the "Canterbury Tales," too, is of a serious,
sober kind, in keeping with his character; and concludes with some sound
moral advice. Therefore, whatever foibles he may have, the "doctor of
physic" is presented to us as a sterling gentleman, no unworthy
predecessor of those who to-day, on more modern lines, still follow in his
footsteps.




The Doctors Shakespeare Knew.

BY A. H. WALL.

    "O, mickle is the powerful grace that lies
    In herbs, plants, shrubs, and their true qualities.
    For nought so vile that on the earth doth live
    But to the earth some special good doth give;
    Nor ought so good, but, strained from that fair use
    Revolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse."
                                  --_Romeo and Juliet._

    "By medicine life may be prolong'd."--_Cymbeline V. 5._


In Walckenaer's "Memoirs of Madame de Sévigné," and in the amusing,
interesting volume which Gaston Boissier devoted to her works and letters,
we have glimpses of the medical profession in France, which show us it was
in her time and country, just what it was in England in the same century
when it was known to Shakespeare. For one more or less genuine physician
there were thousands of charlatans and quacks, and the contempt which our
great dramatic poet frequently expresses in his works for medical
practitioners must, in fairness, be regarded as applicable to the latter,
not to the former. In 1884, an American writer on this subject (Dr. Rush
Field, in his "Medical Thoughts of Shakespeare") strove to show that our
great philosophic poet and playwright's opinion of all the medical
practitioners was a low one. "He uses them frequently," he says, "as a
tool by which deaths are produced through the means of poison, and
generally treats them with contempt." That he might fairly do this, and
that in doing it he rather displayed respect and regard for the genuine,
more or less scientific professors of the healing art, can be very readily
demonstrated by anyone at all familiar with his plays. But to return to
Madame de Sévigné. At a time when she was growing old, when her letters
speak so sadly of the dying condition of Cardinal de Retz at Commercy, of
Madame de la Fayette's being consumed by slow fever, and La Roche confined
to his armchair by gout, of Corbinelle's threatened insanity, and of his
taking "potable gold" as a remedy for headache, she writes also of
small-pox and other fevers having permanently settled at Versailles and
Saint-Germain, where the King and Queen were attacked, and ladies and
gentlemen of the Court were decimated, and cases of apoplexy and
rheumatism were rapidly increasing in every direction. "Fashionable folk,
used up with pleasure-making, sick through disappointed ambition,
fidgetting without motive, agitating without aim, tainted with morbid
fancies and suspicion," found themselves in the doctor's hands, and were
far more ready to select practitioners who promised magically swift and
easy cures, than those who spoke of slow and gradual recovery by means
which were neither painless nor pleasurable. "Everybody," says Boissur,
"women included, battled with one another to possess marvellous secrets
whereby obstinate complaints should be immediately cured. Madame Fouquet
applied a plaster to the dying Queen, which cured her, to the great
scandal of the Faculty unable to save her; and the Princess de Tarente
served out drugs to all her people at Vitre.

[Illustration: WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.

(_The Stratford Portrait._)]

Madame Sévigné wrote of her as "the best doctor in the upper classes; she
has rare and valuable compounds of which she gives us three pinches with
prodigious effect." When writing to her daughter, she begs her not to
neglect taking such medicines as "cherry water," "extract of periwinkles,"
"viper-broth," "uric acid," and "powdered crab's-eyes." She says the
extract of periwinkles "endowed Madame de Grignam with a second youth."
Writing to her daughter, "If you use it, when you re-appear so fair
people will cry, 'O'er what blessed flower can she have walked,' then I
will answer 'On the periwinkle.'" She tells, too, how the Capuchins, who
still retained their ancient medical reputation, treated the rheumatism in
her leg "with plants bruised and applied twice a day; taken off while wet
twice a day, and buried in the earth, so that as they rotted away her
pains might in like way decrease." "It's a pity you ran and told the
surgeons this," she says to her daughter, "for they roar with laughter at
it, but I do not care a fig for them." In like way Madame de Scudery tells
Bassy, "There is an abbé here who is making a great bother by curing by
sympathy. For fever of all kinds, so they say, he takes the patient's
spittle and mingles it with an egg, and gives it to a dog; the dog dies
and the patient recovers.... They say he has cured a quantity of people."

Turning from these illustrations of medical practice in France to see how
identical it is with that adopted in England when Shakespeare lived, we
recall the advice of that eminent gentleman, Andrew Rourde, who recommends
people to wash their faces once a week only, using a scarlet cloth to wipe
them dry upon, as a sure remedy in certain cases. In other instances we
find that certain pills made from the skulls of murderers taken down from
gibbets, and ground to powder for that purpose, were popular as medicine,
that a draught of water drunk from a murdered man's skull had wonderful
medicinal properties, and that the blood of a dragon was absolutely
miraculous in the cures it effected. The touch of a dead man's hand was
another ghastly remedy in common use, and the powder of mummy was a
wonderful cure for certain grave complaints. Love-philtres were also
regarded from a medicinal point of view, and the strange doings of quack
_accoucheurs_ are not less absurdly terrible. That the seventeenth century
physician himself was not always proof against these products of ancient
ignorance and superstition, is abundantly apparent. Van Helmont, the son
of a nobleman, born in Brussels, and very carefully educated for his
profession, practised both medicine and magic medicinally. He rejected
Galen, inclined to that illiterate pretender Paracelsus, and determined
that the only way by which he could defy disease, and utterly destroy it,
was through what he called _Archæus_. Speaking of digestion, for instance,
he denied that it was either chemical or mechanical in its nature, but the
result of this _Archæus_, a spiritual activity, working in a very
mysteriously complicated way, for both evil and good. It has been said
that he was one of Lord Bacon's disciples, but for that assertion there
certainly is no sufficient foundation, for Bacon, if a mystic by
inclination, was logical in reasoning. In England Van Helmont had an
English follower in the person of another physician, Dr. Fludd, a disciple
of the famous inventor of the camera obscura, and conjecturally the first
photographer. His grand quack remedy was "the powder of sympathy," which
was the "sword-salve" of Paracelsus (composed of moss taken from the skull
of a gibbetted murderer, of warm human blood, human suet, linseed oil,
turpentine, etc.). This was applied, not to the wound, but to the sword
that inflicted it, kept "in a cool place!" Certain plants pulled up with
the left hand were regarded as a sure remedy in fever cases, but the
gatherer, while gathering, was not to look behind, for that deprived the
plants of their medicinal value.

Amongst other physicians of Shakespeare's century was Mr. Valentine
Greatrake, who came to London from Ireland, where his supposed magical
cures had been awakening a great sensation. He hired a large house in
Lincoln's Inn Fields, to which vast crowds of patients of all kinds and
conditions crowded daily, all clamouring to be cured. He received them in
their order, says an eye-witness, with "a grave and simple countenence."
For, as Shakespeare wrote, "Thus credulous fools are caught." ("Comedy of
Errors," 1, 2.) Greatrake (afterwards executed for high treason) asserted
that every diseased person was possessed by a devil, and that by his
prayers and laying on of hands the devil could be cast out. Lord Conway
sent for him to cure an incurable disease from which his wife was
suffering, and even some of the most learned and eminent people of the
time were amongst his patrons. St. Evremond wrote, "You can hardly imagine
what a reputation he gained in a short time. Catholics and Protestants
visited him from every part, all believing that power from heaven was in
his hands."

In an Act of Parliament which was passed in the year 1511, we read, in its
preamble, that "the science and cunning of Physic and Surgery" was
exercised by "a great multitude of ignorant persons, of whom the greater
part have no manner of insight in the same, nor in any other kind of
learning--some also can read no letters in the book--so far forth that
common artificers, as smiths, weavers, and women, boldly and accostumably
took upon them great cures, and things of great difficulty, in which they
partly used sorceries and witchcraft, and partly supplied such medicines
unto the diseased as are very noisome, and nothing meet therefore; to the
high displeasure of God," etc.

A large number of the pretended remedies thus used in medical practice are
clearly traceable back to the ancient Magi, who were professors of
medicine, as well as priests and astrologers.

With these facts before you, turn to your Shakespeare, and see how he
regarded the popular delusions thus created and fostered, with their

    "Distinguished cheaters, prating mountebanks,
    And many such libertines of sin."
                                  --_Comedy of Errors._

Do you remember the other lines from this source, in which the poet speaks
of "This pernicious slave," who "forsooth took on him as a conjurer, and,
gazing in mine eyes, feeling my pulse, and with no face, as't were,
outfacing me, cried out I was possessed." This is not the stern, grave
doctor in "Macbeth," who did not pretend to "raze out the written troubles
of the brain," but said, "Therein the patient must minister unto himself."
There is no depreciation of the healing art in Shakespeare's painting of
Lear's physician, as there is of the "caitiff wretch" of an apothecary,
who sold poison to Romeo in a very different way to that in which the
physician in Cymbeline supplied a deadly drug to the Queen. "I beseech
your grace," says he, speaking in solemn earnestness, "without offence
(my conscience bids me ask) wherefore you have commanded of me these most
poisonous compounds." In "All's well that Ends Well," you will recognize
the foregoing descriptions of medicinal delusions in the interview between
Helena and the King, who says, we "may not be so credulous of cure, when
our most learned doctors leave us, and the congregated college have
concluded that labouring art can never ransom Nature from her maid estate,
I say we must not so stain our judgment, or corrupt our hope, to
prostitute our past-cure malady to empirics." In this play both "Galen and
Paracelsus" are mentioned, and their names then represented rival schools
of medicine.

How smartly and merrily Shakespeare wrote of such cures as Greatrake
professed to effect, we see in Henry VI., where Simpcox, supposed to be
miraculously cured of blindness, is asked to and does describe what he
sees, "If thou _hadst_ been born blind, thou might'st as well have known
all our names as thus to name the several colours we do wear."

In the "Merry Wives of Windsor" we have "Master Caius that calls himself
doctor of physic," and is called by Dame Quickly a "fool and physician."
The two were in Shakespeare's time very commonly combined, and often, as
we have shown, very strangely. Dr. Caius was a real name borne by a
learned gentleman who was physician to Queen Elizabeth. In Cymbeline the
name of the physician is Cornelius. This again was the name of a real
physician, who, in the sixteenth century, gained great reputation in
Europe chiefly by restoring Charles V. to health after a tediously long
illness. We may presume that Shakespeare was familiar with the fact.

Amongst the doctors of our poet's time it was a common custom to throw up
cases when they believed them hopeless. Shakespeare's Sempronius says,
"His friends, like physicians, thrice gave him o'er," and Lord Bacon in
his work on "The Advancement of Learning," says of Physicians, "In the
enquiry of diseases, they do abandon the cures of many, some as in their
nature incurable, and others as past the period of cure, so that Sylla
triumvirs never prescribed so many men to die as they do by their ignorant
edicts." We have spoken of the sword-salve cure for wounds. Of dealers in
poison who visited fairs and market-places, and attracted crowds by the
aid of a stage fool, we get a glimpse in "Hamlet," where Laertes says:--

    "I bought an unction of a mountebank,
    So mortal, that but dip a knife in it,
    Where it draws blood, no cataplasm so rare
    Collected from all simples that have virtue,
    Under the moon can save the thing from death."

There is a hit at doctors who gave others remedies they had not enough
faith in to adopt for themselves:--

    "Thou speak'st like a physician, Helicarnus:
    Who minister'st a potion unto me
    That thou would'st tremble to receive thyself."
                                  --_Pericles._

In the same play the true physician receives full appreciation. Cerimon
says of himself:--

                            "'Tis known, I ever
    Have studied physic, through which secret art,
    By turning o'er authorities, I have
    Together with my practice, made familiar
    To me, and to my aid, the blest infusions
    That dwell in vegitives, in metals, stones.
    And I can speake of the disturbances
    That nature works, and of her cures; which doth give me
    A more content in course of true delight
    Than to be thirsty after tottering honour,
    Or tie my treasure up in silken bags,
    To please the fool, and death."

And one of the two listening gentlemen adds:--

    "Your honour has through Ephesus pour'd forth
    Your charity, and hundreds call themselves
    Your creatures, who by you have been restored."

And Pericles, with his supposed dead wife in his arms, turning to Cerimon,
who has saved her from the grave, says:--

                      "Reverend Sir,
    The gods can have no mortal officer
    More like a god than you."

And Gower, speaking the concluding lines of the play, adds:--

    "In reverend Cerimon there well appears
    The worth that learned charity aye wears."

    "_Cerimon_:            I hold it ever
    Virtue and cunning (wisdom) were endowment greater
    Than nobleness and riches...."

There was, perhaps, when Shakespeare wrote the above lines, some thought
of the Elizabethan nobleman, Edmund, Earl of Derby, who "was famous for
chirurgerie, bone-setting, and hospitalite," as Ward says in his Diary; of
the Marquis of Dorchester, who in his time was a Fellow of the College of
Surgeons; or of the poet's son-in-law, Dr. Hall, a gentleman who resided
in Stratford-on-Avon, in a fine old half timber house still standing, and
known as Hall's Croft. To his wife, the poet's elder daughter, Shakespeare
bequeathed his house and grounds, which Dr. Hall occupied when he died.
His grave is near that of his glorious father-in-law, and on it is the
following inscription:--

    "HERE LYETH Y{E} BODY OF JOHN HALL,
    GENT: HE MARR: SVSANNA Y{E} DAUGHTER
    AND CO HEIRE OF WILL. SHAKESPEARE,
    GENT. HEE DECEASED NOVE{R} 25 A{O} 1635
    AGED 60.

    Hallius hic situs est medica celeberrimus arte
      Expectans regni gaudia læta Dei
    Dignus erat meritis qui Nestora vinceret annis,
      In terris omnes, sed rapit aequa dies;
    Ne tumulo, quid desit adest fidissima conjux
      Et vitæ Comitem nunc quoque mortis habet."




Dickens' Doctors.

BY THOMAS FROST.


Dickens, it must be admitted by even the greatest admirers of his
inimitable genius, among whom the writer of this paper must be counted,
was not successful in his delineations of the medical profession. Though
his most humorous as well as his most pathetic pictures of human life are
drawn from the humbler walks in the pilgrimage of humanity, he has given
us some good touches of his skill in his presentments of other
professions, and notably of lawyers and lawyers' clerks. Nothing in
fiction can excel his legal characters in, for instance, "Bleak
House,"--his Mr. Tulkinghorn, Mr. Guppy, the clerk, and Mr. Snagsby, the
law stationer. But a life-like doctor cannot be found in his works, and
the nearest approaches to such a description are the merest sketches.

The most strongly marked of these are Dr. Parker Peps and Mr. Pilkins, the
two members of the faculty who officiate at the closing scene in the life
of Mrs. Dombey, in which a sense of humour, with difficulty suppressed by
the author, mingles with the touching sadness of the death. Dr. Parker
Peps, "one of the Court physicians, and a man of immense reputation for
assisting at the increase of great families," is introduced "walking up
and down the drawing-room with his hands behind him, to the unspeakable
admiration of the family surgeon, who had regularly puffed the case for
the last six weeks among all his friends and acquaintances as one to which
he was in hourly expectation, day and night, of being summoned in
conjunction with Dr. Parker Peps." But in this little interlude, the two
actors in which do not appear again, the obsequiousness of Mr. Pilkins to
the Court physician, and the manner in which the latter, with assumed
obliviousness, substitutes "her grace, the duchess" or "her ladyship" for
Mrs. Dombey, verge on caricature, a tendency Dickens seems to have had at
all times some difficulty in resisting.

Of Dr. Slammer also we have only a sketch, and that of the slightest
character. Though he is described as "one of the most popular personages
in his own circle," we gather from the incidents in which he appears only
that he was very irascible. As we read of his furious jealousy of Jingle,
and the interrupted duel with Winkle, who had received his challenge to
the former by mistake, we wonder at the circle in which this "little fat
man, with a ring of upright black hair round his head, and an extensive
bald plain on the top of it," was one of the most popular personages.
Harold Skimpole, we are told, had been educated for the medical
profession; but his training seems to have left no traces of it upon his
character or his conversation. He prefers to dabble in literature and
music for his own amusement, and look to his friends for the means of
living, too prosaic an occupation for himself.

One of the best, but not quite the best, of the medical characters in
Dickens' novels, is Allan Woodcourt, who "had gone out a poor ship's
surgeon, and had come home nothing better,"--the young man hastily called
in when the death of Nemo is discovered, in conjunction with "a testy
medical man, brought from his dinner, with a broad snuffy upper lip, and a
broad Scotch tongue." Allan Woodcourt has the kindness of heart which
characterises the profession, and exemplifies it very pleasingly in the
scene with the brickmaker's wife, and with poor Jo, the forlorn waif who
is kept continually moving on by the police. How tenderly, too, he deals
with Richard Carstone, the weak-minded victim of the long-drawn Chancery
suit. And his head is as sound as his heart is soft. "You," says Richard
to him, "can pursue your art for its own sake, and can put your hand to
the plough and never turn; and can strike a purpose out of anything." What
a world of difference we see in this briefly sketched trait to the want of
earnestness of purpose and steadfastness of pursuit in the character of
young Carstone!

Even stronger testimony to the good qualities of Allan Woodcourt is borne
by Mr. Jarndyce. Allan, says that gentleman, is "a man whose hopes and
aims may sometimes lie (as most men's sometimes do, I dare say) above the
ordinary level, but to whom the ordinary level will be high enough after
all, if it should prove to be a way of usefulness and good service leading
to no other. All generous spirits are ambitious, I suppose; but the
ambition that calmly trusts itself to such a road, instead of
spasmodically trying to fly over it, is the kind I care for. It is
Woodcourt's kind." The love passages of this estimable young man with the
equally estimable Esther Summerson, one of Dickens' most charming
presentments of English maidenhood, are very pleasing, and none of them
more so than one which occurs towards the close of the story.

There is another medical character in one of the Christmas stories which,
good as it is, might have been made better but for the extent to which the
exigencies of space limited the author in the development of character in
that class of stories. I mean Dr. Jeddler, the genial but mistaken father
of Grace and Marion, in "The Battle of Life." The doctor is "a great
philosopher, and the heart and mystery of his philosophy was to look upon
the world as a gigantic practical joke; as something too absurd to be
considered seriously by any practical man. His system of belief had been
in the beginning part and parcel of the battle ground on which he lived."
He is not of the cynical school, but a modern Democritus, whose
inclination to laugh at everything on the surface of the ocean of life was
irresistible, while there was nothing in the conditions of his existence
to suggest anything that was beneath. When he hears his daughters
conversing about their lovers, "his reflections as he looked after them,
and heard the purport of their discourse, were limited at first to certain
merry meditations on the folly of all loves and likings, and the idle
imposition practised on themselves by young people who believe for a
moment that there could be anything serious in such bubbles, and were
always deceived--always."

Dr. Jeddler is a widower; we are not told what his experiences of married
life had been. Had they been unhappy, one would suppose that he would have
been more disposed to be cynical and pessimistic than to regard life's
incidents as provocative of merriment, yet, if they had been happy, why
should he have regarded the engagement of Grace as an idle folly, a bubble
on life's surface, soon to burst? Dickens' explanation is, from this point
of view, scarcely satisfactory. "He was sorry," says the novelist, "for
her sake--sorry for them both--that life should be such a very ridiculous
business as it was. The doctor never dreamed of inquiring whether his
children, or either of them, helped in any way to make the scheme a
serious one. But then he was a philosopher. A kind and generous man by
nature, he had stumbled by chance over that common philosopher's stone
(much more easily discovered than the object of the alchemist's
researches) which sometimes trips up kind and generous men, and has the
fatal property of turning gold to dross, and every precious thing to poor
account."

But when sorrow had humbled the doctor's heart, he felt that the world in
which some love, deep-anchored, is the portion of every human creature,
was more serious than he had thought it, and understood "how such a trifle
as the absence of a little unit in the great absurd account had stricken
him to the ground." Then, when he and his daughters are again together in
the old home, and his arms are about them both, we find him acknowledging
that "It's a world full of hearts, and a serious world with all its
folly,--even with mine, which was enough to swamp the whole world."

It is to be observed, however, that while we find all the traits and
incidents of professional life in the lawyers of Dickens' creation, there
is little or nothing of the kind in his doctors. Such traits are abundant
in his presentments of Tulkinghorn, and Kenge, and Vholes in Wickfield,
and many others that might be named; but they are so completely absent
from his portrayals of Allan Woodcourt and Dr. Jeddler, that the two men
might as well have been of any other profession, without any loss to the
stories in which they appear. If we compare them with his lawyers, or with
the clergymen of Mrs. Oliphant, we are struck at once with the difference.

[Illustration: CHARLES DICKENS.]

This is not the case, however, when from the full-blown medical
practitioner, adding to his name the initials M.D. or M.R.C.S., we descend
to the "sawbones in training," as the facetious Sam Weller designates the
young men qualifying themselves for the exercise of the profession by
"walking the hospitals." The medical students of the novelist's early
days were--it would perhaps be fairer to say that a large proportion of
them were--a turbulent and disorderly element in the social life of the
metropolis. The newspapers of the day record their frequent appearances at
the Bow Street and Marlborough Street police-courts on charges of rowdyism
in the streets at or after midnight, when they came out from their
favourite places of amusement, the Coal Hole, in the Strand, the Cider
Cellars, in Maiden Lane, and the Judge and Jury Club, in Leicester Square,
the latter presided over by Renton Nicholson, who edited a vile
publication called _The Town_. Their after-amusements were found in
strolling through the streets in threes and fours, singing at the top of
their voices comic songs, that often outraged propriety, ringing door
bells, and chaffing the police. Dickens must often in his reporting days
have witnessed the next morning appearances of these young men at Bow
Street police-court.

The first appearance of two specimens of this variety of the immature
medico in the humorous pages of the "Pickwick Papers" is described as
follows in the low cockney vernacular of Sam Weller. "One on 'em," he
tells Mr. Pickwick, "has got his legs on the table, and is a-drinkin'
brandy neat, vile the tother one--him in the barnacles--has got a barrel
of oysters atween his knees, vich he's a-openin' like steam, and as fast
as he eats 'em he takes a aim with the shells at young Dropsy, who's
a-sittin' down fast asleep in the chimbley corner." The latter gentleman
is Mr. Benjamin Allen, who is described by the novelist as "a coarse,
stout, thick-set young man, with black hair cut rather short, and a white
face cut rather long. He was embellished with spectacles, and wore a white
neckerchief. Below his single-breasted black surtout, which was buttoned
up to his chin, appeared the usual number of pepper-and-salt coloured
legs, terminating in a pair of imperfectly polished boots. Although his
coat was short in the sleeves, it disclosed no vestige of a linen
wristband, and although there was quite enough of his face to admit of the
encroachment of a shirt-collar, it was not graced by the smallest approach
to that appendage. He presented altogether rather a mildewy appearance,
and emitted a fragrant odour of full-flavoured Cubas."

This gentleman's companion is Mr. Bob Sawyer, "who was habited in a coarse
blue coat which, without being either a great-coat or a surtout, partook
of the nature and qualities of both," and "had about him that sort of
slovenly smartness and swaggering gait which is peculiar to young
gentlemen who smoke in the streets by day, shout and scream in the same by
night, call waiters by their Christian names, and do various other acts
and deeds of an equally facetious description. He wore a pair of plaid
trousers and a large rough double-breasted waistcoat: out of doors he
carried a thick stick with a big top. He eschewed gloves, and looked, upon
the whole, something like a dissipated Robinson Crusoe." The conversation
of these budding surgeons is perfectly in harmony with their outward
aspect. Their discourse, when it assumes a serious character, is of the
"cases" at the hospital and the "subjects" at the time being on the
dissecting tables of the anatomical lecture-rooms. When relieved from
attendance at the hospitals, they lounge at tavern bars, and flirt with
barmaids and waitresses, to whom their attentions are not unfrequently of
an objectionable character, and less agreeable than they imagine them to
be.

The contrast between the graphic power displayed by Dickens in his
delineation of the characters of Bob Sawyer and Ben Allen, and the
indistinctiveness, as to profession, of his presentments of Allan
Woodcourt and Dr. Jeddler, may help us to understand the causes which
render his doctors so much less effective than his lawyers. The legal
profession presents more variety than the medical, and comes before us
more prominently in conjunction with incidents of a striking character, as
may be seen every day in the newspaper records of the courts of law and of
police. The physician and the surgeon stand as much apart, in these
respects, from the busy barrister or solicitor as the clergy do. Dickens
has not given us a clerical portrait, and probably for a similar reason.
Mrs. Oliphant, on the other hand, excels in her delineations of every
grade of the Anglican hierarchy; but her genius as a writer of fiction
runs in a groove essentially different from that of Dickens.




Famous Literary Doctors.

BY CUMING WALTERS.


Medical men have not so commonly made literature an extra pursuit, or
adopted it as a serious calling, as have the members of the other liberal
professions. It is quite expected that a clergyman should write poems,
philosophical essays, and perhaps even a novel with a purpose; and it is
usual to recruit the ranks of critics extensively from the law, and to
trust to briefless barristers for a continuous supply of romances. No
detail is more frequently discovered in the biographies of eminent authors
than that they were called to the Bar, and either never practised or
forsook practising in order to engage in literary labours. Indeed, it
might almost seem that failure in law was the most important step towards
success in authorship. No such rule applies, however, to medical men, and
no such comment would be justified in their case. Not only do we find the
writing of books--otherwise than text-books and technical
treatises--rarer with them, but it curiously happens that in most
instances it has been the successful practitioner, not the man walking the
hospitals or waiting for calls, who has turned author. And we shall find
that these medico-literati (if I may coin the phrase) have often been
among the most hard-working in their profession, and the wonder is that
they were able to enter upon a second pursuit and to follow it with so
much zeal. For, in most of the examples I shall advance, literature was
more than a pastime with these men who indulged in it. It was chosen by
some for its lucrativeness, and by the majority for its capacity to
enhance their reputation or to bring them enduring fame. This much may be
safely said, that the names of many excellent doctors would have faded
from public remembrance ere this, and would have passed away with the
generation to which they belonged, had not literature given them lasting
luminance. In not a few instances the fact is already forgotten or wholly
ignored that certain successful writers once wrote "M.D." after their
names. Who cares that the author of that classic "Religio Medici" took his
degrees at Leyden and at Oxford, and dispensed medicine to the end of his
life? Who cares that the author of "The Borough," "Tales in Verse," and
"The Parish Register," was apprenticed to a surgeon? Who cares that the
writer of such dramas as "Virginius," "William Tell," and "The Hunchback,"
was trained for a physician? Who cares that the author of "Roderick
Random," "Peregrine Pickle," and "The Expedition of Humphrey Clinker" was
a surgeon's assistant and acted as surgeon's mate in the unfortunate
Carthagena expedition, before trying (unsuccessfully) to obtain a practice
in London? And, above all, who cares that the author of "The Deserted
Village" and "The Vicar of Wakefield" studied physic in Edinburgh and on
the Continent, and, as Boswell was informed, "was enabled to pursue his
travels on foot, partly by demanding at Universities to enter the lists as
a disputant, by which, according to the custom of many of them, he was
entitled to the premium of a crown, when luckily for him his challenge was
not accepted?" Such are a few of the examples which immediately occur to
the mind when the whole subject is contemplated.

It would be impossible in the compass of a short article to deal
systematically and comprehensively with doctors who became authors, or to
make out a complete list of their names with an account of the works which
entitled them to the designation. Any facts now adduced must be considered
arbitrary and capricious, so far as the choice of them is concerned; and
sequence is so little attempted that the reader will pardon, I trust, a
possible leap from Galen to Goldsmith, from Sir Thomas Browne to Tobias
Smollett, and from Sir John Blackmore to Conan Doyle. I put aside those
members of the profession who have simply written on professional
subjects. Their name is legion, but in the great majority of cases such
work as this would not strictly justify their inclusion among the
literati. And, on the other hand, we cannot find a place in the category
for such men as Goethe or Sainte-Beuve, for though both studied
medicine, it seems to have been purely with a view to the extension of
their knowledge and not with any more practical or material object.
Sainte-Beuve, it is true, for a short time in his youth entertained some
thought of adopting the profession; but Goethe only dipped into the
subject with the same spirit that he dipped into experimental chemistry
and astrology.

Let us, then, refer to a few types certain of instant recognition. The
most notable of modern instances is Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, a
specialist in his profession, a hard-working physician, and the author of
valuable treatises on medical art, who nevertheless occupied the position
of being among the four chief poets whom America has produced, and one of
the most versatile of the littérateurs of the century. He went to the
Paris Medical Schools shortly after he had graduated at Harvard; he
practised as a physician at Boston; and for nearly forty years he was
Professor of Physiology. Yet he had time to write the most delightful and
original of philosophical essays, to publish novels of which at least
one--"Elsie Venner: A Romance of Destiny"--will rank as a classic; to
deliver orations and after-dinner speeches in sparkling verse, and to
write exquisite poems in rich and felicitous language on a wonderful
variety of themes, the complete collection of which makes a very
substantial volume. In all his work Dr. Holmes showed himself to be the
profound student of nature and of humanity with many varying interests;
yet we can often trace the hand of the physician in the work of the
essayist and poet. His novels were special studies which only the ardent
physiologist and metaphysician would have cared to discuss, or, at all
events, would have discussed so well. Both "Elsie Venner" and "The
Guardian Angel" deal with the occult problems of heredity, and those
problems are treated with the power of the specialist in certain branches
of science. Still more strongly is the character of the medical man
displayed in a number of the poems, some by reason of their subject, and
some by the figures and imagery they contain. The well-known "Stethoscope
Song" will immediately suggest itself in illustration. But, for purposes
of quotation, I prefer a less popular poem of rare beauty, which more
strikingly manifests the writer's power of transmuting the hard dry facts
of science into light and gleaming poetry. I refer to what he called at
first "The Anatomist's Hymn," but afterwards "The Living Temple." It is
one of the interpolated poems in the "Autocrat" series of papers, and to
my thinking invests the human body and its physical functions with
unimagined charms.

Take, for instance, this poetic exposition of our respiration, the
scientific correctness and exactness of which need no explanation to
readers of this volume:--

    "The smooth, soft air with pulse-like waves
    Flows murmuring through its hidden caves,
    Whose streams of brightening purple rush
    Fired with a new and livelier blush,
    While all their burden of decay
    The ebbing current steals away,
    And red with Nature's flame they start
    From the warm fountains of the heart.

    No rest that throbbing slave may ask,
    For ever quivering o'er his task,
    While far and wide a crimson jet
    Leaps forth to fill the woven net
    Which in unnumbered crossing tides
    The flood of burning life divides,
    Then kindling each decaying part
    Creeps back to find the throbbing heart.

    But warmed with that unchanging flame
    Behold the outward moving frame,
    Its living marbles jointed strong
    With glistening band and silvery thong,
    And linked to reason's guiding reins
    By myriad rings in trembling chains,
    Each graven with the threaded zone
    Which claims it as the master's own."

There is an almost irresistible temptation to linger over Dr. Oliver
Wendell Holmes' books, so intensely interesting is his personality and so
fascinating is his work. But several other eminent poets of the
profession demand attention. To Crabbe's connection with surgery I have
already incidentally referred, and inasmuch as he early abandoned the
calling for the ministry, little need be said except that his youthful
experience may have aided him in writing a scathing denunciation of the
Quack, who believed wholly in the potence of "oxymel of squills," and of
the Parish Doctor, who "first insults the victim whom he kills." The poet
was a severe castigator, and was never less forbearing with the lash than
when these impostors of his day were under his hand for flagellation. In
Mark Akenside we come to a better specimen of the class which we are
considering. At the age of twenty he went to Leyden, and three years later
became, (as Dr. Johnson writes) "a doctor of physick, having, according to
the custom of the Dutch Universities, published a thesis." In the same
year he published "The Pleasures of the Imagination," his greatest work.
This was followed by a collection of odes, but he still sought a
livelihood as a physician. Little success attended him, however, and Dr.
Johnson records that Akenside was known as a poet better than as a doctor,
and would have been reduced to great exigencies but for the generosity of
an ardent friend. "Thus supported, he gradually advanced in medical
reputation, but never attained any great extent of practice, or eminence
of popularity. A physician in a great city," his biographer continues
musingly, "seems to be the mere play-thing of Fortune; his degree of
reputation is, for the most part, totally casual; they that employ him,
know not his excellence; they that reject him, know not his deficiency."
Yet it was otherwise with Sir Samuel Garth, doctor and poet, of whom
Johnson himself records that "by his conversation and accomplishments he
obtained a very extensive practice." His principal poem was "The
Dispensary," relating to a controversy of the time between the College of
Physicians, who desired to give gratuitous advice to the poor, and the
Apothecaries, who wished to keep up the high price of medicine. Garth was
"on the side of charity against the intrigues of interest, and of regular
learning against licentious usurpation of medical authority," as Johnson
put it; and he sprang into favour, was eventually knighted, and became
physician-general to the army. His last literary work, and his worst, was
a crude but ostentatious preface to a translation of Ovid. As a matter of
fact his writing was invariably mediocre, and Pope, in calling attention
to the fact that the "Dispensary" poem had been corrected in every
edition, unkindly remarked that "every change was an improvement." John
Phillips, who may be ranked among the physicians, though it is doubtful
whether he practised, enjoyed a better fate as a man of letters than did
either Akenside or Garth. He sprang into sudden popularity by the
publication of a whimsical and clever medley called "The Silver Shilling,"
and this he followed up by a sort of official commemoration of the victory
of Blenheim. His greatest achievement was a poem in two books on "Cider,"
and he was meditating an epic on "The Last Day" when he died, at the early
age of thirty-three. One curious fact about his writings, small as it is,
is worthy of mention. He sang the praises of tobacco in every poem he
wrote, except that on Blenheim.

Dr. Johnson did not rate Phillips very highly; he said that what study
could confer he obtained, but that "natural deficience cannot be
supplied." The sturdy doctor, however, did his utmost to rehabilitate the
damaged reputation of Blackmore, whom we may regard as the most
remarkable of all the compounds of physician-poets with whom we can become
acquainted. Blackmore obtained an undeserved success, which was followed
by unmerited ridicule, and Johnson, who hated every form of injustice,
constituted himself his champion. For the truth about Blackmore we must
seek the medium between the extremes of Johnson's praise and of the
censure of his enemies--the "malignity of contemporary wits," as Boswell
termed it. When all is said and done the fact remains that Blackmore was a
man of uncommon character, and a prodigious worker. His first work, a
heroic poem in ten books, on Prince Arthur, was written, he related, by
"such catches and starts, and in such occasional uncertain hours as his
profession afforded, and for the greatest part in coffee-houses, or in
passing up and down the streets." This work passed through several
editions with rapidity, and two extra books were added to it. The King
knighted him and gave him other advances, but the critics furiously
assailed him, and his name became a by-word for all that was heavy and
ridiculous in poetry. Notwithstanding this he persevered, and published
successively a "Paraphrase on the Book of Job," a "Satire on Wit,"
"Elijah,"--an epic poem in ten books--"Creation, a Philosophical Poem,"
"Advice to Poets how to celebrate the Duke of Marlborough," "The Nature of
Man," "Redemption," "A New Version of the Psalms," "Alfred"--an epic in
twelve books--"A History of the Conspiracy against King William," and a
host of others which his perverted reason or fantastic fancy suggested.
Never, perhaps, was known such a voluminous author, or one so erratic in
his system. What with his long heroic poems, his treatises on smallpox and
other diseases, his theological controversies, his "Advices" to painters,
poets, and weavers, and his prose contributions to periodical
publications, "England's Arch-Poet" (as Swift described him) could never
have idled away an hour. Of all that he wrote, a few passages from his
"Arthur" and "Creation" are alone remembered, and but for Johnson's
good-natured attempt to save him from oblivion, his name would only have
lived in the satires of his remorseless critics. One saying of Blackmore's
only is worth noting here. He had laid himself open to the imputation of
despising learning, and Dr. Johnson himself thought him a shallow ill-read
man. But Blackmore said:--"I only undervalued false or superficial
learning, that signifies nothing for the service of mankind; as to physic
I expressly affirmed that learning must be joined with native genius to
make a physician of the first rank; but if those talents are separated, I
asserted, and do still insist, that a man of native sagacity and diligence
will prove a more able and useful practiser than a heavy notional scholar
encumbered with a heap of confused ideas."

One or two other doctors who in their time enjoyed a reputation as
writers, but whose fame was transient, or, at least, is insecure, call for
very brief notice before we pass on to a few of greater importance. Sir
John Hill, M.D., an eighteenth century physician, was a fairly extensive
litterateur, and in addition to producing treatises on botany, medicine,
natural history, and philosophy, wrote half a dozen novels, and several
dramas. His _chef d'oeuvre_ was "The Vegetable System," a work of such
magnitude that it ran to twenty-six volumes, a copy of which was presented
to the King of Sweden, and procured for the author the distinction of
being included in the Order of the Polar Star. Dr. William Fullarton
Cumming, a son of Burns' "Bonnie Leslie," was compelled to travel in mild
climates for his health, and as a result wrote "The Notes of a Wanderer,"
a work abounding in poetic descriptions of the charming scenery of the
East. He tells us that the real pleasure of travelling is not to boast of
how many lions one may have slain in a single day, but to saunter about
without an object, to inhale the moral atmosphere of places visited, to
enter bazaars, not to buy, but to catch the hundred peculiarities of a new
people, to stray hither and thither watching the work and the recreations
of other races. John Chalmers, M.D. (not to be confused with the great
divine, Dr. Thomas Chalmers), also deserves to be noted as a very graceful
writer of romantic stories; and Sir Henry Thompson, under the name of "Pen
Oliver," produced some years ago a strange little volume which enjoyed a
season's success--"Charley Kingston's Aunt."

That most diffident and most delightful of authors, Dr. John Brown, who
gave us the memorable "Rab and his Friends," was in practice at Edinburgh.
As long as lovers of the animal creation are to be found, the story of Rab
and of Marjorie will be read; and these sketches of brutes whom he almost
humanised will probably outlive the genial doctor's more ambitious "Horæ
Subsecivæ" and "John Leech and other Papers." Of a very different nature
was the author of "Ten Thousand a Year," Dr. Samuel Warren, physician,
lawyer, politician, novelist, and office-seeker. Tittlebat Titmouse is not
much studied now, for the type is out-of-date, and the society of which
the novel treats, the abuses prevalent, the general corruption which
prevailed in public life, were exposures intended for a past generation.
Yet there are passages in the work which should save it from absolute
neglect, and it has for over half a century kept its author's name alive.
This is more than his "Passages from the Diary of a late Physician" could
have done, or those dozen other works with the bare titles of which the
present reading public is scarcely acquainted. John Abercrombie, the chief
consulting physician in Scotland during the last century, sought and
achieved literary fame with two volumes on "The Intellectual Powers," and
"The Moral Feelings." They enjoyed a popularity scarcely commensurate with
their actual merits.

David Macbeth Moir, who faithfully performed the arduous duties of a
medical practitioner in Edinburgh, and whose life was almost wholly
devoted to the service of his fellows, was the famous "Delta" of
_Blackwood's Magazine_. His poems, some four hundred of which he
contributed to "Maga." alone, are out of fashion now, though their
delightful vein of reflectiveness and their charm of expression should
preserve them from absolute neglect. The heavy labours of his profession
did not seem to check his literary productiveness. His poems fill two
large volumes; his prose works are by no means meagre or unimportant, and
his "Sketches of the Poetical Literature of the past Half-century," is a
standard work on the poetry of his period. Medical treatises, too, came
from his pen; and his "Life of Mansie Wauch, Tailor," is one of the most
agreeable of genuine Scotch sketches. His biographer correctly summed up
the merits of the worthy doctor as a literary worker in the words "Good
sound sense, a simple healthy feeling, excited and exalted though these
may be, never fail him. He draws from nature, and from himself direct."
Quiet humour and simple pathos, a love of humanity, deep reverential
feeling, and originality of thought--all these are found in "Delta's"
writings, and serve, with his own admirable nature, to keep his memory
green.

Of Dr. Conan Doyle, the most conspicuous instance of the hour of the
doctor turned author, no detailed notice is requisite, as the main facts
of his career are sufficiently well known, and his literary work promises
to bring him both fame and fortune. Undoubtedly he exemplifies the fact
that the medical hand can scarcely be concealed when it takes to the pen,
for his novels and stories abound in allusions which only his study,
training, and experience as a doctor could suggest. His reading and
observation largely provide the technique of his romances. Something of
the same could be said of Smollett's work, though the medical knowledge of
the author was often turned to less agreeable account. In fact, most of
Smollet's references on this score were the reverse of delectable, and I
refrain from a more precise examination of them. The unexpected use to
which Mr. R. D. Blackmore has turned his knowledge of medicine--for he
studied medicine as well as law seriously in his youth--in several of his
novels, notably in the last, "Perlycross," has excited much interest and
attention among the profession. So marked is this that I cannot refrain
quoting from a singularly interesting criticism penned by a leading
physician in the Midlands. "The medical incidents in 'Perlycross,'" he
says, "are pourtrayed with an accuracy which shows an intimate knowledge
of the profession and its members.... No doubt the opinions expressed by
one learned doctor were those of the time represented in the story, though
they could hardly be received with justice in the present day. Speaking of
the illness of Sir Thomas Waldron, he says (p. 18):--'At present such a
case could be dealt with best in Paris, although we have young men rising
now who will make it otherwise before very long.' The key to this
difficulty is found later on (p. 159) where the technical word
'introsusception' is mentioned as the disease or condition from which the
patient suffered. At the time spoken of Parisian surgeons, headed by the
eminent Dupuytren, excelled in the art of surgery; at the present time
such a case could be treated as well by any hospital surgeon in England as
in the metropolis of France.... The book contains an admirably-described
case of catalepsy, which is equally well explained. The cure of the
attack is described with consummate skill and power. The keystone of the
whole position of medical knowledge is contained in a few words towards
its close. In these days of rapid transition from one excitement to
another it would be well to take the lesson to heart, and to remember what
the author speaks of as two fine things--'If you wish to be sure of
anything see it with your own good eyes,' and the second, 'Never scamp
your work.' How these sayings may be applied in the practice of the
profession may with profit be learned from a perusal of the pages of
'Perlycross.'" Perhaps I am going too far in claiming Mr. Blackmore as a
medical man who has taken to literature, but the excuse of his early
training, combined with this curious result of it manifested in his
writing, proves irresistible.

Not to stray, however, but to get our feet once more upon solid ground, we
may refer to a classic example, with which this article, had it been aught
else but discursive, should have begun. Galen, the Greek physician, must
be counted among the first and most famous of his class who have written
literary works. He was so voluminous a writer on philosophical subjects
that scores of books on logic and ethics have been fathered upon him
without much question arising as to the unlikelihood of his being the
author of so many. As it is he is credited with eighty-three treatises,
the genuineness of which is not disputed; there are nineteen suspected to
bear his name unjustly, forty-five are proved to be spurious, and then
there remain a further fifteen fragments and fifteen commentaries on
Hippocrates, which may be accepted as his in part or whole. He made
himself master of the medical, physiological, and scientific knowledge of
his time. He was born in 130 A.D., and died in 201, and left a record of
that period. In addition to preparing this massive work, he seems to have
found time to devote himself to various branches of philosophy with such
success that later writers were well pleased to trade with the talisman of
his name. Were it worth while to go back to antiquity, and to the history
of foreign nations for further examples of physicians whose writings were
not confined to expositions of the medical system, Averrhoes, most famous
of Arabian philosophers, and physician to the calif, a master of the
twelfth century, would occupy a prominent position. But it is more to our
purpose to draw attention to the remarkable career, and one that deserves
to be held in remembrance, of Arthur Johnston, physician to King Charles
the First. In the same year that he graduated at the university of Padua
(1610) he was "laureated poet at Paris, and that most deservedly," as Sir
Thomas Urquhart recorded. He was then only three-and-twenty years of age,
and the prospect of many years being before him, he indulged in extensive
travel, and visited in turn most of the principal foreign seats of
learning. His journeying over, he settled in France and became equally
well known as a physician and as a writer of excellent Latin verse. A
courteous act, characteristic of the time, secured him the favour and
patronage of the English royal family, for in 1645 he published an elegy
on James I., and followed this up by dedicating a Latin rendering of the
Song of Solomon to King Charles. Other specimens of his rare culture and
his poetical powers were forthcoming, and he achieved a European
reputation. His Latin translation of the Psalms is held to be unexcelled
by any other, unless it be Buchanan's, and the fact that his translation
is still in use sufficiently attests its excellence and value. He died
suddenly in 1641, while on a visit to Oxford, and in the centuries which
have succeeded he has not been displaced in the front rank of refined and
deeply versed Latin scholars and poets.

It would be a matter of considerable difficulty to make a complete list of
literary doctors, but enough has perhaps been written to show that they
are no small band so far as numbers go, and that their influence in the
world of books has been very considerable and distinguished. We owe to
them many great works of enduring repute, of value to the student, of
perpetual entertainment to the general reader. When, too, we consider the
willingness and the zeal with which the writing members of the medical
profession have imparted their knowledge, we are led to believe that they
accepted as their motto the noble utterance of Sir Thomas Browne, the
chief of literary doctors:--"To be reserved and caitiff in goodness is the
sordidest piece of covetousness, and more contemptible than pecuniary
Avarice. To this (as calling myself a Scholar) I am obliged by the duty of
my condition: I make not therefore my head a grave, but a treasure of
knowledge; I intend no Monopoly, but a community, in learning; I study
not for my own sake only, but for theirs that study not for themselves. I
envy no man that knows more than myself, but pity them that know less. I
instruct no man as an exercise of my knowledge, or with an intent rather
to nourish and keep it alive in mine own head than beget and propagate it
in his; and in the midst of all my endeavours there is but one thought
that dejects me, that my acquired parts must perish with myself, nor can
be Legacied among my honoured Friends."




The "Doctor" in time of Pestilence.

BY WILLIAM E. A. AXON, F.R.S.L.

    "I do not feel in me those sordid and unchristian desires of my
    profession; I do not secretly implore and wish for Plagues, rejoice at
    Famines, revolve Ephemerides and Almanacks in expectation of malignant
    Aspects, fatal Conjunctions, and Eclipses."--SIR THOMAS BROWNE'S
    "Religio Medici," pt. ii., sec. ix.


Of the great epidemics which have from time to time devastated Europe,
Great Britain has had its full share. Between 664 and 1665 there were many
visitations, resulting in heavy mortality, to which the general name of
plague or pestilence has been given, although they were not always
identical in form. Often the dread sisters Famine and Pestilence went hand
in hand in the domains of merrie England in the good old times.

The Statute of Labourers declares, no doubt with perfect truth, that "a
great part of the people, principally of artisans and labourers," died in
the pestilence known as the Black Death of 1349, which had important
consequences, socially and politically. There were many subsequent
outbreaks, though they fortunately did not attain to the enormous
proportions of the great mortality. We have from the graphic hand of
Chaucer a life-like portrait of a medical man of the fourteenth century
who had gained his money in the time of pestilence.

At the end of the fifteenth and middle of the sixteenth century, we have
as alternating with bubo plague, the _Sudor Anglicanus_. Its appearance
coincided with the invasion by which Richard III. lost his crown, and his
rival became Henry VII. Dr. Thomas Forrester, who was in London during the
outbreak of 1485, gives instances of suddenness with which the "sweat"
became fatal. "We saw two prestys standing togeder and speaking togeder,
and we saw both of them die suddenly." The symptoms were sweating, bad
odour, redness, thirst, headache, "and some had black spots as it appeared
in our frere Alban, a noble leech, on whose soul God have mercy."
Forrester complains of the quacks who put letters on poles and on church
doors, promising to help the people in their need. He lays stress upon
astrological causes, but does not overlook the defective sanitation which
gave the plague some of its firm hold. The _Sudor Anglicanus_ returned in
1508, 1517, 1528, and 1551. The last visitation was the occasion of a
treatise by the worthy Cambridge founder, to whom Gonville and Caius
College owes so much.

"The Boke of Jhon Caius aganst the sweatyng Sickness" is an interesting
document. It opens with a long autobiographical passage as to his previous
literary labours, which have ranged from medicine to theology. At first he
wrote in English, but afterwards in Latin and Greek. The reason for this
change is stated. "Sence y{t} that tyme diverse other thynges I have
written, but with the entente never more to write in the Englishe tongue
partly because the comodite of that which is so written, passeth not the
compasse of Englande, but remaineth enclosed within the seas, and partly
because I thought that labours so taken should be halfe lost among them
which set not by learnyng. Thirdly, for that I thought it best to auoide
the judgment of the multitude from whom in maters of lernyng a man shal be
forced to dissente, in disprouyng that which they most approue, and
approuyng that which they most disalowe. Fourthly for that the common
settyng furthe and printig of every foolishe thyng in englishe, both of
phisicke vnperfectly and other matters vndiscretly diminishe the grace of
thynges learned set furth in thesame. But chiefely because I would geve
none example or comfort to my countrie men (who I would to be now, as here
tofore they have been, comparable in learnyng to men of other countries)
to stande onely in the Englishe tongue, but to leaue the simplicitie of
the same, and to procede further in many and diuerse knowledges both in
tongues and sciences at home and in uniuersities, to the adornyng of the
comon welthe, better service of their kyng, and great pleasure and
commodite of their own selues, to what kind of life so euer they should
applie them." But his resolution not to write again in the vulgar tongue
was broken by considerations of utility, for he saw that it could not be
very serviceable to ordinary English people to give them advice as to the
treatment of the sweating sickness in a language which they did not
understand. In his account of this dire malady, he lays stress upon errors
and excess of diet as a strongly co-operating cause. "They which had thys
sweat sore with perille or death, were either men of welthe, ease and
welfare, or of the poorer sorte such as wer idls persones, good ale
drinkers, and Tauerne haunters. For these, by ye great welfare of the one
sorte, and large drinkyng of thother, heped up in their bodies moche evill
matter: by their ease and idlenes, coulde not waste and consume it."
Against the infection of bad air he recommends avoiding carrion "kepyng
Canelles cleane" and other general sanitary precautions. He suggests that
the midsummer bonfires were intended for purging the air, "and not onely
for vigils." Rosewater and other perfumes are to be used, and he thinks it
would be well to clear the house of its rushes and dust. It is to be
feared that the rushes which served instead of carpets, even in great
houses, were not renewed very frequently. The handkerchief was to be
perfumed, and the patient was to have in his mouth "a pece either of
setwel, or of the rote of _enula campana_ wel steped before in vinegre
rosate, a mace, or berie of Juniper."

Dr. Caius, like Dr. Forrester, did not omit to warn his readers that even
with the aid of his book a medical man was still necessary, and in doing
so he gives us a glimpse of the quack doctors of the sixteenth century.
"Therefore seke you out a good Phisicien, and knowen to haue skille, and
at the leaste be so good to your bodies, as you are to your hosen or shoes
for the wel-making or mending wherof, I doubt not but you wil diligently
searche out who is knowe to be the best hosier or shoemaker in the place
where you dwelle: and flie the unlearned as a pestilence to the comune
wealth. As simple women, carpenters, pewterers, brasiers, sope ball
sellers, pulters, hostellers, painters, apotecaries (otherwise then for
their drogges), auaunters theselves to come from Pole, Constantiple,
Italie, Almaine, Spaine, Fraunce, Grece, and Turkie, Inde, Egipt or Jury:
from y{e} seruice of Emperoures, kinges, and quienes, promisig helpe of al
diseases, yea vncurable, with one or two drinckes, by waters sixe monethes
in continualle distillinge, by _Aurum potabile_, or _quintessence_, by
drynckes of great and hygh prices as though thei were made of the sune,
moone, or sterres, by blessynges, and Blowinges, Hipocriticalle prayenges,
and foolysh smokynges of shirts, smockes, and kerchieffes, wyth such other
theire phantasies and mockeries, meaninge nothng els, but to abuse your
light belieue, and scorne you behind your backes with their medicines, so
filthie, that I am ashamed to name theim, for your single wit and simple
belief, in trusting the most which you know not at al, and vnderstad
least: like to them which thinke farre foules have faire fethers, although
thei be never so euil fauoured & foule: as though there could not be so
conning an Englishman, as a foolish running stranger (of others I speak
not) or so perfect helth by honest learning, as by deceiptfull ignorance."

Dr. Caius laid stress upon exercise as an aid to health, but some popular
games he thought "rather a laming of legges than an exercise." We need not
follow him in the details of the treatment he recommends if in spite of
the adoption of his preventive _regime_, the sweating sickness should
come.

In 1561 there was issued "A newe booke conteyninge an exortacion to the
sicke." The tract ends with the following parody on the nostrums current
for the cure of the pestilence: "Take a pond of good hard penaunce, and
washe it wel with the water of your eyes, and let it ly a good whyle at
youre hert. Take also of the best fyne fayth, hope, charyte yt you can
get, a like quantite of al mixed together, your soule even full, and use
this confection every day in your lyfe, whiles the plages of God
reigneth. Then, take both your handes ful of good workes commaunded of
God, and kepe them close in a clene conscience from the duste of vayne
glory, and ever as you are able and se necessite so to use them. This
medicine was found wryten in an olde byble boke, and it hath been
practised and proved true of mani, both men and women" (Collier's _Bib.
Account_, i. 74).

The wealthy, on an outbreak of the plague, fled from the infected city, as
we may learn from Boccaccio, and from Miles Coverdale's translation of
Osiander's sermon, "How and whether a Christian man ought to flye the
horrible plage of the pestilence," which appeared in 1537.

During the plague of London, in 1603, the physicians are asserted by
Dekker to have "hid their synodical heads," but this is at all events not
wholly true. Thomas Lodge, the poet, was also a graduate in medicine, and
in his "Treatise on the Plague"--not the only one published in relation to
this epidemic--we are told of his experiences of the plague-stricken city.
He gives some good advice in relation to the sanitary measures to be taken
for the prevention of the plague.

The nature of the regulations devised in the Tudor times to ward off
infection may be gathered from the rules laid down at Chester in November,
1574, when

    "the right Worshipful Sir John Sauage, Knight, maior of the City of
    Chester had consideracion of the present state of the said cite
    somewhat visited with what is called the plage, and divisinge the best
    meanes and orderlie waies he can, with [the advice] of his Bretheren
    the alderman, Justices of peace within the citie aforesaid (through
    the goodness of God) to avoid the same hath with such advice, sett
    forth ordained and appointed (amongst other) the points, articles,
    clauses, and orders folowing, which he willeth and commandeth all
    persons to observe and kepe, upon the severall pains theirin
    contayned:

    "Imprimis. That no person nor persons who are or shalbe visited with
    the said sickness, or any other who shall be of there company, shall
    go abrode out of there houses without license of the alderman of the
    ward such persons inhabite, And that every person soe licensed to
    beare openlie in their hands ... three quarters long ... ense ...
    shall goe abrode out of the ... upon paine that eny person doynge the
    contrary to be furthwith expulsed out of the said citie.

    "2. Item if any person doe company with any persons visited, they
    alsoe to beare ... upon like payne.

    "3. Item that none of them soe visited doe goe abroad in any part or
    place within the citie in the night season, upon like payne.

    "4. Item that the accustomed due watche to be kepte every night,
    within the said citie, by the inhabitants thereof.

    "5. Item the same watchman to apprehend and take up all night walkers
    and such suspect as shalbe founde within and to bring them to the
    Justice of peace, of that ... the gaile of the Northgate, that further
    order may be taken with them as shall appear....

    "6. Item that no swine be kept, within the said citie nor any other
    place, then ... side prively nor openlie after the xiii{th} daie of
    this present moneth, upon paine of fyne and imprisonment of every
    person doing the contrary.

    "7. Item that no donge, muck or filth, at any tyme, hearafter be caste
    within the walls of the said citie, upon paine of ffyne and
    imprisonment at his worships direction.

    "8. Item that no kind or sort of ... or any wares from other place be
    brought in packs into the said citie of Chester, untill the same be
    ffirste opened and eired without the libities of the said citie, upon
    pain last recited.

    "9. Item that papers or writing containing this sence Lord haue mercie
    upon us, to be fixed upon euery house, dore post, or other open place,
    to the street of the house so infected.

    "10. Item that no person of the said citie doe suffer any their doggs
    to goe abrode out of their houses or dwellings, upon paine that euery
    such dogge so founde abrode shalbe presently killed. And the owners
    thereof ponished at his worships pleasure."

It has always been found easier to make laws than to have them enforced,
and we find certain inhabitants complaining of the disobedience of
infected persons in the following petition:--

    "To the right worshipful Sir John Savage, knight, maior of the Citie
    of Chester, the aldermen, sheriffs, and common counsaile of the same.

    "In most humble wise complayninge sheweth unto your worships, your
    Orators, the persons whose name are subscribed inhabiting in a certain
    lane within the same citie called Pepper Street, That where yt haue
    pleased God to infect divers persons of the same Street with the
    plage, and where also for the avoidinge of further infection your
    worships have taken order that all such so infected should observe
    certaine good necessarye orders by your worships made and provided.
    But so it is, right worships, that none of the said persons infected
    do observe any of the orders by your worships in that case taken, to
    the greate danger and perill, not only of your Orators and their
    famelyes being in number twenty, but also of the reste of the said
    citie, who by the sufferance of God and of his gracious goodness are
    clere and safe from any infection of the said deceas: In consideration
    whereof your Orators moste humbly beseche your worships for God's
    sake, and as your worships intend it your Orators should, by the
    sufferance of God, avoide the dangers of the said deceas with their
    family, and also for the better safty of the citie to take such
    directions with the said infected persons that they may clearly be
    avoided from thens to some other convenient for the time untill God
    shall restore them to their former health. And in this doing your
    Orators shall daily pray, &c."[1]

During the visitation of the plague at Manchester in 1645, when the place
suffered severely, the authorities not only provided "cabins" at
Collyhurst for the reception of those whom the disease attacked, but
engaged the services of "Doctor Smith," who received £4 "for his charges
to London and a free guift," and £39 "for part of his wages for his
service in the time of the visitation." Thos. Minshull, the apothecary,
was paid £6 2s. 6d. for "stuffe for ye town's service." Some "bottles and
stuffe" were unused at the end of the plague, and these were sold to "Mr.
Smith, Phissition," for £1.

The story of English pestilence closes with the Great Plague of London in
1665. It began about the west end of the city, Hampstead, Highgate, and
Acton sharing the infection, and gradually worked eastward by way of
Holborn. Out of an estimated population of 460,000 there died 97,306
persons, of whom 68,596 perished of pestilence. One week witnessed 8,297
deaths, and it has been seriously argued that the official figures very
much underrate the truth, and that in this week of highest mortality the
deaths really amounted to 12,000. "Almost all other diseases turned to the
plague." Many of the clergy fled, and the places of some were occupied by
the ejected Nonconformists. The complaint of absenteeism was also brought
against the physicians, but there were certainly some who stayed in the
infected and desolate city. "But Lord!" says Pepys, "what a sad time it is
to all: no boats upon the river, and grass grown all up and down Whitehall
Court, and nobody but poor wretches in the street." William Boghurst, who
was an apothecary, and Nathaniel Hodges, who was a physician, each wrote
full accounts of the plague.

Hodges was the son of a vicar of Kensington, where he was born in 1629. He
was a King's scholar at Westminster, and was educated both at Cambridge
and Oxford, taking his M.D. degree at the latter university in 1659. When
the great plague broke out he remained at his house in Walbrook, and gave
advice to all who sought it. There was unfortunately no lack of patients.
Hodges' writings give us a minute account of the "doctor in the time of
pestilence." The first doubtful appearances of the plague were noticed by
Dr. Hodges amongst some of those who sought his counsel at the Christmas
of 1664-5, in May and June there were some that could not be mistaken, and
in August and September he was overwhelmed with work. He was an early
riser, and after taking a dose of anti-pestilential electuary, he attended
to any private business that needed immediate decision, and then went to
his consulting room, and for three hours received a succession of
patients, some already ill of the plague, others only infected by fear.
Having disposed of these anxious inquirers, the doctor breakfasted, and
then began his round of visits to patients who were unable to see him at
home. Disinfectants were burnt on hot coals as he entered their houses,
and he also took a lozenge. Returning home, he dined off roast meat and
pickles, prefaced and followed by sack and other wine. A second round of
visits did not terminate until eight or nine in the evening. He was an
enemy of tobacco, but his dislike of the Indian weed did not extend to
sack, which he seems to have drunk plentifully, especially perhaps on the
two occasions when he thought he had himself caught the plague. These
proved to be false alarms. Amongst the drugs he tried and found useless
were "unicorn's horn" and dried toads. The Corporation of London testified
a due sense of Hodges' services by a stipend and the position of physician
to the city. His "Loimologia" is an important contribution to the
literature of epidemics.

Hodges, who had thus been a witness of the Carnival of Death in the
metropolis of England, may well have pondered on the words of one of his
illustrious contemporaries, Sir Thomas Browne, who says:--"I have not
those strait ligaments, or narrow obligations to the world as to dote on
life, or be convulst and tremble at the name of Death. Not that I am
insensible of the dread and horrour thereof; or by raking into the bowels
of the deceased, continual sight of anatomies, skeletons, or cadaverous
reliques, like vespilloes or grave makers, I am become stupid, or have
forgot the apprehension of mortality: but that, marshalling all the
horrors and contemplating the extremities thereof, I find not anything
therein able to daunt the courage of a man, much less a well resolved
Christian.... For a Pagan there may be some motive to be in love with
life; but for a Christian to be amazed at Death, I see not how he can
escape this dilemma, that he is too sensible of this life, or hopeless of
the life to come."




Mountebanks and Medicine.

BY THOMAS FROST.


Mountebanks--a name derived from the Italian words _monta in banco_,
mounting a bench--were, in company with their attendant zanies, or "Merry
Andrews," a popular class of public entertainers down to the earlier years
of the present century. Their chief object, however, was not to provide a
free entertainment, but to dispose of their nostrums to the crowds which
the entertainment brought together. Andrew Borde, a medical practitioner
at Winchester, who obtained a more than local reputation, enjoying the
distinction of being one of the physicians of Henry VIII., is said to have
been the original "Merry Andrew." The story of his life is full of
interest, and furnishes some curious information concerning the manners of
his age and his class. Mr. George Roberts, who supplied Lord Macaulay with
much material for his "History of England," relates that Borde was a man
of great learning, and had travelled on the continent. He made many
astronomical calculations, which may not unfairly be supposed to have
been for the purposes of astrology. He was a celibitarian and an ascetic,
drinking water three times a week, wearing a hair-shirt next his skin, and
keeping the sheet intended for his burial at the foot of his bed. As a
mountebank, he frequented fairs, markets, and other places of public
resort, and addressed those assembled in recommendation of his medicines.
He was a fluent speaker, and the witticisms with which he interspersed his
lectures never failed to attract, obtaining for him the name of "Merry
Andrew."

Mountebanks flourished on the continent as well as in England, and the
_Belphegor_ of the dramatist had many prototypes in Italy and France.
Coryat, a little-known writer, who made the tour of Europe at the
beginning of the seventeenth century, and published a narrative of his
adventures and experiences, gives a good account of the mountebanks he saw
at Venice. "Twice a day," he says, "that is, in the morning and afternoon,
you may see five or six several stages erected for them.... These
mountebanks at one end of their stage place their trunk, which is
replenished with a world of new-fangled trumperies. After the whole rabble
of them has gotten up to the stage,--whereof some wear vizards like fools
in a play, some that are women are attired with habits according to that
person they sustain,--the music begins; sometimes vocal, sometimes
instrumental, sometimes both. While the music plays, the principal
mountebank opens his trunk and sets abroad his wares. Then he maketh an
oration to the audience of half-an-hour long, wherein he doth most
hyperbolically extol the virtue of his drugs and confections--though many
of them are very counterfeit and false. I often wondered at these natural
orators, for they would tell their tales with such admirable volubility
and plausible grace, _extempore_, and seasoned with that singular variety
of elegant jests and witty conceits, that they did often strike great
admiration into strangers.... He then delivereth his commodities by little
and little, the jester still playing his part, and the musicians singing
and playing upon their instruments. The principal things that they sell
are oils, sovereign waters, amorous songs printed, apothecary drugs, and a
commonweal of other trifles. The head mountebank, every time he delivereth
out anything, maketh an extemporal speech, which he doth eftsoons
intermingle with such savoury jests (but spiced now and then with
singular scurrility), that they minister passing mirth and laughter to the
whole company, which may perhaps consist of a thousand people." The
entertainment extended over two hours, when, having sold as many of their
wares as they could, their properties would be removed and the stage taken
down.

Jonson, in his comedy of "Volpone," presents a scene showing a
mountebank's stage at Venice, and the discourse of the vendor of quack
medicines has a remarkable resemblance to the oratory of the "Cheap Jacks"
of the present day, of which old play-goers may remember hearing a very
good imitation in the drama of "The Flowers of the Forest." Says Jonson's
mountebank: "You all know, honourable gentlemen, I never valued this
ampulla, or vial, at less than eight crowns; but for this time I am
content to be deprived of it for six: six crowns is the price, and less in
courtesy I know you cannot offer me. Take it or leave it, however, both it
and I am at your service! Well! I am in a humour at this time to make a
present of the small quantity my coffer contains: to the rich in courtesy,
and to the poor for God's sake. Wherefore, now mark: I asked you six
crowns, and six crowns at other times you have paid me; you shall not give
me six crowns, nor five, nor four, nor three, nor two, nor one, nor half a
ducat. Sixpence it will cost you (or six hundred pounds); expect no lower
price, for I will not bate."

Returning to the mountebanks of our own country, we find in the accounts
of the Chamberlain of the Corporation of Worcester for the year 1631 the
following item:--

    "They yeald account of money by them received of mountebanks to the
    use of the poor 58s. 9d."

It is suggested by Mr. John Noake, however, that these mountebanks were
riders or posturers, and that the amount was the charge made for the
permission accorded them to perform in the city. Later in the century, the
eccentric Earl of Rochester, on one occasion, played the mountebank on
Tower Hill, and the example was followed by more than one comedian of the
next century. Leveridge and Penkethman, actors well known at Bartholomew
Fair for many years, appeared at country fairs as "Doctor Leverigo and his
Jack-Pudding Pinkanello," as also did Haines as "Watho Van Claturbank,
High German Doctor." The discourse of the latter was published as a
broadside, headed with an engraving representing him addressing a crowd
from a stage, with a bottle of medicine in his right hand. Beside him
stands a Harlequin, and in the rear a man with a plumed hat blows a
trumpet. A gouty patient occupies a high-backed arm-chair, and an array of
boxes and bottles is seen at the back of the stage.

"Having studied Galen, Hypocrates, Albumazar, and Paracelsus," says the
discourse thus headed, "I am now become the Esculapius of the age; having
been educated at twelve universities, and travelled through fifty-two
kingdoms, and been counsellor to the counsellors of several monarchs. By
the earnest prayers and entreaties of several lords, earls, dukes, and
honourable personages, I have been at last prevailed upon to oblige the
world with this notice, that all persons, young or old, blind or lame,
deaf and dumb, curable or incurable, may know where to repair for cure, in
all cephalalgias, paralytic paroxysms, palpitations of the pericardium,
empyemas, syncopes, and nasieties; arising either from a plethory or a
cachochymy, vertiginous vapours, hydrocephalus dysenteries, odontalgic or
podagrical inflammations, and the entire legion of lethiferous
distempers.... This is Nature's palladium, health's magazine; it works
seven manner of ways, as Nature requires, for it scorns to be confined to
any particular mode of operation; so that it affecteth the cure either
hypnotically, hydrotically, cathartically, poppismatically, pneumatically,
or synedochically; it mundifies the hypogastrium, extinguishes all
supernatural fermentations and ebullitions, and, in fine, annihilates all
nosotrophical morbific ideas of the whole corporeal compages. A drachm of
it is worth a bushel of March dust; for, if a man chance to have his
brains beat out, or his head dropped off, two drops--I say two drops!
gentlemen--seasonably applied, will recall the fleeting spirit,
re-enthrone the deposed archeus, cement the discontinuity of the parts,
and in six minutes restore the lifeless trunk to all its pristine
functions, vital, natural, and animal; so that this, believe me,
gentlemen, is the only sovereign remedy in the world. _Venienti occurite
morbo._--Down with your dust. _Principiis obsta._--No cure no money.
_Quærendo pecunia primum._--Be not sick too late."

The mountebanking quack flourished in great state in the first half of the
last century. "A Tour through England," published in 1723, gives the
following account of one whom the author saw at Winchester:--"As I was
sitting at the George Inn, I saw a coach with six bay horses, a calash and
four, a chaise and four, enter the inn, in a yellow livery, turned up with
red; four gentlemen on horseback, in blue, trimmed with silver: and as
yellow is the colour given by the dukes in England, I went out to see what
duke it was; but there was no coronet on the coach, only a plain
coat-of-arms on each, with this motto: ARGENTO LABORAT FABER. Upon
enquiry, I found this great equipage belonged to a mountebank, and that
his name being Smith, the motto was a pun upon his name. The footmen in
yellow were his tumblers and trumpeters, and those in blue his
merry-andrew, his apothecary, and his spokesman. He was dressed in black
velvet, and had in his coach a woman that danced on the ropes. He cures
all diseases, and sells his packets for sixpence a-piece. He erected
stages in all the market towns twenty miles round; and it is a prodigy how
so wise a people as the English are gulled by such pickpockets. But his
amusements on the stage are worth the sixpence, without the pills. In the
morning he is dressed up in a fine brocade night-gown, for his chamber
practice, when he gives advice, and gets large fees."

A passage in a letter written by the second Lord Lyttelton, about the year
1774, shows that this style of travelling was then still kept up by
mountebanks. He says:--"As a family party of us were crossing the road on
the side of Hagley Park, a chaise passed along, followed by a couple of
attendants with French horns. Who can that be, said my father? Some
itinerant mountebank, replied I, if one may judge from his musical
followers. I really spoke with all the indifference of an innocent mind:
nor did it occur to me that the Right Reverend Father in God, my uncle,
had sometimes been pleased to travel with servants similarly accoutred."
Nearly twenty years later, the famous quack, Katerfelto, travelled through
Durham in a carriage, with a pair of horses, and attended by two negro
servants in green liveries, with red collars. In the towns he visited
these men were sent round to announce his lectures on electricity and the
microscope, blowing trumpets, and distributing hand-bills.

There seems to be good ground for believing that among what may be called
the amateur mountebanks, such as Rochester, we must count the author of
"Tristram Shandy." Dr. Dibdin found in the possession of Mr. James
Atkinson, a medical practitioner at York, a rather roughly executed
picture, in oil colours, representing a mountebank and his zany on a
stage, surrounded by a crowd. An inscription described the former as Mr.
T. Brydges, and the latter as the Rev. Laurence Sterne. Mr. Atkinson, who
was an octogenarian, told Dr. Dibdin that his father had been acquainted
with Sterne, who was a good amateur draughtsman, and that he and Brydges
each painted the other's portrait in the picture. The story is a strange
one, but before it is dismissed as unworthy of belief, it must be
remembered that the clerical story-writer was a droll and whimsical
character, and at no time much influenced by his priestly vocation. It is
quite conceivable, therefore, that he may have indulged in such a freak on
some occasion during the period of his life in which he developed his
worst moral deficiencies.

In the early years of the present century, a German quack, named Bossy,
used to mount a stage on Tower Hill and Covent Garden Market alternately,
in order, as he said, that both ends of London might profit by his
experience and skill. It is said that on one of these occasions, when he
had induced an old woman to mount his stage in the latter place, and
relate the wonderful cures the doctor had performed upon her, a parrot
that had learned some coarse language from the porters and costermongers
frequenting the market, and sometimes used it in a manner that seemed very
apt to the occasion, exclaimed, "Lying old ----!" when the old woman
concluded her narrative. The roar of laughter with which this criticism
was received by the rough audience disconcerted Bossy for a moment; but
quickly recovering his presence of mind, he stepped forward, with his hand
on his heart, and gravely replied, "It is no lie, you wicked bird!--it is
all true as is de Gospel!" Bossy attained considerable reputation, and
ended his days with a fair competence.

The mountebank has long fallen from his former high estate. The quack may
still be found vending his pills in the open-air markets of Yorkshire and
Lancashire; but he does not mount a stage, and resembles his predecessors
of the last century only in the fluency and volubility of his discourse on
the virtues of his potions, pills, and plasters. The author of the paper
on mountebanks in the "Book of Days" (edited by Robert Chambers), states
that he saw one at York about 1860, who "sold medicines on a stage in the
old style, but without the Merry Andrew or the music," and adds that "he
presented himself in shabby black clothes, with a dirty white neck-cloth."
Even the name had long before that time ceased to be connected with the
vending of medicines, and had come to be applied to those itinerant circus
companies who gave gratuitous performances in the open air, making their
gains by the sale of lottery tickets. The present writer remembers seeing
the circus company of John Clarke performing on a piece of waste ground at
Lower Norwood, when the clown of the show went among the spectators
selling tickets at a shilling each, entitling the holder to participate in
a drawing, the prizes in which were Britannia metal tea pots and milk
ewers, papier maché tea trays, cotton gown pieces, etc. That must have
been about 1835, or within a year or two of that time.

Only a few years later, a lottery in sixpenny shares was similarly
conducted at Alfreton, in Derbyshire, and probably in many other places,
though contrary to the provisions of the Lottery Act.

The mountebank doctor of former times, with his carriage, his zany, and
his musicians, can now only be met with in the provincial towns of France
and Italy, and even there but seldom. Thirty or forty years ago, there was
a man who, in a carriage drawn up behind the Louvre, used to practise
dentistry and advertise his father, who had a flourishing dentist's
practice in one of the narrow streets near the cathedral of Notre Dame.
Another of this fraternity was seen at Marseilles by an English tourist a
few years later, and in this instance some musicians accompanied the
mountebank's phaeton, and drowned the cries of the suffering patients with
the crash of a march. But these survivals remind us rather of _Belphegor_,
in the pathetic drama of that name, than of _Dulcamara_ in the opera of
_L'Elisor d'Amore_, with his gorgeous equipage and his musical attendants,
as old play-goers remember the personation of the character by the famous
Lablache.




The Strange Story of the Fight with the Small-Pox.

BY THOMAS FROST.


When, at the present day, we hear of an epidemic of small-pox in some town
where the practice of vaccine inoculation has been neglected, it is both
instructive and consolatory to turn our thoughts back to the time, before
the introduction of that practice, when that horrible disease caused ten
per cent, of all the deaths in excess of those occurring in the ordinary
course of nature. This statement, startling as it may seem to the present
generation, may be verified by reference to the annual bills of mortality
of the city of London. This fearful state of things had prevailed in
England from the time of the Plantagenets, when, in the first quarter of
the eighteenth century, a gleam of light was flashed upon the medical
darkness of western Europe from the east. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu,
writing from Adrianople to a lady friend in the spring of 1717, flashed
that light in the concluding portion of her letter, as follows:--

    "Apropos of distempers, I am going to tell you a thing that will make
    you wish yourself here. The small-pox, so fatal and so general amongst
    us, is here entirely harmless, by the invention of _ingrafting_, which
    is the term they give it. There is a set of old women who make it
    their business to perform the operation every autumn, in the month of
    September, when the great heat is abated. People send to one another
    to know if any of their family has a mind to have the small-pox; they
    make parties for this purpose, and when they are met (commonly fifteen
    or sixteen together), the old woman comes with a nut-shell full of the
    matter of the best sort of small-pox, and asks what vein you please to
    have opened. She immediately rips open that you offer to her with a
    large needle (which gives you no more pain than a common scratch), and
    puts into the vein as much matter as can lie upon the head of her
    needle, and after that binds up the little wound with a hollow bit of
    shell, and in this manner opens four or five veins.

    ... Every year thousands undergo this operation; and the French
    ambassador says pleasantly, that they take the small-pox here by way
    of diversion, as they take the waters in other countries. There is no
    example of any one that has died in it; and you may believe I am well
    satisfied of the safety of this experiment, since I intend to try it
    on my own little son."

This intention she carried into practice, and on her return to England
made great exertions to introduce inoculation into general use. The
medical profession opposed it so strongly, however, that for many years
the horrible distemper continued to rage unchecked. Such announcements as
the following were, in consequence, not unfrequent in the newspapers:--

    "WHEREAS the TOWN of BURY ST. EDMUND'S, where the GENERAL QUARTER
    SESSIONS of the PEACE of that Division are usually held, is now
    afflicted with the Small-Pox, for which reason it might be of
    exceeding ill consequence to the Country in General to hold the
    Sessions there; This is, therefore, to acquaint the PUBLIC that the
    next GENERAL QUARTER SESSIONS of the Peace will be held at the sign of
    the PICKEREL in IXWORTH, on Monday next.

      "COCKSEDGE, Clerk of the Peace."

Later on in the same year (1744) an advertisement appeared, signed by the
clergy, churchwardens, and medical practitioners of the town, stating that
"there were only twenty-one persons then lying ill of the small-pox."
Scarcely a week passed, in those days, without advertisements appearing of
the number of cases of the disease in certain towns. Careful study of a
large number of these announcements shows, however, that it was only
thought desirable to advertise when the epidemic was thought to be
abating, or when it had abated. Take the following, for instance:--

    "Nov. 4, 1755.

    "Upon the strictest Inquiry made of the present state of the SMALL-POX
    in BECCLES, it appears to be in eleven houses, and no more, and that
    the truth may be constantly known, the same will be weekly advertised
    alternately in the Ipswich and Norwich papers by us,

      "THO. PAGE, Rector.
      "OSM. CLARKE and IS. BLOWERS, Churchwardens."

In the following year we find it announced that, "upon a strict inquiry
made by the clerks through their respective parishes, delivered to us, and
attested by them, there is but six persons now afflicted with the
small-pox in this town,"--to wit, Colchester--and this statement is signed
by three ministers and six medical practitioners. In the _Ipswich Journal_
of Jan. 22nd, 1757, the following appeared:--"There will be no fair this
year at Bildestone on Ash Wednesday, as usual, by reason of the small-pox
being in several parishes not far off."

The practice of inoculation, though still frowned upon by a large
proportion of the medical profession, was growing at this time, as appears
from the following advertisement:--

    "COLCHESTER, May 12, 1762.

    "The Practice of bringing people out of the country into this town to
    be inoculated for the Small-pox being very prejudicial to the town in
    many respects, but especially to the Trade thereof, and as by this
    practice the distemper may be continued much longer in the town than
    it otherwise would, in all probability, it is thought proper by some
    of the principal inhabitants and traders in the town, that this public
    notice should be given that they are determined to prosecute any
    person or persons whomsoever, that shall hereafter bring into this
    town, or who shall receive into their houses in the town as lodgers,
    any person or persons for that purpose, with the utmost severity that
    the law will permit.... But that they might not be thought
    discouragers of a practice so salutary and beneficial to mankind, as
    inoculation is found to be, which encourages great numbers to go into
    the practice, the persons who have caused this public notice to be
    given have no objection to surgeons carrying on the practice in houses
    properly situated for the purpose."

The "great numbers" of persons referred to in this notice as having "gone
into the practice" of inoculation for the small-pox appear to have been
chiefly old women, as in Turkey, and by some of these it was carried on
until the passing of the Vaccination Act in 1840. Five guineas was the fee
advertised in the _Ipswich Journal_ in 1761 for performing the operation
by Robert Sutton, an operator in Kent, who announced that he had "only met
with but one accident out of the many hundreds he has had under his cure."

The prevalence of this hideous disease in the last century, and the dread
which it inspired, is curiously attested by the frequency with which
advertisements for servants, etc., appeared in the newspapers, in which
there was an express stipulation that applicants must have had the
small-pox. A housemaid or footman whose face bore the traces of this
disease would not, at the present day, find their appearance much in their
favour: but the following selection of advertisements, culled from the
_Ipswich Journal_ and the _Salisbury and Winchester Journal_, show that in
the last century the marks would increase their chances of obtaining
employment very considerably. The dates range from 1755 to 1781, and such
announcements might be increased to any extent.

    "A Three Years' APPRENTICE is wanted to use the Sea between
    Manningtree and London, whose age is between 18 and 25 years, and has
    had the Small-pox. Such a one, inquiring of MR. WM. LEACH, at Mistley
    Thorne, in Essex, will hear of good encouragement."

    "WANTED, about Michaelmas, as Coachman, in a gentleman's family, who
    can drive four horses, and ride postillion well. A Single Man, must
    have had the Small-pox, and know how to drive in London. Such an one,
    who can be well recommended, by giving a description of himself, his
    age, and abilities, in a letter directed to A. B., at MR. J.
    KENDALL'S, in COLCHESTER, may hear of a very good place."

    "WANTED, a JOURNEYMAN BAKER, that is a good workman, and has had the
    SMALL-POX. Such a person may hear of a good place by applying to MR.
    JOHN STOW, at Sudbury, or to the Printer of this paper."

    "Wanted an Apprentice to an eminent Surgeon in full practice in the
    county of Suffolk. If he has not had the Small-Pox, it is expected he
    will be inoculated for it, before he enters on business.--Enquire of
    JOHN FOX, at Dedham, Essex."


    "COLCHESTER, June 15th, 1762.

    "Wanted immediately, a Stout Lad as an Apprentice to a Currier. If he
    can write it will be the more agreeable. Inquire further of ELEANOR
    ONYON. N.B.--If he has not had the Small-pox, he need not apply."

    "WANTED for a gentleman that lives most part of the year in London, A
    Genteel Person, between 28 and 40 years of age, that has had the
    Small-pox, to be as Companion and Housekeeper. One that has been
    brought up in a genteel, frugal and handsome manner, either a Maid or
    Widow, so they have no incumbrances."

    "WANTED, a NURSEMAID. None need apply who cannot bring a good
    character from their last place; and has had the Small-pox."

    "WANTS a place in a large or small family, in town or country, a YOUNG
    MAN, who is well versed in the different branches of a Gardener, has
    had the Small-pox, and can write a good hand."

    "WANTED, in a large family, a STOUT WOMAN, about 30, single, or a
    widow without children, who has had the Small-pox, to take care of a
    lusty child, under a year old. Her character must be unexceptionable,
    and by no means a fashionable dresser, and lived in families of
    credit. Any person answering this description may enquire of MRS.
    MERCER, at the Star and Garter, Andover, and be further informed."

It was about the time when the last of these advertisements appeared that
Jenner commenced his inquiries concerning the prophylactic virtues of
cow-pox, though nearly twenty years elapsed before they were sufficiently
advanced to enable him to make the results known. His idea of using
vaccine inoculation to bring about the total extinction of small pox was
scouted by those of his professional brethren to whom he mentioned it, and
we learn from one of his biographers that, at the outset, "both his own
observation and that of other medical men of his acquaintance proved to
him that what was commonly called cow-pox was not a certain preventive of
small-pox. But he ascertained by assiduous inquiry and personal
investigation that cows were liable to various kinds of eruption on their
teats, all capable of being communicated to the hands of the milkers; and
that such sores when so communicated were all called cow-pox." But when he
had traced out the nature of these various diseases, and ascertained which
of them possessed the protective virtue against small-pox, he was again
foiled by learning that in some cases when what he now called the true
cow-pox broke out among the cattle on a dairy farm, and had been
communicated to the milkers, they subsequently had small-pox. These
repeated failures perplexed him, but at the same time stimulated, instead
of discouraging him. He conceived the idea that the virus of cow-pox
might undergo some change which deprived it of its protective power, while
still enabling it to communicate a disease to human beings. Following up
the inquiry from this point, he at length discovered that the virus was
capable of imparting protection against small-pox only in a certain
condition of the pustule.

He was now prepared to submit his theory to the test of experiment, but it
was not until 1796 that he had the opportunity. A dairymaid, who had
contracted cow-pox from one of her employer's cows, afforded the matter,
and Jenner introduced it into two incisions in the arms of a boy about
eight years of age. The disease thus transferred ran its ordinary course
without any ill effects, and the boy was afterwards inoculated with the
virus of small pox, which produced no effect. The disappearance of the
cow-pox from the dairies in the neighbourhood of his country practice in
Gloucestershire prevented him from making further experiments; and when he
visited London for that purpose, he had the mortification of finding that
no one could be found who would consent to be operated upon. It was not
until 1798 that this obstacle was overcome, and then, the results of the
earlier experiments having been confirmed by a series of vaccinations,
followed by inoculation for small-pox several months afterwards without
effect, Jenner made his discovery public.

In the following year, vaccine inoculation began to spread, the practice
being taken up by many of Jenner's friends, including several who were not
in the medical profession. But, like inoculation for the small-pox, when
introduced by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu,--like all innovations on
established practices, indeed,--vaccination received for many years after
its introduction the most violent opposition. Just as inoculation for
small-pox had been denounced from the pulpit and in medical treatises as a
"diabolical operation" and a wicked interference with the designs of
Providence, so did a certain Dr. Squirrel denounce vaccination as an
attempt to change "the established laws of nature." The most absurd
stories were circulated of the effects alleged to have followed
vaccination. "A lady," it is stated by Mr. Bettany, "complained that since
her daughter had been vaccinated she coughed like a cow, and had grown
hairy all over her body; and in one country district it was stated that
vaccination had been discontinued there, because those who had been
inoculated in that manner bellowed like bulls." There were even doctors
who pretended to detect resemblances to bovine visages in the countenances
of children, produced, as they did not hesitate to declare, by
vaccination! Self-interest may have had as much to do as prejudice in
prompting the opposition of the profession. Many practitioners derived a
considerable portion of their income from fees for inoculation for
small-pox. Sutton, as we have seen, charged five guineas for the
operation, and advertised himself in many provincial newspapers; and the
income of Dr. Woodville, at one time physician to the Small-Pox Hospital,
is said to have sunk in one year from a thousand pounds to a hundred on
his adopting the practice of vaccination.

Notwithstanding the prejudice and interested antagonism to which the new
practice was exposed, it continued to make way. The Rev. Dr. Booker, of
Dudley, gave the following striking testimony to its beneficial
effects:--"I have, previous to the knowledge of vaccine inoculation,
frequently buried, day after day, several (and once as many as eight)
victims of the small-pox. But since the parish has been blessed with this
invaluable boon of Divine Providence (cow pox), introduced among us nearly
four years ago, only two victims have fallen a prey to the above ravaging
disorder (small pox). In the surrounding villages, like an insatiable
Moloch, it has lately been devouring vast numbers, where obstinacy and
prejudice have precluded the Jennerian protective blessing."

In 1803, the Royal Jennerian Institution was founded under royal
patronage, and with Jenner as president, to promote vaccination in London
and elsewhere; and its operations were continued for a few years with much
success, ceasing, however, on the establishment of the National Vaccine
Institution in 1808. Two years prior to this event, Lord Henry Petty, who
then held the office of Chancellor of the Exchequer, carried a motion in
the House of Commons, that the Royal College of Physicians should be
requested to inquire and report on the progress of vaccination. The
report, which appeared in the following year, set forth that, within eight
years from the discovery of vaccination, some hundreds of thousands of
persons had been vaccinated in the British Islands, and upwards of eight
hundred thousand in our East Indian possessions, and that the practice
had been generally adopted on the continent of Europe. Considering that
small-pox destroyed one-sixth of those whom it attacked, and that nearly
one-tenth, and in some years more than that proportion, of the entire
mortality in London was caused by it, and also the number, respectability,
and extensive experience of the advocates of vaccination, compared with
the feeble and imperfect testimonies of its few opponents, the value of
the practice seemed firmly established.

This report did much to advance vaccination in public opinion. At the next
quarter sessions held at Stafford, it was taken into consideration by the
county magistrates, who, from its statements and the reports and
testimonials sent to Jenner, considered themselves justified in placing it
on record--"That vaccine inoculation, properly conducted, appeared never
to have failed as a certain preservative against small-pox; that it was
unattended by fever, and perfectly free from danger; that it required
neither confinement, loss of time, nor previous preparation; that it was
not infectious, nor productive of other diseases; that it might be
performed with safety on persons of every age and sex, and at all times
and seasons of the year." It was not, however, until 1840 that the results
of the labours of Jenner, the report of the Royal College of Physicians,
and the opinions of nearly the entire medical profession received
legislative endorsement by the passing of the Vaccination Act, since which
small-pox has become a thing of the past, except in cases where it has
been conserved by prejudice and ignorance.




Burkers and Body-Snatchers.

BY THOMAS FROST.


How recollections will crowd upon the mind when a train of thought is set
in motion by the association of ideas! When, many years ago, I visited Dr.
Kahn's anatomical museum, then located in Tichborne Street, I there saw a
human skeleton which was affirmed by the lecturer, Dr. Sexton, to be that
of John Bishop, who was hanged in 1831, for the murder of an Italian boy
named Carlo Ferrari, at a house in Nova Scotia Gardens, one of the slums
then existing in the north-eastern quarter of London. Though nearly forty
years had elapsed since the commission of the crime, and I was only ten
years of age when I heard the horrible story which the sight of that
ghastly relic of mortality recalled to my mind, all the incidents
connected with it immediately passed before my mental vision like a
hideous phantasmagoria. The vividness with which they came back to me may
be accounted for by the deep impression which they made upon my mind at
the time of their occurrence. Those whose memories will carry them back
sixty years will readily understand this.

At the time when the public mind was harrowed by the narration in the
newspapers of the horrible circumstances connected with the murder, and
for some time previously, a fearful excitement had been created in all
parts of the country by stories of murders committed and graves robbed of
their ghastly tenants for the purpose of supplying with "subjects" the
dissecting tables of the London and Edinburgh schools of anatomy. In the
latter city two miscreants named Burke and Hare had been convicted of
murder for this purpose, and one of them hanged for their crimes; but the
scare had not abated. Stories were told with appalling frequency of
corpses missing from lonely graveyards and of narrow escapes from murder
in little frequented places. Chloroform had not then been discovered, but
the Scotch professors of the art of murder had introduced the practice,
popularly named after one of them, of disabling their victims by means of
a pitch plaster suddenly clapped on the mouth. Every person who was
missing was thought to have been "burked," and the watching of graves to
prevent the removal of newly-buried corpses became an established
practice. As the dark nights of the late autumn came on, the fears of the
timid and nervous were doubled, and persons who lived in lonely places, or
in the ill-lighted parts of towns, became afraid to leave their houses
after nightfall. I remember hearing such fears expressed by several
persons at Croydon, with whom my parents were acquainted, and also of
neighbours combining to assist in watching the graves of deceased members
of each others' families.

A few years ago, I was one day exchanging reminiscences of a long bygone
generation with a brother journalist, when, on this gruesome subject being
mentioned, he placed in my hands a report of the trial of the murderers of
Carlo Ferrari, which appeared to have been detached from a volume of
criminal trials. No feature of the horrible record impressed me so much as
the cool, business-like manner in which the wretches concerned in the
crime hawked the corpse of their victim from one school of anatomy to
another, and the equally cool and business-like manner in which the matter
was dealt with by those with whom their nefarious occupation brought them
in contact. The procuring of corpses for anatomical purposes was, in fact,
a regular trade, and the biographer of Sir Astley Cooper states that "the
Resurrection-men were occasionally employed on expeditions into the
country to obtain possession of the bodies of those who had been subjected
to some important operation, and of which a _post mortem_ examination was
of the greatest interest to science. Scarcely any distance from London was
considered an insuperable difficulty in the attaining of this object, and
as certainly as the Resurrectionist undertook the task, so certain was he
of completing it. This was usually an expensive undertaking, but still it
did not restrain the most zealous in their profession from occasionally
engaging these men in this employment." The price of a subject ranged from
seven to twelve guineas, but when the "body-snatchers" were specially
employed to procure some particular corpse, the incidental expenses were
often as much more.

As an illustration of the times in which such horrors were possible, the
story of the murder of Carlo Ferrari may, at this distance of time from
the event, be worth telling. In the autumn of 1831, there lived in one of
a row of small houses, known as Nova Scotia Gardens, in the
poverty-stricken district of Bethnal Green, a man named John Bishop, with
his wife and three children. He had formerly been a carrier at Highgate,
but had long been suspected of "body-snatching," as the practice of
robbing graves was termed, and had no visible means of honest living. He
had the look of a man whose original rustic stolidity had been
supercharged with cockney cunning. The house adjoining Bishop's was
occupied by a man named Woodcock, who had succeeded in the tenancy a
glass-blower named Thomas Williams, described as a little, simple-looking
man, of mild and inoffensive demeanour. About two o'clock on the morning
of the 4th of November, Woodcock was awakened by a noise, as of a scuffle,
in Bishop's house, and afterwards heard two men leave it and return in a
few minutes, when he recognised the voices as those of Bishop and
Williams. At noon the same day these two men were in a neighbouring
public-house, accompanied by two other men, one of whom was known as James
May, who had formerly been a butcher, but for the last few years had been
suspected of following the same ghastly and revolting occupation as
Bishop. In the afternoon three men alighted from a cab at Nova Scotia
Gardens, two of them being recognised as Bishop and Williams, and
afterwards returned to the vehicle, when the former and the third man were
carrying something in a sack, which they placed in the cab. The three men
then entered, and it was driven off.

About seven o'clock the same evening, Bishop and May presented themselves
at Guy's Hospital, carrying something in a sack, and asked the porter if a
"subject" was wanted. Receiving a negative reply, they asked him to allow
"it" to remain there until the next morning, to which he consented.
Half-an-hour later, the two traffickers in human flesh called at
Grainger's anatomical theatre, in Webb Street, Southwark, and told the
curator they had "a very fresh male subject, about fourteen years of age."
The offer being declined, they went away, and later on they were,
accompanied by Williams, in a public-house, where May was seen by a waiter
to pour water on a handkerchief containing human teeth, and then rub the
teeth together, remarking that they were worth two pounds to him.

Next morning, May called upon a dentist named Mills, on Newington
Causeway, and sold a dozen teeth to him for a guinea, observing that they
were the teeth of a boy fourteen years of age. On examining them, Mills
found that morsels of the gums and splinters of the jaw were adhering to
them, as if much force had been used to wrench them out. Two hours later,
Bishop and May called again at the anatomical theatre in Southwark, and
repeated their offer of the preceding evening, which was again declined.
Shortly afterwards, they went to Guy's Hospital, accompanied by Williams
and a man named Shields, to remove the "subject" left there the evening
before, and it was given to them in the sack, as they had left it, and
placed in a large hamper, which Shields had brought for the purpose. There
was a hole in the sack, through which the porter saw a small foot
protruding, apparently that of a boy or a woman.

About midnight, the bell of King's College was rung, and the porter, on
going to the gate, found there Bishop and May, whom he had seen there
before, it seems, and on similar business. May asked him if anything was
wanted, and receiving an indifferent answer, added that they had a male
"subject," a boy about fourteen years of age. The porter inquired the
price, and was told they wanted twelve guineas for it. He then said he
would ask Mr. Partridge, the demonstrator in anatomy, and they followed
him to a room adjoining the dissecting room. Nine guineas were offered,
which May, with an oath, refused, and went outside. Bishop then said to
the porter, "Never mind May, he is drunk; it shall come in for nine in
half-an-hour." They then went away, returning at the stipulated time,
accompanied by Williams and Shields, the latter carrying on his head the
hamper containing the corpse brought from Guy's Hospital. It was taken
into a room, where it was opened, and the corpse turned out of the sack by
May. The porter, observing a cut on the left temple, and that the left arm
was bent and the fingers clenched, conceived suspicions of foul play, and
communicated them at once to Mr. Partridge. That gentleman thereupon
examined the corpse, and mentioned its condition to the secretary, who
immediately gave information to the police.

In order to detain the men until the arrival of the police, the
demonstrator showed them a £50 note, observing that he must get it changed
for gold before he could pay them. Several constables were soon on the
spot, and the four men were arrested, and taken to the station-house in
Vine Street, Covent Garden. On being charged on suspicion with having
unlawful possession of a corpse, May said he had nothing to do with it,
and had merely accompanied Bishop. A similar statement was made by
Williams, and Bishop said he was only removing the corpse from St.
Thomas's Hospital to King's College. Shields, who was known as a porter,
said he was employed to carry the hamper, which he did in the exercise of
his vocation. They were all then removed to the cells.

The evidence given at the coroner's inquest by Partridge and two other
surgeons left no doubt that the unfortunate lad, respecting whose identity
there was no evidence, had been killed by a violent blow on the back of
the neck, which had affected the spinal cord. The four accused men were
present in custody during the inquiry, and Bishop, after reading a bill
relating to the murder, which was displayed on the wall of the room, was
heard by a constable to say, in a subdued tone, to May, "It was the blood
that sold us." Volunteering to give evidence, he said he got the corpse
from a grave, but declined to name the place whence he had got it,
alleging that the information would get into trouble two watchmen, who
had large families. May also made a voluntary statement, to the effect
that he got two "subjects" from the country, which he took first to
Grainger's theatre of anatomy, and afterwards to Guy's Hospital,
subsequently meeting Bishop, who promised him all he could get for a
"subject" above nine guineas if he would sell it for him. The inquest was
adjourned, and the police proceeded with their investigation.

The houses of Bishop and May had been promptly visited and searched by the
police, who found at the former's a sack, a large hamper, and a brad-awl,
the last showing recent bloodstains. At May's house in Dorset Street, New
Kent Road, they found a pair of breeches, stained with blood at the back.
On a second visit to Bishop's house the garden was dug over, and a jacket,
trousers, and a shirt found in one spot, and in another a coat, trousers,
a vest with blood on the collar and one shoulder, and a shirt with the
front torn. When the brad-awl was produced at Bow Street police-court, May
said, "That is the instrument I punched the teeth out with." Shields was
eventually discharged from custody, but the other three prisoners were
committed for trial on the capital charge.

The identity of the victim remained a mystery until the 19th of November,
a fortnight after the murder, when the corpse was recognised by a
foreigner named Brun as that of a boy named Carlo Ferrari, whom he had
brought from Italy two years before, but had not seen since July, 1830.
The boy picked up the means of living by exhibiting a tortoise and a pair
of white mice in the streets. He had been seen by several persons in or
near Nova Scotia Gardens on the 3rd of November, but he had not been seen
since, nor had he returned on that day to his miserable lodgings in
Charles Street, Drury Lane. The clothes found in Bishop's garden
corresponded with the description given of those worn by him when he was
last seen, and a little boy who played with Bishop's children stated that
they had, on the following day, shown him two white mice in a cage similar
to the one carried by Ferrari.

The incidents of the crime, as revealed from day to day, and the mystery
in which the identity of the victim was for some time veiled, created so
much excitement in the public mind, that when the prisoners were placed
in the dock at the Old Bailey, early in December, the court was crowded,
and a guinea each was paid for seats in the gallery, the occupants of
which, all fashionably dressed, as might be expected of those who could
afford to pay that price for the gratification of their love of the
sensational, had taken their seats the day before. Though the evidence was
but a recapitulation of the story told before in the police-court and the
inquest-room, it was listened to with the utmost avidity. The witnesses
for the defence were few, and their evidence valueless, except in the case
of May, for whom an _alibi_ was established in respect of the time between
the afternoon of the day preceding the murder and noon on the following
day. The prisoners were sentenced to death, but in May's case the sentence
was commuted into transportation for life. A sea-faring relative of mine,
who was second officer of the vessel in which May was sent out to Sydney,
described him as an athletic, wiry-looking man, with features expressive
of sternness, and a determined will, quite a different-looking man,
therefore, to his two companions in crime, who were duly hanged at
Newgate.

The crime of these men, and the deeds of Burke and Hare, created such a
scare, and exposed so vividly the temptation to murder afforded by the
prices paid by surgeons for "subjects," that the attention of parliament
was directed to the matter, and a Select Committee of the House of Commons
was appointed to inquire and report as to the facilities which might be
given for obtaining bodies for anatomical purposes in a legitimate manner.

Sir Astley Cooper, who was one of the eminent surgeons who gave evidence
before this committee, was asked whether the state of the law prevented
teachers of anatomy from obtaining the body of any person, which, in
consequence of some peculiarity of structure, they might be desirous of
procuring. He replied:--"The law does not prevent our obtaining the body
of an individual if we think proper; for there is no person, let his
situation in life be what it may, whom, if I were disposed to dissect, I
could not obtain.... The law only enhances the price, and does not prevent
the exhumation. Nobody is secured by the law; it only adds to the price of
the subject." The result of this inquiry was the passing of the Anatomy
Act, by which the bodies of persons dying in hospitals and workhouses, if
unclaimed by the relatives, may be placed at the disposal of the schools
of anatomy.




Reminiscences of the Cholera.

BY THOMAS FROST.


It is now more than sixty years since the strange and mysterious
visitation, as it was then considered, known as the cholera morbus, for
which fearsome name that of Asiatic cholera has since been substituted,
made its first appearance in this country, or anywhere west of the Ural
Mountains. Coming first from India, from the banks of the Ganges and the
Indus, the dread pestilence moved steadily westward and north-westward
until, creeping along the rivers of Russia, and desolating all the most
considerable towns of that country, it reached St. Petersburg. There it
raged with fearful severity, mowing down as with the scythe of Death more
than a thousand persons daily. So dreadful were the features of the
unknown malady, and so rapidly were its victims carried off, that the
ignorant populace of the capital attributed it to poison administered by
the doctors. A fearful tumult was excited by this belief, and it was with
great difficulty that it was suppressed.

From Russia the dire disease spread rapidly into almost every country in
Europe, and wherever it appeared created the profoundest awe and the most
bewildering terror. In Paris it broke out with extreme malignity in March,
1832, and soon raged there with greater virulence than it had exhibited in
any other city in Europe except St. Petersburg. The deaths soon reached
from four to five hundred daily, and during April they rose to a total for
the month of twelve thousand seven hundred. It was hinted that the ravages
of this new and dreadful disease were caused by the poisoning of the meat
sold in the markets and the water in the public fountains; and the
dwellers in the slums became so infuriated by this horrible and absurd
rumour that mobs perambulated the streets howling for vengeance on the
poisoners. Many unfortunate persons were murdered in the streets on being
denounced as the perpetrators of these imaginary crimes, and so paralysed
was the arm of justice by the influence of terror that nothing was done to
vindicate the majesty of the law. Everyone who could afford to leave Paris
fled from it with precipitation, and the city was abandoned to desolation
and anarchy. The legislative labours of the two Chambers were suspended,
and the peers and deputies were the first to set the example of flight,
though Louis Philippe and his family continued to reside at the Tuileries,
with an occasional sojourn of a few days at Neuilly.

I have a vivid recollection of the mingled awe and terror which this fell
disease inspired when it was announced that it had crossed the sea and
made its first victims in this country. It had made its way across the
continent from town to town on the banks of the great rivers, but into
England it was imported by sick sailors. Many generations had passed away
since anything like a pestilence had been known in England, and the
cholera therefore created a panic among all classes of the people, which
served to augment its virulence and render those of a nervous temperament
more liable to be attacked by it. Doctors were utterly unacquainted with
its proper treatment, and indeed had no knowledge whatever of the disease.
Hence it raged without check wherever it appeared, and the rapidity with
which it carried off its victims added to the terror inspired by its
approaches. The first death at Lower Norwood, where my parents then
resided, was that of the pastor of the Independent Chapel, situated only
two doors from my father's house. He died in a few hours from the time he
experienced the premonitory symptoms, and such was the dread of infection
that the corpse was buried the same night by torchlight, in the
burial-ground of the chapel, wrapped in a sheet coated with pitch.

Though a period of seventeen years separated the first cholera epidemic
from the second, the lessons which the former should have taught had not
been so well learned as they should have been, and the latter, with which
these reminiscences are chiefly concerned, inspired a wild, unreasoning
terror in only a little less degree than that of 1832.

I remember a case at Mitcham, in which the women attending a patient were
seized with a panic on the approach of death, and rushed out of the house,
leaving the poor wretch, a woman, to die alone, the corpse being
afterwards found rigid and distorted.

The apparently erratic manner in which the disease spread, sometimes
carrying off victims from one side of a street and sparing the other side,
sometimes smiting every member of a family in one house, and passing over
all the other houses in the same street, was a puzzle to persons who had
given no attention to the causes of the disease, and were content to
regard it as a sign of the wrath of God, reasoning about the matter as
little as did the Israelites whose relatives were swept off at
Kibroth-hattaavah. They had not given sufficient attention to the laws of
health to understand that the disease found its victims where those laws
were neglected, whether from carelessness or from ignorance.

I remember two cases at Croydon in which all the inmates of the houses in
which the disease manifested its dread presence were carried off by it.
One occurred in a cottage in St. James's Road, one of a row which had
originally been level with the road, but had become overshadowed by the
approach to the railway bridge. There were three victims in that house,
and no other case in the same row, or in the neighbourhood. The other case
occurred in King Street, one of several narrow, closely-built streets in
the centre of the town, and the victims were a widow and her only child,
the latter dying not alone, for, like Byron's Haidee,--

                          "----she held within
      A second principle of life, which might
    Have dawned a fair and sinless child of sin;
      But closed its little being without light,
    And went down to the grave unborn, wherein
      Blossom and bough lie withered with one blight."

A remarkable incident occurred while the fell disease was in the full
swing of its ravages. The wife of a working man living in the Old Town, a
low-lying and densely populated quarter, was attacked by it, and at once
removed to a temporary hospital that had been established on Duppas Hill,
a tabular eminence overlooking the town, and in the thirteenth century the
scene of the tournament in which the son of Earl Warrenne was by
misadventure slain. There her husband went, on his return from labour, to
ascertain her condition, and heard with a shock which the reader may
imagine that she was dead. When the poor fellow had in some degree
recovered from the blow, he expressed a wish to see the corpse and take it
to his home. He seems to have been unable to realise that his wife was
really dead, though the nurses and doctors assured him that she had passed
away. The idea that life yet lingered in the form that was apparently
lifeless grew upon him as he gazed and though he may never have read "The
Giaour," he may have felt the force of the thought so finely expressed by
Byron in the lines that introduce his picture of the Greece of his day:--

          "He who hath bent him o'er the dead,
    Ere the first day of death is fled,
    The first dark day of nothingness,
    The last of danger and distress
    (Before Decay's effacing fingers
    Have swept the lines where beauty lingers),
    And marked the mild angelic air,
    The rapture of repose that's there,
    The fixed yet tender traits that streak
    The languor of the pallid cheek,
    And--but for that sad shrouded eye,
        That fires not, wins not, weeps not, now,
        And but for that chill, changeless brow,
    Where cold Obstruction's apathy
    Appals the gazing mourner's heart,
    As if to him it could impart
    The doom he dreads, yet dwells upon;
    Yes, but for these, and these alone,
    Some moments, aye, one treacherous hour,
    He still might doubt the tyrant's power;
    So fair, so calm, so softly sealed,
    The first, last look by death revealed!"

Whether it was feeling or reason that inspired the thought that life yet
lingered in the apparently inanimate, but not yet rigid form, which the
loving husband conveyed to his humble dwelling, it was undoubtedly to that
inspiration that the woman owed her preservation from death. For she was
not dead. Signs of returning animation were perceived when the supposed
corpse was placed upon the bed, and the neighbour women who came in to
perform the last sad offices for the dead were there to welcome her on her
return to life. I will not attempt to describe the feelings with which the
husband beheld the eyelids of his wife unclose, and the rose-tints return
to the pallid cheeks. Like the Greek painter who, conscious of the
inadequacy of his art to fully portray the grief of Agamemnon for the loss
of his son, covered the countenance of the old king with a veil, I draw
the curtain upon the scene, and leave it to the imagination of the reader.

Among the remedies for the cholera which came into vogue during the
prevalence of the epidemic of 1849, the rubbing of the stomach with brandy
and salt obtained a considerable degree of repute; and the chemists vied
with each other, as in the recent epidemics of influenza, in the
concoction and advertising of various cholera mixtures, one of the most
efficacious of which was a preparation of opium and chalk.

The lessons of the cholera were not so entirely neglected on this occasion
as they were after the epidemic of 1832; but it is a sad reflection on our
legislation that we were indebted to the ravages of disease, or rather to
the fear inspired by them, for sanitary reforms which ought to have
resulted from foresight. There had been sanitary inquiries by Royal
Commissions between 1842 and 1849, but little had been done towards
carrying out the recommendations which resulted from them. The existence
of cholera in India, and the causes which produced it, had long been
known; but so long as its ravages were confined to the people of that
country no one seemed to think that it concerned the people of England. It
was known, too, that whatever might be the true causes of zymotic
diseases, concerning which medical opinions differed, accumulations of
filth, contaminated sources of water supply, and an impure condition of
the atmosphere tended to produce their outbreaks, and to aggravate their
virulence. But then we had been used to these evils since the days of the
Plantagenets, and though they had become intensified with the increase of
population and the growth of the large towns, had not Malthus taught us
that epidemics of disease were one of the means used by divine providence
to prevent the numbers of the human race from exceeding the means of
subsistence?

The cholera epidemic of 1849 roused the public mind from its lethargy, and
prepared it to act upon the recommendations of the General Board of Health
and to comply with the Sanitary Act of that year. The old wells of London
were closed, and the like course was adopted in Croydon, where a constant
supply of practically pure water was obtained by boring down to the chalk.
Other towns followed the example, one of the foremost being Birmingham,
which received a supply which enabled the inhabitants to dispense with the
insalubrious rain-water butt. Sewerage works were undertaken where no
efficient system of drainage had before existed. Attention was called to
the important questions of sewage disposal and the pollution of rivers;
and though much even now remains to be done in this direction, and in the
improvement of the water supply of the large manufacturing towns of
Yorkshire and Lancashire, sanitation has been cleared of most of its
difficulties by better knowledge of the philosophy of cause and effect, so
that we no longer regard the calamities resulting from our own ignorance
and neglect of the laws of nature as the inflictions of Providence.




Some Old Doctors.

BY MRS. G. LINNÆUS BANKS.


It is not my intention to go back to those Greek fathers of the healing
art, Hippocrates and Galen, or to dwell on the days when every monastery
held within its walls some learned brother accredited to administer to
bodies as well as souls diseased, or when the mistress of every feudal
castle, every baronial-hall, was trained and skilled in leechcraft,
distilled herbs, concocted potions and unguents, and not only physicked
her household, but was prepared to staunch and dress the gaping wounds
received in siege or tournay. Nor yet have we ought to do with those
pretenders to science who mingled astrology with pharmacy, ascribed to
every plant its ruling planet, and held that the potency of all herbs
depended on the conjunction of planets, or the phase of the moon under
which they were gathered--a belief, indeed, under which old Nicholas
Culpepper compiled his well-known "Herbal" early in the seventeenth
century.

Medicine and surgery have made rapid strides since the days, not a century
agone, when in the naval cockpit, and on the open battlefield, the hatchet
was the ready implement for amputation, the rough cautery that of a red
hot iron applied to the fizzing flesh; and when the doctor cried, "Spit,
man, spit" to the suffering soldier with a gunshot wound in his chest, and
when the sputum came tinged with blood, simply plugged up the bullet-hole
and left the poor fellow to his fate, while he passed on to cases less
hopeless. And _en passant_ I may say that wooden legs and stumps for arms
were so common in the writer's young days as scarcely to attract
attention--so ready were army surgeons to amputate.

These are not matters on which I have to dwell, but I think the present
work would be incomplete without a record of those men of original mind,
whose acute observation and unwearied investigations in the past have
indissolubly linked their names with discoveries which have revolutionised
the practice of both medicine and surgery.

In the opinion of Solomon, "there is nothing new under the sun;" and if
such was the case in his day, how much more of a verity must be the
truism in ours.

So the most startling and perfect revelation of any great fact in human
physiology may have been dimly perceptible to earlier intelligences
groping in the dark, faint adumbrations of which may fall on the sensorium
of the final discoverer, until a ray of divine light dispels the mists of
ages, and the man, developing his crude idea with infinite pains, realises
a great truth, and cries out "Eureka" to an astonished--and too often--an
unbelieving world.

Thus it may have been with the renowned practitioner, WILLIAM HARVEY, who
came into the world when all England was filled with alarms of an
"Invincible Spanish Armada," then preparing to devastate our shores and
spare neither man nor maid, babe nor mother. Yet the scare passed and
peace came, and the boy grew, until his educational course at Cambridge
ended, and his bias led him towards Padua, then the great seat of
academical and medical lore, and there he took his doctor's degree in
physic. With the prestige of Padua upon him, in 1607, when he was but
twenty years of age, he was elected Fellow of the College of Physicians
(founded by Dr. Linacre in the reign of Henry VII.), and in 1715, the man
of twenty-eight became their Anatomical Reader.

A noteworthy appointment this, since consequent study and investigation
led to the grand discovery that the heart--to speak unscientifically--was
a sort of muscular pumping-engine, sending the blood circulating along a
series of blood-vessels to every part of the system, changing in character
on its course until it returned to its centre, the seat of life, to be
pumped out afresh to circulate as before and do its appointed work.

In 1628, Harvey made his discovery known in a learned treatise "On the
circulation of the blood," and as may be supposed, his daring assertions
roused a violent spirit of opposition amongst his medical brethren, even
among those who began to feel the pulses of their patients for the first
time, and to comprehend _why_ there should be a fluttering or audible
beating under the sick one's ribs, and wherefore the fatal hemorrhage
following a sword-thrust or a gunshot wound.

In spite of opposition his teaching created a revolution in medical
practice. The discoverer was called before Charles I. and his Court to
demonstrate the action of the heart and subsidiary organs, in support of
his new doctrine.

Fresh honours fell upon him even when too old to bear the burden. And when
in the fulness of time, William Harvey, who had outlived three monarchs,
made his own exit under Cromwellian rule, he bequeathed infinitely more to
posterity in his invaluable discovery than can be summed up in the estate,
library, and museum now in the proud possession of the College of
Physicians. These are held by a mere body of men. The other has a
world-wide significance.

Yet, as in his life, even in his grave, detractors strove to dim the glory
of his important revelation, ascribing to the theological physician
Servetus, to Realdus Columbus, and to Andreas Cæsalpinas, the credit of
prior discovery.

It remained for another learned physician, a century later, to deal with
these counter-claims, and whilst admitting their vague individual
conceptions of an elusive mystery, to establish once and for ever William
Harvey's inalienable right as sole discoverer.

This notable champion was JOHN FREIND, M.D., F.R.S., distinguished as the
Medical Historian, and Harveian lecturer to the College of Physicians, at
a time when he and his fellows shaved their heads and mounted Ramillies
wigs as outward guarantees for the profundity of wisdom they enshrined.

But apart from his flowing wig, or his defence of Harvey, or his learned
medical history, written in part when he was a prisoner in the Tower for
supposed complicity in the Atterbury Plot, or for skill in the treatment
of disease, John Freind had a pioneer's claim to distinction.

The doctor, strange to say, was a Member of Parliament, and on resuming
his seat on his release from incarceration, he brought before the House of
Commons, in 1725, a remarkable petition from the Royal College of
Physicians, to restrain "the pernicious use of spirituous liquors." And
though he might speak but as the mouthpiece of his brother Fellows, it
needed no small degree of courage to broach such a subject in those days
of general coarse indulgence among all classes; especially if his own
language was as direct and forcible as that of the petitioners.

Therefore, in his triple character as the historian of medicine, as the
champion of William Harvey, and as the foremost M.P. to advocate the
cause of temperance before our national legislative assembly, John Freind,
M.D., claims a niche in our Walhalla of notable old doctors.

In the nave of Westminster Abbey on a memorial of polished granite is this
inscription--"Beneath are deposited the remains of JOHN HUNTER, born at
Long Calderwood, Lanarkshire, N.B., on February 14th, 1728; died in London
on October 10th, 1793. His remains were removed from the Church of St.
Martins-in-the-Fields to this Abbey on March 28th, 1858. The Royal College
of Surgeons of England have placed this table over the grave of Hunter to
record their admiration of his genius as a gifted interpreter of the
Divine power and wisdom that works in the laws of organic life, and their
grateful veneration for his services to mankind as the Father of
scientific surgery. 'O Lord, how manifold are Thy works; in wisdom hast
Thou made them all.'"

Such honours are not paid to the remains of men of common stamp. And of no
common stamp was the sandy-headed youth who, having spent ten years of his
life learning cabinet making, resolved on striking out a better career for
himself; and in his twentieth year took horse and journeyed to London to
place himself under his elder brother, WILLIAM HUNTER, then rising into
note as a medical practitioner and a teacher of anatomy. In October, 1748,
he entered his brother's dissecting room, and whether the fitting of
joints in cabinetware had been of initiatory service, or he had had access
to the books of his medical relations in Glasgow, or that as a boy upon
his father's farm, observation of the domestic animals and of the wild
inhabitants of wood and fell, had roused the desire to master the secrets
of animated nature, sure it is that William speedily foretold a successful
future for his new pupil as an anatomist.

At all events he used his interest to place his promising brother under
the eminent surgeon of Chelsea Hospital, and later under another at St.
Bartholomew's. Then, shocked by the rough speech and manners of his
countrified brother, and his need of education, the classical elder packed
him off to college to pick up a little refinement along with Latin and
Greek.

In vain. Irrepressible and hot-tempered John could not sit down quietly to
study dead languages. Back he came from Oxford in haste, to study dead
bodies in his brother's dissecting room, and serve as demonstrator to his
course of lectures, simultaneously with his study of living bodies at St.
George's Hospital, where in a comparatively short time he became
house-surgeon.

His appointment as staff-surgeon to our troops on foreign service marked
the six intervening years before he settled down to practise in London. He
had laboured ten years on human anatomy, and had dissected a number of the
lower animals, laying the foundation of his collection of comparative
anatomy. Even while on foreign service he had amused himself with studying
the digestive faculties of snakes and lizards when in a torpid state, and
many were the contributions he sent home to his brother's museum.

His return to London, as a teacher of surgery and anatomy, was a marked
success, though private practice had to grow. In 1776, he was appointed
surgeon extraordinary to His Majesty George III., but eleven years prior
to this was admitted a Fellow of the Royal Society, slightly in advance of
his elder brother. Then in 1768, the bachelor, William, shifted himself
and his museum from Jermyn Street to Windmill Street, and resigned the
lease to John, thus securing independent action to the latter, and
facilities for creating a natural-history museum of his own.

Hitherto, the brothers had worked together in unison, but now John
committed the unpardonable offence of bringing home to Jermyn Street "a
tocherless bride," fourteen years younger than himself, endowed only with
beauty and accomplishments, and a faculty for filling the house with
assemblies of wit and fashion, which blunt-spoken John designated
"kick-ups," no doubt with an irreverent big D as a prefix, swearing being
as characteristic as hard work.

And work hard he did, early and late, not merely to maintain his extensive
and lucrative practice, but to provide and prepare subjects for the museum
in the rear of his town house, and for the valuable and original lectures
he delivered in language forcible and clear, if neither refined nor
academic.

His chief workshop, so to speak, was at his country "Box" at Earl's Court,
the grounds of which he had converted into a zoological garden, so many
wild animals were there kept for study. There is a story told of his
facing an escaped lion and flicking him back to his den with his pocket
handkerchief, showing his fearlessness and his knowledge of leonine
nature.

Another tale is told of his intervention between fighting dogs and
leopards, he dragging the infuriated leopards back to their cage by their
collars--and _fainting_ when the feat was accomplished, for his was not a
burly frame, and his heart was in a threatening condition.

An element of humour mingles with the gruesome in Sir B. W. Richardson's
account of the ruse employed to cheat watchful executors, and obtain the
body of O'Brien the Irish Giant,[2] so as to convert it into the skeleton
now in the Hunterian Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, Lincoln's
Inn.

Those were the days when surgeons were not particular where they obtained
subjects for their scalpels, whether from the resurrection men or from the
gallows, and John Hunter was not more dainty than his fellows. But also
from travelling shows and menageries, and from animals that died in the
Tower he was supplied. And so rapidly did his museum grow, absorbing the
bulk of his income, that ere long he had to remove to what is now
Leicester Square, and erect a building in the rear for his collection.

Honours fell upon him thickly as they had fallen on his brother, alike
British and foreign, of which he took little heed, absorbed as he was in
the pursuit of knowledge, and its demonstration. His discoveries placed
him far ahead of the science of his time, though his courtly brother,
earlier in the field and first to leave it, ran him close. Indeed their
final quarrel and alienation arose out of a disputed claim to a certain
discovery in feminine physiology, brought before the Royal Society, a
quarrel which transferred William's museum to the University of Glasgow,
and excluded John from his will.

The so-called "Lyceum Medicum" in Leicester Square, became the home of the
"Society for the Improvement of Medical and Chirurgical Knowledge," and
the "Philosophical Transactions" of the Society testify to the genius and
untiring activity of its promoter. How he found time for his many written
essays and discourses on topics wide apart as "Gunshot-wounds" and "Teeth"
is a marvel. No wonder the frail human machine wore out so early. He had
worked when he should have rested, worked regardless of premonitions and
attacks John Hunter must have well understood, and died at last at
sixty-two, a victim of one of those fits of passion no man with a diseased
heart can indulge in safely.

Setting out originally from the tablet in Westminster Abbey to describe
what manner of man was the old doctor who lay beneath, it became
imperatively necessary to bracket the two brothers, John and William
Hunter, together, since, according to Sir B. W. Richardson, they were
"twins in science," if not in birth. Had not William already come to the
front when John sought him out, he could not have been his teacher, or
given his younger brother his first start in life, his introduction, or
his facilities for study. Then they worked together, became one in
anatomical discovery, in their zeal for collecting all that illustrated
their theories, all that was rare and curious, into unprecedented museums.
Yet how widely the personalities of the brothers differed. They both stood
out among contemporaries, yet William, with his slight form, mildly
refined face, set off by an unpretentious wig, and delicate hands, under
lace ruffles, and wide coat cuffs, a classical scholar, an antiquary, a
numismatist, as well as a naturalist,--Queen Charlotte's medical referee,
stepping out from his chariot, gold cane in hand, to visit his courtly
patients, was the very _beau ideal_ of a fashionable physician of that
day, one who shone in drawing-rooms as well as in the lecture-hall.
Blue-eyed John, with high cheek bones, broad, slightly receding forehead,
tangled red hair, and a shaggy mane of whisker that made his keen face a
triangle, tender of heart, yet brusque and coarse of speech, rough in
manner as in dress (with not a sign of frill or ruffle), despising
dilettante coteries, not squeamish in seeking "subjects," passionate and
determined, caring little for empty honours, for money only to swell his
museum, and nothing for courtly circles, though created
surgeon-extraordinary to George III., and owing his large practice solely
to the force of his character, his science, and his skill. So far he was
his brother's antithesis. John was a diamond in the rough; William the gem
cut and polished. And such were the two old doctors to whom England's
College of Surgeons owes its Hunterian Museum; the University of Glasgow
the other. Had not the brothers quarrelled, the two would have formed one
grand unrivalled collection.

Space is limited, and so must be our notes of these other celebrated "old
doctors," whom it would be invidious to overlook. Of these EDWARD JENNER
stands prominently out, but he has been already dealt with by another
hand.

It is scarcely possible to pass by JOHN ABERNETHY, F.R.S., the eccentric
physician, whose principle was that men should eat to live, not live to
eat, who maintained that the stomach was the chief seat of health or
disease, according as it was used or abused, and that water was the one
natural and nutrient beverage. The practical way in which he illustrated
his theories respecting overfeeding,--filling a pail with food from
various dishes in correspondence with the heterogeneous mixture on his
patients' plates--and his brusque replies to some other of his patients,
have perpetuated his name through his oddities, rather than as a
benefactor of his kind, who revolutionized the medical practice of his
time, and of course excited envy and antagonism. His hair, kept together
at the nape of the neck with a ribbon tie, was brushed back from his
forehead, and added a degree of sharpness to his somewhat hatchet-shaped
face, when he told the timorous lady who was "afraid she had swallowed a
spider," "Then put a fly in your mouth, madam, and the spider will come up
to catch him." Or when he threw the shilling from his fee back to a mother
with a delicate daughter, "Take that, madam, and buy her a skipping-rope,"
an intimation that exercise was needed. It was an age of coarse feeding
and strong drinking, an age of drastic purges and much blood-letting, and
Abernethy's temperance principles, so much in advance of his time,
provoked considerable opposition from his medical brethren, whose
satirical epigrams he was not slow to cap.

But contemporary squibs and satires cannot affect the real good which has
made Abernethy's name a household word. Indeed it has been stamped upon a
biscuit. It is stamped also on a medical society he founded at St.
Bartholomew's Hospital, where his centenary has recently been celebrated.

Many have been the contributions to scientific medicine and surgery since
the rough days of the old doctors I have endeavoured to chronicle, but
these men of wigs and ties, gold-headed canes and pouncet-boxes, breeches
and buckled shoes, were the pioneers of progress, they cleared the way
for the men of this day and generation, and left their mark on their own
age, not to be effaced by newer and more advanced successors, to whom they
have served as stepping-stones.




The Lee Penny.


The story of the Lee Penny is full of historic interest, and the legends
respecting it furnished Sir Walter Scott with some incidents for his novel
the "Talisman."

This amulet is a stone of a deep red colour and triangular shape, in size
about half-an-inch on each side, and is set in a silver coin. The various
accounts which have come under our notice are agreed that this curious
relic of antiquity has been in the Lee family since a period immediately
after the death of King Robert the Bruce.

The monarch was nearing his end, and as he lay on his death-bed, he was
much troubled for having failed to visit in person the Holy Land to assist
in the Crusade. His long war with the English had rendered it impossible
for him to leave his kingdom to fight in a foreign land, even in the cause
of religion.

Sir James Douglas, his tried and trusty friend, stood beside the bed of
his king, and was in sore distress. As a last request the king implored
that as soon as possible after his soul had left his body Douglas would
take his heart to Jerusalem. On the honour of a knight, Sir James
faithfully promised to discharge the trust.

The king died in 1329, and his heart was enclosed in a silver case. Sir
James suspended it from his neck with a chain, and without delay gathered
round him a suitable retinue, and made his way towards the Holy Land. He
was not destined to reach that country, for on his route the intelligence
reached him that Alphonso, King of Leon and Castile, was waging war with
the Moorish chief, Osmyn of Granada. To assist the Christians, he felt it
was his duty, and in accordance with the dying charge of his king. With
courage he engaged in the fray, but was soon surrounded by horsemen, and
he who had fought so long and bravely, realised that he must meet his doom
far from the country he loved so well. He made a desperate effort to
escape. The precious casket he took from his neck and threw it before him,
saying, "Onward, as thou were wont, thou noble heart! Douglas will follow
thee." He followed it and was slain. After the battle was over the brave
knight was found resting on the heart of Bruce. The mortal remains of the
valiant knight were carried back to his home and buried in his church of
St. Bride, at Douglas.

The heart of Bruce was entrusted to Sir Simon Locard, and by him borne
back to Scotland, and at last found a resting-place beneath the high altar
of Melrose Abbey, and its site is still pointed out. Mrs. Hemans wrote a
charming poem on Bruce's heart in Melrose Abbey, commencing:--

    "Heart! that did'st press forward still,
    Where the trumpet's note rang shrill;
    Where the knightly swords are crossing,
    And the plumes like sea-foam tossing,
    Leader of the charging spear,
    Fiery heart! and liest thou here?
    May this narrow spot inurn
    Aught that could so beat and burn?"

We are told the family name of Locard was changed to Lockheart, or
Lockhart, from the circumstance of Sir Simon having carried the key of the
casket, and was granted as armorial insignia, heart with a fetter-lock,
with the motto, "Corda serrata pando." According to a contributor to
Chambers's "Book of Days," v., 2, p. 415, from the same incident, the
Douglases bear a human heart, imperially crowned, and have in their
possession an ancient sword, emblazoned with two hands holding a heart,
and dated 1329, the year Bruce died.

Lockhart was not daunted at the failure of the first attempt to reach
Jerusalem, and, in company with such Scottish knights as escaped the fate
of their leader, they once more proceeded, and arrived in the Holy Land,
and for some time fought in the wars against the Saracens.

[Illustration: THE LEE PENNY.]

The following adventure is said to have befallen him. He made prisoner in
battle an Emir of wealth and note. The aged mother of his captive came to
the Christian camp to save her son from his captivity. Lockhart fixed the
price at which his prisoner should ransom himself; and the lady, pulling
out a large embroidered purse, proceeded to tell down the amount. In this
operation, a pebble inserted in a coin, some say of the lower empire, fell
out of the purse, and the Saracen matron testified so much haste to
recover it as to give the Scottish knight a high idea of its value. "I
will not consent," he said, "to grant your son's liberty unless the amulet
be added to the ransom." The lady not only consented to this, but
explained to Sir Simon the mode in which the talisman was to be used. The
water in which it was dipped operated as a styptic, or a febrifuge, and
the amulet possessed several other properties as a medical talisman.

Sir Simon Lockhart, after much experience of the wonders which it wrought,
brought it to his own country, and left it to his heirs, by whom, and by
Clyde side in general, it was, and is still, distinguished by the name of
the Lee Penny, from the name of his native seat of Lee.

Its virtues were brought into operation by dropping the stone in water
which was afterwards given to the diseased to drink, washing at the same
time the part affected. No words were used in dipping the stone, or money
permitted to be taken by the servants of Lee. People came from all parts
of Scotland, and many places in England, to carry away the water to give
to their cattle.

Some interesting information respecting this amulet appears in an account
of the Sack and Siege of Newcastle-on-Tyne in 1644. "As one of the natural
sequences," says the writer, "of prolonged distress, caused by this brave
but foolhardy defence against overwhelming odds, the plague broke out
with fatal violence in Newcastle and Gateshead, as well as Tynemouth and
Shields, during the following year. Great numbers of poor people were
carried off by it; while tents were erected on Bensham Common, to which
those infected were removed; and the famous Lee Penny was brought out of
Scotland to be dipped in water for the diseased persons to drink, and the
result said to be a perfect cure. The inhabitants (that is to say, the
Corporation, we presume), gave a bond for a large sum in trust for the
loan; and they thought the charm did so much good, that they offered to
pay the money down, and keep the marvellous penny with a stone in which it
is inserted; but the proprietor, Lockhart of Lee, would not part with it."

We are told that many years ago a remarkable cure is alleged to have been
performed on Lady Baird of Sauchton Hall, near Edinburgh, who, having been
bitten by a mad dog, was seized with hydrophobia. The Lee Penny was sent
for, and she used it for some weeks, drinking and bathing in the water it
had been dipped in, and she quite recovered.

"The most remarkable part of the history," as Sir Walter Scott says,
"perhaps was, that it so especially escaped condemnation when the Church
of Scotland chose to impeach many other cures which savoured of the
miraculous, as occasioned by sorcery, and censured the appeal of them,
'excepting only the amulet called the Lee Penny, to which it pleased God
to annex certain healing virtues, which the Church did not presume to
condemn.'"

The Lee Penny is preserved at Lee House, in Lanarkshire, the residence of
the present representative of the family.




How Our Fathers were Physicked.

BY J. A. LANGFORD, LL.D.


Delightful old Fuller tells us "Necessary and ancient their Profession
ever since man's body was subject to enmity and casualty." There is no
doubt of the necessity and antiquity of the doctor's calling, but there
is, without doubt, no profession in which such great and beneficent
advance has been made in modern times as in the medical. The tortures
which our fathers endured under the old treatment are terrible to think
of. It was not enough that they were afflicted by disease; the pains which
they had to suffer from the supposed remedies far exceeded those which
nature imposed. Cupping, blistering, and especially bleeding, were the
common applications in nearly all complaints, the Bleeding was also used
as a preventive, which proverb truly tells us "is better than cure"; but
in this case the supposed disease could scarcely have been worse than the
supposed prevention. Five times in the year--"in September, before
Advent, before Lent, after Easter, and at Pentecost"--were the periods at
which men in health were accustomed to "breathe a vayne." Besides letting
of blood, the physician's cane and the surgeon's club were vigorously used
on the unfortunate sufferers. Mr. J. C. Jeaffreson, in his very
interesting "Book about Doctors," says, "For many centuries fustigation
was believed in as a sovereign remedy for bodily ailments as well as moral
failings, and a beating was prescribed for an ague as frequently as for
picking and stealing." So what with the lancet and the stick combined, our
fathers must indeed have shuddered at the approach of any of the "natural
shocks that flesh is heir to."

The medicines of those good old times were of a very strange and
objectionable kind. Some of the concoctions were composed of many
ingredients, and were formed of abominable, not to say disgusting,
materials. All nature was ransacked for out-of-the-way and horrible things
which could be used as drugs and nostrums for suffering and gullible
sufferers. In the reign of Charles II., Dr. Thomas Sherley "recommended a
clumsy and inordinate administration of violent drugs" for gout. "Calomel
he habitually administered in simple doses. Sugar of lead he mixed
largely in his conserves; pulverized human bones he was very fond of
prescribing; and the principal ingredient in his gout-powder was 'raspings
of a human skull unburied.' But his sweetest compound was his 'Balsam of
Bats,' strongly recommended as an unguent for hypochondriacal persons,
into which entered adders, bats, sucking-whelps, earth worms, hogs'
grease, the marrow of a stag, and the thigh-bone of an ox." A good idea of
the things sold to a confiding public as cures for its ills may be
gathered from two verses on Colonel Dalmahoy, a well-known--shall we say
quack--of the past:--

    "Dalmahoy sold infusions and lotions,
      Decoctions, and gargles, and pills,
    Electuaries, powders, and potions,
      Spermaciti, salts, scammony, squills.

    Horse aloes, burnt alum, agaric,
      Balm, benzoine, blood-stone, and dill;
    Castor, camphor, and acid tartaric,
      With specifics for every ill."

Metals and precious stones were extensively used in the prescriptions of
bygone doctors. Every metal and every stone was credited with some special
and peculiar virtue which it alone possessed, and it was applied as a cure
for that ailment over which it had influence and power. Bacon tells us,
"We know Diseases of Stoppings, and Suffocations, are the most dangerous
in the body; And it is not much otherwise in the minde. You may take
_Sarza_ to open the Liver; _Steele_ to open the Spleene; _Flowers of
Sulphur_ for the Lungs; _Castoreum_ for the Braine," for each of which
parts it was believed that the specifics named were most efficacious. The
prescriptions of Dr. Bulleyn, in the reign of Elizabeth, are wonderful
examples of how our fathers were physicked. Here are two of those quoted
by Mr. Jeaffreson. The first is

"_An Embrocation._--An embrocation is made after this manner:--Px. Of a
decoction of mallowes, vyolets, barly, quince seed, lettice leaves, one
pint; of barly meale, two ounces; of oyle of vyolets and roses, of each,
an ounce and half; of butter, one ounce; and then seeth them all together
till they be like a brouthe, puttyng thereto, at the ende, foure yolkes of
eggs; and the maner of applying is with peeces of cloth, dipped in the
aforesaid decoction, being actually hoate."

Our second is "truly a medicine for kings and noblemen;" it is called an

"_Electuarium de Gemmis._--Take two drachms of white perles; two little
peeces of saphyre; jacinth, corneline, emerauldes, grannettes, of each an
ounce; setwal, the sweete roote dorsnike, the rind of pomecitron, mase,
basal seede, of each two drachms; of redde corrall, amber, shewing of
ivory, of each two drachms; rootes both of white and red lichen, ginger,
long peper, spicknard, folium indicum, saffron, cardamon, of each one
drachm; of troch diarodon, lignum aloes, of each half a small handful;
cinnamon, galinga, zurnbeth, which is a kind of setwal, of each one drachm
and a half; thin pieces of gold and sylver, of each half a scruple; of
musk, half a drachm. Make your electuary with honey emblici, which is the
fourth kind of mirobulans with roses, strained in equall partes, as much
as will suffice. This healeth cold diseases of ye braine, harte, stomack.
It is a medicine proved against the tremblynge of the harte, faynting and
swooning, the weakness of the stomacke, pensiveness, solitarines. Kings
and noble men have used this for their comfort. It causeth them to be
bold-spirited, the body to smell wel, and ingendreth to the face good
colour."

The most innocent articles used in the old medicines were fruits, and
herbs, and vegetables. To some kinds special virtues are assigned, and Dr.
Bulleyn's "Book of Simples," is very pleasant reading. "Pears, apples,
peaches, quinces, cherries, grapes, raisins, prunes, raspberries, oranges,
medlons, raspberries and strawberries, spinage, ginger, and lettuces are
the good things thrown upon the board." We are told of a prune growing at
Norwich, and known as the "black freere's prune," that it is "very
delicious and pleasaunt, and no lesse profitable unto a hoate stomacke."
"The red warden is of greate virtue, conserved, roasted or baken to quench
choller." We are also informed that "Figges be good agaynst melancholy,
and the falling evil, to be eaten. Figges, nuts, and herb grase do make a
sufficient medicine against poison or the pestilence. Figges make a good
gargarism to cleanse the throates."

Some of the Doctor's prescriptions are very curious. He prescribes "a smal
young mouse rosted," for a child afflicted with a nervous ailment. Nor did
he disdain to use the snail in certain cases. He tells us that "Snayles
broken from the shelles and sodden in whyte wyne with oyle and sugar are
very holsome, because they be hoat and moist for the straightnes of the
lungs and cold cough. Snails stamped with camphery, and leven will draw
forth prycks in the flesh." Snail broth is not entirely unknown in some
country places, even at the present time. Bezoar stone and unicorn's horn
were also used in confections.

Cancer has always been, and unfortunately still is, a terrible and an
incurable disease, and has afforded a fine field for all kinds of nostrums
and specifics which were to produce a "safe and certain cure." One of
these, called a "precious water," was thus composed. "Take dove's foote, a
herb so named, Arkangell ivy with the berries, young red bryer toppes, and
leaves, whyte roses, theyre leaves and buds, red sage, celandyne and
woodbynde, of each lyke quantity, cut or chopped and put into pure cleane
whyte wyne, and clarified honey. Then breake into it alum glasse and put
in a little of the pouder of aloes hepatica. Destill these together softly
in a limbecke of glasse or pure tin; if not then in a limbecke wherein
aqua vitæ is made. Keep this water close. It will not onely kyll the
canker (cancer), if it be duly washed therewyth; but also two droppes
dayly put into the eye wyll sharp the syght, and breake the pearle and
spottes, specially if it be dropped in wyth a little fenell water, and
close the eyes after."

In 1739, the British Parliament passed an Act which is unprecedented in
the annals of folly. A female quack, named Joanna Stephens, was reported
to have effected some most extraordinary cures by the use of a medicine of
which she only possessed the secret. She proposed to make it public for
the sum of £5,000, and a vain attempt was made to raise the sum by
subscription, but only £1,356 3s. was thus raised. An appeal was made to
Parliament, and a commission was appointed to enquire into the subject,
and a certificate signed by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Bishops, Peers,
and Physicians, was presented to the House, declaring that they were
"convinced by experiment of the utility, efficacy, and dissolving power,"
of the tested medicine, and Joanna Stephens was rewarded with the desired
£5,000. The prescriptions were published, and the following extracts will
suffice to show how easily sufferers from diseases may be, and sometimes
are, gulled. This lucky quack says:--

    "My medicines are a Powder, a Decoction, and Pills."

    "The Powder consists of egg-shells and snails, both calcined."

    "The Decoction is made by boiling some herbs (together with a ball
    which consists of soap, swine's-cresses burnt to a blackness, and
    honey), in water."

    "The Pills consist of snails calcined, wild carrot seeds, burdock
    seeds, asken keys, hips and hawes, all burnt to a blackness--soap and
    honey."

Our readers will willingly dispense with the directions of how these
dearly purchased medicines should be prepared. Surely

    "The pleasure is as great,
    In being cheated as to cheat!"

In 1633, Stephen Brasnell, Physician, published a small volume entitled
"Helps | for | Svddain | Accidents | Endangering Life. | By which | Those
that live farre from Physitions or Chirurgions | may happily preserve the
Life | of a true Friend or Neigh-| bour, till such a Man may be | had to
perfect the Cure. | Collected out of the best authors | for the generall
good." The following is his prescription for all kinds of poisons:--viz.
"the Hoofe of an Oxe cut into parings and boyled with bruised mustard-seed
in white wine and faire water. The Bloud of a Malard drunke fresh and
warme: or els dryed to powder, and so drunke in a draught of white wine.
The Bloud of a Stagge also in the same manner. The seeds of Rue and the
leaves of Betony boyled together in white wine. Or take ij scruples (that
is fortie graines) of Mithridate; of prepared Chrystall, one dram (that is
three score grains), fresh Butter one ounce. Mix all well together.
Swallow it down by such quantities as you can swallow at once; and drink
presently upon it a quarter of a pint of the decoction of French Barley,
or so much of six shillings Beere. Of this I have had happy proofe."

There is a much more effective, though a somewhat revolting prescription
for "those with abilitie." "Take," says our seventeenth century physician,
"take a sound horse, open his belly alive, take out all his entrayles
quickly, and put the poysoned partie naked into it all save his head,
while the body of the horse retains his naturall heate, and there let him
sweat well." Our author admits that "this may be held a strange course,
but the same reason that teacheth to devide live pullets and pigeons for
plague-sores approveth this way of sweating as most apt to draw to itselfe
all poysons from the heart and principall parts of the patient's body.
But during this time of sweating he must defend his braine by wearing on
his head a quilt." The quilt is to be made by taking a number of dried
herbs, which are to be made into a "grosse powder and quilt them up in
sarsnet or calico, and let it be so big as to cover all the head like a
cap, then binde it on fast with a kerchief." This is called "a Nightcap to
preserve the Brain."

There are also curious prescriptions for the stings of bees and wasps, the
"bitings of spiders," of which he says "the garden ones are the worst." He
tells us that the "flesh of the same beast that biteth, inwardly taken,
helpeth much," and that "outwardly the best thing to be applied is the
flesh of the same beast that did the hurt, pounded in a morter and applied
in manner of a poultis." Here is one about that pretty little animal, the
shrew-mouse: "Now the shrew-mouse is a little kind of a mouse with a long
sharpe snout and a short tayle; it liveth commonly in old ruinous walls.
It biteth also very venomously, and leaveth foure small perforations made
by her foure foreteeth. To cure her biting, her flesh roasted and eaten is
the best inward antidote if it may be had. And outwardly apply her warme
liver and skin if it may be had. Otherwise _Rocket-reeds_ beaten into
powder, and mixed with the bloud of a dog. Or els the teeth of a dead man
made into a fine powder."

The toad comes in for a good share of attention, and Mr. Bradwell gives a
personal anecdote on this subject. He says:--"Myself, while I was a
student at _Cambridge_, was so hurt by the spouting of a venomous humour
from the body of a great toad into my face while I pashed him to death
with a brickbat. Some of the moisture lighted on my right eye, which did
not a little endanger it, and hath made it ever since apt to receive any
flux of Rheume or Inflammation." Some of our readers may think that this
was a fit punishment for having "pashed" the toad to "death with a
brickbat."

Among the strangest things ever used as medicine must be placed human
skulls. In 1854, Mr. T. A. Trollope gave a short account in _Notes and
Queries_ of a book by Dr. Cammillo Brunoni, published at Fabriano in 1726.
It was entitled _Il Medico Poeta_ (the Physician a Poet), and gives an
account "of the medical uses of human skulls." Dr. Brunoni informs us,
says Mr. Trollope, that "all skulls are not of equal value. Indeed, those
of persons who have died a natural death, are good for little or nothing.
The _reason_ of this is, that the disease of which they died has consumed
or dissipated the essential spirit! The skulls of murderers and bandits
are particularly efficacious. And this is clearly because not only is the
essential spirit of the cranium concentrated therein by the nature of
their violent death, but also the force of it is increased by the long
exposure to the atmosphere, occasioned by the heads of such persons being
ordinarily placed on spikes over the gates of cities! Such skulls are used
in various manners. Preparations of volatile salt, spirit, gelatine,
essence, etc., are made from them, and are very useful in epilepsy and
hoemorrhage. The notion soldiers have, that drinking out of a skull
renders them invulnerable in battle, is a mere superstition, though
respectable writers do maintain that such a practice is a proved
preventive against scrofula."

This very curious book consists of a "poem in twelve cantos, or
'Capitoli,' as from the fifteenth century downwards it was the Italian
fashion to call them, on the physical poet--a sort of medical _ars
poetica_; and followed by a hundred and seventy-two sonnets on all
diseases, drugs, parts of the body, functions of them, and curative
means. Each sonnet is printed on one page, while that opposite is occupied
by a compendious account in prose of the subject in hand. We have a sonnet
on the stomach-ache, a sonnet on apoplexy, a sonnet on purges, another on
blisters, and many others on far less mentionable subjects. The author's
poetical view of the action of a black-dose compares it to that of a tidy
and active housemaid, who, having swept together all the dirt in the room,
throws it out of the window. Mystic virtues are attributed to a variety of
substances, animal, vegetable, and mineral."

That delightful work, The Memoirs of the Verney Family, by Lady Verney,
affords some very striking examples of the medical treatment of poor
suffering humanity in the 17th century. Our selections are from the third
volume.

One of the most extraordinary medicines of this, or of any age, was
without doubt that known as Venice Treacle. In 1651, Sir Ralph Verney was
in Venice, and the Memoirs furnish the following graphic account of this
terrible drug, which was a concoction of the most disgusting materials.
Sir Ralph sends it to Mrs. Isham, for her family medicine chest, and says
"hee that is most famous for Treacle is called Sig{r} Antonio Sgobis, and
keepes shopp at the Strazzo, or Ostridge, sopra il ponte de'Baretteri, on
the right hand going towards St. Mark's. His price is 19 livres (Venize
money) a pound, and hee gives leaden Potts with the Ostridge signe uppon
them, and Papers both in Italian and Lattin to show its virtue." "This
celebrated and incredibly nasty compound," adds Lady Verney,
"traditionally composed by Nero's physician, was made of vipers, white
wine, and opium, 'spices from both the Indies,' liquorice, red roses, tops
of germander, juice of rough aloes, seeds of treacle mustard, tops of St.
John's wort, and some twenty other herbs, to be mixed with honey 'triple
the weight of all the dry species' into an electuary." The recipe is given
as late as 1739, in Dr. Quincey's "English Dispensatory," published by
Thomas Longman, at the Ship in Paternoster Row. "Vipers are essential, and
to get the full benefit of them 'a dozen vipers should be put alive into
white wine.' The English doctor, anxious for the credit of British vipers,
proves that Venice treacle may be made as well in England, 'though their
country is hotter, and so may the more rarify the viperime juices'; yet
the bites of our vipers at the proper time of year, which is the hottest,
are as efficacious and deadly as them. But he complains that the name of
Venice goes so far, that English people 'please themselves much with
buying a Tin Pot at a low price of a dirty sailor ... with directions in
the Italian tongue, printed in London,' and that some base druggists 'make
this wretched stuff of little else than the sweepings of their shops.' Sir
Ralph could pride himself that his leaden pots contained the genuine
horror. It was used as 'an opiate when some stimulus is required at the
same time'; an overdose was confessedly dangerous, and even its advocates
allowed that Venice treacle did not suit everyone, because, forsooth,
'honey disagrees with some particular constitutions.'" For centuries this
medical "horror" was taken by our drastically treated forefathers.

The treatment was indeed drastic, and we might truly add cruel. Tom Verney
had "a tertian ague and a feaver," and for this he had "only a vomit,
glister, a cordiall, and breathed a vane"--that is, was bled. Another
patient, Sir George Wheler, who had caught a chill after dancing, had all
sorts of "Applications of Blisters and Laudanums," so that his Christmas
dinner at Dr. Denton's cost him "the best part of 100 pounds." For an
eruption in the leg, Sir Ralph Verney was advised to apply a lotion "so
virulent, a drop would fech of the skin when it touched."

Young Edmund Verney was ill in 1657, and writes to his father, "Truly I
might compare my afflictions to Job's. I have taken purges and vomits,
pills and potions, I have been blooded, and I doe not know what I have not
had, I have had so many things." In 1657-58 the epidemic known as "The New
Disease," proved very fatal, and created quite a panic. The treatment
adopted by the doctors may be gathered from a prescription of Dr.
Denton's, one of the most famous physicians of the time. He writes to Sir
Ralph Verney, "I see noe danger of Wm. R., and if he had followed your
advice by taking of a vomit, and if that had not done it, then to have
beene blooded, I beleeved he had beene well ere this." Then he adds "It is
the best thinge and the surest and the quickest he can yet doe, therefore
I pray lett him have one yett. 3 full spoonfulls of the vomitage liquor in
possitt drinke will doe well, and he may abide 4 the same night when he
goes to rest; let him take the weight of vi{ds} of diascordium the next
day or the next but one; he may be blooded in the arm about 20 ounces."

Some of the ladies of the time did not, however, approve of this kind of
treatment, and preferred their own remedies, or their own notions of
remedies, to the doctor's prescriptions. We select two examples. Lady
Fanshawe described the disease as "a very ill kind of fever, of which many
died, and it ran generally through all families." While she suffered from
it she ate "neither flesh, nor fish, nor bread, but sage possett drink, a
pancake or eggs, or now and then a turnip or carrott." But Lady Hobart
ventured to prescribe. She writes, "If you have a new dises in your town
pray have a car of yourself, and goo to non of them; but drink good ale
for the gretis cordall that is: I live by the strength of your malt." Few,
we anticipate, would object to her ladyship's advice, and most would
prefer her "good ale" to Dr. Denton's "vomitts," and the loss of 20 ounces
of blood.

Our illustrations might be indefinitely multiplied, but those given will
amply suffice to show the way in which our fathers were physicked.




Medical Folk-Lore.

BY JOHN NICHOLSON.


To ease pain and endeavour to effect a cure, man will try every suggested
remedy, likely and unlikely, and when numberless things have been tried,
each of which was alleged to be a certain cure, he reverts to some simple
thing, taught him by his old grandmother, or the "wise woman" of his early
days; and which, by reason of its simplicity, had been at first
contemptuously rejected in favour of more complex but inefficacious
compounds. There is scarcely a market but has a stall kept by a herb
woman, who, in warm old-fashioned hood, with a little shawl round her
shoulders, her ample waist encircled by broad tapes from which is
suspended a pocket, capacious and indispensable, lays out with great care
her stock of simples--roots, leaves, or flowers, studiously gathered at
the proper time, when their virtue is strongest. Here may be seen poppy
heads for fomentation, dandelion roots for liver complaint, ground ivy for
rheumatism, celandine for weak eyes, and other herbs, all "for the
service of man," to alleviate or cure some of the "ills that flesh is heir
to." She can relate wondrous tales of marvellous cures wrought by her
wares, of cases, long standing, and given up by the duly qualified medical
fraternity, a brotherhood she holds in contempt because of their
new-fangled remedies and methods.

This chapter, however, deals chiefly with superstitious remedies, or at
least those remedies which seem to have no scientific bearing on the case;
thus, a person having a sty on the eye, will have it rubbed with a wedding
ring, or the gold ring of a young maiden; or cause it to be well brushed
seven times with a black cat's tail, if the cat were willing. Another cure
is more efficacious if administered as a surprise. The patient is placed
in front of the operator, who unexpectedly spits on the eye affected;
which action often leads to angry remonstrance, met by derisive laughter,
which causes, it may be, broken friendship and general unpleasantness for
a time.

It is a common belief, almost world-wide in its extent, that toothache is
caused by a little worm which gnaws a hole in the tooth. Not long ago I
was shewn a large molar, which when _in situ_ had caused its owner great
pain, and he pointed to the nerve apertures, saying, "That's where the
worm was!" Shakespeare, in "Much Ado About Nothing,"[3] speaks of this
curious belief:--

    "_D. Pedro._ What! sigh for the toothache?

    _Leon._ Where is but a humour or a worm."

"This superstition was common some years ago in Derbyshire, where there
was an odd way of extracting, as it was thought, the worm. A small
quantity of a mixture, consisting of dried and powdered herbs, was placed
in a tea-cup or other small vessel, and a live coke from the fire was
dropped in. The patient then held his or her open mouth over the cup, and
inhaled the smoke as long as it could be borne. The cup was then taken
away, and a fresh cup or glass, containing water, was then put before the
patient. Into this cup the patient breathed hard for a few moments, and
then, it was supposed, the grub or worm could be seen in the water."[4]

The following was communicated to the _Folk Lore Journal_ by Wm. Pengelly,
Esq., Torquay, February 1st, 1884:--

    "Upwards of sixty years ago, a woman at Looe, in south-east Cornwall,
    complained to a neighbouring woman that she was suffering from
    toothache, on which the neighbour remarked that she could give a charm
    of undoubted efficacy. It was to be in writing, and worn constantly
    about the person; but, unfortunately, it would be valueless if the
    giver and receiver were of the same sex. This difficulty was obviated
    by calling in my services, and requesting me to write from dictation
    the following words:--

    'Peter sat in the gate of Jerusalem. Jesus cometh unto him and saith,
    "Peter, what aileth thee?" He saith, "Lord, I am grievously tormented
    with the toothache." He saith, "Arise, Peter, and follow me." He did
    so, and immediately the toothache left him; and he followed him in the
    name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.'

    The charm, being found to be correctly written, was held to have been
    presented to me by the dictator. I at once gave it to the sufferer,
    who placed it in a small bag and wore it round her neck."

A Roumanian charm against toothache is to sit beside an anthill, masticate
a crust of bread, spit it out over the anthill, and as the ants eat the
bread the toothache will cease.

Some believe that if you pick the aching tooth with the nail of an old
coffin, or drink the water taken from the tops of three waves, the
wearying pain may be relieved or cured. In Norfolk, the toothache is
called the "love pain," and the sufferer does not receive much sympathy.

Some time ago, a man wished to shew me some antiquity he had found, but
his jacket pocket was so filled with odds and ends ("kelterment," he
called it) that he turned all out in order to better prosecute his search.
Among the miscellaneous collection I noticed a potato, withered, dry,
hard, and black; and was informed it was kept as a preventive and cure for
rheumatism. For the same distressing, disabling disease, some people
spread treacle on brown paper, and apply hot to the part affected.

The following curious passages have been transcribed by my friend, Mr.
George Neilson, solicitor, Glasgow, from the Kirk Session Records of the
parish of Gretna, and are here inserted by his consent, most freely
given:--

    "GRAITNEY KIRK, _Feb. 11, 1733_.

    Session met after Sermon.

    It was represented by some of the members that the Charms and Spells
    used at Watshill for Francis Armstrong, Labouring under distemper of
    mind, gave great offence, and 'twas worth while to enquire into the
    affair and publickly admonish the people of the evil of such a course,
    that a timely stop be put to such a practice.

    Several of the members gave account that in Barbara Armstrang's they
    burned Rowantree and Salt, they took three Locks of Francis's hair,
    three pieces of his shirt, three roots of wormwood, three of mugwort,
    three pieces of Rowantree, and boiled alltogether, anointed his Legs
    with the water, and essayed to put three sups in his mouth, and
    meantime kept the door close, being told by Isabel Pott, at Cross, in
    Rockcliff commonly called the Wise Woman, that the person who had
    wronged him would come to the door, but no access was to be given.
    Francis, tho' distracted, told them they were using witch-craft and
    the Devils Charms that would do no good. It is said they carried a
    candle around the bed for one part of the inchantment. John Neilson,
    in Sarkbridge, declared before the Session this was matter of fact
    others then present. Mary Tate, Servant to John Neilson in Sarkbridge
    is to be cited as having gone to the Wise Woman for Consultation."


    "GRAITNEY KIRK, _Feb. 25, 1733_.

    Session met after Sermon

    Mary Tate having been summoned was called on, and compearing confessed
    that she had gone to Isabel Pot, in the parish of Rockcliff, and
    declared that the s{d} Isabell ordered South running water to be
    lifted in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, and to be boiled
    at night in the house where Francis Armstrong was, with nettle roots,
    wormwood, mugwort, southernwood and rowantree, and his hands, legs and
    temples be stroaked therewith, and three sups to be put in his mouth,
    and withal to keep the door close: She ordered also three locks of his
    hair to be burnt in the fire with three pieces clipt out of his shirt,
    and a Slut, _i.e._, a rag dipt in tallow to be lighted and carried
    round his bed, and all to be kept secret except from near friends:
    Mary Tate declared that the said Francis would allow none to touch him
    but her, and at last Helen Armestrange, Spouse to Archibald Crighton,
    Elder, assisted her, and after all the said Francis, tho' distracted,
    told them they were using witchcrafts and the Devil's Charms that
    would do no good: Mary Tate being admonished of the Evil of such a
    course was removed: Notwithstanding her acknowledgments of her fault
    she is to be suspended _a sacris_, and others her accomplices, and
    that none hereafter pretend Ignorance the Congregation is to be
    cautioned against such a practice from the Pulpit."

Ague used to be much more prevalent than it now is. Drainage and
sanitation have banished many evils, and with the evil, the exorcists'
charm for the banishment of the evil. Charms, rather than medical
remedies, for the cure of ague, are very prevalent. Rider's _British
Merlin_ for 1715 lies before me. It is a thin 16mo. booklet of 48 printed
pages and 42 blank pages, but some of the blank inter-leaves have been
torn out. It is bound in parchment with gilt edges, and has had a clasp,
which has disappeared. One of the interleaves bears this written
charm:--"And Peter sat at the gate of Jerusalem and prayed, and Jesus
called Peter, and Peter said, Lord, I am sick of an ague, and the evil
ague being dismissed, Peter said, Lord, grant that whosoever weareth these
lines in writing, the evil ague may depart from them, and from all evil
ague good Lord deliver us." The following charm is taken from an old diary
of 1751[5]:--"When Jesus came near Pilate, He trembled like a leaf, and
the judge asked Him if He had the ague. He answered, He had neither the
ague, nor was He afraid; and whosoever bears these words in mind shall
never fear ague or anything else." A strange charm for this dreaded
disease was to be spoken up the wide cavernous chimney by the eldest
female of the family on St. Agnes' Eve. Thus spake she:--

    "Tremble and go!
    First day shiver and burn;
    Tremble and quake!
    Second day shiver and learn;
    Tremble and die!
    Third day never return."

A curious anecdote is related of Lord Chief Justice Holt. When a young
man, he, with companions who were law students like himself, ran up a
score at an inn, which they were not able to pay. Mr. Holt observed that
the landlord's daughter looked very ill, and, posing as a medical student,
asked what ailed her. He was informed she suffered from ague. Mr. Holt,
continuing to play the doctor, gathered sundry herbs, mixed them with
great ceremony, rolled them up in parchment, scrawled some characters on
the same, and to the great amusement of his companions, tied it round the
neck of the young woman, who straightway was cured of her ague. After the
cure, the pretending doctor offered to pay the bill, but the grateful
landlord and father would not consent, and allowed the party to leave the
house with hearts as light as their pockets.

Many years after, when on the Bench, a woman was brought before him
accused of witchcraft. She denied the charge, but said she had a wonderful
ball, which never failed to cure the ague. The charm was handed to the
judge, who recognised it as the very ball he had made for the young woman
at the inn, to help himself and his companions out of a difficult
position.[6]

In the west of England a live snail is sewn up in a bag and worn round the
neck as an antidote for ague; though others in the same district imprison
a spider in a box, and, as it pines away, so will the disease depart.

It is a common belief in the north of England that a person bitten by a
dog is liable to madness, if the dog which bit them goes mad. In order to
secure the bitten one from such a terrible fate, the owner of the dog is
often compelled to destroy it. Should he refuse to do so, the friends of
the injured party would probably poison it, The condition peculiar to the
morning following a night of debauchery, is said to need "a hair of the
dog that bit you," which doubtless refers to the means taken to prevent
ill effects following a dog bite. A wise saw from the Edda tells us that
"Dog's hair heals dog's bite." The following incident recorded in the
_Pall Mall Gazette_, Oct. 12th, 1866, shews most gross superstition in
this Victorian age. "At an inquest, held on the 5th of October, at
Bradfield, (Bucks.), on the body of a child of five years of age, which
had died of hydrophobia, evidence was given of a practice almost
incredible in civilised England. Sarah Mackness stated that at the request
of the mother of the deceased, she had fished out of the river the body of
the dog by which the child had been bitten, and had extracted its liver, a
slice of which she had frizzled before the fire, and had then given it to
the child to be eaten with some bread. The dog had been drowned nine days
before. The child ate the liver greedily, drank some tea afterwards, but
died, in spite of this strange specific."

Erysipelas in Donegal is known as the "rose." It is very common, but can
be cured by a stroker. The following is said to have happened. A nurse of
a Rector had the "rose," and the doctor was called in. After he was gone,
the woman's friends brought in a stroker, who rubbed the nurse with bog
moss, and then threw a bucket of bogwater over her in bed. This treatment
cured the woman, and is said to be generally in vogue, but is not
efficient except the right person does it.[7] In some parts of Yorkshire,
sheep's dung is applied as a poultice for the cure of erysipelas.

What is more distressing, both to patient and nurse, than whooping cough,
or king-cough, as it is sometimes called? A change of air is deemed
beneficial to the afflicted one, so the mothers of Hull take their
suffering children across the Humber to New Holland and back again. Some
call it "crossing strange water." Other people procure a "hairy worm," and
suspend it in a flannel cover round the neck of the sufferer, in the
belief that as the creature dies and wastes away, so will the cough
depart. This custom seems to be the relic of an old belief that something
of the nature of a hairy caterpillar was the cause of the cough, and Mr.
Tylor, in his _Primitive Culture_,[8] speaks of the ancient
homoeopathic doctrine that what hurts will also cure. In Gloucestershire
roasted mouse is considered a specific for whooping cough; though in
Yorkshire the same diet cure is adopted for croup, while rat pie is the
one to be used for whooping cough. The Norfolk peasants tie up a common
house spider in a piece of muslin, and when the luckless long-legged
spinner dies, the cough will soon disappear. A correspondent of _Notes and
Queries_ states that when staying in a village in Oxfordshire, he was
informed by an old woman that she and her brothers were cured of whooping
cough in the following way. They were required to go, the first thing in
the morning, to a hovel at a little distance from their house, where a fox
was kept. They carried with them a large can of milk, which was set down
before the fox, and when he had taken as much as he cared to drink, the
children shared among them what was left. The _Aberdeen Evening Gazette_
of 24th August, 1882, tells of a curious superstition in Lochee:--

    "Hooping-cough being rather prevalent in Lochee at the present time,
    various cures are resorted to with the view of allaying the distress.
    Amongst these the old 'fret' of passing a child beneath the belly of a
    donkey has come in for a share of patronage. A few days ago, two
    children living with their parents in Camperdown Street, were
    infected with the malady. A hawker's cart, with a donkey yoked to it,
    happening to pass, the mothers thought this an excellent opportunity
    to have their little ones relieved of their hacking cough. The donkey
    was accordingly stopped, the children were brought forth, and the
    ceremony began. The mothers, stationed at either side of the donkey,
    passed and repassed the little creatures underneath the animal's
    belly, and with evident satisfaction appeared to think that a cure
    would in all probability be effected. Nor was this all; a piece of
    bread was next given to the donkey to eat, one of the women holding
    her apron beneath its mouth to catch the crumbs which might fall.
    These were given to the children to eat, so as to make the cure
    effectual. Whether these strange proceedings have resulted in
    banishing the dreaded cough or not, has not been ascertained, and
    probably never will be. A few years ago, the custom was quite common
    in this quarter, but with the spread of education the people generally
    know better than to attempt to cure hooping-cough through the agency
    of a donkey."

The _North British Mail_ for 20th March 1883, among other superstitions in
Tiree, says, "On the west side of the island there is a rock with a hole
in it, through which children are passed when suffering from
whooping-cough or other complaints."

It is a common belief that if you wash your hands in water in which eggs
have been boiled, warts will make their appearance; also, that the blood
of a wart will cause other warts. Anyhow, if the warts be there, they can
either be cured or charmed away. The writer once had a row of warts,
thirteen in number, on his left arm. He was told by an aged dame, who sat
on a three-legged stool before her cottage door, smoking a short black
pipe, to take thirteen bad peas, throw them over his left shoulder, never
heeding where they went, all the while repeating some incantation, which
has been forgotten.

Cures are effected by rubbing the warts with something, which is
afterwards allowed to decay. Some rub the warts with a grey snail or slug,
and then impale the poor creature on a thorn; others steal a bit of beef,
not so much as Taffy made off with, rub the beef on the warts, and then
bury the beef. Lord Bacon, in his _Natural History_, says:--"I had from my
childhood a wart upon one of my fingers; afterwards, when I was about
sixteen years old, being then at Paris, there grew upon both my hands a
number of warts, at the least an hundred in a month's space. The English
Ambassador's lady, who was a woman far from superstitious, told me one day
she would help me away with my warts: whereupon she got a piece of lard
with the skin on, and rubbed the warts all over with the fat side; and
among the rest, the wart which I had from my childhood; then she nailed
the piece of lard, with the fat towards the sun, upon a post of her
chamber window, which was to the south. The success was, that within five
weeks' space all the warts went quite away; and that wart which I had so
long endured, for company.... They say the like is done by the rubbing of
warts with a green elder stick, and then burying the stick to rot in
muck."

In Withal's _Dictionary_ (1608) there is the following couplet:--

    "The bone of a haire's foot closed in a ring,
    Will drive away the cramp whenas it doth wing,"

but Pepys, who tells us the whole of his experience, with comments
thereon, used a hare's foot as a charm for colic. He says:--(20 Jan.
1664-5) "Homeward, in my way buying a hare and taking it home, which arose
upon my discourse to-day with Mr. Batten in Westminster Hall, who showed
me my mistake, that my hare's foot hath not the joynt in it, and assures
me he never had the cholique since he carried it about him; and it is a
strange thing how fancy works, for I no sooner handled his foot but I
became very well, and so continue."

(22nd.) "Now mighty well, and truly I can but impute it to my fresh hare's
foot."

(March 26) "Now I am at a loss to know whether it be my hare's foot which
is my preservation; for I never had a fit of collique since I wore it, or
whether it be my taking a pill of turpentine every morning."

The following newspaper cutting from the _Boston Herald_, 7th February,
1837, is worth preserving:--

    "Nothing could be more absurd than the notions regarding some of these
    supposed cures; a ring made of a hinge of a coffin had the power of
    relieving cramps, which were also mitigated by having a rusty old
    sword hanging up by the bedside. Nails driven in an oak tree prevented
    the toothache. A halter that had served in hanging a criminal was an
    infallible remedy for a head-ache when tied round the head; this
    affection was equally cured by the moss growing upon the human skull
    taken as cephalic snuff dried and pulverised. A dead man's hand could
    dissipate tumours of the glands, by stroking the part nine times; but
    the hand of a man who had been cut down from the gallows was the most
    efficacious. The chips of a gallows on which several had been hanged,
    when worn in a bag round the neck would cure the ague. A stone with a
    hole in it, suspended at the head of a bed, would effectually stop the
    night-mare, hence it was called a hag-stone, as it prevents the
    troublesome witches from sitting upon the sleeper's stomach. The same
    amulet, tied to the key of the stable door, deterred witches from
    riding horses over the country."

Our forefathers firmly believed in planetary influence on the minds and
bodies of men, and no operation could be performed on any part of the body
unless the planet, ruling that particular part, were propitious. Rider's
_British Merlin_ for 1715, places the name of some part of the body--face,
neck, arms, breast, etc., opposite the days of the month, indicating that
the influence of the planets on that day is favourable to that particular
part or organ. An old proverb says:--

    "Friday hair, Sunday horn,
    You'll go the devil afore Monday morn,"

shewing that these days were unlucky for clipping hair and cutting nails.
The _York Fabric Rolls_[9] tell us that Maundy Thursday, the day before
Good Friday, was termed Shere Thursday, because "in olde faders dayes the
people wold that day _sheer_ theyr heddes and clype theyr berdes and poll
theyr heedes and so make them honest ayenst Easter Day." The same
interesting volume[10] gives the following account of charming away
fevers:--

    "1528. Bishopwilton. Isabel Mure presented. She took fier, and ij yong
    women w{t} hirr, and went to a rynnyng water, and light a wypse of
    straw and sett it on the water, and said thus, 'Benedicite, se ye what
    I see. I se the fier burne, and water rynne and the gryse grew, and
    see flew and nyght fevers and all unkowth evils flee, and all other,
    God will,' and after theis wordes said xv Pater Noster, xv Ave Maria
    and thre credes."

The following is a reproduction of a receipt for Yellow Jonus (Jaundice)
copied from an old book in my possession. "A quart of whine (wine), a
penoth of Barbary barck, a penoth of Tormorch (Turmerich), a haporth of
flour of Brimstone for Jonous."




Of Physicians and their Fees,

WITH SOME PERSONAL REMINISCENCES.

BY ANDREW JAMES SYMINGTON, F.R.S.N.A.


In the whole range of professional life, or in any section of the
community, there is no set of men so self-denying, sympathetic,
philanthropic, liable to be called at any hour, day or night, and so
hard-worked, as medical practitioners. To begin with, there is first, a
long and expensive course of study, and, often, several years pass, before
a practice becomes even self-sustaining. Those at the head of the
profession attain to large incomes, and make their £20,000 a year. Noted
specialists, in particular, such as the late Dr. Mackenzie, get large
fees; but the majority of the profession conscientiously perform their
laborious and kindly ministrations ungrudgingly and with moderate
remuneration, which, in most cases, is certainly far short of their
deserts.

This state of matters has prevailed for many centuries, and, taking the
different value of money into account, notwithstanding the advance of
medical science, there is but little change in the scale of remuneration,
whether as to large fees paid by Royal or titled personages, fees by the
middle classes, or by the rural or working population.

It has been well said, that "the theory and practice of medicine is the
noblest and most difficult science in the world; and that there is no
other art for the practice of which the most thorough education is so
essential."

Whittier observes:--"It is the special vocation of the doctor to grow
familiar with suffering--to look upon humanity disrobed of its pride and
glory--robbed of all its fictitious ornaments--weak, hopeless, naked--and
undergoing the last fearful metempsychosis, from its erect and god-like
image, the living temple of an enshrined divinity, to the loathsome clod
and the inanimate dust! Of what ghastly secrets of moral and physical
disease is he the depository!"

Sir Thomas Browne, in his "Religio Medici," says:--"Men, that look no
further than their outsides, think health an appurtenance unto life, and
quarrel with their constitutions for being sick; but I, that have examined
the parts of man, and know upon what tender filaments that fabrick hangs,
do wonder that we are not always so; and, considering the thousand doors
that lead to death, do thank my God that we can die but once."

This model physician, who said, "I cannot go to cure the body of my
patient, but I forget my profession and call unto God for his soul," in
the same work, finely says of charity:--"Divinity hath wisely divided the
act thereof into many branches, and hath taught us, in this narrow way,
many paths unto goodness; as many ways as we may do good, so many ways we
may be charitable. There are infirmities not only of the body, but of soul
and fortunes, which do require the merciful hand of our abilities. I
cannot contemn a man for ignorance, but behold him with as much pity as I
do Lazarus. It is no greater charity to clothe his body than apparel the
nakedness of his soul."

His distinguished position, as a physician and an author, demands very
special and reverential mention in these pages.

Sir Thomas Browne was born in London on the 19th of October, 1605. He died
at Norwich on the 19th of October, 1682, having reached exactly the age of
seventy-seven. His father was a wealthy merchant, of a good Cheshire
family, but died when his more illustrious son was a boy, and his mother
shortly afterwards married Sir Thomas Dutton. After travelling on the
Continent, he settled as a practising physician at Shipley Hall, near
Halifax, for a time, and then moved to Norwich, where the remaining
forty-two years of his life were spent. His library contained vast stores
of learned works on antiquities, languages, and the curiosities of
erudition. He corresponded with the best men of his day, and was often
able to assist them in their various investigations. His friend Evelyn,
alluding to Browne's home, at Norwich, tells us "His whole house and
garden being a paradise and cabinet of rarities, and that of the best
collections, especially medals, books, plants, and natural things." He was
knighted by Charles II. in 1671.

Throughout the troublous times of the Civil War, the Commonwealth, and the
Restoration, he led a quiet studious life, issuing volume after volume
full of profound, penetrating, and far-reaching thought, set forth in
stately, sonorous, and musical language, the perfect form or style of
which, at times, is only equalled but not excelled by the best cadenced
prose of Milton or Jeremy Taylor.

His "Religio Medici," "Hydrotaphia or Urn Burial," and "The Garden of
Cyrus," have been my favourites for more than half a century. Of the
latter work, John Addington Symonds has finely and truly said, that "the
rarer qualities of Sir Thomas Browne's style (are) here displayed in rich
maturity and heavy-scented blossom. The opening phrase of his dedication
to Sir Thomas Le Gros--'When the funeral pyre was out, and the last
valediction over, men took a lasting adieu of their interred friends,
little expecting the curiosity of future ages should comment on their
ashes;'--this phrase strikes a key-note to the sombre harmonies which
follow, connecting the ossuaries of the dead, the tears quenched in the
dust of countless generations, with the vivid sympathy and scrutinizing
sagacity of the living writer.... I will only call attention to the unique
feeling for verbal tone, for what may be called the musical colour of
words, for crumbling cadences, and the reverberation of stationary sounds
in cavernous recesses, which is discernable at large throughout the
dissertation. How simple, for example, seems the collocation of vocables
in this phrase--'Under the drums and tramplings of three conquests!' And
yet with what impeccable instinct the vowels are arranged; how naturally,
how artfully, the rhythm falls! Take another, and this time a complete
sentence,--'But the iniquity of oblivion blindly scattereth her poppy, and
deals with the memory of men, without distinction to merit of perpetuity.'
Take yet another--'The brother of death daily haunts us with dying
mementoes.'"

I take leave of this, the most notable of English Physicians, by
transcribing the following grand, suggestive, and characteristic passage
from his "Fragment on Mummies":--"Yet in these huge structures and
pyramidial immensities of the builders, whereof so little is known, they
seemed not so much to raise sepulchres or temples to death, as to contemn
and disdain it, astonishing heaven with their audacities, and looking
forward with delight to their interment in those eternal piles. Of their
living habitations they made little account, conceiving of them but as
_hospitia_, or inns, while they adorned the sepulchres of the dead, and
planting them on lasting basis, defied the crumbling touches of time and
the misty vaporousness of oblivion. Yet all were but Babel vanities. Time
sadly overcometh all things, and is now dominant, and sitteth upon a
sphinx, and looketh unto Memphis and old Thebes, while his sister Oblivion
reclineth semisomnous on a pyramid, gloriously triumphing, making puzzles
of Titanian erections, and turning old glories into dreams. History
sinketh beneath her cloud. The traveller, as he paceth amazedly through
those deserts, asketh of her, who builded them? and she mumbleth
something, but what it is he heareth not."

The medical profession is a noble and pleasant one, though laborious and
often full of anxiety, straining mind and body. The good physician is the
sympathizing, confidential, and comforting _friend_ of the family. He
values the humble gifts and testimonials of gratitude from the poor, even
more than the costly presents of the rich.

The virtuous poor are always grateful. It can truly be said of the
physician's kind and often gratuitous services to them, in the language of
scripture:--

    "When the ear heard me, then it blessed me; and when the eye saw me it
    gave witness to me; because I delivered the poor that cried, and the
    fatherless, and him that had none to help him. The blessing of him
    that was ready to perish came upon me; and I caused the widow's heart
    to sing for joy."

Among savages, sorcerers, and magicians, are the medicine men; these are
still represented, in civilisation, by impostors and quacks. Members of
the profession, as a rule, keep themselves posted up in the medical
science of the day, honestly and unselfishly do everything that can be
done for their patients, and rejoice in being the means of their recovery,
far more than in their fee.

Burton, in his "Anatomy of Melancholy," treating of "Physician, Patient,
and Physick," when astrology, ignorance, and queer nostrums, were then
more in vogue than practical science, says:--"I would require Honesty in
every Physician, that he be not over careless or covetous, Harpylike to
make a prey of his patient, or, as an hungry Chirurgeon, often produce and
wire-draw his cure, so long as there is any hope of pay. Many of them, to
get a fee, will give physic to every one that comes, when there is no
cause, thus, as it often falleth out, stirring up a silent disease, and
making a strong body weak." Burton then quotes the following sensible
Aphorism from Arnoldus:--"A wise physician will not give physick, but
upon necessity, and first try medicinal diet, before he proceedeth to
medicinal cure."

Latimer thus severely censured the mercenary physicians of his day:--"Ye
see by the example of Hezekiah that it is lawful to use physick. But now
in our days physick is a remedy prepared only for rich folks, and not for
the poor, for the poor man is not able to wage the Physician. God indeed
hath made physick for rich and poor, but Physicians in our time seek only
their own profits, how to get money, not how they might do good unto their
poor neighbour. Whereby it appeareth that they be for the most part
without charity, and so consequently not the children of God; and no doubt
but the heavy judgment of God hangeth over their heads, for they are
commonly very wealthy, and ready to purchase lands, but to help their
neighbour, that they cannot do. But God will find them out one day I doubt
not."

"Empirics and charlatans are the excrescences of the medical profession;
they have obtained in all ages, yet the healing art is not necessarily the
occasion for deception; nor the operations of witchcraft, charms, amulets,
astrology, alchemy, necromancy, or magic; although it has its mysteries
like other branches of occult science."

Paracelsus, the prince of charlatans, styled himself "King of Physic,"
but, though he professed to have discovered the _elixir of life_, he
humbly died at the early age of forty-eight years.

We are told of a patient who, instead of the medicine prescribed,
swallowed the prescription! and _Punch_ records an extraordinary case of a
voracious individual who bolted a door, and threw up a window!

Sydney Smith, on being told by his doctor to take a walk on an empty
stomach, asked--"Upon whose!" But a truce to stories suggested by the
queer nostrums of quacks.

Empirics, however, often believed in their nostrums, and were, sometimes,
amiable and unselfish.

In the year 1776, we are told, there lived a German doctor, who styled
himself, or was called, "the Rain-water doctor;" all the diseases to which
flesh is heir he professed to cure by this simple agent. Some wonderful
cures were, it is said, achieved by means of his application of this
fluid, and his reputation spread far and wide; crowds of maimed and
sickly folk flocked to him, seeking relief at his hands. What is yet more
remarkable still, he declined to accept any fee from his patients!

Dr. Haygarth, of Bath, had a pair of wooden tractors made in precisely the
same shape and appearance as Perkin's metallic ones; and the same results
followed as when the others, which cost five guineas a pair, were used.

The story is well known of the condemned criminal in Paris, who was laid
on a dissecting table, strapped down, with his eyes bandaged, and slightly
pricked, when streamlets of water set a-trickling made him think, as he
had been told, that he was being bled to death. His strength gradually
ebbed away, and he actually died, although he did not lose a drop of
blood.

I knew of a gentleman who, when pills to procure sleep were ordered to be
discontinued, lay awake. The doctor made up a box of bread pills, which
were administered as the others had been, and the patient slept, and
recovered rapidly.

A young medical man fell in love with a young lady patient, and, when he
had no longer any pretext for continuing his visits, he sent her a present
of a pair of spring ducks. Not reciprocating his attentions, she did not
acknowledge the present, upon which he ventured to call, asking if the
birds had reached her. Her reply was--"Quack, quack!"

Dr. Lettsom, a quaker in the time of George III., near the close of the
last century, had such an extensive practice that his receipts in some
years were as much as £12,000; and this although half his services were
entirely gratuitous, and rendered with unusual solicitude and care to
necessitous clergymen and literary men. Generosity was the ruling feature
of his life. On one occasion he attended an old American merchant whose
affairs had gone wrong, and who grieved over leaving the trees he had
planted. The kind hearted doctor purchased the place from the creditors,
and presented it to his patient for life.

Pope, a few days before his decease, bore the following cordial testimony
to the urbanity and courtesy of his medical friends:--"There is no end of
my kind treatment from the Faculty; they are in general the most amiable
companions, and the best friends, as well as the most learned men I know."

And Dryden, in the postscript to his translation of Virgil, speaks in the
same way of the profession. "That I have recovered," says he, "in some
measure the health which I had lost by too much application to this work,
is owing, next to God's mercy, to the skill and care of Dr. Guibbons and
Dr. Hobbs, the two ornaments of their profession, whom I can only pay by
this acknowledgment."

When Dr. Dimsdale, a Hertford physician and member of Parliament, went
over to Russia to inoculate the Empress Catherine and her son, in the year
1768, he received a fee of £12,000, a pension for life of £500 per annum,
and the rank of Baron of the Empire.

Dr. Henry Atkins was sent for to Scotland by James the Sixth to attend
Charles the First (then an infant), ill of a dangerous fever. The King
gave him a fee of £6000, with which he purchased the manor of Clapham.

Louis XIV. after undergoing an operation, gave his physician and his
surgeon 75,000 crowns each.

Dr. Glynn once attended the only son of a poor peasant woman, ministering
to his wants with port wine, bark, and delicacies. After the lad's
recovery, his mother waited on the doctor, bringing a large wicker basket
with an enormous magpie, which was her son's pet, as a fee to show their
gratitude.

A thousand pounds were ordered to be paid to Sir Edmund King for promptly
bleeding Charles the Second, but he never received this fee.

Dr. Mead, in the time of George the First, was generous to a degree, and
like many of his brethren, would not accept fees from curates, half-pay
officers, and men of letters. At home his fee was a guinea. When he
visited patients of means, in consultation or otherwise, he expected two
guineas or more. But to the apothecaries who waited on him at his coffee
houses of call he charged only half a guinea for prescriptions, written
without his having seen the patient. He had an income one year of £7,000,
and for several years received between £5,000 and £6,000, which,
considering the value of money at that time, is as much as that of any
living physician.

The physicians who attended Queen Caroline had five hundred guineas, and
the surgeons three hundred guineas each; Dr. Willis was rewarded for his
attendance on George III. by £1,500 per annum for twenty years, and £650
per annum to his son for life. The other physicians, however, had only
thirty guineas each visit to Windsor, and ten guineas each visit to Kew.

Dr. Abernethy was annoyed by a lady needlessly consulting him about her
tongue. One morning she came, as he was descending the steps from his door
and putting on his gloves. She said:--"Doctor, I'm so glad I have caught
you!" The doctor asked if it were the old trouble. On her saying "Yes," he
told her to put out her tongue. She did so, and he said, "Stand there till
I come," and left her so, in the street, setting out on his round of
visits.

Once when prescribing nutritious and expensive diet for a young man in
consumption, he observed the look of despair on the young wife's face, and
the evidence of straitened circumstances around; when the lady appealed to
him, asking if there was really nothing else he could suggest for her
husband. He replied:--"When I think of it, I'll send along a box of pills
in the afternoon!" A messenger brought the box. On the lid was written
"One every day," and, on being opened, it was found to contain twenty
guineas!

He once bluntly told a _bon-vivant_ gentleman to "Live on sixpence a day,
and earn it!"

Long ago, a friend told me of a lady in Devonshire, belonging to a family
she knew, who read medical books, and at length imagined she had every
disease under the sun. Whenever she discovered what she believed to be a
new symptom, she at once went off to consult different medical men
regarding it, spending several hundreds a year in this way, and all quite
needlessly. At length she confided to her friends that since doctors
differed so widely, and she could obtain no satisfaction as to what ailed
her, she had resolved to go to town and consult one of the Queen's
physicians.

A consultation was held in the family, and her nephew was sent to explain
matters to the physician, in the hope of his being able to cure her
hypochondria. When she reached town, the street in which the physician
lived was blocked with the carriages of patients. After waiting hours, her
turn at last came. The physician examined her, asked a few questions, then
enquired if she had any friends in town, as he would rather call to see
her when under their roof, and there tell her what he had got to say. She
protested that she was quite prepared to hear the worst--that she had for
long years looked death in the face--that the notices of her death were
lying in her desk, all written out and addressed, only requiring the date
to be filled in, etc. The physician said he was busy--more than twenty
patients were still waiting in the street--he was averse to scenes, and
would much prefer to see her at her friend's house. She still persisted,
and begged of him to tell her all, there and then, on which he
said:--"Madam, it is my melancholy duty to inform you--that there is
nothing whatever the matter with you!"

This interview fortunately effected her cure, to the great delight of her
friends, who paid the physician a handsome fee.

Sir Astley Cooper one year received in fees £21,000. This sum was
exceptional, but for many years his income was over £15,000. His great
success was achieved very gradually. "His earnings for the first nine
years of his professional career progressed thus:--In the first year he
netted five guineas; in the second, twenty-six pounds; in the third,
sixty-four pounds; in the fourth, ninety-six pounds; in the fifth, a
hundred pounds; in the sixth, two hundred pounds; in the seventh, four
hundred pounds; in the eighth, six hundred and ten pounds; and in the
ninth--the year in which he secured his hospital appointment--eleven
hundred pounds."

On one occasion when he had performed a perilous surgical operation on a
rich West Indian merchant, the two physicians who were present were paid
three hundred guineas each; but the patient, addressing Sir Astley,
said:--"But you, sir, shall have something better. There, sir, take
_that_," upon which he flung his nightcap at the skilful operator. "Sir,"
replied Sir Astley, picking up the cap, "I'll pocket the affront." On
reaching home, he found in the cap a draft for a thousand guineas from the
grateful but eccentric old man.

A cynical lawyer once advised a young doctor to collect his fees as he
went along, quoting the following verse to back his recommendation:--

    "God and the doctor we alike adore,
    But only when in danger, not before;
    The danger o'er, both are alike requited--
    God is forgotten, and the doctor slighted."

The following story illustrates the too frequent weary waiting, when hope
makes the heart sick, and also shows on what curious casual incidents the
success of a career may sometimes turn. It has been told in different
ways, and attributed to different men, such as to Dr. Freind, and others;
but, quite possibly, the same or a similar incident may have repeatedly
occurred. I simply give it as it was narrated to me. A young doctor having
graduated with honours, took a house at a high rent in Harley Street,
London. The brass plate attracted no patients; months passed idly and
drearily, and the poor fellow took to drink. One night the door-bell
rang--a servant man, from a lady of title round the corner, begged him to
come at once, as his mistress was dangerously ill, lying on the floor; her
own doctor was out, and he was sent to fetch the first doctor he could
find. The young doctor regretfully thought what a fool he was, for here
was his chance, when he could not avail himself of it; but he would go,
and try hard to pull himself together.

When he reached the room, he had enough conscience or sense left to know
that he was not in a fit state to prescribe, and exclaiming, "Drunk, by
George!" took his hat and bolted from the house. Next morning he received
a scented note from the lady, entreating him not to expose her, inviting
him to call, and offering to introduce him professionally to her circle!
Before the season was ended, his practice was yielding him at the rate of
some £1500 a year!

Curiously enough, it is recorded of a British doctor that he once actually
took a fee from a _dead_ patient. Entering the bedroom immediately after
death had taken place, he observed the right hand tightly clenched.
Opening the fingers, he found in them a guinea. "Ah, that was clearly for
me," said the doctor, putting the gold into his pocket.

It may be remembered here, that the Royal College of Physicians, London,
was founded by Thomas Linacre, physician to Henry VIII., in 1518; and that
the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh was incorporated by Charter
of Charles II., November 20th, 1681.

As to the fees paid to physicians, we find that Dr. Edward Browne, the son
of Sir Thomas Browne, who became a distinguished physician in London, in
his Journal, under the date of February 16th, 1664, records: "I went to
visit Mr. Edward Ward, an old man in a feaver, when Mrs. Anne Ward gave me
my first fee, 10 shillings."

In a work entitled "Levamen Infirmi," published in the year 1700, we find
that the scale of remuneration to surgeons and physicians was as
follows:--"To a graduate in physic, his due is about ten shillings, though
he commonly expects or demands twenty. Those that are only licenced
physicians, their due is no more than six shillings and eightpence, though
they commonly demand ten shillings. A surgeon's fee is twelvepence a mile,
be his journey far or near; ten groats to set a bone broke or out of
joint; and for letting blood one shilling; the cutting off or amputation
of any limb is five pounds, but there is no settled price for the cure."

Till recent times neither barristers nor physicians could recover their
fees by legal proceedings against their clients or patients unless a
special contract had been made. In the case of lawyers this custom can be
traced back to the days of ancient Rome. Their services were regarded as
being gratuitously rendered in the interests of friendship and justice,
and of a value no money could buy. The acknowledgment given them by
clients was regarded as an _honorarium_, and paid in advance, so that all
pecuniary interest in the issue of the suit was removed, thus preserving
the independence and respectability of the bar.

Equity draftsmen, conveyancers, and such like, however, could recover
reasonable charges for work done.

So in the medical profession, surgeons, dentists, cuppers, and the like
were always entitled to sue for their fees; but the valuable services of a
consulting physician were of a different kind, not rendered for payment
but acknowledged by the gratitude and honour of his patients.

But this code of honour was modified when all medical practitioners were
relieved by the Act of 21 and 22 Vict. 90, which applied to the United
Kingdom, and enabled them to recover in any court of law their reasonable
charges as well as costs of medicines and medical appliances used. This
rule applies to physicians, surgeons, and apothecaries as defined by the
statute.

The following information is taken from "Everybody's Pocket Cyclopædia"
(Saxon & Co.).


LONDON MEDICAL FEES.

"Patients are charged according to their supposed income, the income being
indicated by the rental of the house in which they reside. The following
are the charges usually made by medical practitioners:--

    -----------------------------------------------------------------------
                          |                    Rentals.
                          |------------------------------------------------
                          |    £10 to £25  |    £25 to £50  |  £50 to £100
    ----------------------|----------------|----------------|--------------
    Ordinary Visit        | 2s 6d to 3s 6d |   3s 6d to 5s  |  5s to 7s 6d
    Night Visit           |   Double an    |    Ordinary    |     Visit
    Mileage beyond two    |                |                |
      miles from home     |      1s 6d     |       2s       |     2s 6d
    Detention per hour    | 2s 6d to 3s 6d |   3s 6d to 5s  |  5s to 7s 6d
    Letters of Advice     | Same charge as |    for an Or-  | dinary Visit
    Attendance on Servants|      2s 6d     | 2s 6d to 3s 6d |  3s 6d to 5s
    Midwifery             |       21s      |    21s to 30s  |  42s to 105s
                          |                |                |
    CONSULTANTS.          |                |                |
                          |                |                |
    Advice or visit alone |       21s      |       21s      |     21s
    Advice or visit with  |                |                |
      another Practitioner|       21s      |    21s to 42s  |  21s to 42s
    Mileage beyond two    |                |                |
      miles from home     |      10s 6d    |      10s 6d    |    10s 6d
    -----------------------------------------------------------------------

"Special visits, _i.e._, of which due notice has not been given before the
practitioner starts on his daily round, are charged at the rate of a visit
and a half. Patients calling on the doctor are charged at the same rate as
if visited by him.

"There are about 23,000 physicians and surgeons in the United Kingdom, or
one to every 1,600 inhabitants."

It has been my privilege to know several doctors intimately. Our family
doctor when I was a boy in Paisley, was Dr. Kerr, a man far in advance of
his day. He was the means of introducing a pure water supply to the town
of Paisley, always strenuously urging the importance of sanitary matters
and good drainage, when such things were then but little understood, and
greatly neglected. Shortly after the water had been introduced to the
houses, from Stanley, an old man--who had been accustomed to purchase
water from a cart which went through the streets selling it from a
barrel--on being asked how he liked the new water, replied indignantly,
"Wha's going to pay good siller for water that has neither smell nor
taste?"

On one occasion, an elderly gentleman, who was slightly hypochondriac,
consulted Dr. Kerr about his clothing, saying that he regulated the
thickness of his flannels by the thermometer. Dr. Kerr, losing patience,
said, "Can you not use the thermometer your Maker has put in your inside,
and put on clothes when you are cold?"

Dr. Kerr's son and assistant, whom we then called "the young doctor," died
a few years ago in Canada, over eighty years of age. No man could
possibly have been more considerately kind, gentle, and tender-hearted. On
one occasion, in 1841, when, in typhus fever, I was struggling for my
life, he sat up with me for three whole consecutive nights, and brought me
through. He ever kept himself abreast of the science of the day, and
devoted his abilities and energies, _con amore_, to the benefitting of
men's souls as well as their bodies.

Another model village and country doctor, also an intimate friend of my
parents, Dr. Campbell of Largs, I knew very well. Good, genial, and
accomplished, he was a perfect gentleman, and equally at home dining with
Sir Thomas Brisbane, or drinking a cup of tea at some old woman's kitchen
fireside. He read the _Lancet_, and tried all new medicines, and
repeatedly, when going to London, at his request I procured the most
recent instruments for him. He was intimate with Dr. Chalmers, Lord
Jeffrey, Lord Moncrieff, Lord Cardwell, etc. In telling me of experiments
with Perkin's metallic tractors, and that the same results were obtained
with wooden ones, showing the power of imagination, he gave me a recent
curious illustration. He had lately had the old fashioned little panes of
glass taken out of the windows of his house, and plate glass inserted.
His mother, who did not know of the change, calling one afternoon, sat on
an easy chair, close by the gable window, knitting. On suddenly looking
round she said, "Oh John, I've been sitting all this time by an _open_
window," and forthwith she began to sneeze! She actually took cold, and
even afterwards could scarcely be persuaded that it had _not_ been an open
window, for she said she felt the cold! The doctor told me of an old
maiden lady who consulted him, and who, when he prescribed in a general
way, insisted on knowing exactly what ailed her. He said she was only
slightly nervous, and would soon be all right. This did not at all please
her, and she at once loudly protested--"Me nervous! There is not a nerve
in my whole body!"

A West India merchant, one of his patients whom I knew, he also told me,
one day said to him, "Doctor, for forty years I never knew I had a
stomach, and now I can think of nothing else!"

At the cholera time Dr. Campbell was laid down by the disease. The fact
spread like wildfire over the village, and, at once, prayer-meetings for
his recovery were called by the public bellman, meetings of _all_ the
different denominations, including the Roman Catholics (Dr. Campbell was a
Free Church Elder), and there were truly heartfelt rejoicings in the whole
district over his recovery.

I once asked him how he managed to get in his fees, since he never refused
to visit when sent for. He said that one year, from curiosity, he kept an
account of his gratuitous visits, and it ran into three figures; but he
never took the trouble to note them again, as it served no purpose.

Many years ago he went to his rest, and, at his request, during his last
illness, I paid him a farewell visit.

There are few finer descriptions of the country doctor than that contained
in Ian Maclaren's "Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush," a book which speaks
directly home to every true Scottish heart.

Dr. Campbell, in his large-hearted and genial Christian charity,
scientific research, and philosophical acquirements, always reminded me of
Sir Thomas Browne, "the beloved physician" of Norwich.

The following pleasing incident, relating to a medical man, came under my
own notice. I often visited a country minister, an intimate friend, a
learned man, and a genius, the quaint originality of whose observations
often reminded me of Fuller, the Church historian, or Charles Lamb.
Although of limited means, the Rev. Robert Winning, of Eaglesham, was ever
hospitable; if he knew of any poor student, he would invite him to the
manse for a month, on the plea that he would help to prepare him for his
examination in Hebrew and Greek. The old manse servant, also an original,
was paid a sum of money as compensation for refusing tips from visitors.
One day, seeing an advertisement of a new book in a magazine I was
reading, Mr. Winning remarked to me, "Andrew, I wish you would buy that
book, _cut the leaves_, and lend it to me to read!"

One evening a message reached him from the village inn, saying that a
doctor had come to an urgent case, which required him to stay over night,
that there was no room in the inn, and asking if the minister could give
him a bed. His wife, knowing the house was full, asked her husband what
they should do. His reply was, "Be not forgetful to entertain strangers,
for thereby some have entertained angels unawares. Give him a room,
though we have to sleep on the floor." He was accordingly hospitably
entertained.

Some time after, the minister took ill. The medical guest heard of it,
went to see the local doctor, and, with his consent, visited the minister
twice a week, from a distance of nine miles, and for a period of some four
months, till his death. When the widow afterwards sent for his account, he
said there was none, for it had been more than discharged on the first
evening he had spent at the manse.

Dr. Stark, of Glasgow, who attended my family for years, was a skilful
practitioner, but eccentric. He generally made light of trifling ailments,
but was most energetic when aroused by any appearance of danger. I knew of
his being suddenly called in to see an old lady who was far gone in an
advanced stage of cholera. He at once asked to be shown over the house,
looked at the different fireplaces, but as none of them suited his
purpose, he went to the kitchen, threw off his coat, took out the range,
made a fire in the recess that would have roasted an ox, had the old lady
carried down in blankets and placed before it, worked energetically with
her the whole night, and brought her through. In a similar way he once
stayed over night and saved the life of one of my boys. One day I called
at his house, and, finding him with a bad cold, eyes red and watery,
throat husky, said, "Doctor, if you found me so, you would prescribe
placing the feet in hot water and mustard, warm gruel, medicine, and going
to bed! Physician, heal thyself!" The doctor's Shakespearian reply was,
"Do you think I am such a fool as to take physic?"

Once when accompanying me to the coast to visit one of my children, there
was a heavy sea on, and the steamer, on approaching the pier, rolled
alarmingly, and was close on a lee shore. A strange lady on board, in
terror, laid hold of the doctor, a tall, stalwart man, saying, "Oh! sir,
are we going to the bottom?" On which he said, dryly, "Behave yourself, if
you are going there, you are going in good company!" which odd answer
reassured and caused her to laugh.

In speaking of a Greek gem representing Cupid and Pysche, one day, when
driving in Wigtonshire with the late Dr. David Easton, a medical friend,
he said I had not given the correct pronunciation of the names. Always
willing to learn, I asked to be put right; whereupon, the doctor gravely
informed me that I ought to have said--Cupped and Physic!

I have spoken of the kindness of medical men, such as Dr. Garth Wilkinson,
to clergymen, artists, and literary men. I add one more expression of
gratitude, which is a good modern instance:--

When at St. Helens, in Jersey, during his last illness, my friend Samuel
Lover, the genial poet and artist, wrote the following lines to Dr. Dixon,
his friend and physician. I first copied them some years ago from Lover's
MS. note-book, kindly lent me by his widow when I was engaged in the
preparation of his life. Such cordial tributes are a good physician's most
highly-valued fees:--

    "Whene'er your vitality
    Is feeble in quality,
    And you fear a fatality
        May end the strife,
    Then Dr. Joe Dickson
    Is the man I would fix on
    For putting new wicks on
        The lamp of life."

From the many varied facts and incidents adduced in these pages, it will
be seen that, in anxiety or sorrow, the good family doctor is a true and
sympathetic friend, whose services can never be paid by gold.

Next to religion, nothing is more precious or comforting than the sympathy
of those who know and fully understand our sufferings, for, as my old
favourite, Sir Thomas Browne, to whom I ever revert with renewed pleasure,
truly and beautifully says:--"It is not the tears of our own eyes only,
but of our friends also, that do exhaust the current of our sorrows,
which, falling into many streams, runs more peaceably, and is contented
with a narrower channel."


Ye Ende




Index.


  Abernethy, John, 206-208, 266

  Advertisements, Curious, 155-159

  Ague, Charms for, 240-241

  Akenside, Mark, 109-111

  Andrews, William, Barber-Surgeons, 1-7;
    Touching for King's Evil, 8-23;
    Assaying Meat and Drink, 24-31

  Anne, Queen, 18-19

  Assay Cups, 30-31

  Assaying Meat and Drink, 24-31

  Atkins, Dr. H., 264

  Axon, W. E. A., The Doctor in the time of Pestilence, 125-139


  Banks, Mrs. G. Linnæus, Some Old Doctors, 192-208

  Barber-Surgeons, 1-7

  Barber's Pole, 6, 35

  Bicycle, 23

  Birmingham town's book, 15

  Bisley, 15

  Bishop, hanged, 167

  Bishop and Williams, body-snatchers, 171-177

  Blackmore, R. D., 118

  Blackmore, Dr., 111-113

  Black Art, 45

  Bleeding, 7, 216

  Blood, Circulation of the, 195

  Blood in windows, 2

  Boke of Jhon Caius, 127

  Booker, Rev. Dr., on small-pox, 163-164

  Bossy, a quack, 149

  Brown, Dr. John, 115

  Brown, Sir Thomas, 123, 124, 253-258, 278, 283

  Bruce, King Robert the, 209

  Buddhism, 67-68

  Bulleyn, Dr., quoted, 219

  Burke and Hare, 168

  Burkers and Body-Snatchers, 167-180

  Burning for disease, 46

  Burton's "Anatomy of Melancholy," 259-260

  Byron quoted, 187


  Campbell, Dr., 276, 278

  Cancer, Curious treatment for, 222

  Carriages, 22-23

  Celestials and medicine, 58-61

  Chalmers, John, M.D., 115

  Charms, 43-44, 52

  Chaucer's Doctor of Physic, 70-75

  Chester in plague time, 133-135;
    Touching at, 17

  Cholera, Reminiscences of, 181-191

  Circulation of the blood, 195

  Colic, Charm for, 248

  Cooper, Sir Astley, 170, 179, 268

  Coryat, 141

  Cramp, Charm, 52;
    Strange cure for, 249

  Croydon, Cholera at, 185-186, 190

  Crusade, 209

  Cumming, Dr. W. F., 114-115

  Cupping, 217

  Curious prescriptions, 226


  Dickens, Charles, Satires by, 65-66

  Dickens' Doctors, 90-101

  Dimsdale, Dr., 264

  Disinfectants in sticks, 33

  Disputes between surgeons and barbers, 5

  Doctor in the time of Pestilence, 125-139

  Doctors Shakespeare Knew, 76-89

  Dog bites, 242

  Douglas, Sir James, 209

  Doyle, Dr. Conan, 118

  "Drunk by George," 270


  Ecclesfield, 16

  Edward the Confessor, 8-9

  Egyptians and Magic, 57-58

  Elizabeth, Queen, at dinner, 28-29

  Erysipelas, 243

  Eskimo Medicine Men, 61-63


  Faith Cures, 42

  Famous Literary Doctors, 102-124

  Fees, London, 273-274

  Food taken in fear, 24

  Freind, John, 196

  Frost, Thomas, Dickens' Doctors, 90-101.
    Mountebanks and Medicine, 140-152.
    The Strange Fight with the Small-pox, 153-166.
    Burkers and Body-Snatchers, 167-180.
    Reminiscences of the Cholera, 181-191


  Galen, 120

  Gallows, superstitions respecting, 249

  Gild, Barbers', 2

  Gold-headed Cane, 32-41

  Grave-mould, 45

  Greatrake, Valentine, 82

  Great Plague of London, 136-139


  Hall, Dr., 88-89

  Harvey, Wm., 194-196

  Heart of Bruce, 210

  Hentzner in England, 28

  Hill, Sir John, 114

  Hodges, Dr., 137

  Holbein, Picture by, 3

  Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 106-108

  How our Fathers were Physicked, 216-233

  Hunter, John, 198

  Hunter, William, 199

  Hunterian Museum, 205


  Jaundice, 251

  Jenner, 159-162

  Johnston, Arthur, 122-123

  Johnson, Dr., touched for the evil, 18-19


  Kerr, Dr., 275


  Langford, J. A., LL.D., How our Fathers were Physicked, 216

  Latimer on Mercenary Physicians, 260

  Lee Penny, 209-215

  Lettsom, J. C., 35, 263

  Liver, eating human, 51

  Lockhart, Sir Simon, 211-213

  Lotteries, 151

  Lover, Samuel, 282


  Macbeth, quoted, 9

  Mashonaland, Credulity in, 63-65

  Magic and Medicine, 42-69

  Manchester in plague time, 135-136

  Mead, Dr., 265

  Medical Folk Lore, 234-251

  Medical Students, 97-98

  Merry Andrew, 141-151

  Mercenary Physicians, 260

  Metals and precious stones used, 218

  Mountebanks and Medicine, 140-152

  Mouse, roasted, prescribed, 221

  Moir, D. M., 116-118

  Montagu, Lady May, 153-154, 162

  Monks as surgeons, 1;
    forbidden to bleed, 2


  Newcastle-on-Tyne, Siege of, 213

  Nicholson, John, Medical Folk-Lore, 234-251

  North American Indian medicine men, 52-56


  O'Brien, Giant, 202

  Of Physicians and their Fees, 252-283


  Parliament, Folly of, 223

  Phillips, John, 111

  Pilgrim's Staff, 32

  Planetary Influence, 250

  Plantagenent kings touching for the evil, 10

  Pontefract Castle, 27

  Pole, Barber's, 6

  Preston records, 17


  Radcliffe's cane, 33

  Rain-water doctor, 261

  Reminiscences of the Cholera, 181-191

  Revolting prescriptions, 225

  Richardson, Sir B. W., 202, 204

  Rings from hinges of coffins, 249

  Robinson, Tom, M.D., The Gold-headed Cane, 32-41

  Rochester, Earl of, 144

  Rheumatism, 238


  Sacrificing for disease, 47-49

  Skull, Human, Medical uses, 227

  Small-pox, Old receipt for, 72

  Smith, Sydney, Witty remark, 261

  Some Old Doctors, 192-208

  St. Agnes' Eve, 241

  Stark, Dr., 280-281

  Statute of Labourers, 124-125

  Strange Stories, 262

  Strange Story of the Fight with the Small Pox, 153-166

  Stuart kings touching for the evil, 12-14

  Suicide's skull, Drinking from, 50

  Symington, A. J., Of Physicians and their Fees, 252-283


  Tooth-drawing, 5

  Thompson, W. H., Chaucer's Doctor of Physic, 70-75

  Thurlow, Lord, on Barbers and Surgeons, 6

  Thompson, Sir Henry, 115

  Tobacco, Poet's Praise of, 111

  Tournament, 186

  Toothache, Folk-lore of, 235-237, 249

  Toad, 227

  Touching for the King's Evil, 8-23

  Touch-pieces, 11, 20-21

  Terling, Essex, 15

  Tudor Kings touching for the Evil, 11


  Verney Family, 229-233

  Visiting Patients, 22-23


  Wall, A. H., Doctors Shakespeare Knew, 76-89

  Walters, Cuming, Magic and Medicine, 42-69;
    Famous Literary Doctors, 102-124

  Warren, Samuel, 116

  Warts, Charms for, 247

  Whooping cough, 244-246

  Wig, 35

  William III. refuses to touch, 18

  Winchester, Mountebank at, 147-148

  Witchcraft, 49-50, 242


  York records, 16-17


  Zulu doctors, 65




FOOTNOTES:

[1] "Chester in the Plantagenet and Tudor Periods," by Rupert H. Morris,
1894, pp. 78-79.

[2] The _Asclepiad_, Vol. viii.

[3] Act ii., sc. 2.

[4] Dyer's English Folk Lore, p. 156.

[5] Dyer's English Folk Lore, p. 158.

[6] _Records of York Castle_, p. 230.

[7] Folk Lore Journal, v. 5.

[8] Vol. i., p. 761.

[9] P. 353.

[10] P. 273.




Transcriber's Notes:

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Superscripted characters are indicated by {superscript}.

The original text contains letters with diacritical marks that are not
represented in this text version.