Remarks on Sir Charles Morgan’s account of the Former State of Medicine
in Italy—The author’s studies in the Anatomical Theatre of Dublin
University—Dr. Burdet—Former importance of farriers and colloughs—Jug
Coyle, and her powers of soliloquy—Larry Butler, the family farrier,
described—Luminous and veritable account of the ancient colloughs—The
_faculty_ of the present day—Hoynhymms and Yahoos—Hydrophobia in
Ireland, and its method of cure.
Doctor Sir Charles Morgan has given us, at the conclusion of his
lady’s excellent work “Italy,” the state of “medicine” in that
country. Our old cookery books, in like manner, after exquisite
receipts for all kinds of dainties, to suit every appetite, generally
finished a luxurious volume with _remedies_ for the “bite of a mad
dog—for scald heads—ague—burns—St. Anthony’s fire—St. Vitus’s
dance—the tooth-ache,” &c. &c. Now, though the Doctor certainly did
not take the cooks by way of precedent, that is no reason why I should
not indulge my whim by citing both examples, and garnishing this
volume with “the state of medicine in Ireland” fifty years ago.
I do not, however, mean to depreciate the state of medicine in these
days of “new lights” and novelties, when old drugs and poisons are
_nicknamed_, and every recipe is a rebus to an old apothecary. Each son
of Galen now strikes out his own system; composes his own syllabus; and
_finishes_ his patients according to his own proper fancy. When a man
dies after a consultation (which is generally the case—the thing being
often decided by _experiment_)—there is no particular necessity for any
explanation to widows, legatees, or heirs-at-law; the death alone of any
testator being a sufficient apology to his nearest and dearest relatives
for the failure of a consultation—that is, if the patient left
sufficient property behind him.
My state of Irish medicine, therefore, relates to those “once on a time”
days, when sons lamented their fathers,[4] and wives could weep over
expiring husbands; when every root and branch of an ancient family
became as black as rooks for the death of a blood relation, though of
almost incalculable removal. In those times the medical old woman and
the surgeon-farrier—the bone-setter and the bleeder—were by no means
considered contemptible practitioners among the Christian
population—who, in common with the dumb beasts, experienced the
advantages of their miscellaneous practice.
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Footnote 4:
In these times it may not, perhaps, be fully credited when I tell—that
four of my father’s sons carried his body _themselves_ to the grave:
that his eldest son was in a state bordering on actual distraction at
his death; and in the enthusiastic paroxysms of affection which we all
felt for our beloved parent at that cruel separation, I do even now
firmly believe there was not one of us who would not, on the impulse
of the moment, have sprung into, and supplanted him in his grave, to
have restored him to animation. But we were all a family of nature and
of heart, and decided enemies to worldly objects.
-----
An anatomical theatre being appended to the University of Dublin,
whenever I heard of a _fresh_ subject, or remarkable corpse, being
obtained for dissection, I frequently attended the lectures, and many
were the beauteous women and fine young fellows then carved into scraps
and joints _pro bono publico_.[5] I thereby obtained a smattering of
information respecting our corporeal clockwork; and having, for
amusement, skimmed over “Cullen’s First Lines,” “Every Man his Own
Doctor,” “Bishop Berkeley on Tar Water,” and “Sawny Cunningham on the
Virtues of Fasting Spittle,” I almost fancied myself qualified for a
diploma. A Welsh aunt of mine, also, having married Doctor Burdet, who
had been surgeon of the Wasp sloop of war, and remarkable for leaving
the best stumps of any naval practitioner, he explained to me the use of
his various instruments for tapping, trepanning, raising the
shoulder-blades, &c. &c.: but when I had been a short time at my
father’s in the country, I found that the farriers and old women
performed, either on man or beast, twenty cures for one achieved by the
doctors and apothecaries. I had great amusement in conversing with these
people, and perceived some reason in their arguments.
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Footnote 5:
I never saw a young woman brought into the dissecting-room but my
blood ran cold, and I was immediately set a-moralising. The old song
of “Death and the Lady” is a better lecture for the fair sex than all
the sermons that ever were preached, including Mr. Fordyce’s. ’Tis a
pity that song is not _melodised_ for the use of the fashionables
during their campaigns in London.
-----
As to the farriers, I reflected, that as man is only a mechanical
animal, and a horse one of the same description, there was no reason why
a drug that was good for a pampered gelding might not also be good for
the hard-goer mounted on him. In truth, I have seen instances where, in
point both of intellect and endurance, there was but very little
distinction between the animals—save that the beverage of the one was
_water_, and that of the other was _punch_—and, in point of _quantity_,
there was no great difference between them in this matter either.
At that time there was seldom more than one regular doctor in a circuit
of twenty miles, and a farrier never came to physic a gentleman’s horse
that some boxes of pills were not deducted from his balls, for the
general use of the ladies and gentlemen of the family; and usually
succeeded vastly better than those of the apothecary.
The class of old women called colloughs were then held in the highest
estimation, as understanding the cure (that is if God pleased) of all
disorders. Their _materia medica_ did not consist of gums, resins,
minerals, and hot iron,—as the farriers’ did; but of leaves of bushes,
bark of trees, _weeds_ from _churchyards_, and mushrooms from _fairy
grounds_; rue, garlic, rosemary, birds’-nests, foxglove, &c.: in
desperate cases they sometimes found it advisable to put a _charm_ into
the bolus or stoop, and then it was sure to be “firm and good.” I never
could find out what either of their charms were. They said they should
die themselves if they disclosed them to any body. No collough ever
could be a _doctor_ whilst she had one tooth remaining in her head, as
the remedy was always reduced to a pulp or paste by her own mumbling of
its materials, and the contact of an old grinder would destroy the
purity of the charms and simples, and leave the cure, they would say, no
better than a farrier’s.
Our old collough, Jug Coyle, as she sat in a corner of the hob, by the
great long turf fire in the kitchen, exactly in the position of the
Indian squaws, munching and mumbling for use an apron-full of her
morning’s gatherings in the fields, used to talk at intervals very
_sensibly_ of her art. “Ough! then, my dear sowl, (said she one
evening,) what would the poor Irishers have done in owld times but for
their colloughs? Such brutes as you!” continued she, (looking at Butler,
the farrier of the family, who was seated fast asleep on a bench at the
opposite end of the hearth,) “’tis you, and the likes of you, a curse on
you, root and branch! that starved the colloughs by giving your poisons
to both cows and quality. Sure its the farriers’ and pothecaries’ drugs
that kills all the people-ay, and the horses and cattle too,” and she
shook her claw-like fist at the unconscious farrier.
“Jug Coyle,” said I, “why are you so angry?”
Jug:—“Sure it’s not for myself, it’s for my calling,” said she: “a
thousand years before the round towers were built (and nobody can tell
_that_ time), the colloughs were greater nor any lady in the country. We
had plenty of charms in those days, Master Jonah, till the farriers
came, bad luck to the race! Ough! may the curse of Crummell light on
yees all, breed, seed, and generation, Larry Butler! not forgetting Ned
Morrisy of Clapook, the villanous cow-doctor, that takes the good from
the colloughs likewise, and all—”
Here Jug Coyle stopped short, as the farrier opened his eyes, and she
knew well that if Larry Butler had a sup in, he would as soon beat an
old woman as any body else. She therefore resumed munching her herbs,
but was totally silenced.
Larry Butler was one of the oldest and most indispensable _attachés_ of
our family. Though nobody remembered him a _boy_, he was as handy, as
fresh, and as _rational_, perhaps more so, than half a century before.
Short, broad, and bow-legged, bone and muscle kept his body together—for
flesh was absent. His face, once extremely handsome, still retained its
youthful colouring—though broken and divided: his sharp eye began to
exhibit the dimness of age: the long white hair had deserted his high
forehead, but fell, in no scanty locks, down each side of his animated
countenance. He is before my eye at this moment—too interesting, and, at
the same time, odd a figure ever to be forgotten.
I had a great respect for old Butler: he was very passionate, but
universally licensed: he could walk any distance, and always carried in
his hand a massive firing-iron. I have thus particularly described the
old man, as being one of the most curious characters of his class I ever
met in Ireland.
Larry soon showed signs of relapsing into slumber; but Jug, fearing it
was a _fox’s sleep_ (an old trick of his), did not recommence her
philippic on the farriers, but went on in her simple praise of the
collough practice. “Sure,” said she, “God never sent any disorder into a
country that he did not likewise send something to cure it with.”
“Why, certainly, Jug,” said I, “it would be rather bad treatment if we
had no cures in the country.”
“Ough! that saying is like your dear father,” said she, “and your
grandfather before you, and your great-grandfather who was before him
agin. Moreover,” pursued Jug, “God planted our cures in the fields
because there was no pothecaries.”
“Very true, Jug,” said I.
“Well, then, Master Jonah,” resumed she, “if God or the Virgin, and I’m
sure I can’t say which of them, planted the cures, sure they must have
made people who knew how to pick them up in the fields, or what good is
their growing there?”
“There’s no gainsaying that, Jug,” gravely observed I.
“Well, then, it was to the colloughs, sure enough, God gave the
knowledge of picking the cures up—because he knew well that they were
owld and helpless, and that it would be a charity to employ them. When
once they learned the herbs, they were welcome every where; and there
was not _one_ man died in his bed (the people say) in owld times for
_twenty_ now-a-days.”
“Of that there is no doubt, Jug,” said I, “though there may be other
reasons for it.”
“Ough! God bless you agin, avourneen! any how,” said Jug. “Well, then,
they say it was Crummell and his troopers, bad luck to their sowls, the
murdering villains! that brought the first farriers (and no better luck
to _them_!) to Ireland, and the colloughs were kilt with the hunger. The
craturs, as the owld people tell, eat grass like the beasts when the
cows were all kilt by the troopers and farriers—avourneen, avourneen!”
Modern practitioners will perceive, by these two specimens of our
ancient _doctors_, that the state of medicine in Ireland was totally
different from that in Italy. Surgery being likewise a branch of the
healing art, no doubt also differed in the two countries, in a similar
degree. I shall therefore give a few _instances_ of both medico-surgical
and surgico-medical practice fifty years ago in Ireland; and if my
talented friend, Lady Morgan, will be so good as to inquire, she will
find, that though she has left medicine so entirely to her lord, she may
get an admirable _doctor_ or two to introduce into her next Irish
_imaginations_—which I hope will be soon forthcoming—certainly not
sooner than agreeable and welcome.
I must here notice a revolution; namely, that of late, since farriers
have got a “step in the peerage,” and are made commissioned officers in
the army, they think it proper to refine their pharmacopeia so as to
render it more congenial to their new rank and station, and some horses
are now not only theoretically but practically placed on more than a
level with the persons who mount them.
The practice of horse medicine is indeed so completely revolutionised,
that gas, steam, and the chemistry of Sir Humphrey Davy, are resorted to
for the morbid affections of that animal in common with those of a
nobleman. The horse, now, regularly takes his hot bath like my lord and
lady, James’ powders, refined liquorice, musk, calomel, and laudanum,
with the most “elegant extracts” and delicate infusions. As if
_Gulliver_ were a prophet, he literally described, in the reign of Queen
Anne, both the _English horse_ and the _Irish peasant_ as they exist at
the present moment. If the lodging, clothing, cleaning, food, medicine,
and attendance of the modern Hoynhymm, be contrasted with the pig-sty,
rags, filth, neglect, and hunger of the Yahoo, it must convince any
honest neutral that Swift (that greatest of Irishmen) did not overcharge
his satire. The sum lavished upon the care of one Hoynhymm for _a single
day_, with little or nothing to do, is more (exclusive of the farrier)
than is now paid to five Irish Yahoos for _twelve hours’_ hard labour,
with to feed, clothe, lodge, and nourish _themselves_, and probably five
wives and twenty or thirty children, for the same period, into the
bargain.
A few very curious cases may elucidate our ancient practice of cure—a
practice, I believe, never even heard of in any other part of Europe.
The bite of a mad dog was to the Irish peasantry of all things the most
puzzling and terrific; and I am sure I can scarcely guess what Doctor
Morgan will think of my veracity when I state the two modes by which
that horrible mania was neutralised or finally put an end to.
When the bite of a dog took place, every effort was made to kill the
beast, and if they succeeded, it was never inquired whether he actually
_was_, or (as the colloughs used to say) _pretended to be_ mad: his
liver was immediately taken out, dried by the fire till quite hard, then
reduced to powder, and given in frequent doses with a draught of holy or
blessed water, to the patient for seven days. If it happened that the
saliva did not penetrate the sufferer’s clothes, or if the dog was _not_
actually mad, it was then considered that the patient was _cured_ by
drinking the dog’s liver and holy water;—and if it so happened that the
bite set him barking, then the priest and farrier told them it was the
will of God that he should bark, and they were contented either to let
him die at his leisure, or send him to heaven a little sooner than was
absolutely necessary.
The herbs of the colloughs were sometimes successfully resorted to;
whether accidental or actual preventives or antidotes, it is not easy to
determine: but when I detail the ulterior remedy to cure the hydrophobia
in Ireland, or at least to render it _perfectly innoxious_, I am well
aware that I shall stand a good chance of being honoured by the
periodicals with the appellation of a “bouncer,” as on occasion of the
former volumes: but the ensuing case, as I can personally vouch for the
fact, I may surely give with tolerable confidence.