position is certainly somewhat different from what it was in the days
when they were contemptuously called leeches, when their scientific
investigations exposed them to persecution and death. Vesalius, the
father of modern anatomy, was condemned to death by the Inquisition for
dissecting a human body, but by the intervention of King Philip II.,
whose physician he was, the punishment was reduced to a pilgrimage to
the Holy Land; on his return the ship was lost on the island of Zante,
where he perished of starvation in 1564. Now Government licenses
doctors to practise vivisection! At Dijon, in 1386, a physician was
fined by the bailiff fifty golden francs, and imprisoned for not having
completed the cures of some persons whose recovery he had undertaken.
In a schedule of the offices, fees, and services which the Lord Wharton
had with the Wardenry of the city and castle of Carlisle in 1547, a
trumpeter was rated at 16d. per day, and a surgeon only at 12d. Edward
III. granted Counsus de Gangeland, an apothecary of London, 6d. a day
for his care and attendance on him while he formerly lay sick in
Scotland. A knowledge of astrology was in those days requisite for a
physician; the herbs were not to be gathered except when the sun and the
planets were in certain constellations, and certificates of their being
so were necessary to give them reputation. Sometimes patients applied
to astrologers, who were astrologers only, whether the constellations
were favourable to the doctor's remedies. Then, if the man died, the
astrologer ascribed the death to the inefficacy of the remedies, while
the doctor threw the blame on the astrologer, he not having properly
observed the constellations. Then the latter would exclaim that his
case was extremely hard; if he made a mistake, his calculation being
wrong, heaven discovered it, whilst if a physician was guilty of a
blunder, the earth covered it. Even then doctors were considered like
the potato plant, whose fruit is underground. To see the doctor's
carriage, whose motto should be 'Live or die,' or 'Morituri te
salutant,' attending a funeral, reminds a cynic of a cobbler taking home
his work.
In England the medical profession rose in public estimation from the
time when Henry VIII., with that view, incorporated several members of
the profession into a body, community, and perpetual college, since
called the College of Physicians. The seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries, with their opposite characteristics of vulgarity and romance,
of squalor and luxury, of ignorance and grand discoveries in science, of
prejudice and intelligence, were highly conducive to the formation and
cultivation of individualism and originality of character; hence those
two centuries abounded in 'oddities' and 'eccentricities,' and in no
section of society more than in the medical. The members of that
profession could very readily and appropriately then be divided into two
great schools--the Rough and the Smooth, the fierce dispensers of
Brimstone and the gentle administrators of Treacle. The present
century, with its levelling tendencies, opposed to all originality and
so-called eccentricity in speech, custom, and costume, reducing all
gentlemen in full dress to the rank of waiters, has nearly abolished the
sulphury Galen; in fact, he would scarcely be tolerated now. People
submit to certain foolish pretensions now, such as those of
thought-reading and pin-hunting cranks, and similar mental
eccentricities; but they must be administered mildly, there must be a
treacly flavour about them, for--
'This is an age of flatness, dull and dreary,
Society is like a washed-out chintz,
Which scandal renders somewhat foul and smeary;
And yet, without its malice, lies, and hints,
E'en fashion's children would at last grow weary
Of looking at the faded cotton prints
To which respectability subdues
Our uncontrolled imagination's hues.'
Hence the medical showmen of the present day must accompany the
'exhibition' of their nostrums with dulcet sounds and honeyed speeches,
especially when treating those nursed in the lap of affluence; and,
accustomed as they are to adulation, the medico who can condescend to
feed them with well-disguised flattery, or assume the tone of abject
servility, has too often the credit of possessing superior skill and
science. And the patients, in the words of Byron, travestied--
'They swallow filthy draughts and nauseous pills,
But yet there is no end of human ills.'
It was, of course, not every doctor who could, at the beginning of his
career, go in for the brimstone system. Unless he was backed by very
powerful patronage, or wrote a book or pamphlet which attracted
attention--as Elliotson's practice rose from L500 to L5,000 a year
through his papers in the _Lancet_--or was by some lucky accident
pitched into a position which by itself alone inspired the public with
an overwhelming belief in his skill, the experiment of treating his
patients with rudeness and indifference would have been fatal to his
prospects. But let him once make a hit, either by being luckily on the
spot when a king or prince was thrown off his horse, or by a successful
operation, or by writing a book which 'caught on,' and the public were
at his feet, and he could trample on them as much as he liked. But it
did not follow that, after such success, he must necessarily abuse his
privileges. Dr. Arbuthnot, the son of a non-juring clergyman in
Scotland, came to London about the time of the Restoration, and at first
earned a living by teaching mathematics, though he had studied medicine.
He happened to be at Epsom on one occasion when Prince George, who was
also there, was suddenly taken ill. Arbuthnot was called in, and having
effected a cure, was soon afterwards appointed one of the physicians in
ordinary to the Queen. And, of course, his practice was established on
a solid foundation, and he carried it on with considerable professional
distinction. But his success did not spoil him, for he was a man of a
genial disposition, who turned neither to brimstone nor to treacle, but
always maintained a dignified demeanour. He was a wit and a man of
letters, and enjoyed the esteem of such men as Swift, Pope, and Gay.
Before coming to London he had chosen Dorchester as a place to practise
as a physician, but the salubrity of the air was opposed to his success,
and he took horse for London. A friend meeting him, asked him where he
was going. 'To leave your confounded place, where I can neither live
nor die.' It was said of him that his wit and pleasantry sometimes
assisted his prescriptions, and in some cases rendered them unnecessary.
He died at the age of sixty from a complication of disorders, so little
is the physician able to cure himself.
Sir Astley Cooper (b. 1768, d. 1841) also did not belong to the
brimstone school. His surgical skill was very great, and he liked to
display it. He always retained perfect self-command in the operating
theatre, and during the most critical and dangerous performances on a
patient, he tried to keep up the latter's courage by lively and
facetious remarks. When he was in the zenith of his fame, a satirical
Sawbones said of him:
'Nor Drury Lane nor Common Garden
Are, to my fancy, worth a farden;
I hold them both small beer.
Give me the wonderful exploits,
And jolly jokes between the sleights,
Of _Astley's Amphitheatre_.'
When Sir Astley lived in Broad Street, City, he had every day a numerous
morning levee of City patients. The room into which they were shown
would hold from forty to fifty people, and often callers, after waiting
for hours, were dismissed without having seen the doctor. His man
Charles, with more than his master's dignity, would say to disappointed
applicants when they reappeared on the following morning: 'I am not sure
that we shall be able to attend to you, for our list is full for the
day; but if you will wait, I will see what we can do for you.' During
the first nine years of his practice Sir Astley's earnings progressed
thus: First year, L5 5s.; second, L26; third, L64; fourth, L96; fifth,
L100; sixth, L200; seventh, L400; eighth, L600; ninth, L1,100.
Eventually his annual income rose to more than L15,000; the largest sum
he ever made in one year was L21,000. A West Indian millionaire gave
him his highest fee; he had successfully undergone a painful operation,
and sitting up in bed, he threw his nightcap at Cooper, saying, 'Take
that!' 'Sir,' replied Sir Astley, 'I'll pocket the affront;' and on
reaching home he found in the cap a cheque for one thousand guineas.
Dr. Matthew Baillie (b. 1761, d. 1823) was a physician who occasionally
indulged in the brimstone temper, and was disinclined to attend to the
details of an uninteresting case. After listening on one occasion to a
long-drawn account from a lady, who ailed so little that she was going
that evening to the opera, he had made his escape, when he was urged to
step upstairs again that the lady might ask him whether, on her return
from the opera, she might eat some oysters. 'Yes, madam,' said Baillie;
'shells and all!'
Dr. Richard Mead (b. 1673, d. 1754) was physician to George II., and the
friend of Drs. Radcliffe, Garth, and Arbuthnot, and a great patron of
literary and artistic genius. In his house in Great Ormond Street he
established what may be called the first academy of painting in London.
His large collection of paintings and antiquities, as well as his
valuable library, was sold by auction on his death in 1754. In 1740 he
had a quarrel with Dr. Woodward, like himself a Gresham professor; the
two men drew their swords, and Mead having obtained the advantage, he
commanded Woodward to beg his life. 'No, doctor,' said the vanquished
combatant, 'that I will not till I am your patient.' But, nevertheless,
at last he wisely submitted. In Ward's 'Lives of the Gresham
Professors' is a view of Gresham College, with a gateway, entering from
Broad Street, marked 25. Within are the figures of two persons, the one
standing, the other kneeling; they represent Dr. Mead and Dr. Woodward.
Dr. Mead was of a generous nature. In 1723, when the celebrated Dr.
Friend was sent to the Tower, Mead kindly took his practice, and, on his
release by Sir Robert Walpole, presented the escaped Jacobite with the
result, L5,000.
Dr. Mead, about 1714, lived at Chelsea; about the same date there lived
in the same locality Dr. Alexander Blackwell, whom we introduce here
chiefly on account of his singularly unfortunate life and very tragical
end. Blackwell was a native of Aberdeen, studied physic under Boerhaave
at Leyden, and took the degree of M.D. On his return home he married,
and for some time practised as a physician in London. But not meeting
with success, he became corrector of the press for Mr. Wilkins, a
printer, and some time after commenced business in the Strand on his own
account, and promised to do well, when, under an antiquated and unjustly
restrictive law, a suit was brought against him for setting up as a
printer without his having served his apprenticeship to it. Mr.
Blackwell defended the suit, but at the trial in Westminster Hall a
dunderheaded jury, probably of narrow-minded tradesmen, all anxious to
uphold their objectionable privileges, found a verdict against him, in
consequence of which he became bankrupt, and one of his creditors kept
him in prison for nearly two years. By the help of his wife, who was a
clever painter and engraver, he was released. She prepared all the
plates for the 'Herbal,' a work figuring most of the plants in the
Physic Garden at Chelsea, close to which she lived. A copy of this book
eventually fell into the hands of the Swedish Ambassador, who sent it
over to his Court, where it was so much liked that Dr. Blackwell was
engaged in the Swedish service, and went to reside at Stockholm. He was
appointed physician to the King, who under his treatment had recovered
from a serious illness. Dr. Blackwell had left his wife in England; she
was to follow him as soon as his position was placed on a solid basis.
But ere this could take place he was accused of having been engaged with
natives and foreigners in plotting to overturn the constitution of the
kingdom. He was found guilty, and sentenced to be broken alive on the
wheel, his heart and bowels to be torn out and burnt, and his body to be
quartered. He was said, under torture, to have made confession of such
an attempt, but the real extent of his guilt must always remain
problematical. That he, a person of no influence, and unconnected with
any person of rank, should have aimed at overthrowing the constitution
seems very improbable. It is more likely that he was made a scapegoat
to strike terror into the party then opposed to the Ministry. The awful
sentence passed on him, however, was commuted to beheading, which fate
he underwent on July 29, 1747. He must have been a man of great nerve
and a humorist, for, having laid his head wrong, he remarked jocosely
that this being his first experiment, no wonder he should want a little
instruction!
The Dr. Woodward we mentioned above seems to have been a very irascible
and objectionable individual. He so grossly insulted Sir Hans Sloane,
when he was reading a paper of his own before the Royal Society in 1710,
that, under the presidency of Sir Isaac Newton, he was expelled from the
Society.
Among medical oddities of the rougher sort we may reckon Mounsey, a
friend of Garrick, and physician to Chelsea Hospital. His way of
extracting teeth was original. Round the tooth to be drawn he fastened
a strong piece of catgut, to the opposite end of which he fastened a
bullet, with which and a strong dose of powder he charged a pistol. On
the trigger being pulled, the tooth was drawn out. Of course, it was
but seldom he could prevail on anyone to try the process. Once, having
induced a gentleman to submit to the operation, the latter at the last
moment exclaimed: 'Stop! stop! I've changed my mind.' 'But I have not,
and you are a fool and a coward for your pains,' answered the doctor,
pulling the trigger, and in another instant the tooth was extracted.
Once, before setting out on a journey, being incredulous as to the
safety of cash-boxes and safes, he hid a considerable quantity of gold
and notes in the fireplace of his study, covering them with cinders and
shavings. A month after, returning luckily sooner than he was expected,
he found his housemaid preparing to entertain a few friends at tea in
her master's room. She was on the point of lighting the fire, and had
just applied a candle to the doctor's notes, when he entered the room,
seized a pail of water which happened to be standing near, and throwing
its contents over the fuel and the servant, extinguished the fire and
her presence of mind at the same time. Some of the notes were injured,
and the Bank of England made some difficulty about cashing them.
'When doctors disagree,' etc. Do they ever agree? Yes, when, after a
consultation over a mild case which has no interest for any of them,
they over wine and biscuits agree that the treatment hitherto pursued
had better be continued. To discuss it further would interrupt the
pleasant chat over the news of the day! But when they meet over a
friendly glass at the coffee-house they go at it hammer and tongs. Dr.
Buchan, the author of 'Domestic Medicine,' of which 80,000 copies were
sold during the author's lifetime, and which, according to modern
medical opinion, killed more patients than that--doctors like cheap
medicine as little as lawyers like cheap law--Dr. Gower, the urbane and
skilled physician of Middlesex Hospital, and Dr. Fordyce, a fashionable
physician, whose deep potations never affected him, used to meet at the
Chapter Coffee-House, and hold discussions on medical topics; but they
never agreed, and with boisterous laughter used to ridicule each other's
theories. But they all agreed in considering the Chapter punch as a
safe remedy for all ills.
Dr. Garth, the author of the 'Dispensary,' a poem directed against the
Apothecaries and Anti-Dispensarians, a section of the College of
Physicians, was very good-natured, but too fond of good living. One
night, when he lingered over the bottle at the Kit-Kat Club, though
patients were longing for him, Steele reproved him for his neglect of
them. 'Well, it's no great matter at all,' replied Garth, pulling out a
list of fifteen, 'for nine of them have such bad constitutions that not
all the physicians in the world can save them, and the other six have
such good constitutions that all the physicians in the world cannot kill
them.' The doctor here plainly admitted the uselessness of his supposed
science, as in his 'Dispensary' he admitted drugs to be not only
useless, but murderous.
'High where the Fleet Ditch descends in sable streams,
To wash the sooty Naiads in the Thames,
There stands a structure[#] on a rising hill,
Where Tyros take their freedom out to kill.'
[#] Apothecaries' Hall. A doctor, I forget his name, having obtained
some mark of distinction from the Company of Apothecaries, mentioned at
a party that the glorious Company of Apothecaries had conferred much
honour on him. 'But,' said a lady, 'what about the noble army of
martyrs of patients?'
In Blenheim Street lived Joshua Brookes, the famous anatomist, whose
lectures were attended by upwards of seven thousand pupils. His museum
was almost a rival of that of John Hunter, and was liberally thrown open
to visitors. One evening a coach drew up at his door, a heavy sack was
taken out and deposited in the hall, and the servants, accustomed to
such occurrences, since their master was in the habit of buying
subjects, were about to carry it down the back-stairs into the
dissecting-room, when a living subject thrust his head and neck out of
one end and begged for his life. The servants in alarm ran to fetch
pistols, but the subject continued to beg for mercy in such tones as to
assure them they had nothing to fear from him. He had been drunk, and
did not know how he got into the sack. Dr. Brookes ordered the sack to
be tied loosely round his chin, and sent him in a coach to the
watch-house. How he got into the sack may easily be surmised: Some
body-snatchers, a tribe then very much to the fore, had no doubt found
the man dead drunk in the street, and knowing the doctor to be a buyer
of subjects, had taken him there, in the hope that the doctor might
begin operating on the body before it recovered consciousness, so as to
enable them afterwards to claim the price. In the days when there were
dozens of executions in one morning at Newgate, the doctors had a good
time of it, for the bodies of the malefactors were handed over to them
for dissection. In fact, under the steps leading up to the front-door
of Surgeons' Hall, a handsome building which stood next to Newgate
Prison, there was a small door, through which the corpses were
introduced into the building. Surgeons' Hall was pulled down in 1809, to
make room for the new Sessions House.
The doctors of the previous two centuries were mostly Sangrados, who
bled and purged their patients most unmercifully; but we must say this
to their credit, they did not descend to the sublime atrocity of
microbes, bacilli, and all the other horrors of the microscopic mania
now sending unnumbered nervous people into lunatic asylums. And so they
had not, like their modern compeers, the chance of amusing themselves
and paying one another professional compliments by sending glass tubes,
filled with the deadly spawn, from one country to another by ship and
rail. Fancy one of those tubes getting accidentally broken, or being
intentionally smashed for a lark on board a passenger steamer. Why,
this would speedily become a vessel laden with corpses! At least,
according to modern teaching, which, _entre nous_, we have no more faith
in than we have in many other medical dicta. A man is ill from over
gorging or drinking, a child ails from a surfeit of sweets or from
catching a disease playing with other children in the streets or at
school. The doctor is called in, and instead of telling the man, 'You
have made a beast of yourself,' or correctly indicating the cause of the
child's illness, he sniffs about and says: 'There is something the
matter with your drains: I can smell sewer-gas.' And presently the
sanitary inspector arrives, and orders the pulling up and renewal of the
drains, and for days the house is filled with the effluvia supposed to
be poisonous. How is it the whole family do not die off? Well,
scavengers who daily deal with offal and garbage of the most offensive
kind, the men who work down in the sewers, enjoy robust health; the
latter only suffer when they are suddenly plunged into an excess of
sewer-gas, but it is the quantity and not the quality that injures.
The excessive treacliness of modern doctors, as we have just shown, is
as objectionable as was the brimstone treatment of some of their
predecessors. A principle with modern doctors is never to acknowledge
themselves nonplussed. The old doctors now and then confessed
themselves beaten. Said an AEsculapius who had been called in to
prescribe for a child, after diagnosing, as the ridiculous farce of
tongue-speering and pulse-squeezing is called: 'This here babe has got a
fever; now, I ain't posted up in fevers, but I will send her something
that will throw her into fits, and I'm a stunner on fits.' And modern
doctors, indeed, have no occasion to admit ignorance since the invention
of the liver. When they cannot tell what is the matter with a man, or
they are too urbane to reproach him with his excesses, his liver is out
of order--and that is an organ which cannot possibly be examined and its
condition be verified so as to prove or disprove the practitioner's
assertion. I assume that nine out of ten people don't know where or
what the liver is--I'm sure I don't, and don't want to; but as Sancho
Panza blessed the man who invented sleep, the doctors should bless their
colleague who invented the liver! Abernethy, of whom more hereafter,
with all his eccentricity, was honest enough to confess that he never
cured or pretended to cure anyone, which only quacks did. He despised
the humbug of the profession, and its arts to mislead and deceive
patients. He only attempted to second Nature in her efforts. He
admitted that he could not remove rheumatism, that opprobrium of the
faculty, and no doctor can; a residence in a warm and ever sunny clime,
or a long course of Turkish baths, can do it. Hence sings Allan
Ramsay's 'Gentle Shepherd':
'I sits with my feet in a brook,
And if they ax me for why,
In spite of the physic I took,
It's rheumatiz kills me, says I.'[#]
[#] In searching for material for these pages I had occasion to read the
lives of a good many doctors; half of them, I should say, died of
rheumatism and gout.
This was the desperate remedy taken by Caroline, Queen of that brute
George II., when he expected her to take her usual walk with him, though
both her feet were swollen with rheumatism. She plunged them in a bath
of cold water, and managed to go out with him that afternoon.
I read in some publication--_London Society_, I think--in an article on
medicine, that it is a sensible plan, adopted by some wise people, to
pay a medical man a yearly sum to look up a household periodically and
keep them in good health. This seems to me as insane a plan as can well
be imagined. Fancy the physicking such a family, especially the
children and servants, must all the year round undergo! For the doctor
does not like to take his money and do nothing for it; so, if there
happens to be no real illness, he must exhibit his draughts and pills,
just to show that he is honestly earning his fee. The regular
attendant, the family doctor, means that the family are hospitalizing
all the year round. Better go and live in the island of Sark. Sir
Robert Inglis, in his account of the Channel Islands, says that at Sark
there is no doctor, and that in the years 1816 and 1820 there was not
one death on the island, containing a population of five hundred
persons, and that on an average of ten years the mortality is not quite
one in a hundred. But let us return to the old doctors.
Dr. George Fordyce, who came in 1762 from Edinburgh to London, very
speedily made himself a name by a series of public lectures on medical
science, which he afterwards published in a volume entitled 'Elements of
the Practice of Physic,' which passed through many editions.
Unfortunately he was given to drink, and though he never was known to be
dead drunk, yet he was often in a state which rendered him unfit for
professional duties. One night when he was in such a condition, he was
suddenly sent for to attend a lady of title who was very ill. He went,
sat down, listened to her story, and felt her pulse. He found he was
not up to his work; he lost his wits, and in a moment of forgetfulness
exclaimed: 'Drunk, by Jove!' Still, he managed to write out a mild
prescription. Early next morning he received a message from his noble
patient to call on her at once. Dr. Fordyce felt very uncomfortable.
The lady evidently intended to upbraid him either with an improper
prescription or with his disgraceful condition. But to his surprise and
relief she thanked him for his prompt compliance with her pressing
summons, and then confessed that he had rightly diagnosed her case, that
unfortunately she occasionally indulged too freely in drink, but that
she hoped he would preserve inviolable secrecy as to the condition he
had found her in. Fordyce listened to her as grave as a judge, and
said: 'You may depend upon me, madam; I shall be as silent as the
grave.'