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 laeta Dei
Dignus erat meritis qui Nestora vinceret annis,
In terris omnes, sed rapit aequa dies;
Ne tumulo, quid desit adest fidissima conjux
Et vitae 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 litterateurs 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."