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 L4 "for his charges
to London and a free guift," and L39 "for part of his wages for his
service in the time of the visitation." Thos. Minshull, the apothecary,
was paid L6 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 L1.
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.
_Quaerendo 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.