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 Caesalpinas, 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.