Just prior to the year 1800, two brothers, named Taylor, emerged from
obscurity in Yorkshire, and set up for doctors. They were farriers, and
from shoeing they advanced to doctoring and bleeding horses, thence to
drugging and butchering those of their fellow-creatures who naturally
preferred brute doctors to respectable physicians. Their system of
practice was a wholesale one.
[Illustration: DOSE--ONE QUART EVERY HOUR.]
"Soft chirurgions make foul sores," said Boleyn, the grandfather of the
beautiful and unfortunate Anne Boleyn. The Taylors struck no soft blows,
"but opened the warfare against disease by bombardment of shot and shell
in all directions. They bled their patients by the gallon, and drugged
them, as they did the cattle, by the stone. Their druggists, Ewbank &
Wallis, of York, supplied them with a ton of Glauber's salts at a time.
Scales and weights in their dispensary were regarded as bugbears of
ignoble minds. Everything was mixed by the scoop or handful. If they
ordered broth for a delicate patient, they directed the nurse to boil a
large leg of mutton in a copper of water, down to a strong decoction, and
administer a quart at stated intervals," _nolens volens?_
The little Abbe de Voisenon, the celebrated wit and dramatic writer
(1708-1775), was once sick at the chateau near Melum, and his physician
ordered him to drink a quart of ptisan (a decoction of barley and other
ingredients) every hour.
"What was the effect of the ptisan?" asked the doctor, on his next visit.
"None," replied the Abbe.
"Have you swallowed it all?"
"No; I could not take but half of it at once."
"No more than half! My order was the whole," exclaimed the doctor.
"Ah! now, friend," said the Abbe, "how could you expect me to swallow a
quart at a time, when I hold only a pint?"