Transcriber's note:
Spelling and punctuation are sometimes erratic. A few obvious
misprints have been corrected, but in general the original spelling
and typesetting conventions have been retained. Accents are
inconsistent, and have not been standardised.
Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).
Text enclosed by equal signs is in bold face (=bold=).
Small capital text has been replaced with all capitals.
THE DOCTOR'S
RECREATION SERIES
CHARLES WELLS MOULTON
_General Editor_
VOLUME FOUR
[Illustration: _PROF. BILLROTH'S SURGICAL CLYNIC_
_A. F. SELLIGMANN, PINX._
_COPYRIGHT 1892 WM. WOOD & CO. NEW YORK_]
[Illustration: title page]
A Book About
DOCTORS
By
John Cordy Jeaffreson
Author of "The Real Lord Byron," "The Real
Shelley," "A Book About Lawyers,"
etc., etc.
1904
THE SAALFIELD PUBLISHING CO.
NEW YORK AKRON, O. CHICAGO
COPYRIGHT, 1904,
BY
THE SAALFIELD PUBLISHING COMPANY
THE
WERNER COMPANY
AKRON, O.
CONTENTS.
PAGE.
CHAPTER I.
Something about Sticks, and rather less about Wigs 5
CHAPTER II.
Early English Physicians 18
CHAPTER III.
Sir Thomas Browne and Sir Kenelm Digby 38
CHAPTER IV.
Sir Hans Sloane 51
CHAPTER V.
The Apothecaries and Sir Samuel Garth 63
CHAPTER VI.
Quacks 82
CHAPTER VII.
John Radcliffe 111
CHAPTER VIII.
The Doctor as a _bon-vivant_ 144
CHAPTER IX.
Fees 163
CHAPTER X.
Pedagogues turned Doctors 183
CHAPTER XI.
The Generosity and Parsimony of Physicians 202
CHAPTER XII.
Bleeding 225
CHAPTER XIII.
Richard Mead 239
CHAPTER XIV.
Imagination as a Remedial Power 255
CHAPTER XV.
Imagination and Nervous Excitement--Mesmer 280
CHAPTER XVI.
Make way for the Ladies! 287
CHAPTER XVII.
Messenger Monsey 311
CHAPTER XVIII.
Akenside 327
CHAPTER XIX.
Lettsom 335
CHAPTER XX.
A few More Quacks 345
CHAPTER XXI.
St. John Long 356
CHAPTER XXII.
The Quarrels of Physicians 374
CHAPTER XXIII.
The Loves of Physicians 393
CHAPTER XXIV.
Literature and Art 421
CHAPTER XXV.
Number Eleven--a Hospital Story 442
CHAPTER XXVI.
Medical Buildings 462
CHAPTER XXVII.
The Country Medical Man 478
ILLUSTRATIONS.
PAGE
PROF. BILLROTH'S SURGICAL CLYNIC[1]. _Frontispiece_
_From the Original Painting by A. F. Seligmann._
THE FOUNDERS OF THE MEDICAL SOCIETY OF LONDON 228
_From the Original Painting._
AN ACCIDENT[1] 258
_From the Original Painting by Dagnan-Vouveret._
THE ANATOMIST 374
_From the Original Painting by Max._
[1] Original by courtesy of William Wood & Co., New York.
PREFACE.
The writer of this volume has endeavoured to collect, in a readable
and attractive form, the best of those medical Ana that have been
preserved by tradition or literature. In doing so, he has not only
done his best to combine and classify old stories, but also cautiously
to select his materials, so that his work, while affording amusement
to the leisure hours of Doctors learned in their craft, might contain
no line that should render it unfit for the drawing-room table. To
effect this, it has been found necessary to reject many valuable and
characteristic anecdotes--some of them entering too minutely into the
mysteries and technicalities of medicine and surgery, and some being
spiced with a humour ill calculated to please the delicacy of the
nineteenth century.
Much of the contents of this volume has never before been published,
but, after being drawn from a variety of manuscript sources, is now
for the first time submitted to the world. It would be difficult to
enumerate all the persons to whom the writer is indebted for access to
documents, suggestions, critical notes, or memoranda. He cannot,
however, let the present occasion go by without expressing his
gratitude to the College of Physicians, for the prompt urbanity with
which they allowed him to inspect the treasures of their library. To
Dr. Munk, the learned librarian of the College--who for many years, in
the scant leisure allowed him by the urgent demands of an extensive
practice, has found a dignified pastime in antiquarian and biographic
research--the writer's best thanks are due. With a liberality by no
means always found in a student possessed of "special information,"
the Doctor surrendered his precious stores to the use of a comparative
stranger, apparently without even thinking of the value of his gift.
But even more than to the librarian of the College of Physicians the
writer is indebted for assistance to his very kind friend Dr. Diamond,
of Twickenham House--a gentleman who, to all the best qualities of a
complete physician, unites the graces of a scholarly mind, an
enthusiasm for art, and the fascinations of a generous nature.
A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS
CHAPTER I.
SOMETHING ABOUT STICKS, AND RATHER LESS ABOUT WIGS.
Properly treated and fully expanded, this subject of "the stick" would
cover all the races of man in all regions and all ages; indeed, it
would hide every member of the human family. Attention could be called
to the respect accorded in every chapter of the world's history,
sacred and profane, to the _rabdos_--to the fasces of the Roman
lictors, which every school-boy honours (often unconsciously) with an
allusion when he says he will _lick_, or vows he won't be
_licked_,--to the herald's staff of Hermes, the caduceus of Mercury,
the wand of Æsculapius, and the rods of Moses and the contending
sorcerers--to the mystic bundles of nine twigs, in honour of the nine
muses, that Dr. Busby loved to wield, and which many a simple English
parent believes Solomon, in all his glory, recommended as an element
in domestic jurisdiction--to the sacred wands of savage tribes, the
staffs of our constables and sheriffs, and the highly polished gold
sticks and black rods that hover about the anterooms of St. James's or
Portsoken. The rule of thumb has been said to be the government of
this world. And what is this thumb but a short stick, a _sceptre_,
emblematic of a sovereign authority which none dares to dispute? "The
stick," says the Egyptian proverb, "came down from heaven."
The only sticks, however, that we here care to speak about are
physicians' canes, barbers' poles, and the twigs of rue which are
still strewn before the prisoner in the dock of a criminal court. Why
should they be thus strung together?
The physician's cane is a very ancient part of his insignia. It is now
disused, but up to very recent times no doctor of medicine presumed to
pay a professional visit, or even to be seen in public, without this
mystic wand. Long as a footman's stick, smooth and varnished, with a
heavy gold knob or cross-bar at the top, it was an instrument with
which, down to the present century, every prudent aspirant to medical
practice was provided. The celebrated "gold-headed cane" which
Radcliffe, Mead, Askew, Pitcairn and Baillie successively bore is
preserved in the College of Physicians, bearing the arms which those
gentlemen assumed, or were entitled to. In one respect it deviated
from the physician's cane proper. It has a cross-bar almost like a
crook; whereas a physician's wand ought to have a knob at the top.
This knob in olden times was hollow, and contained a vinaigrette,
which the man of science always held to his nose when he approached a
sick person, so that its fumes might protect him from the noxious
exhalations of his patient. We know timid people who, on the same
plan, have their handkerchiefs washed in camphor-water, and bury their
faces in them whenever they pass the corner of a dingy street, or
cross an open drain, or come in contact with an ill-looking man. When
Howard, the philanthropist, visited Exeter, he found that the medical
officer of the county gaol had caused a clause to be inserted in his
agreement with the magistrates, exonerating him from attendance and
services during any outbreak of the gaol fever. Most likely this
gentleman, by books or experience, had been enlightened as to the
inefficacy of the vinaigrette.
But though the doctor, like a soldier skulking from the field of
battle, might with impunity decline visiting the wretched captives,
the judge was forced to do his part of the social duty to them--to sit
in their presence during their trial in a close, fetid court; to
brow-beat them when they presumed to make any declaration of their
innocence beyond a brief "not guilty"; to read them an energetic
homily on the consequences of giving way to corrupt passions and evil
manners; and, finally, to order them their proper apportionments of
whipping, or incarceration, or banishment, or death. Such was the
abominable condition of our prisons, that the poor creatures dragged
from them and placed in the dock often by the noxious effluvia of
their bodies made seasoned criminal lawyers turn pale--partly,
perhaps, through fear, but chiefly through physical discomfort. Then
arose the custom of sprinkling aromatic herbs before the prisoners--so
that if the health of his Lordship and the gentlemen of the long robe
suffered from the tainted atmosphere, at least their senses of smell
might be shocked as little as possible. Then, also, came the
chaplain's bouquet, with which that reverend officer was always
provided when accompanying a criminal to Tyburn. Coke used to go
circuit carrying in his hand an enormous fan furnished with a handle,
in the shape of a goodly stick--the whole forming a weapon of offence
or defence. It is not improbable that the shrewd lawyer caused the end
of this cumbrous instrument to be furnished with a vinaigrette.
So much for the head of the physician's cane. The stick itself was
doubtless a relic of the conjuring paraphernalia with which the
healer, in ignorant and superstitious times, worked upon the
imagination of the credulous. Just as the ? which the doctor affixes
to his prescription is the old astrological sign (ill-drawn) of
Jupiter, so his cane descended to him from Hermes and Mercurius. It
was a relic of old jugglery, and of yet older religion--one of those
baubles which we know well where to find, but which our conservative
tendencies disincline us to sweep away without some grave necessity.
The charming-stick, the magic Æsculapian wand of the Medicine-man,
differed in shape and significance from the pole of the
barber-surgeon. In the "British Apollo," 1703, No. 3, we read:--
"I'd know why he that selleth ale
Hangs out a chequer'd part per pale:
And why a barber at port-hole
Puts forth a parti-coloured pole?"
ANSWER.
"In ancient Rome, when men loved fighting,
And wounds and scars took much delight in,
Man-menders then had noble pay--
Which we call surgeons to this day.
'Twas order'd that a huge long pole,
With basin deck'd, should grace the hole,
To guide the wounded, who unlopt
Could walk, on stumps the other hopt;
But when they ended all their wars,
And men grew out of love with scars.
Their trade decaying, to keep swimming,
They joined the other trade of trimming;
And to their poles, to publish either,
Thus twisted both their trades together."
The principal objection that can be made to this answer is that it
leaves the question unanswered, after making only a very lame attempt
to answer it. Lord Thurlow, in a speech delivered in the House of
Peers on 17th of July, 1797, opposing the surgeons' incorporation
bill, said that, "By a statute still in force, the barbers and
surgeons were each to use a pole. The barbers were to have theirs blue
and white, striped with no other appendage; but the surgeons', which
was the same in other respects, was likewise to have a gallipot and a
red rag, to denote the particular nature of their vocation."
But the reason why the surgeon's pole was adorned with both blue and
red seems to have escaped the Chancellor. The chirurgical pole,
properly tricked, ought to have a line of blue paint, another of red,
and a third of white, winding round its length, in a regular
serpentine progression--the blue representing the venous blood, the
more brilliant colour the arterial, and the white thread being
symbolic of the bandage used in tying up the arm after withdrawing the
ligature. The stick itself is a sign that the operator possesses a
stout staff for his patients to hold, continually tightening and
relaxing their grasp during the operation--accelerating the flow of
the blood by the muscular action of the arm. The phlebotomist's staff
is of great antiquity. It is to be found amongst his properties, in an
illuminated missal of the time of Edward the First, and in an
engraving of the "Comenii Orbis Pictus."
Possibly in ancient times the physician's cane and the surgeon's club
were used more actively. For many centuries fustigation was believed
in as a sovereign remedy for bodily ailment as well as moral failings,
and a beating was prescribed for an ague as frequently as for picking
and stealing. This process Antonius Musa employed to cure Octavius
Augustus of Sciatica. Thomas Campanella believed that it had the same
effect as colocynth administered internally. Galen recommended it as a
means of fattening people. Gordonius prescribed it in certain cases of
nervous irritability--"Si sit juvenis, et non vult obedire,
flagelletur frequenter et fortiter." In some rural districts ignorant
mothers still flog the feet of their children to cure them of
chilblains. And there remains on record a case in which club-tincture
produced excellent results on a young patient to whom Desault gave a
liberal dose of it.
In 1792, when Sir Astley Cooper was in Paris, he attended the lectures
of Desault and Chopart in the Hotel Dieu. On one occasion, during this
part of his student course, Cooper saw a young fellow, of some sixteen
years of age, brought before Desault complaining of paralysis in his
right arm. Suspecting that the boy was only shamming, "Abraham,"
Desault observed, unconcernedly, "Otez votre chapeau."
Forgetting his paralytic story, the boy instantly obeyed, and
uncovered his head.
"Donnez moi un baton!" screamed Desault; and he beat the boy
unmercifully.
"D'ou venez vous?" inquired the operator when the castigation was
brought to a close.
"Faubourg de St. Antoine," was the answer.
"Oui, je le crois," replied Desault, with a shrug--speaking a truth
experience had taught him--"tous les coquins viennent de ce quartier
la."
But enough for the present of the barber-surgeon and his pole.
"Tollite barberum,"--as Bonnel Thornton suggested, when in 1745 (a
year barbarous in more ways than one), the surgeons, on being
disjoined from the barbers, were asking what ought to be their motto.
Next to his cane, the physician's wig was the most important of his
accoutrements. It gave profound learning and wise thought to lads just
out of their teens. As the horse-hair skull-cap gives idle Mr.
Briefless all the acuteness and gravity of aspect which one looks for
in an attorney-general, so the doctor's artificial locks were to him a
crown of honour. One of the Dukes of Holstein, in the eighteenth
century, just missed destruction through being warned not to put on
his head a poisoned wig which a traitorous peruke-maker offered him.
To test the value of the advice given him, the Duke had the wig put
upon the head of its fabricator. Within twelve minutes the man
expired! We have never heard of a physician finding death in a wig;
but a doctor who found the means of life in one is no rare bird in
history.
"Each son of Sol, to make him look more big,
Had on a large, grave, decent, three-tailed wig;
His clothes full-trimmed, with button-holes behind,
Stiff were the skirts, with buckram stoutly lined;
The cloth-cut velvet, or more reverend black,
Full-made, and powder'd half-way down his back;
Large decent cuffs, which near the ground did reach,
With half a dozen buttons fix'd on each.
Grave were their faces--fix'd in solemn state,
These men struck awe; their children carried weight,
In reverend wigs old heads young shoulders bore,
And twenty-five or thirty seemed threescore."
The three-tailed wig was the one worn by Will Atkins, the gout doctor
in Charles the Second's time (a good specialty then!). Will Atkins
lived in the Old Bailey, and had a vast practice. His nostrums, some
of which were composed of _thirty_ different ingredients, were
wonderful--but far less so than his wig, which was combed and frizzled
over each cheek. When Will walked about the town, visiting his
patients, he sometimes carried a cane, but never wore a hat. Such an
article of costume would have disarranged the beautiful locks, or, at
least, have obscured their glory.
"Physic of old her entry made
Beneath th' immense full-bottom's shade;
While the gilt cane, with solemn pride,
To each sagacious nose applied,
Seem'd but a necessary prop
To bear the weight of wig at top."
One of the most magnificent wigs on record was that of Colonel
Dalmahoy, which was celebrated in a song beginning:--
"If you would see a noble wig,
And in that wig a man look big,
To Ludgate Hill repair, my joy,
And gaze on Col'nel Dalmahoy."
On Ludgate Hill, in close proximity to the Hall of the Apothecaries in
Water Lane, the Colonel vended drugs and nostrums of all
sorts--sweetmeats, washes for the complexion, scented oil for the
hair, pomades, love-drops, and charms. Wadd, the humorous collector of
anecdotes relating to his profession, records of him--
"Dalmahoy sold infusions and lotions,
Decoctions, and gargles, and pills;
Electuaries, powders, and potions,
Spermaceti, salts, scammony, squills.
"Horse-aloes, burnt alum, agaric,
Balm, benzoine, blood-stone, and dill;
Castor, camphor, and acid tartaric,
With specifics for every ill.
"But with all his specifics in store,
Death on Dalmahoy one day did pop;
And although he had doctors a score,
Made poor Dalmahoy shut up his shop."
The last silk-coated physician was Henry Revell Reynolds, M. D., one
of the physicians who attended George III. during his long and
melancholy affliction. Though this gentleman came quite down to living
times, he persisted to the end in wearing the costume--of a
well-powdered wig, silk coat, breeches, stockings, buckled shoes,
gold-headed cane, and lace ruffles--with which he commenced his
career. He was the Brummel of the Faculty, and retained his fondness
for delicate apparel to the last. Even in his grave-clothes the
coxcombical tastes of the man exhibited themselves. His very cerements
were of "a good make."
"Here well-dressed Reynolds lies.
As great a beau as ever;
We may perhaps see one as wise,
But sure a smarter never."
Whilst Brocklesby's wig is still bobbing about in the distance, we may
as well tell a good story of him. He was an eccentric man, with many
good points, one of which was his friendship for Dr. Johnson. The
Duchess of Richmond requested Brocklesby to visit her maid, who was so
ill that she could not leave her bed. The physician proceeded
forthwith to Richmond House, in obedience to the command. On arriving
there he was shown up-stairs by the invalid's husband, who held the
post of valet to the Duke. The man was a very intelligent fellow, a
character with whom all visitors to Richmond House conversed freely,
and a vehement politician. In this last characteristic the Doctor
resembled him. Slowly the physician and the valet ascended the
staircase, discussing the fate of parties, and the merits of
ministers. They became excited, and declaiming at the top of their
voices entered the sick room. The valet--forgetful of his marital
duties in the delights of an intellectual contest--poured in a
broadside of sarcasms, ironical inquiries, and red-hot declamation;
the doctor--with true English pluck--returning fire, volley for
volley. The battle lasted for upwards of an hour, when the two
combatants walked down-stairs, and the man of medicine took his
departure. When the doctor arrived at his door, and was stepping from
his carriage, it flashed across his mind that he had not applied his
finger to his patient's pulse, or even asked her how she felt herself!
Previous to Charles II.'s reign physicians were in the habit of
visiting their patients on horse-back, sitting sideways on foot-cloths
like women. Simeon Fox and Dr. Argent were the last Presidents of the
College of Physicians to go their rounds in this undignified manner.
With the "Restoration" came the carriage of the London physician. The
_Lex Talionis_ says, "For there must now be a little coach and two
horses; and, being thus attended, half-a-piece, their usual fee, is
but ill-taken, and popped into their left pocket, and possibly may
cause the patient to send for his worship twice before he will come
again to the hazard of another angel."
The fashion, once commenced, soon prevailed. In Queen Anne's reign, no
physician with the slightest pretensions to practice could manage
without his chariot and four, sometimes even six, horses. In our own
day an equipage of some sort is considered so necessary an appendage
to a medical practitioner, that a physician without a carriage (or a
fly that can pass muster for one) is looked on with suspicion. He is
marked down _mauvais sujet_ in the same list with clergymen without
duty, barristers without chambers, and gentlemen whose Irish tenantry
obstinately refuse to keep them supplied with money. On the whole the
carriage system is a good one. It protects stair carpets from being
soiled with muddy boots (a great thing!), and bears cruelly on needy
aspirants after professional employment (a yet greater thing! and one
that manifestly ought to be the object of all professional
etiquette!). If the early struggles of many fashionable physicians
were fully and courageously written, we should have some heart-rending
stories of the screwing and scraping and shifts by which their first
equipages were maintained. Who hasn't heard of the darling doctor who
taught singing under the moustachioed and bearded guise of an Italian
Count, at a young ladies' school at Clapham, in order that he might
make his daily West-end calls between 3 p. m. and 6 p. m. in a
well-built brougham drawn by a fiery steed from a livery stable? There
was one noted case of a young physician who provided himself with the
means of figuring in a brougham during the May-fair morning, by
condescending to the garb and duties of a flyman during the hours of
darkness. He used the same carriage at both periods of the
four-and-twenty hours, lolling in it by daylight, and sitting on it by
gaslight. The poor fellow forgetting himself on one occasion, so far
as to jump _in_ when he ought to have jumped _on_, or jump _on_ when
he ought to have jumped _in_, he published his delicate secret to an
unkind world.
It is a rash thing for a young man to start his carriage, unless he is
sure of being able to sustain it for a dozen years. To drop it is sure
destruction. We remember an ambitious Phaeton of Hospitals who
astonished the world--not only of his profession, but of all
London--with an equipage fit for an ambassador--the vehicle and the
steeds being obtained, like the arms blazoned on his panels, upon
credit. Six years afterwards he was met by a friend crushing the mud
on the Marylebone pavements, and with a characteristic assurance, that
even adversity was unable to deprive him of, said that his health was
so much deranged that his dear friend, Sir James Clarke, had
prescribed continual walking exercise for him as the only means of
recovering his powers of digestion. His friends--good-natured people,
as friends always are--observed that "it was a pity Sir James hadn't
given him the advice a few years sooner--prevention being better than
cure."
Though physicians began generally to take to carriages in Charles
II.'s reign, it may not be supposed that no doctor of medicine before
that time experienced the motion of a wheeled carriage. In "Stowe's
Survey of London" one may read:--
"In the year 1563, Dr. Langton, a physician, rid in a car,
with a gown of damask, lined with velvet, and a coat of
velvet, and a cap of the same (such, it seems, doctors then
wore), but having a blue hood pinned over his cap; which was
(as it seems) a customary mark of guilt. And so came through
Cheapside on a market-day."
The doctor's offence was one against public morals. He had loved not
wisely--but too well. The same generous weakness has brought learned
doctors, since Langton's day, into extremely ridiculous positions.
The cane, wig, silk coat, stockings, side-saddle, and carriage, of the
old physician have been mentioned. We may not pass over his muff in
silence. That he might have his hands warm and delicate of touch, and
so be able to discriminate to a nicety the qualities of his patient's
arterial pulsations, he made his rounds, in cold weather, holding
before him a large fur muff, in which his fingers and fore-arm were
concealed.