THE DOCTOR AS A BON-VIVANT.
"What must I do, sir!" inquired an indolent bon-vivant of Abernethy.
"Live on sixpence a day, and earn it, sir," was the stern answer.
Gabriel Fallopius, who has given his name to a structure with which
anatomists are familiar, gave the same reproof in a more delicate
manner. With a smile he replied in the words of Terence,
"Otio abundas Antipho,"--"Sir, you're as lazy as Hall's dog."
But, though medical practitioners have dealt in sayings like these, to
do them bare justice, it must be admitted that their preaching has
generally been contradicted by the practice. When medicine remained
very much in the hands of the ladies, the composition of remedies, and
the making of dinners, went on in the same apartment. Indeed hunger
and thirst were but two out of a list of diseases that were ministered
to by the attendants round a kitchen table. The same book held the
receipts for dishes and the recipes for electuaries. In many an old
hall of England the manual still remains from which three centuries
ago the lady of the house learned to dress a boar's head or cure a
cold. Most physicians would now disdain to give dietetic instruction
to a patient beyond the most general directions; but there are cases
where, even in these days, they stoop to do so, with advantage to
themselves and their patients.
"I have ordered twelve dinners this morning," a cheery little doctor
said to the writer of these pages, on the white cliffs of a well-known
sea-side town.
"Indeed--I did not know that was your business."
"But it is. A host of rich old invalids come down here to be
medicinally treated. They can't be happy without good living, and yet
are so ignorant of the science and art of eating, that they don't know
how to distinguish between a luxurious and pernicious diet, and a
luxurious and wholesome one. They flock to the 'Duke's Hotel,' and I
always tell the landlord what they are to have. Each dinner costs
three or four guineas. They'd grudge them, and their consciences would
be uneasy at spending so much money, if they ordered their dinners
themselves. But when they regard the fare as medicine recommended by
the doctor, there is no drawback to their enjoyment of it. Their
confidence in me is unbounded."
The bottle and the board were once the doctor's two favourite
companions. More than one eminent physician died in testifying his
affection for them. In the days of tippling they were the most
persevering of tavern-haunters. No wonder that some of them were as
fat as Daniel Lambert, and that even more died sudden deaths from
apoplexy. The obesity of Dr. Stafford was celebrated in an epitaph:--
"Take heed, O good traveller, and do not tread hard,
For here lies Dr. Stafford in all this churchyard."
Dr. Beddoes was so stout that the Clifton ladies used to call him
their "walking feather-bed."
Dr. Flemyng weighed twenty stone and eleven pounds, till he reduced
his weight by abstinence from the delicacies of the table, and by
taking a quarter of an ounce of common Castile soap every night.
Dr. Cheyne's weight was thirty-two stone, till he cured himself by
persevering in a temperate diet. Laughing at two unwieldly noblemen
whose corpulence was the favourite jest of all the wits in the court,
Louis XV. said to one of them, "I suppose you take little or no
exercise."
"Your Majesty will pardon me," replied the bulky duke, "for I
generally walk two or three times round my cousin every morning."
Sir Theodore Mayerne, who, though he was the most eminent physician of
his time, did not disdain to write "Excellent and Well-Approved
Receipts in Cookery, with the best way of Preserving," was killed by
tavern wine. He died, after returning from supper in a Strand hotel;
his immediate friends attributing his unexpected death to the quality
of the beverage, but others, less charitable, setting it down to the
quantity.
Not many years ago, about a score surgeons were dining together at a
tavern, when, about five minutes after some very "particular port" had
been sent round for the first time, they all fell back in their
chairs, afflicted in various degrees with sickness, vertigo, and
spasm. A more pleasant sight for the waiters can hardly be conceived.
One after one the gentlemen were conveyed to beds or sofas.
Unfortunately for the startling effect which the story would otherwise
have produced, they none of them expired. The next day they remembered
that, instead of relishing the "particular port," they had detected a
very unpleasant smack in it. The black bottles were demanded from the
trembling landlord, when chemical analysis soon discovered that they
had been previously used for fly-poison, and had not been properly
cleansed. A fine old crust of such a kind is little to be desired.
It would perhaps have been well had old Butler (mentioned elsewhere in
these volumes) met with a similar mishap, if it had only made him a
less obstinate frequenter of beer-shops. He loved tobacco, deeming it
"A physician
Good both for sound and sickly;
'Tis a hot perfume
That expels cold Rheume,
And makes it flow down quickly."
It is on record that he made one of his patients smoke twenty-five
pipes at a sitting. But fond though he was of tobacco, he was yet
fonder of beer. He invented a drink called "Butler's Ale," afterwards
sold at the Butler's Head, in Mason's Alley, Basinghall Street.
Indeed, he was a sad old scamp. Nightly he would go to the tavern, and
drink deeply for hours, till his maid-servant, old Nell, came between
nine and ten o'clock and _fetched_ him home, scolding him all the way
for being such a sot. But though Butler liked ale and wine for
himself, he thought highly of water for other people. When he occupied
rooms in the Savoy, looking over the Thames, a gentleman afflicted
with an ague came to consult him. Butler tipped the wink to his
servants, who flung the sick man, in the twinkling of an eye, slap out
of the window into the river. We are asked to believe that "the
surprise absolutely cured" the patient of his malady.
The physicians of Charles the Second's day were jolly fellows. They
made deep drinking and intrigue part of their profession as well as of
their practice. Their books contain arguments in favour of indulgence,
which their passions suggested and the taste of the times approved.
Tobias Whitaker and John Archer, both physicians in ordinary to the
merry monarch, were representative men of their class. Whitaker, a
Norfolk man, practised with success at Norwich before coming up to
London. He published a discourse upon waters, that proved him very
ignorant on the subject; and a treatise on the properties of wine,
that is a much better testimony to the soundness of his understanding.
Prefixed to his "Elenchus of opinions on Small-Pox," is a portrait
that represents him as a well-looking fellow. That he was a sincere
and discerning worshipper of Bacchus, is shown by his "Tree of Humane
Life, or the Bloud of the Grape. Proving the possibilitie of
maintaining humane life from infancy to extreame old age without any
sicknesse by the use of Wine." In this work (sold, by the way, in the
author's shop, Pope's Head Alley) we read of wine,--"This is the
phisick that doth not dull, but sets a true edge upon nature, after
operation leaveth no venomous contact. Sure I am this was ancient
phisick, else what meant Avicenna, Rhasis, and Averroes, to move the
body twice every month with the same; as it is familiar to Nature, so
they used it familiarly. As for my own experience, though I have not
lived yet so long as to love excesse, yet have I seene such powerful
effects, both on my selfe and others, as if I could render no other
reason, they were enough to persuade me of its excellencie, seeing
extenuate withered bodies by it caused to be faire, fresh, plumpe, and
fat, old and infirme to be young and sound, when as water or
small-beer drinkers looke like apes rather than men."
John Archer, the author of "Every Man his own Doctor," and "Secrets
Disclosed," was an advocate of generous diet and enlightened
sensuality. His place of business was "a chamber in a Sadler's howse
over against the Black Horse nigh Charing-cross," where his hours of
attendance for some years were from 11 A. M. to 5 P. M. each day. On
setting up a house at Knightsbridge, where he resided in great style,
he shortened the number of hours daily passed in London. In 1684 he
announced in one of his works--"For these and other Directions you may
send to the Author, at his chamber against the _Mews_ by
Charing-cross, who is certainly there from twelve to four, at other
times at his house at Knightsbridge, being a mile from Charing-cross,
where is good air for cure of consumptions, melancholy, and other
infirmities." He had also a business established in Winchester Street,
near Gresham College, next door to the _Fleece Tavern_. Indeed,
physician-in-ordinary to the King though he was, he did not think it
beneath him to keep a number of apothecaries' shops, and, like
Whitaker, to live by the sale of drugs as well as fees. His cordial
dyet drink was advertised as costing 2_s._ 6_d._ per quart; for a box
containing 30 morbus pills, the charge was 5_s._; 40 corroborating
pills were to be had for the same sum. Like Dr. Everard, he
recommended his patients to smoke, saying that "tobacco smoke purified
the air from infectious malignancy by its fragrancy, sweetened the
breath, strengthened the brain and memory, and revived the sight to
admiration." He sold tobacco, of a superior quality to the ordinary
article of commerce, at 2_s._ and 1_s._ an ounce. "The order of taking
it is like other tobacco at any time; its virtues may be perceived by
taking one pipe, after which you will spit more, and your mouth will
be dryer than after common tobacco, which you may moisten by drinking
any warm drink, as coffee, &c., or with sugar candy, liquorish, or a
raisin, and you will find yourself much refreshed."
Whilst Whitaker and Archer were advising men to smoke and drink,
another physician of the Court was inventing a stomach-brush, in some
respects much like the bottle-brush with which fly-poison ought to be
taken from the interior of black bottles before wine is committed to
them. This instrument was pushed down the gullet, and then poked about
and turned round, much in the same way as a chimney-sweeper's brush is
handled by a dexterous operator on soot. It was recommended that
gentlemen should thus sweep out their insides not oftener than once a
week, but not less frequently than once a month. The curious may find
not only a detailed description but engraved likeness of this
remarkable stomach-brush in the _Gentleman's Magazine_, vol. xx., for
the year 1750.
It would be unfair to take leave of Dr. Archer without mentioning his
three inventions, on which he justly prided himself not a little. He
constructed a hot steam-bath, an oven "which doth with a small faggot
bake a good quantity of anything," and "a compleat charriot that shall
with any ordinary horse run swift with four or five people within, and
there is place for more without, all which one horse can as easily
draw as two horses." In these days of vapour baths, bachelors'
kettles, and broughams, surely Dr. Archer ought to have a statue by
the side of Jenner in Trafalgar Square.
The doctors of Anne's time were of even looser morals than their
immediate predecessors. In taverns, over wine, they received patients
and apothecaries. It became fashionable (a fashion that has lasted
down to the present day) for a physician to scratch down his
prescriptions illegibly; the mode, in all probability, arising from
the fact that a doctor's hand was usually too unsteady to write
distinctly.
Freind continually visited his patients in a state of intoxication. To
one lady of high rank he came in such a state of confusion that when
in her room he could only grumble to himself, "Drunk--drunk--drunk, by
God!" Fortunately the fair patient was suffering from the same malady
as her doctor, who (as she learnt from her maid on returning to
consciousness) had made the above bluff comment on _her_ case, and
then had gone away. The next day, Freind was sitting in a penitent
state over his tea, debating what apology he should offer to his
aristocratic patient, when he was relieved from his perplexity by the
arrival of a note from the lady herself enclosing a handsome fee,
imploring her dear Dr. Freind to keep her secret, and begging him to
visit her during the course of the day.
On another occasion Freind wrote a prescription for a member of an
important family, when his faculties were so evidently beyond his
control that Mead was sent for. On arriving, Mead, with a
characteristic delicacy towards his professional friend, took up the
tipsy man's prescription, and having looked at it, said, "'Pon my
honour, Dr. Freind can write a better prescription when drunk than I
can when sober."
Gibbons--the "Nurse Gibbons" of our old friend Radcliffe--was a deep
drinker, disgusting, by the grossness of his debaucheries, the polite
and epicurean Garth. But Gibbons did something for English
dinner-tables worth remembering. He brought into domestic use the
mahogany with which we have so many pleasant associations. His
brother, a West Indian Captain, brought over some of the wood as
ballast, thinking it might possibly turn to use. At first the
carpenters, in a truly conservative spirit, refused to have anything
to do with the "new wood," saying it was too hard for their tools. Dr.
Gibbons, however, had first a candle-box and then a bureau made for
Mrs. Gibbons out of the condemned material. The bureau so pleased his
friends, amongst whom was the Duchess of Buckingham, that her Grace
ordered a similar piece of furniture, and introduced the wood into
high life, where it quickly became the fashion.
Of Radcliffe's drunkenness mention is made elsewhere. As an eater, he
was a _gourmand_, not a _gourmet_. When Prince Eugene of Savoy came
over to England on a diplomatic mission, his nephew, the Chevalier de
Soissons, fell into the fashion of the town, roaming it at night in
search of frays--a roaring, swaggering mohock. The sprightly
Chevalier took it into his head that it would be a pleasant thing to
thrash a watchman; so he squared up to one, and threatened to kill
him. Instead of succumbing, the watchman returned his assailant's
blows, and gave him an awful thrashing. The next day, what with the
mauling he had undergone, and what with _delirium tremens_, the merry
roisterer was declared by his physician, Sieur Swartenburgh, to be in
a dying state. Radcliffe was called in, and acting on his almost
invariable rule, told Prince Eugene that the young man must die,
_because_ Swartenburgh had maltreated him. The prophecy was true, if
the criticism was not. The Chevalier died, and was buried amongst the
Ormond family in Westminster Abbey--it being given out to the public
that he had died of small-pox.
Prince Eugene conceived a strong liking for Radcliffe, and dined with
him at the Doctor's residence. The dinner Radcliffe put before his
guest is expressive of the coarseness both of the times and the man.
On the table the only viands were barons of beef, jiggets of mutton,
legs of pork, and such other ponderous masses of butcher's stuff,
which no one can look at without discomfort, when the first edge has
been taken off the appetite. Prince Eugene expressed himself delighted
with "the food and liquors!"
George Fordyce, like Radcliffe, was fond of substantial fare. For more
than twenty years he dined daily at Dolly's Chop-house. The dinner he
there consumed was his only meal during the four-and-twenty hours, but
its bulk would have kept a boa-constrictor happy for a twelvemonth.
Four o'clock was the hour at which the repast commenced, when,
punctual to a minute, the Doctor seated himself at a table specially
reserved for him, and adorned with a silver tankard of strong ale, a
bottle of port-wine, and a measure containing a quarter of a pint of
brandy. Before the dinner was first put on, he had one light dish of a
broiled fowl, or a few whitings. Having leisurely devoured this plate,
the doctor took one glass of brandy, and asked for his steak. The
steak was always a prime one, weighing one pound and a half. When the
man of science had eaten the whole of it, he took the rest of his
brandy, then drank his tankard of heady ale, and, lastly, sipped down
his bottle of port. Having brought his intellects, up or down, to the
standard of his pupils, he rose and walked down to his house in Essex
Street to give his six o'clock lecture on Chemistry.
Dr. Beauford was another of the eighteenth-century physicians who
thought temperance a vice that hadn't even the recommendation of
transient pleasure. A Jacobite of the most enthusiastic sort, he was
not less than Freind a favourite with the aristocracy who countenanced
the Stuart faction. As he was known to be very intimate with Lord
Barrymore, the Doctor was summoned, in 1745, to appear before the
Privy-Council, and answer the questions of the custodians of his
Majesty's safety and honour.
"You know Lord Barrymore?" said one of the Lords of Council.
"Intimately--most intimately,"--was the answer.
"You are continually with him?"
"We dine together almost daily when his Lordship is in town."
"What do you talk about?"
"Eating and drinking."
"And what else?"
"Oh, my lord, we never talk of anything except eating and
drinking--drinking and eating."
A good deal of treasonable sentiment might have been exchanged in
these discussions of eating and drinking. "God send this _crum-well
down_!" was the ordinary toast of the Cavalier during the glorious
Protectorate of Oliver. And long afterwards, English gentlemen of
Jacobite sympathies, drinking "to the King," before they raised the
glass to their lips, put it over the water-bottle, to indicate where
the King was whose prosperity they pledged.
At the tavern in Finch Lane, where Beauford received the apothecaries
who followed him, he drank freely, but never was known to give a glass
from his bottle to one of his clients. In this respect he resembled
Dr. Gaskin of Plymouth, a physician in fine practice in Devonshire at
the close of the last century, who once said to a young beginner in
his profession, "Young man, when you get a fee, don't give fifteen
shillings of it back to your patient in beef and port-wine."
Contemporary with Beauford was Dr. Barrowby--wit, scholar, political
partisan, and toper. Barrowby was the hero of an oft-told tale,
recently attributed in the newspapers to Abernethy. When canvassing
for a place on the staff of St. Bartholomew's Hospital, Barrowby
entered the shop of one of the governors, a grocer on Snow-hill, to
solicit his influence and vote. The tradesman, bursting with
importance, and anticipating the pleasure of getting a very low bow
from a gentleman, strutted up the shop, and, with a mixture of
insolent patronage and insulting familiarity, cried, "Well, friend,
and what is your business?"
Barrowby paused for a minute, cut him right through with the glance of
his eye, and then said, quietly and slowly, "I want a pound of plums."
Confused and blushing, the grocer did up the plums. Barrowby put them
in his pocket, and went away without asking the fellow for his vote.
A good political story is told of Barrowby, the incident of which
occurred in 1749, eleven years after his translation of Astruc's
"Treatise" appeared. Lord Trentham (afterwards Lord Gower) and Sir
George Vandeput were contesting the election for Westminster.
Barrowby, a vehement supporter of the latter, was then in attendance
on the notorious Joe Weatherby, master of the "Ben Jonson's Head," in
Russell Street, who lay in a perilous state, emaciated by nervous
fever. Mrs. Weatherby was deeply afflicted at her husband's condition,
because it rendered him unable to vote for Lord Trentham. Towards the
close of the polling days the Doctor, calling one day on his patient,
to his great astonishment found him up, and almost dressed by the
nurse and her assistants.
"Hey-day! what's the cause of this?" exclaims Barrowby. "Why are you
up without my leave?"
"Dear Doctor," says Joe, in a broken voice, "I am going to poll."
"To poll!" roars Barrowby, supposing the man to hold his wife's
political opinions, "you mean going to the devil! Get to bed, man, the
cold air will kill you. If you don't get into bed instantly you'll be
dead before the day is out."
"I'll do as you bid me, doctor," was the reluctant answer. "But as my
wife was away for the morning, I thought I could get as far as Covent
Garden Church, and vote for Sir George Vandeput."
"How, Joe, for Sir George?"
"Oh, yes, sir, I don't go with my wife. I am a Sir George's man."
Barrowby was struck by a sudden change for the better in the man's
appearance, and said, "Wait a minute, nurse. Don't pull off his
stockings. Let me feel his pulse. Humph--a good firm stroke! You took
the pills I ordered you?"
"Yes, sir, but they made me feel very ill."
"Ay, so much the better; that's what I wished. Nurse, how did he
sleep?"
"Charmingly, sir."
"Well, Joe," said Barrowby, after a few seconds' consideration, "if
you are bent on going to this election, your mind ought to be set at
rest. It's a fine sunny day, and a ride will very likely do you good.
So, bedad, I'll take you with me in my chariot."
Delighted with his doctor's urbanity, Weatherby was taken off in the
carriage to Covent Garden, recorded his vote for Sir George Vandeput,
was brought back in the same vehicle, and died _two_ hours afterwards,
amidst the reproaches of his wife and her friends of the Court party.
Charles the Second was so impressed with the power of the Medical
Faculty in influencing the various intrigues of political parties,
that he averred that Dr. Lower, Nell Gwynn's physician, did more
mischief than a troop of horse. But Barrowby was prevented, by the
intrusion of death, from rendering effectual service to his party.
Called away from a dinner-table, where he was drinking deeply and
laughing much, to see a patient, he got into his carriage, and was
driven off. When the footman opened the door, on arriving at the house
of sickness, he found his master dead. A fit of apoplexy had struck
him down, whilst he was still a young man, and just as he was
ascending to the highest rank of his profession.
John Sheldon was somewhat addicted to the pleasures of the table. On
one occasion, however, he had to make a journey fasting. The son of a
John Sheldon, an apothecary who carried on business in the Tottenham
Court Road, a few doors from the Black Horse Yard, Sheldon conceived
in early life a strong love for mechanics. At Harrow he was birched
for making a boat and floating it. In after life he had a notable
scheme for taking whales with poisoned harpoons; and, to test its
merit, actually made a voyage to Greenland. He was moreover the first
Englishman to make an ascent in a balloon. He went with Blanchard, and
had taken his place in the car, when the aeronaut, seeing that his
machine was too heavily weighted, begged him to get out.
"If you are my friend, you will alight. My fame, my all, depends on
success," exclaimed Blanchard.
"I won't," bluntly answered Sheldon, as the balloon manifested
symptoms of rising.
In a furious passion, the little air-traveller exclaimed, "Then I
starve you! Point du chicken, by Gar, you shall have no chicken." So
saying, he flung the hamper of provisions out of the car, and, thus
lightened, the balloon went up.
Abernethy is said to have reproved an over-fed alderman for his
excesses at table in the following manner. The civic footman was
ordered to put a large bowl under the sideboard, and of whatever he
served his master with to throw the same quantity into the bowl as he
put on the gourmand's plate. After the repast was at an end, the sated
feaster was requested to look into the bowl at a nauseous mess of mock
turtle, turbot, roast-beef, turkey, sausages, cakes, wines, ale,
fruits, cheese.
Sir Richard Jebb showed little favour to the digestion thinking it was
made to be used--not nursed. Habitually more rough and harsh than
Abernethy in his most surly moods, Jebb offended many of his patients.
"That's _my_ way," said he to a noble invalid, astonished at his
rudeness. "Then," answered the sick man, pointing to the door, "I beg
you'll make that your way."
To all questions about diet Jebb would respond tetchily or carelessly.
"Pray, Sir Richard, may I eat a muffin?" asked a lady.
"Yes, madam, 'tis the _best_ thing you can take."
"Oh, dear! Sir Richard, I am glad of that. The other day you said it
was the worst thing in the world for me."
"Good, madam, I said so last Tuesday. This isn't a Tuesday--is it?"
To another lady who asked what she might eat he said contemptuously,
"Boiled turnips."
"Boiled turnips!" was the answer; "you forget, Sir Richard--I told you
I could not bear boiled turnips."
"Then, madam," answered Sir Richard, sternly, as if his sense of the
moral fitness of things was offended, "you must have a d----d vitiated
appetite."
Sir Richard's best set of dietetic directions consisted of the
following negative advice, given to an old gentleman who put the
everlasting question, "What may I eat?" "My directions, sir, are
simple. You must not eat the poker, shovel, or tongs, for they are
hard of digestion; nor the bellows; but anything else you please."
Even to the King, Sir Richard was plain-spoken. George the Third
lamented to him the restless spirit of his cousin, Dr. John Jebb, the
dissenting minister. "And please your Majesty," was the answer, "if my
cousin were in heaven he would be a reformer."
Dr. Babington used to tell a story of an Irish gentleman, for whom he
prescribed an emetic, saying, "My dear doctor, it is of no use your
giving me an emetic. I tried it twice in Dublin, and it would not stay
on my stomach either time." Jebb's stomach would have gone on
tranquilly, even when entertaining an emetic.
Jebb, with all his bluntness, was a mean lover of the atmosphere of
the Court. His income was subject to great fluctuations, as the whims
of his fashionable employers ran for or against him. Sir Edward
Wilmont's receipts sank from £3000 to £300, in consequence of his
having lost two ladies of quality at the Court. Jebb's revenue never
varied so much as this, but the £15,000 (the greatest sum he ever made
in one year) often fell off by thousands. This fact didn't tend to
lessen his mortification at the loss of a great patient. When George
the Third dismissed him, and took Sir George Baker in his place, he
nearly died of chagrin. And when he was recalled to attend the royal
family in the measles, he nearly died of delight. This ruling passion
exhibited itself strongly in death. When he was on his death-bed, the
Queen, by the hand of a German lady, wrote to inquire after his
condition. So elated was the poor man with this act of royal
benignity, that he grasped the letter, and never let go his hold of it
till the breath of life quitted his attenuated body.
This chapter has been for the most part on the feasting of physicians.
We'll conclude it with a few words on their fasts. In the house of a
Strand grocer there used to be a scientific club, of which the
principal members were--W. Heberden, M.D., J. Turton, M.D., G. Baker,
M.D., Sir John Pringle, Sir William Watson, and Lord C. Cavendish who
officiated as president. Each member paid sixpence per evening for the
use of the grocer's dining-room. The club took in one newspaper, and
the only refreshment allowed to be taken at the place of meeting
was--water.
The most abstemious of eminent physicians was Sir Hans Sloane, the
president of the Royal Society and of the College of Physicians, and
(in a certain sense) the founder of the British Museum. A love of
money made him a hater of all good things, except money and his
museum. He gave up his winter soirées in Bloomsbury Square, in order
to save his tea and bread and butter. At one of these scientific
entertainments Handel offended the scientific knight deeply by laying
a muffin on one of his books. "To be sure it was a gareless trick,"
said the composer, when telling the story, "bud it tid no monsdrous
mischief; pode it but the old poog-vorm treadfully oud of sorts. I
offered my best apologies, but the old miser would not have done with
it. If it had been a biscuit, it would not have mattered; but muffin
and pudder. And I said, _Ah, mine Gotd, that is the rub!--it is the
pudder!_ Now, mine worthy friend, Sir Hans Sloane, you have a nodable
excuse, you may save your doast and pudder, and lay it to that
unfeeling gormandizing German; and den I knows it will add something
to your life by sparing your _burse_."
The eccentric Dr. Glyn of Cambridge, rarely dined, but used to satisfy
his hunger at chance times by cutting slices off a cold joint (a
constant ornament of the side-table in his study), and eating them
while standing. To eat such a dinner in such an attitude would be to
fare little better than the ascetic physician who used twice a week to
dine off two Abernethy biscuits, consumed as he walked at the pace of
four miles an hour. However wholesome they may be, the hard biscuits,
known as Abernethies (but in the construction of which, by-the-by,
Abernethy was no more concerned than were Wellington and Blucher in
making the boots that bear their names), are not convivial cates,
though one would rather have to consume them than the calomel
sandwiches which Dr. Curry (popularly called Dr. Calomel Curry) used
to give his patients.