the imitative and the inventive, even in the lighter processes of art,
than when examining the graphic series of illustrations of _The Wandering
Jew_. Nature is represented under all forms--the woods, the desert, the
ocean, caves, meadows, and skies; and these fixed elemental features might
be well reflected by mechanical aids, photographed or reproduced through
chemical and optical means; but the true meaning of each picture consisted
in the ever-present shadow pursuing the Wanderer--the form of the Holy One
bowed under his cross: it glimmered in the water, was stamped on the rock,
outlined in the gnarled forest branches, pencilled in the floating vapour,
reflected in the ice-mirrored lake, with a latent and inevitable yet
unobtrusive and apparently accidental omni-presence, as if wrought into
the texture of nature through the creative anguish of conscience--which
emphatically announced an intelligence far beyond all mechanical art, and
interfused the material with the abstract, the imaginative, and the human,
as only genius can. The same thing is evinced by comparing the best
photographs of architecture, figures, or landscapes with the sketch-book
of a genuine artist; in certain points there will be found a special
intelligence and feeling which transcend the most remarkable imitative
truth. How much of this is suggested, for instance, by the mere catalogue
of an album on the table at a Parisian _soirée_: fleurs de Redonté,
chevaux de Carl Vernet, Bedouins d'Horace, aquarelles de Ciceri, petit
paysages de Géniole, caricatures de Grandville et de Monnier, beaux
brigands de Schnetz--'tous chéfs d'oeuvre au petit pied.'
A portrait of little Fritz drumming, in the Berlin Gallery, Carlyle hails,
in his _Life of Frederick the Great_, as 'one tiny islet of reality amid
the shoreless sea of fantasms, Flaying of Bartholomews, Rape of Europas,'
&c. Napoleon was delighted to remember that his mother reclined on
tapestry representing the heroes of the _Iliad_, when she brought him into
the world.
For how long and with what vividness are certain pictures associated with
localities. Gainsborough's 'Blue Boy,' and Reynolds's 'Strawberry Girl,'
are among the salient retrospective images of the English school at the
Manchester Exhibition. We think of Correggio with Parma, Perugino with
Perugia, Fra Angelico with Florence, Da Vinci's 'Last Supper' and
Guercino's 'Hagar' with Milan, Murillo with Seville, Vandyke with Madrid,
Rubens with Antwerp, Watteau with Paris, and Paul Potter's 'Bull' with the
Hague.
The Dutch school, in a philosophical estimate, is but the compensation
afforded by the romance of art for its deficiency in nature; the element
of the picturesque not found in mountains, forests, and cataracts, the
lowland painters wrought from flowers and firesides; the radiant tulips
and exquisite interiors, the humble but characteristic in life and
manners. To seize upon individuality is the conservative tact of both
painter and poet; whoever does this effectively contributes to the world's
gallery of historical portraits, and keeps before the living the faces,
costume, and actions of bygone races and heroes. Catlin's aboriginal
portraits introduced the American native tribes to Europe; a naturalist
abroad has but to turn over Audubon's portfolio to become intimately
acquainted with every bird whose plumage or song makes beautiful our
woodlands and seashore; the traveller who rests an hour at Perugia may
trace on the walls of a church the original, crude, yet pious expression
which Raphael developed into angelic beauty. Vernet has, by the very
multiplicity of his battle-pieces, signalized on canvas the military
genius of the French nation; the faith which so distinguishes the
fifteenth from the speculation of the eighteenth century is manifest to us
most eloquently in the masterpieces of religious art which yet remain in
peerless beauty to attest the holy convictions that inspired them; and all
that is peculiar in Grecian culture has found no exponent like the statues
of her divinities. Hogarth preceded Crabbe and Dickens in making palpable
the shadows of want, crime, and luxury. The Italian satirist, who endowed
animals with speech and made them represent the absurdities of humanity,
hinted their possible significance less than Landseer who individualized
their most salient traits, or Kaulbach who revealed the brute creation in
the highest intuitive expression. There is a piquant rustic beauty by
Greuze, which embodies and embalms, in its exquisite suggestiveness, the
special claim of naïve brightness and grace that belongs almost
exclusively to French lovable women; and there is a portrait of an
American matronly belle of the days of Washington, by Stuart, which
represents the type of mingled self-reliance and womanly loveliness that
has made the ladies of our Republican court so memorably attractive.
DOCTORS.
'Throw physic to the dogs.'--MACBETH.
'Friend of my life, which did not you prolong,
The world had wanted many an idle song.'--POPE.
In the moving panoramas of cities are to be seen certain vehicles of all
degrees of locomotive beauty and convenience, from the glossy and
silver-knobbed carriage with its prancing grays, to the bacheloric-looking
sulky with its one gaunt horse, in which are seated gentlemen of a learned
and professional aspect, usually wearing spectacles, and always an air of
intense respectability, or of contemplation and seriousness. They
recognize numerous acquaintances as they pass with a peculiar smile and
nod, and are usually accompanied by 'a little man-boy to hold the horse,'
as the French cook in the play defines a _tigre_. These mysterious
personages rejoice in the title of Doctor--once a very distinctive
appellation, but now as common as authorship and travelling. A moralist,
watching them gliding by amid fashionable equipages, crowded omnibuses,
hasty pedestrians, and all the phenomena of life in a metropolis, would
find a striking contrast between the rushing tide around and the hushed
rooms they enter. To how many their visit is the one daily event that
breaks in upon the monotony of illness and confinement; how many eyes
watch them with eager suspense, and listen to their opinion as the fiat
of destiny; how many feverishly expect their coming, shrink from their
polished steel, rejoice in their cheering ministrations, or dread their
long bills! 'The Doctor!'--a word that stirs the extremest moods, despair
and jollity!
There is no profession which depends so much for its efficiency on
personal traits as that of medicine; for the utility of technical
knowledge here is derived from individual judgment, tact, and sympathy. In
other words, the physician has to deal with an unknown element. Between
the specific ailment and the remedy there are peculiarities of
constitution, the influence of circumstances, and the laws of nature to be
considered; so that although the medical adviser may be thoroughly versed
in physiology, the materia medica, and the symptoms of disease, if he
possess not the discrimination, the observant skill, and the reflective
power to apply his learning wisely, it is comparatively unavailing. The
aim of the divine and the attorney, however impeded by obstacles, is
reached by a more direct course; logic, eloquence, and zeal, united to
professional attainment, will insure success in law and divinity; but in
physic, certain other qualities in the man are requisite to give scope to
the professor. Hence we associate a certain originality with the idea of a
doctor; are apt to regard the vocation at the two extremes of superiority
and pretension, and justly estimate the individuals of the class according
to their capacity of insight and their principles of action, rather than
by their mere acquisitions or rank as teachers. The uncertainty of
medicine, as a practical art, thus induces a stronger reliance on
individual endowments than is the case in any other liberal pursuit.
A philosophical history of the art of healing would be not less curious
than suggestive. The absurd theories which checked its progress for
centuries, the secrets hoarded by Egyptian priests, the union of medical
knowledge with ancient systems of philosophy, the epoch of Galen, the
Arabian and Salerno schools, the reformation of Paracelsus, the brilliant
discoveries which, at long intervals, illumined the track of the science,
and the enlightened principles now realized--if fully discussed--would
form an extraordinary chapter in the biography of man. Herein, as with
other vocations, modern division of labour has concentrated professional
aptitudes. 'L' affluence des postulants,' says Balzac, 'a forcé la
médecine a se diviser en catégories; il y a le médecin qui professe, le
médecin politique et le médecin militant et la cinquième divisions, celle
des docteurs qui vendent des remèdes.'
St. Luke and the Good Samaritan are yet the favourite signs of
apothecaries, confirming the original charity of the art; and in the south
of Europe may still be seen over the barbers' shops the effigy of a human
arm spouting blood from an open vein--an indication of the once universal
custom of periodical depletion. It is now acknowledged that diverse
climates require modified treatment of the same disease; that nervous
susceptibility is far greater in one latitude than another, and that
habits of life essentially individualize the constitution. Indeed, the
widest difference exists in the relation of persons to the doctor; some
never see him, and others must have a consultation upon the most trifling
ailment,--so great is the dependence which can be had upon nature, and so
extreme both the faith and the scepticism which exist in regard to
curative science.
Popular literature is full of hits at the profession. 'Le barbier fait
plus de la moitié d' un médecin,' says Molière, who, in _La Malade
Imaginaire_, has so acutely given the current philosophy of the subject by
satirizing the pedantry and charlatanism of the doctors of his day; 'Nous
voyons que, dans la maladie tout le monde a recours aux médecins;--c'est
une marque de la faiblesse humaine et non pas de la vérité de leur art;'
and of all ailments the hardest to cure is 'la maladie des médecins.'
Imagination has been called by a German philosopher 'the mediatrix, the
nurse, the mover of all the several parts of our spiritual organism.' 'I
have the worst luck of any physician under the cope of heaven,' complains
Sancho Panza; 'other doctors kill their patients, and are paid for it too,
and yet they are at no further trouble than scrawling two or three cramp
words for some physical slip-slop, which the apothecaries are at all the
pains to make up.'
It would seem, indeed, as if the advance of science improved medical
practice negatively--that is, by inducing what in politics has been called
a masterly inactivity; and there is no doubt that no small degree of the
success attending Hahnemann's theory is to be attributed to the
comparative abstinence it inculcates in the use of remedial agents. The
fact is a significant one, as indicative of the want of positive science
in the healing art; and the consequent wisdom of leaving to nature, as far
as possible, the restorative process. Indeed, to assist nature is
acknowledged, by just observers, to be the only wise course; and this
brings us to the inference that a good physician is necessarily a
philosopher; it is incumbent on him, of all men, to exercise the inductive
faculty; he must possess good causality, not only to reason justly on
individual cases, but to apply the progress of science to the exigencies
of disease. It is related of Bixio that such was his zeal for science,
having long wished to ascertain whether a man instinctively turns when
wounded in a vital part, asked his adversary in a duel to aim at one, and,
although fatally hurt, exclaimed with ardour, as he involuntarily spun
round--'It is true, they do turn!'
The comparatively slow accumulation of scientific truth in regard to the
treatment of disease, is illustrated by the fact that not until the lapse
of two thousand years after medicine had assumed the rank of a science,
under the auspices of Hippocrates, was the circulation of the blood
discovered--an era in its history. The fiery discussion of the efficacy of
inoculation, and its gradual introduction, is another significant
evidence of the same general truth. But in our own day the rapid and
valuable developments of chemistry have, in a measure, reversed the
picture. Numerous alleviating and curative agents have been discovered;
the gas of poisonous acids is found to eradicate, in many cases, the most
fatal diseases of the eye; heat, more penetrating than can be created by
other means, is eliminated from carbon in an aëriform state, passes
through the cuticle without leaving a mark on its surface, and restores
aching nerves or exhausted vitality. Vegetable and mineral substances are
refined, analyzed, and combined with a skill never before imagined; opium
yields morphine, and Peruvian bark quinine, and all the known salubrious
elements are thus rendered infinitely subservient to the healing art.
Chloroform is one of the most beneficent of these new agents; and has
exorcised the demon of physical pain by a magical charm, without
violating, in judicious hands, the integrity of nature.
There is a secret of curative art in which consists the genius of healing;
it is that union of sympathy with intelligence, and of moral energy with
magnetic gifts, whereby the tides of life are swayed, and one 'can
minister to a mind diseased.' Fortunate is the patient who is attended by
one thus endowed; but such are usually found out of the professional
circle;--they are referees ordained by nature to settle the difficulties
of inferior spirits; the arbiters recognized by instinct who soothe anger,
reconcile doubt, amuse, elevate, and console, by a kind of moral alchemy;
and potent coadjutors are they to the material aids of merely technical
physicians. 'Who dare say,' asks Rénan, in allusion to the calming and
purifying influence of Jesus, 'that in many cases, and apart from injuries
of a dreaded character, the contact of an exquisite person is not worth
all the resources of pharmacy?' 'It was agony to me,' wrote Hahnemann, 'to
walk in darkness, with no other light than could be derived from books.'
One of his opponents, from this confession, infers the fallacy of his
system; 'the conviction,' he observes, 'is irresistibly forced upon us
that he was not a _born physician_.' If our ancestors were less
enlightened in regard to _hygiène_, and if their physicians were less
scrupulous in tampering with the functions of nature, they had one signal
advantage over us in escaping the inhuman comments, made after every fatal
issue, on the practice and the treatment adopted--no matter with how much
conscientious intelligence. We not only suffer the pangs of bereavement,
but the reproaches of devotees of each school of medicine and of rival
doctors, of having by an unwise choice sacrificed the life for which we
would have cheerfully resigned our own! Somewhat of this occult healing
force might have been read in the serene countenance of Dr. Physic, of
Philadelphia; it predominated in the benevolent founder of the Insane
Asylum of Palermo, who learned from an attack of mental disorder how to
feel for, and minister to, those thus afflicted. The late Preissnitz, of
Graefenberg, seems to have enjoyed the gift which is as truly Nature's
indication of an aptitude for the art, as a sense of beauty in the poet.
But this principle is 'caviare to the general.'
Medicine has lost much of its inherent dignity by the same element, in
modern times, that has degraded art, letters, and society--the spirit of
trade. This agency encourages motives, justifies means, and leads to ends
wholly at variance with high tone and with truth. The gentleman, the
philosopher, the man of honour, and with them that keystone in the arch of
character--self-respect, are wholly compromised in the process of sinking
a liberal art into a common trade. In the economy of modern society,
however, the physician has acquired a new influence; he has gained upon
the monopoly of the priest: for while the spirit of inquiry, by trenching
on the mysterious prerogatives which superstition once accorded, has
retrenched the latter's functions, the same agency, by extending the
domain of science and rendering its claims popular, has enlarged the
sphere of the other profession. To an extent, therefore, never before
known, the doctor fills the office of confessor; his visits yield
agreeable excitement to women with whom he gossips and sympathizes;
admitted by the very exigency of the case to entire confidence, often
revered as a counsellor and friend, as well as relied on as a healer, not
infrequently he becomes the oracle of a household. Privileges like these,
when used with benevolence and integrity, are doubtless honourable to both
parties, and become occasions for the exercise of the noblest service and
the highest sentiments of our nature; while, on the other hand, they are
liable to the grossest abuse, where elevation of character and gentlemanly
instincts are wanting. Accordingly there has sprung into existence, in our
day, a personage best designated as the medical Jesuit; whose real
vocation, as well as the process by which he acquires supremacy, fully
justifies the appellation. Like his religious prototype, he operates
through the female branches, who, in their turn, control the heads of
families; and the extent to which the domestic arrangements, the social
relations, and even the opinions of individuals are thus regulated, is
truly surprising. 'Women,' says Mrs. Jameson, 'are inclined to fall in
love with priests and physicians, because of the help and comfort they
derive from both in perilous moral and physical maladies. They believe in
the presence of real pity, real sympathy, where the look and tone of each
have become merely habitual and conventional, I may say professional.' Yet
a popular novelist, in his ideal portrait of the physician, justly claims
superiority to impulse and casual sympathy as an essential requisite to
success. 'He must enter the room a calm intelligencer. He is disabled for
his mission if he suffer aught to obscure the keen glance of his
science.'[12]
The natural history of the doctor has not yet been written, but the
classes are easily nomenclated; we have all known the humorous, the
urbane, the oracular, the facetious, the brusque, the elegant, the shrewd,
the exquisite, the burly, the bold, and the fastidious; and the character
of people may be inferred by their choice of each species. Those in whom
taste predominates over intellect, will select a physician, for his
agreeable personal qualities; while such as value essential traits, will
compromise with the roughest exterior and the least flattering address for
the sake of genuine skill and a vigorous and honest mind. As a general
rule, in large cities, vanity seems to rule the selection; and it is a
lamentable view of human nature to see the blind preference given to
plausible but shallow men, whose smooth tongues or gallant air win them
suffrages denied to good sense and candid intercourse. The most detestable
genus is that we have described under the name of medical Jesuits; next in
annoyance are the precisians; the most harmless of the weaker order are
the gossips; and there is often little to choose in point of risk to 'the
house of life' between the very timid and the dare-devils; in a great
exigency the former, and in an ordinary case the latter are equally to be
shunned. In the _Horæ Subsecivæ_ of Dr. John Brown, we find some apt and
needed counsel to the aspirants for medical success:--'The young doctor
must have for his main faculty, _sense_; but all will not do if Genius is
not there; such a special therapeutic gift had Hippocrates, Sydenham,
Pott, Purcell, John Hunter, Delpech, Dupuytren, Kellie, Cheyne, Baillie,
and Abercrombie. Moreover, let me tell you, my young doctor friends, that
a cheerful face and step and neckcloth and buttonhole, and an occasional
hearty and kindly joke, and the power of executing and setting a-going a
good laugh, are stock in our trade not to be despised.' Brillat Savarin
declares, doctors easily become gourmands because so well received.
In Paris, Edinburgh, and Philadelphia, all the world over, the medical
student is an exceptional character. Their pranks are patent: the rough
ones like to kick up rows, and the more quiet are unique at practical
jokes. Bob Sawyer is a typical hero. If, like the portrait-painter,
doctors are often the playthings of fortune in cities, where the arbitrary
whims of fashion decree success; in the country their true worth is more
apt to find appreciation, and the individualities of character having free
scope, quite original children of Apollo are the result. The name of
Hopkins is still memorable in the region where he practised, as one of the
literary clique of which Humphries, Dwight, and Barlow were members. Dr.
Osborn, of Sandwich, Mass., wrote the popular whaling-song yet in vogue
among Nantucketers. Dr. Holyoke, of Salem, is renowned as a beautiful
instance of longevity; and the wit of Dr. Spring was proverbial in Boston.
The best example of a medical philosopher, in our annals, is that of Dr.
Rush, of Philadelphia; he reformed the system of practice; first treated
yellow fever successfully, made climate a special study, and, like Burke,
laid every one he encountered under contribution for facts. His life of
seventy years was passed in ardent investigation. It is remarkable that
the first martyr to American liberty was a physician; and, before he fell,
Warren eloquently avowed his principles, like Körner in Germany, rousing
the spirit of his countrymen, and then consecrating his sentiments with
his blood. Boylston, the ancestral portraits of whose family are among the
best of Copley's American works, nearly fell a victim to public
indignation for his zealous and intelligent advocacy of inoculation, and
natural science owes a debt to Barton, Morton, and De Kay, which is
acknowledged both at home and abroad. A French doctor has noted the
historical importance of his _confrères_, and tells us Hamond was Racine's
master, Lestocq helped to elevate Catharine to the Russian throne, Haller
was a poet and romancer, Cuvier was the greatest naturalist of his age,
and Murat was a doctor. French _médecins_ have figured in the Chamber and
on the Boulevards.