A Book about Doctors Part 1

A Book about Doctors.

by John Cordy Jeaffreson.

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 cla.s.sify old stories, but also cautiously to select his materials, so that his work, while affording amus.e.m.e.nt 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 ma.n.u.script 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 doc.u.ments, suggestions, critical notes, or memoranda. He cannot, however, let the present occasion go by without expressing his grat.i.tude 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 a.s.sistance 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 ?sculapius, 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 k.n.o.b 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 a.s.sumed, or were ent.i.tled 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 k.n.o.b at the top.

This k.n.o.b 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 pa.s.s 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 pa.s.sions 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 Lords.h.i.+p 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. c.o.ke 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 c.u.mbrous 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 superst.i.tious 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 ?sculapian 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 n.o.ble 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 tr.i.m.m.i.n.g; And to their poles, to publish either, Thus twisted both their trades together."

The princ.i.p.al 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 fort.i.ter." 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 b.u.t.ton-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 b.u.t.tons 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 n.o.ble 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 c.o.xcombical 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 friends.h.i.+p for Dr. Johnson. The d.u.c.h.ess 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!