A Book about Doctors Part 15

Burke's pun on Brocklesby's name is a good instance of the elaborate ingenuity with which the great Whig orator adorned his conversation and his speeches. Pre-eminent amongst the advertising quacks of the day was Dr. Rock. It was therefore natural that Brocklesby should express some surprise at being accosted by Burke as Dr. Rock, a t.i.tle at once infamous and ridiculous. "Don't be offended. Your name is Rock," said Burke, with a laugh; "I'll prove it algebraically: _Brock--b = Rock_; or, Brock less _b_ makes Rock." Dr. Brocklesby, on the occasion of giving evidence in a trial, had the ill fortune to offend the presiding judge, who, amongst other prejudices not uncommon in the legal profession, cherished a lively contempt for medical evidence. "Well, gentlemen of the jury," said the n.o.ble lawyer in his summing up, "what's the medical testimony? First we have a Dr.

Rocklesby or--Brocklesby. What does he say? _First of all he_ swears--_he's a physician_."

Abernethy is a by-word for rudeness and even brutality of manner; but he was as tender and generous as a man ought to be, as a man of great intelligence usually is. The stories current about him are nearly all fictions of the imagination; or, where they have any foundation in fact, relate to events that occurred long before the hero to whom they are tacked by anecdote-mongers had appeared on the stage. He was eccentric--but his eccentricities always took the direction of common sense; whereas the extravagances attributed to him by popular gossip are frequently those of a heartless buffoon. His time was precious, and he rightly considered that his business was to set his patients in the way of recovering their lost health--not to listen to their fatuous prosings about their maladies. He was therefore prompt and decided in checking the egotistic garrulity of valetudinarians. This candid expression of his dislike to unnecessary talk had one good result. People who came to consult him took care not to offend him by bootless prating. A lady on one occasion entered his consulting-room, and put before him an injured finger, without saying a word. In silence Abernethy dressed the wound, when instantly and silently the lady put the usual fee on the table, and retired. In a few days she called again, and offered the finger for inspection. "Better?" asked the surgeon. "Better," answered the lady, speaking to him for the first time. Not another word followed during the rest of the interview. Three or four similar visits were made, at the last of which the patient held out her finger free from bandages and perfectly healed. "Well?" was Abernethy's monosyllabic inquiry. "Well," was the lady's equally brief answer. "Upon my soul, madam," exclaimed the delighted surgeon, "_you are the most rational woman I ever met with_."

To curb his tongue, however, out of respect to Abernethy's humour, was an impossibility to John Philpot Curran. Eight times Curran (personally unknown to Abernethy) had called on the great surgeon; and eight times Abernethy had looked at the orator's tongue (telling him, by-the-by, that it was the most unclean and utterly abominable tongue in the world), had curtly advised him to drink less, and not abuse his stomach with gormandizing, had taken a guinea, and had bowed him out of the room. On the ninth visit, just as he was about to be dismissed in the same summary fashion, Curran, with a flash of his dark eye, fixed the surgeon, and said--"Mr. Abernethy, I have been here on eight different days, and I have paid you eight different guineas; but you have never yet listened to the symptoms of my complaint. I am resolved, sir, not to leave the room till you satisfy me by doing so." With a good-natured laugh, Abernethy, half suspecting that he had to deal with a madman, fell back in his chair and said--"Oh! very well, sir; I am ready to hear you out. Go on, give me the whole--your birth, parentage, and education. I wait your pleasure. Pray be as minute and tedious as you can." With perfect gravity Curran began--"Sir, my name is John Philpot Curran. My parents were poor, but I believe honest people, of the province of Munster, where also I was born, at Newmarket, in the county of Cork, in the year one thousand seven hundred and fifty. My father being employed to collect the rents of a Protestant gentleman of small fortune, in that neighbourhood, procured my admission into one of the Protestant free-schools, where I obtained the first rudiments of my education. I was next enabled to enter Trinity College, Dublin, in the humble sphere of a sizar--" And so he went steadily on, till he had thrown his auditor into convulsions of laughter.

Abernethy was very careful not to take fees from patients if he suspected them to be in indigent circ.u.mstances. Mr. George Macilwain, in his instructive and agreeable "Memoirs of John Abernethy," mentions a case where an old officer of parsimonious habits, but not of impoverished condition, could not induce Abernethy to accept his fee, and consequently forbore from again consulting him. On another occasion, when a half-pay lieutenant wished to pay him for a long and laborious attendance, Abernethy replied, "Wait till you're a general; then come and see me, and we'll talk about fees." To a gentleman of small means who consulted him, after having in vain had recourse to other surgeons, he said--"Your recovery will be slow. If you don't feel much pain, depend upon it you are gradually getting round; if you do feel much pain, then come again, _but not else_. I don't want your money." To a hospital student (of great promise and industry, but in narrow circ.u.mstances), who became his dresser, he returned the customary fee of sixty guineas, and requested him to expend them in the purchase of books and securing other means of improvement. To a poor widow lady (who consulted him about her child), he, on saying good-bye in a friendly letter, returned all the fees he had taken from her under the impression that she was in good circ.u.mstances, and added ?50 to the sum, begging her to expend it in giving her child a daily ride in the fresh air. He was often brusque and harsh, and more than once was properly reproved for his hastiness and want of consideration.

"I have heard of your rudeness before I came, sir," one lady said, taking his prescription, "but I was not prepared for such treatment.

What am I to do with this?"

"Anything you like," the surgeon roughly answered. "Put it on the fire if you please."

Taking him at his word, the lady put her fee on the table, and the prescription on the fire; and making a bow, left the room. Abernethy followed her into the hall, apologizing, and begging her to take back the fee or let him write another prescription; but the lady would not yield her vantage-ground.

Of operations Abernethy had a most un-surgeon-like horror--"like Cheselden and Hunter, regarding them as the reproach of the profession." "I hope, sir, it will not be long," said a poor woman, suffering under the knife. "No, indeed," earnestly answered Abernethy, "that would be too horrible." This humanity, on a point on which surgeons are popularly regarded as being devoid of feeling, is very general in the profession. William Cooper (Sir Astley's uncle) was, like Abernethy, a most tender-hearted man. He was about to amputate a man's leg, in the hospital theatre, when the poor fellow, terrified at the display of instruments and apparatus, suddenly jumped off the table, and hobbled away. The students burst out laughing; and the surgeon, much pleased at being excused from the performance of a painful duty, exclaimed, "By G.o.d, I am glad he's gone!"

The treatment which one poor fellow received from Abernethy may at first sight seem to militate against our high estimate of the surgeon's humanity, and dislike of inflicting physical pain. Dr. ----, an eminent physician still living and conferring l.u.s.tre on his profession, sent a favourite man-servant with a brief note, running--"Dear Abernethy, Will you do me the kindness to put a seton in this poor fellow's neck? Yours sincerely, ----." The man, who was accustomed and encouraged to indulge in considerable freedom of speech with his master's friends, not only delivered the note to Abernethy, but added, in an explanatory and confiding tone, "You see, sir, I don't get better, and as master thinks I ought to have a seton in my neck, I should be thankful if you'd put it in for me." It is not at all improbable that Abernethy resented the directions of master and man. Anyhow he inquired into the invalid's case, and then taking out his needles did as he was requested. The operation was attended with a little pain, and the man howled, as only a coward can howl, under the temporary inconvenience. "Oh! Lor' bless you! Oh, have mercy on me!

Yarra--yarra--yarr! Oh, doctor--doctor--you'll kill me!" In another minute the surgeon's work was accomplished, and the acute pain having pa.s.sed away, the man recovered his self-possession and impudence.

"Oh, well, sir, I do hope, now that it's done, it'll do me good. I do hope that."

"But it won't do you a bit of good."

"What, sir, no good?" cried the fellow.

"No more good," replied Abernethy, "than if I had spat upon it."

"Then, sir--why--oh, yarr! here's the pain again--why did you do it?"

"Confound you, man!" answered the surgeon testily. "Why did I do it?--why, _didn't you ask me to put a seton in your neck_?"

Of course the surgical treatment employed by Abernethy in this case was the right one; but he was so nettled with the fellow's impudence and unmanly lamentations, that he could not forbear playing off upon him a barbarous jest.

If for this outbreak of vindictive humour the reader is inclined to call Abernethy a savage, let his gift of ?50 to the widow lady, to pay for her sick child's carriage exercise, be remembered. _Apropos_ of ?50, Dr. Wilson of Bath sent a present of that sum to an indigent clergyman, against whom he had come in the course of practice. The gentleman who had engaged to convey the gift to the unfortunate priest said, "Well, then, I'll take the money to him to-morrow." "Oh, my dear sir," said the doctor, "take it to him to-night. Only think of the importance to a sick man of one good night's rest!"

Side by side with stories of the benevolence of "the Faculty," piquant anecdotes of their stinginess might be told. This writer knew formerly a grab-all-you-can-get surgeon, who was entertaining a few professional brethren at a Sunday morning's breakfast, when a patient was ushered into the ante-room of the surgeon's bachelor chambers, and the surgeon himself was called away to the visitor. Unfortunately he left the folding-doors between the breakfast-room and the ante-room ajar, and his friends sitting in the former apartment overheard the following conversation:

"Well, my friend, what's the matter?"--the surgeon's voice.

The visitor's voice--"Plaze, yer honner, I'm a pore Hirish labourer, but I can spill a bit, and I read o' yer honner's moighty foine cure in the midical jarnal--the _Lancet_. And I've walked up twilve miles to have yer honner cure me. My complaint is ----"

Surgeon's voice, contemptuously--"Oh, my good man, you've made a mistake. You'd better go to the druggist's shop nearest your home, and he'll do for you all you want. You couldn't pay me as I require to be paid."

Visitor's voice, proudly and triumphantly--"Och, an' little ye know an Irish gintleman, dochter, if ye think he'd be beholden to the best of you for a feavor. Here's a bit o' gould--nocht liss nor a tin shillin'

piece, but I've saved it up for ye, and ye'll heve the whole, tho' its every blissed farthing I hev."

The surgeon's voice altered. The case was gone into. The prescription was written. The poor Irish drudge rose to go, when the surgeon, with that delicate quant.i.ty of conscience that rogues always have to make themselves comfortable upon, said, "Now, you say you have no more money, my friend. Well, the druggist will charge you eighteenpence for the medicine I have ordered there. So there's eighteenpence for you out of your half-sovereign."

We may add that this surgeon was then, at a moderate computation, making three thousand a year. We have heard of an Old Bailey barrister boasting how he wrung the shillings (to convert the sovereigns already paid with his brief into guineas) from the grimed hands of a prisoner actually standing in the dock for trial, ere he would engage to defend him. But compared with this surgeon the man of the long robe was a disinterested friend of the oppressed.

A better story yet of a surgeon who seized on his fee like a hawk. A clergyman of ----shire, fell from a branch of a high pear-tree to the gra.s.s-plot of the little garden that surrounded his vicarage-house, and sustained, besides being stunned, a compound fracture of the right arm. His wife, a young and lovely creature, of a n.o.ble but poor family, to whom he had been married only three or four years, was terribly alarmed, and without regulating her conduct by considerations of her pecuniary means, dispatched a telegraphic message to an eminent London surgeon. In the course of three or four hours the surgeon made his appearance, and set the broken limb.

"And what, sir," the young wife timidly asked of the surgeon, when he had come down-stairs into her little drawing-room, "is your fee?"

"Oh, let's see--distance from town, hundred miles. Yes. Then my fee is a hundred guineas!"

Turning deadly pale with fright (for the sum was ten times the highest amount the poor girl had thought of as a likely fee) she rose, and left the room, saying, "Will you be kind enough to wait for a few minutes?"

Luckily her brother (like her husband, a clergyman, with very moderate preferment) was in the house, and he soon made his appearance in the drawing-room. "Sir," said he, addressing the operator, "my sister has just now been telling me the embarra.s.sment she is in, and I think it best to repeat her story frankly. She is quite inexperienced in money matters, and sent for you without ever asking what the ordinary fee to so distinguished a surgeon as yourself, for coming so far from London, might be. Well, sir, it is right you should know her circ.u.mstances. My brother-in-law has no property but his small living, which does not yield him more than ?400 per annum, and he has already two children.

My sister has no private fortune whatever, at present, and all she has in prospect is the reversion of a trifling sum--at a distant period.

Poverty is the only stigma that time has fixed upon my family. Now, sir, under the circ.u.mstances, if professional etiquette would allow of your reducing your fee to the straitened finances of my sister, it really would--would be--"

"Oh, my dear sir," returned the surgeon, in a rich, unctuous voice of benevolence, "pray don't think I'm a shark. I am really deeply concerned for your poor sister. As for my demand of _a hundred guineas_, since it would be beyond her means to satisfy it, why, my dear sir, I shall be only too delighted to be allowed--_to take a hundred pounds_!"

The fee-loving propensities of doctors are well ill.u.s.trated by the admirable touches of Froissart's notice of Guyllyam of Ha.r.s.eley, who was appointed physician to Charles the Sixth, King of France, during his derangement. The writer's attention was first called to Friossart's sketch of the renowned mad-doctor by his friend Mr.

Edgar--a gentleman whose valuable contributions to historical literature have endeared his name to both young and old. Of the measures adopted by Guyllyam for the king's cure the readers of Froissart are not particularly informed; but it would appear, from the physician's parting address to the "dukes of Orlyance, Berrey, Burgoyne, and Burbone," that his system was, in its enlightened humanity, not far behind that adopted at the present day by Dr.

Conolly and Dr. Forbes Winslow. But, however this may be, Guyllyam's labours must be regarded as not less consonant with sound nosological views than those of the afflicted monarch's courtiers, until it can be shown that his treatment was worse than leaving Nature to herself.

"They," says Froissart, "that were about the kynge sente the kynge's offrynge to a town called Aresneche, in the countie of Heynaulte, between Cambrey and Valancennes, in the whiche towne there was a churche parteyning to an Abbey of Saynt Waste in Arrasce wherein there lyeth a saynte, called Saynt Acquayre, of whom there is a shrine of sylver, which pylgrimage is sought farre and nere for the malady of the fransey; thyder was sent a man of waxe, representynge the Frenche Kynge, and was humbly offred to the Saynt, that he might be meane to G.o.d, to a.s.swage the kynge's malady, and to sende him helthe. In lykewise the kynge's offrynge was sent to Saynt Hermyer in Romayes, which saynt had meryte to heal the fransey. And in lykewise offrynges were sent into other places for ye same entent."

The conclusion of Guyllyam's attendance is thus described:--"Trewe it is this sycknesse that the kyng took in the voyage towards Bretagne greatly abated the ioye of the realme of France, and good cause why, for when the heed is sicke the body canne have no ioye. No man durste openly speke thereof, but kepte it privy as moche as might be, and it was couertly kept fro the queene, for tyll she was delyuered and churched she knewe nothynge thereof, which tyme she had a doughter.

The physician, myster Guyllyam, who had the chefe charge of healynge of the kynge, was styll aboute hym, and was ryght dyligent and well acquyted hymselfe, whereby he gate bothe honour and profyte; for lytell and lytell he brought the kynge in good estate, and toke away the feuer and the heate, and made hym to haue taste and appetyte to eate and drinke, slepe and rest, and knowledge of every thynge; howebeit, he was very feble, and lytell and lytell he made the kynge to ryde a huntynge and on hawkynge; and whanne tydynges was knowen through France howe the kynge was well mended, and had his memory again, every man was ioyfull and thanked G.o.d. The kynge thus beyng at Crayell, desyred to se the quene his wyfe and the dolphyn his sonne; so the quene came thyder to hym, and the chylde was brought thyder, the kynge made them good chere, and so lytell and lytell, through the helpe of G.o.d, the kynge recouered his helthe. And when mayster Guyllyam sawe the kynge in so good case he was ryght ioyfull, as reasone was, for he hade done a fayre cure, and so delyuered him to the dukes of Orlyance, Berrey, Burgoyne, and Burbone, and sayd: 'My lordes, thanked be G.o.d, the kynge is nowe in good state and helth, so I delyuer him, but beware lette no mane dysplease hym, for as yet his spyrytes be no fully ferme nor stable, but lytell and lytell he shall waxe stronge; reasonable dysporte, rest, and myrthe shall be moste profytable for hym; and trouble hym as lytell as may be with any counsayles, for he hath been sharpely handeled with a hote malady.'

Than it was consydred to retaygne this mayster Guyllyam, and to gyve hym that he shulde be content with all, _whiche is the ende that all physicians requyre, to haue gyftes and rewardes_; he was desyred to abyde styll about the kynge, but he excused hymselfe, and sayd howe he was an olde impotent man, and coulde note endure the maner of courte, wherfore he desyred to returne into his owne countrey. Whan the counsayle sawe he wolde none otherwyse do, they gaue him leaue, and at his departing _gave him a thousand crownes, and retayned hym in wages with four horses whansover he wolde resorte to the courte_; howbeit, I beleve he never came there after, for whan he retournd to the cytie of Laon, there he contynued and dyed a ryche man: he left behynde him a x.x.x thousand frankes. All his dayes he was one of the greatest nygardes that ever was: all his pleasure was to get good and to spende nothynge, for in his howse he neuer spente past two souses of Parys in a day, but wolde eate and drinke in other mennes howses, where as he myght get it. _With this rodde lyghtly all physicyons are beaten._"[19]

[19] Froissart's Chronicles, translated by John Bouchier, Lord Berners.

The humane advice given by Guyllym countenances the tradition that cards were invented for the amus.e.m.e.nt of his royal patient.

CHAPTER XII.

BLEEDING.

Fashion, capricious everywhere, is especially so in surgery and medicine. Smoking we are now taught to regard as a pernicious practice, to be abhorred as James the First abhorred it. Yet Dr.

Archer, and Dr. Everard in his "Panacea, or a Universal Medicine, being a discovery of the wonderful virtues of Tobacco" (1659), warmly defended the habit, and for long it was held by the highest authorities to be an efficacious preservative against disease. What would schoolboys now say to being flogged for _not_ smoking? Yet Thomas Hearne, in his diary (1720-21) writes--"Jan. 21, I have been told that in the last great plague in London none that kept tobacconists' shops had the plague. It is certain that smoking was looked upon as a most excellent preservative. In so much, that even children were obliged to smoak. And I remember that I heard formerly Tom Rogers, who was yeoman beadle, say, that when he was that year, when the plague raged, a school-boy at Eton, all the boys of that school were obliged to smoak in the school every morning, and that he was never whipped so much in his life as he was one morning for not smoaking."

Blood-letting, so long a popular remedy with physicians, has, like tobacco-smoking for medicinal purposes, fallen into disuse and contempt. From Hippocrates to Paracelsus, who, with characteristic daring, raised some objections to the practice of venesection, doctors were in the habit of drawing disease from the body as vintners extract claret from a cask, in a ruddy stream. In the feudal ages bleeding was in high favour. Most of the abbeys had a "flebotomaria" or "bleeding-house," in which the sacred inmates underwent bleedings (or "minutions" as they were termed) at stated periods of the year, to the strains of psalmody. The brethren of the order of St. Victor underwent five munitions annually--in September, before Advent, before Lent, after Easter, and at Pentecost.

There is a good general view of the superst.i.tions and customs connected with venesection, in "The Salerne Schoole," a poem of which mention continually occurs in the writings of our old physicians. The poem commences with the following stanza:--

"The 'Salerne Schoole' doth by these lines impart All health to England's king, and doth advise From care his head to keepe, from wrath his hart.

Drink not much wine, sup light and soon arise, When meat is gone long sitting breedeth smart; And afternoon still waking keep your eies.

Use three physicians still--first Doctor _Quiet_, Next Doctor _Merriman_ and Doctor _Dyet_.

"Of bleeding many profits grow and great The spirits and sences are renew'd thereby, Thogh these mend slowly by the strength of meate, But these with wine restor'd are by-and-by; By bleeding to the marrow commeth heate, It maketh cleane your braine, releeves your eie, It mends your appet.i.te, restoreth sleepe, Correcting humors that do waking keep: All inward parts and sences also clearing, It mends the voice, touch, smell, and taste, and hearing.