A Book about Doctors Part 9

"If a man arrived to such a height of glory should be almost distracted with pride--sometime give his attendance on a servant, or any mean person, for nothing and at the same time neglect a n.o.bleman that gives exhorbitant fees--at other times refuse to leave his bottle for his business, without any regard to the quality of the persons that sent for him, or the danger they are in; if he should be surly and morose, affect to be an humourist, treat his patients like dogs, though people of distinction, and value no man but what would deify him, and never call in question the certainty of his oracles; if he should insult all the world, affront the first n.o.bility, and extend his insolence even to the royal family; if to maintain, as well as to increase, the fame of his sufficiency, he should scorn to consult his betters, on what emergency soever, look down with contempt on the most deserving of his profession, and never confer with any other physician but what will pay homage to his genius, creep to his humour, and ever approach him with all the slavish obsequiousness a court flatterer can treat a prince with; if a man in his life-time should discover, on the one hand, such manifest symptoms of superlative pride, and an insatiable greediness after wealth at the same time; and, on the other, no regard to religion or affection to his kindred, no compa.s.sion to the poor, and hardly any humanity to his fellow-creatures; if he gave no proofs that he loved his country, had a public spirit, or was a lover of the arts, of books, or of literature--what must we judge of his motive, the principle he acted from, when, after his death, we find that he has left a trifle among his relations who stood in need of it, and an immense treasure to a University that did not want it.

"Let a man be as charitable as it is possible for him to be, without forfeiting his reason or good sense, can he think otherwise, but that this famous physician did, in the making of his will, as in everything else, indulge his darling pa.s.sion, entertaining his vanity with the happiness of the contrivance?"

This severe portrait is just about as true as the likeness of a man, painted by a conscientious enemy, usually is. Radcliffe was not endowed with a kindly nature. "Mead, I love you," said he to his fascinating adulator; "and I'll tell you a sure secret to make your fortune--use all mankind ill." Radcliffe carried out his rule by wringing as much as possible from, and returning as little as possible to, his fellowmen. He could not pay a tradesman's bill without a sense of keen suffering. Even a poor pavior, who had been employed to do a job to the stones before the doctor's house in Bloomsbury Square (whither the physician removed from Bow Street), could not get his money without a contest. "Why, you rascal!" cried the debtor, as he alighted from his chariot, "do you pretend to be paid for such a piece of work! Why, you have spoiled my pavement, and then covered it over with earth to hide the bad work."

"Doctor," responded the man, dryly, "mine is not the only bad work the earth hides."

Of course, the only course to pursue with a creditor who could dun in this sarcastic style was to pay, and be rid of him. But the doctor made up for his own avarice by being ever ready to condemn it in others.

Tyson, the miser, being near his last hour, magnanimously resolved to pay two of his 3,000,000 guineas to Radcliffe, to learn if anything could be done for his malady. The miserable old man came up with his wife from Hackney, and tottered into the consulting-room in Bloomsbury Square, with two guineas in his hand--

"You may go, sir," exclaimed Radcliffe, to the astonished wretch, who trusted he was unknown--"you may go home, and die, and be ----, without a speedy repentance; for both the grave and the devil are ready for Tyson of Hackney, who has grown rich out of the spoils of the public and the tears of orphans and widows. You'll be a dead man, sir, in ten days."

There are numerous stories extant relative to Radcliffe's practice; but nearly all those which bear the stamp of genuineness are unfit for publication in the present polite age. Such stories as the hasty-pudding one, re-edited by the pleasant author of "The Gold-headed Cane," can be found by the dozen, but the c.u.mbrous workmanship of Mr. Joseph Miller is manifest in them all.

CHAPTER VIII.

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 pract.i.tioners 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 n.o.blemen 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 quant.i.ty.

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 a.n.a.lysis 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 pa.s.sions 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 cla.s.s. 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 pa.s.sed 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 f.a.ggot bake a good quant.i.ty 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 G.o.d!" 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 a.s.sociations. 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 d.u.c.h.ess 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 succ.u.mbing, the watchman returned his a.s.sailant'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 coa.r.s.eness 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 ma.s.ses of butcher's stuff, which no one can look at without discomfort, when the first edge has been taken off the appet.i.te. 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 gla.s.s 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 Ess.e.x 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?"