The Doctor in History, Literature, Folk-Lore, Etc Part 4

as Roger Bacon calls it. In dealing with his patients he was guided by "natural magic."

To this practice Chaucer alludes in another of his poems, the "House of Fame."

"And clerks eke, which con well, All this magic naturell, That craftily do her intents, To make in certain ascendents, Images--lo through which magic, To make a man be whole or sick."

So that in spite of what appears to us the charlatanry in his make up, the doctor was supposed to be a person of importance in the eyes of his fellow pilgrims, with quite the standing of an accredited medical man of to-day, is evidenced by the manner in which mine host Bailly addresses him. Master Bailly was no particular respecter of persons, indeed, on the contrary, he was somewhat of a Philistine; yet he was all respect to this man of medicine. It is as "Sir" Doctor of Physic, the host addresses him; also declaring him to be a "proper man," and like a prelate. After the story of chicanery related by the Canon's Yeoman, it is to the physician he looks to tell a tale of "honest matter." Such is his bearing towards him throughout.

The doctor's contribution to the "Canterbury Tales," too, is of a serious, sober kind, in keeping with his character; and concludes with some sound moral advice. Therefore, whatever foibles he may have, the "doctor of physic" is presented to us as a sterling gentleman, no unworthy predecessor of those who to-day, on more modern lines, still follow in his footsteps.

The Doctors Shakespeare Knew.

BY A. H. WALL.

"O, mickle is the powerful grace that lies In herbs, plants, shrubs, and their true qualities.

For nought so vile that on the earth doth live But to the earth some special good doth give; Nor ought so good, but, strained from that fair use Revolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse."

--_Romeo and Juliet._

"By medicine life may be prolong'd."--_Cymbeline V. 5._

In Walckenaer's "Memoirs of Madame de Sevigne," and in the amusing, interesting volume which Gaston Boissier devoted to her works and letters, we have glimpses of the medical profession in France, which show us it was in her time and country, just what it was in England in the same century when it was known to Shakespeare. For one more or less genuine physician there were thousands of charlatans and quacks, and the contempt which our great dramatic poet frequently expresses in his works for medical pract.i.tioners must, in fairness, be regarded as applicable to the latter, not to the former. In 1884, an American writer on this subject (Dr. Rush Field, in his "Medical Thoughts of Shakespeare") strove to show that our great philosophic poet and playwright's opinion of all the medical pract.i.tioners was a low one. "He uses them frequently," he says, "as a tool by which deaths are produced through the means of poison, and generally treats them with contempt." That he might fairly do this, and that in doing it he rather displayed respect and regard for the genuine, more or less scientific professors of the healing art, can be very readily demonstrated by anyone at all familiar with his plays. But to return to Madame de Sevigne. At a time when she was growing old, when her letters speak so sadly of the dying condition of Cardinal de Retz at Commercy, of Madame de la Fayette's being consumed by slow fever, and La Roche confined to his armchair by gout, of Corbinelle's threatened insanity, and of his taking "potable gold" as a remedy for headache, she writes also of small-pox and other fevers having permanently settled at Versailles and Saint-Germain, where the King and Queen were attacked, and ladies and gentlemen of the Court were decimated, and cases of apoplexy and rheumatism were rapidly increasing in every direction. "Fashionable folk, used up with pleasure-making, sick through disappointed ambition, fidgetting without motive, agitating without aim, tainted with morbid fancies and suspicion," found themselves in the doctor's hands, and were far more ready to select pract.i.tioners who promised magically swift and easy cures, than those who spoke of slow and gradual recovery by means which were neither painless nor pleasurable. "Everybody," says Boissur, "women included, battled with one another to possess marvellous secrets whereby obstinate complaints should be immediately cured. Madame Fouquet applied a plaster to the dying Queen, which cured her, to the great scandal of the Faculty unable to save her; and the Princess de Tarente served out drugs to all her people at Vitre.

[Ill.u.s.tration: WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.

(_The Stratford Portrait._)]

Madame Sevigne wrote of her as "the best doctor in the upper cla.s.ses; she has rare and valuable compounds of which she gives us three pinches with prodigious effect." When writing to her daughter, she begs her not to neglect taking such medicines as "cherry water," "extract of periwinkles,"

"viper-broth," "uric acid," and "powdered crab's-eyes." She says the extract of periwinkles "endowed Madame de Grignam with a second youth."

Writing to her daughter, "If you use it, when you re-appear so fair people will cry, 'O'er what blessed flower can she have walked,' then I will answer 'On the periwinkle.'" She tells, too, how the Capuchins, who still retained their ancient medical reputation, treated the rheumatism in her leg "with plants bruised and applied twice a day; taken off while wet twice a day, and buried in the earth, so that as they rotted away her pains might in like way decrease." "It's a pity you ran and told the surgeons this," she says to her daughter, "for they roar with laughter at it, but I do not care a fig for them." In like way Madame de Scudery tells Ba.s.sy, "There is an abbe here who is making a great bother by curing by sympathy. For fever of all kinds, so they say, he takes the patient's spittle and mingles it with an egg, and gives it to a dog; the dog dies and the patient recovers.... They say he has cured a quant.i.ty of people."

Turning from these ill.u.s.trations of medical practice in France to see how identical it is with that adopted in England when Shakespeare lived, we recall the advice of that eminent gentleman, Andrew Rourde, who recommends people to wash their faces once a week only, using a scarlet cloth to wipe them dry upon, as a sure remedy in certain cases. In other instances we find that certain pills made from the skulls of murderers taken down from gibbets, and ground to powder for that purpose, were popular as medicine, that a draught of water drunk from a murdered man's skull had wonderful medicinal properties, and that the blood of a dragon was absolutely miraculous in the cures it effected. The touch of a dead man's hand was another ghastly remedy in common use, and the powder of mummy was a wonderful cure for certain grave complaints. Love-philtres were also regarded from a medicinal point of view, and the strange doings of quack _accoucheurs_ are not less absurdly terrible. That the seventeenth century physician himself was not always proof against these products of ancient ignorance and superst.i.tion, is abundantly apparent. Van Helmont, the son of a n.o.bleman, born in Brussels, and very carefully educated for his profession, practised both medicine and magic medicinally. He rejected Galen, inclined to that illiterate pretender Paracelsus, and determined that the only way by which he could defy disease, and utterly destroy it, was through what he called _Archaeus_. Speaking of digestion, for instance, he denied that it was either chemical or mechanical in its nature, but the result of this _Archaeus_, a spiritual activity, working in a very mysteriously complicated way, for both evil and good. It has been said that he was one of Lord Bacon's disciples, but for that a.s.sertion there certainly is no sufficient foundation, for Bacon, if a mystic by inclination, was logical in reasoning. In England Van Helmont had an English follower in the person of another physician, Dr. Fludd, a disciple of the famous inventor of the camera obscura, and conjecturally the first photographer. His grand quack remedy was "the powder of sympathy," which was the "sword-salve" of Paracelsus (composed of moss taken from the skull of a gibbetted murderer, of warm human blood, human suet, linseed oil, turpentine, etc.). This was applied, not to the wound, but to the sword that inflicted it, kept "in a cool place!" Certain plants pulled up with the left hand were regarded as a sure remedy in fever cases, but the gatherer, while gathering, was not to look behind, for that deprived the plants of their medicinal value.

Amongst other physicians of Shakespeare's century was Mr. Valentine Greatrake, who came to London from Ireland, where his supposed magical cures had been awakening a great sensation. He hired a large house in Lincoln's Inn Fields, to which vast crowds of patients of all kinds and conditions crowded daily, all clamouring to be cured. He received them in their order, says an eye-witness, with "a grave and simple countenence."

For, as Shakespeare wrote, "Thus credulous fools are caught." ("Comedy of Errors," 1, 2.) Greatrake (afterwards executed for high treason) a.s.serted that every diseased person was possessed by a devil, and that by his prayers and laying on of hands the devil could be cast out. Lord Conway sent for him to cure an incurable disease from which his wife was suffering, and even some of the most learned and eminent people of the time were amongst his patrons. St. Evremond wrote, "You can hardly imagine what a reputation he gained in a short time. Catholics and Protestants visited him from every part, all believing that power from heaven was in his hands."

In an Act of Parliament which was pa.s.sed in the year 1511, we read, in its preamble, that "the science and cunning of Physic and Surgery" was exercised by "a great mult.i.tude of ignorant persons, of whom the greater part have no manner of insight in the same, nor in any other kind of learning--some also can read no letters in the book--so far forth that common artificers, as smiths, weavers, and women, boldly and accostumably took upon them great cures, and things of great difficulty, in which they partly used sorceries and witchcraft, and partly supplied such medicines unto the diseased as are very noisome, and nothing meet therefore; to the high displeasure of G.o.d," etc.

A large number of the pretended remedies thus used in medical practice are clearly traceable back to the ancient Magi, who were professors of medicine, as well as priests and astrologers.

With these facts before you, turn to your Shakespeare, and see how he regarded the popular delusions thus created and fostered, with their

"Distinguished cheaters, prating mountebanks, And many such libertines of sin."

--_Comedy of Errors._

Do you remember the other lines from this source, in which the poet speaks of "This pernicious slave," who "forsooth took on him as a conjurer, and, gazing in mine eyes, feeling my pulse, and with no face, as't were, outfacing me, cried out I was possessed." This is not the stern, grave doctor in "Macbeth," who did not pretend to "raze out the written troubles of the brain," but said, "Therein the patient must minister unto himself."

There is no depreciation of the healing art in Shakespeare's painting of Lear's physician, as there is of the "caitiff wretch" of an apothecary, who sold poison to Romeo in a very different way to that in which the physician in Cymbeline supplied a deadly drug to the Queen. "I beseech your grace," says he, speaking in solemn earnestness, "without offence (my conscience bids me ask) wherefore you have commanded of me these most poisonous compounds." In "All's well that Ends Well," you will recognize the foregoing descriptions of medicinal delusions in the interview between Helena and the King, who says, we "may not be so credulous of cure, when our most learned doctors leave us, and the congregated college have concluded that labouring art can never ransom Nature from her maid estate, I say we must not so stain our judgment, or corrupt our hope, to prost.i.tute our past-cure malady to empirics." In this play both "Galen and Paracelsus" are mentioned, and their names then represented rival schools of medicine.

How smartly and merrily Shakespeare wrote of such cures as Greatrake professed to effect, we see in Henry VI., where Simpc.o.x, supposed to be miraculously cured of blindness, is asked to and does describe what he sees, "If thou _hadst_ been born blind, thou might'st as well have known all our names as thus to name the several colours we do wear."

In the "Merry Wives of Windsor" we have "Master Caius that calls himself doctor of physic," and is called by Dame Quickly a "fool and physician."

The two were in Shakespeare's time very commonly combined, and often, as we have shown, very strangely. Dr. Caius was a real name borne by a learned gentleman who was physician to Queen Elizabeth. In Cymbeline the name of the physician is Cornelius. This again was the name of a real physician, who, in the sixteenth century, gained great reputation in Europe chiefly by restoring Charles V. to health after a tediously long illness. We may presume that Shakespeare was familiar with the fact.

Amongst the doctors of our poet's time it was a common custom to throw up cases when they believed them hopeless. Shakespeare's Semp.r.o.nius says, "His friends, like physicians, thrice gave him o'er," and Lord Bacon in his work on "The Advancement of Learning," says of Physicians, "In the enquiry of diseases, they do abandon the cures of many, some as in their nature incurable, and others as past the period of cure, so that Sylla triumvirs never prescribed so many men to die as they do by their ignorant edicts." We have spoken of the sword-salve cure for wounds. Of dealers in poison who visited fairs and market-places, and attracted crowds by the aid of a stage fool, we get a glimpse in "Hamlet," where Laertes says:--

"I bought an unction of a mountebank, So mortal, that but dip a knife in it, Where it draws blood, no cataplasm so rare Collected from all simples that have virtue, Under the moon can save the thing from death."

There is a hit at doctors who gave others remedies they had not enough faith in to adopt for themselves:--

"Thou speak'st like a physician, Helicarnus: Who minister'st a potion unto me That thou would'st tremble to receive thyself."

--_Pericles._

In the same play the true physician receives full appreciation. Cerimon says of himself:--

"'Tis known, I ever Have studied physic, through which secret art, By turning o'er authorities, I have Together with my practice, made familiar To me, and to my aid, the blest infusions That dwell in vegitives, in metals, stones.

And I can speake of the disturbances That nature works, and of her cures; which doth give me A more content in course of true delight Than to be thirsty after tottering honour, Or tie my treasure up in silken bags, To please the fool, and death."

And one of the two listening gentlemen adds:--

"Your honour has through Ephesus pour'd forth Your charity, and hundreds call themselves Your creatures, who by you have been restored."

And Pericles, with his supposed dead wife in his arms, turning to Cerimon, who has saved her from the grave, says:--

"Reverend Sir, The G.o.ds can have no mortal officer More like a G.o.d than you."

And Gower, speaking the concluding lines of the play, adds:--

"In reverend Cerimon there well appears The worth that learned charity aye wears."

"_Cerimon_: I hold it ever Virtue and cunning (wisdom) were endowment greater Than n.o.bleness and riches...."

There was, perhaps, when Shakespeare wrote the above lines, some thought of the Elizabethan n.o.bleman, Edmund, Earl of Derby, who "was famous for chirurgerie, bone-setting, and hospitalite," as Ward says in his Diary; of the Marquis of Dorchester, who in his time was a Fellow of the College of Surgeons; or of the poet's son-in-law, Dr. Hall, a gentleman who resided in Stratford-on-Avon, in a fine old half timber house still standing, and known as Hall's Croft. To his wife, the poet's elder daughter, Shakespeare bequeathed his house and grounds, which Dr. Hall occupied when he died.

His grave is near that of his glorious father-in-law, and on it is the following inscription:--

"HERE LYETH Y{E} BODY OF JOHN HALL, GENT: HE MARR: SVSANNA Y{E} DAUGHTER AND CO HEIRE OF WILL. SHAKESPEARE, GENT. HEE DECEASED NOVE{R} 25 A{O} 1635 AGED 60.

Hallius hic situs est medica celeberrimus arte Expectans regni gaudia laeta Dei Dignus erat meritis qui Nestora vinceret annis, In terris omnes, sed rapit aequa dies; Ne tumulo, quid desit adest fidissima conjux Et vitae Comitem nunc quoque mortis habet."

d.i.c.kens' Doctors.

BY THOMAS FROST.

d.i.c.kens, it must be admitted by even the greatest admirers of his inimitable genius, among whom the writer of this paper must be counted, was not successful in his delineations of the medical profession. Though his most humorous as well as his most pathetic pictures of human life are drawn from the humbler walks in the pilgrimage of humanity, he has given us some good touches of his skill in his presentments of other professions, and notably of lawyers and lawyers' clerks. Nothing in fiction can excel his legal characters in, for instance, "Bleak House,"--his Mr. Tulkinghorn, Mr. Guppy, the clerk, and Mr. Snagsby, the law stationer. But a life-like doctor cannot be found in his works, and the nearest approaches to such a description are the merest sketches.