The Funny Side of Physic Part 12

When confined to his bed in his last sickness, Garrick had the advice of several of the best physicians, summoned to his villa near Hampton, and Monsey, in bad taste and worse temper, wrote a satire on the occurrence.

He accused the actor of parsimony, among other mean qualities, and though, after the death of Garrick, January 22, 1779, he destroyed the verses, some portions of them got into print, of which the following is a sample:--

"Seven wise doctors lately met To save a wretched sinner.

'Come, Tom,' said Jack, 'pray let's be quick, Or we shall lose _our_ dinner.'

"Some roared for rhubarb, jalap some, And others cried for Dover;[3]

'Let's give him something,' each one said, 'And then let's give him over.'"

At last, after much learned wrangling, one more learned than the others proposed to arouse the energies of the dying man by jingling a purse of gold in his ear. This suggestion was acted upon, and

"Soon as the favorite sound he heard, One faint effort he tried; He oped his eyes, he scratched his head, He gave one grasp--and died."

Riding on horseback through Hyde Park, Monsey was accompanied by a Mr.

Robinson, a Trinitarian preacher, who knew that the doctor's religion was of the Unitarian stamp. After deploring, in solemn tones, the corrupt state of morals, etc., the minister turned to Monsey, and said,--

"And, doctor, I am addressing one who believes there is no G.o.d."

"And I," replied Monsey, "one who believes there are _three_."

[Ill.u.s.tration: HEALING THE SICK WITH A GOLDEN DOSE.]

The good man, greatly shocked, put spurs to his horse, and, without vouchsafing a "good day," rode away at a high gallop.

PEDAGOGUES TURNED OUT AS DOCTORS.

Some of the hundreds of respectable medical pract.i.tioners of this democratic country, who, between commencement and the following term, used to lengthen out their scanty means by "teaching the young idea how to shoot" in some far-off country village, will scarcely thank me for introducing the above-named subject to their present notice. However, it will depend somewhat upon the way they take it; whether, like Sir Davy, they are ashamed of their "small beginnings," or, like Dr. Monsey, they may independently snap their fingers in the face of their plebeian origin, and boast of their earlier common efforts for a better foothold among the great men of their generation.

Among English physicians, with whom it was, and still is, counted a disgrace to have been previously known in a more humble calling, we may find a long list of "doctors pedagogic," beginning with Dr. John Bond, who taught school until the age of forty, when he turned doctor. He was a man of great learning, however, and became a successful physician. Even among the good people of Taunton, where he had resided and labored as a pedagogue in former years, he was esteemed as a "wise physician."

John Arbuthnot was a "Scotch pedagogue." He was distinguished as a man of letters and of wit; the a.s.sociate of Pope and Swift, and of Bolingbroke; a companion at the court of Queen Anne.

Arbuthnot owed his social elevation to his quick wit, rare conversational powers, and fascinating address, rather than to his family influence, professional knowledge, or medical success.

"Dorchester, where, as a young pract.i.tioner, he endeavored to establish himself, utterly refused to give him a living; but it doubtless," says Jeaffreson, "maintained more than one dull empiric in opulence. Failing to get a living among the rustic boors, who could appreciate no effort of the human voice but a fox-hunter's whoop, Arbuthnot packed up and went to London."

Poverty for a while haunted his door in London, and to keep the wolf away he was compelled to resort to "the most hateful of all occupations--the personal instruction of the ignorant."

Arbuthnot was a brilliant writer as well as fluent talker, and by his literary hit, "Examination of Dr. Woodward's Account of the Deluge," he was soon brought into notice. By the merest accident and the greatest fortune he was called to Prince George of Denmark, when his royal highness was suddenly taken sick, and, as all who fell within the circle of his magical private acquaintance were led to respect and love him, the doctor was retained in the good graces of the prince. On the death of Dr. Hannes, Arbuthnot received the appointment of physician-in-ordinary to the queen.

The polished manner of the fortunate doctor, his handsome person, and flattering, cordial seeming address, especially to ladies, made him a court favorite. To retain the good graces of his royal patient, the queen, "he adopted a tone of affection for her as an individual, as well as a loyal devotion to her as a queen." His conversation, while it had the semblance of the utmost frankness, was foaming over with flattery.

"If the queen won't swallow my pills she will my flattery," he is said to have whispered to his friend Swift; but this report is doubtful, as he stood in fear of the displeasure of the querulous, crotchety, weak-minded queen, who had but recently discharged Dr. Radcliffe for a slip of the tongue, when at the coffee-house he had said she had the "_vapors_."

"What is the hour?" asked the queen of Arbuthnot.

"Whatever hour it may please your majesty," was his characteristic reply, with his most winning smile and graceful obeisance.

By this sort of flattery he retained his hold in the queen's favor till her death.

By these facts one is reminded of the saying of Oxenstierna, when, on concluding the peace of Westphalia in 1648, he sent his young son John as plenipotentiary to the powers on that occasion, remarking, in presence of those who expressed their surprise thereat,--

"You do not know with how little wisdom men are governed."

With the loss of the queen's patronage at her death, and his wine-loving proclivities, Dr. Arbuthnot became sick and poor, and died in straitened circ.u.mstances.

ANOTHER POOR PEDAGOGUE,

Who reached the acme of medical fame, and became court physician, was Sir Richard Blackmer. He surely ought not to have been called an ignoramus (by Dr. Johnson), for he resided thirteen years in the University of Oxford.

After leaving Oxford, his extreme poverty compelled him to adopt the profession of a schoolmaster. In the year 1700 there were collected upwards of forty sets of ribald verses, under the t.i.tle of "Commendary Verses, or the Author of Two Arthurs, and Satyr against Wit;" in which Sir Richard was taunted with his earlier poverty, and of having been a pedagogue!

Every man has his advertis.e.m.e.nt and his advertisers. The poets and lampooners were Blackmer's. They a.s.sisted in bringing him into notoriety.

Among them were Pope, Steele, and the obscene Dr. Garth. While the authors of those filthy, licentious productions (which no bar-maid or kitchen-scullion at this day could read without blushing behind her pots and kettles) were flattering themselves that they were injuring the honest doctor, they were bringing him daily into the notice of better men than themselves, and heaping ignominy upon the authors of such vile lampoons.

One satire opened thus:--

"By nature meant, by want a pedant made, Blackmer at first professed the whipping trade.

In vain his pills as well as birch he tried; His boys grew blockheads, and his patients died."

Mr. Jeaffreson says, "the same dull sarcasms about killing patients and whipping boys into blockheads are repeated over and again; and as if to show, with the greatest possible force, the pitch to which the evil of the times had risen, the coa.r.s.est and most disgusting of all these lampoon writers was a lady of rank,--the Countess of Sandwich!"

Wouldn't a young Harvard or Yale medical graduate, without money, friends, or a practice, leap for joy with the knowledge that he had two-score _disinterested_ writers advertising him into universal notice, since it is considered a burning disgrace for an honorable, upright, and educated physician to advertise himself!

Of course Sir Richard rose, in spite of his foes, to whom he seldom replied. He says, in one of his own works, "I am but a hard-working doctor, spending my days in coffee-houses (where physicians were wont to receive apothecaries, and, hearing the cases of their patients, prescribe for them without seeing them, at half price), receiving apothecaries, or driving over the stones in my carriage, visiting my patients."

The honest, upright man who rises from nothing, and continues to ascend right in the teeth of immense opposition from his enemies, seldom relapses into obscurity in after life. Though Dr. Blackmer failed as a poet, he died esteemed as an honest man, a consistent Christian, and an excellent physician.

A WEAVER AND A QUAKER BOY.

Many cases might be instanced of weavers becoming physicians, but let one suffice. John Sutcliffe, a Yorkshire weaver, with no early educational advantages, and with the broadest provincial dialect, became a respectable apothecary, and subsequently a first-cla.s.s medical pract.i.tioner. He rose entirely by his own integrity, frugality, industry, and intelligence.

Amongst his apprentices was Dr. John Coakley Lettsom, whose name must ever rank high as a literary man, and a benevolent and successful physician.

Lettsom was born in the West Indies, and was a Quaker. The place under the Yorkshire apothecary was secured for the boy by Mr. Fothergill, a Quaker minister of Warrington, England.

A senior drug clerk informed the rustic inhabitants of the arrival of a Quaker from a far off county, where the people were _antipodes_,--whose feet were in a position exactly opposite to those of the English. Having well circulated this startling information, the merry clerk and fellow-apprentices laid back to enjoy the joke all by themselves.

The very day the new apprentice entered upon his duties, the apothecary shop became haunted by an immense and curious crowd of gaping rustics, old and young, male and female, to see the wonderful Quaker who was accustomed to walking on his head!

Day after day the curious peasants came and went, and if the astonished Sutcliffe closed his doors against the unprofitable rabble, they peered in at his windows, or hung about the entrances, hoping to see the remarkable phenomenon issue forth. But as the day of "walking off on his ear" had not then arrived, they were doomed to disappointment and lost faith in his ability to do what they had expected of him.

JOHN RADCLIFFE.