The Funny Side of Physic Part 71

There's hope ahead: we'll one day meet again, My love and I; We'll wipe away all tears of sorrow then; Her love-lit eye Will all my many troubles then beguile, And keep this wayward reb from Johnson's Isle.

[Ill.u.s.tration: STUCK!]

A SCRIPTURAL CONUNDRUM.

The Georgia contrabands were great on conundrums, says a soldier of Sherman's army. One day one of these human "charcoal sketches" was driving a pair of contrary mules. .h.i.tched to a cart loaded with foraging stuff. He was sitting on the load, saying to himself, "Now dat Clem ax me dat cundrum to bodder dis n.i.g.g.e.r, and I done just make it out. 'Why ar Moses like er cotton-gin?' I done see. I mighty 'fraid I hab to gib dat up. Whoa! Git up? What de debble you doin'?"

While "cudgelling his brains" for a solution of Clem's conundrum, the mules had strayed from the cart road, and were stuck hard and fast in the mud. "Git up dar yer Balum's cusses!" piling on the whip and using some "swear words" not to be repeated. "Dar, take dat, and dat, yer!"

Just then Chaplain C. rode up, and hearing the contraband swearing, said,--

"Do you know what the great I Am said?"

"Look'er yer, ma.s.ser," interrupted the negro; "done yer ax me none of yer cundrums till I git out ob dis d---- hole; and I answer Clem's fust--'Why am Moses like er gin-cotton?'"

WOULDN'T MARRY A REGIMENT.

When General Kelley was after Mosby's guerrillas, he captured a girl named Sally Dusky, whose two brothers were officers in the guerrilla band. The general tried in vain to induce the girl--who was not bad looking, by the way--to reveal the rebs' hiding-places. Having failed in all other ways, the general said,--

"If you will make a clean breast of it, and tell us truly, I will give you the chances for a husband of all the men and officers of my command."

With this bait he turned her over to Captain Baggs. After some deliberation she asked that officer if the general meant what he said.

"O, most a.s.suredly; the general was sincere," was his reply.

The girl a.s.sumed a thoughtful mood for some moments, and then said,--

"Well, I wouldn't like to marry the whole regiment, or staff, but I'd as lief have the old general as any of them."

[Ill.u.s.tration]

XXII.

GLUTTONS AND WINE-BIBBERS.

"Full well he knew, where food does not refresh, The shrivelled soul sinks inward with the flesh; That he's best armed for danger's rash career, _Who's crammed so full there is no room for fear_."

"Strange! that a creature rational, and cast In human mould, should brutalize by choice His nature."--COWPER.

GOOD CHEER AND A CHEERFUL HEART.--A MODERN SILENUS.--A SAD WRECK.--DELIRIUM TREMENS.--FATAL ERRORS.--"EATING LIKE A GLUTTON."--STRENGTH IN WEAKNESS.--A HOT PLACE, EVEN FOR A COOK.--A HUNGRY DOCTOR.--THE MODERN GILPIN.--A CHANGE! A SOW FOR A HORSE!--A DUCK POND.--THE FORLORN WIDOW.--A SCIENTIFIC GORMAND.--ANOTHER.--"DOORN'T GO TO 'IM," ETC.--DR. BUTLER'S BEER AND BATH.--CASTS HIS LAST VOTE.

If I confine this chapter to modern physicians, it will be brief. Though doctors are usually pretty good livers, they, at this day of the world, too well know the deadly properties of the villanous concoctions sold as liquors to risk much of it in their own systems.

There is a whole sermon on eating in our first text above, and, while we admit that gluttony is reprehensible, we detest "the shrivelled soul" who starves wittingly his body to heap up riches, or under the idle delusion of starving out disease, or "mortifying the flesh." If not very "mortifying," it is very depressing, to be bored by one of these "lean, lank hypochondriacs,"--to have to entertain, or be entertained by, such.

O, give me the wide-mouthed, the round-faced, or abdomened, the cheerful, laughing man, especially if he's a doctor.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A GOOD LIVER.]

"Ah, doctor," said a poor, emaciated invalid to me during my first year's practice at ----, "you do me good like a medicine by your presence. Why, the blue devils leave the house the moment you enter. I don't believe you was ever blue."

"Hereafter my patients shall never know that I am."

Nor is it necessary to gulp down ardent spirits to keep the spirits up.

Stimulants produce an unnatural buoyancy of spirits, and the unnatural destroys the natural habit of the system. A good and natural habit does not grow upon a person to his injury; an unnatural one always does, ending in his destruction. A good living gives good spirits; _caeteris paribus_, a poor living low spirits.

A MODERN SILENUS.

Silenus, of the mythologists, was a demiG.o.d, who became the nurse, the preceptor, and finally the attendant, of Bacchus. He was represented as a fat, bloated old fellow, riding on an a.s.s, and drunk every day in the year.

I knew a "bright and shining light" in the medical profession who turned out a modern Silenus. This was Dr. G., of Plymouth, Conn. His father had given him the best medical education which this country afforded. He was a gentleman of superior address, as well as talent, tall, straight, and handsome as an Apollo, with a dark, flashing eye, a ma.s.sive brow, shaded by a profusion of jet-black locks. How long he had practised medicine I do not know. Throughout the county he had an excellent professional reputation, particularly as a surgeon. His instruments were numerous, and of the best and latest improvements. Alas that such a man should be lost to the community, and to humanity! But his appet.i.te for intoxicating drink knew no bounds. His thirst was as insatiable as Tantalus'.

When I first knew him, he still was in practice, but the better portion of the community had ceased to trust him. He never was sober for a day. He occupied then a little office in the square, containing a front and a back room. In the latter were his few medicines,--there was no apothecary in town,--and a number of large gla.s.s jars, containing excellent anatomical and foetal specimens. This room was not finished inside, and the walls were full of nails, projecting through from the clapboards outside.

One day a Mr. Hotchkiss went after him, hoping to find the doctor sufficiently sober to prescribe for a patient, in a case of emergency.

"What do you suppose I found him doing?" said Mr. Hotchkiss to me.

"Hiding from the snakes in his back room?" I suggested.

"No, sir; he had the tremens, and with his coat off, his hair standing every way, his eyes glaring like a demon's, he had his case of forceps strewn over the floor, and was diving at the ends of the clapboard nails, which he called devils, that came through the boards, in the back office."

"Ah, there you are! Another devil staring at me!" he shouted; and with the bright, gleaming forceps he dove at a nail, wrenched it from the wall, and flinging it on the floor, he stamped on it, crying, "Another dead devil!

Come on. Ah, ha! there you are again!" and he dove at another. When he broke a forceps he flung it on the floor, and caught a new pair. I tried to stop him, but he only accused me of being leagued with his evil majesty to destroy him.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A DOCTOR KILLING THE DEVILS.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: PAYING FOR HIS WINE.]

Another day, after having p.a.w.ned nearly all his instruments for money with which to buy liquor to appease his raving appet.i.te, he was seen to unseal one of the jars containing a foetal specimen, pour out a quant.i.ty of the diluted alcohol in which it had long been preserved, and drink it down with the avidity of a starving man.

His last instrument and case p.a.w.ned, he sold the coat from his back to buy liquors. He could no longer get practice, no longer pay his board, and he became an outcast from all respectable society, and a frequenter of bar-rooms. A poor and simple old woman in the remote part of the town took compa.s.sion on him, and gave him a home. But nothing could chain his uncontrollable pa.s.sion for intoxicating drinks.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A BAR-ROOM DOCTOR.]

The last time I saw him was in the month of December. He was in a grocery, warming himself by the store fire. He wore a crownless hat, a woman's shawl over his shoulders, and a pair of boy's pants partially covered his legs; no stockings covered his ankles, and a pair of old, low shoes encased his feet. The light had fled from his once beautiful, l.u.s.trous eyes; great wrinkles furrowed his once manly brow; his hair, once dark and glossy as the raven's wing, was now streaked with gray, uncombed and unkempt, hanging, knotted and snarled, over his neck and bloated face.

"Don't you recollect me?" he asked, with a shaking voice and a distressing effort at a smile. Ah, it was sickening to the senses.

Alas! Such another wreck may I never behold. What power shall awaken him from his awful condition, and

"Picture a happy past, Gone from his sight, Bring back his early youth, Cloudless and bright; Tell how a mother's eye Watched while he slept, Tell how she prayed for him, Sorrowed and wept.