The Funny Side of Physic Part 88

"The doctor picked himself out of the mire, and, with a volley of expletives 'too numerous to mention,' clambered on to his beast, and trotted on, _dash, dash, dash!_ as though nothing had happened."

[Ill.u.s.tration: DR. CANDEE.]

The dress of the modern physician is a plain black suit, throughout, with immaculate linen, and possibly a white cravat.

Occasionally one will "crop out" in some oddity of dress, but usually as a medium for advertising his business. With the better portion of the community, such monstrosities do not pa.s.s as indications of intelligence in the exhibitor.

This engraving represents Dr. Candee, a western magnetic doctor. He was formerly from the "nutmeg state," and is a fair specimen of the travelling doctors who secure custom from their oddities and eccentricities of dress.

XXVII.

MEDICAL FACTS AND STATISTICS.

HOW MANY.--WHO THEY ARE.--HOW THEY DIE.--HOW MUCH RUM THEY CONSUME.--HOW THEY LIVE.--OLD AGE.--WHY WE DIE.--GET MARRIED.--OLD PEOPLE'S WEDDING.--A GOOD ONE.--THE ORIGIN OF THE HONEYMOON.--A SWEET OBLIVION.--HOLD YOUR TONGUE!--MANY MEN, MANY MINDS.--"ALLOPATHY."--LOTS OF DOCTORS.--THE ITCH MITE.--A HORSE CAR RIDE.--KEEP COOL!--KNICKKNACKS.--HUMBLE PIE.--INCREASE OF INSANITY.--A COOL STUDENT.--HOW TO GET RID OF A MOTHER-IN-LAW.

THE POPULATION.

There are on the earth about one billion of inhabitants.

They speak four thousand and sixty-four languages.

Only one person in a thousand reaches his allotted years,--threescore and ten.

Between the ages of sixteen and forty-five, there are more females than males.

Lawyers live the longest, doctors next, ministers least of the three professions.

There are more insane among farmers than of any other laborers.

Caucasians live longer than Malays, Hindoos, Chinese, or Negroes.

Light-skinned, dark-haired persons with dark or blue eyes live the longest.

Red or florid complexioned, gray or hazel eyes, shortest.

One half of the people die before the age of seventeen; one fourth before seven.

About 91,824 die each day; one every second.

The married live longer than the single.

Tall men live longer than short ones. (No pun.)

Short women live longer than tall ones.

Three quarters of the adults are married.

Births and deaths are more frequent by night than day.

The cost of the clergy of the United States is six million dollars yearly.

Lawyers receive about thirty-five million dollars.

Crime costs the United States about nineteen million dollars.

Tobacco one hundred and fifty million dollars. (That's crime, also.)

Liquors one billion four hundred and eighty-three million four hundred and ninety-one thousand eight hundred and sixty-five dollars. (Text-book of Temperance, p. 188.)

Opium is eaten in the world by one hundred and twenty million people.

Hasheesh is used by some twenty millions.

The temperate live longer than the intemperate.

SELF-DESTRUCTION.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A GERMAN BEER GIRL.]

The Hon. Francis Gillette, in a speech in Hartford, Conn., in 1871, said that there was "in Connecticut, on an average, one liquor shop to every forty voters, and three to every Christian church. In this city, as stated in the _Hartford Times_, recently, we have five hundred liquor shops, and one million eight hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars were, last year, paid for intoxicating drinks. A cry, an appeal, came to me from the city, a few days since, after this wise: 'Our young men are going to destruction, and we want your influence, counsel, and prayers, to help save them.'"

In New London, report says, the young men are falling into drinking habits as never before. So in New Haven, Bridgeport, and the other cities and large places of the state.

"The pulse of a person in health beats about seventy strokes a minute, and the ordinary term of life is about seventy years. In these seventy years, the pulse of a temperate person beats two billion five hundred and seventy-four million four hundred and forty thousand times. If no actual disorganization should happen, a drunken person might live until his pulse beat this number of times; but by the constant stimulus of ardent spirits, or by pulse-quickening food, or tobacco, the pulse becomes greatly accelerated, and the two billion five hundred and seventy-four million four hundred and forty thousand pulsations are performed in little more than half the ordinary term of human life, and life goes out in forty or forty-five years, instead of seventy. This application of numbers is given to show that the acceleration of those forces diminishes the term of human life."

"In New York, Mr. Greeley states that 'a much larger proportion of adult males in the state drink now than did in 1840-44.' After speaking of the adverse demonstrations all over the country, he adds, 'I cannot recall a single decisive, cheering success, to offset these many reverses.'

"Ma.s.sachusetts is moving to build an asylum for her twenty-five thousand drunkards. Lager beer brewers at Boston Highlands have three millions of dollars invested in the business, manufactured four hundred and ninety-five thousand barrels last year, and paid a tax of half a million to the general government. The city of Chicago, last year, received into her treasury one hundred and ten thousand dollars for the sale of indulgences to sell intoxicating drinks.

"The same rate of fearful expenditure for intoxicating drinks extends across the ocean. In a speech before the Trades' Union Congress, last October, at Birmingham, 'on the disorganization of labor,' Mr. Potter shows drunkenness to be the great disorganizer of the labor of Great Britain, at a yearly cost of two hundred and twenty-eight million pounds, equal to one billion one hundred and forty million dollars; enough," he adds, "to pay the public debt of Great Britain in less than five years, and greatly diminish taxation forever."

HOW THEY LIVE.

In one block near the New Bowery, New York, are huddled fifteen hundred and twenty persons. Eight hundred and twelve are Irish, two hundred and eighteen Germans, one hundred and eighty-nine Poles, one hundred and eighty-six Italians, thirty-nine Negroes, sixty-four French, two Welsh, only ten American. Of these, ten hundred and sixty-two are Catholic, two hundred and eighty-seven Jews, etc. There are twenty grog-shops and fifty degraded women. Of six hundred and thirteen children, but one hundred and sixty-six went to school.

New York city consumes nine thousand six hundred dollars' worth of flour a day (twelve hundred barrels), and uses ten thousand dollars' worth of tobacco per day.

OLD AGE.

We have mentioned some physicians who lived to an extreme old age--the Doctors Meade; one lived to be one hundred and forty-eight years and nine months. Thomas Parr, an English yeoman, lived to the remarkable age of _one hundred and fifty-three years_; and even then Dr. Harvey, who held a _post mortem_ on the body, found no internal indication of decay. One of his descendants lived to be one hundred and twenty. The Rev. Henry Reade, Northampton, England, reached the age of one hundred and thirty-two.