“Augustus Apolphus: I will deceive you no longer. My conscience upbraids me. Those pearly white teeth you so much admire are false! false! They were made by Dr. Grinder, dentist. I use Dr. Scourer’s tooth-paste, which keeps them clean and white. ‘O, how sharper than a serpent’s thanks it is to have a toothless child.’Susan Jane.”
“Augustus Apolphus: I will deceive you no longer. My conscience upbraids me. Those pearly white teeth you so much admire are false! false! They were made by Dr. Grinder, dentist. I use Dr. Scourer’s tooth-paste, which keeps them clean and white. ‘O, how sharper than a serpent’s thanks it is to have a toothless child.’
Susan Jane.”
Great and public men are sometimes induced or inveigled into recommending a patent medicine. In London, one Joshua Ward, a drysalter, of Thames Street, about the year 1780, introduced a pill, composed of the usual ingredients,—aloes and senna,—which, owing to some benefit he was supposed to have derived from their use, Lord Chief Baron Reynolds was led to praise in the highest terms. The result of this high dignitary’s patronage was to give prominence to Ward and his pills, which subsequently sold for the fabulous price of 2s. 6d. a pill! General Churchill added his praise, and Ward was called as a physician to prescribe for the king. Either in consequence, or in spite of the treatment, the royal malady disappeared, and Ward wasrewarded with a solemn vote of the House of Commons protecting him fromthe interdiction of the College of Physicians. In addition to the liberal fee, he asked for and obtained the privilege of driving his carriage through St. James Park! Notwithstanding the pill, Reynolds died of his disease not long afterwards.
Henry Fielding subscribed to the wonderful efficacy of “Tar Water,” a nostrum of his day, but died of the disease for which it was recommended.
Some time prior to 1780 there was published in the newspapers a list of the patent nostrums, or advertised remedies, in London, which numbered upwards of two hundred.
Now there are known, in the United States alone, to be upwards of three hundred differently named hair preparations.
Dr. Head, of whom we have made mention, “realized large sums from worthless quack nostrums,” while at the same time another popular physician, with a Cambridge (England) diploma in his office, was proprietor of a “gout mixture,” which sold at the shops for two shillings a bottle.
Some of these shameless scoundrels, owners of advertised nostrums, with little or no sense of honor, have published the recommendations of great men, without the knowledge or permission of the parties whose names were so falsely affixed to their worthless stuff. A New York quack recently used the name of Henry Ward Beecher in this manner. Mr. Beecher published him as a thief and forger of his name, which only served to bring the doctor (?) into universal notice. Only to-day I read his impudent advertisement in a newspaper, with Mr. Beecher’s name affixed as reference. If you prosecute one of the villains for issuing false certificates, even for forging your own name, it does him no great injury, you get no satisfaction, and in the end it only serves to call public attention to a worthless article, thereby increasing its sale.
In the LondonMedical Journalof 1806, Dr. Lettsom attacked and exposed a “nervous cordial,” stating that it was a deleterious article; “that it had killed its thousands;”and further asserted that Brodum, its proprietor, was a Jewish knave, having been a bootblack in Copenhagen, and a wholesale murderer. Brodum at once brought an action against the proprietor of theJournal, laying the damages at twenty-five thousand dollars. Brodum held the advantage, and theJournalproprietor asked for terms of settlement. Brodum’s terms were not modest. He, through his attorney, agreed to withdraw the action provided the name of the author was revealed, and that he should whitewash the quack in the next number of theJournal, over the same signature! Dr. Lettsom consented to these terms, paid the lawyers’ bills and costs, amounting to three hundred and ninety pounds, and wrote the required puff of Brodum and his nostrum.
Soothing Syrups, nervous cordials, etc., owe their soothing properties to opium, or its salt—morphine.
From “Opium and the Opium Appetite,” by Alonzo Calkins, M. D., we are informed that an article sold as “Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup,” for children teething, contains nearlyone grain of the alkaloid(morphine)to each ounce of the syrup! Taking one teaspoonful as the dose (that is, one drachm), and there being eight drachms to the ounce, consequently about one eighth of a grain of morphine is given to an infant at a dose! Do you wonder it gives him aquietus? Do you wonder that the mortality among children is greatly on the increase? that so many of the darling, helpless little innocents die from dropsy, brain fever, epileptic fits, and the like?
Fruit Syrups for Soda Water.
Perhaps you take yours “plain.” No! Then you may want to know how the pure fruit syrup, which sweetens and flavors the soda, is made. The “soda” itself is a very harmless article.
Butyric Etheris usually taken for a basis. Butyric ether is manufactured from rancid butter, old rotten cheese, orLimburger cheese. The latter is the “loudest,” and affords the best flavor to the ether. The cheese is treated with sulphuric acid. Old leather is known to give it a particularly fine flavor. Any old boots and shoes will answer.
Pineapple Syrupis made from butyric and formic ether. The latter is manufactured from soap or glycerine. Sulphuric acid and red ants will do as well.
Strawberryis made of twelve parts of butyric ether and one of acetic ether, alcohol, and water. Color with cochineal—a bug of the tick species, from Mexico. Sometimes a little real strawberry is added, but it is not deemed essential.
Raspberryis made from the same articles. If convenient, the druggist adds a little raspberry jam or syrup. If not, color a little deeper, add some strawberry, and change the label to raspberry.
Vanilla Syrupis made of Tonqua beans, such as boys sell on the street.
Peachis made from bitter almonds.Wild Cherrythe same.
Nectaris formed by a compound of various syrups and Madeira wine. You can easily make the Madeira of neutral spirits, sugar, raisins, and logwood to color it.
Sarsaparilla.Take the cheapest and nastiest molasses obtainable. Strain it to remove dead bees, sticks, cockroaches, etc. Flavor with essence sassafras and wintergreen. Little extract sarsaparilla will do no harm if added to the mixture. It is very harmless.
Lemonis made of citric acid and sugar.
Coffeeis made mostly of chiccory, burnt livers, sometimes a little coffee bean. Horses’ livers are said to be the best, giving it aracyflavor, and morebody.
“They are all very good,” the vender tells you; he takes his plain, however. You see how much cheaper these are than therealfruit syrup itself; and as neither you nor I can tell the difference bytaste, what inducement has the dealer in soda water to use the costlier articles?
I have a friend who sells the “pure syrups,” and I presume the reader has also; but I respectfully decline drinking soda water with “pure fruit syrups.”
POISONOUS HAIR TONICS AND COSMETICS.Extract from the report of Professor C. F. Chandler, Ph. D., chemist to the Metropolitan Board of Health. This report, which presents the results of the examination of a few of the articles in general use, was printed in full in the Chemical News (American reprint) for May, 1870. We present the following list of dangerous preparations, which gives the number of grains of lead, etc., in one fluid ounce.I.Hair Tonics, Washes, and Restoratives.Grains of lead inone fluid ounce.1.Clark’s Distilled Restorative for the Hair,0.112.Chevalier’s Life for the Hair,1.023.Circassian Hair Rejuvenator,2.714.Ayer’s Hair Vigor,2.895.Professor Wood’s Hair Restorative,3.086.Dr. J. J. O’Brien’s Hair Restorer, America,3.287.Gray’s Celebrated Hair Restorative,3.398.Phalon’s Vitalia,4.699.Ring’s Vegetable Ambrosia,5.0010.Mrs. S. A. Allen’s World’s Hair Restorer,5.5711.L. Knittel’s Indian Hair Tonique,6.2912.Hall’s Vegetable Sicilian Hair Renewer,7.1313.Dr. Tebbet’s Physiological Hair Regenerator,7.4414.Martha Washington Hair Restorative,9.8015.Singer’s Hair Restorative,16.39II.Lotions or Washes for the Complexion.Perry’s Moth and Freckle Lotion.Mercury in solution,2.67gr.}equiv. to{Corrosive Sub.,3.61gr.Zinc in solution,0.99"Sulphate of Zinc,4.25"The sediment contains mercury, lead, and bismuth.III.Enamels for the Skin.Grains of lead in one fluidounce, after shaking.Eugenie’s Favorite,108.94grains.Phalon’s Snow-white Enamel,146.28"Phalon’s Snow-white Oriental Cream,190.99"Conclusion.—It appears from the foregoing,—1. TheHair Tonics,Washes, andRestorativescontain lead in considerable quantities; that they owe their action to this metal, and that they are consequently highly dangerous to the health of persons using them.2. With a single exception, Perry’s Moth and Freckle Lotion, theLotionsfor the skin are free from lead and other injurious metals.3. That theEnamelsare composed of either carbonate of lime, oxide of zinc, or carbonate of lead, suspended in water. The first two classes of enamels are comparatively harmless; as harmless as any other white dirt, when plastered over the skin to close the pores and prevent its healthy action. On the other hand, the enamels composed of carbonate of lead are highly dangerous, and their use is very certain to produce disastrous results to those who patronize them.
POISONOUS HAIR TONICS AND COSMETICS.
Extract from the report of Professor C. F. Chandler, Ph. D., chemist to the Metropolitan Board of Health. This report, which presents the results of the examination of a few of the articles in general use, was printed in full in the Chemical News (American reprint) for May, 1870. We present the following list of dangerous preparations, which gives the number of grains of lead, etc., in one fluid ounce.
I.Hair Tonics, Washes, and Restoratives.
II.Lotions or Washes for the Complexion.
Perry’s Moth and Freckle Lotion.
The sediment contains mercury, lead, and bismuth.
III.Enamels for the Skin.
Conclusion.—It appears from the foregoing,—
1. TheHair Tonics,Washes, andRestorativescontain lead in considerable quantities; that they owe their action to this metal, and that they are consequently highly dangerous to the health of persons using them.
2. With a single exception, Perry’s Moth and Freckle Lotion, theLotionsfor the skin are free from lead and other injurious metals.
3. That theEnamelsare composed of either carbonate of lime, oxide of zinc, or carbonate of lead, suspended in water. The first two classes of enamels are comparatively harmless; as harmless as any other white dirt, when plastered over the skin to close the pores and prevent its healthy action. On the other hand, the enamels composed of carbonate of lead are highly dangerous, and their use is very certain to produce disastrous results to those who patronize them.
Hair Restoratives: A Bald Bachelor’s Experience.
A gentleman of perhaps thirty-five years of age once called upon the writer for advice relative to baldness, when he related the following experience, permitting me to make a note of it at leisure.
“In 1865 my friends intimated to me that my hair was getting slightly thin on the crown of my head. I have always had a mortal terror of being bald, and daily examinations convinced me that my fears were about to be realized. My first inquiry was for a remedy.
“‘What shall I do to prevent its falling out?’ I nervously inquired.
“‘Get a bottle of Dr. ——’s Hair Restorative,’ one advised; another, some different preparation,—all advertised remedies,—till I had a list a yard long of various washes, preventives, restorers, etc.,ad infinitum.
“I obtained one ofthe very best. I used it as directed. Itstuckas though its virtue consisted in sticking the loose hairs firmly to the firmer-rooted ones. But alas! after a month’s trial, sufficient hair had come out of my head to make a respectablechignon!
“I next got some of Mrs. A. S. S. Allon’s—or All—something; I forget the rest of the name; I’m sure of the A. S. S., however,—and that was worse than thegum-stick-’emkind, for the hair came out faster than before.
“In despair, I applied to a ‘respectable apothecary,’ who keeps the next corner drug store. ‘For God’s sake, Mr. Bilious, have you got any good preventive for falling of the hair?’ I exclaimed.
“‘O, yes, just the article,’ he replied, rubbing his palms vigorously. He then showed me his stock, consisting ofthirty-nine different kinds!
“‘All very good—highly recommended,’ he remarked, with commendable impartiality.
“I selected one—with rather an ominous name, I admit:—Kat-hair-on!—preferring cat’s hair to none.
“I used the Kathairon according to directions.”
“‘Did the cat’s hair grow?’ I anxiously inquired.
“‘Neither cat’s hair nor human hair.’ No. Worse and worse. I was about to abandon all effort, when, stopping on a corner to get a young boot-black to shine my boots, preparatory to making a call on a lady acquaintance, before whom I was desirous of making a genteel appearance, a dirty, ragged little urchin peered around the block, and exclaimed, ‘O, mister, you’re barefooted on top o’ yer head!’ I had inadvertently removed my hat, to wipe my forehead.
“BAREFOOTED ON THE TOP OF HIS HEAD.”
“This was the last feather. Though coming from but a dirty boot-black, it stung me to the marrow. I kicked over the boy, box, blacking, and all, and rushed into the nearest drug shop. I bought another new hair preparation. Another ominous name—‘Bare-it!’
“This I also used, as directed on the label, for a month.‘I think,’ I said, ‘if I use it a second month, it will entirelybare it!’
“I bought a wig, and had my head shaved. I didn’t lock myself up in a coal-cellar, or hide under a tub, like Diogenes, but I felt that I would have gladly done either, to hide myself from the eyes of the world. The girls all cast shy glances at me as they passed; as though the majority ofthemdid not wear false hair!
“In utter desperation, I visited a dermatologist. What a name to make hair grow! Well, he examined my scalp with a microscope, and said the hair could be made to grow anew. ‘I discover myriads of germs, which only require the right treatment in order to spring up in an exuberant crop of wavy tresses.’ I bought his preparations. Bill, thirty-eight dollars. They were worthless.
“Soon after this failure, I heard of a new remedy—‘a sure cure.’ The proprietor possessed a world-wide reputation, from the manufacture of various other remedies for nearly all diseases to which we poor mortals are subject, and there might be something in this. It was recommended to cure baldness, and restore gray hair to its natural color. I would go and see the proprietor of this excellent hair restorer. I hastened to Lowell. I was ushered into the doctor’s sanctum—into the very presence of this Napoleon of medicine-makers, the Alexander of conquered worlds—of medical prejudices!
“With hat in hand, I bowed low to the great Doctor Hair—or hair doctor. He beheld my veneration for himself. With a practised eye, he noted my genteel apparel. Flattered by my obeisance, and not to be outdone in politeness, he arose, removed his tile, and bowed equally low in return to my profound salutation, when lo!O tempora! O mores!he was both bald and gray! I retired without specifying the object of my visit.”
A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing.
When a man tells you, point blank, that he is selling an article for the profit of it, believe him; but when he asserts that he is advertising and offering a remedy solely for the public good, for the benefit of suffering humanity, he is a liar. Beware of such.
Furthermore, when he publishes an advertisement in every paper in the land, announcing that himself having been miraculously or “providentially” cured of avarietyof diseases by a certain compound, theprescriptionfor which he will send free to any address, you should hesitate, until satisfied of the disinterestedness of the party, and meantime ask yourself the following question: “Provided this be true, why don’t the unparalleled benevolent gentlemanpublish the recipe, which would cost so much less than this persistent advertising ‘that he will send it to any requiring it’? And you are next led to ask,—
“Where is the ‘dodge’? For money is what he is after.”
A reverend (?), a scoundrel, a “wolf in sheep’s clothing,” advertises in nearly every paper you chance to notice, especiallyreligiousnewspapers, a remedy he discovered while a missionary to some foreign country, that cured him of avarietyof diseases, the recipe for which medicine he will send to any address,free of charge.
“Here is the ‘Old Sands of Life’ dodge,” I said, “which I had the satisfaction of exposing fourteen years ago.”
The reader may recollect the advertisement of “A Retired Physician, seventy-five years of age, whose sands of life had nearly run out,” who advertised so extensively a remedy which cured his daughter, etc., which remedy he would sendfree, to the afflicted, on application.
I investigated his “little fraud.” I found, instead of an old man “seventy-five years of age,” a young man of about twenty-eight or thirty. He was no reverend. He had nodaughter. He was a tall, gaunt, profane, tobacco-chewing, foul-mouthed fellow, with a bad impediment in his speech from loss of palate, whose namewasOliver Phipps Brown, a printer by trade, who formerly worked as journeyman in theCourantoffice, Hartford, Conn. The police finally got hold of him, and broke up the swindle.
OLD “SANDS OF LIFE.”
Here is now a parallel case. The abovereverendsays he will send the recipe free. I directed my student to write for it. The recipe came, with various articles named therein, supposed to be the Latin names of plants. I assert that there are no such medicines in the Materia Medica, or the world. Thereverenddon’t want that there should be. Why? Because you would not then send to him for his “Compound.”
He sends with his recipe a circular, in which he gives you the history ofhis marvellous discovery. Further along, by some oversight, he says it was made known to him through a physician!
The names are bogus. The whole remedy is a humbug. There are names in it asspecieswhich sound something like some medical term; and the druggist may be deceived thereby. The reverend quack, foreseeing “the difficulty in obtaining the articles in their purity at any druggist’s,” advises you to send to him for them. Do you begin to see thedodge? He “will furnish it atcost.” Only think! How benevolent! “My meansmake me independent.” Think again. An invalid from boyhood, his time and means exhausted in travelling “in Europe two years,” and was only “sent a missionary (?) through the kindness of friends,” he assures us in his circular. Here hediscovered through an old physician—surely a new mode of discovery—this wonderful compound, which cured him in “six weeks,” and forthwith, in gratitude, he proceeded to New York, and began putting up this marvellous remedy “at cost.”
Let us examine the article sold for three dollars and a half a small package. Dr. Hall, of the “Journal of Health,” examined the article which “Old Sands of Life” sold asCanabis Indica, and found the cost “but sixteen cents, bottle and all.” Nevertheless, “The Retired Physician” sold it to his dupes for two dollars. I do not hesitate to say that the above compound cost evenless than sixteen cents a package.
“But,” said a gentleman to me, “he is connected with the Bible House. Here is his address: ‘Station D, Bible House, New York.’”
“There is a post-station by that name. Suppose I should give an address, ‘34 Museum Building.’ Would that imply that I was a play-actor, or owner of the Museum?” I replied.
“Then it is only another ‘Reverend’ dodge—is it?” he asked.
“Precisely; it is to give character to his characterless address.”
“Don’t the newspaper publishers know it is a swindle?” he suggested.
“There’s not the least doubt that they know it.”
“Then hereafter I shall have little faith in the religion or honesty of the newspaper that publishes such swindling advertisements.”
“Admitting that they know the dishonesty of the thing,—and how can any man endowed with common sense but seethat there isswindleon the face of it?—the publisher of that advertisement is aparticeps criminisin the transaction.”
“Why don’t some of the thousand victims who have been swindled into buying this worthless stuff expose him?”
“In exposing thereverend wolf, don’t you see they would expose their own weakness? This is the reason of the fellow’s selecting the peculiar class of diseases as curable by his great discovery. The poor sufferer does not wish the community to know that he is afflicted by such a disease.”
“It is truly a great dodge; and no doubt the knave has found fools enough to make him ‘independent.’”
Rules.1. Take no patent or advertised medicines at all. They are of no earthly use! You never require them, as they are not conducive to your health, happiness, or longevity.
There are physicians who can cure every disease that flesh is heir to—excepting one.
2. Apply in your need only to a respectable physician.
3. Give your preference to such as administer the smallest quantities of medicine—and are successful in their practice.
I have barely begun to exhaust the material I have been years collecting for this chapter; but I must desist, to give room for other important expositions.
MANUFACTURED DOCTORS.
A BOSTON BARBER AS M. D.—A BARBER “GONE TO POT.”—FOOLS MADE DOCTORS.—BAKERS.—BARBERS.—“A LUCKY DOG.”—TINKERS.—ROYAL FAVORS.—“LITTLE CARVER DAVY.”—A BUTCHER’S BLOCKHEAD.—A SWEEPING VISIT.—HOP-PED FROM OBSCURITY.—PEDAGOGUES TURN DOCTORS.—ARBUTHNOT.—“A QUAKER.”—“WALKS OFF ON HIS EAR.”—WEAVERS AND BASKET-MAKERS.—A TOUGH PRINCE; REQUIRED THREE M. D.’S TO KILL HIM.—MARAT A HORSE DOCTOR.—A MERRY PARSON.—BLACK MAIL.—POLICE AS A MIDWIFE, ETC., ETC.
A BOSTON BARBER AS M. D.—A BARBER “GONE TO POT.”—FOOLS MADE DOCTORS.—BAKERS.—BARBERS.—“A LUCKY DOG.”—TINKERS.—ROYAL FAVORS.—“LITTLE CARVER DAVY.”—A BUTCHER’S BLOCKHEAD.—A SWEEPING VISIT.—HOP-PED FROM OBSCURITY.—PEDAGOGUES TURN DOCTORS.—ARBUTHNOT.—“A QUAKER.”—“WALKS OFF ON HIS EAR.”—WEAVERS AND BASKET-MAKERS.—A TOUGH PRINCE; REQUIRED THREE M. D.’S TO KILL HIM.—MARAT A HORSE DOCTOR.—A MERRY PARSON.—BLACK MAIL.—POLICE AS A MIDWIFE, ETC., ETC.
“Every man is either a physician or a fool at forty,” says the old proverb.
“May not a man be both?” suggested Canning, in the presence of a circle of friends, before whom Sir Henry Halford happened to quote the old saying.
“There is generally a fool in every family, whom the parents select at once for a priest or a physician,” said Peter Pindar. He was good authority.
I am of the opinion that there are many whose mental capacity has been overrated, who have made doctors of themselves; but we are not to treat of fools in this chapter, but of men whomcircumstanceshave created physicians, and of men who, in spite of circumstances of birth or education, have made themselves doctors.
In the choice of a trade or profession, every young man should weigh carefully his natural capacity to the pursuit selected. His parents or guardians should consult the youth’s adaptability rather than their own convenience. How many have dragged out a miserable existence by ill choice of a calling! Men who were destined by nature to be wood-sawyers and diggers of trenches, are found daily taking upon themselves the immense responsibility of teaching those whose mental calibre is far above their own, or assuming the greater responsibility of administering to the afflicted.
If a man finds himself adapted to a higher calling than that originally selected for him by his friends, by all means let him “come up higher;” but too many by far have changed from a trade to a profession to which they had no adaptability.
So we find men in the medical profession who were better as they were,—bakers, barbers, butchers, tailors, tinkers, pedagogues, cobblers, horse doctors, etc., etc.
There used to be a fish-peddler going about Boston, blowing a fish-horn, and crying his “fresh cod an’ haddock,” who, getting tired of that loud crying and loud smelling occupation, took to blowing his horn for his “wonderful discovery” of a “pasture weed,” which cured every humor but a thundering humor (one can see the humor of the joke), and every eruption since the eruption of Hecla in 1783,—which is a pity that he had not made his discovery in time to have tried it on old Hecla’s back when it was up.
Barbers as Doctors.
A barber of Boston, accidentally overhearing a gentleman mention a certain remedy for the “barber’s itch,” seized upon the idea of speculating upon it, and at once sold out his shop, made up the ointment, clapped M. D. to his name, put out his circulars, and is now seeking whom he may devour, as a physician.
With the looseness of morals and the laxity of our laws, one of these fellows “can make a doctor as quick as a tinker can make a tin kettle.”
Probably more barbers have become doctors than any other artisans, for the reason that barbers were formerly nearly the only acknowledged “blood-letters.” In the earlier days of Abernethy, barber surgeons were recognized, and the great doctor said of himself, “I have often doffed my hat to those fellows, with a razor between their teeth and a lancet in their hands.” Doubtless some of them arrived to usefulness in the profession. Dr. Ambrose Paré, a French barber surgeon, was called the father of French surgery, and enjoyed the confidence of Charles IX. An eminent surgeon of London was Mr. Pott. He was contemporary with Dr. Hunter, and gave lectures at St. Bartholomew Hospital in Hunter’s presence. Some person asking a wag one day where Dr. Hunter was, he replied that, “with barber surgeons hehad gone to pot.”
This alliance of surgery and shaving, to say nothing of other qualifications with which they were sometimes associated, conceivably enough furnished some pretext for apprenticeships, since Dickey Gossip’s definition of
“Shaving and tooth-drawing,Bleeding, cabbaging, and sawing,”
was by no means always sufficiently comprehensive to include the multifarious accomplishments of “the doctor.” “I have seen,” says Dr. Macillwain, of England, “within twenty-five years, chemist, druggist, surgeon, apothecary, and the significant, ‘&c.,’ followed by hatter, hosier, and linen draper, all in one establishment.”
I saw in New Hampshire, in 1864, doctor, barber, and apothecary represented by one man.
William Butts, another barber surgeon of London, was called to attend Henry VIII., and was rewarded for hisprofessional services with the honor of knighthood in 1512. Another, who was knighted by Henry VIII., was John Ayliffe, a sheriff, formerly a merchant of Blackwell Hall.
Royalty had a chronic habit of knighting quacks. Queen Anne became so charmed by a tailor, who had turned doctor, and who, by some hook or crook, was called to prescribe for the queen’s weak eyes, that she had him sworn in, with another knave, as her own oculist. “This lucky gentleman,” says a reliable author, “was William Reade, a botching tailor of Grub Street, London. To the very last he was a great ignoramus, as a work entitled ‘A Short and Exact Account of all Diseases Incident to the Eyes,’ attests; yet he rose to knighthood, and the most lucrative and fashionable practice of the period.” Reade (Sir William) was unable to read the book he had published (written by anamanuensis); nevertheless, aristocracy, and wise and worthy people at that, who listened to his dignified voice, viewed his pompous person, encased in rich garments, and adorned with jewelry and lace ruffles,cap-a-pie, resting his chin upon his enormous gold-headed cane, as, reclining in his splendid coach, drawn by a span of superb blood horses, up to St. James, considered him the most learned and eminent physician of that generation.
In the British Museum is deposited a copy of a poem to the great oculist. This poem Reade himself had written, at the hand of a penny-a-liner, a “poet of Grub Street,” immediately after he was knighted, which has been mainly instrumental in handing his name down to posterity.
Tinker as Doctor.
About the year 1705, one Roger Grant rose into public notice in London, by his publication of his own “marvellous cures.” This fellow was no fool, though a great knave. He was formerly a travelling tinker, subsequently a cobbler, and Anabaptist preacher. From tinkering of pots, he becamemender of soles of men’s boots and shoes; thence saver of souls from perdition, a tinkerer of sore eyes, and lightener of the body. The following bit of poetry was written in 1708 for his benefit, the “picture” being one which Grant, who was a very vain man, had gotten up from a copperplate likeness of himself, to distribute among his friends. The picture was found posted up conspicuously with the lines:—
“A tinker first, his scene of life began;That failing, he set up for a cunning man;But, wanting luck, puts on a new disguise,And now pretends that he can cure your eyes.But this expect, that, like a tinker true,Where he repairs one eye, he puts out two.”
THE EYE DOCTOR.
He worked himself into notoriety by the publication, in pamphlet form, of his cures,—a mixture of truth strongly spiced with falsehood,—and scattering it over the community. “His plan was to get hold of some poor, ignorant person, of imperfect vision, and, after treating him with medicine andhalf-crowns for a few weeks, induce him to sign a testimonial, which he probably had never read, that he was born blind, and by the providential intervention of Dr. Grant, he had been entirely restored. To this certificate the clergyman and church-wardens of the parish, in which the patient had been known to wander in mendicancy, were asked to attest; and if they proved impregnable to the cunning representations of the importunate solicitors, and declined to sign the certificate, the doctor did not scruple to save them that trouble by signing their names himself.”
More than once was the charge of being a tinker preferred against him. The following satire was written and published for his benefit—with Dr. Reade’s—after Queen Anne had Dr. Grant sworn in as her “oculist in ordinary”:—
“Her majesty sure was in a surprise,Or else was very short-sighted,When a tinker was sworn to look to her eyes,And the mountebank Reade was knighted.”
“The Little Carver Davy.”
The distinguished chemical philosopher and physician of Penzance, Sir Humphry Davy, Bart., was the son of a poor wood-carver, at which trade Humphry worked in his earlier days, and was named by his familiar associates, the “Little Carver Davy.” On the death of his father, the widow established herself as a milliner at Penzance, where she apprenticed her son to an apothecary. His mother was a woman of talent and great moral sense. When, as Sir Humphry, he had reached the summit of his fame, he looked back upon the facts of his humble origin, his father’s plebeian occupation and associates, and his mother’s mean pursuit, followed for his benefit, with mortification instead of regarding them as sources of pride.
A Butcher Boy escapes the Cleaver and becomes a Great Physician and Poet.
In a rickety old three story house, the lower part of which was occupied as a butcher’s shop and trader’s room, and the upper stories as a dwelling-house, at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, in 1721, was born Mark Akenside. His father was a butcher, and one day, as the boy Mark was assisting at the menial occupation of cutting up a calf, a cleaver fell from the shop block upon another “calf,”—that of young Akenside’s leg,—which lamed him for life.
THE YOUNG SURGEON’S FIRST EXPERIENCE.
Akenside was a Nonconformist, and by the aid of the Dissenters’ Society young Mark was sent to Edinburgh to study theology. From theology he went to physic, his honest parent refunding the money to the society paid for his studies under their patronage, and he subsequently obtained his degree at Cambridge, and became a fellow of the R. S.
Like Davy, Akenside became ashamed of his plebeian origin. His lameness, like Lord Byron’s, was a continual source of mortification to him.
He became a physician to St. Thomas; and, as he went with the students the rounds of the hospital, the fastidiousness of the little bunch of dignity at having come so closely in contact with the vulgar rabble, induced him, at times, to make the strongest patients precede him withbrooms, to clear a way for him through the crowd of diseased wretches, who, nevertheless, had wonderful faith in his wisdom, and would cry out, “Bravo for the butcher boy with a game leg!” as they fell back before the fearful charge of corn brooms.
By the assistance of friends, and his ever extensive practice, Akenside was enabled, to the day of his death, in 1770, to keep his carriage, wear his gold-hilted sword, and his huge well-powdered wig.
How One Hop-ped from Obscurity.
“Dr. Messenger Monsey, in the heyday of his prosperity, used to assert to his friends that the first of his known ancestors was a baker and a retailer of hops. At a critical point of this worthy man’s career, when hops were ‘down,’ and feathers ‘up,’ in order to raise the needful for present emergencies he ripped up his beds, sold the feathers, and refilled the ticks with hops. When a change occurred in the market soon afterwards the process was reversed; even the children’s beds were reopened, and the hops sold for a large profit over the cost of replacing the feathers!”
“That’s the way, sirs, that my family hop-ped from obscurity,” the doctor would conclude, with great gusto.
The Duke of Leeds used, in the same manner, to delight in boasting of his lucky progenitor, Jack Osborn, the shop lad, who rescued his master’s beautiful daughter from a watery grave at the bottom of the Thames, and won her hand away from a score of noble suitors, who wanted, literally, the young lady’spin-money as much as herself. Her father was a pin manufacturer, and had in his shop on London Bridge amassed a considerable wealth in the business.The jolly old man, instead of disdaining to bestow the lovely and wealthy maid—his only child—on an apprentice, exclaimed,—
“Jack Osborn won her, and Jack shall wear her.”
When Lord Bath vainly endeavored to effect a reconciliation between the doctor and Garrick, who had fallen out, Monsey said,—
“Why will your lordship trouble yourself with the squabbles of a merry-andrew and aquackdoctor?”
Monsey continued his quarrel with Garrick up to the day of the death of the great tragedian. The latter seldom retaliated, but when he did his sarcasm cut to the bone.
Garrick’s style of satire may be inferred from his epigram on James Quin, the celebrated actor, and illegitimate son of an Irishman, “whose wife turned out a bigamist.” When Garrick make his debut on the London stage, at Godman’s Fields playhouse, October 19, 1741, as “Richard the Third,” Quin objected to Garrick’s original style, saying,—
“If this young fellow is right, myself and all the other actors are wrong.”
Being told that the theatre was crowded to the dome nightly to hear the new actor, Quin replied that “Garrick was a new religion; Whitefield was followed for a time, but they would all come to church again.” Hence Garrick wrote the following epigram:—
“Pope Quin, who damns all churches but his own,Complains that heresy infects the town;That Whitefield-Garrick has misled the age,And taints the sound religion of the stage.‘Schism,’ he cries, ‘has turned the nation’s brain,But eyes will open, and to church again!’Thou great Infallible, forbear to roar;Thy bulls and errors are revered no more.When doctrines meet with general approbation,It is notheresy, but reformation.”
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 metTo save a wretched sinner.‘Come, Tom,’ said Jack, ‘pray let’s be quick,Or we shall loseourdinner.’“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 God.”
“And I,” replied Monsey, “one who believes there arethree.”
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 practitioners 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 associate 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 practitioner, he endeavoredto 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 circumstances.
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 title 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 advertisement and his advertisers. The poets and lampooners were Blackmer’s. They assisted 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 thatthey 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 coarsest 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-scoredisinterestedwriters 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-class medical practitioner. 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 wereantipodes,—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.
John Radcliffe, the humbug, “the physician without learning,” was the son of a Yorkshire yeoman. When he had risen to intimacy with the leading nobility of London,—as he did by his “shrewdness, arrogant simplicity, and immeasurable insolence,”—he laid claim to aristocratic origin. The Earl of Derwenter recognizedSirJohn as a kinsman; but the heralds interfered with the little “corner” of the doctor and earl, after Radcliffe’s decease, by admonishing the University of Oxford not to erect any escutcheon over his plebeian monument.
Of Radcliffe’s success in getting patronage we have spoken in another chapter. Doubtless he, Dr. Hannes, and Dr. Mead all resorted to the same sharp tricks, of which they accused each other by turns, in order to gain notoriety and practice.
Dr. Edward Hanneswas reputed a “basket-maker.” At least, his father followed that humble calling. Of the son’s earlier life little is known. About the year 168-, he burst upon the London aristocracy with a magnificent equipage, consisting of coach and four, and handsome liveried servants and coachmen.
These werehisadvertisements, and he soon rode into a splendid practice, notwithstanding Radcliffe’s contrary prognostication.
Dr. Hannes and Dr. Blackmer, being called to attend upon the young Duke of Gloucester, and the disease taking a fatal turn, Sir John Radcliffe was also called to examine into the case. Radcliffe could not forego the opportunity here offered to lash his rivals, and turning to them in the presence of the royal household, he said,—
“It would have been happy for the nation had you, sir (to Hannes), been bred a basket-maker, and you, sir (to Blackmer), remained a country schoolmaster, rather thanhave ventured out of your reach in the practice of an art to which you are an utter stranger, and for your blunders in which you ought to be whipped with one of your own rods.”
As the case was simply one of rash, none of them had much to boast of.
A Horse Doctor.
There have been, and still are, thousands in the various walks of life, who, at some period, have attempted the practice of medicine. Among the hundreds whom our colleges “grind out” annually, not more than one in twenty succeeds in medical practice so far as to gain any eminence, or the competence of a common laborer.
Marat was a horse doctor.
The most remarkable thing respecting this noted man occurred at his birth.He was born triplets!
Yes, though “born of parents entirely unknown to history,” three different places have claimed themselves, or been claimed, as his birthplace.
Before his energies became perverted to political aims, he had endeavored to rise, by his own talent and energies, through the sciences.
The year 1789 found him in the position of veterinary surgeon to the Count d’Artois, thoroughly disgusted with his failure to rise in society with the “quacks,” as he termed them, “of the Corps Scientifique.”
Miss Mühlbach, in her “Maria Antoinette and her Son,” presents Marat in conversation with the cobbler, Simon, as follows:—
“The cobbler quickly turned round to confront the questioner. He saw, standing by his side, a little, remarkably crooked and dwarfed young man, whose unnaturally large head was set upon narrow, depressed shoulders, and whose whole (ludicrous) appearance made such an impression upon the cobbler that he laughed outright.
“‘Not beautiful, am I?’ asked the stranger, who tried to join in the laugh with the cobbler, but the result was a mere grimace; which made his unnaturally large mouth extend from ear to ear, displaying two fearful rows of long, greenish teeth. ‘Not beautiful at all, am I? Dreadful ugly!’
“‘You are somewhat remarkable, at least,’ replied the cobbler. ‘If I did not hear you speak French, and see you standing upright, I should think you the monstrous toad in the fable.’
“‘I am the monstrous toad of the fable. I have merely disguised myself to-day as a man, in order to look at this Austrian woman and her brood.’
“‘Where do you live, and what is your name, sir?’ asked the cobbler, with glowing curiosity.
“‘I live in the stables of the Count d’Artois, and my name is Jean Paul Marat.’
“‘In the stable!’ cried the cobbler. ‘My faith, I had not supposed you a hostler or a coachman. It must be a funny sight, M. Marat, to seeyoumounted upon a horse.’
“‘You think that such a big toad does not belong there exactly. Well, you are right, brother Simon. My real business is not at all with the horses, but with the men of the stable. I am the horse doctor of the Count d’Artois, and I can assure you that I am a tolerably skilful doctor.’”
We do not quote the above author as reliable authority in personal descriptions, beyond the “shrugging of shoulders,” which habit she attributes to all of her characters (vide“Napoleon and Queen Louisa,” where she uses the phrase some twenty-three times).
At the time of his assuming the dictatorship, he resided in most squalid apartments, situated in one of the lowest back streets of Paris, in criminal intimacy with the wife of his printer.... He sold their bed to get money to bring out the first number of his journal, and lived in extreme poverty at a time when he could have become immensely rich by selling his silence.
The death of this wretch was hastened only a few days by his assassination, for he was already consumed by a disgusting disease, and it is melancholy to add that he was adored after his death, and his remains deposited in the Pantheon with national honors, and an altar erected to his memory in the club of the Cordeliers.
“I killed one man to save a hundred thousand!” exclaimed the magnificent Charlotte Corday to her judges; “a villain to save innocents, a furious wild beast, to give repose to my country!” Thus the “horse doctor” ignominiously perished at the hands of a woman,—a woman who immortalized herself by killing a “villain.”
Peter Pindar, the Preacher.
We find many cases where ministers have turned doctors, andvice versa.
“Peter Pindar” is here worthy of a passing notice. His true name was Wolcot. Descended from a family of doctors for several generations, he nevertheless himself failed to gain a living practice.
When King George III. sent Sir William Trelawney out as governor of Jamaica, about 1760, he took young Dr. Wolcot with him, who acted in the treble capacity of physician, private secretary, and chaplain to the governor’s household. Dr. Wolcot’s professional knowledge had been acquired somewhat “irregularly,” and it is very doubtful whether he ever received ordination at the hands of the bishops.
It is true, however, that he acted as rector for the colony, reading prayers and preaching whenever a congregation of ten presented itself, which occurred only semi-occasionally.
The doctor was fond of shooting, and ’tis gravely reported that he and his clerk used to amuse themselves on the way to church by shooting pigeons and other wild game, with which the wood abounded. Having shot their way to thesacred edifice, the merry parson and jolly clerk would wait ten minutes for the congregation to convene, and if, at the expiration of that time, the quota had not arrived, the few were dismissed with a blessing, and the pair shot their way back home. If but a few negroes presented themselves, the rector ordered his clerk to give them a bit of silver, with which to buy them off.
THE PARSON BUYING OFF THE “CONGREGATION.”
One old negro, more cunning than the rest, and who discovered that the parson’s interest was rather in the discharge of his fowling-piece than the discharge of his priestly duties, used to present himself punctually every Sunday at church.
“What brings you here, blackie?” asked the parson.
“To hear de prayer for sinners, and de sarmon, masser.”
“Wouldn’t abitor two serve you as well?” asked the rector, with a wink.
“Well, masser, dis chile lub de good sarmon ob yer rev’rence, but dis time de money might do,” was the reply, with a significant scratch of his woolly head.
The parson would then pay the price, the negro would grin his thanks, and, chuckling to himself, retire; and for a year or more this sort ofblack-mailing was continued.
Tiring ofactingas priest, Wolcot returned to London, and vainly endeavored to establish himself in practice. Neither preaching nor practising physic was his forte, and he resorted to the pen. Here he discovered his genius. Adopting thenom de plumeof “Peter Pindar,” he became famous as a political satirist, and the author of numerous popular works. He died in London in 1819. Wolcot possessed a kindly heart, and a benevolence deeper than his pockets.
Policemen as Doctors and Surgeons.
Some very laughable scenes, as well as very touching and painful ones, might be recorded, had we space, where policemen have necessarily been unceremoniously summoned to act as physician or surgeon in absence of a “regular.”
In Portland, the police have to turn their hand to most everything. Circumstances beyond his control compelled one Mr. J. S. to act the part of midwife to a strapping Irish woman at the station-house, one evening, he being the sole “committee of reception” to a bouncing baby that came along somewhat precipitately. The account, which is well authenticated, closes by saying,—
“Mother, baby, and officer are doing as well as can be expected!”
We have seen the “officer.” He did better than was “expected.”
The writer was on a Fulton ferry boat in the winter of1857, when a similar scene occurred. A German woman was taken in pain. A whisper was passed to a female passenger; a policeman was summoned from outside the ladies’ (?) cabin; the male occupants were ejected,—even myself and another medical student, and the husband of the patient. The latter remonstrated, and demonstrated his objection to the momentary separation by beating and shouting at the saloon door.
“Katharina! Katharina!” he shouted, “keep up a steef upper lips!”
This roaring attracted nearly all the men from the opposite side of the boat, who crowded around him and the door, to learn the cause of the Teutonic demonstrations of alternate fear, anger, and encouragement.
“Got in himmel! Vere you leefs ven you’s t’ home? Vich a man can’t come mit his vife, altogedder? Hopen de door, unt I preaks him mit mine feest; don’t it?” So he kept on, alternately cursing the policeman and encouraging “Katharina,” till we reached the Brooklyn side, and left the ferry boat.