“Where have you been lingering, that you are behind time at school?”
“WAITING TO SEE THE IMAGES BOW”.
“Been down to Professor Gammel’s, waitin’ to see the images bow.”
Then the teacher drew his ferule or rod, and made them “bow” in submission to a smart whipping—a sequel anticipated by the older scholars who instituted the story.
House Spiders.—Was there ever a child who was not taught, directly or indirectly, that house spiders were poisonous,—that their bite was instantaneous death? Was there ever a greater mistake? Many people have a superstitious terror of these harmless creatures. The bite of spiders is only poisonous to those insects which the divine economy seems to have created for them to destroy. It is possible, as by a fly, sometimes for a slight skin inflammation, less than a mosquito’s bite, to follow the sting of a spider on a very small child.
Let me hereby disabuse the public mind of the repugnance or horror with which these little creatures are regarded. The Creator has evidently placed them here for the destruction of flies and other insects, which otherwise would completely overrun us. The fly is such a domestic creature, that he soon deserts a house where the family is long absent. The spider then removes also. (I have watched this proceeding, with no little interest, in the absence of my own family.) Therefore the spider was created to suppress a superabundance of insect life. When I have before stated this fact, the listener has been led to inquire why the flies were then made. We will not answer the suggestion of this “riddle” as the Irishman did (you know that he said, “To feed the spiders, to be sure”), but reply, that if this question is to arise in this connection, we may as well keep on our inquiry till we arrive at the greater riddle, “Why arewecreated?”—to which we have no space for reply.
It is said that manufacturers of quill pens in London, being greatly annoyed by a species of moth which infests their quills and devours the feathers, and the common spider being endowed with an inordinate appetite for those same moths, the penmakers and spiders are on the best of terms, and an army of these much-maligned and persecuted insects encamp in each pen factory, and do good service to the cause of literature as well as trade, by protecting the quills.We may yet find that even mosquitos and bedbugs have their uses in the wise economy of nature.
Now, when tidy housewifery requires that brush and broom should ruthlessly demolish the webs,—the wonderful work and mechanism of the one species of house spider,—let it be done as a necessity, not with a feeling of repugnance to the harmless little insect; and let children be taught the truthful lesson that nothing is made in vain.
The House Cat, with many, is regarded with unaccountable superstition. It goes with the witch, particularly the black cat. No witch ever could exist without one. This is usually the species that haunts naughty boys in their dreams after they have eaten too heartily of cake, and other indigestible stuff, at evening.
Cats are as old as time. At least their existence dates back as far as man’s in history, and they were formerly regarded as a sacred animal.
In ancient Egypt we find that Master Tomas, with his round face and rugged whiskers, symbolized the sun. Preserved in the British Museum are abundant proofs of the reverence and superstition with which the feline race was regarded by the Egyptians. Here several of these revered Grimalkins are mummied in spices, and perfumes, and balsams, in which they have survived the unknown centuries of the past, “to contrast the value of a dead cat in the land of the Pharaohs with the fate of such relics in modern times, ignominiously consigned to the scavenger’s cart, or feloniously hanging upon a tree, the scarecrow of the orchard.”
Diodorus, the Greek writer, 1st century B. C., informs us that such was the superstitious veneration with which the Egyptians regarded cats, that no one could ruffle the fur of Tom or Tabby with impunity, and that any man killing a cat was put to death. (O, what a country it must have been to sleep in!) In Ptolemy’s time, while the Roman army was established in Egypt, one of the Romans killed acat, when the people flew to his house, and dragged him forth, and neither the fear of the soldiers nor the influence of the prince could deliver the unfortunate cat-slayer from the wrath of the infuriated mob.
Mohammed had a superstition for cats, and was said to have been constantly attended by one. A cat hospital was founded at Damascus in respect to the prophet’s predilection, which Baumgarten, the German professor (1714 to 1762) found filled with feline inmates. Turkey maintained several public establishments of this kind.
Howell the Good, king of Wales, 10th century, legislated for the cat propagation, and it would seem that the race was limited, since a week old kitten sold for a penny,—a great deal of money in those days,—and fourpence for one old enough to catch a mouse. The following ludicrous penalty was attached to a cat-stealer:—
“If any person stole a cat that guarded the prince’s granaries he was to forfeit a milch ewe, fleece, and lamb; or, in lieu of these, as much wheat as, when poured upon the cat, suspended by the tail, her head touching the floor, would form a heap high enough to bury her to the tail tip.”
This would seem rather hard on poor pussy, even to threatening her suffocation.
Huc, in his “Chinese Empire,” tells us that the Chinese peasantry are accustomed to tell the noon hour from the narrowing and dilation of the pupils of pussy’s eyes; they are said to be drawn down to a hair’s-breadth precisely at twelve o’clock. This horological utility, however, by no means gives her a fixed tenure in a Chinese home. There she enters into the category of edible animals, and, having served the purpose of a cat-clock, is seen hanging side by side with the carcasses of dogs, rats, and mice in the shambles of every city and town of the celestial empire.
Descending to the middle ages, a mal-odor of magic taints the fair fame of ourprotégés, more especially attachingitself to black or brindled cats, which were commonly found to be the “familiars” of witches; or, rather, their “familiars” were supposed to take the form of these animals; and hence, in nearly all judicial records of these unhappy delusionists, demons in the shape of cats are sure to figure. The witches in “Macbeth” (for what impression of the times he lived in has Shakspeare lost?) awaited the triple mewing of the brindled cat to begin their incantations; and more scientific pretenders to a knowledge of the occult arts are usually represented as attended in their laboratories by a feline companion.
Fragments of a superstitious faith in the magical, or what was till comparatively recent times so nearly allied with it, the medicinal attributes of the animal, still surviving in certain rustic and remote districts of England, where the brains of a cat of the proper color (black, of course) are esteemed a cure for epilepsy; and where, within our memory, such a faith induced a wretched being, in the shape of woman, mad with despair and rage, to tear the living heart from one of these animals, that, by sticking it full of pins and roasting it, she might bring back the regard of a man, brutal and perfidious as herself. Such formulæ are frequently to be met with in the works of ancient naturalists and physicians, and were, doubtlessly, handed down from generation to generation, and locally acted upon in desperate cases.
It is on evidence that more than one old woman has been condemned by our wise ancestors to pay the penalty of her presumed league with Satan in a fiery death, upon no better testimony than the fact that Harper, Rutterkin, or Robin had been seen entering her dwelling in the shape of a black cat. But if, in ancient times, old women, and young ones, too, have been brought to grief through the cats they fostered, certain it is that these creatures have suffered horrible reprisal at the hands of certain vagrants of the sex in our own.
OurFelis domesticahas, for a long time, labored under the serious disadvantage of a traditional character. Buffon sums her up as a “faithless friend, brought in to oppose a still more insidious enemy;” and Goldsmith—who, it is well known, became a writer of natural history “upon compulsion,” and had neither time nor opportunity for personal observation of the habits and instincts of the creatures he so charmingly describes—followed in the track of the great naturalist, and echoes this ungracious definition.
Boys have a natural contempt for cats, and picking them up by the tail, tossing them over the wall, or tying old tin pots to their caudal end, to see how fast they can run, are among their most trifling sports at the expense of Tom and Tabby. I have known a cruel boy to roll a cat in turpentine, and set fire to her. Few men have any feeling but repugnance towards the feline race. The exceptions are in the past.
Cardinal Wolsey’s cat sat on the arm of his chair of state, or took up her position at the back of his throne when he held audiences; and the cat of the poet Petrarch, after death, occupied, embalmed, a niche in his studio; indeed, poets appear to be more susceptible of pussy’s virtues and graces than other persons; and she has, on many occasions, been made the subject of their verse, the sentiment of which fully expresses a sense of the maligned animal’s faithfulness and affection.
Tasso, reduced to such a strait of poverty as to be obliged to borrow a crown from a friend to subsist on through a week, turns for mute sympathy to his faithful cat, and disburdens his case in a charming sonnet, in which he entreats her to assist him through the night with the lustre of her moon-like eyes, having no candles by which he could see to write his verses.
SPORT FOR THE BOYS BUT DEATH FOR THE CAT.
An editor facetiously says, “We have here among us at this time an addition to the M. D.’s in the shape of two cat doctors, who have the terrible idea that they were put upon this earth for the sole object of doctoring cats, and now the mortality list shows, at the least calculation, that no less than eighteen cats and two kittens have travelled to that bourn from which no passengers have ever yet returned, and all because they were the unlucky sons and daughters of ye night prowlers who had been sacrificed for the good of the future cat generation.”
Present Errors.
I think some reason for the present errors and superstitions attached to cats, may be attributed to thecat-adioptric qualities of their eyes and fur. At night their eyes often shine with phosphoric light, and rubbing their fur with the human hand causes it to emit electric sparks, particularly in very cold weather. They are supposed to partake of ghostly, or witch-like qualities, because they can see in the night time. Fish scales, as well as the flesh of fish, contain a phosphoric principle—there is no witchery about such—which can be seen best through the dark. The fur of other animals besides the cat contain electric qualities. Humans possess it to a greater or lesser extent. The eye of the cat—as also the owl—is made, in the divine economy, expressly for night prowling. The back, or reflecting coat (retina), is white, or light, that it may reflect dark objects. In man, and most animals, it is dark. A light-complexioned person can (cæteris paribus) see better at night than one who is dark. In a strong light, it is reversed. So much for cat-optrics.
Our cat-alogue would be incomplete without this cat-agraph, and we should “cat-ch it,” hereafter, from some cat-echist, if we here discontinued our cat-enary cat-egory, without some little cat-ch relative to the domestic and redeeming qualities of this unappreciated cat-tle (excuse the cat-achresis).
Webster says the cat is a deceitful animal. Webster don’t know. She certainly has large cautiousness and secretiveness. Man, with the same secretiveness, with the same neglect and abuse that Tom receives, will become doubly deceitful. Treat him kindly and affectionately, and he will return it. Subject to everybody’s kicks, cuffs, and suspicion, the cat necessarily becomes shy, ugly, and appears deceitful. So does a child. The cat is fond of sweet scents, and pries into drawers and cupboards, oftener to gratify her sense of smell than taste. Cats are very fond of music, and occasionally go upon the piano keys to make the strings vibrate. Depending upon their own exertions for a livelihood, they become thieves. They may, by kind instruction, soon be taught to know and keep their own places.
The healthy cat is neat and systematic. Children may be taught a useful lesson by noticing that the tabby washes her face and hands after meals, and never comes to her repast with them dirty.
Cats are sometimes good fish-catchers, as well as mousers and bird-catchers, often plunging into water to secure their favorite aliment. Their love of praise is exhibited in their general tendency to bring in their prey, and place it at your feet for your approbation. Give them the notice due them, and they will redouble their efforts.
It is a vulgar error to suppose their washing over the head is a sign of rain, or that you can tell the time of tide by their eye-pupils, or that they can go through a solid wall, have nine lives, or suck away a child’s breath.
The cat, as a sanitary means, should be domesticated, especially with scrofulous children and females. Either by their absorbent or repelling powers they assist nature in eradicating that almost universal disease—scrofula.
Teach children that “God has created nothing in vain,” and nothing which will harm them if rightly used.
Here we bid good by to Tom and Tabby.
The Owl.—The superstition which has hung about this very harmless bird is liable to soon cease in the extermination of the creature itself.
“Was you born in the woods to be scared by an owl?” my grandmother once sarcastically inquired when I was frightened from the barn by an old owl inquiring,—
“Who—a’—yoo?”
“WHO—A’—YOO?”
I acknowledge I was a great coward; but I had heard the old women affirm more than once that it was a sign of ill luck or death to hear one of these cat-faced, cat-seeing, mousing creatures cry by day; so I fled from the barn, while the old owl turned his head sidewise, as he sat on a beam, trying to penetrate the light, repeating, “Who—a’—yoo?” It was a sign of death, for my uncle shot the owl.
Magpies are made the subject of superstition. To see a single one strutting across your path is a sad mishap. There is luck in three, or more, however.
Holy Water.—Church superstitions and rites are notwithin our province, unless they are objectionable in a sanitary point of view. If the holy water is clean, it is just as good as any other pure water; but I have seen it poured upon my Irish patients—years ago in Hartford and elsewhere—when there were “wrigglers” in it from long exposure in an unstopped bottle or tea-cup. I approve of holy water, therefore, in large quantities, with other rites, tending to a sanitary object. Have plenty of water—with soap.
THE PROPER USE OF “HOLY WATER.”
Bells.—Few useful articles have been held in greater reverence and superstition. Their origin is of great antiquity. The first Jewish priests adorned their blue tunics with golden bells, as also did the Persian kings. The Greeks put bells upon criminals going to execution, as a warning, as it was an ill omen to see a criminal and his executioner walking. The superstition respecting bells began more particularly with the tenth century, when the priests exorcised and blessed them, giving them the names of saints, making the rabble believe that when they were rung for those ceremonies they had the power to drive devils out of the air, making them quake and tremble; also to restrain the power of the devil over a corpse; hence bell-ringing at funerals.
There are many legends wherein the evil spirits’ dislike to bells is promulgated.
As “the devil hates holy water,” so he does bell-ringing.
Dr. Warner, a clergyman of the Church of England, in his “Hampshire,” enumerates the virtues of a bell, by translating some lines from the “Helpe to Discourse.”
“Men’s deaths I tell by doleful knell;Lightning and thunder I break asunder;On Sabbath all to church I call;The sleepy head I raise from bed;The winds so fierce I doe disperse;Men’s cruel rage I do asswage.”
I think the beautiful music discoursed by a chime of bells would be more effectual “men’s cruel rage” to tranquillize, than a battery of seven cannons. Aside from all superstitious notions, there is an irresistible charm about the music of bells, and I rejoice that they are gradually being redeemed from the superstition and monopoly of one ignorant denomination, as the sacred cross may be, to the use and blessing of all mankind.
Fear of Thunder and Lightning.—These have ever been sources of superstitious terror. The ancients considered thunder and lightning as direct manifestations of divine wrath; hence whatever the lightning struck was accursed. The corpses of persons so killed were allowed to remain where they fell, to the great inconvenience, often, of the living.
The electricity which plays about high poles and spires was formerly attributed to spirits. “Fiery spirits or devils,” says old Burton, “are such as commonly work by blazing stars, fire-drakes,” etc. “Likewise they counterfeit suns and moons ofttimes, and sit on ships’ masts.” The electric sparks upon the metal points of soldiers’ spears were regarded as omens of no small importance.
In some parts of Europe, up to the last century, it was a custom to ring bells during a thunder-storm, to drive away evil spirits; but this act often was the cause of death, by the exposure of persons to the points of attraction, and the conducting power of moist ropes and metallic wires. On the night of April 15, 1718, the lightning struck twenty-four steeples while the bells were ringing. In July of the following year, while the bells were tolling at a funeral celebrationin the Chateau Vieux, lightning struck the steeple, killing nine persons and injuring twenty-two. Statistics show that numerous deaths were caused by bell-ringing in England and France, during the last century, to drive away imaginary spirits.
The saint usually invoked on these occasions was St. Barnabas.
The houseleek and bay tree were supposed to afford protection from lightning.
“The thunder has soured the beer,” or the milk, is a common saying; and I once saw a piece of iron lying across the beer-barrel to keep away thunder. A heavy atmosphere may suddenly sour beer or milk.
Creeping three times under the communion table while the chimes were striking, at midnight, was believed to cure fits, as late as 1835.
Glass, stone, and feathers are non-conductors to electricity. Persons very susceptible to electric currents need give themselves no fear, and no more caution need be taken than we take to protect ourselves against other objects of danger. Lightning will not strike one out of doors, unless he is near a point of high attraction,—under a tree, or pole,—or has about him, exposed, some metallic substance, or some very wet article. Houses under or near tall trees, or with suitable lightning-rods, are safe enough. A feather bed, particularly one insulated by glass-rollers, or plates, under the posts, and not touching the wall, is a perfectly safe place for invalids and nervous people who are susceptible to electricity. The pulse of such is often increased in frequency before a thunder-storm. Let such first have no fear. See God in the storm and lightning as only a saving power. I know a girl who “tears around like mad” for a man at the approach of a thunder-storm. When finding one, she feels perfectly safe. If not, she hides in the cellar till the storm abates.
Unlucky Days.—The superstition respecting unlucky Friday is well known. Some cynical bachelors say it is unlucky because named for a woman. Monday was also so named. I can find no account of this superstition until after the first century A. D. It is said that our Saviour was crucified on Friday—a day of fear and trembling, of earthquakes and divers remarkable phenomena; but that day is now as uncertain as the day of his birth, in the various changes of the calendar, heathen naming of the days to suit their notions, and the great uncertainty of chronology. No doubt Christ arose from the dead on the then first day of the week, and was crucified the third day before the resurrection; but what day of our present week who can tell? If on Friday, it should be counted far from an unlucky day. Sailors are particularly superstitious as to sailing on Friday, notwithstanding Columbus sailed on Friday, and discovered America on that day.
The French believe in unlucky Friday. Lord Byron, Dr. Johnson, and other authors and poets, are said to have so believed. Shakspeare, Scott, Goldsmith, Bacon, Sir Francis Drake, Napoleon, and many other great men, were pretty thoroughly tinged with superstition; the latter, it is said, believed in “luck,” or destiny.
The future of children is yet believed to depend much upon the day of the week on which they are born.
“Monday’s child is fair in face;Tuesday’s child is full of grace;Wednesday’s child is full of woe;Thursday’s child has far to go;Friday’s child works hard for its living;Saturday’s child is loving and giving;And a child that’s born on Christmas dayIs fair, and wise, and good, and gay.”[7]
This, of course, is all nonsense—or rather the belief in such signs—and one day is equally as good as another for nature’s work, or in which to fulfil the requirements of God and nature. Let no mother, or her who is about to become a mother, put faith in old nurses’ whims. Their brains are full of all such fantastic notions, which are too often revealed in the sick room, and the effect is often detrimental to the peace and happiness of the mother, and at times dangerous to the life of the invalid.
Superstition of a Kiss.
The monks of the middle ages—great theorists—divided the kiss into fifteen distinct and separate orders.
1. The decorous or modest kiss.
2. The diplomatic, or kiss of policy.
3. The spying kiss, to ascertain if a woman had drank wine.
4. The slave kiss.
5. The kiss infamous—a church penance.
6. The slipper kiss, practised towards tyrants.
7. The judicial kiss.
8. The feudal kiss.
9. The religious kiss (kissing the cross).
10. The academical kiss (on joining a solemn brotherhood).
11. The hand kiss.
12. The Judas kiss.
13. The medical kiss—for the purpose of healing some sickness.
14. The kiss of etiquette.
15. The kiss of love—the only real kiss. But this was also to be variously considered; viz., given by ardent enthusiasm, as by lovers; by matrimonial affection; or, lastly, between two men—an awful kiss, tasting like sandwiches without butter or meat.
THE MODEST KISS.
The End is not yet.
The reign of superstition is not yet ended.
It is impossible for any great catastrophe, involving loss of property or life, to occur without a certain superstitious class harping upon the event as a judgment of God upon the wickedness of the victims. If a great city is swept away by the devouring elements, we hear the cry that “an offended Deity has visited the ‘Babylon of the West’ with his vengeance for her wickedness.” Some penurious wretch takes it up, and says, “I’ll give nothing, then, to the victims of the fire. It is God’s judgment; I won’t interfere.” A rich man is murdered in cold blood, and the same howl goes up, “It is the judgment of God upon him for heaping up riches.” The fact of his riches going to thousands of poor artisans, actors, musicians, widows, orphans, and “western Babylonian sufferers,” goes for nothing with such people. Thesesame superstitious wretches have not yet done asserting that the assassination of President Lincoln was in judgment for his attending a theatre.
Twenty-five persons were killed in a church at Bologna, recently, while kneeling in prayer. Was this an expression of God’s wrath upon church-goers?
“The laws by which God governs the universe are inexorable. The frost will blight, the fire destroy, the storms will ravage, disease and death will do their appointed work, though narrow-mindedness and bigotry misconstrue their intent. All things are for good. If natural laws are violated, the known and inevitable result follows.”
I have already exceeded the space to which this chapter was limited, and there are a thousand superstitious beliefs and practices which are not herein enumerated nor explained. But rest assured that nothing exists without its uses, without the knowledge of the divine Author, and nothing supernatural does or ever did exist amongst natural beings. There is nothing within this world but what God has placed for man’s good. There is nothing here past man’s ability to fathom. God is love.
What there is beyond this world, we shall find out quite soon enough.
TRAVELLING DOCTORS.
“His fancy lay to travelling.”—L’Estrange.
PUBLIC CONFIDENCE(?).—THE EYE OF THE PUBLIC.—A BAD SPECIMEN.—“REMARKABLE TUMOR.”—“THE SINGING DOCTOR.”—CAUGHT IN A STORM.—BIG PUFFING.—A SPLENDID “TURNOUT.”—WHO WAS HE?—A SUDDEN DISAPPEARANCE.—THE “SPANKING DOCTOR.”—A FAIR VICTIM.—LOOSE LAWS.—DR. PULSEFEEL.—IMPUDENCE.—A FIDDLING DOCTOR.—AN ENCORE.—“CHEEK.”—VARIOUS WAYS OF ADVERTISING.
PUBLIC CONFIDENCE(?).—THE EYE OF THE PUBLIC.—A BAD SPECIMEN.—“REMARKABLE TUMOR.”—“THE SINGING DOCTOR.”—CAUGHT IN A STORM.—BIG PUFFING.—A SPLENDID “TURNOUT.”—WHO WAS HE?—A SUDDEN DISAPPEARANCE.—THE “SPANKING DOCTOR.”—A FAIR VICTIM.—LOOSE LAWS.—DR. PULSEFEEL.—IMPUDENCE.—A FIDDLING DOCTOR.—AN ENCORE.—“CHEEK.”—VARIOUS WAYS OF ADVERTISING.
One might say, with some propriety, that these characters—travelling doctors—should have been classed under the heading of our first chapter, as “humbugs;” but if we should put all under that head that belong there, O, where would the chapter end? As “all is not gold that glitters,” so neither, on the other hand, is there anything so bad that no virtue can be found in it. No heart is so utterly depraved as to prevent any good thought or deed from emanating therefrom, though sometimes the good is quite imperceptible to us short-sighted mortals.
As the majority of physicians “turned” out of our medical colleges, or of those in practice in our cities, are unfit to have intrusted to their care the health and lives of our families, friends, or ourselves, so the majority of travelling doctors are to be reckoned equally untrustworthy; no more so.
If the blessed Saviour should return to earth, and travel from town to city, as he did eighteen hundred years ago, healing the sick, I really think there would be a less number believing in him now than then. Less gratitude forhis marvellous cures there could not be; for then some of the miserable wretches, whom he healed free of charge, did not so much as return him thanks. This may be said of some of our patients at this day.
Let a medical man of ever so great reputation travel, and he is lost. A band of angels, on a healing mission, would stand no chance with a people who only expect humbugs to visit them. The Shakspearian inquiry would at once and repeatedly be put,—
“How chance it they travel? Theirresidence, both in reputation and profit, was better both ways!”
Let us view a few travelling doctors through thepubliceye:—
“So shall I dare to give him shape and hue,And bring his mazy-running tricks to view;From humbug’s minions catch the scattered rays,That in one focus they may brightly blaze.“I’d give our (nameless) knight, before he starts,A tireless mind, where never Conscience smarts;An oily tongue, which word should never speakTo call a blush to Satan’s brazen cheek;With, yet, a power of lungs the weak to move,Which lung-quiescent ... might approve;A changing face, which e’en might Homer feign,A ton of brass for every ounce of brain.“Then launch him forth, right cunningly to rageThrough the thin shams of this enlightened age;To tell the people they are lords of earth,And pick their pockets while he lauds their worth;Drug men with folly, which no clime engrosses,And sense deal out in homeopathic doses;And making goodness to his projects bend,With all right aims an ultra spirit blend.·······“He leagues with those who number in their tradeA falsehood told for every sixpence made;To Mammon mortgage all they have of heart,To keep their wealth, with priceless honor part.The fear of God the smallest of their fears,Rolling in wealth, but bankrupt in ideas;To save their purse, their souls contented lose,And count all right, if worldly gain accrues;Who, when they die, no memory leave behind,But in the curses of their cheated kind!“With these Sir Humbug riches seeks to gain,And feels his way through lab’rinths of chicane;Embezzles, swindles, lies, until at lastThe eye of Justice on his crime is cast,When, drugged with wealth, he quits our plundered shore,And Texas boasts one fiery hero more.”
THE TUMOR DOCTOR CONTEMPLATES SUICIDE.
The worst specimen of a travelling doctor I ever knew first appeared at R., one of the principal towns of Vermont, a few years ago. His name was Mariam; or that was what he called himself. He was a Canadian by birth, about twenty-five years of age, short, dark-complexioned, and claimed to be the seventh son of somebody. He was very illiterate, not being able to write a prescription, or his name, for that matter, when he came to R.
MARIAM, THE TUMOR DOCTOR.
I visited his rooms at the hotel, after he had been in town some weeks, and noticed, among other things, that his table was strewn with sheets of paper, upon which he had been practising writing his signature. He opened here boldly. He sent out thousands of circulars in the various trains of cars running from R., distributingthem in person, on the Poor Richard’s principle, that “if you want your work done, do it; if not, send.” He inserted cards in the two village papers, containing the most illiterate and preposterous statements, and hundreds flocked to see him. Imagine his knowledge, for he assured me, to whom he opened his heart in confidence, that he never read a page of a medical work in his life.
He first claimed to cure by the laying on of hands; but as he possessed no magnetic powers, he gradually abandoned that deception. As he could not write a prescription, and knew nothing of compounding medicines, he would go with a patient to a druggist’s, and looking over the names of drugs on the bottles exposed on the shelves, order two or three articles at random, and, as one druggist assured me, of the most opposite properties; such as tincture of iron and iodide of potash, etc. (Note.The acid in the M. Tinct. iron sets the iodine free.)
His clothes were very seedy, “and the crown of his hat went flip flap,” and his toes were healthy, “being able to get out to the air,” when he came to R. Soon he was “in luck,” and a nice suit of clothes, a new silk hat, and boots, speedily graced his not inelegant person. I saw him both before and after the transformation.
The following is a true copy of one of his certificates, taken from his circular:—
“A Great Cure of an Ovarian Tumor!“This is to certify that Dr. Mariam cured me of an immenseovarian tumor of the left shoulder, weighing five pounds and a half, from which I suffered,” etc., etc.(Signed)Mrs. —— ——.“Malone, N. Y.”
“A Great Cure of an Ovarian Tumor!
“This is to certify that Dr. Mariam cured me of an immenseovarian tumor of the left shoulder, weighing five pounds and a half, from which I suffered,” etc., etc.
(Signed)Mrs. —— ——.
“Malone, N. Y.”
On this item being ridiculed in the papers of R., Mariam changed it to a “rose cancer,” and continued the certificate.
Mariam had been practising in Malone, N. Y., also at Whitehall, where, I was informed by a newspaper man, hewas arrested for obtaining money under false pretences. He, however, escaped and fled, to practise his deceptions elsewhere. It was reported that he shuffled off his mortal coil by finally taking two ounces of laudanum, after the civil authorities had placed him comfortably in the county jail, where he had the pleasure of passing many days in viewing the world through an iron-barred window, and reflecting on his eventful career.
The Singing Doctor.
In remarkable contrast with the above described ignoramus, we present the following description, from two contributors, of an extraordinary personage, known for a time as “The Singing Doctor.”
The “Hoosac Valley News” tells this story:—
“One day late in the autumn of 1860, while the rain poured in torrents, and the wind howled fearfully along the hills of old Plymouth, I was obliged to drive to Watertown. The ‘Branch’ was swollen to the river’s size, and foamed madly down over the sombre rocks, while above my head, on the other side of the road, the trees rocked and swayed, as though about to fall into the seething, roaring waters below.
“Above, or mingled with the clashing of the elements, I heard some voice, as if singing. It struck me with wonder. I stopped to listen. It became more distinct, as if approaching. What was it? Who could it be, singing amid the fearful tempest?
“In the midst of my surmising, the object of my wonder came in sight, around a turn in the road just ahead of me.
“It was the Singing Doctor, whom I instantly recognized by his little old white horse, as well as by his own voice, to which I had before listened. The little animal was drenched like a ‘drowned rat.’ The doctor, in his open buggy, with no umbrella,—for the sweeping wind precluded thepossibility of holding one,—and the driving rain pelting mercilessly upon his face and head, was singing.
“‘You must be a happy man,’ I exclaimed, ‘to be singing amid this awful storm.’
“‘Why not?’ he replied. ‘It is always better to be singing than sighing;’ and we passed on through the dangerous defile, and separated....
“Last summer, as I journeyed through the Green Mountain State on a pleasure excursion, I met, on a romantic mountain pass, a magnificent turnout,—a splendid top carriage, drawn by four beautiful, jet black Morgan mares,—which did not attract my attention so much, however, as the music within the carriage. It was the Singing Doctor again, with his two little daughters, singing.
“The handsome and good-natured driver offered me the best half of the road; but still I lingered till the last notes of the song died away, when I drove past the ‘Sanatorian,’ wondering to myself what singing had to do with his increasing prosperity.”
The remainder of the sketch is from the pen of a lady in Vermont:—
“I think it was during the spring of 1867 that our little ‘city on the lake’ was visited by the above remarkable character. We are often visited by migratory physicians, who are usually of the ‘come-and-go’ order; but this one burst upon us like a comet, with dazzling splendor, briefly announced, but at once proclaimed his determination of returning with the regularity of the full moon—repeating his visits every month. Few believed his last arrangement could be carried out, as his predecessors had generally fleeced the invalid public to their utmost at one visit, and if they ever again appeared, it would be under another name and phase. It soon became evident that one visit could not repay the outlay, for no ready posting-board was large enough to hold the agent’s posters, which were printed in strips some twenty-five feet in length, and his advertisements occupied one, two, or more columns of the public journals, while he flooded the houses with his pictorial circulars.
THE SINGING DOCTOR.
“He was merely announced as ‘The Sanatorian,’ but was indorsed (true or false?) by some of New England’s most respectable people. He came in grand style, as the papers briefly announced, thus:—
“‘The Sanatorian.This distinguished physician proposes visiting us on the 18th inst.... The doctor comes in great style.... He has the finest carriage, and the gayest four black Morgan horses we have ever had the pleasure of riding after.’
THE SANATORIAN’S TURNOUT.
“The driver, a handsome fellow, with full brown whiskers, curling hair, and a ‘heavenly blue eye,’ had taken the editor and writer of this last paragraph out to an airing. The team was photographed by the artists, and many of the best citizens had the pleasure of a ride in the easy carriage, and behind the swift ponies.
“The doctor usually remainedincog.to the public. If they wished to see him, they must go to his ‘parlors’ at the best hotels. They did go. And now the most remarkable part of the affair remains to be recorded. An editor whointerviewed him reports thus: ‘The doctor rocks in a rocking-chair,—in fact, never sits in anything else,—or arises and walks the floor, and instantly,at a glance, tells every patient each pain and ache better than the patient could describe them himself. ‘Are you a clairvoyant?’ the editor asked.
“‘Faugh! No, sir.Clairvoyancy is a humbug; merely power of mind over mind. A clairvoyant can go no farther than yourownknowledge leads him, unless he guesses the rest,’ was his emphatic reply.
“The same patients, disguised, visited him twice, but he would tell the same story to them as before. His diagnosis was truly wonderful.
“‘What is your mode of treatment, or what school do you represent?’
“‘There hangs my “school,”’ he would reply, pointing to a New York college diploma. ‘That, however, cures nobody. What cures one patient kills another. My opathy is to cure my patient byany means, regardless of “schools.”’
“To some he gave ‘nothing but water,’ the patients affirmed; to others, pills, powders, syrups, or prescriptions. Well, he came the next month, to our surprise, and to the joy of most of his patients. He did the greatest amount of advertising on the first visit, doing less and less puffing each time. The rich, as well as the poor, visited him. He charged all one dollar. Then, if they declined treatment, he was satisfied; but if they doubted, or were sceptical, he refused all prescription. He advertised quite as much by telling one man he was past all help, and would die in eight weeks, which he did, as by curing the mayor of the city of a cough that jeoparded his life. If a poor woman had no money, he treated her just as cheerfully. Men he would not. His cures are said to have been remarkable. He made some eleven visits, and his patrons increased at each visit; but the novelty wore off before he disappeared. Hewas said to be an excellent musician, an author and composer, a man who was well read (a physician here who often conversed with him so informed the writer), could translate Latin and French, and converse with the mutes. When the day closed, he would see no more patients, but devoted his time to friends, to writing, or to music. Often the hotel parlor would be thronged at evening with the musical portion of the community. In personal appearance he was nothing remarkable,—medium size, wore full beard, had a sharp black eye, a quick, nervous movement, and his voice was not unpleasing to the ear.
“Why he—such a man—should travel, no one knew. He had an object, doubtless, to accomplish, realized it, and retired upon his true name, and from whence he came.”
“Youran, the Spanker.”
The writer has many times seen a fellow who travelled the country, nicknamed “the Spanker.” He was a tall, lean, lank-looking Yankee, with red hair and whiskers, a light gray eye, and claimed to cure all diseases by “spatting” the patient, or the diseased part thereof, with cold water on his bare palm, the use of a battery, and a pill. He had served as door-keeper to a famous doctor, who created afurore, a few years since, by the exercise of his magnetic powers, making cripples to throw down their crutches, and walk off; the deaf to hear, the blind to see; or, at least, many of themthoughtthey did, for the time being, which answered the doctor’s immediate purpose. But one fine morning the magnetic doctor found his door-keeper was among the “missing.” He had learned the trade, and set up on his own account.
This fellow was as ignorant of physic as Jack Reynolds was of Scripture. Reynolds, who killed Townsend in 1870, when under sentence of death, listened attentively for the first time to the story of the Saviour’s crucifixion in atonementfor our sins, when he rather startled the visitors, as well as the eminent divine, with the inquiry, “Did that affair happen lately?”
He was not, it is evident, conversant with Scripture. “The Spanker” was not read in medicine. His treatment was the most ridiculous and repulsive of the absurdities of the nineteenth century. The patient was stripped of his clothes, and often so severely spanked as to compel him, or her, to cry out with pain.
A NEW SCHOOL OF PRACTICE.
The beautiful young wife of the Rev. Mr. F., of Vermont, was brought to the writer for medical advice. The patient was carefully examined, and the minister taken aside, and assured that the lady was past all help; she was in the last stages of consumption; that she would, in all probability, die with the falling of the autumn leaves, or within two months.
The following day the minister carried the patient to the spanker doctor, who declared her case quite curable. The minister employed him to treat the patient.
A few weeks later I saw the minister, seated on the doorstepof his house, bowed in grief. He was on the lookout for me, as I was expected that way. He called to me, and asked if I would view the corpse of his once beautiful wife. I dismounted, and entered the house of mourning. There lay the poor, fair young face, within the narrow confines of the coffin. The cheeks were hollow, the eyes sunken, and the nostrils closed, and I doubt if any air had passed through the left one for weeks—pathognomonic indications of that fell disease, consumption.
“She did not live as long, doctor, as you thought she would, in August,” said Mr. F.
“No, sir: I did not then make allowance for the harsh treatment of Dr. ——, that, I am advised, soon followed.”
A VICTIM OF THE SPANKER.
“O, sir,” he exclaimed, in agony of soul, while the tears coursed freely down his cheeks, and fell upon the coffin,—“O, sir, God only knows what the poor thing suffered.Dr. Youran said the spatting and cold water treatment would save her, and I was anxious to try it, and did, till the poor, dear soul begged us, with tearful eyes, not to punish her further, but to let her die in peace.”
The ignorant scoundrel is still at large, preying upon the invalid public. It is a burning shame that the laxity of our laws permits such ignorant, heartless wretches to go about the country, imposing upon the credulity of invalidity.
The invalids, as we said in our opening, expect to be humbugged, and will believe no honest statement of a case and its probabilities, but will too often swallow the lies and braggadocio, and finally the prescriptions, of ignorant charlatans and impostors.
DR. PULSFEEL LEAVING TOWN.
Mr. Jeaffreson, in the “Book about Doctors,” before often quoted, says of the English travelling doctor of the last century,—
“When Dr. Pulsfeel was tired of London, or felt the want of country air, he adopted the pleasant occupation of fleecing rustic simplicity. For his journeys he provided himself with a stout and fast-trotting hack—stout, that it might bear weighty parcels of medical composition; fast, that in case the ungrateful rabble should commit the indecorum of stoning their benefactor as an impostor,—a mishap that would occasionally occur,—escape might be effected.
“In his circuit the doctor took in all the fairs, markets, wakes, and public festivals, not disdaining to stop an entire week, or even month, at an assize town, where he found the sick anxious to benefit by his marvellous wisdom.
“His manner of making himself known in a new place was to ride boldly into the thickest crowd of a town, and inform his listeners that he had come straight from the Duke of So-and-so, or the Emperor of Wallachia, out of an innate desire to do good to his fellow-creatures. He was born in that very town. He had left it when an orphan boy, to seek his fortune in the great world. His adventures had been wonderful. He had visited the Sultan and the Great Mogul; and the King of Mesopotamia had tried to persuade him to tarry and keep the Mesopotamians out of the devil’s clutches by the offer of a thousand pieces of gold a month. He had cured thousands of emperors, kings, queens, princes, grand duchesses, and generalissimos. He sold all kinds of medicaments—dyes for the hair, washes for the complexion, lotions, rings, and love charms, powders to stay the palsy, fevers, croup, and jaundice. His powder was expensive; he couldn’t help that; it was made of pearl-dust and dried violet leaves from the middle of Tartary. Still, he would sell his friends a package at bare cost,—one crown,—as he did not want to make money out of them.
“Nothing could surpass the impudence of the fellow’s lies, save the admiration with which his credulous auditors swallowed his assertions. There they stood—stout yeomen, drunken squires, gay peasant girls, gawky hinds and gabbling crones, deeming themselves in luck to have lived to behold such a miracle of wisdom. Possibly a young student, home from Oxford, with the rashness of inexperience, would smile scornfully, and cry out, ‘Quack!’ (quack-salver, from the article he used to cure wens); but such interruption was usually frowned down by the orthodox friends of the student, and he was warned that he would come tono good end, if he went on as he had begun, a contemptuous unbeliever, and a mocker of wise men.”
A Musical Doctor.
Mr. Dayton, vocalist, told me of a fellow who cut a swell in various capacities a few years ago. He first knew him as a fiddler at fairs. The next time he turned up was under the following circumstances:—
“With Madam L. and some other renowned vocalist, he was giving concerts, when one day their pianist was taken suddenly sick. Madam was in great trepidation.
THE MUSICAL DOCTOR.
“‘What shall I do? The concert cannot be postponed, and we cannot sing unless we have an accompaniment,’ exclaimed the lady.
“I looked about, made some inquiry,—it was in a small town,—but no competent piano player could be found.
“‘We must abandon the concert,’ I said, which seemed inevitable, when there came a sharp knock at the door.
“‘Come in,’ I called.
“The door opened, and instead of a servant, as I had expected, there appeared a tall, stout specimen of thegenus homo, with large black eyes, and long, dark hair flowing down on to his shoulders, making his best bow, and what he doubtless intended as his sweetest smile.
“I offered him a chair, and inquired how I could serve him.
“‘You want a piano player?’
“‘Yes.’
“‘Well, I will undertake to assist you in your strait. Allow me to see your programme,’ he continued, very patronizingly, waiting for us to make no reply whatever.
“‘Are you—that is, do you play rapidly, and at sight?’ asked madam.
“He replied only by a gesture, a sort of pitiful contempt for the ignorance of any person who should askhimsuch a question....
“Half past seven came, and we went on the stage. I do not know what the fellow’s prelude was; I was otherwise engaged; but his accompaniments were made up, and after he had heard the note sung to which he should have accompanied,—O, it was a horrid jargon, a consecutive blast of discords, a tempest of incomprehensibleness.
ENTHUSIASM.
“Madam caught her breath at the first pausing-place, and signalled him to stop. He took a side glance at her, misinterpreted her, and played on the louder. It became ludicrous in the extreme. He played the minor strains, or what should have been minor, in the major key. He only stopped when he saw us leave the stage. The audience cheered. He took it all as a compliment to himself as a pianist, stopped, and made his most profound obeisance to the house. They laughed and cheered the harder. He mistook it for anencore, bowed again, and returned to the piano. Then the house came down. They stamped,they laughed, they shouted. The boys in the gallery cat-called; the building fairly shook. I ran back to see what it was all about, and there was the pianist (?) beating furiously at the keys, the perspiration pouring in streams from his face. But his playing could only beseento be appreciated; it could not be heard for the stamping of the audience. He finally desisted, and with repeated halts and smiles, he bowed himself off the stage.
“His granddebutand retirement upon the stage occurred the same night. Madam would not permit him to go on again, and we sang the duets from —— without accompaniment. I think the fellow knew nothing of music; he had ‘cheeked’ it right through.
“Perhaps it was two years afterwards—I was staying at the B. Hotel, Maine—when I heard a deal of talk about a great doctor then in town. After dinner the first day, I noticed a man sauntering leisurely from the dining-hall in embroidered slippers, white silk stockings, black pants, gaudy dressing-gown, with long hair falling down over his shoulders. I thought I recognized that face. I approached him after a while, and called him by name.
“‘What? Why, I think you are mistaken. I do not know you, sir,’ he stammered; and then I knew he had recognized me.
“‘O, yes; I am Dayton. You remember you were our pianist once in a strait, in S.’
“‘O, ah! Come up to my room,’ he said, leading the way.
“I followed, when he told me he was doing a good thing at the practice of medicine about the principal towns of the state, and begged I would say nothing about his former occupation. He stated to me that he had been to Europe, and had been studying medicine meantime, which I have since ascertained was entirely untrue.”
And this was the fellow over whom the town was running wild.
The idea of some men trying to become good physicians is as ridiculously absurd as Horace Greeley’s farming, or trying to ascertain if “cundurango is explosive.” The requisite qualities are not in them. They may keep along a few years, or possibly, in communities where there is no competition, succeed in making the people believe they are as good as the common run, and thus succeed on brass instead of brains.
Some of these brainless travelling impostors employ a female or two to precede them from place to place, and make diligent inquiry when the great doctor who performed such marvellous cures in some adjoining town mentioned was coming there. Thus putting it in the shape of an inquiry, it was less likely to excite suspicion.
Two females—one an elderly, lady-like looking woman, the other younger, and anything but lady-like—travelled for a doctor, on a salary, during the summer and autumn of 1868. A lady whose occupation took her from town to town, seeing the two females at various hotels where the doctor was advertised, inveigled the younger one into the confession, in her bad temper, and thus I got my evidence. Another travels on his hair; another on his face; and a fourth on his free advice and treatment; while a fifth succeeds by absurdity of dress.
SCENES FROM EVERY-DAY PRACTICE.