V. WOMAN AS PHYSICIAN…

V. WOMAN AS PHYSICIAN

"Angel of Patience! sent to calm Our feverish brow with cooling palm; To lay the storm of hope and fears, And reconcile life's smile and tears; The throb of wounded pride to still, And make our own our Father's will."--WHITTIER.

HER "MISSION."--NO PLACE IN MEDICAL HISTORY.--ONE OF THEM.--MRS. STEPHENS.--"CRAZY SALLY."--RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS.--RUNS IN THE FAMILY.--ANECDOTES.--"WHICH GOT THRASHED?"--A WRETCHED END.--AMERICAN FEMALE PHYSICIANS.--A PIONEER.--A LAUGHABLE ANECDOTE.--"THREE WISE MEN."--"A SHORT HORSE," ETC.--BOSTON AND NEW YORK FEMALE DOCTORS.--A STORY.--"LOVE AND THOROUGHWORT."--A GAY BEAU.--UP THE PENOBSCOT.--DYING FOR LOVE.--"IS HE MAD?"--THOROUGHWORT WINS.

"From the earliest ages the care of the sick has devolved on woman. A group by one of our sculptors, representing Eve with the body of Abel stretched upon her lap, bending over him in bewildered grief, and striving to restore the vital spirit which she can hardly believe to have departed, is a type of the province of the sex ever since pain and death entered the world.

"To be first the vehicle for human life, and then its devoted guardian; to remove or alleviate the physical evils which afflict the race, or to watch their wasting, and tenderly care for all that remains when they have wrought their result--this is her divinely appointed and universally conceded mission.

"Were she to refuse it, to forsake her station beside the suffering, the office of medicine and the efforts of the physician would be more than half baffled. And yet, where her post is avowedly so important, she has generally been denied the liberty of understanding much that is involved in its intelligent occupancy. With the human body so largely in her charge from birth to death, she is not allowed to inquire into its marvellous mechanism. With the administering of remedies intrusted to her vigilance and faithfulness, she has not been allowed to investigate the qualities, or even know the names or the operations of those substances committed to her use. To be a student with scientific thoroughness, and to practise independently with what she has thus acquired, has been regarded as unseemly, or as beyond her capacity, or as an invasion of prerogatives claimed exclusively for men.

"Indeed, the whole domain of medicine has been 'pre-empted' by men, and in their 'squatter sovereignty' they have sturdily warned off the gentler sex."--Rev. H. B. Elliot, in "Eminent Women of the Age."

It seems to my mind, and ought to every thinking mind, to be ridiculously absurd that "man born of woman" should set up his authority against woman understanding "herself." "Man, know thyself," is stereotyped, but if it ever was put in type form for "woman to know herself," it has long since been "pied."

"Search the Scriptures," and you would never mistrust that "eternal life," or any other life, came, or existed a day, through woman. Mythological writers, who come next to scriptural, give woman no credit in medical science. We will except Hygeia, the goddess of health, the fabled daughter of Æsculapius. In the medical history of no country does she occupy any prominence. There were "Witches," "Enchantresses," "Wise Women," "Fortune-tellers," who in every age have existed to no small extent, and under various names have figured in the histories of all nations, receiving the countenance of prince and beggar--but females as physicians, as a class, have never been recognized by nations or governments, or scarcely by communities or individuals.

In searching the memorials of English authors for two hundred years past, we can find but little to disprove the above assertions. In Mr. Jeaffreson's "Book of Doctors," the author fails to find memorials of their actions, as female physicians, sufficient to fill a single chapter; and those of whom he has made mention, he discourses of mostly in a ridiculous light, as though entirely out of their sphere, or as being of the coarser sort, and questions "if two score could be rescued from oblivion whom our ancestors intrusted with the care of their invalid wives and children."

In this connection, let us briefly mention such as are better known in English literature, as doctresses especially as mentioned by Mr. Jeaffreson.

Two ladies, who are immortalized in "Philosophical Transactions for 1694," were Sarah Hastings and Mrs. French. Another, who received the support of bishops, dukes, lords, countesses, etc., in 1738-9, was Mrs. Joanna Stephens, "an ignorant and vulgar creature." After enriching herself by her specifics, consisting of a "pill, a powder and a decoction," she bamboozled the English Parliament into purchasing the secret, for the (then) enormous sum of £5000. "The Powder consists of eggshells and snails, both calcined."

"The decoction is made by boiling together Alicant soap, swine's-cresses burnt to a blackness, honey, camomile, fennel, parsley, and burdock leaves." "The pill consists of snails, wild carrot and burdock seeds, ashen keys, hips, and haws, all burnt to a blackness; soap and honey."

When we take into consideration the fact that there were no "medical schools for females," at that day, nor until within the last ten or twelve years, that every female applicant was rejected by the medical colleges of England, and that all female practitioners were held in disrepute by both physician and the public, the above repulsive remedies may not so greatly excite our surprise.

"CRAZY SALLY."

The most remarkable woman doctor made mention of in English literature, was Mrs. Mapp, née Sally Wallin. We have collected these facts respecting her origin, character, and career, from Chambers' Miscellany and the Gentlemen's Magazine, 1736-7. Hogarth has immortalized her in his "Undertaker's arms." She is placed at the top of that picture, between Josh Ward, the Pill doctor, and Chevalier Taylor, the quack oculist. (See page 668.)

She was born in Weltshire, in 169-. Her father was a "bone-setter," which occupation "run in the family," like that of the Sweets, of Connecticut, or like the marine whom Mrs. Mapp saw one day, as she, in her carriage, was driving "along the Strand, O."

Said sailor having a wooden leg, the doctress asked, "How does it happen, fellow, that you've a wooden leg."

"O, easy enough, madam; my father had one before me. It sort o' runs in the family, marm," was the laconic reply. From a barefooted school-girl at Weltshire, where Sally obtained barely the rudiments of a common education, she became her father's assistant in bone-setting and manipulating.

The next we hear of Miss Wallin, is at Epsom, where she became known as "Crazy Sally." She has been described as a "very coarse, large, vulgar, illiterate, drunken, bawling woman," "known as a haunter of fairs, about which she loved to reel, screaming and abusive, in a state of roaring intoxication."

It is astonishing as true, that this unattractive specimen of the female sex became so esteemed in Epsom, where she set up as a physician, that the town offered her £100 to remain there a year! The newspapers sounded her praise, the gentry, even, lauded her skill, and physicians witnessed her operations.

"Crazy Sally" awoke one morning and found herself famous. Patients of rank and wealth flocked from every quarter. Attracted by her success and her accumulating wealth, rather than by her beauty or amiable disposition, an Epsom swain made her an offer of marriage, which she, like a woman, accepted. This fellow's name was Mapp, who lived with her but for a fortnight, during which time he "thrashed her" (or she him, it is not just clear which) "three times," and appropriating all of her spare change, amounting to five hundred dollars, he took to himself one half of the world, and quietly left her the other. Our informant adds, "She found consolation for her wounded affections in the homage of the world. She became a notoriety of the first water; every day the public journals gave some interesting account of her, and her remarkable operations."

The Grub Street Journal of that period said, "The remarkable cures of the woman bone-setter, Mrs. Mapp, are too numerous to enumerate. Her bandages are extraordinarily neat, and her dexterity in reducing dislocations and fractures most wonderful. She has cured persons who have been twenty years disabled." Her patients were both male and female. Some of her most difficult operations were performed before physicians of eminence.

Her carriage was splendid, on the panels of which were emblazoned her coat of arms. Regularly every week she visited London in this magnificent chariot drawn by four superb, cream-white horses, attended by servants, arrayed in gorgeous liveries. She put up at the Grecian Coffee-House, and forthwith her rooms would be thronged by invalids.

Notices of her were not always of the most complimentary sort. Being one day detained by a cart of coal that was unloading in a narrow street of the metropolis, on which occasion she was arrayed in a loosely fitting robe-de-chambre, with large flowing sleeves, which set off her massive proportion most conspicuously, she let down the windows of her carriage, and leaning her bare arms upon the door, she impatiently exclaimed,--

"Fellow, how dare you detain a lady of rank thus?"

"A lady of rank!" sneered the coal-man.

"Yes, you villain!" screamed the enraged doctress. "Don't you observe the arms of Mrs. Mapp on the carriage?"

"Yes--I do see the arms," replied the impudent fellow, "and a pair of durned coarse ones they are, to be sure."

On another occasion she was riding up Old Kent Road, dressed as above described. "Her obesity, immodest attire, intoxication, and dazzling equipage were, in the eyes of the mob, so sure signs of royalty, that she was taken for a court lady, of German origin, and of unpopular repute. The crowd gathered about her carriage, and with oaths and yells were about to demolish the windows with clubs and stones, when the nowise alarmed occupant, like Nellie Gwynn, on a similar occasion, rose in her seat, and, with imprecations more emphatic than polite, exclaimed,--

"---- you! Don't you know who I am? I am Mrs. Sally Mapp, the celebrated bone-setter of Epsom!"

"This brief address so tickled the humor of the rabble that the lady was permitted to proceed on her way, amid deafening acclamations and laughter."

This famous woman's career may be likened to a rocket. She flashed before the people as suddenly, ascended as brilliantly to the zenith of fame, and fell like the burned, blackened stick.

Mrs. Mapp spent her last days in poverty, wretchedness, and obscurity, at "Seven Dials," where she died almost unattended, on the night of December 22, 1737. Her demise was thus briefly announced in the journals:--

"Died at her lodgings, near Seven Dials, last week, Mrs. Mapp, the once much-talked-of bone-setter of Epsom, so wretchedly poor that the parish was obliged to bury her."

Mr. Jeaffreson makes mention of two more "female doctors;" one an honest widow, mother of "Chevalier Taylor," who, at Norwich, carried on a respectable business as an apothecary and doctress, and Mrs. Colonel Blood, who, at Romford, supported herself and son by keeping an apothecary shop.

AMERICAN FEMALE PHYSICIANS.

Perhaps English authors and English readers may be satisfied to allow the above meagre and unenviable array of pretenders to stand on record as the representatives of "female doctors" in their liberal and enlightened country! Americans can boast of a better representative.

While England claims a "Female Medical Society," and one "Female Medical College," the United States has several of the former, and three regularly chartered "Female Medical Colleges." In a recent announcement of the English college, it claims fifty students, "but the aim of the whole movement is at present only to furnish competent midwives."

The "Maternity Hospital," of Paris (which existed long before the late Franco-Prussian war, but which we can learn nothing of since the fall of that once beautiful city), "afforded some opportunity for observation, receiving females nominally as students, but they were not allowed to prescribe in the wards, nor were they instructed in regard to the use and properties of the remedies there prescribed. Indeed, they can hardly rise above the position of proficient nurses," says our informant.

Some few medical colleges of the United States are admitting females on the same footing as the heretofore more favored "lords of creation."

A female college has been in existence in Philadelphia for above twenty years. The "New England Female Medical College" was chartered in 1856; but the "regular" colleges, as Yale, Harvard, etc., refuse all female applicants.

New York has been more liberal towards the gentler sex. At Geneva, Rochester, Syracuse, and elsewhere, as early as 1849-50, medical schools of the more liberal sort, but of undoubted respectability and legal charters, opened their doors to female students. In 1869 the New York Female Medical College was chartered, since which time more than two hundred ladies have therein received medical instruction.

In all the principal cities of the Union may be found from one to a dozen respectably educated and successful female practitioners, who have attained to some eminence in spite of the opposition of the "faculty," and the ignorant prejudices of the common people.

It is surprising how early and persistently some men forget that they were "born of woman!" Their contempt of the capabilities of womankind would lead one to suppose them to be ashamed of their own mothers. Mark Twain's facetious but instructive speech, once delivered before an editorial gathering in Boston, ought to be rehearsed to them daily; yes, and enforced by petticoat government upon their notice till it became stereotyped into their stupid brains. Mark says,

"What, sir, would the peoples of the earth be without woman? They would be scarce, sir,--almighty scarce! (Laughter.) Then let us cherish her; let us protect her; let us give her our support, our encouragement, our sympathy,--our--selves, if we get a chance.

"But, jesting aside, Mr. President, woman is gracious, lovable, kind of heart, beautiful, worthy of all respect, of all esteem, of all deference. Not any here will refuse to drink her health right cordially, for each and every one of us has personally known, and loved, and honored the very best of them all,--his own mother!"

Sarah B. Chase, M. D., a respectable and successful female physician of Ohio, gives the following excellent advice:--

"I would not encourage any woman to study medicine, with the expectation of practising, who is not ready and willing--ay, anxious and determined--to go through the same severe drill of preparation, the same thorough discipline, as is required of man before he is crowned with the honors of an M. D."

A FEMALE PIONEER.

Among the first successful female physicians of Boston, where she was born in 1805, is Harriot K. Hunt, M. D. Her father was a shipping merchant, who, by honesty and uprightness died comparatively poor, for riches are not always to the upright. Her mother is described by Rev. H. B. Elliot, "as one possessing a mind of remarkable qualities, argumentative, practical, independent, and, withal, abounding in tenderness and genial brightness." In 1830 we find Miss Hunt not only thrown upon her resources for her own livelihood (her father having left but barely the house that gave them shelter to be called their own), but the support and care of an only and invalid sister, somewhat her junior, were also entirely dependent upon her labors. As a school teacher she met the former, as a student and nurse she finally surmounted the latter. "What! more pedagogues turned doctors?"

After nearly three years' employment of various physicians on the part of the elder sister, and the extreme suffering from the "distressing and complicated disease," and, what was worse, the "severest forms of prescriptions of the old school of physic" for the same time by the younger sister, the Misses Hunt were led to investigate for themselves. They purchased medical works, which they read early and late.

In 1833 Harriot leased her house, and entered the office of a doctress, Mrs. Mott by name, in the double capacity of secretary and student. The younger sister became a patient of Mrs. Mott's. The husband of Mrs. Mott was an English physician, who, with his wife to attend the female portion of his patients, had established himself in Boston. Mrs. Mott was without a thorough medical education. "She made extravagant claims to medical skill in the treatment of cases regarded as hopeless." In 1835 Dr. Mott died, and Mrs. Mott returned to England. Under the treatment of the latter the invalid sister had so much improved in health as to be able to "walk the streets for the first time in three years;" yet where is the "old school doctor," or the veriest charlatan, that would give her the credit she so seemingly deserved in this case. Both were her opponents. Even the students of the neighboring medical school were "pitted against her." The old adage respecting his Satanic majesty having the credit due him, did not seem to apply to her case. But Mrs. Mott was more than a match for their cunning, if not for their scientific theorizings, as the following anecdote will show.

"Three wise men of Gotham," that amiable lady, Mrs. Goose, tells us, "went to sea in a bowl; and had the bowl been stronger, my song would have been longer." This has its parallel in the three wise students of H----, who laid their wise heads together, and went to see--Mrs. Mott, the doctress, of Hanover Street. One was to pretend that he had some peculiar disease, for which he, with his anxious friends, wished to consult the "wise woman." They entered the doctor's office, and demanded to see the doctress. This was an open insult to the woman, as she only gave her attention to females and children. Nevertheless, Mrs. Mott, whose olfactory nerves were not so obtuse as to prevent her from distinguishing the aroma of that peculiar little animal quadruped of the genus Mus, obeyed the summons, and entered the presence of the three wise Æsculapians.

Now the fun began. Not the fun that was to be at the expense of the "ignorant old female quack," however.

One of the gentlemen arose, and after a profound bow, began, with some embarrassment, to state his case.

"But wait just a moment," the doctress interrupted. "You intimate that it is a peculiar case. My fee for consultation in such cases is three dollars. Please hand over the money, and proceed."

This was an unexpected demand. They had thought to have a little fun, expose the woman's ignorance, and have a "huge thing" to tell to their class-fellows, and not pay for it! Mrs. Mott was a woman, but she possessed powerful magnetic influence, and held fast to the point, viz., her fee for consultation; and to the chagrin of the patient (?), and the astonishment of his chums, the three dollars were paid over to the doctress.

"Now, sir, you will please state your case," said the lady, pocketing the fee, adjusting her eye-glasses, and seating herself for a consultation.

"Yes. Well--it is a--a peculiar case," stammered the patient.

"You have informed me of that point before. Please proceed," remarked the doctress with great complacency to the embarrassed fellow.

"It's a delicate case," he blushingly replied.

"O, indeed; then step into this private consulting room;" and arising, she led the way to an inner office, where the young man involuntarily followed, greatly to the amusement of the two remaining students, who remarked, "It is getting blamed hot for us here."

In a moment, the invalid--greatly improved, one might judge, from his agility,--rushed from the private sanctum with a bound, grasped his hat from the table, exclaiming, "Come on, for God's sake!" and rushed from the house, followed by his now thoroughly affrighted companions.

"What's the matter? What did the old tarantula say to you?" demanded the young man's chums, when well outside of the web into which they had so impudently intruded themselves.

"Don't you ever ask me," he vociferated. "A ---- pretty mess you got me into. But if either of you ever again mistake that old woman for a fool, I hope to God she'll take you into her private consulting room."

But to return to Miss Hunt and her sister. In 1855 or '56 the sisters opened an office in Boston. As with all young physicians without "dead men's shoes," professional support, or wealthy and influential friends to back them, patients gathered slowly at first, but with a steady increase, the care of whom soon devolved entirely upon Harriot, as her sister married, and retired from practice.

In 1847 she had an extensive practice among a wealthy and influential class of people, which many an older physician of the sterner sex might envy. With a large practical knowledge, acquired in twelve years' experience, she applied to Harvard College for permission to attend a course of medical lectures. She was refused admission. In 1850 she again applied. The officers consented this time, but the students offered such objections to the admission of females into their presence, that Miss Hunt generously declined to avail herself of the long-coveted opportunity.

"The Female Medical College," at Philadelphia, in 1853, granted Miss Hunt an honorary degree.... She is now in the midst of an extensive practice. Miss Hunt has lived a glorious, self-denying life, upholding her sister co-laborers, and the "dignity of the profession," never demeaning herself by stooping to sell her knowledge, by any of those disreputable practices that mark the avaricious M. D., the charlatan, the parasites, and the leeches of the profession, both male and female.

Among eighty-five "female physicians" (?) of Boston, eighteen claim to be graduates of some college. We know of several who deserve a favorable mention here, but present limits will not admit.

NEW YORK FEMALE DOCTORS.

In New York city there are upwards of two hundred so-called "female physicians," about eighty per cent. of whom, according to the best authority,--police reports, etc.,--subsist by vampirism! Here, in this chapter, I shall mention a few of the really meritorious ones, reserving the large majority to be "shown up" under the various chapters as "fortune-tellers," "clairvoyants," and "astrologers."

The subject of the following imperfect, because brief, sketch,--MRS. C. S. LOZIER, M. D.,--late of New York city, was born in Plainfield, New Jersey, in 1813. Her maiden name was Clemence S. Harned. Her father was a farmer by occupation, and a member of the Methodist church. Her amiable and excellent mother was a Quakeress. "Why should Mrs. Lozier, a gentle, modest, unambitious, home-loving woman, have chosen the calling of a physician?" asks her biographer. My answer would be, "She was a creature of circumstances." Another, in view of the facts to be related, would say, "It was her destiny."

The valuable information which Mrs. Lozier gained, as a Quakeress, amongst that herbalistic people with which she was early associated, with study and practical observation enabled her to "act efficiently as a nurse and attendant upon the sick and afflicted of the neighborhood."

The elder brother of Miss Clemence, William Harned, was a physician, as also were two of her cousins. In 1830 she was married to Mr. Lozier, and removed to New York. Her husband's health failing, and having no other support, Mrs. Lozier opened a select school, which she kept successfully till after the death of Mr. Lozier, in 1837.

"During this period she read medicine with her brother. When her pupils were sick, she would generally be called in before a physician. She also was connected with the 'Moral Reform Society,' with Mrs. Margaret Pryor, and visited the sick and abandoned, often prescribing for them in sickness."

Mrs. Lozier graduated at the Eclectic College, of Syracuse, in 1853, having attended her first course of lectures at the Central College, Rochester. From that time until her death, in 1870, she continued to minister to the sick and afflicted in the city of New York.

At the commencement of this article we stated that Mrs. Lozier was a modest woman. This she continued to be to the end. Those leading physicians who often met her in consultation, with the thousands of patients who from time to time have been under her treatment, the students before whom she lectured during several years, the numerous friends who thronged her parlors, and the Christian professors with whom she mingled,--all, all testify to this fact. "She denied both the expediency and practicability of mingling the sexes" in deriving a medical education. "Woman physician for women," was her motto. It was not always possible for her to refuse to prescribe for male patients, as many can testify. The efforts of some, far down in the scale of life, to connect the name of Mrs. Lozier with those disreputable practices by which the majority of female physicians--the parasites of the profession--subsist, yea, even gain a competence, in this city, and, consequently, respectability,--"for gold buys friends,"--have utterly failed, and her name to-day, as it ever will, stands out boldly as belonging to one who was a self-denying, God-fearing, honorable, and successful female practitioner.

Mrs. Lozier is said to have been a skilful surgeon, "having performed upwards of one hundred and twenty capital operations." In 1867-8 Mrs. L. visited Europe, where she was received with great marks of esteem by eminent men, and admitted to the hospitals.

Her son, Dr. A. W. Lozier, is in practice in New York city.

DOCTORS ELIZABETH AND EMILY BLACKWELL.

The first female who received a medical diploma from any college in the United States was Miss Elizabeth Blackwell.

This lady, who now stands only second in years of experience to Miss Hunt, of Boston, and second to no female in medical knowledge and usefulness, came to this country from England in 1831, when she was ten years of age. [A lady, of whom I made some inquiries respecting the above, assured me "it was only those females who were eligible as nurses, or prospective widowhood, which would make them eligible, were desirous of concealing their true age."]

Being persuaded that her "mission" was to heal the sick, Miss Elizabeth applied, by writing, to six different physicians for advice as to the best means to obtain an education, and received from all the reply that it was "impracticable," utterly impossible, for a female to obtain a medical education; "the proposition eccentric," "Utopian," etc.

It required just this sort of opposition to draw out the true character, and arouse the hidden abilities of such women as the Misses Blackwell.

Elizabeth, while supporting herself by giving music lessons in Charleston, S. C., received regular medical instruction from S. H. Dixon, M. D., a gentleman and scholar, well known to the entire profession of two continents; also from Drs. John Dixon, Allen, and Warrington, the two latter in Philadelphia. Being considered by these gentlemen competent, Miss Blackwell applied to the medical schools of Philadelphia and New York for admission as a medical student, by all of which she was rejected "because she was a female." Finally she gained admission to the College at Geneva, N. Y., and graduated in 1848. Are the males the only "oppressors" of the gentler sex? No, no; woman is woman's own worst enemy.

Miss Blackwell was two years in Geneva, and so violent was the opposition of her own sex, that no lady in Geneva would make her acquaintance while there. "Common civilities at the table, even, were denied me." Entirely different was the treatment which she received at the hands of the students and professors of the college. "Here she found nothing but friendliness and decorum, and, on the eve of her graduation, the cordiality of the students in making way for her to receive her diploma, and pleasantly indicating their congratulations, was marked and respectful."

The following morning her parlor was thronged with ladies.

Miss Elizabeth Blackwell visited London and Paris, and was entered as student at St. Bartholomew's, and also at "La Maternité" (The Maternity).

She returned to New York, and, notwithstanding "she found a blank wall of social and professional antagonism facing the woman physician, which formed a situation of singular loneliness, leaving her without support, respect, or counsel," she gained a foothold, and a respectable and living practice soon began to flow in and crown her persistent efforts.

Now her sister Emily commenced the study of medicine, first with Elizabeth, subsequently with Dr. Davis, of Cincinnati Medical College. In 1852 she and her sister were permitted to attend upon some of the wards (female, we presume) of Bellevue Hospital. In 1854 Emily graduated at Cleveland College (Eclectic, I think).

Through their united efforts the "New York Infirmary for Women and Children" was established. "Up to the present time over fifty thousand patients have received prescriptions and personal care by this means." Contrary to Mrs. Lozier, "they are firm in their conviction of the expediency of mingling the sexes in all scholastic training. In their mode of practice they adopt the main features of the 'regular' system." Nearly all other physicians are rather of the Eclectic system. Like Miss Hunt, "she was bound by no regular school, as none had indorsed her."

There are many contemporaries of Miss Hunt and the sisters Blackwell whom we might mention, but the history of one is the history of the whole, so far as early struggles, opposition of the profession, and neglect and disrespect of their own sex, is concerned.

Frances S. Cooke, M. D., of the "Female Medical College," East Concord Street, Boston, Mrs. Jackson, Lucy Sewall, M. D., recently returned from Europe, and a half-score others of Boston, much deserve more than a passing notice, but our limited space will not permit. Also, Hannah E. Longshore, M. E. Zakezewska, of New York, Miss Jane E. Myers, M. D., Mrs. Mary F. Thomas, M. D. (Camden, Ind.), Miss Ann Preston, M. D., of Philadelphia, Mrs. Annie Bowen, of Chicago, and others, "too numerous to mention," who, in spite of the opposition from their own sex, from the profession, and the public in general, have gained a name and a competency through their professional efforts.

"A woman's intellectual incapacity and her physical weakness will ever disqualify her for the duties of the medical profession," wrote Dr. ----, of Pennsylvania.

Edward H. Dixon, M. D., of New York, in an article published in the "Scalpel" shows, by uncontroverted arguments and facts, that the male child, at birth, "in original organic strength," holds only an equal chance with the female; that "the chances of health for the two sexes at the outset are equal, and so continue till the period when they first attain the full use of their legs."

Ask the mother of a family if the labor pains show any respect of sex.

Does not the female show as strong lungs as the male in its earliest disapprobation of this unceremonious world? How about the comparative strength exhibited in the demonstrations of each when the lacteal fluid is not forthcoming in proportion to the appetite?

Let us consult Dr. Dixon further,--and charge it to the females!

"We give the girl two years' start of the boy,--we shall see why as we proceed. Both have endured the torture of bandaging, pinning (pricking), and tight dressing; both have been rocked, jounced on the knee, papped, laudanumed, paregoricked, castor oiled, suffocated with blankets over the head, sweltered with cap and feather bed, roasted at a fire of anthracite, dosed according to the formula of some superannuated doctor or 'experienced nurse,' or both, for these people usually hunt in couples, and are very gracious to each other. We give the girl the start to make up for the benefit the boy has derived from chasing the cat, rolling on the floor, or sliding down the balustrade, and the torture she had endured from her sampler, and being compelled to 'sit up straight, and not be hoidenish.'"

"Well, they are off to school. Observe how circumspectly our little miss must walk, chiding her brother for being 'too rude.' He, nothing daunted, (with a 'Poh! you're a girl'), starts full tilt after an unlucky pig or a stray dog. If he tumbles into the mud and soils his clothes the result is soon visible in increase of lungs and ruddy cheeks."

"In school the boy has the advantage. The girl 'mustn't loll,' must sit up erect, the limbs hanging down, her feet probably not reaching the floor, and the spinal column must bear the main support for three to six hours! The boy gets relief in 'shying' an occasional paper ball across the room, hitching about, and drawing his legs up on the seat, or sticking a pin in his neighbor, and a good run and jump at recess, changing the monotony of the recreation by an occasional fight after school. At dinner the girl has had no exercise to create an appetite, and her meal is made up of pastry and dessert. 'Remember that her muscles move the limbs, and are composed chiefly of azote, and it is the red meat, or muscle of beef or mutton, that she would eat if she had any appetite for it, that is to say, if her stomach and blood-vessels would endure it. The fact is, the child has fever and loathes meat.'"

While the boy, hat in hand, rushes to the common or rear yard to roll hoop, fly his kite, or, in winter, to skate or coast down hill, the girl is reminded that she has "one whole hour to practise at the piano," either in a darkened room, from whence all God's sunshine is excluded, cold and cheerless, or the other extreme--seated near a heated register, from which the dry, poisonous fumes belch forth, destroying the pure oxygen she requires to inflate her narrowing lungs, and increase the fibrine, the muscle, and strength necessary to the exhausting exercise. She closes the day by eating a bit of cake and a plate of preserves.

The hungry, "neglected" boy has returned, and, with swift coursing blood, strength of muscle and brain, catches a glance at his neglected lesson, comprehending it all the quicker by the change he has enjoyed, bawls boisterously for some cold meat, or something hearty, and tumbles into his bed, forgetting to close the door or window; whereas the girl must be attended to her room, "she is so delicate," and, being tucked well in on a sweltering feather bed, and bound down by heavy blankets, the doors and windows are carefully secured, and, committed to the "care of Providence," she is left to swelter till to-morrow.

The period for a great change arrives, often catching the poor, uninformed girl completely by surprise. Furthermore, the constant deprivation of her natural requirements--pure air, wholesome, nutritious food, unrestrained limbs and lungs--now become more apparent. In spite of the constant drilling which she has received, she feels exceedingly gauche. Her face is alternately pale and flushed; she suffers from headache,--"a rush of blood to the head." Stays and tight-lacing have weakened the action of the heart, cut off the circulation to the extremities, and deprived those parts of blood which now require the nutriment necessary to their strength and support in the time of their greatest need.

The ignorant mother sends for a physician, perhaps almost as ignorant as herself; or, what is still worse, being a miserable time-server, seeing the admirable opportunity for making a bill, straightway commences a course of deception and quackery that, if it do not result in the death of the unfortunate patient, leaves her a miserable creature for life, with spinal curvature or consumption; or worse, by confinement and medication destroy her chance of restoration; and should some unlucky and ignorant young man take her as wife, and she become a mother, she surely will drag out a wretched existence as a victim to uterine displacement and its concomitant results.

Physically, morally, and intellectually woman is not born inferior to man. We have briefly shown where and how she has fallen behind in the race of life in a physical view of the matter. The intellectual sense has kept pace only with the physical. Morally woman stands alone; by her own strength or weakness she stands or falls. Man scarcely upholds or encourages her. Her own sex, we have herein-before stated, is woman's own worst enemy! "Be thou as chaste as ice, or pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny," and if she fall, who shall restore her? The whole world is against her; one half makes her what she is, the other's scorn and neglect keeps her thus! The "ballot" will not keep woman from falling, nor raise her when fallen. The "church" does not exempt woman from the wiles of men, nor its adherents raise the fallen to their pristine strength, beauty, and respectability! Though Christ, the lowly, the magnanimous, said, "Neither do I condemn thee," his followers (?) cannot lay their hands upon their hearts and repeat his gracious words. Where is the fallen woman whom the church (not Roman Catholic) ever took in with that good faith and spirit of sisterly love or brotherly affection, with which a fallen man can, and is, often received into the church and into society?

Echo answers, "Where?"

O, deny this who will! It is no "attack upon the church;" merely a lamentably truthful statement.

The church, like society, withdraws her skirts from contact with the fallen sister. "She is a wreck, drifted upon our shore, for which God holds some one accountable. Not a wreck that can be restored--not a wreck that money or repentance can atone for." (What! not money? Then surely she is lost, and forever!) "The damage is beyond earthly knowledge to estimate, beyond human power of indemnification. If ever the erring soul shall retrace her steps, it will be Christ himself who shall lead her; if ever peace shall brood again over her spirit, it will be the Comforter who shall send the white-winged dove.

"But the merest lad detects the lost woman. She carries the evidences of her guilt (or misfortune?) in the very clothes she wears, whether she is the richly dressed courtesan of the Bowery, or the beggarly street-walker of the village. There is a delicacy in, and a fine bloom on the nature of woman, which impurity smites with its first breath, and she cannot conceal the loss nor cover the shame!"

"If there be but one spot upon thy name, One eye thou fearest to meet, one human voice Whose tones thou shrinkest from, Woman! veil thy face, And bow thy head and die!"

Then is there no help for woman's condition in this cold, uncharitable world? you ask, in view of these facts related above. Yes; but it rests with woman. It must begin with the first breath the female infant draws. Educate her from the cradle. Give her the freedom of the boy, the pure air that the boy breathes; not the romping, rude, boisterous plays, perhaps (?), of the boy, but plenty of outdoor exercise, runs, slides, skates, rides; let her laugh, yea shout, if it be in a country place, till the woods ring again with the merry echoes, and the puzzled forest nymphs issue from their invaded retreats, endeavoring to solve the riddle by ocular demonstration which their ears have failed to unravel, viz., the sex, as revealed in the strength of voice and buoyancy of spirits, or expressed in unrestrained laughter!

"O, shocking! How hoidenish!"

Who says to laugh is "hoidenish?" A female invariably! And this is just what we are explaining: women must change tactics as teachers. There is time enough to instruct the young lady, after the girl or the miss has developed muscle, vitalized her blood, and capacitated her brain for the sterner realities of life.

Let women learn to be true teachers of women.

Begin at the beginning. This is the only way. Stand by one another in the reform. Never mind the ballot; don't try to wear the breeches. No--the male attire I mean.

The superfluous boarding-school education must give place to something more substantial. Mrs. Dashaway is to the point:--

"No, Pauline; home eddycation is perferable. If there is a requestred spot on this toad-stool I detest more'n another it is a female cemetery, where bread-and-butter girls are sent and quartered for a finished eddycation; and it does finish most of em."

"O, no, no, aunty. You mean sequestered spot, and sent quarterly to a seminary."

"Well, well; you've got too many oceans in your head already of Greek and zebra, of itchiology, and other humerous works; as for me, give me pure blood, sound teeth, and a good constitution, and let them what's got them sort of diseases see the good Samaritan, and ten to eleven if he don't cure them in less than no time. Land! if Pauline ain't drummin' the piany!"

Shall women remain passively resigned to the lamentable physical condition of her sex? or will she see where lies the main difficulty, viz., in a wrong start,--in the superfluous, debilitating, namby-pamby education of the female infant, miss, young lady?

Thoreau wrote that he believed resignation a virtue, but he "rather not practise it unless it became absolutely necessary."

"Resignation" is unnecessary in this case. Only let every woman arouse her energies, and stand firmly in claiming her "rights" to rightly educate her children, girls as well as boys, showing no respect of sex in their early training, thereby "commencing at the beginning." What is a house without a good foundation? You may build, and rebuild, and finally it will all topple over, overwhelming you in its ruins.

There is no "right" that woman may claim for herself and sex in general but men must and will concede. Man is not your master. "Habit," "fashion," "opinion," these are your only masters. These shackle woman.

Do women dress for men? to please the opposite sex? or for each other's eye? "You know just how it is yourself." Poh! What do men, generally speaking, know of woman's dress? Absolutely nothing! I boldly assert that not one man in twenty, going out to a call, party, or even a concert or opera, knows the cut and color of the dress of his wife accompanying him. Woman dresses for women's inspection. Whatever she does for fear or favor of man else, woman dresses for her own sex.

"What will Mrs. Codfish say when she sees this turned dress?"

"Old Codfish," her husband, is worth at least fifty thousand dollars, and here is Mrs. Copyman, whose husband is as poor as "Job's turkey," standing in dread of that woman's criticism!

Not one male in a thousand can detect a well turned dress, but I defy the most cunning dressmaker to alter, retrim, frill, and "furbelow" a dress that the female eye won't detect at a glance!

"I rather pay the butcher's bill than the doctor's," says the father.

"O, horrors! Just see that girl swallow the meat! Why, it will make your skin as rough as a grater and as greasy as an Indian's!" exclaims the mother.

Miss Primrose keeps our village school; she who wears the trailing skirts, and was seen to cut a cherry in two parts before eating it, at the party last week. She almost went into convulsions--not of laughter, as I did--to see Kitty Clover astride a plank, with her brother on the opposite end, playing at "See-saw."

"Here we go up--up--uppy; and here we go down--down--downy," they were singing in unison, when "ding, ding, ding!" went the school-bell, followed by a scream from Miss Primrose.

With glowing cheeks--that's from the exercise--and downcast eye, from fear of Miss Primrose's anger, Kitty came demurely into the school-room before recess was half over.

After a long lecture about her "masculine behavior," "horrid red countenance," and "rumpled dress," and "dishevelled hair," poor Kitty is sent to her form to "sit up straight, and not forget that she is a young lady hereafter."

And what of her brother who was on the other end of the plank? O, he is a boy! "That's what's the difference!"

LOVE AND THOROUGHWORT.

"He'll never die for love, I know, He'll never die for love, nor wear Upon his brow the marks of care."

This is a true story, written for this work, but published, by permission of the author, in the "American Union."

"So you believe me totally incapable of truly loving any girl, do you?"

"I most assuredly do," was my positive answer.

My friend, George Brown, turned and walked away a few paces, looking thoughtfully to the ground. He was a splendid looking man, about twenty years of age; my late school-fellow, my present friend and confidant. He was, what I did not flatter myself as being, a great favorite with the ladies. Handsome, tall, manly, of easy address, a fine singer and dancer, the only impediment to his physical perfection was, when the least excited, a hesitancy of speech--almost a stammer. Finally he turned and walked back to me, saying,--

"Now, Ad, if you will agree to a proposition I have to offer, I will disprove your assertion, so oft repeated, that I never loved--not even that dear girl, Jenny Kingsbury."

"First let me hear your proposition."

"You have long desired to visit Bangor?"

"Yes," I replied.

"Let us harness 'Simon' early some fine morning for that delightful city; go by the way of B. and O., stop and see Jenny, who I have learned by roundabout inquiry resides with her aunt in the latter place. And," he added, triumphantly, "see for yourself if she isn't a girl to be loved."

"O, no doubt Jenny Kingsbury 'is a girl to be loved;' so was Addie, and so was 'Ria, and a dozen others, whom you have sworn you loved so devotedly. O George, out upon your affections."

"Will--will--you go? That's the question."

"Yes--I will go--because I wish to visit Bangor very much," was my reply; and the time was at once set for the journey, which was to occupy two days.

Mrs. Brown, the mother of my friend George, was a devout Christian. She believed in her Bible. Moreover, she was an excellent nurse, and next to her Bible, believed in thoroughwort. Thoroughwort tea, or thoroughwort syrup, was her panacea for all the ills, physical or moral, that ever was, or could be, detailed upon poor humanity.

"Before you start, boys--"

"Boys! Where are your men?" interrupted George.

"Hear me!" continued Mrs. Brown. "Before you start for Bangor to-morrow morning, do you take a good drink of that thoroughwort syrup in the large jar on the first shelf in the pantry. It'll keep out the cold; for there'll be frost to-night, I think, and at five o'clock in the morning the air will be sharp. O, there is nothing equal to thoroughwort for keeping out the cold."

"Anything to eat in that pantry?" asked George, with a wink tipped to me. You see I was to sleep with him that night, preparatory to an early start for Bangor.

"Yes, some cold meat, bread, and a pie. But don't forget to first take a dose of the thoroughwort syrup. Addison, you bear it in mind, for George is awful forgetful, especially about taking his thoroughwort." And Mrs. Brown detained us fully fifteen minutes, as she rehearsed the remarkable qualities of her favorite remedy,--"particularly for keeping out cold."

"Mother thinks that condemnable stuff is meat, drink, and clothing," remarked George, as we sought the pantry at an early hour on the following morning, not for the thoroughwort, but for sandwiches, pies, and the like.

"Let me take a taste of the 'stuff,'" I said, as I noticed the jar so conveniently at hand.

"O, no; not on an empty stomach. It will make you throw up Jonah if you do," exclaimed George, with an expression of disgust distorting his features. "Eat something first, and then, if you want to taste the condemned 'stuff,' do so, and the Lord be with you," he added, pitching into the eatables.

Having made away with the pie, and much of the sandwiches, we turned our attention for a moment to the thoroughwort syrup. I took a taste, and George spilled a quantity on the shelf, "that mother may know we have been to the jar," he remarked, as we left the pantry.

It was not yet five o'clock when we drove noiselessly away from the door. If I remember rightly, we were not noiseless after that. The morning was delightful, slightly cool,--but that was no impediment to our warm blood, owing to the thoroughwort,--and we sped on in an exuberant flow of spirits. "Simon" was in excellent travelling order, and went without whip or spur. We should have reached the village of B., where we were to breakfast, and bait Simon, by eight o'clock, but George would insist on making the acquaintance, nolens volens, of half the farmers on the road, ostensibly to inquire the way to B.

"Hallo!" he shouted, reining up Simon before a small farm-house. Up flew a window, and out popped a nightcapped head.

"What d'ye want?" called a feminine voice. It was now hardly daylight, and the person could not distinguish us.

"Excuse me, madam, for disturbing your slumbers; but can you inform a stranger if this is the right road to B.?" asked George, in his most pleasing manner.

"O, yes; keep right on; take the first left hand road to the top o' the hill; then go on till yer--"

We drove away, not waiting for the rest.

"Do you suppose that old woman is talking there now, with her nightcapped head poked out of the window?" asked George, as we reached the hotel at B.

"For shame!" said I. "Waking up all the people on the road, to inquire the way, with which you were perfectly familiar!"

From B. our route lay along the western bank of the beautiful Penobscot. I need not detain you while I rehearse the delightful scenery en route to Bangor; the variegated and gorgeous splendors of the autumnal leaves; the bending boughs, from the abundant ripened fruit, in colors of red, orange, and yellow on one hand, and on the other the bright, glassy waters of the broad river, dotted here and there by the white sails of boats and vessels lying becalmed in the morning sunshine.

We reached the village of O., and George made inquiry for the residence of Mr. Kingsbury.

"The large white house just across the bridge."

"Thank you." And we drove up to the front yard.

"Ne-ne-now, Ad, you go up and knock, and call for Miss Kingsbury; ye-ye-you know I st-stutter when I get ex-ex-cited," said George, hitching Simon to the horse-post.

"What shall I say to her? and how shall I know Miss Kingsbury from any other lady?"

"O, ask for her. I'll compose myself, and follow ri-right up. You'll know her from the description I have given you. Black eyes and hair, full form--O, there is nobody else like her. Come, go up and call for her."

"Well, I'll go; and if I get stuck, come quickly to my rescue," I said, turning to the house. "Is Miss Kingsbury at home?" I asked of the young lady who answered my knock. "This person is surely not Miss Jenny," I said to myself; "cross-eyed, blue at that, and light, almost red hair." She smiled, took a second look at me, and said,--

"Who?"

"Miss Jenny Kingsbury," I repeated.

"Well--yes--I guess she is. Will you walk in?"

"No, thank you. Will you please call her out?" And so saying, I beckoned to George.

The girl closed the door, and I called to George "to make haste and change places with me." He came up just as the door reopened, and a beautiful dark-eyed woman appeared, whom he greeted as Miss Kingsbury.

"I'll see to the horse," I said; and having taken a hurried glance at the young lady, I withdrew. For a full half hour I walked up and down beneath the maples in front of the house, watched the steamer Penobscot, as she came up the river, and from thence turned my attention to a schooner that was endeavoring to enter the cove, not far from the house. A light breeze had sprung up from the westward, and the channel being narrow, there seemed much difficulty in gaining the harbor.

Finally George came to the door and beckoned me. I went in, and received an introduction to Mrs. Kingsbury and to Jenny.

"O, but she is beautiful," I whispered to George.

He was flushed and excited, consequently stammered some, and I was compelled to keep up a conversation, but I did not feel easy. Something was wrong. I detected more than one sly wink between aunt and niece, and when the cross-eyed miss came into the room, I could not tell whom she was glancing at, as her eyes "looked forty ways for Sunday," but she leered perceptibly towards first one, then the other of the ladies. I hinted to George that we must not delay longer. Still he tarried. Mrs. Kingsbury seemed interested in the movements of the schooner in the mouth of the cove. Miss Jenny was interested in George. I was interested in getting away from them all. Finally the schooner was moored to the wharf, and, standing at the window, I noticed a sailor, with a bundle on a stick over his shoulder, approaching the house. A whisper passed between aunt and niece, and the latter asked George to accompany her into an adjoining room.

It was now past noon. A pleasant, savory smell came up from the kitchen, but no one asked me to put up the horse, and stay to dinner.

The man with the bundle came familiarly into the yard. Soon George returned alone to the room, and seizing his hat, he stammered, "C-c-come, Ad," and rushed from the house.

Mrs. Kingsbury attended me to the door, and wished me a pleasant ride to Bangor. George jumped into the buggy, seized the reins, and giving a cut upon the horse, bawled, "Go on, Simon."

"Hold on. First let me unhitch him," I cried, seizing the spirited beast by the bridle. I unfastened the halter, and jumped into the carriage; and away flew Simon, snorting and irritated under the unnecessary cuts he had received from the whip. At the first corner George took the back road towards B.

"Not that way! Hold on, and turn about," I exclaimed, catching at the reins. "Now stop and tell me all about it. Did you propose to Jenny? Has she accepted, and are you beside yourself with ecstatic joy? Come, tell me."

"Ho! Simon." And laying down the reins, George drew out his wallet, and taking therefrom a bit of silk goods, he turned upon my astonished gaze a woe-begone look, and said,--

"Ad, she's mum-mum-married--"

"Married!"

"Yes, married; and there's a piece of her wedding gown. The fellow you saw come in while there, with the bundle on a stick,--the land-lubberish-looking fellow,--was her husband. O my God! Did you ever?" And so relieving his mind, he caught the reins and whip, and away darted Simon at a fearful rate of speed.

At Bangor I said to George,--

"Well, there probably is no love lost on either side. She sold out at the first bid, and you never had the least hold on her affections."

"Ah, I have had her confidence in too many moonlight walks to believe that," was his reply.

"And it was all moonshine,--that's evident," I said.

"No, no; I wish it was. I never shall love again," said George, with a deep sigh, and a sorry-looking cast of countenance.

"No, I suppose not," was my non-consoling reply.

"Still, do you believe I never loved that darling girl?" he asked, almost in a rage. "If that man--that fellow--should die with the autumn leaves, I would at once marry Jenny, who loves me still," he exclaimed, pacing the room like an enraged lion.

"He won't die, however. He looks healthy and robust, and will outlive you and your affection for his wife," I replied, with a derisive laugh.

It rained the next afternoon, as we returned home by a shorter route than via O. and B. George talked a great deal of Jenny on the way back, and said he never should get over this fearful disappointment.

"Only think of the lovely Jenny Kingsbury marrying that fellow with the bundle and the stick! O, I shall be sick over it; I know I shall."

"Especially if you take a bad cold riding in this storm," I added, by way of consolation. "However, you can take some of your mother's good thoroughwort--"

"Confound the thoroughwort," he interrupted.

* * * * *

"Did you know that George is sick?" asked his little brother of me the following day.

"No. Is he much sick?" I inquired, in alarm.

"O, yes; he's awful sick--or was last night; and mother fooled him on a dose of fresh thererwort tea, which only made him sicker," replied the little chap, turning up his nose in disgust.

"Is he better now?" I inquired.

"O, yes; ever so much now. I don't know what ma called the disease he's got; but howsomever she said thererwort was good for it, and I guess it is, 'cause he's better."

I was called away, and did not see my friend George till a week after our return from the little trip to B. He never mentioned Jenny afterwards, nor said a word about the thoroughwort tea. He took to horses after that, and eventually married a poor, unpretending girl, quite unlike the dark-eyed, beautiful, and wealthy Miss Jenny Kingsbury.

Mrs. Brown still recommends her favorite panacea for all ails, physical or moral; but whenever she mentions it in George's presence, he exclaims, with a look of disgust,--

"O, confound the thoroughwort!"

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

VI. QUACKS

"Verily, I swear, 'tis better to be lowly born, And range with humble livers in content, Than to be perked up in a glistening grief And wear a golden sorrow."--KING HENRY VIII.

ANECDOTE IN ILLUSTRATION.--DERIVATION.--FATHER OF QUACKS.--A MEDICAL "BONFIRE."--THE "SAMSON" OF THE PROFESSION.--SIR ASTLEY.--U. S. SURVEYOR-GENERAL HAMMOND.--HOMEOPATHIC QUACKS, ETC.--A MUDDLED DEFINITION.--"STOP THIEF!"--CRIPPLED FOR LIFE!--TWO POUNDS CALOMEL.--VICTIMS.--WASHINGTON, JACKSON, HARRISON.--THE COUNTRY QUACK.--A TRUE AND LUDICROUS ANECDOTE.--DYEING TO DIE!--A SCARED DOCTOR.--DROPSY!--A HASTY WEDDING!--A COUNTRY CONSULTATION.--"SCENES FROM WESTERN PRACTICE."--"TWIST ROOT."--A JOLLY TRIO.--NEW "BUST" OF CUPID.--AN UNWILLING LISTENER.

On looking over my "collection" on quacks and charlatans, I am so strongly reminded of a little anecdote which you may have already seen in print, but which so well illustrates painfully the facts to be adduced in this chapter, that I must appropriate the story, which story a western engineer tells of himself.

"One day our train stopped at a new watering-place, being a small station in Indiana, where I observed two green-looking countrymen in 'homespun' curiously inspecting the locomotive, occasionally giving vent to expressions of astonishment.

"Finally one of them approached and said,--

"'Stranger, are this 'ere a injine?'

"'Certainly. Did you ever see one before?'

"'No, never seen one o' the critters afore. Me an' Bill here comed down t' the station purpose to see one. Them's the biler--ain't it?'

"'Yes, that is the boiler,' I answered.

"'What you call that place you're in?'

"'This we call a cab.'

"'An' this big wheel, what's this fur?'

"'That's the driving wheel.'

"'That big, black thing on top I s'pose is the chimley.'

"'Precisely.'

"'Be you the engineer what runs the machine?'

"'I am,' I replied, with the least bit of self-complacency.

"He eyed me closely for a moment; then, turning to his companion, he remarked,--

"'Bill, it don't take much of a man to be a engineer--do it?'"

The reader will perceive the distinction which we make between humbugs, quacks, and charlatans, though one individual may comprehend the whole.

"Quacks comprehend not only those who enact the absurd impositions of ignorant pretenders, but also of unbecoming acts of professional men themselves."--Thomas' Medical Dictionary.

This is the view we propose to take of it in this chapter, in connection with the derivation of the word.

The word quack is derived from the German "quack salber," or mercury, which metal was introduced into the Materia Medica by Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Paracelsus Bombast ab Hohenhein!

"So extensively was quicksilver used by Paracelsus and his followers that they received the stigma of 'quacks.'"--See Parr's Medical Dictionary.

There is some controversy respecting the date of birth of Paracelsus, but probably it was in the year 1493. He was born in Switzerland.

Professor Waterhouse (1835) says, "He was learned in Greek, Latin, and several other languages. That he introduced quicksilver," etc., "and was a vain, arrogant profligate, and died a confirmed sot."

"Paracelsus was a man of most dissolute habits and unprincipled character, and his works are filled with the highest flights of unintelligible bombastic jargon, unworthy of perusal, but such as might be expected from one who united in his person the qualities of a fanatic and a drunkard."--R. D. T.

Mercury was known to the early Greek and Roman physicians, who regarded it as a dangerous poison. They, however, used it externally in curing the itch, and John de Vigo employed it to cure the plague. Paracelsus used it internally first for lues venerea, which appeared in Naples the year of his birth, though doubtless that disease reached far back, even into the camp of Israel. The heroic doses of Paracelsus either destroyed the disease at once, or the patient. Paracelsus proclaimed to the world that there was no further need of the Materia Medica, especially the writings of Galen, and burned them in public; his "Elixir Vitæ" would cure all diseases. But in spite of his wonderful knowledge and his life-saving elixir, he died of the diseases he professed to cure, at the early age of forty-eight, while Galen lived to the age of seventy.

So much for the "father of quacks."

For nearly four centuries mercury has been exhibited in the Materia Medica to a greater extent than any other remedy. Doubtless it possesses great medicinal virtues, but its abuse--the "heroic doses" used by the ignorant and brainless quacks, both graduates of some medical college, and soi-disant physicians--has made its name a terror to the people and a reproach to the profession. To assail it is to tread on dangerous ground; to invade the "rights" of a numerous host of worshippers; to uncover an ulcer, whose rottenness, though smelling to heaven, is protracted for the pecuniary advantage of the prescriber.

Eminent physicians in every age since its introduction, and in every enlightened country, have protested against its abuse; yea, even its use! They have called its users "quacks," the most contemptible epithet ever introduced into medical nomenclature,--the "Samson" of the profession, because through the instrumentality of an ass and his adherents, "it has slain its thousands."

I need not quote those distinguished practitioners who have recorded their testimony against its general and indiscriminate use. Their name is legion, and every well-informed physician is aware of the fact.

Do not "well-informed physicians" prescribe calomel?

Certainly; but cautiously, and often under protest.

It is recorded of Sir Astley Cooper that he made serious objections to its free use in the wards of the Borough Hospitals, and forthwith the "smaller fry" made such a breeze about his ears that he seemed called upon to defend, and even palliate, his offence. Dr. Macilwain says that Sir Astley is reported to have said in reply to those who demurred,--

"Why, gentlemen, was it likely that I should say anything unkind towards those gentlemen? Is not Mr. Green (surgeon of St. Thomas) my godson, Mr. Tusell my nephew, Mr. Travers my apprentice (surgeon of St. Thomas), Mr. Key and Mr. Cooper (surgeons of Guy's Hospital) my nephews?"

This was very naïve, and as good illustration of the value of evidence in relation to one thing (his provision for his relatives) which is stated in relation to another.

Herein Sir Astley exposed a weakness with which the democratic opponents of President Grant have accused him, viz., of furnishing comfortable positions for his relatives.

Sir John Forbes, when at the head of the medical profession of England in 1846, wrote an earnest appeal to his brethren to rescue their art from the ruin into which it was falling, saying in relation to modes of curing diseases, "Things have become so bad that they must mend or end." This was "dangerous ground," and some physicians of the day feared Dr. Forbes had done an immense mischief. After his death, be it remembered, some of the "medical magnates" of this country virtuously refused to subscribe to his monument fund, saying, "it was a misfortune to mankind (?) that he had ever lived."

Dr. W. A. Hammond, surgeon general of the United States, also blundered when, by an order dated at Washington, May 4, 1863, he struck calomel from the supply table of the army. This proscription was on the ground that "it has so frequently been pushed to excess by military surgeons, as to call for prompt steps to correct its abuse.... This is done with the more confidence, as modern pathology has proved the impropriety of the use of mercury in very many of those diseases in which it was formerly unfailingly administered."

The American Medical Times (regular) said, "The order appeared not only expedient, but judicious and necessary, under the circumstances." What circumstances? Read on further, and the Times editor explains: "No evil can result to the sick soldier from the absence of calomel, however much he may need mercurialization, when such preparations as blue pill, bichloride and iodide of mercury, etc., remain. But, in prescribing these latter remedies, the practitioner generally has a very definite idea of the object he wishes to attain, which is not always the case in the use of calomel."

By this timely order it was estimated that ten thousand soldiers were released from a morning dose of calomel!

Was this a blow aimed at "quackery"? Was Dr. Hammond, "a member of the medical profession highly esteemed for scientific attainments," attempting a reform in medicine? Any way, Dr. Hammond shared the fate of all medical reformers. He was suspended. He was disgraced.

The American Medical Association met at Chicago, and set up a strong opposition to the "order." Certain persons brought charges against the surgeon general. A commission was appointed. The Times said, "The whole affair has the appearance of a secret and deliberate conspiracy against the surgeon general.... The commission is, in the first place, headed by a person known to be hostile to the surgeon general. This fact throws suspicion upon the object of the investigation." Just so. The "object" was to appoint some one instead of Dr. Hammond, who would repeal the obnoxious order. No matter what pretence was set up beside, this is the fact of the case, and the people and the profession know this to be true.

But how shall we judge of the motives of Dr. Hammond but by appearances? Who so well knew the value, or injury, of calomel, as he who had used it for twenty odd years? Admitting Professor Chapman, of Philadelphia, was within twenty years of right when he said, "He who resigns the fate of his patient to calomel, ... if he has a tolerable practice, will, in a single season, lay the foundation of a good business for life," did not Dr. H. exhibit a little selfishness in attempting to deprive young practitioners of the opportunity of laying for themselves a foundation for a prosperous future?

"Doubtless," said a medical journal of the day, "all quacks and irregulars are congratulating themselves upon the appearance of this 'order.'" This leads us to ask, "Who are the quacks?"

The governor of Ohio, in 1861, made inquiry of the United States surgeon general, to know if the regiments of that state could be allowed to choose between allopathic and homeopathic surgeons.

"No: I'll see them damned to hell first," was the gracious reply.

The resolutions drawn up and adopted by the New York Academy of Medicine as an offset against the appeal for admission of homeopathic surgeons into the army (1862), contained the following:--

"3d. That it (homeopathy) is no more worthy of such introduction than other kindred methods of practice as closely allied to quackery."

There were then some thirty-five hundred of that sort of "quacks" practising under diplomas--mostly obtained from regular colleges--in the United States. Shame!

The Royal College, Dublin, the same year, in a resolution passed, called Mesmerism and homeopathy quackery.

In an article in the "Scalpel," from the able pen of Dr. Richmond,--about the time that the "swarm of vampires that was the first fruits of the tribe of rooters that swarmed the State of New York under the teachings of T. and B." (Thompson and Beach),--he calls botanics and eclectics quacks and Paracelsuses! Clear as--mud!

So! The calomel practitioners are quacks. The homeopathics are quacks. The eclectics, and botanics, and Mesmerics, are all quacks! Any more, gentlemen? This is getting things somewhat mixed, and I rush to Dunglison's Medical Dictionary for explanation. Why, a quack is a charlatan! I turn to "Charlatan." Lo, it is quack! Clear as mud, again.

In my perplexity I consult Webster. He refers me to a goose! So I rush to Worcester, and he implies it is a duck! Perhaps the bill has something to do with the name; especially as I am reminded of a suit brought by a Boston M. D. to recover the exorbitant sum of three hundred dollars for reducing a dislocation.

Therefore, summing up this "uncertainty," it seems to be a convenient word, expressive of contempt, which any professional man may hurl at any other whom he dislikes, or with whom he is not in fellowship.

In its general use it is the thief calling, "Stop thief."

It was no unusual practice for physicians of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to use calomel in scruple, and even drachm doses. Mazerne "habitually administered calomel in scruple doses." Yandal gave it by the table-spoonful. I knew a physician in Maine who usually administered it by the tea-spoonful, and I saw a woman at Deer Isle, Me., suffering from true anchylosis of the jaw, in consequence of thus taking his prescription. In the same town was a man who was made completely imbecile by overdoses of mercury. In the town of B----l, same county and state, once lived an old quack, for convenience sake, near a large graveyard. He "owned" it. That is, he is said to have more victims laid away therein than all the other doctors who ever practised in town. "I knew him well." Once he sent to Boston for two ounces of calomel. There was no steam conveyance in those days, and a sea captain took the order. By some mistake, two pounds were sent. It was not returned. "O, never mind," said the doctor; "I shall use it all some time."

Every state, county, yes, every town, in the Union has its victims to this quackery. In Rochelle, Ill., is a remarkable case, a merchant. Almost every joint in his frame is rendered useless. He can speak, and his brain is active. He has a large store, and he is carried to it every day, and there, stretched upon a counter, he gives directions to his employés. Though comparatively young, his hair is blanched like the snow-drift, falling upon his shoulders, and he is hopelessly crippled for life. "He does not speak in very flattering terms of the calomel doctors," said my informant. Neither do the thousands of diseased and mutilated soldiers, the victims to quackery while in the army.

"SPEAKING FACTS.--A little boy, ten years of age, and having a paralyzed right leg, may be seen occasionally among his more able-bodied companions, the newsboys, unsuccessfully striving to 'hoe his row' with his rougher and more vigorous fellows. The limb is wholly dead, so far as its usefulness is concerned and it was caused by giving the little fellow overdoses of calomel, when he was an infant.

"Another victim to calomel lives in the city of Hartford, in the person of a young lady of sixteen, who would be handsome but for deformities of face and mouth, occasioned by calomel given to her when a little child. She cannot open her mouth, and her food is always gruel, etc., introduced through the teeth. But the doctors stick to calomel as the sheet anchor of their faith."

Behold WASHINGTON, who had passed through the battles of his country unharmed, and who in his last illness had, in the brief space of twelve hours, ninety ounces of blood drawn from his veins, and in the same space of time taken sixty grains of calomel!

Who wonders that he should request his physician to allow him to "die in peace"?

Andrew Jackson was another victim to calomel, as well as to the lancet, as the following letter shows:--

"HERMITAGE, October 24, 1844.

"MY DEAR MR. BLAIR: On the 12th inst., I had a return of hemorrhage, and two days after, a chill. With a lancet to correct the first, and calomel to check the second, I am greatly debilitated.

ANDREW JACKSON."

Was not this double quackery? First, it was the Similia similibus curantur (like cures like), of the homeopathists, which the Academy of Medicine has termed quackery. Second, it was exhibiting calomel to the injury (debilitating) of the patient.

President Harrison was another victim.

Are not these historical facts? Nevertheless, it is treason to mention them. "And why should any truth be counted as treasonable?" the honest and intelligent reader is led to inquire. "For truth is mighty, and must prevail," eventually.

Yes, yes, truth will prevail. When bigotry and old-fogy notions are uprooted from the profession, and all educated and benevolent physicians strike hands and join fortunes to eradicate and discountenance all forms of quackery amongst themselves, they will then possess the power to suppress outside quackery. Far too many make a trade of the profession; and just so long as educated physicians countenance or practise any one form of quackery, so long will they be powerless to check the abominations of charlatans and impostors outside of the profession.

We have not introduced the foregoing facts in the interest of any persuasion. With the bickerings of the various schools of medicine we propose to have nothing to do, except to seize upon such truths as those otherwise useless quarrels are continually revealing. Opposition will not weaken a truth, nor strengthen a falsehood. You who are in the right need, therefore, have no fear as to final results.

It is hard to kick against the pricks of custom, and custom has perverted the word which is the text of this chapter, and it is now more commonly applied to the ignorant, boastful pretender to the science of medicine.

Now we will introduce a few facts obtained from without the profession.

THE COUNTRY QUACK.

In the town of P----, Conn., there resided two doctors. One, old Dr. B., a regular, and the other, Dr. S--h, an irregular. It was in the autumn, and a fever was prevailing at this time, of a very malignant character. From over-exertion and exposure Dr. B. was taken sick, and in a few days fever supervened. This news spread terror over the immediate community, and the old doctor becoming delirious, his wife and family soon partook of the terror. A neighboring physician was sent for, but being absent, he did not at once respond; and the invalid becoming, as they feared, rapidly worse, Dr. S. was reluctantly called. He was known to be an ignoramus, formerly a peddler, a farmer, horse-jockey, a fifth-rate country lawyer, and, lastly, a doctor. Had Dr. B. retained his senses, he would have sooner died than have admitted his enemy, this "rooter," into his house. He came, however, with great pomposity, examined the patient, whose delirium prevented resistance, and ordered an immediate application of the juice of poke-berries rubbed over the entire skin of the old doctor, as a febrifuge.

"But," inquired the wife, timidly, "is not this an unusual prescription, Dr. S.?" The doctor replied that it was a new remedy, but very efficacious. "You see," he added, with many a hem and haw, "it will out-herod the blush of the skin, put to shame the fever, which retires in disgust, and so relieves the patient."

"And won't he die, if we follow this strange prescription?" asked a friend, while the doctor was proceeding to deal out a large powder.

"No, no; ahem! You do the dyeing, to prevent the dying. Haw, haw!" roared the vulgar old wretch, convulsed by his own pun, and the anticipation of the ludicrous corpse that he expected to see within a few days.

There was no alternative. The prescription must be followed, and the children were sent to the woods to gather the ripe berries. The quack next proceeded to deal out a dose of lobelia and blood-root, which he left on the desk where Dr. B. prepared medicines when in health, giving directions for its administration, and in high glee took his departure. The inspissated juice of the highly-colored berries was applied over the face, arms, and body of the unconscious doctor, the remarkable appearance of whom we leave the reader to imagine.

By mistake, a large dose of camphorated dover's powders which lay on the table was substituted for the lobelia of Dr. S., which with the warm liquid applied to the skin, checked the fever, and, contrary to the hope and expectation of Dr. S., the following morning found his patient in a fine perspiration, and the neighboring physician arriving, he was soon placed in a condition of safety.

Notwithstanding Dr. S. told some friends of the joke,--for the worst have their friends, you know,--he was known to have prescribed for Dr. B., his sworn enemy; and as the patient was pronounced convalescent, S. received all the credit, and forthwith his services were in great demand. Day and night he rode, till, by the time Dr. B. got out, he was completely exhausted! He became alarmed lest he should take the fever. Such fellows are ever cowards when anything ails their precious selves. He actually became feverish with fear and excitement, and took his bed--and his emetic. He took either an overdose, or not enough, and for hours remained in the greatest distress. Finally, as a dernier resort, his wife sent for Dr. B.! Now came his turn to avenge the insult of the painting by poke-berries, which stain was yet scarcely removed from the skin of the old doctor.

"I'll give him a dose; I'll put my mark on him--one that milk and water, or soap, cannot remove. O, I'll be avenged!" exclaimed Dr. B., as he mounted his gig, and drove to Dr. S.

"O doctor, doctor! I am in fearful distress. Can you help me? Will I die?" whined S., on beholding his opponent.

"No; not such good news. Those born to hang don't die in their beds. But you are very sick, and must abide my directions."

"Yes, yes. Thanks, doctor. This blamed lobelia is killing me, though."

"Then take this." And Dr. B. administered a half tea-spoonful of ipecac, to bring up the lobelia. So far was good.

"Now a basin of water and a sponge," said Dr. B., which being procured, he seemed to examine for a moment very curiously; then ordered the face, neck, arms, and hands of the patient bathed well with the fluid.

On the following morning Dr. B. was sent for, post haste, with the cheering message that "mortification had set in, and his patient was dying."

Off posted the doctor, calling several neighbors, en route, who thronged the apartment of the invalid doctor in speechless astonishment.

"I'm dying, Dr. B.; O, I'm dying," groaned S., rolling to and fro on his bed.

"No, you are not. I told you before, no such good news. Your fever is all gone. You are scared--that's what's the matter," replied Dr. B.

"But look, just look at the color of my skin,--all mortifying," said S.

"O, no; that is merely dyed with nitrate of silver. It's much better than poke-berries--much better," repeated Dr. B.

The recovered patient leaped from his bed, and, with an oath, made straight for the doctor; but the bystanders, though convulsed with laughter, caught the enraged victim, while, amid the cheers and laughter of the crowd, Dr. B. made his escape, saying to himself,--

"The nitrate of silver I put in the basin worked like a charm."

The story soon circulated, and Dr. S., being unable to remove the deep stain from his skin, and the curious rabble from his door, left for parts unknown. Dr. B., on revisiting his patients, who now rejoiced in his recovery, found that S. had not only dispensed lobelia and blood-root, but had bled and mercurialized several.

REMARKABLE DROPSY.

The writer was acquainted with a young physician who was unceremoniously discharged by the family of a beautiful young lady to whom he had been called to prescribe, in a country village, his offence being the discovery of the true source of the patient's (?) indisposition, which fact he dared to intimate to the mother. "An older and more experienced physician" succeeded him, who reversed the diagnosis, and pronounced it "a clear case of dropsy," and the young M. D. went into disrepute. During the entire winter the old doctor made daily visits to his patient. Daily had the old ladies of the neighborhood adjusted their "specs," smoothed down their aprons, and, watching the doctor's return, run out to the gate to inquire after the health of the lady, the belle of the town.

"O, she's convalescent," was his usual reply, with due professional dignity; and thus the matter stood till a crisis came.

There was a ball in the village one night. About eleven o'clock a messenger appeared in the room, who hastily summoned a certain young gentleman, a scion of one of the "first families" in town. At the same time the minister was called, and the young man, standing by the bed, holding the invalid lady by the right hand, while on his left arm he supported a beautiful babe but an hour old, was married to the "convalescent" patient. The old doctor had run a beautiful "bill," but it was his last in that village.

A COUNTRY CONSULTATION.

The difficulty of obtaining competent counsel in the country can only be fully comprehended by the intelligent physician who has had experience therein.

From Dr. Richmond's "Scenes in Western Practice," I have selected the following lamentable incidents, which I have abbreviated as much as is consistent with the facts, related by the doctor, who in this case was called to a wealthy and influential family, two of whom, wife and child, were prostrated by epidemic dysentery.

"As my credit was at stake, an old and very grave man was, at my suggestion, added to the consultation, to guard our reputation from the usual visitation of gossiping slander that always follows a fatal result in the country. He examined the child, and gave his opinion that the symptoms resembled those of ipecac!... But death was ahead of the doctors, and the little sufferer passed quickly away to a better world.

"Another child had died in the vicinity, and the neighbors decided on a change of doctors for the lady. By my consent the inventor of the 'Chingvang Pill' was called, as I assured my friend his wife would now recover without either of us!

"He came, and readily detected the fact that he was in luck. His patient and fees were both safe, and I was floored.

"'Of course, Dr. R., you will call when convenient,' was a polite way of 'letting me down easily,' and I did call.

"Everything went on swimmingly for two days, when suddenly the scale turned; two other children were taken vomiting bile and blood. The doctor was in trouble, and on my friendly call his eye caught mine, and spoke plainly, 'My credit, too, is gone,--the children will both die.'

"The children grew rapidly worse; the council of the neighborhood decided to call further aid. Another regular was called, and, being one of the heroes, he advised (it is solemn truth, dear reader) one hundred grains of calomel at a dose! His reason was, that he had given it to a child, and the patient recovered. His medical brother thought it a little too steep, and they compromised the matter by giving fifty grains! Copious quantities of fresh blood followed the operation, and the little victim of disease and quackery slipped from his suffering into the peaceful and quiet grave!

"One patient remained, and it was decided to call further counsel.

"A simple but shrewd old quack was curing cancers in the neighborhood, who sent word to the afflicted family that he 'could cure the remaining child by cleansing the bowels with pills of butternut bark, aloes, camphor, and Cayenne pepper;' he would feed the little fellow on twist-root tea that would at once stop the discharges. Strange as it may seem, the wily old fool was called into the august presence of three M. D.'s, and a score of other counsellors. He gave his pills; fresh blood followed the raking over the inflamed and sensitive membrane; the child screamed with torture, and was only relieved from its horrible agony by enemas of morphine. The celebrated 'twist-root' (an Indian remedy, whose virtues could not be appreciated by the educated physician) followed, and death closed the scene.

"The old cancer-killer escaped by saying the morphine given in his absence killed the child."

The following brief consultation occurred in Fulton, N. Y., recently:--

Two physicians were called, of opposite schools. After shaking hands over the sick man's bed, one said to the other,--

"I believe you are an --'opathist."

"Yes, I am; and you are a --'pathist; are you not?"

"Yes; and I can't break over the rules of my society by aiding or counselling with you ---- for the sake of one patient. Good day!"

"Sir, I mistook you for a Christian, not a barbarian! Good day!"

A JOLLY TRIO OF DOCTORS.

Before entering upon an exposition of the viler and more reprehensible sort of quacks,--the city charlatans and impostors,--I must relate a diverting scene, also from a country consultation that occurred in New York State some years since, from the perusal of which, if the reader cannot deduce a "moral," he may derive some amusement.

Mr. H. was an invalid; he was the worst kind of an invalid--a hypochondriac. The visiting physician had made a pretty good thing of it, the neighbors affirmed, for "H. was in easy circumstances." Finally he took to his bed, and declared he was about to shuffle off this mortal coil.

Two eminent physicians were summoned from a distance to consult with the attending physician. They arrived by rail, examined the patient, looked wise, and the learned trio withdrew to consult upon so "complicated and important a case." A tea-table had been set in an adjoining room, and to the abundance of eatables wherewith to refresh the distinguished professionals who were there to enter upon an "arbitrament of life or death," were added sundry bottles yet uncorked.

A little son and daughter of Mr. H. were amusing themselves, meantime, by a game at "hide-and-seek," and the former, having "played out" all the legitimate hiding-places, bethought himself of the top of a high secretary in the "banqueting-room." Action followed thought, and, climbing upon a chair-back, he gained the dusty elevation, where he quietly seated himself just as the three wise Æsculapians entered the apartment. His only safety from discovery was to keep quiet.

Corks were drawn, supper was discussed, and conversation flowed merrily along. The weather, the news of the day, and the political crisis were discoursed, and the little fellow perched high on the secretary wondered when and what they would decide on his father's case. Nearly an hour had passed, the doctors were merry, and the boy was tired; but still the little urchin kept his position.

"Well, Dr. A., how is practice here, in general?" inquired one of the counsel.

"Dull; distressingly healthy. Why, if there don't come a windfall in shape of an epidemic this fall, I shall fall short for provender for my horse and bread for my family. How is it with you?"

"O, quite the reverse from you. I have alive twenty daily patients now."

"Very sick, any of them?" asked the local physician.

"No, no,--a little more wine, doctor,--some old women, whom any smart man can make think they are sick; some stout men, whom medicine will keep as patients when once under the weather; and silly girls, whom flattery will always bring again,--ha! ha!" and so saying he gulped down the wine.

"Why, there goes nine o'clock."

"What, so late!" exclaimed one counsellor, looking at his gold repeater.

"We must go or we'll miss the return train," remarked the other; "the doctor here will manage the patient H., who's only got the hypo badly," he added.

"Is that a bust of Pallas he has over his secretary yonder?" asked the first, discovering the boy for the first time.

"I'm afraid Dr. ---- has got a little muddled over this excellent 'Old Port,' that he can't see clearly. Why, that's a bust of Cupid."

"Well," exclaimed the local physician, "I have been here a hundred times, and never before observed that statue; but," eying the statue fixedly, he continued, "it looks neither like Pallas nor Cupid, but rather favors H., and I guess it is a cast he has had recently made of himself."

Through all this comment and inspection the boy sat as mute as a post; but the moment the door closed on the retiring doctors, he clambered down and ran into the sick room.

The old doctor had slipped the customary fee into the hands of his brethren as he bade them good night, and entered the room of his patient. The latter instantly inquired as to the result of the consultation. The doctor entered into an elaborate account of the "diagnosis" and "prognosis" of the case, which was suddenly brought to a close by the little boy, who, climbing into a chair on the opposite side of the bed, asked his father what a "hypo" was.

"You must ask the doctor, my son," replied the father in a feeble voice.

"Hypo," said the unsuspecting doctor, "is an imaginary disease,--the hypochondria, vapors, spleen; ha, ha, ha!"

"Well, papa, that's what the doctors said you've got, 'cause I was on top of the book-case an' heard all they said, an' that's all."

The doctor looked blank. H. arose in his bed, trembling with rage.

"By the heavens above us, I do believe you, my son; and this fellow, this quack, has never had the manliness to tell me so;" and leaping to the floor in his brief single garment, he caught the dumb and astonished "M. D." by the coat collar and another convenient portion of his wardrobe, and running him to the open door, through the hall, he pitched him out into the midnight darkness, saying, "There! I have demonstrated the truth of the assertion by pitching the doctor out of doors." H. recovered his health. The doctor recovered damages for assault and battery.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

VII. CHARLATANS AND IMPOSTORS

"Every absurdity has a chance to defend itself, for error is always talkative."--GOLDSMITH.

DEFINITION.--ADVERTISING CHARLATANS.--CITY IMPOSTORS.--FALSE NAMES.--"ADVICE FREE."--INTIMIDATIONS.--WHOLESALE ROBBERY.--VISITING THEIR DENS IN DISGUISE.--PASSING THE CERBERUS.--WINDINGS.--INS AND OUTS.--THE IRISH PORTER.--QUEER "TWINS," AND A "TRIPLET" DOCTOR.--A HISTORY OF A KNAVE.--BOOT-BLACK AND BOTTLE-WASHER.--PERQUISITES.-- PURCHASED DIPLOMAS.--"INSTITUTES."--WHOLESALE SLAUGHTER OF INFANTS.-- FEMALE HARPIES.--A BOSTON HARPY.--WHERE OUR "LOST CHILDREN" GO.--END OF A WRETCH.

THE CITY CHARLATAN.

A charlatan is necessarily an impostor. He is "one who prates much in his own favor, and makes unwarrantable pretensions to skill." He is "one who imposes on others; a person who assumes a character for the sole purpose of deception."

Originally the charlatan was one who circulated about the country, making false pretensions to extraordinary ability and miraculous cures; but he is now located in the larger cities, and is the most dangerous and insinuating of all medical impostors. You will find his name in the cheapest daily papers.

Name, did I say? No, never.

Of all the charlatans advertising in the papers of this city there is but one who has not advertised under an assumed name. This is prima facie evidence of imposition. Take up the daily paper,--the cheapest print is the one that the rabble patronize, a curse to any city,--and run your eye over the "Medical Column." Of the scores of this class advertising therein none dare publish his real name. There is one impudent fellow, who, while he assumes respectability, and under his true name, has an up-town office, and obtains something bordering on an honorable practice, runs the vilest sort of business, under an assumed name, on a public thoroughfare down town.

These fellows usually advertise, "Advice Free." This is not on the modest principle, that, having no brains, they are scrupulous in not charging for what they cannot give, however; but this is to get the unsuspecting into their dens, for they are shrewd enough to perceive that whatever is "free" the rabble will run after.

When once the victim is within the web, flattering, intimidations, and extravagant promises, one or all, generally will accomplish their aim. As they never expect to see a special victim again, they squeeze the last dollar from the unfortunate wretch, giving therefor nothing--worse than nothing! I sent a pretended patient to one of these charlatans not long since, and, with crocodile tears in his eyes, he related his case to the soi-disant doctor, who with great sympathy heard his case, and assured him it was "heart-rending, and, though very dangerous, he could cure him;" but the knave compelled the patient (!) to turn his pockets inside out to assure him they contained but the proffered dollar. A small vial of diluted spirits nitre was the prescription, for which the doctor assured the patient he usually received twenty to forty dollars!

I have visited several of these places in disguise, including those of female doctors, and those advertising as "midwives," every one of whom agreed to perform a criminal operation upon the mythical lady for whom I was pretending to intercede. Their prices ranged from five to two hundred dollars.

The following painfully ludicrous scene I copy from manuscript notes which I made some years ago, respecting a visit to one of these impostors. I vouch for its truthfulness.

"I next bought a penny paper of a loud-mouthed urchin on the street corner, and, reading it that evening, the words 'Medical Notice' attracted my attention. It was all news to me, and I resolved to visit this 'very celebrated' doctor on the following day, 'advice free.'

"Accordingly I repaired to his office, as designated in the advertisement. There were several doors wonderfully near each other, about which were several doctors' signs conspicuously displayed; and, since I had heard that 'two of a trade seldom agree,' I thought it remarkable that three or four of a profession should here be huddled together.

"'STEP IN THE ENTRY AND RING THE BELL,' I read on a sign, in big yellow letters. I did so, when a big burly Irishman answered the summons.

"'An' who'll yeze like to see, sure?' he inquired, with a broad grin.

"'Dr. A.,' I replied, eying this Cerberus with awakening suspicion.

"'He's just in, sure. Come, follow me.'

"He led the way across a small room, and through a darkened hall, around which I cast a suspicious glance, noticing, among other things unusual, that the partitions did not reach the ceiling. Thence we entered another room, which, from the roundabout way we had approached, I thought must be opposite the outer door of Dr. B.'s or Dr. C.'s office.

"Here Pat left me, saying, 'The ixcillint doctor will be to see yeze ferninst he gits through wid the gintleman who was before your honor.'

"I took a look about the room. The partitions on two sides were temporary. On one side of the apartment stood an old mahogany secretary. Through the dingy glass doors I took a peep. The shelves contained several volumes of 'Patent Office Reports,' odd numbers of an old London magazine, and such like useless works. On the walls were a few soiled cheap anatomical plates, such as you will see in 'galleries' or 'museums' fitted up by quack doctors, to intimidate the beholder. I could look no farther, as the door opened, and a man entered, who, looking nervously around, at once asked my business.

"'Are you Dr. A.?' I asked.

"'I am. Please be seated. You are sick--very sick,' he said hurriedly, and in a manner intended to frighten me.

"Five minutes' conversation satisfied us both--him that I had no money, and me that he had no skill. After vainly endeavoring to extort from me my present address, he unceremoniously showed me out.

"As I closed the door I looked to the name and number, and, as I had anticipated, found myself at Dr. B.'s entrance.

"Turning up my coat collar, and tying a large colored silk handkerchief over the lower part of my face, I knocked at the third door, Dr C.'s.

"The same Irishman thrust out his uncombed head and unwashed face; the same words in the same vernacular language followed.

"'I wish to see Dr. C.,' I replied, changing my voice slightly.

"'He's in, jist. It never rains but it pours. Himself it is that has a bully crowd of patients the day; but coome in.'

"He did not recognize me--that was certain; so I followed, and was led through a labyrinth of rooms and halls, as before, and ushered into a small room, where the polite and loquacious Pat offered me a chair, and giving the right earlock a pull and his left foot a slip back, he said, with his broadest grin and most murderous English,--

"'I'll be shpaking the doctor to come to yeze at once intirely.'

"'But he has others with whom he is engaged, you said but a moment ago.'

"'Ah, yeze niver mind. Theyze ben't gintlemen like yerself, if yeze do come disguised;' and with a 'whist' he tip-toed across the room, applied his ear to the keyhole of the door a moment, and returned in the same manner.

"'It's all right; now I'll go for the doctor;' but still he lingered.

"'Well, why the d----l don't you go?' I said, impatiently.

"'Ah, gintlemen always come disguised to see Dr. A.--no--Dr. B., I mean.'

"''Tis Dr. C. I asked for,' I interrupted.

"'Yis, yis,' he replied, collecting his muddled senses. 'Yis, sure, you did, an' gintlemen always swear--two signs yeze a gintleman. Could yeze spare a quarter for a poor divil? By the howly mither, I git narry a cint, bating what sich gintlemen as yeze gives me. I have a big family to ate at home. There's Bridget' (counting his fingers by the way of a reminder), 'she's sick with the baby; then there's the twins,--two of thim, as I'm a sinner,--and little lame Mike, what's got the rackabites, the doctor says--'

"'Got the what?' I interrupted.

"'The rackabites, or some sich dumbed disease,' he replied, scratching his head.

"'O, you mean rickets. But how old are the twins, and Mike, and the baby?'

"'Will, let me see. The baby is tin days, and not christened yit, for we've not got the money for Father Prince, and there's Mike is siven, and Mary is four, and Bridget junior is five.'

"'And the twins?' I asked, not a little amused.

"'Yis, them's Mary and Bridget junior,--four and five.'

"I interrupted him by a laugh, gave him the desired quarter, and told him to hasten the doctor, which request he proceeded to execute.

"On the heels of retiring Pat the door opened, and the same doctor I had before seen entered.

"'I want to consult Dr. C.,' I drawled out.

"'I am Dr. C.,' he replied, measuring me from head to foot sharply.

"Fearing he would penetrate my disguise, I hastened my errand. 'Having an ulcerated and painful tooth I wish removed, or--'

"'This ain't a dentist's office; but if you have any peculiar disease, I am the physician of all others to relieve you.'

"I being sure now of my man, that this same villain was running three offices under as many different aliases, my next object was to get safely out of his den.

"'I have no need of any such services as you intimate. 'Tis only the tooth--'

"Here he interrupted me by an impatient gesture, intimating that only a descendant of the monosyllable animal once chastised by one Balaam would have entered his office to have a tooth drawn. Admitting the truth of his assertion, and offering my humblest apology, I hurriedly withdrew from this triplet doctor.

"Safely away, I reflected as follows: Here, now, is this scoundrel, by the assistance of an equally ignorant Irishman, conducting at least three offices on a public thoroughfare, under as many assumed names.

"'Why, the fellow is a perfect chameleon!' I exclaimed, walking away. 'He changes his name to suit the applicants to the various rooms. You want Dr. A.,--he is that individual. You desire to see Dr. B.,--when, presto! he is at once the identical man. And so it goes, while his amiable assistant seems to be making a nice little thing of it on his own account. Why all these intricate passages? and why was I each time taken around through them, and out through a different door from that which I entered? Did a legitimate business require such mazy windings as I had just passed through? Did Dr. A., B., or C., or whatever his name might be, rob his patients in one place and thrust them out at another, that they might not be able to testify where and by whom they had been victimized? Was not the newspaper proprietor who advertised these several offices a particeps criminis in the transaction? And with these facts and suggestions I leave the fellow, who by no means is a solitary example of this sort of fraud.'"

On another street in this city is another branch from the Upas tree. I do not wish to advertise for him, hence omit his names, which are legion. Two of them begin with the letter D. The true name of this impostor commences with an M. He is old enough to be better. I know of patients who have been fleeced by him without receiving the least benefit, when the knowledge necessary to prescribe for their recovery, or of so simple a case, might be possessed by even the office boy.

You go to his first office and inquire for the first alias. The usher, a boy sometimes, takes you in, and, slipping out the back door, he calls the old doctor from the next office. They are not connected. Through a glass door he takes a survey of you, to assure himself that you have not been victimized by him already under his other aliases.

If he so recognizes you, he summons a convenient "assistant" to personate the doctor, and thus you are robbed a second time.

HISTORY OF A KNAVE.

The following is a brief and true history of one of the vilest charlatans and impostors now practising in Boston. He has amassed a fortune within a few years by the most barefaced villanies ever resorted to by man. He is one of the most abominable charlatans, who, for the almighty dollar, would willingly sacrifice the lives of his unfortunate victims, who, by glowing newspaper statements and seductive promises, have been drawn into his murderous den. By the side of such unprincipled villains, the highwaymen, the Dick Turpins, with their "Stand and deliver!" or "Your money or your life!" are angels of mercy, for the former rob you of your last dollar, and either endanger your life by giving you useless drugs that check not the disease, or hasten your demise by poisonous compounds given at random, the virulent properties of which the vampires know but little and care less.

Their boast that their remedies are "purely vegetable," "hence uninjurious", is as false as their pretensions to skill, and is counted for nothing when we know that vegetable poisons are more numerous, and often more rapid and violent in their action, than minerals. Both calomel and other minerals are often given by these charlatans. I say given, for few of them know enough to write a legible prescription, much less to write the voluminous works which they put forth on "manhood," "physiology of woman," etc., which are but so many advertisements for their vile trade and criminal practices, and are intended to alarm and corrupt the young and unwary into whose hands they may unfortunately fall.

This fellow, whom I am now to describe, who sometimes prefixes "professor" to his name, was born in the State of New Hampshire, and when a young man came to this city to seek his fortune. After various ups and downs, he became boot-black, porter, and general lackey in the Pearl Street House, then in full blast. He was said to be a youth of rather prepossessing, though insinuating address, and being constantly on the alert for odd pennies and "dimes," succeeded in keeping himself in pocket-money without committing theft, or otherwise compromising his liberty. But the odd change, and his meagre salary, did not long remain in pocket, for the courtesans, who are ever on the alert for unsophisticated youth who throng to the cities, managed to obtain the lion's share from this embryo doctor, whose future greatness he himself never half suspected. Disease, the usual result of intercourse with such creatures, was the consequent inheritance of this young man.

"What, in the name of Heaven, shall I now do?" he asked himself, in his distress and despair. "Money I have none. O God! what shall I do?"

"Drown yourself," replied the tempter.

Such fellows seldom drown. Females, their victims, drown; but who ever heard of a natural-born villain committing suicide, unless to escape the threatening halter?

No, he did not drown, though it had been better for humanity if he had. He went to an old advertising charlatan, who then kept an office in a lower street of this city, a mercenary old vampire, named Stevens. Into the august presence of the charlatan young M. entered, and, trembling and weeping, told his history.

"Have you got any money, young man?" growled the old doctor, wheeling around, and for the first time condescending to notice the poor wretch.

"No," he sobbed in a pitiful voice.

"Then what do you come here for, sir?" roared the doctor, whose pity was a thing of the past. His soul was impenetrable to the appeal of suffering as the hide of the rhinoceros to a leaden bullet.

The young man, fortunately, did not know this fact, and persevered.

"I thought I might work for you to pay for treatment. O, I'll do anything--sweep your office, wash up the floors and bottles, black your boots, do anything and everything, if you'll only cure me. O, do! Say you will, sir!" and the young man writhed in agony of suspense.

"Humph!" grunted the old doctor, contemplatingly.

Doubtless he was considering the advantages which might accrue from accepting the proposition of this earnest applicant, for, after eying him sharply, and beating the devil's tattoo for a few moments upon his table, the doctor condescended to "look into his case," and finally to treat the young man's disease upon the proposed terms.

M. began his apprenticeship by sweeping the office, and the old doctor held him to the very letter of the agreement, keeping him at the most menial service,--boot-blacking, bottle-washing, door-tending, etc.,--protracting his disease as he found the young man useful, till the old knave dared no longer delay the cure, for thereby the victim might go elsewhere for help. When cured, M. engaged to continue work for the small compensation that the doctor offered, especially since he and the old man had begun to understand each other pretty well, and each was equally unscrupulous as to the sponging of the unfortunate victims who fell into their hands.

When the doctor was observed to prescribe from any particular bottle, M. took a mental memorandum thereof till such time as he could take a look at the label, thereby learning the prescription for such disease; and the result was a decision that if this was the science of healing, "it didn't take much of a man to be a"--doctor.

When the old doctor was absent, M. would prescribe on his own account, charge an extra dollar or two as perquisites, and deposit the balance in the doctor's till.

In course of time, by this process of extortion, solicitations, and the increasing perquisites, M. was enabled to set up doctoring on his own account. The old doctor died, and M. had it all his own way.

The young self-styled doctor saw no particular need of making effort to acquire medical knowledge, but a diploma to hang upon his office walls, with the few disgusting anatomical plates (appropriated from Dr. S.), which were admirably adapted to intimidate his simple-minded dupes,--a diploma from some medical society would give character to the "institution," and such he would obtain.

Being cited to court as defendant in a certain case, this soi-disant "M. D." was compelled to retract a former statement that he had attended medical lectures in Pennsylvania College, where he graduated with honors, and come down to the truthful statement, for once in his life, and swear that he had obtained his diploma by purchase.

His present rooms--house and office--are located in the heart of the city, and are not exceeded for convenience and neatness by those of the respectable practitioner. Having amassed a great fortune out of the credulity, misfortunes, and passions of the unfortunate, he has settled down to the plane of the more respectable advertising doctors, and the terrifying plates no longer cover the walls of the best reception-room; but a few valuable pictures and the Philadelphia diploma are conspicuously displayed above the elegant furniture and valuable articles of virtu.

The same extortions and reprehensible practices are still resorted to in order to keep up this "institution." His earlier history is gathered from his own statements, by piecemeal, by a confidential "student," the latter portion by personal investigation of the writer.

Respecting the matter of purchasing diplomas, I will state that I have seen a "Regular Medical Diploma" advertised in the New York Herald for one hundred dollars. The name originally written therein is extracted by oxalic acid, or other chemicals. I knew a physician who parted with his Latin diploma for fifty dollars.

I here warn the youth, and the public in general, against those advertised "institutes," though the name may be selected from that of some benevolent individual,--to give it a look of a benevolent character,--even though it be a "Nightengale," or a "Peabody," or a "St. Mary," and managed, ostensibly, under the sanction of the church or state--beware of it. Without, it is the whited sepulchre, within, the blood, flesh, and bones of dead men, women, and children.

Some years since there was found, after the flight of one Dr. Jaques (?), in a vault in the city of Boston, the bones of some half score infants. The murderous charlatan escaped the halter he so richly deserved, and was practising in a New England village not above six years since.

Another impostor, who has been extensively advertised in this city under an assumed name--selected to correspond with the familiar name of a celebrated New York (also a late Boston) physician and surgeon--who not only cheekily claims to be an "M. D.," but assumes the titles of F. R. S., etc., was but a short time before a dry goods seller on Hanover Street. He never read a standard medical work in his life. Although the villain has gone to parts unknown to the writer, the concern he recently represented as "consulting physician" is in full blast, and the same name and titles are blazoned forth daily in the public prints.

Men get rich in these "institutes," take in an "assistant" for a few weeks, then sell out to the novus homo, and the thing goes on under the old name until the new man gains strength and confidence sufficient to carry it along under his own or his assumed title.

FEMALE HARPIES.

Under the name of "female physician," "midwife," etc., the most illicit and nefarious atrocities are daily practised by the numerous harpies who infest all our principal cities. The mythological harpies were represented as having the faces of women, heartless, with filthy bodies, and claws sharp and strong for fingers, which, once fastened upon human flesh, never relaxed till the last drop of life's blood was wrung from their unfortunate victim.

Virgil thus expressively described them in the third book of the Æneid:--

"When from the mountain-tops, with hideous cry And clattering wings, the filthy harpies fly; Monsters more fierce offending Heaven ne'er sent From hell's abyss for human punishment; With virgin faces, but with ---- obscene, With claws for hands, and looks forever lean!"

I will describe but one of the modern harpies of Boston, appealing to the reader if our text above is too severe.

More than forty years ago, a young, fair, and promising girl came to this city from the White Mountains of New Hampshire. From her maiden home, near Meredith Village, from under the humble roof of Christian parents, she wandered into the haunts of vice and the abodes of wretchedness and disease in the lower part of Boston.

Her maiden name was Elizabeth Leach. You will find her name in the City Directory (1871) "Madam Ester, midwife."

We have not space to write out her whole history, nor inclination to spread before the refined reader the first years of the gay life of this attractive damsel, the seductive and sinful debaucheries of the fascinating, unprincipled woman, nor the more repulsive declination of the diseased and malevolent bawd!

The writer has seen a picture of her home in New Hampshire, a daguerreotype of her in her virginity, and a painting, taken from her sittings, in middle life. In stature, she is tall and stout; in manner, coarse and repulsive. If ever I saw a woman carrying, stamped in every lineament of her countenance, a hard, heartless, soulless, murderous expression, that woman is Madam Ester. Neither the tears, the heart-anguishes, nor the life's blood of the fatherless infant, the husbandless mother, the orphaned or friendless maiden, could draw a sympathizing look or expression from the hardened features of that wretched woman. She is the John Allen of Boston.

For years she has carried on, under the cloak of a "midwife," the most cruel and reprehensible occupation which ever disgraced an outraged community. By extortionate prices she has gained no inconsiderable wealth, and her house, though located in a narrow, darkened alley, or court, is fitted up with an elegance equalling that of some of our best and wealthiest merchants. From parlor to attic, it is splendidly furnished.

She assured me she hated mankind with inexpressible hatred; that man had been her ruin, the instrument of her disease, and would eventually be the cause of her death. She cursed both man and her Maker!

Last spring there appeared an advertisement in a city paper of a young girl who was lost, or abducted from the home of her parents, in which the young lady was described as being but sixteen to seventeen years of age, of light complexion, blue eyes, of but medium height, named Mary ----; and as she took no clothes but those she had on, never before went from home without her parents' consent, and had no trouble at home, her absence could not be accounted for. Any information respecting her would be gratefully received by her distressed parents.

She was all this time at the home of Madam Ester.

The young man who completed her ruin, like the contemptible cur he was, deserted her in her distress, leaving her in the hands of the miserable wretch above described. The girl had one hundred and twenty dollars. A part of it was her own money; some she borrowed, having some influential friends, and the balance her father gave her, ostensibly for the purchase of clothing.

The old vampire appropriated every cent of the sum, and in fourteen days turned the weak and wretched girl into the street, without sufficient money to pay her coach fare to her father's house. A young girl then in the employ of the unfeeling old wretch gave her five dollars, and she informed her kind benefactress that she should go home and say that she had been at service in a family on Beacon Street, but being sick, could earn no greater wages than the sum then in her possession. "The pale and sickly countenance of the poor girl, after the abuse and torture she had undergone," said my informant, "certainly would seem to corroborate her story."

Since the above was written the wicked old wretch has died--died a natural death, sitting in her chair!

On the last day of July, 1871, she sent a girl, a well-dressed and very lady-like appearing young woman, to my office, to know if I could be at liberty to give her a consultation that afternoon. She sent no address; merely a "woman with a cancer of the breast." She came. She introduced her business, not her name. I pronounced her case hopeless, advised her to "close up her worldly affairs, and make her peace with God and mankind, as she could live but a short time." This was given the more plainly, since she "demanded to know the worst," and because of her bold attempt to browbeat me into treating her hopeless case. The cancer was immense, had been cut once by Dr. ----, of this city. Her attendant told me that the old woman never ceased to berate me for my truthful prognosis, and that from that time she gave up all hope of recovery, and soon closed her nefarious practice. I have since gathered all the information respecting her that was possible. I knew at sight that I had a remarkable woman to deal with, and, agreeably to her invitation, I took another physician, a graduate of Harvard College, and went to her house, ostensibly to consult over her case....

A woman who has known madam for many years told me that the old woman was familiar with chemicals, and by the use of acids and alkalies could completely destroy the flesh and bones of infants. She had never seen her do it, but had seen the chemicals, and referred me to persons who had seen the dead body of a female brought out from the house at midnight, and taken away in a wagon. She said she practised great cruelty upon the unfortunate victims who had been placed under her hands, and that their cries had often been heard by the neighbors living in the court.

She said that madam claimed to have been the wife of a policeman who was killed at Fort Hill, and that she was also since married to a Captain ----. The latter was untrue. Madam told me she once thought she was married, but it was a deception on her--a mock marriage. She possessed great quantities of magnificent clothing,--rich dresses of silk, satin, velvet, etc.,--and a beautiful wedding trousseau, which, but a short time before her death, she caused to be brought out and displayed before her.

"O, take them away; I never shall wear them," she said. And she never did.

There is another female physician now residing in this city, who I know has accumulated a considerable property as midwife; but if report, and assertions of victims, are true, she has gained it by threats and extortions. She is now out of practice, or nearly. Her modus operandi was to take the unfortunate female, treat her very tenderly, get hold of her secret, learn the gentleman's name, business, and wealth, and then--especially if he was a family man before--make him "come down," through fear of exposure. Men have "come down" with thousands, little by little, till they were ruined pecuniarily under this fearful blackmailing. I doubt if money could hire her to perform a criminal operation. She can make more money by keeping the unfortunate girl, and blackmailing the seducer, or any other individual who can be scared into the trap, provided the guilty one has no money. "Blessed be nothing," said the Arab.

These people carry on their trade very quietly. Their very next door neighbors may know nothing of the unlawful acts committed right under their noses. It is for the interest of all concerned to keep everything quiet. Their customers, and even their victims, come and go after nightfall.

There is still another class, mostly males, practising in this city, who, under fair pretences and great promises, get the patients' money, and give them no equivalent therefor. Beyond the robbery,--for that is what it is; no more nor less,--and the protracting of a disease (or giving nature more time, as the case may be),--they do the applicant no injury. They receive a fee, calculating it to a nicety, according to the depth of your pocket, give some simple mixture, and bow you out.

Many an honest patient, seeing their high-flown advertisements in the dailies, weeklies, even religious (!) papers, from month to month, is induced to visit these impostors. Their offices may be in a less public street, in a private residence, and have every outward appearance of respectability.

There is a class of male practitioners, not unusually having a Latin diploma, who never appear in the prints. They are the "Nurse Gibbon" class, who employ one or more females to drum patients for them. The following is a truthful statement respecting a visit to one in 1850:--

"On my arrival on the steamer Penobscot at Boston, the lady met me, and, according to arrangement, took me to see 'her physician.' His office was on Chambers Street, left side, a few doors from Cambridge Street, Boston. The doctor was an elderly, pompous individual, who wore gold spectacles, an immense fob chain, and chewed Burgundy pitch. Let this suffice for his description. Poor man! for if his own theology is true, he has gone where Burgundy pitch will be very likely to melt. Excuse this passing tribute to his memory, my dear reader.

"Notwithstanding my friend's lavish praise of her doctor, the first sight of him failed to inspire me with confidence. I was introduced, and the doctor swelled up with his own importance, and said, impressively,--

"Those physicians--amiable men, no doubt--who have treated your case-ah have been all wrong in their diagnosis-ah." This was his prelude, as he counted my pulse by a large gold watch, which he held conspicuously before me.

"Your kind friend and benefactress has saved your life-ah, by conducting you to me before too late-ah." He stopped to watch the effect of this bid for a high fee before proceeding.

"Ah, sir, had you but come to me first-ah, you would now be rejoicing in perfect health-ah; whereas you have narrowly escaped death and eternal torments-ah."

He again took breath, looking very solemn.

"But, sir, I never heard of you before this lady wrote to me," I said.

"True-ah. I do not advertise myself. The veriest quack may advertise-ah. Your case is very dangerous. Hepatitis, cum nephritis-ah," he soliloquized, shaking his head very wisely, while my friend nodded, as if to say, "There! I told you so. He knows all about it."

"Yes, very dangerous-ah. But take my medicines; my pills--hepatica-lobus, and my neuropathicum-ah, and they will restore you to health and happiness-ah, in a few weeks-ah;" and he rubbed his palms complacently, as if in anticipation of a good fat fee for his prescription.

"Will they cure this?" I asked, turning my head, and placing a finger upon a tumor on the right hand side of my neck.

"O-ah, let me see." And so saying, he took a brief survey of the protuberance, and coolly remarked that it was of no material importance. As that was, to my mind, of great consequence, I was dumbfounded by his indifference to its importance.

Selecting a box of pills, and a vial of transparent liquid, the doctor presented them to me with a flourish, saying, in his blandest manner,--

"All there; directions inside-ah; ten dollars-ah."

"What!" And I arose in astonishment, gazing alternately at the doctor and my friend, but could not utter another word. I was but a country greenhorn, you know, and quite unused to city prices.

My friend took the doctor aside, when, after a moment's conversation between them, he returned, and said that "in consideration of the recommendation of the lady, he would take but five dollars-ah."

I paid the bill, and, quite disgusted, took my departure.

That evening I carried the medicines to a druggist, requesting him to inform me what they were. After examining them, he replied,--

"The liquid is simply sweet spirits of nitre, diluted," looking over his glasses at me suspiciously, I thought. "These, I should say, are blue pills, a mild preparation of mercury," returning me the pills. A second druggist, to whom I applied, told me the same, and, knowing they were not what I required for a scrofulous tumor, I threw them into the gutter. Ah!

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

VIII. ANECDOTES OF PHYSICIANS

"I find, Dick, that you are in the habit of taking my best jokes, and passing them off as your own. Do you call that the conduct of a gentleman?"

"To be sure, Tom. Why, a true gentleman will always take a joke from a friend."

A WANT SUPPLIED.--ORIGINAL ANECDOTES OF ABERNETHY.--A LIVE IRISHMAN.--MADAM ROTHSCHILD.--LARGE FEET.--A SHANGHAI ROOSTER.--SPREADING HERSELF.--KEROSENE.--"SALERATUS."--HIS LAST JOKE.--AN ASTONISHED DARKY.--OLD DR. K.'s MARE.--A SCARED CUSTOMER.--"WHAT'S TRUMPS?"--"LET GO THEM HALYARDS."--MEDICAL TITBITS.--MORE MUSTARD THAN MEAT.--"I WANT TO BE AN ANGEL."--TOOTH-DRAWING.--DR. BEECHER VS. DR. HOLMES.--STEALING TIME.--CHOLERA FENCED IN.--"A JOKE THAT'S NOT A JOKE."--A DRY SHOWER-BATH.--PARBOILING AN OLD LADY.

"There would be no difficulty in multiplying anecdotes attributed to Abernethy (or other celebrated physicians) ad libitum, but there are three objections to such a course. First, there are many told of him which never happened; others, which may possibly have occurred, you find it impossible to authenticate; and lastly, there is a class which, if they happened to Dr. Abernethy, certainly happened to others before he was born. In fact, when a man once gets a reputation of doing or saying odd things, every story in which the chief person is unknown or unremembered, is given to the next man whose reputation for such is remarkable."--Memoirs of Dr. Abernethy, by George Macilwain, F. R. C. S., etc., etc.

Notwithstanding the great number of authentic anecdotes of physicians which might be collected together, Mr. Campbell, the experienced antiquarian bookseller, of Boston, assures me there is no such book in print. I have been many years collecting such, and for this chapter I have selected therefrom those most chaste, amusing, instructive, and authentic.

The following original anecdote of the great English surgeon I obtained verbally from Mr. Sladden, of Chicago:--

"My grandmother once visited Dr. Abernethy, with her eldest son, my uncle, living in London, to consult the great physician respecting an inveterate humor of the scalp, with which the child was afflicted.

"There were a great many patients in waiting, and when it came my grandmother's turn, she walked up to the great man, and removing the boy's cap, presented the case for his inspection in silence. He took a quick glance at the humory head, turned to the old lady, and said,--

"'Madam, the best thing I can recommend for that disease is a plenty of warm water and soap. And, by the way, if that don't remove it, the next best thing is to apply freely soap and warm water. Five guineas, if you please, ma'am.'

"As my grandmother was the embodiment of neatness, she never forgave the doctor for this broad intimation of the questionableness of her neatness."

Dr. Stowe told the following story of Dr. Abernethy and a live Irishman:--

"It occurred at Bath. A crowd of pupils, myself one of them, were following Mr. Abernethy through the crowded wards of the hospital, when the apparition of a poor Irishman, with the scantiest shirt I ever saw, jumped from a bed, and literally throwing himself on his knees at the doctor's feet, presented itself. We were startled for a moment, but the poor fellow, with all his country's eloquence, poured out such a torrent of praise, prayers, and blessings, and illustrated it with such ludicrous pantomimic displays of his leg, all splintered and bandaged, that we were not long left in doubt.

"'That's the leg, your hon-nor. Glory be to God. Yer honnor's the buy what saved it. May the heavens be yer bed. Long life to yer honnor. To the divil with the spalpeens that wanted to cut it off!' etc.

"With some difficulty the patient was replaced in bed, and the doctor said,--

"'I am glad your leg is doing well, but never kneel again, except to your Maker.'

"The doctor took the opportunity of giving us a clinical lecture about diseases and their constitutional treatment. Every sentence Abernethy uttered, Pat confirmed.

"'Thrue for yer honnor; divil a lie at all, at all. His honnor's the grathe doctor, entirely,' etc.

"At the slightest allusion to his case, off went the bed-clothes, and up went the leg, as if taking aim at the ceiling. 'That's it, be gorra! and a betther leg than the villain's that wanted to slice it off, entirely.'

"The students actually roared with laughter, but Abernethy retained his usual gravity throughout the whole of the ludicrous scene."

Madam Rothschild, mother of the mighty capitalists, attained the great age of ninety-eight. Her wits, which were of no common order, were preserved to the end. During her last illness, when surrounded by her family and some friends, she turned to her physician, and said, in a suppliant tone,--

"My dear doctor, I pray you try to do something for me."

"Madam, what can I do? I cannot make you young again."

"No, doctor; nor do I want to be young again. But I want to continue to grow old."

LARGE FEET.

Dr. Wood was a man of large "understanding." One day at a presidential reception he was standing in a large crowd, when he felt two feet pressing on his patent leathers. Looking down, he discovered that the said feet belonged to a female. Wood was a bachelor, and at first the sensation was delightful. It made inexpressibly delicious thrills run all up and down his body. But as the impression was all on the lady's side, the above sensations became gradually superseded by those not quite so delightful, and finally the pressure became very uncomfortable. Mustering courage, he said, very gently,--

"Madam, if you please, you are standing on my feet--"

"Your feet, sir, did you say?" For the crowd was so dense that she could not possibly see to the ground.

"Yes, madam, on my feet--this last half hour," very politely.

"O, I beg a thousand pardons, sir; I thought I was standing on a block. They are quite large, sir," trying to remove.

"Yes, ma'am, quite large; but yours covered 'em, madam."

A SHANGHAI ROOSTER.

Many people suffer more from the anticipation of trouble than by the actual infliction. The world is full of "trouble-borrowers." They generally keep a stock on hand to lend to those who unfortunately are compelled to listen to them. The following is a mitigated case:--

"Sir," said a physician visiting a patient in the suburbs of this city, to a neighbor, "your Shanghai greatly disturbs my patient."

"Is it possible?" asked the neighbor, expressing surprise.

"Yes, the bird is a terrible nuisance, giving the patient no peace, day or night, he informs me; but he did not want to complain."

"But," replied the sceptical owner, "I don't see how he can annoy neighbor B. Why, he only crows twice in the night, and only two or three times at regular intervals during the day."

"Yes; but you don't take into consideration all the times the patient is expecting him to crow."

SPREADING HERSELF.

In a country town in Maine the writer knew an elderly physician, who had married a wife much younger than himself, whose aristocratic notions hardly coincided with those of this democratic people, though she had now lived here several years. Finally a young physician came into the place and commenced practice. Among the patients that he obtained from the old doctor's former practice was one named Higgins.

Mrs. Higgins, whose daughter had just recovered from a fever, gave a party, to which the families of both doctors, with the two ministers, and others, were invited.

"Will you go to Mrs. Higgins's party?" asked a neighbor of the old doctor's wife.

"Yes, I intend to go, by all means, for I want to see old Mother Higgins and her new doctor spread themselves."

This reminds me of the following story, which is too good to be lost:--

"'Once upon a time,' an old lady sent her grandson to set a turkey,--not the gobbler, as did the parson in Mrs. Stowe's 'Minister's Wooing.' On his return, the following dialogue occurred:--

"'Sammy, my dear, have you set her?'

"'Yes, grandma,' replied Hopeful.

"'Fixed the nest up all nice, Sammy?'

"'O, mighty fine, grandma.'

"'Did you count the eggs, Sammy, and get an odd number?'

"'Yes, grandma.'

"'How many eggs did you set her on, Sammy, dear?'

"'One hundred and twenty-one, grandma.'

"'O, goodness gracious! Why did you put so many eggs under her, Sammy?'

"'Why, grandma, I wanted to see the old thing spread herself.'"

KEROSENE.

Some editors are continually making themselves ridiculous, as well as endangering the life of some person as ignorant in the matter as themselves, by publishing at random "remedies" for certain complaints, of both of which--remedy and disease--they knew nothing. The following I cut from a paper:--

"One thing I will mention which may be useful to some one. Kerosene oil has been found effective as a vermifuge. It is given by the mouth for round stomach worms, and as an enema for pin worms. It is free from the irritation which follows the use of spirits turpentine, and is equally as effective." (No directions as to quantity at a dose.)

An Irishwoman in Hartford, Conn., spelling out the above in a newspaper, concluded to give her child, a boy of ten, a dose, under the belief that "wurrums ailed the child," and as it was harmless (?), she would give him the benefit of its harmlessness, and her ignorance, and administered accordingly a tea-cup full!

Frightful symptoms supervened,--colic, vomiting, etc.,--when a doctor was sent for, who being absent, his student--who hardly understood the danger of the case, and was a bit of a wag, by the way--sent the following prescription:--

"[R]. Run a wick down the child's throat; any lamp or candle wick will do, provided it is long enough; set fire to the end left outside, and use him for a lamp till the doctor arrives." SELAH.

This may seem too ridiculous to believe, but it is the truth, nevertheless.

SALERATUS VS. SUGAR.

Early one summer morning, while practising in Plymouth, Conn., the writer was startled by a loud knock at the front door, which I hastened to answer. There stood an Irishman, well known as living in a little hut, down on the "Meadows," whose name was Fitzgibbon. He was all out of breath, and the great drops of sweat were rolling all down his rough face, which he was endeavoring to mop up with a huge bandanna handkerchief. As soon as he could possibly articulate, he exclaimed,--

"O, docther, docther! take yourself--down to that sha-anty as quick as ye conva-niantly can, plaze."

"Why, what's the matter at the shanty, Fitzgibbon?"

"O, docther, dear, I've pizened my boy; what will I do intirely?"

"How did it happen? Don't be alarmed, Fitzgibbon." For his manner was frightful.

"Will, I'll till yeze. He's been sick wid the masles. Will, he's ate nothin' for a hole wake, and in the night he wanted some bread an' sugar, do ye see? an' I had no candle, an' I wint in the dark, an' spread him some bread, an' he ate it intirely, an' it was saleratus I put on it, instead of sugar; an' it's now atin' him intirely! O, dear, dear, that I should iver give him saleratus instead o' sugar!"

"Well, Fitzgibbon, if the boy is so big a fool that he don't know the difference between saleratus and sugar, let him die."

"O, docther, don't say so!" exclaimed the poor fellow, in agony.

Then I suddenly recollected that the sense of taste was always vitiated in measles, and thus excused the matter, adding,--

"Now, run home, 'Gibbon, and give the little fellow a tea-spoonful of vinegar in a little sugar and water,--not saleratus and water, mind you."

"No, by the great St. Patrick, I'll niver mistake the likes again," he earnestly interrupted, when I went on, saying,--

"Then in half an hour give him another tea-spoonful, and that will relieve the 'gnawing at his stomach,' and by an hour I'll drive round there and see him, on my way to Watertown."

"I'll trust to yeze to git it out of him. God bless yeze;" and away he darted, saying, "O, howly mother! that I should give him saleratus for sugar!"

HIS LAST JOKE.

A celebrated English physician, who was also a distinguished humorist, when about to die, requested that none of his friends be invited to his funeral.

A friend inquired the reason of this remarkable request.

"Because," sighed the dying but polite humorist, "it is a courtesy which can never be returned."

Charles Matthews, the celebrated comedian, who died in 1837, put the above entirely in the shade by his last joke.

The attending physician had left Mr. Matthews some medicine in a vial, which a friend was to administer during the night. By mistake, he gave the patient some ink from a vial which stood near. On discovering the error, his friend exclaimed, "O, gracious Heavens, Matthews, I have given you ink, instead of medicine."

"Never--never mind, my dear boy," said the dying man faintly; "I will swallow a piece of blotting paper."

AN ASTONISHED NEGRO.

Dr. Robertson, of Charleston, S. C., who attended the writer in 1852, with the yellow fever, was as competent, benevolent, and faithful a physician as I ever had the pleasure of meeting. His services were in great demand during the raging of the "yellow Jack," and on one occasion he was absent from his house and office two whole days and a night. His family became alarmed, and a faithful old negro was sent in search of his master. It was no uncommon occurrence to see a black man traversing the streets, ringing a bell, and crying a "lost child;" but to see a slave searching for his lost master, was almost a phenomenon.

It was quite dark, and the old negro was shuffling along King Street, crying, "Masser Rob'son lost, Masser Rob'son lost," when suddenly he was brought to a halt, and silenced by some one saying,--

"What's that you are crying, Neb?" His name was Nebuchadnezzar.

"O, de Lord! if Masser Dr. Rob'son hain't been an' loss hisself!"

"You old fool, Neb, I am your master--Dr. Robertson. Don't you know me now?" exclaimed a familiar voice.

Sure enough, it was the doctor, returning from his numerous visits, tired and dust-covered.

The whole thing solemnly impressed the old darky, who, a day or two later, was met by a ranting Methodist, vulgarly termed a "carpet-bagger," who, in a solemn voice, said,--

"My colored friend, have you yet found the Lord Jesus?"

"O, golly, masser!" exclaimed the old negro in astonishment; "hab de Lord done gone an' loss hisself?"

(I have seen the last part of this anecdote floating about the newspapers; but did ever any one see the former connection, or even the latter before 1852?)

The writer was but a poor medical student, and an invalid, seeking here a more salubrious climate, away from the frosts and snows of his northern home, and though twenty years have since flown, I have not forgotten, and never shall, the kindness and attention received at the hands of the benevolent Dr. Robertson. While many who went out with me that fall fell victims to the fearful endemic before Jack Frost put a stop to its ravages, I escaped the grim monster Death; and to the superior knowledge and efficient treatment of Dr. R., with the excellent care of the benevolent landlady, Mrs. Butterfield, I owe my life.

Morning and evening the doctor's patter-patter was heard on the stairs,--three flights to climb. The whole case was gone over, and then, if the good old doctor had a moment to spare, he would retail some little anecdote "with which to leave me in good spirits."

The following is one:--

"Mr. Bacon, of Edgefield, was once courting a lady who had frequently refused him; but he, with commendable perseverance, had as often renewed the suit, until at last she became so exceedingly annoyed at his importunities that she told him that she could never marry a man whose tastes, opinions, likes and dislikes were so completely in opposition to her own as were his.

"'In fact, Mr. Bacon,' she is represented as having said, 'I do not think there is one subject on earth upon which we could agree.'

"'I assure you, dear madam, that you are mistaken, which I can prove.'

"'If you will mention one, I will agree to marry you,' replied the lady.

"'Well, I will do it,' replied Mr. Bacon. 'Suppose now you and I were travelling together; we arrive at a hotel which is crowded; there are only two rooms not entirely occupied, in one of which there is a man, in the other a woman: with which would you prefer to sleep?'

"The lady arose indignantly, and replied, 'With the woman, of course, sir.'

"'So would I,' replied Mr. Bacon, triumphantly."

(My room had two beds in it, which suggested the above story.)

DR. K.'S MARE.

The outline of the following ludicrous "situation" was given me by a gentleman of Framingham:--

Old Dr. K., of F., was represented as a rough and off-handed specimen of the genus homo, who liked a horse even better than a woman,--not that he was by any means unmindful of the charms and claims of the beautiful,--better than he loved money, though the latter passion bordered on avariciousness.

An over-nice and sensitive spinster once was visiting the family of Mr. T., in town, which employed a younger and more refined physician than Dr. K.; and the spinster, being somewhat indisposed, requested Mr. T. to call a physician. His own family doctor was suggested; but on close inquiry, she concluded to have "the oldest and most experienced physician that the town afforded," and old Dr. K. was called.

Mr. T. had just purchased a beautiful mare, which the doctor was desirous of possessing; and the animal was the subject of conversation as the two entered the house, even to the parlor, where the spinster reclined upon a sofa. The old doctor examined the lady for a moment in silence, but his mind was all absorbed in the reputed qualities of the mare, as he timed the lady's pulse.

"Slightly nervous," he said to the spinster. "Tongue? Ah! coated. Throat sore?" and turning towards T., he resumed the horse discussion, still holding the lady's wrist. "Good wind, Mr. T.? No spavins? Nothing the matter? Suppose you trot her out this afternoon."

The spinster, supposing the conversation alluded to her, went into the most extreme kind of hysterics.

"A SCARED CUSTOMER."

We give this incident for what it is worth.

A man recently entered a restaurant in Utica, N. Y., and ordered a very elaborate dinner. He lingered long at the table, and finally wound up with a bottle of wine. Then lighting a cigar, he sauntered up to the bar, and remarked to the proprietor,--

"Very fine dinner, landlord. Just charge it, for I haven't a cent."

"But I don't know you," replied the proprietor, indignantly.

"No, of course you don't, or you never would have let me have the dinner."

"Pay me for the dinner, I say," shouted the landlord.

"And I say I can't," vociferated the customer.

"Then I'll see about it," exclaimed the proprietor, who snatched something from a drawer, leaped over the counter, and grasping the man by the collar, pointed something at his throat. "I'll see if you get away with that dinner without paying for it, you scoundrel."

"What is that you hold in your hand?" demanded the now affrighted customer, trying to get a sight at the article.

"That, sir, is a revolver; loaded, sir."

"O, d---- that; I don't care a continental for a revolver; I've got one myself. I was afraid it was a stomach-pump!"

"WHAT'S TRUMPS?"

Mrs. Bray, in her book of Anecdotes, relates a story illustrative of the power of the ruling passion.

"A Devonshire physician, boasting the not untradesman-like name of Vial, was a desperate lover of the game of whist. One evening, during his opponent's deal, he fell to the floor in a fit. Consternation seized on the company, who knew not if the doctor was dead or alive. Finally he showed signs of returning life, and retaining the last cherished idea that had possessed him on falling into the fit, he resumed his chair, exclaiming, 'What's trumps, boys?'"

* * * * *

The writer was present at a similar occurrence. There were a half score of boys seated upon some logs near the country school-house, during recess, listening to a story, something about "an old woman who had just reached a well, with a pitcher to obtain some water, when the old lady tripped her toe, and fell into the well head foremost."

At this juncture one of the listeners fell forward from the log in a fit. We were greatly frightened, but mustered sufficient courage to throw some water in the boy's face, when he gradually came to his senses, exclaiming,--

"Did she break the pitcher, Johnny?"

* * * * *

To Mrs. Bray's book we are again indebted for the following:--

"A bon-vivant, brought to his death-bed by an immoderate use of wine, was one day informed by his physician that he could not, in all human probability, survive many hours, and that he would die before eight o'clock the following morning, summoned all his remaining strength to call the doctor back, and, when the physician had returned, made an ineffectual attempt to rise in bed, saying, with the true recklessness of an innate gambler,--

"'Doctor, I'll bet you some bottles that I live till nine!'"

"LET GO THE HALLIARDS."

A sailor was taken with the pleurisy on board a vessel that was hauling through the "seven bridges" that span the Charles River from the Navy Yard to Cambridgeport, and a well-known physician, rather of the Falstaffian make-up, whom I may as well call Dr. Jones,--because that is not his name,--was summoned. He prescribed for the patient, and when the schooner touched the pier of the bridge, he stepped ashore, as was supposed by the captain and crew, whose whole attention was required to keep the vessel from driving against the drawer; but "there's many a slip 'twixt cup and lip," and the old doctor had taken the "slip," and went plump overboard, unseen by any.

In his descent he grasped at a rope, which happened to be the jib halliards, and as he came up, puffing and blowing the salt water from his mouth and nose, he began to haul "hand-over-hand" at the halliards. His corpulency overbalanced the jib, and gradually the sail began to ascend, to the astonishment of the cook, who stood near by, and to the wrath of the captain on the quarter-deck.

"Let go the jib halliards, there, you confounded slush," roared the captain.

"I ain't h'isting the jib," replied the terrified cook, believing that the sail was bewitched, for sailors are quite superstitious, you know.

"Let go the halliards," shouted the mate. "We shall be across the draw, and all go to Davy Jones' locker. Hear, d---- you, Slush-bucket?"

Still the old doctor pulled for dear life, and still rose the ghost-like sail, while the affrighted cook and all hands ran aft, looking as pale as death. Still the sail went up, up, and the captain and mate began to be astonished, when by this time--less time than it requires to tell it--the old doctor had reached the rail of the vessel, and shouted lustily for help.

All ran forward to help the corpulent old doctor on deck, and by means of a man at each arm, and a boat-hook fast into the doctor's unmentionables, he was hauled safely on board, a wetter and a wiser man.

If you want to get kicked out of his office, just say in his hearing, "Let go them 'ere halliards," and it is done.

"O, mermaids, is it cold and wet Adown beneath the sea? It seems to me that rather chill Must Davy's locker be."

MEDICAL TITBITS.

More Mustard than Meat.--A poor, emaciated Irishman having called in a physician as a forlorn hope, the latter spread a large mustard plaster and applied it to the poor fellow's lean chest.

"Ah, docthor," said Pat, looking down upon the huge plaster with tearful eyes, "it sames to me it's a dale of mustard for so little mate."

* * * * *

"Don't want to be an Angel."--"I want to be an angel," which has been so long shouted by millions of darling little Sunday school children, who hadn't the remotest idea for what they had been wishing (?), and whose parents would not voluntarily consent to the premature transformation, if the children did, has received a check in the following:--

A little sprite, who had been so very sick that her life was despaired of, was told one morning by the doctor that she would now get well.

"O, I'm so glad, doctor!" she replied; "for I don't want to die and go to heaben, and be an angel, and wear fedders, like a hen."

TOOTH DRAWING.

A snobbish-appearing individual accosted a countryman in homespun with the following interrogation:--

"I say, ah, my fraand, are you sufficiently conversant with the topography of this neighborhood to direct me to the nearest disciple of Æsculapius, eh?"

"What?" exclaimed the astonished rustic.

"Can you familiarize me with the most direct course to a physician?"

"Hey?"

"Can you tell me where a doctor lives?"

"O, a doctor's house. Why didn't you say so before?"

* * * * *

The next is after the same sort.

A sailor chap entered a dentist's office to have a tooth extracted.

Doctor (with great professional dignity, speaking very slowly). "Well, mariner, what tooth do you require extracted? Is it an incisor, bicuspid, or a molar?"

Jack (brusque and loud). "It's here in the lower tier, larboard side. Bear a hand, lively, you dumb'd swab, for it's nippin' my jaw like a lobster."

* * * * *

The most astonished boy I ever beheld was a little country lad who came to have a tooth drawn. "He thought it must be fun," his mother said; "but he never had one drawn, and knows nothing of it."

"O!" with a great, round mouth, was all he had time to say, but the expression of astonishment depicted on that striking countenance, glaring eyes, and by the expressive, spasmodic "O!" I never can forget or describe; and he caught his hat and ran home, a distance of two miles, without stopping, while his mother followed in the carriage by which they came. The boy's idea was summed up as follows:--

"The doctor hitched tight onto the tooth with his pinchers, then he pulled his first best, and just before it killed me, the tooth came out, and so I run home."

* * * * *

"Taking it out in trade" is all very well when the arrangement is mutual; but there are occasions when the advantages are imperceptible, at least to one party, as thus:--

"What's the matter, Jerry?" asked old Mr. ----, as Jeremiah was jogging by, growling most furiously.

"Matter 'nough," replied old Jerry. "There I've been luggin' water all the morning for the doctor's wife to wash with, and what do you s'pose she give me for it?"

"About ninepence."

"Ninepence? No! She told me the doctor would pull a tooth for me some time, when he got leisure."

* * * * *

Apothecaries sometimes "come down" from the dignity of the professional man, and crack a joke. For instance,--

A humorous druggist on Washington Street recently exposed some cakes of soap in his window with the pertinent inscription, "Cheaper than dirt."

In the country, you know, they keep almost everything in the apothecaries' shops. We mentioned the fact in our chapter on Apothecaries. A wag once entered one of these apotheco-groco-dry-goods-meat-and-fish-market-stores, and asked the keeper,--

"Do you keep matches, sir?"

"O, yes, all kinds," was the reply.

"Well, I'll take a trotting match," said the wag.

The equally humorous druggist handed down a box of pills, saying,--

"Here, take 'em and trot."

* * * * *

A sure Cure.--Henry Ward Beecher is currently reported as having once written to Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes as to the knowledge of the latter respecting a certain difficulty. The reply was characteristic, and encouraging.

"Gravel," wrote the doctor, "gravel is an effectual cure. It should be taken about four feet deep."

The "remedy" was not, however, so remarkable as the following:--

* * * * *

"Time and Cure."--A good-looking and gentlemanly-dressed fellow was arraigned on the charge of stealing a watch, which watch was found on his person. It was his first offence, and he pleaded, "Guilty." The magistrate was struck with the calm deportment of the prisoner, and asked him what had induced him to take the watch.

"Having been out of health for some time," replied the young man, sorrowfully, "the doctor advised me to take something, which I accordingly did."

The magistrate was rather amused with the humor of the explanation, and further inquired why he had been led to select so remarkable a remedy as a watch.

"Why," replied the prisoner, "I thought if I only had the time, Nature might work the cure."

* * * * *

Dye-stuff.--During the cholera time of 1864, in Hartford, Conn., a little girl was sent to a drug store to purchase some dye-stuff, and forgetting the name of the article, she said to the clerk, "John, what do folks dye with?"

"Die with? Why, the cholera, mostly, nowadays."

"Well, I guess that's the name of what I want. I'll take three cents' worth."

* * * * *

The Hartford Courant told this story in 1869:--

"Cholera fenced in.--You have noticed the flaming handbills setting forth the virtues of a cholera remedy, that are posted by the hundreds on the board fence enclosing the ground on Main Street, where Roberts' opera house is being erected. Well, there was a timid countryman, the other day, who had so far recovered from the 'cholera scare' as to venture into the city with a horse and wagon load of vegetables; and thereby hangs a tale. He drove moderately along the street, when he suddenly spied the word 'Cholera,' in big letters on the new fence, and he staid to see no more. Laying the lash on to his quadruped, he went past the handbills like a streak of lightning, went--'nor stood on the order of his going'--up past the tunnel, planting the vegetables along the entire route,--for the tail-board had loosened,--hardly taking breath, or allowing his beast to breathe, till he reached home at W.

"Safely there, he rushed wildly into the midst of his household, exclaiming,--

"'O, wife, wife, they have got the cholera in Hartford, and have fenced it in.'"

* * * * *

A Joke that's not a Joke.--A funny limb of the law had an office, a few years since, on ---- Street, next door to a doctor's shop. One day, an elderly gentleman, of the fogy school, blundered into the lawyer's office, and asked,--

"Is the doctor in?"

"Don't live here," replied the lawyer, scribbling over some legal documents.

"O, I thought this was the doctor's office."

"Next door, sir;" short, and still writing.

"I beg pardon, but can you tell me if the doctor has many patients?"

"Not living," was the brief reply.

The old gentleman repeated the story in the vicinity, and the doctor threatened the lawyer with a libel. The latter apologized, saying, "it was only a joke, and that no man could sustain a libel against a lawyer," when the doctor acknowledged the joke, and satisfaction, saying he would send up a bottle of wine, in token of reconciliation.

The wine came, and the lawyer invited in a few friends to laugh over the joke, and smile over the doctor's wine. The seal was broken, the dust and cobwebs being removed, and the doctor's health drunk right cordially. The excellence of the doctor's wine was but half discussed, when the lawyer begged to be excused a moment, caught his hat, and rushed from the room. Soon one of the guests repeated the request, and followed; then another, and another, till they had all gone out.

The wine had been nicely "doctored" with tartar emetic, the seal replaced and well dusted over, before being sent to the lawyer. The doctor was now threatened with prosecution; but after some consideration, the following brief correspondence passed between the belligerents:--

"Nolle prosequi." Lawyer to doctor.

"Quits." Doctor to lawyer.

* * * * *

Parboiling an Old Lady.--In Rockland, Me., then called East Thomaston, several years ago, there resided an old Thomsonian doctor, who had erected in one room of his dwelling a new steam bath. An old lady from the "Meadows," concluding to try the virtues of the medicated steam, went down, was duly arrayed in a loose robe by the doctor's wife, and with much trepidation and many warnings not to keep her too long, she entered the bath--a sort of closet, with a door buttoned outside. The steam was kept up by a large boiler, fixed in the fireplace which the doctor was to regulate. The old lady took a book into the bath, "to occupy her mind, and keep her from getting too nervous."

"Now it's going all right," said the doctor, when ding, ding, ding! went the front door bell. The doctor stepped noiselessly out, and learned that a woman required his immediate attention at South Thomaston, three miles away. He forgot all about the old lady fastened into the bath, and leaping into the carriage in waiting, he was whisked off to South Thomaston.

Meantime the steam increased, and the old lady began to get anxious. The moisture gathered on her book; the leaves began to wilt. The dampness increased, and soon the book fell to pieces in her lap. Great drops of sweat and steam rolled down over her face and body, and she arose, and tapping very gently at the door, said,--

"Hadn't I better come out now, doctor?"

No reply. She waited a moment longer, and repeated the knock louder.

"Let me come out, doctor. I am just melting in here."

Still the doctor, to her astonishment, did not reply, or open the door.

"For God's sake, doctor, let me out." Listening a few seconds, she screamed, "O, I believe he's gone, and left me here to parboil! Open, open!" And she knocked louder and louder at the door, while the now almost scalding waters literally poured from her body. "O, I shall suffocate here." And giving a desperate kick, she set her foot through the panelled door, and, getting down on all fours, she crawled through the opening. Just then the doctor's wife, hearing the thumping, hastened to the room, and with many apologies and excuses, rubbed down and dried the old lady, and begged her not to mention the affair.

But never, to the day of her death, did the old lady again enter a "steam bath," or cease to tell how "the doctor went off to attend a 'birth' leaving her in the bath to parboil!"

* * * * *

A Dry Shower Bath.--When shower baths were all the rage, a few years ago, all sorts of plans were suggested to avoid getting wet. The following is to the point:--

Doctor. Well, deacon, how did your wife manage her new shower bath?

Deacon. O, she had real good luck. Madam Mooney told how she managed with hern. She had made a large oiled silk hood, with a large cape to it, like a fisherman's in a storm, that came all down over her shoulders.

Doctor (impatiently). She's a fool for her pains. That's not the way.

Deacon. So my wife thought.

Doctor. And your wife did nothing of the kind, I hope.

Deacon. O, no, no. My wife, she used an umbrilly.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

IX. FORTUNE-TELLERS

1st Witch. By the pricking of my thumbs, Something wicked this way comes.

Macbeth. How now, you secret, black and midnight hags, What is't ye do?

All. A deed without a name.--MACBETH, Act IV. Sc. 1.

PAST AND PRESENT.--BIBLE ASTROLOGERS AND FORTUNE-TELLERS.--ARABIAN.--EASTERN.--ENGLISH.--QUEEN'S FAVORITE.--LILLY.--A LUCKY GUESS.--THE GREAT LONDON FIRE FORETOLD.--HOW.--OUR "TIDAL WAVE" AND AGASSIZ.--A HAUL OF FORTUNE-TELLERS.--PRESENT.--VISIT EN MASSE.--"FILLIKY MILLIKY."--"CHARGE BAYONETS!"--A FOWL PROCEEDING.--FINDING LOST PROPERTY.--THE MAGIC MIRROR EXPOSÉ.--"ONE MORE UNFORTUNATE."--PROCURESSES.--BOSTON MUSEUM.--"A NICE OLD GENTLEMAN."--MONEY DOES IT.--GREAT SUMS OF MONEY.--"LOVE POWDER" EXPOSE.--HASHEESH.--"DOES HE LOVE ME?"

Under the guise of fortune-telling and clairvoyance the most nefarious atrocities are daily enacted, not only in the larger cities, but in the villages and towns even, throughout the country. In this chapter I propose to ventilate them in a manner never before attempted, and the exposé may be relied upon as correct in every particular.

"Why," exclaimed a friend, "I thought fortune-telling one of the follies of the past, and that there was little or none of it practised at the present."

Far from it. Very few, comparatively, who practise the black art come out under the ancient name of fortune-tellers; but there are thousands of ignorant, characterless wretches, in our enlightened day and generation, who pretend to tell fortunes, if not under the open title above, as astrologers, seers, clairvoyants, or spiritualists, etc. There are some clairvoyants of whom we shall treat under the head of "Mind and Matter."

The Bible fortune-tellers practised their lesser deceptions under the various titles of "wise men," "soothsayers," the former being acknowledged as the more legitimate by the Jews, and the latter mere heathenish prognosticators, without divine authority, as thus: Is. ii. 6. "Therefore thou hast forsaken thy people, the house of Jacob, because they be replenished from the east, and are soothsayers, like the Philistines."

8. "Their land also is full of idols; they worship the work of their own hands, that which their own fingers have made."

There were also wizards, astrologers, "star-gazers" (Is. xlvii. 13), spiritualists (1 Sam. xxviii. 3), magicians, sorcerers, and "the well-favored harlot, the mistress of witchcrafts, that selleth nations through her whoredoms, and families through her witchcrafts." Nahum iii. 4.

All of these exist at the present day, carrying on the same sort of vile deceptions and heinous crimes, to the "selling of families and nations," and souls, in spite of law or gospel. Even as those of nearly six thousand years ago were patronized by the great, the kings, and queens, and nobles of the earth, so are the fortune-tellers, under the more refined titles, visited by governors, representatives, and ladies and gentlemen of rank, of modern times.

In visiting these pretenders, in order "to worm out the secrets of their trade," the writer has not only been assured by them in confidence that the above is true, but he has met distinguished characters there, face to face,--the minister of the gospel, the lawyer, the judge, the doctor, and what ought to have been the representative intelligence of the land,--consulting and fellowshiping with ignorant fortune-tellers. "Ignorant?" Yes, out of the scores whom I have seen, there has not been one, male or female, possessing an intelligence above ordinary people in the unprofessional walks of life, while the majority of them were in comparison far below the mediocrity.

If ignorance alone patronized ignorance, like a family intermarrying, the stock would eventually dwindle into nothingness, and entirely die out.

Before the "captivity" the Jews had their wise men, and on their exodus they reported the existence of the magicians or magi of Egypt.

It seems that nearly everybody, and particularly the Egyptians, regarded Moses and Aaron as but magicians in those days; and the magi of Pharaoh's household--for all kings and rulers of ancient times and countries had their fortune-tellers about them--had a little "tilt" with Moses and Aaron, commencing with the changing of the rods into snakes. The Egyptian magicians did very well at the snake "trick," as the modern magician calls it, also at producing frogs, and such like reptiles; but they were puzzled in the vermin business, and the boils troubled them, and they then gave up, and acknowledged that there was a power beyond theirs, and that power was with God.

Well, that is not fortune-telling; but this was the class who professed the power of foretelling; and we find them, with women of the familiar spirits, made mention of all through the scriptural writing. Isaiah testifies (chapter xix.) that the charmers, familiar spirits, and wizards ruined Egypt as a nation. What advantage were they ever to King Saul, the grass-eating king with the long name, or any other individuals, in their perplexities?

They rather stood in the light of individuals, nations, and the cause of Heaven. Then Jesus and the apostles had them to meet and overcome--for their power had become very great, even to the publication of books to promulgate their doctrines; for we read in Acts xix. 19, that there were brought forth at Ephesus, at one time, these books, to the amount of fifty thousand pieces of silver, or about twenty-six thousand five hundred dollars' worth, and burned in the public square or synagogue.

There are some instances recorded in the Bible, and by Josephus, where the Jews professed to foretell events. The curious case of Barjesus, at Paphos, who, for a time, hindered Sergius, the deputy of the country, from embracing Christianity, is cited in illustration of the injury that false prophets are to all advancement. Paul testifies to that fact in the following words: "O, full of all subtlety, and all mischief, child of the devil, enemy to all righteousness," etc.

ARABIAN FORTUNE-TELLER.

The Arabians, from time immemorial, have been implicit believers in fortune-telling, as well as believers in the efficacy of charms and all other mystic arts. "No species of knowledge is more highly venerated by them than that of the occult sciences, which affords maintenance to a vast number of quacks and impudent pretenders." The science of "Isen Allah" enables the possessor to discern what is passing in his absence, to expel evil spirits, and cure malignant diseases. Others claim to control the winds and the weather, calm tempests, and to say their prayers in person at Mecca, without stirring from their own abodes hundreds of miles away!

The "Sinia" is what is better known to us as jugglery and feats of illusion.

The "Ramle" is the more proper fortune-telling, and is believed in and practised by people of all ranks, male and female, and by the physicians.

THE EASTERN PRINCE.

Fortune-telling is practised in all Eastern countries, to a great extent, to the present day. Some pretend to foretell events by the stars and planets, some by charms, cards, the palm of the hand, or a lock of hair; the latter is the most vulgar mode, and commonly followed by the gypsies.

When the fortress of Ismail was besieged, in 1790, by the Russians, Prince Potemkin, the commanding officer, began to grow impatient, after nearly two months' resistance, though he was surrounded by all the comforts and luxuries of an Eastern prince--by courtiers and beautiful women, who employed the most exciting and voluptuous means to engage his attention. Madame De Witt, one of the females, pretended to read the decrees of fate by cards, and foretold that the prince would only take the place at the expiration of three more weeks.

"Ah," exclaimed the prince, with a smile, "I have a method of divination far more infallible, as you shall see;" and he immediately despatched orders to Suwarof to take Ismail within three days. The brave but barbarous hero obeyed the order to the very letter.

THE SEER'S WIFE.

When Richmond, afterwards Henry VII., landed at Milford-Haven, on his memorable march to his successful encounter with Richard III., then at Bosworth Field, he consulted a celebrated Welsh seer, who dwelt in magnificent style at a place called Matha Farm. To the duke's question as to whether he should succeed or not, the wily seer, whose name was Davyd Lloyd, requested a little time in which to consider so important a query.

As Richmond lodged that night with his friend Davyd, he gave him till the following morning to make up his decision, when the seer assured Richmond that he "would succeed gloriously."

For this wonderful and timely information Lloyd received immense rewards at the hand of his grateful prince when he became King Henry VII.

Now for the secret of his success: During the time granted for the answer, Davyd, in great perplexity and trepidation, consulted his wife, instead of the heavens, for an answer. See the wisdom of the reply.

"There can be no difficulty about an answer. Tell him he will certainly succeed. Then, if he does, you will receive honors and rewards; and if he fails, depend on't he will never come here to punish you."

DEE, THE ASTROLOGER.

One of the most remarkable and successful fortune-tellers known to English history was John Dee, who was born in London, 1527, and died in 1608. A biographer says, "He was an English divine and astrologer of great learning, celebrated in the history and science of necromancy, chancellor of St. Paul's, and warden of Manchester College, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. He was also author of several published works on the subject of astrology, revelations of spirits, etc., which books are preserved in the Cottonian library and elsewhere."

Dee enjoyed for a long time the confidence and patronage of Elizabeth. He then resided in an elegant house at Mortlake, which was still standing in 1830, and was used for a female boarding school. "In two hundred years it necessarily had undergone some repairs and alterations; yet portions of it still exhibited the architecture of the sixteenth century.

"From the front windows might be seen the doctor's garden, still attached to the house, down the central path of which the queen used to walk from her carriage from the Shan road to consult the wily conjurer on affairs of love and war.

"He was one of the few men of science who made use of his knowledge to induce the vulgar to believe him a conjurer, and one possessing the power to converse with spirits. Lilly's memoirs recorded many of his impostures, and at one time the public mind was much agitated by his extravagances. The mob more than once destroyed his house (before residing at Mortlake) for being too familiar with their devil. He pretended to see spirits in a stone, which is still preserved with his books and papers.... In his spiritual visions Dee had a confederate in one Kelley, who, of course, confirmed all his master's oracles. Both, however, in spite of their spiritual friends, died miserably--Kelley by leaping from a window and breaking his neck, and Dee in great poverty and wretchedness. The remains of the impostor lie in Mortlake Church, without any memorial."

He unfortunately had survived his royal patroness.

Queen Mary had had Dee imprisoned for practising by enchantment against her life; but her successor released him, and required him to name a lucky day for her coronation.

"In view of this fact," asks the author of 'A Morning's Walk from London to Kew,' "is it to be wondered at that a mere man, like tens of thousands of other fanatics, persuaded himself that he was possessed of supernatural powers?"

ANOTHER IMPOSTOR.--THE GREAT FIRE.

William Lilly followed in the wake of, and was even a more successful impostor than the Reverend Dee. He was first known in London as a book-keeper, whose master, dying, gave him the opportunity of marrying his widow and her snug little fortune of one thousand pounds. The wife died in a few years, and Lilly set up as an astrologer and fortune-teller.

His first great attempt at a public demonstration of his art was about 1630, which was to discover certain treasures which he claimed were buried in the cloister of Westminster Abbey. Lilly had studied astronomy with a Welsh clergyman, and doubtless may have been sufficiently "weather-wise" to anticipate a storm; but however that might have been, on the night of the attempt, there came up a most terrific storm of wind, rain, thunder and lightning, which threatened to bury the actors beneath the ruins of the abbey, and his companions fled, leaving Lilly master of the situation. He unblushingly declared that he himself allayed the "storm spirit," and "attributed the failure to the lack of faith and want of better knowledge in his companions."

"In 1634 Lilly ventured a second marriage, with another woman of property, which was unfortunate as a commercial speculation, for the bride proved extravagant beyond her dowry and Lilly's income. In 1644 he published his first almanac, which he continued thirty-six years. In 1648 he therein predicted the "great fire" of London, which immortalized his name. While Lilly was known as a cheat, and was ridiculed for his absurdities, he received the credit for as lucky a guess as ever blessed the fortunes of a cunning rogue.

"In the year 1656," said his prediction, "the aphelium of Mars, the signification of England, will be in Virgo, which is assuredly the ascendant of the English monarchy, but Aries of the kingdom. When this absis, therefore, of Mars shall appear in Virgo, who shall expect less than a strange catastrophe of human affairs in the commonwealth, monarchy, and kingdom of England?"

He then further stated that it would be "ominous to London, unto her merchants at sea, to her traffique at land, to her poor, to her rich, to all sorts of people inhabiting her or her liberties, by reason of fire and plague!" These he predicted would occur within ten years of that time.

The great plague did occur in London in 1665, and the great fire in 1666! The fire originated by incendiarism in a bakery on Pudding Lane, near the Tower, in a section of the city where the buildings were all constructed of wood with pitched roofs, and also a section near the storehouses for shipping materials, and those of a highly combustible nature. It occurred also at a time when the water-pipes were empty.

This fearful visitation destroyed nearly two thirds of the metropolis. Four hundred and thirty-three acres were burned over. Thirteen thousand houses, eighty-nine churches, and scores of public buildings were laid in ashes and ruins. There was no estimating the amount of property destroyed, nor the many souls who perished in the relentless, devouring flames.

If this great fire originated at the instigation of Lilly, in order to demonstrate his claims as a foreteller of events, as is believed to be the case by nearly all who were not themselves believers in the occult science, what punishment could be meted out to such a villain commensurate to his heinous crime? Curran says, "There are two kinds of prophets, those who are inspired, and those who prophesy events which they themselves intend to bring about. Upon this occasion, Lilly had the ill luck to be deemed of the latter class." Elihu Rich says in his biography of Lilly, "It is certain that he was a man of no character. He was a double-dealer and a liar, by his own showing, ... and perhaps as decent a man as a trading prophet could well be, under the circumstances." Lilly was cited before a committee of the House of Commons, not, as was supposed by many, "that he might discover by the same planetary signs who were the authors of the great fire," but because of the suspicion that he was already acquainted with them, and privy to the supposed machinations which brought about the catastrophe. At one time, 1648-9, Parliament gave him one hundred pounds a year, and he was courted by royalty and nobility, at home and abroad, from whom he received an immense revenue. He died a natural death, in 1681, "leaving some works of interest in the history of astrology," which, in connection with the important personages with whom he was associated, and the remarkable events above recorded, have immortalized his name.

Respecting the prediction of the plague, I presume that if any prominent personage should, at any time, predict a great calamity to a great metropolis, to take place "within ten years, more or less," there necessarily would be something during that time, of a calamitous nature, that might seem to verify their prediction. Besides, we should take into consideration how many predictions are never verified. Dr. Lamb, Dee, Bell, and others prophesied earthquakes to shake up London at various times in 1203, 1598, 1760, etc., which never occurred, to any great extent.

Supposing a great tidal wave should devastate our coast, within ten years even, would not Professor Agassiz be immortalized thereby, although he never predicted it, except in the imaginative and mulish brains of certain individuals, who will have it that he did so predict?

A RAID ON FORTUNE-TELLERS.

In London, at the present day, it is estimated that nearly two thousand persons, male and female, gain a livelihood under the guise of fortune-telling. Some of them are "seers," or "astrologers," "seventh sons," clairvoyants, etc.

From the London Telegraph of the year 1871 we gather the following description of a few of the most prominent of these, with their arrest and trial, as fortune-telling is there, as elsewhere, proscribed by law:--

"First was arraigned 'Professor Zendavesta,' otherwise John Dean Bryant, aged fifty, and described as a 'botanist.' He was charged with having told a woman's fortune, for the not very extravagant sum of thirteen cents. Two married women, it seems, instructed by the police, went to No. 3 Homer Street, Marylebone, and paid sixpence each to a woman, who gave them a bone ticket in return. One might have imagined that it was a spiritualist's seance, but for the fact that the fee for admittance was sixpence, and not one guinea. Professor Zendavesta shook hands with one of the women, and warmly inquired after her health. She told him she was in trouble about her husband, which was false, and he bade her be of good cheer, and made an appointment to meet her on another day. Subsequently, two constables went to Bryant's house, and on going into a room on the ground floor, found thirty or forty young women seated there. The ladies began to scream, and there was a rush for the door; while the police, who seemed to labor under the impression that to attend an astrological lecture was as illegal an act as that of being present at a cock-fight or a common gambling-house, stopped several of the women, and made them give their names and addresses. The walls of the apartment were covered with pictures of Life and Death, with the 'nativities of several royal and illustrious personages, and of Constance Kent.' It is a wonder that the horoscopes of Heliogabalus and Jack the Painter should have been lacking. Then there was a medicine chest containing bottles and memoranda of nativities; also a 'magic mirror, with a revolving cylinder,' showing the figures of men and women, old and young. Of course the collection included a 'book of fate.' This was the case against Bryant.

"One Shepherd, alias 'Professor Cicero,' was next charged, and it was shown that the same 'instructed' women went to his house, paying sixpence for the usual bone ticket. They saw Shepherd separately. When one of them said that she wanted her fortune told, 'Professor Cicero' took a yard tape and measured her hand. He gabbled the usual nonsense to her about love, marriage, and good luck, hinting that the price of a complete nativity would be half a crown, and before they left the place he gave them a circular, with their phrenological organs marked. Indeed, the man's defence was, that he was a professor of phrenology, and not of the black art. A 'magic mirror' and a 'lawyer's gown' were, however, found at his house, and the last named item has certainly a very black look. The evidence against the next defendant, William Henry, alias 'Professor Thalaby,' and against the fourth and last, Frederick Shipton, alias 'Professor Baretta,' did not differ to any great extent from the testimony given against Zendavesta. The solicitor retained for this sage contended that if he had infringed the law, it was likewise violated at the Crystal Palace, where the 'magic mirror' was to be seen every day. Mr. Mansfield, however, had only to deal with the case and the culprits before him, and, convicting all the four fortune-tellers, he sent them to the house of correction, there to be kept, each and every one of them, to hard labor for three months."

THE FORTUNE-TELLERS OF TO-DAY.

Before entering upon the exposé of the viler practices of this vile art,--the "selling of families," and of virginity, and the abominable practices of the procuresses, who carry on their damnable treacheries, particularly in our large cities, at the present day,--I wish to enliven this chapter by one or more amusing instances relative to country fortune-tellers.

Filliky Milliky.--During the summer of 185-, the writer was one of a large party of excursionists to Weymouth's Point, in Union Bay. There was a large barge full of people, old and young, male and female, besides several sailboat loads, who, on the return in the afternoon, decided to stop at the hut of a fortune-teller called "Filliky Milliky." This old man, with his equally ignorant wife, professed to tell fortunes by means of a tea-cup. He claimed that he knew of our intended visit, and had set his house in order; but if that house was "in order" that day, deliver us from seeing it when out of order.

There were some one hundred or more of us, and whilst but two could occupy the attention of the "Millikies" at once, we sought other means of whiling away the time. The old man lived near the river side, and at his leisure had picked up a large pile of lath edgings which had floated down from a lath mill on the river.

One Captain Joy took it upon himself to form "all the gentlemen who would enlist in so noble a cause" into a "home guard," and forthwith arming themselves with the aforesaid lath edgings, a company of volunteers was quickly raised, and drawn up in battle array.

I do not recollect the glorious and patriotic speech by which our noble captain fired our "sluggish souls with due enthusiasm for the great cause in which we were about to embark," but we were put through a course of military tactics, "according to Hardee," and took up our line of march.

There was no Bunker Hill on which to display our valor, but there was another hill, just in rear of the barn nearly, which had not been used in farming purposes that spring, and for this hill we charged at "double-quick." In this charge--the danger lay in the swamping part of the hill--we unambushed a large flock of hens, chickens, and ducks, from the opposite side.

"Charge bayonet!" shouted our noble captain, with great presence of mind.

We charged! The ducks quacked and fled. The hens cackled and ran. The noise was deafening, the chase enthusiastic, and above the dust and din of battle arose the stentorian cry, "Charge bayonet!" The Donnybrook Fair advice of "Wherever there's a head, hit it," was followed to the letter, until the last enemy lay dead on the gory field, or had hid so far under the barn that the small boys could not bring them forth. Then orders came to withdraw, and gather up the dead and wounded.

There was an interesting string of hens, chickens, and ducks brought in and laid at the feet of our great commander, to represent the fowl products of that campaign. The captain's congratulatory speech was characteristic also of the fowl proceedings, at the close of which harangue he appointed the "orderly a committee of three to wait on the fortune-teller, and present him with the spoils of war," of which his "cups" had given him no previous intimation.

What next? The captain informed us that "as the company was 'mutual,' it became necessary, in consideration of the losses, to draw on the stock-holders (gun-stock), as he could see no other 'policy' under which to assess those 'damages.'"

"Filliky Milliky" never carried fowl to a better market.

The "fortunate" ones entertained us, on the barge, with the marvellous revelations that had transpired within the hut. One married lady was assured that she was yet single, but would marry in a six-month. A double-and-twisted old maid was told that her husband was in California. But the most absurd revelation was to a well-known respectable middle-aged lady, who was inclined to believe in the foreseeing powers of old Mother Milliky until now, who was told that she was "soon to receive a letter from her absent husband, also in California for the last five years; that he had become rich, and was soon to return; but that her youngest child, a year old, was inclined to worms, and might not live to see its father return!" All this wonderful information for a ninepence.

* * * * *

Secret of finding lost Property.--In Hopkinton, Mass., there lived a man named Sheffield, who professed to tell fortunes. The postmaster of that town told my informant that old Sheffield received from seven to ten letters per day from the fools who believed in his foreseeing powers. Once the surveyor, with a large gang of men, was working on the highway, and while they were at dinner an ox chain was stolen. The overseer, happening along before the rest of the men, saw some one unhook the chain, and steal away to a field adjoining, pull up a fence post, and deposit the chain in the hole, replace the post, and return. He "lay low," and as the thief passed he discovered him to be old Sheffield, the fortune-teller. He kept his own counsel, and, the chain being missed, a committee of three was appointed to visit the seer, to discover by his art where the stolen property was secreted.

Mr. ----, the overseer, and others, called on Sheffield, who got out his mysterious book, and figured away in an impressive manner, and finally chalked out a rough plan of the ground on the floor, and again consulting his book, he solemnly declared that he had discovered the property.

"You follow this line from the spot where the chain was unhooked from the plough, so many rods to this line fence, go along the fence to the seventh post, draw it up, and the chain will be found beneath, in the post-hole."

The two men were struck dumb with astonishment, for they believed in the mysterious powers of old Sheffield; but the overseer exclaimed, in words more impressive than elegant,--

"Yes, you infernal scoundrel, and you put it there, for I saw you with my own eyes."

THE MAGIC MIRROR EXPOSE.

Not long ago the body of a once beautiful young woman was taken from the Merrimack River, below the factories at L----. She was unknown at the time, and this was all there was given to the public. To the world she was merely--

"One more unfortunate, Weary of breath, Rashly importunate, Gone to her death."

Now, these are the whole facts of the case. She was the daughter of respectable, Christian parents, in a New England village, where she was highly esteemed as an amiable and virtuous young lady. But the tempter came. Not in the form of a "serpent"--very harmless animals, comparatively!--nor that other old fellow, commonly descried as having clattering hoofs and forked tail, etc.--but in the flesh and semblance of a handsome young man! I think preachers and book-makers paint their devils too hideous and too far off! Leave off the d, and look for your evils nearer home, and rather pleasant to look at, on the sly, and not (at first) very unpleasant to the senses in general. These are the dangerous (d)evils; escape them, and you avoid all!

In the village there were two young men, rivals for the affections of this amiable young lady, and I know not but there were a dozen besides. One held the only advantage over the other of having been a native of the town, while the other was, comparatively, but little known.

Both were sober, industrious, and moral young men.

One day Miss ---- was going to the great city, and, for the "sport of the thing," agreed to visit a celebrated fortune-teller--a clairvoyant!--at the instigation of the young man, who, though least known to her, had recently distanced his rival by his assiduity in pressing his suit before the young lady.

He assured her there could be no impropriety in a young lady's visiting a fortune-teller. It was only for fun; nobody believed in them, and she could keep her own secret if she chose!

She went in broad daylight. The lady clairvoyant greeted her cordially, begged her to feel quite at her ease, as there was great fortune in store for her. She described her two lovers very minutely, and informed the girl that the one who was to marry her would come to her in a vision, if she would but look into a mirror hanging on the wall before her.

"I see nothing but my own face," replied the young lady, when she had arisen and looked into the glass.

The woman then turned it half around on the hinges, swung out the frame upon which the mirror was also hung, and, disclosing a plain black glass behind, fastened to the wall, said,--

"Now, if you will step behind the glass, back to the wall, and again look into the mirror, you may possibly see one of the two gentlemen--I cannot say which."

More amused than alarmed, the lady complied.

"Still I see nothing but myself and a dark glass behind me," she said.

"Look steadfastly into the glass. Now!" exclaimed the woman.

"O, what--what do I see?" cried the girl. "'Tis he! 'tis Mr. ----"

"Don't be alarmed; 'tis your future husband. No power can prevent it. It is fate--fate! But it will be a happy consummation," said the woman, closing the mirror.

"Why, I left him at home, surely; and I came by steam. That is a solid wall! Ah, my fate is decreed, I believe!"

Can the reader suppose any sensible person would believe this to be magic? There are thousands who believe it. Miss ---- was one. She had seen the spiritual representation of her future husband, and, finding him at home on her return, the same afternoon, she accepted him as her betrothed, and the other was dismissed.

Her ruin followed. In the flight of her lover, her hopes were forever blasted. To hide her shame, she went secretly from home; and to earn her daily bread, she labored in a cotton factory. When she could no longer cover her shame in the world, she went without--into outer darkness! Her parents went down in sorrow to their untimely graves.

Now about the magic mirror. The young man went to the city by the same train with the girl he proposed to ruin. He had previously arranged with the fortune-teller--no unusual thing--to appear in person behind the darkened glass in the next room, and had returned in disguise by the same train with his victim.

The fortune-teller died miserably, and was buried in the Potter's Field at the expense of the city of Hartford, Conn.

"The thorns which I have reaped are of the tree I planted; they have torn me,--and I bleed: I should have known what fruit would spring from such a seed." BYRON.

Such is one of the results of patronizing fortune-tellers. I have seen this kind of mirror, and the first effect, even on a strong-minded person, seeing but faintly through the darkened glass, over your shoulder, the outlines of a face, and finally, as your eyes get familiar with the darkness, the very features of a person reflected therein, is truly impressive, if not startling.

Young ladies, for your own sakes, for the sake of your friends, and more for Heaven's sake, keep away from fortune-tellers! You cannot possibly see into futurity, neither can any one, much less the ignorant wretches who profess the dark mysteries, tell for you what joys or sorrows are in store for the future!

FORTUNE-TELLERS AS PROCURESSES.

An able reporter to the Boston Daily Post, who devoted a considerable time in May, 1869, to visiting and writing up the fortune-tellers of Boston, which he reported in full in the above paper, and from which I shall copy more fully hereafter, says in conclusion,--

"From what we are able to learn in this direction, we have arrived at the conclusion that there are not less than two hundred men and women in Boston and vicinity who get a good livelihood by this profession, while many do a large and profitable business.

"One lady, who has reduced her charges to the very lowest figure (fifty cents for an interview), candidly informed us that her receipts for the past year had not been less than twelve hundred dollars. Another reported her receipts from ten to fifty dollars a day.

"Of course no reliable estimate, without better statistics, can be made of the magnitude of the business; but it seems not extravagant to estimate their receipts, on an average, at fifteen hundred dollars per annum! or an annual cost to the people of Boston (and vicinity?) for fortune-telling, of the snug little sum of three hundred thousand dollars!"

The price advertised for a sitting in 1870 was from twenty-five cents to one dollar. The Post reporter says of "Mrs. Nellie Richards" (alias Mrs. Nelson), "Not unfrequently her receipts are fifty dollars per day." Again of one, "She has received fifty dollars for one sitting." The writer has visited the most celebrated fortune-tellers here, and been told by them that they have received five, ten, and twenty dollars for one sitting. What for? What was the value received? Not from females do they receive these liberal sums; but from middle-aged or old gentlemen and "married men," as one assured me. It is quite possible for a few sharp fortune-tellers to make fifteen hundred dollars per year at merely telling fools what they may expect from the future. "Middle-aged, old, and married men" do not consult them, as a general rule, for that purpose.

Here is a true history illustrative of my meaning. I gathered the facts from the lady.

On Saturday, the 9th of December, 1871, a young woman, residing with her parents on ---- Street, went to the afternoon performance at the Boston Museum. A young man made three unsuccessful attempts to "flirt" with her. The third time she slightly shook her head. Some one, seated immediately behind her, touched her on the shoulder, and said, "Right, young lady; you did right not to notice him."

"I turned my head," said my informant, "and just made the least bit of acknowledgment to a fine-looking, elderly gentleman, who, perhaps, was rising fifty. He was an utter stranger to me, and I did not observe him afterwards. On the following week I received a note--a very pretty, delicate letter--from the very gentleman. He explained that he saw me at the performance of "Elfie," and was much struck by my lady-like appearance, and the rest, begging the privilege of calling on me privately. Now, how could he have obtained my address?"

"Did the other party, the young 'flirt,' know it?" I asked.

"No--not probable. I was not so astonished in receiving a letter from a stranger, as I was on learning that the nice-looking old gent at the theatre should have sent it, and that he possessed my address."

"Why not surprised by receiving the letter from a stranger?" I asked.

"Because I visited a fortune-teller, a day or two before, who told me I should receive a letter from a middle-aged man, and that it would be to my interest to cultivate his friendship, as he was a nice old covey, and was rich and liberal."

"The secret is out! Did the fortune-teller know your address?"

"O, yes; she was an old friend of my mother's, and asked me nothing for a sitting. And would she possibly betray the daughter of her old friend?"

I have since learned that the young woman was married at the time, which fact the fortune-teller must have known when she advised her to "cultivate the friendship" of an old roué, "as he was rich and liberal."

Rich and liberal! No doubt! The light was astounding which broke in upon the young lady's mind from my intimating that the old viper, the fortune-teller (clairvoyant she calls herself), had betrayed her, and doubtless had received ocular demonstration of the "nice old gentleman's" liberality. Doubtless there was a five, ten, or twenty dollar sitting! and the "friend of her mother" could well afford to give her sittings free!

Reader, if you doubt that such villanies are daily practised in this city, such "betrayals of confidence," and "selling of families," put up "five or ten dollars for a sitting," almost anywhere, and you can have proof. None of your fifty cents or dollar affairs--those are for the females; but "come down" with the V.'s and X.'s; those bring the "great information."

Let us "parable" a case.

"A nice, middle-aged gentleman" calls on Madam Blank.

"Here, now, my good woman, take this fee. Tell me a good future. Let her have dark hair and eyes. If it is satisfactory, I double the fee."

"Call again next week, or in three or four days," is all the conversation necessary to pass for the first "sitting."

Before the expiration of the time, just such a young lady calls. The wily old fortune-teller--too old to sell herself any longer--sells out this, perhaps, unsuspecting lady with black hair and eyes, by mysteriously informing her of a certain nice gentleman whom she will meet at a designated place, at a specified hour, on a particular day! She is very courteous to the girl, asks her nothing for a sitting, has taken a liking to her, worms from her the secrets of her birth, poverty, weaknesses, etc., and, with many smiles and fair promises, bows her out.

She next proceeds to inform the "nice gentleman" that the job is cooked, and the victim is unsuspecting, states where he is to meet her, the signal by which he is to know her; takes the "double fee," and leaves the rest to the "nice middle-aged (and shrewd) gentleman" to manage for himself.

How many young women in Boston can avouch for the truth of this statement? I doubt not there are very many.

Cui Bono? While I know and confess that there are a few ladies who profess to tell fortunes, find lost property, etc., and who do no greater deception, still, what positive advantage has ever been derived therefrom?

LOVE POWDERS AND DROPS.--FRENCH SECRET, ETC.

I have, by purchase and otherwise, obtained the secret of the compounds of the celebrated "Spanish," alias "Turkish, Love Powders." I had previously considered them very harmless preparations. They are quite the reverse. The powder and drops are Spanish flies and blood-root! Sometimes the former are mixed (pulverized) with fine sugar; but the Spanish flies (cantharides), either in powder or liquid, is a very dangerous irritant, a very small dose sometimes producing painful and dangerous strangury. It is far more certain to produce this distressing complaint than to cause any sexual excitement. There may be some harmless powders sold as "love powders," but I have never seen any. I have a quantity of the former. Any physician or chemist may see it, who is interested. A few drops of it will produce burning and excoriation of the mouth and stomach, and inflammation of the stomach, liver, and kidneys. And this dangerous stuff is sold by ignorant fortune-tellers to any equally ignorant, credulous creature who may send fifty cents therefor.

The French Secret is only for fools. Reader, you have no occasion for it. It would be of no positive earthly benefit, provided I could so construe language as to explain to you what it is, in this connection. Be assured that you cannot circumvent Nature, except at the expense of health. Qui n'a sante n'a rien.

Druggists' clerks sometimes sell to boys tincture cantharis for evil purposes.

Hasheesh is another dangerous article, sometimes sold at random, and purchased for no good purpose. A few years since, a great excitement was produced by the young ladies of P---- Female Seminary obtaining and using a quantity of hasheesh. "One girl took five grains, another ten grains. The latter was rendered insensible, and with difficulty restored to consciousness, while the former was rushing around under the peculiar hallucinating effect of the drug, and in a manner bordering on indecency." I obtained this statement, with more that I cannot publish, from a physician who witnessed the scene.

"DOES HE LOVE ME?"

Young girls and children are seduced into visiting fortune-tellers. A Boston fortune-teller, in 1871, took a summer tour through Eastern Massachusetts and New Hampshire. At Manchester, one evening, some one knocked lightly at her reception-room door, when, on her answering the summons, there stood three little girls, of ten or twelve summers.

"Well," said the lady, "what do you children want?"

"We came to have our fortunes told," replied the youngest, drawing her little form up to represent every half inch of her diminutive dimensions. With a smile of incredulity, the lady said, "It costs fifty cents. Besides, you are too small to have a fortune told."

"We've got the money," replied the little speaker; "and we're not too little. Why, I am ten, and Jenny, here, is twelve."

"Well, come in," replied the fortune-teller. There was a lady present, who also asked what those children came there for.

The girls sat up in some chairs proffered. The younger one was so small that her little feet could not reach the floor, and sitting back in her chair, her little limbs stuck out straight, as such awkward little folks' will.

The woman told them something, to seem to cover the money paid. It was not satisfactory, however, and the ten-year-old one put the following questions:--

"Do you think, ma'am, that the young man who is keeping company with me loves me?"

This was a poser, and the woman laughed outright.

"What did she reply?" I asked, shocked, though amused, by the ridiculousness of the whole affair.

"O, Gad, if I know! I was too busy then to listen."

The next question was more strange than the first:--

"Will the young gentleman marry me, eventually?"

"Doubtless he will when you become older," was the reply; "and I advise you to think no more about it till you are much older."

I obtained this item from the third party present, the husband of the fortune-teller.

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