X. EMINENT PHYSICIANS AND SURGEONS
Lord Say. Why, Heaven ne'er made the universe a level. Some trees are loftier than the rest, some mountains O'erpeak their fellows, and some planets shine With brighter ray above the skyey route Than others. Nay, even at our feet, the rose Outscents the lily; and the humblest flower Is noble still o'er meaner plants. And thus Some men are nobler than the mass, and should, By nature's order, shine above their brethren. Lord Clifford. 'Tis true the noble should; but who is noble? Heaven, and not heraldry, makes noble men.
THEIR ORIGIN, BOYHOOD, EARLY STRUGGLES, ETC.--DOCTORS ARE PUBLIC PROPERTY.--DR. MOTT, OF OYSTER BAY.--DR. PARKER.--A "PLOUGH-BOY."--THE FARMER'S BOY AND THE OLD DOCTOR.--SCENE IN BELLEVUE HOSPITAL.--"LEAVES FROM THE LIFE OF AN UNFLEDGED ÆSCULAPIAN."--FIRST PATIENT.--"NONPLUSSED!"--ALL RIGHT AT LAST.--PROFESSORS EBERLE AND DEWEES.--A HARD START.--"FOOTING IT."--ABERNETHY'S BOYHOOD.--"OLD SQUEERS."--SPARE THE BOY AND SPOIL THE ROD.--A DIGRESSION.--SKIRTING A BOG.--AN AGREEABLE TURN.--PROFESSOR HOLMES.--A HOMELESS STUDENT.
It is amusing, as well as instructive, to compare notes on the various circumstances which have led different young men to adopt the science of medicine as their profession.
The advantages of birth and "noble blood" weigh lightly, when thrown into the balance, against circumstances of after life, and its necessities, in ourselves or fellow-creatures. In searching through biographies of famous people, of all ages and countries (to collect a chapter on "Origin of Great Men"), I am peculiarly convinced of the correctness of this conclusion.
The earlier histories and traits of character--no matter which way they point--of all great men are interesting to review; and yet it is a lamentable fact that the accounts of boyhood days, aspirations, hopes, and struggles, with the many little interesting items and episodes of the youth of most great men are very meagre, and, in many cases, entirely lost to the world.
In the published biographies of physicians this is particularly the case. You read the biography of one, and it will suffice for the whole. It begins something like this:--
"Dr. A. was born in Blanktown, about the year 18--; entered the office of Dr. Bolus, where he studied physic; attended college at Spoon Haven, where he graduated with honors; arrived at eminence in his profession;" and, if defunct, ends, "he died at Mortgrass, and sleeps with his fathers. Requiescat in pace."
In presenting to the public the following little sketches of physicians, I may only say that doctors, of all men, are considered public property, and have suffered more of the public's kicks and cuffs than any other class of men, from the time when Hercules amused himself by setting up old Dr. Chiron, and shooting poisoned arrows at his vulnerable heel, to the little divertisement of the lovely St. Calvin and his consistory in cooking Michael Servetus, the Spanish physician; to the imprisonment of our army surgeons by their "brethren" of the South, that they might not be instrumental in restoring Union soldiers to the ranks; or the more recent imprisonment of a physician without cause, and the wholesale slaughter of students, in the Isle of Cuba.
"THE QUAKER SURGEON."
Dr. Valentine Mott gave no intimation, in his boyhood days, of the great ability that for a time seemed to lie dormant within the after-developed, massive, and well-balanced brain of the celebrated surgeon. Except from the fact of his being the son of a country doctor, his schoolmates would as soon have expected to see him turn out a second-rate oyster-man,--suggested by the ominous name of the Bay, at Glen Cove, where Valentine was born,--as to believe that a boy of no more promise would develop into the greatest physician and surgeon of the age! He was reared amongst doctors,--his father, and Dr. Valentine Searnen, and others.
A "plough-boy" is as likely to become an eminent surgeon as is the son of a practising physician. Dr. Willard Parker, one of the most prominent physicians and surgeons of New York city, was born in New Hampshire, in 1802, of humble though most respectable parents. When Willard was but a few years old, his family removed to Middlesex County, Mass., evidently with a hope of bettering their circumstances. Here Mr. Parker entered more fully upon the practical duties of an agricultural life, instructing his son Willard, when not attending the village school, in the mysteries of "Haw, Buck, and gee up, Dobbin."
Until he was sixteen years old, young Parker was brought up a "plough-boy" and a tiller of the soil. From a "plough-boy" he became the "master" of a village school, "teaching the young idea how to shoot," which honest pursuit he continued for several years, until he had accumulated sufficient means to enter Harvard. He was a hard-working student, and his books were not thrown aside when he had obtained a diploma, in 1830.... As a lecturer and operator, Dr. Parker has been most successful.... Since the death of Dr. Valentine Mott, in April, 1865, Professor Parker has been elected president of the New York Inebriate Asylum (Binghamton).
AN ONONDAGA FARMER BOY.
Imagine, dear reader, looking back over the space of nearly forty years, that you see an uncouth young man, twenty years of age, clad in the coarse clothes and cowhide boots of an Onondaga farmer, who, straightening up from his laborious task of potato hoeing, stops for a moment, leaning with one hand upon his hoe, while he wipes the sweat from his handsome, intelligent, though sun-burned brow with a cotton handkerchief in the other. Here is a picture for a painter! Now he seems studiously observing the old village doctor, who, seated in his crazy old gig, drawn by his ancient sorrel mare, is leisurely jogging by on the main turnpike.
"Good evening, Stephen; p'taters doin' well?" says the doctor.
Receiving an affirmative answer, the doctor drives past, and is gone from the sight, but not from the memory, of the young farmer.
"And that is a representative of the science of medicine!"
So saying, the young man "hoed out his row,"--which was his last,--picked up his coat, and returned to the parental mansion, but a few rods distant. This was the turning-point in his life.
We pass over twenty years or more.
It is operating-day at Bellevue Hospital, in New York city. A very serious and important operation is about to be performed. Three hundred students and physicians are seated in a semicircle under the great dome of the hospital, in profound silence and intense interest, while the professor and attending surgeon is delivering a brief but comprehensive lecture relative to the forthcoming operation.
The speaker is a man of middle age, medium height, deep, expressive eyes, well-developed brow, with that excellent quality of muscle and nerve that is only the result of earlier out-door exercise and development, with calm deportment and modest speech. "His conciseness of expression and quiet self-possession are evident to every beholder, and comprehensive and congenial to every listener."
Who is this splendid man before whom students and physicians bow in such profound respect and veneration, and to whom even Professors Mott, Parker, Elliott, Clark, etc., give especial attention?
It is Stephen Smith, M. D., once the Onondaga farmer boy!
Says Dr. Francis, of New York, "When a youthful farmer is seen studying the works of learned authors during that portion of the day which is generally set aside for relaxation and pleasing pastime, one may easily predict for him ultimate success in the branch of life that he may choose, provided he follows out the higher instincts of his nature. The same zeal that caused Stephen Smith, farmer, to study at the risk of ease, and meet the fatigue of body with the energies of mind, has ever marked his course in after years."
COMMENCING PRACTICE.
From that excellent work, "Scenes in the Practice of a New York Surgeon," by Dr. E. H. Dixon, I copy, with some abbreviation, the following, which the author terms "Leaves from the Log-book of an Unfledged Æsculapian:"--
"In the year 1830 I was sent forth, like our long-suffering and much-abused prototype,--old father Noah's crow,--from the ark of safety, the old St. Duane Street College. I pitched my tent, and set up my trap, in what was then a fashionable up-town street.
"I hired a modest house, and had my arm-chair, my midnight couch, and my few books in my melancholy little office, and I confess that I now and then left an amputating-knife, or some other awful-looking instrument, on the table, to impress the poor women who came to me for advice.
"These little matters, although the 'Academy' would frown upon them, I considered quite pardonable. God knows I would willingly have adopted their most approved method of a splendid residence, and silver-mounted harnesses for my bays; but they were yet in dream-land, eating moonbeams, and my vicious little nag had nearly all this time to eat his oats and nurse his bad temper in his comfortable stable.
"In this miserable way I read over my old books, watered my rose-bushes,--sometimes with tears,--drank my tea and ate my toast, and occasionally listened to the complaint of an unfortunate Irish damsel, with her customary account of 'a pain in me side an' a flutterin' about me heart.' At rare intervals I ministered to some of her countrywomen in their fulfilment of the great command when placed in the Garden of Eden. (What a dirty place it would have been if inhabited by Irish women!)
"And thus I spent nearly a year without a single call to any person of character. I think I should have left in despair if it had not been for a lovely creature up the street. She was the wife of a distinguished fish merchant down town.
"This lovely woman was Mrs. Mackerel. I will explain how it was that I was summoned to her ladyship's mansion, and had the pleasure of seeing Mr. Mackerel, of the firm of 'Mackerel, Haddock & Dun.'
"One bitter cold night in January, just as I was about to retire, a furious ring at the front door made me feel particularly amiable! A servant announced the sudden and alarming illness of Mrs. Mackerel, with the assurance that as the family physician was out of town, Mrs. M. would be obliged if I would immediately visit her. Accordingly, I soon found myself in the presence of the accomplished lady, having--I confess it--given my hair an extra touch as I entered the beautiful chamber.
"Mrs. Mackerel was not a bad-tempered lady; she was only a beautiful fool--nothing less, dear reader, or she would have never married old Mackerel. Her charms would have procured her a husband of at least a tolerable exterior. His physiognomy presented a remarkable resemblance to his namesake. Besides, he chewed and smoked, and the combination of the aroma of his favorite luxuries with the articles of his merchandise must have been most uncongenial to the curve of such lips and such nostrils as Mrs. Mackerel's.
"I was received by Mr. Mackerel in a manner that increased observation has since taught me is sufficiently indicative of the hysterical finale of a domestic dialogue. He was not so obtuse as to let me directly into the true cause of his wife's nervous attack and his own collectedness, and yet he felt it would not answer to make too light of it before me.
"Mr. and Mrs. M. had just returned from a party. (The party must be the 'scape-goat'!) He assured me that as the lady was in the full enjoyment of health previously, he felt obliged to attribute the cause of her attack and speechless condition--for she spoke not one word, or gave a sign--to the dancing, heated room, and the supper.
"I was fully prepared to realize the powers of ice-cream, cake, oranges, chicken-salad, oysters, sugar-plums, punch, and champagne, and at one moment almost concluded to despatch a servant for an emetic of ipecac; but--I prudently avoided it. Aside from the improbability of excess of appetite through the portal of such a mouth, the lovely color of the cheeks and lips utterly forbade a conclusion favorable to Mr. Mackerel's solution of the cause.
"I placed my finger on her delicate and jewelled wrist. All seemed calm as the thought of an angel's breast!
"I was nonplussed. 'Could any tumultuous passion ever have agitated that bosom so gently swelling in repose?'
"Mackerel's curious questions touching my sagacity as to his wife's condition received about as satisfactory a solution as do most questions put to me on the cause and treatment of diseases; and having tolerably befogged him with opinions, and lulled his suspicions to rest, by the apparent innocent answers to his leading questions, he arrived at the conclusion most desirable to him, viz., that I was a fool--a conviction quite necessary in some nervous cases....
"So pleased was Mr. M. with the soothing influences of my brief visit that he very courteously waited on me to the outside door, instead of ordering a servant to show me out, and astonished me by desiring me to call on the patient again in the morning.
"After my usual diversion of investigating 'a pain an' a flutterin' about me heart,' and an 'O, I'm kilt intirely,' I visited Mrs. Mackerel, and had the extreme pleasure of finding her quite composed, and in conversation with her fashionable friend, Mrs. Tiptape. The latter was the daughter of a 'retired milliner,' and had formed a desirable union with Tiptape, the eminent dry goods merchant. Fortunately--for she was a woman of influence--I passed the critical examination of Mrs. T. unscathed by her sharp black eyes, and, as the sequel will show, was considered by her 'quite an agreeable person.'
"Poor Mrs. Mackerel, notwithstanding her efforts to conceal it, had evidently received some cruel and stunning communication from her husband on the night of my summons; her agitated circulation during the fortnight of my attendance showed to my conviction some persistent and secret cause for her nervousness.
"One evening she assured me that she felt she should now rapidly recover, as Mr. Mackerel had concluded to take her to Saratoga. I, of course, acquiesced in the decision, though my previous opinion had not been asked. I took a final leave of the lovely woman, and the poor child soon departed for Saratoga.
"The ensuing week there was a sheriff's sale at Mackerel's residence. The day following the Mackerels' departure, Mr. Tiptape did me the honor to inquire after the health of my family; and a week later, Master Tiptape having fallen and bumped his dear nose on the floor, I had the felicity of soothing the anguish of his mamma in her magnificent boudoir, and holding to her lovely nose the smelling salts, and offering such consolation as her trying position required!"
Thus was commenced the practice of one of the first physicians of New York. The facts are avouched for. The names, of course, are manufactured, to cover the occupation of the parties. The doctor still lives, in the enjoyment of a lucrative and respectable practice, and the love and confidence of his numerous friends and patrons.
Quite as ludicrous scenes could be revealed by most physicians, if they would but take the time to think over their earlier efforts, and the various circumstances which were mainly instrumental in getting them into a respectable practice.
HOW PROFESSOR EBERLE STARTED.
The young man who has just squeezed through a medical college, and come out with his "sheepskin," who thinks all he then has to do is to put up his sign, and forthwith he will have a crowd of respectable patients, is to be pitied for his verdancy. The great Professor John Eberle "blessed his stars" when, after graduating as "Doctor of Medicine" in the University of Pennsylvania, and making several unsuccessful attempts at practice in Lancaster County, he received the appointment as physician of the "out-door poor" of Philadelphia. After that, his writings, attracting public attention, were mostly contributive to his success and advancement.
Energy and determination are better property than even scholastic lore and a medical diploma, for unless you possess the former, talent and education fall to the earth.
Dr. William P. Dewees, formerly Professor of Obstetrics in the University of Pennsylvania, the celebrated author, physician, and surgeon, practised seventeen years before he obtained a diploma. He was of Swedish descent on his father's side, and Irish on his mother's. His father died in very limited circumstances, when William was a boy; hence he received no collegiate education until such time as he could earn means, by his own efforts, to pay for that coveted desideratum. We find him, with an ordinary school education, serving as an apothecary's clerk, a student of medicine, and at the early age of twenty-one years trying to practise medicine in a country town fourteen miles from Philadelphia. Young Dewees possessed great talent and energy, but his personal appearance was scarcely such, at that early age, as to inspire the stoical country folks with the requisite confidence to speedily intrust him with their precious lives and more cherished coppers!
"He was scarcely of medium stature, florid complexion, brown hair, and was remarkably youthful in his appearance," says Professor Hodge, M. D.
I have before me an excellent likeness "of the embryo professor," which admirably corresponds with the description given above; but though "youthful," yea, bordering on "greenness," I can read in that frank, intelligent countenance the lines of deep thought, and a soul burning with desire for greater knowledge. The too florid countenance and narrow nostrils are sure indications of a consumptive predisposition. Dr. Dewees died May 30, 1841. He was well read in French and Latin, and also various sciences.
A HARD STARTING.
Sketch of Western Practice.--The following interesting sketch is from the able pen of Dr. Richmond, of Ohio, now a wealthy and eminent M. D. It was originally contributed, if I mistake not, to the "Scalpel."
"I set myself down with my household goods in a land of strangers. How I was to procure bread, or what I was to do, were shrouded in the mysterious future. Memory came to my consolation; for, in spite of myself, the 'Diary of a London Physician,' read in other days, came, with its racy pictures, flitting before my mind's eye; and I knew not but I, too, might yet wish myself, my Mary, and my child sleeping in the cold grave, to hide me from the persecution that seemed to follow me with such sleepless vigilance....
"My store of old watches now came into play. A gentleman wishing to sell out his land, I invested all the wealth I possessed in the purchase of a ten-acre lot, shouldered my axe, and by the aid of a brother I soon prepared logs for the mill sufficient to erect me a small dwelling. I never was happier than when preparing the ground and splitting the blocks of sandstone for the foundation of my house. One customer, whose wife I had carried through a lingering fever, furnished me a frame for a dwelling, and I fell in his debt for a pair of boots. Another furnished nails and glass, and in the course of eight months I moved into my new house.
"For two years I fed my cow, and raised my own provender to feed my gallant nag, which shared my toil and its profits. My first two years' labor barely returned sufficient profit to pay for my home and feed my little family.
"My nag had died, and the terrible drought of 1846 forced me to relinquish the horse I had hired, and for five months I performed all my visits on foot, often travelling from six to ten miles to see one patient....
"These were trying times; but what if the elements were unpropitious? I had food and shelter for myself and family,--blessings about which I had often been in doubt,--and I was fully prepared to let 'the heathen rage, and the people imagine' what they chose!... The first winter was one of great severity; the weather was very changeable, and the most awful snow-storms were often succeeded by heavy rains, and the roads so horrid as to be impassable on horseback or in carriages. I had a patient five miles distant, sick with lung fever, and, in an attendance of forty days I made thirty journeys on foot (three hundred miles to attend one patient!) His recovery added much to my reputation, and I received for my services a new cloak and coat, which I much needed, and a hive of honey bees!...
"An old horse which I again hired of a friend had a polite way of limping, and was a source of much merriment among my patrons. I persistently attributed what they deemed a fault entirely to the politeness of the quadruped; and this nag, with my plain and rustic appearance, endeared me to the laboring population, and thus my calamities became my greatest friends. My fortune changed, and the experience and name I had acquired now came in as capital in trade, and a flood of 'luck' soon followed."
ABERNETHY'S BOYHOOD.
Seated upon the outside of an ancient London stage-coach, to which were attached four raw-boned, old horses, just ready to start for Wolverhaven one pleasant afternoon, you may easily imagine, kind reader,--for it is a fact,--a chubby-faced, commonplace little boy, some ten years old, with another like youthful companion,--"two Londoners,"--while comfortably ensconced within, in one corner of the vehicle, is a large, stern-looking old gentleman, in "immense wig and ruffled shirt."
The stage-horn is sounded, the driver cracks his whip, the sleepy old nags wake up, the coach rocks from side to side, and in a moment more the team is off for its destination.
Why! the reader is readily reminded of the scene of "Old Squeers," taking the wretched little boys down to his "Academy," in Yorkshire, "where youth were boarded, clothed, furnished with pocket-money," and taught everything, from "writing to trigonometry," "arithmetic to astronomy," languages of the "living and dead" and "diet unparalleled!" Nevertheless it is another case, far before "Old Squeers" time.
The elderly gentleman, in top-wig and immense ruffles, was Dr. Robertson, teacher of Wolverhampton Grammar School, and the chubby little boy was Master John Abernethy. Who the "other boy" was is not known, as he never made his mark in after life. Says Dr. Macilwain,--
"We can quite imagine a little boy, careless in his dress, not slovenly, however, with both hands in his trousers pockets, some morning about the year 1774, standing under the sunny side of the wall at Wolverhampton School; his pockets containing, perhaps, a few shillings, some ha'pence, a knife with the point broken, a pencil, together with a tolerably accurate sketch of 'Old Robertson's wig,'--which article, shown in an accredited portrait now before us, was one of those enormous by-gone bushes, which represented a sort of impenetrable fence around the cranium, as if to guard the precious material within; the said boy just finishing a story to his laughing companions, though no sign of mirth appeared in him, save the least curl of the lip, and a smile that would creep out of the corner of his eye in spite of himself."
"The doctor" was represented as being a passionate man. Squeers again! One day young Abernethy had to do some Greek Testament, when his glib translation aroused the suspicion of the watchful old doctor, who discovered the 'crib' in a Greek-Latin version, partially secreted under the boy's desk. No sooner did the doctor make this discovery than with his doubled fist he felled the culprit with one blow to the earth. Squeers again!
"'Why, what an old plagiarist Mr. Dickens must have been!' you exclaim.
"But the case in 'Nicholas Nickleby' is worse, far worse, for 'the little boy sitting on the trunk only sneezed.'
"'Hallo, sir,' growled the schoolmaster (Squeers), 'what's that?'
"'Nothing, sir,' replied the little boy.
"'Nothing, sir!' exclaimed Squeers.
"'Please, sir, I sneezed!' rejoined the boy, trembling till the little trunk shook under him.
"'O, sneezed, did you?' retorted Mr. Squeers. 'Then what did you say "Nothing" for, sir?'
"In default of a better answer to this question, the little boy screwed a couple of knuckles into his eyes, and began to cry; wherefore Mr. Squeers knocked him off the trunk with a blow on one side of the head, and knocked him on again with a blow on the other."
Robertson was a fact; Squeers was a fable. That's the difference.
As Dr. Robertson taught neither arithmetic nor writing in his school, the pupils went to King Street, to a Miss Ready, to receive instruction in those branches. This lady, if report is true, wielded the quill and cowhide with equal grace and mercy, and when the case came to hand, did not accept the modern advice, to "spare the boy and spoil the rod."
When the great surgeon was at the height of his fame, in London, many years afterwards, Miss Ready, still rejoicing in "single blessedness," called on her former pupil. In introducing his respected and venerable teacher to his wife, Abernethy laconically remarked, "I beg to introduce you to a lady who has boxed my ears many a time."
An old schoolmate, when eighty-five years old, wrote to the author of "Memoirs of Abernethy," saying, among other things, "In sports he took the first place, and usually made a strong side; was quick and active, and soon learned a new game."
It was contrary to his own desire that John Abernethy became a physician. "Had my father let me be a lawyer, I should have known by heart every act of Parliament," he repeatedly affirmed.
This was not bragging, as the following anecdote will illustrate:--
On a birthday anniversary of Mrs. Abernethy, mother of John, a gentleman recited a long copy of verses, which he had composed for the occasion.
"Ah," said young Abernethy, "that is a good joke, pretending you have written these verses in honor of my mother. Why, sir, I know those lines well, and can say them by heart."
"It is quite impossible, as no one has seen the copy but myself," rejoined the gentleman, the least annoyed by the accusation of plagiarism.
Upon this Abernethy arose, and repeated them throughout, correctly, to the no small discomfiture of the author. Abernethy had remembered them by hearing the gentleman recite them but once!
"A boy thwarted in his choice of a profession is generally somewhat indifferent as to the course next presented to him." Residing next door neighbor to Abernethy's father was Dr. Charles Blicke, a surgeon in extensive practice. This was very convenient. Sir Charles is represented as having been quick-sighted enough to discover that "the Abernethy boy" was clever, a good scholar, and withal a "sharp fellow." Thus, between the indifference of the parent, and the selfishness of the surgeon, the would-be lawyer, John Abernethy, was apprenticed to the "barber-surgeon" for five years. He was then but fifteen years of age.
"All that young Abernethy probably knew of Sir Charles was, that he rode about in a fine carriage, saw a great many people, and took a great many fees; all of which, though presenting no further attractions for Abernethy, made a prima facie case not altogether repulsive."
We must not forget to mention that young Abernethy was of a very inquiring mind. "When I was a boy," he said in after years, "I half ruined myself in buying oranges and sweetmeats, in order to ascertain the effects of different kinds of diet on diseases."
Whether he tried said "oranges and other things" on himself or some unfortunate victim, my informant saith not; but I leave the reader to decide by his own earlier appetites and experiences. "When I was a boy," I think is significant of the probabilities that it was his own digestive organs that were "half ruined."
Be it as it may, it reminds me of the case of a little country boy, who, on his first advent to the city on a holiday, was chaperoned by his somewhat older and sharper city cousin,--"one of the b'hoy's,"--who exercised a sort of vigilance over the uninitiated rustic, that the little fellow might not surfeit himself by too great a rapacity for peanuts, gingerbread, candies, and oranges, often generously sharing the danger by partaking largely of the small boy's purchases in order to spare his more delicate stomach.
Finding the ignorant little rustic about to devour a nice-looking orange, his cousin pounced upon him just in time to prevent the rash act.
"Here, Sammy; don't you know that is one of the nastiest and most indigestiblest things you could put into your stomach? Give it here!"
Rustic, whose faith in the wisdom of his maturer cousin, though very great, was yet quite counterbalanced by the sweets in the orange, slightly held back, when the other continued,--
"Leastwise, Sammy, let's have a hold of it, and suck the abominable juice out for you."
(For this digression I beg the pardon of the reader; for the idea I thank Frank Leslie.)
George Macilwain, M. D., F. R. C. S., etc., in prefacing the life of the great London surgeon, gives a brief and interesting sketch of his own boyhood, also his early impressions of Abernethy, and his first attendance on his lectures.
"My father practised on the border of a forest, and when he was called at night to visit a distant patient, it was the greatest treat to me, when a little boy, to be allowed to saddle my pony and accompany him. I used to wonder what he could find so 'disagreeable' in that which was to me the greatest possible pleasure; for whether we were skirting a bog on the darkest night, or cantering over the heather by moonlight, I certainly thought there could be nobody happier than I and my pony. It was on one of these occasions that I first heard the name of 'Abernethy.' The next distinct impression I have of him was derived from hearing father say that a lady patient of his had gone up to London to have an operation performed by Dr. Abernethy, though my father did not think the operation necessary to a cure, and that Abernethy entirely agreed with him; that the operation was not performed; that he sent the lady back, and she was recovering. This gave me a notion that Dr. Abernethy must be a good man, as well as a great physician.
"As long as surgery meant riding across the forest with my father, holding his horse, or, if he stopped in too long, seeing if his horse rode as well as my pony, I thought it a very agreeable occupation; but when I found that it included many other things not so agreeable, I soon discovered that there was a profession I liked much better....
"Disappointed in being allowed to follow the pursuit I had chosen, I looked on the one I was about to adopt with something approximating to repulsion; and thus one afternoon, about the year 1816, and somewhat to my own surprise, I found myself walking down Holborn Hill on my way to Dr. Abernethy's lecture at St. Bartholomew's.
"When Dr. Abernethy entered, I was pleased with the expression of his countenance. I almost fancied he sympathized with the melancholy with which I felt oppressed. At first I listened with some attention; as he proceeded, I began even to feel pleasure; as he progressed, I found myself entertained; and before he concluded, I was delighted. What an agreeable, happy man he seems! What a fine profession! What wouldn't I give to know as much as he does! Well, I will see what I can do. In short, I was converted."
All who ever heard him lecture agree that Dr. Abernethy had a most happy way of addressing students. Notwithstanding he has often been represented as rough in his every-day intercourse with men, he was easy, mild, and agreeable in the lecture-hall, and kind and compassionate in the operating-room.
After having carefully studied all that has been written respecting his style and manner as a lecturer and delineator, and also studiously listened to and watched the ways and peculiarities of our most excellent lecturer on anatomy at Harvard, I find many striking resemblances between Dr. Abernethy and Professor Oliver Wendell Holmes.
"The position of Abernethy was always easy and natural, sometimes almost homely. In the anatomical lecture he always stood, and either leaned against the wall, with his arms folded before him, or rested one hand on the table; sometimes one hand in his pocket. In his surgical lecture he usually sat. He was particularly happy in a kind of cosiness, or friendliness of manner, which seemed to identify him with his audience, as if we were about to investigate something interesting together, and not as though we were going to be 'lectured at,' at all. His voice seldom rose above what we term the conversational, and was always pleasing in quality, and enlivened by a sort of archness of expression."
He always kept his eye on the audience, except slightly turning to one side to explain a diagram or subject, "turning his back on no man."
"He had no offensive habits. We have known lecturers who never began without making faces;" we might add, "and with many a hem and haw, or nose-blowing."
"Not long ago we heard a very sensible lecturer, and a very estimable man, produce a most ludicrous effect by the above. He had been stating very clearly some important facts, and he then observed,--
"'The great importance of these I will now proceed to show--' when he immediately began to apply his pocket-handkerchief most vigorously to his nose, still facing his audience."
The ludicrousness of this "illustration" may well be imagined. Of course the students lost their gravity, and laughed and cheered vigorously.
Going in to hear Dr. Holmes lecture, at one o'clock one afternoon, recently, the writer was both shocked and astonished, on the occasion of the professor slipping in a pleasing innuendo, by hearing the students cheer with their hands, and stamp with their thick boots on the seats.
I shall have occasion to refer to this splendid man, the pleasing lecturer, the skilful operator, the able author, the ripe scholar, the pride of Harvard and the state,--Dr. O. W. Holmes,--in another chapter.
THE HOMELESS STUDENT.
(Scene from the EARLY LIFE OF A BOSTON PHYSICIAN. By permission.)
Standing on the steps of the Astor House, New York, one cheerless forenoon in early June, with my carpet-bag in one hand and my fresh medical diploma in the other, with a heavy weight of sorrow at my heart, and only sixteen cents in my pocket, I presented, to myself at least, a picture of such utter despair as words are inadequate to express.[4]
My home--no; I had none--the home, rather, of my kind old father-in-law, where dwelt, for the time being, my wife and child, was many hundred miles away. And how was I to reach it? I could not walk that distance, and sixteen cents would not carry me there. I looked up Broadway, and I looked down towards the Battery. I was alone amid an immense sea of humans, which ebbed and flowed continually past me. O, how wistfully I looked to see if there might be one face amongst the throng which I might recognize! but there was none. Strange, passing strange, not one of that host did I ever gaze upon before! Where--how--should I raise the money necessary to take me from this land of strangers?
"Pinny, sir? Just one pinny. Me father is broken up, and me mither is sick at home. For God's sake give me jist one pinny to buy me some bread."
I turned my gaze upon the picture of squalor and wretchedness just by my side. I need not describe her; she was just like a thousand others in that great Babel.
"Here is doubtless a case of distress, but it is not of the heart, like mine. Such poor have no heart. Skin, muscle, head, stomach! heart, none!"
"Where is your father, did you say?" I asked, mechanically.
"In the Slarter-house; broken up from a fall from a stagin' in Twenty-sixth Street, sir," replied the beggar-girl, still extending her hand for a penny.
"What is he doing in a slaughter-house, sis?" I inquired.
"The Slarter-house is Bellyvew horse-pittle, sir; that's what we Irish call it, sir. Will ye give me the pinny, sir?"
"O, yes, to be sure. Here are pennies for you. Go!"
I knew of a poor Irishman who was brought in there at the hospital a few days before badly "broken up" from a fall on Twenty-sixth Street. His name was John Murphy; they are all named Murphy, or something similar; so it was useless to ask the child her father's name--probably it would have been Murphy.
The conversation had the good effect of arousing me from my lethargy to action. I must not stay in this metropolis and starve. I could not remain and beg, like the Irish girl.
I went to Professor ----, the dean, and requested him to take back my diploma, and let me have sufficient money to carry me home. He complied--God bless him!--and I took the Sound steamer that afternoon for the land of my nativity. What cared I if I was a second-class passenger; I would in two days see my wife and my child!
* * * * *
I had reached home, and was in the bosom of my family once more, and amongst my friends, in a Christian land; for which I "thanked God, and took courage."
"Then pledged me the wine-cup, and fondly I swore Ne'er from my home and my weeping friends to part; My children kissed me a thousand times o'er; My wife sobbed aloud in her fullness of heart."
I had a "call" to practise in a country town twenty-five miles from E----, where my family was to remain a few days till I had secured a house to cover their heads amongst the good friends who were to become my future patrons, as a few of them had been previous to my going to college. The stage, a one-horse affair, called for my trunk, medicine-case, etc., and, having no money with which to pay my fare, I told the driver that "I would walk along," while he picked up another passenger in an opposite direction, "and if he overtook me on the road before I got a ride with some one going to S----, he could take me in."
I walked bravely along a mile or more, and, hearing the stage coming, I stepped from the road-side, secreting myself beneath a friendly tree till he drove past. Issuing from my hiding-place, I trudged along till noon. My darling little wife had taken the precaution to place in my oversack pocket some doughnuts and cheese, and, when I had reached a clear, running brook, I sat myself down upon a log, under the shade of the woods, and partook of my very frugal meal, quenching my thirst from the waters of the brook, which, like Diogenes, I raised in the hollow of my hand.
Thus refreshed, I picked up my overcoat, and again walked along. Before dark I reached S----, pretty tired and foot-sore from such a long walk.
The people, who were expecting me, were much surprised at my non-arrival in the mail; but the unsophisticated driver assured them I had probably secured a ride ahead of him, and I would put in an appearance before nightfall.
About midnight the door-bell rang,--I stopped at the hotel that night,--and a young gentleman asked for Dr. C. I answered the call at once, which was to the daughter of one of the most influential citizens of the place. The young man who called me was her intended. They had been to a party, and she had partaken freely of oysters, milk, and pickles.
Never did fifteen grains of ipecac prove a greater friend to me than it did on that occasion; and in an hour I was back to bed again.
The news of the new doctor's arrival, fresh from a New York college, and his first "remarkable cure of the post-master's daughter" that same night, spread like wildfire, and my reputation was nearly established.
XI. GHOSTS AND WITCHES
"Save and defend us from our ghostly enemies."--COMMON PRAYER.
FOLLY OF BELIEF IN GHOSTS.--WHY GHOSTS ARE ALWAYS WHITE.--A TRUE STORY.--THE GHOST OF THE CAMP.--A GHOSTLY SENTRY-BOX.--A MYSTERY.--THE NAGLES FAMILY.--RAISING THE DEAD.--A LIVELY STAMPEDE.--HOLY WATER.--CÆSAR'S GHOST AT PHILIPPI.--LORD BYRON AND DR. JOHNSON.--GHOST OF A GUILTY CONSCIENCE.--"JOCKEYING A GHOST."--THE WOUNDED BIRD.--A BISHOP SEES A GHOST.--MUSICAL GHOSTS.--A HAUNTED HOUSE.--ABOUT WITCHES.--"WITCHES IN THE CREAM."--HORSE-SHOES.--WOMAN OF ENDOR NOT A WITCH.--WEIGHING FLESH AGAINST THE BIBLE.--THERE ARE NO GHOSTS, OR WITCHES.
Is it not quite time--I appeal to the sensible reader--that such folly was expunged from our literature? What is a ghost? Who ever saw, heard, felt, tasted, or smelled one? Must a person possess some miraculous quality of perception beyond the five senses commonly allotted to man in order to become cognizant of a ghostly presence?
What stupid folly is ghost belief! Yet there are very many individuals in this enlightened day and generation, who, from perverted spirituality, or great credulousness, will accept a ghost story, or a "spiritual revelation," without wincing.
It would seem that many great men of the past, as Calvin, Bacon, Milton, Dante, Lords Byron and Nelson, Sir Walter Scott, Wordsworth, and others, believed in the existence of ghosts and spirits on this mundane sphere.
There are but two classes who believe in ghosts, viz., the ignorant as one class, and persons with large or perverted spirituality--phrenologically speaking--as the other. These are the believers in dreams, in ghosts, in spirits, and fortune-telling. These, too, are the religious (?) fanatics, etc.
THE ORIGIN OF THE WORD GHOST
is curious.
"The first significance of the word, as well as 'spirit,' is breath, or wind." It is of Anglo-Saxon origin, and is from gust, the wind. Hence, a gust of wind. The Irish word goath, wind, comes nearer to the modern English pronunciation, and shows how easily it could have been corrupted to ghost.
It is easy to imagine the good old Saxon ladies, sitting around the evening fireside, and just as one of them has finished some marvellous story of that superstitious age, they are startled by a sudden blast of wind, sweeping around the gabled cottage, and her listeners exclaim, in suppressed breath,--
"Hark! There's a fearful gust!"
The transit from gust to ghost is easily done. The clothes spread upon the bushes without, or pinned to the lines, flapping in the night air, are seen through the shutterless windows, and they become the object of attraction. The effect supersedes the cause, and the clothes become the gust, goath, or ghost! The clothes, necessarily, must be white, or they could not be seen in the night time! Hence a ghost is always clothed in white. Therefore the wind (gust) is no longer the ghost, but any white object seen moving in the night air.
"But I am a wandering ghost-- I am an idle breath, That the sweets of the things now lost Are haunting unto death. Pity me out in the cold, Never to rest any more, Because of my share in the purple and gold, Lost from the world's great store.
"I whirl through empty space, A hapless, hurried ghost; For me there is no place-- I'm weary, wandering, lost. Safe from the night and cold, All else is sheltered--all, From the sheep at rest in the fold, To the black wasp on the wall."
Moffat says that a tribe of Caffres formerly employed the word Morino to designate the Supreme Being; but as they sank into savagery, losing the idea of God, it came to mean only a fabulous ghost, of which they had great terror.
Having briefly shown the folly of the existence of the word in our vocabulary, I will proceed to explode a few of the best authenticated--so called--"ghost stories;" and if I leave anything unexplained in ghostology, let the reader attribute it to either my want of space in which to write so much, or the neglect of my early education in the dead languages.
THE GHOST OF THE CAMP.
I obtained the following story from one of the sentries:--
At Portsmouth, R. I., there was a camp established during the late war, 186-. There was a graveyard in one corner of the enclosed grounds, where several soldier-boys had been buried from the hospital, and here a guard was nightly stationed.
Of course there were many stories told around the campfires, of ghosts and spirits that flitted about the mounds at the dead hours of the night, circulated particularly to frighten those stationed at that point on picket duty.
The body of a soldier had recently been exhumed and placed in a new and more respectable coffin than the pine box coffin furnished by Uncle Sam, in which he had been buried, and the old one was left on the ground.
Partly to protect himself from the inclemency of the weather, and quite as much to show his utter disregard of all ghostly visitors, my informant secured the old pine coffin, "washed it out, though it was impossible to remove all the stains," and, driving a stake firmly into the ground, he stood the coffin on one end, and, removing the lid, used to stand therein on rainy nights.
"When it did not rain, I turned it down, and my companion and myself used to sit on the bottom.
"One day a soldier-boy had died in the hospital, and his friends came to take the body home for Christian burial. It was necessary to remove him in a sheet to the place where they had an elegant casket, bought by his wealthy friends, to receive the remains.
"That very night I was on duty with my friend Charley S., when, near midnight, seated upon the empty coffin, with my gun resting against the side, and my head resting in the palms of my hands, I fell into a drowse.
"Waking up suddenly, I saw something white through the darkness before me; for it was a fearfully dark night, I assure you. I rubbed my sleepy eyes to make sure of my sight, and took another look. I discerned a form, higher than a man, moving about over the mounds but a few yards distant. It had wide side-wings, but they did not seem to assist in the motion of the body part, which did not reach to the ground. I thought I must be asleep, and actually pinched my legs to awake myself before I took a final look at his ghostship. There he stood, stock still. I listened for my companion, without removing my eyes from the white object before me. Still I was not scared, but meant to see it out. I knew I could not see a man far through that impenetrable darkness, for there were no stars nor moon to reveal him. I would not call for help, for if it was a farce to scare me, I should become the laughing-stock of the whole camp.
"Just then I heard the grass crackle, and I knew Charley was approaching in the rear. Still there hung the apparition. I arose from the coffin, my eyes fixed on the object before me, picked up my musket, took deliberate aim at the centre of the thing, and just as I cocked my rifle, I heard Charley set back the hammer of his 'death-dealer.' He, too, had discovered the very remarkable appearance, whatever it was; and now the guns of two 'unfailing shots' covered the object. In another second it had suddenly disappeared! I then spoke, and we ran forward, but found nothing! Where had it gone so very suddenly? It had vanished without sight or sound. We gave up the search; but still I did not believe we had seen anything supernatural.
"There was no little discussion in camp on the following day on the subject. Charley said but little. I could not explain the remarkable phenomenon, and a splendid ghost story was about established, in spite of me, before the mystery became unravelled.
"A tall fellow, who worked about the hospital, and who assisted in taking away the corpse, was returning with the sheet, when he thought he would give the sentry a scare from his coffin by throwing the sheet over his head and stretching out his arms like wings. His clothes being black, his legs did not show; hence the appearance of a white object floating in the air. Hearing the guns cocked, he instantly jerked the sheet from his head; winding it up, he turned and ran away. This accounted for it becoming so instantaneously invisible.
"'Yes,' said the sentry, 'and in a second more you would have been made a ghost!'"
RAISING THE DEAD.
The Nagles Family.--The following remarkable and ridiculous affair transpired in a village where the writer once resided. The Nagleses were Irish. The family consisted of old Nagles, his wife,--who did washing for my mother,--John Tom and Tom John, besides Mary. The reason of having the boys named as above was, that in case either died, the sainted names would still be in the family. This was old Mrs. Nagles' explanation of the matter.
The old man worked about the wharves, wheeled wood and carried coal, and did such like jobs during summer, and chopped wood in the winter. I well remember of hearing stories of his greenness when he first came to town. He was early employed to wheel wood on board a coaster lying at the dock. The captain told him to wheel a load down the plank, cry "Under!" to the men in the hold, and tip down the barrow of wood. All went well till old Nagles got to the stopping-place, over the hold, when he dumped down the load, and cried out, "Stand ferninst, there, down cellar!" to the imminent peril of breaking the heads of the wood-stevedores below.
I well remember also the first appearance of the two boys at the village school one winter.
"What is your name?" inquired the master of the eldest.
"Me name, is it? John Tom Nagles, sir, is me name, and who comes after is the same."
He always was called by us boys "John Tom Nagles, sir," thenceforward. He certainly was the rawest specimen I ever met.
One day the old man was wheeling wood on board a vessel. It was at low water, and there was a distance of sixteen feet from the plank to the bottom of the vessel's hold. The poor old fellow, by some mishap or neglect, let go the barrow, when he called, "Stand ferninst, there, below!" when wood, barrow, and old Mr. Nagles, all went down together. By the fall he broke his neck. I never shall forget the awful lamentation set up by the combined voices of the poor old woman, John Tom, Tom John, and Mary, as they followed the corpse, borne on a wagon, past our house, on the way from the vessel to the Nagles' residence.
On the following day great preparations were made to "wake" the old gentleman according to the most approved fashion in the old country. There were many Irish living--staying, at least--in that town, and large quantities of pipes, tobacco, and whiskey were bought up, and the whole town knew that a "powerful time" was anticipated by the Irish who were invited to old Nagles' wake. It was an unusual occurrence, and several boys and young men of the village went to the locality of the Nagles' house to get a look upon the scene when it got under full pressure. I certainly should have been there had not my parents forbidden me to go, and I regret the inability to give my personal testimony to the truth of the statement of what followed, as I do to what preceded, as related above.
"When the wake was at its height, the room full of tobacco smoke, and the jovial mourners full of Irish whiskey,--strychnine and fusel oil,--there was an alarm of fire in the neighborhood. There was a grand rush from the room, as well as from the windows where stood the listeners, and only one old and drunken woman remained to watch the corpse. The door was left open, and some of the young men outside, thinking it a good opportunity to play a joke on the drunken party, ran into the room, and, seeing only the old woman, who was too drunk to offer any objections, they removed the body from the board, depositing it behind the boxes on which the board was laid, and one of their number took the place of the corpse, barely having time to draw the sheet over his face, when the 'wakers' returned.
"The candles burned dimly through the hazy atmosphere of the old room, and no one noticed the change. The pipes were relighted, the whiskey freely passed, and finally one fellow proposed to offer the corpse a lighted pipe and a glass of whiskey, 'for company's sake, through purgatory.'
"Suiting the action to the word, he approached, attempted to raise the head of the 'lively corpse,' and thrust the nasty pipe between his teeth.
"The young man 'playing corpse' was no smoker, and in infinite disgust he motioned the fellow away, who, too drunk to notice it, stuck the pipe in his face, saying, 'Here, ould man, take a shmoke for your ghost's sake.'
"'Bah! Git away wid the div'lish nasty thing,' exclaimed the young man, rising and sitting up in the coffin.
"There was an instantaneous stampede from the room of every waker who was capable of rising to his legs, followed by the fellow in the sheet, who, dropping the ghostly covering at the door, mingled with the rabble, and was not recognized. The priest and the doctor were speedily summoned. The former arrived, heard, outside the house, the wonderful story, and then proceeded to lay the spirit by sprinkling holy water on the door-stone, thence into the room. By this time the smoke had sufficiently subsided to allow a view of the room, when the stiff, frigid body of old Nagles was discovered on the floor, where 'it had fallen,' as they supposed, 'in attempting to walk.' Of course the doctor ridiculed the idea of a stark, cold body rising and speaking; but the Irish, to this day, believe old Nagles, for that once, refused a pipe and a glass of whiskey. The few young men dared not divulge the secret, and it never leaked out till the entire family of Nagles had gone to parts unknown."
* * * * *
I find a great many ghost stories in books, which are not explained; but since the writer knows nothing of their authenticity, nor the persons with whom they were connected, they are unworthy of notice here.
THE GHOST OF CÆSAR AT PHILIPPI.
Dr. Robert Macnish, of Glasgow, in his "Philosophy of Sleep," says, "No doubt the apparition of Cæsar which appeared to Brutus, and declared it would meet him at Philippi, was either a dream or a spectral illusion--probably the latter. Brutus, in all likelihood, had some idea that the great battle which was to decide his fate would be fought at Philippi. Probably it was a good military position, which he had in his mind fixed upon as a fit place to make a final stand; and he had done enough to Cæsar to account for his mind being painfully and constantly engrossed with the image of the assassinated dictator. Hence the verification of this supposed warning; hence the easy explanation of a supposed supernatural event."
* * * * *
"The ghost of Byron" may help to verify the above. Sir Walter Scott was engaged in his study at Abbotsford, not long after the death of Lord Byron, at about the twilight hour, in reading a sketch of the deceased poet. The room was quiet, his thoughts were intensely centred upon the person of his departed friend, when, as he laid down the volume, as he could see to read no longer, and passed into the hall, he saw before him the eidolon of the deceased poet. He remained for some time impressed by the intensity of the illusion, which had thus created a phantom out of some clothes hanging on a screen at the farther end of the hall.
This is not the first time that Byron had appeared to his friends, as the following, from his own pen, will show:--
Byron wrote to his friend, Alexander Murray, less than two years before the death of the latter, as follows:--
"In 1811, my old schoolmate and form-fellow, Robert Peel, the Irish secretary, told me that he saw me in St. James Street. I was then in Turkey. A day or two afterwards, he pointed out to his brother a person across the street, and said, 'There is the man I took for Byron.' His brother answered, 'Why, it is Byron, and no one else.' I was at this time seen (by them?) to write my name in the Palace Book! I was then ill of a malaria fever. If I had died," adds Byron, "here would have been a ghost story established."
Dr. Johnson says, "An honest old printer named Edward Cave had seen a ghost at St. John's Gate." Of course, the old man succumbed to the apparition.
THE GHOST OF CONSCIENCE.
I have yet to find the record of a good man seeing what he believed to be a ghostly manifestation. It is only the guilty in conscience who conjure up "horrible shadows," as pictured in Shakspeare's ghost of Banquo, as it appeared to Macbeth. What deserving scorn, what scathing contempt, were conveyed in the language of Lady Macbeth to her cowardly, conscience-stricken lord, as she thus rebuked him!--
"O, proper stuff! This is the very painting of your fear; This is the air-drawn dagger which you said Led you to Duncan! O, these flaws and starts (Impostors to true fear) would well become A woman's story at a winter's fire,[5] Authorized by her grandam. Shame itself! ... When all's done, You look but on a stool!"
There is a great truth embodied in a portion of the king's reply, that--
"If charnel-houses and our graves must send Those that we bury, back, our monuments Shall be the maws of kites."
The gay and dissipated Thomas Lyttleton, son of Lord George Lyttleton, and his successor in the peerage, has been the subject of "a well-authenticated ghost story, which relates that he was warned of his death three days before it happened, in 1779, while he was in a state of perfect health, and only thirty-five years of age." This is what says a biographer. Now let us present the truth of the matter.
He was a dissipated man. He was subject to fits. A gentleman present at the time of his seeing a vision, says "that he had been attacked several times by suffocative fits the month before." Here, then, was a body diseased. The same authority says, "It happened that he dreamed, three days before his death, that he saw a fluttering bird; and afterwards, that he saw (dreamed) a woman in white apparel, who said to him, 'Prepare to die; you will not exist three days.'
"His lordship was much alarmed, and called his servant, who slept in an adjoining closet, who found his master in a state of great agitation, and in a profuse perspiration."
Fear blanches the cheek; perspiration is rather a symptom of bodily weakness, and the result of a laborious dream, or even a fit. He had no fear, for, on the third day, while his lordship was at breakfast with "the two Misses Amphlett, Lord Fortescue," and the narrator, he said, lightly,--
"'If I live over to-night, I shall have jockeyed the ghost, for this is the third day.' That day he had another fit. He dined at five, and retired at eleven, when his servant was about to give him some prescribed rhubarb and mint-water, but his lordship, seeing him about to stir the mixture with a toothpick, exclaimed,--
"'You slovenly dog, go and fetch a teaspoon.'
"On the servant's return, he found his master in another fit, and, the pillow being high, his chin bore on his windpipe, when the servant, instead of relieving his lordship from his perilous position, ran away for help; but on his return, found his master dead."
He had strangled. Is it anything strange that a dissipated, weakened man should die after having a score of suffocative fits? It had been more surprising if he had survived them. Then, as respecting the dream, it was the result of a "mind diseased."
There was evidence that his lordship had seduced the Misses Amphlett, and prevailed upon them to leave their mother; and he is said to have admitted, before his death, that the woman seen in his dream was the mother of the unfortunate girls, and that she died of grief, through the disgrace and desertion of her children, about the time that the guilty seducer saw her in the vision. How could his dreams but have been disturbed, with the load of guilt and remorse that he ought to have had resting upon his conscience? The "fluttering bird" was the first form that the wretched mother assumed in his vision, as a bird might flutter about the prison bars that confined her darling offspring. The more natural form of the mother finally appeared to the guilty seducer, and to dream that he heard a voice is no unusual occurrence in the life of any person. The peculiar words amount to nothing. Lyttleton gave them no serious thoughts, and it was an accident of bodily position that caused his sudden death. The whole thing seems to be too flimsy for even a respectable "ghost story."
THE BISHOP SEES A GHOST!
An amusing as well as instructive ghost story is related by Horace Walpole, the indolent, luxurious satirist of fashionable and political contemporaries, whose twenty thousand a year enabled him to live at his ease, "coquetting haughtily with literature and literary men, at his tasty Gothic toy-house at Strawberry Hill."
He relates that the good old Bishop of Chichester was awakened in his palace at an early hour in the morning by his chamber door opening, when a female figure, clothed in white, softly entered the apartment, and quietly took a seat near him. The prelate, who, with "his household, was a disbeliever in ghosts" and spirits, said he was not at all frightened, but, rising in his bed, said, in a tone of authority,--
"Who are you?"
"The presence in the room" made no reply. The bishop repeated the question,--
"Who are you?"
The ghost only heaved a deep sigh, and, while the bishop rang the bell, to call his slumbering servant, her ghostship quietly drew some old "papers from its ghost of a pocket," and commenced reading them to herself.
After the bishop had kept on ringing for the stupid servant, the form arose, thrust the papers out of sight, and left as noiselessly and sedately as she had arrived.
"Well, what have you seen?" asked the bishop, when the servants were aroused.
"Seen, my lord?"
"Ay, seen! or who--what was the woman who has been here?"
"Woman, my lord?"
(It is said one of the fellows smiled, that a woman should have been in the aged bishop's bed-chamber in the night.)
When the bishop had related what he had seen, the domestics apprehended that his lordship had been dreaming, against which the good man protested, and only told what his eyes had beheld. The story that the bishop had been visited by a ghost soon got well circulated, which greatly "diverted the ungodly, at the good prelate's expense, till finally it reached the ears of the keeper of a mad-house in the diocese, who came and deposed that a female lunatic had escaped from his custody on that night" (in light apparel), who, finding the gates and doors of the palace open, had marched directly to his lordship's chamber. The deponent further stated that the lunatic was always reading a bundle of papers.
"There are known," says Walpole, "stories of ghosts, solemnly authenticated, less credible; and I hope you will believe this, attested by the father of our own church."
MUSICAL GHOSTS.
We occasionally hear of this kind, but seldom, if ever, see them. An old lady of Adams, Mass., came to the writer in a state bordering on monomania. She stated that at about three o'clock in the night she would awake and distinctly hear bells ringing at a distance. She would awake her husband, and often compel him to arise and listen "till the poor man was almost out of patience with the annoyance;" not of the bells, for he heard none, but of being continually "wakened because of her whim," as he stated. A brief medical treatment for the disease which caused the vibration of the tympanum dispelled the illusion of bells.
THE PIANO-FORTE GHOST.
A family residing, three years since, but a few miles out of Boston, used to occasionally, during summer only, hear a note or two of the piano strike at the dead hour of the night. A Catholic servant girl and an excellent cook left their situations in consequence of the ghostly music. In vain the family removed the instrument to another position in the room. The musical sounds would startle them from their midnight slumbers.
One thing very remarkable occurred after changing the piano: the sound, which only transpired occasionally, with no regularity as to time, would always begin with the high notes, and end with the lower. Finally, the family--I cannot say why--removed to the city, and the house was sold. The deed of conveyance did not include the ghost, but he remained with the premises, nevertheless. The writer has seen him!
"O, what a pretty cat!" exclaimed a child of the new occupant of the haunted house, on discovering the domestic animal which the late possessor had left.
"Yes; and she looks so very domestic and knowing, she may stay, if no one comes for her, and you'll have her for a playfellow," replied the mother.
A few nights after their settlement, the new family were startled by hearing the piano sound! No particular tune, but it was surely the piano notes that had been distinctly and repeatedly heard. A search revealed nothing. The piano was kept closed thereafter, and no further annoyance occurred, until one night when the company had lingered till nearly midnight, and the instrument had been left open, the sound again occurred. The gentleman quickly lighted a lamp, ran down stairs, and closing the door leading to the connecting room, he found the cat secreted beneath the piano. The instrument was purposely left open the following night, and a watch set, when, no sooner was all quiet, than the cat entered, and leaped upon the piano keys. After touching them a few times with her fore paws, she jumped down, and hid beneath the instrument. "The cat was out." Only one thing remained for explanation, viz., why the change of sound occurred after removing the piano by the first occupants of the house. It occurred in summer. They removed the piano so that the cat, entering a side window, usually left a little raised, had necessarily jumped upon the high keys.
If anybody has got a good ghost, spirit, or witch about his premises, the writer would like to investigate it.
The following silly item is just going the rounds of the press:--
"A HAUNTED HOUSE.
"The first floor of Mrs. Roundy's house, at Lynn, in which the recent murder occurred, is occupied by an apparently intelligent family bearing the name of Conway, who assert that they have heard supernatural noises every night since the tragedy; and they are so sincere in their belief that they are preparing to vacate in favor of their 'uncanny' visitors."
There's nothing to it to investigate.
A FEW WORDS ABOUT WITCHES.
My colored boy, Dennis, assures me that an old woman in Norfolk, Va., having some spite against him, "did something to him that sort o' bewitched him; got some animal into him, like." The symptoms are those of ascarides, but I could not persuade him to take medicine therefor.
"'Tain't no use, sir," he replied, solemnly; "I knowed she done it; I feels it kinder workin' in yer (placing his hand on his stomach); what med'cine neber'll reach."
Neither reason nor ridicule will "budge" him. He knows he's bewitched!
WITCHES IN THE CREAM.
Through all the long, long winter's day, And half the dreary night, We churned, and yet no butter came: The cream looked thin and white.
Next morning, with our hopes renewed, The task began again; We churned, and churned, till back and arms And head did ache with pain.
The cream rose up, then sulking fell, Grew thick, and then grew thin; It splashed and spattered in our eyes, On clothes, and nose, and chin.
We churned it fast, and churned it slow, And stirred it round and round; Yet all the livelong, weary day, Was heard the dasher's sound.
The sun sank in the gloomy west, The moon rose ghastly pale; And still we churned, with courage low, And hopes about to fail,--
When in walked Granny Dean, who heard, With wonder and amaze, Our troubles, as she crossed herself, And in the fire did gaze.
"Lord, help us all!" she quickly said, And covered up her face; "Lord, help us all! for, as you live, There's witches in the place!
"There's witches here within this churn, That have possessed the cream. Go, bring the horse-shoe that I saw Hang on the cellar-beam."
The shoe was brought, when, round and round, She twirled it o'er her head; "Go, drive the witches from that cream!" In solemn voice she said;--
Then tossed it in the fire, till red With heat it soon did turn, And dropped among the witches dread, That hid within the churn.
Once more the dasher's sound was heard,-- Have patience with my rhyme,-- For, sure enough, the butter came In twenty minutes' time.
Some say the temperature was changed With horse-shoe glowing red; But when we ask old Granny Dean, She only shakes her head.--Hearth and Home.
HORSE-SHOES.
One would suppose the folly of putting horse-shoes into cream, "fish-skins into coffee, to settle it," and forcing filthy molasses and water down the throats of new-born babes, were amongst the follies of the past; but they are not yet, with many other superstitious, and even cruel and dangerous notions, done away with. For some prominent instances of this course of proceedings the reader may consult next chapter.
Riding through the rural districts of almost any portion of the Union, one will sometimes find the horse-shoe nailed over the stable, porch, or even house front door, to keep away the witches. As in Gay's fable of "The Old Woman and her Cats:"--
"Straws laid across my path retard, The horse-shoes nailed each threshold guard,"
In Aubrey's time, he tells us that "most houses of the west end of London have the horse-shoe at the threshold."
The nice little old gentleman who keeps the depot at Boylston Station is a dry joker, in his way. Over each door of the station he has an old horse-shoe nailed.
"What have you got these nailed up over the door for?" a stranger asks.
"To keep away witches. I sleep here nights," solemnly replies the station-master; and one must be familiar with that ever agreeable face to detect the sly, enjoyable humor with which he is so often led to repeat this assertion.
In numerous towns within more than half of the states,--I state from personal inquiry,--there are at this day old women, who children, at least, are taught to believe have the power of bewitching! My first fright, when a little boy on my way to school, was from being told that an old woman, whose house we were passing, was a witch.
These modern witches may not have arrived at the dignity of floating through the air on a broomstick, or crossing the water in a cockle-shell, as they were said to in ancient times; but the belief in their existence at this enlightened period of the world is more disgraceful than in the darker ages, and the frightening of children and the naturally superstitious is far more reprehensible.
There is no such thing as a ghost. There are no witches.
"The Bible teaches that there were witches," has often been wrongly asserted. That "choice young man and goodly," whose abilities his doting parent over-estimated when he sent him out in search of the three stray asses, and whose idleness prompted him to consult the seer Samuel, and by whose indolence and procrastination the asses got home first, was a very suitable personage to consult a "woman of a familiar spirit" (or any other woman, save his own wife), from which arose the great modern misnomer of the "Witch of Endor."
"To the Jewish writers, trained to seek counsel only of Jehovah (not even from Christ), the 'Woman of Endor' was a dealer with spirits of evil. With us, who have imbibed truth through a thousand channels made turbid by prejudice and error, she is become a distorted being, allied to the hags of a wild and fatal delusion. We confound her with the (fabled) witches of Macbeth, the victims of Salem, and the modern Moll Pitchers.
"The Woman of Endor! That is a strange perversion of taste that would represent her in hideous aspect. To me she seemeth all that is genial and lovely in womanhood."
"Hearken thou unto the voice of thine handmaid, and let me set a morsel of bread before thee, and eat, that thou mayest have strength when thou goest on thy way."
Then she made and baked the bread, killed and cooked the meat,--all she had in the house,--and Saul did eat, and his servants.
I see nought in this but an exhibition of rare domestic ability and commendable hospitality; in the previous act (revelation), nothing more than a manifestation of the power of mind over mind (possibly the power of God, manifested through her mind?), wherein she divined the object of Saul's visit, and, through the same channel, surmised who he was that consulted her.
Witches are said to be "light weight." But a little above a hundred years ago, a woman was accused in Wingrove, England, by another, of "bewitching her spinning-wheel, so it would turn neither the one way nor the other." To this she took oath, and the magistrate, with pomp and dignity, "followed by a great concourse of people, took the woman to the parish church, her husband also being present, and having stripped the accused to her nether garment, put her into the great scales brought for that purpose, with the Bible in the opposite balance, which was the lawful test of a witch, when, to the no small astonishment and mortification of her maligner, she actually outweighed the book, and was honorably acquitted of the charge!"
Just imagine the picture. In an enlightened age, a Christian people, in possession of the Bible, that gives no intimation of such things as witches, stripping and weighing a female in public, to ascertain if she really was heavier than a common Bible!
XII. MEDICAL SUPERSTITIONS
"When cats run home, and light is come, And dew is cold upon the ground, And the far-off stream is dumb, And the whirling sail goes round, And the whirling sail goes round; Alone and warming his five wits The white owl in the belfry sits."--TENNYSON.
OLD AND NEW.--THE SIGN OF JUPITER.--MODERN IDOLATRY.--ORIGIN OF THE DAYS OF THE WEEK.--HOW WE PERPETUATE IDOLATRY.--SINGULAR FACT.--CHRISTMAS FESTIVITIES.--"OLD NICK."--RIDICULOUS SUPERSTITIONS.--GOLDEN HERB.--HOUSE CRICKETS.--A STOOL WALKS!--THE BOWING IMAGES AT RHODE ISLAND.--HOUSE SPIDERS.--THE HOUSE CAT.--SUPERSTITIOUS IDOLATRIES.--WONDERFUL KNOWLEDGE.--NAUGHTY BOYS.--ERRORS RESPECTING CATS.--SANITARY QUALITIES.--OWLS.--A SCARED BOY.--HOLY WATER.--UNLUCKY DAYS.--THUNDER AND LIGHTNING.--A KISS.
Medicine, above all the other sciences, was founded upon superstition. Medicine, more than all the other arts, has been practised by superstitions. Stretching far back through the vista of time to the remotest antiquity, reaching forward into the more enlightened present, it has partaken of all that was superstitious in barbarism, in heathenism, in mythology, and in religion.
In showing the Alpha I am compelled to reveal the Omega.
Let us begin with Jupiter. I know that some wise Æsculapian--no Jupiterite--will turn up his nose at this page, while to-morrow, if he gets a patient, he will demonstrate what I am saying, and further, help to perpetuate the ignorant absurdities which originated with the old mythologists, by placing "[R]"--the ill-drawn sign of Jupiter--before his recipe.
De Paris tells us that the physician of the present day continues to prefix to his prescriptions the letter "[R]," which is generally supposed to mean "recipe," but which is, in truth, a relic of the astrological symbol of Jupiter, formerly used as a species of superstitious invocation, or to propitiate the king of the gods that the compound might act favorably.
There are still in use many other things which present prima facie evidence of having been introduced when the users placed more faith in mythological or planetary influence than in any innate virtue of the article itself. For instance, at a very early period all diseases were regarded as the effects of certain planetary actions; and not only diseases, but our lives, fortunes, conduct, and the various qualities that constitute one's character, were the consequences of certain planetary control under which we existed. Are there not many who now believe this?
"In ancient medicine pharmacy was at one period only the application of the dreams of astrology to the vegetable world. The herb which put an ague or madness to flight did so by reason of a mystic power imparted to it by a particular constellation, the outward signs of which quality were to be found in its color or shape." Red objects had a mysterious influence on inflammatory diseases, and yellow ones on persons discolored by jaundice. Corals were introduced as a medicine, also to wear about the neck on the same principle.
These notions are not yet obsolete. Certain diseases are still attributed to the action of the moon. Certain yellow herbs are used for the jaundice and other diseases. The hepatica triloba (three-lobed) is recommended for diseases of the lungs as well as liver (as its first name, hepatica, indicates), and some other medicines for other complaints, without the least regard to their innate qualities. Corals are still worn for nose-bleed, red articles kept about the bed and apartments of the small-pox patient, and the red flag hung out at the door of the house, though few may know why a red flag is so hung, or that it originated in superstition.
The announcement of an approaching comet strikes terror to the hearts of thousands; the invalid has the sash raised that he may avoid first seeing the new moon through the glass, and the traveller is rejoiced to catch his first glimpse of the young queen of the night over his right shoulder, "for there is misfortune in seeing it over the left."
But we are not yet done with ancient symbols.
"The stick came down from heaven," says the Egyptian proverb.
"The physician's cane is a very ancient part of his insignia. It has nearly gone into disuse; but until very recently no doctor of medicine would have presumed to pay a visit, or even be seen in public, without this mystic wand. Long as a footman's stick, smooth, and varnished, with a heavy gold head, or a cross-bar, it was an instrument with which, down to the present century, every prudent aspirant to medical practice was provided. The celebrated gold-headed cane which Radcliffe, Mead, Askew, Pitcairn, and Baillie successively bore, is preserved in the College of Physicians, London. It has a cross-bar, almost like a crook, in place of a knob. The knob in olden times was hollow, and contained a vinaigrette, which the man of science held to his nose when he approached a sick person, so that its fumes might protect him from the disease."
The cane, doubtless, came from the wand or caduceus of Mercurius, and was a "relic of the conjuring paraphernalia with which the healer, in ignorant and superstitious times, always worked upon the imagination of the credulous." The present barber's pole originated with surgeons. The red stripe represented the arterial blood; the blue, the venous blood; the white, the bandages.
The superstitious ancients showed more wisdom in their selections of names, as well as in emblems, than we do in retaining them. Heathen worship and mythological signs are mixed and interwoven with all our arts, sciences, and literature. Our days of the week were named by the old Saxons, who worshipped idols--the sun, moon, stars, earth, etc., and to their god's, perpetual honor gave to each day a name from some principal deity. Thus we are idolaters, daily, though unconsciously.
I think not one person in a thousand is aware of this fact; therefore I give a sketch of each.
SUNDAY.
The name of our first day of the week, Sunday, is derived from the Saxon Sunna-dæg, which they named for the sun. It was also called Sun's-dæg.
As the glorious sunlight brought day and warmth, and caused vegetation to spring forth in its season, warmed the blood, and made the heart of man to rejoice, they made that dazzling orb the primary object of their worship. When its absence brought night and darkness, and the storm-clouds shrouded its face in gloom, or the occasional eclipse suddenly cut off its shining, which they superstitiously attributed to the wrath of their chief deity, it then became the object of their supplication. With them, and all superstitious people, all passions, themes, and worships must be embodied--must assume form and dimensions, and as they could not gaze upon the dazzling sun, they personified it in the figure of a man--as being superior to woman with them--arrayed in a primitive garment, holding in his hand a flaming wheel. One day was specially devoted to sun worship.
The modern Sunday is the day, according to historical accounts of the early Christians, on which Christ rose from the dead. It does not appear to have been the same day as, or to have superseded, the Jewish Sabbath, although the Christians early celebrated the day, devoting it to religious services. With the Christians, labor was suspended on this "first day of the week," and Constantine, about the year 320, established an edict which suspended all labor, except agricultural, and forbade also all court proceedings. In 538 A. D. the third Council of Orleans published a decree forbidding all labor on Sunday.
The Sabbath (Hebrew Shabbath) of the Jews, meaning a day of rest, originated as far back as Moses--probably farther. It was merely a day of rest, which was commanded by Jehovah; and if considered only on physiological grounds, it evinces the wisdom and economy of God in setting apart one day in seven to be observed by man as a season of rest and recuperation. As such it only seems to have been regarded till after the forty years of exile, when it changed to a day of religious rites and ceremonies, which is continued till the present day by "that peculiar people." That particular day, given in the "law of Moses," corresponds--it is believed by the Jews--to our Saturday. Christ seemed to teach that the Jewish Sabbath was no more sacred than any other day, and he accused the Pharisees with hypocrisy in their too formal observance thereof. He attended their service on the Sabbath, on the seeming principle that he did other meetings, and as he paid the accustomed tax, because it was best to adapt one's self to the laws and customs of the country.
We do not purpose to enter into any theological discussion as to which of the two days should be observed for rest and religious observances; for who shall decide? Physiologically considered, it makes no difference. There should be one day set apart for rest in seven at the most, and all men should respect it.
Without a Sabbath (day of rest) we should soon relapse into a state of barbarism, and also wear out before our allotted time. "In the hurry and bustle of every-day life and labor, we allow ourselves too little relaxation, too little scope for moral, social, and religious sentiments; therefore it is well to set apart times and seasons when all cares and labors may be laid aside, and communion held with nature and nature's God." And it were better if we all could agree upon one day for our Sabbath; and let us call it "Sabbath," and not help to perpetuate any heathen dogmas and worship by calling God's holy day after the idolatrous customs of the ancient Saxons.
MONDAY.
The second day of the week the Saxons called Monandæg, or Moon's day; hence our Monday.
This day was set apart by that idolatrous people for the worship of their second god in power. In their business pursuits, as well as devotional exercises, they devoted themselves to the moon worship. The name Monandæg was written at the top of all communications, and remembrance had to their god in all transactions of the day. Each monath (new moon or month) religious (?) exercises were celebrated.
The idol Monandæg had the semblance of a female, crowned or capped with a hood-like covering, surmounted by two horns, while a basque and long robe covered the remainder of her person. In her right hand she held the image of the moon.
TUESDAY.
The third object of their worship was Tuisco--corresponding with German Tuisto--the son of Terra (earth), the deified founder of the Teutonic race. He seems to have been the deity who presided over combats and litigations; "hence Tuesday is now, as then, court-day, or the day for commencing litigations." In some dialects it was called Dings-dag, or Things-day--to plead, attempt, cheapen: hence it is often selected as market-day, as well as a time for opening assizes. Hence the god Tuisco was worshipped in the semblance of a venerable sage, with uncovered head, clothed in skins of fierce animals, touching the earth, while he held in his right hand a sceptre, the appropriate ensign of his authority.
Thus originated the name of our third day of the week, and some of its customs.
WEDNESDAY.
This day was named for Woden,--the same as Odin,--and was sacred to the divinity of the Northern and Eastern nations. He was the Anglo-Saxons' god of war, "who came to them from the East in a very mysterious manner, and enacted more wonderful and brilliant exploits of prowess and valor than the Greek mythologists ascribed to their powerful god Hercules." As Odin, this deity was said to have been a monarch (in the flesh) of ancient Germany, Denmark, Scandinavia, etc., and a mighty conqueror. All those tribes, in going into battle, invoked his aid and blessing upon their arms. He was idolized as a fierce and powerful man, with helmet, shield, a drawn sword, a gyrdan about his loins, and feet and legs protected by sandals and knee-high fastenings of iron, ornamented with a death's head.
THURSDAY.
From the deity Thor our Thursday is derived. This Saxon god was the son of Woden, or Odin, and his wife Friga. He was the god of thunder, the bravest and most powerful, after his father, of the Danish and Saxon deities.
Thor is represented as sitting in majestic grandeur upon a golden throne, his head surmounted by a golden crown, richly ornamented by a circle in front, in which were set twelve brilliant stars. In his right hand he grasped the regal sceptre.
FRIDAY.
The sixth day of the week was named in honor of Friga, or Frigga, the wife of Woden and the mother of Thor. In most ancient times she was the same as Venus, the goddess of Hertha, or Earth. She was the most revered of the female divinities of the Danes and Saxons. Friga is represented draped in a light robe suspended from the shoulder, low neck and bare arms. She held in her right hand a drawn sword, and a long bow in the left. Her hair is long and flowing, while a golden band, adorned by ostrich feathers, encircle her snowy brow.
There is nothing in the name or attributes to indicate the ill luck which superstition has attached to the day.
SATURDAY.
The god Seater, for whom the last day of the week is named, is the same as Saturn, which is from Greek--Time.
He is pictured, unlike Saturn, with long, flowing hair and beard, thin features, clothed in person with one entire garment to his ankles and wrists, with his waist girded by a linen scarf. In his right hand he carries a wheel, to represent rolling time. In his left hand he holds a pail of fruit and flowers, to indicate young time as well as old. The fish which is his pedestal represents his power over the abundance of even the sea.
CHRISTMAS FESTIVALS.
Amongst the very pleasant and harmless customs which have been handed down to us from the idolatrous rites and superstitions of the ancient Saxons, Scandinavians, etc., are those connected with our Christmas festivities. The whole observance and connections form a strange mixture of Christian and heathen ceremonies, illustrative of the unwillingness with which a people abandon pagan rites to the adoption of those more consistent with the spirit of a Christianized and enlightened faith.
Now, little folks and big, I am not going to ridicule or deny your right to Christmas and St. Nicholas enjoyments; I will merely hint at their origin, for your own benefit. The day brings more happiness--and folks--to the homes and firesides of the people of the whole world than any other holiday we celebrate.[6] Thanksgiving, you know, is mostly a New England custom. The 25th of December is just as good as any other day on which to have a good time. Ancient people used to celebrate the first and sixth of January. The first three months of the year are named after heathen gods.
The name of the day we celebrate is derived from a Christian source: the rest from pagan. A good feeling was always engendered amongst the most ancient people at the commencement of the lengthening of days in winter, and the approach of a new year. The hanging up of the mistletoe, with the ceremony of gathering it, the kindling of the Yule log, and giving of presents, we trace to the Druids, who were the priests, doctors, and judges of the ancient Celts, Gauls, Britons, and Germans. Our modern stoves and furnaces have shut out the pleasant old log fires, and the candles only remain. The gifts originated in the giving away of pieces of the mistletoe by the grizzly old priests.
Who St. Nicholas was, is only conjectured, not known, any more than who St. Patrick was. It makes no difference where he sprang from; he is a good, jolly, benevolent fellow, who brings lots of presents, and, with the little folks, we are bound to defend him.
It is supposed that the original St. Nicholas lived in Lycia, in Asia Minor, during the fourth century, and was early adopted as a saint of the Catholic church, and also by the Russians and ancient Germans, Celts, and others.
"He has ever been regarded as a very charitable personage, and as the particular guardian of children. Great stories are told of his charity and benevolence. One of these, and that, perhaps, which attaches him to the peculiar festivities of Christmas, is to the effect that a certain nobleman had three lovely daughters, but was so reduced to poverty that he was unable to give them a marriage portion, as was the indispensable custom, and was about to give them over to a life of shame. St. Nicholas was aware of this, and determined in a secret way to assist the nobleman.
"He wended his way towards the nobleman's house, thinking how he could best do this, when he espied an open window, into which he threw a purse of gold, which dropped at the nobleman's feet, and he was enabled to give his daughter a marriage portion. This was repeated upon the second daughter and the third daughter; but the nobleman, being upon the watch, detected his generous benefactor, and thus the affair was made public. From this rose the custom upon St. Nicholas Day, December 6, for parents and friends to secretly put little presents into the stockings of the children. Doubtless this custom, so near the festivities of Christmas, gradually approximated to that day, and become identical with Christmas festivities throughout the world. St. Nicholas is often represented bearing three purses, or golden balls, and these form the pawn-broker's well-known sign, which is traced to this source as its origin--not, we should judge, from their resemblance to the charity of St. Nicholas, but emblematic of his lending in time of need."
POPULAR NOTIONS AND WHIMS.
There was a superstition in Scotland against spinning or ploughing on Christmas; but the Calvinistic clergy, in contempt for all such superstitions, compelled their wives and daughters to spin, and their tenants to plough, on that day.
It is a popular notion to the present time in Devonshire that if the sun shines bright at noon on Christmas day, there will be a plentiful crop of apples the following year.
Bees were thought to sing in their hives on Christmas eve, and it was believed that bread baked then would never mould.
So prevalent was the idea that all nature unites in celebrating the great event of Christ's birth, that it was a well received opinion in some sections of the old world that the cattle fell on their knees at midnight on Christmas eve.
RIDICULOUS SUPERSTITIONS.
"Merlin! Merlin! turn again; Leave the oak-branch where it grew. Seek no more the cress to gain, Nor the herb of golden hue."
Merlin, the reputed great enchanter, flourished in Britain about the fifth century. He is said to have resided in great pomp at the court of "Good King Arthur." You all know the beautiful rhyme about the latter, if not about "Merlin! Merlin!" etc.
"When good King Arthur ruled the land,-- He was a goodly king,-- He stole three pecks of barley-meal To make a bag pudding."
Sublime poetry! Easy mode of obtaining the barley-meal (or Scotch territory). Merlin attached many superstitious beliefs to some of our medicinal plants. The "cress" is supposed to be the mistletoe. "The herb of gold"--golden herb--was a rare plant, held in great esteem by the peasant women of Brittany, who affirmed that it shone like gold at a distance. It must be gathered by or before daybreak.
The most ridiculous part of the affair was in the searching for the "herb of golden hue." None but devout females, blessed by the priests for the occasion, were permitted the great privilege of gathering it. In order to be successful in the search, the privileged person started before daylight, barefooted, bareheaded, and en chemise. (Of course the priest knew the individual, and when she was going.) The root must not be cut or broken, but pulled up entire. If any one trod upon the plant, he or she would fall into a trance, when they could understand the language of fowls and animals--a belief not half as ridiculous as that of the present day, that a person may fall into a trance, and understand the language of the dead; yes, dead and decayed, the organs of speech gone! Yet thousands believe such stuff to-day.
The Mandrake.--Great superstition was formerly attached to this root, and even now is, in some rural districts. The root often resembles the lower half of a human being, and it was credulously believed it would shriek and groan when pulled from its mother earth. This notion is expressed in Romeo and Juliet:--
"Mandrakes, torn out of the earth, That mortals, hearing them, run mad."
Again, in Henry VI.:--
"Would curses kill, as doth the bitter mandrake's groans."
A favorite mode of uprooting this coveted plant--because of its defensive properties, when once gained--was to fasten cords to a dog's neck, thence to the base of the stem of the plant, and sealing their own ears with wax to prevent hearing the groans, which was death or madness, they whipped the unfortunate dog till he drew out the roots, or was killed in the attempt; for the dog usually died then or soon after the cruel beating, and the shrieks of the mandrake were supposed to have caused his death.
The Scabious, or "Devil's bit," was regarded with great superstition. "The old fantastic charmers," said the quaint Gerarde, "say that the Devil bit away the greater part of this root for envy, because of its many virtues and benefits to mankind." Dr. James Smith (1799) as quaintly observes, "The malice of the Devil has unfortunately been so successful, that no virtue can now be found in the remainder of the root or herb."
House Crickets.--The superstition respecting these cheerful and harmless little chirpers is remarkable. Some consider their presence a lucky sign, others their absence more fortunate. To kill one, with some persons, is a sign of death in the house. Very strange! They, blind fools, do not see that the saying originated in the death of the poor little cricket.
The following very remarkable occurrence was related to the writer, as having actually taken place at Providence, R. I., a few years since. Mrs. D., a respectable lady, residing in the city, was reported to have been followed about the house and up stairs by a "cricket,"--a wooden one, used for a foot-stool. People called at her residence to inquire into the truth of the matter; others even requested to see the remarkable phenomenon of a cricket or stool walking off on all fours, until the lady became so annoyed by the continual stream of credulous callers, that she inserted a notice in the city journals denying the truth of the strange rumor. It was supposed to have started from some neighbor's seeing or hearing a house cricket when on a visit at the lady's house.
The Bowing Images.--A still more amusing story is related respecting the two images surmounting the wall each side of the gate at the residence of Professor Gammel, of Providence. A report became current among the school-boys of the city, that when the images heard the clock strike nine in the forenoon they bowed their heads. My informant said it was no unusual thing to see a dozen boys waiting, with books and slates, in front of the professor's gate, to see the images bow at nine. Being late at school, the teacher would inquire,--
"Where have you been lingering, that you are behind time at school?"
"Been down to Professor Gammel's, waitin' to see the images bow."
Then the teacher drew his ferule or rod, and made them "bow" in submission to a smart whipping--a sequel anticipated by the older scholars who instituted the story.
House Spiders.--Was there ever a child who was not taught, directly or indirectly, that house spiders were poisonous,--that their bite was instantaneous death? Was there ever a greater mistake? Many people have a superstitious terror of these harmless creatures. The bite of spiders is only poisonous to those insects which the divine economy seems to have created for them to destroy. It is possible, as by a fly, sometimes for a slight skin inflammation, less than a mosquito's bite, to follow the sting of a spider on a very small child.
Let me hereby disabuse the public mind of the repugnance or horror with which these little creatures are regarded. The Creator has evidently placed them here for the destruction of flies and other insects, which otherwise would completely overrun us. The fly is such a domestic creature, that he soon deserts a house where the family is long absent. The spider then removes also. (I have watched this proceeding, with no little interest, in the absence of my own family.) Therefore the spider was created to suppress a superabundance of insect life. When I have before stated this fact, the listener has been led to inquire why the flies were then made. We will not answer the suggestion of this "riddle" as the Irishman did (you know that he said, "To feed the spiders, to be sure"), but reply, that if this question is to arise in this connection, we may as well keep on our inquiry till we arrive at the greater riddle, "Why are we created?"--to which we have no space for reply.
It is said that manufacturers of quill pens in London, being greatly annoyed by a species of moth which infests their quills and devours the feathers, and the common spider being endowed with an inordinate appetite for those same moths, the penmakers and spiders are on the best of terms, and an army of these much-maligned and persecuted insects encamp in each pen factory, and do good service to the cause of literature as well as trade, by protecting the quills. We may yet find that even mosquitos and bedbugs have their uses in the wise economy of nature.
Now, when tidy housewifery requires that brush and broom should ruthlessly demolish the webs,--the wonderful work and mechanism of the one species of house spider,--let it be done as a necessity, not with a feeling of repugnance to the harmless little insect; and let children be taught the truthful lesson that nothing is made in vain.
The House Cat, with many, is regarded with unaccountable superstition. It goes with the witch, particularly the black cat. No witch ever could exist without one. This is usually the species that haunts naughty boys in their dreams after they have eaten too heartily of cake, and other indigestible stuff, at evening.
Cats are as old as time. At least their existence dates back as far as man's in history, and they were formerly regarded as a sacred animal.
In ancient Egypt we find that Master Tomas, with his round face and rugged whiskers, symbolized the sun. Preserved in the British Museum are abundant proofs of the reverence and superstition with which the feline race was regarded by the Egyptians. Here several of these revered Grimalkins are mummied in spices, and perfumes, and balsams, in which they have survived the unknown centuries of the past, "to contrast the value of a dead cat in the land of the Pharaohs with the fate of such relics in modern times, ignominiously consigned to the scavenger's cart, or feloniously hanging upon a tree, the scarecrow of the orchard."
Diodorus, the Greek writer, 1st century B. C., informs us that such was the superstitious veneration with which the Egyptians regarded cats, that no one could ruffle the fur of Tom or Tabby with impunity, and that any man killing a cat was put to death. (O, what a country it must have been to sleep in!) In Ptolemy's time, while the Roman army was established in Egypt, one of the Romans killed a cat, when the people flew to his house, and dragged him forth, and neither the fear of the soldiers nor the influence of the prince could deliver the unfortunate cat-slayer from the wrath of the infuriated mob.
Mohammed had a superstition for cats, and was said to have been constantly attended by one. A cat hospital was founded at Damascus in respect to the prophet's predilection, which Baumgarten, the German professor (1714 to 1762) found filled with feline inmates. Turkey maintained several public establishments of this kind.
Howell the Good, king of Wales, 10th century, legislated for the cat propagation, and it would seem that the race was limited, since a week old kitten sold for a penny,--a great deal of money in those days,--and fourpence for one old enough to catch a mouse. The following ludicrous penalty was attached to a cat-stealer:--
"If any person stole a cat that guarded the prince's granaries he was to forfeit a milch ewe, fleece, and lamb; or, in lieu of these, as much wheat as, when poured upon the cat, suspended by the tail, her head touching the floor, would form a heap high enough to bury her to the tail tip."
This would seem rather hard on poor pussy, even to threatening her suffocation.
Huc, in his "Chinese Empire," tells us that the Chinese peasantry are accustomed to tell the noon hour from the narrowing and dilation of the pupils of pussy's eyes; they are said to be drawn down to a hair's-breadth precisely at twelve o'clock. This horological utility, however, by no means gives her a fixed tenure in a Chinese home. There she enters into the category of edible animals, and, having served the purpose of a cat-clock, is seen hanging side by side with the carcasses of dogs, rats, and mice in the shambles of every city and town of the celestial empire.
Descending to the middle ages, a mal-odor of magic taints the fair fame of our protégés, more especially attaching itself to black or brindled cats, which were commonly found to be the "familiars" of witches; or, rather, their "familiars" were supposed to take the form of these animals; and hence, in nearly all judicial records of these unhappy delusionists, demons in the shape of cats are sure to figure. The witches in "Macbeth" (for what impression of the times he lived in has Shakspeare lost?) awaited the triple mewing of the brindled cat to begin their incantations; and more scientific pretenders to a knowledge of the occult arts are usually represented as attended in their laboratories by a feline companion.
Fragments of a superstitious faith in the magical, or what was till comparatively recent times so nearly allied with it, the medicinal attributes of the animal, still surviving in certain rustic and remote districts of England, where the brains of a cat of the proper color (black, of course) are esteemed a cure for epilepsy; and where, within our memory, such a faith induced a wretched being, in the shape of woman, mad with despair and rage, to tear the living heart from one of these animals, that, by sticking it full of pins and roasting it, she might bring back the regard of a man, brutal and perfidious as herself. Such formulæ are frequently to be met with in the works of ancient naturalists and physicians, and were, doubtlessly, handed down from generation to generation, and locally acted upon in desperate cases.
It is on evidence that more than one old woman has been condemned by our wise ancestors to pay the penalty of her presumed league with Satan in a fiery death, upon no better testimony than the fact that Harper, Rutterkin, or Robin had been seen entering her dwelling in the shape of a black cat. But if, in ancient times, old women, and young ones, too, have been brought to grief through the cats they fostered, certain it is that these creatures have suffered horrible reprisal at the hands of certain vagrants of the sex in our own.
Our Felis domestica has, for a long time, labored under the serious disadvantage of a traditional character. Buffon sums her up as a "faithless friend, brought in to oppose a still more insidious enemy;" and Goldsmith--who, it is well known, became a writer of natural history "upon compulsion," and had neither time nor opportunity for personal observation of the habits and instincts of the creatures he so charmingly describes--followed in the track of the great naturalist, and echoes this ungracious definition.
Boys have a natural contempt for cats, and picking them up by the tail, tossing them over the wall, or tying old tin pots to their caudal end, to see how fast they can run, are among their most trifling sports at the expense of Tom and Tabby. I have known a cruel boy to roll a cat in turpentine, and set fire to her. Few men have any feeling but repugnance towards the feline race. The exceptions are in the past.
Cardinal Wolsey's cat sat on the arm of his chair of state, or took up her position at the back of his throne when he held audiences; and the cat of the poet Petrarch, after death, occupied, embalmed, a niche in his studio; indeed, poets appear to be more susceptible of pussy's virtues and graces than other persons; and she has, on many occasions, been made the subject of their verse, the sentiment of which fully expresses a sense of the maligned animal's faithfulness and affection.
Tasso, reduced to such a strait of poverty as to be obliged to borrow a crown from a friend to subsist on through a week, turns for mute sympathy to his faithful cat, and disburdens his case in a charming sonnet, in which he entreats her to assist him through the night with the lustre of her moon-like eyes, having no candles by which he could see to write his verses.
An editor facetiously says, "We have here among us at this time an addition to the M. D.'s in the shape of two cat doctors, who have the terrible idea that they were put upon this earth for the sole object of doctoring cats, and now the mortality list shows, at the least calculation, that no less than eighteen cats and two kittens have travelled to that bourn from which no passengers have ever yet returned, and all because they were the unlucky sons and daughters of ye night prowlers who had been sacrificed for the good of the future cat generation."
PRESENT ERRORS.
I think some reason for the present errors and superstitions attached to cats, may be attributed to the cat-adioptric qualities of their eyes and fur. At night their eyes often shine with phosphoric light, and rubbing their fur with the human hand causes it to emit electric sparks, particularly in very cold weather. They are supposed to partake of ghostly, or witch-like qualities, because they can see in the night time. Fish scales, as well as the flesh of fish, contain a phosphoric principle--there is no witchery about such--which can be seen best through the dark. The fur of other animals besides the cat contain electric qualities. Humans possess it to a greater or lesser extent. The eye of the cat--as also the owl--is made, in the divine economy, expressly for night prowling. The back, or reflecting coat (retina), is white, or light, that it may reflect dark objects. In man, and most animals, it is dark. A light-complexioned person can (cæteris paribus) see better at night than one who is dark. In a strong light, it is reversed. So much for cat-optrics.
Our cat-alogue would be incomplete without this cat-agraph, and we should "cat-ch it," hereafter, from some cat-echist, if we here discontinued our cat-enary cat-egory, without some little cat-ch relative to the domestic and redeeming qualities of this unappreciated cat-tle (excuse the cat-achresis).
Webster says the cat is a deceitful animal. Webster don't know. She certainly has large cautiousness and secretiveness. Man, with the same secretiveness, with the same neglect and abuse that Tom receives, will become doubly deceitful. Treat him kindly and affectionately, and he will return it. Subject to everybody's kicks, cuffs, and suspicion, the cat necessarily becomes shy, ugly, and appears deceitful. So does a child. The cat is fond of sweet scents, and pries into drawers and cupboards, oftener to gratify her sense of smell than taste. Cats are very fond of music, and occasionally go upon the piano keys to make the strings vibrate. Depending upon their own exertions for a livelihood, they become thieves. They may, by kind instruction, soon be taught to know and keep their own places.
The healthy cat is neat and systematic. Children may be taught a useful lesson by noticing that the tabby washes her face and hands after meals, and never comes to her repast with them dirty.
Cats are sometimes good fish-catchers, as well as mousers and bird-catchers, often plunging into water to secure their favorite aliment. Their love of praise is exhibited in their general tendency to bring in their prey, and place it at your feet for your approbation. Give them the notice due them, and they will redouble their efforts.
It is a vulgar error to suppose their washing over the head is a sign of rain, or that you can tell the time of tide by their eye-pupils, or that they can go through a solid wall, have nine lives, or suck away a child's breath.
The cat, as a sanitary means, should be domesticated, especially with scrofulous children and females. Either by their absorbent or repelling powers they assist nature in eradicating that almost universal disease--scrofula.
Teach children that "God has created nothing in vain," and nothing which will harm them if rightly used.
Here we bid good by to Tom and Tabby.
The Owl.--The superstition which has hung about this very harmless bird is liable to soon cease in the extermination of the creature itself.
"Was you born in the woods to be scared by an owl?" my grandmother once sarcastically inquired when I was frightened from the barn by an old owl inquiring,--
"Who--a'--yoo?"
I acknowledge I was a great coward; but I had heard the old women affirm more than once that it was a sign of ill luck or death to hear one of these cat-faced, cat-seeing, mousing creatures cry by day; so I fled from the barn, while the old owl turned his head sidewise, as he sat on a beam, trying to penetrate the light, repeating, "Who--a'--yoo?" It was a sign of death, for my uncle shot the owl.
Magpies are made the subject of superstition. To see a single one strutting across your path is a sad mishap. There is luck in three, or more, however.
Holy Water.--Church superstitions and rites are not within our province, unless they are objectionable in a sanitary point of view. If the holy water is clean, it is just as good as any other pure water; but I have seen it poured upon my Irish patients--years ago in Hartford and elsewhere--when there were "wrigglers" in it from long exposure in an unstopped bottle or tea-cup. I approve of holy water, therefore, in large quantities, with other rites, tending to a sanitary object. Have plenty of water--with soap.
Bells.--Few useful articles have been held in greater reverence and superstition. Their origin is of great antiquity. The first Jewish priests adorned their blue tunics with golden bells, as also did the Persian kings. The Greeks put bells upon criminals going to execution, as a warning, as it was an ill omen to see a criminal and his executioner walking. The superstition respecting bells began more particularly with the tenth century, when the priests exorcised and blessed them, giving them the names of saints, making the rabble believe that when they were rung for those ceremonies they had the power to drive devils out of the air, making them quake and tremble; also to restrain the power of the devil over a corpse; hence bell-ringing at funerals.
There are many legends wherein the evil spirits' dislike to bells is promulgated.
As "the devil hates holy water," so he does bell-ringing.
Dr. Warner, a clergyman of the Church of England, in his "Hampshire," enumerates the virtues of a bell, by translating some lines from the "Helpe to Discourse."
"Men's deaths I tell by doleful knell; Lightning and thunder I break asunder; On Sabbath all to church I call; The sleepy head I raise from bed; The winds so fierce I doe disperse; Men's cruel rage I do asswage."
I think the beautiful music discoursed by a chime of bells would be more effectual "men's cruel rage" to tranquillize, than a battery of seven cannons. Aside from all superstitious notions, there is an irresistible charm about the music of bells, and I rejoice that they are gradually being redeemed from the superstition and monopoly of one ignorant denomination, as the sacred cross may be, to the use and blessing of all mankind.
Fear of Thunder and Lightning.--These have ever been sources of superstitious terror. The ancients considered thunder and lightning as direct manifestations of divine wrath; hence whatever the lightning struck was accursed. The corpses of persons so killed were allowed to remain where they fell, to the great inconvenience, often, of the living.
The electricity which plays about high poles and spires was formerly attributed to spirits. "Fiery spirits or devils," says old Burton, "are such as commonly work by blazing stars, fire-drakes," etc. "Likewise they counterfeit suns and moons ofttimes, and sit on ships' masts." The electric sparks upon the metal points of soldiers' spears were regarded as omens of no small importance.
In some parts of Europe, up to the last century, it was a custom to ring bells during a thunder-storm, to drive away evil spirits; but this act often was the cause of death, by the exposure of persons to the points of attraction, and the conducting power of moist ropes and metallic wires. On the night of April 15, 1718, the lightning struck twenty-four steeples while the bells were ringing. In July of the following year, while the bells were tolling at a funeral celebration in the Chateau Vieux, lightning struck the steeple, killing nine persons and injuring twenty-two. Statistics show that numerous deaths were caused by bell-ringing in England and France, during the last century, to drive away imaginary spirits.
The saint usually invoked on these occasions was St. Barnabas.
The houseleek and bay tree were supposed to afford protection from lightning.
"The thunder has soured the beer," or the milk, is a common saying; and I once saw a piece of iron lying across the beer-barrel to keep away thunder. A heavy atmosphere may suddenly sour beer or milk.
Creeping three times under the communion table while the chimes were striking, at midnight, was believed to cure fits, as late as 1835.
Glass, stone, and feathers are non-conductors to electricity. Persons very susceptible to electric currents need give themselves no fear, and no more caution need be taken than we take to protect ourselves against other objects of danger. Lightning will not strike one out of doors, unless he is near a point of high attraction,--under a tree, or pole,--or has about him, exposed, some metallic substance, or some very wet article. Houses under or near tall trees, or with suitable lightning-rods, are safe enough. A feather bed, particularly one insulated by glass-rollers, or plates, under the posts, and not touching the wall, is a perfectly safe place for invalids and nervous people who are susceptible to electricity. The pulse of such is often increased in frequency before a thunder-storm. Let such first have no fear. See God in the storm and lightning as only a saving power. I know a girl who "tears around like mad" for a man at the approach of a thunder-storm. When finding one, she feels perfectly safe. If not, she hides in the cellar till the storm abates.
Unlucky Days.--The superstition respecting unlucky Friday is well known. Some cynical bachelors say it is unlucky because named for a woman. Monday was also so named. I can find no account of this superstition until after the first century A. D. It is said that our Saviour was crucified on Friday--a day of fear and trembling, of earthquakes and divers remarkable phenomena; but that day is now as uncertain as the day of his birth, in the various changes of the calendar, heathen naming of the days to suit their notions, and the great uncertainty of chronology. No doubt Christ arose from the dead on the then first day of the week, and was crucified the third day before the resurrection; but what day of our present week who can tell? If on Friday, it should be counted far from an unlucky day. Sailors are particularly superstitious as to sailing on Friday, notwithstanding Columbus sailed on Friday, and discovered America on that day.
The French believe in unlucky Friday. Lord Byron, Dr. Johnson, and other authors and poets, are said to have so believed. Shakspeare, Scott, Goldsmith, Bacon, Sir Francis Drake, Napoleon, and many other great men, were pretty thoroughly tinged with superstition; the latter, it is said, believed in "luck," or destiny.
The future of children is yet believed to depend much upon the day of the week on which they are born.
"Monday's child is fair in face; Tuesday's child is full of grace; Wednesday's child is full of woe; Thursday's child has far to go; Friday's child works hard for its living; Saturday's child is loving and giving; And a child that's born on Christmas day Is fair, and wise, and good, and gay."[7]
This, of course, is all nonsense--or rather the belief in such signs--and one day is equally as good as another for nature's work, or in which to fulfil the requirements of God and nature. Let no mother, or her who is about to become a mother, put faith in old nurses' whims. Their brains are full of all such fantastic notions, which are too often revealed in the sick room, and the effect is often detrimental to the peace and happiness of the mother, and at times dangerous to the life of the invalid.
SUPERSTITION OF A KISS.
The monks of the middle ages--great theorists--divided the kiss into fifteen distinct and separate orders.
1. The decorous or modest kiss.
2. The diplomatic, or kiss of policy.
3. The spying kiss, to ascertain if a woman had drank wine.
4. The slave kiss.
5. The kiss infamous--a church penance.
6. The slipper kiss, practised towards tyrants.
7. The judicial kiss.
8. The feudal kiss.
9. The religious kiss (kissing the cross).
10. The academical kiss (on joining a solemn brotherhood).
11. The hand kiss.
12. The Judas kiss.
13. The medical kiss--for the purpose of healing some sickness.
14. The kiss of etiquette.
15. The kiss of love--the only real kiss. But this was also to be variously considered; viz., given by ardent enthusiasm, as by lovers; by matrimonial affection; or, lastly, between two men--an awful kiss, tasting like sandwiches without butter or meat.
THE END IS NOT YET.
The reign of superstition is not yet ended.
It is impossible for any great catastrophe, involving loss of property or life, to occur without a certain superstitious class harping upon the event as a judgment of God upon the wickedness of the victims. If a great city is swept away by the devouring elements, we hear the cry that "an offended Deity has visited the 'Babylon of the West' with his vengeance for her wickedness." Some penurious wretch takes it up, and says, "I'll give nothing, then, to the victims of the fire. It is God's judgment; I won't interfere." A rich man is murdered in cold blood, and the same howl goes up, "It is the judgment of God upon him for heaping up riches." The fact of his riches going to thousands of poor artisans, actors, musicians, widows, orphans, and "western Babylonian sufferers," goes for nothing with such people. These same superstitious wretches have not yet done asserting that the assassination of President Lincoln was in judgment for his attending a theatre.
Twenty-five persons were killed in a church at Bologna, recently, while kneeling in prayer. Was this an expression of God's wrath upon church-goers?
"The laws by which God governs the universe are inexorable. The frost will blight, the fire destroy, the storms will ravage, disease and death will do their appointed work, though narrow-mindedness and bigotry misconstrue their intent. All things are for good. If natural laws are violated, the known and inevitable result follows."
* * * * *
I have already exceeded the space to which this chapter was limited, and there are a thousand superstitious beliefs and practices which are not herein enumerated nor explained. But rest assured that nothing exists without its uses, without the knowledge of the divine Author, and nothing supernatural does or ever did exist amongst natural beings. There is nothing within this world but what God has placed for man's good. There is nothing here past man's ability to fathom. God is love.
What there is beyond this world, we shall find out quite soon enough.
XIII. TRAVELLING DOCTORS
"His fancy lay to travelling."--L'ESTRANGE.
PUBLIC CONFIDENCE(?).--THE EYE OF THE PUBLIC.--A BAD SPECIMEN.--"REMARKABLE TUMOR."--"THE SINGING DOCTOR."--CAUGHT IN A STORM.--BIG PUFFING.--A SPLENDID "TURNOUT."--WHO WAS HE?--A SUDDEN DISAPPEARANCE.--THE "SPANKING DOCTOR."--A FAIR VICTIM.--LOOSE LAWS.--DR. PULSEFEEL.--IMPUDENCE.--A FIDDLING DOCTOR.--AN ENCORE.--"CHEEK."--VARIOUS WAYS OF ADVERTISING.
One might say, with some propriety, that these characters--travelling doctors--should have been classed under the heading of our first chapter, as "humbugs;" but if we should put all under that head that belong there, O, where would the chapter end? As "all is not gold that glitters," so neither, on the other hand, is there anything so bad that no virtue can be found in it. No heart is so utterly depraved as to prevent any good thought or deed from emanating therefrom, though sometimes the good is quite imperceptible to us short-sighted mortals.
As the majority of physicians "turned" out of our medical colleges, or of those in practice in our cities, are unfit to have intrusted to their care the health and lives of our families, friends, or ourselves, so the majority of travelling doctors are to be reckoned equally untrustworthy; no more so.
If the blessed Saviour should return to earth, and travel from town to city, as he did eighteen hundred years ago, healing the sick, I really think there would be a less number believing in him now than then. Less gratitude for his marvellous cures there could not be; for then some of the miserable wretches, whom he healed free of charge, did not so much as return him thanks. This may be said of some of our patients at this day.
Let a medical man of ever so great reputation travel, and he is lost. A band of angels, on a healing mission, would stand no chance with a people who only expect humbugs to visit them. The Shakspearian inquiry would at once and repeatedly be put,--
"How chance it they travel? Their residence, both in reputation and profit, was better both ways!"
Let us view a few travelling doctors through the public eye:--
"So shall I dare to give him shape and hue, And bring his mazy-running tricks to view; From humbug's minions catch the scattered rays, That in one focus they may brightly blaze.
"I'd give our (nameless) knight, before he starts, A tireless mind, where never Conscience smarts; An oily tongue, which word should never speak To call a blush to Satan's brazen cheek; With, yet, a power of lungs the weak to move, Which lung-quiescent ... might approve; A changing face, which e'en might Homer feign, A ton of brass for every ounce of brain.
"Then launch him forth, right cunningly to rage Through the thin shams of this enlightened age; To tell the people they are lords of earth, And pick their pockets while he lauds their worth; Drug men with folly, which no clime engrosses, And sense deal out in homeopathic doses; And making goodness to his projects bend, With all right aims an ultra spirit blend.
* * * * *
"He leagues with those who number in their trade A falsehood told for every sixpence made; To Mammon mortgage all they have of heart, To keep their wealth, with priceless honor part. The fear of God the smallest of their fears, Rolling in wealth, but bankrupt in ideas; To save their purse, their souls contented lose, And count all right, if worldly gain accrues; Who, when they die, no memory leave behind, But in the curses of their cheated kind!
"With these Sir Humbug riches seeks to gain, And feels his way through lab'rinths of chicane; Embezzles, swindles, lies, until at last The eye of Justice on his crime is cast, When, drugged with wealth, he quits our plundered shore, And Texas boasts one fiery hero more."
The worst specimen of a travelling doctor I ever knew first appeared at R., one of the principal towns of Vermont, a few years ago. His name was Mariam; or that was what he called himself. He was a Canadian by birth, about twenty-five years of age, short, dark-complexioned, and claimed to be the seventh son of somebody. He was very illiterate, not being able to write a prescription, or his name, for that matter, when he came to R.
I visited his rooms at the hotel, after he had been in town some weeks, and noticed, among other things, that his table was strewn with sheets of paper, upon which he had been practising writing his signature. He opened here boldly. He sent out thousands of circulars in the various trains of cars running from R., distributing them in person, on the Poor Richard's principle, that "if you want your work done, do it; if not, send." He inserted cards in the two village papers, containing the most illiterate and preposterous statements, and hundreds flocked to see him. Imagine his knowledge, for he assured me, to whom he opened his heart in confidence, that he never read a page of a medical work in his life.
He first claimed to cure by the laying on of hands; but as he possessed no magnetic powers, he gradually abandoned that deception. As he could not write a prescription, and knew nothing of compounding medicines, he would go with a patient to a druggist's, and looking over the names of drugs on the bottles exposed on the shelves, order two or three articles at random, and, as one druggist assured me, of the most opposite properties; such as tincture of iron and iodide of potash, etc. (NOTE. The acid in the M. Tinct. iron sets the iodine free.)
His clothes were very seedy, "and the crown of his hat went flip flap," and his toes were healthy, "being able to get out to the air," when he came to R. Soon he was "in luck," and a nice suit of clothes, a new silk hat, and boots, speedily graced his not inelegant person. I saw him both before and after the transformation.
The following is a true copy of one of his certificates, taken from his circular:--
"A GREAT CURE OF AN OVARIAN TUMOR!
"This is to certify that Dr. Mariam cured me of an immense ovarian tumor of the left shoulder, weighing five pounds and a half, from which I suffered," etc., etc.
(Signed) Mrs. ---- ----.
"MALONE, N. Y."
On this item being ridiculed in the papers of R., Mariam changed it to a "rose cancer," and continued the certificate.
Mariam had been practising in Malone, N. Y., also at Whitehall, where, I was informed by a newspaper man, he was arrested for obtaining money under false pretences. He, however, escaped and fled, to practise his deceptions elsewhere. It was reported that he shuffled off his mortal coil by finally taking two ounces of laudanum, after the civil authorities had placed him comfortably in the county jail, where he had the pleasure of passing many days in viewing the world through an iron-barred window, and reflecting on his eventful career.
THE SINGING DOCTOR.
In remarkable contrast with the above described ignoramus, we present the following description, from two contributors, of an extraordinary personage, known for a time as "The Singing Doctor."
The "Hoosac Valley News" tells this story:--
"One day late in the autumn of 1860, while the rain poured in torrents, and the wind howled fearfully along the hills of old Plymouth, I was obliged to drive to Watertown. The 'Branch' was swollen to the river's size, and foamed madly down over the sombre rocks, while above my head, on the other side of the road, the trees rocked and swayed, as though about to fall into the seething, roaring waters below.
"Above, or mingled with the clashing of the elements, I heard some voice, as if singing. It struck me with wonder. I stopped to listen. It became more distinct, as if approaching. What was it? Who could it be, singing amid the fearful tempest?
"In the midst of my surmising, the object of my wonder came in sight, around a turn in the road just ahead of me.
"It was the Singing Doctor, whom I instantly recognized by his little old white horse, as well as by his own voice, to which I had before listened. The little animal was drenched like a 'drowned rat.' The doctor, in his open buggy, with no umbrella,--for the sweeping wind precluded the possibility of holding one,--and the driving rain pelting mercilessly upon his face and head, was singing.
"'You must be a happy man,' I exclaimed, 'to be singing amid this awful storm.'
"'Why not?' he replied. 'It is always better to be singing than sighing;' and we passed on through the dangerous defile, and separated....
"Last summer, as I journeyed through the Green Mountain State on a pleasure excursion, I met, on a romantic mountain pass, a magnificent turnout,--a splendid top carriage, drawn by four beautiful, jet black Morgan mares,--which did not attract my attention so much, however, as the music within the carriage. It was the Singing Doctor again, with his two little daughters, singing.
"The handsome and good-natured driver offered me the best half of the road; but still I lingered till the last notes of the song died away, when I drove past the 'Sanatorian,' wondering to myself what singing had to do with his increasing prosperity."
The remainder of the sketch is from the pen of a lady in Vermont:--
"I think it was during the spring of 1867 that our little 'city on the lake' was visited by the above remarkable character. We are often visited by migratory physicians, who are usually of the 'come-and-go' order; but this one burst upon us like a comet, with dazzling splendor, briefly announced, but at once proclaimed his determination of returning with the regularity of the full moon--repeating his visits every month. Few believed his last arrangement could be carried out, as his predecessors had generally fleeced the invalid public to their utmost at one visit, and if they ever again appeared, it would be under another name and phase. It soon became evident that one visit could not repay the outlay, for no ready posting-board was large enough to hold the agent's posters, which were printed in strips some twenty-five feet in length, and his advertisements occupied one, two, or more columns of the public journals, while he flooded the houses with his pictorial circulars.
"He was merely announced as 'The Sanatorian,' but was indorsed (true or false?) by some of New England's most respectable people. He came in grand style, as the papers briefly announced, thus:--
"'The Sanatorian. This distinguished physician proposes visiting us on the 18th inst.... The doctor comes in great style.... He has the finest carriage, and the gayest four black Morgan horses we have ever had the pleasure of riding after.'
"The driver, a handsome fellow, with full brown whiskers, curling hair, and a 'heavenly blue eye,' had taken the editor and writer of this last paragraph out to an airing. The team was photographed by the artists, and many of the best citizens had the pleasure of a ride in the easy carriage, and behind the swift ponies.
"The doctor usually remained incog. to the public. If they wished to see him, they must go to his 'parlors' at the best hotels. They did go. And now the most remarkable part of the affair remains to be recorded. An editor who interviewed him reports thus: 'The doctor rocks in a rocking-chair,--in fact, never sits in anything else,--or arises and walks the floor, and instantly, at a glance, tells every patient each pain and ache better than the patient could describe them himself. 'Are you a clairvoyant?' the editor asked.
"'Faugh! No, sir. Clairvoyancy is a humbug; merely power of mind over mind. A clairvoyant can go no farther than your own knowledge leads him, unless he guesses the rest,' was his emphatic reply.
"The same patients, disguised, visited him twice, but he would tell the same story to them as before. His diagnosis was truly wonderful.
"'What is your mode of treatment, or what school do you represent?'
"'There hangs my "school,"' he would reply, pointing to a New York college diploma. 'That, however, cures nobody. What cures one patient kills another. My opathy is to cure my patient by any means, regardless of "schools."'
"To some he gave 'nothing but water,' the patients affirmed; to others, pills, powders, syrups, or prescriptions. Well, he came the next month, to our surprise, and to the joy of most of his patients. He did the greatest amount of advertising on the first visit, doing less and less puffing each time. The rich, as well as the poor, visited him. He charged all one dollar. Then, if they declined treatment, he was satisfied; but if they doubted, or were sceptical, he refused all prescription. He advertised quite as much by telling one man he was past all help, and would die in eight weeks, which he did, as by curing the mayor of the city of a cough that jeoparded his life. If a poor woman had no money, he treated her just as cheerfully. Men he would not. His cures are said to have been remarkable. He made some eleven visits, and his patrons increased at each visit; but the novelty wore off before he disappeared. He was said to be an excellent musician, an author and composer, a man who was well read (a physician here who often conversed with him so informed the writer), could translate Latin and French, and converse with the mutes. When the day closed, he would see no more patients, but devoted his time to friends, to writing, or to music. Often the hotel parlor would be thronged at evening with the musical portion of the community. In personal appearance he was nothing remarkable,--medium size, wore full beard, had a sharp black eye, a quick, nervous movement, and his voice was not unpleasing to the ear.
"Why he--such a man--should travel, no one knew. He had an object, doubtless, to accomplish, realized it, and retired upon his true name, and from whence he came."
"YOURAN, THE SPANKER."
The writer has many times seen a fellow who travelled the country, nicknamed "the Spanker." He was a tall, lean, lank-looking Yankee, with red hair and whiskers, a light gray eye, and claimed to cure all diseases by "spatting" the patient, or the diseased part thereof, with cold water on his bare palm, the use of a battery, and a pill. He had served as door-keeper to a famous doctor, who created a furore, a few years since, by the exercise of his magnetic powers, making cripples to throw down their crutches, and walk off; the deaf to hear, the blind to see; or, at least, many of them thought they did, for the time being, which answered the doctor's immediate purpose. But one fine morning the magnetic doctor found his door-keeper was among the "missing." He had learned the trade, and set up on his own account.
This fellow was as ignorant of physic as Jack Reynolds was of Scripture. Reynolds, who killed Townsend in 1870, when under sentence of death, listened attentively for the first time to the story of the Saviour's crucifixion in atonement for our sins, when he rather startled the visitors, as well as the eminent divine, with the inquiry, "Did that affair happen lately?"
He was not, it is evident, conversant with Scripture. "The Spanker" was not read in medicine. His treatment was the most ridiculous and repulsive of the absurdities of the nineteenth century. The patient was stripped of his clothes, and often so severely spanked as to compel him, or her, to cry out with pain.
The beautiful young wife of the Rev. Mr. F., of Vermont, was brought to the writer for medical advice. The patient was carefully examined, and the minister taken aside, and assured that the lady was past all help; she was in the last stages of consumption; that she would, in all probability, die with the falling of the autumn leaves, or within two months.
The following day the minister carried the patient to the spanker doctor, who declared her case quite curable. The minister employed him to treat the patient.
A few weeks later I saw the minister, seated on the doorstep of his house, bowed in grief. He was on the lookout for me, as I was expected that way. He called to me, and asked if I would view the corpse of his once beautiful wife. I dismounted, and entered the house of mourning. There lay the poor, fair young face, within the narrow confines of the coffin. The cheeks were hollow, the eyes sunken, and the nostrils closed, and I doubt if any air had passed through the left one for weeks--pathognomonic indications of that fell disease, consumption.
"She did not live as long, doctor, as you thought she would, in August," said Mr. F.
"No, sir: I did not then make allowance for the harsh treatment of Dr. ----, that, I am advised, soon followed."
"O, sir," he exclaimed, in agony of soul, while the tears coursed freely down his cheeks, and fell upon the coffin,--"O, sir, God only knows what the poor thing suffered. Dr. Youran said the spatting and cold water treatment would save her, and I was anxious to try it, and did, till the poor, dear soul begged us, with tearful eyes, not to punish her further, but to let her die in peace."
The ignorant scoundrel is still at large, preying upon the invalid public. It is a burning shame that the laxity of our laws permits such ignorant, heartless wretches to go about the country, imposing upon the credulity of invalidity.
The invalids, as we said in our opening, expect to be humbugged, and will believe no honest statement of a case and its probabilities, but will too often swallow the lies and braggadocio, and finally the prescriptions, of ignorant charlatans and impostors.
Mr. Jeaffreson, in the "Book about Doctors," before often quoted, says of the English travelling doctor of the last century,--
"When Dr. Pulsfeel was tired of London, or felt the want of country air, he adopted the pleasant occupation of fleecing rustic simplicity. For his journeys he provided himself with a stout and fast-trotting hack--stout, that it might bear weighty parcels of medical composition; fast, that in case the ungrateful rabble should commit the indecorum of stoning their benefactor as an impostor,--a mishap that would occasionally occur,--escape might be effected.
"In his circuit the doctor took in all the fairs, markets, wakes, and public festivals, not disdaining to stop an entire week, or even month, at an assize town, where he found the sick anxious to benefit by his marvellous wisdom.
"His manner of making himself known in a new place was to ride boldly into the thickest crowd of a town, and inform his listeners that he had come straight from the Duke of So-and-so, or the Emperor of Wallachia, out of an innate desire to do good to his fellow-creatures. He was born in that very town. He had left it when an orphan boy, to seek his fortune in the great world. His adventures had been wonderful. He had visited the Sultan and the Great Mogul; and the King of Mesopotamia had tried to persuade him to tarry and keep the Mesopotamians out of the devil's clutches by the offer of a thousand pieces of gold a month. He had cured thousands of emperors, kings, queens, princes, grand duchesses, and generalissimos. He sold all kinds of medicaments--dyes for the hair, washes for the complexion, lotions, rings, and love charms, powders to stay the palsy, fevers, croup, and jaundice. His powder was expensive; he couldn't help that; it was made of pearl-dust and dried violet leaves from the middle of Tartary. Still, he would sell his friends a package at bare cost,--one crown,--as he did not want to make money out of them.
"Nothing could surpass the impudence of the fellow's lies, save the admiration with which his credulous auditors swallowed his assertions. There they stood--stout yeomen, drunken squires, gay peasant girls, gawky hinds and gabbling crones, deeming themselves in luck to have lived to behold such a miracle of wisdom. Possibly a young student, home from Oxford, with the rashness of inexperience, would smile scornfully, and cry out, 'Quack!' (quack-salver, from the article he used to cure wens); but such interruption was usually frowned down by the orthodox friends of the student, and he was warned that he would come to no good end, if he went on as he had begun, a contemptuous unbeliever, and a mocker of wise men."
A MUSICAL DOCTOR.
Mr. Dayton, vocalist, told me of a fellow who cut a swell in various capacities a few years ago. He first knew him as a fiddler at fairs. The next time he turned up was under the following circumstances:--
"With Madam L. and some other renowned vocalist, he was giving concerts, when one day their pianist was taken suddenly sick. Madam was in great trepidation.
"'What shall I do? The concert cannot be postponed, and we cannot sing unless we have an accompaniment,' exclaimed the lady.
"I looked about, made some inquiry,--it was in a small town,--but no competent piano player could be found.
"'We must abandon the concert,' I said, which seemed inevitable, when there came a sharp knock at the door.
"'Come in,' I called.
"The door opened, and instead of a servant, as I had expected, there appeared a tall, stout specimen of the genus homo, with large black eyes, and long, dark hair flowing down on to his shoulders, making his best bow, and what he doubtless intended as his sweetest smile.
"I offered him a chair, and inquired how I could serve him.
"'You want a piano player?'
"'Yes.'
"'Well, I will undertake to assist you in your strait. Allow me to see your programme,' he continued, very patronizingly, waiting for us to make no reply whatever.
"'Are you--that is, do you play rapidly, and at sight?' asked madam.
"He replied only by a gesture, a sort of pitiful contempt for the ignorance of any person who should ask him such a question....
"Half past seven came, and we went on the stage. I do not know what the fellow's prelude was; I was otherwise engaged; but his accompaniments were made up, and after he had heard the note sung to which he should have accompanied,--O, it was a horrid jargon, a consecutive blast of discords, a tempest of incomprehensibleness.
"Madam caught her breath at the first pausing-place, and signalled him to stop. He took a side glance at her, misinterpreted her, and played on the louder. It became ludicrous in the extreme. He played the minor strains, or what should have been minor, in the major key. He only stopped when he saw us leave the stage. The audience cheered. He took it all as a compliment to himself as a pianist, stopped, and made his most profound obeisance to the house. They laughed and cheered the harder. He mistook it for an encore, bowed again, and returned to the piano. Then the house came down. They stamped, they laughed, they shouted. The boys in the gallery cat-called; the building fairly shook. I ran back to see what it was all about, and there was the pianist (?) beating furiously at the keys, the perspiration pouring in streams from his face. But his playing could only be seen to be appreciated; it could not be heard for the stamping of the audience. He finally desisted, and with repeated halts and smiles, he bowed himself off the stage.
"His grand debut and retirement upon the stage occurred the same night. Madam would not permit him to go on again, and we sang the duets from ---- without accompaniment. I think the fellow knew nothing of music; he had 'cheeked' it right through.
"Perhaps it was two years afterwards--I was staying at the B. Hotel, Maine--when I heard a deal of talk about a great doctor then in town. After dinner the first day, I noticed a man sauntering leisurely from the dining-hall in embroidered slippers, white silk stockings, black pants, gaudy dressing-gown, with long hair falling down over his shoulders. I thought I recognized that face. I approached him after a while, and called him by name.
"'What? Why, I think you are mistaken. I do not know you, sir,' he stammered; and then I knew he had recognized me.
"'O, yes; I am Dayton. You remember you were our pianist once in a strait, in S.'
"'O, ah! Come up to my room,' he said, leading the way.
"I followed, when he told me he was doing a good thing at the practice of medicine about the principal towns of the state, and begged I would say nothing about his former occupation. He stated to me that he had been to Europe, and had been studying medicine meantime, which I have since ascertained was entirely untrue."
And this was the fellow over whom the town was running wild.
The idea of some men trying to become good physicians is as ridiculously absurd as Horace Greeley's farming, or trying to ascertain if "cundurango is explosive." The requisite qualities are not in them. They may keep along a few years, or possibly, in communities where there is no competition, succeed in making the people believe they are as good as the common run, and thus succeed on brass instead of brains.
Some of these brainless travelling impostors employ a female or two to precede them from place to place, and make diligent inquiry when the great doctor who performed such marvellous cures in some adjoining town mentioned was coming there. Thus putting it in the shape of an inquiry, it was less likely to excite suspicion.
Two females--one an elderly, lady-like looking woman, the other younger, and anything but lady-like--travelled for a doctor, on a salary, during the summer and autumn of 1868. A lady whose occupation took her from town to town, seeing the two females at various hotels where the doctor was advertised, inveigled the younger one into the confession, in her bad temper, and thus I got my evidence. Another travels on his hair; another on his face; and a fourth on his free advice and treatment; while a fifth succeeds by absurdity of dress.
XIV. SCENES FROM EVERY-DAY PRACTICE
"History, so warm on meaner themes, Is cold on this."--COWPER'S TASK.
"Let no one say that his task is o'er, That bonds of earth are for him no more, Until by some kind or holy deed His name from forgetfulness is freed; Until by words from his lips or pen, Dying, he's 'missed' from the ranks of men." ALICE LEE.
THE BEGGAR BOY AND THE GOLDEN-HAIRED HEIRESS.--MY MIDNIGHT CALL.--THE CONSCIENCE-STRICKEN MOTHER.--"OLD SEROSITY."--THE ILLEGITIMATE CHILD.--DEATH OF THE BEAUTIFUL.--WHO IS THE HEIR?--A TOUCHING SCENE.--FATE OF THE "BEGGAR BOY."--THE TERRIBLE CALLER.--AN IRISH SCENE, FROM DR. DIXON'S BOOK.--BIDDY ON A RAMPAGE.--TERRY ON HIS DEATH BED.--THE STOMACH PUMP.--BIDDY WON'T, AND SHE WILL.--THE BETRAYED AND HER BETRAYER.--"IS THERE A GOD IN ISRAEL?"--THE HUSBANDLESS MOTHER.--THE CRISIS AND COURT.--ANSWER.--THERE IS A "GOD IN ISRAEL."
Ill-clad poverty, benumbed with cold, was abroad alone, exposed to that winter's night, as the white snow fleeced the frost-hardened ground. But never mind earth's cold bosom. The rich man's heart warms him, making him merry, however blows the wind or rages the storm. Shiver, shiver on, beggar poor! Starvation and sense-dulling cold alone belong to you.
Through the crunching snow-drifts trudged a weary boy, with alms-basket on his shivering arm. From his figure, he seemed not over ten years old; but his face was so wan and melancholy, that it was difficult to tell how many year-blights the beggar child had experienced. Summer clothes were still clinging to him; a tattered comforter was the only winter article he wore.
A gay carriage rolled noiselessly by, with a beautiful girl within, well wrapped in fur and cloak, whilst the snow was dashed from the rapid wheels like white dust. She saw, through the dim light, the weary, thin-clad boy, as he stopped, with face bent aside to the flake-burdened blast, to gaze at the smoking horses, as they plunged through the fast-deepening sheet. She dropped the sash, and threw the boy a coin. It sank from her warm hand deep into the drifted snow. It might have brought him bread and a cheering fagot, but the smitten child never found it. The snow closed over the coveted prize, while the blast grew keener.
On, on toiled the beggar boy, through drift and darkness, more weary as night gathered on. Thus is it ever with the humble poor; their load grows heavier as life lessens. No light or warming hearth is there--things that make house a home--to welcome the wandering boy.
The clock had just struck two as I was summoned to the house of Mrs. T. The same carriage that, in the evening, had borne the beautiful young girl, awaited at my door, with its impatient horses snorting against the frosted air. A few minutes later I entered the house. Mrs. T. met me in the hall, with her face deadly pale, and manner much excited. Her singular nervousness had before struck me on my visits, whenever her daughter ailed. She informed me that her "darling Emily" was very ill with a high fever.
We entered the chamber. The young girl lay with her head turned aside upon the pillow, her golden-brown hair scattered in wild profusion upon its white cover, while the nurse was gently moistening the fevered palm of her outstretched hand. The pulse was beating wildly at the wrist and temples, and fever heat glowed from her lustrous eyes. Whilst the nurse held the light to her face, the traces of dried tears were revealed upon her suffused cheeks.
"Heartache surely is here," I said to myself.
There was something in the whole appearance of my patient that excited my curiosity and surprise. Only eight or ten hours had passed since she, from her carriage, had thrown the snow-claimed alms to the beggar boy, and now a high fever was running hot through every artery of her body.
Silently seated by the bedside, after administering a cooling draught I awaited and watched for the changes that might ensue. Her mother sat near the fire, its blaze lighting up every feature of her once beautiful face, which still remained very pale. In all my intercourse with Mrs. T., I never before had so prolonged an opportunity of examining in detail the expression of her countenance. The longer I gazed on her, the more satisfied I became that she had not passed through life without a fearful history.
It was this sensation which struck me when I first became acquainted with her. A few vague rumors had floated about relative to her history; that a strange desertion of her husband had taken place, and that he afterwards was found drowned in the river, near his residence, and that by his death Mrs. T. had become possessed of an immense estate. These stories had, however, soon subsided; and as her means were ample, and her charities liberal, the gossips of the town quietly dropped the past, and speculated upon the future, as should all respectable gossips.
The voice of the patient diverted my thoughts; a few words were murmured, and then the lips pressed tremblingly together, and the tear-drops again started to her cheeks. Suddenly springing up in bed, and threading her long, curling hair through her slender fingers, she exclaimed, in a thrilling, delirious tone,--
"It cannot be true! O, mother--tell me, mother!"
Mrs. T. fairly leaped to the bedside, and placing her hand over the daughter's mouth, with affrighted gestures, she exclaimed,--
"What is it? What does she mean? My God, doctor, she raves!"
The girl fell back on her pillow; the mother stood, pale and trembling, by the bedside, with a nameless terror depicted on every feature. Turning to me, in a quick, restless voice, she bade me hasten to give her child a quieting draught.
"O, anything that will keep her from raving!"
The room was not over warm for such a bitter night, yet the perspiration stood upon the brow of the excited mother like the fallen dew.
"Conscience must lie here," I thought to myself.
In the course of an hour the sufferer slumbered heavily; her breathing was hurried and oppressed, the fever had increased, and her moanings were constant.
Day was breaking, as I left my young patient to return home through the falling snow. As I looked out of the carriage window, I saw a little boy sitting on the cold walk. It was the poor beggar boy of yesterday, as thinly clad, with his pale cheek as white as the snowdrifts through which he had toiled. I ordered the coachman to stop.
"What brought you out, and where are you going, on this cold winter morning, my poor boy?" I exclaimed.
He raised his beautiful dark eyes to my face, and my heart grieved at their look of utter hopelessness, as he faintly answered, "To beg for me and old grandma."
"Are you not very cold, in those thin clothes?" I asked.
His little teeth chattered, as he replied, "O, I am very--cold--sir."
The impatient horses plunged violently in the traces, and the coachman asked to be allowed to drive on. I gave the poor boy the few silver coins that were in my pocket, and we passed on.
I never saw that boy but once again; his look haunts me to this day.
As I rode on, memory was busy tracing where I had ever seen features like his. The dark hair, that lay in uncombed curls upon his forehead, and clustered warmly about his neck, as though in protection against the bitter cold; his large, black eyes, with their long lashes; the finely-chiselled outlines of his mouth and nose,--these all impressed me that I had somewhere seen a face which strikingly resembled his. Poor boy! beauty was his only possession.
At breakfast a letter was handed me, summoning me immediately to one of my own children, who lay sick in a distant town. Before leaving I wrote a hurried note to Mrs. T., stating the cause of my sudden departure, desiring her to call another physician, during my absence. The young girl's fate and the poor beggar boy's face were almost forgotten in my own cares.
On the sixth day following, I again found myself at home. My first thought was for poor Emily. I dreaded to ask; there was something whispering to my heart that all was not well.
My suspense was not long; a messenger had just left, stating that the dear girl was fast failing; that her physician had pronounced her laboring under typhus fever. My God, how my heart sank under these words! I had dreaded this mistake after I left. Alas! how many have fallen by the name of a disease, and not by the disease itself!
After a hurried meal, I drove rapidly to Mr. T.'s residence. The house door was quietly opened by a servant, and in another minute I stood in the chamber of the invalid. The mantel was crowded with numerous vials. The close atmosphere of the sick-room was sickening. By the bedside, with her face bowed over one of the pale hands of the daughter, which she held in both of her own, sat the wretched mother. It seemed to me as though ten years had passed over her faded and care-worn countenance, since I last gazed upon it. I could not stir; my heart stood still. Her hair had become entirely gray.
I gained heart to approach; the desolate mother heard me, and turning quickly she sprang from her chair, and placing her hands on my shoulders, she bowed her head: she sobbed wildly, as though her heart would break.
"Look, look, doctor! Would you have known her? O, my God, she is leaving me! Save her--O, save her!" and the wretched mother fell fainting to the floor. We gently raised and bore her to her own chamber. In a few moments I returned to Emily. She turned her head languidly towards me, while her right hand moved as if to take mine. How dry was the palm! Her color had faded away; the once rounded cheeks were sunken. O, I will not describe her!
The physician who had been called, after my departure, had found her with high fever and delirium. He mistook the excitement of the brain for its inflammation. O, fatal error! A consultation was called. The second comer was notedly a man who viewed every excitement as caused by "an over-action of the vessels," and bleeding was its only relief. The nervous system he entirely ignored. From his theory, man was a mere combination of blood, blood-vessels, and biliary secretions, more or less deranged. Calomel, salts, and the lancet were his Hercules. The grand causa mortis amongst the human family was "serosity." Hence some evil-minded wag amongst his brethren had named him "Old Serosity."
The poor child had been bled, cupped, and purged, in order to subdue this "over-action of the blood-vessels." Verily it may cure the vessels, but it certainly kills the patient.
The life current was nigh exhausted; there was no blood left for renewal of brain, nerve, or vital tissue. My heart was bitter against this murderous adherence to a false principle. Here a human life, that of a young and spotless girl, was the forfeit.
But to return to the thread of the narrative.
"O, I am glad you have come back to me. Do try to save me, doctor," she said, with great effort. Sending the nurse from the room, I quickly pressed the young girl's hand within my own, and said to her,--
"Do you really wish to live, Emily?"
"Yes, yes," she murmured; "I am very young to die."
"Then, my dear, tell me truly what has so terribly shocked your nervous system; tell me." With a strength that startled me, she searched under the mattress side, and drew forth a small note, which she silently placed in my hand. It was discolored by time. I opened it; the date was above twelve years back. It ran thus:--
"When you receive this, Mira (Mrs. T.'s given name), my career will have ended. By my death you will inherit all. Let my unborn child have its just, legal claim. Your child, Emily, take to your home as though she were an adopted orphan. Let not her youth be blighted by the knowledge of her unblest birth. I forgive you. Adieu, forever. H. T."
"O my God, the doomed child is illegitimate," I said. I stooped down and kissed the sufferer's forehead, and promised that I would be a father to her. "Come, cheer up," I whispered, "for your mother's sake. If she has sinned she has suffered much for your sake; forgive her."
"I do forgive her," she whispered, "but can I forget myself, unblessed as I am? But I must know the whole truth. O, where is the right heir of all this wealth? My memory returns now, indistinctly, to my earlier days. A cloud intervenes. I remember but a small cottage, in a deep wood, where mother often came to see me, and a tall woman took care of me. Then came a gay carriage, and took me to a large house; but I never again returned to the cottage in the wood. There, at the large house, mother left me a long time; and when she came back--O, doctor, I can speak no longer. Do give me something to strengthen me, and I will try yet to live."
A cordial was administered by my own hands, and in a short time sleep overcame her. Night again closed in; the wind had sunk to rest with the setting sun. Another night of bitter cold was ushered in. Woe to the poor! Woe to the hungry and the fireless.
* * * * *
As I entered the mother's apartments I found her sitting by a private secretary, which had been brought from the library. Its lid was open, and as I seated myself she took from a package of tied letters a sealed paper, and placing it in my hands, said,--
"Read this at your leisure, doctor. My pilgrimage of life is nigh ended. You will judge how great my sin, and how severe has been my punishment. I ask no forgiveness, for there will be none left to forgive me."
Well, I knew her heart was nigh crushed!
I sought the daughter's chamber. How still was everything! The very candle, with its long flame, parted by the thickened wick-char, seemed not to flicker, as it burned dimly on. I looked at the bed; the sweet girl lay with both hands crossed upon her bosom, as though in prayer. An orange-blossom had dropped from her grasp, and lay neglected by her side; her life-hand never touched it more! Death had claimed his bride!
A wild shriek sounded through the house. The erring mother now knew that she was alone in the great world.
Whilst the shrouding of the dead took place I retired and opened the sealed package. It briefly told its tale of sin and sorrow.
It told how from the first love Emily was the fruit, and how, unknown to all, the child had been secreted; how, about three years after Emily's birth, the mother was married to Harold T., whom she never loved; and how, by a singular accident, the knowledge of her transgression became known to her husband; that, after violently cursing her for her sin and deception, he left her, and shortly afterwards committed suicide; that the letter (written by him just before his death), which was so fatal to the peace and life of Emily, had accidentally dropped from the secretary, and was picked up by her (that night after her return in the carriage), unknown to the mother until the sixth day after my return, when she missed it.
The narrative went on to state that a male child was born after T.'s death, and that, seized with an insane fury, she resolved that he never should inherit its father's name and wealth; and that, through the assistance of a nurse, it was placed with a sum of money at a beggar's door, and a dead child laid beside the mother instead; that before sending the infant away, the nurse tattooed its father's initials on its left arm. The beggar had died, and all traces of the child had been lost. At length her guilty conscience so reproached her that the mother had instituted search for the child, but all in vain.
As I read this tale of crime and repentance, busy memory traced out the features of the beggar boy! Like a sudden light it burst upon me--those features that had so tormented my memory to recall were those of the unhappy mother.
Quickly I went to her room. She was not there. I hastened to Emily's. The mother was wildly clasping the enshrouded form of her daughter, and weeping as though her heart would break asunder. Gently removing her to her own chamber, I intimated that another child, long lost, might yet be restored to her.
She listened as one bewildered. I then informed her of my adventure with the beggar boy.
It was hardly day-dawn as I entered the carriage. My breath froze against the window panes. After a short ride the horses stopped before the wretched snow-covered hovel (where he had seen the beggar child once enter). I opened the carriage door, leaped out, and placed my hand on the latch. The door opened. It was neither bolted nor locked; for no thief would enter there. In the corner of the room lay a bundle of rugs, with some straw, but it was unoccupied. Near the fireplace, where nought but a little well-charred bark remained upon the cold ashes, half reclining in a large wooden chair, lay the beggar boy.
His cap had fallen on the ground, and his dark, curling hair fell clustering over his extended arm, as his head rested upon it. He had seemingly fallen asleep the night before, for his thin summer clothes were on his person, and his basket, yet filled with the fragments of broken feasts, remained untouched at his feet. I placed my hand upon his beautiful head; it was icy cold. Quickly brushing back the fallen ringlets from his face, the unmistakable evidence of death met my gaze.
He had apparently fallen asleep weeping, for a tear-drop lay frozen between the long lashes that fringed the eyelids.
I raised the stiffened body of the ill-fated youth, and tearing away the thin sleeve from his left arm, I distinctly discovered the letters 'H. T.' thereon.
Deserted, famished, and frozen, death had claimed the darling, lone boy before he knew a mother's love!
This sad tale is taken from "Scenes in Northern Practice by Dr. Dewees, N. Y."--Scalpel, 1855. (And like all the stories herein, it has the merit of being true to the letter.)
THE TERRIBLE CALLER.
It was about half past nine in the morning.
My office door suddenly opened, and looking up from my writing, I saw, standing in the passage-way, a very tall man, in a long white frock, reaching to his knees, sleeves rolled to his elbows, a slouched hat set back on his head, his face painted or bedaubed with some white substance, and his eyes gleaming upon me most intensely!
There he stood, looking almost fiercely upon me, while he held the door-knob with his left hand, and grasped with his right a long carving-knife, which was thrust through his belt.
"Are you the doctor?" he shouted with excitement.
"I am the doctor," I replied, calmly awaiting my fate.
He instantly stepped inside the room, when close behind him was revealed the form of a very short man, who held a Kossuth hat in one hand, while with a handkerchief in the other, he stanched the blood that had evidently been flowing pretty freely from his head.
"This man has cut himself very bad on the head; big iron wheel come down on him: can you fix him up?" asked the first. This accounted for his excited manner. But how about the bedaubed face and the huge knife?
I examined the wound, only through the scalp, less than three inches in length; and washing away the surplus clotted blood, I clipped off the hair, and soon secured the edges of the gaping wound by taking a stitch or two through the scalp.
While so doing, the young man rolled his eyes up to his tall companion,--who had explained that they were cooks at Young's Hotel, and that the spit wheel and shaft used for turning meat had fallen eight feet; by which the assistant had barely escaped being killed,--and with a commendable show of thought for his employer's interest, rather than his own comfort or safety, he anxiously exclaimed,--
"Jim, do you think that gentleman's 'order,' what I had in the spit, is overdone yet?"
AN IRISH SCENE.
A young Irish girl, with a wild shriek, an "Och, hone!" and "Ah, murther!" and "Hulla-boo--a--hulla-boo, poor Terry! Ah, why did I taze ye?" burst into my office one evening, upsetting the servant, and actually laying hold on me with her hands, as she exclaimed,--
"Ah, docther, docther, come now, for the love o' the moother that bore ye; come this blessed minute. I've killed poor Terry, an' niver shall see him again. Ah, murther, murther! Why did I taze ye?"
Trying in vain to calm her, I hastily drew on my boots, and almost ran after her to a wretched tenement, some quarter of a mile off, and found the object of the girl's solicitude alive and kicking, with his lungs in the best of order, standing on the stairs that led to his miserable chamber, with a broken scissors in his hand, stirring busily the contents of a tea-cup.
It seems that he had been courting my fair guide, and after the period she had fixed for her final answer to his declaration, she had bantered him with a refusal, which her solicitude for his life plainly showed was far enough from her real intentions.
In his despair he had swallowed an ounce of laudanum, which he had procured from some injudicious druggist, which act had sent Biddy off after me in such terror. He was now mixing a powder which he had obtained from another druggist, who, knowing of his love affair, it will be seen acted with more wisdom than the first, as Terry let slip enough in his hearing to show what he wanted to do with the "ratsbane" for which he inquired; and Biddy, like a true daughter of Eve, had made no secret in the neighborhood that she valued her charms beyond the poor fellow's bid.
As soon as she approached, he, by some inopportune remark, re-excited her wrath, and she again declared she wouldn't have him, "if he wint to the divil."
Poor Terry, in his red shirt and blue stockings, and an attitude of the grandest kind, but covering, as we soon found, a desperate purpose, flourished his tea-cup, and stirred its contents with the scissors, constantly exclaiming,--
"Ah, Biddy, will ye have me? Ye'll have me now--will ye not?"
Still Biddy refused.
"Divil a bit will I let the docther come near me till ye say yis! Sure, weren't we children together in the ould counthry? and didn't we take our potaties and butthermilk out o' the same bowl? And yer mother, that's now dead, always said ye were to be me wife; and now ye're kapin' coompany with that dirty blackguard, Jim O'Connor,--divil take him for a spalpeen. Ah, Biddy, will ye have me?"
And he flourished the cup, and stirred away vigorously with the scissors.
Biddy's blood was up at the disrespectful mention made of Jimmy's name, for "he had a winnin' way wid him," and she shouted at the top of her voice,--
"No, be the St. Patrick, I'll niver have ye."
With an awful gulp, Terry drained the cup, rolled up his eyes, and with one most impassioned yet ludicrous look at her, he fell upon his knees on the step.
Biddy followed, in strong hysterics.
The whole affair was so irresistibly ludicrous that I scarce could keep from laughing; but on observing the bottle, labelled "laudanum," and looking into the bottom of the tea-cup, and discovering a white powder, I changed my prognosis, and hastened to the druggist's near, to see what it was, and procure an antidote, should it really prove "ratsbane."
To my great relief, the man of drugs informed me, laughingly, that he had given Terry a quantity of chalk and eight grains of tartar emetic, as he learned that Terry was already in possession of the ounce of laudanum, and all the neighbors knew that Biddy had driven him to desperation by flirting with his rival, Jim O'Connor. The young man had judiciously told Terry that the powder would make the laudanum sure to operate more effectually.
"How long will it take?" he asked, and bagged all for use when the refusal should come.
My course was now clear. I was in for sport. Sending the druggist's clerk for my stomach-pump, to be in readiness in case the emetic should not operate,--which was scarcely impossible, for eight grains of tartar emetic, taken at a dose, would almost vomit the potatoes out of a bag,--I waited the result.
As for Biddy, I let her lie; for I thought she deserved her punishment. My heart was always tender towards the sex, and I generally expected a "fellow-feeling."
In a short time it became evident that Terry's stomach was not so tough as his will, and he began to intermingle long and portentous sighs with his prayers, and to perspire freely. I gave him a wide berth, in anticipation of the Jonah that was to come up shortly. I was anxious now that Biddy should revive in time to witness his grand effort. Terry was tough, and held out. Shortly she revived, and suddenly starting up, and recollecting the situation, she made one bound for Terry, crying,--
"Ah, Terry, Terry, dear Terry! I'll have ye now. Yis, I will; and I don't care who hears me. I always loved ye, but that divil's baby, Mag, always kept tellin' me ye'd love me the betther if I didn't give in to ye too soon. Ah, Terry, dear, only live, and I'll go to the ends of the world for ye. Ah, an' what would me poor mother say, if she was here? Och, hone! Och, hone! Docther, now what are ye doin'? A purty docther ye are; an' ye pumped out yer own counthryman, that didn't die, sure, an' he tuk twice as much as poor Terry."
Meantime the boy had arrived with the pump.
"Up wid ye now, and use the black pipe ye put down the poor fellow's throat over the way last summer. I'd take it mesilf, if it would do; but God knows whether I'd be worth the throuble."
As Terry had not yet cast up his accounts, and the stomach-pump was at hand, I determined to make a little more capital out of the case, and thrusting the long, flexible India rubber tube down poor Terry's throat, having separated his teeth by means of a stick, and holding his head between my knees, I soon had the satisfaction of depositing the laudanum and tartar emetic in a swill pail, the only article of the toilet the place afforded.
After years proved Terry and Biddy most loving companions. He never, even when drunk, more than threatened her "wid a batin', which she was desarvin'," and she never forgave "that divil's baby, Mag," for her cruel experiment on her heroic and devoted Terry.--Practice of a New York Surgeon.
A LIFE SCENE.
The Situation.--I was young, but, with a wife and child dependent upon my practice for food, raiment, and shelter, I was striving manfully; with my household gods and goods I had located here, in a small village, a year before. My beginning was encouraging, my success in practice more than flattering. But an immense opposition had met and nearly overthrown me, in the form of a man, a deacon of the ---- church. He was one of those "rule or ruin" men whom you will find in every one-horse village. I did not at first know my man,--he did not know me,--or I should have avoided his ill will. I did not know his tenaciousness of titles--he was an esquire also--which was my first unpardonable offence. He swore--"as deacons do"--that I should not practise in that town. I swore, as doctors will, that "so long as I could obtain a potato and a clam a day I would remain while he was my opposer." Clams could be dug at low water, within a few rods of my house; potatoes I grew on the quarter acre of ground given me as partial inducement to settle in that town. His two drunken sons were his emissaries of evil, set on for my overthrow, in addition to the father's voice and known opposition, which few dared to meet. My practice dwindled. A few Nicodemuses came by night, but my darling wife trembled for my very life when I had a night call. My provision was often short, my poor horse was mere skin and bones, standing, day after day, gnawing his empty manger.
"O, is there a God in Israel?" I cried, in my anguish, more than once.
Yes, the reply came to my prayers; there is a God of recompense.
* * * * *
The Betrayed.--My patient was a young girl, over whose golden head but seventeen summers had flown, on rosy wings. Her form was sylph-like, and face as beautiful as the opening flower in the golden sunshine of early day. She was an attendant at his church, a member of his Sabbath school class, and a singer in the choir....
I was shown to her room. Sorrow, and not disease, had left its impress upon her fair young face. Rumor had already given me a hint on which to diagnose my case.
"Who has done this wicked thing?" I asked, holding her hand, and looking kindly into her eyes.
"O, my God! O, I must not tell," she cried, springing up from her couch. I never shall forget the terror depicted on that fair young countenance, as she pronounced these words.
"You must tell. You should not suffer this shame and burden alone. Tell me truly. Who has done it? I must know. There may be a chance to cover the shame and make your babe legitimate. Come," I said.
"O, sir, dear doctor, it can never be;" and she fell back on her pillow, weeping and wringing her hands in awful anguish.
"Come, it shall be done;" and I firmly held to the point.
She arose. I gave her a bowl and napkin that were near; she bathed her inflamed and swollen eyes, then, with surprising calmness and fortitude, took a pencil and a bit of paper from the light-stand at her bedside, and wrote a name.
She then handed it to me, saying "'Tis he." I read the name. I jumped to my feet. I forgot my tender patient. I forgot all but my own sufferings, and those of my dear little wife and darling babe, and their enemy, as I cried out,--
"O, my God in Israel! I have got him! I shall be avenged!"
"O, don't, doctor! What is the matter?" exclaimed the affrighted girl, rising in bed. I had rushed, almost frantically across the room and back. "Forgive me," I said, "I--I forgot myself. Pardon me."
"O, sir, I thought you were mad."
"I was, dear girl. It is past. Now to your case." And I proceeded to unfold to her unsophisticated mind the true state of affairs. Here was a pure, respectable, though poor young girl, under age, who had been betrayed, locked into an office, and seduced by a son of the squire, and deserted, threatened--left to bear the burden and disgrace alone. She dared not divulge the name of her destroyer, because of the position of his family in the community. I dared. But to bring her mind up above her fears, to compel the young man to make restitution, as far as lay in his power, was a severe task. It was my duty to do this; sweeter then than duty, it was my revenge! By implicating the real villain, I released several other young men from suspicion, particularly one young man with red hair.
The girl was taken away from the sight of dear sister's sinister looks, and the influence and threats of the seducer, and secret offers of bribery of the deacon, his father.
The law took its course. No eye could see the hand that worked the machinery. The time was counted almost to a day, as the result proved. The young man was arrested, and gave bonds. It became the theme of general conversation. I was interviewed. I was dumb--deaf--blind! Threats and bribes proved equally ineffectual to induce me to give an opinion, or a pledge not to appear in the coming trial at the next term of the Superior Court. To marry the poor, unfortunate girl was beneath the dignity of the seducer and family. They would pay their last farthing first, or the young man would sooner go to prison for the crime. His two sisters carried their heads higher than ever. The two sons threatened my life. But I kept on the even tenor of my way. The girl became a mother.
"Next Tuesday court sits," whispered everybody, and nothing in town was discussed but the probabilities of the pending lawsuit.
The lawsuit was nothing, the fine was nothing, which the justice might impose; even imprisonment was nothing in comparison to acknowledgment of an illegitimate child by the deacon's family, notwithstanding the child was not red-haired, but much resembled its reputed father, the deacon's son.
There was no trial. The squire paid a sum of money to the idiotic old father of the beautiful young mother, and agreed, orally, to support the child, and the suit was withdrawn. But this virtually acknowledged the child, and the girl returned to her father's roof for shelter, and a place wherein to weep alone over her so-called fatherless child, and hide her shame (?) from the uncharitable world.
The town became too cramped for the squire and his beautiful family. He sold out, but not before he had lost his rule there, and was hanged in effigy as being "too Secesh."
The seducer married a frail beauty, who mourns a drunken, brutish husband.
The other son became steady, and married a lovely girl--my first patient.
The daughters never wedded. Too proud to marry a poor man, too poor and destitute of real beauty or accomplishments for a wealthy or refined man to desire to wed them, they became servants and lackeys. If I desire a lunch at a certain saloon, one of them awaits my order. No matter about the other unfortunate, unloved girl. The father is an imbecile invalid. God is my witness, my judge, I long ago buried my hard feelings against them; they have only my commiseration.
XV. DOCTORS' FEES AND INCOMES
"Three faces wears the doctor; when first sought, An angel's and a god's, the cure half wrought; But, when, the cure complete, he seeks his fee, The d----l looks then less terrible than he." EURICUS CORDUS, 1530.
ANCIENT FEES.--LARGE FEES.--SPANISH PRIEST-DOCTORS.--A PIG ON PENANCE.--SMALL FEES.--A "CHOP" POSTPONED.--LONG FEES.--SHORT FEES.--OLD FEES.--A NIGHT-CAP.--AN OLD SHOE FOR LUCK.--A BLACK FEE.--"HEART'S OFFERING."--A STUFFED CAT.--THE "GREAT GUNS" OF NEW YORK.--BOSTON.--ROTTEN EGGS.--"CATCH WHAT YOU CAN."--FEMALE DOCTORS' FEES.--ABOVE PRICE.--"ASK FOR A FEE."--"PITCH HIM OVERBOARD."--DELICATE FEES.--MAKING THE MOST OF THEM.
The great German physician who wrote the above died (as he ought, for putting so much truth into four lines) in 1538. He, of all physicians of his day, earned his fees; but it is often the case that the most deserving get the least reward, and Cordus was not an exception to the rule. A good physician, or surgeon, is seldom a sharp financier, and vice versa. "It is hard to serve two masters."
Ancient physicians' fees were much larger, considering the difference in the value of money, than modern.
ERASISTRATUS, in the year 330 B. C., received from General Seleucus, of Alexander's army, to whom the kingdom of Syria fell at the termination of the Macedonian conquest, the enormous sum of 60,000 crowns as a fee for his discovery of the disorder of the general's son, Antiochus. The Emperor Augustus employed four physicians, viz., Albutus, Arantius, Calpetanus, and Rubrius, to each of whom he paid an annual salary of 250,000 sesterces, equal to $10,000. Martialis, the Spanish epigramist, who was born in 40 A. D. says Alconius received 10,000,000 sesterces ($400,000) for a few years' practice.
LARGE FEES.
French physicians were never very well paid. The surgeons of Charlemagne were tolerably well recompensed. Ambrose Pare, the great surgeon, and inventor of ligatures (for peculiar arteries),--previous to whose time the arteries were seared with a hot iron; otherwise the patient bled to death,--received 5,000 francs for ligaturing one artery. Louis XIV. gave his surgeons 75,000 crowns each for successfully performing upon him a surgical operation.
Upon the confinement of Maria Louise, second wife of the great Napoleon, four physicians--Bourdier, Corvisat, Dubois, and Ivan--received the sum of $20,000. Dubois was the principal, and received one half of the amount,--not a very extravagant remuneration; but then Napoleon held a mean opinion of physicians in general, and this fee was not to be wondered at. Dupuytren, the distinguished French surgeon, left a property of $1,580,000. Hahnemann, who, in 1785, at Dresden, abandoned physic in disgust, afterwards went to Paris, and at the time of his death was literally besieged with patients, reaping a reward for his labors of not less than $40,000 per annum. Boerhaave was a successful practitioner, born at Leyden, and left, at his death, $200,000 from private practice. John Stow, the eminent antiquarian writer, whose misfortunes compelled him to beg his daily bread at the age of eighty, informs us that "half a crown (English) was looked upon as a large fee in Holland, while in England, at that same time, a physician scorned to touch any fee but gold, and surgeons were still more exorbitant."
In Spain, until a very remote period, the priests continued to exercise the double office of priest and physician, and some of them were proficient in surgery; and though they fixed no stipulated price for their medical services, they usually managed to get two fleeces from the one shearing, and on certain occasions dispose of the carcass also, for their own pecuniary advantages, as the following will show:--
Anthony Gavin, formerly a Catholic priest of Spain, says, "I saw Fran. Alfaro, a Jew, in Lisbon, who told me that he was known to be very rich, when in Seville, where the priests finally stripped him of all his wealth, and cast him into the Inquisition, where they kept him four years, under some pretence, and finally liberated him, that he might accumulate more property. After three years' trade, having again collected considerable wealth, he was again imprisoned and his wealth confiscated by the priest-doctors, but let off, with the order to wear the mark of San Benito (picture of a man in the midst of the fire of hell) for six months.
"But Alfaro fled from the city, and finding a pig near the gate, he slipped the San Benito over the pig's neck, and, sending him into the town, made his escape. 'Now I am poor,' he added, 'nobody wants to imprison me.'"
ENGLISH FEES AND INCOMES.
In no other country have physicians' fees varied so much as in England. The Protestant divine and the physician have kept step together to the music of civilization and enlightenment. Both of these professions were held at a low estimation up to the Elizabethan era, when a young, unfledged M. D. from Oxford would gladly accept a situation in a lord's family for five or ten pounds a year, with his board, and lodgings in the garret, while, in addition to professional services he might act as sort of wise clown, "and be a patient listener, the solver of riddles, and the butt of ridicule for the family and guests. He might save the expense of a gardener--nail up the apricots; or a groom, and sometimes curry down and harness the horses; cast up the farrier's or butler's accounts, or carry a parcel or message across the country."
As was said also of the divine, "Not one living in fifty enabled the incumbent to bring up a family comfortably. As the children multiplied, the household became more beggarly. Often it was only by toiling on his glebe, by feeding swine and by loading dung-carts, that he could gain his daily bread.... His sons followed the plough, and his daughters went out to service."
Queen Elizabeth's physician in ordinary received one hundred pounds per annum and perquisites--"sustenance, wine, wax, and etceteras." Morgan, her apothecary, for one quarter's bill was paid £18 7_s._ 8_d._ A one pound fee, paid by the Earl of Cumberland to a Cambridge physician, was considered as exceptionally liberal, even for a nobleman to pay.
Edward III. granted to his apothecary, who acted in the capacity of physician in those days, a salary amounting to six pence a day, and to Ricardus Wye, his surgeon, twelve pence per day, besides eight marks. (A mark was 13_s._ 4_d._) In the courts of the kings of Wales, the physicians and surgeons were the twelfth in rank, and whose fees were fixed by law. Dr. Caius was fortunate in holding position as physician to Edward VI., Mary, and Elizabeth. Sir Theodore Mayerne was still more fortunate in having the honor of serving Henry IV. and Louis XIII. of France, and subsequently King James I., Charles I. and II. of England. Mayerne has been the subject of many anecdotes, of which the following is a sample:--
A parsimonious friend, consulting Mayerne, laid two broad pieces of gold (sixty shillings) on the doctor's table, to express his generosity, as he felt safe that they would be immediately returned to him. But Mayerne quietly pocketed them, saying,--
"I made my will this morning, and if it became known that I had refused a fee, I might be deemed non compos mentis."
In 1700, graduated physicians' dues were ten shillings, licensed doctors, six shillings eight pence. A surgeon's fee was twelve pence per mile, be his journey long or short, and five shillings for setting a bone or dislocated joint, one shilling for bleeding, and five pounds for an amputation. All after attendance extra.
ANECDOTE OF JAMES COYTHIER.
This jolly doctor was employed by Louis XI., and was said to have sponged immense sums from his royal master, beyond a regular salary.
"He wrung favor upon favor from the king, and if he resisted the modest demands of his physician, the latter threatened him with speedy dissolution. On this menace, the king, succumbing to the fear of death, which weakness characterized his family, would at once surrender at discretion."
Finally, to rid himself of such despotic demands, the king ordered the executioner to behead the physician.
The requisite officer waited on Coythier, and in a courteous and considerate manner, as became the occasion, said to him,--
"I deeply regret, my dear sir, the circumstance, but I must kill you. The king can stand you no longer, and here are my orders."
"All right," replied the doctor, with surprising unconcern; "I am ready whenever you are. What time would you find it most convenient to perform the little operation?"
While the officer was trying to decide, Coythier continued,--
"But I am very sorry to leave his majesty only for a few days; for I have ascertained by occult science that he can't survive me more than four days."
The officer stood struck with amazement, but finally returned and imparted the astounding information to the king.
"O, liberate him instantly. Hurt not a hair of his head," exclaimed the terrified monarch.
Coythier was of course speedily restored to his place in the king's confidence--and treasury.
A LONG FEE.
Here is what may be called a long fee:--
An English surgeon, named Broughton, had the good fortune to open the commerce of the East Indies to his countrymen through a medical fee. Having been sent from Surat to Agra, in the year 1636, to treat a daughter of the emperor Shah Jehan, he had the great fortune to restore the princess.
Beyond the present reward to the physician for his great services, the emperor gave him the privilege of a free commerce throughout the whole extent of his domains. Scarcely had Broughton returned than the favorite nabob of the province--Bengal--sent for the doctor to treat him for a very dangerous disease. Having fortunately restored this patient also, the nabob settled a pension upon the physician, and confirmed the privilege of the emperor, extending it to all Englishmen who should come to Bengal.
Broughton at once communicated this important treaty, as it was, to the English governor at Surat, and, by the advice of the latter, the company sent from England, in 1640, the first ship to trade at Bengal. Such was the origin of the great Indian commerce, which has been continued to the present day,--the longest continued doctor's fee ever given.
Another long fee was that given to Dr. Th. Dinsdale, who travelled from England to St. Petersburg by order of Catharine of Russia, to inoculate her son, the baron of the empire. The empress presented him with a fee of twelve thousand pounds, and a life pension of five hundred pounds. This is the largest sum ever paid to any physician since the world began, for a single operation, and I know of no physician who ever made a longer journey to attend a patient.
A SHORT FEE.
This is how a physician fell short of his fee. Charles II. was taken suddenly and dangerously ill with apoplexy. The court physician being out of town, Dr. King, who only being present, with one attendant, instantly bled his majesty, to which "breach of court etiquette" John Evelyn attributes his salvation for the time; for he would certainly have died, had Dr. King staid the coming of the regular physician--for which act he must have a regular pardon!
The privy council ordered a handsome fee to be paid Dr. King for his great presence of mind and prompt action, but it never was paid. Charles died soon afterwards, and poor King fell short of a fat fee.
ODD FEES.
Amongst the many funny things told about Sir Astley Cooper, the eminent English surgeon, none is better authenticated than that respecting the "night-cap fee."
In his earlier practice, he had to pass through all the trials and tribulations, "anxious and ill-rewarded waitings," that lesser stars have before and since, and ever will, before he became "established." In his first year's practice in London, his profits were but five guineas; his second reached the encouraging sum of twenty-five pounds, and increased in this ratio till the ninth year, when it was one thousand pounds. In one year he made twenty-one thousand guineas. It is said that one merchant of London paid him annually six hundred pounds. It wouldn't require but a few such lucrative patients to keep a doctor in pocket money even at this day.
A West India millionnaire, named Hyatt, had been to London, and undergone a severe and dangerous surgical operation at the hands of Sir Astley, assisted by Drs. Lettsom and Nelson. The operation proved a success, and the grateful patient only waited till he could sit up in bed a little while at a time before expressing in some measure his gratitude to the physicians. All three being present one day, Hyatt arose in bed and presented the two physicians with a fee of three hundred gold guineas, and, turning to Sir Astley, who seemed for a moment to have been slighted, the millionnaire said,--
"And as for you, Sir Astley, you shall have nothing better than that," catching off his night-cap, and flinging it almost into Sir Astley's handsome face--he was said to be the handsomest man in England; "there, take it, sir."
"Sir," exclaimed the surgeon, with a smile, "I pocket the affront."
On reaching home, and examining the night-cap, he found it contained one thousand guineas--nearly five thousand dollars.
AN OLD SHOE.
Quite as odd a fee was that presented to a celebrated New York surgeon about the year 1845. An eccentric old merchant, a descendant of one of the early Dutch families of Manhattan Island, was sick at his summer residence on the Hudson, where his family physician attended him. The doctor gave him no encouragement that he ever would recover. A most celebrated surgeon, since deceased, was called as counsel, who, after careful examination of the case, and considering the merchant's age, coincided with the opinion of the family physician, and so expressed himself to the patient.
"Well, if that is all the good you can do, you may return to New York," said the doomed man. But as the astonished surgeon was going out of the house, the invalid sent a servant after him, in haste, saying,--
"Here, throw this old shoe after him, telling him that I wish him better luck on the next patient;" and drawing off his embroidered slipper, he gave it to the servant, who, well used to his master's whims, as well as confident of his generosity, ran after the doctor, flinging the shoe, and giving the message, as directed. The surgeon felt sure of his fee, well knowing the ability of the eccentric merchant; but he picked up the shoe, and placing it in his coat pocket, said to his brother physician, who accompanied him, "I'll keep it, and I may get something, to boot."
It contained, stuffed into the toe, a draft for five hundred dollars.
A BLACK FEE.
Dr. Robert Glynn, of Cambridge, England, who died nearly eighty years ago, was a most benevolent man, as well as a successful medical practitioner, with a large revenue. Mr. Jeaffreson tells the following amusing story about him:--
"On one occasion a poor peasant woman, the widowed mother of an only son, trudged from the heart of the fens (ten miles) into Cambridge, to consult the good doctor about her boy, who was very sick with the ague. Her manner so interested the doctor that, though it was during an inclement winter, and the roads almost impassable by carriages, he ordered horses harnessed, and taking in the old lady, went to see the sick lad.
"After a tedious attendance, and the exhibition of much port wine and bark, bought at the physician's expense, the patient recovered. A few days after the doctor had taken his discharge, without fees, the poor woman presented herself at the consulting-room, bearing in her hands a large basket.
"'I hope, my good woman, your son is not ill again,' said the doctor.
"'O, no, sir; he was never better,' replied the woman, her face beaming with gratitude; 'but he can't rest quiet for thinking of all the trouble you have had, and so he resolved this morning to send you this;' and she began undoing the cover of the large wicker basket which she had set on the floor. The doctor stood overlooking the transaction in no little concern. Egress being afforded, out hopped an enormous magpie, that strutted around the room, chattering away as independent as a lord.
"'There, doctor, it is his favorite magpie he has sent you,' exclaimed the woman, looking proudly upon the piece of chattering ebony. It was a fee to be proud of."
A HEART'S OFFERING.
The gratitude of the poor country lad for his recovery did not exceed, probably, that of a young girl, as related in the Montpelier papers, from one of which I cut the following:--
"A young girl, fourteen years of age, named Celia ----, called at the hotel to-day where Dr. C., with his family, is stopping, and presenting him with a bouquet of Mayflowers, said, 'I have no money to pay you for curing my head of scrofula, and I thought these flowers might please you.' This was truly the offering of a grateful heart; for her head had been entirely covered by sores, from her birth, and the doctor had cured it. Another journal said, in commenting upon it, 'This heart's offering deeply affected the doctor, to whom it was a greater reward than any money recompense could have been.' The doctor has the withered and blackened flowers and leaves pressed, and hung in a frame in his office, but the memory of the touching scene of their presentation will remain fresh within his heart forever."
A STUFFED CAT-SKIN.
An eccentric and parsimonious old lady, who died in a small village in the State of Maine, some twenty years ago, always kept a half dozen cats about the house. She was a dried-up-looking old crone, and some ill-minded people had gone so far as to call her a witch, doubtless because of her oddities and her cats, "black, white, and brindled." When one of these delightful night-prowlers departed this life, the old lady would have the skin of the animal stuffed, to adorn her mantel shelf. My informant said he had once seen them with his own eyes, arranged along on the shelf, some half score of them, looking as demure and comfortable as a stuffed cat could, while the old woman sat by the fireplace, croning over her knitting work.
The woman paid no bills that she could avoid, always pleading poverty as her excuse for the non-fulfilment of her responsibilities.
One dark and stormy night she was taken very sick, and by a preconcerted signal to a neighbor,--the placing of a light in a certain window,--help was summoned, including the village doctor, to whom she owed a fee for each visit he had ever made her. But this was fated to be the doctor's last call to that patient.
"O, doctor, then I am dying at last--am I?"
The physician assured her such was the case.
"Then, doctor, I must tell you that you've been very patient with me, and have hastened day or night to see me, in my whims, as well as my real sickness, and you shall be rewarded. I have no money, but you see all my treasures arranged along on the mantel-piece there?"
"What!" exclaimed the doctor; "you don't call those cats treasures, I hope!"
"Yes, they are my only treasures, doctor. Now, I want to be just to you, above all others, because you've not only served me as I said, but you've often sent me wood and provisions during the cold winters--"
Here she became too feeble to go on, and the doctor revived her with some cordial from his saddle-bags, when she took breath, and continued,--
"See them, doctor; eleven of them. Which will you choose?"
The doctor, with as much grace as possible, declined selecting any one of the useless stuffed skins; when the old lady, by much effort, raised her head from the pillow, and said, "Well, I will select for you. Take the black one--take--the black--cat--doctor!" and died.
Her dying words so impressed him, that he took the cat home, and, on opening her,--for it was very heavy,--he found that the skin contained nearly a hundred dollars, in gold.
AMERICAN FEES AND INCOMES.
There is a surgeon in New York city whose income from practice outside of the hospital is said to be twenty-five thousand dollars per annum. Dr. Valentine Mott, the celebrated New York surgeon, who died April 26, 1865, at the age of eighty-one years, had a very large income, but less than that enjoyed by several surgeons in the metropolis at the present time.
There are some specialists in New York, Philadelphia, and Boston, who receive greater sums annually than the regular medical or surgical practitioners. There is no law particularly controlling the prices of the former. The fee for a visit, by the established usage of the medical societies in these cities, is from three to ten dollars.
A specialist sometimes receives fifty to one hundred dollars for prescribing in a case, for which another physician, in ordinary practice, would charge but an office fee of two to ten dollars. A quack specialist--and an impostor--in the latter city makes his brags that he has received twelve hundred dollars for one prescription. But then this same lying braggadocio says he has read medicine with Ricard, and had various honors conferred upon him.
Dr. Pulte, of Ohio, one of the western pioneers in homeopathy, who has often been greeted, in his earlier professional rounds, by a shower of dirt, rotten eggs, stones, brickbats, and had rails and sticks thrust through his carriage wheels at night, and been otherwise insulted, until, finally, he had to carry his wife about with him, as a protective measure,--for his revilers would not insult a lady,--has since made as high as twenty thousand dollars a year, and has amassed a fortune of two hundred thousand dollars. There is a Boston homeopathist whose income from practice is not less than twenty to twenty-five thousand dollars annually. Some of the surgeons (allopathic) do better, but hardly reach the figures of Dr. Nelaton, the great French surgeon, who, in 1869, earned four hundred thousand francs, equal to about eighty thousand dollars.
Dr. Bigelow, the very celebrated surgeon of Harvard College, has probably received the largest fee for a surgical operation of any New England practitioner. He is said to be worth nearly a million.
Dr. Buckingham, the eminent medical practitioner, of Boston, who probably earns as much as any physician in the city, a few years ago stated to the graduating class of Harvard College--so I am informed by a physician then present--that he received for his first year's practice in Boston but fifty-seven dollars. He then had a little office up stairs, where he slept, dined,--often on bread and cheese, or a few crackers; sometimes he did not dine,--and received his few patients. But he was a great student, and a hard worker, and often, and usually, stuck to his post during those hours when more prosperous physicians were seeking amusement or relaxation. He was one of the "hold-fast" kind, who always win, in the end.
"Catch what you can."--There is a class of wretches in every city who have no established fee for prescribing for the sick. They go on the principle of "catch what I can." If they cannot get a fee of twenty dollars, they will take two, provided the patient has no more. A young man who visited one of these medical shave-shops was charged a fee of thirty-five dollars in a very simple case; but the benevolent doctor concluded to accept two dollars and a half instead, since the man had no more money. The shamefulness of such Jewing reminds one of the story of a negro trading off a worn-out old mule:--
"I say, dar, what will you take for dat yer mule, Cuffy?"
"O, I axes thirty-five dollars for him, Mr. Sambo."
"O, go way, dar. I gibs you five dollars for him," said the first.
"Well, you can take him, Sambo. I won't stand for thirty dollars on a mule trade, nohow."
There is a female practitioner in St. Louis who earns above ten thousand dollars a year, and her individual fees are moderate at that.
Another doctress, Mrs. Ormsby, of Orange, N. J., accumulates some fifteen thousand a year, and is in turn outstripped by another woman practising in New York, who gets nearly twenty thousand dollars a year. Such certainly possess great business tact, with or without professional merit, and for such let all men give them credit.
Several female doctors in Boston receive from three to five thousand dollars each, yearly.
It is too often the case that a physician's success is reckoned, like a tradesman's, by what he has gained in a pecuniary point of view. There are, however, thousands of worthy men, successful with their cases, who, from less acquisitiveness than benevolence, have failed in securing more than a bare competence, through a life devoted to their profession.
I presume nearly every physician who has experienced a dozen years in practice has some mementos of his poor patients' gratitude, in the form, if not of an ebony bird, or a black cat-skin, of something possessing more beauty, and, to the benevolent heart, which always beats within the breast of every true physician, keepsakes prized above gold and silver.
"Who has not kept some trifling thing, More prized, more prized, than jewels rare, A faded flower, a broken ring, A tress of golden hair, a tress of golden hair?"
A very benevolent physician, and a sexagenarian, of New York city, wrote, twenty years ago, "I even yet enjoy a sort of melancholy satisfaction in hastening to relieve the suffering poor of my neighborhood, though I know that my reward will be very small, or, what is far more frequent, that I shall be paid with ingratitude, if not slander.
"Sometimes there are bright spots in my horizon, and I think myself more than repaid by a new shirt, or a couple of handkerchiefs--the gift of some poor, though grateful sewing girl. A few of these little treasures I prize with peculiar tenderness."
"A tress of hair and a faded leaf Are paltry things to a cynic's eyes: But to me they are keys that open the gates Of a paradise of memories."
ASKING FOR A FEE.
A Boston M. D., who had been in practice fourteen years without accumulating any property, was about to abandon the profession, and, with this view, he applied to Fowler, the phrenologist, with the question, "What pursuit am I best adapted to follow?" Mr. Fowler, with whom he was unacquainted, said, "The practice of medicine;" but, at the same time, he assured the doctor that he ought to do business on a cash principle,--"accipe dum dolet,"--or employ a collector, as he would never collect his fees. Acting on this hint, the doctor returned to his practice, and in a few years was out of debt, and owned a fine residence.
In the matter of collecting fees only he was deficient.
A New York student--if report is true--began earlier to be impressed with the propriety of getting his fee in advance, as the following will show.
He went before the censors for examination. One of the board was a well-known penurious, fee-loving doctor, who, looking over the list of names of the applicants, said,--
"Mr. ----, if a patient came to your office, what would you first do?"
"I would ask him for a fee, sir," was the prompt reply.
An old navy surgeon relates the following regarding examinations:--
"I was shown into the examining-room. Large table, and a half dozen old gentlemen at it. 'Big wigs, no doubt,' I thought, 'and, sure as my name is Symonds, they'll pluck me like a pigeon.'
"'Well, sir, what do you know about the science of medicine?' asked the stout man in the head seat.
"'More than he does of the practice, I'll be bound,' tittered a little wasp-like dandy--a West End ladies' doctor.
"I trembled in my shoes.
"'Well, sir,' continued the first, 'what would you do if during an action a man was brought to you with both arms and legs shot off? Now, sir, speak out; don't keep the board waiting. What would you do?'
"'By Jove, sir,' I answered, 'I would pitch him overboard, and go on to some one else to whom I could be of more service.'
"By thunder! every one present burst out laughing, and they passed me directly--passed me directly."
DELICATE FEES.
There are certain delicate cases, usually terminating in "good news," in which it has long been an established custom for the physician to receive a double fee. "A father just presented with an heir, or a lucky fellow just made one, is expected to bleed freely for the benefit of the faculty." Even the Irish, who, in about all other cases, calculate on "cheating the doctor to pay the priest," will usually lay by a little sum from their penury, or their bank hoardings, as the case may be, "to pay the doctor for the babbie."
We insert the following poetry (!) for the fun of the thing; nevertheless, it is within the experience of more than one physician, who, after doing his duty, exhibiting his best professional ability, and saving the wife of some miserable, worthless fellow, who never deserved such a godsend for a companion, has cheated the doctor out of his fees from spite, when, if the poor woman had died, he would have liberally paid the physician. Let no man take this to himself.
"A woman who scolded one day so long Quite suddenly lost all use of her tongue! The doctor arrived, who, with 'hem and haw,' Pronounced the affection a true locked jaw.
"'What hopes, good doctor?' 'Very small, I see.' The husband (quite sad) slips a double fee. 'No hopes, dear doctor?' 'Ahem! none, I fear.' Gives another fee for an issue clear.
"The madam deceased. 'Pray, sir, do not grieve.' 'My friends, one comfort I surely receive-- A fatal locked jaw was the only case From which my dear wife could have died--in peace.'"
"MAKE THE MOST OF HIM."
It has been said that physicians have been known to benevolently play a fee into a brother's hand when their own palm failed to be broad enough to hold them all. Perhaps the reader may derive amusement or instruction from the following, in which case the writer is well repaid for their insertion:--
"A wealthy tradesman, after drinking the waters of the Bath Springs a long time, under advice of his physician, took a fancy to try those of Bristol. Armed with an introductory letter from his Bath doctor to a professional brother at Bristol, the old gentleman set off on his journey. On the way he said to himself,--
"'I wonder what Dr. ---- has advised the Bristol physician respecting my case;' and giving way to his curiosity, or anxiety, he opened the letter, and read,--
"'DEAR DOCTOR: The bearer is a fat Wiltshire clothier; make the most of him. Yours, professionally, ----.'"
Clutterbuck, the historian, and a pleasant writer, tells the following of his uncle, who was a physician:--
"A nervous old lady, a patient of his, took it into her crotchety old head to try the Bath waters, and applied to her physician for permission.
"'The very thing I have been thinking to recommend,' he replied; 'and I know an excellent physician at the wells, to whom I will give you a letter of introduction.'"
With her letter and a companion, she started for the springs. En route she took out the letter, and, after looking at the address some time, her curiosity overcame her, and she said to her friend, "So long as the doctor has treated me, he has never told me what my case is, and I have a mind to just look into this letter and see what he has told the Bath physician about it."
In vain her friend remonstrated against such a breach of trust. The old lady opened the epistle, and read the following instructive words:--
"DEAR SIR: Keep the old woman three weeks, and send her back."