XVI. GENEROSITY AND MEANNESS
"Life's better joys spring up thus by the wayside, And the world calls them trifles. 'Tis not so. Heaven is not prodigal, nor pours its joys In unregarded torrents upon man: They fall, as fall the riches of the clouds Upon the parched earth, gently, drop by drop. Nothing is trifling which love consecrates."--AYLMERE.
"The art of our necessities is strange."--KING LEAR.
THE WORLD UNMASKED.--A ROUGH DIAMOND.--DECAYED GENTILITY.--"THREE FLIGHT, BACK."--SEVERAL ANECDOTES.--THE OLD FOX-HUNTER.--"STAND ON YOUR HEAD."--KINDNESS TO CLERGYMEN.--RARE CHARITY.--OLD AND HOMELESS.--THE "O'CLO'" JEW.--DR. HUNTER'S GENEROSITY.--"WHAT'S THE PRICE OF BEEF?"--A SAD OMISSION.--INNATE GENEROSITY.--A CURB-STONE MONEY-MANIAC.--AN EYE-OPENER.--AN AVARICIOUS DOCTOR.--ROBBING THE DEAD.
Side by side, hand in hand, through the world, go generosity and meanness. If these could but be personified, and the individuals compelled to stand before men in broad daylight, O, what a staring would there be! Those whom we thought the very embodiment of generosity and kindness would "crop out" in their true hideousness of character--unmasked meanness and selfishness; yes, men too high in the estimation of the world, in church and in state.
On the other hand, we should be equally astonished to find amongst those in the humbler walks of life, as well as some in the more exalted, people, whom the world counted as mean and penurious, now standing forth adorned in robes bleached like the snow-drift, shining bright as the golden sunrise, yet blushing to find that their hidden charities, and secret, self-denying generosities, had been suddenly brought to light.
And when the secret works of this world shall be revealed, no class of men will stand forth more blessed in deeds of generosity and self-sacrifice than the physicians. There is an occasional black sheep in the great flock.
A ROUGH DIAMOND.
There is no better authority for the truth of the many queer stories told about the rough benevolence of Dr. Abernethy, the great English surgeon, than the author of his memoirs--Sir George Macilwain.
"His manner [Dr. Abernethy's], as we shall admit, was occasionally rough, and sometimes rather prematurely truthful. One day he was called in consultation by a physician to give an opinion in a case of a pulsating tumor, which was pretty plainly an aneurism. On proceeding to examine the tumor, he found a plaster covering it.
"'What is this you have on it?' asked Abernethy.
"'O, that is only a plaster.'
"'Pooh!' exclaimed the doctor, pulling it off and flinging it aside.
"'The "pooh" was all well enough,' said the attending physician, afterwards, 'but it took several guineas out of my pocket.'"
"UP THREE PAIR, BACK."
A surgeon--pupil of the above--was requested to visit a patient in a low quarter of the suburbs of the metropolis. When he arrived, and mounted several flights of crazy stairs, he began searching for the designated number, which was so defaced by time that he was only enabled to determine it by the more legible condition of the next number.
An old woman answered the shake of the dilapidated knocker.
"Does Captain Blank live here?"
"Yes, sir,"--trying to penetrate the darkness.
"Is he at home?"
"Yes, sir. Please, may I make so bold as to ask, are you the doctor?"
"Yes."
"O, then please to walk in, sir."
In the ill-furnished, narrow room sat an old man, in a very shabby and variegated déshabille, who rose from his chair, and, with a grace worthy of a count, welcomed the stranger. His manner was extremely gentlemanly, his language well chosen, and the statement of his complaint particularly clear and concise.
The surgeon, who like most of us see strange things, was puzzled to make out his new patient, but concluded that he was one of the many who, having been born to better things, had become reduced by misfortune to these apparently very narrow circumstances.
Accordingly, having prescribed, the surgeon was about taking his leave, when the gentleman said,--
"Sir, I thank you very much for your attention," at the same time offering his hand with a fee.
The benevolent surgeon declined the fee, simply saying,--
"No, I thank you, sir. I hope you will soon be better. Good morning."
"Stay, sir!" exclaimed the old gentleman. "I shall insist on this, if you please," in a tone which at once convinced the surgeon that it would be more painful to refuse than accept the fee; he accordingly took it.
"I am very much obliged to you, sir," the old gentleman then said; "for had you not taken your fee I could not have again had the advantage of your advice. I sent for you because I had understood that you were a pupil of Dr. Abernethy's, for whom I could not again send, because he would not take his fee, and I was so hurt that I am afraid I was rude to the good man. I suppose he, judging from the appearances of things here, thought I could not afford it, hence refused the fee, on which I begged him not to be deceived by appearances, but take the fee. However, he kept retreating and declining, till, forgetting myself a little, and feeling vexed, I said, 'By G----, sir, I insist on your taking it,' when he replied as fiercely, 'By G----, sir, I will not,' and hastily left the room, closing the door after him."
This gentleman lived to the age of ninety. He was really in very good circumstances, but lived in this humble manner to enable him to assist very efficiently some poor relatives. The surgeon, after a while, changed his professional visits to friendly ones, and continued them up to the old man's death. When, however, the gentleman died, about four hundred guineas were found in his boxes.
Sometimes Dr. Abernethy would meet with a patient who would afford a useful lesson. A lady, wife of a distinguished musician, consulted him, and, finding him uncourteous, said,--
"Sir, I had heard of your rudeness before I came, but I did not expect this."
When Dr. Abernethy gave her the prescription, she asked,--
"What am I to do with this, sir?"
"Anything you like. Put it into the fire if you choose."
The lady laid the fee on the table, went to the grate, threw the prescription on to the fire, and hastily left the room.
The doctor followed her to the hall, earnestly pressing her to take back the fee, or permit him to write her another prescription; but the lady would not yield her vantage-ground, and so withdrew.
The foregoing is well authenticated. Mr. Stowe, the informant, knows the lady well.
THE OLD FOX-HUNTER.
Sometimes, again, the ill usage was all on one side.
We know a hard-drinking old fox-hunter who abused Dr. Abernethy roundly; but all that he could say against him was this:--
"Why, sir,--will you believe me?--almost the first words he said, as he entered my room, was, 'I perceive you drink a good deal.'
"Now," continued the patient, very naïvely, "supposing I did, what the devil was that to him?"
Another gentleman, who had a most unfortunate appearance on his nose, exactly like that which accompanies dram-drinking, used to be exceedingly irate against Dr. A. because, when he told the doctor that his stomach was out of order, Abernethy would reply,--
"Ay, I see that by your nose."
THE DUKE, OR THE POOR GENTLEMAN.
One day, just as Dr. Abernethy was stepping into his carriage to make a professional visit to the Duke of W., to whom he had been called in a hurry, a gentleman stopped him to say that the ----, at Somers Town (mentioning a poor gentleman whom he had visited without fee), would be glad to have him visit him again at his leisure.
"Why, I cannot go now," Dr. Abernethy replied, "for I am going in haste to see the Duke of W." Then, pausing a moment before stepping into his carriage, he looked up to the coachman, and quietly said, "To Somers Town."
The fidgety irritability of his first impression at interference, and the beneficence of his second thought, were very characteristic of Dr. Abernethy.
A pupil, who wished to consult him one day, took the very inauspicious moment when the doctor (and professor) was looking over his papers, but a few moments before lecture, in the museum.
"I am fearful, sir, that I have a polypus in my nose, and want you to look at it," said the student.
The doctor made no reply; but when he had completed the sorting of his preparations, he said, looking up,--
"Eh?"
To which the pupil repeated his request.
"Then stand on your head; don't you see that all the light here comes from the skylight? How am I to look into your nose?"
(This was true, for there were no side-lights in the amphitheatre.)
"Where do you live?" continued the doctor.
"Bartholomew Close, sir."
"At what time do you get up?"
"At eight."
"You can't be at Bedford Row" (where Abernethy resided) "at nine, then?"
"Yes, sir, I can."
"To-morrow morning, then."
"Yes, sir; thank you."
The pupil was punctual. Dr. Abernethy made a very careful examination of his nose, found nothing of the nature of polypus, made the pupil promise never to look into his nose again, and he, in after years, said, that there never was anything the matter.
Dr. Abernethy never took a fee from a student, brother doctor, nor full fee from a clergyman. His great labors seemed to be in the hospitals, and on his resignation as surgeon to St. Bartholomew, he presented for its use five hundred dollars. He never neglected his poor hospital patients for the richer ones outside.
One morning, on leaving his house for a visit to the hospital patients, some one wished to detain him, when he exclaimed, in terms more earnest than elegant,--
"Private patients may go to the devil" (or elsewhere, another reports), "but the poor fellows in the hospital I am bound to care for."
To poor students whose funds were "doubtful," he presented free tickets to his college lectures, afterwards showing them marked attention.
Everybody has heard of his rude kindness to a young fashionable miss, whom her mother took to Abernethy for treatment. It is said that the doctor ran a knife under her belt, in presence of the mother, instantly severing it, and exclaiming,--
"Why, madam, don't you know there are upwards of thirty yards of ----" (what are more elegantly termed bowels) "squeezed under that girdle? Go home, give nature fair play, and you'll have no need of a prescription."
KINDNESS TO CLERGYMEN.
"Cynics have been found in plenty to rail at physicians for loving their fees; and one might justly retort that the railers love nothing but their fees. Who does not love--and who is not entitled to--the sweet money earned by labor, be it labor of hand, brain, or cloth? One thing is sure--doctors are unpaid."--A Lawyer.
The above kind-hearted physician, having attended the child of a clergyman's widow, without knowing her situation, returned all the fees he had received from her when he learned who she was, and added, in a letter, fifty pounds besides, with instructions to expend it in daily rides in the open air, for her health. To a clergyman he sent a receipt for his long services, and also enclosing ten pounds.
The generosity of Dr. Wilson, of Bath (now deceased), has before been recorded. He had been attending a clergyman, who, Wilson had learned, was in indigent circumstances, and he afterwards sent fifty pounds in gold to the minister, by a friend.
"Yes, I will take it to him to-morrow," said the gentleman.
"O, my dear sir," exclaimed Dr. Wilson, "take it to him to-night. Only think of the importance to an invalid of one good night's rest."
RARE CHARITY.
Another case of "three pair, back," occurs in the memoirs of Dr. Lettsom, who is already made mention of in this work. On one of his benevolent excursions, the doctor found his way into the squalid garret of a poor old woman who had evidently seen better days. With the refined language and the easy deportment of a well-bred lady, she begged the physician to examine her case, and give her a prescription. (Alas! how often is poverty mistaken for disease, and does want foster malady!) But the kind doctor, after a careful inquiry, formed a correct diagnosis, and wrote on a slip of paper he chanced to have about him, the following brief note to the overseers of the parish:--
"A shilling per diem for Mrs. Moreton. Money, not physic, can cure her.
LETTSOM."
A shilling, in those days, was considered no mean sum per day.
"Alas for the rarity Of Christian charity Under the sun! O, it was pitiful! Near a whole city full, Home she had none.
"Sisterly, brotherly, Fatherly, motherly Feelings had changed; Love, by harsh evidence, Thrown from its eminence, Even God's providence Seeming estranged."
"Alas, doctor," said an unfortunate old gentleman, some seventy-four years old,--a merchant ruined by the American war, bowed down by the weight of his misfortunes, and by disease,--to Dr. Lettsom, "those beautiful trees you may see out of my bedroom window I planted with these now feeble hands. I have lived to see them bear fruit; they have become as part of my family. But with my children still dearer to me, I must quit this dear old home, which was the delight of my youth and the hope of my declining years, and become a homeless, joyless wanderer in my old age."
The benevolent Quaker doctor was deeply affected by these words, and the utter despair and hopelessness with which the weeping old man uttered them; and, speaking a few words of consolation to his unfortunate patient, he wrote a prescription, and hastily retired.
On the old gentleman's examination of the remarkable looking recipe, he found it to be a check for a large sum of money. The benevolence of the physician did not end here. He purchased the residence and grounds of the old man's creditors, and prescribed them to him for life. (He is our young Quaker antipode, mentioned in another chapter.)
The old apothecary, Sutcliff, was right when he said of young Lettsom, while his apprentice, "Thou may'st make a good physician, but I think not a good apothecary." An apothecary is not expected to give away his time or medicine. (They seldom disappoint one's expectations.) A grocer is not expected to give away flour, rice, sugar, tea, to even a starving, languishing neighbor; nor the baker, nor the butcher, to give bread or meat to the perishing. Why, such demands upon them daily would be laughed to scorn. But the physician! These very same niggardly men (individually) would berate the doctor, be he ever so needy, or be his family ever so large, who would accept a fee for even cold-night services to any but the richest patients. All physicians do not have access to the "richest patients." Many a good physician has been compelled to quit practice because of his too large "bump" of benevolence, and because of the limited amount of that article in his first few patients, while thousands of practitioners in this country struggle and labor on through a life of self-denial, wearing themselves out, dying prematurely, leaving their families penniless to the cold charities of an uncharitable world. (See Chapter XXX.)
THE OLD JEW.
"Ah me," exclaimed a Jew, one day, as he reluctantly drew out his wallet to pay three dollars for his examination, prescription, and advice, "if I could only make money like the doctors of mede_cene_! Ah me." Then, taking two dollars from his purse, he asked, "Won't that do?"
This Jew was a merchant, reputed rich, and penurious as he was wealthy, and I demanded the accustomed fee.
"Let me see," said he; "how many patients have you seen to-day?"
"Nine," I replied.
"Let me see," counting his fingers as a tally. "At least twenty-seven dollars a day, and nothing out but a bit of paper. Ah, I wish I had been a doctor in mede_cene_," he added, with a sigh, and a woful look at the money, as he reluctantly handed it over.
This was casting pearls before worse than swine, prescribing for such a wretch. Brains, education, anxiety, all went for nought, with him. Money was his all. A shilling before his eyes would shut out even God's sunlight. If the shilling only shone, glistened,--sunlight enough for such a wretch.
"Let me see," I said, after his miserable body had taken his penurious soul out of my office; "nine patients, one three miles away. Horse-tire and carriage-wear, time, advice, and medicine given, because the patient was a widow. No. 2 patient, the sick child of an invalid mother; no fee. No. 3, an Irishman. The Irish never wish to pay anything; did pay one dollar. No. 4, a merchant. "Charge it." That was his fee. No. 5, a young sewing girl, who, in sewing on army cloth, had sewed her life's blood into the seams. In consumption. Could I take her fee? God forbid. No. 6, a "lady," who, having so much upon her back, had nothing in her purse. I may get my fee at the end of the quarter. "You know my husband. Good morning." It was near two o'clock then. She had occupied my time a whole hour. My dinner was cold; my wife was out of sorts, waiting so long. Nos. 7 and 8, two sick children. Visit them daily; pay uncertain. The ninth was the wealthy Jew. Nine patients; four dollars! Don't I sometimes wish I kept an "O' clo'" store, like the old Jew? This actually occurred when I practised medicine in Hartford.
DR. HUNTER'S GENEROSITY.
No man cared less for the profits of the medical profession, or more for the honor thereof, than the great Dr. John Hunter. He was honest, honorable, and simple in his every day life. His works, which contributed more to the science of medicine than any other writings during a thousand years, were simply announced as by JOHN HUNTER. A plain door plate, with the same name, announced his residence. Money was a secondary consideration to him. The following shows that he desired a professional brother to so consider it:--
"DEAR BROTHER: The bearer needs your advice. He has no money, and you have plenty; so you are well met.
"Yours, JOHN HUNTER."
To a poor tradesman from whom he had received twenty guineas for performing a surgical operation upon his wife, he returned nineteen guineas, having learned with what difficulty and extreme self-denial the husband had raised the money.
"I sent back nineteen guineas, and kept the twentieth," said he, in apology for retaining even the one, "that they might not be hurt with an idea of too great an obligation."
Where is the other man, or class of men, who would have returned the money, honestly earned, as agreed upon beforehand, unasked?
GENEROUS AT ANOTHER'S EXPENSE.
It is all very nice when one can exercise a benevolent spirit, and not draw upon his own pocket.
A well-authenticated story is repeated in this line of Dr. M. Monsey.
Passing through a market one day, he noticed a miserable old woman looking wistfully at a piece of meat hanging just within a stall.
"What is the price of this meat, sir?" she timidly inquired.
"A penny a pound, old woman," replied the butcher, sneeringly, disdaining a civil answer to the wretched-looking woman, who probably had not a penny to pay for the chop.
"Just weigh that piece of meat, my friend," said the doctor, who had been attentively watching the proceedings.
The butcher cheerfully complied with the request of so respectable-looking a customer.
"Ten pounds and a half, sir," replied the butcher.
"There, my good woman," said the doctor, "hold up your apron;" and he dumped the whole into it, saying, "Now make haste home and cook it for your family."
After blessing the very eccentric but benevolent old man over and again for the timely provision, she drew up the corners of the apron, and ran speedily down the market.
"Here, my man," said the doctor, turning to the smiling butcher, "here is ten pence ha'penny, the price of your meat."
"What? What do you mean?" asked the butcher.
"I mean, sir, that I take you at your word. You said the meat was a penny a pound. At that price I bought it for the poor old woman. It's all I'll pay you. Good morning, sir."
I can imagine the "chop-fallen" butcher, standing, in his long frock, with a beaten expression of countenance, alternating his gaze between the pence in his palm and the retreating form of the wigged and laughing old doctor.
A REPORT ON TEETH.
Many stories are told of the eccentricities of Dr. Monsey, and
"No man could better gild a pill, Or make a bill, Or mix a draught, or bleed, or blister, Or draw a tooth out of your head, Or chatter scandal by your bed, Or tell a twister."
Amongst the vagaries of Dr. Monsey, says Mr. Jeaffreson, was the way in which he proceeded to extract his decaying teeth. Around the tooth sentenced to be uprooted he fastened securely a strong piece of cord, or violin string, to the other end of which he attached a bullet. He then proceeded to load a pistol with powder and the bullet. By merely pulling the trigger of the pistol, the operation was speedily and effectually performed.
It was seldom, however, that the doctor could induce his patients to adopt this original mode of extracting undesirable achers.
One gentleman, who had agreed to try this novel process upon a tooth, got so far as to allow the whole apparatus to be adjusted, when, at the very last instant, he exclaimed,--
"Stop, stop! I have changed my mind--"
"I haven't, though; and you're a fool and a coward, and here's go," which saying, the doctor pulled the trigger.
"Bang!" went the pistol, and out flew the tooth, to the delight and astonishment of the patient.
Taking this anecdote alone, it is scarcely credible; but considered in connection with what we have already selected from the life of Dr. Monsey, and what we may write of his eccentricities in our chapter under that head, this may be believed as being nearly correct.
A SAD OMISSION.
Believing, as I do, that every reader of these pages is personally cognizant of the fact of the true benevolence of our present American physicians, and because of the silence of the few biographers respecting the generosities and benevolent deeds of those "who have gone before," I have devoted more space to anecdotes of English surgeons and physicians than I otherwise would. I have searched throughout four volumes of biographies of American physicians without being able to find a single anecdote of generosity recorded therein worthy of notice. Also in the "Lives of Surgeons ----" I have to regret this almost unpardonable neglect. I am assured from my personal knowledge of some of these latter that there are a thousand instances, which, in justice to their benevolence, ought to be put upon record, as they are engraven upon the hearts of their suffering fellow-creatures, and not for the aggrandizement of the generous bestower so much as an example for the cynical and the uncharitable world.
A physician has just left my presence who has given away more than he has ever received from his practice. The good physician is always generous. A mean-souled man cannot become a successful practitioner. His success with his patients depends as much, or more, upon the kindly influences that beam from his eye, that flow from his soul, as upon the medicine that he deals out from his "saddle-bags."
Generosity and kindness are innate to the man. They require little cultivation.
The following amusing anecdote from "Every Saturday," I have reason to believe, has reference to one of our best physicians, who is also a man of letters, and illustrates my assertion:--
"INNATE GENEROSITY."
"One hot August afternoon a gentleman, whose name attached to a check would be more valuable to the reader than if written here, was standing in front of the Revere House, waiting for a Washington Street car. He was a slim, venerable gentleman, with long white hair, and a certain dignity about him which we suppose comes of always having a handsome balance in the bank, for we never knew a poor man to have this particular air. It was a sultry afternoon, and the millionaire, standing on the curb-stone in the shade, had removed his hat, and was cooling his forehead with his handkerchief, like any common person, when the Cambridge horse-car stopped at the crossing at his feet. From this car hastily descended a well-known man of letters, whose pre-occupied expression showed at once that he was wrestling with an insubordinate hexameter, or laying out the points of a new lecture. Suddenly he found himself face to face with a white-haired old man, dejectedly holding a hat in one hand. As quick as thought the poet--to whom neither old age nor young appeals in vain--thrust his hand into his vest pocket, and, dropping a handful of nickel and fractional currency into the extended hat, passed on. The millionaire gazed aghast into the hat for an instant, and then inverted it spasmodically, allowing the money to drop into the gutter, much to the amusement of a gentleman and a tooth-pick on the steps of the Revere House, and very much more to the amusement of another party, who chanced to know that the supposed mendicant and the man of letters had been on terms of personal intimacy these twenty years."
A CURB-STONE MONEY-MANIAC.
A man may possess large acquisitiveness and benevolence at the same time, like Sir Astley Cooper, and succeed both pecuniarily and professionally. Such are, however, scarce. Those with an excess of the grasping principle in their composition illustrate the truth that "where the treasure is the heart will be also." Asleep or awake, drunk or sober, such men never lose sight of the almighty dollar. The annexed story, though irreverent to the doctors, is not irrelevant to the case:--
During the late "panic," a fellow, whose prominent feature was in his Jewish nose, which presented the sign of acquisitiveness by the bridge widening on to the cheeks above the alæ,--all men noted for accumulating have this sign, hung out by nature as a warning to the unwary,--was making a great noise, as he clung to a friendly lamp-post, to which he was arguing the state of the money market. "Come, sir, you are making too much noise," said a policeman.
"Me? No, 'tain't me that's--hic--making the noise; it's the bulls--the bulls, sir; them's what's making all the noise," replied the fellow, skewing first one side of the post, then the other, trying to get a view of his new intruder.
"You are tight, sir--tight as a peep," continued the watchman.
"Me tight? No, sir; it's the money-market what's--ti--tight," replied the gentlemanly dressed individual, though much the worse for bad whiskey. "Go down Wall Street, and Fisk and Vanderbuilt--all of 'em--will tell you so. Everybody says money is--hic--tight. I never was more loose in my--hic--life;" and he demonstrated the assertion by swinging very loosely around the lamp-post, and falling down.
"There, you are down. Too drunk to stand up;" and the policeman helped him to his feet again, and walked him along towards the station.
"No, sir. There you are wrong again; it's stocks that's down. It's the stockholders--hic--that's staggering along; they've fallen and skinned their noses on the curb-stone of adversity. There! don't you see them--crawling along?"
"O, you've got the tremens. Come on," exclaimed the policeman.
"Me? No; it's the shorts and bears what's got the dol--hic--lar--tremens. I've caught the pan--hics--panics, sir; that's all."
The policeman thrust the money-maniac into a cell, and the last seen of him he leaned back against the wall, his feet braced out, while, hatless and the knot of his cravat round under his left ear, he stood arguing the money-market with an imaginary broker on the opposite side of his cell.
AN "EYE-OPENER."
"How much do you charge, sir?" asked a poor farmer, from Framingham, of a city doctor, who had just wiped a bit of dust from the eye of his son.
"Twenty-five dollars, if you please," was the modest reply.
"I cannot pay it, sir," said the poor man. "It only took you a half minute. Our doctor was not at home; but I didn't think you would charge me much, sir."
So the M. D. very benevolently (?) accepted ten dollars--all the poor man had.
Can you wonder, after reading this statement, the truth of which is easily avouched for, that this doctor owns a whole block--stores, hotel--and is immensely rich?
From the English book "About Doctors," here are three anecdotes:--
Radcliffe, the humbug, with a great effort at generosity, had refused his fees for visiting a poor friend a whole year. On making a final visit, the gentleman said, presenting a purse,--
"Doctor, here I have put aside a fee for every day's visit. Let not your goodness get the better of your judgment. Take your money."
The doctor took a look, resolved to carry out his attempt at benevolence, just touched the purse to restore it to his friend, when he heard "the chink of gold" within, and--put it into his pocket, saying,--
"Singly, I could have refused the fees for a twelvemonth, but collectively, they are irresistible. Good day, sir;" and the greedy doctor walked away with a heavier pocket and a lighter heart than he came with.
On visiting a nobleman, Sir Richard Jebb was paid in hand three guineas when he, by right, expected five. The doctor purposely dropped the three gold pieces on the carpet, when the nobleman directed the servant to find and restore them; but Sir Richard still continued the search after receiving the three coins.
"Are they not all found?" inquired the nobleman, looking about.
"No, there must be two more on the carpet, as I have only three restored," replied the wily doctor.
His lordship took the hint, and said, "Never mind; here are two others."
This sticking for a fee was all cast into the shade by the act of an "eminent physician of Bristol." The doctor, entering the bedroom immediately after the death of his patient, found the right hand clinched tightly, and, pulling open the fingers of the dead man, the doctor discovered that the hand contained a guinea.
"Ah!" exclaimed the doctor to the servant and friends around him, "this was doubtless intended for me;" and so saying he pocketed the coin.
"Three hungry travellers found a bag of gold. One ran into the town where bread was sold. He thought, 'I will poison the bread I buy, And seize the treasure when my comrades die.' But they, too, thought, when back his feet have hied, We will destroy him, and the gold divide. They killed him, and, partaking of the bread, In a few moments all were lying dead. O world, behold what ill thy goods have done! Thy gold thus poisoned two and murdered one."
XVII. LOVE AND LOVERS
"No task is harder than that of writing to the ideas of another."--JOHNSON.
Duke. "If ever thou shalt love, In the sweet pangs of it, remember me; For such as I am all true lovers are; Unstaid and skittish in all things else, Save in the constant image of the creature That is beloved.... My life upon it, young as thou art, thine eye Hath stayed upon some face that it loves; Hath it not, boy?"
XANTIPPE, BEFORE JEALOUSY.--A FIRST LOVE--BLASTED HOPES.--A DOCTOR'S STORY.--THE FLIGHT FROM "THE HOUNDS OF THE LAW."--THE EXILE AND RETURN.--DISGUISED AS A PEDDLER.--ESCAPES WITH HIS LOVE.--ENGLISH BEAUS.--YOUNG COQUETTES.--A GAY AND DANGEROUS BEAU.--HANDSOME BEAUS.--LEAP YEAR.--AN OLD BEAU.--BEAUTY NOT ALL-POTENT.--OFFENDED ROYALTY.--YOUTH AND AGE.--A STABLE BOY.--POET-DOCTOR.
An old lady once said, "I've hearn say that doctors either are, or are not, great experts in love affairs; I've forgotten which." Just so!
"I would not be a doctor's wife for the world," I have heard many a lady affirm. True; for few doctors have had the misfortune (or folly) to select a jealous woman for a life companion.
Socrates, the great philosopher, and physician of the mind, seems to have had the ugliest tempered woman in the world, whose very name, Xantippe, has passed into a proverb for a scolding wife; yet she was not jealous of her spouse, but was said to have sincerely loved him; and he bore her outbursts of temper only as a great philosopher could, which seemed not to have disturbed the equanimity of his living nor the humor of his dying.
"Crito,"--these were his last words,--"Crito, forget not the cock that I promised to Esculapius!"
Alas! an affecting satire on philosophy and physic.
No; we find no cases to record of the jealousies of physicians, or their wives. All the jealousies of the former are spent on their professional brethren.
It is a philosophical fact that physicians, of all men, seldom are involved in disgrace, quarrels, or litigations on account of love affairs. Yet they have affections, like other men, and above all men know how to appreciate affection and virtue in woman.
FIRST LOVE--BLASTED HOPES.
I know of a little episode in the early life of a doctor, whose name modesty forbids me to mention. Let me briefly state it in the first person.
Ah, friend, if you and I should meet Beneath the boughs of the bending lime, And you in the same low voice repeat The tender words of the old love-rhyme, It could not bring back the same old time-- No, never.
I was young when I first fell in love,--not above six years of age; but love is without reason, blind to age. The object of my first affection was my school-mischief, as I then called her, who was about twenty. The disparagement of years never entered my innocent noddle. I used to start for school a half hour before nine, and stop on the way at the squire's house, where Miss ---- boarded. O, with what joy I always met her! In summer she gave me roses from the beautiful great white rose-bushes in the squire's front yard; in autumn and winter, splendid red and green apples, from the orchard and cellar, and candy and kisses at all times. So I fell desperately in love with her.
I was greatly shocked, and not a little piqued, when one day she, in cold blood, bade me good by, and went away with a tall man, with shocking red whiskers. That is all I remember about him. I, however, mourned her loss for years, although my appetite remained unimpaired--my parents said.
"Like a still serpent, basking in the sun, With subtle eyes, and back of russet gold, Her gentle tones and quiet sweetness won A coil upon her victims: fold on fold She wove around them with her graceful wiles, Till, serpent-like, she stung amid her smiles."
The next time I saw her was about ten years afterwards. O, with what pleasant anticipations I hastened to her house! I remembered her every look--her fair, intelligent face; her wavy black hair; her heavenly dark-blue eyes. O, I should know her anywhere! Her I never could forget.
With these thoughts I confidently knocked at the door. "Is Miss ---- at home?" I inquired of the--servant, I supposed, who opened the door. Just then three or four dirty-looking little children ran screaming after the woman, calling out, "Marm, marm!"
"Hush, children, hush!" said the female, and, turning again to me, said,--
"Whom did you inquire for?" pushing back one of the red-headed urchins.
"Miss Mary ----, ma'am," I answered. "She once lived at Blue Hill."
She gave a sickly-looking smile. She looked sick before; her cheeks all fallen in; her skimmed-milk colored eyes had a weary, anxious expression; and her thin, bony hands, resting on the door-latch, looked like a consumptive's, as she said,--
"When did you know her?"
"O, but a few years ago, ma'am. Is she here? Does she live in this house?" I eagerly inquired.
"Well," she replied, with another more sepulchral smile,
"I was once Miss Mary ----. I married Mr. ---- ----, over ten years ago. My baby, here,"--presenting the second in size of the children to my view, a reddish-brown haired girl, quite unlike any one I had ever seen before, and wiping its nose with her calico apron,--"she is named for me, Mary ----. Won't you come in, sir?"
No, I thought I would not stop. I didn't stop till I reached the hotel, where I had begged the stage-driver to wait for me but a half hour before, while I called upon the lovely Miss Mary ----.
"O, sunny dreams of childhood, How soon they pass away! Like flowers within the wild wood, They perish and decay."
A HANDY DOCTOR.
A young physician was supposed to be "keepin' company" with a young lady. The matronly friend of the latter, having praised the young man from all points of view, returned one day from the death-bed of a friend, at which the physician had been present. She eulogized the living fully as much as the dead man, and finally turning to the girl, as if she had reached the ne plus ultra of enthusiasm, she said, "Jane, he's the handsomest man I ever see fixin' round a corpse."
A DOCTOR'S STORY.
The writer is acquainted with a young physician, who read medicine with an old doctor, named Gitchel, or Twichel, of Portland, and commenced practice in his native village,--a great mistake for any practitioner to make,--and where he met with consequences natural to even a prophet, opposition and scandal. By some mistake, or, as his opponents charged, mal-practice, he lost a patient. Being, a few days later, in a shop in the next village, he was secretly informed that the "hounds of the law were after him--even at the next door, that very moment." Terrified beyond necessity, he caught up his medicine chest, and, climbing out of the back window, fled to the woods. In the village, at home, he had courted a lovely young girl, with whom he had exchanged vows. She knew the talk that was going on respecting the young doctor, but she believed it not, or, believing, clung the firmer to her pledges.
"After night fell I left the woods, and took to the highway. To go home I was afraid. O, had I but braved the doctors, and defied the lawyers, all would have been well," he told me afterwards. "But I had received such ill treatment, been scandalized so severely, that I was cowed to the earth. I knew not if my life, my Angie, had also turned against me, when the news was spread that I had tacitly admitted my crime by fleeing.
"I went to W., hundreds of miles away. I took a new name, and put out my shingle. I was at once patronized, and soon extensively; but I was morose and unhappy. I was offered a home and a wife. I had as good as a wife away in my far-off home; I was bound to her, and I loved her as I hated my own soul! I dared not write to her, nor go to her. 'O, my God, what shall I do?' I cried, in my misery. He did not hear me, and I came to believe that He was not!
"Thus a whole year wore away, and I had not heard from home. Finally, I determined to make an attempt to see my Angie. I had, after going to W., allowed my heavy beard to go uncropped, which I had never done at home. I wore no clothes that I brought away with me from home. I purchased a few knickknacks, put on a slouched hat, and appeared in my native village as a peddler. Unless my voice betrayed me, I had no fears of detection. To prevent this mishap I kept a silver coin in my mouth when talking.
"I had called at several houses, but could learn nothing of my betrothed, without fear of exciting suspicion by too close inquiries. I therefore, unable longer to stand the suspense, entered her father's house. She and her mother only were at home. I could scarcely suppress my feelings as I beheld her, the idol of my heart. When I spoke, she started to her feet, and with staring countenance gazed fixedly upon me. Then she fell back into her chair.
"My God, she did not know me.
"The mother noticed how pale the girl looked, and proposed to get her a drink of water from the porch.
"'No, no, I am not faint.'
"'Yes, yes,' I articulated, with the coin in my mouth; 'get her some water.'
"Away went the old lady, and, dropping my basket and spitting out the coin, I cried, 'Angie, Angie, bless you, my darling,' and fell kneeling at her feet.
"'O, Charley, it is you,--the Lord be praised!--come at last.'
"I sprang to my feet. There was time to say no more. The mother returned and looked wistfully about.
"'I thought I heard some one saying, "Charley, Charley,"' she said, presenting the water to Angie, who was now flushed and excited. I was searching for my coin.
"'O, the water is warm. Mother, dear, do go to the well in the yard, and get some fresh; and look to see if there is anybody outside calling.' And away went the old lady.
"'Now, Charley, what brought you back? And why did you stay? And--'
"'Wait, wait. Number nine boots brought me. I've come for you, Angie.'
"'You will be arrested if you are seen here, I am afraid,' she said.
"'Then meet me to-night at ---- Crossing, and fly with me.'
"I then told her how I had lived, how I had suffered, and how much I loved her; and she consented to marry me, and secretly go away with me. But the difficulty now lay in getting a lawful man to marry us. The license could be bought; I was certain of that. So I went away and obtained it. I next hired a horse and carriage, and paid for it in advance, to go twelve miles.
"'Aren't you Charley ----?' asked the stable man, eying me sharply, as I was about to drive away to get Angie, that night.
"'Take this,'--and I gave him a gold piece,--'and ask no questions, nor answer any, till you see your horse and carriage safely back,' was my reply.
"As we drove out of the village, I heard wagon wheels far behind us. Reaching the woods, I drove into a wood road, and the 'hounds of the ---- doctors' rode fiercely past. Angie trembled for my safety. I reached a cross road. The moon shone quite brightly, and, jumping from the buggy, I soon found, by the fresh track, which road they had taken. I took a different. So I reached a train that night, and rode till morning; arrived at W. the next, and was married."
It was at W. that I found him first. He was smart. He had a good memory. He was a handsome man, full six feet in his stockings. In all, his address was not excelled by any physician with whom I have ever met. He is now an excellent physician and surgeon, in a large city, in good practice. When he returned on a visit to his native village, as he did last year, the affair had blown over; for after a man is honored abroad, he may become so at home,--seldom before. I wish him happiness and prosperity.
"There is no greater rogue than he who marries only for money; no greater fool than he who marries only for love. I could marry any lady I like, if I would only take the trouble," Dr. Macilvain heard an old fellow say. Of course, nobody but a conceited old bachelor would have said that, who needs a woman to just take some of the self-conceit out of him.
ENGLISH DOCTORS AS BEAUS.
Some of the old English doctors were gay fellows amongst the ladies, according to the best authorities. Nevertheless, few men have arrived at eminence in the medical profession who were known to be afflicted with an overplus of romantic or sentimental qualities in their composition.
It may be interesting, particularly to ladies, to know that the majority of those physicians who have arrived at the dignity of knighthood owe their elevation rather to the smiles of love than the rewards of professional efforts. "Considering the opportunities that medical men have for pressing a suit in love, and the many temptations to gentle emotion that they experience in the aspect of female suffering, and the confiding gratitude of their fair patients, it is to be wondered at that only one medical duke is to be found in the annals of the peerage." But the physician usually has quite sufficient self-control and honor about him, not only to keep his own tender sensibilities in subjection, but often to check those of his grateful and emotional female patient.
Thackeray has said that "girls of rank make love in the nursery, and practise the arts of coquetry upon the page boy who brings up the coals and kindlings."
In this connection Mr. Jeaffreson, whose narratives have the virtue of being true as well as interesting, says, "I could point to a fair matron who now enjoys rank and wealth among the highest, who not only aimed tender glances, and sighed amorously upon a young, waxen-faced, blue-eyed apothecary, but even went so far as to write him a letter proposing an elopement, and other merry arrangements, in which a 'carriage and four,' to speed them over the country, bore a conspicuous part."
The "silly maiden" had, like Dinah, a "fortune in silver and gold," of about two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and her tall, blue-eyed Adonis, to whom she made this almost resistless proposal, was twice her age. But he was a gentleman of honor, and, being in the confidence of the family, he generously, without divulging the mad proposition of the fair young lady, induced the father to take her to the continent, for a twelvemonth's change of air and scenery.
"What a cold-blooded wretch!" will some fair reader exclaim.
"What a fool he was, to be sure!" says the bachelor fortune-seeker.
Well, she didn't die for her first unrequited love, but married a "very great man," and became the mother of several children. And this is the way the fair heroine of this little story avenged herself upon this "Joseph amongst doctors."
Very recently she manifested her good will to the man who had offered her what is generally regarded as the greatest insult a woman can experience, by procuring a commission in the army for his eldest son.
It is interesting to note the various qualities which have attracted the attention, or love, of different sons of Æsculapius to female beauties. Sometimes it has been her hair, the "pride of a woman," that was the point of attraction, as it was with Dr. Mead, "whose highest delight was to comb the luxuriant tresses of the lady on whom he lavished his affections;" or the "eyes of heavenly blue," like the lady love's of Dr. Elliot, senior; or the tiny footprint in the sand, like that which first attracted Dr. Robert Ames to the woman of his choice. What the point of attraction was in the man is not easily ascertained.
A gay and dangerous beau among the "high ladies" was Dr. Hugh Smithson, the father of James Smithson (his illegitimate son), the founder of the "Smithsonian Institution" at Washington. Sir Hugh's forte lay in his remarkably handsome person, said to be only second to Sir Astley Cooper in beauty of form and features. However, he had the address which secured to him one of the handsomest and proudest heiresses of England, and this is how he accomplished it.
He was but the grandson of a Yorkshire baronet, "with no prospects," and was apprenticed to an apothecary, and for a long time paid court to mortar and pestle at Hutton Garden. The story runs, that the handsome doctor had been mittened by a "belle of private rank and modest wealth," and that the only child and heiress of Seymour, Duke of Somerset, and an acquaintance of Sir Hugh's, heard of his rejection, when she publicly observed that "the beauty who had disdained such a man was guilty of a folly that no other woman in England would have been."
Sir Hugh would have been unwise not to have taken this broad hint, and he did what none of the heiress's suitors, even of high rank, had yet aspired to,--proposed, and was accepted. Sixteen years later he was created Duke of Northumberland, and could well afford to laugh in his sleeve at the proposition that "his coronet should be surrounded with senna leaves, instead of strawberry," since he had reached a rank that no other M. D. had previously done, and possessed the "loveliest woman in England," and a great fortune, to boot.
Lord Glenbervie, who from the druggist's counter reached the peerage, was taunted by Sheridan with his plebeian origin, from which a patrician wife had redeemed him, in the following amusing verse:--
"Glenbervie, Glenbervie! What's good for the scurvy? But why is the doctor forgot? In his arms he should quarter A pestle and mortar, For his crest an immense gallipot."
Sir John Elliot was another handsome doctor of that period, who, notwithstanding his being disliked by King George, could, with small effort and large impudence, "capture the hearts of half the prettiest women amongst the king's subjects, and then shrug his shoulders with chagrin at his success." "One lady, the daughter of a nobleman, ignorant that he was otherwise occupied, made him an offer, and on learning, to her surprise and mortification, that he was already married, vowed she would not rest till she had assassinated his wife."
Dr. Arbuthnot, whose courtly address, sparkling wit, ready flow of language, innate cordiality, and polished manners made him a great favorite about London, was one of the finest looking gentlemen of his time. The doctor was contemporary with Dean Swift, with whom he used to enjoy flirtations with the queen's maids of honor about St. James.
"Arm in arm with the dean, he used to peer about St. James, jesting, laughing, causing matronly dowagers to smile at 'that dear Mr. Dean,' and young girls, out for their first season at court, green and unsophisticated, to blush with annoyance at his coarse, shameless badinage,--bowing to this great man, from whom he hoped for countenance; staring insolently at that one, from whom he expected nothing; quoting Martial to the prelate, who could not understand Latin; whispering French to a youthful diplomatist, who knew no tongue but English; and continually angling for the bishopric, which he never got."
From flattering court beauties, Arbuthnot became flatterer to the gouty, hypochondriacal old queen. But wine and women made sad havoc with poor Arbuthnot, who died in very straitened circumstances.
Dr. Mead, before mentioned, was twice married. He was fifty-one years old when married the second time, to a baronet's daughter. Fortunate beyond fortunate men, he had the great mis-fortune of outliving his usefulness. His sight failed, and his powers underwent that gradual decay which is the saddest of all possible conclusions to a vigorous and dignified existence. Even his valets domineered over him. Long before this his second childhood, he excited the ridicule of the town by his vanity and absurd pretensions as a "lady-killer."
"The extravagances of his amorous senility were not only whispered about, but some contemptible fellow seized upon the unpleasant rumors, and published them in a scandalous novelette, wherein the doctor was represented as a 'Cornuter of seventy-five,' when, to please the damsel who 'warmed his aged heart,'--she was a blacksmith's daughter,--the doctor, long past threescore and ten, went to Paris, and learned to dance."
Dr. Richard Mead died aged eighty-one. The sale of his library, pictures, and statues brought the heirs eighty thousand dollars. His other effects amounted to one hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars.
Another Dr. Mead, uncle to the above, lived to the age of one hundred and forty-nine years. Both of these physicians were remarkable for their kindness and liberality. The latter left five pounds a year to the poor, to continue forever.
BEAUTY NOT POTENT WITH LADIES.
A handsome person is not alone requisite to win the affections of a sensible lady. Radcliffe, who was as great a humbug in affairs matrimonial as in all other matters, was represented as being "handsome and imposing in person;" but his overbearing manner, and his coarse flings at the softer sex, made him anything but a favorite with the ladies. While he professed to be a misogynist, he made several unsuccessful attempts, particularly late in life, to commit himself to matrimony.
A lady, with "a singing noise in her head," asked what she should do for it. "Curl your hair at night with a ballad," was the coarse reply.
Once, when sitting over a bottle of wine at a public house, Queen Anne sent her servant for Dr. Radcliffe to hasten to her Royal Highness, who was taken suddenly ill with what was vulgarly called "the blue devils," to which gormandizers are subject, but more properly termed indigestion. "When the wine is in, the wits are out," was readily demonstrated in this case; for, on a second messenger arriving from the queen for her physician to make all haste, Radcliffe banged his fist down on the board, at which other physicians also sat, and exclaimed,--
"Go tell her Royal Highness that she has nothing but the vapors."
When, on the following morning, the process being reversed,--the "wine was out, and wits were in"--the doctor presented himself, with pomp and a show of dignity, at St. James', judge of his mortification, when the chamberlain stopped him in the anteroom, and informed him that he was already succeeded by Dr. Gibbons.
The queen never forgave him for saying she had the "vapors." Radcliffe never forgave Dr. Gibbons for superseding him. "Nurse Gibbons," he would bitterly exclaim, "is only fit to look after nervous women, who only fancy sickness."
When the doctor was forty-three years of age, he made love to a lady of half his years, and followed with an offer of marriage, which was accepted. As the fact became public, the doctor was warmly congratulated upon his good fortune, for the lady was not only young, but was a beauty, and an heiress to seventy-five thousand dollars.
The wedding day was set, which was to crown Radcliffe's happiness, when a little drawback arose, which was not previously mentioned in the bills. The peculiar condition of the beauty's health rendered it expedient that, instead of the doctor, she should marry her father's book-keeper.
The doctor's acetous temper towards the fair sex was not lessened by this mishap, nor were the ladies backward in giving him an occasional reminder of the fact. Nevertheless, unlike the burnt child, that avoided the fire, Radcliffe, sixteen years afterwards, made a second conspicuous throw of the dice. He was then about sixty. He came out with a new and elegant equipage, employed the most fashionable tailors, hatters, and wig-makers, "who arrayed him in the newest modes of foppery, which threw all London into fits of laughter, while he paid his addresses, with the greatest possible publicity, to a lady who possessed every requisite charm,--youth, beauty, and wealth,--except a tenderness for her aged suitor.
"Behold, love has taken the place of avarice [the affair was thus aired in a public print]; "or, rather, is become avarice of another kind, which still urges him to pursue what he does not want. But behold the metamorphosis! The anxious, mean cares of a usurer are turned into the languishments and complaints of a lover. 'Behold,' says the aged Æsculapian, 'I submit; I own, great Love, thy empire. Pity, Hebe, the fop you have made. What have I to do with gilding but on pills? Yet, O Fate, for thee I sit amidst a crowd of painted deities on my chariot, buttoned in gold, clasped in gold, without having any value for that beloved metal, but as it adorns the hat, person, and laces of the dying lover. I ask not to live, O Hebe! Give me gentle death. Euthanasia, Euthanasia! That is all I implore.'
"O Wealth, how impotent art thou, and how little dost thou supply us with real happiness, when the usurer himself cannot forget thee for the love of what is foreign to his felicity, as thou art!"
Although Radcliffe denied his own sisters during his life, "lest they should show their affection for him by dipping their hands in his pockets," some stories of his benevolence are told, one of which is, that finding one Dr. James Drake, when "each had done the utmost to injure the other," broken down and in distressed circumstances, he sent by a lady fifty guineas to his unfortunate enemy, saying,--
"Let him by no means learn who sent it. He is a gentleman who has often done his best to hurt me, and would by no means accept a benefit from one whom he had striven to make an enemy."
A STABLE-BOY, POET, AND DOCTOR.
Poor George Crabbe, the poet-doctor-apothecary, had a very hard time in this cold, unappreciative world, until Love smiled upon his unhappy lot. He was born in the old sea-side town of Aldoborough, where his father was salt inspector,--not an over-lucrative office in those days. George was the eldest of a numerous family.
From the common school he went to apprenticeship with a rough old country doctor, who lodged him with the stable-boy. From this indignity he was, however, soon released, and went to live with a kind gentleman, a surgeon of Woodbridge. Here he began to write poetry. Here, also, he became acquainted with a young surgeon, named Leavett, who introduced Crabbe to a lovely young lady, with whom he fell desperately in love.
This inestimable young lady resided at Parham Lodge with her uncle, John Tovell, yeoman, and her name was Sarah Elmy. Mr. Tovell possessed an estate worth four thousand dollars per annum, and, without assuming any "airs," was a first-class "yeoman" of that period--"one that already began to be styled, by courtesy, an esquire."
"On Crabbe's first introduction to Parham Lodge, he was received with cordiality; but when it became known that he had fallen in love with the squire's niece, it was only natural that his presumption should at first meet with the disapproval of Mrs. Tovell and the squire."
After closing his term of apprenticeship with Dr. Page, young Crabbe returned to his native village, where he furnished a little shop with "a pound's worth of drugs," and an array of empty bottles, and set himself up as an apothecary. His few patients were only amongst the poorer class of the town. Although he had plighted troth with the lovely Sarah at Parham Lodge, with starvation staring him in the face at Aldoborough, and the opposition of the lady's family at the Lodge, there was little prospect of bettering his condition in life. The temporary military appointments which he received brought him no nearer his desired object. The lady remained true to her vows; and long after his friend Leavett had quitted the shores of time, and his new and true friend Burke had extended to the promising author his patronage, she received the reward for her faithful waiting.
The union of Crabbe with Miss Elmy conferred eventually upon the poet, doctor, and apothecary, the possession of the estate of "yeoman" Tovell--Parham Lodge. A maiden sister of the squire's, dying, left him a considerable sum of money. The loving, waiting Sarah proved a faithful, though some might say a somewhat domineering, wife, as the following quotation intimates:--
"I can screw Crabbe up or down, just like an old fiddle," this amiable woman was wont to say; and throughout her life she amply demonstrated the assertion.
"But her last will and testament was a handsome apology for all her past little tiffs."
THE RIGHT MAN.
A curious story is told, and vouched for, respecting the manner in which Dr. and Rev. Thomas Dawson obtained a rich and pious wife. This gentleman combined the two professions of preacher and doctor. If, during divine services, he was called upon to prescribe for an invalid, he wound up his sermon, requested his audience to pray for the sick, and repaired forthwith to administer to the body. I presume the congregation to whom the reasonable request was made did not take it in the same light as did an "M. D." of whom we heard, who made a point to be called out of church every Sabbath.
Once the minister, who had a bit of humor in his manner, stopped on a certain occasion in his "thirdly," and said, "Dr. B. is wanted to attend upon Mr. ----, and may the Lord have mercy upon him."
The doctor was so enraged at this "insinuation" that he called upon the parson, and demanded an "apology to the congregation, before whom he felt he had been grossly slandered."
The parson agreed to this proposal, and in the afternoon he arose and said,--
"As Dr. B. feels aggrieved at my remark of this morning, and demands an apology, I hereby offer the same; and as that was the first case, I trust it may be the last in which I am ever called upon in his behalf to supplicate divine intervention."
But to return to Dr. Dawson. Amongst his patients was a Miss Mary Corbett, said to be one of the wealthiest and most pious of his flock, whom, on his calling upon her one day, he found bending in reverence over the Bible.
The doctor approached, and as she raised her eyes to his she held her finger upon the passage which occupied her immediate attention. The doctor bent down and read the words at which her finger pointed--"Thou art the man."
The doctor was not slow to take the hint. Thus he obtained a pious wife, she a devout husband.--See "Book About Doctors."
A great deal has been reported respecting the "off-hand" manner in which Abernethy "popped the question" to Miss Anne Threlfall. The fact of the case is given by Dr. Macilwain. The lady was visiting at a place where the doctor was attending a patient--of all places the best to learn the true merits of a lady. He was at once interested in her, and ere long there seemed a tacit understanding between them. "The doctor was shy and sensitive; which was the real Rubicon he felt a difficulty in passing; and this was the method he adopted: he wrote her a brief note, pleading professional occupation, etc., and requesting the lady to take a fortnight in which to consider her reply." From these facts a great falsehood has oft been repeated how he "couldn't afford time to make love," etc., and that she must decide to marry him in a week, or not at all.
He was married to her January 9, 1800, and attended lectures the same day.
"Many years after, I met him coming out of the hospital, and said,--
"'You are looking very gay to-day, sir.'
"'Yes,' he replied, looking at his white vest and smart attire, 'one of the girls was married this morning.'
"'Indeed, sir? You should have given yourself a holiday on such an occasion, and not come down to lecture.'
"'Nay,' he replied, 'egad, I came down to lecture the same day I was married myself.'"--Memoirs of Abernethy.
XVIII. MIND AND MATTER
"The evidence of sense is the first and highest kind of evidence of which human nature is capable."--WILKINS.
"They choose darkness rather than light because their deeds are evil."--SCRIPTURE.
IN WHICH ANIMAL MAGNETISM, MESMERISM, AND CLAIRVOYANCE ARE EXPLAINED.--"THE IGNORANT MONOPOLY."--YET ROOM FOR DISCOVERIES.--A "GASSY" SUBJECT.--DRS. CHAPIN AND BEECHER.--HE "CAN'T SEE IT."--THE ROYAL TOUCH.--GASSNER.--"THE DEVIL KNOWS LATIN."--ROYALTY IN THE SHADE.--THE IRISH PROPHET; HE VISITS LONDON.--A COMICAL CROWD.--MESMERISM.--A FUNNY BED-FELLOW.--CLAIRVOYANCE.--THE GATES OF MOSCOW.--THE DOCTOR OF ANTWERP.--THE OLD LADY IN THE POKE-BONNET.--VISIT TO A CLAIRVOYANT.--"FORETELLING" THE PAST.--THE OLD WOMAN OF THE PENOBSCOT MOUNTAINS.--A SECRET KEPT.--CUI BONO?--VISITS TO SEVENTEEN CLAIRVOYANTS.--A BON-TON CLAIRVOYANT.--A BOUNCER.--RIDICULOSITY.
Mind and matter!
What is the connection?
Why does one's yawning set a whole room full to yawning?
What is the unseen power, appropriated mostly by the ignorant, which at times controls another weaker mind, or, for the time being, controls disease? The majority of medical men "get around" this question by denying the whole proposition. But that does not satisfy the jury--the people. The great community know that there is some unseen power, which is partially developed in certain persons, which has great controlling influence over certain other persons; hence over their diseases, especially mental or nervous diseases.
I hope to be able to explain something of this "phenomenon."
Those who practise it know nothing of its modus operandi, any more than the bird that sings on yonder willow knows of the science of music.
To the common suggestion, "It's spirits," I say, No, no!
If it were "spirits," why does the spirit always seek a low organization through which to manifest itself? There are few exceptions to this rule.
It is unnatural, inconsistent with the divine attributes for the supernatural to mingle with the natural. The circulation of the blood was once attributed to the action of the sun--hence a man fell asleep at sunset--and to supernatural causes.
Science has done away with these absurd notions.
"It is a manifestation of divine power," say others.
Well, for that matter, everything is; but directly it is not, for what answers the "spirit" suggestion answers this one also. Divine power cannot be limited.
For want of a better name, let us call this power "animal magnetism."
The man who controls the mind of another, or another's disease, through his mind, must possess the following requisites: First, health; second, will; third, faith that he can control the subject. No reasoning is necessary. The less causality he possesses, the better. The less reasoning faculties, the better he can perform.
Why?
Animal magnetism is an animal power--not a spiritual. All the animal qualities--organs--are located in the back and lower part of the brain. They act independent of reason. Passions have no reason. The affections have no reason. Anger and hate have none. The force, driving power of man is centred back of the ears. The cerebellum, or lower brain, acts independent of reason. Birds, and most of the animals, possess all the qualities that the cerebellum of man contains.
The upper brain--the cerebrum--is the instrument of our thoughts--our reason. In sleep, it is still; its action is suspended. Hence there is no reason in our dreams. The motive power is in the lower brain; hence somnambulism. If there is anything of a "trance" nature, it means shutting off the action of the cerebrum, and concentring the power in the cerebellum. Some persons have but little upper brain. If they have the other requisites, they may become good clairvoyants, or magnetizers, according to the manner in which they exercise the animal power.
I have yet to find a professional clairvoyant with large or active reasoning (intellectual) qualities.
YET ROOM FOR MORE DISCOVERIES.
The living blood has not yet been analyzed. It contains a vitalizing element which chemistry has not yet been adequate to detect. There is yet as much to be discovered in the science of life as has already been revealed to man. It will yet be found out.
How is the power, or force, conveyed from the operator to the person operated upon? Through what medium does it act?
Let us begin with the brain. Let us take a ball of cotton for our illustration. We draw out a piece from it, and spin it out to our fancy. It is a thread, but cotton still, twisted to a fine string. The brain is located at the top of man. By means of fine threads, called nerves, the brain is distributed over the entire body, so completely that you cannot stick a pin in the flesh without touching a nerve, wounding the brain. Suspend the entire action of the brain, as by ether, chloroform, or nitrous oxygen gas, and sticking the pin is not felt. Partially suspend the action, as by a small quantity of the nitrous oxygen gas, and the force of the brain (or active force) is centred upon the lower brain, and the man under its influence acts out his animal nature in spite of reason.
A man, I hold, who magnetizes or mesmerizes another, uses only the force of the lower brain. Like begets like. He cannot affect a person of large intellectual organs; only one with the animal organs active.
You cannot see the gas, yet it affects the person. You cannot see the subtile power conveyed from one man to a weaker. He conveys it by touch--nerve to nerve. I believe science will yet discover just what this subtile agent is--both in the blood and nerves; for it is in both, or why does the suspension of it in one destroy the other? Destroy the nerve, and the corresponding blood-vessel is inactive. Destroy the blood-vessel, and the corresponding nerve suffers.
It is the power that the mother exercises to hush her sobbing babe to slumber. As the child gathers strength of mind, she loses that control. A person may be used as a mesmeric subject until he becomes a mere idiotic machine. Educate a clairvoyant doctor, and what becomes of his clairvoyant power? It is lost with the increase of intellectual power. Now, is this a "divine" quality, that only ignorance can make use of? Is it really "hidden from the wise and prudent, and given to babes?" All sciences were practised by the uneducated first, before being reduced to a science. I think this will be yet reduced to a useful science. As it now stands, it is useless. If it is a spirit power, the spirits are mighty silent as to the fact.
We come into this world by natural causes. We live, grow, exist, and we die by natural causes. We brought no knowledge with us; we carry none out. All the qualities yet developed in man are natural, and adapted to this life. Millions upon millions have so lived and so died, and a spirit power in this world is no nearer to being established than it was when Adam was a little boy. All that heretofore has been attributed to spirit, or supernatural causes, has been proven to be but natural. I claim that magnetism and the undiscovered sciences are natural, and have no connection with the next world, to which we tend. The human eye, to some extent, is magnetic. A blind man cannot thrill an audience; hardly can an orator with glasses over his eyes. Dr. Chapin approaches the nearest to it. Dr. Beecher's great magnetic power is in his eyes, and is also let off at the ends of his fingers. But to thoroughly magnetize a person, he must be touched.
POWER OF THE HUMAN EYE.
A wild animal has only small reasoning organs. The influence of the human eye is potent over him. Lichtenstein says, "The African hunters avail themselves of the circumstance that the lion does not attempt to spring upon his prey until he has measured the ground, and has reached the distance of ten or twelve paces, when he lies crouching on the ground, gathering himself up for the effort. The hunters," he says, "make it a rule never to fire on the lion until he lies down at this short distance, so that they can aim directly at his head with the most perfect certainty. If one meets a lion, his only safety is to stand still, though the animal crouches to make his spring; that spring will not be hazarded if the man remain motionless, and look him steadfastly in the eyes. The animal hesitates, rises, slowly retreats some steps, looks earnestly about him, lies down, again retreats, till, getting by degrees quite out of the magic circle of man's influence, he takes flight in the utmost haste."
It is said of Valentine Greatrakes, the great magnetizer and forerunner of Mesmer, that the glance of his eye had a marvellously fascinating influence upon people of a susceptible or nervous organization. All magnetizers, etc., who have tried their powers upon the writer, first bent a sharp, scrutinizing gaze upon the eye of their unruly subject. Yet they have exercised no reason in selecting the subject.
I attended the exhibitions of Professor Cadwell, night after night, in Boston. I went on the stage. I examined the subjects whom he controlled "like an old fiddle," and, physiognomically and phrenologically, not one of them was above mediocrity intellectually, and the most of them were far below. The best subjects had the least intellectuality. His control over them was astonishing. In some he could suspend the power of memory, others all the reasoning faculties. Some he could control muscularly, some mentally.
"This is a hot stove," he said, setting an empty chair before the row of men, boys, and girls sitting along the wall side of the stage. "It is very hot;" and they began drawing back--all but one. "Don't you see the stove, and feel the awful heat, Frank?" he asked of one hard subject.
"I can feel the heat, but I can't see the stove in that chair," was his droll reply.
The professor could make this gentleman forget his name, but could not make him believe that "a silk hat was a basin of water."
THE ROYAL TOUCH.
The old ignorant kings and queens were said to remove the scrofula (king's evil) by the touch. Gouty old Queen Anne was the last to exercise the royal prerogative to any extent.
A scrofulous development is the result of imperfect action, and obstruction of some one or more of the five excretory organs of the human system. These are the skin (or glands of the same), the lungs, the liver, the kidneys, and the colon. The most that the regular physician does in scrofula (or one who is not a specialist in this branch of physic) is to attend to the general health of the patient of a scrofulous diathesis, build up the strength, and endeavor to increase the vitality. This in a measure tends to reduce the scrofulous development. Now, will not a child sleeping continually with an aged person or invalid tend to reduce the vitality of the child? Yes, it absorbs the disease of the one, while the vitality is thrown off for the benefit of the weaker person. Here, you see, one person may partake of the vitality of another by touch. Then may not the continued touch of a healthy person (king or subject) affect the health of a weaker, on the principle of increased vitality?
But it really removes no cause, hence cannot take the place of an alterative, or anti-scrofulous medicine. The "crew of wretched souls" who waited the king's touch really believed that he "solicits Heaven." Hence the cure. The coin which he hung about the neck of these "strangely visited people, all swollen and ulcerous, pitiful to the eye," called their attention continually to "the healing benediction."
Pyrrhus, who was placed upon the throne by force of arms B. C. 306, was said to cure the "evil" by the "grace of God." Valentine, who only held his throne--A. D. 375--by the help of Theodosius, not by the "grace of God"--claimed to cure scrofula by the latter power, as did Valentine II., whose wicked temper ended his life in a "fit of passion."
The subject of the following sketch claimed also divine power:--
HERR GASSNER. "THE DEVIL UNDERSTANDS LATIN."
It seems from the following truthful account of Herr Gassner, a clergyman at Elwangen, that the devil can understand Latin, as well as "quote Scripture." About the year 1758 this clergyman became so celebrated in curing diseases by animal magnetism, that the people came flocking from Switzerland, the Tyrol, and Swabia, in great numbers, to be cured of all sorts of ailments, a thousand persons arriving at a time, who had to lodge in tents, as the town could not lodge them all.
His modus operandi was as follows. Dressed in a long scarlet cloak, a silken sash about his loins, a chain about his neck, and wearing, or holding in one hand, a crucifix, and touching with the other the diseased part, and in the Latin tongue commanding the disease, or the evil spirit, whichever the case was termed, to depart, in the name of Jesus Christ, the patient was usually healed. Dr. Schlisel says, that Gassner "spoke chiefly in Latin, in his operations, and the devil is said to have understood him perfectly."
The Austrian government gave him its assistance. The excitement became great. Elwangen was overcrowded by people, rich and poor. Riches flowed into the coffers of its trades-people, though Gassner took nothing directly for his cures. Hundreds of patients arrived daily; the apothecary gained a great revenue from dispensing simples ordered by Gassner, principally powder of blessed thistle, oils, and washes. The printers labored day and night at their presses in order to furnish sufficient pamphlets, prayers, pictures, etc., for the eager horde of admirers. The goldsmiths were crowded, also, to furnish all kinds of Agni Dei, crosses, charms, hearts, and rings. Even the beggars had their harvest, as well as bakers, hotel-keepers, and the rest.
During seven years he carried on his public cures. Hundreds of physicians went to see him. Mesmer, in answer to the inquiry of the Elector of Bavaria, declared his astonishing cures were produced merely by the exercise of magnetic spiritual excitement, of which he himself (claiming no God-like power) gave to the elector convincing proofs on the spot.
On the contrary, Gassner claimed that he could heal none unless they exercised faith. His surroundings, trappings, dress, crucifixes, appeals to Jesus Christ, and Latin mummery, had the effect to impress the patient with faith in Gassner's Christ-like powers.
"Some," says Dr. Schlisel, "described him as a prophetic and holy man; others accused him of being a fantastic fellow, an impostor, and leagued with the devil. Some accused him of dealing in the black art; others attributed his cures to the magnet, to electricity, to sympathy, to imagination; and some attributed the whole to the omnipotent power of the name of Christ."
Having touched or rubbed the affected part of the patient, Gassner, in a "loud, proud voice," commanded the disease to come forth, or to manifest itself. Sometimes he had to repeat this command ten times. Then, when the part was presented, he seized it with both hands; he inspired the patient to himself repel the disease, by saying, "Depart from me, in the name of Jesus Christ."
"He then gave the patient his blessing by spreading his cloak over the head, grasping his neck or head in both hands, repeating a silent, earnest prayer, making the sign of the cross, ordering some simple from the apothecary's, which he consecrates, compels the patient to wash his hands clean, when he is permitted to 'depart in peace.'
"Most diseases he cured instantly. Some required months, and others he could not affect in the least."
There is but one philosophical way to account for these cures. To say there is nothing in it, or, "It is all humbug," will not satisfy the people. To affirm it is the arts of the devil is merely nonsensical. It is influence. Of what? Of one powerful mind over another. And when Gassner found a mind equally as powerful as his own, the disease refused to depart. There you have the whole of it, "in a nutshell,"--the exercising of one mind over another; and mind (not unusually) controls matter in the living body.
For about seven years Gassner was a public healer, and then he suddenly and forever disappeared.
ROYALTY IN THE SHADE.
Sir John Fortesque, the learned legal writer of the time of Edward IV., spoke of the gift of healing by touch as a "time immemorial privilege of the kings of England." He very seriously attributed the virtue to the unction imparted to the hands in the coronation. Elizabeth was not superior to this superstition, and she frequently appeared before the people in the character of a miraculous healer. There was formerly a regular office in the English Book of Common Prayer for the performance of this ceremony. The curious reader is referred to Macbeth, Scene III. of Act IV. for further particulars.
With the rise of Valentine Greatrakes, the "royal prerogative" received a staggering blow. The marvellous cures of this man, living in Ireland, reached England, and the king invited him to come to London; and along his journey, whither he was preceded by the returning messenger, we are told that the magistrates of the towns and cities waited upon Valentine, and begged him to remain and heal their sick.
On his arrival, the king, "though not fully persuaded of his wonderful gift, recommended him to the care of his physician, and permitted him to practise his power as much as he pleased in London."
Greatrakes had no medical education, nor claimed aught beyond a gift of healing most diseases by "stroking the parts with his hand." He is described as being a man of "commanding address, frank and pleasing, having a brilliant eye, gallant bearing, fine figure, and a remarkably handsome face. With a hearty and musical voice, and a natural stock of high animal spirits, he was the delight of all festive assemblies. Yet he was a devout man."
Daily there assembled a great number of people, invalids from all parts of the kingdom, to be healed, and to see the wonderful miracles performed by a man! Here congregated the dropsical, those afflicted by unsightly sores, tumors, and swellings, the lame, the halt, and the blind. "Some he could not affect, but the most of them he cured." The only visible means he took was to stroke, or at times violently rub, the part affected. Lord Conway wrote in his praise, but added, "After all, I am far from thinking his cures miraculous. I believe it is by a sanative virtue and a natural efficiency, which extend not to all diseases." The Viscountess Conway was afflicted by an inveterate headache, which he could not remove. This lady was a positive character. The failure was attributed to the peculiar disease, when it should have been assigned to the peculiarity of the person. Sir Evremond, then at court, wrote a sarcastic novel on the subject of "The Irish Prophet." The Royal Society held a meeting on the subject, and, unable to refute the facts of his cures, accounted for them as being "produced by a sanative contagion in Mr. Greatrakes' body, which had an antipathy to some peculiar diseases, and not to others." They demanded (particularly Dr. Loyd, in a "severe pamphlet") how he cured, and why he cured some, and could not others. Greatrakes replied that he was not able to tell. And "let them," he said, "tell me what substance that is which removes and goes out with such expedition, and it will be more easy to resolve their questions."
To the scandalous reports respecting his operations upon female patients, without referring directly to such report, he says, attributing the diseases to evil spirits, "which kind of pains cannot endure my hand, nay, not with gloves, but fly immediately, though six or eight coats or cloaks be between the person and my hand, as at the Lady Ranelagh's," etc.
The clergy had previously taken alarm, and cited Valentine before the Bishop's Court to account for his proceedings, and when he took a scriptural view of his cures, he was forbidden to practise more; which was as preposterous as the decree of Louis XIV., which commanded that no more miracles should be performed at the tomb of the Abbé Paris.
Neither the clergy nor the faculty could prevent him, and daily the crowd of representatives of heterogeneous diseases made pilgrimages to the Squire of Affam. The scene was said to be ludicrously painful. They came in crowds from everywhere; on foot and in carriages; the young and the aged; some hobbling upon crutches, others literally crawling along; the blind carrying the cripple upon his back, while the latter directed the way, and the deaf and dumb followed in their wake.
While the lord mayor and the chief justice, with great physicians, were among his vehement supporters of the sterner sex, the majority of his real admirers were the ladies. The lovely Countess of Devonshire entertained him in her palace, and other high ladies lionized him nightly in their parlors, where he "performed his pleasant operations, with wonderful results, on the prettiest and most hysterical ladies present." "But his triumph was of short duration. His professions were made the butts of ridicule, to which his presence of mind and volubility were unable to effectually respond. His tone of conversation was represented by his enemies as compounded of the blasphemy of the religious enthusiast and the obscene profligate. His boast that he never received a fee for remedial services was met by a square contradiction, and a statement that he received five hundred dollars at once." Finally, the tide of opposition and slander became too strong for him, and he returned to his native land, and to oblivion.
We are indebted to several authorities for the foregoing sketch of Greatrakes, particularly Chambers' Miscellany, Lord Conway, E. Rich, and Jeaffreson.
MESMERISM.
Frederick Anthony Mesmer, to whose name the above ism is affixed, was born in Werseburg, in 1734. He neither discovered, developed, nor understood anything of the art which has immortalized him. He was a designing, audacious man. If Gassner, Prince Hohenloe, and Greatrakes were falsely accused of dealing with the devil, Mesmer was truly leagued with a Father Hell. Father Hell was professor of astronomy at Vienna, where Mesmer obtained a medical diploma, and where he was connected at first with Maximilian Hell in magnetic instruments. Having a falling out with the latter, Mesmer resorted to the arts of his great predecessor, Greatrakes, but professed to cure, without the help of God or man, all curable diseases. He produced marvellous effects (but only temporary, however) in both Vienna and Paris, to which latter place he repaired to practise animal magnetism.
Among the little episodes relative to his treatment is one of Madame Campan, a lady of the royal household, author of "Memoires de Marie Antoinette." The husband of this celebrated lady sent for Dr. Mesmer--for all Paris was running mad after him--to cure him of lung fever. He came with great pomp, and having timed the pulse, and made certain inquiries respecting the case, he gravely informed the husband and wife that it was not in the way of magnetism, and the only mode of cure lay in the following: "You must lay by his side"--for he was confined to his bed--"one of three things, an old empty bottle, a black hen, or a young woman of brown complexion."
"'Sir,' exclaimed the wife, 'let us try the empty bottle first.'
"The bottle was tried, with what result is easily imagined. Monsieur Campan grew worse. Improving the opportunity of the lady's absence, Mesmer bled and blistered the patient, who recovered.
"Imagine the lady's astonishment when Mesmer asked for and actually obtained a written certificate of cure by magnetism" (Mesmerism).
This is more easily believed when one learns that Mesmer obtained his degree on an address, or thesis, relating to "planetary influence on the human body," and that afterwards, in answer to the inquiry by a learned Paris physician, who asked him why he ordered his patients to bathe in the Seine, instead of spring water, as the waters of the Seine were always dirty, Mesmer replied,--
"Why, my dear doctor, the cause of the water which is exposed to the sun's rays being superior to all other water is, that it is magnetized by the sun. I myself magnetized the sun some twenty years ago."
All that sort of fellows have ever a short course. Mesmer reached his zenith in Paris about the year 1784, when, for one year's practice, he received the enormous sum of four hundred thousand francs. The government, at the instigation of Count Maurepas, had previously offered him an annuity of twenty thousand francs, with ten thousand francs additional, to support a college hospital, if he would remain and practise only in France. "One unpleasant condition was attached to this offer, which prevented its acceptance; viz., three nominees of the crown were to watch the proceedings."
The government appointed a commission, consisting of Dr. Guillotin, and three other physicians, and five members of the Academy,--Franklin, Bailly, Borey, Leroi, and Lavoisier,--to examine the means employed by Mesmer. The result of the investigation--the discovery of his battery, which he termed the baquet, around which his patients assembled, and his windy pretensions to the self-possession of some animal magnetism beyond even his disciples, Bergasse and Deslon--was unfavorable to the truth of animal magnetism and morality, and the enthusiasm in his favor rapidly subsided. Mesmer soon found it convenient to repair to London. Here he made no great impression; his day had gone by.
He died in his native town, in all but penury and obscurity, in 1815.
Clairvoyance now made its appearance, which was but a different phase of magnetism, and Mesmerism was soon but indifferently practised in France. In England the faculty entirely ignored it.
CLAIRVOYANCE.
What is it? The word is French, meaning, literally, clear-sightedness. It is a power attributed to certain persons, or claimed by certain persons, of seeing things not visible to the eye, or things at a distance. It is the action of mind over mind,--the seeing, mentally, of one mind through another.
By personal experiment with clairvoyants, I am positively convinced that they follow the mind (thoughts) of the subject or patient. I have laid out my programme before visiting one, and the operator, whether pretending or not to a "trance" state, has followed that course to the end, but usually adding something which was conjectural. Practice helps them very much. But the most of those persons, male and female, who proclaim themselves clairvoyants, are humbugs and impostors.
Let any clear-headed man, who has good intellectual qualities, go to a good clairvoyant, and try the above plan. Think out just the places and persons you wish the clairvoyant (or spiritualist, if he or she choose to call themselves such) to bring up. Stick firmly to your text, and the operator will follow it, if he or she is a clairvoyant. They can tell you nothing that you do not already know. If they go beyond that, it is guessed at.
No person of large causality can be a clairvoyant. The moment they employ cause and effect, they are lost in doubt. How else can you account for nearly all the professional clairvoyants (and spiritualists) being persons of low intellectuality? Of course they deny this; but a fact is a fact, and it can't be rubbed out!
There is a magnetizing feature in clairvoyance. The operator can make some persons think they see a thing, when it is an impossibility to see it. This influence is sometimes passed from one person to another imperceptibly.
When the earthquake shook up the minds of the Bostonians, in 1870, there was one grand illustration of this fact. A gentleman standing in front of the Old State House, on Washington Street, soon after the shock, asserted that the earthquake had started a stone in the front end of the Sears Building.
"There! don't you see it?" he exclaimed to the people on the sidewalk, who are always ready to stop and look at any new or curious object, as he pointed towards an imaginary crack in the marble. "It is just above the corner of that window there"--pointing--"a crack in the stone a foot long."
"O, yes, I see it," said one and another; and the gentleman moved on, leaving the gaping crowd to gaze after the imaginary rent in the wall.
"Where is it?" inquired a new comer.
"Right up there over the door," replied one.
"No, over that third window," said another.
Some "saw it," and others didn't "see it," but all day long the tide of curious humans ebbed and flowed. At eight o'clock in the morning I took a look--not at the broken stone in the marble front, but at the magnetized crowd looking upon an imaginary break. People with large causality looked, exclaimed, "Pooh!" and went on. The credulous stood gazing, and pointing out the rent to the "blind ones, who wouldn't see," hour after hour. At noon I again visited the scene. The crowd had shifted, but the same class, male and female, stood gazing at the "calico building," and the same sort of people "saw the crack over the window."
At six P. M., I again visited the Old State House, and at dusk still again, to behold the crowd straining to get a last look at the rent before darkness shut out the view. On the following day, the scene was repeated, with no mitigation. The fact of the papers denying that there was any rent went for nothing. The crowd came and went, from morning till evening.
THE GATES OF MOSCOW.
Some readers may remember the story of the great Wizard of the North, who performed such marvellous feats before the czar, receiving from his highness a splendid present in money, and finally wound up by announcing that he would leave the city of Moscow on the following day, at twelve M., by all the gates of the city at the same time!
The watchmen were doubled at all the gates, to whom a description of the man was sent, and a sharp lookout was commanded, when, lo! just at noon the wizard was seen leaving the city at each separate outlet at the same moment. Of course he could not have left by but one gate, but which of the twelve no one could tell, for he was seen at all, or the watchmen were made to believe that they saw him, as he passed out. To this the watchmen of the several gates testified, and that he uncovered his head to them, as he went past.
At which gate did he really make his exit? The beautiful gate Spass Voratu, or Gate of the Redeemer, has over the archway a picture of the Saviour. All who pass out here are compelled to uncover. Hence it is my belief, as he was seen uncovered, that this was the gate at which he really went out, and at all the rest the watchmen imagined they saw the wizard make his marvellous exit from Moscow.
THE DOCTOR OF ANTWERP.
Townsend, on Mesmerism, tells an instructing and amusing anecdote of a test, by a learned doctor of Antwerp, upon a clairvoyant girl. The doctor was allowed, at a seance, to select his own test, when he said,--
"If the somnambulist"--that was what he termed her--"tells me what is in my pocket, I will believe." Then to her he put the question,--
"What is in my pocket?"
"A case of lancets," was the reply.
"True," said the doctor, somewhat startled. "But the young lady may know that I am a medical man; hence her guess that I carry a case of instruments in my pocket. But if she will tell me the number of lancets in the case, I will believe."
"Ten," was the correct answer.
Still the doctor was sceptical, and said,--
"I cannot yet believe but if the form of the case is described I must yield to conviction." And the form of the case was given.
"This certainly is very singular," said the doctor, "but still I cannot believe. Now, if the young lady will give the color of the velvet lining of the case, I really must believe."
"The color is dark blue," was her prompt reply.
"True, true!" said the puzzled doctor, and he went away, saying, "It is very curious, very, but still I cannot believe."
Now, if the doctor had not known that the case was in his pocket, or no one present had known beforehand, no clairvoyant could have described it. What does this prove? That her mind was led by his inquiry to his mind, thence to the article on his mind at the moment. "This is a book" I say. The fact of my saying it, or thinking it, leads my mind to the book.
As a person may look towards an object, as out of the window towards a tree, and not see it till his mind is directed to it, so, on the other hand, he may have his mind (thoughts) directed to a thing that his eyes cannot see, and in a person whose superior brain is susceptible, it maybe reflected so vividly as to permit a description of the object.
One may walk over a stream, upon stones, or ground, and not realize the fact till the mind is directed to it; and the thing may be reversed, and a susceptible person may be led to think that he or she is walking over or through water when none is present. The mind must be directed to an object in order to see it mentally.
A gentleman recently told me that a "medium brought up his old grandmother."
"How did she describe the old lady as appearing?" I asked.
"In woollen dress and poke bonnet, with specs on, just as she used to appear when I was a boy, forty years ago."
"I should have thought the fashions would have changed in the unseen world, even if the clothes had not worn out in forty years' service," I suggested.
This slightly staggered him, but he replied, "Perhaps fashions do not change in the spirit-world."
"Then ladies can never be happy there. Besides, what a jolly, comical set they must be down there; the newer fashions appearing hourly in beautiful contrast with the ancient styles; especially the janty, little, precious morsels called hats of to-day, all covered with magnificent ribbons, and flowers, and laces, in contrast with the great ark-like, sombre poke bonnets of forty and a hundred years ago!"
"Sir," I said, when he did not reply to this last poser,--"Sir, bring your stock of common sense to bear upon the matter, and see that the mind of the medium controlled yours, and led you to believe you saw, as the medium did, through your thoughts, your ancient grandmother; for how else would you imagine her, but as you remembered her, in woollen gown, poke bonnet, and spectacles."
VISITS TO A CLAIRVOYANT.
Twenty-five years ago, I visited Madam Young, in Ellsworth, Me.
"You are going a journey," she soon said, after I was seated, and she had examined my "bumps" to learn that I was a rolling stone. "You are going south-west from here." "Marvellous!" one might say, who had little reflective qualities of brain, for that was the very thing I was about to do. But from Ellsworth, Maine, which way else could one go, without going "south-west," unless he really went to the "jumping-off place, away down east?"
Again I visited her in Charleston, S. C.
"You are going a journey soon," she informed me.
"Which way?" I amusingly inquired.
"Towards the north," was the necessary reply.
Charleston is at the extremity of a neck of land. I was not expected to jump off into the bay, by going southward, and her answer was the only rational one. She would minutely describe any person, "good, bad, or indifferent," whom I would fix my mind upon. I was suffering at the time with bronchitis, which she correctly stated. She was the best clairvoyant I have ever tested. She died at Hartford, in 1862.
The following item of the press does not refer to Madam Young:--
A clairvoyant doctor of Hartford proclaims his superiority over other seers on the ground that he "foretells the past and present as well as the future." We should say he would probably "foretell" them much better. As the Irishman said, one gets on better when one goes backward or stands still.
I noticed his advertisement in a Providence paper, recently, where "Dr. ---- foretold the past, present, and future."
A NIGHT IN THE PENOBSCOT MOUNTAINS.
At Castine I heard of an old lady residing high up in the Penobscot mountains, who could magnetize a sore or a painful limb at sight. Such marvellous stories were told of her "charming," that I decided to go over the mountain and see her. She was not a "professional," however, and objected to being made too public. Therefore I made an excuse for calling at the house "on my way afoot across the country," and was cordially received by the family, of whom there were four generations residing under one roof. The house was a story and half brown cottage, large on the ground, and surrounded by numerous out-houses and barns. The view from the western slope of the mountain where she lived was most magnificent. I reached the farm before sunset. Here I lingered to overlook the beautiful Penobscot as it flowed at my feet, and the far-off islands of the sea. Here one could "gaze and never tire," out over the grand old forests, down to the sea-side, and upon countless little white specks, the whitened sails of the fishermen and coasting vessels, with an occasional ship or steamboat flitting up and down the noble Penobscot river and bay. Still above me the eagle built her nest in the rocking pines, on the mountain top, and still far below sung the nightingale and wheeled the hungry osprey in his belated piscatorial occupations.
The sun sank behind the western hills, tinging the soft, fleecy clouds with its golden glory. Slowly changing from purple and gold to faint yellow, to dark blue, the clouds gradually assumed the night hue, and sombre shadows crept adown the western mountains' sides, flinging their dark mantle over the waters, from shore to shore. The sturdy farmer has shouldered his scythe, and reluctantly he leaves the half-mown lot to seek his evening repast at the family table. Then he discovers me, leaning over the gate-bar, rapt in dreamy forgetfulness, and with a hearty salutation extends to me the hospitality, so proverbially cordial, of the old New England farmer. He shows me his pigs in the pen, and his "stock" in the barn-yard, and reaching the house, he calls "mother," who, appearing in calico and homespun, though with a cheerful and smiling face, is introduced to me as his wife. "A stranger, belated, and I guess pretty tired-like, climbing up here; and I won't take no excuses from him; so he stays with us to-night."
I talk with the lady, I play with the babies, I even toy with Towser and Tabby, till tea is set. Now I am introduced to the old lady. I thought I would get to it at last. She was seventy odd years of age, a deaf, but devout old lady, who was easily wheedled into divulging to me her secret of "charming." She told me she had the "rheumatiz," and by my tender sympathies and a roll of plaster for her lame back, I got into her own room before bed-time. O, but I came out soon after! She was very deaf.
"You see," said she, "a woman can't learn it to another woman--only to a male. He must be a good man." I nodded assent. "Yes; well, you must have faith." Again I nodded--she was very deaf. "You must touch the painful part and say--" Here she bent down her lips to my ear and whispered something in seven words which she said I must never tell, and she compelled me to promise never to divulge the secret while I lived, under pain of God's great displeasure.
Perhaps I had better keep my promise, though the good old lady has long since "gone to her reward."
CUI BONO?
The question is repeated every time there is a great robbery or a murder committed,--
"Why do not the clairvoyants tell who has committed this crime?"
Simply because those who consult them do not know. If a person knew where the stolen property was secreted, and he consulted a true clairvoyant, he or she might describe the property and the place where it is secreted. Not otherwise. The same with the murderer. Therefore, of what good is it?
In order to do justice to this subject, to present and explain it in all its various phases, we would require a volume, instead of the space allotted in this chapter. But whatever name one may apply to it,--animal magnetism, Mesmerism, clairvoyance, spiritual or trance mediumship,--its success depends mostly upon the credulity of the person.
During the five days preceding May 15, 1869, a reporter of the Boston Post visited seventeen of these clairvoyants, mediums, etc., and some curious facts and startling contradictions were revealed therein.
"Putting it together," he says, "and carefully epitomizing the amount of fortune that we have in this way been able to purchase, we present our readers with the following balance sheet:" and this, he says, is from the "most experienced and trustworthy fortune-tellers in the good city of Boston, where everything like humbug is most scrupulously avoided.
"Four times we have been told that we were engaged in no business at all, and as many more that our affairs and prospects were never more flourishing. Repeatedly we have been told that we should speedily change our business and abode. On the other hand, we were destined to be a fixture in Boston, and were so well satisfied with our present calling that we should never change. We are not married, but a great many pretty maidens stood ready to help us out of that difficulty." Again, "we were married, and the father of several roguish boys and bright-eyed girls. Thus far in life we had enjoyed good health, were free from all infirmities, and stood a good chance to reach fourscore and ten."
"In less than twenty-four hours this sweet hope was buried, and we were advised that death would overtake us suddenly and soon."
There are various grades of clairvoyants, as of everything else. Here is one class.
"After ascending a rickety, dirty, greasy stairway, you find the madam quartered in a small, square bedroom, poorly and miserably furnished. The room is dirty, dark, and dingy. Portions of the walls are covered with a cheap and quaint paper, patched, here and there, with some of another figure and quality. Pictures of a cheap class are hanging on two sides of the room,--of Columbus, Webster, and three or four love and courtship scenes in France and Germany. The furniture consists of a cheap bed, a dilapidated parlor cooking-stove, a small pine table, three common chairs, and a rocking-chair, cane-bottomed, a big box, covered with a remnant of the national flag, and a few cheap mantel ornaments.
"The madam is a woman under thirty, very stoutly built, weighs one hundred and sixty pounds, has quite fair complexion, with pretty blue eyes, light hair, and withal not bad-looking. She was attired in a loose and rather soiled calico dress, wore no ornaments, and looked rather uninviting."
A BON TON CLAIRVOYANT.
The writer visited a special seance at one of the most aristocratic and recherché abodes of the marvellous in this city, not long since. I was ushered into the brilliantly lighted hall by a janty-looking little biddy in white and embroidered apron. That was all I saw of her, as she disappeared and was substituted by the lady of the house, the medium. She was a pretty, pleasant little lady, with brilliant, dancing, light eyes, hair golden brown, and was dressed in a black silk dress, with blue overskirt, a rich lace collar, and flowing sleeves of the same material.
Depositing hat, coat, and cane on the hall rack, I was introduced to the assembled guests in the great parlors. These rooms were united by a wide, open archway, were high, and brilliantly lighted by rich chandeliers in each room. An elegant piano occupied the west side of the front parlor, upon which was a pile of the latest music. The furniture was of black walnut, and richly upholstered in green and gold rep. The mantel was adorned with vases of porcelain, images of marble and terra-cotta, and little knickknacks of foreign production. The walls were hung with a few of Prang's chromos, oil paintings, and two "spirit" photographs. The most beautiful, as well as the most remarkable, feature of the rooms was the magnificent bouquets of native hot-house flowers, which covered the two marble-topped centre-tables and sideboard. These were presents to the spirits! They did not take them away; the only one I saw removed was knocked over by a careless elbow. I regret to add, that there was no "manifestation," nor anything revealed, worth recording.
A BOUNCER.
A scene that occurred at another place where I previously visited may be considered worthy of notice. I clambered two flights of stairs, and found myself face to face with a very large woman, answering to the alias of Madam ----. She was very fleshy, weighing probably two hundred and thirty-five pounds avoirdupois. Her face was pleasant, and conversation easy. I handing over the required "picture paper," she tumbled into a great easy-chair, and, without any pretence to a trance, began,--
"I perceive that you are in love." This was startling news to a bachelor. "There are two pretty females, one dark-complexioned, the other light." (This is the usual "dodge," for, if there is a woman in the question, one of the two is bound to answer this general description.) "Which shall we follow?" she very teasingly inquired.
"Either that comes handiest," was my indifferent reply.
"Well, the dark one, then. She is tall, fair, and is looking anxiously for you to propose. Do you know a lady of this description whom you like?" I regretted that I did not. My "notion" ran to small ladies, of the opposite complexion. "Well," she said, not the least flurried, "here is one of that kind." I instantly placed my mind on one of this class,--my sister,--and she ran on. "She is soon to meet you. She is very rich." (Nellie will be glad to learn this.) "And I perceive a short-like man looking after her fortune. But have no concern; she loves you fondly, and you will marry her very soon. You are going a voyage, or across some water." (How far can one travel, in this country, without crossing water?) "You will meet an enemy, who will try to injure you in business."
"What business?" I inquired.
"You are a--yes--mechanic, though your hand is soft. I reckon you've been sick. Yes--machinist; make coffee-mills. Yes" (looking sharply into my face). (I was leading her!) "Corn poppers are in your line." (I nodded, and smiled, for how could I refrain from smiling?) "You trade in tin and earthen ware--chamber ware--spoons--and old boots." (True.) "You own a splendid house in the city--a large block"-(head).
"Where was I born? Can you see?"
"Yes; you were reared in the country; where there were deep, dark woods--all woods; in a log house, with thatched roof, and clay and stick chimney. A pig--am I right?--yes, a pig and a dog are kept in the same house. The windows are wooden, and--"
"Where was it?" I suggested.
"I should say in Ireland," she replied.
"Enough, I believe. Now about the other lady," I said.
"The dark one? Yes. She loves you, but is poor. Since you are rich, and a--" Here I tried to impress her that I was married. "You are married, but your wife will not survive you. No, she will soon go to heaven, and you will marry the dark-complexioned lady."
"Good," I exclaimed.
"Yes; and will have five boys and three girls."
"Who?"
"Why, the lady, of course."
"O!"
"Yes, and they will be happy and healthy."
Here she informed me I had got my money's worth.
I think I had.
XIX. ECCENTRICITIES
"They'll not show their teeth in way of smile, Though Nestor swear the jest be laughable."
"Democritus, dear droll, revisit earth, And with our follies glut thy heightened mirth."--PRIOR.
A ONE-EYED DOCTOR AND HIS HORSE.--A NEW EDIBLE.--"HAVE THEM BOILED."--"BEAUTY AND THE BEAST."--A LOVELY STAMPEDE.--AN ECCENTRIC PHILADELPHIAN.--THE POODLES, DRS. HUNTER AND SCIPIO.--SILENT ELOQUENCE.--CONSISTENT TO THE END.--WHEN DOCTORS DISAGREE.--FOUR BLIND MEN.--DIET AND SLEEP.--SAXE AND SANCHO PANZA.--MOTHER GOOSE AS A DOCTOR'S BOOK.--THE TABLES TURNED ON THE DOCTORS.
We love to see an eccentric individual--something out of the common routine of every-day, humdrum life. But what is often taken for an eccentricity is sometimes put on for an advertisement.
Nearly all great men have their oddities or peculiarities. I might give many little interesting sketches of some physicians' oddities right among us, but for too great personality. I may, however, work in a few.
The eccentricities of some doctors lie in their dress. Of this, I shall speak under the head of "Dress and Address." Others lie in personal acts, in their walk, manners, and conversation.
I know of one physician who delights in the worst looking old horse he can obtain. The doctor himself has but one eye. His old donkey-like beast corresponded. Report said that he cut out the left eye of the horse to gain that desired end, which, however, is discredited. The beast was also lame, which defect the doctor would never admit.
"What you ignorantly term 'limping' is only an expression of good breeding--which I cannot attach to all whom I meet on the road. It's bowing,--merely bowing. You never see him do it unless somebody is in sight. Gid-dap!" And so delivering himself, the old doctor would drive on, chuckling softly to himself. When his old horse died, he was presented with a fine young beast, which he declined to accept, but scoured the country till he found a high-boned, rib-bared, foundered, and half-blind old roadster.
A NEW DISH.
Dr. James Wood was an oddity. He was a bachelor, between thirty and forty, large and attractive. He was remarkably neat in dress and person, but delighted in "an old rip of a horse."
Once he was on a tour through New Brunswick, and, in company with a friend, drove up to a tavern at evening, and called for the landlord.
"He ain't t' home, but I'm the horse-slayer," replied a voice, followed by the person of a tall, lean Yankee, who issued from the smoke of the bar-room, and approached our friends, still sitting in the open buggy.
"Here, put up my horse; take good care of him, and feed him well."
"Hoss?" said the impudent fellow. "O, yes, I see him now; he's inside that ere frame, I s'pose. Climb down, gentlemen, and go inter the house. Landlord and the Santipede (Xantippe?) has gone to St. Johns; but I guess Dolly in the kitchin, and me in the bar-room, can eat and drink yer, though you're two putty big fellows, well's myself." So saying, the gentlemen having alighted, he drove the animal to the stable.
At supper, the doctor and his friend and two ladies were the only guests. Just what part the "horse-slayer" had had in its preparation was not obvious, since he had, after caring for the horse, only sat with a pipe in his mouth and his heels elevated on the bar-room stove, or following to the sitting-room, and continually plied the doctor with questions. However, the supper was ample, thanks to "Dolly."
"Is there anything more wanted?" inquired the table girl,--a round-faced, round-headed country specimen in neat calico.
"Yes," replied the doctor, "we would like some napkins, seeing there are none on the table."
Away hastened the girl, who, quickly returning, asked in very primitive simplicity,--
"How will you have them cooked?"
"O, boiled, if you please," replied the doctor, without changing a muscle about his sober-looking face.
The girl disappeared at full trot, followed by jeers of laughter from the gentlemen present, and suppressed titters from the ladies.
In a few moments "Dolly" made her appearance, and after searching in vain through the side-table drawer and a cupboard in the dining-room, she said they had none in the house, and intimated that the table girl could not be induced to return, after being laughed at for her ignorance of what a napkin was, and that "herself would wait upon the guests."
When the doctor returned, the "horse-slayer" called out that the napkin doctor was coming, upon which the terrified table-girl ran away and hid.
My informant says, "You're only to say, any time, 'Here comes that napkin doctor,' and the table girl nearly goes wild, dropping everything, and hiding away in her chamber till assured it is only a false alarm."
The writer is well acquainted with W., who assured him this was true.
BEAUTY AND THE BEAST.
I heard, while in the South, of a doctor, a little, short man, who rode a Canadian horse, a scraggy little specimen, and who, in yellow fever time, used to ride right straight into a drug store, and order his prescription, catch it up, wheel his pony round on his hind legs, stick in the spurs into the flanks of the animal, and go out in a clean gallop.
Though the writer never saw this remarkable feat, there is one more ludicrous, to which he was an eye-witness.
One fine day, while in Charleston, sitting musing in the window of the Victoria Hotel, I saw an African, with bare feet and legs, his whole attire consisting of a coarse shirt and brief trousers, drive a mule attached to a dray, on which was a box, up towards a milliner's store, opposite. The negro jumped from the dray, and, with whip in hand, ran into the store to ascertain if that was the place to leave the box.
The faithful donkey followed his master directly into the store, nor stopped till the wheels of the cart brought up against the door-jambs. The ladies, with whom the front store was crowded, screamed with terror, and fled towards the back room, where the pretty milliner girls were sewing. They caught the panic and sight of the donkey's head and ears in the front shop, and screeched in chorus. A more lively and lovely stampede I never witnessed. It was "Beauty and the Beast," and the beast stood pulling his best to get the cart through; but since a six-foot cart never could go through a four foot doorway, he backed out with the negro's assistance, and Beauty was rescued from the perilous situation.
"Golly!" exclaimed the Buckee, when himself, mule and cart were back into the street. "I fought de ladies were scared ob dis chile, first sight; but I never knowed de ladies to be scared ob a hansum darky like me; and when I looked round an' see dat ar' mules coming into der mill'ner's store--O, yah, yah, yah! I shall die--O, yah, yah, yah!--de Lor'--to only fink ob it, a mule in a mill'ner's shop--he wants muslin--O, yah, yah! I shall die, sure." Then, after a few more outbursts, he stopped short--for the milliner was looking after the box--he rolled up his eyes very solemnly, and said to the donkey,--
"Yer ought to be 'shamed ob yerself to go into dat yer store--dar, take dat!" levelling a blow at the donkey's head with the whip. Then taking the box into the store, he returned, gave the donkey another solemn lecture on his impropriety, and mounted the dray and drove away.
THE CONSULTING POODLES.
A gentleman well known to the writer assured me that he once had occasion to repeatedly consult a physician in Philadelphia, a most excellent practitioner, who owned two pet poodle dogs. They were pure white, and occupied a portion of his office. When I first entered the doctor's presence, I was quite astonished to see, sitting on a corner of his desk, at his left, a beautiful poodle. I thought, at first sight, it was a stuffed specimen; but after inquiring the nature of my visit, the doctor said, "You can retire, sir."
"What!" said I, in surprise at this summary dismissal, when I was startled to see the manikin jump from the desk and run away to a crib beside a book-case.
"I was speaking to Dr. Scipio," the doctor quietly remarked. Then adding, "Dr. Hunter, you can come instead," when another like poodle came and leaped upon the desk, and sat looking very wisely at his master.
While examining my case, he occasionally cast a glance at "Dr. Hunter," sitting as quiet as a marble dog might, but seeming to understand the look which his master gave him, acknowledging it by a pricking up of the ears.
I received my prescription, and what proved to be most excellent advice, and retired. The next time I visited the eccentric doctor, both Drs. Scipio and Hunter were in full consultation, sitting side by side on the desk.
"Now, sirs," said the doctor, after motioning me to a seat near him, "sirs Scipio and Hunter, keep very still, and give attention."
A yawning noise and expression was their simultaneous reply.
"What is the object of the two canine specimens being always present when I have consulted you?" I ventured to inquire, on my last visit to the doctor.
"Some physicians consult two-legged pups, in complicated cases. I prefer quadrupeds. Have we not been very successful--myself, Drs. Hunter and Scipio--in your case, sir?"
This he said with a pleasant, half-serious countenance.
"Indeed, you have, sir," I replied, to which the dogs gave a gap! (a smile?)
"You'll find every successful man with some seeming useless habit or appendage, which, nevertheless, is essential to his success, in absorbing or distracting the superfluities of his nature. A sing-song, every-day man, whom you can see right through, and understand all his moves, seldom amounts to anything. I ape nobody, however, but I feel almost lost, in my examinations, without my dogs."
Well, there may be much to this, after all. A good singer will seldom go forward to master a difficult piece of music without something in his hand. Eccentricities in some persons take the place of a vile, injurious habit, as the eccentric man is usually free from debasing habits.
I am particularly reminded of Suwaroff, the great Russian general, who was so remarkable for his energy, valor, and headlong fighting propensities. This wonderful man was very small in stature, being only five feet and a half inch in height, miserably thin in flesh, with an aquiline nose, a wide mouth, wrinkled brow, and bald head--an eagle look and character. "His contempt of dress could only be equalled by his disregard of every form of politeness, and some idea may be formed of both from the fact that he was washed mornings by several buckets of water thrown over him, and that he drilled his men in his shirt sleeves, with his stockings hanging down about his heels, and proudly dispensing with the use of a pocket handkerchief."
His favorite signal of attack was a shrill "cock-a-doodle-doo!" "To-morrow"--this was his harangue to his men before a great battle--"to-morrow morning I mean to be up one hour before daybreak. I shall wash and dress myself, then say my prayers, give one good cock-crow, and capture Ismail!" Which he did to the letter. After Catharine's death, Paul, her son and successor, could not brook the eccentric habits of "Old Forward and Strike," whose personal appearance was ill suited to court, and when compelled to "change or retire," Suwaroff chose the latter. Again in 1799 he was given a command, but would not change his principles, and was dismissed; and died in 1800, neglected by the imperial Paul, who was assassinated the same year.
SILENT ELOQUENCE.
There is a physician doing an office practice in Boston, who, when you enter his office, by one gesture and movement of his head, with the accompanying expression of his countenance, says to you, as plainly as words, "Take a seat; how do you do? State your case." He is a man of few words, professionally. Through with his business, he becomes one of the most sociable men with whom one need wish to meet.
John Abernethy was remarkable for his eccentricity, and brevity in his dealings with patients. Sometimes he met his match. The following has been told about him often enough to be true. On one occasion a lady, who doubtless had heard of his brusque characteristic, entered his consulting-room, at Bedford Row, and silently presented a sore finger. As silently the doctor examined and dressed the wound. In the same manner the lady deposited the accustomed fee upon the table, and withdrew.
Again she presented the finger for inspection.
"Better?" grunted the great surgeon.
"Better," quietly answered the lady, deposited the fee, and left, without saying another word. Several visits were thus made, when, on presenting it for the last time, Abernethy said,--
"Well?"
"Well," was the lady's only answer, and deposited her last fee.
"Well, madam, upon my soul, you are the most sensible lady with whom I ever met," he exclaimed, and very politely bowed her out.
CONSISTENT TO THE END.
The most eccentric physician who ever lived, and the only one I have read of who carried his odd notions beyond this life, was Messenger Monsey, of whom I have before written in this book. He died at the age of ninety-five. He wrote his own will,--having eighty thousand dollars to dispose of,--and his epitaph. The will was remarkable, and is still preserved. "To a beautiful young lady, named ----," he gave an old battered snuff-box, not containing a shilling, lavishing upon her, at the same time, the most extravagant encomiums on her wit, taste, and elegance; and to another, whom he says he intends to enrich with a handsome legacy, he leaves the gratifying assurance that he changed his mind on finding her "a pert, conceited minx." After railing at bishops, deans, and clergymen, he left an annuity to two of the latter, who did not preach.
"My body shall not be insulted with any funeral ceremonies, but after being dissected in the theatre of Guy's Hospital, by the surgeons, for the benefit of themselves and students, the remainder of my carcass may be put into a hole, or crammed into a box with holes, and thrown into the Thames."
The main part of his property went to his only daughter.
This is a true copy of his epitaph:--
"Here lie my old bones; my vexation now ends; I have lived much too long for myself and my friends. As to churches and churchyards, which men may call holy, 'Tis a rank piece of priestcraft, and founded on folly. What the next world may be never troubled my pate; And, be what it may, I beseech you, O Fate, When the bodies of millions rise up in a riot, To let the old carcase of Monsey lie quiet."
The above reminds me of another epitaph in Greenwood:
"Underneath this turf do lie, Back to back, my wife and I. Generous stranger, spare the tear, For could she speak, I cannot hear. Happier far than when in life, Free from noise and free from strife, When the last trump the air shall fill, If she gets up, I'll just lie still!"
"WHEN DOCTORS DISAGREE."
The eccentricities of some doctors lie in their abuse of their brothers; especially those of a different school, of which they necessarily know little or nothing.
There is a Hindoo story illustrative of the folly of this ex parte decision.
Four blind men went to examine an elephant, to ascertain what it was like. One felt of its foot, the second its trunk, the third its ear, and the last felt of its tail. Then they held a consultation, and began to talk it up.
"The elephant is very much like a mortar," said the one who had felt of the foot.
"It is like a pestle," said the one who had felt of its trunk.
"No; you are both wrong. It's like a fan," said he who had felt of the ears.
"You are all mistaken; it is like a broom," vehemently exclaimed the man who had felt of the tail. The dispute grew warm. Each was sure he was right, because he had personally examined for himself. Then they waxed angry, and a lasting quarrel grew out of it; so, in the end, they were all as ignorant of the truth as when they began the investigation.
The diversity of medical opinion on diet is equally as great as on prescription, and often partakes largely of the notion or eccentricity of the individual physician, rather than the requirements of the patient.
One is an advocate of animal diet; another is a strict Grahamite, or vegetarian, and a third is an animo-vegetarian, which, according to the two kinds of teeth given to man,--the tearing, or canine, and the grinding teeth,--seems to be the most rational decision. Then there is the slop-doctor. I know of one in Connecticut. He weighs about two hundred and fifty pounds. He breakfasts on the richest steak, dines on roast beef, and sups on a fowl. Every patient he has is a victim to "typhoid fever: the result is inflammation of the glands of the stomach, and induced by too hearty food;" hence the patient is starved a month on slop or gruel.
This doctor was formerly a Methodist preacher, and--
"Exhausting all persuasive means to light Our fallen race to Virtue's glorious height, To Medicine gives his comprehensive mind, And fills his pockets while he cures mankind. He scorns M. D.'s, at all hard study sneers, And soon the science of its mystery clears. His knowledge springs intuitive and plain, As Pallas issued from the Thunderer's brain. He takes a patent for some potent pill Whose cure is certain--for it cures to kill. Such mighty powers in its materials lurk, It grows, like Gibbon's Rome, a standard work! Pill-militant, he storms the forts of pain, Where grim Disease has long entrenchéd lain, Routs fevers, agues, colics, colds, and gouts, Nor ends the war till life itself he routs. If of his skill you wish some pregnant hints, Peruse the gravestones, not the public prints! To aid his work, and fame immortal win, Brings steam from physics into medicine; From speeding packets o'er th' Atlantic waste, O'er Styx's stream old Charon's boat to haste, Proving that steam for double use is fit-- To whirl men through the world, and out of it!"
The difference in the item of sleep is amusing. I know a poor, worn-out doctor who finds all health in early rising. Let us refer him to the following, by John G. Saxe:--
EARLY RISING.
"God bless the man who first invented sleep!" So Sancho Panza said, and so say I: And bless him also that he didn't keep His great discovery to himself, nor try To make it--as the lucky fellow might-- A close monopoly by patent right.
Yes, bless the man who first invented sleep (I really can't avoid the iteration); But blast the man, with curses loud and deep, Whate'er the rascal's name, or age, or station, Who first invented, and went round advising, That artificial cut-off--early rising.
"Rise with the lark, and with the lark to bed," Observes some solemn, sentimental owl: Maxims like these are very cheaply said; But ere you make yourself a fool or fowl, Pray, just inquire about his rise and fall, And whether larks have any beds at all.
The time for honest folks to be abed Is in the morning, if I reason right; And he who cannot keep his precious head Upon his pillow till it's fairly light, And so enjoy his forty morning winks, Is up to knavery; or else--he drinks.
Thomson, who sung about the "Seasons," said It was a glorious thing to rise in season; But then he said it--lying--in his bed, At ten o'clock A. M.,--the very reason He wrote so charmingly. The simple fact is, His preaching wasn't sanctioned by his practice.
'Tis doubtless well to be sometimes awake,-- Awake to duty and awake to truth,-- But when, alas! a nice review we take Of our best deeds and days, we find, in sooth, The hours that leave the slightest cause to weep Are those we passed in childhood, or asleep!
'Tis beautiful to leave the world a while For the soft visions of the gentle night; And free at last from mortal care or guile, To live as only in the angels' sight, In sleep's sweet realm so cosily shut in, Where, at the worst, we only dream of sin.
So let us sleep, and give the Maker praise. I like the lad who, when his father thought To clip his morning nap by hackneyed phrase Of vagrant worm by early songster caught, Cried, "Served him right!--it's not at all surprising; The worm was punished, sir, for early rising."
MOTHER GOOSE.
"Gabriel Betteredge," in "Moonstone," was doubtless a true character from life, picked up by the author, Wilkie Collins, somewhere in his travels. I think the best authors seldom have made up so good a character "out of whole cloth," but have gone to the highways and byways for them. Betteredge's forte lay in Robinson Crusoe. That book was his guidance and solace in all his trials and perplexities. But what would you think of a doctor, a respectable graduate of a medical college, who sought, if not advice, recreation and solace in Mother Goose?
This M. D. resided a few years ago in A., New York State. He owned a large library, enjoyed the confidence of a large list of friends and patrons, and was a man of education and refinement. His eccentricity lay in his love of Mother Goose's Melodies. He kept a copy of these nursery rhymes at his very elbow, and often turned from a perplexing case, and sought solace in the jingling rhymes of old Mother Goose!
Well, that was certainly better than relieving his brain by the use of narcotic stimulants, as opium, tobacco, or ardent spirits, which use can only be followed at the expense of nerve, tissue, and membrane.
I have here before me an account of another physician, whose solace and relief from business cares were in his cats, of which he had several, all of which answered to their names. His attachment to these creatures was only equalled by theirs for him. Sometimes one or two perched on his shoulders and sang to him while he rested in his easy-chair. He seemed to drink in Lethean comforts, as thus he would remain for a half hour or more at a time, or till business broke the spell. When a patient came, or a servant announced a call, he would arise and say, "Pets, vamose!" and the cats would all scamper away to their nests, and the doctor, seemingly refreshed in body and mind, would return to the reality of life and its labors.
One's solace is in his children, another's in his wife, a third in his flower-garden; and others' in opium, rum, or tobacco.
THE TABLES TURNED.
Sometimes the doctor's oddity seemed to be in his silence, again in asking "outlandish" questions. Often they get a good return; for instance,--
Dr. G., of Sycamore, Ill., riding in the country one day, saw a sign upon a gate-post, reading thus: "This farm for sail." Stopping his horse, he hailed a little old woman, who stood on tiptoe, hanging out clothes.
"I say, madam, when is this farm going to sail?"
"Just as soon, sir," replied the old lady, placing her thumb to her nose, "as anybody comes along who can raise the wind."
The doctor drove thoughtfully on.
THE DIFFERENCE.
"A priest who was jogging along on an ass was overtaken by a loquacious doctor, and, after some preliminary conversation as to the destination, etc., the doctor proposed that they each should ask a question, and the one who proposed the best should receive hospitality at the other's expense at the next town. The priest agreed, for he was a fat, jolly little fellow, who could enjoy a laugh and "some bottles," even at a doctor's expense. So the doctor proposed the following:--
"What is the difference between a priest and a jackass?"
"That's old," replied the priest. "One wears his cross on his breast, the other on his back.--Now for my turn. What is the difference between the doctor and the ass?"
"I cannot tell," replied the doctor; "what is the difference?"
"I see none," quietly replied the priest.
"NOT BY BREAD ALONE."
A physician in P., who had the reputation of being a high liver, was quite publicly reprimanded for his gluttony by an advent preacher of some note, not a thousand miles from Boston. The doctor bore his abuse without flinching, though he believed the man a hypocrite. A long time afterwards, he met the Adventist in his town, and, after some conversation, invited him to dine at his own house. The hungry Grahamite accepted, and at an early moment found himself at the doctor's board.
"Will you ask a blessing?" said the doctor; which request being complied with, he uncovered one of the only two dishes on the table, which contained nothing but bread. The preacher saw the point, and said, with a disappointed grin, "You shall not live by bread alone."
"Yes; I know that much Scripture," replied the doctor; "so I have provided some butter," uncovering the other dish!
XX. PRESCRIPTIONS REMARKABLE AND RIDICULOUS
"He finds out what stuff they're made of."--SHAKSPEARE.
"By setting brother against brother, To claw and curry one another."--BUTLER.
FIG PASTE AND FIG LEAVES.--SOME OF THOSE OLD FELLOWS.--THEY SLIGHTLY DISAGREE.--HOW TO KEEP CLEAN.--BAXTER VS. THE DOCTOR.--A CURE FOR "RHEUMATIZ."--OLD ENGLISH DOSES.--CURE FOR BLUES.--FOR HYSTERIA.--HEROIC DOSES.--DROWNING A FEVER.--AN EXACT SCIENCE.--SULPHUR AND MOLASSES.--A USE FOR POOR IRISH.--MINERAL SPRINGS.--COLD DRINKS VS. WARM.--THE OLD LADY AND THE AIR PUMP.--SAVED BY HER BUSTLE.--COUNTRY PRESCRIPTIONS AND A FUNNY MISTAKE.--ARE YOU DRUNK OR SOBER?
Mythology informs us that Heraclitus, the melancholy philosopher of Ephesus, fixed his residence in a manure heap, by the advice of his physicians, in hopes of thereby being cured of the dropsy. The remedy proved worse than the disease, and the philosopher died. From that time till the present, medical prescriptions have rather partaken of the extravagant and the ridiculous, than of the rational and beneficial.
In biblical times the real remedies consisted of a few simples, and were almost totally confined to external uses. Fig paste was a favorite remedy for swellings, boils, and ulcers, and an ointment made of olives and some spices was used for wounds, etc. Mrs. Eve, it is said, took to fig leaves. The myrrh and hyssop were used chiefly among the Jews for purification. The former was obtained from Egypt and Arabia East. The original name was, in Arabic, marra, meaning bitter.
The history of medicine is referable to about 1184 before Christ, from which time to Hippocrates, 460 B. C., it could not lay claim to the name of science. It was confined almost entirely to the priestcraft, and partook largely of the fabulous notions of that superstitious age, and was connected with their gods and heroes. Then, necessarily with such a belief, the remedies lay in ceremonies and incantations, as before mentioned in chapter first, and the priests had it all their own way.
Chiron, according to Grecian bibliographers, was about the first who practised medicine to any extent, and who, with Apollo, claimed to have received his knowledge direct from Jupiter. Æsculapius was a son of Apollo. Æsculapius had two sons, who became celebrated physicians, and one daughter, Hygeia, the goddess of health. For a long time the practice of medicine was confined to the descendants of Æsculapius, who was worshipped in the temples of Epidaurus, the ruins of one of which is said to still be seen.
Hippocrates claimed to be a descendant of Æsculapius (460 B. C.). The remedies used by his predecessors were a few vegetable medicines, accelerated by a good many mystical rites. It would seem that medicinal springs were patronized at this early date, as temples of health were established near such wells, in Greece. Theophrastus, of Lesbos, was a fuller's son, and wrote a book on plants. He was a pupil to Plato and Aristotle.
Podalirius was going to cure every disease by bleeding, Herodicus by gymnastics, and Archagathus by burning and gouging out the diseased parts. Then arose Chrysippus, who reversed the blood-letting theory, and would allay the venous excitement by simple medications (not having discovered the difference between veins and arteries, and when they did, it was supposed the latter contained only air; hence the name); Asclepiades, who "kicked Hippocrates' nature out of doors," and the thermo-therapeutists, who turned out the latter.
After the followers of Archagathus, or Archegenus, were driven out of Rome, the hot baths were established, which were the earliest mentioned. There was a very celebrated cold water bath established somewhat earlier, for which Mr. Noah, who owned the right, got up a very large tub, for the exclusive use of himself, family, and household pets. The bath--like nearly all cold water baths extensively used since--was a complete success, killing off all who ventured into the water.
During the reign of the Roman emperor Caracalla (211-217) thermal baths were extensively established at Rome, and Gibbon informs us that they were open for the reception of both senators and people; that they would accommodate three thousand persons at once. The enclosure exceeded a mile in circumference. At one end there was a magnificent temple, dedicated to the god Apollo, and at the reverse another, sacred to Æsculapius, the tutelary divinities of the Thermæ. The Grecians also established cold, warm, and hot baths; and in Turkey the bathing was a religious rite until a very recent period. More recently, it is a source of diversion. "Cleanliness is akin to godliness," and recreation is a religious duty; therefore the warm bath, whether followed as a superstitious rite or as a source of amusement, is nevertheless commendable as a sanitary measure.
Dr. Dio Lewis, of Boston, has a grand warm (Turkish) bathing establishment. There are several hot, champooing, and cooling rooms for ladies or gentlemen, and a grand plunge bath, containing sixteen thousand gallons of water, warmed by a steam apparatus. If the Bostonians are dirty hereafter, they must not blame the doctor. No man knows how dirty he is till he tries one of these baths.
"Crosby's History of the English Baptists preserves the opinion of Sir John Floyer, physician, that immersion was of great sanitary value, and that its discontinuance, about the year 1600, had been attended with ill effects on the physical condition of the population. 'Immersion would prevent many hereditary diseases if it were still practised,' he said. An old man, eighty years of age, whose father lived at the time while immersion was the practice, said that parents would ask the priest to dip well into the water that part of the child which was diseased, to prevent its descending to posterity.
"Baxter vehemently and exaggeratedly denounced it as a breach of the sixth commandment. It produced catarrh, etc., and, in a word, was good for nothing but to despatch men out of the world."
"If murder be sin, then dipping ordinarily in cold water over head is a sin."
So much for Dr. Floyer vs. Baxter. Surely the latter ought to have been "dipped."
A western paper of respectability is responsible for the statement, that an old lady followed up a bishop as he travelled through his diocese, in that vicinity, and was confirmed several times before detected.
"Why did you do such a remarkable deed?" asked the bishop. "Did you feel that your sins were so great as to require a frequent repetition of the ordinance?"
"O, no," replied the old lady, complacently; "but I heerd say it was good for the rheumatiz."
The bishop didn't confirm her any more. She was really going to baptism as the voters go to the polls and vote in New York--"early and often."
OLD ENGLISH PRESCRIPTIONS.
The prescriptions and doses of the old English doctors were "stunning."
Billy Atkins, a gout doctor of Charles II.'s time, who resided in the Old Bailey, did an immense business in his specialty. His remarkable wig and dress will find a place in our chapter on "Dress." He made a nostrum on the authority of Swift, compounded of thirty different promiscuous ingredients.
The apothecary to Queen Elizabeth brought in his quarter-bill, £83, 7s. 8d. Amongst the items were the following: "A confection made like a manus Christi, with bezoar stone, and unicorn's horn, 11s. Sweet scent for christening of Sir Richard Knightly's son, 2s. 6d. A conserve of barberries, damascene plums, and others, for Mr. Ralegh, 6s. Rose water for the King of Navarre's ambassador, 12s. A royal sweetmeat, with rhubarb, 16d."
A sweet preparation, and a favorite of Dr. Theodore Mayerne, was "balsam of bats." A cure for hypochondria was composed of "adders, bats, angle-worms, sucking whelps, ox-bones, marrow, and hog's grease." Nice!
After perusing--without swallowing--his medical prescriptions, the reader would scarcely desire to follow the directions in his "Excellent and well-approved Receipts in Cooking." I should rather, to run my risk, breakfast on boarding-house or hotel hash, than partake of food prepared from Dr. Mayerne's "Cook Book."
According to Dr. Sherley, Mayerne gave violent drugs, calomel in scruple doses, mixed sugar of lead with conserves, and fed gouty kings on pulverized human bones.
"A small, young mouse roasted," is recommended by Dr. Bullyn, as a cure for restlessness and nervousness in children. For cold, cough, and tightness of the lungs, he says, "Snayles (snails) broken from the shells and sodden in whyte wyne, with olyv oyle and sugar, are very holsome." Snails were long a favorite remedy, and given in consumption for no other reason than that "it was a slow disease." A young puppy's skin (warm and fresh) was applied to the chest of a child with croup, because he barked! Fish-worms, sow-bugs, crab's eyes, fish-oil, sheep-droppings, and such delicious stuff were, and still are, favorite remedies with some physicians and country people. The following was one of Dr. Boleyn's royal remedies:--
"Electuarium de Gemmis. Take two drachms of white perles; two little peeces of saphyre; jacinth, corneline, emerauldes, garnettes, of each an ounce; setwal, the sweate roote doronike, the rind of pomecitron, mace, basel seede, of each two drachms; of redde corall, amber, shaving of ivory, of each two drachms; rootes both of white and red behen, ginger, long peper, spicknard, folium indicum, saffron, cardamon, of each one drachm; of troch. diarodon, lignum aloes, of each half a small handful; cinnamon, galinga, zurubeth, which is a kind of setwal, of each one drachm and a half; thin pieces of gold and sylver, of each half a scruple; of musk, half a drachm. Make your electuary with honey emblici, which is the fourth kind of mirobalans with roses, strained in equall partes, as much as will suffice. This healeth cold, diseases of ye braine, harte, stomack. It is a medicine proved against the tremblynge of the harte, faynting, and sounin, the weakness of the stomacke, pensivenes, solitarines. Kings and noblemen have used this for their comfort. It causeth them to be bold-spirited, the body to smell wel, and ingendreth to the face good coloure."
"Truly a medicine for kings and noblemen," says Jeaffreson, who gives the following:--
"During the railroad panic of England (1846), an unfortunate physician prescribed the following for a nervous lady:--
[R]. Great Western, 350 shares. Eastern Counties,} North Middlesex, } a. a. 1050.
M. Haust. 1. Om. noc. cap.
"This direction for a delicate lady to swallow nightly (noc.) 2450 railway shares was cited as proof of the doctor's insanity, and the management of his private affairs was placed in other hands."
"A humersome doctor," as Mrs. Partington would say, gives the following
CURE FOR THE BLUES.
Tinc. Peruvii barki bitters, 1 oz. Sugari albi, vel sweetningus, considerabilibus. Spiritus frumenti, vel old repeus, ad lib. Waterus pumpus, non multum. Nutmegus, sprinklibus.
A SURE CURE.
A physician of our acquaintance was called to a lady patient after she had enjoyed a season of unusual domestic quarrels, who was not over long in "turning herself wrong-side out"--as some females will insist upon doing, for the edification of the medical man--telling, not only all about her pains and aches, but her "trials with that man," her husband--her brutal usage, her scanty wardrobe, her mortification on seeing Mrs. Outsprout appear in a new blue silk, and a "love of a bonnet," and (after entertaining the doctor with wine and good things) finally wind up in hysterical sobs--for which he prescribed, as follows:--
[R]. One new silk dress--first quality. One hat and feather. One diamond--solitaire--aq. prim.
Apply to patient. And 1 coach and span, to Central Park, P. M.
The husband enjoyed the joke; the wife enjoyed the clothes, the diamond pin, and the ride; and the doctor heard no more of their quarrels.
HEROIC DOSES.
Just prior to the year 1800, two brothers, named Taylor, emerged from obscurity in Yorkshire, and set up for doctors. They were farriers, and from shoeing they advanced to doctoring and bleeding horses, thence to drugging and butchering those of their fellow-creatures who naturally preferred brute doctors to respectable physicians. Their system of practice was a wholesale one.
"Soft chirurgions make foul sores," said Boleyn, the grandfather of the beautiful and unfortunate Anne Boleyn. The Taylors struck no soft blows, "but opened the warfare against disease by bombardment of shot and shell in all directions. They bled their patients by the gallon, and drugged them, as they did the cattle, by the stone. Their druggists, Ewbank & Wallis, of York, supplied them with a ton of Glauber's salts at a time. Scales and weights in their dispensary were regarded as bugbears of ignoble minds. Everything was mixed by the scoop or handful. If they ordered broth for a delicate patient, they directed the nurse to boil a large leg of mutton in a copper of water, down to a strong decoction, and administer a quart at stated intervals," nolens volens?
The little Abbe de Voisenon, the celebrated wit and dramatic writer (1708-1775), was once sick at the chateau near Melum, and his physician ordered him to drink a quart of ptisan (a decoction of barley and other ingredients) every hour.
"What was the effect of the ptisan?" asked the doctor, on his next visit.
"None," replied the Abbe.
"Have you swallowed it all?"
"No; I could not take but half of it at once."
"No more than half! My order was the whole," exclaimed the doctor.
"Ah! now, friend," said the Abbe, "how could you expect me to swallow a quart at a time, when I hold only a pint?"
DROWNING A FEVER.
As the next anecdote has had to do service for more than one physician, it is immaterial which doctor it was. He was an irascible old fellow, at least, and not at all careful in leaving orders.
"Your husband is very sick, woman," said the doctor to the wife of an Irish laborer. "His fever is high, and skin as dry as a fish, or a parish contribution box. You must give him plenty of cold water, all he will drink, and to-night I'll see him again. There, don't come snivelling around me. My heart is steeled against that sort of thing. But, as you want something to cry for, just hear me. Your husband isn't going to die! There, now, I know you are disappointed, but you brought it on to yourself." Going away--"Mind, lots of water--"
"Wather, sir! Hoo much wather, docther dear? He shall have it, but, yer honor didn't tell me hoo much wather I must give him."
"Zounds, woman, haven't I told you to give him all he will take? Hoo much? Give him a couple of buckets full, if he will swallow them. Do you hear now? Two buckets full."
"The Lord bless yer honor," cried the woman; and the doctor made his escape.
At evening the doctor stopped, on his return, to ask after the patient. "How is he, woman?" asked the doctor.
"O, he's been tuck away, save yer honor," cried the widow. "The wather did him no good, only we couldn't get down the right quantity. We did our best, doctor dear, and got down him better nor a pailful and a half, when he slipped away from us. Ah, if we could oonly ha' got him to swaller the other half pailful, he might not have died, yer honor."
AN EXACT SCIENCE.
It is sometimes painfully amusing to observe, not only the difference of opinion expressed by medical men from one generation to another, but by those of the same period, and same school.
In the "London Lancet" of July, 1864, there appeared a curious table. A medical practitioner, who had long suffered from hay fever, had from time to time consulted various other medical men by letter, and he gives us in a tabular survey the opinions they gave him of the causes of this disease, and the remedies, as follows:--
"Herewith," writes Dr. Jones, "I forward a synopsis of the opinions of a few of the most eminent men, in various countries, that I have consulted. I have substituted a letter for the name, as I do not think it prudent to place before the general reader the names of those who have so disagreed."
Consulted. Opinion of Cause. Recommended.
Dr. A. A predisposition to phthisis. Quinine and sea voyage. Dr. B. Disease of pneumogastric nerve. Arsen., bell., and cinchona. Dr. C. Disease of the caruncula. Apply bell. and zinc. Dr. D. Inflammation of Schneiderian To paint with nitrate of membrane. silver. Dr. E. Strumous diathesis. Quinine, cod liver oil, and wine. Dr. F. Dyspepsia. Kreosote, henbane, quinine. Dr. G. Vapor of chlorophyll. Remain in a room from 11 A. M. to 6 P. M. Dr. H. Light debility, hay pollen. Do., port wine, snuff, salt, and opium, and wear blue glasses. Dr. L. From large doses of iodine. (Never took any iodine.) Try quinine and opium. Dr. M. Disease of iris. Avoid the sun's rays from 11 A. M. to 6 P. M. Dr. N. Want of red corpuscles. Try iron, port wine, and soups. Dr. O. Disease of optic nerve. Phosph. ac. and quinine. Dr. P. Asthma from hay pollen. Chlorodyne and quinine. Dr. Q. Phrenitis. Small doses of opium. Dr. R. Nervous debility, from heat. Turkish baths.
This needs no comment.
The different opinions on doses of medicine is more absurd. We have already mentioned cases wherein certain physicians administered calomel in scruple, and even drachm doses. Before us is a work wherein it is seriously asserted that a medicinal action was obtained from the two hundredth trituration,--a dose so small, in comparison with the scruple doses, as to be counted only by the millionths.
How many of us have had to wake up mornings, and swallow a table-spoonful of sulphur and molasses, with mingled feelings of disgust at the sulphur, and exquisite delight from the molasses, as we retired, lapping our mouths, to get the last taste! Now, L. B. Wells, M. D., of New York, informs us that he has cured an eruption of the skin by the use of the four thousandth dilution of sulphur,--so comparatively small that I cannot express it by figures. Well, these extremes have their uses, and we may look for relief in the mediate ground. The smaller we can get the dose, and still be reliable, the better we shall suit the people,--though we shall seriously offend the apothecaries.
Dr. Francis, in his book, "Surgeons of New York," tells the following, which illustrates how a desperate remedy may apply to a desperate disease. The cases in reference were "peritonitis." Dr. Smith (our "plough-boy") had charge of the lying-in wards, under Professor Clark.
"Dr. Smith, have you ever attended a common school?" asked Professor Clark.
"Yes, sir."
"Did you ever hear a teacher say, 'I will whip you within an inch of your life?'" pursued Dr. Clark.
"Yes, sir; I have."
"Well, that is the way I wish you to give opium to these patients,--'to within an inch of their lives.'"
Dr. Smith determined to follow implicitly his instructions, and gave to one as high as twelve grains of opium an hour.
"At this extreme point the remedy was maintained for several days.
"The patient recovered, and remained in the hospital, attached to kitchen service, for several months."
Certainly, the poor Irish, even, have their uses in New York city.
MINERAL SPRINGS.
The writer, having spent much time at the various mineral springs throughout the United States, and partaken of the water of some for weeks in succession, is competent to give an opinion as to their merits. Collectively, they are commendable, especially those located in country places, away from scenes of dissipation and profligacy.
The only reliable way to expect benefit from spring waters is to select one by the advice of your physician, and go direct to the spring.
Much of the bottled waters sold are "doctored," either by the retailer, the wholesaler, or often at the springs from where they are exported. Who is to know whether Vichy, Kissengen, Saratoga, or even Vermont mineral water, as sold by the package, ever saw the respective springs from which they are named? The various mineral waters are easily made, by adding to carbonized water such peculiar minerals, or salts, as analysis has shown exists in the natural springs. I knew a man who affirmed that he ruined a suit of clothes, while employed at a certain spring, by the acids with which he "doctored" the water, before it was shipped. Sulphuret of potassium covers the properties of many springs; iron others.
It has been intimated that the waters of a celebrated spring which I visited is indebted for its peculiar flavor to an old tannery, which, within the memory of that mythical being, "the oldest inhabitant," occupied the site where this favorite spring "gushes forth." Having no desire to be tanned inside,--after my boyhood's experience in that delightful external process,--I respectfully declined drinking from this spring.
By the immense quantities of "spring water" gulped down hourly and daily by visitors, one is led to suppose the cure lies in a thorough washing out. There is an excellent spring near Nashville, Tenn., from which I drank for a week; also another at Sheldon, Vt. There are three different springs at this latter place, but I prefer the "Sheldon" to either of the other two. I discovered a good spring at Newport, Vt., and there are others in that vicinity.
COLD DRINKS VS. WARM DRINKS.
"Drink freely of cold water," says an author of no small repute, to persons of a weak stomach, viz., dyspeptics.
When I was an apprentice, my master (Sir Charles Blicke) used to say, "O, sir, you are faint: pray drink this water." "And what do you think was the effect of putting cold water into a man's stomach, under these circumstances?" asks the great Dr. Abernethy. "Why, of course, that it was often rejected in his face." Never put cold water, or cold victuals, into a weak stomach.
The above surgeon is responsible for the following advice.
An Irishman called in great haste upon the doctor, saying,--
"O, dochter--be jabers, me b'y Tim has swallowed a mouse."
"Then, Paddy, be jabers, let your boy Tim swallow a cat."
THE OLD LADY AND THE PUMP.
One can readily conceive the utility of a warm bath--even a cold water bath, if the bather is robust--or a steam bath, a vapor, or a sun bath; but the advantage of the absurdity which the nineteenth century has introduced from antiquity, viz., the dry cupping, or pumping treatment, is not so self-evident.
An old lady, suffering from "rheumatism, and a humor of the blood," was persuaded to visit a "pump-doctor's" rooms.
"What's that hollow thing for?" she nervously inquired.
"That is a limb-receiver," replied the polite operator. "If the disease is in the limb, we enclose it within this; the rubber excludes the air, and to this faucet we affix the pump, and remove the air from the limb."
"Yes, yes; but I thought air was necessary to health; besides, I don't see how that is going to cure the limb. Does it add anything to, or take anything from the limb?" she inquired.
"Well--no--yes; that is, it draws the disease out from that part."
"Yes, yes; but suppose the disease is all over the person, as mine is."
"Then we place them in this," putting his hand upon an article which she had not before discovered.
"That? Why, that looks like the case to a Dutchman's pipe, only a sight times larger. And do tell if you shet folks up in that box," cautiously approaching and examining it.
The operator assured her such was the case.
"Is the disease left in the box when you are done pumping? Does it really suck all the disease into the thing by the process?" she inquired.
"Well, madam, you put your questions in a remarkable manner. But it displaces the air around the person, and the vital principle within forces out the disease. It is certain to benefit all diseases," he replied.
"Well, I don't see how it can, if it can't be seen. Does it act as physic, emetic, a bath, or do the sores follow right out of the blood into the box?"
"Neither, madam." The operator was very patient. "Just try the limb-receiver first; then you can tell better about the whole treatment."
After much persuasion, and by the assistance of the female operator, the old lady was seated, and the limb-receiver adjusted. Now the man in the next room began to pump. The old lady was very nervous, and felt for her snuff-box, and while so doing the man was still pumping. Having taken the snuff, her mind again referred to the limb in the box, and the pressure (suction) having naturally increased, her nervousness overcame her, and with a scream and a bound she left the chair and rushed for the door, dragging the receiver, which clung tight to the one limb, rather outweighing the boot and hose of the other, drawing the gutta-percha pipe after her, which only added to her fright, and with another scream for "help," and "O, will nobody save me?--O, murder, murder!" she, like a bound lion, went the length of her chain, and tumbled over in a heap on the floor. The woman rushed from behind the screen, the man from the pump-room, and rescued the old lady, who fled to her carriage in waiting; and doubtless to her dying day she will continue to tell of how narrowly she escaped "being sucked entirely through that gutta-percha pipe--only for her having on a bustle."
COUNTRY MISTAKES.
A Canadian, of a nervous, consumptive diathesis, went down to Portland, Maine, to consult a physician, and fell in with old Dr. F., whom he found busily engaged in examining some papers. The old doctor heard his case, and hurriedly wrote him a prescription. The chirography of the doctor was none of the best, yet the Portland druggists, who were familiar with his scrawls, could easily decipher his prescriptions. Not so the country apothecary, to whom the patient took the recipe, to save expense, which was something as follows: "Spiritus frumenti et valerianum," etc.; then followed the directions for taking.
After much delay and consultation with the green-grocer boy, it was put up as a painter's article, viz., "spirits turpentine and varnish."
The first glass-full satisfied the invalid.
DRUNK, OR SOBER.
A gentleman, knowing the parties in his boyhood, rehearsed to me the following anecdote:--
Old Dr. Gallup, of ----, N. H., was an excellent physician, whose failing lay in his propensity to imbibe more spirits then he could carry off.
"Are you drunk, or sober?" was no unusual question, put by those requiring his services, before permitting the old doctor to prescribe.
"Sober as a judge. What--hic--do you want?" he would reply.
Mr. B., who had been a long time confined to his house, under the care of an old fogy doctor, one of the "Gods of Medicine," with whom all knowledge remains, and with whom all knowledge dies, after taking nearly all the drugs contained in his Materia Medica, decided to change, and sent for Dr. Gallup.
"Are you drunk, or sober, doctor?" was the first salutation.
"Sober as a judge. What's wanted?" was the reply, omitting the "hic."
"Can you cure me? I've been blistered and parboiled, puked and physicked, bled in vein and pocket for the last three months. Now, can you cure me?"
Gallup looked over the case, and the medicine left by the other doctor, threw the latter all out of the window, ordered a nourishing diet, told Mr. B. to take no more drugs, took his fee, and left. Mr. B. recovered without another visit.
XXI. SCENES FROM HOSPITAL AND CAMP
"HE FOUGHT MIT SIEGEL."--A HOSPITAL SCENE AT NIGHT.--ADMINISTERING ANGELS.--"WATER! WATER!"--THE SOLDIER-BOY'S DYING MESSAGE.--THE WELL-WORN BIBLE.--WARM HEARTS IN FROZEN BODIES.--"PUDDING AND MILK."--THE POETICAL AND AMUSING SIDE.--"TO AMELIA."--MY LOVE AND I.--A SCRIPTURAL CONUNDRUM.--MARRYING A REGIMENT.
I met him again; he was trudging along, His knapsack with chickens was swelling; He'd "blenkered" these dainties, and thought it no wrong, From some secessionist's dwelling. "What regiment's yours, and under whose flag Do you fight?" said I, touching his shoulder; Turning slowly about, he smilingly said,-- For the thought made him stronger and bolder,-- "I fights mit Siegel."
The next time I saw him, his knapsack was gone, His cap and his canteen were missing; Shell, shrapnell, and grape, and the swift rifle-ball, Around him and o'er him were hissing. "How are you, my friend, and where have you been? And for what, and for whom, are you fighting?" He said, as a shell from the enemy's gun Sent his arm and his musket a-kiting, "I fights mit Siegel."
We scraped out his grave, and he dreamlessly sleeps On the bank of the Shenandoah River; His home and his kindred alike are unknown, His reward in the hands of the Giver. We placed a rough board at the head of his grave, "And we left him alone in his glory," But on it we cut, ere we turned from the spot, The little we knew of his story-- "I fights mit Siegel."--GRANT P. ROBINSON.
If any of the little "life stories" which I here relate in this brief chapter, have perchance before met the reader's eye, I can only say that they cannot be read too often. We need no longer go back to remotest history--to Joan d'Arc, Grace Darling, Florence Nightingale, nor to revolutionary scenes--to find "cases of courage and devotion, for no annals are so rich as ours in these deliberate acts of unquestioning self-sacrifice, which at once ennoble our estimate of human nature, and increase the homage we pay to the virtues of women."
A HOSPITAL SCENE AT NIGHT.
Night gathered her sable mantle about earth and sky, and the cold, wintry wind swept around the temporary hospital with a mournful wail, a rude lullaby, and a sad requiem to the wounded and dying soldier boys who crowded its rankling wards. Through the dark, sickly atmosphere, by the flickering lamp-lights, are just discernible the long rows of suffering, dying humanity. As the wind lulls, the sighs and groans of the unfortunate sufferers greet your ears on every side. "Water, water!" is the general request.
Every moment new ones are added to the mangled and suffering throng, as they are brought in from the battle-field and the amputating-room. The surgeons are busily at work. Every able-bodied soldier must be at the front, for the emergency is great. Ah! who shall give the "water" which raging thirst momentarily demands? Who is to soothe the fearful anguish, from lacerated nerve and muscle, by cruel shot and shell? And who shall smooth the dying pillow, hear the last prayer, for self, and for loved ones far away in the northern homes? And who will kindly receive the dying messages for those dear ones,--wife, children, father, mother,--whom he never will see again, and kiss the pallid cheek, commend the soul to God, and close the eyes forever of the poor soldier boy, who died away from home and friends, in the hospital?
God himself had raised up those to fill this sacred office, in the form of frail women--woman, because no man could fill the hallowed sphere. Flitting from couch to couch, like a fairy thing, noiselessly; like an angel of mercy, administering, soothing; but like a woman, beautiful, frail, and slender, with a cheering smile, and sympathy, as much expressed in the light of the eye as the sound of the voice, she moistened the parched lips, lightened the pillows, and the hearts, and seemed never to tire in deeds of love and kindness to the distressed soldiers.
Next to the soldiers, the physicians know how to appreciate the true women at the hospital couch. After the manifestations of skill, labor, anxiety, and devotion to the cause by the physicians, thousands of men would have perished but for the hand and heart of woman, and who now live to speak her praise and cherish her memory forever.
"Ain't she an angel?" said a gray-haired veteran, as she gave the boys their breakfast. "She never seems to tire; she is always smiling, and don't seem to walk, but flies from one to another. God bless her."
"Ma'am, where did you come from?" asked a fair boy of seventeen summers, as she smoothed his hair, and told him, with gleaming eyes, he would soon see his mother, and the old homestead, and be won back to life and health. "How could such a lady as you come way down here to take care of us poor, sick, dirty boys?"
"I consider it an honor," she said, "to wait on you, and wash off the mud you have waded through for me."
Said another, "Lady, please write down your name, that I may look at it, and take it home, and show my wife who wrote my letters, combed my hair, and fed me. I don't believe you're like other people."
"God bless her, and spare her life," they would say, with devotion, as she passed on.
(These things were written of Miss Breckenbridge by Mrs. Hoge, of Chicago.)
THE SOLDIER BOY'S DYING MESSAGE.
She sat by the couch of a fair-haired boy, who was that day mortally wounded. It was night now, and in the hospital before described. The poor boy knew he must go, but before he died he wanted to leave a message of love for his mother, away in the northern home.
"Tell me all you wish to have her know; I will convey your message to her," said the lady, as she bent her slender young form over the dying boy, and tenderly smoothed back the fleecy locks from his pallid brow.
"O, bless you, dear lady. You speak words of such joy to me. But it is this. I left a good mother, and sister Susie, in the dear old home in A. O, so much I have longed to see them during these last few hours! to see them but for one moment! O God, but for one moment!" And while he took breath she turned away her beautiful face to hide the falling tears, which she must not let the poor boy see. "Tell her," he pursued,--"my mother,--that I never found out how much I loved her till I came away from her side to fight for my country. O, lady, tell her this, and Susie, and poor father. I see it all now. And the old home comes back to my mind as clear as though I left it but yesterday. There is the old house, with its gabled roof, and the porch, all covered with clinging jessamines, and the big house-dog lying under the porch, and the great old well-sweep; and off in the meadow are the trees I used to climb. O, I never, never shall see them again. I feel very weak. Can't I have some more of that drink?"
"Yes, poor, dear boy. Here; the surgeon said you could have all you wanted."
"O, thank you. I wish I could write. O, there; that is so refreshing. If I could but write and tell her how good you have been to me! But write your name to her, the whole of it. She will understand, if you don't tell her how good you are. Well, I won't say any more, for you shake your head; but tell her how I love her, and them all. Am I fainting?"
She arose from her knees, and taking some water, with her hand she moistened his brow and his silky hair, and offered him some more of the strengthening cordial. But he declined taking it. The boy was dying. He made one more effort, and said,--
"Mother! Tell her, too, how I have kept her little Bible; and she can see how it has been read, and marked, and worn. O for one sight of her dear face, one look from her loving eyes, one kiss from her lips! I'd then die in peace."
The beautiful lady softly smoothed his hair, wiped his face, whispered words too sacred for sterner hearts, and kissed away her own tears from his pallid cheeks.
"Mother! Was it you? Then good by. I die--happy, Mother!"
Thus he expired. The good lady wrote the above to the mother of the brave lad, and thus I obtained the original.
WARM HEARTS IN FROZEN BODIES.
"A lady in one of the hospitals of the west was much attracted by two young men, lying side by side, all splintered and bandaged, so that they could not move hand or foot, but so cheerful and happy looking, that she said,--
"'Why, boys, you are looking very bright to-day.'
"'O, yes,' they replied, 'we're all right now; we've been turned this morning.'
"And she found that for six long weeks they had lain in one position, and for the first time that morning had been moved to the other side of their cot.
"'And were you among those poor boys who were left lying where you fell, that bitter cold morning, till you froze fast to the ground?'
"'Yes, ma'am; we were lying there two days. You know they had no time to attend to us. They had to go and take the fort.'
"'And didn't you think it was very cruel in them to leave you there to suffer so long?' she inquired.
"'Why, no, ma'am; we wanted them to go and take the fort.'
"'But when it was taken, you were in too great agony to know or care for it?'
"'O, no, ma'am,' they replied, with flashing eyes. 'There was a whole lot of us wounded fellows on the hill-side, watching to see if they would get the fort; and when we saw they had it, every one of us who had a whole arm, or leg, waved it in the air, and hurrahed till the air rang again.'"
This is from a letter by Miss M. E. Breckenbridge, a lady who laid down her life for the sick soldiers.
PUDDING AND MILK.
Under Dr. Vanderkieft's supervision, in Sedgwick's corps, there was one of the noblest self-sacrificing women of the army of the Potomac. This lady was unwearied in her efforts for the good of the soldiers.
While at Smoketown Hospital, there was a poor, emaciated soldier, whose weak and pitiable condition attracted her attention. He could retain nothing on his stomach. Mrs. Lee--for that was the lady--had tried all the various dishes for which the meagre hospital supplies afforded materials, but nothing afforded the patient relief and nourishment, until one day, in overhauling the stores, she found a quantity of Indian corn meal.
"O, I have found a prize," she cried, in delight.
"What is it?" inquired the little fellow detailed as orderly.
"Indian meal," was her reply.
"Pshaw! I thought you had found a bag of dollars."
"Better than dollars. Bring it along." And she hastened away to the tent where lay her poor patient.
"Sanburn," said she,--for that was the invalid's name,--"could you eat some mush?"
"I don't know what that is. I don't like any of your fancy dishes."
"Why, it's pudding and milk," said a boy on the next cot.
"O, yes," exclaimed the starving soldier. "I think I could eat a bucket full of pudding and milk."
Mrs. Lee was not long in giving him an opportunity for the trial. She at first brought him a small quantity, with some sweet milk, and to her joy, as well as that of the lean, hungry patient, it suited him. He ate it three times a day, and recovered. Indeed, the sack of meal was worth more than a sack of dollars, as she had said.
As strange as this may seem, there are instances on record where very remarkable, yea, absurd articles of diet have cured where medicine failed.
SMALL BEER.
The Earl of Bath, when he was Mr. Pulteney, was very sick of the pleuristic fever, in Staffordshire. Doctor after doctor had been called down from London, till his secretary had paid out the sum of three thousand seven hundred and fifty dollars. The last two physicians had given him up. "He must die," said Drs. Friend and Broxholm. They, however prescribed some simple remedies, and were about to leave, when the invalid, just alive, was heard to mutter, "Small beer."
"He asks for small beer," said the attendants. "Shall we give him some?"
"Yes, give him 'small beer,' or anything," replied the doctors.
A great two-quart silver pitcher full was brought, and he drank the whole contents, and demanded more. The request was granted, and, after drinking the gallon, he fell asleep, perspired freely, and recovered.
THE POETICAL AND AMUSING SIDE.
There is a poetical side, as well as a prosy side, to the camp and hospital. The following effusion of confusion was sent to the writer by a brother who gave his life for his country. It was written by a rebel soldier, who never realized his dream, and doubtless his "Amelia" mourns his loss as sincerely as though he had fought in a better cause.
TO AMELIA.
1. O, come, my love, and go away to the land up north; for there, they say, it's rite good picketin' for rebel boys. And we'll take the land, and sweep the band of New Yorkers into the bay.
2. I've heered of Delmonico's, and Barnum's Shows, and how many hotels the land only knows. And we'll steer our bark for Centre Park. Here's a health to ourselves, and away she goes. (Here I drank.)
3. Then come with your knight so true, and down with the boys that's dressed in blue. Farewell to hoe-cake an' hominy, Richmond and Montgomery. I'll lick the damn Yankees, an' marry you.
4. Here's a heart, I reckon, as firm's a rock; no truer ever beat neath a gray or blue frock. So come, my love, and haste away. We'll moor our bark in New York Bay, when I end this fighting work.
Your true lover, J. PARSLOE.
The next has been in print, and was written by Major McKnight, while a prisoner. "He was a poet, musician, and joker, and used to run from grave to gay, from lively to severe, on almost all mottoes. He was an especial favorite with his guard, the Union boys."
MY LOVE AND I.
My love reposes in a rosewood frame; A bunk have I; A couch of feath'ry down fills up the same; Mine's straw, but dry. She sinks to rest at night without a sigh; With waking eyes I watch the hours creep by.
My love her daily dinner takes in state; And so do I; The richest viands flank her plate; Coarse grub have I. Pure wines she sips at ease her thirst to slake; I pump my drink from Erie's limpid lake.
My love has all the world at will to roam; Three acres I; She goes abroad, or quiet sits at home; So cannot I. Bright angels watch around her couch at night; A Yank, with loaded gun, keeps me in sight.
A thousand weary miles stretch between My love and I; To her, this wintry night, cold, calm, serene, I waft a sigh, And hope, with all my earnestness of soul, To-morrow's mail may bring me my parole.
There's hope ahead: we'll one day meet again, My love and I; We'll wipe away all tears of sorrow then; Her love-lit eye Will all my many troubles then beguile, And keep this wayward reb from Johnson's Isle.
A SCRIPTURAL CONUNDRUM.
The Georgia contrabands were great on conundrums, says a soldier of Sherman's army. One day one of these human "charcoal sketches" was driving a pair of contrary mules hitched to a cart loaded with foraging stuff. He was sitting on the load, saying to himself, "Now dat Clem ax me dat cundrum to bodder dis nigger, and I done just make it out. 'Why ar Moses like er cotton-gin?' I done see. I mighty 'fraid I hab to gib dat up. Whoa! Git up? What de debble you doin'?"
While "cudgelling his brains" for a solution of Clem's conundrum, the mules had strayed from the cart road, and were stuck hard and fast in the mud. "Git up dar yer Balum's cusses!" piling on the whip and using some "swear words" not to be repeated. "Dar, take dat, and dat, yer!"
Just then Chaplain C. rode up, and hearing the contraband swearing, said,--
"Do you know what the great I Am said?"
"Look'er yer, masser," interrupted the negro; "done yer ax me none of yer cundrums till I git out ob dis d---- hole; and I answer Clem's fust--'Why am Moses like er gin-cotton?'"
WOULDN'T MARRY A REGIMENT.
When General Kelley was after Mosby's guerrillas, he captured a girl named Sally Dusky, whose two brothers were officers in the guerrilla band. The general tried in vain to induce the girl--who was not bad looking, by the way--to reveal the rebs' hiding-places. Having failed in all other ways, the general said,--
"If you will make a clean breast of it, and tell us truly, I will give you the chances for a husband of all the men and officers of my command."
With this bait he turned her over to Captain Baggs. After some deliberation she asked that officer if the general meant what he said.
"O, most assuredly; the general was sincere," was his reply.
The girl assumed a thoughtful mood for some moments, and then said,--
"Well, I wouldn't like to marry the whole regiment, or staff, but I'd as lief have the old general as any of them."
XXII. GLUTTONS AND WINE-BIBBERS
"Full well he knew, where food does not refresh, The shrivelled soul sinks inward with the flesh; That he's best armed for danger's rash career, Who's crammed so full there is no room for fear."
"Strange! that a creature rational, and cast In human mould, should brutalize by choice His nature."--COWPER.
GOOD CHEER AND A CHEERFUL HEART.--A MODERN SILENUS.--A SAD WRECK.--DELIRIUM TREMENS.--FATAL ERRORS.--"EATING LIKE A GLUTTON."--STRENGTH IN WEAKNESS.--A HOT PLACE, EVEN FOR A COOK.--A HUNGRY DOCTOR.--THE MODERN GILPIN.--A CHANGE! A SOW FOR A HORSE!--A DUCK POND.--THE FORLORN WIDOW.--A SCIENTIFIC GORMAND.--ANOTHER.--"DOORN'T GO TO 'IM," ETC.--DR. BUTLER'S BEER AND BATH.--CASTS HIS LAST VOTE.
If I confine this chapter to modern physicians, it will be brief. Though doctors are usually pretty good livers, they, at this day of the world, too well know the deadly properties of the villanous concoctions sold as liquors to risk much of it in their own systems.
There is a whole sermon on eating in our first text above, and, while we admit that gluttony is reprehensible, we detest "the shrivelled soul" who starves wittingly his body to heap up riches, or under the idle delusion of starving out disease, or "mortifying the flesh." If not very "mortifying," it is very depressing, to be bored by one of these "lean, lank hypochondriacs,"--to have to entertain, or be entertained by, such. O, give me the wide-mouthed, the round-faced, or abdomened, the cheerful, laughing man, especially if he's a doctor.
"Ah, doctor," said a poor, emaciated invalid to me during my first year's practice at ----, "you do me good like a medicine by your presence. Why, the blue devils leave the house the moment you enter. I don't believe you was ever blue."
"Hereafter my patients shall never know that I am."
Nor is it necessary to gulp down ardent spirits to keep the spirits up. Stimulants produce an unnatural buoyancy of spirits, and the unnatural destroys the natural habit of the system. A good and natural habit does not grow upon a person to his injury; an unnatural one always does, ending in his destruction. A good living gives good spirits; cæteris paribus, a poor living low spirits.
A MODERN SILENUS.
Silenus, of the mythologists, was a demigod, who became the nurse, the preceptor, and finally the attendant, of Bacchus. He was represented as a fat, bloated old fellow, riding on an ass, and drunk every day in the year.
I knew a "bright and shining light" in the medical profession who turned out a modern Silenus. This was Dr. G., of Plymouth, Conn. His father had given him the best medical education which this country afforded. He was a gentleman of superior address, as well as talent, tall, straight, and handsome as an Apollo, with a dark, flashing eye, a massive brow, shaded by a profusion of jet-black locks. How long he had practised medicine I do not know. Throughout the county he had an excellent professional reputation, particularly as a surgeon. His instruments were numerous, and of the best and latest improvements. Alas that such a man should be lost to the community, and to humanity! But his appetite for intoxicating drink knew no bounds. His thirst was as insatiable as Tantalus'.
When I first knew him, he still was in practice, but the better portion of the community had ceased to trust him. He never was sober for a day. He occupied then a little office in the square, containing a front and a back room. In the latter were his few medicines,--there was no apothecary in town,--and a number of large glass jars, containing excellent anatomical and foetal specimens. This room was not finished inside, and the walls were full of nails, projecting through from the clapboards outside.
One day a Mr. Hotchkiss went after him, hoping to find the doctor sufficiently sober to prescribe for a patient, in a case of emergency.
"What do you suppose I found him doing?" said Mr. Hotchkiss to me.
"Hiding from the snakes in his back room?" I suggested.
"No, sir; he had the tremens, and with his coat off, his hair standing every way, his eyes glaring like a demon's, he had his case of forceps strewn over the floor, and was diving at the ends of the clapboard nails, which he called devils, that came through the boards, in the back office."
"Ah, there you are! Another devil staring at me!" he shouted; and with the bright, gleaming forceps he dove at a nail, wrenched it from the wall, and flinging it on the floor, he stamped on it, crying, "Another dead devil! Come on. Ah, ha! there you are again!" and he dove at another. When he broke a forceps he flung it on the floor, and caught a new pair. I tried to stop him, but he only accused me of being leagued with his evil majesty to destroy him.
Another day, after having pawned nearly all his instruments for money with which to buy liquor to appease his raving appetite, he was seen to unseal one of the jars containing a foetal specimen, pour out a quantity of the diluted alcohol in which it had long been preserved, and drink it down with the avidity of a starving man.
His last instrument and case pawned, he sold the coat from his back to buy liquors. He could no longer get practice, no longer pay his board, and he became an outcast from all respectable society, and a frequenter of bar-rooms. A poor and simple old woman in the remote part of the town took compassion on him, and gave him a home. But nothing could chain his uncontrollable passion for intoxicating drinks.
The last time I saw him was in the month of December. He was in a grocery, warming himself by the store fire. He wore a crownless hat, a woman's shawl over his shoulders, and a pair of boy's pants partially covered his legs; no stockings covered his ankles, and a pair of old, low shoes encased his feet. The light had fled from his once beautiful, lustrous eyes; great wrinkles furrowed his once manly brow; his hair, once dark and glossy as the raven's wing, was now streaked with gray, uncombed and unkempt, hanging, knotted and snarled, over his neck and bloated face.
"Don't you recollect me?" he asked, with a shaking voice and a distressing effort at a smile. Ah, it was sickening to the senses.
Alas! Such another wreck may I never behold. What power shall awaken him from his awful condition, and
"Picture a happy past, Gone from his sight, Bring back his early youth, Cloudless and bright; Tell how a mother's eye Watched while he slept, Tell how she prayed for him, Sorrowed and wept.
"Point to the better land, Home of the blest, Where she has passed away, Gone to her rest. O'er the departed one Memory will yearn; God, in his mercy, grant He may return."
FATAL ERRORS.
Unfortunately, it is much easier to copy a great man's imperfections than those qualities which give him his greatness. Too often, also, are their defects mistaken for their marks of distinction,--vice for virtue,--and copied by the young, who have not the ability to imitate their greatness.
"General Grant smokes!"
"President Grant drinks!"
These two sentences, with the lamentable fact of their probable truth, have made more smokers of young men in the military and civil walks of life than all other texts in the English language. General or President Grant is not responsible for the lack of brains in the community, to be sure; but if "great men" will persist in bad habits, young men should be taught the difference between them and their virtues, and cautioned to shun them, or their bark will be stranded far out of sight of their desired haven,--the port of their ambition,--and nothing but a worthless wreck remains to tell what better piloting might have done for them. The voyage ended cannot be re-commenced.
A student of medicine, in New York, brought a bottle of liquor to our room. I told him where that bottle would carry him.
"Pshaw! It's only a pint of wine. Dr. Abernethy, the great English surgeon, bought one hundred and twenty-six gallons at once, and he did not die a drunkard," was his contemptuous reply.
"But you must remember that Abernethy lived in the days of good port wine, when every man had something to say of the sample his hospitality produced of his popular beverage. The doctor, who never was intemperate, was very hospitable.
"'Honest John Lloyd!'--what an anomaly when applied to a rum-seller--was a great wine merchant of London, a particular friend of Abernethy's, and of all great men of his day, who loved wines and brandies.
"One day I went to Lloyd's just as Dr. Abernethy left.
"'Well,' said Mr. Lloyd, 'what a funny man your master is.'
"'Who?' said I.
"Why, Mr. Abernethy. He has just been here and paid me for a pipe of wine, and threw down a handful of notes and pieces of paper, with fees. I wanted him to stop to see if they were all right, and said, 'Some of those fees may be more than you think, perhaps.' 'Never mind,' said he; 'I can't stop; you have them as I took them,' and hastily went his way.
"In occasional habits we may most safely recollect that faults are no less faults (as Mirabeau said of Frederick the Great) because they have the shadow of a great name; and we believe that no good man would desire to leave a better expiation of any weakness than that it should deter others from a similar error."
In fact, the doctor was opposed to drunkenness, and also gluttony, although he himself "was a good liver," as the following anecdote will show:--
A wealthy merchant who resided in the country had been very sick, and barely recovered, when, from the same cause, he was again threatened with a return of the like disease.
"I went to see him at home, and dined with him. He seemed to think that if he did not drink deeply, he might eat like a glutton," said the doctor. "Well, I saw he was at his old tricks again, and I said to him, 'Sir, what would you think of a merchant, who, having been prosperous in business and amassed a comfortable fortune, went and risked it all in what he knew was an imprudent speculation?'
"Why, sir," he exclaimed, "I should say he was a great ass."
"'Nay, then, thou art the man,' said Abernethy."
The leopard does not change his spots. For the truth of this read the life and fall of Uniac.
O, it is a fearful thing to become a drunkard.
The habit once acquired is never gotten entirely rid of. It sleeps--it never dies, but with the death of the victim.
Young men, avoid the first drink. Never take that first fatal glass; thus, and only thus, are you safe from a drunkard's grave, and the curse entailed upon your progeny.
STRENGTH IN WEAKNESS.
"Sir, I am advised that you have a barrel of beer in your room," said the president of one of our New England colleges to a student, who, contrary to rule and usage, had actually purchased a barrel of the delightful stuff made from brewed hops, copperas, and filthy slops, and deposited it under the bed, convenient for use.
"Yes, sir; such is the fact," replied the student.
"What explanation can you give for such conduct, sir?"
"Well," began the student with the boldest confidence, "the truth is, my physician, in consideration of my ill health, advised me to take a little ale daily; and not wishing to be seen visiting the beer-shops where the beverage is retailed, I decided to buy a barrel, and take it quietly at my room."
"Indeed! and have you derived the anticipated benefit therefrom, sir?" inquired the president.
"O, yes, sir; indeed I have. Why, when I first had the barrel placed in my room two weeks ago, I could not move it. Now, sir, I can carry it with the greatest of ease."
The president smiled, and ordered the barrel removed, saying that "in consideration of his rapid convalescence the treatment could safely be discontinued."
A WARM PLACE FOR A COOK.
Soon after the completion of the Roberts Opera House, in Hartford, Conn., the Putnam Phalanx held a grand ball within its walls. The music was exquisite; the prompters the best in the state; the ladies were the most beautiful and dressy in the land; and all went splendidly, till the supper was discussed. There had been a misunderstanding about the number for whom supper was to be prepared, and it was found out, when too late, that there were a hundred more guests than plates. The supper was spread in the basement. When the writer went down with friends, the tables, which had already been twice occupied, presented a disgusting scene--all heaped up with dirty dishes, debris of "fowl, fish, and dessert," and great complaint was made by the hungry dancers, while some unpleasant epithets, and uncomplimentary remarks were hurled at the heads of the innocent caterers.
With our party were Dr. C., a great joker, and Dr. D., his match.
"If you don't like this fare you can go through into the restaurant," said one of the waiters. "It is all the same," he added.
We required no second invitation. We did ample justice to the fare provided, and retired, leaving Dr. C. to bring up the rear. In a half minute he came running after us, saying,--
"The fellow told me I must pay for the supper in there, extra!"
"Well, what did you tell him?"
"Why, I told him to go to h----."
"Well, you did right; let him go; that is just the place for him."
On another occasion, the dinner not being forthcoming at a hotel where we dined, the doctor "fell to," and soon demolished the best part of a blanc-mange pudding before him.
"That, sir, is dessert," politely interrupted the waiter, in dismay at seeing his dessert so rapidly disappearing.
"No matter," said the doctor, finishing it; "I could eat it if it were the Great Sahara!"
A MODERN GILPIN.
The widow Wealthy lived in the country. She was a blooming widow, fair, plump, and--sickly. She owned a valuable farm, just turning off from the main thoroughfare,--broad acres, nice cottage house, great barn and granary, and she was considered, by certain eligible old bachelors, and a widower or two, as "a mighty good catch."
Dr. Filley practised in the country. He was a bachelor, above forty. He was a short, thick-set man, with a fair practice, which might have been better, but for certain whispers about a growing propensity to--drinking! That's the word. Of course he denied the insinuation, and defied any one to prove that he was ever the worse for liquor. The doctor was attendant, professionally, upon the widow, and--well you know how the gossips manage that sort of a thing in the country. But who was to know whether "the doctor made more visits per week to the widow Wealthy than her state of health seemed to warrant"? or who knew that "the widow was 'sweet' towards the little doctor, and that she intended he should throw the bill all in at the end of the year--himself to boot?" Never mind his rivals; they do not come into our amusing story.
John, the widow's hired man, was sent very unexpectedly, one day in autumn, for the doctor to call that afternoon, to see the invalid. Very unexpectedly to the widow, and greatly to her mortification, two gossiping neighbors called at her residence just as the doctor was expected to arrive. "O, she was so glad to see Mrs. ---- and Mrs. ----!"
Dr. Filley rode a scraggy little Canadian horse,--a fiery, headstrong beast, but a good saddle horse. Somehow, the unexpected call, at that hour, slightly "flustered" the little doctor; but he threw his saddle-bags over his shoulder, mounted the beast, and turned his head towards the widow's residence.
"I b'lieve I am a little nervous over this colt; I wonder what's the matter!" And he tried to rein up the headstrong little beast, to give himself time to--sober off!
"I reary bl'eve I'm a little--taken by surprise--ho, Charley! Why, what's got inter--pony? Goes like 'r devil. Ho, ho, boy."
Pretty soon the beast struck into a gallop; and now he reached the lane that led into Mrs. Wealthy's farm. The pony knew the lane as well as his master, and the barn better. The said lane led by the barn-yard and out-buildings, the house being beyond. The barn-yard bars were down, and the pony made for the opening, in a clean gallop, over the fallen bars, right in amongst the cattle, the sheep, and the swine. A big ox gave a bellow at the sudden arrival, and, with tail and head in air, ran to the opposite side of the yard, intruding upon the comfort of a big old sow, that was dozing in the mud. With a loud snort, the discomfited porker rushed from the mire just in time to meet the horse, and in attempting to pass on both sides at once, she went between the short fore legs of the pony, and brought up with a loud squeal, and a shock that sent the rider over the horse's head, down astride the hog. The pony reared, wheeled, and ran out of the yard at one pair of bars, and the sow went pell-mell out of the other, bearing the doctor and saddle-bags swiftly along towards the house.
The hired man witnessed the sudden change of steeds, and gave the alarm. The widow--not so very sick--was just graciously showing her two unwelcome lady callers out, after being worried nearly an hour by their company; and taking an anxious look towards the lane, she saw the doctor coming on a clean--no, dirty--gallop, on her old sow.
She lost no time in giving a loud scream. What else should she do?
"O, goodness gracious! What is that?"
"O Lord, save and defend us! What is it?" exclaimed the two ladies, in chorus.
"A man on a hog!"
"The doctor on a sow!" again in chorus.
Now the pony and the swine met, the doctor still clinging to the sow's ear with one hand, and to the tail with the other; of course, having turned a clean summersault from the pony, facing towards the sow's hind quarters. The swine, beset on all sides, sheered off, and made directly through a large duck-pond in the field, scattering the geese and ducks every way, which, crying out, "Quack, quack!" made off as fast as feet and wings could carry them. Half way across the pond the doctor lost his balance, and, with his saddle-bags, fell splashing into the water.
Another scream from the ladies,--only two of them.
The widow, like a sensible woman, when she saw the doctor's danger, ran for the well-pole. "Here, John, here! Take this well-hook, and fish him out quick, before he drowns."
John obeyed, and in an instant the doctor was safely landed.
The doctor was sobered.
The widow, seeing no further danger, like a true woman, fainted.
Leaving the muddy and half-drowned doctor, who looked like a well-wet-down bantam cock, John turned to his mistress, whom he picked up from the grass, and carried into the house. The two ladies, who had witnessed her discomfiture, assisted in loosening the stays, and administering some salts, which revived the widow.
"O, did you ever see such a comical sight?"
"Never. O, wasn't it horrid? The little doctor riding backward, on a horrid, dirty, old pig! O, if I ever!"
And the ladies laughed in unison, in which the widow actually joined.
"But what has become of the poor, wet fellow? And did John rescue the saddle-bags?" inquired the widow.
John, meantime, had returned to the doctor's assistance. He now fished out the saddle-bags, and the unfortunate doctor started on foot for home, whither the pony had long since fled.
The story, in the mouth of one servant and three ladies, was anything but a secret, and--you know how it is in the country.
* * * * *
The widow still holds the farm in her own name, in a town in New England.
Dr. Filley practises physic in California.
A SCIENTIFIC GOURMAND.
Our familiar friend, "A Book about Doctors," which we have before introduced to your notice as the only amusing work in the English language, upon the subject, gives a long list of bon vivants of the old school, amongst whom are some eminent names in the medical profession. In fact, the abstemious doctors during the past centuries would seem to have been far in the minority. Even Harvey was accused of being fond of brandy.
"Dr. George Fordyce was fond of substantial fare, like Radcliffe, who was a gormand. For above twenty years Fordyce dined at Dolly's chop-house. The dinner he there consumed was his only meal during the four and twenty hours.
"Four o'clock was his dinner hour. Before him was set a silver tankard of strongest ale, a bottle of port wine, and a quarter pint of brandy.
"The dinner was preluded by a dish of broiled fowl, or a few whitings. Having leisurely devoured this plate, the doctor took a glass of brandy, and ordered his steak, which was always a prime one, weighing one and a half pounds. Of course, vegetables, etc., accompanied the steak.
"When the man of science had devoured the whole of this, the bulk of which would have kept a boa constrictor happy a twelvemonth, he took the rest of his brandy, drank off the tankard of ale, and topped off by sipping down his bottle of port wine.
"Having thus brought his intellects, up or down, to the standard of his pupils, he rose, and walked down to Essex Street, and delivered his six o'clock lecture on chemistry." (He lived to the age of sixty-six.)
Another glutton, in contrast with whom Fordyce was an abstinent, was Dr. Beauford. In 1745 he was summoned to appear before the privy council, to answer some questions relative to Lord B., with whom the doctor was intimate.
"Do you know Lord Barrymore?" asked one of the lords.
"Intimately, most intimately," replied the doctor.
"You were often with him?"
"We dine together almost daily when his lordship is in town," answered the doctor, with expressions of delight.
"What do you talk about?"
"Eating and drinking."
"Eating and drinking! What else?" asked his lordship.
"O, my lord, we never talk about anything but eating and drinking,--except--"
"Except what, sir?"
"Except drinking and eating, my lord."
The council retired, greatly disappointed, for they had expected to worm some important secret from the doctor.
At Finch Lane Tavern, where Dr. Beauford used to receive the apothecaries at half fee, he was represented as sitting over his bottles and glasses, from which he drank deeply, never offering one of his clients a drop, though they often sat opposite, at the same table, looking with anxious countenances and watering mouths upon the tempting cordials, as the doctor tossed them off.
"DOORN'T GO TO 'IM," ETC.
"Not many years since, in a fishing village on the eastern coast, there flourished a doctor in great repute amongst the poor, and his influence over the humble patients literally depended on the fact that he was sure, once in the twenty-four hours, to be handsomely intoxicated.
"Dickens has told us how, when he bought the raven immortalized in 'Barnaby Rudge,' the vender of that sagacious bird, after enumerating his various accomplishments, said, in conclusion,--
"'But, sir, if you want him to come out strong, you must show him a man drunk.'
"The simple villagers of Flintbeach had a firm faith in the strengthening effect of looking at a tipsy doctor. They usually postponed their visits to Dr. Mutchkins till evening, because they then had the benefit of the learned man in his highest intellectual condition.
"'Doorn't go to 'im i' the morning; he can't doctor no ways to speak on till he's had a glass,' was the advice usually given to strangers not aware of the doctor's little peculiarities."
DR. BUTLER'S BEER AND BATH.
An amusing description is given of one Dr. Butler, of London, who, like the above, used to get drunk nightly. He was the inventor of a beer which bore his name, something like our Ottawa, "with a stick in it," by one Dr. Irish. We once saw a drunken fellow holding on to a lamp post, while he held out one hand, and was arguing with an imaginary policeman that he was not drunk,--only had been taking a "little of that--hic--beverage, Dr. Waterwa's Irish beer, by the advice of his physician."
Dr. Butler had an old female servant named Nell Boler. At ten o'clock, nightly, she used to go to the tavern where the doctor was, by that hour, too drunk to go home alone, when, after some argument and a deal of scolding from Nell for his "beastly drunkenness," she would carry the inebriated doctor home, and put him to bed.
"Notwithstanding that Dr. Butler was fond of beer and wine for himself, he was said to approve of water for his patients. Once he occupied rooms bordering on the Thames. A gentleman afflicted by the ague came to see him. Butler tipped the wink to his assistant, who tumbled the invalid out of the window, slap into the river. We are asked to believe that the surprise actually cured the patient of his disease."
Water did not cure the doctor, however, but beer did.
Dr. Burrowly was stricken down in his prime, and just as he was about to succeed to the most elevated position in the medical profession.
The doctor was a politician, as well as an excellent surgeon. When Lords Gower and Vandeput were contesting the election for Westminster, in 1780, the doctor was supporting the latter. One Weatherly, who kept a tavern, and whose wife wore the ---- belt, was very sick. Mrs. Weatherly deeply regretted the fact of the sickness, as she wanted her husband to vote for Lord T. Late on election day, Dr. Burrowly called round to see his patient, quite willing that he should be sufficiently sick to keep him from going to the polls. To his surprise he found him up, and dressed.
"Heyday! how's this?" exclaimed the doctor, in anger. "Why are you up, without my permission?"
"O, doctor," replied Joe Weatherly, feebly, "I am going to vote."
"Vote!" roared the doctor, not doubting that his wife had urged him to attempt to go to the polls to vote for Lord J. "To bed. The cold air would kill you. To bed instantly, or you're a dead man before nightfall."
"I'll do as you say, doctor; but as my wife was away, I thought I could get as far as Covent Garden Church, and vote for Sir George Vandeput."
"For Sir George, did you say, Joe?"
"O, yes, sir; I don't agree with my wife. She's for Lord Trentham."
The doctor changed his prognosis.
"Wait. Let me see; nurse, don't remove his stockings;" feeling the man's pulse. "Humph! A good firm stroke. Better than I expected. You took the pills? Yes; they made you sick? Nurse, did he sleep well?"
"Charmingly, sir;" with a knowing twinkle of the eye.
"Well, Joe, if you are bent on going to the polls, it will set your mind better at ease to go. It's a fine sunny afternoon. The ride will do you good. So, bedad, I'll take you along in my chariot."
Weatherly was delighted with the doctor's urbanity, resumed his coat, went to the election, and voted for Sir George, rode back in the chariot, and died two hours afterwards, amidst the reproaches of his amiable spouse.
"Called away from a dinner table, where he was eating, laughing, and drinking deeply, Dr. B. was found dead in the coach from apoplexy, on the arrival at the place of destination."