XXIII. THE DOCTOR AS POET, AUTHOR, AND MUSICIAN…

XXIII. THE DOCTOR AS POET, AUTHOR, AND MUSICIAN

"Here comes the trout that must be caught with tickling."

"To patient study, and unwearied thought, And wise and watchful nurture of his powers, Must the true poet consecrate his hours: Thus, and thus only, may the crown be bought Which his great brethren all their lives have sought; For not to careless wreathers of chance-flowers Openeth the Muse her amaranthine bowers, But to the few, who worthily have fought The toilsome fight, and won their way to fame. With such as these I may not cast my lot, With such as these I must not seek a name; Content to please a while and be forgot; Winning from daily toil--which irks me not-- Rare and brief leisure my poor song to frame."

OUR PATRON, OUR PATTERN.--SOME WRITERS.--SOME BLUNDERS.--AN OLD SMOKER.--OLD GREEKS.--A DUKE ANSWERED BY A COUNTRY MISS.--THE PILGRIMS AND THE PEAS.--"LITTLE DAISY."--"CASA WAPPA!"--FINE POETRY.--MORE SCHOOLMASTERS AND TAILORS.--NAPOLEON'S AND WASHINGTON'S PHYSICIANS.--A FRENCH "BUTCHER."--A DIF. OF OPINION.--SOME EPITAPHS.--DR. HOLMES' "ONE-HOSS SHAY."--HEALTHFUL INFLUENCE OF MUSIC.--SAVED BY MUSIC.--A GERMAN TOUCH-UP.--MUSIC ON ANIMALS.--MUSIC AMONG THE MICE.--MUSIC AND HEALTH.

Apollo,--the father of Æsculapius, the "father of physicians"--was the god of poetry and of music, as well as the patron of physicians. He presented to Mercurius the famous caduceus, which has descended in the semblance of the shepherd's crook--he being the protector of shepherds and the Muses--and the physician's cane and surgeon's pole. Apollo is represented with flowing hair,--which the Romans loved to imitate, with an effort also at his graces of person and mind. Students at this day who court the Muses begin by allowing, or coaxing their hair to grow long, forgetting, as they nurse a sickly goatee or mustache, assisting its show by an occasional dose of nitrate of silver, that their god was further represented as a tall, beardless youth, and instead of a bottle or cigar, he held a lyre in his hand and discoursed music.

I think Dr. Apollo a very safe pattern for our students to imitate, those particularly who are "fast," and who only think, with Bobby Burns,--

"Just now we're living sound and hale; Then top and maintop crowd the sail; Heave care owre side! And large, before enjoyment's gale, Let's tak the tide."

It is quite impossible to mention all, even of the most celebrated of our physicians, who have contributed to the literary and musical world. But I shall quote a sufficient number to disprove the assertion that "literary physicians have not, as a rule, prospered as medical practitioners."

Who has developed and promulgated the knowledge relative to anatomy, chemistry, physiology, botany, etc., but the physicians? The true representation of sculpture, of painting, of engraving, and most of the arts, depends upon the learned writing of the doctors.

Da Vinci owed his success as a portrait painter to his knowledge of anatomy and physiology derived from study under a physician, as also did Michael Angelo. How would our Powers have succeeded as a sculptor, without this knowledge, or Miss Bonheur as a painter of animals? Dr. Hunter says "Vinci (L.) was at the time the best anatomist in the world."

Crabbe, to be sure, failed as a physician, but succeeded as a literary man; but then Crabbe was no physician, and was unread in medicine and surgery. Arbuthnot also failed in the same manner, and for the same cause. All who have so failed may attribute it to the fact they did not succeed in what they were not, but did succeed in what they were--as Oliver Goldsmith. He squandered at the gaming table the money given him by his kind uncle to get him through Trinity College, and though spending two years afterwards in Edinburgh, and passing one year at Leyden, ostensibly reading medicine, he totally failed to pass an examination before the surgeons of the college at London, and was rejected "as being insufficiently informed." He had previously been writing for the unappreciative booksellers, and authorship now became, per force, his only means of livelihood.

Goldsmith was an excellent, kind-hearted man; and if he had only got married and had a good wife to develop him, he would have been a greater man than he was.

It has been intimated in these pages that Shakspeare was prejudiced against medicine,--throwing "physic to the dogs;" but it is evident from a careful perusal of his works that Shakspeare was ignorant, and also superstitious, as respects this much abused science. Of the superstitions we need not further treat, but refer the intelligent reader to any of his plays for the truth of our intimation.

In Act II., Scene 1, of Coriolanus, he says by Menenius Agrippa, the friend of Coriolanus, "It gives me an estate of seven years' health, in which time I will make a lip at the physician; the most sovereign prescription of Galen is but empirical," etc. Coriolanus was banished from Rome, and died in the fifth century before Christ (about 490), and Galen was not born till six hundred years afterwards, viz.,--A. D. 130.

We should smile to see the Apollo Belvedere with "glasses on his nose,"--as many of our young ape-ollos now wear for effect; but it would scarcely be less ridiculous than Gloster saying in Lear, "I shall not want spectacles." King Lyr reigned during the earliest period of the Anglo-Saxon history, and spectacles were not introduced into England until the beginning of the fourteenth century. It is said that the painter Cigoli in his representation of the aged Simeon at the circumcision of Christ, made this same error by placing spectacles on the patriarch's nose.

More ludicrous than either of the above is the painting by Albert Durer, the German artist (about 1515), of his scene, "Peter denying Christ," wherein he represents a Roman soldier leaning against the door-post comfortably smoking a tobacco pipe. The pipe, to which Germans are particularly partial, was just being introduced during Durer's latter years. The tobacco was not introduced into Europe until 1496, and was, when first burned, twisted together.[8]

The Spaniards, in their report on their return from the first voyage of Columbus said that "the savages would twist up long rolls of tobacco leaves, and lighting one end, smoke away like devils." (The primitive cigar.)

ANCIENT GREEK AUTHORS.

Nearly all the ancient Greek physicians were authors of no mean calibre, considering the age in which they lived.

Pherecydes, a Greek philosopher and physician, wrote a book on diet during the sixth century before Christ. Pythagoras, his illustrious pupil, was said to be the first who dissected animals. He wrote, and taught anatomy and physiology, in the school of Crotona. Herodotus was a great teacher and writer; also Herophilus, his pupil. (B. C. 4th century.) There were four physicians named Hippocrates. The second of that name has nearly eclipsed all the others. The period in which he lived was highly favorable to the development of the qualities of the great Hippocrates. He was contemporary with Plato, Herodotus, who was his teacher, Pericles, Socrates, Thucydides, etc.

The most notable works of Hippocrates are 1st and 3d "Books on Epidemics," "Prognostics," "Treatise on Air and Water," "Regime of Acute Diseases," and "Treatise on Wounds."

Heraclitus, of Ephesus, is conjectured to be the first who dissected the human body. "The principle of his theory is the recognition of the fire of life and the ethereal element of wisdom as the ground of all visible existence." Fragments of his writings, only, have been preserved. He imitated Pythagoras.

Theophrastus wrote a book on plants. He lived to be one hundred and seven years old.

Herophilus first made diagnosis by the pulse, upon which he wrote a book.

Celsus was the author of eight works, yet Pliny makes no mention of him. Galen spoke of him as an excellent physician and writer; also Bostock.

Galen was a man of great talent and education. Suidas--11th century--says he wrote no less than five hundred books on medicine, and half as many on other subjects. His native tongue was Greek, but he also wrote in Latin and Persic.

Besides medicine, the above famous physicians wrote on philosophy, history, religion, etc. Poetry in those days was little more than heroic, or epic, prose.

THE DUKE ANSWERED BY A COUNTRY MISS.

Since I am not writing a medical history, I need not go on to quote the long list of the names of those who from the old Greek days to the present time have been both authors and successful medical practitioners. Their bare names would fill a large volume, and who would care to read them? To the general reader they would be quite unwelcome. The reason why medical authors are so little known is, that their writings have been too wearisome for the general reader. Such English authors as the satirical Wolcot (Peter Pindar), the courteous essayist Drake, the poetical and nature-loving Davy, and the "single-hearted, affectionate" Dr. Moir, are remembered, while greater and deeper thinkers and writers are, with their works, buried in oblivion.

When the Duke of Kent was last in America (1819), he was one day taking observations in the country, when he entered a cosy little farm-house, where he noticed a pretty young girl, reading a book.

"Do you have books here, my dear?" he asked, contemptuously.

"O, yes, sir," replied the girl naively, "we have the Bible and Peter Pindar."

That was a model house. The Bible and fun-provoking "Peter Pindar!" Under such a roof you will find no guile. Here you will avoid the extremes of "all work and no play," for the mind, "that makes Jack a dull boy," and "all play and no work," which "makes him a mere toy."

I have visited some houses in New England where the Bible, and "Baxter's Call to the Unconverted," were the only books to be seen; others where nothing was to be found upon the shelves but a vile collection of novels, such as Mrs. Partington has termed "yaller-cupboard literature." These need no comment, in either case.

THE PILGRIMS AND THE PEAS.

Our only excuse for copying this from Pindar will be found in reading the poem, slightly abbreviated. The pilgrims were ordered by the priest to do penance by walking fifty miles with peas in their shoes.

"The knaves set off upon the same day, Peas in their shoes, to go and pray; But very different their speed, I wot; One of the sinners galloped on, Light as a bullet from a gun, The other limped as though he'd been shot.

"One saw the Virgin soon, 'Peccavi!' cried, Had his soul whitewashed, all so clever, When home again he nimbly hied, Made fit with saints above to live forever! In coming back, however, let me say, He met his brother rogue about half way, Hobbling with outstretched hand and bending knees, Cursing the souls and bodies of the peas! His eyes in tears, his cheeks and brows in sweat, Deep sympathizing with his groaning feet. 'How now?' the light-toed, whitewashed pilgrim broke; 'You lazy lubber!' 'You see it,' cried the other. ''Tis no joke. My feet, once hard as any rock, Are now as soft as blubber.'

"'But, brother sinner, do explain How 'tis that you are not in pain; How is't that you can like a greyhound go, Merry as if nought had happened, burn ye?' 'Why,' cried the other, grinning, 'you must know That just before I ventured on my journey, To walk a little more at ease, I took the liberty to boil my peas!'"

LITTLE DAVY AGAIN.

Sir Humphry Davy lived from 1778 to 1829. Coleridge said of him, "Had not Davy been the first chemist, he probably would have been the first poet of the age." He made some important chemical discoveries, overworked his body and brain, and took the pen "to amuse" and recreate himself, but too late, telling us of "the pleasures and advantages of fishing," etc.

The following verses are from the poem of Dr. David Macbeth Moir, on the death of his darling little boy, who died at the age of five years:--

"Gem of our hearth, our household pride, Earth's undefiled, Could love have saved, thou hadst not died, Our dear, sweet child! Humbly we bow to Fate's decree; Yet had we hoped that time should see Thee mourn for us, not us for thee, Casa Wappy![9]

"The nursery shows thy pictured wall, Thy bat, thy bow, Thy cloak, thy bonnet, club, and ball; But where art thou? A corner holds thine empty chair; Thy playthings, idly scattered there, But speak to us of our despair, Casa Wappy!

"Yet 'tis a sweet balm to our despair, Fond, fairest boy, That heaven is God's, and thou art there, With him in joy! There past are death and all its woes, There beauty's stream forever flows, And pleasure's day no sunset knows, Casa Wappy!"

"The sole purpose of poetry," says the author of the above beautiful poem, "is to delight and instruct; and no one can be either pleased or profited by what is unintelligible. Mysticism in law is quibbling; mysticism in religion is the jugglery of priestcraft; mysticism in medicine is quackery; and these often serve their crooked purposes well. But mysticism in poetry can have no attainable triumph." Again he says,--

"The finest poetry is that which is most patent to the general understanding, and hence to the approval or disapproval of the common sense of mankind."

Dr. Moir enriched the pages of Blackwood's Magazine for thirty years with his beautiful poems, and occasional prose, which, according to Professor Wilson, "breathed the simplest and purest pathos." He practised medicine and surgery in his native village, six miles from Edinburgh, till the day of his death, which occurred in consequence of a wound caused by the upsetting of his carriage.

I find four physicians by the name of Abercromby, who were excellent physicians, and authors of no little note. One, Patrick, a Scotchman, and physician to James II., had a library second to few physicians of his day. Lancisi, an Italian physician who lived at the same time, possessed a splendid library consisting of thirty thousand volumes. He discovered a set of lost plates of Eustachius, from which he published tables. Lancisi was physician to several popes, and was a master of polite literature, and an author of great distinction.

MORE SCHOOLMASTERS AND TAILORS.

Dr. Richard Blackmore (Sir)--our "schoolmaster turned doctor"--was an author of no small note. "A poet of the time of Dryden in better repute as an honest man and a physician," says a biographer.

He should have been a man of importance, since Swift was pitted against him in "brutal verse." Steele and Pope scribbled about the pedagogue Blackmore. Dryden, who was unable to answer him, called him "a pedant, an ass, a quack, and a cant preacher," and he was ridiculed by the whole set of "petty scribblers, professional libellers, coffee-house rakes, and literary amateurs of the Temple who formed the rabble of the vast army against which the doctor had pitted himself in defence of public decency and domestic morality." We have already referred to the "forty sets of ribald verses taunting him of his early poverty, which caused him to become a schoolmaster."

Amongst his works were "Alfred," a poem of twenty books; another of twelve books; "Hymn to Light," "Satire against Wit," "The Nature of Man;" "Creation," in seven books; "Redemption," in six books, etc.

Dr. Johnson says of Dr. Blackmore, "And let it be remembered for his honor that to have been a schoolmaster is the only reproach which all the perspicacity of malice animated by wit has ever fixed upon his private life."

Heinrich Stilling, "a pseudonyme adopted by Heinrich Jung, in one of the most remarkable autobiographies ever written," was born about the year 1740, in Nassau. He was bred a tailor, and with his father followed his occupation until the son, by his own efforts and by the aid of his remarkable natural abilities, raised him to a more exalted position. By great efforts and diligent study he acquired a knowledge of Latin and Greek, and something of medicine, when he proceeded to the University of Strasburg. Here he remained prosecuting his studies with much diligence and zeal until he obtained not only his degree, but succeeded to the appointment of a professorship, and raised himself to eminence both by his ability as a lecturer and as an operator.

He was also an author of considerable renown, not only on medical subjects, but as a miscellaneous writer. His novel named "Theobold" is still read. He wrote a treatise on minerals.

His most remarkable production, however, was his autobiography entitled "Jugend, Junglingjahre, Wanderschaft und Alter Von Heinrich Stilling."

Cabanis, physician to Napoleon I., was a writer of note, particularly on physiology and philosophy. His complete works were recently published in Paris, and a portion of them have been translated into English.

Bard (Samuel), physician to Washington, was an author, but his writings were principally on medicine. His father was Dr. John Bard, who, with Dr. Middleton, made at Poughkeepsie the first dissection in America.

Dr. Valentine Mott, of New York, was not only the first surgeon in America, but he was an excellent lecturer and a voluminous writer, but, as far as I can learn, having before me a complete list of his writings, almost entirely on medical subjects. Having been to Europe repeatedly, a book of travels ought to have been added to the list.

One day, in Paris, the celebrated surgeon Dr. R. ---- asked Dr. Mott to visit his hospital and see him perform his peculiar operation. Dr. Mott assured the surgeon that he accepted with great pleasure.

"But," said the Frenchman, "on reflection I find there is no patient there requiring such an operation. However, that makes no difference, my dear sir. You shall see. There is a poor devil in one of the wards who is of no use to us, himself, or friends; and so come along, and I will operate upon him beautifully, beautifully," said the famous butcher. Dr. Mott, being a humane man, declined seeing the operation on such barbarous terms.

A DIFFERENCE OF OPINION.

In "Surgeons of New York" Dr. Francis gives the following:--

"On asking Dr. Batchelder (then eighty-one years of age), if he had to live over his eventful life, if he would again be a doctor, he replied,--

"Yes, sir;" most positively.

Dr. Hosack's favorite branch of practice has been general surgery. On asking him the question if he would again be a surgeon, his reply was condensed into a comprehensive

"Never!"

Dr. Hosack was present as examining physician to Colt, who committed suicide in the city prison. It is believed to this day, in certain circles, that Colt escaped, leaving another body smuggled into prison over night to represent him. The writer was induced once in Hartford to believe this to be true, as persons stated that they had really seen Colt in California. Dr. Hosack's testimony makes the case clear. Colt did not escape. "It seems that when the prisoner found, at the last moment, that there was neither possibility of escaping nor the least probability of a reprieve, he induced some friend to send him a coffee-pot of hot coffee in which the dagger was concealed, and which he drove into his heart even beyond the handle."

Dr. Hosack (Alex. Eddy) was also physician to Aaron Burr.

"Do you never experience any contrition, at times, for the deed?" (viz., shooting Hamilton), asked Dr. H. of his patient.

"No, sir; I could not regret it. Twice he crossed my path. He brought it upon himself," was Burr's reply.

Mrs. H., the doctor's mother, not unfrequently took tea and played chess of an evening with Benjamin Franklin. Franklin was a funny old gentleman. He used to amuse himself by giving ether to the children of the neighborhood and letting them out under its influence to laugh at their fellow-playmates.

SOME PURITANIC EPITAPHS.

The most ingenious of the Puritan poets was the Rev. Michael Wigglesworth, whose "Day of Doom" is the most remarkable curiosity in American literature. "He was as skilled," says one of his biographers, "in physic and surgery as in diviner things;" and when he could neither preach nor prescribe for the physical sufferings of his neighbors,--

"In costly verse, and most laborious rhymes, He dished up truths right worthy our regard."

He was buried in Malden, near Boston, and his epitaph was written by Mather.

THE EXCELLENT MICHAEL WIGGLESWORTH.

Remembered by some good tokens.

"His pen did once meat from the eater fetch; And now he's gone beyond the eater's reach. His body, once so thin, was next to none; From hence he's to unbodied spirits flown. Once his rare skill did all diseases heal; And he does nothing now uneasy feel. He to his Paradise is joyful come, And waits with joy to see his Day of Doom."

The last epitaph for which we have now space is from the monument of Dr. Clark, a grandson of the celebrated Dr. John Clark, who came to New England in 1630.

"He who among physicians shone so late, And by his wise prescriptions conquered Fate, Now lies extended in the silent grave; Nor him alive would his vast merit save. But still his fame shall last, his virtues live, And all sepulchral monuments survive: Still flourish shall his name: nor shall this stone Long as his piety and love be known."

And

"Such graves as his are pilgrim shrines, Shrines to no code or creed confined-- _The Delphian vales, the Palestines, The Meccas of the mind_."

THE ONE-HOSS SHAY.

Mr. Mundella, of the British Parliament, recently said,--

"American authors are now among the best writers in the English language. Among the poets were Longfellow, Holmes, Whittier, Bryant, and Lowell--five men whom no other country in the same generation could surpass, if, indeed, they could match. Never were purer or nobler men than they." He had the honor of knowing some of the greatest literary men in England, and could say that the American authors could compare with them in every way. O. W. Holmes was the most brilliant conversationalist it was ever his good fortune to meet.

As a poet, "his style is brilliant, sparkling, and terse," says Hillard.

I can only find space for the following from the pen of Dr. Holmes:--

Have you heard of the wonderful one-hoss shay, That was built in such a logical way, To run a hundred years to a day, And then, of a sudden, it--ah, but stay, I'll tell you what happened without delay: Scaring the parson into fits, Frightening people out of their wits, Have you heard of that, I say?

Seventeen hundred and fifty-five, Georgius Secundus was then alive,-- Snuffy old drone from the German hive! That was the year when Lisbon town Saw the earth open and gulp her down, And Braddock's army was done so brown, Left without a scalp to its crown. It was on the terrible Earthquake day, That the deacon finished the one-hoss shay.

Now, in building of chaises, I tell you what, There is always somewhere a weakest spot; In hub, tire, felloe, in spring or thill, In panel or cross-bar, or floor or sill, In screw, bolt, thoroughbrace, lurking still, Find it somewhere you must and will, Above or below, or within or without; And that's the reason, beyond a doubt, A chaise breaks down, but doesn't wear out. But the deacon swore (as deacons do, With an "I dew vum," or an "I tell yeou") He would build one shay to beat the taown, 'n' the keounty, 'n' all the kentry raoun'; It should be so built that it couldn't break down: "Fur," said the deacon, "'tis mighty plain That the weakes' place mus' stan' the strain; 'n' the way t' fix it, uz I maintain, Is only jest T' make that place uz strong uz the rest."

So the deacon inquired of the village folk Where he could find the strongest oak, That couldn't be split, nor bent, nor broke,-- That was for spokes, and floor, and sills; He sent for lancewood to make the thills; The cross-bars were ash, from the straightest trees; The panels of white-wood, that cuts like cheese, But lasts like iron for things like these; The hubs of logs from the "Settler's Ellum,"-- Last of its timber--they couldn't sell 'em; Never an axe had seen their chips, And the wedges flew from between their lips, Their blunt ends frizzled like celery-tips; Step and prop-iron, bolt and screw, Spring, tire, axle, and linchpin too, Steel of the finest, bright and blue; Thoroughbrace bison skin, thick and wide; Boot, top, dasher, from tough old hide Found in the pit when the tanner died. That was the way he "put her through." "There!" said the deacon, "naow she'll dew!"

Do! I tell you, I rather guess She was a wonder, and nothing less! Colts grew horses, beards turned gray, Deacon and deaconess dropped away; Children and grandchildren--where were they? But there stood the stout old one-hoss shay As fresh as on Lisbon Earthquake day!

Eighteen hundred: it came and found The deacon's masterpiece strong and sound. Eighteen hundred increased by ten: "Hansum kerridge" they called it then. Eighteen hundred and twenty came,-- Running as usual; much the same. Thirty and forty at last arrive, And then came fifty and fifty-five.

Little of all we value here Wakes on the morn of its hundredth year Without both feeling and looking queer. In fact, there's nothing that keeps its youth, So far as I know, but a tree and truth. (This is a moral that runs at large; Take it. You're welcome. No extra charge.) First of November,--the Earthquake day,-- There are traces of age in the one-hoss shay, A general flavor of mild decay, But nothing local, as one may say. There couldn't be,--for the deacon's art Had made it so like in every part That there wasn't a chance for one to start.

For the wheels were just as strong as the thills, And the floor was just as strong as the sills, And the panels just as strong as the floor, And the whippletree neither less nor more, And the back cross-bar as strong as the fore, And spring, and axle, and hub encore. And yet, as a whole, it is past no doubt, In another hour it will be worn out.

First of November, fifty-five! This morning the parson takes a drive. Now, small boys, get out of the way! Here comes the wonderful one-hoss shay, Drawn by a rat-tailed, ewe-necked bay. "Huddup!" said the parson. Off went they.

The parson was working his Sunday's text, Had got to fifthly, and stopped perplexed, And what the--Moses--was coming next? All at once the horse stood still, Close by the meet'n'-house on the hill. First a shiver, and then a thrill, Then something decidedly like a spill,-- And the parson was sitting upon a rock, At half past nine by the meet'n'-house clock,-- Just the hour of the Earthquake shock! What do you think the parson found, When he got up and stared around? The poor old chaise in a heap or mound, As if it had been to the mill and ground! You see, of course, if you're not a dunce, How it went to pieces all at once,-- All at once and nothing first,-- Just as bubbles do when they burst.

End of the wonderful one-hoss shay. Logic is logic. That's all I say.

HEALTHFUL INFLUENCE OF MUSIC.

The curative power of music is little understood. Our medical men would do well to devote more time and attention to music and its beneficial influences upon themselves and patients. In Paris, music is being introduced at the chief asylum for the benefit of the insane, the hypochondriacs, and such like patients. Its introduction at the "Retreat," at Hartford, Conn., has been attended with happy results.

The writer attributes the primary step towards recovery of several patients of his, suffering under great mental, nervous, and bodily prostration, to his ordering the piano or melodeon reopened.

Not long since I visited a patient at a distance. She was young and fair, and "supposed to be in consumption," which is usually a flattering disease, while this patient was laboring under great despondency, bordering on despair. Her parents could not account for her dejection.

Determined not to hurry over the case, and seeing a closed piano in the room, I asked if it was not used.

"No," replied the mother; "she has not touched it for more than three months; she takes no interest in anything."

I looked upon the sad, fair face, and thought I had never seen a picture of such utter hopelessness in a young maiden. I approached the piano, and raised its lid. The ivory keys were all dusty. The mother dusted them off, and with a great, deep sigh, whispered to me, "The dust will soon gather on her coffin. She will never touch these keys again."

"Pooh!" I exclaimed. "You, madam, discourage her. Let me sing something that will awaken her from her lethargy."

No matter how I played, or what I sang. It was the right key, the sympathetic chord. The first notes aroused her. She lifted her great, dark eyes for the first time. Great tears burst their bonds, thawing out the winter-locked senses, awakening the spring-time flowers of hope, that led to a summer season of health and happiness....

I know this was decidedly unprofessional; but what care I? The young girl was aroused from her despondency, and her precious life saved. Medicine, which before was of no avail, now took effect. O, I pity the poor fool who only has learned to cram drugs by the scruple, dram, and ounce down the unwilling throats of his more pitiful patients because musty books tell him to.

Dr. Mason F. Cogswell, a graduate of Yale, was a man eminent for piety and benevolence, a scholar, and a successful practitioner, which none can gainsay. "In music he was a proficient," said Professor Knight. While practising medicine in Stamford, Conn., he was said to have instructed the choir in psalm tunes and anthems, and other music, and adapted one to every Sabbath in the year. He possessed a great library, and was for ten years president of the State Medical Society. Dr. Cogswell had a deaf and dumb daughter, and he originated the design of an asylum, which was more fully developed by Mr. Gallaudet, in the Hartford asylum for the deaf and dumb. He died in 1830, at the age of seventy.

I know of a great many excellent physicians who are musicians and lovers of music. Guilmette is a first-class primo basso.

Who does not love to listen to the beautiful heart and home songs of Dr. J. P. Ordway, such as "Home Delights," "Come to the Spirit Land," etc.? "The twinkling Stars are laughing, Love," has been sung in every land, and arranged into band music by all the best leaders of the world. A Boston musician said to the writer recently, "After the audience had been disgusted a whole hour by classic music, the house came down enthusiastically on hearing one of Dr. Ordway's touching melodies."

The Germans seldom die of consumption. They are all musicians. There are many authors and poets among the German doctors. The following gem, it is needless to add, is not by one of the best authors:--

"December's came, and now der breezes Howls vay up amidst der dreeses; Now der boy mit ragged drouses Shivering feeches home der cowses. His boots vas old, und dorn his gloze is, Und bless my shdars, how blue his nose is!"

INFLUENCE OF MUSIC UPON ANIMALS.

Some wild animals are easily caught and readily tamed by the assistance, of music. "Whistle the rabbit and he'll stop," is as true as trite. The most common exhibition of the influence of music on animals is, perhaps, that witnessed in circuses, and other equestrian entertainments, where the horse is affected in a lively and exhilarating manner by the performances of the band, often waltzing and prancing, and keeping perfect time with the music.

Dogs are affected by music, but it is difficult to determine whether agreeably or otherwise. Many naturalists believe it to be disagreeable to them. Owls have been known to die from the effect of music. On the other hand, it is well known that many kinds of birds are affected in a very agreeable manner, often approaching as near as possible the instruments, or persons, and remaining as long as the music continues, and then flapping their wings, as we should clap our hands, in approbation of the performance.

Many of the wild animals are said to be fond of, and even charmed by, music. The hunters in the Tyrol, and some parts of Germany, often entice stags by singing, and the female deer by playing the flute. Beavers and rats have been taught to dance the rope, keeping time to music.

Among the insects, spiders are found to be very fond of music. As soon as the sounds reach them, they descend along their web to the point nearest to that from which the music originates, and there remain motionless as long as it continues. Prisoners sometimes tame them by singing or whistling, and make companions of them.

But perhaps the most remarkable instance of the influence of music on animals occurred at a menagerie in Paris a few years ago, when a concert was given, and two elephants were among the auditors. The orchestra being placed out of their sight, they could not perceive whence the harmony came. The first sensation was that of surprise. At one moment they gazed eagerly, at the spectators; the next they ran at their keeper to caress him, and seemed to inquire what these strange sounds meant; but at length, perceiving that nothing was amiss, they gave themselves up to the impression which the music communicated. Each new tune seemed to produce a change of feeling, causing their gestures and cries to assume an expression in accordance with it. But it was still more remarkable that, after a piece had produced an agreeable effect upon them, if it was incorrectly played, they would remain cold and unmoved.

MUSIC AMONG THE MICE.

The writer used to amuse himself and friends by attracting a pair of mice into his room by means of a guitar. The following, relating to the same, is from the "American," 1856:--

"We called upon our friend, and found him alone in his room, 'touching the guitar lightly.' He arose, greeted us with his bland smile, and said,--

"'Perhaps you would like to see my pupils. If you will be seated, and remain very quiet, I will call them out.'

"We did so. He resumed his seat, and, taking his splendid-toned guitar, touched some beautiful chords from an opera, and, in a moment, two or three mice ran out from the corner of the room, pointed on a 'bee line' towards the sound of the instrument. They stopped and listened for a moment or two, and, as the music glided up and down, they would move to and fro some inches on the floor, reminding one of a Schottische. In various passages of the music I saw one jump up two or three inches from the floor. Thus they manoeuvred till the music ceased, when they scampered away to their holes again."

MUSIC AND HEALTH.

Let patients amuse themselves by music. It is conducive to health. I cannot select music for you; choose for yourself, only don't get the "Hark! from the tombs a doleful sound" style. Get church music, if you like, but select a cheering class. O, it is a very mistaken idea that all music and mirth must cease in a house because a member of the household is an invalid. Try my suggestion. Re-open the piano or organ; or, if you haven't an instrument, re-tune your voices, and let music again "flow joyfully along," and see if happy results do not follow.

Physicians, I pray you, if you have never investigated this matter personally, do so. It is not adopted by any particular school of physic. It is not secured by letters patent. You will not be accounted outside of the Asclepiadæ, nor sued for infringement, if you prescribe music for the despondent patient. You need not turn "minstrels," burnt-cork fellows, etc., nor make comic actors of yourselves by so doing.

Your judgment will suggest the kind of patient who most needs this sort of "soul and spirit" stimulus. It is better than slop porter; better than sulphuric acid brandy, or strychnine whiskey, and you well know the basis of those liquors. Don't think me officious in these strong suggestions. Try my advice, and you will agree with me.

"PROVE ALL THINGS; HOLD FAST TO THAT WHICH IS GOOD."

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XXIV. ADULTERATIONS

BREAD, BUTTER, AND THE BIBLE.--"JACK ASHORE."--BUCKWHEAT CAKES ARE GOOD.--WHAT'S IN THE BREAD, AND HOW TO DETECT IT.--BUTTER.--HOW TO TELL GOOD AND BAD.--MILK.--ANALYSIS OF GOOD AND "SWILL MILK."--WHAT'S IN THE MILK BESIDES MICE?--THE COW WITH ONE TEAT.--"LOUD" CHEESE.--TEA AND COFFEE.--TANNIN, SAWDUST, AND HORSES' LIVERS.--ALCOHOLIC DRINKS.--CHURCH WINE AND BREAD.--BEER AND BITTER HERBS.--SPANISH FLIES AND STRYCHNINE.--"NINE MEN STANDIN' AT THE DOOR."--BURTON'S ALE; AN ASTONISHING FACT.--FISHY.--"FISH ON A SPREE."--TO REMEDY IMPURE WATER.--CHARCOAL AND THE BISHOP.--HOG-ISH.--PORK AND SCROFULA.--NOTICES OF THE PRESS.

BREAD.

Bread and butter and the Bible are synonymous with civilization and Christianity. Bread and the Bible, civilization and Christianity, have kept step together since the history of each began.

Two shipwrecked sailors, floating on a spar, after long privation and suffering, were thrown upon an unknown land. After looking about very shyly,--for every thing looked wild and uncivilized,--they came suddenly upon a hut. Jack was afraid to advance, but his hungry companion cautiously approached, and finally entered the hut. In a moment he came rushing out, exclaiming,--

"Come on, Jack. It's all right. Nobody at home; but it's civilized land we're grounded on. I found a loaf of bread."

This was conclusive evidence, next to finding a Bible, that it was a civilized country; and Jack waited for no further proof, but followed Captain Duncan into the cabin, where the two soon appeased their hunger.

Wheaten bread was never an article of diet amongst savages. "Take away wheat bread and butter from our families for a few generations, and who is prepared to say that civilization would not glide easily to a state of barbarism? There is sound philosophy in this suggestion, because there is no other kind of human food that is so admirably adapted to the development of the human frame, including a noble brain, as good wheat bread." It contains phosphates in just sufficient quantities to keep up a healthful supply for brain work. Fish contains more phosphorus; but are fish-eating Esquimaux,[10] or coast-men, the more intellectual for having made fish their principal diet?

In five hundred pounds of wheat, there are,--

Muscle material, 78 pounds. Bone (and teeth) material, 85 " Fat principle, 12 "

Ground to a fine flour:--

Muscle material, 65 " Bone material, 30 " Fat principle, 10 "

Cereal food will keep off hunger longer than animal food. By experience I have found that buckwheat will satisfy the cravings of hunger longer than wheat, rye, or corn. Dr. R. B. Welton, of Boston, says,--

"A lady of culture, refinement, and unusual powers of observation and comparison, became a widow. Reduced from affluence to poverty, with a large family of small children dependent on her manual labor for daily food, she made a variety of experiments to ascertain what articles could be purchased for the least money, and would, at the same time, "go the farthest," by keeping her children longest from crying for something to eat. She soon discovered that when they ate buckwheat cakes and molasses, they were quiet for a longer time than after eating any other kind of food.

"A distinguished judge of the United States District Court observed that when he took buckwheat cakes for breakfast, he could sit on the bench the whole day without being uncomfortably hungry. If the cakes were omitted, he felt obliged to take a lunch about noon. Buckwheat cakes are a universal favorite at the winter breakfast table, and scientific investigation and analysis have shown that they abound in the heat-forming principle; hence nature takes away our appetite for them in summer."

Another writer says,--

"We find the lowest order of intelligences standing on a potato. Only one step above this class, another order is found on a hoe-cake. One degree above this we meet with the class that has risen in the scale of being as high as it is possible for mortals to rise on a pancake. Head and shoulders above all of these classes we find the highest order of intelligences, with large and well-developed brains, and noble characters, standing securely on their wheaten loaf."

Since bread, then, is the "staff of life," the sin of its adulteration is the greatest of all wrongs to the human family.

Flour is often adulterated with plaster, white earth, alum, magnesia, etc.

To detect plaster, burn some of the bread to ashes, and the white grains will be discovered.

Alum is a very pernicious ingredient of adulteration, intended to make the bread white and light. It is often mixed in inferior flour. It is detected thus: Soak the loaf till soft in water, adding sufficient warm water to make it thin; stir it well, and set it a few hours; then strain it and boil it, to evaporate most of the water. After it stands a while, and cools, the crystals of alum will be precipitated. You may then tell it by taste.

Magnesia, so often mixed with inferior flour, to make the bread appear light, is injurious to children and invalids. You may detect it by burning the bread, and finding the magnesia in the ashes.

Soda, or potash. Much soda produces dyspepsia, sour stomach, and burning. To find potash, or soda, break up the bread, and pour upon it sufficient hot water to cover it. When it is cool, take a piece of litmus paper (obtained at the apothecary's), wet it in vinegar, and put it into the dish with the bread and water. The potash will turn the litmus blue again. The more potash, the sooner it changes. In some countries it is known that bread is adulterated by copper.

BUTTER.

Butter stands next to bread, as an article of diet. It is adulterated, with difficulty, with lard; but the usual way is to mix very cheap butter with a quantity of good butter. Butter is colored by carrots, yellow ochre, and yolks of eggs, and "adulterated by sand and chalk." To detect all of these, melt the butter in hot water. The coloring will separate and join the water, and the other adulterations settle to the bottom.

MILK.

"There's chalk in the milk," is all nonsense. Chalk will not remain in solution, but will settle. Hence milk is not adulterated with chalk. Milk is reduced by water, and if the body is again made up which the water has reduced, it is done by adding corn starch, or calves' brains!

Pure Milk contains

Water, 862.8 Solid particles, 137.2 ----- To parts 1000

Butter, 43.8 Sugar, 52.7 Caseine, 38.0 Saline, 2.7 ----- Solid matter, 137.2

Grass-fed Cows' Milk.

Water, 868 Solid, 132 ---- To parts 1000

Butter, 44 Sugar, 46 Caseine, 39 Salt, 3 --- Solid matter, 132

Swill Milk of New York.

Water, 930 Solid particles, 70 ---- To parts 1000

Butter, 18 Sugar, 8 Caseine, 34 Salt, 10 -- Solid matter, 70

The reader will perceive by these quotations (from Dr. Samuel R. Percy's report to the Academy of Medicine, New York), that it requires twice as much swill milk to give the same amount of nourishment as of a pure article. Furthermore, the swill milk is diseased, and, when magnified, appears as represented in the illustration. It contains corrupt matter, and pieces of diseased udder, with broken-down rotten globules.

The result of feeding children on this pernicious article of diet is to generate scrofula, skin diseases, rickets, diarrhoea, cholera infantum, and consumption, or marasmus--wasting away.

Some children in cities literally starve to death on this sort of milk.

Starch in milk may be detected by putting a drop of iodine into a glass of milk, when the starch will give off a blue color; or, by boiling such milk, it will thicken. Animals' brains, which are sometimes mixed in milk, may be detected with the microscope. Soda is often put in cans of milk that are to be transported, to keep the milk sweet.

We once saw a milkman picking a pair of mice out of his big milk can; but these little accidents, with hairs and dirt from the animals, are not to be mentioned, in view of the above greater facts of "what's in the milk"?

During the late run on the ---- Bank, New York, a gentleman said that a Westchester milkman named Thompson W. Decker had purchased sixteen thousand dollars worth of books at a discount, not because he wanted to speculate, as he was a millionnaire, but to show he had confidence in the institution, and wished to enhance its credit. Profitable business!

THE COW WITH ONE TEAT.

A cute old dairyman, who lived on a farm,-- To tell you the place is no good, nor no harm,-- Kept three or four cows--"Fan," "Molly," and "Bess," With one not yet mentioned, whose name you can't guess.

Two teams he kept running by night and by day, But where all the milk came from nobody could say; His cows were no better than those of his neighbor, Who kept just as many with equal the labor.

And as for paying! he built a great house, And barns, and granaries that would keep out a mouse; He drove fast horses, and was said to live high, But his neighbors looked on, and couldn't tell why.

"Old Bess kicked the bucket! Now let's see," said they, "If he runs his two carts in the same style to-day." But the 'cute old farmer was not to be beat, For the best to give down was the cow with one teat!

But since old "Bess" died the milk had grown thinner, And the fact leaked out now that the old sinner Had a cow with one teat, and fixed near the rump Was a handle which worked like any good pump!

CHEESE.

"Poison is sometimes generated in curds, and cheese prepared too damp, without sufficient salt."

Hall, of the Recorder, has been presented with some Limburger cheese; and this is how he acknowledges it: "Our friend, Wm. F. Belknap, of Watertown, sends us some choice, fragrant, Limburger cheese. Although of Dutch descent, we 'pass.' Our 'offence is not rank!' and does not 'smell to Heaven.' That distinct package of Limburger could give the ninety and nine little 'stinks of Cologne' ten points, and 'skunk' 'em--just as e-a-s-y. We generously offered the package to a man who slaughters skunks for their hide and ile; but he said he didn't admire the odor, and guessed he'd worry along without it; and we finally passed it on a German, who lives over the hill five miles to leeward of the village. We suppose there are some people who eat Limburger. It's just as a man is brought up. 'None for Joseph,' thank you."

TEA AND COFFEE.

Tea was introduced into England in the year 1666, and sold for sixty shillings per pound. It was first boiled till tender, and sauced up with butter in large dishes, the "broth" being thrown away: An excellent way for using the article!

All imported tea is black, unless colored before leaving China, and is colored by prussiate of potash--a poison so deleterious as to require labelling in drug stores as "POISON." It makes one very nervous,--good tea does not, unless used to excess,--and acts as a slow poison on the system. By its over-action on the liver, it makes one yellow, and will spoil the fairest complexion. All teas contain tannic acid, which, combining with milk, makes excellent leather of one. Black teas are sometimes colored with gypsum and Prussian blue.

I obtained these facts from a retired tea merchant of Philadelphia. He spent some time in China.

Coffee is adulterated with mahogany sawdust, acorns, peas, beans, roasted carrots, but more commonly with dandelion root and chiccory. I have obtained some samples of these from a large coffee-grinder in this city. But what is more repulsive still, baked horses' and bullocks' livers are often mixed with cheap coffees, to give them more body! Pure coffee is the less injurious. All these substances may be detected, as they become soft by boiling, which coffee-bean does not. Coffee browned in silver-lined cylinders retains its flavor more perfectly than in iron.

ALCOHOLIC DRINKS.

This is not a temperance lecture. I have only to tell you of impure liquors. Excepting alcohol I know of no pure liquors. I can find none. I have offered one hundred dollars for an ounce of pure brandy.

Wines.--The following articles are used to make or adulterate wine: water, sugar, arsenic, alum, cochineal and other coloring matter, chalk, lime, sulphur, lead, corrosive sublimate, etc.

To detect arsenic, put some pure lime-water in a glass, and drop the wine,--say a teaspoonful,--into it. If white clouds arise, expect that it contains arsenic. A positive test of arsenic in liquids is the ammonio-nitrate of silver, which precipitates a rich yellow matter, the arseniate of silver, and this quickly changes to a greenish-brown color. No elder or deacon should use wine, unless domestic, without having a sample of it analyzed by a disinterested chemist. The thought to me is perfectly shocking, that the villanous concoctions sold by even honest and Christian druggists, and used for communion purposes, to represent the blood of Christ, should be composed of alum, arsenic, and bugs! (cochineal). Of bread I say the same. A deacon's wife, not a hundred miles from Lowell, buys baker's bread, sour and yellow, for communion purposes. A lady showed me a sample of it, very unlike what my old grandmother, a deaconess, used to make for that purpose. It requires too much space to give tests of the various poisons in wines. I have no confidence in any foreign wines.

Alcohol has been distilled from the brain and other parts of the dead body of drunkards.

A WINE BATH.

An American traveller in the streets of Paris, seeing the words, "Wine Baths given here," exclaimed,--

"Well, these French are a luxurious people;" when, with true Yankee curiosity and the feeling that he could afford whatever any one else did, he walked in and demanded a "wine bath."

Feeling wonderfully refreshed after it, and having to pay but five francs, he asked, in some astonishment, how a wine bath could be afforded so cheaply. His sable attendant, who had been a slave in Virginia, and enjoyed a sly bit of humor, replied,--

"O, massa, we just pass it along into anudder room, where we gib bath at four francs."

"Then you throw it away, I suppose."

"No, massa; den we send it lower down, and charge three francs a bath. Dar's plenty of people who ain't so berry particular, who will bathe in it after this at two francs a head. Den, massa, we let the common people have it at a franc apiece."

"Then, of course, you throw it away," exclaimed the traveller, who thought this was going even beyond Yankee profit.

"No, indeed, massa," was the indignant reply, accompanied by a profound bow; "no, indeed, massa; we are not so stravagant as dat comes to; we just bottle it up den, and send it to 'Meriky for champagne."

A CHEMIST'S TESTIMONY.

Dr. Hiram Cox, an eminent chemist of Ohio, states that during two years he has made five hundred and seventy-nine inspections of various kinds of liquors, and has found nine tenths of them imitations, and a quarter portion of them poisonous concoctions. Of brandy, he found one gallon in one hundred pure; of wine, not a gallon in a thousand, but generally made of whiskey as a basis, with poisonous articles for condiments. Not a drop of Madeira wine had been made in that island since 1851. Some of the whiskey he inspected contained sulphuric acid enough in a quart to eat a hole through a man's stomach.

Brandy usually contains sulphuric acid. I obtained a "pure article" yesterday, from an honest, Christian druggist. In an hour I found sulphuric acid in it. Acids are easily detected in liquors, by placing in it for an hour a bright steel spatula. The acids have an affinity to steel, and the spatula soon turns black, separating the acid from the liquid supposed to be brandy. If the brandy is sharp to the throat on swallowing it, be sure that it is not pure, but contains capsicum, horseradish, or fusel oil. Good brandy will be smooth and oily to the throat. To detect lead in wine or brandy, suspend a piece of pure zinc in the glass, and if the lead is present, delicate fibrils of that metal will form on the zinc.

All malt liquors may be adulterated. Bitter herbs are used instead of hops. Copperas is used in lager beer; tobacco, nux vomica, and cocculus indicus in London porter--brown stout. To avoid them, drink no beer. It is of no earthly or heavenly use. A patient who would die without beer will certainly die with its use. Spanish flies are said to be used in liquors sometimes.

The strychnine--of whiskey--directs its action to the superior portion of the spinal cord: hence paralysis, insanity, and sudden death of whiskey drinkers.

Drinkers often suffer from gravel, from the lime, or chalk, or other minerals contained in liquors. Alcohol itself will not digest, yet ignorant physicians prescribe alcoholic drinks for dyspeptics.

Vinegar is often made from sulphuric acid. Good vinegar will not burn on your lips. To detect acid-sulphuric, drop a little of solution of sugar of lead in your vinegar; the lead precipitates a whitish sediment.

A SHORT SERMON.

"There's nine men standin' at the dore, an they all sed they'd take sugar in there'n. Sich, friends and brethering, was the talk in a wurldli' cens, wonst common in this our ainshunt land, but the dais is gone by and the sans run dry, and no man can say to his nabur, Thou art the man, and will you take enny more shugar in your kaughey? But the words of our tex has a difrunt and more pertikelur meenin than this. Thar they stood at the dore on a cold winter's mornin, two Baptiss and two Methodies and five Lutharians, and the tother was a publikin, and they all with one vois sed they wouldn't dirty their feet in a dram shop, but if the publikin would go and get the drinks they'd pay for 'em. And they all cried out and sed, 'I'll take mine with shugar--for it won't feel good to drink the stuff without sweetenin'.' So the publikin he marched in, and the bar-keeper said, 'What want ye?' and he answered and sed, 'A drink.' 'How will ye have it?' 'Plain and strate,' says he, 'for it ain't no use in wastin' shugar to circumsalvate akafortis. But there's nine more standin' at the dore, and they all sed they'd take shugar in ther'n.' Friends and brethering, it ain't only the likker or the spirits that is drunk in this roundabout and underhanded way, but it's the likker of all sorts of human wickedness in like manner. There's the likker of mallis that menny of you drinks to the drugs; but you're sure to sweetin' it with the shugar of self-justification. Ther's the likker of avris that some keeps behind the curtain for constant use, but they always has it well mixt with the sweetin' uv prudens and ekonimy. Ther's the likker of self-luv that sum men drinks by the gallon, but they always puts in lots of the shugar of Take Keer of Number One.

"An' lastly, ther's the likker uv oxtorshun, which the man sweetins according to circumstances.... And ther's nine men at the dore, and they all sed they'd take shugar in ther'n. But, friends and brethering, thar's a time comin' and a place fixin' whar thar'll be no 'standin' at the door,' to call for 'shugar in ther'n.' But they'll have to go rite in and take the drink square up to the front, and the bar-keeper'll be old Satun, and nobody else; and he'll give 'em 'shugar in ther'n,' you'd better believe it; and it'll be shugar of lead, and red-hot at that, as shure as my name's CONSHUNCE DODGER."

* * * * *

ALCOHOL contains no life-supporting principle. It has no iron or salts for the blood, no lime for bone, phosphorus for brain, no nitrogen for vital tissue. Burton's "Old Pale Ale" is given to invalids, but (by Dr. Hassal's analysis of one gallon), one must swallow 65,320 parts (grains) of water, 200 of vinegar, 2,510 of malt gum, etc., in order to get 100 of sugar, which is the only nourishing quality therein.

FISH is a good and wholesome article of diet, and salt water fish are never poisonous, if fresh. I once knew of fresh water fish being poisonous. The following article appeared in the Daily Courant of Hartford in 1864.

THE FISH IN LITTLE RIVER ON A SPREE.

Something got into the fish in Little River yesterday morning, "and raised the mischief" with them. They came to the top of the water, hundreds of them, and acted as if they were in the last stages of a premature decline. "Want of breath," such as boys say dogs die with, seemed to be the trouble. Never were the finny tribe so anxious to get out of water, and they poked their noses above the surface in the most beseeching way possible. The appeal was too strong to resist, and hundreds of men, women, and children, with sudden inventions for furnishing relief, such as baskets, coal-sifters, bags, etc., fixed at the end of long poles, lined the banks of the stream, and such luck in fishing has not been witnessed in this vicinity for years. What produced all this commotion among the inhabitants of the deep, is only conjectured. Some say a beer brewery, whose flavoring extracts (one of which is said to be cockle), after being relieved of their choicest qualities, are sent through a sewer into the stream, was the fountain head from which the trouble flowed. But beer drinkers look upon the idea as preposterous; they say it casts an unwarranted reflection upon a most respectable article of beverage. Perhaps so. Another claim is that somebody had thrown acid into the water; and another that decayed vegetable matter, occasioned by the long drought, has been liberally distributed in the river, from small streams which the late rains have swollen. We express no opinion about it, for, as the sensationist would say in speaking of something on a grander scale, "The whole matter is wrapped in the most profound mystery." It is a sure thing, however, that the fish had a high old time, and were considerably puzzled themselves to know what was up. Wouldn't advise anybody to invest in dressed suckers for a day or two, at least.

Since writing the above, Dr. Crabtre, coroner, informs us that he has secured several of the fish, and finds, by analyzing, that they were poisoned by sulphuric acid. The evidence of it is very strong in the fish that died before being taken from the water. Acid is used at Sharp's factory, and is thrown in considerable quantities into the river. It will not be very healthy business to eat fish which have been thus "tampered with," and, as we are informed that many were dressed yesterday and sent into market, we caution the public against buying "small fry," unless they know where they were caught.

WATER.

Foul wells, from an accumulation of carbonic acid gas, may be purified by a horse-shoe. But the horse-shoe, or other iron, or a brick, must be red hot. The vapor thus immediately absorbs the poison gas.

"Drink no water from streams or rivers on which, above, there are manufactories, etc.," says a medical writer. But if such water is filtered through charcoal, it will be tolerably pure. Even stagnant water may be purified by pulverized charcoal. Dead rats, cats, and dogs are sometimes found in wells. The taste of the water soon reveals such offensive presence. Clean out the well, and sift in some charcoal and dry earth, and the water will be all right again.

* * * * *

CHARCOAL will purify, but it will also defile, as the following will show:--

"A small boy, not yet in his teens, had charge of a donkey laden with coals, on a recent day in spring; and in a Midland Lane, far away from any human habitation, the wicked ass threw off his load--a load too heavy for the youngster to replace. He sat down in despair, looking alternately at the sack and the cuddy--the latter (unfeeling brute!) calmly cropping the roadside grass. At last a horseman hove in sight, and gradually drew nearer and nearer.

"'Halloa, thee big fellow!' cried the lad to the six-feet Archdeacon of ----, 'I wish thee'dst get off thy 'oss, and give us a lift with this here bag of coals.'

"The venerable rider had delivered many a charge in his life, but never received such a one as this himself--so brief and so brusque. He was taken aback at first, and drew himself up; but his good nature overcame his offended dignity, and dismounting, he played the part, not of the Levite, but of the Samaritan. The big priest and the small boy tugged and tumbled the sack, and hugged and lifted it, till the coals were fairly in statu quo--the archdeacon retiring from his task with blackened hands and soiled neck-tie.

"'Well,' exclaimed the small boy as his venerable friend remounted his horse, 'for such a big chap as thee art, thee's the awkwardest at a bag o' coals I ever seed in all my born days! Come op, Neddy!'"

HOGISH.

Pork is one of the vilest articles ever introduced into the dietetic world. It is a food for the generation and development of scrofula. The word scrofa (Latin), from which scrofula is derived, means a breeding sow. Pork is the Jew's abomination. I have never seen but one Jew with the scrofula. The Irish worship a pig. They die by the wholesale of scrofula and consumption. Tubercles are often found in pork, sometimes in beef. We had the gratification of adding to the health of Hartford for two summers by abating the swine nuisance. Previous to our war on them, the hogs rooted and wallowed in the streets!

ADULTERATIONS OF SUGAR AND CONFECTIONERY.

It is pleasantly supposed that sugar is the basis of all candies; and originally this was doubtless true.

It would be better for the rising generation if the original prescription was still carried out, and nothing of a more injurious nature than sugar was added to it, in the innumerable varieties of confectionery which are daily sold in our shops, or in richly decorated stores, "gotten up regardless of expense," over elegant marble counters, and from tempting cut and stained glass jars, or from little stands upon the street corners, to our children, old and young.

Sugar, pure and in moderate quantities, is a very harmless confection.

Professor Morchand and others affirm that a solution of pure sugar has no injurious effect upon the teeth, the popular notion to the contrary notwithstanding. Neither is pure or refined sugar, taken in moderate quantities, injurious to the blood, or the stomach, unless the stomach be very weak. In order to cure my children of an inordinate appetite for sugar, I have repeatedly obtained a pound of pure white lump, and set it before each, respectively, allowing it to eat as much as it chose. Failing, in one case out of three, to surfeit the child with one pound, I purchased six pounds in a box, and taking off the cover, I placed the whole temptingly before her. This cloyed her, and now she does not take sugar in her tea.

I have never known serious results accruing from children eating large quantities of purified sugar; yet I would not advise it to be given them in excess, excepting for the above purpose, viz., "to cure them of an inordinate appetite for sugar."

Now try to break the child of an excessive appetite for candy by giving it large quantities at once, and nine times out of ten you will have a sick or dead child in the house for your rash experiment.

Hence your candies, "nine times out of ten," will be found to contain injurious or poisonous substances.

REFINED SUGAR.

Sugar is an aliment and condiment. It is also, medically, an alterative and a demulcent. Finely pulverized loaf sugar and gum arabic, in equal proportions, form an excellent and soothing compound for inflamed throats, catarrh, and nasal irritations, to be taken dry, by mouth and nostrils, and often repeated.

Pure loaf sugar is white, brittle, inodorous, permanent in the air, and of a specific gravity of 1.6. It is chemically expressed thus: C24, H22, O22. It is nutritious to a certain extent, but alone will not support life for an unlimited length of time. This is owing to the entire absence of nitrogen in its composition. By analysis, sugar is resolved into carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen.

Pulverized sugar is often adulterated with starch, flour, magnesia, and sometimes silex and terra alba. Loaf sugar, however, is usually found to be pure.

BROWN OR UNREFINED SUGAR.

Brown sugar changes under atmospheric influences, and loses its sweetness. This change is attributed to the lime it contains. The best grade of brown sugar is nearly dry, of yellowish color, and emits less odor than the lower grades. It consists of cane sugar, vegetable and gummy matter, tannic acid, and lime. Put your hand into a barrel containing damp brown sugar, press a quantity, and suddenly relax your grasp, and it moves as though it was alive. It is alive! Place a few grains under a powerful microscope, and lo! you see organized animals, with bodies, heads, eyes, legs, and claws!

Poor people, who purchase brown sugar in preference to white, miss a figure in their selection, by the sand, water, and other foreign substances which the former contains.

Brown sugar is not so wholesome as the refined. I have attributed several cases of gravel that have come under my observation to the patients' habitual use of low grades of brown sugar.

CONFECTIONERY. THE FIRST STEP IN ITS ADULTERATION.

Confectionery and sweetmeats used to be manufactured from sugar, flour, fruit, nuts, etc., and flavored with sassafras, lemon, orange, vanilla, rose, and the extracts of various other plants or vegetables. When competition came in the way of profits on these articles, the avaricious and dishonest manufacturer began to substitute or add something of a cheaper or heavier nature to these compositions, which would enable him to sell at a lower price, with even a greater profit. Candy cheats were not easily detected, the sweets and flavors hiding the multitude of sins of the confectioner.

It seemed all but useless for the would-be honest manufacturer to attempt to either compete with his rival or to expose his rascalities, which latter would only serve to advertise the wares of his competitor. Hence he, too, adopted the same practice of adulterating his manufactures. One dishonest man makes a thousand. I do not affirm that there are no honest confectioners,--this would be as ungenerous as untrue,--or that we must use no confectionery. But let us hereby learn to avoid that which is impure.

GYPSUM, TERRA ALBA, OR PLASTER OF PARIS.

This is the principal article used in the manufacture of impure candies. The first intimation that the writer had of terra alba being mixed with sugar in candy, was when one confectioner placed a sample of the white earth in a dish upon his counter, with a sample of confectionery made therefrom, to expose the cheat of his rivals. "But as for me, I make only pure candies," etc., was his affirmation. Well, perhaps he did.

What is the nature of gypsum, terra alba, or white earth? Gypsum, or sulphate of lime, is a white, crystalline mineral, found in the excrement of most animals. Hence gypsum is extensively used as an artificial manure. It is found in peat soil, also used for manure, and is a natural production, occurring in rocky masses, under various names, as alabaster, anhydrate, and selenite.

The natural gypsum, or plaster of commerce, consists of

Water, 21 per cent. Lime, 33 " Sulphuric acid, 46 " --- 100

Plaster was used as a fertilizer by the early Roman and British farmers. It was introduced into America in 1772. It may here be worthy of notice, that when Dr. Franklin desired to exhibit its utility to his unbelieving countrymen, he sowed upon a field near Washington, in large letters, with pulverized gypsum, the following words: "This has been plastered."

The result is supposed to have been highly convincing. But this was as a manure. Dr. Franklin did not recommend it as a condiment.

You may know children who have been sown with plaster--though that plaster was modified by the smaller admixture of sugar--by their pale, puny, weakly appearance. Sugar has a tendency to increase the fatty and warming matter of the system; gypsum, or terra alba, to destroy it.

Gypsum is used in confectionery without being calcined. Calcined plaster, after being wet, readily "sets," or hardens. Heating gypsum deprives it of the percentage of water, when it is known to commerce as "plaster of Paris." It is cheap as manure; hence it is used instead of sugar.

Terra alba taken into the system absorbs the moisture essential to health, and disposes the child to weakness of the joints and spinal column, to rickets, marasmus, and consumption. There are other diseases to which its habitual use exposes the user; but if parents will not heed the above warning, it is useless to multiply reasons for not feeding children upon cheap or adulterated confectionery.

TO DETECT MINERAL SUBSTANCE.

Take no man's ipse dixit when the health or lives of your precious ones are at stake. "Prove all things."

To detect mineral substances in candy, put a quantity--particularly of lozenges, peppermints, or cream candy--into a bowl, pour on sufficient hot water to cover it well. Sugar is soluble in boiling water to any extent. Terra alba is not. The sugar will all disappear; the plaster, sand, etc., will settle to the bottom; the coloring matter will mix in or rise to the top of the water. Pure candies leave no sediment when dissolved in hot water.

I have seen some "chocolate cream drops" which were half terra alba; nor were these purchased upon the street corners, where the worst sorts are said to be exhibited. Boston dealers complain that some New York houses send drummers to Boston who offer confectionery at a less price, at wholesale, than it costs to manufacture a fair grade of the same by any process yet known, in Boston. Chocolate drops are made by a patent process at about seventeen cents per pound when sugar is fourteen, and chocolate thirty-five cents per pound.

Gum arabic drops have been sold for seventeen cents when sugar cost almost twice that sum, and pure gum arabic nearly three times seventeen cents. I asked an extensive confectioner how this could be explained, and he said, "By using glucose in place of gum arabic."

Now, glucose is a sugar obtained from grapes, a very nice substitute for the above, though less sweet than other sugars--as cane, beet, etc.

"What do you call glucose?" I asked this confectioner.

"It is mucilage made from glue," was his reply.

Glue is a nasty substance, at best. It is extracted by no very neat process from the refuse of skins, parings, hoofs, entrails, etc., of animals, particularly of oxen, calves, and sheep. It usually lies till it becomes stale and corrupt before being made into glue.

A confectioner showed me some "gum arabic drops" made from this patent "glucose" which cost but thirteen cents per pound. Jessop exhibited some extra pure gum drops which actually cost fifty cents to manufacture. I found all his costlier candies to be pure.

Gum drops are a luxury, and are excellent for bronchial difficulties, inflammation of the throat, larynx, and stomach. How shall we, then, tell a pure gum arabic drop from those nasty glue drops? First, the cheap article is usually of a darker color. The pure gum arabic drops are light color, like the gum. Take one in your fingers and double it over. If it possesses sufficient elasticity to bend on itself thus without breaking the grain, you may feel pretty sure it is gum arabic. The glue drop is brittle, and breaks up rough as it bends.

Do not purchase the colored drops. Pure sugar and gum arabic are white, or nearly so, and require no coloring.

Purchase only of a reliable party. Avoid colored confectionery, also all cheap candies. Even maple sugar makers have heard of sand and gypsum.

POISONOUS COLORING MATTER, ETC.

The following poisonous coloring materials are sometimes used in confectionery, says "The Art of Confectionery," but should be avoided: Scheele's green, a deadly poison, composed of arsenic and copper; verdigris (green), or acetate of copper--another deadly poison; red oxide of lead; brown oxide of lead; massicot, or, yellow oxide of lead; oxide of copper, etc.; vermilion, or sulphuret of mercury; gamboge, chromic acid, and Naples yellow. "Litmus, also, should be avoided, as it is frequently incorporated with arsenic and the per-oxide of mercury."

Ultramarine blue is barely admissible, and blue candies are less liable to be injurious than green, yellow, or red. Marigolds and saffron are sometimes used for coloring; but the cost of these, particularly the latter, compared with the minerals, as French and chrome yellows, is so high, rendering the temptation to substitute the latter so great, that purchasers should give themselves the benefit of the fear, and use no yellow candies of a cheap quality. Green candy is the most dangerous. Buy none, use none; they are mostly very dangerous confections.

LICORICE, GUM DROPS, ETC.

About the nastiest of all candies are the licorice and the chocolate conglomerations. Glue, molasses, brown sugar, plaster, and lampblack, are among their beauties, with, for the latter, just sufficient real chocolate to give them a possible flavor. Licorice is cheap enough and nasty enough, but the addition of refuse molasses, glue, and lampblack, which is no unusual matter, makes it still more repulsive.

Metcalf & Company, extensive wholesale and retail druggists, kindly gave me the figures of cost on the first, second, and lower grades of gum arabic, glucose, etc. The first quality of gum arabic costs, by the cask, about sixty to seventy-five cents per pound; the lowest about twenty-two. There is a new manufacture in New York, with a "side issue," wherein they necessarily turn out large quantities of glucose,--refuse from grain,--and this is sold for eight to thirteen cents a pound, to confectioners. It is much better than glue, but still the glue is used to-day, and I have on my table at this moment a sample of "gum drops" made this week in Boston from cheap glue, brown sugar, and a little Tonka bean flavor. The Tonka bean represents vanilla. These cost thirteen cents a pound, and are sometimes known, with the mucilage or glucose drops, to wholesale buyers, as "A. B." drops, to distinguish them from pure gum arabic. The unfortunate consumer, however, is not informed regarding the difference.

DANGEROUS ACIDS.

"Sour drops," or lemon drops, are sometimes flavored with lemon; but oil of lemon is costly, and sulphuric and nitric acids are cheap, and more extensively used in confectionery. I recently sat down with a friend, in a first-class restaurant, to a piece of "lemon pie," etc. I took St. Paul's advice, and partook of what was set before me, asking no questions for conscience' sake. The next morning, meeting the friend,--a physician, by the way,--I asked him how he liked tartaric acid. He replied, "Very well in a drink, but not in pies."

These acids are not only injurious to the teeth, but to the tender mucous membranes of the throat and stomach, engendering headache, colic-like pains, diarrhoea, and painful urinary diseases. Spirits of turpentine, or oil of turpentine, is extensively used in "peppermints;" also in essence of peppermint, often sold by peddlers, and in shops, as "pure essence." I question if any druggist would retail such impure and dangerous articles, since he would know it at sight, and ought to be familiar with its evil effects when used freely, as people use essence of peppermint. What I have stated respecting the flavoring of soda syrups is applicable to confectionery.

Hydrocyanic acid, or prussic acid, which is mentioned as being used to represent "wild cherry," in syrup or medicines, is employed in candies to give an "almond" flavor. Oil of bitter almonds is very costly, which is the excuse for substituting the much cheaper article, prussic acid.

The temptations set in the way of children to purchase candies are so great, and the adulterations so common, that I have devoted more space to the exposé of these cheats than I at first intended; but I hope that the public will hereby take warning, and mark the beneficial results which will accrue from an avoidance of cheap, painted, and adulterated confectioneries. These are sold everywhere, but most commonly upon the streets.

Near a stand upon a public street of this city, sandwiched by the thick flying dust on the one hand, and the warning, "Dust thou art," on the other, my attention was attracted to a little ragged urchin, who stood holding under his left arm a few dirty copies of a daily paper, while the right hand wandered furtively about in his trousers pocket, and his eyes looked longingly upon the tempting confectionery spread upon the dusty board and boxes before him. Indecision dwelt upon his pale, thin countenance, and drawing nearer, I awaited this conflict of mind and matter with a feeling of no little curiosity.

Finally, he seemed to have decided upon a purchase of some variegated candy, and making a desperate dive with the hand deeper into the pocket, he drew forth some pennies, which were quickly exchanged for the coveted painted poison,--none the more poisonous for having been sold upon a street stand, however.

His sharp, bluish-pale face lighted up with an unnatural glow of delight as he seized the tempting prize; and as he turned away, I said, kindly,--

"Have you been selling papers, sonny?"

"Yes, sir; buy one?" he replied, with an eye yet to business.

"Yes; and have you any more pennies?"

"No, sir." And he dropped his head in confusion.

"How much have you made to-day?" I next inquired.

"Seventeen cents, sir."

"And expended it all for candy, I suppose."

Receiving an affirmative reply, I next kindly questioned him respecting his family. His mother was a widow, very poor, and I asked him,--

"What will she say when you return with no money to show for your day's work?"

The tears started from his blue eyes, and I knew that I had made a "point." After some further conversation, I persuaded him to show me where he lived. Up the usual "three flight, back," in a low attic room, I beheld a picture of abject misery. The mother was sick, and lay uncomfortably upon an old sofa, which, with two rickety chairs and a large box, which served the double purpose of table and cupboard, were the only furniture of the apartment. She was totally dependent upon her little son's earnings for a sustenance. She had nothing in the house to eat; no money with which to obtain anything. Her boy's earnings had fallen off unaccountably, and for two days they had not tasted food. When she learned that he had brought in no money (for it was now near nightfall), she fell to weeping and upbraiding "the lazy, idle wretch for not bringing home something to eat." The boy began to cry bitterly, and acknowledged his error in spending his earnings for confectionery. I then exacted a solemn promise from him that he never would buy another penny's worth of the poison, gave him some change to purchase a bountiful meal, and left with a determination to ventilate street candy stands.

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XXV. ALL ABOUT TOBACCO

"The doctors admit snuff's a hurtful thing, And troubles the brain and sight, But it helps their trade; so they do not say Quite as much as they otherwise might."--L. H. S.

"HOW MUCH?"--AMOUNT IN THE WORLD.--"SIAMESE TWINS."--A MIGHTY ARMY.--ITS NAME AND NATIVITY.--A DONKEY RIDE.--LITTLE BREECHES.--WHIPPING SCHOOL GIRLS AND BOYS TO MAKE THEM SMOKE.--TOM'S LETTER.--"PURE SOCIETY."--HOW A YOUNG MAN WAS "TOOK IN."--DELICIOUS MORSELS.--THE STREET NUISANCE.--A SQUIRTER.--ANOTHER.--IT BEGETS LAZINESS.--NATIONAL RUIN.--BLACK EYES.--DISEASE AND INSANITY.--USES OF THE WEED.--GETS RID OF SUPERFLUOUS POPULATION.--TOBACCO WORSE THAN RUM.--THE OLD FARMER'S DOG AND THE WOODCHUCK.--"WHAT KILLED HIM."

HOW MUCH?

Do you know how much money is being squandered to-day, in the United States, in the filthy, health-destroying use of tobacco?

No.

Only $410,958! That's all.

In Commissioner Wells's report, it is shown that in the fiscal year ending June 30, 1868, the amount received from the tax on chewing and smoking tobacco was, in round numbers, fifteen million dollars. Add to this the cost of production, and dealers' profits, which are five times more than the revenue tax, amounting to seventy-five million dollars. The number of cigars taxed was six hundred millions. It is calculated as many more are used through smuggling, making a grand total yearly expenditure in the United States of one hundred and fifty millions of dollars for tobacco alone!

Give me $410,958 a day, and I will go into the pauper houses of these United States, and bring forth every pauper child; I will go down into the dark, damp cellars, and away into the cobweb-hung attics, and bring forth every ragged child of crime and poverty. I will take all these little bread-and-gospel-starved children, feed, clothe, and send them to school and Sabbath school, the year round, with $410,958 a day.

Christian ministers and professors, think of it! Young men and boys, think of it!

Yes, the Americans smoke, snuff, and chew one hundred and fifty million dollars in tobacco annually. The Chinamen consume $38,294,200 worth of opium in a year. The Russians stuff and glut over an unmerciful amount of lard and candles in a year; and the Frenchmen disgust the rest of mankind by eating all the frogs they can catch. Then there are the cannibals of the South Seas--they love tender babies to eat, but not an old tobacco-soaked sailor will they masticate.

Tobacco kills lice, bugs, fops, small boys, and other vermin.

Tobacco fees doctors, and fills hospitals.

Tobacco fills insane asylums and jails.

Tobacco fills pauper houses and graveyards.

Tobacco makes drunkards.

Tobacco and rum go hand and hand; they are one, inseparable; they are twins, yea, Siamese twins, the Chang and Eng of all villanies. I never saw a drunkard who did not first use tobacco. Did you?

John H. Hawkins, the father of Washingtonians, said he never was able to find a drunkard who had not first used tobacco.

TOO LOW A FIGURE.

Since writing the above I have been variously informed that my figures are too low. The national revenue derived from tobacco in the States for the year ending June, 1871, was $31,350,707.

CIGARS.

"According to General Pleasonton, who collected the tax on them, there were 1,332,246,000 cigars used in the United States last year. This one billion three hundred and thirty-two million two hundred and forty-six thousand cigars were undoubtedly retailed at ten cents apiece. So we smoked up in this country, last year, $133,224,600 worth of tobacco."

This does not include pipe-smoking nor chewing tobacco.

The total amount of the vile weed produced in the world annually is as follows:--

Asia, 309,900,000 pounds. Europe, 281,844,500 " America, 248,280,500 " Africa, 24,300,100 " Australia, 714,000 " ----------- Making a total of, 865,039,100 "

THE MIGHTY ARMY OF INVASION.

It is estimated that there are two hundred millions of tobacco-users in the world. What a splendid regiment of sneezers, spewers, smokers, and spitters they would make! They would form a phalanx of five deep, reaching entirely around the world.

Wouldn't they look gay? Forty millions, with filthy old tobacco pipes stuck in their mouths, "smoking away 'like devils!'" Eighty millions, with best Havana cigars, made in Connecticut and New York, from cabbage leaf, waste stumps of cigars, and "old soldiers," thrown away by Irish, Dutch, Italians, French, and Chinese, out of cancerous mouths, whiskey mouths, syphilitic and ulcerous mouths, rotten-toothed mouths--splendid!--protruding from between their sweet lips! Forty millions with pigtail and fine cut, sweet "honey dew," made as above, scented, grinding away in their forty million human mills! Forty millions, including five millions in petticoats, holding cartridge boxes (of snuff) in their delicate hands, from which they distribute death-dealing ammunition to--their lovely noses!

See them "marching along, marching along," to the tune that never an "old cow died on" yet, or hogs, or any animal, except he unfortunately became mixed up involuntarily with viler humans,--with jolly banners, blacked in the smoke and stench of great battles, bearing the words "Death to Purity!" "War to the Hilt with Health!" "All hail, Disease, Drunkenness, and Death!"

Splendid picture!

Alas! true picture!

And what do they leave in their wake?

Death to all animal and vegetable life!

The vile spittle and debris dropped by the way have killed all vegetable life. There's nothing vile and filthy that they have not cursed the ground with.

The following are a few of the articles mixed with various brands of tobacco, as though the original poisonous weed was not sufficiently deleterious: Opium, copperas, iron, licorice,--blacked with lampblack,--the dirtiest refuse molasses, the offal of urine, etc.

The effluvia and smoke arising have killed the foliage and the birds by the wayside, and miles of beautiful forests have been burned away. Nothing but a broad strip of blackened, cursed, and barren waste, remains. To offset this evil there is--nothing.

Now, this army is daily on its march through our land, and I have only begun to mention its depredations. Who will stop it?

ITS NAMES AND NATIVITY.

Tobacco is a native of the West Indies. Romanus Paine, who accompanied Columbus on his second voyage, seems to have been the first to introduce tobacco into Europe as an article of luxury. Paine is said to have lived a vagabond life, and died a miserable death.

The natives called it Peterna. The name tobacco is derived from the town of Tabaco, New Spain. The Latin name, Nicotiana Tabacum, is from Jean Nicot, who was a French ambassador from the court of Francis I. (born the year tobacco was introduced by Paine) to Portugal. On the return of Nicot, he brought and introduced to the French court the narcotic plant, and popularized it in France. Thence it was introduced all over Europe, but encountered great opposition. Sir Walter Raleigh introduced tobacco into England about 1582.

History informs us that a Persian king so strongly prohibited its use, and visited such severe penalties upon its votaries, that many of his subjects fled away to the caves, forests, and mountains, where they might worship this matchless deity free from persecution. The czar prohibited its use in Russia under penalty of death to smokers, mitigating snuff takers' penalty to merely slitting open their noses.

In Constantinople a Turk found smoking was placed upon a donkey, facing the beast's rump, and with a pipe-stem run through his nose, was rode about the public streets, a sad warning to all tobacco smokers. King James thundered against it. The government of Switzerland sounded its voice against it till the Alps echoed again.

But in spite of opposition and the vileness of the article, it has worked itself into a general use,--next to that of table salt,--and to-day a majority of the adult male population of our Christianized and enlightened United States are its acknowledged votaries.

In the year 1850 I saw in a house in Sedgwick, Me., individuals of four different generations smoking. The old grandmother was eighty-five years old. She smoked. A grandmother, sixty-three, with her husband, smoked. Their son smoked, and had very weak eyes. His two nephews smoked and chewed tobacco. The elder lady died with scrofulous sore eyes, not having, for years before her death, a single eyelash, and her swollen, inflamed eyelids were a sight disgusting to view. All her grand and great grandchildren whom I saw were scrofulous. Some suffered with rheumatism, and all were yellowish or tawny.

LITTLE CHILDREN LEARN TO SMOKE.

I once saw a father teaching his little three-year-old boy to smoke. I knew a boy at Ellsworth who learned to smoke before he could light his pipe. His father, who taught him the wicked habit, was not at all respectable, and had often been jailed for selling rum.

* * * * *

The following is a sample of the modern John Hay's style of teaching:--

LITTLE-BREECHES.

"I come into town with some turnips, And my little Gabe come along-- No four-year-old in the county Could beat him for pretty and strong; Peart, and chipper, and sassy, Always ready to swear and fight, And I'd larnt him to chaw terbacker, Jest to keep his milk teeth white.

"The snow come down like a blanket As I passed by Taggart's store; I went in for a jug of molasses, And left the team at the door. They scared at something and started-- I heard one little squall, And hell-to-split over the prairie Went team, Little-Breeches and all.

"Hell-to-split over the prairie! I was almost froze with skeer; But we rousted up some torches, And sarched for 'em far and near. At last we struck hosses and wagon, Snowed under a soft white mound: Upsot, dead beat--but of little Gabe No hide nor hair was found.

"And here all hopes soured on me Of my fellow-critters' aid-- I jest flopped down on my marrow bones, Crotch-deep in the snow, and prayed. By this the torches was played out, And me and Isrul Parr Went off for some wood to a sheep-fold, That he said was somewhar thar.

"We found it at last, and a little shed Where they shut up the lambs at night; We looked in, and seen them huddled thar, So warm, and sleepy, and white.

"And thar sot Little-Breeches, and chirped As peart as ever you see: 'I want a chaw of terbacker, And that's what's the matter of me.'"

WHIPPING SCHOOL BOYS AND GIRLS TO MAKE THEM SMOKE.

In London, in 1721, Thomas Hearne tells us school children were compelled to smoke. "And I remember," he says, "that I heard Tom Rogers say that when he was yeoman beadle that year, when the plague raged, being a boy at Eaton, all the boys of his school were obliged to smoke in the school-room every morning, and that he never was whipped so much in his life as he was one morning for not smoking."

Some boys, nowadays, would gladly undergo the "flogging" if they could be permitted to enjoy a smoke afterwards.

There are but few people inhabiting the eastern coast, and following fishing for a vocation, who do not smoke or chew tobacco; and their wives and children also smoke.

Sailors are proverbially addicted to smoking and chewing. Their love of tobacco far exceeds their appetite for grog.

* * * * *

The following letter from a sailor below port to his brother in London explains itself:--

NEAR GRAVESEND, on board Belotropen.

TO DEAR BROTHER BOB.

DEAR BOB: This comes hopin' to find you well, as it leaves me safe anchored here yester arternoon. Voyge short an' few squalls. Hopes to find old father stout, and am out of pigtail.

Sight o' pigtail at Gravesend but unfortinately unfit for a dog to chor. I send this by Capt'n's boy, and buy me pound best pigtail and let it be good--best at 7 diles (Dials), sign of black boy, and am short of shirts--only took two, whereof one is wored out and tother most.

Capt'n's boy loves pigtail, so tie it up when bort an' put in his pocket. Aint so partick'ler about the shirts as present can be washed, but be sure to go to 7 diles sign of Black boy and git the pigtail as I haint had a cud to chor since thursday. Pound'll do as I spect to be up tomorrow or day arter. an' remember the pigtail--so I am your lovin' brother

Tom ----.

P. S. dont forget the pigtail.

PURE SOCIETY.--HOW A YOUNG MAN WAS "TOOK IN."

When a young man is about to be "taken into society," the question naturally arises, Is the young man, or the society, to be benefited by the accession? As the young man seems anxious to make his debut there, we presume he is to be benefited by the initiation into pure society.

Since nine tenths of the young men are tobacco-users, we will presume safely enough that this young man is one of them. He has used it from five to seven years,--sufficient time to admit of its becoming part and parcel of him.

The young man--"John" is his name--is before the examining committee, who, not being blind or obtuse from the use of the weed themselves, and knowing no young man is fit to enter pure society who uses, or has used, tobacco, without being purified, they submit him to the test, with the following results:--

"His clothes are impregnated with tobacco," the examiner reports.

"Let them be removed and purified," is the command.

They are soaked in alkalies, and soap, and water. They are washed, and boiled, dried, aired, and pressed and pronounced clean, and fit for society.

The committee next examine John's skin. "It is full of nicotine. It must be cleansed." So John is taken to the Turkish bath, the most likely place to remove the filth permeating his every pore. Dr. Dio Diogenes puts him through; he is "sweated," and the great room is scented throughout by the tobacco aroma arising from the ten thousand before clogged-up pores of his skin. He is all but parboiled, then soaped and scrubbed, rubbed, and then goes into the plunge bath. The fishes are instantly killed. The canary bird in the next room is suffocated by the effluvia penetrating to his cage. The young man is wiped again, dried, and cooled.

Again the committee smell. John is not yet pure. The nicotine is "in his blood," says Dr. Chemistry. A faucet is introduced into John's aorta, and his blood drawn off into a bucket for the chemist to analyze and purify of tobacco. Still the flesh is full of nicotine, and it must be removed and purified. It is too late for John to object, and the fact cannot be denied that the poison is in his muscle; so he is stripped of the integuments to his framework.

The committee now examine the bony structure.

In Germany they have recently dug up the bones of tobacco-users who have been dead years, and found nicotine (tobacco principle) in them. May not this man's bones be full of nicotine, which will come out through, if we replace the integuments, blood, and garments?

"The bones must be subjected to purification," said the judge.

They are soaked in alkalies, boiled in acids, and sufficient nicotine is extracted to kill five men not hardened in the tobacco service.

Thus, and only thus, could John have been purified from his vile habit and its results, and fitted for decent male society, female society, and Christian society. There is said to be one other place where John can possibly have the nicotine of seven years' deposit taken out of him. It is a very warm place, and the principal chemical ingredient used is said to be sulphuric, and kept up to a boiling point by means of infernal great fires.

DELICIOUS MORSELS.

Nicotine is the active principle of tobacco, expressed chemically thus: C10 H8 N. One fourth of a drop will kill a rabbit, one drop will kill a large dog. It is a virulent poison, the intoxicating principle of prepared tobacco. It is not in the natural leaf. It results from fermentation. Two little boys were overheard discussing tobacco merits and demerits. One was in favor of tobacco, the other "anti." "Why," said anti, "it's so poisonous that a drop of the oil, put on a dog's tail, will kill a man in a minute." It is the opium in the best Havanas which enslaves the smokers more than the tobacco. Those cigars, also American manufactured cigars, are dipped in a solution of opium. It is said that twenty thousand dollars' worth of opium is used annually in one cigar manufactory in Havana.

THE STREET NUISANCE.

"I knew, by the smoke that so lazily curled From his lips, 'twas a loafer I happened to meet; And I said, "If a nuisance there be in the world, 'Tis the smoke of cigars on a frequented street."

"It was night, and the ladies were gliding around, And in many an eye shone the glittering tear; But the loafer puffed on, and I heard not a sound, Save the sharp, barking cough of each smoke-stricken dear."

Here is a "blow" from Horace Greeley. "I do not say that every chewer or smoker is a blackguard; but show me a blackguard who is not a lover of tobacco, and I will show you two white blackbirds." Good enough for Horace.

Now, admitting that there are gentlemen who smoke and chew on the streets, how are ladies, or the people, to know that they are such, since the loafer, the blackguard, the thief, the pickpocket, the profaners of God's name (all), the blackleg, the murderers bear the same insignia of their profession? At one time, every man incarcerated in the Connecticut state prison was a tobacco-user; nearly all, also, at the Maine, Vermont, and Massachusetts prisons.

It is quite lamentable to see how liable tobacco-using is to convert a thorough gentleman into a selfish, dirty blackguard, who will promenade the streets, chatting with some boon companion, while the pair go recklessly along, blowing their offensive smoke directly into ladies' faces, their ashes into their beautiful eyes, and spitting their filthy saliva directly or indirectly over costly dresses, thinking only of self!

THE MAN WHO CHEWS.

Behold the picture of the man who chews! A human squirt-gun on the world let loose. A foe to neatness, see him in the streets, His surcharged mouth endangering all he meets. The dark saliva, drizzling from his chin, Betrays the nature of the flood within. Where, then, O where, shall Neatness hope to hide From this o'erwhelming of the blackened tide? Shall she seek shelter in the house of prayer? A hundred squirting mouths await her there. The same foul scene she's witnessed oft before,-- A solemn cud is laid at every door! The vile spittoon finds place in many a pew, As if one part of worship were to chew!

ANOTHER STREET NUISANCE.

Speaking of President Grant and his cigar, a writer says,--

"Not only do smoky editors take advantage of this weakness of our president, but tobacconists, greedy of gain, are subjecting it to their sordid purposes. Hitherto these gentlemen have insulted the public taste by posting at their shop doors some savage, some filthy squaw, or some unearthly image, to invite attention to their cigars and 'negro head tobacco.' And all this seemed appropriate. But cupidity is audacious, and they now insult American pride by installing at their doors a full, life-like, wooden bust of General Grant offering to passing travellers a cigar. Emblems of majesty are not rare. We have Jupiter with his thunderbolt, Hercules with his club, Ahasuerus with his sceptre, Washington with his Declaration of Independence, Lincoln with his Proclamation of Liberty to four millions, and now, in this year of our Lord, we have President Grant and his cigar!

IT BEGETS LAZINESS AND NATIONAL RUIN.

Sir Benjamin Brodie, a distinguished physician of London, says, "A large proportion of habitual smokers are rendered lazy and listless, indisposed to bodily and incapable of much mental exertion. Others suffer from depression of the spirits, amounting to hypochondriasis, which smoking relieves for the time, though it aggravates the evil afterwards....

"What will be the result, if this habit be continued by future generations?"

Tobacco is ruining our nation. Its tendency is to make the individual user idle, listless, and imbecile. Individuals make up the nation. Those nations using the most tobacco are the most rapidly deteriorating.

Once the ships of Holland ploughed the waters with a broom at the mast-head, emblematic of her power to sweep the ocean. Behold her now! "Her people self-satisfied, content with their pipes, and the glories once achieved by their grandfathers." Look at the Mexicans, and the lazzaroni of Italy. "Spain took the lead of civilized nations in the use of tobacco; but since its introduction into that country, the noble Castilian has become degenerated, his moral, intellectual, and physical energies weakened, paralyzed, and debased. The Turks, descendants of the warlike Saracens, are notoriously known as inveterate smokers. And to-day they are characterized as an enervated, lazy, worthless, degenerate people."

Go about the shops, and bar-rooms, and billiard-halls of our own community, and see our lazzaroni. What class do they principally represent--the active and virtuous, or the idle and vicious?

A young man greatly addicted to smoking, and who, to my knowledge, was exceedingly lazy, was seated by the writer's fireside, listless and idle, save barely drawing slowly in and out the tobacco smoke of an old pipe, when, after repeated requests of his sister that he should go out to the shed and bring in some wood to replenish the dying embers, she got out of patience with him, and exclaimed,--

"There, Ed, you're the laziest fellow I ever saw, sitting there and smoking till the fire has nearly gone out, on a cold day like this."

"Ugh!" he grunted, and slowly added, "I once heard tell of a lazier boy than I am, sister."

"How could that be possible? Do tell me," she exclaimed, impatiently.

"Well, you see,"--spitting on the floor,--"when he came to die, he couldn't do it. He was too lazy to draw his last breath, and they had to get a corkscrew to draw it for him."

"You think it smart and cunning, John, To use the nauseous weed; To make your mouth so filthy then, It were a shame indeed. To smoke and chew tobacco, John, Till your teeth are coated brown, Making a chimney of your nose, And of yourself a clown,--

"Yes, that would be so cunning, John,-- The girls will love you so; Your breath will smell so sweet, They'll want you for a beau. Because you use tobacco, John, You think yourself a man; But the girls will find it out, John, Disguise it all you can."

"Shall I assist you to alight?" asked one of those nice young men who loaf about country hotel doors, smoking a villanous cigar, of a buxom country lass, on arrival of the stage.

"Thank you, sir," said the girl, with irony, and a jump, "but I never smoke."

BLACK EYES AND FINGERS.

An American traveller visiting the greatest cigar manufactory in Seville, Spain, says, amongst other things,--

"Here were five thousand young girls, all in one room,--and Sevillians, too,--in the factory. They are all old enough to be mischievous, and 'put on airs.' I doubt if as many black eyes can be seen in any one place as in this factory. Their fingers move rapidly, and their tongues a little faster. The manufactories consume ten thousand pounds of tobacco per day.

"I have often heard that a woman's weapon is her tongue, and that the sex were notorious for using it; but, like many other unkind statements against Heaven's best, last gift to man, I doubted it until I peeped into the Fabrico de Tabacos of Seville. What must be the weight of mischief manufactured each day along with the cigars, I don't know, but I feel safe in stating that it is at least equal with the tobacco. This factory was erected in 1750, is six hundred and sixty feet long by five hundred and twenty-five wide, and is surrounded by a mole. It is the principal factory in the kingdom, as every one uses tobacco in some shape in Andalusia, not excepting the ladies; but it is when they are on the shady side of forty that they puff and cogitate. Snuff, cigars, and cigarettes are all manufactured here. The best workers among the girls earn about forty cents per day, the poorest about half that amount. Every night they are all searched."

DISEASE AND INSANITY.

Tobacco helps to fill our insane asylums. Dr. Butler, of Hartford, and others, have assured me of the fact. "I am personally acquainted with several individuals, now at lunatic asylums, whose minds first became impaired by the use of tobacco."

"In France, the increase in cases of lunacy and paralysis keeps pace, almost in exact ratio, with the increase of the revenue from tobacco. From 1812 to 1832, the tobacco tax yielded 28,000,000f., and there were 8000 lunatic patients. Now the tobacco revenue is 180,000,000f., and there are 44,000 paralytic and lunatic patients in French asylums. Napoleon and Eugenie, assisted by their subjects, smoked out five million pounds of tobacco the year before they went on their travels. Take notice. As ye sow, so also reap."

Sir Benjamin Brodie, before quoted, says, "Occasionally tobacco produces a general nervous excitability, which in a degree partakes of the nature of delirium tremens."

THE MEERSCHAUM. A SONNET.

"The gorgeous glories of autumnal dyes; The golden glow that haloes rare old wine; The dying hectic of the day's decline; The rainbow radiance of auroral skies; The blush of Beauty, smit with Love's surprise; The unimagined hues in gems that shine,-- All these, O Nicotina, may be thine! But what of thy bewildered votaries? How fares it with the more precious human clay? Keeps the lip pure, while wood and ivory stains? Stays the sight clear, while smoke obscures the day? Works the brain true, while poison fills the veins? Shines the soul fair where Tophet-blackness reigns? Let shattered nerves declare! Let palsied manhood say!" J. IVES PEASE.

USES AND ABUSES OF TOBACCO.

In our opening remarks on tobacco, we stated some of the uses of tobacco, such as killing bugs and lice on plants, vermin on cattle, etc. It prevents cannibals from eating up our poor sailors; and, in the Mexican war, it was ascertained that the turkey buzzards would not eat our dead soldiers who were impregnated with tobacco!

Dean Swift published a pamphlet, in his day, showing how the superfluity of poor children could be made an article of diet for landlords who had already consumed the parents' substance. All may not admit that there is a superfluity of children and youth in the larger towns and cities of our country. A New York paper says that "five thousand young men might leave New York city without being missed." Now for our argument. "Like begets like." The lamb feeds upon pure hay or sweet grass. It is the emblem of purity; it represented Christ. The lion and tiger have only tearing teeth, and subsist upon animal food, and they are of a wild, ferocious nature. Man stuffs himself with tobacco poison. It becomes a part of him,--muscle, blood, bone! Like begets like, and behold the tobacco-user's children, puny, yellow, pale, scrofulous, rickety, and consumptive. Many years ago it was estimated that twenty thousand persons died annually in the United States from the use of tobacco. Nine tenths begin with tobacco catarrh, go on to consumption, and death.

"The diseased, enfeebled, impaired, and rotten constitution of the parent is transmitted to the child, which comes into the world an invalid, and then, being exposed more directly to the poisonous effects of this pernicious habit of the parent, its struggle for life is exceedingly short, and in less than twelve months from its birth it sickens, droops, and dies, and the milkman's adulterated milk, especially in cities, is often made the scape-goat for this uncleanly, if not sinful habit of the parent."

If it is true that the wicked mostly make up the tobacco-consumers, you perceive by this, that like the prisons and gallows, tobacco catches and kills off the superfluous wicked population and their offspring. The sins of the parents are visited upon their children, and what a host of puny, wretched, and wicked little children tobacco helps to rid the world of. Selah!

TOBACCO WORSE THAN RUM.

Tobacco is worse than rum because, by its begetting a dryness of the throat and fauces, it creates an appetite for strong drink. It is too evident to need corroboration. 1. "Rum intoxicates." So does tobacco. "Intoxication" is from the Greek en (in) and toxicon (poison). Therefore, when any perceptible poison is in the person, he is intoxicated. 2. "Alcohol blunts the senses, and ruins many a fair intellect." So does tobacco. But since the ruined drunkard used tobacco, how do you know it was not tobacco which ruined him? Come, tell me! 3. "Rum makes a man miserable." So does tobacco. The user is in Tophet the day he is out of the weed. 4. "Whiskey makes paupers." So does tobacco. I knew a whole family who went to the Brooklyn, Me., pauper house one winter, when, if the father and mother had not used tobacco, they could have been in health and prosperity. 5. "Rum makes thieves." So does tobacco. Men have been known to steal tobacco when they would not have stolen bread. 6. "It makes murderers." Where is the murderer of the nineteenth century who was not a tobacco-user, and an excessive user at that, from George Dennison, who on the drop asked the sheriff for a chew of tobacco, to Stokes, in his New York cell, surrounded by a cloud of tobacco smoke, awaiting the decision of the jury to ascertain if it was really he who shot the "Prince of Erie"?

* * * * *

You can't always tell just what kills a man, or a dog, as the following story proves:--

"An old farmer was out one fine day looking over his broad acres, with an axe on his shoulder, and a small dog at his heels. They espied a woodchuck. The dog gave chase, and drove him into a stone wall, where action immediately commenced. The dog would draw the woodchuck partly out from the wall, and the woodchuck would take the dog back. The old farmer's sympathy getting high on the side of the dog, he thought he must help him. So, putting himself in position, with the axe above the dog, he waited the extraction of the woodchuck, when he would cut him down. Soon an opportunity offered, and the old man struck; but the woodchuck gathered up at the same time, took the dog in far enough to receive the blow, and the dog's head was chopped off on the spot. Forty years after, the old man, in relating the story, would always add, with a chuckle of satisfaction, 'And that dog don't know, to this day, but what the woodchuck killed him!'"

We regret our want of space to ventilate tobacco more thoroughly.

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

XXVI. DRESS AND ADDRESS OF PHYSICIANS

The fish called the Flounder, perhaps you may know, Has one side for use, and another for show; One side for the public, a delicate brown, And one that is white, which he always keeps down.

* * * * *

Then said an old Sculpin--"My freedom excuse, But you're playing the cobbler with holes in your shoes; Your brown side is up,--but just wait till you're fried, And you'll find that all flounders are white on one side." DR. O. W. HOLMES. 1844.

GOSSIP IS INTERESTING.--COMPARATIVE SIGNS OF GREATNESS.--THE GREAT SURGEONS OF THE WORLD.--ADDRESS NECESSARY.--"THIS IS A BONE."--DRESS not NECESSARY.--COUNTRY DOCTORS' DRESS.--HOW THE DEACON SWEARS.--A GOOD MANY SHIRTS.--ONLY WASHED WHEN FOUND DRUNK.--LITTLE TOMMY MISTAKEN FOR A GREEN CABBAGE BY THE COW.--AN INSULTED LADY.--DOCTORS' WIGS.--"AIN'T SHE LOVELY?"--HARVEY AND HIS HABITS.--THE DOCTOR AND THE VALET.--A BIG WIG.--BEN FRANKLIN.--JENNER'S DRESS.--AN ANIMATED WIG; A LAUGHABLE STORY.--A CHARACTER.--"DASH, DASH."

"All personal gossip is interesting, and all of us like to know something of the men whom we hear talked of day by day, and whose works have delighted or instructed us; how they dressed, talked, or walked, and amused themselves; what they loved to eat and drink, and how they looked when their bows were unbent."

Most famous men have had some peculiarity of dress or address, or both. Our first impression of Goliah--by what we heard of his size--was that he was as high as a church steeple; and of Napoleon, that he was as short as Tom Thumb. But when we read for ourselves, we found that Goliah was much less in stature than Xerxes and some modern giants, and Napoleon was of medium size.

No man can become truly great in any capacity unless he has the innate qualities of greatness within his composition. These qualities, if possessed, will appear in his face,--for face, as well as acts, indicate the character.

There seem to be elements of character in all great men--almost the identical basis of character in the one as in the other, the different vocations explaining any minor differences that are to be found in them. Thus we find precisely the same features in the character of Michael Angelo and the Duke of Wellington--two men living three centuries apart, in different countries--one a great artist, and the other a great warrior. Compare Washington and Julius Cæsar; you will find them surprisingly alike in many particulars. In them, as in every instance I have yet studied, the distinguishing feature is an intense love of work--work of the kind that fell to the lot of each to do. Another feature is indomitable courage; and the last is a never-dying perseverance. Though I have carefully studied the histories of many of the greatest men, in order, if I could, to discover the source of their greatness, I have never yet come upon one great life that has lacked these three features--love of work, unfailing courage, and perseverance.

"To be a good surgeon one should be a complete man. He should have a strong intellect to give him judgment and enable him to understand the case to be operated on in all its bearings. He needs strong perceptive faculties especially, through which to render him practical, to enable him not only to know and remember all parts, but to use instruments and tools successfully; also large constructiveness, to give him a mechanical cast of mind. More than this, he must have inventive power to discover and apply the necessary mechanical means for the performance of the duties of his profession. He must have large Firmness, Destructiveness, and Benevolence, to give stability, fortitude, and kindness. He must have enough of Cautiousness to make him careful where he cuts, but not so much as to make him timid, irresolute, and hesitating; Self-esteem, to give assurance; Hope, to inspire in his patients confidence, and genial good-nature, to make him liked at the bedside.

"In the group of eminent men whose likenesses are herewith presented, we find strongly marked physiognomies in each. There is nothing weak or wanting about them. All seem full and complete. Take their features separately--eyes, nose, mouth, chin, cheeks, lips--analyze closely as you can, and you will discover strength in every lineament and in every line. In Harvey we have the large perceptives of the observer and discoverer. He was pre-eminently practical in all things. In Abernethy there is naturally more of the author and physician than of the surgeon, and you feel that he would be more likely to give you advice than to apply the knife. In Hunter, strong, practical common sense, with great Constructiveness, predominates. See how broad the head between the ears. His expression indicates 'business.' Sir Astley Cooper looks the scholar, the operator, and the very dignified gentleman which he was. (He was the handsomest man of his day.) Carnochan, the resolute, the prompt, the expert, is large in intellect, high in the crown, and broad at the base; he has perhaps the best natural endowment, and by education is the one best fitted for his profession, among ten thousand. He is, in all respects, 'the right man in the right place.'

"Dr. Mott, the Quaker surgeon, has a large and well-formed brain, and strong body, with the vital-motive temperament, good mechanical skill, and great self-control, resolution, courage, and sound common sense. Jenner, the thoughtful, the kindly, the sympathetical, and scholarly, has less of the qualities of a surgeon than any of the others."

For the above interesting facts we are indebted to the "Phrenological Journal."

Professor Bigelow, of Harvard, has all the requisites in his "make up" of a great surgeon. As a lecturer, Dr. Bigelow is easy and off-handed. He comes into the room without any fuss or airs. He takes up a bone, a femur, perhaps, and after looking at it and turning it round and upside down as though he never saw it before, he finally says, "This is a bone--yes, a bone." You want to laugh outright at the quaintness of the whole prelude. Then he goes on to tell all about "the bone." We have not space for more than a mere line sketch of even great men like the above, and but few of those.

THE OLD COUNTRY DOCTOR'S DRESS.

The country doctor of the past is interesting in both dress and address. He is almost always, somehow, an elderly gentleman. He devotes little time and attention to dress. We have one in our "mind's eye" at this moment,--the dear old soul! His head was as white as--Horace Greeley's; not so bald. His hair he combed by running his fingers though it mornings. His eyes, ears, and mouth were ever open to the call of the needy. His clothes looked as though they belonged to another man, or as if he had lodged in a hotel and there had been a fire, and every man had put on the first clothes he found. His coat belonged to a taller and bigger man, also his pants, while the vest was a boy's overcoat. His boots were not mates. His lean old spouse looked neat and prim, but as though she had been used for trying every new sample of pill which the doctor's prolific brain invented.

I knew another, kind, benevolent old doctor, who started off immediately on a call, without adding to or changing his dress. I once saw him seven miles from home in his shirt sleeves in November, driving fiercely along in his gig, as dignified as though dressed in his Sunday coat. If a friend reminded him of his omission, he would smile benevolently, swear as cordially, and drive on. He did not mean to be odd, he did not mean to swear; and the minister, who had talked with him on the subject more than once, had come to that charitable conclusion--for the doctor always made due acknowledgment, and did not forget the contributions and salaries. The doctor was like an innocent old backwoods deacon we have heard of, who, chancing at a village tavern for the first time, heard some extraordinary swearing; and being fascinated by this new accomplishment, he went home, and looking about for an opportunity to put to practical use the new vocabulary, he finally electrified his amiable wife by exclaiming,--

"Lord-all-hell, wife; shut the doors by a dam' sight!"

* * * * *

In regard to shirts, a reliable author tells us that Dr. H. Davy adopted the following plan to save time. "He affected not to have time for the ordinary decencies of the toilet. Cold ablutions neither his constitution nor his philosophic temperament required; so he rarely ever washed himself. But the most remarkable fact was on the plea of saving time. When one shirt became too indecently dirty to be seen longer he used to put a clean one on over it; also the same with stockings and drawers. By spring he would look like the 'metamorphosis man' in the circus--big and rotund.

"On rare occasions he would divest himself of his superfluous stock of linen, which occasion was a feast to the washerwoman, but it was a source of perplexity to his less intimate friends, who could not account for his sudden transition from corpulency to tenuity."

The doctor's stock of shirts must have equalled Stanford's.

A California paper tells us that "twenty years ago Leland Stanford arrived in that state with only one shirt to his back. Since then, by close attention to business, he has contrived to accumulate a trifle of ten million."

What possible use can a man have for ten million shirts?

The Earl of Surrey, afterwards eleventh Duke of Norfolk, who was a notorious gormand and hard drinker, and a leading member of the Beefsteak Club, was so far from cleanly in his person that his servants used to avail themselves of his fits of drunkenness--which were pretty frequent, by the way, for the purpose of washing him. On these occasions they stripped him as they would a corpse, and performed the needful ablutions. He was equally notorious for his horror of clean linen. One day, on his complaining to his physician that he had become a perfect martyr to rheumatism, and had tried every possible remedy without success, the latter wittily replied, "Pray, my lord, did you ever try a clean shirt?"

Dr. Davy's remarkable oddity of dress did not end here. He took to fishing: we have noticed his writing on angling elsewhere. He was often seen on the river's banks, in season and out of season, "in a costume that must have been a source of no common amusement to the river nymphs. His coat and breeches were of a bright green cloth. His hat was what Dr. Paris describes as 'having been intended for a coal-heaver, but as having been dyed green, in its raw state, by some sort of pigment.' In this attire Davy flattered himself that he closely resembled vegetable life"--which was not intended to scare away the fishes.

This reminds me of Mrs. Pettigrew's little boy "Tommy." Never heard of it? "Well," says Mrs. Pettigrew, "I never again will dress a child in green. You see,"--very affectedly,--"I used to put a jacket and hood on little Tommy all of beautiful green color, till one day he was playing out on the grass, looking so green and innocent, when along came a cow, and eat poor little Tommy all up, mistaking him for a cabbage."

Mrs. H. Davy was as curious in dress as the doctor. "One day"--it is told for the truth--"the lady accompanied her husband to Paris, and walking in the Tuileries, wearing the fashionable London bonnet of the period,--shaped like a cockle-shell,--and the doctor dressed in his green, they were mistaken for masqueraders, and a great crowd of astonished Parisians began staring at the couple.

"Their discomfiture had hardly commenced when the garden inspector informed the lady that nothing of the kind could be permitted on the grounds, and requested a withdrawal.

"The rabble increased, and it became necessary to order a guard of infantry to remove 'la belle Anglaise' safely, surrounded by French bayonets."

A Portland paper tells how a servant girl there mended her stockings. "When a hole appeared in the toe, Bridget tied a string around the stocking below the aperture and cut off the projecting portion. This operation was repeated as often as necessary, each time pulling the stocking down a little, until at last it was nearly all cut away, when Bridget sewed on new legs, and thus kept her stockings always in repair."

DOCTORS' WIGS.

For the space of about three centuries the physician's wig was his most prominent insignia of office. Who invented it, or why it was invented, I am unable to learn. The name wig is Anglo-Saxon. Hogarth, in his "Undertaker's Arms," has given us some correct samples of doctors' wigs. Of the fifteen heads the only unwigged one is that of a woman--Mrs. Mapp, the bone-setter. The one at her left is Taylor, the "quack oculist;" the other at her right is Ward, who got rich on a pill. Mrs. Mapp is sketched in our chapter on Female Doctors. Isn't she lovely? And how Taylor and Ward lean towards her!

YE ANCIENT DOCTOR.

"Each son of Sol, to make him look more big, Wore an enormous, grave, three-tailed wig; His clothes full trimmed, with button-holes behind; Stiff were the skirts, with buckram stoutly lined; The cloth-cut velvet, or more reverend black, Full made and powdered half way down his back; Large muslin cuffs, which near the ground did reach, With half a dozen buttons fixed to each. Grave were their faces--fixed in solemn state; These men struck awe; their children carried weight. In reverend wigs old heads young shoulders bore; And twenty-five or thirty seemed threescore."

HARVEY'S HABITS.

I think Harvey should have been represented in a wig. They were worn by doctors in his day, though John Aubrey makes no mention of Dr. Harvey's wearing one. He (Aubrey) says, "Harvey was not tall, but of a lowly stature; round faced, olive complexion, little eyes, round, black, and very full of spirit. His hair was black as a raven, but quite white twenty years before he died. I remember he was wont to drink coffee with his brother Eliab before coffee-houses were in fashion in London.

"He, with all his brothers, was very choleric, and in younger days wore a dagger, as the fashion then was; but this doctor would be apt to draw out his dagger upon very slight occasions.

"He rode on horseback, with a foot-cloth, to visit his patients, his footman following, which was then a very decent fashion, now quite discontinued."

It was not unusual to see a doctor cantering along at a high rate of speed, and his footman running hard at his side, with whom the doctor was keeping up a lively conversation.

Jeaffreson tells the following story of Dr. Brocklesby, also the proprietor of an immense wig. The doctor was suddenly called by the Duchess of Richmond to visit her maid. The doctor was met by the husband of the fair patient, and valet to the duke.

In the hall the doctor and valet fell into a sharp discussion. On the stairs the argument became hotter, for the valet was an intelligent fellow. They became more excited as they neared the sick chamber, which they entered, declaiming at the top of their voices.

The patient was forgotten, though no doubt she lifted her fair head from the pillow to see her undutiful lord disputing with her negligent doctor. The valet poured in sarcasm and irony by the broadside. The doctor, with true Johnny Bull pluck, replied volley for volley, and the battle lasted for above an hour. The doctor went down stairs, the loquacious valet courteously showing him out, when the two separated on the most amiable terms.

Judge of the doctor's consternation, when, on reaching his own door, the truth flashed across his mind that he had neglected to look at the patient's tongue, feel her pulse, or, more strange, look for his fee. The valet was so ashamed, when he returned to the chamber, that his invalid wife, instead of scolding him, as he deserved, fell into a laughing fit, and forthwith recovered from her sickness.

I have seen many a patient for whom I thought a right hearty laugh would do more good than all the medicine in the shops.

One William--known as "Bill"--Atkins, a gout doctor, used to strut about the streets of London, about 1650, with a huge gold-headed cane in his hand, and a "stunning" big three-tailed wig on his otherwise bare head. Gout doctoring was profitable in Charles II.'s time.

"Dr. Henry Reynolds, physician to George III., was the Beau Brummell of the faculty, and was the last of the big-wigged and silk-coated doctors. His dress was superb, consisting of a well-powdered wig, silk coat, velvet breeches, white silk stockings, gold-buckled shoes, gold-headed cane, and immaculate lace ruffles."

Benjamin Franklin had often met and conversed with Reynolds.

FRANKLIN'S COURT DRESS.

Nathaniel Hawthorne relates an anecdote of the origin of Franklin's adoption of the customary civil dress, when going to court as a diplomatist. It was simply that his tailor had disappointed him of his court suit, and he wore his plain one, with great reluctance, because he had no other. Afterwards, gaining great success and praise by his mishap, he continued to wear it from policy. The great American philosopher was as big a humbug as the rest of us.

DR. JENNER'S DRESS.

"When I first saw him," says a writer of his day, "he was dressed in blue coat, yellow buttons and waistcoat, buskins, well-polished boots, with handsome silver spurs. His wig, after the fashion, was done up in a club, and he wore a broad-brimmed hat."

AN ANIMATED QUEUE.

An old English gentleman told me an amusing story of a wig. A Dr. Wing, who wore a big wig and a long queue, visited a great lady, who was confined to her bed. The lady's maid was present, having just brought in a bowl of hot gruel. As the old doctor was about to make some remark to the maid, as she held the bowl in her hands, he felt his queue, or tail to his wig, moving, when he turned suddenly round towards the lady, and looking with astonishment at his patient, he said,--

"Madam, were you pulling my tail?"

"Sir!" replied the lady, in equal astonishment and indignation.

Just then the tail gave another flop.

Whirling about like a top whipped by a school-boy, the doctor cried to the maid,--

"Zounds, woman, it was you who pulled my wig!"

"Me, sir!" exclaimed the affrighted lady's maid.

"Yes, you, you hussy!"

"But, I beg your pardon--"

"Thunder and great guns, madam!" And the doctor whirled back on his pivoted heels towards the more astonished lady, who now had risen from her pillow by great effort, and sat in her night dress, gazing in profound terror upon the supposed drunken or insane doctor. Again the wig swung to and fro, like a clock pendulum. Again the old doctor, now all of a lather of sweat, spun round, and accused the girl of playing a "scaly trick" upon his dignified person.

"Sir, do you see that I have both hands full?"

Away went the tail again. The lady saw it moving as though bewitched, and called loudly for help. The greatest consternation prevailed, the doctor alternating his astounded gaze between the two females; when the queue gave a powerful jerk, and out leaped a big mouse, which went plump into the hot porridge. The maid gave a shrill scream, and dropped the hot liquid upon the doctor's silk hose, and fled.

The poor, innocent mouse was dead; the doctor was scalded; the lady was in convulsions--of laughter; when the room was suddenly filled by alarmed domestics, from scullion to valet, and all the ladies and gentlemen of the household.

"What's the matter?" sternly inquired the master of the house, approaching the bed.

"O, dear, dear!" cried the convalescent, "a mouse was in the doctor's wig, and--"

"A mouse!" exclaimed the doctor, jerking the offensive wig from his bald pate. "A d--d mouse! I beg a thousand pardons, madam," turning to the lady, holding the wig by the tail, and giving it a violent shake. He had not seen the mouse jump, and till this moment thought that the lady and maid had conspired to insult him.

A "CHARACTER."

Old Dr. Standish was represented by our authority as "a huge, burly, surly, churlish old fellow, who died at an extremely advanced age in the year 1825.

"He was as unsociable, hoggish an old curmudgeon as ever rode a stout hack. Without a companion, save, occasionally, 'poor Tom, a Thetford breeches maker,' 'he sat every night, for fifty years, in the chief parlor of the Holmnook, in drinking brandy and water, and smoking a "church warden."' Occasionally his wife, 'a quiet, inoffensive little body,' would object to the doctor's ways, and, forgetting that she was a woman, offer an opinion of her own.

"On such occasions, Dr. Standish thrashed her soundly with a dog-whip."

In consequence of too oft repetition of this unpleasantness, she ran away.

"Standish's mode of riding was characteristic of the man. Straight on he went, at a lumbering, six-miles-an-hour gait, dash, dash, dash, through the muddy roads, sitting loosely in his saddle, heavy and shapeless as a bag of potatoes, looking down at his slouchy brown corduroy breeches and clay-colored boots, the toes of which pointed in opposite directions, with a perpetual scowl on his brow, never vouchsafing a word to a living creature.

"'Good morning to you, doctor; 'tis a nice day,' a friendly voice would exclaim.

"'Ugh!' Standish would grunt, while on, dash, dash, dash! he rode.

"He never turned out for a wayfarer.

"A frolicsome curate, who had met old Standish, and received nothing but a grunt in reply to his urbane greeting, arranged the following plan to make the doctor speak.

"When riding out one day, he observed Standish coming on with his usual 'dash, dash, dash,' and stoical look. The clerical gentleman put spurs to his beast, and charged the man of pills and pukes at full tilt. Within three feet of Standish's horse's nose, the young curate reined suddenly up. The doctor's horse, as anticipated, came to a dead halt, when the burly body of old Standish rolled into the muddy highway, going clean over the horse's head.

"'Ugh!' grunted the doctor.

"'Good morning,' said the curate, good-humoredly.

"The doctor picked himself out of the mire, and, with a volley of expletives 'too numerous to mention,' clambered on to his beast, and trotted on, dash, dash, dash! as though nothing had happened."

* * * * *

The dress of the modern physician is a plain black suit, throughout, with immaculate linen, and possibly a white cravat.

Occasionally one will "crop out" in some oddity of dress, but usually as a medium for advertising his business. With the better portion of the community, such monstrosities do not pass as indications of intelligence in the exhibitor.

This engraving represents Dr. Candee, a western magnetic doctor. He was formerly from the "nutmeg state," and is a fair specimen of the travelling doctors who secure custom from their oddities and eccentricities of dress.

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XXVII. MEDICAL FACTS AND STATISTICS

HOW MANY.--WHO THEY ARE.--HOW THEY DIE.--HOW MUCH RUM THEY CONSUME.--HOW THEY LIVE.--OLD AGE.--WHY WE DIE.--GET MARRIED.--OLD PEOPLE'S WEDDING.--A GOOD ONE.--THE ORIGIN OF THE HONEYMOON.--A SWEET OBLIVION.--HOLD YOUR TONGUE!--MANY MEN, MANY MINDS.--"ALLOPATHY."--LOTS OF DOCTORS.--THE ITCH MITE.--A HORSE CAR RIDE.--KEEP COOL!--KNICKKNACKS.--HUMBLE PIE.--INCREASE OF INSANITY.--A COOL STUDENT.--HOW TO GET RID OF A MOTHER-IN-LAW.

THE POPULATION.

There are on the earth about one billion of inhabitants.

They speak four thousand and sixty-four languages.

Only one person in a thousand reaches his allotted years,--threescore and ten.

Between the ages of sixteen and forty-five, there are more females than males.

Lawyers live the longest, doctors next, ministers least of the three professions.

There are more insane among farmers than of any other laborers.

Caucasians live longer than Malays, Hindoos, Chinese, or Negroes.

Light-skinned, dark-haired persons with dark or blue eyes live the longest.

Red or florid complexioned, gray or hazel eyes, shortest.

One half of the people die before the age of seventeen; one fourth before seven.

About 91,824 die each day; one every second.

The married live longer than the single.

Tall men live longer than short ones. (No pun.)

Short women live longer than tall ones.

Three quarters of the adults are married.

Births and deaths are more frequent by night than day.

The cost of the clergy of the United States is six million dollars yearly.

Lawyers receive about thirty-five million dollars.

Crime costs the United States about nineteen million dollars.

Tobacco one hundred and fifty million dollars. (That's crime, also.)

Liquors one billion four hundred and eighty-three million four hundred and ninety-one thousand eight hundred and sixty-five dollars. (Text-book of Temperance, p. 188.)

Opium is eaten in the world by one hundred and twenty million people.

Hasheesh is used by some twenty millions.

The temperate live longer than the intemperate.

SELF-DESTRUCTION.

The Hon. Francis Gillette, in a speech in Hartford, Conn., in 1871, said that there was "in Connecticut, on an average, one liquor shop to every forty voters, and three to every Christian church. In this city, as stated in the Hartford Times, recently, we have five hundred liquor shops, and one million eight hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars were, last year, paid for intoxicating drinks. A cry, an appeal, came to me from the city, a few days since, after this wise: 'Our young men are going to destruction, and we want your influence, counsel, and prayers, to help save them.'"

In New London, report says, the young men are falling into drinking habits as never before. So in New Haven, Bridgeport, and the other cities and large places of the state.

"The pulse of a person in health beats about seventy strokes a minute, and the ordinary term of life is about seventy years. In these seventy years, the pulse of a temperate person beats two billion five hundred and seventy-four million four hundred and forty thousand times. If no actual disorganization should happen, a drunken person might live until his pulse beat this number of times; but by the constant stimulus of ardent spirits, or by pulse-quickening food, or tobacco, the pulse becomes greatly accelerated, and the two billion five hundred and seventy-four million four hundred and forty thousand pulsations are performed in little more than half the ordinary term of human life, and life goes out in forty or forty-five years, instead of seventy. This application of numbers is given to show that the acceleration of those forces diminishes the term of human life."

"In New York, Mr. Greeley states that 'a much larger proportion of adult males in the state drink now than did in 1840-44.' After speaking of the adverse demonstrations all over the country, he adds, 'I cannot recall a single decisive, cheering success, to offset these many reverses.'

"Massachusetts is moving to build an asylum for her twenty-five thousand drunkards. Lager beer brewers at Boston Highlands have three millions of dollars invested in the business, manufactured four hundred and ninety-five thousand barrels last year, and paid a tax of half a million to the general government. The city of Chicago, last year, received into her treasury one hundred and ten thousand dollars for the sale of indulgences to sell intoxicating drinks.

"The same rate of fearful expenditure for intoxicating drinks extends across the ocean. In a speech before the Trades' Union Congress, last October, at Birmingham, 'on the disorganization of labor,' Mr. Potter shows drunkenness to be the great disorganizer of the labor of Great Britain, at a yearly cost of two hundred and twenty-eight million pounds, equal to one billion one hundred and forty million dollars; enough," he adds, "to pay the public debt of Great Britain in less than five years, and greatly diminish taxation forever."

HOW THEY LIVE.

In one block near the New Bowery, New York, are huddled fifteen hundred and twenty persons. Eight hundred and twelve are Irish, two hundred and eighteen Germans, one hundred and eighty-nine Poles, one hundred and eighty-six Italians, thirty-nine Negroes, sixty-four French, two Welsh, only ten American. Of these, ten hundred and sixty-two are Catholic, two hundred and eighty-seven Jews, etc. There are twenty grog-shops and fifty degraded women. Of six hundred and thirteen children, but one hundred and sixty-six went to school.

New York city consumes nine thousand six hundred dollars' worth of flour a day (twelve hundred barrels), and uses ten thousand dollars' worth of tobacco per day.

OLD AGE.

We have mentioned some physicians who lived to an extreme old age--the Doctors Meade; one lived to be one hundred and forty-eight years and nine months. Thomas Parr, an English yeoman, lived to the remarkable age of one hundred and fifty-three years; and even then Dr. Harvey, who held a post mortem on the body, found no internal indication of decay. One of his descendants lived to be one hundred and twenty. The Rev. Henry Reade, Northampton, England, reached the age of one hundred and thirty-two.

There was a female in Lancashire, whose death was noticed in the Times, called the "Cricket of the Hedge," who lived to be one hundred and forty-one years, less a few days. The Countess Desmond arrived at the remarkable age of one hundred and forty years.

One might suppose the allotted threescore and ten years a sufficiently long time to satisfy one to live in poverty in this world; but Henry Jenkins lived and died at the age of one hundred and sixty-nine years, in abject penury. He was a native of Yorkshire, and died in 1670.

WHY WE DIE.

But few of the human race die of old age. Besides the thousand and one diseases flesh is heir to, and the disease which Mrs. O'Flannagan said her husband died of, viz., "Of a Saturday 'tis that poor Mike died," very many die of disappointment. More fret out. Mr. Beecher said, "It is the fretting that wears out the machinery; friction, not the real wear."

"Choked with passion" is no chimera; for passion often kills the unfortunate possessor of an irritable temper, sometimes suddenly. Care and over-anxiety sweep away thousands annually.

Let us see how long a man should live. The horse lives twenty-five years; the ox fifteen or twenty; the lion about twenty; the dog ten or twelve; the rabbit eight; the guinea-pig six or seven years. These numbers all bear a similar proportion to the time the animal takes to grow to its full size. But man, of all animals, is the one that seldom comes up to his average. He ought to live a hundred years, according to this physiological law, for five times twenty are one hundred; but instead of that, he scarcely reaches, on the average, four times his growing period; the cat six times; and the rabbit even eight times the standard of measurement. The reason is obvious. Man is not only the most irregular and the most intemperate, but the most laborious and hard-worked of all animals. He is also the most irritable of all animals; and there is reason to believe, though we cannot tell what an animal secretly feels, that, more than any other animal, man cherishes wrath to keep it warm, and consumes himself with the fire of his secret reflections.

"Age dims the lustre of the eye, and pales the roses on beauty's cheek; while crows' feet, and furrows, and wrinkles, and lost teeth, and gray hairs, and bald head, and tottering limbs, and limping, most sadly mar the human form divine. But dim as the eye is, pallid and sunken as may be the face of beauty, and frail and feeble that once strong, erect, and manly body, the immortal soul, just fledging its wings for its home in heaven, may look out through those faded windows as beautiful as the dewdrop of summer's morning, as melting as the tears that glisten in affection's eye, by growing kindly, by cultivating sympathy with all human kind, by cherishing forbearance towards the follies and foibles of our race, and feeding, day by day, on that love to God and man which lifts us from the brute, and makes us akin to angels."

GET MARRIED.

There's nothing like it. Get married early. The majority of men save nothing, amount to nothing, until they are married. Don't get married too much. There was a man up in court recently for being too much married. A well-matched, temperate couple grow old, to be sure, but they "grow old gracefully." When people venture the second and third time in the "marriage lottery," it is fair to presume the first experience was a happy one. Here is a case:--

AN OLD PEOPLE'S WEDDING.

"Married, in Gerry, Chautauqua County, New York, November 6, 1864, by Elder Jonathan Wilson, aged eighty-eight, Silvanus Fisher, a widower, aged eighty-two, to Priscilla Cowder, a widow, aged seventy-six, all of Gerry."

What were their habits? Did they drink, smoke, or chew? Did they dissipate in any way? Who will tell us how these aged people managed to keep up their youthful spirits so long?. We should like to publish the recipe for "the benefit of whom it concerns."

A GOOD ONE.

A Maryland paper tells the story of a marriage under difficulties, where first the bridegroom failed to appear at the appointed time through bashfulness, and was discovered, pursued, and only "brought to" with a shot gun. The bride then became indignant, and refused to marry so faint-hearted a swain. And finally, the clergyman, who is something of a wag, settled the matter by threatening to have them both arrested for breach of promise unless the ceremony was immediately performed--which it was.

THE HONEYMOON.

The origin of the honeymoon is not generally known.

The Saxons long and long ago got up the delightful occasion. Amongst the ancient Saxons and Teutons a beverage was made of honey and water, and sometimes flavored with mulberries. This drink was used especially at weddings and the after festivals. These festivals were kept up among the nobility sometimes for a month--"monath." The "hunig monath" was thus established, and the next moon after the marriage was called the honeymoon.

Alaric, about the fifth century king of the Saxons and Western Goths, is said to have actually died on his wedding night from drinking too freely of the honeyed beverage,--at least he died before morning,--and it certainly would seem to be a charitable inference to draw, since he partook very deeply of the "festive drink." It was certainly a sweet oblivion, "yet it should be a warning to posterity, as showing that even bridegrooms may make too merry."

Dr. Blanchet recently read a paper before the Academy of Science, Paris, relative to some cases of "long sleep," or lethargic slumber. One of them related to a lady twenty years of age, who took a sleeping fit during her honeymoon, which lasted fifty days.

"During this long period a false front tooth had to be taken out in order to introduce milk and broth into her mouth. This was her only food; she remained motionless, insensible, and all her muscles were in a state of contraction. Her pulse was low, her breathing scarcely perceptible; there was no evacuation, no leanness; her complexion was florid and healthy. The other cases were exactly similar. Dr. Blanchet is of opinion that in such cases no stimulants or forced motion ought to be employed.

"The report did not say whether the husband was pleased or not with her long silence."

There is too much talk in the world about woman's "jaw." As for me, give me the woman who can talk; the faster and more sense the better.

"MANY MEN, MANY MINDS."

There are in the United States about thirty-five thousand physicians. Of this number about five thousand are Homeopathists, and nearly thirty thousand are what is wrongly termed Allopathists.

Allopathic--Allopathy.--The dictionaries say this term means "the employment of medicines in order to produce effects different from those resulting from the disease--a term invented by Hahnemann to designate the ordinary practice as opposed to Homeopathy." The term is not acknowledged by physicians, only as a nick, or false one, given by the Hahnemannites to regular practitioners. "Never allow yourself," says Professor Wood, author of the American or U. S. Dispensatory, "to be called an Allopath. It is an opprobrious name, given by the enemies of regular physicians." It is, moreover, very inappropriate, for we give other remedies besides those of counter-irritation; as, for instance, an emetic for nausea.

The first regular physicians of Boston were Dr. John Walon, Dr. John Cutler, and Dr. Zabdal Boylston. Some of the earlier doctors had acted in the double capacity of minister and physician, as previously mentioned.

Massachusetts has now twelve hundred "regular" doctors, three hundred, or more, homeopathists, and some hundred botanics, etc. Boston has three hundred and twenty "allopathics," about fifty homeopathists, a dozen "eclectics," one hundred and twenty of miscellaneous, and eighty-four female doctors.

Surely some of them must needs "scratch for a living;" yet there is always room for a first-class practitioner anywhere.

THE ITCH MITE.

As we are speaking of "scratching" we will mention the itch mite, which we propose to give particular--sulphur--in this chapter.

The animal which makes one love to scratch is from one sixteenth to one seventeenth of an inch in length, and may be seen with the naked eye if the eye is sharp enough to "see it."

The luxury of scratching is said to greatly compensate for the filthy disease known as the "itch."

Dr. Ellitson says "a Scotch king--viz., James I.--is alleged to have said that no subject deserved to have the itch--none but Royalty--on account of the great pleasure derived from scratching." The king was said to have spoken from experience.

In these days of filthy horse-cars (we are speaking of New York), this fact may be interesting to passengers.

A HORSE-CAR RIDE.

Never full; pack 'em in; Move up, fat men, squeeze in, thin; Trunks, valises, boxes, bundles, Fill up gaps as on she tumbles. Market baskets without number; Owners easy nod in slumber; Thirty seated, forty standing, A dozen more on either landing. Old man lifts his signal finger, Car slacks up, but not a linger; He's jerked aboard by sleeve or shoulder, Shoved inside to sweat and moulder. Toes are trod on, hats are smashed, Dresses soiled, hoop skirts crashed, Thieves are busy, bent on plunder; Still we rattle on like thunder. Packed together, unwashed bodies Bathed in fumes of whiskey toddies; Tobacco, garlic, cheese, and lager beer Perfume the heated atmosphere; Old boots, pipes, leather, and tan, And, if in luck, a "soap-fat man;" Ar'n't we jolly? What a blessing! A horse-car hash, with such a dressing!

HOW TO KEEP COOL.

1. Don't fan yourself. Those persons who are continually using a fan are ever telling you "how awful hot it is." Look at their faces! Red hot! Human nature is a contrary jade. The more you blow with a fan that warm air on your face, the more blood it calls to that part, and the more blood the more heat. So don't fan.

2. Don't drink ice-water. Cold, iced water is excellent for a fever, perhaps (similia similibus curantur); but if you drink it down when you are merely warm from outward heat, you get up an internal fever, which is increased in proportion as you take that unnatural beverage into the stomach. I drink tea, chocolate, coffee. Some persons cannot drink the latter. Then don't; but take black tea; not too strong, nor scalding hot. If very thirsty after, take small quantities of cold (not iced) water. Don't take ice-cream. It increases heat and thirst. Soda-water is less objectionable. Sprinkling the carpet with water several times a day keeps the room cooler. If there are small children or invalids, this may be objectionable.

3. With the hand apply cool or tepid water to the entire person every six to twenty-four hours. The electricity from the hand equalizes the circulation. Rub dry with a soft towel. A coarse scrubbing-cloth (even a hemlock board) does nicely for a hog, but do not apply such to human beings. It is quite unnatural.

4. Do not sleep in any garment at night worn during the day. Have your windows open as wide as you will, and bars to keep out flies and mosquitos. Keep a sheet over the limbs, to exclude the hot air from the surface.

5. Eat fruits, and but little meats. You will find, as a general rule, all ripe fruit healthy in its season. I have lived in the South several years, and know whereof I affirm.

6. And above all--keep cool!

KNICKKNACKS.

More Truth than Poetry.--The following conversation between a colored prisoner and a temperance lecturer who was in search of facts to fortify his positions and illustrate his subject, explains itself:--

"What brought you to prison, my colored friend?"

"Two constables, sah."

"Yes; but I mean, had intemperance anything to do with it?"

"Yes, sah; dey wuz bofe uv 'em drunk, sah."

* * * * *

Humble Pie.--The humble pie of former times was a pie made out of the "umbles" or entrails of the deer; a dish of the second table, inferior, of course, to the venison pastry which smoked upon the dais, and therefore not inexpressive of that humiliation which the term "eating humble pie" now painfully describes. The "umbles" of the deer are usually the perquisites of the gamekeeper.

* * * * *

Increase of Insanity.--Insanity in England is rapidly increasing. In 1861, when the population was 19,860,701, there were 36,702 lunatics, being nineteen in every ten thousand persons. In 1871, with a population of 22,704,108, there were 56,735 lunatics, or twenty-five out of every ten thousand persons. Of these lunatics 6,110 were private patients.

* * * * *

Error of Diagnosis.--"Doctor," said a hard-looking, brandy-faced customer a few days ago to a physician! "Doctor, I'm troubled with an oppression and uneasiness about the breast. What do you suppose the matter is?"

"All very easily accounted for," said the physician; "you have water on the chest."

"Water! Come, that'll do very well for a joke; but how could I get water on my chest when I haven't touched a drop in twenty years? If you had said brandy, you might have hit it."

* * * * *

Ferocity of a Wasp.--A lady at Grantham observed a wasp tearing a common fly to pieces on the breakfast table. When first noticed the wasp grasped the fly firmly, and had cut off a leg and a wing, so that its rescue would have been no kindness. The wasp was covered with a basin until it should receive a murderer's doom; and when the basin was removed for its execution, nothing was seen of the fly but the wings and a number of little black pieces.

* * * * *

Madame Regina Dal Cin, a famous surgeon of Austria, having performed one hundred and fifty successful operations in the city hospital at Trieste, was rewarded by the municipal authorities with a letter of thanks and a purse of gold.

* * * * *

A Cool Student.--In the Quartier Latin, Paris, a student was lying in bed, to which he had gone supperless, trying to devise some means to raise the wind; suddenly, in the dead of night, his reveries were disturbed by a "click." Stealthily raising himself in bed, he saw a burglar endeavoring to open his desk with skeleton keys. The student burst into fits of laughter; the frightened thief, astounded, inquired the cause of his glee. "Why, I am laughing to see you take so much trouble to force open my desk and pick the lock to find the money which I cannot find though I have the key." The thief picked up his implements, politely expressed his regret for having uselessly disturbed him, and transferred his talents and implements to some more Californian quarter.

* * * * *

How to get rid of a Mother-in-Law.--During the recent small-pox excitement in Indianapolis, an excited individual rushed into a telegraph office, hurriedly wrote a despatch, and handed the same to the able and talented clerk. The message bore the startling intelligence that the sender's wife was down with the small-pox, and closed with the request that his mother-in-law come "immediately." While making change, the telegraph man said, "My friend, are you not afraid your mother-in-law will take the small-pox?" Without vouchsafing an immediate reply to the query, the dutiful son-in-law remarked, "Sir, are you a married man?" "No, sir, I am not." "Then, sir, take my word for it, it's all right. Just bring the old woman along."

* * * * *

A Dying Request.--A kind physician living near Boston, wishing to smooth the last hours of a poor woman whom he was attending, asked her if there was anything he could do for her before she died. The poor soul, looking up, replied, "Doctor, I have always thought I should like to have a glass butter-dish before I died."

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XXVIII. BLEEDERS AND BUTCHERS

"Three special months, September, April, May, There are in which 'tis good to ope a vein: In these three months the moon bears greatest sway; Then old or young that store of blood contain. September, April, May, have daies apiece That bleeding do forbid, and eating geese."

BLEEDING IN 1872.--EARLIEST BLOOD-LETTERS.--A ROYAL SURGEON.--A DRAWING JOKE.--THE PRETTY COQUETTE.--TINKERS AS BLEEDERS.--WHOLESALE BUTCHERY.--THE BARBERS OF SOUTH AMERICA.--OUR FOREFATHERS BLEED.--A FRENCH BUTCHER.--CUR?--ABERNETHY OPPOSES BLOOD-LETTING.--THE MISFORTUNES OF A BARBER-SURGEON (THREE SCENES FROM DOUGLAS JERROLD) JOB PIPPINS AND THE WAGONER; JOB AND THE HIGHWAYMEN; JOB NAKED AND JOB DRESSED.

When, in the year of our Lord 1872, a full half dozen educated physicians meet around the dying bed of a Rich man in this city to quarrel over him, and in the absence of one branch of the faction, the other assume charge of the patient, whom they bleed and leave in articulo mortis, it is not too late to take up the subject of venesection.

Podalirius is supposed to have been the first man who employed blood-letting, since whose time the lancet is said to have slain more than the sword; and, notwithstanding the many lives that have been sacrificed to this bloody absurdity, it is still practised by those who claim to have all science and wisdom for its sanction.

It is useless to bring one learned man's opinion against it, because another's can be found equally wise to offset him: the great public has condemned the practice. It early fell into disrepute with the more refined, notwithstanding some kings took to bleeding as naturally as butchers.

A ROYAL SURGEON.

A gentleman who was about retiring, after having dined with a friend at St. James's, fell down a flight of stairs, which fall completely stunned him. On his recovery he found himself sitting on the floor, while a little old gentleman was busily attending to his wants, washing the blood from his head, and sticking a piece of plaster on to some variegated cuts for which he could not account. His surprise kept him silent till the kind and very convenient surgeon was through with the operation, when the patient arose from the floor, limped forward with extended hand, to offer his profound thanks, if not fees, to his benefactor, when an attendant instantly checked him with such intimation as to further astonish the gentleman by the knowledge that for his kind assistance he was indebted to George II., King of England.--Percy's Anecdotes.

A DRAWING JOKE.

Several kings and great lords are made mention of as being particularly fond of using the lancet. Peter the Great of Russia was remarkably fond of witnessing dissections and surgical operations. He even used to carry a case of instruments in his pocket. He often visited the hospitals to witness capital operations, at times assisting in person, and was able to dissect properly, to bleed a patient, and extract a tooth as well as one of the faculty.

The pretty wife of one of the czar's valets had the following unpleasant experience of his skill. The husband of the "maid" accused her of flirting, and vowed revenge. The czar noticed the valet seated in the ante-room, looking forlorn, and asked the cause of his dejection. The wicked valet replied that his wife had a tooth which gave her great pain, keeping them both awake day and night, but would not have it drawn.

"Send her to me," said the czar.

The woman was brought, but persisted in affirming that her teeth were sound, and never ached. The valet alleged that this was always the way she did when the physician was called; therefore, in spite of her cries and remonstrances, the king ordered her husband to hold her head between his knees, when the czar drew out his instruments and instantly extracted the tooth designated by the husband, disregarding the cries of the unfortunate victim.

In a few days the czar was informed that the thing was a put-up job by the jealous husband, in order to punish, if not mar the beauty of, his gallant wife, whereupon the instruments were again brought into requisition; and this time the naughty valet was the sufferer, to the extent of losing a sound and valuable tooth.

EVERY TINKER HAS HIS DAY.

During a long period, and in several countries, the barbers were the only acknowledged blood-letters. Some of them were educated to the trade of bleeding. Dr. Meade was once lecturer to the barber-surgeons, and, if I mistake not, Dr. Abernethy; but the majority of them were as ignorant as the tinkers, who also went about the country bleeding the people at both vein and pocket.

In 1592 one Nicolas Gyer published a work entitled "The English Phlebotomy, or Method of Healing by Letting of Blood." Its motto was, "The horse-leech hath two daughters, which crye, 'Give, give.'" The author thus complains: "Phlebotomy is greatly abused by vagabond horse-leeches and travelling tinkers, who find work in almost every village, who have, in truth, neither knowledge, wit, or honesty; hence the sober practitioner and cunning chirurgeon liveth basely, is despised, and counted a very abject amongst the vulgar sort."

Many of the abbeys of Europe and Asia had a "phlebotomaria," or bleeding-room, connected, in which the sacred (?) inmates underwent bleeding at certain seasons. The monks of the order of St. Victor, and others, underwent five venesections per year; for the "Salerne Schoole," 1601, says,--

"To bleed doth cheare the pensive, and remove The raging furies fed by burning love."

The priests seem to have overlooked Paul's advice, for such to marry, as it was "better to marry than to burn." If the writer could unfold the secrets of his "prison-house,"--as doubtless is the experience of most physicians,--he could tell of worse habits of some modern priests than this quinarial venesection.

"To bleed in May is still the custom with ignorant people in a few remote districts" of England. In Marchland a woman used to bleed patients for a few pence per arm.

Steele tells of a bleeder of his time who advertised to bleed, at certain hours, "all who came, for three pence a head"--he meant arm, doubtless!

Mention is made of the Drs. Taylor (horse doctors), who drew blood from the rabble as they would claret from a pipe. "Every Sunday morning they bled gratis all who liked a prick from their lancets. On such occasions a hundred poor wretches could be seen seated on the long benches of the surgery, waiting venesection. When ready, the two brothers would pass rapidly along the lines of bared arms, one applying the white strip of cloth above the elbow, the other following and immediately opening the vein. The crimson stream was directed into a wooden trough that ran along in front of the seats where the operation was performed."

It scarcely seems possible that such wholesale butchery could have been openly performed but a hundred years ago! Yet it is still practised, but with a little more decency.

In South America venesection is still performed by the barbers, who are nearly all natives.

"A surgeon in Ecuador would consider it an injury to his dignity to bleed a patient; so he deputes that duty to the Indian phlebotomist, who does the work in a most barbarous manner, with a blunt and jagged instrument, after causing considerable pain, and even danger, to the patient.

"These barbers and bleeders are considered to be the leaders of their caste, as from their ranks are drawn the native alcaldes, or magistrates; and so proud are they of their position, that they would not exchange their badge of office (a silver-headed cane) for the cross of a bishop.

"The most prominent figures at the Easter celebration are the barbers, who are almost always Indians. They dress in a kind of plaited cape, and wear collars of a ridiculous height, and starched to an extreme degree of stiffness. In this class are also to be found the sangradores, or bleeders, who, as of old, unite the two professions."

A curious scene is presented during each successive day of the "Holy Week," when the effigies of the titular saints are brought out, and with the priests, music, and banners, and the barbers to bear burning incense, they are paraded before the superstitious, gaping, and priest-ridden people.

BLEEDING OUR FOREFATHERS.

Dr. Fuller, the first physician amongst the colonists of New England, wrote to Governor Bradford, June, 1630, saying,--

"I have been to Matapan (now Dorchester), and let some twenty of those people's blood."

What disease demanded, in the estimation of the good and wise doctor, this seemingly bloody visit, we are not informed.

"The Mercure de France, April, 1728, and December, 1729, gives an account of a French woman, the wife of a hussar named Gignoult, whom, under the direction of Monsieur Theveneau, Dr. Palmery bled three thousand nine hundred and four times, and that within the space of nine months. Again the bleeding was renewed, and in the course of a few years, from 1726 to the end of 1729, she had been bled twenty-six thousand two hundred and thirty times."

No wonder our informant asks, "Did this really occur? Or was the editor of the Mercure the original Baron Munchausen?"

"Once, in the Duchy of Wurtemberg, the public executioner, after having sent a certain number of his fellow-creatures out of this troublesome world, was dignified by the title of 'Doctor.' Would it not be well to reverse the thing, and make such murderous physicians as Theveneau and M. Palmery rank as hangmen-extraordinary?"

A FRENCH BUTCHER-SURGEON.

But, then, some of those French surgeons are worse than hangmen.

Dr. Mott, when once in Paris, was invited by M. ---- to witness a private operation, which was simply the removal of a tumor from the neck of an elderly gentleman.

"Dr. Mott informed me," says Dr. S. Francis, "that never in his life had he seen anybody but a butcher cut and slash as did this French surgeon. He cut the jugular vein. Dr. Mott instantly compressed it. In a moment more he severed it again. By this time, the patient being feeble, and having, by these two successive accidents, lost much blood, a portion of the tumor was cut off, the hole plugged up by lint, and the patient left."

A week after, Dr. M. met the surgeon, and inquired after the patient.

"O, oui," said the butcher, shrugging his shoulders. "Poor old fellow! He grew pious, and suddenly died."

And this was by one of the first surgeons of France, on the authority of Dr. Valentine Mott.

Cases are cited in Paget's "Surgical Pathology," of tumors being removed by the knife from four to nine times, and returning, proving fatal, in every instance.

CUR?

Yes, "Why?" A man's strength is in his blood, Samson notwithstanding. Then if you take away his blood, you lessen his chances of recovery, because you have lessened his strength.

"Cum sanguinem detrahere oportet, deliberatione indiget," said Aretæus, a Greek physician of the first century. ("When bleeding is required, there is need of deliberation.")

"Cur?" (why) was a favorite inquiry of Dr. Abernethy's.

"We recollect a surgeon being called to a gentleman who was taken suddenly ill. The medical attendant, being present, asked the surgeon,--

"'Shall I bleed him at once, sir?'

"'Why should you desire to bleed him?'

"'O, exactly. You prefer cupping?'

"'Why should he be cupped?'

"'Then shall I apply some leeches?'

"This, too, was declined. In short, it never seemed to have occurred to the physician that neither might be necessary; still less that either might therefore prove mischievous."

THE MISFORTUNES OF A BARBER-BLEEDER.

Three Scenes from a Story by Douglas Jerrold--rewritten.

Scene 1.--Job Pippins, a handsome Barber, is discharged from Sir Scipio Manikin's, for kissing that gentleman's young and pretty wife. He meets a Scotch wagoner.

"I say, I ha' got a dead mun in the wagon."

"A dead man?" cried Job.

"Ay; picked him up i' the muddle o' the road. The bay cob wor standin' loike a lamb beside um. I shall take um to the 'Barley Mow' yonder." (An inn.)

"But stop, for God's sake," exclaimed Job, jumping upon the wagon. Instantly he recognized the features of Sir Scipio. Struck by apoplexy, he had fallen from his horse. Instantly Job tore off Sir Scipio's coat, rolled up his sleeves, bound the arm, and produced a razor.

"Ha! what wilt ye do, mun?" cried the wagoner, seeing the razor.

"Bleed him," replied Job, with exquisite composure; "I fear his heart is stopped."

"Loikely. I do think it be Grinders, the lawyer. Cut um deep, deep;" and the fellow opened wide his eyes to see if the lawyer had red blood or Japan ink in his veins. "Cut um deep; though if it be old Grinders, by what I hear, it be a shame to disturb him, ony way," said the wagoner.

"Grinders! Pshaw! It's Sir Scipio Manikin."

"Wounds!" roared the scared wagoner. "No, man, no! Don't meddle wi' such gentry folks in my wagon." So saying, he sought to stay the hand of the bleeder at the moment he was applying the sharp blade of the razor to the bared arm, but only succeeded in driving the instrument deep into the limb. Job turned pale. The wagoner groaned and trembled.

"We shall be hanged for this job--hanged, hanged!"

"Providentially," as the knight afterwards affirmed, the landlord of the "Barley Mow," in chastising his wife, had broken his leg, and had called in Dr. Saffron, who, now returning, came upon the wagon containing the bulky body of Sir Scipio, mangled and bleeding.

The apoplectic squire began to return to dim consciousness, and beholding Job, with a razor between his teeth, standing over him, timing his pulse, he gave an involuntary shudder, particularly as he now recalled the late scene, which had terminated in his kicking Job penniless into the highway.

Dr. Saffron took the wounded arm, looked at Job, and said,--

"Is this your doings?"

Job looked, "Yes," but spoke not.

"Bleeding!" repeated the doctor, fiercely; "I call it capital carving." Then turning to the wagoner, he said, "And you found Sir Scipio lying in the road?"

"Ay, sir; rolled up like a hedge pig," replied the wagoner.

Job wiped his razor, and slipped silently away.

* * * * *

Scene 2.--Job, half starved and half dead from the fatigues of his long walk, finds his way into an old woman's hut, which unfortunately is the rendezvous of three highwaymen.

"Moll, the stool," said one of the men.

The stool ordered was thrown towards Job, who sank resignedly upon it.

"What's o'clock?" asked Bats, one of the robbers.

Job leaped from the stool in amazement, clapped his hand to his waistcoat pocket, and drew forth a splendid gold watch, the late property of Sir Scipio. Job had merely borrowed it to time the pulse of the apoplectic knight, and forgot to return it. The eyes of the highwayman were fixed leeringly upon the chronometer. They gave no heed to the embarrassment of the possessor.

"I say, friend, time must be worth something to you to score it by such a watch."

"It isn't mine," cried Job, the perspiration starting from every pore of his body.

"Ha, ha, ha!" laughed the three at this unnecessary information.

"A mistake; I got it in the oddest way."

"Ha, ha, ha!" again roared his hearers in chorus.

"O Lord! I shall be hanged for this," cried Job.

"In course you will," said Mortlake, comfortingly.

Job now hastily felt in his other pockets to see if he unwittingly possessed any other property not his own, when he pulled out a large handkerchief well saturated with Sir Scipio's blood.

Mortlake gave an expressive cluck. Bats uttered a low, accusing whistle.

"What! he was game--was he? Well, it is all over now; tell us how it happened, and what you did with the body," said the third.

In vain Job persisted in the truth. He was only laughed at....

"Moll, the gin." Such a gamy highwayman as Job presented evidence of being deserves to be treated! Let us see in the next scene how he was treated.

* * * * *

Scene 3.--Job was drank dead drunk. Stripped of not only Sir Manikin's watch and chain, but of everything save one brief garment, and under cover of night deposited in an adjoining meadow.

"Job Pippins slept."

"Job Pippins awoke."

An insect ticked its little note in Job's ear.

"The watch!" cried the bewildered Job, springing to his feet and gaspingly applying his hands to his flesh.

Who can depict his utter amazement when he had become convinced of his own identity, and found himself standing out in the broad world, reduced to the brief wardrobe, which is summed up in the one single word--"SHIRT"?

Hatless, shoeless, hoseless, he stood upon the grass, the bold zephyrs playing with his garment--a bloody, tattered flag of terrible distress. Job looked timidly about. He resolved, and he re-resolved. Should he turn back to the house from whence he had been so ruthlessly ejected? Should he hide behind the hedge and solicit the help of some male passer? Who would put faith in a man with no recommendation, and possessing such a small wardrobe? O, indecision! how many better men have gone to ruin because of thee!

Decision came to Job's help--at least help out of that field. At this very moment of need for some one to help him decide what course to pursue, a ferocious bull, feeding in the next meadow, annoyed or scandalized by the appearance of Job, scaled the low fence, and with one bellow, ran full tilt after Job, who hesitated no longer, but leaped the rail fence just as the animal made a lunge at him. Job reached the highway in safety of person, though the bull retreated with a full square yard of the false flag of truce upon his horns.

Job's destitution seemed perfect without this last affliction. The sound of carriage wheels startled him, but to where should he flee? He was at the zero of his fortunes. He was naked, hungry, penniless. Where should he find one friend.

"Ah! the river!" That would hide him forever from the uncharitable world!...

Job crawled across the field, and was already near the stream.

What! Had some pitying angel, softened by Job's utter destitution and despair, alighted amongst the bushes! Or was it a temptation of the devil?

Reader, "put yourself in"--No! But imagine Job reduced to the moiety of a shirt, about to take the fatal plunge, when lo! he discovers just before him, lying,--a golden waif,--a very handsome suit of clothes,--hat, breeches, hose, shoes, gloves, cane, cravat! and no visible second person near.

Job's perplexity was brief. He seated himself on the grass. He changed his equivocal shirt for the ample piece of ruffled "aired-snow" in the twinkling of an eye; donned the stockings and breeches,--"just a fit,"--waistcoat, and coat, seized the hat, gloves, cravat, and cane, and in three minutes he was back on the main road. The swimmer must have been just Job's size, so admirably did the whole wardrobe fit and become him.

Again Job passed the five-barred gate, where stood the bull, with glaring eyes, waving in vain the flag of truce upon his horns.

Job journeyed onward, waving his cane, and smiling in supreme contempt at the bit of rag which so recently proclaimed his crime and wretchedness. He put his hand into his pocket, and pulled out a purse! It contained eight guineas! This was too much. Job fell upon his knees in the highway, overcome with gratitude, and holding up the purse in his left hand, placing the other over his stomach, he "blessed his lucky stars" for his propitious change of fortunes.

Here we bid adieu to the barber-bleeders. Those who wish to know how the swimmer came out, must consult "Men of Character," by Jerrold.

THE USE OF BRAINS.

Mr. G. H. Lewes tells a story of a gentleman who, under the scissors, said something about his thinning locks being caused by the development of his brains. "Excuse me, sir," remarked the barber, "but you are laboring under a mistake. The brains permeate the skull, and encourage the growth of the hair--that's what they're for, sir."

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XXIX. THE OMNIUM GATHERUM

EX-SELL-SIR!--"THE OBJECT TO BE ATTAINED."--A NOTORIOUS FEMALE DOCTOR.--A WHITE BLACK MAN.--SQUASHY.--MOTHER'S FOOL.--WHO IT WAS.--THE PHILOSOPHER AND HIS DAUGHTER.--EDUCATION AND GIBBERISH.--SCOTTISH HOSPITALITY.--THE OLD LADY WITH AN ANIMAL IN HER STOMACH.--STORIES ABOUT LITTLE FOLKS.--THE BOY WITH A BULLET IN HIM.--CASE OF SMALL-POX.--NOT MUCH TO LOOK AT.--FUNERAL ANTHEMS.

EX-SELL-SIR.

The morning sun was shining bright, As lone upon old Georgetown's height, A Bliss-ful doctor, clad in brown, Desiring wealth and great renown, Displayed aloft to wondering eyes A shrub which bore this strange device, Cundurango!

A maiden fair, with pallid cheek, With ardent haste his aid did seek To stay the progress and the pain Of carcinoma of the brain; While still aloft the shrub he bore, The answer came, with windy roar, To Cundurango!

A matron old, with long unrest From carcinoma of the breast, This Bliss-ful doctor rushed to see, And begged his aid on bended knee. The magic shrub waved still on high, And rushed through air the well-known cry, Try Cundurango!

The evening sun went down in red-- The maid and matron both were dead; And yet, through all the realms around, This worthless shrub, of mighty sound, Will serve to fill the purse forlorn, And the cancer succumb "in a horn" To Cundurango.

THE OBJECT TO BE ATTAINED.

A doctor was called in to see a patient whose native land was Ireland, and whose native drink was whiskey. Water was prescribed as the only cure. Pat said it was out of the question; he could never drink it. Then milk was proposed, and Pat agreed to get well on milk. The doctor was soon summoned again. Near the bed on which the sick man lay was a table, and on the table a large bowl, and in the bowl was milk, but strongly flavored with whiskey.

"What have you here?" said the doctor.

"Milk, doctor; just what you orthered."

"But there's whiskey in it; I smell it."

"Well, doctor," sighed the patient, "there may be whiskey in it, but milk is my object."

THE LAUGH WINS.

An old lady reduced in circumstances applied to a physician to know if she might conscientiously sell some quack pills. The physician rather recommended that she should sell some pills made of bread, observing that, if they did no good, they would certainly do no harm. The old lady commenced business, and performed many cures with her pills, till at last she had great confidence in them. At length the physician, whom she called her benefactor, became ill by a bone sticking in his throat, which he could not pass up or down. In this situation the old lady visited him, and recommended her pills in his own language. The physician, upon this expression, burst out laughing, and in the act of laughing brought up the bone.

A NOTORIOUS FEMALE DOCTOR.

WASHINGTON, January 10, 1872.

From an account of the "Women's National Suffrage Association," reported to the Press, I cut the following description of a noted female doctress who dresses in a garb as near to a man's as the cramped laws of the land will admit.

"Ten minutes after the opening ... a curly, crinkly feminine, in very large walking boots, came to the front, being followed, after a brief pause, by the rest of the sisters. This lady was new, even to the reporters, and one of them, handing up a pencilled inquiry to Mrs. Dr. Walker, was informed that she was 'Mrs. Ricker, a beautiful, charming, and good widow, fair, forty, and rich.' This bit of interesting news started on its travels.

* * * * *

"The doctor, who has the usual manly proclivity for hugging the girls, threw her arms around a pretty and modest-looking girl standing by, and enthusiastically shouted, "You are a dear, sweet little creature." The frightened young woman drew hastily back, and faltered out that she was not in the habit of being hugged by men. This turned the laugh on the doctor; but she gained her lost ground by quickly replying to the inquiry of the secretary as to what place he should put her down from as a delegate, to put her down "from all the world;" but he objected, anxious for the completeness of his roster.

"You must have a local habitation, you know."

"Put me down from Washington, then, for that is the home of everybody who has none other."

Unmindful of the eloquent protest of her coat and pantaloons against feminine distinctions, he wrote her down as "Mrs. Mary Walker;" but seizing the pencil from his fingers, she spitefully erased the "Mrs." and wrote "Doctor."

"I never was Mrs.; I never will be."

A WHITE MAN TURNING BLACK.

The San Francisco Examiner says a gentleman of that city, about twenty-five years of age, ruddy complexion, curly red hair, who had an intractable and painful ulcer on the left arm, resisting all previous modes of treatment, yielded to the request of trying the effect of transplanting a piece of skin to the ulcer from another person. The ulcer was prepared in the usual manner by his physician, and a bit of skin, about an inch square, was taken from the arm of a fine healthy negro man and immediately spread over the ugly ulcer, and then carefully dressed and bandaged. The skin transplantation had the desired effect. Healthy granulation sprang up, and the unsightly ulcer soon healed. A few months afterwards he went to his physician and told him that ever since the sore healed the black skin commenced to spread, and it was increasing. About one third of his arm was completely negroed. The doctor himself was alarmed. The high probability is, that the whole skin of this white man will become negro.

* * * * *

An officer had a wooden leg so exceedingly well made that it could scarcely be distinguished from a real one. A cannon ball carried it off. A soldier who saw him fall called out, "Quick, run for the surgeon." "No," replied the officer, coolly; "it is the joiner I want."

"SQUASHY."

Squashy was a contraband. He came from North Carolina. He was looking about Washington for "a new masser," when Dr. ----, of ---- regiment C. V., took him for a body servant.

The doctor was out on horseback at parade that very day, and the most that Squashy had as yet learned of his master was, that he was handsome.

"Dat's him! Dar's my new masser! see um! see um! ridin' on hoss-back, dar!" exclaimed the contraband to a host of other negroes watching the parade.

That night, when the doctor returned to his quarters, Squashy came to assist in removing some of the superfluous and dirt-covered garments of his new master, amongst which were his heavy and mud-splashed boots.

The doctor was a joker. "Now, what's your name, boy?"

"Squashy, sar; dat's what dey called me, sar," replied the contraband, showing a gorgeous row of ivories, and the whites of two great, globular eyes.

"Well, Squashy,--that's a very appropriate name,--just pull off these boots. Left one first. There--pull! hard! harder!--There she comes! Now the other; now pull; it always comes the hardest; pull strong--stronger--now it's coming--O, murder! you've pulled my whole leg out!"

Sure enough, the boot, leg and all, came off at the thigh, and slap! crash! bang! over backwards, over a camp-stool, on to the floor, went Squashy, with the boot and wooden leg of the doctor grasped tightly in his brawny hands.

"O, de Lord!" cried Squashy, rising. "I didn't go for to do it! O, Lord, see um bleed!" he continued, as in the uncertain light he saw a bit of red flannel round the stump; and, dropping the leg, he turned, and with a look of the utmost terror depicted on his countenance, he fled from the apartment.

On the following day the doctor made diligent inquiry for Squashy; but he never was found, and probably to this day thinks he pulled out the leg of his "new and hansum masser."

* * * * *

We do not know who wrote the following which is too good to be lost; hence we give it anonymously.

MOTHER'S FOOL.

"'Tis plain enough to see," said a farmer's wife, "These boys will make their marks in life; They never were made to handle a hoe, And at once to college ought to go. There's Fred, he's little better than a fool, But John and Henry must go to school."

"Well, really, wife," quoth farmer Brown, As he set his mug of cider down, "Fred does more work in a day for me Than both his brothers do in three. Book larnin' will never plant one's corn, Nor hoe potatoes, sure's you're born, Nor mend a rod of broken fence: For my part, give me common sense."

But his wife was bound the roost to rule, And John and Henry were sent to school, While Fred, of course, was left behind, Because his mother said he had no mind.

Five years at school the students spent, Then into business each one went. John learned to play the flute and fiddle, And parted his hair, of course, in the middle, While his brother looked rather higher than he, And hung out a sign, "H. Brown, M. D."

Meanwhile, at home, their brother Fred Had taken a notion into his head; But he quietly trimmed his apple trees, Milked the cows and hived the bees; While somehow, either by hook or crook, He managed to read full many a book, Until at last his father said He was getting "book larnin'" into his head; "But for all that," added farmer Brown, "He's the smartest boy there is in town."

The war broke out, and Captain Fred A hundred men to battle led, And, when the rebel flag came down, Went marching home as General Brown. But he went to work on the farm again, And planted corn and sowed his grain; He shingled the barn and mended the fence, Till people declared he had common sense.

Now common sense was very rare, And the State House needed a portion there; So the "family dunce" moved into town, The people called him Governor Brown; And his brothers, who went to the city school, Came home to live with "mother's fool."

WHO IT WAS.

There is an anecdote told of Dr. Emmons, one of the most able of New England divines, meeting a Pantheistical physician at the house of a sick parishioner. It was no place for a dispute. It was no place for any unbecoming familiarity with the minister. It was no place for a physician to inquire into the age of the minister, especially with any intent of entangling him in a debate; and, above all, where the querist was too visionary for any logical discussion. But the abrupt question of the Pantheist was, "Mr. Emmons, how old are you?"

"Sixty, sir; and how old are you?" came the quick reply.

"As old as creation, sir," was the triumphant response.

"Then you are of the same age with Adam and Eve."

"Certainly; I was in the garden when they were."

"I have always heard that there was a third party in the garden with them, but I never knew before that it was you."

A HEAVY DOCTOR.

Dr. Stone, of Savannah, walked into the river at Savannah, and, like other stones, was about to sink, when he was romantically rescued by a brave lady.

SCOTTISH HOSPITALITY.

The Scotch people--even the females--are great smokers, and female tobacco-users are not considered the embodiment of neatness.

The Countess of A., with a laudable desire to promote tidiness in the various cottages on her estate, used to visit them periodically, and exhort the inmates to cleanliness. One cottage was always found especially untidy; and getting, perhaps, the least out of patience, the countess took up a brush-broom, and having by its dexterous use made the room much improved, she turned to the housewife, who, with pipe between her lips, had been sitting on a stool, with body bent forward, her elbows on her knees, and her chin resting in the palms of her hands, watching the proceeding. The Countess said,--

"There, my good woman, is it not much better?"

"Ay, my leddy," said the woman, nodding her head, and rising, she stepped towards the countess, drew the pipe from her mouth, and wiping it with her brawny palm, presented it, saying,--

"An' will ye tak' a blast noo, my leddy?"

ANIMALS IN THE STOMACH.

Most physicians scout the idea of terrestrial animals or reptiles living in one's stomach. The wife of Captain Hodgden, of Mount Desert, presented the writer with a singular looking reptile some three inches in length, looking not unlike an earwig, excepting having two horns on its head, which animal she said crawled from her mouth the night previous. She declared for years that there was a live animal in her stomach, and attributed its dislodgment to the use of some bitters (Chelone glabra).

A nice old lady called at our office one day, some years ago, during my absence, and informed Dr. Colley, who was attending my patients temporarily, that she had a live animal in her stomach. The doctor tells the story as follows:--

"'Now don't you laugh at me, doctor, 'cause all the doctors do, and I know it ain't no whim nor notion I've got in my head, but a real live animal I've got into my stomach,' she said.

"I looked at the good old lady, and could not find it in my heart to tell her she was laboring under a delusion, therefore I replied, very sympathetically,--

"'O, no doubt you are right, and all the doctors have been wrong. Why, just sit quiet a moment, and I will show you a whole bottle full that the doctor has from time to time taken from the stomachs of patients.' So saying, I went into the laboratory, and got down a bottle of centipedes, lizards, and a big, black, southern horn-bug, which the doctor's brother had collected in the South, and, dusting off the bottle, took it to the old lady, who sat comfortably in a rocking-chair, taking snuff, and nervously humming a little pennyroyal tune.

"'There, madam--there is a host of various kinds of reptiles, which the doctor has compelled to abandon the living stomach.'

"'Du tell,' she exclaimed, readjusting her glasses, 'if them all come out of folks' stomachs! Let me take the bottle.'

"'I suppose they really did, marm.'

"'And the big black one; who did that come out of?' she asked, turning the bottle around to get a view of the ugly monster--horns two inches long!

"'O, let me see. That came out of a colored man--awful appetite, madam.'

"'Du tell! Well, I'm much obleeged to you for showing them to me. Now I'll go right home, and pitch into them doctors. I knowed they're all wrong.' And so saying, the old lady arose, buzzed round and round like a bee in a bottle, got her reticule, and started for the door.

"'O, I forgot,' she exclaimed, coming back. 'Give me some of the medicine to get this animal out of my system, doctor.'

"I gave her a quantity of gentian, told her to use no snuff for two months, and she would have no further trouble with the animal; that she must not expect to see him, as they seldom came away whole, like those in the bottle. She promised, with a sigh, and a sorry look at the snuff-box, and went away. I have no doubt but I did the best thing possible for her case."

STORIES ABOUT LITTLE FOLKS.

As ludicrous as the above may seem, it is true; but we cannot vouch for the truth of the following story:--

* * * * *

The Boy with a Bullet in him.--A lad swallowed a small bullet. His friends were very much alarmed about it; and his father thinking no pains should be spared to save his darling boy's life, sent post haste to a surgeon of skill, directing the messenger to tell the circumstances and urge his coming without delay. The doctor was found, heard the dismal tale, and with as much unconcern as he would manifest in a case of common headache, wrote the following laconic reply:--

SIR: Don't alarm yourself. If after three weeks the bullet is not removed, give the boy a charge of powder.

Yours, &c., ----

P. S. Do not aim the boy at anybody.--M. D.

* * * * *

Case of Small-pox.--A lady school teacher in Omaha, having an inordinate dread of the small-pox, sent home a little girl because she said her mother was sick and had marks on her face. The next day the girl presented herself at the school-house, with her finger in her mouth, and her little bonnet swinging by the strings, and said to the teacher,--

"Miss ----, we've got a baby at our house; but mother told me to tell you that 'it isn't catchin'.'"

* * * * *

"Not much to look at."--The late eminent Dr. Wallaston was introduced, at an evening party, to a rather pert young lady.

"O, doctor," she said, "I am delighted to meet you; I have so long wished to see you."

"Well," said the man of science, "and pray what do you think of me now you have seen me?"

"You may be very clever," was the answer, "but you are nothing to look at."

* * * * *

Funeral Anthems.--Reading in a western paper that at funerals out in Terre Haute they closed the solemn ceremony by singing very impressively "The Ham-fat Man," reminds me of the following, which actually occurred at Portsmouth, N. H., last year:--

Three little girls, who had carefully and tenderly buried a pet canary-bird in the garden, were seen holding a consultation, which terminated by sending one of the trio into the house, with the inquiry, "Do they sing at funerals?" Being answered in the affirmative, the little messenger ran back, and in a few moments the three were observed standing, hand in hand, around the little mound gravely singing,--

"Shoo, fly! don't bodder me."

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