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-The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Funny Side of Physic, by A. D. Crabtre
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
-almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
-re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
-with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
-
-
-Title: The Funny Side of Physic
-
-Author: A. D. Crabtre
-
-Release Date: December 10, 2012 [EBook #41595]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
-
-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FUNNY SIDE OF PHYSIC ***
-
-
-
-
-Produced by The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
-http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images
-generously made available by The Internet Archive.)
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-  THE FUNNY SIDE OF PHYSIC:
-
-  OR,
-
-  THE MYSTERIES OF MEDICINE,
-  PRESENTING THE
-  HUMOROUS AND SERIOUS SIDES OF MEDICAL PRACTICE.
-
-  AN EXPOSÉ OF
-  MEDICAL HUMBUGS, QUACKS, AND CHARLATANS
-  IN ALL AGES AND ALL COUNTRIES.
-
-
-  By A. D. CRABTRE, M. D.
-
-
-  HARTFORD:
-  J. B. BURR & HYDE.
-  CHICAGO AND CINCINNATI:
-  J. B. BURR, HYDE & COMPANY.
-  1872.
-
-
-
-
-  Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1872, by
-  J. B. BURR AND HYDE,
-  In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.
-
-
-
-
-PREFACE.
-
-
-The books which most please while instructing the reader, are those which
-mingle the lively and gay with the sedate spirit in the narration of
-important facts. The verdict of the reader of this work must be (it is
-modestly suggested), that the author has luckily hit the happy vein in its
-construction.
-
-Of all facts which bear upon human happiness or sorrow, those which serve
-to increase the former, and alleviate or banish the latter, are most
-desirable for everybody to know; and of all professions which most
-intimately concern the personal well-being of the public at large, that of
-the physician is most important. The author of this book has spared no
-pains of research to collect the facts of which he discourses, and has
-endeavored to cover the whole ground embraced by his subject with
-pertinent and important suggestions, statements, scientific discoveries,
-incidents in the career of great physicians, etc., and to fix them in the
-reader's mind by _apt anecdotes, which will be found in abundance
-throughout the work_.
-
-There is no better man in the world than the true physician, and no more
-base wretch than the ordinary "Quack," or medical charlatan. If the author
-has spared no pains of study to make his book acceptable, he may be said,
-also, to have as unsparingly visited his indignation upon the quacks who
-have all along the line of historic medicine disgraced the physician's and
-the surgeon's profession.
-
-The general public but little understand what a vast amount of ignorance
-has at times been cunningly concealed by medical practitioners, and how
-grossly the people of every city and village are even nowadays trifled
-with by some who arrogate to themselves the honorable title of Doctor of
-Medicine.
-
-Herein not only the base and the good physician, but the honorable and the
-trifling apothecary, receive their due reward, or well-merited punishment,
-so far as the pen can give them. The reader will be utterly surprised when
-he comes to learn how the quacks of the past and the present have brought
-themselves into note by tricks and schemes very similar and equally
-infamous. The wanton trifling with the health and life of their patients,
-the greed of gain, and the perfect destitution of all moral nature, which
-some of these men have exhibited in their career, are astounding.
-
-The apothecaries, as well as physicians, are descanted on, and the
-miserable tricks to which the large majority of them resort, exposed. The
-public will be astonished to find what trash in the matter of drugs it
-pays for; how filthy, vile, and often poisonous and hurtful materials
-people buy for medicines at extortionate prices; how even the syrups which
-they drink in soda drawn from costly and splendid fountains are often made
-from the most filthy materials, and are not fit for the lower animals, not
-to say human beings, to drink. And this fact is only illustrative of
-hundreds of others set forth in this work.
-
-This work not only exposes the multifold frauds of quacks, apothecaries,
-travelling doctors, soothsayers, fortune-tellers, certain clairvoyants,
-and "spiritual mediums," and the like, who "practise medicine" to a more
-or less extent, or profess to discover and heal diseases,--but it points
-out to the reader the most approved rules for protecting the health, and
-recovering it when lost. In short, it is a work embodying the most sound
-advice, founded upon the judgment of the best physicians of the past and
-present, as tested in the Author's experience for a period of twenty
-years' active practice. In other words, it is a compendium of sound
-medical advice, as well as a racy, lively, and incisive dissection and
-exposure of the villanies of quacks and other medical empirics, etc.
-
-Persons of all ages will find the work not only interesting to read, but
-most valuable in a practical sense. To the young who would shun the crafts
-and villanies to which they must be exposed as they grow up,--for all are
-liable to be more or less ill at times,--it will prove invaluable,
-enabling them to detect the spurious from the reliable in medicine, and
-how to judge between the pretentious charlatan (even enjoying a large
-ride) and the true physician. And none are so old that they may not reap
-great advantages from the work.
-
-
-
-
-CONTENTS.
-
-
-  I. MEDICAL HUMBUGS.
-
-  ORIGIN AND APPLICATION OF "HUMBUG."--A FIFTH AVENUE HUMBUG.--
-  JOB'S OPINION OF DOCTORS.--EARLY PHYSICIANS.--PRIESTS AS
-  DOCTORS.--WIZARDS COME TO GRIEF.--A "CAPITAL" OPERATION.--A
-  WOMAN CUT INTO TWELVE PIECES.--ANECDOTE.--ROBIN HOOD'S LITTLE
-  JOKE.--TIT FOR TAT. ENGLISH HUMBUGS.--FRENCH DITTO.--A
-  FORTUNE ON DIRTY WATER.--AMERICAN HUMBUGS.--A FIRST CLASS
-  "DODGE."--A FREE RIDE.--A SHARP INTERROGATOR.--DOCTOR
-  PUSBELLY.--A WICKED STAGE-DRIVER'S STORY.--"OLD PILGARLIC"
-  TAKES A BATH.--LUDICROUS SCENE.--PROFESSOR BREWSTER.                  19
-
-
-  II. APOTHECARIES.
-
-  FIRST MENTION OF.--A POOR SPECIMEN.--ELIZABETHAN.--KING JAMES
-  I. [VI.].--ALLSPICE AND ALOES, SUGAR AND TARTAR EMETIC.--
-  WAR.--PHYSICIAN VS. APOTHECARY.--IGNORANCE.--STEALING A
-  TRADE.--A LAUGHABLE PRESCRIPTION.--"CASTER ILE."--MODERN DRUG
-  SWALLOWING.--MISTAKES.--"STEALS THE TOOLS ALSO."--
-  SUBSTITUTES.--"A QUID."--A "SMELL" OF PATENT MEDICINES.--"A
-  SAMPLE CLERK."                                                        61
-
-
-  III. PATENT MEDICINES.
-
-  PATENT MEDICINES.--HOW STARTED.--HOW MADE.--THE WAY IMMENSE
-  FORTUNES ARE REALIZED.--SPALDING'S GLUE.--SOURED SWILL.--
-  SARSAPARILLA HUMBUGS.--S. P. TOWNSEND.--"A DOWN EAST FARMER'S
-  STORY."--"WILD CHERRY" EXPOSITIONS.--"CAPTAIN WRAGGE'S PILL"
-  A FAIR SAMPLE OF THE WHOLE.--HOW PILL SALES ARE STARTED.--A
-  SLIP OF THE PEN.--"GRIPE PILLS."--SHAKSPEARE IMPROVED.--H. W.
-  B. "FRUIT SYRUP."--HAIR TONICS.--A BALD BACHELOR'S
-  EXPERIENCE.--A LUDICROUS STORY.--A WOLF IN SHEEP'S CLOTHING.          78
-
-
-  IV. MANUFACTURED DOCTORS.
-
-  A BOSTON BARBER AS M. D.--A BARBER "GONE TO POT."--FOOLS MADE
-  DOCTORS.--BAKERS.--BARBERS.--"A LUCKY DOG."--TINKERS.--ROYAL
-  FAVORS.--"LITTLE CARVER DAVY."--A BUTCHER'S BLOCKHEAD.--A
-  SWEEPING VISIT.--HOP-PED FROM OBSCURITY.--PEDAGOGUES TURN
-  DOCTORS.--ARBUTHNOT.--"A QUAKER."--"WALKS OFF ON HIS EAR."--
-  WEAVERS AND BASKET-MAKERS.--A TOUGH PRINCE; REQUIRED THREE M.
-  D.'S TO KILL HIM.--MARAT A HORSE DOCTOR.--A MERRY PARSON.--
-  BLACK MAIL.--POLICE AS A MIDWIFE, ETC., ETC.                          99
-
-
-  V. WOMAN AS PHYSICIAN.
-
-  HER "MISSION."--NO PLACE IN MEDICAL HISTORY.--ONE OF THEM.--
-  MRS. STEPHENS.--"CRAZY SALLY."--RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS.--RUNS IN
-  THE FAMILY.--ANECDOTES.--"WHICH GOT THRASHED?"--A WRETCHED
-  END.--AMERICAN FEMALE PHYSICIANS.--A PIONEER.--A LAUGHABLE
-  ANECDOTE.--"THREE WISE MEN."--"A SHORT HORSE," ETC.--BOSTON
-  AND NEW YORK FEMALE DOCTORS.--A STORY.--"LOVE AND
-  THOROUGHWORT."--A GAY BEAU.--UP THE PENOBSCOT.--DYING FOR
-  LOVE.--"IS HE MAD?"--THOROUGHWORT WINS.                              123
-
-
-  VI. QUACKS.
-
-  ANECDOTE IN ILLUSTRATION.--DERIVATION.--FATHER OF QUACKS.--A
-  MEDICAL "BONFIRE."--THE "SAMSON" OF THE PROFESSION.--SIR
-  ASTLEY.--U. S. SURVEYOR-GENERAL HAMMOND.--HOMEOPATHIC QUACKS,
-  ETC.--A MUDDLED DEFINITION.--"STOP THIEF!"--CRIPPLED FOR
-  LIFE!--TWO POUNDS CALOMEL.--VICTIMS.--WASHINGTON, JACKSON,
-  HARRISON.--THE COUNTRY QUACK.--A TRUE AND LUDICROUS
-  ANECDOTE.--DYEING TO DIE!--A SCARED DOCTOR.--DROPSY!--A HASTY
-  WEDDING!--A COUNTRY CONSULTATION.--"SCENES FROM WESTERN
-  PRACTICE."--"TWIST ROOT."--A JOLLY TRIO.--NEW "BUST" OF
-  CUPID.--AN UNWILLING LISTENER.                                       157
-
-
-  VII. CHARLATANS AND IMPOSTORS.
-
-  DEFINITION.--ADVERTISING CHARLATANS.--CITY IMPOSTORS.--FALSE
-  NAMES.--"ADVICE FREE."--INTIMIDATIONS.--WHOLESALE ROBBERY.--
-  VISITING THEIR DENS IN DISGUISE.--PASSING THE CERBERUS.--
-  WINDINGS.--INS AND OUTS.--THE IRISH PORTER.--QUEER "TWINS,"
-  AND A "TRIPLET" DOCTOR.--A HISTORY OF A KNAVE.--BOOT-BLACK
-  AND BOTTLE-WASHER.--PERQUISITES.--PURCHASED DIPLOMAS.--
-  "INSTITUTES."--WHOLESALE SLAUGHTER OF INFANTS.--FEMALE
-  HARPIES.--A BOSTON HARPY.--WHERE OUR "LOST CHILDREN" GO.--
-  END OF A WRETCH.                                                     180
-
-
-  VIII. ANECDOTES OF PHYSICIANS.
-
-  A WANT SUPPLIED.--ORIGINAL ANECDOTES OF ABERNETHY.--A LIVE
-  IRISHMAN.--MADAM ROTHSCHILD.--LARGE FEET.--A SHANGHAI
-  ROOSTER.--SPREADING HERSELF.--KEROSENE.--"SALERATUS."--HIS
-  LAST JOKE.--AN ASTONISHED DARKY.--OLD DR. K.'S MARE.--A
-  SCARED CUSTOMER.--"WHAT'S TRUMPS?"--"LET GO THEM HALYARDS."--
-  MEDICAL TITBITS.--MORE MUSTARD THAN MEAT.--"I WANT TO BE AN
-  ANGEL."--TOOTH-DRAWING.--DR. BEECHER VS. DR. HOLMES.--
-  STEALING TIME.--CHOLERA FENCED IN.--"A JOKE THAT'S NOT A
-  JOKE."--A DRY SHOWER-BATH.--PARBOILING AN OLD LADY.                  200
-
-
-  IX. FORTUNE-TELLERS.
-
-  PAST AND PRESENT.--BIBLE ASTROLOGERS AND FORTUNE-TELLERS.--
-  ARABIAN.--EASTERN.--ENGLISH.--QUEEN'S FAVORITE.--LILLY.--A
-  LUCKY GUESS.--THE GREAT LONDON FIRE FORETOLD.--HOW.--OUR
-  "TIDAL WAVE" AND AGASSIZ.--A HALL OF FORTUNE-TELLERS.--
-  PRESENT.--VISIT EN MASSE.--"FILLIKY MILLIKY."--"CHARGE
-  BAYONETS!"--A FOWL PROCEEDING.--FINDING LOST PROPERTY.--THE
-  MAGIC MIRROR EXPOSÉ.--"ONE MORE UNFORTUNATE."--PROCURESSES.--
-  BOSTON MUSEUM.--"A NICE OLD GENTLEMAN."--MONEY DOES IT.--
-  GREAT SUMS OF MONEY.--"LOVE POWDER" EXPOSÉ.--HASHEESH.--"DOES
-  HE LOVE ME?"                                                         227
-
-
-  X. EMINENT PHYSICIANS AND SURGEONS.
-
-  THEIR ORIGIN, BOYHOOD, EARLY STRUGGLES, ETC.--DOCTORS ARE
-  PUBLIC PROPERTY.--DR. MOTT, OF OYSTER BAY.--DR. PARKER.--A
-  "PLOUGH-BOY."--THE FARMER'S BOY AND THE OLD DOCTOR.--SCENE IN
-  BELLEVUE HOSPITAL.--"LEAVES FROM THE LIFE OF AN UNFLEDGED
-  ÆSCULAPIAN."--FIRST PATIENT.--"NONPLUSSED!"--ALL RIGHT AT
-  LAST.--PROFESSORS EBERLE AND DEWEES.--A HARD START.--"FOOTING
-  IT."--ABERNETHY'S BOYHOOD.--"OLD SQUEERS."--SPARE THE BOY AND
-  SPOIL THE ROD.--A DIGRESSION.--SKIRTING A BOG.--AN AGREEABLE
-  TURN.--PROFESSOR HOLMES.--A HOMELESS STUDENT.                        253
-
-
-  XI. GHOSTS AND WITCHES.
-
-  FOLLY OF BELIEF IN GHOSTS.--WHY GHOSTS ARE ALWAYS WHITE.--A
-  TRUE STORY.--THE GHOST OF THE CAMP.--A GHOSTLY SENTRY-BOX.--A
-  MYSTERY.--THE NAGLES FAMILY.--RAISING THE DEAD.--A LIVELY
-  STAMPEDE.--HOLY WATER.--CÆSAR'S GHOST AT PHILIPPI.--LORD
-  BYRON AND DR. JOHNSON.--GHOST OF A GUILTY CONSCIENCE.--
-  "JOCKEYING A GHOST."--THE WOUNDED BIRD.--A BISHOP SEES A
-  GHOST.--MUSICAL GHOSTS.--A HAUNTED HOUSE.--ABOUT WITCHES.--
-  "WITCHES IN THE CREAM."--HORSE-SHOES.--WOMAN OF ENDOR NOT A
-  WITCH.--WEIGHING FLESH AGAINST THE BIBLE.--THERE ARE NO
-  GHOSTS, OR WITCHES.                                                  278
-
-
-  XII. MEDICAL SUPERSTITIONS.
-
-  OLD AND NEW.--THE SIGN OF JUPITER.--MODERN IDOLATRY.--ORIGIN
-  OF THE DAYS OF THE WEEK.--HOW WE PERPETUATE IDOLATRY.--
-  SINGULAR FACT.--CHRISTMAS FESTIVITIES.--"OLD NICK."--
-  RIDICULOUS SUPERSTITIONS.--GOLDEN HERB.--HOUSE CRICKETS.--A
-  STOOL WALKS.--THE BOWING IMAGES AT RHODE ISLAND.--HOUSE
-  SPIDERS.--THE HOUSE CAT.--SUPERSTITIOUS IDOLATRIES.--
-  WONDERFUL KNOWLEDGE.--NAUGHTY BOYS.--ERRORS RESPECTING
-  CATS.--SANITARY QUALITIES.--OWLS.--A SCARED BOY.--HOLY
-  WATER.--UNLUCKY DAYS.--THUNDER AND LIGHTNING.--A KISS.               307
-
-
-  XIII. TRAVELLING DOCTORS.
-
-  PUBLIC CONFIDENCE(?).--THE EYE OF THE PUBLIC.--A BAD
-  SPECIMEN.--"REMARKABLE TUMOR."--"THE SINGING DOCTOR."--CAUGHT
-  IN A STORM.--BIG PUFFING.--A SPLENDID "TURNOUT."--WHO WAS
-  HE?--A SUDDEN DISAPPEARANCE.--THE "SPANKING DOCTOR."--A FAIR
-  VICTIM.--LOOSE LAWS.--DR. PULSEFEEL.--IMPUDENCE.--A FIDDLING
-  DOCTOR.--AN ENCORE.--"CHEEK."--VARIOUS WAYS OF ADVERTISING.          341
-
-
-  XIV. SCENES FROM EVERY-DAY PRACTICE.
-
-  THE BEGGAR BOY AND THE GOLDEN-HAIRED HEIRESS.--MY MIDNIGHT
-  CALL.--THE CONSCIENCE-STRICKEN MOTHER.--"OLD SEROSITY."--THE
-  ILLEGITIMATE CHILD.--DEATH OF THE BEAUTIFUL.--WHO IS THE
-  HEIR?--A TOUCHING SCENE.--FATE OF THE "BEGGAR BOY."--THE
-  TERRIBLE CALLER.--AN IRISH SCENE, FROM DR. DIXON'S BOOK.--
-  BIDDY ON A RAMPAGE.--TERRY ON HIS DEATH BED.--THE STOMACH
-  PUMP.--BIDDY WON'T, AND SHE WILL.--THE BETRAYED AND HER
-  BETRAYER.--"IS THERE A GOD IN ISRAEL?"--THE HUSBANDLESS
-  MOTHER.--THE CRISIS AND COURT.--ANSWER.--THERE IS A "GOD IN
-  ISRAEL."                                                             362
-
-
-  XV. DOCTORS' FEES AND INCOMES.
-
-  ANCIENT FEES.--LARGE FEES.--SPANISH PRIEST-DOCTORS.--A PIG ON
-  PENANCE.--SMALL FEES.--A "CHOP" POSTPONED.--LONG FEES.--SHORT
-  FEES.--OLD FEES.--A NIGHT-CAP.--AN OLD SHOE FOR LUCK.--A
-  BLACK FEE.--"HEART'S OFFERING."--A STUFFED CAT.--THE "GREAT
-  GUNS" OF NEW YORK.--BOSTON.--ROTTEN EGGS.--"CATCH WHAT YOU
-  CAN."--FEMALE DOCTORS' FEES.--ABOVE PRICE.--"ASK FOR A
-  FEE."--"PITCH HIM OVERBOARD."--DELICATE FEES.--MAKING THE
-  MOST OF THEM.                                                        386
-
-
-  XVI. GENEROSITY AND MEANNESS.
-
-  THE WORLD UNMASKED.--A ROUGH DIAMOND.--DECAYED GENTILITY.--
-  "THREE FLIGHT, BACK."--SEVERAL ANECDOTES.--THE OLD
-  FOX-HUNTER.--"STAND ON YOUR HEAD."--KINDNESS TO CLERGYMEN.--
-  RARE CHARITY.--OLD AND HOMELESS.--THE "O'CLO'" JEW.--DR.
-  HUNTER'S GENEROSITY.--"WHAT'S THE PRICE OF BEEF?"--A SAD
-  OMISSION.--INNATE GENEROSITY.--A CURB-STONE MONEY-MANIAC.--AN
-  EYE-OPENER.--AN AVARICIOUS DOCTOR.--ROBBING THE DEAD.                410
-
-
-  XVII. LOVE AND LOVERS.
-
-  XANTIPPE, BEFORE JEALOUSY.--A FIRST LOVE.--BLASTED HOPES.--A
-  DOCTOR'S STORY.--THE FLIGHT FROM "THE HOUNDS OF THE LAW."--
-  THE EXILE AND RETURN.--DISGUISED AS A PEDDLER.--ESCAPES WITH
-  HIS LOVE.--ENGLISH BEAUS.--YOUNG COQUETTES.--A GAY AND
-  DANGEROUS BEAU.--HANDSOME BEAUS.--LEAP YEAR.--AN OLD BEAU.--
-  BEAUTY NOT ALL-POTENT.--OFFENDED ROYALTY.--YOUTH AND AGE.--A
-  STABLE BOY.--POET-DOCTOR.                                            438
-
-
-  XVIII. MIND AND MATTER.
-
-  IN WHICH ANIMAL MAGNETISM, MESMERISM, AND CLAIRVOYANCE ARE
-  EXPLAINED.--"THE IGNORANT MONOPOLY."--YET ROOM FOR
-  DISCOVERIES.--A "GASSY" SUBJECT.--DRS. CHAPIN AND BEECHER.--
-  HE "CAN'T SEE IT."--THE ROYAL TOUCH.--GASSNER.--"THE DEVIL
-  KNOWS LATIN."--ROYALTY IN THE SHADE.--THE IRISH PROPHET; HE
-  VISITS LONDON.--A COMICAL CROWD.--MESMERISM.--A FUNNY
-  BED-FELLOW.--CLAIRVOYANCE.--THE GATES OF MOSCOW.--THE DOCTOR
-  OF ANTWERP.--THE OLD LADY IN THE POKE-BONNET.--VISIT TO A
-  CLAIRVOYANT.--"FORETELLING" THE PAST.--THE OLD WOMAN OF THE
-  PENOBSCOT MOUNTAINS.--A SECRET KEPT.--CUI BONO?--VISITS TO
-  SEVENTEEN CLAIRVOYANTS.--A BON-TON CLAIRVOYANT.--A BOUNCER.--
-  RIDICULOSITY.                                                        461
-
-
-  XIX. ECCENTRICITIES.
-
-  A ONE-EYED DOCTOR AND HIS HORSE.--A NEW EDIBLE.--"HAVE THEM
-  BOILED."--"BEAUTY AND THE BEAST."--A LOVELY STAMPEDE.--AN
-  ECCENTRIC PHILADELPHIAN.--THE POODLES, DRS. HUNTER AND
-  SCIPIO.--SILENT ELOQUENCE.--CONSISTENT TO THE END.--WHEN
-  DOCTORS DISAGREE.--FOUR BLIND MEN.--DIET AND SLEEP.--SAXE AND
-  SANCHO PANZA.--MOTHER GOOSE AS A DOCTOR'S BOOK.--THE TABLES
-  TURNED ON THE DOCTORS.                                               495
-
-
-  XX. PRESCRIPTIONS REMARKABLE AND RIDICULOUS.
-
-  FIG PASTE AND FIG LEAVES.--SOME OF THOSE OLD FELLOWS.--THEY
-  SLIGHTLY DISAGREE.--HOW TO KEEP CLEAN.--BAXTER VS. THE
-  DOCTOR.--A CURE FOR "RHEUMATIZ."--OLD ENGLISH DOSES.--CURE
-  FOR BLUES.--FOR HYSTERIA.--HEROIC DOSES.--DROWNING A FEVER.--
-  AN EXACT SCIENCE.--SULPHUR AND MOLASSES.--A USE FOR POOR
-  IRISH.--MINERAL SPRINGS.--COLD DRINKS VS. WARM.--THE OLD LADY
-  AND THE AIR-PUMP.--SAVED BY HER BUSTLE.--COUNTRY
-  PRESCRIPTIONS AND A FUNNY MISTAKE.--ARE YOU DRUNK OR SOBER?          517
-
-
-  XXI. SCENES FROM HOSPITAL AND CAMP.
-
-  "HE FOUGHT MIT SIEGEL."--A HOSPITAL SCENE AT NIGHT.--
-  ADMINISTERING ANGELS.--"WATER! WATER!"--THE SOLDIER-BOY'S
-  DYING MESSAGE.--THE WELL-WORN BIBLE.--WARM HEARTS IN FROZEN
-  BODIES.--"PUDDING AND MILK."--THE POETICAL AND AMUSING
-  SIDE.--"TO AMELIA."--MY LOVE AND I.--A SCRIPTURAL
-  CONUNDRUM.--MARRYING A REGIMENT.                                     538
-
-
-  XXII. GLUTTONS AND WINE-BIBBERS.
-
-  GOOD CHEER AND A CHEERFUL HEART.--A MODERN SILENUS.--A SAD
-  WRECK.--DELIRIUM TREMENS.--FATAL ERRORS.--"EATING LIKE A
-  GLUTTON."--STRENGTH IN WEAKNESS.--A HOT PLACE, EVEN FOR A
-  COOK.--A HUNGRY DOCTOR.--THE MODERN GILPIN.--A CHANGE! A SOW
-  FOR A HORSE!--A DUCK POND.--THE FORLORN WIDOW.--A SCIENTIFIC
-  GORMAND.--ANOTHER.--"DOORN'T GO TO 'IM," ETC.--DR. BUTLER'S
-  BEER AND BATH.--CASTS HIS LAST VOTE.                                 550
-
-
-  XXIII. THE DOCTOR AS POET, AUTHOR, AND MUSICIAN.
-
-  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.                                        571
-
-
-  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.                                     599
-
-
-  XXV. ALL ABOUT TOBACCO.
-
-  "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."              633
-
-
-  XXVI. DRESS AND ADDRESS OF PHYSICIANS.
-
-  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.--"DOSH, DOSH."        659
-
-
-  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.                                                  680
-
-
-  XXVIII. BLEEDERS AND BUTCHERS.
-
-  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 DOUGLASS JERROLD); JOB
-  PIPPINS AND THE WAGONER; JOB AND THE HIGHWAYMEN; JOB NAKED
-  AND JOB DRESSED.                                                     695
-
-
-  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.                                        709
-
-
-  XXX. THE OTHER SIDE.
-
-  PUT YOURSELF IN HIS PLACE.--STEALING FROM THE PROFESSION.--
-  ANECDOTE OF RUFUS CHOATE.--INGRATES.--A NIGHT ROW.--"SAVING
-  AT THE SPIGOT AND WASTING AT THE BUNG."--SHOPPING PATIENTS.--
-  AN AFFECTIONATE WIFE.--RUM AND TOBACCO PATIENTS.--THE
-  PHYSICIAN'S WIDOW AND ORPHAN, THE SUMMONS, THE TENEMENT, THE
-  INVALIDS, HOW THEY LIVED, HER HISTORY, THE UNNATURAL FATHER,
-  HOW THEY DIED, THE END.--A PETER-FUNK DOCTOR.--SELLING OUT.          727
-
-
-  XXXI. "THIS IS FOR YOUR HEALTH."
-
-  THE INESTIMABLE VALUE OF HEALTH.--NO BLESSING IN
-  COMPARISON.--MEN AND SWINE.--BEGIN WITH THE INFANT.--"BABY ON
-  THE PORCH."--IN A STRAIT JACKET.--"TWO LITTLE SHOES."--
-  YOUTH.--IMPURE LITERATURE AND PASSIONS.--"OUR GIRLS."--BARE
-  ARMS AND BUSTS.--HOW AND WHAT WE BREATHE.--"THE FREEDOM OF
-  THE STREET."--KEEP YOUR EYES OPEN AND MOUTH CLOSED.--THE
-  LUNGS AND BREATHING.--A MAN FULL OF HOLES.--SEVEN MILLION
-  MOUTHS TO FEED.--PURE WATER.--CLEANLINESS. SOAP VS.
-  WRINKLES.--GOD'S SUNSHINE.                                           748
-
-
-  XXXII. HEALTH WITHOUT MEDICINE.
-
-  CHEERFULNESS.--GOOD ADVICE.--REV. FRANCIS J. COLLIER ON
-  CHRISTIAN CHEERFULNESS.--WHAT GOD SAYS ABOUT IT.--WHINING.--
-  LOVE AND HEALTH.--AFFECTION AND PERFECTION.--SEPARATING THE
-  SHEEP AND GOATS.--THE FENCES UP AND FENCES DOWN.--SIXTEEN AND
-  SIXTY.--ACTION AND IDLENESS.--IDLENESS AND CRIME.--BEAUTY AND
-  DEVELOPMENT.--SLEEP.--DAY AND NIGHT.--"WHAT SHALL WE EAT?"--A
-  STOMACH-MILL AND A STEWING-PAN.--"FIVE MINUTES FOR
-  REFRESHMENTS."--ANCIENT DIET.--COOKS IN A "STEW."--THE
-  GREEN-GROCERIES OF THE CLASSICS.--CABBAGES AND ARTICHOKES.--
-  ANIMAL AND VEGETABLE DIET.                                           769
-
-
-  XXXIII. CONSUMPTION.
-
-  CONSUMPTION A MONSTER!--UNIVERSAL REIGN.--SIGNS OF HIS
-  APPROACH.--WARNINGS.--BAD POSITIONS.--SCHOOL-HOUSES.--ENGLISH
-  THEORY.--PREVENTIVES.--AIR AND SUNSHINE.--SCROFULA.--A JOLLY
-  FAT GRANDMOTHER.--"WASP WAISTS."--CHANGE OF CLIMATE.--"TOO
-  LATE!"--WHAT TO AVOID.--HUMBUGS.--COD LIVER OIL.--STRYCHNINE
-  WHISKEY.--A MATTER-OF-FACT PATIENT.--SWALLOWING A
-  PRESCRIPTION.--SIT AND LIE STRAIGHT.--FEATHERS OR CURLED
-  HAIR.--A YANKEE DISEASE.--CATARRH AND COLD FEET, HOW TO
-  REMEDY.--"GIVE US SOME SNUFF, DOCTOR."--OTHER THINGS TO
-  AVOID.--A TENDER POINT.                                              790
-
-
-  XXXIV. ACCIDENTS.
-
-  RULES FOR MACHINISTS, MECHANICS, RAILROAD MEN, ETC., IN CASES
-  OF ACCIDENT.--HOW TO FIND AN ARTERY AND STOP THE BLEEDING.--
-  DROWNING; TO RESTORE.--SUN-STROKE.--AVOID ICE.--"ACCIDENTS
-  WILL HAPPEN."--WHAT TO HAVE IN THE HOUSE.--BRUISES.--BURNS.--
-  DO THE BEST YOU CAN AND TRUST GOD FOR THE REST.                      811
-
-
-
-
-ILLUSTRATIONS.
-
-
-  1. A. D. CRABTRE, M. D.,                     Frontispiece.
-
-  2. DR. ANGLICUS PONTO,                                  31
-
-  3. MISFORTUNES NEVER COME SINGLY,                       33
-
-  4. THE MISER OUTWITS HIMSELF,                           38
-
-  5. COMMENCING A PRACTICE IN NEW YORK,                   47
-
-  6. GRACE BEFORE MEAT,                                   48
-
-  7. OLD PILGARLIC TAKES A BATH,                          55
-
-  8. PROFESSOR BREWSTER,                                  55
-
-  9. AN INFANTRY CHARGE,                                  60
-
-  10. THE "FREE PASS" PRESCRIPTION,                       69
-
-  11. THE WRONG PATIENT,                                  71
-
-  12. A CANDIDATE FOR THE PRESIDENCY,                     77
-
-  13. UNDER FULL SAIL,                                    77
-
-  14. "IT'S ALL A HUMBUG,"                                82
-
-  15. "BAREFOOTED ON THE TOP OF HIS HEAD,"                93
-
-  16. OLD "SANDS OF LIFE,"                                96
-
-  17. REFRESHMENTS,                                       98
-
-  18. THE EYE DOCTOR,                                    103
-
-  19. THE YOUNG SURGEON'S FIRST EXPERIENCE,              105
-
-  20. HEALING THE SICK WITH A GOLDEN DOSE,               111
-
-  21. THE PARSON BUYING OFF THE "CONGREGATION,"          120
-
-  22. A JUVENILE BACCHUS,                                122
-
-  23. "DON'T YOU OBSERVE THE ARMS OF MRS. MAPP?"         128
-
-  24. THREE WISE STUDENTS CONSULTING A DOCTRESS,         134
-
-  25. "POH! YOU'RE A GIRL,"                              141
-
-  26. "HERE WE GO UP-UP-UPPY,"                           148
-
-  27. "LOVE AMONG THE ROSES,"                            156
-
-  28. THE INQUISITIVE COUNTRYMEN,                        161
-
-  29. CURIOUS EFFECTS OF A FEVER,                        171
-
-  30. MARRYING A FAMILY,                                 173
-
-  31. 'OPATHISTS IN CONSULTATION,                        175
-
-  32. A "HYPO" PATIENT DISCHARGING HIS PHYSICIAN,        178
-
-  33. TOO MUCH HAT,                                      179
-
-  34. CONVINCING EVIDENCE OF INSOLVENCY,                 181
-
-  35. "AN' WHO'LL YEZE LIKE TO SEE, SURE?"               183
-
-  36. A BOSTON QUACK EXAMINING A STUDENT,                189
-
-  37. ORNAMENTAL TAIL-PIECE,                             199
-
-  38. DR. ABERNETHY IN THE HOSPITAL,                     202
-
-  39. AN EXTENSIVE SET,                                  205
-
-  40. "O, DOCTHER, DEAR, I'VE PIZENED ME BOY,"           207
-
-  41. "LOST MARSER! LOST MARSER!"                        209
-
-  42. NOT A STOMACH PUMP,                                213
-
-  43. "LOWER TIER, LARBOARD SIDE,"                       217
-
-  44. THE FARMER'S ESCAPE FROM THE CHOLERA,              223
-
-  45. TOO MUCH VAPOR,                                    224
-
-  46. A DRY SHOWER BATH,                                 225
-
-  47. GRAPES AND WINE,                                   226
-
-  48. CHARGE, INFANTRY!                                  239
-
-  49. AFTER THE BATTLE,                                  240
-
-  50. THE FORTUNE-TELLER'S MAGIC MIRROR,                 244
-
-  51. CHILDREN CONSULTING A FORTUNE-TELLER,              251
-
-  52. THE HUNTRESS,                                      252
-
-  53. THE ONONDAGA FARMER BOY,                           256
-
-  54. THE POLITE QUADRUPED,                              265
-
-  55. YOUNG ABERNETHY,                                   266
-
-  56. "PINNY, SIR? JUST ONE PINNY,"                      274
-
-  57. THE PENNILESS PHYSICIAN,                           276
-
-  58. THE INDIAN WARRIOR,                                277
-
-  59. BELIEVERS IN GHOSTS,                               278
-
-  60. "HARK! THERE'S A FEARFUL GUST!"                    280
-
-  61. A GRAVE SENTRY,                                    282
-
-  62. A GHOST IN CAMP,                                   285
-
-  63. OLD NAGLES,                                        286
-
-  64. THE NAGLES BOYS,                                   287
-
-  65. CHIEF MOURNERS,                                    288
-
-  66. THE CORPSE THAT WOULD NOT SMOKE,                   290
-
-  67. PREPARE TO DIE,                                    293
-
-  68. THE BISHOP'S GHOSTLY VISITOR,                      295
-
-  69. THE MUSICAL PUSS,                                  301
-
-  70. A DARKEY BEWITCHED,                                301
-
-  71. BOYLSTON STATION,                                  303
-
-  72. WEIGHING A WITCH BY BIBLE STANDARD,                305
-
-  73. PASSING THE FORT,                                  306
-
-  74. THE GOD OF RECIPES,                                308
-
-  75. SUN-SUNDAY,                                        310
-
-  76. MOON-MONDAY,                                       313
-
-  77. TUISCO-TUESDAY,                                    313
-
-  78. WODEN-WEDNESDAY,                                   314
-
-  79. THOR-THURSDAY,                                     315
-
-  80. FRIGA-FRIDAY,                                      315
-
-  81. SEATER-SATURDAY,                                   316
-
-  82. GATHERING THE MANDRAKE,                            321
-
-  83. "WAITING TO SEE THE IMAGES BOW,"                   323
-
-  84. SPORT FOR THE BOYS BUT DEATH TO THE CAT,           329
-
-  85. "WHO-A'-YOO?"                                      333
-
-  86. THE PROPER USE OF "HOLY WATER,"                    334
-
-  87. THE MODEST KISS,                                   339
-
-  88. HOLDING THE PLOW,                                  340
-
-  89. THE TUMOR DOCTOR CONTEMPLATES SUICIDE,             343
-
-  90. MARIAM, THE TUMOR DOCTOR,                          345
-
-  91. THE SINGING DOCTOR,                                349
-
-  92. THE SANATORIAN'S TURNOUT,                          351
-
-  93. A NEW SCHOOL OF PRACTICE,                          354
-
-  94. A VICTIM OF THE SPANKER,                           355
-
-  95. DR. PULSFEEL LEAVING TOWN,                         356
-
-  96. THE MUSICAL DOCTOR,                                358
-
-  97. ENTHUSIASM,                                        359
-
-  98. ALL WOOL,                                          361
-
-  99. CHARITY THROWN AWAY,                               363
-
-  100. THE BEGGAR BOY,                                   366
-
-  101. REMORSE,                                          368
-
-  102. THE LOST HEIR,                                    373
-
-  103. A MORNING CALLER,                                 375
-
-  104. "WHY DID I TAZE YE?"                              376
-
-  105. SUCCESS OF TERRY'S COURTSHIP,                     379
-
-  106. THE BETRAYED,                                     382
-
-  107. SAILING INTO PORT,                                385
-
-  108. A SAN BENITO PIG,                                 388
-
-  109. AN OLD ENGLISH CLERGYMAN AND HIS FAMILY,          390
-
-  110. THE KING'S PHYSICIAN AND THE EXECUTIONER,         393
-
-  111. A SLIPPER-Y FEE,                                  397
-
-  112. A LIVING FEE,                                     399
-
-  113. STUFFED PETS,                                     400
-
-  114. A PIONEER OF HOMOEOPATHY,                         403
-
-  115. A SHARP MULE TRADE,                               405
-
-  116. ORNAMENTAL TAIL-PIECE,                            409
-
-  117. PHYSICIAN'S CHARITY,                              411
-
-  118. SEARCH FOR A PATIENT,                             412
-
-  119. AN ECCENTRIC PATIENT,                             417
-
-  120. A WOMAN'S REBUKE,                                 417
-
-  121. AFRAID OF A POLYPUS,                              418
-
-  122. ABERNETHY'S SURGICAL OPERATION,                   420
-
-  123. RECKONING A DOCTOR'S FEES,                        424
-
-  124. PATIENT NUMBER FIVE,                              425
-
-  125. THE ASTONISHED BUTCHER,                           427
-
-  126. MODERN IMPROVEMENTS IN DENTISTRY,                 431
-
-  127. CHARITY NOT SOLICITED,                            431
-
-  128. CAPTURE OF A WALL STREET BULL,                    433
-
-  129. DEATH'S FEE,                                      436
-
-  130. THE AMERICAN SAILOR,                              437
-
-  131. MY FIRST LOVE,                                    439
-
-  132. TEN YEARS LATER,                                  441
-
-  133. FLIGHT OF THE DOCTOR,                             443
-
-  134. THE LOVER AS A PEDDLER,                           447
-
-  135. FLIGHT OF THE LOVERS,                             447
-
-  136. AN AGED PUPIL,                                    453
-
-  137. BIRTHPLACE OF GEORGE CRABBE,                      457
-
-  138. "POPPING THE QUESTION,"                           460
-
-  139. LOVE'S LINKS,                                     460
-
-  140. THE LION MAGNETIZED,                              466
-
-  141. A HARD SUBJECT,                                   467
-
-  142. GASSNER HEALING "BY THE GRACE OF GOD,"            471
-
-  143. NO LACK OF PATIENTS,                              475
-
-  144. "A BOTTLE, A HEN, OR A WOMAN,"                    477
-
-  145. EFFECTS OF AN EARTHQUAKE,                         483
-
-  146. A BELIEVER SEES HIS GRANDMOTHER,                  483
-
-  147. THE CHARMER DIVULGES HER SECRET,                  488
-
-  148. "I PERCEIVE YOU ARE IN LOVE,"                     492
-
-  149. THE FARMER'S DAUGHTERS,                           494
-
-  150. A "HORSE-SLAYER" INDULGING HIS OPINION,           499
-
-  151. NO TIME TO LOSE,                                  500
-
-  152. BEAUTY AND THE BEAST,                             503
-
-  153. DR. HUNTER IN CONSULTATION,                       504
-
-  154. THE RUSSIAN GENERAL'S DRILL,                      506
-
-  155. WHAT THE ELEPHANT IS LIKE,                        511
-
-  156. A DOCTOR'S SOLACE,                                511
-
-  157. HOW A LADY PROCURED A VALUABLE PRESCRIPTION,      525
-
-  158. DOSE--ONE QUART EVERY HOUR,                       526
-
-  159. PUMPING AN OLD LADY,                              537
-
-  160. A DANGEROUS PRESCRIPTION,                         537
-
-  161. THE FARMER'S EMBLEMS,                             537
-
-  162. THE DYING MESSAGE,                                541
-
-  163. STUCK!                                            547
-
-  164. COMMERCE,                                         549
-
-  165. A GOOD LIVER,                                     551
-
-  166. A DOCTOR "KILLING THE DEVILS,"                    555
-
-  167. PAYING FOR HIS WINE,                              555
-
-  168. A BAR-ROOM DOCTOR,                                555
-
-  169. "THE DOCTOR ON A SOW!"                            565
-
-  170. RESCUE OF THE DOCTOR,                             565
-
-  171. "ONLY IRISH BEER,"                                568
-
-  172. CURE FOR THE AGUE,                                569
-
-  173. PLAYING THE REEDS,                                570
-
-  174. AN EMBRYO APOLLO,                                 572
-
-  175. THE PILGRIM CHEAT,                                577
-
-  176. FRANKLIN'S EXPERIMENTS WITH ETHER,                585
-
-  177. END OF THE WONDERFUL ONE-HOSS SHAY,               591
-
-  178. "MUSIC, THE SOUL OF LIFE,"                        597
-
-  179. THE MUSICAL MICE,                                 597
-
-  180. FOUNTAIN,                                         598
-
-  181. SIGNS OF CIVILIZATION,                            603
-
-  182. SWILL MILK (MAGNIFIED),                           605
-
-  183. PURE MILK (MAGNIFIED),                            606
-
-  184. WATERED MILK (MAGNIFIED),                         606
-
-  185. "WHAT'S IN THE MILK?"                             606
-
-  186. A CHAMPAGNE BATH,                                 611
-
-  187. MOTHER'S MILK--PURE AND HEALTHY,                  612
-
-  188. MOTHER'S MILK AFTER DRINKING WHISKY,              612
-
-  189. WAITING FOR ASSISTANCE,                           617
-
-  190. A CONFECTIONERY STORE,                            619
-
-  191. TARTARIC ACID FOR SUPPER,                         629
-
-  192. A STREET CANDY STAND,                             629
-
-  193. THE NEWSBOY'S MOTHER,                             630
-
-  194. THE IDOL OF TOBACCO USERS,                        634
-
-  195. PUNISHMENT OF THE TURK,                           638
-
-  196. SMOKERS OF FOUR GENERATIONS,                      639
-
-  197. "I WANT A CHAW OF TERBACKER,"                     641
-
-  198. YOUNG SMOKERS,                                    642
-
-  199. EXAMINATION OF THE SMOKER,                        643
-
-  200. PURIFYING HIS BLOOD,                              644
-
-  201. CLEANSING HIS BONES,                              645
-
-  202. THE SMOKER,                                       647
-
-  203. THE CHEWER,                                       648
-
-  204. SIGN OF THE TIMES,                                648
-
-  205. MY LAZY SMOKING FRIEND,                           650
-
-  206. "SHALL I ASSIST YOU TO ALIGHT?"                   653
-
-  207. WORK FOR TONGUES AND FINGERS,                     653
-
-  208. WHAT KILLED THE DOG?                              657
-
-  209. THE NEWSBOY,                                      658
-
-  210. THE GREAT SURGEONS OF THE WORLD,                  661
-
-  211. A CALL ON THE VILLAGE DOCTOR,                     663
-
-  212. PHYSICIANS' COSTUME IN 1790,                      664
-
-  213. HOW POOR TOMMY WAS LOST,                          666
-
-  214. BRIDGET'S METHOD OF MENDING STOCKINGS,            667
-
-  215. THE UNDERTAKERS' ARMS,                            671
-
-  216. DISPUTE OF THE DOCTOR AND VALET,                  671
-
-  217. A WIG MOUSE,                                      674
-
-  218. THE MYSTERY EXPLAINED,                            675
-
-  219. MEETING OF THE DOCTOR AND THE CURATE,             679
-
-  220. DOCTOR CANDEE,                                    679
-
-  221. A GERMAN BEER GIRL,                               681
-
-  222. AN INDIGNANT BRIDE,                               686
-
-  223. THE ITCH MITE,                                    689
-
-  224. THE BURGLAR AND STUDENT,                          693
-
-  225. HARVESTED,                                        694
-
-  226. ASSISTANCE FROM A ROYAL SURGEON,                  696
-
-  227. PETER THE GREAT AS A SURGEON,                     697
-
-  228. JOB DISCHARGED BY SIR SCIPIO,                     703
-
-  229. "BLEED HIM,"                                      704
-
-  230. A BORROWED WATCH,                                 706
-
-  231. JOB'S DECISION,                                   708
-
-  232. SQUASHY'S SURGICAL OPERATION,                     715
-
-  233. "WILL YE TAK' A BLAST, NOO?"                      720
-
-  234. REPTILES FROM THE STOMACH,                        722
-
-  235. "IT ISN'T CATCHIN',"                              724
-
-  236. FUNERAL OF THE CANARY,                            725
-
-  237. MY FRONT STREET PATIENT,                          731
-
-  238. A SHOPPING PATIENT,                               733
-
-  239. CALL AT THE TENEMENT,                             737
-
-  240. THE WIDOW'S OCCUPATION,                           739
-
-  241. THE PHYSICIAN AND THE FATHER,                     742
-
-  242. THE PETER FUNK PHYSICIAN,                         745
-
-  243. VIRTUE,                                           747
-
-  244. THE FREEDOM OF THE PARK,                          761
-
-  245. "IT COSTS NOTHING,"                               766
-
-  246. A NATURAL POSITION,                               792
-
-  247. AN UNNATURAL POSITION,                            792
-
-  248. CORRECT POSITION,                                 796
-
-  249. INCORRECT POSITION,                               796
-
-  250. HOW WASP WAISTS ARE MADE,                         799
-
-  251. A CONSUMPTIVE WAIST,                              800
-
-  252. NON-CONSUMPTIVE WAIST,                            800
-
-  253. A HEALTHY POSITION,                               804
-
-  254. POSITION OF ARTERY IN ARM,                        811
-
-  255. COMPRESSING AN ARTERY IN ARM,                     812
-
-  256. POSITION OF ARTERY IN LEG,                        812
-
-  257. THE DOCTOR'S QUEUE,                               816
-
-
-
-
-I.
-
-MEDICAL HUMBUGS.
-
-    _Marina._ ... Should I tell my history,
-              'Twould seem like lies disdained in the reporting.
-
-    _Pericles._ Pray thee, speak.--_Shakspeare._
-
-    ORIGIN AND APPLICATION OF "HUMBUG."--A FIFTH AVENUE HUMBUG.--JOB'S
-    OPINION OF DOCTORS.--EARLY PHYSICIANS.--PRIESTS AS DOCTORS.--WIZARDS
-    COME TO GRIEF.--A "CAPITAL" OPERATION.--A WOMAN CUT INTO TWELVE
-    PIECES.--ANECDOTE.--ROBIN HOOD'S LITTLE JOKE.--TIT FOR TAT.--ENGLISH
-    HUMBUGS.--FRENCH DITTO.--A FORTUNE ON DIRTY WATER.--AMERICAN
-    HUMBUGS.--A FIRST CLASS "DODGE."--A FREE RIDE.--A SHARP
-    INTERROGATOR.--DOCTOR PUSBELLY.--A WICKED STAGE-DRIVER'S STORY.--"OLD
-    PILGARLIC" TAKES A BATH.--LUDICROUS SCENE.--PROFESSOR BREWSTER.
-
-
-Medical humbugs began to exist with the first pretenders to the science of
-healing. Quacks originated at a much later period. So materially different
-are the two classes, that I am compelled to treat of them separately.
-
-The word _humbug_ is a corruption of _Hamburg_, Germany, and seems to have
-originated in London. The following episode is in illustration of both its
-origin and meaning:--
-
-"O, Bridget, Bridget!" exclaimed the fashionable mistress of a brown stone
-front in Fifth Avenue, New York, to her surprised servant girl, "what have
-you been doing at the front door?"
-
-"Och, murther! Nothin', ma'am."
-
-"Nothing!" repeated the mistress.
-
-"Yes'm--that is--" stammered Bridget, greatly embarrassed.
-
-"What were you doing at the front door but a moment since?"
-
-"Nothin', ma'am, but spakin' to me cousin; he's a p'leeceman, ma'am, if ye
-plaze, ma'am," replied Bridget, dropping a low courtesy to the mistress.
-
-"No, no; I did not mean that. But haven't you been cleaning the door-knob
-and the bell-pull?"
-
-"Yes'm," replied Bridget, changing from embarrassment to surprise.
-
-"Why, Bridget, didn't I tell you never to polish the front door-knobs
-during the warm season? Now my friends will think that I have returned
-from Saratoga--"
-
-"And is it to Saratogy ye've been, ma'am?" exclaimed Bridget.
-
-"No, you dunce; but was not the front of the house closed, and the
-servants forbidden to polish the plates and glass, that my friends might
-be led to believe we had all gone to the watering-place?"
-
-That was true humbug. Double humbuggery! for the servant girl was
-humbugging her mistress by pretending to polish the door-knobs, while she
-was really coqueting with a policeman; and the mistress was humbugging her
-friends into the belief that the house was closed, and the family gone to
-Saratoga.
-
-So, Hamburg, on the Elbe, being a fashionable resort of the upper-ten-dom
-of London, those who would ape aristocracy, yet being unable to bear the
-expense of a trip to the Continent, closed the front of their dwellings,
-moved into the rear, giving out word that they had gone to _Hamburg_.
-
-When a house was observed so closed, with a notice on the door, the
-passers by would wag their heads, and exclaim, questionably, "Ah, gone to
-Hamburg!" or, "All gone to Hamburg!" "It's all Hamburg!" and so on. And,
-like a thousand other words in the English language, this became
-corrupted, and "humbug" followed. Hence, taking the sense from the
-derivation of the word, humbug means "an imposition, under fair
-pretences;" cheat; hoax; a deception without malicious intent. Webster
-says it is "a low word."
-
-The humbugs in medicine, we assert, began to exist with the first persons
-of whom we have any account in the history of the healing art. Among the
-early Egyptian physicians, Æsculapius was esteemed as the most celebrated.
-He was the first humbug in his line. However, nearly all the accounts we
-have of him are mythological. If we are to credit the early writers, this
-great healer restored so many to life, that he greatly interfered with
-undertaker Pluto's occupation, who picked a quarrel with Æsculapius, and
-the two referred the matter to Jupiter for adjudication.
-
-But we may go back of this "god of medicine." If he was physician to the
-Argonauts, we must fix the date of his great exploits at about the year B.
-C. 1263. It is claimed by good authority that the Book of Job dates back
-to B. C. 1520, and is the oldest book extant. Herein we find Job saying,
-"Ye are forgers of lies; ye are all physicians of no value." Since his
-friends were trying their best to humbug him, Job certainly intimates that
-physicians--some of them, at least--were looked upon as humbugs. But,
-then, Job was only an Arab prince; not an Israelite, at all; nor does he
-condescend to mention that "peculiar people" in his book. And besides,
-what reliance can be based upon the opinion of a man respecting
-physicians, whose only surgical instrument consisted of a "piece or
-fragment of a broken pot"?
-
-Therefore, leaving the "Arab prince," we will turn for a moment to the
-early Jewish physicians. Josephus does not enlighten us much respecting
-them. The Old Testament makes mention of physicians in three
-instances,--the last figuratively.
-
-The first instance--a rather amusing one--where physicians are mentioned
-in the sacred writings, is in 2 Chron. xvi. 12: "And Asa, in the
-thirty-ninth year of his reign, was diseased in his feet, until the
-disease was exceeding great; yet in his disease he sought not to the Lord,
-but to the physicians." The compiler adds, very coolly, as though a
-natural consequence, "_And Asa slept with his fathers_!" This reminds us
-of an anecdote by the late Dr. Waterhouse. An Irishman obtained twenty
-grains of morphine, which, instead of quinine, he took at one dose, to
-cure the chills. The doctor, in relating it long afterwards, added,
-laconically, "He being a good Catholic, his funeral was numerously
-attended."
-
-For generations nearly all the pretensions to healing were made by the
-priests and magicians, who humbugged and "bamboozled" the ignorant and
-superstitious rabble to their hearts' content. Kings and subjects were
-alike believers in the Magi. Saul believed in the magic powers of the
-"witch of Endor." The wicked king Nebuchadnezzar classed Daniel and his
-three companions with the magicians, although Daniel (chap. xi. 10) denied
-the imputation. Joseph laid claim to the power of divination; for, having
-caused the silver cup to be placed in the sack of corn, and after having
-sent and brought his brother back, he said (Gen. xliv. 15), "What deed is
-this that ye have done? Wot ye not that such a man as I can certainly
-divine?" It seemed necessary to deal with the people according to their
-belief. It was useless to dispute with them. As late as the preaching of
-Paul and Barnabas, the whole nations of Jews and Greeks were so tinctured
-with belief in magic and enchantment in healing, taught and promulgated by
-the priesthood, that when the apostles healed the cripple of Lystra, the
-rabble, headed by the priests, cried out, "The gods are come down to us in
-the likeness of men." And they called Barnabas Jupiter, and Paul
-Mercurius.
-
-The town clerk in the theatre said to the excited crowd, "These men are
-neither robbers of churches, nor yet blasphemers of your goddess."
-
-Diana was appealed to for women in childbirth; Mercurius for the healing
-of cutaneous diseases (_herpes_), probably because he carried a _herpe_,
-or short sword, also, at times, the caduceus; and Jupiter for various
-diseases. But to return to the times of Saul and David.
-
-It seems that the business became overcrowded, and the vilest and most
-degraded of both sexes swelled the ranks of sorcerers, astrologers, and
-spiritualists, until every class and condition of people became
-impregnated with these beliefs, from kings to the lowest subject. Finally,
-the strong arm of the law laid hold of them, and the edict went forth that
-"a witch shall not live," that "a wizard shall be put to death," and that
-"the soothsayer be stoned."
-
-Nevertheless, the wretches continued to practise their deceptions, but
-less openly for a time, and they are made mention of throughout the sacred
-writings, until "the closing of the canon."
-
-But the Scriptures are almost totally silent on surgery, and the remedies
-resorted to by those pretending to the science--as also by physicians and
-priests--were such as to lead us to believe that their _materia medica_
-was very limited. Under the head of Ridiculous Prescriptions, we shall
-mention these remedies:--
-
-The earliest record we find of surgical operations in the Old Testament is
-in Judges xix. 29,--a "capital operation," we may judge, for the account
-informs us that the patient, a woman, "was divided into twelve pieces."
-
-Turning to the profane writers for information, we plunge into an abyss of
-uncertainty, with this exception; that the practice of medicine--it could
-not be called a science--was still in the hands of the priesthood, and
-partook largely of the fabulous notions of the age, being connected almost
-entirely with idolatries and humbuggeries. The cunning priests caused the
-rabble, from first to last, to believe that all disease was inflicted, not
-from the violation of the laws of nature, but by some angry and outraged
-divinity, whose wrath must be appeased by bribes (_paid to the priests_),
-by incantations, and absurd ceremonies, or else the afflicted victim must
-die a painful death, and forever after suffer a more horrible eternity.
-The priests' receiving the pay reminds us of the following little
-anecdote.
-
-A very pious man, recently congratulating a convalescing patient upon his
-recovery, asked his friend who had been his physician.
-
-"Dr. Blank brought me safely through," was his reply.
-
-"No, no," said the friend, "God brought you out of this affliction, and
-healed you,--not the doctor."
-
-"Well," replied the man, "may be he did; but I am sure that the doctor
-will charge me for it."
-
-The offices of priest and physician were united among the Jews, Heathens,
-Greeks, Egyptians, and Romans. The Druids (from _draoi_, magician) ruled
-and ruined the ancient Celts, Gauls, Britons, and Germans. The people of
-these nations looked up to the priests as though life and death and
-immortality hung only upon their lips. Among our aborigines we have also
-examples of the double office of priest and "medicine man." And it is an
-astonishing fact, that notwithstanding the ignorance of the pretenders to
-healing, or the ridiculousness of the prescriptions, or the exorbitant
-fees, the rabble of the age relied upon them with the most implicit
-confidence. If the patient recovered, the priests--embodying the gods--had
-restored them by their great skill and the favor of some particular
-divinity, and so were worshipped, and again rewarded with other fees to
-offer sacrifices to the individual god who was supposed to favor the
-priest or wizard. If he died it was the will of the gods that it should so
-be, and the friends lost none of their faith in the abilities of their
-medical and spiritual advisers.
-
-The priests could not be disposed of so easily as the witches and wizards
-were supposed to have been, for they kept the people under greater fear,
-and held the balance of power in their own hands. The only difference
-between the priests and wizards was, that the former _claimed_ to exercise
-their arts by the power of the gods, while the latter were said to be
-assisted by the evil spirits. The priests claimed this in the times of
-Christ, and tried to persuade the rabble that he was assisted by
-Beelzebub. While the grasping priesthood professed poverty and
-self-denial, they were continually enriching themselves by robberies and
-extortions upon the ignorant and superstitious common people.
-
-A mirth-provoking anecdote is told of Robin Hood and two friars, which we
-cannot forbear relating here as illustrative of the above assertion. If
-our readers regard stories from such a source as very uncertain, we have
-only to reply that we are now dealing with "uncertainties."
-
-"One day, Robin disguised himself as a friar, and went out on the highway.
-Very soon he met two priests, to whom he appealed for charity in the
-blessed Virgin's name.
-
-"'That we would do, were it in our power,' they replied.
-
-"'I fear you are so addicted to falsehood, I cannot believe that you have
-no money, as you say. However, let us all down on our marrow bones, and
-pray the Virgin to send us some money.'
-
-"'No, no,' replied the priests; 'it is of no use.'
-
-"'What! have you no faith in your patron saint? Down, I say, and pray.'
-
-"In fear, down fell the two priests, and Robin by their side, and all
-prayed most lustily.
-
-"'Now feel in your pockets,' said Robin, rising.
-
-"'There is nothing,' they replied, plunging their hands deep into their
-cloaks.
-
-"'Down again, and pray harder,' shouted Robin, drawing his sword.
-
-"Down they fell, and mumbled over their Latin, but declared the gods had
-sent them nothing.
-
-"'I do not believe you,' said Robin; 'you ever were a pack of liars. Let
-each stand a search, that we deceive not each other.' So Robin turned his
-own empty pockets wrong side out, then compelled the friars to follow
-suit, when lo! out fell five hundred pieces of gold.
-
-"When Robin saw this glorious sight, he berated the priests soundly, and
-taking the gold, went away to Sherwood, and made merry at the expense of
-the church."
-
-About 1185 B. C. we find among the Grecians some traces of what was termed
-the healing art. But fact and fable, history and mythology, are so mixed
-and blended, that it is impossible to gain any reliable information so far
-back.
-
-Chiron is made mention of as having acquired much celebrity as a
-physician. It is claimed that he was learned in the arts and sciences,
-that he taught astronomy to Hercules, music to Apollo, and medicine to
-Æsculapius, who came from Egypt. From what can be gleaned, of reliability,
-it seems that he employed simple medicines, and possessed some knowledge
-of dressing wounds and reducing fractures and dislocations; but no doubt
-he pretended to greater things than the times would warrant, for, when
-shot by an arrow from the bow of Hercules, his former pupil, he was unable
-to heal the wound, and begged Jupiter to "set him up" among the stars,
-which request was complied with, and Chiron was translated to the heavens,
-where he still shines in the constellation Sagittarius, represented as a
-centaur, with drawn bow, driving before him the other eleven signs of the
-zodiac.
-
-We have alluded to Æsculapius, and, passing over all others of his class,
-we come to the times of Hippocrates.
-
-Hippocrates is rightly called the "Father of Medicine," for he was the
-first to raise medicine to a science. We mention him without classing him
-with humbugs; but Menecrates, who flourished about the same time, arrived
-at great notoriety by ruse and deception. He was "famous for vanity and
-arrogance." He went about accompanied by some patients, whom he claimed to
-have cured, as proofs of his great ability. One he disguised as Apollo,
-another he arrayed in the habit of Æsculapius, and sent them abroad to
-sound his praise, while he took upon himself the garb, and assumed the
-character, of Jupiter.
-
-Pliny says that medicine was the last of the sciences introduced into
-Rome, and that the Septimont City was six hundred years without a regular
-physician. Archagathus, a Grecian, settled in Rome about 300 B. C., and if
-he was a fair sample of those who followed him, it had been better for
-Rome that it had remained another six hundred years "without a regular
-physician." He introduced cruel and painful escharotics, and made free use
-of the knife and the lancet. He was a humbug of the first water, and a
-quack besides, and as such he was banished in a few years.
-
-The Christian era introduced some light into the medical, as well as the
-religious world; yet we learn, by both sacred and profane writers, that
-truth and knowledge were the exceptions, and ignorance and humbug were the
-rule by which medicine was practised by those who pretended to the art.
-Names changed, characters remained the same.
-
-The priests still held their own, and were not, as already shown, to be
-gotten rid of, as the witches and wizards, their rivals and imitators, by
-litigation, nor was their power broken until the Decree of the Council of
-Tours in 1163 A. D., which prohibited priests and deacons from performing
-certain surgical operations.
-
-After the Reformation the vocations of spiritual and medical adviser
-diverged wider and wider, until now a priest or minister is seldom
-consulted for bodily infirmities, and only by persons of the most ignorant
-and superstitious denominations.
-
-Setting the priesthood aside did not suppress humbugs in medicine. In fact
-the profession went into disrepute, which the priests hastened, and a
-lower order of people took upon themselves the practice of deceiving the
-sick and afflicted. Now and then a greater humbug than common would spring
-up, and for a time draw the rabble after him, till the next arose to
-eclipse him.
-
-From the discovery of America to about 1600, ambitious upstarts, humbugs,
-and seekers of fame and fortune were drawn away from the old world, and
-either for this reason, or because the biographers were attracted to a
-more interesting field, accounts of medical celebrities are very meagre;
-but from the latter period to the present day there has been no lack of
-records from which to draw our material.
-
-During the 17th and 18th centuries medical impostors had things all their
-own way. Ignorance was no hinderance to advancement, socially or
-pecuniarily. Some men published, in their own names, voluminous works, in
-both English and Latin, which they themselves could not read. By soft
-words and cunning arts others gained high positions, and, without
-knowledge of the first branch of medical science, became "court
-physicians."
-
-From the lowest walks, they rose up on every side: from the cobbler's
-bench, and the tailor's board; from cutting up meat in the butcher's shop,
-to "cutting up" naughty boys in a pedagogue's capacity; from shaving the
-unwashed rabble behind the striped barber's pole, to shaving their wives
-behind counters, where they measured the cloth of the weaver, they became
-cobblers of poor healths, butchers of men, and shavers of the invalided
-public. But these will be discoursed of under another head.
-
-We here offer one proof of this state of affairs by a quotation from the
-original charter of the first College of Physicians, granted by Henry
-VIII., which reads, "Before this period a great multitude of ignorant
-persons, of which the greater part had no insight into physic, _nor into
-any other kind of learning_,--some could not even read the Book,--so far
-forth that common artificers, as smiths, weavers, and women boldly and
-accustomedly took upon themselves great cures, to the high displeasure of
-God, great infamy of the faculty, and the grievous hurt, damage, and
-destruction of many of the king's liege people."
-
-The meetings of this august body (College of Physicians) were held at the
-house of Dr. Linacre. "He was a gentleman of distinction, both as a
-physician and scholar." He became disgusted with physic, and took "holy
-orders" five years before his death. He was one of the original
-petitioners of the charter, which complained that the above rabble of
-doctors could not read the Book (Bible). Now see the ignorance--the
-hypocrisy of the man!
-
-Dr. Caius, who wrote his epitaph, says of Linacre, "He certainly was not a
-very profound theologian, for a short time before his death he read the
-New Testament for the first time, when, so greatly was he astonished at
-finding the rules of Christianity so widely at variance with their
-practice, that he threw down the sacred volume in a passion, saying,
-'Either this is not gospel, or we are not Christians.'" This was just
-prior to 1600.
-
-This Dr. Caius is supposed to be the same character whom Shakspeare
-introduced in his "_Merry Wives of Windsor_;" and as it is a fact patent
-to all that the great poet had no very exalted opinion of doctors, and
-would "throw physic to the dogs," it has been suggested that Caius was
-produced by him on that ground.
-
-There are others of this and a later period, whom, though ranking amongst
-the greatest of humbugs, we defer mentioning here, but will notice in our
-chapter on quacks.
-
-Mr. Jeaffreson, in his excellent work, "Book About Doctors," to which work
-I am indebted for several anecdotes, says,--
-
-"The lives of three physicians--Sydenham, Sir Hans Sloane, and
-Heberden--completely bridge over the uncertain period between old
-empiricism and modern science."
-
-The former, Dr. Thomas Sydenham, was born at Windford Eagle, Dorsetshire,
-England, in 1624, and was esteemed as an excellent physician and profound
-scholar of his day. Nothing is known of his boyhood. For a time he was a
-soldier. He was about forty years old when admitted a member of the
-College of Physicians. Dr. Richard Blackmore, his contemporary, who was
-but a pedagogue at the outstart himself, but afterwards knighted as Sir
-Richard, says of Dr. Sydenham, "He was only a disbanded officer, who
-entered upon the practice of medicine for a maintenance, without any
-preparatory learning." The fact of his possessing a diploma went for
-nothing, since Dr. Meyersbach obtained his about this time for a few
-shillings, and without the rudiments of an education, made a splendid
-living out of the credulity even of the most learned and fashionable
-classes of English society, and arrived at the height of honor and
-distinction.
-
-The reader must admit that diplomas were cheap honors, when one was
-granted to a dog! A young English gentleman, for the sport of the thing,
-paid the price of a medical diploma soon after Dr. Meyersbach's was
-granted, and had it duly recorded in the archives of the college (Erfurth)
-as having been awarded to Anglicus Ponto.
-
-"And who was Anglicus Ponto?"
-
-"None other than the gentleman's dog--a fine mastiff."
-
-But this question was not asked till too late to prevent the joke. It had
-the good effect, however, to raise at once the price of degrees.
-
-Dr. Sydenham published several medical works, copies of which are now
-extant, but his pretensions to skill availed him but little in time of
-need. His prescriptions--some of them, at least--were very absurd, and
-during his latter years, while enjoying a lucrative practice, and
-possessing the utmost confidence of the _bon ton_, he suffered
-excruciating pains from the gout, which, with other complications, ended
-his days. "Physician, heal thyself."
-
-[Illustration: DR. ANGLICUS PONTO.]
-
-Dr. Blackmore, an aspirant to medical fame, applied to Dr. Sydenham, while
-residing in Pall Mall, with the following inquiry:--
-
-"What is the best course of study for a medical student?"
-
-"Read Don Quixote," was Sydenham's reply. "It is a very good book. I read
-it yet." I find this in a biographical dictionary of 1779. While some
-biographers endeavor to pass this off as a joke, it is a well-known fact
-that the doctor was a sceptic in medicine, and those who knew him best
-believe that he meant just what he said.
-
-On the arrival of Dr. Sloane in London, he waited on Dr. Sydenham, as
-being the great gun of the town at that time, and presented a letter of
-introduction, in which an enthusiastic friend had set forth Sloane's
-qualifications in glowing language, as being perfected in anatomy, botany,
-and the various branches of medicine. Sydenham finished the letter, threw
-it on the table, eyed the young man very sharply, and said,--
-
-"Sir, this is all very fine, on paper--very fine; but it won't do.
-Anatomy! botany! Nonsense. Why, sir, I know an old woman in Covent Garden
-who better understands botany; and as for anatomy, no doubt my butcher can
-dissect a joint quite as well. No, no, young man; this is all stuff. You
-must go to the bedside; it is only there that you can learn disease."
-
-In spite of this mortifying reception, however, Sydenham afterwards took
-the greatest interest in Dr. Sloane, frequently taking the young man with
-him in his chariot on going his rounds.
-
-In "Lives of English Physicians," the author, in writing of Dr. Sydenham,
-says, "At the commencement of his practice, it is handed down to us, that
-it was his ordinary custom, when consulted by patients for the first time,
-to hear attentively their story, and then reply, "Well, I will consider
-your case, and in a few days will prescribe something for you;" thereby
-gaining time to look up such a case. He soon learned that this
-deliberation would not do, as some forgot to return after "a few days,"
-and to save his fees he was obliged, _nolens volens_, to prescribe on the
-spot.
-
-A further proof of his contemptible opinion of deriving knowledge from
-books, as expressed above to Dr. Blackmore, is exemplified and
-corroborated in an address to Dr. Mapletoft (1675).
-
-"The medical art could not be learned so well and surely as by use and
-experience, and that he who would pay the nicest and most accurate
-attention to the symptoms of distempers, would succeed best in finding out
-the true means of cure."
-
-"Riding on horseback," he says, in one of his books, "will cure all
-diseases except confirmed consumption." How about curing gout?
-
-A very amusing, though painful picture, is drawn by Dr. Winslow, a
-reliable author of the seventeenth century, in his book, "Physic and
-Physicians:"--
-
-"Dr. Sydenham suffered extremely from the gout. One day, during the latter
-part of his life, he was sitting near an open window, on the ground floor
-of his residence in St. James Square, inspiring the cool breeze on a
-summer's afternoon, and reflecting, with a serene countenance and great
-complacency on the alleviation of human misery that his skill enabled him
-to give. Whilst this divine man was enjoying this delicious reverie, and
-occasionally sipping his favorite beverage from a silver tankard, in which
-was immersed a sprig of rosemary, a sneak thief approached, and seeing the
-helpless condition of the old doctor, stole the cup, right before his
-eyes, and ran away with it. The doctor was too lame to run after him, and
-before he could stir to ring and give alarm the thief was well off."
-
-[Illustration: MISFORTUNES NEVER COME SINGLY.]
-
-This reminds one of a story of an old man who stood in a highway, leaning
-on his staff, and crying, in a feeble, croaking voice, "Stop thief! stop
-thief!"
-
-"What is the matter, sir?" inquired a fellow, approaching.
-
-"O, a villain has stolen my hat from my head, and run away."
-
-"Your hat!" looking at the bare head; "why didn't you run after him?"
-
-"O, my dear sir, I can't run a step. I am very lame."
-
-"Can't run! then here goes your wig." And so saying, the fellow caught the
-poor old man's wig, and scampered away at the top of his speed.
-
-Dr. Sydenham died December 29, 1689. He could not be termed a quack, but
-certainly he was a consummate humbug.
-
-An author, before quoted, after copying a description of the "poor
-physician" of the age, adds,--
-
-"How it calls to mind the image of Dr. Oliver Goldsmith, when, with a
-smattering of medical knowledge and a German diploma, he tried to pick out
-of the miseries and ignorance of his fellow-creatures the means of keeping
-soul and body together! He, too, poet and doctor, would have sold a pot of
-rouge to a faded beauty, or a bottle of hair dye, or a nostrum warranted
-to cure the bite of a mad dog."
-
-"Set a rogue to catch a rogue." And to this principle we are indebted for
-the exposition of many fallacies and humbugs pursued by early physicians
-in order to gain practice.
-
-"Dr. Radcliffe," says Dr. Hannes, "on his arrival in London, employed half
-of the porters in town to call for him at the coffee-houses (a famous
-resort of physicians of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries) and
-places of public resort, so that his name might become known."
-
-On the other hand, Radcliffe accused Dr. Hannes of the same trick a few
-years later. Doctors were doctors' own worst enemies. Instead of standing
-by each other of the same school, in lip service, or passing by each
-other's errors and imperfections in silence, as they do nowadays, they
-quarrelled continually, accusing each other of the very tricks they
-practised themselves.
-
-Of Dr. Meade it was confidently asserted, that without practice at first,
-he opened extensive correspondence with all the nurses and midwives in his
-vicinity, associated and conversed with apothecaries and gossips, who,
-hoping for his trade, would recommend him as a skilful practitioner. The
-ruse worked, and soon the doctor found his calls were _bona fide_. This is
-a trick that some American physicians we know of may have learned from Dr.
-Meade. Certainly they know and practise the deception.
-
-When Dr. Hannes went to London, he opened the campaign with a coach and
-four. The carriage was of the most imposing appearance, the horses were
-the best bloods, sleek and high-spirited, the harnesses and caparisons of
-the richest mountings of silver and gold, with the most elegant trimmings.
-
-"By Jove, Radcliffe!" exclaimed Meade, "Dr. Hannes' horses are the finest
-I have ever seen."
-
-"Umph," growled Radcliffe, "then he will be able to sell them for all the
-more." But Dr. Radcliffe's _prognosis_ was at fault for once; and
-notwithstanding all the prejudice that Radcliffe and his friends could
-bring to bear against Hannes, and the lampooning verses spread broadcast
-against him, he kept his "fine horses," and rode into a flourishing
-business.
-
-To make his name known, Dr. Hannes used to send liveried footmen running
-about the streets, with directions to poke their heads into every coach
-they met, and inquire anxiously, "Is Dr. Hannes here?" "Is this Dr.
-Hannes' carriage?" etc.
-
-Acting upon these orders, one of these fellows, after looking into every
-carriage from Whitehall to Royal Exchange, ran into a coffee-house, which
-was one of the great places of meeting for members of the medical
-profession. Several physicians were present, among whom was Radcliffe.
-
-"Gentlemen," said the liveried servant, hat in hand, "can your honors tell
-me if Dr. Hannes is present?"
-
-"Who wants Dr. Hannes, fellow?" demanded Radcliffe.
-
-"Lord A. and Lord B., your honor," replied the man.
-
-"No, no, friend," responded the doctor, with pleasant irony; "those lords
-don't want _your master_; 'tis he who wants them."
-
-The humbug exploded, but Hannes had got the start before this occurred.
-
-A worthy biographer begins thus, in writing of Dr. Radcliffe: "The
-Jacobite partisan, the physician without learning, the luxurious _bon
-vivant_, Radcliffe, who grudged the odd sixpence of his tavern score,"
-etc., "was born in Yorkshire, in the year 1650."
-
-But notwithstanding Radcliffe's plebeian birth, he died rich, therefore
-respected--a fact which hides many sins and imperfections. He not only
-humbugged the people of his day into the belief that he was a learned and
-eminent physician, but by his shrewdness in disposing of his gains, in
-bestowing wealth where it would tell in after years, when his body had
-returned to the dust from whence it came,--such as giving fifty thousand
-dollars to the Oxford University as a fund for the establishment of the
-great "Radcliffe Library," etc.,--he succeeded in humbugging subsequent
-generations into the same belief.
-
-Certainly there is room for a few more such humbugs.
-
-Dr. Barnard de Mandeville, in "Essays on Charity and Charity Schools,"
-says of Radcliffe, "That a man with small skill in physic, and hardly any
-learning, should by vile arts get into practice, and lay up wealth, is no
-mighty wonder; but that he should so deeply work himself into the good
-opinion of the world as to gain the general esteem of a nation, and
-establish a reputation beyond all contemporaries, with no other qualities
-but a perfect knowledge of mankind, and a capacity of making the most of
-it, is something extraordinary."
-
-Mandeville further accuses him of "an insatiable greediness after wealth,
-no regard for religion, or affection for kindred, no compassion for the
-poor, and hardly any humanity to his fellow-creatures; gave no proofs that
-he loved his country, had a public spirit, or love of the arts, books, or
-literature;" and asks, in summing up all this, "What must we judge of his
-motives, the principle he acted from, when after his death we find that he
-left but a mere trifle among his (poor) relatives who stood in need, and
-left an immense treasure to a university that did not want it?"
-
-"Radcliffe was not endowed with a kindly nature," says another writer.
-"Meade, I love you," he is represented as saying to his fascinating
-adulator, "and I will tell you a secret to make your fortune. Use all
-mankind ill."
-
-Radcliffe had practised what he preached. Though mean and penurious, he
-could not brook meanness in others.
-
-The rich miser, John Tyson, approximating his end, magnanimously resolved
-to pay two of his three million guineas to Dr. Radcliffe for medical
-advice. The miserable old man, accompanied by his wife, came up to London,
-and tottered into the doctor's office at Bloomsbury Square.
-
-"I wish to consult you, sir; here are two guineas."
-
-"You may go, sir," exclaimed Radcliffe.
-
-The old miser had trusted that he was unknown, and he might pass for a
-poor wretch, unable to pay the five guineas expected from the wealthy, as
-a single consultation fee.
-
-"You may go home and die, and be d----d; for the grave and the devil are
-ready for Jack Tyson of Hackney, who has amassed riches out of the public
-and the tears of orphans and widows."
-
-As the miserable old man turned away, Radcliffe exclaimed, "You'll be a
-dead man in less than ten days."
-
-It required little medical skill, in the feeble condition of the old man,
-in order to give this correct prognosis.
-
-Radcliffe was the Barnum of doctors. "_Omnia mutantur, et nos mutamus in
-illis_," exclaimed Lotharius the First. But that "all things are changed,
-and we change with them," did not apply to medical humbugs during the
-seventeenth and eighteenth centuries--no, nor in the nineteenth century,
-as we will show, particularly in our articles on Quacks and Patent
-Medicines.
-
-[Illustration: THE MISER OUTWITS HIMSELF.]
-
-The requisites essential to success are amusingly described by a writer of
-the former time, as follows:--
-
-_First._ A decent black suit, and (if your credit will stretch so far), a
-plush jacket, not a pin the worse if threadbare as a tailor's cloak--it
-shows the more reverend antiquity.
-
-_Second._ You must carry a caduceus, or cane, like Mercury, capped with a
-civet-box (or snuff-box like Sir Richard's), and must walk with becoming
-gravity, as if in deep contemplation upon an arbitrament between life and
-death.
-
-_Third._ You must hire convenient lodgings in a respectable neighborhood,
-with a hatch[1] at the door; have your reception-room hung with pictures
-of some celebrated physicians, ancient historical scenes, and anatomical
-plates, and the floor belittered with gallipots and half-empty bottles.
-Any sexton will furnish your window with a skull, in hope of your custom.
-
-_Fourth._ Let your desk never be without some old musty Greek and Arabic
-authors, and on your table some work on anatomy, open at a picture page,
-to amuse, if not astonish spectators, and carelessly thrown on the same a
-few gilt shillings, to represent so many guineas received that morning as
-fees.
-
-_Fifth._ Fail not to patronize neighboring alehouses, which may, in turn,
-recommend you to inquirers; and hold correspondence with all the nurses
-and midwives whose address you may obtain, to applaud your skill at
-gossiping.
-
-_Sixth._ Be not over modest in airy pretensions, not forgetting that
-loquaciousness and impudence are essentials to gaining a fool's
-confidence. In case you are naturally backward in language, or have an
-impediment of speech, you are recommended to persevere in a habit of
-mysterious and profound silence before patients, rendered impressive by
-grave nods and ahems.
-
-
-EARLY FRENCH PHYSICIANS.
-
-From what meagre biographies we have of French doctors of the past, we are
-led to believe that, as at the present time, the humbugs outnumbered the
-honest medical practitioners. In the days of Clovis and the great
-Charlemagne, before the power of Rome was broken, before Russia was a
-nation, and when England was subject to the caprices of many masters,
-there were many surgeons employed in the armies of these kings, but the
-priests and wizards were the physicians to the great public. The surgeons
-possessed all the knowledge there was to be attained at that distant day;
-yet they made the heart, not the brain, the centre of thought, and "the
-palace of the soul," knew little of anatomy, and nothing of the
-circulation of the blood.
-
-The physicians of later periods held court positions by flattery, not by
-merit. This was particularly true up to and inclusive of the reign of
-"LOUIS LE GRAND." Those who attended as physicians upon the court of this
-remarkable monarch of France for seventy-two years, received no stipend
-whatever, except the honor of holding so exalted a position as court
-physician to such a mighty ruler; and, notwithstanding the outside
-practice that this elevated station necessarily brought them, but few
-physicians could long bear the enormous expense attending that position.
-
-Louis resided at a distance from his capital. His changes of residence
-were continual, and not without a design, and chiefly made for the purpose
-of creating and maintaining a number of artificial distinctions. By these
-he kept the court in a state of constant anxiety, expense, and
-expectation. When the next proposed change was announced, he had made it
-the fashion for courtiers to accompany him,--to Versailles, to St.
-Germain, or Marly,--and to occupy apartments near him, and the
-extravagance and magnificence in which he made it incumbent upon his
-followers to appear, with the frequent prescribed changes, rendered it too
-expensive a position for a man to sustain, unless possessed of a previous
-ample fortune. The surgeons of the armies were paid for their services.
-
-Both Drs. O'Meara and Antommarchi have testified to Napoleon's scepticism
-in medicine and distrust of physicians. But "surgeons are godlike," he is
-represented as saying, and upon all worthy he bestowed the "Legion of
-Honor."
-
-At St. Helena, Dr. Antommarchi was endeavoring to persuade the emperor to
-take a simple remedy which he had prepared for him.
-
-"Bah!" exclaimed Napoleon, "I cannot; it is beyond my power to take
-medicine."
-
-"I pray your majesty to try," entreated the doctor.
-
-"The aversion I have for the slightest preparation is inconceivable. I
-have exposed myself to the dangers of the battle-field with indifference;
-I have seen death without betraying emotion; but to take medicine, I
-cannot," was his reply.
-
-Madame Bertrand, who was present, tried also to persuade the emperor to
-take the physician's prescription.
-
-"How do you manage to take all those abominable pills and drugs, Madame
-Bertrand, which the doctor is continually prescribing for you?" asked the
-emperor.
-
-"O, I take them without stopping to think about it," was her reply; "and I
-beg your majesty will do the same."
-
-Still the dying man shook his head, and appealed to General Montholon, who
-gave a similar answer.
-
-"Do you think it will relieve me from this oppression, doctor?" he finally
-asked of Dr. Antommarchi.
-
-"I do, my dear sire; and I entreat your majesty to drink it."
-
-"What is it?" asked Napoleon, eying the glass suspiciously.
-
-"Merely some orange water," was the reply.
-
-"Give it me, then;" and the emperor seized the cup and drank the contents
-at one draught.
-
-"The emperor has no faith in medicine, and never takes any," said Las
-Cases, in his memoirs.
-
-About the year 1723, a man sprang into notice in Paris, styling himself
-Dr. Villars. He claimed relationship to the Duke Louis Hector Villars, and
-the Abbe Pons is represented as saying that "Dr. Villars is superior to
-the great marshal, Louis Hector. The duke kills men,--the doctor prolongs
-their existence."
-
-Villars declared that his uncle, who had been killed at the age of one
-hundred years, and who might, but for his accidental death, have lived
-another half century, had confided to him the secret of his longevity.
-It consisted of a medicine, which, if taken according to directions
-accompanying each bottle, would prolong the life of the fortunate
-possessor _ad infinitum_.
-
-Villars employed several assistants to stand on the corners of the
-streets, and who, when a funeral was seen passing, would exclaim,--
-
-"Ah! if the unfortunate deceased had but taken Dr. Villars' nostrum, he
-might now be riding in his own carriage, instead of in a hearse."
-
-"Of course," says our authority, "the rabble believed the testimony of
-such respectable and _disinterested_ appearing witnesses, and made haste
-to obtain the doctor's nostrum--and instructions." And here is where the
-laugh comes in.
-
-The patient received positive instructions to live temperately, to eat
-moderately, bathe daily, to avoid all excesses, to take steady and
-moderate exercise, to rise early, and, in fact, to obey all the laws of
-nature. Of course those who persevered in these instructions were greatly
-benefited thereby, and the dupes, attributing their recovery to the use of
-the nostrum, lauded the doctor.
-
-The medicine, put up in a small bottle, carefully labelled, and sold for
-the modest sum of five francs, consisted of water from the River Seine,
-tinctured with a quantity of spirits of nitre. A few were wise enough to
-see the trick, but most people believed in the efficacy of the nostrum.
-
-Unfortunately for Villars, he intrusted his secret to another, the humbug
-leaked out, and Othello's occupation was gone; but not, however, until
-Villars had amassed a large fortune from the credulity of the public.
-
-This brings to mind a story, the truth of which can be vouched for,
-respecting a New England doctor. His labels contained the following
-instructions:--
-
-"The doctor charges you to take care of the health God has given you. In
-eating and exercise be moderate. Avoid bad habits and excesses that sap
-the life from you. Use no salt pork, newly-baked fine bread, vinegar,
-coffee, strong tea, or spirits while taking this medicine. 'Tis not in the
-power of man to restore you to health unless you regard these directions."
-
-"What do you think of this?" asked the editor of a journal of Dr. P.,
-former professor of H---- College, presenting a vial of the high dilution,
-as the medicine was, labelled as above.
-
-"All very well," the doctor replied, after having read the label; "for if
-the vial contains nothing but water, with just sufficient alcohol to keep
-it, a strict observance of these directions might restore you to health."
-
-"You have treated my case for a long time, doctor, and have never given me
-such instructions. Pray why don't _you_ get up something similar?"
-
-"Well, what was his reply?" I asked, as the editor hesitated.
-
-"O, he has not yet informed me."
-
-
-AMERICAN HUMBUGS.
-
-Humbug is not necessarily synonymous with ignorance. So far from it, that
-doubtless a very perfect and successful man in the art of humbugging must
-be educated to his business.
-
-The following true statement is a case in point: A physician of New York,
-now in excellent standing, who "rolls in riches," and whose own carriage
-is drawn by a span of horses that Bonner once might have envied, was but a
-few years ago as poor as a church mouse, and as unknown as Scripture. He
-had graduated with honors in Transylvania University, opened an office in
-a country town, where his knowledge and talents were unappreciated, and
-which place he abandoned after a twelve months' patient waiting for a
-practice which did not come. He had become poorer every month, and but
-for the kind assistance of early friends, must have perished of want.
-
-"Either it is distressingly healthy here, or the good people are afraid to
-trust their lives and healths in the hands of an inexperienced physician,"
-he remarked to a friend to whom he applied for means for a new start
-elsewhere.
-
-"And where will you try your luck next?" inquired his friend.
-
-"In New York city."
-
-"In New York city?"
-
-"Yes, and I shall there succeed," he exclaimed, with great determination.
-
-"Well, I hope in my heart of hearts you will," was his friend's reply, as
-he kindly loaned him the required sum of money.
-
-Had his friend asked the advice of a third party before making the loan,
-doubtless the answer would have been something like the following, though
-it was respecting another case:--
-
-"Dr. J. wants me to loan him some money for thirty days; do you suppose he
-will refund it?"
-
-"What! lend him money?" was the reply. "He return it? No, sir; if you lend
-that man an emetic he would never _return_ it."
-
-On his borrowed funds,--neither principal nor interest of which his kind
-friend ever expected him to be able to return,--the doctor entered the
-great metropolis. He hired a house in a respectable locality, and hung out
-his sign. During his long quiet days in the country village he had read a
-great deal, and was "up to the tricks" of his predecessors. He had
-particularly posted himself on the ways and means resorted to by some of
-those physicians, of whom we have already made brief mention, for getting
-into practice.
-
-[Illustration: COMMENCING A PRACTICE IN NEW YORK.]
-
-"What avails it that I know as much as other physicians who have entered
-upon a practice? What does my diploma amount to if I have no patients?"
-he asked himself over and again. Practice was now his want, and this is
-the way he obtained it. Having read of a celebrated physician, who kept
-his few patients a long time in waiting, under pretence that he was
-preoccupied by the many who fortunately had preceded, our young physician
-adopted that great man's tactics. For want of patients to keep in waiting,
-he hired some decently dressed lackeys to apply regularly at his front
-door, at specified times, and wait till the colored servant admitted them,
-one at a time. Each was passed out after a half hour's supposed
-consultation, and the next admitted. The neighbors and others passing,
-seeing patients continually in waiting, some with a hand, a foot, face, or
-other parts bound up, were led to read his sign, and soon a _bona fide_
-patient applied, who, in turn, was kept waiting a long time,
-notwithstanding the young doctor's anxiety to finger a real medical fee
-from his first New York patient. Others followed, the lackeys were
-dismissed, and the physician's practice was established. His merit kept
-what his shrewdness had obtained.
-
-Cannot the reader avouch for the reputed extensive rides of some country
-doctor, who, without a known patient, harnessed his bare-ribbed old horse
-to his crazy gig, and drove furiously about the country, returning by a
-roundabout way, without having made a single professional visit, thereby
-humbugging the honest country people into a belief that he had innumerable
-patients in his route?
-
-To quite another class of humbugs belongs the subject of the following
-sketch. I have had the pleasure of meeting him but twice--may I never meet
-him again. The first interview was at the board of a country hotel.
-
-[Illustration: GRACE BEFORE MEAT.]
-
-I had arrived late at evening by rail, and ordered a light supper. When
-the tea-bell had summoned me, I found a large, phlegmatic individual
-seated opposite at the table, who possibly had arrived by the same
-conveyance as myself. His person was quite repulsive. He was probably
-fifty years of age, his eyes watery and restless, his thin stock of
-hair--indicating a corresponding poverty of brain--black, streaked by
-gray, was stuck back professionally (!) over a low bump of veneration, and
-high organs of firmness and self-esteem, which, with a Roman nose, large,
-protruding under jaw, and wide, open mouth, gave him a striking
-appearance, at least. But what was most observable was his thin, uneven,
-scraggy whiskers, uncombed, and besmeared by tobacco juice and bits of the
-weed, drooling down over their uncertain length, over waistcoat, and so
-out of sight below the table. His coat sleeves had evidently been
-substituted for a handkerchief when too great a surplus of tobacco juice
-obstructed his face. He bent his great, watery eyes over towards me, and
-opened the ball by suggesting that I ask a blessing over the food so
-bountifully and temptingly laid before us. Having too much compassion on
-the present exhausted state of my stomach to disregard its immediate
-demands, and too little confidence in the veneration of my _vis-a-vis_ to
-return the request, I went to eating, while he closed one eye, keeping the
-other on a plate of hot steak just placed before him by the table girl. I
-have since been strongly reminded of him by the character "Bishopriggs,"
-in Wilkie Collins's book, "_Man and Wife_." I think, however, for
-hypocrisy, the present subject exceeded Bishopriggs. Having wagged his
-enormous jaw a few times, by way of grace, he began eating and conversing
-alternately.
-
-"I take it, friend, you're a railroad conductor, coming in so late," he
-suggested, between mouthfuls.
-
-"No," was my brief reply.
-
-"Perhaps, cap'n, you're a drummer. Sell dry or wet goods?"
-
-"No."
-
-"A newspaper man?"
-
-I merely shook my head.
-
-"Then a patent medicine vender?"
-
-"No!" emphatically.
-
-"Not a minister," he asserted. "Perhaps a doctor," he perseveringly
-continued.
-
-"Yes, sir; I am a physician."
-
-"O! ah! indeed! I am rejoiced to learn it. Give me your hand, sir," he
-exclaimed, rising and reaching his enormous palm across the table. "I am
-rejoiced, as I said before, to meet a brother."
-
-"A _brother_!" I repeated, with unfeigned surprise and disgust.
-
-"Yes, a brother! I, too, am a doctor. I have the honor," etc., for the
-next ten minutes, while I hastened to finish my supper.
-
-His last interrogation was what a college boy would call a "stunner."
-
-"_Do you think, sir, that the Fillopian ducks are the same in a male as
-they are in a female?_"
-
-[Dr. S., a quack living in Winsted, Conn., once said to an educated
-physician, that he sometimes found difficulty in introducing a female
-catheter on account of the "prostrate" (meaning _prostate_) gland,--which
-exists only in the male!]
-
-I saw him once after the above interesting interview. He entered the drug
-house of Rust, Bird, & Brother, Boston, just as I was about to go out. I
-could not refrain from turning my attention towards him, as I recognized
-his stentorian voice.
-
-"Have you got any _Bonyset arbs_?" was all I waited to hear. I
-subsequently learned that he was known in Vermont and part of New York
-State by the _sobriquet_ of "Dr. Pusbelly."
-
-The following story respecting "Dr. Pusbelly," related in my hearing by a
-stage-driver, is in perfect keeping with the character of the man, as he
-impressed me in my first interview at the country hotel.
-
-
-DR. PUSBELLY.
-
-One sunny day in autumn I had occasion to take a long journey "away down
-in Maine," when and where there was no railroad. I was seated on the
-outside of a four-horse stage-coach, with three or four other passengers,
-one of whom was a lady, who preferred riding in that elevated station to
-being cramped up inside the coach with eight persons, besides sundry
-babies, a poodle dog, and a parrot.
-
-"Sam," our driver, was a sociable fellow, full of pleasant stories,--and
-Medford rum, though he was considered a perfectly safe Jehu. The greatest
-drawback to his otherwise agreeable yarns was his habit of swearing.
-Notwithstanding the presence of the lady, he would occasionally round his
-periods and emphasize his sentences with an expletive which had better
-have been omitted.
-
-"Can't you tell a story just as well without swearing, Sam?" I inquired.
-
-"O, no; it comes second natur. Why, cap'n, everybody swears sometimes. And
-that reminds me--Git up, Jerry" (to the horse). "There was an old doctor,
-Pill--Pilgarlic, I called him, on account of his pills, and the strong
-effluvia from his cataract mouth. He was up round Champlain, where I drove
-before the d--d railroads ruined the great stage business. Well, he was as
-religious as a cuss,--that ain't swearin', is it, cap'n? Well, he came
-round there pill-peddling, you see, and in order to make the old women
-believe in his (expletive) medicines--"
-
-"Don't swear, Sam. You can tell the story better without. Come, try,"
-interrupted a passenger, with a twinkle of fun in his expressive eyes.
-
-"Who's telling this story,--you or me?" exclaimed Sam, with a wink.
-
-"Yes, he talked pills by Bible doctrine, swore his essences by the blood
-of the Lamb, the ---- old hypocrite. I knowed he was a blamed old
-hypocrite, for I had to drive him round every onct in a while, and he
-never failed, in season and out of place, to exhort me to seek salvation,
-and a new heart, and pure understanding, while, all the time, the filthy
-tobacco juice slobbered all over his filthier mug, and down his scattering
-whiskers;--now and then one, like the scattering trees in yonder
-field,--all over his vest; and his coat sleeves were as bad, from frequent
-drawing across his face. Yes, he said, 'Jesus,' but he meant pills. He
-said, 'Get wine and milk, without money and without price,' but he meant,
-buy his essences, _with_ money. The old gals went crazy over him, and the
-pill market was lively. The louder he prayed and exhorted, the faster he
-sold his medicines.
-
-"One Sunday afternoon he wanted me to shy him over the lake; so, taking
-his Hem-book and Bible in his coat pockets, and his two tin trunks of
-medicine, he followed me to the shore. He seated his great carcass in the
-starn of the boat, while I rowed him over the lake. All the way he
-slobbered tobacco juice; and gabbled his religion at me, while
-occasionally I swore mine back at him.
-
-"When we got over, I jumped out, and told him to set steady till I hauled
-the boat up further; but he didn't mind, and rose up in the starn with his
-kit, a tin trunk in each hand, just as I gave the craft a yerk, when over
-backwards he went kerflounce into the water,--carcass, trunks, Bible,
-pills, and essences, all into the lake. O, the d----! You ought to have
-seen him. Up he came, puffin' and blowin' like a big whale! Then I fished
-him out with the boat-hook, and went for his trunks. No sooner had he
-reached _terror firmer_ than, blowin' the surplus water and tobacco out of
-his throat, _he commenced swearin' at me_. Religion went by the board! O,
-Jerusalem! Such a blessing as he gave me I never before heard. I knowed it
-was pent up in him, the ---- old sinner, and he only wanted the occasion
-to let it out. The bath done it! It was the cussidest baptism I ever
-witnessed in the hull course of my life."
-
-"Was he called Dr. Pusbelly?" I suggested, at the close of the narrative.
-
-"Yes, that was his name; but I called him Old Pilgarlic, blame him."
-
-
-"PROFESSOR BREWSTER."
-
-When I lived in Hartford, Conn., some years ago, there resided in that
-city a black man, then somewhat noted as a "seer" among various classes of
-whites, as well as blacks, and who resides there still, and has since
-become quite famous. In what category to place this man,--Professor
-Brewster, so called,--it is perhaps a little difficult to determine;
-whether among "clairvoyants," "animal magnetizers," "natural doctors,"
-"fortune-tellers," or what, or all, it must be admitted that he is a
-"character," and wields great influence among certain classes. Nature made
-him a superior man of his race, and what thorough, early education
-might have done for him, we are left to conjecture. So noted is
-Professor Brewster, that I have thought him a proper subject for comment
-here, as a living illustration of what a man of subtle genius may
-accomplish, though wholly without "book learning," or other approved
-instruction, in the field of medicine.
-
-[Illustration: OLD PILGARLIC TAKES A BATH.]
-
-A reliable friend of mine has gathered the following facts and statements
-in regard to Professor Brewster, and taken pains to secure the
-accompanying engraving of the veritable professor, as he appears in the
-year 1872.
-
-[Illustration: PROFESSOR BREWSTER.]
-
-"The full name of this remarkable man, now residing in Hartford, Conn., is
-Worthington Hooker Erasmus Brewster, commonly called, by those who venture
-on familiarity, 'Worthy' Brewster, for short. Worthy is of full medium
-height, powerfully built, and well knitted together. His head is very well
-moulded, and also extremely large, but not disproportionally large for his
-massive shoulders. He was born of 'poor but honest' (though undoubtedly
-black) parents, in the town of Granby, Conn., on the 21st day of January,
-1812.
-
-"The boy Worthy, at the age of six years, went with his mother (his father
-having died) and her new husband to the hills of Litchfield County to
-live, and was there brought up to youth's estate, enjoying the
-opportunities of education at the district school in what is now _West_
-Winsted. The places of the birth and early rearing of Professor Brewster
-are fixed beyond question, which fact will, it is hoped, forbid the
-contention of other towns, and of 'seven cities,' or more, over the
-question, after he shall have passed away. Worthy was not attracted to
-literature and science, however. He seemed to spurn these, as unworthy of
-his natural gifts to waste their time upon. But he learned to read, and
-can write a 'fair hand.' Seeing no special need of being cramped and
-confined by the narrow rules of spelling, Worthy has invented a style of
-orthography for himself, and writes a compact, forcible, and even masterly
-letter.
-
-"But we must not linger on the details of his youth. Suffice it that
-Worthy grew up a powerful lad, and became the conquering athlete of all
-the region about his home. No man, of hundreds who tried, was able to
-successfully wrestle with him. The strongest men were no match for him. He
-was as agile as he was powerful, and to this day retains great elasticity
-of foot and limb. He was a mysterious fellow also, and, before he was
-sixteen years old, was regarded by his friends and acquaintances, of
-African descent, especially, as a sort of prophet, while many whites
-considered him a necromancer, and people all about declared he 'had the
-devil in him' to no ordinary extent. Worthy claimed, in those days, to
-'see visions,' and many stories are current among his contemporaries
-regarding his then being able to 'charm snakes,' and do other miraculous
-things. Abundant witnesses, such as they are, can now be found ready to
-take their oaths that they have seen Worthy, 'with their own eyes,'
-perform his miracles. It is certain that these believe in him.
-
-"At the age of twenty Worthy went to New York city, where (in Lawrence
-Street) he lived for the period of a year, successfully practising the art
-of fortune-telling. While there Worthy first discovered his powers as a
-'mesmerizer,' or magnetic physician. A school-girl, knowing that Worthy
-'practised the healing art' somewhat, and suffering intensely with a
-toothache, jeeringly asked him, 'Why can't you think of something to cure
-my toothache?' Whereupon Worthy clapped his hands to her head, and
-vigorously drew them down her cheeks, half in fun, half seriously, when,
-to his astonishment, he found that all his (sound) teeth ached terribly,
-while she declared that the pain had left hers. Such is his story; and it
-is by no means an improbable one; for animal magnetism is a fixed fact
-(however it may be analyzed or defined), and diseases are often
-'magnetically' alleviated; and Worthy, with his powerful body and superb
-health, as well as native force of intellect, may be as naturally gifted,
-as a magnetic operator, as even Mesmer himself. Indeed, the writer is
-inclined to believe that Worthy's great power over many people is largely
-due to his superior vital forces.
-
-"Worthy now turned his attention considerably to diseases, but returned to
-Litchfield County for a while. At the age of twenty-six, he resolved 'to
-see more of the world,' and in the capacity of steward embarked at New
-Haven on board the brig Marshal, Captain Brison, freighted with horses,
-and bound for a long trading voyage to the Island of Demarara, and to
-South America, where they coasted during the winters, and took in coffee,
-etc., in exchange for their cargo. Worthy was gone from home on this
-voyage two years and two months, during which time he learned many
-mysteries. He was a foreign traveller now, and his polite and
-professional education may be said to have at that time become
-'finished.'
-
-"Since then Worthy has practised medicine to considerable extent, told
-fortunes, 'looked' (in a crystal) for stolen property, and, if we are to
-believe half of what is attested by many astute people (such as police
-detectives, etc.), has, by force of his great sagacity, or in some way (he
-would say, through clairvoyance), managed to achieve great success in
-ferreting out lost or stolen treasures, and bringing thieves to grief.
-
-"People of all classes in society visit him with their troubles of mind
-and body. But the major part of his clientage is females. The wives and
-accomplished daughters of wealthy men, as well as poor and ignorant women,
-come from distant parts of the country to consult him, and a great number
-of the first ladies of Hartford also consult him. Worthy carries on the
-business of a 'chair-seater,' partly to occupy his time during the
-intervals of his divinations, and partly to provide an excuse for cautious
-persons to call on him for consultations. Those who consult him do so
-mostly regarding secret matters, and they pretend to visit him to engage
-him to seat chairs!
-
-"He is consulted in respect to all sorts of diseases, and by unsuccessful,
-perplexed, or doubting lovers; by husbands whose wives have absconded, and
-who are anxious to call them back; by wives in regard to their wandering
-husbands; by hosts of superstitious people (and these are found in all
-classes), who believe themselves 'possessed by devils,' or demons. He is
-expected to cast out the devils (and he does so as surely as most doctors
-cure imaginary diseases). People who have lost property, and officers of
-the law in search of stolen goods, consult him; and bachelors and widowers
-in want of wives, and countless maids (both old and young), anxious to get
-married, visit him and receive his sweet consolations, or mourn over the
-ill luck which he prognosticates for them. His correspondence is large. A
-hasty glance through several hundred letters in 'Professor Brewster's'
-possession convinced the writer that the amount and character of the
-superstition and ignorance which exist in these days, in our very midst,
-are probably but little conjectured by the more cultivated classes. They
-are indeed astounding, but are not confined, as we have before intimated,
-to the wholly illiterate classes. People competent to write letters with
-grammatical precision, and observing what would ordinarily be called an
-'excellent business style,' at least, in their composition, consult the
-professor; and so successful is Worthy in his diagnoses of and
-prescriptions for various diseases, that many of his patients write him
-letters overflowing with gratitude, while others voluntarily and
-admiringly attest his skill as a 'seer.' To what talent, 'gift,' or what
-secret of good luck, 'Professor Brewster' owes the many successes he wins
-(even though he may fail ten times more often than he succeeds), we
-cannot, of course, decide. But certain it is that he, with all his claims
-to a knowledge of the 'occult,' exists, practises his arts, and through a
-period of years has retained his old patients, and the postulants before
-his supposed demigodship, while adding constantly to their number. In this
-he is a remarkable man. He has accumulated quite a respectable property,
-and is decidedly one of the 'institutions' of the enlightened and
-cultivated city of Hartford.
-
-"It should be remarked here that Worthy was, during the late civil war, a
-true patriot. He was attached to the twenty-ninth regiment Connecticut
-Volunteers, under Colonel Wooster (a 'colored' regiment), and was 'gone to
-the war' over two years. His powers as a 'clairvoyant,' or 'fore-seer,'
-served him in the war, and he 'always knew what was coming,' he says. As a
-part of the curious history of the war, serving to show how little the
-people of the North understood, in the first years of the contest, that
-they were fighting for a great humanitary end,--the abolition of chattel
-slavery,--it may be noted here, that Worthy wrote to Governor Buckingham,
-in August, 1862, proposing to raise a black regiment, and the governor, by
-his secretary, replied to Worthy's proposition, that he then did 'not deem
-it expedient,'--which fact institutes a comparison between the judgments
-of the governor and Worthy, not uncomplimentary to the latter."
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-II.
-
-APOTHECARIES.
-
-    FIRST MENTION OF.--A POOR SPECIMEN.--ELIZABETHAN.--KING JAMES I.
-    [VI.].--ALLSPICE AND ALOES, SUGAR AND TARTAR EMETIC.--WAR.--PHYSICIAN
-    VS. APOTHECARY.--IGNORANCE.--STEALING A TRADE.--A LAUGHABLE
-    PRESCRIPTION.--"CASTER ILE."--MODERN DRUG SWALLOWING.--MISTAKES.--
-    "STEALS THE TOOLS ALSO."--SUBSTITUTES.--"A QUID."--A "SMELL" OF PATENT
-    MEDICINES.--"A SAMPLE CLERK."
-
-
-There are few occupations wherein Old Time has wrought so few changes as
-in that of the apothecary's. What it was four hundred years ago it is
-to-day! Who first invented its weights, measures, and symbols, I am unable
-to say; but it is a fact that they remain the same as when first made
-mention of by the earliest writers on the subject.
-
-Drop into the "corner drug store,"--and what corner has none!--examine the
-balances, the tables of weights and measures, the graduating glass, the
-signs for grains, scruples, ounces, and pounds, and you will find them the
-same as those used by the earliest known _medical_ apothecaries, by those
-of the Elizabethan period, or when King Lear (Lyr) said, "Give me an ounce
-of civet, good apothecary, to sweeten my imagination; there's money for
-thee."
-
-The money has changed; _names_ of drugs are somewhat altered; some new
-ones have taken the place of old ones; prescriptions changed in quality;
-but quantities, and modes of expressing them, are unchanged.
-
-"In the middle ages an apothecary was the keeper of any shop or warehouse,
-and an officer appointed to take charge of a magazine."--_Webster._
-
-We have good grounds for supposing this to have been the case in the time
-of the rebuilding of the wall of Jerusalem, more that two thousand years
-ago. Nehemiah informs us that the son of an apothecary assisted in
-"fortifying Jerusalem unto the broad wall." Was not this the office of an
-overseer, or "keeper of a magazine"? Various artisans were employed to
-perform certain portions of the work, and who more appropriate or better
-qualified to oversee the rebuilding of the fortifications than "an officer
-appointed to take charge of the magazines"?
-
-One more reference we draw from Scripture,[2] viz., in Exodus xxxvii. 29,
-where "the holy anointing oil" (not for medicine, but for the tabernacle),
-"and the pure incense of sweet spices" (not medical), "were made according
-to the work [book?] of the apothecary." This, however, no more implies
-that the said "apothecary" was a medical man, a dispenser of physic, or
-versed in medical lore, than that the maker of shewbread (Lev. xxiv. 5)
-was necessarily a pharmacist.
-
-In fact, there seems to have been no need of an apothecary, as medicine
-dispenser, until about the latter part of the thirteenth century.
-
-The oldest known work on compounding medicines was written by Nicolaus
-Mynepsus, who died in the commencement of the fourteenth century.
-
-The first apothecaries were merely growers and dispensers of herbs, and
-were but a poor and beggarly set.
-
-Shakspeare's delineation of the "_poor apothecary of Mantua_," in Romeo
-and Juliet, so completely answers the description of the whole "kit" of
-druggists of the times, that we may be pardoned in quoting him.
-
-Romeo says,--
-
-  "I do remember an apothecary,--
-  And hereabouts he dwells,--whom late I noted
-  In tattered weeds, with overwhelming brows,
-  Culling of simples (herbs). Meagre were his looks;
-  Sharp misery had worn him to the bones;
-  And in his needy shop a tortoise hung,
-  An alligator stuffed, and other skins
-  Of ill-shaped fishes; and about his shelves
-  A beggarly account of empty boxes,
-  Green earthen pots, bladders, and musty seeds;
-  Remnants of packthread, and old cakes of roses,
-  Were thinly scattered to make up a show.
-  Noting this penury, to myself I said,--
-  'An' if a man did need a poison now,
-  Whose sale is present death in Mantua,
-  Here lives a caitiff wretch would sell it him.'
-
-         *       *       *       *       *
-
-  What, ho! apothecary!
-    _Apothecary._ Who calls so loud?
-    _Romeo._ Come hither, man! I see that thou art poor.
-  Hold! There is forty ducats! [$80.] Let me have
-  A dram of poison.
-    _Apoth._ Such mortal drugs I have, but Mantua's law
-  Is death to any he that utters them.
-    _Rom._ Art thou so bare, and full of wretchedness,
-  And fear'st to die? Famine is on thy cheeks;
-  Need and oppression starveth in thy eyes;
-  Upon thy back hangs ragged misery;
-  The world is not thy friend, nor the world's law;
-  The world affords no law to make thee rich;
-  Then be not poor, but break it, and take this.
-    _Apoth._ My poverty, but not my will, consents."
-
-When we behold the opulent druggists of the present day, we can hardly
-credit the fact that for nearly two hundred years the apothecary of Mantua
-was a fair specimen of the wretches who represented that now important
-branch of business.
-
-The physician was the master, the apothecary the slave!
-
-The following were among the rules prescribed by Dr. Bullyn for the
-"apothecary's life and conduct" during the Elizabethan era:--
-
-    "1. He must serve God, be clenly, pity the poore.
-
-    2. Must not be suborned for money to hurt mankind.
-
-    4. His garden must be at hand, with plenty of herbes, seedes, and
-    rootes.
-
-    5. To sow, set, plant, gather, preserve, and keepe them in due time.
-
-    6. To read Dioscorides, to learn ye nature of plants and herbes.
-    (Dioscorides published a work on vegetable remedies about 1499, in
-    Greek. The _translation_ was referred to.)
-
-    8. To have his morters, stilles, pottes, filters, glasses, and boxes
-    cleane and sweete.
-
-    12. That he neither increase nor diminish the physician's bill
-    (prescription), nor keepe it for his own use.
-
-    14. That he peruse often his wares, that they corrupt not.
-
-    15. That he put not in _quid pro quo_ (i. e., substitute one drug for
-    another.) (Would not this be excellent advice to some of the
-    apothecaries of the present day?)
-
-    16. That he meddle only in his vocation.
-
-    18. That he delight to reade Nicolaus Mynepsus, and a few other
-    ancient authors.
-
-    19. That he remember his office is only ye physician's _cooke_.
-
-    20. That he use true waights and measures.
-
-    21. That he be not covetous or crafty, seeking his own lucre before
-    other men's help and comfort."
-
-We may see the wisdom evinced by the author of the above advice,
-especially in articles Nos. 2, 12, and 21, when we know of a druggist's
-clerk of modern times, who, having stolen the physician's prescriptions
-intrusted to his care, started out on borrowed capital, and, putting them
-up as his own wonderful discoveries, advertised them extensively, until
-his remedies, for all diseases which flesh is heir to, are now sold
-throughout the entire universe!
-
-As the doctors were accustomed to retain their most valuable recipes, and
-put up the medicines themselves, selling them as nostrums, and because of
-the heavy percentage demanded by them for those intrusted to the
-apothecaries, and the small profit accruing from the sale of medicines at
-the time, the poor wretched "cookes" were necessarily kept in extreme
-poverty. So, in order to eke out a living, the apothecaries were also
-grocers and small tradesmen. As at the present day, they were not required
-to possess any knowledge of medical science beyond the reading of a few
-books "relating to the nature of plants," hence very little honor or
-profit could accrue from the business alone.
-
-Grocers kept a small stock of drugs, sometimes in a corner by themselves,
-but not unusually thrown about and jumbled amongst the articles kept for
-culinary and other purposes. As mineral medicines became more generally
-used, these were also added to the little stock, and not unfrequently was
-some poisonous substance dealt out by a green clerk (as is often the case
-nowadays) to the little errand girl, sent in haste for some culinary
-article.
-
-Allspice and aloes, sugar and tartar emetic, lemon essence and laudanum,
-were thrown promiscuously together into drawers, or upon the most
-convenient shelves, and you need not go far into the country to witness
-the same lamentable spectacle in the enlightened nineteenth century. The
-apothecary gave the most attention, as now, to the exposition and sale of
-those articles which sold the most readily, and returned the greatest
-profit. All druggists at present sell cigars and tobacco, at the same time
-not unusually posting up a conspicuous sign--
-
-  NO SMOKING ALLOWED HERE.
-
-The following is a case in point:--
-
-_Druggist._ Smoking not allowed here, sir.
-
-_Customer._ Why! I just bought this cigar from you.
-
-_Druggist._ Well, we also sell emetics and cathartics. That does not
-license customers to sit down and enjoy them on the premises.
-
-In the thirteenth year of the reign of James I. of England (and James VI.
-of Scotland) the apothecaries and grocers were disunited. The charter,
-however, placed the former under the control of the College of Physicians,
-who were endowed with the arbitrary powers of inspecting their shops and
-wares, and inflicting punishments for alleged neglects, deficiencies, and
-malpractices.
-
-The physicians knew so little, that the apothecaries soon were enabled to
-cope with them; "and before a generation had passed away the apothecaries
-had gained so much, socially and pecuniarily, that the more prosperous of
-them could afford to laugh in the face of the faculty, and by the
-commencement of the next century they were fawned upon by the younger
-physicians, and were in a position to quarrel with the old, which they
-soon improved."
-
-As it was a common occurrence for patients to apply at the apothecary's
-for a physician, the former either recommended the applicant to one who
-favored him, _or else prescribed for the patient himself_. The
-promulgation of this fact was the declaration of war with the old
-physicians, who heretofore had done their best to keep down the
-apothecaries. The former threatened punishment, as provided by law; the
-latter retaliated, by refusing to call them in to consult on difficult
-cases. "Starving graduates of Oxford and Cambridge, with the certificate
-of the college in their pockets, were imbittered by having to trudge along
-on foot and see the mean 'medicine mixers,' who had scarce scholarship
-enough to construe a prescription, dashing by in their carriages."
-
-The war progressed,--Physician _vs._ Apothecary,--and the rabble joined.
-Education sided with the physicians, interest sided with the
-apothecaries.
-
-  "So modern 'pothecaries taught the art,
-  By doctors' bills, to play the doctors' part;
-  Bold in the practice of mistaken rules,
-  Prescribe, apply, and call their masters fools."
-
-To circumvent the apothecaries, a dispensary was established in the
-College of Physicians, where prescriptions were dispensed at cost. While
-this proceeding served to lessen the apothecary's income for a time, it
-could not greatly benefit the prescribing physician. The former might
-parallel his case with Iago, and say of the physician, he
-
-  "Robs me of that which not enriches him,
-  And makes me poor indeed."
-
-Physicians were divided into two classes,--Dispensarians and
-Anti-dispensarians. Charges of ignorance, extortion, and of double-dealing
-were preferred on both sides. The dispensary doctors charged their
-opponents with playing into the hands of the apothecaries by prescribing
-enormous doses, often changing their prescriptions uselessly to increase
-the druggists' revenues and _their own percentage_! On the other hand, the
-dispensarians were accused of charging a double profit on prescriptions
-whenever the ignorance of the patient, respecting the value of drugs,
-would admit of the extortion.
-
-Had the physicians been united, the apothecaries would have had to
-succumb; but a divided house must fall, and the apothecaries won the day.
-
-A London apothecary, having been prosecuted by the college for prescribing
-for a patient without a regular physician's advice, carried the case up to
-the House of Lords, where he obtained a verdict in his favor; and another
-apothecary, Mr. Goodwin, whose goods had been seized by some dispensary
-doctors, having obtained a large sum for damages, which being considered
-test cases, the doctors from this time (about 1725) discontinued the
-exercise of their authority over the apothecaries.
-
-Thus emancipated from the supervision of the physicians, the apothecaries
-began to feel their own importance, and most of them prescribed boldly for
-patients, without consulting a doctor. The ignorance of many of them was
-only equalled by their impudence. It is not unusual, at the present day,
-for not only apothecaries, but their most ignorant clerks, to prescribe
-for persons, strangers perhaps, who call to inquire for a physician; and
-cases, too, where the utmost skill and experience are required.
-
-The following amusing anecdote is sufficiently in accordance with facts
-within our own knowledge to be true, notwithstanding its _seeming_
-improbability:--
-
-
-ANECDOTE OF MACREADY, THE ACTOR.
-
-The handwriting of Macready, the actor, was curiously illegible, and
-especially when writing a pass to the theatre. One day, at New Orleans,
-Mr. Brougham obtained one of these orders for a friend. On handing it to
-the latter gentleman, he asked,--
-
-"What is this, Brougham?"
-
-"A pass to see Macready."
-
-"Why, I thought it was a physician's prescription, which it most
-resembles."
-
-"So it does," acquiesced Mr. Brougham, again looking over the queer
-hieroglyphics. "Let us go to an apothecary's and have it made up."
-
-Turning to the nearest druggist's, the paper was given to the clerk, who
-gave it a careless glance, and proceeded to get a vial ready.
-
-With a second look at the paper, down came a tincture bottle, and the vial
-was half filled. Then there was a pause.
-
-Brougham and his friend pretended not to notice the proceedings. The clerk
-was evidently puzzled, and finally broke down, and rang for the
-proprietor, an elderly and pompous looking individual, who issued from the
-inner sanctum. The clerk presented the paper, the old dispenser adjusted
-his eye-glasses, examined the document for a few seconds, and then, with a
-depreciating expression,--a compound of pity and contempt for the
-ignorance of the subordinate,--he proceeded to fill the vial with some
-apocryphal fluid, and, giving it a professional "shake up," duly corked
-and labelled it.
-
-[Illustration: THE "FREE PASS" PRESCRIPTION.]
-
-"A cough mixture, gentlemen," he said, with a bland smile, as he handed it
-to the gentleman in waiting, "and a very excellent one, too. Fifty cents,
-if you please."
-
-In a copy of the London Lancet, 1844, is reported Dr. Graham's bill. In
-the same number of which is a reply by an apothecary, who asks if "the old
-and respectable class of apothecaries are to be forever abolished;" and
-he quotes the assertion from one of the articles in the bill: "Is it not a
-notorious fact that the masses of chemists and druggists know nothing of
-the business in which they are engaged?" Dr. Graham certainly ought to
-have known.
-
-Druggists are liable to make mistakes,--as are all men; but carelesness
-and ignorance, one or both, are usually to be found at the bottom of the
-fatalities so common in the dispensing of prescriptions. I know an old and
-experienced druggist who sold a pot of extract belladonna for extract
-dandelion. In the same city, on the same street, I know another who was
-prosecuted for dispensing opium for taraxicum, which carelesness caused
-the death of two children. The following mistake was less fatal, but only
-think of the poor lady's feelings!
-
-A servant girl was sent to a certain drug store we know of, who, in a
-"rich brogue," which might have caused General Scott's eyes to water with
-satisfaction, and his ears to lop like Bottom's after his transformation
-by the mischievous fairy, she asked for some "caster ile," which she
-wished effectually disguised.
-
-"Do you like soda water?" asked the druggist.
-
-"O, yis, thank ye, sir," was the prompt reply; "an' limmun, sir, if ye
-plaze; long life to yeze."
-
-The man then proceeded to draw a glass, strongly flavored with lemon, with
-a dose of oil cast upon its troubled waters.
-
-"Drink it at one swallow," said he, presenting it to the smiling Bridget.
-This she did, again thanking the gentlemanly clerk.
-
-"What are you waiting for?" he inquired, seeing that she still lingered.
-
-"I'm waitin' for the caster ile, sir," said the girl.
-
-"O! Why you have just taken it," replied the soda-drug man.
-
-"Och! Murther! It was for a sick man I wanted it, an' not meself at all."
-
-[Illustration: THE WRONG PATIENT.]
-
-While there have been great changes in the drug trade during the last
-fifty years, necessary to the increasing demand for drugs, the
-establishment of wholesale houses and some specialties, and in cities, the
-substitution of cigars, soda water, patent medicines, etc., for groceries
-and provisions, the dispensing apothecary is nearer to what he was
-hundreds of years ago, as we asserted at the commencement of this chapter,
-than any other professional we know of. The paraphernalia of the shop is
-nearly the same. There is no improvement in pot, in jar, in tables, in
-spatula; the old, ungainly mortar is not _substituted_ by a mill; the
-signs of ounces and drachms remain the same, though so near alike that
-they are easily and often mistaken one for the other, and the prescription
-before the dispenser is prefixed by a relic of the astrological symbol of
-Jupiter,--"the god of medicine to the ancient Greeks and Egyptians,"--as a
-species of superstitious invocation. In our largest cities even, in the
-shop windows, the mammoth flashing blue bottles, "a relic of empiric
-charlatanry," still brighten our street corners, and frighten our horses
-at night, as in the days of our forefathers.
-
-We intimated that "patent medicines" had added greatly to the trade. This
-we shall treat of under its proper head. Many have arisen from penury to
-affluence, from obscurity to renown, in the drug trade of later years; but
-take away the tobacco trade, the soda fountain, and the outside patent
-nostrums, and wherein would the apothecary now differ from his
-predecessors?
-
-"The Yankees bate the divil for swallowing drugs," said an Irishman.
-
-"A paddy will take nothing but castor oil," replied the Yankee.
-
-Yankee or Irish, English or Scotch, French or German, they all rush to the
-drug store for pills, for powder, for whiskey (?), for tobacco, for patent
-medicines, and the druggists flourish.
-
-From the window near which I write this, I overlook a wholesale drug store
-on a "retail street." The front windows contain only _patent medicines_,
-and the flashy signs that announce their virtues. Few prescriptions are
-dispensed within. Before the door, piled nearly a story high, I have just
-counted ninety-eight boxes, and some barrels. There are hundreds of these
-drug houses scattered over this city; and every other city of America has
-its quota.
-
-Yes, the Irishman had the right of it; "the Yankees _do_ bate the divil
-for swallowing drugs." Further, it is my positive opinion that his
-infernal majesty beats a good many of them by the encouragement of their
-purchase; and, kind reader, if you have the ghost of a doubt of the truth
-of our intimation, don't, I pray, promulgate it, but, like a wise judge,
-withhold your decision until the evidence is in; until you hear our
-exposition of "patent medicines."
-
-A patient comes to the city for the purpose of consulting some experienced
-physician for a certain complaint. Probably he gets a prescription, with
-instructions to go to a certain respectable druggist or apothecary in town
-to have the necessary medicines put up. Of course a respectable physician
-knows of a reliable apothecary. The patient, in nine cases out of ten,
-desires to retain the prescription, and often does so. He goes to another
-drug store, more convenient, for a second quantity of the same; and now
-let me ask the patient,--no matter who or where he is,--did you ever get
-the same kind of medicine, in _look_, color, quantity, and
-taste,--all,--the second time, from the same prescription? I have often
-heard the patient complain that he could not get the same put up at the
-very store where he got the original prescription compounded.
-
-I once was called to visit a lady who was laboring under great
-prostration; "sickness at the stomach," with constipation.
-
-"What is the disease?" inquired the anxious husband, who had previously
-employed two regular physicians for the case, and discharged them both.
-
-"Nux vomica," was the reply.
-
-I gathered up three of the vials on the table, and, taking them to the
-designated apothecary's, I demanded the prescriptions corresponding with
-the numbers on the vials. These were duplicates.
-
-He had made a mistake! that's all. He had compounded an ounce of tincture
-of nux instead of a drachm! Not that a drachm could be taken at a dose
-with impunity; but whatever the dose was, the patient was continually
-taking eight times as much as the physician intended to prescribe.
-
-Another reason of the failure of the prescribing physician meeting the
-expectation anticipated, is the use of old and inert medicines.
-
-Where a man's treasure is, his heart is also. An apothecary's interest is
-more in nostrums, tobacco, _soda_, etc., than in medicines; how, then, can
-he follow the excellent advice of Dr. Bullyn, in article "14, that he
-peruse often his wares, that they corrupt not."
-
-But the greatest cheat is in the "substituting" business; the "_quid pro
-quo_." Horse aloes may be bought for ten cents a pound. Podophyllin costs
-seventy-five cents an ounce. They each act as cathartic, and I have
-detected the former put in place of the latter. How is the physician to
-know the cheat? How is the patient to detect it? Perhaps the former
-_stuff_--aloes--may have given the victim the hemorrhoids. One dose may be
-quite sufficient to produce that distressing disease. This only calls for
-another prescription! So it looks a deal like a "you tickle me, and I'll
-tickle you" profession, at best. Thus the patient becomes disgusted, and
-resorts to our next--"Patent Medicines."
-
-In closing this chapter on Apothecaries, I must relate a little scene to
-which I was an eye-witness. Meantime, let me say to the "respectable
-druggist," Don't be offended if I have slighted you by leaving you out, in
-my description of the various kinds of apothecaries enumerated above.
-There is a respectable class of druggists whom I have not mentioned, and
-doubtless you belong to that order.
-
-On going home one evening, not long since, I observed several boys, loud
-and boisterous, surrounding a lamp post. As I approached, I heard, among
-the cries and vociferations,--
-
-"Howld to it, Jimmy; it'll be the makin' of ye."
-
-I drew nearer, and discovered a sickly-looking lad leaning up against the
-lamp post, with the stump of a cigar in his mouth, and a taller boy
-endeavoring to hold him up by his jacket collar, while a short-set urchin
-was stooping behind to assist in the task. They were evidently endeavoring
-to teach "Jimmy" to smoke. The poor fellow was deathly sick, and faintly
-begged to be let off.
-
-"O, no, no. Stick to it, Jimmy; it'll be the makin' of yese," was
-repeated.
-
-"Sure, ye'll niver do for a _sample clark in a potecary shop_," said
-another, as he blew a cloud of smoke from his own cigar stump into the
-pale face of the victim to modern accomplishments.
-
-[Illustration: A CANDIDATE FOR THE PRESIDENCY.]
-
-"General Grant smokes, Jimmy, and you'll never be a man if you don't
-learn," added a voice minus the brogue.
-
-A policeman here interfered, and rescued the wretched "Jimmy."
-
-"What is a sample clerk, my lad?" I asked of the boy who had used the
-above expression.
-
-"O, sir, he's the divil o' the 'potecary shop; the lean, pimply-faced
-urchin what tastes all the pizen drugs for the boss. If his constitution
-is tough enough to stand it the first year, then they makes a clark of him
-the nixt."
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-III.
-
-PATENT MEDICINES
-
-    "Expunge the whole."--POPE.
-
-    "These are terrible alarms to persons grown fat and wealthy."--SOUTH.
-
-    PATENT MEDICINES.--HOW STARTED.--HOW MADE.--THE WAY IMMENSE FORTUNES
-    ARE REALIZED.--SPALDING'S GLUE.--SOURED SWILL.--SARSAPARILLA
-    HUMBUGS.--S. P. TOWNSEND.--"A DOWN EAST FARMER'S STORY."--"WILD
-    CHERRY" EXPOSITIONS.--"CAPTAIN WRAGGE'S PILL" A FAIR SAMPLE OF THE
-    WHOLE.--HOW PILL SALES ARE STARTED.--A SLIP OF THE PEN.--"GRIPE
-    PILLS."--SHAKSPEARE IMPROVED.--H. W. B. "FRUIT SYRUP."--HAIR
-    TONICS.--A BALD BACHELOR'S EXPERIENCE.--A LUDICROUS STORY.--A WOLF IN
-    SHEEP'S CLOTHING.
-
-
-In the former chapters are shown some of the causes which led to the
-present immense _demand_ for proprietary nostrums, or patent medicines.
-The conflicting "_isms_" and "_opathies_" of the medical fraternity, their
-quarrels and depreciations of one and another, their expositions of each
-other's weaknesses, frauds, and duplicities, disgusted the common people,
-who finally resorted to the irregulars, to astrologers, and humbugs of
-various pretensions, and to the few advertised nostrums of those earlier
-periods.
-
-"While there is life there is hope," and invalids would, and still
-continue to seize upon almost any promised relief from present pain and
-anticipated death. Speculative and unprincipled men have seldom been
-wanting, at any period, to profit by this misfortune of their
-fellow-creatures, and to play upon the credulity of the afflicted, by
-offering various compounds warranted to restore them to perfect health. At
-first such medicines were introduced by the owner going about personally
-and introducing them; subsequently, by employing equally unprincipled
-parties, of either sex, to go in advance, and tell of the wonderful cures
-that this particular nostrum had wrought upon them. And to listen to these
-lauders, one would be led to suppose that they had been afflicted with all
-the ills nameable, adapting themselves to the parties
-addressed,--yesterday, the gout; to-day, consumption, etc.,--regardless of
-truth or circumstance. The physician created the apothecary. The two
-opened the way for the less principled patent medicine vender.
-
-"Are not physicians and apothecaries sometimes owners of patent
-medicines?" is the inquiry raised. Yes, certainly; but the true physician,
-or honorable apothecary, is then sunk in the nostrum manufacturer. Next we
-have the mountebanks. These were attendant upon fairs and in the
-marketplaces, who, mounted upon a bench,--hence the name,--cried the
-marvellous virtues of the medicine, and, by the assistance of a _decoy_ in
-the crowd, often drove a lucrative business.
-
-Finally, upon the general introduction of printing, physician, apothecary,
-mountebank, speculator, all seized upon the "power of the press," to more
-extensively introduce their "wonderful discoveries."
-
-When you notice the name--and, O, ye gods, such names as are patched up to
-attract your attention!--to a new medicine, systematically and extensively
-advertised in every paper you chance to pick up, you wonder how any profit
-can accrue to the manufacturer of the compound after paying such enormous
-prices as column upon column in a thousand newspapers must necessarily
-cost. "If the articles cost anything at the outset," you go on to
-philosophize, "how can the manufacturers or proprietors make enough profit
-to pay for this colossal advertising?" The solution of the problem is
-embodied in your inquiry. They cost nothing, or as near to nothing as
-possible for worthless trash to cost. This is the secret of the fortunes
-made in advertised medicines.
-
-When we _know_ the complete worthlessness of the majority of the articles
-that are placed before the public,--yea, their more than worthlessness,
-for they are, many of them, highly injurious to the user,--the fact of
-their enormous consumption is truly astonishing. The drug-swallowing
-public has grown lean and poor in proportion as the manufacturers and
-venders of these villanous compounds have grown fat and wealthy.
-
-Said the proprietor of "Coe's Cough Balsam" and "Dyspepsia Cure" to the
-author, "If you have got a _good_ medicine, one of value, don't put it
-before the public. I can advertise _dish water_, and sell it, just as well
-as an article of merit. It is all in the advertising." As the above
-preparations were advertised on every board fence, and in every newspaper
-in New England at least, did his assertion imply that those articles were
-mere "_dish water_"?
-
-
-"SPALDING'S GLUE."
-
-I was informed by a Mr. Johnston, who engineered the advertising of the
-preparation, that it cost but one eighth of a cent per bottle. If you want
-to make a liquid glue, dissolve a quantity of common glue in water at
-nearly boiling point, say one pound of glue to a gallon of water; add an
-ounce or less of nitric acid to hold it in solution, and bottle. The more
-glue, the stronger the preparation.
-
-The pain-killers and liniments are the most costly, on account of the
-alcohol necessary to their manufacture; and, in fact, the principal item
-of expense in all liquid medical articles put up for public sale, is in
-the alcohol essential to their preservation against the extremes of heat
-and cold to which they may be subjected.
-
-
-SOURED SWILL.
-
-There is an article which "smells to heaven," the acidiferous title of
-which glares in mammoth letters from every road-side, wherein the
-audacious proprietor obviates the necessity of alcohol for its preparation
-or preservation. It is merely fermented slops--"dish water," minus the
-alcohol. Take a few handfuls of any bitter herbs, saturate them in any
-dirty pond water,--say a barrel full,--add some nitric acid, and bottle,
-without straining! Here you have _Vinegared Bitters_! The cheeky
-proprietor informs the "ignorant public" that, "if the _medicine_ becomes
-sour (ferments), as it sometimes will, being its 'nature so to do,' it
-does not detract from its medical virtues." True, true! for it never
-possessed "medical virtues."
-
-The cost of this villanous decoction is _scarcely half a cent a bottle_!
-Soured swill! It is recommended to cure fifty different complaints! It
-sells to fools for "one dollar a bottle," and will go through one like so
-much quicksilver. "Try a bottle," if you doubt it. The "dodge" is in
-advertising it as a temperance bitter. Having no alcoholic properties, it
-in no wise endangers the user in becoming addicted to _stimulants_.
-
-Sarsaparilla humbugs are only second to the above. But a few years since
-an immense fortune was realized by a New York speculator in human flesh on
-a "Sarsaparilla" which contained not one drop of that all but useless
-medicine; nor did it possess any real medical properties whatever.
-
-
-THE DOWN EAST FARMER'S STORY.
-
-To illustrate this point, we introduce the following conversation between
-the author and a "down east" farmer, in 1852:--
-
-"It's all a humbug, is saxferilla!" exclaimed the old farmer, rapping his
-fist "hard down on the old oaken table."
-
-"Why, no; not _all_ sarsaparilla; you must admit--"
-
-"No difference. I tell you it's a pesky humbug, all of it."
-
-[Illustration: "IT'S ALL A HUMBUG."]
-
-Withdrawing his tobacco pipe from his mouth, he laid it on the table, and
-standing his thumb end on the board, as a "point of departure," he turned
-to me, and said,--
-
-"Why, in the medical books it has been analyzed, and they say it's nothin'
-but sugar-house molasses, cheap whiskey, and a sprinkling of essence of
-wintergreen and saxafras. Git the book, and see 'Townsend's Saxferilla,'
-and that is the article! But they are all alike. Let me tell you about the
-great New York saxferilla speculation. One man, S. P. Townsend, started a
-compound like this here--nothin' but molasses and whiskey, and essence to
-scent it nicely. When he had got it advertised from Texas to the Gut of
-Canser (Canso, Provinces), from the Atlantic to the Specific, and was
-about to make his fortune off on it, some speculators see he was doin' a
-good thing, and, by zounds! they put their heads together, and their
-dollars, to have a finger in the pie; and they done it. This is the way
-they circumscribed him. They hired an old fellow,--I believe he was a
-porter in a store when they found him,--named Jacob Townsend, and a right
-rough old customer he was, all rags and dirt, hadn't but one reliable eye,
-and a regular old rumsucker.
-
-"Well, they fixed him up with a fine suit of clothes, and, by zounds! they
-palmed him off for the original, Simon Pure saxferilla man. So they
-advertised him as the real ginuine Townsend, and started a 'saxferilla,'
-with his ugly old face on the bottles, and said that the other was
-counterfeit, you see; and there he sat, with his one eye cocked on the
-crowd of customers that crowded round to see the ginuine thing, you know.
-So they blowed the other saxferilla as counterfeit, and finding in a store
-a bottle or two that had _fomented_, they made a great noise about the
-bogus saxferilla, 'busting the bottles,' and all that, and again asserting
-that the Jacob Townsend was the true blue, Simon Pure; and it took, by
-zounds! Yes, the public swallowed the lie, the saxferilla, old Jacob, and
-all. I hearn that both the parties made a fortune on it."
-
-Stopping to take a whiff at his neglected pipe, he resumed:--
-
-"Saxferilla is all a humbug!"
-
-S. P. Townsend, as is well known, amassed a fortune, at one time, on the
-profits of the "sarsaparilla," put up, as the reader may remember, in
-huge, square, black bottles. The Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol.
-XL. p. 237, says, "Townsend's Sarsaparilla, Albany, N. Y., in nearly black
-bottles," is "composed of molasses, extract of roots _or_ barks (sassafras
-bark is better than essence, because of body and color), and _probably_
-senna and sarsaparilla. A. A. HAYES, State Assayer."
-
-The medical properties are all a _supposition_, even though Dr. Hayes was
-_hired_ to give the analysis of it to the public, in the interest of the
-proprietor, and consequently he would not detract from its _supposed_
-merits.
-
-Pectorals, wild cherry preparations, etc., are cheaply made. Oil of
-almonds produces the _cherry_ flavor, _hydrocyanic acid_ (prussic acid, a
-virulent poison) and morphine, or opium, constitute the medical
-properties. I have not examined the exception to the above.
-
-_Pills._ The bitter and cathartic properties of nearly every pill in the
-market,--advertised preparation,--whether "mandrake," "liver,"
-"vegetable," or what else, are made up from aloes, the coarsest and
-cheapest of all bitter cathartics. One is as good as another. You pay your
-money, however; you can take your choice.
-
-One holds the ascendency in proportion to the money or cheek invested by
-the owner in its introduction. A great Philadelphia pill, now sold in all
-the drug stores of America, was introduced by the following "dodge": The
-owner began small. He took his pills to the druggists, and, as he could
-not sell an unknown and unadvertised patent pill, he left a few boxes on
-commission. He then sent round and bought them up. Their ready sale
-induced the druggists to purchase again, for cash. The proprietor invested
-the surplus cash in advertising their "rapid sale," as well as their "rare
-virtues," and by puffing, and a little more buying up, he got them
-started. He necessarily must keep them advertised, or they would become a
-_drug_ in market.
-
-Wilkie Collins, Esq., in "No Name," has the best written description of
-the _modus operandi_ of keeping a "pill before the people," and I cannot
-refrain from quoting Captain Wragge to Magdalen in this connection.
-
-"My dear girl, I have been occupied, since we last saw each other, in
-slightly modifying my old professional habits. I have shifted from moral
-agriculture to medical agriculture. Formerly I preyed on the public
-sympathy; now I prey on the public's stomach. Stomach and sympathy,
-sympathy and stomach. The founders of my fortune are three in number:
-their names are Aloes, Scammony, and Gamboge. In plainer words, I am now
-living--on a pill! I made a little money, if you remember, by my friendly
-connection with you. I made a little more by the happy decease
-(_Requiescat in pace_) of that female relative of Mrs. Wragge's. Very
-good! What do you think I did? I invested the whole of my capital, at one
-fell swoop, in advertising a pill, and purchased my drugs and pill boxes
-on credit. The result is before you. Here I am, a grand financial fact,
-with my clothes positively paid for, and a balance at my banker's; with my
-servant in livery, and my gig at the door; solvent, popular, and all on a
-pill!"
-
-Magdalen smiled.
-
-"It's no laughing matter for the public, my dear; they can't get rid of me
-and my pill; they must take us. There is not a single form of appeal in
-the whole range of human advertisement which I am not making to the
-unfortunate public at this moment. Hire the last novel--there I am inside
-the covers of the book; send for the last song--the instant you open the
-leaves I drop out of it; take a cab--I fly in at the windows in red; buy a
-box of tooth-powders at the chemists--I wrap it up in blue; show yourself
-at the theatre--I flutter down from the galleries in yellow. The mere
-titles of my advertisements are quite irresistible. Let me quote a few
-from last week's issue. Proverbial title: 'A pill in time saves nine.'
-Familiar title: 'Excuse me, how is your stomach?' Patriotic title: 'What
-are the three characteristics of a true-born Englishman?--his hearth, his
-home, and his pill;' etc.
-
-"The place in which I make my pill is an advertisement in itself. I have
-one of the largest shops in London. Behind the counter, visible to the
-public through the lucid medium of plate glass, are four and twenty young
-men, in white aprons, making the pill. Behind another, four and twenty
-making the boxes. At the bottom of the shop are three elderly accountants,
-posting the vast financial transactions accruing from the pill, in three
-enormous ledgers. Over the door are my name, portrait, and autograph,
-expanded to colossal proportions, and surrounded, in flowing letters, the
-motto of the establishment: 'DOWN WITH THE DOCTORS.' Mrs. Wragge
-contributes her quota to this prodigious enterprise. She is the celebrated
-woman whom I have cured of indescribable agonies, from every complaint
-under the sun. Her _portrait_ is engraved on all the wrappers, with the
-following inscription: 'Before she took the pill,' etc."
-
-[In this country we are familiar with the ghostly looking picture of a
-man, the said proprietor of a medicine, "before he took the pill" (aloes),
-and "after;" the "after" being represented by a ridiculous extreme of
-muscular and adipose tissue.]
-
-"Captain Wragge's" is the style in which most medicines are placed before
-the public. We take up our morning journal: its columns are crowded by
-patent medicine advertisements. We turn in disgust from their glaring
-statements, and attempt to read a news item. We get half through, and find
-we are sold into reading a puff for the same trashy article. We take a
-horse-car for up or down town, and opposite, in bold and variegated
-letters, the persistent remedy (?) stares you continually in the face. We
-enter the post office: the lobbies are employed for the exposition,
-perhaps sale, of the patent medicines. We open our box: "O, we've a large
-mail to-day!" we exclaim; when, lo! half of the envelopes contain patent
-medicine advertisements, which have been run through the post office into
-every man's box in the department. And so it goes all day. We breakfast on
-aloes, dine on quassia, sup on logwood and myrrh, and sleep on morphine
-and prussic acid!
-
-"The humors of the press" sometimes inadvertently tell you the truth
-respecting this or that remedy advertised in their columns.
-
-A religious newspaper before me says of a proprietary medicine,
-"Advertised in another column of our paper: It is a _hell-deserving_
-article." Probably the copy read, "Well-deserving article."
-
-Said a certain paper, "A correspondent, whose duty it was to 'read up' the
-religious weeklies, has concluded that the reason of those journals
-devoting so much space to patent medicine announcements is, 'that the
-object of religion and quackery are similar--both prepare us for another
-and better world.'"
-
-The proprietor of a pill,--not Captain Wragge,--threatened recently to
-prosecute a New Hampshire newspaper publisher for a puff of his "Gripe
-Pills."
-
-As every fool, as well as some wise people, read the "personals" in the
-papers, an occasional notice of a tooth-paste, bitter, or tonic is
-inserted therein, thus:--
-
-    "AUGUSTUS APOLPHUS: I will deceive you no longer. My conscience
-    upbraids me. Those pearly white teeth you so much admire are false!
-    false! They were made by Dr. Grinder, dentist. I use Dr. Scourer's
-    tooth-paste, which keeps them clean and white. 'O, how sharper than a
-    serpent's thanks it is to have a toothless child.'
-
-    SUSAN JANE."
-
-Great and public men are sometimes induced or inveigled into recommending
-a patent medicine. In London, one Joshua Ward, a drysalter, of Thames
-Street, about the year 1780, introduced a pill, composed of the usual
-ingredients,--aloes and senna,--which, owing to some benefit he was
-supposed to have derived from their use, Lord Chief Baron Reynolds was led
-to praise in the highest terms. The result of this high dignitary's
-patronage was to give prominence to Ward and his pills, which subsequently
-sold for the fabulous price of 2s. 6d. a pill! General Churchill added his
-praise, and Ward was called as a physician to prescribe for the king.
-Either in consequence, or in spite of the treatment, the royal malady
-disappeared, and Ward was _re_warded with a solemn vote of the House of
-Commons protecting him from the interdiction of the College of
-Physicians. In addition to the liberal fee, he asked for and obtained the
-privilege of driving his carriage through St. James Park! Notwithstanding
-the pill, Reynolds died of his disease not long afterwards.
-
-Henry Fielding subscribed to the wonderful efficacy of "Tar Water," a
-nostrum of his day, but died of the disease for which it was recommended.
-
-Some time prior to 1780 there was published in the newspapers a list of
-the patent nostrums, or advertised remedies, in London, which numbered
-upwards of two hundred.
-
-Now there are known, in the United States alone, to be upwards of three
-hundred differently named hair preparations.
-
-Dr. Head, of whom we have made mention, "realized large sums from
-worthless quack nostrums," while at the same time another popular
-physician, with a Cambridge (England) diploma in his office, was
-proprietor of a "gout mixture," which sold at the shops for two shillings
-a bottle.
-
-Some of these shameless scoundrels, owners of advertised nostrums, with
-little or no sense of honor, have published the recommendations of great
-men, without the knowledge or permission of the parties whose names were
-so falsely affixed to their worthless stuff. A New York quack recently
-used the name of Henry Ward Beecher in this manner. Mr. Beecher published
-him as a thief and forger of his name, which only served to bring the
-doctor (?) into universal notice. Only to-day I read his impudent
-advertisement in a newspaper, with Mr. Beecher's name affixed as
-reference. If you prosecute one of the villains for issuing false
-certificates, even for forging your own name, it does him no great injury,
-you get no satisfaction, and in the end it only serves to call public
-attention to a worthless article, thereby increasing its sale.
-
-In the London _Medical Journal_ of 1806, Dr. Lettsom attacked and exposed
-a "nervous cordial," stating that it was a deleterious article; "that it
-had killed its thousands;" and further asserted that Brodum, its
-proprietor, was a Jewish knave, having been a bootblack in Copenhagen, and
-a wholesale murderer. Brodum at once brought an action against the
-proprietor of the _Journal_, laying the damages at twenty-five thousand
-dollars. Brodum held the advantage, and the _Journal_ proprietor asked for
-terms of settlement. Brodum's terms were not modest. He, through his
-attorney, agreed to withdraw the action provided the name of the author
-was revealed, and that he should whitewash the quack in the next number of
-the _Journal_, over the same signature! Dr. Lettsom consented to these
-terms, paid the lawyers' bills and costs, amounting to three hundred and
-ninety pounds, and wrote the required puff of Brodum and his nostrum.
-
-SOOTHING SYRUPS, nervous cordials, etc., owe their soothing properties to
-opium, or its salt--morphine.
-
-From "OPIUM AND THE OPIUM APPETITE," by Alonzo Calkins, M. D., we are
-informed that an article sold as "Mrs. Winslow's Soothing Syrup," for
-children teething, contains nearly _one grain of the alkaloid_ (morphine)
-_to each ounce of the syrup_! Taking one teaspoonful as the dose (that is,
-one drachm), and there being eight drachms to the ounce, consequently
-about one eighth of a grain of morphine is given to an infant at a dose!
-Do you wonder it gives him a _quietus_? Do you wonder that the mortality
-among children is greatly on the increase? that so many of the darling,
-helpless little innocents die from dropsy, brain fever, epileptic fits,
-and the like?
-
-
-FRUIT SYRUPS FOR SODA WATER.
-
-Perhaps you take yours "plain." No! Then you may want to know how the pure
-fruit syrup, which sweetens and flavors the soda, is made. The "soda"
-itself is a very harmless article.
-
-BUTYRIC ETHER is usually taken for a basis. Butyric ether is manufactured
-from rancid butter, old rotten cheese, or Limburger cheese. The latter is
-the "loudest," and affords the best flavor to the ether. The cheese is
-treated with sulphuric acid. Old leather is known to give it a
-particularly fine flavor. Any old boots and shoes will answer.
-
-PINEAPPLE SYRUP is made from butyric and formic ether. The latter is
-manufactured from soap or glycerine. Sulphuric acid and red ants will do
-as well.
-
-STRAWBERRY is made of twelve parts of butyric ether and one of acetic
-ether, alcohol, and water. Color with cochineal--a bug of the tick
-species, from Mexico. Sometimes a little real strawberry is added, but it
-is not deemed essential.
-
-RASPBERRY is made from the same articles. If convenient, the druggist adds
-a little raspberry jam or syrup. If not, color a little deeper, add some
-strawberry, and change the label to raspberry.
-
-VANILLA SYRUP is made of Tonqua beans, such as boys sell on the street.
-
-PEACH is made from bitter almonds. WILD CHERRY the same.
-
-NECTAR is formed by a compound of various syrups and Madeira wine. You can
-easily make the Madeira of neutral spirits, sugar, raisins, and logwood to
-color it.
-
-SARSAPARILLA. Take the cheapest and nastiest molasses obtainable. Strain
-it to remove dead bees, sticks, cockroaches, etc. Flavor with essence
-sassafras and wintergreen. Little extract sarsaparilla will do no harm if
-added to the mixture. It is very harmless.
-
-LEMON is made of citric acid and sugar.
-
-COFFEE is made mostly of chiccory, burnt livers, sometimes a little coffee
-bean. Horses' livers are said to be the best, giving it a _racy_ flavor,
-and more _body_.
-
-"They are all very good," the vender tells you; he takes his plain,
-however. You see how much cheaper these are than the _real_ fruit syrup
-itself; and as neither you nor I can tell the difference by _taste_, what
-inducement has the dealer in soda water to use the costlier articles?
-
-I have a friend who sells the "pure syrups," and I presume the reader has
-also; but I respectfully decline drinking soda water with "pure fruit
-syrups."
-
-    POISONOUS HAIR TONICS AND COSMETICS.
-
-    Extract from the report of Professor C. F. Chandler, Ph. D., chemist
-    to the Metropolitan Board of Health. This report, which presents the
-    results of the examination of a few of the articles in general use,
-    was printed in full in the Chemical News (American reprint) for May,
-    1870. We present the following list of dangerous preparations, which
-    gives the number of grains of lead, etc., in one fluid ounce.
-
-    I. HAIR TONICS, WASHES, AND RESTORATIVES.
-
-                                                         Grains of lead in
-                                                         one fluid ounce.
-
-      1. Clark's Distilled Restorative for the Hair,         0.11
-      2. Chevalier's Life for the Hair,                      1.02
-      3. Circassian Hair Rejuvenator,                        2.71
-      4. Ayer's Hair Vigor,                                  2.89
-      5. Professor Wood's Hair Restorative,                  3.08
-      6. Dr. J. J. O'Brien's Hair Restorer, America,         3.28
-      7. Gray's Celebrated Hair Restorative,                 3.39
-      8. Phalon's Vitalia,                                   4.69
-      9. Ring's Vegetable Ambrosia,                          5.00
-      10. Mrs. S. A. Allen's World's Hair Restorer,          5.57
-      11. L. Knittel's Indian Hair Tonique,                  6.29
-      12. Hall's Vegetable Sicilian Hair Renewer,            7.13
-      13. Dr. Tebbet's Physiological Hair Regenerator,       7.44
-      14. Martha Washington Hair Restorative,                9.80
-      15. Singer's Hair Restorative,                        16.39
-
-    II. LOTIONS OR WASHES FOR THE COMPLEXION.
-
-    _Perry's Moth and Freckle Lotion._
-
-      Mercury in solution, 2.67 gr. }equiv.{ Corrosive Sub.,   3.61 gr.
-      Zinc in solution,    0.99  "  }  to  { Sulphate of Zinc, 4.25  "
-
-    The sediment contains mercury, lead, and bismuth.
-
-    III. ENAMELS FOR THE SKIN.
-
-                                      Grains of lead in one fluid
-                                         ounce, after shaking.
-
-      Eugenie's Favorite,                    108.94 grains.
-      Phalon's Snow-white Enamel,            146.28   "
-      Phalon's Snow-white Oriental Cream,    190.99   "
-
-    CONCLUSION.--It appears from the foregoing,--
-
-    1. The HAIR TONICS, WASHES, and RESTORATIVES contain lead in
-    considerable quantities; that they owe their action to this metal, and
-    that they are consequently highly dangerous to the health of persons
-    using them.
-
-    2. With a single exception, Perry's Moth and Freckle Lotion, the
-    LOTIONS for the skin are free from lead and other injurious metals.
-
-    3. That the ENAMELS are composed of either carbonate of lime, oxide of
-    zinc, or carbonate of lead, suspended in water. The first two classes
-    of enamels are comparatively harmless; as harmless as any other white
-    dirt, when plastered over the skin to close the pores and prevent its
-    healthy action. On the other hand, the enamels composed of carbonate
-    of lead are highly dangerous, and their use is very certain to produce
-    disastrous results to those who patronize them.
-
-
-HAIR RESTORATIVES: A BALD BACHELOR'S EXPERIENCE.
-
-A gentleman of perhaps thirty-five years of age once called upon the
-writer for advice relative to baldness, when he related the following
-experience, permitting me to make a note of it at leisure.
-
-"In 1865 my friends intimated to me that my hair was getting slightly thin
-on the crown of my head. I have always had a mortal terror of being bald,
-and daily examinations convinced me that my fears were about to be
-realized. My first inquiry was for a remedy.
-
-"'What shall I do to prevent its falling out?' I nervously inquired.
-
-"'Get a bottle of Dr. ----'s Hair Restorative,' one advised; another, some
-different preparation,--all advertised remedies,--till I had a list a yard
-long of various washes, preventives, restorers, etc., _ad infinitum_.
-
-"I obtained one of _the very best_. I used it as directed. It _stuck_ as
-though its virtue consisted in sticking the loose hairs firmly to the
-firmer-rooted ones. But alas! after a month's trial, sufficient hair had
-come out of my head to make a respectable _chignon_!
-
-"I next got some of Mrs. A. S. S. Allon's--or All--something; I forget the
-rest of the name; I'm sure of the A. S. S., however,--and that was worse
-than the _gum-stick-'em_ kind, for the hair came out faster than before.
-
-"In despair, I applied to a 'respectable apothecary,' who keeps the next
-corner drug store. 'For God's sake, Mr. Bilious, have you got any good
-preventive for falling of the hair?' I exclaimed.
-
-"'O, yes, just the article,' he replied, rubbing his palms vigorously. He
-then showed me his stock, consisting of _thirty-nine different kinds_!
-
-"'All very good--highly recommended,' he remarked, with commendable
-impartiality.
-
-"I selected one--with rather an ominous name, I
-admit:--_Kat-hair-on_!--preferring cat's hair to none.
-
-"I used the Kathairon according to directions."
-
-"'Did the cat's hair grow?' I anxiously inquired.
-
-"'Neither cat's hair nor human hair.' No. Worse and worse. I was about to
-abandon all effort, when, stopping on a corner to get a young boot-black
-to shine my boots, preparatory to making a call on a lady acquaintance,
-before whom I was desirous of making a genteel appearance, a dirty, ragged
-little urchin peered around the block, and exclaimed, 'O, mister, you're
-barefooted on top o' yer head!' I had inadvertently removed my hat, to
-wipe my forehead.
-
-[Illustration: "BAREFOOTED ON THE TOP OF HIS HEAD."]
-
-"This was the last feather. Though coming from but a dirty boot-black, it
-stung me to the marrow. I kicked over the boy, box, blacking, and all, and
-rushed into the nearest drug shop. I bought another new hair preparation.
-Another ominous name--'_Bare-it_!'
-
-"This I also used, as directed on the label, for a month. 'I think,' I
-said, 'if I use it a second month, it will entirely _bare it_!'
-
-"I bought a wig, and had my head shaved. I didn't lock myself up in a
-coal-cellar, or hide under a tub, like Diogenes, but I felt that I would
-have gladly done either, to hide myself from the eyes of the world. The
-girls all cast shy glances at me as they passed; as though the majority of
-_them_ did not wear false hair!
-
-"In utter desperation, I visited a dermatologist. What a name to make hair
-grow! Well, he examined my scalp with a microscope, and said the hair
-could be made to grow anew. 'I discover myriads of germs, which only
-require the right treatment in order to spring up in an exuberant crop of
-wavy tresses.' I bought his preparations. Bill, thirty-eight dollars. They
-were worthless.
-
-"Soon after this failure, I heard of a new remedy--'a sure cure.' The
-proprietor possessed a world-wide reputation, from the manufacture of
-various other remedies for nearly all diseases to which we poor mortals
-are subject, and there might be something in this. It was recommended to
-cure baldness, and restore gray hair to its natural color. I would go and
-see the proprietor of this excellent hair restorer. I hastened to Lowell.
-I was ushered into the doctor's sanctum--into the very presence of this
-Napoleon of medicine-makers, the Alexander of conquered worlds--of medical
-prejudices!
-
-"With hat in hand, I bowed low to the great Doctor Hair--or hair doctor.
-He beheld my veneration for himself. With a practised eye, he noted my
-genteel apparel. Flattered by my obeisance, and not to be outdone in
-politeness, he arose, removed his tile, and bowed equally low in return to
-my profound salutation, when lo! _O tempora! O mores!_ he was both bald
-and gray! I retired without specifying the object of my visit."
-
-
-A WOLF IN SHEEP'S CLOTHING.
-
-When a man tells you, point blank, that he is selling an article for the
-profit of it, believe him; but when he asserts that he is advertising and
-offering a remedy solely for the public good, for the benefit of suffering
-humanity, he is a liar. Beware of such.
-
-Furthermore, when he publishes an advertisement in every paper in the
-land, announcing that himself having been miraculously or "providentially"
-cured of a _variety_ of diseases by a certain compound, the _prescription_
-for which he will send free to any address, you should hesitate, until
-satisfied of the disinterestedness of the party, and meantime ask yourself
-the following question: "Provided this be true, why don't the unparalleled
-benevolent gentleman _publish the recipe_, which would cost so much less
-than this persistent advertising 'that he will send it to any requiring
-it'? And you are next led to ask,--
-
-"Where is the 'dodge'? For money is what he is after."
-
-A reverend (?), a scoundrel, a "wolf in sheep's clothing," advertises in
-nearly every paper you chance to notice, especially _religious_
-newspapers, a remedy he discovered while a missionary to some foreign
-country, that cured him of a _variety_ of diseases, the recipe for which
-medicine he will send to any address, _free of charge_.
-
-"Here is the '_Old Sands of Life_' dodge," I said, "which I had the
-satisfaction of exposing fourteen years ago."
-
-The reader may recollect the advertisement of "A Retired Physician,
-seventy-five years of age, whose sands of life had nearly run out," who
-advertised so extensively a remedy which cured his daughter, etc., which
-remedy he would send _free_, to the afflicted, on application.
-
-I investigated his "little fraud." I found, instead of an old man
-"seventy-five years of age," a young man of about twenty-eight or thirty.
-He was no reverend. He had no daughter. He was a tall, gaunt, profane,
-tobacco-chewing, foul-mouthed fellow, with a bad impediment in his speech
-from loss of palate, whose name _was_ Oliver Phipps Brown, a printer by
-trade, who formerly worked as journeyman in the _Courant_ office,
-Hartford, Conn. The police finally got hold of him, and broke up the
-swindle.
-
-[Illustration: OLD "SANDS OF LIFE."]
-
-Here is now a parallel case. The above _reverend_ says he will send the
-recipe free. I directed my student to write for it. The recipe came, with
-various articles named therein, supposed to be the Latin names of plants.
-I assert that there are no such medicines in the Materia Medica, or the
-world. The _reverend_ don't want that there should be. Why? Because you
-would not then send to him for his "Compound."
-
-He sends with his recipe a circular, in which he gives you the history of
-_his marvellous discovery_. Further along, by some oversight, he says it
-was made known to him through a physician!
-
-The names are bogus. The whole remedy is a humbug. There are names in it
-as _species_ which sound something like some medical term; and the
-druggist may be deceived thereby. The reverend quack, foreseeing "the
-difficulty in obtaining the articles in their purity at any druggist's,"
-advises you to send to him for them. Do you begin to see the _dodge_? He
-"will furnish it at _cost_." Only think! How benevolent! "My means make
-me independent." Think again. An invalid from boyhood, his time and means
-exhausted in travelling "in Europe two years," and was only "sent a
-missionary (?) through the kindness of friends," he assures us in his
-circular. Here he _discovered through an old physician_--surely a new mode
-of discovery--this wonderful compound, which cured him in "six weeks," and
-forthwith, in gratitude, he proceeded to New York, and began putting up
-this marvellous remedy "_at cost_."
-
-Let us examine the article sold for three dollars and a half a small
-package. Dr. Hall, of the "Journal of Health," examined the article which
-"Old Sands of Life" sold as _Canabis Indica_, and found the cost "_but
-sixteen cents, bottle and all_." Nevertheless, "The Retired Physician"
-sold it to his dupes for two dollars. I do not hesitate to say that the
-above compound cost even _less than sixteen cents a package_.
-
-"But," said a gentleman to me, "he is connected with the Bible House. Here
-is his address: 'Station D, Bible House, New York.'"
-
-"There is a post-station by that name. Suppose I should give an address,
-'34 Museum Building.' Would that imply that I was a play-actor, or owner
-of the Museum?" I replied.
-
-"Then it is only another 'Reverend' dodge--is it?" he asked.
-
-"Precisely; it is to give character to his characterless address."
-
-"Don't the newspaper publishers know it is a swindle?" he suggested.
-
-"There's not the least doubt that they know it."
-
-"Then hereafter I shall have little faith in the religion or honesty of
-the newspaper that publishes such swindling advertisements."
-
-"Admitting that they know the dishonesty of the thing,--and how can any
-man endowed with common sense but see that there is _swindle_ on the face
-of it?--the publisher of that advertisement is a _particeps criminis_ in
-the transaction."
-
-"Why don't some of the thousand victims who have been swindled into buying
-this worthless stuff expose him?"
-
-"In exposing the _reverend wolf_, don't you see they would expose their
-own weakness? This is the reason of the fellow's selecting the peculiar
-class of diseases as curable by his great discovery. The poor sufferer
-does not wish the community to know that he is afflicted by such a
-disease."
-
-"It is truly a great dodge; and no doubt the knave has found fools enough
-to make him '_independent_.'"
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-RULES. 1. Take no patent or advertised medicines at all. They are of no
-earthly use! You never require them, as they are not conducive to your
-health, happiness, or longevity.
-
-There are physicians who can cure every disease that flesh is heir
-to--_excepting one_.
-
-2. Apply in your need only to a respectable physician.
-
-3. Give your preference to such as administer the smallest quantities of
-medicine--_and are successful in their practice_.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-I have barely begun to exhaust the material I have been years collecting
-for this chapter; but I must desist, to give room for other important
-expositions.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-IV.
-
-MANUFACTURED DOCTORS.
-
-    "One says, 'I'm not of any school;
-    No living master gives me rule;
-    Nor do I in the old tracks tread;
-    I scorn to learn aught from the dead.'
-    Which means, if I am not mistook,
-    'I am an ass on my own hook.'"
-
-    A BOSTON BARBER AS M. D.--A BARBER "GONE TO POT."--FOOLS MADE
-    DOCTORS.--BAKERS.--BARBERS.--"A LUCKY DOG."--TINKERS.--ROYAL
-    FAVORS.--"LITTLE CARVER DAVY."--A BUTCHER'S BLOCKHEAD.--A SWEEPING
-    VISIT.--HOP-PED FROM OBSCURITY.--PEDAGOGUES TURN
-    DOCTORS.--ARBUTHNOT.--"A QUAKER."--"WALKS OFF ON HIS EAR."--WEAVERS
-    AND BASKET-MAKERS.--A TOUGH PRINCE; REQUIRED THREE M. D.'S TO KILL
-    HIM.--MARAT A HORSE DOCTOR.--A MERRY PARSON.--BLACK MAIL.--POLICE AS A
-    MIDWIFE, ETC., ETC.
-
-
-"Every man is either a physician or a fool at forty," says the old
-proverb.
-
-"May not a man be both?" suggested Canning, in the presence of a circle of
-friends, before whom Sir Henry Halford happened to quote the old saying.
-
-"There is generally a fool in every family, whom the parents select at
-once for a priest or a physician," said Peter Pindar. He was good
-authority.
-
-I am of the opinion that there are many whose mental capacity has been
-overrated, who have made doctors of themselves; but we are not to treat of
-fools in this chapter, but of men whom _circumstances_ have created
-physicians, and of men who, in spite of circumstances of birth or
-education, have made themselves doctors.
-
-In the choice of a trade or profession, every young man should weigh
-carefully his natural capacity to the pursuit selected. His parents or
-guardians should consult the youth's adaptability rather than their own
-convenience. How many have dragged out a miserable existence by ill choice
-of a calling! Men who were destined by nature to be wood-sawyers and
-diggers of trenches, are found daily taking upon themselves the immense
-responsibility of teaching those whose mental calibre is far above their
-own, or assuming the greater responsibility of administering to the
-afflicted.
-
-If a man finds himself adapted to a higher calling than that originally
-selected for him by his friends, by all means let him "come up higher;"
-but too many by far have changed from a trade to a profession to which
-they had no adaptability.
-
-So we find men in the medical profession who were better as they
-were,--bakers, barbers, butchers, tailors, tinkers, pedagogues, cobblers,
-horse doctors, etc., etc.
-
-There used to be a fish-peddler going about Boston, blowing a fish-horn,
-and crying his "fresh cod an' haddock," who, getting tired of that loud
-crying and loud smelling occupation, took to blowing his horn for his
-"wonderful discovery" of a "pasture weed," which cured every humor but a
-thundering humor (one can see the humor of the joke), and every eruption
-since the eruption of Hecla in 1783,--which is a pity that he had not made
-his discovery in time to have tried it on old Hecla's back when it was up.
-
-
-BARBERS AS DOCTORS.
-
-A barber of Boston, accidentally overhearing a gentleman mention a certain
-remedy for the "barber's itch," seized upon the idea of speculating upon
-it, and at once sold out his shop, made up the ointment, clapped M. D. to
-his name, put out his circulars, and is now seeking whom he may devour, as
-a physician.
-
-With the looseness of morals and the laxity of our laws, one of these
-fellows "can make a doctor as quick as a tinker can make a tin kettle."
-
-Probably more barbers have become doctors than any other artisans, for the
-reason that barbers were formerly nearly the only acknowledged
-"blood-letters." In the earlier days of Abernethy, barber surgeons were
-recognized, and the great doctor said of himself, "I have often doffed my
-hat to those fellows, with a razor between their teeth and a lancet in
-their hands." Doubtless some of them arrived to usefulness in the
-profession. Dr. Ambrose Paré, a French barber surgeon, was called the
-father of French surgery, and enjoyed the confidence of Charles IX. An
-eminent surgeon of London was Mr. Pott. He was contemporary with Dr.
-Hunter, and gave lectures at St. Bartholomew Hospital in Hunter's
-presence. Some person asking a wag one day where Dr. Hunter was, he
-replied that, "with barber surgeons he _had gone to pot_."
-
-This alliance of surgery and shaving, to say nothing of other
-qualifications with which they were sometimes associated, conceivably
-enough furnished some pretext for apprenticeships, since Dickey Gossip's
-definition of
-
-  "Shaving and tooth-drawing,
-  Bleeding, cabbaging, and sawing,"
-
-was by no means always sufficiently comprehensive to include the
-multifarious accomplishments of "the doctor." "I have seen," says Dr.
-Macillwain, of England, "within twenty-five years, chemist, druggist,
-surgeon, apothecary, and the significant, '&c.,' followed by hatter,
-hosier, and linen draper, all in one establishment."
-
-I saw in New Hampshire, in 1864, doctor, barber, and apothecary
-represented by one man.
-
-William Butts, another barber surgeon of London, was called to attend
-Henry VIII., and was rewarded for his professional services with the
-honor of knighthood in 1512. Another, who was knighted by Henry VIII., was
-John Ayliffe, a sheriff, formerly a merchant of Blackwell Hall.
-
-Royalty had a chronic habit of knighting quacks. Queen Anne became so
-charmed by a tailor, who had turned doctor, and who, by some hook or
-crook, was called to prescribe for the queen's weak eyes, that she had him
-sworn in, with another knave, as her own oculist. "This lucky gentleman,"
-says a reliable author, "was William Reade, a botching tailor of Grub
-Street, London. To the very last he was a great ignoramus, as a work
-entitled 'A Short and Exact Account of all Diseases Incident to the Eyes,'
-attests; yet he rose to knighthood, and the most lucrative and fashionable
-practice of the period." Reade (_Sir William_) was unable to read the book
-he had published (written by an _amanuensis_); nevertheless, aristocracy,
-and wise and worthy people at that, who listened to his dignified voice,
-viewed his pompous person, encased in rich garments, and adorned with
-jewelry and lace ruffles, _cap-a-pie_, resting his chin upon his enormous
-gold-headed cane, as, reclining in his splendid coach, drawn by a span of
-superb blood horses, up to St. James, considered him the most learned and
-eminent physician of that generation.
-
-In the British Museum is deposited a copy of a poem to the great oculist.
-This poem Reade himself had written, at the hand of a penny-a-liner, a
-"poet of Grub Street," immediately after he was knighted, which has been
-mainly instrumental in handing his name down to posterity.
-
-
-TINKER AS DOCTOR.
-
-About the year 1705, one Roger Grant rose into public notice in London, by
-his publication of his own "marvellous cures." This fellow was no fool,
-though a great knave. He was formerly a travelling tinker, subsequently a
-cobbler, and Anabaptist preacher. From tinkering of pots, he became
-mender of soles of men's boots and shoes; thence saver of souls from
-perdition, a tinkerer of sore eyes, and lightener of the body. The
-following bit of poetry was written in 1708 for his benefit, the "picture"
-being one which Grant, who was a very vain man, had gotten up from a
-copperplate likeness of himself, to distribute among his friends. The
-picture was found posted up conspicuously with the lines:--
-
-  "A tinker first, his scene of life began;
-  That failing, he set up for a cunning man;
-  But, wanting luck, puts on a new disguise,
-  And now pretends that he can cure your eyes.
-  But this expect, that, like a tinker true,
-  Where he repairs one eye, he puts out two."
-
-[Illustration: THE EYE DOCTOR.]
-
-He worked himself into notoriety by the publication, in pamphlet form, of
-his cures,--a mixture of truth strongly spiced with falsehood,--and
-scattering it over the community. "His plan was to get hold of some poor,
-ignorant person, of imperfect vision, and, after treating him with
-medicine and half-crowns for a few weeks, induce him to sign a
-testimonial, which he probably had never read, that he was born blind, and
-by the providential intervention of Dr. Grant, he had been entirely
-restored. To this certificate the clergyman and church-wardens of the
-parish, in which the patient had been known to wander in mendicancy, were
-asked to attest; and if they proved impregnable to the cunning
-representations of the importunate solicitors, and declined to sign the
-certificate, the doctor did not scruple to save them that trouble by
-signing their names himself."
-
-More than once was the charge of being a tinker preferred against him. The
-following satire was written and published for his benefit--with Dr.
-Reade's--after Queen Anne had Dr. Grant sworn in as her "oculist in
-ordinary":--
-
-  "Her majesty sure was in a surprise,
-    Or else was very short-sighted,
-  When a tinker was sworn to look to her eyes,
-    And the mountebank Reade was knighted."
-
-
-"THE LITTLE CARVER DAVY."
-
-The distinguished chemical philosopher and physician of Penzance, Sir
-Humphry Davy, Bart., was the son of a poor wood-carver, at which trade
-Humphry worked in his earlier days, and was named by his familiar
-associates, the "Little Carver Davy." On the death of his father, the
-widow established herself as a milliner at Penzance, where she apprenticed
-her son to an apothecary. His mother was a woman of talent and great moral
-sense. When, as Sir Humphry, he had reached the summit of his fame, he
-looked back upon the facts of his humble origin, his father's plebeian
-occupation and associates, and his mother's mean pursuit, followed for his
-benefit, with mortification instead of regarding them as sources of
-pride.
-
-
-A BUTCHER BOY ESCAPES THE CLEAVER AND BECOMES A GREAT PHYSICIAN AND POET.
-
-In a rickety old three story house, the lower part of which was occupied
-as a butcher's shop and trader's room, and the upper stories as a
-dwelling-house, at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, in 1721, was born Mark Akenside.
-His father was a butcher, and one day, as the boy Mark was assisting at
-the menial occupation of cutting up a calf, a cleaver fell from the shop
-block upon another "calf,"--that of young Akenside's leg,--which lamed him
-for life.
-
-[Illustration: THE YOUNG SURGEON'S FIRST EXPERIENCE.]
-
-Akenside was a Nonconformist, and by the aid of the Dissenters' Society
-young Mark was sent to Edinburgh to study theology. From theology he went
-to physic, his honest parent refunding the money to the society paid for
-his studies under their patronage, and he subsequently obtained his degree
-at Cambridge, and became a fellow of the R. S.
-
-Like Davy, Akenside became ashamed of his plebeian origin. His lameness,
-like Lord Byron's, was a continual source of mortification to him.
-
-He became a physician to St. Thomas; and, as he went with the students the
-rounds of the hospital, the fastidiousness of the little bunch of dignity
-at having come so closely in contact with the vulgar rabble, induced him,
-at times, to make the strongest patients precede him with _brooms_, to
-clear a way for him through the crowd of diseased wretches, who,
-nevertheless, had wonderful faith in his wisdom, and would cry out,
-"_Bravo for the butcher boy with a game leg!_" as they fell back before
-the fearful charge of corn brooms.
-
-By the assistance of friends, and his ever extensive practice, Akenside
-was enabled, to the day of his death, in 1770, to keep his carriage, wear
-his gold-hilted sword, and his huge well-powdered wig.
-
-
-HOW ONE HOP-PED FROM OBSCURITY.
-
-"Dr. Messenger Monsey, in the heyday of his prosperity, used to assert to
-his friends that the first of his known ancestors was a baker and a
-retailer of hops. At a critical point of this worthy man's career, when
-hops were 'down,' and feathers 'up,' in order to raise the needful for
-present emergencies he ripped up his beds, sold the feathers, and refilled
-the ticks with hops. When a change occurred in the market soon afterwards
-the process was reversed; even the children's beds were reopened, and the
-hops sold for a large profit over the cost of replacing the feathers!"
-
-"That's the way, sirs, that my family hop-ped from obscurity," the doctor
-would conclude, with great gusto.
-
-The Duke of Leeds used, in the same manner, to delight in boasting of his
-lucky progenitor, Jack Osborn, the shop lad, who rescued his master's
-beautiful daughter from a watery grave at the bottom of the Thames, and
-won her hand away from a score of noble suitors, who wanted, literally,
-the young lady's _pin_-money as much as herself. Her father was a pin
-manufacturer, and had in his shop on London Bridge amassed a considerable
-wealth in the business. The jolly old man, instead of disdaining to
-bestow the lovely and wealthy maid--his only child--on an apprentice,
-exclaimed,--
-
-"Jack Osborn won her, and Jack shall wear her."
-
-When Lord Bath vainly endeavored to effect a reconciliation between the
-doctor and Garrick, who had fallen out, Monsey said,--
-
-"Why will your lordship trouble yourself with the squabbles of a
-merry-andrew and a _quack_ doctor?"
-
-Monsey continued his quarrel with Garrick up to the day of the death of
-the great tragedian. The latter seldom retaliated, but when he did his
-sarcasm cut to the bone.
-
-Garrick's style of satire may be inferred from his epigram on James Quin,
-the celebrated actor, and illegitimate son of an Irishman, "whose wife
-turned out a bigamist." When Garrick make his debut on the London stage,
-at Godman's Fields playhouse, October 19, 1741, as "Richard the Third,"
-Quin objected to Garrick's original style, saying,--
-
-"If this young fellow is right, myself and all the other actors are
-wrong."
-
-Being told that the theatre was crowded to the dome nightly to hear the
-new actor, Quin replied that "Garrick was a new religion; Whitefield was
-followed for a time, but they would all come to church again." Hence
-Garrick wrote the following epigram:--
-
-  "Pope Quin, who damns all churches but his own,
-  Complains that heresy infects the town;
-  That Whitefield-Garrick has misled the age,
-  And taints the sound religion of the stage.
-  'Schism,' he cries, 'has turned the nation's brain,
-  But eyes will open, and to church again!'
-  Thou great Infallible, forbear to roar;
-  Thy bulls and errors are revered no more.
-  When doctrines meet with general approbation,
-  It is not _heresy_, but reformation."
-
-When confined to his bed in his last sickness, Garrick had the advice of
-several of the best physicians, summoned to his villa near Hampton, and
-Monsey, in bad taste and worse temper, wrote a satire on the occurrence.
-He accused the actor of parsimony, among other mean qualities, and though,
-after the death of Garrick, January 22, 1779, he destroyed the verses,
-some portions of them got into print, of which the following is a
-sample:--
-
-  "Seven wise doctors lately met
-    To save a wretched sinner.
-  'Come, Tom,' said Jack, 'pray let's be quick,
-    Or we shall lose _our_ dinner.'
-
-  "Some roared for rhubarb, jalap some,
-    And others cried for Dover;[3]
-  'Let's give him something,' each one said,
-    'And then let's give him over.'"
-
-At last, after much learned wrangling, one more learned than the others
-proposed to arouse the energies of the dying man by jingling a purse of
-gold in his ear. This suggestion was acted upon, and
-
-  "Soon as the favorite sound he heard,
-    One faint effort he tried;
-  He oped his eyes, he scratched his head,
-    He gave one grasp--and died."
-
-Riding on horseback through Hyde Park, Monsey was accompanied by a Mr.
-Robinson, a Trinitarian preacher, who knew that the doctor's religion was
-of the Unitarian stamp. After deploring, in solemn tones, the corrupt
-state of morals, etc., the minister turned to Monsey, and said,--
-
-"And, doctor, I am addressing one who believes there is no God."
-
-"And I," replied Monsey, "one who believes there are _three_."
-
-[Illustration: HEALING THE SICK WITH A GOLDEN DOSE.]
-
-The good man, greatly shocked, put spurs to his horse, and, without
-vouchsafing a "good day," rode away at a high gallop.
-
-
-PEDAGOGUES TURNED OUT AS DOCTORS.
-
-Some of the hundreds of respectable medical practitioners of this
-democratic country, who, between commencement and the following term, used
-to lengthen out their scanty means by "teaching the young idea how to
-shoot" in some far-off country village, will scarcely thank me for
-introducing the above-named subject to their present notice. However, it
-will depend somewhat upon the way they take it; whether, like Sir Davy,
-they are ashamed of their "small beginnings," or, like Dr. Monsey, they
-may independently snap their fingers in the face of their plebeian origin,
-and boast of their earlier common efforts for a better foothold among the
-great men of their generation.
-
-Among English physicians, with whom it was, and still is, counted a
-disgrace to have been previously known in a more humble calling, we may
-find a long list of "doctors pedagogic," beginning with Dr. John Bond, who
-taught school until the age of forty, when he turned doctor. He was a man
-of great learning, however, and became a successful physician. Even among
-the good people of Taunton, where he had resided and labored as a
-pedagogue in former years, he was esteemed as a "wise physician."
-
-John Arbuthnot was a "Scotch pedagogue." He was distinguished as a man of
-letters and of wit; the associate of Pope and Swift, and of Bolingbroke; a
-companion at the court of Queen Anne.
-
-Arbuthnot owed his social elevation to his quick wit, rare conversational
-powers, and fascinating address, rather than to his family influence,
-professional knowledge, or medical success.
-
-"Dorchester, where, as a young practitioner, he endeavored to establish
-himself, utterly refused to give him a living; but it doubtless," says
-Jeaffreson, "maintained more than one dull empiric in opulence. Failing to
-get a living among the rustic boors, who could appreciate no effort of the
-human voice but a fox-hunter's whoop, Arbuthnot packed up and went to
-London."
-
-Poverty for a while haunted his door in London, and to keep the wolf away
-he was compelled to resort to "the most hateful of all occupations--the
-personal instruction of the ignorant."
-
-Arbuthnot was a brilliant writer as well as fluent talker, and by his
-literary hit, "Examination of Dr. Woodward's Account of the Deluge," he
-was soon brought into notice. By the merest accident and the greatest
-fortune he was called to Prince George of Denmark, when his royal highness
-was suddenly taken sick, and, as all who fell within the circle of his
-magical private acquaintance were led to respect and love him, the doctor
-was retained in the good graces of the prince. On the death of Dr. Hannes,
-Arbuthnot received the appointment of physician-in-ordinary to the queen.
-
-The polished manner of the fortunate doctor, his handsome person, and
-flattering, cordial seeming address, especially to ladies, made him a
-court favorite. To retain the good graces of his royal patient, the queen,
-"he adopted a tone of affection for her as an individual, as well as a
-loyal devotion to her as a queen." His conversation, while it had the
-semblance of the utmost frankness, was foaming over with flattery.
-
-"If the queen won't swallow my pills she will my flattery," he is said to
-have whispered to his friend Swift; but this report is doubtful, as he
-stood in fear of the displeasure of the querulous, crotchety, weak-minded
-queen, who had but recently discharged Dr. Radcliffe for a slip of the
-tongue, when at the coffee-house he had said she had the "_vapors_."
-
-"What is the hour?" asked the queen of Arbuthnot.
-
-"Whatever hour it may please your majesty," was his characteristic reply,
-with his most winning smile and graceful obeisance.
-
-By this sort of flattery he retained his hold in the queen's favor till
-her death.
-
-By these facts one is reminded of the saying of Oxenstierna, when, on
-concluding the peace of Westphalia in 1648, he sent his young son John as
-plenipotentiary to the powers on that occasion, remarking, in presence of
-those who expressed their surprise thereat,--
-
-"You do not know with how little wisdom men are governed."
-
-With the loss of the queen's patronage at her death, and his wine-loving
-proclivities, Dr. Arbuthnot became sick and poor, and died in straitened
-circumstances.
-
-
-ANOTHER POOR PEDAGOGUE,
-
-Who reached the acme of medical fame, and became court physician, was Sir
-Richard Blackmer. He surely ought not to have been called an ignoramus (by
-Dr. Johnson), for he resided thirteen years in the University of Oxford.
-After leaving Oxford, his extreme poverty compelled him to adopt the
-profession of a schoolmaster. In the year 1700 there were collected
-upwards of forty sets of ribald verses, under the title of "Commendary
-Verses, or the Author of Two Arthurs, and Satyr against Wit;" in which Sir
-Richard was taunted with his earlier poverty, and of having been a
-pedagogue!
-
-Every man has his advertisement and his advertisers. The poets and
-lampooners were Blackmer's. They assisted in bringing him into notoriety.
-Among them were Pope, Steele, and the obscene Dr. Garth. While the authors
-of those filthy, licentious productions (which no bar-maid or
-kitchen-scullion at this day could read without blushing behind her pots
-and kettles) were flattering themselves that they were injuring the
-honest doctor, they were bringing him daily into the notice of better men
-than themselves, and heaping ignominy upon the authors of such vile
-lampoons.
-
-One satire opened thus:--
-
-  "By nature meant, by want a pedant made,
-  Blackmer at first professed the whipping trade.
-
-         *       *       *       *       *
-
-  In vain his pills as well as birch he tried;
-  His boys grew blockheads, and his patients died."
-
-Mr. Jeaffreson says, "the same dull sarcasms about killing patients and
-whipping boys into blockheads are repeated over and again; and as if to
-show, with the greatest possible force, the pitch to which the evil of the
-times had risen, the coarsest and most disgusting of all these lampoon
-writers was a lady of rank,--the Countess of Sandwich!"
-
-Wouldn't a young Harvard or Yale medical graduate, without money, friends,
-or a practice, leap for joy with the knowledge that he had two-score
-_disinterested_ writers advertising him into universal notice, since it is
-considered a burning disgrace for an honorable, upright, and educated
-physician to advertise himself!
-
-Of course Sir Richard rose, in spite of his foes, to whom he seldom
-replied. He says, in one of his own works, "I am but a hard-working
-doctor, spending my days in coffee-houses (where physicians were wont to
-receive apothecaries, and, hearing the cases of their patients, prescribe
-for them without seeing them, at half price), receiving apothecaries, or
-driving over the stones in my carriage, visiting my patients."
-
-The honest, upright man who rises from nothing, and continues to ascend
-right in the teeth of immense opposition from his enemies, seldom relapses
-into obscurity in after life. Though Dr. Blackmer failed as a poet, he
-died esteemed as an honest man, a consistent Christian, and an excellent
-physician.
-
-
-A WEAVER AND A QUAKER BOY.
-
-Many cases might be instanced of weavers becoming physicians, but let one
-suffice. John Sutcliffe, a Yorkshire weaver, with no early educational
-advantages, and with the broadest provincial dialect, became a respectable
-apothecary, and subsequently a first-class medical practitioner. He rose
-entirely by his own integrity, frugality, industry, and intelligence.
-
-Amongst his apprentices was Dr. John Coakley Lettsom, whose name must ever
-rank high as a literary man, and a benevolent and successful physician.
-Lettsom was born in the West Indies, and was a Quaker. The place under the
-Yorkshire apothecary was secured for the boy by Mr. Fothergill, a Quaker
-minister of Warrington, England.
-
-A senior drug clerk informed the rustic inhabitants of the arrival of a
-Quaker from a far off county, where the people were _antipodes_,--whose
-feet were in a position exactly opposite to those of the English. Having
-well circulated this startling information, the merry clerk and
-fellow-apprentices laid back to enjoy the joke all by themselves.
-
-The very day the new apprentice entered upon his duties, the apothecary
-shop became haunted by an immense and curious crowd of gaping rustics, old
-and young, male and female, to see the wonderful Quaker who was accustomed
-to walking on his head!
-
-Day after day the curious peasants came and went, and if the astonished
-Sutcliffe closed his doors against the unprofitable rabble, they peered in
-at his windows, or hung about the entrances, hoping to see the remarkable
-phenomenon issue forth. But as the day of "walking off on his ear" had not
-then arrived, they were doomed to disappointment and lost faith in his
-ability to do what they had expected of him.
-
-
-JOHN RADCLIFFE.
-
-John Radcliffe, the humbug, "the physician without learning," was the son
-of a Yorkshire yeoman. When he had risen to intimacy with the leading
-nobility of London,--as he did by his "shrewdness, arrogant simplicity,
-and immeasurable insolence,"--he laid claim to aristocratic origin. The
-Earl of Derwenter recognized _Sir_ John as a kinsman; but the heralds
-interfered with the little "corner" of the doctor and earl, after
-Radcliffe's decease, by admonishing the University of Oxford not to erect
-any escutcheon over his plebeian monument.
-
-Of Radcliffe's success in getting patronage we have spoken in another
-chapter. Doubtless he, Dr. Hannes, and Dr. Mead all resorted to the same
-sharp tricks, of which they accused each other by turns, in order to gain
-notoriety and practice.
-
-DR. EDWARD HANNES was reputed a "_basket-maker_." At least, his father
-followed that humble calling. Of the son's earlier life little is known.
-About the year 168-, he burst upon the London aristocracy with a
-magnificent equipage, consisting of coach and four, and handsome liveried
-servants and coachmen.
-
-These were _his_ advertisements, and he soon rode into a splendid
-practice, notwithstanding Radcliffe's contrary prognostication.
-
-Dr. Hannes and Dr. Blackmer, being called to attend upon the young Duke of
-Gloucester, and the disease taking a fatal turn, Sir John Radcliffe was
-also called to examine into the case. Radcliffe could not forego the
-opportunity here offered to lash his rivals, and turning to them in the
-presence of the royal household, he said,--
-
-"It would have been happy for the nation had you, sir (to Hannes), been
-bred a basket-maker, and you, sir (to Blackmer), remained a country
-schoolmaster, rather than have ventured out of your reach in the practice
-of an art to which you are an utter stranger, and for your blunders in
-which you ought to be whipped with one of your own rods."
-
-As the case was simply one of rash, none of them had much to boast of.
-
-
-A HORSE DOCTOR.
-
-There have been, and still are, thousands in the various walks of life,
-who, at some period, have attempted the practice of medicine. Among the
-hundreds whom our colleges "grind out" annually, not more than one in
-twenty succeeds in medical practice so far as to gain any eminence, or the
-competence of a common laborer.
-
-MARAT WAS A HORSE DOCTOR.
-
-The most remarkable thing respecting this noted man occurred at his birth.
-_He was born triplets!_
-
-Yes, though "born of parents entirely unknown to history," three different
-places have claimed themselves, or been claimed, as his birthplace.
-
-Before his energies became perverted to political aims, he had endeavored
-to rise, by his own talent and energies, through the sciences.
-
-The year 1789 found him in the position of veterinary surgeon to the Count
-d'Artois, thoroughly disgusted with his failure to rise in society with
-the "quacks," as he termed them, "of the Corps Scientifique."
-
-Miss Mühlbach, in her "_Maria Antoinette and her Son_," presents Marat in
-conversation with the cobbler, Simon, as follows:--
-
-"The cobbler quickly turned round to confront the questioner. He saw,
-standing by his side, a little, remarkably crooked and dwarfed young man,
-whose unnaturally large head was set upon narrow, depressed shoulders, and
-whose whole (ludicrous) appearance made such an impression upon the
-cobbler that he laughed outright.
-
-"'Not beautiful, am I?' asked the stranger, who tried to join in the laugh
-with the cobbler, but the result was a mere grimace; which made his
-unnaturally large mouth extend from ear to ear, displaying two fearful
-rows of long, greenish teeth. 'Not beautiful at all, am I? Dreadful ugly!'
-
-"'You are somewhat remarkable, at least,' replied the cobbler. 'If I did
-not hear you speak French, and see you standing upright, I should think
-you the monstrous toad in the fable.'
-
-"'I am the monstrous toad of the fable. I have merely disguised myself
-to-day as a man, in order to look at this Austrian woman and her brood.'
-
-"'Where do you live, and what is your name, sir?' asked the cobbler, with
-glowing curiosity.
-
-"'I live in the stables of the Count d'Artois, and my name is Jean Paul
-Marat.'
-
-"'In the stable!' cried the cobbler. 'My faith, I had not supposed you a
-hostler or a coachman. It must be a funny sight, M. Marat, to see _you_
-mounted upon a horse.'
-
-"'You think that such a big toad does not belong there exactly. Well, you
-are right, brother Simon. My real business is not at all with the horses,
-but with the men of the stable. I am the horse doctor of the Count
-d'Artois, and I can assure you that I am a tolerably skilful doctor.'"
-
-We do not quote the above author as reliable authority in personal
-descriptions, beyond the "shrugging of shoulders," which habit she
-attributes to all of her characters (_vide_ "Napoleon and Queen Louisa,"
-where she uses the phrase some twenty-three times).
-
-At the time of his assuming the dictatorship, he resided in most squalid
-apartments, situated in one of the lowest back streets of Paris, in
-criminal intimacy with the wife of his printer.... He sold their bed to
-get money to bring out the first number of his journal, and lived in
-extreme poverty at a time when he could have become immensely rich by
-selling his silence.
-
-The death of this wretch was hastened only a few days by his
-assassination, for he was already consumed by a disgusting disease, and it
-is melancholy to add that he was adored after his death, and his remains
-deposited in the Pantheon with national honors, and an altar erected to
-his memory in the club of the Cordeliers.
-
-"I killed one man to save a hundred thousand!" exclaimed the magnificent
-Charlotte Corday to her judges; "a villain to save innocents, a furious
-wild beast, to give repose to my country!" Thus the "horse doctor"
-ignominiously perished at the hands of a woman,--a woman who immortalized
-herself by killing a "villain."
-
-
-PETER PINDAR, THE PREACHER.
-
-We find many cases where ministers have turned doctors, and _vice versa_.
-
-"PETER PINDAR" is here worthy of a passing notice. His true name was
-Wolcot. Descended from a family of doctors for several generations, he
-nevertheless himself failed to gain a living practice.
-
-When King George III. sent Sir William Trelawney out as governor of
-Jamaica, about 1760, he took young Dr. Wolcot with him, who acted in the
-treble capacity of physician, private secretary, and chaplain to the
-governor's household. Dr. Wolcot's professional knowledge had been
-acquired somewhat "irregularly," and it is very doubtful whether he ever
-received ordination at the hands of the bishops.
-
-It is true, however, that he acted as rector for the colony, reading
-prayers and preaching whenever a congregation of ten presented itself,
-which occurred only semi-occasionally.
-
-The doctor was fond of shooting, and 'tis gravely reported that he and his
-clerk used to amuse themselves on the way to church by shooting pigeons
-and other wild game, with which the wood abounded. Having shot their way
-to the sacred edifice, the merry parson and jolly clerk would wait ten
-minutes for the congregation to convene, and if, at the expiration of that
-time, the quota had not arrived, the few were dismissed with a blessing,
-and the pair shot their way back home. If but a few negroes presented
-themselves, the rector ordered his clerk to give them a bit of silver,
-with which to buy them off.
-
-[Illustration: THE PARSON BUYING OFF THE "CONGREGATION."]
-
-One old negro, more cunning than the rest, and who discovered that the
-parson's interest was rather in the discharge of his fowling-piece than
-the discharge of his priestly duties, used to present himself punctually
-every Sunday at church.
-
-"What brings you here, blackie?" asked the parson.
-
-"To hear de prayer for sinners, and de sarmon, masser."
-
-"Wouldn't a _bit_ or two serve you as well?" asked the rector, with a
-wink.
-
-"Well, masser, dis chile lub de good sarmon ob yer rev'rence, but dis time
-de money might do," was the reply, with a significant scratch of his
-woolly head.
-
-The parson would then pay the price, the negro would grin his thanks, and,
-chuckling to himself, retire; and for a year or more this sort of
-_black_-mailing was continued.
-
-Tiring of _acting_ as priest, Wolcot returned to London, and vainly
-endeavored to establish himself in practice. Neither preaching nor
-practising physic was his forte, and he resorted to the pen. Here he
-discovered his genius. Adopting the _nom de plume_ of "Peter Pindar," he
-became famous as a political satirist, and the author of numerous popular
-works. He died in London in 1819. Wolcot possessed a kindly heart, and a
-benevolence deeper than his pockets.
-
-
-POLICEMEN AS DOCTORS AND SURGEONS.
-
-Some very laughable scenes, as well as very touching and painful ones,
-might be recorded, had we space, where policemen have necessarily been
-unceremoniously summoned to act as physician or surgeon in absence of a
-"regular."
-
-In Portland, the police have to turn their hand to most everything.
-Circumstances beyond his control compelled one Mr. J. S. to act the part
-of midwife to a strapping Irish woman at the station-house, one evening,
-he being the sole "committee of reception" to a bouncing baby that came
-along somewhat precipitately. The account, which is well authenticated,
-closes by saying,--
-
-"Mother, baby, and officer are doing as well as can be expected!"
-
-We have seen the "officer." He did better than was "expected."
-
-The writer was on a Fulton ferry boat in the winter of 1857, when a
-similar scene occurred. A German woman was taken in pain. A whisper was
-passed to a female passenger; a policeman was summoned from outside the
-ladies' (?) cabin; the male occupants were ejected,--even myself and
-another medical student, and the husband of the patient. The latter
-remonstrated, and demonstrated his objection to the momentary separation
-by beating and shouting at the saloon door.
-
-"Katharina! Katharina!" he shouted, "keep up a steef upper lips!"
-
-This roaring attracted nearly all the men from the opposite side of the
-boat, who crowded around him and the door, to learn the cause of the
-Teutonic demonstrations of alternate fear, anger, and encouragement.
-
-"Got in himmel! Vere you leefs ven you's t' home? Vich a man can't come
-mit his vife, altogedder? Hopen de door, unt I preaks him mit mine feest;
-don't it?" So he kept on, alternately cursing the policeman and
-encouraging "Katharina," till we reached the Brooklyn side, and left the
-ferry boat.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-V.
-
-WOMAN AS PHYSICIAN.
-
-    "Angel of Patience! sent to calm
-    Our feverish brow with cooling palm;
-    To lay the storm of hope and fears,
-    And reconcile life's smile and tears;
-    The throb of wounded pride to still,
-    And make our own our Father's will."--WHITTIER.
-
-    HER "MISSION."--NO PLACE IN MEDICAL HISTORY.--ONE OF THEM.--MRS.
-    STEPHENS.--"CRAZY SALLY."--RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS.--RUNS IN THE
-    FAMILY.--ANECDOTES.--"WHICH GOT THRASHED?"--A WRETCHED END.--AMERICAN
-    FEMALE PHYSICIANS.--A PIONEER.--A LAUGHABLE ANECDOTE.--"THREE WISE
-    MEN."--"A SHORT HORSE," ETC.--BOSTON AND NEW YORK FEMALE DOCTORS.--A
-    STORY.--"LOVE AND THOROUGHWORT."--A GAY BEAU.--UP THE
-    PENOBSCOT.--DYING FOR LOVE.--"IS HE MAD?"--THOROUGHWORT WINS.
-
-
-"From the earliest ages the care of the sick has devolved on woman. A
-group by one of our sculptors, representing Eve with the body of Abel
-stretched upon her lap, bending over him in bewildered grief, and striving
-to restore the vital spirit which she can hardly believe to have departed,
-is a type of the province of the sex ever since pain and death entered the
-world.
-
-"To be first the vehicle for human life, and then its devoted guardian; to
-remove or alleviate the physical evils which afflict the race, or to watch
-their wasting, and tenderly care for all that remains when they have
-wrought their result--this is her divinely appointed and universally
-conceded mission.
-
-"Were she to refuse it, to forsake her station beside the suffering, the
-office of medicine and the efforts of the physician would be more than
-half baffled. And yet, where her post is avowedly so important, she has
-generally been denied the liberty of understanding much that is involved
-in its intelligent occupancy. With the human body so largely in her charge
-from birth to death, she is not allowed to inquire into its marvellous
-mechanism. With the administering of remedies intrusted to her vigilance
-and faithfulness, she has not been allowed to investigate the qualities,
-or even know the names or the operations of those substances committed to
-her use. To be a student with scientific thoroughness, and to practise
-independently with what she has thus acquired, has been regarded as
-unseemly, or as beyond her capacity, or as an invasion of prerogatives
-claimed exclusively for men.
-
-"Indeed, the whole domain of medicine has been '_pre-empted_' by men, and
-in their '_squatter sovereignty_' they have sturdily warned off the
-gentler sex."--Rev. H. B. Elliot, in "_Eminent Women of the Age_."
-
-It seems to my mind, and ought to every thinking mind, to be ridiculously
-absurd that "man born of woman" should set up his authority against woman
-understanding "herself." "Man, know thyself," is stereotyped, but if it
-ever was put in type form for "woman to know herself," it has long since
-been "_pied_."
-
-"Search the Scriptures," and you would never mistrust that "eternal life,"
-or any other life, came, or existed a day, through woman. Mythological
-writers, who come next to scriptural, give woman no credit in medical
-science. We will except Hygeia, the goddess of health, the fabled daughter
-of Æsculapius. In the _medical_ history of no country does she occupy any
-prominence. There were "Witches," "Enchantresses," "Wise Women,"
-"Fortune-tellers," who in every age have existed to no small extent, and
-under various names have figured in the histories of all nations,
-receiving the countenance of prince and beggar--but females as physicians,
-_as a class_, have never been recognized by nations or governments, or
-scarcely by communities or individuals.
-
-In searching the memorials of English authors for two hundred years past,
-we can find but little to disprove the above assertions. In Mr.
-Jeaffreson's "Book of Doctors," the author fails to find memorials of
-their actions, as female physicians, sufficient to fill a single chapter;
-and those of whom he has made mention, he discourses of mostly in a
-ridiculous light, as though entirely out of their sphere, or as being of
-the coarser sort, and questions "if two score could be rescued from
-oblivion whom our ancestors intrusted with the care of their invalid wives
-and children."
-
-In this connection, let us briefly mention such as are better known in
-English literature, as doctresses especially as mentioned by Mr.
-Jeaffreson.
-
-Two ladies, who are immortalized in "Philosophical Transactions for 1694,"
-were Sarah Hastings and Mrs. French. Another, who received the support of
-bishops, dukes, lords, countesses, etc., in 1738-9, was Mrs. Joanna
-Stephens, "an ignorant and vulgar creature." After enriching herself by
-her specifics, consisting of a "pill, a powder and a decoction," she
-bamboozled the English Parliament into purchasing the secret, for the
-(then) enormous sum of £5000. "The Powder consists of _eggshells_ and
-_snails_, both calcined."
-
-"The decoction is made by boiling together Alicant _soap_, swine's-cresses
-burnt to a blackness, honey, camomile, fennel, parsley, and burdock
-leaves." "The pill consists of snails, wild carrot and burdock seeds,
-ashen keys, hips, and haws, all burnt to a blackness; soap and honey."
-
-When we take into consideration the fact that there were no "medical
-schools for females," at that day, nor until within the last ten or twelve
-years, that every female applicant was rejected by the medical colleges of
-England, and that all female practitioners were held in disrepute by both
-physician and the public, the above repulsive remedies may not so greatly
-excite our surprise.
-
-
-"CRAZY SALLY."
-
-The most remarkable woman doctor made mention of in English literature,
-was Mrs. Mapp, _née_ Sally Wallin. We have collected these facts
-respecting her origin, character, and career, from _Chambers' Miscellany_
-and the _Gentlemen's Magazine_, 1736-7. Hogarth has immortalized her in
-his "Undertaker's arms." She is placed at the top of that picture, between
-Josh Ward, the _Pill_ doctor, and Chevalier Taylor, the quack oculist.
-(See page 668.)
-
-She was born in Weltshire, in 169-. Her father was a "bone-setter," which
-occupation "run in the family," like that of the Sweets, of Connecticut,
-or like the marine whom Mrs. Mapp saw one day, as she, in her carriage,
-was driving "along the Strand, O."
-
-Said sailor having a wooden leg, the doctress asked, "How does it happen,
-fellow, that you've a wooden leg."
-
-"O, easy enough, madam; my father had one before me. It sort o' runs in
-the family, marm," was the laconic reply. From a barefooted school-girl at
-Weltshire, where Sally obtained barely the rudiments of a common
-education, she became her father's assistant in bone-setting and
-manipulating.
-
-The next we hear of Miss Wallin, is at Epsom, where she became known as
-"Crazy Sally." She has been described as a "very coarse, large, vulgar,
-illiterate, drunken, bawling woman," "known as a haunter of fairs, about
-which she loved to reel, screaming and abusive, in a state of roaring
-intoxication."
-
-It is astonishing as true, that this unattractive specimen of the female
-sex became so esteemed in Epsom, where she set up as a physician, that the
-town offered her £100 to remain there a year! The newspapers sounded her
-praise, the gentry, even, lauded her skill, and physicians witnessed her
-operations.
-
-"Crazy Sally" awoke one morning and found herself famous. Patients of rank
-and wealth flocked from every quarter. Attracted by her success and her
-accumulating wealth, rather than by her _beauty_ or _amiable_ disposition,
-an Epsom swain made her an offer of marriage, which she, like a woman,
-accepted. This fellow's name was Mapp, who lived with her but for a
-fortnight, during which time he "thrashed her" (or she him, it is not just
-clear which) "three times," and appropriating all of her spare change,
-amounting to five hundred dollars, he took to himself one half of the
-world, and quietly left her the other. Our informant adds, "She found
-consolation for her wounded affections in the homage of the world. She
-became a notoriety of the first water; every day the public journals gave
-some interesting account of her, and her remarkable operations."
-
-The _Grub Street Journal_ of that period said, "The remarkable cures of
-the woman bone-setter, Mrs. Mapp, are too numerous to enumerate. Her
-bandages are extraordinarily neat, and her dexterity in reducing
-dislocations and fractures most wonderful. She has cured persons who have
-been twenty years disabled." Her patients were both male and female. Some
-of her most difficult operations were performed before physicians of
-eminence.
-
-Her carriage was splendid, on the panels of which were emblazoned her coat
-of arms. Regularly every week she visited London in this magnificent
-chariot drawn by four superb, cream-white horses, attended by servants,
-arrayed in gorgeous liveries. She put up at the Grecian Coffee-House, and
-forthwith her rooms would be thronged by invalids.
-
-Notices of her were not always of the most complimentary sort. Being one
-day detained by a cart of coal that was unloading in a narrow street of
-the metropolis, on which occasion she was arrayed in a loosely fitting
-robe-de-chambre, with large flowing sleeves, which set off her massive
-proportion most conspicuously, she let down the windows of her carriage,
-and leaning her bare arms upon the door, she impatiently exclaimed,--
-
-"Fellow, how dare you detain a lady of rank thus?"
-
-"A lady of rank!" sneered the coal-man.
-
-"Yes, you villain!" screamed the enraged doctress. "Don't you observe the
-arms of Mrs. Mapp on the carriage?"
-
-[Illustration: "DON'T YOU OBSERVE THE ARMS OF MRS. MAPP?"]
-
-"Yes--I _do_ see the arms," replied the impudent fellow, "and a pair of
-durned coarse ones they are, to be sure."
-
-On another occasion she was riding up Old Kent Road, dressed as above
-described. "Her obesity, immodest attire, intoxication, and dazzling
-equipage were, in the eyes of the mob, so sure signs of royalty, that she
-was taken for a court lady, of German origin, and of unpopular repute. The
-crowd gathered about her carriage, and with oaths and yells were about to
-demolish the windows with clubs and stones, when the nowise alarmed
-occupant, like Nellie Gwynn, on a similar occasion, rose in her seat,
-and, with imprecations more emphatic than polite, exclaimed,--
-
-"---- you! Don't you know who I am? I am Mrs. Sally Mapp, the celebrated
-bone-setter of Epsom!"
-
-"This brief address so tickled the humor of the rabble that the lady was
-permitted to proceed on her way, amid deafening acclamations and
-laughter."
-
-This famous woman's career may be likened to a rocket. She flashed before
-the people as suddenly, ascended as brilliantly to the zenith of fame, and
-fell like the burned, blackened stick.
-
-Mrs. Mapp spent her last days in poverty, wretchedness, and obscurity, at
-"Seven Dials," where she died almost unattended, on the night of December
-22, 1737. Her demise was thus briefly announced in the journals:--
-
-"Died at her lodgings, near Seven Dials, last week, Mrs. Mapp, the once
-much-talked-of bone-setter of Epsom, so wretchedly poor that the parish
-was obliged to bury her."
-
-Mr. Jeaffreson makes mention of two more "female doctors;" one an honest
-widow, mother of "Chevalier Taylor," who, at Norwich, carried on a
-respectable business as an apothecary and doctress, and Mrs. Colonel
-Blood, who, at Romford, supported herself and son by keeping an apothecary
-shop.
-
-
-AMERICAN FEMALE PHYSICIANS.
-
-Perhaps English authors and English readers may be satisfied to allow the
-above meagre and unenviable array of pretenders to stand on record as the
-representatives of "female doctors" in their liberal and enlightened
-country! Americans can boast of a better representative.
-
-While England claims a "Female Medical Society," and one "Female Medical
-College," the United States has several of the former, and three regularly
-chartered "Female Medical Colleges." In a recent announcement of the
-English college, it claims fifty students, "but the aim of the whole
-movement is at present only to furnish competent midwives."
-
-The "Maternity Hospital," of Paris (which existed long before the late
-Franco-Prussian war, but which we can learn nothing of since the fall of
-that once beautiful city), "afforded some opportunity for observation,
-receiving females nominally as students, but they were not allowed to
-prescribe in the wards, nor were they instructed in regard to the use and
-properties of the remedies there prescribed. Indeed, they can hardly rise
-above the position of proficient nurses," says our informant.
-
-Some few medical colleges of the United States are admitting females on
-the same footing as the heretofore more favored "lords of creation."
-
-A female college has been in existence in Philadelphia for above twenty
-years. The "New England Female Medical College" was chartered in 1856; but
-the "regular" colleges, as Yale, Harvard, etc., refuse all female
-applicants.
-
-New York has been more liberal towards the gentler sex. At Geneva,
-Rochester, Syracuse, and elsewhere, as early as 1849-50, medical schools
-of the more liberal sort, but of undoubted respectability and legal
-charters, opened their doors to female students. In 1869 the New York
-Female Medical College was chartered, since which time more than two
-hundred ladies have therein received medical instruction.
-
-In all the principal cities of the Union may be found from one to a dozen
-respectably educated and successful female practitioners, who have
-attained to some eminence in spite of the opposition of the "faculty," and
-the ignorant prejudices of the common people.
-
-It is surprising how early and persistently some men forget that they were
-"born of woman!" Their contempt of the capabilities of womankind would
-lead one to suppose them to be ashamed of their own mothers. Mark Twain's
-facetious but instructive speech, once delivered before an editorial
-gathering in Boston, ought to be rehearsed to them daily; yes, and
-enforced by petticoat government upon their notice till it became
-stereotyped into their stupid brains. Mark says,
-
-"What, sir, would the peoples of the earth be without woman? They would be
-scarce, sir,--almighty scarce! (Laughter.) Then let us cherish her; let us
-protect her; let us give her our support, our encouragement, our
-sympathy,--our--selves, if we get a chance.
-
-"But, jesting aside, Mr. President, woman is gracious, lovable, kind of
-heart, beautiful, worthy of all respect, of all esteem, of all deference.
-Not any here will refuse to drink her health right cordially, for each and
-every one of us has personally known, and loved, and honored the very best
-of them all,--_his own mother_!"
-
-Sarah B. Chase, M. D., a respectable and successful female physician of
-Ohio, gives the following excellent advice:--
-
-"I would not encourage any woman to study medicine, with the expectation
-of practising, who is not ready and willing--ay, _anxious_ and
-_determined_--to go through the same severe drill of preparation, the same
-thorough discipline, as is required of man before he is crowned with the
-honors of an M. D."
-
-
-A FEMALE PIONEER.
-
-Among the first successful female physicians of Boston, where she was born
-in 1805, is Harriot K. Hunt, M. D. Her father was a shipping merchant,
-who, by honesty and uprightness died comparatively poor, for riches are
-not always to the upright. Her mother is described by Rev. H. B. Elliot,
-"as one possessing a mind of remarkable qualities, argumentative,
-practical, independent, and, withal, abounding in tenderness and genial
-brightness." In 1830 we find Miss Hunt not only thrown upon her resources
-for her own livelihood (her father having left but barely the house that
-gave them shelter to be called their own), but the support and care of an
-only and invalid sister, somewhat her junior, were also entirely dependent
-upon her labors. As a school teacher she met the former, as a student and
-nurse she finally surmounted the latter. "What! more pedagogues turned
-doctors?"
-
-After nearly three years' employment of various physicians on the part of
-the elder sister, and the extreme suffering from the "distressing and
-complicated disease," and, what was worse, the "severest forms of
-prescriptions of the old school of physic" for the same time by the
-younger sister, the Misses Hunt were led to investigate for themselves.
-They purchased medical works, which they read early and late.
-
-In 1833 Harriot leased her house, and entered the office of a doctress,
-Mrs. Mott by name, in the double capacity of secretary and student. The
-younger sister became a patient of Mrs. Mott's. The husband of Mrs. Mott
-was an English physician, who, with his wife to attend the female portion
-of his patients, had established himself in Boston. Mrs. Mott was without
-a thorough medical education. "She made extravagant claims to medical
-skill in the treatment of cases regarded as hopeless." In 1835 Dr. Mott
-died, and Mrs. Mott returned to England. Under the treatment of the latter
-the invalid sister had so much improved in health as to be able to "walk
-the streets for the first time in three years;" yet where is the "old
-school doctor," or the veriest charlatan, that would give her the credit
-she so seemingly deserved in this case. Both were her opponents. Even the
-students of the neighboring medical school were "pitted against her." The
-old adage respecting his Satanic majesty having the credit due him, did
-not seem to apply to her case. But Mrs. Mott was more than a match for
-their cunning, if not for their scientific theorizings, as the following
-anecdote will show.
-
-"Three wise men of Gotham," that amiable lady, Mrs. Goose, tells us,
-"went to sea in a bowl; and had the bowl been stronger, my song would have
-been longer." This has its parallel in the three wise students of H----,
-who laid their wise heads together, and went to _see_--Mrs. Mott, the
-doctress, of Hanover Street. One was to pretend that he had some peculiar
-disease, for which he, with his anxious friends, wished to consult the
-"wise woman." They entered the doctor's office, and demanded to see the
-doctress. This was an open insult to the woman, as she only gave her
-attention to females and children. Nevertheless, Mrs. Mott, whose
-olfactory nerves were not so obtuse as to prevent her from distinguishing
-the aroma of that peculiar little animal quadruped of the genus _Mus_,
-obeyed the summons, and entered the presence of the three wise
-Æsculapians.
-
-Now the fun began. Not the fun that _was to be_ at the expense of the
-"ignorant old female quack," however.
-
-One of the gentlemen arose, and after a profound bow, began, with some
-embarrassment, to state his case.
-
-"But wait just a moment," the doctress interrupted. "You intimate that it
-is a _peculiar_ case. My fee for consultation in such cases is _three
-dollars_. Please hand over the money, and proceed."
-
-This was an unexpected demand. They had thought to have a little fun,
-expose the woman's ignorance, and have a "huge thing" to tell to their
-class-fellows, _and not pay for it_! Mrs. Mott was a woman, but she
-possessed powerful magnetic influence, and held fast to the point, viz.,
-her fee for consultation; and to the chagrin of the patient (?), and the
-astonishment of his chums, the three dollars were paid over to the
-doctress.
-
-"Now, sir, you will please state your case," said the lady, pocketing the
-fee, adjusting her eye-glasses, and seating herself for a consultation.
-
-"Yes. Well--it is a--a peculiar case," stammered the patient.
-
-"You have informed me of that point before. Please proceed," remarked the
-doctress with great complacency to the embarrassed fellow.
-
-"It's a delicate case," he blushingly replied.
-
-"O, indeed; then step into this private consulting room;" and arising, she
-led the way to an inner office, where the young man involuntarily
-followed, greatly to the amusement of the two remaining students, who
-remarked, "It is getting blamed hot for us here."
-
-[Illustration: THREE WISE STUDENTS CONSULTING A DOCTRESS.]
-
-In a moment, the invalid--greatly improved, one might judge, from his
-agility,--rushed from the private sanctum with a bound, grasped his hat
-from the table, exclaiming, "Come on, for God's sake!" and rushed from the
-house, followed by his now thoroughly affrighted companions.
-
-"What's the matter? What did the old tarantula say to you?" demanded the
-young man's chums, when well outside of the web into which they had so
-impudently intruded themselves.
-
-"Don't you ever ask me," he vociferated. "A ---- pretty mess you got me
-into. But if either of you ever again mistake that old woman for a fool, I
-hope to God she'll take you into her private consulting room."
-
-But to return to Miss Hunt and her sister. In 1855 or '56 the sisters
-opened an office in Boston. As with all young physicians without "dead
-men's shoes," professional support, or wealthy and influential friends to
-back them, patients gathered slowly at first, but with a steady increase,
-the care of whom soon devolved entirely upon Harriot, as her sister
-married, and retired from practice.
-
-In 1847 she had an extensive practice among a wealthy and influential
-class of people, which many an older physician of the sterner sex might
-envy. With a large practical knowledge, acquired in twelve years'
-experience, she applied to Harvard College for permission to attend a
-course of medical lectures. She was refused admission. In 1850 she again
-applied. The officers consented this time, but the students offered such
-objections to the admission of females into their presence, that Miss Hunt
-generously declined to avail herself of the long-coveted opportunity.
-
-"The Female Medical College," at Philadelphia, in 1853, granted Miss Hunt
-an honorary degree.... She is now in the midst of an extensive practice.
-Miss Hunt has lived a glorious, self-denying life, upholding her sister
-co-laborers, and the "dignity of the profession," never demeaning herself
-by stooping to sell her knowledge, by any of those disreputable practices
-that mark the avaricious M. D., the charlatan, the parasites, and the
-leeches of the profession, both male and female.
-
-Among eighty-five "female physicians" (?) of Boston, eighteen claim to be
-graduates of some college. We know of several who deserve a favorable
-mention here, but present limits will not admit.
-
-
-NEW YORK FEMALE DOCTORS.
-
-In New York city there are upwards of two hundred so-called "female
-physicians," about eighty per cent. of whom, according to the best
-authority,--police reports, etc.,--subsist by _vampirism_! Here, in this
-chapter, I shall mention a few of the really meritorious ones, reserving
-the large majority to be "shown up" under the various chapters as
-"fortune-tellers," "clairvoyants," and "astrologers."
-
-The subject of the following imperfect, because brief, sketch,--MRS. C. S.
-LOZIER, M. D.,--late of New York city, was born in Plainfield, New Jersey,
-in 1813. Her maiden name was Clemence S. Harned. Her father was a farmer
-by occupation, and a member of the Methodist church. Her amiable and
-excellent mother was a Quakeress. "Why should Mrs. Lozier, a gentle,
-modest, unambitious, home-loving woman, have chosen the calling of a
-physician?" asks her biographer. My answer would be, "She was a creature
-of circumstances." Another, in view of the facts to be related, would say,
-"_It was her destiny_."
-
-The valuable information which Mrs. Lozier gained, as a Quakeress, amongst
-that herbalistic people with which she was early associated, with study
-and practical observation enabled her to "act efficiently as a nurse and
-attendant upon the sick and afflicted of the neighborhood."
-
-The elder brother of Miss Clemence, William Harned, was a physician, as
-also were two of her cousins. In 1830 she was married to Mr. Lozier, and
-removed to New York. Her husband's health failing, and having no other
-support, Mrs. Lozier opened a select school, which she kept successfully
-till after the death of Mr. Lozier, in 1837.
-
-"During this period she read medicine with her brother. When her pupils
-were sick, she would generally be called in before a physician. She also
-was connected with the 'Moral Reform Society,' with Mrs. Margaret Pryor,
-and visited the sick and abandoned, often prescribing for them in
-sickness."
-
-Mrs. Lozier graduated at the Eclectic College, of Syracuse, in 1853,
-having attended her first course of lectures at the Central College,
-Rochester. From that time until her death, in 1870, she continued to
-minister to the sick and afflicted in the city of New York.
-
-At the commencement of this article we stated that Mrs. Lozier was a
-modest woman. This she continued to be to the end. Those leading
-physicians who often met her in consultation, with the thousands of
-patients who from time to time have been under her treatment, the students
-before whom she lectured during several years, the numerous friends who
-thronged her parlors, and the Christian professors with whom she
-mingled,--all, _all_ testify to this fact. "She denied both the expediency
-and practicability of mingling the sexes" in deriving a medical education.
-"Woman physician for women," was her motto. It was not always possible for
-her to refuse to prescribe for male patients, as many can testify. The
-efforts of some, far down in the scale of life, to connect the name of
-Mrs. Lozier with those disreputable practices by which the majority of
-female physicians--the parasites of the profession--subsist, yea, even
-gain a competence, in this city, and, consequently,
-_respectability_,--"for gold buys friends,"--have utterly failed, and her
-_name_ to-day, as it ever will, stands out boldly as belonging to one who
-was a self-denying, God-fearing, honorable, and successful female
-practitioner.
-
-Mrs. Lozier is said to have been a skilful surgeon, "having performed
-upwards of one hundred and twenty capital operations." In 1867-8 Mrs. L.
-visited Europe, where she was received with great marks of esteem by
-eminent men, and admitted to the hospitals.
-
-Her son, Dr. A. W. Lozier, is in practice in New York city.
-
-
-DOCTORS ELIZABETH AND EMILY BLACKWELL.
-
-The first female who received a medical diploma from any college in the
-United States was Miss Elizabeth Blackwell.
-
-This lady, who now stands only second in years of experience to Miss Hunt,
-of Boston, and second to no female in medical knowledge and usefulness,
-came to this country from England in 1831, when she was ten years of age.
-[A lady, of whom I made some inquiries respecting the above, assured me
-"it was only those females who were eligible as nurses, or prospective
-widowhood, which would make them eligible, were desirous of concealing
-their true age."]
-
-Being persuaded that her "mission" was to heal the sick, Miss Elizabeth
-applied, by writing, to six different physicians for advice as to the best
-means to obtain an education, and received from all the reply that it was
-"impracticable," utterly impossible, for a female to obtain a medical
-education; "the proposition eccentric," "Utopian," etc.
-
-It required just this sort of opposition to draw out the true character,
-and arouse the hidden abilities of such women as the Misses Blackwell.
-
-Elizabeth, while supporting herself by giving music lessons in Charleston,
-S. C., received regular medical instruction from S. H. Dixon, M. D., a
-gentleman and scholar, well known to the entire profession of two
-continents; also from Drs. John Dixon, Allen, and Warrington, the two
-latter in Philadelphia. Being considered by these gentlemen competent,
-Miss Blackwell applied to the medical schools of Philadelphia and New York
-for admission as a medical student, by all of which she was rejected
-"because she was a female." Finally she gained admission to the College at
-Geneva, N. Y., and graduated in 1848. Are the _males_ the only
-"oppressors" of the gentler sex? No, no; woman is woman's own worst enemy.
-
-Miss Blackwell was two years in Geneva, and so violent was the opposition
-of _her own sex_, that no lady in Geneva would make her acquaintance while
-there. "Common civilities at the table, even, were denied me." Entirely
-different was the treatment which she received at the hands of the
-students and professors of the college. "Here she found nothing but
-friendliness and decorum, and, on the eve of her graduation, the
-cordiality of the students in making way for her to receive her diploma,
-and pleasantly indicating their congratulations, was marked and
-respectful."
-
-The following morning her parlor was thronged with ladies.
-
-Miss Elizabeth Blackwell visited London and Paris, and was entered as
-student at St. Bartholomew's, and also at "_La Maternité_" (The
-Maternity).
-
-She returned to New York, and, notwithstanding "she found a blank wall of
-social and professional antagonism facing the woman physician, which
-formed a situation of singular loneliness, leaving her without support,
-respect, or counsel," she gained a foothold, and a respectable and living
-practice soon began to flow in and crown her persistent efforts.
-
-Now her sister Emily commenced the study of medicine, first with
-Elizabeth, subsequently with Dr. Davis, of Cincinnati Medical College. In
-1852 she and her sister were permitted to attend upon some of the wards
-(female, we presume) of Bellevue Hospital. In 1854 Emily graduated at
-Cleveland College (Eclectic, I think).
-
-Through their united efforts the "New York Infirmary for Women and
-Children" was established. "Up to the present time over fifty thousand
-patients have received prescriptions and personal care by this means."
-Contrary to Mrs. Lozier, "they are firm in their conviction of the
-expediency of mingling the sexes in _all_ scholastic training. In their
-mode of practice they adopt the main features of the 'regular' system."
-Nearly all other physicians are rather of the _Eclectic_ system. Like Miss
-Hunt, "she was bound by no regular school, as none had indorsed her."
-
-There are many contemporaries of Miss Hunt and the sisters Blackwell whom
-we might mention, but the history of one is the history of the whole, so
-far as early struggles, opposition of the profession, and neglect and
-disrespect of their own sex, is concerned.
-
-Frances S. Cooke, M. D., of the "Female Medical College," East Concord
-Street, Boston, Mrs. Jackson, Lucy Sewall, M. D., recently returned from
-Europe, and a half-score others of Boston, much deserve more than a
-passing notice, but our limited space will not permit. Also, Hannah E.
-Longshore, M. E. Zakezewska, of New York, Miss Jane E. Myers, M. D., Mrs.
-Mary F. Thomas, M. D. (Camden, Ind.), Miss Ann Preston, M. D., of
-Philadelphia, Mrs. Annie Bowen, of Chicago, and others, "too numerous to
-mention," who, in spite of the opposition from their own sex, from the
-profession, and the public in general, have gained a name and a competency
-through their professional efforts.
-
-"A woman's intellectual incapacity and her physical weakness will ever
-disqualify her for the duties of the medical profession," wrote Dr. ----,
-of Pennsylvania.
-
-Edward H. Dixon, M. D., of New York, in an article published in the
-"_Scalpel_" shows, by uncontroverted arguments and facts, that the male
-child, at birth, "in original organic strength," holds only an equal
-chance with the female; that "the chances of health for the two sexes at
-the outset are equal, and so continue till the period when they first
-attain the full use of their legs."
-
-Ask the mother of a family if the labor pains show any respect of sex.
-
-Does not the female show as strong lungs as the male in its _earliest_
-disapprobation of this unceremonious world? How about the comparative
-strength exhibited in the demonstrations of each when the lacteal fluid is
-not forthcoming in proportion to the appetite?
-
-Let us consult Dr. Dixon further,--and charge it to the females!
-
-"We give the girl two years' start of the boy,--we shall see why as we
-proceed. Both have endured the torture of bandaging, pinning (pricking),
-and tight dressing; both have been rocked, jounced on the knee, papped,
-laudanumed, paregoricked, castor oiled, suffocated with blankets over the
-head, sweltered with cap and feather bed, roasted at a fire of anthracite,
-dosed according to the formula of some superannuated doctor or
-'experienced nurse,' or both, for these people usually hunt in couples,
-and are very gracious to each other. We give the girl the start to make up
-for the benefit the boy has derived from chasing the cat, rolling on the
-floor, or sliding down the balustrade, and the torture _she_ had endured
-from her sampler, and being compelled to 'sit up straight, and not be
-_hoidenish_.'"
-
-[Illustration: "POH! YOU'RE A GIRL."]
-
-"Well, they are off to school. Observe how circumspectly our little miss
-must walk, chiding her brother for being 'too rude.' He, nothing daunted,
-(with a '_Poh! you're a girl_'), starts full tilt after an unlucky pig or
-a stray dog. If he tumbles into the mud and soils his clothes the result
-is soon visible in increase of lungs and ruddy cheeks."
-
-"In school the boy has the advantage. The girl 'mustn't loll,' must sit up
-erect, the limbs hanging down, her feet probably not reaching the floor,
-and the spinal column must bear the main support for three to six hours!
-The boy gets relief in 'shying' an occasional paper ball across the room,
-hitching about, and drawing his legs up on the seat, or sticking a pin in
-his neighbor, and a good run and jump at recess, changing the monotony of
-the recreation by an occasional fight after school. At dinner the girl has
-had no exercise to create an appetite, and her meal is made up of pastry
-and dessert. 'Remember that her muscles move the limbs, and are composed
-chiefly of azote, and it is the red meat, or muscle of beef or mutton,
-that she would eat if she had any appetite for it, that is to say, if her
-stomach and blood-vessels would endure it. The fact is, _the child has
-fever and loathes meat_.'"
-
-While the boy, hat in hand, rushes to the common or rear yard to roll
-hoop, fly his kite, or, in winter, to skate or coast down hill, the girl
-is reminded that she has "one whole hour to practise at the piano," either
-in a darkened room, from whence all God's sunshine is excluded, cold and
-cheerless, or the other extreme--seated near a heated register, from which
-the dry, poisonous fumes belch forth, destroying the pure oxygen she
-requires to inflate her narrowing lungs, and increase the fibrine, the
-muscle, and strength necessary to the exhausting exercise. She closes the
-day by eating a bit of cake and a plate of preserves.
-
-The hungry, "neglected" boy has returned, and, with swift coursing blood,
-strength of muscle and brain, catches a glance at his neglected lesson,
-comprehending it all the quicker by the change he has enjoyed, bawls
-boisterously for some cold meat, or something hearty, and tumbles into his
-bed, forgetting to close the door or window; whereas the girl must be
-attended to her room, "she is so delicate," and, being tucked well in on a
-sweltering feather bed, and bound down by heavy blankets, the doors and
-windows are carefully secured, and, committed to the "care of Providence,"
-she is left to swelter till to-morrow.
-
-The period for a great change arrives, often catching the poor, uninformed
-girl completely by surprise. Furthermore, the constant deprivation of her
-natural requirements--pure air, wholesome, nutritious food, unrestrained
-limbs and lungs--now become more apparent. In spite of the constant
-drilling which she has received, she feels exceedingly _gauche_. Her face
-is alternately pale and flushed; she suffers from headache,--"a rush of
-blood to the head." Stays and tight-lacing have weakened the action of the
-heart, cut off the circulation to the extremities, and deprived those
-parts of blood which now require the nutriment necessary to their strength
-and support in the time of their greatest need.
-
-The ignorant mother sends for a physician, perhaps almost as ignorant as
-herself; or, what is still worse, being a miserable time-server, seeing
-the admirable opportunity for making a bill, straightway commences a
-course of deception and quackery that, if it do not result in the death of
-the unfortunate patient, leaves her a miserable creature for life, with
-spinal curvature or consumption; or worse, by confinement and medication
-destroy her chance of restoration; and should some unlucky and ignorant
-young man take her as wife, and she become a mother, she surely will drag
-out a wretched existence as a victim to uterine displacement and its
-concomitant results.
-
-Physically, morally, and intellectually woman is not born inferior to man.
-We have briefly shown where and how she has fallen behind in the race of
-life in a physical view of the matter. The intellectual sense has kept
-pace only with the physical. Morally woman stands alone; by her own
-strength or weakness she stands or falls. Man scarcely upholds or
-encourages her. Her own sex, we have herein-before stated, is woman's own
-worst enemy! "Be thou as chaste as ice, or pure as snow, thou shalt not
-escape calumny," and if she fall, who shall restore her? The whole world
-is against her; one half makes her what she is, the other's scorn and
-neglect keeps her thus! The "ballot" will not keep woman from falling, nor
-raise her when fallen. The "church" does not exempt woman from the wiles
-of men, nor its adherents raise the fallen to their pristine strength,
-beauty, and respectability! Though Christ, the lowly, the magnanimous,
-said, "_Neither do I condemn thee_," his followers (?) cannot lay their
-hands upon their hearts and repeat his gracious words. Where is the fallen
-woman whom the church (not Roman Catholic) ever took in with that good
-faith and spirit of sisterly love or brotherly affection, with which a
-fallen man can, and is, often received into the church and into society?
-
-Echo answers, "Where?"
-
-O, deny this who will! It is no "attack upon the church;" merely a
-lamentably truthful statement.
-
-The church, like society, withdraws her skirts from contact with the
-fallen sister. "She is a wreck, drifted upon our shore, for which God
-holds some one accountable. Not a wreck that can be restored--not a wreck
-that money or repentance can atone for." (What! not money? Then surely she
-is lost, and forever!) "The damage is beyond earthly knowledge to
-estimate, beyond human power of indemnification. If ever the erring soul
-shall retrace her steps, it will be _Christ_ himself who shall lead her;
-if ever peace shall brood again over her spirit, it will be the Comforter
-who shall send the white-winged dove.
-
-"But the merest lad detects the lost woman. She carries the evidences of
-her guilt (or misfortune?) in the very clothes she wears, whether she is
-the richly dressed courtesan of the Bowery, or the beggarly street-walker
-of the village. There is a delicacy in, and a fine bloom on the nature of
-woman, which impurity smites with its first breath, and she cannot conceal
-the loss nor cover the shame!"
-
-  "If there be but one spot upon thy name,
-  One eye thou fearest to meet, one human voice
-  Whose tones thou shrinkest from, Woman! veil thy face,
-  And bow thy head and die!"
-
-Then is there no help for woman's condition in this cold, uncharitable
-world? you ask, in view of these facts related above. Yes; _but it rests
-with woman_. It must begin with the first breath the female infant draws.
-Educate her from the cradle. Give her the freedom of the boy, the pure air
-that the boy breathes; not the romping, rude, boisterous plays, perhaps
-(?), of the boy, but plenty of outdoor exercise, runs, slides, skates,
-rides; let her laugh, yea _shout_, if it be in a country place, till the
-woods ring again with the merry echoes, and the puzzled forest nymphs
-issue from their invaded retreats, endeavoring to solve the riddle by
-ocular demonstration which their ears have failed to unravel, viz., the
-sex, as revealed in the strength of voice and buoyancy of spirits, or
-expressed in unrestrained laughter!
-
-"O, shocking! How hoidenish!"
-
-Who says to laugh is "_hoidenish_?" A female invariably! And this is just
-what we are explaining: women must change tactics as teachers. There is
-time enough to instruct the _young_ lady, after the girl or the miss has
-developed muscle, vitalized her blood, and capacitated her brain for the
-sterner realities of life.
-
-Let women learn to be true teachers of women.
-
-Begin at the beginning. This is the only way. Stand by one another in the
-reform. Never mind the ballot; don't try to wear the _breeches_. No--the
-male attire I mean.
-
-The superfluous boarding-school education must give place to something
-more substantial. Mrs. Dashaway is to the point:--
-
-"No, Pauline; home eddycation is perferable. If there is a requestred spot
-on this toad-stool I detest more'n another it is a female cemetery, where
-bread-and-butter girls are sent and quartered for a finished eddycation;
-and it does finish most of em."
-
-"O, no, no, aunty. You mean _sequestered_ spot, and sent _quarterly_ to a
-_seminary_."
-
-"Well, well; you've got too many oceans in your head already of Greek and
-zebra, of itchiology, and other humerous works; as for me, give me pure
-blood, sound teeth, and a good constitution, and let them what's got them
-sort of diseases see the good Samaritan, and ten to eleven if he don't
-cure them in less than no time. Land! if Pauline ain't drummin' the
-piany!"
-
-Shall women remain passively resigned to the lamentable physical condition
-of her sex? or will she see where lies the main difficulty, viz., in a
-_wrong start_,--in the superfluous, debilitating, _namby-pamby_ education
-of the female infant, miss, young lady?
-
-Thoreau wrote that he believed resignation a _virtue_, but he "rather not
-practise it unless it became absolutely necessary."
-
-"Resignation" is unnecessary in this case. Only let every woman arouse her
-energies, and stand firmly in claiming her "rights" to rightly educate her
-children, girls as well as boys, showing no respect of sex in their
-_early_ training, thereby "commencing at the beginning." What is a house
-without a good foundation? You may build, and rebuild, and finally it will
-all topple over, overwhelming you in its ruins.
-
-There is no "right" that woman may claim for herself and sex in general
-but men must and will concede. Man is not your master. "Habit," "fashion,"
-"opinion," these are your only masters. These shackle woman.
-
-Do women dress for men? to please the opposite sex? or for each other's
-eye? "You know just how it is yourself." Poh! What do men, generally
-speaking, know of woman's dress? Absolutely nothing! I boldly assert that
-not one man in twenty, going out to a call, party, or even a concert or
-opera, knows the cut and color of the dress of his wife accompanying him.
-Woman dresses for women's inspection. Whatever she does for fear or favor
-of man else, woman dresses for her own sex.
-
-"What will Mrs. Codfish say when she sees this turned dress?"
-
-"Old Codfish," her husband, is worth at least fifty thousand dollars, and
-here is Mrs. Copyman, whose husband is as poor as "Job's turkey," standing
-in dread of that woman's criticism!
-
-Not one male in a thousand can detect a well turned dress, but I defy the
-most cunning dressmaker to alter, retrim, frill, and "furbelow" a dress
-that the female eye won't detect at a glance!
-
-"I rather pay the butcher's bill than the doctor's," says the father.
-
-"O, horrors! Just see that girl swallow the meat! Why, it will make your
-skin as rough as a grater and as greasy as an Indian's!" exclaims the
-mother.
-
-Miss Primrose keeps our village school; she who wears the trailing skirts,
-and was seen to cut a cherry in two parts before eating it, at the party
-last week. She almost went into convulsions--not of laughter, as I did--to
-see Kitty Clover astride a plank, with her brother on the opposite end,
-playing at "See-saw."
-
-"Here we go up--up--uppy; and here we go down--down--downy," they were
-singing in unison, when "ding, ding, ding!" went the school-bell, followed
-by a scream from Miss Primrose.
-
-With glowing cheeks--that's from the exercise--and downcast eye, from fear
-of Miss Primrose's anger, Kitty came demurely into the school-room before
-recess was half over.
-
-After a long lecture about her "masculine behavior," "horrid red
-countenance," and "rumpled dress," and "dishevelled hair," poor Kitty is
-sent to her form to "sit up straight, and not forget that she is a young
-lady hereafter."
-
-[Illustration: "HERE WE GO UP--UP--UPPY; AND HERE WE GO
-DOWN--DOWN--DOWNY."]
-
-And what of her brother who was on the other end of the plank? O, he is a
-boy! "That's what's the difference!"
-
-
-LOVE AND THOROUGHWORT.
-
-  "He'll never die for love, I know,
-  He'll never die for love, nor wear
-  Upon his brow the marks of care."
-
-This is a true story, written for this work, but published, by permission
-of the author, in the "American Union."
-
-"So you believe me totally incapable of truly loving _any_ girl, do you?"
-
-"I most assuredly do," was my positive answer.
-
-My friend, George Brown, turned and walked away a few paces, looking
-thoughtfully to the ground. He was a splendid looking man, about twenty
-years of age; my late school-fellow, my present friend and confidant. He
-was, what I did not flatter myself as being, a great favorite with the
-ladies. Handsome, tall, manly, of easy address, a fine singer and dancer,
-the only impediment to his physical perfection was, when the least
-excited, a hesitancy of speech--almost a stammer. Finally he turned and
-walked back to me, saying,--
-
-"Now, Ad, if you will agree to a proposition I have to offer, I will
-disprove your assertion, so oft repeated, that I never loved--not even
-that dear girl, Jenny Kingsbury."
-
-"First let me hear your proposition."
-
-"You have long desired to visit Bangor?"
-
-"Yes," I replied.
-
-"Let us harness 'Simon' early some fine morning for that delightful city;
-go by the way of B. and O., stop and see Jenny, who I have learned by
-roundabout inquiry resides with her aunt in the latter place. And," he
-added, triumphantly, "see for yourself if she isn't a girl to be loved."
-
-"O, no doubt Jenny Kingsbury 'is a girl to be loved;' so was Addie, and so
-was 'Ria, and a dozen others, whom you have sworn you loved so devotedly.
-O George, out upon your affections."
-
-"Will--will--you go? That's the question."
-
-"Yes--I will go--because I wish to visit Bangor very much," was my reply;
-and the time was at once set for the journey, which was to occupy two
-days.
-
-Mrs. Brown, the mother of my friend George, was a devout Christian. She
-believed in her Bible. Moreover, she was an excellent _nurse_, and next to
-her Bible, believed in _thoroughwort_. Thoroughwort tea, or thoroughwort
-syrup, was her panacea for all the ills, physical or moral, that ever was,
-or could be, detailed upon poor humanity.
-
-"Before you start, boys--"
-
-"Boys! Where are your _men_?" interrupted George.
-
-"Hear me!" continued Mrs. Brown. "Before you start for Bangor to-morrow
-morning, do you take a good drink of that thoroughwort syrup in the large
-jar on the first shelf in the pantry. It'll keep out the cold; for
-there'll be frost to-night, I think, and at five o'clock in the morning
-the air will be sharp. O, there is nothing equal to _thoroughwort_ for
-keeping out the cold."
-
-"Anything to eat in that pantry?" asked George, with a wink tipped to me.
-You see I was to sleep with him that night, preparatory to an early start
-for Bangor.
-
-"Yes, some cold meat, bread, and a pie. But don't forget to first take a
-dose of the thoroughwort syrup. Addison, you bear it in mind, for George
-is awful forgetful, especially about taking his thoroughwort." And Mrs.
-Brown detained us fully fifteen minutes, as she rehearsed the remarkable
-qualities of her favorite remedy,--"particularly for keeping out cold."
-
-"Mother thinks that condemnable stuff is meat, drink, and clothing,"
-remarked George, as we sought the pantry at an early hour on the following
-morning, not for the thoroughwort, but for sandwiches, pies, and the like.
-
-"Let me take a taste of the 'stuff,'" I said, as I noticed the jar so
-conveniently at hand.
-
-"O, no; not on an empty stomach. It will make you throw up Jonah if you
-do," exclaimed George, with an expression of disgust distorting his
-features. "Eat something first, and then, if you want to taste the
-condemned 'stuff,' do so, and the Lord be with you," he added, pitching
-into the eatables.
-
-Having made away with the pie, and much of the sandwiches, we turned our
-attention for a moment to the thoroughwort syrup. I took a taste, and
-George spilled a quantity on the shelf, "that mother may know we have been
-to the jar," he remarked, as we left the pantry.
-
-It was not yet five o'clock when we drove noiselessly away from the door.
-If I remember rightly, we were not _noiseless_ after that. The morning was
-delightful, slightly cool,--but that was no impediment to our warm blood,
-owing to the thoroughwort,--and we sped on in an exuberant flow of
-spirits. "Simon" was in excellent travelling order, and went without whip
-or spur. We should have reached the village of B., where we were to
-breakfast, and bait Simon, by eight o'clock, but George would insist on
-making the acquaintance, _nolens volens_, of half the farmers on the road,
-ostensibly to inquire the way to B.
-
-"Hallo!" he shouted, reining up Simon before a small farm-house. Up flew a
-window, and out popped a nightcapped head.
-
-"What d'ye want?" called a feminine voice. It was now hardly daylight, and
-the person could not distinguish us.
-
-"Excuse me, madam, for disturbing your slumbers; but can you inform a
-stranger if this is the right road to B.?" asked George, in his most
-pleasing manner.
-
-"O, yes; keep right on; take the first left hand road to the top o' the
-hill; then go on till yer--"
-
-We drove away, not waiting for the rest.
-
-"Do you suppose that old woman is talking there now, with her nightcapped
-head poked out of the window?" asked George, as we reached the hotel at B.
-
-"For shame!" said I. "Waking up all the people on the road, to inquire the
-way, with which you were perfectly familiar!"
-
-From B. our route lay along the western bank of the beautiful Penobscot. I
-need not detain you while I rehearse the delightful scenery _en route_ to
-Bangor; the variegated and gorgeous splendors of the autumnal leaves; the
-bending boughs, from the abundant ripened fruit, in colors of red, orange,
-and yellow on one hand, and on the other the bright, glassy waters of the
-broad river, dotted here and there by the white sails of boats and vessels
-lying becalmed in the morning sunshine.
-
-We reached the village of O., and George made inquiry for the residence of
-Mr. Kingsbury.
-
-"The large white house just across the bridge."
-
-"Thank you." And we drove up to the front yard.
-
-"Ne-ne-now, Ad, you go up and knock, and call for Miss Kingsbury;
-ye-ye-you know I st-stutter when I get ex-ex-cited," said George, hitching
-Simon to the horse-post.
-
-"What shall I say to her? and how shall I know Miss Kingsbury from any
-other lady?"
-
-"O, ask for her. I'll compose myself, and follow ri-right up. You'll know
-her from the description I have given you. Black eyes and hair, full
-form--O, there is nobody else like her. Come, go up and call for her."
-
-"Well, I'll go; and if I get stuck, come quickly to my rescue," I said,
-turning to the house. "Is _Miss_ Kingsbury at home?" I asked of the young
-lady who answered my knock. "This person is surely not Miss Jenny," I said
-to myself; "cross-eyed, blue at that, and light, almost red hair." She
-smiled, took a second look at me, and said,--
-
-"Who?"
-
-"Miss Jenny Kingsbury," I repeated.
-
-"Well--yes--I guess she is. Will you walk in?"
-
-"No, thank you. Will you please call her out?" And so saying, I beckoned
-to George.
-
-The girl closed the door, and I called to George "to make haste and change
-places with me." He came up just as the door reopened, and a beautiful
-dark-eyed woman appeared, whom he greeted as Miss Kingsbury.
-
-"I'll see to the horse," I said; and having taken a hurried glance at
-the young lady, I withdrew. For a full half hour I walked up and down
-beneath the maples in front of the house, watched the steamer Penobscot,
-as she came up the river, and from thence turned my attention to a
-schooner that was endeavoring to enter the cove, not far from the house. A
-light breeze had sprung up from the westward, and the channel being
-narrow, there seemed much difficulty in gaining the harbor.
-
-Finally George came to the door and beckoned me. I went in, and received
-an introduction to Mrs. Kingsbury and to Jenny.
-
-"O, but she is beautiful," I whispered to George.
-
-He was flushed and excited, consequently stammered some, and I was
-compelled to keep up a conversation, but I did not feel easy. Something
-was wrong. I detected more than one sly wink between aunt and niece, and
-when the cross-eyed miss came into the room, I could not tell whom she was
-glancing at, as her eyes "looked forty ways for Sunday," but she leered
-perceptibly towards first one, then the other of the ladies. I hinted to
-George that we must not delay longer. Still he tarried. Mrs. Kingsbury
-seemed interested in the movements of the schooner in the mouth of the
-cove. Miss Jenny was interested in George. I was interested in getting
-away from them all. Finally the schooner was moored to the wharf, and,
-standing at the window, I noticed a sailor, with a bundle on a stick over
-his shoulder, approaching the house. A whisper passed between aunt and
-niece, and the latter asked George to accompany her into an adjoining
-room.
-
-It was now past noon. A pleasant, savory smell came up from the kitchen,
-but no one asked me to put up the horse, and stay to dinner.
-
-The man with the bundle came familiarly into the yard. Soon George
-returned alone to the room, and seizing his hat, he stammered, "C-c-come,
-Ad," and rushed from the house.
-
-Mrs. Kingsbury attended me to the door, and wished me a pleasant ride to
-Bangor. George jumped into the buggy, seized the reins, and giving a cut
-upon the horse, bawled, "Go on, Simon."
-
-"Hold on. First let me unhitch him," I cried, seizing the spirited beast
-by the bridle. I unfastened the halter, and jumped into the carriage; and
-away flew Simon, snorting and irritated under the unnecessary cuts he had
-received from the whip. At the first corner George took the back road
-towards B.
-
-"Not that way! Hold on, and turn about," I exclaimed, catching at the
-reins. "Now stop and tell me all about it. Did you propose to Jenny? Has
-she accepted, and are you beside yourself with ecstatic joy? Come, tell
-me."
-
-"Ho! Simon." And laying down the reins, George drew out his wallet, and
-taking therefrom a bit of silk goods, he turned upon my astonished gaze a
-woe-begone look, and said,--
-
-"Ad, she's mum-mum-married--"
-
-"Married!"
-
-"Yes, married; and there's a piece of her wedding gown. The fellow you saw
-come in while there, with the bundle on a stick,--the
-land-lubberish-looking fellow,--was her husband. O my God! Did you ever?"
-And so relieving his mind, he caught the reins and whip, and away darted
-Simon at a fearful rate of speed.
-
-At Bangor I said to George,--
-
-"Well, there probably is no love lost on either side. She sold out at the
-first bid, and you never had the least hold on her affections."
-
-"Ah, I have had her confidence in too many moonlight walks to believe
-that," was his reply.
-
-"And it was all moonshine,--that's evident," I said.
-
-"No, no; I wish it was. I never shall love again," said George, with a
-deep sigh, and a sorry-looking cast of countenance.
-
-"No, I suppose not," was my non-consoling reply.
-
-"Still, do you believe I never loved that darling girl?" he asked, almost
-in a rage. "If that man--that _fellow_--should die with the autumn leaves,
-I would at once marry Jenny, who loves me still," he exclaimed, pacing the
-room like an enraged lion.
-
-"He won't die, however. He looks healthy and robust, and will outlive you
-and your affection for his wife," I replied, with a derisive laugh.
-
-It rained the next afternoon, as we returned home by a shorter route than
-_via_ O. and B. George talked a great deal of Jenny on the way back, and
-said he never should get over this fearful disappointment.
-
-"Only think of the lovely Jenny Kingsbury marrying that fellow with the
-bundle and the stick! O, I shall be sick over it; I know I shall."
-
-"Especially if you take a bad cold riding in this storm," I added, by way
-of consolation. "However, you can take some of your mother's good
-thoroughwort--"
-
-"Confound the thoroughwort," he interrupted.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-"Did you know that George is sick?" asked his little brother of me the
-following day.
-
-"No. Is he much sick?" I inquired, in alarm.
-
-"O, yes; he's awful sick--or was last night; and mother fooled him on a
-dose of fresh thererwort tea, which only made him sicker," replied the
-little chap, turning up his nose in disgust.
-
-"Is he better now?" I inquired.
-
-"O, yes; ever so much _now_. I don't know what ma called the disease he's
-got; but howsomever she said thererwort was good for it, and I guess it
-is, 'cause he's better."
-
-I was called away, and did not see my friend George till a week after our
-return from the little trip to B. He never mentioned Jenny afterwards, nor
-said a word about the thoroughwort tea. He took to horses after that,
-and eventually married a poor, unpretending girl, quite unlike the
-dark-eyed, beautiful, and wealthy Miss Jenny Kingsbury.
-
-Mrs. Brown still recommends her favorite panacea for all ails, physical or
-moral; but whenever she mentions it in George's presence, he exclaims,
-with a look of disgust,--
-
-"O, confound the thoroughwort!"
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-VI.
-
-QUACKS.
-
-                                "Verily,
-    I swear, 'tis better to be lowly born,
-    And range with humble livers in content,
-    Than to be perked up in a glistening grief
-    And wear a golden sorrow."--KING HENRY VIII.
-
-    ANECDOTE IN ILLUSTRATION.--DERIVATION.--FATHER OF QUACKS.--A MEDICAL
-    "BONFIRE."--THE "SAMSON" OF THE PROFESSION.--SIR ASTLEY.--U. S.
-    SURVEYOR-GENERAL HAMMOND.--HOMEOPATHIC QUACKS, ETC.--A MUDDLED
-    DEFINITION.--"STOP THIEF!"--CRIPPLED FOR LIFE!--TWO POUNDS
-    CALOMEL.--VICTIMS.--WASHINGTON, JACKSON, HARRISON.--THE COUNTRY
-    QUACK.--A TRUE AND LUDICROUS ANECDOTE.--DYEING TO DIE!--A SCARED
-    DOCTOR.--DROPSY!--A HASTY WEDDING!--A COUNTRY CONSULTATION.--"SCENES
-    FROM WESTERN PRACTICE."--"TWIST ROOT."--A JOLLY TRIO.--NEW "BUST" OF
-    CUPID.--AN UNWILLING LISTENER.
-
-
-On looking over my "collection" on quacks and charlatans, I am so strongly
-reminded of a little anecdote which you may have already seen in print,
-but which so well illustrates painfully the facts to be adduced in this
-chapter, that I _must_ appropriate the story, which story a western
-engineer tells of himself.
-
-"One day our train stopped at a new watering-place, being a small station
-in Indiana, where I observed two green-looking countrymen in 'homespun'
-curiously inspecting the locomotive, occasionally giving vent to
-expressions of astonishment.
-
-"Finally one of them approached and said,--
-
-"'Stranger, are this 'ere a injine?'
-
-"'Certainly. Did you ever see one before?'
-
-"'No, never seen one o' the critters afore. Me an' Bill here comed down t'
-the station purpose to see one. Them's the biler--ain't it?'
-
-"'Yes, that is the boiler,' I answered.
-
-"'What you call that place you're in?'
-
-"'This we call a cab.'
-
-"'An' this big wheel, what's this fur?'
-
-"'That's the driving wheel.'
-
-"'That big, black thing on top I s'pose is the chimley.'
-
-"'Precisely.'
-
-"'Be you the engineer what runs the machine?'
-
-"'I am,' I replied, with the least bit of self-complacency.
-
-"He eyed me closely for a moment; then, turning to his companion, he
-remarked,--
-
-"'Bill, it don't take much of a man to be a engineer--do it?'"
-
-The reader will perceive the distinction which we make between humbugs,
-quacks, and charlatans, though one individual may comprehend the whole.
-
-"Quacks comprehend not only those who enact the absurd impositions of
-ignorant pretenders, but also of _unbecoming acts of professional men
-themselves_."--_Thomas' Medical Dictionary._
-
-This is the view we propose to take of it in this chapter, in connection
-with the derivation of the word.
-
-The word _quack_ is derived from the German "_quack salber_," or mercury,
-which metal was introduced into the _Materia Medica_ by _Philippus
-Aureolus Theophrastus Paracelsus Bombast ab Hohenhein_!
-
-"So extensively was quicksilver used by Paracelsus and his followers that
-they received the stigma of 'quacks.'"--See _Parr's Medical Dictionary_.
-
-There is some controversy respecting the date of birth of Paracelsus, but
-probably it was in the year 1493. He was born in Switzerland.
-
-[Illustration: THE INQUISITIVE COUNTRYMEN.]
-
-Professor Waterhouse (1835) says, "He was learned in Greek, Latin, and
-several other languages. That he introduced quicksilver," etc., "and was a
-vain, arrogant profligate, and died a confirmed sot."
-
-"Paracelsus was a man of most dissolute habits and unprincipled character,
-and his works are filled with the highest flights of unintelligible
-bombastic jargon, unworthy of perusal, but such as might be expected from
-one who united in his person the qualities of a fanatic and a
-drunkard."--_R. D. T._
-
-Mercury was known to the early Greek and Roman physicians, who regarded it
-as a dangerous poison. They, however, used it externally in curing the
-_itch_, and John de Vigo employed it to cure the plague. Paracelsus used
-it internally first for _lues venerea_, which appeared in Naples the year
-of his birth, though doubtless that disease reached far back, even into
-the camp of Israel. The heroic doses of Paracelsus either destroyed the
-disease at once, _or the patient_. Paracelsus proclaimed to the world that
-there was no further need of the _Materia Medica_, especially the writings
-of Galen, and burned them in public; his "Elixir Vitæ" would cure all
-diseases. But in spite of his wonderful knowledge and his life-saving
-elixir, he died of the diseases he professed to cure, at the early age of
-forty-eight, while Galen lived to the age of seventy.
-
-So much for the "father of quacks."
-
-For nearly four centuries mercury has been exhibited in the _Materia
-Medica_ to a greater extent than any other remedy. Doubtless it possesses
-great medicinal virtues, but its abuse--the "heroic doses" used by the
-ignorant and brainless quacks, both graduates of some medical college, and
-_soi-disant_ physicians--has made its name a terror to the people and a
-reproach to the profession. To assail it is to tread on dangerous ground;
-to invade the "rights" of a numerous host of worshippers; to uncover an
-ulcer, whose rottenness, though smelling to heaven, is protracted for the
-pecuniary advantage of the prescriber.
-
-Eminent physicians in every age since its introduction, and in every
-enlightened country, have protested against its abuse; yea, even its use!
-They have called its users "_quacks_," the most contemptible epithet ever
-introduced into medical nomenclature,--the "_Samson_" of the profession,
-because through the instrumentality of an ass and his adherents, "it has
-slain its thousands."
-
-I need not quote those distinguished practitioners who have recorded their
-testimony against its general and indiscriminate use. Their name is
-legion, and every well-informed physician is aware of the fact.
-
-Do not "well-informed physicians" prescribe calomel?
-
-Certainly; but cautiously, and often under protest.
-
-It is recorded of Sir Astley Cooper that he made serious objections to its
-free use in the wards of the Borough Hospitals, and forthwith the "smaller
-fry" made such a breeze about his ears that he seemed called upon to
-defend, and even palliate, his offence. Dr. Macilwain says that Sir Astley
-is reported to have said in reply to those who demurred,--
-
-"Why, gentlemen, was it likely that I should say anything unkind towards
-those gentlemen? Is not Mr. Green (surgeon of St. Thomas) my godson, Mr.
-Tusell my nephew, Mr. Travers my apprentice (surgeon of St. Thomas), Mr.
-Key and Mr. Cooper (surgeons of Guy's Hospital) my nephews?"
-
-This was very _naïve_, and as good illustration of the value of evidence
-in relation to one thing (his provision for his relatives) which is stated
-in relation to another.
-
-Herein Sir Astley exposed a weakness with which the democratic opponents
-of President Grant have accused him, viz., of furnishing comfortable
-positions for his relatives.
-
-Sir John Forbes, when at the head of the medical profession of England in
-1846, wrote an earnest appeal to his brethren to rescue their art from the
-ruin into which it was falling, saying in relation to modes of curing
-diseases, "Things have become so bad that they must mend or end." This was
-"dangerous ground," and some physicians of the day feared Dr. Forbes had
-done an immense mischief. After his death, be it remembered, some of the
-"medical magnates" of this country virtuously refused to subscribe to his
-monument fund, saying, "it was a misfortune to mankind (?) that he had
-ever lived."
-
-Dr. W. A. Hammond, surgeon general of the United States, also blundered
-when, by an order dated at _Washington, May 4, 1863_, he struck calomel
-from the supply table of the army. This proscription was on the ground
-that "it has so frequently been pushed to excess by military surgeons, as
-to call for prompt steps to correct its abuse.... _This is done with the
-more confidence, as modern pathology has proved the impropriety of the use
-of mercury in very many of those diseases in which it was formerly
-unfailingly administered._"
-
-_The American Medical Times_ (regular) said, "The order appeared not only
-expedient, but judicious and necessary, under the circumstances." _What_
-circumstances? Read on further, and the _Times_ editor explains: "No evil
-can result to the sick soldier from the absence of calomel, however much
-he may need mercurialization, when such preparations as blue pill,
-bichloride and iodide of mercury, etc., remain. But, in prescribing these
-latter remedies, the practitioner generally has a very definite idea of
-the object he wishes to attain, which is not always the case in the use of
-calomel."
-
-By this timely order it was estimated that ten thousand soldiers were
-released from a morning dose of calomel!
-
-Was this a blow aimed at "quackery"? Was Dr. Hammond, "a member of the
-medical profession highly esteemed for scientific attainments," attempting
-a reform in medicine? Any way, Dr. Hammond shared the fate of all medical
-reformers. He was suspended. He was disgraced.
-
-The American Medical Association met at Chicago, and set up a strong
-opposition to the "order." Certain persons brought charges against the
-surgeon general. A commission was appointed. The _Times_ said, "The whole
-affair has the appearance of a secret and deliberate conspiracy against
-the surgeon general.... The commission is, in the first place, headed by a
-person known to be hostile to the surgeon general. This fact throws
-suspicion upon the _object_ of the investigation." Just so. The "object"
-was to appoint some one instead of Dr. Hammond, who would repeal the
-obnoxious order. No matter what _pretence_ was set up beside, this is the
-fact of the case, and the people and the profession know this to be true.
-
-But how shall we judge of the motives of Dr. Hammond but by _appearances_?
-Who so well knew the value, or injury, of calomel, as he who had used it
-for twenty odd years? Admitting Professor Chapman, of Philadelphia, was
-within twenty years of right when he said, "He who resigns the fate of his
-patient to calomel, ... if he has a tolerable practice, will, in a single
-season, lay the foundation of a good business for life," did not Dr. H.
-exhibit a little selfishness in attempting to deprive young practitioners
-of the opportunity of laying for themselves a foundation for a prosperous
-future?
-
-"Doubtless," said a medical journal of the day, "all _quacks_ and
-_irregulars_ are congratulating themselves upon the appearance of this
-'order.'" This leads us to ask, "Who are the quacks?"
-
-The governor of Ohio, in 1861, made inquiry of the United States surgeon
-general, to know if the regiments of that state could be allowed to choose
-between allopathic and homeopathic surgeons.
-
-"_No: I'll see them damned to hell first_," was the gracious reply.
-
-The resolutions drawn up and adopted by the New York Academy of Medicine
-as an offset against the appeal for admission of homeopathic surgeons into
-the army (1862), contained the following:--
-
-"3d. That it (homeopathy) is no more worthy of such introduction than
-other kindred methods of practice as closely allied to _quackery_."
-
-There were then some thirty-five hundred of that sort of "quacks"
-practising under diplomas--mostly obtained from regular colleges--in the
-United States. Shame!
-
-The Royal College, Dublin, the same year, in a resolution passed, called
-Mesmerism and homeopathy quackery.
-
-In an article in the "Scalpel," from the able pen of Dr. Richmond,--about
-the time that the "swarm of vampires that was the first fruits of the
-tribe of rooters that swarmed the State of New York under the teachings of
-T. and B." (Thompson and Beach),--he calls botanics and eclectics quacks
-and Paracelsuses! Clear as--mud!
-
-So! The calomel practitioners are quacks. The homeopathics are quacks. The
-eclectics, and botanics, and Mesmerics, are all quacks! Any more,
-gentlemen? This is getting things somewhat mixed, and I rush to
-Dunglison's Medical Dictionary for explanation. Why, a quack is a
-_charlatan_! I turn to "Charlatan." Lo, it is quack! Clear as mud, again.
-
-In my perplexity I consult Webster. He refers me to a _goose_! So I rush
-to Worcester, and he implies it is a _duck_! Perhaps the _bill_ has
-something to do with the name; especially as I am reminded of a suit
-brought by a Boston M. D. to recover the exorbitant sum of three hundred
-dollars for reducing a dislocation.
-
-Therefore, summing up this "uncertainty," it seems to be a convenient
-word, expressive of contempt, which any professional man may hurl at any
-other whom he dislikes, or with whom he is not in fellowship.
-
-In its general use it is the _thief_ calling, "Stop thief."
-
-It was no unusual practice for physicians of the sixteenth and seventeenth
-centuries to use calomel in scruple, and even drachm doses. Mazerne
-"habitually administered calomel in scruple doses." Yandal gave it by the
-table-spoonful. I knew a physician in Maine who usually administered it by
-the tea-spoonful, and I saw a woman at Deer Isle, Me., suffering from true
-anchylosis of the jaw, in consequence of thus taking his prescription. In
-the same town was a man who was made completely imbecile by overdoses of
-mercury. In the town of B----l, same county and state, once lived an old
-quack, for convenience sake, near a large graveyard. _He "owned" it._ That
-is, he is said to have more victims laid away therein than all the other
-doctors who ever practised in town. "I knew him well." Once he sent to
-Boston for _two ounces_ of calomel. There was no steam conveyance in those
-days, and a sea captain took the order. By some mistake, _two pounds_ were
-sent. It was not returned. "O, never mind," said the doctor; "I shall use
-it all some time."
-
-Every state, county, yes, every town, in the Union has its victims to this
-quackery. In Rochelle, Ill., is a remarkable case, a merchant. Almost
-every joint in his frame is rendered useless. He can speak, and his brain
-is active. He has a large store, and he is carried to it every day, and
-there, stretched upon a counter, he gives directions to his employés.
-Though comparatively young, his hair is blanched like the snow-drift,
-falling upon his shoulders, and he is hopelessly crippled for life. "He
-does not speak in very flattering terms of the calomel doctors," said my
-informant. Neither do the thousands of diseased and mutilated soldiers,
-the victims to quackery while in the army.
-
-"SPEAKING FACTS.--A little boy, ten years of age, and having a paralyzed
-right leg, may be seen occasionally among his more able-bodied companions,
-the newsboys, unsuccessfully striving to 'hoe his row' with his rougher
-and more vigorous fellows. The limb is wholly dead, so far as its
-usefulness is concerned and it was caused by giving the little fellow
-overdoses of calomel, when he was an infant.
-
-"Another victim to calomel lives in the city of Hartford, in the person of
-a young lady of sixteen, who would be handsome but for deformities of face
-and mouth, occasioned by calomel given to her when a little child. She
-cannot open her mouth, and her food is always gruel, etc., introduced
-through the teeth. But the doctors stick to calomel as the sheet anchor of
-their faith."
-
-Behold WASHINGTON, who had passed through the battles of his country
-unharmed, and who in his last illness had, in the brief space of twelve
-hours, ninety ounces of blood drawn from his veins, and in the same space
-of time taken sixty grains of calomel!
-
-Who wonders that he should request his physician to allow him to "_die in
-peace_"?
-
-Andrew Jackson was another victim to calomel, as well as to the lancet, as
-the following letter shows:--
-
-    "HERMITAGE, October 24, 1844.
-
-    "MY DEAR MR. BLAIR: On the 12th inst., I had a return of hemorrhage,
-    and two days after, a chill. With a lancet to correct the first, and
-    calomel to check the second, I am _greatly debilitated_.
-
-    ANDREW JACKSON."
-
-Was not this double quackery? First, it was the _Similia similibus
-curantur_ (like cures like), of the homeopathists, which the Academy of
-Medicine has termed quackery. Second, it was exhibiting calomel to the
-injury (debilitating) of the patient.
-
-President Harrison was another victim.
-
-Are not these historical facts? Nevertheless, it is treason to mention
-them. "And why should any truth be counted as treasonable?" the honest and
-intelligent reader is led to inquire. "For truth is mighty, and must
-prevail," eventually.
-
-Yes, yes, truth will prevail. When bigotry and old-fogy notions are
-uprooted from the profession, and all educated and benevolent physicians
-strike hands and join fortunes to eradicate and discountenance all forms
-of quackery amongst themselves, they will then possess the power to
-suppress outside quackery. Far too many make a _trade_ of the
-_profession_; and just so long as educated physicians countenance or
-practise any one form of quackery, so long will they be powerless to check
-the abominations of charlatans and impostors outside of the profession.
-
-We have not introduced the foregoing facts in the interest of any
-persuasion. With the bickerings of the various schools of medicine we
-propose to have nothing to do, except to seize upon such truths as those
-otherwise useless quarrels are continually revealing. Opposition will not
-weaken a truth, nor strengthen a falsehood. You who are in the right need,
-therefore, have no fear as to final results.
-
-It is hard to kick against the pricks of custom, and custom has perverted
-the word which is the text of this chapter, and it is now more commonly
-applied to the ignorant, boastful _pretender_ to the science of medicine.
-
-Now we will introduce a few facts obtained from without the profession.
-
-
-THE COUNTRY QUACK.
-
-In the town of P----, Conn., there resided two doctors. One, old Dr. B., a
-regular, and the other, Dr. S--h, an irregular. It was in the autumn, and
-a fever was prevailing at this time, of a very malignant character. From
-over-exertion and exposure Dr. B. was taken sick, and in a few days fever
-supervened. This news spread terror over the immediate community, and the
-old doctor becoming delirious, his wife and family soon partook of the
-terror. A neighboring physician was sent for, but being absent, he did not
-at once respond; and the invalid becoming, as they feared, rapidly worse,
-Dr. S. was reluctantly called. He was known to be an ignoramus, formerly a
-peddler, a farmer, horse-jockey, a fifth-rate country lawyer, and, lastly,
-a doctor. Had Dr. B. retained his senses, he would have sooner died than
-have admitted his enemy, this "rooter," into his house. He came, however,
-with great pomposity, examined the patient, whose delirium prevented
-resistance, and ordered an immediate application of the juice of
-poke-berries rubbed over the entire skin of the old doctor, as a
-febrifuge.
-
-"But," inquired the wife, timidly, "is not this an unusual prescription,
-Dr. S.?" The doctor replied that it was a new remedy, but very
-efficacious. "You see," he added, with many a hem and haw, "it will
-out-herod the blush of the skin, put to shame the fever, which retires in
-disgust, and so relieves the patient."
-
-"And won't he die, if we follow this strange prescription?" asked a
-friend, while the doctor was proceeding to deal out a large powder.
-
-"No, no; ahem! _You_ do the _dyeing_, to prevent the _dying_. Haw, haw!"
-roared the vulgar old wretch, convulsed by his own pun, and the
-anticipation of the ludicrous corpse that he expected to see within a few
-days.
-
-There was no alternative. The prescription must be followed, and the
-children were sent to the woods to gather the ripe berries. The quack next
-proceeded to deal out a dose of lobelia and blood-root, which he left on
-the desk where Dr. B. prepared medicines when in health, giving directions
-for its administration, and in high glee took his departure. The
-inspissated juice of the highly-colored berries was applied over the face,
-arms, and body of the unconscious doctor, the remarkable appearance of
-whom we leave the reader to imagine.
-
-By mistake, a large dose of camphorated dover's powders which lay on the
-table was substituted for the lobelia of Dr. S., which with the warm
-liquid applied to the skin, checked the fever, and, contrary to the hope
-and expectation of Dr. S., the following morning found his patient in a
-fine perspiration, and the neighboring physician arriving, he was soon
-placed in a condition of safety.
-
-Notwithstanding Dr. S. told some friends of the joke,--for the worst have
-their friends, you know,--he was known to have prescribed for Dr. B., his
-sworn enemy; and as the patient was pronounced convalescent, S. received
-all the credit, and forthwith his services were in great demand. Day and
-night he rode, till, by the time Dr. B. got out, he was completely
-exhausted! He became alarmed lest he should take the fever. Such fellows
-are ever cowards when anything ails their precious selves. He actually
-became feverish with fear and excitement, and took his bed--and his
-emetic. He took either an overdose, or not enough, and for hours remained
-in the greatest distress. Finally, as a _dernier resort_, his wife sent
-for Dr. B.! Now came his turn to avenge the insult of the painting by
-poke-berries, which stain was yet scarcely removed from the skin of the
-old doctor.
-
-"I'll give him a dose; I'll put my mark on him--one that milk and water,
-or soap, cannot remove. O, I'll be avenged!" exclaimed Dr. B., as he
-mounted his gig, and drove to Dr. S.
-
-"O doctor, doctor! I am in fearful distress. Can you help me? Will I die?"
-whined S., on beholding his opponent.
-
-"No; not such good news. Those born to hang don't die in their beds. But
-you are very sick, and must abide my directions."
-
-"Yes, yes. Thanks, doctor. This blamed lobelia is killing me, though."
-
-"Then take this." And Dr. B. administered a half tea-spoonful of ipecac,
-to bring up the lobelia. So far was good.
-
-"Now a basin of water and a sponge," said Dr. B., which being procured, he
-seemed to examine for a moment very curiously; then ordered the face,
-neck, arms, and hands of the patient bathed well with the fluid.
-
-On the following morning Dr. B. was sent for, post haste, with the
-cheering message that "mortification had set in, and his patient was
-dying."
-
-Off posted the doctor, calling several neighbors, _en route_, who thronged
-the apartment of the invalid doctor in speechless astonishment.
-
-[Illustration: CURIOUS EFFECT OF A FEVER.]
-
-"I'm dying, Dr. B.; O, I'm dying," groaned S., rolling to and fro on his
-bed.
-
-"No, you are not. I told you before, no such good news. Your fever is all
-gone. You are scared--that's what's the matter," replied Dr. B.
-
-"But look, just look at the color of my skin,--all mortifying," said S.
-
-"O, no; that is merely dyed with _nitrate of silver_. It's much better
-than poke-berries--much better," repeated Dr. B.
-
-The recovered patient leaped from his bed, and, with an oath, made
-straight for the doctor; but the bystanders, though convulsed with
-laughter, caught the enraged victim, while, amid the cheers and laughter
-of the crowd, Dr. B. made his escape, saying to himself,--
-
-"The nitrate of silver I put in the basin worked like a charm."
-
-The story soon circulated, and Dr. S., being unable to remove the deep
-stain from his skin, and the curious rabble from his door, left for parts
-unknown. Dr. B., on revisiting his patients, who now rejoiced in his
-recovery, found that S. had not only dispensed lobelia and blood-root, but
-had bled and mercurialized several.
-
-
-REMARKABLE DROPSY.
-
-The writer was acquainted with a young physician who was unceremoniously
-discharged by the family of a beautiful young lady to whom he had been
-called to prescribe, in a country village, his offence being the discovery
-of the true source of the patient's (?) indisposition, which fact he
-_dared_ to intimate to the mother. "An older and more experienced
-physician" succeeded him, who reversed the diagnosis, and pronounced it "a
-clear case of _dropsy_," and the young M. D. went into disrepute. During
-the entire winter the old doctor made daily visits to his patient. Daily
-had the old ladies of the neighborhood adjusted their "specs," smoothed
-down their aprons, and, watching the doctor's return, run out to the gate
-to inquire after the health of the lady, the belle of the town.
-
-"O, she's _convalescent_," was his usual reply, with due professional
-dignity; and thus the matter stood till a crisis came.
-
-[Illustration: MARRYING A FAMILY.]
-
-There was a ball in the village one night. About eleven o'clock a
-messenger appeared in the room, who hastily summoned a certain young
-gentleman, a scion of one of the "first families" in town. At the same
-time the minister was called, and the young man, standing by the bed,
-holding the invalid lady by the right hand, while on his left arm he
-supported a beautiful babe but an hour old, was married to the
-"convalescent" patient. The old doctor had run a beautiful "bill," but it
-was his last in that village.
-
-
-A COUNTRY CONSULTATION.
-
-The difficulty of obtaining competent counsel in the country can only be
-fully comprehended by the intelligent physician who has had experience
-therein.
-
-From Dr. Richmond's "_Scenes in Western Practice_," I have selected the
-following lamentable incidents, which I have abbreviated as much as is
-consistent with the facts, related by the doctor, who in this case was
-called to a wealthy and influential family, two of whom, wife and child,
-were prostrated by epidemic dysentery.
-
-"As my credit was at stake, an old and very grave man was, at my
-suggestion, added to the consultation, to guard our reputation from the
-usual visitation of gossiping slander that always follows a fatal result
-in the country. He examined the child, and gave his opinion that the
-symptoms resembled those of ipecac!... But death was ahead of the doctors,
-and the little sufferer passed quickly away to a better world.
-
-"Another child had died in the vicinity, and the _neighbors_ decided on a
-change of doctors for the lady. By my consent the inventor of the
-'Chingvang Pill' was called, as I assured my friend his wife would now
-recover without either of us!
-
-"He came, and readily detected the fact that he was in luck. His patient
-and fees were both safe, and I was floored.
-
-"'Of course, Dr. R., you will call when _convenient_,' was a polite way of
-'letting me down easily,' and I did call.
-
-"Everything went on swimmingly for two days, when suddenly the scale
-turned; two other children were taken vomiting bile and blood. The doctor
-was in trouble, and on my friendly call his eye caught mine, and spoke
-plainly, 'My credit, too, is gone,--the children will both die.'
-
-"The children grew rapidly worse; the council of the _neighborhood_
-decided to call further aid. Another regular was called, and, being one of
-the heroes, he advised (it is solemn truth, dear reader) _one hundred
-grains of calomel at a dose_! His reason was, that he had given it to a
-child, and the patient recovered. His medical brother thought it a little
-too steep, and they compromised the matter by giving fifty grains! Copious
-quantities of fresh blood followed the operation, and the little victim of
-disease and quackery slipped from his suffering into the peaceful and
-quiet grave!
-
-"One patient remained, and it was decided to call further counsel.
-
-"A simple but shrewd old quack was curing cancers in the neighborhood, who
-sent word to the afflicted family that he 'could cure the remaining child
-by cleansing the bowels with pills of butternut bark, aloes, camphor, and
-Cayenne pepper;' he would feed the little fellow on twist-root tea that
-would at once stop the discharges. Strange as it may seem, the wily old
-fool was called into the august presence of three M. D.'s, and a score of
-other counsellors. He gave his pills; fresh blood followed the raking over
-the inflamed and sensitive membrane; the child screamed with torture, and
-was only relieved from its horrible agony by enemas of morphine. The
-celebrated '_twist-root_' (an Indian remedy, whose virtues could not be
-appreciated by the educated physician) followed, and death closed the
-scene.
-
-"The old cancer-killer escaped by saying the morphine given in his absence
-_killed the child_."
-
-[Illustration: 'OPATHISTS IN CONSULTATION.]
-
-The following brief consultation occurred in Fulton, N. Y., recently:--
-
-Two physicians were called, of opposite schools. After shaking hands over
-the sick man's bed, one said to the other,--
-
-"I believe you are an --'opathist."
-
-"Yes, I am; and you are a --'pathist; are you not?"
-
-"Yes; and I can't break over the rules of my society by aiding or
-counselling with you ---- for the sake of _one_ patient. Good day!"
-
-"Sir, I mistook you for a Christian, not a barbarian! Good day!"
-
-
-A JOLLY TRIO OF DOCTORS.
-
-Before entering upon an exposition of the viler and more reprehensible
-sort of quacks,--the city charlatans and impostors,--I must relate a
-diverting scene, also from a country consultation that occurred in New
-York State some years since, from the perusal of which, if the reader
-cannot deduce a "moral," he may derive some amusement.
-
-Mr. H. was an invalid; he was the worst kind of an invalid--a
-hypochondriac. The visiting physician had made a pretty good thing of it,
-the neighbors affirmed, for "H. was in easy circumstances." Finally he
-took to his bed, and declared he was about to shuffle off this mortal
-coil.
-
-Two eminent physicians were summoned from a distance to consult with the
-attending physician. They arrived by rail, examined the patient, looked
-wise, and the learned trio withdrew to consult upon so "complicated and
-important a case." A tea-table had been set in an adjoining room, and to
-the abundance of eatables wherewith to refresh the distinguished
-professionals who were there to enter upon an "arbitrament of life or
-death," were added sundry bottles yet uncorked.
-
-A little son and daughter of Mr. H. were amusing themselves, meantime, by
-a game at "hide-and-seek," and the former, having "played out" all the
-legitimate hiding-places, bethought himself of the top of a high secretary
-in the "banqueting-room." Action followed thought, and, climbing upon a
-chair-back, he gained the dusty elevation, where he quietly seated himself
-just as the three wise Æsculapians entered the apartment. His only safety
-from discovery was to keep quiet.
-
-Corks were drawn, supper was discussed, and conversation flowed merrily
-along. The weather, the news of the day, and the political crisis were
-discoursed, and the little fellow perched high on the secretary wondered
-when and what they would decide on his father's case. Nearly an hour had
-passed, the doctors were merry, and the boy was tired; but still the
-little urchin kept his position.
-
-"Well, Dr. A., how is practice here, in general?" inquired one of the
-counsel.
-
-"Dull; distressingly healthy. Why, if there don't come a windfall in shape
-of an epidemic this fall, I shall _fall_ short for provender for my horse
-and bread for my family. How is it with you?"
-
-"O, quite the reverse from you. I have alive twenty daily patients now."
-
-"Very sick, any of them?" asked the local physician.
-
-"No, no,--a little more wine, doctor,--some old women, whom any smart man
-can make think they are sick; some stout men, whom medicine will keep as
-patients when once under the weather; and silly girls, whom flattery will
-always bring again,--ha! ha!" and so saying he gulped down the wine.
-
-"Why, there goes nine o'clock."
-
-"What, so late!" exclaimed one counsellor, looking at his gold repeater.
-
-"We must go or we'll miss the return train," remarked the other; "the
-doctor here will manage the patient H., who's only got the _hypo_ badly,"
-he added.
-
-"Is that a bust of Pallas he has over his secretary yonder?" asked the
-first, discovering the boy for the first time.
-
-"I'm afraid Dr. ---- has got a little muddled over this excellent 'Old
-Port,' that he can't see clearly. Why, that's a bust of _Cupid_."
-
-"Well," exclaimed the local physician, "I have been here a hundred times,
-and never before observed that statue; but," eying the statue fixedly, he
-continued, "it looks neither like Pallas nor Cupid, but rather favors H.,
-and I guess it is a cast he has had recently made of himself."
-
-Through all this comment and inspection the boy sat as mute as a post; but
-the moment the door closed on the retiring doctors, he clambered down and
-ran into the sick room.
-
-[Illustration: A "HYPO" PATIENT DISCHARGING HIS PHYSICIAN.]
-
-The old doctor had slipped the customary fee into the hands of his
-brethren as he bade them good night, and entered the room of his patient.
-The latter instantly inquired as to the result of the consultation. The
-doctor entered into an elaborate account of the "diagnosis" and
-"prognosis" of the case, which was suddenly brought to a close by the
-little boy, who, climbing into a chair on the opposite side of the bed,
-asked his father what a "hypo" was.
-
-"You must ask the doctor, my son," replied the father in a feeble voice.
-
-"Hypo," said the unsuspecting doctor, "is an _imaginary_ disease,--the
-hypochondria, vapors, spleen; ha, ha, ha!"
-
-"Well, papa, that's what the doctors said you've got, 'cause I was on top
-of the book-case an' heard all they said, an' that's all."
-
-The doctor looked blank. H. arose in his bed, trembling with rage.
-
-"By the heavens above us, I do believe you, my son; and this fellow, this
-quack, has never had the manliness to tell me so;" and leaping to the
-floor in his brief single garment, he caught the dumb and astonished "M.
-D." by the coat collar and another convenient portion of his wardrobe, and
-running him to the open door, through the hall, he pitched him out into
-the midnight darkness, saying, "There! I have demonstrated the truth of
-the assertion by pitching the doctor out of doors." H. recovered his
-health. The doctor recovered damages for assault and battery.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-VII.
-
-CHARLATANS AND IMPOSTORS.
-
-    "Every absurdity has a chance to defend itself, for error is always
-    talkative."--GOLDSMITH.
-
-    DEFINITION.--ADVERTISING CHARLATANS.--CITY IMPOSTORS.--FALSE
-    NAMES.--"ADVICE FREE."--INTIMIDATIONS.--WHOLESALE ROBBERY.--VISITING
-    THEIR DENS IN DISGUISE.--PASSING THE CERBERUS.--WINDINGS.--INS AND
-    OUTS.--THE IRISH PORTER.--QUEER "TWINS," AND A "TRIPLET" DOCTOR.--A
-    HISTORY OF A KNAVE.--BOOT-BLACK AND BOTTLE-WASHER.--PERQUISITES.--
-    PURCHASED DIPLOMAS.--"INSTITUTES."--WHOLESALE SLAUGHTER OF INFANTS.--
-    FEMALE HARPIES.--A BOSTON HARPY.--WHERE OUR "LOST CHILDREN" GO.--END
-    OF A WRETCH.
-
-
-THE CITY CHARLATAN.
-
-A charlatan is necessarily an impostor. He is "one who prates much in his
-own favor, and makes unwarrantable pretensions to skill." He is "one who
-imposes on others; a person who assumes a character for the sole purpose
-of deception."
-
-Originally the charlatan was one who circulated about the country, making
-false pretensions to extraordinary ability and miraculous cures; but he is
-now located in the larger cities, and is the most dangerous and
-insinuating of all medical impostors. You will find his name in the
-cheapest daily papers.
-
-Name, did I say? No, never.
-
-Of all the charlatans advertising in the papers of this city there is but
-one who has not advertised under an assumed name. This is _prima facie_
-evidence of imposition. Take up the daily paper,--the cheapest print is
-the one that the rabble patronize, a curse to any city,--and run your eye
-over the "_Medical Column_." Of the scores of this class advertising
-therein none dare publish his real name. There is one impudent fellow,
-who, while he assumes respectability, and under his true name, has an
-up-town office, and obtains something bordering on an honorable practice,
-runs the vilest sort of business, under an assumed name, on a public
-thoroughfare down town.
-
-These fellows usually advertise, "Advice Free." This is not on the modest
-principle, that, having no brains, they are scrupulous in not charging for
-what they cannot give, however; but this is to get the unsuspecting into
-their dens, for they are shrewd enough to perceive that whatever is "free"
-the rabble will run after.
-
-[Illustration: CONVINCING EVIDENCE OF INSOLVENCY.]
-
-When once the victim is within the web, flattering, intimidations, and
-extravagant promises, one or all, generally will accomplish their aim. As
-they never expect to see a special victim again, they squeeze the last
-dollar from the unfortunate wretch, giving therefor nothing--worse than
-nothing! I sent a pretended patient to one of these charlatans not long
-since, and, with crocodile tears in his eyes, he related his case to the
-_soi-disant_ doctor, who with great sympathy heard his case, and assured
-him it was "heart-rending, and, though very dangerous, he could cure him;"
-but the knave compelled the patient (!) to turn his pockets inside out to
-assure him they contained but the proffered dollar. A small vial of
-diluted spirits nitre was the prescription, for which the doctor assured
-the patient he usually received twenty to forty dollars!
-
-I have visited several of these places in disguise, including those of
-female doctors, and those advertising as "midwives," every one of whom
-agreed to perform a criminal operation upon the mythical lady for whom I
-was pretending to intercede. Their prices ranged from five to two hundred
-dollars.
-
-The following painfully ludicrous scene I copy from manuscript notes which
-I made some years ago, respecting a visit to one of these impostors. I
-vouch for its truthfulness.
-
-"I next bought a penny paper of a loud-mouthed urchin on the street
-corner, and, reading it that evening, the words 'Medical Notice' attracted
-my attention. It was all news to me, and I resolved to visit this 'very
-celebrated' doctor on the following day, 'advice free.'
-
-"Accordingly I repaired to his office, as designated in the advertisement.
-There were several doors wonderfully near each other, about which were
-several doctors' signs conspicuously displayed; and, since I had heard
-that 'two of a trade seldom agree,' I thought it remarkable that three or
-four of a profession should here be huddled together.
-
-"'STEP IN THE ENTRY AND RING THE BELL,' I read on a sign, in big yellow
-letters. I did so, when a big burly Irishman answered the summons.
-
-"'An' who'll yeze like to see, sure?' he inquired, with a broad grin.
-
-"'Dr. A.,' I replied, eying this Cerberus with awakening suspicion.
-
-"'He's just in, sure. Come, follow me.'
-
-"He led the way across a small room, and through a darkened hall, around
-which I cast a suspicious glance, noticing, among other things unusual,
-that the partitions did not reach the ceiling. Thence we entered another
-room, which, from the roundabout way we had approached, I thought must be
-opposite the outer door of Dr. B.'s or Dr. C.'s office.
-
-"Here Pat left me, saying, 'The ixcillint doctor will be to see yeze
-ferninst he gits through wid the gintleman who was before your honor.'
-
-[Illustration: "AN' WHO'LL YEZE LIKE TO SEE, SURE?"]
-
-"I took a look about the room. The partitions on two sides were temporary.
-On one side of the apartment stood an old mahogany secretary. Through the
-dingy glass doors I took a peep. The shelves contained several volumes of
-'Patent Office Reports,' odd numbers of an old London magazine, and such
-like useless works. On the walls were a few soiled cheap anatomical
-plates, such as you will see in 'galleries' or 'museums' fitted up by
-quack doctors, to intimidate the beholder. I could look no farther, as the
-door opened, and a man entered, who, looking nervously around, at once
-asked my business.
-
-"'Are you Dr. A.?' I asked.
-
-"'I am. Please be seated. You are sick--very sick,' he said hurriedly, and
-in a manner intended to frighten me.
-
-"Five minutes' conversation satisfied us both--him that I had no money,
-and me that he had no skill. After vainly endeavoring to extort from me my
-present address, he unceremoniously showed me out.
-
-"As I closed the door I looked to the name and number, and, as I had
-anticipated, found myself at Dr. B.'s entrance.
-
-"Turning up my coat collar, and tying a large colored silk handkerchief
-over the lower part of my face, I knocked at the third door, Dr C.'s.
-
-"The same Irishman thrust out his uncombed head and unwashed face; the
-same words in the same vernacular language followed.
-
-"'I wish to see Dr. C.,' I replied, changing my voice slightly.
-
-"'He's in, jist. It never rains but it pours. Himself it is that has a
-bully crowd of patients the day; but coome in.'
-
-"He did not recognize me--that was certain; so I followed, and was led
-through a labyrinth of rooms and halls, as before, and ushered into a
-small room, where the polite and loquacious Pat offered me a chair, and
-giving the right earlock a pull and his left foot a slip back, he said,
-with his broadest grin and most murderous English,--
-
-"'I'll be shpaking the doctor to come to yeze at once intirely.'
-
-"'But he has others with whom he is engaged, you said but a moment ago.'
-
-"'Ah, yeze niver mind. Theyze ben't gintlemen like yerself, if yeze do
-come disguised;' and with a '_whist_' he tip-toed across the room, applied
-his ear to the keyhole of the door a moment, and returned in the same
-manner.
-
-"'It's all right; now I'll go for the doctor;' but still he lingered.
-
-"'Well, why the d----l don't you go?' I said, impatiently.
-
-"'Ah, gintlemen always come disguised to see Dr. A.--no--Dr. B., I mean.'
-
-"''Tis Dr. C. I asked for,' I interrupted.
-
-"'Yis, yis,' he replied, collecting his muddled senses. 'Yis, sure, you
-did, an' gintlemen always swear--two signs yeze a gintleman. Could yeze
-spare a quarter for a poor divil? By the howly mither, I git narry a cint,
-bating what sich gintlemen as yeze gives me. I have a big family to ate at
-home. There's Bridget' (counting his fingers by the way of a reminder),
-'she's sick with the baby; then there's the twins,--two of thim, as I'm a
-sinner,--and little lame Mike, what's got the rackabites, the doctor
-says--'
-
-"'Got the what?' I interrupted.
-
-"'The rackabites, or some sich dumbed disease,' he replied, scratching his
-head.
-
-"'O, you mean rickets. But how old are the twins, and Mike, and the baby?'
-
-"'Will, let me see. The baby is tin days, and not christened yit, for
-we've not got the money for Father Prince, and there's Mike is siven, and
-Mary is four, and Bridget junior is five.'
-
-"'And the twins?' I asked, not a little amused.
-
-"'Yis, them's Mary and Bridget junior,--four and five.'
-
-"I interrupted him by a laugh, gave him the desired quarter, and told him
-to hasten the doctor, which request he proceeded to execute.
-
-"On the heels of retiring Pat the door opened, and the same doctor I had
-before seen entered.
-
-"'I want to consult Dr. C.,' I drawled out.
-
-"'I am Dr. C.,' he replied, measuring me from head to foot sharply.
-
-"Fearing he would penetrate my disguise, I hastened my errand. 'Having an
-ulcerated and painful tooth I wish removed, or--'
-
-"'This ain't a dentist's office; but if you have any peculiar disease, I
-am the physician of all others to relieve you.'
-
-"I being sure now of my man, that this same villain was running three
-offices under as many different _aliases_, my next object was to get
-safely out of his den.
-
-"'I have no need of any such services as you intimate. 'Tis only the
-tooth--'
-
-"Here he interrupted me by an impatient gesture, intimating that only a
-descendant of the monosyllable animal once chastised by one Balaam would
-have entered his office to have a tooth drawn. Admitting the truth of his
-assertion, and offering my humblest apology, I hurriedly withdrew from
-this _triplet_ doctor.
-
-"Safely away, I reflected as follows: Here, now, is this scoundrel, by the
-assistance of an equally ignorant Irishman, conducting at least three
-offices on a public thoroughfare, under as many assumed names.
-
-"'Why, the fellow is a perfect chameleon!' I exclaimed, walking away. 'He
-changes his name to suit the applicants to the various rooms. You want Dr.
-A.,--he is that individual. You desire to see Dr. B.,--when, _presto!_ he
-is at once the identical man. And so it goes, while his amiable assistant
-seems to be making a nice little thing of it on his own account. Why all
-these intricate passages? and why was I each time taken around through
-them, and out through a different door from that which I entered? Did a
-legitimate business require such mazy windings as I had just passed
-through? Did Dr. A., B., or C., or whatever his name might be, rob his
-patients in one place and thrust them out at another, that they might not
-be able to testify where and by whom they had been victimized? Was not the
-newspaper proprietor who advertised these several offices a _particeps
-criminis_ in the transaction? And with these facts and suggestions I
-leave the fellow, who by no means is a solitary example of this sort of
-fraud.'"
-
-On another street in this city is another branch from the Upas tree. I do
-not wish to advertise for him, hence omit his _names_, which are legion.
-Two of them begin with the letter D. The true name of this impostor
-commences with an M. He is old enough to be better. I know of patients who
-have been fleeced by him without receiving the least benefit, when the
-knowledge necessary to prescribe for their recovery, or of so simple a
-case, might be possessed by even the office boy.
-
-You go to his first office and inquire for the first _alias_. The usher, a
-boy sometimes, takes you in, and, slipping out the back door, he calls the
-old doctor from the next office. They are not connected. Through a glass
-door he takes a survey of you, to assure himself that you have not been
-victimized by him already under his other _aliases_.
-
-If he so recognizes you, he summons a convenient "assistant" to personate
-the doctor, and thus you are robbed a second time.
-
-
-HISTORY OF A KNAVE.
-
-The following is a brief and true history of one of the vilest charlatans
-and impostors now practising in Boston. He has amassed a fortune within a
-few years by the most barefaced villanies ever resorted to by man. He is
-one of the most abominable charlatans, who, for the almighty dollar, would
-willingly sacrifice the lives of his unfortunate victims, who, by glowing
-newspaper statements and seductive promises, have been drawn into his
-murderous den. By the side of such unprincipled villains, the highwaymen,
-the Dick Turpins, with their "Stand and deliver!" or "Your money or your
-life!" are angels of mercy, for the former rob you of your last dollar,
-and either endanger your life by giving you useless drugs that check not
-the disease, or hasten your demise by poisonous compounds given at
-random, the virulent properties of which the vampires know but little and
-care less.
-
-Their boast that their remedies are "_purely vegetable_," "hence
-uninjurious", is as false as their pretensions to skill, and is counted
-for nothing when we know that vegetable poisons are more numerous, and
-often more rapid and violent in their action, than minerals. Both calomel
-and other minerals are often _given_ by these charlatans. I say _given_,
-for few of them know enough to write a legible prescription, much less to
-write the voluminous works which they put forth on "manhood," "physiology
-of woman," etc., which are but so many advertisements for their vile trade
-and criminal practices, and are intended to alarm and corrupt the young
-and unwary into whose hands they may unfortunately fall.
-
-This fellow, whom I am now to describe, who sometimes prefixes "professor"
-to his name, was born in the State of New Hampshire, and when a young man
-came to this city to seek his fortune. After various ups and downs, he
-became boot-black, porter, and general lackey in the Pearl Street House,
-then in full blast. He was said to be a youth of rather prepossessing,
-though insinuating address, and being constantly on the alert for odd
-pennies and "dimes," succeeded in keeping himself in pocket-money without
-committing theft, or otherwise compromising his liberty. But the odd
-change, and his meagre salary, did not long remain in pocket, for the
-courtesans, who are ever on the alert for unsophisticated youth who throng
-to the cities, managed to obtain the lion's share from this embryo doctor,
-whose future greatness he himself never half suspected. Disease, the usual
-result of intercourse with such creatures, was the consequent inheritance
-of this young man.
-
-"What, in the name of Heaven, shall I now do?" he asked himself, in his
-distress and despair. "Money I have none. O God! what shall I do?"
-
-"Drown yourself," replied the tempter.
-
-Such fellows seldom drown. Females, their victims, drown; but who ever
-heard of a natural-born villain committing suicide, unless to escape the
-threatening halter?
-
-No, he did not drown, though it had been better for humanity if he had. He
-went to an old advertising charlatan, who then kept an office in a lower
-street of this city, a mercenary old vampire, named Stevens. Into the
-august presence of the charlatan young M. entered, and, trembling and
-weeping, told his history.
-
-[Illustration: A BOSTON QUACK EXAMINING A STUDENT.]
-
-"Have you got any money, young man?" growled the old doctor, wheeling
-around, and for the first time condescending to notice the poor wretch.
-
-"No," he sobbed in a pitiful voice.
-
-"Then what do you come here for, sir?" roared the doctor, whose pity was
-a thing of the past. His soul was impenetrable to the appeal of suffering
-as the hide of the rhinoceros to a leaden bullet.
-
-The young man, fortunately, did not know this fact, and persevered.
-
-"I thought I might work for you to pay for treatment. O, I'll do
-anything--sweep your office, wash up the floors and bottles, black your
-boots, do anything and everything, if you'll only cure me. O, do! Say you
-will, sir!" and the young man writhed in agony of suspense.
-
-"Humph!" grunted the old doctor, contemplatingly.
-
-Doubtless he was considering the advantages which might accrue from
-accepting the proposition of this earnest applicant, for, after eying him
-sharply, and beating the devil's tattoo for a few moments upon his table,
-the doctor condescended to "look into his case," and finally to treat the
-young man's disease upon the proposed terms.
-
-M. began his apprenticeship by sweeping the office, and the old doctor
-held him to the very letter of the agreement, keeping him at the most
-menial service,--boot-blacking, bottle-washing, door-tending,
-etc.,--protracting his disease as he found the young man useful, till the
-old knave dared no longer delay the cure, for thereby the victim might go
-elsewhere for help. When cured, M. engaged to continue work for the small
-compensation that the doctor offered, especially since he and the old man
-had begun to understand each other pretty well, and each was equally
-unscrupulous as to the sponging of the unfortunate victims who fell into
-their hands.
-
-When the doctor was observed to prescribe from any particular bottle, M.
-took a mental memorandum thereof till such time as he could take a look at
-the label, thereby learning the prescription for such disease; and the
-result was a decision that if this was the science of healing, "_it didn't
-take much of a man to be a_"--_doctor_.
-
-When the old doctor was absent, M. would prescribe on his own account,
-charge an extra dollar or two as perquisites, and deposit the balance in
-the doctor's till.
-
-In course of time, by this process of extortion, solicitations, and the
-increasing perquisites, M. was enabled to set up doctoring on his own
-account. The old doctor died, and M. had it all his own way.
-
-The young self-styled doctor saw no particular need of making effort to
-acquire medical knowledge, but a diploma to hang upon his office walls,
-with the few disgusting anatomical plates (appropriated from Dr. S.),
-which were admirably adapted to intimidate his simple-minded dupes,--a
-diploma from some medical society would give character to the
-"institution," and such he would obtain.
-
-Being cited to court as defendant in a certain case, this _soi-disant_ "M.
-D." was compelled to retract a former statement that he had attended
-medical lectures in Pennsylvania College, where he graduated with honors,
-and come down to the truthful statement, _for once in his life_, and swear
-that he had obtained his diploma by _purchase_.
-
-His present rooms--house and office--are located in the heart of the city,
-and are not exceeded for convenience and neatness by those of the
-respectable practitioner. Having amassed a great fortune out of the
-credulity, misfortunes, and passions of the unfortunate, he has settled
-down to the plane of the more respectable advertising doctors, and the
-terrifying plates no longer cover the walls of the _best_ reception-room;
-but a few valuable pictures and the Philadelphia diploma are conspicuously
-displayed above the elegant furniture and valuable articles of _virtu_.
-
-The same extortions and reprehensible practices are still resorted to in
-order to keep up this "institution." His earlier history is gathered from
-_his own statements_, by piecemeal, by a confidential "student," the
-latter portion by _personal investigation_ of the writer.
-
-Respecting the matter of purchasing diplomas, I will state that I have
-seen a "Regular Medical Diploma" advertised in the New York _Herald_ for
-one hundred dollars. The name originally written therein is extracted by
-oxalic acid, or other chemicals. I knew a physician who parted with his
-Latin diploma for fifty dollars.
-
-I here warn the youth, and the public in general, against those advertised
-"_institutes_," though the name may be selected from that of some
-benevolent individual,--to give it a look of a benevolent character,--even
-though it be a "Nightengale," or a "Peabody," or a "St. Mary," and
-managed, _ostensibly_, under the sanction of the church or state--beware
-of it. Without, it is the whited sepulchre, within, the blood, flesh, and
-bones of dead men, women, and children.
-
-Some years since there was found, after the flight of one Dr. Jaques (?),
-in a vault in the city of Boston, the bones of some half score infants.
-The murderous charlatan escaped the halter he so richly deserved, and was
-practising in a New England village not above six years since.
-
-Another impostor, who has been extensively advertised in this city under
-an assumed name--selected to correspond with the familiar name of a
-celebrated New York (also a late Boston) physician and surgeon--who not
-only cheekily claims to be an "M. D.," but assumes the titles of F. R. S.,
-etc., was but a short time before a dry goods seller on Hanover Street. He
-never read a standard medical work in his life. Although the villain has
-gone to parts unknown to the writer, the concern he recently represented
-as "consulting physician" is in full blast, and the same name and titles
-are blazoned forth daily in the public prints.
-
-Men get rich in these "institutes," take in an "assistant" for a few
-weeks, then sell out to the _novus homo_, and the thing goes on under the
-old name until the new man gains strength and confidence sufficient to
-carry it along under his own or his assumed title.
-
-
-FEMALE HARPIES.
-
-Under the name of "female physician," "midwife," etc., the most illicit
-and nefarious atrocities are daily practised by the numerous harpies who
-infest all our principal cities. The mythological harpies were represented
-as having the faces of women, heartless, with filthy bodies, and claws
-sharp and strong for fingers, which, once fastened upon human flesh, never
-relaxed till the last drop of life's blood was wrung from their
-unfortunate victim.
-
-Virgil thus expressively described them in the third book of the Æneid:--
-
-  "When from the mountain-tops, with hideous cry
-  And clattering wings, the filthy harpies fly;
-  Monsters more fierce offending Heaven ne'er sent
-  From hell's abyss for human punishment;
-  With virgin faces, but with ---- obscene,
-  With claws for hands, and looks forever lean!"
-
-I will describe but one of the modern harpies of Boston, appealing to the
-reader if our text above is too severe.
-
-More than forty years ago, a young, fair, and promising girl came to this
-city from the White Mountains of New Hampshire. From her maiden home, near
-Meredith Village, from under the humble roof of Christian parents, she
-wandered into the haunts of vice and the abodes of wretchedness and
-disease in the lower part of Boston.
-
-Her maiden name was Elizabeth Leach. You will find her name in the City
-Directory (1871) "_Madam Ester, midwife_."
-
-We have not space to write out her whole history, nor inclination to
-spread before the refined reader the first years of the gay life of this
-attractive damsel, the seductive and sinful debaucheries of the
-fascinating, unprincipled woman, nor the more repulsive declination of the
-diseased and malevolent _bawd_!
-
-The writer has seen a picture of her home in New Hampshire, a
-daguerreotype of her in her virginity, and a painting, taken from her
-sittings, in middle life. In stature, she is tall and stout; in manner,
-coarse and repulsive. If ever I saw a woman carrying, stamped in every
-lineament of her countenance, a hard, heartless, soulless, murderous
-expression, that woman is Madam Ester. Neither the tears, the
-heart-anguishes, nor the life's blood of the fatherless infant, the
-husbandless mother, the orphaned or friendless maiden, could draw a
-sympathizing look or expression from the hardened features of that
-wretched woman. _She is the John Allen of Boston._
-
-For years she has carried on, under the cloak of a "midwife," the most
-cruel and reprehensible occupation which ever disgraced an outraged
-community. By extortionate prices she has gained no inconsiderable wealth,
-and her house, though located in a narrow, darkened alley, or court, is
-fitted up with an elegance equalling that of some of our best and
-wealthiest merchants. From parlor to attic, it is splendidly furnished.
-
-She assured me she hated mankind with inexpressible hatred; that man had
-been her ruin, the instrument of her disease, and would eventually be the
-cause of her death. She cursed both man and her Maker!
-
-Last spring there appeared an advertisement in a city paper of a young
-girl who was lost, or abducted from the home of her parents, in which the
-young lady was described as being but sixteen to seventeen years of age,
-of light complexion, blue eyes, of but medium height, named Mary ----; and
-as she took no clothes but those she had on, never before went from home
-without her parents' consent, and had no trouble at home, her absence
-could not be accounted for. Any information respecting her would be
-gratefully received by her distressed parents.
-
-She was all this time at the home of Madam Ester.
-
-The young man who completed her ruin, like the contemptible cur he was,
-deserted her in her distress, leaving her in the hands of the miserable
-wretch above described. The girl had one hundred and twenty dollars. A
-part of it was her own money; some she borrowed, having some influential
-friends, and the balance her father gave her, ostensibly for the purchase
-of clothing.
-
-The old vampire appropriated every cent of the sum, and in fourteen days
-turned the weak and wretched girl into the street, without sufficient
-money to pay her coach fare to her father's house. A young girl then in
-the employ of the unfeeling old wretch gave her five dollars, and she
-informed her kind benefactress that she should go home and say that she
-had been at service in a family on Beacon Street, but being sick, could
-earn no greater wages than the sum then in her possession. "The pale and
-sickly countenance of the poor girl, after the abuse and torture she had
-undergone," said my informant, "certainly would seem to corroborate her
-story."
-
-Since the above was written the wicked old wretch has died--died a natural
-death, sitting in her chair!
-
-On the last day of July, 1871, she sent a girl, a well-dressed and very
-lady-like appearing young woman, to my office, to know if I could be at
-liberty to give her a consultation that afternoon. She sent no address;
-merely a "woman with a cancer of the breast." She came. She introduced her
-business, not her name. I pronounced her case hopeless, advised her to
-"close up her worldly affairs, and make her peace with God and mankind, as
-she could live but a short time." This was given the more plainly, since
-she "demanded to know the worst," and because of her bold attempt to
-browbeat me into treating her hopeless case. The cancer was immense, had
-been cut once by Dr. ----, of this city. Her attendant told me that the
-old woman never ceased to berate me for my truthful prognosis, and that
-from that time she gave up all hope of recovery, and soon closed her
-nefarious practice. I have since gathered all the information respecting
-her that was possible. I knew at sight that I had a remarkable woman to
-deal with, and, agreeably to her invitation, I took another physician, a
-graduate of Harvard College, and went to her house, ostensibly to consult
-over her case....
-
-A woman who has known madam for many years told me that the old woman was
-familiar with chemicals, and by the use of acids and alkalies could
-completely destroy the flesh and bones of infants. She had never seen her
-do it, but had seen the chemicals, and referred me to persons who had seen
-the dead body of a female brought out from the house at midnight, and
-taken away in a wagon. She said she practised great cruelty upon the
-unfortunate victims who had been placed under her hands, and that their
-cries had often been heard by the neighbors living in the court.
-
-She said that madam claimed to have been the wife of a policeman who was
-killed at Fort Hill, and that she was also since married to a Captain
-----. The latter was untrue. Madam told me she once _thought_ she was
-married, but it was a deception on her--a mock marriage. She possessed
-great quantities of magnificent clothing,--rich dresses of silk, satin,
-velvet, etc.,--and a beautiful wedding _trousseau_, which, but a short
-time before her death, she caused to be brought out and displayed before
-her.
-
-"O, take them away; I never shall wear them," she said. And she never did.
-
-There is another female physician now residing in this city, who I know
-has accumulated a considerable property as midwife; but if report, and
-assertions of victims, are true, she has gained it by threats and
-extortions. She is now out of practice, or nearly. Her _modus operandi_
-was to take the unfortunate female, treat her very tenderly, get hold of
-her secret, learn the gentleman's name, business, and wealth, and
-then--especially if he was a family man before--make him "come down,"
-through fear of exposure. Men have "come down" with thousands, little by
-little, till they were ruined pecuniarily under this fearful blackmailing.
-I doubt if money could hire her to perform a criminal operation. She can
-make more money by keeping the unfortunate girl, and blackmailing the
-seducer, _or any other individual_ who can be scared into the trap,
-provided the guilty one has no money. "Blessed be nothing," said the Arab.
-
-These people carry on their trade very quietly. Their very next door
-neighbors may know nothing of the unlawful acts committed right under
-their noses. It is for the interest of all concerned to keep everything
-quiet. Their customers, and even their victims, come and go after
-nightfall.
-
-There is still another class, mostly males, practising in this city, who,
-under fair pretences and great promises, get the patients' money, and give
-them no equivalent therefor. Beyond the robbery,--for that is what it is;
-no more nor less,--and the protracting of a disease (or giving nature more
-time, as the case may be),--they do the applicant no injury. They receive
-a fee, calculating it to a nicety, according to the depth of your pocket,
-give some simple mixture, and bow you out.
-
-Many an honest patient, seeing their high-flown advertisements in the
-dailies, weeklies, even religious (!) papers, from month to month, is
-induced to visit these impostors. Their offices may be in a less public
-street, in a private residence, and have every outward appearance of
-respectability.
-
-There is a class of male practitioners, not unusually having a Latin
-diploma, who never appear in the prints. They are the "Nurse Gibbon"
-class, who employ one or more females to drum patients for them. The
-following is a truthful statement respecting a visit to one in 1850:--
-
-"On my arrival on the steamer Penobscot at Boston, the lady met me, and,
-according to arrangement, took me to see 'her physician.' His office was
-on Chambers Street, left side, a few doors from Cambridge Street, Boston.
-The doctor was an elderly, pompous individual, who wore gold spectacles,
-an immense fob chain, and chewed Burgundy pitch. Let this suffice for his
-description. Poor man! for if his own theology is true, he has gone where
-Burgundy pitch will be very likely to melt. Excuse this passing tribute to
-his memory, my dear reader.
-
-"Notwithstanding my friend's lavish praise of her doctor, the first sight
-of him failed to inspire me with confidence. I was introduced, and the
-doctor swelled up with his own importance, and said, impressively,--
-
-"Those physicians--amiable men, no doubt--who have treated your case-ah
-have been all wrong in their diagnosis-ah." This was his prelude, as he
-counted my pulse by a large gold watch, which he held conspicuously before
-me.
-
-"Your kind friend and benefactress has saved your life-ah, by conducting
-you to me before too late-ah." He stopped to watch the effect of this bid
-for a high fee before proceeding.
-
-"Ah, sir, had you but come to me first-ah, you would now be rejoicing in
-perfect health-ah; whereas you have narrowly escaped death and eternal
-torments-ah."
-
-He again took breath, looking very solemn.
-
-"But, sir, I never heard of you before this lady wrote to me," I said.
-
-"True-ah. I do not advertise myself. The veriest quack may advertise-ah.
-Your case is very dangerous. _Hepatitis, cum nephritis_-ah," he
-soliloquized, shaking his head very wisely, while my friend nodded, as if
-to say, "There! I told you so. He knows all about it."
-
-"Yes, very dangerous-ah. But take my medicines; my pills--hepatica-lobus,
-and my neuropathicum-ah, and they will restore you to health and
-happiness-ah, in a few weeks-ah;" and he rubbed his palms complacently, as
-if in anticipation of a good fat fee for his prescription.
-
-"Will they cure this?" I asked, turning my head, and placing a finger upon
-a tumor on the right hand side of my neck.
-
-"O-ah, let me see." And so saying, he took a brief survey of the
-protuberance, and coolly remarked that it was of no material importance.
-As that was, to my mind, of great consequence, I was dumbfounded by his
-indifference to its importance.
-
-Selecting a box of pills, and a vial of transparent liquid, the doctor
-presented them to me with a flourish, saying, in his blandest manner,--
-
-"All there; directions inside-ah; ten dollars-ah."
-
-"What!" And I arose in astonishment, gazing alternately at the doctor and
-my friend, but could not utter another word. I was but a country
-greenhorn, you know, and quite unused to city prices.
-
-My friend took the doctor aside, when, after a moment's conversation
-between them, he returned, and said that "in consideration of the
-recommendation of the lady, he would take but five dollars-ah."
-
-I paid the bill, and, quite disgusted, took my departure.
-
-That evening I carried the medicines to a druggist, requesting him to
-inform me what they were. After examining them, he replied,--
-
-"The liquid is simply sweet spirits of nitre, diluted," looking over his
-glasses at me suspiciously, I thought. "These, I should say, are blue
-pills, a mild preparation of mercury," returning me the pills. A second
-druggist, to whom I applied, told me the same, and, knowing they were not
-what I required for a scrofulous tumor, I threw them into the gutter.
-_Ah!_
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-VIII.
-
-ANECDOTES OF PHYSICIANS.
-
-    "I find, Dick, that you are in the habit of taking my best jokes, and
-    passing them off as your own. Do you call that the conduct of a
-    gentleman?"
-
-    "To be sure, Tom. Why, a true gentleman will always take a joke from a
-    friend."
-
-    A WANT SUPPLIED.--ORIGINAL ANECDOTES OF ABERNETHY.--A LIVE
-    IRISHMAN.--MADAM ROTHSCHILD.--LARGE FEET.--A SHANGHAI
-    ROOSTER.--SPREADING HERSELF.--KEROSENE.--"SALERATUS."--HIS LAST
-    JOKE.--AN ASTONISHED DARKY.--OLD DR. K.'s MARE.--A SCARED
-    CUSTOMER.--"WHAT'S TRUMPS?"--"LET GO THEM HALYARDS."--MEDICAL
-    TITBITS.--MORE MUSTARD THAN MEAT.--"I WANT TO BE AN
-    ANGEL."--TOOTH-DRAWING.--DR. BEECHER VS. DR. HOLMES.--STEALING
-    TIME.--CHOLERA FENCED IN.--"A JOKE THAT'S NOT A JOKE."--A DRY
-    SHOWER-BATH.--PARBOILING AN OLD LADY.
-
-
-"There would be no difficulty in multiplying anecdotes attributed to
-Abernethy (or other celebrated physicians) _ad libitum_, but there are
-three objections to such a course. First, there are many told of him which
-never happened; others, which may possibly have occurred, you find it
-impossible to authenticate; and lastly, there is a class which, if they
-happened to Dr. Abernethy, certainly happened to others before he was
-born. In fact, when a man once gets a reputation of doing or saying odd
-things, every story in which the chief person is unknown or unremembered,
-is given to the next man whose reputation for such is
-remarkable."--_Memoirs of Dr. Abernethy, by George Macilwain, F. R. C. S.,
-etc., etc._
-
-Notwithstanding the great number of authentic anecdotes of physicians
-which might be collected together, Mr. Campbell, the experienced
-antiquarian bookseller, of Boston, assures me there is no such book in
-print. I have been many years collecting such, and for this chapter I have
-selected therefrom those most chaste, amusing, instructive, and authentic.
-
-The following original anecdote of the great English surgeon I obtained
-verbally from Mr. Sladden, of Chicago:--
-
-"My grandmother once visited Dr. Abernethy, with her eldest son, my uncle,
-living in London, to consult the great physician respecting an inveterate
-humor of the scalp, with which the child was afflicted.
-
-"There were a great many patients in waiting, and when it came my
-grandmother's turn, she walked up to the great man, and removing the boy's
-cap, presented the case for his inspection in silence. He took a quick
-glance at the humory head, turned to the old lady, and said,--
-
-"'Madam, the best thing I can recommend for that disease is a plenty of
-warm water and soap. And, by the way, if that don't remove it, the next
-best thing is to apply freely soap and warm water. Five guineas, if you
-please, ma'am.'
-
-"As my grandmother was the embodiment of neatness, she never forgave the
-doctor for this broad intimation of the questionableness of her neatness."
-
-Dr. Stowe told the following story of Dr. Abernethy and a live Irishman:--
-
-"It occurred at Bath. A crowd of pupils, myself one of them, were
-following Mr. Abernethy through the crowded wards of the hospital, when
-the apparition of a poor Irishman, with the scantiest shirt I ever saw,
-jumped from a bed, and literally throwing himself on his knees at the
-doctor's feet, presented itself. We were startled for a moment, but the
-poor fellow, with all his country's eloquence, poured out such a torrent
-of praise, prayers, and blessings, and illustrated it with such ludicrous
-pantomimic displays of his leg, all splintered and bandaged, that we were
-not long left in doubt.
-
-"'That's the leg, your hon-nor. Glory be to God. Yer honnor's the buy what
-saved it. May the heavens be yer bed. Long life to yer honnor. To the
-divil with the spalpeens that wanted to cut it off!' etc.
-
-"With some difficulty the patient was replaced in bed, and the doctor
-said,--
-
-"'I am glad your leg is doing well, but never kneel again, except to your
-Maker.'
-
-"The doctor took the opportunity of giving us a clinical lecture about
-diseases and their constitutional treatment. Every sentence Abernethy
-uttered, Pat confirmed.
-
-[Illustration: DR. ABERNETHY IN THE HOSPITAL.]
-
-"'Thrue for yer honnor; divil a lie at all, at all. His honnor's the
-grathe doctor, entirely,' etc.
-
-"At the slightest allusion to his case, off went the bed-clothes, and up
-went the leg, as if taking aim at the ceiling. 'That's it, be gorra! and a
-betther leg than the villain's that wanted to slice it off, entirely.'
-
-"The students actually roared with laughter, but Abernethy retained his
-usual gravity throughout the whole of the ludicrous scene."
-
-Madam Rothschild, mother of the mighty capitalists, attained the great age
-of ninety-eight. Her wits, which were of no common order, were preserved
-to the end. During her last illness, when surrounded by her family and
-some friends, she turned to her physician, and said, in a suppliant
-tone,--
-
-"My dear doctor, I pray you try to do something for me."
-
-"Madam, what can I do? I cannot make you young again."
-
-"No, doctor; nor do I want to be young again. But I want to continue to
-grow old."
-
-
-LARGE FEET.
-
-Dr. Wood was a man of large "understanding." One day at a presidential
-reception he was standing in a large crowd, when he felt two feet pressing
-on his patent leathers. Looking down, he discovered that the said feet
-belonged to a female. Wood was a bachelor, and at first the sensation was
-delightful. It made inexpressibly delicious thrills run all up and down
-his body. But as the _impression_ was all on the lady's side, the above
-sensations became gradually superseded by those not quite so delightful,
-and finally the pressure became very uncomfortable. Mustering courage, he
-said, very gently,--
-
-"Madam, if you please, you are standing on my feet--"
-
-"Your feet, sir, did you say?" For the crowd was so dense that she could
-not possibly see to the ground.
-
-"Yes, madam, on my feet--this last half hour," very politely.
-
-"O, I beg a thousand pardons, sir; I thought I was standing on a block.
-_They are quite large, sir_," trying to remove.
-
-"Yes, ma'am, quite large; but _yours covered 'em, madam_."
-
-
-A SHANGHAI ROOSTER.
-
-Many people suffer more from the anticipation of trouble than by the
-actual infliction. The world is full of "trouble-borrowers." They
-generally keep a stock on hand to lend to those who unfortunately are
-compelled to listen to them. The following is a mitigated case:--
-
-"Sir," said a physician visiting a patient in the suburbs of this city, to
-a neighbor, "your Shanghai greatly disturbs my patient."
-
-"Is it possible?" asked the neighbor, expressing surprise.
-
-"Yes, the bird is a terrible nuisance, giving the patient no peace, day or
-night, he informs me; but he did not want to complain."
-
-"But," replied the sceptical owner, "I don't see how he can annoy neighbor
-B. Why, he only crows twice in the night, and only two or three times at
-regular intervals during the day."
-
-"Yes; but you don't take into consideration all the times the patient is
-_expecting_ him to crow."
-
-
-SPREADING HERSELF.
-
-In a country town in Maine the writer knew an elderly physician, who had
-married a wife much younger than himself, whose aristocratic notions
-hardly coincided with those of this democratic people, though she had now
-lived here several years. Finally a young physician came into the place
-and commenced practice. Among the patients that he obtained from the old
-doctor's former practice was one named Higgins.
-
-Mrs. Higgins, whose daughter had just recovered from a fever, gave a
-party, to which the families of both doctors, with the two ministers, and
-others, were invited.
-
-"Will you go to Mrs. Higgins's party?" asked a neighbor of the old
-doctor's wife.
-
-"Yes, I intend to go, by all means, for I want to see old Mother Higgins
-and her new doctor spread themselves."
-
-This reminds me of the following story, which is too good to be lost:--
-
-"'Once upon a time,' an old lady sent her grandson to set a turkey,--not
-the gobbler, as did the parson in Mrs. Stowe's 'Minister's Wooing.' On his
-return, the following dialogue occurred:--
-
-"'Sammy, my dear, have you set her?'
-
-"'Yes, grandma,' replied Hopeful.
-
-[Illustration: "AN EXTENSIVE SET."]
-
-"'Fixed the nest up all nice, Sammy?'
-
-"'O, mighty fine, grandma.'
-
-"'Did you count the eggs, Sammy, and get an odd number?'
-
-"'Yes, grandma.'
-
-"'How many eggs did you set her on, Sammy, dear?'
-
-"'One hundred and twenty-one, grandma.'
-
-"'O, goodness gracious! Why did you put so many eggs under her, Sammy?'
-
-"'Why, grandma, I wanted to see the old thing spread herself.'"
-
-
-KEROSENE.
-
-Some editors are continually making themselves ridiculous, as well as
-endangering the life of some person as ignorant in the matter as
-themselves, by publishing at random "remedies" for certain complaints, of
-both of which--remedy and disease--they knew nothing. The following I cut
-from a paper:--
-
-"One thing I will mention which may be useful to some one. Kerosene oil
-has been found effective as a vermifuge. It is given by the mouth for
-round stomach worms, and as an enema for pin worms. It is free from the
-irritation which follows the use of spirits turpentine, and is equally as
-effective." (No directions as to quantity at a dose.)
-
-An Irishwoman in Hartford, Conn., spelling out the above in a newspaper,
-concluded to give her child, a boy of ten, a dose, under the belief that
-"wurrums ailed the child," and as it was harmless (?), she would give him
-the benefit of its harmlessness, and her ignorance, and administered
-accordingly a _tea-cup full_!
-
-Frightful symptoms supervened,--colic, vomiting, etc.,--when a doctor was
-sent for, who being absent, his student--who hardly understood the danger
-of the case, and was a bit of a wag, by the way--sent the following
-prescription:--
-
-"[R]. Run a wick down the child's throat; any lamp or candle wick will do,
-provided it is long enough; set fire to the end left outside, _and use him
-for a lamp till the doctor arrives_." SELAH.
-
-This may seem too ridiculous to believe, but it is the truth,
-nevertheless.
-
-
-SALERATUS VS. SUGAR.
-
-Early one summer morning, while practising in Plymouth, Conn., the writer
-was startled by a loud knock at the front door, which I hastened to
-answer. There stood an Irishman, well known as living in a little hut,
-down on the "Meadows," whose name was Fitzgibbon. He was all out of
-breath, and the great drops of sweat were rolling all down his rough face,
-which he was endeavoring to mop up with a huge bandanna handkerchief. As
-soon as he could possibly articulate, he exclaimed,--
-
-"O, docther, docther! take yourself--down to that sha-anty as quick as ye
-conva-niantly can, plaze."
-
-[Illustration: "O, DOCTHER, DEAR, I'VE PIZENED ME BOY."]
-
-"Why, what's the matter at the shanty, Fitzgibbon?"
-
-"O, docther, dear, I've pizened my boy; what will I do intirely?"
-
-"How did it happen? Don't be alarmed, Fitzgibbon." For his manner was
-frightful.
-
-"Will, I'll till yeze. He's been sick wid the masles. Will, he's ate
-nothin' for a hole wake, and in the night he wanted some bread an' sugar,
-do ye see? an' I had no candle, an' I wint in the dark, an' spread him
-some bread, an' he ate it intirely, an' it was saleratus I put on it,
-instead of sugar; an' it's now atin' him intirely! O, dear, dear, that I
-should iver give him saleratus instead o' sugar!"
-
-"Well, Fitzgibbon, if the boy is so big a fool that he don't know the
-difference between saleratus and sugar, let him die."
-
-"O, docther, don't say so!" exclaimed the poor fellow, in agony.
-
-Then I suddenly recollected that the sense of taste was always vitiated in
-measles, and thus excused the matter, adding,--
-
-"Now, run home, 'Gibbon, and give the little fellow a tea-spoonful of
-vinegar in a little sugar and water,--not saleratus and water, mind you."
-
-"No, by the great St. Patrick, I'll niver mistake the likes again," he
-earnestly interrupted, when I went on, saying,--
-
-"Then in half an hour give him another tea-spoonful, and that will relieve
-the 'gnawing at his stomach,' and by an hour I'll drive round there and
-see him, on my way to Watertown."
-
-"I'll trust to yeze to git it out of him. God bless yeze;" and away he
-darted, saying, "O, howly mother! that I should give him saleratus for
-sugar!"
-
-
-HIS LAST JOKE.
-
-A celebrated English physician, who was also a distinguished humorist,
-when about to die, requested that none of his friends be invited to his
-funeral.
-
-A friend inquired the reason of this remarkable request.
-
-"Because," sighed the dying but polite humorist, "it is a courtesy which
-can never be returned."
-
-Charles Matthews, the celebrated comedian, who died in 1837, put the above
-entirely in the shade by _his_ last joke.
-
-The attending physician had left Mr. Matthews some medicine in a vial,
-which a friend was to administer during the night. By mistake, he gave the
-patient some ink from a vial which stood near. On discovering the error,
-his friend exclaimed, "O, gracious Heavens, Matthews, I have given you
-ink, instead of medicine."
-
-"Never--never mind, my dear boy," said the dying man faintly; "_I will
-swallow a piece of blotting paper_."
-
-
-AN ASTONISHED NEGRO.
-
-Dr. Robertson, of Charleston, S. C., who attended the writer in 1852, with
-the yellow fever, was as competent, benevolent, and faithful a physician
-as I ever had the pleasure of meeting. His services were in great demand
-during the raging of the "yellow Jack," and on one occasion he was absent
-from his house and office two whole days and a night. His family became
-alarmed, and a faithful old negro was sent in search of his master. It was
-no uncommon occurrence to see a black man traversing the streets, ringing
-a bell, and crying a "lost child;" but to see a slave searching for his
-lost master, was almost a phenomenon.
-
-[Illustration: "LOST MARSER! LOST MARSER!"]
-
-It was quite dark, and the old negro was shuffling along King Street,
-crying, "Masser Rob'son lost, Masser Rob'son lost," when suddenly he was
-brought to a halt, and silenced by some one saying,--
-
-"What's that you are crying, Neb?" His name was Nebuchadnezzar.
-
-"O, de Lord! if Masser Dr. Rob'son hain't been an' loss hisself!"
-
-"You old fool, Neb, I am your master--Dr. Robertson. Don't you know me
-now?" exclaimed a familiar voice.
-
-Sure enough, it was the doctor, returning from his numerous visits, tired
-and dust-covered.
-
-The whole thing solemnly impressed the old darky, who, a day or two later,
-was met by a ranting Methodist, vulgarly termed a "_carpet-bagger_," who,
-in a solemn voice, said,--
-
-"My colored friend, have you yet found the Lord Jesus?"
-
-"O, golly, masser!" exclaimed the old negro in astonishment; "hab de Lord
-done gone an' loss hisself?"
-
-(I have seen the last part of this anecdote floating about the newspapers;
-but did ever any one see the former connection, or even the latter before
-1852?)
-
-The writer was but a poor medical student, and an invalid, seeking here a
-more salubrious climate, away from the frosts and snows of his northern
-home, and though twenty years have since flown, I have not forgotten, and
-never shall, the kindness and attention received at the hands of the
-benevolent Dr. Robertson. While many who went out with me that fall fell
-victims to the fearful endemic before Jack Frost put a stop to its
-ravages, I escaped the grim monster Death; and to the superior knowledge
-and efficient treatment of Dr. R., with the excellent care of the
-benevolent landlady, Mrs. Butterfield, I owe my life.
-
-Morning and evening the doctor's patter-patter was heard on the
-stairs,--three flights to climb. The whole case was gone over, and then,
-if the good old doctor had a moment to spare, he would retail some little
-anecdote "with which to leave me in good spirits."
-
-The following is one:--
-
-"Mr. Bacon, of Edgefield, was once courting a lady who had frequently
-refused him; but he, with commendable perseverance, had as often renewed
-the suit, until at last she became so exceedingly annoyed at his
-importunities that she told him that she could never marry a man whose
-tastes, opinions, likes and dislikes were so completely in opposition to
-her own as were his.
-
-"'In fact, Mr. Bacon,' she is represented as having said, 'I do not think
-there is one subject on earth upon which we could agree.'
-
-"'I assure you, dear madam, that you are mistaken, which I can prove.'
-
-"'If you will mention one, I will agree to marry you,' replied the lady.
-
-"'Well, I will do it,' replied Mr. Bacon. 'Suppose now you and I were
-travelling together; we arrive at a hotel which is crowded; there are only
-two rooms not entirely occupied, in one of which there is a man, in the
-other a woman: with which would you prefer to sleep?'
-
-"The lady arose indignantly, and replied, 'With the woman, of course,
-sir.'
-
-"'So would I,' replied Mr. Bacon, triumphantly."
-
-(My room had two beds in it, which suggested the above story.)
-
-
-DR. K.'S MARE.
-
-The outline of the following ludicrous "situation" was given me by a
-gentleman of Framingham:--
-
-Old Dr. K., of F., was represented as a rough and off-handed specimen of
-the genus _homo_, who liked a horse even better than a woman,--not that he
-was by any means unmindful of the charms and claims of the
-beautiful,--better than he loved money, though the latter passion
-bordered on avariciousness.
-
-An over-nice and sensitive spinster once was visiting the family of Mr.
-T., in town, which employed a younger and more refined physician than Dr.
-K.; and the spinster, being somewhat indisposed, requested Mr. T. to call
-a physician. His own family doctor was suggested; but on close inquiry,
-she concluded to have "the oldest and most experienced physician that the
-town afforded," and old Dr. K. was called.
-
-Mr. T. had just purchased a beautiful mare, which the doctor was desirous
-of possessing; and the animal was the subject of conversation as the two
-entered the house, even to the parlor, where the spinster reclined upon a
-sofa. The old doctor examined the lady for a moment in silence, but his
-mind was all absorbed in the reputed qualities of the mare, as he timed
-the lady's pulse.
-
-"Slightly nervous," he said to the spinster. "Tongue? Ah! coated. Throat
-sore?" and turning towards T., he resumed the horse discussion, still
-holding the lady's wrist. "Good wind, Mr. T.? No spavins? Nothing the
-matter? Suppose you trot her out this afternoon."
-
-The spinster, supposing the conversation alluded to her, went into the
-most extreme kind of hysterics.
-
-
-"A SCARED CUSTOMER."
-
-We give this incident for what it is worth.
-
-A man recently entered a restaurant in Utica, N. Y., and ordered a very
-elaborate dinner. He lingered long at the table, and finally wound up with
-a bottle of wine. Then lighting a cigar, he sauntered up to the bar, and
-remarked to the proprietor,--
-
-"Very fine dinner, landlord. Just charge it, for I haven't a cent."
-
-"But I don't know you," replied the proprietor, indignantly.
-
-"No, of course you don't, or you never would have let me have the dinner."
-
-"Pay me for the dinner, I say," shouted the landlord.
-
-"And I say I can't," vociferated the customer.
-
-"Then I'll see about it," exclaimed the proprietor, who snatched something
-from a drawer, leaped over the counter, and grasping the man by the
-collar, pointed something at his throat. "I'll see if you get away with
-that dinner without paying for it, you scoundrel."
-
-"What is that you hold in your hand?" demanded the now affrighted
-customer, trying to get a sight at the article.
-
-"That, sir, is a revolver; loaded, sir."
-
-[Illustration: NOT A STOMACH-PUMP.]
-
-"O, d---- that; I don't care a continental for a revolver; I've got one
-myself. _I was afraid it was a stomach-pump!_"
-
-
-"WHAT'S TRUMPS?"
-
-Mrs. Bray, in her book of _Anecdotes_, relates a story illustrative of the
-power of the ruling passion.
-
-"A Devonshire physician, boasting the not untradesman-like name of Vial,
-was a desperate lover of the game of whist. One evening, during his
-opponent's deal, he fell to the floor in a fit. Consternation seized on
-the company, who knew not if the doctor was dead or alive. Finally he
-showed signs of returning life, and retaining the last cherished idea that
-had possessed him on falling into the fit, he resumed his chair,
-exclaiming, '_What's trumps, boys?_'"
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-The writer was present at a similar occurrence. There were a half score of
-boys seated upon some logs near the country school-house, during recess,
-listening to a story, something about "an old woman who had just reached a
-well, with a pitcher to obtain some water, when the old lady tripped her
-toe, and fell into the well head foremost."
-
-At this juncture one of the listeners fell forward from the log in a fit.
-We were greatly frightened, but mustered sufficient courage to throw some
-water in the boy's face, when he gradually came to his senses,
-exclaiming,--
-
-"_Did she break the pitcher, Johnny?_"
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-To Mrs. Bray's book we are again indebted for the following:--
-
-"A _bon-vivant_, brought to his death-bed by an immoderate use of wine,
-was one day informed by his physician that he could not, in all human
-probability, survive many hours, and that he would die before eight
-o'clock the following morning, summoned all his remaining strength to call
-the doctor back, and, when the physician had returned, made an ineffectual
-attempt to rise in bed, saying, with the true recklessness of an innate
-gambler,--
-
-"'Doctor, I'll bet you some bottles that I live till _nine_!'"
-
-
-"LET GO THE HALLIARDS."
-
-A sailor was taken with the pleurisy on board a vessel that was hauling
-through the "seven bridges" that span the Charles River from the Navy Yard
-to Cambridgeport, and a well-known physician, rather of the Falstaffian
-make-up, whom I may as well call Dr. Jones,--because that is _not_ his
-name,--was summoned. He prescribed for the patient, and when the schooner
-touched the pier of the bridge, he stepped ashore, as was supposed by the
-captain and crew, whose whole attention was required to keep the vessel
-from driving against the drawer; but "there's many a slip 'twixt cup and
-lip," and the old doctor had taken the "slip," and went plump overboard,
-unseen by any.
-
-In his descent he grasped at a rope, which happened to be the jib
-halliards, and as he came up, puffing and blowing the salt water from his
-mouth and nose, he began to haul "hand-over-hand" at the halliards. His
-corpulency overbalanced the jib, and gradually the sail began to ascend,
-to the astonishment of the cook, who stood near by, and to the wrath of
-the captain on the quarter-deck.
-
-"Let go the jib halliards, there, you confounded _slush_," roared the
-captain.
-
-"I ain't h'isting the jib," replied the terrified cook, believing that the
-sail was bewitched, for sailors are quite superstitious, you know.
-
-"Let go the halliards," shouted the mate. "We shall be across the draw,
-and all go to Davy Jones' locker. Hear, d---- you, Slush-bucket?"
-
-Still the old doctor pulled for dear life, and still rose the ghost-like
-sail, while the affrighted cook and all hands ran aft, looking as pale as
-death. Still the sail went up, up, and the captain and mate began to be
-astonished, when by this time--less time than it requires to tell it--the
-old doctor had reached the rail of the vessel, and shouted lustily for
-help.
-
-All ran forward to help the corpulent old doctor on deck, and by means of
-a man at each arm, and a boat-hook fast into the doctor's unmentionables,
-he was hauled safely on board, a wetter and a wiser man.
-
-If you want to get kicked out of his office, just say in his hearing,
-"_Let go them 'ere halliards_," and it is done.
-
-  "O, mermaids, is it cold and wet
-    Adown beneath the sea?
-  It seems to me that rather chill
-    Must Davy's locker be."
-
-
-MEDICAL TITBITS.
-
-_More Mustard than Meat._--A poor, emaciated Irishman having called in a
-physician as a forlorn hope, the latter spread a large mustard plaster and
-applied it to the poor fellow's lean chest.
-
-"Ah, docthor," said Pat, looking down upon the huge plaster with tearful
-eyes, "it sames to me it's a dale of mustard for so little mate."
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-"_Don't want to be an Angel._"--"I want to be an angel," which has been so
-long shouted by _millions_ of darling little Sunday school children, who
-hadn't the remotest idea for what they had been wishing (?), and whose
-parents would not voluntarily consent to the premature transformation, if
-the children did, has received a check in the following:--
-
-A little sprite, who had been so very sick that her life was despaired of,
-was told one morning by the doctor that she would now get well.
-
-"O, I'm so glad, doctor!" she replied; "for I don't want to die and go to
-heaben, and be an angel, and wear fedders, like a hen."
-
-
-TOOTH DRAWING.
-
-A snobbish-appearing individual accosted a countryman in homespun with the
-following interrogation:--
-
-"I say, ah, my fraand, are you sufficiently conversant with the topography
-of _this_ neighborhood to direct me to the nearest disciple of Æsculapius,
-eh?"
-
-"What?" exclaimed the astonished rustic.
-
-"Can you familiarize me with the most direct course to a physician?"
-
-"Hey?"
-
-"Can you tell me where a doctor lives?"
-
-"O, a doctor's house. Why didn't you say so before?"
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-The next is after the same sort.
-
-A sailor chap entered a dentist's office to have a tooth extracted.
-
-[Illustration: "LOWER TIER, LARBOARD SIDE."]
-
-_Doctor (with great professional dignity, speaking very slowly)._ "Well,
-mariner, what tooth do you require extracted? Is it an incisor, bicuspid,
-or a molar?"
-
-_Jack (brusque and loud)._ "It's here in the lower tier, larboard side.
-Bear a hand, lively, you dumb'd swab, for it's nippin' my jaw like a
-lobster."
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-_The most astonished boy_ I ever beheld was a little country lad who came
-to have a tooth drawn. "He thought it must be fun," his mother said; "but
-he never had one drawn, and knows nothing of it."
-
-"O!" with a great, round mouth, was all he had time to say, but the
-expression of astonishment depicted on that striking countenance, glaring
-eyes, and by the expressive, spasmodic "O!" I never can forget or
-describe; and he caught his hat and ran home, a distance of two miles,
-without stopping, while his mother followed in the carriage by which they
-came. The boy's idea was summed up as follows:--
-
-"The doctor hitched tight onto the tooth with his pinchers, then he pulled
-his first best, and just before it killed me, the tooth came out, and so I
-run home."
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-"_Taking it out in trade_" is all very well when the arrangement is
-mutual; but there are occasions when the advantages are imperceptible, at
-least to one party, as thus:--
-
-"What's the matter, Jerry?" asked old Mr. ----, as Jeremiah was jogging
-by, growling most furiously.
-
-"Matter 'nough," replied old Jerry. "There I've been luggin' water all the
-morning for the doctor's wife to wash with, and what do you s'pose she
-give me for it?"
-
-"About ninepence."
-
-"Ninepence? No! She told me the doctor would pull a tooth for me some
-time, when he got leisure."
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-Apothecaries sometimes "come down" from the dignity of the professional
-man, and crack a joke. For instance,--
-
-A humorous druggist on Washington Street recently exposed some cakes of
-soap in his window with the pertinent inscription, "Cheaper than dirt."
-
-In the country, you know, they keep almost everything in the apothecaries'
-shops. We mentioned the fact in our chapter on Apothecaries. A wag once
-entered one of these apotheco-groco-dry-goods-meat-and-fish-market-stores,
-and asked the keeper,--
-
-"Do you keep matches, sir?"
-
-"O, yes, all kinds," was the reply.
-
-"Well, I'll take a trotting match," said the wag.
-
-The equally humorous druggist handed down a box of pills, saying,--
-
-"Here, take 'em and trot."
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-_A sure Cure._--Henry Ward Beecher is currently reported as having once
-written to Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes as to the knowledge of the latter
-respecting a certain difficulty. The reply was characteristic, and
-_encouraging_.
-
-"Gravel," wrote the doctor, "gravel is an effectual cure. It should be
-taken about four feet deep."
-
-The "remedy" was not, however, so remarkable as the following:--
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-"_Time and Cure._"--A good-looking and gentlemanly-dressed fellow was
-arraigned on the charge of stealing a watch, which watch was found on his
-person. It was his first offence, and he pleaded, "Guilty." The magistrate
-was struck with the calm deportment of the prisoner, and asked him what
-had induced him to take the watch.
-
-"Having been out of health for some time," replied the young man,
-sorrowfully, "the doctor advised me to take something, which I accordingly
-did."
-
-The magistrate was rather amused with the humor of the explanation, and
-further inquired why he had been led to select so remarkable a remedy as a
-watch.
-
-"Why," replied the prisoner, "I thought if I only had the _time_, Nature
-might work the _cure_."
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-_Dye-stuff._--During the cholera time of 1864, in Hartford, Conn., a
-little girl was sent to a drug store to purchase some dye-stuff, and
-forgetting the name of the article, she said to the clerk, "John, what do
-folks dye with?"
-
-"Die with? Why, the cholera, mostly, nowadays."
-
-"Well, I guess that's the name of what I want. I'll take three cents'
-worth."
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-The Hartford Courant told this story in 1869:--
-
-"_Cholera fenced in._--You have noticed the flaming handbills setting
-forth the virtues of a cholera remedy, that are posted by the hundreds on
-the board fence enclosing the ground on Main Street, where Roberts' opera
-house is being erected. Well, there was a timid countryman, the other day,
-who had so far recovered from the 'cholera scare' as to venture into the
-city with a horse and wagon load of vegetables; and thereby hangs a tale.
-He drove moderately along the street, when he suddenly spied the word
-'Cholera,' in big letters on the new fence, and he staid to see no more.
-Laying the lash on to his quadruped, he went past the handbills like a
-streak of lightning, went--'nor stood on the order of his going'--up past
-the tunnel, planting the vegetables along the entire route,--for the
-tail-board had loosened,--hardly taking breath, or allowing his beast to
-breathe, till he reached home at W.
-
-"Safely there, he rushed wildly into the midst of his household,
-exclaiming,--
-
-"'O, wife, wife, they _have_ got the cholera in Hartford, _and have fenced
-it in_.'"
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-_A Joke that's not a Joke._--A funny limb of the law had an office, a few
-years since, on ---- Street, next door to a doctor's shop. One day, an
-elderly gentleman, of the fogy school, blundered into the lawyer's office,
-and asked,--
-
-"Is the doctor in?"
-
-[Illustration: THE FARMER'S ESCAPE FROM THE CHOLERA.]
-
-"Don't live here," replied the lawyer, scribbling over some legal
-documents.
-
-"O, I thought this was the doctor's office."
-
-"Next door, sir;" short, and still writing.
-
-"I beg pardon, but can you tell me if the doctor has many patients?"
-
-"_Not living_," was the brief reply.
-
-The old gentleman repeated the story in the vicinity, and the doctor
-threatened the lawyer with a libel. The latter apologized, saying, "it was
-only a joke, and that no man could sustain a libel against a lawyer," when
-the doctor acknowledged the joke, and satisfaction, saying he would send
-up a bottle of wine, in token of reconciliation.
-
-The wine came, and the lawyer invited in a few friends to laugh over the
-joke, and _smile_ over the doctor's wine. The seal was broken, the dust
-and cobwebs being removed, and the doctor's health drunk right cordially.
-The excellence of the doctor's wine was but half discussed, when the
-lawyer begged to be excused a moment, caught his hat, and rushed from the
-room. Soon one of the guests repeated the request, and followed; then
-another, and another, till they had all gone out.
-
-The wine had been nicely "doctored" with _tartar emetic_, the seal
-replaced and well dusted over, before being sent to the lawyer. The doctor
-was now threatened with prosecution; but after some consideration, the
-following brief correspondence passed between the belligerents:--
-
-"Nolle prosequi." Lawyer to doctor.
-
-"Quits." Doctor to lawyer.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-_Parboiling an Old Lady._--In Rockland, Me., then called East Thomaston,
-several years ago, there resided an old Thomsonian doctor, who had erected
-in one room of his dwelling a new steam bath. An old lady from the
-"Meadows," concluding to try the virtues of the medicated steam, went
-down, was duly arrayed in a loose robe by the doctor's wife, and with much
-trepidation and many warnings not to keep her too long, she entered the
-bath--a sort of closet, with a door buttoned outside. The steam was kept
-up by a large boiler, fixed in the fireplace which the doctor was to
-regulate. The old lady took a book into the bath, "to occupy her mind, and
-keep her from getting too nervous."
-
-"Now it's going all right," said the doctor, when ding, ding, ding! went
-the front door bell. The doctor stepped noiselessly out, and learned that
-a woman required his immediate attention at South Thomaston, three miles
-away. He forgot all about the old lady fastened into the bath, and leaping
-into the carriage in waiting, he was whisked off to South Thomaston.
-
-Meantime the steam increased, and the old lady began to get anxious. The
-moisture gathered on her book; the leaves began to wilt. The dampness
-increased, and soon the book fell to pieces in her lap. Great drops of
-sweat and steam rolled down over her face and body, and she arose, and
-tapping very gently at the door, said,--
-
-"Hadn't I better come out now, doctor?"
-
-[Illustration: TOO MUCH VAPOR.]
-
-No reply. She waited a moment longer, and repeated the knock louder.
-
-"Let me come out, doctor. I am just melting in here."
-
-Still the doctor, to her astonishment, did not reply, or open the door.
-
-"For God's sake, doctor, let me out." Listening a few seconds, she
-screamed, "O, I believe he's gone, and left me here to parboil! Open,
-open!" And she knocked louder and louder at the door, while the now almost
-scalding waters literally poured from her body. "O, I shall suffocate
-here." And giving a desperate kick, she set her foot through the panelled
-door, and, getting down on all fours, she crawled through the opening.
-Just then the doctor's wife, hearing the thumping, hastened to the room,
-and with many apologies and excuses, rubbed down and dried the old lady,
-and begged her not to mention the affair.
-
-But never, to the day of her death, did the old lady again enter a "steam
-bath," or cease to tell how "_the doctor went off to attend a 'birth'
-leaving her in the bath to parboil_!"
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-_A Dry Shower Bath._--When shower baths were all the rage, a few years
-ago, all sorts of plans were suggested to avoid getting wet. The following
-is to the point:--
-
-_Doctor._ Well, deacon, how did your wife manage her new shower bath?
-
-[Illustration: A DRY SHOWER BATH.]
-
-_Deacon._ O, she had real good luck. Madam Mooney told how she managed
-with hern. She had made a large oiled silk hood, with a large cape to it,
-like a fisherman's in a storm, that came all down over her shoulders.
-
-_Doctor_ (impatiently). She's a fool for her pains. That's not the way.
-
-_Deacon._ So my wife thought.
-
-_Doctor._ And your wife did nothing of the kind, I hope.
-
-_Deacon._ O, no, no. My wife, she used an umbrilly.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-IX.
-
-FORTUNE-TELLERS.
-
-    _1st Witch._ By the pricking of my thumbs,
-                 Something wicked this way comes.
-
-      _Macbeth._ How now, you secret, black and midnight hags,
-                 What is't ye do?
-
-          _All._ A deed without a name.--MACBETH, Act IV. Sc. 1.
-
-    PAST AND PRESENT.--BIBLE ASTROLOGERS AND
-    FORTUNE-TELLERS.--ARABIAN.--EASTERN.--ENGLISH.--QUEEN'S
-    FAVORITE.--LILLY.--A LUCKY GUESS.--THE GREAT LONDON FIRE
-    FORETOLD.--HOW.--OUR "TIDAL WAVE" AND AGASSIZ.--A HAUL OF
-    FORTUNE-TELLERS.--PRESENT.--VISIT EN MASSE.--"FILLIKY
-    MILLIKY."--"CHARGE BAYONETS!"--A FOWL PROCEEDING.--FINDING LOST
-    PROPERTY.--THE MAGIC MIRROR EXPOSÉ.--"ONE MORE
-    UNFORTUNATE."--PROCURESSES.--BOSTON MUSEUM.--"A NICE OLD
-    GENTLEMAN."--MONEY DOES IT.--GREAT SUMS OF MONEY.--"LOVE POWDER"
-    EXPOSE.--HASHEESH.--"DOES HE LOVE ME?"
-
-
-Under the guise of fortune-telling and clairvoyance the most nefarious
-atrocities are daily enacted, not only in the larger cities, but in the
-villages and towns even, throughout the country. In this chapter I propose
-to ventilate them in a manner never before attempted, and the _exposé_ may
-be relied upon as correct in every particular.
-
-"Why," exclaimed a friend, "I thought fortune-telling one of the follies
-of the past, and that there was little or none of it practised at the
-present."
-
-Far from it. Very few, comparatively, who practise the black art come out
-under the ancient name of fortune-tellers; but there are thousands of
-ignorant, characterless wretches, in our enlightened day and generation,
-who pretend to tell fortunes, if not under the open title above, as
-astrologers, seers, clairvoyants, or spiritualists, etc. There are some
-clairvoyants of whom we shall treat under the head of "Mind and Matter."
-
-The Bible fortune-tellers practised their lesser deceptions under the
-various titles of "wise men," "soothsayers," the former being acknowledged
-as the more legitimate by the Jews, and the latter mere heathenish
-prognosticators, without divine authority, as thus: Is. ii. 6. "Therefore
-thou hast forsaken thy people, the house of Jacob, because they be
-replenished from the east, and are _soothsayers, like the Philistines_."
-
-8. "Their land also is full of idols; they worship the work of their own
-hands, that which their own fingers have made."
-
-There were also wizards, astrologers, "star-gazers" (Is. xlvii. 13),
-spiritualists (1 Sam. xxviii. 3), magicians, sorcerers, and "the
-well-favored harlot, the mistress of witchcrafts, that _selleth nations
-through her whoredoms, and families through her witchcrafts_." Nahum iii.
-4.
-
-All of these exist at the present day, carrying on the same sort of vile
-deceptions and heinous crimes, to the "selling of families and nations,"
-and souls, in spite of law or gospel. Even as those of nearly six thousand
-years ago were patronized by the great, the kings, and queens, and nobles
-of the earth, so are the fortune-tellers, under the more refined titles,
-visited by governors, representatives, and ladies and gentlemen of rank,
-of modern times.
-
-In visiting these pretenders, in order "to worm out the secrets of their
-trade," the writer has not only been assured by them in confidence that
-the above is true, but he has met distinguished characters there, face to
-face,--the minister of the gospel, the lawyer, the judge, the doctor, and
-what _ought_ to have been the representative intelligence of the
-land,--consulting and fellowshiping with ignorant fortune-tellers.
-"Ignorant?" Yes, out of the scores whom I have seen, there has not been
-one, male or female, possessing an intelligence above ordinary people in
-the unprofessional walks of life, while the majority of them were in
-comparison far below the mediocrity.
-
-If ignorance alone patronized ignorance, like a family intermarrying, the
-stock would eventually dwindle into nothingness, and entirely die out.
-
-Before the "captivity" the Jews had their wise men, and on their exodus
-they reported the existence of the magicians or magi of Egypt.
-
-It seems that nearly everybody, and particularly the Egyptians, regarded
-Moses and Aaron as but magicians in those days; and the magi of Pharaoh's
-household--for all kings and rulers of ancient times and countries had
-their fortune-tellers about them--had a little "tilt" with Moses and
-Aaron, commencing with the changing of the rods into snakes. The Egyptian
-magicians did very well at the snake "trick," as the modern magician calls
-it, also at producing frogs, and such like reptiles; but they were puzzled
-in the vermin business, and the boils troubled them, and they then gave
-up, and acknowledged that there _was_ a power beyond theirs, and that
-power was with God.
-
-Well, that is not fortune-telling; but this was the class who professed
-the power of foretelling; and we find them, with women of the familiar
-spirits, made mention of all through the scriptural writing. Isaiah
-testifies (chapter xix.) that the charmers, familiar spirits, and wizards
-ruined Egypt as a nation. What advantage were they ever to King Saul, the
-grass-eating king with the long name, or any other individuals, in their
-perplexities?
-
-They rather stood in the light of individuals, nations, and the cause of
-Heaven. Then Jesus and the apostles had them to meet and overcome--for
-their power had become very great, even to the publication of books to
-promulgate their doctrines; for we read in Acts xix. 19, that there were
-brought forth at Ephesus, at one time, these books, to the amount of
-fifty thousand pieces of silver, or about twenty-six thousand five hundred
-dollars' worth, and burned in the public square or synagogue.
-
-There are some instances recorded in the Bible, and by Josephus, where the
-Jews professed to foretell events. The curious case of Barjesus, at
-Paphos, who, for a time, hindered Sergius, the deputy of the country, from
-embracing Christianity, is cited in illustration of the injury that false
-prophets are to all advancement. Paul testifies to that fact in the
-following words: "O, full of all subtlety, and all mischief, child of the
-devil, enemy to all righteousness," etc.
-
-
-ARABIAN FORTUNE-TELLER.
-
-The Arabians, from time immemorial, have been implicit believers in
-fortune-telling, as well as believers in the efficacy of charms and all
-other mystic arts. "No species of knowledge is more highly venerated by
-them than that of the occult sciences, which affords maintenance to a vast
-number of quacks and impudent pretenders." The science of "Isen Allah"
-enables the possessor to discern what is passing in his absence, to expel
-evil spirits, and cure malignant diseases. Others claim to control the
-winds and the weather, calm tempests, and to say their prayers in person
-at Mecca, without stirring from their own abodes hundreds of miles away!
-
-The "Sinia" is what is better known to us as jugglery and feats of
-illusion.
-
-The "Ramle" is the more proper fortune-telling, and is believed in and
-practised by people of all ranks, male and female, and by the physicians.
-
-
-THE EASTERN PRINCE.
-
-Fortune-telling is practised in all Eastern countries, to a great extent,
-to the present day. Some pretend to foretell events by the stars and
-planets, some by charms, cards, the palm of the hand, or a lock of hair;
-the latter is the most vulgar mode, and commonly followed by the gypsies.
-
-When the fortress of Ismail was besieged, in 1790, by the Russians, Prince
-Potemkin, the commanding officer, began to grow impatient, after nearly
-two months' resistance, though he was surrounded by all the comforts and
-luxuries of an Eastern prince--by courtiers and beautiful women, who
-employed the most exciting and voluptuous means to engage his attention.
-Madame De Witt, one of the females, pretended to read the decrees of fate
-by cards, and foretold that the prince would only take the place at the
-expiration of three more weeks.
-
-"Ah," exclaimed the prince, with a smile, "I have a method of divination
-far more infallible, as you shall see;" and he immediately despatched
-orders to Suwarof _to take Ismail within three days_. The brave but
-barbarous hero obeyed the order to the very letter.
-
-
-THE SEER'S WIFE.
-
-When Richmond, afterwards Henry VII., landed at Milford-Haven, on his
-memorable march to his successful encounter with Richard III., then at
-Bosworth Field, he consulted a celebrated Welsh seer, who dwelt in
-magnificent style at a place called Matha Farm. To the duke's question as
-to whether he should succeed or not, the wily seer, whose name was Davyd
-Lloyd, requested a little time in which to consider so important a query.
-
-As Richmond lodged that night with his friend Davyd, he gave him till the
-following morning to make up his decision, when the seer assured Richmond
-that he "would succeed gloriously."
-
-For this wonderful and timely information Lloyd received immense rewards
-at the hand of his grateful prince when he became King Henry VII.
-
-Now for the secret of his success: During the time granted for the answer,
-Davyd, in great perplexity and trepidation, consulted his wife, instead of
-the heavens, for an answer. See the wisdom of the reply.
-
-"There can be no difficulty about an answer. Tell him he will certainly
-succeed. Then, if he does, you will receive honors and rewards; and if he
-fails, depend on't he will never come here to punish you."
-
-
-DEE, THE ASTROLOGER.
-
-One of the most remarkable and successful fortune-tellers known to English
-history was John Dee, who was born in London, 1527, and died in 1608. A
-biographer says, "He was an English divine and astrologer of great
-learning, celebrated in the history and science of necromancy, chancellor
-of St. Paul's, and warden of Manchester College, in the reign of Queen
-Elizabeth. He was also author of several published works on the subject of
-astrology, revelations of spirits, etc., which books are preserved in the
-Cottonian library and elsewhere."
-
-Dee enjoyed for a long time the confidence and patronage of Elizabeth. He
-then resided in an elegant house at Mortlake, which was still standing in
-1830, and was used for a female boarding school. "In two hundred years it
-necessarily had undergone some repairs and alterations; yet portions of it
-still exhibited the architecture of the sixteenth century.
-
-"From the front windows might be seen the doctor's garden, still attached
-to the house, down the central path of which the queen used to walk from
-her carriage from the Shan road to consult the wily conjurer on affairs of
-love and war.
-
-"He was one of the few men of science who made use of his knowledge to
-induce the vulgar to believe him a conjurer, and one possessing the power
-to converse with spirits. Lilly's memoirs recorded many of his impostures,
-and at one time the public mind was much agitated by his extravagances.
-The mob more than once destroyed his house (before residing at Mortlake)
-for being too familiar with their devil. He pretended to see spirits in a
-stone, which is still preserved with his books and papers.... In his
-spiritual visions Dee had a confederate in one Kelley, who, of course,
-confirmed all his master's oracles. Both, however, in spite of their
-spiritual friends, died miserably--Kelley by leaping from a window and
-breaking his neck, and Dee in great poverty and wretchedness. The remains
-of the impostor lie in Mortlake Church, without any memorial."
-
-He unfortunately had survived his royal patroness.
-
-Queen Mary had had Dee imprisoned for practising by enchantment against
-her life; but her successor released him, and required him to name a lucky
-day for her coronation.
-
-"In view of this fact," asks the author of 'A Morning's Walk from London
-to Kew,' "is it to be wondered at that a mere man, like tens of thousands
-of other fanatics, persuaded himself that he was possessed of supernatural
-powers?"
-
-
-ANOTHER IMPOSTOR.--THE GREAT FIRE.
-
-William Lilly followed in the wake of, and was even a more successful
-impostor than the Reverend Dee. He was first known in London as a
-book-keeper, whose master, dying, gave him the opportunity of marrying his
-widow and her snug little fortune of one thousand pounds. The wife died in
-a few years, and Lilly set up as an astrologer and fortune-teller.
-
-His first great attempt at a public demonstration of his art was about
-1630, which was to discover certain treasures which he claimed were buried
-in the cloister of Westminster Abbey. Lilly had studied astronomy with a
-Welsh clergyman, and doubtless may have been sufficiently "weather-wise"
-to anticipate a storm; but however that might have been, on the night of
-the attempt, there came up a most terrific storm of wind, rain, thunder
-and lightning, which threatened to bury the actors beneath the ruins of
-the abbey, and his companions fled, leaving Lilly master of the situation.
-He unblushingly declared that he himself allayed the "storm spirit," and
-"attributed the failure to the lack of faith and want of better knowledge
-in his companions."
-
-"In 1634 Lilly ventured a second marriage, with another woman of property,
-which was unfortunate as a commercial speculation, for the bride proved
-extravagant beyond her dowry and Lilly's income. In 1644 he published his
-first almanac, which he continued thirty-six years. In 1648 he therein
-predicted the "great fire" of London, which immortalized his name. While
-Lilly was known as a cheat, and was ridiculed for his absurdities, he
-received the credit for as lucky a guess as ever blessed the fortunes of a
-cunning rogue.
-
-"In the year 1656," said his prediction, "the aphelium of Mars, the
-signification of England, will be in Virgo, which is assuredly the
-ascendant of the English monarchy, but Aries of the kingdom. When this
-absis, therefore, of Mars shall appear in Virgo, who shall expect less
-than a strange _catastrophe_ of human affairs in the commonwealth,
-monarchy, and kingdom of England?"
-
-He then further stated that it would be "_ominous to London, unto her
-merchants at sea, to her traffique_ at land, to her poor, to her rich, to
-all _sorts of people inhabiting her or her liberties, by reason of fire
-and plague_!" These he predicted would occur within ten years of that
-time.
-
-The great plague did occur in London in 1665, and the great fire in 1666!
-The fire originated by incendiarism in a bakery on Pudding Lane, near the
-Tower, in a section of the city where the buildings were all constructed
-of wood with pitched roofs, and also a section near the storehouses for
-shipping materials, and those of a highly combustible nature. It occurred
-also at a time when the water-pipes were empty.
-
-This fearful visitation destroyed nearly two thirds of the metropolis.
-Four hundred and thirty-three acres were burned over. Thirteen thousand
-houses, eighty-nine churches, and scores of public buildings were laid in
-ashes and ruins. There was no estimating the amount of property destroyed,
-nor the many souls who perished in the relentless, devouring flames.
-
-If this great fire originated at the instigation of Lilly, in order to
-demonstrate his claims as a foreteller of events, as is believed to be the
-case by nearly all who were not themselves believers in the occult
-science, what punishment could be meted out to such a villain commensurate
-to his heinous crime? Curran says, "There are two kinds of prophets, those
-who are inspired, and those who prophesy events which they themselves
-intend to bring about. Upon this occasion, Lilly had the ill luck to be
-deemed of the latter class." Elihu Rich says in his biography of Lilly,
-"It is certain that he was a man of no character. He was a double-dealer
-and a liar, by his own showing, ... and perhaps as decent a man as a
-_trading_ prophet could well be, under the circumstances." Lilly was cited
-before a committee of the House of Commons, not, as was supposed by many,
-"that he might discover by the same planetary signs _who_ were the authors
-of the great fire," but because of the suspicion that he was already
-acquainted with them, and privy to the supposed machinations which brought
-about the catastrophe. At one time, 1648-9, Parliament gave him one
-hundred pounds a year, and he was courted by royalty and nobility, at home
-and abroad, from whom he received an immense revenue. He died a natural
-death, in 1681, "leaving some works of interest in the history of
-astrology," which, in connection with the important personages with whom
-he was associated, and the remarkable events above recorded, have
-immortalized his name.
-
-Respecting the prediction of the plague, I presume that if any prominent
-personage should, at any time, predict a great calamity to a great
-metropolis, to take place "_within ten years, more or less_," there
-necessarily would be something during that time, of a calamitous nature,
-that might seem to verify their prediction. Besides, we should take into
-consideration how many predictions are never verified. Dr. Lamb, Dee,
-Bell, and others prophesied earthquakes to shake up London at various
-times in 1203, 1598, 1760, etc., which never occurred, to any great
-extent.
-
-Supposing a great tidal wave should devastate our coast, within ten years
-even, would not Professor Agassiz be immortalized thereby, although he
-never predicted it, except in the imaginative and mulish brains of certain
-individuals, who will have it that he did so predict?
-
-
-A RAID ON FORTUNE-TELLERS.
-
-In London, at the present day, it is estimated that nearly two thousand
-persons, male and female, gain a livelihood under the guise of
-fortune-telling. Some of them are "seers," or "astrologers," "seventh
-sons," clairvoyants, etc.
-
-From the London Telegraph of the year 1871 we gather the following
-description of a few of the most prominent of these, with their arrest and
-trial, as fortune-telling is there, as elsewhere, proscribed by law:--
-
-"First was arraigned 'Professor Zendavesta,' otherwise John Dean Bryant,
-aged fifty, and described as a 'botanist.' He was charged with having told
-a woman's fortune, for the not very extravagant sum of thirteen cents. Two
-married women, it seems, instructed by the police, went to No. 3 Homer
-Street, Marylebone, and paid sixpence each to a woman, who gave them a
-bone ticket in return. One might have imagined that it was a
-spiritualist's _seance_, but for the fact that the fee for admittance was
-sixpence, and not one guinea. Professor Zendavesta shook hands with one of
-the women, and warmly inquired after her health. She told him she was in
-trouble about her husband, which was false, and he bade her be of good
-cheer, and made an appointment to meet her on another day. Subsequently,
-two constables went to Bryant's house, and on going into a room on the
-ground floor, found thirty or forty young women seated there. The ladies
-began to scream, and there was a rush for the door; while the police, who
-seemed to labor under the impression that to attend an astrological
-lecture was as illegal an act as that of being present at a cock-fight or
-a common gambling-house, stopped several of the women, and made them give
-their names and addresses. The walls of the apartment were covered with
-pictures of Life and Death, with the 'nativities of several royal and
-illustrious personages, and of Constance Kent.' It is a wonder that the
-horoscopes of Heliogabalus and Jack the Painter should have been lacking.
-Then there was a medicine chest containing bottles and memoranda of
-nativities; also a 'magic mirror, with a revolving cylinder,' showing the
-figures of men and women, old and young. Of course the collection included
-a 'book of fate.' This was the case against Bryant.
-
-"One Shepherd, alias 'Professor Cicero,' was next charged, and it was
-shown that the same 'instructed' women went to his house, paying sixpence
-for the usual bone ticket. They saw Shepherd separately. When one of them
-said that she wanted her fortune told, 'Professor Cicero' took a yard tape
-and measured her hand. He gabbled the usual nonsense to her about love,
-marriage, and good luck, hinting that the price of a complete nativity
-would be half a crown, and before they left the place he gave them a
-circular, with their phrenological organs marked. Indeed, the man's
-defence was, that he was a professor of phrenology, and not of the black
-art. A 'magic mirror' and a 'lawyer's gown' were, however, found at his
-house, and the last named item has certainly a very black look. The
-evidence against the next defendant, William Henry, alias 'Professor
-Thalaby,' and against the fourth and last, Frederick Shipton, alias
-'Professor Baretta,' did not differ to any great extent from the testimony
-given against Zendavesta. The solicitor retained for this sage contended
-that if he had infringed the law, it was likewise violated at the Crystal
-Palace, where the 'magic mirror' was to be seen every day. Mr. Mansfield,
-however, had only to deal with the case and the culprits before him, and,
-convicting all the four fortune-tellers, he sent them to the house of
-correction, there to be kept, each and every one of them, to hard labor
-for three months."
-
-
-THE FORTUNE-TELLERS OF TO-DAY.
-
-Before entering upon the _exposé_ of the viler practices of this vile
-art,--the "selling of families," and of virginity, and the abominable
-practices of the procuresses, who carry on their damnable treacheries,
-particularly in our large cities, at the present day,--I wish to enliven
-this chapter by one or more amusing instances relative to country
-fortune-tellers.
-
-_Filliky Milliky._--During the summer of 185-, the writer was one of a
-large party of excursionists to Weymouth's Point, in Union Bay. There was
-a large barge full of people, old and young, male and female, besides
-several sailboat loads, who, on the return in the afternoon, decided to
-stop at the hut of a fortune-teller called "Filliky Milliky." This old
-man, with his equally ignorant wife, professed to tell fortunes by means
-of a tea-cup. He claimed that he knew of our intended visit, and had set
-his house in order; but if that house was "in order" that day, deliver us
-from seeing it when out of order.
-
-There were some one hundred or more of us, and whilst but two could occupy
-the attention of the "Millikies" at once, we sought other means of whiling
-away the time. The old man lived near the river side, and at his leisure
-had picked up a large pile of lath edgings which had floated down from a
-lath mill on the river.
-
-One Captain Joy took it upon himself to form "all the gentlemen who would
-enlist in so noble a cause" into a "home guard," and forthwith arming
-themselves with the aforesaid lath edgings, a company of volunteers was
-quickly raised, and drawn up in battle array.
-
-I do not recollect the glorious and patriotic speech by which our noble
-captain fired our "sluggish souls with due enthusiasm for the great cause
-in which we were about to embark," but we were put through a course of
-military tactics, "according to Hardee," and took up our line of march.
-
-[Illustration: CHARGE, INFANTRY!]
-
-There was no Bunker Hill on which to display our valor, but there was
-another hill, just in rear of the barn nearly, which had not been used in
-farming purposes that spring, and for this hill we charged at
-"double-quick." In this charge--the danger lay in the _swamping_ part of
-the hill--we unambushed a large flock of hens, chickens, and ducks, from
-the opposite side.
-
-"_Charge bayonet!_" shouted our noble captain, with great presence of
-mind.
-
-We charged! The ducks quacked and fled. The hens cackled and ran. The
-noise was deafening, the chase enthusiastic, and above the dust and din of
-battle arose the stentorian cry, "Charge bayonet!" The Donnybrook Fair
-advice of "Wherever there's a head, hit it," was followed to the letter,
-until the last enemy lay dead on the gory field, or had hid so far under
-the barn that the small boys could not bring them forth. Then orders came
-to withdraw, and gather up the dead and wounded.
-
-[Illustration: AFTER THE BATTLE.]
-
-There was an interesting string of hens, chickens, and ducks brought in
-and laid at the feet of our great commander, to represent the fowl
-products of that campaign. The captain's congratulatory speech was
-characteristic also of the _fowl proceedings_, at the close of which
-harangue he appointed the "orderly a committee of three to wait on the
-fortune-teller, and present him with the spoils of war," of which his
-"cups" had given him no previous intimation.
-
-What next? The captain informed us that "as the company was 'mutual,' it
-became necessary, in consideration of the losses, to draw on the
-_stock-holders_ (_gun-stock_), as he could see no other 'policy' under
-which to assess those 'damages.'"
-
-"Filliky Milliky" never carried fowl to a better market.
-
-The "fortunate" ones entertained us, on the barge, with the marvellous
-revelations that had transpired within the hut. One married lady was
-assured that she was yet single, but would marry in a six-month. A
-double-and-twisted old maid was told that her husband was in California.
-But the most absurd revelation was to a well-known respectable middle-aged
-lady, who was inclined to believe in the foreseeing powers of old Mother
-Milliky until now, who was told that she was "soon to receive a letter
-from her absent husband, also in California for the last five years; that
-he had become rich, and was soon to return; but that her youngest child, a
-year old, was inclined to worms, and might not live to see its father
-return!" All this wonderful information for a ninepence.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-_Secret of finding lost Property._--In Hopkinton, Mass., there lived a man
-named Sheffield, who professed to tell fortunes. The postmaster of that
-town told my informant that old Sheffield received from seven to ten
-letters per day from the fools who believed in his foreseeing powers. Once
-the surveyor, with a large gang of men, was working on the highway, and
-while they were at dinner an ox chain was stolen. The overseer, happening
-along before the rest of the men, saw some one unhook the chain, and steal
-away to a field adjoining, pull up a fence post, and deposit the chain in
-the hole, replace the post, and return. He "lay low," and as the thief
-passed he discovered him to be old Sheffield, the fortune-teller. He kept
-his own counsel, and, the chain being missed, a committee of three was
-appointed to visit the seer, to discover by his art where the stolen
-property was secreted.
-
-Mr. ----, the overseer, and others, called on Sheffield, who got out his
-mysterious book, and figured away in an impressive manner, and finally
-chalked out a rough plan of the ground on the floor, and again consulting
-his book, he solemnly declared that he had discovered the property.
-
-"You follow this line from the spot where the chain was unhooked from the
-plough, so many rods to this line fence, go along the fence to the seventh
-post, draw it up, and the chain will be found beneath, in the post-hole."
-
-The two men were struck dumb with astonishment, for they believed in the
-mysterious powers of old Sheffield; but the overseer exclaimed, in words
-more impressive than elegant,--
-
-"Yes, you infernal scoundrel, and you put it there, for I saw you with my
-own eyes."
-
-
-THE MAGIC MIRROR EXPOSE.
-
-Not long ago the body of a once beautiful young woman was taken from the
-Merrimack River, below the factories at L----. She was unknown at the
-time, and this was all there was given to the public. To the world she was
-merely--
-
-  "One more unfortunate,
-    Weary of breath,
-  Rashly importunate,
-    Gone to her death."
-
-Now, these are the whole facts of the case. She was the daughter of
-respectable, Christian parents, in a New England village, where she was
-highly esteemed as an amiable and virtuous young lady. But the tempter
-came. Not in the form of a "serpent"--very harmless animals,
-comparatively!--nor that other old fellow, commonly descried as having
-clattering hoofs and forked tail, etc.--but in the flesh and semblance of
-a handsome young man! I think preachers and book-makers paint their devils
-too hideous and too far off! Leave off the d, and look for your evils
-nearer home, and rather pleasant to look at, on the sly, and not (at
-first) very unpleasant to the senses in general. These are the dangerous
-(d)evils; escape _them_, and you avoid all!
-
-In the village there were two young men, rivals for the affections of this
-amiable young lady, and I know not but there were a dozen besides. One
-held the only advantage over the other of having been a native of the
-town, while the other was, comparatively, but little known.
-
-Both were sober, industrious, and moral young men.
-
-One day Miss ---- was going to the great city, and, for the "sport of the
-thing," agreed to visit a celebrated fortune-teller--a clairvoyant!--at
-the instigation of the young man, who, though least known to her, had
-recently distanced his rival by his assiduity in pressing his suit before
-the young lady.
-
-He assured her there could be no impropriety in a young lady's visiting a
-fortune-teller. It was only for fun; nobody believed in them, and she
-could keep her own secret if she chose!
-
-She went in broad daylight. The lady clairvoyant greeted her cordially,
-begged her to feel quite at her ease, as there was great fortune in store
-for her. She described her two lovers very minutely, and informed the girl
-that the one who was to marry her would come to her in a vision, if she
-would but look into a mirror hanging on the wall before her.
-
-"I see nothing but my own face," replied the young lady, when she had
-arisen and looked into the glass.
-
-The woman then turned it half around on the hinges, swung out the frame
-upon which the mirror was also hung, and, disclosing a plain black glass
-behind, fastened to the wall, said,--
-
-"Now, if you will step behind the glass, back to the wall, and again look
-into the mirror, you _may_ possibly see one of the two gentlemen--I cannot
-_say_ which."
-
-More amused than alarmed, the lady complied.
-
-[Illustration: THE FORTUNE-TELLER'S MAGIC MIRROR.]
-
-"Still I see nothing but myself and a dark glass behind me," she said.
-
-"Look steadfastly into the glass. _Now!_" exclaimed the woman.
-
-"O, what--what do I see?" cried the girl. "'Tis he! 'tis Mr. ----"
-
-"Don't be alarmed; 'tis your future husband. No power can prevent it. It
-is fate--fate! But it will be a happy consummation," said the woman,
-closing the mirror.
-
-"Why, I left him at home, surely; and I came by steam. That is a solid
-wall! Ah, my fate is decreed, I believe!"
-
-Can the reader suppose any sensible person would believe this to be magic?
-There are thousands who believe it. Miss ---- was one. She had seen the
-spiritual representation of her future husband, and, finding him at home
-on her return, the same afternoon, she accepted him as her betrothed, and
-the other was dismissed.
-
-Her ruin followed. In the flight of her lover, her hopes were forever
-blasted. To hide her shame, she went secretly from home; and to earn her
-daily bread, she labored in a cotton factory. When she could no longer
-cover her shame in the world, she went without--into outer darkness! Her
-parents went down in sorrow to their untimely graves.
-
-Now about the magic mirror. The young man went to the city by the same
-train with the girl he proposed to ruin. He had previously arranged with
-the fortune-teller--no unusual thing--to appear in person behind the
-darkened glass in the next room, and had returned in disguise by the same
-train with his victim.
-
-The fortune-teller died miserably, and was buried in the Potter's Field at
-the expense of the city of Hartford, Conn.
-
-  "The thorns which I have reaped are of the tree
-  I planted; they have torn me,--and I bleed:
-  I should have known what fruit would spring from such a seed."
-                                                            BYRON.
-
-Such is one of the results of patronizing fortune-tellers. I have seen
-this kind of mirror, and the first effect, even on a strong-minded person,
-seeing but faintly through the darkened glass, over your shoulder, the
-outlines of a face, and finally, as your eyes get familiar with the
-darkness, the very features of a person reflected therein, is truly
-impressive, if not startling.
-
-Young ladies, for your own sakes, for the sake of your friends, and more
-for Heaven's sake, keep away from fortune-tellers! _You cannot possibly
-see into futurity_, neither can any one, much less the ignorant wretches
-who profess the dark mysteries, tell for you what joys or sorrows are in
-store for the future!
-
-
-FORTUNE-TELLERS AS PROCURESSES.
-
-An able reporter to the Boston Daily Post, who devoted a considerable time
-in May, 1869, to visiting and writing up the fortune-tellers of Boston,
-which he reported in full in the above paper, and from which I shall copy
-more fully hereafter, says in conclusion,--
-
-"From what we are able to learn in this direction, we have arrived at the
-conclusion that there are not _less than two hundred men and women_ in
-Boston and vicinity who get a good livelihood by this profession, while
-many do a large and profitable business.
-
-"One lady, who has reduced her charges to the very lowest figure (fifty
-cents for an interview), candidly informed us that her receipts for the
-past year had not been less than twelve hundred dollars. Another reported
-her receipts from ten to fifty dollars a day.
-
-"Of course no reliable estimate, without better statistics, can be made of
-the magnitude of the business; but it seems not extravagant to estimate
-their receipts, on an average, at fifteen hundred dollars per annum! or an
-annual cost to the people of Boston (and vicinity?) for fortune-telling,
-of the snug little sum of three hundred thousand dollars!"
-
-The price advertised for a sitting in 1870 was from twenty-five cents to
-one dollar. The Post reporter says of "Mrs. Nellie Richards" (_alias_ Mrs.
-Nelson), "Not unfrequently her receipts are fifty dollars per day." Again
-of one, "She has received fifty dollars for one sitting." The writer has
-visited the most celebrated fortune-tellers here, and been told by them
-that they have received five, ten, and twenty dollars for one sitting.
-What for? What was the value received? Not from _females_ do they receive
-these liberal sums; but from middle-aged or old gentlemen and "married
-men," as one assured me. It is quite possible for a few sharp
-fortune-tellers to make fifteen hundred dollars per year at merely telling
-fools what they may expect from the future. "Middle-aged, old, and married
-men" do not consult them, as a general rule, for that purpose.
-
-Here is a true history illustrative of my meaning. I gathered the facts
-from the lady.
-
-On Saturday, the 9th of December, 1871, a young woman, residing with her
-parents on ---- Street, went to the afternoon performance at the Boston
-Museum. A young man made three unsuccessful attempts to "flirt" with her.
-The third time she slightly shook her head. Some one, seated immediately
-behind her, touched her on the shoulder, and said, "Right, young lady; you
-did right not to notice him."
-
-"I turned my head," said my informant, "and just made the least bit of
-acknowledgment to a fine-looking, elderly gentleman, who, perhaps, was
-rising fifty. He was an utter stranger to me, and I did not observe him
-afterwards. On the following week I received a note--a very pretty,
-delicate letter--from the very gentleman. He explained that he saw me at
-the performance of "Elfie," and was much struck by my lady-like
-appearance, and the rest, begging the privilege of calling on me
-privately. Now, how could he have obtained my address?"
-
-"Did the other party, the young 'flirt,' know it?" I asked.
-
-"No--not probable. I was not so astonished in receiving a letter from a
-stranger, as I was on learning that the nice-looking old gent at the
-theatre should have sent it, and that he possessed my address."
-
-"Why not surprised by receiving the letter from a stranger?" I asked.
-
-"Because I visited a fortune-teller, a day or two before, who told me I
-should receive a letter from a middle-aged man, and that it would be to my
-interest to cultivate his friendship, as he was a nice old covey, and was
-rich and liberal."
-
-"The secret is out! Did the fortune-teller know your address?"
-
-"O, yes; she was an old friend of my mother's, _and asked me nothing for a
-sitting_. And would _she_ possibly betray the daughter of her old friend?"
-
-I have since learned that the young woman was married at the time, which
-fact the fortune-teller must have known when she advised her to "cultivate
-the friendship" of an old _roué_, "as he was rich and liberal."
-
-Rich and liberal! No doubt! The light was astounding which broke in upon
-the young lady's mind from my intimating that the old viper, the
-fortune-teller (clairvoyant she calls herself), had betrayed her, and
-doubtless had received ocular demonstration of the "nice old gentleman's"
-liberality. Doubtless there was a five, ten, or twenty dollar sitting! and
-the "friend of her mother" could well afford to give her sittings free!
-
-Reader, if you doubt that such villanies are daily practised in this city,
-such "betrayals of confidence," and "selling of families," put up "five or
-ten dollars for a sitting," almost anywhere, and you can have proof. None
-of your fifty cents or dollar affairs--those are for the females; but
-"come down" with the V.'s and X.'s; those bring the "great information."
-
-Let us "parable" a case.
-
-"A nice, middle-aged gentleman" calls on Madam Blank.
-
-"Here, now, my good woman, take this fee. Tell me a good future. Let her
-have dark hair and eyes. If it is satisfactory, I double the fee."
-
-"Call again next week, or in three or four days," is all the conversation
-necessary to pass for the first "sitting."
-
-Before the expiration of the time, just such a young lady calls. The wily
-old fortune-teller--too old to sell herself any longer--sells out this,
-perhaps, unsuspecting lady with black hair and eyes, by mysteriously
-informing her of a certain nice gentleman whom she will meet at a
-designated place, at a specified hour, on a particular day! She is _very_
-courteous to the girl, asks her nothing for a sitting, has taken a liking
-to her, worms from her the secrets of her birth, poverty, weaknesses,
-etc., and, with many smiles and fair promises, bows her out.
-
-She next proceeds to inform the "nice gentleman" that the job is cooked,
-and the victim is unsuspecting, states where he is to meet her, the signal
-by which he is to know her; takes the "double fee," and leaves the rest to
-the "nice middle-aged (and shrewd) gentleman" to manage for himself.
-
-How many young women in Boston can avouch for the truth of this statement?
-I doubt not there are very many.
-
-_Cui Bono?_ While I know and confess that there are a few ladies who
-_profess_ to tell fortunes, find lost property, etc., and who do no
-greater deception, still, what positive advantage has ever been derived
-therefrom?
-
-
-LOVE POWDERS AND DROPS.--FRENCH SECRET, ETC.
-
-I have, by purchase and otherwise, obtained the secret of the compounds of
-the celebrated "Spanish," _alias_ "Turkish, Love Powders." I had
-previously considered them very harmless preparations. They are quite the
-reverse. The powder and drops are _Spanish flies_ and _blood-root_!
-Sometimes the former are mixed (pulverized) with fine sugar; but the
-Spanish flies (cantharides), either in powder or liquid, is a very
-dangerous irritant, a very small dose sometimes producing painful and
-dangerous strangury. It is far more certain to produce this distressing
-complaint than to cause any sexual excitement. There may be some harmless
-powders sold as "love powders," but I have never seen any. I have a
-quantity of the former. Any physician or chemist may see it, who is
-interested. A few drops of it will produce burning and excoriation of the
-mouth and stomach, and inflammation of the stomach, liver, and kidneys.
-And this dangerous stuff is sold by ignorant fortune-tellers to any
-equally ignorant, credulous creature who may send fifty cents therefor.
-
-_The French Secret_ is only for fools. Reader, _you_ have no occasion for
-it. It would be of no positive earthly benefit, provided I could so
-construe language as to explain to you what it is, in this connection. Be
-assured that you cannot circumvent Nature, except at the expense of
-health. _Qui n'a sante n'a rien._
-
-Druggists' clerks sometimes sell to boys _tincture cantharis_ for evil
-purposes.
-
-_Hasheesh_ is another dangerous article, sometimes sold at random, and
-purchased for no good purpose. A few years since, a great excitement was
-produced by the young ladies of P---- Female Seminary obtaining and using
-a quantity of _hasheesh_. "One girl took five grains, another _ten_
-grains. The latter was rendered insensible, and with difficulty restored
-to consciousness, while the former was rushing around under the peculiar
-hallucinating effect of the drug, and in a manner bordering on indecency."
-I obtained this statement, with more that I cannot publish, from a
-physician who witnessed the scene.
-
-
-"DOES HE LOVE ME?"
-
-Young girls and children are seduced into visiting fortune-tellers. A
-Boston fortune-teller, in 1871, took a summer tour through Eastern
-Massachusetts and New Hampshire. At Manchester, one evening, some one
-knocked lightly at her reception-room door, when, on her answering the
-summons, there stood three little girls, of ten or twelve summers.
-
-"Well," said the lady, "what do you children want?"
-
-"We came to have our fortunes told," replied the youngest, drawing her
-little form up to represent every half inch of her diminutive dimensions.
-With a smile of incredulity, the lady said, "It costs fifty cents.
-Besides, you are too small to have a fortune told."
-
-"We've got the money," replied the little speaker; "and we're not too
-little. Why, I am ten, and Jenny, here, is twelve."
-
-[Illustration: CHILDREN CONSULTING A FORTUNE-TELLER.]
-
-"Well, come in," replied the fortune-teller. There was a lady present, who
-also asked what those children came there for.
-
-The girls sat up in some chairs proffered. The younger one was so small
-that her little feet could not reach the floor, and sitting back in her
-chair, her little limbs stuck out straight, as such awkward little folks'
-will.
-
-The woman told them something, to seem to cover the money paid. It was not
-satisfactory, however, and the ten-year-old one put the following
-questions:--
-
-"Do you think, ma'am, that the young man who is keeping company with me
-loves me?"
-
-This was a poser, and the woman laughed outright.
-
-"What did she reply?" I asked, shocked, though amused, by the
-ridiculousness of the whole affair.
-
-"O, Gad, if I know! I was too busy then to listen."
-
-The next question was more strange than the first:--
-
-"Will the young gentleman marry me, eventually?"
-
-"Doubtless he will when you become older," was the reply; "and I advise
-you to think no more about it till you are much older."
-
-I obtained this item from the third party present, the husband of the
-fortune-teller.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-X.
-
-EMINENT PHYSICIANS AND SURGEONS.
-
-    _Lord Say._      Why, Heaven ne'er made the universe a level.
-                     Some trees are loftier than the rest, some mountains
-                     O'erpeak their fellows, and some planets shine
-                     With brighter ray above the skyey route
-                     Than others. Nay, even at our feet, the rose
-                     Outscents the lily; and the humblest flower
-                     Is noble still o'er meaner plants. And thus
-                     Some men are nobler than the mass, and should,
-                     By nature's order, shine above their brethren.
-    _Lord Clifford._ 'Tis true the noble should; but who is noble?
-                     Heaven, and not heraldry, makes noble men.
-
-    THEIR ORIGIN, BOYHOOD, EARLY STRUGGLES, ETC.--DOCTORS ARE PUBLIC
-    PROPERTY.--DR. MOTT, OF OYSTER BAY.--DR. PARKER.--A "PLOUGH-BOY."--THE
-    FARMER'S BOY AND THE OLD DOCTOR.--SCENE IN BELLEVUE HOSPITAL.--"LEAVES
-    FROM THE LIFE OF AN UNFLEDGED ÆSCULAPIAN."--FIRST
-    PATIENT.--"NONPLUSSED!"--ALL RIGHT AT LAST.--PROFESSORS EBERLE AND
-    DEWEES.--A HARD START.--"FOOTING IT."--ABERNETHY'S BOYHOOD.--"OLD
-    SQUEERS."--SPARE THE BOY AND SPOIL THE ROD.--A DIGRESSION.--SKIRTING A
-    BOG.--AN AGREEABLE TURN.--PROFESSOR HOLMES.--A HOMELESS STUDENT.
-
-
-It is amusing, as well as instructive, to compare notes on the various
-circumstances which have led different young men to adopt the science of
-medicine as their profession.
-
-The advantages of birth and "noble blood" weigh lightly, when thrown into
-the balance, against circumstances of after life, and its necessities, in
-ourselves or fellow-creatures. In searching through biographies of famous
-people, of all ages and countries (to collect a chapter on "Origin of
-Great Men"), I am peculiarly convinced of the correctness of this
-conclusion.
-
-The earlier histories and traits of character--no matter which way they
-point--of all great men are interesting to review; and yet it is a
-lamentable fact that the accounts of boyhood days, aspirations, hopes, and
-struggles, with the many little interesting items and episodes of the
-youth of most great men are very meagre, and, in many cases, entirely lost
-to the world.
-
-In the published biographies of physicians this is particularly the case.
-You read the biography of one, and it will suffice for the whole. It
-begins something like this:--
-
-"Dr. A. was born in Blanktown, about the year 18--; entered the office of
-Dr. Bolus, where he studied physic; attended college at Spoon Haven, where
-he graduated with honors; arrived at eminence in his profession;" and, if
-defunct, ends, "he died at Mortgrass, and sleeps with his fathers.
-_Requiescat in pace._"
-
-In presenting to the public the following little sketches of physicians, I
-may only say that doctors, of all men, are considered public property, and
-have suffered more of the public's kicks and cuffs than any other class of
-men, from the time when Hercules amused himself by setting up old Dr.
-Chiron, and shooting poisoned arrows at his vulnerable heel, to the little
-divertisement of the lovely St. Calvin and his consistory in cooking
-Michael Servetus, the Spanish physician; to the imprisonment of our army
-surgeons by their "brethren" of the South, that they might not be
-instrumental in restoring Union soldiers to the ranks; or the more recent
-imprisonment of a physician without cause, and the wholesale slaughter of
-students, in the Isle of Cuba.
-
-
-"THE QUAKER SURGEON."
-
-Dr. Valentine Mott gave no intimation, in his boyhood days, of the great
-ability that for a time seemed to lie dormant within the after-developed,
-massive, and well-balanced brain of the celebrated surgeon. Except from
-the fact of his being the son of a country doctor, his schoolmates would
-as soon have expected to see him turn out a second-rate
-oyster-man,--suggested by the ominous name of the Bay, at Glen Cove, where
-Valentine was born,--as to believe that a boy of no more promise would
-develop into the greatest physician and surgeon of the age! He was reared
-amongst doctors,--his father, and Dr. Valentine Searnen, and others.
-
-A "plough-boy" is as likely to become an eminent surgeon as is the son of
-a practising physician. Dr. Willard Parker, one of the most prominent
-physicians and surgeons of New York city, was born in New Hampshire, in
-1802, of humble though most respectable parents. When Willard was but a
-few years old, his family removed to Middlesex County, Mass., evidently
-with a hope of bettering their circumstances. Here Mr. Parker entered more
-fully upon the practical duties of an agricultural life, instructing his
-son Willard, when not attending the village school, in the mysteries of
-"Haw, Buck, and gee up, Dobbin."
-
-Until he was sixteen years old, young Parker was brought up a "plough-boy"
-and a tiller of the soil. From a "plough-boy" he became the "master" of a
-village school, "teaching the young idea how to shoot," which honest
-pursuit he continued for several years, until he had accumulated
-sufficient means to enter Harvard. He was a hard-working student, and his
-books were not thrown aside when he had obtained a diploma, in 1830.... As
-a lecturer and operator, Dr. Parker has been most successful.... Since the
-death of Dr. Valentine Mott, in April, 1865, Professor Parker has been
-elected president of the New York Inebriate Asylum (Binghamton).
-
-
-AN ONONDAGA FARMER BOY.
-
-Imagine, dear reader, looking back over the space of nearly forty years,
-that you see an uncouth young man, twenty years of age, clad in the coarse
-clothes and cowhide boots of an Onondaga farmer, who, straightening up
-from his laborious task of potato hoeing, stops for a moment, leaning with
-one hand upon his hoe, while he wipes the sweat from his handsome,
-intelligent, though sun-burned brow with a cotton handkerchief in the
-other. Here is a picture for a painter! Now he seems studiously observing
-the old village doctor, who, seated in his crazy old gig, drawn by his
-ancient sorrel mare, is leisurely jogging by on the main turnpike.
-
-[Illustration: THE ONONDAGA FARMER BOY.]
-
-"Good evening, Stephen; p'taters doin' well?" says the doctor.
-
-Receiving an affirmative answer, the doctor drives past, and is gone from
-the sight, but not from the memory, of the young farmer.
-
-"And _that_ is a representative of the science of medicine!"
-
-So saying, the young man "hoed out his row,"--which was his last,--picked
-up his coat, and returned to the parental mansion, but a few rods distant.
-This was the turning-point in his life.
-
-We pass over twenty years or more.
-
-It is operating-day at Bellevue Hospital, in New York city. A very serious
-and important operation is about to be performed. Three hundred students
-and physicians are seated in a semicircle under the great dome of the
-hospital, in profound silence and intense interest, while the professor
-and attending surgeon is delivering a brief but comprehensive lecture
-relative to the forthcoming operation.
-
-The speaker is a man of middle age, medium height, deep, expressive eyes,
-well-developed brow, with that excellent quality of muscle and nerve that
-is only the result of earlier out-door exercise and development, with calm
-deportment and modest speech. "His conciseness of expression and quiet
-self-possession are evident to every beholder, and comprehensive and
-congenial to every listener."
-
-Who is this splendid man before whom students and physicians bow in such
-profound respect and veneration, and to whom even Professors Mott, Parker,
-Elliott, Clark, etc., give especial attention?
-
-It is Stephen Smith, M. D., once the Onondaga farmer boy!
-
-Says Dr. Francis, of New York, "When a youthful farmer is seen studying
-the works of learned authors during that portion of the day which is
-generally set aside for relaxation and pleasing pastime, one may easily
-predict for him ultimate success in the branch of life that he may choose,
-provided he follows out the higher instincts of his nature. The same zeal
-that caused Stephen Smith, farmer, to study at the risk of ease, and meet
-the fatigue of body with the energies of mind, has ever marked his course
-in after years."
-
-
-COMMENCING PRACTICE.
-
-From that excellent work, "Scenes in the Practice of a New York Surgeon,"
-by Dr. E. H. Dixon, I copy, with some abbreviation, the following, which
-the author terms "Leaves from the Log-book of an Unfledged Æsculapian:"--
-
-"In the year 1830 I was sent forth, like our long-suffering and
-much-abused prototype,--old father Noah's crow,--from the ark of safety,
-the old St. Duane Street College. I pitched my tent, and set up my trap,
-in what was then a fashionable up-town street.
-
-"I hired a modest house, and had my arm-chair, my midnight couch, and my
-few books in my melancholy little office, and I confess that I now and
-then left an amputating-knife, or some other awful-looking instrument, on
-the table, to impress the poor women who came to me for advice.
-
-"These little matters, although the 'Academy' would frown upon them, I
-considered quite pardonable. God knows I would willingly have adopted
-their most approved method of a splendid residence, and silver-mounted
-harnesses for my bays; but they were yet in dream-land, eating moonbeams,
-and my vicious little nag had nearly all this time to eat his oats and
-nurse his bad temper in his comfortable stable.
-
-"In this miserable way I read over my old books, watered my
-rose-bushes,--sometimes with tears,--drank my tea and ate my toast, and
-occasionally listened to the complaint of an unfortunate Irish damsel,
-with her customary account of 'a pain in me side an' a flutterin' about me
-heart.' At rare intervals I ministered to some of her countrywomen in
-their fulfilment of the great command when placed in the Garden of Eden.
-(What a dirty place it would have been if inhabited by Irish women!)
-
-"And thus I spent nearly a year without a single call to any person of
-character. I think I should have left in despair if it had not been for a
-lovely creature up the street. She was the wife of a distinguished fish
-merchant down town.
-
-"This lovely woman was Mrs. Mackerel. I will explain how it was that I
-was summoned to her ladyship's mansion, and had the pleasure of seeing Mr.
-Mackerel, of the firm of 'Mackerel, Haddock & Dun.'
-
-"One bitter cold night in January, just as I was about to retire, a
-furious ring at the front door made me feel particularly amiable! A
-servant announced the sudden and alarming illness of Mrs. Mackerel, with
-the assurance that as the family physician was out of town, Mrs. M. would
-be obliged if I would immediately visit her. Accordingly, I soon found
-myself in the presence of the accomplished lady, having--I confess
-it--given my hair an extra touch as I entered the beautiful chamber.
-
-"Mrs. Mackerel was not a bad-tempered lady; she was only a beautiful
-fool--nothing less, dear reader, or she would have never married old
-Mackerel. Her charms would have procured her a husband of at least a
-tolerable exterior. His physiognomy presented a remarkable resemblance to
-his namesake. Besides, he chewed and smoked, and the combination of the
-aroma of his favorite luxuries with the articles of his merchandise must
-have been most uncongenial to the curve of such lips and such nostrils as
-Mrs. Mackerel's.
-
-"I was received by Mr. Mackerel in a manner that increased observation has
-since taught me is sufficiently indicative of the hysterical _finale_ of a
-domestic dialogue. He was not so obtuse as to let me directly into the
-true cause of his wife's nervous attack and his own collectedness, and yet
-he felt it would not answer to make too light of it before me.
-
-"Mr. and Mrs. M. had just returned from a party. (The party must be the
-'scape-goat'!) He assured me that as the lady was in the full enjoyment of
-health previously, he felt obliged to attribute the cause of her attack
-and speechless condition--for she spoke not one word, or gave a sign--to
-the dancing, heated room, and the supper.
-
-"I was fully prepared to realize the powers of ice-cream, cake, oranges,
-chicken-salad, oysters, sugar-plums, punch, and champagne, and at one
-moment almost concluded to despatch a servant for an emetic of ipecac;
-but--I prudently avoided it. Aside from the improbability of excess of
-appetite through the portal of such a mouth, the lovely color of the
-cheeks and lips utterly forbade a conclusion favorable to Mr. Mackerel's
-solution of the cause.
-
-"I placed my finger on her delicate and jewelled wrist. All seemed calm as
-the thought of an angel's breast!
-
-"I was nonplussed. 'Could any tumultuous passion ever have agitated that
-bosom so gently swelling in repose?'
-
-"Mackerel's curious questions touching my sagacity as to his wife's
-condition received about as satisfactory a solution as do most questions
-put to me on the cause and treatment of diseases; and having tolerably
-befogged him with opinions, and lulled his suspicions to rest, by the
-apparent innocent answers to his leading questions, he arrived at the
-conclusion most desirable to him, viz., that I was a fool--a conviction
-quite necessary in some nervous cases....
-
-"So pleased was Mr. M. with the soothing influences of my brief visit that
-he very courteously waited on me to the outside door, instead of ordering
-a servant to show me out, and astonished me by desiring me to call on the
-patient again in the morning.
-
-"After my usual diversion of investigating 'a pain an' a flutterin' about
-me heart,' and an 'O, I'm kilt intirely,' I visited Mrs. Mackerel, and had
-the extreme pleasure of finding her quite composed, and in conversation
-with her fashionable friend, Mrs. Tiptape. The latter was the daughter of
-a 'retired milliner,' and had formed a desirable union with Tiptape, the
-eminent dry goods merchant. Fortunately--for she was a woman of
-influence--I passed the critical examination of Mrs. T. unscathed by her
-sharp black eyes, and, as the sequel will show, was considered by her
-'quite an agreeable person.'
-
-"Poor Mrs. Mackerel, notwithstanding her efforts to conceal it, had
-evidently received some cruel and stunning communication from her husband
-on the night of my summons; her agitated circulation during the fortnight
-of my attendance showed to my conviction some persistent and secret cause
-for her nervousness.
-
-"One evening she assured me that she felt she should now rapidly recover,
-as Mr. Mackerel had concluded to take her to Saratoga. I, of course,
-acquiesced in the decision, though my previous opinion had not been asked.
-I took a final leave of the lovely woman, and the poor child soon departed
-for Saratoga.
-
-"The ensuing week there was a sheriff's sale at Mackerel's residence. The
-day following the Mackerels' departure, Mr. Tiptape did me the honor to
-inquire after the health of my family; and a week later, Master Tiptape
-having fallen and bumped his dear nose on the floor, I had the felicity of
-soothing the anguish of his mamma in her magnificent _boudoir_, and
-holding to her lovely nose the smelling salts, and offering such
-consolation as her trying position required!"
-
-Thus was commenced the practice of one of the first physicians of New
-York. The facts are avouched for. The names, of course, are manufactured,
-to cover the occupation of the parties. The doctor still lives, in the
-enjoyment of a lucrative and respectable practice, and the love and
-confidence of his numerous friends and patrons.
-
-Quite as ludicrous scenes could be revealed by most physicians, if they
-would but take the time to think over their earlier efforts, and the
-various circumstances which were mainly instrumental in getting them into
-a respectable practice.
-
-
-HOW PROFESSOR EBERLE STARTED.
-
-The young man who has just squeezed through a medical college, and come
-out with his "sheepskin," who thinks all he then has to do is to put up
-his sign, and forthwith he will have a crowd of respectable patients, is
-to be pitied for his verdancy. The great Professor John Eberle "blessed
-his stars" when, after graduating as "Doctor of Medicine" in the
-University of Pennsylvania, and making several unsuccessful attempts at
-practice in Lancaster County, he received the appointment as physician of
-the "out-door poor" of Philadelphia. After that, his writings, attracting
-public attention, were mostly contributive to his success and advancement.
-
-Energy and determination are better property than even scholastic lore and
-a medical diploma, for unless you possess the former, talent and education
-fall to the earth.
-
-Dr. William P. Dewees, formerly Professor of Obstetrics in the University
-of Pennsylvania, the celebrated author, physician, and surgeon, practised
-seventeen years before he obtained a diploma. He was of Swedish descent on
-his father's side, and Irish on his mother's. His father died in very
-limited circumstances, when William was a boy; hence he received no
-collegiate education until such time as he could earn means, by his own
-efforts, to pay for that coveted desideratum. We find him, with an
-ordinary school education, serving as an apothecary's clerk, a student of
-medicine, and at the early age of twenty-one years trying to practise
-medicine in a country town fourteen miles from Philadelphia. Young Dewees
-possessed great talent and energy, but his personal appearance was
-scarcely such, at that early age, as to inspire the stoical country folks
-with the requisite confidence to speedily intrust him with their precious
-lives and more cherished coppers!
-
-"He was scarcely of medium stature, florid complexion, brown hair, and was
-remarkably youthful in his appearance," says Professor Hodge, M. D.
-
-I have before me an excellent likeness "of the embryo professor," which
-admirably corresponds with the description given above; but though
-"youthful," yea, bordering on "greenness," I can read in that frank,
-intelligent countenance the lines of deep thought, and a soul burning with
-desire for greater knowledge. The too florid countenance and narrow
-nostrils are sure indications of a consumptive predisposition. Dr. Dewees
-died May 30, 1841. He was well read in French and Latin, and also various
-sciences.
-
-
-A HARD STARTING.
-
-_Sketch of Western Practice._--The following interesting sketch is from
-the able pen of Dr. Richmond, of Ohio, now a wealthy and eminent M. D. It
-was originally contributed, if I mistake not, to the "Scalpel."
-
-"I set myself down with my household goods in a land of strangers. How I
-was to procure bread, or what I was to do, were shrouded in the mysterious
-future. Memory came to my consolation; for, in spite of myself, the 'Diary
-of a London Physician,' read in other days, came, with its racy pictures,
-flitting before my mind's eye; and I knew not but I, too, might yet wish
-myself, my Mary, and my child sleeping in the cold grave, to hide me from
-the persecution that seemed to follow me with such sleepless vigilance....
-
-"My store of old watches now came into play. A gentleman wishing to sell
-out his land, I invested all the wealth I possessed in the purchase of a
-ten-acre lot, shouldered my axe, and by the aid of a brother I soon
-prepared logs for the mill sufficient to erect me a small dwelling. I
-never was happier than when preparing the ground and splitting the blocks
-of sandstone for the foundation of my house. One customer, whose wife I
-had carried through a lingering fever, furnished me a frame for a
-dwelling, and I fell in his debt for a pair of boots. Another furnished
-nails and glass, and in the course of eight months I moved into my new
-house.
-
-"For two years I fed my cow, and raised my own provender to feed my
-gallant nag, which shared my toil and its profits. My first two years'
-labor barely returned sufficient profit to pay for my home and feed my
-little family.
-
-"My nag had died, and the terrible drought of 1846 forced me to relinquish
-the horse I had hired, and for five months I performed all my visits on
-foot, often travelling from six to ten miles to see one patient....
-
-"These were trying times; but what if the elements were unpropitious? I
-had food and shelter for myself and family,--blessings about which I had
-often been in doubt,--and I was fully prepared to let 'the heathen rage,
-and the people imagine' what they chose!... The first winter was one of
-great severity; the weather was very changeable, and the most awful
-snow-storms were often succeeded by heavy rains, and the roads so horrid
-as to be impassable on horseback or in carriages. I had a patient five
-miles distant, sick with lung fever, and, in an attendance of forty days I
-made thirty journeys on foot (three hundred miles to attend one patient!)
-His recovery added much to my reputation, and I received for my services a
-new cloak and coat, which I much needed, and a hive of honey bees!...
-
-"An old horse which I again hired of a friend had a polite way of limping,
-and was a source of much merriment among my patrons. I persistently
-attributed what they deemed a fault entirely to the politeness of the
-quadruped; and this nag, with my plain and rustic appearance, endeared me
-to the laboring population, and thus my calamities became my greatest
-friends. My fortune changed, and the experience and name I had acquired
-now came in as capital in trade, and a flood of 'luck' soon followed."
-
-
-ABERNETHY'S BOYHOOD.
-
-Seated upon the outside of an ancient London stage-coach, to which were
-attached four raw-boned, old horses, just ready to start for Wolverhaven
-one pleasant afternoon, you may easily imagine, kind reader,--for it is a
-fact,--a chubby-faced, commonplace little boy, some ten years old, with
-another like youthful companion,--"two Londoners,"--while comfortably
-ensconced within, in one corner of the vehicle, is a large, stern-looking
-old gentleman, in "immense wig and ruffled shirt."
-
-[Illustration: THE POLITE QUADRUPED.]
-
-The stage-horn is sounded, the driver cracks his whip, the sleepy old nags
-wake up, the coach rocks from side to side, and in a moment more the team
-is off for its destination.
-
-Why! the reader is readily reminded of the scene of "_Old Squeers_,"
-taking the wretched little boys down to his "Academy," in Yorkshire,
-"where youth were boarded, clothed, furnished with pocket-money," and
-taught everything, from "writing to trigonometry," "arithmetic to
-astronomy," languages of the "_living_ and _dead_" and "diet
-unparalleled!" Nevertheless it is another case, far before "Old Squeers"
-time.
-
-The elderly gentleman, in top-wig and immense ruffles, was Dr. Robertson,
-teacher of Wolverhampton Grammar School, and the chubby little boy was
-Master John Abernethy. Who the "other boy" was is not known, as he never
-made his mark in after life. Says Dr. Macilwain,--
-
-"We can quite imagine a little boy, careless in his dress, not slovenly,
-however, with both hands in his trousers pockets, some morning about the
-year 1774, standing under the sunny side of the wall at Wolverhampton
-School; his pockets containing, perhaps, a few shillings, some ha'pence, a
-knife with the point broken, a pencil, together with a tolerably accurate
-sketch of 'Old Robertson's wig,'--which article, shown in an accredited
-portrait now before us, was one of those enormous by-gone bushes, which
-represented a sort of impenetrable fence around the cranium, as if to
-guard the precious material within; the said boy just finishing a story to
-his laughing companions, though no sign of mirth appeared in him, save the
-least curl of the lip, and a smile that would creep out of the corner of
-his eye in spite of himself."
-
-[Illustration: YOUNG ABERNETHY.]
-
-"The doctor" was represented as being a passionate man. Squeers again!
-One day young Abernethy had to do some Greek Testament, when his glib
-translation aroused the suspicion of the watchful old doctor, who
-discovered the 'crib' in a Greek-Latin version, partially secreted under
-the boy's desk. No sooner did the doctor make this discovery than with his
-doubled fist he felled the culprit with one blow to the earth. Squeers
-again!
-
-"'Why, what an old plagiarist Mr. Dickens must have been!' you exclaim.
-
-"But the case in 'Nicholas Nickleby' is worse, far worse, for 'the little
-boy sitting on the trunk only sneezed.'
-
-"'Hallo, sir,' growled the schoolmaster (Squeers), 'what's that?'
-
-"'Nothing, sir,' replied the little boy.
-
-"'Nothing, sir!' exclaimed Squeers.
-
-"'Please, sir, I sneezed!' rejoined the boy, trembling till the little
-trunk shook under him.
-
-"'O, sneezed, did you?' retorted Mr. Squeers. 'Then what did you say
-"Nothing" for, sir?'
-
-"In default of a better answer to this question, the little boy screwed a
-couple of knuckles into his eyes, and began to cry; wherefore Mr. Squeers
-knocked him off the trunk with a blow on one side of the head, and knocked
-him on again with a blow on the other."
-
-Robertson was a fact; Squeers was a fable. That's the difference.
-
-As Dr. Robertson taught neither arithmetic nor writing in his school, the
-pupils went to King Street, to a Miss Ready, to receive instruction in
-those branches. This lady, if report is true, wielded the quill and
-cowhide with equal grace and mercy, and when the case came to hand, did
-not accept the modern advice, to "spare the boy and spoil the rod."
-
-When the great surgeon was at the height of his fame, in London, many
-years afterwards, Miss Ready, still rejoicing in "single blessedness,"
-called on her former pupil. In introducing his respected and venerable
-teacher to his wife, Abernethy laconically remarked, "I beg to introduce
-you to a lady who has boxed my ears many a time."
-
-An old schoolmate, when eighty-five years old, wrote to the author of
-"Memoirs of Abernethy," saying, among other things, "In sports he took the
-first place, and usually made a strong side; was quick and active, and
-soon learned a new game."
-
-It was contrary to his own desire that John Abernethy became a physician.
-"Had my father let me be a lawyer, I should have known by heart every act
-of Parliament," he repeatedly affirmed.
-
-This was not bragging, as the following anecdote will illustrate:--
-
-On a birthday anniversary of Mrs. Abernethy, mother of John, a gentleman
-recited a long copy of verses, which he had composed for the occasion.
-
-"Ah," said young Abernethy, "that is a good joke, pretending you have
-written these verses in honor of my mother. Why, sir, I know those lines
-well, and can say them by heart."
-
-"It is quite impossible, as no one has seen the copy but myself," rejoined
-the gentleman, the least annoyed by the accusation of plagiarism.
-
-Upon this Abernethy arose, and repeated them throughout, correctly, to the
-no small discomfiture of the author. Abernethy had remembered them by
-hearing the gentleman recite them but once!
-
-"A boy thwarted in his choice of a profession is generally somewhat
-indifferent as to the course next presented to him." Residing next door
-neighbor to Abernethy's father was Dr. Charles Blicke, a surgeon in
-extensive practice. This was very convenient. Sir Charles is represented
-as having been quick-sighted enough to discover that "the Abernethy boy"
-was clever, a good scholar, and withal a "sharp fellow." Thus, between the
-indifference of the parent, and the selfishness of the surgeon, the
-would-be lawyer, John Abernethy, was apprenticed to the "barber-surgeon"
-for five years. He was then but fifteen years of age.
-
-"All that young Abernethy probably knew of Sir Charles was, that he rode
-about in a fine carriage, saw a great many people, and took a great many
-fees; all of which, though presenting no further attractions for
-Abernethy, made a _prima facie_ case not altogether repulsive."
-
-We must not forget to mention that young Abernethy was of a very inquiring
-mind. "When I was a boy," he said in after years, "I half ruined myself in
-buying oranges and sweetmeats, in order to ascertain the effects of
-different kinds of diet on diseases."
-
-Whether he tried said "oranges and other things" on himself or some
-unfortunate victim, my informant saith not; but I leave the reader to
-decide by his own earlier appetites and experiences. "When I was a boy," I
-think is significant of the probabilities that it was his own digestive
-organs that were "half ruined."
-
-Be it as it may, it reminds me of the case of a little country boy, who,
-on his first advent to the city on a holiday, was chaperoned by his
-somewhat older and sharper city cousin,--"one of the b'hoy's,"--who
-exercised a sort of vigilance over the uninitiated rustic, that the little
-fellow might not surfeit himself by too great a rapacity for peanuts,
-gingerbread, candies, and oranges, often generously sharing the danger by
-partaking largely of the small boy's purchases in order to spare his more
-delicate stomach.
-
-Finding the ignorant little rustic about to devour a nice-looking orange,
-his cousin pounced upon him just in time to prevent the rash act.
-
-"Here, Sammy; don't you know that is one of the nastiest and most
-indigestiblest things you could put into your stomach? Give it here!"
-
-Rustic, whose faith in the wisdom of his maturer cousin, though very
-great, was yet quite counterbalanced by the sweets in the orange, slightly
-held back, when the other continued,--
-
-"Leastwise, Sammy, let's have a hold of it, and suck the abominable juice
-out for you."
-
-(For this digression I beg the pardon of the reader; for the idea I thank
-Frank Leslie.)
-
-George Macilwain, M. D., F. R. C. S., etc., in prefacing the life of the
-great London surgeon, gives a brief and interesting sketch of his own
-boyhood, also his early impressions of Abernethy, and his first attendance
-on his lectures.
-
-"My father practised on the border of a forest, and when he was called at
-night to visit a distant patient, it was the greatest treat to me, when a
-little boy, to be allowed to saddle my pony and accompany him. I used to
-wonder what he could find so 'disagreeable' in that which was to me the
-greatest possible pleasure; for whether we were skirting a bog on the
-darkest night, or cantering over the heather by moonlight, I certainly
-thought there could be nobody happier than I and my pony. It was on one of
-these occasions that I first heard the name of 'Abernethy.' The next
-distinct impression I have of him was derived from hearing father say that
-a lady patient of his had gone up to London to have an operation performed
-by Dr. Abernethy, though my father did not think the operation necessary
-to a cure, and that Abernethy entirely agreed with him; that the operation
-was not performed; that he sent the lady back, and she was recovering.
-This gave me a notion that Dr. Abernethy must be a good man, as well as a
-great physician.
-
-"As long as surgery meant riding across the forest with my father, holding
-his horse, or, if he stopped in too long, seeing if his horse rode as well
-as my pony, I thought it a very agreeable occupation; but when I found
-that it included many other things not so agreeable, I soon discovered
-that there was a profession I liked much better....
-
-"Disappointed in being allowed to follow the pursuit I had chosen, I
-looked on the one I was about to adopt with something approximating to
-repulsion; and thus one afternoon, about the year 1816, and somewhat to my
-own surprise, I found myself walking down Holborn Hill on my way to Dr.
-Abernethy's lecture at St. Bartholomew's.
-
-"When Dr. Abernethy entered, I was pleased with the expression of his
-countenance. I almost fancied he sympathized with the melancholy with
-which I felt oppressed. At first I listened with some attention; as he
-proceeded, I began even to feel pleasure; as he progressed, I found myself
-entertained; and before he concluded, I was delighted. What an agreeable,
-happy man he seems! What a fine profession! What wouldn't I give to know
-as much as he does! Well, I will see what I can do. In short, I was
-converted."
-
-All who ever heard him lecture agree that Dr. Abernethy had a most happy
-way of addressing students. Notwithstanding he has often been represented
-as rough in his every-day intercourse with men, he was easy, mild, and
-agreeable in the lecture-hall, and kind and compassionate in the
-operating-room.
-
-After having carefully studied all that has been written respecting his
-style and manner as a lecturer and delineator, and also studiously
-listened to and watched the ways and peculiarities of our most excellent
-lecturer on anatomy at Harvard, I find many striking resemblances between
-Dr. Abernethy and Professor Oliver Wendell Holmes.
-
-"The position of Abernethy was always easy and natural, sometimes almost
-homely. In the anatomical lecture he always stood, and either leaned
-against the wall, with his arms folded before him, or rested one hand on
-the table; sometimes one hand in his pocket. In his surgical lecture he
-usually sat. He was particularly happy in a kind of cosiness, or
-friendliness of manner, which seemed to identify him with his audience, as
-if we were about to investigate something interesting together, and not
-as though we were going to be 'lectured at,' at all. His voice seldom rose
-above what we term the conversational, and was always pleasing in quality,
-and enlivened by a sort of archness of expression."
-
-He always kept his eye on the audience, except slightly turning to one
-side to explain a diagram or subject, "turning his back on no man."
-
-"He had no offensive habits. We have known lecturers who never began
-without making faces;" we might add, "and with many a hem and haw, or
-nose-blowing."
-
-"Not long ago we heard a very sensible lecturer, and a very estimable man,
-produce a most ludicrous effect by the above. He had been stating very
-clearly some important facts, and he then observed,--
-
-"'The great importance of these I will now proceed to show--' when he
-immediately began to apply his pocket-handkerchief most vigorously to his
-nose, still facing his audience."
-
-The ludicrousness of this "illustration" may well be imagined. Of course
-the students lost their gravity, and laughed and cheered vigorously.
-
-Going in to hear Dr. Holmes lecture, at one o'clock one afternoon,
-recently, the writer was both shocked and astonished, on the occasion of
-the professor slipping in a pleasing innuendo, by hearing the students
-cheer with their hands, and stamp with their thick boots on the seats.
-
-I shall have occasion to refer to this splendid man, the pleasing
-lecturer, the skilful operator, the able author, the ripe scholar, the
-pride of Harvard and the state,--Dr. O. W. Holmes,--in another chapter.
-
-
-THE HOMELESS STUDENT.
-
-(Scene from the EARLY LIFE OF A BOSTON PHYSICIAN. By permission.)
-
-Standing on the steps of the Astor House, New York, one cheerless forenoon
-in early June, with my carpet-bag in one hand and my fresh medical diploma
-in the other, with a heavy weight of sorrow at my heart, and only sixteen
-cents in my pocket, I presented, to myself at least, a picture of such
-utter despair as words are inadequate to express.[4]
-
-My home--no; I had none--the home, rather, of my kind old father-in-law,
-where dwelt, for the time being, my wife and child, was many hundred miles
-away. And how was I to reach it? I could not walk that distance, and
-sixteen cents would not carry me there. I looked up Broadway, and I looked
-down towards the Battery. I was alone amid an immense sea of humans, which
-ebbed and flowed continually past me. O, how wistfully I looked to see if
-there might be one face amongst the throng which I might recognize! but
-there was none. Strange, passing strange, not one of that host did I ever
-gaze upon before! Where--how--should I raise the money necessary to take
-me from this land of strangers?
-
-"Pinny, sir? Just one pinny. Me father is broken up, and me mither is sick
-at home. For God's sake give me jist one pinny to buy me some bread."
-
-I turned my gaze upon the picture of squalor and wretchedness just by my
-side. I need not describe her; she was just like a thousand others in that
-great Babel.
-
-"Here is doubtless a case of distress, but it is not of the heart, like
-mine. Such poor have no heart. Skin, muscle, head, stomach! heart, none!"
-
-"Where is your father, did you say?" I asked, mechanically.
-
-"In the Slarter-house; broken up from a fall from a stagin' in
-Twenty-sixth Street, sir," replied the beggar-girl, still extending her
-hand for a penny.
-
-"What is he doing in a slaughter-house, sis?" I inquired.
-
-"The Slarter-house is Bellyvew horse-pittle, sir; that's what we Irish
-call it, sir. Will ye give me the pinny, sir?"
-
-[Illustration: "PINNY, SIR? JUST ONE PINNY."]
-
-"O, yes, to be sure. Here are pennies for you. Go!"
-
-I knew of a poor Irishman who was brought in there at the hospital a few
-days before badly "broken up" from a fall on Twenty-sixth Street. His name
-was John Murphy; they are all named Murphy, or something similar; so it
-was useless to ask the child her father's name--probably it would have
-been Murphy.
-
-The conversation had the good effect of arousing me from my lethargy to
-action. I must not stay in this metropolis and starve. I could not remain
-and beg, like the Irish girl.
-
-I went to Professor ----, the dean, and requested him to take back my
-diploma, and let me have sufficient money to carry me home. He
-complied--God bless him!--and I took the Sound steamer that afternoon for
-the land of my nativity. What cared I if I was a second-class passenger; I
-would in two days see my wife and my child!
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-I had reached home, and was in the bosom of my family once more, and
-amongst my friends, in a Christian land; for which I "thanked God, and
-took courage."
-
-  "Then pledged me the wine-cup, and fondly I swore
-    Ne'er from my home and my weeping friends to part;
-  My children kissed me a thousand times o'er;
-    My wife sobbed aloud in her fullness of heart."
-
-I had a "call" to practise in a country town twenty-five miles from E----,
-where my family was to remain a few days till I had secured a house to
-cover their heads amongst the good friends who were to become my future
-patrons, as a few of them had been previous to my going to college. The
-stage, a one-horse affair, called for my trunk, medicine-case, etc., and,
-having no money with which to pay my fare, I told the driver that "I would
-walk along," while he picked up another passenger in an opposite
-direction, "and if he overtook me on the road before I got a ride with
-some one going to S----, he could take me in."
-
-I walked bravely along a mile or more, and, hearing the stage coming, I
-stepped from the road-side, secreting myself beneath a friendly tree till
-he drove past. Issuing from my hiding-place, I trudged along till noon. My
-darling little wife had taken the precaution to place in my oversack
-pocket some doughnuts and cheese, and, when I had reached a clear, running
-brook, I sat myself down upon a log, under the shade of the woods, and
-partook of my very frugal meal, quenching my thirst from the waters of the
-brook, which, like Diogenes, I raised in the hollow of my hand.
-
-Thus refreshed, I picked up my overcoat, and again walked along. Before
-dark I reached S----, pretty tired and foot-sore from such a long walk.
-
-[Illustration: THE PENNILESS PHYSICIAN.]
-
-The people, who were expecting me, were much surprised at my non-arrival
-in the mail; but the unsophisticated driver assured them I had probably
-secured a ride ahead of him, and I would put in an appearance before
-nightfall.
-
-About midnight the door-bell rang,--I stopped at the hotel that
-night,--and a young gentleman asked for Dr. C. I answered the call at
-once, which was to the daughter of one of the most influential citizens of
-the place. The young man who called me was her intended. They had been to
-a party, and she had partaken freely of oysters, milk, and pickles.
-
-Never did fifteen grains of ipecac prove a greater friend to me than it
-did on that occasion; and in an hour I was back to bed again.
-
-The news of the new doctor's arrival, fresh from a New York college, and
-his first "remarkable cure of the post-master's daughter" that same night,
-spread like wildfire, and my reputation was nearly established.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-XI.
-
-GHOSTS AND WITCHES.
-
-    "Save and defend us from our _ghostly_ enemies."--COMMON PRAYER.
-
-    FOLLY OF BELIEF IN GHOSTS.--WHY GHOSTS ARE ALWAYS WHITE.--A TRUE
-    STORY.--THE GHOST OF THE CAMP.--A GHOSTLY SENTRY-BOX.--A MYSTERY.--THE
-    NAGLES FAMILY.--RAISING THE DEAD.--A LIVELY STAMPEDE.--HOLY
-    WATER.--CÆSAR'S GHOST AT PHILIPPI.--LORD BYRON AND DR. JOHNSON.--GHOST
-    OF A GUILTY CONSCIENCE.--"JOCKEYING A GHOST."--THE WOUNDED BIRD.--A
-    BISHOP SEES A GHOST.--MUSICAL GHOSTS.--A HAUNTED HOUSE.--ABOUT
-    WITCHES.--"WITCHES IN THE CREAM."--HORSE-SHOES.--WOMAN OF ENDOR NOT A
-    WITCH.--WEIGHING FLESH AGAINST THE BIBLE.--THERE ARE NO GHOSTS, OR
-    WITCHES.
-
-
-Is it not quite time--I appeal to the sensible reader--that such folly was
-expunged from our literature? What is a ghost? Who ever saw, heard, felt,
-tasted, or smelled one? Must a person possess some miraculous quality of
-perception beyond the five senses commonly allotted to man in order to
-become cognizant of a ghostly presence?
-
-[Illustration: BELIEVERS IN GHOSTS.]
-
-What stupid folly is ghost belief! Yet there are very many individuals in
-this enlightened day and generation, who, from perverted spirituality, or
-great credulousness, will accept a ghost story, or a "spiritual
-revelation," without wincing.
-
-It would seem that many great men of the past, as Calvin, Bacon, Milton,
-Dante, Lords Byron and Nelson, Sir Walter Scott, Wordsworth, and others,
-believed in the existence of ghosts and spirits on this mundane sphere.
-
-There are but two classes who believe in ghosts, viz., the ignorant as one
-class, and persons with large or perverted spirituality--phrenologically
-speaking--as the other. These are the believers in dreams, in ghosts, in
-spirits, and fortune-telling. These, too, are the religious (?) fanatics,
-etc.
-
-
-THE ORIGIN OF THE WORD GHOST
-
-is curious.
-
-"The first significance of the word, as well as 'spirit,' is breath, or
-wind." It is of Anglo-Saxon origin, and is from _gust_, the wind. Hence, a
-_gust_ of _wind_. The Irish word _goath_, wind, comes nearer to the modern
-English pronunciation, and shows how easily it could have been corrupted
-to _ghost_.
-
-It is easy to imagine the good old Saxon ladies, sitting around the
-evening fireside, and just as one of them has finished some marvellous
-story of that superstitious age, they are startled by a sudden blast of
-wind, sweeping around the gabled cottage, and her listeners exclaim, in
-suppressed breath,--
-
-"Hark! There's a fearful gust!"
-
-The transit from _gust_ to _ghost_ is easily done. The clothes spread upon
-the bushes without, or pinned to the lines, flapping in the night air, are
-seen through the shutterless windows, and they become the object of
-attraction. The _effect_ supersedes the _cause_, and the clothes become
-the gust, goath, or ghost! The clothes, necessarily, must be white, or
-they _could not be seen in the night time_! Hence a ghost is always
-clothed in white. Therefore the wind (gust) is no longer the ghost, but
-any white object seen moving in the night air.
-
-[Illustration: "HARK! THERE'S A FEARFUL GUST!"]
-
-  "But I am a wandering ghost--
-    I am an idle breath,
-  That the sweets of the things now lost
-    Are haunting unto death.
-  Pity me out in the cold,
-    Never to rest any more,
-  Because of my share in the purple and gold,
-    Lost from the world's great store.
-
-  "I whirl through empty space,
-    A hapless, hurried ghost;
-  For me there is no place--
-    I'm weary, wandering, lost.
-  Safe from the night and cold,
-    All else is sheltered--all,
-  From the sheep at rest in the fold,
-    To the black wasp on the wall."
-
-Moffat says that a tribe of Caffres formerly employed the word _Morino_ to
-designate the Supreme Being; but as they sank into savagery, losing the
-idea of God, it came to mean only a fabulous ghost, of which they had
-great terror.
-
-Having briefly shown the folly of the existence of the word in our
-vocabulary, I will proceed to explode a few of the best authenticated--so
-called--"ghost stories;" and if I leave anything unexplained in
-ghostology, let the reader attribute it to either my want of space in
-which to write so much, or the neglect of my early education in the _dead
-languages_.
-
-
-THE GHOST OF THE CAMP.
-
-I obtained the following story from one of the sentries:--
-
-At Portsmouth, R. I., there was a camp established during the late war,
-186-. There was a graveyard in one corner of the enclosed grounds, where
-several soldier-boys had been buried from the hospital, and here a guard
-was nightly stationed.
-
-Of course there were many stories told around the campfires, of ghosts and
-spirits that flitted about the mounds at the dead hours of the night,
-circulated particularly to frighten those stationed at that point on
-picket duty.
-
-The body of a soldier had recently been exhumed and placed in a new and
-more respectable coffin than the pine box coffin furnished by Uncle Sam,
-in which he had been buried, and the old one was left on the ground.
-
-Partly to protect himself from the inclemency of the weather, and quite as
-much to show his utter disregard of all ghostly visitors, my informant
-secured the old pine coffin, "washed it out, though it was impossible to
-remove all the stains," and, driving a stake firmly into the ground, he
-stood the coffin on one end, and, removing the lid, used to stand therein
-on rainy nights.
-
-"When it did not rain, I turned it down, and my companion and myself used
-to sit on the bottom.
-
-"One day a soldier-boy had died in the hospital, and his friends came to
-take the body home for Christian burial. It was necessary to remove him in
-a sheet to the place where they had an elegant casket, bought by his
-wealthy friends, to receive the remains.
-
-"That very night I was on duty with my friend Charley S., when, near
-midnight, seated upon the empty coffin, with my gun resting against the
-side, and my head resting in the palms of my hands, I fell into a drowse.
-
-[Illustration: A GRAVE SENTRY.]
-
-"Waking up suddenly, I saw something white through the darkness before me;
-for it was a fearfully dark night, I assure you. I rubbed my sleepy eyes
-to make sure of my sight, and took another look. I discerned a form,
-higher than a man, moving about over the mounds but a few yards distant.
-It had wide side-wings, but they did not seem to assist in the motion of
-the body part, which did not reach to the ground. I thought I must be
-asleep, and actually pinched my legs to awake myself before I took a final
-look at his ghostship. There he stood, stock still. I listened for my
-companion, without removing my eyes from the white object before me. Still
-I was not scared, but meant to see it out. I knew I could not see a man
-far through that impenetrable darkness, for there were no stars nor
-moon to reveal him. I would not call for help, for if it was a farce to
-scare me, I should become the laughing-stock of the whole camp.
-
-[Illustration: A GHOST IN CAMP.]
-
-"Just then I heard the grass crackle, and I knew Charley was approaching
-in the rear. Still there hung the apparition. I arose from the coffin, my
-eyes fixed on the object before me, picked up my musket, took deliberate
-aim at the centre of the thing, and just as I cocked my rifle, I heard
-Charley set back the hammer of his 'death-dealer.' He, too, had discovered
-the very remarkable appearance, whatever it was; and now the guns of two
-'unfailing shots' covered the object. In another second it had suddenly
-disappeared! I then spoke, and we ran forward, but found nothing! Where
-had it gone so very suddenly? It had vanished without sight or sound. We
-gave up the search; but still I did not believe we had seen anything
-supernatural.
-
-"There was no little discussion in camp on the following day on the
-subject. Charley said but little. I could not explain the remarkable
-phenomenon, and a splendid ghost story was about established, in spite of
-me, before the mystery became unravelled.
-
-"A tall fellow, who worked about the hospital, and who assisted in taking
-away the corpse, was returning with the sheet, when he thought he would
-give the sentry a scare from his coffin by throwing the sheet over his
-head and stretching out his arms like wings. His clothes being black, his
-legs did not show; hence the appearance of a white object floating in the
-air. Hearing the guns cocked, he instantly jerked the sheet from his head;
-winding it up, he turned and ran away. This accounted for it becoming so
-instantaneously invisible.
-
-"'Yes,' said the sentry, 'and in a second more you would have been made a
-ghost!'"
-
-
-RAISING THE DEAD.
-
-_The Nagles Family._--The following remarkable and ridiculous affair
-transpired in a village where the writer once resided. The Nagleses were
-Irish. The family consisted of old Nagles, his wife,--who did washing for
-my mother,--John Tom and Tom John, besides Mary. The reason of having the
-boys named as above was, that in case either died, the sainted names would
-still be in the family. This was old Mrs. Nagles' explanation of the
-matter.
-
-The old man worked about the wharves, wheeled wood and carried coal, and
-did such like jobs during summer, and chopped wood in the winter. I well
-remember of hearing stories of his greenness when he first came to town.
-He was early employed to wheel wood on board a coaster lying at the dock.
-The captain told him to wheel a load down the plank, cry "Under!" to the
-men in the hold, and tip down the barrow of wood. All went well till old
-Nagles got to the stopping-place, over the hold, when he dumped down the
-load, and cried out, "Stand ferninst, there, down cellar!" to the imminent
-peril of breaking the heads of the wood-stevedores below.
-
-[Illustration: OLD NAGLES.]
-
-I well remember also the first appearance of the two boys at the village
-school one winter.
-
-"What is your name?" inquired the master of the eldest.
-
-"Me name, is it? John Tom Nagles, sir, is me name, and who comes after is
-the same."
-
-He always was called by us boys "John Tom Nagles, sir," thenceforward. He
-certainly was the rawest specimen I ever met.
-
-One day the old man was wheeling wood on board a vessel. It was at low
-water, and there was a distance of sixteen feet from the plank to the
-bottom of the vessel's hold. The poor old fellow, by some mishap or
-neglect, let go the barrow, when he called, "Stand ferninst, there,
-below!" when wood, barrow, and old Mr. Nagles, all went down together. By
-the fall he broke his neck. I never shall forget the awful lamentation set
-up by the combined voices of the poor old woman, John Tom, Tom John, and
-Mary, as they followed the corpse, borne on a wagon, past our house, on
-the way from the vessel to the Nagles' residence.
-
-[Illustration: THE NAGLES BOYS.]
-
-On the following day great preparations were made to "wake" the old
-gentleman according to the most approved fashion in the old country. There
-were many Irish living--_staying_, at least--in that town, and large
-quantities of pipes, tobacco, and whiskey were bought up, and the whole
-town knew that a "powerful time" was anticipated by the Irish who were
-invited to old Nagles' wake. It was an unusual occurrence, and several
-boys and young men of the village went to the locality of the Nagles'
-house to get a look upon the scene when it got under full pressure. I
-certainly should have been there had not my parents forbidden me to go,
-and I regret the inability to give my personal testimony to the truth of
-the statement of what followed, as I do to what preceded, as related
-above.
-
-[Illustration: CHIEF MOURNERS.]
-
-"When the wake was at its height, the room full of tobacco smoke, and the
-jovial mourners full of Irish whiskey,--strychnine and fusel oil,--there
-was an alarm of fire in the neighborhood. There was a grand rush from the
-room, as well as from the windows where stood the listeners, and only one
-old and drunken woman remained to watch the corpse. The door was left
-open, and some of the young men outside, thinking it a good opportunity to
-play a joke on the drunken party, ran into the room, and, seeing only the
-old woman, who was too drunk to offer any objections, they removed the
-body from the board, depositing it behind the boxes on which the board was
-laid, and one of their number took the place of the corpse, barely having
-time to draw the sheet over his face, when the 'wakers' returned.
-
-"The candles burned dimly through the hazy atmosphere of the old room, and
-no one noticed the change. The pipes were relighted, the whiskey freely
-passed, and finally one fellow proposed to offer the corpse a lighted pipe
-and a glass of whiskey, 'for company's sake, through purgatory.'
-
-"Suiting the action to the word, he approached, attempted to raise the
-head of the 'lively corpse,' and thrust the nasty pipe between his teeth.
-
-"The young man 'playing corpse' was no smoker, and in infinite disgust he
-motioned the fellow away, who, too drunk to notice it, stuck the pipe in
-his face, saying, 'Here, ould man, take a shmoke for your ghost's sake.'
-
-"'Bah! Git away wid the div'lish nasty thing,' exclaimed the young man,
-rising and sitting up in the coffin.
-
-"There was an instantaneous stampede from the room of every waker who was
-capable of rising to his legs, followed by the fellow in the sheet, who,
-dropping the ghostly covering at the door, mingled with the rabble, and
-was not recognized. The priest and the doctor were speedily summoned. The
-former arrived, heard, outside the house, the wonderful story, and then
-proceeded to lay the spirit by sprinkling holy water on the door-stone,
-thence into the room. By this time the smoke had sufficiently subsided to
-allow a view of the room, when the stiff, frigid body of old Nagles was
-discovered on the floor, where 'it had fallen,' as they supposed, 'in
-attempting to walk.' Of course the doctor ridiculed the idea of a stark,
-cold body rising and speaking; but the Irish, to this day, believe old
-Nagles, for that once, refused a pipe and a glass of whiskey. The few
-young men dared not divulge the secret, and it never leaked out till the
-entire family of Nagles had gone to parts unknown."
-
-[Illustration: A CORPSE THAT WOULD NOT SMOKE.]
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-I find a great many ghost stories in books, which are not explained; but
-since the writer knows nothing of their authenticity, nor the persons with
-whom they were connected, they are unworthy of notice here.
-
-
-THE GHOST OF CÆSAR AT PHILIPPI.
-
-Dr. Robert Macnish, of Glasgow, in his "Philosophy of Sleep," says, "No
-doubt the apparition of Cæsar which appeared to Brutus, and declared it
-would meet him at Philippi, was either a dream or a spectral
-illusion--probably the latter. Brutus, in all likelihood, had some idea
-that the great battle which was to decide his fate would be fought at
-Philippi. Probably it was a good military position, which he had in his
-mind fixed upon as a fit place to make a final stand; and he had done
-enough to Cæsar to account for his mind being painfully and constantly
-engrossed with the image of the assassinated dictator. Hence the
-verification of this supposed warning; hence the easy explanation of a
-supposed supernatural event."
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-"The ghost of Byron" may help to verify the above. Sir Walter Scott was
-engaged in his study at Abbotsford, not long after the death of Lord
-Byron, at about the twilight hour, in reading a sketch of the deceased
-poet. The room was quiet, his thoughts were intensely centred upon the
-person of his departed friend, when, as he laid down the volume, as he
-could see to read no longer, and passed into the hall, he saw before him
-the _eidolon_ of the deceased poet. He remained for some time impressed by
-the intensity of the illusion, which had thus created a phantom out of
-some clothes hanging on a screen at the farther end of the hall.
-
-This is not the first time that Byron had appeared to his friends, as the
-following, from his own pen, will show:--
-
-Byron wrote to his friend, Alexander Murray, less than two years before
-the death of the latter, as follows:--
-
-"In 1811, my old schoolmate and form-fellow, Robert Peel, the Irish
-secretary, told me that he saw me in St. James Street. I was then in
-Turkey. A day or two afterwards, he pointed out to his brother a person
-across the street, and said, 'There is the man I took for Byron.' His
-brother answered, 'Why, it is Byron, and no one else.' I was at this time
-_seen_ (by them?) to write my name in the Palace Book! I was then ill of a
-malaria fever. If I had died," adds Byron, "here would have been a ghost
-story established."
-
-Dr. Johnson says, "An honest old printer named Edward Cave had seen a
-ghost at St. John's Gate." Of course, the old man succumbed to the
-apparition.
-
-
-THE GHOST OF CONSCIENCE.
-
-I have yet to find the record of a good man seeing what he believed to be
-a ghostly manifestation. It is only the guilty in conscience who conjure
-up "horrible shadows," as pictured in Shakspeare's ghost of Banquo, as it
-appeared to Macbeth. What deserving scorn, what scathing contempt, were
-conveyed in the language of Lady Macbeth to her cowardly,
-conscience-stricken lord, as she thus rebuked him!--
-
-                "O, proper stuff!
-  This is the very painting of your fear;
-  This is the air-drawn dagger which you said
-  Led you to Duncan! O, these flaws and starts
-  (Impostors to true fear) would well become
-  A woman's story at a winter's fire,[5]
-  Authorized by her grandam. Shame itself!
-                  ... When all's done,
-  You look but on a stool!"
-
-There is a great truth embodied in a portion of the king's reply, that--
-
-  "If charnel-houses and our graves must send
-  Those that we bury, back, our monuments
-  Shall be the maws of kites."
-
-The gay and dissipated Thomas Lyttleton, son of Lord George Lyttleton, and
-his successor in the peerage, has been the subject of "a
-well-authenticated ghost story, which relates that he was warned of his
-death three days before it happened, in 1779, while he was in a state of
-perfect health, and only thirty-five years of age." This is what says a
-biographer. Now let us present the truth of the matter.
-
-He was a dissipated man. He was subject to fits. A gentleman present at
-the time of his seeing a vision, says "that he had been attacked several
-times by suffocative fits the month before." Here, then, was a _body
-diseased_. The same authority says, "It happened that he dreamed, three
-days before his death, that he saw a _fluttering bird_; and afterwards,
-that he saw (dreamed) a woman in white apparel, who said to him, 'Prepare
-to die; you will not exist three days.'
-
-[Illustration: PREPARE TO DIE!]
-
-"His lordship was much alarmed, and called his servant, who slept in an
-adjoining closet, who found his master in a state of great agitation, and
-in a profuse perspiration."
-
-Fear blanches the cheek; perspiration is rather a symptom of bodily
-weakness, and the result of a laborious dream, or even a fit. He had no
-fear, for, on the third day, while his lordship was at breakfast with "the
-two Misses Amphlett, Lord Fortescue," and the narrator, he said,
-lightly,--
-
-"'If I live over to-night, _I shall have jockeyed the ghost_, for this is
-the third day.' That day he had another fit. He dined at five, and retired
-at eleven, when his servant was about to give him some prescribed rhubarb
-and mint-water, but his lordship, seeing him about to stir the mixture
-with a toothpick, exclaimed,--
-
-"'You slovenly dog, go and fetch a teaspoon.'
-
-"On the servant's return, he found his master in another fit, and, the
-pillow being high, his chin bore on his windpipe, when the servant,
-instead of relieving his lordship from his perilous position, ran away for
-help; but on his return, found his master dead."
-
-He had strangled. Is it anything strange that a dissipated, weakened man
-should die after having a score of suffocative fits? It had been more
-surprising if he had survived them. Then, as respecting the dream, it was
-the result of a "mind diseased."
-
-There was evidence that his lordship had seduced the Misses Amphlett, and
-prevailed upon them to leave their mother; and he is said to have
-admitted, before his death, that the woman seen in his dream was the
-mother of the unfortunate girls, and that she died of grief, through the
-disgrace and desertion of her children, about the time that the guilty
-seducer saw her in the vision. How could his dreams but have been
-disturbed, with the load of guilt and remorse that he ought to have had
-resting upon his conscience? The "fluttering bird" was the first form that
-the wretched mother assumed in his vision, as a bird might flutter about
-the prison bars that confined her darling offspring. The more natural form
-of the mother finally appeared to the guilty seducer, and to dream that he
-heard a voice is no unusual occurrence in the life of any person. The
-peculiar words amount to nothing. Lyttleton gave them no serious thoughts,
-and it was an accident of bodily position that caused his sudden death.
-The whole thing seems to be too flimsy for even a respectable "ghost
-story."
-
-
-THE BISHOP SEES A GHOST!
-
-An amusing as well as instructive ghost story is related by Horace
-Walpole, the indolent, luxurious satirist of fashionable and political
-contemporaries, whose twenty thousand a year enabled him to live at his
-ease, "coquetting haughtily with literature and literary men, at his tasty
-Gothic toy-house at Strawberry Hill."
-
-[Illustration: THE BISHOP'S GHOSTLY VISITOR.]
-
-He relates that the good old Bishop of Chichester was awakened in his
-palace at an early hour in the morning by his chamber door opening, when a
-female figure, clothed in white, softly entered the apartment, and quietly
-took a seat near him. The prelate, who, with "his household, was a
-disbeliever in ghosts" and spirits, said he was not at all frightened,
-but, rising in his bed, said, in a tone of authority,--
-
-"Who are you?"
-
-"The presence in the room" made no reply. The bishop repeated the
-question,--
-
-"Who are you?"
-
-The ghost only heaved a deep sigh, and, while the bishop rang the bell, to
-call his slumbering servant, her ghostship quietly drew some old "papers
-from its ghost of a pocket," and commenced reading them to herself.
-
-After the bishop had kept on ringing for the stupid servant, the form
-arose, thrust the papers out of sight, and left as noiselessly and
-sedately as she had arrived.
-
-"Well, what have you seen?" asked the bishop, when the servants were
-aroused.
-
-"Seen, my lord?"
-
-"Ay, seen! or who--what was the woman who has been here?"
-
-"Woman, my lord?"
-
-(It is said one of the fellows smiled, that a woman should have been in
-the aged bishop's bed-chamber in the night.)
-
-When the bishop had related what he had seen, the domestics apprehended
-that his lordship had been dreaming, against which the good man protested,
-and only told what his eyes had beheld. The story that the bishop had been
-visited by a ghost soon got well circulated, which greatly "diverted the
-ungodly, at the good prelate's expense, till finally it reached the ears
-of the keeper of a mad-house in the diocese, who came and deposed that a
-female lunatic had escaped from his custody on that night" (in light
-apparel), who, finding the gates and doors of the palace open, had marched
-directly to his lordship's chamber. The deponent further stated that the
-lunatic was _always reading a bundle of papers_.
-
-"There are known," says Walpole, "stories of ghosts, solemnly
-authenticated, less credible; and I hope you will believe this, attested
-by the father of our own church."
-
-
-MUSICAL GHOSTS.
-
-We occasionally _hear_ of this kind, but seldom, if ever, _see_ them. An
-old lady of Adams, Mass., came to the writer in a state bordering on
-monomania. She stated that at about _three o'clock_ in the night she would
-awake and distinctly hear bells ringing at a distance. She would awake her
-husband, and often compel him to arise and listen "till the poor man was
-almost out of patience with the annoyance;" not of the bells, for he heard
-none, but of being continually "wakened because of her whim," as he
-stated. A brief medical treatment for the disease which caused the
-vibration of the tympanum dispelled the illusion of bells.
-
-
-THE PIANO-FORTE GHOST.
-
-A family residing, three years since, but a few miles out of Boston, used
-to occasionally, during summer only, hear a note or two of the piano
-strike at the dead hour of the night. A Catholic servant girl and an
-excellent cook left their situations in consequence of the ghostly music.
-In vain the family removed the instrument to another position in the room.
-The musical sounds would startle them from their midnight slumbers.
-
-One thing very remarkable occurred after changing the piano: the sound,
-which only transpired occasionally, with no regularity as to time, would
-always begin with the high notes, and end with the lower. Finally, the
-family--I cannot say why--removed to the city, and the house was sold. The
-deed of conveyance did not include the ghost, but he remained with the
-premises, nevertheless. The writer has seen him!
-
-"O, what a pretty cat!" exclaimed a child of the new occupant of the
-haunted house, on discovering the domestic animal which the late possessor
-had left.
-
-"Yes; and she looks so very domestic and knowing, she may stay, if no one
-comes for her, and you'll have her for a playfellow," replied the mother.
-
-A few nights after their settlement, the new family were startled by
-hearing the piano sound! No particular tune, but it was surely the piano
-notes that had been distinctly and repeatedly heard. A search revealed
-nothing. The piano was kept closed thereafter, and no further annoyance
-occurred, until one night when the company had lingered till nearly
-midnight, and the instrument had been left open, the sound again occurred.
-The gentleman quickly lighted a lamp, ran down stairs, and closing the
-door leading to the connecting room, he found the cat secreted beneath the
-piano. The instrument was purposely left open the following night, and a
-watch set, when, no sooner was all quiet, than the cat entered, and leaped
-upon the piano keys. After touching them a few times with her fore paws,
-she jumped down, and hid beneath the instrument. "The cat was out." Only
-one thing remained for explanation, viz., why the change of sound occurred
-after removing the piano by the first occupants of the house. It occurred
-in summer. They removed the piano so that the cat, entering a side window,
-usually left a little raised, had necessarily jumped upon the high keys.
-
-If anybody has got a good ghost, spirit, or witch about his premises, the
-writer would like to investigate it.
-
-The following silly item is just going the rounds of the press:--
-
-
-"A HAUNTED HOUSE.
-
-"The first floor of Mrs. Roundy's house, at Lynn, in which the recent
-murder occurred, is occupied by an apparently intelligent family bearing
-the name of Conway, who assert that they have heard supernatural noises
-every night since the tragedy; and they are so sincere in their belief
-that they are preparing to vacate in favor of their 'uncanny' visitors."
-
-There's nothing to it to investigate.
-
-
-A FEW WORDS ABOUT WITCHES.
-
-My colored boy, Dennis, assures me that an old woman in Norfolk, Va.,
-having some spite against him, "did something to him that sort o'
-bewitched him; got some animal into him, like." The symptoms are those of
-_ascarides_, but I could not persuade him to take medicine therefor.
-
-"'Tain't no use, sir," he replied, solemnly; "I knowed she done it; I
-feels it kinder workin' in yer (placing his hand on his stomach); what
-med'cine neber'll reach."
-
-Neither reason nor ridicule will "budge" him. He knows he's bewitched!
-
-[Illustration: THE MUSICAL PUSS.]
-
-[Illustration: A DARKEY BEWITCHED.]
-
-
-WITCHES IN THE CREAM.
-
-  Through all the long, long winter's day,
-    And half the dreary night,
-  We churned, and yet no butter came:
-    The cream looked thin and white.
-
-  Next morning, with our hopes renewed,
-    The task began again;
-  We churned, and churned, till back and arms
-    And head did ache with pain.
-
-  The cream rose up, then sulking fell,
-    Grew thick, and then grew thin;
-  It splashed and spattered in our eyes,
-    On clothes, and nose, and chin.
-
-  We churned it fast, and churned it slow,
-    And stirred it round and round;
-  Yet all the livelong, weary day,
-    Was heard the dasher's sound.
-
-  The sun sank in the gloomy west,
-    The moon rose ghastly pale;
-  And still we churned, with courage low,
-    And hopes about to fail,--
-
-  When in walked Granny Dean, who heard,
-    With wonder and amaze,
-  Our troubles, as she crossed herself,
-    And in the fire did gaze.
-
-  "Lord, help us all!" she quickly said,
-    And covered up her face;
-  "Lord, help us all! for, as you live,
-    There's witches in the place!
-
-  "There's witches here within this churn,
-    That have possessed the cream.
-  Go, bring the horse-shoe that I saw
-    Hang on the cellar-beam."
-
-  The shoe was brought, when, round and round,
-    She twirled it o'er her head;
-  "Go, drive the witches from that cream!"
-    In solemn voice she said;--
-
-  Then tossed it in the fire, till red
-    With heat it soon did turn,
-  And dropped among the witches dread,
-    That hid within the churn.
-
-  Once more the dasher's sound was heard,--
-    Have patience with my rhyme,--
-  For, sure enough, the butter came
-    In twenty minutes' time.
-
-  Some say the temperature was changed
-    With horse-shoe glowing red;
-  But when we ask old Granny Dean,
-    She only shakes her head.--_Hearth and Home._
-
-
-HORSE-SHOES.
-
-One would suppose the folly of putting horse-shoes into cream, "fish-skins
-into coffee, to settle it," and forcing filthy molasses and water down the
-throats of new-born babes, were amongst the follies of the past; but they
-are not yet, with many other superstitious, and even cruel and dangerous
-notions, done away with. For some prominent instances of this course of
-proceedings the reader may consult next chapter.
-
-Riding through the rural districts of almost any portion of the Union, one
-will sometimes find the horse-shoe nailed over the stable, porch, or even
-house front door, to keep away the witches. As in Gay's fable of "The Old
-Woman and her Cats:"--
-
-  "Straws laid across my path retard,
-  The horse-shoes nailed each threshold guard,"
-
-In Aubrey's time, he tells us that "most houses of the west end of London
-have the horse-shoe at the threshold."
-
-The nice little old gentleman who keeps the depot at Boylston Station is a
-dry joker, in his way. Over each door of the station he has an old
-horse-shoe nailed.
-
-"What have you got these nailed up over the door for?" a stranger asks.
-
-[Illustration: BOYLSTON STATION.]
-
-"To keep away witches. I sleep here nights," solemnly replies the
-station-master; and one must be familiar with that ever agreeable face to
-detect the sly, enjoyable humor with which he is so often led to repeat
-this assertion.
-
-In numerous towns within more than half of the states,--I state from
-personal inquiry,--there are at this day old women, who children, at
-least, are taught to believe have the power of bewitching! My first
-fright, when a little boy on my way to school, was from being told that an
-old woman, whose house we were passing, was a witch.
-
-These modern witches may not have arrived at the dignity of floating
-through the air on a broomstick, or crossing the water in a cockle-shell,
-as they were said to in ancient times; but the belief in their existence
-at this enlightened period of the world is more disgraceful than in the
-darker ages, and the frightening of children and the naturally
-superstitious is far more reprehensible.
-
-There is no such thing as a ghost. There are no witches.
-
-"The Bible teaches that there were witches," has often been wrongly
-asserted. That "choice young man and goodly," whose abilities his doting
-parent over-estimated when he sent him out _in search of the three stray
-asses_, and whose idleness prompted him to consult the seer Samuel, and by
-whose indolence and procrastination the asses got home first, was a very
-suitable personage to consult a "_woman of a familiar spirit_" (or any
-other woman, save his own wife), from which arose the great modern
-misnomer of the "_Witch of Endor_."
-
-"To the Jewish writers, trained to seek counsel only of Jehovah (not even
-from Christ), the 'Woman of Endor' was a dealer with spirits of evil. With
-us, who have imbibed truth through a thousand channels made turbid by
-prejudice and error, she is become a distorted being, allied to the hags
-of a wild and fatal delusion. We confound her with the (fabled) witches of
-Macbeth, the victims of Salem, and the modern Moll Pitchers.
-
-"The Woman of Endor! That is a strange perversion of taste that would
-represent her in hideous aspect. To me she seemeth all that is genial and
-lovely in womanhood."
-
-"Hearken thou unto the voice of thine handmaid, and let me set a morsel of
-bread before thee, and eat, that thou mayest have strength when thou goest
-on thy way."
-
-Then she made and baked the bread, killed and cooked the meat,--all she
-had in the house,--and Saul did eat, and his servants.
-
-I see nought in this but an exhibition of rare domestic ability and
-commendable hospitality; in the previous act (revelation), nothing more
-than a manifestation of the power of mind over mind (possibly the power of
-God, manifested through her mind?), wherein she divined the object of
-Saul's visit, and, through the same channel, surmised who he was that
-consulted her.
-
-[Illustration: WEIGHING A WITCH BY BIBLE STANDARD.]
-
-Witches are said to be "light weight." But a little above a hundred
-years ago, a woman was accused in Wingrove, England, by another, of
-"bewitching her spinning-wheel, so it would turn _neither the one way nor
-the other_." To this she took oath, and the magistrate, with pomp and
-dignity, "followed by a great concourse of people, took the woman to the
-parish church, her husband also being present, and having stripped the
-accused to her nether garment, put her into the great scales brought for
-that purpose, with the Bible in the opposite balance, which was the lawful
-test of a witch, when, to the no small astonishment and mortification of
-her maligner, she actually outweighed the book, and was honorably
-acquitted of the charge!"
-
-Just imagine the picture. In an enlightened age, a Christian people, in
-possession of the Bible, that gives no intimation of such things as
-witches, stripping and weighing a female in public, to ascertain if she
-really was heavier than a common Bible!
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-XII.
-
-MEDICAL SUPERSTITIONS.
-
-    "When cats run home, and light is come,
-      And dew is cold upon the ground,
-    And the far-off stream is dumb,
-      And the whirling sail goes round,
-      And the whirling sail goes round;
-    Alone and warming his five wits
-    The white owl in the belfry sits."--TENNYSON.
-
-    OLD AND NEW.--THE SIGN OF JUPITER.--MODERN IDOLATRY.--ORIGIN OF THE
-    DAYS OF THE WEEK.--HOW WE PERPETUATE IDOLATRY.--SINGULAR
-    FACT.--CHRISTMAS FESTIVITIES.--"OLD NICK."--RIDICULOUS
-    SUPERSTITIONS.--GOLDEN HERB.--HOUSE CRICKETS.--A STOOL WALKS!--THE
-    BOWING IMAGES AT RHODE ISLAND.--HOUSE SPIDERS.--THE HOUSE
-    CAT.--SUPERSTITIOUS IDOLATRIES.--WONDERFUL KNOWLEDGE.--NAUGHTY
-    BOYS.--ERRORS RESPECTING CATS.--SANITARY QUALITIES.--OWLS.--A SCARED
-    BOY.--HOLY WATER.--UNLUCKY DAYS.--THUNDER AND LIGHTNING.--A KISS.
-
-
-Medicine, above all the other sciences, was founded upon superstition.
-Medicine, more than all the other arts, has been practised by
-superstitions. Stretching far back through the vista of time to the
-remotest antiquity, reaching forward into the more enlightened present, it
-has partaken of all that was superstitious in barbarism, in heathenism, in
-mythology, and in religion.
-
-In showing the Alpha I am compelled to reveal the Omega.
-
-Let us begin with Jupiter. I know that some wise Æsculapian--no
-Jupiterite--will turn up his nose at this page, while to-morrow, if he
-gets a patient, he will demonstrate what I am saying, and further, help
-to perpetuate the ignorant absurdities which originated with the old
-mythologists, by placing "[R]"--the ill-drawn sign of Jupiter--before his
-recipe.
-
-[Illustration: THE GOD OF RECIPES.]
-
-De Paris tells us that the physician of the present day continues to
-prefix to his prescriptions the letter "[R]," which is generally supposed
-to mean "recipe," but which is, in truth, a relic of the astrological
-symbol of Jupiter, formerly used as a species of superstitious invocation,
-or to propitiate the king of the gods that the compound might act
-favorably.
-
-There are still in use many other things which present _prima facie_
-evidence of having been introduced when the users placed more faith in
-mythological or planetary influence than in any innate virtue of the
-article itself. For instance, at a very early period all diseases were
-regarded as the effects of certain planetary actions; and not only
-diseases, but our lives, fortunes, conduct, and the various qualities that
-constitute one's character, were the consequences of certain planetary
-control under which we existed. Are there not many who now believe this?
-
-"In ancient medicine pharmacy was at one period only the application of
-the dreams of astrology to the vegetable world. The herb which put an ague
-or madness to flight did so by reason of a mystic power imparted to it by
-a particular constellation, the outward signs of which quality were to be
-found in its color or shape." Red objects had a mysterious influence on
-inflammatory diseases, and yellow ones on persons discolored by jaundice.
-Corals were introduced as a medicine, also to wear about the neck on the
-same principle.
-
-These notions are not yet obsolete. Certain diseases are still attributed
-to the action of the moon. Certain yellow herbs are used for the
-jaundice and other diseases. The _hepatica triloba_ (three-lobed) is
-recommended for diseases of the lungs as well as liver (as its first name,
-_hepatica_, indicates), and some other medicines for other complaints,
-without the least regard to their innate qualities. Corals are still worn
-for nose-bleed, red articles kept about the bed and apartments of the
-small-pox patient, and the red flag hung out at the door of the house,
-though few may know why a _red_ flag is so hung, or that it originated in
-superstition.
-
-The announcement of an approaching comet strikes terror to the hearts of
-thousands; the invalid has the sash raised that he may avoid first seeing
-the new moon through the glass, and the traveller is rejoiced to catch his
-first glimpse of the young queen of the night over his right shoulder,
-"for there is misfortune in seeing it over the left."
-
-But we are not yet done with ancient symbols.
-
-"The stick came down from heaven," says the Egyptian proverb.
-
-"The physician's cane is a very ancient part of his insignia. It has
-nearly gone into disuse; but until very recently no doctor of medicine
-would have presumed to pay a visit, or even be seen in public, without
-this mystic wand. Long as a footman's stick, smooth, and varnished, with a
-heavy gold head, or a cross-bar, it was an instrument with which, down to
-the present century, every prudent aspirant to medical practice was
-provided. The celebrated gold-headed cane which Radcliffe, Mead, Askew,
-Pitcairn, and Baillie successively bore, is preserved in the College of
-Physicians, London. It has a cross-bar, almost like a crook, in place of a
-knob. The knob in olden times was hollow, and contained a vinaigrette,
-which the man of science held to his nose when he approached a sick
-person, so that its fumes might protect him from the disease."
-
-The cane, doubtless, came from the wand or caduceus of Mercurius, and was
-a "relic of the conjuring paraphernalia with which the healer, in
-ignorant and superstitious times, always worked upon the imagination of
-the credulous." The present barber's pole originated with surgeons. The
-red stripe represented the arterial blood; the blue, the venous blood; the
-white, the bandages.
-
-The superstitious ancients showed more wisdom in their selections of
-names, as well as in emblems, than we do in retaining them. Heathen
-worship and mythological signs are mixed and interwoven with all our arts,
-sciences, and literature. Our days of the week were named by the old
-Saxons, who worshipped idols--the sun, moon, stars, earth, etc., and to
-their god's, perpetual honor gave to each day a name from some principal
-deity. Thus we are idolaters, daily, though unconsciously.
-
-I think not one person in a thousand is aware of this fact; therefore I
-give a sketch of each.
-
-
-SUNDAY.
-
-The name of our first day of the week, Sunday, is derived from the Saxon
-_Sunna-dæg_, which they named for the sun. It was also called _Sun's-dæg_.
-
-[Illustration: SUN--Sunday.]
-
-As the glorious sunlight brought day and warmth, and caused vegetation to
-spring forth in its season, warmed the blood, and made the heart of man to
-rejoice, they made that dazzling orb the primary object of their worship.
-When its absence brought night and darkness, and the storm-clouds
-shrouded its face in gloom, or the occasional eclipse suddenly cut off its
-shining, which they superstitiously attributed to the wrath of their chief
-deity, it then became the object of their supplication. With them, and all
-superstitious people, all passions, themes, and worships must be
-embodied--must assume form and dimensions, and as they could not gaze upon
-the dazzling sun, they personified it in the figure of a man--as being
-superior to woman with them--arrayed in a primitive garment, holding in
-his hand a flaming wheel. One day was specially devoted to sun worship.
-
-The modern Sunday is the day, according to historical accounts of the
-early Christians, on which Christ rose from the dead. It does not appear
-to have been the same day as, or to have superseded, the Jewish Sabbath,
-although the Christians early celebrated the day, devoting it to religious
-services. With the Christians, labor was suspended on this "first day of
-the week," and Constantine, about the year 320, established an edict which
-suspended all labor, except agricultural, and forbade also all court
-proceedings. In 538 A. D. the third Council of Orleans published a decree
-forbidding all labor on Sunday.
-
-The Sabbath (Hebrew _Shabbath_) of the Jews, meaning a day of rest,
-originated as far back as Moses--probably farther. It was merely a day of
-rest, which was commanded by Jehovah; and if considered only on
-physiological grounds, it evinces the wisdom and economy of God in setting
-apart one day in seven to be observed by man as a season of rest and
-recuperation. As such it only seems to have been regarded till after the
-forty years of exile, when it changed to a day of religious rites and
-ceremonies, which is continued till the present day by "that peculiar
-people." That particular day, given in the "law of Moses," corresponds--it
-is believed by the Jews--to our Saturday. Christ seemed to teach that the
-Jewish Sabbath was no more sacred than any other day, and he accused the
-Pharisees with hypocrisy in their too formal observance thereof. He
-attended their service on the Sabbath, on the seeming principle that he
-did other meetings, and as he paid the accustomed tax, because it was best
-to adapt one's self to the laws and customs of the country.
-
-We do not purpose to enter into any theological discussion as to which of
-the two days should be observed for rest and religious observances; for
-who shall decide? Physiologically considered, it makes no difference.
-There should be one day set apart for rest in seven at the most, and all
-men should respect it.
-
-Without a Sabbath (day of rest) we should soon relapse into a state of
-barbarism, and also wear out before our allotted time. "In the hurry and
-bustle of every-day life and labor, we allow ourselves too little
-relaxation, too little scope for moral, social, and religious sentiments;
-therefore it is well to set apart times and seasons when all cares and
-labors may be laid aside, and communion held with nature and nature's
-God." And it were better if we all could agree upon one day for our
-Sabbath; and let us call it "Sabbath," and not help to perpetuate any
-heathen dogmas and worship by calling God's holy day after the idolatrous
-customs of the ancient Saxons.
-
-
-MONDAY.
-
-The second day of the week the Saxons called _Monandæg_, or Moon's day;
-hence our Monday.
-
-This day was set apart by that idolatrous people for the worship of their
-second god in power. In their business pursuits, as well as devotional
-exercises, they devoted themselves to the moon worship. The name
-_Monandæg_ was written at the top of all communications, and remembrance
-had to their god in all transactions of the day. Each _monath_ (new moon
-or month) religious (?) exercises were celebrated.
-
-The idol Monandæg had the semblance of a female, crowned or capped with a
-hood-like covering, surmounted by two horns, while a basque and long robe
-covered the remainder of her person. In her right hand she held the image
-of the moon.
-
-[Illustration: MOON--Monday.]
-
-[Illustration: TUISCO--Tuesday.]
-
-
-TUESDAY.
-
-The third object of their worship was Tuisco--corresponding with German
-_Tuisto_--the son of _Terra_ (earth), the deified founder of the
-Teutonic race. He seems to have been the deity who presided over combats
-and litigations; "hence Tuesday is now, as then, court-day, or the day for
-commencing litigations." In some dialects it was called _Dings-dag_, or
-Things-day--to plead, attempt, cheapen: hence it is often selected as
-market-day, as well as a time for opening assizes. Hence the god _Tuisco_
-was worshipped in the semblance of a venerable sage, with uncovered head,
-clothed in skins of fierce animals, touching the earth, while he held in
-his right hand a sceptre, the appropriate ensign of his authority.
-
-Thus originated the name of our third day of the week, and some of its
-customs.
-
-[Illustration: WODEN--Wednesday.]
-
-
-WEDNESDAY.
-
-This day was named for _Woden_,--the same as _Odin_,--and was sacred to
-the divinity of the Northern and Eastern nations. He was the Anglo-Saxons'
-god of war, "who came to them from the East in a very mysterious manner,
-and enacted more wonderful and brilliant exploits of prowess and valor
-than the Greek mythologists ascribed to their powerful god Hercules." As
-_Odin_, this deity was said to have been a monarch (in the flesh) of
-ancient Germany, Denmark, Scandinavia, etc., and a mighty conqueror. All
-those tribes, in going into battle, invoked his aid and blessing upon
-their arms. He was idolized as a fierce and powerful man, with helmet,
-shield, a drawn sword, a _gyrdan_ about his loins, and feet and legs
-protected by sandals and knee-high fastenings of iron, ornamented with a
-death's head.
-
-[Illustration: THOR--Thursday.]
-
-[Illustration: FRIGA--Friday.]
-
-
-THURSDAY.
-
-From the deity _Thor_ our Thursday is derived. This Saxon god was the son
-of Woden, or Odin, and his wife Friga. He was the god of thunder, the
-bravest and most powerful, after his father, of the Danish and Saxon
-deities.
-
-Thor is represented as sitting in majestic grandeur upon a golden throne,
-his head surmounted by a golden crown, richly ornamented by a circle in
-front, in which were set twelve brilliant stars. In his right hand he
-grasped the regal sceptre.
-
-
-FRIDAY.
-
-The sixth day of the week was named in honor of _Friga_, or Frigga, the
-wife of Woden and the mother of Thor. In most ancient times she was the
-same as Venus, the goddess of Hertha, or Earth. She was the most revered
-of the female divinities of the Danes and Saxons. Friga is represented
-draped in a light robe suspended from the shoulder, low neck and bare
-arms. She held in her right hand a drawn sword, and a long bow in the
-left. Her hair is long and flowing, while a golden band, adorned by
-ostrich feathers, encircle her snowy brow.
-
-There is nothing in the name or attributes to indicate the ill luck which
-superstition has attached to the day.
-
-[Illustration: SEATER--Saturday.]
-
-
-SATURDAY.
-
-The god _Seater_, for whom the last day of the week is named, is the same
-as Saturn, which is from Greek--_Time_.
-
-He is pictured, unlike Saturn, with long, flowing hair and beard, thin
-features, clothed in person with one entire garment to his ankles and
-wrists, with his waist girded by a linen scarf. In his right hand he
-carries a wheel, to represent rolling time. In his left hand he holds a
-pail of fruit and flowers, to indicate young time as well as old. The fish
-which is his pedestal represents his power over the abundance of even the
-sea.
-
-
-CHRISTMAS FESTIVALS.
-
-Amongst the very pleasant and harmless customs which have been handed down
-to us from the idolatrous rites and superstitions of the ancient Saxons,
-Scandinavians, etc., are those connected with our Christmas festivities.
-The whole observance and connections form a strange mixture of Christian
-and heathen ceremonies, illustrative of the unwillingness with which a
-people abandon pagan rites to the adoption of those more consistent with
-the spirit of a Christianized and enlightened faith.
-
-Now, little folks and big, I am not going to ridicule or deny your right
-to Christmas and St. Nicholas enjoyments; I will merely hint at their
-origin, for your own benefit. The day brings more happiness--and folks--to
-the homes and firesides of the people of the _whole world_ than any other
-holiday we celebrate.[6] Thanksgiving, you know, is mostly a New England
-custom. The 25th of December is just as good as any other day on which to
-have a good time. Ancient people used to celebrate the first and sixth
-of January. The first three months of the year are named after heathen
-gods.
-
-The _name_ of the day we celebrate is derived from a Christian source: the
-rest from pagan. A good feeling was always engendered amongst the most
-ancient people at the commencement of the lengthening of days in winter,
-and the approach of a new year. The hanging up of the mistletoe, with the
-ceremony of gathering it, the kindling of the Yule log, and giving of
-presents, we trace to the Druids, who were the priests, doctors, and
-judges of the ancient Celts, Gauls, Britons, and Germans. Our modern
-stoves and furnaces have shut out the pleasant old log fires, and the
-candles only remain. The gifts originated in the giving away of pieces of
-the mistletoe by the grizzly old priests.
-
-Who St. Nicholas was, is only conjectured, _not known_, any more than who
-St. Patrick was. It makes no difference where he sprang from; he is a
-good, jolly, benevolent fellow, who brings lots of presents, and, with the
-little folks, we are bound to defend him.
-
-It is supposed that the original St. Nicholas lived in Lycia, in Asia
-Minor, during the fourth century, and was early adopted as a saint of the
-Catholic church, and also by the Russians and ancient Germans, Celts, and
-others.
-
-"He has ever been regarded as a very charitable personage, and as the
-particular guardian of children. Great stories are told of his charity and
-benevolence. One of these, and that, perhaps, which attaches him to the
-peculiar festivities of Christmas, is to the effect that a certain
-nobleman had three lovely daughters, but was so reduced to poverty that he
-was unable to give them a marriage portion, as was the indispensable
-custom, and was about to give them over to a life of shame. St. Nicholas
-was aware of this, and determined in a secret way to assist the nobleman.
-
-"He wended his way towards the nobleman's house, thinking how he could
-best do this, when he espied an open window, into which he threw a purse
-of gold, which dropped at the nobleman's feet, and he was enabled to give
-his daughter a marriage portion. This was repeated upon the second
-daughter and the third daughter; but the nobleman, being upon the watch,
-detected his generous benefactor, and thus the affair was made public.
-From this rose the custom upon St. Nicholas Day, December 6, for parents
-and friends to secretly put little presents into the stockings of the
-children. Doubtless this custom, so near the festivities of Christmas,
-gradually approximated to that day, and become identical with Christmas
-festivities throughout the world. St. Nicholas is often represented
-bearing three purses, or golden balls, and these form the pawn-broker's
-well-known sign, which is traced to this source as its origin--not, we
-should judge, from their resemblance to the charity of St. Nicholas, but
-emblematic of his lending in time of need."
-
-
-POPULAR NOTIONS AND WHIMS.
-
-There was a superstition in Scotland against spinning or ploughing on
-Christmas; but the Calvinistic clergy, in contempt for all such
-superstitions, compelled their wives and daughters to spin, and their
-tenants to plough, on that day.
-
-It is a popular notion to the present time in Devonshire that if the sun
-shines bright at noon on Christmas day, there will be a plentiful crop of
-apples the following year.
-
-Bees were thought to sing in their hives on Christmas eve, and it was
-believed that bread baked then would never mould.
-
-So prevalent was the idea that all nature unites in celebrating the great
-event of Christ's birth, that it was a well received opinion in some
-sections of the old world that the cattle fell on their knees at midnight
-on Christmas eve.
-
-
-RIDICULOUS SUPERSTITIONS.
-
-  "Merlin! Merlin! turn again;
-    Leave the oak-branch where it grew.
-  Seek no more the cress to gain,
-    Nor the herb of golden hue."
-
-Merlin, the reputed great enchanter, flourished in Britain about the fifth
-century. He is said to have resided in great pomp at the court of "Good
-King Arthur." You all know the beautiful rhyme about the latter, if not
-about "Merlin! Merlin!" etc.
-
-  "When good King Arthur ruled the land,--
-    He was a goodly king,--
-  He stole three pecks of barley-meal
-    To make a bag pudding."
-
-Sublime poetry! Easy mode of obtaining the barley-meal (or Scotch
-territory). Merlin attached many superstitious beliefs to some of our
-medicinal plants. The "cress" is supposed to be the mistletoe. "The herb
-of gold"--golden herb--was a rare plant, held in great esteem by the
-peasant women of Brittany, who affirmed that it shone like gold at a
-distance. It must be gathered by or before daybreak.
-
-The most ridiculous part of the affair was in the searching for the "herb
-of golden hue." None but devout females, blessed by the priests for the
-occasion, were permitted the great privilege of gathering it. In order to
-be successful in the search, the privileged person started before
-daylight, barefooted, bareheaded, and _en chemise_. (Of course the priest
-knew the individual, and when she was going.) The root must not be cut or
-broken, but pulled up entire. If any one trod upon the plant, he or she
-would fall into a trance, when they could understand the language of fowls
-and animals--a belief not half as ridiculous as that of the present day,
-that a person may fall into a trance, and understand the language of the
-dead; yes, dead and decayed, the organs of speech gone! Yet thousands
-believe such stuff to-day.
-
-_The Mandrake._--Great superstition was formerly attached to this root,
-and even now is, in some rural districts. The root often resembles the
-lower half of a human being, and it was credulously believed it would
-shriek and groan when pulled from its mother earth. This notion is
-expressed in Romeo and Juliet:--
-
-  "Mandrakes, torn out of the earth,
-  That mortals, hearing them, run mad."
-
-Again, in Henry VI.:--
-
-  "Would curses kill, as doth the bitter mandrake's groans."
-
-[Illustration: GATHERING THE MANDRAKE.]
-
-A favorite mode of uprooting this coveted plant--because of its defensive
-properties, when once gained--was to fasten cords to a dog's neck, thence
-to the base of the stem of the plant, and sealing their own ears with wax
-to prevent hearing the groans, which was death or madness, they whipped
-the unfortunate dog till he drew out the roots, or was killed in the
-attempt; for the dog usually died then or soon after the cruel beating,
-and the shrieks of the mandrake were supposed to have caused his death.
-
-The Scabious, or "Devil's bit," was regarded with great superstition. "The
-old fantastic charmers," said the quaint Gerarde, "say that the Devil bit
-away the greater part of this root for envy, because of its many virtues
-and benefits to mankind." Dr. James Smith (1799) as quaintly observes,
-"The malice of the Devil has unfortunately been so successful, that no
-virtue can now be found in the remainder of the root or herb."
-
-_House Crickets._--The superstition respecting these cheerful and harmless
-little _chirpers_ is remarkable. Some consider their presence a lucky
-sign, others their absence more fortunate. To kill one, with some persons,
-is a sign of death in the house. Very strange! They, blind fools, do not
-see that the saying originated in the death of the poor little cricket.
-
-The following very remarkable occurrence was related to the writer, as
-having actually taken place at Providence, R. I., a few years since. Mrs.
-D., a respectable lady, residing in the city, was reported to have been
-followed about the house and up stairs by a "cricket,"--a wooden one, used
-for a foot-stool. People called at her residence to inquire into the truth
-of the matter; others even requested to see the remarkable phenomenon of a
-cricket or stool walking off on all fours, until the lady became so
-annoyed by the continual stream of credulous callers, that she inserted a
-notice in the city journals denying the truth of the strange rumor. It was
-supposed to have started from some neighbor's seeing or hearing a house
-cricket when on a visit at the lady's house.
-
-_The Bowing Images._--A still more amusing story is related respecting the
-two images surmounting the wall each side of the gate at the residence of
-Professor Gammel, of Providence. A report became current among the
-school-boys of the city, that when the images _heard_ the clock strike
-nine in the forenoon they bowed their heads. My informant said it was no
-unusual thing to see a dozen boys waiting, with books and slates, in front
-of the professor's gate, to see the images bow at nine. Being late at
-school, the teacher would inquire,--
-
-"Where have you been lingering, that you are behind time at school?"
-
-[Illustration: "WAITING TO SEE THE IMAGES BOW".]
-
-"Been down to Professor Gammel's, waitin' to see the images bow."
-
-Then the teacher drew his ferule or rod, and made them "bow" in submission
-to a smart whipping--a sequel anticipated by the older scholars who
-instituted the story.
-
-_House Spiders._--Was there ever a child who was not taught, directly or
-indirectly, that house spiders were poisonous,--that their bite was
-instantaneous death? Was there ever a greater mistake? Many people have a
-superstitious terror of these harmless creatures. The bite of spiders is
-only poisonous to those insects which the divine economy seems to have
-created for them to destroy. It is possible, as by a fly, sometimes for a
-slight skin inflammation, less than a mosquito's bite, to follow the sting
-of a spider on a very small child.
-
-Let me hereby disabuse the public mind of the repugnance or horror with
-which these little creatures are regarded. The Creator has evidently
-placed them here for the destruction of flies and other insects, which
-otherwise would completely overrun us. The fly is such a domestic
-creature, that he soon deserts a house where the family is long absent.
-The spider then removes also. (I have watched this proceeding, with no
-little interest, in the absence of my own family.) Therefore the spider
-was created to suppress a superabundance of insect life. When I have
-before stated this fact, the listener has been led to inquire why the
-flies were then made. We will not answer the suggestion of this "riddle"
-as the Irishman did (you know that he said, "To feed the spiders, to be
-sure"), but reply, that if this question is to arise in this connection,
-we may as well keep on our inquiry till we arrive at the greater riddle,
-"Why are _we_ created?"--to which we have no space for reply.
-
-It is said that manufacturers of quill pens in London, being greatly
-annoyed by a species of moth which infests their quills and devours the
-feathers, and the common spider being endowed with an inordinate appetite
-for those same moths, the penmakers and spiders are on the best of terms,
-and an army of these much-maligned and persecuted insects encamp in each
-pen factory, and do good service to the cause of literature as well as
-trade, by protecting the quills. We may yet find that even mosquitos and
-bedbugs have their uses in the wise economy of nature.
-
-Now, when tidy housewifery requires that brush and broom should ruthlessly
-demolish the webs,--the wonderful work and mechanism of the one species of
-house spider,--let it be done as a necessity, not with a feeling of
-repugnance to the harmless little insect; and let children be taught the
-truthful lesson that nothing is made in vain.
-
-_The House Cat_, with many, is regarded with unaccountable superstition.
-It goes with the witch, particularly the black cat. No witch ever could
-exist without one. This is usually the species that haunts naughty boys in
-their dreams after they have eaten too heartily of cake, and other
-indigestible stuff, at evening.
-
-Cats are as old as time. At least their existence dates back as far as
-man's in history, and they were formerly regarded as a sacred animal.
-
-In ancient Egypt we find that Master Tomas, with his round face and rugged
-whiskers, symbolized the sun. Preserved in the British Museum are abundant
-proofs of the reverence and superstition with which the feline race was
-regarded by the Egyptians. Here several of these revered Grimalkins are
-mummied in spices, and perfumes, and balsams, in which they have survived
-the unknown centuries of the past, "to contrast the value of a dead cat in
-the land of the Pharaohs with the fate of such relics in modern times,
-ignominiously consigned to the scavenger's cart, or feloniously hanging
-upon a tree, the scarecrow of the orchard."
-
-Diodorus, the Greek writer, 1st century B. C., informs us that such was
-the superstitious veneration with which the Egyptians regarded cats, that
-no one could ruffle the fur of Tom or Tabby with impunity, and that any
-man killing a cat was put to death. (O, what a country it must have been
-to sleep in!) In Ptolemy's time, while the Roman army was established in
-Egypt, one of the Romans killed a cat, when the people flew to his house,
-and dragged him forth, and neither the fear of the soldiers nor the
-influence of the prince could deliver the unfortunate cat-slayer from the
-wrath of the infuriated mob.
-
-Mohammed had a superstition for cats, and was said to have been constantly
-attended by one. A cat hospital was founded at Damascus in respect to the
-prophet's predilection, which Baumgarten, the German professor (1714 to
-1762) found filled with feline inmates. Turkey maintained several public
-establishments of this kind.
-
-Howell the Good, king of Wales, 10th century, legislated for the cat
-propagation, and it would seem that the race was limited, since a week old
-kitten sold for a penny,--a great deal of money in those days,--and
-fourpence for one old enough to catch a mouse. The following ludicrous
-penalty was attached to a cat-stealer:--
-
-"If any person stole a cat that guarded the prince's granaries he was to
-forfeit a milch ewe, fleece, and lamb; or, in lieu of these, as much wheat
-as, when poured upon the cat, suspended by the tail, her head touching the
-floor, would form a heap high enough to bury her to the tail tip."
-
-This would seem rather hard on poor pussy, even to threatening her
-suffocation.
-
-Huc, in his "Chinese Empire," tells us that the Chinese peasantry are
-accustomed to tell the noon hour from the narrowing and dilation of the
-pupils of pussy's eyes; they are said to be drawn down to a hair's-breadth
-precisely at twelve o'clock. This horological utility, however, by no
-means gives her a fixed tenure in a Chinese home. There she enters into
-the category of edible animals, and, having served the purpose of a
-cat-clock, is seen hanging side by side with the carcasses of dogs, rats,
-and mice in the shambles of every city and town of the celestial empire.
-
-Descending to the middle ages, a mal-odor of magic taints the fair fame of
-our _protégés_, more especially attaching itself to black or brindled
-cats, which were commonly found to be the "familiars" of witches; or,
-rather, their "familiars" were supposed to take the form of these animals;
-and hence, in nearly all judicial records of these unhappy delusionists,
-demons in the shape of cats are sure to figure. The witches in "Macbeth"
-(for what impression of the times he lived in has Shakspeare lost?)
-awaited the triple mewing of the brindled cat to begin their incantations;
-and more scientific pretenders to a knowledge of the occult arts are
-usually represented as attended in their laboratories by a feline
-companion.
-
-Fragments of a superstitious faith in the magical, or what was till
-comparatively recent times so nearly allied with it, the medicinal
-attributes of the animal, still surviving in certain rustic and remote
-districts of England, where the brains of a cat of the proper color
-(black, of course) are esteemed a cure for epilepsy; and where, within our
-memory, such a faith induced a wretched being, in the shape of woman, mad
-with despair and rage, to tear the living heart from one of these animals,
-that, by sticking it full of pins and roasting it, she might bring back
-the regard of a man, brutal and perfidious as herself. Such formulæ are
-frequently to be met with in the works of ancient naturalists and
-physicians, and were, doubtlessly, handed down from generation to
-generation, and locally acted upon in desperate cases.
-
-It is on evidence that more than one old woman has been condemned by our
-wise ancestors to pay the penalty of her presumed league with Satan in a
-fiery death, upon no better testimony than the fact that Harper,
-Rutterkin, or Robin had been seen entering her dwelling in the shape of a
-black cat. But if, in ancient times, old women, and young ones, too, have
-been brought to grief through the cats they fostered, certain it is that
-these creatures have suffered horrible reprisal at the hands of certain
-vagrants of the sex in our own.
-
-Our _Felis domestica_ has, for a long time, labored under the serious
-disadvantage of a traditional character. Buffon sums her up as a
-"faithless friend, brought in to oppose a still more insidious enemy;" and
-Goldsmith--who, it is well known, became a writer of natural history "upon
-compulsion," and had neither time nor opportunity for personal observation
-of the habits and instincts of the creatures he so charmingly
-describes--followed in the track of the great naturalist, and echoes this
-ungracious definition.
-
-Boys have a natural contempt for cats, and picking them up by the tail,
-tossing them over the wall, or tying old tin pots to their caudal end, to
-see how fast they can run, are among their most trifling sports at the
-expense of Tom and Tabby. I have known a cruel boy to roll a cat in
-turpentine, and set fire to her. Few men have any feeling but repugnance
-towards the feline race. The exceptions are in the past.
-
-Cardinal Wolsey's cat sat on the arm of his chair of state, or took up her
-position at the back of his throne when he held audiences; and the cat of
-the poet Petrarch, after death, occupied, embalmed, a niche in his studio;
-indeed, poets appear to be more susceptible of pussy's virtues and graces
-than other persons; and she has, on many occasions, been made the subject
-of their verse, the sentiment of which fully expresses a sense of the
-maligned animal's faithfulness and affection.
-
-Tasso, reduced to such a strait of poverty as to be obliged to borrow a
-crown from a friend to subsist on through a week, turns for mute sympathy
-to his faithful cat, and disburdens his case in a charming sonnet, in
-which he entreats her to assist him through the night with the lustre of
-her moon-like eyes, having no candles by which he could see to write his
-verses.
-
-[Illustration: SPORT FOR THE BOYS BUT DEATH FOR THE CAT.]
-
-An editor facetiously says, "We have here among us at this time an
-addition to the M. D.'s in the shape of two cat doctors, who have the
-terrible idea that they were put upon this earth for the sole object of
-doctoring cats, and now the mortality list shows, at the least
-calculation, that no less than eighteen cats and two kittens have
-travelled to that bourn from which no passengers have ever yet returned,
-and all because they were the unlucky sons and daughters of ye night
-prowlers who had been sacrificed for the good of the future cat
-generation."
-
-
-PRESENT ERRORS.
-
-I think some reason for the present errors and superstitions attached to
-cats, may be attributed to the _cat_-adioptric qualities of their eyes and
-fur. At night their eyes often shine with phosphoric light, and rubbing
-their fur with the human hand causes it to emit electric sparks,
-particularly in very cold weather. They are supposed to partake of
-ghostly, or witch-like qualities, because they can see in the night time.
-Fish scales, as well as the flesh of fish, contain a phosphoric
-principle--there is no witchery about such--which can be seen best through
-the dark. The fur of other animals besides the cat contain electric
-qualities. Humans possess it to a greater or lesser extent. The eye of the
-cat--as also the owl--is made, in the divine economy, expressly for night
-prowling. The back, or reflecting coat (retina), is white, or light, that
-it may reflect dark objects. In man, and most animals, it is dark. A
-light-complexioned person can (_cæteris paribus_) see better at night than
-one who is dark. In a strong light, it is reversed. So much for
-cat-optrics.
-
-Our cat-alogue would be incomplete without this cat-agraph, and we should
-"cat-ch it," hereafter, from some cat-echist, if we here discontinued our
-cat-enary cat-egory, without some little cat-ch relative to the domestic
-and redeeming qualities of this unappreciated cat-tle (excuse the
-cat-achresis).
-
-Webster says the cat is a deceitful animal. Webster don't know. She
-certainly has large cautiousness and secretiveness. Man, with the same
-secretiveness, with the same neglect and abuse that Tom receives, will
-become doubly deceitful. Treat him kindly and affectionately, and he will
-return it. Subject to everybody's kicks, cuffs, and suspicion, the cat
-necessarily becomes shy, ugly, and appears deceitful. So does a child. The
-cat is fond of sweet scents, and pries into drawers and cupboards, oftener
-to gratify her sense of smell than taste. Cats are very fond of music, and
-occasionally go upon the piano keys to make the strings vibrate. Depending
-upon their own exertions for a livelihood, they become thieves. They may,
-by kind instruction, soon be taught to know and keep their own places.
-
-The healthy cat is neat and systematic. Children may be taught a useful
-lesson by noticing that the tabby washes her face and hands after meals,
-and never comes to her repast with them dirty.
-
-Cats are sometimes good fish-catchers, as well as mousers and
-bird-catchers, often plunging into water to secure their favorite aliment.
-Their love of praise is exhibited in their general tendency to bring in
-their prey, and place it at your feet for your approbation. Give them the
-notice due them, and they will redouble their efforts.
-
-It is a vulgar error to suppose their washing over the head is a sign of
-rain, or that you can tell the time of tide by their eye-pupils, or that
-they can go through a solid wall, have nine lives, or suck away a child's
-breath.
-
-The cat, as a sanitary means, should be domesticated, especially with
-scrofulous children and females. Either by their absorbent or repelling
-powers they assist nature in eradicating that almost universal
-disease--scrofula.
-
-Teach children that "God has created nothing in vain," and nothing which
-will harm them if rightly used.
-
-Here we bid good by to Tom and Tabby.
-
-_The Owl._--The superstition which has hung about this very harmless bird
-is liable to soon cease in the extermination of the creature itself.
-
-"Was you born in the woods to be scared by an owl?" my grandmother once
-sarcastically inquired when I was frightened from the barn by an old owl
-inquiring,--
-
-"Who--a'--yoo?"
-
-[Illustration: "WHO--A'--YOO?"]
-
-I acknowledge I was a great coward; but I had heard the old women affirm
-more than once that it was a sign of ill luck or death to hear one of
-these cat-faced, cat-seeing, mousing creatures cry by day; so I fled from
-the barn, while the old owl turned his head sidewise, as he sat on a beam,
-trying to penetrate the light, repeating, "Who--a'--yoo?" It was a sign of
-death, for my uncle shot the owl.
-
-Magpies are made the subject of superstition. To see a single one
-strutting across your path is a sad mishap. There is luck in three, or
-more, however.
-
-_Holy Water._--Church superstitions and rites are not within our
-province, unless they are objectionable in a sanitary point of view. If
-the holy water is clean, it is just as good as any other pure water; but I
-have seen it poured upon my Irish patients--years ago in Hartford and
-elsewhere--when there were "wrigglers" in it from long exposure in an
-unstopped bottle or tea-cup. I approve of holy water, therefore, in large
-quantities, with other rites, tending to a sanitary object. Have plenty of
-water--with soap.
-
-[Illustration: THE PROPER USE OF "HOLY WATER."]
-
-_Bells._--Few useful articles have been held in greater reverence and
-superstition. Their origin is of great antiquity. The first Jewish priests
-adorned their blue tunics with golden bells, as also did the Persian
-kings. The Greeks put bells upon criminals going to execution, as a
-warning, as it was an ill omen to see a criminal and his executioner
-walking. The superstition respecting bells began more particularly with
-the tenth century, when the priests exorcised and blessed them, giving
-them the names of saints, making the rabble believe that when they were
-rung for those ceremonies they had the power to drive devils out of the
-air, making them quake and tremble; also to restrain the power of the
-devil over a corpse; hence bell-ringing at funerals.
-
-There are many legends wherein the evil spirits' dislike to bells is
-promulgated.
-
-As "the devil hates holy water," so he does bell-ringing.
-
-Dr. Warner, a clergyman of the Church of England, in his "Hampshire,"
-enumerates the virtues of a bell, by translating some lines from the
-"Helpe to Discourse."
-
-  "Men's deaths I tell by doleful knell;
-  Lightning and thunder I break asunder;
-  On Sabbath all to church I call;
-  The sleepy head I raise from bed;
-  The winds so fierce I doe disperse;
-  Men's cruel rage I do asswage."
-
-I think the beautiful music discoursed by a chime of bells would be more
-effectual "men's cruel rage" to tranquillize, than a battery of seven
-cannons. Aside from all superstitious notions, there is an irresistible
-charm about the music of bells, and I rejoice that they are gradually
-being redeemed from the superstition and monopoly of one ignorant
-denomination, as the sacred cross may be, to the use and blessing of all
-mankind.
-
-_Fear of Thunder and Lightning._--These have ever been sources of
-superstitious terror. The ancients considered thunder and lightning as
-direct manifestations of divine wrath; hence whatever the lightning struck
-was accursed. The corpses of persons so killed were allowed to remain
-where they fell, to the great inconvenience, often, of the living.
-
-The electricity which plays about high poles and spires was formerly
-attributed to spirits. "Fiery spirits or devils," says old Burton, "are
-such as commonly work by blazing stars, fire-drakes," etc. "Likewise they
-counterfeit suns and moons ofttimes, and sit on ships' masts." The
-electric sparks upon the metal points of soldiers' spears were regarded as
-omens of no small importance.
-
-In some parts of Europe, up to the last century, it was a custom to ring
-bells during a thunder-storm, to drive away evil spirits; but this act
-often was the cause of death, by the exposure of persons to the points of
-attraction, and the conducting power of moist ropes and metallic wires. On
-the night of April 15, 1718, the lightning struck twenty-four steeples
-while the bells were ringing. In July of the following year, while the
-bells were tolling at a funeral celebration in the Chateau Vieux,
-lightning struck the steeple, killing nine persons and injuring
-twenty-two. Statistics show that numerous deaths were caused by
-bell-ringing in England and France, during the last century, to drive away
-imaginary spirits.
-
-The saint usually invoked on these occasions was St. Barnabas.
-
-The houseleek and bay tree were supposed to afford protection from
-lightning.
-
-"The thunder has soured the beer," or the milk, is a common saying; and I
-once saw a piece of iron lying across the beer-barrel to keep away
-thunder. A heavy atmosphere may suddenly sour beer or milk.
-
-Creeping three times under the communion table while the chimes were
-striking, at midnight, was believed to cure fits, as late as 1835.
-
-Glass, stone, and feathers are non-conductors to electricity. Persons very
-susceptible to electric currents need give themselves no fear, and no more
-caution need be taken than we take to protect ourselves against other
-objects of danger. Lightning will not strike one out of doors, unless he
-is near a point of high attraction,--under a tree, or pole,--or has about
-him, exposed, some metallic substance, or some very wet article. Houses
-under or near tall trees, or with suitable lightning-rods, are safe
-enough. A feather bed, particularly one insulated by glass-rollers, or
-plates, under the posts, and not touching the wall, is a perfectly safe
-place for invalids and nervous people who are susceptible to electricity.
-The pulse of such is often increased in frequency before a thunder-storm.
-Let such first have no fear. See God in the storm and lightning as only a
-saving power. I know a girl who "tears around like mad" for a man at the
-approach of a thunder-storm. When finding one, she feels perfectly safe.
-If not, she hides in the cellar till the storm abates.
-
-_Unlucky Days._--The superstition respecting unlucky Friday is well known.
-Some cynical bachelors say it is unlucky because named for a woman. Monday
-was also so named. I can find no account of this superstition until after
-the first century A. D. It is said that our Saviour was crucified on
-Friday--a day of fear and trembling, of earthquakes and divers remarkable
-phenomena; but that day is now as uncertain as the day of his birth, in
-the various changes of the calendar, heathen naming of the days to suit
-their notions, and the great uncertainty of chronology. No doubt Christ
-arose from the dead on the then first day of the week, and was crucified
-the third day before the resurrection; but what day of our present week
-who can tell? If on Friday, it should be counted far from an unlucky day.
-Sailors are particularly superstitious as to sailing on Friday,
-notwithstanding Columbus sailed on Friday, and discovered America on that
-day.
-
-The French believe in unlucky Friday. Lord Byron, Dr. Johnson, and other
-authors and poets, are said to have so believed. Shakspeare, Scott,
-Goldsmith, Bacon, Sir Francis Drake, Napoleon, and many other great men,
-were pretty thoroughly tinged with superstition; the latter, it is said,
-believed in "luck," or destiny.
-
-The future of children is yet believed to depend much upon the day of the
-week on which they are born.
-
-  "Monday's child is fair in face;
-  Tuesday's child is full of grace;
-  Wednesday's child is full of woe;
-  Thursday's child has far to go;
-  Friday's child works hard for its living;
-  Saturday's child is loving and giving;
-  And a child that's born on Christmas day
-  Is fair, and wise, and good, and gay."[7]
-
-This, of course, is all nonsense--or rather the belief in such signs--and
-one day is equally as good as another for nature's work, or in which to
-fulfil the requirements of God and nature. Let no mother, or her who is
-about to become a mother, put faith in old nurses' whims. Their brains are
-full of all such fantastic notions, which are too often revealed in the
-sick room, and the effect is often detrimental to the peace and happiness
-of the mother, and at times dangerous to the life of the invalid.
-
-
-SUPERSTITION OF A KISS.
-
-The monks of the middle ages--great theorists--divided the kiss into
-fifteen distinct and separate orders.
-
-1. The decorous or modest kiss.
-
-2. The diplomatic, or kiss of policy.
-
-3. The spying kiss, to ascertain if a woman had drank wine.
-
-4. The slave kiss.
-
-5. The kiss infamous--a church penance.
-
-6. The slipper kiss, practised towards tyrants.
-
-7. The judicial kiss.
-
-8. The feudal kiss.
-
-9. The religious kiss (kissing the cross).
-
-10. The academical kiss (on joining a solemn brotherhood).
-
-11. The hand kiss.
-
-12. The Judas kiss.
-
-13. The medical kiss--for the purpose of healing some sickness.
-
-14. The kiss of etiquette.
-
-15. The kiss of love--the only real kiss. But this was also to be
-variously considered; viz., given by ardent enthusiasm, as by lovers; by
-matrimonial affection; or, lastly, between two men--an awful kiss, tasting
-like sandwiches without butter or meat.
-
-[Illustration: THE MODEST KISS.]
-
-
-THE END IS NOT YET.
-
-The reign of superstition is not yet ended.
-
-It is impossible for any great catastrophe, involving loss of property or
-life, to occur without a certain superstitious class harping upon the
-event as a judgment of God upon the wickedness of the victims. If a great
-city is swept away by the devouring elements, we hear the cry that "an
-offended Deity has visited the 'Babylon of the West' with his vengeance
-for her wickedness." Some penurious wretch takes it up, and says, "I'll
-give nothing, then, to the victims of the fire. It is God's judgment; I
-won't interfere." A rich man is murdered in cold blood, and the same howl
-goes up, "It is the judgment of God upon him for heaping up riches." The
-fact of his riches going to thousands of poor artisans, actors, musicians,
-widows, orphans, and "western Babylonian sufferers," goes for nothing with
-such people. These same superstitious wretches have not yet done
-asserting that the assassination of President Lincoln was in judgment for
-his attending a theatre.
-
-Twenty-five persons were killed in a church at Bologna, recently, while
-kneeling in prayer. Was this an expression of God's wrath upon
-church-goers?
-
-"The laws by which God governs the universe are inexorable. The frost will
-blight, the fire destroy, the storms will ravage, disease and death will
-do their appointed work, though narrow-mindedness and bigotry misconstrue
-their intent. All things are for good. If natural laws are violated, the
-known and inevitable result follows."
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-I have already exceeded the space to which this chapter was limited, and
-there are a thousand superstitious beliefs and practices which are not
-herein enumerated nor explained. But rest assured that nothing exists
-without its uses, without the knowledge of the divine Author, and nothing
-supernatural does or ever did exist amongst natural beings. There is
-nothing within this world but what God has placed for man's good. There is
-nothing here past man's ability to fathom. God is love.
-
-What there is beyond this world, we shall find out quite soon enough.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-XIII.
-
-TRAVELLING DOCTORS.
-
-    "His fancy lay to travelling."--L'ESTRANGE.
-
-    PUBLIC CONFIDENCE(?).--THE EYE OF THE PUBLIC.--A BAD
-    SPECIMEN.--"REMARKABLE TUMOR."--"THE SINGING DOCTOR."--CAUGHT IN A
-    STORM.--BIG PUFFING.--A SPLENDID "TURNOUT."--WHO WAS HE?--A SUDDEN
-    DISAPPEARANCE.--THE "SPANKING DOCTOR."--A FAIR VICTIM.--LOOSE
-    LAWS.--DR. PULSEFEEL.--IMPUDENCE.--A FIDDLING DOCTOR.--AN
-    ENCORE.--"CHEEK."--VARIOUS WAYS OF ADVERTISING.
-
-
-One might say, with some propriety, that these characters--travelling
-doctors--should have been classed under the heading of our first chapter,
-as "humbugs;" but if we should put all under that head that belong there,
-O, where would the chapter end? As "all is not gold that glitters," so
-neither, on the other hand, is there anything so bad that no virtue can be
-found in it. No heart is so utterly depraved as to prevent any good
-thought or deed from emanating therefrom, though sometimes the good is
-quite imperceptible to us short-sighted mortals.
-
-As the majority of physicians "turned" out of our medical colleges, or of
-those in practice in our cities, are unfit to have intrusted to their care
-the health and lives of our families, friends, or ourselves, so the
-majority of travelling doctors are to be reckoned equally untrustworthy;
-no more so.
-
-If the blessed Saviour should return to earth, and travel from town to
-city, as he did eighteen hundred years ago, healing the sick, I really
-think there would be a less number believing in him now than then. Less
-gratitude for his marvellous cures there could not be; for then some of
-the miserable wretches, whom he healed free of charge, did not so much as
-return him thanks. This may be said of some of our patients at this day.
-
-Let a medical man of ever so great reputation travel, and he is lost. A
-band of angels, on a healing mission, would stand no chance with a people
-who only expect humbugs to visit them. The Shakspearian inquiry would at
-once and repeatedly be put,--
-
-"How chance it they travel? Their _residence_, both in reputation and
-profit, was better both ways!"
-
-Let us view a few travelling doctors through the _public_ eye:--
-
-  "So shall I dare to give him shape and hue,
-  And bring his mazy-running tricks to view;
-  From humbug's minions catch the scattered rays,
-  That in one focus they may brightly blaze.
-
-  "I'd give our (nameless) knight, before he starts,
-  A tireless mind, where never Conscience smarts;
-  An oily tongue, which word should never speak
-  To call a blush to Satan's brazen cheek;
-  With, yet, a power of lungs the weak to move,
-  Which lung-quiescent ... might approve;
-  A changing face, which e'en might Homer feign,
-  A ton of brass for every ounce of brain.
-
-  "Then launch him forth, right cunningly to rage
-  Through the thin shams of this enlightened age;
-  To tell the people they are lords of earth,
-  And pick their pockets while he lauds their worth;
-  Drug men with folly, which no clime engrosses,
-  And sense deal out in homeopathic doses;
-  And making goodness to his projects bend,
-  With all right aims an ultra spirit blend.
-
-         *       *       *       *       *
-
-  "He leagues with those who number in their trade
-  A falsehood told for every sixpence made;
-  To Mammon mortgage all they have of heart,
-  To keep their wealth, with priceless honor part.
-  The fear of God the smallest of their fears,
-  Rolling in wealth, but bankrupt in ideas;
-  To save their purse, their souls contented lose,
-  And count all right, if worldly gain accrues;
-  Who, when they die, no memory leave behind,
-  But in the curses of their cheated kind!
-
-  "With these Sir Humbug riches seeks to gain,
-  And feels his way through lab'rinths of chicane;
-  Embezzles, swindles, lies, until at last
-  The eye of Justice on his crime is cast,
-  When, drugged with wealth, he quits our plundered shore,
-  And Texas boasts one fiery hero more."
-
-[Illustration: THE TUMOR DOCTOR CONTEMPLATES SUICIDE.]
-
-[Illustration: MARIAM, THE TUMOR DOCTOR.]
-
-The worst specimen of a travelling doctor I ever knew first appeared at
-R., one of the principal towns of Vermont, a few years ago. His name was
-Mariam; or that was what he called himself. He was a Canadian by birth,
-about twenty-five years of age, short, dark-complexioned, and claimed to
-be the seventh son of somebody. He was very illiterate, not being able to
-write a prescription, or his name, for that matter, when he came to R.
-
-I visited his rooms at the hotel, after he had been in town some weeks,
-and noticed, among other things, that his table was strewn with sheets of
-paper, upon which he had been practising writing his signature. He opened
-here boldly. He sent out thousands of circulars in the various trains of
-cars running from R., distributing them in person, on the Poor Richard's
-principle, that "if you want your work done, do it; if not, send." He
-inserted cards in the two village papers, containing the most illiterate
-and preposterous statements, and hundreds flocked to see him. Imagine his
-knowledge, for he assured me, to whom he opened his heart in confidence,
-that he never read a page of a medical work in his life.
-
-He first claimed to cure by the laying on of hands; but as he possessed no
-magnetic powers, he gradually abandoned that deception. As he could not
-write a prescription, and knew nothing of compounding medicines, he would
-go with a patient to a druggist's, and looking over the names of drugs on
-the bottles exposed on the shelves, order two or three articles at random,
-and, as one druggist assured me, of the most opposite properties; such as
-tincture of iron and iodide of potash, etc. (NOTE. The acid in the M.
-Tinct. iron sets the iodine free.)
-
-His clothes were very seedy, "and the crown of his hat went flip flap,"
-and his toes were healthy, "being able to get out to the air," when he
-came to R. Soon he was "in luck," and a nice suit of clothes, a new silk
-hat, and boots, speedily graced his not inelegant person. I saw him both
-before and after the transformation.
-
-The following is a true copy of one of his certificates, taken from his
-circular:--
-
-    "A GREAT CURE OF AN OVARIAN TUMOR!
-
-    "This is to certify that Dr. Mariam cured me of an immense _ovarian
-    tumor of the left shoulder_, weighing five pounds and a half, from
-    which I suffered," etc., etc.
-
-    (Signed)      Mrs. ---- ----.
-
-    "MALONE, N. Y."
-
-On this item being ridiculed in the papers of R., Mariam changed it to a
-"rose cancer," and continued the certificate.
-
-Mariam had been practising in Malone, N. Y., also at Whitehall, where, I
-was informed by a newspaper man, he was arrested for obtaining money
-under false pretences. He, however, escaped and fled, to practise his
-deceptions elsewhere. It was reported that he shuffled off his mortal coil
-by finally taking two ounces of laudanum, after the civil authorities had
-placed him comfortably in the county jail, where he had the pleasure of
-passing many days in viewing the world through an iron-barred window, and
-reflecting on his eventful career.
-
-
-THE SINGING DOCTOR.
-
-In remarkable contrast with the above described ignoramus, we present the
-following description, from two contributors, of an extraordinary
-personage, known for a time as "The Singing Doctor."
-
-The "Hoosac Valley News" tells this story:--
-
-"One day late in the autumn of 1860, while the rain poured in torrents,
-and the wind howled fearfully along the hills of old Plymouth, I was
-obliged to drive to Watertown. The 'Branch' was swollen to the river's
-size, and foamed madly down over the sombre rocks, while above my head, on
-the other side of the road, the trees rocked and swayed, as though about
-to fall into the seething, roaring waters below.
-
-"Above, or mingled with the clashing of the elements, I heard some voice,
-as if singing. It struck me with wonder. I stopped to listen. It became
-more distinct, as if approaching. What was it? Who could it be, singing
-amid the fearful tempest?
-
-"In the midst of my surmising, the object of my wonder came in sight,
-around a turn in the road just ahead of me.
-
-"It was the Singing Doctor, whom I instantly recognized by his little old
-white horse, as well as by his own voice, to which I had before listened.
-The little animal was drenched like a 'drowned rat.' The doctor, in his
-open buggy, with no umbrella,--for the sweeping wind precluded the
-possibility of holding one,--and the driving rain pelting mercilessly
-upon his face and head, was singing.
-
-"'You must be a happy man,' I exclaimed, 'to be singing amid this awful
-storm.'
-
-"'Why not?' he replied. 'It is always better to be singing than sighing;'
-and we passed on through the dangerous defile, and separated....
-
-"Last summer, as I journeyed through the Green Mountain State on a
-pleasure excursion, I met, on a romantic mountain pass, a magnificent
-turnout,--a splendid top carriage, drawn by four beautiful, jet black
-Morgan mares,--which did not attract my attention so much, however, as the
-music within the carriage. It was the Singing Doctor again, with his two
-little daughters, singing.
-
-"The handsome and good-natured driver offered me the best half of the
-road; but still I lingered till the last notes of the song died away, when
-I drove past the 'Sanatorian,' wondering to myself what singing had to do
-with his increasing prosperity."
-
-The remainder of the sketch is from the pen of a lady in Vermont:--
-
-"I think it was during the spring of 1867 that our little 'city on the
-lake' was visited by the above remarkable character. We are often visited
-by migratory physicians, who are usually of the 'come-and-go' order; but
-this one burst upon us like a comet, with dazzling splendor, briefly
-announced, but at once proclaimed his determination of returning with the
-regularity of the full moon--repeating his visits every month. Few
-believed his last arrangement could be carried out, as his predecessors
-had generally fleeced the invalid public to their utmost at one visit, and
-if they ever again appeared, it would be under another name and phase. It
-soon became evident that one visit could not repay the outlay, for no
-ready posting-board was large enough to hold the agent's posters, which
-were printed in strips some twenty-five feet in length, and his
-advertisements occupied one, two, or more columns of the public journals,
-while he flooded the houses with his pictorial circulars.
-
-[Illustration: THE SINGING DOCTOR.]
-
-"He was merely announced as 'The Sanatorian,' but was indorsed (true or
-false?) by some of New England's most respectable people. He came in grand
-style, as the papers briefly announced, thus:--
-
-"'_The Sanatorian._ This distinguished physician proposes visiting us on
-the 18th inst.... The doctor comes in great style.... He has the finest
-carriage, and the gayest four black Morgan horses we have ever had the
-pleasure of riding after.'
-
-[Illustration: THE SANATORIAN'S TURNOUT.]
-
-"The driver, a handsome fellow, with full brown whiskers, curling hair,
-and a 'heavenly blue eye,' had taken the editor and writer of this last
-paragraph out to an airing. The team was photographed by the artists, and
-many of the best citizens had the pleasure of a ride in the easy carriage,
-and behind the swift ponies.
-
-"The doctor usually remained _incog._ to the public. If they wished to see
-him, they must go to his 'parlors' at the best hotels. They did go. And
-now the most remarkable part of the affair remains to be recorded. An
-editor who interviewed him reports thus: 'The doctor rocks in a
-rocking-chair,--in fact, never sits in anything else,--or arises and walks
-the floor, and instantly, _at a glance_, tells every patient each pain and
-ache better than the patient could describe them himself. 'Are you a
-clairvoyant?' the editor asked.
-
-"'_Faugh! No, sir._ Clairvoyancy is a humbug; merely power of mind over
-mind. A clairvoyant can go no farther than your _own_ knowledge leads him,
-unless he guesses the rest,' was his emphatic reply.
-
-"The same patients, disguised, visited him twice, but he would tell the
-same story to them as before. His diagnosis was truly wonderful.
-
-"'What is your mode of treatment, or what school do you represent?'
-
-"'There hangs my "school,"' he would reply, pointing to a New York college
-diploma. 'That, however, cures nobody. What cures one patient kills
-another. My opathy is to cure my patient by _any means_, regardless of
-"schools."'
-
-"To some he gave 'nothing but water,' the patients affirmed; to others,
-pills, powders, syrups, or prescriptions. Well, he came the next month, to
-our surprise, and to the joy of most of his patients. He did the greatest
-amount of advertising on the first visit, doing less and less puffing each
-time. The rich, as well as the poor, visited him. He charged all one
-dollar. Then, if they declined treatment, he was satisfied; but if they
-doubted, or were sceptical, he refused all prescription. He advertised
-quite as much by telling one man he was past all help, and would die in
-eight weeks, which he did, as by curing the mayor of the city of a cough
-that jeoparded his life. If a poor woman had no money, he treated her just
-as cheerfully. Men he would not. His cures are said to have been
-remarkable. He made some eleven visits, and his patrons increased at each
-visit; but the novelty wore off before he disappeared. He was said to be
-an excellent musician, an author and composer, a man who was well read (a
-physician here who often conversed with him so informed the writer), could
-translate Latin and French, and converse with the mutes. When the day
-closed, he would see no more patients, but devoted his time to friends, to
-writing, or to music. Often the hotel parlor would be thronged at evening
-with the musical portion of the community. In personal appearance he was
-nothing remarkable,--medium size, wore full beard, had a sharp black eye,
-a quick, nervous movement, and his voice was not unpleasing to the ear.
-
-"Why he--such a man--should travel, no one knew. He had an object,
-doubtless, to accomplish, realized it, and retired upon his true name, and
-from whence he came."
-
-
-"YOURAN, THE SPANKER."
-
-The writer has many times seen a fellow who travelled the country,
-nicknamed "the Spanker." He was a tall, lean, lank-looking Yankee, with
-red hair and whiskers, a light gray eye, and claimed to cure all diseases
-by "spatting" the patient, or the diseased part thereof, with cold water
-on his bare palm, the use of a battery, and a pill. He had served as
-door-keeper to a famous doctor, who created a _furore_, a few years since,
-by the exercise of his magnetic powers, making cripples to throw down
-their crutches, and walk off; the deaf to hear, the blind to see; or, at
-least, many of them _thought_ they did, for the time being, which answered
-the doctor's immediate purpose. But one fine morning the magnetic doctor
-found his door-keeper was among the "missing." He had learned the trade,
-and set up on his own account.
-
-This fellow was as ignorant of physic as Jack Reynolds was of Scripture.
-Reynolds, who killed Townsend in 1870, when under sentence of death,
-listened attentively for the first time to the story of the Saviour's
-crucifixion in atonement for our sins, when he rather startled the
-visitors, as well as the eminent divine, with the inquiry, "Did that
-affair happen lately?"
-
-He was not, it is evident, conversant with Scripture. "The Spanker" was
-not read in medicine. His treatment was the most ridiculous and repulsive
-of the absurdities of the nineteenth century. The patient was stripped of
-his clothes, and often so severely spanked as to compel him, or her, to
-cry out with pain.
-
-[Illustration: A NEW SCHOOL OF PRACTICE.]
-
-The beautiful young wife of the Rev. Mr. F., of Vermont, was brought to
-the writer for medical advice. The patient was carefully examined, and the
-minister taken aside, and assured that the lady was past all help; she was
-in the last stages of consumption; that she would, in all probability, die
-with the falling of the autumn leaves, or within two months.
-
-The following day the minister carried the patient to the spanker doctor,
-who declared her case quite curable. The minister employed him to treat
-the patient.
-
-A few weeks later I saw the minister, seated on the doorstep of his
-house, bowed in grief. He was on the lookout for me, as I was expected
-that way. He called to me, and asked if I would view the corpse of his
-once beautiful wife. I dismounted, and entered the house of mourning.
-There lay the poor, fair young face, within the narrow confines of the
-coffin. The cheeks were hollow, the eyes sunken, and the nostrils closed,
-and I doubt if any air had passed through the left one for
-weeks--pathognomonic indications of that fell disease, consumption.
-
-"She did not live as long, doctor, as you thought she would, in August,"
-said Mr. F.
-
-"No, sir: I did not then make allowance for the harsh treatment of Dr.
-----, that, I am advised, soon followed."
-
-[Illustration: A VICTIM OF THE SPANKER.]
-
-"O, sir," he exclaimed, in agony of soul, while the tears coursed freely
-down his cheeks, and fell upon the coffin,--"O, sir, God only knows what
-the poor thing suffered. Dr. Youran said the spatting and cold water
-treatment would save her, and I was anxious to try it, and did, till the
-poor, dear soul begged us, with tearful eyes, not to punish her further,
-but to let her die in peace."
-
-The ignorant scoundrel is still at large, preying upon the invalid public.
-It is a burning shame that the laxity of our laws permits such ignorant,
-heartless wretches to go about the country, imposing upon the credulity of
-invalidity.
-
-The invalids, as we said in our opening, expect to be humbugged, and will
-believe no honest statement of a case and its probabilities, but will too
-often swallow the lies and braggadocio, and finally the prescriptions, of
-ignorant charlatans and impostors.
-
-[Illustration: DR. PULSFEEL LEAVING TOWN.]
-
-Mr. Jeaffreson, in the "Book about Doctors," before often quoted, says of
-the English travelling doctor of the last century,--
-
-"When Dr. Pulsfeel was tired of London, or felt the want of country air,
-he adopted the pleasant occupation of fleecing rustic simplicity. For his
-journeys he provided himself with a stout and fast-trotting hack--stout,
-that it might bear weighty parcels of medical composition; fast, that in
-case the ungrateful rabble should commit the indecorum of stoning their
-benefactor as an impostor,--a mishap that would occasionally
-occur,--escape might be effected.
-
-"In his circuit the doctor took in all the fairs, markets, wakes, and
-public festivals, not disdaining to stop an entire week, or even month, at
-an assize town, where he found the sick anxious to benefit by his
-marvellous wisdom.
-
-"His manner of making himself known in a new place was to ride boldly into
-the thickest crowd of a town, and inform his listeners that he had come
-straight from the Duke of So-and-so, or the Emperor of Wallachia, out of
-an innate desire to do good to his fellow-creatures. He was born in that
-very town. He had left it when an orphan boy, to seek his fortune in the
-great world. His adventures had been wonderful. He had visited the Sultan
-and the Great Mogul; and the King of Mesopotamia had tried to persuade him
-to tarry and keep the Mesopotamians out of the devil's clutches by the
-offer of a thousand pieces of gold a month. He had cured thousands of
-emperors, kings, queens, princes, grand duchesses, and generalissimos. He
-sold all kinds of medicaments--dyes for the hair, washes for the
-complexion, lotions, rings, and love charms, powders to stay the palsy,
-fevers, croup, and jaundice. His powder was expensive; he couldn't help
-that; it was made of pearl-dust and dried violet leaves from the middle of
-Tartary. Still, he would sell his friends a package at bare cost,--one
-crown,--as he did not want to make money out of them.
-
-"Nothing could surpass the impudence of the fellow's lies, save the
-admiration with which his credulous auditors swallowed his assertions.
-There they stood--stout yeomen, drunken squires, gay peasant girls, gawky
-hinds and gabbling crones, deeming themselves in luck to have lived to
-behold such a miracle of wisdom. Possibly a young student, home from
-Oxford, with the rashness of inexperience, would smile scornfully, and cry
-out, 'Quack!' (quack-salver, from the article he used to cure wens); but
-such interruption was usually frowned down by the orthodox friends of the
-student, and he was warned that he would come to no good end, if he went
-on as he had begun, a contemptuous unbeliever, and a mocker of wise men."
-
-
-A MUSICAL DOCTOR.
-
-Mr. Dayton, vocalist, told me of a fellow who cut a swell in various
-capacities a few years ago. He first knew him as a fiddler at fairs. The
-next time he turned up was under the following circumstances:--
-
-"With Madam L. and some other renowned vocalist, he was giving concerts,
-when one day their pianist was taken suddenly sick. Madam was in great
-trepidation.
-
-[Illustration: THE MUSICAL DOCTOR.]
-
-"'What shall I do? The concert cannot be postponed, and we cannot sing
-unless we have an accompaniment,' exclaimed the lady.
-
-"I looked about, made some inquiry,--it was in a small town,--but no
-competent piano player could be found.
-
-"'We must abandon the concert,' I said, which seemed inevitable, when
-there came a sharp knock at the door.
-
-"'Come in,' I called.
-
-"The door opened, and instead of a servant, as I had expected, there
-appeared a tall, stout specimen of the _genus homo_, with large black
-eyes, and long, dark hair flowing down on to his shoulders, making his
-best bow, and what he doubtless intended as his sweetest smile.
-
-"I offered him a chair, and inquired how I could serve him.
-
-"'You want a piano player?'
-
-"'Yes.'
-
-"'Well, I will undertake to assist you in your strait. Allow me to see
-your programme,' he continued, very patronizingly, waiting for us to make
-no reply whatever.
-
-"'Are you--that is, do you play rapidly, and at sight?' asked madam.
-
-"He replied only by a gesture, a sort of pitiful contempt for the
-ignorance of any person who should ask _him_ such a question....
-
-"Half past seven came, and we went on the stage. I do not know what the
-fellow's prelude was; I was otherwise engaged; but his accompaniments were
-made up, and after he had heard the note sung to which he should have
-accompanied,--O, it was a horrid jargon, a consecutive blast of discords,
-a tempest of incomprehensibleness.
-
-[Illustration: ENTHUSIASM.]
-
-"Madam caught her breath at the first pausing-place, and signalled him to
-stop. He took a side glance at her, misinterpreted her, and played on the
-louder. It became ludicrous in the extreme. He played the minor strains,
-or what should have been minor, in the major key. He only stopped when he
-saw us leave the stage. The audience cheered. He took it all as a
-compliment to himself as a pianist, stopped, and made his most profound
-obeisance to the house. They laughed and cheered the harder. He mistook it
-for an _encore_, bowed again, and returned to the piano. Then the house
-came down. They stamped, they laughed, they shouted. The boys in the
-gallery cat-called; the building fairly shook. I ran back to see what it
-was all about, and there was the pianist (?) beating furiously at the
-keys, the perspiration pouring in streams from his face. But his playing
-could only be _seen_ to be appreciated; it could not be heard for the
-stamping of the audience. He finally desisted, and with repeated halts and
-smiles, he bowed himself off the stage.
-
-"His grand _debut_ and retirement upon the stage occurred the same night.
-Madam would not permit him to go on again, and we sang the duets from
----- without accompaniment. I think the fellow knew nothing of music; he
-had 'cheeked' it right through.
-
-"Perhaps it was two years afterwards--I was staying at the B. Hotel,
-Maine--when I heard a deal of talk about a great doctor then in town.
-After dinner the first day, I noticed a man sauntering leisurely from the
-dining-hall in embroidered slippers, white silk stockings, black pants,
-gaudy dressing-gown, with long hair falling down over his shoulders. I
-thought I recognized that face. I approached him after a while, and called
-him by name.
-
-"'What? Why, I think you are mistaken. I do not know you, sir,' he
-stammered; and then I knew he had recognized me.
-
-"'O, yes; I am Dayton. You remember you were our pianist once in a strait,
-in S.'
-
-"'O, ah! Come up to my room,' he said, leading the way.
-
-"I followed, when he told me he was doing a good thing at the practice of
-medicine about the principal towns of the state, and begged I would say
-nothing about his former occupation. He stated to me that he had been to
-Europe, and had been studying medicine meantime, which I have since
-ascertained was entirely untrue."
-
-And this was the fellow over whom the town was running wild.
-
-The idea of some men trying to become good physicians is as ridiculously
-absurd as Horace Greeley's farming, or trying to ascertain if "cundurango
-is explosive." The requisite qualities are not in them. They may keep
-along a few years, or possibly, in communities where there is no
-competition, succeed in making the people believe they are as good as the
-common run, and thus succeed on brass instead of brains.
-
-Some of these brainless travelling impostors employ a female or two to
-precede them from place to place, and make diligent inquiry when the great
-doctor who performed such marvellous cures in some adjoining town
-mentioned was coming there. Thus putting it in the shape of an inquiry, it
-was less likely to excite suspicion.
-
-Two females--one an elderly, lady-like looking woman, the other younger,
-and anything but lady-like--travelled for a doctor, on a salary, during
-the summer and autumn of 1868. A lady whose occupation took her from town
-to town, seeing the two females at various hotels where the doctor was
-advertised, inveigled the younger one into the confession, in her bad
-temper, and thus I got my evidence. Another travels on his hair; another
-on his face; and a fourth on his free advice and treatment; while a fifth
-succeeds by absurdity of dress.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-XIV.
-
-SCENES FROM EVERY-DAY PRACTICE.
-
-    "History, so warm on meaner themes,
-    Is cold on this."--COWPER'S TASK.
-
-    "Let no one say that his task is o'er,
-    That bonds of earth are for him no more,
-    Until by some kind or holy deed
-    His name from forgetfulness is freed;
-    Until by words from his lips or pen,
-    Dying, he's 'missed' from the ranks of men."
-                                            ALICE LEE.
-
-    THE BEGGAR BOY AND THE GOLDEN-HAIRED HEIRESS.--MY MIDNIGHT CALL.--THE
-    CONSCIENCE-STRICKEN MOTHER.--"OLD SEROSITY."--THE ILLEGITIMATE
-    CHILD.--DEATH OF THE BEAUTIFUL.--WHO IS THE HEIR?--A TOUCHING
-    SCENE.--FATE OF THE "BEGGAR BOY."--THE TERRIBLE CALLER.--AN IRISH
-    SCENE, FROM DR. DIXON'S BOOK.--BIDDY ON A RAMPAGE.--TERRY ON HIS DEATH
-    BED.--THE STOMACH PUMP.--BIDDY WON'T, AND SHE WILL.--THE BETRAYED AND
-    HER BETRAYER.--"IS THERE A GOD IN ISRAEL?"--THE HUSBANDLESS
-    MOTHER.--THE CRISIS AND COURT.--ANSWER.--THERE IS A "GOD IN ISRAEL."
-
-
-Ill-clad poverty, benumbed with cold, was abroad alone, exposed to that
-winter's night, as the white snow fleeced the frost-hardened ground. But
-never mind earth's cold bosom. The rich man's heart warms _him_, making
-him merry, however blows the wind or rages the storm. Shiver, shiver on,
-beggar poor! Starvation and sense-dulling cold alone belong to you.
-
-Through the crunching snow-drifts trudged a weary boy, with alms-basket on
-his shivering arm. From his figure, he seemed not over ten years old; but
-his face was so wan and melancholy, that it was difficult to tell how
-many year-blights the beggar child had experienced. Summer clothes were
-still clinging to him; a tattered comforter was the only winter article he
-wore.
-
-[Illustration: CHARITY THROWN AWAY.]
-
-A gay carriage rolled noiselessly by, with a beautiful girl within, well
-wrapped in fur and cloak, whilst the snow was dashed from the rapid wheels
-like white dust. She saw, through the dim light, the weary, thin-clad boy,
-as he stopped, with face bent aside to the flake-burdened blast, to gaze
-at the smoking horses, as they plunged through the fast-deepening sheet.
-She dropped the sash, and threw the boy a coin. It sank from her warm hand
-deep into the drifted snow. It might have brought him bread and a
-cheering fagot, but the smitten child never found it. The snow closed over
-the coveted prize, while the blast grew keener.
-
-On, on toiled the beggar boy, through drift and darkness, more weary as
-night gathered on. Thus is it ever with the humble poor; their load grows
-heavier as life lessens. No light or warming hearth is there--things that
-make house a home--to welcome the wandering boy.
-
-The clock had just struck two as I was summoned to the house of Mrs. T.
-The same carriage that, in the evening, had borne the beautiful young
-girl, awaited at my door, with its impatient horses snorting against the
-frosted air. A few minutes later I entered the house. Mrs. T. met me in
-the hall, with her face deadly pale, and manner much excited. Her singular
-nervousness had before struck me on my visits, whenever her daughter
-ailed. She informed me that her "darling Emily" was very ill with a high
-fever.
-
-We entered the chamber. The young girl lay with her head turned aside upon
-the pillow, her golden-brown hair scattered in wild profusion upon its
-white cover, while the nurse was gently moistening the fevered palm of her
-outstretched hand. The pulse was beating wildly at the wrist and temples,
-and fever heat glowed from her lustrous eyes. Whilst the nurse held the
-light to her face, the traces of dried tears were revealed upon her
-suffused cheeks.
-
-"Heartache surely is here," I said to myself.
-
-There was something in the whole appearance of my patient that excited my
-curiosity and surprise. Only eight or ten hours had passed since she, from
-her carriage, had thrown the snow-claimed alms to the beggar boy, and
-_now_ a high fever was running hot through every artery of her body.
-
-Silently seated by the bedside, after administering a cooling draught I
-awaited and watched for the changes that might ensue. Her mother sat near
-the fire, its blaze lighting up every feature of her once beautiful face,
-which still remained very pale. In all my intercourse with Mrs. T., I
-never before had so prolonged an opportunity of examining in detail the
-expression of her countenance. The longer I gazed on her, the more
-satisfied I became that she had not passed through life without a fearful
-history.
-
-It was this sensation which struck me when I first became acquainted with
-her. A few vague rumors had floated about relative to her history; that a
-strange desertion of her husband had taken place, and that he afterwards
-was found drowned in the river, near his residence, and that by his death
-Mrs. T. had become possessed of an immense estate. These stories had,
-however, soon subsided; and as her means were ample, and her charities
-liberal, the gossips of the town quietly dropped the past, and speculated
-upon the future, as should all respectable gossips.
-
-The voice of the patient diverted my thoughts; a few words were murmured,
-and then the lips pressed tremblingly together, and the tear-drops again
-started to her cheeks. Suddenly springing up in bed, and threading her
-long, curling hair through her slender fingers, she exclaimed, in a
-thrilling, delirious tone,--
-
-"It cannot be true! O, mother--tell me, mother!"
-
-Mrs. T. fairly leaped to the bedside, and placing her hand over the
-daughter's mouth, with affrighted gestures, she exclaimed,--
-
-"What is it? What does she mean? My God, doctor, she raves!"
-
-The girl fell back on her pillow; the mother stood, pale and trembling, by
-the bedside, with a nameless terror depicted on every feature. Turning to
-me, in a quick, restless voice, she bade me hasten to give her child a
-quieting draught.
-
-"O, anything that will keep her from raving!"
-
-The room was not over warm for such a bitter night, yet the perspiration
-stood upon the brow of the excited mother like the fallen dew.
-
-"Conscience must lie here," I thought to myself.
-
-In the course of an hour the sufferer slumbered heavily; her breathing was
-hurried and oppressed, the fever had increased, and her moanings were
-constant.
-
-Day was breaking, as I left my young patient to return home through the
-falling snow. As I looked out of the carriage window, I saw a little boy
-sitting on the cold walk. It was the poor beggar boy of yesterday, as
-thinly clad, with his pale cheek as white as the snowdrifts through which
-he had toiled. I ordered the coachman to stop.
-
-[Illustration: THE BEGGAR BOY.]
-
-"What brought you out, and where are you going, on this cold winter
-morning, my poor boy?" I exclaimed.
-
-He raised his beautiful dark eyes to my face, and my heart grieved at
-their look of utter hopelessness, as he faintly answered, "To beg for me
-and old grandma."
-
-"Are you not very cold, in those thin clothes?" I asked.
-
-His little teeth chattered, as he replied, "O, I am very--cold--sir."
-
-The impatient horses plunged violently in the traces, and the coachman
-asked to be allowed to drive on. I gave the poor boy the few silver coins
-that were in my pocket, and we passed on.
-
-I never saw that boy but once again; his look haunts me to this day.
-
-As I rode on, memory was busy tracing where I had ever seen features like
-his. The dark hair, that lay in uncombed curls upon his forehead, and
-clustered warmly about his neck, as though in protection against the
-bitter cold; his large, black eyes, with their long lashes; the
-finely-chiselled outlines of his mouth and nose,--these all impressed me
-that I had somewhere seen a face which strikingly resembled his. Poor boy!
-beauty was his only possession.
-
-At breakfast a letter was handed me, summoning me immediately to one of my
-own children, who lay sick in a distant town. Before leaving I wrote a
-hurried note to Mrs. T., stating the cause of my sudden departure,
-desiring her to call another physician, during my absence. The young
-girl's fate and the poor beggar boy's face were almost forgotten in my own
-cares.
-
-On the sixth day following, I again found myself at home. My first thought
-was for poor Emily. I dreaded to ask; there was something whispering to my
-heart that all was not well.
-
-My suspense was not long; a messenger had just left, stating that the dear
-girl was fast failing; that her physician had pronounced her laboring
-under typhus fever. My God, how my heart sank under these words! I had
-dreaded this mistake after I left. Alas! how many have fallen by the name
-of a disease, and not by the disease itself!
-
-After a hurried meal, I drove rapidly to Mr. T.'s residence. The house
-door was quietly opened by a servant, and in another minute I stood in the
-chamber of the invalid. The mantel was crowded with numerous vials. The
-close atmosphere of the sick-room was sickening. By the bedside, with her
-face bowed over one of the pale hands of the daughter, which she held in
-both of her own, sat the wretched mother. It seemed to me as though ten
-years had passed over her faded and care-worn countenance, since I last
-gazed upon it. I could not stir; my heart stood still. _Her hair had
-become entirely gray._
-
-[Illustration: REMORSE.]
-
-I gained heart to approach; the desolate mother heard me, and turning
-quickly she sprang from her chair, and placing her hands on my shoulders,
-she bowed her head: she sobbed wildly, as though her heart would break.
-
-"Look, look, doctor! Would you have known her? O, my God, she is leaving
-me! Save her--O, save her!" and the wretched mother fell fainting to the
-floor. We gently raised and bore her to her own chamber. In a few moments
-I returned to Emily. She turned her head languidly towards me, while her
-right hand moved as if to take mine. How dry was the palm! Her color had
-faded away; the once rounded cheeks were sunken. O, I will not describe
-her!
-
-The physician who had been called, after my departure, had found her with
-high fever and delirium. He mistook the excitement of the brain for its
-inflammation. O, fatal error! A consultation was called. The second comer
-was notedly a man who viewed every excitement as caused by "an over-action
-of the vessels," and bleeding was its only relief. The nervous system he
-entirely ignored. From his theory, man was a mere combination of blood,
-blood-vessels, and biliary secretions, more or less deranged. Calomel,
-salts, and the lancet were his Hercules. The grand _causa mortis_ amongst
-the human family was "serosity." Hence some evil-minded wag amongst his
-brethren had named him "Old Serosity."
-
-The poor child had been bled, cupped, and purged, in order to subdue this
-"over-action of the blood-vessels." Verily it may cure the vessels, but it
-certainly kills the patient.
-
-The life current was nigh exhausted; there was no blood left for renewal
-of brain, nerve, or vital tissue. My heart was bitter against this
-murderous adherence to a false principle. Here a human life, that of a
-young and spotless girl, was the forfeit.
-
-But to return to the thread of the narrative.
-
-"O, I am glad you have come back to me. Do try to save me, doctor," she
-said, with great effort. Sending the nurse from the room, I quickly
-pressed the young girl's hand within my own, and said to her,--
-
-"Do you really wish to live, Emily?"
-
-"Yes, yes," she murmured; "I am very young to die."
-
-"Then, my dear, tell me truly what has so terribly shocked your nervous
-system; tell me." With a strength that startled me, she searched under the
-mattress side, and drew forth a small note, which she silently placed in
-my hand. It was discolored by time. I opened it; the date was above twelve
-years back. It ran thus:--
-
-"When you receive this, Mira (Mrs. T.'s given name), my career will have
-ended. By my death you will inherit all. Let my unborn child have its
-just, legal claim. Your child, Emily, take to your home as though she were
-an adopted orphan. Let not her youth be blighted by the knowledge of her
-unblest birth. I forgive you. Adieu, forever. H. T."
-
-"O my God, the doomed child is illegitimate," I said. I stooped down and
-kissed the sufferer's forehead, and promised that I would be a father to
-her. "Come, cheer up," I whispered, "for your mother's sake. If she has
-sinned she has suffered much for your sake; forgive her."
-
-"I do forgive her," she whispered, "but can I forget myself, unblessed as
-I am? But I must know the whole truth. O, where is the right heir of all
-this wealth? My memory returns now, indistinctly, to my earlier days. A
-cloud intervenes. I remember but a small cottage, in a deep wood, where
-mother often came to see me, and a tall woman took care of me. Then came a
-gay carriage, and took me to a large house; but I never again returned to
-the cottage in the wood. There, at the large house, mother left me a long
-time; and when she came back--O, doctor, I can speak no longer. Do give me
-something to strengthen me, and I will try yet to live."
-
-A cordial was administered by my own hands, and in a short time sleep
-overcame her. Night again closed in; the wind had sunk to rest with the
-setting sun. Another night of bitter cold was ushered in. Woe to the poor!
-Woe to the hungry and the fireless.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-As I entered the mother's apartments I found her sitting by a private
-secretary, which had been brought from the library. Its lid was open, and
-as I seated myself she took from a package of tied letters a sealed paper,
-and placing it in my hands, said,--
-
-"Read this at your leisure, doctor. My pilgrimage of life is nigh ended.
-You will judge how great my sin, and how severe has been my punishment. I
-ask no forgiveness, _for there will be none left to forgive me_."
-
-Well, I knew her heart was nigh crushed!
-
-I sought the daughter's chamber. How still was everything! The very
-candle, with its long flame, parted by the thickened wick-char, seemed not
-to flicker, as it burned dimly on. I looked at the bed; the sweet girl lay
-with both hands crossed upon her bosom, as though in prayer. An
-orange-blossom had dropped from her grasp, and lay neglected by her side;
-her life-hand never touched it more! Death had claimed his bride!
-
-A wild shriek sounded through the house. The erring mother now knew that
-she was alone in the great world.
-
-Whilst the shrouding of the dead took place I retired and opened the
-sealed package. It briefly told its tale of sin and sorrow.
-
-It told how from the first love Emily was the fruit, and how, unknown to
-all, the child had been secreted; how, about three years after Emily's
-birth, the mother was married to Harold T., whom _she never loved_; and
-how, by a singular accident, the knowledge of her transgression became
-known to her husband; that, after violently cursing her for her sin and
-deception, he left her, and shortly afterwards committed suicide; that
-the letter (written by him just before his death), which was so fatal to
-the peace and life of Emily, had accidentally dropped from the secretary,
-and was picked up by her (that night after her return in the carriage),
-unknown to the mother until the sixth day after my return, when she missed
-it.
-
-The narrative went on to state that a male child was born after T.'s
-death, and that, seized with an insane fury, she resolved that he never
-should inherit its father's name and wealth; and that, through the
-assistance of a nurse, it was placed with a sum of money at a beggar's
-door, and a dead child laid beside the mother instead; that before sending
-the infant away, the nurse tattooed its father's initials on its left arm.
-The beggar had died, and all traces of the child had been lost. At length
-her guilty conscience so reproached her that the mother had instituted
-search for the child, but all in vain.
-
-As I read this tale of crime and repentance, busy memory traced out the
-features of the _beggar boy_! Like a sudden light it burst upon me--those
-features that had so tormented my memory to recall were those of the
-unhappy mother.
-
-Quickly I went to her room. She was not there. I hastened to Emily's. The
-mother was wildly clasping the enshrouded form of her daughter, and
-weeping as though her heart would break asunder. Gently removing her to
-her own chamber, I intimated that another child, long lost, might yet be
-restored to her.
-
-She listened as one bewildered. I then informed her of my adventure with
-the beggar boy.
-
-It was hardly day-dawn as I entered the carriage. My breath froze against
-the window panes. After a short ride the horses stopped before the
-wretched snow-covered hovel (where he had seen the beggar child once
-enter). I opened the carriage door, leaped out, and placed my hand on the
-latch. The door opened. It was neither bolted nor locked; for no thief
-would enter there. In the corner of the room lay a bundle of rugs, with
-some straw, but it was unoccupied. Near the fireplace, where nought but a
-little well-charred bark remained upon the cold ashes, half reclining in a
-large wooden chair, lay the beggar boy.
-
-[Illustration: THE LOST HEIR.]
-
-His cap had fallen on the ground, and his dark, curling hair fell
-clustering over his extended arm, as his head rested upon it. He had
-seemingly fallen asleep the night before, for his thin summer clothes were
-on his person, and his basket, yet filled with the fragments of broken
-feasts, remained untouched at his feet. I placed my hand upon his
-beautiful head; it was icy cold. Quickly brushing back the fallen ringlets
-from his face, the unmistakable evidence of death met my gaze.
-
-He had apparently fallen asleep weeping, for a tear-drop lay frozen
-between the long lashes that fringed the eyelids.
-
-I raised the stiffened body of the ill-fated youth, and tearing away the
-thin sleeve from his left arm, I distinctly discovered the letters 'H. T.'
-thereon.
-
-Deserted, famished, and frozen, death had claimed the darling, lone boy
-before he knew a mother's love!
-
-This sad tale is taken from "_Scenes in Northern Practice by Dr. Dewees_,
-N. Y."--_Scalpel_, 1855. (And like all the stories herein, it has the
-merit of being true to the letter.)
-
-
-THE TERRIBLE CALLER.
-
-It was about half past nine in the morning.
-
-My office door suddenly opened, and looking up from my writing, I saw,
-standing in the passage-way, a very tall man, in a long white frock,
-reaching to his knees, sleeves rolled to his elbows, a slouched hat set
-back on his head, his face painted or bedaubed with some white substance,
-and his eyes gleaming upon me most intensely!
-
-There he stood, looking almost fiercely upon me, while he held the
-door-knob with his left hand, and grasped with his right a long
-carving-knife, which was thrust through his belt.
-
-"Are you the doctor?" he shouted with excitement.
-
-"I am the doctor," I replied, calmly awaiting my fate.
-
-He instantly stepped inside the room, when close behind him was revealed
-the form of a very short man, who held a Kossuth hat in one hand, while
-with a handkerchief in the other, he stanched the blood that had evidently
-been flowing pretty freely from his head.
-
-"This man has cut himself very bad on the head; big iron wheel come down
-on him: can you fix him up?" asked the first. This accounted for his
-excited manner. But how about the bedaubed face and the huge knife?
-
-[Illustration: A MORNING CALLER.]
-
-I examined the wound, only through the scalp, less than three inches in
-length; and washing away the surplus clotted blood, I clipped off the
-hair, and soon secured the edges of the gaping wound by taking a stitch or
-two through the scalp.
-
-While so doing, the young man rolled his eyes up to his tall
-companion,--who had explained that they were cooks at Young's Hotel, and
-that the spit wheel and shaft used for turning meat had fallen eight feet;
-by which the assistant had barely escaped being killed,--and with a
-commendable show of thought for his employer's interest, rather than his
-own comfort or safety, he anxiously exclaimed,--
-
-"Jim, do you think that gentleman's 'order,' what I had in the spit, is
-overdone yet?"
-
-
-AN IRISH SCENE.
-
-A young Irish girl, with a wild shriek, an "Och, hone!" and "Ah, murther!"
-and "Hulla-boo--a--hulla-boo, poor Terry! Ah, why did I taze ye?" burst
-into my office one evening, upsetting the servant, and actually laying
-hold on me with her hands, as she exclaimed,--
-
-"Ah, docther, docther, come now, for the love o' the moother that bore ye;
-come this blessed minute. I've killed poor Terry, an' niver shall see him
-again. Ah, murther, murther! Why did I taze ye?"
-
-[Illustration: "WHY DID I TAZE YE?"]
-
-Trying in vain to calm her, I hastily drew on my boots, and almost ran
-after her to a wretched tenement, some quarter of a mile off, and found
-the object of the girl's solicitude alive and kicking, with his lungs in
-the best of order, standing on the stairs that led to his miserable
-chamber, with a broken scissors in his hand, stirring busily the contents
-of a tea-cup.
-
-It seems that he had been courting my fair guide, and after the period she
-had fixed for her final answer to his declaration, she had bantered him
-with a refusal, which her solicitude for his life plainly showed was far
-enough from her real intentions.
-
-In his despair he had swallowed an ounce of laudanum, which he had
-procured from some injudicious druggist, which act had sent Biddy off
-after me in such terror. He was now mixing a powder which he had obtained
-from another druggist, who, knowing of his love affair, it will be seen
-acted with more wisdom than the first, as Terry let slip enough in his
-hearing to show what he wanted to do with the "ratsbane" for which he
-inquired; and Biddy, like a true daughter of Eve, had made no secret in
-the neighborhood that she valued her charms beyond the poor fellow's bid.
-
-As soon as she approached, he, by some inopportune remark, re-excited her
-wrath, and she again declared she wouldn't have him, "if he wint to the
-divil."
-
-Poor Terry, in his red shirt and blue stockings, and an attitude of the
-grandest kind, but covering, as we soon found, a desperate purpose,
-flourished his tea-cup, and stirred its contents with the scissors,
-constantly exclaiming,--
-
-"Ah, Biddy, will ye have me? Ye'll have me now--will ye not?"
-
-Still Biddy refused.
-
-"Divil a bit will I let the docther come near me till ye say yis! Sure,
-weren't we children together in the ould counthry? and didn't we take our
-potaties and butthermilk out o' the same bowl? And yer mother, that's now
-dead, always said ye were to be me wife; and now ye're kapin' coompany
-with that dirty blackguard, Jim O'Connor,--divil take him for a spalpeen.
-Ah, Biddy, will ye have me?"
-
-And he flourished the cup, and stirred away vigorously with the scissors.
-
-Biddy's blood was up at the disrespectful mention made of Jimmy's name,
-for "he had a winnin' way wid him," and she shouted at the top of her
-voice,--
-
-"No, be the St. Patrick, I'll niver have ye."
-
-With an awful gulp, Terry drained the cup, rolled up his eyes, and with
-one most impassioned yet ludicrous look at her, he fell upon his knees on
-the step.
-
-Biddy followed, in strong hysterics.
-
-The whole affair was so irresistibly ludicrous that I scarce could keep
-from laughing; but on observing the bottle, labelled "laudanum," and
-looking into the bottom of the tea-cup, and discovering a white powder, I
-changed my prognosis, and hastened to the druggist's near, to see what it
-was, and procure an antidote, should it really prove "ratsbane."
-
-To my great relief, the man of drugs informed me, laughingly, that he had
-given Terry a quantity of chalk and _eight grains of tartar emetic_, as he
-learned that Terry was already in possession of the ounce of laudanum, and
-all the neighbors knew that Biddy had driven him to desperation by
-flirting with his rival, Jim O'Connor. The young man had judiciously told
-Terry that the powder would make the laudanum sure to operate more
-effectually.
-
-"How long will it take?" he asked, and bagged all for use when the refusal
-should come.
-
-My course was now clear. I was in for sport. Sending the druggist's clerk
-for my stomach-pump, to be in readiness in case the emetic should not
-operate,--which was scarcely impossible, for eight grains of tartar
-emetic, taken at a dose, would almost vomit the potatoes out of a bag,--I
-waited the result.
-
-As for Biddy, I let her lie; for I thought she deserved her punishment. My
-heart was always tender towards the sex, and I generally expected a
-"fellow-feeling."
-
-[Illustration: SUCCESS OF TERRY'S COURTSHIP.]
-
-In a short time it became evident that Terry's stomach was not so tough as
-his will, and he began to intermingle long and portentous sighs with his
-prayers, and to perspire freely. I gave him a wide berth, in anticipation
-of the Jonah that was to come up shortly. I was anxious now that Biddy
-should revive in time to witness his grand effort. Terry was tough, and
-held out. Shortly she revived, and suddenly starting up, and recollecting
-the situation, she made one bound for Terry, crying,--
-
-"Ah, Terry, Terry, dear Terry! I'll have ye now. Yis, I will; and I don't
-care who hears me. I always loved ye, but that divil's baby, Mag, always
-kept tellin' me ye'd love me the betther if I didn't give in to ye too
-soon. Ah, Terry, dear, only live, and I'll go to the ends of the world for
-ye. Ah, an' what would me poor mother say, if she was here? Och, hone!
-Och, hone! Docther, now what are ye doin'? A purty docther ye are; an' ye
-pumped out yer own counthryman, that didn't die, sure, an' he tuk twice as
-much as poor Terry."
-
-Meantime the boy had arrived with the pump.
-
-"Up wid ye now, and use the black pipe ye put down the poor fellow's
-throat over the way last summer. I'd take it mesilf, if it would do; but
-God knows whether I'd be worth the throuble."
-
-As Terry had not yet cast up his accounts, and the stomach-pump was at
-hand, I determined to make a little more capital out of the case, and
-thrusting the long, flexible India rubber tube down poor Terry's throat,
-having separated his teeth by means of a stick, and holding his head
-between my knees, I soon had the satisfaction of depositing the laudanum
-and tartar emetic in a swill pail, the only article of the toilet the
-place afforded.
-
-After years proved Terry and Biddy most loving companions. He never, even
-when drunk, more than threatened her "wid a batin', which she was
-desarvin'," and she never forgave "that divil's baby, Mag," for her cruel
-experiment on her heroic and devoted Terry.--_Practice of a New York
-Surgeon._
-
-
-A LIFE SCENE.
-
-_The Situation._--I was young, but, with a wife and child dependent upon
-my practice for food, raiment, and shelter, I was striving manfully; with
-my household gods and goods I had located here, in a small village, a year
-before. My beginning was encouraging, my success in practice more than
-flattering. But an immense opposition had met and nearly overthrown me, in
-the form of a man, a deacon of the ---- church. He was one of those "rule
-or ruin" men whom you will find in every one-horse village. I did not at
-first know my man,--he did not know me,--or I should have avoided his ill
-will. I did not know his tenaciousness of titles--he was an esquire
-also--which was my first unpardonable offence. He swore--"as deacons
-do"--that I should not practise in that town. I swore, as doctors will,
-that "so long as I could obtain a potato and a clam a day I would remain
-while he was my opposer." Clams could be dug at low water, within a few
-rods of my house; potatoes I grew on the quarter acre of ground given me
-as partial inducement to settle in that town. His two drunken sons were
-his emissaries of evil, set on for my overthrow, in addition to the
-father's voice and known opposition, which few dared to meet. My practice
-dwindled. A few Nicodemuses came by night, but my darling wife trembled
-for my very life when I had a night call. My provision was often short, my
-poor horse was mere skin and bones, standing, day after day, gnawing his
-empty manger.
-
-"O, is there a God in Israel?" I cried, in my anguish, more than once.
-
-Yes, the reply came to my prayers; there is a God of recompense.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-_The Betrayed._--My patient was a young girl, over whose golden head but
-seventeen summers had flown, on rosy wings. Her form was sylph-like, and
-face as beautiful as the opening flower in the golden sunshine of early
-day. She was an attendant at _his_ church, a member of _his_ Sabbath
-school class, and a singer in the choir....
-
-[Illustration: THE BETRAYED.]
-
-I was shown to her room. Sorrow, and not disease, had left its impress
-upon her fair young face. Rumor had already given me a hint on which to
-diagnose my case.
-
-"Who has done this wicked thing?" I asked, holding her hand, and looking
-kindly into her eyes.
-
-"O, my God! O, I must not tell," she cried, springing up from her couch. I
-never shall forget the terror depicted on that fair young countenance, as
-she pronounced these words.
-
-"You must tell. You should not suffer this shame and burden alone. Tell me
-truly. Who has done it? I must know. There may be a chance to cover the
-shame and make your babe legitimate. Come," I said.
-
-"O, sir, dear doctor, it can never be;" and she fell back on her pillow,
-weeping and wringing her hands in awful anguish.
-
-"Come, it shall be done;" and I firmly held to the point.
-
-She arose. I gave her a bowl and napkin that were near; she bathed her
-inflamed and swollen eyes, then, with surprising calmness and fortitude,
-took a pencil and a bit of paper from the light-stand at her bedside, and
-wrote a name.
-
-She then handed it to me, saying "'Tis he." I read the name. I jumped to
-my feet. I forgot my tender patient. I forgot all but my own sufferings,
-and those of my dear little wife and darling babe, and their enemy, as I
-cried out,--
-
-"O, my God in Israel! I have got him! I shall be avenged!"
-
-"O, don't, doctor! What is the matter?" exclaimed the affrighted girl,
-rising in bed. I had rushed, almost frantically across the room and back.
-"Forgive me," I said, "I--I forgot myself. Pardon me."
-
-"O, sir, I thought you were mad."
-
-"I was, dear girl. It is past. Now to your case." And I proceeded to
-unfold to her unsophisticated mind the true state of affairs. Here was a
-pure, respectable, though poor young girl, under age, who had been
-betrayed, locked into an office, and seduced by a son of the squire, and
-deserted, threatened--left to bear the burden and disgrace alone. She
-dared not divulge the name of her destroyer, because of the position of
-his family in the community. I dared. But to bring her mind up above her
-fears, to compel the young man to make restitution, as far as lay in his
-power, was a severe task. It was my duty to do this; sweeter then than
-duty, it was my revenge! By implicating the real villain, I released
-several other young men from suspicion, particularly one young man with
-red hair.
-
-The girl was taken away from the sight of dear sister's sinister looks,
-and the influence and threats of the seducer, and secret offers of bribery
-of the deacon, his father.
-
-The law took its course. No eye could see the hand that worked the
-machinery. The time was counted almost to a day, as the result proved. The
-young man was arrested, and gave bonds. It became the theme of general
-conversation. I was interviewed. I was dumb--deaf--blind! Threats and
-bribes proved equally ineffectual to induce me to give an opinion, or a
-pledge not to appear in the coming trial at the next term of the Superior
-Court. To marry the poor, unfortunate girl was beneath the dignity of the
-seducer and family. They would pay their last farthing first, or the young
-man would sooner go to prison for the crime. His two sisters carried their
-heads higher than ever. The two sons threatened my life. But I kept on the
-even tenor of my way. The girl became a mother.
-
-"Next Tuesday court sits," whispered everybody, and nothing in town was
-discussed but the probabilities of the pending lawsuit.
-
-The lawsuit was nothing, the fine was nothing, which the justice might
-impose; even imprisonment was nothing in comparison to acknowledgment of
-an illegitimate child by the deacon's family, notwithstanding the child
-was not red-haired, but much resembled its reputed father, the deacon's
-son.
-
-There was no trial. The squire paid a sum of money to the idiotic old
-father of the beautiful young mother, and agreed, orally, to support the
-child, and the suit was withdrawn. But this virtually acknowledged the
-child, and the girl returned to her father's roof for shelter, and a place
-wherein to weep alone over her so-called fatherless child, and hide her
-shame (?) from the uncharitable world.
-
-The town became too cramped for the squire and his beautiful family. He
-sold out, but not before he had lost his rule there, and was hanged in
-effigy as being "too Secesh."
-
-The seducer married a frail beauty, who mourns a drunken, brutish husband.
-
-The other son became steady, and married a lovely girl--my first patient.
-
-The daughters never wedded. Too proud to marry a poor man, too poor and
-destitute of real beauty or accomplishments for a wealthy or refined man
-to desire to wed them, they became servants and lackeys. If I desire a
-lunch at a certain saloon, one of them awaits my order. No matter about
-the other unfortunate, unloved girl. The father is an imbecile invalid.
-God is my witness, my judge, I long ago buried my hard feelings against
-them; they have only my commiseration.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-XV.
-
-DOCTORS' FEES AND INCOMES.
-
-    "Three faces wears the doctor; when first sought,
-    An angel's and a god's, the cure half wrought;
-    But, when, the cure complete, he seeks his fee,
-    The d----l looks then less terrible than he."
-                                          EURICUS CORDUS, 1530.
-
-    ANCIENT FEES.--LARGE FEES.--SPANISH PRIEST-DOCTORS.--A PIG ON
-    PENANCE.--SMALL FEES.--A "CHOP" POSTPONED.--LONG FEES.--SHORT
-    FEES.--OLD FEES.--A NIGHT-CAP.--AN OLD SHOE FOR LUCK.--A BLACK
-    FEE.--"HEART'S OFFERING."--A STUFFED CAT.--THE "GREAT GUNS" OF NEW
-    YORK.--BOSTON.--ROTTEN EGGS.--"CATCH WHAT YOU CAN."--FEMALE DOCTORS'
-    FEES.--ABOVE PRICE.--"ASK FOR A FEE."--"PITCH HIM
-    OVERBOARD."--DELICATE FEES.--MAKING THE MOST OF THEM.
-
-
-The great German physician who wrote the above died (as he ought, for
-putting so much truth into four lines) in 1538. He, of all physicians of
-his day, earned his fees; but it is often the case that the most deserving
-get the least reward, and Cordus was not an exception to the rule. A good
-physician, or surgeon, is seldom a sharp financier, and _vice versa_. "It
-is hard to serve two masters."
-
-Ancient physicians' fees were much larger, considering the difference in
-the value of money, than modern.
-
-ERASISTRATUS, in the year 330 B. C., received from General Seleucus, of
-Alexander's army, to whom the kingdom of Syria fell at the termination of
-the Macedonian conquest, the enormous sum of 60,000 crowns as a fee for
-his discovery of the disorder of the general's son, Antiochus. The Emperor
-Augustus employed four physicians, viz., Albutus, Arantius, Calpetanus,
-and Rubrius, to each of whom he paid an annual salary of 250,000
-sesterces, equal to $10,000. Martialis, the Spanish epigramist, who was
-born in 40 A. D. says Alconius received 10,000,000 sesterces ($400,000)
-for a few years' practice.
-
-
-LARGE FEES.
-
-French physicians were never very well paid. The surgeons of Charlemagne
-were tolerably well recompensed. Ambrose Pare, the great surgeon, and
-inventor of ligatures (for peculiar arteries),--previous to whose time the
-arteries were seared with a hot iron; otherwise the patient bled to
-death,--received 5,000 francs for ligaturing one artery. Louis XIV. gave
-his surgeons 75,000 crowns each for successfully performing upon him a
-surgical operation.
-
-Upon the confinement of Maria Louise, second wife of the great Napoleon,
-four physicians--Bourdier, Corvisat, Dubois, and Ivan--received the sum of
-$20,000. Dubois was the principal, and received one half of the
-amount,--not a very extravagant remuneration; but then Napoleon held a
-mean opinion of physicians in general, and this fee was not to be wondered
-at. Dupuytren, the distinguished French surgeon, left a property of
-$1,580,000. Hahnemann, who, in 1785, at Dresden, abandoned physic in
-disgust, afterwards went to Paris, and at the time of his death was
-literally besieged with patients, reaping a reward for his labors of not
-less than $40,000 per annum. Boerhaave was a successful practitioner, born
-at Leyden, and left, at his death, $200,000 from private practice. John
-Stow, the eminent antiquarian writer, whose misfortunes compelled him to
-beg his daily bread at the age of eighty, informs us that "half a crown
-(English) was looked upon as a large fee in Holland, while in England, at
-that same time, a physician scorned to touch any fee but gold, and
-surgeons were still more exorbitant."
-
-In Spain, until a very remote period, the priests continued to exercise
-the double office of priest and physician, and some of them were
-proficient in surgery; and though they fixed no stipulated price for their
-medical services, they usually managed to get two fleeces from the one
-shearing, and on certain occasions dispose of the carcass also, for their
-own pecuniary advantages, as the following will show:--
-
-Anthony Gavin, formerly a Catholic priest of Spain, says, "I saw Fran.
-Alfaro, a Jew, in Lisbon, who told me that he was known to be very rich,
-when in Seville, where the priests finally stripped him of all his wealth,
-and cast him into the Inquisition, where they kept him four years, under
-some pretence, and finally liberated him, that he might accumulate more
-property. After three years' trade, having again collected considerable
-wealth, he was again imprisoned and his wealth confiscated by the
-priest-doctors, but let off, with the order to wear the mark of San Benito
-(picture of a man in the midst of the fire of hell) for six months.
-
-[Illustration: A SAN BENITO PIG.]
-
-"But Alfaro fled from the city, and finding a pig near the gate, he
-slipped the San Benito over the pig's neck, and, sending him into the
-town, made his escape. 'Now I am poor,' he added, 'nobody wants to
-imprison me.'"
-
-
-ENGLISH FEES AND INCOMES.
-
-In no other country have physicians' fees varied so much as in England.
-The Protestant divine and the physician have kept step together to the
-music of civilization and enlightenment. Both of these professions were
-held at a low estimation up to the Elizabethan era, when a young,
-unfledged M. D. from Oxford would gladly accept a situation in a lord's
-family for five or ten pounds a year, with his board, and lodgings in the
-garret, while, in addition to professional services he might act as sort
-of wise clown, "and be a patient listener, the solver of riddles, and the
-butt of ridicule for the family and guests. He might save the expense of a
-gardener--nail up the apricots; or a groom, and sometimes curry down and
-harness the horses; cast up the farrier's or butler's accounts, or carry a
-parcel or message across the country."
-
-As was said also of the divine, "Not one living in fifty enabled the
-incumbent to bring up a family comfortably. As the children multiplied,
-the household became more beggarly. Often it was only by toiling on his
-glebe, by feeding swine and by loading dung-carts, that he could gain his
-daily bread.... His sons followed the plough, and his daughters went out
-to service."
-
-Queen Elizabeth's physician in ordinary received one hundred pounds per
-annum and perquisites--"sustenance, wine, wax, and etceteras." Morgan, her
-apothecary, for one quarter's bill was paid £18 7_s._ 8_d._ A one pound
-fee, paid by the Earl of Cumberland to a Cambridge physician, was
-considered as exceptionally liberal, even for a nobleman to pay.
-
-Edward III. granted to his apothecary, who acted in the capacity of
-physician in those days, a salary amounting to six pence a day, and to
-Ricardus Wye, his surgeon, twelve pence per day, besides eight marks. (A
-mark was 13_s._ 4_d._) In the courts of the kings of Wales, the
-physicians and surgeons were the twelfth in rank, and whose fees were
-fixed by law. Dr. Caius was fortunate in holding position as physician to
-Edward VI., Mary, and Elizabeth. Sir Theodore Mayerne was still more
-fortunate in having the honor of serving Henry IV. and Louis XIII. of
-France, and subsequently King James I., Charles I. and II. of England.
-Mayerne has been the subject of many anecdotes, of which the following is
-a sample:--
-
-[Illustration: AN OLD ENGLISH CLERGYMAN AND HIS FAMILY.]
-
-A parsimonious friend, consulting Mayerne, laid two broad pieces of gold
-(sixty shillings) on the doctor's table, to express his generosity, as he
-felt safe that they would be immediately returned to him. But Mayerne
-quietly pocketed them, saying,--
-
-"I made my will this morning, and if it became known that I had refused a
-fee, I might be deemed _non compos mentis_."
-
-[Illustration: THE KING'S PHYSICIAN AND THE EXECUTIONER.]
-
-In 1700, graduated physicians' dues were ten shillings, licensed doctors,
-six shillings eight pence. A surgeon's fee was twelve pence per mile, be
-his journey long or short, and five shillings for setting a bone or
-dislocated joint, one shilling for bleeding, and five pounds for an
-amputation. All after attendance extra.
-
-
-ANECDOTE OF JAMES COYTHIER.
-
-This jolly doctor was employed by Louis XI., and was said to have sponged
-immense sums from his royal master, beyond a regular salary.
-
-"He wrung favor upon favor from the king, and if he resisted the modest
-demands of his physician, the latter threatened him with speedy
-dissolution. On this menace, the king, succumbing to the fear of death,
-which weakness characterized his family, would at once surrender at
-discretion."
-
-Finally, to rid himself of such despotic demands, the king ordered the
-executioner to behead the physician.
-
-The requisite officer waited on Coythier, and in a courteous and
-considerate manner, as became the occasion, said to him,--
-
-"I deeply regret, my dear sir, the circumstance, but I must kill you. The
-king can stand you no longer, and here are my orders."
-
-"All right," replied the doctor, with surprising unconcern; "I am ready
-whenever you are. What time would you find it most convenient to perform
-the little operation?"
-
-While the officer was trying to decide, Coythier continued,--
-
-"But I am very sorry to leave his majesty only for a few days; for I have
-ascertained by occult science that he can't survive me more than four
-days."
-
-The officer stood struck with amazement, but finally returned and imparted
-the astounding information to the king.
-
-"O, liberate him instantly. Hurt not a hair of his head," exclaimed the
-terrified monarch.
-
-Coythier was of course speedily restored to his place in the king's
-confidence--and treasury.
-
-
-A LONG FEE.
-
-Here is what may be called a _long fee_:--
-
-An English surgeon, named Broughton, had the good fortune to open the
-commerce of the East Indies to his countrymen through a medical fee.
-Having been sent from Surat to Agra, in the year 1636, to treat a daughter
-of the emperor Shah Jehan, he had the great fortune to restore the
-princess.
-
-Beyond the present reward to the physician for his great services, the
-emperor gave him the privilege of a free commerce throughout the whole
-extent of his domains. Scarcely had Broughton returned than the favorite
-nabob of the province--Bengal--sent for the doctor to treat him for a very
-dangerous disease. Having fortunately restored this patient also, the
-nabob settled a pension upon the physician, and confirmed the privilege of
-the emperor, extending it to all Englishmen who should come to Bengal.
-
-Broughton at once communicated this important treaty, as it was, to the
-English governor at Surat, and, by the advice of the latter, the company
-sent from England, in 1640, the first ship to trade at Bengal. Such was
-the origin of the great Indian commerce, which has been continued to the
-present day,--the longest continued doctor's fee ever given.
-
-Another long fee was that given to Dr. Th. Dinsdale, who travelled from
-England to St. Petersburg by order of Catharine of Russia, to inoculate
-her son, the baron of the empire. The empress presented him with a fee of
-twelve thousand pounds, and a life pension of five hundred pounds. This is
-the largest sum ever paid to any physician since the world began, for a
-single operation, and I know of no physician who ever made a longer
-journey to attend a patient.
-
-
-A SHORT FEE.
-
-This is how a physician fell short of his fee. Charles II. was taken
-suddenly and dangerously ill with apoplexy. The court physician being out
-of town, Dr. King, who only being present, with one attendant, instantly
-bled his majesty, to which "breach of court etiquette" John Evelyn
-attributes his salvation for the time; for he would certainly have died,
-had Dr. King staid the coming of the regular physician--for which act he
-must have a regular pardon!
-
-The privy council ordered a handsome fee to be paid Dr. King for his great
-presence of mind and prompt action, but it never was paid. Charles died
-soon afterwards, and poor King fell short of a fat fee.
-
-
-ODD FEES.
-
-Amongst the many funny things told about Sir Astley Cooper, the eminent
-English surgeon, none is better authenticated than that respecting the
-"night-cap fee."
-
-In his earlier practice, he had to pass through all the trials and
-tribulations, "anxious and ill-rewarded waitings," that lesser stars have
-before and since, and ever will, before he became "established." In his
-first year's practice in London, his profits were but five guineas; his
-second reached the encouraging sum of twenty-five pounds, and increased in
-this ratio till the ninth year, when it was one thousand pounds. In one
-year he made twenty-one thousand guineas. It is said that one merchant of
-London paid him annually six hundred pounds. It wouldn't require but a few
-such lucrative patients to keep a doctor in pocket money even at this
-day.
-
-A West India millionnaire, named Hyatt, had been to London, and undergone
-a severe and dangerous surgical operation at the hands of Sir Astley,
-assisted by Drs. Lettsom and Nelson. The operation proved a success, and
-the grateful patient only waited till he could sit up in bed a little
-while at a time before expressing in some measure his gratitude to the
-physicians. All three being present one day, Hyatt arose in bed and
-presented the two physicians with a fee of three hundred gold guineas,
-and, turning to Sir Astley, who seemed for a moment to have been slighted,
-the millionnaire said,--
-
-"And as for you, Sir Astley, you shall have nothing better than that,"
-catching off his night-cap, and flinging it almost into Sir Astley's
-handsome face--he was said to be the handsomest man in England; "there,
-take it, sir."
-
-"Sir," exclaimed the surgeon, with a smile, "I pocket the affront."
-
-On reaching home, and examining the night-cap, he found it contained one
-thousand guineas--nearly five thousand dollars.
-
-
-AN OLD SHOE.
-
-Quite as odd a fee was that presented to a celebrated New York surgeon
-about the year 1845. An eccentric old merchant, a descendant of one of the
-early Dutch families of Manhattan Island, was sick at his summer residence
-on the Hudson, where his family physician attended him. The doctor gave
-him no encouragement that he ever would recover. A most celebrated
-surgeon, since deceased, was called as counsel, who, after careful
-examination of the case, and considering the merchant's age, coincided
-with the opinion of the family physician, and so expressed himself to the
-patient.
-
-"Well, if that is all the good you can do, you may return to New York,"
-said the doomed man. But as the astonished surgeon was going out of the
-house, the invalid sent a servant after him, in haste, saying,--
-
-"Here, throw this old shoe after him, telling him that I wish him better
-luck on the next patient;" and drawing off his embroidered slipper, he
-gave it to the servant, who, well used to his master's whims, as well as
-confident of his generosity, ran after the doctor, flinging the shoe, and
-giving the message, as directed. The surgeon felt sure of his fee, well
-knowing the ability of the eccentric merchant; but he picked up the shoe,
-and placing it in his coat pocket, said to his brother physician, who
-accompanied him, "I'll keep it, and I may get something, to _boot_."
-
-[Illustration: A SLIPPER-Y FEE.]
-
-It contained, stuffed into the toe, a draft for five hundred dollars.
-
-
-A BLACK FEE.
-
-Dr. Robert Glynn, of Cambridge, England, who died nearly eighty years ago,
-was a most benevolent man, as well as a successful medical practitioner,
-with a large revenue. Mr. Jeaffreson tells the following amusing story
-about him:--
-
-"On one occasion a poor peasant woman, the widowed mother of an only son,
-trudged from the heart of the fens (ten miles) into Cambridge, to consult
-the good doctor about her boy, who was very sick with the ague. Her manner
-so interested the doctor that, though it was during an inclement winter,
-and the roads almost impassable by carriages, he ordered horses harnessed,
-and taking in the old lady, went to see the sick lad.
-
-"After a tedious attendance, and the exhibition of much port wine and
-bark, bought at the physician's expense, the patient recovered. A few days
-after the doctor had taken his discharge, without fees, the poor woman
-presented herself at the consulting-room, bearing in her hands a large
-basket.
-
-"'I hope, my good woman, your son is not ill again,' said the doctor.
-
-"'O, no, sir; he was never better,' replied the woman, her face beaming
-with gratitude; 'but he can't rest quiet for thinking of all the trouble
-you have had, and so he resolved this morning to send you this;' and she
-began undoing the cover of the large wicker basket which she had set on
-the floor. The doctor stood overlooking the transaction in no little
-concern. Egress being afforded, out hopped an enormous magpie, that
-strutted around the room, chattering away as independent as a lord.
-
-"'There, doctor, it is his favorite magpie he has sent you,' exclaimed the
-woman, looking proudly upon the piece of chattering ebony. It was a fee to
-be proud of."
-
-
-A HEART'S OFFERING.
-
-The gratitude of the poor country lad for his recovery did not exceed,
-probably, that of a young girl, as related in the Montpelier papers, from
-one of which I cut the following:--
-
-"A young girl, fourteen years of age, named Celia ----, called at the
-hotel to-day where Dr. C., with his family, is stopping, and presenting
-him with a bouquet of Mayflowers, said, 'I have no money to pay you for
-curing my head of scrofula, and I thought these flowers might please you.'
-This was truly the offering of a grateful heart; for her head _had been
-entirely covered by sores, from her birth_, and the doctor had cured it.
-Another journal said, in commenting upon it, 'This heart's offering deeply
-affected the doctor, to whom it was a greater reward than any money
-recompense could have been.' The doctor has the withered and blackened
-flowers and leaves pressed, and hung in a frame in his office, but the
-memory of the touching scene of their presentation will remain fresh
-within his heart forever."
-
-[Illustration: A LIVING FEE.]
-
-
-A STUFFED CAT-SKIN.
-
-An eccentric and parsimonious old lady, who died in a small village in the
-State of Maine, some twenty years ago, always kept a half dozen cats about
-the house. She was a dried-up-looking old crone, and some ill-minded
-people had gone so far as to call her a witch, doubtless because of her
-oddities and her cats, "black, white, and brindled." When one of these
-delightful night-prowlers departed this life, the old lady would have the
-skin of the animal stuffed, to adorn her mantel shelf. My informant said
-he had once seen them with his own eyes, arranged along on the shelf, some
-half score of them, looking as demure and comfortable as a stuffed cat
-could, while the old woman sat by the fireplace, croning over her knitting
-work.
-
-[Illustration: STUFFED PETS.]
-
-The woman paid no bills that she could avoid, always pleading poverty as
-her excuse for the non-fulfilment of her responsibilities.
-
-One dark and stormy night she was taken very sick, and by a preconcerted
-signal to a neighbor,--the placing of a light in a certain window,--help
-was summoned, including the village doctor, to whom she owed a fee for
-each visit he had ever made her. But this was fated to be the doctor's
-last call to that patient.
-
-"O, doctor, then I am dying at last--am I?"
-
-The physician assured her such was the case.
-
-"Then, doctor, I must tell you that you've been very patient with me, and
-have hastened day or night to see me, in my whims, as well as my real
-sickness, and you shall be rewarded. I have no money, but you see all my
-treasures arranged along on the mantel-piece there?"
-
-"What!" exclaimed the doctor; "you don't call those cats treasures, I
-hope!"
-
-"Yes, they are my only treasures, doctor. Now, I want to be just to _you_,
-above all others, because you've not only served me as I said, but you've
-often sent me wood and provisions during the cold winters--"
-
-Here she became too feeble to go on, and the doctor revived her with some
-cordial from his saddle-bags, when she took breath, and continued,--
-
-"See them, doctor; eleven of them. Which will you choose?"
-
-The doctor, with as much grace as possible, declined selecting any one of
-the useless stuffed skins; when the old lady, by much effort, raised her
-head from the pillow, and said, "Well, I will select for you. Take the
-black one--take--the black--cat--doctor!" and died.
-
-Her dying words so impressed him, that he took the cat home, and, on
-opening her,--for it was very heavy,--he found that the skin contained
-nearly a hundred dollars, in gold.
-
-
-AMERICAN FEES AND INCOMES.
-
-There is a surgeon in New York city whose income from practice outside of
-the hospital is said to be twenty-five thousand dollars per annum. Dr.
-Valentine Mott, the celebrated New York surgeon, who died April 26, 1865,
-at the age of eighty-one years, had a very large income, but less than
-that enjoyed by several surgeons in the metropolis at the present time.
-
-There are some specialists in New York, Philadelphia, and Boston, who
-receive greater sums annually than the regular medical or surgical
-practitioners. There is no law particularly controlling the prices of the
-former. The fee for a visit, by the established usage of the medical
-societies in these cities, is from three to ten dollars.
-
-A specialist sometimes receives fifty to one hundred dollars for
-prescribing in a case, for which another physician, in ordinary practice,
-would charge but an office fee of two to ten dollars. A quack
-specialist--and an impostor--in the latter city makes his brags that he
-has received twelve hundred dollars for one prescription. But then this
-same lying braggadocio says he has read medicine with Ricard, and had
-various honors conferred upon him.
-
-Dr. Pulte, of Ohio, one of the western pioneers in homeopathy, who has
-often been greeted, in his earlier professional rounds, by a shower of
-dirt, rotten eggs, stones, brickbats, and had rails and sticks thrust
-through his carriage wheels at night, and been otherwise insulted, until,
-finally, he had to carry his wife about with him, as a protective
-measure,--for his revilers would not insult a lady,--has since made as
-high as twenty thousand dollars a year, and has amassed a fortune of two
-hundred thousand dollars. There is a Boston homeopathist whose income from
-practice is not less than twenty to twenty-five thousand dollars annually.
-Some of the surgeons (allopathic) do better, but hardly reach the figures
-of Dr. Nelaton, the great French surgeon, who, in 1869, earned four
-hundred thousand francs, equal to about eighty thousand dollars.
-
-[Illustration: A PIONEER OF HOMEOPATHY.]
-
-Dr. Bigelow, the very celebrated surgeon of Harvard College, has probably
-received the largest fee for a surgical operation of any New England
-practitioner. He is said to be worth nearly a million.
-
-Dr. Buckingham, the eminent medical practitioner, of Boston, who probably
-earns as much as any physician in the city, a few years ago stated to the
-graduating class of Harvard College--so I am informed by a physician then
-present--that he received for his first year's practice in Boston _but
-fifty-seven dollars_. He then had a little office up stairs, where he
-slept, dined,--often on bread and cheese, or a few crackers; sometimes he
-did not dine,--and received his few patients. But he was a great student,
-and a hard worker, and often, and usually, stuck to his post during those
-hours when more prosperous physicians were seeking amusement or
-relaxation. He was one of the "_hold-fast_" kind, who always win, in the
-end.
-
-"_Catch what you can._"--There is a class of wretches in every city who
-have no established fee for prescribing for the sick. They go on the
-principle of "catch what I can." If they cannot get a fee of twenty
-dollars, they will take two, provided the patient has no more. A young man
-who visited one of these medical shave-shops was charged a fee of
-thirty-five dollars in a very simple case; but the benevolent doctor
-concluded to accept two dollars and a half instead, since the man had no
-more money. The shamefulness of such Jewing reminds one of the story of a
-negro trading off a worn-out old mule:--
-
-"I say, dar, what will you take for dat yer mule, Cuffy?"
-
-"O, I axes thirty-five dollars for him, Mr. Sambo."
-
-"O, go way, dar. I gibs you five dollars for him," said the first.
-
-"Well, you can take him, Sambo. I won't stand for thirty dollars on a mule
-trade, nohow."
-
-There is a female practitioner in St. Louis who earns above ten thousand
-dollars a year, and her individual fees are moderate at that.
-
-Another doctress, Mrs. Ormsby, of Orange, N. J., accumulates some fifteen
-thousand a year, and is in turn outstripped by another woman practising in
-New York, who gets nearly twenty thousand dollars a year. Such certainly
-possess great business tact, with or without professional merit, and for
-such let all men give them credit.
-
-Several female doctors in Boston receive from three to five thousand
-dollars each, yearly.
-
-It is too often the case that a physician's success is reckoned, like a
-tradesman's, by what he has gained in a pecuniary point of view. There
-are, however, thousands of worthy men, successful with their cases, who,
-from less acquisitiveness than benevolence, have failed in securing more
-than a bare competence, through a life devoted to their profession.
-
-[Illustration: A SHARP MULE TRADE.]
-
-I presume nearly every physician who has experienced a dozen years in
-practice has some mementos of his poor patients' gratitude, in the form,
-if not of an ebony bird, or a black cat-skin, of something possessing more
-beauty, and, to the benevolent heart, which always beats within the
-breast of every true physician, keepsakes prized above gold and silver.
-
-  "Who has not kept some trifling thing,
-    More prized, more prized, than jewels rare,
-  A faded flower, a broken ring,
-    A tress of golden hair, a tress of golden hair?"
-
-A very benevolent physician, and a sexagenarian, of New York city, wrote,
-twenty years ago, "I even yet enjoy a sort of melancholy satisfaction in
-hastening to relieve the suffering poor of my neighborhood, though I know
-that my reward will be very small, or, what is far more frequent, that I
-shall be paid with ingratitude, if not slander.
-
-"Sometimes there are bright spots in my horizon, and I think myself more
-than repaid by a new shirt, or a couple of handkerchiefs--the gift of some
-poor, though grateful sewing girl. A few of these little treasures I prize
-with peculiar tenderness."
-
-  "A tress of hair and a faded leaf
-    Are paltry things to a cynic's eyes:
-  But to me they are keys that open the gates
-    Of a paradise of memories."
-
-
-ASKING FOR A FEE.
-
-A Boston M. D., who had been in practice fourteen years without
-accumulating any property, was about to abandon the profession, and, with
-this view, he applied to Fowler, the phrenologist, with the question,
-"What pursuit am I best adapted to follow?" Mr. Fowler, with whom he was
-unacquainted, said, "The practice of medicine;" but, at the same time, he
-assured the doctor that he ought to do business on a _cash_
-principle,--"_accipe dum dolet_,"--or employ a collector, as he would
-never collect his fees. Acting on this hint, the doctor returned to his
-practice, and in a few years was out of debt, and owned a fine residence.
-
-In the matter of collecting fees only he was deficient.
-
-A New York student--if report is true--began earlier to be impressed with
-the propriety of getting his fee in advance, as the following will show.
-
-He went before the censors for examination. One of the board was a
-well-known penurious, fee-loving doctor, who, looking over the list of
-names of the applicants, said,--
-
-"Mr. ----, if a patient came to your office, what would you first do?"
-
-"I would ask him for a fee, sir," was the prompt reply.
-
-An old navy surgeon relates the following regarding examinations:--
-
-"I was shown into the examining-room. Large table, and a half dozen old
-gentlemen at it. 'Big wigs, no doubt,' I thought, 'and, sure as my name is
-Symonds, they'll pluck me like a pigeon.'
-
-"'Well, sir, what do you know about the science of medicine?' asked the
-stout man in the head seat.
-
-"'More than he does of the practice, I'll be bound,' tittered a little
-wasp-like dandy--a West End ladies' doctor.
-
-"I trembled in my shoes.
-
-"'Well, sir,' continued the first, 'what would you do if during an action
-a man was brought to you with both arms and legs shot off? Now, sir, speak
-out; don't keep the board waiting. What would you do?'
-
-"'By Jove, sir,' I answered, 'I would pitch him overboard, and go on to
-some one else to whom I could be of more service.'
-
-"By thunder! every one present burst out laughing, and they passed me
-directly--passed me directly."
-
-
-DELICATE FEES.
-
-There are certain delicate cases, usually terminating in "good news," in
-which it has long been an established custom for the physician to receive
-a double fee. "A father just presented with an heir, or a lucky fellow
-just made one, is expected to bleed freely for the benefit of the
-faculty." Even the Irish, who, in about all other cases, calculate on
-"cheating the doctor to pay the priest," will usually lay by a little sum
-from their penury, or their bank hoardings, as the case may be, "to pay
-the doctor for the babbie."
-
-We insert the following poetry (!) for the fun of the thing; nevertheless,
-it is within the experience of more than one physician, who, after doing
-his duty, exhibiting his best professional ability, and saving the wife of
-some miserable, worthless fellow, who never deserved such a godsend for a
-companion, has cheated the doctor out of his fees from spite, when, if the
-poor woman had died, he would have liberally paid the physician. Let no
-man take this to himself.
-
-  "A woman who scolded one day so long
-  Quite suddenly lost all use of her tongue!
-  The doctor arrived, who, with 'hem and haw,'
-  Pronounced the affection a true locked jaw.
-
-  "'What hopes, good doctor?' 'Very small, I see.'
-  The husband (quite sad) slips a double fee.
-  'No hopes, _dear_ doctor?' 'Ahem! none, I fear.'
-  Gives another fee for an issue clear.
-
-  "The madam deceased. 'Pray, sir, do not grieve.'
-  'My friends, one comfort I surely receive--
-  A fatal locked jaw was the only case
-  From which my dear wife could have died--in peace.'"
-
-
-"MAKE THE MOST OF HIM."
-
-It has been said that physicians have been known to benevolently play a
-fee into a brother's hand when their own palm failed to be broad enough to
-hold them all. Perhaps the reader may derive amusement or instruction from
-the following, in which case the writer is well repaid for their
-insertion:--
-
-"A wealthy tradesman, after drinking the waters of the Bath Springs a
-long time, under advice of his physician, took a fancy to try those of
-Bristol. Armed with an introductory letter from his Bath doctor to a
-professional brother at Bristol, the old gentleman set off on his journey.
-On the way he said to himself,--
-
-"'I wonder what Dr. ---- has advised the Bristol physician respecting my
-case;' and giving way to his curiosity, or anxiety, he opened the letter,
-and read,--
-
-    "'DEAR DOCTOR: The bearer is a fat Wiltshire clothier; _make the most
-    of him_. Yours, professionally, ----.'"
-
-Clutterbuck, the historian, and a pleasant writer, tells the following of
-his uncle, who was a physician:--
-
-"A nervous old lady, a patient of his, took it into her crotchety old head
-to try the Bath waters, and applied to her physician for permission.
-
-"'The very thing I have been thinking to recommend,' he replied; 'and I
-know an excellent physician at the wells, to whom I will give you a letter
-of introduction.'"
-
-With her letter and a companion, she started for the springs. _En route_
-she took out the letter, and, after looking at the address some time, her
-curiosity overcame her, and she said to her friend, "So long as the doctor
-has treated me, he has never told me what my case is, and I have a mind to
-just look into this letter and see what he has told the Bath physician
-about it."
-
-In vain her friend remonstrated against such a breach of trust. The old
-lady opened the epistle, and read the following instructive words:--
-
-    "DEAR SIR: Keep the old woman three weeks, and send her back."
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-XVI.
-
-GENEROSITY AND MEANNESS.
-
-    "Life's better joys spring up thus by the wayside,
-    And the world calls them trifles. 'Tis not so.
-    Heaven is not prodigal, nor pours its joys
-    In unregarded torrents upon man:
-    They fall, as fall the riches of the clouds
-    Upon the parched earth, gently, drop by drop.
-    Nothing is trifling which love consecrates."--AYLMERE.
-
-    "The art of our necessities is strange."--KING LEAR.
-
-    THE WORLD UNMASKED.--A ROUGH DIAMOND.--DECAYED GENTILITY.--"THREE
-    FLIGHT, BACK."--SEVERAL ANECDOTES.--THE OLD FOX-HUNTER.--"STAND ON
-    YOUR HEAD."--KINDNESS TO CLERGYMEN.--RARE CHARITY.--OLD AND
-    HOMELESS.--THE "O'CLO'" JEW.--DR. HUNTER'S GENEROSITY.--"WHAT'S THE
-    PRICE OF BEEF?"--A SAD OMISSION.--INNATE GENEROSITY.--A CURB-STONE
-    MONEY-MANIAC.--AN EYE-OPENER.--AN AVARICIOUS DOCTOR.--ROBBING THE
-    DEAD.
-
-
-Side by side, hand in hand, through the world, go generosity and meanness.
-If these could but be personified, and the individuals compelled to stand
-before men in broad daylight, O, what a staring would there be! Those whom
-we thought the very embodiment of generosity and kindness would "crop out"
-in their true hideousness of character--unmasked meanness and selfishness;
-yes, men too high in the estimation of the world, in church and in state.
-
-On the other hand, we should be equally astonished to find amongst those
-in the humbler walks of life, as well as some in the more exalted, people,
-whom the world counted as mean and penurious, now standing forth adorned
-in robes bleached like the snow-drift, shining bright as the golden
-sunrise, yet blushing to find that their hidden charities, and secret,
-self-denying generosities, had been suddenly brought to light.
-
-And when the secret works of this world shall be revealed, no class of men
-will stand forth more blessed in deeds of generosity and self-sacrifice
-than the physicians. There is an occasional black sheep in the great
-flock.
-
-
-A ROUGH DIAMOND.
-
-There is no better authority for the truth of the many queer stories told
-about the rough benevolence of Dr. Abernethy, the great English surgeon,
-than the author of his memoirs--Sir George Macilwain.
-
-[Illustration: PHYSICIANS' CHARITY.]
-
-"His manner [Dr. Abernethy's], as we shall admit, was occasionally rough,
-and sometimes rather prematurely truthful. One day he was called in
-consultation by a physician to give an opinion in a case of a pulsating
-tumor, which was pretty plainly an aneurism. On proceeding to examine the
-tumor, he found a plaster covering it.
-
-"'What is this you have on it?' asked Abernethy.
-
-"'O, that is only a plaster.'
-
-"'Pooh!' exclaimed the doctor, pulling it off and flinging it aside.
-
-"'The "pooh" was all well enough,' said the attending physician,
-afterwards, 'but it took several guineas out of my pocket.'"
-
-
-"UP THREE PAIR, BACK."
-
-A surgeon--pupil of the above--was requested to visit a patient in a low
-quarter of the suburbs of the metropolis. When he arrived, and mounted
-several flights of crazy stairs, he began searching for the designated
-number, which was so defaced by time that he was only enabled to determine
-it by the more legible condition of the next number.
-
-[Illustration: SEARCH FOR A PATIENT.]
-
-An old woman answered the shake of the dilapidated knocker.
-
-"Does Captain Blank live here?"
-
-"Yes, sir,"--trying to penetrate the darkness.
-
-"Is he at home?"
-
-"Yes, sir. Please, may I make so bold as to ask, are you the doctor?"
-
-"Yes."
-
-"O, then please to walk in, sir."
-
-In the ill-furnished, narrow room sat an old man, in a very shabby and
-variegated _déshabille_, who rose from his chair, and, with a grace worthy
-of a count, welcomed the stranger. His manner was extremely gentlemanly,
-his language well chosen, and the statement of his complaint particularly
-clear and concise.
-
-The surgeon, who like most of us see strange things, was puzzled to make
-out his new patient, but concluded that he was one of the many who, having
-been born to better things, had become reduced by misfortune to these
-apparently very narrow circumstances.
-
-Accordingly, having prescribed, the surgeon was about taking his leave,
-when the gentleman said,--
-
-"Sir, I thank you very much for your attention," at the same time offering
-his hand with a fee.
-
-The benevolent surgeon declined the fee, simply saying,--
-
-"No, I thank you, sir. I hope you will soon be better. Good morning."
-
-"Stay, sir!" exclaimed the old gentleman. "I shall insist on this, if you
-please," in a tone which at once convinced the surgeon that it would be
-more painful to refuse than accept the fee; he accordingly took it.
-
-"I am very much obliged to you, sir," the old gentleman then said; "for
-had you not taken your fee I could not have again had the advantage of
-your advice. I sent for you because I had understood that you were a pupil
-of Dr. Abernethy's, for whom I could not again send, _because he would
-not take his fee_, and I was so hurt that I am afraid I was rude to the
-good man. I suppose he, judging from the appearances of things here,
-thought I could not afford it, hence refused the fee, on which I begged
-him not to be deceived by appearances, but take the fee. However, he kept
-retreating and declining, till, forgetting myself a little, and feeling
-vexed, I said, 'By G----, sir, I insist on your taking it,' when he
-replied as fiercely, 'By G----, sir, I will not,' and hastily left the
-room, closing the door after him."
-
-This gentleman lived to the age of ninety. He was really in very good
-circumstances, but lived in this humble manner to enable him to assist
-very efficiently some poor relatives. The surgeon, after a while, changed
-his professional visits to friendly ones, and continued them up to the old
-man's death. When, however, the gentleman died, about four hundred guineas
-were found in his boxes.
-
-Sometimes Dr. Abernethy would meet with a patient who would afford a
-useful lesson. A lady, wife of a distinguished musician, consulted him,
-and, finding him uncourteous, said,--
-
-"Sir, I had heard of your rudeness before I came, but I did not expect
-this."
-
-When Dr. Abernethy gave her the prescription, she asked,--
-
-"What am I to do with this, sir?"
-
-"Anything you like. Put it into the fire if you choose."
-
-The lady laid the fee on the table, went to the grate, threw the
-prescription on to the fire, and hastily left the room.
-
-The doctor followed her to the hall, earnestly pressing her to take back
-the fee, or permit him to write her another prescription; but the lady
-would not yield her vantage-ground, and so withdrew.
-
-The foregoing is well authenticated. Mr. Stowe, the informant, knows the
-lady well.
-
-[Illustration: AN ECCENTRIC PATIENT.]
-
-[Illustration: A WOMAN'S REBUKE.]
-
-
-THE OLD FOX-HUNTER.
-
-Sometimes, again, the ill usage was all on one side.
-
-We know a hard-drinking old fox-hunter who abused Dr. Abernethy roundly;
-but all that he could say against him was this:--
-
-"Why, sir,--will you believe me?--almost the first words he said, as he
-entered my room, was, 'I perceive you drink a good deal.'
-
-"Now," continued the patient, very _naïvely_, "supposing I did, what the
-devil was that to him?"
-
-Another gentleman, who had a most unfortunate appearance on his nose,
-exactly like that which accompanies dram-drinking, used to be exceedingly
-irate against Dr. A. because, when he told the doctor that his stomach was
-out of order, Abernethy would reply,--
-
-"Ay, I see that by your nose."
-
-
-THE DUKE, OR THE POOR GENTLEMAN.
-
-One day, just as Dr. Abernethy was stepping into his carriage to make a
-professional visit to the Duke of W., to whom he had been called in a
-hurry, a gentleman stopped him to say that the ----, at Somers Town
-(mentioning a poor gentleman whom he had visited without fee), would be
-glad to have him visit him again at his leisure.
-
-"Why, I cannot go now," Dr. Abernethy replied, "for I am going in haste to
-see the Duke of W." Then, pausing a moment before stepping into his
-carriage, he looked up to the coachman, and quietly said, "To Somers
-Town."
-
-The fidgety irritability of his first impression at interference, and the
-beneficence of his second thought, were very characteristic of Dr.
-Abernethy.
-
-A pupil, who wished to consult him one day, took the very inauspicious
-moment when the doctor (and professor) was looking over his papers, but a
-few moments before lecture, in the museum.
-
-"I am fearful, sir, that I have a polypus in my nose, and want you to look
-at it," said the student.
-
-The doctor made no reply; but when he had completed the sorting of his
-preparations, he said, looking up,--
-
-"Eh?"
-
-To which the pupil repeated his request.
-
-[Illustration: AFRAID OF A POLYPUS.]
-
-"Then stand on your head; don't you see that all the light here comes from
-the skylight? How am I to look into your nose?"
-
-(This was true, for there were no side-lights in the amphitheatre.)
-
-"Where do you live?" continued the doctor.
-
-"Bartholomew Close, sir."
-
-"At what time do you get up?"
-
-"At eight."
-
-"You can't be at Bedford Row" (where Abernethy resided) "at nine, then?"
-
-"Yes, sir, I can."
-
-"To-morrow morning, then."
-
-"Yes, sir; thank you."
-
-The pupil was punctual. Dr. Abernethy made a very careful examination of
-his nose, found nothing of the nature of polypus, made the pupil promise
-never to look into his nose again, and he, in after years, said, that
-there never was anything the matter.
-
-Dr. Abernethy never took a fee from a student, brother doctor, nor full
-fee from a clergyman. His great labors seemed to be in the hospitals, and
-on his resignation as surgeon to St. Bartholomew, he presented for its use
-five hundred dollars. He never neglected his poor hospital patients for
-the richer ones outside.
-
-One morning, on leaving his house for a visit to the hospital patients,
-some one wished to detain him, when he exclaimed, in terms more earnest
-than elegant,--
-
-"Private patients may go to the devil" (or elsewhere, another reports),
-"but the poor fellows in the hospital I am bound to care for."
-
-To poor students whose funds were "doubtful," he presented free tickets to
-his college lectures, afterwards showing them marked attention.
-
-Everybody has heard of his rude kindness to a young fashionable miss, whom
-her mother took to Abernethy for treatment. It is said that the doctor ran
-a knife under her belt, in presence of the mother, instantly severing it,
-and exclaiming,--
-
-"Why, madam, don't you know there are upwards of thirty yards of ----"
-(what are more elegantly termed bowels) "squeezed under that girdle? Go
-home, give nature fair play, and you'll have no need of a prescription."
-
-[Illustration: ABERNETHY'S SURGICAL OPERATION.]
-
-
-KINDNESS TO CLERGYMEN.
-
-"Cynics have been found in plenty to rail at physicians for loving their
-fees; and one might justly retort that the railers love nothing but their
-fees. Who does not love--and who is not entitled to--the sweet money
-earned by labor, be it labor of hand, brain, or cloth? One thing is
-sure--doctors are unpaid."--_A Lawyer._
-
-The above kind-hearted physician, having attended the child of a
-clergyman's widow, without knowing her situation, returned all the fees he
-had received from her when he learned who she was, and added, in a
-letter, fifty pounds besides, with instructions to expend it in daily
-rides in the open air, for her health. To a clergyman he sent a receipt
-for his long services, and also enclosing ten pounds.
-
-The generosity of Dr. Wilson, of Bath (now deceased), has before been
-recorded. He had been attending a clergyman, who, Wilson had learned, was
-in indigent circumstances, and he afterwards sent fifty pounds in gold to
-the minister, by a friend.
-
-"Yes, I will take it to him to-morrow," said the gentleman.
-
-"O, my dear sir," exclaimed Dr. Wilson, "take it to him to-night. Only
-think of the importance to an invalid of one good night's rest."
-
-
-RARE CHARITY.
-
-Another case of "three pair, back," occurs in the memoirs of Dr. Lettsom,
-who is already made mention of in this work. On one of his benevolent
-excursions, the doctor found his way into the squalid garret of a poor old
-woman who had evidently seen better days. With the refined language and
-the easy deportment of a well-bred lady, she begged the physician to
-examine her case, and give her a prescription. (Alas! how often is poverty
-mistaken for disease, and does want foster malady!) But the kind doctor,
-after a careful inquiry, formed a correct diagnosis, and wrote on a slip
-of paper he chanced to have about him, the following brief note to the
-overseers of the parish:--
-
-    "A shilling per diem for Mrs. Moreton. Money, not physic, can cure
-    her.
-
-    LETTSOM."
-
-A shilling, in those days, was considered no mean sum per day.
-
-  "Alas for the rarity
-  Of Christian charity
-    Under the sun!
-  O, it was pitiful!
-  Near a whole city full,
-    Home she had none.
-
-  "Sisterly, brotherly,
-  Fatherly, motherly
-    Feelings had changed;
-  Love, by harsh evidence,
-  Thrown from its eminence,
-  Even God's providence
-    Seeming estranged."
-
-"Alas, doctor," said an unfortunate old gentleman, some seventy-four years
-old,--a merchant ruined by the American war, bowed down by the weight of
-his misfortunes, and by disease,--to Dr. Lettsom, "those beautiful trees
-you may see out of my bedroom window I planted with these now feeble
-hands. I have lived to see them bear fruit; they have become as part of my
-family. But with my children still dearer to me, I must quit this dear old
-home, which was the delight of my youth and the hope of my declining
-years, and become a homeless, joyless wanderer in my old age."
-
-The benevolent Quaker doctor was deeply affected by these words, and the
-utter despair and hopelessness with which the weeping old man uttered
-them; and, speaking a few words of consolation to his unfortunate patient,
-he wrote a prescription, and hastily retired.
-
-On the old gentleman's examination of the remarkable looking recipe, he
-found it to be a check for a large sum of money. The benevolence of the
-physician did not end here. He purchased the residence and grounds of the
-old man's creditors, and prescribed them to him for life. (He is our young
-Quaker antipode, mentioned in another chapter.)
-
-The old apothecary, Sutcliff, was right when he said of young Lettsom,
-while his apprentice, "Thou may'st make a good physician, but I think not
-a good apothecary." An apothecary is not expected to give away his time or
-medicine. (They seldom disappoint one's expectations.) A grocer is not
-expected to give away flour, rice, sugar, tea, to even a starving,
-languishing neighbor; nor the baker, nor the butcher, to give bread or
-meat to the perishing. Why, such demands upon them daily would be laughed
-to scorn. But the physician! These very same niggardly men (individually)
-would berate the doctor, be he ever so needy, or be his family ever so
-large, who would accept a fee for even cold-night services to any but the
-richest patients. All physicians do not have access to the "richest
-patients." Many a good physician has been compelled to quit practice
-because of his too large "bump" of benevolence, and because of the limited
-amount of that article in his first few patients, while thousands of
-practitioners in this country struggle and labor on through a life of
-self-denial, wearing themselves out, dying prematurely, leaving their
-families penniless to the cold charities of an uncharitable world. (See
-Chapter XXX.)
-
-
-THE OLD JEW.
-
-"Ah me," exclaimed a Jew, one day, as he reluctantly drew out his wallet
-to pay three dollars for his examination, prescription, and advice, "if I
-could only make money like the doctors of mede_cene_! Ah me." Then, taking
-two dollars from his purse, he asked, "Won't that do?"
-
-This Jew was a merchant, reputed rich, and penurious as he was wealthy,
-and I demanded the accustomed fee.
-
-"Let me see," said he; "how many patients have you seen to-day?"
-
-"Nine," I replied.
-
-"Let me see," counting his fingers as a tally. "At least twenty-seven
-dollars a day, and nothing out but a bit of paper. Ah, I wish I had been a
-doctor in mede_cene_," he added, with a sigh, and a woful look at the
-money, as he reluctantly handed it over.
-
-This was casting pearls before worse than swine, prescribing for such a
-wretch. Brains, education, anxiety, all went for nought, with him. _Money_
-was his all. A shilling before his eyes would shut out even God's
-sunlight. If the shilling only _shone_, _glistened_,--sunlight enough for
-such a wretch.
-
-[Illustration: RECKONING A DOCTOR'S FEES.]
-
-"Let _me_ see," I said, after his miserable body had taken his penurious
-soul out of my office; "nine patients, one three miles away. Horse-tire
-and carriage-wear, time, advice, and medicine given, because the patient
-was a widow. No. 2 patient, the sick child of an invalid mother; no fee.
-No. 3, an Irishman. The Irish never wish to pay anything; did pay one
-dollar. No. 4, a merchant. "Charge it." That was _his_ fee. No. 5, a young
-sewing girl, who, in sewing on army cloth, had sewed her life's blood into
-the seams. In consumption. Could I take her fee? God forbid. No. 6, a
-"lady," who, having so much upon her back, had nothing in her purse. I may
-get my fee at the end of the quarter. "You know my husband. Good morning."
-It was near two o'clock then. She had occupied my time a whole hour. My
-dinner was cold; my wife was out of sorts, waiting so long. Nos. 7 and 8,
-two sick children. Visit them daily; pay uncertain. The ninth was the
-wealthy Jew. Nine patients; four dollars! Don't I sometimes wish I kept an
-"O' clo'" store, like the old Jew? This actually occurred when I practised
-medicine in Hartford.
-
-[Illustration: PATIENT NUMBER FIVE.]
-
-
-DR. HUNTER'S GENEROSITY.
-
-No man cared _less_ for the profits of the medical profession, or _more_
-for the honor thereof, than the great Dr. John Hunter. He was honest,
-honorable, and simple in his every day life. His works, which contributed
-more to the science of medicine than any other writings during a thousand
-years, were simply announced as by JOHN HUNTER. A plain door plate, with
-the same name, announced his residence. Money was a secondary
-consideration to him. The following shows that he desired a professional
-brother to so consider it:--
-
-    "DEAR BROTHER: The bearer needs your advice. He has no money, and you
-    have plenty; so you are well met.
-
-    "Yours,        JOHN HUNTER."
-
-To a poor tradesman from whom he had received twenty guineas for
-performing a surgical operation upon his wife, he returned nineteen
-guineas, having learned with what difficulty and extreme self-denial the
-husband had raised the money.
-
-"I sent back nineteen guineas, and kept the twentieth," said he, in
-apology for retaining even the one, "that they might not be hurt with an
-idea of too great an obligation."
-
-Where is the other man, or class of men, who would have returned the
-money, honestly earned, as agreed upon beforehand, unasked?
-
-
-GENEROUS AT ANOTHER'S EXPENSE.
-
-It is all very nice when one can exercise a benevolent spirit, and not
-draw upon his own pocket.
-
-A well-authenticated story is repeated in this line of Dr. M. Monsey.
-
-Passing through a market one day, he noticed a miserable old woman looking
-wistfully at a piece of meat hanging just within a stall.
-
-"What is the price of this meat, sir?" she timidly inquired.
-
-"A penny a pound, old woman," replied the butcher, sneeringly, disdaining
-a civil answer to the wretched-looking woman, who probably had not a penny
-to pay for the chop.
-
-"Just weigh that piece of meat, my friend," said the doctor, who had been
-attentively watching the proceedings.
-
-The butcher cheerfully complied with the request of so respectable-looking
-a customer.
-
-"Ten pounds and a half, sir," replied the butcher.
-
-"There, my good woman," said the doctor, "hold up your apron;" and he
-dumped the whole into it, saying, "Now make haste home and cook it for
-your family."
-
-After blessing the very eccentric but benevolent old man over and again
-for the timely provision, she drew up the corners of the apron, and ran
-speedily down the market.
-
-"Here, my man," said the doctor, turning to the smiling butcher, "here is
-ten pence ha'penny, the price of your meat."
-
-"What? What do you mean?" asked the butcher.
-
-"I mean, sir, that I take you at your word. You said the meat was a penny
-a pound. At that price I bought it for the poor old woman. It's all I'll
-pay you. Good morning, sir."
-
-[Illustration: THE ASTONISHED BUTCHER.]
-
-I can imagine the "chop-fallen" butcher, standing, in his long frock, with
-a _beaten_ expression of countenance, alternating his gaze between the
-pence in his palm and the retreating form of the wigged and laughing old
-doctor.
-
-
-A REPORT ON TEETH.
-
-Many stories are told of the eccentricities of Dr. Monsey, and
-
-  "No man could better gild a pill,
-    Or make a bill,
-  Or mix a draught, or bleed, or blister,
-  Or draw a tooth out of your head,
-  Or chatter scandal by your bed,
-    Or tell a twister."
-
-Amongst the vagaries of Dr. Monsey, says Mr. Jeaffreson, was the way in
-which he proceeded to extract his decaying teeth. Around the tooth
-sentenced to be uprooted he fastened securely a strong piece of cord, or
-violin string, to the other end of which he attached a bullet. He then
-proceeded to load a pistol with powder and the bullet. By merely pulling
-the trigger of the pistol, the operation was speedily and effectually
-performed.
-
-It was seldom, however, that the doctor could induce his patients to adopt
-this original mode of extracting undesirable achers.
-
-One gentleman, who had agreed to try this novel process upon a tooth, got
-so far as to allow the whole apparatus to be adjusted, when, at the very
-last instant, he exclaimed,--
-
-"Stop, stop! I have changed my mind--"
-
-"I haven't, though; and you're a fool and a coward, and here's go," which
-saying, the doctor pulled the trigger.
-
-"Bang!" went the pistol, and out flew the tooth, to the delight and
-astonishment of the patient.
-
-Taking this anecdote alone, it is scarcely credible; but considered in
-connection with what we have already selected from the life of Dr. Monsey,
-and what we may write of his eccentricities in our chapter under that
-head, this may be believed as being nearly correct.
-
-[Illustration: MODERN IMPROVEMENTS IN DENTISTRY.]
-
-[Illustration: CHARITY NOT SOLICITED.]
-
-
-A SAD OMISSION.
-
-Believing, as I do, that every reader of these pages is personally
-cognizant of the fact of the true benevolence of our present American
-physicians, and because of the silence of the few biographers respecting
-the generosities and benevolent deeds of those "who have gone before," I
-have devoted more space to anecdotes of English surgeons and physicians
-than I otherwise would. I have searched throughout four volumes of
-biographies of American physicians without being able to find a single
-anecdote of generosity recorded therein worthy of notice. Also in the
-"Lives of Surgeons ----" I have to regret this almost unpardonable
-neglect. I am assured from my personal knowledge of some of these latter
-that there are a thousand instances, which, in justice to their
-benevolence, ought to be put upon record, as they are engraven upon the
-hearts of their suffering fellow-creatures, and not for the aggrandizement
-of the generous bestower so much as an example for the cynical and the
-uncharitable world.
-
-A physician has just left my presence who has given away more than he has
-ever received from his practice. The good physician is always generous. A
-mean-souled man cannot become a successful practitioner. His success with
-his patients depends as much, or more, upon the kindly influences that
-beam from his eye, that flow from his soul, as upon the medicine that he
-deals out from his "saddle-bags."
-
-Generosity and kindness are innate to the man. They require little
-cultivation.
-
-The following amusing anecdote from "Every Saturday," I have reason to
-believe, has reference to one of our best physicians, who is also a man of
-letters, and illustrates my assertion:--
-
-
-"INNATE GENEROSITY."
-
-"One hot August afternoon a gentleman, whose name attached to a check
-would be more valuable to the reader than if written here, was standing in
-front of the Revere House, waiting for a Washington Street car. He was a
-slim, venerable gentleman, with long white hair, and a certain dignity
-about him which we suppose comes of always having a handsome balance in
-the bank, for we never knew a poor man to have this particular air. It was
-a sultry afternoon, and the millionaire, standing on the curb-stone in the
-shade, had removed his hat, and was cooling his forehead with his
-handkerchief, like any common person, when the Cambridge horse-car stopped
-at the crossing at his feet. From this car hastily descended a well-known
-man of letters, whose pre-occupied expression showed at once that he was
-wrestling with an insubordinate hexameter, or laying out the points of a
-new lecture. Suddenly he found himself face to face with a white-haired
-old man, dejectedly holding a hat in one hand. As quick as thought the
-poet--to whom neither old age nor young appeals in vain--thrust his hand
-into his vest pocket, and, dropping a handful of nickel and fractional
-currency into the extended hat, passed on. The millionaire gazed aghast
-into the hat for an instant, and then inverted it spasmodically, allowing
-the money to drop into the gutter, much to the amusement of a gentleman
-and a tooth-pick on the steps of the Revere House, and very much more to
-the amusement of another party, who chanced to know that the supposed
-mendicant and the man of letters had been on terms of personal intimacy
-these twenty years."
-
-
-A CURB-STONE MONEY-MANIAC.
-
-A man may possess large acquisitiveness and benevolence at the same time,
-like Sir Astley Cooper, and succeed both pecuniarily and professionally.
-Such are, however, scarce. Those with an excess of the grasping principle
-in their composition illustrate the truth that "where the treasure is the
-heart will be also." Asleep or awake, drunk or sober, such men never lose
-sight of the almighty dollar. The annexed story, though irreverent to the
-doctors, is not irrelevant to the case:--
-
-During the late "panic," a fellow, whose prominent feature was in his
-Jewish nose, which presented the sign of acquisitiveness by the bridge
-widening on to the cheeks above the _alæ_,--all men noted for accumulating
-have this sign, hung out by nature as a warning to the unwary,--was making
-a great noise, as he clung to a friendly lamp-post, to which he was
-arguing the state of the money market. "Come, sir, you are making too much
-noise," said a policeman.
-
-[Illustration: CAPTURE OF A WALL STREET BULL.]
-
-"Me? No, 'tain't me that's--hic--making the noise; it's the bulls--the
-bulls, sir; them's what's making all the noise," replied the fellow,
-skewing first one side of the post, then the other, trying to get a view
-of his new intruder.
-
-"You are tight, sir--tight as a peep," continued the watchman.
-
-"Me tight? No, sir; it's the money-market what's--ti--tight," replied the
-gentlemanly dressed individual, though much the worse for bad whiskey. "Go
-down Wall Street, and Fisk and Vanderbuilt--all of 'em--will tell you so.
-Everybody says money is--hic--tight. I never was more loose in
-my--hic--life;" and he demonstrated the assertion by swinging very loosely
-around the lamp-post, and falling down.
-
-"There, you are down. Too drunk to stand up;" and the policeman helped him
-to his feet again, and walked him along towards the station.
-
-"No, sir. There you are wrong again; it's stocks that's down. It's the
-stockholders--hic--that's staggering along; they've fallen and skinned
-their noses on the curb-stone of adversity. There! don't you see
-them--crawling along?"
-
-"O, you've got the tremens. Come on," exclaimed the policeman.
-
-"Me? No; it's the shorts and bears what's got the dol--hic--lar--tremens.
-I've caught the pan--hics--panics, sir; that's all."
-
-The policeman thrust the money-maniac into a cell, and the last seen of
-him he leaned back against the wall, his feet braced out, while, hatless
-and the knot of his cravat round under his left ear, he stood arguing the
-money-market with an imaginary broker on the opposite side of his cell.
-
-
-AN "EYE-OPENER."
-
-"How much do you charge, sir?" asked a poor farmer, from Framingham, of a
-city doctor, who had just wiped a bit of dust from the eye of his son.
-
-"Twenty-five dollars, if you please," was the modest reply.
-
-"I cannot pay it, sir," said the poor man. "It only took you a half
-minute. Our doctor was not at home; but I didn't think you would charge me
-much, sir."
-
-So the M. D. very benevolently (?) accepted ten dollars--all the poor man
-had.
-
-Can you wonder, after reading this statement, the truth of which is easily
-avouched for, that this doctor owns a whole block--stores, hotel--and is
-immensely rich?
-
-From the English book "About Doctors," here are three anecdotes:--
-
-Radcliffe, the humbug, with a great effort at generosity, had refused his
-fees for visiting a poor friend a whole year. On making a final visit, the
-gentleman said, presenting a purse,--
-
-"Doctor, here I have put aside a fee for every day's visit. Let not your
-goodness get the better of your judgment. Take your money."
-
-The doctor took a look, resolved to carry out his attempt at benevolence,
-just touched the purse to restore it to his friend, when he heard "the
-chink of gold" within, and--put it into his pocket, saying,--
-
-"Singly, I could have refused the fees for a twelvemonth, but
-collectively, they are irresistible. Good day, sir;" and the greedy doctor
-walked away with a heavier pocket and a lighter heart than he came with.
-
-On visiting a nobleman, Sir Richard Jebb was paid in hand three guineas
-when he, by right, expected five. The doctor purposely dropped the three
-gold pieces on the carpet, when the nobleman directed the servant to find
-and restore them; but Sir Richard still continued the search after
-receiving the three coins.
-
-"Are they not all found?" inquired the nobleman, looking about.
-
-"No, there must be two more on the carpet, as I have only three restored,"
-replied the wily doctor.
-
-His lordship took the hint, and said, "Never mind; here are two others."
-
-[Illustration: DEATH'S FEE.]
-
-This sticking for a fee was all cast into the shade by the act of an
-"eminent physician of Bristol." The doctor, entering the bedroom
-immediately after the death of his patient, found the right hand clinched
-tightly, and, pulling open the fingers of the dead man, the doctor
-discovered that the hand contained a guinea.
-
-"Ah!" exclaimed the doctor to the servant and friends around him, "this
-was doubtless intended for me;" and so saying he pocketed the coin.
-
-  "Three hungry travellers found a bag of gold.
-  One ran into the town where bread was sold.
-  He thought, 'I will poison the bread I buy,
-  And seize the treasure when my comrades die.'
-  But they, too, thought, when back his feet have hied,
-  We will destroy him, and the gold divide.
-  They killed him, and, partaking of the bread,
-  In a few moments all were lying dead.
-  O world, behold what ill thy goods have done!
-  Thy gold thus poisoned two and murdered one."
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-XVII.
-
-LOVE AND LOVERS.
-
-    "No task is harder than that of writing to the ideas of
-    another."--JOHNSON.
-
-    _Duke._ "If ever thou shalt love,
-            In the sweet pangs of it, remember me;
-            For such as I am all true lovers are;
-            Unstaid and skittish in all things else,
-            Save in the constant image of the creature
-            That is beloved....
-            My life upon it, young as thou art, thine eye
-            Hath stayed upon some face that it loves;
-            Hath it not, boy?"
-
-    XANTIPPE, BEFORE JEALOUSY.--A FIRST LOVE--BLASTED HOPES.--A DOCTOR'S
-    STORY.--THE FLIGHT FROM "THE HOUNDS OF THE LAW."--THE EXILE AND
-    RETURN.--DISGUISED AS A PEDDLER.--ESCAPES WITH HIS LOVE.--ENGLISH
-    BEAUS.--YOUNG COQUETTES.--A GAY AND DANGEROUS BEAU.--HANDSOME
-    BEAUS.--LEAP YEAR.--AN OLD BEAU.--BEAUTY NOT ALL-POTENT.--OFFENDED
-    ROYALTY.--YOUTH AND AGE.--A STABLE BOY.--POET-DOCTOR.
-
-
-An old lady once said, "I've hearn say that doctors either are, or are
-not, great experts in love affairs; I've forgotten which." Just so!
-
-"I would not be a doctor's wife for the world," I have heard many a lady
-affirm. True; for few doctors have had the misfortune (or folly) to select
-a jealous woman for a life companion.
-
-Socrates, the great philosopher, and physician of the mind, seems to have
-had the ugliest tempered woman in the world, whose very name, _Xantippe_,
-has passed into a proverb for a scolding wife; yet she was not jealous of
-her spouse, but was said to have sincerely loved him; and he bore her
-outbursts of temper only as a great philosopher could, which seemed not to
-have disturbed the equanimity of his living nor the humor of his dying.
-
-"Crito,"--these were his last words,--"Crito, forget not the cock that I
-promised to Esculapius!"
-
-Alas! an affecting satire on philosophy and physic.
-
-[Illustration: MY FIRST LOVE.]
-
-No; we find no cases to record of the jealousies of physicians, or their
-wives. All the jealousies of the former are spent on their professional
-brethren.
-
-It is a philosophical fact that physicians, of all men, seldom are
-involved in disgrace, quarrels, or litigations on account of love affairs.
-Yet they have affections, like other men, and above all men know how to
-appreciate affection and virtue in woman.
-
-
-FIRST LOVE--BLASTED HOPES.
-
-I know of a little episode in the early life of a doctor, whose name
-modesty forbids me to mention. Let me briefly state it in the first
-person.
-
-  Ah, friend, if you and I should meet
-    Beneath the boughs of the bending lime,
-  And you in the same low voice repeat
-    The tender words of the old love-rhyme,
-    It could not bring back the same old time--
-                  No, never.
-
-I was young when I first fell in love,--not above six years of age; but
-love is without reason, blind to age. The object of my first affection was
-my school-_mischief_, as I then called her, who was about twenty. The
-disparagement of years never entered my innocent noddle. I used to start
-for school a half hour before nine, and stop on the way at the squire's
-house, where Miss ---- boarded. O, with what joy I always met her! In
-summer she gave me roses from the beautiful great white rose-bushes in the
-squire's front yard; in autumn and winter, splendid red and green apples,
-from the orchard and cellar, and candy and kisses at all times. So I fell
-desperately in love with her.
-
-I was greatly shocked, and not a little piqued, when one day she, in cold
-blood, bade me good by, and went away with a tall man, with shocking red
-whiskers. That is all I remember about him. I, however, mourned her loss
-for years, although my appetite remained unimpaired--my parents said.
-
-  "Like a still serpent, basking in the sun,
-    With subtle eyes, and back of russet gold,
-  Her gentle tones and quiet sweetness won
-    A coil upon her victims: fold on fold
-  She wove around them with her graceful wiles,
-  Till, serpent-like, she stung amid her smiles."
-
-The next time I saw her was about ten years afterwards. O, with what
-pleasant anticipations I hastened to her house! I remembered her every
-look--her fair, intelligent face; her wavy black hair; her heavenly
-dark-blue eyes. O, I should know her anywhere! Her I never could forget.
-
-[Illustration: TEN YEARS LATER.]
-
-With these thoughts I confidently knocked at the door. "Is Miss ---- at
-home?" I inquired of the--servant, I supposed, who opened the door. Just
-then three or four dirty-looking little children ran screaming after the
-woman, calling out, "Marm, marm!"
-
-"Hush, children, hush!" said the female, and, turning again to me, said,--
-
-"Whom did you inquire for?" pushing back one of the red-headed urchins.
-
-"Miss Mary ----, ma'am," I answered. "She once lived at Blue Hill."
-
-She gave a sickly-looking smile. She looked sick before; her cheeks all
-fallen in; her skimmed-milk colored eyes had a weary, anxious expression;
-and her thin, bony hands, resting on the door-latch, looked like a
-consumptive's, as she said,--
-
-"When did you know her?"
-
-"O, but a few years ago, ma'am. Is she here? Does she live in _this
-house_?" I eagerly inquired.
-
-"Well," she replied, with another more sepulchral smile,
-
-"I was once Miss Mary ----. I married Mr. ---- ----, over ten years ago.
-My baby, here,"--presenting the second in size of the children to my view,
-a reddish-brown haired girl, quite unlike any one I had ever seen before,
-and wiping its nose with her calico apron,--"she is named for me, Mary
-----. Won't you come in, sir?"
-
-No, I thought I would not stop. I didn't stop till I reached the hotel,
-where I had begged the stage-driver to wait for me but a half hour before,
-while I called upon the lovely Miss Mary ----.
-
-  "O, sunny dreams of childhood,
-    How soon they pass away!
-  Like flowers within the wild wood,
-    They perish and decay."
-
-
-A HANDY DOCTOR.
-
-A young physician was supposed to be "keepin' company" with a young lady.
-The matronly friend of the latter, having praised the young man from all
-points of view, returned one day from the death-bed of a friend, at which
-the physician had been present. She eulogized the living fully as much as
-the dead man, and finally turning to the girl, as if she had reached the
-_ne plus ultra_ of enthusiasm, she said, "Jane, he's the handsomest man I
-ever see fixin' round a corpse."
-
-
-A DOCTOR'S STORY.
-
-The writer is acquainted with a young physician, who read medicine with an
-old doctor, named Gitchel, or Twichel, of Portland, and commenced practice
-in his native village,--a great mistake for any practitioner to make,--and
-where he met with consequences natural to even a prophet, opposition and
-scandal. By some mistake, or, as his opponents charged, mal-practice, he
-lost a patient. Being, a few days later, in a shop in the next village, he
-was secretly informed that the "hounds of the law were after him--even at
-the next door, that very moment." Terrified beyond necessity, he caught up
-his medicine chest, and, climbing out of the back window, fled to the
-woods. In the village, at home, he had courted a lovely young girl, with
-whom he had exchanged vows. She knew the talk that was going on
-respecting the young doctor, but she believed it not, or, believing,
-clung the firmer to her pledges.
-
-[Illustration: FLIGHT OF THE DOCTOR.]
-
-"After night fell I left the woods, and took to the highway. To go home I
-was afraid. O, had I but braved the doctors, and defied the lawyers, all
-would have been well," he told me afterwards. "But I had received such ill
-treatment, been scandalized so severely, that I was cowed to the earth. I
-knew not if my life, my Angie, had also turned against me, when the news
-was spread that I had tacitly admitted my crime by fleeing.
-
-"I went to W., hundreds of miles away. I took a new name, and put out my
-shingle. I was at once patronized, and soon extensively; but I was morose
-and unhappy. I was offered a home and a wife. I had as good as a wife away
-in my far-off home; I was bound to her, and I _loved_ her as I _hated my
-own soul_! I dared not write to her, nor go to her. 'O, my God, what shall
-I do?' I cried, in my misery. He did not hear me, and I came to believe
-that _He was not_!
-
-"Thus a whole year wore away, and I had not heard from home. Finally, I
-determined to make an attempt to see my Angie. I had, after going to W.,
-allowed my heavy beard to go uncropped, which I had never done at home. I
-wore no clothes that I brought away with me from home. I purchased a few
-knickknacks, put on a slouched hat, and appeared in my native village as a
-peddler. Unless my voice betrayed me, I had no fears of detection. To
-prevent this mishap I kept a silver coin in my mouth when talking.
-
-"I had called at several houses, but could learn nothing of my betrothed,
-without fear of exciting suspicion by too close inquiries. I therefore,
-unable longer to stand the suspense, entered her father's house. She and
-her mother only were at home. I could scarcely suppress my feelings as I
-beheld her, the idol of my heart. When I spoke, she started to her feet,
-and with staring countenance gazed fixedly upon me. Then she fell back
-into her chair.
-
-[Illustration: FLIGHT OF THE LOVERS.]
-
-[Illustration: THE LOVER AS A PEDDLER.]
-
-"My God, she did not know me.
-
-"The mother noticed how pale the girl looked, and proposed to get her a
-drink of water from the porch.
-
-"'No, no, I am not faint.'
-
-"'Yes, yes,' I articulated, with the coin in my mouth; 'get her some
-water.'
-
-"Away went the old lady, and, dropping my basket and spitting out the
-coin, I cried, 'Angie, Angie, bless you, my darling,' and fell kneeling at
-her feet.
-
-"'O, Charley, it is you,--the Lord be praised!--come at last.'
-
-"I sprang to my feet. There was time to say no more. The mother returned
-and looked wistfully about.
-
-"'I thought I heard some one saying, "Charley, Charley,"' she said,
-presenting the water to Angie, who was now flushed and excited. I was
-searching for my coin.
-
-"'O, the water is warm. Mother, dear, do go to the well in the yard, and
-get some fresh; and look to see if there is anybody outside calling.' And
-away went the old lady.
-
-"'Now, Charley, what brought you back? And why did you stay? And--'
-
-"'Wait, wait. Number nine boots brought me. I've come for you, Angie.'
-
-"'You will be arrested if you are seen here, I am afraid,' she said.
-
-"'Then meet me to-night at ---- Crossing, and fly with me.'
-
-"I then told her how I had lived, how I had suffered, and how much I loved
-her; and she consented to marry me, and secretly go away with me. But the
-difficulty now lay in getting a lawful man to marry us. The license could
-be bought; I was certain of that. So I went away and obtained it. I next
-hired a horse and carriage, and paid for it in advance, to go twelve
-miles.
-
-"'Aren't you Charley ----?' asked the stable man, eying me sharply, as I
-was about to drive away to get Angie, that night.
-
-"'Take this,'--and I gave him a gold piece,--'and ask no questions, nor
-answer any, till you see your horse and carriage safely back,' was my
-reply.
-
-"As we drove out of the village, I heard wagon wheels far behind us.
-Reaching the woods, I drove into a wood road, and the 'hounds of the ----
-doctors' rode fiercely past. Angie trembled for my safety. I reached a
-cross road. The moon shone quite brightly, and, jumping from the buggy, I
-soon found, by the fresh track, which road they had taken. I took a
-different. So I reached a train that night, and rode till morning; arrived
-at W. the next, and was married."
-
-It was at W. that I found him first. He was smart. He had a good memory.
-He was a handsome man, full six feet in his stockings. In all, his address
-was not excelled by any physician with whom I have ever met. He is now an
-excellent physician and surgeon, in a large city, in good practice. When
-he returned on a visit to his native village, as he did last year, the
-affair had blown over; for after a man is honored abroad, he may become so
-at home,--seldom before. I wish him happiness and prosperity.
-
-"There is no greater rogue than he who marries only for money; no greater
-fool than he who marries only for love. I could marry any lady I like, if
-I would only take the trouble," Dr. Macilvain heard an old fellow say. Of
-course, nobody but a conceited old bachelor would have said that, who
-needs a woman to just take some of the self-conceit out of him.
-
-
-ENGLISH DOCTORS AS BEAUS.
-
-Some of the old English doctors were gay fellows amongst the ladies,
-according to the best authorities. Nevertheless, few men have arrived at
-eminence in the medical profession who were known to be afflicted with an
-overplus of romantic or sentimental qualities in their composition.
-
-It may be interesting, particularly to ladies, to know that the majority
-of those physicians who have arrived at the dignity of knighthood owe
-their elevation rather to the smiles of love than the rewards of
-professional efforts. "Considering the opportunities that medical men have
-for pressing a suit in love, and the many temptations to gentle emotion
-that they experience in the aspect of female suffering, and the confiding
-gratitude of their fair patients, it is to be wondered at that only one
-medical duke is to be found in the annals of the peerage." But the
-physician usually has quite sufficient self-control and honor about him,
-not only to keep his own tender sensibilities in subjection, but often to
-check those of his grateful and emotional female patient.
-
-Thackeray has said that "girls of rank make love in the nursery, and
-practise the arts of coquetry upon the page boy who brings up the coals
-and kindlings."
-
-In this connection Mr. Jeaffreson, whose narratives have the virtue of
-being true as well as interesting, says, "I could point to a fair matron
-who now enjoys rank and wealth among the highest, who not only aimed
-tender glances, and sighed amorously upon a young, waxen-faced, blue-eyed
-apothecary, but even went so far as to write him a letter proposing an
-elopement, and other merry arrangements, in which a 'carriage and four,'
-to speed them over the country, bore a conspicuous part."
-
-The "silly maiden" had, like Dinah, a "fortune in silver and gold," of
-about two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and her tall, blue-eyed
-Adonis, to whom she made this _almost_ resistless proposal, was twice her
-age. But he was a gentleman of honor, and, being in the confidence of the
-family, he generously, without divulging the mad proposition of the fair
-young lady, induced the father to take her to the continent, for a
-twelvemonth's change of air and scenery.
-
-"What a cold-blooded wretch!" will some fair reader exclaim.
-
-"What a fool he was, to be sure!" says the bachelor fortune-seeker.
-
-Well, she didn't die for her first unrequited love, but married a "very
-great man," and became the mother of several children. And this is the way
-the fair heroine of this little story avenged herself upon this "Joseph
-amongst doctors."
-
-Very recently she manifested her good will to the man who had offered her
-what is generally regarded as the greatest insult a woman can experience,
-by procuring a commission in the army for his eldest son.
-
-It is interesting to note the various qualities which have attracted the
-attention, or love, of different sons of Æsculapius to female beauties.
-Sometimes it has been her hair, the "pride of a woman," that was the point
-of attraction, as it was with Dr. Mead, "whose highest delight was to comb
-the luxuriant tresses of the lady on whom he lavished his affections;" or
-the "eyes of heavenly blue," like the lady love's of Dr. Elliot, senior;
-or the tiny footprint in the sand, like that which first attracted Dr.
-Robert Ames to the woman of his choice. What the point of attraction was
-in the man is not easily ascertained.
-
-A gay and dangerous beau among the "high ladies" was Dr. Hugh Smithson,
-the father of James Smithson (his illegitimate son), the founder of the
-"Smithsonian Institution" at Washington. Sir Hugh's forte lay in his
-remarkably handsome person, said to be only second to Sir Astley Cooper in
-beauty of form and features. However, he had the address which secured to
-him one of the handsomest and proudest heiresses of England, and this is
-how he accomplished it.
-
-He was but the grandson of a Yorkshire baronet, "with no prospects," and
-was apprenticed to an apothecary, and for a long time paid court to mortar
-and pestle at Hutton Garden. The story runs, that the handsome doctor had
-been mittened by a "belle of private rank and modest wealth," and that
-the only child and heiress of Seymour, Duke of Somerset, and an
-acquaintance of Sir Hugh's, heard of his rejection, when she publicly
-observed that "the beauty who had disdained such a man was guilty of a
-folly that no other woman in England would have been."
-
-Sir Hugh would have been unwise not to have taken this broad hint, and he
-did what none of the heiress's suitors, even of high rank, had yet aspired
-to,--proposed, and was accepted. Sixteen years later he was created Duke
-of Northumberland, and could well afford to laugh in his sleeve at the
-proposition that "his coronet should be surrounded with _senna_ leaves,
-instead of strawberry," since he had reached a rank that no other M. D.
-had previously done, and possessed the "_loveliest woman in England_," and
-a great fortune, to boot.
-
-Lord Glenbervie, who from the druggist's counter reached the peerage, was
-taunted by Sheridan with his plebeian origin, from which a patrician wife
-had redeemed him, in the following amusing verse:--
-
-  "Glenbervie, Glenbervie!
-  What's good for the scurvy?
-    But why is the doctor forgot?
-  In his arms he should quarter
-  A pestle and mortar,
-    For his crest an immense gallipot."
-
-Sir John Elliot was another handsome doctor of that period, who,
-notwithstanding his being disliked by King George, could, with small
-effort and large impudence, "capture the hearts of half the prettiest
-women amongst the king's subjects, and then shrug his shoulders with
-chagrin at his success." "One lady, the daughter of a nobleman, ignorant
-that he was otherwise occupied, made him an offer, and on learning, to her
-surprise and mortification, that he was already married, vowed she would
-not rest till she had assassinated his wife."
-
-Dr. Arbuthnot, whose courtly address, sparkling wit, ready flow of
-language, innate cordiality, and polished manners made him a great
-favorite about London, was one of the finest looking gentlemen of his
-time. The doctor was contemporary with Dean Swift, with whom he used to
-enjoy flirtations with the queen's maids of honor about St. James.
-
-"Arm in arm with the dean, he used to peer about St. James, jesting,
-laughing, causing matronly dowagers to smile at 'that dear Mr. Dean,' and
-young girls, out for their first season at court, green and
-unsophisticated, to blush with annoyance at his coarse, shameless
-badinage,--bowing to this great man, from whom he hoped for countenance;
-staring insolently at that one, from whom he expected nothing; quoting
-Martial to the prelate, who could not understand Latin; whispering French
-to a youthful diplomatist, who knew no tongue but English; and continually
-angling for the bishopric, which he never got."
-
-From flattering court beauties, Arbuthnot became flatterer to the gouty,
-hypochondriacal old queen. But wine and women made sad havoc with poor
-Arbuthnot, who died in very straitened circumstances.
-
-Dr. Mead, before mentioned, was twice married. He was fifty-one years old
-when married the second time, to a baronet's daughter. Fortunate beyond
-fortunate men, he had the great _mis_-fortune of outliving his usefulness.
-His sight failed, and his powers underwent that gradual decay which is the
-saddest of all possible conclusions to a vigorous and dignified existence.
-Even his valets domineered over him. Long before this his second
-childhood, he excited the ridicule of the town by his vanity and absurd
-pretensions as a "lady-killer."
-
-"The extravagances of his amorous senility were not only whispered about,
-but some contemptible fellow seized upon the unpleasant rumors, and
-published them in a scandalous novelette, wherein the doctor was
-represented as a 'Cornuter of seventy-five,' when, to please the damsel
-who 'warmed his aged heart,'--she was a blacksmith's daughter,--the
-doctor, long past threescore and ten, went to Paris, and learned to
-dance."
-
-[Illustration: AN AGED PUPIL.]
-
-Dr. Richard Mead died aged eighty-one. The sale of his library, pictures,
-and statues brought the heirs eighty thousand dollars. His other effects
-amounted to one hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars.
-
-Another Dr. Mead, uncle to the above, lived to the age of one hundred and
-forty-nine years. Both of these physicians were remarkable for their
-kindness and liberality. The latter left five pounds a year to the poor,
-to continue forever.
-
-
-BEAUTY NOT POTENT WITH LADIES.
-
-A handsome person is not alone requisite to win the affections of a
-sensible lady. Radcliffe, who was as great a humbug in affairs matrimonial
-as in all other matters, was represented as being "handsome and imposing
-in person;" but his overbearing manner, and his coarse flings at the
-softer sex, made him anything but a favorite with the ladies. While he
-professed to be a misogynist, he made several unsuccessful attempts,
-particularly late in life, to commit himself to matrimony.
-
-A lady, with "a singing noise in her head," asked what she should do for
-it. "Curl your hair at night with a ballad," was the coarse reply.
-
-Once, when sitting over a bottle of wine at a public house, Queen Anne
-sent her servant for Dr. Radcliffe to hasten to her Royal Highness, who
-was taken suddenly ill with what was vulgarly called "the blue devils," to
-which gormandizers are subject, but more properly termed indigestion.
-"When the wine is in, the wits are out," was readily demonstrated in this
-case; for, on a second messenger arriving from the queen for her physician
-to make all haste, Radcliffe banged his fist down on the board, at which
-other physicians also sat, and exclaimed,--
-
-"Go tell her Royal Highness that she has nothing but the vapors."
-
-When, on the following morning, the process being reversed,--the "wine was
-out, and wits were in"--the doctor presented himself, with pomp and a show
-of dignity, at St. James', judge of his mortification, when the
-chamberlain stopped him in the anteroom, and informed him that he was
-already succeeded by Dr. Gibbons.
-
-The queen never forgave him for saying she had the "vapors." Radcliffe
-never forgave Dr. Gibbons for superseding him. "Nurse Gibbons," he would
-bitterly exclaim, "is only fit to look after nervous women, who only fancy
-sickness."
-
-When the doctor was forty-three years of age, he made love to a lady of
-half his years, and followed with an offer of marriage, which was
-accepted. As the fact became public, the doctor was warmly congratulated
-upon his good fortune, for the lady was not only young, but was a beauty,
-and an heiress to seventy-five thousand dollars.
-
-The wedding day was set, which was to crown Radcliffe's happiness, when a
-little drawback arose, which was not previously mentioned in the bills.
-The peculiar condition of the beauty's health rendered it expedient that,
-instead of the doctor, she should marry her father's book-keeper.
-
-The doctor's acetous temper towards the fair sex was not lessened by this
-mishap, nor were the ladies backward in giving him an occasional reminder
-of the fact. Nevertheless, unlike the burnt child, that avoided the fire,
-Radcliffe, sixteen years afterwards, made a second conspicuous throw of
-the dice. He was then about sixty. He came out with a new and elegant
-equipage, employed the most fashionable tailors, hatters, and wig-makers,
-"who arrayed him in the newest modes of foppery, which threw all London
-into fits of laughter, while he paid his addresses, with the greatest
-possible publicity, to a lady who possessed every requisite charm,--youth,
-beauty, and wealth,--except a tenderness for her aged suitor.
-
-"Behold, love has taken the place of avarice [the affair was thus aired in
-a public print]; "or, rather, is become avarice of another kind, which
-still urges him to pursue what he does not want. But behold the
-metamorphosis! The anxious, mean cares of a usurer are turned into the
-languishments and complaints of a lover. 'Behold,' says the aged
-Æsculapian, 'I submit; I own, great Love, thy empire. Pity, Hebe, the fop
-you have made. What have I to do with gilding but on pills? Yet, O Fate,
-for thee I sit amidst a crowd of painted deities on my chariot, buttoned
-in gold, clasped in gold, without having any value for that beloved
-metal, but as it adorns the hat, person, and laces of the dying lover. I
-ask not to live, O Hebe! Give me gentle death. Euthanasia, Euthanasia!
-That is all I implore.'
-
-"O Wealth, how impotent art thou, and how little dost thou supply us with
-real happiness, when the usurer himself cannot forget thee for the love of
-what is foreign to his felicity, as thou art!"
-
-Although Radcliffe denied his own sisters during his life, "lest they
-should show their affection for him by dipping their hands in his
-pockets," some stories of his benevolence are told, one of which is, that
-finding one Dr. James Drake, when "each had done the utmost to injure the
-other," broken down and in distressed circumstances, he sent by a lady
-fifty guineas to his unfortunate enemy, saying,--
-
-"Let him by no means learn who sent it. He is a gentleman who has often
-done his best to hurt me, and would by no means accept a benefit from one
-whom he had striven to make an enemy."
-
-
-A STABLE-BOY, POET, AND DOCTOR.
-
-Poor George Crabbe, the poet-doctor-apothecary, had a very hard time in
-this cold, unappreciative world, until Love smiled upon his unhappy lot.
-He was born in the old sea-side town of Aldoborough, where his father was
-salt inspector,--not an over-lucrative office in those days. George was
-the eldest of a numerous family.
-
-From the common school he went to apprenticeship with a rough old country
-doctor, who lodged him with the stable-boy. From this indignity he was,
-however, soon released, and went to live with a kind gentleman, a surgeon
-of Woodbridge. Here he began to write poetry. Here, also, he became
-acquainted with a young surgeon, named Leavett, who introduced Crabbe to a
-lovely young lady, with whom he fell desperately in love.
-
-This inestimable young lady resided at Parham Lodge with her uncle, John
-Tovell, yeoman, and her name was Sarah Elmy. Mr. Tovell possessed an
-estate worth four thousand dollars per annum, and, without assuming any
-"airs," was a first-class "yeoman" of that period--"one that already began
-to be styled, by courtesy, an esquire."
-
-"On Crabbe's first introduction to Parham Lodge, he was received with
-cordiality; but when it became known that he had fallen in love with the
-squire's niece, it was only natural that his presumption should at first
-meet with the disapproval of Mrs. Tovell and the squire."
-
-[Illustration: BIRTHPLACE OF GEORGE CRABBE.]
-
-After closing his term of apprenticeship with Dr. Page, young Crabbe
-returned to his native village, where he furnished a little shop with "a
-pound's worth of drugs," and an array of empty bottles, and set himself up
-as an apothecary. His few patients were only amongst the poorer class of
-the town. Although he had plighted troth with the lovely Sarah at Parham
-Lodge, with starvation staring him in the face at Aldoborough, and the
-opposition of the lady's family at the Lodge, there was little prospect
-of bettering his condition in life. The temporary military appointments
-which he received brought him no nearer his desired object. The lady
-remained true to her vows; and long after his friend Leavett had quitted
-the shores of time, and his new and true friend Burke had extended to the
-promising author his patronage, she received the reward for her faithful
-waiting.
-
-The union of Crabbe with Miss Elmy conferred eventually upon the poet,
-doctor, and apothecary, the possession of the estate of "yeoman"
-Tovell--Parham Lodge. A maiden sister of the squire's, dying, left him a
-considerable sum of money. The loving, waiting Sarah proved a faithful,
-though some might say a somewhat domineering, wife, as the following
-quotation intimates:--
-
-"I can screw Crabbe up or down, just like an old fiddle," this amiable
-woman was wont to say; and throughout her life she amply demonstrated the
-assertion.
-
-"But her last will and testament was a handsome apology for all her past
-little tiffs."
-
-
-THE RIGHT MAN.
-
-A curious story is told, and vouched for, respecting the manner in which
-Dr. and Rev. Thomas Dawson obtained a rich and pious wife. This gentleman
-combined the two professions of preacher and doctor. If, during divine
-services, he was called upon to prescribe for an invalid, he wound up his
-sermon, requested his audience to pray for the sick, and repaired
-forthwith to administer to the body. I presume the congregation to whom
-the reasonable request was made did not take it in the same light as did
-an "M. D." of whom we heard, who made a point to be called out of church
-every Sabbath.
-
-Once the minister, who had a bit of humor in his manner, stopped on a
-certain occasion in his "thirdly," and said, "Dr. B. is wanted to attend
-upon Mr. ----, and may the Lord have mercy upon him."
-
-The doctor was so enraged at this "insinuation" that he called upon the
-parson, and demanded an "apology to the congregation, before whom he felt
-he had been grossly slandered."
-
-The parson agreed to this proposal, and in the afternoon he arose and
-said,--
-
-"As Dr. B. feels aggrieved at my remark of this morning, and demands an
-apology, I hereby offer the same; and as that was the first case, I trust
-it may be the last in which I am ever called upon in his behalf to
-supplicate divine intervention."
-
-But to return to Dr. Dawson. Amongst his patients was a Miss Mary Corbett,
-said to be one of the wealthiest and most pious of his flock, whom, on his
-calling upon her one day, he found bending in reverence over the Bible.
-
-The doctor approached, and as she raised her eyes to his she held her
-finger upon the passage which occupied her immediate attention. The doctor
-bent down and read the words at which her finger pointed--"Thou art the
-man."
-
-The doctor was not slow to take the hint. Thus he obtained a pious wife,
-she a devout husband.--_See "Book About Doctors."_
-
-A great deal has been reported respecting the "off-hand" manner in which
-Abernethy "popped the question" to Miss Anne Threlfall. The fact of the
-case is given by Dr. Macilwain. The lady was visiting at a place where the
-doctor was attending a patient--of all places the best to learn the true
-merits of a lady. He was at once interested in her, and ere long there
-seemed a tacit understanding between them. "The doctor was shy and
-sensitive; which was the real Rubicon he felt a difficulty in passing; and
-this was the method he adopted: he wrote her a brief note, pleading
-professional occupation, etc., and requesting the lady to take a
-fortnight in which to consider her reply." From these facts a great
-falsehood has oft been repeated how he "couldn't afford time to make
-love," etc., and that she must decide to marry him in a week, or not at
-all.
-
-He was married to her January 9, 1800, and attended lectures the same day.
-
-[Illustration: "POPPING THE QUESTION."]
-
-"Many years after, I met him coming out of the hospital, and said,--
-
-"'You are looking very gay to-day, sir.'
-
-"'Yes,' he replied, looking at his white vest and smart attire, 'one of
-the girls was married this morning.'
-
-"'Indeed, sir? You should have given yourself a holiday on such an
-occasion, and not come down to lecture.'
-
-"'Nay,' he replied, 'egad, I came down to lecture the same day I was
-married myself.'"--_Memoirs of Abernethy._
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-XVIII.
-
-MIND AND MATTER.
-
-    "The evidence of sense is the first and highest kind of evidence of
-    which human nature is capable."--WILKINS.
-
-    "They choose darkness rather than light because their deeds are
-    evil."--SCRIPTURE.
-
-    IN WHICH ANIMAL MAGNETISM, MESMERISM, AND CLAIRVOYANCE ARE
-    EXPLAINED.--"THE IGNORANT MONOPOLY."--YET ROOM FOR DISCOVERIES.--A
-    "GASSY" SUBJECT.--DRS. CHAPIN AND BEECHER.--HE "CAN'T SEE IT."--THE
-    ROYAL TOUCH.--GASSNER.--"THE DEVIL KNOWS LATIN."--ROYALTY IN THE
-    SHADE.--THE IRISH PROPHET; HE VISITS LONDON.--A COMICAL
-    CROWD.--MESMERISM.--A FUNNY BED-FELLOW.--CLAIRVOYANCE.--THE GATES OF
-    MOSCOW.--THE DOCTOR OF ANTWERP.--THE OLD LADY IN THE
-    POKE-BONNET.--VISIT TO A CLAIRVOYANT.--"FORETELLING" THE PAST.--THE
-    OLD WOMAN OF THE PENOBSCOT MOUNTAINS.--A SECRET KEPT.--CUI
-    BONO?--VISITS TO SEVENTEEN CLAIRVOYANTS.--A BON-TON CLAIRVOYANT.--A
-    BOUNCER.--RIDICULOSITY.
-
-
-Mind and matter!
-
-What is the connection?
-
-Why does one's yawning set a whole room full to yawning?
-
-What is the unseen power, appropriated mostly by the ignorant, which at
-times controls another weaker mind, or, for the time being, controls
-disease? The majority of medical men "get around" this question by denying
-the whole proposition. But that does not satisfy the jury--the people. The
-great community know that there is some unseen power, which is partially
-developed in certain persons, which has great controlling influence over
-certain other persons; hence over their diseases, especially mental or
-nervous diseases.
-
-I hope to be able to explain something of this "phenomenon."
-
-Those who practise it know nothing of its _modus operandi_, any more than
-the bird that sings on yonder willow knows of the science of music.
-
-To the common suggestion, "It's spirits," I say, No, _no_!
-
-If it were "spirits," why does the spirit always seek a _low organization_
-through which to manifest itself? There are few exceptions to this rule.
-
-It is unnatural, inconsistent with the divine attributes for the
-supernatural to mingle with the natural. The circulation of the blood was
-once attributed to the action of the sun--hence a man fell asleep at
-sunset--and to supernatural causes.
-
-Science has done away with these absurd notions.
-
-"It is a manifestation of divine power," say others.
-
-Well, for that matter, everything is; but _directly_ it is not, for what
-answers the "spirit" suggestion answers this one also. Divine power cannot
-be limited.
-
-For want of a better name, let us call this power "animal magnetism."
-
-The man who controls the mind of another, or another's disease, through
-his mind, must possess the following requisites: First, health; second,
-will; third, faith that he can control the subject. No _reasoning_ is
-necessary. The less causality he possesses, the better. The less reasoning
-faculties, the better he can perform.
-
-Why?
-
-Animal magnetism is an animal power--not a spiritual. All the animal
-qualities--organs--are located in the back and lower part of the brain.
-They act independent of reason. Passions have no reason. The affections
-have no reason. Anger and hate have none. The force, driving power of
-man is centred back of the ears. The cerebellum, or lower brain, acts
-independent of reason. Birds, and most of the animals, possess all the
-qualities that the cerebellum of man contains.
-
-The upper brain--the cerebrum--is the instrument of our thoughts--our
-reason. In sleep, it is still; its action is suspended. Hence there is no
-reason in our dreams. The motive power is in the lower brain; hence
-somnambulism. If there is anything of a "trance" nature, it means shutting
-off the action of the cerebrum, and concentring the power in the
-cerebellum. Some persons have but little upper brain. If they have the
-other requisites, they may become good clairvoyants, or magnetizers,
-according to the manner in which they exercise the animal power.
-
-I have yet to find a professional clairvoyant with large or active
-reasoning (intellectual) qualities.
-
-
-YET ROOM FOR MORE DISCOVERIES.
-
-The _living_ blood has not yet been analyzed. It contains a vitalizing
-element which chemistry has not yet been adequate to detect. There is yet
-as much to be discovered in the science of life as has already been
-revealed to man. It will yet be found out.
-
-How is the power, or force, conveyed from the operator to the person
-operated upon? Through what medium does it act?
-
-Let us begin with the brain. Let us take a ball of cotton for our
-illustration. We draw out a piece from it, and spin it out to our fancy.
-It is a thread, but _cotton_ still, twisted to a fine string. The brain is
-located at the top of man. By means of fine threads, called nerves, the
-brain is distributed over the entire body, so completely that you cannot
-stick a pin in the flesh without touching a nerve, wounding the brain.
-Suspend the entire action of the brain, as by ether, chloroform, or
-nitrous oxygen gas, and sticking the pin is not felt. Partially suspend
-the action, as by a small quantity of the nitrous oxygen gas, and the
-force of the brain (or active force) is centred upon the lower brain, and
-the man under its influence acts out his animal nature in spite of reason.
-
-A man, I hold, who magnetizes or mesmerizes another, uses only the force
-of the lower brain. Like begets like. He cannot affect a person of large
-intellectual organs; only one with the animal organs active.
-
-You cannot _see_ the gas, yet it affects the person. You cannot see the
-subtile power conveyed from one man to a weaker. He conveys it by
-touch--nerve to nerve. I believe science will yet discover just what this
-subtile agent is--both in the blood and nerves; for it is in both, or why
-does the suspension of it in one destroy the other? Destroy the nerve, and
-the corresponding blood-vessel is inactive. Destroy the blood-vessel, and
-the corresponding nerve suffers.
-
-It is the power that the mother exercises to hush her sobbing babe to
-slumber. As the child gathers strength of mind, she loses that control. A
-person may be used as a mesmeric subject until he becomes a mere idiotic
-machine. Educate a clairvoyant doctor, and what becomes of his clairvoyant
-power? It is lost with the increase of intellectual power. Now, is this a
-"divine" quality, that only ignorance can make use of? Is it really
-"hidden from the wise and prudent, and given to babes?" All sciences were
-practised by the uneducated first, before being reduced to a _science_. I
-think this will be yet reduced to a useful science. As it now stands, it
-is useless. If it is a spirit power, the spirits are mighty silent as to
-the fact.
-
-We come into this world by natural causes. We live, grow, exist, and we
-die by natural causes. We brought no knowledge with us; we carry none out.
-All the qualities yet developed in man are natural, and adapted to this
-life. Millions upon millions have so lived and so died, and a spirit
-power in _this_ world is no nearer to being established than it was when
-Adam was a little boy. All that heretofore has been attributed to spirit,
-or supernatural causes, has been proven to be but natural. I claim that
-magnetism and the undiscovered sciences are natural, and have no
-connection with the next world, to which we tend. The human eye, to some
-extent, is magnetic. A blind man cannot thrill an audience; hardly can an
-orator with glasses over his eyes. Dr. Chapin approaches the nearest to
-it. Dr. Beecher's great magnetic power is in his eyes, and is also let off
-at the ends of his fingers. But to _thoroughly_ magnetize a person, he
-must be _touched_.
-
-
-POWER OF THE HUMAN EYE.
-
-A wild animal has only small reasoning organs. The influence of the human
-eye is potent over him. Lichtenstein says, "The African hunters avail
-themselves of the circumstance that the lion does not attempt to spring
-upon his prey until he has measured the ground, and has reached the
-distance of ten or twelve paces, when he lies crouching on the ground,
-gathering himself up for the effort. The hunters," he says, "make it a
-rule never to fire on the lion until he lies down at this short distance,
-so that they can aim directly at his head with the most perfect certainty.
-If one meets a lion, his only safety is to stand still, though the animal
-crouches to make his spring; that spring will not be hazarded if the man
-remain motionless, and look him steadfastly in the eyes. The animal
-hesitates, rises, slowly retreats some steps, looks earnestly about him,
-lies down, again retreats, till, getting by degrees quite out of the magic
-circle of man's influence, he takes flight in the utmost haste."
-
-It is said of Valentine Greatrakes, the great magnetizer and forerunner of
-Mesmer, that the glance of his eye had a marvellously fascinating
-influence upon people of a susceptible or nervous organization. All
-magnetizers, etc., who have tried their powers upon the writer, first
-bent a sharp, scrutinizing gaze upon the eye of their unruly subject. Yet
-they have exercised no _reason_ in selecting the subject.
-
-[Illustration: THE LION MAGNETIZED.]
-
-I attended the exhibitions of Professor Cadwell, night after night, in
-Boston. I went on the stage. I examined the subjects whom he controlled
-"like an old fiddle," and, physiognomically and phrenologically, not one
-of them was above mediocrity intellectually, and the most of them were far
-below. The best subjects had the least intellectuality. His control over
-them was astonishing. In some he could suspend the power of memory, others
-all the reasoning faculties. Some he could control muscularly, some
-mentally.
-
-"This is a hot stove," he said, setting an empty chair before the row of
-men, boys, and girls sitting along the wall side of the stage. "_It is
-very hot_;" and they began drawing back--all but one. "Don't you see the
-stove, and feel the awful heat, Frank?" he asked of one hard subject.
-
-[Illustration: A HARD SUBJECT.]
-
-"I can feel the heat, but I can't see the stove in that chair," was his
-droll reply.
-
-The professor could make this gentleman forget his name, but could not
-make him believe that "a silk hat was a basin of water."
-
-
-THE ROYAL TOUCH.
-
-The old ignorant kings and queens were said to remove the scrofula (king's
-evil) by the touch. Gouty old Queen Anne was the last to exercise the
-royal prerogative to any extent.
-
-A scrofulous _development_ is the result of imperfect action, and
-obstruction of some one or more of the five excretory organs of the human
-system. These are the skin (or glands of the same), the lungs, the liver,
-the kidneys, and the colon. The most that the regular physician does in
-scrofula (or one who is not a specialist in this branch of physic) is to
-attend to the general health of the patient of a scrofulous diathesis,
-build up the strength, and endeavor to increase the vitality. This _in a
-measure_ tends to reduce the scrofulous development. Now, will not a child
-sleeping continually with an aged person or invalid tend to reduce the
-vitality of the child? Yes, it absorbs the disease of the one, while the
-vitality is thrown off for the benefit of the weaker person. Here, you
-see, one person may partake of the vitality of another by touch. Then may
-not the continued touch of a healthy person (king or subject) affect the
-health of a weaker, on the principle of increased vitality?
-
-But it really removes no cause, hence cannot take the place of an
-alterative, or anti-scrofulous medicine. The "crew of wretched souls" who
-waited the king's touch really believed that he "solicits Heaven." Hence
-the cure. The coin which he hung about the neck of these "strangely
-visited people, all swollen and ulcerous, pitiful to the eye," called
-their attention continually to "the healing benediction."
-
-Pyrrhus, who was placed upon the throne by force of arms B. C. 306, was
-said to cure the "evil" by the "grace of God." Valentine, who only held
-his throne--A. D. 375--by the help of Theodosius, not by the "grace of
-God"--claimed to cure scrofula by the latter power, as did Valentine II.,
-whose wicked temper ended his life in a "fit of passion."
-
-The subject of the following sketch claimed also divine power:--
-
-
-HERR GASSNER. "THE DEVIL UNDERSTANDS LATIN."
-
-It seems from the following truthful account of Herr Gassner, a clergyman
-at Elwangen, that the devil can understand Latin, as well as "quote
-Scripture." About the year 1758 this clergyman became so celebrated in
-curing diseases by animal magnetism, that the people came flocking from
-Switzerland, the Tyrol, and Swabia, in great numbers, to be cured of
-all sorts of ailments, a thousand persons arriving at a time, who had to
-lodge in tents, as the town could not lodge them all.
-
-[Illustration: GASSNER HEALING "BY THE GRACE OF GOD."]
-
-His _modus operandi_ was as follows. Dressed in a long scarlet cloak, a
-silken sash about his loins, a chain about his neck, and wearing, or
-holding in one hand, a crucifix, and touching with the other the diseased
-part, and in the Latin tongue commanding the disease, or the evil spirit,
-whichever the case was termed, to depart, in the name of Jesus Christ, the
-patient was usually healed. Dr. Schlisel says, that Gassner "spoke chiefly
-in Latin, in his operations, and the devil is said to have understood him
-perfectly."
-
-The Austrian government gave him its assistance. The excitement became
-great. Elwangen was overcrowded by people, rich and poor. Riches flowed
-into the coffers of its trades-people, though Gassner took nothing
-directly for his cures. Hundreds of patients arrived daily; the apothecary
-gained a great revenue from dispensing simples ordered by Gassner,
-principally powder of _blessed thistle_, oils, and washes. The printers
-labored day and night at their presses in order to furnish sufficient
-pamphlets, prayers, pictures, etc., for the eager horde of admirers. The
-goldsmiths were crowded, also, to furnish all kinds of _Agni Dei_,
-crosses, charms, hearts, and rings. Even the beggars had their harvest, as
-well as bakers, hotel-keepers, and the rest.
-
-During seven years he carried on his public cures. Hundreds of physicians
-went to see him. Mesmer, in answer to the inquiry of the Elector of
-Bavaria, declared his astonishing cures were produced merely by the
-exercise of magnetic spiritual excitement, of which he himself (claiming
-no God-like power) gave to the elector convincing proofs on the spot.
-
-On the contrary, Gassner claimed that he could heal none unless they
-exercised faith. His surroundings, trappings, dress, crucifixes, appeals
-to Jesus Christ, and Latin mummery, had the effect to impress the patient
-with faith in Gassner's Christ-like powers.
-
-"Some," says Dr. Schlisel, "described him as a prophetic and holy man;
-others accused him of being a fantastic fellow, an impostor, and leagued
-with the devil. Some accused him of dealing in the black art; others
-attributed his cures to the magnet, to electricity, to sympathy, to
-imagination; and some attributed the whole to the omnipotent power of the
-name of Christ."
-
-Having touched or rubbed the affected part of the patient, Gassner, in a
-"loud, proud voice," commanded the disease to come forth, or to manifest
-itself. Sometimes he had to repeat this command ten times. Then, when the
-part was presented, he seized it with both hands; he inspired the patient
-to himself repel the disease, by saying, "Depart from me, in the name of
-Jesus Christ."
-
-"He then gave the patient his blessing by spreading his cloak over the
-head, grasping his neck or head in both hands, repeating a silent, earnest
-prayer, making the sign of the cross, ordering some simple from the
-apothecary's, which he consecrates, compels the patient to wash his hands
-clean, when he is permitted to 'depart in peace.'
-
-"Most diseases he cured instantly. Some required months, and others he
-could not affect in the least."
-
-There is but one philosophical way to account for these cures. To say
-there is nothing in it, or, "It is all humbug," will not satisfy the
-people. To affirm it is the arts of the devil is merely nonsensical. It is
-_influence_. Of what? Of one powerful mind over another. And when Gassner
-found a mind equally as powerful as his own, the disease refused to
-depart. There you have the whole of it, "in a nutshell,"--the exercising
-of one mind over another; and mind (not unusually) controls matter in the
-living body.
-
-For about seven years Gassner was a public healer, and then he suddenly
-and forever disappeared.
-
-
-ROYALTY IN THE SHADE.
-
-Sir John Fortesque, the learned legal writer of the time of Edward IV.,
-spoke of the gift of healing by touch as a "time immemorial privilege of
-the kings of England." He very seriously attributed the virtue to the
-unction imparted to the hands in the coronation. Elizabeth was not
-superior to this superstition, and she frequently appeared before the
-people in the character of a miraculous healer. There was formerly a
-regular office in the English Book of Common Prayer for the performance of
-this ceremony. The curious reader is referred to Macbeth, Scene III. of
-Act IV. for further particulars.
-
-With the rise of Valentine Greatrakes, the "royal prerogative" received a
-staggering blow. The marvellous cures of this man, living in Ireland,
-reached England, and the king invited him to come to London; and along his
-journey, whither he was preceded by the returning messenger, we are told
-that the magistrates of the towns and cities waited upon Valentine, and
-begged him to remain and heal their sick.
-
-On his arrival, the king, "though not fully persuaded of his wonderful
-gift, recommended him to the care of his physician, and permitted him to
-practise his power as much as he pleased in London."
-
-Greatrakes had no medical education, nor claimed aught beyond a gift of
-healing most diseases by "stroking the parts with his hand." He is
-described as being a man of "commanding address, frank and pleasing,
-having a brilliant eye, gallant bearing, fine figure, and a remarkably
-handsome face. With a hearty and musical voice, and a natural stock of
-high _animal_ spirits, he was the delight of all festive assemblies. Yet
-he was a devout man."
-
-Daily there assembled a great number of people, invalids from all parts of
-the kingdom, to be healed, and to see the wonderful miracles performed by
-a _man_! Here congregated the dropsical, those afflicted by unsightly
-sores, tumors, and swellings, the lame, the halt, and the blind. "Some he
-could not affect, but the most of them he cured." The only visible means
-he took was to stroke, or at times violently rub, the part affected. Lord
-Conway wrote in his praise, but added, "After all, I am far from thinking
-his cures miraculous. I believe it is by a _sanative virtue_ and a
-_natural efficiency_, which extend not to all diseases." The Viscountess
-Conway was afflicted by an inveterate headache, which he could not remove.
-This lady was a positive character. The failure was attributed to the
-_peculiar_ disease, when it should have been assigned to the peculiarity
-of the person. Sir Evremond, then at court, wrote a sarcastic novel on the
-subject of "The Irish Prophet." The Royal Society held a meeting on the
-subject, and, unable to refute the facts of his cures, accounted for them
-as being "produced by a sanative contagion in Mr. Greatrakes' body, which
-had an antipathy to some peculiar diseases, and not to others." They
-demanded (particularly Dr. Loyd, in a "severe pamphlet") how he cured, and
-why he cured some, and could not others. Greatrakes replied that he was
-not able to tell. And "let them," he said, "tell me what substance that is
-which removes and goes out with such expedition, and it will be more easy
-to resolve their questions."
-
-To the scandalous reports respecting his operations upon female patients,
-without referring directly to such report, he says, attributing the
-diseases to evil spirits, "which kind of pains cannot endure my hand, nay,
-not with gloves, but fly immediately, though six or eight coats or cloaks
-be between the person and my hand, as at the Lady Ranelagh's," etc.
-
-The clergy had previously taken alarm, and cited Valentine before the
-Bishop's Court to account for his proceedings, and when he took a
-scriptural view of his cures, he was forbidden to practise more; which was
-as preposterous as the decree of Louis XIV., which commanded that no more
-miracles should be performed at the tomb of the Abbé Paris.
-
-Neither the clergy nor the faculty could prevent him, and daily the crowd
-of representatives of heterogeneous diseases made pilgrimages to the
-Squire of Affam. The scene was said to be ludicrously painful. They came
-in crowds from everywhere; on foot and in carriages; the young and the
-aged; some hobbling upon crutches, others literally crawling along; the
-blind carrying the cripple upon his back, while the latter directed the
-way, and the deaf and dumb followed in their wake.
-
-[Illustration: NO LACK OF PATIENTS.]
-
-While the lord mayor and the chief justice, with great physicians, were
-among his vehement supporters of the sterner sex, the majority of his real
-admirers were the ladies. The lovely Countess of Devonshire entertained
-him in her palace, and other high ladies lionized him nightly in their
-parlors, where he "performed his pleasant operations, with wonderful
-results, on the prettiest and most hysterical ladies present." "But his
-triumph was of short duration. His professions were made the butts of
-ridicule, to which his presence of mind and volubility were unable to
-effectually respond. His tone of conversation was represented by his
-enemies as compounded of the blasphemy of the religious enthusiast and the
-obscene profligate. His boast that he never received a fee for remedial
-services was met by a square contradiction, and a statement that he
-received five hundred dollars at once." Finally, the tide of opposition
-and slander became too strong for him, and he returned to his native land,
-and to oblivion.
-
-We are indebted to several authorities for the foregoing sketch of
-Greatrakes, particularly Chambers' Miscellany, Lord Conway, E. Rich, and
-Jeaffreson.
-
-
-MESMERISM.
-
-Frederick Anthony Mesmer, to whose name the above _ism_ is affixed, was
-born in Werseburg, in 1734. He neither discovered, developed, nor
-understood anything of the art which has immortalized him. He was a
-designing, audacious man. If Gassner, Prince Hohenloe, and Greatrakes were
-falsely accused of dealing with the devil, Mesmer was truly leagued with a
-Father Hell. Father Hell was professor of astronomy at Vienna, where
-Mesmer obtained a medical diploma, and where he was connected at first
-with Maximilian Hell in magnetic instruments. Having a falling out with
-the latter, Mesmer resorted to the arts of his great predecessor,
-Greatrakes, but professed to cure, without the help of God or man, all
-curable diseases. He produced marvellous effects (but only temporary,
-however) in both Vienna and Paris, to which latter place he repaired to
-practise animal magnetism.
-
-Among the little episodes relative to his treatment is one of Madame
-Campan, a lady of the royal household, author of "Memoires de Marie
-Antoinette." The husband of this celebrated lady sent for Dr. Mesmer--for
-all Paris was running mad after him--to cure him of lung fever. He came
-with great pomp, and having timed the pulse, and made certain inquiries
-respecting the case, he gravely informed the husband and wife that it was
-not in the way of magnetism, and the only mode of cure lay in the
-following: "You must lay by his side"--for he was confined to his
-bed--"one of three things, an old empty bottle, a black hen, or a young
-woman of brown complexion."
-
-[Illustration: "A BOTTLE, A HEN, OR A WOMAN."]
-
-"'Sir,' exclaimed the wife, 'let us try the empty bottle first.'
-
-"The bottle was tried, with what result is easily imagined. Monsieur
-Campan grew worse. Improving the opportunity of the lady's absence, Mesmer
-bled and blistered the patient, who recovered.
-
-"Imagine the lady's astonishment when Mesmer asked for and actually
-obtained a written certificate of cure by magnetism" (Mesmerism).
-
-This is more easily believed when one learns that Mesmer obtained his
-degree on an address, or thesis, relating to "planetary influence on the
-human body," and that afterwards, in answer to the inquiry by a learned
-Paris physician, who asked him why he ordered his patients to bathe in the
-Seine, instead of spring water, as the waters of the Seine were always
-dirty, Mesmer replied,--
-
-"Why, my dear doctor, the cause of the water which is exposed to the sun's
-rays being superior to all other water is, that it is magnetized by the
-sun. I myself magnetized the sun some twenty years ago."
-
-All that sort of fellows have ever a short course. Mesmer reached his
-zenith in Paris about the year 1784, when, for one year's practice, he
-received the enormous sum of four hundred thousand francs. The government,
-at the instigation of Count Maurepas, had previously offered him an
-annuity of twenty thousand francs, with ten thousand francs additional, to
-support a college hospital, if he would remain and practise only in
-France. "One unpleasant condition was attached to this offer, which
-prevented its acceptance; viz., three nominees of the crown were to watch
-the proceedings."
-
-The government appointed a commission, consisting of Dr. Guillotin, and
-three other physicians, and five members of the Academy,--Franklin,
-Bailly, Borey, Leroi, and Lavoisier,--to examine the means employed by
-Mesmer. The result of the investigation--the discovery of his battery,
-which he termed the _baquet_, around which his patients assembled, and his
-windy pretensions to the self-possession of some animal magnetism beyond
-even his disciples, Bergasse and Deslon--was unfavorable to the truth of
-animal magnetism and morality, and the enthusiasm in his favor rapidly
-subsided. Mesmer soon found it convenient to repair to London. Here he
-made no great impression; his day had gone by.
-
-He died in his native town, in all but penury and obscurity, in 1815.
-
-Clairvoyance now made its appearance, which was but a different phase of
-magnetism, and Mesmerism was soon but indifferently practised in France.
-In England the faculty entirely ignored it.
-
-
-CLAIRVOYANCE.
-
-What is it? The word is French, meaning, literally, clear-sightedness. It
-is a power attributed to certain persons, or claimed by certain persons,
-of seeing things not visible to the eye, or things at a distance. It is
-the action of mind over mind,--the seeing, mentally, of one mind through
-another.
-
-By personal experiment with clairvoyants, I am positively convinced that
-they follow the mind (thoughts) of the subject or patient. I have laid out
-my programme before visiting one, and the operator, whether pretending or
-not to a "trance" state, has followed that course to the end, but usually
-adding something which was conjectural. Practice helps them very much. But
-the most of those persons, male and female, who proclaim themselves
-clairvoyants, are humbugs and impostors.
-
-Let any clear-headed man, who has good intellectual qualities, go to a
-good clairvoyant, and try the above plan. Think out just the places and
-persons you wish the clairvoyant (or spiritualist, if he or she choose to
-call themselves such) to bring up. Stick firmly to your text, and the
-operator will follow it, if he or she is a clairvoyant. They can tell you
-nothing that you do not already know. If they go beyond that, it is
-guessed at.
-
-No person of large causality can be a clairvoyant. The moment they employ
-cause and effect, they are lost in doubt. How else can you account for
-nearly all the professional clairvoyants (and spiritualists) being persons
-of low intellectuality? Of course they deny this; but a fact is a fact,
-and _it can't be rubbed out_!
-
-There is a magnetizing feature in clairvoyance. The operator can make some
-persons _think_ they see a thing, when it is an impossibility to see it.
-This influence is sometimes passed from one person to another
-imperceptibly.
-
-When the earthquake shook up the minds of the Bostonians, in 1870, there
-was one grand illustration of this fact. A gentleman standing in front of
-the Old State House, on Washington Street, soon after the shock, asserted
-that the earthquake had started a stone in the front end of the Sears
-Building.
-
-"There! don't you see it?" he exclaimed to the people on the sidewalk, who
-are always ready to stop and look at any new or curious object, as he
-pointed towards an imaginary crack in the marble. "It is just above the
-corner of that window there"--pointing--"a crack in the stone a foot
-long."
-
-"O, yes, I see it," said one and another; and the gentleman moved on,
-leaving the gaping crowd to gaze after the imaginary rent in the wall.
-
-"Where is it?" inquired a new comer.
-
-"Right up there over the door," replied one.
-
-"No, over that third window," said another.
-
-Some "saw it," and others didn't "see it," but all day long the tide of
-curious humans ebbed and flowed. At eight o'clock in the morning I took a
-look--not at the broken stone in the marble front, but at the magnetized
-crowd looking upon an imaginary break. People with large causality looked,
-exclaimed, "Pooh!" and went on. The credulous stood gazing, and pointing
-out the rent to the "blind ones, who wouldn't see," hour after hour. At
-noon I again visited the scene. The crowd had shifted, but the same class,
-male and female, stood gazing at the "calico building," and the same sort
-of people "saw the crack over the window."
-
-[Illustration: EFFECTS OF AN EARTHQUAKE.]
-
-[Illustration: A BELIEVER SEES HIS GRANDMOTHER.]
-
-At six P. M., I again visited the Old State House, and at dusk still
-again, to behold the crowd straining to get a last look at the rent before
-darkness shut out the view. On the following day, the scene was repeated,
-with no mitigation. The fact of the papers denying that there was any rent
-went for nothing. The crowd came and went, from morning till evening.
-
-
-THE GATES OF MOSCOW.
-
-Some readers may remember the story of the great Wizard of the North, who
-performed such marvellous feats before the czar, receiving from his
-highness a splendid present in money, and finally wound up by announcing
-that he would leave the city of Moscow on the following day, at twelve M.,
-_by all the gates of the city at the same time_!
-
-The watchmen were doubled at all the gates, to whom a description of the
-man was sent, and a sharp lookout was commanded, when, lo! just at noon
-the wizard was seen leaving the city at each separate outlet at the same
-moment. Of course he could not have left by but one gate, but which of the
-twelve no one could tell, for he was seen at all, or the watchmen were
-made to believe that they saw him, as he passed out. To this the watchmen
-of the several gates testified, and that he uncovered his head to them, as
-he went past.
-
-At which gate did he really make his exit? The beautiful gate Spass
-Voratu, or Gate of the Redeemer, has over the archway a picture of the
-Saviour. All who pass out here are compelled to uncover. Hence it is my
-belief, as he was seen uncovered, that this was the gate at which he
-really went out, and at all the rest the watchmen imagined they saw the
-wizard make his marvellous exit from Moscow.
-
-
-THE DOCTOR OF ANTWERP.
-
-Townsend, on Mesmerism, tells an instructing and amusing anecdote of a
-test, by a learned doctor of Antwerp, upon a clairvoyant girl. The doctor
-was allowed, at a seance, to select his own test, when he said,--
-
-"If the somnambulist"--that was what he termed her--"tells me what is in
-my pocket, I will believe." Then to her he put the question,--
-
-"What is in my pocket?"
-
-"A case of lancets," was the reply.
-
-"True," said the doctor, somewhat startled. "But the young lady may know
-that I am a medical man; hence her guess that I carry a case of
-instruments in my pocket. But if she will tell me the number of lancets in
-the case, I will believe."
-
-"Ten," was the correct answer.
-
-Still the doctor was sceptical, and said,--
-
-"I cannot yet believe but if the form of the case is described I must
-yield to conviction." And the form of the case was given.
-
-"This certainly is very singular," said the doctor, "but still I cannot
-believe. Now, if the young lady will give the color of the velvet lining
-of the case, I really _must_ believe."
-
-"The color is dark blue," was her prompt reply.
-
-"True, true!" said the puzzled doctor, and he went away, saying, "It is
-very curious, very, but still I cannot believe."
-
-Now, if the doctor had not known that the case was in his pocket, or no
-one present had known beforehand, no clairvoyant could have described it.
-What does this prove? That her mind was led by his inquiry to his mind,
-thence to the article on his mind at the moment. "This is a book" I say.
-The fact of my saying it, or thinking it, leads my mind to the book.
-
-As a person may look towards an object, as out of the window towards a
-tree, and not see it till his mind is directed to it, so, on the other
-hand, he may have his mind (thoughts) directed to a thing that his eyes
-cannot see, and in a person whose superior brain is susceptible, it maybe
-reflected so vividly as to permit a description of the object.
-
-One may walk over a stream, upon stones, or ground, and not realize the
-fact till the mind is directed to it; and the thing may be reversed, and a
-susceptible person may be led to think that he or she is walking over or
-through water when none is present. The mind must be directed to an object
-in order to see it mentally.
-
-A gentleman recently told me that a "medium brought up his old
-grandmother."
-
-"How did she describe the old lady as appearing?" I asked.
-
-"In woollen dress and poke bonnet, with specs on, just as she used to
-appear when I was a boy, forty years ago."
-
-"I should have thought the fashions would have changed in the unseen
-world, even if the clothes had not worn out in forty years' service," I
-suggested.
-
-This slightly staggered him, but he replied, "Perhaps fashions do not
-change in the spirit-world."
-
-"Then ladies can never be happy there. Besides, what a jolly, comical set
-they must be down there; the newer fashions appearing hourly in beautiful
-contrast with the ancient styles; especially the janty, little, precious
-morsels called hats of to-day, all covered with magnificent ribbons, and
-flowers, and laces, in contrast with the great ark-like, sombre poke
-bonnets of forty and a hundred years ago!"
-
-"Sir," I said, when he did not reply to this last poser,--"Sir, bring your
-stock of common sense to bear upon the matter, and see that the mind of
-the medium controlled yours, and led you to believe you saw, as the medium
-did, through your thoughts, your ancient grandmother; for how else would
-you imagine her, but as you remembered her, in woollen gown, poke bonnet,
-and spectacles."
-
-
-VISITS TO A CLAIRVOYANT.
-
-Twenty-five years ago, I visited Madam Young, in Ellsworth, Me.
-
-"You are going a journey," she soon said, after I was seated, and she had
-examined my "bumps" to learn that I was a rolling stone. "You are going
-south-west from here." "Marvellous!" one might say, who had little
-reflective qualities of brain, for that was the very thing I was about to
-do. But from Ellsworth, Maine, which way else could one go, without going
-"south-west," unless he really went to the "jumping-off place, away down
-east?"
-
-Again I visited her in Charleston, S. C.
-
-"You are going a journey soon," she informed me.
-
-"Which way?" I amusingly inquired.
-
-"Towards the north," was the necessary reply.
-
-Charleston is at the extremity of a neck of land. I was not expected to
-jump off into the bay, by going southward, and her answer was the only
-rational one. She would minutely describe any person, "good, bad, or
-indifferent," whom I would fix my mind upon. I was suffering at the time
-with bronchitis, which she correctly stated. She was the best clairvoyant
-I have ever tested. She died at Hartford, in 1862.
-
-The following item of the press does not refer to Madam Young:--
-
-A clairvoyant doctor of Hartford proclaims his superiority over other
-seers on the ground that he "foretells the past and present as well as the
-future." We should say he would probably "foretell" them much better. As
-the Irishman said, one gets on better when one goes backward or stands
-still.
-
-I noticed his advertisement in a Providence paper, recently, where "Dr.
----- foretold the past, present, and future."
-
-
-A NIGHT IN THE PENOBSCOT MOUNTAINS.
-
-At Castine I heard of an old lady residing high up in the Penobscot
-mountains, who could magnetize a sore or a painful limb at sight. Such
-marvellous stories were told of her "charming," that I decided to go over
-the mountain and see her. She was not a "professional," however, and
-objected to being made too public. Therefore I made an excuse for calling
-at the house "on my way afoot across the country," and was cordially
-received by the family, of whom there were four generations residing under
-one roof. The house was a story and half brown cottage, large on the
-ground, and surrounded by numerous out-houses and barns. The view from the
-western slope of the mountain where she lived was most magnificent. I
-reached the farm before sunset. Here I lingered to overlook the beautiful
-Penobscot as it flowed at my feet, and the far-off islands of the sea.
-Here one could "gaze and never tire," out over the grand old forests, down
-to the sea-side, and upon countless little white specks, the whitened
-sails of the fishermen and coasting vessels, with an occasional ship or
-steamboat flitting up and down the noble Penobscot river and bay. Still
-above me the eagle built her nest in the rocking pines, on the mountain
-top, and still far below sung the nightingale and wheeled the hungry
-osprey in his belated piscatorial occupations.
-
-The sun sank behind the western hills, tinging the soft, fleecy clouds
-with its golden glory. Slowly changing from purple and gold to faint
-yellow, to dark blue, the clouds gradually assumed the night hue, and
-sombre shadows crept adown the western mountains' sides, flinging their
-dark mantle over the waters, from shore to shore. The sturdy farmer has
-shouldered his scythe, and reluctantly he leaves the half-mown lot to seek
-his evening repast at the family table. Then he discovers me, leaning over
-the gate-bar, rapt in dreamy forgetfulness, and with a hearty salutation
-extends to me the hospitality, so proverbially cordial, of the old New
-England farmer. He shows me his pigs in the pen, and his "stock" in the
-barn-yard, and reaching the house, he calls "mother," who, appearing in
-calico and homespun, though with a cheerful and smiling face, is
-introduced to me as his wife. "A stranger, belated, and I guess pretty
-tired-like, climbing up here; and I won't take no excuses from him; so he
-stays with us to-night."
-
-[Illustration: THE CHARMER DIVULGES HER SECRET.]
-
-I talk with the lady, I play with the babies, I even toy with Towser and
-Tabby, till tea is set. Now I am introduced to the old lady. I thought I
-would get to it at last. She was seventy odd years of age, a deaf, but
-devout old lady, who was easily wheedled into divulging to me her secret
-of "charming." She told me she had the "rheumatiz," and by my tender
-sympathies and a roll of plaster for her lame back, I got into her own
-room before bed-time. O, but I came out soon after! She was very deaf.
-
-"You see," said she, "a woman can't learn it to another woman--only to a
-male. He must be a _good_ man." I nodded assent. "Yes; well, you must have
-faith." Again I nodded--she was very deaf. "You must touch the painful
-part and say--" Here she bent down her lips to my ear and whispered
-something in seven words which she said I must never tell, and she
-compelled me to promise never to divulge the secret while I lived, under
-pain of God's great displeasure.
-
-Perhaps I had better keep my promise, though the good old lady has long
-since "gone to her reward."
-
-
-CUI BONO?
-
-The question is repeated every time there is a great robbery or a murder
-committed,--
-
-"Why do not the clairvoyants tell who has committed this crime?"
-
-Simply because those who consult them do not know. If a person knew where
-the stolen property was secreted, and he consulted a true clairvoyant, he
-or she _might_ describe the property and the place where it is secreted.
-Not otherwise. The same with the murderer. Therefore, of what good is it?
-
-In order to do justice to this subject, to present and explain it in all
-its various phases, we would require a volume, instead of the space
-allotted in this chapter. But whatever name one may apply to it,--animal
-magnetism, Mesmerism, clairvoyance, spiritual or trance mediumship,--its
-success depends mostly upon the credulity of the person.
-
-During the five days preceding May 15, 1869, a reporter of the Boston Post
-visited seventeen of these clairvoyants, mediums, etc., and some curious
-facts and startling contradictions were revealed therein.
-
-"Putting it together," he says, "and carefully epitomizing the amount of
-fortune that we have in this way been able to purchase, we present our
-readers with the following balance sheet:" and this, he says, is from the
-"most experienced and trustworthy fortune-tellers in the good city of
-Boston, where everything like _humbug_ is most scrupulously avoided.
-
-"Four times we have been told that we were engaged in no business at all,
-and as many more that our affairs and prospects were never more
-flourishing. Repeatedly we have been told that we should speedily change
-our business and abode. On the other hand, we were destined to be a
-fixture in Boston, and were so well satisfied with our present calling
-that we should never change. We are not married, but a great many pretty
-maidens stood ready to help us out of that difficulty." Again, "we were
-married, and the father of several roguish boys and bright-eyed girls.
-Thus far in life we had enjoyed good health, were free from all
-infirmities, and stood a good chance to reach fourscore and ten."
-
-"In less than twenty-four hours this sweet hope was buried, and we were
-advised that death would overtake us suddenly and soon."
-
-There are various grades of clairvoyants, as of everything else. Here is
-one class.
-
-"After ascending a rickety, dirty, greasy stairway, you find the madam
-quartered in a small, square bedroom, poorly and miserably furnished. The
-room is dirty, dark, and dingy. Portions of the walls are covered with a
-cheap and quaint paper, patched, here and there, with some of another
-figure and quality. Pictures of a cheap class are hanging on two sides of
-the room,--of Columbus, Webster, and three or four love and courtship
-scenes in France and Germany. The furniture consists of a cheap bed, a
-dilapidated parlor cooking-stove, a small pine table, three common chairs,
-and a rocking-chair, cane-bottomed, a big box, covered with a remnant of
-the national flag, and a few cheap mantel ornaments.
-
-"The madam is a woman under thirty, very stoutly built, weighs one hundred
-and sixty pounds, has quite fair complexion, with pretty blue eyes, light
-hair, and withal not bad-looking. She was attired in a loose and rather
-soiled calico dress, wore no ornaments, and looked rather uninviting."
-
-
-A BON TON CLAIRVOYANT.
-
-The writer visited a special seance at one of the most aristocratic and
-_recherché_ abodes of the marvellous in this city, not long since. I was
-ushered into the brilliantly lighted hall by a janty-looking little biddy
-in white and embroidered apron. That was all I saw of her, as she
-disappeared and was substituted by the lady of the house, the medium. She
-was a pretty, pleasant little lady, with brilliant, dancing, light eyes,
-hair golden brown, and was dressed in a black silk dress, with blue
-overskirt, a rich lace collar, and flowing sleeves of the same material.
-
-Depositing hat, coat, and cane on the hall rack, I was introduced to the
-assembled guests in the great parlors. These rooms were united by a wide,
-open archway, were high, and brilliantly lighted by rich chandeliers in
-each room. An elegant piano occupied the west side of the front parlor,
-upon which was a pile of the latest music. The furniture was of black
-walnut, and richly upholstered in green and gold rep. The mantel was
-adorned with vases of porcelain, images of marble and terra-cotta, and
-little knickknacks of foreign production. The walls were hung with a few
-of Prang's chromos, oil paintings, and two "spirit" photographs. The most
-beautiful, as well as the most remarkable, feature of the rooms was the
-magnificent bouquets of native hot-house flowers, which covered the two
-marble-topped centre-tables and sideboard. These were presents to the
-spirits! They did not take them away; the only one I saw removed was
-knocked over by a careless elbow. I regret to add, that there was no
-"manifestation," nor anything revealed, worth recording.
-
-
-A BOUNCER.
-
-A scene that occurred at another place where I previously visited may be
-considered worthy of notice. I clambered two flights of stairs, and found
-myself face to face with a very large woman, answering to the alias of
-Madam ----. She was very fleshy, weighing probably two hundred and
-thirty-five pounds avoirdupois. Her face was pleasant, and conversation
-easy. I handing over the required "picture paper," she tumbled into a
-great easy-chair, and, without any pretence to a trance, began,--
-
-[Illustration: "I PERCEIVE YOU ARE IN LOVE."]
-
-"I perceive that you are in love." This was startling news to a bachelor.
-"There are two pretty females, one dark-complexioned, the other light."
-(This is the usual "dodge," for, if there is a woman in the question, one
-of the two is bound to answer this general description.) "Which shall we
-follow?" she very teasingly inquired.
-
-"Either that comes handiest," was my indifferent reply.
-
-"Well, the dark one, then. She is tall, fair, and is looking anxiously for
-you to propose. Do you know a lady of this description whom you like?" I
-regretted that I did not. My "notion" ran to small ladies, of the opposite
-complexion. "Well," she said, not the least flurried, "here is one of that
-kind." I instantly placed my mind on one of this class,--my sister,--and
-she ran on. "She is soon to meet you. She is very rich." (Nellie will be
-glad to learn this.) "And I perceive a short-like man looking after her
-fortune. But have no concern; she loves you fondly, and you will marry her
-very soon. You are going a voyage, or across some water." (How far can one
-travel, in this country, without crossing water?) "You will meet an enemy,
-who will try to injure you in business."
-
-"What business?" I inquired.
-
-"You are a--yes--mechanic, though your hand is soft. I reckon you've been
-sick. Yes--machinist; make coffee-mills. Yes" (looking sharply into my
-face). (I was _leading her_!) "Corn poppers are in your line." (I nodded,
-and smiled, for how could I refrain from smiling?) "You trade in tin and
-earthen ware--chamber ware--spoons--and old boots." (True.) "You own a
-splendid house in the city--a large block"-(head).
-
-"Where was I born? Can you see?"
-
-"Yes; you were reared in the country; where there were deep, dark
-woods--all woods; in a log house, with thatched roof, and clay and stick
-chimney. A pig--am I right?--yes, a pig and a dog are kept in the same
-house. The windows are wooden, and--"
-
-"Where was it?" I suggested.
-
-"I should say in Ireland," she replied.
-
-"Enough, I believe. Now about the other lady," I said.
-
-"The dark one? Yes. She loves you, but is poor. Since you are rich, and
-a--" Here I tried to impress her that I was married. "You are married, but
-your wife will not survive you. No, she will soon go to heaven, and you
-will marry the dark-complexioned lady."
-
-"Good," I exclaimed.
-
-"Yes; and will have five boys and three girls."
-
-"Who?"
-
-"Why, the lady, of course."
-
-"O!"
-
-"Yes, and they will be happy and healthy."
-
-Here she informed me I had got my money's worth.
-
-I think I had.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-XIX.
-
-ECCENTRICITIES.
-
-    "They'll not show their teeth in way of smile,
-    Though Nestor swear the jest be laughable."
-
-    "Democritus, dear droll, revisit earth,
-    And with our follies glut thy heightened mirth."--PRIOR.
-
-    A ONE-EYED DOCTOR AND HIS HORSE.--A NEW EDIBLE.--"HAVE THEM
-    BOILED."--"BEAUTY AND THE BEAST."--A LOVELY STAMPEDE.--AN ECCENTRIC
-    PHILADELPHIAN.--THE POODLES, DRS. HUNTER AND SCIPIO.--SILENT
-    ELOQUENCE.--CONSISTENT TO THE END.--WHEN DOCTORS DISAGREE.--FOUR BLIND
-    MEN.--DIET AND SLEEP.--SAXE AND SANCHO PANZA.--MOTHER GOOSE AS A
-    DOCTOR'S BOOK.--THE TABLES TURNED ON THE DOCTORS.
-
-
-We love to see an eccentric individual--something out of the common
-routine of every-day, humdrum life. But what is often taken for an
-eccentricity is sometimes put on for an advertisement.
-
-Nearly all great men have their oddities or peculiarities. I might give
-many little interesting sketches of some physicians' oddities right among
-us, but for too great personality. I may, however, work in a few.
-
-The eccentricities of some doctors lie in their dress. Of this, I shall
-speak under the head of "Dress and Address." Others lie in personal acts,
-in their walk, manners, and conversation.
-
-I know of one physician who delights in the worst looking old horse he can
-obtain. The doctor himself has but one eye. His old donkey-like beast
-corresponded. Report said that he cut out the left eye of the horse to
-gain that desired end, which, however, is discredited. The beast was also
-lame, which defect the doctor would never admit.
-
-"What _you_ ignorantly term 'limping' is only an expression of good
-breeding--which I cannot attach to all whom I meet on the road. It's
-bowing,--merely bowing. You never see him do it unless somebody is in
-sight. Gid-dap!" And so delivering himself, the old doctor would drive on,
-chuckling softly to himself. When his old horse died, he was presented
-with a fine young beast, which he declined to accept, but scoured the
-country till he found a high-boned, rib-bared, foundered, and half-blind
-old roadster.
-
-
-A NEW DISH.
-
-Dr. James Wood was an oddity. He was a bachelor, between thirty and forty,
-large and attractive. He was remarkably neat in dress and person, but
-delighted in "an old rip of a horse."
-
-Once he was on a tour through New Brunswick, and, in company with a
-friend, drove up to a tavern at evening, and called for the landlord.
-
-"He ain't t' home, but I'm the horse-slayer," replied a voice, followed by
-the person of a tall, lean Yankee, who issued from the smoke of the
-bar-room, and approached our friends, still sitting in the open buggy.
-
-"Here, put up my horse; take good care of him, and feed him well."
-
-"Hoss?" said the impudent fellow. "O, yes, I see him now; he's inside that
-ere frame, I s'pose. Climb down, gentlemen, and go inter the house.
-Landlord and the Santipede (Xantippe?) has gone to St. Johns; but I guess
-Dolly in the kitchin, and me in the bar-room, can eat and drink yer,
-though you're two putty big fellows, well's myself." So saying, the
-gentlemen having alighted, he drove the animal to the stable.
-
-[Illustration: A "HORSE-SLAYER" INDULGING HIS OPINION.]
-
-At supper, the doctor and his friend and two ladies were the only
-guests. Just what part the "horse-slayer" had had in its preparation was
-not obvious, since he had, after caring for the horse, only sat with a
-pipe in his mouth and his heels elevated on the bar-room stove, or
-following to the sitting-room, and continually plied the doctor with
-questions. However, the supper was ample, thanks to "Dolly."
-
-"Is there anything more wanted?" inquired the table girl,--a round-faced,
-round-headed country specimen in neat calico.
-
-"Yes," replied the doctor, "we would like some napkins, seeing there are
-none on the table."
-
-Away hastened the girl, who, quickly returning, asked in very primitive
-simplicity,--
-
-"How will you have them cooked?"
-
-"O, boiled, if you please," replied the doctor, without changing a muscle
-about his sober-looking face.
-
-The girl disappeared at full trot, followed by jeers of laughter from the
-gentlemen present, and suppressed titters from the ladies.
-
-In a few moments "Dolly" made her appearance, and after searching in vain
-through the side-table drawer and a cupboard in the dining-room, she said
-they had none in the house, and intimated that the table girl could not be
-induced to return, after being laughed at for her ignorance of what a
-napkin was, and that "herself would wait upon the guests."
-
-When the doctor returned, the "horse-slayer" called out that the napkin
-doctor was coming, upon which the terrified table-girl ran away and hid.
-
-My informant says, "You're only to say, any time, 'Here comes that napkin
-doctor,' and the table girl nearly goes wild, dropping everything, and
-hiding away in her chamber till assured it is only a false alarm."
-
-The writer is well acquainted with W., who assured him this was true.
-
-
-BEAUTY AND THE BEAST.
-
-I heard, while in the South, of a doctor, a little, short man, who rode a
-Canadian horse, a scraggy little specimen, and who, in yellow fever time,
-used to ride right straight into a drug store, and order his prescription,
-catch it up, wheel his pony round on his hind legs, stick in the spurs
-into the flanks of the animal, and go out in a clean gallop.
-
-[Illustration: NO TIME TO LOSE.]
-
-Though the writer never saw this remarkable feat, there is one more
-ludicrous, to which he was an eye-witness.
-
-One fine day, while in Charleston, sitting musing in the window of the
-Victoria Hotel, I saw an African, with bare feet and legs, his whole
-attire consisting of a coarse shirt and brief trousers, drive a mule
-attached to a dray, on which was a box, up towards a milliner's store,
-opposite. The negro jumped from the dray, and, with whip in hand, ran into
-the store to ascertain if that was the place to leave the box.
-
-[Illustration: BEAUTY AND THE BEAST.]
-
-The faithful donkey followed his master directly into the store, nor
-stopped till the wheels of the cart brought up against the door-jambs. The
-ladies, with whom the front store was crowded, screamed with terror, and
-fled towards the back room, where the pretty milliner girls were sewing.
-They caught the panic and sight of the donkey's head and ears in the front
-shop, and screeched in chorus. A more lively and lovely stampede I never
-witnessed. It was "Beauty and the Beast," and the beast stood pulling his
-best to get the cart through; but since a six-foot cart never could go
-through a four foot doorway, he backed out with the negro's assistance,
-and Beauty was rescued from the perilous situation.
-
-"Golly!" exclaimed the Buckee, when himself, mule and cart were back into
-the street. "I fought de ladies were scared ob dis chile, first sight; but
-I never knowed de ladies to be scared ob a hansum darky like me; and when
-I looked round an' see dat ar' mules coming into der mill'ner's store--O,
-yah, yah, yah! I shall die--O, yah, yah, yah!--de Lor'--to only fink ob
-it, a mule in a mill'ner's shop--he wants muslin--O, yah, yah! I shall
-die, sure." Then, after a few more outbursts, he stopped short--for the
-milliner was looking after the box--he rolled up his eyes very solemnly,
-and said to the donkey,--
-
-"Yer ought to be 'shamed ob yerself to go into dat yer store--dar, take
-dat!" levelling a blow at the donkey's head with the whip. Then taking the
-box into the store, he returned, gave the donkey another solemn lecture on
-his impropriety, and mounted the dray and drove away.
-
-
-THE CONSULTING POODLES.
-
-A gentleman well known to the writer assured me that he once had occasion
-to repeatedly consult a physician in Philadelphia, a most excellent
-practitioner, who owned two pet poodle dogs. They were pure white, and
-occupied a portion of his office. When I first entered the doctor's
-presence, I was quite astonished to see, sitting on a corner of his desk,
-at his left, a beautiful poodle. I thought, at first sight, it was a
-stuffed specimen; but after inquiring the nature of my visit, the doctor
-said, "You can retire, sir."
-
-"What!" said I, in surprise at this summary dismissal, when I was startled
-to see the manikin jump from the desk and run away to a crib beside a
-book-case.
-
-[Illustration: DR. HUNTER IN CONSULTATION.]
-
-"I was speaking to Dr. Scipio," the doctor quietly remarked. Then adding,
-"Dr. Hunter, you can come instead," when another like poodle came and
-leaped upon the desk, and sat looking very wisely at his master.
-
-While examining my case, he occasionally cast a glance at "Dr. Hunter,"
-sitting as quiet as a marble dog might, but seeming to understand the look
-which his master gave him, acknowledging it by a pricking up of the ears.
-
-I received my prescription, and what proved to be most excellent advice,
-and retired. The next time I visited the eccentric doctor, both Drs.
-Scipio and Hunter were in full consultation, sitting side by side on the
-desk.
-
-"Now, sirs," said the doctor, after motioning me to a seat near him, "sirs
-Scipio and Hunter, keep very still, and give attention."
-
-A yawning noise and expression was their simultaneous reply.
-
-"What is the object of the two canine specimens being always present when
-I have consulted you?" I ventured to inquire, on my last visit to the
-doctor.
-
-"Some physicians consult two-legged pups, in complicated cases. I prefer
-quadrupeds. Have we not been very successful--myself, Drs. Hunter and
-Scipio--in your case, sir?"
-
-This he said with a pleasant, half-serious countenance.
-
-"Indeed, you have, sir," I replied, to which the dogs gave a gap! (a
-smile?)
-
-"You'll find every successful man with some seeming useless habit or
-appendage, which, nevertheless, is essential to his success, in absorbing
-or distracting the superfluities of his nature. A sing-song, every-day
-man, whom you can see right through, and understand all his moves, seldom
-amounts to anything. I ape nobody, however, but I feel almost lost, in my
-examinations, without my dogs."
-
-Well, there may be much to this, after all. A good singer will seldom go
-forward to master a difficult piece of music without something in his
-hand. Eccentricities in some persons take the place of a vile, injurious
-habit, as the eccentric man is usually free from debasing habits.
-
-I am particularly reminded of Suwaroff, the great Russian general, who was
-so remarkable for his energy, valor, and headlong fighting propensities.
-This wonderful man was very small in stature, being only five feet and a
-half inch in height, miserably thin in flesh, with an aquiline nose, a
-wide mouth, wrinkled brow, and bald head--an eagle look and character.
-"His contempt of dress could only be equalled by his disregard of every
-form of politeness, and some idea may be formed of both from the fact that
-he was washed mornings by several buckets of water thrown over him, and
-that he drilled his men in his shirt sleeves, with his stockings hanging
-down about his heels, and proudly dispensing with the use of a pocket
-handkerchief."
-
-[Illustration: THE RUSSIAN GENERAL'S DRILL.]
-
-His favorite signal of attack was a shrill "_cock-a-doodle-doo!_"
-"To-morrow"--this was his harangue to his men before a great
-battle--"to-morrow morning I mean to be up one hour before daybreak. I
-shall wash and dress myself, then say my prayers, give one good
-_cock-crow_, and capture Ismail!" Which he did to the letter. After
-Catharine's death, Paul, her son and successor, could not brook the
-eccentric habits of "Old Forward and Strike," whose personal appearance
-was ill suited to court, and when compelled to "change or retire,"
-Suwaroff chose the latter. Again in 1799 he was given a command, but would
-not change his principles, and was dismissed; and died in 1800, neglected
-by the imperial Paul, who was assassinated the same year.
-
-
-SILENT ELOQUENCE.
-
-There is a physician doing an office practice in Boston, who, when you
-enter his office, by one gesture and movement of his head, with the
-accompanying expression of his countenance, says to you, as plainly as
-words, "Take a seat; how do you do? State your case." He is a man of few
-words, professionally. Through with his business, he becomes one of the
-most sociable men with whom one need wish to meet.
-
-John Abernethy was remarkable for his eccentricity, and brevity in his
-dealings with patients. Sometimes he met his match. The following has been
-told about him often enough to be true. On one occasion a lady, who
-doubtless had heard of his _brusque_ characteristic, entered his
-consulting-room, at Bedford Row, and silently presented a sore finger. As
-silently the doctor examined and dressed the wound. In the same manner the
-lady deposited the accustomed fee upon the table, and withdrew.
-
-Again she presented the finger for inspection.
-
-"Better?" grunted the great surgeon.
-
-"Better," quietly answered the lady, deposited the fee, and left, without
-saying another word. Several visits were thus made, when, on presenting it
-for the last time, Abernethy said,--
-
-"Well?"
-
-"Well," was the lady's only answer, and deposited her last fee.
-
-"Well, madam, upon my soul, you are the most sensible lady with whom I
-ever met," he exclaimed, and very politely bowed her out.
-
-
-CONSISTENT TO THE END.
-
-The most eccentric physician who ever lived, and the only one I have read
-of who carried his odd notions beyond this life, was Messenger Monsey, of
-whom I have before written in this book. He died at the age of
-ninety-five. He wrote his own will,--having eighty thousand dollars to
-dispose of,--and his epitaph. The will was remarkable, and is still
-preserved. "To a beautiful young lady, named ----," he gave an old
-battered snuff-box, not containing a shilling, lavishing upon her, at the
-same time, the most extravagant encomiums on her wit, taste, and elegance;
-and to another, whom he says he intends to enrich with a handsome legacy,
-he leaves the gratifying assurance that he changed his mind on finding her
-"a pert, conceited minx." After railing at bishops, deans, and clergymen,
-he left an annuity to two of the latter, who did not preach.
-
-"My body shall not be insulted with any funeral ceremonies, but after
-being dissected in the theatre of Guy's Hospital, by the surgeons, for the
-benefit of themselves and students, the remainder of my carcass may be put
-into a hole, or crammed into a box with holes, and thrown into the
-Thames."
-
-The main part of his property went to his only daughter.
-
-[Illustration: WHAT THE ELEPHANT IS LIKE.]
-
-[Illustration: A DOCTOR'S SOLACE.]
-
-This is a true copy of his epitaph:--
-
-  "Here lie my old bones; my vexation now ends;
-  I have lived much too long for myself and my friends.
-  As to churches and churchyards, which men may call holy,
-  'Tis a rank piece of priestcraft, and founded on folly.
-  What the next world may be never troubled my pate;
-  And, be what it may, I beseech you, O Fate,
-  When the bodies of millions rise up in a riot,
-  To let the old carcase of Monsey lie quiet."
-
-The above reminds me of another epitaph in Greenwood:
-
-  "Underneath this turf do lie,
-  Back to back, my wife and I.
-  Generous stranger, spare the tear,
-  For could she speak, I cannot hear.
-  Happier far than when in life,
-  Free from noise and free from strife,
-  When the last trump the air shall fill,
-  If she gets up, I'll just lie still!"
-
-
-"WHEN DOCTORS DISAGREE."
-
-The eccentricities of some doctors lie in their abuse of their brothers;
-especially those of a different school, of which they necessarily know
-little or nothing.
-
-There is a Hindoo story illustrative of the folly of this _ex parte_
-decision.
-
-Four blind men went to examine an elephant, to ascertain what it was like.
-One felt of its foot, the second its trunk, the third its ear, and the
-last felt of its tail. Then they held a consultation, and began to talk it
-up.
-
-"The elephant is very much like a mortar," said the one who had felt of
-the foot.
-
-"It is like a pestle," said the one who had felt of its trunk.
-
-"No; you are both wrong. It's like a fan," said he who had felt of the
-ears.
-
-"You are all mistaken; it is like a broom," vehemently exclaimed the man
-who had felt of the tail. The dispute grew warm. Each was sure he was
-right, because he had personally examined for himself. Then they waxed
-angry, and a lasting quarrel grew out of it; so, in the end, they were all
-as ignorant of the truth as when they began the investigation.
-
-The diversity of medical opinion on diet is equally as great as on
-prescription, and often partakes largely of the notion or eccentricity of
-the individual physician, rather than the requirements of the patient.
-
-One is an advocate of animal diet; another is a strict Grahamite, or
-vegetarian, and a third is an animo-vegetarian, which, according to the
-two kinds of teeth given to man,--the tearing, or canine, and the grinding
-teeth,--seems to be the most rational decision. Then there is the
-slop-doctor. I know of one in Connecticut. He weighs about two hundred and
-fifty pounds. He breakfasts on the richest steak, dines on roast beef, and
-sups on a fowl. Every patient he has is a victim to "typhoid fever: the
-result is inflammation of the glands of the stomach, and induced by too
-hearty food;" hence the patient is starved a month on slop or gruel.
-
-This doctor was formerly a Methodist preacher, and--
-
-  "Exhausting all _persuasive_ means to light
-  Our fallen race to Virtue's glorious height,
-  To Medicine gives his comprehensive mind,
-  And fills his pockets while he cures mankind.
-  He scorns M. D.'s, at all hard study sneers,
-  And soon the science of its mystery clears.
-  _His_ knowledge springs intuitive and plain,
-  As Pallas issued from the Thunderer's brain.
-  He takes a patent for some potent pill
-  Whose cure is certain--for it cures to kill.
-  Such mighty powers in its materials lurk,
-  It grows, like Gibbon's Rome, a standard _work_!
-  Pill-militant, he storms the forts of pain,
-  Where grim Disease has long entrenchéd lain,
-  Routs fevers, agues, colics, colds, and gouts,
-  Nor ends the war till life itself he routs.
-  If of his skill you wish some pregnant hints,
-  Peruse the gravestones, not the public prints!
-  To aid his work, and fame immortal win,
-  Brings steam from physics into medicine;
-  From speeding packets o'er th' Atlantic waste,
-  O'er Styx's stream old Charon's boat to haste,
-  Proving that steam for double use is fit--
-  To whirl men _through_ the world, and _out_ of it!"
-
-The difference in the item of sleep is amusing. I know a poor, worn-out
-doctor who finds all health in early rising. Let us refer him to the
-following, by John G. Saxe:--
-
-  EARLY RISING.
-
-  "God bless the man who first invented sleep!"
-    So Sancho Panza said, and so say I:
-  And bless him also that he didn't keep
-    His great discovery to himself, nor try
-  To make it--as the lucky fellow might--
-  A close monopoly by patent right.
-
-  Yes, bless the man who first invented sleep
-    (I really can't avoid the iteration);
-  But blast the man, with curses loud and deep,
-    Whate'er the rascal's name, or age, or station,
-  Who first invented, and went round advising,
-  That artificial cut-off--early rising.
-
-  "Rise with the lark, and with the lark to bed,"
-    Observes some solemn, sentimental owl:
-  Maxims like these are very cheaply said;
-    But ere you make yourself a fool or fowl,
-  Pray, just inquire about his rise and fall,
-  And whether larks have any beds at all.
-
-  The time for honest folks to be abed
-    Is in the morning, if I reason right;
-  And he who cannot keep his precious head
-    Upon his pillow till it's fairly light,
-  And so enjoy his forty morning winks,
-  Is up to knavery; or else--he drinks.
-
-  Thomson, who sung about the "Seasons," said
-    It was a glorious thing to _rise_ in season;
-  But then he said it--lying--in his bed,
-    At ten o'clock A. M.,--the very reason
-  He wrote so charmingly. The simple fact is,
-  His preaching wasn't sanctioned by his practice.
-
-  'Tis doubtless well to be sometimes awake,--
-    Awake to duty and awake to truth,--
-  But when, alas! a nice review we take
-    Of our best deeds and days, we find, in sooth,
-  The hours that leave the slightest cause to weep
-  Are those we passed in childhood, or asleep!
-
-  'Tis beautiful to leave the world a while
-    For the soft visions of the gentle night;
-  And free at last from mortal care or guile,
-    To live as only in the angels' sight,
-  In sleep's sweet realm so cosily shut in,
-  Where, at the worst, we only _dream_ of sin.
-
-  So let us sleep, and give the Maker praise.
-    I like the lad who, when his father thought
-  To clip his morning nap by hackneyed phrase
-    Of vagrant worm by early songster caught,
-  Cried, "Served him right!--it's not at all surprising;
-  The worm was punished, sir, for early rising."
-
-
-MOTHER GOOSE.
-
-"Gabriel Betteredge," in "Moonstone," was doubtless a true character from
-life, picked up by the author, Wilkie Collins, somewhere in his travels. I
-think the best authors seldom have made up so good a character "out of
-whole cloth," but have gone to the highways and byways for them.
-Betteredge's forte lay in Robinson Crusoe. That book was his guidance and
-solace in all his trials and perplexities. But what would you think of a
-doctor, a respectable graduate of a medical college, who sought, if not
-advice, recreation and solace in Mother Goose?
-
-This M. D. resided a few years ago in A., New York State. He owned a large
-library, enjoyed the confidence of a large list of friends and patrons,
-and was a man of education and refinement. His eccentricity lay in his
-love of Mother Goose's Melodies. He kept a copy of these nursery rhymes at
-his very elbow, and often turned from a perplexing case, and sought solace
-in the jingling rhymes of old Mother Goose!
-
-Well, that was certainly better than relieving his brain by the use of
-narcotic stimulants, as opium, tobacco, or ardent spirits, which use can
-only be followed at the expense of nerve, tissue, and membrane.
-
-I have here before me an account of another physician, whose solace and
-relief from business cares were in his cats, of which he had several, all
-of which answered to their names. His attachment to these creatures was
-only equalled by theirs for him. Sometimes one or two perched on his
-shoulders and sang to him while he rested in his easy-chair. He seemed to
-drink in Lethean comforts, as thus he would remain for a half hour or more
-at a time, or till business broke the spell. When a patient came, or a
-servant announced a call, he would arise and say, "Pets, vamose!" and the
-cats would all scamper away to their nests, and the doctor, seemingly
-refreshed in body and mind, would return to the reality of life and its
-labors.
-
-One's solace is in his children, another's in his wife, a third in his
-flower-garden; and others' in opium, rum, or tobacco.
-
-
-THE TABLES TURNED.
-
-Sometimes the doctor's oddity seemed to be in his silence, again in asking
-"outlandish" questions. Often they get a good return; for instance,--
-
-Dr. G., of Sycamore, Ill., riding in the country one day, saw a sign upon
-a gate-post, reading thus: "This farm for sail." Stopping his horse, he
-hailed a little old woman, who stood on tiptoe, hanging out clothes.
-
-"I say, madam, when is this farm going to _sail_?"
-
-"Just as soon, sir," replied the old lady, placing her thumb to her nose,
-"as anybody comes along who can raise the wind."
-
-The doctor drove thoughtfully on.
-
-
-THE DIFFERENCE.
-
-"A priest who was jogging along on an ass was overtaken by a loquacious
-doctor, and, after some preliminary conversation as to the destination,
-etc., the doctor proposed that they each should ask a question, and the
-one who proposed the best should receive hospitality at the other's
-expense at the next town. The priest agreed, for he was a fat, jolly
-little fellow, who could enjoy a laugh and "some bottles," even at a
-doctor's expense. So the doctor proposed the following:--
-
-"What is the difference between a priest and a jackass?"
-
-"That's old," replied the priest. "One wears his cross on his breast, the
-other on his back.--Now for my turn. What is the difference between the
-doctor and the ass?"
-
-"I cannot tell," replied the doctor; "what is the difference?"
-
-"I see none," quietly replied the priest.
-
-
-"NOT BY BREAD ALONE."
-
-A physician in P., who had the reputation of being a high liver, was quite
-publicly reprimanded for his gluttony by an advent preacher of some note,
-not a thousand miles from Boston. The doctor bore his abuse without
-flinching, though he believed the man a hypocrite. A long time afterwards,
-he met the Adventist in his town, and, after some conversation, invited
-him to dine at his own house. The hungry Grahamite accepted, and at an
-early moment found himself at the doctor's board.
-
-"Will you ask a blessing?" said the doctor; which request being complied
-with, he uncovered one of the only two dishes on the table, which
-contained nothing but bread. The preacher saw the point, and said, with a
-disappointed grin, "You shall not live by bread alone."
-
-"Yes; I know that much Scripture," replied the doctor; "so I have provided
-some butter," uncovering the other dish!
-
-
-
-
-XX.
-
-PRESCRIPTIONS REMARKABLE AND RIDICULOUS.
-
-    "He finds out what stuff they're made of."--SHAKSPEARE.
-
-    "By setting brother against brother,
-    To claw and curry one another."--BUTLER.
-
-    FIG PASTE AND FIG LEAVES.--SOME OF THOSE OLD FELLOWS.--THEY SLIGHTLY
-    DISAGREE.--HOW TO KEEP CLEAN.--BAXTER VS. THE DOCTOR.--A CURE FOR
-    "RHEUMATIZ."--OLD ENGLISH DOSES.--CURE FOR BLUES.--FOR
-    HYSTERIA.--HEROIC DOSES.--DROWNING A FEVER.--AN EXACT
-    SCIENCE.--SULPHUR AND MOLASSES.--A USE FOR POOR IRISH.--MINERAL
-    SPRINGS.--COLD DRINKS VS. WARM.--THE OLD LADY AND THE AIR PUMP.--SAVED
-    BY HER BUSTLE.--COUNTRY PRESCRIPTIONS AND A FUNNY MISTAKE.--ARE YOU
-    DRUNK OR SOBER?
-
-
-Mythology informs us that Heraclitus, the melancholy philosopher of
-Ephesus, fixed his residence in a manure heap, by the advice of his
-physicians, in hopes of thereby being cured of the dropsy. The remedy
-proved worse than the disease, and the philosopher died. From that time
-till the present, medical prescriptions have rather partaken of the
-extravagant and the ridiculous, than of the rational and beneficial.
-
-In biblical times the real remedies consisted of a few simples, and were
-almost totally confined to external uses. Fig paste was a favorite remedy
-for swellings, boils, and ulcers, and an ointment made of olives and some
-spices was used for wounds, etc. Mrs. Eve, it is said, took to fig leaves.
-The myrrh and hyssop were used chiefly among the Jews for purification.
-The former was obtained from Egypt and Arabia East. The original name was,
-in Arabic, _marra_, meaning bitter.
-
-The history of medicine is referable to about 1184 before Christ, from
-which time to Hippocrates, 460 B. C., it could not lay claim to the name
-of science. It was confined almost entirely to the priestcraft, and
-partook largely of the fabulous notions of that superstitious age, and was
-connected with their gods and heroes. Then, necessarily with such a
-belief, the remedies lay in ceremonies and incantations, as before
-mentioned in chapter first, and the priests had it all their own way.
-
-Chiron, according to Grecian bibliographers, was about the first who
-practised medicine to any extent, and who, with Apollo, claimed to have
-received his knowledge direct from Jupiter. Æsculapius was a son of
-Apollo. Æsculapius had two sons, who became celebrated physicians, and one
-daughter, Hygeia, the goddess of health. For a long time the practice of
-medicine was confined to the descendants of Æsculapius, who was worshipped
-in the temples of Epidaurus, the ruins of one of which is said to still be
-seen.
-
-Hippocrates claimed to be a descendant of Æsculapius (460 B. C.). The
-remedies used by his predecessors were a few vegetable medicines,
-accelerated by a good many mystical rites. It would seem that medicinal
-springs were patronized at this early date, as temples of health were
-established near such wells, in Greece. Theophrastus, of Lesbos, was a
-fuller's son, and wrote a book on plants. He was a pupil to Plato and
-Aristotle.
-
-Podalirius was going to cure every disease by bleeding, Herodicus by
-gymnastics, and Archagathus by burning and gouging out the diseased parts.
-Then arose Chrysippus, who reversed the blood-letting theory, and would
-allay the venous excitement by simple medications (not having discovered
-the difference between veins and arteries, and when they did, it was
-supposed the latter contained only air; hence the name); Asclepiades, who
-"kicked Hippocrates' nature out of doors," and the thermo-therapeutists,
-who turned out the latter.
-
-After the followers of Archagathus, or Archegenus, were driven out of
-Rome, the hot baths were established, which were the earliest mentioned.
-There was a very celebrated cold water bath established somewhat earlier,
-for which Mr. Noah, who owned the right, got up a very large tub, for the
-exclusive use of himself, family, and household pets. The bath--like
-nearly all cold water baths _extensively used since_--was a complete
-success, killing off all who ventured into the water.
-
-During the reign of the Roman emperor Caracalla (211-217) thermal baths
-were extensively established at Rome, and Gibbon informs us that they were
-open for the reception of both senators and people; that they would
-accommodate three thousand persons at once. The enclosure exceeded a mile
-in circumference. At one end there was a magnificent temple, dedicated to
-the god Apollo, and at the reverse another, sacred to Æsculapius, the
-tutelary divinities of the Thermæ. The Grecians also established cold,
-warm, and hot baths; and in Turkey the bathing was a religious rite until
-a very recent period. More recently, it is a source of diversion.
-"Cleanliness is akin to godliness," and recreation is a religious duty;
-therefore the warm bath, whether followed as a superstitious rite or as a
-source of amusement, is nevertheless commendable as a sanitary measure.
-
-Dr. Dio Lewis, of Boston, has a grand warm (Turkish) bathing
-establishment. There are several hot, champooing, and cooling rooms for
-ladies or gentlemen, and a grand plunge bath, containing sixteen thousand
-gallons of water, warmed by a steam apparatus. If the Bostonians are dirty
-hereafter, they must not blame the doctor. No man knows how dirty he is
-till he tries one of these baths.
-
-"Crosby's History of the English Baptists preserves the opinion of Sir
-John Floyer, physician, that immersion was of great sanitary value, and
-that its discontinuance, about the year 1600, had been attended with ill
-effects on the physical condition of the population. 'Immersion would
-prevent many hereditary diseases if it were still practised,' he said. An
-old man, eighty years of age, whose father lived at the time while
-immersion was the practice, said that parents would ask the priest to dip
-well into the water that part of the child which was diseased, to prevent
-its descending to posterity.
-
-"Baxter vehemently and exaggeratedly denounced it as a breach of the sixth
-commandment. It produced catarrh, etc., and, in a word, was good for
-nothing but to despatch men out of the world."
-
-"If murder be sin, then dipping ordinarily in cold water over head is a
-sin."
-
-So much for Dr. Floyer vs. Baxter. Surely the latter ought to have been
-"dipped."
-
-A western paper of respectability is responsible for the statement, that
-an old lady followed up a bishop as he travelled through his diocese, in
-that vicinity, and was confirmed several times before detected.
-
-"Why did you do such a remarkable deed?" asked the bishop. "Did you feel
-that your sins were so great as to require a frequent repetition of the
-ordinance?"
-
-"O, no," replied the old lady, complacently; "but I heerd say it was good
-for the rheumatiz."
-
-The bishop didn't confirm her any more. She was really going to baptism as
-the voters go to the polls and vote in New York--"early and often."
-
-
-OLD ENGLISH PRESCRIPTIONS.
-
-The prescriptions and doses of the old English doctors were "stunning."
-
-Billy Atkins, a gout doctor of Charles II.'s time, who resided in the Old
-Bailey, did an immense business in his specialty. His remarkable wig and
-dress will find a place in our chapter on "Dress." He made a nostrum on
-the authority of Swift, compounded of thirty different promiscuous
-ingredients.
-
-The apothecary to Queen Elizabeth brought in his quarter-bill, £83, 7s.
-8d. Amongst the items were the following: "A confection made like a manus
-Christi, with bezoar stone, and unicorn's horn, 11s. Sweet scent for
-christening of Sir Richard Knightly's son, 2s. 6d. A conserve of
-barberries, damascene plums, and others, for Mr. Ralegh, 6s. Rose water
-for the King of Navarre's ambassador, 12s. A royal sweetmeat, with
-rhubarb, 16d."
-
-A sweet preparation, and a favorite of Dr. Theodore Mayerne, was "balsam
-of bats." A cure for hypochondria was composed of "adders, bats,
-angle-worms, sucking whelps, ox-bones, marrow, and hog's grease." Nice!
-
-After perusing--without swallowing--his medical prescriptions, the reader
-would scarcely desire to follow the directions in his "Excellent and
-well-approved Receipts in Cooking." I should rather, to run my risk,
-breakfast on boarding-house or hotel hash, than partake of food prepared
-from Dr. Mayerne's "Cook Book."
-
-According to Dr. Sherley, Mayerne gave violent drugs, calomel in scruple
-doses, mixed sugar of lead with conserves, and fed gouty kings on
-pulverized human bones.
-
-"A small, young mouse roasted," is recommended by Dr. Bullyn, as a cure
-for restlessness and nervousness in children. For cold, cough, and
-tightness of the lungs, he says, "Snayles (snails) broken from the shells
-and sodden in whyte wyne, with olyv oyle and sugar, are very holsome."
-Snails were long a favorite remedy, and given in consumption for no other
-reason than that "it was a _slow_ disease." A young puppy's skin (warm and
-fresh) was applied to the chest of a child with croup, because he
-_barked_! Fish-worms, sow-bugs, crab's eyes, fish-oil, sheep-droppings,
-and such delicious stuff were, and still are, favorite remedies with some
-physicians and country people. The following was one of Dr. Boleyn's royal
-remedies:--
-
-"_Electuarium de Gemmis._ Take two drachms of white perles; two little
-peeces of saphyre; jacinth, corneline, emerauldes, garnettes, of each an
-ounce; setwal, the sweate roote doronike, the rind of pomecitron, mace,
-basel seede, of each two drachms; of redde corall, amber, shaving of
-ivory, of each two drachms; rootes both of white and red behen, ginger,
-long peper, spicknard, folium indicum, saffron, cardamon, of each one
-drachm; of troch. diarodon, lignum aloes, of each half a small handful;
-cinnamon, galinga, zurubeth, which is a kind of setwal, of each one drachm
-and a half; thin pieces of gold and sylver, of each half a scruple; of
-musk, half a drachm. Make your electuary with honey emblici, which is the
-fourth kind of mirobalans with roses, strained in equall partes, as much
-as will suffice. This healeth cold, diseases of ye braine, harte, stomack.
-It is a medicine proved against the tremblynge of the harte, faynting, and
-sounin, the weakness of the stomacke, pensivenes, solitarines. Kings and
-noblemen have used this for their comfort. It causeth them to be
-bold-spirited, the body to smell wel, and ingendreth to the face good
-coloure."
-
-"Truly a medicine for kings and noblemen," says Jeaffreson, who gives the
-following:--
-
-"During the railroad panic of England (1846), an unfortunate physician
-prescribed the following for a nervous lady:--
-
-  [R]. Great Western, 350 shares.
-       Eastern Counties,}
-       North Middlesex, } a. a. 1050.
-
-  M.   Haust. 1. Om. noc. cap.
-
-"This direction for a delicate lady to swallow nightly (noc.) 2450
-railway shares was cited as proof of the doctor's insanity, and the
-management of his private affairs was placed in other hands."
-
-[Illustration: HOW A LADY PROCURED A VALUABLE PRESCRIPTION.]
-
-"A humersome doctor," as Mrs. Partington would say, gives the following
-
-  CURE FOR THE BLUES.
-
-  Tinc. Peruvii barki bitters, 1 oz.
-  Sugari albi, vel sweetningus, considerabilibus.
-  Spiritus frumenti, vel old repeus, ad lib.
-  Waterus pumpus, non multum.
-  Nutmegus, sprinklibus.
-
-
-A SURE CURE.
-
-A physician of our acquaintance was called to a lady patient after she had
-enjoyed a season of unusual domestic quarrels, who was not over long in
-"turning herself wrong-side out"--as some females will insist upon doing,
-for the edification of the medical man--telling, not only all about her
-pains and aches, but her "trials with that man," her husband--her brutal
-usage, her scanty wardrobe, her mortification on seeing Mrs. Outsprout
-appear in a new blue silk, and a "love of a bonnet," and (after
-entertaining the doctor with wine and good things) finally wind up in
-hysterical sobs--for which he prescribed, as follows:--
-
-  [R]. One new silk dress--first quality.
-       One hat and feather.
-       One diamond--solitaire--aq. prim.
-
-    Apply to patient. And 1 coach and span, to Central Park, P. M.
-
-The husband enjoyed the joke; the wife enjoyed the clothes, the diamond
-pin, and the ride; and the doctor heard no more of their quarrels.
-
-
-HEROIC DOSES.
-
-Just prior to the year 1800, two brothers, named Taylor, emerged from
-obscurity in Yorkshire, and set up for doctors. They were farriers, and
-from shoeing they advanced to doctoring and bleeding horses, thence to
-drugging and butchering those of their fellow-creatures who naturally
-preferred brute doctors to respectable physicians. Their system of
-practice was a wholesale one.
-
-[Illustration: DOSE--ONE QUART EVERY HOUR.]
-
-"Soft chirurgions make foul sores," said Boleyn, the grandfather of the
-beautiful and unfortunate Anne Boleyn. The Taylors struck no soft blows,
-"but opened the warfare against disease by bombardment of shot and shell
-in all directions. They bled their patients by the gallon, and drugged
-them, as they did the cattle, by the stone. Their druggists, Ewbank &
-Wallis, of York, supplied them with a ton of Glauber's salts at a time.
-Scales and weights in their dispensary were regarded as bugbears of
-ignoble minds. Everything was mixed by the scoop or handful. If they
-ordered broth for a delicate patient, they directed the nurse to boil a
-large leg of mutton in a copper of water, down to a strong decoction, and
-administer a quart at stated intervals," _nolens volens?_
-
-The little Abbe de Voisenon, the celebrated wit and dramatic writer
-(1708-1775), was once sick at the chateau near Melum, and his physician
-ordered him to drink a quart of ptisan (a decoction of barley and other
-ingredients) every hour.
-
-"What was the effect of the ptisan?" asked the doctor, on his next visit.
-
-"None," replied the Abbe.
-
-"Have you swallowed it all?"
-
-"No; I could not take but half of it at once."
-
-"No more than half! My order was the whole," exclaimed the doctor.
-
-"Ah! now, friend," said the Abbe, "how could you expect me to swallow a
-quart at a time, when I hold only a pint?"
-
-
-DROWNING A FEVER.
-
-As the next anecdote has had to do service for more than one physician, it
-is immaterial which doctor it was. He was an irascible old fellow, at
-least, and not at all careful in leaving orders.
-
-"Your husband is very sick, woman," said the doctor to the wife of an
-Irish laborer. "His fever is high, and skin as dry as a fish, or a parish
-contribution box. You must give him plenty of cold water, all he will
-drink, and to-night I'll see him again. There, don't come snivelling
-around me. My heart is steeled against that sort of thing. But, as you
-want something to cry for, just hear me. Your husband isn't going to die!
-There, now, I know you are disappointed, but you brought it on to
-yourself." Going away--"Mind, lots of water--"
-
-"Wather, sir! Hoo much wather, docther dear? He shall have it, but, yer
-honor didn't tell me hoo much wather I must give him."
-
-"Zounds, woman, haven't I told you to give him all he will take? Hoo much?
-Give him a couple of buckets full, if he will swallow them. Do you hear
-now? Two buckets full."
-
-"The Lord bless yer honor," cried the woman; and the doctor made his
-escape.
-
-At evening the doctor stopped, on his return, to ask after the patient.
-"How is he, woman?" asked the doctor.
-
-"O, he's been tuck away, save yer honor," cried the widow. "The wather did
-him no good, only we couldn't get down the right quantity. We did our
-best, doctor dear, and got down him better nor a pailful and a half, when
-he slipped away from us. Ah, if we could oonly ha' got him to swaller the
-other half pailful, he might not have died, yer honor."
-
-
-AN EXACT SCIENCE.
-
-It is sometimes painfully amusing to observe, not only the difference of
-opinion expressed by medical men from one generation to another, but by
-those of the same period, and same school.
-
-In the "London Lancet" of July, 1864, there appeared a curious table. A
-medical practitioner, who had long suffered from hay fever, had from time
-to time consulted various other medical men by letter, and he gives us in
-a tabular survey the opinions they gave him of the causes of this disease,
-and the remedies, as follows:--
-
-"Herewith," writes Dr. Jones, "I forward a synopsis of the opinions of a
-few of the most eminent men, in various countries, that I have consulted.
-I have substituted a letter for the name, as I do not think it prudent to
-place before the general reader the names of those who have so disagreed."
-
-  Consulted.      Opinion of Cause.              Recommended.
-
-  Dr. A.  A predisposition to phthisis.    Quinine and sea voyage.
-  Dr. B.  Disease of pneumogastric nerve.  Arsen., bell., and cinchona.
-  Dr. C.  Disease of the caruncula.        Apply bell. and zinc.
-  Dr. D.  Inflammation of Schneiderian     To paint with nitrate of
-            membrane.                        silver.
-  Dr. E.  Strumous diathesis.              Quinine, cod liver oil, and
-                                             wine.
-  Dr. F.  Dyspepsia.                       Kreosote, henbane, quinine.
-  Dr. G.  Vapor of chlorophyll.            Remain in a room from 11
-                                             A. M. to 6 P. M.
-  Dr. H.  Light debility, hay pollen.      Do., port wine, snuff, salt,
-                                             and opium, and wear blue
-                                             glasses.
-  Dr. L. From large doses of iodine.
-           (Never took any iodine.)        Try quinine and opium.
-  Dr. M. Disease of iris.                  Avoid the sun's rays from 11
-                                             A. M. to 6 P. M.
-  Dr. N. Want of red corpuscles.           Try iron, port wine, and soups.
-  Dr. O. Disease of optic nerve.           Phosph. ac. and quinine.
-  Dr. P. Asthma from hay pollen.           Chlorodyne and quinine.
-  Dr. Q. Phrenitis.                        Small doses of opium.
-  Dr. R. Nervous debility, from heat.      Turkish baths.
-
-This needs no comment.
-
-The different opinions on doses of medicine is more absurd. We have
-already mentioned cases wherein certain physicians administered calomel in
-scruple, and even drachm doses. Before us is a work wherein it is
-seriously asserted that a medicinal action was obtained from the two
-hundredth trituration,--a dose so small, in comparison with the scruple
-doses, as to be counted only by the _millionths_.
-
-How many of us have had to wake up mornings, and swallow a table-spoonful
-of sulphur and molasses, with mingled feelings of disgust at the sulphur,
-and exquisite delight from the molasses, as we retired, lapping our
-mouths, to get the last taste! Now, L. B. Wells, M. D., of New York,
-informs us that he has cured an eruption of the skin by the use of the
-four thousandth dilution of sulphur,--so comparatively small that I
-cannot express it by figures. Well, these extremes have their uses, and we
-may look for relief in the mediate ground. The smaller we can get the
-dose, and still be reliable, the better we shall suit the people,--though
-we shall seriously offend the apothecaries.
-
-Dr. Francis, in his book, "Surgeons of New York," tells the following,
-which illustrates how a desperate remedy may apply to a desperate disease.
-The cases in reference were "peritonitis." Dr. Smith (our "plough-boy")
-had charge of the lying-in wards, under Professor Clark.
-
-"Dr. Smith, have you ever attended a common school?" asked Professor
-Clark.
-
-"Yes, sir."
-
-"Did you ever hear a teacher say, 'I will whip you within an inch of your
-life?'" pursued Dr. Clark.
-
-"Yes, sir; I have."
-
-"Well, that is the way I wish you to give opium to these patients,--'to
-within an inch of their lives.'"
-
-Dr. Smith determined to follow implicitly his instructions, and gave to
-one as high as twelve grains of opium an hour.
-
-"At this extreme point the remedy was maintained for several days.
-
-"The patient recovered, and remained in the hospital, attached to kitchen
-service, for several months."
-
-Certainly, the poor Irish, even, have their uses in New York city.
-
-
-MINERAL SPRINGS.
-
-The writer, having spent much time at the various mineral springs
-throughout the United States, and partaken of the water of some for weeks
-in succession, is competent to give an opinion as to their merits.
-Collectively, they are commendable, especially those located in country
-places, away from scenes of dissipation and profligacy.
-
-The only reliable way to expect benefit from spring waters is to select
-one by the advice of your physician, and go direct to the spring.
-
-Much of the bottled waters sold are "doctored," either by the retailer,
-the wholesaler, or often at the springs from where they are exported. Who
-is to know whether Vichy, Kissengen, Saratoga, or even Vermont mineral
-water, as sold by the package, ever saw the respective springs from which
-they are named? The various mineral waters are easily made, by adding to
-carbonized water such peculiar minerals, or salts, as analysis has shown
-exists in the natural springs. I knew a man who affirmed that he ruined a
-suit of clothes, while employed at a certain spring, by the acids with
-which he "doctored" the water, before it was shipped. Sulphuret of
-potassium covers the properties of many springs; iron others.
-
-It has been intimated that the waters of a celebrated spring which I
-visited is indebted for its peculiar flavor to an old tannery, which,
-within the memory of that mythical being, "the oldest inhabitant,"
-occupied the site where this favorite spring "gushes forth." Having no
-desire to be tanned inside,--after my boyhood's experience in that
-delightful external process,--I respectfully declined drinking from this
-spring.
-
-By the immense quantities of "spring water" gulped down hourly and daily
-by visitors, one is led to suppose the cure lies in a thorough washing
-out. There is an excellent spring near Nashville, Tenn., from which I
-drank for a week; also another at Sheldon, Vt. There are three different
-springs at this latter place, but I prefer the "Sheldon" to either of the
-other two. I discovered a good spring at Newport, Vt., and there are
-others in that vicinity.
-
-
-COLD DRINKS VS. WARM DRINKS.
-
-"Drink freely of cold water," says an author of no small repute, to
-persons of a weak stomach, viz., dyspeptics.
-
-When I was an apprentice, my master (Sir Charles Blicke) used to say, "O,
-sir, you are faint: pray drink this water." "And what do you think was the
-effect of putting cold water into a man's stomach, under these
-circumstances?" asks the great Dr. Abernethy. "Why, of course, that it was
-often rejected in his face." Never put cold water, or cold victuals, into
-a weak stomach.
-
-The above surgeon is responsible for the following advice.
-
-An Irishman called in great haste upon the doctor, saying,--
-
-"O, dochter--be jabers, me b'y Tim has swallowed a mouse."
-
-"Then, Paddy, be jabers, let your boy Tim swallow a cat."
-
-
-THE OLD LADY AND THE PUMP.
-
-One can readily conceive the utility of a warm bath--even a cold water
-bath, if the bather is robust--or a steam bath, a vapor, or a sun bath;
-but the advantage of the absurdity which the nineteenth century has
-introduced from antiquity, viz., the dry cupping, or pumping treatment, is
-not so self-evident.
-
-An old lady, suffering from "rheumatism, and a humor of the blood," was
-persuaded to visit a "pump-doctor's" rooms.
-
-"What's that hollow thing for?" she nervously inquired.
-
-"That is a limb-receiver," replied the polite operator. "If the disease is
-in the limb, we enclose it within this; the rubber excludes the air, and
-to this faucet we affix the pump, and remove the air from the limb."
-
-"Yes, yes; but I thought air was necessary to health; besides, I don't see
-how that is going to cure the limb. Does it add anything to, or take
-anything from the limb?" she inquired.
-
-"Well--no--yes; that is, it draws the disease out from that part."
-
-"Yes, yes; but suppose the disease is all over the person, as mine is."
-
-"Then we place them in this," putting his hand upon an article which she
-had not before discovered.
-
-"That? Why, that looks like the case to a Dutchman's pipe, only a sight
-times larger. And do tell if you shet folks up in that box," cautiously
-approaching and examining it.
-
-The operator assured her such was the case.
-
-"Is the disease left in the box when you are done pumping? Does it really
-suck all the disease into the thing by the process?" she inquired.
-
-"Well, madam, you put your questions in a remarkable manner. But it
-displaces the air around the person, and the vital principle within forces
-out the disease. It is certain to benefit all diseases," he replied.
-
-"Well, I don't see how it can, if it can't be seen. Does it act as physic,
-emetic, a bath, or do the sores follow right out of the blood into the
-box?"
-
-"Neither, madam." The operator was very patient. "Just try the
-limb-receiver first; then you can tell better about the whole treatment."
-
-After much persuasion, and by the assistance of the female operator, the
-old lady was seated, and the limb-receiver adjusted. Now the man in the
-next room began to pump. The old lady was very nervous, and felt for her
-snuff-box, and while so doing the man was still pumping. Having taken the
-snuff, her mind again referred to the limb in the box, and the pressure
-(suction) having naturally increased, her nervousness overcame her, and
-with a scream and a bound she left the chair and rushed for the door,
-dragging the receiver, which clung tight to the one limb, rather
-outweighing the boot and hose of the other, drawing the gutta-percha pipe
-after her, which only added to her fright, and with another scream for
-"help," and "O, will nobody save me?--O, murder, murder!" she, like a
-bound lion, went the length of her chain, and tumbled over in a heap on
-the floor. The woman rushed from behind the screen, the man from the
-pump-room, and rescued the old lady, who fled to her carriage in waiting;
-and doubtless to her dying day she will continue to tell of how narrowly
-she escaped "being sucked entirely through that gutta-percha pipe--only
-for her having on a bustle."
-
-
-COUNTRY MISTAKES.
-
-A Canadian, of a nervous, consumptive diathesis, went down to Portland,
-Maine, to consult a physician, and fell in with old Dr. F., whom he found
-busily engaged in examining some papers. The old doctor heard his case,
-and hurriedly wrote him a prescription. The chirography of the doctor was
-none of the best, yet the Portland druggists, who were familiar with his
-scrawls, could easily decipher his prescriptions. Not so the country
-apothecary, to whom the patient took the recipe, to save expense, which
-was something as follows: "Spiritus frumenti et valerianum," etc.; then
-followed the directions for taking.
-
-After much delay and consultation with the green-grocer boy, it was put up
-as a painter's article, viz., "spirits turpentine and varnish."
-
-The first glass-full satisfied the invalid.
-
-
-DRUNK, OR SOBER.
-
-A gentleman, knowing the parties in his boyhood, rehearsed to me the
-following anecdote:--
-
-Old Dr. Gallup, of ----, N. H., was an excellent physician, whose failing
-lay in his propensity to imbibe more spirits then he could carry off.
-
-"Are you drunk, or sober?" was no unusual question, put by those requiring
-his services, before permitting the old doctor to prescribe.
-
-[Illustration: "PUMPING" AN OLD LADY.]
-
-[Illustration: A DANGEROUS PRESCRIPTION.]
-
-"Sober as a judge. What--hic--do you want?" he would reply.
-
-Mr. B., who had been a long time confined to his house, under the care of
-an old fogy doctor, one of the "Gods of Medicine," with whom all knowledge
-remains, and with whom all knowledge dies, after taking nearly all the
-drugs contained in his Materia Medica, decided to change, and sent for Dr.
-Gallup.
-
-"Are you drunk, or sober, doctor?" was the first salutation.
-
-"Sober as a judge. What's wanted?" was the reply, omitting the "hic."
-
-"Can you cure me? I've been blistered and parboiled, puked and physicked,
-bled in vein and pocket for the last three months. Now, can you cure me?"
-
-Gallup looked over the case, and the medicine left by the other doctor,
-threw the latter all out of the window, ordered a nourishing diet, told
-Mr. B. to take no more drugs, took his fee, and left. Mr. B. recovered
-without another visit.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-XXI.
-
-SCENES FROM HOSPITAL AND CAMP.
-
-    "HE FOUGHT MIT SIEGEL."--A HOSPITAL SCENE AT NIGHT.--ADMINISTERING
-    ANGELS.--"WATER! WATER!"--THE SOLDIER-BOY'S DYING MESSAGE.--THE
-    WELL-WORN BIBLE.--WARM HEARTS IN FROZEN BODIES.--"PUDDING AND
-    MILK."--THE POETICAL AND AMUSING SIDE.--"TO AMELIA."--MY LOVE AND
-    I.--A SCRIPTURAL CONUNDRUM.--MARRYING A REGIMENT.
-
-
-  I met him again; he was trudging along,
-    His knapsack with chickens was swelling;
-  He'd "blenkered" these dainties, and thought it no wrong,
-    From some secessionist's dwelling.
-  "What regiment's yours, and under whose flag
-    Do you fight?" said I, touching his shoulder;
-  Turning slowly about, he smilingly said,--
-    For the thought made him stronger and bolder,--
-                    "I fights mit Siegel."
-
-  The next time I saw him, his knapsack was gone,
-    His cap and his canteen were missing;
-  Shell, shrapnell, and grape, and the swift rifle-ball,
-    Around him and o'er him were hissing.
-  "How are you, my friend, and where have you been?
-    And for what, and for whom, are you fighting?"
-  He said, as a shell from the enemy's gun
-    Sent his arm and his musket a-kiting,
-                    "I fights mit Siegel."
-
-  We scraped out his grave, and he dreamlessly sleeps
-    On the bank of the Shenandoah River;
-  His home and his kindred alike are unknown,
-    His reward in the hands of the Giver.
-  We placed a rough board at the head of his grave,
-    "And we left him alone in his glory,"
-  But on it we cut, ere we turned from the spot,
-    The little we knew of his story--
-                    "I fights mit Siegel."--GRANT P. ROBINSON.
-
-If any of the little "life stories" which I here relate in this brief
-chapter, have perchance before met the reader's eye, I can only say that
-they cannot be read too often. We need no longer go back to remotest
-history--to Joan d'Arc, Grace Darling, Florence Nightingale, nor to
-revolutionary scenes--to find "cases of courage and devotion, for no
-annals are so rich as ours in these deliberate acts of unquestioning
-self-sacrifice, which at once ennoble our estimate of human nature, and
-increase the homage we pay to the virtues of women."
-
-
-A HOSPITAL SCENE AT NIGHT.
-
-Night gathered her sable mantle about earth and sky, and the cold, wintry
-wind swept around the temporary hospital with a mournful wail, a rude
-lullaby, and a sad requiem to the wounded and dying soldier boys who
-crowded its rankling wards. Through the dark, sickly atmosphere, by the
-flickering lamp-lights, are just discernible the long rows of suffering,
-dying humanity. As the wind lulls, the sighs and groans of the unfortunate
-sufferers greet your ears on every side. "Water, water!" is the general
-request.
-
-Every moment new ones are added to the mangled and suffering throng, as
-they are brought in from the battle-field and the amputating-room. The
-surgeons are busily at work. Every able-bodied soldier must be at the
-front, for the emergency is great. Ah! who shall give the "water" which
-raging thirst momentarily demands? Who is to soothe the fearful anguish,
-from lacerated nerve and muscle, by cruel shot and shell? And who shall
-smooth the dying pillow, hear the last prayer, for self, and for loved
-ones far away in the northern homes? And who will kindly receive the dying
-messages for those dear ones,--wife, children, father, mother,--whom he
-never will see again, and kiss the pallid cheek, commend the soul to God,
-and close the eyes forever of the poor soldier boy, who died away from
-home and friends, in the hospital?
-
-God himself had raised up those to fill this sacred office, in the form of
-frail women--woman, because no man could fill the hallowed sphere.
-Flitting from couch to couch, like a fairy thing, noiselessly; like an
-angel of mercy, administering, soothing; but like a _woman_, beautiful,
-frail, and slender, with a cheering smile, and sympathy, as much expressed
-in the light of the eye as the sound of the voice, she moistened the
-parched lips, lightened the pillows, and the hearts, and seemed never to
-tire in deeds of love and kindness to the distressed soldiers.
-
-Next to the soldiers, the physicians know how to appreciate the true women
-at the hospital couch. After the manifestations of skill, labor, anxiety,
-and devotion to the cause by the physicians, thousands of men would have
-perished but for the hand and heart of woman, and who now live to speak
-her praise and cherish her memory forever.
-
-"Ain't she an angel?" said a gray-haired veteran, as she gave the boys
-their breakfast. "She never seems to tire; she is always smiling, and
-don't seem to walk, but flies from one to another. God bless her."
-
-"Ma'am, where did you come from?" asked a fair boy of seventeen summers,
-as she smoothed his hair, and told him, with gleaming eyes, he would soon
-see his mother, and the old homestead, and be won back to life and health.
-"How could such a lady as you come way down here to take care of us poor,
-sick, dirty boys?"
-
-"I consider it an honor," she said, "to wait on you, and wash off the mud
-you have waded through for me."
-
-Said another, "Lady, please write down your name, that I may look at it,
-and take it home, and show my wife who wrote my letters, combed my hair,
-and fed me. I don't believe you're like other people."
-
-"God bless her, and spare her life," they would say, with devotion, as she
-passed on.
-
-(These things were written of Miss Breckenbridge by Mrs. Hoge, of
-Chicago.)
-
-
-THE SOLDIER BOY'S DYING MESSAGE.
-
-She sat by the couch of a fair-haired boy, who was that day mortally
-wounded. It was night now, and in the hospital before described. The poor
-boy knew he must go, but before he died he wanted to leave a message of
-love for his mother, away in the northern home.
-
-"Tell me all you wish to have her know; I will convey your message to
-her," said the lady, as she bent her slender young form over the dying
-boy, and tenderly smoothed back the fleecy locks from his pallid brow.
-
-[Illustration: THE DYING MESSAGE.]
-
-"O, bless you, dear lady. You speak words of such joy to me. But it is
-this. I left a good mother, and sister Susie, in the dear old home in A.
-O, so much I have longed to see them during these last few hours! to see
-them but for one moment! O God, but for one moment!" And while he took
-breath she turned away her beautiful face to hide the falling tears,
-which she must not let the poor boy see. "Tell her," he pursued,--"my
-mother,--that I never found out how much I loved her till I came away from
-her side to fight for my country. O, lady, tell her this, and Susie, and
-poor father. I see it all now. And the old home comes back to my mind as
-clear as though I left it but yesterday. There is the old house, with its
-gabled roof, and the porch, all covered with clinging jessamines, and the
-big house-dog lying under the porch, and the great old well-sweep; and off
-in the meadow are the trees I used to climb. O, I never, never shall see
-them again. I feel very weak. Can't I have some more of that drink?"
-
-"Yes, poor, dear boy. Here; the surgeon said you could have all you
-wanted."
-
-"O, thank you. I wish I could write. O, there; that is so refreshing. If I
-could but write and tell her how good you have been to me! But write your
-name to her, the whole of it. She will understand, if you don't tell her
-how good you are. Well, I won't say any more, for you shake your head; but
-tell her how I love her, and them all. Am I fainting?"
-
-She arose from her knees, and taking some water, with her hand she
-moistened his brow and his silky hair, and offered him some more of the
-strengthening cordial. But he declined taking it. The boy was dying. He
-made one more effort, and said,--
-
-"Mother! Tell her, too, how I have kept her little Bible; and she can see
-how it has been read, and marked, and worn. O for one sight of her dear
-face, one look from her loving eyes, one kiss from her lips! I'd then die
-in peace."
-
-The beautiful lady softly smoothed his hair, wiped his face, whispered
-words too sacred for sterner hearts, and kissed away her own tears from
-his pallid cheeks.
-
-"Mother! Was it you? Then good by. I die--happy, Mother!"
-
-Thus he expired. The good lady wrote the above to the mother of the brave
-lad, and thus I obtained the original.
-
-
-WARM HEARTS IN FROZEN BODIES.
-
-"A lady in one of the hospitals of the west was much attracted by two
-young men, lying side by side, all splintered and bandaged, so that they
-could not move hand or foot, but so cheerful and happy looking, that she
-said,--
-
-"'Why, boys, you are looking very bright to-day.'
-
-"'O, yes,' they replied, 'we're all right now; we've been turned this
-morning.'
-
-"And she found that for six long weeks they had lain in one position, and
-for the first time that morning had been moved to the other side of their
-cot.
-
-"'And were you among those poor boys who were left lying where you fell,
-that bitter cold morning, till you froze fast to the ground?'
-
-"'Yes, ma'am; we were lying there two days. You know they had no time to
-attend to us. They had to go and take the fort.'
-
-"'And didn't you think it was very cruel in them to leave you there to
-suffer so long?' she inquired.
-
-"'Why, no, ma'am; we wanted them to go and take the fort.'
-
-"'But when it was taken, you were in too great agony to know or care for
-it?'
-
-"'O, no, ma'am,' they replied, with flashing eyes. 'There was a whole lot
-of us wounded fellows on the hill-side, watching to see if they would get
-the fort; and when we saw they had it, every one of us who had a whole
-arm, or leg, waved it in the air, and hurrahed till the air rang again.'"
-
-This is from a letter by Miss M. E. Breckenbridge, a lady who laid down
-her life for the sick soldiers.
-
-
-PUDDING AND MILK.
-
-Under Dr. Vanderkieft's supervision, in Sedgwick's corps, there was one of
-the noblest self-sacrificing women of the army of the Potomac. This lady
-was unwearied in her efforts for the good of the soldiers.
-
-While at Smoketown Hospital, there was a poor, emaciated soldier, whose
-weak and pitiable condition attracted her attention. He could retain
-nothing on his stomach. Mrs. Lee--for that was the lady--had tried all the
-various dishes for which the meagre hospital supplies afforded materials,
-but nothing afforded the patient relief and nourishment, until one day, in
-overhauling the stores, she found a quantity of Indian corn meal.
-
-"O, I have found a prize," she cried, in delight.
-
-"What is it?" inquired the little fellow detailed as orderly.
-
-"Indian meal," was her reply.
-
-"Pshaw! I thought you had found a bag of dollars."
-
-"Better than dollars. Bring it along." And she hastened away to the tent
-where lay her poor patient.
-
-"Sanburn," said she,--for that was the invalid's name,--"could you eat
-some mush?"
-
-"I don't know what that is. I don't like any of your fancy dishes."
-
-"Why, it's pudding and milk," said a boy on the next cot.
-
-"O, yes," exclaimed the starving soldier. "I think I could eat a bucket
-full of pudding and milk."
-
-Mrs. Lee was not long in giving him an opportunity for the trial. She at
-first brought him a small quantity, with some sweet milk, and to her joy,
-as well as that of the lean, hungry patient, it suited him. He ate it
-three times a day, and recovered. Indeed, the sack of meal was worth more
-than a sack of dollars, as she had said.
-
-As strange as this may seem, there are instances on record where very
-remarkable, yea, absurd articles of diet have cured where medicine
-failed.
-
-
-SMALL BEER.
-
-The Earl of Bath, when he was Mr. Pulteney, was very sick of the
-pleuristic fever, in Staffordshire. Doctor after doctor had been called
-down from London, till his secretary had paid out the sum of three
-thousand seven hundred and fifty dollars. The last two physicians had
-given him up. "He must die," said Drs. Friend and Broxholm. They, however
-prescribed some simple remedies, and were about to leave, when the
-invalid, just alive, was heard to mutter, "Small beer."
-
-"He asks for small beer," said the attendants. "Shall we give him some?"
-
-"Yes, give him 'small beer,' or anything," replied the doctors.
-
-A great two-quart silver pitcher full was brought, and he drank the whole
-contents, and demanded more. The request was granted, and, after drinking
-the gallon, he fell asleep, perspired freely, and recovered.
-
-
-THE POETICAL AND AMUSING SIDE.
-
-There is a poetical side, as well as a prosy side, to the camp and
-hospital. The following effusion of confusion was sent to the writer by a
-brother who gave his life for his country. It was written by a rebel
-soldier, who never realized his dream, and doubtless his "Amelia" mourns
-his loss as sincerely as though he had fought in a better cause.
-
-
-TO AMELIA.
-
-1. O, come, my love, and go away to the land up north; for there, they
-say, it's rite good picketin' for rebel boys. And we'll take the land, and
-sweep the band of New Yorkers into the bay.
-
-2. I've heered of Delmonico's, and Barnum's Shows, and how many hotels the
-land only knows. And we'll steer our bark for Centre Park. Here's a health
-to ourselves, and away she goes. (Here I drank.)
-
-3. Then come with your knight so true, and down with the boys that's
-dressed in blue. Farewell to hoe-cake an' hominy, Richmond and Montgomery.
-I'll lick the damn Yankees, an' marry you.
-
-4. Here's a heart, I reckon, as firm's a rock; no truer ever beat neath a
-gray or blue frock. So come, my love, and haste away. We'll moor our bark
-in New York Bay, when I end this fighting work.
-
-  Your true lover,
-  J. PARSLOE.
-
-The next has been in print, and was written by Major McKnight, while a
-prisoner. "He was a poet, musician, and joker, and used to run from grave
-to gay, from lively to severe, on almost all mottoes. He was an especial
-favorite with his guard, the Union boys."
-
-
-MY LOVE AND I.
-
-  My love reposes in a rosewood frame;
-        A bunk have I;
-  A couch of feath'ry down fills up the same;
-        Mine's straw, but dry.
-  She sinks to rest at night without a sigh;
-  With waking eyes I watch the hours creep by.
-
-  My love her daily dinner takes in state;
-        And so do I;
-  The richest viands flank her plate;
-        Coarse grub have I.
-  Pure wines she sips at ease her thirst to slake;
-  I pump my drink from Erie's limpid lake.
-
-  My love has all the world at will to roam;
-        Three acres I;
-  She goes abroad, or quiet sits at home;
-        So cannot I.
-  Bright angels watch around her couch at night;
-  A Yank, with loaded gun, keeps me in sight.
-
-  A thousand weary miles stretch between
-        My love and I;
-  To her, this wintry night, cold, calm, serene,
-        I waft a sigh,
-  And hope, with all my earnestness of soul,
-  To-morrow's mail may bring me my parole.
-
-  There's hope ahead: we'll one day meet again,
-        My love and I;
-  We'll wipe away all tears of sorrow then;
-        Her love-lit eye
-  Will all my many troubles then beguile,
-  And keep this wayward reb from Johnson's Isle.
-
-[Illustration: STUCK!]
-
-
-A SCRIPTURAL CONUNDRUM.
-
-The Georgia contrabands were great on conundrums, says a soldier of
-Sherman's army. One day one of these human "charcoal sketches" was
-driving a pair of contrary mules hitched to a cart loaded with foraging
-stuff. He was sitting on the load, saying to himself, "Now dat Clem ax me
-dat cundrum to bodder dis nigger, and I done just make it out. 'Why ar
-Moses like er cotton-gin?' I done see. I mighty 'fraid I hab to gib dat
-up. Whoa! Git up? What de debble you doin'?"
-
-While "cudgelling his brains" for a solution of Clem's conundrum, the
-mules had strayed from the cart road, and were stuck hard and fast in the
-mud. "Git up dar yer Balum's cusses!" piling on the whip and using some
-"swear words" not to be repeated. "Dar, take dat, and dat, yer!"
-
-Just then Chaplain C. rode up, and hearing the contraband swearing,
-said,--
-
-"Do you know what the great I Am said?"
-
-"Look'er yer, masser," interrupted the negro; "done yer ax me none of yer
-cundrums till I git out ob dis d---- hole; and I answer Clem's fust--'Why
-am Moses like er gin-cotton?'"
-
-
-WOULDN'T MARRY A REGIMENT.
-
-When General Kelley was after Mosby's guerrillas, he captured a girl named
-Sally Dusky, whose two brothers were officers in the guerrilla band. The
-general tried in vain to induce the girl--who was not bad looking, by the
-way--to reveal the rebs' hiding-places. Having failed in all other ways,
-the general said,--
-
-"If you will make a clean breast of it, and tell us truly, I will give you
-the chances for a husband of all the men and officers of my command."
-
-With this bait he turned her over to Captain Baggs. After some
-deliberation she asked that officer if the general meant what he said.
-
-"O, most assuredly; the general was sincere," was his reply.
-
-The girl assumed a thoughtful mood for some moments, and then said,--
-
-"Well, I wouldn't like to marry the whole regiment, or staff, but I'd as
-lief have the old general as any of them."
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-XXII.
-
-GLUTTONS AND WINE-BIBBERS.
-
-    "Full well he knew, where food does not refresh,
-    The shrivelled soul sinks inward with the flesh;
-    That he's best armed for danger's rash career,
-    _Who's crammed so full there is no room for fear_."
-
-    "Strange! that a creature rational, and cast
-    In human mould, should brutalize by choice
-    His nature."--COWPER.
-
-    GOOD CHEER AND A CHEERFUL HEART.--A MODERN SILENUS.--A SAD
-    WRECK.--DELIRIUM TREMENS.--FATAL ERRORS.--"EATING LIKE A
-    GLUTTON."--STRENGTH IN WEAKNESS.--A HOT PLACE, EVEN FOR A COOK.--A
-    HUNGRY DOCTOR.--THE MODERN GILPIN.--A CHANGE! A SOW FOR A HORSE!--A
-    DUCK POND.--THE FORLORN WIDOW.--A SCIENTIFIC
-    GORMAND.--ANOTHER.--"DOORN'T GO TO 'IM," ETC.--DR. BUTLER'S BEER AND
-    BATH.--CASTS HIS LAST VOTE.
-
-
-If I confine this chapter to modern physicians, it will be brief. Though
-doctors are usually pretty good livers, they, at this day of the world,
-too well know the deadly properties of the villanous concoctions sold as
-liquors to risk much of it in their own systems.
-
-There is a whole sermon on eating in our first text above, and, while we
-admit that gluttony is reprehensible, we detest "the shrivelled soul" who
-starves wittingly his body to heap up riches, or under the idle delusion
-of starving out disease, or "mortifying the flesh." If not very
-"mortifying," it is very depressing, to be bored by one of these "lean,
-lank hypochondriacs,"--to have to entertain, or be entertained by, such.
-O, give me the wide-mouthed, the round-faced, or abdomened, the cheerful,
-laughing man, especially if he's a doctor.
-
-[Illustration: A GOOD LIVER.]
-
-"Ah, doctor," said a poor, emaciated invalid to me during my first year's
-practice at ----, "you do me good like a medicine by your presence. Why,
-the blue devils leave the house the moment you enter. I don't believe you
-was ever blue."
-
-"Hereafter my patients shall never know that I am."
-
-Nor is it necessary to gulp down ardent spirits to keep the spirits up.
-Stimulants produce an unnatural buoyancy of spirits, and the unnatural
-destroys the natural habit of the system. A good and natural habit does
-not grow upon a person to his injury; an unnatural one always does, ending
-in his destruction. A good living gives good spirits; _cæteris paribus_, a
-poor living low spirits.
-
-
-A MODERN SILENUS.
-
-Silenus, of the mythologists, was a demigod, who became the nurse, the
-preceptor, and finally the attendant, of Bacchus. He was represented as a
-fat, bloated old fellow, riding on an ass, and drunk every day in the
-year.
-
-I knew a "bright and shining light" in the medical profession who turned
-out a modern Silenus. This was Dr. G., of Plymouth, Conn. His father had
-given him the best medical education which this country afforded. He was a
-gentleman of superior address, as well as talent, tall, straight, and
-handsome as an Apollo, with a dark, flashing eye, a massive brow, shaded
-by a profusion of jet-black locks. How long he had practised medicine I do
-not know. Throughout the county he had an excellent professional
-reputation, particularly as a surgeon. His instruments were numerous, and
-of the best and latest improvements. Alas that such a man should be lost
-to the community, and to humanity! But his appetite for intoxicating drink
-knew no bounds. His thirst was as insatiable as Tantalus'.
-
-When I first knew him, he still was in practice, but the better portion of
-the community had ceased to trust him. He never was sober for a day. He
-occupied then a little office in the square, containing a front and a back
-room. In the latter were his few medicines,--there was no apothecary in
-town,--and a number of large glass jars, containing excellent anatomical
-and foetal specimens. This room was not finished inside, and the walls
-were full of nails, projecting through from the clapboards outside.
-
-One day a Mr. Hotchkiss went after him, hoping to find the doctor
-sufficiently sober to prescribe for a patient, in a case of emergency.
-
-"What do you suppose I found him doing?" said Mr. Hotchkiss to me.
-
-"Hiding from the snakes in his back room?" I suggested.
-
-"No, sir; he had the tremens, and with his coat off, his hair standing
-every way, his eyes glaring like a demon's, he had his case of forceps
-strewn over the floor, and was diving at the ends of the clapboard nails,
-which he called devils, that came through the boards, in the back office."
-
-"Ah, there you are! Another devil staring at me!" he shouted; and with the
-bright, gleaming forceps he dove at a nail, wrenched it from the wall, and
-flinging it on the floor, he stamped on it, crying, "Another dead devil!
-Come on. Ah, ha! there you are again!" and he dove at another. When he
-broke a forceps he flung it on the floor, and caught a new pair. I tried
-to stop him, but he only accused me of being leagued with his evil majesty
-to destroy him.
-
-[Illustration: A DOCTOR KILLING THE DEVILS.]
-
-[Illustration: PAYING FOR HIS WINE.]
-
-Another day, after having pawned nearly all his instruments for money
-with which to buy liquor to appease his raving appetite, he was seen to
-unseal one of the jars containing a foetal specimen, pour out a quantity
-of the diluted alcohol in which it had long been preserved, and drink it
-down with the avidity of a starving man.
-
-His last instrument and case pawned, he sold the coat from his back to buy
-liquors. He could no longer get practice, no longer pay his board, and he
-became an outcast from all respectable society, and a frequenter of
-bar-rooms. A poor and simple old woman in the remote part of the town took
-compassion on him, and gave him a home. But nothing could chain his
-uncontrollable passion for intoxicating drinks.
-
-[Illustration: A BAR-ROOM DOCTOR.]
-
-The last time I saw him was in the month of December. He was in a grocery,
-warming himself by the store fire. He wore a crownless hat, a woman's
-shawl over his shoulders, and a pair of boy's pants partially covered his
-legs; no stockings covered his ankles, and a pair of old, low shoes
-encased his feet. The light had fled from his once beautiful, lustrous
-eyes; great wrinkles furrowed his once manly brow; his hair, once dark and
-glossy as the raven's wing, was now streaked with gray, uncombed and
-unkempt, hanging, knotted and snarled, over his neck and bloated face.
-
-"Don't you recollect me?" he asked, with a shaking voice and a distressing
-effort at a smile. Ah, it was sickening to the senses.
-
-Alas! Such another wreck may I never behold. What power shall awaken him
-from his awful condition, and
-
-  "Picture a happy past,
-    Gone from his sight,
-  Bring back his early youth,
-    Cloudless and bright;
-  Tell how a mother's eye
-    Watched while he slept,
-  Tell how she prayed for him,
-    Sorrowed and wept.
-
-  "Point to the better land,
-    Home of the blest,
-  Where she has passed away,
-    Gone to her rest.
-  O'er the departed one
-    Memory will yearn;
-  God, in his mercy, grant
-    He may return."
-
-
-FATAL ERRORS.
-
-Unfortunately, it is much easier to copy a great man's imperfections than
-those qualities which give him his greatness. Too often, also, are their
-defects mistaken for their marks of distinction,--vice for virtue,--and
-copied by the young, who have not the ability to imitate their greatness.
-
-"General Grant smokes!"
-
-"_President_ Grant drinks!"
-
-These two sentences, with the lamentable fact of their probable truth,
-have made more smokers of young men in the military and civil walks of
-life than all other texts in the English language. General or President
-Grant is not responsible for the lack of brains in the community, to be
-sure; but if "great men" will persist in bad habits, young men should be
-taught the difference between them and their virtues, and cautioned to
-shun them, or their bark will be stranded far out of sight of their
-desired haven,--the port of their ambition,--and nothing but a worthless
-wreck remains to tell what better piloting might have done for them. The
-voyage ended cannot be re-commenced.
-
-A student of medicine, in New York, brought a bottle of liquor to our
-room. I told him where that bottle would carry him.
-
-"Pshaw! It's only a pint of wine. Dr. Abernethy, the great English
-surgeon, bought one hundred and twenty-six gallons at once, and he did not
-_die a drunkard_," was his contemptuous reply.
-
-"But you must remember that Abernethy lived in the days of _good_ port
-wine, when every man had something to say of the sample his hospitality
-produced of his popular beverage. The doctor, who never was intemperate,
-was very hospitable.
-
-"'Honest John Lloyd!'--what an anomaly when applied to a rum-seller--was a
-great wine merchant of London, a particular friend of Abernethy's, and of
-all great men of his day, who loved wines and brandies.
-
-"One day I went to Lloyd's just as Dr. Abernethy left.
-
-"'Well,' said Mr. Lloyd, 'what a funny man your master is.'
-
-"'Who?' said I.
-
-"Why, Mr. Abernethy. He has just been here and paid me for a pipe of wine,
-and threw down a handful of notes and pieces of paper, with fees. I wanted
-him to stop to see if they were all right, and said, 'Some of those fees
-may be more than you think, perhaps.' 'Never mind,' said he; 'I can't
-stop; you have them as I took them,' and hastily went his way.
-
-"In occasional habits we may most safely recollect that faults are no less
-faults (as Mirabeau said of Frederick the Great) because they have the
-shadow of a great name; and we believe that no good man would desire to
-leave a better expiation of any weakness than that it should deter others
-from a similar error."
-
-In fact, the doctor was opposed to drunkenness, and also gluttony,
-although he himself "was a good liver," as the following anecdote will
-show:--
-
-A wealthy merchant who resided in the country had been very sick, and
-barely recovered, when, from the same cause, he was again threatened with
-a return of the like disease.
-
-"I went to see him at home, and dined with him. He seemed to think that if
-he did not drink deeply, he might _eat like a glutton_," said the doctor.
-"Well, I saw he was at his old tricks again, and I said to him, 'Sir, what
-would you think of a merchant, who, having been prosperous in business and
-amassed a comfortable fortune, went and risked it all in what he knew was
-an imprudent speculation?'
-
-"Why, sir," he exclaimed, "I should say he was a great ass."
-
-"'Nay, then, thou art the man,' said Abernethy."
-
-The leopard does not change his spots. For the truth of this read the life
-and fall of Uniac.
-
-O, it is a fearful thing to become a drunkard.
-
-The habit once acquired is never gotten entirely rid of. It sleeps--it
-never dies, but with the death of the victim.
-
-Young men, avoid the first drink. Never take that first fatal glass; thus,
-and only thus, are you safe from a drunkard's grave, and the curse
-entailed upon your progeny.
-
-
-STRENGTH IN WEAKNESS.
-
-"Sir, I am advised that you have a barrel of beer in your room," said the
-president of one of our New England colleges to a student, who, contrary
-to rule and usage, had actually purchased a barrel of the delightful stuff
-made from brewed hops, copperas, and filthy slops, and deposited it under
-the bed, convenient for use.
-
-"Yes, sir; such is the fact," replied the student.
-
-"What explanation can you give for such conduct, sir?"
-
-"Well," began the student with the boldest confidence, "the truth is, my
-physician, in consideration of my ill health, advised me to take a little
-ale daily; and not wishing to be seen visiting the beer-shops where the
-beverage is retailed, I decided to buy a barrel, and take it quietly at my
-room."
-
-"Indeed! and have you derived the anticipated benefit therefrom, sir?"
-inquired the president.
-
-"O, yes, sir; indeed I have. Why, when I first had the barrel placed in my
-room two weeks ago, I could not move it. Now, sir, I can carry it with the
-greatest of ease."
-
-The president _smiled_, and ordered the barrel removed, saying that "in
-consideration of his rapid convalescence the treatment could safely be
-discontinued."
-
-
-A WARM PLACE FOR A COOK.
-
-Soon after the completion of the Roberts Opera House, in Hartford, Conn.,
-the Putnam Phalanx held a grand ball within its walls. The music was
-exquisite; the prompters the best in the state; the ladies were the most
-beautiful and dressy in the land; and all went splendidly, till the supper
-was discussed. There had been a misunderstanding about the number for whom
-supper was to be prepared, and it was found out, when too late, that there
-were a hundred more guests than plates. The supper was spread in the
-basement. When the writer went down with friends, the tables, which had
-already been twice occupied, presented a disgusting scene--all heaped up
-with dirty dishes, debris of "fowl, fish, and dessert," and great
-complaint was made by the hungry dancers, while some unpleasant epithets,
-and uncomplimentary remarks were hurled at the heads of the innocent
-caterers.
-
-With our party were Dr. C., a great joker, and Dr. D., his match.
-
-"If you don't like this fare you can go through into the restaurant," said
-one of the waiters. "It is all the same," he added.
-
-We required no second invitation. We did ample justice to the fare
-provided, and retired, leaving Dr. C. to bring up the rear. In a half
-minute he came running after us, saying,--
-
-"The fellow told me I must pay for the supper in there, extra!"
-
-"Well, what did you tell him?"
-
-"Why, I told him to go to h----."
-
-"Well, you did right; let him go; that is just the place for him."
-
-On another occasion, the dinner not being forthcoming at a hotel where we
-dined, the doctor "fell to," and soon demolished the best part of a
-blanc-mange pudding before him.
-
-"That, sir, is dessert," politely interrupted the waiter, in dismay at
-seeing his dessert so rapidly disappearing.
-
-"No matter," said the doctor, finishing it; "I could eat it if it were the
-Great Sahara!"
-
-
-A MODERN GILPIN.
-
-The widow Wealthy lived in the country. She was a blooming widow, fair,
-plump, and--sickly. She owned a valuable farm, just turning off from the
-main thoroughfare,--broad acres, nice cottage house, great barn and
-granary, and she was considered, by certain eligible old bachelors, and a
-widower or two, as "a mighty good catch."
-
-Dr. Filley practised in the country. He was a bachelor, above forty. He
-was a short, thick-set man, with a fair practice, which might have been
-better, but for certain whispers about a growing propensity to--drinking!
-That's the word. Of course he denied the insinuation, and defied any one
-to prove that he was ever the worse for liquor. The doctor was attendant,
-professionally, upon the widow, and--well you know how the gossips manage
-that sort of a thing in the country. But who was to know whether "the
-doctor made more visits per week to the widow Wealthy than her state of
-health seemed to warrant"? or who knew that "the widow was 'sweet' towards
-the little doctor, and that she intended he should throw the bill all in
-at the end of the year--himself to boot?" Never mind his rivals; they do
-not come into our amusing story.
-
-John, the widow's hired man, was sent very unexpectedly, one day in
-autumn, for the doctor to call that afternoon, to see the invalid. Very
-unexpectedly to the widow, and greatly to her mortification, two gossiping
-neighbors called at her residence just as the doctor was expected to
-arrive. "O, she was so glad to see Mrs. ---- and Mrs. ----!"
-
-Dr. Filley rode a scraggy little Canadian horse,--a fiery, headstrong
-beast, but a good saddle horse. Somehow, the unexpected call, at that
-hour, slightly "flustered" the little doctor; but he threw his saddle-bags
-over his shoulder, mounted the beast, and turned his head towards the
-widow's residence.
-
-"I b'lieve I am a little nervous over this colt; I wonder what's the
-matter!" And he tried to rein up the headstrong little beast, to give
-himself time to--sober off!
-
-"I reary bl'eve I'm a little--taken by surprise--ho, Charley! Why, what's
-got inter--pony? Goes like 'r devil. Ho, ho, boy."
-
-Pretty soon the beast struck into a gallop; and now he reached the lane
-that led into Mrs. Wealthy's farm. The pony knew the lane as well as his
-master, and the barn better. The said lane led by the barn-yard and
-out-buildings, the house being beyond. The barn-yard bars were down, and
-the pony made for the opening, in a clean gallop, over the fallen bars,
-right in amongst the cattle, the sheep, and the swine. A big ox gave a
-bellow at the sudden arrival, and, with tail and head in air, ran to the
-opposite side of the yard, intruding upon the comfort of a big old sow,
-that was dozing in the mud. With a loud snort, the discomfited porker
-rushed from the mire just in time to meet the horse, and in attempting to
-pass on both sides at once, she went between the short fore legs of the
-pony, and brought up with a loud squeal, and a shock that sent the rider
-over the horse's head, down astride the hog. The pony reared, wheeled, and
-ran out of the yard at one pair of bars, and the sow went pell-mell out
-of the other, bearing the doctor and saddle-bags swiftly along towards the
-house.
-
-The hired man witnessed the sudden change of steeds, and gave the alarm.
-The widow--not so very sick--was just graciously showing her two unwelcome
-lady callers out, after being worried nearly an hour by their company; and
-taking an anxious look towards the lane, she saw the doctor coming on a
-clean--no, dirty--gallop, on her old sow.
-
-She lost no time in giving a loud scream. What else should she do?
-
-"O, goodness gracious! What is that?"
-
-"O Lord, save and defend us! What is it?" exclaimed the two ladies, in
-chorus.
-
-"A man on a hog!"
-
-"The doctor on a sow!" again in chorus.
-
-Now the pony and the swine met, the doctor still clinging to the sow's ear
-with one hand, and to the tail with the other; of course, having turned a
-clean summersault from the pony, facing towards the sow's hind quarters.
-The swine, beset on all sides, sheered off, and made directly through a
-large duck-pond in the field, scattering the geese and ducks every way,
-which, crying out, "Quack, quack!" made off as fast as feet and wings
-could carry them. Half way across the pond the doctor lost his balance,
-and, with his saddle-bags, fell splashing into the water.
-
-Another scream from the ladies,--only two of them.
-
-The widow, like a sensible woman, when she saw the doctor's danger, ran
-for the well-pole. "Here, John, here! Take this well-hook, and fish him
-out quick, before he drowns."
-
-John obeyed, and in an instant the doctor was safely landed.
-
-The doctor was sobered.
-
-The widow, seeing no further danger, like a true woman, fainted.
-
-[Illustration: THE DOCTOR ON A SOW.]
-
-[Illustration: RESCUE OF THE DOCTOR.]
-
-Leaving the muddy and half-drowned doctor, who looked like a well-wet-down
-bantam cock, John turned to his mistress, whom he picked up from the
-grass, and carried into the house. The two ladies, who had witnessed her
-discomfiture, assisted in loosening the stays, and administering some
-salts, which revived the widow.
-
-"O, did you ever see such a comical sight?"
-
-"Never. O, wasn't it horrid? The little doctor riding backward, on a
-horrid, dirty, old pig! O, if I ever!"
-
-And the ladies laughed in unison, in which the widow actually joined.
-
-"But what has become of the poor, wet fellow? And did John rescue the
-saddle-bags?" inquired the widow.
-
-John, meantime, had returned to the doctor's assistance. He now fished out
-the saddle-bags, and the unfortunate doctor started on foot for home,
-whither the pony had long since fled.
-
-The story, in the mouth of one servant and three ladies, was anything but
-a secret, and--you know how it is in the country.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-The widow still holds the farm in her own name, in a town in New England.
-
-Dr. Filley practises physic in California.
-
-
-A SCIENTIFIC GOURMAND.
-
-Our familiar friend, "A Book about Doctors," which we have before
-introduced to your notice as the only amusing work in the English
-language, upon the subject, gives a long list of _bon vivants_ of the old
-school, amongst whom are some eminent names in the medical profession. In
-fact, the abstemious doctors during the past centuries would seem to have
-been far in the minority. Even Harvey was accused of being fond of brandy.
-
-"Dr. George Fordyce was fond of substantial fare, like Radcliffe, who was
-a _gormand_. For above twenty years Fordyce dined at Dolly's chop-house.
-The dinner he there consumed was his only meal during the four and twenty
-hours.
-
-"Four o'clock was his dinner hour. Before him was set a silver tankard of
-strongest ale, a bottle of port wine, and a quarter pint of brandy.
-
-"The dinner was preluded by a dish of broiled fowl, or a few whitings.
-Having leisurely devoured this plate, the doctor took a glass of brandy,
-and ordered his steak, which was always a prime one, _weighing one and a
-half pounds_. Of course, vegetables, etc., accompanied the steak.
-
-"When the man of science had devoured the whole of this, the bulk of which
-would have kept a boa constrictor happy a twelvemonth, he took the rest of
-his brandy, drank off the tankard of ale, and topped off by sipping down
-his bottle of port wine.
-
-"Having thus brought his intellects, up or down, to the standard of his
-pupils, he rose, and walked down to Essex Street, and delivered his six
-o'clock lecture on chemistry." (He lived to the age of sixty-six.)
-
-Another glutton, in contrast with whom Fordyce was an abstinent, was Dr.
-Beauford. In 1745 he was summoned to appear before the privy council, to
-answer some questions relative to Lord B., with whom the doctor was
-intimate.
-
-"Do you know Lord Barrymore?" asked one of the lords.
-
-"Intimately, _most_ intimately," replied the doctor.
-
-"You were often with him?"
-
-"We dine together almost daily when his lordship is in town," answered the
-doctor, with expressions of delight.
-
-"What do you talk about?"
-
-"Eating and drinking."
-
-"Eating and drinking! What else?" asked his lordship.
-
-"O, my lord, we never talk about anything but eating and
-drinking,--except--"
-
-"Except what, sir?"
-
-"_Except drinking and eating_, my lord."
-
-The council retired, greatly disappointed, for they had expected to worm
-some important secret from the doctor.
-
-At Finch Lane Tavern, where Dr. Beauford used to receive the apothecaries
-at half fee, he was represented as sitting over his bottles and glasses,
-from which he drank deeply, never offering one of his clients a drop,
-though they often sat opposite, at the same table, looking with anxious
-countenances and watering mouths upon the tempting cordials, as the doctor
-tossed them off.
-
-
-"DOORN'T GO TO 'IM," ETC.
-
-"Not many years since, in a fishing village on the eastern coast, there
-flourished a doctor in great repute amongst the poor, and his influence
-over the humble patients literally depended on the fact that he was sure,
-once in the twenty-four hours, to be handsomely intoxicated.
-
-"Dickens has told us how, when he bought the raven immortalized in
-'Barnaby Rudge,' the vender of that sagacious bird, after enumerating his
-various accomplishments, said, in conclusion,--
-
-"'But, sir, if you want him to come out strong, you must show him a man
-drunk.'
-
-"The simple villagers of Flintbeach had a firm faith in the strengthening
-effect of looking at a tipsy doctor. They usually postponed their visits
-to Dr. Mutchkins till evening, because they then had the benefit of the
-learned man in his highest intellectual condition.
-
-"'Doorn't go to 'im i' the morning; he can't doctor no ways to speak on
-till he's had a glass,' was the advice usually given to strangers not
-aware of the doctor's little peculiarities."
-
-
-DR. BUTLER'S BEER AND BATH.
-
-An amusing description is given of one Dr. Butler, of London, who, like
-the above, used to get drunk nightly. He was the inventor of a beer which
-bore his name, something like our Ottawa, "with a stick in it," by one Dr.
-Irish. We once saw a drunken fellow holding on to a lamp post, while he
-held out one hand, and was arguing with an imaginary policeman that he was
-not drunk,--only had been taking a "little of that--hic--beverage, Dr.
-Waterwa's Irish beer, by the advice of his physician."
-
-[Illustration: "ONLY IRISH BEER."]
-
-Dr. Butler had an old female servant named Nell Boler. At ten o'clock,
-nightly, she used to go to the tavern where the doctor was, by that hour,
-too drunk to go home alone, when, after some argument and a deal of
-scolding from Nell for his "beastly drunkenness," she would carry the
-inebriated doctor home, and put him to bed.
-
-"Notwithstanding that Dr. Butler was fond of beer and wine for himself, he
-was said to approve of water for his patients. Once he occupied rooms
-bordering on the Thames. A gentleman afflicted by the ague came to see
-him. Butler tipped the wink to his assistant, who tumbled the invalid out
-of the window, slap into the river. We are asked to believe that the
-surprise actually cured the patient of his disease."
-
-[Illustration: CURE FOR THE AGUE.]
-
-Water did not cure the doctor, however, but beer did.
-
-Dr. Burrowly was stricken down in his prime, and just as he was about to
-succeed to the most elevated position in the medical profession.
-
-The doctor was a politician, as well as an excellent surgeon. When Lords
-Gower and Vandeput were contesting the election for Westminster, in 1780,
-the doctor was supporting the latter. One Weatherly, who kept a tavern,
-and whose wife wore the ---- belt, was very sick. Mrs. Weatherly deeply
-regretted the fact of the sickness, as she wanted her husband to vote for
-Lord T. Late on election day, Dr. Burrowly called round to see his
-patient, quite willing that he should be sufficiently sick to keep him
-from going to the polls. To his surprise he found him up, and dressed.
-
-"Heyday! how's this?" exclaimed the doctor, in anger. "Why are you up,
-without my permission?"
-
-"O, doctor," replied Joe Weatherly, feebly, "I am going to vote."
-
-"Vote!" roared the doctor, not doubting that his wife had urged him to
-attempt to go to the polls to vote for Lord J. "To bed. The cold air would
-kill you. To bed instantly, or you're a dead man before nightfall."
-
-"I'll do as you say, doctor; but as my wife was away, I thought I could
-get as far as Covent Garden Church, and vote for Sir George Vandeput."
-
-"For Sir George, did you say, Joe?"
-
-"O, yes, sir; I don't agree with my wife. She's for Lord Trentham."
-
-The doctor changed his prognosis.
-
-"Wait. Let me see; nurse, don't remove his stockings;" feeling the man's
-pulse. "Humph! A good firm stroke. Better than I expected. You took the
-pills? Yes; they made you sick? Nurse, did he sleep well?"
-
-"Charmingly, sir;" with a knowing twinkle of the eye.
-
-"Well, Joe, if you are bent on going to the polls, it will set your mind
-better at ease to go. It's a fine sunny afternoon. The ride will do you
-good. So, bedad, I'll take you along in my chariot."
-
-Weatherly was delighted with the doctor's urbanity, resumed his coat, went
-to the election, and voted for Sir George, rode back in the chariot, _and
-died two hours afterwards_, amidst the reproaches of his amiable spouse.
-
-"Called away from a dinner table, where he was eating, laughing, and
-drinking deeply, Dr. B. was found dead in the coach from apoplexy, on the
-arrival at the place of destination."
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-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.
-
-[Illustration: AN EMBRYO APOLLO.]
-
-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_!'"
-
-[Illustration: THE PILGRIM CHEAT.]
-
-
-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.
-
-[Illustration: FRANKLIN'S EXPERIMENTS WITH ETHER.]
-
-"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.
-
-[Illustration: END OF THE WONDERFUL ONE-HORSE SHAY.]
-
-
-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.
-
-[Illustration: "MUSIC, THE SOUL OF LIFE."]
-
-[Illustration: THE MUSICAL MICE.]
-
-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."
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-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.
-
-[Illustration: SIGNS OF CIVILIZATION.]
-
-"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
-
-[Illustration: SWILL MILK (MAGNIFIED).]
-
-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.
-
-[Illustration: PURE MILK.]
-
-[Illustration: WATERED MILK.]
-
-[Illustration: "WHAT'S IN THE MILK?"]
-
-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.
-
-[Illustration: A CHAMPAGNE BATH.]
-
-"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.
-
-[Illustration: MOTHER'S MILK PURE AND HEALTHY.]
-
-[Illustration: MOTHER'S MILK AFTER DRINKING WHISKEY.]
-
-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.
-
-[Illustration: WAITING FOR ASSISTANCE.]
-
-"'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.
-
-[Illustration: A CONFECTIONERY STORE.]
-
-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.
-
-[Illustration: TARTARIC ACID FOR SUPPER.]
-
-[Illustration: A STREET CANDY STAND.]
-
-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.
-
-[Illustration: THE NEWSBOY'S MOTHER.]
-
-
-
-
-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!
-
-[Illustration: THE IDOL OF TOBACCO USERS.]
-
-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_.
-
-[Illustration: PUNISHMENT OF THE TURK.]
-
-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.
-
-[Illustration: SMOKERS OF FOUR GENERATIONS.]
-
-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.'"
-
-[Illustration: "I WANT A CHAW OF TERBACKER."]
-
-
-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."
-
-[Illustration: YOUNG SMOKERS.]
-
-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.
-
-[Illustration: EXAMINATION OF THE SMOKER.]
-
-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.
-
-[Illustration: PURIFYING HIS BLOOD.]
-
-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.
-
-[Illustration: CLEANSING HIS BONES.]
-
-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."
-
-[Illustration: THE SMOKER.]
-
-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_!
-
-[Illustration: THE CHEWER.]
-
-
-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!
-
-[Illustration: SIGN OF THE TIMES.]
-
-
-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?
-
-[Illustration: MY LAZY SMOKING FRIEND.]
-
-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."
-
-[Illustration: "SHALL I ASSIST YOU TO ALIGHT?"]
-
-[Illustration: WORK FOR TONGUES AND FINGERS.]
-
-  "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"?
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-[Illustration: WHAT KILLED THE DOG?]
-
-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.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-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.
-
-[Illustration: THE GREAT SURGEONS OF THE WORLD.]
-
-"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.
-
-[Illustration: A CALL ON THE VILLAGE DOCTOR.]
-
-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!"
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-[Illustration: PHYSICIANS COSTUME IN 1790.]
-
-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.
-
-[Illustration: HOW POOR TOMMY WAS LOST.]
-
-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."
-
-[Illustration: BRIDGET'S METHOD OF MENDING STOCKINGS.]
-
-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.
-
-[Illustration: THE UNDERTAKER'S ARMS.]
-
-"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.
-
-[Illustration: DISPUTE OF THE DOCTOR AND VALET.]
-
-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.
-
-[Illustration: A WIG MOUSE.]
-
-"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.
-
-[Illustration: THE MYSTERY EXPLAINED.]
-
-"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.
-
-[Illustration: MEETING OF THE DOCTOR AND THE CURATE.]
-
-"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."
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-[Illustration: DR. CANDEE.]
-
-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.
-
-
-
-
-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.
-
-[Illustration: A GERMAN BEER GIRL.]
-
-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.
-
-[Illustration: AN INDIGNANT BRIDE.]
-
-
-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.
-
-[Illustration: THE ITCH MITE.]
-
-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.
-
-[Illustration: THE BURGLAR AND STUDENT.]
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-_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."
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-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._
-
-[Illustration: ASSISTANCE FROM A ROYAL SURGEON.]
-
-
-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.
-
-[Illustration: PETER THE GREAT AS A SURGEON.]
-
-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.
-
-[Illustration: JOB DISCHARGED BY SIR SCIPIO.]
-
-"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.)
-
-[Illustration: "BLEED HIM."]
-
-"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.
-
-[Illustration: A BORROWED WATCH.]
-
-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!
-
-[Illustration: JOB'S DECISION.]
-
-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_."
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-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.
-
-[Illustration: SQUASHY'S SURGICAL OPERATION ON THE DOCTOR.]
-
-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.
-
-[Illustration: "WILL YE TAK' A BLAST NOO?"]
-
-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,--
-
-[Illustration: REPTILES FROM THE STOMACH.]
-
-"'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.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-[Illustration: "IT ISN'T CATCHIN'."]
-
-_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_."
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-[Illustration: FUNERAL OF THE CANARY.]
-
-_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._"
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-XXX.
-
-THE OTHER SIDE.
-
-    It's a very good rule in all things of life,
-      When judging a friend or brother,
-    Not to look at the question alone on one side,
-      But always to turn to the other.
-    We are apt to be selfish in all our views,
-      In the jostling, headlong race,
-    And so, to be right, ere you censure a man,
-      Just "put yourself in his place."--ANON.
-
-    PUT YOURSELF IN HIS PLACE.--STEALING FROM THE PROFESSION.--ANECDOTE OF
-    RUFUS CHOATE.--INGRATES.--A NIGHT ROW.--"SAVING AT THE SPIGOT AND
-    WASTING AT THE BUNG."--SHOPPING PATIENTS.--AN AFFECTIONATE WIFE.--RUM
-    AND TOBACCO PATIENTS.--THE PHYSICIAN'S WIDOW AND ORPHANS, THE SUMMONS,
-    THE TENEMENT, THE INVALIDS, HOW THEY LIVED, HER HISTORY, THE UNNATURAL
-    FATHER, HOW THEY DIED, THE END.--A PETER-FUNK DOCTOR.--SELLING OUT.
-
-
-While I trust that respectable, educated physicians will take no offence
-at the _exposé_ in the foregoing chapters, as nothing therein is
-_intended_ to lessen them in public opinion, or detract from the merit of
-the TRUE PHYSICIAN of any school, I cannot leave the subject without
-presenting some facts to show that the people are not blameless in
-creating and maintaining so many humbugs and impositions, to the damage
-and scandal of respectable practitioners and legitimate medicine.
-
-
-STEALING FROM THE PROFESSION.
-
-I need not tell men of any profession, that there are those, even in the
-respectable walks of life, who will watch their opportunity to button-hole
-the lawyer or the doctor, in the public streets, to "just ask him a
-question," rather than call at his office, where a fee would certainly be
-a just compensation for the expected advice.
-
-One of these highway robbers once overtook Mr. Choate, the great Boston
-lawyer, on a public street, and asked him if he should sue Mr. Jones, so
-and so, briefly stating his case, if he, the lawyer, thought he, Smith,
-would win the suit.
-
-"O, yes," replied the great lawyer; and Smith went on his way rejoicing.
-
-The case went to trial, Smith _vs._ Jones. Smith employed a cheap
-pettifogger. Jones employed Mr. Choate to defend him, and gained the suit.
-
-"Didn't you tell me I had a good case?" demanded the irascible plaintiff
-of Mr. Choate, when he found that the case had gone against him.
-
-"Well, I think you did say something to me about it," replied Mr. Choate,
-very indifferently.
-
-"Yes, and didn't you advise me to sue him?" cried the infuriated Smith.
-
-"Let me see, Mr. Smith: how much did you pay me for that advice?"
-
-"Nothing, sir! nothing!" roared Smith.
-
-"Well, that was all it was worth," remarked Mr. Choate, quietly.
-
-Another of these free advice fellows detained the author at the
-post-office last week, and very patronizingly asked,--
-
-"What would you take for a code id de ed, docdor?"
-
-"Take? take two pocket handkerchiefs," was the cheap prescription for a
-cheap patient.
-
-
-INGRATES.
-
-  "What, then! doth Charity fail?
-  Is Faith of no avail?
-  Is Hope blown out like a light
-  By a gust of wind in the night?
-  The clashing of creeds, and the strife
-  Of the many beliefs, that in vain
-  Perplex man's heart and brain,
-  Are nought but the rustle of leaves,
-  When the breath of God upheaves
-  The boughs of the Tree of Life,
-  And they subside again!
-  And I remember still
-  The words, and from whom they came,
-  Not he that repeateth the name,
-  But he that doeth the will!"
-
-"Of all men, the physician is most likely to discover the leading traits
-of character in his fellow-beings; on no other condition than that of
-sickness do they present themselves without those guards upon the
-countenance and tongue that an artificial mode of life has rendered almost
-indispensable to their existence; in city life, more especially."
-
-"The confiding patient often hangs, as it were, with an oppressive weight
-upon the conscientious physician, and if he be afflicted with a generous,
-sympathizing soul, farewell to his happiness. His heart will bleed for
-distress, both bodily and pecuniary, that he cannot alleviate, and he
-gives up in despair a profession which will so severely tax his nervous
-system as to render the best medical talent comparatively useless....
-
-"Those who speak of the gratitude of the low Catholic Irish in this (New
-York) city, or any other city, as they present their true characters to
-the young practitioner, will find but one opinion,--a more improvident,
-heartless, and dishonest class of people never defiled the fair face of
-the earth. They are indeed a bitter curse to the young and humane
-physician."
-
-And this from the pen of one of the most noble and humane physicians of
-the great metropolis, whose generosity forbids him ever to refuse a visit,
-day or night, to the distressed, even amongst the lowest of the class he
-so bitterly condemns. The above is the experience of other physicians
-besides Dr. Dixon, and in other cities besides New York.
-
-During my days of extreme poverty in H., an Irish woman, whose child,
-suffering with cholera infantum, I snatched from the very jaws of death,
-cheated me out of my fees, when I afterwards learned that she owned two
-tenements, and had money in the Savings Bank.
-
-While I was practising in H., one cold winter's night, an Irishman came
-for me to go to Front Street, as a man had fallen down stairs, and was
-"kilt intirely."
-
-"Then it is Mr. Roberts, the undertaker, whom you want," I replied.
-
-"O, no, he isn't kilt intirely, but broke his arrum, doctor."
-
-Therefore I drew on my boots, took my hat and case, and was soon at the
-designated number. A drunken row, as usual. It was near midnight, Saturday
-night. A big, burly fellow lay on the bed in a large front room,
-surrounded by a dozen men and women, nearly all drunk, except the patient.
-His arm was dislocated at the shoulder downward. I drew off my coat,
-jumped upon the bed, set the man up, raised the limb, clapped my knee
-under the limb, raised the arm, and using it for a lever, the bone snapped
-into the socket as quickly as I am telling the story.
-
-"Ah, that gives me aise; ah, God bless you, docther. How mooch is the
-damage? Get the wallet, woman, and let me pay the good docther," said the
-grateful patient. "How mooch? Say it asy, noo."
-
-"Two dollars." A very modest fee for such a job at midnight.
-
-"O, the divil!" cried the woman. "And is it two dollars for the snap of a
-job likes to that, noo, ye'll be axin' a poor man?"
-
-I made no reply. The man asked for the money.
-
-"Will yeze be axin' that much?" asked a six and a half foot Irishman who
-stood by the opposite side of the bed.
-
-"Do you have to pay the bill, sir?" I demanded.
-
-"Noo," he replied.
-
-"Then mind your own business," I exclaimed, with a clincher, and a flash
-of the eyes that somehow caused him to cower like the miserable drunken
-coward he was, amid the laughs and jeers of the bystanders.
-
-[Illustration: MY FRONT STREET PATIENT.]
-
-"There, take the money," said the woman (boarding mistress). "Dr. B. would
-come ferninst the railroad over for half of it, he would," she added.
-
-"Woman," said I, "when next any of your kind want a doctor, do you go
-ferninst the railroad for Dr. B." (I knew she lied), "and get him for a
-dollar. As for me, _I never, for love or money, will come to your call
-again_."
-
-I never heard of money enough to induce me to visit Front or Charles
-Street after that night, and I have seen some anxious faces looking about
-for a doctor, in case of emergency, in that locality.
-
-
-"SAVING AT THE SPIGOT, AND WASTING AT THE BUNG."
-
-Again, there is a class in every city who, to avoid a physician's fee, go
-to an apothecary, briefly and imperfectly state their case, perhaps to a
-green clerk, or a proprietor who is as ignorant of the pathology of the
-disease as the miserable applicant; and who ever knew of a druggist too
-ignorant to prescribe for a case over the counter? The result is often the
-administration of harsh remedies, which aggravate the present, or produce
-some other disease worse than the original, and in the end the patient is
-obliged to seek the advice of a physician.
-
-Now the patient is ashamed to tell the whole truth, the doctor has yet to
-learn what drugs are rankling in the system, and the disease is often
-protracted thereby ten times as long as it need have been, had the man at
-the outset sought the advice of a respectable physician. This is an
-every-day occurrence. I knew a young man who recently went into
-consumption from having a comparatively simple case prolonged by this
-apotheco-medical interference.
-
-
-SHOPPING PATIENTS.
-
-"A queer kind of patients!" you exclaim.
-
-Yes, very queer. One class of them go round from office to office, to
-"just inquire about a friend" (themselves), "if they could be cured," how
-long it would require, and, ten to one, even ask what medicines "you would
-give for such a case."
-
-Such persons, if females, usually come into the city for the double
-purpose of seeing a doctor, or a dozen, and shopping,--doing the shopping
-first; tramping from one end of the city to the other, visiting the doctor
-last, with bundles and boxes by the score, "in a great hurry; must catch
-a certain train; all tired out;" making the opportunity for diagnosis an
-unfavorable one, and not unusually asking the doctor--a stranger,
-perhaps--to trust them till they come again.
-
-[Illustration: A SHOPPING PATIENT.]
-
-Whoever "O. SHAW" may be, he knows a thing or two. Hear him.
-
-
-AN AFFECTIONATE WIFE.
-
-A poor mechanic, three weeks after marriage, was addressed by his wife
-thus:--
-
-"Harry, don't you think a new silk dress would become my beauty?"
-
-He answered affirmatively, of course, and promised that when his present
-job was completed, which would be in about a fortnight, the necessary
-stamps would be forthcoming, and that she might then array her loveliness
-in the wished-for dress. The affectionate wife kissed him, and thus
-rewarded his generosity. Three days afterwards the man met with an
-accident, and was brought home on a shutter, and it was evident that for
-weeks he would be confined to his bed. On beholding him, his wife gave
-vent to repeated outbursts of agony, as an affectionate woman should,
-considering the cause. This touched the unfortunate man, and he said,
-consolingly,--
-
-"Dry your tears, dear Nettie; I'll be all right again in a few weeks."
-
-"Perhaps you may," she answered; "but all your earnings for a long time
-after you resume work will be required to pay your doctor's bill, and you
-won't be able to get me _that new silk dress_."--O. SHAW.
-
-
-A SENSIBLE PRESCRIPTION.
-
-A doctor up town recently gave the following prescription for a lady: "A
-new bonnet, a cashmere shawl, and a new pair of gaiter boots." The lady,
-it is needless to say, has entirely recovered.
-
-
-RUM AND TOBACCO PATIENTS.
-
-Then there is a large class,--men, mostly; males, at least,--who, having
-spent all their substance and much of their health in excess of
-tobacco-using and whiskey-drinking, apply to the physician for aid, "in
-charity, for God's sake," as they have nothing with which to pay him, and
-usually a numerous family dependent upon their miserable labor for
-sustenance. Woe to the physician who gets a reputation for benevolence at
-this day and generation of "cheek."
-
-"Doctor, I hope you _will_ do something for my distress," said a
-gentlemanly-dressed individual, not many months ago. "I have but sixteen
-cents in my pocket, and I owe for four weeks' board, and am out of
-employment." He was a play actor. Could I say no to so honest a statement
-of his low state of finance? I treated him faithfully, without a penny.
-
-Not many weeks afterwards I knew of his going away and stopping two days
-at a hotel with a strange woman.
-
-Still there are others who are quite able, but who think it no sin to
-cheat a doctor by misrepresenting their inability to pay. They work upon
-the sympathies of the benevolent doctor; they "would willingly pay a
-hundred dollars, if they had it," etc.; and thus slip off without
-compensating him for his services. Every physician knows that I have not
-overstated the above.
-
-There is also a large class of patients, with whom, like the "old clo'
-Jew," wisdom, brain work, advice, go for nothing. You must represent their
-case as perfectly fearful, and do something perfectly awful for them, or
-you are of no account.
-
-Selden, who understood these failings in mankind vastly well, gives them a
-sly hit in his "Table Talk." If a man had a sore leg, and he should go to
-an honest, judicious surgeon, and he should only bid him keep it warm, and
-anoint it with such an oil (an oil well known), that would do the cure,
-haply he would not much regard him, because he knows the medicine to be an
-ordinary one. But if he should go to a surgeon that should tell him, "Your
-leg will gangrene within three days, and it must be cut off; and you will
-die unless you do something that I could tell you," what listening there
-would be to this man!
-
-"O, for the Lord's sake, tell me what this is; I will give you any content
-for your pains."
-
-
-THE PHYSICIAN'S WIDOW AND ORPHAN.
-
-Scenes from "Practice of a New York Surgeon."
-
-I have abridged the following truthful story from the above work, which
-book I recommend to the perusal of all lovers of moral and entertaining
-literature.
-
-_The Summons._--The experienced physician knows, from the sound of the
-door bell, whether it is the representative of wealth or penury who is
-outside at the bell-pull.
-
-The doctor opened the door to the _timid_ summons.
-
-"Will you please come and see my mother?" asked a little delicate and
-thinly-dressed girl. "She has been very ill for nearly a year, and I'm
-afraid she's going to die." The poor little heart was swelling with grief.
-
-Almost ashamed as I donned my heavy coat, for the night was bitter cold,
-and the shivering little girl pattered after me with her well-worn shoes
-and scanty dress, I hurried along to the abode of poverty.
-
-_The Tenement._--The faint rays of a candle issuing from an upper window
-of one of those wretched wooden buildings, guided us to the invalid's
-tenement, and as we approached the house the little girl ran ahead of me,
-and stood shivering in the doorway, while I carefully walked up the
-rickety steps.
-
-Poor as the tenement was, its cleanliness was noticeable, from the fact
-that it was isolated from the loathsome Irish neighbors, whose superior
-means and brutal habits allowed them to occupy the lower and more
-accessible apartments almost in common with the swine which are fed from
-their very doorsteps.
-
-_The Invalid._--A violent paroxysm of coughing had just seized the lady,
-and I waited some moments before I could observe her features. She had
-surely seen better days. There were about her and the little apartment
-evidences of refinement, from her own tidy person to the little sweet
-rosebush in full bloom, and the faultless white board, and the scanty,
-though snowy curtains that shaded the attic window, which produced a
-melancholy effect upon me, which was not lessened when good breeding
-required me to address my patient.
-
-[Illustration: CALL AT THE TENEMENT.]
-
-Her countenance had evidently been beautiful; an immense mass of auburn
-hair, such as Titian loved to paint, yet shaded her brow; the eyes were
-large and lustrous; the nose was slightly aquiline, the lips thin; and
-every feature bespoke the woman of a highly refined and intellectual
-nature. When her gaze met mine for an instant, I felt that pity was
-misplaced in the emotions which swelled my heart, for the lofty dignity,
-almost _hauteur_, in that look, would have become an empress in reduced
-circumstances.
-
-"Go, dearest, to your little bed, and close the door, my love," she said,
-turning to the child.
-
-The girl lingered an instant. I stood between the dying mother and her
-child. I turned aside whilst their lips met in that holy kiss that a dying
-mother only can give, ay, and a prayer that she alone can breathe.
-
-When the little creature had withdrawn, by a narrow door scarcely
-distinguishable from the rest of the rough, whitewashed boards that
-divided her little closet from the main room, the mother turned her
-earnest gaze upon me, and said,--
-
-"I have troubled you, doctor, not with the view of taxing your kindness to
-any extent, but to ask how long I may yet linger,"--placing her hand on
-her wasted bosom,--"depending for every service upon that little fragile
-creature, for whom alone I have, I fear, a selfish desire to live."
-
-I could not answer immediately. My heart was too full. I had recognized
-the dreadful malady at a glance. She was far gone with consumption.
-
-"I have a duty to perform, connected with her, that depends upon your
-answer--one that I have selfishly, alas! too long deferred."
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-As I arose to take my departure, she requested me to open the door to the
-little chamber. I did so, and there lay the poor, pale child, with her
-clothes unremoved. Merciful God! an infant watching its dying mother, a
-refined, delicate and intellectual woman, the wife of an educated
-physician, in a wretched tenement, surrounded by palaces!
-
-_How they lived._--O, my God, what a discovery was made on my next visit,
-the following morning! Then I saw what had before excited my curiosity,
-viz., the manner in which my patient contrived to support herself and
-child, for I was quite sure that she would never condescend to beg.
-
-[Illustration: THE WIDOW AT WORK.]
-
-I had observed, during my visit the previous evening, a very large
-package, tied up in commercial form, and by its side a large square board.
-The widow was now sitting up in bed, propped up with some coarse straw
-pillows, her cheeks burning with hectic, and the square board resting upon
-a couple of cross-pieces to keep it from her wasted limbs, and she and the
-child were at work putting up soda and seidlitz powders. Several dozen
-boxes had been filled during the morning, placed in envelopes, and
-labelled.
-
-"'Tis the lot of humanity to labor," she said, when I had detected her at
-the task which taxed the last mite of her remaining strength, and I stood
-horrified looking on; "and why should I be exempt?" she asked, actually
-smiling gracefully.
-
-I removed the board, but allowed the girl to resume her work by the little
-table near, saying that her remark was applicable only to those able to
-labor. She assured me that their contracted circumstances had "compelled
-her to make this exhibition of her industry."
-
-_Her History._--Twelve years before, this beautiful and refined lady had
-left a home of wealth and affluence to share the fortunes of her husband,
-Dr. ----, who was worthy of all the love that a pure and affectionate
-woman could bestow. He struggled on manfully and hopefully against
-misfortune until two years ago....
-
-I had once met her husband. It was under the following circumstances. A
-child had been run over, and much injured. I was called, but found, on my
-arrival, that this young doctor had been before me, and done all that was
-required; but the gentleman whose duty it was said if I would attend the
-case he would pay all charges, and the young physician, on learning this
-fact on the next visit, retired in my favor. That evening I called at his
-office, and insisted upon his accepting one half of the fees which I knew
-I should receive. He hesitatingly accepted, after much persuasion on my
-part; and I remember that it was my impression at the time that he was
-excessively proud.
-
-Now, the poor wife informed me that, at the time, their means were
-entirely exhausted, and when he came home that evening with a large basket
-of necessaries, and some little delicacies to which they had long been
-unaccustomed, and upon her expressing her astonishment, he _sat down and
-wept like a child_.
-
-"Great God," he cried, in agony of soul, "why did I take you from your
-father's house, where you had plenty? What a reward for devoting the
-flower of life to such a profession! To hear a wife, and the mother of my
-child, expressing astonishment and joy at the unwonted sight of the very
-necessaries of life!"
-
-It was only when the note-books and manuscripts of this truly meritorious
-and unfortunate young man fell into my hands, that I discovered what a
-loss his family and the profession had sustained.
-
-He was too proud to ask assistance. Even in his fatal sickness, he
-continued, until a late period, to decline medical treatment, rather than
-expose his poverty to his brethren. Finally he became known to Dr. ----,
-who devoted his time and purse to him until he died. That season Dr.
----- died also.
-
-After his death, the lady with her child had removed to these miserable
-quarters. The needle, and coloring of prints, had sustained them both for
-a year, when, finding it impossible, with her failing health, to earn a
-living at that employment, she resumed the one by which her noble husband
-had been compelled to eke out his miserable income,--putting up seidlitz
-powders,--in order to sustain them.
-
-Often, she told me, had she sat by his side till late in the night reading
-to him, whilst he plied his fingers industriously at this employment, so
-utterly repulsive to an intellectual man; and when she would beg him to
-retire, he would often cheerfully obey the summons to an all-night visit
-to some wretched and dishonest Irishman--who could not get the service of
-a more knowing (pecuniarily) physician without an advanced fee--in the
-remote hope of obtaining a few dollars, which his refinement taught these
-wretchedly dishonest people they had only to refuse, as they almost
-invariably do, in order to escape entirely the obligation! This is the
-gratitude (!) of which we have spoken before. It was whilst attending one
-of these miserable people that he imbibed the fatal disease which swept
-him from the earth, and left his poor wife and child to struggle on alone
-in their cheerless journey.
-
-It is needless to say that from the time of the visits of the benevolent
-physician, the widow wanted for nothing that earth could bestow, to the
-day of her death, which soon occurred; else she would have died at her
-task!
-
-_The Unnatural Father._--On the fifth day, evening, a man entered my
-office and inquired for me. He was plainly dressed in black, and possessed
-one of those hard, immovable countenances which admit of no particular
-definition.
-
-"I received a letter from you relative to my daughter."
-
-This was said in such a perfectly business-like manner, without the least
-emotion, that I was shocked, and my countenance must have expressed my
-astonishment, for he immediately added,--
-
-"A sad business, my dear sir. Well, well, I will not detain you. The
-corpse is here?"
-
-"No, sir. I will accompany you to the late abode of your daughter." I was
-glad that she had not been removed; I thought it might do his moral nature
-some good to see the condition to which his unnatural conduct had brought
-her.
-
-[Illustration: THE PHYSICIAN AND THE FATHER.]
-
-Not a muscle of his countenance changed, as we ascended the wretched
-steps. The watcher admitted us to the poor, low room, and handing him a
-letter from my pocket, I said, "These are your daughter's last words to
-you, which she intrusted to my keeping for you. I will not intrude upon
-your privacy, but will await you at my office;" and bowing, I retired,
-leaving him beside the corpse of his neglected child.
-
-In less than fifteen minutes he returned, and, without any allusion to the
-event, thanked me for my attentions, declining a chair, saying,--
-
-"You will please make out your bill. I wish to be ready to start early in
-the morning, and take the corpse with me." He inquired for the address of
-an undertaker, and the present abode of _her_ child!
-
-I stood speechless! He was an anomaly. I measured him with my eyes; he
-cast his own for an instant to the floor, and then said,--
-
-"My business habits, I fear, shock you, sir. I have been in a hurry all my
-life. I have never had time to think. I owe you an apology, sir--pardon
-me."
-
-I thought of the future fate of the poor child, and I must acknowledge I
-hypocritically, for once in my adult life, took the _hand of the man I
-totally despised_, as I asked him mildly if his daughter had not requested
-to be buried by the side of her husband, whom she loved so well.
-
-"No, sir," he sharply replied; "his name was not mentioned in the letter;
-very properly too. I had no respect for him, sir, none whatever; nor
-should I have acceded to such, had she made the request."
-
-I gave him the address of the grandchild, and also an undertaker's.
-
-"I am much obliged to you," he said, hurriedly. "I will trouble you no
-further. I will send for the bill in the morning. Good evening, sir."
-
-I wanted the man (_brute!_) to love the poor little orphan, his
-grandchild, and that night I prepared a letter--instead of a bill--which I
-hoped would benefit him, without aggravating his feelings towards her. I
-said that I deemed such a privilege a sacred one, not to be soiled by a
-pecuniary return. I said other things to him, in the note, which I need
-not repeat. Near spring, in a kind, almost affectionate letter, he
-announced to me the death of his grandchild. She had fulfilled her
-mission. She had greatly subdued his nature by her lovely character....
-
-I learned that the remains of Dr. ---- were afterwards interred by the
-side of his wife and child, and I received but lately the assurance that
-the wretched father, before his death, admitted that money was not the
-chief good.
-
-Thus perished a noble physician, a devoted wife, and their lovely
-offspring, because of the selfish ingratitude of one to whom they were and
-still might have been an inestimable blessing.
-
-
-THE PHYSICIAN.
-
-    "Honor a physician with the honor due unto him, for the uses which ye
-    may have of him: for the Lord hath created him; for of the Most High
-    cometh healing, and he shall receive honor of the king. The skill of
-    the physician shall lift up his head: and in the sight of great men he
-    shall be in admiration."--_Ecclesiasticus_ xxxviii.
-
-If there is one class of men in the world who deserves the gratitude of
-their fellow-creatures above another, it is the physicians. By physician I
-mean not him who alone can theorize garrulously upon anatomy and
-physiology, chemistry and therapeutics, but who can render assistance, in
-time of need, to the sick and distressed. In ancient days physicians were
-reckoned "as the gods." I much wonder, as I turn the leaves of the
-Testament, at the abuse heaped upon the Saviour; for he went about healing
-the sick, and casting out devils (evil diseases). Surely society was at a
-very low ebb in those times.
-
-Who has greater, firmer friends than the physician! The good physician is
-sure to prosper. Certainly "envy increases in exact proportion with fame;
-the man who is successful in his undertakings, and builds up a character,
-makes enemies, and calls forth swarms of stinging, peevish, biting
-insects, just as the sunshine awakens the world of flies;" but the true
-physician, having the desire at heart to benefit his fellow-creatures, is
-strong, is beloved, is blessed! He calls forth hosts of friends on every
-side, just as the pure morning air calls fragrance from every lovely
-flower. Would you have the prayers and blessing of the good? then
-
-  "Go to the pillow of disease,
-    Where night gives no repose,
-  And on the cheek where sickness preys
-    Bid health to plant the rose.
-  Go where the sufferer ready lies
-    To perish in his doom,
-  Snatch from the grave his closing eyes,
-    And bring a blessing home."
-
-
-A PETER-FUNK DOCTOR.
-
-One day, passing up Washington Street, Boston, I detected a familiar voice
-issuing from a store, on the window-panes of which lately vacated premises
-was pasted "Removal," and, looking in, I saw a man mounted on a box
-selling a pinchbeck watch. The place _looked_ a deal like a New York
-Peter-Funk shop. However that may have been, I recognized the hired
-auctioneer as once having been a medical practitioner. He was a graduate
-of C---- Medical College. Owing to his honesty and lack of acquisitiveness
-among dishonest and niggardly creatures in ----, whom he faithfully served
-in his earlier efforts at his profession, he was compelled to resort to
-other means of gaining a support for himself and family, and finally was
-reduced to clerking and selling goods for those whose business tact
-exceeded his own.
-
-[Illustration: THE PETER-FUNK PHYSICIAN.]
-
-
-SELLING OUT.
-
-Everybody has heard of Leavitt, the dry little joker, the humorous and
-popular auctioneer of Hartford, who sells everybody, and everything, from
-a riddled sauce-pan to a nine-acre lot in the suburbs.
-
-One fine day he was selling, in front of the State House, a various
-collection of articles, with a lot of ancient and modern household
-furniture and traps that would have made Mrs. Toodles happy for a six
-months, and was "looking sharp" for some one to help him over a tough
-place on an odd lot, when he discovered in the crowd a pleasant, open,
-upturned countenance,--a sort of oasis in the desert,--to whom he at once
-appealed for assistance. A knowing wink from young rusticus was the
-response, a return from the auctioneer, and the bids went on with
-astonishing rapidity, till down went a big lot of goods, which everybody
-seemed to have wanted--a truckle-bed and fixings, with earthen ware, etc.
-
-"Yours, sir--what's your name?" said L. to the young man from the
-agricultural district.
-
-"Mine? O, no; I didn't bid on 'em," said rustic.
-
-"Yes, you did," replied the auctioneer.
-
-"Well, I guess not, much."
-
-"But you did--the whole lot. You winked every time I looked towards you."
-
-"Winked?"
-
-"Yes, and kept winking; and a wink is a bid always," said L., the least
-taken aback at the prospect of losing a good sale.
-
-"Wal--as for that--so did you keep winkin' at me. I thought you was
-winkin' as much as to say, 'Keep dark; I'll stick somebody onto this lot
-of stuff;' and I kept winkin' back, as if to reply, 'Well, I'll be hanged
-if you don't, mister.'"
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-XXXI.
-
-"THIS IS FOR YOUR HEALTH."
-
-    "Like leaves on trees the race of man is found,
-    Now green in youth, now withering on the ground;
-    Another race the following spring supplies;
-    They fall successive, and successive rise;
-    So generations in their course decay,
-    So flourish these when those have passed away."
-
-    THE INESTIMABLE VALUE OF HEALTH.--NO BLESSING IN COMPARISON.--MEN AND
-    SWINE.--BEGIN WITH THE INFANT.--"BABY ON THE PORCH."--IN A STRAIT
-    JACKET.--"TWO LITTLE SHOES."--YOUTH.--IMPURE LITERATURE AND
-    PASSIONS.--"OUR GIRLS."--BARE ARMS AND BUSTS.--HOW AND WHAT WE
-    BREATHE.--"THE FREEDOM OF THE STREET."--KEEP YOUR EYES OPEN AND MOUTH
-    CLOSED.--THE LUNGS AND BREATHING.--A MAN FULL OF HOLES.--SEVEN MILLION
-    MOUTHS TO FEED.--PURE WATER.--CLEANLINESS.--SOAP VS. WRINKLES.--GOD'S
-    SUNSHINE.
-
-
-HEALTH IS ABOVE ALL THINGS.
-
-Health is that which makes our meat and drink both savory and pleasant,
-else Nature's injunction of eating and drinking were a hard task and a
-slavish custom. It makes our beds lie easy and our sleep sweet and
-refreshing. It renews our strength with the morning's sun, and makes us
-cheerful at the light of another day. It makes the soul take delight in
-her mansion and pleasures, a pleasure indeed, without which we solace
-ourselves in nothing of terrene felicity or enjoyment.--_Mainwaring._
-
-Without health there is no earthly blessing. In comparison with health all
-other blessings dwindle into insignificance. Life is a burden to the
-perpetual invalid, for whom the only solace is in the silent grave. Nor
-can such always look forward with perfect confidence to rest even beyond
-the dark portals of the tomb; for the infirm body is not unusually
-attended by an enfeebled mind which often jeopardizes Hope:--
-
-  "And Hope, like the rainbow of summer,
-  Gives a promise of Lethe at last."
-
-If, then, health is so essential to our earthly happiness, and to our hope
-of peace in immortality, O, let us who possess the boon strive to retain
-it, and we who have it not seek diligently to regain that which is lost.
-
-The farmer does not consider it a compromise of his dignity to search out
-the best modes and means for increasing the quality as well as the
-quantity of his stock--his horses, his oxen, his sheep, and his
-swine,--and is man, the most noble work of his Maker,--man, created but a
-little below the angels,--is man an exception to this rule, that he should
-cease to be the study of mankind? Is humanity below the animals?
-
-Mankind deteriorates while domesticated live stock improves.
-
-God has given us bodies formed in his own likeness, and has pronounced
-them "good," hence, not diseased; and it is evidently our most imperative
-duty to regard it as a great gift, and preserve these bodies as the
-inestimable boon of the Almighty.
-
-It is very evident that man has fallen far short of the requirements of
-his Maker.
-
-From Adam to the flood--a space of time estimated at upwards of fifteen
-hundred years, according to Hebrew chronographers--the average of man's
-years was nine hundred. From Noah to Jacob, by the same chronology, it had
-dwindled to one hundred and forty-seven years. In the ninetieth psalm we
-read, "The days of our years are threescore years and ten." From actual
-statistics it is shown to average now less than one fourth of threescore
-and ten years.
-
-And this fact in the face of civilization, enlightenment, and
-Christianity! Why so? How shall we account for the evil?
-
-The Psalmist above quoted says further, "and if by reason of _strength_
-they be fourscore years," etc., which implies that strength prolongs, and
-weakness--reversing the matter--shortens our days.
-
-Let us begin at the beginning.
-
-
-ABOUT THE BABIES.--HOW THEY ARE REARED AND HOW THEY SHOULD BE.
-
-  BABY ON THE PORCH.
-
-  Out on the porch, by the open door,
-    Sweet with roses and cool with shade,
-  Baby is creeping over the floor--
-    Dear little winsome blue-eyed maid!
-
-  All about her the shadows dance,
-    All above her the roses swing,
-  Sunbeams in the lattice glance,
-    Robins up in the branches sing.
-
-  Up at the blossoms her fingers reach,
-    Lisping her pleading in broken words,
-  Cooing away, in her tender speech,
-    Songs like the twitter of nestling birds.
-
-  Creeping, creeping over the floor,
-    Soon my birdie will find her wings,
-  Fluttering out at the open door
-    Into the wonderful world of things.
-
-  Bloom of roses and balm of dew,
-    Brooks that bubble and winds that call,
-  All things lovely, and glad, and new,
-    And the Father watching us over it all!
-
-"Select the best sprouts for transplanting," says the "Old Farmer's
-Almanac." And here you have the whole root of the matter in a nut shell;
-for sickly-looking sprouts produce only sickly-looking plants. Like begets
-like.
-
-Now, how about the babies? Women's rights are advocated. Men take their
-rights. But who shall defend the babies' rights? Poor, helpless little
-non-combatants! Let me say a few words in their behalf.
-
-Children, from the cradle, are wrongfully treated. Their first rights are
-here curtailed. Look at the baby that is permitted to creep out "on the
-porch," or over nature's green carpet, and there bask in the sunshine and
-frolic in the open air; then look in pity upon the pale weekly house-plant
-child. The contrast is as striking as lamentable.
-
-"O, he'll get his death's cold if the air blows upon him," hysterically
-screams the ignorant mother. Yes, "ignorant"--that is the adjective I want
-to describe her.
-
-The young mother has doubtless been sent to a fashionable boarding-school,
-where she was taught algebra, French, (?) the art of adornment, how to
-walk fashionably, eat delicately, and dress _à la mode_, and even how to
-make a good "catch," but never how to preserve her health or rear an
-offspring. O, this would be shockingly immodest, or "counting chickens
-before they are hatched," I once heard a lady affirm.
-
-Nine tenths of our American wives are totally ignorant of everything that
-pertains to their own health, or that of the healthful rearing of an
-infant.
-
-
-BABY IN A STRAIT JACKET.
-
-At first the infant is usually bound tightly in swaddling clothes, lest it
-move a limb, or for fear (like the down east orator) that it will "bust,"
-and thus kept from air and exercise the first year or two, till it not
-unusually becomes a stunted, rickety thing, hardly worth "transplanting"
-or raising. Haven't you and I, kind reader, been subjected to something of
-this sort of strait jacket insanity?--insanity of parents! And having been
-tolerably strongly constituted from a "tough stock," we survived that
-first wrong, whereas thousands of "nicer" babies have succumbed to the
-swaddling and stifling process.
-
-This is wrong, all wrong. The infant should be left free, at least as to
-its chest and limbs, in order to breathe, kick, and expand. How happy the
-little fellows are at evening to get rid of the murderous clothes which
-have been bundled about them all day, and how they will fight and squirm
-to get down on the carpet all stripped, and creep, or, if old enough, run
-about in freedom! How they crow and prattle!
-
-Now, don't swaddle them--a simple, easy bandage is early admissible,--or
-cover their heads and faces with caps, sheets, or blankets. Inure them to
-the air early and continually, and they will have less colds and
-"snuffles" than if you confined them within doors. Give them air and
-sunlight, and away with your "goose-grease." Yes, I have even known some
-country people to apply skunk's oil, and others who larded the infant's
-nose and chest for the "snuffles." Croup delights in such babies!
-
-Then from the strait jacket, baby is taken to the other extreme--bare
-arms, neck, and chest. Old Dr. Warren once said, "Boston sacrifices
-hundreds of children annually by not clothing their arms and chests."
-Once, when in remonstrating with a mother against this barbarous practice
-of thus exposing her little one-year-old to a chilling atmosphere when my
-arms and chest were not over warm as wrapped in an overcoat, she replied
-to me,--
-
-"O, the little dear looks so pretty with its little white arms and neck
-all bare!"
-
-"Yes," I replied, sorrowfully, "it will look pretty, also, laid out in its
-coffin."
-
-She was greatly shocked by the remark, which, however, too soon proved
-true.
-
-"Doctor's stuff" cannot counteract the fatal results of such ignorance and
-exposures.
-
-  TWO LITTLE SHOES.
-
-  Two little shoes laid away in the drawer,
-    Treasured so fondly--never to be worn;
-  Two little feet laid away in the tomb,
-    Cold and all lifeless--sadly we mourn.
-  What trifling things does not a mother keep,
-    Tokens of love the swelling heart to ease;
-  Useless little toys--a lock of golden hair;
-    Something to fondle--to cherish like these
-  Two little shoes laid away in the drawer,
-    Treasured so fondly, never to be worn!
-
-  These little shoes are only left us now;
-    Gone is our "darling," ever to remain;
-  Dear little feet, so plump and all dimpled,
-    Never will press them--never again!
-  But heavenly thoughts shall cheer me on my way:
-    Death is but life, in fairer, sunnier view;
-  Busy little feet but just run on before;
-    This is my solace as my tears bedew
-  Two little shoes laid away in the drawer,
-    Treasured so fondly, never to be worn.
-
-
-IMPURE LITERATURE AND PASSIONS.
-
-It is as marvellous as true that some children survive this treatment;
-besides the stuffing with meat victuals, candies, and cookies, inducing
-colic and dysentery; then dosing with rhubarb, paregoric, peppermint, and
-worse. Soothing syrups! Eternal quietuses! Yes, in spite of extremes of
-heat and cold, stuffing and dosing with crude and poisonous articles, some
-babies actually reach the next stage--youth!
-
-From chilled blood, indigestion, poisonous air and drugs, repeated attacks
-of croup, bronchitis, dysentery, etc., the majority who have reached
-puberty are afflicted by some scrofulous taint, or development, or broken
-constitutions.
-
-Now, they have appetites and passions to grapple. We have already, in
-chapter fifth, shown how the school-girl is cheated out of health by the
-deprivation of her "rights," among which are air, freedom, and exercise.
-Here is another evil, which must not be passed over unnoticed. A New York
-physician, who wields an abler pen than myself, thus expresses my ideas.
-What he applies to females is not limited by copyright. Males, help
-yourselves; it belongs to you quite as much as to the beautiful.
-
-"It sickens the heart to contemplate the education of female children in
-this city." (And let me add, in this country.) "Should nature even triumph
-over all the evils above enumerated, no sooner has the poor girl attained
-the age of puberty, than her mind and nervous system are placed upon the
-rack of novel-reading and sentimental love stories. There is just enough
-of truth in some of these mawkish productions to excite the passions and
-distract the attention of the young girl from the love of nature and its
-teachings, and all rational ideas of real life, and to cause her to
-despise the commonplace parents whose every hour may be occupied for her
-consideration and welfare."
-
-This writer goes on to condemn those selfish, money-grasping wretches
-"professors of religion, too," in our city, who publish this impure and
-overstrained literature, to the great injury of the morals of the young;
-adding, "What language can be too strong for such disgusting hypocrisy? We
-punish a poor wretch for the publication of an obscene book or print, and
-give honor and preferment to those who instil poison into the minds of our
-children by a book prepared with devilish ingenuity, and in every possible
-style of attraction and excitement.
-
-"It is the premature excitement of the nervous and sexual system that
-should be avoided. The licentious characters presented in all the glowing
-tints of a depraved imagination cannot fail to injuriously affect the
-youthful organism."
-
-The dissolute and immoral characters whom we debar from the personal
-friendship of our sons and daughters, whom we exclude from our parlors,
-and even street recognition, are sugared over, and, between gilded covers,
-passed freely into the _boudoirs_, school-rooms, and seminaries of our
-children, for their companionship at their leisure. The vile characters in
-person would be far less injurious, for in that case their hideousness
-would the surer be revealed.
-
-"Nothing can be more certain than the production of these works of a
-precocious evidence of puberty. The forces of the young heart and vascular
-system are thus prematurely goaded into ephemeral action by the stimulus
-of an imagination alternately moved to laughter, and tears, and sexual
-passion."
-
-Mr. Baxter, in Part 2, ch. xxi., direction 1, of his _Christian
-Directory_, which is a direction for reading other books than the Bible,
-says, "I pre-suppose that you keep the devil's books out of your hands and
-house. I mean cards, and idle tales, and play-books, and romances or
-love-books, and false, bewitching stories, and the seducting books of
-false teachers.... For where these are suffered to corrupt the mind, all
-grave and useful writings are forestalled; and it is a wonder to see how
-powerfully these poison the minds of children, and many other empty
-heads."
-
-It would astonish and shame some parents if they would take pains to look
-over the books which are daily and nightly perused by their children. It
-is not enough for you to know that such books were obtained from a "dear
-friend," or from a respectable publisher, or pious bookseller, or that
-they are lawful publications. Parents and guardians, I pray you take
-warning.
-
-
-"OUR GIRLS."
-
-I want everybody, male and female, old and young, to read that most
-excellent book, "Our Girls," by Dr. Dio Lewis. It will do you good. For
-humanity's sake, and particularly for the benefit of females, I recommend
-it. Lest some of my readers should not follow this advice, I want to tell
-you what it says about
-
-
-LOW NECK AND SHORT SLEEVES.
-
-"Many a modest woman appears at a party with her arms nude, and so much of
-her chest exposed that you can see nearly half of the mammal glands. Many
-a modest mother permits her daughters to make this model-artist exhibition
-of themselves.
-
-"One beautiful woman said, in answer to my complaints, 'You should not
-look.'
-
-"'But,' I said, 'do you not adjust your dress in this way on purpose to
-give us a chance to look?'
-
-"She was greatly shocked at my way of putting it.
-
-"'Well,' I said, 'this assurance is perfectly stunning. You strip
-yourselves, go to a public party, parade yourselves for hours in a glare
-of gas-light, saying to the crowd, "Look here, gentlemen," and then you
-are shocked because we put your unmistakable actions into words.'
-
-"In discussing this subject before an audience of ladies in this city
-(Boston), the other evening, I said, 'Ladies, suppose I had entered this
-hall with my arms and bust bare; what would you have done? You would have
-made a rush for the door, and, as you jostled against each other in
-hurrying out, you would have exclaimed to each other, "O, the
-unconscionable scallawag!" May I ask if it is not right that we should
-demand of you as much modesty as you demand of us?' But you exclaim,
-'Custom! it is the custom, and fashion is everything.'" Again the author
-says,--
-
-"This exposure of the naked bosom before men belongs not to the highest
-type of Christian civilization, but to those dark ages when women sought
-nothing higher than the gratification of the passions of man, and were
-content to be mere slaves and toys.
-
-"Boston contains its proportion of the refined women of the country. We
-have here a few score of the old families, inheriting culture and wealth,
-and who can take rank with the best. A matron who knows their habits
-assures me that she never saw a member of one of those families in 'low
-neck and short sleeves.'
-
-"In the future free and Christian America, the very dress of women will
-proclaim a high, pure womanhood.... We shall then discard the costumes
-devised by the dissolute capitals of Europe.
-
-"What a strange spectacle we witness in America to-day! Free, brave
-American women hold out to the world the Bible of social, political, and
-religious freedom, and anon we see them down on their knees, waiting the
-arrival of the latest steamer from France, to learn how they may dress
-their bodies for the next month."
-
-Well, he does not censure ladies in the above manner all through; but yet,
-in a most earnest and interesting way he divulges the most startling
-truths, and even very young misses are delighted with the whole argument.
-"Why, it's just like a story," exclaimed my twelve-year-old Katie on
-reading it.
-
-What Dr. Lewis objects to on the score of immodesty, I also oppose on the
-ground of unhealthfulness. The idea of preventing or curing the
-laryngitis, or consumption, in a lady, when there is nothing but gauze, or
-a bit of ribbon and a galvanized bosom pin, between her neck and the cold
-and changeable atmosphere of the north or east, is ridiculously absurd. No
-doctors or doctors' pectorals can save such. "High necks," warm flannels,
-or make your wills.
-
-
-HOW AND WHAT WE SHOULD BREATHE.
-
-It would disgust the reader if I should enter into the details of telling
-him what people--respectable people, even, in nice houses--breathe over.
-Air is life. The purer the air, the purer the life-stream that courses
-through our hearts. You cannot get too much of it. Take it in freely. Have
-only pure air in your houses, in your sleeping-rooms and cellars.
-Particularly see that the children have the freedom of the air, day and
-night, at home, at school, everywhere. It is free--costs nothing!
-
-
-THE FREEDOM OF THE STREET.
-
-      "I dwell amid the city,
-      And hear the flow of souls;
-  I do not hear the several contraries,
-  I do not hear the separate tone that rolls
-          In art or speech.
-
-  "For pomp or trade, for merry-make or folly,
-  I hear the confidence and sum of each,
-      And what is melancholy.
-  Thy voice is a complaint, O crowded city,
-  The blue sky covering thee, like God's great pity."
-
-"Heaven bless the freedom of the park," has exclaimed a child of song; and
-he might also have invoked the same blessing upon "the freedom of the
-street." The street is free to all; to high and low, young and old, rich
-and poor. It recognizes no distinctions or castes; it is the very
-expressiveness of democracy.
-
-The child of fashion, arrayed in silks, ribbons, and furbelows; the child
-of penury and want, in rags, filth, and semi-nakedness; the shaver of
-notes and the shaver of faces; the college professor and the chiffonier,
-all mingle in common on the street. Now walking side by side, now brushing
-past each other, now stopping to look at the same cause of excitement, now
-each jostled into the gutter. No distinction in wealth, birth, or
-intellect is recognized; no one dare attempt to restrict the freedom of
-the thoroughfare, and none dare say to another, "Stand aside, for I am
-better than thou."
-
-The little boy trundles his hoop against the shins of the thoughtful
-student; the little girl knocks the spectacles from the nose of the man of
-science with her rope, while the preacher runs against an awning-post to
-make way for a red-faced nurse with a willow carriage; the antiquated
-apple woman, and the child with its huge chunk of bread and butter, sit
-on the curb; the painter digs the end of his ladder rather uncomfortably
-into some pursy old gentleman's stomach; while the sweep, with the soot
-trembling upon his eyelashes, strolls along as independently and leisurely
-as the dandy in tights, and with the sweeter consciousness that he is
-doing something for the public good.
-
-[Illustration: THE FREEDOM OF THE PARK.]
-
-The street is a world in miniature, a Vanity Fair in motion, a shifting
-panorama of society, painted with the pencil of folly and fancy. It is the
-only plane upon which society, "the field which men sow thick with
-friendships," meets on a common level. It does not flaunt in aristocracy,
-and never dares to be pretentious.
-
-
-"KEEP YOUR EYES OPEN AND MOUTHS CLOSED."
-
-There's true philosophy in the above saying of a wise _savant_. But there
-is more wisdom in the latter clause than he even dreamed of in his
-philosophy.
-
-The Book informs us that God breathed the breath of life (air) into man's
-_nostrils_. Nothing is more injurious, save continually breathing foul
-air, than the habit of breathing through the mouth. Keep the mouth closed.
-A great many diseases of the teeth, mouth, throat, head, and lungs may be
-traced directly to the pernicious and general habit of breathing with the
-mouth open--inhaling and exhaling cold air directly into the mouth and
-throat, inflaming and chilling the mucous membrane and the blood. The
-nostrils are the only proper passages for the air to the lungs. Here are
-filterers to exclude particles of dust and foreign matter, and various
-ramifications, whereby the air is properly warmed before reaching the
-lining of the throat and lungs. In infected air you are less injured, and
-less liable to contract contagious diseases, when inhaling only through
-the natural channel, the nostrils.
-
-I think it was Dr. Good, of London, who wrote a book on the subject,
-which Carlyle pronounced "a sane voice in a world of chaos."
-
-George Catlin says he learned the secret of keeping the mouth closed while
-among the North American Indians. They would not allow themselves or their
-children to sleep with the mouth open (though their reasoning is
-questionable), because the evil spirit would creep in them at night. Hence
-the parent went around after the pappooses were asleep, and closed their
-mouths. Pulmonary diseases are seldom found in the "close-mouthed." Kant,
-the philosopher, claims to have cured himself of consumption by this
-discovery. Persons never snore except by breathing through the open mouth.
-O, give us quiet, you snorers, by keeping your mouths shut, even at the
-expense of "keeping your eyes open" to watch yourself, and thus deliver
-the world from the disturbance of snoring.
-
-
-THE LUNGS.--BREATHING.
-
-All that live, down even to vegetables and trees, breathe, _must_ breathe,
-in order to live; live in proportion as they breathe; begin life's first
-function with breathing, and end its last in their last breath. And
-breathing is the _most important_ function of life, from first to last,
-because the grand stimulator and sustainer of all. Would you get and keep
-warm when cold, breathe copiously, for this renews that carbonic
-consumption all through the system which creates all animal warmth. Would
-you cool off, and keep cool, in hot weather, deep, copious breathing will
-burst open all those myriads of pores, each of which, by converting the
-water in the system into insensible perspiration, casts out heat, and
-refreshes mind and body. Would you labor long and hard, with intellect or
-muscle, without exhaustion or injury, breathe abundantly; for breath is
-the great re-invigorator of life and all its functions. Would you keep
-well, breath is your great preventive of fevers, of consumption, of "all
-the ills that flesh is heir to." Would you break up fevers, or colds, or
-unload the system of morbid matter, or save both your constitution and
-doctor's fee, cover up warm, drink soft water--cold, if you have a robust
-constitution sufficient to produce a reaction; if not, hot water should be
-used. Then let in the fresh air, and breathe, breathe, breathe, just as
-deep and much as possible, and in a few hours you can "forestall and
-prevent" the worst attack of disease you ever will have; for this will
-both unload disease at every pore of skin and lungs, and infuse into the
-system that _vis animæ_ which will both grapple in with and expel disease
-in all its forms, and restore health, strength, and life.
-
-Nature has no panacea like it. _Try the experiment_, and it will
-revolutionize your condition. And the longer you try, the more will it
-regenerate your body and your mind. Even if you have the blues, deep
-breathing will soon dispel them, especially if you add vigorous exercise.
-Would you even put forth your greatest mental exertions in speaking or
-writing, keep your lungs clear up to their fullest, liveliest action.
-Would you even breathe forth your highest, holiest orisons of thanksgiving
-and worship, deepening your inspiration of fresh air will likewise deepen
-and quicken your _divine_ inspiration. Nor can even bodily pleasures be
-fully enjoyed except in and by copious breathing. In short, proper
-breathing is the alpha and omega of all physical, and thereby of all
-mental and moral function and enjoyment.
-
-
-A MAN FULL OF HOLES.
-
-Yes, made of holes!
-
-A gentleman once told me a story, as follows. We were travelling on the
-Ohio River, on board of a steamer.
-
-"You see that bank over opposite?"
-
-"Yes," I replied.
-
-"Well, thereby hangs a little story. I always laugh when I think of it,
-or pass the spot, which is often. A fellow sat looking at that spot,
-watching the thousands of swallows that were continually flitting to and
-fro, in and out of their nests, and laughing immoderately to himself. I
-approached, and ventured to inquire the cause of his mirth, that I might
-partake of it.
-
-"Well, you see that bank and all them nests? Well, one day I went down on
-the boat and noticed them. When I came back, there had meantime been a
-heavy rain storm which washed the bank away, and left the holes all
-sticking out;" and the fellow continued to laugh as though he would split
-himself, probably from the _idea_ of the holes "sticking out." I wondered
-how he could see them if the bank around was washed away.
-
-Still the man full of holes is a fact. According to Krause, quoted in
-Gray's and Wilson's works on anatomy, there are twenty-eight hundred
-(2800) pores in the skin of the human body to the square inch; and the
-number of square inches to an average-sized man is twenty-five hundred
-(2500). This would give some _seven million pores in the whole body_.
-These pores, or tubes, are one fourth of an inch in length; hence, the
-entire length of them all is _twenty-eight miles_.
-
-That part of the skin is the healthiest which is the most exposed to the
-air, as the face and hands. That part the most diseased from which the air
-is most excluded, as the _feet_. Three fourths of all persons over
-fourteen years of age have diseased feet; either corns, chilblains, or
-diseased joints or nails.
-
-
-SEVEN MILLION MOUTHS TO FEED.
-
-These seven million mouths must be fed daily and hourly. Their food is
-light and air. Man is not only fed and nourished through the portal of his
-mouth, but through all the pores of his body, by drawing in nutriment from
-the surrounding elements, even from the viewless air.
-
-These little mouths also need moisture. This fact is revealed to the
-senses through the medium of the nerves; for, how grateful to the dry,
-parched skin, is a bath of cold water! or, if the blood is in a "low
-state,"--impoverished by disease,--let it be a tepid bath. Let it feel
-comfortable and grateful to the user. This is a good rule to direct you.
-The little children love it--love to paddle and splash in it. If they cry
-and fight against washing, it is usually because of the rudeness of the
-operator, who, with brawny palm or rough sponge takes the child unawares,
-nearly suffocating it, and briskly and rudely rubbing over the surface of
-the tender face, regardless of such small obstructions as nose, chin, and
-lips, and not unusually dashing a quantity of yellow soap suds into the
-infantile eyes. The next time the little fellow is requested to be washed,
-he, remembering the last _scouring_, naturally objects to a repetition of
-the unpleasant process.
-
-As the nostrils inhale pure air beneficially, they also exhale impurities.
-The pores also excrete, or throw off impurities. A healthy skin will throw
-out, by the pores, from two to three pounds of impure matter every
-twenty-four hours. To be sure a greater quantity of this impurity is a
-vapory substance, yet that holds in solution solid particles of corrupt
-matter, which greatly tend to clog the pores if left to obstruct free
-perspiration.
-
-
-WATER.
-
-Then, aside from cooling and nourishing the skin and the system through
-the pores, cleanliness and health demand oft and repeated ablutions of the
-whole body. In order that the perspiration may be unobstructed, it is
-absolutely necessary to wash the whole surface of the body in water, and
-on account of the _acid_ and oily substance collecting on the skin, using
-a small quantity of alkali, as soap or soda in the water, and thus, by
-good brisk rubbing, using the hand in preference to a cloth or sponge,
-thoroughly cleansing the little mouths referred to, else their action is
-retarded and suspended. This should be done daily during the summer
-season.
-
-This is a simple process, indispensable to health, and the unwashed can
-hardly believe what beneficial results follow such a plain course, or know
-the healthful influence or the comfort derived from a frequent use of pure
-water.
-
-Those who bathe thus daily seldom take colds. During the winter, in cold
-climates, weekly or semi-weekly bathing may suffice.
-
-[Illustration: "IT COSTS NOTHING."]
-
-A statesman, in seeking an illustration of the difference between price
-and value, very happily hit upon water, which costs nothing, and yet is of
-inestimable worth. Water, next to air, is the most indispensable of all
-the productions of nature. "Unlike most good things providentially
-supplied for our use, it is hardly capable of abuse. The more common
-danger to be feared is from too little, not too much, water.
-
-"Simple a thing, however, as it may be to quench the thirst from the
-running stream, or the mountain spring, there are but few people who know
-how to drink. Most people, in the eagerness of thirst, swallow with such
-avidity the welcome draught, that they deluge their stomachs without
-proportionately refreshing themselves. The slowly sipping of a single
-goblet of water will do more to alleviate thirst than the sudden gulping
-down of a gallon. It is more frequently the dryness of the mouth, during
-hot weather, than the want of the system, which calls for the supply of
-fluid. When larger quantities, moreover, are poured into the stomach than
-are required, that organ becomes oppressed mechanically by the distention,
-and the digestion is consequently weakened."
-
-The prescribed ablutions of the Jews and Mohammedans have not only a
-spiritual but a hygienic value. "The washing of the body not only whitens
-the outside of the sepulchre, but purifies the internal organs, and renews
-the spiritual man as well.... Hence, when the body becomes foul by the
-retention of worn-out and corrupt material accumulated on the surface and
-the interior of the structure, it becomes a cage suitable only for the
-dwelling of unclean birds, and no others will descend and make their nests
-therein. It is a vessel fitted to receive only the lower passions and
-feelings of human nature.
-
-"Public bathing-houses are as important a means of grace as our poorly
-ventilated churches, and many an unhappy soul would be brought nearer to
-heaven by a judicious application of soap and water than he could be by
-listening to a sermon about that of which he comprehends little and cares
-less."--_Rev. W. F. Evans's "Mental Cure."_
-
-
-SOAP VS. WRINKLES.
-
-How much younger and fresher the wayworn traveller or the outdoor laborer
-looks after a thorough washing of the face and hands only. Many who
-complain of "bird's claws" and wrinkles might murmur less if they made a
-thorough use of warm water and "old brown windsor soap," or better, the
-true castile soap. Nearly all the soap sold at groceries for castile is
-spurious. A good druggist will have the desired article, and for rough,
-chapped skin nothing is better, not even glycerine.
-
-Then wash out the furrows of fine dirt that gather in the _little_
-wrinkles, and it will surprise some folks to see how, thereby, they have
-reduced the size of their wrinkles. It is like cleansing an old coat!
-
-
-GOD'S SUNSHINE.
-
-Next to air and water in importance to health and happiness is sunlight.
-O, "let there be light" in your houses, that there may be light in your
-hearts also!
-
-Our houses should be so constructed and located that the sun may shine
-into every room some time during the day. Too many build houses and live
-in the rear. The hall and large parlors are usually situated in front, to
-the south or west, throwing the sitting, dining, and
-working-room--kitchen--in the shade. Let the cheering, life-giving
-influences of God's dear blessed sunshine flood the working, sitting, and,
-particularly, the sleeping rooms. He or she who sleeps in a room from
-which the sunshine is totally excluded will be pale, weak, tired, and die
-prematurely of consumption. Try a plant in such a room. It soon turns pale
-and sickly. Just so your children and yourself. I have such patients
-daily. Medicine cannot substitute sunshine.
-
-Throw open the blinds, dash aside the curtains, and let in the light and
-sunshine to your homes and hearts. Never mind the carpets; they may be
-replaced, but you and your children, never! Save your health, if _you ruin
-an old carpet in so doing_!
-
-Cholera, dysentery, scrofula, nervous diseases, and consumption prevail
-more extensively in narrow and darkened, as also in the shady side of
-streets; also in darkened prisons and hospitals.
-
-A heavy heart walks in dark and cheerless apartments. The cheerful, happy
-man, the joyous, contented wife, the beautiful, healthy children, dwell
-and rejoice in homes where flows full and free the pure air and the
-life-keeping, health-giving sunshine.
-
-Christianity is more likely to take up its abode with the latter. There
-only green leaves and beautiful flowers can gladden the sight and
-exhilarate the senses.
-
-Air, water, sunlight! "These three." Don't neglect them. So shall you live
-long, live healthy, and at last die happily!
-
-
-
-
-XXXII.
-
-HEALTH WITHOUT MEDICINE.
-
-    How shall I stay life's sunny hours?
-      For though the summer skies are clear,
-    Foreboding thoughts steal o'er my heart,
-      And autumn sounds oppress my ear.
-    While heart with hope beats warm and high,
-      And pleasures drink in summer bowers,
-    I know that autumn frosts will come--
-      How shall I stay life's sunny hours?
-
-    CHEERFULNESS.--GOOD ADVICE.--REV. FRANCIS J. COLLIER ON CHRISTIAN
-    CHEERFULNESS.--WHAT GOD SAYS ABOUT IT.--WHINING.--LOVE AND
-    HEALTH.--AFFECTION AND PERFECTION.--SEPARATING THE SHEEP AND
-    GOATS.--THE FENCES UP AND FENCES DOWN.--SIXTEEN AND SIXTY.--ACTION AND
-    IDLENESS.--IDLENESS AND CRIME.--BEAUTY AND DEVELOPMENT.--SLEEP.--DAY
-    AND NIGHT.--"WHAT SHALL WE EAT?"--A STOMACH-MILL AND A
-    STEWING-PAN.--"FIVE MINUTES FOR REFRESHMENTS."--ANCIENT DIET.--COOKS
-    IN A "STEW."--THE GREEN-GROCERIES OF THE CLASSICS.--CABBAGES AND
-    ARTICHOKES.--ANIMAL AND VEGETABLE DIET.
-
-
-CHEERFULNESS.
-
-I place cheerfulness next, in the catalogue of essentials to long life and
-happiness; before "diet," for, unless a man eats cheerfully, nothing will
-agree with him; and if he be constantly cheerful, nothing that he eats
-will injure him.
-
-"How shall I be cheerful when all the world goes wrong with me?" asks the
-diseased and despondent man or woman.
-
-Put on cheerfulness as a garment. Assume it. Try my suggestion. Use a
-little hypocrisy with yourself. Go before your glass, if necessary, and
-assume a cheerful countenance. Keep it up, and before long you will be
-astonished to find that Mr. Melancholy don't like it, and begins to
-withdraw his sombre person. Keep on "keeping it up," and the most happy
-results will soon follow your exertions.
-
-Try the reverse, and melancholy will return. This is cheap medicine.
-"[R]--A cheerful face, taken daily, feasting."
-
-
-CHRISTIAN CHEERFULNESS.
-
-The following prize essay was written by Rev. Francis J. Collier:--
-
-"_Cheerfulness as a Medicine._--Perhaps nothing has a greater tendency to
-cast gloom over the spirit than _disease_. The mind sympathizes with the
-body as much as the body with the mind. Their union is so intimate, so
-delicate, so sensitive, that what affects the one necessarily affects the
-other. Each to a certain degree determines the other's condition. If the
-mind is joyful, its emotion is betrayed by the expression of the body. 'A
-merry heart maketh a cheerful countenance.' But if the body is injured, or
-the physical system deranged, the mind at once suffers, and forthwith
-droops into sadness. It becomes, therefore, your Christian duty, if you
-have health, to study the laws of your physical being; to compel yourself
-both to labor and to rest; to avoid unnecessary risks or exposure; to
-abstain from injurious indulgences; to be prudent, temperate, chaste, and,
-by every proper means, to try to preserve what is so essential to your
-spiritual comfort. If you have lost this boon, strive to regain it. Think
-not, speak not, all the while about your malady. Suppress moans and
-complaints. They are always disagreeable to others; they can never be
-beneficial to you. Count your mercies, and not your miseries. Try upon
-your body the stimulus of a cheerful spirit. It may not insure your
-recovery, but it will certainly produce a pleasant alleviation. 'A merry
-heart doeth good like a medicine; but a broken spirit dryeth the bones.'
-
-"_Borrowing Trouble._--Forebodings of evil rob the mind of cheerfulness.
-'Ills that never happened have mostly made men wretched,' says Tupper.
-Casting our glance ahead, we see 'lions' in the way; difficulties which we
-are sure we can never overcome; griefs under whose heavy weight we shall
-be utterly crushed. Not satisfied with our present troubles, we borrow
-misery from the future. The Holy Scripture instructs us to do otherwise.
-'Thou knowest not what a day may bring forth.'--Prov. xxvii. 1. 'Take
-therefore no thought for the morrow, for the morrow shall take thought for
-the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.'--Matt.
-vi. 34. And then it gives us a golden promise, 'As thy days, so shall thy
-strength be.'
-
-"The life of many Christians is a life of constant sadness and gloom. They
-seem to be entire strangers to all the happiness of earth and all the
-hopes of heaven. Their faces commonly appear as sombre as the stones which
-mark the dwelling-places of the dead. Their feelings are better expressed
-in sighs than in songs. Unhappy themselves, they make others unhappy. They
-come and go like clouds, shutting out the sunshine from cheerful hearts,
-and for a while casting upon them shadows cold and dark.
-
-"Arise, O, desponding one! Quit your tearful abode in the valley of gloom,
-and come and make your dwelling on the bright hill-top of cheerfulness.
-Look up! look up! and behold the sun shining through the clouds, and the
-stars through the darkness."
-
-
-WHINING.
-
-This is a habit opposed to cheerfulness, and producing contrary results.
-It is half-sister to scolding, and equally as obnoxious. Don't fret and
-whine. It makes you look old and cross. The disease soon becomes chronic
-if indulged in. It is a disease that not only the doctors know at sight,
-but every one can read it in the face of those thus afflicted. "O, what a
-cross face that lady has got!" I heard another female exclaim but
-yesterday, as they passed on the street. You cannot hide it; then don't
-induce such a look.
-
-Somebody has written the following, which so completely expresses my ideas
-of the matter, that I quote the item verbatim:--
-
-"There is a class of persons in this world, by no means small, whose
-prominent peculiarity is whining. They whine because they are poor; or, if
-rich, because they have no health to enjoy their riches; they whine
-because it is too shiny; they whine because it is too rainy; they whine
-because they have 'no luck,' and others' prosperity exceeds theirs; they
-whine because some friends have died, and they are still living; they
-whine because they have aches and pains, and they have aches and pains
-because they whine, no one can tell why.
-
-"Now, we would like to say a word to these whining persons. Stop whining.
-It's of no use, this everlasting complaining, fretting, fault-finding,
-scolding, and whining. Why, you are the most deluded set of creatures that
-ever lived.
-
-"Do you not know that it is a well-settled principle of physiology and
-common sense that these habits are more exhausting to nervous vitality
-than almost any other violation of physiological law? And do you not know
-that life is pretty much what you make it and take it? You can make it
-bright and sunshiny, or you can make it dark and shadowy. This life is
-only meant to discipline us, to fit us for a higher and nobler state of
-being. Then stop whining and fretting, and go on your way rejoicing."
-
-
-LOVE.
-
-"Well, what has that to do with health and long life?" ask the cynic, the
-bachelor, the old maid possibly, and the plodders.
-
-Everything, I reply.
-
-The man, woman, or child who loves well and wisely, who loves the most, is
-the happiest, healthiest, and will live the longest.
-
-"That is a bold assertion," says my quizzer.
-
-Yes, and true as bold. Now listen in silence to my statement.
-
-Who loves, what loves, and what is the result?
-
-"God is love." Here is the first, the fundamental principle.
-
-He is the oldest of all beings. To be like him is to love,--to love all
-things which he has created. This is Godlike. If you are not thus, you are
-like the ungodly, who "shall not live out half their days." "Love God, and
-keep his commandments."
-
-"Love thy neighbor as thyself."
-
-Is there not more happiness and health in the obeying of this command,
-than in disobedience to it? Whatever is conducive to happiness is
-healthful. Whatever produces unhappiness is injurious to health. Love is
-undefinable.
-
-"There is a fragrant blossom that maketh glad the garden of the heart.
-
-Its root lieth deep; it is delicate, yet lasting as the lilac-crocus of
-autumn.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-I saw, and asked not its name; I knew no language was so wealthy.
-
-Though every heart of every clime findeth its echo within.
-
-And yet, what shall I say? Is a sordid man capable of love?
-
-Hath a seducer known it? Can an adulterer perceive it?
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-Chaste, and looking up to God, as the fountain of tenderness and joy.
-
-Quiet, yet flowing deep, as the Rhine among rivers.
-
-Lasting, and knowing not change, it walketh in truth and sincerity.
-
-Love never grows old, love never perisheth."
-
-
-AFFECTION AND PERFECTION.
-
-Love is so closely connected with our lives, and all that makes or mars
-our peace and pleasure, health and beauty, that I should feel guilty of a
-sin of omission by excluding this item from my chapter on health and
-happiness.
-
-To be unloved is to be unhappy. Do not forget the connection between
-health and happiness. They are all but synonymous terms.
-
-You may know the unloved and unlovely by the lines of care, dissipation,
-or crime that are furrowed upon their brows. Go into the highways, and you
-may readily pick out the unloved child by its unsatisfied expression of
-countenance. It lifts its great, hungry eyes to yours instinctively, and
-asks for love and sympathy as plainly by that searching look, as the child
-of penury, the bread-starveling asks for alms when it presents its scrawny
-hand, and in pitiful tones says, "Please give me a penny, for God's sake."
-
-O, give the child "love," for God's sake; for he so loved the world that
-he gave us his only begotten Son, who only in turn taught us to love.
-
-Physical perfection is never found in the unloved.
-
-The unloved wife is not long beautiful, nor the child of such. There is a
-marked difference between them and the wife and child that the husband and
-father cherishes and caresses with unrestrained affection. In sickness
-love divides the burden, as in the common toils of life.
-
-Disguise or deny the truth of the assertion if you will, woman must love
-somebody or some thing. She were not otherwise a true woman, nor made in
-the image of her Maker. If the husband denies her that affection which
-truly belongs to her nature, he must not blame her, but himself, if she
-loves another. She will cling to something. If she has no children upon
-whom to lavish her affections, she will love some other's, or a pet
-canary, or even a cat, or lapdog; but love she will.
-
-
-SEPARATING THE SHEEP AND GOATS.
-
-I place cheerfulness before love, because angry and melancholy people are
-unlovable. If you wish to be loved and happy, be lovable. Strive to
-please, to make those about you happy, and then you will be lovable.
-Cheerfulness is the first step.
-
-A very sensible writer in the _Phrenological Journal_ says,--
-
-"There is not enough thought, and time, and consideration devoted to this
-inevitable requisite, love. It is kept too much in the background. How
-many years are given to preparing young people for professions, trades,
-and occupations; how much counsel and advice are heaped around these
-topics; and yet how little importance is attached to the very influence
-which will probably be the turning-point of their lives. No wonder there
-are so many unhappy marriages. If we could only remember that boys and
-girls are not to be educated for lawyers, merchants, school-teachers, or
-housekeepers alone, but for husbands and wives, as well."
-
-Those girls are the most chaste and ladylike who have been brought up with
-a family, or neighborhood, or school of boys; and on the other hand, those
-boys who have from their earliest days been accustomed to female restraint
-and girlhood's influences, make the best men, and most faithful, loving
-husbands and fathers.
-
-What shall I say of those demoralizing institutions where the "young
-ladies" are taught algebra, languages, and ill manners? Where they are
-forbidden to recognize a gentleman in the school-room, prayer-room, or
-street? Can you, honest reader, believe there are such institutions in our
-enlightened land? Yet there are; where the sexes are denied not only the
-association with, but are forbidden the common courtesies of life; where,
-if a friend or brother lifts his hat to the young lady, while belonging to
-that institution, she is forbidden to acknowledge the courtesy.
-
-I remember Mrs. Brandyball, in one of Theodore Hook's novels of society,
-boasting of her seminary for young ladies as one of the _safest_ in the
-world, being entirely surrounded by a dense wall, eight feet high,
-surmounted by sharp spikes and broken glass bottles. I reckon all the
-virtue preserved in this way was not worth the cost of its defences.
-
-
-FENCES BROKEN DOWN.
-
-The writer passed some time in a town where these discourtesies were
-promulgated. I boarded with a pious family, where a large number of male
-students boarded also. There was one class of influences and _passions_
-pervading that place. All female influence and restraint were withdrawn.
-And what was the result? The boys were forbidden to smoke, or chew
-tobacco, or play at cards. They reckoned me as a "right jolly good
-fellow," because I could be induced to play a game of euchre with them;
-but they occasionally smoked me out of their rooms, and I was repeatedly
-compelled to check their wonted flow of licentious conversation. Cards, as
-an innocent amusement, I could stand, but the "accomplishments" referred
-to I could not endure. Shall I, as a physician, mention the positive
-evidence, the pathognomonic indications which were revealed to me in the
-faces of many of those young men; of vulgar habits, which are less often
-or seldom revealed in those who customarily associate in pure female
-society? They had little or no respect for the opposite sex. Their ideas
-of them, thoughts and conversations, were most gross. If some now and
-then, as they occasionally would, took a stolen interview, a walk at
-night, when "Old Prof." was asleep, it was with no more exalted views of
-purity than any other midnight criminal prowlers are supposed to cherish.
-
-And the girls? Alas! they were ready to flirt with every strange man,
-drummer, or else, who came into the village. The aforesaid pious landlord
-assured me further, what my eyes did not see, that he knew of girls
-climbing out of the windows at night, and partaking of stolen rides and
-interviews as late as midnight; and he pointed out to me one coy, plump
-little miss, who he knew "had been out as late as one or two A. M., taking
-a ride with a gentleman scholar."
-
-The scholars all met in the "chapel" for prayers. Are sly glances, winks,
-or billets-doux prayers? If so, they prayed fervently.
-
-Any well read, observing physician will tell you of the ruined healths of
-the majority of females educated at such exclusive seminaries.
-
-And what is the reverse of this exclusiveness?
-
-Bring the sexes up together. Teach them together, as much as is
-consistent. They will each have better manners, be more graceful, and
-possess clearer ideas of propriety, more beauty and better health, than by
-the plan of a separate education.
-
-We all dread to grow old. Don't talk of second childhood. Keep the first
-youthfulness fresh till the last. Love will do much towards continuing
-this desirable state. Says the _Phrenological Journal_, beauty comes and
-goes with health. The bad habits and false conditions which destroy the
-latter, render the former impossible. Youthfulness of form and features
-depends on youthfulness of feeling.
-
-  "Spring still makes spring in the mind,
-    When sixty years are told;
-  Love wakes anew the throbbing heart,
-    And we are never old."
-
-If, then, we would retain youthful looks, we must do nothing that will
-make us _feel old_.
-
-O, the folly of parents in some things! The nonsense of sixty is the
-sweetest kind of sense to sixteen; and the father and mother who renew
-their own youths in that of their children may be said to experience a
-second blossoming of their lives. Teach them to talk to you of their
-friends and companions. Let the girls chat freely about gentlemen if they
-wish. It is far better to control the subject than to forbid it. Don't
-make fun of your boy's shamefaced first love, but help him to judge the
-article properly. You would hardly send him by himself to select a coat or
-a hat--has he not equal need of your counsel and assistance in selecting
-that much more uncertain piece of goods, a sweetheart?
-
-There is a great deal of popular nonsense talked and written about the
-folly of our girls contracting early marriages. It is not the early
-marriage that is in fault, it is the premature choice of a husband. Only
-take time enough about selecting the proper person, and it is not of much
-consequence how soon the minister is called in. Keep him on trial a little
-while, girls; look at him from every possible point of view, domestic or
-foreign. Don't be deluded by the hollow glitter of handsome features and
-prepossessing manners. A Greek nose or a graceful brow will not insure
-conjugal happiness by any means. A husband ought to be like a watertight
-roof, equally serviceable in sunny or rainy weather.
-
-
-ACTION AND IDLENESS.
-
-While action is surely essential to our physical and moral being, all
-extremes should be avoided. Excessive labor, even out of door, in the air
-and sunshine, may be injurious. On this point I quote the _Scientific
-American_:--
-
-"It has oftentimes been asserted that those exposed to severe labor in the
-open atmosphere were the least subject to sickness. This has been proven a
-fallacy. Of persons engaged at heavy labor in outdoor exposure, the
-percentage of sickness in the year is 28.05. Of those engaged at heavy
-labor in-doors, such as blacksmiths, etc., the percentage of sickness is
-26.54--not much to be sure; but of those engaged at light occupations
-in-doors and out, the percentage of sickness is only 20.80-21.58. For
-every three cases of sickness in those engaged in light labor, there are
-four cases among those whose lot is heavy labor. The mortality, however,
-is greater among those engaged in light toil, and in-door labor is less
-favorable to longevity than laboring in the open atmosphere. It is
-established clearly that the quantum of sickness annually falling to the
-lot of man is in direct proportion to demands on his muscular power.
-
-"How true this makes the assertion,--'Every inventor who abridges labor,
-and relieves man from the drudgery of severe toil, is a benefactor of his
-race.' There were many who looked upon labor-saving machines as great
-evils, because they supplanted the hand toil of many operatives. We have
-helped to cure the laboring and toiling classes of such absurd notions. A
-more enlightened spirit is now abroad, for all experience proves that
-labor-saving machines do not destroy the occupations of men, but merely
-change them."
-
-
-IDLENESS INDUCES CRIME.
-
-This fact cannot be too strongly or repeatedly impressed upon parents and
-children.
-
-Warden Haynes, of the Massachusetts State Prison, lately uttered these
-emphatic and significant words, which are worthy to be written in letters
-of gold: "Eight out of every ten come here by liquor; and a great curse
-is, not learning a trade. Young men get the notion that it is not genteel
-to learn a trade; they idle away their time, get into saloons, acquire the
-habits of drinking, and then gambling, and then they are ready for any
-crime." How many young men we see every day who are in the pathway to this
-end. Fathers and mothers who hold the dangerous view that it is not
-genteel for their children to learn a trade, can see where such ideas
-lead. The words of wisdom quoted above are full of weighty import for both
-parents and children.
-
-
-BEAUTY AND DEVELOPMENT.
-
-Activity of body and mind are conducive to health.
-
-Everybody ought to know that moderate exercise develops the muscular and
-nervous power, hence the vitality of all creatures. Is the active,
-prancing steed, or the inactive, sluggish swine, the better representative
-of beauty, strength, and long life?
-
-"The horse," answers everybody. Then avoid the habits of the other, and
-you will be very unlike that indolent, unclean, and gluttonous animal.
-When you see a man who reminds you of a hog, be assured he has swinish
-habits.
-
-Mental activity, unless it is excessive, is conducive to beauty, to
-strength, and health. A writer in the American Odd Fellow has some good
-ideas illustrative of my argument, that I may be pardoned for quoting
-him:--
-
-"We were speaking of handsome men the other evening, and I was wondering
-why K. had so lost the beauty for which five years ago he was so famous.
-'O, it's because he never did anything,' said B.; 'he never worked,
-thought, or suffered. You must have the mind chiselling away at the
-features, if you want handsome middle-aged men.' Since hearing that
-remark, I have been on the watch to see whether it is generally true--and
-it is. A handsome man who does nothing but eat and drink grows flabby, and
-the fine lines of his features are lost; but the hard thinker has an
-admirable sculptor at work, keeping his fine lines in repair, and
-constantly going over his face to improve, if possible, the original
-design."
-
-Therefore, we infer that this moderate (outdoor) exercise is conducive to
-beauty, health, and longevity. Moderate activity of the mind the same.
-
-Idleness begets licentious thoughts and deeds. Activity of body and mind
-in honorable pursuits calls away the nervous power from the lower to the
-higher organs. A lively, cheerful, clean man or woman, is seldom wicked or
-licentious.
-
-
-SLEEP.
-
-By the assistance of John G. Saxe, we have already given those
-
-  "Early to bed, and early to rise,
-  Makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise,"
-
-fellows a touch of our opinion on too early rising. I base my judgment
-upon careful and continued observation during many years.
-
-The Scriptures teach that the day is for work, and night for sleep. This
-turning day into night, sitting up till near midnight, is all wrong. It is
-ruinous to health and beauty. This other extreme, of rising at four or
-five o'clock and pitching into hard labor, is wearing and tearing to the
-constitution; and though nature for a while adapts herself to the
-necessity, by browning and unnaturally developing the exposed parts of
-such deluded or unfortunate persons, _it does it at the expense of his
-length of days_. He will not live so long for his over-doing.
-
-Begin by retiring earlier, at the first indication after nightfall of
-fatigue and sleepiness. If sweaty, wash the skin quickly, as previously
-directed, with warm water, _rubbing dry and warm_, and cover up. Lie on
-one side. Do not sleep on your back. You are more liable to dream
-laborious or frightful dreams, snore, or have nightmare. Do not sleep in
-clothes worn during the day.
-
-Unfortunate is the man or woman, who, from necessity, arises before six or
-seven in winter, or five to seven in summer.
-
-Literary persons require more sleep than laborers. Children require more
-than adults. Do not lie in bed long after awaking at morning. Open your
-window wide as soon as you arise--it is supposed to be partially open at
-the top all night.
-
-In inhaling air at night or morning, do it only through the nostrils.
-Night air is _not_ injurious any more than day air if so inhaled. Sleep
-when sleepy--this is a good rule, unless disease induces unnatural sleep.
-
-
-WHAT SHALL WE EAT?
-
-_Eat what relishes well, and agrees with you afterwards._ This is the best
-general rule I have been able to adopt for eating.
-
-There has been so much ridiculous stuff written upon "diet" that most
-sensible people have given up trying to follow the prescribed rules of
-writers, if not their physician's directions on that score.
-
-Take the following, by one celebrated Dr. Brown, of England, for an
-example, although we may find others quite as ridiculous nearer home:--
-
-"For breakfast, toast and rich soup made on a slow fire, a walk before
-breakfast, and a good deal after it; a glass of wine in the forenoon,
-_from time to time_; good broth or soup to dinner, with meat of any kind
-he likes, but always the most nourishing; several glasses of port or punch
-to be taken after dinner, till some enlivening effect is perceived from
-them, and a dram after everything heavy; one hour and a half after dinner
-another walk; between tea-time and supper a game with cheerful company at
-cards or any other play, never too prolonged; a little light reading;
-jocose, humorous company, avoiding that of popular Presbyterian ministers
-and their admirers, and all hypocrites and thieves of every
-description.... Lastly, the company of amiable, handsome, and delightful
-young women and an enlivening glass."
-
-Dr. Russell, to whom we are indebted for the quotation, might well say
-that "John Brown's prescriptions seem a caricature of his system."
-
-
-A "STOMACH-MILL" AND A "STEWING-POT."
-
-There have been many speculations about the nature of the digestive
-process, and in relation to them the celebrated Hunter remarked,
-playfully, "To account for digestion, some have made the stomach a mill;
-some would have it to be a stewing-pot, and some a brewing-trough; yet all
-the while one would have thought that it must have been very evident that
-the stomach was neither a mill, nor a stewing-pot, nor a brewing-trough,
-nor anything but a _stomach_." All that can be said is, that digestion is
-a chemical process, the mechanical agency spoken of being of service only
-in thoroughly mixing the gastric juice with the food.
-
-
-"FIVE MINUTES FOR REFRESHMENTS."
-
-"Murder! murder!" the conductor might as well cry to passengers, as "Five
-minutes for refreshments."
-
-Now it makes less difference what we eat than how we eat. Cold hash, eaten
-slowly, therefore, well masticated, and mixed with the saliva, is more
-likely to "set well" than a light cake or a cracker, though it be "Bond's
-best," if hurried down the throat.
-
-What the English call the "blarsted Yankee style" of gulping down the food
-half masticated, washing it down with drinks, will ruin anything but a
-sheet-iron stomach in a cast-iron constitution. Talk about "mills." Why,
-that most excellently contrived mill in the mouth is not suffered to
-perform its duty. The hopper is too crammed; it clogs the whole machinery.
-
-Eating between meals destroys the regular periods naturally established by
-the stomach for digestion. Three meals should be sufficient for
-twenty-four hours.
-
-"Much has been said about exercising after eating, and the truth has been
-often over-stated. The famous experiment with the two dogs is cited to
-show that exercise after eating interferes with the process of digestion.
-Observe just how much was proved by the experiment. Two dogs were fed to
-the full, and while one was left to lie still, the other was made to run
-about very briskly. In an hour or two both dogs were killed, and it was
-found that the food was well digested in the dog that remained quiet, but
-not in the other. (I have seen it stated the reverse.) This proves simply
-that _violent_ exercise, taken _immediately_ after eating, interferes with
-digestion. Other facts show that light exercise rather promotes than
-impedes the process, and that even very strong exercise does not interfere
-with it if a short interval of rest be allowed, so that the process may be
-fairly commenced.
-
-"The same is to some extent true of exercise of mind. It seems to be
-necessary that there should be some measure of concentration of energy in
-the stomach for the due performance of digestion, and any very decided
-exercise, bodily or mental, tends to prevent this. In the dyspeptic, even
-a slight amount of effort, either of body or mind, often suffices to do
-it.
-
-"It is very commonly said that it is wrong to eat just before going to
-bed. Is this true? Cattle are apt to go to sleep after eating fully. Do
-sleep and digestion agree well in their case, and not so in the case of
-man? In some seasons of the year the farmer takes his heartiest meal at
-the close of the labors of the day, and soon retires. Is this a bad
-custom? Our opinion is that food may be taken properly at a late hour,
-provided, first, that the individual has not already eaten enough for the
-twenty-four hours,--that he has done so being true, probably, in most
-cases; and provided, secondly, that he is in such a state of health that
-digestion will not so act upon his nerves as to disturb his sleep. If it
-will thus act, it is clear that he had better be disturbed when awake,
-for he can bear the disturbance then with less of injury to his system."
-
-
-ANCIENT DIET.
-
-"How did them old _anti-delusion_ fellows live?" once asked an honest old
-farmer of the writer. "They must have lived differently than we live, or
-they would not have told so many years as they did."
-
-True, true. The difference between ancient and modern diet is remarkable.
-The ancient Greeks and Romans used no tea, coffee, tobacco, chocolate,
-sugar, lard, or butter. They had but few spices, no "nutmeg, cinnamon,
-ginger, or cloves," no Cayenne pepper, no sage, sweet marjoram, spinach,
-tapioca, Irish moss, arrow-root, potato, corn starch, common beans; no
-oranges, tamarinds, or candies, or the Yankee invention, "buckwheat cakes
-and molasses." What would our modern cooks do without the above enumerated
-articles in the culinary department? And the butter! Down to the Saviour's
-time butter was unknown. Dr. Galen (130-218, A. D.) saw the first butter
-only a short time before his death. Tea is comparatively a modern
-introduction.
-
-
-THE GREEN GROCERY OF THE CLASSICS.
-
-The cabbage has had a singular destiny--in one country an object of
-worship, in another of contempt. The Egyptians made of it a god, and it
-was the first dish they touched at their repasts. The Greeks and Romans
-took it as a remedy for the languor following inebriation. Cato said that
-in the cabbage was a panacea for the ills of man. Erasistratus recommended
-it as a specific in paralysis. Hippocrates accounted it a sovereign
-remedy, boiled with salt, for the colic. And Athenian medical men
-prescribed it to young nursing mothers, who wished to see lusty babies
-lying in their arms. Diphilus preferred the beet to the cabbage, both as
-food and as medicine,--in the latter case, as a vermifuge. (Horace Greeley
-prefers the latter, for he says that "a cabbage will beat a beet if the
-cabbage gets a-head.") The same physician extols mallows, not for
-fomentation, but as a good edible vegetable, appeasing hunger and curing
-the sore throat at the same time. The asparagus, as we are accustomed to
-see it, has derogated from its ancient magnificence. The original "grass"
-was from twelve to twenty feet high; and a dish of them could only have
-been served to the Brobdignagians. Under the Romans, stems of asparagus
-were raised of three pounds' weight, heavy enough to knock down a slave in
-waiting with. The Greeks ate them of more moderate dimensions, or would
-have eaten them, but that the publishing doctors of their day denounced
-asparagus as injurious to the sight. But then it was also said that a
-slice or two of boiled pumpkin would reinvigorate the sight which had been
-deteriorated by asparagus! "Do that as quickly as you should asparagus!"
-is a proverb descended to us from Augustus, and illustrative of the mode
-in which the vegetable was prepared for the table.
-
-A still more favorite dish, at Athens, was turnips from Thebes. Carrots,
-too, formed a distinguished dish at Greek and Roman tables. Purslain was
-rather honored as a cure against poisons, whether in the blood by wounds,
-or in the stomach from beverage. I have heard it asserted in France, that
-if you briskly rub a glass with fingers which have been previously rubbed
-with purslain or parsley, the glass will certainly break. I have tried the
-experiment, but only to find that the glass resisted the pretended charm.
-
-Broccoli was the favorite vegetable food of Drusus. He ate greedily
-thereof; and as his father, Tiberius, was as fond of it as he, the master
-of the Roman world and his illustrious heir were constantly quarrelling,
-like two clowns, when a dish of broccoli stood between them. Artichokes
-grew less rapidly into aristocratic favor; the _dictum_ of Galen was
-against them, and for a long time they were only used by drinkers against
-headache, and by singers to strengthen their voice. Pliny pronounced
-artichokes excellent food for poor people and donkeys. For nobler stomachs
-he preferred the cucumber--the Nemesis of vegetables. But people were at
-issue touching the merits of the cucumber. Not so regarding the lettuce,
-which has been universally honored. It was the most highly esteemed dish
-of the beautiful Adonis. It was prescribed as provocative to sleep; and it
-cured Augustus of the malady which sits so heavily on the soul of Leopold
-of Belgium--hypochondriasis. Science and rank eulogized the lettuce, and
-philosophy sanctioned the eulogy in the person of Aristoxenus, who not
-only grew lettuces as the pride of his garden, but irrigated them with
-wine, in order to increase their flavor.
-
-But we must not place too much trust in the stories, either of sages or
-apothecaries. These pagans recommended the seductive but indigestible
-endive as good against the headache, and young onions and honey as
-admirable preservers of health, when taken fasting; but this was a
-prescription for rustic swains and nymphs. The higher classes, in town or
-country, would hardly venture on it. And yet the mother of Apollo ate raw
-leeks, and loved them of gigantic dimensions. For this reason, perhaps,
-was the leek accounted not only as salubrious, but as a beautifier. The
-love for melons was derived, in similar fashion probably, from Tiberius,
-who cared for them even more than he did for broccoli. The German Cæsars
-inherited the taste of their Roman predecessor, carrying it, indeed, to
-excess; for more than one of them submitted to die after eating melons,
-rather than live by renouncing them.
-
-I have spoken of gigantic asparagus: the Jews had radishes that could vie
-with them, if it be true that a fox and cubs could burrow in the hollow of
-one, and that it was not uncommon to grow them of a hundred pounds in
-weight. It must have been such radishes as those that were employed by
-seditious mobs of old, as weapons in insurrections. In such case, a
-rebellious people were always well victualled, and had peculiar
-facilities, not only to beat their adversaries, but _to eat their own
-arms_! The horseradish is probably a descendant of this gigantic ancestor.
-It had at one period a gigantic reputation. Dipped in poison, it rendered
-the draught innocuous, and rubbed on the hands, it made an encounter with
-venomed serpents mere play. In short, it was celebrated as being a cure
-for every evil in life, the only exception being that it destroyed the
-teeth. There was far more difference of opinion touching garlic than there
-was touching the radish. The Egyptians deified it, as they did the leek
-and the cabbage; the Greeks devoted it to Gehenna, and to soldiers,
-sailors, and cocks that were not "game." Medicinally, it was held to be
-useful in many diseases, if the root used were originally sown when the
-moon was below the horizon. No one who had eaten of it, however, could
-presume to enter the temple of Cybele. Alphonso of Castile was as
-particular as this goddess; and a knight of Castile, "detected as being
-guilty of garlic," suffered banishment from the royal presence during the
-entire month.
-
-It is long since the above instructive article on the "Green Groceries of
-the Classics," by Dr. Doran, was in print, and I think it will be new to
-most of my readers. I hope it will prove interesting as well as
-instructive.
-
-
-ANIMAL OR VEGETABLE DIET?
-
-Both, if considered in regard to health. With an eye to economy only, I
-should recommend vegetable diet.
-
-I think that poor people lay out more, in proportion, than the rich, for
-the purchase of animal food. They often buy extravagantly, on the credit
-system, purchasing on Saturday nights, when there is a rush at the
-stalls, and less opportunities for good bargains than when there is more
-time. Again, the lower classes fry their meats, losing much of their
-flavor and substance, by its going up chimney; or by boiling, and throwing
-away much of the nutriment with the water, which stewing in a covered dish
-would obviate.
-
-I have been into various markets, and observed the poor as they made their
-purchases. I have seen them count into the butcher's hand their last penny
-for a rib roast, a piece of pork to fry, a hind quarter of lamb to bake,
-or beef to boil, when a piece to stew, with nourishing vegetables, would
-cost far less, and return double the nutritive principle.
-
-Beefsteak, which contains seventy-five per cent. of water, is poor economy
-of both money and health. The flank and neck pieces are better. The more
-fatty and nutritive fore quarters are better than the hind quarters. Ask
-the Jews. Coarse vegetables, as carrots, cabbages, turnips, and potatoes,
-contain more nourishment than beef, though far less than the cereals, as
-wheat, barley, corn, and buckwheat. Beans, peas, rice, cracked wheat or
-hominy, cooked with meat, make a most wholesome and nourishing diet for
-laborers, for the sedentary, and for invalids. Meat should never be given
-to toothless infants. Milk, or bread and milk, is all they require until
-they have teeth.
-
-A cheap, innutritious regimen is scarcely conducive to longevity, any more
-than a stimulating and high living is contributive to that end. A great
-quantity of hot roast meats is objectionable. Also hot fine flour bread.
-Let those particularly interested in the matter see our article on bread,
-etc., in chapter on Adulterations. Also, as respects coarse sugar against
-the refined. See, also, Nutriment for Consumptives, in next chapter.
-
-
-
-
-XXXIII.
-
-CONSUMPTION (PHTHISIS PULMONALIS).
-
-    CONSUMPTION A MONSTER!--UNIVERSAL REIGN.--SIGNS OF HIS
-    APPROACH.--WARNINGS.--BAD POSITIONS.--SCHOOL-HOUSES.--ENGLISH
-    THEORY.--PREVENTIVES.--AIR AND SUNSHINE.--SCROFULA.--A JOLLY FAT
-    GRANDMOTHER.--"WASP WAISTS."--CHANGE OF CLIMATE.--"TOO LATE!"--WHAT TO
-    AVOID.--HUMBUGS.--COD-LIVER OIL.--STRYCHNINE WHISKEY.--A
-    MATTER-OF-FACT PATIENT.--SWALLOWING A PRESCRIPTION.--SIT AND LIE
-    STRAIGHT.--FEATHERS OR CURLED HAIR.--A YANKEE DISEASE.--CATARRH AND
-    COLD FEET, HOW TO REMEDY.--"GIVE US SOME SNUFF, DOCTOR."--OTHER THINGS
-    TO AVOID.--A TENDER POINT.
-
-
-Phthisis Pulmonalis is consumption of the lungs, which is the common
-acceptation of the term consumption. _Phthisis_ is from the Greek, meaning
-_to consume_. This fearful disease, from the earliest period in the
-history of medicine to the present day, has proved more destructive of
-human life than any other in the entire catalogue of ills to which frail
-humanity is heir. In Great Britain, one in every four dies of consumption;
-in France, one in five. In the United States, especially in New England,
-the number who die annually by this fearful disease is truly startling!
-One in every three! One reason for this fatality is because of the
-prevailing and erroneous idea that it is inevitably a fatal disease.
-
-Consumption is a relentless monster, and insidious in his approaches. He
-spares not the high or the low. Oftener known in the hovel, he fails not
-to visit dwellers in palaces. He paints the cheek of the infant, youth,
-maiden, the middle-aged, and the aged with the false glow of health. The
-delicate and beautiful are his common subjects.
-
-Tupper wrote with an understanding when he penned the following:--
-
-  "Behold that fragile form of delicate, transparent beauty,
-  Whose light blue eye and hectic cheek are lit by the bale-fires of
-      decline;
-  All droopingly she lieth, as a dew-laden lily,
-  Her flaxen tresses rashly luxuriant, dank with unhealthy moisture;
-  Hath not thy heart said of her, 'Alas! poor child of weakness'?"
-
-Yes, the monster "Decline" seeks particularly the fair-skinned, of
-"transparent beauty," and those of the "light blue eye and flaxen hair,"
-for his victims. Nor are the illiterate alone his subjects, but men of the
-most talented minds, men versed in arts, sciences, and _belles-lettres_,
-professors of hygiene and physiology, and the very practitioners of the
-art of medicine themselves, are often the shining marks of the insidious
-monster whom they by erudition diligently seek to repel.
-
-Because of the too prevalent belief of the invincibleness of consumption,
-it has been neglected more than any other disease. The victims to its
-wiles have hoped against hope, while the enemy has woven his web quietly
-and flatteringly around them.
-
-You must first be warned of his earliest aggression.
-
-
-SIGNS OF HIS APPROACH.
-
-He is a deceiver. Let us be wary of him.
-
-We have been too negligent in this matter. Let us remember that prevention
-is far better than cure.
-
-The slight fatigue on the least exertion we have counted as "nothing." The
-hectic flush of the cheeks is too often mistaken for a sign of health. The
-cursory pains of the chest, or left side, or under the shoulder-blades,
-are disregarded, or, if noticed at all, are mentioned as though "of no
-account." The slight hacking cough is scarcely heeded; for do not people
-often cough without having consumption, and without raising blood? True,
-true; and this is the stronghold of the deceiver.
-
-Consumption is a disease which is not entirely confined to the lungs. It
-is often a depraved condition of the system, particularly the blood. There
-is a "consumption of the blood," and a variety of morbid phenomena, which
-cannot be expressed in the single word consumption. It not unusually
-results in a scrofulous predisposition. An hereditary predisposition may
-or may not be the cause. If the former, its development must depend upon
-some exciting cause, which will be mentioned hereafter. The intermarrying
-of persons of like temperaments and constitutional dispositions inevitably
-results in children of scrofulous and consumptive diathesis.
-
-[Illustration: A NATURAL POSITION.]
-
-[Illustration: AN UNNATURAL POSITION.]
-
-A neglected cold, cough, or catarrh may soon develop this fatality. The
-peculiar changes in females at certain periods of life often awaken the
-slumbering enemy. Teething in infancy not unfrequently develops the
-scrofulous element, and a wasting of the system--either _marasmus_ or
-_tabes mesenterica_--follows, which, under the best treatment, may prove
-fatal.
-
-The slip-shod, doubled-up way that many people have of lying, sitting, and
-standing, are conducive to consumption.
-
-Badly-ventilated school-houses have heretofore been a source of great
-injury to children, developing scrofula and consumption in constitutions
-where it might have remained latent during their lifetime. Every
-reflecting parent should rejoice in the improvements which have been made
-during the last few years in the matter of ventilation in buildings,
-particularly in churches and school-rooms, although janitors, porters, and
-teachers have as yet too limited ideas on the subject of wholesome air.
-The dry furnaces are a very objectionable feature, and not conducive to
-health.
-
-_Early Symptoms._--Fatigue on the least exertion; a languid, tired feeling
-in the morning; rosy tint of one or both cheeks during the latter part of
-the day, caused by unoxygenized blood rushing to the surface; swelling of
-the glands of the neck, or elsewhere; enlarged joints; paleness of the
-lips; areola under the eyes; sensitiveness to the air; chills running over
-the body; taking cold easily; catarrhal symptoms; premature development of
-the intellect; and early physical maturity, are among its initiatory
-indications. Also, when the disease is located in the lungs, spitting of
-white, frothy mucus, or blood, with catarrhal symptoms; cough, which is
-noticed by others before by the patient; hacking on retiring, or early in
-the morning; varied appetite; tickling in the throat; short breath on
-exertion, with rapid pulse.
-
-_Second Stage._--Cough, and difficult breathing; increased difficulty of
-lying on one side; sharp, short pains; diminution of monthly period;
-swelling of the lower extremities, leaving corrugation on removing the
-hose and garters at night; raising greenish yellow matter, with (at
-times) hard, curd-like substance; sweating easily (sometimes the reverse);
-night sweats; restless, feverish, either dull or sharp bright cast to the
-eyes. Sputa increases to the
-
-_Third Stage._--Diarrhoea not unusually supervenes; spitting of blood; the
-person emaciates rapidly; the face changes from a bloated to a cadaverous
-appearance, with hectic fever; the patient faints easily; debility
-increases with the cough, or hæmoptosis occurs often, until death finally
-closes the scene.
-
-These are merely some of the external symptoms. Let the patient mark them,
-not so much to fear, as to provide against them. To be forewarned is to be
-forearmed. I caution you against the causes, and give you the benefit of
-my extensive experience with this disease, both in New England and three
-years in the South, that you may avoid its development by attention to
-rules for health and longevity.
-
-If this fearful disease was better understood by the people, it would
-prove far less destructive of human life. Undomesticated animals do not
-die of it; domesticated ones do. What does that imply? That the people
-have engendered the disease! Let the "people," then, take the first step
-in preventing its ravages.
-
-
-THEORY OF CONSUMPTION.
-
-At a sitting of the Academy of Medicine at London, Dr. Priory read a paper
-on the treatment of phthisis, in which he developed the following
-propositions:--
-
-1. Pulmonary phthisis is a combination of multifarious variable phenomena,
-and not a morbid unity.
-
-2. Hence there does not and cannot exist a specific medicine against it.
-
-3. Therefore neither iodine nor its tincture, neither chlorine, nor sea
-salt, nor tar, can be considered in the light of anti-phthisical
-remedies.
-
-4. _There are no specifics against phthisis, but there are systems of
-treatment to be followed in order to conquer the pathological states which
-constitute the disorder._
-
-5. In order to cure consumptive patients, the peculiar affections under
-which they labor must be studied, and appreciated, and counteracted by
-appropriate means.
-
-6. The tubercle cannot be cured by the use of remedies, but good hygienic
-precautions may prevent its development.
-
-7. The real way to relieve, cure, or prolong the life of consumptive
-patients, is to treat their various pathological states, which ought to
-receive different names, according to their nature.
-
-8. Consumption, thus treated, has often been cured, and oftener still life
-has been considerably prolonged.
-
-9. Phthisis should never be left to itself, but always treated as stated
-above.
-
-10. The old methods, founded on the general idea of a single illness
-called phthisis, are neither scientific nor rational.
-
-11. The exact diagnosis of the various pathological states which
-constitute the malady will dictate the most useful treatment for it.
-
-
-PREVENTIVES OF CONSUMPTION.
-
-If a man desires a house erected, he consults a carpenter, or if a first
-class residence, he employs an architect. If our watch gets out of repair,
-we take it to a skilful jeweller. If our boots become worn, want tapping,
-they are sent to the cobbler. But how many people there are, who, when the
-complicated mechanism of the system gets out of order,--which they cannot
-look into as they can their watch or old boots,--first try to patch
-themselves up, instead of employing a professional "cobbler of poor health
-and broken constitutions."
-
-Before me are Wistar's, Wilson's, and Gray's Works on Anatomy. I have
-read them, or Krause's, more than twenty years. They contain all that has
-been discovered relative to the human system. But I do not know it all. I
-never can. I doubt if the man lives who knows it all. Then here is
-"Physiology," which treats of the offices or various functions of the
-system. I do not comprehend it all. "Great ignoramus!" Nobody is perfected
-in it. Next is Pathology, which treats of diseases, their causes, nature,
-and symptoms. Then there are Materia Medica, Chemistry, and much more to
-be learned before one can become competent to prescribe for diseases
-safely.
-
-[Illustration: CORRECT POSITION.]
-
-[Illustration: INCORRECT POSITION.]
-
-Can a carpenter, or any mechanic, a lawyer, minister, or other than he who
-devotes his whole powers to the theory and practice of medicine, be
-intrusted with the precious healths and lives of individuals, about which
-he knows little or nothing? Or can I, in a few chapters, instruct such in
-the art of curing complicated diseases? O, no, no. But I can do something
-better for such. I can tell you how to avoid diseases. I am quite positive
-of it. I should wrong you, and endanger your lives by the deception thus
-put forth. There are some books written on the subject which are useful to
-the masses in the same manner in which I trust this will prove, by
-instructing in the ways of health, and warnings against that which is
-injurious; but there are far too many issued which are but a damage to the
-public by their false claims of posting everybody in the knowledge of
-curing all diseases, particularly that complicated one termed consumption.
-
-Among the preventives of this fell destroyer I enumerate,--
-
-_First_, Plenty of God's pure, free air; and _second_, sunshine. These are
-indispensable. He who prescribes for a patient without looking into this
-matter has yet to learn the first principle of the healing art.
-
-A lady recently came to my office with her son for medical advice. She was
-a robust, matronly looking individual, who might turn the scale at one
-hundred and eighty pounds, while the twelve-year-old boy was almost a
-dwarf, pale and delicate. The contrast was astounding.
-
-"Madam," I said, "I perceive that your son sleeps in a room where no
-sunshine permeates by day;" for I could liken the pale, sickly-looking
-fellow to nothing but a vegetable which had sprouted in a dark, damp
-cellar. A gardener can tell such a vegetable, or plant, which has been
-prematurely developed away from air and sunshine. And though she looked
-astonished at my Oedipean proclivity in solving riddles, it was nothing
-marvellous that a physician should detect a result in a patient which a
-clodhopper might discover in a cabbage.
-
-"Yes, sir," she finally answered, "he always sleeps in a room where the
-sunlight don't enter; but I did not think it was that which made him so
-pale-like; besides, I have taken him to several doctors, and they said
-nothing about it; but their prescriptions did him no good, and I am
-discouraged."
-
-Such stoicism was unpardonable, but I said in reply,--
-
-"Take your son into a light airy room, to sleep. Try a healthy plant in
-the cell where you have so wrongfully intombed him, and observe how
-speedily the color and strength will depart from it. When you can come
-back and assure me of his change of apartment, I will prescribe for him."
-
-She went away, repeating to herself, as if to impress it firmly upon her
-mind,--
-
-"Put a plant into his room--plant into Johnny's room."
-
-The lady afterwards returned, saying that she was sorry that the plant had
-died, but was glad to say that Johnny was better.
-
-It is a daily occurrence for physicians to see patients who are dying by
-inches from the above cause; nor are they the low foreigners alone, but,
-like my stoical one hundred and eighty pounder, of American birth, and
-without excuse for their ignorance.
-
-Do not sleep or live in apartments unventilated, or where the life-giving
-sunshine does not penetrate during some portion of the day. It is living a
-lingering death. If the patient is scrofulous, let him or her employ such
-remedies as are known to remove the predisposition, or seek aid from some
-physician who has cured scrofula. The regular practitioner seldom desires
-such cases. One who has devoted much time to scrofula and chronic diseases
-should be preferred. I think chronic practice should become a separate
-branch in medicine as much as surgery is fast becoming. Take the disease
-in season. Do not neglect colds, coughs, and catarrh.
-
-Persons of a low state of blood, who are weak and debilitated, should wear
-flannels the year round--thinner in summer than in winter; keep the feet
-dry--avoid "wafer soles,"--and the body clean, but beware of what Artemus
-Ward termed "too much baths." Employ soap and a small quantity of water,
-with a plenty of dry rubbing, till you get a healthy circulation to the
-surface.
-
-Mothers, see to the solitary and other habits of your daughters. Fathers,
-instruct your sons in the laws of nature, and of their bodies. Do you
-understand?
-
-See our youth swept off by the thousands annually, for want of proper care
-and instruction!...
-
-
-A JOLLY FAT GRANDMOTHER.
-
-"_Wasp Waists._"--This is what I heard a fine-looking though
-tobacco-sucking gentleman utter, as with his companion he passed two young
-and fashionably dressed ladies on the street recently.
-
-[Illustration: HOW WASP WAISTS ARE MADE.]
-
-So I fell into a reverie, in which I called up the image of a fat, jolly
-old lady whom I knew as my "grandmarm." She had a waist half as large
-around as a flour barrel.
-
-"O, horrid creature!" exclaims a modern belle.
-
-But, then, my grandmother could breathe! You cannot--_only half breathe_!
-And my "grandmarm" had a fresh color to her cheeks and lips, and a good
-bust, till she was over sixty years of age, and she lived to be almost a
-hundred years old. You won't live to see a third of that time. Did our
-grandfathers or mothers die of consumption? O, no. Still they lived
-well--mine did. When I see a modern mince pie, it quickly carries my mind
-back to childhood days, when I think of a little boy who thought
-grandmothers were gotten up expressly to furnish nice cakes and mince pies
-for the rising generation.
-
-O, but she was jolly--and so were her pies!
-
-An Irish blunderer once said, "Ah, ye don't see any of the young gals of
-the present day fourscore and tin years ould;" and probably we should not
-see many of our present "crop" if _we_ should survive that age.
-
-Drs. A., B., and C., tell me how many ladies who visit your offices can
-take a full, deep breath. "Not one in a score or two!" So I thought.
-
-[Illustration: A CONSUMPTIVE WAIST. CAUSE, TIGHT CORSETS.]
-
-[Illustration: NON-CONSUMPTIVE WAIST. NEVER WORE CORSETS.]
-
-Lungs which are not used in full become weak and tender. Do you have sore
-places about your chest? Practise inflating your lungs with pure air
-through the nostrils,--where God first breathed the breath of life,--and
-give room for the lungs to expand, and the "sore places" will all
-disappear after a time. See my article on breathing. Put it into steady,
-moderate practice, and the result will be beneficial beyond all
-conception.
-
-
-CONSUMPTION IS CURABLE.
-
-"Is it true that consumption of the lungs is ever cured?" is a question
-which is often seriously asked.
-
-"O, yes," I reply.
-
-"What are the proofs?"
-
-Where on dissection we find cicatrices,--places in the lungs where
-tubercles have existed, sloughing out great cavities, which have healed
-all sound, the scar only remaining--what then? Here is positive proof that
-consumption had been at work, was repelled by some means, and the patient
-had recovered, subsequently dying of some other disease, or from accident.
-
-Such is the fact in many cases. It is an error--fatal to thousands--to
-suppose that the lungs, of all substance in the body, cannot be healed.
-Yet it is a fact patent to most educated physicians, that many cases of
-consumption are cured in this country, while others are prolonged, and the
-patient made comfortable during many years.
-
-Change of climate may be much towards saving a patient. Before deciding
-upon such change, consult your physician. Ought not he to know best? A
-climate adapted to one constitution may be quite unsuited to another. What
-a wise provision in Providence in giving this little world a variety of
-climates! There are certain portions of the States and world where
-consumption seldom prevails. The climate of California and the western
-prairies, as also some portions of the South away from the coast, is less
-conducive of lung and throat diseases than the more bleak and changeable
-climate of New England and the Northern States. A change is only
-beneficial in those cases where there is a mere deficiency of vitality in
-the system. If the disease depends upon a scrofulous or other taint in the
-system, one gains little by going from home. Change of climate does not
-alter the condition of the system materially, so much as it relieves one
-from atmospheric pressure, reducing thereby the demands upon his small
-stock of vitality,--just as some places are less expensive in which to
-live, and your funds hold out longer. The writer resided in the Southern
-States during three cold seasons, and carefully studied the effects of
-changes. He has two brothers in California, who, during the past ten
-years, have often written respecting the climate west of the Rocky
-Mountains. If ever called upon to decide on a climate for a friend or
-patient who had determined to change from this, I would advise him, or
-her, to select California.
-
-Do not change too late! going away from home and friends to die among
-strangers....
-
-
-AVOID HUMBUGS.
-
-Do not run to clairvoyants and spiritual humbugs for advice. A clairvoyant
-physician once said to me,--
-
-"Mr. So-and-so has just called upon me to learn where he shall spend the
-winter. He thinks he has the consumption, and that I can tell him where he
-will pass the winter safely. What confounded fools some of these men are,
-to be sure!" she exclaimed. "Why, I have got that disease myself (not the
-foolish disease, but consumption), and don't know what to do to save my
-own life."
-
-That lady is living in Boston to-day. The gentleman went to St. Thomas,
-dying in the hospital in January, amongst strangers, where every dollar he
-possessed was stolen from him.
-
-Nearly all patent medicines are humbugs. Avoid them. Dr. Dio Lewis says
-that "the bath-tub is a humbug." I believe him. While you avoid drowning
-inside by pouring down drugs, do not exhaust your vitality externally in a
-bath-tub. The hand-bath is all-sufficient for consumptives.
-
-
-COD-LIVER OIL AND WHISKEY.
-
-"Take cod-liver oil and die!" has become proverbial. The oil is utterly
-worthless as a medicine, and the whiskey usually recommended to be taken
-in connection is decidedly injurious. It is poisonous. I defy one to
-obtain a pure article of whiskey in this country. If it could by any means
-be obtained in its purity, it would not cure this disease any more than
-the nasty oil from fishes' livers. The oil is often given, not as a
-medicine, but as an article of nourishment. If the patient so understands
-it, all right; it will do no harm; but if he thinks that he is taking a
-remedial agent, he is deceived thereby, and losing the precious time in
-which he ought to be employing some remedy for his recovery. The
-statements that cod-liver oil contains iodine, lime, phosphorus, etc., is
-all bosh. A most reliable druggist of this city, who has sold a _ton or
-two_ of the oil, told me that "all the iodine or phosphorus that it
-contains you might put into your eye, and not injure that organ."
-
-If good, wholesome bread, butter, milk, eggs, and beef, will not give
-nutriment to the wasting system, cod-liver oil will not, and the patient
-must die--provided he has trusted to nutriment alone.
-
-I have never known a consumptive patient to recover upon cod-liver oil. I
-have known them to recover by other treatment, particularly by the use of
-the phosphates, as "phosphate of lime," and iron, soda, and other
-combinations. I have intimated that a patient should be advised by "his
-physician;" but if that physician is one of the old-fogy style who insists
-upon cod-liver oil and whiskey as a cure, why, you had better "change
-horses in crossing a river," than to perish on an old, worn-out hobby!
-There are two classes of patients which the doctor has to deal with; one
-will follow no instructions accurately, the other swallows everything
-literally.
-
-I remember a story illustrative of the latter. A dyspeptic applied to Dr.
-C. for treatment. The doctor looked into the case, gave a prescription,
-telling the patient to take it, and return in a fortnight.
-
-At the designated time he returned, radiant and happy.
-
-"Did you follow my directions?" inquired the physician.
-
-"O, yes, to the letter, doctor; and see--I am well!"
-
-"I have forgotten just what I gave you; let me see the prescription," said
-the doctor, delighted at his success.
-
-"I haven't it. Why, I took it, sir."
-
-"Took it--the medicine, you mean," explained the man of pills and powders.
-
-"Medicine? No. You gave me no medicine--nothing but a paper, and I took
-that according to directions. That's what cured me."
-
-The clown had swallowed the recipe!
-
-The consumptive requires nourishment. He must derive it from wholesome
-food,--even fat meats are beneficial,--not from medicines. Let food be one
-thing, medicine another. I believe that a man would starve upon cod-liver
-oil. He would not upon bread or beef.
-
-
-SIT AND LIE STRAIGHT.
-
-Go into one of our school-houses, and you may there see subjects preparing
-for consumption. Our illustrations will give the reader a correct idea of
-our meaning, without any explanation. The sewing-machines, or rather the
-position which many girls assume while sitting at their work by them from
-three to twelve hours a day, tend to depression of the lungs, obstruction
-of circulation, reduction of the vitality, dyspepsia, and sooner or later
-lead to consumption.
-
-[Illustration: A HEALTHY POSITION.]
-
-Let everybody when walking stand erect, with shoulders slightly thrown
-back rather than inclined towards the chest, then outward, and keep the
-mouth closed. When sitting, keep the body erect, or lean back slightly,
-resting the shoulders, rather than the spinal column, against any
-substance excepting feathers, changing the limbs from time to time to any
-easy position. If tired, and one can consistently "loll," recline to one
-side, resting the cheek upon the hand. If one is very tired, and desires
-to "rest fast," sit with the feet and hands crossed or arms folded.
-
-[Illustration: A CONSUMPTIVE POSITION.]
-
-If you lie crooked in bed, do it on the side. "To bend up double, man
-never was made," says the song. Do not bolster up the head so as to get a
-square look at your toes, or, being in a feather bed, till you resemble a
-letter C. Rather use but one light curled-hair pillow. It is cool and
-healthy. Avoid feather beds and pillows.
-
-"Didn't your 'grandma sleep during nearly a hundred years' on a feather
-bed?" My quizzer has returned, peeped over my shoulder, and asked this
-question. Now see me quench him at a swoop.
-
-"Yes, she did; and I think it probable that if she had not she would have
-been living now. My grandmother's good habits, free use of muscle,
-sunshine, and air, more than offset the use of mince pies, and the evil of
-sleeping on a feather bed in winter."
-
-I sleep on a hair mattress and pillow the year round. They are the best.
-
-
-CATARRH AND COLD FEET.--HOW TO CURE BOTH.
-
-Catarrh is peculiarly a Yankee disease. Now, how does a Yankee differ in
-his habits from the rest of the world's people?
-
-Let me tell you wherein he differs. The "five minutes for refreshments" is
-an illustration. He hurries, he rushes, he's a talker; and having hurried
-unnecessarily, and got himself all in a perspiration, he stops to talk
-with a friend on the street, in a current of air, possibly in a puddle of
-water, the consequence of which is checked perspiration, a cold, the
-catarrh. If the circulation to the skin is checked, that excretory organ
-ceases to throw off the waste and worn-out matter of the system, and the
-work is thrown upon the mucous membrane, which if failing to perform the
-unnatural office, the patient goes into a decline. Set this down as reason
-No. 1 for the catarrh being peculiarly a "Yankee disease."
-
-Chronic catarrh necessarily must be connected with a bad circulation of
-the blood, a want of action in the skin, and usually with cold feet. I
-must take time to explain these causes of a disease which usually leads to
-the more fatal one--consumption. Now we have cold feet and loss of action
-in the skin. Result, catarrh, terminating fatal in consumption.
-
-To keep the feet warm is to restore the circulation. Has your doctor
-failed to do this? I fear he did not understand the connection, or the
-patient did not follow his instructions. Dip the cold feet into a little
-cold water! Is that "too homeopathic?"--cold to cure cold! Never mind, do
-it. It feels cold at first. Well, catch them out, rub them vigorously with
-a towel, then with the hands, and when quite red, cover them up in bed, or
-in stockings and boots. Repeat it daily till cured. Wear thick-soled boots
-and shoes always. Meantime, take a dose of the third dilution of sulphur
-mornings, or at ten A. M., and the third trituration of calcarea-carbonica
-at early bedtime.
-
-To restore the loss of circulation to the skin, meantime--for they must
-both be cured together--take a daily hand-bath; that is, with the hand and
-in a comfortable room, apply a dose of castile or Windsor soap to the
-skin, half of the person at a time, if the weather is cool,--avoiding a
-current of air,--then, with cool or cold water, _and the hand only_, wash
-rapidly over the surface, following quickly with a dry towel and the dry
-hand, till warm. Cover the upper extremity, and proceed to wash the other
-portion of the body in the same manner. I really believe that there are
-individuals with such peculiar temperaments, or low state of the blood,
-that they cannot bear cold water. See to it that it is not fear, or habit,
-which prevents its use, before abandoning a remedy of such curative
-powers.
-
-Now, there is no other way under heaven whereby man can be saved from
-catarrh than this which I have here given. If the patient requires further
-medical treatment, he or she surely requires this, else there is no
-catarrh in the case.
-
-"But can't you give me some snuff, doctor?"
-
-Snuffs and nasal injections are humbugs. They will not cure a chronic
-catarrh. The sugar and gum arabic powder is excellent for the local
-irritation. That is all any local remedy can reach. Thousands of dollars
-are expended annually for "Catarrh Remedies," which never cured a case
-yet, but have been the death of thousands, by aggravating and prolonging
-the disease.
-
-Indigestion and "a goneness at the stomach" not unusually accompany the
-above disease. In addition to the instructions here given, rubbing and
-slapping the region of the stomach with water and the hand, and taking
-small quantities of extract gentian, orange-peel, dock, and ginger, equal
-parts, twice daily, following the directions regarding slow eating and
-cheerfulness, will eventually remove the distressing disease.
-
-
-OTHER THINGS TO BE AVOIDED.
-
-For consumption, the old-fogy treatment by squills, ipecac, laudanum, and
-the host of expectorants, is worthless. One of the fatalities in this
-disease has been the sticking to these useless medicines by a certain
-class of physicians and patients.
-
-Use no tobacco. If tight-lacing and confined habits, as want of air and
-exercise, have been conducive to the development of consumption in
-females, more repulsive habits have led to catarrhal affections,
-destruction of the vitality, and finally to consumption in many of the
-opposite sex. Does the mother, by habits which injure her health,
-jeopardize the life and health of her offspring? The husband and father,
-by the debasing and health-destroying habit of tobacco-using, injures both
-mother and child. The description which I have given in the article on
-tobacco, respecting cleansing the young man, and purifying him fit for
-society, is no joke! The clothes, skin, blood, muscle, and bones,--even
-the seminal fluid,--of the confirmed tobacco-user, all are impregnated
-with tobacco poison. Does any one question but something of this virus is
-transmitted to the offspring? Further, I have known many a wife to become
-tobacco-diseased,--nervous, yellow, sick at the stomach, dyspeptic,
-neuralgic, etc.,--suffering untold horrors, from lying, night after night,
-during year in and year out, beside a great, filthy, tobacco-plant of a
-husband!
-
-Perhaps some sensitive gentleman--user of the weed of course--may object
-to my way of putting it. Sound truths, like sound meat, require no
-mincing. We know that children, sleeping constantly with elderly people,
-become prematurely old and infirm. We know also that nurses and others,
-sleeping with perpetual invalids, imbibe their diseases. The skin of the
-tobacco-user is continually giving off the tobacco poison--_nicotine_--and
-the more susceptible skin of the female, or child, by its absorbent
-powers, is as continually taking in this poison. There are many
-tobacco-users, who, if they knew this fact, would for this reason, if no
-other, abandon the injurious and sinful habit; would not want to continue
-a habit--be it never so slavish--which, aside from its injury to
-themselves, was destroying the health and lives of his wife and his
-children.
-
-Tobacco exhausts the saliva, the fluids, the blood, often the muscle, _and
-destroys the recuperative powers of the human system_. It weakens the
-power of the heart. Nine tenths of the reported deaths from "heart
-disease" really originate, or result directly from the effects of
-tobacco-using. And, finally, it destroys the good effects of nearly all
-medicines. I positively affirm that no patient afflicted with a chronic
-disease can recover by the use of medicines if he continues the excessive
-use of tobacco.
-
-I think these are good and conclusive reasons why one should not use that
-pernicious weed--tobacco.
-
-Avoid all excesses, particularly of coition. Consumptives should husband
-all their resources. One other way of doing this is to keep from wasting
-the breath and caloric of the system through the mouth. Again, I say,
-breathe only through the nostrils. Keep out of crowded and unventilated
-halls, school-rooms, churches, and houses. Air! air and sunshine! don't
-forget them.
-
-Avoid patent medicines. They are worthless. Even if one in a thousand were
-adapted to the _disease_ in question, it might not be to the peculiar
-constitution of the invalid.
-
-People are so differently constituted that one kind of food, clothing, or
-medicine cannot be adapted to all. I wish that I could tell every reader
-of these pages what remedies are adapted to persons suffering from not
-only consumption, but from a hundred other diseases. But it is impossible,
-as intimated in the fore part of this chapter. Not only the quality of a
-medicine suited to one constitution may not be at all suited to another,
-but the quantity is even as uncertain. It requires much knowledge and long
-experience in the disease, and its various peculiarities, as also of the
-varied constitution and idiosyncrasies of different patients, in order to
-prescribe successfully.
-
-As the majority of the readers of this work are predisposed to
-consumption, let them seek to prevent its development in their systems.
-The writer has done this; he has told you in plain terms how it was done,
-how it still can be; but it is you who must believe in and abide by these
-instructions. Do this, and you will scarcely require to obtain and retain
-the knowledge of a thousand remedies and a complete knowledge of yourself,
-which it requires a lifetime of practice and study to possess.
-
-Dr. Worcester Beach, of New York, in one of his botanical works, tells of
-a country-woman who, having been given up as incurable with consumption,
-gathered and boiled together all the different kinds of herbs and barks
-which she could find upon the farm, and making this decoction into a
-syrup, drank of it freely, and was cured thereby! I would not recommend
-this empirical sort of practice, but quote it to show the uncertainty of
-what medicine was adapted to the case.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-XXXIV.
-
-ACCIDENTS.
-
-    RULES FOR MACHINISTS, MECHANICS, RAILROAD MEN, ETC., IN CASES OF
-    ACCIDENT.--HOW TO FIND AN ARTERY AND STOP THE BLEEDING.--DROWNING; TO
-    RESTORE.--SUN-STROKE.--AVOID ICE.--"ACCIDENTS WILL HAPPEN."--WHAT TO
-    HAVE IN THE HOUSE.--BRUISES.--BURNS.--DO THE BEST YOU CAN, AND TRUST
-    GOD FOR THE REST.
-
-
-Mechanics, machinists, railroad men, etc., may find the following rules of
-the most vital importance in case of accidents, whereby valuable lives may
-be saved:--
-
-1. When a person is seriously injured, do not crowd around him; give him
-air.
-
-2. Send for a surgeon or physician at once.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 1.]
-
-3. Lay the patient on his back, and ascertain whether he is bleeding. If
-it is from the artery of the fore-arm, it must be compressed immediately.
-If from the _artery_, the blood will _spurt out in jets_. Do not try to
-stanch the blood at the wound, but find the main artery. Strip the arm,
-feel for the artery, a little below the arm-pit, _just inside_ of the
-_large muscle_. (Fig. 1.) _You can feel it throb._ Press it with your
-thumbs or fingers, while an assistant folds a large handkerchief, or piece
-of shirt, if necessary, and ties a knot in the middle, or places a _flat_,
-_round_ stone in it, puts this over the artery, ties the handkerchief
-below the thumbs, puts a stick through, and twists it just tight enough
-to stop the bleeding. (Fig. 2.) The first man may relax his grasp, to
-ascertain if the compress is sufficiently tight. If you get the knot (or
-stone) on the artery, a few twists will check the blood. If the limb
-becomes cold and purple, you have got it too tight. One end of the stick
-may be tucked under the bandage to hold it from untwisting. The surgeon
-will arrive and take up the bleeding vessel and tie it.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 2.]
-
-4. If it be the leg which is cut or mangled and bleeding, find the artery,
-inside the thigh, quite high up, back of the large muscle. (Fig. 3.) Bear
-on quite hard, for it is deeper than in the arm, till you feel it throb.
-Compress it hard, and proceed with the bandage as above directed for the
-arm. The large artery (femoral) bleeds fast. Work quickly, and do not get
-excited.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 3.]
-
-A schoolmate of mine died in a few moments, in a blacksmith shop, from a
-piece of steel flying into his leg. If the smith had known this simple
-process, stripped the boy, and compressed the artery till help arrived, he
-would have saved a life, an only son, the support and solace of a widowed
-mother.
-
-5. If the wound is much below the knee, find the artery (Fig. 4.) in the
-hollow back of the knee (_popliteal space_), and proceed as above
-directed.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 4.]
-
-6. If a wound is not of an artery, that is, if the blood does not spurt
-out, bandaging the wound may do till the doctor arrives.
-
-7. If the shock has prostrated the patient, give him a teaspoonful of
-brandy or other liquor--always provided he has not been drinking. Many
-accidents occur in consequence of liquor-drinking. If the patient is cold,
-faint, and prostrate, wrap him or her up warm, placing hot bricks, or jugs
-of hot water, at the feet. When he can swallow, some hot tea, or soup, may
-be given, if necessary.
-
-8. If the patient has delirium tremens, give him strong coffee.
-
-9. To remove an injured person, do not call a carriage, but take a
-shutter, or board, or door, throw your coats upon it, and tenderly place
-him thereon. Carry him carefully. Don't keep step in walking; he will ride
-easier without.
-
-10. If a patient faints, give him air. Let him lie on the back. Wipe the
-face with a little water. A little camphor in water may be applied to the
-face and temples, provided he has not been using it already to excess.
-Camphor, used excessively, may keep one faint a long time. Let the clothes
-be loosened. Keep cool, and wait.
-
-11. Avoid all rude and alarming conversation around the patient. When he
-recovers a little, do not press around and confuse him with questions of
-"What can I do for you?" etc. _Let him rest._
-
-12. If a person has been under water, _don't roll him to get the water out
-of him. There is no water there beyond the mouth._ The life has been
-rolled out of many a poor wretch, over a barrel, under this foolish
-delusion of "getting the water out of him." Lay him on his side, in a warm
-room, or in the sun. Try to inflate the lungs. Don't get a "bellows," and
-blow him full of wind. He is not like a bladder, or a balloon, that he
-needs inflating thus. To breathe is what he needs. Let the water, if any,
-in the mouth, run out. Wrap him warm--hot water at feet. Rub the limbs, if
-cold, for a long time. Persevere. Do not give him up until a good
-physician has arrived, and pronounced him beyond all hope of recovery.
-
-
-SUN-STROKE (COUP DE SOLEIL).
-
-The "ounce of prevention" must first be considered in this case.
-
-1. All who can should keep in the shade during the extreme heat of the
-summer days. You who must "bear the heat and burden of the day" may not be
-able always to avoid the direct rays of the scorching sun. Wide-rimmed
-palm or straw hats should be worn, and when the noonday sun pours down its
-sultry beams, wet the hair, or keep a green leaf, or wet handkerchief, in
-your hat. This will surely prevent sun-stroke, by the evaporation of
-moisture. If away in the field, swinging the scythe, or with spade
-levelling the "everlasting hills," and no water is near, place some green
-grass or damp earth in the hat,--any way to avoid sun-stroke and sudden
-death!
-
-2. You will see, every summer, a paragraph in the newspapers recommending
-the application of ice to the head in case of threatened sun-stroke, or
-after sun-stroke. Do not believe all you see in the papers. Just sit down
-and reason a moment. Think of the great, extreme transition from the
-powerful heat of the sun's rays on the brain to that of the application of
-_ice_! It requires but little thought to convince one that the extreme
-contrast must give such a shock to the brain (or blood therein) as nature
-cannot resist. Did you ever know a patient to recover from sun-stroke when
-ice had been applied to his head? _I think not._
-
-I have known one to recover from warm, moist applications. Let the head be
-kept wet (moist) with tepid water, and covered over by a dry cloth. He
-cannot swallow. Do not choke him by villanous whiskey poured into the
-mouth. Having placed him in a warm bed, removed his clothes, and made him
-comfortable, send for a physician.
-
-
-"ACCIDENTS WILL HAPPEN."
-
-Yes, and every family should be prepared for them.
-
-1. As a remedy against fatal results, in severe cases, and for deliverance
-from pain, even in smaller accidents, every family should keep in the
-house an ounce bottle of tincture of arnica, the cost of which is
-trifling. Keep it well labelled, and out of the reach of children. To
-drink it is injurious.
-
-2. For a bruise, or any injury, put half a teaspoonful of the arnica into
-a teacupful of tepid water, and bathe tenderly the wound. Then wet a cloth
-in the liquid, bind it on with a dry cloth outside to exclude the air.
-When dry, if pain or tenderness remains, renew the application. This will
-soon reduce any "bump" on your little ones' heads, except a real
-phrenological "bump." A woman once brought a boy to my office, to have me
-give her some "liniment for a bad bump on the child's head," showing me
-the place.
-
-"Madam," I said, "I think a considerable persuasion, with plenty of
-patient kindness, will do more than medicine to reduce that bump. It is
-called, by phrenologists, 'firmness.' By the development, I should judge
-that the boy was very stubborn."
-
-3. For burns and scalds, keep in the house a vial of tincture of urtica
-urens. Apply it to burns as above directed for wounds. When the smarting
-ceases, and the wound is whitish, omit it, and dress the wound with a
-little mutton tallow on a linen cloth.
-
-Keep no patent medicines about; then you will be less likely to be dosing
-with them. It is hard to tell what are good, and do not make a medical
-depot of your stomach to ascertain.
-
-The individual who is continually dabbling in medicines is a perpetual
-invalid, from the result of such everlasting dosing.
-
-If you regard the concise, yet sufficient, instructions for preserving
-health laid down herein, particularly after noting the hints thrown out
-all through the body of the book, you will annually have less and less
-occasion for the use of medicines.
-
-When you actually think you require a physician, get the best,--the best
-article is the cheapest in the end,--and abide by his counsel. I have told
-you of some remarkable characters in the history of medicine; but the harp
-and flowing locks of Apollo, the caduceus of Mercury, the staff of
-Æsculapius, the hoary beard of Hippocrates, the baton of De Sault, the
-three-tailed wig of Atkins, the silken coat and charming address of Dr.
-Reynolds, the gay equipage of Hannes, the library of Radcliffe, or the
-knowing nods and significant silence of some of the more modern doctors,
-will avail nothing in the time of great danger and distress.
-
-It is the truly kind-hearted, humane, and educated physician upon whom you
-must depend in your time of need. Seek such. There are yet many; humanity
-is not a thing entirely of the past. Who loses faith in humanity has lost
-it in God. Do the best your circumstances allow in all things,--
-
-  "Angels can no more,"--
-
-receiving all afflictions cheerfully, looking hopefully to God for his
-blessing, which faileth not, in all the walks of "this life and in that
-which is to come."
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-FOOTNOTES:
-
-[1] Small door or window, through which to receive night calls, etc.
-
-[2] The art of embalming was known, and even practised by "servants,"
-translated or called physicians, or sometimes apothecaries (or "by his
-arts"), four thousand years ago. Jacob, Joseph, Asa, and others were
-embalmed. The Egyptians were early versed in this art, which now is
-almost, or entirely, lost.
-
-[3] Dover's Powder.
-
-[4] See Frontispiece.
-
-[5] This illustrates our "Origin of Ghosts."
-
-[6] An Irishman, who was once asked why the parents of Christ were obliged
-to lodge in a stable on the night of the Saviour's birth, replied, "And
-weren't the inns full of the crowd, who had gone up before to celebrate
-Christmas?"
-
-[7] The writer was fortunately born on Christmas (Sabbath) day. He hopes
-the publishers will present his picture in this book to prove his
-"fairness," and let the wisdom of these pages prove the remainder.
-
-[8] The medical man in quest of a curiosity will be gratified by looking
-on page 228 of Hastings' Surgery, where he will find the head and face of
-a female engraved on the nude body of a male. I discovered it
-accidentally, but how such an _error_ (?) could have occurred I cannot
-say.
-
-[9] Casa Wappy, a self-conferred, pet name of the little boy.
-
-[10] ESQUIMAUX HOSPITALITY.--Dr. Kane relates that one day, worn out by
-fatigue, he turned into an Esquimaux hut to get a little sleep. His
-good-natured hostess covered him up with some of her own habiliments, and
-gave him her baby for a pillow; which, Dr. Spooner says, was a living
-illustration of the kindness of woman.
-
-
-
-
-Transcriber's Notes:
-
-Passages in italics are indicated by _italics_.
-
-The original text includes the prescription symbol that is represented as
-[R] in this text version.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-End of Project Gutenberg's The Funny Side of Physic, by A. D. Crabtre
-
-*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FUNNY SIDE OF PHYSIC ***
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-<pre>
-
-The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Funny Side of Physic, by A. D. Crabtre
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
-almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
-re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
-with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
-
-
-Title: The Funny Side of Physic
-
-Author: A. D. Crabtre
-
-Release Date: December 10, 2012 [EBook #41595]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: UTF-8
-
-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FUNNY SIDE OF PHYSIC ***
-
-
-
-
-Produced by The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
-http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images
-generously made available by The Internet Archive.)
-
-
-
-
-
-
-</pre>
-
-
-
-<p><a name="frontis" id="frontis"></a>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/cover.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
-<h1><small>THE FUNNY SIDE<br />
-OF PHYSIC:</small></h1>
-<p class="center">OR,</p>
-<p class="center">THE MYSTERIES OF MEDICINE,<br />
-PRESENTING THE<br />
-<span class="smcap">Humorous and Serious Sides of Medical Practice</span>.</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="large">AN EXPOSÉ</span><br />
-OF<br />
-MEDICAL HUMBUGS, QUACKS, AND CHARLATANS<br />
-IN ALL AGES AND ALL COUNTRIES.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center">By <span class="large">A. D. CRABTRE</span>, M. D.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center">HARTFORD:<br />
-J. B. BURR &amp; HYDE.<br />
-CHICAGO AND CINCINNATI:<br />
-J. B. BURR, HYDE &amp; COMPANY.<br />
-1872.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center">Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1872, by<br />
-J. B. BURR AND HYDE,<br />
-In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
-<hr style="width: 50%;" />
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span></p>
-<h2>PREFACE.</h2>
-
-
-<p>The books which most please while instructing the reader, are those which
-mingle the lively and gay with the sedate spirit in the narration of
-important facts. The verdict of the reader of this work must be (it is
-modestly suggested), that the author has luckily hit the happy vein in its
-construction.</p>
-
-<p>Of all facts which bear upon human happiness or sorrow, those which serve
-to increase the former, and alleviate or banish the latter, are most
-desirable for everybody to know; and of all professions which most
-intimately concern the personal well-being of the public at large, that of
-the physician is most important. The author of this book has spared no
-pains of research to collect the facts of which he discourses, and has
-endeavored to cover the whole ground embraced by his subject with
-pertinent and important suggestions, statements, scientific discoveries,
-incidents in the career of great physicians, etc., and to fix them in the
-reader’s mind by <i>apt anecdotes, which will be found in abundance
-throughout the work</i>.</p>
-
-<p>There is no better man in the world than the true physician, and no more
-base wretch than the ordinary “Quack,� or medical charlatan. If the author
-has spared no pains of study to make his book acceptable, he may be said,
-also, to have as unsparingly visited his indignation upon the quacks who
-have all along the line of historic medicine disgraced the physician’s and
-the surgeon’s profession.</p>
-
-<p>The general public but little understand what a vast amount of ignorance
-has at times been cunningly concealed by medical practitioners, and how
-grossly the people of every city and village are even nowadays trifled
-with by some who arrogate to themselves the honorable title of Doctor of
-Medicine.</p>
-
-<p>Herein not only the base and the good physician, but the honorable and the
-trifling apothecary, receive their due reward, or well-merited punishment,
-so far as the pen can give them. The reader will be utterly surprised when
-he comes to learn how the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span> quacks of the past and the present have brought
-themselves into note by tricks and schemes very similar and equally
-infamous. The wanton trifling with the health and life of their patients,
-the greed of gain, and the perfect destitution of all moral nature, which
-some of these men have exhibited in their career, are astounding.</p>
-
-<p>The apothecaries, as well as physicians, are descanted on, and the
-miserable tricks to which the large majority of them resort, exposed. The
-public will be astonished to find what trash in the matter of drugs it
-pays for; how filthy, vile, and often poisonous and hurtful materials
-people buy for medicines at extortionate prices; how even the syrups which
-they drink in soda drawn from costly and splendid fountains are often made
-from the most filthy materials, and are not fit for the lower animals, not
-to say human beings, to drink. And this fact is only illustrative of
-hundreds of others set forth in this work.</p>
-
-<p>This work not only exposes the multifold frauds of quacks, apothecaries,
-travelling doctors, soothsayers, fortune-tellers, certain clairvoyants,
-and “spiritual mediums,� and the like, who “practise medicine� to a more
-or less extent, or profess to discover and heal diseases,&mdash;but it points
-out to the reader the most approved rules for protecting the health, and
-recovering it when lost. In short, it is a work embodying the most sound
-advice, founded upon the judgment of the best physicians of the past and
-present, as tested in the Author’s experience for a period of twenty
-years’ active practice. In other words, it is a compendium of sound
-medical advice, as well as a racy, lively, and incisive dissection and
-exposure of the villanies of quacks and other medical empirics, etc.</p>
-
-<p>Persons of all ages will find the work not only interesting to read, but
-most valuable in a practical sense. To the young who would shun the crafts
-and villanies to which they must be exposed as they grow up,&mdash;for all are
-liable to be more or less ill at times,&mdash;it will prove invaluable,
-enabling them to detect the spurious from the reliable in medicine, and
-how to judge between the pretentious charlatan (even enjoying a large
-ride) and the true physician. And none are so old that they may not reap
-great advantages from the work.</p>
-
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
-<hr style="width: 50%;" />
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span></p>
-<h2>CONTENTS.</h2>
-
-<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table">
-<tr><td align="center"><a href="#I">I.</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="center">MEDICAL HUMBUGS.</td></tr>
-<tr><td><small>ORIGIN AND APPLICATION OF “HUMBUG.�&mdash;A FIFTH AVENUE HUMBUG.&mdash;JOB’S OPINION OF DOCTORS.&mdash;EARLY PHYSICIANS.&mdash;PRIESTS AS
-DOCTORS.&mdash;WIZARDS COME TO GRIEF.&mdash;A “CAPITAL� OPERATION.&mdash;A WOMAN CUT INTO TWELVE PIECES.&mdash;ANECDOTE.&mdash;ROBIN HOOD’S LITTLE
-JOKE.&mdash;TIT FOR TAT. ENGLISH HUMBUGS.&mdash;FRENCH DITTO.&mdash;A FORTUNE ON DIRTY WATER.&mdash;AMERICAN HUMBUGS.&mdash;A FIRST CLASS “DODGE.�&mdash;A
-FREE RIDE.&mdash;A SHARP INTERROGATOR.&mdash;DOCTOR PUSBELLY.&mdash;A WICKED STAGE-DRIVER’S STORY.&mdash;“OLD PILGARLIC� TAKES A BATH.&mdash;LUDICROUS
-SCENE.&mdash;PROFESSOR BREWSTER.</small></td>
-    <td valign="bottom" align="right"><a href="#Page_19">19</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td align="center"><a href="#II">II.</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="center">APOTHECARIES.</td></tr>
-<tr><td><small>FIRST MENTION OF.&mdash;A POOR SPECIMEN.&mdash;ELIZABETHAN.&mdash;KING JAMES I. [VI.].&mdash;ALLSPICE AND ALOES, SUGAR AND TARTAR
-EMETIC.&mdash;WAR.&mdash;PHYSICIAN VS. APOTHECARY.&mdash;IGNORANCE.&mdash;STEALING A TRADE.&mdash;A LAUGHABLE PRESCRIPTION.&mdash;“CASTER ILE.�&mdash;MODERN
-DRUG SWALLOWING.&mdash;MISTAKES.&mdash;“STEALS THE TOOLS ALSO.�&mdash;SUBSTITUTES.&mdash;“A QUID.�&mdash;A “SMELL� OF PATENT MEDICINES.&mdash;“A SAMPLE CLERK.�</small></td>
-    <td valign="bottom" align="right"><a href="#Page_61">61</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td align="center"><a href="#III">III.</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="center">PATENT MEDICINES.</td></tr>
-<tr><td><small>PATENT MEDICINES.&mdash;HOW STARTED.&mdash;HOW MADE.&mdash;THE WAY IMMENSE FORTUNES ARE REALIZED.&mdash;SPALDING’S GLUE.&mdash;SOURED
-SWILL.&mdash;SARSAPARILLA HUMBUGS.&mdash;S. P. TOWNSEND.&mdash;“A DOWN EAST FARMER’S STORY.�&mdash;“WILD CHERRY� EXPOSITIONS.&mdash;“CAPTAIN WRAGGE’S PILL� A
-FAIR SAMPLE OF THE WHOLE.&mdash;HOW PILL SALES ARE STARTED.&mdash;A SLIP OF THE PEN.&mdash;“GRIPE PILLS.�&mdash;SHAKSPEARE IMPROVED.&mdash;H. W. B. “FRUIT
-SYRUP.�&mdash;HAIR TONICS.&mdash;A BALD BACHELOR’S EXPERIENCE.&mdash;A LUDICROUS STORY.&mdash;A WOLF IN SHEEP’S CLOTHING.</small></td>
-    <td valign="bottom" align="right"><a href="#Page_78">78</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="center"><a href="#IV">IV.</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="center">MANUFACTURED DOCTORS.</td></tr>
-<tr><td><small>A BOSTON BARBER AS M. D.&mdash;A BARBER “GONE TO POT.�&mdash;FOOLS MADE DOCTORS.&mdash;BAKERS.&mdash;BARBERS.&mdash;“A LUCKY
-DOG.�&mdash;TINKERS.&mdash;ROYAL FAVORS.&mdash;“LITTLE CARVER DAVY.�&mdash;A BUTCHER’S BLOCKHEAD.&mdash;A SWEEPING VISIT.&mdash;HOP-PED FROM
-OBSCURITY.&mdash;PEDAGOGUES TURN DOCTORS.&mdash;ARBUTHNOT.&mdash;“A QUAKER.�&mdash;“WALKS OFF ON HIS EAR.�&mdash;WEAVERS AND BASKET-MAKERS.&mdash;A TOUGH
-PRINCE; REQUIRED THREE M. D.’S TO KILL HIM.&mdash;MARAT A HORSE DOCTOR.&mdash;A MERRY PARSON.&mdash;BLACK MAIL.&mdash;POLICE AS A MIDWIFE, ETC., ETC.</small></td>
-    <td valign="bottom" align="right"><a href="#Page_99">99</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td align="center"><a href="#V">V.</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="center">WOMAN AS PHYSICIAN.</td></tr>
-<tr><td><small>HER “MISSION.�&mdash;NO PLACE IN MEDICAL HISTORY.&mdash;ONE OF THEM.&mdash;MRS. STEPHENS.&mdash;“CRAZY SALLY.�&mdash;RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS.&mdash;RUNS
-IN THE FAMILY.&mdash;ANECDOTES.&mdash;“WHICH GOT THRASHED?�&mdash;A WRETCHED END.&mdash;AMERICAN FEMALE PHYSICIANS.&mdash;A PIONEER.&mdash;A LAUGHABLE
-ANECDOTE.&mdash;“THREE WISE MEN.�&mdash;“A SHORT HORSE,� ETC.&mdash;BOSTON AND NEW YORK FEMALE DOCTORS.&mdash;A STORY.&mdash;“LOVE AND THOROUGHWORT.�&mdash;A GAY
-BEAU.&mdash;UP THE PENOBSCOT.&mdash;DYING FOR LOVE.&mdash;“IS HE MAD?�&mdash;THOROUGHWORT WINS.</small></td>
-    <td valign="bottom" align="right"><a href="#Page_123">123</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td align="center"><a href="#VI">VI.</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="center">QUACKS.</td></tr>
-<tr><td><small>ANECDOTE IN ILLUSTRATION.&mdash;DERIVATION.&mdash;FATHER OF QUACKS.&mdash;A MEDICAL “BONFIRE.�&mdash;THE “SAMSON� OF THE PROFESSION.&mdash;SIR
-ASTLEY.&mdash;U. S. SURVEYOR-GENERAL HAMMOND.&mdash;HOMEOPATHIC QUACKS, ETC.&mdash;A MUDDLED DEFINITION.&mdash;“STOP THIEF!�&mdash;CRIPPLED FOR LIFE!&mdash;TWO
-POUNDS CALOMEL.&mdash;VICTIMS.&mdash;WASHINGTON, JACKSON, HARRISON.&mdash;THE COUNTRY QUACK.&mdash;A TRUE AND LUDICROUS ANECDOTE.&mdash;DYEING TO DIE!&mdash;A
-SCARED DOCTOR.&mdash;DROPSY!&mdash;A HASTY WEDDING!&mdash;A COUNTRY CONSULTATION.&mdash;“SCENES FROM WESTERN PRACTICE.�&mdash;“TWIST ROOT.�&mdash;A
-JOLLY TRIO.&mdash;NEW “BUST� OF CUPID.&mdash;AN UNWILLING LISTENER.</small></td>
-    <td valign="bottom" align="right"><a href="#Page_157">157</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td align="center"><a href="#VII">VII.</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="center">CHARLATANS AND IMPOSTORS.</td></tr>
-<tr><td><small>DEFINITION.&mdash;ADVERTISING CHARLATANS.&mdash;CITY IMPOSTORS.&mdash;FALSE NAMES.&mdash;“ADVICE FREE.�&mdash;INTIMIDATIONS.&mdash;WHOLESALE
-ROBBERY.&mdash;VISITING THEIR DENS IN DISGUISE.&mdash;PASSING THE CERBERUS.&mdash;WINDINGS.&mdash;INS AND OUTS.&mdash;THE IRISH PORTER.&mdash;QUEER “TWINS,�
-AND A “TRIPLET� DOCTOR.&mdash;A HISTORY OF A KNAVE.&mdash;BOOT-BLACK AND BOTTLE-WASHER.&mdash;PERQUISITES.&mdash;PURCHASED DIPLOMAS.&mdash;“INSTITUTES.�&mdash;WHOLESALE
-SLAUGHTER OF INFANTS.&mdash;FEMALE HARPIES.&mdash;A BOSTON HARPY.&mdash;WHERE OUR “LOST CHILDREN� GO.&mdash;END OF A WRETCH.</small></td>
-    <td valign="bottom" align="right"><a href="#Page_180">180</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="center"><a href="#VIII">VIII.</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="center">ANECDOTES OF PHYSICIANS.</td></tr>
-<tr><td><small>A WANT SUPPLIED.&mdash;ORIGINAL ANECDOTES OF ABERNETHY.&mdash;A LIVE IRISHMAN.&mdash;MADAM ROTHSCHILD.&mdash;LARGE FEET.&mdash;A SHANGHAI
-ROOSTER.&mdash;SPREADING HERSELF.&mdash;KEROSENE.&mdash;“SALERATUS.�&mdash;HIS LAST JOKE.&mdash;AN ASTONISHED DARKY.&mdash;OLD DR. K.’S MARE.&mdash;A SCARED
-CUSTOMER.&mdash;“WHAT’S TRUMPS?�&mdash;“LET GO THEM HALYARDS.�&mdash;MEDICAL TITBITS.&mdash;MORE MUSTARD THAN MEAT.&mdash;“I WANT TO BE AN
-ANGEL.�&mdash;TOOTH-DRAWING.&mdash;DR. BEECHER VS. DR. HOLMES.&mdash;STEALING TIME.&mdash;CHOLERA FENCED IN.&mdash;“A JOKE THAT’S NOT A JOKE.�&mdash;A DRY
-SHOWER-BATH.&mdash;PARBOILING AN OLD LADY.</small></td>
-    <td valign="bottom" align="right"><a href="#Page_200">200</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td align="center"><a href="#IX">IX.</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="center">FORTUNE-TELLERS.</td></tr>
-<tr><td><small>PAST AND PRESENT.&mdash;BIBLE ASTROLOGERS AND FORTUNE-TELLERS.&mdash;ARABIAN.&mdash;EASTERN.&mdash;ENGLISH.&mdash;QUEEN’S
-FAVORITE.&mdash;LILLY.&mdash;A LUCKY GUESS.&mdash;THE GREAT LONDON FIRE FORETOLD.&mdash;HOW.&mdash;OUR “TIDAL WAVE� AND AGASSIZ.&mdash;A HALL OF
-FORTUNE-TELLERS.&mdash;PRESENT.&mdash;VISIT EN MASSE.&mdash;“FILLIKY MILLIKY.�&mdash;“CHARGE BAYONETS!�&mdash;A FOWL PROCEEDING.&mdash;FINDING LOST
-PROPERTY.&mdash;THE MAGIC MIRROR EXPOSÉ.&mdash;“ONE MORE UNFORTUNATE.�&mdash;PROCURESSES.&mdash;BOSTON MUSEUM.&mdash;“A NICE OLD GENTLEMAN.�&mdash;MONEY
-DOES IT.&mdash;GREAT SUMS OF MONEY.&mdash;“LOVE POWDER� EXPOSÉ.&mdash;HASHEESH.&mdash;“DOES HE LOVE ME?�</small></td>
-    <td valign="bottom" align="right"><a href="#Page_227">227</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td align="center"><a href="#X">X.</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="center">EMINENT PHYSICIANS AND SURGEONS.</td></tr>
-<tr><td><small>THEIR ORIGIN, BOYHOOD, EARLY STRUGGLES, ETC.&mdash;DOCTORS ARE PUBLIC PROPERTY.&mdash;DR. MOTT, OF OYSTER BAY.&mdash;DR. PARKER.&mdash;A
-“PLOUGH-BOY.�&mdash;THE FARMER’S BOY AND THE OLD DOCTOR.&mdash;SCENE IN BELLEVUE HOSPITAL.&mdash;“LEAVES FROM THE LIFE OF AN UNFLEDGED ÆSCULAPIAN.�&mdash;FIRST
-PATIENT.&mdash;“NONPLUSSED!�&mdash;ALL RIGHT AT LAST.&mdash;PROFESSORS EBERLE AND DEWEES.&mdash;A HARD START.&mdash;“FOOTING IT.�&mdash;ABERNETHY’S
-BOYHOOD.&mdash;“OLD SQUEERS.�&mdash;SPARE THE BOY AND SPOIL THE ROD.&mdash;A DIGRESSION.&mdash;SKIRTING A BOG.&mdash;AN AGREEABLE TURN.&mdash;PROFESSOR
-HOLMES.&mdash;A HOMELESS STUDENT.</small></td>
-    <td valign="bottom" align="right"><a href="#Page_253">253</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td align="center"><a href="#XI">XI.</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="center">GHOSTS AND WITCHES.</td></tr>
-<tr><td><small>FOLLY OF BELIEF IN GHOSTS.&mdash;WHY GHOSTS ARE ALWAYS WHITE.&mdash;A TRUE STORY.&mdash;THE GHOST OF THE CAMP.&mdash;A GHOSTLY SENTRY-BOX.&mdash;A
-MYSTERY.&mdash;THE NAGLES FAMILY.&mdash;RAISING THE DEAD.&mdash;A LIVELY STAMPEDE.&mdash;HOLY WATER.&mdash;CÆSAR’S GHOST AT PHILIPPI.&mdash;LORD BYRON AND DR.
-JOHNSON.&mdash;GHOST OF A GUILTY CONSCIENCE.&mdash;“JOCKEYING A GHOST.�&mdash;THE <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span>WOUNDED
-BIRD.&mdash;A BISHOP SEES A GHOST.&mdash;MUSICAL GHOSTS.&mdash;A HAUNTED HOUSE.&mdash;ABOUT WITCHES.&mdash;“WITCHES IN THE CREAM.�&mdash;HORSE-SHOES.&mdash;WOMAN
-OF ENDOR NOT A WITCH.&mdash;WEIGHING FLESH AGAINST THE BIBLE.&mdash;THERE ARE NO GHOSTS, OR WITCHES.</small></td>
-    <td valign="bottom" align="right"><a href="#Page_278">278</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td align="center"><a href="#XII">XII.</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="center">MEDICAL SUPERSTITIONS.</td></tr>
-<tr><td><small>OLD AND NEW.&mdash;THE SIGN OF JUPITER.&mdash;MODERN IDOLATRY.&mdash;ORIGIN OF THE DAYS OF THE WEEK.&mdash;HOW WE PERPETUATE IDOLATRY.&mdash;SINGULAR
-FACT.&mdash;CHRISTMAS FESTIVITIES.&mdash;“OLD NICK.�&mdash;RIDICULOUS SUPERSTITIONS.&mdash;GOLDEN HERB.&mdash;HOUSE CRICKETS.&mdash;A STOOL WALKS.&mdash;THE BOWING
-IMAGES AT RHODE ISLAND.&mdash;HOUSE SPIDERS.&mdash;THE HOUSE CAT.&mdash;SUPERSTITIOUS IDOLATRIES.&mdash;WONDERFUL KNOWLEDGE.&mdash;NAUGHTY BOYS.&mdash;ERRORS
-RESPECTING CATS.&mdash;SANITARY QUALITIES.&mdash;OWLS.&mdash;A SCARED BOY.&mdash;HOLY WATER.&mdash;UNLUCKY DAYS.&mdash;THUNDER AND LIGHTNING.&mdash;A KISS.</small></td>
-    <td valign="bottom" align="right"><a href="#Page_307">307</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td align="center"><a href="#XIII">XIII.</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="center">TRAVELLING DOCTORS.</td></tr>
-<tr><td><small>PUBLIC CONFIDENCE(?).&mdash;THE EYE OF THE PUBLIC.&mdash;A BAD SPECIMEN.&mdash;“REMARKABLE TUMOR.�&mdash;“THE SINGING DOCTOR.�&mdash;CAUGHT IN A
-STORM.&mdash;BIG PUFFING.&mdash;A SPLENDID “TURNOUT.�&mdash;WHO WAS HE?&mdash;A SUDDEN DISAPPEARANCE.&mdash;THE “SPANKING DOCTOR.�&mdash;A FAIR VICTIM.&mdash;LOOSE
-LAWS.&mdash;DR. PULSEFEEL.&mdash;IMPUDENCE.&mdash;A FIDDLING DOCTOR.&mdash;AN ENCORE.&mdash;“CHEEK.�&mdash;VARIOUS WAYS OF ADVERTISING.</small></td>
-    <td valign="bottom" align="right"><a href="#Page_341">341</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td align="center"><a href="#XIV">XIV.</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="center">SCENES FROM EVERY-DAY PRACTICE.</td></tr>
-<tr><td><small>THE BEGGAR BOY AND THE GOLDEN-HAIRED HEIRESS.&mdash;MY MIDNIGHT CALL.&mdash;THE CONSCIENCE-STRICKEN MOTHER.&mdash;“OLD SEROSITY.�&mdash;THE ILLEGITIMATE
-CHILD.&mdash;DEATH OF THE BEAUTIFUL.&mdash;WHO IS THE HEIR?&mdash;A TOUCHING SCENE.&mdash;FATE OF THE “BEGGAR BOY.�&mdash;THE TERRIBLE CALLER.&mdash;AN IRISH SCENE,
-FROM DR. DIXON’S BOOK.&mdash;BIDDY ON A RAMPAGE.&mdash;TERRY ON HIS DEATH BED.&mdash;THE STOMACH PUMP.&mdash;BIDDY WON’T, AND SHE WILL.&mdash;THE BETRAYED AND HER
-BETRAYER.&mdash;“IS THERE A GOD IN ISRAEL?�&mdash;THE HUSBANDLESS MOTHER.&mdash;THE CRISIS AND COURT.&mdash;ANSWER.&mdash;THERE IS A “GOD IN ISRAEL.�</small></td>
-    <td valign="bottom" align="right"><a href="#Page_362">362</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td align="center"><a href="#XV">XV.</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="center">DOCTORS’ FEES AND INCOMES.</td></tr>
-<tr><td><small>ANCIENT FEES.&mdash;LARGE FEES.&mdash;SPANISH PRIEST-DOCTORS.&mdash;A PIG ON PENANCE.&mdash;SMALL FEES.&mdash;A “CHOP� POSTPONED.&mdash;LONG
-FEES.&mdash;SHORT FEES.&mdash;OLD FEES.&mdash;A NIGHT-CAP.&mdash;AN OLD SHOE FOR LUCK.&mdash;A BLACK FEE.&mdash;“HEART’S OFFERING.�&mdash;A STUFFED CAT.&mdash;THE
-“GREAT GUNS� OF NEW YORK.&mdash;BOSTON.&mdash;ROTTEN EGGS.&mdash;“CATCH WHAT YOU CAN.�&mdash;FEMALE DOCTORS’ FEES.&mdash;ABOVE PRICE.&mdash;“ASK FOR A
-FEE.�&mdash;“PITCH HIM OVERBOARD.�&mdash;DELICATE FEES.&mdash;MAKING THE MOST OF THEM.</small></td>
-    <td valign="bottom" align="right"><a href="#Page_386">386</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="center"><a href="#XVI">XVI.</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="center">GENEROSITY AND MEANNESS.</td></tr>
-<tr><td><small>THE WORLD UNMASKED.&mdash;A ROUGH DIAMOND.&mdash;DECAYED GENTILITY.&mdash;“THREE FLIGHT, BACK.�&mdash;SEVERAL ANECDOTES.&mdash;THE OLD
-FOX-HUNTER.&mdash;“STAND ON YOUR HEAD.�&mdash;KINDNESS TO CLERGYMEN.&mdash;RARE CHARITY.&mdash;OLD AND HOMELESS.&mdash;THE “O’CLO’� JEW.&mdash;DR. HUNTER’S
-GENEROSITY.&mdash;“WHAT’S THE PRICE OF BEEF?�&mdash;A SAD OMISSION.&mdash;INNATE GENEROSITY.&mdash;A CURB-STONE MONEY-MANIAC.&mdash;AN EYE-OPENER.&mdash;AN
-AVARICIOUS DOCTOR.&mdash;ROBBING THE DEAD.</small></td>
-    <td valign="bottom" align="right"><a href="#Page_410">410</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td align="center"><a href="#XVII">XVII.</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="center">LOVE AND LOVERS.</td></tr>
-<tr><td><small>XANTIPPE, BEFORE JEALOUSY.&mdash;A FIRST LOVE.&mdash;BLASTED HOPES.&mdash;A DOCTOR’S STORY.&mdash;THE FLIGHT FROM “THE HOUNDS OF THE LAW.�&mdash;THE
-EXILE AND RETURN.&mdash;DISGUISED AS A PEDDLER.&mdash;ESCAPES WITH HIS LOVE.&mdash;ENGLISH BEAUS.&mdash;YOUNG COQUETTES.&mdash;A GAY AND DANGEROUS BEAU.&mdash;HANDSOME
-BEAUS.&mdash;LEAP YEAR.&mdash;AN OLD BEAU.&mdash;BEAUTY NOT ALL-POTENT.&mdash;OFFENDED ROYALTY.&mdash;YOUTH AND AGE.&mdash;A STABLE BOY.&mdash;POET-DOCTOR.</small></td>
-    <td valign="bottom" align="right"><a href="#Page_438">438</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td align="center"><a href="#XVIII">XVIII.</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="center">MIND AND MATTER.</td></tr>
-<tr><td><small>IN WHICH ANIMAL MAGNETISM, MESMERISM, AND CLAIRVOYANCE ARE EXPLAINED.&mdash;“THE IGNORANT MONOPOLY.�&mdash;YET ROOM FOR DISCOVERIES.&mdash;A “GASSY�
-SUBJECT.&mdash;DRS. CHAPIN AND BEECHER.&mdash;HE “CAN’T SEE IT.�&mdash;THE ROYAL TOUCH.&mdash;GASSNER.&mdash;“THE DEVIL KNOWS LATIN.�&mdash;ROYALTY IN THE
-SHADE.&mdash;THE IRISH PROPHET; HE VISITS LONDON.&mdash;A COMICAL CROWD.&mdash;MESMERISM.&mdash;A FUNNY BED-FELLOW.&mdash;CLAIRVOYANCE.&mdash;THE GATES OF
-MOSCOW.&mdash;THE DOCTOR OF ANTWERP.&mdash;THE OLD LADY IN THE POKE-BONNET.&mdash;VISIT TO A CLAIRVOYANT.&mdash;“FORETELLING� THE PAST.&mdash;THE OLD WOMAN OF THE
-PENOBSCOT MOUNTAINS.&mdash;A SECRET KEPT.&mdash;CUI BONO?&mdash;VISITS TO SEVENTEEN CLAIRVOYANTS.&mdash;A BON-TON CLAIRVOYANT.&mdash;A BOUNCER.&mdash;RIDICULOSITY.</small></td>
-    <td valign="bottom" align="right"><a href="#Page_461">461</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td align="center"><a href="#XIX">XIX.</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="center">ECCENTRICITIES.</td></tr>
-<tr><td><small>A ONE-EYED DOCTOR AND HIS HORSE.&mdash;A NEW EDIBLE.&mdash;“HAVE THEM BOILED.�&mdash;“BEAUTY AND THE BEAST.�&mdash;A LOVELY STAMPEDE.&mdash;AN ECCENTRIC
-PHILADELPHIAN.&mdash;THE POODLES, DRS. HUNTER AND SCIPIO.&mdash;SILENT ELOQUENCE.&mdash;CONSISTENT TO THE END.&mdash;WHEN DOCTORS DISAGREE.&mdash;FOUR BLIND
-MEN.&mdash;DIET AND SLEEP.&mdash;SAXE AND SANCHO PANZA.&mdash;MOTHER GOOSE AS A DOCTOR’S BOOK.&mdash;THE TABLES TURNED ON THE DOCTORS.</small></td>
-    <td valign="bottom" align="right"><a href="#Page_495">495</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="center"><a href="#XX">XX.</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="center">PRESCRIPTIONS REMARKABLE AND RIDICULOUS.</td></tr>
-<tr><td><small>FIG PASTE AND FIG LEAVES.&mdash;SOME OF THOSE OLD FELLOWS.&mdash;THEY SLIGHTLY DISAGREE.&mdash;HOW TO KEEP CLEAN.&mdash;BAXTER VS. THE DOCTOR.&mdash;A CURE
-FOR “RHEUMATIZ.�&mdash;OLD ENGLISH DOSES.&mdash;CURE FOR BLUES.&mdash;FOR HYSTERIA.&mdash;HEROIC DOSES.&mdash;DROWNING A FEVER.&mdash;AN EXACT SCIENCE.&mdash;SULPHUR
-AND MOLASSES.&mdash;A USE FOR POOR IRISH.&mdash;MINERAL SPRINGS.&mdash;COLD DRINKS VS. WARM.&mdash;THE OLD LADY AND THE AIR-PUMP.&mdash;SAVED BY
-HER BUSTLE.&mdash;COUNTRY PRESCRIPTIONS AND A FUNNY MISTAKE.&mdash;ARE YOU DRUNK OR SOBER?</small></td>
-    <td valign="bottom" align="right"><a href="#Page_517">517</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td align="center"><a href="#XXI">XXI.</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="center">SCENES FROM HOSPITAL AND CAMP.</td></tr>
-<tr><td><small>“HE FOUGHT MIT SIEGEL.�&mdash;A HOSPITAL SCENE AT NIGHT.&mdash;ADMINISTERING ANGELS.&mdash;“WATER! WATER!�&mdash;THE SOLDIER-BOY’S DYING MESSAGE.&mdash;THE
-WELL-WORN BIBLE.&mdash;WARM HEARTS IN FROZEN BODIES.&mdash;“PUDDING AND MILK.�&mdash;THE POETICAL AND AMUSING SIDE.&mdash;“TO AMELIA.�&mdash;MY LOVE AND I.&mdash;A
-SCRIPTURAL CONUNDRUM.&mdash;MARRYING A REGIMENT.</small></td>
-    <td valign="bottom" align="right"><a href="#Page_538">538</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td align="center"><a href="#XXII">XXII.</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="center">GLUTTONS AND WINE-BIBBERS.</td></tr>
-<tr><td><small>GOOD CHEER AND A CHEERFUL HEART.&mdash;A MODERN SILENUS.&mdash;A SAD WRECK.&mdash;DELIRIUM TREMENS.&mdash;FATAL ERRORS.&mdash;“EATING LIKE A
-GLUTTON.�&mdash;STRENGTH IN WEAKNESS.&mdash;A HOT PLACE, EVEN FOR A COOK.&mdash;A HUNGRY DOCTOR.&mdash;THE MODERN GILPIN.&mdash;A CHANGE! A SOW FOR A
-HORSE!&mdash;A DUCK POND.&mdash;THE FORLORN WIDOW.&mdash;A SCIENTIFIC GORMAND.&mdash;ANOTHER.&mdash;“DOORN’T GO TO ’IM,� ETC.&mdash;DR. BUTLER’S BEER AND
-BATH.&mdash;CASTS HIS LAST VOTE.</small></td>
-    <td valign="bottom" align="right"><a href="#Page_550">550</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td align="center"><a href="#XXIII">XXIII.</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="center">THE DOCTOR AS POET, AUTHOR, AND MUSICIAN.</td></tr>
-<tr><td><small>OUR PATRON, OUR PATTERN.&mdash;SOME WRITERS.&mdash;SOME BLUNDERS.&mdash;AN OLD SMOKER.&mdash;OLD GREEKS.&mdash;A DUKE ANSWERED BY A COUNTRY MISS.&mdash;THE
-PILGRIMS AND THE PEAS.&mdash;“LITTLE DAISY.�&mdash;“CASA WAPPA!�&mdash;FINE POETRY.&mdash;MORE SCHOOLMASTERS AND TAILORS.&mdash;NAPOLEON’S AND WASHINGTON’S
-PHYSICIANS.&mdash;A FRENCH “BUTCHER.�&mdash;A DIF. OF OPINION.&mdash;SOME EPITAPHS.&mdash;DR. HOLMES’ “ONE-HOSS SHAY.�&mdash;HEALTHFUL INFLUENCE OF MUSIC.&mdash;SAVED
-BY MUSIC.&mdash;A GERMAN TOUCH-UP.&mdash;MUSIC ON ANIMALS.&mdash;“MUSIC AMONG THE MICE.�&mdash;MUSIC AND HEALTH.</small></td>
-    <td valign="bottom" align="right"><a href="#Page_571">571</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td align="center"><a href="#XXIV">XXIV.</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="center">ADULTERATIONS.</td></tr>
-<tr><td><small>BREAD, BUTTER, AND THE BIBLE.&mdash;“JACK ASHORE.�&mdash;BUCKWHEAT CAKES ARE<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span>
-GOOD.&mdash;WHAT’S IN THE BREAD, AND HOW TO DETECT IT.&mdash;BUTTER.&mdash;HOW TO TELL GOOD AND BAD.&mdash;MILK.&mdash;ANALYSIS OF GOOD AND “SWILL MILK.�&mdash;WHAT’S
-IN THE MILK BESIDES MICE?&mdash;THE COW WITH ONE TEAT.&mdash;“LOUD� CHEESE.&mdash;TEA AND COFFEE.&mdash;TANNIN, SAWDUST, AND HORSES’ LIVERS.&mdash;ALCOHOLIC
-DRINKS.&mdash;CHURCH WINE AND BREAD.&mdash;BEER AND BITTER HERBS.&mdash;SPANISH FLIES AND STRYCHNINE.&mdash;“NINE MEN STANDIN’ AT THE DOOR.�&mdash;BURTON’S ALE; AN
-ASTONISHING FACT.&mdash;FISHY.&mdash;“FISH ON A SPREE.�&mdash;TO REMEDY IMPURE WATER.&mdash;CHARCOAL AND THE BISHOP.&mdash;HOG-ISH.&mdash;PORK AND
-SCROFULA.&mdash;NOTICES OF THE PRESS.</small></td>
-    <td valign="bottom" align="right"><a href="#Page_599">599</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td align="center"><a href="#XXV">XXV.</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="center">ALL ABOUT TOBACCO.</td></tr>
-<tr><td><small>“HOW MUCH?�&mdash;AMOUNT IN THE WORLD.&mdash;“SIAMESE TWINS.�&mdash;A MIGHTY ARMY.&mdash;ITS NAME AND NATIVITY.&mdash;A DONKEY RIDE.&mdash;LITTLE
-BREECHES.&mdash;WHIPPING SCHOOL GIRLS AND BOYS TO MAKE THEM SMOKE.&mdash;TOM’S LETTER.&mdash;“PURE SOCIETY.�&mdash;HOW A YOUNG MAN WAS “TOOK IN.�&mdash;DELICIOUS
-MORSELS.&mdash;THE STREET NUISANCE.&mdash;A SQUIRTER.&mdash;ANOTHER.&mdash;IT BEGETS LAZINESS.&mdash;NATIONAL RUIN.&mdash;BLACK EYES.&mdash;DISEASE AND INSANITY.&mdash;USES
-OF THE WEED.&mdash;GETS RID OF SUPERFLUOUS POPULATION.&mdash;TOBACCO WORSE THAN RUM.&mdash;THE OLD FARMER’S DOG AND THE WOODCHUCK.&mdash;“WHAT KILLED HIM.�</small></td>
-    <td valign="bottom" align="right"><a href="#Page_633">633</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td align="center"><a href="#XXVI">XXVI.</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="center">DRESS AND ADDRESS OF PHYSICIANS.</td></tr>
-<tr><td><small>GOSSIP IS INTERESTING.&mdash;COMPARATIVE SIGNS OF GREATNESS.&mdash;THE GREAT SURGEONS OF THE WORLD.&mdash;ADDRESS NECESSARY.&mdash;“THIS IS A
-BONE.�&mdash;DRESS NOT NECESSARY.&mdash;COUNTRY DOCTORS’ DRESS.&mdash;HOW THE DEACON SWEARS.&mdash;A GOOD MANY SHIRTS.&mdash;ONLY WASHED WHEN FOUND DRUNK.&mdash;LITTLE
-TOMMY MISTAKEN FOR A GREEN CABBAGE BY THE COW.&mdash;AN INSULTED LADY.&mdash;DOCTORS’ WIGS.&mdash;“AIN’T SHE LOVELY?�&mdash;HARVEY AND HIS HABITS.&mdash;THE
-DOCTOR AND THE VALET.&mdash;A BIG WIG.&mdash;BEN FRANKLIN.&mdash;JENNER’S DRESS.&mdash;AN ANIMATED WIG; A LAUGHABLE STORY.&mdash;A CHARACTER.&mdash;“DOSH, DOSH.�</small></td>
-    <td valign="bottom" align="right"><a href="#Page_659">659</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td align="center"><a href="#XXVII">XXVII.</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="center">MEDICAL FACTS AND STATISTICS.</td></tr>
-<tr><td><small>HOW MANY.&mdash;WHO THEY ARE.&mdash;HOW THEY DIE.&mdash;HOW MUCH RUM THEY CONSUME.&mdash;HOW THEY LIVE.&mdash;OLD AGE.&mdash;WHY WE DIE.&mdash;GET
-MARRIED.&mdash;OLD PEOPLE’S WEDDING.&mdash;A GOOD ONE.&mdash;THE ORIGIN OF THE HONEYMOON.&mdash;A SWEET OBLIVION.&mdash;HOLD YOUR TONGUE!&mdash;MANY MEN, MANY
-MINDS.&mdash;“ALLOPATHY.�&mdash;LOTS OF DOCTORS.&mdash;THE ITCH MITE.&mdash;A HORSE-CAR RIDE.&mdash;KEEP COOL!&mdash;KNICKKNACKS.&mdash;HUMBLE PIE.&mdash;INCREASE
-OF INSANITY.&mdash;A COOL STUDENT.&mdash;HOW TO GET RID OF A MOTHER-IN-LAW.</small></td>
-    <td valign="bottom" align="right"><a href="#Page_680">680</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="center"><a href="#XXVIII">XXVIII.</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="center">BLEEDERS AND BUTCHERS.</td></tr>
-<tr><td><small>BLEEDING IN 1872.&mdash;EARLIEST BLOOD-LETTERS.&mdash;A ROYAL SURGEON.&mdash;A DRAWING JOKE.&mdash;THE PRETTY COQUETTE.&mdash;TINKERS
-AS BLEEDERS.&mdash;WHOLESALE BUTCHERY.&mdash;THE BARBERS OF SOUTH AMERICA.&mdash;OUR FOREFATHERS BLEED.&mdash;A FRENCH BUTCHER.&mdash;CUR?&mdash;ABERNETHY
-OPPOSES BLOOD-LETTING.&mdash;THE MISFORTUNES OF A BARBER-SURGEON (THREE SCENES FROM DOUGLASS JERROLD); JOB PIPPINS AND THE WAGONER; JOB AND THE HIGHWAYMEN;
-JOB NAKED AND JOB DRESSED.</small></td>
-    <td valign="bottom" align="right"><a href="#Page_695">695</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td align="center"><a href="#XXIX">XXIX.</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="center">THE OMNIUM GATHERUM.</td></tr>
-<tr><td><small>EX-SELL-SIR!&mdash;“THE OBJECT TO BE ATTAINED.�&mdash;A NOTORIOUS FEMALE DOCTOR.&mdash;A WHITE BLACK MAN.&mdash;SQUASHY.&mdash;MOTHER’S FOOL.&mdash;WHO
-IT WAS.&mdash;THE PHILOSOPHER AND HIS DAUGHTER.&mdash;EDUCATION AND GIBBERISH.&mdash;SCOTTISH HOSPITALITY.&mdash;THE OLD LADY WITH AN ANIMAL IN HER
-STOMACH.&mdash;STORIES ABOUT LITTLE FOLKS.&mdash;THE BOY WITH A BULLET IN HIM.&mdash;CASE OF SMALL-POX.&mdash;NOT MUCH TO LOOK AT.&mdash;FUNERAL ANTHEMS.</small></td>
-    <td valign="bottom" align="right"><a href="#Page_711">709</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td align="center"><a href="#XXX">XXX.</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="center">THE OTHER SIDE.</td></tr>
-<tr><td><small>PUT YOURSELF IN HIS PLACE.&mdash;STEALING FROM THE PROFESSION.&mdash;ANECDOTE OF RUFUS CHOATE.&mdash;INGRATES.&mdash;A NIGHT ROW.&mdash;“SAVING AT
-THE SPIGOT AND WASTING AT THE BUNG.�&mdash;SHOPPING PATIENTS.&mdash;AN AFFECTIONATE WIFE.&mdash;RUM AND TOBACCO PATIENTS.&mdash;THE PHYSICIAN’S WIDOW AND ORPHAN,
-THE SUMMONS, THE TENEMENT, THE INVALIDS, HOW THEY LIVED, HER HISTORY, THE UNNATURAL FATHER, HOW THEY DIED, THE END.&mdash;A PETER-FUNK DOCTOR.&mdash;SELLING OUT.</small></td>
-    <td valign="bottom" align="right"><a href="#Page_727">727</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td align="center"><a href="#XXXI">XXXI.</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="center">“THIS IS FOR YOUR HEALTH.�</td></tr>
-<tr><td><small>THE INESTIMABLE VALUE OF HEALTH.&mdash;NO BLESSING IN COMPARISON.&mdash;MEN AND SWINE.&mdash;BEGIN WITH THE INFANT.&mdash;“BABY ON THE PORCH.�&mdash;IN A
-STRAIT JACKET.&mdash;“TWO LITTLE SHOES.�&mdash;YOUTH.&mdash;IMPURE LITERATURE AND PASSIONS.&mdash;“OUR GIRLS.�&mdash;BARE ARMS AND BUSTS.&mdash;HOW AND WHAT WE
-BREATHE.&mdash;“THE FREEDOM OF THE STREET.�&mdash;KEEP YOUR EYES OPEN AND MOUTH CLOSED.&mdash;THE LUNGS AND BREATHING.&mdash;A MAN FULL OF HOLES.&mdash;SEVEN MILLION
-MOUTHS TO FEED.&mdash;PURE WATER.&mdash;CLEANLINESS. SOAP VS. WRINKLES.&mdash;GOD’S SUNSHINE.</small></td>
-    <td valign="bottom" align="right"><a href="#Page_748">748</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="center"><a href="#XXXII">XXXII.</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="center">HEALTH WITHOUT MEDICINE.</td></tr>
-<tr><td><small>CHEERFULNESS.&mdash;GOOD ADVICE.&mdash;REV. FRANCIS J. COLLIER ON CHRISTIAN CHEERFULNESS.&mdash;WHAT GOD SAYS ABOUT IT.&mdash;WHINING.&mdash;LOVE AND
-HEALTH.&mdash;AFFECTION AND PERFECTION.&mdash;SEPARATING THE SHEEP AND GOATS.&mdash;THE FENCES UP AND FENCES DOWN.&mdash;SIXTEEN AND SIXTY.&mdash;ACTION AND
-IDLENESS.&mdash;IDLENESS AND CRIME.&mdash;BEAUTY AND DEVELOPMENT.&mdash;SLEEP.&mdash;DAY AND NIGHT.&mdash;“WHAT SHALL WE EAT?�&mdash;A STOMACH-MILL AND A
-STEWING-PAN.&mdash;“FIVE MINUTES FOR REFRESHMENTS.�&mdash;ANCIENT DIET.&mdash;COOKS IN A “STEW.�&mdash;THE GREEN-GROCERIES OF THE CLASSICS.&mdash;CABBAGES
-AND ARTICHOKES.&mdash;ANIMAL AND VEGETABLE DIET.</small></td>
-    <td valign="bottom" align="right"><a href="#Page_769">769</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td align="center"><a href="#XXXIII">XXXIII.</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="center">CONSUMPTION.</td></tr>
-<tr><td><small>CONSUMPTION A MONSTER!&mdash;UNIVERSAL REIGN.&mdash;SIGNS OF HIS APPROACH.&mdash;WARNINGS.&mdash;BAD POSITIONS.&mdash;SCHOOL-HOUSES.&mdash;ENGLISH
-THEORY.&mdash;PREVENTIVES.&mdash;AIR AND SUNSHINE.&mdash;SCROFULA.&mdash;A JOLLY FAT GRANDMOTHER.&mdash;“WASP WAISTS.�&mdash;CHANGE OF CLIMATE.&mdash;“TOO
-LATE!�&mdash;WHAT TO AVOID.&mdash;HUMBUGS.&mdash;COD LIVER OIL.&mdash;STRYCHNINE WHISKEY.&mdash;A MATTER-OF-FACT PATIENT.&mdash;SWALLOWING A PRESCRIPTION.&mdash;SIT
-AND LIE STRAIGHT.&mdash;FEATHERS OR CURLED HAIR.&mdash;A YANKEE DISEASE.&mdash;CATARRH AND COLD FEET, HOW TO REMEDY.&mdash;“GIVE US SOME SNUFF, DOCTOR.�&mdash;OTHER
-THINGS TO AVOID.&mdash;A TENDER POINT.</small></td>
-    <td valign="bottom" align="right"><a href="#Page_790">790</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td align="center"><a href="#XXXIV">XXXIV.</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="center">ACCIDENTS.</td></tr>
-<tr><td><small>RULES FOR MACHINISTS, MECHANICS, RAILROAD MEN, ETC., IN CASES OF ACCIDENT.&mdash;HOW TO FIND AN ARTERY AND STOP THE BLEEDING.&mdash;DROWNING; TO
-RESTORE.&mdash;SUN-STROKE.&mdash;AVOID ICE.&mdash;“ACCIDENTS WILL HAPPEN.�&mdash;WHAT TO HAVE IN THE HOUSE.&mdash;BRUISES.&mdash;BURNS.&mdash;DO THE BEST YOU
-CAN AND TRUST GOD FOR THE REST.</small></td>
-    <td valign="bottom" align="right"><a href="#Page_811">811</a></td></tr></table>
-
-
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
-<hr style="width: 50%;" />
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span></p>
-<h2>ILLUSTRATIONS.</h2>
-
-
-<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table">
-<tr><td align="right">1.</td>
-    <td><small>A. D. CRABTRE, M. D.,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#frontis">Frontispiece.</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">2.</td>
-    <td><small>DR. ANGLICUS PONTO,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_31">31</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">3.</td>
-    <td><small>MISFORTUNES NEVER COME SINGLY,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_33">33</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">4.</td>
-    <td><small>THE MISER OUTWITS HIMSELF,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_38">38</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">5.</td>
-    <td><small>COMMENCING A PRACTICE IN NEW YORK,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_45">47</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">6.</td>
-    <td><small>GRACE BEFORE MEAT,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_47">48</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">7.</td>
-    <td><small>OLD PILGARLIC TAKES A BATH,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_53">55</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">8.</td>
-    <td><small>PROFESSOR BREWSTER,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_55">55</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">9.</td>
-    <td><small>AN INFANTRY CHARGE,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_60">60</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">10.</td>
-    <td><small>THE “FREE PASS� PRESCRIPTION,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_69">69</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">11.</td>
-    <td><small>THE WRONG PATIENT,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_71">71</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">12.</td>
-    <td><small>A CANDIDATE FOR THE PRESIDENCY,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_75">77</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">13.</td>
-    <td><small>UNDER FULL SAIL,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_77">77</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">14.</td>
-    <td><small>“IT’S ALL A HUMBUG,�</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_82">82</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">15.</td>
-    <td><small>“BAREFOOTED ON THE TOP OF HIS HEAD,�</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_93">93</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">16.</td>
-    <td><small>OLD “SANDS OF LIFE,�</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_96">96</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">17.</td>
-    <td><small>REFRESHMENTS,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_98">98</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">18.</td>
-    <td><small>THE EYE DOCTOR,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_103">103</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">19.</td>
-    <td><small>THE YOUNG SURGEON’S FIRST EXPERIENCE,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_105">105</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">20.</td>
-    <td><small>HEALING THE SICK WITH A GOLDEN DOSE,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_109">111</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">21.</td>
-    <td><small>THE PARSON BUYING OFF THE “CONGREGATION,�</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_120">120</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">22.</td>
-    <td><small>A JUVENILE BACCHUS,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_122">122</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">23.</td>
-    <td><small>“DON’T YOU OBSERVE THE ARMS OF MRS. MAPP?�</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_128">128</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">24.</td>
-    <td><small>THREE WISE STUDENTS CONSULTING A DOCTRESS,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_134">134</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">25.</td>
-    <td><small>“POH! YOU’RE A GIRL,�</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_141">141</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">26.</td>
-    <td><small>“HERE WE GO UP-UP-UPPY,�</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_148">148</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">27.</td>
-    <td><small>“LOVE AMONG THE ROSES,�</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_156">156</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">28.</td>
-    <td><small>THE INQUISITIVE COUNTRYMEN,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_159">161</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">29.</td>
-    <td><small>CURIOUS EFFECTS OF A FEVER,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_171">171</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">30.</td>
-    <td><small>MARRYING A FAMILY,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_172">173</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">31.</td>
-    <td><small>’OPATHISTS IN CONSULTATION,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_175">175</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">32.</td>
-    <td><small>A “HYPO� PATIENT DISCHARGING HIS PHYSICIAN,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_178">178</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">33.</td>
-    <td><small>TOO MUCH HAT,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_179">179</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">34.</td>
-    <td><small>CONVINCING EVIDENCE OF INSOLVENCY,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_181">181</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">35.</td>
-    <td><small>“AN’ WHO’LL YEZE LIKE TO SEE, SURE?�</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_183">183</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">36.</td>
-    <td><small>A BOSTON QUACK EXAMINING A STUDENT,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_189">189</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">37.</td>
-    <td><small>ORNAMENTAL TAIL-PIECE,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_199">199</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">38.</td>
-    <td><small>DR. ABERNETHY IN THE HOSPITAL,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_202">202</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">39.</td>
-    <td><small>AN EXTENSIVE SET,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_205">205</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">40.</td>
-    <td><small>“O, DOCTHER, DEAR, I’VE PIZENED ME BOY,�</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_207">207</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">41.</td>
-    <td><small>“LOST MARSER! LOST MARSER!�</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_209">209</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">42.</td>
-    <td><small>NOT A STOMACH PUMP,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_213">213</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">43.</td>
-    <td><small>“LOWER TIER, LARBOARD SIDE,�</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_217">217</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">44.</td>
-    <td><small>THE FARMER’S ESCAPE FROM THE CHOLERA,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_221">223</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">45.</td>
-    <td><small>TOO MUCH VAPOR,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_224">224</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">46.</td>
-    <td><small>A DRY SHOWER BATH,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_225">225</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span>47.</td>
-    <td><small>GRAPES AND WINE,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_226">226</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">48.</td>
-    <td><small>CHARGE, INFANTRY!</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_239">239</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">49.</td>
-    <td><small>AFTER THE BATTLE,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_240">240</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">50.</td>
-    <td><small>THE FORTUNE-TELLER’S MAGIC MIRROR,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_244">244</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">51.</td>
-    <td><small>CHILDREN CONSULTING A FORTUNE-TELLER,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_251">251</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">52.</td>
-    <td><small>THE HUNTRESS,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_252">252</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">53.</td>
-    <td><small>THE ONONDAGA FARMER BOY,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_256">256</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">54.</td>
-    <td><small>THE POLITE QUADRUPED,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_265">265</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">55.</td>
-    <td><small>YOUNG ABERNETHY,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_266">266</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">56.</td>
-    <td><small>“PINNY, SIR? JUST ONE PINNY,�</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_274">274</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">57.</td>
-    <td><small>THE PENNILESS PHYSICIAN,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_276">276</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">58.</td>
-    <td><small>THE INDIAN WARRIOR,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_277">277</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">59.</td>
-    <td><small>BELIEVERS IN GHOSTS,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_278">278</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">60.</td>
-    <td><small>“HARK! THERE’S A FEARFUL GUST!�</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_280">280</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">61.</td>
-    <td><small>A GRAVE SENTRY,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_282">282</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">62.</td>
-    <td><small>A GHOST IN CAMP,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_283">285</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">63.</td>
-    <td><small>OLD NAGLES,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_286">286</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">64.</td>
-    <td><small>THE NAGLES BOYS,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_287">287</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">65.</td>
-    <td><small>CHIEF MOURNERS,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_288">288</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">66.</td>
-    <td><small>THE CORPSE THAT WOULD NOT SMOKE,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_290">290</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">67.</td>
-    <td><small>PREPARE TO DIE,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_293">293</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">68.</td>
-    <td><small>THE BISHOP’S GHOSTLY VISITOR,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_295">295</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">69.</td>
-    <td><small>THE MUSICAL PUSS,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_300">301</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">70.</td>
-    <td><small>A DARKEY BEWITCHED,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_300">301</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">71.</td>
-    <td><small>BOYLSTON STATION,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_303">303</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">72.</td>
-    <td><small>WEIGHING A WITCH BY BIBLE STANDARD,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_305">305</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">73.</td>
-    <td><small>PASSING THE FORT,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_306">306</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">74.</td>
-    <td><small>THE GOD OF RECIPES,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_308">308</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">75.</td>
-    <td><small>SUN-SUNDAY,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_310">310</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">76.</td>
-    <td><small>MOON-MONDAY,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_313">313</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">77.</td>
-    <td><small>TUISCO-TUESDAY,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_313">313</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">78.</td>
-    <td><small>WODEN-WEDNESDAY,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_314">314</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">79.</td>
-    <td><small>THOR-THURSDAY,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_315">315</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">80.</td>
-    <td><small>FRIGA-FRIDAY,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_315">315</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">81.</td>
-    <td><small>SEATER-SATURDAY,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_316">316</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">82.</td>
-    <td><small>GATHERING THE MANDRAKE,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_321">321</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">83.</td>
-    <td><small>“WAITING TO SEE THE IMAGES BOW,�</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_323">323</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">84.</td>
-    <td><small>SPORT FOR THE BOYS BUT DEATH TO THE CAT,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_329">329</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">85.</td>
-    <td><small>“WHO-A’-YOO?�</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_333">333</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">86.</td>
-    <td><small>THE PROPER USE OF “HOLY WATER,�</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_334">334</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">87.</td>
-    <td><small>THE MODEST KISS,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_339">339</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">88.</td>
-    <td><small>HOLDING THE PLOW,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_340">340</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">89.</td>
-    <td><small>THE TUMOR DOCTOR CONTEMPLATES SUICIDE,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_343">343</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">90.</td>
-    <td><small>MARIAM, THE TUMOR DOCTOR,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_345">345</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">91.</td>
-    <td><small>THE SINGING DOCTOR,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_349">349</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">92.</td>
-    <td><small>THE SANATORIAN’S TURNOUT,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_351">351</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">93.</td>
-    <td><small>A NEW SCHOOL OF PRACTICE,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_354">354</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">94.</td>
-    <td><small>A VICTIM OF THE SPANKER,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_355">355</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">95.</td>
-    <td><small>DR. PULSFEEL LEAVING TOWN,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_356">356</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">96.</td>
-    <td><small>THE MUSICAL DOCTOR,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_358">358</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">97.</td>
-    <td><small>ENTHUSIASM,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_359">359</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">98.</td>
-    <td><small>ALL WOOL,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_361">361</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">99.</td>
-    <td><small>CHARITY THROWN AWAY,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_363">363</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">100.</td>
-    <td><small>THE BEGGAR BOY,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_366">366</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">101.</td>
-    <td><small>REMORSE,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_368">368</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">102.</td>
-    <td><small>THE LOST HEIR,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_373">373</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span>103.</td>
-    <td><small>A MORNING CALLER,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_375">375</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">104.</td>
-    <td><small>“WHY DID I TAZE YE?�</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_376">376</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">105.</td>
-    <td><small>SUCCESS OF TERRY’S COURTSHIP,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_379">379</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">106.</td>
-    <td><small>THE BETRAYED,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_382">382</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">107.</td>
-    <td><small>SAILING INTO PORT,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_385">385</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">108.</td>
-    <td><small>A SAN BENITO PIG,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_388">388</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">109.</td>
-    <td><small>AN OLD ENGLISH CLERGYMAN AND HIS FAMILY,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_390">390</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">110.</td>
-    <td><small>THE KING’S PHYSICIAN AND THE EXECUTIONER,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_391">393</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">111.</td>
-    <td><small>A SLIPPER-Y FEE,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_397">397</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">112.</td>
-    <td><small>A LIVING FEE,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_400">399</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">113.</td>
-    <td><small>STUFFED PETS,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_401">400</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">114.</td>
-    <td><small>A PIONEER OF HOMÅ’OPATHY,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_403">403</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">115.</td>
-    <td><small>A SHARP MULE TRADE,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_405">405</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">116.</td>
-    <td><small>ORNAMENTAL TAIL-PIECE,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_409">409</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">117.</td>
-    <td><small>PHYSICIAN’S CHARITY,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_411">411</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">118.</td>
-    <td><small>SEARCH FOR A PATIENT,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_412">412</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">119.</td>
-    <td><small>AN ECCENTRIC PATIENT,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_415">417</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">120.</td>
-    <td><small>A WOMAN’S REBUKE,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_416">417</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">121.</td>
-    <td><small>AFRAID OF A POLYPUS,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_418">418</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">122.</td>
-    <td><small>ABERNETHY’S SURGICAL OPERATION,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_420">420</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">123.</td>
-    <td><small>RECKONING A DOCTOR’S FEES,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_424">424</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">124.</td>
-    <td><small>PATIENT NUMBER FIVE,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_425">425</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">125.</td>
-    <td><small>THE ASTONISHED BUTCHER,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_427">427</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">126.</td>
-    <td><small>MODERN IMPROVEMENTS IN DENTISTRY,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_429">431</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">127.</td>
-    <td><small>CHARITY NOT SOLICITED,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_430">431</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">128.</td>
-    <td><small>CAPTURE OF A WALL STREET BULL,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_433">433</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">129.</td>
-    <td><small>DEATH’S FEE,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_436">436</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">130.</td>
-    <td><small>THE AMERICAN SAILOR,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_437">437</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">131.</td>
-    <td><small>MY FIRST LOVE,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_439">439</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">132.</td>
-    <td><small>TEN YEARS LATER,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_441">441</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">133.</td>
-    <td><small>FLIGHT OF THE DOCTOR,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_444">443</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">134.</td>
-    <td><small>THE LOVER AS A PEDDLER,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_445">447</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">135.</td>
-    <td><small>FLIGHT OF THE LOVERS,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_445">447</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">136.</td>
-    <td><small>AN AGED PUPIL,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_453">453</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">137.</td>
-    <td><small>BIRTHPLACE OF GEORGE CRABBE,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_457">457</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">138.</td>
-    <td><small>“POPPING THE QUESTION,�</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_460">460</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">139.</td>
-    <td><small>LOVE’S LINKS,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_460">460</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">140.</td>
-    <td><small>THE LION MAGNETIZED,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_466">466</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">141.</td>
-    <td><small>A HARD SUBJECT,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_467">467</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">142.</td>
-    <td><small>GASSNER HEALING “BY THE GRACE OF GOD,�</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_469">471</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">143.</td>
-    <td><small>NO LACK OF PATIENTS,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_475">475</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">144.</td>
-    <td><small>“A BOTTLE, A HEN, OR A WOMAN,�</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_477">477</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">145.</td>
-    <td><small>EFFECTS OF AN EARTHQUAKE,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_481">483</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">146.</td>
-    <td><small>A BELIEVER SEES HIS GRANDMOTHER,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_481">483</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">147.</td>
-    <td><small>THE CHARMER DIVULGES HER SECRET,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_488">488</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">148.</td>
-    <td><small>“I PERCEIVE YOU ARE IN LOVE,�</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_492">492</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">149.</td>
-    <td><small>THE FARMER’S DAUGHTERS,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_494">494</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">150.</td>
-    <td><small>A “HORSE-SLAYER� INDULGING HIS OPINION,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_497">499</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">151.</td>
-    <td><small>NO TIME TO LOSE,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_500">500</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">152.</td>
-    <td><small>BEAUTY AND THE BEAST,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_501">503</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">153.</td>
-    <td><small>DR. HUNTER IN CONSULTATION,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_504">504</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">154.</td>
-    <td><small>THE RUSSIAN GENERAL’S DRILL,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_506">506</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">155.</td>
-    <td><small>WHAT THE ELEPHANT IS LIKE,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_509">511</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">156.</td>
-    <td><small>A DOCTOR’S SOLACE,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_509">511</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">157.</td>
-    <td><small>HOW A LADY PROCURED A VALUABLE PRESCRIPTION,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_523">525</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">158.</td>
-    <td><small>DOSE&mdash;ONE QUART EVERY HOUR,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_526">526</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span>159.</td>
-    <td><small>PUMPING AN OLD LADY,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_535">537</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">160.</td>
-    <td><small>A DANGEROUS PRESCRIPTION,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_535">537</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">161.</td>
-    <td><small>THE FARMER’S EMBLEMS,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_537">537</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">162.</td>
-    <td><small>THE DYING MESSAGE,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_541">541</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">163.</td>
-    <td><small>STUCK!</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_547">547</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">164.</td>
-    <td><small>COMMERCE,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_549">549</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">165.</td>
-    <td><small>A GOOD LIVER,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_551">551</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">166.</td>
-    <td><small>A DOCTOR “KILLING THE DEVILS,�</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_553">555</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">167.</td>
-    <td><small>PAYING FOR HIS WINE,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_553">555</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">168.</td>
-    <td><small>A BAR-ROOM DOCTOR,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_555">555</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">169.</td>
-    <td><small>“THE DOCTOR ON A SOW!�</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_563">565</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">170.</td>
-    <td><small>RESCUE OF THE DOCTOR,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_563">565</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">171.</td>
-    <td><small>“ONLY IRISH BEER,�</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_568">568</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">172.</td>
-    <td><small>CURE FOR THE AGUE,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_569">569</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">173.</td>
-    <td><small>PLAYING THE REEDS,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_570">570</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">174.</td>
-    <td><small>AN EMBRYO APOLLO,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_572">572</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">175.</td>
-    <td><small>THE PILGRIM CHEAT,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_578">577</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">176.</td>
-    <td><small>FRANKLIN’S EXPERIMENTS WITH ETHER,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_583">585</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">177.</td>
-    <td><small>END OF THE WONDERFUL ONE-HOSS SHAY,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_590">591</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">178.</td>
-    <td><small>“MUSIC, THE SOUL OF LIFE,�</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_595">597</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">179.</td>
-    <td><small>THE MUSICAL MICE,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_595">597</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">180.</td>
-    <td><small>FOUNTAIN,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_598">598</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">181.</td>
-    <td><small>SIGNS OF CIVILIZATION,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_601">603</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">182.</td>
-    <td><small>SWILL MILK (MAGNIFIED),</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_605">605</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">183.</td>
-    <td><small>PURE MILK (MAGNIFIED),</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_606">606</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">184.</td>
-    <td><small>WATERED MILK (MAGNIFIED),</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_606">606</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">185.</td>
-    <td><small>“WHAT’S IN THE MILK?�</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_606">606</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">186.</td>
-    <td><small>A CHAMPAGNE BATH,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_611">611</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">187.</td>
-    <td><small>MOTHER’S MILK&mdash;PURE AND HEALTHY,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_612">612</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">188.</td>
-    <td><small>MOTHER’S MILK AFTER DRINKING WHISKY,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_612">612</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">189.</td>
-    <td><small>WAITING FOR ASSISTANCE,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_617">617</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">190.</td>
-    <td><small>A CONFECTIONERY STORE,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_619">619</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">191.</td>
-    <td><small>TARTARIC ACID FOR SUPPER,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_627">629</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">192.</td>
-    <td><small>A STREET CANDY STAND,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_627">629</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">193.</td>
-    <td><small>THE NEWSBOY’S MOTHER,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_631">630</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">194.</td>
-    <td><small>THE IDOL OF TOBACCO USERS,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_634">634</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">195.</td>
-    <td><small>PUNISHMENT OF THE TURK,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_638">638</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">196.</td>
-    <td><small>SMOKERS OF FOUR GENERATIONS,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_639">639</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">197.</td>
-    <td><small>“I WANT A CHAW OF TERBACKER,�</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_641">641</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">198.</td>
-    <td><small>YOUNG SMOKERS,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_642">642</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">199.</td>
-    <td><small>EXAMINATION OF THE SMOKER,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_643">643</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">200.</td>
-    <td><small>PURIFYING HIS BLOOD,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_644">644</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">201.</td>
-    <td><small>CLEANSING HIS BONES,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_645">645</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">202.</td>
-    <td><small>THE SMOKER,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_647">647</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">203.</td>
-    <td><small>THE CHEWER,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_648">648</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">204.</td>
-    <td><small>SIGN OF THE TIMES,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_649">648</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">205.</td>
-    <td><small>MY LAZY SMOKING FRIEND,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_650">650</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">206.</td>
-    <td><small>“SHALL I ASSIST YOU TO ALIGHT?�</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_651">653</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">207.</td>
-    <td><small>WORK FOR TONGUES AND FINGERS,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_651">653</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">208.</td>
-    <td><small>WHAT KILLED THE DOG?</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_657">657</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">209.</td>
-    <td><small>THE NEWSBOY,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_658">658</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">210.</td>
-    <td><small>THE GREAT SURGEONS OF THE WORLD,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_661">661</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">211.</td>
-    <td><small>A CALL ON THE VILLAGE DOCTOR,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_663">663</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">212.</td>
-    <td><small>PHYSICIANS’ COSTUME IN 1790,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_664">664</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">213.</td>
-    <td><small>HOW POOR TOMMY WAS LOST,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_666">666</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">214.</td>
-    <td><small>BRIDGET’S METHOD OF MENDING STOCKINGS,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_667">667</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span>215.</td>
-    <td><small>THE UNDERTAKERS’ ARMS,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_669">671</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">216.</td>
-    <td><small>DISPUTE OF THE DOCTOR AND VALET,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_671">671</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">217.</td>
-    <td><small>A WIG MOUSE,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_674">674</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">218.</td>
-    <td><small>THE MYSTERY EXPLAINED,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_675">675</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">219.</td>
-    <td><small>MEETING OF THE DOCTOR AND THE CURATE,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_677">679</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">220.</td>
-    <td><small>DOCTOR CANDEE,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_679">679</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">221.</td>
-    <td><small>A GERMAN BEER GIRL,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_681">681</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">222.</td>
-    <td><small>AN INDIGNANT BRIDE,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_687">686</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">223.</td>
-    <td><small>THE ITCH MITE,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_689">689</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">224.</td>
-    <td><small>THE BURGLAR AND STUDENT,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_693">693</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">225.</td>
-    <td><small>HARVESTED,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_694">694</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">226.</td>
-    <td><small>ASSISTANCE FROM A ROYAL SURGEON,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_697">696</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">227.</td>
-    <td><small>PETER THE GREAT AS A SURGEON,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_698">697</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">228.</td>
-    <td><small>JOB DISCHARGED BY SIR SCIPIO,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_703">703</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">229.</td>
-    <td><small>“BLEED HIM,�</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_704">704</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">230.</td>
-    <td><small>A BORROWED WATCH,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_706">706</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">231.</td>
-    <td><small>JOB’S DECISION,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_708">708</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">232.</td>
-    <td><small>SQUASHY’S SURGICAL OPERATION,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_715">715</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">233.</td>
-    <td><small>“WILL YE TAK’ A BLAST, NOO?�</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_721">720</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">234.</td>
-    <td><small>REPTILES FROM THE STOMACH,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_722">722</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">235.</td>
-    <td><small>“IT ISN’T CATCHIN’,�</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_724">724</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">236.</td>
-    <td><small>FUNERAL OF THE CANARY,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_725">725</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">237.</td>
-    <td><small>MY FRONT STREET PATIENT,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_731">731</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">238.</td>
-    <td><small>A SHOPPING PATIENT,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_733">733</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">239.</td>
-    <td><small>CALL AT THE TENEMENT,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_737">737</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">240.</td>
-    <td><small>THE WIDOW’S OCCUPATION,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_739">739</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">241.</td>
-    <td><small>THE PHYSICIAN AND THE FATHER,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_742">742</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">242.</td>
-    <td><small>THE PETER FUNK PHYSICIAN,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_746">745</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">243.</td>
-    <td><small>VIRTUE,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_747">747</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">244.</td>
-    <td><small>THE FREEDOM OF THE PARK,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_759">761</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">245.</td>
-    <td><small>“IT COSTS NOTHING,�</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_766">766</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">246.</td>
-    <td><small>A NATURAL POSITION,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_792">792</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">247.</td>
-    <td><small>AN UNNATURAL POSITION,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_792">792</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">248.</td>
-    <td><small>CORRECT POSITION,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_796">796</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">249.</td>
-    <td><small>INCORRECT POSITION,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_796">796</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">250.</td>
-    <td><small>HOW WASP WAISTS ARE MADE,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_799">799</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">251.</td>
-    <td><small>A CONSUMPTIVE WAIST,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_800">800</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">252.</td>
-    <td><small>NON-CONSUMPTIVE WAIST,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_800">800</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">253.</td>
-    <td><small>A HEALTHY POSITION,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_804">804</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">254.</td>
-    <td><small>POSITION OF ARTERY IN ARM,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_811">811</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">255.</td>
-    <td><small>COMPRESSING AN ARTERY IN ARM,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_812">812</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">256.</td>
-    <td><small>POSITION OF ARTERY IN LEG,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_812">812</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">257.</td>
-    <td><small>THE DOCTOR’S QUEUE,</small></td>
-    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_816">816</a></td></tr></table>
-
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
-<hr style="width: 50%;" />
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span></p>
-<h2><a name="I" id="I"></a>I.</h2>
-<p class="title">MEDICAL HUMBUGS.</p>
-
-<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table">
-<tr><td valign="top" align="right"><i>Marina.</i></td>
-    <td>... Should I tell my history,<br />’Twould seem like lies disdained in the reporting.</td></tr>
-<tr><td valign="top" align="right"><i>Pericles.</i></td>
-    <td>Pray thee, speak.&mdash;<i>Shakspeare.</i></td></tr></table>
-
-<div class="note"><p class="hang"><small>ORIGIN AND APPLICATION OF “HUMBUG.�&mdash;A FIFTH AVENUE HUMBUG.&mdash;JOB’S
-OPINION OF DOCTORS.&mdash;EARLY PHYSICIANS.&mdash;PRIESTS AS DOCTORS.&mdash;WIZARDS
-COME TO GRIEF.&mdash;A “CAPITAL� OPERATION.&mdash;A WOMAN CUT INTO TWELVE
-PIECES.&mdash;ANECDOTE.&mdash;ROBIN HOOD’S LITTLE JOKE.&mdash;TIT FOR TAT.&mdash;ENGLISH
-HUMBUGS.&mdash;FRENCH DITTO.&mdash;A FORTUNE ON DIRTY WATER.&mdash;AMERICAN
-HUMBUGS.&mdash;A FIRST CLASS “DODGE.�&mdash;A FREE RIDE.&mdash;A SHARP
-INTERROGATOR.&mdash;DOCTOR PUSBELLY.&mdash;A WICKED STAGE-DRIVER’S STORY.&mdash;“OLD
-PILGARLIC� TAKES A BATH.&mdash;LUDICROUS SCENE.&mdash;PROFESSOR BREWSTER.</small></p></div>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p>Medical humbugs began to exist with the first pretenders to the science of
-healing. Quacks originated at a much later period. So materially different
-are the two classes, that I am compelled to treat of them separately.</p>
-
-<p>The word <i>humbug</i> is a corruption of <i>Hamburg</i>, Germany, and seems to have
-originated in London. The following episode is in illustration of both its
-origin and meaning:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“O, Bridget, Bridget!� exclaimed the fashionable mistress of a brown stone
-front in Fifth Avenue, New York, to her surprised servant girl, “what have
-you been doing at the front door?�</p>
-
-<p>“Och, murther! Nothin’, ma’am.�</p>
-
-<p>“Nothing!� repeated the mistress.</p>
-
-<p>“Yes’m&mdash;that is&mdash;� stammered Bridget, greatly embarrassed.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span>“What were you doing at the front door but a moment since?�</p>
-
-<p>“Nothin’, ma’am, but spakin’ to me cousin; he’s a p’leeceman, ma’am, if ye
-plaze, ma’am,� replied Bridget, dropping a low courtesy to the mistress.</p>
-
-<p>“No, no; I did not mean that. But haven’t you been cleaning the door-knob
-and the bell-pull?�</p>
-
-<p>“Yes’m,� replied Bridget, changing from embarrassment to surprise.</p>
-
-<p>“Why, Bridget, didn’t I tell you never to polish the front door-knobs
-during the warm season? Now my friends will think that I have returned
-from Saratoga&mdash;�</p>
-
-<p>“And is it to Saratogy ye’ve been, ma’am?� exclaimed Bridget.</p>
-
-<p>“No, you dunce; but was not the front of the house closed, and the
-servants forbidden to polish the plates and glass, that my friends might
-be led to believe we had all gone to the watering-place?�</p>
-
-<p>That was true humbug. Double humbuggery! for the servant girl was
-humbugging her mistress by pretending to polish the door-knobs, while she
-was really coqueting with a policeman; and the mistress was humbugging her
-friends into the belief that the house was closed, and the family gone to
-Saratoga.</p>
-
-<p>So, Hamburg, on the Elbe, being a fashionable resort of the upper-ten-dom
-of London, those who would ape aristocracy, yet being unable to bear the
-expense of a trip to the Continent, closed the front of their dwellings,
-moved into the rear, giving out word that they had gone to <i>Hamburg</i>.</p>
-
-<p>When a house was observed so closed, with a notice on the door, the
-passers by would wag their heads, and exclaim, questionably, “Ah, gone to
-Hamburg!� or, “All gone to Hamburg!� “It’s all Hamburg!� and so on. And,
-like a thousand other words in the English language, this became
-corrupted, and “humbug� followed. Hence, taking<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span> the sense from the
-derivation of the word, humbug means “an imposition, under fair
-pretences;� cheat; hoax; a deception without malicious intent. Webster
-says it is “a low word.�</p>
-
-<p>The humbugs in medicine, we assert, began to exist with the first persons
-of whom we have any account in the history of the healing art. Among the
-early Egyptian physicians, Æsculapius was esteemed as the most celebrated.
-He was the first humbug in his line. However, nearly all the accounts we
-have of him are mythological. If we are to credit the early writers, this
-great healer restored so many to life, that he greatly interfered with
-undertaker Pluto’s occupation, who picked a quarrel with Æsculapius, and
-the two referred the matter to Jupiter for adjudication.</p>
-
-<p>But we may go back of this “god of medicine.� If he was physician to the
-Argonauts, we must fix the date of his great exploits at about the year
-B. C. 1263. It is claimed by good authority that the Book of Job dates back
-to B. C. 1520, and is the oldest book extant. Herein we find Job saying,
-“Ye are forgers of lies; ye are all physicians of no value.� Since his
-friends were trying their best to humbug him, Job certainly intimates that
-physicians&mdash;some of them, at least&mdash;were looked upon as humbugs. But,
-then, Job was only an Arab prince; not an Israelite, at all; nor does he
-condescend to mention that “peculiar people� in his book. And besides,
-what reliance can be based upon the opinion of a man respecting
-physicians, whose only surgical instrument consisted of a “piece or
-fragment of a broken pot�?</p>
-
-<p>Therefore, leaving the “Arab prince,� we will turn for a moment to the
-early Jewish physicians. Josephus does not enlighten us much respecting
-them. The Old Testament makes mention of physicians in three
-instances,&mdash;the last figuratively.</p>
-
-<p>The first instance&mdash;a rather amusing one&mdash;where <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span>physicians are mentioned
-in the sacred writings, is in 2 Chron. xvi. 12: “And Asa, in the
-thirty-ninth year of his reign, was diseased in his feet, until the
-disease was exceeding great; yet in his disease he sought not to the Lord,
-but to the physicians.� The compiler adds, very coolly, as though a
-natural consequence, “<i>And Asa slept with his fathers</i>!� This reminds us
-of an anecdote by the late Dr. Waterhouse. An Irishman obtained twenty
-grains of morphine, which, instead of quinine, he took at one dose, to
-cure the chills. The doctor, in relating it long afterwards, added,
-laconically, “He being a good Catholic, his funeral was numerously
-attended.�</p>
-
-<p>For generations nearly all the pretensions to healing were made by the
-priests and magicians, who humbugged and “bamboozled� the ignorant and
-superstitious rabble to their hearts’ content. Kings and subjects were
-alike believers in the Magi. Saul believed in the magic powers of the
-“witch of Endor.� The wicked king Nebuchadnezzar classed Daniel and his
-three companions with the magicians, although Daniel (chap. xi. 10) denied
-the imputation. Joseph laid claim to the power of divination; for, having
-caused the silver cup to be placed in the sack of corn, and after having
-sent and brought his brother back, he said (Gen. xliv. 15), “What deed is
-this that ye have done? Wot ye not that such a man as I can certainly
-divine?� It seemed necessary to deal with the people according to their
-belief. It was useless to dispute with them. As late as the preaching of
-Paul and Barnabas, the whole nations of Jews and Greeks were so tinctured
-with belief in magic and enchantment in healing, taught and promulgated by
-the priesthood, that when the apostles healed the cripple of Lystra, the
-rabble, headed by the priests, cried out, “The gods are come down to us in
-the likeness of men.� And they called Barnabas Jupiter, and Paul
-Mercurius.</p>
-
-<p>The town clerk in the theatre said to the excited crowd,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span> “These men are
-neither robbers of churches, nor yet blasphemers of your goddess.�</p>
-
-<p>Diana was appealed to for women in childbirth; Mercurius for the healing
-of cutaneous diseases (<i>herpes</i>), probably because he carried a <i>herpe</i>,
-or short sword, also, at times, the caduceus; and Jupiter for various
-diseases. But to return to the times of Saul and David.</p>
-
-<p>It seems that the business became overcrowded, and the vilest and most
-degraded of both sexes swelled the ranks of sorcerers, astrologers, and
-spiritualists, until every class and condition of people became
-impregnated with these beliefs, from kings to the lowest subject. Finally,
-the strong arm of the law laid hold of them, and the edict went forth that
-“a witch shall not live,� that “a wizard shall be put to death,� and that
-“the soothsayer be stoned.�</p>
-
-<p>Nevertheless, the wretches continued to practise their deceptions, but
-less openly for a time, and they are made mention of throughout the sacred
-writings, until “the closing of the canon.�</p>
-
-<p>But the Scriptures are almost totally silent on surgery, and the remedies
-resorted to by those pretending to the science&mdash;as also by physicians and
-priests&mdash;were such as to lead us to believe that their <i>materia medica</i>
-was very limited. Under the head of Ridiculous Prescriptions, we shall
-mention these remedies:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>The earliest record we find of surgical operations in the Old Testament is
-in Judges xix. 29,&mdash;a “capital operation,� we may judge, for the account
-informs us that the patient, a woman, “was divided into twelve pieces.�</p>
-
-<p>Turning to the profane writers for information, we plunge into an abyss of
-uncertainty, with this exception; that the practice of medicine&mdash;it could
-not be called a science&mdash;was still in the hands of the priesthood, and
-partook largely of the fabulous notions of the age, being connected almost
-entirely with idolatries and humbuggeries. The cunning<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span> priests caused the
-rabble, from first to last, to believe that all disease was inflicted, not
-from the violation of the laws of nature, but by some angry and outraged
-divinity, whose wrath must be appeased by bribes (<i>paid to the priests</i>),
-by incantations, and absurd ceremonies, or else the afflicted victim must
-die a painful death, and forever after suffer a more horrible eternity.
-The priests’ receiving the pay reminds us of the following little
-anecdote.</p>
-
-<p>A very pious man, recently congratulating a convalescing patient upon his
-recovery, asked his friend who had been his physician.</p>
-
-<p>“Dr. Blank brought me safely through,� was his reply.</p>
-
-<p>“No, no,� said the friend, “God brought you out of this affliction, and
-healed you,&mdash;not the doctor.�</p>
-
-<p>“Well,� replied the man, “may be he did; but I am sure that the doctor
-will charge me for it.�</p>
-
-<p>The offices of priest and physician were united among the Jews, Heathens,
-Greeks, Egyptians, and Romans. The Druids (from <i>draoi</i>, magician) ruled
-and ruined the ancient Celts, Gauls, Britons, and Germans. The people of
-these nations looked up to the priests as though life and death and
-immortality hung only upon their lips. Among our aborigines we have also
-examples of the double office of priest and “medicine man.� And it is an
-astonishing fact, that notwithstanding the ignorance of the pretenders to
-healing, or the ridiculousness of the prescriptions, or the exorbitant
-fees, the rabble of the age relied upon them with the most implicit
-confidence. If the patient recovered, the priests&mdash;embodying the gods&mdash;had
-restored them by their great skill and the favor of some particular
-divinity, and so were worshipped, and again rewarded with other fees to
-offer sacrifices to the individual god who was supposed to favor the
-priest or wizard. If he died it was the will of the gods that it should so
-be, and the friends lost none of their faith in the abilities of their
-medical and spiritual advisers.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span>The priests could not be disposed of so easily as the witches and wizards
-were supposed to have been, for they kept the people under greater fear,
-and held the balance of power in their own hands. The only difference
-between the priests and wizards was, that the former <i>claimed</i> to exercise
-their arts by the power of the gods, while the latter were said to be
-assisted by the evil spirits. The priests claimed this in the times of
-Christ, and tried to persuade the rabble that he was assisted by
-Beelzebub. While the grasping priesthood professed poverty and
-self-denial, they were continually enriching themselves by robberies and
-extortions upon the ignorant and superstitious common people.</p>
-
-<p>A mirth-provoking anecdote is told of Robin Hood and two friars, which we
-cannot forbear relating here as illustrative of the above assertion. If
-our readers regard stories from such a source as very uncertain, we have
-only to reply that we are now dealing with “uncertainties.�</p>
-
-<p>“One day, Robin disguised himself as a friar, and went out on the highway.
-Very soon he met two priests, to whom he appealed for charity in the
-blessed Virgin’s name.</p>
-
-<p>“‘That we would do, were it in our power,’ they replied.</p>
-
-<p>“‘I fear you are so addicted to falsehood, I cannot believe that you have
-no money, as you say. However, let us all down on our marrow bones, and
-pray the Virgin to send us some money.’</p>
-
-<p>“‘No, no,’ replied the priests; ‘it is of no use.’</p>
-
-<p>“‘What! have you no faith in your patron saint? Down, I say, and pray.’</p>
-
-<p>“In fear, down fell the two priests, and Robin by their side, and all
-prayed most lustily.</p>
-
-<p>“‘Now feel in your pockets,’ said Robin, rising.</p>
-
-<p>“‘There is nothing,’ they replied, plunging their hands deep into their
-cloaks.</p>
-
-<p>“‘Down again, and pray harder,’ shouted Robin, drawing his sword.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span>“Down they fell, and mumbled over their Latin, but declared the gods had
-sent them nothing.</p>
-
-<p>“‘I do not believe you,’ said Robin; ‘you ever were a pack of liars. Let
-each stand a search, that we deceive not each other.’ So Robin turned his
-own empty pockets wrong side out, then compelled the friars to follow
-suit, when lo! out fell five hundred pieces of gold.</p>
-
-<p>“When Robin saw this glorious sight, he berated the priests soundly, and
-taking the gold, went away to Sherwood, and made merry at the expense of
-the church.�</p>
-
-<p>About 1185 B. C. we find among the Grecians some traces of what was termed
-the healing art. But fact and fable, history and mythology, are so mixed
-and blended, that it is impossible to gain any reliable information so far
-back.</p>
-
-<p>Chiron is made mention of as having acquired much celebrity as a
-physician. It is claimed that he was learned in the arts and sciences,
-that he taught astronomy to Hercules, music to Apollo, and medicine to
-Æsculapius, who came from Egypt. From what can be gleaned, of reliability,
-it seems that he employed simple medicines, and possessed some knowledge
-of dressing wounds and reducing fractures and dislocations; but no doubt
-he pretended to greater things than the times would warrant, for, when
-shot by an arrow from the bow of Hercules, his former pupil, he was unable
-to heal the wound, and begged Jupiter to “set him up� among the stars,
-which request was complied with, and Chiron was translated to the heavens,
-where he still shines in the constellation Sagittarius, represented as a
-centaur, with drawn bow, driving before him the other eleven signs of the
-zodiac.</p>
-
-<p>We have alluded to Æsculapius, and, passing over all others of his class,
-we come to the times of Hippocrates.</p>
-
-<p>Hippocrates is rightly called the “Father of Medicine,� for he was the
-first to raise medicine to a science. We mention him without classing him
-with humbugs; but<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span> Menecrates, who flourished about the same time, arrived
-at great notoriety by ruse and deception. He was “famous for vanity and
-arrogance.� He went about accompanied by some patients, whom he claimed to
-have cured, as proofs of his great ability. One he disguised as Apollo,
-another he arrayed in the habit of Æsculapius, and sent them abroad to
-sound his praise, while he took upon himself the garb, and assumed the
-character, of Jupiter.</p>
-
-<p>Pliny says that medicine was the last of the sciences introduced into
-Rome, and that the Septimont City was six hundred years without a regular
-physician. Archagathus, a Grecian, settled in Rome about 300 B. C., and if
-he was a fair sample of those who followed him, it had been better for
-Rome that it had remained another six hundred years “without a regular
-physician.� He introduced cruel and painful escharotics, and made free use
-of the knife and the lancet. He was a humbug of the first water, and a
-quack besides, and as such he was banished in a few years.</p>
-
-<p>The Christian era introduced some light into the medical, as well as the
-religious world; yet we learn, by both sacred and profane writers, that
-truth and knowledge were the exceptions, and ignorance and humbug were the
-rule by which medicine was practised by those who pretended to the art.
-Names changed, characters remained the same.</p>
-
-<p>The priests still held their own, and were not, as already shown, to be
-gotten rid of, as the witches and wizards, their rivals and imitators, by
-litigation, nor was their power broken until the Decree of the Council of
-Tours in 1163 A. D., which prohibited priests and deacons from performing
-certain surgical operations.</p>
-
-<p>After the Reformation the vocations of spiritual and medical adviser
-diverged wider and wider, until now a priest or minister is seldom
-consulted for bodily infirmities, and only by persons of the most ignorant
-and superstitious denominations.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span>Setting the priesthood aside did not suppress humbugs in medicine. In fact
-the profession went into disrepute, which the priests hastened, and a
-lower order of people took upon themselves the practice of deceiving the
-sick and afflicted. Now and then a greater humbug than common would spring
-up, and for a time draw the rabble after him, till the next arose to
-eclipse him.</p>
-
-<p>From the discovery of America to about 1600, ambitious upstarts, humbugs,
-and seekers of fame and fortune were drawn away from the old world, and
-either for this reason, or because the biographers were attracted to a
-more interesting field, accounts of medical celebrities are very meagre;
-but from the latter period to the present day there has been no lack of
-records from which to draw our material.</p>
-
-<p>During the 17th and 18th centuries medical impostors had things all their
-own way. Ignorance was no hinderance to advancement, socially or
-pecuniarily. Some men published, in their own names, voluminous works, in
-both English and Latin, which they themselves could not read. By soft
-words and cunning arts others gained high positions, and, without
-knowledge of the first branch of medical science, became “court
-physicians.�</p>
-
-<p>From the lowest walks, they rose up on every side: from the cobbler’s
-bench, and the tailor’s board; from cutting up meat in the butcher’s shop,
-to “cutting up� naughty boys in a pedagogue’s capacity; from shaving the
-unwashed rabble behind the striped barber’s pole, to shaving their wives
-behind counters, where they measured the cloth of the weaver, they became
-cobblers of poor healths, butchers of men, and shavers of the invalided
-public. But these will be discoursed of under another head.</p>
-
-<p>We here offer one proof of this state of affairs by a quotation from the
-original charter of the first College of Physicians, granted by Henry
-VIII., which reads, “Before this period a great multitude of ignorant
-persons, of which the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span> greater part had no insight into physic, <i>nor into
-any other kind of learning</i>,&mdash;some could not even read the Book,&mdash;so far
-forth that common artificers, as smiths, weavers, and women boldly and
-accustomedly took upon themselves great cures, to the high displeasure of
-God, great infamy of the faculty, and the grievous hurt, damage, and
-destruction of many of the king’s liege people.�</p>
-
-<p>The meetings of this august body (College of Physicians) were held at the
-house of Dr. Linacre. “He was a gentleman of distinction, both as a
-physician and scholar.� He became disgusted with physic, and took “holy
-orders� five years before his death. He was one of the original
-petitioners of the charter, which complained that the above rabble of
-doctors could not read the Book (Bible). Now see the ignorance&mdash;the
-hypocrisy of the man!</p>
-
-<p>Dr. Caius, who wrote his epitaph, says of Linacre, “He certainly was not a
-very profound theologian, for a short time before his death he read the
-New Testament for the first time, when, so greatly was he astonished at
-finding the rules of Christianity so widely at variance with their
-practice, that he threw down the sacred volume in a passion, saying,
-‘Either this is not gospel, or we are not Christians.’� This was just
-prior to 1600.</p>
-
-<p>This Dr. Caius is supposed to be the same character whom Shakspeare
-introduced in his “<i>Merry Wives of Windsor</i>;� and as it is a fact patent
-to all that the great poet had no very exalted opinion of doctors, and
-would “throw physic to the dogs,� it has been suggested that Caius was
-produced by him on that ground.</p>
-
-<p>There are others of this and a later period, whom, though ranking amongst
-the greatest of humbugs, we defer mentioning here, but will notice in our
-chapter on quacks.</p>
-
-<p>Mr. Jeaffreson, in his excellent work, “Book About Doctors,� to which work
-I am indebted for several anecdotes, says,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span>“The lives of three physicians&mdash;Sydenham, Sir Hans Sloane, and
-Heberden&mdash;completely bridge over the uncertain period between old
-empiricism and modern science.�</p>
-
-<p>The former, Dr. Thomas Sydenham, was born at Windford Eagle, Dorsetshire,
-England, in 1624, and was esteemed as an excellent physician and profound
-scholar of his day. Nothing is known of his boyhood. For a time he was a
-soldier. He was about forty years old when admitted a member of the
-College of Physicians. Dr. Richard Blackmore, his contemporary, who was
-but a pedagogue at the outstart himself, but afterwards knighted as Sir
-Richard, says of Dr. Sydenham, “He was only a disbanded officer, who
-entered upon the practice of medicine for a maintenance, without any
-preparatory learning.� The fact of his possessing a diploma went for
-nothing, since Dr. Meyersbach obtained his about this time for a few
-shillings, and without the rudiments of an education, made a splendid
-living out of the credulity even of the most learned and fashionable
-classes of English society, and arrived at the height of honor and
-distinction.</p>
-
-<p>The reader must admit that diplomas were cheap honors, when one was
-granted to a dog! A young English gentleman, for the sport of the thing,
-paid the price of a medical diploma soon after Dr. Meyersbach’s was
-granted, and had it duly recorded in the archives of the college (Erfurth)
-as having been awarded to Anglicus Ponto.</p>
-
-<p>“And who was Anglicus Ponto?�</p>
-
-<p>“None other than the gentleman’s dog&mdash;a fine mastiff.�</p>
-
-<p>But this question was not asked till too late to prevent the joke. It had
-the good effect, however, to raise at once the price of degrees.</p>
-
-<p>Dr. Sydenham published several medical works, copies of which are now
-extant, but his pretensions to skill availed him but little in time of
-need. His prescriptions&mdash;some of them, at least&mdash;were very absurd, and
-during his latter years, while enjoying a lucrative practice, and
-possessing<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span> the utmost confidence of the <i>bon ton</i>, he suffered
-excruciating pains from the gout, which, with other complications, ended
-his days. “Physician, heal thyself.�</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 450px; height: 331px;"><img src="images/img001.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">DR. ANGLICUS PONTO.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>Dr. Blackmore, an aspirant to medical fame, applied to Dr. Sydenham, while
-residing in Pall Mall, with the following inquiry:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“What is the best course of study for a medical student?�</p>
-
-<p>“Read Don Quixote,� was Sydenham’s reply. “It is a very good book. I read
-it yet.� I find this in a biographical dictionary of 1779. While some
-biographers endeavor to pass this off as a joke, it is a well-known fact
-that the doctor was a sceptic in medicine, and those who knew him best
-believe that he meant just what he said.</p>
-
-<p>On the arrival of Dr. Sloane in London, he waited on Dr. Sydenham, as
-being the great gun of the town at that time, and presented a letter of
-introduction, in which an enthusiastic friend had set forth Sloane’s
-qualifications in glowing language, as being perfected in anatomy, botany,
-and the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span> various branches of medicine. Sydenham finished the letter, threw
-it on the table, eyed the young man very sharply, and said,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“Sir, this is all very fine, on paper&mdash;very fine; but it won’t do.
-Anatomy! botany! Nonsense. Why, sir, I know an old woman in Covent Garden
-who better understands botany; and as for anatomy, no doubt my butcher can
-dissect a joint quite as well. No, no, young man; this is all stuff. You
-must go to the bedside; it is only there that you can learn disease.�</p>
-
-<p>In spite of this mortifying reception, however, Sydenham afterwards took
-the greatest interest in Dr. Sloane, frequently taking the young man with
-him in his chariot on going his rounds.</p>
-
-<p>In “Lives of English Physicians,� the author, in writing of Dr. Sydenham,
-says, “At the commencement of his practice, it is handed down to us, that
-it was his ordinary custom, when consulted by patients for the first time,
-to hear attentively their story, and then reply, “Well, I will consider
-your case, and in a few days will prescribe something for you;� thereby
-gaining time to look up such a case. He soon learned that this
-deliberation would not do, as some forgot to return after “a few days,�
-and to save his fees he was obliged, <i>nolens volens</i>, to prescribe on the
-spot.</p>
-
-<p>A further proof of his contemptible opinion of deriving knowledge from
-books, as expressed above to Dr. Blackmore, is exemplified and
-corroborated in an address to Dr. Mapletoft (1675).</p>
-
-<p>“The medical art could not be learned so well and surely as by use and
-experience, and that he who would pay the nicest and most accurate
-attention to the symptoms of distempers, would succeed best in finding out
-the true means of cure.�</p>
-
-<p>“Riding on horseback,� he says, in one of his books, “will cure all
-diseases except confirmed consumption.� How about curing gout?</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span>A very amusing, though painful picture, is drawn by Dr. Winslow, a
-reliable author of the seventeenth century, in his book, “Physic and
-Physicians:�&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“Dr. Sydenham suffered extremely from the gout. One day, during the latter
-part of his life, he was sitting near an open window, on the ground floor
-of his residence in St. James Square, inspiring the cool breeze on a
-summer’s afternoon, and reflecting, with a serene countenance and great
-complacency on the alleviation of human misery that his skill enabled him
-to give. Whilst this divine man was enjoying this delicious reverie, and
-occasionally sipping his favorite beverage from a silver tankard, in which
-was immersed a sprig of rosemary, a sneak thief approached, and seeing the
-helpless condition of the old doctor, stole the cup, right before his
-eyes, and ran away with it. The doctor was too lame to run after him, and
-before he could stir to ring and give alarm the thief was well off.�</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 450px; height: 357px;"><img src="images/img002.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">MISFORTUNES NEVER COME SINGLY.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>This reminds one of a story of an old man who stood in a highway, leaning
-on his staff, and crying, in a feeble, croaking voice, “Stop thief! stop
-thief!�</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span>“What is the matter, sir?� inquired a fellow, approaching.</p>
-
-<p>“O, a villain has stolen my hat from my head, and run away.�</p>
-
-<p>“Your hat!� looking at the bare head; “why didn’t you run after him?�</p>
-
-<p>“O, my dear sir, I can’t run a step. I am very lame.�</p>
-
-<p>“Can’t run! then here goes your wig.� And so saying, the fellow caught the
-poor old man’s wig, and scampered away at the top of his speed.</p>
-
-<p>Dr. Sydenham died December 29, 1689. He could not be termed a quack, but
-certainly he was a consummate humbug.</p>
-
-<p>An author, before quoted, after copying a description of the “poor
-physician� of the age, adds,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“How it calls to mind the image of Dr. Oliver Goldsmith, when, with a
-smattering of medical knowledge and a German diploma, he tried to pick out
-of the miseries and ignorance of his fellow-creatures the means of keeping
-soul and body together! He, too, poet and doctor, would have sold a pot of
-rouge to a faded beauty, or a bottle of hair dye, or a nostrum warranted
-to cure the bite of a mad dog.�</p>
-
-<p>“Set a rogue to catch a rogue.� And to this principle we are indebted for
-the exposition of many fallacies and humbugs pursued by early physicians
-in order to gain practice.</p>
-
-<p>“Dr. Radcliffe,� says Dr. Hannes, “on his arrival in London, employed half
-of the porters in town to call for him at the coffee-houses (a famous
-resort of physicians of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries) and
-places of public resort, so that his name might become known.�</p>
-
-<p>On the other hand, Radcliffe accused Dr. Hannes of the same trick a few
-years later. Doctors were doctors’ own worst enemies. Instead of standing
-by each other of the same school, in lip service, or passing by each
-other’s errors and imperfections in silence, as they do nowadays, they
-quarrelled continually, accusing each other of the very tricks they
-practised themselves.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span>Of Dr. Meade it was confidently asserted, that without practice at first,
-he opened extensive correspondence with all the nurses and midwives in his
-vicinity, associated and conversed with apothecaries and gossips, who,
-hoping for his trade, would recommend him as a skilful practitioner. The
-ruse worked, and soon the doctor found his calls were <i>bona fide</i>. This is
-a trick that some American physicians we know of may have learned from Dr.
-Meade. Certainly they know and practise the deception.</p>
-
-<p>When Dr. Hannes went to London, he opened the campaign with a coach and
-four. The carriage was of the most imposing appearance, the horses were
-the best bloods, sleek and high-spirited, the harnesses and caparisons of
-the richest mountings of silver and gold, with the most elegant trimmings.</p>
-
-<p>“By Jove, Radcliffe!� exclaimed Meade, “Dr. Hannes’ horses are the finest
-I have ever seen.�</p>
-
-<p>“Umph,� growled Radcliffe, “then he will be able to sell them for all the
-more.� But Dr. Radcliffe’s <i>prognosis</i> was at fault for once; and
-notwithstanding all the prejudice that Radcliffe and his friends could
-bring to bear against Hannes, and the lampooning verses spread broadcast
-against him, he kept his “fine horses,� and rode into a flourishing
-business.</p>
-
-<p>To make his name known, Dr. Hannes used to send liveried footmen running
-about the streets, with directions to poke their heads into every coach
-they met, and inquire anxiously, “Is Dr. Hannes here?� “Is this Dr.
-Hannes’ carriage?� etc.</p>
-
-<p>Acting upon these orders, one of these fellows, after looking into every
-carriage from Whitehall to Royal Exchange, ran into a coffee-house, which
-was one of the great places of meeting for members of the medical
-profession. Several physicians were present, among whom was Radcliffe.</p>
-
-<p>“Gentlemen,� said the liveried servant, hat in hand, “can your honors tell
-me if Dr. Hannes is present?�</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span>“Who wants Dr. Hannes, fellow?� demanded Radcliffe.</p>
-
-<p>“Lord A. and Lord B., your honor,� replied the man.</p>
-
-<p>“No, no, friend,� responded the doctor, with pleasant irony; “those lords
-don’t want <i>your master</i>; ’tis he who wants them.�</p>
-
-<p>The humbug exploded, but Hannes had got the start before this occurred.</p>
-
-<p>A worthy biographer begins thus, in writing of Dr. Radcliffe: “The
-Jacobite partisan, the physician without learning, the luxurious <i>bon
-vivant</i>, Radcliffe, who grudged the odd sixpence of his tavern score,�
-etc., “was born in Yorkshire, in the year 1650.�</p>
-
-<p>But notwithstanding Radcliffe’s plebeian birth, he died rich, therefore
-respected&mdash;a fact which hides many sins and imperfections. He not only
-humbugged the people of his day into the belief that he was a learned and
-eminent physician, but by his shrewdness in disposing of his gains, in
-bestowing wealth where it would tell in after years, when his body had
-returned to the dust from whence it came,&mdash;such as giving fifty thousand
-dollars to the Oxford University as a fund for the establishment of the
-great “Radcliffe Library,� etc.,&mdash;he succeeded in humbugging subsequent
-generations into the same belief.</p>
-
-<p>Certainly there is room for a few more such humbugs.</p>
-
-<p>Dr. Barnard de Mandeville, in “Essays on Charity and Charity Schools,�
-says of Radcliffe, “That a man with small skill in physic, and hardly any
-learning, should by vile arts get into practice, and lay up wealth, is no
-mighty wonder; but that he should so deeply work himself into the good
-opinion of the world as to gain the general esteem of a nation, and
-establish a reputation beyond all contemporaries, with no other qualities
-but a perfect knowledge of mankind, and a capacity of making the most of
-it, is something extraordinary.�</p>
-
-<p>Mandeville further accuses him of “an insatiable <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span>greediness after wealth,
-no regard for religion, or affection for kindred, no compassion for the
-poor, and hardly any humanity to his fellow-creatures; gave no proofs that
-he loved his country, had a public spirit, or love of the arts, books, or
-literature;� and asks, in summing up all this, “What must we judge of his
-motives, the principle he acted from, when after his death we find that he
-left but a mere trifle among his (poor) relatives who stood in need, and
-left an immense treasure to a university that did not want it?�</p>
-
-<p>“Radcliffe was not endowed with a kindly nature,� says another writer.
-“Meade, I love you,� he is represented as saying to his fascinating
-adulator, “and I will tell you a secret to make your fortune. Use all
-mankind ill.�</p>
-
-<p>Radcliffe had practised what he preached. Though mean and penurious, he
-could not brook meanness in others.</p>
-
-<p>The rich miser, John Tyson, approximating his end, magnanimously resolved
-to pay two of his three million guineas to Dr. Radcliffe for medical
-advice. The miserable old man, accompanied by his wife, came up to London,
-and tottered into the doctor’s office at Bloomsbury Square.</p>
-
-<p>“I wish to consult you, sir; here are two guineas.�</p>
-
-<p>“You may go, sir,� exclaimed Radcliffe.</p>
-
-<p>The old miser had trusted that he was unknown, and he might pass for a
-poor wretch, unable to pay the five guineas expected from the wealthy, as
-a single consultation fee.</p>
-
-<p>“You may go home and die, and be d&mdash;&mdash;d; for the grave and the devil are
-ready for Jack Tyson of Hackney, who has amassed riches out of the public
-and the tears of orphans and widows.�</p>
-
-<p>As the miserable old man turned away, Radcliffe exclaimed, “You’ll be a
-dead man in less than ten days.�</p>
-
-<p>It required little medical skill, in the feeble condition of the old man,
-in order to give this correct prognosis.</p>
-
-<p>Radcliffe was the Barnum of doctors. “<i>Omnia mutantur, et nos mutamus in
-illis</i>,� exclaimed Lotharius the First. But<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span> that “all things are changed,
-and we change with them,� did not apply to medical humbugs during the
-seventeenth and eighteenth centuries&mdash;no, nor in the nineteenth century,
-as we will show, particularly in our articles on Quacks and Patent
-Medicines.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 450px; height: 331px;"><img src="images/img003.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">THE MISER OUTWITS HIMSELF.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>The requisites essential to success are amusingly described by a writer of
-the former time, as follows:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p><i>First.</i> A decent black suit, and (if your credit will stretch so far), a
-plush jacket, not a pin the worse if threadbare as a tailor’s cloak&mdash;it
-shows the more reverend antiquity.</p>
-
-<p><i>Second.</i> You must carry a caduceus, or cane, like Mercury, capped with a
-civet-box (or snuff-box like Sir Richard’s), and must walk with becoming
-gravity, as if in deep contemplation upon an arbitrament between life and
-death.</p>
-
-<p><i>Third.</i> You must hire convenient lodgings in a respectable neighborhood,
-with a hatch<a name='fna_1' id='fna_1' href='#f_1'><small>[1]</small></a> at the door; have your<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span> reception-room hung with pictures
-of some celebrated physicians, ancient historical scenes, and anatomical
-plates, and the floor belittered with gallipots and half-empty bottles.
-Any sexton will furnish your window with a skull, in hope of your custom.</p>
-
-<p><i>Fourth.</i> Let your desk never be without some old musty Greek and Arabic
-authors, and on your table some work on anatomy, open at a picture page,
-to amuse, if not astonish spectators, and carelessly thrown on the same a
-few gilt shillings, to represent so many guineas received that morning as
-fees.</p>
-
-<p><i>Fifth.</i> Fail not to patronize neighboring alehouses, which may, in turn,
-recommend you to inquirers; and hold correspondence with all the nurses
-and midwives whose address you may obtain, to applaud your skill at
-gossiping.</p>
-
-<p><i>Sixth.</i> Be not over modest in airy pretensions, not forgetting that
-loquaciousness and impudence are essentials to gaining a fool’s
-confidence. In case you are naturally backward in language, or have an
-impediment of speech, you are recommended to persevere in a habit of
-mysterious and profound silence before patients, rendered impressive by
-grave nods and ahems.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Early French Physicians.</span></p>
-
-<p>From what meagre biographies we have of French doctors of the past, we are
-led to believe that, as at the present time, the humbugs outnumbered the
-honest medical practitioners. In the days of Clovis and the great
-Charlemagne, before the power of Rome was broken, before Russia was a
-nation, and when England was subject to the caprices of many masters,
-there were many surgeons employed in the armies of these kings, but the
-priests and wizards were the physicians to the great public. The surgeons
-possessed all the knowledge there was to be attained at that distant day;
-yet they made the heart, not the brain, the centre of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span> thought, and “the
-palace of the soul,� knew little of anatomy, and nothing of the
-circulation of the blood.</p>
-
-<p>The physicians of later periods held court positions by flattery, not by
-merit. This was particularly true up to and inclusive of the reign of
-“<span class="smcap">Louis le Grand</span>.� Those who attended as physicians upon the court of this
-remarkable monarch of France for seventy-two years, received no stipend
-whatever, except the honor of holding so exalted a position as court
-physician to such a mighty ruler; and, notwithstanding the outside
-practice that this elevated station necessarily brought them, but few
-physicians could long bear the enormous expense attending that position.</p>
-
-<p>Louis resided at a distance from his capital. His changes of residence
-were continual, and not without a design, and chiefly made for the purpose
-of creating and maintaining a number of artificial distinctions. By these
-he kept the court in a state of constant anxiety, expense, and
-expectation. When the next proposed change was announced, he had made it
-the fashion for courtiers to accompany him,&mdash;to Versailles, to St.
-Germain, or Marly,&mdash;and to occupy apartments near him, and the
-extravagance and magnificence in which he made it incumbent upon his
-followers to appear, with the frequent prescribed changes, rendered it too
-expensive a position for a man to sustain, unless possessed of a previous
-ample fortune. The surgeons of the armies were paid for their services.</p>
-
-<p>Both Drs. O’Meara and Antommarchi have testified to Napoleon’s scepticism
-in medicine and distrust of physicians. But “surgeons are godlike,� he is
-represented as saying, and upon all worthy he bestowed the “Legion of
-Honor.�</p>
-
-<p>At St. Helena, Dr. Antommarchi was endeavoring to persuade the emperor to
-take a simple remedy which he had prepared for him.</p>
-
-<p>“Bah!� exclaimed Napoleon, “I cannot; it is beyond my power to take
-medicine.�</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span>“I pray your majesty to try,� entreated the doctor.</p>
-
-<p>“The aversion I have for the slightest preparation is inconceivable. I
-have exposed myself to the dangers of the battle-field with indifference;
-I have seen death without betraying emotion; but to take medicine, I
-cannot,� was his reply.</p>
-
-<p>Madame Bertrand, who was present, tried also to persuade the emperor to
-take the physician’s prescription.</p>
-
-<p>“How do you manage to take all those abominable pills and drugs, Madame
-Bertrand, which the doctor is continually prescribing for you?� asked the
-emperor.</p>
-
-<p>“O, I take them without stopping to think about it,� was her reply; “and I
-beg your majesty will do the same.�</p>
-
-<p>Still the dying man shook his head, and appealed to General Montholon, who
-gave a similar answer.</p>
-
-<p>“Do you think it will relieve me from this oppression, doctor?� he finally
-asked of Dr. Antommarchi.</p>
-
-<p>“I do, my dear sire; and I entreat your majesty to drink it.�</p>
-
-<p>“What is it?� asked Napoleon, eying the glass suspiciously.</p>
-
-<p>“Merely some orange water,� was the reply.</p>
-
-<p>“Give it me, then;� and the emperor seized the cup and drank the contents
-at one draught.</p>
-
-<p>“The emperor has no faith in medicine, and never takes any,� said Las
-Cases, in his memoirs.</p>
-
-<p>About the year 1723, a man sprang into notice in Paris, styling himself
-Dr. Villars. He claimed relationship to the Duke Louis Hector Villars, and
-the Abbe Pons is represented as saying that “Dr. Villars is superior to
-the great marshal, Louis Hector. The duke kills men,&mdash;the doctor prolongs
-their existence.�</p>
-
-<p>Villars declared that his uncle, who had been killed at the age of one
-hundred years, and who might, but for his accidental death, have lived
-another half century, had confided to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span> him the secret of his longevity.
-It consisted of a medicine, which, if taken according to directions
-accompanying each bottle, would prolong the life of the fortunate
-possessor <i>ad infinitum</i>.</p>
-
-<p>Villars employed several assistants to stand on the corners of the
-streets, and who, when a funeral was seen passing, would exclaim,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“Ah! if the unfortunate deceased had but taken Dr. Villars’ nostrum, he
-might now be riding in his own carriage, instead of in a hearse.�</p>
-
-<p>“Of course,� says our authority, “the rabble believed the testimony of
-such respectable and <i>disinterested</i> appearing witnesses, and made haste
-to obtain the doctor’s nostrum&mdash;and instructions.� And here is where the
-laugh comes in.</p>
-
-<p>The patient received positive instructions to live temperately, to eat
-moderately, bathe daily, to avoid all excesses, to take steady and
-moderate exercise, to rise early, and, in fact, to obey all the laws of
-nature. Of course those who persevered in these instructions were greatly
-benefited thereby, and the dupes, attributing their recovery to the use of
-the nostrum, lauded the doctor.</p>
-
-<p>The medicine, put up in a small bottle, carefully labelled, and sold for
-the modest sum of five francs, consisted of water from the River Seine,
-tinctured with a quantity of spirits of nitre. A few were wise enough to
-see the trick, but most people believed in the efficacy of the nostrum.</p>
-
-<p>Unfortunately for Villars, he intrusted his secret to another, the humbug
-leaked out, and Othello’s occupation was gone; but not, however, until
-Villars had amassed a large fortune from the credulity of the public.</p>
-
-<p>This brings to mind a story, the truth of which can be vouched for,
-respecting a New England doctor. His labels contained the following
-instructions:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“The doctor charges you to take care of the health God has given you. In
-eating and exercise be moderate. Avoid<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span> bad habits and excesses that sap
-the life from you. Use no salt pork, newly-baked fine bread, vinegar,
-coffee, strong tea, or spirits while taking this medicine. ’Tis not in the
-power of man to restore you to health unless you regard these directions.�</p>
-
-<p>“What do you think of this?� asked the editor of a journal of Dr. P.,
-former professor of H&mdash;&mdash; College, presenting a vial of the high dilution,
-as the medicine was, labelled as above.</p>
-
-<p>“All very well,� the doctor replied, after having read the label; “for if
-the vial contains nothing but water, with just sufficient alcohol to keep
-it, a strict observance of these directions might restore you to health.�</p>
-
-<p>“You have treated my case for a long time, doctor, and have never given me
-such instructions. Pray why don’t <i>you</i> get up something similar?�</p>
-
-<p>“Well, what was his reply?� I asked, as the editor hesitated.</p>
-
-<p>“O, he has not yet informed me.�</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">American Humbugs.</span></p>
-
-<p>Humbug is not necessarily synonymous with ignorance. So far from it, that
-doubtless a very perfect and successful man in the art of humbugging must
-be educated to his business.</p>
-
-<p>The following true statement is a case in point: A physician of New York,
-now in excellent standing, who “rolls in riches,� and whose own carriage
-is drawn by a span of horses that Bonner once might have envied, was but a
-few years ago as poor as a church mouse, and as unknown as Scripture. He
-had graduated with honors in Transylvania University, opened an office in
-a country town, where his knowledge and talents were unappreciated, and
-which place he abandoned after a twelve months’ patient waiting for a
-practice which did not come. He had become poorer every month, and but<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span>
-for the kind assistance of early friends, must have perished of want.</p>
-
-<p>“Either it is distressingly healthy here, or the good people are afraid to
-trust their lives and healths in the hands of an inexperienced physician,�
-he remarked to a friend to whom he applied for means for a new start
-elsewhere.</p>
-
-<p>“And where will you try your luck next?� inquired his friend.</p>
-
-<p>“In New York city.�</p>
-
-<p>“In New York city?�</p>
-
-<p>“Yes, and I shall there succeed,� he exclaimed, with great determination.</p>
-
-<p>“Well, I hope in my heart of hearts you will,� was his friend’s reply, as
-he kindly loaned him the required sum of money.</p>
-
-<p>Had his friend asked the advice of a third party before making the loan,
-doubtless the answer would have been something like the following, though
-it was respecting another case:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“Dr. J. wants me to loan him some money for thirty days; do you suppose he
-will refund it?�</p>
-
-<p>“What! lend him money?� was the reply. “He return it? No, sir; if you lend
-that man an emetic he would never <i>return</i> it.�</p>
-
-<p>On his borrowed funds,&mdash;neither principal nor interest of which his kind
-friend ever expected him to be able to return,&mdash;the doctor entered the
-great metropolis. He hired a house in a respectable locality, and hung out
-his sign. During his long quiet days in the country village he had read a
-great deal, and was “up to the tricks� of his predecessors. He had
-particularly posted himself on the ways and means resorted to by some of
-those physicians, of whom we have already made brief mention, for getting
-into practice.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span></p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 600px; height: 394px;"><img src="images/img004.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">COMMENCING A PRACTICE IN NEW YORK.</p>
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span>“What avails it that I know as much as other physicians who have entered
-upon a practice? What does my diploma amount to if I have no patients?�
-he asked himself over and again. Practice was now his want, and this is
-the way he obtained it. Having read of a celebrated physician, who kept
-his few patients a long time in waiting, under pretence that he was
-preoccupied by the many who fortunately had preceded, our young physician
-adopted that great man’s tactics. For want of patients to keep in waiting,
-he hired some decently dressed lackeys to apply regularly at his front
-door, at specified times, and wait till the colored servant admitted them,
-one at a time. Each was passed out after a half hour’s supposed
-consultation, and the next admitted. The neighbors and others passing,
-seeing patients continually in waiting, some with a hand, a foot, face, or
-other parts bound up, were led to read his sign, and soon a <i>bona fide</i>
-patient applied, who, in turn, was kept waiting a long time,
-notwithstanding the young doctor’s anxiety to finger a real medical fee
-from his first New York patient. Others followed, the lackeys were
-dismissed, and the physician’s practice was established. His merit kept
-what his shrewdness had obtained.</p>
-
-<p>Cannot the reader avouch for the reputed extensive rides of some country
-doctor, who, without a known patient, harnessed his bare-ribbed old horse
-to his crazy gig, and drove furiously about the country, returning by a
-roundabout way, without having made a single professional visit, thereby
-humbugging the honest country people into a belief that he had innumerable
-patients in his route?</p>
-
-<p>To quite another class of humbugs belongs the subject of the following
-sketch. I have had the pleasure of meeting him but twice&mdash;may I never meet
-him again. The first interview was at the board of a country hotel.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 450px; height: 328px;"><img src="images/img005.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">GRACE BEFORE MEAT.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>I had arrived late at evening by rail, and ordered a light supper. When
-the tea-bell had summoned me, I found a large, phlegmatic individual
-seated opposite at the table, who possibly had arrived by the same
-conveyance as myself.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span> His person was quite repulsive. He was probably
-fifty years of age, his eyes watery and restless, his thin stock of
-hair&mdash;indicating a corresponding poverty of brain&mdash;black, streaked by
-gray, was stuck back professionally (!) over a low bump of veneration, and
-high organs of firmness and self-esteem, which, with a Roman nose, large,
-protruding under jaw, and wide, open mouth, gave him a striking
-appearance, at least. But what was most observable was his thin, uneven,
-scraggy whiskers, uncombed, and besmeared by tobacco juice and bits of the
-weed, drooling down over their uncertain length, over waistcoat, and so
-out of sight below the table. His coat sleeves had evidently been
-substituted for a handkerchief when too great a surplus of tobacco juice
-obstructed his face. He bent his great, watery eyes over towards me, and
-opened the ball by suggesting that I ask a blessing over the food so
-bountifully and temptingly laid before us. Having too much compassion on
-the present exhausted state of my stomach to disregard its immediate<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span>
-demands, and too little confidence in the veneration of my <i>vis-a-vis</i> to
-return the request, I went to eating, while he closed one eye, keeping the
-other on a plate of hot steak just placed before him by the table girl. I
-have since been strongly reminded of him by the character “Bishopriggs,�
-in Wilkie Collins’s book, “<i>Man and Wife</i>.� I think, however, for
-hypocrisy, the present subject exceeded Bishopriggs. Having wagged his
-enormous jaw a few times, by way of grace, he began eating and conversing
-alternately.</p>
-
-<p>“I take it, friend, you’re a railroad conductor, coming in so late,� he
-suggested, between mouthfuls.</p>
-
-<p>“No,� was my brief reply.</p>
-
-<p>“Perhaps, cap’n, you’re a drummer. Sell dry or wet goods?�</p>
-
-<p>“No.�</p>
-
-<p>“A newspaper man?�</p>
-
-<p>I merely shook my head.</p>
-
-<p>“Then a patent medicine vender?�</p>
-
-<p>“No!� emphatically.</p>
-
-<p>“Not a minister,� he asserted. “Perhaps a doctor,� he perseveringly
-continued.</p>
-
-<p>“Yes, sir; I am a physician.�</p>
-
-<p>“O! ah! indeed! I am rejoiced to learn it. Give me your hand, sir,� he
-exclaimed, rising and reaching his enormous palm across the table. “I am
-rejoiced, as I said before, to meet a brother.�</p>
-
-<p>“A <i>brother</i>!� I repeated, with unfeigned surprise and disgust.</p>
-
-<p>“Yes, a brother! I, too, am a doctor. I have the honor,� etc., for the
-next ten minutes, while I hastened to finish my supper.</p>
-
-<p>His last interrogation was what a college boy would call a “stunner.�</p>
-
-<p>“<i>Do you think, sir, that the Fillopian ducks are the same in a male as
-they are in a female?</i>�</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span>[Dr. S., a quack living in Winsted, Conn., once said to an educated
-physician, that he sometimes found difficulty in introducing a female
-catheter on account of the “prostrate� (meaning <i>prostate</i>) gland,&mdash;which
-exists only in the male!]</p>
-
-<p>I saw him once after the above interesting interview. He entered the drug
-house of Rust, Bird, &amp; Brother, Boston, just as I was about to go out. I
-could not refrain from turning my attention towards him, as I recognized
-his stentorian voice.</p>
-
-<p>“Have you got any <i>Bonyset arbs</i>?� was all I waited to hear. I
-subsequently learned that he was known in Vermont and part of New York
-State by the <i>sobriquet</i> of “Dr. Pusbelly.�</p>
-
-<p>The following story respecting “Dr. Pusbelly,� related in my hearing by a
-stage-driver, is in perfect keeping with the character of the man, as he
-impressed me in my first interview at the country hotel.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Dr. Pusbelly.</span></p>
-
-<p>One sunny day in autumn I had occasion to take a long journey “away down
-in Maine,� when and where there was no railroad. I was seated on the
-outside of a four-horse stage-coach, with three or four other passengers,
-one of whom was a lady, who preferred riding in that elevated station to
-being cramped up inside the coach with eight persons, besides sundry
-babies, a poodle dog, and a parrot.</p>
-
-<p>“Sam,� our driver, was a sociable fellow, full of pleasant stories,&mdash;and
-Medford rum, though he was considered a perfectly safe Jehu. The greatest
-drawback to his otherwise agreeable yarns was his habit of swearing.
-Notwithstanding the presence of the lady, he would occasionally round his
-periods and emphasize his sentences with an expletive which had better
-have been omitted.</p>
-
-<p>“Can’t you tell a story just as well without swearing, Sam?� I inquired.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span>“O, no; it comes second natur. Why, cap’n, everybody swears sometimes. And
-that reminds me&mdash;Git up, Jerry� (to the horse). “There was an old doctor,
-Pill&mdash;Pilgarlic, I called him, on account of his pills, and the strong
-effluvia from his cataract mouth. He was up round Champlain, where I drove
-before the d&mdash;d railroads ruined the great stage business. Well, he was as
-religious as a cuss,&mdash;that ain’t swearin’, is it, cap’n? Well, he came
-round there pill-peddling, you see, and in order to make the old women
-believe in his (expletive) medicines&mdash;�</p>
-
-<p>“Don’t swear, Sam. You can tell the story better without. Come, try,�
-interrupted a passenger, with a twinkle of fun in his expressive eyes.</p>
-
-<p>“Who’s telling this story,&mdash;you or me?� exclaimed Sam, with a wink.</p>
-
-<p>“Yes, he talked pills by Bible doctrine, swore his essences by the blood
-of the Lamb, the &mdash;&mdash; old hypocrite. I knowed he was a blamed old
-hypocrite, for I had to drive him round every onct in a while, and he
-never failed, in season and out of place, to exhort me to seek salvation,
-and a new heart, and pure understanding, while, all the time, the filthy
-tobacco juice slobbered all over his filthier mug, and down his scattering
-whiskers;&mdash;now and then one, like the scattering trees in yonder
-field,&mdash;all over his vest; and his coat sleeves were as bad, from frequent
-drawing across his face. Yes, he said, ‘Jesus,’ but he meant pills. He
-said, ‘Get wine and milk, without money and without price,’ but he meant,
-buy his essences, <i>with</i> money. The old gals went crazy over him, and the
-pill market was lively. The louder he prayed and exhorted, the faster he
-sold his medicines.</p>
-
-<p>“One Sunday afternoon he wanted me to shy him over the lake; so, taking
-his Hem-book and Bible in his coat pockets, and his two tin trunks of
-medicine, he followed me to the shore. He seated his great carcass in the
-starn of the boat, while I rowed him over the lake. All the way he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span>
-slobbered tobacco juice; and gabbled his religion at me, while
-occasionally I swore mine back at him.</p>
-
-<p>“When we got over, I jumped out, and told him to set steady till I hauled
-the boat up further; but he didn’t mind, and rose up in the starn with his
-kit, a tin trunk in each hand, just as I gave the craft a yerk, when over
-backwards he went kerflounce into the water,&mdash;carcass, trunks, Bible,
-pills, and essences, all into the lake. O, the d&mdash;&mdash;! You ought to have
-seen him. Up he came, puffin’ and blowin’ like a big whale! Then I fished
-him out with the boat-hook, and went for his trunks. No sooner had he
-reached <i>terror firmer</i> than, blowin’ the surplus water and tobacco out of
-his throat, <i>he commenced swearin’ at me</i>. Religion went by the board! O,
-Jerusalem! Such a blessing as he gave me I never before heard. I knowed it
-was pent up in him, the &mdash;&mdash; old sinner, and he only wanted the occasion
-to let it out. The bath done it! It was the cussidest baptism I ever
-witnessed in the hull course of my life.�</p>
-
-<p>“Was he called Dr. Pusbelly?� I suggested, at the close of the narrative.</p>
-
-<p>“Yes, that was his name; but I called him Old Pilgarlic, blame him.�</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center">“<span class="smcap">Professor Brewster.</span>�</p>
-
-<p>When I lived in Hartford, Conn., some years ago, there resided in that
-city a black man, then somewhat noted as a “seer� among various classes of
-whites, as well as blacks, and who resides there still, and has since
-become quite famous. In what category to place this man,&mdash;Professor
-Brewster, so called,&mdash;it is perhaps a little difficult to determine;
-whether among “clairvoyants,� “animal magnetizers,� “natural doctors,�
-“fortune-tellers,� or what, or all, it must be admitted that he is a
-“character,� and wields great influence among certain classes. Nature made
-him a superior man of his race, and what thorough, early education
-might have done for him, we are left to conjecture. So noted is
-Professor Brewster, that I have thought him a proper subject for comment
-here, as a living illustration of what a man of subtle genius may
-accomplish, though wholly without “book learning,� or other approved
-instruction, in the field of medicine.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span></p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 600px; height: 393px;"><img src="images/img006.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">OLD PILGARLIC TAKES A BATH.</p>
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span>A reliable friend of mine has gathered the following facts and statements
-in regard to Professor Brewster, and taken pains to secure the
-accompanying engraving of the veritable professor, as he appears in the
-year 1872.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img007.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">PROFESSOR BREWSTER.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>“The full name of this remarkable man, now residing in Hartford, Conn., is
-Worthington Hooker Erasmus Brewster, commonly called, by those who venture
-on familiarity, ‘Worthy’ Brewster, for short. Worthy is of full medium
-height, powerfully built, and well knitted together. His head is very well
-moulded, and also extremely large, but not disproportionally large for his
-massive shoulders. He was born of ‘poor but honest’ (though undoubtedly
-black)<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span> parents, in the town of Granby, Conn., on the 21st day of January,
-1812.</p>
-
-<p>“The boy Worthy, at the age of six years, went with his mother (his father
-having died) and her new husband to the hills of Litchfield County to
-live, and was there brought up to youth’s estate, enjoying the
-opportunities of education at the district school in what is now <i>West</i>
-Winsted. The places of the birth and early rearing of Professor Brewster
-are fixed beyond question, which fact will, it is hoped, forbid the
-contention of other towns, and of ‘seven cities,’ or more, over the
-question, after he shall have passed away. Worthy was not attracted to
-literature and science, however. He seemed to spurn these, as unworthy of
-his natural gifts to waste their time upon. But he learned to read, and
-can write a ‘fair hand.’ Seeing no special need of being cramped and
-confined by the narrow rules of spelling, Worthy has invented a style of
-orthography for himself, and writes a compact, forcible, and even masterly
-letter.</p>
-
-<p>“But we must not linger on the details of his youth. Suffice it that
-Worthy grew up a powerful lad, and became the conquering athlete of all
-the region about his home. No man, of hundreds who tried, was able to
-successfully wrestle with him. The strongest men were no match for him. He
-was as agile as he was powerful, and to this day retains great elasticity
-of foot and limb. He was a mysterious fellow also, and, before he was
-sixteen years old, was regarded by his friends and acquaintances, of
-African descent, especially, as a sort of prophet, while many whites
-considered him a necromancer, and people all about declared he ‘had the
-devil in him’ to no ordinary extent. Worthy claimed, in those days, to
-‘see visions,’ and many stories are current among his contemporaries
-regarding his then being able to ‘charm snakes,’ and do other miraculous
-things. Abundant witnesses, such as they are, can now be found ready to
-take their oaths that they have seen Worthy, ‘with their<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span> own eyes,’
-perform his miracles. It is certain that these believe in him.</p>
-
-<p>“At the age of twenty Worthy went to New York city, where (in Lawrence
-Street) he lived for the period of a year, successfully practising the art
-of fortune-telling. While there Worthy first discovered his powers as a
-‘mesmerizer,’ or magnetic physician. A school-girl, knowing that Worthy
-‘practised the healing art’ somewhat, and suffering intensely with a
-toothache, jeeringly asked him, ‘Why can’t you think of something to cure
-my toothache?’ Whereupon Worthy clapped his hands to her head, and
-vigorously drew them down her cheeks, half in fun, half seriously, when,
-to his astonishment, he found that all his (sound) teeth ached terribly,
-while she declared that the pain had left hers. Such is his story; and it
-is by no means an improbable one; for animal magnetism is a fixed fact
-(however it may be analyzed or defined), and diseases are often
-‘magnetically’ alleviated; and Worthy, with his powerful body and superb
-health, as well as native force of intellect, may be as naturally gifted,
-as a magnetic operator, as even Mesmer himself. Indeed, the writer is
-inclined to believe that Worthy’s great power over many people is largely
-due to his superior vital forces.</p>
-
-<p>“Worthy now turned his attention considerably to diseases, but returned to
-Litchfield County for a while. At the age of twenty-six, he resolved ‘to
-see more of the world,’ and in the capacity of steward embarked at New
-Haven on board the brig Marshal, Captain Brison, freighted with horses,
-and bound for a long trading voyage to the Island of Demarara, and to
-South America, where they coasted during the winters, and took in coffee,
-etc., in exchange for their cargo. Worthy was gone from home on this
-voyage two years and two months, during which time he learned many
-mysteries. He was a foreign traveller now, and his polite and
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span>professional education may be said to have at that time become
-‘finished.’</p>
-
-<p>“Since then Worthy has practised medicine to considerable extent, told
-fortunes, ‘looked’ (in a crystal) for stolen property, and, if we are to
-believe half of what is attested by many astute people (such as police
-detectives, etc.), has, by force of his great sagacity, or in some way (he
-would say, through clairvoyance), managed to achieve great success in
-ferreting out lost or stolen treasures, and bringing thieves to grief.</p>
-
-<p>“People of all classes in society visit him with their troubles of mind
-and body. But the major part of his clientage is females. The wives and
-accomplished daughters of wealthy men, as well as poor and ignorant women,
-come from distant parts of the country to consult him, and a great number
-of the first ladies of Hartford also consult him. Worthy carries on the
-business of a ‘chair-seater,’ partly to occupy his time during the
-intervals of his divinations, and partly to provide an excuse for cautious
-persons to call on him for consultations. Those who consult him do so
-mostly regarding secret matters, and they pretend to visit him to engage
-him to seat chairs!</p>
-
-<p>“He is consulted in respect to all sorts of diseases, and by unsuccessful,
-perplexed, or doubting lovers; by husbands whose wives have absconded, and
-who are anxious to call them back; by wives in regard to their wandering
-husbands; by hosts of superstitious people (and these are found in all
-classes), who believe themselves ‘possessed by devils,’ or demons. He is
-expected to cast out the devils (and he does so as surely as most doctors
-cure imaginary diseases). People who have lost property, and officers of
-the law in search of stolen goods, consult him; and bachelors and widowers
-in want of wives, and countless maids (both old and young), anxious to get
-married, visit him and receive his sweet consolations, or mourn over the
-ill luck which he prognosticates<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span> for them. His correspondence is large. A
-hasty glance through several hundred letters in ‘Professor Brewster’s’
-possession convinced the writer that the amount and character of the
-superstition and ignorance which exist in these days, in our very midst,
-are probably but little conjectured by the more cultivated classes. They
-are indeed astounding, but are not confined, as we have before intimated,
-to the wholly illiterate classes. People competent to write letters with
-grammatical precision, and observing what would ordinarily be called an
-‘excellent business style,’ at least, in their composition, consult the
-professor; and so successful is Worthy in his diagnoses of and
-prescriptions for various diseases, that many of his patients write him
-letters overflowing with gratitude, while others voluntarily and
-admiringly attest his skill as a ‘seer.’ To what talent, ‘gift,’ or what
-secret of good luck, ‘Professor Brewster’ owes the many successes he wins
-(even though he may fail ten times more often than he succeeds), we
-cannot, of course, decide. But certain it is that he, with all his claims
-to a knowledge of the ‘occult,’ exists, practises his arts, and through a
-period of years has retained his old patients, and the postulants before
-his supposed demigodship, while adding constantly to their number. In this
-he is a remarkable man. He has accumulated quite a respectable property,
-and is decidedly one of the ‘institutions’ of the enlightened and
-cultivated city of Hartford.</p>
-
-<p>“It should be remarked here that Worthy was, during the late civil war, a
-true patriot. He was attached to the twenty-ninth regiment Connecticut
-Volunteers, under Colonel Wooster (a ‘colored’ regiment), and was ‘gone to
-the war’ over two years. His powers as a ‘clairvoyant,’ or ‘fore-seer,’
-served him in the war, and he ‘always knew what was coming,’ he says. As a
-part of the curious history of the war, serving to show how little the
-people of the North understood, in the first years of the contest, that
-they<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span> were fighting for a great humanitary end,&mdash;the abolition of chattel
-slavery,&mdash;it may be noted here, that Worthy wrote to Governor Buckingham,
-in August, 1862, proposing to raise a black regiment, and the governor, by
-his secretary, replied to Worthy’s proposition, that he then did ‘not deem
-it expedient,’&mdash;which fact institutes a comparison between the judgments
-of the governor and Worthy, not uncomplimentary to the latter.�</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img008.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
-<hr style="width: 50%;" />
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span></p>
-<h2><a name="II" id="II"></a>II.</h2>
-<p class="title">APOTHECARIES.</p>
-
-<div class="note"><p class="hang"><small>FIRST MENTION OF.&mdash;A POOR SPECIMEN.&mdash;ELIZABETHAN.&mdash;KING JAMES I.
-[VI.].&mdash;ALLSPICE AND ALOES, SUGAR AND TARTAR EMETIC.&mdash;WAR.&mdash;PHYSICIAN
-VS. APOTHECARY.&mdash;IGNORANCE.&mdash;STEALING A TRADE.&mdash;A LAUGHABLE
-PRESCRIPTION.&mdash;“CASTER ILE.�&mdash;MODERN DRUG
-SWALLOWING.&mdash;MISTAKES.&mdash;“STEALS THE TOOLS ALSO.�&mdash;SUBSTITUTES.&mdash;“A
-QUID.�&mdash;A “SMELL� OF PATENT MEDICINES.&mdash;“A SAMPLE CLERK.�</small></p></div>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p>There are few occupations wherein Old Time has wrought so few changes as
-in that of the apothecary’s. What it was four hundred years ago it is
-to-day! Who first invented its weights, measures, and symbols, I am unable
-to say; but it is a fact that they remain the same as when first made
-mention of by the earliest writers on the subject.</p>
-
-<p>Drop into the “corner drug store,�&mdash;and what corner has none!&mdash;examine the
-balances, the tables of weights and measures, the graduating glass, the
-signs for grains, scruples, ounces, and pounds, and you will find them the
-same as those used by the earliest known <i>medical</i> apothecaries, by those
-of the Elizabethan period, or when King Lear (Lyr) said, “Give me an ounce
-of civet, good apothecary, to sweeten my imagination; there’s money for
-thee.�</p>
-
-<p>The money has changed; <i>names</i> of drugs are somewhat altered; some new
-ones have taken the place of old ones; prescriptions changed in quality;
-but quantities, and modes of expressing them, are unchanged.</p>
-
-<p>“In the middle ages an apothecary was the keeper of any shop or warehouse,
-and an officer appointed to take charge of a magazine.�&mdash;<i>Webster.</i></p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span>We have good grounds for supposing this to have been the case in the time
-of the rebuilding of the wall of Jerusalem, more that two thousand years
-ago. Nehemiah informs us that the son of an apothecary assisted in
-“fortifying Jerusalem unto the broad wall.� Was not this the office of an
-overseer, or “keeper of a magazine�? Various artisans were employed to
-perform certain portions of the work, and who more appropriate or better
-qualified to oversee the rebuilding of the fortifications than “an officer
-appointed to take charge of the magazines�?</p>
-
-<p>One more reference we draw from Scripture,<a name='fna_2' id='fna_2' href='#f_2'><small>[2]</small></a> viz., in Exodus xxxvii. 29,
-where “the holy anointing oil� (not for medicine, but for the tabernacle),
-“and the pure incense of sweet spices� (not medical), “were made according
-to the work [book?] of the apothecary.� This, however, no more implies
-that the said “apothecary� was a medical man, a dispenser of physic, or
-versed in medical lore, than that the maker of shewbread (Lev. xxiv. 5)
-was necessarily a pharmacist.</p>
-
-<p>In fact, there seems to have been no need of an apothecary, as medicine
-dispenser, until about the latter part of the thirteenth century.</p>
-
-<p>The oldest known work on compounding medicines was written by Nicolaus
-Mynepsus, who died in the commencement of the fourteenth century.</p>
-
-<p>The first apothecaries were merely growers and dispensers of herbs, and
-were but a poor and beggarly set.</p>
-
-<p>Shakspeare’s delineation of the “<i>poor apothecary of Mantua</i>,� in Romeo
-and Juliet, so completely answers the description of the whole “kit� of
-druggists of the times, that we may be pardoned in quoting him.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span>Romeo says,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p class="poem">“I do remember an apothecary,&mdash;<br />
-And hereabouts he dwells,&mdash;whom late I noted<br />
-In tattered weeds, with overwhelming brows,<br />
-Culling of simples (herbs). Meagre were his looks;<br />
-Sharp misery had worn him to the bones;<br />
-And in his needy shop a tortoise hung,<br />
-An alligator stuffed, and other skins<br />
-Of ill-shaped fishes; and about his shelves<br />
-A beggarly account of empty boxes,<br />
-Green earthen pots, bladders, and musty seeds;<br />
-Remnants of packthread, and old cakes of roses,<br />
-Were thinly scattered to make up a show.<br />
-Noting this penury, to myself I said,&mdash;<br />
-‘An’ if a man did need a poison now,<br />
-Whose sale is present death in Mantua,<br />
-Here lives a caitiff wretch would sell it him.’<br />
-<strong><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span></strong><br />
-What, ho! apothecary!<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><i>Apothecary.</i> Who calls so loud?</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><i>Romeo.</i> Come hither, man! I see that thou art poor.</span><br />
-Hold! There is forty ducats! [$80.] Let me have<br />
-A dram of poison.<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><i>Apoth.</i> Such mortal drugs I have, but Mantua’s law</span><br />
-Is death to any he that utters them.<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><i>Rom.</i> Art thou so bare, and full of wretchedness,</span><br />
-And fear’st to die? Famine is on thy cheeks;<br />
-Need and oppression starveth in thy eyes;<br />
-Upon thy back hangs ragged misery;<br />
-The world is not thy friend, nor the world’s law;<br />
-The world affords no law to make thee rich;<br />
-Then be not poor, but break it, and take this.<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><i>Apoth.</i> My poverty, but not my will, consents.�</span></p>
-
-<p>When we behold the opulent druggists of the present day, we can hardly
-credit the fact that for nearly two hundred years the apothecary of Mantua
-was a fair specimen of the wretches who represented that now important
-branch of business.</p>
-
-<p>The physician was the master, the apothecary the slave!</p>
-
-<p>The following were among the rules prescribed by Dr.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span> Bullyn for the
-“apothecary’s life and conduct� during the Elizabethan era:&mdash;</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot"><p>“1. He must serve God, be clenly, pity the poore.</p>
-
-<p>2. Must not be suborned for money to hurt mankind.</p>
-
-<p>4. His garden must be at hand, with plenty of herbes, seedes, and
-rootes.</p>
-
-<p>5. To sow, set, plant, gather, preserve, and keepe them in due time.</p>
-
-<p>6. To read Dioscorides, to learn ye nature of plants and herbes.
-(Dioscorides published a work on vegetable remedies about 1499, in
-Greek. The <i>translation</i> was referred to.)</p>
-
-<p>8. To have his morters, stilles, pottes, filters, glasses, and boxes
-cleane and sweete.</p>
-
-<p>12. That he neither increase nor diminish the physician’s bill
-(prescription), nor keepe it for his own use.</p>
-
-<p>14. That he peruse often his wares, that they corrupt not.</p>
-
-<p>15. That he put not in <i>quid pro quo</i> (i. e., substitute one drug for
-another.) (Would not this be excellent advice to some of the
-apothecaries of the present day?)</p>
-
-<p>16. That he meddle only in his vocation.</p>
-
-<p>18. That he delight to reade Nicolaus Mynepsus, and a few other
-ancient authors.</p>
-
-<p>19. That he remember his office is only ye physician’s <i>cooke</i>.</p>
-
-<p>20. That he use true waights and measures.</p>
-
-<p>21. That he be not covetous or crafty, seeking his own lucre before
-other men’s help and comfort.�</p></div>
-
-<p>We may see the wisdom evinced by the author of the above advice,
-especially in articles Nos. 2, 12, and 21, when we know of a druggist’s
-clerk of modern times, who, having stolen the physician’s prescriptions
-intrusted to his care, started out on borrowed capital, and, putting them
-up as his own wonderful discoveries, advertised them extensively, until
-his remedies, for all diseases which flesh is heir to, are now sold
-throughout the entire universe!</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span>As the doctors were accustomed to retain their most valuable recipes, and
-put up the medicines themselves, selling them as nostrums, and because of
-the heavy percentage demanded by them for those intrusted to the
-apothecaries, and the small profit accruing from the sale of medicines at
-the time, the poor wretched “cookes� were necessarily kept in extreme
-poverty. So, in order to eke out a living, the apothecaries were also
-grocers and small tradesmen. As at the present day, they were not required
-to possess any knowledge of medical science beyond the reading of a few
-books “relating to the nature of plants,� hence very little honor or
-profit could accrue from the business alone.</p>
-
-<p>Grocers kept a small stock of drugs, sometimes in a corner by themselves,
-but not unusually thrown about and jumbled amongst the articles kept for
-culinary and other purposes. As mineral medicines became more generally
-used, these were also added to the little stock, and not unfrequently was
-some poisonous substance dealt out by a green clerk (as is often the case
-nowadays) to the little errand girl, sent in haste for some culinary
-article.</p>
-
-<p>Allspice and aloes, sugar and tartar emetic, lemon essence and laudanum,
-were thrown promiscuously together into drawers, or upon the most
-convenient shelves, and you need not go far into the country to witness
-the same lamentable spectacle in the enlightened nineteenth century. The
-apothecary gave the most attention, as now, to the exposition and sale of
-those articles which sold the most readily, and returned the greatest
-profit. All druggists at present sell cigars and tobacco, at the same time
-not unusually posting up a conspicuous sign&mdash;</p>
-
-<p class="center"><strong>NO SMOKING ALLOWED HERE.</strong></p>
-
-<p>The following is a case in point:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p><i>Druggist.</i> Smoking not allowed here, sir.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span><i>Customer.</i> Why! I just bought this cigar from you.</p>
-
-<p><i>Druggist.</i> Well, we also sell emetics and cathartics. That does not
-license customers to sit down and enjoy them on the premises.</p>
-
-<p>In the thirteenth year of the reign of James I. of England (and James VI.
-of Scotland) the apothecaries and grocers were disunited. The charter,
-however, placed the former under the control of the College of Physicians,
-who were endowed with the arbitrary powers of inspecting their shops and
-wares, and inflicting punishments for alleged neglects, deficiencies, and
-malpractices.</p>
-
-<p>The physicians knew so little, that the apothecaries soon were enabled to
-cope with them; “and before a generation had passed away the apothecaries
-had gained so much, socially and pecuniarily, that the more prosperous of
-them could afford to laugh in the face of the faculty, and by the
-commencement of the next century they were fawned upon by the younger
-physicians, and were in a position to quarrel with the old, which they
-soon improved.�</p>
-
-<p>As it was a common occurrence for patients to apply at the apothecary’s
-for a physician, the former either recommended the applicant to one who
-favored him, <i>or else prescribed for the patient himself</i>. The
-promulgation of this fact was the declaration of war with the old
-physicians, who heretofore had done their best to keep down the
-apothecaries. The former threatened punishment, as provided by law; the
-latter retaliated, by refusing to call them in to consult on difficult
-cases. “Starving graduates of Oxford and Cambridge, with the certificate
-of the college in their pockets, were imbittered by having to trudge along
-on foot and see the mean ‘medicine mixers,’ who had scarce scholarship
-enough to construe a prescription, dashing by in their carriages.�</p>
-
-<p>The war progressed,&mdash;Physician <i>vs.</i> Apothecary,&mdash;and the rabble joined.
-Education sided with the physicians, interest sided with the
-apothecaries.</p>
-
-<p class="poem"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span>
-“So modern ’pothecaries taught the art,<br />
-By doctors’ bills, to play the doctors’ part;<br />
-Bold in the practice of mistaken rules,<br />
-Prescribe, apply, and call their masters fools.�</p>
-
-<p>To circumvent the apothecaries, a dispensary was established in the
-College of Physicians, where prescriptions were dispensed at cost. While
-this proceeding served to lessen the apothecary’s income for a time, it
-could not greatly benefit the prescribing physician. The former might
-parallel his case with Iago, and say of the physician, he</p>
-
-<p class="poem">“Robs me of that which not enriches him,<br />
-And makes me poor indeed.�</p>
-
-<p>Physicians were divided into two classes,&mdash;Dispensarians and
-Anti-dispensarians. Charges of ignorance, extortion, and of double-dealing
-were preferred on both sides. The dispensary doctors charged their
-opponents with playing into the hands of the apothecaries by prescribing
-enormous doses, often changing their prescriptions uselessly to increase
-the druggists’ revenues and <i>their own percentage</i>! On the other hand, the
-dispensarians were accused of charging a double profit on prescriptions
-whenever the ignorance of the patient, respecting the value of drugs,
-would admit of the extortion.</p>
-
-<p>Had the physicians been united, the apothecaries would have had to
-succumb; but a divided house must fall, and the apothecaries won the day.</p>
-
-<p>A London apothecary, having been prosecuted by the college for prescribing
-for a patient without a regular physician’s advice, carried the case up to
-the House of Lords, where he obtained a verdict in his favor; and another
-apothecary, Mr. Goodwin, whose goods had been seized by some dispensary
-doctors, having obtained a large sum for damages, which being considered
-test cases, the doctors from this time (about 1725) discontinued the
-exercise of their authority over the apothecaries.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span>Thus emancipated from the supervision of the physicians, the apothecaries
-began to feel their own importance, and most of them prescribed boldly for
-patients, without consulting a doctor. The ignorance of many of them was
-only equalled by their impudence. It is not unusual, at the present day,
-for not only apothecaries, but their most ignorant clerks, to prescribe
-for persons, strangers perhaps, who call to inquire for a physician; and
-cases, too, where the utmost skill and experience are required.</p>
-
-<p>The following amusing anecdote is sufficiently in accordance with facts
-within our own knowledge to be true, notwithstanding its <i>seeming</i>
-improbability:&mdash;</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Anecdote of Macready, the Actor.</span></p>
-
-<p>The handwriting of Macready, the actor, was curiously illegible, and
-especially when writing a pass to the theatre. One day, at New Orleans,
-Mr. Brougham obtained one of these orders for a friend. On handing it to
-the latter gentleman, he asked,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“What is this, Brougham?�</p>
-
-<p>“A pass to see Macready.�</p>
-
-<p>“Why, I thought it was a physician’s prescription, which it most
-resembles.�</p>
-
-<p>“So it does,� acquiesced Mr. Brougham, again looking over the queer
-hieroglyphics. “Let us go to an apothecary’s and have it made up.�</p>
-
-<p>Turning to the nearest druggist’s, the paper was given to the clerk, who
-gave it a careless glance, and proceeded to get a vial ready.</p>
-
-<p>With a second look at the paper, down came a tincture bottle, and the vial
-was half filled. Then there was a pause.</p>
-
-<p>Brougham and his friend pretended not to notice the proceedings. The clerk
-was evidently puzzled, and finally broke down, and rang for the
-proprietor, an elderly and pompous looking individual, who issued from the
-inner sanctum. The<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span> clerk presented the paper, the old dispenser adjusted
-his eye-glasses, examined the document for a few seconds, and then, with a
-depreciating expression,&mdash;a compound of pity and contempt for the
-ignorance of the subordinate,&mdash;he proceeded to fill the vial with some
-apocryphal fluid, and, giving it a professional “shake up,� duly corked
-and labelled it.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 445px; height: 450px;"><img src="images/img009.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">THE “FREE PASS� PRESCRIPTION.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>“A cough mixture, gentlemen,� he said, with a bland smile, as he handed it
-to the gentleman in waiting, “and a very excellent one, too. Fifty cents,
-if you please.�</p>
-
-<p>In a copy of the London Lancet, 1844, is reported Dr. Graham’s bill. In
-the same number of which is a reply by an apothecary, who asks if “the old
-and respectable class of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span> apothecaries are to be forever abolished;� and
-he quotes the assertion from one of the articles in the bill: “Is it not a
-notorious fact that the masses of chemists and druggists know nothing of
-the business in which they are engaged?� Dr. Graham certainly ought to
-have known.</p>
-
-<p>Druggists are liable to make mistakes,&mdash;as are all men; but carelesness
-and ignorance, one or both, are usually to be found at the bottom of the
-fatalities so common in the dispensing of prescriptions. I know an old and
-experienced druggist who sold a pot of extract belladonna for extract
-dandelion. In the same city, on the same street, I know another who was
-prosecuted for dispensing opium for taraxicum, which carelesness caused
-the death of two children. The following mistake was less fatal, but only
-think of the poor lady’s feelings!</p>
-
-<p>A servant girl was sent to a certain drug store we know of, who, in a
-“rich brogue,� which might have caused General Scott’s eyes to water with
-satisfaction, and his ears to lop like Bottom’s after his transformation
-by the mischievous fairy, she asked for some “caster ile,� which she
-wished effectually disguised.</p>
-
-<p>“Do you like soda water?� asked the druggist.</p>
-
-<p>“O, yis, thank ye, sir,� was the prompt reply; “an’ limmun, sir, if ye
-plaze; long life to yeze.�</p>
-
-<p>The man then proceeded to draw a glass, strongly flavored with lemon, with
-a dose of oil cast upon its troubled waters.</p>
-
-<p>“Drink it at one swallow,� said he, presenting it to the smiling Bridget.
-This she did, again thanking the gentlemanly clerk.</p>
-
-<p>“What are you waiting for?� he inquired, seeing that she still lingered.</p>
-
-<p>“I’m waitin’ for the caster ile, sir,� said the girl.</p>
-
-<p>“O! Why you have just taken it,� replied the soda-drug man.</p>
-
-<p>“Och! Murther! It was for a sick man I wanted it, an’ not meself at all.�</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span></p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 450px; height: 324px;"><img src="images/img010.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">THE WRONG PATIENT.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>While there have been great changes in the drug trade during the last
-fifty years, necessary to the increasing demand for drugs, the
-establishment of wholesale houses and some specialties, and in cities, the
-substitution of cigars, soda water, patent medicines, etc., for groceries
-and provisions, the dispensing apothecary is nearer to what he was
-hundreds of years ago, as we asserted at the commencement of this chapter,
-than any other professional we know of. The paraphernalia of the shop is
-nearly the same. There is no improvement in pot, in jar, in tables, in
-spatula; the old, ungainly mortar is not <i>substituted</i> by a mill; the
-signs of ounces and drachms remain the same, though so near alike that
-they are easily and often mistaken one for the other, and the prescription
-before the dispenser is prefixed by a relic of the astrological symbol of
-Jupiter,&mdash;“the god of medicine to the ancient Greeks and Egyptians,�&mdash;as a
-species of superstitious invocation. In our largest cities even, in the
-shop windows, the mammoth flashing blue bottles, “a relic of empiric
-charlatanry,� still brighten our street corners, and frighten our horses
-at night, as in the days of our forefathers.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span>We intimated that “patent medicines� had added greatly to the trade. This
-we shall treat of under its proper head. Many have arisen from penury to
-affluence, from obscurity to renown, in the drug trade of later years; but
-take away the tobacco trade, the soda fountain, and the outside patent
-nostrums, and wherein would the apothecary now differ from his
-predecessors?</p>
-
-<p>“The Yankees bate the divil for swallowing drugs,� said an Irishman.</p>
-
-<p>“A paddy will take nothing but castor oil,� replied the Yankee.</p>
-
-<p>Yankee or Irish, English or Scotch, French or German, they all rush to the
-drug store for pills, for powder, for whiskey (?), for tobacco, for patent
-medicines, and the druggists flourish.</p>
-
-<p>From the window near which I write this, I overlook a wholesale drug store
-on a “retail street.� The front windows contain only <i>patent medicines</i>,
-and the flashy signs that announce their virtues. Few prescriptions are
-dispensed within. Before the door, piled nearly a story high, I have just
-counted ninety-eight boxes, and some barrels. There are hundreds of these
-drug houses scattered over this city; and every other city of America has
-its quota.</p>
-
-<p>Yes, the Irishman had the right of it; “the Yankees <i>do</i> bate the divil
-for swallowing drugs.� Further, it is my positive opinion that his
-infernal majesty beats a good many of them by the encouragement of their
-purchase; and, kind reader, if you have the ghost of a doubt of the truth
-of our intimation, don’t, I pray, promulgate it, but, like a wise judge,
-withhold your decision until the evidence is in; until you hear our
-exposition of “patent medicines.�</p>
-
-<p>A patient comes to the city for the purpose of consulting some experienced
-physician for a certain complaint. Probably he gets a prescription, with
-instructions to go to a certain respectable druggist or apothecary in town
-to have the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span> necessary medicines put up. Of course a respectable physician
-knows of a reliable apothecary. The patient, in nine cases out of ten,
-desires to retain the prescription, and often does so. He goes to another
-drug store, more convenient, for a second quantity of the same; and now
-let me ask the patient,&mdash;no matter who or where he is,&mdash;did you ever get
-the same kind of medicine, in <i>look</i>, color, quantity, and
-taste,&mdash;all,&mdash;the second time, from the same prescription? I have often
-heard the patient complain that he could not get the same put up at the
-very store where he got the original prescription compounded.</p>
-
-<p>I once was called to visit a lady who was laboring under great
-prostration; “sickness at the stomach,� with constipation.</p>
-
-<p>“What is the disease?� inquired the anxious husband, who had previously
-employed two regular physicians for the case, and discharged them both.</p>
-
-<p>“Nux vomica,� was the reply.</p>
-
-<p>I gathered up three of the vials on the table, and, taking them to the
-designated apothecary’s, I demanded the prescriptions corresponding with
-the numbers on the vials. These were duplicates.</p>
-
-<p>He had made a mistake! that’s all. He had compounded an ounce of tincture
-of nux instead of a drachm! Not that a drachm could be taken at a dose
-with impunity; but whatever the dose was, the patient was continually
-taking eight times as much as the physician intended to prescribe.</p>
-
-<p>Another reason of the failure of the prescribing physician meeting the
-expectation anticipated, is the use of old and inert medicines.</p>
-
-<p>Where a man’s treasure is, his heart is also. An apothecary’s interest is
-more in nostrums, tobacco, <i>soda</i>, etc., than in medicines; how, then, can
-he follow the excellent advice of Dr. Bullyn, in article “14, that he
-peruse often his wares, that they corrupt not.�</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span>But the greatest cheat is in the “substituting� business; the “<i>quid pro
-quo</i>.� Horse aloes may be bought for ten cents a pound. Podophyllin costs
-seventy-five cents an ounce. They each act as cathartic, and I have
-detected the former put in place of the latter. How is the physician to
-know the cheat? How is the patient to detect it? Perhaps the former
-<i>stuff</i>&mdash;aloes&mdash;may have given the victim the hemorrhoids. One dose may be
-quite sufficient to produce that distressing disease. This only calls for
-another prescription! So it looks a deal like a “you tickle me, and I’ll
-tickle you� profession, at best. Thus the patient becomes disgusted, and
-resorts to our next&mdash;“Patent Medicines.�</p>
-
-<p>In closing this chapter on Apothecaries, I must relate a little scene to
-which I was an eye-witness. Meantime, let me say to the “respectable
-druggist,� Don’t be offended if I have slighted you by leaving you out, in
-my description of the various kinds of apothecaries enumerated above.
-There is a respectable class of druggists whom I have not mentioned, and
-doubtless you belong to that order.</p>
-
-<p>On going home one evening, not long since, I observed several boys, loud
-and boisterous, surrounding a lamp post. As I approached, I heard, among
-the cries and vociferations,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“Howld to it, Jimmy; it’ll be the makin’ of ye.�</p>
-
-<p>I drew nearer, and discovered a sickly-looking lad leaning up against the
-lamp post, with the stump of a cigar in his mouth, and a taller boy
-endeavoring to hold him up by his jacket collar, while a short-set urchin
-was stooping behind to assist in the task. They were evidently endeavoring
-to teach “Jimmy� to smoke. The poor fellow was deathly sick, and faintly
-begged to be let off.</p>
-
-<p>“O, no, no. Stick to it, Jimmy; it’ll be the makin’ of yese,� was
-repeated.</p>
-
-<p>“Sure, ye’ll niver do for a <i>sample clark in a potecary shop</i>,� said
-another, as he blew a cloud of smoke from his own cigar stump into the
-pale face of the victim to modern accomplishments.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span></p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 600px; height: 393px;"><img src="images/img011.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">A CANDIDATE FOR THE PRESIDENCY.</p>
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span>“General Grant smokes, Jimmy, and you’ll never be a man if you don’t
-learn,� added a voice minus the brogue.</p>
-
-<p>A policeman here interfered, and rescued the wretched “Jimmy.�</p>
-
-<p>“What is a sample clerk, my lad?� I asked of the boy who had used the
-above expression.</p>
-
-<p>“O, sir, he’s the divil o’ the ’potecary shop; the lean, pimply-faced
-urchin what tastes all the pizen drugs for the boss. If his constitution
-is tough enough to stand it the first year, then they makes a clark of him
-the nixt.�</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img012.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
-<hr style="width: 50%;" />
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span></p>
-<h2><a name="III" id="III"></a>III.</h2>
-<p class="title">PATENT MEDICINES</p>
-
-<p class="center">“Expunge the whole.�&mdash;<span class="smcap">Pope.</span><br />
-“These are terrible alarms to persons grown fat and wealthy.�&mdash;<span class="smcap">South.</span></p>
-
-<div class="note"><p class="hang"><small>PATENT MEDICINES.&mdash;HOW STARTED.&mdash;HOW MADE.&mdash;THE WAY IMMENSE FORTUNES
-ARE REALIZED.&mdash;SPALDING’S GLUE.&mdash;SOURED SWILL.&mdash;SARSAPARILLA
-HUMBUGS.&mdash;S. P. TOWNSEND.&mdash;“A DOWN EAST FARMER’S STORY.�&mdash;“WILD
-CHERRY� EXPOSITIONS.&mdash;“CAPTAIN WRAGGE’S PILL� A FAIR SAMPLE OF THE
-WHOLE.&mdash;HOW PILL SALES ARE STARTED.&mdash;A SLIP OF THE PEN.&mdash;“GRIPE
-PILLS.�&mdash;SHAKSPEARE IMPROVED.&mdash;H. W. B. “FRUIT SYRUP.�&mdash;HAIR
-TONICS.&mdash;A BALD BACHELOR’S EXPERIENCE.&mdash;A LUDICROUS STORY.&mdash;A WOLF IN SHEEP’S CLOTHING.</small></p></div>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p>In the former chapters are shown some of the causes which led to the
-present immense <i>demand</i> for proprietary nostrums, or patent medicines.
-The conflicting “<i>isms</i>� and “<i>opathies</i>� of the medical fraternity, their
-quarrels and depreciations of one and another, their expositions of each
-other’s weaknesses, frauds, and duplicities, disgusted the common people,
-who finally resorted to the irregulars, to astrologers, and humbugs of
-various pretensions, and to the few advertised nostrums of those earlier
-periods.</p>
-
-<p>“While there is life there is hope,v and invalids would, and still
-continue to seize upon almost any promised relief from present pain and
-anticipated death. Speculative and unprincipled men have seldom been
-wanting, at any period, to profit by this misfortune of their
-fellow-creatures, and to play upon the credulity of the afflicted, by
-offering various compounds warranted to restore them to perfect health. At
-first such medicines were introduced by the owner going<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span> about personally
-and introducing them; subsequently, by employing equally unprincipled
-parties, of either sex, to go in advance, and tell of the wonderful cures
-that this particular nostrum had wrought upon them. And to listen to these
-lauders, one would be led to suppose that they had been afflicted with all
-the ills nameable, adapting themselves to the parties
-addressed,&mdash;yesterday, the gout; to-day, consumption, etc.,&mdash;regardless of
-truth or circumstance. The physician created the apothecary. The two
-opened the way for the less principled patent medicine vender.</p>
-
-<p>“Are not physicians and apothecaries sometimes owners of patent
-medicines?� is the inquiry raised. Yes, certainly; but the true physician,
-or honorable apothecary, is then sunk in the nostrum manufacturer. Next we
-have the mountebanks. These were attendant upon fairs and in the
-marketplaces, who, mounted upon a bench,&mdash;hence the name,&mdash;cried the
-marvellous virtues of the medicine, and, by the assistance of a <i>decoy</i> in
-the crowd, often drove a lucrative business.</p>
-
-<p>Finally, upon the general introduction of printing, physician, apothecary,
-mountebank, speculator, all seized upon the “power of the press,� to more
-extensively introduce their “wonderful discoveries.�</p>
-
-<p>When you notice the name&mdash;and, O, ye gods, such names as are patched up to
-attract your attention!&mdash;to a new medicine, systematically and extensively
-advertised in every paper you chance to pick up, you wonder how any profit
-can accrue to the manufacturer of the compound after paying such enormous
-prices as column upon column in a thousand newspapers must necessarily
-cost. “If the articles cost anything at the outset,� you go on to
-philosophize, “how can the manufacturers or proprietors make enough profit
-to pay for this colossal advertising?� The solution of the problem is
-embodied in your inquiry. They cost nothing, or as near to nothing as
-possible for worthless trash to cost.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span> This is the secret of the fortunes
-made in advertised medicines.</p>
-
-<p>When we <i>know</i> the complete worthlessness of the majority of the articles
-that are placed before the public,&mdash;yea, their more than worthlessness,
-for they are, many of them, highly injurious to the user,&mdash;the fact of
-their enormous consumption is truly astonishing. The drug-swallowing
-public has grown lean and poor in proportion as the manufacturers and
-venders of these villanous compounds have grown fat and wealthy.</p>
-
-<p>Said the proprietor of “Coe’s Cough Balsam� and “Dyspepsia Cure� to the
-author, “If you have got a <i>good</i> medicine, one of value, don’t put it
-before the public. I can advertise <i>dish water</i>, and sell it, just as well
-as an article of merit. It is all in the advertising.� As the above
-preparations were advertised on every board fence, and in every newspaper
-in New England at least, did his assertion imply that those articles were
-mere “<i>dish water</i>�?</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center">“<span class="smcap">Spalding’s Glue.</span>�</p>
-
-<p>I was informed by a Mr. Johnston, who engineered the advertising of the
-preparation, that it cost but one eighth of a cent per bottle. If you want
-to make a liquid glue, dissolve a quantity of common glue in water at
-nearly boiling point, say one pound of glue to a gallon of water; add an
-ounce or less of nitric acid to hold it in solution, and bottle. The more
-glue, the stronger the preparation.</p>
-
-<p>The pain-killers and liniments are the most costly, on account of the
-alcohol necessary to their manufacture; and, in fact, the principal item
-of expense in all liquid medical articles put up for public sale, is in
-the alcohol essential to their preservation against the extremes of heat
-and cold to which they may be subjected.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span></p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Soured Swill.</span></p>
-
-<p>There is an article which “smells to heaven,� the acidiferous title of
-which glares in mammoth letters from every road-side, wherein the
-audacious proprietor obviates the necessity of alcohol for its preparation
-or preservation. It is merely fermented slops&mdash;“dish water,� minus the
-alcohol. Take a few handfuls of any bitter herbs, saturate them in any
-dirty pond water,&mdash;say a barrel full,&mdash;add some nitric acid, and bottle,
-without straining! Here you have <i>Vinegared Bitters</i>! The cheeky
-proprietor informs the “ignorant public� that, “if the <i>medicine</i> becomes
-sour (ferments), as it sometimes will, being its ‘nature so to do,’ it
-does not detract from its medical virtues.� True, true! for it never
-possessed “medical virtues.�</p>
-
-<p>The cost of this villanous decoction is <i>scarcely half a cent a bottle</i>!
-Soured swill! It is recommended to cure fifty different complaints! It
-sells to fools for “one dollar a bottle,� and will go through one like so
-much quicksilver. “Try a bottle,� if you doubt it. The “dodge� is in
-advertising it as a temperance bitter. Having no alcoholic properties, it
-in no wise endangers the user in becoming addicted to <i>stimulants</i>.</p>
-
-<p>Sarsaparilla humbugs are only second to the above. But a few years since
-an immense fortune was realized by a New York speculator in human flesh on
-a “Sarsaparilla� which contained not one drop of that all but useless
-medicine; nor did it possess any real medical properties whatever.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">The Down East Farmer’s Story.</span></p>
-
-<p>To illustrate this point, we introduce the following conversation between
-the author and a “down east� farmer, in 1852:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“It’s all a humbug, is saxferilla!� exclaimed the old farmer, rapping his
-fist “hard down on the old oaken table.�</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span>“Why, no; not <i>all</i> sarsaparilla; you must admit&mdash;�</p>
-
-<p>“No difference. I tell you it’s a pesky humbug, all of it.�</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 450px; height: 354px;"><img src="images/img013.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">“IT’S ALL A HUMBUG.�</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>Withdrawing his tobacco pipe from his mouth, he laid it on the table, and
-standing his thumb end on the board, as a “point of departure,� he turned
-to me, and said,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“Why, in the medical books it has been analyzed, and they say it’s nothin’
-but sugar-house molasses, cheap whiskey, and a sprinkling of essence of
-wintergreen and saxafras. Git the book, and see ‘Townsend’s Saxferilla,’
-and that is the article! But they are all alike. Let me tell you about the
-great New York saxferilla speculation. One man, S. P. Townsend, started a
-compound like this here&mdash;nothin’ but molasses and whiskey, and essence to
-scent it nicely. When he had got it advertised from Texas to the Gut of
-Canser (Canso, Provinces), from the Atlantic to the Specific, and was
-about to make his fortune off on it, some<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span> speculators see he was doin’ a
-good thing, and, by zounds! they put their heads together, and their
-dollars, to have a finger in the pie; and they done it. This is the way
-they circumscribed him. They hired an old fellow,&mdash;I believe he was a
-porter in a store when they found him,&mdash;named Jacob Townsend, and a right
-rough old customer he was, all rags and dirt, hadn’t but one reliable eye,
-and a regular old rumsucker.</p>
-
-<p>“Well, they fixed him up with a fine suit of clothes, and, by zounds! they
-palmed him off for the original, Simon Pure saxferilla man. So they
-advertised him as the real ginuine Townsend, and started a ‘saxferilla,’
-with his ugly old face on the bottles, and said that the other was
-counterfeit, you see; and there he sat, with his one eye cocked on the
-crowd of customers that crowded round to see the ginuine thing, you know.
-So they blowed the other saxferilla as counterfeit, and finding in a store
-a bottle or two that had <i>fomented</i>, they made a great noise about the
-bogus saxferilla, ‘busting the bottles,’ and all that, and again asserting
-that the Jacob Townsend was the true blue, Simon Pure; and it took, by
-zounds! Yes, the public swallowed the lie, the saxferilla, old Jacob, and
-all. I hearn that both the parties made a fortune on it.�</p>
-
-<p>Stopping to take a whiff at his neglected pipe, he resumed:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“Saxferilla is all a humbug!�</p>
-
-<p>S. P. Townsend, as is well known, amassed a fortune, at one time, on the
-profits of the “sarsaparilla,� put up, as the reader may remember, in
-huge, square, black bottles. The Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol.
-XL. p. 237, says, “Townsend’s Sarsaparilla, Albany, N. Y., in nearly black
-bottles,� is “composed of molasses, extract of roots <i>or</i> barks (sassafras
-bark is better than essence, because of body and color), and <i>probably</i>
-senna and sarsaparilla. <span class="smcap">A. A. Hayes</span>, State Assayer.�</p>
-
-<p>The medical properties are all a <i>supposition</i>, even though<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span> Dr. Hayes was
-<i>hired</i> to give the analysis of it to the public, in the interest of the
-proprietor, and consequently he would not detract from its <i>supposed</i>
-merits.</p>
-
-<p>Pectorals, wild cherry preparations, etc., are cheaply made. Oil of
-almonds produces the <i>cherry</i> flavor, <i>hydrocyanic acid</i> (prussic acid, a
-virulent poison) and morphine, or opium, constitute the medical
-properties. I have not examined the exception to the above.</p>
-
-<p><i>Pills.</i> The bitter and cathartic properties of nearly every pill in the
-market,&mdash;advertised preparation,&mdash;whether “mandrake,� “liver,�
-“vegetable,� or what else, are made up from aloes, the coarsest and
-cheapest of all bitter cathartics. One is as good as another. You pay your
-money, however; you can take your choice.</p>
-
-<p>One holds the ascendency in proportion to the money or cheek invested by
-the owner in its introduction. A great Philadelphia pill, now sold in all
-the drug stores of America, was introduced by the following “dodge�: The
-owner began small. He took his pills to the druggists, and, as he could
-not sell an unknown and unadvertised patent pill, he left a few boxes on
-commission. He then sent round and bought them up. Their ready sale
-induced the druggists to purchase again, for cash. The proprietor invested
-the surplus cash in advertising their “rapid sale,� as well as their “rare
-virtues,� and by puffing, and a little more buying up, he got them
-started. He necessarily must keep them advertised, or they would become a
-<i>drug</i> in market.</p>
-
-<p>Wilkie Collins, Esq., in “No Name,� has the best written description of
-the <i>modus operandi</i> of keeping a “pill before the people,� and I cannot
-refrain from quoting Captain Wragge to Magdalen in this connection.</p>
-
-<p>“My dear girl, I have been occupied, since we last saw each other, in
-slightly modifying my old professional habits. I have shifted from moral
-agriculture to medical agriculture. Formerly I preyed on the public
-sympathy; now I prey on<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span> the public’s stomach. Stomach and sympathy,
-sympathy and stomach. The founders of my fortune are three in number:
-their names are Aloes, Scammony, and Gamboge. In plainer words, I am now
-living&mdash;on a pill! I made a little money, if you remember, by my friendly
-connection with you. I made a little more by the happy decease
-(<i>Requiescat in pace</i>) of that female relative of Mrs. Wragge’s. Very
-good! What do you think I did? I invested the whole of my capital, at one
-fell swoop, in advertising a pill, and purchased my drugs and pill boxes
-on credit. The result is before you. Here I am, a grand financial fact,
-with my clothes positively paid for, and a balance at my banker’s; with my
-servant in livery, and my gig at the door; solvent, popular, and all on a
-pill!�</p>
-
-<p>Magdalen smiled.</p>
-
-<p>“It’s no laughing matter for the public, my dear; they can’t get rid of me
-and my pill; they must take us. There is not a single form of appeal in
-the whole range of human advertisement which I am not making to the
-unfortunate public at this moment. Hire the last novel&mdash;there I am inside
-the covers of the book; send for the last song&mdash;the instant you open the
-leaves I drop out of it; take a cab&mdash;I fly in at the windows in red; buy a
-box of tooth-powders at the chemists&mdash;I wrap it up in blue; show yourself
-at the theatre&mdash;I flutter down from the galleries in yellow. The mere
-titles of my advertisements are quite irresistible. Let me quote a few
-from last week’s issue. Proverbial title: ‘A pill in time saves nine.’
-Familiar title: ‘Excuse me, how is your stomach?’ Patriotic title: ‘What
-are the three characteristics of a true-born Englishman?&mdash;his hearth, his
-home, and his pill;’ etc.</p>
-
-<p>“The place in which I make my pill is an advertisement in itself. I have
-one of the largest shops in London. Behind the counter, visible to the
-public through the lucid medium of plate glass, are four and twenty young
-men, in white aprons, making the pill. Behind another, four and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span> twenty
-making the boxes. At the bottom of the shop are three elderly accountants,
-posting the vast financial transactions accruing from the pill, in three
-enormous ledgers. Over the door are my name, portrait, and autograph,
-expanded to colossal proportions, and surrounded, in flowing letters, the
-motto of the establishment: ‘<span class="smcap">Down with the Doctors</span>.’ Mrs. Wragge
-contributes her quota to this prodigious enterprise. She is the celebrated
-woman whom I have cured of indescribable agonies, from every complaint
-under the sun. Her <i>portrait</i> is engraved on all the wrappers, with the
-following inscription: ‘Before she took the pill,’ etc.�</p>
-
-<p>[In this country we are familiar with the ghostly looking picture of a
-man, the said proprietor of a medicine, “before he took the pill� (aloes),
-and “after;� the “after� being represented by a ridiculous extreme of
-muscular and adipose tissue.]</p>
-
-<p>“Captain Wragge’s� is the style in which most medicines are placed before
-the public. We take up our morning journal: its columns are crowded by
-patent medicine advertisements. We turn in disgust from their glaring
-statements, and attempt to read a news item. We get half through, and find
-we are sold into reading a puff for the same trashy article. We take a
-horse-car for up or down town, and opposite, in bold and variegated
-letters, the persistent remedy (?) stares you continually in the face. We
-enter the post office: the lobbies are employed for the exposition,
-perhaps sale, of the patent medicines. We open our box: “O, we’ve a large
-mail to-day!� we exclaim; when, lo! half of the envelopes contain patent
-medicine advertisements, which have been run through the post office into
-every man’s box in the department. And so it goes all day. We breakfast on
-aloes, dine on quassia, sup on logwood and myrrh, and sleep on morphine
-and prussic acid!</p>
-
-<p>“The humors of the press� sometimes inadvertently tell you the truth
-respecting this or that remedy advertised in their columns.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span>A religious newspaper before me says of a proprietary medicine,
-“Advertised in another column of our paper: It is a <i>hell-deserving</i>
-article.� Probably the copy read, “Well-deserving article.�</p>
-
-<p>Said a certain paper, “A correspondent, whose duty it was to ‘read up’ the
-religious weeklies, has concluded that the reason of those journals
-devoting so much space to patent medicine announcements is, ‘that the
-object of religion and quackery are similar&mdash;both prepare us for another
-and better world.’�</p>
-
-<p>The proprietor of a pill,&mdash;not Captain Wragge,&mdash;threatened recently to
-prosecute a New Hampshire newspaper publisher for a puff of his “Gripe
-Pills.�</p>
-
-<p>As every fool, as well as some wise people, read the “personals� in the
-papers, an occasional notice of a tooth-paste, bitter, or tonic is
-inserted therein, thus:&mdash;</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot"><p>“<span class="smcap">Augustus Apolphus</span>: I will deceive you no longer. My conscience
-upbraids me. Those pearly white teeth you so much admire are false!
-false! They were made by Dr. Grinder, dentist. I use Dr. Scourer’s
-tooth-paste, which keeps them clean and white. ‘O, how sharper than a
-serpent’s thanks it is to have a toothless child.’</p>
-
-<p><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><span class="smcap">Susan Jane.</span>�</span></p></div>
-
-<p>Great and public men are sometimes induced or inveigled into recommending
-a patent medicine. In London, one Joshua Ward, a drysalter, of Thames
-Street, about the year 1780, introduced a pill, composed of the usual
-ingredients,&mdash;aloes and senna,&mdash;which, owing to some benefit he was
-supposed to have derived from their use, Lord Chief Baron Reynolds was led
-to praise in the highest terms. The result of this high dignitary’s
-patronage was to give prominence to Ward and his pills, which subsequently
-sold for the fabulous price of 2s. 6d. a pill! General Churchill added his
-praise, and Ward was called as a physician to prescribe for the king.
-Either in consequence, or in spite of the treatment, the royal malady
-disappeared, and Ward was <i>re</i>warded with a solemn vote of the House of
-Commons protecting him from<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span> the interdiction of the College of
-Physicians. In addition to the liberal fee, he asked for and obtained the
-privilege of driving his carriage through St. James Park! Notwithstanding
-the pill, Reynolds died of his disease not long afterwards.</p>
-
-<p>Henry Fielding subscribed to the wonderful efficacy of “Tar Water,� a
-nostrum of his day, but died of the disease for which it was recommended.</p>
-
-<p>Some time prior to 1780 there was published in the newspapers a list of
-the patent nostrums, or advertised remedies, in London, which numbered
-upwards of two hundred.</p>
-
-<p>Now there are known, in the United States alone, to be upwards of three
-hundred differently named hair preparations.</p>
-
-<p>Dr. Head, of whom we have made mention, “realized large sums from
-worthless quack nostrums,� while at the same time another popular
-physician, with a Cambridge (England) diploma in his office, was
-proprietor of a “gout mixture,� which sold at the shops for two shillings
-a bottle.</p>
-
-<p>Some of these shameless scoundrels, owners of advertised nostrums, with
-little or no sense of honor, have published the recommendations of great
-men, without the knowledge or permission of the parties whose names were
-so falsely affixed to their worthless stuff. A New York quack recently
-used the name of Henry Ward Beecher in this manner. Mr. Beecher published
-him as a thief and forger of his name, which only served to bring the
-doctor (?) into universal notice. Only to-day I read his impudent
-advertisement in a newspaper, with Mr. Beecher’s name affixed as
-reference. If you prosecute one of the villains for issuing false
-certificates, even for forging your own name, it does him no great injury,
-you get no satisfaction, and in the end it only serves to call public
-attention to a worthless article, thereby increasing its sale.</p>
-
-<p>In the London <i>Medical Journal</i> of 1806, Dr. Lettsom attacked and exposed
-a “nervous cordial,� stating that it was a deleterious article; “that it
-had killed its thousands;�<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span> and further asserted that Brodum, its
-proprietor, was a Jewish knave, having been a bootblack in Copenhagen, and
-a wholesale murderer. Brodum at once brought an action against the
-proprietor of the <i>Journal</i>, laying the damages at twenty-five thousand
-dollars. Brodum held the advantage, and the <i>Journal</i> proprietor asked for
-terms of settlement. Brodum’s terms were not modest. He, through his
-attorney, agreed to withdraw the action provided the name of the author
-was revealed, and that he should whitewash the quack in the next number of
-the <i>Journal</i>, over the same signature! Dr. Lettsom consented to these
-terms, paid the lawyers’ bills and costs, amounting to three hundred and
-ninety pounds, and wrote the required puff of Brodum and his nostrum.</p>
-
-<p><span class="smcap">Soothing Syrups</span>, nervous cordials, etc., owe their soothing properties to
-opium, or its salt&mdash;morphine.</p>
-
-<p>From “<span class="smcap">Opium and the Opium Appetite</span>,� by Alonzo Calkins, M. D., we are
-informed that an article sold as “Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup,� for
-children teething, contains nearly <i>one grain of the alkaloid</i> (morphine)
-<i>to each ounce of the syrup</i>! Taking one teaspoonful as the dose (that is,
-one drachm), and there being eight drachms to the ounce, consequently
-about one eighth of a grain of morphine is given to an infant at a dose!
-Do you wonder it gives him a <i>quietus</i>? Do you wonder that the mortality
-among children is greatly on the increase? that so many of the darling,
-helpless little innocents die from dropsy, brain fever, epileptic fits,
-and the like?</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Fruit Syrups for Soda Water.</span></p>
-
-<p>Perhaps you take yours “plain.� No! Then you may want to know how the pure
-fruit syrup, which sweetens and flavors the soda, is made. The “soda�
-itself is a very harmless article.</p>
-
-<p><span class="smcap">Butyric Ether</span> is usually taken for a basis. Butyric ether is manufactured
-from rancid butter, old rotten cheese, or<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span> Limburger cheese. The latter is
-the “loudest,� and affords the best flavor to the ether. The cheese is
-treated with sulphuric acid. Old leather is known to give it a
-particularly fine flavor. Any old boots and shoes will answer.</p>
-
-<p><span class="smcap">Pineapple Syrup</span> is made from butyric and formic ether. The latter is
-manufactured from soap or glycerine. Sulphuric acid and red ants will do
-as well.</p>
-
-<p><span class="smcap">Strawberry</span> is made of twelve parts of butyric ether and one of acetic
-ether, alcohol, and water. Color with cochineal&mdash;a bug of the tick
-species, from Mexico. Sometimes a little real strawberry is added, but it
-is not deemed essential.</p>
-
-<p><span class="smcap">Raspberry</span> is made from the same articles. If convenient, the druggist adds
-a little raspberry jam or syrup. If not, color a little deeper, add some
-strawberry, and change the label to raspberry.</p>
-
-<p><span class="smcap">Vanilla Syrup</span> is made of Tonqua beans, such as boys sell on the street.</p>
-
-<p><span class="smcap">Peach</span> is made from bitter almonds. <span class="smcap">Wild Cherry</span> the same.</p>
-
-<p><span class="smcap">Nectar</span> is formed by a compound of various syrups and Madeira wine. You can
-easily make the Madeira of neutral spirits, sugar, raisins, and logwood to
-color it.</p>
-
-<p><span class="smcap">Sarsaparilla.</span> Take the cheapest and nastiest molasses obtainable. Strain
-it to remove dead bees, sticks, cockroaches, etc. Flavor with essence
-sassafras and wintergreen. Little extract sarsaparilla will do no harm if
-added to the mixture. It is very harmless.</p>
-
-<p><span class="smcap">Lemon</span> is made of citric acid and sugar.</p>
-
-<p><span class="smcap">Coffee</span> is made mostly of chiccory, burnt livers, sometimes a little coffee
-bean. Horses’ livers are said to be the best, giving it a <i>racy</i> flavor,
-and more <i>body</i>.</p>
-
-<p>“They are all very good,� the vender tells you; he takes his plain,
-however. You see how much cheaper these are than the <i>real</i> fruit syrup
-itself; and as neither you nor I can tell the difference by <i>taste</i>, what
-inducement has the dealer in soda water to use the costlier articles?</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span>I have a friend who sells the “pure syrups,� and I presume the reader has
-also; but I respectfully decline drinking soda water with “pure fruit
-syrups.�</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot"><p class="center">POISONOUS HAIR TONICS AND COSMETICS.</p>
-
-<p>Extract from the report of Professor C. F. Chandler, Ph. D., chemist
-to the Metropolitan Board of Health. This report, which presents the
-results of the examination of a few of the articles in general use,
-was printed in full in the Chemical News (American reprint) for May,
-1870. We present the following list of dangerous preparations, which
-gives the number of grains of lead, etc., in one fluid ounce.</p>
-
-<p class="center">I. <span class="smcap">Hair Tonics, Washes, and Restoratives.</span></p>
-<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table">
-<tr><td>&nbsp;</td>
-    <td>&nbsp;</td>
-    <td><span class="spacer">&nbsp;</span></td>
-    <td align="center">Grains of lead in<br />one fluid ounce.</td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">1.</td>
-    <td>Clark’s Distilled Restorative for the Hair,</td>
-    <td>&nbsp;</td>
-    <td align="center">0.11</td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">2.</td>
-    <td>Chevalier’s Life for the Hair,</td>
-    <td>&nbsp;</td>
-    <td align="center">1.02</td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">3.</td>
-    <td>Circassian Hair Rejuvenator,</td>
-    <td>&nbsp;</td>
-    <td align="center">2.71</td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">4.</td>
-    <td>Ayer’s Hair Vigor,</td>
-    <td>&nbsp;</td>
-    <td align="center">2.89</td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">5.</td>
-    <td>Professor Wood’s Hair Restorative,</td>
-    <td>&nbsp;</td>
-    <td align="center">3.08</td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">6.</td>
-    <td>Dr. J. J. O’Brien’s Hair Restorer, America,</td>
-    <td>&nbsp;</td>
-    <td align="center">3.28</td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">7.</td>
-    <td>Gray’s Celebrated Hair Restorative,</td>
-    <td>&nbsp;</td>
-    <td align="center">3.39</td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">8.</td>
-    <td>Phalon’s Vitalia,</td>
-    <td>&nbsp;</td>
-    <td align="center">4.69</td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">9.</td>
-    <td>Ring’s Vegetable Ambrosia,</td>
-    <td>&nbsp;</td>
-    <td align="center">5.00</td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">10.</td>
-    <td>Mrs. S. A. Allen’s World’s Hair Restorer,</td>
-    <td>&nbsp;</td>
-    <td align="center">5.57</td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">11.</td>
-    <td>L. Knittel’s Indian Hair Tonique,</td>
-    <td>&nbsp;</td>
-    <td align="center">6.29</td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">12.</td>
-    <td>Hall’s Vegetable Sicilian Hair Renewer,</td>
-    <td>&nbsp;</td>
-    <td align="center">7.13</td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">13.</td>
-    <td>Dr. Tebbet’s Physiological Hair Regenerator,</td>
-    <td>&nbsp;</td>
-    <td align="center">7.44</td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">14.</td>
-    <td>Martha Washington Hair Restorative,</td>
-    <td>&nbsp;</td>
-    <td align="center">9.80</td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right">15.</td>
-    <td>Singer’s Hair Restorative,</td>
-    <td>&nbsp;</td>
-    <td align="center"><span style="margin-left: -.5em;">16.39</span></td></tr></table>
-
-<p class="center">II. <span class="smcap">Lotions or Washes for the Complexion.</span></p>
-
-<p class="center"><i>Perry’s Moth and Freckle Lotion.</i></p>
-
-<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table">
-<tr><td>Mercury in solution,</td>
-    <td>2.67</td>
-    <td>gr.</td>
-    <td rowspan="2" valign="middle"><span class="large">}</span></td>
-    <td rowspan="2" valign="middle">equiv. to</td>
-    <td rowspan="2" valign="middle"><span class="large">{</span></td>
-    <td>Corrosive Sub.,</td>
-    <td>3.61</td>
-    <td>gr.</td></tr>
-<tr><td>Zinc in solution,</td>
-    <td>0.99</td>
-    <td align="center">"</td>
-    <td>Sulphate of Zinc,</td>
-    <td>4.25</td>
-    <td align="center">"</td></tr></table>
-
-<p class="center">The sediment contains mercury, lead, and bismuth.</p>
-
-<p class="center">III. <span class="smcap">Enamels for the Skin.</span></p>
-
-<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table">
-<tr><td>&nbsp;</td>
-    <td><span class="spacer">&nbsp;</span></td>
-    <td colspan="2" align="center">Grains of lead in one fluid<br />ounce, after shaking.</td></tr>
-<tr><td>Eugenie’s Favorite,</td>
-    <td>&nbsp;</td>
-    <td align="center">108.94</td>
-    <td>grains.</td></tr>
-<tr><td>Phalon’s Snow-white Enamel,</td>
-    <td>&nbsp;</td>
-    <td align="center">146.28</td>
-    <td><span style="margin-left: 1em;">"</span></td></tr>
-<tr><td>Phalon’s Snow-white Oriental Cream,</td>
-    <td>&nbsp;</td>
-    <td align="center">190.99</td>
-    <td><span style="margin-left: 1em;">"</span></td></tr></table>
-
-<p><span class="smcap">Conclusion.</span>&mdash;It appears from the foregoing,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>1. The <span class="smcap">Hair Tonics</span>, <span class="smcap">Washes</span>, and <span class="smcap">Restoratives</span> contain lead in
-considerable quantities; that they owe their action to this metal, and
-that they are consequently highly dangerous to the health of persons
-using them.</p>
-
-<p>2. With a single exception, Perry’s Moth and Freckle Lotion, the
-<span class="smcap">Lotions</span> for the skin are free from lead and other injurious metals.</p>
-
-<p>3. That the <span class="smcap">Enamels</span> are composed of either carbonate of lime, oxide of
-zinc, or carbonate of lead, suspended in water. The first two classes
-of enamels are comparatively harmless; as harmless as any other white
-dirt, when plastered over the skin to close the pores and prevent its
-healthy action. On the other hand, the enamels composed of carbonate
-of lead are highly dangerous, and their use is very certain to produce
-disastrous results to those who patronize them.</p></div>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span></p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Hair Restoratives: A Bald Bachelor’s Experience.</span></p>
-
-<p>A gentleman of perhaps thirty-five years of age once called upon the
-writer for advice relative to baldness, when he related the following
-experience, permitting me to make a note of it at leisure.</p>
-
-<p>“In 1865 my friends intimated to me that my hair was getting slightly thin
-on the crown of my head. I have always had a mortal terror of being bald,
-and daily examinations convinced me that my fears were about to be
-realized. My first inquiry was for a remedy.</p>
-
-<p>“‘What shall I do to prevent its falling out?’ I nervously inquired.</p>
-
-<p>“‘Get a bottle of Dr. &mdash;&mdash;’s Hair Restorative,’ one advised; another, some
-different preparation,&mdash;all advertised remedies,&mdash;till I had a list a yard
-long of various washes, preventives, restorers, etc., <i>ad infinitum</i>.</p>
-
-<p>“I obtained one of <i>the very best</i>. I used it as directed. It <i>stuck</i> as
-though its virtue consisted in sticking the loose hairs firmly to the
-firmer-rooted ones. But alas! after a month’s trial, sufficient hair had
-come out of my head to make a respectable <i>chignon</i>!</p>
-
-<p>“I next got some of Mrs. A. S. S. Allon’s&mdash;or All&mdash;something; I forget the
-rest of the name; I’m sure of the A. S. S., however,&mdash;and that was worse
-than the <i>gum-stick-’em</i> kind, for the hair came out faster than before.</p>
-
-<p>“In despair, I applied to a ‘respectable apothecary,’ who keeps the next
-corner drug store. ‘For God’s sake, Mr. Bilious, have you got any good
-preventive for falling of the hair?’ I exclaimed.</p>
-
-<p>“‘O, yes, just the article,’ he replied, rubbing his palms vigorously. He
-then showed me his stock, consisting of <i>thirty-nine different kinds</i>!</p>
-
-<p>“‘All very good&mdash;highly recommended,’ he remarked, with commendable
-impartiality.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span>“I selected one&mdash;with rather an ominous name, I
-admit:&mdash;<i>Kat-hair-on</i>!&mdash;preferring cat’s hair to none.</p>
-
-<p>“I used the Kathairon according to directions.�</p>
-
-<p>“‘Did the cat’s hair grow?’ I anxiously inquired.</p>
-
-<p>“‘Neither cat’s hair nor human hair.’ No. Worse and worse. I was about to
-abandon all effort, when, stopping on a corner to get a young boot-black
-to shine my boots, preparatory to making a call on a lady acquaintance,
-before whom I was desirous of making a genteel appearance, a dirty, ragged
-little urchin peered around the block, and exclaimed, ‘O, mister, you’re
-barefooted on top o’ yer head!’ I had inadvertently removed my hat, to
-wipe my forehead.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 450px; height: 305px;"><img src="images/img014.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">“BAREFOOTED ON THE TOP OF HIS HEAD.�</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>“This was the last feather. Though coming from but a dirty boot-black, it
-stung me to the marrow. I kicked over the boy, box, blacking, and all, and
-rushed into the nearest drug shop. I bought another new hair preparation.
-Another ominous name&mdash;‘<i>Bare-it</i>!’</p>
-
-<p>“This I also used, as directed on the label, for a month.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span> ‘I think,’ I
-said, ‘if I use it a second month, it will entirely <i>bare it</i>!’</p>
-
-<p>“I bought a wig, and had my head shaved. I didn’t lock myself up in a
-coal-cellar, or hide under a tub, like Diogenes, but I felt that I would
-have gladly done either, to hide myself from the eyes of the world. The
-girls all cast shy glances at me as they passed; as though the majority of
-<i>them</i> did not wear false hair!</p>
-
-<p>“In utter desperation, I visited a dermatologist. What a name to make hair
-grow! Well, he examined my scalp with a microscope, and said the hair
-could be made to grow anew. ‘I discover myriads of germs, which only
-require the right treatment in order to spring up in an exuberant crop of
-wavy tresses.’ I bought his preparations. Bill, thirty-eight dollars. They
-were worthless.</p>
-
-<p>“Soon after this failure, I heard of a new remedy&mdash;‘a sure cure.’ The
-proprietor possessed a world-wide reputation, from the manufacture of
-various other remedies for nearly all diseases to which we poor mortals
-are subject, and there might be something in this. It was recommended to
-cure baldness, and restore gray hair to its natural color. I would go and
-see the proprietor of this excellent hair restorer. I hastened to Lowell.
-I was ushered into the doctor’s sanctum&mdash;into the very presence of this
-Napoleon of medicine-makers, the Alexander of conquered worlds&mdash;of medical
-prejudices!</p>
-
-<p>“With hat in hand, I bowed low to the great Doctor Hair&mdash;or hair doctor.
-He beheld my veneration for himself. With a practised eye, he noted my
-genteel apparel. Flattered by my obeisance, and not to be outdone in
-politeness, he arose, removed his tile, and bowed equally low in return to
-my profound salutation, when lo! <i>O tempora! O mores!</i> he was both bald
-and gray! I retired without specifying the object of my visit.�</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span></p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing.</span></p>
-
-<p>When a man tells you, point blank, that he is selling an article for the
-profit of it, believe him; but when he asserts that he is advertising and
-offering a remedy solely for the public good, for the benefit of suffering
-humanity, he is a liar. Beware of such.</p>
-
-<p>Furthermore, when he publishes an advertisement in every paper in the
-land, announcing that himself having been miraculously or “providentially�
-cured of a <i>variety</i> of diseases by a certain compound, the <i>prescription</i>
-for which he will send free to any address, you should hesitate, until
-satisfied of the disinterestedness of the party, and meantime ask yourself
-the following question: “Provided this be true, why don’t the unparalleled
-benevolent gentleman <i>publish the recipe</i>, which would cost so much less
-than this persistent advertising ‘that he will send it to any requiring
-it’? And you are next led to ask,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“Where is the ‘dodge’? For money is what he is after.�</p>
-
-<p>A reverend (?), a scoundrel, a “wolf in sheep’s clothing,� advertises in
-nearly every paper you chance to notice, especially <i>religious</i>
-newspapers, a remedy he discovered while a missionary to some foreign
-country, that cured him of a <i>variety</i> of diseases, the recipe for which
-medicine he will send to any address, <i>free of charge</i>.</p>
-
-<p>“Here is the ‘<i>Old Sands of Life</i>’ dodge,� I said, “which I had the
-satisfaction of exposing fourteen years ago.�</p>
-
-<p>The reader may recollect the advertisement of “A Retired Physician,
-seventy-five years of age, whose sands of life had nearly run out,� who
-advertised so extensively a remedy which cured his daughter, etc., which
-remedy he would send <i>free</i>, to the afflicted, on application.</p>
-
-<p>I investigated his “little fraud.� I found, instead of an old man
-“seventy-five years of age,� a young man of about twenty-eight or thirty.
-He was no reverend. He had no<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span> daughter. He was a tall, gaunt, profane,
-tobacco-chewing, foul-mouthed fellow, with a bad impediment in his speech
-from loss of palate, whose name <i>was</i> Oliver Phipps Brown, a printer by
-trade, who formerly worked as journeyman in the <i>Courant</i> office,
-Hartford, Conn. The police finally got hold of him, and broke up the
-swindle.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img015.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">OLD “SANDS OF LIFE.�</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>Here is now a parallel case. The above <i>reverend</i> says he will send the
-recipe free. I directed my student to write for it. The recipe came, with
-various articles named therein, supposed to be the Latin names of plants.
-I assert that there are no such medicines in the Materia Medica, or the
-world. The <i>reverend</i> don’t want that there should be. Why? Because you
-would not then send to him for his “Compound.�</p>
-
-<p>He sends with his recipe a circular, in which he gives you the history of
-<i>his marvellous discovery</i>. Further along, by some oversight, he says it
-was made known to him through a physician!</p>
-
-<p>The names are bogus. The whole remedy is a humbug. There are names in it
-as <i>species</i> which sound something like some medical term; and the
-druggist may be deceived thereby. The reverend quack, foreseeing “the
-difficulty in obtaining the articles in their purity at any druggist’s,�
-advises you to send to him for them. Do you begin to see the <i>dodge</i>? He
-“will furnish it at <i>cost</i>.� Only think! How benevolent! “My means<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span> make
-me independent.� Think again. An invalid from boyhood, his time and means
-exhausted in travelling “in Europe two years,� and was only “sent a
-missionary (?) through the kindness of friends,� he assures us in his
-circular. Here he <i>discovered through an old physician</i>&mdash;surely a new mode
-of discovery&mdash;this wonderful compound, which cured him in “six weeks,� and
-forthwith, in gratitude, he proceeded to New York, and began putting up
-this marvellous remedy “<i>at cost</i>.�</p>
-
-<p>Let us examine the article sold for three dollars and a half a small
-package. Dr. Hall, of the “Journal of Health,� examined the article which
-“Old Sands of Life� sold as <i>Canabis Indica</i>, and found the cost “<i>but
-sixteen cents, bottle and all</i>.� Nevertheless, “The Retired Physician�
-sold it to his dupes for two dollars. I do not hesitate to say that the
-above compound cost even <i>less than sixteen cents a package</i>.</p>
-
-<p>“But,� said a gentleman to me, “he is connected with the Bible House. Here
-is his address: ‘Station D, Bible House, New York.’�</p>
-
-<p>“There is a post-station by that name. Suppose I should give an address,
-‘34 Museum Building.’ Would that imply that I was a play-actor, or owner
-of the Museum?� I replied.</p>
-
-<p>“Then it is only another ‘Reverend’ dodge&mdash;is it?� he asked.</p>
-
-<p>“Precisely; it is to give character to his characterless address.�</p>
-
-<p>“Don’t the newspaper publishers know it is a swindle?� he suggested.</p>
-
-<p>“There’s not the least doubt that they know it.�</p>
-
-<p>“Then hereafter I shall have little faith in the religion or honesty of
-the newspaper that publishes such swindling advertisements.�</p>
-
-<p>“Admitting that they know the dishonesty of the thing,&mdash;and how can any
-man endowed with common sense but see<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span> that there is <i>swindle</i> on the face
-of it?&mdash;the publisher of that advertisement is a <i>particeps criminis</i> in
-the transaction.�</p>
-
-<p>“Why don’t some of the thousand victims who have been swindled into buying
-this worthless stuff expose him?�</p>
-
-<p>“In exposing the <i>reverend wolf</i>, don’t you see they would expose their
-own weakness? This is the reason of the fellow’s selecting the peculiar
-class of diseases as curable by his great discovery. The poor sufferer
-does not wish the community to know that he is afflicted by such a
-disease.�</p>
-
-<p>“It is truly a great dodge; and no doubt the knave has found fools enough
-to make him ‘<i>independent</i>.’�</p>
-
-<hr style="width: 25%;" />
-
-<p><span class="smcap">Rules.</span> 1. Take no patent or advertised medicines at all. They are of no
-earthly use! You never require them, as they are not conducive to your
-health, happiness, or longevity.</p>
-
-<p>There are physicians who can cure every disease that flesh is heir
-to&mdash;<i>excepting one</i>.</p>
-
-<p>2. Apply in your need only to a respectable physician.</p>
-
-<p>3. Give your preference to such as administer the smallest quantities of
-medicine&mdash;<i>and are successful in their practice</i>.</p>
-
-<hr style="width: 25%;" />
-
-<p>I have barely begun to exhaust the material I have been years collecting
-for this chapter; but I must desist, to give room for other important
-expositions.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img016.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
-<hr style="width: 50%;" />
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span></p>
-<h2><a name="IV" id="IV"></a>IV.</h2>
-<p class="title">MANUFACTURED DOCTORS.</p>
-
-<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table">
-<tr><td>“One says, ‘I’m not of any school;<br />
-No living master gives me rule;<br />
-Nor do I in the old tracks tread;<br />
-I scorn to learn aught from the dead.’<br />
-Which means, if I am not mistook,<br />
-‘I am an ass on my own hook.’�</td></tr></table>
-
-<div class="note"><p class="hang"><small>A BOSTON BARBER AS M. D.&mdash;A BARBER “GONE TO POT.�&mdash;FOOLS MADE
-DOCTORS.&mdash;BAKERS.&mdash;BARBERS.&mdash;“A LUCKY DOG.�&mdash;TINKERS.&mdash;ROYAL
-FAVORS.&mdash;“LITTLE CARVER DAVY.�&mdash;A BUTCHER’S BLOCKHEAD.&mdash;A SWEEPING
-VISIT.&mdash;HOP-PED FROM OBSCURITY.&mdash;PEDAGOGUES TURN
-DOCTORS.&mdash;ARBUTHNOT.&mdash;“A QUAKER.�&mdash;“WALKS OFF ON HIS EAR.�&mdash;WEAVERS
-AND BASKET-MAKERS.&mdash;A TOUGH PRINCE; REQUIRED THREE M. D.’S TO KILL
-HIM.&mdash;MARAT A HORSE DOCTOR.&mdash;A MERRY PARSON.&mdash;BLACK MAIL.&mdash;POLICE AS A MIDWIFE, ETC., ETC.</small></p></div>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p>“Every man is either a physician or a fool at forty,� says the old
-proverb.</p>
-
-<p>“May not a man be both?� suggested Canning, in the presence of a circle of
-friends, before whom Sir Henry Halford happened to quote the old saying.</p>
-
-<p>“There is generally a fool in every family, whom the parents select at
-once for a priest or a physician,� said Peter Pindar. He was good
-authority.</p>
-
-<p>I am of the opinion that there are many whose mental capacity has been
-overrated, who have made doctors of themselves; but we are not to treat of
-fools in this chapter, but of men whom <i>circumstances</i> have created
-physicians, and of men who, in spite of circumstances of birth or
-education, have made themselves doctors.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span>In the choice of a trade or profession, every young man should weigh
-carefully his natural capacity to the pursuit selected. His parents or
-guardians should consult the youth’s adaptability rather than their own
-convenience. How many have dragged out a miserable existence by ill choice
-of a calling! Men who were destined by nature to be wood-sawyers and
-diggers of trenches, are found daily taking upon themselves the immense
-responsibility of teaching those whose mental calibre is far above their
-own, or assuming the greater responsibility of administering to the
-afflicted.</p>
-
-<p>If a man finds himself adapted to a higher calling than that originally
-selected for him by his friends, by all means let him “come up higher;�
-but too many by far have changed from a trade to a profession to which
-they had no adaptability.</p>
-
-<p>So we find men in the medical profession who were better as they
-were,&mdash;bakers, barbers, butchers, tailors, tinkers, pedagogues, cobblers,
-horse doctors, etc., etc.</p>
-
-<p>There used to be a fish-peddler going about Boston, blowing a fish-horn,
-and crying his “fresh cod an’ haddock,� who, getting tired of that loud
-crying and loud smelling occupation, took to blowing his horn for his
-“wonderful discovery� of a “pasture weed,� which cured every humor but a
-thundering humor (one can see the humor of the joke), and every eruption
-since the eruption of Hecla in 1783,&mdash;which is a pity that he had not made
-his discovery in time to have tried it on old Hecla’s back when it was up.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Barbers as Doctors.</span></p>
-
-<p>A barber of Boston, accidentally overhearing a gentleman mention a certain
-remedy for the “barber’s itch,� seized upon the idea of speculating upon
-it, and at once sold out his shop, made up the ointment, clapped M. D. to
-his name, put out his circulars, and is now seeking whom he may devour, as
-a physician.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span>With the looseness of morals and the laxity of our laws, one of these
-fellows “can make a doctor as quick as a tinker can make a tin kettle.�</p>
-
-<p>Probably more barbers have become doctors than any other artisans, for the
-reason that barbers were formerly nearly the only acknowledged
-“blood-letters.� In the earlier days of Abernethy, barber surgeons were
-recognized, and the great doctor said of himself, “I have often doffed my
-hat to those fellows, with a razor between their teeth and a lancet in
-their hands.� Doubtless some of them arrived to usefulness in the
-profession. Dr. Ambrose Paré, a French barber surgeon, was called the
-father of French surgery, and enjoyed the confidence of Charles IX. An
-eminent surgeon of London was Mr. Pott. He was contemporary with Dr.
-Hunter, and gave lectures at St. Bartholomew Hospital in Hunter’s
-presence. Some person asking a wag one day where Dr. Hunter was, he
-replied that, “with barber surgeons he <i>had gone to pot</i>.�</p>
-
-<p>This alliance of surgery and shaving, to say nothing of other
-qualifications with which they were sometimes associated, conceivably
-enough furnished some pretext for apprenticeships, since Dickey Gossip’s
-definition of</p>
-
-<p class="poem">“Shaving and tooth-drawing,<br />
-Bleeding, cabbaging, and sawing,�</p>
-
-<p>was by no means always sufficiently comprehensive to include the
-multifarious accomplishments of “the doctor.� “I have seen,� says Dr.
-Macillwain, of England, “within twenty-five years, chemist, druggist,
-surgeon, apothecary, and the significant, ‘&amp;c.,’ followed by hatter,
-hosier, and linen draper, all in one establishment.�</p>
-
-<p>I saw in New Hampshire, in 1864, doctor, barber, and apothecary
-represented by one man.</p>
-
-<p>William Butts, another barber surgeon of London, was called to attend
-Henry VIII., and was rewarded for his <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span>professional services with the
-honor of knighthood in 1512. Another, who was knighted by Henry VIII., was
-John Ayliffe, a sheriff, formerly a merchant of Blackwell Hall.</p>
-
-<p>Royalty had a chronic habit of knighting quacks. Queen Anne became so
-charmed by a tailor, who had turned doctor, and who, by some hook or
-crook, was called to prescribe for the queen’s weak eyes, that she had him
-sworn in, with another knave, as her own oculist. “This lucky gentleman,�
-says a reliable author, “was William Reade, a botching tailor of Grub
-Street, London. To the very last he was a great ignoramus, as a work
-entitled ‘A Short and Exact Account of all Diseases Incident to the Eyes,’
-attests; yet he rose to knighthood, and the most lucrative and fashionable
-practice of the period.� Reade (<i>Sir William</i>) was unable to read the book
-he had published (written by an <i>amanuensis</i>); nevertheless, aristocracy,
-and wise and worthy people at that, who listened to his dignified voice,
-viewed his pompous person, encased in rich garments, and adorned with
-jewelry and lace ruffles, <i>cap-a-pie</i>, resting his chin upon his enormous
-gold-headed cane, as, reclining in his splendid coach, drawn by a span of
-superb blood horses, up to St. James, considered him the most learned and
-eminent physician of that generation.</p>
-
-<p>In the British Museum is deposited a copy of a poem to the great oculist.
-This poem Reade himself had written, at the hand of a penny-a-liner, a
-“poet of Grub Street,� immediately after he was knighted, which has been
-mainly instrumental in handing his name down to posterity.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Tinker as Doctor.</span></p>
-
-<p>About the year 1705, one Roger Grant rose into public notice in London, by
-his publication of his own “marvellous cures.� This fellow was no fool,
-though a great knave. He was formerly a travelling tinker, subsequently a
-cobbler, and Anabaptist preacher. From tinkering of pots, he became<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span>
-mender of soles of men’s boots and shoes; thence saver of souls from
-perdition, a tinkerer of sore eyes, and lightener of the body. The
-following bit of poetry was written in 1708 for his benefit, the “picture�
-being one which Grant, who was a very vain man, had gotten up from a
-copperplate likeness of himself, to distribute among his friends. The
-picture was found posted up conspicuously with the lines:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p class="poem">“A tinker first, his scene of life began;<br />
-That failing, he set up for a cunning man;<br />
-But, wanting luck, puts on a new disguise,<br />
-And now pretends that he can cure your eyes.<br />
-But this expect, that, like a tinker true,<br />
-Where he repairs one eye, he puts out two.�</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 450px; height: 401px;"><img src="images/img017.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">THE EYE DOCTOR.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>He worked himself into notoriety by the publication, in pamphlet form, of
-his cures,&mdash;a mixture of truth strongly spiced with falsehood,&mdash;and
-scattering it over the community. “His plan was to get hold of some poor,
-ignorant person, of imperfect vision, and, after treating him with
-medicine and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span> half-crowns for a few weeks, induce him to sign a
-testimonial, which he probably had never read, that he was born blind, and
-by the providential intervention of Dr. Grant, he had been entirely
-restored. To this certificate the clergyman and church-wardens of the
-parish, in which the patient had been known to wander in mendicancy, were
-asked to attest; and if they proved impregnable to the cunning
-representations of the importunate solicitors, and declined to sign the
-certificate, the doctor did not scruple to save them that trouble by
-signing their names himself.�</p>
-
-<p>More than once was the charge of being a tinker preferred against him. The
-following satire was written and published for his benefit&mdash;with Dr.
-Reade’s&mdash;after Queen Anne had Dr. Grant sworn in as her “oculist in
-ordinary�:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p class="poem">“Her majesty sure was in a surprise,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Or else was very short-sighted,</span><br />
-When a tinker was sworn to look to her eyes,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And the mountebank Reade was knighted.�</span></p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center">“<span class="smcap">The Little Carver Davy.</span>�</p>
-
-<p>The distinguished chemical philosopher and physician of Penzance, Sir
-Humphry Davy, Bart., was the son of a poor wood-carver, at which trade
-Humphry worked in his earlier days, and was named by his familiar
-associates, the “Little Carver Davy.� On the death of his father, the
-widow established herself as a milliner at Penzance, where she apprenticed
-her son to an apothecary. His mother was a woman of talent and great moral
-sense. When, as Sir Humphry, he had reached the summit of his fame, he
-looked back upon the facts of his humble origin, his father’s plebeian
-occupation and associates, and his mother’s mean pursuit, followed for his
-benefit, with mortification instead of regarding them as sources of
-pride.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span></p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">A Butcher Boy escapes the Cleaver and becomes a Great Physician and Poet.</span></p>
-
-<p>In a rickety old three story house, the lower part of which was occupied
-as a butcher’s shop and trader’s room, and the upper stories as a
-dwelling-house, at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, in 1721, was born Mark Akenside.
-His father was a butcher, and one day, as the boy Mark was assisting at
-the menial occupation of cutting up a calf, a cleaver fell from the shop
-block upon another “calf,�&mdash;that of young Akenside’s leg,&mdash;which lamed him
-for life.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 450px; height: 281px;"><img src="images/img018.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">THE YOUNG SURGEON’S FIRST EXPERIENCE.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>Akenside was a Nonconformist, and by the aid of the Dissenters’ Society
-young Mark was sent to Edinburgh to study theology. From theology he went
-to physic, his honest parent refunding the money to the society paid for
-his studies under their patronage, and he subsequently obtained his degree
-at Cambridge, and became a fellow of the R. S.</p>
-
-<p>Like Davy, Akenside became ashamed of his plebeian origin. His lameness,
-like Lord Byron’s, was a continual source of mortification to him.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span>He became a physician to St. Thomas; and, as he went with the students the
-rounds of the hospital, the fastidiousness of the little bunch of dignity
-at having come so closely in contact with the vulgar rabble, induced him,
-at times, to make the strongest patients precede him with <i>brooms</i>, to
-clear a way for him through the crowd of diseased wretches, who,
-nevertheless, had wonderful faith in his wisdom, and would cry out,
-“<i>Bravo for the butcher boy with a game leg!</i>� as they fell back before
-the fearful charge of corn brooms.</p>
-
-<p>By the assistance of friends, and his ever extensive practice, Akenside
-was enabled, to the day of his death, in 1770, to keep his carriage, wear
-his gold-hilted sword, and his huge well-powdered wig.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">How One Hop-ped from Obscurity.</span></p>
-
-<p>“Dr. Messenger Monsey, in the heyday of his prosperity, used to assert to
-his friends that the first of his known ancestors was a baker and a
-retailer of hops. At a critical point of this worthy man’s career, when
-hops were ‘down,’ and feathers ‘up,’ in order to raise the needful for
-present emergencies he ripped up his beds, sold the feathers, and refilled
-the ticks with hops. When a change occurred in the market soon afterwards
-the process was reversed; even the children’s beds were reopened, and the
-hops sold for a large profit over the cost of replacing the feathers!�</p>
-
-<p>“That’s the way, sirs, that my family hop-ped from obscurity,� the doctor
-would conclude, with great gusto.</p>
-
-<p>The Duke of Leeds used, in the same manner, to delight in boasting of his
-lucky progenitor, Jack Osborn, the shop lad, who rescued his master’s
-beautiful daughter from a watery grave at the bottom of the Thames, and
-won her hand away from a score of noble suitors, who wanted, literally,
-the young lady’s <i>pin</i>-money as much as herself. Her father was a pin
-manufacturer, and had in his shop on London Bridge amassed a considerable
-wealth in the business.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span> The jolly old man, instead of disdaining to
-bestow the lovely and wealthy maid&mdash;his only child&mdash;on an apprentice,
-exclaimed,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“Jack Osborn won her, and Jack shall wear her.�</p>
-
-<p>When Lord Bath vainly endeavored to effect a reconciliation between the
-doctor and Garrick, who had fallen out, Monsey said,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“Why will your lordship trouble yourself with the squabbles of a
-merry-andrew and a <i>quack</i> doctor?�</p>
-
-<p>Monsey continued his quarrel with Garrick up to the day of the death of
-the great tragedian. The latter seldom retaliated, but when he did his
-sarcasm cut to the bone.</p>
-
-<p>Garrick’s style of satire may be inferred from his epigram on James Quin,
-the celebrated actor, and illegitimate son of an Irishman, “whose wife
-turned out a bigamist.� When Garrick make his debut on the London stage,
-at Godman’s Fields playhouse, October 19, 1741, as “Richard the Third,�
-Quin objected to Garrick’s original style, saying,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“If this young fellow is right, myself and all the other actors are
-wrong.�</p>
-
-<p>Being told that the theatre was crowded to the dome nightly to hear the
-new actor, Quin replied that “Garrick was a new religion; Whitefield was
-followed for a time, but they would all come to church again.� Hence
-Garrick wrote the following epigram:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p class="poem">“Pope Quin, who damns all churches but his own,<br />
-Complains that heresy infects the town;<br />
-That Whitefield-Garrick has misled the age,<br />
-And taints the sound religion of the stage.<br />
-‘Schism,’ he cries, ‘has turned the nation’s brain,<br />
-But eyes will open, and to church again!’<br />
-Thou great Infallible, forbear to roar;<br />
-Thy bulls and errors are revered no more.<br />
-When doctrines meet with general approbation,<br />
-It is not <i>heresy</i>, but reformation.�</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span>When confined to his bed in his last sickness, Garrick had the advice of
-several of the best physicians, summoned to his villa near Hampton, and
-Monsey, in bad taste and worse temper, wrote a satire on the occurrence.
-He accused the actor of parsimony, among other mean qualities, and though,
-after the death of Garrick, January 22, 1779, he destroyed the verses,
-some portions of them got into print, of which the following is a
-sample:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p class="poem">“Seven wise doctors lately met<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">To save a wretched sinner.</span><br />
-‘Come, Tom,’ said Jack, ‘pray let’s be quick,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Or we shall lose <i>our</i> dinner.’</span><br />
-<br />
-“Some roared for rhubarb, jalap some,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And others cried for Dover;<a name='fna_3' id='fna_3' href='#f_3'><small>[3]</small></a></span><br />
-‘Let’s give him something,’ each one said,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">‘And then let’s give him over.’�</span></p>
-
-<p>At last, after much learned wrangling, one more learned than the others
-proposed to arouse the energies of the dying man by jingling a purse of
-gold in his ear. This suggestion was acted upon, and</p>
-
-<p class="poem">“Soon as the favorite sound he heard,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">One faint effort he tried;</span><br />
-He oped his eyes, he scratched his head,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">He gave one grasp&mdash;and died.�</span></p>
-
-<p>Riding on horseback through Hyde Park, Monsey was accompanied by a Mr.
-Robinson, a Trinitarian preacher, who knew that the doctor’s religion was
-of the Unitarian stamp. After deploring, in solemn tones, the corrupt
-state of morals, etc., the minister turned to Monsey, and said,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“And, doctor, I am addressing one who believes there is no God.�</p>
-
-<p>“And I,� replied Monsey, “one who believes there are <i>three</i>.�</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span></p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 600px; height: 395px;"><img src="images/img019.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">HEALING THE SICK WITH A GOLDEN DOSE.</p>
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span>The good man, greatly shocked, put spurs to his horse, and, without
-vouchsafing a “good day,� rode away at a high gallop.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Pedagogues turned out as Doctors.</span></p>
-
-<p>Some of the hundreds of respectable medical practitioners of this
-democratic country, who, between commencement and the following term, used
-to lengthen out their scanty means by “teaching the young idea how to
-shoot� in some far-off country village, will scarcely thank me for
-introducing the above-named subject to their present notice. However, it
-will depend somewhat upon the way they take it; whether, like Sir Davy,
-they are ashamed of their “small beginnings,� or, like Dr. Monsey, they
-may independently snap their fingers in the face of their plebeian origin,
-and boast of their earlier common efforts for a better foothold among the
-great men of their generation.</p>
-
-<p>Among English physicians, with whom it was, and still is, counted a
-disgrace to have been previously known in a more humble calling, we may
-find a long list of “doctors pedagogic,� beginning with Dr. John Bond, who
-taught school until the age of forty, when he turned doctor. He was a man
-of great learning, however, and became a successful physician. Even among
-the good people of Taunton, where he had resided and labored as a
-pedagogue in former years, he was esteemed as a “wise physician.�</p>
-
-<p>John Arbuthnot was a “Scotch pedagogue.� He was distinguished as a man of
-letters and of wit; the associate of Pope and Swift, and of Bolingbroke; a
-companion at the court of Queen Anne.</p>
-
-<p>Arbuthnot owed his social elevation to his quick wit, rare conversational
-powers, and fascinating address, rather than to his family influence,
-professional knowledge, or medical success.</p>
-
-<p>“Dorchester, where, as a young practitioner, he endeavored<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span> to establish
-himself, utterly refused to give him a living; but it doubtless,� says
-Jeaffreson, “maintained more than one dull empiric in opulence. Failing to
-get a living among the rustic boors, who could appreciate no effort of the
-human voice but a fox-hunter’s whoop, Arbuthnot packed up and went to
-London.�</p>
-
-<p>Poverty for a while haunted his door in London, and to keep the wolf away
-he was compelled to resort to “the most hateful of all occupations&mdash;the
-personal instruction of the ignorant.�</p>
-
-<p>Arbuthnot was a brilliant writer as well as fluent talker, and by his
-literary hit, “Examination of Dr. Woodward’s Account of the Deluge,� he
-was soon brought into notice. By the merest accident and the greatest
-fortune he was called to Prince George of Denmark, when his royal highness
-was suddenly taken sick, and, as all who fell within the circle of his
-magical private acquaintance were led to respect and love him, the doctor
-was retained in the good graces of the prince. On the death of Dr. Hannes,
-Arbuthnot received the appointment of physician-in-ordinary to the queen.</p>
-
-<p>The polished manner of the fortunate doctor, his handsome person, and
-flattering, cordial seeming address, especially to ladies, made him a
-court favorite. To retain the good graces of his royal patient, the queen,
-“he adopted a tone of affection for her as an individual, as well as a
-loyal devotion to her as a queen.� His conversation, while it had the
-semblance of the utmost frankness, was foaming over with flattery.</p>
-
-<p>“If the queen won’t swallow my pills she will my flattery,� he is said to
-have whispered to his friend Swift; but this report is doubtful, as he
-stood in fear of the displeasure of the querulous, crotchety, weak-minded
-queen, who had but recently discharged Dr. Radcliffe for a slip of the
-tongue, when at the coffee-house he had said she had the “<i>vapors</i>.�</p>
-
-<p>“What is the hour?� asked the queen of Arbuthnot.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span>“Whatever hour it may please your majesty,� was his characteristic reply,
-with his most winning smile and graceful obeisance.</p>
-
-<p>By this sort of flattery he retained his hold in the queen’s favor till
-her death.</p>
-
-<p>By these facts one is reminded of the saying of Oxenstierna, when, on
-concluding the peace of Westphalia in 1648, he sent his young son John as
-plenipotentiary to the powers on that occasion, remarking, in presence of
-those who expressed their surprise thereat,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“You do not know with how little wisdom men are governed.�</p>
-
-<p>With the loss of the queen’s patronage at her death, and his wine-loving
-proclivities, Dr. Arbuthnot became sick and poor, and died in straitened
-circumstances.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Another Poor Pedagogue</span>,</p>
-
-<p>Who reached the acme of medical fame, and became court physician, was Sir
-Richard Blackmer. He surely ought not to have been called an ignoramus (by
-Dr. Johnson), for he resided thirteen years in the University of Oxford.
-After leaving Oxford, his extreme poverty compelled him to adopt the
-profession of a schoolmaster. In the year 1700 there were collected
-upwards of forty sets of ribald verses, under the title of “Commendary
-Verses, or the Author of Two Arthurs, and Satyr against Wit;� in which Sir
-Richard was taunted with his earlier poverty, and of having been a
-pedagogue!</p>
-
-<p>Every man has his advertisement and his advertisers. The poets and
-lampooners were Blackmer’s. They assisted in bringing him into notoriety.
-Among them were Pope, Steele, and the obscene Dr. Garth. While the authors
-of those filthy, licentious productions (which no bar-maid or
-kitchen-scullion at this day could read without blushing behind her pots
-and kettles) were flattering themselves that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span> they were injuring the
-honest doctor, they were bringing him daily into the notice of better men
-than themselves, and heaping ignominy upon the authors of such vile
-lampoons.</p>
-
-<p>One satire opened thus:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p class="poem">“By nature meant, by want a pedant made,<br />
-Blackmer at first professed the whipping trade.<br />
-<strong><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span></strong><br />
-In vain his pills as well as birch he tried;<br />
-His boys grew blockheads, and his patients died.�</p>
-
-<p>Mr. Jeaffreson says, “the same dull sarcasms about killing patients and
-whipping boys into blockheads are repeated over and again; and as if to
-show, with the greatest possible force, the pitch to which the evil of the
-times had risen, the coarsest and most disgusting of all these lampoon
-writers was a lady of rank,&mdash;the Countess of Sandwich!�</p>
-
-<p>Wouldn’t a young Harvard or Yale medical graduate, without money, friends,
-or a practice, leap for joy with the knowledge that he had two-score
-<i>disinterested</i> writers advertising him into universal notice, since it is
-considered a burning disgrace for an honorable, upright, and educated
-physician to advertise himself!</p>
-
-<p>Of course Sir Richard rose, in spite of his foes, to whom he seldom
-replied. He says, in one of his own works, “I am but a hard-working
-doctor, spending my days in coffee-houses (where physicians were wont to
-receive apothecaries, and, hearing the cases of their patients, prescribe
-for them without seeing them, at half price), receiving apothecaries, or
-driving over the stones in my carriage, visiting my patients.�</p>
-
-<p>The honest, upright man who rises from nothing, and continues to ascend
-right in the teeth of immense opposition from his enemies, seldom relapses
-into obscurity in after life. Though Dr. Blackmer failed as a poet, he
-died esteemed as an honest man, a consistent Christian, and an excellent
-physician.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span></p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">A Weaver and a Quaker Boy.</span></p>
-
-<p>Many cases might be instanced of weavers becoming physicians, but let one
-suffice. John Sutcliffe, a Yorkshire weaver, with no early educational
-advantages, and with the broadest provincial dialect, became a respectable
-apothecary, and subsequently a first-class medical practitioner. He rose
-entirely by his own integrity, frugality, industry, and intelligence.</p>
-
-<p>Amongst his apprentices was Dr. John Coakley Lettsom, whose name must ever
-rank high as a literary man, and a benevolent and successful physician.
-Lettsom was born in the West Indies, and was a Quaker. The place under the
-Yorkshire apothecary was secured for the boy by Mr. Fothergill, a Quaker
-minister of Warrington, England.</p>
-
-<p>A senior drug clerk informed the rustic inhabitants of the arrival of a
-Quaker from a far off county, where the people were <i>antipodes</i>,&mdash;whose
-feet were in a position exactly opposite to those of the English. Having
-well circulated this startling information, the merry clerk and
-fellow-apprentices laid back to enjoy the joke all by themselves.</p>
-
-<p>The very day the new apprentice entered upon his duties, the apothecary
-shop became haunted by an immense and curious crowd of gaping rustics, old
-and young, male and female, to see the wonderful Quaker who was accustomed
-to walking on his head!</p>
-
-<p>Day after day the curious peasants came and went, and if the astonished
-Sutcliffe closed his doors against the unprofitable rabble, they peered in
-at his windows, or hung about the entrances, hoping to see the remarkable
-phenomenon issue forth. But as the day of “walking off on his ear� had not
-then arrived, they were doomed to disappointment and lost faith in his
-ability to do what they had expected of him.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span></p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">John Radcliffe.</span></p>
-
-<p>John Radcliffe, the humbug, “the physician without learning,� was the son
-of a Yorkshire yeoman. When he had risen to intimacy with the leading
-nobility of London,&mdash;as he did by his “shrewdness, arrogant simplicity,
-and immeasurable insolence,�&mdash;he laid claim to aristocratic origin. The
-Earl of Derwenter recognized <i>Sir</i> John as a kinsman; but the heralds
-interfered with the little “corner� of the doctor and earl, after
-Radcliffe’s decease, by admonishing the University of Oxford not to erect
-any escutcheon over his plebeian monument.</p>
-
-<p>Of Radcliffe’s success in getting patronage we have spoken in another
-chapter. Doubtless he, Dr. Hannes, and Dr. Mead all resorted to the same
-sharp tricks, of which they accused each other by turns, in order to gain
-notoriety and practice.</p>
-
-<p><span class="smcap">Dr. Edward Hannes</span> was reputed a “<i>basket-maker</i>.� At least, his father
-followed that humble calling. Of the son’s earlier life little is known.
-About the year 168-, he burst upon the London aristocracy with a
-magnificent equipage, consisting of coach and four, and handsome liveried
-servants and coachmen.</p>
-
-<p>These were <i>his</i> advertisements, and he soon rode into a splendid
-practice, notwithstanding Radcliffe’s contrary prognostication.</p>
-
-<p>Dr. Hannes and Dr. Blackmer, being called to attend upon the young Duke of
-Gloucester, and the disease taking a fatal turn, Sir John Radcliffe was
-also called to examine into the case. Radcliffe could not forego the
-opportunity here offered to lash his rivals, and turning to them in the
-presence of the royal household, he said,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“It would have been happy for the nation had you, sir (to Hannes), been
-bred a basket-maker, and you, sir (to Blackmer), remained a country
-schoolmaster, rather than<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span> have ventured out of your reach in the practice
-of an art to which you are an utter stranger, and for your blunders in
-which you ought to be whipped with one of your own rods.�</p>
-
-<p>As the case was simply one of rash, none of them had much to boast of.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">A Horse Doctor.</span></p>
-
-<p>There have been, and still are, thousands in the various walks of life,
-who, at some period, have attempted the practice of medicine. Among the
-hundreds whom our colleges “grind out� annually, not more than one in
-twenty succeeds in medical practice so far as to gain any eminence, or the
-competence of a common laborer.</p>
-
-<p><span class="smcap">Marat was a horse doctor.</span></p>
-
-<p>The most remarkable thing respecting this noted man occurred at his birth.
-<i>He was born triplets!</i></p>
-
-<p>Yes, though “born of parents entirely unknown to history,� three different
-places have claimed themselves, or been claimed, as his birthplace.</p>
-
-<p>Before his energies became perverted to political aims, he had endeavored
-to rise, by his own talent and energies, through the sciences.</p>
-
-<p>The year 1789 found him in the position of veterinary surgeon to the Count
-d’Artois, thoroughly disgusted with his failure to rise in society with
-the “quacks,� as he termed them, “of the Corps Scientifique.�</p>
-
-<p>Miss Mühlbach, in her “<i>Maria Antoinette and her Son</i>,� presents Marat in
-conversation with the cobbler, Simon, as follows:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“The cobbler quickly turned round to confront the questioner. He saw,
-standing by his side, a little, remarkably crooked and dwarfed young man,
-whose unnaturally large head was set upon narrow, depressed shoulders, and
-whose whole (ludicrous) appearance made such an impression upon the
-cobbler that he laughed outright.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span>“‘Not beautiful, am I?’ asked the stranger, who tried to join in the laugh
-with the cobbler, but the result was a mere grimace; which made his
-unnaturally large mouth extend from ear to ear, displaying two fearful
-rows of long, greenish teeth. ‘Not beautiful at all, am I? Dreadful ugly!’</p>
-
-<p>“‘You are somewhat remarkable, at least,’ replied the cobbler. ‘If I did
-not hear you speak French, and see you standing upright, I should think
-you the monstrous toad in the fable.’</p>
-
-<p>“‘I am the monstrous toad of the fable. I have merely disguised myself
-to-day as a man, in order to look at this Austrian woman and her brood.’</p>
-
-<p>“‘Where do you live, and what is your name, sir?’ asked the cobbler, with
-glowing curiosity.</p>
-
-<p>“‘I live in the stables of the Count d’Artois, and my name is Jean Paul
-Marat.’</p>
-
-<p>“‘In the stable!’ cried the cobbler. ‘My faith, I had not supposed you a
-hostler or a coachman. It must be a funny sight, M. Marat, to see <i>you</i>
-mounted upon a horse.’</p>
-
-<p>“‘You think that such a big toad does not belong there exactly. Well, you
-are right, brother Simon. My real business is not at all with the horses,
-but with the men of the stable. I am the horse doctor of the Count
-d’Artois, and I can assure you that I am a tolerably skilful doctor.’�</p>
-
-<p>We do not quote the above author as reliable authority in personal
-descriptions, beyond the “shrugging of shoulders,� which habit she
-attributes to all of her characters (<i>vide</i> “Napoleon and Queen Louisa,�
-where she uses the phrase some twenty-three times).</p>
-
-<p>At the time of his assuming the dictatorship, he resided in most squalid
-apartments, situated in one of the lowest back streets of Paris, in
-criminal intimacy with the wife of his printer.... He sold their bed to
-get money to bring out the first number of his journal, and lived in
-extreme poverty at a time when he could have become immensely rich by
-selling his silence.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span>The death of this wretch was hastened only a few days by his
-assassination, for he was already consumed by a disgusting disease, and it
-is melancholy to add that he was adored after his death, and his remains
-deposited in the Pantheon with national honors, and an altar erected to
-his memory in the club of the Cordeliers.</p>
-
-<p>“I killed one man to save a hundred thousand!� exclaimed the magnificent
-Charlotte Corday to her judges; “a villain to save innocents, a furious
-wild beast, to give repose to my country!� Thus the “horse doctor�
-ignominiously perished at the hands of a woman,&mdash;a woman who immortalized
-herself by killing a “villain.�</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Peter Pindar, the Preacher.</span></p>
-
-<p>We find many cases where ministers have turned doctors, and <i>vice versa</i>.</p>
-
-<p>“<span class="smcap">Peter Pindar</span>� is here worthy of a passing notice. His true name was
-Wolcot. Descended from a family of doctors for several generations, he
-nevertheless himself failed to gain a living practice.</p>
-
-<p>When King George III. sent Sir William Trelawney out as governor of
-Jamaica, about 1760, he took young Dr. Wolcot with him, who acted in the
-treble capacity of physician, private secretary, and chaplain to the
-governor’s household. Dr. Wolcot’s professional knowledge had been
-acquired somewhat “irregularly,� and it is very doubtful whether he ever
-received ordination at the hands of the bishops.</p>
-
-<p>It is true, however, that he acted as rector for the colony, reading
-prayers and preaching whenever a congregation of ten presented itself,
-which occurred only semi-occasionally.</p>
-
-<p>The doctor was fond of shooting, and ’tis gravely reported that he and his
-clerk used to amuse themselves on the way to church by shooting pigeons
-and other wild game, with which the wood abounded. Having shot their way
-to the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span> sacred edifice, the merry parson and jolly clerk would wait ten
-minutes for the congregation to convene, and if, at the expiration of that
-time, the quota had not arrived, the few were dismissed with a blessing,
-and the pair shot their way back home. If but a few negroes presented
-themselves, the rector ordered his clerk to give them a bit of silver,
-with which to buy them off.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img020.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">THE PARSON BUYING OFF THE “CONGREGATION.�</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>One old negro, more cunning than the rest, and who discovered that the
-parson’s interest was rather in the discharge of his fowling-piece than
-the discharge of his priestly duties, used to present himself punctually
-every Sunday at church.</p>
-
-<p>“What brings you here, blackie?� asked the parson.</p>
-
-<p>“To hear de prayer for sinners, and de sarmon, masser.�</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span>“Wouldn’t a <i>bit</i> or two serve you as well?� asked the rector, with a
-wink.</p>
-
-<p>“Well, masser, dis chile lub de good sarmon ob yer rev’rence, but dis time
-de money might do,� was the reply, with a significant scratch of his
-woolly head.</p>
-
-<p>The parson would then pay the price, the negro would grin his thanks, and,
-chuckling to himself, retire; and for a year or more this sort of
-<i>black</i>-mailing was continued.</p>
-
-<p>Tiring of <i>acting</i> as priest, Wolcot returned to London, and vainly
-endeavored to establish himself in practice. Neither preaching nor
-practising physic was his forte, and he resorted to the pen. Here he
-discovered his genius. Adopting the <i>nom de plume</i> of “Peter Pindar,� he
-became famous as a political satirist, and the author of numerous popular
-works. He died in London in 1819. Wolcot possessed a kindly heart, and a
-benevolence deeper than his pockets.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Policemen as Doctors and Surgeons.</span></p>
-
-<p>Some very laughable scenes, as well as very touching and painful ones,
-might be recorded, had we space, where policemen have necessarily been
-unceremoniously summoned to act as physician or surgeon in absence of a
-“regular.�</p>
-
-<p>In Portland, the police have to turn their hand to most everything.
-Circumstances beyond his control compelled one Mr. J. S. to act the part
-of midwife to a strapping Irish woman at the station-house, one evening,
-he being the sole “committee of reception� to a bouncing baby that came
-along somewhat precipitately. The account, which is well authenticated,
-closes by saying,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“Mother, baby, and officer are doing as well as can be expected!�</p>
-
-<p>We have seen the “officer.� He did better than was “expected.�</p>
-
-<p>The writer was on a Fulton ferry boat in the winter of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span> 1857, when a
-similar scene occurred. A German woman was taken in pain. A whisper was
-passed to a female passenger; a policeman was summoned from outside the
-ladies’ (?) cabin; the male occupants were ejected,&mdash;even myself and
-another medical student, and the husband of the patient. The latter
-remonstrated, and demonstrated his objection to the momentary separation
-by beating and shouting at the saloon door.</p>
-
-<p>“Katharina! Katharina!� he shouted, “keep up a steef upper lips!�</p>
-
-<p>This roaring attracted nearly all the men from the opposite side of the
-boat, who crowded around him and the door, to learn the cause of the
-Teutonic demonstrations of alternate fear, anger, and encouragement.</p>
-
-<p>“Got in himmel! Vere you leefs ven you’s t’ home? Vich a man can’t come
-mit his vife, altogedder? Hopen de door, unt I preaks him mit mine feest;
-don’t it?� So he kept on, alternately cursing the policeman and
-encouraging “Katharina,� till we reached the Brooklyn side, and left the
-ferry boat.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img021.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
-<hr style="width: 50%;" />
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span></p>
-<h2><a name="V" id="V"></a>V.</h2>
-<p class="title">WOMAN AS PHYSICIAN.</p>
-
-<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table">
-<tr><td>“Angel of Patience! sent to calm<br />
-Our feverish brow with cooling palm;<br />
-To lay the storm of hope and fears,<br />
-And reconcile life’s smile and tears;<br />
-The throb of wounded pride to still,<br />
-And make our own our Father’s will.�&mdash;<span class="smcap">Whittier.</span></td></tr></table>
-
-<div class="note"><p class="hang"><small>HER “MISSION.�&mdash;NO PLACE IN MEDICAL HISTORY.&mdash;ONE OF THEM.&mdash;MRS.
-STEPHENS.&mdash;“CRAZY SALLY.�&mdash;RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS.&mdash;RUNS IN THE
-FAMILY.&mdash;ANECDOTES.&mdash;“WHICH GOT THRASHED?�&mdash;A WRETCHED END.&mdash;AMERICAN
-FEMALE PHYSICIANS.&mdash;A PIONEER.&mdash;A LAUGHABLE ANECDOTE.&mdash;“THREE WISE
-MEN.�&mdash;“A SHORT HORSE,� ETC.&mdash;BOSTON AND NEW YORK FEMALE DOCTORS.&mdash;A
-STORY.&mdash;“LOVE AND THOROUGHWORT.�&mdash;A GAY BEAU.&mdash;UP THE
-PENOBSCOT.&mdash;DYING FOR LOVE.&mdash;“IS HE MAD?�&mdash;THOROUGHWORT WINS.</small></p></div>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p>“From the earliest ages the care of the sick has devolved on woman. A
-group by one of our sculptors, representing Eve with the body of Abel
-stretched upon her lap, bending over him in bewildered grief, and striving
-to restore the vital spirit which she can hardly believe to have departed,
-is a type of the province of the sex ever since pain and death entered the
-world.</p>
-
-<p>“To be first the vehicle for human life, and then its devoted guardian; to
-remove or alleviate the physical evils which afflict the race, or to watch
-their wasting, and tenderly care for all that remains when they have
-wrought their result&mdash;this is her divinely appointed and universally
-conceded mission.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span>“Were she to refuse it, to forsake her station beside the suffering, the
-office of medicine and the efforts of the physician would be more than
-half baffled. And yet, where her post is avowedly so important, she has
-generally been denied the liberty of understanding much that is involved
-in its intelligent occupancy. With the human body so largely in her charge
-from birth to death, she is not allowed to inquire into its marvellous
-mechanism. With the administering of remedies intrusted to her vigilance
-and faithfulness, she has not been allowed to investigate the qualities,
-or even know the names or the operations of those substances committed to
-her use. To be a student with scientific thoroughness, and to practise
-independently with what she has thus acquired, has been regarded as
-unseemly, or as beyond her capacity, or as an invasion of prerogatives
-claimed exclusively for men.</p>
-
-<p>“Indeed, the whole domain of medicine has been ‘<i>pre-empted</i>’ by men, and
-in their ‘<i>squatter sovereignty</i>’ they have sturdily warned off the
-gentler sex.�&mdash;Rev. H. B. Elliot, in “<i>Eminent Women of the Age</i>.�</p>
-
-<p>It seems to my mind, and ought to every thinking mind, to be ridiculously
-absurd that “man born of woman� should set up his authority against woman
-understanding “herself.� “Man, know thyself,� is stereotyped, but if it
-ever was put in type form for “woman to know herself,� it has long since
-been “<i>pied</i>.�</p>
-
-<p>“Search the Scriptures,� and you would never mistrust that “eternal life,�
-or any other life, came, or existed a day, through woman. Mythological
-writers, who come next to scriptural, give woman no credit in medical
-science. We will except Hygeia, the goddess of health, the fabled daughter
-of Æsculapius. In the <i>medical</i> history of no country does she occupy any
-prominence. There were “Witches,� “Enchantresses,� “Wise Women,�
-“Fortune-tellers,� who in every age have existed to no small extent, and
-under various names have figured in the histories of all nations,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span>
-receiving the countenance of prince and beggar&mdash;but females as physicians,
-<i>as a class</i>, have never been recognized by nations or governments, or
-scarcely by communities or individuals.</p>
-
-<p>In searching the memorials of English authors for two hundred years past,
-we can find but little to disprove the above assertions. In Mr.
-Jeaffreson’s “Book of Doctors,� the author fails to find memorials of
-their actions, as female physicians, sufficient to fill a single chapter;
-and those of whom he has made mention, he discourses of mostly in a
-ridiculous light, as though entirely out of their sphere, or as being of
-the coarser sort, and questions “if two score could be rescued from
-oblivion whom our ancestors intrusted with the care of their invalid wives
-and children.�</p>
-
-<p>In this connection, let us briefly mention such as are better known in
-English literature, as doctresses especially as mentioned by Mr.
-Jeaffreson.</p>
-
-<p>Two ladies, who are immortalized in “Philosophical Transactions for 1694,�
-were Sarah Hastings and Mrs. French. Another, who received the support of
-bishops, dukes, lords, countesses, etc., in 1738-9, was Mrs. Joanna
-Stephens, “an ignorant and vulgar creature.� After enriching herself by
-her specifics, consisting of a “pill, a powder and a decoction,� she
-bamboozled the English Parliament into purchasing the secret, for the
-(then) enormous sum of £5000. “The Powder consists of <i>eggshells</i> and
-<i>snails</i>, both calcined.�</p>
-
-<p>“The decoction is made by boiling together Alicant <i>soap</i>, swine’s-cresses
-burnt to a blackness, honey, camomile, fennel, parsley, and burdock
-leaves.� “The pill consists of snails, wild carrot and burdock seeds,
-ashen keys, hips, and haws, all burnt to a blackness; soap and honey.�</p>
-
-<p>When we take into consideration the fact that there were no “medical
-schools for females,� at that day, nor until within the last ten or twelve
-years, that every female applicant was rejected by the medical colleges of
-England,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span> and that all female practitioners were held in disrepute by both
-physician and the public, the above repulsive remedies may not so greatly
-excite our surprise.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center">“<span class="smcap">Crazy Sally.</span>�</p>
-
-<p>The most remarkable woman doctor made mention of in English literature,
-was Mrs. Mapp, <i>née</i> Sally Wallin. We have collected these facts
-respecting her origin, character, and career, from <i>Chambers’ Miscellany</i>
-and the <i>Gentlemen’s Magazine</i>, 1736-7. Hogarth has immortalized her in
-his “Undertaker’s arms.� She is placed at the top of that picture, between
-Josh Ward, the <i>Pill</i> doctor, and Chevalier Taylor, the quack oculist.
-(See page 668.)</p>
-
-<p>She was born in Weltshire, in 169-. Her father was a “bone-setter,� which
-occupation “run in the family,� like that of the Sweets, of Connecticut,
-or like the marine whom Mrs. Mapp saw one day, as she, in her carriage,
-was driving “along the Strand, O.�</p>
-
-<p>Said sailor having a wooden leg, the doctress asked, “How does it happen,
-fellow, that you’ve a wooden leg.�</p>
-
-<p>“O, easy enough, madam; my father had one before me. It sort o’ runs in
-the family, marm,� was the laconic reply. From a barefooted school-girl at
-Weltshire, where Sally obtained barely the rudiments of a common
-education, she became her father’s assistant in bone-setting and
-manipulating.</p>
-
-<p>The next we hear of Miss Wallin, is at Epsom, where she became known as
-“Crazy Sally.� She has been described as a “very coarse, large, vulgar,
-illiterate, drunken, bawling woman,� “known as a haunter of fairs, about
-which she loved to reel, screaming and abusive, in a state of roaring
-intoxication.�</p>
-
-<p>It is astonishing as true, that this unattractive specimen of the female
-sex became so esteemed in Epsom, where she set up as a physician, that the
-town offered her £100 to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span> remain there a year! The newspapers sounded her
-praise, the gentry, even, lauded her skill, and physicians witnessed her
-operations.</p>
-
-<p>“Crazy Sally� awoke one morning and found herself famous. Patients of rank
-and wealth flocked from every quarter. Attracted by her success and her
-accumulating wealth, rather than by her <i>beauty</i> or <i>amiable</i> disposition,
-an Epsom swain made her an offer of marriage, which she, like a woman,
-accepted. This fellow’s name was Mapp, who lived with her but for a
-fortnight, during which time he “thrashed her� (or she him, it is not just
-clear which) “three times,� and appropriating all of her spare change,
-amounting to five hundred dollars, he took to himself one half of the
-world, and quietly left her the other. Our informant adds, “She found
-consolation for her wounded affections in the homage of the world. She
-became a notoriety of the first water; every day the public journals gave
-some interesting account of her, and her remarkable operations.�</p>
-
-<p>The <i>Grub Street Journal</i> of that period said, “The remarkable cures of
-the woman bone-setter, Mrs. Mapp, are too numerous to enumerate. Her
-bandages are extraordinarily neat, and her dexterity in reducing
-dislocations and fractures most wonderful. She has cured persons who have
-been twenty years disabled.� Her patients were both male and female. Some
-of her most difficult operations were performed before physicians of
-eminence.</p>
-
-<p>Her carriage was splendid, on the panels of which were emblazoned her coat
-of arms. Regularly every week she visited London in this magnificent
-chariot drawn by four superb, cream-white horses, attended by servants,
-arrayed in gorgeous liveries. She put up at the Grecian Coffee-House, and
-forthwith her rooms would be thronged by invalids.</p>
-
-<p>Notices of her were not always of the most complimentary sort. Being one
-day detained by a cart of coal that was <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span>unloading in a narrow street of
-the metropolis, on which occasion she was arrayed in a loosely fitting
-robe-de-chambre, with large flowing sleeves, which set off her massive
-proportion most conspicuously, she let down the windows of her carriage,
-and leaning her bare arms upon the door, she impatiently exclaimed,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“Fellow, how dare you detain a lady of rank thus?�</p>
-
-<p>“A lady of rank!� sneered the coal-man.</p>
-
-<p>“Yes, you villain!� screamed the enraged doctress. “Don’t you observe the
-arms of Mrs. Mapp on the carriage?�</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 450px; height: 257px;"><img src="images/img022.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">“DON’T YOU OBSERVE THE ARMS OF MRS. MAPP?�</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>“Yes&mdash;I <i>do</i> see the arms,� replied the impudent fellow, “and a pair of
-durned coarse ones they are, to be sure.�</p>
-
-<p>On another occasion she was riding up Old Kent Road, dressed as above
-described. “Her obesity, immodest attire, intoxication, and dazzling
-equipage were, in the eyes of the mob, so sure signs of royalty, that she
-was taken for a court lady, of German origin, and of unpopular repute. The
-crowd gathered about her carriage, and with oaths and yells were about to
-demolish the windows with clubs and stones, when the nowise alarmed
-occupant, like Nellie Gwynn, on a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span> similar occasion, rose in her seat,
-and, with imprecations more emphatic than polite, exclaimed,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“&mdash;&mdash; you! Don’t you know who I am? I am Mrs. Sally Mapp, the celebrated
-bone-setter of Epsom!�</p>
-
-<p>“This brief address so tickled the humor of the rabble that the lady was
-permitted to proceed on her way, amid deafening acclamations and
-laughter.�</p>
-
-<p>This famous woman’s career may be likened to a rocket. She flashed before
-the people as suddenly, ascended as brilliantly to the zenith of fame, and
-fell like the burned, blackened stick.</p>
-
-<p>Mrs. Mapp spent her last days in poverty, wretchedness, and obscurity, at
-“Seven Dials,� where she died almost unattended, on the night of December
-22, 1737. Her demise was thus briefly announced in the journals:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“Died at her lodgings, near Seven Dials, last week, Mrs. Mapp, the once
-much-talked-of bone-setter of Epsom, so wretchedly poor that the parish
-was obliged to bury her.�</p>
-
-<p>Mr. Jeaffreson makes mention of two more “female doctors;� one an honest
-widow, mother of “Chevalier Taylor,� who, at Norwich, carried on a
-respectable business as an apothecary and doctress, and Mrs. Colonel
-Blood, who, at Romford, supported herself and son by keeping an apothecary
-shop.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">American Female Physicians.</span></p>
-
-<p>Perhaps English authors and English readers may be satisfied to allow the
-above meagre and unenviable array of pretenders to stand on record as the
-representatives of “female doctors� in their liberal and enlightened
-country! Americans can boast of a better representative.</p>
-
-<p>While England claims a “Female Medical Society,� and one “Female Medical
-College,� the United States has several of the former, and three regularly
-chartered “Female Medical Colleges.� In a recent announcement of the
-English college,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span> it claims fifty students, “but the aim of the whole
-movement is at present only to furnish competent midwives.�</p>
-
-<p>The “Maternity Hospital,� of Paris (which existed long before the late
-Franco-Prussian war, but which we can learn nothing of since the fall of
-that once beautiful city), “afforded some opportunity for observation,
-receiving females nominally as students, but they were not allowed to
-prescribe in the wards, nor were they instructed in regard to the use and
-properties of the remedies there prescribed. Indeed, they can hardly rise
-above the position of proficient nurses,� says our informant.</p>
-
-<p>Some few medical colleges of the United States are admitting females on
-the same footing as the heretofore more favored “lords of creation.�</p>
-
-<p>A female college has been in existence in Philadelphia for above twenty
-years. The “New England Female Medical College� was chartered in 1856; but
-the “regular� colleges, as Yale, Harvard, etc., refuse all female
-applicants.</p>
-
-<p>New York has been more liberal towards the gentler sex. At Geneva,
-Rochester, Syracuse, and elsewhere, as early as 1849-50, medical schools
-of the more liberal sort, but of undoubted respectability and legal
-charters, opened their doors to female students. In 1869 the New York
-Female Medical College was chartered, since which time more than two
-hundred ladies have therein received medical instruction.</p>
-
-<p>In all the principal cities of the Union may be found from one to a dozen
-respectably educated and successful female practitioners, who have
-attained to some eminence in spite of the opposition of the “faculty,� and
-the ignorant prejudices of the common people.</p>
-
-<p>It is surprising how early and persistently some men forget that they were
-“born of woman!� Their contempt of the capabilities of womankind would
-lead one to suppose them to be ashamed of their own mothers. Mark Twain’s
-facetious but instructive speech, once delivered before an editorial<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span>
-gathering in Boston, ought to be rehearsed to them daily; yes, and
-enforced by petticoat government upon their notice till it became
-stereotyped into their stupid brains. Mark says,</p>
-
-<p>“What, sir, would the peoples of the earth be without woman? They would be
-scarce, sir,&mdash;almighty scarce! (Laughter.) Then let us cherish her; let us
-protect her; let us give her our support, our encouragement, our
-sympathy,&mdash;our&mdash;selves, if we get a chance.</p>
-
-<p>“But, jesting aside, Mr. President, woman is gracious, lovable, kind of
-heart, beautiful, worthy of all respect, of all esteem, of all deference.
-Not any here will refuse to drink her health right cordially, for each and
-every one of us has personally known, and loved, and honored the very best
-of them all,&mdash;<i>his own mother</i>!�</p>
-
-<p>Sarah B. Chase, M. D., a respectable and successful female physician of
-Ohio, gives the following excellent advice:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“I would not encourage any woman to study medicine, with the expectation
-of practising, who is not ready and willing&mdash;ay, <i>anxious</i> and
-<i>determined</i>&mdash;to go through the same severe drill of preparation, the same
-thorough discipline, as is required of man before he is crowned with the
-honors of an M. D.�</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">A Female Pioneer.</span></p>
-
-<p>Among the first successful female physicians of Boston, where she was born
-in 1805, is Harriot K. Hunt, M. D. Her father was a shipping merchant,
-who, by honesty and uprightness died comparatively poor, for riches are
-not always to the upright. Her mother is described by Rev. H. B. Elliot,
-“as one possessing a mind of remarkable qualities, argumentative,
-practical, independent, and, withal, abounding in tenderness and genial
-brightness.� In 1830 we find Miss Hunt not only thrown upon her resources
-for her own livelihood (her father having left but barely the house that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span>
-gave them shelter to be called their own), but the support and care of an
-only and invalid sister, somewhat her junior, were also entirely dependent
-upon her labors. As a school teacher she met the former, as a student and
-nurse she finally surmounted the latter. “What! more pedagogues turned
-doctors?�</p>
-
-<p>After nearly three years’ employment of various physicians on the part of
-the elder sister, and the extreme suffering from the “distressing and
-complicated disease,� and, what was worse, the “severest forms of
-prescriptions of the old school of physic� for the same time by the
-younger sister, the Misses Hunt were led to investigate for themselves.
-They purchased medical works, which they read early and late.</p>
-
-<p>In 1833 Harriot leased her house, and entered the office of a doctress,
-Mrs. Mott by name, in the double capacity of secretary and student. The
-younger sister became a patient of Mrs. Mott’s. The husband of Mrs. Mott
-was an English physician, who, with his wife to attend the female portion
-of his patients, had established himself in Boston. Mrs. Mott was without
-a thorough medical education. “She made extravagant claims to medical
-skill in the treatment of cases regarded as hopeless.� In 1835 Dr. Mott
-died, and Mrs. Mott returned to England. Under the treatment of the latter
-the invalid sister had so much improved in health as to be able to “walk
-the streets for the first time in three years;� yet where is the “old
-school doctor,� or the veriest charlatan, that would give her the credit
-she so seemingly deserved in this case. Both were her opponents. Even the
-students of the neighboring medical school were “pitted against her.� The
-old adage respecting his Satanic majesty having the credit due him, did
-not seem to apply to her case. But Mrs. Mott was more than a match for
-their cunning, if not for their scientific theorizings, as the following
-anecdote will show.</p>
-
-<p>“Three wise men of Gotham,� that amiable lady, Mrs.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span> Goose, tells us,
-“went to sea in a bowl; and had the bowl been stronger, my song would have
-been longer.� This has its parallel in the three wise students of H&mdash;&mdash;,
-who laid their wise heads together, and went to <i>see</i>&mdash;Mrs. Mott, the
-doctress, of Hanover Street. One was to pretend that he had some peculiar
-disease, for which he, with his anxious friends, wished to consult the
-“wise woman.� They entered the doctor’s office, and demanded to see the
-doctress. This was an open insult to the woman, as she only gave her
-attention to females and children. Nevertheless, Mrs. Mott, whose
-olfactory nerves were not so obtuse as to prevent her from distinguishing
-the aroma of that peculiar little animal quadruped of the genus <i>Mus</i>,
-obeyed the summons, and entered the presence of the three wise
-Æsculapians.</p>
-
-<p>Now the fun began. Not the fun that <i>was to be</i> at the expense of the
-“ignorant old female quack,� however.</p>
-
-<p>One of the gentlemen arose, and after a profound bow, began, with some
-embarrassment, to state his case.</p>
-
-<p>“But wait just a moment,� the doctress interrupted. “You intimate that it
-is a <i>peculiar</i> case. My fee for consultation in such cases is <i>three
-dollars</i>. Please hand over the money, and proceed.�</p>
-
-<p>This was an unexpected demand. They had thought to have a little fun,
-expose the woman’s ignorance, and have a “huge thing� to tell to their
-class-fellows, <i>and not pay for it</i>! Mrs. Mott was a woman, but she
-possessed powerful magnetic influence, and held fast to the point, viz.,
-her fee for consultation; and to the chagrin of the patient (?), and the
-astonishment of his chums, the three dollars were paid over to the
-doctress.</p>
-
-<p>“Now, sir, you will please state your case,� said the lady, pocketing the
-fee, adjusting her eye-glasses, and seating herself for a consultation.</p>
-
-<p>“Yes. Well&mdash;it is a&mdash;a peculiar case,� stammered the patient.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span>“You have informed me of that point before. Please proceed,� remarked the
-doctress with great complacency to the embarrassed fellow.</p>
-
-<p>“It’s a delicate case,� he blushingly replied.</p>
-
-<p>“O, indeed; then step into this private consulting room;� and arising, she
-led the way to an inner office, where the young man involuntarily
-followed, greatly to the amusement of the two remaining students, who
-remarked, “It is getting blamed hot for us here.�</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 450px; height: 334px;"><img src="images/img023.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">THREE WISE STUDENTS CONSULTING A DOCTRESS.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>In a moment, the invalid&mdash;greatly improved, one might judge, from his
-agility,&mdash;rushed from the private sanctum with a bound, grasped his hat
-from the table, exclaiming, “Come on, for God’s sake!� and rushed from the
-house, followed by his now thoroughly affrighted companions.</p>
-
-<p>“What’s the matter? What did the old tarantula say to you?� demanded the
-young man’s chums, when well outside of the web into which they had so
-impudently intruded themselves.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span>“Don’t you ever ask me,� he vociferated. “A &mdash;&mdash; pretty mess you got me
-into. But if either of you ever again mistake that old woman for a fool, I
-hope to God she’ll take you into her private consulting room.�</p>
-
-<p>But to return to Miss Hunt and her sister. In 1855 or ’56 the sisters
-opened an office in Boston. As with all young physicians without “dead
-men’s shoes,� professional support, or wealthy and influential friends to
-back them, patients gathered slowly at first, but with a steady increase,
-the care of whom soon devolved entirely upon Harriot, as her sister
-married, and retired from practice.</p>
-
-<p>In 1847 she had an extensive practice among a wealthy and influential
-class of people, which many an older physician of the sterner sex might
-envy. With a large practical knowledge, acquired in twelve years’
-experience, she applied to Harvard College for permission to attend a
-course of medical lectures. She was refused admission. In 1850 she again
-applied. The officers consented this time, but the students offered such
-objections to the admission of females into their presence, that Miss Hunt
-generously declined to avail herself of the long-coveted opportunity.</p>
-
-<p>“The Female Medical College,� at Philadelphia, in 1853, granted Miss Hunt
-an honorary degree.... She is now in the midst of an extensive practice.
-Miss Hunt has lived a glorious, self-denying life, upholding her sister
-co-laborers, and the “dignity of the profession,� never demeaning herself
-by stooping to sell her knowledge, by any of those disreputable practices
-that mark the avaricious M. D., the charlatan, the parasites, and the
-leeches of the profession, both male and female.</p>
-
-<p>Among eighty-five “female physicians� (?) of Boston, eighteen claim to be
-graduates of some college. We know of several who deserve a favorable
-mention here, but present limits will not admit.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span></p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">New York Female Doctors.</span></p>
-
-<p>In New York city there are upwards of two hundred so-called “female
-physicians,� about eighty per cent. of whom, according to the best
-authority,&mdash;police reports, etc.,&mdash;subsist by <i>vampirism</i>! Here, in this
-chapter, I shall mention a few of the really meritorious ones, reserving
-the large majority to be “shown up� under the various chapters as
-“fortune-tellers,� “clairvoyants,� and “astrologers.�</p>
-
-<p>The subject of the following imperfect, because brief, sketch,&mdash;<span class="smcap">Mrs. C. S.
-Lozier, M. D.</span>,&mdash;late of New York city, was born in Plainfield, New Jersey,
-in 1813. Her maiden name was Clemence S. Harned. Her father was a farmer
-by occupation, and a member of the Methodist church. Her amiable and
-excellent mother was a Quakeress. “Why should Mrs. Lozier, a gentle,
-modest, unambitious, home-loving woman, have chosen the calling of a
-physician?� asks her biographer. My answer would be, “She was a creature
-of circumstances.� Another, in view of the facts to be related, would say,
-“<i>It was her destiny</i>.�</p>
-
-<p>The valuable information which Mrs. Lozier gained, as a Quakeress, amongst
-that herbalistic people with which she was early associated, with study
-and practical observation enabled her to “act efficiently as a nurse and
-attendant upon the sick and afflicted of the neighborhood.�</p>
-
-<p>The elder brother of Miss Clemence, William Harned, was a physician, as
-also were two of her cousins. In 1830 she was married to Mr. Lozier, and
-removed to New York. Her husband’s health failing, and having no other
-support, Mrs. Lozier opened a select school, which she kept successfully
-till after the death of Mr. Lozier, in 1837.</p>
-
-<p>“During this period she read medicine with her brother. When her pupils
-were sick, she would generally be called in before a physician. She also
-was connected with the ‘Moral Reform Society,’ with Mrs. Margaret Pryor,
-and visited<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span> the sick and abandoned, often prescribing for them in
-sickness.�</p>
-
-<p>Mrs. Lozier graduated at the Eclectic College, of Syracuse, in 1853,
-having attended her first course of lectures at the Central College,
-Rochester. From that time until her death, in 1870, she continued to
-minister to the sick and afflicted in the city of New York.</p>
-
-<p>At the commencement of this article we stated that Mrs. Lozier was a
-modest woman. This she continued to be to the end. Those leading
-physicians who often met her in consultation, with the thousands of
-patients who from time to time have been under her treatment, the students
-before whom she lectured during several years, the numerous friends who
-thronged her parlors, and the Christian professors with whom she
-mingled,&mdash;all, <i>all</i> testify to this fact. “She denied both the expediency
-and practicability of mingling the sexes� in deriving a medical education.
-“Woman physician for women,� was her motto. It was not always possible for
-her to refuse to prescribe for male patients, as many can testify. The
-efforts of some, far down in the scale of life, to connect the name of
-Mrs. Lozier with those disreputable practices by which the majority of
-female physicians&mdash;the parasites of the profession&mdash;subsist, yea, even
-gain a competence, in this city, and, consequently,
-<i>respectability</i>,&mdash;“for gold buys friends,�&mdash;have utterly failed, and her
-<i>name</i> to-day, as it ever will, stands out boldly as belonging to one who
-was a self-denying, God-fearing, honorable, and successful female
-practitioner.</p>
-
-<p>Mrs. Lozier is said to have been a skilful surgeon, “having performed
-upwards of one hundred and twenty capital operations.� In 1867-8 Mrs. L.
-visited Europe, where she was received with great marks of esteem by
-eminent men, and admitted to the hospitals.</p>
-
-<p>Her son, Dr. A. W. Lozier, is in practice in New York city.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span></p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Doctors Elizabeth and Emily Blackwell.</span></p>
-
-<p>The first female who received a medical diploma from any college in the
-United States was Miss Elizabeth Blackwell.</p>
-
-<p>This lady, who now stands only second in years of experience to Miss Hunt,
-of Boston, and second to no female in medical knowledge and usefulness,
-came to this country from England in 1831, when she was ten years of age.
-[A lady, of whom I made some inquiries respecting the above, assured me
-“it was only those females who were eligible as nurses, or prospective
-widowhood, which would make them eligible, were desirous of concealing
-their true age.�]</p>
-
-<p>Being persuaded that her “mission� was to heal the sick, Miss Elizabeth
-applied, by writing, to six different physicians for advice as to the best
-means to obtain an education, and received from all the reply that it was
-“impracticable,� utterly impossible, for a female to obtain a medical
-education; “the proposition eccentric,� “Utopian,� etc.</p>
-
-<p>It required just this sort of opposition to draw out the true character,
-and arouse the hidden abilities of such women as the Misses Blackwell.</p>
-
-<p>Elizabeth, while supporting herself by giving music lessons in Charleston,
-S. C., received regular medical instruction from S. H. Dixon, M. D., a
-gentleman and scholar, well known to the entire profession of two
-continents; also from Drs. John Dixon, Allen, and Warrington, the two
-latter in Philadelphia. Being considered by these gentlemen competent,
-Miss Blackwell applied to the medical schools of Philadelphia and New York
-for admission as a medical student, by all of which she was rejected
-“because she was a female.� Finally she gained admission to the College at
-Geneva, N. Y., and graduated in 1848. Are the <i>males</i> the only
-“oppressors� of the gentler sex? No, no; woman is woman’s own worst enemy.</p>
-
-<p>Miss Blackwell was two years in Geneva, and so violent<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span> was the opposition
-of <i>her own sex</i>, that no lady in Geneva would make her acquaintance while
-there. “Common civilities at the table, even, were denied me.� Entirely
-different was the treatment which she received at the hands of the
-students and professors of the college. “Here she found nothing but
-friendliness and decorum, and, on the eve of her graduation, the
-cordiality of the students in making way for her to receive her diploma,
-and pleasantly indicating their congratulations, was marked and
-respectful.�</p>
-
-<p>The following morning her parlor was thronged with ladies.</p>
-
-<p>Miss Elizabeth Blackwell visited London and Paris, and was entered as
-student at St. Bartholomew’s, and also at “<i>La Maternité</i>� (The
-Maternity).</p>
-
-<p>She returned to New York, and, notwithstanding “she found a blank wall of
-social and professional antagonism facing the woman physician, which
-formed a situation of singular loneliness, leaving her without support,
-respect, or counsel,� she gained a foothold, and a respectable and living
-practice soon began to flow in and crown her persistent efforts.</p>
-
-<p>Now her sister Emily commenced the study of medicine, first with
-Elizabeth, subsequently with Dr. Davis, of Cincinnati Medical College. In
-1852 she and her sister were permitted to attend upon some of the wards
-(female, we presume) of Bellevue Hospital. In 1854 Emily graduated at
-Cleveland College (Eclectic, I think).</p>
-
-<p>Through their united efforts the “New York Infirmary for Women and
-Children� was established. “Up to the present time over fifty thousand
-patients have received prescriptions and personal care by this means.�
-Contrary to Mrs. Lozier, “they are firm in their conviction of the
-expediency of mingling the sexes in <i>all</i> scholastic training. In their
-mode of practice they adopt the main features of the ‘regular’ system.�
-Nearly all other physicians are rather of the <i>Eclectic</i> system. Like Miss
-Hunt, “she was bound by no regular school, as none had indorsed her.�</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span>There are many contemporaries of Miss Hunt and the sisters Blackwell whom
-we might mention, but the history of one is the history of the whole, so
-far as early struggles, opposition of the profession, and neglect and
-disrespect of their own sex, is concerned.</p>
-
-<p>Frances S. Cooke, M. D., of the “Female Medical College,� East Concord
-Street, Boston, Mrs. Jackson, Lucy Sewall, M. D., recently returned from
-Europe, and a half-score others of Boston, much deserve more than a
-passing notice, but our limited space will not permit. Also, Hannah E.
-Longshore, M. E. Zakezewska, of New York, Miss Jane E. Myers, M. D., Mrs.
-Mary F. Thomas, M. D. (Camden, Ind.), Miss Ann Preston, M. D., of
-Philadelphia, Mrs. Annie Bowen, of Chicago, and others, “too numerous to
-mention,� who, in spite of the opposition from their own sex, from the
-profession, and the public in general, have gained a name and a competency
-through their professional efforts.</p>
-
-<p>“A woman’s intellectual incapacity and her physical weakness will ever
-disqualify her for the duties of the medical profession,� wrote Dr. &mdash;&mdash;,
-of Pennsylvania.</p>
-
-<p>Edward H. Dixon, M. D., of New York, in an article published in the
-“<i>Scalpel</i>� shows, by uncontroverted arguments and facts, that the male
-child, at birth, “in original organic strength,� holds only an equal
-chance with the female; that “the chances of health for the two sexes at
-the outset are equal, and so continue till the period when they first
-attain the full use of their legs.�</p>
-
-<p>Ask the mother of a family if the labor pains show any respect of sex.</p>
-
-<p>Does not the female show as strong lungs as the male in its <i>earliest</i>
-disapprobation of this unceremonious world? How about the comparative
-strength exhibited in the demonstrations of each when the lacteal fluid is
-not forthcoming in proportion to the appetite?</p>
-
-<p>Let us consult Dr. Dixon further,&mdash;and charge it to the females!</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span>“We give the girl two years’ start of the boy,&mdash;we shall see why as we
-proceed. Both have endured the torture of bandaging, pinning (pricking),
-and tight dressing; both have been rocked, jounced on the knee, papped,
-laudanumed, paregoricked, castor oiled, suffocated with blankets over the
-head, sweltered with cap and feather bed, roasted at a fire of anthracite,
-dosed according to the formula of some superannuated doctor or
-‘experienced nurse,’ or both, for these people usually hunt in couples,
-and are very gracious to each other. We give the girl the start to make up
-for the benefit the boy has derived from chasing the cat, rolling on the
-floor, or sliding down the balustrade, and the torture <i>she</i> had endured
-from her sampler, and being compelled to ‘sit up straight, and not be
-<i>hoidenish</i>.’�</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 450px; height: 256px;"><img src="images/img024.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">“POH! YOU’RE A GIRL.�</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>“Well, they are off to school. Observe how circumspectly our little miss
-must walk, chiding her brother for being ‘too rude.’ He, nothing daunted,
-(with a ‘<i>Poh! you’re a girl</i>’), starts full tilt after an unlucky pig or
-a stray dog. If he tumbles into the mud and soils his clothes the result
-is soon visible in increase of lungs and ruddy cheeks.�</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span>“In school the boy has the advantage. The girl ‘mustn’t loll,’ must sit up
-erect, the limbs hanging down, her feet probably not reaching the floor,
-and the spinal column must bear the main support for three to six hours!
-The boy gets relief in ‘shying’ an occasional paper ball across the room,
-hitching about, and drawing his legs up on the seat, or sticking a pin in
-his neighbor, and a good run and jump at recess, changing the monotony of
-the recreation by an occasional fight after school. At dinner the girl has
-had no exercise to create an appetite, and her meal is made up of pastry
-and dessert. ‘Remember that her muscles move the limbs, and are composed
-chiefly of azote, and it is the red meat, or muscle of beef or mutton,
-that she would eat if she had any appetite for it, that is to say, if her
-stomach and blood-vessels would endure it. The fact is, <i>the child has
-fever and loathes meat</i>.’�</p>
-
-<p>While the boy, hat in hand, rushes to the common or rear yard to roll
-hoop, fly his kite, or, in winter, to skate or coast down hill, the girl
-is reminded that she has “one whole hour to practise at the piano,� either
-in a darkened room, from whence all God’s sunshine is excluded, cold and
-cheerless, or the other extreme&mdash;seated near a heated register, from which
-the dry, poisonous fumes belch forth, destroying the pure oxygen she
-requires to inflate her narrowing lungs, and increase the fibrine, the
-muscle, and strength necessary to the exhausting exercise. She closes the
-day by eating a bit of cake and a plate of preserves.</p>
-
-<p>The hungry, “neglected� boy has returned, and, with swift coursing blood,
-strength of muscle and brain, catches a glance at his neglected lesson,
-comprehending it all the quicker by the change he has enjoyed, bawls
-boisterously for some cold meat, or something hearty, and tumbles into his
-bed, forgetting to close the door or window; whereas the girl must be
-attended to her room, “she is so delicate,� and, being tucked well in on a
-sweltering feather bed, and bound<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span> down by heavy blankets, the doors and
-windows are carefully secured, and, committed to the “care of Providence,�
-she is left to swelter till to-morrow.</p>
-
-<p>The period for a great change arrives, often catching the poor, uninformed
-girl completely by surprise. Furthermore, the constant deprivation of her
-natural requirements&mdash;pure air, wholesome, nutritious food, unrestrained
-limbs and lungs&mdash;now become more apparent. In spite of the constant
-drilling which she has received, she feels exceedingly <i>gauche</i>. Her face
-is alternately pale and flushed; she suffers from headache,&mdash;“a rush of
-blood to the head.� Stays and tight-lacing have weakened the action of the
-heart, cut off the circulation to the extremities, and deprived those
-parts of blood which now require the nutriment necessary to their strength
-and support in the time of their greatest need.</p>
-
-<p>The ignorant mother sends for a physician, perhaps almost as ignorant as
-herself; or, what is still worse, being a miserable time-server, seeing
-the admirable opportunity for making a bill, straightway commences a
-course of deception and quackery that, if it do not result in the death of
-the unfortunate patient, leaves her a miserable creature for life, with
-spinal curvature or consumption; or worse, by confinement and medication
-destroy her chance of restoration; and should some unlucky and ignorant
-young man take her as wife, and she become a mother, she surely will drag
-out a wretched existence as a victim to uterine displacement and its
-concomitant results.</p>
-
-<p>Physically, morally, and intellectually woman is not born inferior to man.
-We have briefly shown where and how she has fallen behind in the race of
-life in a physical view of the matter. The intellectual sense has kept
-pace only with the physical. Morally woman stands alone; by her own
-strength or weakness she stands or falls. Man scarcely upholds or
-encourages her. Her own sex, we have herein-before<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span> stated, is woman’s own
-worst enemy! “Be thou as chaste as ice, or pure as snow, thou shalt not
-escape calumny,� and if she fall, who shall restore her? The whole world
-is against her; one half makes her what she is, the other’s scorn and
-neglect keeps her thus! The “ballot� will not keep woman from falling, nor
-raise her when fallen. The “church� does not exempt woman from the wiles
-of men, nor its adherents raise the fallen to their pristine strength,
-beauty, and respectability! Though Christ, the lowly, the magnanimous,
-said, “<i>Neither do I condemn thee</i>,� his followers (?) cannot lay their
-hands upon their hearts and repeat his gracious words. Where is the fallen
-woman whom the church (not Roman Catholic) ever took in with that good
-faith and spirit of sisterly love or brotherly affection, with which a
-fallen man can, and is, often received into the church and into society?</p>
-
-<p>Echo answers, “Where?�</p>
-
-<p>O, deny this who will! It is no “attack upon the church;� merely a
-lamentably truthful statement.</p>
-
-<p>The church, like society, withdraws her skirts from contact with the
-fallen sister. “She is a wreck, drifted upon our shore, for which God
-holds some one accountable. Not a wreck that can be restored&mdash;not a wreck
-that money or repentance can atone for.� (What! not money? Then surely she
-is lost, and forever!) “The damage is beyond earthly knowledge to
-estimate, beyond human power of indemnification. If ever the erring soul
-shall retrace her steps, it will be <i>Christ</i> himself who shall lead her;
-if ever peace shall brood again over her spirit, it will be the Comforter
-who shall send the white-winged dove.</p>
-
-<p>“But the merest lad detects the lost woman. She carries the evidences of
-her guilt (or misfortune?) in the very clothes she wears, whether she is
-the richly dressed courtesan of the Bowery, or the beggarly street-walker
-of the village. There is a delicacy in, and a fine bloom on the nature<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span> of
-woman, which impurity smites with its first breath, and she cannot conceal
-the loss nor cover the shame!�</p>
-
-<p class="poem">“If there be but one spot upon thy name,<br />
-One eye thou fearest to meet, one human voice<br />
-Whose tones thou shrinkest from, Woman! veil thy face,<br />
-And bow thy head and die!�</p>
-
-<p>Then is there no help for woman’s condition in this cold, uncharitable
-world? you ask, in view of these facts related above. Yes; <i>but it rests
-with woman</i>. It must begin with the first breath the female infant draws.
-Educate her from the cradle. Give her the freedom of the boy, the pure air
-that the boy breathes; not the romping, rude, boisterous plays, perhaps
-(?), of the boy, but plenty of outdoor exercise, runs, slides, skates,
-rides; let her laugh, yea <i>shout</i>, if it be in a country place, till the
-woods ring again with the merry echoes, and the puzzled forest nymphs
-issue from their invaded retreats, endeavoring to solve the riddle by
-ocular demonstration which their ears have failed to unravel, viz., the
-sex, as revealed in the strength of voice and buoyancy of spirits, or
-expressed in unrestrained laughter!</p>
-
-<p>“O, shocking! How hoidenish!�</p>
-
-<p>Who says to laugh is “<i>hoidenish</i>?� A female invariably! And this is just
-what we are explaining: women must change tactics as teachers. There is
-time enough to instruct the <i>young</i> lady, after the girl or the miss has
-developed muscle, vitalized her blood, and capacitated her brain for the
-sterner realities of life.</p>
-
-<p>Let women learn to be true teachers of women.</p>
-
-<p>Begin at the beginning. This is the only way. Stand by one another in the
-reform. Never mind the ballot; don’t try to wear the <i>breeches</i>. No&mdash;the
-male attire I mean.</p>
-
-<p>The superfluous boarding-school education must give place to something
-more substantial. Mrs. Dashaway is to the point:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span>“No, Pauline; home eddycation is perferable. If there is a requestred spot
-on this toad-stool I detest more’n another it is a female cemetery, where
-bread-and-butter girls are sent and quartered for a finished eddycation;
-and it does finish most of em.�</p>
-
-<p>“O, no, no, aunty. You mean <i>sequestered</i> spot, and sent <i>quarterly</i> to a
-<i>seminary</i>.�</p>
-
-<p>“Well, well; you’ve got too many oceans in your head already of Greek and
-zebra, of itchiology, and other humerous works; as for me, give me pure
-blood, sound teeth, and a good constitution, and let them what’s got them
-sort of diseases see the good Samaritan, and ten to eleven if he don’t
-cure them in less than no time. Land! if Pauline ain’t drummin’ the
-piany!�</p>
-
-<p>Shall women remain passively resigned to the lamentable physical condition
-of her sex? or will she see where lies the main difficulty, viz., in a
-<i>wrong start</i>,&mdash;in the superfluous, debilitating, <i>namby-pamby</i> education
-of the female infant, miss, young lady?</p>
-
-<p>Thoreau wrote that he believed resignation a <i>virtue</i>, but he “rather not
-practise it unless it became absolutely necessary.�</p>
-
-<p>“Resignation� is unnecessary in this case. Only let every woman arouse her
-energies, and stand firmly in claiming her “rights� to rightly educate her
-children, girls as well as boys, showing no respect of sex in their
-<i>early</i> training, thereby “commencing at the beginning.� What is a house
-without a good foundation? You may build, and rebuild, and finally it will
-all topple over, overwhelming you in its ruins.</p>
-
-<p>There is no “right� that woman may claim for herself and sex in general
-but men must and will concede. Man is not your master. “Habit,� “fashion,�
-“opinion,� these are your only masters. These shackle woman.</p>
-
-<p>Do women dress for men? to please the opposite sex? or for each other’s
-eye? “You know just how it is yourself.�<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span> Poh! What do men, generally
-speaking, know of woman’s dress? Absolutely nothing! I boldly assert that
-not one man in twenty, going out to a call, party, or even a concert or
-opera, knows the cut and color of the dress of his wife accompanying him.
-Woman dresses for women’s inspection. Whatever she does for fear or favor
-of man else, woman dresses for her own sex.</p>
-
-<p>“What will Mrs. Codfish say when she sees this turned dress?�</p>
-
-<p>“Old Codfish,� her husband, is worth at least fifty thousand dollars, and
-here is Mrs. Copyman, whose husband is as poor as “Job’s turkey,� standing
-in dread of that woman’s criticism!</p>
-
-<p>Not one male in a thousand can detect a well turned dress, but I defy the
-most cunning dressmaker to alter, retrim, frill, and “furbelow� a dress
-that the female eye won’t detect at a glance!</p>
-
-<p>“I rather pay the butcher’s bill than the doctor’s,� says the father.</p>
-
-<p>“O, horrors! Just see that girl swallow the meat! Why, it will make your
-skin as rough as a grater and as greasy as an Indian’s!� exclaims the
-mother.</p>
-
-<p>Miss Primrose keeps our village school; she who wears the trailing skirts,
-and was seen to cut a cherry in two parts before eating it, at the party
-last week. She almost went into convulsions&mdash;not of laughter, as I did&mdash;to
-see Kitty Clover astride a plank, with her brother on the opposite end,
-playing at “See-saw.�</p>
-
-<p>“Here we go up&mdash;up&mdash;uppy; and here we go down&mdash;down&mdash;downy,� they were
-singing in unison, when “ding, ding, ding!� went the school-bell, followed
-by a scream from Miss Primrose.</p>
-
-<p>With glowing cheeks&mdash;that’s from the exercise&mdash;and downcast eye, from fear
-of Miss Primrose’s anger, Kitty came demurely into the school-room before
-recess was half over.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span>After a long lecture about her “masculine behavior,� “horrid red
-countenance,� and “rumpled dress,� and “dishevelled hair,� poor Kitty is
-sent to her form to “sit up straight, and not forget that she is a young
-lady hereafter.�</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 450px; height: 396px;"><img src="images/img025.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">“HERE WE GO UP&mdash;UP&mdash;UPPY; AND HERE WE GO DOWN&mdash;DOWN&mdash;DOWNY.�</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>And what of her brother who was on the other end of the plank? O, he is a
-boy! “That’s what’s the difference!�</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Love and Thoroughwort.</span></p>
-
-<p class="poem">“He’ll never die for love, I know,<br />
-He’ll never die for love, nor wear<br />
-Upon his brow the marks of care.�</p>
-
-<p>This is a true story, written for this work, but published, by permission
-of the author, in the “American Union.�</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span>“So you believe me totally incapable of truly loving <i>any</i> girl, do you?�</p>
-
-<p>“I most assuredly do,� was my positive answer.</p>
-
-<p>My friend, George Brown, turned and walked away a few paces, looking
-thoughtfully to the ground. He was a splendid looking man, about twenty
-years of age; my late school-fellow, my present friend and confidant. He
-was, what I did not flatter myself as being, a great favorite with the
-ladies. Handsome, tall, manly, of easy address, a fine singer and dancer,
-the only impediment to his physical perfection was, when the least
-excited, a hesitancy of speech&mdash;almost a stammer. Finally he turned and
-walked back to me, saying,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“Now, Ad, if you will agree to a proposition I have to offer, I will
-disprove your assertion, so oft repeated, that I never loved&mdash;not even
-that dear girl, Jenny Kingsbury.�</p>
-
-<p>“First let me hear your proposition.�</p>
-
-<p>“You have long desired to visit Bangor?�</p>
-
-<p>“Yes,� I replied.</p>
-
-<p>“Let us harness ‘Simon’ early some fine morning for that delightful city;
-go by the way of B. and O., stop and see Jenny, who I have learned by
-roundabout inquiry resides with her aunt in the latter place. And,� he
-added, triumphantly, “see for yourself if she isn’t a girl to be loved.�</p>
-
-<p>“O, no doubt Jenny Kingsbury ‘is a girl to be loved;’ so was Addie, and so
-was ’Ria, and a dozen others, whom you have sworn you loved so devotedly.
-O George, out upon your affections.�</p>
-
-<p>“Will&mdash;will&mdash;you go? That’s the question.�</p>
-
-<p>“Yes&mdash;I will go&mdash;because I wish to visit Bangor very much,� was my reply;
-and the time was at once set for the journey, which was to occupy two
-days.</p>
-
-<p>Mrs. Brown, the mother of my friend George, was a devout Christian. She
-believed in her Bible. Moreover, she was an excellent <i>nurse</i>, and next to
-her Bible, believed in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span> <i>thoroughwort</i>. Thoroughwort tea, or thoroughwort
-syrup, was her panacea for all the ills, physical or moral, that ever was,
-or could be, detailed upon poor humanity.</p>
-
-<p>“Before you start, boys&mdash;�</p>
-
-<p>“Boys! Where are your <i>men</i>?� interrupted George.</p>
-
-<p>“Hear me!� continued Mrs. Brown. “Before you start for Bangor to-morrow
-morning, do you take a good drink of that thoroughwort syrup in the large
-jar on the first shelf in the pantry. It’ll keep out the cold; for
-there’ll be frost to-night, I think, and at five o’clock in the morning
-the air will be sharp. O, there is nothing equal to <i>thoroughwort</i> for
-keeping out the cold.�</p>
-
-<p>“Anything to eat in that pantry?� asked George, with a wink tipped to me.
-You see I was to sleep with him that night, preparatory to an early start
-for Bangor.</p>
-
-<p>“Yes, some cold meat, bread, and a pie. But don’t forget to first take a
-dose of the thoroughwort syrup. Addison, you bear it in mind, for George
-is awful forgetful, especially about taking his thoroughwort.� And Mrs.
-Brown detained us fully fifteen minutes, as she rehearsed the remarkable
-qualities of her favorite remedy,&mdash;“particularly for keeping out cold.�</p>
-
-<p>“Mother thinks that condemnable stuff is meat, drink, and clothing,�
-remarked George, as we sought the pantry at an early hour on the following
-morning, not for the thoroughwort, but for sandwiches, pies, and the like.</p>
-
-<p>“Let me take a taste of the ‘stuff,’� I said, as I noticed the jar so
-conveniently at hand.</p>
-
-<p>“O, no; not on an empty stomach. It will make you throw up Jonah if you
-do,� exclaimed George, with an expression of disgust distorting his
-features. “Eat something first, and then, if you want to taste the
-condemned ‘stuff,’ do so, and the Lord be with you,� he added, pitching
-into the eatables.</p>
-
-<p>Having made away with the pie, and much of the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span>sandwiches, we turned our
-attention for a moment to the thoroughwort syrup. I took a taste, and
-George spilled a quantity on the shelf, “that mother may know we have been
-to the jar,� he remarked, as we left the pantry.</p>
-
-<p>It was not yet five o’clock when we drove noiselessly away from the door.
-If I remember rightly, we were not <i>noiseless</i> after that. The morning was
-delightful, slightly cool,&mdash;but that was no impediment to our warm blood,
-owing to the thoroughwort,&mdash;and we sped on in an exuberant flow of
-spirits. “Simon� was in excellent travelling order, and went without whip
-or spur. We should have reached the village of B., where we were to
-breakfast, and bait Simon, by eight o’clock, but George would insist on
-making the acquaintance, <i>nolens volens</i>, of half the farmers on the road,
-ostensibly to inquire the way to B.</p>
-
-<p>“Hallo!� he shouted, reining up Simon before a small farm-house. Up flew a
-window, and out popped a nightcapped head.</p>
-
-<p>“What d’ye want?� called a feminine voice. It was now hardly daylight, and
-the person could not distinguish us.</p>
-
-<p>“Excuse me, madam, for disturbing your slumbers; but can you inform a
-stranger if this is the right road to B.?� asked George, in his most
-pleasing manner.</p>
-
-<p>“O, yes; keep right on; take the first left hand road to the top o’ the
-hill; then go on till yer&mdash;�</p>
-
-<p>We drove away, not waiting for the rest.</p>
-
-<p>“Do you suppose that old woman is talking there now, with her nightcapped
-head poked out of the window?� asked George, as we reached the hotel at B.</p>
-
-<p>“For shame!� said I. “Waking up all the people on the road, to inquire the
-way, with which you were perfectly familiar!�</p>
-
-<p>From B. our route lay along the western bank of the beautiful Penobscot. I
-need not detain you while I rehearse the delightful scenery <i>en route</i> to
-Bangor; the variegated<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span> and gorgeous splendors of the autumnal leaves; the
-bending boughs, from the abundant ripened fruit, in colors of red, orange,
-and yellow on one hand, and on the other the bright, glassy waters of the
-broad river, dotted here and there by the white sails of boats and vessels
-lying becalmed in the morning sunshine.</p>
-
-<p>We reached the village of O., and George made inquiry for the residence of
-Mr. Kingsbury.</p>
-
-<p>“The large white house just across the bridge.�</p>
-
-<p>“Thank you.� And we drove up to the front yard.</p>
-
-<p>“Ne-ne-now, Ad, you go up and knock, and call for Miss Kingsbury;
-ye-ye-you know I st-stutter when I get ex-ex-cited,� said George, hitching
-Simon to the horse-post.</p>
-
-<p>“What shall I say to her? and how shall I know Miss Kingsbury from any
-other lady?�</p>
-
-<p>“O, ask for her. I’ll compose myself, and follow ri-right up. You’ll know
-her from the description I have given you. Black eyes and hair, full
-form&mdash;O, there is nobody else like her. Come, go up and call for her.�</p>
-
-<p>“Well, I’ll go; and if I get stuck, come quickly to my rescue,� I said,
-turning to the house. “Is <i>Miss</i> Kingsbury at home?� I asked of the young
-
-lady who answered my knock. “This person is surely not Miss Jenny,� I said
-to myself; “cross-eyed, blue at that, and light, almost red hair.� She
-smiled, took a second look at me, and said,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“Who?�</p>
-
-<p>“Miss Jenny Kingsbury,� I repeated.</p>
-
-<p>“Well&mdash;yes&mdash;I guess she is. Will you walk in?�</p>
-
-<p>“No, thank you. Will you please call her out?� And so saying, I beckoned
-to George.</p>
-
-<p>The girl closed the door, and I called to George “to make haste and change
-places with me.� He came up just as the door reopened, and a beautiful
-dark-eyed woman appeared, whom he greeted as Miss Kingsbury.</p>
-
-<p>“I’ll see to the horse,� I said; and having taken a hurried<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span> glance at
-the young lady, I withdrew. For a full half hour I walked up and down
-beneath the maples in front of the house, watched the steamer Penobscot,
-as she came up the river, and from thence turned my attention to a
-schooner that was endeavoring to enter the cove, not far from the house. A
-light breeze had sprung up from the westward, and the channel being
-narrow, there seemed much difficulty in gaining the harbor.</p>
-
-<p>Finally George came to the door and beckoned me. I went in, and received
-an introduction to Mrs. Kingsbury and to Jenny.</p>
-
-<p>“O, but she is beautiful,� I whispered to George.</p>
-
-<p>He was flushed and excited, consequently stammered some, and I was
-compelled to keep up a conversation, but I did not feel easy. Something
-was wrong. I detected more than one sly wink between aunt and niece, and
-when the cross-eyed miss came into the room, I could not tell whom she was
-glancing at, as her eyes “looked forty ways for Sunday,� but she leered
-perceptibly towards first one, then the other of the ladies. I hinted to
-George that we must not delay longer. Still he tarried. Mrs. Kingsbury
-seemed interested in the movements of the schooner in the mouth of the
-cove. Miss Jenny was interested in George. I was interested in getting
-away from them all. Finally the schooner was moored to the wharf, and,
-standing at the window, I noticed a sailor, with a bundle on a stick over
-his shoulder, approaching the house. A whisper passed between aunt and
-niece, and the latter asked George to accompany her into an adjoining
-room.</p>
-
-<p>It was now past noon. A pleasant, savory smell came up from the kitchen,
-but no one asked me to put up the horse, and stay to dinner.</p>
-
-<p>The man with the bundle came familiarly into the yard. Soon George
-returned alone to the room, and seizing his hat, he stammered, “C-c-come,
-Ad,� and rushed from the house.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span>Mrs. Kingsbury attended me to the door, and wished me a pleasant ride to
-Bangor. George jumped into the buggy, seized the reins, and giving a cut
-upon the horse, bawled, “Go on, Simon.�</p>
-
-<p>“Hold on. First let me unhitch him,� I cried, seizing the spirited beast
-by the bridle. I unfastened the halter, and jumped into the carriage; and
-away flew Simon, snorting and irritated under the unnecessary cuts he had
-received from the whip. At the first corner George took the back road
-towards B.</p>
-
-<p>“Not that way! Hold on, and turn about,� I exclaimed, catching at the
-reins. “Now stop and tell me all about it. Did you propose to Jenny? Has
-she accepted, and are you beside yourself with ecstatic joy? Come, tell
-me.�</p>
-
-<p>“Ho! Simon.� And laying down the reins, George drew out his wallet, and
-taking therefrom a bit of silk goods, he turned upon my astonished gaze a
-woe-begone look, and said,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“Ad, she’s mum-mum-married&mdash;�</p>
-
-<p>“Married!�</p>
-
-<p>“Yes, married; and there’s a piece of her wedding gown. The fellow you saw
-come in while there, with the bundle on a stick,&mdash;the
-land-lubberish-looking fellow,&mdash;was her husband. O my God! Did you ever?�
-And so relieving his mind, he caught the reins and whip, and away darted
-Simon at a fearful rate of speed.</p>
-
-<p>At Bangor I said to George,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“Well, there probably is no love lost on either side. She sold out at the
-first bid, and you never had the least hold on her affections.�</p>
-
-<p>“Ah, I have had her confidence in too many moonlight walks to believe
-that,� was his reply.</p>
-
-<p>“And it was all moonshine,&mdash;that’s evident,� I said.</p>
-
-<p>“No, no; I wish it was. I never shall love again,� said George, with a
-deep sigh, and a sorry-looking cast of countenance.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span>“No, I suppose not,� was my non-consoling reply.</p>
-
-<p>“Still, do you believe I never loved that darling girl?� he asked, almost
-in a rage. “If that man&mdash;that <i>fellow</i>&mdash;should die with the autumn leaves,
-I would at once marry Jenny, who loves me still,� he exclaimed, pacing the
-room like an enraged lion.</p>
-
-<p>“He won’t die, however. He looks healthy and robust, and will outlive you
-and your affection for his wife,� I replied, with a derisive laugh.</p>
-
-<p>It rained the next afternoon, as we returned home by a shorter route than
-<i>via</i> O. and B. George talked a great deal of Jenny on the way back, and
-said he never should get over this fearful disappointment.</p>
-
-<p>“Only think of the lovely Jenny Kingsbury marrying that fellow with the
-bundle and the stick! O, I shall be sick over it; I know I shall.�</p>
-
-<p>“Especially if you take a bad cold riding in this storm,� I added, by way
-of consolation. “However, you can take some of your mother’s good
-thoroughwort&mdash;�</p>
-
-<p>“Confound the thoroughwort,� he interrupted.</p>
-
-<hr style="width: 25%;" />
-
-<p>“Did you know that George is sick?� asked his little brother of me the
-following day.</p>
-
-<p>“No. Is he much sick?� I inquired, in alarm.</p>
-
-<p>“O, yes; he’s awful sick&mdash;or was last night; and mother fooled him on a
-dose of fresh thererwort tea, which only made him sicker,� replied the
-little chap, turning up his nose in disgust.</p>
-
-<p>“Is he better now?� I inquired.</p>
-
-<p>“O, yes; ever so much <i>now</i>. I don’t know what ma called the disease he’s
-got; but howsomever she said thererwort was good for it, and I guess it
-is, ’cause he’s better.�</p>
-
-<p>I was called away, and did not see my friend George till a week after our
-return from the little trip to B. He never mentioned Jenny afterwards, nor
-said a word about the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span> thoroughwort tea. He took to horses after that,
-and eventually married a poor, unpretending girl, quite unlike the
-dark-eyed, beautiful, and wealthy Miss Jenny Kingsbury.</p>
-
-<p>Mrs. Brown still recommends her favorite panacea for all ails, physical or
-moral; but whenever she mentions it in George’s presence, he exclaims,
-with a look of disgust,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“O, confound the thoroughwort!�</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img026.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
-<hr style="width: 50%;" />
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span></p>
-<h2><a name="VI" id="VI"></a>VI.</h2>
-<p class="title">QUACKS.</p>
-
-<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table">
-<tr><td><span style="margin-left: 9em;">“Verily,</span><br />
-I swear, ’tis better to be lowly born,<br />
-And range with humble livers in content,<br />
-Than to be perked up in a glistening grief<br />
-And wear a golden sorrow.�&mdash;<span class="smcap">King Henry VIII.</span></td></tr></table>
-
-<div class="note"><p class="hang"><small>ANECDOTE IN ILLUSTRATION.&mdash;DERIVATION.&mdash;FATHER OF QUACKS.&mdash;A MEDICAL
-“BONFIRE.�&mdash;THE “SAMSON� OF THE PROFESSION.&mdash;SIR ASTLEY.&mdash;U. S.
-SURVEYOR-GENERAL HAMMOND.&mdash;HOMEOPATHIC QUACKS, ETC.&mdash;A MUDDLED
-DEFINITION.&mdash;“STOP THIEF!�&mdash;CRIPPLED FOR LIFE!&mdash;TWO POUNDS
-CALOMEL.&mdash;VICTIMS.&mdash;WASHINGTON, JACKSON, HARRISON.&mdash;THE COUNTRY
-QUACK.&mdash;A TRUE AND LUDICROUS ANECDOTE.&mdash;DYEING TO DIE!&mdash;A SCARED
-DOCTOR.&mdash;DROPSY!&mdash;A HASTY WEDDING!&mdash;A COUNTRY CONSULTATION.&mdash;“SCENES
-FROM WESTERN PRACTICE.�&mdash;“TWIST ROOT.�&mdash;A JOLLY TRIO.&mdash;NEW “BUST� OF
-CUPID.&mdash;AN UNWILLING LISTENER.</small></p></div>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p>On looking over my “collection� on quacks and charlatans, I am so strongly
-reminded of a little anecdote which you may have already seen in print,
-but which so well illustrates painfully the facts to be adduced in this
-chapter, that I <i>must</i> appropriate the story, which story a western
-engineer tells of himself.</p>
-
-<p>“One day our train stopped at a new watering-place, being a small station
-in Indiana, where I observed two green-looking countrymen in ‘homespun’
-curiously inspecting the locomotive, occasionally giving vent to
-expressions of astonishment.</p>
-
-<p>“Finally one of them approached and said,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“‘Stranger, are this ’ere a injine?’</p>
-
-<p>“‘Certainly. Did you ever see one before?’</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span>“‘No, never seen one o’ the critters afore. Me an’ Bill here comed down t’
-the station purpose to see one. Them’s the biler&mdash;ain’t it?’</p>
-
-<p>“‘Yes, that is the boiler,’ I answered.</p>
-
-<p>“‘What you call that place you’re in?’</p>
-
-<p>“‘This we call a cab.’</p>
-
-<p>“‘An’ this big wheel, what’s this fur?’</p>
-
-<p>“‘That’s the driving wheel.’</p>
-
-<p>“‘That big, black thing on top I s’pose is the chimley.’</p>
-
-<p>“‘Precisely.’</p>
-
-<p>“‘Be you the engineer what runs the machine?’</p>
-
-<p>“‘I am,’ I replied, with the least bit of self-complacency.</p>
-
-<p>“He eyed me closely for a moment; then, turning to his companion, he
-remarked,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“‘Bill, it don’t take much of a man to be a engineer&mdash;do it?’�</p>
-
-<p>The reader will perceive the distinction which we make between humbugs,
-quacks, and charlatans, though one individual may comprehend the whole.</p>
-
-<p>“Quacks comprehend not only those who enact the absurd impositions of
-ignorant pretenders, but also of <i>unbecoming acts of professional men
-themselves</i>.�&mdash;<i>Thomas’ Medical Dictionary.</i></p>
-
-<p>This is the view we propose to take of it in this chapter, in connection
-with the derivation of the word.</p>
-
-<p>The word <i>quack</i> is derived from the German “<i>quack salber</i>,� or mercury,
-which metal was introduced into the <i>Materia Medica</i> by <i>Philippus
-Aureolus Theophrastus Paracelsus Bombast ab Hohenhein</i>!</p>
-
-<p>“So extensively was quicksilver used by Paracelsus and his followers that
-they received the stigma of ‘quacks.’�&mdash;See <i>Parr’s Medical Dictionary</i>.</p>
-
-<p>There is some controversy respecting the date of birth of Paracelsus, but
-probably it was in the year 1493. He was born in Switzerland.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span></p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 600px; height: 395px;"><img src="images/img027.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">THE INQUISITIVE COUNTRYMEN.</p>
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span>Professor Waterhouse (1835) says, “He was learned in Greek, Latin, and
-several other languages. That he introduced quicksilver,� etc., “and was a
-vain, arrogant profligate, and died a confirmed sot.�</p>
-
-<p>“Paracelsus was a man of most dissolute habits and unprincipled character,
-and his works are filled with the highest flights of unintelligible
-bombastic jargon, unworthy of perusal, but such as might be expected from
-one who united in his person the qualities of a fanatic and a
-drunkard.�&mdash;<i>R. D. T.</i></p>
-
-<p>Mercury was known to the early Greek and Roman physicians, who regarded it
-as a dangerous poison. They, however, used it externally in curing the
-<i>itch</i>, and John de Vigo employed it to cure the plague. Paracelsus used
-it internally first for <i>lues venerea</i>, which appeared in Naples the year
-of his birth, though doubtless that disease reached far back, even into
-the camp of Israel. The heroic doses of Paracelsus either destroyed the
-disease at once, <i>or the patient</i>. Paracelsus proclaimed to the world that
-there was no further need of the <i>Materia Medica</i>, especially the writings
-of Galen, and burned them in public; his “Elixir Vitæ� would cure all
-diseases. But in spite of his wonderful knowledge and his life-saving
-elixir, he died of the diseases he professed to cure, at the early age of
-forty-eight, while Galen lived to the age of seventy.</p>
-
-<p>So much for the “father of quacks.�</p>
-
-<p>For nearly four centuries mercury has been exhibited in the <i>Materia
-Medica</i> to a greater extent than any other remedy. Doubtless it possesses
-great medicinal virtues, but its abuse&mdash;the “heroic doses� used by the
-ignorant and brainless quacks, both graduates of some medical college, and
-<i>soi-disant</i> physicians&mdash;has made its name a terror to the people and a
-reproach to the profession. To assail it is to tread on dangerous ground;
-to invade the “rights� of a numerous host of worshippers; to uncover an
-ulcer, whose <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span>rottenness, though smelling to heaven, is protracted for the
-pecuniary advantage of the prescriber.</p>
-
-<p>Eminent physicians in every age since its introduction, and in every
-enlightened country, have protested against its abuse; yea, even its use!
-They have called its users “<i>quacks</i>,� the most contemptible epithet ever
-introduced into medical nomenclature,&mdash;the “<i>Samson</i>� of the profession,
-because through the instrumentality of an ass and his adherents, “it has
-slain its thousands.�</p>
-
-<p>I need not quote those distinguished practitioners who have recorded their
-testimony against its general and indiscriminate use. Their name is
-legion, and every well-informed physician is aware of the fact.</p>
-
-<p>Do not “well-informed physicians� prescribe calomel?</p>
-
-<p>Certainly; but cautiously, and often under protest.</p>
-
-<p>It is recorded of Sir Astley Cooper that he made serious objections to its
-free use in the wards of the Borough Hospitals, and forthwith the “smaller
-fry� made such a breeze about his ears that he seemed called upon to
-defend, and even palliate, his offence. Dr. Macilwain says that Sir Astley
-is reported to have said in reply to those who demurred,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“Why, gentlemen, was it likely that I should say anything unkind towards
-those gentlemen? Is not Mr. Green (surgeon of St. Thomas) my godson, Mr.
-Tusell my nephew, Mr. Travers my apprentice (surgeon of St. Thomas), Mr.
-Key and Mr. Cooper (surgeons of Guy’s Hospital) my nephews?�</p>
-
-<p>This was very <i>naïve</i>, and as good illustration of the value of evidence
-in relation to one thing (his provision for his relatives) which is stated
-in relation to another.</p>
-
-<p>Herein Sir Astley exposed a weakness with which the democratic opponents
-of President Grant have accused him, viz., of furnishing comfortable
-positions for his relatives.</p>
-
-<p>Sir John Forbes, when at the head of the medical profession of England in
-1846, wrote an earnest appeal to his brethren to rescue their art from the
-ruin into which it was falling,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span> saying in relation to modes of curing
-diseases, “Things have become so bad that they must mend or end.� This was
-“dangerous ground,� and some physicians of the day feared Dr. Forbes had
-done an immense mischief. After his death, be it remembered, some of the
-“medical magnates� of this country virtuously refused to subscribe to his
-monument fund, saying, “it was a misfortune to mankind (?) that he had
-ever lived.�</p>
-
-<p>Dr. W. A. Hammond, surgeon general of the United States, also blundered
-when, by an order dated at <i>Washington, May 4, 1863</i>, he struck calomel
-from the supply table of the army. This proscription was on the ground
-that “it has so frequently been pushed to excess by military surgeons, as
-to call for prompt steps to correct its abuse.... <i>This is done with the
-more confidence, as modern pathology has proved the impropriety of the use
-of mercury in very many of those diseases in which it was formerly
-unfailingly administered.</i>�</p>
-
-<p><i>The American Medical Times</i> (regular) said, “The order appeared not only
-expedient, but judicious and necessary, under the circumstances.� <i>What</i>
-circumstances? Read on further, and the <i>Times</i> editor explains: “No evil
-can result to the sick soldier from the absence of calomel, however much
-he may need mercurialization, when such preparations as blue pill,
-bichloride and iodide of mercury, etc., remain. But, in prescribing these
-latter remedies, the practitioner generally has a very definite idea of
-the object he wishes to attain, which is not always the case in the use of
-calomel.�</p>
-
-<p>By this timely order it was estimated that ten thousand soldiers were
-released from a morning dose of calomel!</p>
-
-<p>Was this a blow aimed at “quackery�? Was Dr. Hammond, “a member of the
-medical profession highly esteemed for scientific attainments,� attempting
-a reform in medicine? Any way, Dr. Hammond shared the fate of all medical
-reformers. He was suspended. He was disgraced.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span>The American Medical Association met at Chicago, and set up a strong
-opposition to the “order.� Certain persons brought charges against the
-surgeon general. A commission was appointed. The <i>Times</i> said, “The whole
-affair has the appearance of a secret and deliberate conspiracy against
-the surgeon general.... The commission is, in the first place, headed by a
-person known to be hostile to the surgeon general. This fact throws
-suspicion upon the <i>object</i> of the investigation.� Just so. The “object�
-was to appoint some one instead of Dr. Hammond, who would repeal the
-obnoxious order. No matter what <i>pretence</i> was set up beside, this is the
-fact of the case, and the people and the profession know this to be true.</p>
-
-<p>But how shall we judge of the motives of Dr. Hammond but by <i>appearances</i>?
-Who so well knew the value, or injury, of calomel, as he who had used it
-for twenty odd years? Admitting Professor Chapman, of Philadelphia, was
-within twenty years of right when he said, “He who resigns the fate of his
-patient to calomel, ... if he has a tolerable practice, will, in a single
-season, lay the foundation of a good business for life,� did not Dr. H.
-exhibit a little selfishness in attempting to deprive young practitioners
-of the opportunity of laying for themselves a foundation for a prosperous
-future?</p>
-
-<p>“Doubtless,� said a medical journal of the day, “all <i>quacks</i> and
-<i>irregulars</i> are congratulating themselves upon the appearance of this
-‘order.’� This leads us to ask, “Who are the quacks?�</p>
-
-<p>The governor of Ohio, in 1861, made inquiry of the United States surgeon
-general, to know if the regiments of that state could be allowed to choose
-between allopathic and homeopathic surgeons.</p>
-
-<p>“<i>No: I’ll see them damned to hell first</i>,� was the gracious reply.</p>
-
-<p>The resolutions drawn up and adopted by the New York<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span> Academy of Medicine
-as an offset against the appeal for admission of homeopathic surgeons into
-the army (1862), contained the following:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“3d. That it (homeopathy) is no more worthy of such introduction than
-other kindred methods of practice as closely allied to <i>quackery</i>.�</p>
-
-<p>There were then some thirty-five hundred of that sort of “quacks�
-practising under diplomas&mdash;mostly obtained from regular colleges&mdash;in the
-United States. Shame!</p>
-
-<p>The Royal College, Dublin, the same year, in a resolution passed, called
-Mesmerism and homeopathy quackery.</p>
-
-<p>In an article in the “Scalpel,� from the able pen of Dr. Richmond,&mdash;about
-the time that the “swarm of vampires that was the first fruits of the
-tribe of rooters that swarmed the State of New York under the teachings of
-T. and B.� (Thompson and Beach),&mdash;he calls botanics and eclectics quacks
-and Paracelsuses! Clear as&mdash;mud!</p>
-
-<p>So! The calomel practitioners are quacks. The homeopathics are quacks. The
-eclectics, and botanics, and Mesmerics, are all quacks! Any more,
-gentlemen? This is getting things somewhat mixed, and I rush to
-Dunglison’s Medical Dictionary for explanation. Why, a quack is a
-<i>charlatan</i>! I turn to “Charlatan.� Lo, it is quack! Clear as mud, again.</p>
-
-<p>In my perplexity I consult Webster. He refers me to a <i>goose</i>! So I rush
-to Worcester, and he implies it is a <i>duck</i>! Perhaps the <i>bill</i> has
-something to do with the name; especially as I am reminded of a suit
-brought by a Boston M. D. to recover the exorbitant sum of three hundred
-dollars for reducing a dislocation.</p>
-
-<p>Therefore, summing up this “uncertainty,� it seems to be a convenient
-word, expressive of contempt, which any professional man may hurl at any
-other whom he dislikes, or with whom he is not in fellowship.</p>
-
-<p>In its general use it is the <i>thief</i> calling, “Stop thief.�</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span>It was no unusual practice for physicians of the sixteenth and seventeenth
-centuries to use calomel in scruple, and even drachm doses. Mazerne
-“habitually administered calomel in scruple doses.� Yandal gave it by the
-table-spoonful. I knew a physician in Maine who usually administered it by
-the tea-spoonful, and I saw a woman at Deer Isle, Me., suffering from true
-anchylosis of the jaw, in consequence of thus taking his prescription. In
-the same town was a man who was made completely imbecile by overdoses of
-mercury. In the town of B&mdash;&mdash;l, same county and state, once lived an old
-quack, for convenience sake, near a large graveyard. <i>He “owned� it.</i> That
-is, he is said to have more victims laid away therein than all the other
-doctors who ever practised in town. “I knew him well.� Once he sent to
-Boston for <i>two ounces</i> of calomel. There was no steam conveyance in those
-days, and a sea captain took the order. By some mistake, <i>two pounds</i> were
-sent. It was not returned. “O, never mind,� said the doctor; “I shall use
-it all some time.�</p>
-
-<p>Every state, county, yes, every town, in the Union has its victims to this
-quackery. In Rochelle, Ill., is a remarkable case, a merchant. Almost
-every joint in his frame is rendered useless. He can speak, and his brain
-is active. He has a large store, and he is carried to it every day, and
-there, stretched upon a counter, he gives directions to his employés.
-Though comparatively young, his hair is blanched like the snow-drift,
-falling upon his shoulders, and he is hopelessly crippled for life. “He
-does not speak in very flattering terms of the calomel doctors,� said my
-informant. Neither do the thousands of diseased and mutilated soldiers,
-the victims to quackery while in the army.</p>
-
-<p>“<span class="smcap">Speaking Facts.</span>&mdash;A little boy, ten years of age, and having a paralyzed
-right leg, may be seen occasionally among his more able-bodied companions,
-the newsboys, unsuccessfully striving to ‘hoe his row’ with his rougher
-and more vigorous fellows. The limb is wholly dead, so far as<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span> its
-usefulness is concerned and it was caused by giving the little fellow
-overdoses of calomel, when he was an infant.</p>
-
-<p>“Another victim to calomel lives in the city of Hartford, in the person of
-a young lady of sixteen, who would be handsome but for deformities of face
-and mouth, occasioned by calomel given to her when a little child. She
-cannot open her mouth, and her food is always gruel, etc., introduced
-through the teeth. But the doctors stick to calomel as the sheet anchor of
-their faith.�</p>
-
-<p>Behold <span class="smcap">Washington</span>, who had passed through the battles of his country
-unharmed, and who in his last illness had, in the brief space of twelve
-hours, ninety ounces of blood drawn from his veins, and in the same space
-of time taken sixty grains of calomel!</p>
-
-<p>Who wonders that he should request his physician to allow him to “<i>die in
-peace</i>�?</p>
-
-<p>Andrew Jackson was another victim to calomel, as well as to the lancet, as
-the following letter shows:&mdash;</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot">
-<p class="right">“<span class="smcap">Hermitage</span>, October 24, 1844.</p>
-
-<p>“<span class="smcap">My dear Mr. Blair</span>: On the 12th inst., I had a return of hemorrhage,
-and two days after, a chill. With a lancet to correct the first, and
-calomel to check the second, I am <i>greatly debilitated</i>.</p>
-
-<p><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><span class="smcap">Andrew Jackson.</span>�</span></p></div>
-
-<p>Was not this double quackery? First, it was the <i>Similia similibus
-curantur</i> (like cures like), of the homeopathists, which the Academy of
-Medicine has termed quackery. Second, it was exhibiting calomel to the
-injury (debilitating) of the patient.</p>
-
-<p>President Harrison was another victim.</p>
-
-<p>Are not these historical facts? Nevertheless, it is treason to mention
-them. “And why should any truth be counted as treasonable?� the honest and
-intelligent reader is led to inquire. “For truth is mighty, and must
-prevail,� eventually.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span>Yes, yes, truth will prevail. When bigotry and old-fogy notions are
-uprooted from the profession, and all educated and benevolent physicians
-strike hands and join fortunes to eradicate and discountenance all forms
-of quackery amongst themselves, they will then possess the power to
-suppress outside quackery. Far too many make a <i>trade</i> of the
-<i>profession</i>; and just so long as educated physicians countenance or
-practise any one form of quackery, so long will they be powerless to check
-the abominations of charlatans and impostors outside of the profession.</p>
-
-<p>We have not introduced the foregoing facts in the interest of any
-persuasion. With the bickerings of the various schools of medicine we
-propose to have nothing to do, except to seize upon such truths as those
-otherwise useless quarrels are continually revealing. Opposition will not
-weaken a truth, nor strengthen a falsehood. You who are in the right need,
-therefore, have no fear as to final results.</p>
-
-<p>It is hard to kick against the pricks of custom, and custom has perverted
-the word which is the text of this chapter, and it is now more commonly
-applied to the ignorant, boastful <i>pretender</i> to the science of medicine.</p>
-
-<p>Now we will introduce a few facts obtained from without the profession.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">The Country Quack.</span></p>
-
-<p>In the town of P&mdash;&mdash;, Conn., there resided two doctors. One, old Dr. B., a
-regular, and the other, Dr. S&mdash;h, an irregular. It was in the autumn, and
-a fever was prevailing at this time, of a very malignant character. From
-over-exertion and exposure Dr. B. was taken sick, and in a few days fever
-supervened. This news spread terror over the immediate community, and the
-old doctor becoming delirious, his wife and family soon partook of the
-terror. A neighboring physician was sent for, but being absent, he did not
-at once respond; and the invalid becoming, as they<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span> feared, rapidly worse,
-Dr. S. was reluctantly called. He was known to be an ignoramus, formerly a
-peddler, a farmer, horse-jockey, a fifth-rate country lawyer, and, lastly,
-a doctor. Had Dr. B. retained his senses, he would have sooner died than
-have admitted his enemy, this “rooter,� into his house. He came, however,
-with great pomposity, examined the patient, whose delirium prevented
-resistance, and ordered an immediate application of the juice of
-poke-berries rubbed over the entire skin of the old doctor, as a
-febrifuge.</p>
-
-<p>“But,� inquired the wife, timidly, “is not this an unusual prescription,
-Dr. S.?� The doctor replied that it was a new remedy, but very
-efficacious. “You see,� he added, with many a hem and haw, “it will
-out-herod the blush of the skin, put to shame the fever, which retires in
-disgust, and so relieves the patient.�</p>
-
-<p>“And won’t he die, if we follow this strange prescription?� asked a
-friend, while the doctor was proceeding to deal out a large powder.</p>
-
-<p>“No, no; ahem! <i>You</i> do the <i>dyeing</i>, to prevent the <i>dying</i>. Haw, haw!�
-roared the vulgar old wretch, convulsed by his own pun, and the
-anticipation of the ludicrous corpse that he expected to see within a few
-days.</p>
-
-<p>There was no alternative. The prescription must be followed, and the
-children were sent to the woods to gather the ripe berries. The quack next
-proceeded to deal out a dose of lobelia and blood-root, which he left on
-the desk where Dr. B. prepared medicines when in health, giving directions
-for its administration, and in high glee took his departure. The
-inspissated juice of the highly-colored berries was applied over the face,
-arms, and body of the unconscious doctor, the remarkable appearance of
-whom we leave the reader to imagine.</p>
-
-<p>By mistake, a large dose of camphorated dover’s powders which lay on the
-table was substituted for the lobelia of Dr. S., which with the warm
-liquid applied to the skin, checked<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span> the fever, and, contrary to the hope
-and expectation of Dr. S., the following morning found his patient in a
-fine perspiration, and the neighboring physician arriving, he was soon
-placed in a condition of safety.</p>
-
-<p>Notwithstanding Dr. S. told some friends of the joke,&mdash;for the worst have
-their friends, you know,&mdash;he was known to have prescribed for Dr. B., his
-sworn enemy; and as the patient was pronounced convalescent, S. received
-all the credit, and forthwith his services were in great demand. Day and
-night he rode, till, by the time Dr. B. got out, he was completely
-exhausted! He became alarmed lest he should take the fever. Such fellows
-are ever cowards when anything ails their precious selves. He actually
-became feverish with fear and excitement, and took his bed&mdash;and his
-emetic. He took either an overdose, or not enough, and for hours remained
-in the greatest distress. Finally, as a <i>dernier resort</i>, his wife sent
-for Dr. B.! Now came his turn to avenge the insult of the painting by
-poke-berries, which stain was yet scarcely removed from the skin of the
-old doctor.</p>
-
-<p>“I’ll give him a dose; I’ll put my mark on him&mdash;one that milk and water,
-or soap, cannot remove. O, I’ll be avenged!� exclaimed Dr. B., as he
-mounted his gig, and drove to Dr. S.</p>
-
-<p>“O doctor, doctor! I am in fearful distress. Can you help me? Will I die?�
-whined S., on beholding his opponent.</p>
-
-<p>“No; not such good news. Those born to hang don’t die in their beds. But
-you are very sick, and must abide my directions.�</p>
-
-<p>“Yes, yes. Thanks, doctor. This blamed lobelia is killing me, though.�</p>
-
-<p>“Then take this.� And Dr. B. administered a half tea-spoonful of ipecac,
-to bring up the lobelia. So far was good.</p>
-
-<p>“Now a basin of water and a sponge,� said Dr. B., which being procured, he
-seemed to examine for a moment very<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span> curiously; then ordered the face,
-neck, arms, and hands of the patient bathed well with the fluid.</p>
-
-<p>On the following morning Dr. B. was sent for, post haste, with the
-cheering message that “mortification had set in, and his patient was
-dying.�</p>
-
-<p>Off posted the doctor, calling several neighbors, <i>en route</i>, who thronged
-the apartment of the invalid doctor in speechless astonishment.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 450px; height: 307px;"><img src="images/img028.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">CURIOUS EFFECT OF A FEVER.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>“I’m dying, Dr. B.; O, I’m dying,� groaned S., rolling to and fro on his
-bed.</p>
-
-<p>“No, you are not. I told you before, no such good news. Your fever is all
-gone. You are scared&mdash;that’s what’s the matter,� replied Dr. B.</p>
-
-<p>“But look, just look at the color of my skin,&mdash;all mortifying,� said S.</p>
-
-<p>“O, no; that is merely dyed with <i>nitrate of silver</i>. It’s much better
-than poke-berries&mdash;much better,� repeated Dr. B.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span>The recovered patient leaped from his bed, and, with an oath, made
-straight for the doctor; but the bystanders, though convulsed with
-laughter, caught the enraged victim, while, amid the cheers and laughter
-of the crowd, Dr. B. made his escape, saying to himself,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“The nitrate of silver I put in the basin worked like a charm.�</p>
-
-<p>The story soon circulated, and Dr. S., being unable to remove the deep
-stain from his skin, and the curious rabble from his door, left for parts
-unknown. Dr. B., on revisiting his patients, who now rejoiced in his
-recovery, found that S. had not only dispensed lobelia and blood-root, but
-had bled and mercurialized several.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Remarkable Dropsy.</span></p>
-
-<p>The writer was acquainted with a young physician who was unceremoniously
-discharged by the family of a beautiful young lady to whom he had been
-called to prescribe, in a country village, his offence being the discovery
-of the true source of the patient’s (?) indisposition, which fact he
-<i>dared</i> to intimate to the mother. “An older and more experienced
-physician� succeeded him, who reversed the diagnosis, and pronounced it “a
-clear case of <i>dropsy</i>,� and the young M. D. went into disrepute. During
-the entire winter the old doctor made daily visits to his patient. Daily
-had the old ladies of the neighborhood adjusted their “specs,� smoothed
-down their aprons, and, watching the doctor’s return, run out to the gate
-to inquire after the health of the lady, the belle of the town.</p>
-
-<p>“O, she’s <i>convalescent</i>,� was his usual reply, with due professional
-dignity; and thus the matter stood till a crisis came.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 450px; height: 320px;"><img src="images/img029.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">MARRYING A FAMILY.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>There was a ball in the village one night. About eleven o’clock a
-messenger appeared in the room, who hastily summoned a certain young
-gentleman, a scion of one of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span> “first families� in town. At the same
-time the minister was called, and the young man, standing by the bed,
-holding the invalid lady by the right hand, while on his left arm he
-supported a beautiful babe but an hour old, was married to the
-“convalescent� patient. The old doctor had run a beautiful “bill,� but it
-was his last in that village.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">A Country Consultation.</span></p>
-
-<p>The difficulty of obtaining competent counsel in the country can only be
-fully comprehended by the intelligent physician who has had experience
-therein.</p>
-
-<p>From Dr. Richmond’s “<i>Scenes in Western Practice</i>,� I have selected the
-following lamentable incidents, which I have abbreviated as much as is
-consistent with the facts, related by the doctor, who in this case was
-called to a wealthy and influential family, two of whom, wife and child,
-were prostrated by epidemic dysentery.</p>
-
-<p>“As my credit was at stake, an old and very grave man<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span> was, at my
-suggestion, added to the consultation, to guard our reputation from the
-usual visitation of gossiping slander that always follows a fatal result
-in the country. He examined the child, and gave his opinion that the
-symptoms resembled those of ipecac!... But death was ahead of the doctors,
-and the little sufferer passed quickly away to a better world.</p>
-
-<p>“Another child had died in the vicinity, and the <i>neighbors</i> decided on a
-change of doctors for the lady. By my consent the inventor of the
-‘Chingvang Pill’ was called, as I assured my friend his wife would now
-recover without either of us!</p>
-
-<p>“He came, and readily detected the fact that he was in luck. His patient
-and fees were both safe, and I was floored.</p>
-
-<p>“‘Of course, Dr. R., you will call when <i>convenient</i>,’ was a polite way of
-‘letting me down easily,’ and I did call.</p>
-
-<p>“Everything went on swimmingly for two days, when suddenly the scale
-turned; two other children were taken vomiting bile and blood. The doctor
-was in trouble, and on my friendly call his eye caught mine, and spoke
-plainly, ‘My credit, too, is gone,&mdash;the children will both die.’</p>
-
-<p>“The children grew rapidly worse; the council of the <i>neighborhood</i>
-decided to call further aid. Another regular was called, and, being one of
-the heroes, he advised (it is solemn truth, dear reader) <i>one hundred
-grains of calomel at a dose</i>! His reason was, that he had given it to a
-child, and the patient recovered. His medical brother thought it a little
-too steep, and they compromised the matter by giving fifty grains! Copious
-quantities of fresh blood followed the operation, and the little victim of
-disease and quackery slipped from his suffering into the peaceful and
-quiet grave!</p>
-
-<p>“One patient remained, and it was decided to call further counsel.</p>
-
-<p>“A simple but shrewd old quack was curing cancers in the neighborhood, who
-sent word to the afflicted family that he ‘could cure the remaining child
-by cleansing the bowels<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span> with pills of butternut bark, aloes, camphor, and
-Cayenne pepper;’ he would feed the little fellow on twist-root tea that
-would at once stop the discharges. Strange as it may seem, the wily old
-fool was called into the august presence of three M. D.’s, and a score of
-other counsellors. He gave his pills; fresh blood followed the raking over
-the inflamed and sensitive membrane; the child screamed with torture, and
-was only relieved from its horrible agony by enemas of morphine. The
-celebrated ‘<i>twist-root</i>’ (an Indian remedy, whose virtues could not be
-appreciated by the educated physician) followed, and death closed the
-scene.</p>
-
-<p>“The old cancer-killer escaped by saying the morphine given in his absence
-<i>killed the child</i>.�</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 450px; height: 383px;"><img src="images/img030.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">’OPATHISTS IN CONSULTATION.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>The following brief consultation occurred in Fulton, N. Y., recently:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span>Two physicians were called, of opposite schools. After shaking hands over
-the sick man’s bed, one said to the other,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“I believe you are an &mdash;’opathist.�</p>
-
-<p>“Yes, I am; and you are a &mdash;’pathist; are you not?�</p>
-
-<p>“Yes; and I can’t break over the rules of my society by aiding or
-counselling with you &mdash;&mdash; for the sake of <i>one</i> patient. Good day!�</p>
-
-<p>“Sir, I mistook you for a Christian, not a barbarian! Good day!�</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">A Jolly Trio of Doctors.</span></p>
-
-<p>Before entering upon an exposition of the viler and more reprehensible
-sort of quacks,&mdash;the city charlatans and impostors,&mdash;I must relate a
-diverting scene, also from a country consultation that occurred in New
-York State some years since, from the perusal of which, if the reader
-cannot deduce a “moral,� he may derive some amusement.</p>
-
-<p>Mr. H. was an invalid; he was the worst kind of an invalid&mdash;a
-hypochondriac. The visiting physician had made a pretty good thing of it,
-the neighbors affirmed, for “H. was in easy circumstances.� Finally he
-took to his bed, and declared he was about to shuffle off this mortal
-coil.</p>
-
-<p>Two eminent physicians were summoned from a distance to consult with the
-attending physician. They arrived by rail, examined the patient, looked
-wise, and the learned trio withdrew to consult upon so “complicated and
-important a case.� A tea-table had been set in an adjoining room, and to
-the abundance of eatables wherewith to refresh the distinguished
-professionals who were there to enter upon an “arbitrament of life or
-death,� were added sundry bottles yet uncorked.</p>
-
-<p>A little son and daughter of Mr. H. were amusing themselves, meantime, by
-a game at “hide-and-seek,� and the former, having “played out� all the
-legitimate hiding-places, bethought himself of the top of a high secretary
-in the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span>“banqueting-room.� Action followed thought, and, climbing upon a
-chair-back, he gained the dusty elevation, where he quietly seated himself
-just as the three wise Æsculapians entered the apartment. His only safety
-from discovery was to keep quiet.</p>
-
-<p>Corks were drawn, supper was discussed, and conversation flowed merrily
-along. The weather, the news of the day, and the political crisis were
-discoursed, and the little fellow perched high on the secretary wondered
-when and what they would decide on his father’s case. Nearly an hour had
-passed, the doctors were merry, and the boy was tired; but still the
-little urchin kept his position.</p>
-
-<p>“Well, Dr. A., how is practice here, in general?� inquired one of the
-counsel.</p>
-
-<p>“Dull; distressingly healthy. Why, if there don’t come a windfall in shape
-of an epidemic this fall, I shall <i>fall</i> short for provender for my horse
-and bread for my family. How is it with you?�</p>
-
-<p>“O, quite the reverse from you. I have alive twenty daily patients now.�</p>
-
-<p>“Very sick, any of them?� asked the local physician.</p>
-
-<p>“No, no,&mdash;a little more wine, doctor,&mdash;some old women, whom any smart man
-can make think they are sick; some stout men, whom medicine will keep as
-patients when once under the weather; and silly girls, whom flattery will
-always bring again,&mdash;ha! ha!� and so saying he gulped down the wine.</p>
-
-<p>“Why, there goes nine o’clock.�</p>
-
-<p>“What, so late!� exclaimed one counsellor, looking at his gold repeater.</p>
-
-<p>“We must go or we’ll miss the return train,� remarked the other; “the
-doctor here will manage the patient H., who’s only got the <i>hypo</i> badly,�
-he added.</p>
-
-<p>“Is that a bust of Pallas he has over his secretary yonder?� asked the
-first, discovering the boy for the first time.</p>
-
-<p>“I’m afraid Dr. &mdash;&mdash; has got a little muddled over this <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span>excellent ‘Old
-Port,’ that he can’t see clearly. Why, that’s a bust of <i>Cupid</i>.�</p>
-
-<p>“Well,� exclaimed the local physician, “I have been here a hundred times,
-and never before observed that statue; but,� eying the statue fixedly, he
-continued, “it looks neither like Pallas nor Cupid, but rather favors H.,
-and I guess it is a cast he has had recently made of himself.�</p>
-
-<p>Through all this comment and inspection the boy sat as mute as a post; but
-the moment the door closed on the retiring doctors, he clambered down and
-ran into the sick room.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 450px; height: 316px;"><img src="images/img031.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">A “HYPO� PATIENT DISCHARGING HIS PHYSICIAN.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>The old doctor had slipped the customary fee into the hands of his
-brethren as he bade them good night, and entered the room of his patient.
-The latter instantly inquired as to the result of the consultation. The
-doctor entered into an elaborate account of the “diagnosis� and
-“prognosis� of the case, which was suddenly brought to a close by the
-little boy, who, climbing into a chair on the opposite side of the bed,
-asked his father what a “hypo� was.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span>“You must ask the doctor, my son,� replied the father in a feeble voice.</p>
-
-<p>“Hypo,� said the unsuspecting doctor, “is an <i>imaginary</i> disease,&mdash;the
-hypochondria, vapors, spleen; ha, ha, ha!�</p>
-
-<p>“Well, papa, that’s what the doctors said you’ve got, ’cause I was on top
-of the book-case an’ heard all they said, an’ that’s all.�</p>
-
-<p>The doctor looked blank. H. arose in his bed, trembling with rage.</p>
-
-<p>“By the heavens above us, I do believe you, my son; and this fellow, this
-quack, has never had the manliness to tell me so;� and leaping to the
-floor in his brief single garment, he caught the dumb and astonished “M.
-D.� by the coat collar and another convenient portion of his wardrobe, and
-running him to the open door, through the hall, he pitched him out into
-the midnight darkness, saying, “There! I have demonstrated the truth of
-the assertion by pitching the doctor out of doors.� H. recovered his
-health. The doctor recovered damages for assault and battery.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img032.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
-<hr style="width: 50%;" />
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span></p>
-<h2><a name="VII" id="VII"></a>VII.</h2>
-<p class="title">CHARLATANS AND IMPOSTORS.</p>
-
-<p class="center">“Every absurdity has a chance to defend itself, for error is always talkative.�&mdash;<span class="smcap">Goldsmith.</span></p>
-
-<div class="note"><p class="hang"><small>DEFINITION.&mdash;ADVERTISING CHARLATANS.&mdash;CITY IMPOSTORS.&mdash;FALSE
-NAMES.&mdash;“ADVICE FREE.�&mdash;INTIMIDATIONS.&mdash;WHOLESALE ROBBERY.&mdash;VISITING
-THEIR DENS IN DISGUISE.&mdash;PASSING THE CERBERUS.&mdash;WINDINGS.&mdash;INS AND
-OUTS.&mdash;THE IRISH PORTER.&mdash;QUEER “TWINS,� AND A “TRIPLET� DOCTOR.&mdash;A
-HISTORY OF A KNAVE.&mdash;BOOT-BLACK AND
-BOTTLE-WASHER.&mdash;PERQUISITES.&mdash;PURCHASED
-DIPLOMAS.&mdash;“INSTITUTES.�&mdash;WHOLESALE SLAUGHTER OF INFANTS.&mdash;FEMALE
-HARPIES.&mdash;A BOSTON HARPY.&mdash;WHERE OUR “LOST CHILDREN� GO.&mdash;END OF A WRETCH.</small></p></div>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">The City Charlatan.</span></p>
-
-<p>A charlatan is necessarily an impostor. He is “one who prates much in his
-own favor, and makes unwarrantable pretensions to skill.� He is “one who
-imposes on others; a person who assumes a character for the sole purpose
-of deception.�</p>
-
-<p>Originally the charlatan was one who circulated about the country, making
-false pretensions to extraordinary ability and miraculous cures; but he is
-now located in the larger cities, and is the most dangerous and
-insinuating of all medical impostors. You will find his name in the
-cheapest daily papers.</p>
-
-<p>Name, did I say? No, never.</p>
-
-<p>Of all the charlatans advertising in the papers of this city there is but
-one who has not advertised under an assumed name. This is <i>prima facie</i>
-evidence of imposition. Take up the daily paper,&mdash;the cheapest print is
-the one that the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span> rabble patronize, a curse to any city,&mdash;and run your eye
-over the “<i>Medical Column</i>.� Of the scores of this class advertising
-therein none dare publish his real name. There is one impudent fellow,
-who, while he assumes respectability, and under his true name, has an
-up-town office, and obtains something bordering on an honorable practice,
-runs the vilest sort of business, under an assumed name, on a public
-thoroughfare down town.</p>
-
-<p>These fellows usually advertise, “Advice Free.� This is not on the modest
-principle, that, having no brains, they are scrupulous in not charging for
-what they cannot give, however; but this is to get the unsuspecting into
-their dens, for they are shrewd enough to perceive that whatever is “free�
-the rabble will run after.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 450px; height: 252px;"><img src="images/img033.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">CONVINCING EVIDENCE OF INSOLVENCY.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>When once the victim is within the web, flattering, intimidations, and
-extravagant promises, one or all, generally will accomplish their aim. As
-they never expect to see a special victim again, they squeeze the last
-dollar from the unfortunate wretch, giving therefor nothing&mdash;worse than
-nothing! I sent a pretended patient to one of these charlatans not long
-since, and, with crocodile tears in his eyes, he related his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span> case to the
-<i>soi-disant</i> doctor, who with great sympathy heard his case, and assured
-him it was “heart-rending, and, though very dangerous, he could cure him;�
-but the knave compelled the patient (!) to turn his pockets inside out to
-assure him they contained but the proffered dollar. A small vial of
-diluted spirits nitre was the prescription, for which the doctor assured
-the patient he usually received twenty to forty dollars!</p>
-
-<p>I have visited several of these places in disguise, including those of
-female doctors, and those advertising as “midwives,� every one of whom
-agreed to perform a criminal operation upon the mythical lady for whom I
-was pretending to intercede. Their prices ranged from five to two hundred
-dollars.</p>
-
-<p>The following painfully ludicrous scene I copy from manuscript notes which
-I made some years ago, respecting a visit to one of these impostors. I
-vouch for its truthfulness.</p>
-
-<p>“I next bought a penny paper of a loud-mouthed urchin on the street
-corner, and, reading it that evening, the words ‘Medical Notice’ attracted
-my attention. It was all news to me, and I resolved to visit this ‘very
-celebrated’ doctor on the following day, ‘advice free.’</p>
-
-<p>“Accordingly I repaired to his office, as designated in the advertisement.
-There were several doors wonderfully near each other, about which were
-several doctors’ signs conspicuously displayed; and, since I had heard
-that ‘two of a trade seldom agree,’ I thought it remarkable that three or
-four of a profession should here be huddled together.</p>
-
-<p>“‘<span class="smcap">Step in the Entry and Ring the Bell</span>,’ I read on a sign, in big yellow
-letters. I did so, when a big burly Irishman answered the summons.</p>
-
-<p>“‘An’ who’ll yeze like to see, sure?’ he inquired, with a broad grin.</p>
-
-<p>“‘Dr. A.,’ I replied, eying this Cerberus with awakening suspicion.</p>
-
-<p>“‘He’s just in, sure. Come, follow me.’</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span>“He led the way across a small room, and through a darkened hall, around
-which I cast a suspicious glance, noticing, among other things unusual,
-that the partitions did not reach the ceiling. Thence we entered another
-room, which, from the roundabout way we had approached, I thought must be
-opposite the outer door of Dr. B.’s or Dr. C.’s office.</p>
-
-<p>“Here Pat left me, saying, ‘The ixcillint doctor will be to see yeze
-ferninst he gits through wid the gintleman who was before your honor.’</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 450px; height: 346px;"><img src="images/img034.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">“AN’ WHO’LL YEZE LIKE TO SEE, SURE?�</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>“I took a look about the room. The partitions on two sides were temporary.
-On one side of the apartment stood an old mahogany secretary. Through the
-dingy glass doors I took a peep. The shelves contained several volumes of
-‘Patent Office Reports,’ odd numbers of an old London magazine, and such
-like useless works. On the walls were a few soiled cheap anatomical
-plates, such as you will see in ‘galleries’<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span> or ‘museums’ fitted up by
-quack doctors, to intimidate the beholder. I could look no farther, as the
-door opened, and a man entered, who, looking nervously around, at once
-asked my business.</p>
-
-<p>“‘Are you Dr. A.?’ I asked.</p>
-
-<p>“‘I am. Please be seated. You are sick&mdash;very sick,’ he said hurriedly, and
-in a manner intended to frighten me.</p>
-
-<p>“Five minutes’ conversation satisfied us both&mdash;him that I had no money,
-and me that he had no skill. After vainly endeavoring to extort from me my
-present address, he unceremoniously showed me out.</p>
-
-<p>“As I closed the door I looked to the name and number, and, as I had
-anticipated, found myself at Dr. B.’s entrance.</p>
-
-<p>“Turning up my coat collar, and tying a large colored silk handkerchief
-over the lower part of my face, I knocked at the third door, Dr C.’s.</p>
-
-<p>“The same Irishman thrust out his uncombed head and unwashed face; the
-same words in the same vernacular language followed.</p>
-
-<p>“‘I wish to see Dr. C.,’ I replied, changing my voice slightly.</p>
-
-<p>“‘He’s in, jist. It never rains but it pours. Himself it is that has a
-bully crowd of patients the day; but coome in.’</p>
-
-<p>“He did not recognize me&mdash;that was certain; so I followed, and was led
-through a labyrinth of rooms and halls, as before, and ushered into a
-small room, where the polite and loquacious Pat offered me a chair, and
-giving the right earlock a pull and his left foot a slip back, he said,
-with his broadest grin and most murderous English,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“‘I’ll be shpaking the doctor to come to yeze at once intirely.’</p>
-
-<p>“‘But he has others with whom he is engaged, you said but a moment ago.’</p>
-
-<p>“‘Ah, yeze niver mind. Theyze ben’t gintlemen like yerself, if yeze do come
-disguised;’ and with a ‘<i>whist</i>’ he tip-toed across the room, applied his
-ear to the keyhole of the door a moment, and returned in the same manner.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span>“‘It’s all right; now I’ll go for the doctor;’ but still he lingered.</p>
-
-<p>“‘Well, why the d&mdash;&mdash;l don’t you go?’ I said, impatiently.</p>
-
-<p>“‘Ah, gintlemen always come disguised to see Dr. A.&mdash;no&mdash;Dr. B., I mean.’</p>
-
-<p>“‘’Tis Dr. C. I asked for,’ I interrupted.</p>
-
-<p>“‘Yis, yis,’ he replied, collecting his muddled senses. ‘Yis, sure, you
-did, an’ gintlemen always swear&mdash;two signs yeze a gintleman. Could yeze
-spare a quarter for a poor divil? By the howly mither, I git narry a cint,
-bating what sich gintlemen as yeze gives me. I have a big family to ate at
-home. There’s Bridget’ (counting his fingers by the way of a reminder),
-‘she’s sick with the baby; then there’s the twins,&mdash;two of thim, as I’m a
-sinner,&mdash;and little lame Mike, what’s got the rackabites, the doctor
-says&mdash;’</p>
-
-<p>“‘Got the what?’ I interrupted.</p>
-
-<p>“‘The rackabites, or some sich dumbed disease,’ he replied, scratching his
-head.</p>
-
-<p>“‘O, you mean rickets. But how old are the twins, and Mike, and the baby?’</p>
-
-<p>“‘Will, let me see. The baby is tin days, and not christened yit, for
-we’ve not got the money for Father Prince, and there’s Mike is siven, and
-Mary is four, and Bridget junior is five.’</p>
-
-<p>“‘And the twins?’ I asked, not a little amused.</p>
-
-<p>“‘Yis, them’s Mary and Bridget junior,&mdash;four and five.’</p>
-
-<p>“I interrupted him by a laugh, gave him the desired quarter, and told him
-to hasten the doctor, which request he proceeded to execute.</p>
-
-<p>“On the heels of retiring Pat the door opened, and the same doctor I had
-before seen entered.</p>
-
-<p>“‘I want to consult Dr. C.,’ I drawled out.</p>
-
-<p>“‘I am Dr. C.,’ he replied, measuring me from head to foot sharply.</p>
-
-<p>“Fearing he would penetrate my disguise, I hastened my<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span> errand. ‘Having an
-ulcerated and painful tooth I wish removed, or&mdash;’</p>
-
-<p>“‘This ain’t a dentist’s office; but if you have any peculiar disease, I
-am the physician of all others to relieve you.’</p>
-
-<p>“I being sure now of my man, that this same villain was running three
-offices under as many different <i>aliases</i>, my next object was to get
-safely out of his den.</p>
-
-<p>“‘I have no need of any such services as you intimate. ’Tis only the
-tooth&mdash;’</p>
-
-<p>“Here he interrupted me by an impatient gesture, intimating that only a
-descendant of the monosyllable animal once chastised by one Balaam would
-have entered his office to have a tooth drawn. Admitting the truth of his
-assertion, and offering my humblest apology, I hurriedly withdrew from
-this <i>triplet</i> doctor.</p>
-
-<p>“Safely away, I reflected as follows: Here, now, is this scoundrel, by the
-assistance of an equally ignorant Irishman, conducting at least three
-offices on a public thoroughfare, under as many assumed names.</p>
-
-<p>“‘Why, the fellow is a perfect chameleon!’ I exclaimed, walking away. ‘He
-changes his name to suit the applicants to the various rooms. You want Dr.
-A.,&mdash;he is that individual. You desire to see Dr. B.,&mdash;when, <i>presto!</i> he
-is at once the identical man. And so it goes, while his amiable assistant
-seems to be making a nice little thing of it on his own account. Why all
-these intricate passages? and why was I each time taken around through
-them, and out through a different door from that which I entered? Did a
-legitimate business require such mazy windings as I had just passed
-through? Did Dr. A., B., or C., or whatever his name might be, rob his
-patients in one place and thrust them out at another, that they might not
-be able to testify where and by whom they had been victimized? Was not the
-newspaper proprietor who advertised these several offices a <i>particeps
-criminis</i> in the transaction? And with these facts and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span> suggestions I
-leave the fellow, who by no means is a solitary example of this sort of
-fraud.’�</p>
-
-<p>On another street in this city is another branch from the Upas tree. I do
-not wish to advertise for him, hence omit his <i>names</i>, which are legion.
-Two of them begin with the letter D. The true name of this impostor
-commences with an M. He is old enough to be better. I know of patients who
-have been fleeced by him without receiving the least benefit, when the
-knowledge necessary to prescribe for their recovery, or of so simple a
-case, might be possessed by even the office boy.</p>
-
-<p>You go to his first office and inquire for the first <i>alias</i>. The usher, a
-boy sometimes, takes you in, and, slipping out the back door, he calls the
-old doctor from the next office. They are not connected. Through a glass
-door he takes a survey of you, to assure himself that you have not been
-victimized by him already under his other <i>aliases</i>.</p>
-
-<p>If he so recognizes you, he summons a convenient “assistant� to personate
-the doctor, and thus you are robbed a second time.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">History of a Knave.</span></p>
-
-<p>The following is a brief and true history of one of the vilest charlatans
-and impostors now practising in Boston. He has amassed a fortune within a
-few years by the most barefaced villanies ever resorted to by man. He is
-one of the most abominable charlatans, who, for the almighty dollar, would
-willingly sacrifice the lives of his unfortunate victims, who, by glowing
-newspaper statements and seductive promises, have been drawn into his
-murderous den. By the side of such unprincipled villains, the highwaymen,
-the Dick Turpins, with their “Stand and deliver!� or “Your money or your
-life!� are angels of mercy, for the former rob you of your last dollar,
-and either endanger your life by giving you useless drugs that check not
-the disease, or hasten your<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span> demise by poisonous compounds given at
-random, the virulent properties of which the vampires know but little and
-care less.</p>
-
-<p>Their boast that their remedies are “<i>purely vegetable</i>,� “hence
-uninjurious�, is as false as their pretensions to skill, and is counted
-for nothing when we know that vegetable poisons are more numerous, and
-often more rapid and violent in their action, than minerals. Both calomel
-and other minerals are often <i>given</i> by these charlatans. I say <i>given</i>,
-for few of them know enough to write a legible prescription, much less to
-write the voluminous works which they put forth on “manhood,� “physiology
-of woman,� etc., which are but so many advertisements for their vile trade
-and criminal practices, and are intended to alarm and corrupt the young
-and unwary into whose hands they may unfortunately fall.</p>
-
-<p>This fellow, whom I am now to describe, who sometimes prefixes “professor�
-to his name, was born in the State of New Hampshire, and when a young man
-came to this city to seek his fortune. After various ups and downs, he
-became boot-black, porter, and general lackey in the Pearl Street House,
-then in full blast. He was said to be a youth of rather prepossessing,
-though insinuating address, and being constantly on the alert for odd
-pennies and “dimes,� succeeded in keeping himself in pocket-money without
-committing theft, or otherwise compromising his liberty. But the odd
-change, and his meagre salary, did not long remain in pocket, for the
-courtesans, who are ever on the alert for unsophisticated youth who throng
-to the cities, managed to obtain the lion’s share from this embryo doctor,
-whose future greatness he himself never half suspected. Disease, the usual
-result of intercourse with such creatures, was the consequent inheritance
-of this young man.</p>
-
-<p>“What, in the name of Heaven, shall I now do?� he asked himself, in his
-distress and despair. “Money I have none. O God! what shall I do?�</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span>“Drown yourself,� replied the tempter.</p>
-
-<p>Such fellows seldom drown. Females, their victims, drown; but who ever
-heard of a natural-born villain committing suicide, unless to escape the
-threatening halter?</p>
-
-<p>No, he did not drown, though it had been better for humanity if he had. He
-went to an old advertising charlatan, who then kept an office in a lower
-street of this city, a mercenary old vampire, named Stevens. Into the
-august presence of the charlatan young M. entered, and, trembling and
-weeping, told his history.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 450px; height: 365px;"><img src="images/img035.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">A BOSTON QUACK EXAMINING A STUDENT.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>“Have you got any money, young man?� growled the old doctor, wheeling
-around, and for the first time condescending to notice the poor wretch.</p>
-
-<p>“No,� he sobbed in a pitiful voice.</p>
-
-<p>“Then what do you come here for, sir?� roared the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span>doctor, whose pity was
-a thing of the past. His soul was impenetrable to the appeal of suffering
-as the hide of the rhinoceros to a leaden bullet.</p>
-
-<p>The young man, fortunately, did not know this fact, and persevered.</p>
-
-<p>“I thought I might work for you to pay for treatment. O, I’ll do
-anything&mdash;sweep your office, wash up the floors and bottles, black your
-boots, do anything and everything, if you’ll only cure me. O, do! Say you
-will, sir!� and the young man writhed in agony of suspense.</p>
-
-<p>“Humph!� grunted the old doctor, contemplatingly.</p>
-
-<p>Doubtless he was considering the advantages which might accrue from
-accepting the proposition of this earnest applicant, for, after eying him
-sharply, and beating the devil’s tattoo for a few moments upon his table,
-the doctor condescended to “look into his case,� and finally to treat the
-young man’s disease upon the proposed terms.</p>
-
-<p>M. began his apprenticeship by sweeping the office, and the old doctor
-held him to the very letter of the agreement, keeping him at the most
-menial service,&mdash;boot-blacking, bottle-washing, door-tending,
-etc.,&mdash;protracting his disease as he found the young man useful, till the
-old knave dared no longer delay the cure, for thereby the victim might go
-elsewhere for help. When cured, M. engaged to continue work for the small
-compensation that the doctor offered, especially since he and the old man
-had begun to understand each other pretty well, and each was equally
-unscrupulous as to the sponging of the unfortunate victims who fell into
-their hands.</p>
-
-<p>When the doctor was observed to prescribe from any particular bottle, M.
-took a mental memorandum thereof till such time as he could take a look at
-the label, thereby learning the prescription for such disease; and the
-result was a decision that if this was the science of healing, “<i>it didn’t
-take much of a man to be a</i>�&mdash;<i>doctor</i>.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span>When the old doctor was absent, M. would prescribe on his own account,
-charge an extra dollar or two as perquisites, and deposit the balance in
-the doctor’s till.</p>
-
-<p>In course of time, by this process of extortion, solicitations, and the
-increasing perquisites, M. was enabled to set up doctoring on his own
-account. The old doctor died, and M. had it all his own way.</p>
-
-<p>The young self-styled doctor saw no particular need of making effort to
-acquire medical knowledge, but a diploma to hang upon his office walls,
-with the few disgusting anatomical plates (appropriated from Dr. S.),
-which were admirably adapted to intimidate his simple-minded dupes,&mdash;a
-diploma from some medical society would give character to the
-“institution,� and such he would obtain.</p>
-
-<p>Being cited to court as defendant in a certain case, this <i>soi-disant</i> “M.
-D.� was compelled to retract a former statement that he had attended
-medical lectures in Pennsylvania College, where he graduated with honors,
-and come down to the truthful statement, <i>for once in his life</i>, and swear
-that he had obtained his diploma by <i>purchase</i>.</p>
-
-<p>His present rooms&mdash;house and office&mdash;are located in the heart of the city,
-and are not exceeded for convenience and neatness by those of the
-respectable practitioner. Having amassed a great fortune out of the
-credulity, misfortunes, and passions of the unfortunate, he has settled
-down to the plane of the more respectable advertising doctors, and the
-terrifying plates no longer cover the walls of the <i>best</i> reception-room;
-but a few valuable pictures and the Philadelphia diploma are conspicuously
-displayed above the elegant furniture and valuable articles of <i>virtu</i>.</p>
-
-<p>The same extortions and reprehensible practices are still resorted to in
-order to keep up this “institution.� His earlier history is gathered from
-<i>his own statements</i>, by piecemeal, by a confidential “student,� the
-latter portion by <i>personal investigation</i> of the writer.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span>Respecting the matter of purchasing diplomas, I will state that I have
-seen a “Regular Medical Diploma� advertised in the New York <i>Herald</i> for
-one hundred dollars. The name originally written therein is extracted by
-oxalic acid, or other chemicals. I knew a physician who parted with his
-Latin diploma for fifty dollars.</p>
-
-<p>I here warn the youth, and the public in general, against those advertised
-“<i>institutes</i>,� though the name may be selected from that of some
-benevolent individual,&mdash;to give it a look of a benevolent character,&mdash;even
-though it be a “Nightengale,� or a “Peabody,� or a “St. Mary,� and
-managed, <i>ostensibly</i>, under the sanction of the church or state&mdash;beware
-of it. Without, it is the whited sepulchre, within, the blood, flesh, and
-bones of dead men, women, and children.</p>
-
-<p>Some years since there was found, after the flight of one Dr. Jaques (?),
-in a vault in the city of Boston, the bones of some half score infants.
-The murderous charlatan escaped the halter he so richly deserved, and was
-practising in a New England village not above six years since.</p>
-
-<p>Another impostor, who has been extensively advertised in this city under
-an assumed name&mdash;selected to correspond with the familiar name of a
-celebrated New York (also a late Boston) physician and surgeon&mdash;who not
-only cheekily claims to be an “M. D.,� but assumes the titles of F. R. S.,
-etc., was but a short time before a dry goods seller on Hanover Street. He
-never read a standard medical work in his life. Although the villain has
-gone to parts unknown to the writer, the concern he recently represented
-as “consulting physician� is in full blast, and the same name and titles
-are blazoned forth daily in the public prints.</p>
-
-<p>Men get rich in these “institutes,� take in an “assistant� for a few
-weeks, then sell out to the <i>novus homo</i>, and the thing goes on under the
-old name until the new man gains strength and confidence sufficient to
-carry it along under his own or his assumed title.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span></p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Female Harpies.</span></p>
-
-<p>Under the name of “female physician,� “midwife,� etc., the most illicit
-and nefarious atrocities are daily practised by the numerous harpies who
-infest all our principal cities. The mythological harpies were represented
-as having the faces of women, heartless, with filthy bodies, and claws
-sharp and strong for fingers, which, once fastened upon human flesh, never
-relaxed till the last drop of life’s blood was wrung from their
-unfortunate victim.</p>
-
-<p>Virgil thus expressively described them in the third book of the Æneid:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p class="poem">“When from the mountain-tops, with hideous cry<br />
-And clattering wings, the filthy harpies fly;<br />
-Monsters more fierce offending Heaven ne’er sent<br />
-From hell’s abyss for human punishment;<br />
-With virgin faces, but with &mdash;&mdash; obscene,<br />
-With claws for hands, and looks forever lean!�</p>
-
-<p>I will describe but one of the modern harpies of Boston, appealing to the
-reader if our text above is too severe.</p>
-
-<p>More than forty years ago, a young, fair, and promising girl came to this
-city from the White Mountains of New Hampshire. From her maiden home, near
-Meredith Village, from under the humble roof of Christian parents, she
-wandered into the haunts of vice and the abodes of wretchedness and
-disease in the lower part of Boston.</p>
-
-<p>Her maiden name was Elizabeth Leach. You will find her name in the City
-Directory (1871) “<i>Madam Ester, midwife</i>.�</p>
-
-<p>We have not space to write out her whole history, nor inclination to
-spread before the refined reader the first years of the gay life of this
-attractive damsel, the seductive and sinful debaucheries of the
-fascinating, unprincipled woman, nor the more repulsive declination of the
-diseased and malevolent <i>bawd</i>!</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span>The writer has seen a picture of her home in New Hampshire, a
-daguerreotype of her in her virginity, and a painting, taken from her
-sittings, in middle life. In stature, she is tall and stout; in manner,
-coarse and repulsive. If ever I saw a woman carrying, stamped in every
-lineament of her countenance, a hard, heartless, soulless, murderous
-expression, that woman is Madam Ester. Neither the tears, the
-heart-anguishes, nor the life’s blood of the fatherless infant, the
-husbandless mother, the orphaned or friendless maiden, could draw a
-sympathizing look or expression from the hardened features of that
-wretched woman. <i>She is the John Allen of Boston.</i></p>
-
-<p>For years she has carried on, under the cloak of a “midwife,� the most
-cruel and reprehensible occupation which ever disgraced an outraged
-community. By extortionate prices she has gained no inconsiderable wealth,
-and her house, though located in a narrow, darkened alley, or court, is
-fitted up with an elegance equalling that of some of our best and
-wealthiest merchants. From parlor to attic, it is splendidly furnished.</p>
-
-<p>She assured me she hated mankind with inexpressible hatred; that man had
-been her ruin, the instrument of her disease, and would eventually be the
-cause of her death. She cursed both man and her Maker!</p>
-
-<p>Last spring there appeared an advertisement in a city paper of a young
-girl who was lost, or abducted from the home of her parents, in which the
-young lady was described as being but sixteen to seventeen years of age,
-of light complexion, blue eyes, of but medium height, named Mary &mdash;&mdash;; and
-as she took no clothes but those she had on, never before went from home
-without her parents’ consent, and had no trouble at home, her absence
-could not be accounted for. Any information respecting her would be
-gratefully received by her distressed parents.</p>
-
-<p>She was all this time at the home of Madam Ester.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span>The young man who completed her ruin, like the contemptible cur he was,
-deserted her in her distress, leaving her in the hands of the miserable
-wretch above described. The girl had one hundred and twenty dollars. A
-part of it was her own money; some she borrowed, having some influential
-friends, and the balance her father gave her, ostensibly for the purchase
-of clothing.</p>
-
-<p>The old vampire appropriated every cent of the sum, and in fourteen days
-turned the weak and wretched girl into the street, without sufficient
-money to pay her coach fare to her father’s house. A young girl then in
-the employ of the unfeeling old wretch gave her five dollars, and she
-informed her kind benefactress that she should go home and say that she
-had been at service in a family on Beacon Street, but being sick, could
-earn no greater wages than the sum then in her possession. “The pale and
-sickly countenance of the poor girl, after the abuse and torture she had
-undergone,� said my informant, “certainly would seem to corroborate her
-story.�</p>
-
-<p>Since the above was written the wicked old wretch has died&mdash;died a natural
-death, sitting in her chair!</p>
-
-<p>On the last day of July, 1871, she sent a girl, a well-dressed and very
-lady-like appearing young woman, to my office, to know if I could be at
-liberty to give her a consultation that afternoon. She sent no address;
-merely a “woman with a cancer of the breast.� She came. She introduced her
-business, not her name. I pronounced her case hopeless, advised her to
-“close up her worldly affairs, and make her peace with God and mankind, as
-she could live but a short time.� This was given the more plainly, since
-she “demanded to know the worst,� and because of her bold attempt to
-browbeat me into treating her hopeless case. The cancer was immense, had
-been cut once by Dr. &mdash;&mdash;, of this city. Her attendant told me that the
-old woman never ceased to berate me for my truthful prognosis, and that
-from<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span> that time she gave up all hope of recovery, and soon closed her
-nefarious practice. I have since gathered all the information respecting
-her that was possible. I knew at sight that I had a remarkable woman to
-deal with, and, agreeably to her invitation, I took another physician, a
-graduate of Harvard College, and went to her house, ostensibly to consult
-over her case....</p>
-
-<p>A woman who has known madam for many years told me that the old woman was
-familiar with chemicals, and by the use of acids and alkalies could
-completely destroy the flesh and bones of infants. She had never seen her
-do it, but had seen the chemicals, and referred me to persons who had seen
-the dead body of a female brought out from the house at midnight, and
-taken away in a wagon. She said she practised great cruelty upon the
-unfortunate victims who had been placed under her hands, and that their
-cries had often been heard by the neighbors living in the court.</p>
-
-<p>She said that madam claimed to have been the wife of a policeman who was
-killed at Fort Hill, and that she was also since married to a Captain
-&mdash;&mdash;. The latter was untrue. Madam told me she once <i>thought</i> she was
-married, but it was a deception on her&mdash;a mock marriage. She possessed
-great quantities of magnificent clothing,&mdash;rich dresses of silk, satin,
-velvet, etc.,&mdash;and a beautiful wedding <i>trousseau</i>, which, but a short
-time before her death, she caused to be brought out and displayed before
-her.</p>
-
-<p>“O, take them away; I never shall wear them,� she said. And she never did.</p>
-
-<p>There is another female physician now residing in this city, who I know
-has accumulated a considerable property as midwife; but if report, and
-assertions of victims, are true, she has gained it by threats and
-extortions. She is now out of practice, or nearly. Her <i>modus operandi</i>
-was to take the unfortunate female, treat her very tenderly, get hold of
-her secret, learn the gentleman’s name, business, and wealth,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span> and
-then&mdash;especially if he was a family man before&mdash;make him “come down,�
-through fear of exposure. Men have “come down� with thousands, little by
-little, till they were ruined pecuniarily under this fearful blackmailing.
-I doubt if money could hire her to perform a criminal operation. She can
-make more money by keeping the unfortunate girl, and blackmailing the
-seducer, <i>or any other individual</i> who can be scared into the trap,
-provided the guilty one has no money. “Blessed be nothing,� said the Arab.</p>
-
-<p>These people carry on their trade very quietly. Their very next door
-neighbors may know nothing of the unlawful acts committed right under
-their noses. It is for the interest of all concerned to keep everything
-quiet. Their customers, and even their victims, come and go after
-nightfall.</p>
-
-<p>There is still another class, mostly males, practising in this city, who,
-under fair pretences and great promises, get the patients’ money, and give
-them no equivalent therefor. Beyond the robbery,&mdash;for that is what it is;
-no more nor less,&mdash;and the protracting of a disease (or giving nature more
-time, as the case may be),&mdash;they do the applicant no injury. They receive
-a fee, calculating it to a nicety, according to the depth of your pocket,
-give some simple mixture, and bow you out.</p>
-
-<p>Many an honest patient, seeing their high-flown advertisements in the
-dailies, weeklies, even religious (!) papers, from month to month, is
-induced to visit these impostors. Their offices may be in a less public
-street, in a private residence, and have every outward appearance of
-respectability.</p>
-
-<p>There is a class of male practitioners, not unusually having a Latin
-diploma, who never appear in the prints. They are the “Nurse Gibbon�
-class, who employ one or more females to drum patients for them. The
-following is a truthful statement respecting a visit to one in 1850:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“On my arrival on the steamer Penobscot at Boston, the lady met me, and,
-according to arrangement, took me to see<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span> ‘her physician.’ His office was
-on Chambers Street, left side, a few doors from Cambridge Street, Boston.
-The doctor was an elderly, pompous individual, who wore gold spectacles,
-an immense fob chain, and chewed Burgundy pitch. Let this suffice for his
-description. Poor man! for if his own theology is true, he has gone where
-Burgundy pitch will be very likely to melt. Excuse this passing tribute to
-his memory, my dear reader.</p>
-
-<p>“Notwithstanding my friend’s lavish praise of her doctor, the first sight
-of him failed to inspire me with confidence. I was introduced, and the
-doctor swelled up with his own importance, and said, impressively,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“Those physicians&mdash;amiable men, no doubt&mdash;who have treated your case-ah
-have been all wrong in their diagnosis-ah.� This was his prelude, as he
-counted my pulse by a large gold watch, which he held conspicuously before
-me.</p>
-
-<p>“Your kind friend and benefactress has saved your life-ah, by conducting
-you to me before too late-ah.� He stopped to watch the effect of this bid
-for a high fee before proceeding.</p>
-
-<p>“Ah, sir, had you but come to me first-ah, you would now be rejoicing in
-perfect health-ah; whereas you have narrowly escaped death and eternal
-torments-ah.�</p>
-
-<p>He again took breath, looking very solemn.</p>
-
-<p>“But, sir, I never heard of you before this lady wrote to me,� I said.</p>
-
-<p>“True-ah. I do not advertise myself. The veriest quack may advertise-ah.
-Your case is very dangerous. <i>Hepatitis, cum nephritis</i>-ah,� he
-soliloquized, shaking his head very wisely, while my friend nodded, as if
-to say, “There! I told you so. He knows all about it.�</p>
-
-<p>“Yes, very dangerous-ah. But take my medicines; my pills&mdash;hepatica-lobus,
-and my neuropathicum-ah, and they will restore you to health and
-happiness-ah, in a few weeks-ah;� and he rubbed his palms complacently, as
-if in anticipation of a good fat fee for his prescription.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span>“Will they cure this?� I asked, turning my head, and placing a finger upon
-a tumor on the right hand side of my neck.</p>
-
-<p>“O-ah, let me see.� And so saying, he took a brief survey of the
-protuberance, and coolly remarked that it was of no material importance.
-As that was, to my mind, of great consequence, I was dumbfounded by his
-indifference to its importance.</p>
-
-<p>Selecting a box of pills, and a vial of transparent liquid, the doctor
-presented them to me with a flourish, saying, in his blandest manner,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“All there; directions inside-ah; ten dollars-ah.�</p>
-
-<p>“What!� And I arose in astonishment, gazing alternately at the doctor and
-my friend, but could not utter another word. I was but a country
-greenhorn, you know, and quite unused to city prices.</p>
-
-<p>My friend took the doctor aside, when, after a moment’s conversation
-between them, he returned, and said that “in consideration of the
-recommendation of the lady, he would take but five dollars-ah.�</p>
-
-<p>I paid the bill, and, quite disgusted, took my departure.</p>
-
-<p>That evening I carried the medicines to a druggist, requesting him to
-inform me what they were. After examining them, he replied,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“The liquid is simply sweet spirits of nitre, diluted,� looking over his
-glasses at me suspiciously, I thought. “These, I should say, are blue
-pills, a mild preparation of mercury,� returning me the pills. A second
-druggist, to whom I applied, told me the same, and, knowing they were not
-what I required for a scrofulous tumor, I threw them into the gutter.
-<i>Ah!</i></p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img036.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
-<hr style="width: 50%;" />
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span></p>
-<h2><a name="VIII" id="VIII"></a>VIII.</h2>
-<p class="title">ANECDOTES OF PHYSICIANS.</p>
-
-<div class="note"><p>“I find, Dick, that you are in the habit of taking my best jokes, and
-passing them off as your own. Do you call that the conduct of a gentleman?�</p>
-
-<p>“To be sure, Tom. Why, a true gentleman will always take a joke from a friend.�</p></div>
-
-<div class="note"><p class="hang"><small>A WANT SUPPLIED.&mdash;ORIGINAL ANECDOTES OF ABERNETHY.&mdash;A LIVE
-IRISHMAN.&mdash;MADAM ROTHSCHILD.&mdash;LARGE FEET.&mdash;A SHANGHAI
-ROOSTER.&mdash;SPREADING HERSELF.&mdash;KEROSENE.&mdash;“SALERATUS.�&mdash;HIS LAST
-JOKE.&mdash;AN ASTONISHED DARKY.&mdash;OLD DR. K.’s MARE.&mdash;A SCARED
-CUSTOMER.&mdash;“WHAT’S TRUMPS?�&mdash;“LET GO THEM HALYARDS.�&mdash;MEDICAL
-TITBITS.&mdash;MORE MUSTARD THAN MEAT.&mdash;“I WANT TO BE AN
-ANGEL.�&mdash;TOOTH-DRAWING.&mdash;DR. BEECHER VS. DR. HOLMES.&mdash;STEALING
-TIME.&mdash;CHOLERA FENCED IN.&mdash;“A JOKE THAT’S NOT A JOKE.�&mdash;A DRY
-SHOWER-BATH.&mdash;PARBOILING AN OLD LADY.</small></p></div>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p>“There would be no difficulty in multiplying anecdotes attributed to
-Abernethy (or other celebrated physicians) <i>ad libitum</i>, but there are
-three objections to such a course. First, there are many told of him which
-never happened; others, which may possibly have occurred, you find it
-impossible to authenticate; and lastly, there is a class which, if they
-happened to Dr. Abernethy, certainly happened to others before he was
-born. In fact, when a man once gets a reputation of doing or saying odd
-things, every story in which the chief person is unknown or unremembered,
-is given to the next man whose reputation for such is
-remarkable.�&mdash;<i>Memoirs of Dr. Abernethy, by George Macilwain, F. R. C. S.,
-etc., etc.</i></p>
-
-<p>Notwithstanding the great number of authentic anecdotes of physicians
-which might be collected together, Mr. Campbell, the experienced
-antiquarian bookseller, of Boston,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span> assures me there is no such book in
-print. I have been many years collecting such, and for this chapter I have
-selected therefrom those most chaste, amusing, instructive, and authentic.</p>
-
-<p>The following original anecdote of the great English surgeon I obtained
-verbally from Mr. Sladden, of Chicago:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“My grandmother once visited Dr. Abernethy, with her eldest son, my uncle,
-living in London, to consult the great physician respecting an inveterate
-humor of the scalp, with which the child was afflicted.</p>
-
-<p>“There were a great many patients in waiting, and when it came my
-grandmother’s turn, she walked up to the great man, and removing the boy’s
-cap, presented the case for his inspection in silence. He took a quick
-glance at the humory head, turned to the old lady, and said,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“‘Madam, the best thing I can recommend for that disease is a plenty of
-warm water and soap. And, by the way, if that don’t remove it, the next
-best thing is to apply freely soap and warm water. Five guineas, if you
-please, ma’am.’</p>
-
-<p>“As my grandmother was the embodiment of neatness, she never forgave the
-doctor for this broad intimation of the questionableness of her neatness.�</p>
-
-<p>Dr. Stowe told the following story of Dr. Abernethy and a live Irishman:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“It occurred at Bath. A crowd of pupils, myself one of them, were
-following Mr. Abernethy through the crowded wards of the hospital, when
-the apparition of a poor Irishman, with the scantiest shirt I ever saw,
-jumped from a bed, and literally throwing himself on his knees at the
-doctor’s feet, presented itself. We were startled for a moment, but the
-poor fellow, with all his country’s eloquence, poured out such a torrent
-of praise, prayers, and blessings, and illustrated it with such ludicrous
-pantomimic displays of his leg, all splintered and bandaged, that we were
-not long left in doubt.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span>“‘That’s the leg, your hon-nor. Glory be to God. Yer honnor’s the buy what
-saved it. May the heavens be yer bed. Long life to yer honnor. To the
-divil with the spalpeens that wanted to cut it off!’ etc.</p>
-
-<p>“With some difficulty the patient was replaced in bed, and the doctor
-said,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“‘I am glad your leg is doing well, but never kneel again, except to your
-Maker.’</p>
-
-<p>“The doctor took the opportunity of giving us a clinical lecture about
-diseases and their constitutional treatment. Every sentence Abernethy
-uttered, Pat confirmed.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 450px; height: 307px;"><img src="images/img037.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">DR. ABERNETHY IN THE HOSPITAL.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>“‘Thrue for yer honnor; divil a lie at all, at all. His honnor’s the
-grathe doctor, entirely,’ etc.</p>
-
-<p>“At the slightest allusion to his case, off went the bed-clothes, and up
-went the leg, as if taking aim at the ceiling. ‘That’s it, be gorra! and a
-betther leg than the villain’s that wanted to slice it off, entirely.’</p>
-
-<p>“The students actually roared with laughter, but Abernethy<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span> retained his
-usual gravity throughout the whole of the ludicrous scene.�</p>
-
-<p>Madam Rothschild, mother of the mighty capitalists, attained the great age
-of ninety-eight. Her wits, which were of no common order, were preserved
-to the end. During her last illness, when surrounded by her family and
-some friends, she turned to her physician, and said, in a suppliant
-tone,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“My dear doctor, I pray you try to do something for me.�</p>
-
-<p>“Madam, what can I do? I cannot make you young again.�</p>
-
-<p>“No, doctor; nor do I want to be young again. But I want to continue to
-grow old.�</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Large Feet.</span></p>
-
-<p>Dr. Wood was a man of large “understanding.� One day at a presidential
-reception he was standing in a large crowd, when he felt two feet pressing
-on his patent leathers. Looking down, he discovered that the said feet
-belonged to a female. Wood was a bachelor, and at first the sensation was
-delightful. It made inexpressibly delicious thrills run all up and down
-his body. But as the <i>impression</i> was all on the lady’s side, the above
-sensations became gradually superseded by those not quite so delightful,
-and finally the pressure became very uncomfortable. Mustering courage, he
-said, very gently,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“Madam, if you please, you are standing on my feet&mdash;�</p>
-
-<p>“Your feet, sir, did you say?� For the crowd was so dense that she could
-not possibly see to the ground.</p>
-
-<p>“Yes, madam, on my feet&mdash;this last half hour,� very politely.</p>
-
-<p>“O, I beg a thousand pardons, sir; I thought I was standing on a block.
-<i>They are quite large, sir</i>,� trying to remove.</p>
-
-<p>“Yes, ma’am, quite large; but <i>yours covered ’em, madam</i>.�</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span></p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">A Shanghai Rooster.</span></p>
-
-<p>Many people suffer more from the anticipation of trouble than by the
-actual infliction. The world is full of “trouble-borrowers.� They
-generally keep a stock on hand to lend to those who unfortunately are
-compelled to listen to them. The following is a mitigated case:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“Sir,� said a physician visiting a patient in the suburbs of this city, to
-a neighbor, “your Shanghai greatly disturbs my patient.�</p>
-
-<p>“Is it possible?� asked the neighbor, expressing surprise.</p>
-
-<p>“Yes, the bird is a terrible nuisance, giving the patient no peace, day or
-night, he informs me; but he did not want to complain.�</p>
-
-<p>“But,� replied the sceptical owner, “I don’t see how he can annoy neighbor
-B. Why, he only crows twice in the night, and only two or three times at
-regular intervals during the day.�</p>
-
-<p>“Yes; but you don’t take into consideration all the times the patient is
-<i>expecting</i> him to crow.�</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Spreading Herself.</span></p>
-
-<p>In a country town in Maine the writer knew an elderly physician, who had
-married a wife much younger than himself, whose aristocratic notions
-hardly coincided with those of this democratic people, though she had now
-lived here several years. Finally a young physician came into the place
-and commenced practice. Among the patients that he obtained from the old
-doctor’s former practice was one named Higgins.</p>
-
-<p>Mrs. Higgins, whose daughter had just recovered from a fever, gave a
-party, to which the families of both doctors, with the two ministers, and
-others, were invited.</p>
-
-<p>“Will you go to Mrs. Higgins’s party?� asked a neighbor of the old
-doctor’s wife.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span>“Yes, I intend to go, by all means, for I want to see old Mother Higgins
-and her new doctor spread themselves.�</p>
-
-<p>This reminds me of the following story, which is too good to be lost:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“‘Once upon a time,’ an old lady sent her grandson to set a turkey,&mdash;not
-the gobbler, as did the parson in Mrs. Stowe’s ‘Minister’s Wooing.’ On his
-return, the following dialogue occurred:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“‘Sammy, my dear, have you set her?’</p>
-
-<p>“‘Yes, grandma,’ replied Hopeful.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img038.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">“AN EXTENSIVE SET.�</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>“‘Fixed the nest up all nice, Sammy?’</p>
-
-<p>“‘O, mighty fine, grandma.’</p>
-
-<p>“‘Did you count the eggs, Sammy, and get an odd number?’</p>
-
-<p>“‘Yes, grandma.’</p>
-
-<p>“‘How many eggs did you set her on, Sammy, dear?’</p>
-
-<p>“‘One hundred and twenty-one, grandma.’</p>
-
-<p>“‘O, goodness gracious! Why did you put so many eggs under her, Sammy?’</p>
-
-<p>“‘Why, grandma, I wanted to see the old thing spread herself.’�</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span></p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Kerosene.</span></p>
-
-<p>Some editors are continually making themselves ridiculous, as well as
-endangering the life of some person as ignorant in the matter as
-themselves, by publishing at random “remedies� for certain complaints, of
-both of which&mdash;remedy and disease&mdash;they knew nothing. The following I cut
-from a paper:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“One thing I will mention which may be useful to some one. Kerosene oil
-has been found effective as a vermifuge. It is given by the mouth for
-round stomach worms, and as an enema for pin worms. It is free from the
-irritation which follows the use of spirits turpentine, and is equally as
-effective.� (No directions as to quantity at a dose.)</p>
-
-<p>An Irishwoman in Hartford, Conn., spelling out the above in a newspaper,
-concluded to give her child, a boy of ten, a dose, under the belief that
-“wurrums ailed the child,� and as it was harmless (?), she would give him
-the benefit of its harmlessness, and her ignorance, and administered
-accordingly a <i>tea-cup full</i>!</p>
-
-<p>Frightful symptoms supervened,&mdash;colic, vomiting, etc.,&mdash;when a doctor was
-sent for, who being absent, his student&mdash;who hardly understood the danger
-of the case, and was a bit of a wag, by the way&mdash;sent the following
-prescription:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“&#8478;. Run a wick down the child’s throat; any lamp or candle wick will do,
-provided it is long enough; set fire to the end left outside, <i>and use him
-for a lamp till the doctor arrives</i>.� <span class="smcap">Selah.</span></p>
-
-<p>This may seem too ridiculous to believe, but it is the truth,
-nevertheless.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Saleratus vs. Sugar.</span></p>
-
-<p>Early one summer morning, while practising in Plymouth, Conn., the writer
-was startled by a loud knock at the front<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span> door, which I hastened to
-answer. There stood an Irishman, well known as living in a little hut,
-down on the “Meadows,� whose name was Fitzgibbon. He was all out of
-breath, and the great drops of sweat were rolling all down his rough face,
-which he was endeavoring to mop up with a huge bandanna handkerchief. As
-soon as he could possibly articulate, he exclaimed,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“O, docther, docther! take yourself&mdash;down to that sha-anty as quick as ye
-conva-niantly can, plaze.�</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 450px; height: 428px;"><img src="images/img039.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">“O, DOCTHER, DEAR, I’VE PIZENED ME BOY.�</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>“Why, what’s the matter at the shanty, Fitzgibbon?�</p>
-
-<p>“O, docther, dear, I’ve pizened my boy; what will I do intirely?�</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span>“How did it happen? Don’t be alarmed, Fitzgibbon.� For his manner was
-frightful.</p>
-
-<p>“Will, I’ll till yeze. He’s been sick wid the masles. Will, he’s ate
-nothin’ for a hole wake, and in the night he wanted some bread an’ sugar,
-do ye see? an’ I had no candle, an’ I wint in the dark, an’ spread him
-some bread, an’ he ate it intirely, an’ it was saleratus I put on it,
-instead of sugar; an’ it’s now atin’ him intirely! O, dear, dear, that I
-should iver give him saleratus instead o’ sugar!�</p>
-
-<p>“Well, Fitzgibbon, if the boy is so big a fool that he don’t know the
-difference between saleratus and sugar, let him die.�</p>
-
-<p>“O, docther, don’t say so!� exclaimed the poor fellow, in agony.</p>
-
-<p>Then I suddenly recollected that the sense of taste was always vitiated in
-measles, and thus excused the matter, adding,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“Now, run home, ’Gibbon, and give the little fellow a tea-spoonful of
-vinegar in a little sugar and water,&mdash;not saleratus and water, mind you.�</p>
-
-<p>“No, by the great St. Patrick, I’ll niver mistake the likes again,� he
-earnestly interrupted, when I went on, saying,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“Then in half an hour give him another tea-spoonful, and that will relieve
-the ‘gnawing at his stomach,’ and by an hour I’ll drive round there and
-see him, on my way to Watertown.�</p>
-
-<p>“I’ll trust to yeze to git it out of him. God bless yeze;� and away he
-darted, saying, “O, howly mother! that I should give him saleratus for
-sugar!�</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">His last Joke.</span></p>
-
-<p>A celebrated English physician, who was also a distinguished humorist,
-when about to die, requested that none of his friends be invited to his
-funeral.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span>A friend inquired the reason of this remarkable request.</p>
-
-<p>“Because,� sighed the dying but polite humorist, “it is a courtesy which
-can never be returned.�</p>
-
-<p>Charles Matthews, the celebrated comedian, who died in 1837, put the above
-entirely in the shade by <i>his</i> last joke.</p>
-
-<p>The attending physician had left Mr. Matthews some medicine in a vial,
-which a friend was to administer during the night. By mistake, he gave the
-patient some ink from a vial which stood near. On discovering the error,
-his friend exclaimed, “O, gracious Heavens, Matthews, I have given you
-ink, instead of medicine.�</p>
-
-<p>“Never&mdash;never mind, my dear boy,� said the dying man faintly; “<i>I will
-swallow a piece of blotting paper</i>.�</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">An astonished Negro.</span></p>
-
-<p>Dr. Robertson, of Charleston, S. C., who attended the writer in 1852, with
-the yellow fever, was as competent, benevolent, and faithful a physician
-as I ever had the pleasure of meeting. His services were in great demand
-during the raging of the “yellow Jack,� and on one occasion he was absent
-from his house and office two whole days and a night. His family became
-alarmed, and a faithful old negro was sent in search of his master. It was
-no uncommon occurrence to see a black man traversing the streets, ringing
-a bell, and crying a “lost child;� but to see a slave searching for his
-lost master, was almost a phenomenon.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 350px; height: 450px;"><img src="images/img040.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">“LOST MARSER! LOST MARSER!�</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span>It was quite dark, and the old negro was shuffling along King Street,
-crying, “Masser Rob’son lost, Masser Rob’son lost,� when suddenly he was
-brought to a halt, and silenced by some one saying,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“What’s that you are crying, Neb?� His name was Nebuchadnezzar.</p>
-
-<p>“O, de Lord! if Masser Dr. Rob’son hain’t been an’ loss hisself!�</p>
-
-<p>“You old fool, Neb, I am your master&mdash;Dr. Robertson. Don’t you know me
-now?� exclaimed a familiar voice.</p>
-
-<p>Sure enough, it was the doctor, returning from his numerous visits, tired
-and dust-covered.</p>
-
-<p>The whole thing solemnly impressed the old darky, who, a day or two later,
-was met by a ranting Methodist, vulgarly termed a “<i>carpet-bagger</i>,� who,
-in a solemn voice, said,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“My colored friend, have you yet found the Lord Jesus?�</p>
-
-<p>“O, golly, masser!� exclaimed the old negro in astonishment; “hab de Lord
-done gone an’ loss hisself?�</p>
-
-<p>(I have seen the last part of this anecdote floating about the newspapers;
-but did ever any one see the former connection, or even the latter before
-1852?)</p>
-
-<p>The writer was but a poor medical student, and an invalid, seeking here a
-more salubrious climate, away from the frosts and snows of his northern
-home, and though twenty years have since flown, I have not forgotten, and
-never shall, the kindness and attention received at the hands of the
-benevolent Dr. Robertson. While many who went out with me that fall fell
-victims to the fearful endemic before Jack Frost put a stop to its
-ravages, I escaped the grim monster Death; and to the superior knowledge
-and efficient treatment of Dr. R., with the excellent care of the
-benevolent landlady, Mrs. Butterfield, I owe my life.</p>
-
-<p>Morning and evening the doctor’s patter-patter was heard on the
-stairs,&mdash;three flights to climb. The whole case was gone over, and then,
-if the good old doctor had a moment to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span> spare, he would retail some little
-anecdote “with which to leave me in good spirits.�</p>
-
-<p>The following is one:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“Mr. Bacon, of Edgefield, was once courting a lady who had frequently
-refused him; but he, with commendable perseverance, had as often renewed
-the suit, until at last she became so exceedingly annoyed at his
-importunities that she told him that she could never marry a man whose
-tastes, opinions, likes and dislikes were so completely in opposition to
-her own as were his.</p>
-
-<p>“‘In fact, Mr. Bacon,’ she is represented as having said, ‘I do not think
-there is one subject on earth upon which we could agree.’</p>
-
-<p>“‘I assure you, dear madam, that you are mistaken, which I can prove.’</p>
-
-<p>“‘If you will mention one, I will agree to marry you,’ replied the lady.</p>
-
-<p>“‘Well, I will do it,’ replied Mr. Bacon. ‘Suppose now you and I were
-travelling together; we arrive at a hotel which is crowded; there are only
-two rooms not entirely occupied, in one of which there is a man, in the
-other a woman: with which would you prefer to sleep?’</p>
-
-<p>“The lady arose indignantly, and replied, ‘With the woman, of course,
-sir.’</p>
-
-<p>“‘So would I,’ replied Mr. Bacon, triumphantly.�</p>
-
-<p>(My room had two beds in it, which suggested the above story.)</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Dr. K.’s Mare.</span></p>
-
-<p>The outline of the following ludicrous “situation� was given me by a
-gentleman of Framingham:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>Old Dr. K., of F., was represented as a rough and off-handed specimen of
-the genus <i>homo</i>, who liked a horse even better than a woman,&mdash;not that he
-was by any means unmindful of the charms and claims of the
-beautiful,&mdash;better<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span> than he loved money, though the latter passion
-bordered on avariciousness.</p>
-
-<p>An over-nice and sensitive spinster once was visiting the family of Mr.
-T., in town, which employed a younger and more refined physician than Dr.
-K.; and the spinster, being somewhat indisposed, requested Mr. T. to call
-a physician. His own family doctor was suggested; but on close inquiry,
-she concluded to have “the oldest and most experienced physician that the
-town afforded,� and old Dr. K. was called.</p>
-
-<p>Mr. T. had just purchased a beautiful mare, which the doctor was desirous
-of possessing; and the animal was the subject of conversation as the two
-entered the house, even to the parlor, where the spinster reclined upon a
-sofa. The old doctor examined the lady for a moment in silence, but his
-mind was all absorbed in the reputed qualities of the mare, as he timed
-the lady’s pulse.</p>
-
-<p>“Slightly nervous,� he said to the spinster. “Tongue? Ah! coated. Throat
-sore?� and turning towards T., he resumed the horse discussion, still
-holding the lady’s wrist. “Good wind, Mr. T.? No spavins? Nothing the
-matter? Suppose you trot her out this afternoon.�</p>
-
-<p>The spinster, supposing the conversation alluded to her, went into the
-most extreme kind of hysterics.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center">“<span class="smcap">A Scared Customer.</span>�</p>
-
-<p>We give this incident for what it is worth.</p>
-
-<p>A man recently entered a restaurant in Utica, N. Y., and ordered a very
-elaborate dinner. He lingered long at the table, and finally wound up with
-a bottle of wine. Then lighting a cigar, he sauntered up to the bar, and
-remarked to the proprietor,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“Very fine dinner, landlord. Just charge it, for I haven’t a cent.�</p>
-
-<p>“But I don’t know you,� replied the proprietor, indignantly.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span>“No, of course you don’t, or you never would have let me have the dinner.�</p>
-
-<p>“Pay me for the dinner, I say,� shouted the landlord.</p>
-
-<p>“And I say I can’t,� vociferated the customer.</p>
-
-<p>“Then I’ll see about it,� exclaimed the proprietor, who snatched something
-from a drawer, leaped over the counter, and grasping the man by the
-collar, pointed something at his throat. “I’ll see if you get away with
-that dinner without paying for it, you scoundrel.�</p>
-
-<p>“What is that you hold in your hand?� demanded the now affrighted
-customer, trying to get a sight at the article.</p>
-
-<p>“That, sir, is a revolver; loaded, sir.�</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 450px; height: 334px;"><img src="images/img041.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">NOT A STOMACH-PUMP.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>“O, d&mdash;&mdash; that; I don’t care a continental for a revolver; I’ve got one
-myself. <i>I was afraid it was a stomach-pump!</i>�</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span></p>
-<p class="center">“<span class="smcap">What’s Trumps?</span>�</p>
-
-<p>Mrs. Bray, in her book of <i>Anecdotes</i>, relates a story illustrative of the
-power of the ruling passion.</p>
-
-<p>“A Devonshire physician, boasting the not untradesman-like name of Vial,
-was a desperate lover of the game of whist. One evening, during his
-opponent’s deal, he fell to the floor in a fit. Consternation seized on
-the company, who knew not if the doctor was dead or alive. Finally he
-showed signs of returning life, and retaining the last cherished idea that
-had possessed him on falling into the fit, he resumed his chair,
-exclaiming, ‘<i>What’s trumps, boys?</i>’�</p>
-
-<hr style="width: 25%;" />
-
-<p>The writer was present at a similar occurrence. There were a half score of
-boys seated upon some logs near the country school-house, during recess,
-listening to a story, something about “an old woman who had just reached a
-well, with a pitcher to obtain some water, when the old lady tripped her
-toe, and fell into the well head foremost.�</p>
-
-<p>At this juncture one of the listeners fell forward from the log in a fit.
-We were greatly frightened, but mustered sufficient courage to throw some
-water in the boy’s face, when he gradually came to his senses,
-exclaiming,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“<i>Did she break the pitcher, Johnny?</i>�</p>
-
-<hr style="width: 25%;" />
-
-<p>To Mrs. Bray’s book we are again indebted for the following:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“A <i>bon-vivant</i>, brought to his death-bed by an immoderate use of wine,
-was one day informed by his physician that he could not, in all human
-probability, survive many hours, and that he would die before eight
-o’clock the following morning, summoned all his remaining strength to call
-the doctor back, and, when the physician had returned, made an ineffectual
-attempt to rise in bed, saying, with the true recklessness of an innate
-gambler,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“‘Doctor, I’ll bet you some bottles that I live till <i>nine</i>!’�</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span></p>
-<p class="center">“<span class="smcap">Let go the Halliards.</span>�</p>
-
-<p>A sailor was taken with the pleurisy on board a vessel that was hauling
-through the “seven bridges� that span the Charles River from the Navy Yard
-to Cambridgeport, and a well-known physician, rather of the Falstaffian
-make-up, whom I may as well call Dr. Jones,&mdash;because that is <i>not</i> his
-name,&mdash;was summoned. He prescribed for the patient, and when the schooner
-touched the pier of the bridge, he stepped ashore, as was supposed by the
-captain and crew, whose whole attention was required to keep the vessel
-from driving against the drawer; but “there’s many a slip ’twixt cup and
-lip,� and the old doctor had taken the “slip,� and went plump overboard,
-unseen by any.</p>
-
-<p>In his descent he grasped at a rope, which happened to be the jib
-halliards, and as he came up, puffing and blowing the salt water from his
-mouth and nose, he began to haul “hand-over-hand� at the halliards. His
-corpulency overbalanced the jib, and gradually the sail began to ascend,
-to the astonishment of the cook, who stood near by, and to the wrath of
-the captain on the quarter-deck.</p>
-
-<p>“Let go the jib halliards, there, you confounded <i>slush</i>,� roared the
-captain.</p>
-
-<p>“I ain’t h’isting the jib,� replied the terrified cook, believing that the
-sail was bewitched, for sailors are quite superstitious, you know.</p>
-
-<p>“Let go the halliards,� shouted the mate. “We shall be across the draw,
-and all go to Davy Jones’ locker. Hear, d&mdash;&mdash; you, Slush-bucket?�</p>
-
-<p>Still the old doctor pulled for dear life, and still rose the ghost-like
-sail, while the affrighted cook and all hands ran aft, looking as pale as
-death. Still the sail went up, up, and the captain and mate began to be
-astonished, when by this time&mdash;less time than it requires to tell it&mdash;the
-old doctor had reached the rail of the vessel, and shouted lustily for
-help.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span>All ran forward to help the corpulent old doctor on deck, and by means of
-a man at each arm, and a boat-hook fast into the doctor’s unmentionables,
-he was hauled safely on board, a wetter and a wiser man.</p>
-
-<p>If you want to get kicked out of his office, just say in his hearing,
-“<i>Let go them ’ere halliards</i>,� and it is done.</p>
-
-<p class="poem">“O, mermaids, is it cold and wet<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Adown beneath the sea?</span><br />
-It seems to me that rather chill<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Must Davy’s locker be.�</span></p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Medical Titbits.</span></p>
-
-<p><i>More Mustard than Meat.</i>&mdash;A poor, emaciated Irishman having called in a
-physician as a forlorn hope, the latter spread a large mustard plaster and
-applied it to the poor fellow’s lean chest.</p>
-
-<p>“Ah, docthor,� said Pat, looking down upon the huge plaster with tearful
-eyes, “it sames to me it’s a dale of mustard for so little mate.�</p>
-
-<hr style="width: 25%;" />
-
-<p>“<i>Don’t want to be an Angel.</i>�&mdash;“I want to be an angel,� which has been so
-long shouted by <i>millions</i> of darling little Sunday school children, who
-hadn’t the remotest idea for what they had been wishing (?), and whose
-parents would not voluntarily consent to the premature transformation, if
-the children did, has received a check in the following:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>A little sprite, who had been so very sick that her life was despaired of,
-was told one morning by the doctor that she would now get well.</p>
-
-<p>“O, I’m so glad, doctor!� she replied; “for I don’t want to die and go to
-heaben, and be an angel, and wear fedders, like a hen.�</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Tooth Drawing.</span></p>
-
-<p>A snobbish-appearing individual accosted a countryman in homespun with the
-following interrogation:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span>“I say, ah, my fraand, are you sufficiently conversant with the topography
-of <i>this</i> neighborhood to direct me to the nearest disciple of Æsculapius, eh?�</p>
-
-<p>“What?� exclaimed the astonished rustic.</p>
-
-<p>“Can you familiarize me with the most direct course to a physician?�</p>
-
-<p>“Hey?�</p>
-
-<p>“Can you tell me where a doctor lives?�</p>
-
-<p>“O, a doctor’s house. Why didn’t you say so before?�</p>
-
-<hr style="width: 25%;" />
-
-<p>The next is after the same sort.</p>
-
-<p>A sailor chap entered a dentist’s office to have a tooth extracted.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 450px; height: 325px;"><img src="images/img042.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">“LOWER TIER, LARBOARD SIDE.�</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p><i>Doctor</i> (<i>with great professional dignity, speaking very slowly</i>). “Well,
-mariner, what tooth do you require extracted? Is it an incisor, bicuspid,
-or a molar?�</p>
-
-<p><i>Jack</i> (<i>brusque and loud</i>). “It’s here in the lower tier,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span> larboard side.
-Bear a hand, lively, you dumb’d swab, for it’s nippin’ my jaw like a lobster.�</p>
-
-<hr style="width: 25%;" />
-
-<p><i>The most astonished boy</i> I ever beheld was a little country lad who came
-to have a tooth drawn. “He thought it must be fun,� his mother said; “but
-he never had one drawn, and knows nothing of it.�</p>
-
-<p>“O!� with a great, round mouth, was all he had time to say, but the
-expression of astonishment depicted on that striking countenance, glaring
-eyes, and by the expressive, spasmodic “O!� I never can forget or
-describe; and he caught his hat and ran home, a distance of two miles,
-without stopping, while his mother followed in the carriage by which they
-came. The boy’s idea was summed up as follows:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“The doctor hitched tight onto the tooth with his pinchers, then he pulled
-his first best, and just before it killed me, the tooth came out, and so I
-run home.�</p>
-
-<hr style="width: 25%;" />
-
-<p>“<i>Taking it out in trade</i>� is all very well when the arrangement is
-mutual; but there are occasions when the advantages are imperceptible, at
-least to one party, as thus:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“What’s the matter, Jerry?� asked old Mr. &mdash;&mdash;, as Jeremiah was jogging
-by, growling most furiously.</p>
-
-<p>“Matter ’nough,� replied old Jerry. “There I’ve been luggin’ water all the
-morning for the doctor’s wife to wash with, and what do you s’pose she
-give me for it?�</p>
-
-<p>“About ninepence.�</p>
-
-<p>“Ninepence? No! She told me the doctor would pull a tooth for me some
-time, when he got leisure.�</p>
-
-<hr style="width: 25%;" />
-
-<p>Apothecaries sometimes “come down� from the dignity of the professional
-man, and crack a joke. For instance,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>A humorous druggist on Washington Street recently exposed some cakes of
-soap in his window with the pertinent inscription, “Cheaper than dirt.�</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span>In the country, you know, they keep almost everything in the apothecaries’
-shops. We mentioned the fact in our chapter on Apothecaries. A wag once
-entered one of these apotheco-groco-dry-goods-meat-and-fish-market-stores,
-and asked the keeper,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“Do you keep matches, sir?�</p>
-
-<p>“O, yes, all kinds,� was the reply.</p>
-
-<p>“Well, I’ll take a trotting match,� said the wag.</p>
-
-<p>The equally humorous druggist handed down a box of pills, saying,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“Here, take ’em and trot.�</p>
-
-<hr style="width: 25%;" />
-
-<p><i>A sure Cure.</i>&mdash;Henry Ward Beecher is currently reported as having once
-written to Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes as to the knowledge of the latter
-respecting a certain difficulty. The reply was characteristic, and
-<i>encouraging</i>.</p>
-
-<p>“Gravel,� wrote the doctor, “gravel is an effectual cure. It should be
-taken about four feet deep.�</p>
-
-<p>The “remedy� was not, however, so remarkable as the following:&mdash;</p>
-
-<hr style="width: 25%;" />
-
-<p>“<i>Time and Cure.</i>�&mdash;A good-looking and gentlemanly-dressed fellow was
-arraigned on the charge of stealing a watch, which watch was found on his
-person. It was his first offence, and he pleaded, “Guilty.� The magistrate
-was struck with the calm deportment of the prisoner, and asked him what
-had induced him to take the watch.</p>
-
-<p>“Having been out of health for some time,� replied the young man,
-sorrowfully, “the doctor advised me to take something, which I accordingly
-did.�</p>
-
-<p>The magistrate was rather amused with the humor of the explanation, and
-further inquired why he had been led to select so remarkable a remedy as a
-watch.</p>
-
-<p>“Why,� replied the prisoner, “I thought if I only had the <i>time</i>, Nature
-might work the <i>cure</i>.�</p>
-
-<hr style="width: 25%;" />
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span><i>Dye-stuff.</i>&mdash;During the cholera time of 1864, in Hartford, Conn., a
-little girl was sent to a drug store to purchase some dye-stuff, and
-forgetting the name of the article, she said to the clerk, “John, what do
-folks dye with?�</p>
-
-<p>“Die with? Why, the cholera, mostly, nowadays.�</p>
-
-<p>“Well, I guess that’s the name of what I want. I’ll take three cents’
-worth.�</p>
-
-<hr style="width: 25%;" />
-
-<p>The Hartford Courant told this story in 1869:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“<i>Cholera fenced in.</i>&mdash;You have noticed the flaming handbills setting
-forth the virtues of a cholera remedy, that are posted by the hundreds on
-the board fence enclosing the ground on Main Street, where Roberts’ opera
-house is being erected. Well, there was a timid countryman, the other day,
-who had so far recovered from the ‘cholera scare’ as to venture into the
-city with a horse and wagon load of vegetables; and thereby hangs a tale.
-He drove moderately along the street, when he suddenly spied the word
-‘Cholera,’ in big letters on the new fence, and he staid to see no more.
-Laying the lash on to his quadruped, he went past the handbills like a
-streak of lightning, went&mdash;‘nor stood on the order of his going’&mdash;up past
-the tunnel, planting the vegetables along the entire route,&mdash;for the
-tail-board had loosened,&mdash;hardly taking breath, or allowing his beast to
-breathe, till he reached home at W.</p>
-
-<p>“Safely there, he rushed wildly into the midst of his household,
-exclaiming,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“‘O, wife, wife, they <i>have</i> got the cholera in Hartford, <i>and have fenced
-it in</i>.’�</p>
-
-<hr style="width: 25%;" />
-
-<p><i>A Joke that’s not a Joke.</i>&mdash;A funny limb of the law had an office, a few
-years since, on &mdash;&mdash; Street, next door to a doctor’s shop. One day, an
-elderly gentleman, of the fogy school, blundered into the lawyer’s office,
-and asked,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“Is the doctor in?�</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span></p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 600px; height: 393px;"><img src="images/img043.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">THE FARMER’S ESCAPE FROM THE CHOLERA.</p>
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span>“Don’t live here,� replied the lawyer, scribbling over some legal
-documents.</p>
-
-<p>“O, I thought this was the doctor’s office.�</p>
-
-<p>“Next door, sir;� short, and still writing.</p>
-
-<p>“I beg pardon, but can you tell me if the doctor has many patients?�</p>
-
-<p>“<i>Not living</i>,� was the brief reply.</p>
-
-<p>The old gentleman repeated the story in the vicinity, and the doctor
-threatened the lawyer with a libel. The latter apologized, saying, “it was
-only a joke, and that no man could sustain a libel against a lawyer,� when
-the doctor acknowledged the joke, and satisfaction, saying he would send
-up a bottle of wine, in token of reconciliation.</p>
-
-<p>The wine came, and the lawyer invited in a few friends to laugh over the
-joke, and <i>smile</i> over the doctor’s wine. The seal was broken, the dust
-and cobwebs being removed, and the doctor’s health drunk right cordially.
-The excellence of the doctor’s wine was but half discussed, when the
-lawyer begged to be excused a moment, caught his hat, and rushed from the
-room. Soon one of the guests repeated the request, and followed; then
-another, and another, till they had all gone out.</p>
-
-<p>The wine had been nicely “doctored� with <i>tartar emetic</i>, the seal
-replaced and well dusted over, before being sent to the lawyer. The doctor
-was now threatened with prosecution; but after some consideration, the
-following brief correspondence passed between the belligerents:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“Nolle prosequi.� Lawyer to doctor.</p>
-
-<p>“Quits.� Doctor to lawyer.</p>
-
-<hr style="width: 25%;" />
-
-<p><i>Parboiling an Old Lady.</i>&mdash;In Rockland, Me., then called East Thomaston,
-several years ago, there resided an old Thomsonian doctor, who had erected
-in one room of his dwelling a new steam bath. An old lady from the
-“Meadows,� concluding to try the virtues of the medicated steam,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span> went
-down, was duly arrayed in a loose robe by the doctor’s wife, and with much
-trepidation and many warnings not to keep her too long, she entered the
-bath&mdash;a sort of closet, with a door buttoned outside. The steam was kept
-up by a large boiler, fixed in the fireplace which the doctor was to
-regulate. The old lady took a book into the bath, “to occupy her mind, and
-keep her from getting too nervous.�</p>
-
-<p>“Now it’s going all right,� said the doctor, when ding, ding, ding! went
-the front door bell. The doctor stepped noiselessly out, and learned that
-a woman required his immediate attention at South Thomaston, three miles
-away. He forgot all about the old lady fastened into the bath, and leaping
-into the carriage in waiting, he was whisked off to South Thomaston.</p>
-
-<p>Meantime the steam increased, and the old lady began to get anxious. The
-moisture gathered on her book; the leaves began to wilt. The dampness
-increased, and soon the book fell to pieces in her lap. Great drops of
-sweat and steam rolled down over her face and body, and she arose, and
-tapping very gently at the door, said,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“Hadn’t I better come out now, doctor?�</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 450px; height: 304px;"><img src="images/img044.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">TOO MUCH VAPOR.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>No reply. She waited a moment longer, and repeated the knock louder.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span>“Let me come out, doctor. I am just melting in here.�</p>
-
-<p>Still the doctor, to her astonishment, did not reply, or open the door.</p>
-
-<p>“For God’s sake, doctor, let me out.� Listening a few seconds, she
-screamed, “O, I believe he’s gone, and left me here to parboil! Open,
-open!� And she knocked louder and louder at the door, while the now almost
-scalding waters literally poured from her body. “O, I shall suffocate
-here.� And giving a desperate kick, she set her foot through the panelled
-door, and, getting down on all fours, she crawled through the opening.
-Just then the doctor’s wife, hearing the thumping, hastened to the room,
-and with many apologies and excuses, rubbed down and dried the old lady,
-and begged her not to mention the affair.</p>
-
-<p>But never, to the day of her death, did the old lady again enter a “steam
-bath,� or cease to tell how “<i>the doctor went off to attend a ‘birth’
-leaving her in the bath to parboil</i>!�</p>
-
-<hr style="width: 25%;" />
-
-<p><i>A Dry Shower Bath.</i>&mdash;When shower baths were all the rage, a few years
-ago, all sorts of plans were suggested to avoid getting wet. The following
-is to the point:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p><i>Doctor.</i> Well, deacon, how did your wife manage her new shower bath?</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img045.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">A DRY SHOWER BATH.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p><i>Deacon.</i> O, she had real good luck. Madam Mooney told how she managed
-with hern. She had made a large oiled silk hood, with a large<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span> cape to it,
-like a fisherman’s in a storm, that came all down over her shoulders.</p>
-
-<p><i>Doctor</i> (impatiently). She’s a fool for her pains. That’s not the way.</p>
-
-<p><i>Deacon.</i> So my wife thought.</p>
-
-<p><i>Doctor.</i> And your wife did nothing of the kind, I hope.</p>
-
-<p><i>Deacon.</i> O, no, no. My wife, she used an umbrilly.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img046.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
-<hr style="width: 50%;" />
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span></p>
-<h2><a name="IX" id="IX"></a>IX.</h2>
-<p class="title">FORTUNE-TELLERS.</p>
-
-<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table">
-<tr><td align="right" valign="top"><i>1st Witch.</i></td>
-    <td>By the pricking of my thumbs,<br />Something wicked this way comes.</td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right" valign="top"><i>Macbeth.</i></td>
-    <td>How now, you secret, black and midnight hags,<br />What is’t ye do?</td></tr>
-<tr><td align="right" valign="top"><i>All.</i></td>
-    <td>A deed without a name.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Macbeth</span>, Act IV. Sc. 1.</td></tr></table>
-
-<div class="note"><p class="hang"><small>PAST AND PRESENT.&mdash;BIBLE ASTROLOGERS AND
-FORTUNE-TELLERS.&mdash;ARABIAN.&mdash;EASTERN.&mdash;ENGLISH.&mdash;QUEEN’S
-FAVORITE.&mdash;LILLY.&mdash;A LUCKY GUESS.&mdash;THE GREAT LONDON FIRE
-FORETOLD.&mdash;HOW.&mdash;OUR “TIDAL WAVE� AND AGASSIZ.&mdash;A HAUL OF
-FORTUNE-TELLERS.&mdash;PRESENT.&mdash;VISIT EN MASSE.&mdash;“FILLIKY
-MILLIKY.�&mdash;“CHARGE BAYONETS!�&mdash;A FOWL PROCEEDING.&mdash;FINDING LOST
-PROPERTY.&mdash;THE MAGIC MIRROR EXPOSÉ.&mdash;“ONE MORE
-UNFORTUNATE.�&mdash;PROCURESSES.&mdash;BOSTON MUSEUM.&mdash;“A NICE OLD
-GENTLEMAN.�&mdash;MONEY DOES IT.&mdash;GREAT SUMS OF MONEY.&mdash;“LOVE POWDER�
-EXPOSE.&mdash;HASHEESH.&mdash;“DOES HE LOVE ME?�</small></p></div>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p>Under the guise of fortune-telling and clairvoyance the most nefarious
-atrocities are daily enacted, not only in the larger cities, but in the
-villages and towns even, throughout the country. In this chapter I propose
-to ventilate them in a manner never before attempted, and the <i>exposé</i> may
-be relied upon as correct in every particular.</p>
-
-<p>“Why,� exclaimed a friend, “I thought fortune-telling one of the follies
-of the past, and that there was little or none of it practised at the
-present.�</p>
-
-<p>Far from it. Very few, comparatively, who practise the black art come out
-under the ancient name of fortune-tellers; but there are thousands of
-ignorant, characterless wretches, in our enlightened day and generation,
-who pretend to tell fortunes, if not under the open title above, as
-astrologers,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span> seers, clairvoyants, or spiritualists, etc. There are some
-clairvoyants of whom we shall treat under the head of “Mind and Matter.�</p>
-
-<p>The Bible fortune-tellers practised their lesser deceptions under the
-various titles of “wise men,� “soothsayers,� the former being acknowledged
-as the more legitimate by the Jews, and the latter mere heathenish
-prognosticators, without divine authority, as thus: Is. ii. 6. “Therefore
-thou hast forsaken thy people, the house of Jacob, because they be
-replenished from the east, and are <i>soothsayers, like the Philistines</i>.�</p>
-
-<p>8. “Their land also is full of idols; they worship the work of their own
-hands, that which their own fingers have made.�</p>
-
-<p>There were also wizards, astrologers, “star-gazers� (Is. xlvii. 13),
-spiritualists (1 Sam. xxviii. 3), magicians, sorcerers, and “the
-well-favored harlot, the mistress of witchcrafts, that <i>selleth nations
-through her whoredoms, and families through her witchcrafts</i>.� Nahum iii.
-4.</p>
-
-<p>All of these exist at the present day, carrying on the same sort of vile
-deceptions and heinous crimes, to the “selling of families and nations,�
-and souls, in spite of law or gospel. Even as those of nearly six thousand
-years ago were patronized by the great, the kings, and queens, and nobles
-of the earth, so are the fortune-tellers, under the more refined titles,
-visited by governors, representatives, and ladies and gentlemen of rank,
-of modern times.</p>
-
-<p>In visiting these pretenders, in order “to worm out the secrets of their
-trade,� the writer has not only been assured by them in confidence that
-the above is true, but he has met distinguished characters there, face to
-face,&mdash;the minister of the gospel, the lawyer, the judge, the doctor, and
-what <i>ought</i> to have been the representative intelligence of the
-land,&mdash;consulting and fellowshiping with ignorant fortune-tellers.
-“Ignorant?� Yes, out of the scores whom I have seen, there has not been
-one, male or female, possessing an <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span>intelligence above ordinary people in
-the unprofessional walks of life, while the majority of them were in
-comparison far below the mediocrity.</p>
-
-<p>If ignorance alone patronized ignorance, like a family intermarrying, the
-stock would eventually dwindle into nothingness, and entirely die out.</p>
-
-<p>Before the “captivity� the Jews had their wise men, and on their exodus
-they reported the existence of the magicians or magi of Egypt.</p>
-
-<p>It seems that nearly everybody, and particularly the Egyptians, regarded
-Moses and Aaron as but magicians in those days; and the magi of Pharaoh’s
-household&mdash;for all kings and rulers of ancient times and countries had
-their fortune-tellers about them&mdash;had a little “tilt� with Moses and
-Aaron, commencing with the changing of the rods into snakes. The Egyptian
-magicians did very well at the snake “trick,� as the modern magician calls
-it, also at producing frogs, and such like reptiles; but they were puzzled
-in the vermin business, and the boils troubled them, and they then gave
-up, and acknowledged that there <i>was</i> a power beyond theirs, and that
-power was with God.</p>
-
-<p>Well, that is not fortune-telling; but this was the class who professed
-the power of foretelling; and we find them, with women of the familiar
-spirits, made mention of all through the scriptural writing. Isaiah
-testifies (chapter xix.) that the charmers, familiar spirits, and wizards
-ruined Egypt as a nation. What advantage were they ever to King Saul, the
-grass-eating king with the long name, or any other individuals, in their
-perplexities?</p>
-
-<p>They rather stood in the light of individuals, nations, and the cause of
-Heaven. Then Jesus and the apostles had them to meet and overcome&mdash;for
-their power had become very great, even to the publication of books to
-promulgate their doctrines; for we read in Acts xix. 19, that there were
-brought forth at Ephesus, at one time, these books, to the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span> amount of
-fifty thousand pieces of silver, or about twenty-six thousand five hundred
-dollars’ worth, and burned in the public square or synagogue.</p>
-
-<p>There are some instances recorded in the Bible, and by Josephus, where the
-Jews professed to foretell events. The curious case of Barjesus, at
-Paphos, who, for a time, hindered Sergius, the deputy of the country, from
-embracing Christianity, is cited in illustration of the injury that false
-prophets are to all advancement. Paul testifies to that fact in the
-following words: “O, full of all subtlety, and all mischief, child of the
-devil, enemy to all righteousness,� etc.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Arabian Fortune-teller.</span></p>
-
-<p>The Arabians, from time immemorial, have been implicit believers in
-fortune-telling, as well as believers in the efficacy of charms and all
-other mystic arts. “No species of knowledge is more highly venerated by
-them than that of the occult sciences, which affords maintenance to a vast
-number of quacks and impudent pretenders.� The science of “Isen Allah�
-enables the possessor to discern what is passing in his absence, to expel
-evil spirits, and cure malignant diseases. Others claim to control the
-winds and the weather, calm tempests, and to say their prayers in person
-at Mecca, without stirring from their own abodes hundreds of miles away!</p>
-
-<p>The “Sinia� is what is better known to us as jugglery and feats of
-illusion.</p>
-
-<p>The “Ramle� is the more proper fortune-telling, and is believed in and
-practised by people of all ranks, male and female, and by the physicians.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">The Eastern Prince.</span></p>
-
-<p>Fortune-telling is practised in all Eastern countries, to a great extent,
-to the present day. Some pretend to foretell<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span> events by the stars and
-planets, some by charms, cards, the palm of the hand, or a lock of hair;
-the latter is the most vulgar mode, and commonly followed by the gypsies.</p>
-
-<p>When the fortress of Ismail was besieged, in 1790, by the Russians, Prince
-Potemkin, the commanding officer, began to grow impatient, after nearly
-two months’ resistance, though he was surrounded by all the comforts and
-luxuries of an Eastern prince&mdash;by courtiers and beautiful women, who
-employed the most exciting and voluptuous means to engage his attention.
-Madame De Witt, one of the females, pretended to read the decrees of fate
-by cards, and foretold that the prince would only take the place at the
-expiration of three more weeks.</p>
-
-<p>“Ah,� exclaimed the prince, with a smile, “I have a method of divination
-far more infallible, as you shall see;� and he immediately despatched
-orders to Suwarof <i>to take Ismail within three days</i>. The brave but
-barbarous hero obeyed the order to the very letter.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">The Seer’s Wife.</span></p>
-
-<p>When Richmond, afterwards Henry VII., landed at Milford-Haven, on his
-memorable march to his successful encounter with Richard III., then at
-Bosworth Field, he consulted a celebrated Welsh seer, who dwelt in
-magnificent style at a place called Matha Farm. To the duke’s question as
-to whether he should succeed or not, the wily seer, whose name was Davyd
-Lloyd, requested a little time in which to consider so important a query.</p>
-
-<p>As Richmond lodged that night with his friend Davyd, he gave him till the
-following morning to make up his decision, when the seer assured Richmond
-that he “would succeed gloriously.�</p>
-
-<p>For this wonderful and timely information Lloyd received immense rewards
-at the hand of his grateful prince when he became King Henry VII.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span>Now for the secret of his success: During the time granted for the answer,
-Davyd, in great perplexity and trepidation, consulted his wife, instead of
-the heavens, for an answer. See the wisdom of the reply.</p>
-
-<p>“There can be no difficulty about an answer. Tell him he will certainly
-succeed. Then, if he does, you will receive honors and rewards; and if he
-fails, depend on’t he will never come here to punish you.�</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Dee, the Astrologer.</span></p>
-
-<p>One of the most remarkable and successful fortune-tellers known to English
-history was John Dee, who was born in London, 1527, and died in 1608. A
-biographer says, “He was an English divine and astrologer of great
-learning, celebrated in the history and science of necromancy, chancellor
-of St. Paul’s, and warden of Manchester College, in the reign of Queen
-Elizabeth. He was also author of several published works on the subject of
-astrology, revelations of spirits, etc., which books are preserved in the
-Cottonian library and elsewhere.�</p>
-
-<p>Dee enjoyed for a long time the confidence and patronage of Elizabeth. He
-then resided in an elegant house at Mortlake, which was still standing in
-1830, and was used for a female boarding school. “In two hundred years it
-necessarily had undergone some repairs and alterations; yet portions of it
-still exhibited the architecture of the sixteenth century.</p>
-
-<p>“From the front windows might be seen the doctor’s garden, still attached
-to the house, down the central path of which the queen used to walk from
-her carriage from the Shan road to consult the wily conjurer on affairs of
-love and war.</p>
-
-<p>“He was one of the few men of science who made use of his knowledge to
-induce the vulgar to believe him a conjurer, and one possessing the power
-to converse with spirits. Lilly’s memoirs recorded many of his impostures,
-and at one<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span> time the public mind was much agitated by his extravagances.
-The mob more than once destroyed his house (before residing at Mortlake)
-for being too familiar with their devil. He pretended to see spirits in a
-stone, which is still preserved with his books and papers.... In his
-spiritual visions Dee had a confederate in one Kelley, who, of course,
-confirmed all his master’s oracles. Both, however, in spite of their
-spiritual friends, died miserably&mdash;Kelley by leaping from a window and
-breaking his neck, and Dee in great poverty and wretchedness. The remains
-of the impostor lie in Mortlake Church, without any memorial.�</p>
-
-<p>He unfortunately had survived his royal patroness.</p>
-
-<p>Queen Mary had had Dee imprisoned for practising by enchantment against
-her life; but her successor released him, and required him to name a lucky
-day for her coronation.</p>
-
-<p>“In view of this fact,� asks the author of ‘A Morning’s Walk from London
-to Kew,’ “is it to be wondered at that a mere man, like tens of thousands
-of other fanatics, persuaded himself that he was possessed of supernatural
-powers?�</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Another Impostor.&mdash;The Great Fire.</span></p>
-
-<p>William Lilly followed in the wake of, and was even a more successful
-impostor than the Reverend Dee. He was first known in London as a
-book-keeper, whose master, dying, gave him the opportunity of marrying his
-widow and her snug little fortune of one thousand pounds. The wife died in
-a few years, and Lilly set up as an astrologer and fortune-teller.</p>
-
-<p>His first great attempt at a public demonstration of his art was about
-1630, which was to discover certain treasures which he claimed were buried
-in the cloister of Westminster Abbey. Lilly had studied astronomy with a
-Welsh clergyman, and doubtless may have been sufficiently “weather-wise�
-to anticipate a storm; but however that might have been, on the night of
-the attempt, there came up a most terrific<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span> storm of wind, rain, thunder
-and lightning, which threatened to bury the actors beneath the ruins of
-the abbey, and his companions fled, leaving Lilly master of the situation.
-He unblushingly declared that he himself allayed the “storm spirit,� and
-“attributed the failure to the lack of faith and want of better knowledge
-in his companions.�</p>
-
-<p>“In 1634 Lilly ventured a second marriage, with another woman of property,
-which was unfortunate as a commercial speculation, for the bride proved
-extravagant beyond her dowry and Lilly’s income. In 1644 he published his
-first almanac, which he continued thirty-six years. In 1648 he therein
-predicted the “great fire� of London, which immortalized his name. While
-Lilly was known as a cheat, and was ridiculed for his absurdities, he
-received the credit for as lucky a guess as ever blessed the fortunes of a
-cunning rogue.</p>
-
-<p>“In the year 1656,� said his prediction, “the aphelium of Mars, the
-signification of England, will be in Virgo, which is assuredly the
-ascendant of the English monarchy, but Aries of the kingdom. When this
-absis, therefore, of Mars shall appear in Virgo, who shall expect less
-than a strange <i>catastrophe</i> of human affairs in the commonwealth,
-monarchy, and kingdom of England?�</p>
-
-<p>He then further stated that it would be “<i>ominous to London, unto her
-merchants at sea, to her traffique</i> at land, to her poor, to her rich, to
-all <i>sorts of people inhabiting her or her liberties, by reason of fire
-and plague</i>!� These he predicted would occur within ten years of that
-time.</p>
-
-<p>The great plague did occur in London in 1665, and the great fire in 1666!
-The fire originated by incendiarism in a bakery on Pudding Lane, near the
-Tower, in a section of the city where the buildings were all constructed
-of wood with pitched roofs, and also a section near the storehouses for
-shipping materials, and those of a highly combustible nature. It occurred
-also at a time when the water-pipes were empty.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span>This fearful visitation destroyed nearly two thirds of the metropolis.
-Four hundred and thirty-three acres were burned over. Thirteen thousand
-houses, eighty-nine churches, and scores of public buildings were laid in
-ashes and ruins. There was no estimating the amount of property destroyed,
-nor the many souls who perished in the relentless, devouring flames.</p>
-
-<p>If this great fire originated at the instigation of Lilly, in order to
-demonstrate his claims as a foreteller of events, as is believed to be the
-case by nearly all who were not themselves believers in the occult
-science, what punishment could be meted out to such a villain commensurate
-to his heinous crime? Curran says, “There are two kinds of prophets, those
-who are inspired, and those who prophesy events which they themselves
-intend to bring about. Upon this occasion, Lilly had the ill luck to be
-deemed of the latter class.� Elihu Rich says in his biography of Lilly,
-“It is certain that he was a man of no character. He was a double-dealer
-and a liar, by his own showing, ... and perhaps as decent a man as a
-<i>trading</i> prophet could well be, under the circumstances.� Lilly was cited
-before a committee of the House of Commons, not, as was supposed by many,
-“that he might discover by the same planetary signs <i>who</i> were the authors
-of the great fire,� but because of the suspicion that he was already
-acquainted with them, and privy to the supposed machinations which brought
-about the catastrophe. At one time, 1648-9, Parliament gave him one
-hundred pounds a year, and he was courted by royalty and nobility, at home
-and abroad, from whom he received an immense revenue. He died a natural
-death, in 1681, “leaving some works of interest in the history of
-astrology,� which, in connection with the important personages with whom
-he was associated, and the remarkable events above recorded, have
-immortalized his name.</p>
-
-<p>Respecting the prediction of the plague, I presume that if<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span> any prominent
-personage should, at any time, predict a great calamity to a great
-metropolis, to take place “<i>within ten years, more or less</i>,� there
-necessarily would be something during that time, of a calamitous nature,
-that might seem to verify their prediction. Besides, we should take into
-consideration how many predictions are never verified. Dr. Lamb, Dee,
-Bell, and others prophesied earthquakes to shake up London at various
-times in 1203, 1598, 1760, etc., which never occurred, to any great
-extent.</p>
-
-<p>Supposing a great tidal wave should devastate our coast, within ten years
-even, would not Professor Agassiz be immortalized thereby, although he
-never predicted it, except in the imaginative and mulish brains of certain
-individuals, who will have it that he did so predict?</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">A Raid on Fortune-tellers.</span></p>
-
-<p>In London, at the present day, it is estimated that nearly two thousand
-persons, male and female, gain a livelihood under the guise of
-fortune-telling. Some of them are “seers,� or “astrologers,� “seventh
-sons,� clairvoyants, etc.</p>
-
-<p>From the London Telegraph of the year 1871 we gather the following
-description of a few of the most prominent of these, with their arrest and
-trial, as fortune-telling is there, as elsewhere, proscribed by law:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“First was arraigned ‘Professor Zendavesta,’ otherwise John Dean Bryant,
-aged fifty, and described as a ‘botanist.’ He was charged with having told
-a woman’s fortune, for the not very extravagant sum of thirteen cents. Two
-married women, it seems, instructed by the police, went to No. 3 Homer
-Street, Marylebone, and paid sixpence each to a woman, who gave them a
-bone ticket in return. One might have imagined that it was a
-spiritualist’s <i>seance</i>, but for the fact that the fee for admittance was
-sixpence, and not one guinea. Professor Zendavesta shook hands with one of
-the women, and warmly inquired after her health. She told<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span> him she was in
-trouble about her husband, which was false, and he bade her be of good
-cheer, and made an appointment to meet her on another day. Subsequently,
-two constables went to Bryant’s house, and on going into a room on the
-ground floor, found thirty or forty young women seated there. The ladies
-began to scream, and there was a rush for the door; while the police, who
-seemed to labor under the impression that to attend an astrological
-lecture was as illegal an act as that of being present at a cock-fight or
-a common gambling-house, stopped several of the women, and made them give
-their names and addresses. The walls of the apartment were covered with
-pictures of Life and Death, with the ‘nativities of several royal and
-illustrious personages, and of Constance Kent.’ It is a wonder that the
-horoscopes of Heliogabalus and Jack the Painter should have been lacking.
-Then there was a medicine chest containing bottles and memoranda of
-nativities; also a ‘magic mirror, with a revolving cylinder,’ showing the
-figures of men and women, old and young. Of course the collection included
-a ‘book of fate.’ This was the case against Bryant.</p>
-
-<p>“One Shepherd, alias ‘Professor Cicero,’ was next charged, and it was
-shown that the same ‘instructed’ women went to his house, paying sixpence
-for the usual bone ticket. They saw Shepherd separately. When one of them
-said that she wanted her fortune told, ‘Professor Cicero’ took a yard tape
-and measured her hand. He gabbled the usual nonsense to her about love,
-marriage, and good luck, hinting that the price of a complete nativity
-would be half a crown, and before they left the place he gave them a
-circular, with their phrenological organs marked. Indeed, the man’s
-defence was, that he was a professor of phrenology, and not of the black
-art. A ‘magic mirror’ and a ‘lawyer’s gown’ were, however, found at his
-house, and the last named item has certainly a very black look. The
-evidence against the next defendant, William Henry, alias ‘Professor
-Thalaby,’ and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span> against the fourth and last, Frederick Shipton, alias
-‘Professor Baretta,’ did not differ to any great extent from the testimony
-given against Zendavesta. The solicitor retained for this sage contended
-that if he had infringed the law, it was likewise violated at the Crystal
-Palace, where the ‘magic mirror’ was to be seen every day. Mr. Mansfield,
-however, had only to deal with the case and the culprits before him, and,
-convicting all the four fortune-tellers, he sent them to the house of
-correction, there to be kept, each and every one of them, to hard labor
-for three months.�</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">The Fortune-tellers of To-day.</span></p>
-
-<p>Before entering upon the <i>exposé</i> of the viler practices of this vile
-art,&mdash;the “selling of families,� and of virginity, and the abominable
-practices of the procuresses, who carry on their damnable treacheries,
-particularly in our large cities, at the present day,&mdash;I wish to enliven
-this chapter by one or more amusing instances relative to country
-fortune-tellers.</p>
-
-<p><i>Filliky Milliky.</i>&mdash;During the summer of 185-, the writer was one of a
-large party of excursionists to Weymouth’s Point, in Union Bay. There was
-a large barge full of people, old and young, male and female, besides
-several sailboat loads, who, on the return in the afternoon, decided to
-stop at the hut of a fortune-teller called “Filliky Milliky.� This old
-man, with his equally ignorant wife, professed to tell fortunes by means
-of a tea-cup. He claimed that he knew of our intended visit, and had set
-his house in order; but if that house was “in order� that day, deliver us
-from seeing it when out of order.</p>
-
-<p>There were some one hundred or more of us, and whilst but two could occupy
-the attention of the “Millikies� at once, we sought other means of whiling
-away the time. The old man lived near the river side, and at his leisure
-had picked up a large pile of lath edgings which had floated down from a
-lath mill on the river.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span>One Captain Joy took it upon himself to form “all the gentlemen who would
-enlist in so noble a cause� into a “home guard,� and forthwith arming
-themselves with the aforesaid lath edgings, a company of volunteers was
-quickly raised, and drawn up in battle array.</p>
-
-<p>I do not recollect the glorious and patriotic speech by which our noble
-captain fired our “sluggish souls with due enthusiasm for the great cause
-in which we were about to embark,� but we were put through a course of
-military tactics, “according to Hardee,� and took up our line of march.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img047.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">CHARGE, INFANTRY!</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>There was no Bunker Hill on which to display our valor, but there was
-another hill, just in rear of the barn nearly, which had not been used in
-farming purposes that spring, and for this hill we charged at
-“double-quick.� In this charge&mdash;the danger lay in the <i>swamping</i> part of
-the hill&mdash;we unambushed a large flock of hens, chickens, and ducks, from
-the opposite side.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span>“<i>Charge bayonet!</i>� shouted
-our noble captain, with great presence of mind.</p>
-
-<p>We charged! The ducks quacked and fled. The hens cackled and ran. The
-noise was deafening, the chase enthusiastic, and above the dust and din of
-battle arose the stentorian cry, “Charge bayonet!� The Donnybrook Fair
-advice of “Wherever there’s a head, hit it,� was followed to the letter,
-until the last enemy lay dead on the gory field, or had hid so far under
-the barn that the small boys could not bring them forth. Then orders came
-to withdraw, and gather up the dead and wounded.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img048.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">AFTER THE BATTLE.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>There was an interesting string of hens, chickens, and ducks brought in
-and laid at the feet of our great commander, to represent the fowl
-products of that campaign. The captain’s congratulatory speech was
-characteristic also of the <i>fowl proceedings</i>, at the close of which
-harangue he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span> appointed the “orderly a committee of three to wait on the
-fortune-teller, and present him with the spoils of war,� of which his
-“cups� had given him no previous intimation.</p>
-
-<p>What next? The captain informed us that “as the company was ‘mutual,’ it
-became necessary, in consideration of the losses, to draw on the
-<i>stock-holders</i> (<i>gun-stock</i>), as he could see no other ‘policy’ under
-which to assess those ‘damages.’�</p>
-
-<p>“Filliky Milliky� never carried fowl to a better market.</p>
-
-<p>The “fortunate� ones entertained us, on the barge, with the marvellous
-revelations that had transpired within the hut. One married lady was
-assured that she was yet single, but would marry in a six-month. A
-double-and-twisted old maid was told that her husband was in California.
-But the most absurd revelation was to a well-known respectable middle-aged
-lady, who was inclined to believe in the foreseeing powers of old Mother
-Milliky until now, who was told that she was “soon to receive a letter
-from her absent husband, also in California for the last five years; that
-he had become rich, and was soon to return; but that her youngest child, a
-year old, was inclined to worms, and might not live to see its father
-return!� All this wonderful information for a ninepence.</p>
-
-<hr style="width: 25%;" />
-
-<p><i>Secret of finding lost Property.</i>&mdash;In Hopkinton, Mass., there lived a man
-named Sheffield, who professed to tell fortunes. The postmaster of that
-town told my informant that old Sheffield received from seven to ten
-letters per day from the fools who believed in his foreseeing powers. Once
-the surveyor, with a large gang of men, was working on the highway, and
-while they were at dinner an ox chain was stolen. The overseer, happening
-along before the rest of the men, saw some one unhook the chain, and steal
-away to a field adjoining, pull up a fence post, and deposit the chain in
-the hole, replace the post, and return. He “lay low,�<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span> and as the thief
-passed he discovered him to be old Sheffield, the fortune-teller. He kept
-his own counsel, and, the chain being missed, a committee of three was
-appointed to visit the seer, to discover by his art where the stolen
-property was secreted.</p>
-
-<p>Mr. &mdash;&mdash;, the overseer, and others, called on Sheffield, who got out his
-mysterious book, and figured away in an impressive manner, and finally
-chalked out a rough plan of the ground on the floor, and again consulting
-his book, he solemnly declared that he had discovered the property.</p>
-
-<p>“You follow this line from the spot where the chain was unhooked from the
-plough, so many rods to this line fence, go along the fence to the seventh
-post, draw it up, and the chain will be found beneath, in the post-hole.�</p>
-
-<p>The two men were struck dumb with astonishment, for they believed in the
-mysterious powers of old Sheffield; but the overseer exclaimed, in words
-more impressive than elegant,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“Yes, you infernal scoundrel, and you put it there, for I saw you with my
-own eyes.�</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">The Magic Mirror Expose.</span></p>
-
-<p>Not long ago the body of a once beautiful young woman was taken from the
-Merrimack River, below the factories at L&mdash;&mdash;. She was unknown at the
-time, and this was all there was given to the public. To the world she was
-merely&mdash;</p>
-
-<p class="poem">“One more unfortunate,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Weary of breath,</span><br />
-Rashly importunate,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Gone to her death.�</span></p>
-
-<p>Now, these are the whole facts of the case. She was the daughter of
-respectable, Christian parents, in a New England village, where she was
-highly esteemed as an amiable and virtuous young lady. But the tempter
-came. Not in the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span> form of a “serpent�&mdash;very harmless animals,
-comparatively!&mdash;nor that other old fellow, commonly descried as having
-clattering hoofs and forked tail, etc.&mdash;but in the flesh and semblance of
-a handsome young man! I think preachers and book-makers paint their devils
-too hideous and too far off! Leave off the d, and look for your evils
-nearer home, and rather pleasant to look at, on the sly, and not (at
-first) very unpleasant to the senses in general. These are the dangerous
-(d)evils; escape <i>them</i>, and you avoid all!</p>
-
-<p>In the village there were two young men, rivals for the affections of this
-amiable young lady, and I know not but there were a dozen besides. One
-held the only advantage over the other of having been a native of the
-town, while the other was, comparatively, but little known.</p>
-
-<p>Both were sober, industrious, and moral young men.</p>
-
-<p>One day Miss &mdash;&mdash; was going to the great city, and, for the “sport of the
-thing,� agreed to visit a celebrated fortune-teller&mdash;a clairvoyant!&mdash;at
-the instigation of the young man, who, though least known to her, had
-recently distanced his rival by his assiduity in pressing his suit before
-the young lady.</p>
-
-<p>He assured her there could be no impropriety in a young lady’s visiting a
-fortune-teller. It was only for fun; nobody believed in them, and she
-could keep her own secret if she chose!</p>
-
-<p>She went in broad daylight. The lady clairvoyant greeted her cordially,
-begged her to feel quite at her ease, as there was great fortune in store
-for her. She described her two lovers very minutely, and informed the girl
-that the one who was to marry her would come to her in a vision, if she
-would but look into a mirror hanging on the wall before her.</p>
-
-<p>“I see nothing but my own face,� replied the young lady, when she had
-arisen and looked into the glass.</p>
-
-<p>The woman then turned it half around on the hinges, swung out the frame
-upon which the mirror was also hung,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span> and, disclosing a plain black glass
-behind, fastened to the wall, said,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“Now, if you will step behind the glass, back to the wall, and again look
-into the mirror, you <i>may</i> possibly see one of the two gentlemen&mdash;I cannot
-<i>say</i> which.�</p>
-
-<p>More amused than alarmed, the lady complied.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 450px; height: 343px;"><img src="images/img049.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">THE FORTUNE-TELLER’S MAGIC MIRROR.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>“Still I see nothing but myself and a dark glass behind me,� she said.</p>
-
-<p>“Look steadfastly into the glass. <i>Now!</i>� exclaimed the woman.</p>
-
-<p>“O, what&mdash;what do I see?� cried the girl. “’Tis he! ’tis Mr. &mdash;&mdash;�</p>
-
-<p>“Don’t be alarmed; ’tis your future husband. No power can prevent it. It
-is fate&mdash;fate! But it will be a happy consummation,� said the woman,
-closing the mirror.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span>“Why, I left him at home, surely; and I came by steam. That is a solid
-wall! Ah, my fate is decreed, I believe!�</p>
-
-<p>Can the reader suppose any sensible person would believe this to be magic?
-There are thousands who believe it. Miss &mdash;&mdash; was one. She had seen the
-spiritual representation of her future husband, and, finding him at home
-on her return, the same afternoon, she accepted him as her betrothed, and
-the other was dismissed.</p>
-
-<p>Her ruin followed. In the flight of her lover, her hopes were forever
-blasted. To hide her shame, she went secretly from home; and to earn her
-daily bread, she labored in a cotton factory. When she could no longer
-cover her shame in the world, she went without&mdash;into outer darkness! Her
-parents went down in sorrow to their untimely graves.</p>
-
-<p>Now about the magic mirror. The young man went to the city by the same
-train with the girl he proposed to ruin. He had previously arranged with
-the fortune-teller&mdash;no unusual thing&mdash;to appear in person behind the
-darkened glass in the next room, and had returned in disguise by the same
-train with his victim.</p>
-
-<p>The fortune-teller died miserably, and was buried in the Potter’s Field at
-the expense of the city of Hartford, Conn.</p>
-
-<p class="poem">“The thorns which I have reaped are of the tree<br />
-I planted; they have torn me,&mdash;and I bleed:<br />
-I should have known what fruit would spring from such a seed.�<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 22em;"><span class="smcap">Byron.</span></span></p>
-
-<p>Such is one of the results of patronizing fortune-tellers. I have seen
-this kind of mirror, and the first effect, even on a strong-minded person,
-seeing but faintly through the darkened glass, over your shoulder, the
-outlines of a face, and finally, as your eyes get familiar with the
-darkness, the very features of a person reflected therein, is truly
-impressive, if not startling.</p>
-
-<p>Young ladies, for your own sakes, for the sake of your friends, and more
-for Heaven’s sake, keep away from <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span>fortune-tellers! <i>You cannot possibly
-see into futurity</i>, neither can any one, much less the ignorant wretches
-who profess the dark mysteries, tell for you what joys or sorrows are in
-store for the future!</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Fortune-tellers as Procuresses.</span></p>
-
-<p>An able reporter to the Boston Daily Post, who devoted a considerable time
-in May, 1869, to visiting and writing up the fortune-tellers of Boston,
-which he reported in full in the above paper, and from which I shall copy
-more fully hereafter, says in conclusion,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“From what we are able to learn in this direction, we have arrived at the
-conclusion that there are not <i>less than two hundred men and women</i> in
-Boston and vicinity who get a good livelihood by this profession, while
-many do a large and profitable business.</p>
-
-<p>“One lady, who has reduced her charges to the very lowest figure (fifty
-cents for an interview), candidly informed us that her receipts for the
-past year had not been less than twelve hundred dollars. Another reported
-her receipts from ten to fifty dollars a day.</p>
-
-<p>“Of course no reliable estimate, without better statistics, can be made of
-the magnitude of the business; but it seems not extravagant to estimate
-their receipts, on an average, at fifteen hundred dollars per annum! or an
-annual cost to the people of Boston (and vicinity?) for fortune-telling,
-of the snug little sum of three hundred thousand dollars!�</p>
-
-<p>The price advertised for a sitting in 1870 was from twenty-five cents to
-one dollar. The Post reporter says of “Mrs. Nellie Richards� (<i>alias</i> Mrs.
-Nelson), “Not unfrequently her receipts are fifty dollars per day.� Again
-of one, “She has received fifty dollars for one sitting.� The writer has
-visited the most celebrated fortune-tellers here, and been told by them
-that they have received five, ten, and twenty dollars for one sitting.
-What for? What was the value<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span> received? Not from <i>females</i> do they receive
-these liberal sums; but from middle-aged or old gentlemen and “married
-men,� as one assured me. It is quite possible for a few sharp
-fortune-tellers to make fifteen hundred dollars per year at merely telling
-fools what they may expect from the future. “Middle-aged, old, and married
-men� do not consult them, as a general rule, for that purpose.</p>
-
-<p>Here is a true history illustrative of my meaning. I gathered the facts
-from the lady.</p>
-
-<p>On Saturday, the 9th of December, 1871, a young woman, residing with her
-parents on &mdash;&mdash; Street, went to the afternoon performance at the Boston
-Museum. A young man made three unsuccessful attempts to “flirt� with her.
-The third time she slightly shook her head. Some one, seated immediately
-behind her, touched her on the shoulder, and said, “Right, young lady; you
-did right not to notice him.�</p>
-
-<p>“I turned my head,� said my informant, “and just made the least bit of
-acknowledgment to a fine-looking, elderly gentleman, who, perhaps, was
-rising fifty. He was an utter stranger to me, and I did not observe him
-afterwards. On the following week I received a note&mdash;a very pretty,
-delicate letter&mdash;from the very gentleman. He explained that he saw me at
-the performance of “Elfie,� and was much struck by my lady-like
-appearance, and the rest, begging the privilege of calling on me
-privately. Now, how could he have obtained my address?�</p>
-
-<p>“Did the other party, the young ‘flirt,’ know it?� I asked.</p>
-
-<p>“No&mdash;not probable. I was not so astonished in receiving a letter from a
-stranger, as I was on learning that the nice-looking old gent at the
-theatre should have sent it, and that he possessed my address.�</p>
-
-<p>“Why not surprised by receiving the letter from a stranger?� I asked.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span>“Because I visited a fortune-teller, a day or two before, who told me I
-should receive a letter from a middle-aged man, and that it would be to my
-interest to cultivate his friendship, as he was a nice old covey, and was
-rich and liberal.�</p>
-
-<p>“The secret is out! Did the fortune-teller know your address?�</p>
-
-<p>“O, yes; she was an old friend of my mother’s, <i>and asked me nothing for a
-sitting</i>. And would <i>she</i> possibly betray the daughter of her old friend?�</p>
-
-<p>I have since learned that the young woman was married at the time, which
-fact the fortune-teller must have known when she advised her to “cultivate
-the friendship� of an old <i>roué</i>, “as he was rich and liberal.�</p>
-
-<p>Rich and liberal! No doubt! The light was astounding which broke in upon
-the young lady’s mind from my intimating that the old viper, the
-fortune-teller (clairvoyant she calls herself), had betrayed her, and
-doubtless had received ocular demonstration of the “nice old gentleman’s�
-liberality. Doubtless there was a five, ten, or twenty dollar sitting! and
-the “friend of her mother� could well afford to give her sittings free!</p>
-
-<p>Reader, if you doubt that such villanies are daily practised in this city,
-such “betrayals of confidence,� and “selling of families,� put up “five or
-ten dollars for a sitting,� almost anywhere, and you can have proof. None
-of your fifty cents or dollar affairs&mdash;those are for the females; but
-“come down� with the V.’s and X.’s; those bring the “great information.�</p>
-
-<p>Let us “parable� a case.</p>
-
-<p>“A nice, middle-aged gentleman� calls on Madam Blank.</p>
-
-<p>“Here, now, my good woman, take this fee. Tell me a good future. Let her
-have dark hair and eyes. If it is satisfactory, I double the fee.�</p>
-
-<p>“Call again next week, or in three or four days,� is all the conversation
-necessary to pass for the first “sitting.�</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span>Before the expiration of the time, just such a young lady calls. The wily
-old fortune-teller&mdash;too old to sell herself any longer&mdash;sells out this,
-perhaps, unsuspecting lady with black hair and eyes, by mysteriously
-informing her of a certain nice gentleman whom she will meet at a
-designated place, at a specified hour, on a particular day! She is <i>very</i>
-courteous to the girl, asks her nothing for a sitting, has taken a liking
-to her, worms from her the secrets of her birth, poverty, weaknesses,
-etc., and, with many smiles and fair promises, bows her out.</p>
-
-<p>She next proceeds to inform the “nice gentleman� that the job is cooked,
-and the victim is unsuspecting, states where he is to meet her, the signal
-by which he is to know her; takes the “double fee,� and leaves the rest to
-the “nice middle-aged (and shrewd) gentleman� to manage for himself.</p>
-
-<p>How many young women in Boston can avouch for the truth of this statement?
-I doubt not there are very many.</p>
-
-<p><i>Cui Bono?</i> While I know and confess that there are a few ladies who
-<i>profess</i> to tell fortunes, find lost property, etc., and who do no
-greater deception, still, what positive advantage has ever been derived
-therefrom?</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Love Powders and Drops.&mdash;French Secret, etc.</span></p>
-
-<p>I have, by purchase and otherwise, obtained the secret of the compounds of
-the celebrated “Spanish,� <i>alias</i> “Turkish, Love Powders.� I had
-previously considered them very harmless preparations. They are quite the
-reverse. The powder and drops are <i>Spanish flies</i> and <i>blood-root</i>!
-Sometimes the former are mixed (pulverized) with fine sugar; but the
-Spanish flies (cantharides), either in powder or liquid, is a very
-dangerous irritant, a very small dose sometimes producing painful and
-dangerous strangury. It is far more certain to produce this distressing
-complaint than to cause any sexual excitement. There may be some harmless
-powders sold as “love powders,� but I have never seen any.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span> I have a
-quantity of the former. Any physician or chemist may see it, who is
-interested. A few drops of it will produce burning and excoriation of the
-mouth and stomach, and inflammation of the stomach, liver, and kidneys.
-And this dangerous stuff is sold by ignorant fortune-tellers to any
-equally ignorant, credulous creature who may send fifty cents therefor.</p>
-
-<p><i>The French Secret</i> is only for fools. Reader, <i>you</i> have no occasion for
-it. It would be of no positive earthly benefit, provided I could so
-construe language as to explain to you what it is, in this connection. Be
-assured that you cannot circumvent Nature, except at the expense of
-health. <i>Qui n’a sante n’a rien.</i></p>
-
-<p>Druggists’ clerks sometimes sell to boys <i>tincture cantharis</i> for evil
-purposes.</p>
-
-<p><i>Hasheesh</i> is another dangerous article, sometimes sold at random, and
-purchased for no good purpose. A few years since, a great excitement was
-produced by the young ladies of P&mdash;&mdash; Female Seminary obtaining and using
-a quantity of <i>hasheesh</i>. “One girl took five grains, another <i>ten</i>
-grains. The latter was rendered insensible, and with difficulty restored
-to consciousness, while the former was rushing around under the peculiar
-hallucinating effect of the drug, and in a manner bordering on indecency.�
-I obtained this statement, with more that I cannot publish, from a
-physician who witnessed the scene.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center">“<span class="smcap">Does he love me?</span>�</p>
-
-<p>Young girls and children are seduced into visiting fortune-tellers. A
-Boston fortune-teller, in 1871, took a summer tour through Eastern
-Massachusetts and New Hampshire. At Manchester, one evening, some one
-knocked lightly at her reception-room door, when, on her answering the
-summons, there stood three little girls, of ten or twelve summers.</p>
-
-<p>“Well,� said the lady, “what do you children want?�</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span>“We came to have our fortunes told,� replied the youngest, drawing her
-little form up to represent every half inch of her diminutive dimensions.
-With a smile of incredulity, the lady said, “It costs fifty cents.
-Besides, you are too small to have a fortune told.�</p>
-
-<p>“We’ve got the money,� replied the little speaker; “and we’re not too
-little. Why, I am ten, and Jenny, here, is twelve.�</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 450px; height: 376px;"><img src="images/img050.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">CHILDREN CONSULTING A FORTUNE-TELLER.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>“Well, come in,� replied the fortune-teller. There was a lady present, who
-also asked what those children came there for.</p>
-
-<p>The girls sat up in some chairs proffered. The younger one was so small
-that her little feet could not reach the floor, and sitting back in her
-chair, her little limbs stuck out straight, as such awkward little folks’
-will.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span>The woman told them something, to seem to cover the money paid. It was not
-satisfactory, however, and the ten-year-old one put the following
-questions:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“Do you think, ma’am, that the young man who is keeping company with me
-loves me?�</p>
-
-<p>This was a poser, and the woman laughed outright.</p>
-
-<p>“What did she reply?� I asked, shocked, though amused, by the
-ridiculousness of the whole affair.</p>
-
-<p>“O, Gad, if I know! I was too busy then to listen.�</p>
-
-<p>The next question was more strange than the first:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“Will the young gentleman marry me, eventually?�</p>
-
-<p>“Doubtless he will when you become older,� was the reply; “and I advise
-you to think no more about it till you are much older.�</p>
-
-<p>I obtained this item from the third party present, the husband of the
-fortune-teller.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img051.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
-<hr style="width: 50%;" />
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span></p>
-<h2><a name="X" id="X"></a>X.</h2>
-<p class="title">EMINENT PHYSICIANS AND SURGEONS.</p>
-
-<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table">
-<tr><td valign="top" align="right"><i>Lord Say.</i></td>
-    <td>Why, Heaven ne’er made the universe a level.<br />
-        Some trees are loftier than the rest, some mountains<br />
-        O’erpeak their fellows, and some planets shine<br />
-        With brighter ray above the skyey route<br />
-        Than others. Nay, even at our feet, the rose<br />
-        Outscents the lily; and the humblest flower<br />
-        Is noble still o’er meaner plants. And thus<br />
-        Some men are nobler than the mass, and should,<br />
-        By nature’s order, shine above their brethren.</td></tr>
-<tr><td valign="top" align="right"><i>Lord Clifford.</i></td>
-    <td>’Tis true the noble should; but who is noble?<br />Heaven, and not heraldry, makes noble men.</td></tr></table>
-
-<div class="note"><p class="hang"><small>THEIR ORIGIN, BOYHOOD, EARLY STRUGGLES, ETC.&mdash;DOCTORS ARE PUBLIC
-PROPERTY.&mdash;DR. MOTT, OF OYSTER BAY.&mdash;DR. PARKER.&mdash;A “PLOUGH-BOY.�&mdash;THE
-FARMER’S BOY AND THE OLD DOCTOR.&mdash;SCENE IN BELLEVUE HOSPITAL.&mdash;“LEAVES
-FROM THE LIFE OF AN UNFLEDGED ÆSCULAPIAN.�&mdash;FIRST
-PATIENT.&mdash;“NONPLUSSED!�&mdash;ALL RIGHT AT LAST.&mdash;PROFESSORS EBERLE AND
-DEWEES.&mdash;A HARD START.&mdash;“FOOTING IT.�&mdash;ABERNETHY’S BOYHOOD.&mdash;“OLD
-SQUEERS.�&mdash;SPARE THE BOY AND SPOIL THE ROD.&mdash;A DIGRESSION.&mdash;SKIRTING A
-BOG.&mdash;AN AGREEABLE TURN.&mdash;PROFESSOR HOLMES.&mdash;A HOMELESS STUDENT.</small></p></div>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p>It is amusing, as well as instructive, to compare notes on the various
-circumstances which have led different young men to adopt the science of
-medicine as their profession.</p>
-
-<p>The advantages of birth and “noble blood� weigh lightly, when thrown into
-the balance, against circumstances of after life, and its necessities, in
-ourselves or fellow-creatures. In searching through biographies of famous
-people, of all ages and countries (to collect a chapter on “Origin of
-Great<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span> Men�), I am peculiarly convinced of the correctness of this
-conclusion.</p>
-
-<p>The earlier histories and traits of character&mdash;no matter which way they
-point&mdash;of all great men are interesting to review; and yet it is a
-lamentable fact that the accounts of boyhood days, aspirations, hopes, and
-struggles, with the many little interesting items and episodes of the
-youth of most great men are very meagre, and, in many cases, entirely lost
-to the world.</p>
-
-<p>In the published biographies of physicians this is particularly the case.
-You read the biography of one, and it will suffice for the whole. It
-begins something like this:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“Dr. A. was born in Blanktown, about the year 18&mdash;; entered the office of
-Dr. Bolus, where he studied physic; attended college at Spoon Haven, where
-he graduated with honors; arrived at eminence in his profession;� and, if
-defunct, ends, “he died at Mortgrass, and sleeps with his fathers.
-<i>Requiescat in pace.</i>�</p>
-
-<p>In presenting to the public the following little sketches of physicians, I
-may only say that doctors, of all men, are considered public property, and
-have suffered more of the public’s kicks and cuffs than any other class of
-men, from the time when Hercules amused himself by setting up old Dr.
-Chiron, and shooting poisoned arrows at his vulnerable heel, to the little
-divertisement of the lovely St. Calvin and his consistory in cooking
-Michael Servetus, the Spanish physician; to the imprisonment of our army
-surgeons by their “brethren� of the South, that they might not be
-instrumental in restoring Union soldiers to the ranks; or the more recent
-imprisonment of a physician without cause, and the wholesale slaughter of
-students, in the Isle of Cuba.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center">“<span class="smcap">The Quaker Surgeon.</span>�</p>
-
-<p>Dr. Valentine Mott gave no intimation, in his boyhood days, of the great
-ability that for a time seemed to lie <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span>dormant within the after-developed,
-massive, and well-balanced brain of the celebrated surgeon. Except from
-the fact of his being the son of a country doctor, his schoolmates would
-as soon have expected to see him turn out a second-rate
-oyster-man,&mdash;suggested by the ominous name of the Bay, at Glen Cove, where
-Valentine was born,&mdash;as to believe that a boy of no more promise would
-develop into the greatest physician and surgeon of the age! He was reared
-amongst doctors,&mdash;his father, and Dr. Valentine Searnen, and others.</p>
-
-<p>A “plough-boy� is as likely to become an eminent surgeon as is the son of
-a practising physician. Dr. Willard Parker, one of the most prominent
-physicians and surgeons of New York city, was born in New Hampshire, in
-1802, of humble though most respectable parents. When Willard was but a
-few years old, his family removed to Middlesex County, Mass., evidently
-with a hope of bettering their circumstances. Here Mr. Parker entered more
-fully upon the practical duties of an agricultural life, instructing his
-son Willard, when not attending the village school, in the mysteries of
-“Haw, Buck, and gee up, Dobbin.�</p>
-
-<p>Until he was sixteen years old, young Parker was brought up a “plough-boy�
-and a tiller of the soil. From a “plough-boy� he became the “master� of a
-village school, “teaching the young idea how to shoot,� which honest
-pursuit he continued for several years, until he had accumulated
-sufficient means to enter Harvard. He was a hard-working student, and his
-books were not thrown aside when he had obtained a diploma, in 1830.... As
-a lecturer and operator, Dr. Parker has been most successful.... Since the
-death of Dr. Valentine Mott, in April, 1865, Professor Parker has been
-elected president of the New York Inebriate Asylum (Binghamton).</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span></p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">An Onondaga Farmer Boy.</span></p>
-
-<p>Imagine, dear reader, looking back over the space of nearly forty years,
-that you see an uncouth young man, twenty years of age, clad in the coarse
-clothes and cowhide boots of an Onondaga farmer, who, straightening up
-from his laborious task of potato hoeing, stops for a moment, leaning with
-one hand upon his hoe, while he wipes the sweat from his handsome,
-intelligent, though sun-burned brow with a cotton handkerchief in the
-other. Here is a picture for a painter! Now he seems studiously observing
-the old village doctor, who, seated in his crazy old gig, drawn by his
-ancient sorrel mare, is leisurely jogging by on the main turnpike.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 296px; height: 450px;"><img src="images/img052.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">THE ONONDAGA FARMER BOY.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>“Good evening, Stephen; p’taters doin’ well?� says the doctor.</p>
-
-<p>Receiving an affirmative answer, the doctor drives past, and is gone from
-the sight, but not from the memory, of the young farmer.</p>
-
-<p>“And <i>that</i> is a representative of the science of medicine!�</p>
-
-<p>So saying, the young man “hoed out his row,�&mdash;which was his last,&mdash;picked
-up his coat, and returned to the parental mansion, but a few rods distant.
-This was the turning-point in his life.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span>We pass over twenty years or more.</p>
-
-<p>It is operating-day at Bellevue Hospital, in New York city. A very serious
-and important operation is about to be performed. Three hundred students
-and physicians are seated in a semicircle under the great dome of the
-hospital, in profound silence and intense interest, while the professor
-and attending surgeon is delivering a brief but comprehensive lecture
-relative to the forthcoming operation.</p>
-
-<p>The speaker is a man of middle age, medium height, deep, expressive eyes,
-well-developed brow, with that excellent quality of muscle and nerve that
-is only the result of earlier out-door exercise and development, with calm
-deportment and modest speech. “His conciseness of expression and quiet
-self-possession are evident to every beholder, and comprehensive and
-congenial to every listener.�</p>
-
-<p>Who is this splendid man before whom students and physicians bow in such
-profound respect and veneration, and to whom even Professors Mott, Parker,
-Elliott, Clark, etc., give especial attention?</p>
-
-<p>It is Stephen Smith, M. D., once the Onondaga farmer boy!</p>
-
-<p>Says Dr. Francis, of New York, “When a youthful farmer is seen studying
-the works of learned authors during that portion of the day which is
-generally set aside for relaxation and pleasing pastime, one may easily
-predict for him ultimate success in the branch of life that he may choose,
-provided he follows out the higher instincts of his nature. The same zeal
-that caused Stephen Smith, farmer, to study at the risk of ease, and meet
-the fatigue of body with the energies of mind, has ever marked his course
-in after years.�</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Commencing Practice.</span></p>
-
-<p>From that excellent work, “Scenes in the Practice of a New York Surgeon,�
-by Dr. E. H. Dixon, I copy, with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span> some abbreviation, the following, which
-the author terms “Leaves from the Log-book of an Unfledged Æsculapian:�&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“In the year 1830 I was sent forth, like our long-suffering and
-much-abused prototype,&mdash;old father Noah’s crow,&mdash;from the ark of safety,
-the old St. Duane Street College. I pitched my tent, and set up my trap,
-in what was then a fashionable up-town street.</p>
-
-<p>“I hired a modest house, and had my arm-chair, my midnight couch, and my
-few books in my melancholy little office, and I confess that I now and
-then left an amputating-knife, or some other awful-looking instrument, on
-the table, to impress the poor women who came to me for advice.</p>
-
-<p>“These little matters, although the ‘Academy’ would frown upon them, I
-considered quite pardonable. God knows I would willingly have adopted
-their most approved method of a splendid residence, and silver-mounted
-harnesses for my bays; but they were yet in dream-land, eating moonbeams,
-and my vicious little nag had nearly all this time to eat his oats and
-nurse his bad temper in his comfortable stable.</p>
-
-<p>“In this miserable way I read over my old books, watered my
-rose-bushes,&mdash;sometimes with tears,&mdash;drank my tea and ate my toast, and
-occasionally listened to the complaint of an unfortunate Irish damsel,
-with her customary account of ‘a pain in me side an’ a flutterin’ about me
-heart.’ At rare intervals I ministered to some of her countrywomen in
-their fulfilment of the great command when placed in the Garden of Eden.
-(What a dirty place it would have been if inhabited by Irish women!)</p>
-
-<p>“And thus I spent nearly a year without a single call to any person of
-character. I think I should have left in despair if it had not been for a
-lovely creature up the street. She was the wife of a distinguished fish
-merchant down town.</p>
-
-<p>“This lovely woman was Mrs. Mackerel. I will explain<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span> how it was that I
-was summoned to her ladyship’s mansion, and had the pleasure of seeing Mr.
-Mackerel, of the firm of ‘Mackerel, Haddock &amp; Dun.’</p>
-
-<p>“One bitter cold night in January, just as I was about to retire, a
-furious ring at the front door made me feel particularly amiable! A
-servant announced the sudden and alarming illness of Mrs. Mackerel, with
-the assurance that as the family physician was out of town, Mrs. M. would
-be obliged if I would immediately visit her. Accordingly, I soon found
-myself in the presence of the accomplished lady, having&mdash;I confess
-it&mdash;given my hair an extra touch as I entered the beautiful chamber.</p>
-
-<p>“Mrs. Mackerel was not a bad-tempered lady; she was only a beautiful
-fool&mdash;nothing less, dear reader, or she would have never married old
-Mackerel. Her charms would have procured her a husband of at least a
-tolerable exterior. His physiognomy presented a remarkable resemblance to
-his namesake. Besides, he chewed and smoked, and the combination of the
-aroma of his favorite luxuries with the articles of his merchandise must
-have been most uncongenial to the curve of such lips and such nostrils as
-Mrs. Mackerel’s.</p>
-
-<p>“I was received by Mr. Mackerel in a manner that increased observation has
-since taught me is sufficiently indicative of the hysterical <i>finale</i> of a
-domestic dialogue. He was not so obtuse as to let me directly into the
-true cause of his wife’s nervous attack and his own collectedness, and yet
-he felt it would not answer to make too light of it before me.</p>
-
-<p>“Mr. and Mrs. M. had just returned from a party. (The party must be the
-‘scape-goat’!) He assured me that as the lady was in the full enjoyment of
-health previously, he felt obliged to attribute the cause of her attack
-and speechless condition&mdash;for she spoke not one word, or gave a sign&mdash;to
-the dancing, heated room, and the supper.</p>
-
-<p>“I was fully prepared to realize the powers of ice-cream,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span> cake, oranges,
-chicken-salad, oysters, sugar-plums, punch, and champagne, and at one
-moment almost concluded to despatch a servant for an emetic of ipecac;
-but&mdash;I prudently avoided it. Aside from the improbability of excess of
-appetite through the portal of such a mouth, the lovely color of the
-cheeks and lips utterly forbade a conclusion favorable to Mr. Mackerel’s
-solution of the cause.</p>
-
-<p>“I placed my finger on her delicate and jewelled wrist. All seemed calm as
-the thought of an angel’s breast!</p>
-
-<p>“I was nonplussed. ‘Could any tumultuous passion ever have agitated that
-bosom so gently swelling in repose?’</p>
-
-<p>“Mackerel’s curious questions touching my sagacity as to his wife’s
-condition received about as satisfactory a solution as do most questions
-put to me on the cause and treatment of diseases; and having tolerably
-befogged him with opinions, and lulled his suspicions to rest, by the
-apparent innocent answers to his leading questions, he arrived at the
-conclusion most desirable to him, viz., that I was a fool&mdash;a conviction
-quite necessary in some nervous cases....</p>
-
-<p>“So pleased was Mr. M. with the soothing influences of my brief visit that
-he very courteously waited on me to the outside door, instead of ordering
-a servant to show me out, and astonished me by desiring me to call on the
-patient again in the morning.</p>
-
-<p>“After my usual diversion of investigating ‘a pain an’ a flutterin’ about
-me heart,’ and an ‘O, I’m kilt intirely,’ I visited Mrs. Mackerel, and had
-the extreme pleasure of finding her quite composed, and in conversation
-with her fashionable friend, Mrs. Tiptape. The latter was the daughter of
-a ‘retired milliner,’ and had formed a desirable union with Tiptape, the
-eminent dry goods merchant. Fortunately&mdash;for she was a woman of
-influence&mdash;I passed the critical examination of Mrs. T. unscathed by her
-sharp black eyes, and, as the sequel will show, was considered by her
-‘quite an agreeable person.’</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span>“Poor Mrs. Mackerel, notwithstanding her efforts to conceal it, had
-evidently received some cruel and stunning communication from her husband
-on the night of my summons; her agitated circulation during the fortnight
-of my attendance showed to my conviction some persistent and secret cause
-for her nervousness.</p>
-
-<p>“One evening she assured me that she felt she should now rapidly recover,
-as Mr. Mackerel had concluded to take her to Saratoga. I, of course,
-acquiesced in the decision, though my previous opinion had not been asked.
-I took a final leave of the lovely woman, and the poor child soon departed
-for Saratoga.</p>
-
-<p>“The ensuing week there was a sheriff’s sale at Mackerel’s residence. The
-day following the Mackerels’ departure, Mr. Tiptape did me the honor to
-inquire after the health of my family; and a week later, Master Tiptape
-having fallen and bumped his dear nose on the floor, I had the felicity of
-soothing the anguish of his mamma in her magnificent <i>boudoir</i>, and
-holding to her lovely nose the smelling salts, and offering such
-consolation as her trying position required!�</p>
-
-<p>Thus was commenced the practice of one of the first physicians of New
-York. The facts are avouched for. The names, of course, are manufactured,
-to cover the occupation of the parties. The doctor still lives, in the
-enjoyment of a lucrative and respectable practice, and the love and
-confidence of his numerous friends and patrons.</p>
-
-<p>Quite as ludicrous scenes could be revealed by most physicians, if they
-would but take the time to think over their earlier efforts, and the
-various circumstances which were mainly instrumental in getting them into
-a respectable practice.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">How Professor Eberle started.</span></p>
-
-<p>The young man who has just squeezed through a medical college, and come
-out with his “sheepskin,� who thinks all<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span> he then has to do is to put up
-his sign, and forthwith he will have a crowd of respectable patients, is
-to be pitied for his verdancy. The great Professor John Eberle “blessed
-his stars� when, after graduating as “Doctor of Medicine� in the
-University of Pennsylvania, and making several unsuccessful attempts at
-practice in Lancaster County, he received the appointment as physician of
-the “out-door poor� of Philadelphia. After that, his writings, attracting
-public attention, were mostly contributive to his success and advancement.</p>
-
-<p>Energy and determination are better property than even scholastic lore and
-a medical diploma, for unless you possess the former, talent and education
-fall to the earth.</p>
-
-<p>Dr. William P. Dewees, formerly Professor of Obstetrics in the University
-of Pennsylvania, the celebrated author, physician, and surgeon, practised
-seventeen years before he obtained a diploma. He was of Swedish descent on
-his father’s side, and Irish on his mother’s. His father died in very
-limited circumstances, when William was a boy; hence he received no
-collegiate education until such time as he could earn means, by his own
-efforts, to pay for that coveted desideratum. We find him, with an
-ordinary school education, serving as an apothecary’s clerk, a student of
-medicine, and at the early age of twenty-one years trying to practise
-medicine in a country town fourteen miles from Philadelphia. Young Dewees
-possessed great talent and energy, but his personal appearance was
-scarcely such, at that early age, as to inspire the stoical country folks
-with the requisite confidence to speedily intrust him with their precious
-lives and more cherished coppers!</p>
-
-<p>“He was scarcely of medium stature, florid complexion, brown hair, and was
-remarkably youthful in his appearance,� says Professor Hodge, M. D.</p>
-
-<p>I have before me an excellent likeness “of the embryo professor,� which
-admirably corresponds with the description<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span> given above; but though
-“youthful,� yea, bordering on “greenness,� I can read in that frank,
-intelligent countenance the lines of deep thought, and a soul burning with
-desire for greater knowledge. The too florid countenance and narrow
-nostrils are sure indications of a consumptive predisposition. Dr. Dewees
-died May 30, 1841. He was well read in French and Latin, and also various
-sciences.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">A hard Starting.</span></p>
-
-<p><i>Sketch of Western Practice.</i>&mdash;The following interesting sketch is from
-the able pen of Dr. Richmond, of Ohio, now a wealthy and eminent M. D. It
-was originally contributed, if I mistake not, to the “Scalpel.�</p>
-
-<p>“I set myself down with my household goods in a land of strangers. How I
-was to procure bread, or what I was to do, were shrouded in the mysterious
-future. Memory came to my consolation; for, in spite of myself, the ‘Diary
-of a London Physician,’ read in other days, came, with its racy pictures,
-flitting before my mind’s eye; and I knew not but I, too, might yet wish
-myself, my Mary, and my child sleeping in the cold grave, to hide me from
-the persecution that seemed to follow me with such sleepless vigilance....</p>
-
-<p>“My store of old watches now came into play. A gentleman wishing to sell
-out his land, I invested all the wealth I possessed in the purchase of a
-ten-acre lot, shouldered my axe, and by the aid of a brother I soon
-prepared logs for the mill sufficient to erect me a small dwelling. I
-never was happier than when preparing the ground and splitting the blocks
-of sandstone for the foundation of my house. One customer, whose wife I
-had carried through a lingering fever, furnished me a frame for a
-dwelling, and I fell in his debt for a pair of boots. Another furnished
-nails and glass, and in the course of eight months I moved into my new
-house.</p>
-
-<p>“For two years I fed my cow, and raised my own provender to feed my
-gallant nag, which shared my toil and its<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span> profits. My first two years’
-labor barely returned sufficient profit to pay for my home and feed my
-little family.</p>
-
-<p>“My nag had died, and the terrible drought of 1846 forced me to relinquish
-the horse I had hired, and for five months I performed all my visits on
-foot, often travelling from six to ten miles to see one patient....</p>
-
-<p>“These were trying times; but what if the elements were unpropitious? I
-had food and shelter for myself and family,&mdash;blessings about which I had
-often been in doubt,&mdash;and I was fully prepared to let ‘the heathen rage,
-and the people imagine’ what they chose!... The first winter was one of
-great severity; the weather was very changeable, and the most awful
-snow-storms were often succeeded by heavy rains, and the roads so horrid
-as to be impassable on horseback or in carriages. I had a patient five
-miles distant, sick with lung fever, and, in an attendance of forty days I
-made thirty journeys on foot (three hundred miles to attend one patient!)
-His recovery added much to my reputation, and I received for my services a
-new cloak and coat, which I much needed, and a hive of honey bees!...</p>
-
-<p>“An old horse which I again hired of a friend had a polite way of limping,
-and was a source of much merriment among my patrons. I persistently
-attributed what they deemed a fault entirely to the politeness of the
-quadruped; and this nag, with my plain and rustic appearance, endeared me
-to the laboring population, and thus my calamities became my greatest
-friends. My fortune changed, and the experience and name I had acquired
-now came in as capital in trade, and a flood of ‘luck’ soon followed.�</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Abernethy’s Boyhood</span>.</p>
-
-<p>Seated upon the outside of an ancient London stage-coach, to which were
-attached four raw-boned, old horses, just ready to start for Wolverhaven
-one pleasant afternoon, you may easily imagine, kind reader,&mdash;for it is a
-fact,&mdash;a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span> chubby-faced, commonplace little boy, some ten years old, with
-another like youthful companion,&mdash;“two Londoners,�&mdash;while comfortably
-ensconced within, in one corner of the vehicle, is a large, stern-looking
-old gentleman, in “immense wig and ruffled shirt.�</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img053.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">THE POLITE QUADRUPED.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>The stage-horn is sounded, the driver cracks his whip, the sleepy old nags
-wake up, the coach rocks from side to side, and in a moment more the team
-is off for its destination.</p>
-
-<p>Why! the reader is readily reminded of the scene of “<i>Old Squeers</i>,�
-taking the wretched little boys down to his “Academy,� in Yorkshire,
-“where youth were boarded, clothed, furnished with pocket-money,� and
-taught everything, from “writing to trigonometry,� “arithmetic to
-astronomy,�<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span> languages of the “<i>living</i> and <i>dead</i>� and “diet
-unparalleled!� Nevertheless it is another case, far before “Old Squeers�
-time.</p>
-
-<p>The elderly gentleman, in top-wig and immense ruffles, was Dr. Robertson,
-teacher of Wolverhampton Grammar School, and the chubby little boy was
-Master John Abernethy. Who the “other boy� was is not known, as he never
-made his mark in after life. Says Dr. Macilwain,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“We can quite imagine a little boy, careless in his dress, not slovenly,
-however, with both hands in his trousers pockets, some morning about the
-year 1774, standing under the sunny side of the wall at Wolverhampton
-School; his pockets containing, perhaps, a few shillings, some ha’pence, a
-knife with the point broken, a pencil, together with a tolerably accurate
-sketch of ‘Old Robertson’s wig,’&mdash;which article, shown in an accredited
-portrait now before us, was one of those enormous by-gone bushes, which
-represented a sort of impenetrable fence around the cranium, as if to
-guard the precious material within; the said boy just finishing a story to
-his laughing companions, though no sign of mirth appeared in him, save the
-least curl of the lip, and a smile that would creep out of the corner of
-his eye in spite of himself.�</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 286px; height: 450px;"><img src="images/img054.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">YOUNG ABERNETHY.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>“The doctor� was represented as being a passionate man.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span> Squeers again!
-One day young Abernethy had to do some Greek Testament, when his glib
-translation aroused the suspicion of the watchful old doctor, who
-discovered the ‘crib’ in a Greek-Latin version, partially secreted under
-the boy’s desk. No sooner did the doctor make this discovery than with his
-doubled fist he felled the culprit with one blow to the earth. Squeers
-again!</p>
-
-<p>“‘Why, what an old plagiarist Mr. Dickens must have been!’ you exclaim.</p>
-
-<p>“But the case in ‘Nicholas Nickleby’ is worse, far worse, for ‘the little
-boy sitting on the trunk only sneezed.’</p>
-
-<p>“‘Hallo, sir,’ growled the schoolmaster (Squeers), ‘what’s that?’</p>
-
-<p>“‘Nothing, sir,’ replied the little boy.</p>
-
-<p>“‘Nothing, sir!’ exclaimed Squeers.</p>
-
-<p>“‘Please, sir, I sneezed!’ rejoined the boy, trembling till the little
-trunk shook under him.</p>
-
-<p>“‘O, sneezed, did you?’ retorted Mr. Squeers. ‘Then what did you say
-“Nothing� for, sir?’</p>
-
-<p>“In default of a better answer to this question, the little boy screwed a
-couple of knuckles into his eyes, and began to cry; wherefore Mr. Squeers
-knocked him off the trunk with a blow on one side of the head, and knocked
-him on again with a blow on the other.�</p>
-
-<p>Robertson was a fact; Squeers was a fable. That’s the difference.</p>
-
-<p>As Dr. Robertson taught neither arithmetic nor writing in his school, the
-pupils went to King Street, to a Miss Ready, to receive instruction in
-those branches. This lady, if report is true, wielded the quill and
-cowhide with equal grace and mercy, and when the case came to hand, did
-not accept the modern advice, to “spare the boy and spoil the rod.�</p>
-
-<p>When the great surgeon was at the height of his fame, in London, many
-years afterwards, Miss Ready, still rejoicing<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span> in “single blessedness,�
-called on her former pupil. In introducing his respected and venerable
-teacher to his wife, Abernethy laconically remarked, “I beg to introduce
-you to a lady who has boxed my ears many a time.�</p>
-
-<p>An old schoolmate, when eighty-five years old, wrote to the author of
-“Memoirs of Abernethy,� saying, among other things, “In sports he took the
-first place, and usually made a strong side; was quick and active, and
-soon learned a new game.�</p>
-
-<p>It was contrary to his own desire that John Abernethy became a physician.
-“Had my father let me be a lawyer, I should have known by heart every act
-of Parliament,� he repeatedly affirmed.</p>
-
-<p>This was not bragging, as the following anecdote will illustrate:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>On a birthday anniversary of Mrs. Abernethy, mother of John, a gentleman
-recited a long copy of verses, which he had composed for the occasion.</p>
-
-<p>“Ah,� said young Abernethy, “that is a good joke, pretending you have
-written these verses in honor of my mother. Why, sir, I know those lines
-well, and can say them by heart.�</p>
-
-<p>“It is quite impossible, as no one has seen the copy but myself,� rejoined
-the gentleman, the least annoyed by the accusation of plagiarism.</p>
-
-<p>Upon this Abernethy arose, and repeated them throughout, correctly, to the
-no small discomfiture of the author. Abernethy had remembered them by
-hearing the gentleman recite them but once!</p>
-
-<p>“A boy thwarted in his choice of a profession is generally somewhat
-indifferent as to the course next presented to him.� Residing next door
-neighbor to Abernethy’s father was Dr. Charles Blicke, a surgeon in
-extensive practice. This was very convenient. Sir Charles is represented
-as having been quick-sighted enough to discover that “the Abernethy boy�<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span>
-was clever, a good scholar, and withal a “sharp fellow.� Thus, between the
-indifference of the parent, and the selfishness of the surgeon, the
-would-be lawyer, John Abernethy, was apprenticed to the “barber-surgeon�
-for five years. He was then but fifteen years of age.</p>
-
-<p>“All that young Abernethy probably knew of Sir Charles was, that he rode
-about in a fine carriage, saw a great many people, and took a great many
-fees; all of which, though presenting no further attractions for
-Abernethy, made a <i>prima facie</i> case not altogether repulsive.�</p>
-
-<p>We must not forget to mention that young Abernethy was of a very inquiring
-mind. “When I was a boy,� he said in after years, “I half ruined myself in
-buying oranges and sweetmeats, in order to ascertain the effects of
-different kinds of diet on diseases.�</p>
-
-<p>Whether he tried said “oranges and other things� on himself or some
-unfortunate victim, my informant saith not; but I leave the reader to
-decide by his own earlier appetites and experiences. “When I was a boy,� I
-think is significant of the probabilities that it was his own digestive
-organs that were “half ruined.�</p>
-
-<p>Be it as it may, it reminds me of the case of a little country boy, who,
-on his first advent to the city on a holiday, was chaperoned by his
-somewhat older and sharper city cousin,&mdash;“one of the b’hoy’s,�&mdash;who
-exercised a sort of vigilance over the uninitiated rustic, that the little
-fellow might not surfeit himself by too great a rapacity for peanuts,
-gingerbread, candies, and oranges, often generously sharing the danger by
-partaking largely of the small boy’s purchases in order to spare his more
-delicate stomach.</p>
-
-<p>Finding the ignorant little rustic about to devour a nice-looking orange,
-his cousin pounced upon him just in time to prevent the rash act.</p>
-
-<p>“Here, Sammy; don’t you know that is one of the nastiest and most
-indigestiblest things you could put into your stomach? Give it here!�</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span>Rustic, whose faith in the wisdom of his maturer cousin, though very
-great, was yet quite counterbalanced by the sweets in the orange, slightly
-held back, when the other continued,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“Leastwise, Sammy, let’s have a hold of it, and suck the abominable juice
-out for you.�</p>
-
-<p>(For this digression I beg the pardon of the reader; for the idea I thank
-Frank Leslie.)</p>
-
-<p>George Macilwain, M. D., F. R. C. S., etc., in prefacing the life of the
-great London surgeon, gives a brief and interesting sketch of his own
-boyhood, also his early impressions of Abernethy, and his first attendance
-on his lectures.</p>
-
-<p>“My father practised on the border of a forest, and when he was called at
-night to visit a distant patient, it was the greatest treat to me, when a
-little boy, to be allowed to saddle my pony and accompany him. I used to
-wonder what he could find so ‘disagreeable’ in that which was to me the
-greatest possible pleasure; for whether we were skirting a bog on the
-darkest night, or cantering over the heather by moonlight, I certainly
-thought there could be nobody happier than I and my pony. It was on one of
-these occasions that I first heard the name of ‘Abernethy.’ The next
-distinct impression I have of him was derived from hearing father say that
-a lady patient of his had gone up to London to have an operation performed
-by Dr. Abernethy, though my father did not think the operation necessary
-to a cure, and that Abernethy entirely agreed with him; that the operation
-was not performed; that he sent the lady back, and she was recovering.
-This gave me a notion that Dr. Abernethy must be a good man, as well as a
-great physician.</p>
-
-<p>“As long as surgery meant riding across the forest with my father, holding
-his horse, or, if he stopped in too long, seeing if his horse rode as well
-as my pony, I thought it a very agreeable occupation; but when I found
-that it included many other things not so agreeable, I soon discovered
-that there was a profession I liked much better....</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span>“Disappointed in being allowed to follow the pursuit I had chosen, I
-looked on the one I was about to adopt with something approximating to
-repulsion; and thus one afternoon, about the year 1816, and somewhat to my
-own surprise, I found myself walking down Holborn Hill on my way to Dr.
-Abernethy’s lecture at St. Bartholomew’s.</p>
-
-<p>“When Dr. Abernethy entered, I was pleased with the expression of his
-countenance. I almost fancied he sympathized with the melancholy with
-which I felt oppressed. At first I listened with some attention; as he
-proceeded, I began even to feel pleasure; as he progressed, I found myself
-entertained; and before he concluded, I was delighted. What an agreeable,
-happy man he seems! What a fine profession! What wouldn’t I give to know
-as much as he does! Well, I will see what I can do. In short, I was
-converted.�</p>
-
-<p>All who ever heard him lecture agree that Dr. Abernethy had a most happy
-way of addressing students. Notwithstanding he has often been represented
-as rough in his every-day intercourse with men, he was easy, mild, and
-agreeable in the lecture-hall, and kind and compassionate in the
-operating-room.</p>
-
-<p>After having carefully studied all that has been written respecting his
-style and manner as a lecturer and delineator, and also studiously
-listened to and watched the ways and peculiarities of our most excellent
-lecturer on anatomy at Harvard, I find many striking resemblances between
-Dr. Abernethy and Professor Oliver Wendell Holmes.</p>
-
-<p>“The position of Abernethy was always easy and natural, sometimes almost
-homely. In the anatomical lecture he always stood, and either leaned
-against the wall, with his arms folded before him, or rested one hand on
-the table; sometimes one hand in his pocket. In his surgical lecture he
-usually sat. He was particularly happy in a kind of cosiness, or
-friendliness of manner, which seemed to identify him with his audience, as
-if we were about to investigate<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span> something interesting together, and not
-as though we were going to be ‘lectured at,’ at all. His voice seldom rose
-above what we term the conversational, and was always pleasing in quality,
-and enlivened by a sort of archness of expression.�</p>
-
-<p>He always kept his eye on the audience, except slightly turning to one
-side to explain a diagram or subject, “turning his back on no man.�</p>
-
-<p>“He had no offensive habits. We have known lecturers who never began
-without making faces;� we might add, “and with many a hem and haw, or
-nose-blowing.�</p>
-
-<p>“Not long ago we heard a very sensible lecturer, and a very estimable man,
-produce a most ludicrous effect by the above. He had been stating very
-clearly some important facts, and he then observed,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“‘The great importance of these I will now proceed to show&mdash;’ when he
-immediately began to apply his pocket-handkerchief most vigorously to his
-nose, still facing his audience.�</p>
-
-<p>The ludicrousness of this “illustration� may well be imagined. Of course
-the students lost their gravity, and laughed and cheered vigorously.</p>
-
-<p>Going in to hear Dr. Holmes lecture, at one o’clock one afternoon,
-recently, the writer was both shocked and astonished, on the occasion of
-the professor slipping in a pleasing innuendo, by hearing the students
-cheer with their hands, and stamp with their thick boots on the seats.</p>
-
-<p>I shall have occasion to refer to this splendid man, the pleasing
-lecturer, the skilful operator, the able author, the ripe scholar, the
-pride of Harvard and the state,&mdash;Dr. O. W. Holmes,&mdash;in another chapter.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span></p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">The homeless Student.</span></p>
-
-<p class="center">(Scene from the <span class="smcap">Early Life of a Boston Physician</span>. By permission.)</p>
-
-<p>Standing on the steps of the Astor House, New York, one cheerless forenoon
-in early June, with my carpet-bag in one hand and my fresh medical diploma
-in the other, with a heavy weight of sorrow at my heart, and only sixteen
-cents in my pocket, I presented, to myself at least, a picture of such
-utter despair as words are inadequate to express.<a name='fna_4' id='fna_4' href='#f_4'><small>[4]</small></a></p>
-
-<p>My home&mdash;no; I had none&mdash;the home, rather, of my kind old father-in-law,
-where dwelt, for the time being, my wife and child, was many hundred miles
-away. And how was I to reach it? I could not walk that distance, and
-sixteen cents would not carry me there. I looked up Broadway, and I looked
-down towards the Battery. I was alone amid an immense sea of humans, which
-ebbed and flowed continually past me. O, how wistfully I looked to see if
-there might be one face amongst the throng which I might recognize! but
-there was none. Strange, passing strange, not one of that host did I ever
-gaze upon before! Where&mdash;how&mdash;should I raise the money necessary to take
-me from this land of strangers?</p>
-
-<p>“Pinny, sir? Just one pinny. Me father is broken up, and me mither is sick
-at home. For God’s sake give me jist one pinny to buy me some bread.�</p>
-
-<p>I turned my gaze upon the picture of squalor and wretchedness just by my
-side. I need not describe her; she was just like a thousand others in that
-great Babel.</p>
-
-<p>“Here is doubtless a case of distress, but it is not of the heart, like
-mine. Such poor have no heart. Skin, muscle, head, stomach! heart, none!�</p>
-
-<p>“Where is your father, did you say?� I asked, mechanically.</p>
-
-<p>“In the Slarter-house; broken up from a fall from a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span> stagin’ in
-Twenty-sixth Street, sir,� replied the beggar-girl, still extending her
-hand for a penny.</p>
-
-<p>“What is he doing in a slaughter-house, sis?� I inquired.</p>
-
-<p>“The Slarter-house is Bellyvew horse-pittle, sir; that’s what we Irish
-call it, sir. Will ye give me the pinny, sir?�</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 450px; height: 366px;"><img src="images/img055.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">“PINNY, SIR? JUST ONE PINNY.�</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>“O, yes, to be sure. Here are pennies for you. Go!�</p>
-
-<p>I knew of a poor Irishman who was brought in there at the hospital a few
-days before badly “broken up� from a fall on Twenty-sixth Street. His name
-was John Murphy; they are all named Murphy, or something similar; so it
-was useless to ask the child her father’s name&mdash;probably it would have
-been Murphy.</p>
-
-<p>The conversation had the good effect of arousing me from my lethargy to
-action. I must not stay in this metropolis<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span> and starve. I could not remain
-and beg, like the Irish girl.</p>
-
-<p>I went to Professor &mdash;&mdash;, the dean, and requested him to take back my
-diploma, and let me have sufficient money to carry me home. He
-complied&mdash;God bless him!&mdash;and I took the Sound steamer that afternoon for
-the land of my nativity. What cared I if I was a second-class passenger; I
-would in two days see my wife and my child!</p>
-
-<p class="center"><strong><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span></strong></p>
-
-<p>I had reached home, and was in the bosom of my family once more, and
-amongst my friends, in a Christian land; for which I “thanked God, and
-took courage.�</p>
-
-<p class="poem">“Then pledged me the wine-cup, and fondly I swore<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Ne’er from my home and my weeping friends to part;</span><br />
-My children kissed me a thousand times o’er;<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">My wife sobbed aloud in her fullness of heart.�</span></p>
-
-<p>I had a “call� to practise in a country town twenty-five miles from E&mdash;&mdash;,
-where my family was to remain a few days till I had secured a house to
-cover their heads amongst the good friends who were to become my future
-patrons, as a few of them had been previous to my going to college. The
-stage, a one-horse affair, called for my trunk, medicine-case, etc., and,
-having no money with which to pay my fare, I told the driver that “I would
-walk along,� while he picked up another passenger in an opposite
-direction, “and if he overtook me on the road before I got a ride with
-some one going to S&mdash;&mdash;, he could take me in.�</p>
-
-<p>I walked bravely along a mile or more, and, hearing the stage coming, I
-stepped from the road-side, secreting myself beneath a friendly tree till
-he drove past. Issuing from my hiding-place, I trudged along till noon. My
-darling little wife had taken the precaution to place in my oversack
-pocket some doughnuts and cheese, and, when I had reached a clear, running
-brook, I sat myself down upon a log, under the shade<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span> of the woods, and
-partook of my very frugal meal, quenching my thirst from the waters of the
-brook, which, like Diogenes, I raised in the hollow of my hand.</p>
-
-<p>Thus refreshed, I picked up my overcoat, and again walked along. Before
-dark I reached S&mdash;&mdash;, pretty tired and foot-sore from such a long walk.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 450px; height: 300px;"><img src="images/img056.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">THE PENNILESS PHYSICIAN.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>The people, who were expecting me, were much surprised at my non-arrival
-in the mail; but the unsophisticated driver assured them I had probably
-secured a ride ahead of him, and I would put in an appearance before
-nightfall.</p>
-
-<p>About midnight the door-bell rang,&mdash;I stopped at the hotel that
-night,&mdash;and a young gentleman asked for Dr. C. I answered the call at
-once, which was to the daughter of one of the most influential citizens of
-the place. The young man who called me was her intended. They had been to
-a party, and she had partaken freely of oysters, milk, and pickles.</p>
-
-
-<p>Never did fifteen grains of ipecac prove a greater friend to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span> me than it
-did on that occasion; and in an hour I was back to bed again.</p>
-
-<p>The news of the new doctor’s arrival, fresh from a New York college, and
-his first “remarkable cure of the post-master’s daughter� that same night,
-spread like wildfire, and my reputation was nearly established.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img057.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
-<hr style="width: 50%;" />
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span></p>
-<h2><a name="XI" id="XI"></a>XI.</h2>
-<p class="title">GHOSTS AND WITCHES.</p>
-
-<p class="center">“Save and defend us from our <i>ghostly</i> enemies.�&mdash;<span class="smcap">Common Prayer.</span></p>
-
-<div class="note"><p class="hang"><small>FOLLY OF BELIEF IN GHOSTS.&mdash;WHY GHOSTS ARE ALWAYS WHITE.&mdash;A TRUE
-STORY.&mdash;THE GHOST OF THE CAMP.&mdash;A GHOSTLY SENTRY-BOX.&mdash;A MYSTERY.&mdash;THE
-NAGLES FAMILY.&mdash;RAISING THE DEAD.&mdash;A LIVELY STAMPEDE.&mdash;HOLY
-WATER.&mdash;CÆSAR’S GHOST AT PHILIPPI.&mdash;LORD BYRON AND DR. JOHNSON.&mdash;GHOST
-OF A GUILTY CONSCIENCE.&mdash;“JOCKEYING A GHOST.�&mdash;THE WOUNDED BIRD.&mdash;A
-BISHOP SEES A GHOST.&mdash;MUSICAL GHOSTS.&mdash;A HAUNTED HOUSE.&mdash;ABOUT
-WITCHES.&mdash;“WITCHES IN THE CREAM.�&mdash;HORSE-SHOES.&mdash;WOMAN OF ENDOR NOT A
-WITCH.&mdash;WEIGHING FLESH AGAINST THE BIBLE.&mdash;THERE ARE NO GHOSTS, OR WITCHES.</small></p></div>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p>Is it not quite time&mdash;I appeal to the sensible reader&mdash;that such folly was
-expunged from our literature? What is a ghost? Who ever saw, heard, felt,
-tasted, or smelled one? Must a person possess some miraculous quality of
-perception beyond the five senses commonly allotted to man in order to
-become cognizant of a ghostly presence?</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img058.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">BELIEVERS IN GHOSTS.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>What stupid folly is ghost belief! Yet there are very many individuals in
-this enlightened day and generation, who, from perverted spirituality, or
-great credulousness, will accept a ghost story, or a “spiritual
-revelation,� without wincing.</p>
-
-<p>It would seem that many great men of the past, as Calvin,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span> Bacon, Milton,
-Dante, Lords Byron and Nelson, Sir Walter Scott, Wordsworth, and others,
-believed in the existence of ghosts and spirits on this mundane sphere.</p>
-
-<p>There are but two classes who believe in ghosts, viz., the ignorant as one
-class, and persons with large or perverted spirituality&mdash;phrenologically
-speaking&mdash;as the other. These are the believers in dreams, in ghosts, in
-spirits, and fortune-telling. These, too, are the religious (?) fanatics,
-etc.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">The Origin of the word Ghost</span></p>
-
-<p>is curious.</p>
-
-<p>“The first significance of the word, as well as ‘spirit,’ is breath, or
-wind.� It is of Anglo-Saxon origin, and is from <i>gust</i>, the wind. Hence, a
-<i>gust</i> of <i>wind</i>. The Irish word <i>goath</i>, wind, comes nearer to the modern
-English pronunciation, and shows how easily it could have been corrupted
-to <i>ghost</i>.</p>
-
-<p>It is easy to imagine the good old Saxon ladies, sitting around the
-evening fireside, and just as one of them has finished some marvellous
-story of that superstitious age, they are startled by a sudden blast of
-wind, sweeping around the gabled cottage, and her listeners exclaim, in
-suppressed breath,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“Hark! There’s a fearful gust!�</p>
-
-<p>The transit from <i>gust</i> to <i>ghost</i> is easily done. The clothes spread upon
-the bushes without, or pinned to the lines, flapping in the night air, are
-seen through the shutterless windows, and they become the object of
-attraction. The <i>effect</i> supersedes the <i>cause</i>, and the clothes become
-the gust, goath, or ghost! The clothes, necessarily, must be white, or
-they <i>could not be seen in the night time</i>! Hence a ghost is always
-clothed in white. Therefore the wind (gust) is no longer the ghost, but
-any white object seen moving in the night air.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span></p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 450px; height: 332px;"><img src="images/img059.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">“HARK! THERE’S A FEARFUL GUST!�</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p class="poem">“But I am a wandering ghost&mdash;<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">I am an idle breath,</span><br />
-That the sweets of the things now lost<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Are haunting unto death.</span><br />
-Pity me out in the cold,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Never to rest any more,</span><br />
-Because of my share in the purple and gold,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Lost from the world’s great store.</span><br />
-<br />
-“I whirl through empty space,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">A hapless, hurried ghost;</span><br />
-For me there is no place&mdash;<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">I’m weary, wandering, lost.</span><br />
-Safe from the night and cold,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">All else is sheltered&mdash;all,</span><br />
-From the sheep at rest in the fold,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">To the black wasp on the wall.�</span></p>
-
-<p>Moffat says that a tribe of Caffres formerly employed the word <i>Morino</i> to
-designate the Supreme Being; but as they<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span> sank into savagery, losing the
-idea of God, it came to mean only a fabulous ghost, of which they had
-great terror.</p>
-
-<p>Having briefly shown the folly of the existence of the word in our
-vocabulary, I will proceed to explode a few of the best authenticated&mdash;so
-called&mdash;“ghost stories;� and if I leave anything unexplained in
-ghostology, let the reader attribute it to either my want of space in
-which to write so much, or the neglect of my early education in the <i>dead
-languages</i>.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">The Ghost of the Camp.</span></p>
-
-<p>I obtained the following story from one of the sentries:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>At Portsmouth, R. I., there was a camp established during the late war,
-186-. There was a graveyard in one corner of the enclosed grounds, where
-several soldier-boys had been buried from the hospital, and here a guard
-was nightly stationed.</p>
-
-<p>Of course there were many stories told around the campfires, of ghosts and
-spirits that flitted about the mounds at the dead hours of the night,
-circulated particularly to frighten those stationed at that point on
-picket duty.</p>
-
-<p>The body of a soldier had recently been exhumed and placed in a new and
-more respectable coffin than the pine box coffin furnished by Uncle Sam,
-in which he had been buried, and the old one was left on the ground.</p>
-
-<p>Partly to protect himself from the inclemency of the weather, and quite as
-much to show his utter disregard of all ghostly visitors, my informant
-secured the old pine coffin, “washed it out, though it was impossible to
-remove all the stains,� and, driving a stake firmly into the ground, he
-stood the coffin on one end, and, removing the lid, used to stand therein
-on rainy nights.</p>
-
-<p>“When it did not rain, I turned it down, and my companion and myself used
-to sit on the bottom.</p>
-
-<p>“One day a soldier-boy had died in the hospital, and his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span> friends came to
-take the body home for Christian burial. It was necessary to remove him in
-a sheet to the place where they had an elegant casket, bought by his
-wealthy friends, to receive the remains.</p>
-
-<p>“That very night I was on duty with my friend Charley S., when, near
-midnight, seated upon the empty coffin, with my gun resting against the
-side, and my head resting in the palms of my hands, I fell into a drowse.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 269px; height: 450px;"><img src="images/img060.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">A GRAVE SENTRY.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>“Waking up suddenly, I saw something white through the darkness before me;
-for it was a fearfully dark night, I assure you. I rubbed my sleepy eyes
-to make sure of my sight, and took another look. I discerned a form,
-higher than a man, moving about over the mounds but a few yards distant.
-It had wide side-wings, but they did not seem to assist in the motion of
-the body part, which did not reach to the ground. I thought I must be
-asleep, and actually pinched my legs to awake myself before I took a final
-look at his ghostship. There he stood, stock still. I listened for my
-companion, without removing my eyes from the white object before me. Still
-I was not scared, but meant to see it out. I knew I could not see a man
-far through that impenetrable darkness, for there were no stars nor
-moon to reveal him. I would not call for help, for if it was a farce to
-scare me, I should become the laughing-stock of the whole camp.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span></p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 600px; height: 394px;"><img src="images/img061.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">A GHOST IN CAMP.</p>
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span>“Just then I heard the grass crackle, and I knew Charley was approaching
-in the rear. Still there hung the apparition. I arose from the coffin, my
-eyes fixed on the object before me, picked up my musket, took deliberate
-aim at the centre of the thing, and just as I cocked my rifle, I heard
-Charley set back the hammer of his ‘death-dealer.’ He, too, had discovered
-the very remarkable appearance, whatever it was; and now the guns of two
-‘unfailing shots’ covered the object. In another second it had suddenly
-disappeared! I then spoke, and we ran forward, but found nothing! Where
-had it gone so very suddenly? It had vanished without sight or sound. We
-gave up the search; but still I did not believe we had seen anything
-supernatural.</p>
-
-<p>“There was no little discussion in camp on the following day on the
-subject. Charley said but little. I could not explain the remarkable
-phenomenon, and a splendid ghost story was about established, in spite of
-me, before the mystery became unravelled.</p>
-
-<p>“A tall fellow, who worked about the hospital, and who assisted in taking
-away the corpse, was returning with the sheet, when he thought he would
-give the sentry a scare from his coffin by throwing the sheet over his
-head and stretching out his arms like wings. His clothes being black, his
-legs did not show; hence the appearance of a white object floating in the
-air. Hearing the guns cocked, he instantly jerked the sheet from his head;
-winding it up, he turned and ran away. This accounted for it becoming so
-instantaneously invisible.</p>
-
-<p>“‘Yes,’ said the sentry, ‘and in a second more you would have been made a
-ghost!’�</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span></p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Raising the Dead.</span></p>
-
-<p><i>The Nagles Family.</i>&mdash;The following remarkable and ridiculous affair
-transpired in a village where the writer once resided. The Nagleses were
-Irish. The family consisted of old Nagles, his wife,&mdash;who did washing for
-my mother,&mdash;John Tom and Tom John, besides Mary. The reason of having the
-boys named as above was, that in case either died, the sainted names would
-still be in the family. This was old Mrs. Nagles’ explanation of the
-matter.</p>
-
-<p>The old man worked about the wharves, wheeled wood and carried coal, and
-did such like jobs during summer, and chopped wood in the winter. I well
-remember of hearing stories of his greenness when he first came to town.
-He was early employed to wheel wood on board a coaster lying at the dock.
-The captain told him to wheel a load down the plank, cry “Under!� to the
-men in the hold, and tip down the barrow of wood. All went well till old
-Nagles got to the stopping-place, over the hold, when he dumped down the
-load, and cried out, “Stand ferninst, there, down cellar!� to the imminent
-peril of breaking the heads of the wood-stevedores below.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img062.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">OLD NAGLES.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>I well remember also the first appearance of the two boys at the village
-school one winter.</p>
-
-<p>“What is your name?� inquired the master of the eldest.</p>
-
-<p>“Me name, is it? John Tom Nagles, sir, is me name, and who comes after is
-the same.�</p>
-
-<p>He always was called by us boys “John Tom Nagles, sir,� thenceforward. He
-certainly was the rawest specimen I ever met.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span>One day the old man was wheeling wood on board a vessel. It was at low
-water, and there was a distance of sixteen feet from the plank to the
-bottom of the vessel’s hold. The poor old fellow, by some mishap or
-neglect, let go the barrow, when he called, “Stand ferninst, there,
-below!� when wood, barrow, and old Mr. Nagles, all went down together. By
-the fall he broke his neck. I never shall forget the awful lamentation set
-up by the combined voices of the poor old woman, John Tom, Tom John, and
-Mary, as they followed the corpse, borne on a wagon, past our house, on
-the way from the vessel to the Nagles’ residence.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 450px; height: 342px;"><img src="images/img063.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">THE NAGLES BOYS.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>On the following day great preparations were made to “wake� the old
-gentleman according to the most approved fashion in the old country. There
-were many Irish living&mdash;<i>staying</i>, at least&mdash;in that town, and large
-quantities of pipes, tobacco, and whiskey were bought up, and the whole<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span>
-town knew that a “powerful time� was anticipated by the Irish who were
-invited to old Nagles’ wake. It was an unusual occurrence, and several
-boys and young men of the village went to the locality of the Nagles’
-house to get a look upon the scene when it got under full pressure. I
-certainly should have been there had not my parents forbidden me to go,
-and I regret the inability to give my personal testimony to the truth of
-the statement of what followed, as I do to what preceded, as related
-above.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 445px; height: 450px;"><img src="images/img064.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">CHIEF MOURNERS.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>“When the wake was at its height, the room full of tobacco smoke, and the
-jovial mourners full of Irish whiskey,&mdash;strychnine and fusel oil,&mdash;there
-was an alarm of fire in the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span> neighborhood. There was a grand rush from the
-room, as well as from the windows where stood the listeners, and only one
-old and drunken woman remained to watch the corpse. The door was left
-open, and some of the young men outside, thinking it a good opportunity to
-play a joke on the drunken party, ran into the room, and, seeing only the
-old woman, who was too drunk to offer any objections, they removed the
-body from the board, depositing it behind the boxes on which the board was
-laid, and one of their number took the place of the corpse, barely having
-time to draw the sheet over his face, when the ‘wakers’ returned.</p>
-
-<p>“The candles burned dimly through the hazy atmosphere of the old room, and
-no one noticed the change. The pipes were relighted, the whiskey freely
-passed, and finally one fellow proposed to offer the corpse a lighted pipe
-and a glass of whiskey, ‘for company’s sake, through purgatory.’</p>
-
-<p>“Suiting the action to the word, he approached, attempted to raise the
-head of the ‘lively corpse,’ and thrust the nasty pipe between his teeth.</p>
-
-<p>“The young man ‘playing corpse’ was no smoker, and in infinite disgust he
-motioned the fellow away, who, too drunk to notice it, stuck the pipe in
-his face, saying, ‘Here, ould man, take a shmoke for your ghost’s sake.’</p>
-
-<p>“‘Bah! Git away wid the div’lish nasty thing,’ exclaimed the young man,
-rising and sitting up in the coffin.</p>
-
-<p>“There was an instantaneous stampede from the room of every waker who was
-capable of rising to his legs, followed by the fellow in the sheet, who,
-dropping the ghostly covering at the door, mingled with the rabble, and
-was not recognized. The priest and the doctor were speedily summoned. The
-former arrived, heard, outside the house, the wonderful story, and then
-proceeded to lay the spirit by sprinkling holy water on the door-stone,
-thence into the room. By this time the smoke had sufficiently subsided to
-allow a view of the room, when the stiff, frigid body of old<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span> Nagles was
-discovered on the floor, where ‘it had fallen,’ as they supposed, ‘in
-attempting to walk.’ Of course the doctor ridiculed the idea of a stark,
-cold body rising and speaking; but the Irish, to this day, believe old
-Nagles, for that once, refused a pipe and a glass of whiskey. The few
-young men dared not divulge the secret, and it never leaked out till the
-entire family of Nagles had gone to parts unknown.�</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 450px; height: 429px;"><img src="images/img065.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">A CORPSE THAT WOULD NOT SMOKE.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<hr style="width: 25%;" />
-
-<p>I find a great many ghost stories in books, which are not explained; but
-since the writer knows nothing of their authenticity, nor the persons with
-whom they were connected, they are unworthy of notice here.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</a></span></p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">The Ghost of Cæsar at Philippi.</span></p>
-
-<p>Dr. Robert Macnish, of Glasgow, in his “Philosophy of Sleep,� says, “No
-doubt the apparition of Cæsar which appeared to Brutus, and declared it
-would meet him at Philippi, was either a dream or a spectral
-illusion&mdash;probably the latter. Brutus, in all likelihood, had some idea
-that the great battle which was to decide his fate would be fought at
-Philippi. Probably it was a good military position, which he had in his
-mind fixed upon as a fit place to make a final stand; and he had done
-enough to Cæsar to account for his mind being painfully and constantly
-engrossed with the image of the assassinated dictator. Hence the
-verification of this supposed warning; hence the easy explanation of a
-supposed supernatural event.�</p>
-
-<hr style="width: 25%;" />
-
-<p>“The ghost of Byron� may help to verify the above. Sir Walter Scott was
-engaged in his study at Abbotsford, not long after the death of Lord
-Byron, at about the twilight hour, in reading a sketch of the deceased
-poet. The room was quiet, his thoughts were intensely centred upon the
-person of his departed friend, when, as he laid down the volume, as he
-could see to read no longer, and passed into the hall, he saw before him
-the <i>eidolon</i> of the deceased poet. He remained for some time impressed by
-the intensity of the illusion, which had thus created a phantom out of
-some clothes hanging on a screen at the farther end of the hall.</p>
-
-<p>This is not the first time that Byron had appeared to his friends, as the
-following, from his own pen, will show:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>Byron wrote to his friend, Alexander Murray, less than two years before
-the death of the latter, as follows:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“In 1811, my old schoolmate and form-fellow, Robert Peel, the Irish
-secretary, told me that he saw me in St. James Street. I was then in
-Turkey. A day or two afterwards, he pointed out to his brother a person
-across the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</a></span> street, and said, ‘There is the man I took for Byron.’ His
-brother answered, ‘Why, it is Byron, and no one else.’ I was at this time
-<i>seen</i> (by them?) to write my name in the Palace Book! I was then ill of a
-malaria fever. If I had died,� adds Byron, “here would have been a ghost
-story established.�</p>
-
-<p>Dr. Johnson says, “An honest old printer named Edward Cave had seen a
-ghost at St. John’s Gate.� Of course, the old man succumbed to the
-apparition.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">The Ghost of Conscience.</span></p>
-
-<p>I have yet to find the record of a good man seeing what he believed to be
-a ghostly manifestation. It is only the guilty in conscience who conjure
-up “horrible shadows,� as pictured in Shakspeare’s ghost of Banquo, as it
-appeared to Macbeth. What deserving scorn, what scathing contempt, were
-conveyed in the language of Lady Macbeth to her cowardly,
-conscience-stricken lord, as she thus rebuked him!&mdash;</p>
-
-<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 5em;">“O, proper stuff!</span><br />
-This is the very painting of your fear;<br />
-This is the air-drawn dagger which you said<br />
-Led you to Duncan! O, these flaws and starts<br />
-(Impostors to true fear) would well become<br />
-A woman’s story at a winter’s fire,<a name='fna_5' id='fna_5' href='#f_5'><small>[5]</small></a><br />
-Authorized by her grandam. Shame itself!<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 8em;">... When all’s done,</span><br />
-You look but on a stool!�</p>
-
-<p>There is a great truth embodied in a portion of the king’s reply, that&mdash;</p>
-
-<p class="poem">“If charnel-houses and our graves must send<br />
-Those that we bury, back, our monuments<br />
-Shall be the maws of kites.�</p>
-
-<p>The gay and dissipated Thomas Lyttleton, son of Lord George Lyttleton, and
-his successor in the peerage, has been<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</a></span> the subject of “a
-well-authenticated ghost story, which relates that he was warned of his
-death three days before it happened, in 1779, while he was in a state of
-perfect health, and only thirty-five years of age.� This is what says a
-biographer. Now let us present the truth of the matter.</p>
-
-<p>He was a dissipated man. He was subject to fits. A gentleman present at
-the time of his seeing a vision, says “that he had been attacked several
-times by suffocative fits the month before.� Here, then, was a <i>body
-diseased</i>. The same authority says, “It happened that he dreamed, three
-days before his death, that he saw a <i>fluttering bird</i>; and afterwards,
-that he saw (dreamed) a woman in white apparel, who said to him, ‘Prepare
-to die; you will not exist three days.’</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 450px; height: 201px;"><img src="images/img066.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">PREPARE TO DIE!</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>“His lordship was much alarmed, and called his servant, who slept in an
-adjoining closet, who found his master in a state of great agitation, and
-in a profuse perspiration.�</p>
-
-<p>Fear blanches the cheek; perspiration is rather a symptom of bodily
-weakness, and the result of a laborious dream, or even a fit. He had no
-fear, for, on the third day, while his lordship was at breakfast with “the
-two Misses Amphlett, Lord Fortescue,� and the narrator, he said,
-lightly,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“‘If I live over to-night, <i>I shall have jockeyed the ghost</i>,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</a></span> for this is
-the third day.’ That day he had another fit. He dined at five, and retired
-at eleven, when his servant was about to give him some prescribed rhubarb
-and mint-water, but his lordship, seeing him about to stir the mixture
-with a toothpick, exclaimed,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“‘You slovenly dog, go and fetch a teaspoon.’</p>
-
-<p>“On the servant’s return, he found his master in another fit, and, the
-pillow being high, his chin bore on his windpipe, when the servant,
-instead of relieving his lordship from his perilous position, ran away for
-help; but on his return, found his master dead.�</p>
-
-<p>He had strangled. Is it anything strange that a dissipated, weakened man
-should die after having a score of suffocative fits? It had been more
-surprising if he had survived them. Then, as respecting the dream, it was
-the result of a “mind diseased.�</p>
-
-<p>There was evidence that his lordship had seduced the Misses Amphlett, and
-prevailed upon them to leave their mother; and he is said to have
-admitted, before his death, that the woman seen in his dream was the
-mother of the unfortunate girls, and that she died of grief, through the
-disgrace and desertion of her children, about the time that the guilty
-seducer saw her in the vision. How could his dreams but have been
-disturbed, with the load of guilt and remorse that he ought to have had
-resting upon his conscience? The “fluttering bird� was the first form that
-the wretched mother assumed in his vision, as a bird might flutter about
-the prison bars that confined her darling offspring. The more natural form
-of the mother finally appeared to the guilty seducer, and to dream that he
-heard a voice is no unusual occurrence in the life of any person. The
-peculiar words amount to nothing. Lyttleton gave them no serious thoughts,
-and it was an accident of bodily position that caused his sudden death.
-The whole thing seems to be too flimsy for even a respectable “ghost
-story.�</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</a></span></p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">The Bishop sees a Ghost!</span></p>
-
-<p>An amusing as well as instructive ghost story is related by Horace
-Walpole, the indolent, luxurious satirist of fashionable and political
-contemporaries, whose twenty thousand a year enabled him to live at his
-ease, “coquetting haughtily with literature and literary men, at his tasty
-Gothic toy-house at Strawberry Hill.�</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 450px; height: 309px;"><img src="images/img067.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">THE BISHOP’S GHOSTLY VISITOR.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>He relates that the good old Bishop of Chichester was awakened in his
-palace at an early hour in the morning by his chamber door opening, when a
-female figure, clothed in white, softly entered the apartment, and quietly
-took a seat near him. The prelate, who, with “his household, was a
-disbeliever in ghosts� and spirits, said he was not at all frightened,
-but, rising in his bed, said, in a tone of authority,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“Who are you?�</p>
-
-<p>“The presence in the room� made no reply. The bishop repeated the
-question,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</a></span>“Who are you?�</p>
-
-<p>The ghost only heaved a deep sigh, and, while the bishop rang the bell, to
-call his slumbering servant, her ghostship quietly drew some old “papers
-from its ghost of a pocket,� and commenced reading them to herself.</p>
-
-<p>After the bishop had kept on ringing for the stupid servant, the form
-arose, thrust the papers out of sight, and left as noiselessly and
-sedately as she had arrived.</p>
-
-<p>“Well, what have you seen?� asked the bishop, when the servants were
-aroused.</p>
-
-<p>“Seen, my lord?�</p>
-
-<p>“Ay, seen! or who&mdash;what was the woman who has been here?�</p>
-
-<p>“Woman, my lord?�</p>
-
-<p>(It is said one of the fellows smiled, that a woman should have been in
-the aged bishop’s bed-chamber in the night.)</p>
-
-<p>When the bishop had related what he had seen, the domestics apprehended
-that his lordship had been dreaming, against which the good man protested,
-and only told what his eyes had beheld. The story that the bishop had been
-visited by a ghost soon got well circulated, which greatly “diverted the
-ungodly, at the good prelate’s expense, till finally it reached the ears
-of the keeper of a mad-house in the diocese, who came and deposed that a
-female lunatic had escaped from his custody on that night� (in light
-apparel), who, finding the gates and doors of the palace open, had marched
-directly to his lordship’s chamber. The deponent further stated that the
-lunatic was <i>always reading a bundle of papers</i>.</p>
-
-<p>“There are known,� says Walpole, “stories of ghosts, solemnly
-authenticated, less credible; and I hope you will believe this, attested
-by the father of our own church.�</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Musical Ghosts.</span></p>
-
-<p>We occasionally <i>hear</i> of this kind, but seldom, if ever, <i>see</i> them. An
-old lady of Adams, Mass., came to the writer in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</a></span> a state bordering on
-monomania. She stated that at about <i>three o’clock</i> in the night she would
-awake and distinctly hear bells ringing at a distance. She would awake her
-husband, and often compel him to arise and listen “till the poor man was
-almost out of patience with the annoyance;� not of the bells, for he heard
-none, but of being continually “wakened because of her whim,� as he
-stated. A brief medical treatment for the disease which caused the
-vibration of the tympanum dispelled the illusion of bells.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">The Piano-forte Ghost.</span></p>
-
-<p>A family residing, three years since, but a few miles out of Boston, used
-to occasionally, during summer only, hear a note or two of the piano
-strike at the dead hour of the night. A Catholic servant girl and an
-excellent cook left their situations in consequence of the ghostly music.
-In vain the family removed the instrument to another position in the room.
-The musical sounds would startle them from their midnight slumbers.</p>
-
-<p>One thing very remarkable occurred after changing the piano: the sound,
-which only transpired occasionally, with no regularity as to time, would
-always begin with the high notes, and end with the lower. Finally, the
-family&mdash;I cannot say why&mdash;removed to the city, and the house was sold. The
-deed of conveyance did not include the ghost, but he remained with the
-premises, nevertheless. The writer has seen him!</p>
-
-<p>“O, what a pretty cat!� exclaimed a child of the new occupant of the
-haunted house, on discovering the domestic animal which the late possessor
-had left.</p>
-
-<p>“Yes; and she looks so very domestic and knowing, she may stay, if no one
-comes for her, and you’ll have her for a playfellow,� replied the mother.</p>
-
-<p>A few nights after their settlement, the new family were startled by
-hearing the piano sound! No particular tune, but<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</a></span> it was surely the piano
-notes that had been distinctly and repeatedly heard. A search revealed
-nothing. The piano was kept closed thereafter, and no further annoyance
-occurred, until one night when the company had lingered till nearly
-midnight, and the instrument had been left open, the sound again occurred.
-The gentleman quickly lighted a lamp, ran down stairs, and closing the
-door leading to the connecting room, he found the cat secreted beneath the
-piano. The instrument was purposely left open the following night, and a
-watch set, when, no sooner was all quiet, than the cat entered, and leaped
-upon the piano keys. After touching them a few times with her fore paws,
-she jumped down, and hid beneath the instrument. “The cat was out.� Only
-one thing remained for explanation, viz., why the change of sound occurred
-after removing the piano by the first occupants of the house. It occurred
-in summer. They removed the piano so that the cat, entering a side window,
-usually left a little raised, had necessarily jumped upon the high keys.</p>
-
-<p>If anybody has got a good ghost, spirit, or witch about his premises, the
-writer would like to investigate it.</p>
-
-<p>The following silly item is just going the rounds of the press:&mdash;</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center">“<span class="smcap">A haunted House.</span></p>
-
-<p>“The first floor of Mrs. Roundy’s house, at Lynn, in which the recent
-murder occurred, is occupied by an apparently intelligent family bearing
-the name of Conway, who assert that they have heard supernatural noises
-every night since the tragedy; and they are so sincere in their belief
-that they are preparing to vacate in favor of their ‘uncanny’ visitors.�</p>
-
-<p>There’s nothing to it to investigate.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">A few Words about Witches.</span></p>
-
-<p>My colored boy, Dennis, assures me that an old woman in Norfolk, Va.,
-having some spite against him, “did <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</a></span>something to him that sort o’
-bewitched him; got some animal into him, like.� The symptoms are those of
-<i>ascarides</i>, but I could not persuade him to take medicine therefor.</p>
-
-<p>“’Tain’t no use, sir,� he replied, solemnly; “I knowed she done it; I
-feels it kinder workin’ in yer (placing his hand on his stomach); what
-med’cine neber’ll reach.�</p>
-
-<p>Neither reason nor ridicule will “budge� him. He knows he’s bewitched!</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</a></span></p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 450px; height: 332px;"><img src="images/img068.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">THE MUSICAL PUSS.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 450px; height: 330px;"><img src="images/img069.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">A DARKEY BEWITCHED.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</a></span></p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Witches in the Cream.</span></p>
-
-<p class="poem">Through all the long, long winter’s day,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And half the dreary night,</span><br />
-We churned, and yet no butter came:<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The cream looked thin and white.</span><br />
-<br />
-Next morning, with our hopes renewed,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The task began again;</span><br />
-We churned, and churned, till back and arms<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And head did ache with pain.</span><br />
-<br />
-The cream rose up, then sulking fell,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Grew thick, and then grew thin;</span><br />
-It splashed and spattered in our eyes,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">On clothes, and nose, and chin.</span><br />
-<br />
-We churned it fast, and churned it slow,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And stirred it round and round;</span><br />
-Yet all the livelong, weary day,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Was heard the dasher’s sound.</span><br />
-<br />
-The sun sank in the gloomy west,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The moon rose ghastly pale;</span><br />
-And still we churned, with courage low,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And hopes about to fail,&mdash;</span><br />
-<br />
-When in walked Granny Dean, who heard,<br />
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</a></span><span style="margin-left: 1em;">With wonder and amaze,</span><br />
-Our troubles, as she crossed herself,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And in the fire did gaze.</span><br />
-<br />
-“Lord, help us all!� she quickly said,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And covered up her face;</span><br />
-“Lord, help us all! for, as you live,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">There’s witches in the place!</span><br />
-<br />
-“There’s witches here within this churn,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">That have possessed the cream.</span><br />
-Go, bring the horse-shoe that I saw<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Hang on the cellar-beam.�</span><br />
-<br />
-The shoe was brought, when, round and round,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">She twirled it o’er her head;</span><br />
-“Go, drive the witches from that cream!�<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">In solemn voice she said;&mdash;</span><br />
-<br />
-Then tossed it in the fire, till red<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">With heat it soon did turn,</span><br />
-And dropped among the witches dread,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">That hid within the churn.</span><br />
-<br />
-Once more the dasher’s sound was heard,&mdash;<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Have patience with my rhyme,&mdash;</span><br />
-For, sure enough, the butter came<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">In twenty minutes’ time.</span><br />
-<br />
-Some say the temperature was changed<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">With horse-shoe glowing red;</span><br />
-But when we ask old Granny Dean,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">She only shakes her head.&mdash;<i>Hearth and Home.</i></span></p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Horse-shoes.</span></p>
-
-<p>One would suppose the folly of putting horse-shoes into cream, “fish-skins
-into coffee, to settle it,� and forcing filthy molasses and water down the
-throats of new-born babes, were amongst the follies of the past; but they
-are not yet,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</a></span> with many other superstitious, and even cruel and dangerous
-notions, done away with. For some prominent instances of this course of
-proceedings the reader may consult next chapter.</p>
-
-<p>Riding through the rural districts of almost any portion of the Union, one
-will sometimes find the horse-shoe nailed over the stable, porch, or even
-house front door, to keep away the witches. As in Gay’s fable of “The Old
-Woman and her Cats:�&mdash;</p>
-
-<p class="poem">“Straws laid across my path retard,<br />
-The horse-shoes nailed each threshold guard,�</p>
-
-<p>In Aubrey’s time, he tells us that “most houses of the west end of London
-have the horse-shoe at the threshold.�</p>
-
-<p>The nice little old gentleman who keeps the depot at Boylston Station is a
-dry joker, in his way. Over each door of the station he has an old
-horse-shoe nailed.</p>
-
-<p>“What have you got these nailed up over the door for?� a stranger asks.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img070.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">BOYLSTON STATION.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>“To keep away witches. I sleep here nights,� solemnly replies the
-station-master; and one must be familiar with that ever agreeable face to
-detect the sly, enjoyable humor with which he is so often led to repeat
-this assertion.</p>
-
-<p>In numerous towns within more than half of the states,&mdash;I state from
-personal inquiry,&mdash;there are at this day old women, who children, at
-least, are taught to believe have the power of bewitching! My first
-fright, when a little boy on my way to school, was from being told that an
-old woman, whose house we were passing, was a witch.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</a></span>These modern witches may not have arrived at the dignity of floating
-through the air on a broomstick, or crossing the water in a cockle-shell,
-as they were said to in ancient times; but the belief in their existence
-at this enlightened period of the world is more disgraceful than in the
-darker ages, and the frightening of children and the naturally
-superstitious is far more reprehensible.</p>
-
-<p>There is no such thing as a ghost. There are no witches.</p>
-
-<p>“The Bible teaches that there were witches,� has often been wrongly
-asserted. That “choice young man and goodly,� whose abilities his doting
-parent over-estimated when he sent him out <i>in search of the three stray
-asses</i>, and whose idleness prompted him to consult the seer Samuel, and by
-whose indolence and procrastination the asses got home first, was a very
-suitable personage to consult a “<i>woman of a familiar spirit</i>� (or any
-other woman, save his own wife), from which arose the great modern
-misnomer of the “<i>Witch of Endor</i>.�</p>
-
-<p>“To the Jewish writers, trained to seek counsel only of Jehovah (not even
-from Christ), the ‘Woman of Endor’ was a dealer with spirits of evil. With
-us, who have imbibed truth through a thousand channels made turbid by
-prejudice and error, she is become a distorted being, allied to the hags
-of a wild and fatal delusion. We confound her with the (fabled) witches of
-Macbeth, the victims of Salem, and the modern Moll Pitchers.</p>
-
-<p>“The Woman of Endor! That is a strange perversion of taste that would
-represent her in hideous aspect. To me she seemeth all that is genial and
-lovely in womanhood.�</p>
-
-<p>“Hearken thou unto the voice of thine handmaid, and let me set a morsel of
-bread before thee, and eat, that thou mayest have strength when thou goest
-on thy way.�</p>
-
-<p>Then she made and baked the bread, killed and cooked the meat,&mdash;all she
-had in the house,&mdash;and Saul did eat, and his servants.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</a></span>I see nought in this but an exhibition of rare domestic ability and
-commendable hospitality; in the previous act (revelation), nothing more
-than a manifestation of the power of mind over mind (possibly the power of
-God, manifested through her mind?), wherein she divined the object of
-Saul’s visit, and, through the same channel, surmised who he was that
-consulted her.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 376px; height: 450px;"><img src="images/img071.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">WEIGHING A WITCH BY BIBLE STANDARD.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>Witches are said to be “light weight.� But a little above<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[Pg 306]</a></span> a hundred
-years ago, a woman was accused in Wingrove, England, by another, of
-“bewitching her spinning-wheel, so it would turn <i>neither the one way nor
-the other</i>.� To this she took oath, and the magistrate, with pomp and
-dignity, “followed by a great concourse of people, took the woman to the
-parish church, her husband also being present, and having stripped the
-accused to her nether garment, put her into the great scales brought for
-that purpose, with the Bible in the opposite balance, which was the lawful
-test of a witch, when, to the no small astonishment and mortification of
-her maligner, she actually outweighed the book, and was honorably
-acquitted of the charge!�</p>
-
-<p>Just imagine the picture. In an enlightened age, a Christian people, in
-possession of the Bible, that gives no intimation of such things as
-witches, stripping and weighing a female in public, to ascertain if she
-really was heavier than a common Bible!</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img072.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
-<hr style="width: 50%;" />
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</a></span></p>
-<h2><a name="XII" id="XII"></a>XII.</h2>
-<p class="title">MEDICAL SUPERSTITIONS.</p>
-
-<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table">
-<tr><td>“When cats run home, and light is come,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And dew is cold upon the ground,</span><br />
-And the far-off stream is dumb,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And the whirling sail goes round,</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And the whirling sail goes round;</span><br />
-Alone and warming his five wits<br />
-The white owl in the belfry sits.�&mdash;<span class="smcap">Tennyson.</span></td></tr></table>
-
-<div class="note"><p class="hang"><small>OLD AND NEW.&mdash;THE SIGN OF JUPITER.&mdash;MODERN IDOLATRY.&mdash;ORIGIN OF THE
-DAYS OF THE WEEK.&mdash;HOW WE PERPETUATE IDOLATRY.&mdash;SINGULAR
-FACT.&mdash;CHRISTMAS FESTIVITIES.&mdash;“OLD NICK.�&mdash;RIDICULOUS
-SUPERSTITIONS.&mdash;GOLDEN HERB.&mdash;HOUSE CRICKETS.&mdash;A STOOL WALKS!&mdash;THE
-BOWING IMAGES AT RHODE ISLAND.&mdash;HOUSE SPIDERS.&mdash;THE HOUSE
-CAT.&mdash;SUPERSTITIOUS IDOLATRIES.&mdash;WONDERFUL KNOWLEDGE.&mdash;NAUGHTY
-BOYS.&mdash;ERRORS RESPECTING CATS.&mdash;SANITARY QUALITIES.&mdash;OWLS.&mdash;A SCARED
-BOY.&mdash;HOLY WATER.&mdash;UNLUCKY DAYS.&mdash;THUNDER AND LIGHTNING.&mdash;A KISS.</small></p></div>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p>Medicine, above all the other sciences, was founded upon superstition.
-Medicine, more than all the other arts, has been practised by
-superstitions. Stretching far back through the vista of time to the
-remotest antiquity, reaching forward into the more enlightened present, it
-has partaken of all that was superstitious in barbarism, in heathenism, in
-mythology, and in religion.</p>
-
-<p>In showing the Alpha I am compelled to reveal the Omega.</p>
-
-<p>Let us begin with Jupiter. I know that some wise Æsculapian&mdash;no
-Jupiterite&mdash;will turn up his nose at this page, while to-morrow, if he
-gets a patient, he will demonstrate<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[Pg 308]</a></span> what I am saying, and further, help
-to perpetuate the ignorant absurdities which originated with the old
-mythologists, by placing “&#8478;�&mdash;the ill-drawn sign of Jupiter&mdash;before his
-recipe.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img073.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">THE GOD OF RECIPES.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>De Paris tells us that the physician of the present day continues to
-prefix to his prescriptions the letter “&#8478;,� which is generally supposed
-to mean “recipe,� but which is, in truth, a relic of the astrological
-symbol of Jupiter, formerly used as a species of superstitious invocation,
-or to propitiate the king of the gods that the compound might act
-favorably.</p>
-
-<p>There are still in use many other things which present <i>prima facie</i>
-evidence of having been introduced when the users placed more faith in
-mythological or planetary influence than in any innate virtue of the
-article itself. For instance, at a very early period all diseases were
-regarded as the effects of certain planetary actions; and not only
-diseases, but our lives, fortunes, conduct, and the various qualities that
-constitute one’s character, were the consequences of certain planetary
-control under which we existed. Are there not many who now believe this?</p>
-
-<p>“In ancient medicine pharmacy was at one period only the application of
-the dreams of astrology to the vegetable world. The herb which put an ague
-or madness to flight did so by reason of a mystic power imparted to it by
-a particular constellation, the outward signs of which quality were to be
-found in its color or shape.� Red objects had a mysterious influence on
-inflammatory diseases, and yellow ones on persons discolored by jaundice.
-Corals were introduced as a medicine, also to wear about the neck on the
-same principle.</p>
-
-<p>These notions are not yet obsolete. Certain diseases are still attributed
-to the action of the moon. Certain yellow<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[Pg 309]</a></span> herbs are used for the
-jaundice and other diseases. The <i>hepatica triloba</i> (three-lobed) is
-recommended for diseases of the lungs as well as liver (as its first name,
-<i>hepatica</i>, indicates), and some other medicines for other complaints,
-without the least regard to their innate qualities. Corals are still worn
-for nose-bleed, red articles kept about the bed and apartments of the
-small-pox patient, and the red flag hung out at the door of the house,
-though few may know why a <i>red</i> flag is so hung, or that it originated in
-superstition.</p>
-
-<p>The announcement of an approaching comet strikes terror to the hearts of
-thousands; the invalid has the sash raised that he may avoid first seeing
-the new moon through the glass, and the traveller is rejoiced to catch his
-first glimpse of the young queen of the night over his right shoulder,
-“for there is misfortune in seeing it over the left.�</p>
-
-<p>But we are not yet done with ancient symbols.</p>
-
-<p>“The stick came down from heaven,� says the Egyptian proverb.</p>
-
-<p>“The physician’s cane is a very ancient part of his insignia. It has
-nearly gone into disuse; but until very recently no doctor of medicine
-would have presumed to pay a visit, or even be seen in public, without
-this mystic wand. Long as a footman’s stick, smooth, and varnished, with a
-heavy gold head, or a cross-bar, it was an instrument with which, down to
-the present century, every prudent aspirant to medical practice was
-provided. The celebrated gold-headed cane which Radcliffe, Mead, Askew,
-Pitcairn, and Baillie successively bore, is preserved in the College of
-Physicians, London. It has a cross-bar, almost like a crook, in place of a
-knob. The knob in olden times was hollow, and contained a vinaigrette,
-which the man of science held to his nose when he approached a sick
-person, so that its fumes might protect him from the disease.�</p>
-
-<p>The cane, doubtless, came from the wand or caduceus of Mercurius, and was
-a “relic of the conjuring paraphernalia<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[Pg 310]</a></span> with which the healer, in
-ignorant and superstitious times, always worked upon the imagination of
-the credulous.� The present barber’s pole originated with surgeons. The
-red stripe represented the arterial blood; the blue, the venous blood; the
-white, the bandages.</p>
-
-<p>The superstitious ancients showed more wisdom in their selections of
-names, as well as in emblems, than we do in retaining them. Heathen
-worship and mythological signs are mixed and interwoven with all our arts,
-sciences, and literature. Our days of the week were named by the old
-Saxons, who worshipped idols&mdash;the sun, moon, stars, earth, etc., and to
-their god’s, perpetual honor gave to each day a name from some principal
-deity. Thus we are idolaters, daily, though unconsciously.</p>
-
-<p>I think not one person in a thousand is aware of this fact; therefore I
-give a sketch of each.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Sunday.</span></p>
-
-<p>The name of our first day of the week, Sunday, is derived from the Saxon
-<i>Sunna-dæg</i>, which they named for the sun. It was also called <i>Sun’s-dæg</i>.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img074.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">SUN&mdash;Sunday.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>As the glorious sunlight brought day and warmth, and caused vegetation to
-spring forth in its season, warmed the blood, and made the heart of man to
-rejoice, they made that dazzling orb the primary object of their worship.
-When its absence brought night and <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[Pg 311]</a></span>darkness, and the storm-clouds
-shrouded its face in gloom, or the occasional eclipse suddenly cut off its
-shining, which they superstitiously attributed to the wrath of their chief
-deity, it then became the object of their supplication. With them, and all
-superstitious people, all passions, themes, and worships must be
-embodied&mdash;must assume form and dimensions, and as they could not gaze upon
-the dazzling sun, they personified it in the figure of a man&mdash;as being
-superior to woman with them&mdash;arrayed in a primitive garment, holding in
-his hand a flaming wheel. One day was specially devoted to sun worship.</p>
-
-<p>The modern Sunday is the day, according to historical accounts of the
-early Christians, on which Christ rose from the dead. It does not appear
-to have been the same day as, or to have superseded, the Jewish Sabbath,
-although the Christians early celebrated the day, devoting it to religious
-services. With the Christians, labor was suspended on this “first day of
-the week,� and Constantine, about the year 320, established an edict which
-suspended all labor, except agricultural, and forbade also all court
-proceedings. In 538 A. D. the third Council of Orleans published a decree
-forbidding all labor on Sunday.</p>
-
-<p>The Sabbath (Hebrew <i>Shabbath</i>) of the Jews, meaning a day of rest,
-originated as far back as Moses&mdash;probably farther. It was merely a day of
-rest, which was commanded by Jehovah; and if considered only on
-physiological grounds, it evinces the wisdom and economy of God in setting
-apart one day in seven to be observed by man as a season of rest and
-recuperation. As such it only seems to have been regarded till after the
-forty years of exile, when it changed to a day of religious rites and
-ceremonies, which is continued till the present day by “that peculiar
-people.� That particular day, given in the “law of Moses,� corresponds&mdash;it
-is believed by the Jews&mdash;to our Saturday. Christ seemed to teach that the
-Jewish Sabbath was no more<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[Pg 312]</a></span> sacred than any other day, and he accused the
-Pharisees with hypocrisy in their too formal observance thereof. He
-attended their service on the Sabbath, on the seeming principle that he
-did other meetings, and as he paid the accustomed tax, because it was best
-to adapt one’s self to the laws and customs of the country.</p>
-
-<p>We do not purpose to enter into any theological discussion as to which of
-the two days should be observed for rest and religious observances; for
-who shall decide? Physiologically considered, it makes no difference.
-There should be one day set apart for rest in seven at the most, and all
-men should respect it.</p>
-
-<p>Without a Sabbath (day of rest) we should soon relapse into a state of
-barbarism, and also wear out before our allotted time. “In the hurry and
-bustle of every-day life and labor, we allow ourselves too little
-relaxation, too little scope for moral, social, and religious sentiments;
-therefore it is well to set apart times and seasons when all cares and
-labors may be laid aside, and communion held with nature and nature’s
-God.� And it were better if we all could agree upon one day for our
-Sabbath; and let us call it “Sabbath,� and not help to perpetuate any
-heathen dogmas and worship by calling God’s holy day after the idolatrous
-customs of the ancient Saxons.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Monday.</span></p>
-
-<p>The second day of the week the Saxons called <i>Monandæg</i>, or Moon’s day;
-hence our Monday.</p>
-
-<p>This day was set apart by that idolatrous people for the worship of their
-second god in power. In their business pursuits, as well as devotional
-exercises, they devoted themselves to the moon worship. The name
-<i>Monandæg</i> was written at the top of all communications, and remembrance
-had to their god in all transactions of the day. Each <i>monath</i> (new moon
-or month) religious (?) exercises were celebrated.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[Pg 313]</a></span>The idol Monandæg had the semblance of a female, crowned or capped with a
-hood-like covering, surmounted by two horns, while a basque and long robe
-covered the remainder of her person. In her right hand she held the image
-of the moon.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img075.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">MOON&mdash;Monday.<span class="spacer">&nbsp;</span><span class="spacer">&nbsp;</span>TUISCO&mdash;Tuesday.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Tuesday.</span></p>
-
-<p>The third object of their worship was Tuisco&mdash;corresponding with German
-<i>Tuisto</i>&mdash;the son of <i>Terra</i> (earth),<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[Pg 314]</a></span> the deified founder of the
-Teutonic race. He seems to have been the deity who presided over combats
-and litigations; “hence Tuesday is now, as then, court-day, or the day for
-commencing litigations.� In some dialects it was called <i>Dings-dag</i>, or
-Things-day&mdash;to plead, attempt, cheapen: hence it is often selected as
-market-day, as well as a time for opening assizes. Hence the god <i>Tuisco</i>
-was worshipped in the semblance of a venerable sage, with uncovered head,
-clothed in skins of fierce animals, touching the earth, while he held in
-his right hand a sceptre, the appropriate ensign of his authority.</p>
-
-<p>Thus originated the name of our third day of the week, and some of its
-customs.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img076.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">WODEN&mdash;Wednesday.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Wednesday.</span></p>
-
-<p>This day was named for <i>Woden</i>,&mdash;the same as <i>Odin</i>,&mdash;and was sacred to
-the divinity of the Northern and Eastern nations. He was the Anglo-Saxons’
-god of war, “who came to them from the East in a very mysterious manner,
-and enacted more wonderful and brilliant exploits of prowess and valor
-than the Greek mythologists ascribed to their powerful god Hercules.� As
-<i>Odin</i>, this deity was said to have been a monarch (in the flesh) of
-ancient<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[Pg 315]</a></span> Germany, Denmark, Scandinavia, etc., and a mighty conqueror. All
-those tribes, in going into battle, invoked his aid and blessing upon
-their arms. He was idolized as a fierce and powerful man, with helmet,
-shield, a drawn sword, a <i>gyrdan</i> about his loins, and feet and legs
-protected by sandals and knee-high fastenings of iron, ornamented with a
-death’s head.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img077.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">THOR&mdash;Thursday.<span class="spacer">&nbsp;</span><span class="spacer">&nbsp;</span>FRIGA&mdash;Friday.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[Pg 316]</a></span></p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Thursday.</span></p>
-
-<p>From the deity <i>Thor</i> our Thursday is derived. This Saxon god was the son
-of Woden, or Odin, and his wife Friga. He was the god of thunder, the
-bravest and most powerful, after his father, of the Danish and Saxon
-deities.</p>
-
-<p>Thor is represented as sitting in majestic grandeur upon a golden throne,
-his head surmounted by a golden crown, richly ornamented by a circle in
-front, in which were set twelve brilliant stars. In his right hand he
-grasped the regal sceptre.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Friday.</span></p>
-
-<p>The sixth day of the week was named in honor of <i>Friga</i>, or Frigga, the
-wife of Woden and the mother of Thor. In most ancient times she was the
-same as Venus, the goddess of Hertha, or Earth. She was the most revered
-of the female divinities of the Danes and Saxons. Friga is represented
-draped in a light robe suspended from the shoulder, low neck and bare
-arms. She held in her right hand a drawn sword, and a long bow in the
-left. Her hair is long and flowing, while a golden band, adorned by
-ostrich feathers, encircle her snowy brow.</p>
-
-<p>There is nothing in the name or attributes to indicate the ill luck which
-superstition has attached to the day.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img078.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">SEATER&mdash;Saturday.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[Pg 317]</a></span></p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Saturday.</span></p>
-
-<p>The god <i>Seater</i>, for whom the last day of the week is named, is the same
-as Saturn, which is from Greek&mdash;<i>Time</i>.</p>
-
-<p>He is pictured, unlike Saturn, with long, flowing hair and beard, thin
-features, clothed in person with one entire garment to his ankles and
-wrists, with his waist girded by a linen scarf. In his right hand he
-carries a wheel, to represent rolling time. In his left hand he holds a
-pail of fruit and flowers, to indicate young time as well as old. The fish
-which is his pedestal represents his power over the abundance of even the
-sea.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Christmas Festivals.</span></p>
-
-<p>Amongst the very pleasant and harmless customs which have been handed down
-to us from the idolatrous rites and superstitions of the ancient Saxons,
-Scandinavians, etc., are those connected with our Christmas festivities.
-The whole observance and connections form a strange mixture of Christian
-and heathen ceremonies, illustrative of the unwillingness with which a
-people abandon pagan rites to the adoption of those more consistent with
-the spirit of a Christianized and enlightened faith.</p>
-
-<p>Now, little folks and big, I am not going to ridicule or deny your right
-to Christmas and St. Nicholas enjoyments; I will merely hint at their
-origin, for your own benefit. The day brings more happiness&mdash;and folks&mdash;to
-the homes and firesides of the people of the <i>whole world</i> than any other
-holiday we celebrate.<a name='fna_6' id='fna_6' href='#f_6'><small>[6]</small></a> Thanksgiving, you know, is mostly a New England
-custom. The 25th of December is just as good as any other day on which to
-have a good time. Ancient people used to celebrate the first and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[Pg 318]</a></span> sixth
-of January. The first three months of the year are named after heathen
-gods.</p>
-
-<p>The <i>name</i> of the day we celebrate is derived from a Christian source: the
-rest from pagan. A good feeling was always engendered amongst the most
-ancient people at the commencement of the lengthening of days in winter,
-and the approach of a new year. The hanging up of the mistletoe, with the
-ceremony of gathering it, the kindling of the Yule log, and giving of
-presents, we trace to the Druids, who were the priests, doctors, and
-judges of the ancient Celts, Gauls, Britons, and Germans. Our modern
-stoves and furnaces have shut out the pleasant old log fires, and the
-candles only remain. The gifts originated in the giving away of pieces of
-the mistletoe by the grizzly old priests.</p>
-
-<p>Who St. Nicholas was, is only conjectured, <i>not known</i>, any more than who
-St. Patrick was. It makes no difference where he sprang from; he is a
-good, jolly, benevolent fellow, who brings lots of presents, and, with the
-little folks, we are bound to defend him.</p>
-
-<p>It is supposed that the original St. Nicholas lived in Lycia, in Asia
-Minor, during the fourth century, and was early adopted as a saint of the
-Catholic church, and also by the Russians and ancient Germans, Celts, and
-others.</p>
-
-<p>“He has ever been regarded as a very charitable personage, and as the
-particular guardian of children. Great stories are told of his charity and
-benevolence. One of these, and that, perhaps, which attaches him to the
-peculiar festivities of Christmas, is to the effect that a certain
-nobleman had three lovely daughters, but was so reduced to poverty that he
-was unable to give them a marriage portion, as was the indispensable
-custom, and was about to give them over to a life of shame. St. Nicholas
-was aware of this, and determined in a secret way to assist the nobleman.</p>
-
-<p>“He wended his way towards the nobleman’s house, thinking how he could
-best do this, when he espied an open <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[Pg 319]</a></span>window, into which he threw a purse
-of gold, which dropped at the nobleman’s feet, and he was enabled to give
-his daughter a marriage portion. This was repeated upon the second
-daughter and the third daughter; but the nobleman, being upon the watch,
-detected his generous benefactor, and thus the affair was made public.
-From this rose the custom upon St. Nicholas Day, December 6, for parents
-and friends to secretly put little presents into the stockings of the
-children. Doubtless this custom, so near the festivities of Christmas,
-gradually approximated to that day, and become identical with Christmas
-festivities throughout the world. St. Nicholas is often represented
-bearing three purses, or golden balls, and these form the pawn-broker’s
-well-known sign, which is traced to this source as its origin&mdash;not, we
-should judge, from their resemblance to the charity of St. Nicholas, but
-emblematic of his lending in time of need.�</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Popular Notions and Whims.</span></p>
-
-<p>There was a superstition in Scotland against spinning or ploughing on
-Christmas; but the Calvinistic clergy, in contempt for all such
-superstitions, compelled their wives and daughters to spin, and their
-tenants to plough, on that day.</p>
-
-<p>It is a popular notion to the present time in Devonshire that if the sun
-shines bright at noon on Christmas day, there will be a plentiful crop of
-apples the following year.</p>
-
-<p>Bees were thought to sing in their hives on Christmas eve, and it was
-believed that bread baked then would never mould.</p>
-
-<p>So prevalent was the idea that all nature unites in celebrating the great
-event of Christ’s birth, that it was a well received opinion in some
-sections of the old world that the cattle fell on their knees at midnight
-on Christmas eve.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[Pg 320]</a></span></p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Ridiculous Superstitions.</span></p>
-
-<p class="poem">“Merlin! Merlin! turn again;<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Leave the oak-branch where it grew.</span><br />
-Seek no more the cress to gain,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Nor the herb of golden hue.�</span></p>
-
-<p>Merlin, the reputed great enchanter, flourished in Britain about the fifth
-century. He is said to have resided in great pomp at the court of “Good
-King Arthur.� You all know the beautiful rhyme about the latter, if not
-about “Merlin! Merlin!� etc.</p>
-
-<p class="poem">“When good King Arthur ruled the land,&mdash;<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">He was a goodly king,&mdash;</span><br />
-He stole three pecks of barley-meal<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">To make a bag pudding.�</span></p>
-
-<p>Sublime poetry! Easy mode of obtaining the barley-meal (or Scotch
-territory). Merlin attached many superstitious beliefs to some of our
-medicinal plants. The “cress� is supposed to be the mistletoe. “The herb
-of gold�&mdash;golden herb&mdash;was a rare plant, held in great esteem by the
-peasant women of Brittany, who affirmed that it shone like gold at a
-distance. It must be gathered by or before daybreak.</p>
-
-<p>The most ridiculous part of the affair was in the searching for the “herb
-of golden hue.� None but devout females, blessed by the priests for the
-occasion, were permitted the great privilege of gathering it. In order to
-be successful in the search, the privileged person started before
-daylight, barefooted, bareheaded, and <i>en chemise</i>. (Of course the priest
-knew the individual, and when she was going.) The root must not be cut or
-broken, but pulled up entire. If any one trod upon the plant, he or she
-would fall into a trance, when they could understand the language of fowls
-and animals&mdash;a belief not half as ridiculous as that of the present day,
-that a person may fall into a trance, and understand the language of the
-dead; yes, dead and decayed, the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[Pg 321]</a></span> organs of speech gone! Yet thousands
-believe such stuff to-day.</p>
-
-<p><i>The Mandrake.</i>&mdash;Great superstition was formerly attached to this root,
-and even now is, in some rural districts. The root often resembles the
-lower half of a human being, and it was credulously believed it would
-shriek and groan when pulled from its mother earth. This notion is
-expressed in Romeo and Juliet:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p class="poem">“Mandrakes, torn out of the earth,<br />
-That mortals, hearing them, run mad.�</p>
-
-<p>Again, in Henry VI.:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p class="poem">“Would curses kill, as doth the bitter mandrake’s groans.�</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 450px; height: 331px;"><img src="images/img079.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">GATHERING THE MANDRAKE.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>A favorite mode of uprooting this coveted plant&mdash;because of its defensive
-properties, when once gained&mdash;was to fasten cords to a dog’s neck, thence
-to the base of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[Pg 322]</a></span> stem of the plant, and sealing their own ears with wax
-to prevent hearing the groans, which was death or madness, they whipped
-the unfortunate dog till he drew out the roots, or was killed in the
-attempt; for the dog usually died then or soon after the cruel beating,
-and the shrieks of the mandrake were supposed to have caused his death.</p>
-
-<p>The Scabious, or “Devil’s bit,� was regarded with great superstition. “The
-old fantastic charmers,� said the quaint Gerarde, “say that the Devil bit
-away the greater part of this root for envy, because of its many virtues
-and benefits to mankind.� Dr. James Smith (1799) as quaintly observes,
-“The malice of the Devil has unfortunately been so successful, that no
-virtue can now be found in the remainder of the root or herb.�</p>
-
-<p><i>House Crickets.</i>&mdash;The superstition respecting these cheerful and harmless
-little <i>chirpers</i> is remarkable. Some consider their presence a lucky
-sign, others their absence more fortunate. To kill one, with some persons,
-is a sign of death in the house. Very strange! They, blind fools, do not
-see that the saying originated in the death of the poor little cricket.</p>
-
-<p>The following very remarkable occurrence was related to the writer, as
-having actually taken place at Providence, R. I., a few years since. Mrs.
-D., a respectable lady, residing in the city, was reported to have been
-followed about the house and up stairs by a “cricket,�&mdash;a wooden one, used
-for a foot-stool. People called at her residence to inquire into the truth
-of the matter; others even requested to see the remarkable phenomenon of a
-cricket or stool walking off on all fours, until the lady became so
-annoyed by the continual stream of credulous callers, that she inserted a
-notice in the city journals denying the truth of the strange rumor. It was
-supposed to have started from some neighbor’s seeing or hearing a house
-cricket when on a visit at the lady’s house.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[Pg 323]</a></span><i>The Bowing Images.</i>&mdash;A still more amusing story is related respecting the
-two images surmounting the wall each side of the gate at the residence of
-Professor Gammel, of Providence. A report became current among the
-school-boys of the city, that when the images <i>heard</i> the clock strike
-nine in the forenoon they bowed their heads. My informant said it was no
-unusual thing to see a dozen boys waiting, with books and slates, in front
-of the professor’s gate, to see the images bow at nine. Being late at
-school, the teacher would inquire,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“Where have you been lingering, that you are behind time at school?�</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 450px; height: 320px;"><img src="images/img080.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">“WAITING TO SEE THE IMAGES BOW�.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>“Been down to Professor Gammel’s, waitin’ to see the images bow.�</p>
-
-<p>Then the teacher drew his ferule or rod, and made them “bow� in submission
-to a smart whipping&mdash;a sequel anticipated by the older scholars who
-instituted the story.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[Pg 324]</a></span><i>House Spiders.</i>&mdash;Was there ever a child who was not taught, directly or
-indirectly, that house spiders were poisonous,&mdash;that their bite was
-instantaneous death? Was there ever a greater mistake? Many people have a
-superstitious terror of these harmless creatures. The bite of spiders is
-only poisonous to those insects which the divine economy seems to have
-created for them to destroy. It is possible, as by a fly, sometimes for a
-slight skin inflammation, less than a mosquito’s bite, to follow the sting
-of a spider on a very small child.</p>
-
-<p>Let me hereby disabuse the public mind of the repugnance or horror with
-which these little creatures are regarded. The Creator has evidently
-placed them here for the destruction of flies and other insects, which
-otherwise would completely overrun us. The fly is such a domestic
-creature, that he soon deserts a house where the family is long absent.
-The spider then removes also. (I have watched this proceeding, with no
-little interest, in the absence of my own family.) Therefore the spider
-was created to suppress a superabundance of insect life. When I have
-before stated this fact, the listener has been led to inquire why the
-flies were then made. We will not answer the suggestion of this “riddle�
-as the Irishman did (you know that he said, “To feed the spiders, to be
-sure�), but reply, that if this question is to arise in this connection,
-we may as well keep on our inquiry till we arrive at the greater riddle,
-“Why are <i>we</i> created?�&mdash;to which we have no space for reply.</p>
-
-<p>It is said that manufacturers of quill pens in London, being greatly
-annoyed by a species of moth which infests their quills and devours the
-feathers, and the common spider being endowed with an inordinate appetite
-for those same moths, the penmakers and spiders are on the best of terms,
-and an army of these much-maligned and persecuted insects encamp in each
-pen factory, and do good service to the cause of literature as well as
-trade, by protecting the quills.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">[Pg 325]</a></span> We may yet find that even mosquitos and
-bedbugs have their uses in the wise economy of nature.</p>
-
-<p>Now, when tidy housewifery requires that brush and broom should ruthlessly
-demolish the webs,&mdash;the wonderful work and mechanism of the one species of
-house spider,&mdash;let it be done as a necessity, not with a feeling of
-repugnance to the harmless little insect; and let children be taught the
-truthful lesson that nothing is made in vain.</p>
-
-<p><i>The House Cat</i>, with many, is regarded with unaccountable superstition.
-It goes with the witch, particularly the black cat. No witch ever could
-exist without one. This is usually the species that haunts naughty boys in
-their dreams after they have eaten too heartily of cake, and other
-indigestible stuff, at evening.</p>
-
-<p>Cats are as old as time. At least their existence dates back as far as
-man’s in history, and they were formerly regarded as a sacred animal.</p>
-
-<p>In ancient Egypt we find that Master Tomas, with his round face and rugged
-whiskers, symbolized the sun. Preserved in the British Museum are abundant
-proofs of the reverence and superstition with which the feline race was
-regarded by the Egyptians. Here several of these revered Grimalkins are
-mummied in spices, and perfumes, and balsams, in which they have survived
-the unknown centuries of the past, “to contrast the value of a dead cat in
-the land of the Pharaohs with the fate of such relics in modern times,
-ignominiously consigned to the scavenger’s cart, or feloniously hanging
-upon a tree, the scarecrow of the orchard.�</p>
-
-<p>Diodorus, the Greek writer, 1st century B. C., informs us that such was
-the superstitious veneration with which the Egyptians regarded cats, that
-no one could ruffle the fur of Tom or Tabby with impunity, and that any
-man killing a cat was put to death. (O, what a country it must have been
-to sleep in!) In Ptolemy’s time, while the Roman army was established in
-Egypt, one of the Romans killed a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">[Pg 326]</a></span> cat, when the people flew to his house,
-and dragged him forth, and neither the fear of the soldiers nor the
-influence of the prince could deliver the unfortunate cat-slayer from the
-wrath of the infuriated mob.</p>
-
-<p>Mohammed had a superstition for cats, and was said to have been constantly
-attended by one. A cat hospital was founded at Damascus in respect to the
-prophet’s predilection, which Baumgarten, the German professor (1714 to
-1762) found filled with feline inmates. Turkey maintained several public
-establishments of this kind.</p>
-
-<p>Howell the Good, king of Wales, 10th century, legislated for the cat
-propagation, and it would seem that the race was limited, since a week old
-kitten sold for a penny,&mdash;a great deal of money in those days,&mdash;and
-fourpence for one old enough to catch a mouse. The following ludicrous
-penalty was attached to a cat-stealer:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“If any person stole a cat that guarded the prince’s granaries he was to
-forfeit a milch ewe, fleece, and lamb; or, in lieu of these, as much wheat
-as, when poured upon the cat, suspended by the tail, her head touching the
-floor, would form a heap high enough to bury her to the tail tip.�</p>
-
-<p>This would seem rather hard on poor pussy, even to threatening her
-suffocation.</p>
-
-<p>Huc, in his “Chinese Empire,� tells us that the Chinese peasantry are
-accustomed to tell the noon hour from the narrowing and dilation of the
-pupils of pussy’s eyes; they are said to be drawn down to a hair’s-breadth
-precisely at twelve o’clock. This horological utility, however, by no
-means gives her a fixed tenure in a Chinese home. There she enters into
-the category of edible animals, and, having served the purpose of a
-cat-clock, is seen hanging side by side with the carcasses of dogs, rats,
-and mice in the shambles of every city and town of the celestial empire.</p>
-
-<p>Descending to the middle ages, a mal-odor of magic taints the fair fame of
-our <i>protégés</i>, more especially attaching<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">[Pg 327]</a></span> itself to black or brindled
-cats, which were commonly found to be the “familiars� of witches; or,
-rather, their “familiars� were supposed to take the form of these animals;
-and hence, in nearly all judicial records of these unhappy delusionists,
-demons in the shape of cats are sure to figure. The witches in “Macbeth�
-(for what impression of the times he lived in has Shakspeare lost?)
-awaited the triple mewing of the brindled cat to begin their incantations;
-and more scientific pretenders to a knowledge of the occult arts are
-usually represented as attended in their laboratories by a feline
-companion.</p>
-
-<p>Fragments of a superstitious faith in the magical, or what was till
-comparatively recent times so nearly allied with it, the medicinal
-attributes of the animal, still surviving in certain rustic and remote
-districts of England, where the brains of a cat of the proper color
-(black, of course) are esteemed a cure for epilepsy; and where, within our
-memory, such a faith induced a wretched being, in the shape of woman, mad
-with despair and rage, to tear the living heart from one of these animals,
-that, by sticking it full of pins and roasting it, she might bring back
-the regard of a man, brutal and perfidious as herself. Such formulæ are
-frequently to be met with in the works of ancient naturalists and
-physicians, and were, doubtlessly, handed down from generation to
-generation, and locally acted upon in desperate cases.</p>
-
-<p>It is on evidence that more than one old woman has been condemned by our
-wise ancestors to pay the penalty of her presumed league with Satan in a
-fiery death, upon no better testimony than the fact that Harper,
-Rutterkin, or Robin had been seen entering her dwelling in the shape of a
-black cat. But if, in ancient times, old women, and young ones, too, have
-been brought to grief through the cats they fostered, certain it is that
-these creatures have suffered horrible reprisal at the hands of certain
-vagrants of the sex in our own.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">[Pg 328]</a></span>Our <i>Felis domestica</i> has, for a long time, labored under the serious
-disadvantage of a traditional character. Buffon sums her up as a
-“faithless friend, brought in to oppose a still more insidious enemy;� and
-Goldsmith&mdash;who, it is well known, became a writer of natural history “upon
-compulsion,� and had neither time nor opportunity for personal observation
-of the habits and instincts of the creatures he so charmingly
-describes&mdash;followed in the track of the great naturalist, and echoes this
-ungracious definition.</p>
-
-<p>Boys have a natural contempt for cats, and picking them up by the tail,
-tossing them over the wall, or tying old tin pots to their caudal end, to
-see how fast they can run, are among their most trifling sports at the
-expense of Tom and Tabby. I have known a cruel boy to roll a cat in
-turpentine, and set fire to her. Few men have any feeling but repugnance
-towards the feline race. The exceptions are in the past.</p>
-
-<p>Cardinal Wolsey’s cat sat on the arm of his chair of state, or took up her
-position at the back of his throne when he held audiences; and the cat of
-the poet Petrarch, after death, occupied, embalmed, a niche in his studio;
-indeed, poets appear to be more susceptible of pussy’s virtues and graces
-than other persons; and she has, on many occasions, been made the subject
-of their verse, the sentiment of which fully expresses a sense of the
-maligned animal’s faithfulness and affection.</p>
-
-<p>Tasso, reduced to such a strait of poverty as to be obliged to borrow a
-crown from a friend to subsist on through a week, turns for mute sympathy
-to his faithful cat, and disburdens his case in a charming sonnet, in
-which he entreats her to assist him through the night with the lustre of
-her moon-like eyes, having no candles by which he could see to write his
-verses.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">[Pg 329]</a></span></p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 600px; height: 393px;"><img src="images/img081.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">SPORT FOR THE BOYS BUT DEATH FOR THE CAT.</p>
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">[Pg 330]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">[Pg 331]</a></span>An editor facetiously says, “We have here among us at this time an
-addition to the M. D.’s in the shape of two cat doctors, who have the
-terrible idea that they were put upon this earth for the sole object of
-doctoring cats, and now the mortality list shows, at the least
-calculation, that no less than eighteen cats and two kittens have
-travelled to that bourn from which no passengers have ever yet returned,
-and all because they were the unlucky sons and daughters of ye night
-prowlers who had been sacrificed for the good of the future cat
-generation.�</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Present Errors.</span></p>
-
-<p>I think some reason for the present errors and superstitions attached to
-cats, may be attributed to the <i>cat</i>-adioptric qualities of their eyes and
-fur. At night their eyes often shine with phosphoric light, and rubbing
-their fur with the human hand causes it to emit electric sparks,
-particularly in very cold weather. They are supposed to partake of
-ghostly, or witch-like qualities, because they can see in the night time.
-Fish scales, as well as the flesh of fish, contain a phosphoric
-principle&mdash;there is no witchery about such&mdash;which can be seen best through
-the dark. The fur of other animals besides the cat contain electric
-qualities. Humans possess it to a greater or lesser extent. The eye of the
-cat&mdash;as also the owl&mdash;is made, in the divine economy, expressly for night
-prowling. The back, or reflecting coat (retina), is white, or light, that
-it may reflect dark objects. In man, and most animals, it is dark. A
-light-complexioned person can (<i>cæteris paribus</i>) see better at night than
-one who is dark. In a strong light, it is reversed. So much for
-cat-optrics.</p>
-
-<p>Our cat-alogue would be incomplete without this cat-agraph, and we should
-“cat-ch it,� hereafter, from some cat-echist, if we here discontinued our
-cat-enary cat-egory, without some little cat-ch relative to the domestic
-and redeeming qualities of this unappreciated cat-tle (excuse the
-cat-achresis).</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">[Pg 332]</a></span>Webster says the cat is a deceitful animal. Webster don’t know. She
-certainly has large cautiousness and secretiveness. Man, with the same
-secretiveness, with the same neglect and abuse that Tom receives, will
-become doubly deceitful. Treat him kindly and affectionately, and he will
-return it. Subject to everybody’s kicks, cuffs, and suspicion, the cat
-necessarily becomes shy, ugly, and appears deceitful. So does a child. The
-cat is fond of sweet scents, and pries into drawers and cupboards, oftener
-to gratify her sense of smell than taste. Cats are very fond of music, and
-occasionally go upon the piano keys to make the strings vibrate. Depending
-upon their own exertions for a livelihood, they become thieves. They may,
-by kind instruction, soon be taught to know and keep their own places.</p>
-
-<p>The healthy cat is neat and systematic. Children may be taught a useful
-lesson by noticing that the tabby washes her face and hands after meals,
-and never comes to her repast with them dirty.</p>
-
-<p>Cats are sometimes good fish-catchers, as well as mousers and
-bird-catchers, often plunging into water to secure their favorite aliment.
-Their love of praise is exhibited in their general tendency to bring in
-their prey, and place it at your feet for your approbation. Give them the
-notice due them, and they will redouble their efforts.</p>
-
-<p>It is a vulgar error to suppose their washing over the head is a sign of
-rain, or that you can tell the time of tide by their eye-pupils, or that
-they can go through a solid wall, have nine lives, or suck away a child’s
-breath.</p>
-
-<p>The cat, as a sanitary means, should be domesticated, especially with
-scrofulous children and females. Either by their absorbent or repelling
-powers they assist nature in eradicating that almost universal
-disease&mdash;scrofula.</p>
-
-<p>Teach children that “God has created nothing in vain,� and nothing which
-will harm them if rightly used.</p>
-
-<p>Here we bid good by to Tom and Tabby.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333">[Pg 333]</a></span><i>The Owl.</i>&mdash;The superstition which has hung about this very harmless bird
-is liable to soon cease in the extermination of the creature itself.</p>
-
-<p>“Was you born in the woods to be scared by an owl?� my grandmother once
-sarcastically inquired when I was frightened from the barn by an old owl
-inquiring,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“Who&mdash;a’&mdash;yoo?�</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 450px; height: 304px;"><img src="images/img082.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">“WHO&mdash;A’&mdash;YOO?�</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>I acknowledge I was a great coward; but I had heard the old women affirm
-more than once that it was a sign of ill luck or death to hear one of
-these cat-faced, cat-seeing, mousing creatures cry by day; so I fled from
-the barn, while the old owl turned his head sidewise, as he sat on a beam,
-trying to penetrate the light, repeating, “Who&mdash;a’&mdash;yoo?� It was a sign of
-death, for my uncle shot the owl.</p>
-
-<p>Magpies are made the subject of superstition. To see a single one
-strutting across your path is a sad mishap. There is luck in three, or
-more, however.</p>
-
-<p><i>Holy Water.</i>&mdash;Church superstitions and rites are not<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334">[Pg 334]</a></span> within our
-province, unless they are objectionable in a sanitary point of view. If
-the holy water is clean, it is just as good as any other pure water; but I
-have seen it poured upon my Irish patients&mdash;years ago in Hartford and
-elsewhere&mdash;when there were “wrigglers� in it from long exposure in an
-unstopped bottle or tea-cup. I approve of holy water, therefore, in large
-quantities, with other rites, tending to a sanitary object. Have plenty of
-water&mdash;with soap.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img083.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">THE PROPER USE OF “HOLY WATER.�</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p><i>Bells.</i>&mdash;Few useful articles have been held in greater reverence and
-superstition. Their origin is of great antiquity. The first Jewish priests
-adorned their blue tunics with golden bells, as also did the Persian
-kings. The Greeks put bells upon criminals going to execution, as a
-warning, as it was an ill omen to see a criminal and his executioner
-walking. The superstition respecting bells began more particularly with
-the tenth century, when the priests exorcised and blessed them, giving
-them the names of saints, making the rabble believe that when they were
-rung for those ceremonies they had the power to drive devils out of the
-air, making them quake and tremble; also to restrain the power of the
-devil over a corpse; hence bell-ringing at funerals.</p>
-
-<p>There are many legends wherein the evil spirits’ dislike to bells is
-promulgated.</p>
-
-<p>As “the devil hates holy water,� so he does bell-ringing.</p>
-
-<p>Dr. Warner, a clergyman of the Church of England, in his “Hampshire,�
-enumerates the virtues of a bell, by translating some lines from the
-“Helpe to Discourse.�</p>
-
-<p class="poem"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335">[Pg 335]</a></span>
-“Men’s deaths I tell by doleful knell;<br />
-Lightning and thunder I break asunder;<br />
-On Sabbath all to church I call;<br />
-The sleepy head I raise from bed;<br />
-The winds so fierce I doe disperse;<br />
-Men’s cruel rage I do asswage.�</p>
-
-<p>I think the beautiful music discoursed by a chime of bells would be more
-effectual “men’s cruel rage� to tranquillize, than a battery of seven
-cannons. Aside from all superstitious notions, there is an irresistible
-charm about the music of bells, and I rejoice that they are gradually
-being redeemed from the superstition and monopoly of one ignorant
-denomination, as the sacred cross may be, to the use and blessing of all
-mankind.</p>
-
-<p><i>Fear of Thunder and Lightning.</i>&mdash;These have ever been sources of
-superstitious terror. The ancients considered thunder and lightning as
-direct manifestations of divine wrath; hence whatever the lightning struck
-was accursed. The corpses of persons so killed were allowed to remain
-where they fell, to the great inconvenience, often, of the living.</p>
-
-<p>The electricity which plays about high poles and spires was formerly
-attributed to spirits. “Fiery spirits or devils,� says old Burton, “are
-such as commonly work by blazing stars, fire-drakes,� etc. “Likewise they
-counterfeit suns and moons ofttimes, and sit on ships’ masts.� The
-electric sparks upon the metal points of soldiers’ spears were regarded as
-omens of no small importance.</p>
-
-<p>In some parts of Europe, up to the last century, it was a custom to ring
-bells during a thunder-storm, to drive away evil spirits; but this act
-often was the cause of death, by the exposure of persons to the points of
-attraction, and the conducting power of moist ropes and metallic wires. On
-the night of April 15, 1718, the lightning struck twenty-four steeples
-while the bells were ringing. In July of the following year, while the
-bells were tolling at a funeral celebration<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336">[Pg 336]</a></span> in the Chateau Vieux,
-lightning struck the steeple, killing nine persons and injuring
-twenty-two. Statistics show that numerous deaths were caused by
-bell-ringing in England and France, during the last century, to drive away
-imaginary spirits.</p>
-
-<p>The saint usually invoked on these occasions was St. Barnabas.</p>
-
-<p>The houseleek and bay tree were supposed to afford protection from
-lightning.</p>
-
-<p>“The thunder has soured the beer,� or the milk, is a common saying; and I
-once saw a piece of iron lying across the beer-barrel to keep away
-thunder. A heavy atmosphere may suddenly sour beer or milk.</p>
-
-<p>Creeping three times under the communion table while the chimes were
-striking, at midnight, was believed to cure fits, as late as 1835.</p>
-
-<p>Glass, stone, and feathers are non-conductors to electricity. Persons very
-susceptible to electric currents need give themselves no fear, and no more
-caution need be taken than we take to protect ourselves against other
-objects of danger. Lightning will not strike one out of doors, unless he
-is near a point of high attraction,&mdash;under a tree, or pole,&mdash;or has about
-him, exposed, some metallic substance, or some very wet article. Houses
-under or near tall trees, or with suitable lightning-rods, are safe
-enough. A feather bed, particularly one insulated by glass-rollers, or
-plates, under the posts, and not touching the wall, is a perfectly safe
-place for invalids and nervous people who are susceptible to electricity.
-The pulse of such is often increased in frequency before a thunder-storm.
-Let such first have no fear. See God in the storm and lightning as only a
-saving power. I know a girl who “tears around like mad� for a man at the
-approach of a thunder-storm. When finding one, she feels perfectly safe.
-If not, she hides in the cellar till the storm abates.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_337" id="Page_337">[Pg 337]</a></span><i>Unlucky Days.</i>&mdash;The superstition respecting unlucky Friday is well known.
-Some cynical bachelors say it is unlucky because named for a woman. Monday
-was also so named. I can find no account of this superstition until after
-the first century A. D. It is said that our Saviour was crucified on
-Friday&mdash;a day of fear and trembling, of earthquakes and divers remarkable
-phenomena; but that day is now as uncertain as the day of his birth, in
-the various changes of the calendar, heathen naming of the days to suit
-their notions, and the great uncertainty of chronology. No doubt Christ
-arose from the dead on the then first day of the week, and was crucified
-the third day before the resurrection; but what day of our present week
-who can tell? If on Friday, it should be counted far from an unlucky day.
-Sailors are particularly superstitious as to sailing on Friday,
-notwithstanding Columbus sailed on Friday, and discovered America on that
-day.</p>
-
-<p>The French believe in unlucky Friday. Lord Byron, Dr. Johnson, and other
-authors and poets, are said to have so believed. Shakspeare, Scott,
-Goldsmith, Bacon, Sir Francis Drake, Napoleon, and many other great men,
-were pretty thoroughly tinged with superstition; the latter, it is said,
-believed in “luck,� or destiny.</p>
-
-<p>The future of children is yet believed to depend much upon the day of the
-week on which they are born.</p>
-
-<p class="poem">“Monday’s child is fair in face;<br />
-Tuesday’s child is full of grace;<br />
-Wednesday’s child is full of woe;<br />
-Thursday’s child has far to go;<br />
-Friday’s child works hard for its living;<br />
-Saturday’s child is loving and giving;<br />
-And a child that’s born on Christmas day<br />
-Is fair, and wise, and good, and gay.�<a name='fna_7' id='fna_7' href='#f_7'><small>[7]</small></a></p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_338" id="Page_338">[Pg 338]</a></span>This, of course, is all nonsense&mdash;or rather the belief in such signs&mdash;and
-one day is equally as good as another for nature’s work, or in which to
-fulfil the requirements of God and nature. Let no mother, or her who is
-about to become a mother, put faith in old nurses’ whims. Their brains are
-full of all such fantastic notions, which are too often revealed in the
-sick room, and the effect is often detrimental to the peace and happiness
-of the mother, and at times dangerous to the life of the invalid.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Superstition of a Kiss.</span></p>
-
-<p>The monks of the middle ages&mdash;great theorists&mdash;divided the kiss into
-fifteen distinct and separate orders.</p>
-
-<p>1. The decorous or modest kiss.</p>
-
-<p>2. The diplomatic, or kiss of policy.</p>
-
-<p>3. The spying kiss, to ascertain if a woman had drank wine.</p>
-
-<p>4. The slave kiss.</p>
-
-<p>5. The kiss infamous&mdash;a church penance.</p>
-
-<p>6. The slipper kiss, practised towards tyrants.</p>
-
-<p>7. The judicial kiss.</p>
-
-<p>8. The feudal kiss.</p>
-
-<p>9. The religious kiss (kissing the cross).</p>
-
-<p>10. The academical kiss (on joining a solemn brotherhood).</p>
-
-<p>11. The hand kiss.</p>
-
-<p>12. The Judas kiss.</p>
-
-<p>13. The medical kiss&mdash;for the purpose of healing some sickness.</p>
-
-<p>14. The kiss of etiquette.</p>
-
-<p>15. The kiss of love&mdash;the only real kiss. But this was also to be
-variously considered; viz., given by ardent enthusiasm, as by lovers; by
-matrimonial affection; or, lastly, between two men&mdash;an awful kiss, tasting
-like sandwiches without butter or meat.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_339" id="Page_339">[Pg 339]</a></span></p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 450px; height: 335px;"><img src="images/img084.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">THE MODEST KISS.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">The End is not yet.</span></p>
-
-<p>The reign of superstition is not yet ended.</p>
-
-<p>It is impossible for any great catastrophe, involving loss of property or
-life, to occur without a certain superstitious class harping upon the
-event as a judgment of God upon the wickedness of the victims. If a great
-city is swept away by the devouring elements, we hear the cry that “an
-offended Deity has visited the ‘Babylon of the West’ with his vengeance
-for her wickedness.� Some penurious wretch takes it up, and says, “I’ll
-give nothing, then, to the victims of the fire. It is God’s judgment; I
-won’t interfere.� A rich man is murdered in cold blood, and the same howl
-goes up, “It is the judgment of God upon him for heaping up riches.� The
-fact of his riches going to thousands of poor artisans, actors, musicians,
-widows, orphans, and “western Babylonian sufferers,� goes for nothing with
-such people. These<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_340" id="Page_340">[Pg 340]</a></span> same superstitious wretches have not yet done
-asserting that the assassination of President Lincoln was in judgment for
-his attending a theatre.</p>
-
-<p>Twenty-five persons were killed in a church at Bologna, recently, while
-kneeling in prayer. Was this an expression of God’s wrath upon
-church-goers?</p>
-
-<p>“The laws by which God governs the universe are inexorable. The frost will
-blight, the fire destroy, the storms will ravage, disease and death will
-do their appointed work, though narrow-mindedness and bigotry misconstrue
-their intent. All things are for good. If natural laws are violated, the
-known and inevitable result follows.�</p>
-
-<hr style="width: 25%;" />
-
-<p>I have already exceeded the space to which this chapter was limited, and
-there are a thousand superstitious beliefs and practices which are not
-herein enumerated nor explained. But rest assured that nothing exists
-without its uses, without the knowledge of the divine Author, and nothing
-supernatural does or ever did exist amongst natural beings. There is
-nothing within this world but what God has placed for man’s good. There is
-nothing here past man’s ability to fathom. God is love.</p>
-
-<p>What there is beyond this world, we shall find out quite soon enough.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img085.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
-<hr style="width: 50%;" />
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_341" id="Page_341">[Pg 341]</a></span></p>
-<h2><a name="XIII" id="XIII"></a>XIII.</h2>
-<p class="title">TRAVELLING DOCTORS.</p>
-
-<p class="center">“His fancy lay to travelling.�&mdash;<span class="smcap">L’Estrange.</span></p>
-
-<div class="note"><p class="hang"><small>PUBLIC CONFIDENCE(?).&mdash;THE EYE OF THE PUBLIC.&mdash;A BAD
-SPECIMEN.&mdash;“REMARKABLE TUMOR.�&mdash;“THE SINGING DOCTOR.�&mdash;CAUGHT IN A
-STORM.&mdash;BIG PUFFING.&mdash;A SPLENDID “TURNOUT.�&mdash;WHO WAS HE?&mdash;A SUDDEN
-DISAPPEARANCE.&mdash;THE “SPANKING DOCTOR.�&mdash;A FAIR VICTIM.&mdash;LOOSE
-LAWS.&mdash;DR. PULSEFEEL.&mdash;IMPUDENCE.&mdash;A FIDDLING DOCTOR.&mdash;AN
-ENCORE.&mdash;“CHEEK.�&mdash;VARIOUS WAYS OF ADVERTISING.</small></p></div>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p>One might say, with some propriety, that these characters&mdash;travelling
-doctors&mdash;should have been classed under the heading of our first chapter,
-as “humbugs;� but if we should put all under that head that belong there,
-O, where would the chapter end? As “all is not gold that glitters,� so
-neither, on the other hand, is there anything so bad that no virtue can be
-found in it. No heart is so utterly depraved as to prevent any good
-thought or deed from emanating therefrom, though sometimes the good is
-quite imperceptible to us short-sighted mortals.</p>
-
-<p>As the majority of physicians “turned� out of our medical colleges, or of
-those in practice in our cities, are unfit to have intrusted to their care
-the health and lives of our families, friends, or ourselves, so the
-majority of travelling doctors are to be reckoned equally untrustworthy;
-no more so.</p>
-
-<p>If the blessed Saviour should return to earth, and travel from town to
-city, as he did eighteen hundred years ago, healing the sick, I really
-think there would be a less number believing in him now than then. Less
-gratitude for<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_342" id="Page_342">[Pg 342]</a></span> his marvellous cures there could not be; for then some of
-the miserable wretches, whom he healed free of charge, did not so much as
-return him thanks. This may be said of some of our patients at this day.</p>
-
-<p>Let a medical man of ever so great reputation travel, and he is lost. A
-band of angels, on a healing mission, would stand no chance with a people
-who only expect humbugs to visit them. The Shakspearian inquiry would at
-once and repeatedly be put,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“How chance it they travel? Their <i>residence</i>, both in reputation and
-profit, was better both ways!�</p>
-
-<p>Let us view a few travelling doctors through the <i>public</i> eye:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p class="poem">“So shall I dare to give him shape and hue,<br />
-And bring his mazy-running tricks to view;<br />
-From humbug’s minions catch the scattered rays,<br />
-That in one focus they may brightly blaze.<br />
-<br />
-“I’d give our (nameless) knight, before he starts,<br />
-A tireless mind, where never Conscience smarts;<br />
-An oily tongue, which word should never speak<br />
-To call a blush to Satan’s brazen cheek;<br />
-With, yet, a power of lungs the weak to move,<br />
-Which lung-quiescent ... might approve;<br />
-A changing face, which e’en might Homer feign,<br />
-A ton of brass for every ounce of brain.<br />
-<br />
-“Then launch him forth, right cunningly to rage<br />
-Through the thin shams of this enlightened age;<br />
-To tell the people they are lords of earth,<br />
-And pick their pockets while he lauds their worth;<br />
-Drug men with folly, which no clime engrosses,<br />
-And sense deal out in homeopathic doses;<br />
-And making goodness to his projects bend,<br />
-With all right aims an ultra spirit blend.<br />
-<strong><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span></strong><br />
-“He leagues with those who number in their trade<br />
-A falsehood told for every sixpence made;<br />
-To Mammon mortgage all they have of heart,<br />
-To keep their wealth, with priceless honor part.<br />
-The fear of God the smallest of their fears,<br />
-Rolling in wealth, but bankrupt in ideas;<br />
-To save their purse, their souls contented lose,<br />
-And count all right, if worldly gain accrues;<br />
-Who, when they die, no memory leave behind,<br />
-But in the curses of their cheated kind!<br />
-<br />
-“With these Sir Humbug riches seeks to gain,<br />
-And feels his way through lab’rinths of chicane;<br />
-Embezzles, swindles, lies, until at last<br />
-The eye of Justice on his crime is cast,<br />
-When, drugged with wealth, he quits our plundered shore,<br />
-And Texas boasts one fiery hero more.�</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_343" id="Page_343">[Pg 343]</a></span></p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 330px; height: 500px;"><img src="images/img086.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">THE TUMOR DOCTOR CONTEMPLATES SUICIDE.</p>
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_344" id="Page_344">[Pg 344]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_345" id="Page_345">[Pg 345]</a></span>The worst specimen of a travelling doctor I ever knew first appeared at
-R., one of the principal towns of Vermont, a few years ago. His name was
-Mariam; or that was what he called himself. He was a Canadian by birth,
-about twenty-five years of age, short, dark-complexioned, and claimed to
-be the seventh son of somebody. He was very illiterate, not being able to
-write a prescription, or his name, for that matter, when he came to R.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 228px; height: 450px;"><img src="images/img087.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">MARIAM, THE TUMOR DOCTOR.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>I visited his rooms at the hotel, after he had been in town some weeks,
-and noticed, among other things, that his table was strewn with sheets of
-paper, upon which he had been practising writing his signature. He opened
-here boldly. He sent out thousands of circulars in the various trains of
-cars running from R., distributing<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_346" id="Page_346">[Pg 346]</a></span> them in person, on the Poor Richard’s
-principle, that “if you want your work done, do it; if not, send.� He
-inserted cards in the two village papers, containing the most illiterate
-and preposterous statements, and hundreds flocked to see him. Imagine his
-knowledge, for he assured me, to whom he opened his heart in confidence,
-that he never read a page of a medical work in his life.</p>
-
-<p>He first claimed to cure by the laying on of hands; but as he possessed no
-magnetic powers, he gradually abandoned that deception. As he could not
-write a prescription, and knew nothing of compounding medicines, he would
-go with a patient to a druggist’s, and looking over the names of drugs on
-the bottles exposed on the shelves, order two or three articles at random,
-and, as one druggist assured me, of the most opposite properties; such as
-tincture of iron and iodide of potash, etc. (<span class="smcap">Note.</span> The acid in the M.
-Tinct. iron sets the iodine free.)</p>
-
-<p>His clothes were very seedy, “and the crown of his hat went flip flap,�
-and his toes were healthy, “being able to get out to the air,� when he
-came to R. Soon he was “in luck,� and a nice suit of clothes, a new silk
-hat, and boots, speedily graced his not inelegant person. I saw him both
-before and after the transformation.</p>
-
-<p>The following is a true copy of one of his certificates, taken from his
-circular:&mdash;</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot"><p class="center">“<span class="smcap">A Great Cure of an Ovarian Tumor!</span></p>
-
-<p>“This is to certify that Dr. Mariam cured me of an immense <i>ovarian
-tumor of the left shoulder</i>, weighing five pounds and a half, from
-which I suffered,� etc., etc.</p>
-
-<p><span style="margin-left: 2em;">(Signed)<span class="spacer">&nbsp;</span>Mrs. &mdash;&mdash; &mdash;&mdash;.</span></p>
-
-<p>“<span class="smcap">Malone, N. Y.</span>�</p></div>
-
-<p>On this item being ridiculed in the papers of R., Mariam changed it to a
-“rose cancer,� and continued the certificate.</p>
-
-<p>Mariam had been practising in Malone, N. Y., also at Whitehall, where, I
-was informed by a newspaper man, he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_347" id="Page_347">[Pg 347]</a></span> was arrested for obtaining money
-under false pretences. He, however, escaped and fled, to practise his
-deceptions elsewhere. It was reported that he shuffled off his mortal coil
-by finally taking two ounces of laudanum, after the civil authorities had
-placed him comfortably in the county jail, where he had the pleasure of
-passing many days in viewing the world through an iron-barred window, and
-reflecting on his eventful career.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">The Singing Doctor.</span></p>
-
-<p>In remarkable contrast with the above described ignoramus, we present the
-following description, from two contributors, of an extraordinary
-personage, known for a time as “The Singing Doctor.�</p>
-
-<p>The “Hoosac Valley News� tells this story:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“One day late in the autumn of 1860, while the rain poured in torrents,
-and the wind howled fearfully along the hills of old Plymouth, I was
-obliged to drive to Watertown. The ‘Branch’ was swollen to the river’s
-size, and foamed madly down over the sombre rocks, while above my head, on
-the other side of the road, the trees rocked and swayed, as though about
-to fall into the seething, roaring waters below.</p>
-
-<p>“Above, or mingled with the clashing of the elements, I heard some voice,
-as if singing. It struck me with wonder. I stopped to listen. It became
-more distinct, as if approaching. What was it? Who could it be, singing
-amid the fearful tempest?</p>
-
-<p>“In the midst of my surmising, the object of my wonder came in sight,
-around a turn in the road just ahead of me.</p>
-
-<p>“It was the Singing Doctor, whom I instantly recognized by his little old
-white horse, as well as by his own voice, to which I had before listened.
-The little animal was drenched like a ‘drowned rat.’ The doctor, in his
-open buggy, with no umbrella,&mdash;for the sweeping wind precluded the
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_348" id="Page_348">[Pg 348]</a></span>possibility of holding one,&mdash;and the driving rain pelting mercilessly
-upon his face and head, was singing.</p>
-
-<p>“‘You must be a happy man,’ I exclaimed, ‘to be singing amid this awful
-storm.’</p>
-
-<p>“‘Why not?’ he replied. ‘It is always better to be singing than sighing;’
-and we passed on through the dangerous defile, and separated....</p>
-
-<p>“Last summer, as I journeyed through the Green Mountain State on a
-pleasure excursion, I met, on a romantic mountain pass, a magnificent
-turnout,&mdash;a splendid top carriage, drawn by four beautiful, jet black
-Morgan mares,&mdash;which did not attract my attention so much, however, as the
-music within the carriage. It was the Singing Doctor again, with his two
-little daughters, singing.</p>
-
-<p>“The handsome and good-natured driver offered me the best half of the
-road; but still I lingered till the last notes of the song died away, when
-I drove past the ‘Sanatorian,’ wondering to myself what singing had to do
-with his increasing prosperity.�</p>
-
-<p>The remainder of the sketch is from the pen of a lady in Vermont:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“I think it was during the spring of 1867 that our little ‘city on the
-lake’ was visited by the above remarkable character. We are often visited
-by migratory physicians, who are usually of the ‘come-and-go’ order; but
-this one burst upon us like a comet, with dazzling splendor, briefly
-announced, but at once proclaimed his determination of returning with the
-regularity of the full moon&mdash;repeating his visits every month. Few
-believed his last arrangement could be carried out, as his predecessors
-had generally fleeced the invalid public to their utmost at one visit, and
-if they ever again appeared, it would be under another name and phase. It
-soon became evident that one visit could not repay the outlay, for no
-ready posting-board was large enough to hold the agent’s posters, which
-were printed in strips some twenty-five feet in length, and his
-advertisements occupied one, two, or more columns of the public journals,
-while he flooded the houses with his pictorial circulars.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_349" id="Page_349">[Pg 349]</a></span></p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 600px; height: 397px;"><img src="images/img088.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">THE SINGING DOCTOR.</p>
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_350" id="Page_350">[Pg 350]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_351" id="Page_351">[Pg 351]</a></span>“He was merely announced as ‘The Sanatorian,’ but was indorsed (true or
-false?) by some of New England’s most respectable people. He came in grand
-style, as the papers briefly announced, thus:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“‘<i>The Sanatorian.</i> This distinguished physician proposes visiting us on
-the 18th inst.... The doctor comes in great style.... He has the finest
-carriage, and the gayest four black Morgan horses we have ever had the
-pleasure of riding after.’</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img089.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">THE SANATORIAN’S TURNOUT.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>“The driver, a handsome fellow, with full brown whiskers, curling hair,
-and a ‘heavenly blue eye,’ had taken the editor and writer of this last
-paragraph out to an airing. The team was photographed by the artists, and
-many of the best citizens had the pleasure of a ride in the easy carriage,
-and behind the swift ponies.</p>
-
-<p>“The doctor usually remained <i>incog.</i> to the public. If they wished to see
-him, they must go to his ‘parlors’ at the best hotels. They did go. And
-now the most remarkable part of the affair remains to be recorded. An
-editor who<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_352" id="Page_352">[Pg 352]</a></span> interviewed him reports thus: ‘The doctor rocks in a
-rocking-chair,&mdash;in fact, never sits in anything else,&mdash;or arises and walks
-the floor, and instantly, <i>at a glance</i>, tells every patient each pain and
-ache better than the patient could describe them himself. ‘Are you a
-clairvoyant?’ the editor asked.</p>
-
-<p>“‘<i>Faugh! No, sir.</i> Clairvoyancy is a humbug; merely power of mind over
-mind. A clairvoyant can go no farther than your <i>own</i> knowledge leads him,
-unless he guesses the rest,’ was his emphatic reply.</p>
-
-<p>“The same patients, disguised, visited him twice, but he would tell the
-same story to them as before. His diagnosis was truly wonderful.</p>
-
-<p>“‘What is your mode of treatment, or what school do you represent?’</p>
-
-<p>“‘There hangs my “school,�’ he would reply, pointing to a New York college
-diploma. ‘That, however, cures nobody. What cures one patient kills
-another. My opathy is to cure my patient by <i>any means</i>, regardless of
-“schools.�’</p>
-
-<p>“To some he gave ‘nothing but water,’ the patients affirmed; to others,
-pills, powders, syrups, or prescriptions. Well, he came the next month, to
-our surprise, and to the joy of most of his patients. He did the greatest
-amount of advertising on the first visit, doing less and less puffing each
-time. The rich, as well as the poor, visited him. He charged all one
-dollar. Then, if they declined treatment, he was satisfied; but if they
-doubted, or were sceptical, he refused all prescription. He advertised
-quite as much by telling one man he was past all help, and would die in
-eight weeks, which he did, as by curing the mayor of the city of a cough
-that jeoparded his life. If a poor woman had no money, he treated her just
-as cheerfully. Men he would not. His cures are said to have been
-remarkable. He made some eleven visits, and his patrons increased at each
-visit; but the novelty wore off before he disappeared. He<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_353" id="Page_353">[Pg 353]</a></span> was said to be
-an excellent musician, an author and composer, a man who was well read (a
-physician here who often conversed with him so informed the writer), could
-translate Latin and French, and converse with the mutes. When the day
-closed, he would see no more patients, but devoted his time to friends, to
-writing, or to music. Often the hotel parlor would be thronged at evening
-with the musical portion of the community. In personal appearance he was
-nothing remarkable,&mdash;medium size, wore full beard, had a sharp black eye,
-a quick, nervous movement, and his voice was not unpleasing to the ear.</p>
-
-<p>“Why he&mdash;such a man&mdash;should travel, no one knew. He had an object,
-doubtless, to accomplish, realized it, and retired upon his true name, and
-from whence he came.�</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center">“<span class="smcap">Youran, the Spanker.</span>�</p>
-
-<p>The writer has many times seen a fellow who travelled the country,
-nicknamed “the Spanker.� He was a tall, lean, lank-looking Yankee, with
-red hair and whiskers, a light gray eye, and claimed to cure all diseases
-by “spatting� the patient, or the diseased part thereof, with cold water
-on his bare palm, the use of a battery, and a pill. He had served as
-door-keeper to a famous doctor, who created a <i>furore</i>, a few years since,
-by the exercise of his magnetic powers, making cripples to throw down
-their crutches, and walk off; the deaf to hear, the blind to see; or, at
-least, many of them <i>thought</i> they did, for the time being, which answered
-the doctor’s immediate purpose. But one fine morning the magnetic doctor
-found his door-keeper was among the “missing.� He had learned the trade,
-and set up on his own account.</p>
-
-<p>This fellow was as ignorant of physic as Jack Reynolds was of Scripture.
-Reynolds, who killed Townsend in 1870, when under sentence of death,
-listened attentively for the first time to the story of the Saviour’s
-crucifixion in atonement<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_354" id="Page_354">[Pg 354]</a></span> for our sins, when he rather startled the
-visitors, as well as the eminent divine, with the inquiry, “Did that
-affair happen lately?�</p>
-
-<p>He was not, it is evident, conversant with Scripture. “The Spanker� was
-not read in medicine. His treatment was the most ridiculous and repulsive
-of the absurdities of the nineteenth century. The patient was stripped of
-his clothes, and often so severely spanked as to compel him, or her, to
-cry out with pain.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img090.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">A NEW SCHOOL OF PRACTICE.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>The beautiful young wife of the Rev. Mr. F., of Vermont, was brought to
-the writer for medical advice. The patient was carefully examined, and the
-minister taken aside, and assured that the lady was past all help; she was
-in the last stages of consumption; that she would, in all probability, die
-with the falling of the autumn leaves, or within two months.</p>
-
-<p>The following day the minister carried the patient to the spanker doctor,
-who declared her case quite curable. The minister employed him to treat
-the patient.</p>
-
-<p>A few weeks later I saw the minister, seated on the doorstep<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_355" id="Page_355">[Pg 355]</a></span> of his
-house, bowed in grief. He was on the lookout for me, as I was expected
-that way. He called to me, and asked if I would view the corpse of his
-once beautiful wife. I dismounted, and entered the house of mourning.
-There lay the poor, fair young face, within the narrow confines of the
-coffin. The cheeks were hollow, the eyes sunken, and the nostrils closed,
-and I doubt if any air had passed through the left one for
-weeks&mdash;pathognomonic indications of that fell disease, consumption.</p>
-
-<p>“She did not live as long, doctor, as you thought she would, in August,�
-said Mr. F.</p>
-
-<p>“No, sir: I did not then make allowance for the harsh treatment of Dr.
-&mdash;&mdash;, that, I am advised, soon followed.�</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 450px; height: 330px;"><img src="images/img091.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">A VICTIM OF THE SPANKER.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>“O, sir,� he exclaimed, in agony of soul, while the tears coursed freely
-down his cheeks, and fell upon the coffin,&mdash;“O, sir, God only knows what
-the poor thing suffered.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_356" id="Page_356">[Pg 356]</a></span> Dr. Youran said the spatting and cold water
-treatment would save her, and I was anxious to try it, and did, till the
-poor, dear soul begged us, with tearful eyes, not to punish her further,
-but to let her die in peace.�</p>
-
-<p>The ignorant scoundrel is still at large, preying upon the invalid public.
-It is a burning shame that the laxity of our laws permits such ignorant,
-heartless wretches to go about the country, imposing upon the credulity of
-invalidity.</p>
-
-<p>The invalids, as we said in our opening, expect to be humbugged, and will
-believe no honest statement of a case and its probabilities, but will too
-often swallow the lies and braggadocio, and finally the prescriptions, of
-ignorant charlatans and impostors.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 450px; height: 194px;"><img src="images/img092.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">DR. PULSFEEL LEAVING TOWN.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>Mr. Jeaffreson, in the “Book about Doctors,� before often quoted, says of
-the English travelling doctor of the last century,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“When Dr. Pulsfeel was tired of London, or felt the want of country air,
-he adopted the pleasant occupation of fleecing rustic simplicity. For his
-journeys he provided himself with a stout and fast-trotting hack&mdash;stout,
-that it might bear weighty parcels of medical composition; fast, that in
-case the ungrateful rabble should commit the indecorum of stoning their
-benefactor as an impostor,&mdash;a mishap that would occasionally
-occur,&mdash;escape might be effected.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_357" id="Page_357">[Pg 357]</a></span>“In his circuit the doctor took in all the fairs, markets, wakes, and
-public festivals, not disdaining to stop an entire week, or even month, at
-an assize town, where he found the sick anxious to benefit by his
-marvellous wisdom.</p>
-
-<p>“His manner of making himself known in a new place was to ride boldly into
-the thickest crowd of a town, and inform his listeners that he had come
-straight from the Duke of So-and-so, or the Emperor of Wallachia, out of
-an innate desire to do good to his fellow-creatures. He was born in that
-very town. He had left it when an orphan boy, to seek his fortune in the
-great world. His adventures had been wonderful. He had visited the Sultan
-and the Great Mogul; and the King of Mesopotamia had tried to persuade him
-to tarry and keep the Mesopotamians out of the devil’s clutches by the
-offer of a thousand pieces of gold a month. He had cured thousands of
-emperors, kings, queens, princes, grand duchesses, and generalissimos. He
-sold all kinds of medicaments&mdash;dyes for the hair, washes for the
-complexion, lotions, rings, and love charms, powders to stay the palsy,
-fevers, croup, and jaundice. His powder was expensive; he couldn’t help
-that; it was made of pearl-dust and dried violet leaves from the middle of
-Tartary. Still, he would sell his friends a package at bare cost,&mdash;one
-crown,&mdash;as he did not want to make money out of them.</p>
-
-<p>“Nothing could surpass the impudence of the fellow’s lies, save the
-admiration with which his credulous auditors swallowed his assertions.
-There they stood&mdash;stout yeomen, drunken squires, gay peasant girls, gawky
-hinds and gabbling crones, deeming themselves in luck to have lived to
-behold such a miracle of wisdom. Possibly a young student, home from
-Oxford, with the rashness of inexperience, would smile scornfully, and cry
-out, ‘Quack!’ (quack-salver, from the article he used to cure wens); but
-such interruption was usually frowned down by the orthodox friends of the
-student, and he was warned that he would come to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_358" id="Page_358">[Pg 358]</a></span> no good end, if he went
-on as he had begun, a contemptuous unbeliever, and a mocker of wise men.�</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">A Musical Doctor.</span></p>
-
-<p>Mr. Dayton, vocalist, told me of a fellow who cut a swell in various
-capacities a few years ago. He first knew him as a fiddler at fairs. The
-next time he turned up was under the following circumstances:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“With Madam L. and some other renowned vocalist, he was giving concerts,
-when one day their pianist was taken suddenly sick. Madam was in great
-trepidation.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img093.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">THE MUSICAL DOCTOR.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>“‘What shall I do? The concert cannot be postponed, and we cannot sing
-unless we have an accompaniment,’ exclaimed the lady.</p>
-
-<p>“I looked about, made some inquiry,&mdash;it was in a small town,&mdash;but no
-competent piano player could be found.</p>
-
-<p>“‘We must abandon the concert,’ I said, which seemed inevitable, when
-there came a sharp knock at the door.</p>
-
-<p>“‘Come in,’ I called.</p>
-
-<p>“The door opened, and instead of a servant, as I had expected, there
-appeared a tall, stout specimen of the <i>genus homo</i>, with large black
-eyes, and long, dark hair flowing down on to his shoulders, making his
-best bow, and what he doubtless intended as his sweetest smile.</p>
-
-<p>“I offered him a chair, and inquired how I could serve him.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_359" id="Page_359">[Pg 359]</a></span>“‘You want a piano player?’</p>
-
-<p>“‘Yes.’</p>
-
-<p>“‘Well, I will undertake to assist you in your strait. Allow me to see
-your programme,’ he continued, very patronizingly, waiting for us to make
-no reply whatever.</p>
-
-<p>“‘Are you&mdash;that is, do you play rapidly, and at sight?’ asked madam.</p>
-
-<p>“He replied only by a gesture, a sort of pitiful contempt for the
-ignorance of any person who should ask <i>him</i> such a question....</p>
-
-<p>“Half past seven came, and we went on the stage. I do not know what the
-fellow’s prelude was; I was otherwise engaged; but his accompaniments were
-made up, and after he had heard the note sung to which he should have
-accompanied,&mdash;O, it was a horrid jargon, a consecutive blast of discords,
-a tempest of incomprehensibleness.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 450px; height: 342px;"><img src="images/img094.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">ENTHUSIASM.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>“Madam caught her breath at the first pausing-place, and signalled him to
-stop. He took a side glance at her, misinterpreted her, and played on the
-louder. It became ludicrous in the extreme. He played the minor strains,
-or what should have been minor, in the major key. He only stopped when he
-saw us leave the stage. The audience cheered. He took it all as a
-compliment to himself as a pianist, stopped, and made his most profound
-obeisance to the house. They laughed and cheered the harder. He mistook it
-for an <i>encore</i>, bowed again, and returned to the piano. Then the house
-came down. They stamped,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_360" id="Page_360">[Pg 360]</a></span> they laughed, they shouted. The boys in the
-gallery cat-called; the building fairly shook. I ran back to see what it
-was all about, and there was the pianist (?) beating furiously at the
-keys, the perspiration pouring in streams from his face. But his playing
-could only be <i>seen</i> to be appreciated; it could not be heard for the
-stamping of the audience. He finally desisted, and with repeated halts and
-smiles, he bowed himself off the stage.</p>
-
-<p>“His grand <i>debut</i> and retirement upon the stage occurred the same night.
-Madam would not permit him to go on again, and we sang the duets from &mdash;&mdash;
-without accompaniment. I think the fellow knew nothing of music; he had
-‘cheeked’ it right through.</p>
-
-<p>“Perhaps it was two years afterwards&mdash;I was staying at the B. Hotel,
-Maine&mdash;when I heard a deal of talk about a great doctor then in town.
-After dinner the first day, I noticed a man sauntering leisurely from the
-dining-hall in embroidered slippers, white silk stockings, black pants,
-gaudy dressing-gown, with long hair falling down over his shoulders. I
-thought I recognized that face. I approached him after a while, and called
-him by name.</p>
-
-<p>“‘What? Why, I think you are mistaken. I do not know you, sir,’ he
-stammered; and then I knew he had recognized me.</p>
-
-<p>“‘O, yes; I am Dayton. You remember you were our pianist once in a strait,
-in S.’</p>
-
-<p>“‘O, ah! Come up to my room,’ he said, leading the way.</p>
-
-<p>“I followed, when he told me he was doing a good thing at the practice of
-medicine about the principal towns of the state, and begged I would say
-nothing about his former occupation. He stated to me that he had been to
-Europe, and had been studying medicine meantime, which I have since
-ascertained was entirely untrue.�</p>
-
-<p>And this was the fellow over whom the town was running wild.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_361" id="Page_361">[Pg 361]</a></span>The idea of some men trying to become good physicians is as ridiculously
-absurd as Horace Greeley’s farming, or trying to ascertain if “cundurango
-is explosive.� The requisite qualities are not in them. They may keep
-along a few years, or possibly, in communities where there is no
-competition, succeed in making the people believe they are as good as the
-common run, and thus succeed on brass instead of brains.</p>
-
-<p>Some of these brainless travelling impostors employ a female or two to
-precede them from place to place, and make diligent inquiry when the great
-doctor who performed such marvellous cures in some adjoining town
-mentioned was coming there. Thus putting it in the shape of an inquiry, it
-was less likely to excite suspicion.</p>
-
-<p>Two females&mdash;one an elderly, lady-like looking woman, the other younger,
-and anything but lady-like&mdash;travelled for a doctor, on a salary, during
-the summer and autumn of 1868. A lady whose occupation took her from town
-to town, seeing the two females at various hotels where the doctor was
-advertised, inveigled the younger one into the confession, in her bad
-temper, and thus I got my evidence. Another travels on his hair; another
-on his face; and a fourth on his free advice and treatment; while a fifth
-succeeds by absurdity of dress.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img095.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
-<hr style="width: 50%;" />
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_362" id="Page_362">[Pg 362]</a></span></p>
-<h2><a name="XIV" id="XIV"></a>XIV.</h2>
-<p class="title">SCENES FROM EVERY-DAY PRACTICE.</p>
-
-<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table">
-<tr><td>“History, so warm on meaner themes,<br />
-Is cold on this.�&mdash;<span class="smcap">Cowper’s Task.</span><br />
-<br />
-“Let no one say that his task is o’er,<br />
-That bonds of earth are for him no more,<br />
-Until by some kind or holy deed<br />
-His name from forgetfulness is freed;<br />
-Until by words from his lips or pen,<br />
-Dying, he’s ‘missed’ from the ranks of men.�<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 14em;"><span class="smcap">Alice Lee.</span></span></td></tr></table>
-
-<div class="note"><p class="hang"><small>THE BEGGAR BOY AND THE GOLDEN-HAIRED HEIRESS.&mdash;MY MIDNIGHT CALL.&mdash;THE
-CONSCIENCE-STRICKEN MOTHER.&mdash;“OLD SEROSITY.�&mdash;THE ILLEGITIMATE
-CHILD.&mdash;DEATH OF THE BEAUTIFUL.&mdash;WHO IS THE HEIR?&mdash;A TOUCHING
-SCENE.&mdash;FATE OF THE “BEGGAR BOY.�&mdash;THE TERRIBLE CALLER.&mdash;AN IRISH
-SCENE, FROM DR. DIXON’S BOOK.&mdash;BIDDY ON A RAMPAGE.&mdash;TERRY ON HIS DEATH
-BED.&mdash;THE STOMACH PUMP.&mdash;BIDDY WON’T, AND SHE WILL.&mdash;THE BETRAYED AND
-HER BETRAYER.&mdash;“IS THERE A GOD IN ISRAEL?�&mdash;THE HUSBANDLESS
-MOTHER.&mdash;THE CRISIS AND COURT.&mdash;ANSWER.&mdash;THERE IS A “GOD IN ISRAEL.�</small></p></div>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p>Ill-clad poverty, benumbed with cold, was abroad alone, exposed to that
-winter’s night, as the white snow fleeced the frost-hardened ground. But
-never mind earth’s cold bosom. The rich man’s heart warms <i>him</i>, making
-him merry, however blows the wind or rages the storm. Shiver, shiver on,
-beggar poor! Starvation and sense-dulling cold alone belong to you.</p>
-
-<p>Through the crunching snow-drifts trudged a weary boy, with alms-basket on
-his shivering arm. From his figure, he seemed not over ten years old; but
-his face was so wan and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_363" id="Page_363">[Pg 363]</a></span> melancholy, that it was difficult to tell how
-many year-blights the beggar child had experienced. Summer clothes were
-still clinging to him; a tattered comforter was the only winter article he
-wore.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 450px; height: 386px;"><img src="images/img096.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">CHARITY THROWN AWAY.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>A gay carriage rolled noiselessly by, with a beautiful girl within, well
-wrapped in fur and cloak, whilst the snow was dashed from the rapid wheels
-like white dust. She saw, through the dim light, the weary, thin-clad boy,
-as he stopped, with face bent aside to the flake-burdened blast, to gaze
-at the smoking horses, as they plunged through the fast-deepening sheet.
-She dropped the sash, and threw the boy a coin. It sank from her warm hand
-deep into the drifted snow. It might have brought him bread and a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_364" id="Page_364">[Pg 364]</a></span>
-cheering fagot, but the smitten child never found it. The snow closed over
-the coveted prize, while the blast grew keener.</p>
-
-<p>On, on toiled the beggar boy, through drift and darkness, more weary as
-night gathered on. Thus is it ever with the humble poor; their load grows
-heavier as life lessens. No light or warming hearth is there&mdash;things that
-make house a home&mdash;to welcome the wandering boy.</p>
-
-<p>The clock had just struck two as I was summoned to the house of Mrs. T.
-The same carriage that, in the evening, had borne the beautiful young
-girl, awaited at my door, with its impatient horses snorting against the
-frosted air. A few minutes later I entered the house. Mrs. T. met me in
-the hall, with her face deadly pale, and manner much excited. Her singular
-nervousness had before struck me on my visits, whenever her daughter
-ailed. She informed me that her “darling Emily� was very ill with a high
-fever.</p>
-
-<p>We entered the chamber. The young girl lay with her head turned aside upon
-the pillow, her golden-brown hair scattered in wild profusion upon its
-white cover, while the nurse was gently moistening the fevered palm of her
-outstretched hand. The pulse was beating wildly at the wrist and temples,
-and fever heat glowed from her lustrous eyes. Whilst the nurse held the
-light to her face, the traces of dried tears were revealed upon her
-suffused cheeks.</p>
-
-<p>“Heartache surely is here,� I said to myself.</p>
-
-<p>There was something in the whole appearance of my patient that excited my
-curiosity and surprise. Only eight or ten hours had passed since she, from
-her carriage, had thrown the snow-claimed alms to the beggar boy, and
-<i>now</i> a high fever was running hot through every artery of her body.</p>
-
-<p>Silently seated by the bedside, after administering a cooling draught I
-awaited and watched for the changes that might ensue. Her mother sat near
-the fire, its blaze lighting<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_365" id="Page_365">[Pg 365]</a></span> up every feature of her once beautiful face,
-which still remained very pale. In all my intercourse with Mrs. T., I
-never before had so prolonged an opportunity of examining in detail the
-expression of her countenance. The longer I gazed on her, the more
-satisfied I became that she had not passed through life without a fearful
-history.</p>
-
-<p>It was this sensation which struck me when I first became acquainted with
-her. A few vague rumors had floated about relative to her history; that a
-strange desertion of her husband had taken place, and that he afterwards
-was found drowned in the river, near his residence, and that by his death
-Mrs. T. had become possessed of an immense estate. These stories had,
-however, soon subsided; and as her means were ample, and her charities
-liberal, the gossips of the town quietly dropped the past, and speculated
-upon the future, as should all respectable gossips.</p>
-
-<p>The voice of the patient diverted my thoughts; a few words were murmured,
-and then the lips pressed tremblingly together, and the tear-drops again
-started to her cheeks. Suddenly springing up in bed, and threading her
-long, curling hair through her slender fingers, she exclaimed, in a
-thrilling, delirious tone,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“It cannot be true! O, mother&mdash;tell me, mother!�</p>
-
-<p>Mrs. T. fairly leaped to the bedside, and placing her hand over the
-daughter’s mouth, with affrighted gestures, she exclaimed,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“What is it? What does she mean? My God, doctor, she raves!�</p>
-
-<p>The girl fell back on her pillow; the mother stood, pale and trembling, by
-the bedside, with a nameless terror depicted on every feature. Turning to
-me, in a quick, restless voice, she bade me hasten to give her child a
-quieting draught.</p>
-
-<p>“O, anything that will keep her from raving!�</p>
-
-<p>The room was not over warm for such a bitter night,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_366" id="Page_366">[Pg 366]</a></span> yet the perspiration
-stood upon the brow of the excited mother like the fallen dew.</p>
-
-<p>“Conscience must lie here,� I thought to myself.</p>
-
-<p>In the course of an hour the sufferer slumbered heavily; her breathing was
-hurried and oppressed, the fever had increased, and her moanings were
-constant.</p>
-
-<p>Day was breaking, as I left my young patient to return home through the
-falling snow. As I looked out of the carriage window, I saw a little boy
-sitting on the cold walk. It was the poor beggar boy of yesterday, as
-thinly clad, with his pale cheek as white as the snowdrifts through which
-he had toiled. I ordered the coachman to stop.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img097.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">THE BEGGAR BOY.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>“What brought you out, and where are you going, on this cold winter
-morning, my poor boy?� I exclaimed.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_367" id="Page_367">[Pg 367]</a></span>He raised his beautiful dark eyes to my face, and my heart grieved at
-their look of utter hopelessness, as he faintly answered, “To beg for me
-and old grandma.�</p>
-
-<p>“Are you not very cold, in those thin clothes?� I asked.</p>
-
-<p>His little teeth chattered, as he replied, “O, I am very&mdash;cold&mdash;sir.�</p>
-
-<p>The impatient horses plunged violently in the traces, and the coachman
-asked to be allowed to drive on. I gave the poor boy the few silver coins
-that were in my pocket, and we passed on.</p>
-
-<p>I never saw that boy but once again; his look haunts me to this day.</p>
-
-<p>As I rode on, memory was busy tracing where I had ever seen features like
-his. The dark hair, that lay in uncombed curls upon his forehead, and
-clustered warmly about his neck, as though in protection against the
-bitter cold; his large, black eyes, with their long lashes; the
-finely-chiselled outlines of his mouth and nose,&mdash;these all impressed me
-that I had somewhere seen a face which strikingly resembled his. Poor boy!
-beauty was his only possession.</p>
-
-<p>At breakfast a letter was handed me, summoning me immediately to one of my
-own children, who lay sick in a distant town. Before leaving I wrote a
-hurried note to Mrs. T., stating the cause of my sudden departure,
-desiring her to call another physician, during my absence. The young
-girl’s fate and the poor beggar boy’s face were almost forgotten in my own
-cares.</p>
-
-<p>On the sixth day following, I again found myself at home. My first thought
-was for poor Emily. I dreaded to ask; there was something whispering to my
-heart that all was not well.</p>
-
-<p>My suspense was not long; a messenger had just left, stating that the dear
-girl was fast failing; that her physician had pronounced her laboring
-under typhus fever. My<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_368" id="Page_368">[Pg 368]</a></span> God, how my heart sank under these words! I had
-dreaded this mistake after I left. Alas! how many have fallen by the name
-of a disease, and not by the disease itself!</p>
-
-<p>After a hurried meal, I drove rapidly to Mr. T.’s residence. The house
-door was quietly opened by a servant, and in another minute I stood in the
-chamber of the invalid. The mantel was crowded with numerous vials. The
-close atmosphere of the sick-room was sickening. By the bedside, with her
-face bowed over one of the pale hands of the daughter, which she held in
-both of her own, sat the wretched mother. It seemed to me as though ten
-years had passed over her faded and care-worn countenance, since I last
-gazed upon it. I could not stir; my heart stood still. <i>Her hair had
-become entirely gray.</i></p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 450px; height: 324px;"><img src="images/img098.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">REMORSE.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>I gained heart to approach; the desolate mother heard me, and turning
-quickly she sprang from her chair, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_369" id="Page_369">[Pg 369]</a></span> placing her hands on my shoulders,
-she bowed her head: she sobbed wildly, as though her heart would break.</p>
-
-<p>“Look, look, doctor! Would you have known her? O, my God, she is leaving
-me! Save her&mdash;O, save her!� and the wretched mother fell fainting to the
-floor. We gently raised and bore her to her own chamber. In a few moments
-I returned to Emily. She turned her head languidly towards me, while her
-right hand moved as if to take mine. How dry was the palm! Her color had
-faded away; the once rounded cheeks were sunken. O, I will not describe
-her!</p>
-
-<p>The physician who had been called, after my departure, had found her with
-high fever and delirium. He mistook the excitement of the brain for its
-inflammation. O, fatal error! A consultation was called. The second comer
-was notedly a man who viewed every excitement as caused by “an over-action
-of the vessels,� and bleeding was its only relief. The nervous system he
-entirely ignored. From his theory, man was a mere combination of blood,
-blood-vessels, and biliary secretions, more or less deranged. Calomel,
-salts, and the lancet were his Hercules. The grand <i>causa mortis</i> amongst
-the human family was “serosity.� Hence some evil-minded wag amongst his
-brethren had named him “Old Serosity.�</p>
-
-<p>The poor child had been bled, cupped, and purged, in order to subdue this
-“over-action of the blood-vessels.� Verily it may cure the vessels, but it
-certainly kills the patient.</p>
-
-<p>The life current was nigh exhausted; there was no blood left for renewal
-of brain, nerve, or vital tissue. My heart was bitter against this
-murderous adherence to a false principle. Here a human life, that of a
-young and spotless girl, was the forfeit.</p>
-
-<p>But to return to the thread of the narrative.</p>
-
-<p>“O, I am glad you have come back to me. Do try to save me, doctor,� she
-said, with great effort. Sending the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_370" id="Page_370">[Pg 370]</a></span> nurse from the room, I quickly
-pressed the young girl’s hand within my own, and said to her,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“Do you really wish to live, Emily?�</p>
-
-<p>“Yes, yes,� she murmured; “I am very young to die.�</p>
-
-<p>“Then, my dear, tell me truly what has so terribly shocked your nervous
-system; tell me.� With a strength that startled me, she searched under the
-mattress side, and drew forth a small note, which she silently placed in
-my hand. It was discolored by time. I opened it; the date was above twelve
-years back. It ran thus:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“When you receive this, Mira (Mrs. T.’s given name), my career will have
-ended. By my death you will inherit all. Let my unborn child have its
-just, legal claim. Your child, Emily, take to your home as though she were
-an adopted orphan. Let not her youth be blighted by the knowledge of her
-unblest birth. I forgive you. Adieu, forever. H. T.�</p>
-
-<p>“O my God, the doomed child is illegitimate,� I said. I stooped down and
-kissed the sufferer’s forehead, and promised that I would be a father to
-her. “Come, cheer up,� I whispered, “for your mother’s sake. If she has
-sinned she has suffered much for your sake; forgive her.�</p>
-
-<p>“I do forgive her,� she whispered, “but can I forget myself, unblessed as
-I am? But I must know the whole truth. O, where is the right heir of all
-this wealth? My memory returns now, indistinctly, to my earlier days. A
-cloud intervenes. I remember but a small cottage, in a deep wood, where
-mother often came to see me, and a tall woman took care of me. Then came a
-gay carriage, and took me to a large house; but I never again returned to
-the cottage in the wood. There, at the large house, mother left me a long
-time; and when she came back&mdash;O, doctor, I can speak no longer. Do give me
-something to strengthen me, and I will try yet to live.�</p>
-
-<p>A cordial was administered by my own hands, and in a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_371" id="Page_371">[Pg 371]</a></span> short time sleep
-overcame her. Night again closed in; the wind had sunk to rest with the
-setting sun. Another night of bitter cold was ushered in. Woe to the poor!
-Woe to the hungry and the fireless.</p>
-
-<p class="center"><strong><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span></strong></p>
-
-<p>As I entered the mother’s apartments I found her sitting by a private
-secretary, which had been brought from the library. Its lid was open, and
-as I seated myself she took from a package of tied letters a sealed paper,
-and placing it in my hands, said,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“Read this at your leisure, doctor. My pilgrimage of life is nigh ended.
-You will judge how great my sin, and how severe has been my punishment. I
-ask no forgiveness, <i>for there will be none left to forgive me</i>.�</p>
-
-<p>Well, I knew her heart was nigh crushed!</p>
-
-<p>I sought the daughter’s chamber. How still was everything! The very
-candle, with its long flame, parted by the thickened wick-char, seemed not
-to flicker, as it burned dimly on. I looked at the bed; the sweet girl lay
-with both hands crossed upon her bosom, as though in prayer. An
-orange-blossom had dropped from her grasp, and lay neglected by her side;
-her life-hand never touched it more! Death had claimed his bride!</p>
-
-<p>A wild shriek sounded through the house. The erring mother now knew that
-she was alone in the great world.</p>
-
-<p>Whilst the shrouding of the dead took place I retired and opened the
-sealed package. It briefly told its tale of sin and sorrow.</p>
-
-<p>It told how from the first love Emily was the fruit, and how, unknown to
-all, the child had been secreted; how, about three years after Emily’s
-birth, the mother was married to Harold T., whom <i>she never loved</i>; and
-how, by a singular accident, the knowledge of her transgression became
-known to her husband; that, after violently cursing her for her sin and
-deception, he left her, and shortly afterwards <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_372" id="Page_372">[Pg 372]</a></span>committed suicide; that
-the letter (written by him just before his death), which was so fatal to
-the peace and life of Emily, had accidentally dropped from the secretary,
-and was picked up by her (that night after her return in the carriage),
-unknown to the mother until the sixth day after my return, when she missed
-it.</p>
-
-<p>The narrative went on to state that a male child was born after T.’s
-death, and that, seized with an insane fury, she resolved that he never
-should inherit its father’s name and wealth; and that, through the
-assistance of a nurse, it was placed with a sum of money at a beggar’s
-door, and a dead child laid beside the mother instead; that before sending
-the infant away, the nurse tattooed its father’s initials on its left arm.
-The beggar had died, and all traces of the child had been lost. At length
-her guilty conscience so reproached her that the mother had instituted
-search for the child, but all in vain.</p>
-
-<p>As I read this tale of crime and repentance, busy memory traced out the
-features of the <i>beggar boy</i>! Like a sudden light it burst upon me&mdash;those
-features that had so tormented my memory to recall were those of the
-unhappy mother.</p>
-
-<p>Quickly I went to her room. She was not there. I hastened to Emily’s. The
-mother was wildly clasping the enshrouded form of her daughter, and
-weeping as though her heart would break asunder. Gently removing her to
-her own chamber, I intimated that another child, long lost, might yet be
-restored to her.</p>
-
-<p>She listened as one bewildered. I then informed her of my adventure with
-the beggar boy.</p>
-
-<p>It was hardly day-dawn as I entered the carriage. My breath froze against
-the window panes. After a short ride the horses stopped before the
-wretched snow-covered hovel (where he had seen the beggar child once
-enter). I opened the carriage door, leaped out, and placed my hand on the
-latch. The door opened. It was neither bolted nor locked;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_373" id="Page_373">[Pg 373]</a></span> for no thief
-would enter there. In the corner of the room lay a bundle of rugs, with
-some straw, but it was unoccupied. Near the fireplace, where nought but a
-little well-charred bark remained upon the cold ashes, half reclining in a
-large wooden chair, lay the beggar boy.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img099.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">THE LOST HEIR.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>His cap had fallen on the ground, and his dark, curling hair fell
-clustering over his extended arm, as his head rested upon it. He had
-seemingly fallen asleep the night before, for his thin summer clothes were
-on his person, and his basket, yet filled with the fragments of broken
-feasts, remained <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_374" id="Page_374">[Pg 374]</a></span>untouched at his feet. I placed my hand upon his
-beautiful head; it was icy cold. Quickly brushing back the fallen ringlets
-from his face, the unmistakable evidence of death met my gaze.</p>
-
-<p>He had apparently fallen asleep weeping, for a tear-drop lay frozen
-between the long lashes that fringed the eyelids.</p>
-
-<p>I raised the stiffened body of the ill-fated youth, and tearing away the
-thin sleeve from his left arm, I distinctly discovered the letters ‘H. T.’
-thereon.</p>
-
-<p>Deserted, famished, and frozen, death had claimed the darling, lone boy
-before he knew a mother’s love!</p>
-
-<p>This sad tale is taken from “<i>Scenes in Northern Practice by Dr. Dewees</i>,
-N. Y.�&mdash;<i>Scalpel</i>, 1855. (And like all the stories herein, it has the
-merit of being true to the letter.)</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">The Terrible Caller.</span></p>
-
-<p>It was about half past nine in the morning.</p>
-
-<p>My office door suddenly opened, and looking up from my writing, I saw,
-standing in the passage-way, a very tall man, in a long white frock,
-reaching to his knees, sleeves rolled to his elbows, a slouched hat set
-back on his head, his face painted or bedaubed with some white substance,
-and his eyes gleaming upon me most intensely!</p>
-
-<p>There he stood, looking almost fiercely upon me, while he held the
-door-knob with his left hand, and grasped with his right a long
-carving-knife, which was thrust through his belt.</p>
-
-<p>“Are you the doctor?� he shouted with excitement.</p>
-
-<p>“I am the doctor,� I replied, calmly awaiting my fate.</p>
-
-<p>He instantly stepped inside the room, when close behind him was revealed
-the form of a very short man, who held a Kossuth hat in one hand, while
-with a handkerchief in the other, he stanched the blood that had evidently
-been flowing pretty freely from his head.</p>
-
-<p>“This man has cut himself very bad on the head; big<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_375" id="Page_375">[Pg 375]</a></span> iron wheel come down
-on him: can you fix him up?� asked the first. This accounted for his
-excited manner. But how about the bedaubed face and the huge knife?</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 333px; height: 450px;"><img src="images/img100.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">A MORNING CALLER.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>I examined the wound, only through the scalp, less than three inches in
-length; and washing away the surplus clotted blood, I clipped off the
-hair, and soon secured the edges of the gaping wound by taking a stitch or
-two through the scalp.</p>
-
-<p>While so doing, the young man rolled his eyes up to his tall
-companion,&mdash;who had explained that they were cooks at<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_376" id="Page_376">[Pg 376]</a></span> Young’s Hotel, and
-that the spit wheel and shaft used for turning meat had fallen eight feet;
-by which the assistant had barely escaped being killed,&mdash;and with a
-commendable show of thought for his employer’s interest, rather than his
-own comfort or safety, he anxiously exclaimed,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“Jim, do you think that gentleman’s ‘order,’ what I had in the spit, is
-overdone yet?�</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">An Irish Scene.</span></p>
-
-<p>A young Irish girl, with a wild shriek, an “Och, hone!� and “Ah, murther!�
-and “Hulla-boo&mdash;a&mdash;hulla-boo, poor Terry! Ah, why did I taze ye?� burst
-into my office one evening, upsetting the servant, and actually laying
-hold on me with her hands, as she exclaimed,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“Ah, docther, docther, come now, for the love o’ the moother that bore ye;
-come this blessed minute. I’ve killed poor Terry, an’ niver shall see him
-again. Ah, murther, murther! Why did I taze ye?�</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 450px; height: 265px;"><img src="images/img101.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">“WHY DID I TAZE YE?�</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>Trying in vain to calm her, I hastily drew on my boots, and almost ran
-after her to a wretched tenement, some quarter<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_377" id="Page_377">[Pg 377]</a></span> of a mile off, and found
-the object of the girl’s solicitude alive and kicking, with his lungs in
-the best of order, standing on the stairs that led to his miserable
-chamber, with a broken scissors in his hand, stirring busily the contents
-of a tea-cup.</p>
-
-<p>It seems that he had been courting my fair guide, and after the period she
-had fixed for her final answer to his declaration, she had bantered him
-with a refusal, which her solicitude for his life plainly showed was far
-enough from her real intentions.</p>
-
-<p>In his despair he had swallowed an ounce of laudanum, which he had
-procured from some injudicious druggist, which act had sent Biddy off
-after me in such terror. He was now mixing a powder which he had obtained
-from another druggist, who, knowing of his love affair, it will be seen
-acted with more wisdom than the first, as Terry let slip enough in his
-hearing to show what he wanted to do with the “ratsbane� for which he
-inquired; and Biddy, like a true daughter of Eve, had made no secret in
-the neighborhood that she valued her charms beyond the poor fellow’s bid.</p>
-
-<p>As soon as she approached, he, by some inopportune remark, re-excited her
-wrath, and she again declared she wouldn’t have him, “if he wint to the
-divil.�</p>
-
-<p>Poor Terry, in his red shirt and blue stockings, and an attitude of the
-grandest kind, but covering, as we soon found, a desperate purpose,
-flourished his tea-cup, and stirred its contents with the scissors,
-constantly exclaiming,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“Ah, Biddy, will ye have me? Ye’ll have me now&mdash;will ye not?�</p>
-
-<p>Still Biddy refused.</p>
-
-<p>“Divil a bit will I let the docther come near me till ye say yis! Sure,
-weren’t we children together in the ould counthry? and didn’t we take our
-potaties and butthermilk out o’ the same bowl? And yer mother, that’s now
-dead,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_378" id="Page_378">[Pg 378]</a></span> always said ye were to be me wife; and now ye’re kapin’ coompany
-with that dirty blackguard, Jim O’Connor,&mdash;divil take him for a spalpeen.
-Ah, Biddy, will ye have me?�</p>
-
-<p>And he flourished the cup, and stirred away vigorously with the scissors.</p>
-
-<p>Biddy’s blood was up at the disrespectful mention made of Jimmy’s name,
-for “he had a winnin’ way wid him,� and she shouted at the top of her
-voice,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“No, be the St. Patrick, I’ll niver have ye.�</p>
-
-<p>With an awful gulp, Terry drained the cup, rolled up his eyes, and with
-one most impassioned yet ludicrous look at her, he fell upon his knees on
-the step.</p>
-
-<p>Biddy followed, in strong hysterics.</p>
-
-<p>The whole affair was so irresistibly ludicrous that I scarce could keep
-from laughing; but on observing the bottle, labelled “laudanum,� and
-looking into the bottom of the tea-cup, and discovering a white powder, I
-changed my prognosis, and hastened to the druggist’s near, to see what it
-was, and procure an antidote, should it really prove “ratsbane.�</p>
-
-<p>To my great relief, the man of drugs informed me, laughingly, that he had
-given Terry a quantity of chalk and <i>eight grains of tartar emetic</i>, as he
-learned that Terry was already in possession of the ounce of laudanum, and
-all the neighbors knew that Biddy had driven him to desperation by
-flirting with his rival, Jim O’Connor. The young man had judiciously told
-Terry that the powder would make the laudanum sure to operate more
-effectually.</p>
-
-<p>“How long will it take?� he asked, and bagged all for use when the refusal
-should come.</p>
-
-<p>My course was now clear. I was in for sport. Sending the druggist’s clerk
-for my stomach-pump, to be in readiness in case the emetic should not
-operate,&mdash;which was scarcely impossible, for eight grains of tartar
-emetic, taken at a dose, would almost vomit the potatoes out of a bag,&mdash;I
-waited the result.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_379" id="Page_379">[Pg 379]</a></span>As for Biddy, I let her lie; for I thought she deserved her punishment. My
-heart was always tender towards the sex, and I generally expected a
-“fellow-feeling.�</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 450px; height: 434px;"><img src="images/img102.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">SUCCESS OF TERRY’S COURTSHIP.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>In a short time it became evident that Terry’s stomach was not so tough as
-his will, and he began to intermingle long and portentous sighs with his
-prayers, and to perspire freely. I gave him a wide berth, in anticipation
-of the Jonah that was to come up shortly. I was anxious now that Biddy
-should revive in time to witness his grand effort. Terry was tough, and
-held out. Shortly she revived, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_380" id="Page_380">[Pg 380]</a></span> suddenly starting up, and recollecting
-the situation, she made one bound for Terry, crying,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“Ah, Terry, Terry, dear Terry! I’ll have ye now. Yis, I will; and I don’t
-care who hears me. I always loved ye, but that divil’s baby, Mag, always
-kept tellin’ me ye’d love me the betther if I didn’t give in to ye too
-soon. Ah, Terry, dear, only live, and I’ll go to the ends of the world for
-ye. Ah, an’ what would me poor mother say, if she was here? Och, hone!
-Och, hone! Docther, now what are ye doin’? A purty docther ye are; an’ ye
-pumped out yer own counthryman, that didn’t die, sure, an’ he tuk twice as
-much as poor Terry.�</p>
-
-<p>Meantime the boy had arrived with the pump.</p>
-
-<p>“Up wid ye now, and use the black pipe ye put down the poor fellow’s
-throat over the way last summer. I’d take it mesilf, if it would do; but
-God knows whether I’d be worth the throuble.�</p>
-
-<p>As Terry had not yet cast up his accounts, and the stomach-pump was at
-hand, I determined to make a little more capital out of the case, and
-thrusting the long, flexible India rubber tube down poor Terry’s throat,
-having separated his teeth by means of a stick, and holding his head
-between my knees, I soon had the satisfaction of depositing the laudanum
-and tartar emetic in a swill pail, the only article of the toilet the
-place afforded.</p>
-
-<p>After years proved Terry and Biddy most loving companions. He never, even
-when drunk, more than threatened her “wid a batin’, which she was
-desarvin’,� and she never forgave “that divil’s baby, Mag,� for her cruel
-experiment on her heroic and devoted Terry.&mdash;<i>Practice of a New York
-Surgeon.</i></p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_381" id="Page_381">[Pg 381]</a></span></p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">A Life Scene.</span></p>
-
-<p><i>The Situation.</i>&mdash;I was young, but, with a wife and child dependent upon
-my practice for food, raiment, and shelter, I was striving manfully; with
-my household gods and goods I had located here, in a small village, a year
-before. My beginning was encouraging, my success in practice more than
-flattering. But an immense opposition had met and nearly overthrown me, in
-the form of a man, a deacon of the &mdash;&mdash; church. He was one of those “rule
-or ruin� men whom you will find in every one-horse village. I did not at
-first know my man,&mdash;he did not know me,&mdash;or I should have avoided his ill
-will. I did not know his tenaciousness of titles&mdash;he was an esquire
-also&mdash;which was my first unpardonable offence. He swore&mdash;“as deacons
-do�&mdash;that I should not practise in that town. I swore, as doctors will,
-that “so long as I could obtain a potato and a clam a day I would remain
-while he was my opposer.� Clams could be dug at low water, within a few
-rods of my house; potatoes I grew on the quarter acre of ground given me
-as partial inducement to settle in that town. His two drunken sons were
-his emissaries of evil, set on for my overthrow, in addition to the
-father’s voice and known opposition, which few dared to meet. My practice
-dwindled. A few Nicodemuses came by night, but my darling wife trembled
-for my very life when I had a night call. My provision was often short, my
-poor horse was mere skin and bones, standing, day after day, gnawing his
-empty manger.</p>
-
-<p>“O, is there a God in Israel?� I cried, in my anguish, more than once.</p>
-
-<p>Yes, the reply came to my prayers; there is a God of recompense.</p>
-
-<p class="center"><strong><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span></strong></p>
-
-<p><i>The Betrayed.</i>&mdash;My patient was a young girl, over whose golden head but
-seventeen summers had flown, on rosy wings.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_382" id="Page_382">[Pg 382]</a></span> Her form was sylph-like, and
-face as beautiful as the opening flower in the golden sunshine of early
-day. She was an attendant at <i>his</i> church, a member of <i>his</i> Sabbath
-school class, and a singer in the choir....</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img103.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">THE BETRAYED.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>I was shown to her room. Sorrow, and not disease, had left its impress
-upon her fair young face. Rumor had already given me a hint on which to
-diagnose my case.</p>
-
-<p>“Who has done this wicked thing?� I asked, holding her hand, and looking
-kindly into her eyes.</p>
-
-<p>“O, my God! O, I must not tell,� she cried, springing up from her couch. I
-never shall forget the terror depicted on that fair young countenance, as
-she pronounced these words.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_383" id="Page_383">[Pg 383]</a></span>“You must tell. You should not suffer this shame and burden alone. Tell me
-truly. Who has done it? I must know. There may be a chance to cover the
-shame and make your babe legitimate. Come,� I said.</p>
-
-<p>“O, sir, dear doctor, it can never be;� and she fell back on her pillow,
-weeping and wringing her hands in awful anguish.</p>
-
-<p>“Come, it shall be done;� and I firmly held to the point.</p>
-
-<p>She arose. I gave her a bowl and napkin that were near; she bathed her
-inflamed and swollen eyes, then, with surprising calmness and fortitude,
-took a pencil and a bit of paper from the light-stand at her bedside, and
-wrote a name.</p>
-
-<p>She then handed it to me, saying “’Tis he.� I read the name. I jumped to
-my feet. I forgot my tender patient. I forgot all but my own sufferings,
-and those of my dear little wife and darling babe, and their enemy, as I
-cried out,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“O, my God in Israel! I have got him! I shall be avenged!�</p>
-
-<p>“O, don’t, doctor! What is the matter?� exclaimed the affrighted girl,
-rising in bed. I had rushed, almost frantically across the room and back.
-“Forgive me,� I said, “I&mdash;I forgot myself. Pardon me.�</p>
-
-<p>“O, sir, I thought you were mad.�</p>
-
-<p>“I was, dear girl. It is past. Now to your case.� And I proceeded to
-unfold to her unsophisticated mind the true state of affairs. Here was a
-pure, respectable, though poor young girl, under age, who had been
-betrayed, locked into an office, and seduced by a son of the squire, and
-deserted, threatened&mdash;left to bear the burden and disgrace alone. She
-dared not divulge the name of her destroyer, because of the position of
-his family in the community. I dared. But to bring her mind up above her
-fears, to compel the young man to make restitution, as far as lay in his
-power, was a severe task. It was my duty to do this; sweeter then than
-duty, it was my revenge! By implicating the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_384" id="Page_384">[Pg 384]</a></span> real villain, I released
-several other young men from suspicion, particularly one young man with
-red hair.</p>
-
-<p>The girl was taken away from the sight of dear sister’s sinister looks,
-and the influence and threats of the seducer, and secret offers of bribery
-of the deacon, his father.</p>
-
-<p>The law took its course. No eye could see the hand that worked the
-machinery. The time was counted almost to a day, as the result proved. The
-young man was arrested, and gave bonds. It became the theme of general
-conversation. I was interviewed. I was dumb&mdash;deaf&mdash;blind! Threats and
-bribes proved equally ineffectual to induce me to give an opinion, or a
-pledge not to appear in the coming trial at the next term of the Superior
-Court. To marry the poor, unfortunate girl was beneath the dignity of the
-seducer and family. They would pay their last farthing first, or the young
-man would sooner go to prison for the crime. His two sisters carried their
-heads higher than ever. The two sons threatened my life. But I kept on the
-even tenor of my way. The girl became a mother.</p>
-
-<p>“Next Tuesday court sits,� whispered everybody, and nothing in town was
-discussed but the probabilities of the pending lawsuit.</p>
-
-<p>The lawsuit was nothing, the fine was nothing, which the justice might
-impose; even imprisonment was nothing in comparison to acknowledgment of
-an illegitimate child by the deacon’s family, notwithstanding the child
-was not red-haired, but much resembled its reputed father, the deacon’s
-son.</p>
-
-<p>There was no trial. The squire paid a sum of money to the idiotic old
-father of the beautiful young mother, and agreed, orally, to support the
-child, and the suit was withdrawn. But this virtually acknowledged the
-child, and the girl returned to her father’s roof for shelter, and a place
-wherein to weep alone over her so-called fatherless child, and hide her
-shame (?) from the uncharitable world.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_385" id="Page_385">[Pg 385]</a></span>The town became too cramped for the squire and his beautiful family. He
-sold out, but not before he had lost his rule there, and was hanged in
-effigy as being “too Secesh.�</p>
-
-<p>The seducer married a frail beauty, who mourns a drunken, brutish husband.</p>
-
-<p>The other son became steady, and married a lovely girl&mdash;my first patient.</p>
-
-<p>The daughters never wedded. Too proud to marry a poor man, too poor and
-destitute of real beauty or accomplishments for a wealthy or refined man
-to desire to wed them, they became servants and lackeys. If I desire a
-lunch at a certain saloon, one of them awaits my order. No matter about
-the other unfortunate, unloved girl. The father is an imbecile invalid.
-God is my witness, my judge, I long ago buried my hard feelings against
-them; they have only my commiseration.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img104.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
-<hr style="width: 50%;" />
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_386" id="Page_386">[Pg 386]</a></span></p>
-<h2><a name="XV" id="XV"></a>XV.</h2>
-<p class="title">DOCTORS’ FEES AND INCOMES.</p>
-
-<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table">
-<tr><td>“Three faces wears the doctor; when first sought,<br />
-An angel’s and a god’s, the cure half wrought;<br />
-But, when, the cure complete, he seeks his fee,<br />
-The d&mdash;&mdash;l looks then less terrible than he.�<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 12em;"><span class="smcap">Euricus Cordus, 1530.</span></span></td></tr></table>
-
-<div class="note"><p class="hang"><small>ANCIENT FEES.&mdash;LARGE FEES.&mdash;SPANISH PRIEST-DOCTORS.&mdash;A PIG ON
-PENANCE.&mdash;SMALL FEES.&mdash;A “CHOP� POSTPONED.&mdash;LONG FEES.&mdash;SHORT
-FEES.&mdash;OLD FEES.&mdash;A NIGHT-CAP.&mdash;AN OLD SHOE FOR LUCK.&mdash;A BLACK
-FEE.&mdash;“HEART’S OFFERING.�&mdash;A STUFFED CAT.&mdash;THE “GREAT GUNS� OF NEW
-YORK.&mdash;BOSTON.&mdash;ROTTEN EGGS.&mdash;“CATCH WHAT YOU CAN.�&mdash;FEMALE DOCTORS’
-FEES.&mdash;ABOVE PRICE.&mdash;“ASK FOR A FEE.�&mdash;“PITCH HIM
-OVERBOARD.�&mdash;DELICATE FEES.&mdash;MAKING THE MOST OF THEM.</small></p></div>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p>The great German physician who wrote the above died (as he ought, for
-putting so much truth into four lines) in 1538. He, of all physicians of
-his day, earned his fees; but it is often the case that the most deserving
-get the least reward, and Cordus was not an exception to the rule. A good
-physician, or surgeon, is seldom a sharp financier, and <i>vice versa</i>. “It
-is hard to serve two masters.�</p>
-
-<p>Ancient physicians’ fees were much larger, considering the difference in
-the value of money, than modern.</p>
-
-<p><span class="smcap">Erasistratus</span>, in the year 330 B. C., received from General Seleucus, of
-Alexander’s army, to whom the kingdom of Syria fell at the termination of
-the Macedonian conquest, the enormous sum of 60,000 crowns as a fee for
-his discovery of the disorder of the general’s son, Antiochus. The Emperor
-Augustus employed four physicians, viz., Albutus, Arantius, Calpetanus,
-and Rubrius, to each of whom he paid<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_387" id="Page_387">[Pg 387]</a></span> an annual salary of 250,000
-sesterces, equal to $10,000. Martialis, the Spanish epigramist, who was
-born in 40 A. D. says Alconius received 10,000,000 sesterces ($400,000)
-for a few years’ practice.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Large Fees.</span></p>
-
-<p>French physicians were never very well paid. The surgeons of Charlemagne
-were tolerably well recompensed. Ambrose Pare, the great surgeon, and
-inventor of ligatures (for peculiar arteries),&mdash;previous to whose time the
-arteries were seared with a hot iron; otherwise the patient bled to
-death,&mdash;received 5,000 francs for ligaturing one artery. Louis XIV. gave
-his surgeons 75,000 crowns each for successfully performing upon him a
-surgical operation.</p>
-
-<p>Upon the confinement of Maria Louise, second wife of the great Napoleon,
-four physicians&mdash;Bourdier, Corvisat, Dubois, and Ivan&mdash;received the sum of
-$20,000. Dubois was the principal, and received one half of the
-amount,&mdash;not a very extravagant remuneration; but then Napoleon held a
-mean opinion of physicians in general, and this fee was not to be wondered
-at. Dupuytren, the distinguished French surgeon, left a property of
-$1,580,000. Hahnemann, who, in 1785, at Dresden, abandoned physic in
-disgust, afterwards went to Paris, and at the time of his death was
-literally besieged with patients, reaping a reward for his labors of not
-less than $40,000 per annum. Boerhaave was a successful practitioner, born
-at Leyden, and left, at his death, $200,000 from private practice. John
-Stow, the eminent antiquarian writer, whose misfortunes compelled him to
-beg his daily bread at the age of eighty, informs us that “half a crown
-(English) was looked upon as a large fee in Holland, while in England, at
-that same time, a physician scorned to touch any fee but gold, and
-surgeons were still more exorbitant.�</p>
-
-<p>In Spain, until a very remote period, the priests <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_388" id="Page_388">[Pg 388]</a></span>continued to exercise
-the double office of priest and physician, and some of them were
-proficient in surgery; and though they fixed no stipulated price for their
-medical services, they usually managed to get two fleeces from the one
-shearing, and on certain occasions dispose of the carcass also, for their
-own pecuniary advantages, as the following will show:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>Anthony Gavin, formerly a Catholic priest of Spain, says, “I saw Fran.
-Alfaro, a Jew, in Lisbon, who told me that he was known to be very rich,
-when in Seville, where the priests finally stripped him of all his wealth,
-and cast him into the Inquisition, where they kept him four years, under
-some pretence, and finally liberated him, that he might accumulate more
-property. After three years’ trade, having again collected considerable
-wealth, he was again imprisoned and his wealth confiscated by the
-priest-doctors, but let off, with the order to wear the mark of San Benito
-(picture of a man in the midst of the fire of hell) for six months.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 450px; height: 257px;"><img src="images/img105.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">A SAN BENITO PIG.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>“But Alfaro fled from the city, and finding a pig near the gate, he
-slipped the San Benito over the pig’s neck, and, sending him into the
-town, made his escape. ‘Now I am poor,’ he added, ‘nobody wants to
-imprison me.’�</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_389" id="Page_389">[Pg 389]</a></span></p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">English Fees and Incomes.</span></p>
-
-<p>In no other country have physicians’ fees varied so much as in England.
-The Protestant divine and the physician have kept step together to the
-music of civilization and enlightenment. Both of these professions were
-held at a low estimation up to the Elizabethan era, when a young,
-unfledged M. D. from Oxford would gladly accept a situation in a lord’s
-family for five or ten pounds a year, with his board, and lodgings in the
-garret, while, in addition to professional services he might act as sort
-of wise clown, “and be a patient listener, the solver of riddles, and the
-butt of ridicule for the family and guests. He might save the expense of a
-gardener&mdash;nail up the apricots; or a groom, and sometimes curry down and
-harness the horses; cast up the farrier’s or butler’s accounts, or carry a
-parcel or message across the country.�</p>
-
-<p>As was said also of the divine, “Not one living in fifty enabled the
-incumbent to bring up a family comfortably. As the children multiplied,
-the household became more beggarly. Often it was only by toiling on his
-glebe, by feeding swine and by loading dung-carts, that he could gain his
-daily bread.... His sons followed the plough, and his daughters went out
-to service.�</p>
-
-<p>Queen Elizabeth’s physician in ordinary received one hundred pounds per
-annum and perquisites&mdash;“sustenance, wine, wax, and etceteras.� Morgan, her
-apothecary, for one quarter’s bill was paid £18 7<i>s.</i> 8<i>d.</i> A one pound
-fee, paid by the Earl of Cumberland to a Cambridge physician, was
-considered as exceptionally liberal, even for a nobleman to pay.</p>
-
-<p>Edward III. granted to his apothecary, who acted in the capacity of
-physician in those days, a salary amounting to six pence a day, and to
-Ricardus Wye, his surgeon, twelve pence per day, besides eight marks. (A
-mark was 13<i>s.</i> 4<i>d.</i>) In the courts of the kings of Wales, the
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_390" id="Page_390">[Pg 390]</a></span>physicians and surgeons were the twelfth in rank, and whose fees were
-fixed by law. Dr. Caius was fortunate in holding position as physician to
-Edward VI., Mary, and Elizabeth. Sir Theodore Mayerne was still more
-fortunate in having the honor of serving Henry IV. and Louis XIII. of
-France, and subsequently King James I., Charles I. and II. of England.
-Mayerne has been the subject of many anecdotes, of which the following is
-a sample:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 376px; height: 450px;"><img src="images/img106.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">AN OLD ENGLISH CLERGYMAN AND HIS FAMILY.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>A parsimonious friend, consulting Mayerne, laid two broad pieces of gold
-(sixty shillings) on the doctor’s table, to express his generosity, as he
-felt safe that they would be immediately returned to him. But Mayerne
-quietly pocketed them, saying,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“I made my will this morning, and if it became known that I had refused a
-fee, I might be deemed <i>non compos mentis</i>.�</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_391" id="Page_391">[Pg 391]</a></span></p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 336px; height: 500px;"><img src="images/img107.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">THE KING’S PHYSICIAN AND THE EXECUTIONER.</p>
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_392" id="Page_392">[Pg 392]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_393" id="Page_393">[Pg 393]</a></span>In 1700, graduated physicians’ dues were ten shillings, licensed doctors,
-six shillings eight pence. A surgeon’s fee was twelve pence per mile, be
-his journey long or short, and five shillings for setting a bone or
-dislocated joint, one shilling for bleeding, and five pounds for an
-amputation. All after attendance extra.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Anecdote of James Coythier.</span></p>
-
-<p>This jolly doctor was employed by Louis XI., and was said to have sponged
-immense sums from his royal master, beyond a regular salary.</p>
-
-<p>“He wrung favor upon favor from the king, and if he resisted the modest
-demands of his physician, the latter threatened him with speedy
-dissolution. On this menace, the king, succumbing to the fear of death,
-which weakness characterized his family, would at once surrender at
-discretion.�</p>
-
-<p>Finally, to rid himself of such despotic demands, the king ordered the
-executioner to behead the physician.</p>
-
-<p>The requisite officer waited on Coythier, and in a courteous and
-considerate manner, as became the occasion, said to him,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“I deeply regret, my dear sir, the circumstance, but I must kill you. The
-king can stand you no longer, and here are my orders.�</p>
-
-<p>“All right,� replied the doctor, with surprising unconcern; “I am ready
-whenever you are. What time would you find it most convenient to perform
-the little operation?�</p>
-
-<p>While the officer was trying to decide, Coythier continued,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_394" id="Page_394">[Pg 394]</a></span>“But I am very sorry to leave his majesty only for a few days; for I have
-ascertained by occult science that he can’t survive me more than four
-days.�</p>
-
-<p>The officer stood struck with amazement, but finally returned and imparted
-the astounding information to the king.</p>
-
-<p>“O, liberate him instantly. Hurt not a hair of his head,� exclaimed the
-terrified monarch.</p>
-
-<p>Coythier was of course speedily restored to his place in the king’s
-confidence&mdash;and treasury.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">A Long Fee.</span></p>
-
-<p>Here is what may be called a <i>long fee</i>:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>An English surgeon, named Broughton, had the good fortune to open the
-commerce of the East Indies to his countrymen through a medical fee.
-Having been sent from Surat to Agra, in the year 1636, to treat a daughter
-of the emperor Shah Jehan, he had the great fortune to restore the
-princess.</p>
-
-<p>Beyond the present reward to the physician for his great services, the
-emperor gave him the privilege of a free commerce throughout the whole
-extent of his domains. Scarcely had Broughton returned than the favorite
-nabob of the province&mdash;Bengal&mdash;sent for the doctor to treat him for a very
-dangerous disease. Having fortunately restored this patient also, the
-nabob settled a pension upon the physician, and confirmed the privilege of
-the emperor, extending it to all Englishmen who should come to Bengal.</p>
-
-<p>Broughton at once communicated this important treaty, as it was, to the
-English governor at Surat, and, by the advice of the latter, the company
-sent from England, in 1640, the first ship to trade at Bengal. Such was
-the origin of the great Indian commerce, which has been continued to the
-present day,&mdash;the longest continued doctor’s fee ever given.</p>
-
-<p>Another long fee was that given to Dr. Th. Dinsdale, who travelled from
-England to St. Petersburg by order of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_395" id="Page_395">[Pg 395]</a></span> Catharine of Russia, to inoculate
-her son, the baron of the empire. The empress presented him with a fee of
-twelve thousand pounds, and a life pension of five hundred pounds. This is
-the largest sum ever paid to any physician since the world began, for a
-single operation, and I know of no physician who ever made a longer
-journey to attend a patient.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">A Short Fee.</span></p>
-
-<p>This is how a physician fell short of his fee. Charles II. was taken
-suddenly and dangerously ill with apoplexy. The court physician being out
-of town, Dr. King, who only being present, with one attendant, instantly
-bled his majesty, to which “breach of court etiquette� John Evelyn
-attributes his salvation for the time; for he would certainly have died,
-had Dr. King staid the coming of the regular physician&mdash;for which act he
-must have a regular pardon!</p>
-
-<p>The privy council ordered a handsome fee to be paid Dr. King for his great
-presence of mind and prompt action, but it never was paid. Charles died
-soon afterwards, and poor King fell short of a fat fee.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Odd Fees.</span></p>
-
-<p>Amongst the many funny things told about Sir Astley Cooper, the eminent
-English surgeon, none is better authenticated than that respecting the
-“night-cap fee.�</p>
-
-<p>In his earlier practice, he had to pass through all the trials and
-tribulations, “anxious and ill-rewarded waitings,� that lesser stars have
-before and since, and ever will, before he became “established.� In his
-first year’s practice in London, his profits were but five guineas; his
-second reached the encouraging sum of twenty-five pounds, and increased in
-this ratio till the ninth year, when it was one thousand pounds. In one
-year he made twenty-one thousand guineas. It is said that one merchant of
-London paid him annually six hundred pounds. It wouldn’t require but a few
-such<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_396" id="Page_396">[Pg 396]</a></span> lucrative patients to keep a doctor in pocket money even at this
-day.</p>
-
-<p>A West India millionnaire, named Hyatt, had been to London, and undergone
-a severe and dangerous surgical operation at the hands of Sir Astley,
-assisted by Drs. Lettsom and Nelson. The operation proved a success, and
-the grateful patient only waited till he could sit up in bed a little
-while at a time before expressing in some measure his gratitude to the
-physicians. All three being present one day, Hyatt arose in bed and
-presented the two physicians with a fee of three hundred gold guineas,
-and, turning to Sir Astley, who seemed for a moment to have been slighted,
-the millionnaire said,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“And as for you, Sir Astley, you shall have nothing better than that,�
-catching off his night-cap, and flinging it almost into Sir Astley’s
-handsome face&mdash;he was said to be the handsomest man in England; “there,
-take it, sir.�</p>
-
-<p>“Sir,� exclaimed the surgeon, with a smile, “I pocket the affront.�</p>
-
-<p>On reaching home, and examining the night-cap, he found it contained one
-thousand guineas&mdash;nearly five thousand dollars.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">An Old Shoe.</span></p>
-
-<p>Quite as odd a fee was that presented to a celebrated New York surgeon
-about the year 1845. An eccentric old merchant, a descendant of one of the
-early Dutch families of Manhattan Island, was sick at his summer residence
-on the Hudson, where his family physician attended him. The doctor gave
-him no encouragement that he ever would recover. A most celebrated
-surgeon, since deceased, was called as counsel, who, after careful
-examination of the case, and considering the merchant’s age, coincided
-with the opinion of the family physician, and so expressed himself to the
-patient.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_397" id="Page_397">[Pg 397]</a></span>“Well, if that is all the good you can do, you may return to New York,�
-said the doomed man. But as the astonished surgeon was going out of the
-house, the invalid sent a servant after him, in haste, saying,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“Here, throw this old shoe after him, telling him that I wish him better
-luck on the next patient;� and drawing off his embroidered slipper, he
-gave it to the servant, who, well used to his master’s whims, as well as
-confident of his generosity, ran after the doctor, flinging the shoe, and
-giving the message, as directed. The surgeon felt sure of his fee, well
-knowing the ability of the eccentric merchant; but he picked up the shoe,
-and placing it in his coat pocket, said to his brother physician, who
-accompanied him, “I’ll keep it, and I may get something, to <i>boot</i>.�</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 450px; height: 257px;"><img src="images/img108.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">A SLIPPER-Y FEE.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>It contained, stuffed into the toe, a draft for five hundred dollars.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">A Black Fee.</span></p>
-
-<p>Dr. Robert Glynn, of Cambridge, England, who died nearly eighty years ago,
-was a most benevolent man, as well<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_398" id="Page_398">[Pg 398]</a></span> as a successful medical practitioner,
-with a large revenue. Mr. Jeaffreson tells the following amusing story
-about him:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“On one occasion a poor peasant woman, the widowed mother of an only son,
-trudged from the heart of the fens (ten miles) into Cambridge, to consult
-the good doctor about her boy, who was very sick with the ague. Her manner
-so interested the doctor that, though it was during an inclement winter,
-and the roads almost impassable by carriages, he ordered horses harnessed,
-and taking in the old lady, went to see the sick lad.</p>
-
-<p>“After a tedious attendance, and the exhibition of much port wine and
-bark, bought at the physician’s expense, the patient recovered. A few days
-after the doctor had taken his discharge, without fees, the poor woman
-presented herself at the consulting-room, bearing in her hands a large
-basket.</p>
-
-<p>“‘I hope, my good woman, your son is not ill again,’ said the doctor.</p>
-
-<p>“‘O, no, sir; he was never better,’ replied the woman, her face beaming
-with gratitude; ‘but he can’t rest quiet for thinking of all the trouble
-you have had, and so he resolved this morning to send you this;’ and she
-began undoing the cover of the large wicker basket which she had set on
-the floor. The doctor stood overlooking the transaction in no little
-concern. Egress being afforded, out hopped an enormous magpie, that
-strutted around the room, chattering away as independent as a lord.</p>
-
-<p>“‘There, doctor, it is his favorite magpie he has sent you,’ exclaimed the
-woman, looking proudly upon the piece of chattering ebony. It was a fee to
-be proud of.�</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">A Heart’s Offering.</span></p>
-
-<p>The gratitude of the poor country lad for his recovery did not exceed,
-probably, that of a young girl, as related<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_399" id="Page_399">[Pg 399]</a></span> in the Montpelier papers, from
-one of which I cut the following:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“A young girl, fourteen years of age, named Celia &mdash;&mdash;, called at the
-hotel to-day where Dr. C., with his family, is stopping, and presenting
-him with a bouquet of Mayflowers, said, ‘I have no money to pay you for
-curing my head of scrofula, and I thought these flowers might please you.’
-This was truly the offering of a grateful heart; for her head <i>had been
-entirely covered by sores, from her birth</i>, and the doctor had cured it.
-Another journal said, in commenting upon it, ‘This heart’s offering deeply
-affected the doctor, to whom it was a greater reward than any money
-recompense could have been.’ The doctor has the withered and blackened
-flowers and leaves pressed, and hung in a frame in his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_400" id="Page_400">[Pg 400]</a></span> office, but the
-memory of the touching scene of their presentation will remain fresh
-within his heart forever.�</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 450px; height: 396px;"><img src="images/img109.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">A LIVING FEE.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">A Stuffed Cat-skin.</span></p>
-
-<p>An eccentric and parsimonious old lady, who died in a small village in the
-State of Maine, some twenty years ago, always kept a half dozen cats about
-the house. She was a dried-up-looking old crone, and some ill-minded
-people had gone so far as to call her a witch, doubtless because of her<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_401" id="Page_401">[Pg 401]</a></span>
-oddities and her cats, “black, white, and brindled.� When one of these
-delightful night-prowlers departed this life, the old lady would have the
-skin of the animal stuffed, to adorn her mantel shelf. My informant said
-he had once seen them with his own eyes, arranged along on the shelf, some
-half score of them, looking as demure and comfortable as a stuffed cat
-could, while the old woman sat by the fireplace, croning over her knitting
-work.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 416px; height: 450px;"><img src="images/img110.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">STUFFED PETS.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>The woman paid no bills that she could avoid, always pleading poverty as
-her excuse for the non-fulfilment of her responsibilities.</p>
-
-<p>One dark and stormy night she was taken very sick, and by a preconcerted
-signal to a neighbor,&mdash;the placing of a light in a certain window,&mdash;help
-was summoned, including the village doctor, to whom she owed a fee for
-each visit he had ever made her. But this was fated to be the doctor’s
-last call to that patient.</p>
-
-<p>“O, doctor, then I am dying at last&mdash;am I?�</p>
-
-<p>The physician assured her such was the case.</p>
-
-<p>“Then, doctor, I must tell you that you’ve been very patient with me, and
-have hastened day or night to see me, in my whims, as well as my real
-sickness, and you shall be rewarded. I have no money, but you see all my
-treasures arranged along on the mantel-piece there?�</p>
-
-<p>“What!� exclaimed the doctor; “you don’t call those cats treasures, I
-hope!�</p>
-
-<p>“Yes, they are my only treasures, doctor. Now, I want to be just to <i>you</i>,
-above all others, because you’ve not only served me as I said, but you’ve
-often sent me wood and provisions during the cold winters&mdash;�</p>
-
-<p>Here she became too feeble to go on, and the doctor revived her with some
-cordial from his saddle-bags, when she took breath, and continued,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“See them, doctor; eleven of them. Which will you choose?�</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_402" id="Page_402">[Pg 402]</a></span>The doctor, with as much grace as possible, declined selecting any one of
-the useless stuffed skins; when the old lady, by much effort, raised her
-head from the pillow, and said, “Well, I will select for you. Take the
-black one&mdash;take&mdash;the black&mdash;cat&mdash;doctor!� and died.</p>
-
-<p>Her dying words so impressed him, that he took the cat home, and, on
-opening her,&mdash;for it was very heavy,&mdash;he found that the skin contained
-nearly a hundred dollars, in gold.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">American Fees and Incomes.</span></p>
-
-<p>There is a surgeon in New York city whose income from practice outside of
-the hospital is said to be twenty-five thousand dollars per annum. Dr.
-Valentine Mott, the celebrated New York surgeon, who died April 26, 1865,
-at the age of eighty-one years, had a very large income, but less than
-that enjoyed by several surgeons in the metropolis at the present time.</p>
-
-<p>There are some specialists in New York, Philadelphia, and Boston, who
-receive greater sums annually than the regular medical or surgical
-practitioners. There is no law particularly controlling the prices of the
-former. The fee for a visit, by the established usage of the medical
-societies in these cities, is from three to ten dollars.</p>
-
-<p>A specialist sometimes receives fifty to one hundred dollars for
-prescribing in a case, for which another physician, in ordinary practice,
-would charge but an office fee of two to ten dollars. A quack
-specialist&mdash;and an impostor&mdash;in the latter city makes his brags that he
-has received twelve hundred dollars for one prescription. But then this
-same lying braggadocio says he has read medicine with Ricard, and had
-various honors conferred upon him.</p>
-
-<p>Dr. Pulte, of Ohio, one of the western pioneers in homeopathy, who has
-often been greeted, in his earlier professional rounds, by a shower of
-dirt, rotten eggs, stones,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_403" id="Page_403">[Pg 403]</a></span> brickbats, and had rails and sticks thrust
-through his carriage wheels at night, and been otherwise insulted, until,
-finally, he had to carry his wife about with him, as a protective
-measure,&mdash;for his revilers would not insult a lady,&mdash;has since made as
-high as twenty thousand dollars a year, and has amassed a fortune of two
-hundred thousand dollars. There is a Boston homeopathist whose income from
-practice is not less than twenty to twenty-five thousand dollars annually.
-Some of the surgeons (allopathic) do better, but hardly reach the figures
-of Dr. Nelaton, the great French surgeon, who, in 1869, earned four
-hundred thousand francs, equal to about eighty thousand dollars.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 450px; height: 247px;"><img src="images/img111.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">A PIONEER OF HOMEOPATHY.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>Dr. Bigelow, the very celebrated surgeon of Harvard College, has probably
-received the largest fee for a surgical operation of any New England
-practitioner. He is said to be worth nearly a million.</p>
-
-<p>Dr. Buckingham, the eminent medical practitioner, of Boston, who probably
-earns as much as any physician in the city, a few years ago stated to the
-graduating class of Harvard College&mdash;so I am informed by a physician then
-present&mdash;that he received for his first year’s practice in Boston<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_404" id="Page_404">[Pg 404]</a></span> <i>but
-fifty-seven dollars</i>. He then had a little office up stairs, where he
-slept, dined,&mdash;often on bread and cheese, or a few crackers; sometimes he
-did not dine,&mdash;and received his few patients. But he was a great student,
-and a hard worker, and often, and usually, stuck to his post during those
-hours when more prosperous physicians were seeking amusement or
-relaxation. He was one of the “<i>hold-fast</i>� kind, who always win, in the
-end.</p>
-
-<p>“<i>Catch what you can.</i>�&mdash;There is a class of wretches in every city who
-have no established fee for prescribing for the sick. They go on the
-principle of “catch what I can.� If they cannot get a fee of twenty
-dollars, they will take two, provided the patient has no more. A young man
-who visited one of these medical shave-shops was charged a fee of
-thirty-five dollars in a very simple case; but the benevolent doctor
-concluded to accept two dollars and a half instead, since the man had no
-more money. The shamefulness of such Jewing reminds one of the story of a
-negro trading off a worn-out old mule:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“I say, dar, what will you take for dat yer mule, Cuffy?�</p>
-
-<p>“O, I axes thirty-five dollars for him, Mr. Sambo.�</p>
-
-<p>“O, go way, dar. I gibs you five dollars for him,� said the first.</p>
-
-<p>“Well, you can take him, Sambo. I won’t stand for thirty dollars on a mule
-trade, nohow.�</p>
-
-<p>There is a female practitioner in St. Louis who earns above ten thousand
-dollars a year, and her individual fees are moderate at that.</p>
-
-<p>Another doctress, Mrs. Ormsby, of Orange, N. J., accumulates some fifteen
-thousand a year, and is in turn outstripped by another woman practising in
-New York, who gets nearly twenty thousand dollars a year. Such certainly
-possess great business tact, with or without professional merit, and for
-such let all men give them credit.</p>
-
-<p>Several female doctors in Boston receive from three to five thousand
-dollars each, yearly.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_405" id="Page_405">[Pg 405]</a></span>It is too often the case that a physician’s success is reckoned, like a
-tradesman’s, by what he has gained in a pecuniary point of view. There
-are, however, thousands of worthy men, successful with their cases, who,
-from less acquisitiveness than benevolence, have failed in securing more
-than a bare competence, through a life devoted to their profession.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 449px; height: 450px;"><img src="images/img112.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">A SHARP MULE TRADE.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>I presume nearly every physician who has experienced a dozen years in
-practice has some mementos of his poor patients’ gratitude, in the form,
-if not of an ebony bird, or a black cat-skin, of something possessing more
-beauty, and,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_406" id="Page_406">[Pg 406]</a></span> to the benevolent heart, which always beats within the
-breast of every true physician, keepsakes prized above gold and silver.</p>
-
-<p class="poem">“Who has not kept some trifling thing,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">More prized, more prized, than jewels rare,</span><br />
-A faded flower, a broken ring,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">A tress of golden hair, a tress of golden hair?�</span></p>
-
-<p>A very benevolent physician, and a sexagenarian, of New York city, wrote,
-twenty years ago, “I even yet enjoy a sort of melancholy satisfaction in
-hastening to relieve the suffering poor of my neighborhood, though I know
-that my reward will be very small, or, what is far more frequent, that I
-shall be paid with ingratitude, if not slander.</p>
-
-<p>“Sometimes there are bright spots in my horizon, and I think myself more
-than repaid by a new shirt, or a couple of handkerchiefs&mdash;the gift of some
-poor, though grateful sewing girl. A few of these little treasures I prize
-with peculiar tenderness.�</p>
-
-<p class="poem">“A tress of hair and a faded leaf<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Are paltry things to a cynic’s eyes:</span><br />
-But to me they are keys that open the gates<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Of a paradise of memories.�</span></p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Asking for a Fee.</span></p>
-
-<p>A Boston M. D., who had been in practice fourteen years without
-accumulating any property, was about to abandon the profession, and, with
-this view, he applied to Fowler, the phrenologist, with the question,
-“What pursuit am I best adapted to follow?� Mr. Fowler, with whom he was
-unacquainted, said, “The practice of medicine;� but, at the same time, he
-assured the doctor that he ought to do business on a <i>cash</i>
-principle,&mdash;“<i>accipe dum dolet</i>,�&mdash;or employ a collector, as he would
-never collect his fees. Acting on this hint, the doctor returned to his
-practice, and in a few years was out of debt, and owned a fine residence.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_407" id="Page_407">[Pg 407]</a></span>In the matter of collecting fees only he was deficient.</p>
-
-<p>A New York student&mdash;if report is true&mdash;began earlier to be impressed with
-the propriety of getting his fee in advance, as the following will show.</p>
-
-<p>He went before the censors for examination. One of the board was a
-well-known penurious, fee-loving doctor, who, looking over the list of
-names of the applicants, said,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“Mr. &mdash;&mdash;, if a patient came to your office, what would you first do?�</p>
-
-<p>“I would ask him for a fee, sir,� was the prompt reply.</p>
-
-<p>An old navy surgeon relates the following regarding examinations:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“I was shown into the examining-room. Large table, and a half dozen old
-gentlemen at it. ‘Big wigs, no doubt,’ I thought, ‘and, sure as my name is
-Symonds, they’ll pluck me like a pigeon.’</p>
-
-<p>“‘Well, sir, what do you know about the science of medicine?’ asked the
-stout man in the head seat.</p>
-
-<p>“‘More than he does of the practice, I’ll be bound,’ tittered a little
-wasp-like dandy&mdash;a West End ladies’ doctor.</p>
-
-<p>“I trembled in my shoes.</p>
-
-<p>“‘Well, sir,’ continued the first, ‘what would you do if during an action
-a man was brought to you with both arms and legs shot off? Now, sir, speak
-out; don’t keep the board waiting. What would you do?’</p>
-
-<p>“‘By Jove, sir,’ I answered, ‘I would pitch him overboard, and go on to
-some one else to whom I could be of more service.’</p>
-
-<p>“By thunder! every one present burst out laughing, and they passed me
-directly&mdash;passed me directly.�</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Delicate Fees.</span></p>
-
-<p>There are certain delicate cases, usually terminating in “good news,� in
-which it has long been an established custom for the physician to receive
-a double fee. “A father just <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_408" id="Page_408">[Pg 408]</a></span>presented with an heir, or a lucky fellow
-just made one, is expected to bleed freely for the benefit of the
-faculty.� Even the Irish, who, in about all other cases, calculate on
-“cheating the doctor to pay the priest,� will usually lay by a little sum
-from their penury, or their bank hoardings, as the case may be, “to pay
-the doctor for the babbie.�</p>
-
-<p>We insert the following poetry (!) for the fun of the thing; nevertheless,
-it is within the experience of more than one physician, who, after doing
-his duty, exhibiting his best professional ability, and saving the wife of
-some miserable, worthless fellow, who never deserved such a godsend for a
-companion, has cheated the doctor out of his fees from spite, when, if the
-poor woman had died, he would have liberally paid the physician. Let no
-man take this to himself.</p>
-
-<p class="poem">“A woman who scolded one day so long<br />
-Quite suddenly lost all use of her tongue!<br />
-The doctor arrived, who, with ‘hem and haw,’<br />
-Pronounced the affection a true locked jaw.<br />
-<br />
-“‘What hopes, good doctor?’ ‘Very small, I see.’<br />
-The husband (quite sad) slips a double fee.<br />
-‘No hopes, <i>dear</i> doctor?’ ‘Ahem! none, I fear.’<br />
-Gives another fee for an issue clear.<br />
-<br />
-“The madam deceased. ‘Pray, sir, do not grieve.’<br />
-‘My friends, one comfort I surely receive&mdash;<br />
-A fatal locked jaw was the only case<br />
-From which my dear wife could have died&mdash;in peace.’�</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center">“<span class="smcap">Make the most of him.</span>�</p>
-
-<p>It has been said that physicians have been known to benevolently play a
-fee into a brother’s hand when their own palm failed to be broad enough to
-hold them all. Perhaps the reader may derive amusement or instruction from
-the following, in which case the writer is well repaid for their
-insertion:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“A wealthy tradesman, after drinking the waters of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_409" id="Page_409">[Pg 409]</a></span> Bath Springs a
-long time, under advice of his physician, took a fancy to try those of
-Bristol. Armed with an introductory letter from his Bath doctor to a
-professional brother at Bristol, the old gentleman set off on his journey.
-On the way he said to himself,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“‘I wonder what Dr. &mdash;&mdash; has advised the Bristol physician respecting my
-case;’ and giving way to his curiosity, or anxiety, he opened the letter,
-and read,&mdash;</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot"><p>“‘<span class="smcap">Dear Doctor</span>: The bearer is a fat Wiltshire clothier; <i>make the most
-of him</i>. Yours, professionally, &mdash;&mdash;.’�</p></div>
-
-<p>Clutterbuck, the historian, and a pleasant writer, tells the following of
-his uncle, who was a physician:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“A nervous old lady, a patient of his, took it into her crotchety old head
-to try the Bath waters, and applied to her physician for permission.</p>
-
-<p>“‘The very thing I have been thinking to recommend,’ he replied; ‘and I
-know an excellent physician at the wells, to whom I will give you a letter
-of introduction.’�</p>
-
-<p>With her letter and a companion, she started for the springs. <i>En route</i>
-she took out the letter, and, after looking at the address some time, her
-curiosity overcame her, and she said to her friend, “So long as the doctor
-has treated me, he has never told me what my case is, and I have a mind to
-just look into this letter and see what he has told the Bath physician
-about it.�</p>
-
-<p>In vain her friend remonstrated against such a breach of trust. The old
-lady opened the epistle, and read the following instructive words:&mdash;</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot"><p>“<span class="smcap">Dear Sir</span>: Keep the old woman three weeks, and send her back.�</p></div>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img113.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
-<hr style="width: 50%;" />
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_410" id="Page_410">[Pg 410]</a></span></p>
-<h2><a name="XVI" id="XVI"></a>XVI.</h2>
-<p class="title">GENEROSITY AND MEANNESS.</p>
-
-<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table">
-<tr><td>“Life’s better joys spring up thus by the wayside,<br />
-And the world calls them trifles. ’Tis not so.<br />
-Heaven is not prodigal, nor pours its joys<br />
-In unregarded torrents upon man:<br />
-They fall, as fall the riches of the clouds<br />
-Upon the parched earth, gently, drop by drop.<br />
-Nothing is trifling which love consecrates.�&mdash;<span class="smcap">Aylmere.</span><br />
-<br />
-“The art of our necessities is strange.�&mdash;<span class="smcap">King Lear.</span></td></tr></table>
-
-<div class="note"><p class="hang"><small>THE WORLD UNMASKED.&mdash;A ROUGH DIAMOND.&mdash;DECAYED GENTILITY.&mdash;“THREE
-FLIGHT, BACK.�&mdash;SEVERAL ANECDOTES.&mdash;THE OLD FOX-HUNTER.&mdash;“STAND ON
-YOUR HEAD.�&mdash;KINDNESS TO CLERGYMEN.&mdash;RARE CHARITY.&mdash;OLD AND
-HOMELESS.&mdash;THE “O’CLO’� JEW.&mdash;DR. HUNTER’S GENEROSITY.&mdash;“WHAT’S THE
-PRICE OF BEEF?�&mdash;A SAD OMISSION.&mdash;INNATE GENEROSITY.&mdash;A CURB-STONE
-MONEY-MANIAC.&mdash;AN EYE-OPENER.&mdash;AN AVARICIOUS DOCTOR.&mdash;ROBBING THE DEAD.</small></p></div>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p>Side by side, hand in hand, through the world, go generosity and meanness.
-If these could but be personified, and the individuals compelled to stand
-before men in broad daylight, O, what a staring would there be! Those whom
-we thought the very embodiment of generosity and kindness would “crop out�
-in their true hideousness of character&mdash;unmasked meanness and selfishness;
-yes, men too high in the estimation of the world, in church and in state.</p>
-
-<p>On the other hand, we should be equally astonished to find amongst those
-in the humbler walks of life, as well as some in the more exalted, people,
-whom the world counted as mean and penurious, now standing forth adorned
-in robes<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_411" id="Page_411">[Pg 411]</a></span> bleached like the snow-drift, shining bright as the golden
-sunrise, yet blushing to find that their hidden charities, and secret,
-self-denying generosities, had been suddenly brought to light.</p>
-
-<p>And when the secret works of this world shall be revealed, no class of men
-will stand forth more blessed in deeds of generosity and self-sacrifice
-than the physicians. There is an occasional black sheep in the great
-flock.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">A Rough Diamond.</span></p>
-
-<p>There is no better authority for the truth of the many queer stories told
-about the rough benevolence of Dr. Abernethy, the great English surgeon,
-than the author of his memoirs&mdash;Sir George Macilwain.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 256px; height: 450px;"><img src="images/img114.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">PHYSICIANS’ CHARITY.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>“His manner [Dr. Abernethy’s], as we shall admit, was occasionally rough,
-and sometimes rather prematurely truthful. One day he was called in
-consultation by a physician to give an opinion in a case of a pulsating
-tumor, which was pretty plainly an aneurism. On proceeding to examine the
-tumor, he found a plaster covering it.</p>
-
-<p>“‘What is this you have on it?’ asked Abernethy.</p>
-
-<p>“‘O, that is only a plaster.’</p>
-
-<p>“‘Pooh!’ exclaimed the doctor, pulling it off and flinging it aside.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_412" id="Page_412">[Pg 412]</a></span>“‘The “pooh� was all well enough,’ said the attending physician,
-afterwards, ‘but it took several guineas out of my pocket.’�</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center">“<span class="smcap">Up Three Pair, Back.</span>�</p>
-
-<p>A surgeon&mdash;pupil of the above&mdash;was requested to visit a patient in a low
-quarter of the suburbs of the metropolis. When he arrived, and mounted
-several flights of crazy stairs, he began searching for the designated
-number, which was so defaced by time that he was only enabled to determine
-it by the more legible condition of the next number.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 412px; height: 450px;"><img src="images/img115.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">SEARCH FOR A PATIENT.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_413" id="Page_413">[Pg 413]</a></span>An old woman answered the shake of the dilapidated knocker.</p>
-
-<p>“Does Captain Blank live here?�</p>
-
-<p>“Yes, sir,�&mdash;trying to penetrate the darkness.</p>
-
-<p>“Is he at home?�</p>
-
-<p>“Yes, sir. Please, may I make so bold as to ask, are you the doctor?�</p>
-
-<p>“Yes.�</p>
-
-<p>“O, then please to walk in, sir.�</p>
-
-<p>In the ill-furnished, narrow room sat an old man, in a very shabby and
-variegated <i>déshabille</i>, who rose from his chair, and, with a grace worthy
-of a count, welcomed the stranger. His manner was extremely gentlemanly,
-his language well chosen, and the statement of his complaint particularly
-clear and concise.</p>
-
-<p>The surgeon, who like most of us see strange things, was puzzled to make
-out his new patient, but concluded that he was one of the many who, having
-been born to better things, had become reduced by misfortune to these
-apparently very narrow circumstances.</p>
-
-<p>Accordingly, having prescribed, the surgeon was about taking his leave,
-when the gentleman said,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“Sir, I thank you very much for your attention,� at the same time offering
-his hand with a fee.</p>
-
-<p>The benevolent surgeon declined the fee, simply saying,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“No, I thank you, sir. I hope you will soon be better. Good morning.�</p>
-
-<p>“Stay, sir!� exclaimed the old gentleman. “I shall insist on this, if you
-please,� in a tone which at once convinced the surgeon that it would be
-more painful to refuse than accept the fee; he accordingly took it.</p>
-
-<p>“I am very much obliged to you, sir,� the old gentleman then said; “for
-had you not taken your fee I could not have again had the advantage of
-your advice. I sent for you because I had understood that you were a pupil
-of Dr. <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_414" id="Page_414">[Pg 414]</a></span>Abernethy’s, for whom I could not again send, <i>because he would
-not take his fee</i>, and I was so hurt that I am afraid I was rude to the
-good man. I suppose he, judging from the appearances of things here,
-thought I could not afford it, hence refused the fee, on which I begged
-him not to be deceived by appearances, but take the fee. However, he kept
-retreating and declining, till, forgetting myself a little, and feeling
-vexed, I said, ‘By G&mdash;&mdash;, sir, I insist on your taking it,’ when he
-replied as fiercely, ‘By G&mdash;&mdash;, sir, I will not,’ and hastily left the
-room, closing the door after him.�</p>
-
-<p>This gentleman lived to the age of ninety. He was really in very good
-circumstances, but lived in this humble manner to enable him to assist
-very efficiently some poor relatives. The surgeon, after a while, changed
-his professional visits to friendly ones, and continued them up to the old
-man’s death. When, however, the gentleman died, about four hundred guineas
-were found in his boxes.</p>
-
-<p>Sometimes Dr. Abernethy would meet with a patient who would afford a
-useful lesson. A lady, wife of a distinguished musician, consulted him,
-and, finding him uncourteous, said,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“Sir, I had heard of your rudeness before I came, but I did not expect
-this.�</p>
-
-<p>When Dr. Abernethy gave her the prescription, she asked,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“What am I to do with this, sir?�</p>
-
-<p>“Anything you like. Put it into the fire if you choose.�</p>
-
-<p>The lady laid the fee on the table, went to the grate, threw the
-prescription on to the fire, and hastily left the room.</p>
-
-<p>The doctor followed her to the hall, earnestly pressing her to take back
-the fee, or permit him to write her another prescription; but the lady
-would not yield her vantage-ground, and so withdrew.</p>
-
-<p>The foregoing is well authenticated. Mr. Stowe, the informant, knows the
-lady well.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_415" id="Page_415">[Pg 415]</a></span></p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 450px; height: 282px;"><img src="images/img116.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">AN ECCENTRIC PATIENT.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_416" id="Page_416">[Pg 416]</a></span></p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 450px; height: 392px;"><img src="images/img117.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">A WOMAN’S REBUKE.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_417" id="Page_417">[Pg 417]</a></span></p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">The Old Fox-hunter.</span></p>
-
-<p>Sometimes, again, the ill usage was all on one side.</p>
-
-<p>We know a hard-drinking old fox-hunter who abused Dr. Abernethy roundly;
-but all that he could say against him was this:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“Why, sir,&mdash;will you believe me?&mdash;almost the first words he said, as he
-entered my room, was, ‘I perceive you drink a good deal.’</p>
-
-<p>“Now,� continued the patient, very <i>naïvely</i>, “supposing I did, what the
-devil was that to him?�</p>
-
-<p>Another gentleman, who had a most unfortunate appearance on his nose,
-exactly like that which accompanies dram-drinking, used to be exceedingly
-irate against Dr. A. because, when he told the doctor that his stomach was
-out of order, Abernethy would reply,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“Ay, I see that by your nose.�</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">The Duke, or the poor Gentleman.</span></p>
-
-<p>One day, just as Dr. Abernethy was stepping into his carriage to make a
-professional visit to the Duke of W., to whom he had been called in a
-hurry, a gentleman stopped him to say that the &mdash;&mdash;, at Somers Town
-(mentioning a poor gentleman whom he had visited without fee), would be
-glad to have him visit him again at his leisure.</p>
-
-<p>“Why, I cannot go now,� Dr. Abernethy replied, “for I am going in haste to
-see the Duke of W.� Then, pausing a moment before stepping into his
-carriage, he looked up to the coachman, and quietly said, “To Somers
-Town.�</p>
-
-<p>The fidgety irritability of his first impression at interference, and the
-beneficence of his second thought, were very characteristic of Dr.
-Abernethy.</p>
-
-<p>A pupil, who wished to consult him one day, took the very inauspicious
-moment when the doctor (and professor) was looking over his papers, but a
-few moments before lecture, in the museum.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_418" id="Page_418">[Pg 418]</a></span>“I am fearful, sir, that I have a polypus in my nose, and want you to look
-at it,� said the student.</p>
-
-<p>The doctor made no reply; but when he had completed the sorting of his
-preparations, he said, looking up,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“Eh?�</p>
-
-<p>To which the pupil repeated his request.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 450px; height: 302px;"><img src="images/img118.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">AFRAID OF A POLYPUS.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>“Then stand on your head; don’t you see that all the light here comes from
-the skylight? How am I to look into your nose?�</p>
-
-<p>(This was true, for there were no side-lights in the amphitheatre.)</p>
-
-<p>“Where do you live?� continued the doctor.</p>
-
-<p>“Bartholomew Close, sir.�</p>
-
-<p>“At what time do you get up?�</p>
-
-<p>“At eight.�</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_419" id="Page_419">[Pg 419]</a></span>“You can’t be at Bedford Row� (where Abernethy resided) “at nine, then?�</p>
-
-<p>“Yes, sir, I can.�</p>
-
-<p>“To-morrow morning, then.�</p>
-
-<p>“Yes, sir; thank you.�</p>
-
-<p>The pupil was punctual. Dr. Abernethy made a very careful examination of
-his nose, found nothing of the nature of polypus, made the pupil promise
-never to look into his nose again, and he, in after years, said, that
-there never was anything the matter.</p>
-
-<p>Dr. Abernethy never took a fee from a student, brother doctor, nor full
-fee from a clergyman. His great labors seemed to be in the hospitals, and
-on his resignation as surgeon to St. Bartholomew, he presented for its use
-five hundred dollars. He never neglected his poor hospital patients for
-the richer ones outside.</p>
-
-<p>One morning, on leaving his house for a visit to the hospital patients,
-some one wished to detain him, when he exclaimed, in terms more earnest
-than elegant,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“Private patients may go to the devil� (or elsewhere, another reports),
-“but the poor fellows in the hospital I am bound to care for.�</p>
-
-<p>To poor students whose funds were “doubtful,� he presented free tickets to
-his college lectures, afterwards showing them marked attention.</p>
-
-<p>Everybody has heard of his rude kindness to a young fashionable miss, whom
-her mother took to Abernethy for treatment. It is said that the doctor ran
-a knife under her belt, in presence of the mother, instantly severing it,
-and exclaiming,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“Why, madam, don’t you know there are upwards of thirty yards of &mdash;&mdash;�
-(what are more elegantly termed bowels) “squeezed under that girdle? Go
-home, give nature fair play, and you’ll have no need of a prescription.�</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_420" id="Page_420">[Pg 420]</a></span></p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 330px; height: 450px;"><img src="images/img119.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">ABERNETHY’S SURGICAL OPERATION.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Kindness to Clergymen.</span></p>
-
-<p>“Cynics have been found in plenty to rail at physicians for loving their
-fees; and one might justly retort that the railers love nothing but their
-fees. Who does not love&mdash;and who is not entitled to&mdash;the sweet money
-earned by labor, be it labor of hand, brain, or cloth? One thing is
-sure&mdash;doctors are unpaid.�&mdash;<i>A Lawyer.</i></p>
-
-<p>The above kind-hearted physician, having attended the child of a
-clergyman’s widow, without knowing her situation, returned all the fees he
-had received from her when<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_421" id="Page_421">[Pg 421]</a></span> he learned who she was, and added, in a
-letter, fifty pounds besides, with instructions to expend it in daily
-rides in the open air, for her health. To a clergyman he sent a receipt
-for his long services, and also enclosing ten pounds.</p>
-
-<p>The generosity of Dr. Wilson, of Bath (now deceased), has before been
-recorded. He had been attending a clergyman, who, Wilson had learned, was
-in indigent circumstances, and he afterwards sent fifty pounds in gold to
-the minister, by a friend.</p>
-
-<p>“Yes, I will take it to him to-morrow,� said the gentleman.</p>
-
-<p>“O, my dear sir,� exclaimed Dr. Wilson, “take it to him to-night. Only
-think of the importance to an invalid of one good night’s rest.�</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Rare Charity.</span></p>
-
-<p>Another case of “three pair, back,� occurs in the memoirs of Dr. Lettsom,
-who is already made mention of in this work. On one of his benevolent
-excursions, the doctor found his way into the squalid garret of a poor old
-woman who had evidently seen better days. With the refined language and
-the easy deportment of a well-bred lady, she begged the physician to
-examine her case, and give her a prescription. (Alas! how often is poverty
-mistaken for disease, and does want foster malady!) But the kind doctor,
-after a careful inquiry, formed a correct diagnosis, and wrote on a slip
-of paper he chanced to have about him, the following brief note to the
-overseers of the parish:&mdash;</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot">
-<p>“A shilling per diem for Mrs. Moreton. Money, not physic, can cure her.</p>
-
-<p><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><span class="smcap">Lettsom.</span>�</span></p></div>
-
-<p>A shilling, in those days, was considered no mean sum per day.</p>
-
-<p class="poem">“Alas for the rarity<br />
-Of Christian charity<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Under the sun!</span><br />
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_422" id="Page_422">[Pg 422]</a></span>O, it was pitiful!<br />
-Near a whole city full,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Home she had none.</span><br />
-<br />
-“Sisterly, brotherly,<br />
-Fatherly, motherly<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Feelings had changed;</span><br />
-Love, by harsh evidence,<br />
-Thrown from its eminence,<br />
-Even God’s providence<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Seeming estranged.�</span></p>
-
-<p>“Alas, doctor,� said an unfortunate old gentleman, some seventy-four years
-old,&mdash;a merchant ruined by the American war, bowed down by the weight of
-his misfortunes, and by disease,&mdash;to Dr. Lettsom, “those beautiful trees
-you may see out of my bedroom window I planted with these now feeble
-hands. I have lived to see them bear fruit; they have become as part of my
-family. But with my children still dearer to me, I must quit this dear old
-home, which was the delight of my youth and the hope of my declining
-years, and become a homeless, joyless wanderer in my old age.�</p>
-
-<p>The benevolent Quaker doctor was deeply affected by these words, and the
-utter despair and hopelessness with which the weeping old man uttered
-them; and, speaking a few words of consolation to his unfortunate patient,
-he wrote a prescription, and hastily retired.</p>
-
-<p>On the old gentleman’s examination of the remarkable looking recipe, he
-found it to be a check for a large sum of money. The benevolence of the
-physician did not end here. He purchased the residence and grounds of the
-old man’s creditors, and prescribed them to him for life. (He is our young
-Quaker antipode, mentioned in another chapter.)</p>
-
-<p>The old apothecary, Sutcliff, was right when he said of young Lettsom,
-while his apprentice, “Thou may’st make a good physician, but I think not
-a good apothecary.� An apothecary is not expected to give away his time or
-medicine. (They seldom disappoint one’s expectations.) A<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_423" id="Page_423">[Pg 423]</a></span> grocer is not
-expected to give away flour, rice, sugar, tea, to even a starving,
-languishing neighbor; nor the baker, nor the butcher, to give bread or
-meat to the perishing. Why, such demands upon them daily would be laughed
-to scorn. But the physician! These very same niggardly men (individually)
-would berate the doctor, be he ever so needy, or be his family ever so
-large, who would accept a fee for even cold-night services to any but the
-richest patients. All physicians do not have access to the “richest
-patients.� Many a good physician has been compelled to quit practice
-because of his too large “bump� of benevolence, and because of the limited
-amount of that article in his first few patients, while thousands of
-practitioners in this country struggle and labor on through a life of
-self-denial, wearing themselves out, dying prematurely, leaving their
-families penniless to the cold charities of an uncharitable world. (See
-<a href="#XXX">Chapter XXX</a>.)</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">The Old Jew.</span></p>
-
-<p>“Ah me,� exclaimed a Jew, one day, as he reluctantly drew out his wallet
-to pay three dollars for his examination, prescription, and advice, “if I
-could only make money like the doctors of mede<i>cene</i>! Ah me.� Then, taking
-two dollars from his purse, he asked, “Won’t that do?�</p>
-
-<p>This Jew was a merchant, reputed rich, and penurious as he was wealthy,
-and I demanded the accustomed fee.</p>
-
-<p>“Let me see,� said he; “how many patients have you seen to-day?�</p>
-
-<p>“Nine,� I replied.</p>
-
-<p>“Let me see,� counting his fingers as a tally. “At least twenty-seven
-dollars a day, and nothing out but a bit of paper. Ah, I wish I had been a
-doctor in mede<i>cene</i>,� he added, with a sigh, and a woful look at the
-money, as he reluctantly handed it over.</p>
-
-<p>This was casting pearls before worse than swine, prescribing<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_424" id="Page_424">[Pg 424]</a></span> for such a
-wretch. Brains, education, anxiety, all went for nought, with him. <i>Money</i>
-was his all. A shilling before his eyes would shut out even God’s
-sunlight. If the shilling only <i>shone</i>, <i>glistened</i>,&mdash;sunlight enough for
-such a wretch.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 450px; height: 377px;"><img src="images/img120.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">RECKONING A DOCTOR’S FEES.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>“Let <i>me</i> see,� I said, after his miserable body had taken his penurious
-soul out of my office; “nine patients, one three miles away. Horse-tire
-and carriage-wear, time, advice, and medicine given, because the patient
-was a widow. No. 2 patient, the sick child of an invalid mother; no fee.
-No. 3, an Irishman. The Irish never wish to pay anything; did pay one
-dollar. No. 4, a merchant. “Charge it.� That was <i>his</i> fee. No. 5, a young
-sewing girl, who, in sewing on army cloth, had sewed her life’s blood into
-the seams. In consumption. Could I take her fee? God <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_425" id="Page_425">[Pg 425]</a></span>forbid. No. 6, a
-“lady,� who, having so much upon her back, had nothing in her purse. I may
-get my fee at the end of the quarter. “You know my husband. Good morning.�
-It was near two o’clock then. She had occupied my time a whole hour. My
-dinner was cold; my wife was out of sorts, waiting so long. Nos. 7 and 8,
-two sick children. Visit them daily; pay uncertain. The ninth was the
-wealthy Jew. Nine patients; four dollars! Don’t I sometimes wish I kept an
-“O’ clo’� store, like the old Jew? This actually occurred when I practised
-medicine in Hartford.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img121.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">PATIENT NUMBER FIVE.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Dr. Hunter’s Generosity.</span></p>
-
-<p>No man cared <i>less</i> for the profits of the medical profession, or <i>more</i>
-for the honor thereof, than the great Dr. John Hunter. He was honest,
-honorable, and simple in his every day life. His works, which contributed
-more to the science of medicine than any other writings during a thousand
-years, were simply announced as by <span class="smcap">John Hunter</span>. A plain door plate, with
-the same name, announced his residence. Money was a secondary
-consideration to him. The following shows that he desired a professional
-brother to so consider it:&mdash;</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot"><p>“<span class="smcap">Dear Brother</span>: The bearer needs your advice. He has no money, and you
-have plenty; so you are well met.</p>
-
-<p><span style="margin-left: 2em;">“Yours,<span class="spacer">&nbsp;</span><span class="smcap">John Hunter</span>.�</span></p></div>
-
-<p>To a poor tradesman from whom he had received twenty guineas for
-performing a surgical operation upon his wife, he returned nineteen
-guineas, having learned with what difficulty and extreme self-denial the
-husband had raised the money.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_426" id="Page_426">[Pg 426]</a></span>“I sent back nineteen guineas, and kept the twentieth,� said he, in
-apology for retaining even the one, “that they might not be hurt with an
-idea of too great an obligation.�</p>
-
-<p>Where is the other man, or class of men, who would have returned the
-money, honestly earned, as agreed upon beforehand, unasked?</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Generous at Another’s Expense.</span></p>
-
-<p>It is all very nice when one can exercise a benevolent spirit, and not
-draw upon his own pocket.</p>
-
-<p>A well-authenticated story is repeated in this line of Dr. M. Monsey.</p>
-
-<p>Passing through a market one day, he noticed a miserable old woman looking
-wistfully at a piece of meat hanging just within a stall.</p>
-
-<p>“What is the price of this meat, sir?� she timidly inquired.</p>
-
-<p>“A penny a pound, old woman,� replied the butcher, sneeringly, disdaining
-a civil answer to the wretched-looking woman, who probably had not a penny
-to pay for the chop.</p>
-
-<p>“Just weigh that piece of meat, my friend,� said the doctor, who had been
-attentively watching the proceedings.</p>
-
-<p>The butcher cheerfully complied with the request of so respectable-looking
-a customer.</p>
-
-<p>“Ten pounds and a half, sir,� replied the butcher.</p>
-
-<p>“There, my good woman,� said the doctor, “hold up your apron;� and he
-dumped the whole into it, saying, “Now make haste home and cook it for
-your family.�</p>
-
-<p>After blessing the very eccentric but benevolent old man over and again
-for the timely provision, she drew up the corners of the apron, and ran
-speedily down the market.</p>
-
-<p>“Here, my man,� said the doctor, turning to the smiling butcher, “here is
-ten pence ha’penny, the price of your meat.�</p>
-
-<p>“What? What do you mean?� asked the butcher.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_427" id="Page_427">[Pg 427]</a></span>“I mean, sir, that I take you at your word. You said the meat was a penny
-a pound. At that price I bought it for the poor old woman. It’s all I’ll
-pay you. Good morning, sir.�</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 329px; height: 450px;"><img src="images/img122.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">THE ASTONISHED BUTCHER.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>I can imagine the “chop-fallen� butcher, standing, in his long frock, with
-a <i>beaten</i> expression of countenance, alternating his gaze between the
-pence in his palm and the retreating form of the wigged and laughing old
-doctor.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_428" id="Page_428">[Pg 428]</a></span></p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">A Report on Teeth.</span></p>
-
-<p>Many stories are told of the eccentricities of Dr. Monsey, and</p>
-
-<p class="poem">“No man could better gild a pill,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Or make a bill,</span><br />
-Or mix a draught, or bleed, or blister,<br />
-Or draw a tooth out of your head,<br />
-Or chatter scandal by your bed,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Or tell a twister.�</span></p>
-
-<p>Amongst the vagaries of Dr. Monsey, says Mr. Jeaffreson, was the way in
-which he proceeded to extract his decaying teeth. Around the tooth
-sentenced to be uprooted he fastened securely a strong piece of cord, or
-violin string, to the other end of which he attached a bullet. He then
-proceeded to load a pistol with powder and the bullet. By merely pulling
-the trigger of the pistol, the operation was speedily and effectually
-performed.</p>
-
-<p>It was seldom, however, that the doctor could induce his patients to adopt
-this original mode of extracting undesirable achers.</p>
-
-<p>One gentleman, who had agreed to try this novel process upon a tooth, got
-so far as to allow the whole apparatus to be adjusted, when, at the very
-last instant, he exclaimed,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“Stop, stop! I have changed my mind&mdash;�</p>
-
-<p>“I haven’t, though; and you’re a fool and a coward, and here’s go,� which
-saying, the doctor pulled the trigger.</p>
-
-<p>“Bang!� went the pistol, and out flew the tooth, to the delight and
-astonishment of the patient.</p>
-
-<p>Taking this anecdote alone, it is scarcely credible; but considered in
-connection with what we have already selected from the life of Dr. Monsey,
-and what we may write of his eccentricities in our chapter under that
-head, this may be believed as being nearly correct.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_429" id="Page_429">[Pg 429]</a></span></p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 450px; height: 272px;"><img src="images/img123.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">MODERN IMPROVEMENTS IN DENTISTRY.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_430" id="Page_430">[Pg 430]</a></span></p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 450px; height: 421px;"><img src="images/img124.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">CHARITY NOT SOLICITED.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_431" id="Page_431">[Pg 431]</a></span></p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">A sad Omission.</span></p>
-
-<p>Believing, as I do, that every reader of these pages is personally
-cognizant of the fact of the true benevolence of our present American
-physicians, and because of the silence of the few biographers respecting
-the generosities and benevolent deeds of those “who have gone before,� I
-have devoted more space to anecdotes of English surgeons and physicians
-than I otherwise would. I have searched throughout four volumes of
-biographies of American physicians without being able to find a single
-anecdote of generosity recorded therein worthy of notice. Also in the
-“Lives of Surgeons &mdash;&mdash;� I have to regret this almost unpardonable
-neglect. I am assured from my personal knowledge of some of these latter
-that there are a thousand instances, which, in justice to their
-benevolence, ought to be put upon record, as they are engraven upon the
-hearts of their suffering fellow-creatures, and not for the aggrandizement
-of the generous bestower so much as an example for the cynical and the
-uncharitable world.</p>
-
-<p>A physician has just left my presence who has given away more than he has
-ever received from his practice. The good physician is always generous. A
-mean-souled man cannot become a successful practitioner. His success with
-his patients depends as much, or more, upon the kindly influences that
-beam from his eye, that flow from his soul, as upon the medicine that he
-deals out from his “saddle-bags.�</p>
-
-<p>Generosity and kindness are innate to the man. They require little
-cultivation.</p>
-
-<p>The following amusing anecdote from “Every Saturday,� I have reason to
-believe, has reference to one of our best physicians, who is also a man of
-letters, and illustrates my assertion:&mdash;</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_432" id="Page_432">[Pg 432]</a></span></p>
-<p class="center">“<span class="smcap">Innate Generosity.</span>�</p>
-
-<p>“One hot August afternoon a gentleman, whose name attached to a check
-would be more valuable to the reader than if written here, was standing in
-front of the Revere House, waiting for a Washington Street car. He was a
-slim, venerable gentleman, with long white hair, and a certain dignity
-about him which we suppose comes of always having a handsome balance in
-the bank, for we never knew a poor man to have this particular air. It was
-a sultry afternoon, and the millionaire, standing on the curb-stone in the
-shade, had removed his hat, and was cooling his forehead with his
-handkerchief, like any common person, when the Cambridge horse-car stopped
-at the crossing at his feet. From this car hastily descended a well-known
-man of letters, whose pre-occupied expression showed at once that he was
-wrestling with an insubordinate hexameter, or laying out the points of a
-new lecture. Suddenly he found himself face to face with a white-haired
-old man, dejectedly holding a hat in one hand. As quick as thought the
-poet&mdash;to whom neither old age nor young appeals in vain&mdash;thrust his hand
-into his vest pocket, and, dropping a handful of nickel and fractional
-currency into the extended hat, passed on. The millionaire gazed aghast
-into the hat for an instant, and then inverted it spasmodically, allowing
-the money to drop into the gutter, much to the amusement of a gentleman
-and a tooth-pick on the steps of the Revere House, and very much more to
-the amusement of another party, who chanced to know that the supposed
-mendicant and the man of letters had been on terms of personal intimacy
-these twenty years.�</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">A Curb-stone Money-maniac.</span></p>
-
-<p>A man may possess large acquisitiveness and benevolence at the same time,
-like Sir Astley Cooper, and succeed both pecuniarily and professionally.
-Such are, however, scarce.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_433" id="Page_433">[Pg 433]</a></span> Those with an excess of the grasping principle
-in their composition illustrate the truth that “where the treasure is the
-heart will be also.� Asleep or awake, drunk or sober, such men never lose
-sight of the almighty dollar. The annexed story, though irreverent to the
-doctors, is not irrelevant to the case:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>During the late “panic,� a fellow, whose prominent feature was in his
-Jewish nose, which presented the sign of acquisitiveness by the bridge
-widening on to the cheeks above the <i>alæ</i>,&mdash;all men noted for accumulating
-have this sign, hung out by nature as a warning to the unwary,&mdash;was making
-a great noise, as he clung to a friendly lamp-post, to which he was
-arguing the state of the money market. “Come, sir, you are making too much
-noise,� said a policeman.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 450px; height: 348px;"><img src="images/img125.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">CAPTURE OF A WALL STREET BULL.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>“Me? No, ’tain’t me that’s&mdash;hic&mdash;making the noise; it’s<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_434" id="Page_434">[Pg 434]</a></span> the bulls&mdash;the
-bulls, sir; them’s what’s making all the noise,� replied the fellow,
-skewing first one side of the post, then the other, trying to get a view
-of his new intruder.</p>
-
-<p>“You are tight, sir&mdash;tight as a peep,� continued the watchman.</p>
-
-<p>“Me tight? No, sir; it’s the money-market what’s&mdash;ti&mdash;tight,� replied the
-gentlemanly dressed individual, though much the worse for bad whiskey. “Go
-down Wall Street, and Fisk and Vanderbuilt&mdash;all of ’em&mdash;will tell you so.
-Everybody says money is&mdash;hic&mdash;tight. I never was more loose in
-my&mdash;hic&mdash;life;� and he demonstrated the assertion by swinging very loosely
-around the lamp-post, and falling down.</p>
-
-<p>“There, you are down. Too drunk to stand up;� and the policeman helped him
-to his feet again, and walked him along towards the station.</p>
-
-<p>“No, sir. There you are wrong again; it’s stocks that’s down. It’s the
-stockholders&mdash;hic&mdash;that’s staggering along; they’ve fallen and skinned
-their noses on the curb-stone of adversity. There! don’t you see
-them&mdash;crawling along?�</p>
-
-<p>“O, you’ve got the tremens. Come on,� exclaimed the policeman.</p>
-
-<p>“Me? No; it’s the shorts and bears what’s got the dol&mdash;hic&mdash;lar&mdash;tremens.
-I’ve caught the pan&mdash;hics&mdash;panics, sir; that’s all.�</p>
-
-<p>The policeman thrust the money-maniac into a cell, and the last seen of
-him he leaned back against the wall, his feet braced out, while, hatless
-and the knot of his cravat round under his left ear, he stood arguing the
-money-market with an imaginary broker on the opposite side of his cell.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">An “Eye-opener.�</span></p>
-
-<p>“How much do you charge, sir?� asked a poor farmer, from Framingham, of a
-city doctor, who had just wiped a bit of dust from the eye of his son.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_435" id="Page_435">[Pg 435]</a></span>“Twenty-five dollars, if you please,� was the modest reply.</p>
-
-<p>“I cannot pay it, sir,� said the poor man. “It only took you a half
-minute. Our doctor was not at home; but I didn’t think you would charge me
-much, sir.�</p>
-
-<p>So the M. D. very benevolently (?) accepted ten dollars&mdash;all the poor man
-had.</p>
-
-<p>Can you wonder, after reading this statement, the truth of which is easily
-avouched for, that this doctor owns a whole block&mdash;stores, hotel&mdash;and is
-immensely rich?</p>
-
-<p>From the English book “About Doctors,� here are three anecdotes:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>Radcliffe, the humbug, with a great effort at generosity, had refused his
-fees for visiting a poor friend a whole year. On making a final visit, the
-gentleman said, presenting a purse,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“Doctor, here I have put aside a fee for every day’s visit. Let not your
-goodness get the better of your judgment. Take your money.�</p>
-
-<p>The doctor took a look, resolved to carry out his attempt at benevolence,
-just touched the purse to restore it to his friend, when he heard “the
-chink of gold� within, and&mdash;put it into his pocket, saying,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“Singly, I could have refused the fees for a twelvemonth, but
-collectively, they are irresistible. Good day, sir;� and the greedy doctor
-walked away with a heavier pocket and a lighter heart than he came with.</p>
-
-<p>On visiting a nobleman, Sir Richard Jebb was paid in hand three guineas
-when he, by right, expected five. The doctor purposely dropped the three
-gold pieces on the carpet, when the nobleman directed the servant to find
-and restore them; but Sir Richard still continued the search after
-receiving the three coins.</p>
-
-<p>“Are they not all found?� inquired the nobleman, looking about.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_436" id="Page_436">[Pg 436]</a></span>“No, there must be two more on the carpet, as I have only three restored,�
-replied the wily doctor.</p>
-
-<p>His lordship took the hint, and said, “Never mind; here are two others.�</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 419px; height: 450px;"><img src="images/img126.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">DEATH’S FEE.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>This sticking for a fee was all cast into the shade by the act of an
-“eminent physician of Bristol.� The doctor, entering the bedroom
-immediately after the death of his patient, found the right hand clinched
-tightly, and, pulling open the fingers of the dead man, the doctor
-discovered that the hand contained a guinea.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_437" id="Page_437">[Pg 437]</a></span>“Ah!� exclaimed the doctor to the servant and friends around him, “this
-was doubtless intended for me;� and so saying he pocketed the coin.</p>
-
-<p class="poem">“Three hungry travellers found a bag of gold.<br />
-One ran into the town where bread was sold.<br />
-He thought, ‘I will poison the bread I buy,<br />
-And seize the treasure when my comrades die.’<br />
-But they, too, thought, when back his feet have hied,<br />
-We will destroy him, and the gold divide.<br />
-They killed him, and, partaking of the bread,<br />
-In a few moments all were lying dead.<br />
-O world, behold what ill thy goods have done!<br />
-Thy gold thus poisoned two and murdered one.�</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img127.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
-<hr style="width: 50%;" />
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_438" id="Page_438">[Pg 438]</a></span></p>
-<h2><a name="XVII" id="XVII"></a>XVII.</h2>
-<p class="title">LOVE AND LOVERS.</p>
-
-<p class="center">“No task is harder than that of writing to the ideas of another.�&mdash;<span class="smcap">Johnson.</span></p>
-
-<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table">
-<tr><td valign="top"><i>Duke.</i></td>
-    <td>“If ever thou shalt love,<br />
-        In the sweet pangs of it, remember me;<br />
-        For such as I am all true lovers are;<br />
-        Unstaid and skittish in all things else,<br />
-        Save in the constant image of the creature<br />
-        That is beloved....<br />
-        My life upon it, young as thou art, thine eye<br />
-        Hath stayed upon some face that it loves;<br />
-        Hath it not, boy?�</td></tr></table>
-
-<div class="note"><p class="hang"><small>XANTIPPE, BEFORE JEALOUSY.&mdash;A FIRST LOVE&mdash;BLASTED HOPES.&mdash;A DOCTOR’S
-STORY.&mdash;THE FLIGHT FROM “THE HOUNDS OF THE LAW.�&mdash;THE EXILE AND
-RETURN.&mdash;DISGUISED AS A PEDDLER.&mdash;ESCAPES WITH HIS LOVE.&mdash;ENGLISH
-BEAUS.&mdash;YOUNG COQUETTES.&mdash;A GAY AND DANGEROUS BEAU.&mdash;HANDSOME
-BEAUS.&mdash;LEAP YEAR.&mdash;AN OLD BEAU.&mdash;BEAUTY NOT ALL-POTENT.&mdash;OFFENDED
-ROYALTY.&mdash;YOUTH AND AGE.&mdash;A STABLE BOY.&mdash;POET-DOCTOR.</small></p></div>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p>An old lady once said, “I’ve hearn say that doctors either are, or are
-not, great experts in love affairs; I’ve forgotten which.� Just so!</p>
-
-<p>“I would not be a doctor’s wife for the world,� I have heard many a lady
-affirm. True; for few doctors have had the misfortune (or folly) to select
-a jealous woman for a life companion.</p>
-
-<p>Socrates, the great philosopher, and physician of the mind, seems to have
-had the ugliest tempered woman in the world, whose very name, <i>Xantippe</i>,
-has passed into a proverb for a scolding wife; yet she was not jealous of
-her<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_439" id="Page_439">[Pg 439]</a></span> spouse, but was said to have sincerely loved him; and he bore her
-outbursts of temper only as a great philosopher could, which seemed not to
-have disturbed the equanimity of his living nor the humor of his dying.</p>
-
-<p>“Crito,�&mdash;these were his last words,&mdash;“Crito, forget not the cock that I
-promised to Esculapius!�</p>
-
-<p>Alas! an affecting satire on philosophy and physic.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img128.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">MY FIRST LOVE.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>No; we find no cases to record of the jealousies of physicians, or their
-wives. All the jealousies of the former are spent on their professional
-brethren.</p>
-
-<p>It is a philosophical fact that physicians, of all men, seldom<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_440" id="Page_440">[Pg 440]</a></span> are
-involved in disgrace, quarrels, or litigations on account of love affairs.
-Yet they have affections, like other men, and above all men know how to
-appreciate affection and virtue in woman.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">First Love&mdash;Blasted Hopes.</span></p>
-
-<p>I know of a little episode in the early life of a doctor, whose name
-modesty forbids me to mention. Let me briefly state it in the first
-person.</p>
-
-<p class="poem">Ah, friend, if you and I should meet<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Beneath the boughs of the bending lime,</span><br />
-And you in the same low voice repeat<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The tender words of the old love-rhyme,</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">It could not bring back the same old time&mdash;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 6em;">No, never.</span></p>
-
-<p>I was young when I first fell in love,&mdash;not above six years of age; but
-love is without reason, blind to age. The object of my first affection was
-my school-<i>mischief</i>, as I then called her, who was about twenty. The
-disparagement of years never entered my innocent noddle. I used to start
-for school a half hour before nine, and stop on the way at the squire’s
-house, where Miss &mdash;&mdash; boarded. O, with what joy I always met her! In
-summer she gave me roses from the beautiful great white rose-bushes in the
-squire’s front yard; in autumn and winter, splendid red and green apples,
-from the orchard and cellar, and candy and kisses at all times. So I fell
-desperately in love with her.</p>
-
-<p>I was greatly shocked, and not a little piqued, when one day she, in cold
-blood, bade me good by, and went away with a tall man, with shocking red
-whiskers. That is all I remember about him. I, however, mourned her loss
-for years, although my appetite remained unimpaired&mdash;my parents said.</p>
-
-<p class="poem">“Like a still serpent, basking in the sun,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">With subtle eyes, and back of russet gold,</span><br />
-Her gentle tones and quiet sweetness won<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">A coil upon her victims: fold on fold</span><br />
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_441" id="Page_441">[Pg 441]</a></span>She wove around them with her graceful wiles,<br />
-Till, serpent-like, she stung amid her smiles.�</p>
-
-<p>The next time I saw her was about ten years afterwards. O, with what
-pleasant anticipations I hastened to her house! I remembered her every
-look&mdash;her fair, intelligent face; her wavy black hair; her heavenly
-dark-blue eyes. O, I should know her anywhere! Her I never could forget.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 450px; height: 431px;"><img src="images/img129.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">TEN YEARS LATER.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>With these thoughts I confidently knocked at the door. “Is Miss &mdash;&mdash; at
-home?� I inquired of the&mdash;servant, I supposed, who opened the door. Just
-then three or four dirty-looking little children ran screaming after the
-woman, calling out, “Marm, marm!�</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_442" id="Page_442">[Pg 442]</a></span>“Hush, children, hush!� said the female, and, turning again to me, said,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“Whom did you inquire for?� pushing back one of the red-headed urchins.</p>
-
-<p>“Miss Mary &mdash;&mdash;, ma’am,� I answered. “She once lived at Blue Hill.�</p>
-
-<p>She gave a sickly-looking smile. She looked sick before; her cheeks all
-fallen in; her skimmed-milk colored eyes had a weary, anxious expression;
-and her thin, bony hands, resting on the door-latch, looked like a
-consumptive’s, as she said,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“When did you know her?�</p>
-
-<p>“O, but a few years ago, ma’am. Is she here? Does she live in <i>this
-house</i>?� I eagerly inquired.</p>
-
-<p>“Well,� she replied, with another more sepulchral smile,</p>
-
-<p>“I was once Miss Mary &mdash;&mdash;. I married Mr. &mdash;&mdash; &mdash;&mdash;, over ten years ago.
-My baby, here,�&mdash;presenting the second in size of the children to my view,
-a reddish-brown haired girl, quite unlike any one I had ever seen before,
-and wiping its nose with her calico apron,&mdash;“she is named for me, Mary
-&mdash;&mdash;. Won’t you come in, sir?�</p>
-
-<p>No, I thought I would not stop. I didn’t stop till I reached the hotel,
-where I had begged the stage-driver to wait for me but a half hour before,
-while I called upon the lovely Miss Mary &mdash;&mdash;.</p>
-
-<p class="poem">“O, sunny dreams of childhood,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">How soon they pass away!</span><br />
-Like flowers within the wild wood,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">They perish and decay.�</span></p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">A handy Doctor.</span></p>
-
-<p>A young physician was supposed to be “keepin’ company� with a young lady.
-The matronly friend of the latter, having praised the young man from all
-points of view, returned one day from the death-bed of a friend, at which
-the physician<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_443" id="Page_443">[Pg 443]</a></span> had been present. She eulogized the living fully as much as
-the dead man, and finally turning to the girl, as if she had reached the
-<i>ne plus ultra</i> of enthusiasm, she said, “Jane, he’s the handsomest man I
-ever see fixin’ round a corpse.�</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">A Doctor’s Story.</span></p>
-
-<p>The writer is acquainted with a young physician, who read medicine with an
-old doctor, named Gitchel, or Twichel, of Portland, and commenced practice
-in his native village,&mdash;a great mistake for any practitioner to make,&mdash;and
-where he met with consequences natural to even a prophet, opposition and
-scandal. By some mistake, or, as his opponents charged, mal-practice, he
-lost a patient. Being, a few days later, in a shop in the next village, he
-was secretly informed that the “hounds of the law were after him&mdash;even at
-the next door, that very moment.� Terrified beyond necessity, he caught up
-his medicine chest, and, climbing out of the back window, fled to the
-woods. In the village, at home, he had courted a lovely young girl, with
-whom he had exchanged vows. She knew the talk that was going on
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_444" id="Page_444">[Pg 444]</a></span>respecting the young doctor, but she believed it not, or, believing,
-clung the firmer to her pledges.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 450px; height: 239px;"><img src="images/img130.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">FLIGHT OF THE DOCTOR.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>“After night fell I left the woods, and took to the highway. To go home I
-was afraid. O, had I but braved the doctors, and defied the lawyers, all
-would have been well,� he told me afterwards. “But I had received such ill
-treatment, been scandalized so severely, that I was cowed to the earth. I
-knew not if my life, my Angie, had also turned against me, when the news
-was spread that I had tacitly admitted my crime by fleeing.</p>
-
-<p>“I went to W., hundreds of miles away. I took a new name, and put out my
-shingle. I was at once patronized, and soon extensively; but I was morose
-and unhappy. I was offered a home and a wife. I had as good as a wife away
-in my far-off home; I was bound to her, and I <i>loved</i> her as I <i>hated my
-own soul</i>! I dared not write to her, nor go to her. ‘O, my God, what shall
-I do?’ I cried, in my misery. He did not hear me, and I came to believe
-that <i>He was not</i>!</p>
-
-<p>“Thus a whole year wore away, and I had not heard from home. Finally, I
-determined to make an attempt to see my Angie. I had, after going to W.,
-allowed my heavy beard to go uncropped, which I had never done at home. I
-wore no clothes that I brought away with me from home. I purchased a few
-knickknacks, put on a slouched hat, and appeared in my native village as a
-peddler. Unless my voice betrayed me, I had no fears of detection. To
-prevent this mishap I kept a silver coin in my mouth when talking.</p>
-
-<p>“I had called at several houses, but could learn nothing of my betrothed,
-without fear of exciting suspicion by too close inquiries. I therefore,
-unable longer to stand the suspense, entered her father’s house. She and
-her mother only were at home. I could scarcely suppress my feelings as I
-beheld her, the idol of my heart. When I spoke, she started to her feet,
-and with staring countenance gazed fixedly upon me. Then she fell back
-into her chair.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_445" id="Page_445">[Pg 445]</a></span></p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 450px; height: 299px;"><img src="images/img131.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">FLIGHT OF THE LOVERS.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 450px; height: 328px;"><img src="images/img132.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">THE LOVER AS A PEDDLER.</p>
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_446" id="Page_446">[Pg 446]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_447" id="Page_447">[Pg 447]</a></span>“My God, she did not know me.</p>
-
-<p>“The mother noticed how pale the girl looked, and proposed to get her a
-drink of water from the porch.</p>
-
-<p>“‘No, no, I am not faint.’</p>
-
-<p>“‘Yes, yes,’ I articulated, with the coin in my mouth; ‘get her some
-water.’</p>
-
-<p>“Away went the old lady, and, dropping my basket and spitting out the
-coin, I cried, ‘Angie, Angie, bless you, my darling,’ and fell kneeling at
-her feet.</p>
-
-<p>“‘O, Charley, it is you,&mdash;the Lord be praised!&mdash;come at last.’</p>
-
-<p>“I sprang to my feet. There was time to say no more. The mother returned
-and looked wistfully about.</p>
-
-<p>“‘I thought I heard some one saying, “Charley, Charley,�’ she said,
-presenting the water to Angie, who was now flushed and excited. I was
-searching for my coin.</p>
-
-<p>“‘O, the water is warm. Mother, dear, do go to the well in the yard, and
-get some fresh; and look to see if there is anybody outside calling.’ And
-away went the old lady.</p>
-
-<p>“‘Now, Charley, what brought you back? And why did you stay? And&mdash;’</p>
-
-<p>“‘Wait, wait. Number nine boots brought me. I’ve come for you, Angie.’</p>
-
-<p>“‘You will be arrested if you are seen here, I am afraid,’ she said.</p>
-
-<p>“‘Then meet me to-night at &mdash;&mdash; Crossing, and fly with me.’</p>
-
-<p>“I then told her how I had lived, how I had suffered, and how much I loved
-her; and she consented to marry me, and secretly go away with me. But the
-difficulty now lay in getting a lawful man to marry us. The license could
-be bought; I was certain of that. So I went away and obtained it. I next
-hired a horse and carriage, and paid for it in advance, to go twelve
-miles.</p>
-
-<p>“‘Aren’t you Charley &mdash;&mdash;?’ asked the stable man, eying<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_448" id="Page_448">[Pg 448]</a></span> me sharply, as I
-was about to drive away to get Angie, that night.</p>
-
-<p>“‘Take this,’&mdash;and I gave him a gold piece,&mdash;‘and ask no questions, nor
-answer any, till you see your horse and carriage safely back,’ was my
-reply.</p>
-
-<p>“As we drove out of the village, I heard wagon wheels far behind us.
-Reaching the woods, I drove into a wood road, and the ‘hounds of the &mdash;&mdash;
-doctors’ rode fiercely past. Angie trembled for my safety. I reached a
-cross road. The moon shone quite brightly, and, jumping from the buggy, I
-soon found, by the fresh track, which road they had taken. I took a
-different. So I reached a train that night, and rode till morning; arrived
-at W. the next, and was married.�</p>
-
-<p>It was at W. that I found him first. He was smart. He had a good memory.
-He was a handsome man, full six feet in his stockings. In all, his address
-was not excelled by any physician with whom I have ever met. He is now an
-excellent physician and surgeon, in a large city, in good practice. When
-he returned on a visit to his native village, as he did last year, the
-affair had blown over; for after a man is honored abroad, he may become so
-at home,&mdash;seldom before. I wish him happiness and prosperity.</p>
-
-<p>“There is no greater rogue than he who marries only for money; no greater
-fool than he who marries only for love. I could marry any lady I like, if
-I would only take the trouble,� Dr. Macilvain heard an old fellow say. Of
-course, nobody but a conceited old bachelor would have said that, who
-needs a woman to just take some of the self-conceit out of him.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">English Doctors as Beaus.</span></p>
-
-<p>Some of the old English doctors were gay fellows amongst the ladies,
-according to the best authorities. Nevertheless, few men have arrived at
-eminence in the medical profession who were known to be afflicted with an
-overplus of romantic or sentimental qualities in their composition.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_449" id="Page_449">[Pg 449]</a></span>It may be interesting, particularly to ladies, to know that the majority
-of those physicians who have arrived at the dignity of knighthood owe
-their elevation rather to the smiles of love than the rewards of
-professional efforts. “Considering the opportunities that medical men have
-for pressing a suit in love, and the many temptations to gentle emotion
-that they experience in the aspect of female suffering, and the confiding
-gratitude of their fair patients, it is to be wondered at that only one
-medical duke is to be found in the annals of the peerage.� But the
-physician usually has quite sufficient self-control and honor about him,
-not only to keep his own tender sensibilities in subjection, but often to
-check those of his grateful and emotional female patient.</p>
-
-<p>Thackeray has said that “girls of rank make love in the nursery, and
-practise the arts of coquetry upon the page boy who brings up the coals
-and kindlings.�</p>
-
-<p>In this connection Mr. Jeaffreson, whose narratives have the virtue of
-being true as well as interesting, says, “I could point to a fair matron
-who now enjoys rank and wealth among the highest, who not only aimed
-tender glances, and sighed amorously upon a young, waxen-faced, blue-eyed
-apothecary, but even went so far as to write him a letter proposing an
-elopement, and other merry arrangements, in which a ‘carriage and four,’
-to speed them over the country, bore a conspicuous part.�</p>
-
-<p>The “silly maiden� had, like Dinah, a “fortune in silver and gold,� of
-about two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and her tall, blue-eyed
-Adonis, to whom she made this <i>almost</i> resistless proposal, was twice her
-age. But he was a gentleman of honor, and, being in the confidence of the
-family, he generously, without divulging the mad proposition of the fair
-young lady, induced the father to take her to the continent, for a
-twelvemonth’s change of air and scenery.</p>
-
-<p>“What a cold-blooded wretch!� will some fair reader exclaim.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_450" id="Page_450">[Pg 450]</a></span>“What a fool he was, to be sure!� says the bachelor fortune-seeker.</p>
-
-<p>Well, she didn’t die for her first unrequited love, but married a “very
-great man,� and became the mother of several children. And this is the way
-the fair heroine of this little story avenged herself upon this “Joseph
-amongst doctors.�</p>
-
-<p>Very recently she manifested her good will to the man who had offered her
-what is generally regarded as the greatest insult a woman can experience,
-by procuring a commission in the army for his eldest son.</p>
-
-<p>It is interesting to note the various qualities which have attracted the
-attention, or love, of different sons of Æsculapius to female beauties.
-Sometimes it has been her hair, the “pride of a woman,� that was the point
-of attraction, as it was with Dr. Mead, “whose highest delight was to comb
-the luxuriant tresses of the lady on whom he lavished his affections;� or
-the “eyes of heavenly blue,� like the lady love’s of Dr. Elliot, senior;
-or the tiny footprint in the sand, like that which first attracted Dr.
-Robert Ames to the woman of his choice. What the point of attraction was
-in the man is not easily ascertained.</p>
-
-<p>A gay and dangerous beau among the “high ladies� was Dr. Hugh Smithson,
-the father of James Smithson (his illegitimate son), the founder of the
-“Smithsonian Institution� at Washington. Sir Hugh’s forte lay in his
-remarkably handsome person, said to be only second to Sir Astley Cooper in
-beauty of form and features. However, he had the address which secured to
-him one of the handsomest and proudest heiresses of England, and this is
-how he accomplished it.</p>
-
-<p>He was but the grandson of a Yorkshire baronet, “with no prospects,� and
-was apprenticed to an apothecary, and for a long time paid court to mortar
-and pestle at Hutton Garden. The story runs, that the handsome doctor had
-been mittened by a “belle of private rank and modest<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_451" id="Page_451">[Pg 451]</a></span> wealth,� and that
-the only child and heiress of Seymour, Duke of Somerset, and an
-acquaintance of Sir Hugh’s, heard of his rejection, when she publicly
-observed that “the beauty who had disdained such a man was guilty of a
-folly that no other woman in England would have been.�</p>
-
-<p>Sir Hugh would have been unwise not to have taken this broad hint, and he
-did what none of the heiress’s suitors, even of high rank, had yet aspired
-to,&mdash;proposed, and was accepted. Sixteen years later he was created Duke
-of Northumberland, and could well afford to laugh in his sleeve at the
-proposition that “his coronet should be surrounded with <i>senna</i> leaves,
-instead of strawberry,� since he had reached a rank that no other M. D.
-had previously done, and possessed the “<i>loveliest woman in England</i>,� and
-a great fortune, to boot.</p>
-
-<p>Lord Glenbervie, who from the druggist’s counter reached the peerage, was
-taunted by Sheridan with his plebeian origin, from which a patrician wife
-had redeemed him, in the following amusing verse:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p class="poem">“Glenbervie, Glenbervie!<br />
-What’s good for the scurvy?<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">But why is the doctor forgot?</span><br />
-In his arms he should quarter<br />
-A pestle and mortar,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">For his crest an immense gallipot.�</span></p>
-
-<p>Sir John Elliot was another handsome doctor of that period, who,
-notwithstanding his being disliked by King George, could, with small
-effort and large impudence, “capture the hearts of half the prettiest
-women amongst the king’s subjects, and then shrug his shoulders with
-chagrin at his success.� “One lady, the daughter of a nobleman, ignorant
-that he was otherwise occupied, made him an offer, and on learning, to her
-surprise and mortification, that he was already married, vowed she would
-not rest till she had assassinated his wife.�</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_452" id="Page_452">[Pg 452]</a></span>Dr. Arbuthnot, whose courtly address, sparkling wit, ready flow of
-language, innate cordiality, and polished manners made him a great
-favorite about London, was one of the finest looking gentlemen of his
-time. The doctor was contemporary with Dean Swift, with whom he used to
-enjoy flirtations with the queen’s maids of honor about St. James.</p>
-
-<p>“Arm in arm with the dean, he used to peer about St. James, jesting,
-laughing, causing matronly dowagers to smile at ‘that dear Mr. Dean,’ and
-young girls, out for their first season at court, green and
-unsophisticated, to blush with annoyance at his coarse, shameless
-badinage,&mdash;bowing to this great man, from whom he hoped for countenance;
-staring insolently at that one, from whom he expected nothing; quoting
-Martial to the prelate, who could not understand Latin; whispering French
-to a youthful diplomatist, who knew no tongue but English; and continually
-angling for the bishopric, which he never got.�</p>
-
-<p>From flattering court beauties, Arbuthnot became flatterer to the gouty,
-hypochondriacal old queen. But wine and women made sad havoc with poor
-Arbuthnot, who died in very straitened circumstances.</p>
-
-<p>Dr. Mead, before mentioned, was twice married. He was fifty-one years old
-when married the second time, to a baronet’s daughter. Fortunate beyond
-fortunate men, he had the great <i>mis</i>-fortune of outliving his usefulness.
-His sight failed, and his powers underwent that gradual decay which is the
-saddest of all possible conclusions to a vigorous and dignified existence.
-Even his valets domineered over him. Long before this his second
-childhood, he excited the ridicule of the town by his vanity and absurd
-pretensions as a “lady-killer.�</p>
-
-<p>“The extravagances of his amorous senility were not only whispered about,
-but some contemptible fellow seized upon the unpleasant rumors, and
-published them in a scandalous novelette, wherein the doctor was
-represented as a ‘Cornuter<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_453" id="Page_453">[Pg 453]</a></span> of seventy-five,’ when, to please the damsel
-who ‘warmed his aged heart,’&mdash;she was a blacksmith’s daughter,&mdash;the
-doctor, long past threescore and ten, went to Paris, and learned to
-dance.�</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 450px; height: 381px;"><img src="images/img133.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">AN AGED PUPIL.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>Dr. Richard Mead died aged eighty-one. The sale of his library, pictures,
-and statues brought the heirs eighty thousand dollars. His other effects
-amounted to one hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars.</p>
-
-<p>Another Dr. Mead, uncle to the above, lived to the age of one hundred and
-forty-nine years. Both of these physicians were remarkable for their
-kindness and liberality. The latter left five pounds a year to the poor,
-to continue forever.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_454" id="Page_454">[Pg 454]</a></span></p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Beauty not Potent with Ladies.</span></p>
-
-<p>A handsome person is not alone requisite to win the affections of a
-sensible lady. Radcliffe, who was as great a humbug in affairs matrimonial
-as in all other matters, was represented as being “handsome and imposing
-in person;� but his overbearing manner, and his coarse flings at the
-softer sex, made him anything but a favorite with the ladies. While he
-professed to be a misogynist, he made several unsuccessful attempts,
-particularly late in life, to commit himself to matrimony.</p>
-
-<p>A lady, with “a singing noise in her head,� asked what she should do for
-it. “Curl your hair at night with a ballad,� was the coarse reply.</p>
-
-<p>Once, when sitting over a bottle of wine at a public house, Queen Anne
-sent her servant for Dr. Radcliffe to hasten to her Royal Highness, who
-was taken suddenly ill with what was vulgarly called “the blue devils,� to
-which gormandizers are subject, but more properly termed indigestion.
-“When the wine is in, the wits are out,� was readily demonstrated in this
-case; for, on a second messenger arriving from the queen for her physician
-to make all haste, Radcliffe banged his fist down on the board, at which
-other physicians also sat, and exclaimed,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“Go tell her Royal Highness that she has nothing but the vapors.�</p>
-
-<p>When, on the following morning, the process being reversed,&mdash;the “wine was
-out, and wits were in�&mdash;the doctor presented himself, with pomp and a show
-of dignity, at St. James’, judge of his mortification, when the
-chamberlain stopped him in the anteroom, and informed him that he was
-already succeeded by Dr. Gibbons.</p>
-
-<p>The queen never forgave him for saying she had the “vapors.� Radcliffe
-never forgave Dr. Gibbons for superseding him. “Nurse Gibbons,� he would
-bitterly exclaim, “is only fit to look after nervous women, who only fancy
-sickness.�</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_455" id="Page_455">[Pg 455]</a></span>When the doctor was forty-three years of age, he made love to a lady of
-half his years, and followed with an offer of marriage, which was
-accepted. As the fact became public, the doctor was warmly congratulated
-upon his good fortune, for the lady was not only young, but was a beauty,
-and an heiress to seventy-five thousand dollars.</p>
-
-<p>The wedding day was set, which was to crown Radcliffe’s happiness, when a
-little drawback arose, which was not previously mentioned in the bills.
-The peculiar condition of the beauty’s health rendered it expedient that,
-instead of the doctor, she should marry her father’s book-keeper.</p>
-
-<p>The doctor’s acetous temper towards the fair sex was not lessened by this
-mishap, nor were the ladies backward in giving him an occasional reminder
-of the fact. Nevertheless, unlike the burnt child, that avoided the fire,
-Radcliffe, sixteen years afterwards, made a second conspicuous throw of
-the dice. He was then about sixty. He came out with a new and elegant
-equipage, employed the most fashionable tailors, hatters, and wig-makers,
-“who arrayed him in the newest modes of foppery, which threw all London
-into fits of laughter, while he paid his addresses, with the greatest
-possible publicity, to a lady who possessed every requisite charm,&mdash;youth,
-beauty, and wealth,&mdash;except a tenderness for her aged suitor.</p>
-
-<p>“Behold, love has taken the place of avarice [the affair was thus aired in
-a public print]; “or, rather, is become avarice of another kind, which
-still urges him to pursue what he does not want. But behold the
-metamorphosis! The anxious, mean cares of a usurer are turned into the
-languishments and complaints of a lover. ‘Behold,’ says the aged
-Æsculapian, ‘I submit; I own, great Love, thy empire. Pity, Hebe, the fop
-you have made. What have I to do with gilding but on pills? Yet, O Fate,
-for thee I sit amidst a crowd of painted deities on my chariot, buttoned
-in gold, clasped in gold, without having any value for that beloved<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_456" id="Page_456">[Pg 456]</a></span>
-metal, but as it adorns the hat, person, and laces of the dying lover. I
-ask not to live, O Hebe! Give me gentle death. Euthanasia, Euthanasia!
-That is all I implore.’</p>
-
-<p>“O Wealth, how impotent art thou, and how little dost thou supply us with
-real happiness, when the usurer himself cannot forget thee for the love of
-what is foreign to his felicity, as thou art!�</p>
-
-<p>Although Radcliffe denied his own sisters during his life, “lest they
-should show their affection for him by dipping their hands in his
-pockets,� some stories of his benevolence are told, one of which is, that
-finding one Dr. James Drake, when “each had done the utmost to injure the
-other,� broken down and in distressed circumstances, he sent by a lady
-fifty guineas to his unfortunate enemy, saying,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“Let him by no means learn who sent it. He is a gentleman who has often
-done his best to hurt me, and would by no means accept a benefit from one
-whom he had striven to make an enemy.�</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">A Stable-boy, Poet, and Doctor.</span></p>
-
-<p>Poor George Crabbe, the poet-doctor-apothecary, had a very hard time in
-this cold, unappreciative world, until Love smiled upon his unhappy lot.
-He was born in the old sea-side town of Aldoborough, where his father was
-salt inspector,&mdash;not an over-lucrative office in those days. George was
-the eldest of a numerous family.</p>
-
-<p>From the common school he went to apprenticeship with a rough old country
-doctor, who lodged him with the stable-boy. From this indignity he was,
-however, soon released, and went to live with a kind gentleman, a surgeon
-of Woodbridge. Here he began to write poetry. Here, also, he became
-acquainted with a young surgeon, named Leavett, who introduced Crabbe to a
-lovely young lady, with whom he fell desperately in love.</p>
-
-<p>This inestimable young lady resided at Parham Lodge<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_457" id="Page_457">[Pg 457]</a></span> with her uncle, John
-Tovell, yeoman, and her name was Sarah Elmy. Mr. Tovell possessed an
-estate worth four thousand dollars per annum, and, without assuming any
-“airs,� was a first-class “yeoman� of that period&mdash;“one that already began
-to be styled, by courtesy, an esquire.�</p>
-
-<p>“On Crabbe’s first introduction to Parham Lodge, he was received with
-cordiality; but when it became known that he had fallen in love with the
-squire’s niece, it was only natural that his presumption should at first
-meet with the disapproval of Mrs. Tovell and the squire.�</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img134.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">BIRTHPLACE OF GEORGE CRABBE.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>After closing his term of apprenticeship with Dr. Page, young Crabbe
-returned to his native village, where he furnished a little shop with “a
-pound’s worth of drugs,� and an array of empty bottles, and set himself up
-as an apothecary. His few patients were only amongst the poorer class of
-the town. Although he had plighted troth with the lovely Sarah at Parham
-Lodge, with starvation staring him in the face at Aldoborough, and the
-opposition of the lady’s family<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_458" id="Page_458">[Pg 458]</a></span> at the Lodge, there was little prospect
-of bettering his condition in life. The temporary military appointments
-which he received brought him no nearer his desired object. The lady
-remained true to her vows; and long after his friend Leavett had quitted
-the shores of time, and his new and true friend Burke had extended to the
-promising author his patronage, she received the reward for her faithful
-waiting.</p>
-
-<p>The union of Crabbe with Miss Elmy conferred eventually upon the poet,
-doctor, and apothecary, the possession of the estate of “yeoman�
-Tovell&mdash;Parham Lodge. A maiden sister of the squire’s, dying, left him a
-considerable sum of money. The loving, waiting Sarah proved a faithful,
-though some might say a somewhat domineering, wife, as the following
-quotation intimates:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“I can screw Crabbe up or down, just like an old fiddle,� this amiable
-woman was wont to say; and throughout her life she amply demonstrated the
-assertion.</p>
-
-<p>“But her last will and testament was a handsome apology for all her past
-little tiffs.�</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">The Right Man.</span></p>
-
-<p>A curious story is told, and vouched for, respecting the manner in which
-Dr. and Rev. Thomas Dawson obtained a rich and pious wife. This gentleman
-combined the two professions of preacher and doctor. If, during divine
-services, he was called upon to prescribe for an invalid, he wound up his
-sermon, requested his audience to pray for the sick, and repaired
-forthwith to administer to the body. I presume the congregation to whom
-the reasonable request was made did not take it in the same light as did
-an “M. D.� of whom we heard, who made a point to be called out of church
-every Sabbath.</p>
-
-<p>Once the minister, who had a bit of humor in his manner, stopped on a
-certain occasion in his “thirdly,� and said,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_459" id="Page_459">[Pg 459]</a></span> “Dr. B. is wanted to attend
-upon Mr. &mdash;&mdash;, and may the Lord have mercy upon him.�</p>
-
-<p>The doctor was so enraged at this “insinuation� that he called upon the
-parson, and demanded an “apology to the congregation, before whom he felt
-he had been grossly slandered.�</p>
-
-<p>The parson agreed to this proposal, and in the afternoon he arose and
-said,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“As Dr. B. feels aggrieved at my remark of this morning, and demands an
-apology, I hereby offer the same; and as that was the first case, I trust
-it may be the last in which I am ever called upon in his behalf to
-supplicate divine intervention.�</p>
-
-<p>But to return to Dr. Dawson. Amongst his patients was a Miss Mary Corbett,
-said to be one of the wealthiest and most pious of his flock, whom, on his
-calling upon her one day, he found bending in reverence over the Bible.</p>
-
-<p>The doctor approached, and as she raised her eyes to his she held her
-finger upon the passage which occupied her immediate attention. The doctor
-bent down and read the words at which her finger pointed&mdash;“Thou art the
-man.�</p>
-
-<p>The doctor was not slow to take the hint. Thus he obtained a pious wife,
-she a devout husband.&mdash;<i>See “Book About Doctors.�</i></p>
-
-<p>A great deal has been reported respecting the “off-hand� manner in which
-Abernethy “popped the question� to Miss Anne Threlfall. The fact of the
-case is given by Dr. Macilwain. The lady was visiting at a place where the
-doctor was attending a patient&mdash;of all places the best to learn the true
-merits of a lady. He was at once interested in her, and ere long there
-seemed a tacit understanding between them. “The doctor was shy and
-sensitive; which was the real Rubicon he felt a difficulty in passing; and
-this was the method he adopted: he wrote her a brief note, pleading
-professional occupation, etc., and requesting the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_460" id="Page_460">[Pg 460]</a></span> lady to take a
-fortnight in which to consider her reply.� From these facts a great
-falsehood has oft been repeated how he “couldn’t afford time to make
-love,� etc., and that she must decide to marry him in a week, or not at
-all.</p>
-
-<p>He was married to her January 9, 1800, and attended lectures the same day.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 450px; height: 248px;"><img src="images/img135.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">“POPPING THE QUESTION.�</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>“Many years after, I met him coming out of the hospital, and said,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“‘You are looking very gay to-day, sir.’</p>
-
-<p>“‘Yes,’ he replied, looking at his white vest and smart attire, ‘one of
-the girls was married this morning.’</p>
-
-<p>“‘Indeed, sir? You should have given yourself a holiday on such an
-occasion, and not come down to lecture.’</p>
-
-<p>“‘Nay,’ he replied, ‘egad, I came down to lecture the same day I was
-married myself.’�&mdash;<i>Memoirs of Abernethy.</i></p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img136.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
-<hr style="width: 50%;" />
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_461" id="Page_461">[Pg 461]</a></span></p>
-<h2><a name="XVIII" id="XVIII"></a>XVIII.</h2>
-<p class="title">MIND AND MATTER.</p>
-
-<p class="note">“The evidence of sense is the first and highest kind of evidence of
-which human nature is capable.�&mdash;<span class="smcap">Wilkins.</span></p>
-
-<p class="note">“They choose darkness rather than light because their deeds are
-evil.�&mdash;<span class="smcap">Scripture.</span></p>
-
-<div class="note"><p class="hang"><small>IN WHICH ANIMAL MAGNETISM, MESMERISM, AND CLAIRVOYANCE ARE
-EXPLAINED.&mdash;“THE IGNORANT MONOPOLY.�&mdash;YET ROOM FOR DISCOVERIES.&mdash;A
-“GASSY� SUBJECT.&mdash;DRS. CHAPIN AND BEECHER.&mdash;HE “CAN’T SEE IT.�&mdash;THE
-ROYAL TOUCH.&mdash;GASSNER.&mdash;“THE DEVIL KNOWS LATIN.�&mdash;ROYALTY IN THE
-SHADE.&mdash;THE IRISH PROPHET; HE VISITS LONDON.&mdash;A COMICAL
-CROWD.&mdash;MESMERISM.&mdash;A FUNNY BED-FELLOW.&mdash;CLAIRVOYANCE.&mdash;THE GATES OF
-MOSCOW.&mdash;THE DOCTOR OF ANTWERP.&mdash;THE OLD LADY IN THE
-POKE-BONNET.&mdash;VISIT TO A CLAIRVOYANT.&mdash;“FORETELLING� THE PAST.&mdash;THE
-OLD WOMAN OF THE PENOBSCOT MOUNTAINS.&mdash;A SECRET KEPT.&mdash;CUI
-BONO?&mdash;VISITS TO SEVENTEEN CLAIRVOYANTS.&mdash;A BON-TON CLAIRVOYANT.&mdash;A
-BOUNCER.&mdash;RIDICULOSITY.</small></p></div>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p>Mind and matter!</p>
-
-<p>What is the connection?</p>
-
-<p>Why does one’s yawning set a whole room full to yawning?</p>
-
-<p>What is the unseen power, appropriated mostly by the ignorant, which at
-times controls another weaker mind, or, for the time being, controls
-disease? The majority of medical men “get around� this question by denying
-the whole proposition. But that does not satisfy the jury&mdash;the people. The
-great community know that there is some unseen power, which is partially
-developed in certain persons, which has great controlling influence over
-certain other persons;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_462" id="Page_462">[Pg 462]</a></span> hence over their diseases, especially mental or
-nervous diseases.</p>
-
-<p>I hope to be able to explain something of this “phenomenon.�</p>
-
-<p>Those who practise it know nothing of its <i>modus operandi</i>, any more than
-the bird that sings on yonder willow knows of the science of music.</p>
-
-<p>To the common suggestion, “It’s spirits,� I say, No, <i>no</i>!</p>
-
-<p>If it were “spirits,� why does the spirit always seek a <i>low organization</i>
-through which to manifest itself? There are few exceptions to this rule.</p>
-
-<p>It is unnatural, inconsistent with the divine attributes for the
-supernatural to mingle with the natural. The circulation of the blood was
-once attributed to the action of the sun&mdash;hence a man fell asleep at
-sunset&mdash;and to supernatural causes.</p>
-
-<p>Science has done away with these absurd notions.</p>
-
-<p>“It is a manifestation of divine power,� say others.</p>
-
-<p>Well, for that matter, everything is; but <i>directly</i> it is not, for what
-answers the “spirit� suggestion answers this one also. Divine power cannot
-be limited.</p>
-
-<p>For want of a better name, let us call this power “animal magnetism.�</p>
-
-<p>The man who controls the mind of another, or another’s disease, through
-his mind, must possess the following requisites: First, health; second,
-will; third, faith that he can control the subject. No <i>reasoning</i> is
-necessary. The less causality he possesses, the better. The less reasoning
-faculties, the better he can perform.</p>
-
-<p>Why?</p>
-
-<p>Animal magnetism is an animal power&mdash;not a spiritual. All the animal
-qualities&mdash;organs&mdash;are located in the back and lower part of the brain.
-They act independent of reason. Passions have no reason. The affections
-have no reason. Anger and hate have none. The force, driving<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_463" id="Page_463">[Pg 463]</a></span> power of
-man is centred back of the ears. The cerebellum, or lower brain, acts
-independent of reason. Birds, and most of the animals, possess all the
-qualities that the cerebellum of man contains.</p>
-
-<p>The upper brain&mdash;the cerebrum&mdash;is the instrument of our thoughts&mdash;our
-reason. In sleep, it is still; its action is suspended. Hence there is no
-reason in our dreams. The motive power is in the lower brain; hence
-somnambulism. If there is anything of a “trance� nature, it means shutting
-off the action of the cerebrum, and concentring the power in the
-cerebellum. Some persons have but little upper brain. If they have the
-other requisites, they may become good clairvoyants, or magnetizers,
-according to the manner in which they exercise the animal power.</p>
-
-<p>I have yet to find a professional clairvoyant with large or active
-reasoning (intellectual) qualities.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Yet Room for more Discoveries.</span></p>
-
-<p>The <i>living</i> blood has not yet been analyzed. It contains a vitalizing
-element which chemistry has not yet been adequate to detect. There is yet
-as much to be discovered in the science of life as has already been
-revealed to man. It will yet be found out.</p>
-
-<p>How is the power, or force, conveyed from the operator to the person
-operated upon? Through what medium does it act?</p>
-
-<p>Let us begin with the brain. Let us take a ball of cotton for our
-illustration. We draw out a piece from it, and spin it out to our fancy.
-It is a thread, but <i>cotton</i> still, twisted to a fine string. The brain is
-located at the top of man. By means of fine threads, called nerves, the
-brain is distributed over the entire body, so completely that you cannot
-stick a pin in the flesh without touching a nerve, wounding the brain.
-Suspend the entire action of the brain, as by ether, chloroform, or
-nitrous oxygen gas, and sticking the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_464" id="Page_464">[Pg 464]</a></span> pin is not felt. Partially suspend
-the action, as by a small quantity of the nitrous oxygen gas, and the
-force of the brain (or active force) is centred upon the lower brain, and
-the man under its influence acts out his animal nature in spite of reason.</p>
-
-<p>A man, I hold, who magnetizes or mesmerizes another, uses only the force
-of the lower brain. Like begets like. He cannot affect a person of large
-intellectual organs; only one with the animal organs active.</p>
-
-<p>You cannot <i>see</i> the gas, yet it affects the person. You cannot see the
-subtile power conveyed from one man to a weaker. He conveys it by
-touch&mdash;nerve to nerve. I believe science will yet discover just what this
-subtile agent is&mdash;both in the blood and nerves; for it is in both, or why
-does the suspension of it in one destroy the other? Destroy the nerve, and
-the corresponding blood-vessel is inactive. Destroy the blood-vessel, and
-the corresponding nerve suffers.</p>
-
-<p>It is the power that the mother exercises to hush her sobbing babe to
-slumber. As the child gathers strength of mind, she loses that control. A
-person may be used as a mesmeric subject until he becomes a mere idiotic
-machine. Educate a clairvoyant doctor, and what becomes of his clairvoyant
-power? It is lost with the increase of intellectual power. Now, is this a
-“divine� quality, that only ignorance can make use of? Is it really
-“hidden from the wise and prudent, and given to babes?� All sciences were
-practised by the uneducated first, before being reduced to a <i>science</i>. I
-think this will be yet reduced to a useful science. As it now stands, it
-is useless. If it is a spirit power, the spirits are mighty silent as to
-the fact.</p>
-
-<p>We come into this world by natural causes. We live, grow, exist, and we
-die by natural causes. We brought no knowledge with us; we carry none out.
-All the qualities yet developed in man are natural, and adapted to this
-life. Millions upon millions have so lived and so died, and a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_465" id="Page_465">[Pg 465]</a></span> spirit
-power in <i>this</i> world is no nearer to being established than it was when
-Adam was a little boy. All that heretofore has been attributed to spirit,
-or supernatural causes, has been proven to be but natural. I claim that
-magnetism and the undiscovered sciences are natural, and have no
-connection with the next world, to which we tend. The human eye, to some
-extent, is magnetic. A blind man cannot thrill an audience; hardly can an
-orator with glasses over his eyes. Dr. Chapin approaches the nearest to
-it. Dr. Beecher’s great magnetic power is in his eyes, and is also let off
-at the ends of his fingers. But to <i>thoroughly</i> magnetize a person, he
-must be <i>touched</i>.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Power of the Human Eye.</span></p>
-
-<p>A wild animal has only small reasoning organs. The influence of the human
-eye is potent over him. Lichtenstein says, “The African hunters avail
-themselves of the circumstance that the lion does not attempt to spring
-upon his prey until he has measured the ground, and has reached the
-distance of ten or twelve paces, when he lies crouching on the ground,
-gathering himself up for the effort. The hunters,� he says, “make it a
-rule never to fire on the lion until he lies down at this short distance,
-so that they can aim directly at his head with the most perfect certainty.
-If one meets a lion, his only safety is to stand still, though the animal
-crouches to make his spring; that spring will not be hazarded if the man
-remain motionless, and look him steadfastly in the eyes. The animal
-hesitates, rises, slowly retreats some steps, looks earnestly about him,
-lies down, again retreats, till, getting by degrees quite out of the magic
-circle of man’s influence, he takes flight in the utmost haste.�</p>
-
-<p>It is said of Valentine Greatrakes, the great magnetizer and forerunner of
-Mesmer, that the glance of his eye had a marvellously fascinating
-influence upon people of a susceptible or nervous organization. All
-magnetizers, etc., who have<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_466" id="Page_466">[Pg 466]</a></span> tried their powers upon the writer, first
-bent a sharp, scrutinizing gaze upon the eye of their unruly subject. Yet
-they have exercised no <i>reason</i> in selecting the subject.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 448px; height: 450px;"><img src="images/img137.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">THE LION MAGNETIZED.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>I attended the exhibitions of Professor Cadwell, night after night, in
-Boston. I went on the stage. I examined the subjects whom he controlled
-“like an old fiddle,� and, physiognomically and phrenologically, not one
-of them was above mediocrity intellectually, and the most of them were far
-below. The best subjects had the least intellectuality. His control over
-them was astonishing. In some he could suspend the power of memory, others
-all the reasoning<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_467" id="Page_467">[Pg 467]</a></span> faculties. Some he could control muscularly, some
-mentally.</p>
-
-<p>“This is a hot stove,� he said, setting an empty chair before the row of
-men, boys, and girls sitting along the wall side of the stage. “<i>It is
-very hot</i>;� and they began drawing back&mdash;all but one. “Don’t you see the
-stove, and feel the awful heat, Frank?� he asked of one hard subject.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 450px; height: 198px;"><img src="images/img138.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">A HARD SUBJECT.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>“I can feel the heat, but I can’t see the stove in that chair,� was his
-droll reply.</p>
-
-<p>The professor could make this gentleman forget his name, but could not
-make him believe that “a silk hat was a basin of water.�</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">The Royal Touch.</span></p>
-
-<p>The old ignorant kings and queens were said to remove the scrofula (king’s
-evil) by the touch. Gouty old Queen Anne was the last to exercise the
-royal prerogative to any extent.</p>
-
-<p>A scrofulous <i>development</i> is the result of imperfect action, and
-obstruction of some one or more of the five excretory organs of the human
-system. These are the skin (or glands of the same), the lungs, the liver,
-the kidneys, and the colon. The most that the regular physician does in
-scrofula (or one<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_468" id="Page_468">[Pg 468]</a></span> who is not a specialist in this branch of physic) is to
-attend to the general health of the patient of a scrofulous diathesis,
-build up the strength, and endeavor to increase the vitality. This <i>in a
-measure</i> tends to reduce the scrofulous development. Now, will not a child
-sleeping continually with an aged person or invalid tend to reduce the
-vitality of the child? Yes, it absorbs the disease of the one, while the
-vitality is thrown off for the benefit of the weaker person. Here, you
-see, one person may partake of the vitality of another by touch. Then may
-not the continued touch of a healthy person (king or subject) affect the
-health of a weaker, on the principle of increased vitality?</p>
-
-<p>But it really removes no cause, hence cannot take the place of an
-alterative, or anti-scrofulous medicine. The “crew of wretched souls� who
-waited the king’s touch really believed that he “solicits Heaven.� Hence
-the cure. The coin which he hung about the neck of these “strangely
-visited people, all swollen and ulcerous, pitiful to the eye,� called
-their attention continually to “the healing benediction.�</p>
-
-<p>Pyrrhus, who was placed upon the throne by force of arms B. C. 306, was
-said to cure the “evil� by the “grace of God.� Valentine, who only held
-his throne&mdash;A. D. 375&mdash;by the help of Theodosius, not by the “grace of
-God�&mdash;claimed to cure scrofula by the latter power, as did Valentine II.,
-whose wicked temper ended his life in a “fit of passion.�</p>
-
-<p>The subject of the following sketch claimed also divine power:&mdash;</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Herr Gassner. “The Devil understands Latin.�</span></p>
-
-<p>It seems from the following truthful account of Herr Gassner, a clergyman
-at Elwangen, that the devil can understand Latin, as well as “quote
-Scripture.� About the year 1758 this clergyman became so celebrated in
-curing diseases by animal magnetism, that the people came flocking from
-Switzerland, the Tyrol, and Swabia, in great numbers, to be cured of
-all sorts of ailments, a thousand persons arriving at a time, who had to
-lodge in tents, as the town could not lodge them all.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_469" id="Page_469">[Pg 469]</a></span></p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 600px; height: 398px;"><img src="images/img139.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">GASSNER HEALING “BY THE GRACE OF GOD.�</p>
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_470" id="Page_470">[Pg 470]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_471" id="Page_471">[Pg 471]</a></span>His <i>modus operandi</i> was as follows. Dressed in a long scarlet cloak, a
-silken sash about his loins, a chain about his neck, and wearing, or
-holding in one hand, a crucifix, and touching with the other the diseased
-part, and in the Latin tongue commanding the disease, or the evil spirit,
-whichever the case was termed, to depart, in the name of Jesus Christ, the
-patient was usually healed. Dr. Schlisel says, that Gassner “spoke chiefly
-in Latin, in his operations, and the devil is said to have understood him
-perfectly.�</p>
-
-<p>The Austrian government gave him its assistance. The excitement became
-great. Elwangen was overcrowded by people, rich and poor. Riches flowed
-into the coffers of its trades-people, though Gassner took nothing
-directly for his cures. Hundreds of patients arrived daily; the apothecary
-gained a great revenue from dispensing simples ordered by Gassner,
-principally powder of <i>blessed thistle</i>, oils, and washes. The printers
-labored day and night at their presses in order to furnish sufficient
-pamphlets, prayers, pictures, etc., for the eager horde of admirers. The
-goldsmiths were crowded, also, to furnish all kinds of <i>Agni Dei</i>,
-crosses, charms, hearts, and rings. Even the beggars had their harvest, as
-well as bakers, hotel-keepers, and the rest.</p>
-
-<p>During seven years he carried on his public cures. Hundreds of physicians
-went to see him. Mesmer, in answer to the inquiry of the Elector of
-Bavaria, declared his astonishing cures were produced merely by the
-exercise of magnetic spiritual excitement, of which he himself (claiming
-no God-like power) gave to the elector convincing proofs on the spot.</p>
-
-<p>On the contrary, Gassner claimed that he could heal none unless they
-exercised faith. His surroundings, trappings,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_472" id="Page_472">[Pg 472]</a></span> dress, crucifixes, appeals
-to Jesus Christ, and Latin mummery, had the effect to impress the patient
-with faith in Gassner’s Christ-like powers.</p>
-
-<p>“Some,� says Dr. Schlisel, “described him as a prophetic and holy man;
-others accused him of being a fantastic fellow, an impostor, and leagued
-with the devil. Some accused him of dealing in the black art; others
-attributed his cures to the magnet, to electricity, to sympathy, to
-imagination; and some attributed the whole to the omnipotent power of the
-name of Christ.�</p>
-
-<p>Having touched or rubbed the affected part of the patient, Gassner, in a
-“loud, proud voice,� commanded the disease to come forth, or to manifest
-itself. Sometimes he had to repeat this command ten times. Then, when the
-part was presented, he seized it with both hands; he inspired the patient
-to himself repel the disease, by saying, “Depart from me, in the name of
-Jesus Christ.�</p>
-
-<p>“He then gave the patient his blessing by spreading his cloak over the
-head, grasping his neck or head in both hands, repeating a silent, earnest
-prayer, making the sign of the cross, ordering some simple from the
-apothecary’s, which he consecrates, compels the patient to wash his hands
-clean, when he is permitted to ‘depart in peace.’</p>
-
-<p>“Most diseases he cured instantly. Some required months, and others he
-could not affect in the least.�</p>
-
-<p>There is but one philosophical way to account for these cures. To say
-there is nothing in it, or, “It is all humbug,� will not satisfy the
-people. To affirm it is the arts of the devil is merely nonsensical. It is
-<i>influence</i>. Of what? Of one powerful mind over another. And when Gassner
-found a mind equally as powerful as his own, the disease refused to
-depart. There you have the whole of it, “in a nutshell,�&mdash;the exercising
-of one mind over another; and mind (not unusually) controls matter in the
-living body.</p>
-
-<p>For about seven years Gassner was a public healer, and then he suddenly
-and forever disappeared.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_473" id="Page_473">[Pg 473]</a></span></p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Royalty in the Shade.</span></p>
-
-<p>Sir John Fortesque, the learned legal writer of the time of Edward IV.,
-spoke of the gift of healing by touch as a “time immemorial privilege of
-the kings of England.� He very seriously attributed the virtue to the
-unction imparted to the hands in the coronation. Elizabeth was not
-superior to this superstition, and she frequently appeared before the
-people in the character of a miraculous healer. There was formerly a
-regular office in the English Book of Common Prayer for the performance of
-this ceremony. The curious reader is referred to Macbeth, Scene III. of
-Act IV. for further particulars.</p>
-
-<p>With the rise of Valentine Greatrakes, the “royal prerogative� received a
-staggering blow. The marvellous cures of this man, living in Ireland,
-reached England, and the king invited him to come to London; and along his
-journey, whither he was preceded by the returning messenger, we are told
-that the magistrates of the towns and cities waited upon Valentine, and
-begged him to remain and heal their sick.</p>
-
-<p>On his arrival, the king, “though not fully persuaded of his wonderful
-gift, recommended him to the care of his physician, and permitted him to
-practise his power as much as he pleased in London.�</p>
-
-<p>Greatrakes had no medical education, nor claimed aught beyond a gift of
-healing most diseases by “stroking the parts with his hand.� He is
-described as being a man of “commanding address, frank and pleasing,
-having a brilliant eye, gallant bearing, fine figure, and a remarkably
-handsome face. With a hearty and musical voice, and a natural stock of
-high <i>animal</i> spirits, he was the delight of all festive assemblies. Yet
-he was a devout man.�</p>
-
-<p>Daily there assembled a great number of people, invalids from all parts of
-the kingdom, to be healed, and to see the wonderful miracles performed by
-a <i>man</i>! Here congregated<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_474" id="Page_474">[Pg 474]</a></span> the dropsical, those afflicted by unsightly
-sores, tumors, and swellings, the lame, the halt, and the blind. “Some he
-could not affect, but the most of them he cured.� The only visible means
-he took was to stroke, or at times violently rub, the part affected. Lord
-Conway wrote in his praise, but added, “After all, I am far from thinking
-his cures miraculous. I believe it is by a <i>sanative virtue</i> and a
-<i>natural efficiency</i>, which extend not to all diseases.� The Viscountess
-Conway was afflicted by an inveterate headache, which he could not remove.
-This lady was a positive character. The failure was attributed to the
-<i>peculiar</i> disease, when it should have been assigned to the peculiarity
-of the person. Sir Evremond, then at court, wrote a sarcastic novel on the
-subject of “The Irish Prophet.� The Royal Society held a meeting on the
-subject, and, unable to refute the facts of his cures, accounted for them
-as being “produced by a sanative contagion in Mr. Greatrakes’ body, which
-had an antipathy to some peculiar diseases, and not to others.� They
-demanded (particularly Dr. Loyd, in a “severe pamphlet�) how he cured, and
-why he cured some, and could not others. Greatrakes replied that he was
-not able to tell. And “let them,� he said, “tell me what substance that is
-which removes and goes out with such expedition, and it will be more easy
-to resolve their questions.�</p>
-
-<p>To the scandalous reports respecting his operations upon female patients,
-without referring directly to such report, he says, attributing the
-diseases to evil spirits, “which kind of pains cannot endure my hand, nay,
-not with gloves, but fly immediately, though six or eight coats or cloaks
-be between the person and my hand, as at the Lady Ranelagh’s,� etc.</p>
-
-<p>The clergy had previously taken alarm, and cited Valentine before the
-Bishop’s Court to account for his proceedings, and when he took a
-scriptural view of his cures, he was forbidden to practise more; which was
-as preposterous as the decree of Louis XIV., which commanded that no more<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_475" id="Page_475">[Pg 475]</a></span>
-miracles should be performed at the tomb of the Abbé Paris.</p>
-
-<p>Neither the clergy nor the faculty could prevent him, and daily the crowd
-of representatives of heterogeneous diseases made pilgrimages to the
-Squire of Affam. The scene was said to be ludicrously painful. They came
-in crowds from everywhere; on foot and in carriages; the young and the
-aged; some hobbling upon crutches, others literally crawling along; the
-blind carrying the cripple upon his back, while the latter directed the
-way, and the deaf and dumb followed in their wake.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 450px; height: 237px;"><img src="images/img140.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">NO LACK OF PATIENTS.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>While the lord mayor and the chief justice, with great physicians, were
-among his vehement supporters of the sterner sex, the majority of his real
-admirers were the ladies. The lovely Countess of Devonshire entertained
-him in her palace, and other high ladies lionized him nightly in their
-parlors, where he “performed his pleasant operations, with wonderful
-results, on the prettiest and most hysterical ladies present.� “But his
-triumph was of short duration. His professions were made the butts of
-ridicule, to which his presence of mind and volubility were unable to
-effectually<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_476" id="Page_476">[Pg 476]</a></span> respond. His tone of conversation was represented by his
-enemies as compounded of the blasphemy of the religious enthusiast and the
-obscene profligate. His boast that he never received a fee for remedial
-services was met by a square contradiction, and a statement that he
-received five hundred dollars at once.� Finally, the tide of opposition
-and slander became too strong for him, and he returned to his native land,
-and to oblivion.</p>
-
-<p>We are indebted to several authorities for the foregoing sketch of
-Greatrakes, particularly Chambers’ Miscellany, Lord Conway, E. Rich, and
-Jeaffreson.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Mesmerism.</span></p>
-
-<p>Frederick Anthony Mesmer, to whose name the above <i>ism</i> is affixed, was
-born in Werseburg, in 1734. He neither discovered, developed, nor
-understood anything of the art which has immortalized him. He was a
-designing, audacious man. If Gassner, Prince Hohenloe, and Greatrakes were
-falsely accused of dealing with the devil, Mesmer was truly leagued with a
-Father Hell. Father Hell was professor of astronomy at Vienna, where
-Mesmer obtained a medical diploma, and where he was connected at first
-with Maximilian Hell in magnetic instruments. Having a falling out with
-the latter, Mesmer resorted to the arts of his great predecessor,
-Greatrakes, but professed to cure, without the help of God or man, all
-curable diseases. He produced marvellous effects (but only temporary,
-however) in both Vienna and Paris, to which latter place he repaired to
-practise animal magnetism.</p>
-
-<p>Among the little episodes relative to his treatment is one of Madame
-Campan, a lady of the royal household, author of “Memoires de Marie
-Antoinette.� The husband of this celebrated lady sent for Dr. Mesmer&mdash;for
-all Paris was running mad after him&mdash;to cure him of lung fever. He came
-with great pomp, and having timed the pulse, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_477" id="Page_477">[Pg 477]</a></span> made certain inquiries
-respecting the case, he gravely informed the husband and wife that it was
-not in the way of magnetism, and the only mode of cure lay in the
-following: “You must lay by his side�&mdash;for he was confined to his
-bed&mdash;“one of three things, an old empty bottle, a black hen, or a young
-woman of brown complexion.�</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 450px; height: 359px;"><img src="images/img141.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">“A BOTTLE, A HEN, OR A WOMAN.�</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>“‘Sir,’ exclaimed the wife, ‘let us try the empty bottle first.’</p>
-
-<p>“The bottle was tried, with what result is easily imagined. Monsieur
-Campan grew worse. Improving the opportunity of the lady’s absence, Mesmer
-bled and blistered the patient, who recovered.</p>
-
-<p>“Imagine the lady’s astonishment when Mesmer asked for and actually
-obtained a written certificate of cure by magnetism� (Mesmerism).</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_478" id="Page_478">[Pg 478]</a></span>This is more easily believed when one learns that Mesmer obtained his
-degree on an address, or thesis, relating to “planetary influence on the
-human body,� and that afterwards, in answer to the inquiry by a learned
-Paris physician, who asked him why he ordered his patients to bathe in the
-Seine, instead of spring water, as the waters of the Seine were always
-dirty, Mesmer replied,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“Why, my dear doctor, the cause of the water which is exposed to the sun’s
-rays being superior to all other water is, that it is magnetized by the
-sun. I myself magnetized the sun some twenty years ago.�</p>
-
-<p>All that sort of fellows have ever a short course. Mesmer reached his
-zenith in Paris about the year 1784, when, for one year’s practice, he
-received the enormous sum of four hundred thousand francs. The government,
-at the instigation of Count Maurepas, had previously offered him an
-annuity of twenty thousand francs, with ten thousand francs additional, to
-support a college hospital, if he would remain and practise only in
-France. “One unpleasant condition was attached to this offer, which
-prevented its acceptance; viz., three nominees of the crown were to watch
-the proceedings.�</p>
-
-<p>The government appointed a commission, consisting of Dr. Guillotin, and
-three other physicians, and five members of the Academy,&mdash;Franklin,
-Bailly, Borey, Leroi, and Lavoisier,&mdash;to examine the means employed by
-Mesmer. The result of the investigation&mdash;the discovery of his battery,
-which he termed the <i>baquet</i>, around which his patients assembled, and his
-windy pretensions to the self-possession of some animal magnetism beyond
-even his disciples, Bergasse and Deslon&mdash;was unfavorable to the truth of
-animal magnetism and morality, and the enthusiasm in his favor rapidly
-subsided. Mesmer soon found it convenient to repair to London. Here he
-made no great impression; his day had gone by.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_479" id="Page_479">[Pg 479]</a></span>He died in his native town, in all but penury and obscurity, in 1815.</p>
-
-<p>Clairvoyance now made its appearance, which was but a different phase of
-magnetism, and Mesmerism was soon but indifferently practised in France.
-In England the faculty entirely ignored it.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Clairvoyance.</span></p>
-
-<p>What is it? The word is French, meaning, literally, clear-sightedness. It
-is a power attributed to certain persons, or claimed by certain persons,
-of seeing things not visible to the eye, or things at a distance. It is
-the action of mind over mind,&mdash;the seeing, mentally, of one mind through
-another.</p>
-
-<p>By personal experiment with clairvoyants, I am positively convinced that
-they follow the mind (thoughts) of the subject or patient. I have laid out
-my programme before visiting one, and the operator, whether pretending or
-not to a “trance� state, has followed that course to the end, but usually
-adding something which was conjectural. Practice helps them very much. But
-the most of those persons, male and female, who proclaim themselves
-clairvoyants, are humbugs and impostors.</p>
-
-<p>Let any clear-headed man, who has good intellectual qualities, go to a
-good clairvoyant, and try the above plan. Think out just the places and
-persons you wish the clairvoyant (or spiritualist, if he or she choose to
-call themselves such) to bring up. Stick firmly to your text, and the
-operator will follow it, if he or she is a clairvoyant. They can tell you
-nothing that you do not already know. If they go beyond that, it is
-guessed at.</p>
-
-<p>No person of large causality can be a clairvoyant. The moment they employ
-cause and effect, they are lost in doubt. How else can you account for
-nearly all the professional clairvoyants (and spiritualists) being persons
-of low <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_480" id="Page_480">[Pg 480]</a></span>intellectuality? Of course they deny this; but a fact is a fact,
-and <i>it can’t be rubbed out</i>!</p>
-
-<p>There is a magnetizing feature in clairvoyance. The operator can make some
-persons <i>think</i> they see a thing, when it is an impossibility to see it.
-This influence is sometimes passed from one person to another
-imperceptibly.</p>
-
-<p>When the earthquake shook up the minds of the Bostonians, in 1870, there
-was one grand illustration of this fact. A gentleman standing in front of
-the Old State House, on Washington Street, soon after the shock, asserted
-that the earthquake had started a stone in the front end of the Sears
-Building.</p>
-
-<p>“There! don’t you see it?� he exclaimed to the people on the sidewalk, who
-are always ready to stop and look at any new or curious object, as he
-pointed towards an imaginary crack in the marble. “It is just above the
-corner of that window there�&mdash;pointing&mdash;“a crack in the stone a foot
-long.�</p>
-
-<p>“O, yes, I see it,� said one and another; and the gentleman moved on,
-leaving the gaping crowd to gaze after the imaginary rent in the wall.</p>
-
-<p>“Where is it?� inquired a new comer.</p>
-
-<p>“Right up there over the door,� replied one.</p>
-
-<p>“No, over that third window,� said another.</p>
-
-<p>Some “saw it,� and others didn’t “see it,� but all day long the tide of
-curious humans ebbed and flowed. At eight o’clock in the morning I took a
-look&mdash;not at the broken stone in the marble front, but at the magnetized
-crowd looking upon an imaginary break. People with large causality looked,
-exclaimed, “Pooh!� and went on. The credulous stood gazing, and pointing
-out the rent to the “blind ones, who wouldn’t see,� hour after hour. At
-noon I again visited the scene. The crowd had shifted, but the same class,
-male and female, stood gazing at the “calico building,� and the same sort
-of people “saw the crack over the window.�</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_481" id="Page_481">[Pg 481]</a></span></p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 450px; height: 325px;"><img src="images/img142.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">EFFECTS OF AN EARTHQUAKE.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 450px; height: 331px;"><img src="images/img143.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">A BELIEVER SEES HIS GRANDMOTHER.</p>
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_482" id="Page_482">[Pg 482]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_483" id="Page_483">[Pg 483]</a></span>At six P. M., I again visited the Old State House, and at dusk still
-again, to behold the crowd straining to get a last look at the rent before
-darkness shut out the view. On the following day, the scene was repeated,
-with no mitigation. The fact of the papers denying that there was any rent
-went for nothing. The crowd came and went, from morning till evening.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">The Gates of Moscow.</span></p>
-
-<p>Some readers may remember the story of the great Wizard of the North, who
-performed such marvellous feats before the czar, receiving from his
-highness a splendid present in money, and finally wound up by announcing
-that he would leave the city of Moscow on the following day, at twelve M.,
-<i>by all the gates of the city at the same time</i>!</p>
-
-<p>The watchmen were doubled at all the gates, to whom a description of the
-man was sent, and a sharp lookout was commanded, when, lo! just at noon
-the wizard was seen leaving the city at each separate outlet at the same
-moment. Of course he could not have left by but one gate, but which of the
-twelve no one could tell, for he was seen at all, or the watchmen were
-made to believe that they saw him, as he passed out. To this the watchmen
-of the several gates testified, and that he uncovered his head to them, as
-he went past.</p>
-
-<p>At which gate did he really make his exit? The beautiful gate Spass
-Voratu, or Gate of the Redeemer, has over the archway a picture of the
-Saviour. All who pass out here are compelled to uncover. Hence it is my
-belief, as he was seen uncovered, that this was the gate at which he
-really went out, and at all the rest the watchmen imagined they saw the
-wizard make his marvellous exit from Moscow.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_484" id="Page_484">[Pg 484]</a></span></p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">The Doctor of Antwerp.</span></p>
-
-<p>Townsend, on Mesmerism, tells an instructing and amusing anecdote of a
-test, by a learned doctor of Antwerp, upon a clairvoyant girl. The doctor
-was allowed, at a seance, to select his own test, when he said,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“If the somnambulist�&mdash;that was what he termed her&mdash;“tells me what is in
-my pocket, I will believe.� Then to her he put the question,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“What is in my pocket?�</p>
-
-<p>“A case of lancets,� was the reply.</p>
-
-<p>“True,� said the doctor, somewhat startled. “But the young lady may know
-that I am a medical man; hence her guess that I carry a case of
-instruments in my pocket. But if she will tell me the number of lancets in
-the case, I will believe.�</p>
-
-<p>“Ten,� was the correct answer.</p>
-
-<p>Still the doctor was sceptical, and said,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“I cannot yet believe but if the form of the case is described I must
-yield to conviction.� And the form of the case was given.</p>
-
-<p>“This certainly is very singular,� said the doctor, “but still I cannot
-believe. Now, if the young lady will give the color of the velvet lining
-of the case, I really <i>must</i> believe.�</p>
-
-<p>“The color is dark blue,� was her prompt reply.</p>
-
-<p>“True, true!� said the puzzled doctor, and he went away, saying, “It is
-very curious, very, but still I cannot believe.�</p>
-
-<p>Now, if the doctor had not known that the case was in his pocket, or no
-one present had known beforehand, no clairvoyant could have described it.
-What does this prove? That her mind was led by his inquiry to his mind,
-thence to the article on his mind at the moment. “This is a book� I say.
-The fact of my saying it, or thinking it, leads my mind to the book.</p>
-
-<p>As a person may look towards an object, as out of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_485" id="Page_485">[Pg 485]</a></span> window towards a
-tree, and not see it till his mind is directed to it, so, on the other
-hand, he may have his mind (thoughts) directed to a thing that his eyes
-cannot see, and in a person whose superior brain is susceptible, it maybe
-reflected so vividly as to permit a description of the object.</p>
-
-<p>One may walk over a stream, upon stones, or ground, and not realize the
-fact till the mind is directed to it; and the thing may be reversed, and a
-susceptible person may be led to think that he or she is walking over or
-through water when none is present. The mind must be directed to an object
-in order to see it mentally.</p>
-
-<p>A gentleman recently told me that a “medium brought up his old
-grandmother.�</p>
-
-<p>“How did she describe the old lady as appearing?� I asked.</p>
-
-<p>“In woollen dress and poke bonnet, with specs on, just as she used to
-appear when I was a boy, forty years ago.�</p>
-
-<p>“I should have thought the fashions would have changed in the unseen
-world, even if the clothes had not worn out in forty years’ service,� I
-suggested.</p>
-
-<p>This slightly staggered him, but he replied, “Perhaps fashions do not
-change in the spirit-world.�</p>
-
-<p>“Then ladies can never be happy there. Besides, what a jolly, comical set
-they must be down there; the newer fashions appearing hourly in beautiful
-contrast with the ancient styles; especially the janty, little, precious
-morsels called hats of to-day, all covered with magnificent ribbons, and
-flowers, and laces, in contrast with the great ark-like, sombre poke
-bonnets of forty and a hundred years ago!�</p>
-
-<p>“Sir,� I said, when he did not reply to this last poser,&mdash;“Sir, bring your
-stock of common sense to bear upon the matter, and see that the mind of
-the medium controlled yours, and led you to believe you saw, as the medium
-did, through your thoughts, your ancient grandmother; for how else would
-you imagine her, but as you remembered her, in woollen gown, poke bonnet,
-and spectacles.�</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_486" id="Page_486">[Pg 486]</a></span></p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Visits to a Clairvoyant.</span></p>
-
-<p>Twenty-five years ago, I visited Madam Young, in Ellsworth, Me.</p>
-
-<p>“You are going a journey,� she soon said, after I was seated, and she had
-examined my “bumps� to learn that I was a rolling stone. “You are going
-south-west from here.� “Marvellous!� one might say, who had little
-reflective qualities of brain, for that was the very thing I was about to
-do. But from Ellsworth, Maine, which way else could one go, without going
-“south-west,� unless he really went to the “jumping-off place, away down
-east?�</p>
-
-<p>Again I visited her in Charleston, S. C.</p>
-
-<p>“You are going a journey soon,� she informed me.</p>
-
-<p>“Which way?� I amusingly inquired.</p>
-
-<p>“Towards the north,� was the necessary reply.</p>
-
-<p>Charleston is at the extremity of a neck of land. I was not expected to
-jump off into the bay, by going southward, and her answer was the only
-rational one. She would minutely describe any person, “good, bad, or
-indifferent,� whom I would fix my mind upon. I was suffering at the time
-with bronchitis, which she correctly stated. She was the best clairvoyant
-I have ever tested. She died at Hartford, in 1862.</p>
-
-<p>The following item of the press does not refer to Madam Young:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>A clairvoyant doctor of Hartford proclaims his superiority over other
-seers on the ground that he “foretells the past and present as well as the
-future.� We should say he would probably “foretell� them much better. As
-the Irishman said, one gets on better when one goes backward or stands
-still.</p>
-
-<p>I noticed his advertisement in a Providence paper, recently, where “Dr.
-&mdash;&mdash; foretold the past, present, and future.�</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_487" id="Page_487">[Pg 487]</a></span></p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">A Night in the Penobscot Mountains.</span></p>
-
-<p>At Castine I heard of an old lady residing high up in the Penobscot
-mountains, who could magnetize a sore or a painful limb at sight. Such
-marvellous stories were told of her “charming,� that I decided to go over
-the mountain and see her. She was not a “professional,� however, and
-objected to being made too public. Therefore I made an excuse for calling
-at the house “on my way afoot across the country,� and was cordially
-received by the family, of whom there were four generations residing under
-one roof. The house was a story and half brown cottage, large on the
-ground, and surrounded by numerous out-houses and barns. The view from the
-western slope of the mountain where she lived was most magnificent. I
-reached the farm before sunset. Here I lingered to overlook the beautiful
-Penobscot as it flowed at my feet, and the far-off islands of the sea.
-Here one could “gaze and never tire,� out over the grand old forests, down
-to the sea-side, and upon countless little white specks, the whitened
-sails of the fishermen and coasting vessels, with an occasional ship or
-steamboat flitting up and down the noble Penobscot river and bay. Still
-above me the eagle built her nest in the rocking pines, on the mountain
-top, and still far below sung the nightingale and wheeled the hungry
-osprey in his belated piscatorial occupations.</p>
-
-<p>The sun sank behind the western hills, tinging the soft, fleecy clouds
-with its golden glory. Slowly changing from purple and gold to faint
-yellow, to dark blue, the clouds gradually assumed the night hue, and
-sombre shadows crept adown the western mountains’ sides, flinging their
-dark mantle over the waters, from shore to shore. The sturdy farmer has
-shouldered his scythe, and reluctantly he leaves the half-mown lot to seek
-his evening repast at the family table. Then he discovers me, leaning over
-the gate-bar, rapt in dreamy forgetfulness, and with a hearty salutation
-extends<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_488" id="Page_488">[Pg 488]</a></span> to me the hospitality, so proverbially cordial, of the old New
-England farmer. He shows me his pigs in the pen, and his “stock� in the
-barn-yard, and reaching the house, he calls “mother,� who, appearing in
-calico and homespun, though with a cheerful and smiling face, is
-introduced to me as his wife. “A stranger, belated, and I guess pretty
-tired-like, climbing up here; and I won’t take no excuses from him; so he
-stays with us to-night.�</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img144.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">THE CHARMER DIVULGES HER SECRET.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>I talk with the lady, I play with the babies, I even toy with Towser and
-Tabby, till tea is set. Now I am introduced to the old lady. I thought I
-would get to it at last. She was seventy odd years of age, a deaf, but
-devout old lady, who was easily wheedled into divulging to me her secret
-of “charming.� She told me she had the “rheumatiz,� and by my tender
-sympathies and a roll of plaster for her lame back,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_489" id="Page_489">[Pg 489]</a></span> I got into her own
-room before bed-time. O, but I came out soon after! She was very deaf.</p>
-
-<p>“You see,� said she, “a woman can’t learn it to another woman&mdash;only to a
-male. He must be a <i>good</i> man.� I nodded assent. “Yes; well, you must have
-faith.� Again I nodded&mdash;she was very deaf. “You must touch the painful
-part and say&mdash;� Here she bent down her lips to my ear and whispered
-something in seven words which she said I must never tell, and she
-compelled me to promise never to divulge the secret while I lived, under
-pain of God’s great displeasure.</p>
-
-<p>Perhaps I had better keep my promise, though the good old lady has long
-since “gone to her reward.�</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Cui Bono?</span></p>
-
-<p>The question is repeated every time there is a great robbery or a murder
-committed,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“Why do not the clairvoyants tell who has committed this crime?�</p>
-
-<p>Simply because those who consult them do not know. If a person knew where
-the stolen property was secreted, and he consulted a true clairvoyant, he
-or she <i>might</i> describe the property and the place where it is secreted.
-Not otherwise. The same with the murderer. Therefore, of what good is it?</p>
-
-<p>In order to do justice to this subject, to present and explain it in all
-its various phases, we would require a volume, instead of the space
-allotted in this chapter. But whatever name one may apply to it,&mdash;animal
-magnetism, Mesmerism, clairvoyance, spiritual or trance mediumship,&mdash;its
-success depends mostly upon the credulity of the person.</p>
-
-<p>During the five days preceding May 15, 1869, a reporter of the Boston Post
-visited seventeen of these clairvoyants, mediums, etc., and some curious
-facts and startling contradictions were revealed therein.</p>
-
-<p>“Putting it together,� he says, “and carefully epitomizing<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_490" id="Page_490">[Pg 490]</a></span> the amount of
-fortune that we have in this way been able to purchase, we present our
-readers with the following balance sheet:� and this, he says, is from the
-“most experienced and trustworthy fortune-tellers in the good city of
-Boston, where everything like <i>humbug</i> is most scrupulously avoided.</p>
-
-<p>“Four times we have been told that we were engaged in no business at all,
-and as many more that our affairs and prospects were never more
-flourishing. Repeatedly we have been told that we should speedily change
-our business and abode. On the other hand, we were destined to be a
-fixture in Boston, and were so well satisfied with our present calling
-that we should never change. We are not married, but a great many pretty
-maidens stood ready to help us out of that difficulty.� Again, “we were
-married, and the father of several roguish boys and bright-eyed girls.
-Thus far in life we had enjoyed good health, were free from all
-infirmities, and stood a good chance to reach fourscore and ten.�</p>
-
-<p>“In less than twenty-four hours this sweet hope was buried, and we were
-advised that death would overtake us suddenly and soon.�</p>
-
-<p>There are various grades of clairvoyants, as of everything else. Here is
-one class.</p>
-
-<p>“After ascending a rickety, dirty, greasy stairway, you find the madam
-quartered in a small, square bedroom, poorly and miserably furnished. The
-room is dirty, dark, and dingy. Portions of the walls are covered with a
-cheap and quaint paper, patched, here and there, with some of another
-figure and quality. Pictures of a cheap class are hanging on two sides of
-the room,&mdash;of Columbus, Webster, and three or four love and courtship
-scenes in France and Germany. The furniture consists of a cheap bed, a
-dilapidated parlor cooking-stove, a small pine table, three common chairs,
-and a rocking-chair, cane-bottomed, a big box, covered with a remnant of
-the national flag, and a few cheap mantel ornaments.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_491" id="Page_491">[Pg 491]</a></span>“The madam is a woman under thirty, very stoutly built, weighs one hundred
-and sixty pounds, has quite fair complexion, with pretty blue eyes, light
-hair, and withal not bad-looking. She was attired in a loose and rather
-soiled calico dress, wore no ornaments, and looked rather uninviting.�</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">A Bon Ton Clairvoyant.</span></p>
-
-<p>The writer visited a special seance at one of the most aristocratic and
-<i>recherché</i> abodes of the marvellous in this city, not long since. I was
-ushered into the brilliantly lighted hall by a janty-looking little biddy
-in white and embroidered apron. That was all I saw of her, as she
-disappeared and was substituted by the lady of the house, the medium. She
-was a pretty, pleasant little lady, with brilliant, dancing, light eyes,
-hair golden brown, and was dressed in a black silk dress, with blue
-overskirt, a rich lace collar, and flowing sleeves of the same material.</p>
-
-<p>Depositing hat, coat, and cane on the hall rack, I was introduced to the
-assembled guests in the great parlors. These rooms were united by a wide,
-open archway, were high, and brilliantly lighted by rich chandeliers in
-each room. An elegant piano occupied the west side of the front parlor,
-upon which was a pile of the latest music. The furniture was of black
-walnut, and richly upholstered in green and gold rep. The mantel was
-adorned with vases of porcelain, images of marble and terra-cotta, and
-little knickknacks of foreign production. The walls were hung with a few
-of Prang’s chromos, oil paintings, and two “spirit� photographs. The most
-beautiful, as well as the most remarkable, feature of the rooms was the
-magnificent bouquets of native hot-house flowers, which covered the two
-marble-topped centre-tables and sideboard. These were presents to the
-spirits! They did not take them away; the only one I saw removed was
-knocked over by a careless<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_492" id="Page_492">[Pg 492]</a></span> elbow. I regret to add, that there was no
-“manifestation,� nor anything revealed, worth recording.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">A Bouncer.</span></p>
-
-<p>A scene that occurred at another place where I previously visited may be
-considered worthy of notice. I clambered two flights of stairs, and found
-myself face to face with a very large woman, answering to the alias of
-Madam &mdash;&mdash;. She was very fleshy, weighing probably two hundred and
-thirty-five pounds avoirdupois. Her face was pleasant, and conversation
-easy. I handing over the required “picture paper,� she tumbled into a
-great easy-chair, and, without any pretence to a trance, began,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img145.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">“I PERCEIVE YOU ARE IN LOVE.�</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>“I perceive that you are in love.� This was startling news to a bachelor.
-“There are two pretty females, one dark-complexioned, the other light.�
-(This is the usual “dodge,� for, if there is a woman in the question, one
-of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_493" id="Page_493">[Pg 493]</a></span> two is bound to answer this general description.) “Which shall we
-follow?� she very teasingly inquired.</p>
-
-<p>“Either that comes handiest,� was my indifferent reply.</p>
-
-<p>“Well, the dark one, then. She is tall, fair, and is looking anxiously for
-you to propose. Do you know a lady of this description whom you like?� I
-regretted that I did not. My “notion� ran to small ladies, of the opposite
-complexion. “Well,� she said, not the least flurried, “here is one of that
-kind.� I instantly placed my mind on one of this class,&mdash;my sister,&mdash;and
-she ran on. “She is soon to meet you. She is very rich.� (Nellie will be
-glad to learn this.) “And I perceive a short-like man looking after her
-fortune. But have no concern; she loves you fondly, and you will marry her
-very soon. You are going a voyage, or across some water.� (How far can one
-travel, in this country, without crossing water?) “You will meet an enemy,
-who will try to injure you in business.�</p>
-
-<p>“What business?� I inquired.</p>
-
-<p>“You are a&mdash;yes&mdash;mechanic, though your hand is soft. I reckon you’ve been
-sick. Yes&mdash;machinist; make coffee-mills. Yes� (looking sharply into my
-face). (I was <i>leading her</i>!) “Corn poppers are in your line.� (I nodded,
-and smiled, for how could I refrain from smiling?) “You trade in tin and
-earthen ware&mdash;chamber ware&mdash;spoons&mdash;and old boots.� (True.) “You own a
-splendid house in the city&mdash;a large block�-(head).</p>
-
-<p>“Where was I born? Can you see?�</p>
-
-<p>“Yes; you were reared in the country; where there were deep, dark
-woods&mdash;all woods; in a log house, with thatched roof, and clay and stick
-chimney. A pig&mdash;am I right?&mdash;yes, a pig and a dog are kept in the same
-house. The windows are wooden, and&mdash;�</p>
-
-<p>“Where was it?� I suggested.</p>
-
-<p>“I should say in Ireland,� she replied.</p>
-
-<p>“Enough, I believe. Now about the other lady,� I said.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_494" id="Page_494">[Pg 494]</a></span>“The dark one? Yes. She loves you, but is poor. Since you are rich, and
-a&mdash;� Here I tried to impress her that I was married. “You are married, but
-your wife will not survive you. No, she will soon go to heaven, and you
-will marry the dark-complexioned lady.�</p>
-
-<p>“Good,� I exclaimed.</p>
-
-<p>“Yes; and will have five boys and three girls.�</p>
-
-<p>“Who?�</p>
-
-<p>“Why, the lady, of course.�</p>
-
-<p>“O!�</p>
-
-<p>“Yes, and they will be happy and healthy.�</p>
-
-<p>Here she informed me I had got my money’s worth.</p>
-
-<p>I think I had.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img146.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
-<hr style="width: 50%;" />
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_495" id="Page_495">[Pg 495]</a></span></p>
-<h2><a name="XIX" id="XIX"></a>XIX.</h2>
-<p class="title">ECCENTRICITIES.</p>
-
-<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table">
-<tr><td>“They’ll not show their teeth in way of smile,<br />
-Though Nestor swear the jest be laughable.�<br />
-<br />
-“Democritus, dear droll, revisit earth,<br />
-And with our follies glut thy heightened mirth.�&mdash;<span class="smcap">Prior.</span></td></tr></table>
-
-<div class="note"><p class="hang"><small>A ONE-EYED DOCTOR AND HIS HORSE.&mdash;A NEW EDIBLE.&mdash;“HAVE THEM
-BOILED.�&mdash;“BEAUTY AND THE BEAST.�&mdash;A LOVELY STAMPEDE.&mdash;AN ECCENTRIC
-PHILADELPHIAN.&mdash;THE POODLES, DRS. HUNTER AND SCIPIO.&mdash;SILENT
-ELOQUENCE.&mdash;CONSISTENT TO THE END.&mdash;WHEN DOCTORS DISAGREE.&mdash;FOUR BLIND
-MEN.&mdash;DIET AND SLEEP.&mdash;SAXE AND SANCHO PANZA.&mdash;MOTHER GOOSE AS A
-DOCTOR’S BOOK.&mdash;THE TABLES TURNED ON THE DOCTORS.</small></p></div>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p>We love to see an eccentric individual&mdash;something out of the common
-routine of every-day, humdrum life. But what is often taken for an
-eccentricity is sometimes put on for an advertisement.</p>
-
-<p>Nearly all great men have their oddities or peculiarities. I might give
-many little interesting sketches of some physicians’ oddities right among
-us, but for too great personality. I may, however, work in a few.</p>
-
-<p>The eccentricities of some doctors lie in their dress. Of this, I shall
-speak under the head of “Dress and Address.� Others lie in personal acts,
-in their walk, manners, and conversation.</p>
-
-<p>I know of one physician who delights in the worst looking old horse he can
-obtain. The doctor himself has but one eye. His old donkey-like beast
-corresponded. Report said that he cut out the left eye of the horse to
-gain that desired end,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_496" id="Page_496">[Pg 496]</a></span> which, however, is discredited. The beast was also
-lame, which defect the doctor would never admit.</p>
-
-<p>“What <i>you</i> ignorantly term ‘limping’ is only an expression of good
-breeding&mdash;which I cannot attach to all whom I meet on the road. It’s
-bowing,&mdash;merely bowing. You never see him do it unless somebody is in
-sight. Gid-dap!� And so delivering himself, the old doctor would drive on,
-chuckling softly to himself. When his old horse died, he was presented
-with a fine young beast, which he declined to accept, but scoured the
-country till he found a high-boned, rib-bared, foundered, and half-blind
-old roadster.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">A new Dish.</span></p>
-
-<p>Dr. James Wood was an oddity. He was a bachelor, between thirty and forty,
-large and attractive. He was remarkably neat in dress and person, but
-delighted in “an old rip of a horse.�</p>
-
-<p>Once he was on a tour through New Brunswick, and, in company with a
-friend, drove up to a tavern at evening, and called for the landlord.</p>
-
-<p>“He ain’t t’ home, but I’m the horse-slayer,� replied a voice, followed by
-the person of a tall, lean Yankee, who issued from the smoke of the
-bar-room, and approached our friends, still sitting in the open buggy.</p>
-
-<p>“Here, put up my horse; take good care of him, and feed him well.�</p>
-
-<p>“Hoss?� said the impudent fellow. “O, yes, I see him now; he’s inside that
-ere frame, I s’pose. Climb down, gentlemen, and go inter the house.
-Landlord and the Santipede (Xantippe?) has gone to St. Johns; but I guess
-Dolly in the kitchin, and me in the bar-room, can eat and drink yer,
-though you’re two putty big fellows, well’s myself.� So saying, the
-gentlemen having alighted, he drove the animal to the stable.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_497" id="Page_497">[Pg 497]</a></span></p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 600px; height: 399px;"><img src="images/img147.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">A “HORSE-SLAYER� INDULGING HIS OPINION.</p>
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_498" id="Page_498">[Pg 498]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_499" id="Page_499">[Pg 499]</a></span>At supper, the doctor and his friend and two ladies were the only
-guests. Just what part the “horse-slayer� had had in its preparation was
-not obvious, since he had, after caring for the horse, only sat with a
-pipe in his mouth and his heels elevated on the bar-room stove, or
-following to the sitting-room, and continually plied the doctor with
-questions. However, the supper was ample, thanks to “Dolly.�</p>
-
-<p>“Is there anything more wanted?� inquired the table girl,&mdash;a round-faced,
-round-headed country specimen in neat calico.</p>
-
-<p>“Yes,� replied the doctor, “we would like some napkins, seeing there are
-none on the table.�</p>
-
-<p>Away hastened the girl, who, quickly returning, asked in very primitive
-simplicity,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“How will you have them cooked?�</p>
-
-<p>“O, boiled, if you please,� replied the doctor, without changing a muscle
-about his sober-looking face.</p>
-
-<p>The girl disappeared at full trot, followed by jeers of laughter from the
-gentlemen present, and suppressed titters from the ladies.</p>
-
-<p>In a few moments “Dolly� made her appearance, and after searching in vain
-through the side-table drawer and a cupboard in the dining-room, she said
-they had none in the house, and intimated that the table girl could not be
-induced to return, after being laughed at for her ignorance of what a
-napkin was, and that “herself would wait upon the guests.�</p>
-
-<p>When the doctor returned, the “horse-slayer� called out that the napkin
-doctor was coming, upon which the terrified table-girl ran away and hid.</p>
-
-<p>My informant says, “You’re only to say, any time, ‘Here comes that napkin
-doctor,’ and the table girl nearly goes wild, dropping everything, and
-hiding away in her chamber till assured it is only a false alarm.�</p>
-
-<p>The writer is well acquainted with W., who assured him this was true.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_500" id="Page_500">[Pg 500]</a></span></p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Beauty and the Beast.</span></p>
-
-<p>I heard, while in the South, of a doctor, a little, short man, who rode a
-Canadian horse, a scraggy little specimen, and who, in yellow fever time,
-used to ride right straight into a drug store, and order his prescription,
-catch it up, wheel his pony round on his hind legs, stick in the spurs
-into the flanks of the animal, and go out in a clean gallop.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 450px; height: 314px;"><img src="images/img148.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">NO TIME TO LOSE.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>Though the writer never saw this remarkable feat, there is one more
-ludicrous, to which he was an eye-witness.</p>
-
-<p>One fine day, while in Charleston, sitting musing in the window of the
-Victoria Hotel, I saw an African, with bare feet and legs, his whole
-attire consisting of a coarse shirt and brief trousers, drive a mule
-attached to a dray, on which was a box, up towards a milliner’s store,
-opposite. The negro jumped from the dray, and, with whip in hand, ran into
-the store to ascertain if that was the place to leave the box.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_501" id="Page_501">[Pg 501]</a></span></p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 600px; height: 402px;"><img src="images/img149.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">BEAUTY AND THE BEAST.</p>
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_502" id="Page_502">[Pg 502]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_503" id="Page_503">[Pg 503]</a></span>The faithful donkey followed his master directly into the store, nor
-stopped till the wheels of the cart brought up against the door-jambs. The
-ladies, with whom the front store was crowded, screamed with terror, and
-fled towards the back room, where the pretty milliner girls were sewing.
-They caught the panic and sight of the donkey’s head and ears in the front
-shop, and screeched in chorus. A more lively and lovely stampede I never
-witnessed. It was “Beauty and the Beast,� and the beast stood pulling his
-best to get the cart through; but since a six-foot cart never could go
-through a four foot doorway, he backed out with the negro’s assistance,
-and Beauty was rescued from the perilous situation.</p>
-
-<p>“Golly!� exclaimed the Buckee, when himself, mule and cart were back into
-the street. “I fought de ladies were scared ob dis chile, first sight; but
-I never knowed de ladies to be scared ob a hansum darky like me; and when
-I looked round an’ see dat ar’ mules coming into der mill’ner’s store&mdash;O,
-yah, yah, yah! I shall die&mdash;O, yah, yah, yah!&mdash;de Lor’&mdash;to only fink ob
-it, a mule in a mill’ner’s shop&mdash;he wants muslin&mdash;O, yah, yah! I shall
-die, sure.� Then, after a few more outbursts, he stopped short&mdash;for the
-milliner was looking after the box&mdash;he rolled up his eyes very solemnly,
-and said to the donkey,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“Yer ought to be ’shamed ob yerself to go into dat yer store&mdash;dar, take
-dat!� levelling a blow at the donkey’s head with the whip. Then taking the
-box into the store, he returned, gave the donkey another solemn lecture on
-his impropriety, and mounted the dray and drove away.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">The consulting Poodles.</span></p>
-
-<p>A gentleman well known to the writer assured me that he once had occasion
-to repeatedly consult a physician in Philadelphia, a most excellent
-practitioner, who owned two pet poodle dogs. They were pure white, and
-occupied a portion<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_504" id="Page_504">[Pg 504]</a></span> of his office. When I first entered the doctor’s
-presence, I was quite astonished to see, sitting on a corner of his desk,
-at his left, a beautiful poodle. I thought, at first sight, it was a
-stuffed specimen; but after inquiring the nature of my visit, the doctor
-said, “You can retire, sir.�</p>
-
-<p>“What!� said I, in surprise at this summary dismissal, when I was startled
-to see the manikin jump from the desk and run away to a crib beside a
-book-case.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 450px; height: 435px;"><img src="images/img150.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">DR. HUNTER IN CONSULTATION.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>“I was speaking to Dr. Scipio,� the doctor quietly remarked. Then adding,
-“Dr. Hunter, you can come instead,� when another like poodle came and
-leaped upon the desk, and sat looking very wisely at his master.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_505" id="Page_505">[Pg 505]</a></span>While examining my case, he occasionally cast a glance at “Dr. Hunter,�
-sitting as quiet as a marble dog might, but seeming to understand the look
-which his master gave him, acknowledging it by a pricking up of the ears.</p>
-
-<p>I received my prescription, and what proved to be most excellent advice,
-and retired. The next time I visited the eccentric doctor, both Drs.
-Scipio and Hunter were in full consultation, sitting side by side on the
-desk.</p>
-
-<p>“Now, sirs,� said the doctor, after motioning me to a seat near him, “sirs
-Scipio and Hunter, keep very still, and give attention.�</p>
-
-<p>A yawning noise and expression was their simultaneous reply.</p>
-
-<p>“What is the object of the two canine specimens being always present when
-I have consulted you?� I ventured to inquire, on my last visit to the
-doctor.</p>
-
-<p>“Some physicians consult two-legged pups, in complicated cases. I prefer
-quadrupeds. Have we not been very successful&mdash;myself, Drs. Hunter and
-Scipio&mdash;in your case, sir?�</p>
-
-<p>This he said with a pleasant, half-serious countenance.</p>
-
-<p>“Indeed, you have, sir,� I replied, to which the dogs gave a gap! (a
-smile?)</p>
-
-<p>“You’ll find every successful man with some seeming useless habit or
-appendage, which, nevertheless, is essential to his success, in absorbing
-or distracting the superfluities of his nature. A sing-song, every-day
-man, whom you can see right through, and understand all his moves, seldom
-amounts to anything. I ape nobody, however, but I feel almost lost, in my
-examinations, without my dogs.�</p>
-
-<p>Well, there may be much to this, after all. A good singer will seldom go
-forward to master a difficult piece of music without something in his
-hand. Eccentricities in some persons take the place of a vile, injurious
-habit, as the eccentric man is usually free from debasing habits.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_506" id="Page_506">[Pg 506]</a></span>I am particularly reminded of Suwaroff, the great Russian general, who was
-so remarkable for his energy, valor, and headlong fighting propensities.
-This wonderful man was very small in stature, being only five feet and a
-half inch in height, miserably thin in flesh, with an aquiline nose, a
-wide mouth, wrinkled brow, and bald head&mdash;an eagle look and character.
-“His contempt of dress could only be equalled by his disregard of every
-form of politeness, and some idea may be formed of both from the fact that
-he was washed mornings by several buckets of water thrown over him, and
-that he drilled his men in his shirt sleeves, with his stockings hanging
-down about his heels, and proudly dispensing with the use of a pocket
-handkerchief.�</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img151.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">THE RUSSIAN GENERAL’S DRILL.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>His favorite signal of attack was a shrill “<i>cock-a-doodle-doo!</i>�
-“To-morrow�&mdash;this was his harangue to his men before a great
-battle&mdash;“to-morrow morning I mean to be up one hour before daybreak. I
-shall wash and dress myself, then say my prayers, give one good
-<i>cock-crow</i>, and <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_507" id="Page_507">[Pg 507]</a></span>capture Ismail!� Which he did to the letter. After
-Catharine’s death, Paul, her son and successor, could not brook the
-eccentric habits of “Old Forward and Strike,� whose personal appearance
-was ill suited to court, and when compelled to “change or retire,�
-Suwaroff chose the latter. Again in 1799 he was given a command, but would
-not change his principles, and was dismissed; and died in 1800, neglected
-by the imperial Paul, who was assassinated the same year.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Silent Eloquence.</span></p>
-
-<p>There is a physician doing an office practice in Boston, who, when you
-enter his office, by one gesture and movement of his head, with the
-accompanying expression of his countenance, says to you, as plainly as
-words, “Take a seat; how do you do? State your case.� He is a man of few
-words, professionally. Through with his business, he becomes one of the
-most sociable men with whom one need wish to meet.</p>
-
-<p>John Abernethy was remarkable for his eccentricity, and brevity in his
-dealings with patients. Sometimes he met his match. The following has been
-told about him often enough to be true. On one occasion a lady, who
-doubtless had heard of his <i>brusque</i> characteristic, entered his
-consulting-room, at Bedford Row, and silently presented a sore finger. As
-silently the doctor examined and dressed the wound. In the same manner the
-lady deposited the accustomed fee upon the table, and withdrew.</p>
-
-<p>Again she presented the finger for inspection.</p>
-
-<p>“Better?� grunted the great surgeon.</p>
-
-<p>“Better,� quietly answered the lady, deposited the fee, and left, without
-saying another word. Several visits were thus made, when, on presenting it
-for the last time, Abernethy said,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“Well?�</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_508" id="Page_508">[Pg 508]</a></span>“Well,� was the lady’s only answer, and deposited her last fee.</p>
-
-<p>“Well, madam, upon my soul, you are the most sensible lady with whom I
-ever met,� he exclaimed, and very politely bowed her out.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Consistent to the End.</span></p>
-
-<p>The most eccentric physician who ever lived, and the only one I have read
-of who carried his odd notions beyond this life, was Messenger Monsey, of
-whom I have before written in this book. He died at the age of
-ninety-five. He wrote his own will,&mdash;having eighty thousand dollars to
-dispose of,&mdash;and his epitaph. The will was remarkable, and is still
-preserved. “To a beautiful young lady, named &mdash;&mdash;,� he gave an old
-battered snuff-box, not containing a shilling, lavishing upon her, at the
-same time, the most extravagant encomiums on her wit, taste, and elegance;
-and to another, whom he says he intends to enrich with a handsome legacy,
-he leaves the gratifying assurance that he changed his mind on finding her
-“a pert, conceited minx.� After railing at bishops, deans, and clergymen,
-he left an annuity to two of the latter, who did not preach.</p>
-
-<p>“My body shall not be insulted with any funeral ceremonies, but after
-being dissected in the theatre of Guy’s Hospital, by the surgeons, for the
-benefit of themselves and students, the remainder of my carcass may be put
-into a hole, or crammed into a box with holes, and thrown into the
-Thames.�</p>
-
-<p>The main part of his property went to his only daughter.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_509" id="Page_509">[Pg 509]</a></span></p>
-<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img152.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">WHAT THE ELEPHANT IS LIKE.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 450px; height: 314px;"><img src="images/img153.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">A DOCTOR’S SOLACE.</p>
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_510" id="Page_510">[Pg 510]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_511" id="Page_511">[Pg 511]</a></span>This is a true copy of his epitaph:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p class="poem">“Here lie my old bones; my vexation now ends;<br />
-I have lived much too long for myself and my friends.<br />
-As to churches and churchyards, which men may call holy,<br />
-’Tis a rank piece of priestcraft, and founded on folly.<br />
-What the next world may be never troubled my pate;<br />
-And, be what it may, I beseech you, O Fate,<br />
-When the bodies of millions rise up in a riot,<br />
-To let the old carcase of Monsey lie quiet.�</p>
-
-<p>The above reminds me of another epitaph in Greenwood:</p>
-
-<p class="poem">“Underneath this turf do lie,<br />
-Back to back, my wife and I.<br />
-Generous stranger, spare the tear,<br />
-For could she speak, I cannot hear.<br />
-Happier far than when in life,<br />
-Free from noise and free from strife,<br />
-When the last trump the air shall fill,<br />
-If she gets up, I’ll just lie still!�</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center">“<span class="smcap">When Doctors disagree.</span>�</p>
-
-<p>The eccentricities of some doctors lie in their abuse of their brothers;
-especially those of a different school, of which they necessarily know
-little or nothing.</p>
-
-<p>There is a Hindoo story illustrative of the folly of this <i>ex parte</i>
-decision.</p>
-
-<p>Four blind men went to examine an elephant, to ascertain what it was like.
-One felt of its foot, the second its trunk, the third its ear, and the
-last felt of its tail. Then they held a consultation, and began to talk it
-up.</p>
-
-<p>“The elephant is very much like a mortar,� said the one who had felt of
-the foot.</p>
-
-<p>“It is like a pestle,� said the one who had felt of its trunk.</p>
-
-<p>“No; you are both wrong. It’s like a fan,� said he who had felt of the
-ears.</p>
-
-<p>“You are all mistaken; it is like a broom,� vehemently exclaimed the man
-who had felt of the tail. The dispute grew warm. Each was sure he was
-right, because he had personally examined for himself. Then they waxed
-angry, and a lasting quarrel grew out of it; so, in the end, they were all
-as ignorant of the truth as when they began the investigation.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_512" id="Page_512">[Pg 512]</a></span>The diversity of medical opinion on diet is equally as great as on
-prescription, and often partakes largely of the notion or eccentricity of
-the individual physician, rather than the requirements of the patient.</p>
-
-<p>One is an advocate of animal diet; another is a strict Grahamite, or
-vegetarian, and a third is an animo-vegetarian, which, according to the
-two kinds of teeth given to man,&mdash;the tearing, or canine, and the grinding
-teeth,&mdash;seems to be the most rational decision. Then there is the
-slop-doctor. I know of one in Connecticut. He weighs about two hundred and
-fifty pounds. He breakfasts on the richest steak, dines on roast beef, and
-sups on a fowl. Every patient he has is a victim to “typhoid fever: the
-result is inflammation of the glands of the stomach, and induced by too
-hearty food;� hence the patient is starved a month on slop or gruel.</p>
-
-<p>This doctor was formerly a Methodist preacher, and&mdash;</p>
-
-<p class="poem">“Exhausting all <i>persuasive</i> means to light<br />
-Our fallen race to Virtue’s glorious height,<br />
-To Medicine gives his comprehensive mind,<br />
-And fills his pockets while he cures mankind.<br />
-He scorns M. D.’s, at all hard study sneers,<br />
-And soon the science of its mystery clears.<br />
-<i>His</i> knowledge springs intuitive and plain,<br />
-As Pallas issued from the Thunderer’s brain.<br />
-He takes a patent for some potent pill<br />
-Whose cure is certain&mdash;for it cures to kill.<br />
-Such mighty powers in its materials lurk,<br />
-It grows, like Gibbon’s Rome, a standard <i>work</i>!<br />
-Pill-militant, he storms the forts of pain,<br />
-Where grim Disease has long entrenchéd lain,<br />
-Routs fevers, agues, colics, colds, and gouts,<br />
-Nor ends the war till life itself he routs.<br />
-If of his skill you wish some pregnant hints,<br />
-Peruse the gravestones, not the public prints!<br />
-To aid his work, and fame immortal win,<br />
-Brings steam from physics into medicine;<br />
-From speeding packets o’er th’ Atlantic waste,<br />
-O’er Styx’s stream old Charon’s boat to haste,<br />
-Proving that steam for double use is fit&mdash;<br />
-To whirl men <i>through</i> the world, and <i>out</i> of it!�</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_513" id="Page_513">[Pg 513]</a></span>The difference in the item of sleep is amusing. I know a poor, worn-out
-doctor who finds all health in early rising. Let us refer him to the
-following, by John G. Saxe:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 5em;">EARLY RISING.</span><br />
-“God bless the man who first invented sleep!�<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">So Sancho Panza said, and so say I:</span><br />
-And bless him also that he didn’t keep<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">His great discovery to himself, nor try</span><br />
-To make it&mdash;as the lucky fellow might&mdash;<br />
-A close monopoly by patent right.<br />
-<br />
-Yes, bless the man who first invented sleep<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">(I really can’t avoid the iteration);</span><br />
-But blast the man, with curses loud and deep,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Whate’er the rascal’s name, or age, or station,</span><br />
-Who first invented, and went round advising,<br />
-That artificial cut-off&mdash;early rising.<br />
-<br />
-“Rise with the lark, and with the lark to bed,�<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Observes some solemn, sentimental owl:</span><br />
-Maxims like these are very cheaply said;<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">But ere you make yourself a fool or fowl,</span><br />
-Pray, just inquire about his rise and fall,<br />
-And whether larks have any beds at all.<br />
-<br />
-The time for honest folks to be abed<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Is in the morning, if I reason right;</span><br />
-And he who cannot keep his precious head<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Upon his pillow till it’s fairly light,</span><br />
-And so enjoy his forty morning winks,<br />
-Is up to knavery; or else&mdash;he drinks.<br />
-<br />
-Thomson, who sung about the “Seasons,� said<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">It was a glorious thing to <i>rise</i> in season;</span><br />
-But then he said it&mdash;lying&mdash;in his bed,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">At ten o’clock A. M.,&mdash;the very reason</span><br />
-He wrote so charmingly. The simple fact is,<br />
-His preaching wasn’t sanctioned by his practice.<br />
-<br />
-’Tis doubtless well to be sometimes awake,&mdash;<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Awake to duty and awake to truth,&mdash;</span><br />
-But when, alas! a nice review we take<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Of our best deeds and days, we find, in sooth,</span><br />
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_514" id="Page_514">[Pg 514]</a></span>The hours that leave the slightest cause to weep<br />
-Are those we passed in childhood, or asleep!<br />
-<br />
-’Tis beautiful to leave the world a while<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">For the soft visions of the gentle night;</span><br />
-And free at last from mortal care or guile,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">To live as only in the angels’ sight,</span><br />
-In sleep’s sweet realm so cosily shut in,<br />
-Where, at the worst, we only <i>dream</i> of sin.<br />
-<br />
-So let us sleep, and give the Maker praise.<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">I like the lad who, when his father thought</span><br />
-To clip his morning nap by hackneyed phrase<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Of vagrant worm by early songster caught,</span><br />
-Cried, “Served him right!&mdash;it’s not at all surprising;<br />
-The worm was punished, sir, for early rising.�</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Mother Goose.</span></p>
-
-<p>“Gabriel Betteredge,� in “Moonstone,� was doubtless a true character from
-life, picked up by the author, Wilkie Collins, somewhere in his travels. I
-think the best authors seldom have made up so good a character “out of
-whole cloth,� but have gone to the highways and byways for them.
-Betteredge’s forte lay in Robinson Crusoe. That book was his guidance and
-solace in all his trials and perplexities. But what would you think of a
-doctor, a respectable graduate of a medical college, who sought, if not
-advice, recreation and solace in Mother Goose?</p>
-
-<p>This M. D. resided a few years ago in A., New York State. He owned a large
-library, enjoyed the confidence of a large list of friends and patrons,
-and was a man of education and refinement. His eccentricity lay in his
-love of Mother Goose’s Melodies. He kept a copy of these nursery rhymes at
-his very elbow, and often turned from a perplexing case, and sought solace
-in the jingling rhymes of old Mother Goose!</p>
-
-<p>Well, that was certainly better than relieving his brain by the use of
-narcotic stimulants, as opium, tobacco, or ardent<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_515" id="Page_515">[Pg 515]</a></span> spirits, which use can
-only be followed at the expense of nerve, tissue, and membrane.</p>
-
-<p>I have here before me an account of another physician, whose solace and
-relief from business cares were in his cats, of which he had several, all
-of which answered to their names. His attachment to these creatures was
-only equalled by theirs for him. Sometimes one or two perched on his
-shoulders and sang to him while he rested in his easy-chair. He seemed to
-drink in Lethean comforts, as thus he would remain for a half hour or more
-at a time, or till business broke the spell. When a patient came, or a
-servant announced a call, he would arise and say, “Pets, vamose!� and the
-cats would all scamper away to their nests, and the doctor, seemingly
-refreshed in body and mind, would return to the reality of life and its
-labors.</p>
-
-<p>One’s solace is in his children, another’s in his wife, a third in his
-flower-garden; and others’ in opium, rum, or tobacco.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">The Tables turned.</span></p>
-
-<p>Sometimes the doctor’s oddity seemed to be in his silence, again in asking
-“outlandish� questions. Often they get a good return; for instance,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>Dr. G., of Sycamore, Ill., riding in the country one day, saw a sign upon
-a gate-post, reading thus: “This farm for sail.� Stopping his horse, he
-hailed a little old woman, who stood on tiptoe, hanging out clothes.</p>
-
-<p>“I say, madam, when is this farm going to <i>sail</i>?�</p>
-
-<p>“Just as soon, sir,� replied the old lady, placing her thumb to her nose,
-“as anybody comes along who can raise the wind.�</p>
-
-<p>The doctor drove thoughtfully on.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">The Difference.</span></p>
-
-<p>“A priest who was jogging along on an ass was overtaken by a loquacious
-doctor, and, after some preliminary<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_516" id="Page_516">[Pg 516]</a></span> conversation as to the destination,
-etc., the doctor proposed that they each should ask a question, and the
-one who proposed the best should receive hospitality at the other’s
-expense at the next town. The priest agreed, for he was a fat, jolly
-little fellow, who could enjoy a laugh and “some bottles,� even at a
-doctor’s expense. So the doctor proposed the following:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“What is the difference between a priest and a jackass?�</p>
-
-<p>“That’s old,� replied the priest. “One wears his cross on his breast, the
-other on his back.&mdash;Now for my turn. What is the difference between the
-doctor and the ass?�</p>
-
-<p>“I cannot tell,� replied the doctor; “what is the difference?�</p>
-
-<p>“I see none,� quietly replied the priest.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center">“<span class="smcap">Not by Bread alone.</span>�</p>
-
-<p>A physician in P., who had the reputation of being a high liver, was quite
-publicly reprimanded for his gluttony by an advent preacher of some note,
-not a thousand miles from Boston. The doctor bore his abuse without
-flinching, though he believed the man a hypocrite. A long time afterwards,
-he met the Adventist in his town, and, after some conversation, invited
-him to dine at his own house. The hungry Grahamite accepted, and at an
-early moment found himself at the doctor’s board.</p>
-
-<p>“Will you ask a blessing?� said the doctor; which request being complied
-with, he uncovered one of the only two dishes on the table, which
-contained nothing but bread. The preacher saw the point, and said, with a
-disappointed grin, “You shall not live by bread alone.�</p>
-
-<p>“Yes; I know that much Scripture,� replied the doctor; “so I have provided
-some butter,� uncovering the other dish!</p>
-
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
-<hr style="width: 50%;" />
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_517" id="Page_517">[Pg 517]</a></span></p>
-<h2><a name="XX" id="XX"></a>XX.</h2>
-<p class="title">PRESCRIPTIONS REMARKABLE AND RIDICULOUS.</p>
-
-<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table">
-<tr><td>“He finds out what stuff they’re made of.�&mdash;<span class="smcap">Shakspeare.</span><br />
-<br />
-“By setting brother against brother,<br />
-To claw and curry one another.�&mdash;<span class="smcap">Butler.</span></td></tr></table>
-
-<div class="note"><p class="hang"><small>FIG PASTE AND FIG LEAVES.&mdash;SOME OF THOSE OLD FELLOWS.&mdash;THEY SLIGHTLY
-DISAGREE.&mdash;HOW TO KEEP CLEAN.&mdash;BAXTER VS. THE DOCTOR.&mdash;A CURE FOR
-“RHEUMATIZ.�&mdash;OLD ENGLISH DOSES.&mdash;CURE FOR BLUES.&mdash;FOR
-HYSTERIA.&mdash;HEROIC DOSES.&mdash;DROWNING A FEVER.&mdash;AN EXACT
-SCIENCE.&mdash;SULPHUR AND MOLASSES.&mdash;A USE FOR POOR IRISH.&mdash;MINERAL
-SPRINGS.&mdash;COLD DRINKS VS. WARM.&mdash;THE OLD LADY AND THE AIR PUMP.&mdash;SAVED
-BY HER BUSTLE.&mdash;COUNTRY PRESCRIPTIONS AND A FUNNY MISTAKE.&mdash;ARE YOU DRUNK OR SOBER?</small></p></div>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p>Mythology informs us that Heraclitus, the melancholy philosopher of
-Ephesus, fixed his residence in a manure heap, by the advice of his
-physicians, in hopes of thereby being cured of the dropsy. The remedy
-proved worse than the disease, and the philosopher died. From that time
-till the present, medical prescriptions have rather partaken of the
-extravagant and the ridiculous, than of the rational and beneficial.</p>
-
-<p>In biblical times the real remedies consisted of a few simples, and were
-almost totally confined to external uses. Fig paste was a favorite remedy
-for swellings, boils, and ulcers, and an ointment made of olives and some
-spices was used for wounds, etc. Mrs. Eve, it is said, took to fig leaves.
-The myrrh and hyssop were used chiefly among the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_518" id="Page_518">[Pg 518]</a></span> Jews for purification.
-The former was obtained from Egypt and Arabia East. The original name was,
-in Arabic, <i>marra</i>, meaning bitter.</p>
-
-<p>The history of medicine is referable to about 1184 before Christ, from
-which time to Hippocrates, 460 B. C., it could not lay claim to the name
-of science. It was confined almost entirely to the priestcraft, and
-partook largely of the fabulous notions of that superstitious age, and was
-connected with their gods and heroes. Then, necessarily with such a
-belief, the remedies lay in ceremonies and incantations, as before
-mentioned in chapter first, and the priests had it all their own way.</p>
-
-<p>Chiron, according to Grecian bibliographers, was about the first who
-practised medicine to any extent, and who, with Apollo, claimed to have
-received his knowledge direct from Jupiter. Æsculapius was a son of
-Apollo. Æsculapius had two sons, who became celebrated physicians, and one
-daughter, Hygeia, the goddess of health. For a long time the practice of
-medicine was confined to the descendants of Æsculapius, who was worshipped
-in the temples of Epidaurus, the ruins of one of which is said to still be
-seen.</p>
-
-<p>Hippocrates claimed to be a descendant of Æsculapius (460 B. C.). The
-remedies used by his predecessors were a few vegetable medicines,
-accelerated by a good many mystical rites. It would seem that medicinal
-springs were patronized at this early date, as temples of health were
-established near such wells, in Greece. Theophrastus, of Lesbos, was a
-fuller’s son, and wrote a book on plants. He was a pupil to Plato and
-Aristotle.</p>
-
-<p>Podalirius was going to cure every disease by bleeding, Herodicus by
-gymnastics, and Archagathus by burning and gouging out the diseased parts.
-Then arose Chrysippus, who reversed the blood-letting theory, and would
-allay the venous excitement by simple medications (not having discovered
-the difference between veins and arteries, and when<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_519" id="Page_519">[Pg 519]</a></span> they did, it was
-supposed the latter contained only air; hence the name); Asclepiades, who
-“kicked Hippocrates’ nature out of doors,� and the thermo-therapeutists,
-who turned out the latter.</p>
-
-<p>After the followers of Archagathus, or Archegenus, were driven out of
-Rome, the hot baths were established, which were the earliest mentioned.
-There was a very celebrated cold water bath established somewhat earlier,
-for which Mr. Noah, who owned the right, got up a very large tub, for the
-exclusive use of himself, family, and household pets. The bath&mdash;like
-nearly all cold water baths <i>extensively used since</i>&mdash;was a complete
-success, killing off all who ventured into the water.</p>
-
-<p>During the reign of the Roman emperor Caracalla (211-217) thermal baths
-were extensively established at Rome, and Gibbon informs us that they were
-open for the reception of both senators and people; that they would
-accommodate three thousand persons at once. The enclosure exceeded a mile
-in circumference. At one end there was a magnificent temple, dedicated to
-the god Apollo, and at the reverse another, sacred to Æsculapius, the
-tutelary divinities of the Thermæ. The Grecians also established cold,
-warm, and hot baths; and in Turkey the bathing was a religious rite until
-a very recent period. More recently, it is a source of diversion.
-“Cleanliness is akin to godliness,� and recreation is a religious duty;
-therefore the warm bath, whether followed as a superstitious rite or as a
-source of amusement, is nevertheless commendable as a sanitary measure.</p>
-
-<p>Dr. Dio Lewis, of Boston, has a grand warm (Turkish) bathing
-establishment. There are several hot, champooing, and cooling rooms for
-ladies or gentlemen, and a grand plunge bath, containing sixteen thousand
-gallons of water, warmed by a steam apparatus. If the Bostonians are dirty
-hereafter, they must not blame the doctor. No man knows how dirty he is
-till he tries one of these baths.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_520" id="Page_520">[Pg 520]</a></span>“Crosby’s History of the English Baptists preserves the opinion of Sir
-John Floyer, physician, that immersion was of great sanitary value, and
-that its discontinuance, about the year 1600, had been attended with ill
-effects on the physical condition of the population. ‘Immersion would
-prevent many hereditary diseases if it were still practised,’ he said. An
-old man, eighty years of age, whose father lived at the time while
-immersion was the practice, said that parents would ask the priest to dip
-well into the water that part of the child which was diseased, to prevent
-its descending to posterity.</p>
-
-<p>“Baxter vehemently and exaggeratedly denounced it as a breach of the sixth
-commandment. It produced catarrh, etc., and, in a word, was good for
-nothing but to despatch men out of the world.�</p>
-
-<p>“If murder be sin, then dipping ordinarily in cold water over head is a
-sin.�</p>
-
-<p>So much for Dr. Floyer vs. Baxter. Surely the latter ought to have been
-“dipped.�</p>
-
-<p>A western paper of respectability is responsible for the statement, that
-an old lady followed up a bishop as he travelled through his diocese, in
-that vicinity, and was confirmed several times before detected.</p>
-
-<p>“Why did you do such a remarkable deed?� asked the bishop. “Did you feel
-that your sins were so great as to require a frequent repetition of the
-ordinance?�</p>
-
-<p>“O, no,� replied the old lady, complacently; “but I heerd say it was good
-for the rheumatiz.�</p>
-
-<p>The bishop didn’t confirm her any more. She was really going to baptism as
-the voters go to the polls and vote in New York&mdash;“early and often.�</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Old English Prescriptions.</span></p>
-
-<p>The prescriptions and doses of the old English doctors were “stunning.�</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_521" id="Page_521">[Pg 521]</a></span>Billy Atkins, a gout doctor of Charles II.’s time, who resided in the Old
-Bailey, did an immense business in his specialty. His remarkable wig and
-dress will find a place in our chapter on “Dress.� He made a nostrum on
-the authority of Swift, compounded of thirty different promiscuous
-ingredients.</p>
-
-<p>The apothecary to Queen Elizabeth brought in his quarter-bill, £83, 7s.
-8d. Amongst the items were the following: “A confection made like a manus
-Christi, with bezoar stone, and unicorn’s horn, 11s. Sweet scent for
-christening of Sir Richard Knightly’s son, 2s. 6d. A conserve of
-barberries, damascene plums, and others, for Mr. Ralegh, 6s. Rose water
-for the King of Navarre’s ambassador, 12s. A royal sweetmeat, with
-rhubarb, 16d.�</p>
-
-<p>A sweet preparation, and a favorite of Dr. Theodore Mayerne, was “balsam
-of bats.� A cure for hypochondria was composed of “adders, bats,
-angle-worms, sucking whelps, ox-bones, marrow, and hog’s grease.� Nice!</p>
-
-<p>After perusing&mdash;without swallowing&mdash;his medical prescriptions, the reader
-would scarcely desire to follow the directions in his “Excellent and
-well-approved Receipts in Cooking.� I should rather, to run my risk,
-breakfast on boarding-house or hotel hash, than partake of food prepared
-from Dr. Mayerne’s “Cook Book.�</p>
-
-<p>According to Dr. Sherley, Mayerne gave violent drugs, calomel in scruple
-doses, mixed sugar of lead with conserves, and fed gouty kings on
-pulverized human bones.</p>
-
-<p>“A small, young mouse roasted,� is recommended by Dr. Bullyn, as a cure
-for restlessness and nervousness in children. For cold, cough, and
-tightness of the lungs, he says, “Snayles (snails) broken from the shells
-and sodden in whyte wyne, with olyv oyle and sugar, are very holsome.�
-Snails were long a favorite remedy, and given in consumption for no other
-reason than that “it was a <i>slow</i> disease.� A young puppy’s skin (warm and
-fresh) was applied to the chest of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_522" id="Page_522">[Pg 522]</a></span> a child with croup, because he
-<i>barked</i>! Fish-worms, sow-bugs, crab’s eyes, fish-oil, sheep-droppings,
-and such delicious stuff were, and still are, favorite remedies with some
-physicians and country people. The following was one of Dr. Boleyn’s royal
-remedies:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“<i>Electuarium de Gemmis.</i> Take two drachms of white perles; two little
-peeces of saphyre; jacinth, corneline, emerauldes, garnettes, of each an
-ounce; setwal, the sweate roote doronike, the rind of pomecitron, mace,
-basel seede, of each two drachms; of redde corall, amber, shaving of
-ivory, of each two drachms; rootes both of white and red behen, ginger,
-long peper, spicknard, folium indicum, saffron, cardamon, of each one
-drachm; of troch. diarodon, lignum aloes, of each half a small handful;
-cinnamon, galinga, zurubeth, which is a kind of setwal, of each one drachm
-and a half; thin pieces of gold and sylver, of each half a scruple; of
-musk, half a drachm. Make your electuary with honey emblici, which is the
-fourth kind of mirobalans with roses, strained in equall partes, as much
-as will suffice. This healeth cold, diseases of ye braine, harte, stomack.
-It is a medicine proved against the tremblynge of the harte, faynting, and
-sounin, the weakness of the stomacke, pensivenes, solitarines. Kings and
-noblemen have used this for their comfort. It causeth them to be
-bold-spirited, the body to smell wel, and ingendreth to the face good
-coloure.�</p>
-
-<p>“Truly a medicine for kings and noblemen,� says Jeaffreson, who gives the
-following:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“During the railroad panic of England (1846), an unfortunate physician
-prescribed the following for a nervous lady:&mdash;</p>
-
-<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="table">
-<tr><td>&#8478;.</td><td><span class="spacer2">&nbsp;</span></td>
-    <td colspan="3">Great Western, 350 shares.</td></tr>
-<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td>&nbsp;</td>
-    <td>Eastern Counties,</td>
-    <td rowspan="2"><span class="huge">}</span></td></tr>
-<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td>&nbsp;</td>
-    <td>North Middlesex,</td>
-    <td>a. a. 1050.</td></tr>
-<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td>M.</td><td>&nbsp;</td><td colspan="3">Haust. 1. Om. noc. cap.</td></tr></table>
-
-<p>“This direction for a delicate lady to swallow nightly (noc.) 2450
-railway shares was cited as proof of the doctor’s insanity, and the
-management of his private affairs was placed in other hands.�</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_523" id="Page_523">[Pg 523]</a></span></p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 600px; height: 394px;"><img src="images/img154.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">HOW A LADY PROCURED A VALUABLE PRESCRIPTION.</p>
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_524" id="Page_524">[Pg 524]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_525" id="Page_525">[Pg 525]</a></span>“A humersome doctor,� as Mrs. Partington would say, gives the following</p>
-
-<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 2em;">CURE FOR THE BLUES.</span><br />
-Tinc. Peruvii barki bitters, 1 oz.<br />
-Sugari albi, vel sweetningus, considerabilibus.<br />
-Spiritus frumenti, vel old repeus, ad lib.<br />
-Waterus pumpus, non multum.<br />
-Nutmegus, sprinklibus.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">A Sure Cure.</span></p>
-
-<p>A physician of our acquaintance was called to a lady patient after she had
-enjoyed a season of unusual domestic quarrels, who was not over long in
-“turning herself wrong-side out�&mdash;as some females will insist upon doing,
-for the edification of the medical man&mdash;telling, not only all about her
-pains and aches, but her “trials with that man,� her husband&mdash;her brutal
-usage, her scanty wardrobe, her mortification on seeing Mrs. Outsprout
-appear in a new blue silk, and a “love of a bonnet,� and (after
-entertaining the doctor with wine and good things) finally wind up in
-hysterical sobs&mdash;for which he prescribed, as follows:&mdash;</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot">
-<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="table">
-<tr><td>&#8478;.</td><td><span class="spacer2">&nbsp;</span></td><td>One new silk dress&mdash;first quality.</td></tr>
-<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td>&nbsp;</td><td>One hat and feather.</td></tr>
-<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td>&nbsp;</td><td>One diamond&mdash;solitaire&mdash;aq. prim.</td></tr></table>
-
-<p>Apply to patient. And 1 coach and span, to Central Park, P. M.</p></div>
-
-<p>The husband enjoyed the joke; the wife enjoyed the clothes, the diamond
-pin, and the ride; and the doctor heard no more of their quarrels.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_526" id="Page_526">[Pg 526]</a></span></p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Heroic Doses.</span></p>
-
-<p>Just prior to the year 1800, two brothers, named Taylor, emerged from
-obscurity in Yorkshire, and set up for doctors. They were farriers, and
-from shoeing they advanced to doctoring and bleeding horses, thence to
-drugging and butchering those of their fellow-creatures who naturally
-preferred brute doctors to respectable physicians. Their system of
-practice was a wholesale one.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img155.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">DOSE&mdash;ONE QUART EVERY HOUR.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>“Soft chirurgions make foul sores,� said Boleyn, the grandfather of the
-beautiful and unfortunate Anne Boleyn. The Taylors struck no soft blows,
-“but opened the warfare against disease by bombardment of shot and shell
-in all directions. They bled their patients by the gallon, and drugged
-them, as they did the cattle, by the stone. Their druggists, Ewbank &amp;
-Wallis, of York, supplied them with a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_527" id="Page_527">[Pg 527]</a></span> ton of Glauber’s salts at a time.
-Scales and weights in their dispensary were regarded as bugbears of
-ignoble minds. Everything was mixed by the scoop or handful. If they
-ordered broth for a delicate patient, they directed the nurse to boil a
-large leg of mutton in a copper of water, down to a strong decoction, and
-administer a quart at stated intervals,� <i>nolens volens?</i></p>
-
-<p>The little Abbe de Voisenon, the celebrated wit and dramatic writer
-(1708-1775), was once sick at the chateau near Melum, and his physician
-ordered him to drink a quart of ptisan (a decoction of barley and other
-ingredients) every hour.</p>
-
-<p>“What was the effect of the ptisan?� asked the doctor, on his next visit.</p>
-
-<p>“None,� replied the Abbe.</p>
-
-<p>“Have you swallowed it all?�</p>
-
-<p>“No; I could not take but half of it at once.�</p>
-
-<p>“No more than half! My order was the whole,� exclaimed the doctor.</p>
-
-<p>“Ah! now, friend,� said the Abbe, “how could you expect me to swallow a
-quart at a time, when I hold only a pint?�</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Drowning a Fever.</span></p>
-
-<p>As the next anecdote has had to do service for more than one physician, it
-is immaterial which doctor it was. He was an irascible old fellow, at
-least, and not at all careful in leaving orders.</p>
-
-<p>“Your husband is very sick, woman,� said the doctor to the wife of an
-Irish laborer. “His fever is high, and skin as dry as a fish, or a parish
-contribution box. You must give him plenty of cold water, all he will
-drink, and to-night I’ll see him again. There, don’t come snivelling
-around me. My heart is steeled against that sort of thing. But, as you
-want something to cry for, just hear me. Your husband<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_528" id="Page_528">[Pg 528]</a></span> isn’t going to die!
-There, now, I know you are disappointed, but you brought it on to
-yourself.� Going away&mdash;“Mind, lots of water&mdash;�</p>
-
-<p>“Wather, sir! Hoo much wather, docther dear? He shall have it, but, yer
-honor didn’t tell me hoo much wather I must give him.�</p>
-
-<p>“Zounds, woman, haven’t I told you to give him all he will take? Hoo much?
-Give him a couple of buckets full, if he will swallow them. Do you hear
-now? Two buckets full.�</p>
-
-<p>“The Lord bless yer honor,� cried the woman; and the doctor made his
-escape.</p>
-
-<p>At evening the doctor stopped, on his return, to ask after the patient.
-“How is he, woman?� asked the doctor.</p>
-
-<p>“O, he’s been tuck away, save yer honor,� cried the widow. “The wather did
-him no good, only we couldn’t get down the right quantity. We did our
-best, doctor dear, and got down him better nor a pailful and a half, when
-he slipped away from us. Ah, if we could oonly ha’ got him to swaller the
-other half pailful, he might not have died, yer honor.�</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">An exact Science.</span></p>
-
-<p>It is sometimes painfully amusing to observe, not only the difference of
-opinion expressed by medical men from one generation to another, but by
-those of the same period, and same school.</p>
-
-<p>In the “London Lancet� of July, 1864, there appeared a curious table. A
-medical practitioner, who had long suffered from hay fever, had from time
-to time consulted various other medical men by letter, and he gives us in
-a tabular survey the opinions they gave him of the causes of this disease,
-and the remedies, as follows:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“Herewith,� writes Dr. Jones, “I forward a synopsis of the opinions of a
-few of the most eminent men, in various countries, that I have consulted.
-I have substituted a letter<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_529" id="Page_529">[Pg 529]</a></span> for the name, as I do not think it prudent to
-place before the general reader the names of those who have so disagreed.�</p>
-
-<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table">
-<tr><td>Consulted.</td>
-    <td align="center">Opinion of Cause.</td><td><span class="spacer2">&nbsp;</span></td>
-    <td align="center">Recommended.</td></tr>
-<tr><td>Dr. A.</td>
-    <td>A predisposition to phthisis.</td><td>&nbsp;</td>
-    <td>Quinine and sea voyage.</td></tr>
-<tr><td>Dr. B.</td>
-    <td>Disease of pneumogastric nerve.</td><td>&nbsp;</td>
-    <td>Arsen., bell., and cinchona.</td></tr>
-<tr><td>Dr. C.</td>
-    <td>Disease of the caruncula.</td><td>&nbsp;</td>
-    <td>Apply bell. and zinc.</td></tr>
-<tr><td>Dr. D.</td>
-    <td>Inflammation of Schneiderian membrane.</td><td>&nbsp;</td>
-    <td>To paint with nitrate of silver.</td></tr>
-<tr><td>Dr. E.</td>
-    <td>Strumous diathesis.</td><td>&nbsp;</td>
-    <td>Quinine, cod liver oil, and wine.</td></tr>
-<tr><td>Dr. F.</td>
-    <td>Dyspepsia.</td><td>&nbsp;</td>
-    <td>Kreosote, henbane, quinine.</td></tr>
-<tr><td>Dr. G.</td>
-    <td>Vapor of chlorophyll.</td><td>&nbsp;</td>
-    <td>Remain in a room from 11 A. M. to 6 P. M.</td></tr>
-<tr><td valign="top">Dr. H.</td>
-    <td valign="top">Light debility, hay pollen.</td><td>&nbsp;</td>
-    <td>Do., port wine, snuff, salt, and opium, and<br /><span style="margin-left: 1em;">wear blue glasses.</span></td></tr>
-<tr><td valign="top">Dr. L.</td>
-    <td>From large doses of iodine.<br /><span style="margin-left: 1em;">(Never took any iodine.)</span></td><td>&nbsp;</td>
-    <td valign="bottom">Try quinine and opium.</td></tr>
-<tr><td>Dr. M.</td>
-    <td>Disease of iris.</td><td>&nbsp;</td>
-    <td>Avoid the sun’s rays from 11 A. M. to 6 P. M.</td></tr>
-<tr><td>Dr. N.</td>
-    <td>Want of red corpuscles.</td><td>&nbsp;</td>
-    <td>Try iron, port wine, and soups.</td></tr>
-<tr><td>Dr. O.</td>
-    <td>Disease of optic nerve.</td><td>&nbsp;</td>
-    <td>Phosph. ac. and quinine.</td></tr>
-<tr><td>Dr. P.</td>
-    <td>Asthma from hay pollen.</td><td>&nbsp;</td>
-    <td>Chlorodyne and quinine.</td></tr>
-<tr><td>Dr. Q.</td>
-    <td>Phrenitis.</td><td>&nbsp;</td>
-    <td>Small doses of opium.</td></tr>
-<tr><td>Dr. R.</td>
-    <td>Nervous debility, from heat.</td><td>&nbsp;</td>
-    <td>Turkish baths.</td></tr></table>
-
-<p>This needs no comment.</p>
-
-<p>The different opinions on doses of medicine is more absurd. We have
-already mentioned cases wherein certain physicians administered calomel in
-scruple, and even drachm doses. Before us is a work wherein it is
-seriously asserted that a medicinal action was obtained from the two
-hundredth trituration,&mdash;a dose so small, in comparison with the scruple
-doses, as to be counted only by the <i>millionths</i>.</p>
-
-<p>How many of us have had to wake up mornings, and swallow a table-spoonful
-of sulphur and molasses, with mingled feelings of disgust at the sulphur,
-and exquisite delight from the molasses, as we retired, lapping our
-mouths, to get the last taste! Now, L. B. Wells, M. D., of New York,
-informs us that he has cured an eruption of the skin by the use of the
-four thousandth dilution of sulphur,&mdash;so <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_530" id="Page_530">[Pg 530]</a></span>comparatively small that I
-cannot express it by figures. Well, these extremes have their uses, and we
-may look for relief in the mediate ground. The smaller we can get the
-dose, and still be reliable, the better we shall suit the people,&mdash;though
-we shall seriously offend the apothecaries.</p>
-
-<p>Dr. Francis, in his book, “Surgeons of New York,� tells the following,
-which illustrates how a desperate remedy may apply to a desperate disease.
-The cases in reference were “peritonitis.� Dr. Smith (our “plough-boy�)
-had charge of the lying-in wards, under Professor Clark.</p>
-
-<p>“Dr. Smith, have you ever attended a common school?� asked Professor
-Clark.</p>
-
-<p>“Yes, sir.�</p>
-
-<p>“Did you ever hear a teacher say, ‘I will whip you within an inch of your
-life?’� pursued Dr. Clark.</p>
-
-<p>“Yes, sir; I have.�</p>
-
-<p>“Well, that is the way I wish you to give opium to these patients,&mdash;‘to
-within an inch of their lives.’�</p>
-
-<p>Dr. Smith determined to follow implicitly his instructions, and gave to
-one as high as twelve grains of opium an hour.</p>
-
-<p>“At this extreme point the remedy was maintained for several days.</p>
-
-<p>“The patient recovered, and remained in the hospital, attached to kitchen
-service, for several months.�</p>
-
-<p>Certainly, the poor Irish, even, have their uses in New York city.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Mineral Springs.</span></p>
-
-<p>The writer, having spent much time at the various mineral springs
-throughout the United States, and partaken of the water of some for weeks
-in succession, is competent to give an opinion as to their merits.
-Collectively, they are commendable, especially those located in country
-places, away from scenes of dissipation and profligacy.</p>
-
-<p>The only reliable way to expect benefit from spring waters<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_531" id="Page_531">[Pg 531]</a></span> is to select
-one by the advice of your physician, and go direct to the spring.</p>
-
-<p>Much of the bottled waters sold are “doctored,� either by the retailer,
-the wholesaler, or often at the springs from where they are exported. Who
-is to know whether Vichy, Kissengen, Saratoga, or even Vermont mineral
-water, as sold by the package, ever saw the respective springs from which
-they are named? The various mineral waters are easily made, by adding to
-carbonized water such peculiar minerals, or salts, as analysis has shown
-exists in the natural springs. I knew a man who affirmed that he ruined a
-suit of clothes, while employed at a certain spring, by the acids with
-which he “doctored� the water, before it was shipped. Sulphuret of
-potassium covers the properties of many springs; iron others.</p>
-
-<p>It has been intimated that the waters of a celebrated spring which I
-visited is indebted for its peculiar flavor to an old tannery, which,
-within the memory of that mythical being, “the oldest inhabitant,�
-occupied the site where this favorite spring “gushes forth.� Having no
-desire to be tanned inside,&mdash;after my boyhood’s experience in that
-delightful external process,&mdash;I respectfully declined drinking from this
-spring.</p>
-
-<p>By the immense quantities of “spring water� gulped down hourly and daily
-by visitors, one is led to suppose the cure lies in a thorough washing
-out. There is an excellent spring near Nashville, Tenn., from which I
-drank for a week; also another at Sheldon, Vt. There are three different
-springs at this latter place, but I prefer the “Sheldon� to either of the
-other two. I discovered a good spring at Newport, Vt., and there are
-others in that vicinity.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Cold Drinks vs. Warm Drinks.</span></p>
-
-<p>“Drink freely of cold water,� says an author of no small repute, to
-persons of a weak stomach, viz., dyspeptics.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_532" id="Page_532">[Pg 532]</a></span>When I was an apprentice, my master (Sir Charles Blicke) used to say, “O,
-sir, you are faint: pray drink this water.� “And what do you think was the
-effect of putting cold water into a man’s stomach, under these
-circumstances?� asks the great Dr. Abernethy. “Why, of course, that it was
-often rejected in his face.� Never put cold water, or cold victuals, into
-a weak stomach.</p>
-
-<p>The above surgeon is responsible for the following advice.</p>
-
-<p>An Irishman called in great haste upon the doctor, saying,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“O, dochter&mdash;be jabers, me b’y Tim has swallowed a mouse.�</p>
-
-<p>“Then, Paddy, be jabers, let your boy Tim swallow a cat.�</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">The Old Lady and the Pump.</span></p>
-
-<p>One can readily conceive the utility of a warm bath&mdash;even a cold water
-bath, if the bather is robust&mdash;or a steam bath, a vapor, or a sun bath;
-but the advantage of the absurdity which the nineteenth century has
-introduced from antiquity, viz., the dry cupping, or pumping treatment, is
-not so self-evident.</p>
-
-<p>An old lady, suffering from “rheumatism, and a humor of the blood,� was
-persuaded to visit a “pump-doctor’s� rooms.</p>
-
-<p>“What’s that hollow thing for?� she nervously inquired.</p>
-
-<p>“That is a limb-receiver,� replied the polite operator. “If the disease is
-in the limb, we enclose it within this; the rubber excludes the air, and
-to this faucet we affix the pump, and remove the air from the limb.�</p>
-
-<p>“Yes, yes; but I thought air was necessary to health; besides, I don’t see
-how that is going to cure the limb. Does it add anything to, or take
-anything from the limb?� she inquired.</p>
-
-<p>“Well&mdash;no&mdash;yes; that is, it draws the disease out from that part.�</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_533" id="Page_533">[Pg 533]</a></span>“Yes, yes; but suppose the disease is all over the person, as mine is.�</p>
-
-<p>“Then we place them in this,� putting his hand upon an article which she
-had not before discovered.</p>
-
-<p>“That? Why, that looks like the case to a Dutchman’s pipe, only a sight
-times larger. And do tell if you shet folks up in that box,� cautiously
-approaching and examining it.</p>
-
-<p>The operator assured her such was the case.</p>
-
-<p>“Is the disease left in the box when you are done pumping? Does it really
-suck all the disease into the thing by the process?� she inquired.</p>
-
-<p>“Well, madam, you put your questions in a remarkable manner. But it
-displaces the air around the person, and the vital principle within forces
-out the disease. It is certain to benefit all diseases,� he replied.</p>
-
-<p>“Well, I don’t see how it can, if it can’t be seen. Does it act as physic,
-emetic, a bath, or do the sores follow right out of the blood into the
-box?�</p>
-
-<p>“Neither, madam.� The operator was very patient. “Just try the
-limb-receiver first; then you can tell better about the whole treatment.�</p>
-
-<p>After much persuasion, and by the assistance of the female operator, the
-old lady was seated, and the limb-receiver adjusted. Now the man in the
-next room began to pump. The old lady was very nervous, and felt for her
-snuff-box, and while so doing the man was still pumping. Having taken the
-snuff, her mind again referred to the limb in the box, and the pressure
-(suction) having naturally increased, her nervousness overcame her, and
-with a scream and a bound she left the chair and rushed for the door,
-dragging the receiver, which clung tight to the one limb, rather
-outweighing the boot and hose of the other, drawing the gutta-percha pipe
-after her, which only added to her fright, and with another scream for
-“help,� and “O, will nobody save me?&mdash;O, murder, murder!� she, like a
-bound lion, went<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_534" id="Page_534">[Pg 534]</a></span> the length of her chain, and tumbled over in a heap on
-the floor. The woman rushed from behind the screen, the man from the
-pump-room, and rescued the old lady, who fled to her carriage in waiting;
-and doubtless to her dying day she will continue to tell of how narrowly
-she escaped “being sucked entirely through that gutta-percha pipe&mdash;only
-for her having on a bustle.�</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Country Mistakes.</span></p>
-
-<p>A Canadian, of a nervous, consumptive diathesis, went down to Portland,
-Maine, to consult a physician, and fell in with old Dr. F., whom he found
-busily engaged in examining some papers. The old doctor heard his case,
-and hurriedly wrote him a prescription. The chirography of the doctor was
-none of the best, yet the Portland druggists, who were familiar with his
-scrawls, could easily decipher his prescriptions. Not so the country
-apothecary, to whom the patient took the recipe, to save expense, which
-was something as follows: “Spiritus frumenti et valerianum,� etc.; then
-followed the directions for taking.</p>
-
-<p>After much delay and consultation with the green-grocer boy, it was put up
-as a painter’s article, viz., “spirits turpentine and varnish.�</p>
-
-<p>The first glass-full satisfied the invalid.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Drunk, or Sober.</span></p>
-
-<p>A gentleman, knowing the parties in his boyhood, rehearsed to me the
-following anecdote:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>Old Dr. Gallup, of &mdash;&mdash;, N. H., was an excellent physician, whose failing
-lay in his propensity to imbibe more spirits then he could carry off.</p>
-
-<p>“Are you drunk, or sober?� was no unusual question, put by those requiring
-his services, before permitting the old doctor to prescribe.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_535" id="Page_535">[Pg 535]</a></span></p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 450px; height: 329px;"><img src="images/img156.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">“PUMPING� AN OLD LADY.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 450px; height: 352px;"><img src="images/img157.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">A DANGEROUS PRESCRIPTION.</p>
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_536" id="Page_536">[Pg 536]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_537" id="Page_537">[Pg 537]</a></span>“Sober as a judge. What&mdash;hic&mdash;do you want?� he would reply.</p>
-
-<p>Mr. B., who had been a long time confined to his house, under the care of
-an old fogy doctor, one of the “Gods of Medicine,� with whom all knowledge
-remains, and with whom all knowledge dies, after taking nearly all the
-drugs contained in his Materia Medica, decided to change, and sent for Dr.
-Gallup.</p>
-
-<p>“Are you drunk, or sober, doctor?� was the first salutation.</p>
-
-<p>“Sober as a judge. What’s wanted?� was the reply, omitting the “hic.�</p>
-
-<p>“Can you cure me? I’ve been blistered and parboiled, puked and physicked,
-bled in vein and pocket for the last three months. Now, can you cure me?�</p>
-
-<p>Gallup looked over the case, and the medicine left by the other doctor,
-threw the latter all out of the window, ordered a nourishing diet, told
-Mr. B. to take no more drugs, took his fee, and left. Mr. B. recovered
-without another visit.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img158.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
-<hr style="width: 50%;" />
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_538" id="Page_538">[Pg 538]</a></span></p>
-<h2><a name="XXI" id="XXI"></a>XXI.</h2>
-<p class="title">SCENES FROM HOSPITAL AND CAMP.</p>
-
-<div class="note"><p class="hang"><small>“HE FOUGHT MIT SIEGEL.�&mdash;A HOSPITAL SCENE AT NIGHT.&mdash;ADMINISTERING
-ANGELS.&mdash;“WATER! WATER!�&mdash;THE SOLDIER-BOY’S DYING MESSAGE.&mdash;THE
-WELL-WORN BIBLE.&mdash;WARM HEARTS IN FROZEN BODIES.&mdash;“PUDDING AND
-MILK.�&mdash;THE POETICAL AND AMUSING SIDE.&mdash;“TO AMELIA.�&mdash;MY LOVE AND
-I.&mdash;A SCRIPTURAL CONUNDRUM.&mdash;MARRYING A REGIMENT.</small></p></div>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="poem">I met him again; he was trudging along,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">His knapsack with chickens was swelling;</span><br />
-He’d “blenkered� these dainties, and thought it no wrong,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">From some secessionist’s dwelling.</span><br />
-“What regiment’s yours, and under whose flag<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Do you fight?� said I, touching his shoulder;</span><br />
-Turning slowly about, he smilingly said,&mdash;<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">For the thought made him stronger and bolder,&mdash;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 7em;">“I fights mit Siegel.�</span><br />
-<br />
-The next time I saw him, his knapsack was gone,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">His cap and his canteen were missing;</span><br />
-Shell, shrapnell, and grape, and the swift rifle-ball,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Around him and o’er him were hissing.</span><br />
-“How are you, my friend, and where have you been?<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And for what, and for whom, are you fighting?�</span><br />
-He said, as a shell from the enemy’s gun<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Sent his arm and his musket a-kiting,</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 7em;">“I fights mit Siegel.�</span><br />
-<br />
-We scraped out his grave, and he dreamlessly sleeps<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">On the bank of the Shenandoah River;</span><br />
-His home and his kindred alike are unknown,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">His reward in the hands of the Giver.</span><br />
-We placed a rough board at the head of his grave,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">“And we left him alone in his glory,�</span><br />
-But on it we cut, ere we turned from the spot,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The little we knew of his story&mdash;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 7em;">“I fights mit Siegel.�&mdash;<span class="smcap">Grant P. Robinson.</span></span></p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_539" id="Page_539">[Pg 539]</a></span>If any of the little “life stories� which I here relate in this brief
-chapter, have perchance before met the reader’s eye, I can only say that
-they cannot be read too often. We need no longer go back to remotest
-history&mdash;to Joan d’Arc, Grace Darling, Florence Nightingale, nor to
-revolutionary scenes&mdash;to find “cases of courage and devotion, for no
-annals are so rich as ours in these deliberate acts of unquestioning
-self-sacrifice, which at once ennoble our estimate of human nature, and
-increase the homage we pay to the virtues of women.�</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">A Hospital Scene at Night.</span></p>
-
-<p>Night gathered her sable mantle about earth and sky, and the cold, wintry
-wind swept around the temporary hospital with a mournful wail, a rude
-lullaby, and a sad requiem to the wounded and dying soldier boys who
-crowded its rankling wards. Through the dark, sickly atmosphere, by the
-flickering lamp-lights, are just discernible the long rows of suffering,
-dying humanity. As the wind lulls, the sighs and groans of the unfortunate
-sufferers greet your ears on every side. “Water, water!� is the general
-request.</p>
-
-<p>Every moment new ones are added to the mangled and suffering throng, as
-they are brought in from the battle-field and the amputating-room. The
-surgeons are busily at work. Every able-bodied soldier must be at the
-front, for the emergency is great. Ah! who shall give the “water� which
-raging thirst momentarily demands? Who is to soothe the fearful anguish,
-from lacerated nerve and muscle, by cruel shot and shell? And who shall
-smooth the dying pillow, hear the last prayer, for self, and for loved
-ones far away in the northern homes? And who will kindly receive the dying
-messages for those dear ones,&mdash;wife, children, father, mother,&mdash;whom he
-never will see again, and kiss the pallid cheek, commend the soul to God,
-and close the eyes forever of the poor soldier boy, who died away from
-home and friends, in the hospital?</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_540" id="Page_540">[Pg 540]</a></span>God himself had raised up those to fill this sacred office, in the form of
-frail women&mdash;woman, because no man could fill the hallowed sphere.
-Flitting from couch to couch, like a fairy thing, noiselessly; like an
-angel of mercy, administering, soothing; but like a <i>woman</i>, beautiful,
-frail, and slender, with a cheering smile, and sympathy, as much expressed
-in the light of the eye as the sound of the voice, she moistened the
-parched lips, lightened the pillows, and the hearts, and seemed never to
-tire in deeds of love and kindness to the distressed soldiers.</p>
-
-<p>Next to the soldiers, the physicians know how to appreciate the true women
-at the hospital couch. After the manifestations of skill, labor, anxiety,
-and devotion to the cause by the physicians, thousands of men would have
-perished but for the hand and heart of woman, and who now live to speak
-her praise and cherish her memory forever.</p>
-
-<p>“Ain’t she an angel?� said a gray-haired veteran, as she gave the boys
-their breakfast. “She never seems to tire; she is always smiling, and
-don’t seem to walk, but flies from one to another. God bless her.�</p>
-
-<p>“Ma’am, where did you come from?� asked a fair boy of seventeen summers,
-as she smoothed his hair, and told him, with gleaming eyes, he would soon
-see his mother, and the old homestead, and be won back to life and health.
-“How could such a lady as you come way down here to take care of us poor,
-sick, dirty boys?�</p>
-
-<p>“I consider it an honor,� she said, “to wait on you, and wash off the mud
-you have waded through for me.�</p>
-
-<p>Said another, “Lady, please write down your name, that I may look at it,
-and take it home, and show my wife who wrote my letters, combed my hair,
-and fed me. I don’t believe you’re like other people.�</p>
-
-<p>“God bless her, and spare her life,� they would say, with devotion, as she
-passed on.</p>
-
-<p>(These things were written of Miss Breckenbridge by Mrs. Hoge, of
-Chicago.)</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_541" id="Page_541">[Pg 541]</a></span></p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">The Soldier Boy’s Dying Message.</span></p>
-
-<p>She sat by the couch of a fair-haired boy, who was that day mortally
-wounded. It was night now, and in the hospital before described. The poor
-boy knew he must go, but before he died he wanted to leave a message of
-love for his mother, away in the northern home.</p>
-
-<p>“Tell me all you wish to have her know; I will convey your message to
-her,� said the lady, as she bent her slender young form over the dying
-boy, and tenderly smoothed back the fleecy locks from his pallid brow.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 450px; height: 327px;"><img src="images/img159.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">THE DYING MESSAGE.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>“O, bless you, dear lady. You speak words of such joy to me. But it is
-this. I left a good mother, and sister Susie, in the dear old home in A.
-O, so much I have longed to see them during these last few hours! to see
-them but for one moment! O God, but for one moment!� And while he took
-breath she turned away her beautiful face to hide the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_542" id="Page_542">[Pg 542]</a></span> falling tears,
-which she must not let the poor boy see. “Tell her,� he pursued,&mdash;“my
-mother,&mdash;that I never found out how much I loved her till I came away from
-her side to fight for my country. O, lady, tell her this, and Susie, and
-poor father. I see it all now. And the old home comes back to my mind as
-clear as though I left it but yesterday. There is the old house, with its
-gabled roof, and the porch, all covered with clinging jessamines, and the
-big house-dog lying under the porch, and the great old well-sweep; and off
-in the meadow are the trees I used to climb. O, I never, never shall see
-them again. I feel very weak. Can’t I have some more of that drink?�</p>
-
-<p>“Yes, poor, dear boy. Here; the surgeon said you could have all you
-wanted.�</p>
-
-<p>“O, thank you. I wish I could write. O, there; that is so refreshing. If I
-could but write and tell her how good you have been to me! But write your
-name to her, the whole of it. She will understand, if you don’t tell her
-how good you are. Well, I won’t say any more, for you shake your head; but
-tell her how I love her, and them all. Am I fainting?�</p>
-
-<p>She arose from her knees, and taking some water, with her hand she
-moistened his brow and his silky hair, and offered him some more of the
-strengthening cordial. But he declined taking it. The boy was dying. He
-made one more effort, and said,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“Mother! Tell her, too, how I have kept her little Bible; and she can see
-how it has been read, and marked, and worn. O for one sight of her dear
-face, one look from her loving eyes, one kiss from her lips! I’d then die
-in peace.�</p>
-
-<p>The beautiful lady softly smoothed his hair, wiped his face, whispered
-words too sacred for sterner hearts, and kissed away her own tears from
-his pallid cheeks.</p>
-
-<p>“Mother! Was it you? Then good by. I die&mdash;happy, Mother!�</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_543" id="Page_543">[Pg 543]</a></span>Thus he expired. The good lady wrote the above to the mother of the brave
-lad, and thus I obtained the original.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Warm Hearts in frozen Bodies.</span></p>
-
-<p>“A lady in one of the hospitals of the west was much attracted by two
-young men, lying side by side, all splintered and bandaged, so that they
-could not move hand or foot, but so cheerful and happy looking, that she
-said,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“‘Why, boys, you are looking very bright to-day.’</p>
-
-<p>“‘O, yes,’ they replied, ‘we’re all right now; we’ve been turned this
-morning.’</p>
-
-<p>“And she found that for six long weeks they had lain in one position, and
-for the first time that morning had been moved to the other side of their
-cot.</p>
-
-<p>“‘And were you among those poor boys who were left lying where you fell,
-that bitter cold morning, till you froze fast to the ground?’</p>
-
-<p>“‘Yes, ma’am; we were lying there two days. You know they had no time to
-attend to us. They had to go and take the fort.’</p>
-
-<p>“‘And didn’t you think it was very cruel in them to leave you there to
-suffer so long?’ she inquired.</p>
-
-<p>“‘Why, no, ma’am; we wanted them to go and take the fort.’</p>
-
-<p>“‘But when it was taken, you were in too great agony to know or care for
-it?’</p>
-
-<p>“‘O, no, ma’am,’ they replied, with flashing eyes. ‘There was a whole lot
-of us wounded fellows on the hill-side, watching to see if they would get
-the fort; and when we saw they had it, every one of us who had a whole
-arm, or leg, waved it in the air, and hurrahed till the air rang again.’�</p>
-
-<p>This is from a letter by Miss M. E. Breckenbridge, a lady who laid down
-her life for the sick soldiers.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_544" id="Page_544">[Pg 544]</a></span></p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Pudding and Milk.</span></p>
-
-<p>Under Dr. Vanderkieft’s supervision, in Sedgwick’s corps, there was one of
-the noblest self-sacrificing women of the army of the Potomac. This lady
-was unwearied in her efforts for the good of the soldiers.</p>
-
-<p>While at Smoketown Hospital, there was a poor, emaciated soldier, whose
-weak and pitiable condition attracted her attention. He could retain
-nothing on his stomach. Mrs. Lee&mdash;for that was the lady&mdash;had tried all the
-various dishes for which the meagre hospital supplies afforded materials,
-but nothing afforded the patient relief and nourishment, until one day, in
-overhauling the stores, she found a quantity of Indian corn meal.</p>
-
-<p>“O, I have found a prize,� she cried, in delight.</p>
-
-<p>“What is it?� inquired the little fellow detailed as orderly.</p>
-
-<p>“Indian meal,� was her reply.</p>
-
-<p>“Pshaw! I thought you had found a bag of dollars.�</p>
-
-<p>“Better than dollars. Bring it along.� And she hastened away to the tent
-where lay her poor patient.</p>
-
-<p>“Sanburn,� said she,&mdash;for that was the invalid’s name,&mdash;“could you eat
-some mush?�</p>
-
-<p>“I don’t know what that is. I don’t like any of your fancy dishes.�</p>
-
-<p>“Why, it’s pudding and milk,� said a boy on the next cot.</p>
-
-<p>“O, yes,� exclaimed the starving soldier. “I think I could eat a bucket
-full of pudding and milk.�</p>
-
-<p>Mrs. Lee was not long in giving him an opportunity for the trial. She at
-first brought him a small quantity, with some sweet milk, and to her joy,
-as well as that of the lean, hungry patient, it suited him. He ate it
-three times a day, and recovered. Indeed, the sack of meal was worth more
-than a sack of dollars, as she had said.</p>
-
-<p>As strange as this may seem, there are instances on record where very
-remarkable, yea, absurd articles of diet have cured where medicine
-failed.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_545" id="Page_545">[Pg 545]</a></span></p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Small Beer.</span></p>
-
-<p>The Earl of Bath, when he was Mr. Pulteney, was very sick of the
-pleuristic fever, in Staffordshire. Doctor after doctor had been called
-down from London, till his secretary had paid out the sum of three
-thousand seven hundred and fifty dollars. The last two physicians had
-given him up. “He must die,� said Drs. Friend and Broxholm. They, however
-prescribed some simple remedies, and were about to leave, when the
-invalid, just alive, was heard to mutter, “Small beer.�</p>
-
-<p>“He asks for small beer,� said the attendants. “Shall we give him some?�</p>
-
-<p>“Yes, give him ‘small beer,’ or anything,� replied the doctors.</p>
-
-<p>A great two-quart silver pitcher full was brought, and he drank the whole
-contents, and demanded more. The request was granted, and, after drinking
-the gallon, he fell asleep, perspired freely, and recovered.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">The poetical and amusing Side.</span></p>
-
-<p>There is a poetical side, as well as a prosy side, to the camp and
-hospital. The following effusion of confusion was sent to the writer by a
-brother who gave his life for his country. It was written by a rebel
-soldier, who never realized his dream, and doubtless his “Amelia� mourns
-his loss as sincerely as though he had fought in a better cause.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">To Amelia.</span></p>
-
-<p>1. O, come, my love, and go away to the land up north; for there, they
-say, it’s rite good picketin’ for rebel boys. And we’ll take the land, and
-sweep the band of New Yorkers into the bay.</p>
-
-<p>2. I’ve heered of Delmonico’s, and Barnum’s Shows, and how many hotels the
-land only knows. And we’ll steer our bark for Centre Park. Here’s a health
-to ourselves, and away she goes. (Here I drank.)</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_546" id="Page_546">[Pg 546]</a></span>3. Then come with your knight so true, and down with the boys that’s
-dressed in blue. Farewell to hoe-cake an’ hominy, Richmond and Montgomery.
-I’ll lick the damn Yankees, an’ marry you.</p>
-
-<p>4. Here’s a heart, I reckon, as firm’s a rock; no truer ever beat neath a
-gray or blue frock. So come, my love, and haste away. We’ll moor our bark
-in New York Bay, when I end this fighting work.</p>
-
-<p><span style="margin-left: 2em;">Your true lover,</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 4em;"><span class="smcap">J. Parsloe</span>.</span></p>
-
-<p>The next has been in print, and was written by Major McKnight, while a
-prisoner. “He was a poet, musician, and joker, and used to run from grave
-to gay, from lively to severe, on almost all mottoes. He was an especial
-favorite with his guard, the Union boys.�</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">My Love and I.</span></p>
-
-<p class="poem">My love reposes in a rosewood frame;<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 3em;">A bunk have I;</span><br />
-A couch of feath’ry down fills up the same;<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Mine’s straw, but dry.</span><br />
-She sinks to rest at night without a sigh;<br />
-With waking eyes I watch the hours creep by.<br />
-<br />
-My love her daily dinner takes in state;<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 3em;">And so do I;</span><br />
-The richest viands flank her plate;<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Coarse grub have I.</span><br />
-Pure wines she sips at ease her thirst to slake;<br />
-I pump my drink from Erie’s limpid lake.<br />
-<br />
-My love has all the world at will to roam;<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Three acres I;</span><br />
-She goes abroad, or quiet sits at home;<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 3em;">So cannot I.</span><br />
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_547" id="Page_547">[Pg 547]</a></span>Bright angels watch around her couch at night;<br />
-A Yank, with loaded gun, keeps me in sight.<br />
-<br />
-A thousand weary miles stretch between<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 3em;">My love and I;</span><br />
-To her, this wintry night, cold, calm, serene,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 3em;">I waft a sigh,</span><br />
-And hope, with all my earnestness of soul,<br />
-To-morrow’s mail may bring me my parole.<br />
-<br />
-There’s hope ahead: we’ll one day meet again,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 3em;">My love and I;</span><br />
-We’ll wipe away all tears of sorrow then;<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Her love-lit eye</span><br />
-Will all my many troubles then beguile,<br />
-And keep this wayward reb from Johnson’s Isle.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img160.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">STUCK!</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">A Scriptural Conundrum.</span></p>
-
-<p>The Georgia contrabands were great on conundrums, says a soldier of
-Sherman’s army. One day one of these human<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_548" id="Page_548">[Pg 548]</a></span> “charcoal sketches� was
-driving a pair of contrary mules hitched to a cart loaded with foraging
-stuff. He was sitting on the load, saying to himself, “Now dat Clem ax me
-dat cundrum to bodder dis nigger, and I done just make it out. ‘Why ar
-Moses like er cotton-gin?’ I done see. I mighty ’fraid I hab to gib dat
-up. Whoa! Git up? What de debble you doin’?�</p>
-
-<p>While “cudgelling his brains� for a solution of Clem’s conundrum, the
-mules had strayed from the cart road, and were stuck hard and fast in the
-mud. “Git up dar yer Balum’s cusses!� piling on the whip and using some
-“swear words� not to be repeated. “Dar, take dat, and dat, yer!�</p>
-
-<p>Just then Chaplain C. rode up, and hearing the contraband swearing,
-said,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“Do you know what the great I Am said?�</p>
-
-<p>“Look’er yer, masser,� interrupted the negro; “done yer ax me none of yer
-cundrums till I git out ob dis d&mdash;&mdash; hole; and I answer Clem’s fust&mdash;‘Why
-am Moses like er gin-cotton?’�</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Wouldn’t marry a Regiment.</span></p>
-
-<p>When General Kelley was after Mosby’s guerrillas, he captured a girl named
-Sally Dusky, whose two brothers were officers in the guerrilla band. The
-general tried in vain to induce the girl&mdash;who was not bad looking, by the
-way&mdash;to reveal the rebs’ hiding-places. Having failed in all other ways,
-the general said,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“If you will make a clean breast of it, and tell us truly, I will give you
-the chances for a husband of all the men and officers of my command.�</p>
-
-<p>With this bait he turned her over to Captain Baggs. After some
-deliberation she asked that officer if the general meant what he said.</p>
-
-<p>“O, most assuredly; the general was sincere,� was his reply.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_549" id="Page_549">[Pg 549]</a></span>The girl assumed a thoughtful mood for some moments, and then said,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“Well, I wouldn’t like to marry the whole regiment, or staff, but I’d as
-lief have the old general as any of them.�</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img161.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
-<hr style="width: 50%;" />
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_550" id="Page_550">[Pg 550]</a></span></p>
-<h2><a name="XXII" id="XXII"></a>XXII.</h2>
-<p class="title">GLUTTONS AND WINE-BIBBERS.</p>
-
-<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table">
-<tr><td>“Full well he knew, where food does not refresh,<br />
-The shrivelled soul sinks inward with the flesh;<br />
-That he’s best armed for danger’s rash career,<br />
-<i>Who’s crammed so full there is no room for fear</i>.�<br />
-<br />
-“Strange! that a creature rational, and cast<br />
-In human mould, should brutalize by choice<br />
-His nature.�&mdash;<span class="smcap">Cowper.</span></td></tr></table>
-
-<div class="note"><p class="hang"><small>GOOD CHEER AND A CHEERFUL HEART.&mdash;A MODERN SILENUS.&mdash;A SAD
-WRECK.&mdash;DELIRIUM TREMENS.&mdash;FATAL ERRORS.&mdash;“EATING LIKE A
-GLUTTON.�&mdash;STRENGTH IN WEAKNESS.&mdash;A HOT PLACE, EVEN FOR A COOK.&mdash;A
-HUNGRY DOCTOR.&mdash;THE MODERN GILPIN.&mdash;A CHANGE! A SOW FOR A HORSE!&mdash;A
-DUCK POND.&mdash;THE FORLORN WIDOW.&mdash;A SCIENTIFIC
-GORMAND.&mdash;ANOTHER.&mdash;“DOORN’T GO TO ’IM,� ETC.&mdash;DR. BUTLER’S BEER AND
-BATH.&mdash;CASTS HIS LAST VOTE.</small></p></div>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p>If I confine this chapter to modern physicians, it will be brief. Though
-doctors are usually pretty good livers, they, at this day of the world,
-too well know the deadly properties of the villanous concoctions sold as
-liquors to risk much of it in their own systems.</p>
-
-<p>There is a whole sermon on eating in our first text above, and, while we
-admit that gluttony is reprehensible, we detest “the shrivelled soul� who
-starves wittingly his body to heap up riches, or under the idle delusion
-of starving out disease, or “mortifying the flesh.� If not very
-“mortifying,� it is very depressing, to be bored by one of these “lean,
-lank hypochondriacs,�&mdash;to have to entertain, or be entertained by, such.
-O, give me the wide-mouthed, the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_551" id="Page_551">[Pg 551]</a></span> round-faced, or abdomened, the cheerful,
-laughing man, especially if he’s a doctor.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img162.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">A GOOD LIVER.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>“Ah, doctor,� said a poor, emaciated invalid to me during my first year’s
-practice at &mdash;&mdash;, “you do me good like a medicine by your presence. Why,
-the blue devils leave the house the moment you enter. I don’t believe you
-was ever blue.�</p>
-
-<p>“Hereafter my patients shall never know that I am.�</p>
-
-<p>Nor is it necessary to gulp down ardent spirits to keep the spirits up.
-Stimulants produce an unnatural buoyancy of spirits, and the unnatural
-destroys the natural habit of the system. A good and natural habit does
-not grow upon a person to his injury; an unnatural one always does, ending
-in his destruction. A good living gives good spirits; <i>cæteris paribus</i>, a
-poor living low spirits.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">A modern Silenus.</span></p>
-
-<p>Silenus, of the mythologists, was a demigod, who became the nurse, the
-preceptor, and finally the attendant, of Bacchus. He was represented as a
-fat, bloated old fellow, riding on an ass, and drunk every day in the
-year.</p>
-
-<p>I knew a “bright and shining light� in the medical profession who turned
-out a modern Silenus. This was Dr. G., of Plymouth, Conn. His father had
-given him the best medical education which this country afforded. He was a
-gentleman of superior address, as well as talent, tall, straight, and
-handsome as an Apollo, with a dark, flashing eye, a massive brow, shaded
-by a profusion of jet-black locks. How long he had practised medicine I do
-not know.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_552" id="Page_552">[Pg 552]</a></span> Throughout the county he had an excellent professional
-reputation, particularly as a surgeon. His instruments were numerous, and
-of the best and latest improvements. Alas that such a man should be lost
-to the community, and to humanity! But his appetite for intoxicating drink
-knew no bounds. His thirst was as insatiable as Tantalus’.</p>
-
-<p>When I first knew him, he still was in practice, but the better portion of
-the community had ceased to trust him. He never was sober for a day. He
-occupied then a little office in the square, containing a front and a back
-room. In the latter were his few medicines,&mdash;there was no apothecary in
-town,&mdash;and a number of large glass jars, containing excellent anatomical
-and fœtal specimens. This room was not finished inside, and the walls
-were full of nails, projecting through from the clapboards outside.</p>
-
-<p>One day a Mr. Hotchkiss went after him, hoping to find the doctor
-sufficiently sober to prescribe for a patient, in a case of emergency.</p>
-
-<p>“What do you suppose I found him doing?� said Mr. Hotchkiss to me.</p>
-
-<p>“Hiding from the snakes in his back room?� I suggested.</p>
-
-<p>“No, sir; he had the tremens, and with his coat off, his hair standing
-every way, his eyes glaring like a demon’s, he had his case of forceps
-strewn over the floor, and was diving at the ends of the clapboard nails,
-which he called devils, that came through the boards, in the back office.�</p>
-
-<p>“Ah, there you are! Another devil staring at me!� he shouted; and with the
-bright, gleaming forceps he dove at a nail, wrenched it from the wall, and
-flinging it on the floor, he stamped on it, crying, “Another dead devil!
-Come on. Ah, ha! there you are again!� and he dove at another. When he
-broke a forceps he flung it on the floor, and caught a new pair. I tried
-to stop him, but he only accused me of being leagued with his evil majesty
-to destroy him.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_553" id="Page_553">[Pg 553]</a></span></p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 450px; height: 332px;"><img src="images/img163.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">A DOCTOR KILLING THE DEVILS.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 450px; height: 328px;"><img src="images/img164.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">PAYING FOR HIS WINE.</p>
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_554" id="Page_554">[Pg 554]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_555" id="Page_555">[Pg 555]</a></span>Another day, after having pawned nearly all his instruments for money
-with which to buy liquor to appease his raving appetite, he was seen to
-unseal one of the jars containing a fœtal specimen, pour out a quantity
-of the diluted alcohol in which it had long been preserved, and drink it
-down with the avidity of a starving man.</p>
-
-<p>His last instrument and case pawned, he sold the coat from his back to buy
-liquors. He could no longer get practice, no longer pay his board, and he
-became an outcast from all respectable society, and a frequenter of
-bar-rooms. A poor and simple old woman in the remote part of the town took
-compassion on him, and gave him a home. But nothing could chain his
-uncontrollable passion for intoxicating drinks.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img165.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">A BAR-ROOM DOCTOR.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>The last time I saw him was in the month of December. He was in a grocery,
-warming himself by the store fire. He wore a crownless hat, a woman’s
-shawl over his shoulders, and a pair of boy’s pants partially covered his
-legs; no stockings covered his ankles, and a pair of old, low shoes
-encased his feet. The light had fled from his once beautiful, lustrous
-eyes; great wrinkles furrowed his once manly brow; his hair, once dark and
-glossy as the raven’s wing, was now streaked with gray, uncombed and
-unkempt, hanging, knotted and snarled, over his neck and bloated face.</p>
-
-<p>“Don’t you recollect me?� he asked, with a shaking voice and a distressing
-effort at a smile. Ah, it was sickening to the senses.</p>
-
-<p>Alas! Such another wreck may I never behold. What power shall awaken him
-from his awful condition, and</p>
-
-<p class="poem"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_556" id="Page_556">[Pg 556]</a></span>
-“Picture a happy past,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Gone from his sight,</span><br />
-Bring back his early youth,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Cloudless and bright;</span><br />
-Tell how a mother’s eye<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Watched while he slept,</span><br />
-Tell how she prayed for him,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Sorrowed and wept.</span><br />
-<br />
-“Point to the better land,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Home of the blest,</span><br />
-Where she has passed away,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Gone to her rest.</span><br />
-O’er the departed one<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Memory will yearn;</span><br />
-God, in his mercy, grant<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">He may return.�</span></p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Fatal Errors.</span></p>
-
-<p>Unfortunately, it is much easier to copy a great man’s imperfections than
-those qualities which give him his greatness. Too often, also, are their
-defects mistaken for their marks of distinction,&mdash;vice for virtue,&mdash;and
-copied by the young, who have not the ability to imitate their greatness.</p>
-
-<p>“General Grant smokes!�</p>
-
-<p>“<i>President</i> Grant drinks!�</p>
-
-<p>These two sentences, with the lamentable fact of their probable truth,
-have made more smokers of young men in the military and civil walks of
-life than all other texts in the English language. General or President
-Grant is not responsible for the lack of brains in the community, to be
-sure; but if “great men� will persist in bad habits, young men should be
-taught the difference between them and their virtues, and cautioned to
-shun them, or their bark will be stranded far out of sight of their
-desired haven,&mdash;the port of their ambition,&mdash;and nothing but a worthless
-wreck remains to tell what better piloting might have done for them. The
-voyage ended cannot be re-commenced.</p>
-
-<p>A student of medicine, in New York, brought a bottle of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_557" id="Page_557">[Pg 557]</a></span> liquor to our
-room. I told him where that bottle would carry him.</p>
-
-<p>“Pshaw! It’s only a pint of wine. Dr. Abernethy, the great English
-surgeon, bought one hundred and twenty-six gallons at once, and he did not
-<i>die a drunkard</i>,� was his contemptuous reply.</p>
-
-<p>“But you must remember that Abernethy lived in the days of <i>good</i> port
-wine, when every man had something to say of the sample his hospitality
-produced of his popular beverage. The doctor, who never was intemperate,
-was very hospitable.</p>
-
-<p>“‘Honest John Lloyd!’&mdash;what an anomaly when applied to a rum-seller&mdash;was a
-great wine merchant of London, a particular friend of Abernethy’s, and of
-all great men of his day, who loved wines and brandies.</p>
-
-<p>“One day I went to Lloyd’s just as Dr. Abernethy left.</p>
-
-<p>“‘Well,’ said Mr. Lloyd, ‘what a funny man your master is.’</p>
-
-<p>“‘Who?’ said I.</p>
-
-<p>“Why, Mr. Abernethy. He has just been here and paid me for a pipe of wine,
-and threw down a handful of notes and pieces of paper, with fees. I wanted
-him to stop to see if they were all right, and said, ‘Some of those fees
-may be more than you think, perhaps.’ ‘Never mind,’ said he; ‘I can’t
-stop; you have them as I took them,’ and hastily went his way.</p>
-
-<p>“In occasional habits we may most safely recollect that faults are no less
-faults (as Mirabeau said of Frederick the Great) because they have the
-shadow of a great name; and we believe that no good man would desire to
-leave a better expiation of any weakness than that it should deter others
-from a similar error.�</p>
-
-<p>In fact, the doctor was opposed to drunkenness, and also gluttony,
-although he himself “was a good liver,� as the following anecdote will
-show:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>A wealthy merchant who resided in the country had been<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_558" id="Page_558">[Pg 558]</a></span> very sick, and
-barely recovered, when, from the same cause, he was again threatened with
-a return of the like disease.</p>
-
-<p>“I went to see him at home, and dined with him. He seemed to think that if
-he did not drink deeply, he might <i>eat like a glutton</i>,� said the doctor.
-“Well, I saw he was at his old tricks again, and I said to him, ‘Sir, what
-would you think of a merchant, who, having been prosperous in business and
-amassed a comfortable fortune, went and risked it all in what he knew was
-an imprudent speculation?’</p>
-
-<p>“Why, sir,� he exclaimed, “I should say he was a great ass.�</p>
-
-<p>“‘Nay, then, thou art the man,’ said Abernethy.�</p>
-
-<p>The leopard does not change his spots. For the truth of this read the life
-and fall of Uniac.</p>
-
-<p>O, it is a fearful thing to become a drunkard.</p>
-
-<p>The habit once acquired is never gotten entirely rid of. It sleeps&mdash;it
-never dies, but with the death of the victim.</p>
-
-<p>Young men, avoid the first drink. Never take that first fatal glass; thus,
-and only thus, are you safe from a drunkard’s grave, and the curse
-entailed upon your progeny.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Strength in Weakness.</span></p>
-
-<p>“Sir, I am advised that you have a barrel of beer in your room,� said the
-president of one of our New England colleges to a student, who, contrary
-to rule and usage, had actually purchased a barrel of the delightful stuff
-made from brewed hops, copperas, and filthy slops, and deposited it under
-the bed, convenient for use.</p>
-
-<p>“Yes, sir; such is the fact,� replied the student.</p>
-
-<p>“What explanation can you give for such conduct, sir?�</p>
-
-<p>“Well,� began the student with the boldest confidence, “the truth is, my
-physician, in consideration of my ill health, advised me to take a little
-ale daily; and not wishing to be seen visiting the beer-shops where the
-beverage is retailed, I decided to buy a barrel, and take it quietly at my
-room.�</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_559" id="Page_559">[Pg 559]</a></span>“Indeed! and have you derived the anticipated benefit therefrom, sir?�
-inquired the president.</p>
-
-<p>“O, yes, sir; indeed I have. Why, when I first had the barrel placed in my
-room two weeks ago, I could not move it. Now, sir, I can carry it with the
-greatest of ease.�</p>
-
-<p>The president <i>smiled</i>, and ordered the barrel removed, saying that “in
-consideration of his rapid convalescence the treatment could safely be
-discontinued.�</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">A warm Place for a Cook.</span></p>
-
-<p>Soon after the completion of the Roberts Opera House, in Hartford, Conn.,
-the Putnam Phalanx held a grand ball within its walls. The music was
-exquisite; the prompters the best in the state; the ladies were the most
-beautiful and dressy in the land; and all went splendidly, till the supper
-was discussed. There had been a misunderstanding about the number for whom
-supper was to be prepared, and it was found out, when too late, that there
-were a hundred more guests than plates. The supper was spread in the
-basement. When the writer went down with friends, the tables, which had
-already been twice occupied, presented a disgusting scene&mdash;all heaped up
-with dirty dishes, debris of “fowl, fish, and dessert,� and great
-complaint was made by the hungry dancers, while some unpleasant epithets,
-and uncomplimentary remarks were hurled at the heads of the innocent
-caterers.</p>
-
-<p>With our party were Dr. C., a great joker, and Dr. D., his match.</p>
-
-<p>“If you don’t like this fare you can go through into the restaurant,� said
-one of the waiters. “It is all the same,� he added.</p>
-
-<p>We required no second invitation. We did ample justice to the fare
-provided, and retired, leaving Dr. C. to bring up the rear. In a half
-minute he came running after us, saying,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_560" id="Page_560">[Pg 560]</a></span>“The fellow told me I must pay for the supper in there, extra!�</p>
-
-<p>“Well, what did you tell him?�</p>
-
-<p>“Why, I told him to go to h&mdash;&mdash;.�</p>
-
-<p>“Well, you did right; let him go; that is just the place for him.�</p>
-
-<p>On another occasion, the dinner not being forthcoming at a hotel where we
-dined, the doctor “fell to,� and soon demolished the best part of a
-blanc-mange pudding before him.</p>
-
-<p>“That, sir, is dessert,� politely interrupted the waiter, in dismay at
-seeing his dessert so rapidly disappearing.</p>
-
-<p>“No matter,� said the doctor, finishing it; “I could eat it if it were the
-Great Sahara!�</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">A Modern Gilpin.</span></p>
-
-<p>The widow Wealthy lived in the country. She was a blooming widow, fair,
-plump, and&mdash;sickly. She owned a valuable farm, just turning off from the
-main thoroughfare,&mdash;broad acres, nice cottage house, great barn and
-granary, and she was considered, by certain eligible old bachelors, and a
-widower or two, as “a mighty good catch.�</p>
-
-<p>Dr. Filley practised in the country. He was a bachelor, above forty. He
-was a short, thick-set man, with a fair practice, which might have been
-better, but for certain whispers about a growing propensity to&mdash;drinking!
-That’s the word. Of course he denied the insinuation, and defied any one
-to prove that he was ever the worse for liquor. The doctor was attendant,
-professionally, upon the widow, and&mdash;well you know how the gossips manage
-that sort of a thing in the country. But who was to know whether “the
-doctor made more visits per week to the widow Wealthy than her state of
-health seemed to warrant�? or who knew that “the widow was ‘sweet’ towards
-the little doctor, and that she intended he should throw the bill all in
-at the end of the year&mdash;himself to boot?� Never mind his rivals; they do
-not come into our amusing story.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_561" id="Page_561">[Pg 561]</a></span>John, the widow’s hired man, was sent very unexpectedly, one day in
-autumn, for the doctor to call that afternoon, to see the invalid. Very
-unexpectedly to the widow, and greatly to her mortification, two gossiping
-neighbors called at her residence just as the doctor was expected to
-arrive. “O, she was so glad to see Mrs. &mdash;&mdash; and Mrs. &mdash;&mdash;!�</p>
-
-<p>Dr. Filley rode a scraggy little Canadian horse,&mdash;a fiery, headstrong
-beast, but a good saddle horse. Somehow, the unexpected call, at that
-hour, slightly “flustered� the little doctor; but he threw his saddle-bags
-over his shoulder, mounted the beast, and turned his head towards the
-widow’s residence.</p>
-
-<p>“I b’lieve I am a little nervous over this colt; I wonder what’s the
-matter!� And he tried to rein up the headstrong little beast, to give
-himself time to&mdash;sober off!</p>
-
-<p>“I reary bl’eve I’m a little&mdash;taken by surprise&mdash;ho, Charley! Why, what’s
-got inter&mdash;pony? Goes like ’r devil. Ho, ho, boy.�</p>
-
-<p>Pretty soon the beast struck into a gallop; and now he reached the lane
-that led into Mrs. Wealthy’s farm. The pony knew the lane as well as his
-master, and the barn better. The said lane led by the barn-yard and
-out-buildings, the house being beyond. The barn-yard bars were down, and
-the pony made for the opening, in a clean gallop, over the fallen bars,
-right in amongst the cattle, the sheep, and the swine. A big ox gave a
-bellow at the sudden arrival, and, with tail and head in air, ran to the
-opposite side of the yard, intruding upon the comfort of a big old sow,
-that was dozing in the mud. With a loud snort, the discomfited porker
-rushed from the mire just in time to meet the horse, and in attempting to
-pass on both sides at once, she went between the short fore legs of the
-pony, and brought up with a loud squeal, and a shock that sent the rider
-over the horse’s head, down astride the hog. The pony reared, wheeled, and
-ran out of the yard at one pair of bars, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_562" id="Page_562">[Pg 562]</a></span> the sow went pell-mell out
-of the other, bearing the doctor and saddle-bags swiftly along towards the
-house.</p>
-
-<p>The hired man witnessed the sudden change of steeds, and gave the alarm.
-The widow&mdash;not so very sick&mdash;was just graciously showing her two unwelcome
-lady callers out, after being worried nearly an hour by their company; and
-taking an anxious look towards the lane, she saw the doctor coming on a
-clean&mdash;no, dirty&mdash;gallop, on her old sow.</p>
-
-<p>She lost no time in giving a loud scream. What else should she do?</p>
-
-<p>“O, goodness gracious! What is that?�</p>
-
-<p>“O Lord, save and defend us! What is it?� exclaimed the two ladies, in
-chorus.</p>
-
-<p>“A man on a hog!�</p>
-
-<p>“The doctor on a sow!� again in chorus.</p>
-
-<p>Now the pony and the swine met, the doctor still clinging to the sow’s ear
-with one hand, and to the tail with the other; of course, having turned a
-clean summersault from the pony, facing towards the sow’s hind quarters.
-The swine, beset on all sides, sheered off, and made directly through a
-large duck-pond in the field, scattering the geese and ducks every way,
-which, crying out, “Quack, quack!� made off as fast as feet and wings
-could carry them. Half way across the pond the doctor lost his balance,
-and, with his saddle-bags, fell splashing into the water.</p>
-
-<p>Another scream from the ladies,&mdash;only two of them.</p>
-
-<p>The widow, like a sensible woman, when she saw the doctor’s danger, ran
-for the well-pole. “Here, John, here! Take this well-hook, and fish him
-out quick, before he drowns.�</p>
-
-<p>John obeyed, and in an instant the doctor was safely landed.</p>
-
-<p>The doctor was sobered.</p>
-
-<p>The widow, seeing no further danger, like a true woman, fainted.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_563" id="Page_563">[Pg 563]</a></span></p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 450px; height: 315px;"><img src="images/img166.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">THE DOCTOR ON A SOW.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 450px; height: 316px;"><img src="images/img167.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">RESCUE OF THE DOCTOR.</p>
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_564" id="Page_564">[Pg 564]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_565" id="Page_565">[Pg 565]</a></span>Leaving the muddy and half-drowned doctor, who looked like a well-wet-down
-bantam cock, John turned to his mistress, whom he picked up from the
-grass, and carried into the house. The two ladies, who had witnessed her
-discomfiture, assisted in loosening the stays, and administering some
-salts, which revived the widow.</p>
-
-<p>“O, did you ever see such a comical sight?�</p>
-
-<p>“Never. O, wasn’t it horrid? The little doctor riding backward, on a
-horrid, dirty, old pig! O, if I ever!�</p>
-
-<p>And the ladies laughed in unison, in which the widow actually joined.</p>
-
-<p>“But what has become of the poor, wet fellow? And did John rescue the
-saddle-bags?� inquired the widow.</p>
-
-<p>John, meantime, had returned to the doctor’s assistance. He now fished out
-the saddle-bags, and the unfortunate doctor started on foot for home,
-whither the pony had long since fled.</p>
-
-<p>The story, in the mouth of one servant and three ladies, was anything but
-a secret, and&mdash;you know how it is in the country.</p>
-
-<p class="center"><strong><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span></strong></p>
-
-<p>The widow still holds the farm in her own name, in a town in New England.</p>
-
-<p>Dr. Filley practises physic in California.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">A scientific Gourmand.</span></p>
-
-<p>Our familiar friend, “A Book about Doctors,� which we have before
-introduced to your notice as the only amusing work in the English
-language, upon the subject, gives a long list of <i>bon vivants</i> of the old
-school, amongst whom are some eminent names in the medical profession. In
-fact, the abstemious doctors during the past centuries would seem to have
-been far in the minority. Even Harvey was accused of being fond of brandy.</p>
-
-<p>“Dr. George Fordyce was fond of substantial fare, like<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_566" id="Page_566">[Pg 566]</a></span> Radcliffe, who was
-a <i>gormand</i>. For above twenty years Fordyce dined at Dolly’s chop-house.
-The dinner he there consumed was his only meal during the four and twenty
-hours.</p>
-
-<p>“Four o’clock was his dinner hour. Before him was set a silver tankard of
-strongest ale, a bottle of port wine, and a quarter pint of brandy.</p>
-
-<p>“The dinner was preluded by a dish of broiled fowl, or a few whitings.
-Having leisurely devoured this plate, the doctor took a glass of brandy,
-and ordered his steak, which was always a prime one, <i>weighing one and a
-half pounds</i>. Of course, vegetables, etc., accompanied the steak.</p>
-
-<p>“When the man of science had devoured the whole of this, the bulk of which
-would have kept a boa constrictor happy a twelvemonth, he took the rest of
-his brandy, drank off the tankard of ale, and topped off by sipping down
-his bottle of port wine.</p>
-
-<p>“Having thus brought his intellects, up or down, to the standard of his
-pupils, he rose, and walked down to Essex Street, and delivered his six
-o’clock lecture on chemistry.� (He lived to the age of sixty-six.)</p>
-
-<p>Another glutton, in contrast with whom Fordyce was an abstinent, was Dr.
-Beauford. In 1745 he was summoned to appear before the privy council, to
-answer some questions relative to Lord B., with whom the doctor was
-intimate.</p>
-
-<p>“Do you know Lord Barrymore?� asked one of the lords.</p>
-
-<p>“Intimately, <i>most</i> intimately,� replied the doctor.</p>
-
-<p>“You were often with him?�</p>
-
-<p>“We dine together almost daily when his lordship is in town,� answered the
-doctor, with expressions of delight.</p>
-
-<p>“What do you talk about?�</p>
-
-<p>“Eating and drinking.�</p>
-
-<p>“Eating and drinking! What else?� asked his lordship.</p>
-
-<p>“O, my lord, we never talk about anything but eating and
-drinking,&mdash;except&mdash;�</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_567" id="Page_567">[Pg 567]</a></span>“Except what, sir?�</p>
-
-<p>“<i>Except drinking and eating</i>, my lord.�</p>
-
-<p>The council retired, greatly disappointed, for they had expected to worm
-some important secret from the doctor.</p>
-
-<p>At Finch Lane Tavern, where Dr. Beauford used to receive the apothecaries
-at half fee, he was represented as sitting over his bottles and glasses,
-from which he drank deeply, never offering one of his clients a drop,
-though they often sat opposite, at the same table, looking with anxious
-countenances and watering mouths upon the tempting cordials, as the doctor
-tossed them off.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">“Doorn’t go to ’im,� etc.</span></p>
-
-<p>“Not many years since, in a fishing village on the eastern coast, there
-flourished a doctor in great repute amongst the poor, and his influence
-over the humble patients literally depended on the fact that he was sure,
-once in the twenty-four hours, to be handsomely intoxicated.</p>
-
-<p>“Dickens has told us how, when he bought the raven immortalized in
-‘Barnaby Rudge,’ the vender of that sagacious bird, after enumerating his
-various accomplishments, said, in conclusion,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“‘But, sir, if you want him to come out strong, you must show him a man
-drunk.’</p>
-
-<p>“The simple villagers of Flintbeach had a firm faith in the strengthening
-effect of looking at a tipsy doctor. They usually postponed their visits
-to Dr. Mutchkins till evening, because they then had the benefit of the
-learned man in his highest intellectual condition.</p>
-
-<p>“‘Doorn’t go to ’im i’ the morning; he can’t doctor no ways to speak on
-till he’s had a glass,’ was the advice usually given to strangers not
-aware of the doctor’s little peculiarities.�</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_568" id="Page_568">[Pg 568]</a></span></p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Dr. Butler’s Beer and Bath.</span></p>
-
-<p>An amusing description is given of one Dr. Butler, of London, who, like
-the above, used to get drunk nightly. He was the inventor of a beer which
-bore his name, something like our Ottawa, “with a stick in it,� by one Dr.
-Irish. We once saw a drunken fellow holding on to a lamp post, while he
-held out one hand, and was arguing with an imaginary policeman that he was
-not drunk,&mdash;only had been taking a “little of that&mdash;hic&mdash;beverage, Dr.
-Waterwa’s Irish beer, by the advice of his physician.�</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 250px; height: 450px;"><img src="images/img168.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">“ONLY IRISH BEER.�</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>Dr. Butler had an old female servant named Nell Boler. At ten o’clock,
-nightly, she used to go to the tavern where the doctor was, by that hour,
-too drunk to go home alone, when, after some argument and a deal of
-scolding from Nell for his “beastly drunkenness,� she would carry the
-inebriated doctor home, and put him to bed.</p>
-
-<p>“Notwithstanding that Dr. Butler was fond of beer and wine for himself, he
-was said to approve of water for his patients. Once he occupied rooms
-bordering on the Thames. A gentleman afflicted by the ague came to see
-him. Butler<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_569" id="Page_569">[Pg 569]</a></span> tipped the wink to his assistant, who tumbled the invalid out
-of the window, slap into the river. We are asked to believe that the
-surprise actually cured the patient of his disease.�</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 450px; height: 277px;"><img src="images/img169.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">CURE FOR THE AGUE.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>Water did not cure the doctor, however, but beer did.</p>
-
-<p>Dr. Burrowly was stricken down in his prime, and just as he was about to
-succeed to the most elevated position in the medical profession.</p>
-
-<p>The doctor was a politician, as well as an excellent surgeon. When Lords
-Gower and Vandeput were contesting the election for Westminster, in 1780,
-the doctor was supporting the latter. One Weatherly, who kept a tavern,
-and whose wife wore the &mdash;&mdash; belt, was very sick. Mrs. Weatherly deeply
-regretted the fact of the sickness, as she wanted her husband to vote for
-Lord T. Late on election day, Dr. Burrowly called round to see his
-patient, quite willing that he should be sufficiently sick to keep him
-from going to the polls. To his surprise he found him up, and dressed.</p>
-
-<p>“Heyday! how’s this?� exclaimed the doctor, in anger. “Why are you up,
-without my permission?�</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_570" id="Page_570">[Pg 570]</a></span>“O, doctor,� replied Joe Weatherly, feebly, “I am going to vote.�</p>
-
-<p>“Vote!� roared the doctor, not doubting that his wife had urged him to
-attempt to go to the polls to vote for Lord J. “To bed. The cold air would
-kill you. To bed instantly, or you’re a dead man before nightfall.�</p>
-
-<p>“I’ll do as you say, doctor; but as my wife was away, I thought I could
-get as far as Covent Garden Church, and vote for Sir George Vandeput.�</p>
-
-<p>“For Sir George, did you say, Joe?�</p>
-
-<p>“O, yes, sir; I don’t agree with my wife. She’s for Lord Trentham.�</p>
-
-<p>The doctor changed his prognosis.</p>
-
-<p>“Wait. Let me see; nurse, don’t remove his stockings;� feeling the man’s
-pulse. “Humph! A good firm stroke. Better than I expected. You took the
-pills? Yes; they made you sick? Nurse, did he sleep well?�</p>
-
-<p>“Charmingly, sir;� with a knowing twinkle of the eye.</p>
-
-<p>“Well, Joe, if you are bent on going to the polls, it will set your mind
-better at ease to go. It’s a fine sunny afternoon. The ride will do you
-good. So, bedad, I’ll take you along in my chariot.�</p>
-
-<p>Weatherly was delighted with the doctor’s urbanity, resumed his coat, went
-to the election, and voted for Sir George, rode back in the chariot, <i>and
-died two hours afterwards</i>, amidst the reproaches of his amiable spouse.</p>
-
-<p>“Called away from a dinner table, where he was eating, laughing, and
-drinking deeply, Dr. B. was found dead in the coach from apoplexy, on the
-arrival at the place of destination.�</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img170.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
-<hr style="width: 50%;" />
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_571" id="Page_571">[Pg 571]</a></span></p>
-<h2><a name="XXIII" id="XXIII"></a>XXIII.</h2>
-<p class="title">THE DOCTOR AS POET, AUTHOR, AND MUSICIAN.</p>
-
-<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table">
-<tr><td>“Here comes the trout that must be caught with tickling.�<br />
-<br />
-“To patient study, and unwearied thought,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And wise and watchful nurture of his powers,</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Must the true poet consecrate his hours:</span><br />
-Thus, and thus only, may the crown be bought<br />
-Which his great brethren all their lives have sought;<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">For not to careless wreathers of chance-flowers</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Openeth the Muse her amaranthine bowers,</span><br />
-But to the few, who worthily have fought<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The toilsome fight, and won their way to fame.</span><br />
-With such as these I may not cast my lot,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">With such as these I must not seek a name;</span><br />
-Content to please a while and be forgot;<br />
-Winning from daily toil&mdash;which irks me not&mdash;<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Rare and brief leisure my poor song to frame.�</span></td></tr></table>
-
-<div class="note"><p class="hang"><small>OUR PATRON, OUR PATTERN.&mdash;SOME WRITERS.&mdash;SOME BLUNDERS.&mdash;AN OLD
-SMOKER.&mdash;OLD GREEKS.&mdash;A DUKE ANSWERED BY A COUNTRY MISS.&mdash;THE PILGRIMS
-AND THE PEAS.&mdash;“LITTLE DAISY.�&mdash;“CASA WAPPA!�&mdash;FINE POETRY.&mdash;MORE
-SCHOOLMASTERS AND TAILORS.&mdash;NAPOLEON’S AND WASHINGTON’S PHYSICIANS.&mdash;A
-FRENCH “BUTCHER.�&mdash;A DIF. OF OPINION.&mdash;SOME EPITAPHS.&mdash;DR. HOLMES’
-“ONE-HOSS SHAY.�&mdash;HEALTHFUL INFLUENCE OF MUSIC.&mdash;SAVED BY MUSIC.&mdash;A
-GERMAN TOUCH-UP.&mdash;MUSIC ON ANIMALS.&mdash;MUSIC AMONG THE MICE.&mdash;MUSIC AND HEALTH.</small></p></div>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p>Apollo,&mdash;the father of Æsculapius, the “father of physicians�&mdash;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&mdash;he being the protector of shepherds and the
-Muses&mdash;and the physician’s cane and surgeon’s pole. Apollo is represented
-with flowing hair,&mdash;which the Romans loved to imitate, with an effort also
-at his graces<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_572" id="Page_572">[Pg 572]</a></span> 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, <i>beardless</i> youth, and instead of a bottle or
-cigar, he held a lyre in his hand and discoursed music.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img171.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">AN EMBRYO APOLLO.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>I think Dr. Apollo a very safe pattern for our students to imitate, those
-particularly who are “fast,� and who only think, with <i>Bobby Burns</i>,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p class="poem">“Just now we’re living sound and hale;<br />
-Then top and maintop crowd the sail;<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Heave care owre side!</span><br />
-And large, before enjoyment’s gale,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Let’s tak the tide.�</span></p>
-
-<p>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.�</p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-<p>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 <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_573" id="Page_573">[Pg 573]</a></span>knowledge, or Miss Bonheur as a painter of animals? Dr. Hunter says
-“Vinci (L.) was at the time the best anatomist in the world.�</p>
-
-<p>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 <i>did not succeed
-in what they were not, but did succeed in what they were</i>&mdash;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.</p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-<p>It has been intimated in these pages that Shakspeare was prejudiced
-against medicine,&mdash;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.</p>
-
-<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_574" id="Page_574">[Pg 574]</a></span>
-was not born till six hundred years afterwards, viz.,&mdash;A. D. 130.</p>
-
-<p>We should smile to see the Apollo Belvedere with “glasses on his
-nose,�&mdash;as many of our young ape-ollos now wear for <i>effect</i>; 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.</p>
-
-<p>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.<a name='fna_8' id='fna_8' href='#f_8'><small>[8]</small></a></p>
-
-<p>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, <i>and lighting one end, smoke away like devils</i>.� (The primitive
-cigar.)</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Ancient Greek Authors.</span></p>
-
-<p>Nearly all the ancient Greek physicians were authors of no mean calibre,
-considering the age in which they lived.</p>
-
-<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_575" id="Page_575">[Pg 575]</a></span> 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.</p>
-
-<p>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.�</p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-<p>Theophrastus wrote a book on plants. He lived to be one hundred and seven
-years old.</p>
-
-<p>Herophilus first made diagnosis by the pulse, upon which he wrote a book.</p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-<p>Galen was a man of great talent and education. Suidas&mdash;11th century&mdash;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.</p>
-
-<p>Besides medicine, the above famous physicians wrote on philosophy,
-history, religion, etc. Poetry in those days was little more than heroic,
-or epic, prose.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_576" id="Page_576">[Pg 576]</a></span></p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">The Duke answered by a Country Miss.</span></p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-<p>“Do you have books here, my dear?� he asked, contemptuously.</p>
-
-<p>“O, yes, sir,� replied the girl naively, “<i>we have the Bible and Peter
-Pindar</i>.�</p>
-
-<p>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
-“<i>all</i> 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.�</p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_577" id="Page_577">[Pg 577]</a></span></p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">The Pilgrims and the Peas.</span></p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-<p class="poem">“The knaves set off upon the same day,<br />
-Peas in their shoes, to go and pray;<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">But very different their speed, I wot;</span><br />
-One of the sinners galloped on,<br />
-Light as a bullet from a gun,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><i>The other limped as though he’d been shot</i>.</span><br />
-<br />
-“One saw the Virgin soon, ‘<i>Peccavi!</i>’ cried,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Had his soul whitewashed, all so clever,</span><br />
-When home again he nimbly hied,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Made fit with saints above to live forever!</span><br />
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_578" id="Page_578">[Pg 578]</a></span>In coming back, however, let me say,<br />
-He met his brother rogue about half way,<br />
-Hobbling with outstretched hand and bending knees,<br />
-Cursing the souls and bodies of the peas!<br />
-His eyes in tears, his cheeks and brows in sweat,<br />
-Deep sympathizing with his groaning feet.<br />
-‘How now?’ the light-toed, whitewashed pilgrim broke;<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">‘You lazy lubber!’</span><br />
-‘You see it,’ cried the other. ‘’Tis no joke.<br />
-My feet, once hard as any rock,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Are now as soft as blubber.’</span><br />
-<br />
-“‘But, brother sinner, do explain<br />
-How ’tis that you are not in pain;<br />
-How is’t that you can like a greyhound go,<br />
-Merry as if nought had happened, burn ye?’<br />
-‘Why,’ cried the other, grinning, ‘you must know<br />
-That just before I ventured on my journey,<br />
-To walk a little more at ease,<br />
-<i>I took the liberty to boil my peas</i>!’�</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 450px; height: 396px;"><img src="images/img172.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">THE PILGRIM CHEAT.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Little Davy again.</span></p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-<p>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:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p class="poem">“Gem of our hearth, our household pride,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Earth’s undefiled,</span><br />
-Could love have saved, thou hadst not died,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Our dear, sweet child!</span><br />
-Humbly we bow to Fate’s decree;<br />
-Yet had we hoped that time should see<br />
-Thee mourn for us, not us for thee,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 9em;">Casa Wappy!<a name='fna_9' id='fna_9' href='#f_9'><small>[9]</small></a></span><br />
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_579" id="Page_579">[Pg 579]</a></span><br />
-“The nursery shows thy pictured wall,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Thy bat, thy bow,</span><br />
-Thy cloak, thy bonnet, club, and ball;<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">But where art thou?</span><br />
-A corner holds thine empty chair;<br />
-Thy playthings, idly scattered there,<br />
-But speak to us of our despair,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 9em;">Casa Wappy!</span><br />
-<br />
-“Yet ’tis a sweet balm to our despair,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Fond, fairest boy,</span><br />
-That heaven is God’s, and thou art there,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">With him in joy!</span><br />
-There past are death and all its woes,<br />
-There beauty’s stream forever flows,<br />
-And pleasure’s day no sunset knows,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 9em;">Casa Wappy!�</span></p>
-
-<p>“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,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“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.�</p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_580" id="Page_580">[Pg 580]</a></span> 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.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">More Schoolmasters and Tailors.</span></p>
-
-<p>Dr. Richard Blackmore (Sir)&mdash;our “schoolmaster turned doctor�&mdash;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.</p>
-
-<p>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.�</p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-<p>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.�</p>
-
-<p>Heinrich Stilling, “a pseudonyme adopted by Heinrich Jung, in one of the
-most remarkable autobiographies ever<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_581" id="Page_581">[Pg 581]</a></span> 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.</p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-<p>His most remarkable production, however, was his autobiography entitled
-“Jugend, Junglingjahre, Wanderschaft und Alter Von Heinrich Stilling.�</p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-<p>One day, in Paris, the celebrated surgeon Dr. R. &mdash;&mdash; 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.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_582" id="Page_582">[Pg 582]</a></span>“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.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">A Difference of Opinion.</span></p>
-
-<p>In “Surgeons of New York� Dr. Francis gives the following:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“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,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“Yes, sir;� most positively.</p>
-
-<p>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</p>
-
-<p>“Never!�</p>
-
-<p>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
-<i>beyond the handle</i>.�</p>
-
-<p>Dr. Hosack (Alex. Eddy) was also physician to Aaron Burr.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_583" id="Page_583">[Pg 583]</a></span></p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 600px; height: 398px;"><img src="images/img173.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">FRANKLIN’S EXPERIMENTS WITH ETHER.</p>
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_584" id="Page_584">[Pg 584]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_585" id="Page_585">[Pg 585]</a></span>“Do you never experience any contrition, at times, for the deed?� (viz.,
-shooting Hamilton), asked Dr. H. of his patient.</p>
-
-<p>“No, sir; I could not regret it. Twice he crossed my path. He brought it
-upon himself,� was Burr’s reply.</p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Some Puritanic Epitaphs.</span></p>
-
-<p>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,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p class="poem">“In costly verse, and most laborious rhymes,<br />
-He dished up truths right worthy our regard.�</p>
-
-<p>He was buried in Malden, near Boston, and his epitaph was written by
-Mather.</p>
-
-<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: -1em;">THE EXCELLENT MICHAEL WIGGLESWORTH.</span><br />
-<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 2em;"><i>Remembered by some good tokens.</i></span><br />
-<br />
-“His pen did once <i>meat from the eater fetch</i>;<br />
-And now he’s gone beyond the <i>eater’s</i> reach.<br />
-His body, once so <i>thin</i>, was next to <i>none</i>;<br />
-From hence he’s to <i>unbodied spirits</i> flown.<br />
-Once his rare skill did all <i>diseases</i> heal;<br />
-And he does nothing now uneasy feel.<br />
-He to his Paradise is joyful come,<br />
-And waits with joy to see his <i>Day of Doom</i>.�</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_586" id="Page_586">[Pg 586]</a></span>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.</p>
-
-<p class="poem">“He who among physicians shone so late,<br />
-And by his wise prescriptions conquered Fate,<br />
-Now lies extended in the silent grave;<br />
-Nor him alive would his vast merit save.<br />
-But still his fame shall last, his virtues live,<br />
-And all sepulchral monuments survive:<br />
-Still flourish shall his name: nor shall this stone<br />
-Long as his piety and love be known.�</p>
-
-<p>And</p>
-
-<p class="poem">“Such graves as his are pilgrim shrines,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Shrines to no code or creed confined&mdash;</span><br />
-<i>The Delphian vales, the Palestines,</i><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><i>The Meccas of the mind</i>.�</span></p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">The One-Hoss Shay.</span></p>
-
-<p>Mr. Mundella, of the British Parliament, recently said,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“American authors are now among the best writers in the English language.
-Among the poets were Longfellow, Holmes, Whittier, Bryant, and
-Lowell&mdash;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.</p>
-
-<p>As a poet, “his style is brilliant, sparkling, and terse,� says Hillard.</p>
-
-<p>I can only find space for the following from the pen of Dr. Holmes:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p class="poem">Have you heard of the wonderful one-hoss shay,<br />
-That was built in such a logical way,<br />
-To run a hundred years to a day,<br />
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_587" id="Page_587">[Pg 587]</a></span>And then, of a sudden, it&mdash;ah, but stay,<br />
-I’ll tell you what happened without delay:<br />
-Scaring the parson into fits,<br />
-Frightening people out of their wits,<br />
-Have you heard of that, I say?<br />
-<br />
-Seventeen hundred and fifty-five,<br />
-<i>Georgius Secundus</i> was then alive,&mdash;<br />
-Snuffy old drone from the German hive!<br />
-That was the year when Lisbon town<br />
-Saw the earth open and gulp her down,<br />
-And Braddock’s army was done so brown,<br />
-Left without a scalp to its crown.<br />
-It was on the terrible Earthquake day,<br />
-That the deacon finished the one-hoss shay.<br />
-<br />
-Now, in building of chaises, I tell you what,<br />
-There is always <i>somewhere</i> a weakest spot;<br />
-In hub, tire, felloe, in spring or thill,<br />
-In panel or cross-bar, or floor or sill,<br />
-In screw, bolt, thoroughbrace, lurking still,<br />
-Find it somewhere you must and will,<br />
-Above or below, or within or without;<br />
-And that’s the reason, beyond a doubt,<br />
-A chaise <i>breaks down</i>, but doesn’t <i>wear out</i>.<br />
-But the deacon swore (as deacons do,<br />
-With an “I dew vum,� or an “I tell yeou�)<br />
-He would build one shay to beat the taown,<br />
-’n’ the keounty, ’n’ all the kentry raoun’;<br />
-It should be so built that it <i>couldn’t</i> break down:<br />
-“Fur,� said the deacon, “’tis mighty plain<br />
-That the weakes’ place mus’ stan’ the strain;<br />
-’n’ the way t’ fix it, uz I maintain,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;">Is only jest</span><br />
-T’ make that place uz strong uz the rest.�<br />
-<br />
-So the deacon inquired of the village folk<br />
-Where he could find the strongest oak,<br />
-That couldn’t be split, nor bent, nor broke,&mdash;<br />
-That was for spokes, and floor, and sills;<br />
-He sent for lancewood to make the thills;<br />
-The cross-bars were ash, from the straightest trees;<br />
-The panels of white-wood, that cuts like cheese,<br />
-But lasts like iron for things like these;<br />
-The hubs of logs from the “Settler’s Ellum,�&mdash;<br />
-Last of its timber&mdash;they couldn’t sell ’em;<br />
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_588" id="Page_588">[Pg 588]</a></span>Never an axe had seen their chips,<br />
-And the wedges flew from between their lips,<br />
-Their blunt ends frizzled like celery-tips;<br />
-Step and prop-iron, bolt and screw,<br />
-Spring, tire, axle, and linchpin too,<br />
-Steel of the finest, bright and blue;<br />
-Thoroughbrace bison skin, thick and wide;<br />
-Boot, top, dasher, from tough old hide<br />
-Found in the pit when the tanner died.<br />
-That was the way he “put her through.�<br />
-“There!� said the deacon, “naow she’ll dew!�<br />
-<br />
-Do! I tell you, I rather guess<br />
-She was a wonder, and nothing less!<br />
-Colts grew horses, beards turned gray,<br />
-Deacon and deaconess dropped away;<br />
-Children and grandchildren&mdash;where were they?<br />
-But there stood the stout old one-hoss shay<br />
-As fresh as on Lisbon Earthquake day!<br />
-<br />
-Eighteen hundred: it came and found<br />
-The deacon’s masterpiece strong and sound.<br />
-Eighteen hundred increased by ten:<br />
-“Hansum kerridge� they called it then.<br />
-Eighteen hundred and twenty came,&mdash;<br />
-Running as usual; much the same.<br />
-Thirty and forty at last arrive,<br />
-And then came fifty and <i>fifty-five</i>.<br />
-<br />
-Little of all we value here<br />
-Wakes on the morn of its hundredth year<br />
-Without both feeling and looking queer.<br />
-In fact, there’s nothing that keeps its youth,<br />
-So far as I know, but a tree and truth.<br />
-(This is a moral that runs at large;<br />
-Take it. You’re welcome. No extra charge.)<br />
-<i>First of November</i>,&mdash;the Earthquake day,&mdash;<br />
-There are traces of age in the one-hoss shay,<br />
-A general flavor of mild decay,<br />
-But nothing local, as one may say.<br />
-There couldn’t be,&mdash;for the deacon’s art<br />
-Had made it so like in every part<br />
-That there wasn’t a chance for one to start.<br />
-<br />
-For the wheels were just as strong as the thills,<br />
-And the floor was just as strong as the sills,<br />
-And the panels just as strong as the floor,<br />
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_589" id="Page_589">[Pg 589]</a></span>And the whippletree neither less nor more,<br />
-And the back cross-bar as strong as the fore,<br />
-And spring, and axle, and hub <i>encore</i>.<br />
-And yet, <i>as a whole</i>, it is past no doubt,<br />
-In another hour it will be <i>worn out</i>.<br />
-<br />
-First of November, fifty-five!<br />
-This morning the parson takes a drive.<br />
-Now, small boys, get out of the way!<br />
-Here comes the wonderful one-hoss shay,<br />
-Drawn by a rat-tailed, ewe-necked bay.<br />
-“Huddup!� said the parson. Off went they.<br />
-<br />
-The parson was working his Sunday’s text,<br />
-Had got to <i>fifthly</i>, and stopped perplexed,<br />
-And what the&mdash;Moses&mdash;was coming next?<br />
-All at once the horse stood still,<br />
-Close by the meet’n’-house on the hill.<br />
-First a shiver, and then a thrill,<br />
-Then something decidedly like a spill,&mdash;<br />
-And the parson was sitting upon a rock,<br />
-At half past nine by the meet’n’-house clock,&mdash;<br />
-Just the hour of the Earthquake shock!<br />
-What do you think the parson found,<br />
-When he got up and stared around?<br />
-The poor old chaise in a heap or mound,<br />
-As if it had been to the mill and ground!<br />
-You see, of course, if you’re not a dunce,<br />
-How it went to pieces all at once,&mdash;<br />
-All at once and nothing first,&mdash;<br />
-Just as bubbles do when they burst.<br />
-<br />
-End of the wonderful one-hoss shay.<br />
-Logic is logic. That’s all I say.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_590" id="Page_590">[Pg 590]</a></span></p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 600px; height: 401px;"><img src="images/img174.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">END OF THE WONDERFUL ONE-HORSE SHAY.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_591" id="Page_591">[Pg 591]</a></span></p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Healthful Influence of Music.</span></p>
-
-<p>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
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_592" id="Page_592">[Pg 592]</a></span>“Retreat,� at Hartford, Conn., has been attended with happy results.</p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-<p>Determined not to hurry over the case, and seeing a closed piano in the
-room, I asked if it was not used.</p>
-
-<p>“No,� replied the mother; “she has not touched it for more than three
-months; she takes no interest in anything.�</p>
-
-<p>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.�</p>
-
-<p>“Pooh!� I exclaimed. “You, madam, discourage her. Let me sing something
-that will awaken her from her lethargy.�</p>
-
-<p>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....</p>
-
-<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_593" id="Page_593">[Pg 593]</a></span> avail, now took effect. O, I pity the poor fool
-who <i>only</i> 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.</p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-<p>I know of a great many excellent physicians who are musicians and lovers
-of music. Guilmette is a first-class primo basso.</p>
-
-<p>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.�</p>
-
-<p>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:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p class="poem">“December’s came, and now der breezes<br />
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_594" id="Page_594">[Pg 594]</a></span>Howls vay up amidst der dreeses;<br />
-Now der boy mit ragged drouses<br />
-Shivering feeches home der cowses.<br />
-His boots vas old, und dorn his gloze is,<br />
-Und bless my shdars, how blue his nose is!�</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Influence of Music upon Animals.</span></p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_595" id="Page_595">[Pg 595]</a></span></p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 450px; height: 329px;"><img src="images/img175.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">“MUSIC, THE SOUL OF LIFE.�</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 450px; height: 352px;"><img src="images/img176.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">THE MUSICAL MICE.</p>
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_596" id="Page_596">[Pg 596]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_597" id="Page_597">[Pg 597]</a></span>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.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Music among the Mice.</span></p>
-
-<p>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:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“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,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“‘Perhaps you would like to see my pupils. If you will be seated, and
-remain very quiet, I will call them out.’</p>
-
-<p>“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 manœuvred till the music ceased, when they
-scampered away to their holes again.�</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_598" id="Page_598">[Pg 598]</a></span></p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Music and Health.</span></p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-<p>“<span class="smcap">Prove all things; hold fast to that which is good.</span>�</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img177.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
-<hr style="width: 50%;" />
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_599" id="Page_599">[Pg 599]</a></span></p>
-<h2><a name="XXIV" id="XXIV"></a>XXIV.</h2>
-<p class="title">ADULTERATIONS.</p>
-
-<div class="note"><p class="hang"><small>BREAD, BUTTER, AND THE BIBLE.&mdash;“JACK ASHORE.�&mdash;BUCKWHEAT CAKES ARE
-GOOD.&mdash;WHAT’S IN THE BREAD, AND HOW TO DETECT IT.&mdash;BUTTER.&mdash;HOW TO
-TELL GOOD AND BAD.&mdash;MILK.&mdash;ANALYSIS OF GOOD AND “SWILL MILK.�&mdash;WHAT’S
-IN THE MILK BESIDES MICE?&mdash;THE COW WITH ONE TEAT.&mdash;“LOUD� CHEESE.&mdash;TEA
-AND COFFEE.&mdash;TANNIN, SAWDUST, AND HORSES’ LIVERS.&mdash;ALCOHOLIC
-DRINKS.&mdash;CHURCH WINE AND BREAD.&mdash;BEER AND BITTER HERBS.&mdash;SPANISH FLIES
-AND STRYCHNINE.&mdash;“NINE MEN STANDIN’ AT THE DOOR.�&mdash;BURTON’S ALE; AN
-ASTONISHING FACT.&mdash;FISHY.&mdash;“FISH ON A SPREE.�&mdash;TO REMEDY IMPURE
-WATER.&mdash;CHARCOAL AND THE BISHOP.&mdash;HOG-ISH.&mdash;PORK AND
-SCROFULA.&mdash;NOTICES OF THE PRESS.</small></p></div>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Bread.</span></p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-<p>Two shipwrecked sailors, floating on a spar, after long privation and
-suffering, were thrown upon an unknown land. After looking about very
-shyly,&mdash;for every thing looked wild and uncivilized,&mdash;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,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“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.�</p>
-
-<p>This was conclusive evidence, next to finding a Bible, that it was a
-civilized country; and Jack waited for no further<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_600" id="Page_600">[Pg 600]</a></span> proof, but followed
-Captain Duncan into the cabin, where the two soon appeased their hunger.</p>
-
-<p>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,<a name='fna_10' id='fna_10' href='#f_10'><small>[10]</small></a> or coast-men, the more intellectual for having
-made fish their principal diet?</p>
-
-<p>In five hundred pounds of wheat, there are,&mdash;</p>
-
-<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table">
-<tr><td>Muscle material,</td>
-    <td><span class="spacer">&nbsp;</span></td>
-    <td>78</td><td>pounds.</td></tr>
-<tr><td>Bone (and teeth) material,</td>
-    <td>&nbsp;</td>
-    <td>85</td><td align="center">"</td></tr>
-<tr><td>Fat principle,</td>
-    <td>&nbsp;</td>
-    <td>12</td><td align="center">"</td></tr></table>
-
-<p>Ground to a fine flour:&mdash;</p>
-
-<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table">
-<tr><td>Muscle material,</td>
-    <td><span class="spacer">&nbsp;</span></td>
-    <td>65</td><td>pounds.</td></tr>
-<tr><td>Bone material,</td>
-    <td>&nbsp;</td>
-    <td>30</td><td align="center">"</td></tr>
-<tr><td>Fat principle,</td>
-    <td>&nbsp;</td>
-    <td>10</td><td align="center">"</td></tr></table>
-
-<p>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,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“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.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_601" id="Page_601">[Pg 601]</a></span></p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 337px; height: 500px;"><img src="images/img178.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">SIGNS OF CIVILIZATION.</p>
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_602" id="Page_602">[Pg 602]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_603" id="Page_603">[Pg 603]</a></span>“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.�</p>
-
-<p>Another writer says,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“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.�</p>
-
-<p>Since bread, then, is the “staff of life,� the sin of its adulteration is
-the greatest of all wrongs to the human family.</p>
-
-<p>Flour is often adulterated with plaster, white earth, alum, magnesia, etc.</p>
-
-<p>To detect plaster, burn some of the bread to ashes, and the white grains
-will be discovered.</p>
-
-<p>Alum is a very pernicious ingredient of adulteration, intended to make the
-bread white and light. It is often mixed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_604" id="Page_604">[Pg 604]</a></span> 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.</p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Butter.</span></p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Milk.</span></p>
-
-<p>“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!</p>
-
-<p class="center"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_605" id="Page_605">[Pg 605]</a></span><i>Pure Milk contains</i></p>
-
-<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table">
-<tr><td>Water,</td>
-    <td><span class="spacer">&nbsp;</span></td>
-    <td align="right">862.8</td></tr>
-<tr><td>Solid particles,</td>
-    <td>&nbsp;</td>
-    <td align="right" class="botbor">137.2</td></tr>
-<tr><td><span style="margin-left: 4em;">To parts</span></td>
-    <td>&nbsp;</td>
-    <td align="right">1000</td></tr>
-<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td>Butter,</td>
-    <td>&nbsp;</td>
-    <td align="right">43.8</td></tr>
-<tr><td>Sugar,</td>
-    <td>&nbsp;</td>
-    <td align="right">52.7</td></tr>
-<tr><td>Caseine,</td>
-    <td>&nbsp;</td>
-    <td align="right">38.0</td></tr>
-<tr><td>Saline,</td>
-    <td>&nbsp;</td>
-    <td align="right" class="botbor">2.7</td></tr>
-<tr><td><span style="margin-left: 2em;">Solid matter,</span></td>
-    <td>&nbsp;</td>
-    <td align="right">137.2</td></tr></table>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><i>Grass-fed Cows’ Milk.</i></p>
-
-<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table">
-<tr><td>Water,</td>
-    <td><span class="spacer">&nbsp;</span></td>
-    <td align="right">868</td></tr>
-<tr><td>Solid,</td>
-    <td>&nbsp;</td>
-    <td align="right" class="botbor">132</td></tr>
-<tr><td><span style="margin-left: 2em;">To parts</span></td>
-    <td>&nbsp;</td>
-    <td align="right">1000</td></tr>
-<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td>Butter,</td>
-    <td>&nbsp;</td>
-    <td align="right">44</td></tr>
-<tr><td>Sugar,</td>
-    <td>&nbsp;</td>
-    <td align="right">46</td></tr>
-<tr><td>Caseine,</td>
-    <td>&nbsp;</td>
-    <td align="right">39</td></tr>
-<tr><td>Salt,</td>
-    <td>&nbsp;</td>
-    <td align="right" class="botbor">3</td></tr>
-<tr><td><span style="margin-left: 2em;">Solid matter,</span></td>
-    <td>&nbsp;</td>
-    <td align="right">132</td></tr></table>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><i>Swill Milk of New York.</i></p>
-
-<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table">
-<tr><td>Water,</td>
-    <td><span class="spacer">&nbsp;</span></td>
-    <td align="right">930</td></tr>
-<tr><td>Solid particles,</td>
-    <td>&nbsp;</td>
-    <td align="right" class="botbor">70</td></tr>
-<tr><td><span style="margin-left: 2em;">To parts</span></td>
-    <td>&nbsp;</td>
-    <td align="right">1000</td></tr>
-<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td>Butter,</td>
-    <td>&nbsp;</td>
-    <td align="right">18</td></tr>
-<tr><td>Sugar,</td>
-    <td>&nbsp;</td>
-    <td align="right">8</td></tr>
-<tr><td>Caseine,</td>
-    <td>&nbsp;</td>
-    <td align="right">34</td></tr>
-<tr><td>Salt,</td>
-    <td>&nbsp;</td>
-    <td align="right" class="botbor">10</td></tr>
-<tr><td><span style="margin-left: 2em;">Solid matter,</span></td>
-    <td>&nbsp;</td>
-    <td align="right">70</td></tr></table>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img179.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">SWILL MILK (MAGNIFIED).</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>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 <i>diseased udder</i>, with broken-down rotten globules.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_606" id="Page_606">[Pg 606]</a></span>The result of feeding children on this pernicious article of diet is to
-generate scrofula, skin diseases, rickets, diarrhœa, cholera infantum,
-and consumption, or marasmus&mdash;wasting away.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img180.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">PURE MILK.<span class="spacer3">&nbsp;</span>WATERED MILK.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 450px; height: 321px;"><img src="images/img181.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">“WHAT’S IN THE MILK?�</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_607" id="Page_607">[Pg 607]</a></span>Some children in cities literally starve to death on this sort of milk.</p>
-
-<p>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. <i>Animals’ brains</i>, 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.</p>
-
-<p>We once saw a milkman <i>picking a pair of mice out of his big milk can</i>;
-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�?</p>
-
-<p>During the late run on the &mdash;&mdash; 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!</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">The Cow with One Teat.</span></p>
-
-<p class="poem">A cute old dairyman, who lived on a farm,&mdash;<br />
-To tell you the place is no good, nor no harm,&mdash;<br />
-Kept three or four cows&mdash;“Fan,� “Molly,� and “Bess,�<br />
-With one not yet mentioned, whose name you can’t guess.<br />
-<br />
-Two teams he kept running by night and by day,<br />
-But where all the milk came from nobody could say;<br />
-His cows were no better than those of his neighbor,<br />
-Who kept just as many with equal the labor.<br />
-<br />
-And as for paying! he built a great house,<br />
-And barns, and granaries that would keep out a mouse;<br />
-He drove fast horses, and was said to live high,<br />
-But his neighbors looked on, and couldn’t tell why.<br />
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_608" id="Page_608">[Pg 608]</a></span><br />
-“<i>Old Bess kicked the bucket!</i> Now let’s see,� said they,<br />
-“If he runs his two carts in the same style to-day.�<br />
-But the ’cute old farmer was not to be beat,<br />
-For the best to give down was the cow with one teat!<br />
-<br />
-But since old “Bess� died the milk had grown thinner,<br />
-And the fact <i>leaked</i> out now that the old sinner<br />
-Had a cow with one teat, and fixed near the rump<br />
-Was a handle which worked like any good pump!</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Cheese.</span></p>
-
-<p>“Poison is sometimes generated in curds, and cheese prepared too damp,
-without sufficient salt.�</p>
-
-<p>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 <i>choice</i>, <i>fragrant</i>, Limburger cheese. Although of Dutch
-<i>descent</i>, we ‘pass.’ <i>Our</i> ‘offence is <i>not</i> rank!’ and does not ‘smell
-to Heaven.’ That <i>distinct</i> package of Limburger could give the ninety and
-nine little ‘stinks of Cologne’ ten points, and ‘skunk’ ’em&mdash;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
-<i>are</i> some people who eat Limburger. It’s just as a man is brought up.
-‘None for Joseph,’ thank you.�</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Tea and Coffee.</span></p>
-
-<p>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!</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_609" id="Page_609">[Pg 609]</a></span>All imported tea is black, unless colored before leaving China, and is
-colored by prussiate of potash&mdash;a poison so deleterious as to require
-labelling in drug stores as “<span class="smcap">Poison</span>.� It makes one very nervous,&mdash;good tea
-does not, unless used to excess,&mdash;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.</p>
-
-<p>I obtained these facts from a retired tea merchant of Philadelphia. He
-spent some time in China.</p>
-
-<p>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 <i>give them more body</i>! Pure coffee is
-the less injurious. All these substances may be detected, <i>as they become
-soft by boiling, which coffee-bean does not</i>. Coffee browned in
-silver-lined cylinders retains its flavor more perfectly than in iron.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Alcoholic Drinks.</span></p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-<p><i>Wines.</i>&mdash;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.</p>
-
-<p>To detect arsenic, put some pure lime-water in a glass, and drop the
-wine,&mdash;say a teaspoonful,&mdash;into it. If white clouds arise, expect that it
-contains arsenic. A positive test of arsenic in liquids is the
-ammonio-nitrate of silver,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_610" id="Page_610">[Pg 610]</a></span> which precipitates a rich yellow matter, the
-<i>arseniate of silver</i>, 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 <i>alum, arsenic, and bugs</i>!
-(cochineal). Of bread I say the same. A deacon’s wife, not a hundred miles
-from Lowell, buys baker’s bread, <i>sour and yellow</i>, 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 <i>any</i> foreign wines.</p>
-
-<p>Alcohol has been distilled from the brain and other parts of the dead body
-of drunkards.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">A Wine Bath.</span></p>
-
-<p>An American traveller in the streets of Paris, seeing the words, “Wine
-Baths given here,� exclaimed,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“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.�</p>
-
-<p>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,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“O, massa, we just pass it along into anudder room, where we gib bath at
-four francs.�</p>
-
-<p>“Then you throw it away, I suppose.�</p>
-
-<p>“No, massa; den we send it lower down, and charge three francs a bath.
-Dar’s plenty of people who ain’t so berry<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_611" id="Page_611">[Pg 611]</a></span> 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.�</p>
-
-<p>“Then, of course, you throw it away,� exclaimed the traveller, who thought
-this was going even beyond Yankee profit.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 450px; height: 360px;"><img src="images/img182.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">A CHAMPAGNE BATH.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>“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.�</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">A Chemist’s Testimony.</span></p>
-
-<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_612" id="Page_612">[Pg 612]</a></span> 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.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img183.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">MOTHER’S MILK PURE AND HEALTHY.<span class="spacer">&nbsp;</span>MOTHER’S MILK AFTER DRINKING WHISKEY.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_613" id="Page_613">[Pg 613]</a></span>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&mdash;brown stout. To avoid them, <i>drink no beer</i>. It
-is of no earthly or heavenly use. A patient who would die without beer
-will certainly die with its use. <i>Spanish flies</i> are said to be used in
-liquors sometimes.</p>
-
-<p>The strychnine&mdash;of whiskey&mdash;directs its action to the superior portion of
-the spinal cord: hence paralysis, insanity, and sudden death of whiskey
-drinkers.</p>
-
-<p>Drinkers often suffer from gravel, from the lime, or chalk, or other
-minerals contained in liquors. Alcohol itself will <i>not digest</i>, yet
-ignorant physicians prescribe alcoholic drinks for dyspeptics.</p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">A short Sermon.</span></p>
-
-<p>“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&mdash;for it won’t feel good to drink the stuff
-without sweetenin’.’ So the publikin he marched in, and the bar-keeper
-said, ‘What<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_614" id="Page_614">[Pg 614]</a></span> 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.</p>
-
-<p>“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 <span class="smcap">Conshunce Dodger</span>.�</p>
-
-<hr style="width: 25%;" />
-
-<p><span class="smcap">Alcohol</span> 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 “<i>Old Pale Ale</i>� 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.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_615" id="Page_615">[Pg 615]</a></span><span class="smcap">Fish</span> 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.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">The Fish in Little River on a Spree.</span></p>
-
-<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_616" id="Page_616">[Pg 616]</a></span>
-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.</p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Water.</span></p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-<p>“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.</p>
-
-<hr style="width: 25%;" />
-
-<p><span class="smcap">Charcoal</span> will purify, but it will also defile, as the following will
-show:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_617" id="Page_617">[Pg 617]</a></span> wicked ass threw off his load&mdash;a load too heavy for
-the youngster to replace. He sat down in despair, looking alternately at
-the sack and the cuddy&mdash;the latter (unfeeling brute!) calmly cropping the
-roadside grass. At last a horseman hove in sight, and gradually drew
-nearer and nearer.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 450px; height: 389px;"><img src="images/img184.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">WAITING FOR ASSISTANCE.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>“‘Halloa, thee big fellow!’ cried the lad to the six-feet Archdeacon of
-&mdash;&mdash;, ‘I wish thee’dst get off thy ’oss, and give us a lift with this here
-bag of coals.’</p>
-
-<p>“The venerable rider had delivered many a charge in his life, but never
-received such a one as this himself&mdash;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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_618" id="Page_618">[Pg 618]</a></span> 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 <i>in statu
-quo</i>&mdash;the archdeacon retiring from his task with blackened hands and
-soiled neck-tie.</p>
-
-<p>“‘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!’�</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Hogish.</span></p>
-
-<p>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 <i>scrofa</i> (Latin), from which <i>scrofula</i> 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
-<i>rooted and wallowed in the streets</i>!</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Adulterations of Sugar and Confectionery.</span></p>
-
-<p>It is pleasantly supposed that sugar is the basis of all candies; and
-originally this was doubtless true.</p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-<p>Sugar, pure and in moderate quantities, is a very harmless confection.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_619" id="Page_619">[Pg 619]</a></span>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, <i>unless the stomach be
-very weak</i>. 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.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 450px; height: 280px;"><img src="images/img185.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">A CONFECTIONERY STORE.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>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.�</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_620" id="Page_620">[Pg 620]</a></span>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.</p>
-
-<p>Hence your candies, “nine times out of ten,� will be found to contain
-injurious or poisonous substances.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Refined Sugar.</span></p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-<p>Pulverized sugar is often adulterated with starch, flour, magnesia, and
-sometimes silex and terra alba. Loaf sugar, however, is usually found to
-be pure.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Brown or Unrefined Sugar.</span></p>
-
-<p>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
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_621" id="Page_621">[Pg 621]</a></span>microscope, and lo! you see organized animals, with bodies, heads, eyes,
-legs, and claws!</p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Confectionery. The first Step in its Adulteration.</span></p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-<p>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,&mdash;this would be as ungenerous as untrue,&mdash;or that we must
-use no confectionery. But let us hereby learn to avoid that which is
-impure.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Gypsum, Terra Alba, or Plaster of Paris.</span></p>
-
-<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_622" id="Page_622">[Pg 622]</a></span> confectioner placed a sample of the <i>white
-earth</i> 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.</p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-<p>The natural gypsum, or plaster of commerce, consists of</p>
-
-<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table">
-<tr><td>Water,</td>
-    <td><span class="spacer">&nbsp;</span></td>
-    <td align="right">21</td>
-    <td>per cent.</td></tr>
-<tr><td>Lime,</td>
-    <td>&nbsp;</td>
-    <td align="right">33</td>
-    <td align="center">"</td></tr>
-<tr><td>Sulphuric acid,</td>
-    <td>&nbsp;</td>
-    <td align="right" class="botbor">46</td>
-    <td align="center">"</td></tr>
-<tr><td colspan="2">&nbsp;</td>
-    <td align="right">100</td></tr></table>
-
-<p>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.�</p>
-
-<p>The result is supposed to have been highly convincing. But this was as a
-manure. Dr. Franklin did not recommend it as a condiment.</p>
-
-<p>You may know children who have been sown with plaster&mdash;though that plaster
-was modified by the smaller admixture of sugar&mdash;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.</p>
-
-<p>Gypsum is used in confectionery without being calcined.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_623" id="Page_623">[Pg 623]</a></span> 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.</p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">To detect Mineral Substance.</span></p>
-
-<p>Take no man’s <i>ipse dixit</i> when the health or lives of your precious ones
-are at stake. “Prove all things.�</p>
-
-<p>To detect mineral substances in candy, put a quantity&mdash;particularly of
-lozenges, peppermints, or cream candy&mdash;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. <i>Pure candies leave no sediment when dissolved in hot
-water.</i></p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-<p>Gum arabic drops have been sold for seventeen cents<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_624" id="Page_624">[Pg 624]</a></span> 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.�</p>
-
-<p>Now, glucose is a sugar obtained from grapes, a very nice substitute for
-the above, though less sweet than other sugars&mdash;as cane, beet, etc.</p>
-
-<p>“What do you call glucose?� I asked this confectioner.</p>
-
-<p>“It is mucilage made from glue,� was his reply.</p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-<p>Do not purchase the colored drops. Pure sugar and gum arabic are white, or
-nearly so, and require no coloring.</p>
-
-<p>Purchase only of a reliable party. Avoid colored confectionery, also all
-cheap candies. Even maple sugar makers <i>have heard</i> of sand and gypsum.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_625" id="Page_625">[Pg 625]</a></span></p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Poisonous Coloring Matter, etc.</span></p>
-
-<p>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&mdash;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.�</p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Licorice, Gum Drops, etc.</span></p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-<p>Metcalf &amp; 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_626" id="Page_626">[Pg 626]</a></span> 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,&mdash;refuse from grain,&mdash;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.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Dangerous Acids.</span></p>
-
-<p>“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,&mdash;a physician, by
-the way,&mdash;I asked him how he liked tartaric acid. He replied, “Very well
-in a drink, but not in pies.�</p>
-
-<p>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, diarrhœa, 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.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_627" id="Page_627">[Pg 627]</a></span></p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 450px; height: 309px;"><img src="images/img186.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">TARTARIC ACID FOR SUPPER.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 450px; height: 347px;"><img src="images/img187.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">A STREET CANDY STAND.</p>
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_628" id="Page_628">[Pg 628]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_629" id="Page_629">[Pg 629]</a></span>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.</p>
-
-<p>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 <i>exposé</i> 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.</p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-<p>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,&mdash;none the more poisonous for having been sold upon a
-street stand, however.</p>
-
-<p>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,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_630" id="Page_630">[Pg 630]</a></span>“Have you been selling papers, sonny?�</p>
-
-<p>“Yes, sir; buy one?� he replied, with an eye yet to business.</p>
-
-<p>“Yes; and have you any more pennies?�</p>
-
-<p>“No, sir.� And he dropped his head in confusion.</p>
-
-<p>“How much have you made to-day?� I next inquired.</p>
-
-<p>“Seventeen cents, sir.�</p>
-
-<p>“And expended it all for candy, I suppose.�</p>
-
-<p>Receiving an affirmative reply, I next kindly questioned him respecting
-his family. His mother was a widow, very poor, and I asked him,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“What will she say when you return with no money to show for your day’s
-work?�</p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_631" id="Page_631">[Pg 631]</a></span></p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 600px; height: 401px;"><img src="images/img188.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">THE NEWSBOY’S MOTHER.</p>
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_632" id="Page_632">[Pg 632]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
-
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
-<hr style="width: 50%;" />
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_633" id="Page_633">[Pg 633]</a></span></p>
-<h2><a name="XXV" id="XXV"></a>XXV.</h2>
-<p class="title">ALL ABOUT TOBACCO.</p>
-
-<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table">
-<tr><td>“The doctors admit snuff’s a hurtful thing,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And troubles the brain and sight,</span><br />
-But it helps their trade; so they do not say<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Quite as much as they otherwise might.�&mdash;L. H. S.</span></td></tr></table>
-
-<div class="note"><p class="hang"><small>“HOW MUCH?�&mdash;AMOUNT IN THE WORLD.&mdash;“SIAMESE TWINS.�&mdash;A MIGHTY
-ARMY.&mdash;ITS NAME AND NATIVITY.&mdash;A DONKEY RIDE.&mdash;LITTLE
-BREECHES.&mdash;WHIPPING SCHOOL GIRLS AND BOYS TO MAKE THEM SMOKE.&mdash;TOM’S
-LETTER.&mdash;“PURE SOCIETY.�&mdash;HOW A YOUNG MAN WAS “TOOK IN.�&mdash;DELICIOUS
-MORSELS.&mdash;THE STREET NUISANCE.&mdash;A SQUIRTER.&mdash;ANOTHER.&mdash;IT BEGETS
-LAZINESS.&mdash;NATIONAL RUIN.&mdash;BLACK EYES.&mdash;DISEASE AND INSANITY.&mdash;USES OF
-THE WEED.&mdash;GETS RID OF SUPERFLUOUS POPULATION.&mdash;TOBACCO WORSE THAN
-RUM.&mdash;THE OLD FARMER’S DOG AND THE WOODCHUCK.&mdash;“WHAT KILLED HIM.�</small></p></div>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">How much?</span></p>
-
-<p>Do you know how much money is being squandered to-day, in the United
-States, in the filthy, health-destroying use of tobacco?</p>
-
-<p>No.</p>
-
-<p>Only $410,958! That’s all.</p>
-
-<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_634" id="Page_634">[Pg 634]</a></span> a grand total yearly expenditure in the
-United States of one hundred and fifty millions of dollars for tobacco
-alone!</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img189.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">THE IDOL OF TOBACCO USERS.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-<p>Christian ministers and professors, think of it! Young men and boys, think
-of it!</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_635" id="Page_635">[Pg 635]</a></span>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&mdash;they love tender babies to eat, but not an old
-tobacco-soaked sailor will they masticate.</p>
-
-<p>Tobacco kills lice, bugs, fops, small boys, and other vermin.</p>
-
-<p>Tobacco fees doctors, and fills hospitals.</p>
-
-<p>Tobacco fills insane asylums and jails.</p>
-
-<p>Tobacco fills pauper houses and graveyards.</p>
-
-<p>Tobacco makes drunkards.</p>
-
-<p>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?</p>
-
-<p>John H. Hawkins, the father of Washingtonians, said he never was able to
-find a drunkard who had not first used tobacco.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Too low a Figure.</span></p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Cigars.</span></p>
-
-<p>“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.�</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_636" id="Page_636">[Pg 636]</a></span>This does not include pipe-smoking nor chewing tobacco.</p>
-
-<p>The total amount of the vile weed produced in the world annually is as
-follows:&mdash;</p>
-
-<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table">
-<tr><td>Asia,</td>
-    <td><span class="spacer">&nbsp;</span></td>
-    <td align="right">309,900,000</td>
-    <td>pounds.</td></tr>
-<tr><td>Europe,</td>
-    <td>&nbsp;</td>
-    <td align="right">281,844,500</td>
-    <td align="center">"</td></tr>
-<tr><td>America,</td>
-    <td>&nbsp;</td>
-    <td align="right">248,280,500</td>
-    <td align="center">"</td></tr>
-<tr><td>Africa,</td>
-    <td>&nbsp;</td>
-    <td align="right">24,300,100</td>
-    <td align="center">"</td></tr>
-<tr><td>Australia,</td>
-    <td>&nbsp;</td>
-    <td align="right" class="botbor">714,000</td>
-    <td align="center">"</td></tr>
-<tr><td>Making a total of,</td>
-    <td>&nbsp;</td>
-    <td align="right">865,039,100</td>
-    <td align="center">"</td></tr></table>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">The mighty Army of Invasion.</span></p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-<p>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&mdash;splendid!&mdash;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&mdash;their lovely noses!</p>
-
-<p>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,&mdash;with jolly banners, blacked in
-the smoke<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_637" id="Page_637">[Pg 637]</a></span> and stench of great battles, bearing the words “Death to
-Purity!� “War to the Hilt with Health!� “All hail, Disease, Drunkenness,
-and Death!�</p>
-
-<p>Splendid picture!</p>
-
-<p>Alas! true picture!</p>
-
-<p>And what do they leave in their wake?</p>
-
-<p>Death to all animal and vegetable life!</p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-<p>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,&mdash;blacked with
-lampblack,&mdash;the dirtiest refuse molasses, the offal of urine, etc.</p>
-
-<p>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&mdash;nothing.</p>
-
-<p>Now, this army is daily on its march through our land, and I have only
-<i>begun</i> to mention its depredations. Who will stop it?</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Its Names and Nativity.</span></p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-<p>The natives called it <i>Peterna</i>. 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_638" id="Page_638">[Pg 638]</a></span> 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.</p>
-
-<p>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 <i>merely slitting open their noses</i>.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 450px; height: 256px;"><img src="images/img190.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">PUNISHMENT OF THE TURK.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-<p>But in spite of opposition and the vileness of the article, it has worked
-itself into a general use,&mdash;next to that of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_639" id="Page_639">[Pg 639]</a></span> table salt,&mdash;and to-day a
-majority of the adult male population of our Christianized and enlightened
-United States are its acknowledged votaries.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 450px; height: 330px;"><img src="images/img191.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">SMOKERS OF FOUR GENERATIONS.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_640" id="Page_640">[Pg 640]</a></span></p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Little Children learn to smoke.</span></p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-<hr style="width: 25%;" />
-
-<p>The following is a sample of the modern John Hay’s style of teaching:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 3em;">LITTLE-BREECHES.</span><br />
-“I come into town with some turnips,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And my little Gabe come along&mdash;</span><br />
-No four-year-old in the county<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Could beat him for pretty and strong;</span><br />
-Peart, and chipper, and sassy,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Always ready to swear and fight,</span><br />
-And I’d larnt him to chaw terbacker,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Jest to keep his milk teeth white.</span><br />
-<br />
-“The snow come down like a blanket<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">As I passed by Taggart’s store;</span><br />
-I went in for a jug of molasses,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And left the team at the door.</span><br />
-They scared at something and started&mdash;<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">I heard one little squall,</span><br />
-And hell-to-split over the prairie<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Went team, Little-Breeches and all.</span><br />
-<br />
-“Hell-to-split over the prairie!<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">I was almost froze with skeer;</span><br />
-But we rousted up some torches,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And sarched for ’em far and near.</span><br />
-At last we struck hosses and wagon,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Snowed under a soft white mound:</span><br />
-Upsot, dead beat&mdash;but of little Gabe<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">No hide nor hair was found.</span><br />
-<br />
-“And here all hopes soured on me<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Of my fellow-critters’ aid&mdash;</span><br />
-I jest flopped down on my marrow bones,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Crotch-deep in the snow, and prayed.</span><br />
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_641" id="Page_641">[Pg 641]</a></span>By this the torches was played out,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And me and Isrul Parr</span><br />
-Went off for some wood to a sheep-fold,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">That he said was somewhar thar.</span><br />
-<br />
-“We found it at last, and a little shed<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Where they shut up the lambs at night;</span><br />
-We looked in, and seen them huddled thar,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">So warm, and sleepy, and white.</span><br />
-<br />
-“And thar sot Little-Breeches, and chirped<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">As peart as ever you see:</span><br />
-‘I want a chaw of terbacker,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And that’s what’s the matter of me.’�</span></p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 450px; height: 312px;"><img src="images/img192.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">“I WANT A CHAW OF TERBACKER.�</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Whipping School Boys and Girls to make them smoke.</span></p>
-
-<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_642" id="Page_642">[Pg 642]</a></span>
-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.�</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img193.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">YOUNG SMOKERS.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>Some boys, nowadays, would gladly undergo the “flogging� if they could be
-permitted to enjoy a smoke afterwards.</p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-<p>Sailors are proverbially addicted to smoking and chewing. Their love of
-tobacco far exceeds their appetite for grog.</p>
-
-<hr style="width: 25%;" />
-
-<p>The following letter from a sailor below port to his brother in London
-explains itself:&mdash;</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot">
-<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Near Gravesend</span>, on board Belotropen.</p>
-
-<p><span class="smcap">To dear Brother Bob.</span></p>
-
-<p><span class="smcap">Dear Bob</span>: 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.</p>
-
-<p>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&mdash;best at 7 diles (Dials), sign of black boy, and am
-short of shirts&mdash;only took two, whereof one is wored out and tother
-most.</p>
-
-<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_643" id="Page_643">[Pg 643]</a></span> 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&mdash;so I am your
-lovin’ brother</p>
-
-<p><span style="margin-left: 2em;">Tom &mdash;&mdash;.</span></p>
-
-<p>P. S. dont forget the pigtail.</p></div>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Pure Society.&mdash;How a young Man was “took in.�</span></p>
-
-<p>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 <i>debut</i> there, we
-presume <i>he</i> is to be benefited by the initiation into pure society.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 450px; height: 349px;"><img src="images/img194.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">EXAMINATION OF THE SMOKER.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>Since nine tenths of the young men are tobacco-users, we will presume
-safely enough that this young man is one of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_644" id="Page_644">[Pg 644]</a></span> them. He has used it from
-five to seven years,&mdash;sufficient time to admit of its becoming part and
-parcel of him.</p>
-
-<p>The young man&mdash;“John� is his name&mdash;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:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“His clothes are impregnated with tobacco,� the examiner reports.</p>
-
-<p>“Let them be removed and purified,� is the command.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 450px; height: 278px;"><img src="images/img195.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">PURIFYING HIS BLOOD.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_645" id="Page_645">[Pg 645]</a></span> 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.</p>
-
-<p>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 <i>is</i> in his muscle; so he is stripped of the integuments
-to his framework.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 450px; height: 300px;"><img src="images/img196.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">CLEANSING HIS BONES.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>The committee now examine the bony structure.</p>
-
-<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_646" id="Page_646">[Pg 646]</a></span> full of nicotine, which will come out through, if we
-replace the integuments, blood, and garments?</p>
-
-<p>“The bones must be subjected to purification,� said the judge.</p>
-
-<p>They are soaked in alkalies, boiled in acids, and sufficient nicotine is
-extracted to kill five men not hardened in the tobacco service.</p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Delicious Morsels.</span></p>
-
-<p>Nicotine is the active principle of tobacco, expressed chemically thus:
-C<sup>10</sup> H<sup>8</sup> 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
-<i>prepared</i> tobacco. It is not in the natural leaf. <i>It results from
-fermentation.</i> 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.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_647" id="Page_647">[Pg 647]</a></span></p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">The Street Nuisance.</span></p>
-
-<p class="poem">“I knew, by the smoke that so lazily curled<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">From his lips, ’twas a loafer I happened to meet;</span><br />
-And I said, “If a nuisance there be in the world,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">’Tis the smoke of cigars on a frequented street.�</span><br />
-<br />
-“It was night, and the ladies were gliding around,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And in many an eye shone the glittering tear;</span><br />
-But the loafer puffed on, and I heard not a sound,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Save the sharp, barking cough of each smoke-stricken dear.�</span></p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img197.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">THE SMOKER.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-<p>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!</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_648" id="Page_648">[Pg 648]</a></span></p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">The Man who chews.</span></p>
-
-<p class="poem">Behold the picture of the man who chews!<br />
-A human squirt-gun on the world let loose.<br />
-A foe to neatness, see him in the streets,<br />
-His surcharged mouth endangering all he meets.<br />
-The dark saliva, drizzling from his chin,<br />
-Betrays the nature of the flood within.<br />
-Where, then, O where, shall Neatness hope to hide<br />
-From this o’erwhelming of the blackened tide?<br />
-Shall she seek shelter in the house of prayer?<br />
-A hundred squirting mouths await her there.<br />
-The same foul scene she’s witnessed oft before,&mdash;<br />
-A <i>solemn cud</i> is laid at every door!<br />
-The vile spittoon finds place in many a pew,<br />
-As if one part of worship were to <i>chew</i>!</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img198.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">THE CHEWER.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Another Street Nuisance.</span></p>
-
-<p>Speaking of President Grant and his cigar, a writer says,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“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,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_649" id="Page_649">[Pg 649]</a></span>
-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!</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img199.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">SIGN OF THE TIMES.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">It begets Laziness and national Ruin.</span></p>
-
-<p>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....</p>
-
-<p>“What will be the result, if this habit be continued by future
-generations?�</p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-<p>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.�</p>
-
-<p>Go about the shops, and bar-rooms, and billiard-halls of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_650" id="Page_650">[Pg 650]</a></span> our own
-community, and see <i>our</i> lazzaroni. What class do they principally
-represent&mdash;the active and virtuous, or the idle and vicious?</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 450px; height: 314px;"><img src="images/img200.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">MY LAZY SMOKING FRIEND.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>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,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“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.�</p>
-
-<p>“Ugh!� he grunted, and slowly added, “I once heard tell of a lazier boy
-than I am, sister.�</p>
-
-<p>“How could that be possible? Do tell me,� she exclaimed, impatiently.</p>
-
-<p>“Well, you see,�&mdash;spitting on the floor,&mdash;“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.�</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_651" id="Page_651">[Pg 651]</a></span></p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 450px; height: 322px;"><img src="images/img201.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">“SHALL I ASSIST YOU TO ALIGHT?�</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 450px; height: 318px;"><img src="images/img202.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">WORK FOR TONGUES AND FINGERS.</p>
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_652" id="Page_652">[Pg 652]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p class="poem"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_653" id="Page_653">[Pg 653]</a></span>
-“You think it smart and cunning, John,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">To use the nauseous weed;</span><br />
-To make your mouth so filthy then,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">It were a shame indeed.</span><br />
-To smoke and chew tobacco, John,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Till your teeth are coated brown,</span><br />
-Making a chimney of your nose,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And of yourself a clown,&mdash;</span><br />
-<br />
-“Yes, that would be so cunning, John,&mdash;<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The girls will love you so;</span><br />
-Your breath will smell so sweet,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">They’ll want you for a beau.</span><br />
-Because you use tobacco, John,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">You think yourself a man;</span><br />
-But the girls will find it out, John,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Disguise it all you can.�</span></p>
-
-<p>“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.</p>
-
-<p>“Thank you, sir,� said the girl, with irony, and a jump, “but I never
-smoke.�</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Black Eyes and Fingers.</span></p>
-
-<p>An American traveller visiting the greatest cigar manufactory in Seville,
-Spain, says, amongst other things,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“Here were five thousand young girls, all in one room,&mdash;and Sevillians,
-too,&mdash;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.</p>
-
-<p>“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 <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_654" id="Page_654">[Pg 654]</a></span>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.�</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Disease and Insanity.</span></p>
-
-<p>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.�</p>
-
-<p>“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.�</p>
-
-<p>Sir Benjamin Brodie, before quoted, says, “Occasionally tobacco produces a
-general nervous excitability, which in a degree partakes of the nature of
-<i>delirium tremens</i>.�</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_655" id="Page_655">[Pg 655]</a></span></p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">The Meerschaum. A Sonnet.</span></p>
-
-<p class="poem">“The gorgeous glories of autumnal dyes;<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The golden glow that haloes rare old wine;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The dying hectic of the day’s decline;</span><br />
-The rainbow radiance of auroral skies;<br />
-The blush of Beauty, smit with Love’s surprise;<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The unimagined hues in gems that shine,&mdash;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">All these, O Nicotina, <i>may</i> be thine!</span><br />
-But what of thy bewildered votaries?<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">How fares it with the more precious human clay?</span><br />
-Keeps the <i>lip</i> pure, while wood and ivory stains?<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Stays the <i>sight</i> clear, while smoke obscures the day?</span><br />
-Works the <i>brain</i> true, while poison fills the veins?<br />
-Shines the <i>soul</i> fair where Tophet-blackness reigns?<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Let shattered nerves declare! Let palsied manhood say!�</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 20em;"><span class="smcap">J. Ives Pease.</span></span></p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Uses and Abuses of Tobacco.</span></p>
-
-<p>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!</p>
-
-<p>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 <i>is</i>
-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 <i>only</i> 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,&mdash;muscle, blood, bone! Like begets like, and behold the tobacco-user’s
-children,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_656" id="Page_656">[Pg 656]</a></span> 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.</p>
-
-<p>“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.�</p>
-
-<p>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!</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Tobacco worse than Rum.</span></p>
-
-<p>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 <i>en</i> (in) and <i>toxicon</i> (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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_657" id="Page_657">[Pg 657]</a></span> 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�?</p>
-
-<hr style="width: 25%;" />
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 450px; height: 325px;"><img src="images/img203.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">WHAT KILLED THE DOG?</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>You can’t always tell just what kills a man, or a dog, as the following
-story proves:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“An old farmer was out one fine day looking over his broad acres, with an
-axe on his shoulder, and a small dog at<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_658" id="Page_658">[Pg 658]</a></span> 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!’�</p>
-
-<p>We regret our want of space to ventilate tobacco more thoroughly.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img204.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
-<hr style="width: 50%;" />
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_659" id="Page_659">[Pg 659]</a></span></p>
-<h2><a name="XXVI" id="XXVI"></a>XXVI.</h2>
-<p class="title">DRESS AND ADDRESS OF PHYSICIANS.</p>
-
-<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table">
-<tr><td>The fish called the Flounder, perhaps you may know,<br />
-Has one side for use, and another for show;<br />
-One side for the public, a delicate brown,<br />
-And one that is white, which he always keeps down.<br />
-<strong><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span></strong><br />
-Then said an old Sculpin&mdash;“My freedom excuse,<br />
-But you’re playing the cobbler with holes in your shoes;<br />
-Your brown side is up,&mdash;but just wait till you’re <i>fried</i>,<br />
-And you’ll find that all flounders are white on one side.�<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 14em;"><span class="smcap">Dr. O. W. Holmes.</span> 1844.</span></td></tr></table>
-
-<div class="note"><p class="hang"><small>GOSSIP IS INTERESTING.&mdash;COMPARATIVE SIGNS OF GREATNESS.&mdash;THE GREAT
-SURGEONS OF THE WORLD.&mdash;ADDRESS NECESSARY.&mdash;“THIS IS A BONE.�&mdash;DRESS
-<i>not</i> NECESSARY.&mdash;COUNTRY DOCTORS’ DRESS.&mdash;HOW THE DEACON SWEARS.&mdash;A
-GOOD MANY SHIRTS.&mdash;ONLY WASHED WHEN FOUND DRUNK.&mdash;LITTLE TOMMY
-MISTAKEN FOR A GREEN CABBAGE BY THE COW.&mdash;AN INSULTED LADY.&mdash;DOCTORS’
-WIGS.&mdash;“AIN’T SHE LOVELY?�&mdash;HARVEY AND HIS HABITS.&mdash;THE DOCTOR AND THE
-VALET.&mdash;A BIG WIG.&mdash;BEN FRANKLIN.&mdash;JENNER’S DRESS.&mdash;AN ANIMATED WIG; A
-LAUGHABLE STORY.&mdash;A CHARACTER.&mdash;“DASH, DASH.�</small></p></div>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p>“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.�</p>
-
-<p>Most famous men have had some peculiarity of dress or address, or both.
-Our first impression of Goliah&mdash;by what we heard of his size&mdash;was that he
-was as high as a church steeple; and of Napoleon, that he was as short as
-Tom<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_660" id="Page_660">[Pg 660]</a></span> 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.</p>
-
-<p>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,&mdash;for face, as well as acts, indicate
-the character.</p>
-
-<p>There seem to be elements of character in all great men&mdash;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&mdash;two men living three centuries apart,
-in different countries&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;love of work, unfailing
-courage, and perseverance.</p>
-
-<p>“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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_661" id="Page_661">[Pg 661]</a></span> 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.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img205.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">THE GREAT SURGEONS OF THE WORLD.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>“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&mdash;eyes, nose, mouth, chin, cheeks, lips&mdash;analyze closely as<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_662" id="Page_662">[Pg 662]</a></span> 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.’</p>
-
-<p>“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.�</p>
-
-<p>For the above interesting facts we are indebted to the “Phrenological
-Journal.�</p>
-
-<p>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&mdash;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.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_663" id="Page_663">[Pg 663]</a></span></p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">The old Country Doctor’s Dress.</span></p>
-
-<p>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,&mdash;the dear old soul! His head was as white as&mdash;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.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 450px; height: 313px;"><img src="images/img206.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">A CALL ON THE VILLAGE DOCTOR.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>I knew another, kind, benevolent old doctor, who started<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_664" id="Page_664">[Pg 664]</a></span> 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&mdash;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,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“Lord-all-hell, wife; shut the doors by a dam’ sight!�</p>
-
-<hr style="width: 25%;" />
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img207.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">PHYSICIANS COSTUME IN 1790.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>In regard to shirts, a reliable author tells us that Dr. H. Davy adopted
-the following plan <i>to save time</i>. “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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_665" id="Page_665">[Pg 665]</a></span> 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&mdash;big and rotund.</p>
-
-<p>“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.�</p>
-
-<p>The doctor’s stock of shirts must have equalled Stanford’s.</p>
-
-<p>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.�</p>
-
-<p>What possible use can a man have for <i>ten million shirts</i>?</p>
-
-<p>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&mdash;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?�</p>
-
-<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_666" id="Page_666">[Pg 666]</a></span> state, by some sort of pigment.’ In this attire
-Davy flattered himself that he closely resembled vegetable life�&mdash;which
-was not intended to scare away the fishes.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 450px; height: 285px;"><img src="images/img208.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">HOW POOR TOMMY WAS LOST.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>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,�&mdash;very affectedly,&mdash;“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.�</p>
-
-<p>Mrs. H. Davy was as curious in dress as the doctor. “One day�&mdash;it is told
-for the truth&mdash;“the lady accompanied her husband to Paris, and walking in
-the Tuileries, wearing the fashionable London bonnet of the
-period,&mdash;shaped like a cockle-shell,&mdash;and the doctor dressed in his green,
-they were mistaken for <i>masqueraders</i>, and a great crowd of astonished
-Parisians began staring at the couple.</p>
-
-<p>“Their discomfiture had hardly commenced when the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_667" id="Page_667">[Pg 667]</a></span>garden inspector
-informed the lady that nothing of the kind could be permitted on the
-grounds, and requested a withdrawal.</p>
-
-<p>“The rabble increased, and it became necessary to order a guard of
-infantry to remove ‘<i>la belle Anglaise</i>’ safely, surrounded by French
-bayonets.�</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img209.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">BRIDGET’S METHOD OF MENDING STOCKINGS.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>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.�</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Doctors’ Wigs.</span></p>
-
-<p>For the space of about three centuries the physician’s wig was his most
-prominent insignia of office. Who invented it,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_668" id="Page_668">[Pg 668]</a></span> or why it was invented, I
-am unable to learn. The name <i>wig</i> 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&mdash;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!</p>
-
-<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 3em;">YE ANCIENT DOCTOR.</span><br />
-“Each son of Sol, to make him look more big,<br />
-Wore an enormous, grave, three-tailed wig;<br />
-His clothes full trimmed, with button-holes behind;<br />
-Stiff were the skirts, with buckram stoutly lined;<br />
-The cloth-cut velvet, or more reverend black,<br />
-Full made and powdered half way down his back;<br />
-Large muslin cuffs, which near the ground did reach,<br />
-With half a dozen buttons fixed to each.<br />
-Grave were their faces&mdash;fixed in solemn state;<br />
-These men struck awe; their children carried weight.<br />
-In reverend wigs old heads young shoulders bore;<br />
-And twenty-five or thirty seemed threescore.�</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Harvey’s Habits.</span></p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-<p>“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.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_669" id="Page_669">[Pg 669]</a></span></p>
-<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img210.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">THE UNDERTAKER’S ARMS.</p>
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_670" id="Page_670">[Pg 670]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_671" id="Page_671">[Pg 671]</a></span>“He rode <i>on horseback, with a foot-cloth, to visit his patients, his
-footman following, which was then a very decent fashion, now quite
-discontinued</i>.�</p>
-
-<p>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 <i>lively</i> conversation.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img211.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">DISPUTE OF THE DOCTOR AND VALET.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_672" id="Page_672">[Pg 672]</a></span>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.</p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-<p>One William&mdash;known as “Bill�&mdash;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.</p>
-
-<p>“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.�</p>
-
-<p>Benjamin Franklin had often met and conversed with Reynolds.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_673" id="Page_673">[Pg 673]</a></span></p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Franklin’s Court Dress.</span></p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Dr. Jenner’s Dress.</span></p>
-
-<p>“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.�</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">An Animated Queue.</span></p>
-
-<p>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,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“Madam, were you pulling my tail?�</p>
-
-<p>“Sir!� replied the lady, in equal astonishment and indignation.</p>
-
-<p>Just then the tail gave another flop.</p>
-
-<p>Whirling about like a top whipped by a school-boy, the doctor cried to the
-maid,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“Zounds, woman, it was <i>you</i> who pulled my wig!�</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_674" id="Page_674">[Pg 674]</a></span>“Me, sir!� exclaimed the affrighted lady’s maid.</p>
-
-<p>“Yes, you, you hussy!�</p>
-
-<p>“But, I beg your pardon&mdash;�</p>
-
-<p>“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.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 450px; height: 340px;"><img src="images/img212.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">A WIG MOUSE.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>“Sir, do you see that I have both hands full?�</p>
-
-<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_675" id="Page_675">[Pg 675]</a></span> 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.</p>
-
-<p>The poor, innocent mouse was dead; the doctor was scalded; the lady was in
-convulsions&mdash;of laughter; when the room was suddenly filled by alarmed
-domestics, from scullion to valet, and all the ladies and gentlemen of the
-household.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 450px; height: 337px;"><img src="images/img213.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">THE MYSTERY EXPLAINED.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>“What’s the matter?� sternly inquired the master of the house, approaching
-the bed.</p>
-
-<p>“O, dear, dear!� cried the convalescent, “a mouse was in the doctor’s wig,
-and&mdash;�</p>
-
-<p>“A mouse!� exclaimed the doctor, jerking the offensive wig from his bald
-pate. “A d&mdash;d mouse! I beg a thousand pardons, madam,� turning to the
-lady, holding the wig<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_676" id="Page_676">[Pg 676]</a></span> 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.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">A “Character.�</span></p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-<p>“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.</p>
-
-<p>“On such occasions, Dr. Standish thrashed her soundly with a dog-whip.�</p>
-
-<p>In consequence of too oft repetition of this unpleasantness, she ran away.</p>
-
-<p>“Standish’s mode of riding was characteristic of the man. Straight on he
-went, at a lumbering, six-miles-an-hour gait, <i>dash, dash, dash</i>, 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.</p>
-
-<p>“‘Good morning to you, doctor; ’tis a nice day,’ a friendly voice would
-exclaim.</p>
-
-<p>“‘Ugh!’ Standish would grunt, while on, <i>dash, dash, dash!</i> he rode.</p>
-
-<p>“He never turned out for a wayfarer.</p>
-
-<p>“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.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_677" id="Page_677">[Pg 677]</a></span></p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 600px; height: 400px;"><img src="images/img214.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">MEETING OF THE DOCTOR AND THE CURATE.</p>
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_678" id="Page_678">[Pg 678]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_679" id="Page_679">[Pg 679]</a></span>“When riding out one day, he observed Standish coming on with his usual
-‘<i>dash, dash, dash</i>,’ 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.</p>
-
-<p>“‘Ugh!’ grunted the doctor.</p>
-
-<p>“‘Good morning,’ said the curate, good-humoredly.</p>
-
-<p>“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, <i>dash, dash, dash!</i> as though nothing had happened.�</p>
-
-<hr style="width: 25%;" />
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img215.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">DR. CANDEE.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>The dress of the modern physician is a plain black suit, throughout, with
-immaculate linen, and possibly a white cravat.</p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
-<hr style="width: 50%;" />
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_680" id="Page_680">[Pg 680]</a></span></p>
-<h2><a name="XXVII" id="XXVII"></a>XXVII.</h2>
-<p class="title">MEDICAL FACTS AND STATISTICS.</p>
-
-<div class="note"><p class="hang"><small>HOW MANY.&mdash;WHO THEY ARE.&mdash;HOW THEY DIE.&mdash;HOW MUCH RUM THEY
-CONSUME.&mdash;HOW THEY LIVE.&mdash;OLD AGE.&mdash;WHY WE DIE.&mdash;GET MARRIED.&mdash;OLD
-PEOPLE’S WEDDING.&mdash;A GOOD ONE.&mdash;THE ORIGIN OF THE HONEYMOON.&mdash;A SWEET
-OBLIVION.&mdash;HOLD YOUR TONGUE!&mdash;MANY MEN, MANY
-MINDS.&mdash;“ALLOPATHY.�&mdash;LOTS OF DOCTORS.&mdash;THE ITCH MITE.&mdash;A HORSE CAR
-RIDE.&mdash;KEEP COOL!&mdash;KNICKKNACKS.&mdash;HUMBLE PIE.&mdash;INCREASE OF INSANITY.&mdash;A
-COOL STUDENT.&mdash;HOW TO GET RID OF A MOTHER-IN-LAW.</small></p></div>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">The Population.</span></p>
-
-<p>There are on the earth about one billion of inhabitants.</p>
-
-<p>They speak four thousand and sixty-four languages.</p>
-
-<p>Only one person in a thousand reaches his allotted years,&mdash;threescore and
-ten.</p>
-
-<p>Between the ages of sixteen and forty-five, there are more females than
-males.</p>
-
-<p>Lawyers live the longest, doctors next, ministers least of the three
-professions.</p>
-
-<p>There are more insane among farmers than of any other laborers.</p>
-
-<p>Caucasians live longer than Malays, Hindoos, Chinese, or Negroes.</p>
-
-<p>Light-skinned, dark-haired persons with dark or blue eyes live the
-longest.</p>
-
-<p>Red or florid complexioned, gray or hazel eyes, shortest.</p>
-
-<p>One half of the people die before the age of seventeen; one fourth before
-seven.</p>
-
-<p>About 91,824 die each day; one every second.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_681" id="Page_681">[Pg 681]</a></span>The married live longer than the single.</p>
-
-<p>Tall men live longer than short ones. (No pun.)</p>
-
-<p>Short women live longer than tall ones.</p>
-
-<p>Three quarters of the adults are married.</p>
-
-<p>Births and deaths are more frequent by night than day.</p>
-
-<p>The cost of the clergy of the United States is six million dollars yearly.</p>
-
-<p>Lawyers receive about thirty-five million dollars.</p>
-
-<p>Crime costs the United States about nineteen million dollars.</p>
-
-<p>Tobacco one hundred and fifty million dollars. (That’s crime, also.)</p>
-
-<p>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.)</p>
-
-<p>Opium is eaten in the world by one hundred and twenty million people.</p>
-
-<p>Hasheesh is used by some twenty millions.</p>
-
-<p>The temperate live longer than the intemperate.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Self-destruction.</span></p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img216.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">A GERMAN BEER GIRL.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>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 <i>Hartford Times</i>, recently, we have five hundred liquor shops, and
-one million eight hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars were, last
-year, paid for <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_682" id="Page_682">[Pg 682]</a></span>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.’�</p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-<p>“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.�</p>
-
-<p>“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.’</p>
-
-<p>“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.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_683" id="Page_683">[Pg 683]</a></span>“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.�</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">How they live.</span></p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Old Age.</span></p>
-
-<p>We have mentioned some physicians who lived to an extreme old age&mdash;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
-<i>one hundred and fifty-three years</i>; and even then Dr. Harvey, who held a
-<i>post mortem</i> on the body, found no internal indication of decay. One of
-his descendants lived to be one hundred and twenty. The Rev. Henry Reade,
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_684" id="Page_684">[Pg 684]</a></span>Northampton, England, reached the age of one hundred and thirty-two.</p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-<p>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 <i>one hundred and sixty-nine years</i>,
-in abject penury. He was a native of Yorkshire, and died in 1670.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Why we die.</span></p>
-
-<p>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 <i>fret</i> out. Mr. Beecher said, “It is the
-fretting that wears out the machinery; friction, not the real wear.�</p>
-
-<p>“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.</p>
-
-<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_685" id="Page_685">[Pg 685]</a></span> 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.</p>
-
-<p>“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.�</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Get Married.</span></p>
-
-<p>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 <i>too
-much</i>. 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:&mdash;</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_686" id="Page_686">[Pg 686]</a></span></p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">An Old People’s Wedding.</span></p>
-
-<p>“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.�</p>
-
-<p>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.�</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">A good One.</span></p>
-
-<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_687" id="Page_687">[Pg 687]</a></span> 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&mdash;which it
-was.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img217.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">AN INDIGNANT BRIDE.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">The Honeymoon.</span></p>
-
-<p>The origin of the honeymoon is not generally known.</p>
-
-<p>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&mdash;“monath.� The “hunig monath� was thus
-established, and the next moon after the marriage was called the
-honeymoon.</p>
-
-<p>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,&mdash;at least he died before morning,&mdash;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.�</p>
-
-<p>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
-<i>honeymoon</i>, which lasted fifty days.</p>
-
-<p>“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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_688" id="Page_688">[Pg 688]</a></span> 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.</p>
-
-<p>“The report did not say whether the husband was pleased or not with her
-long silence.�</p>
-
-<p>There is too much talk in the world about woman’s “<i>jaw</i>.� As for me, give
-me the woman who can <i>talk</i>; the faster and more sense the better.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center">“<span class="smcap">Many Men, Many Minds.</span>�</p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-<p>Allopathic&mdash;Allopathy.&mdash;The dictionaries say this term means “the
-employment of medicines in order to produce effects different from those
-resulting from the disease&mdash;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.</p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_689" id="Page_689">[Pg 689]</a></span> hundred and twenty of miscellaneous, and eighty-four
-female doctors.</p>
-
-<p>Surely some of them must needs “scratch for a living;� yet there is always
-room for a first-class practitioner anywhere.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">The Itch Mite.</span></p>
-
-<p>As we are speaking of “scratching� we will mention the itch mite, which we
-propose to give particular&mdash;sulphur&mdash;in this chapter.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img218.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">THE ITCH MITE.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>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.�</p>
-
-<p>The luxury of scratching is said to greatly compensate for the filthy
-disease known as the “itch.�</p>
-
-<p>Dr. Ellitson says “a Scotch king&mdash;viz., James I.&mdash;is alleged to have said
-that no subject deserved to have the itch&mdash;none but Royalty&mdash;on account of
-the great pleasure derived from scratching.� The king was said to have
-spoken from experience.</p>
-
-<p>In these days of filthy horse-cars (we are speaking of New York), this
-fact may be interesting to passengers.</p>
-
-<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 2em;">A HORSE-CAR RIDE.</span><br />
-Never full; pack ’em in;<br />
-Move up, fat men, squeeze in, thin;<br />
-Trunks, valises, boxes, bundles,<br />
-Fill up gaps as on she tumbles.<br />
-Market baskets without number;<br />
-Owners easy nod in slumber;<br />
-Thirty seated, forty standing,<br />
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_690" id="Page_690">[Pg 690]</a></span>A dozen more on either landing.<br />
-Old man lifts his signal finger,<br />
-Car slacks up, but not a linger;<br />
-He’s jerked aboard by sleeve or shoulder,<br />
-Shoved inside to sweat and moulder.<br />
-Toes are trod on, hats are smashed,<br />
-Dresses soiled, hoop skirts crashed,<br />
-Thieves are busy, bent on plunder;<br />
-Still we rattle on like thunder.<br />
-Packed together, unwashed bodies<br />
-Bathed in fumes of whiskey toddies;<br />
-Tobacco, garlic, cheese, and lager beer<br />
-Perfume the heated atmosphere;<br />
-Old boots, pipes, leather, and tan,<br />
-And, if in luck, a “soap-fat man;�<br />
-Ar’n’t we jolly? What a blessing!<br />
-A horse-car hash, with such a dressing!</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">How to keep Cool.</span></p>
-
-<p>1. <i>Don’t fan yourself.</i> 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.</p>
-
-<p>2. <i>Don’t drink ice-water.</i> Cold, iced water is excellent for a fever,
-perhaps (<i>similia similibus curantur</i>); 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. <i>Then don’t</i>; 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.</p>
-
-<p>3. <i>With the hand</i> apply cool or tepid water to the entire<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_691" id="Page_691">[Pg 691]</a></span> person every
-six to twenty-four hours. The electricity from the hand <i>equalizes</i> 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.</p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-<p>6. And above all&mdash;<i>keep cool</i>!</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Knickknacks.</span></p>
-
-<p><i>More Truth than Poetry.</i>&mdash;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:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“What brought you to prison, my colored friend?�</p>
-
-<p>“Two constables, sah.�</p>
-
-<p>“Yes; but I mean, had intemperance anything to do with it?�</p>
-
-<p>“Yes, sah; dey wuz bofe uv ’em drunk, sah.�</p>
-
-<hr style="width: 25%;" />
-
-<p><i>Humble Pie.</i>&mdash;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.</p>
-
-<hr style="width: 25%;" />
-
-<p><i>Increase of Insanity.</i>&mdash;Insanity in England is rapidly increasing. In
-1861, when the population was 19,860,701,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_692" id="Page_692">[Pg 692]</a></span> 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.</p>
-
-<hr style="width: 25%;" />
-
-<p><i>Error of Diagnosis.</i>&mdash;“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?�</p>
-
-<p>“All very easily accounted for,� said the physician; “you have water on
-the chest.�</p>
-
-<p>“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.�</p>
-
-<hr style="width: 25%;" />
-
-<p><i>Ferocity of a Wasp.</i>&mdash;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.</p>
-
-<hr style="width: 25%;" />
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-<hr style="width: 25%;" />
-
-<p><i>A Cool Student.</i>&mdash;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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_693" id="Page_693">[Pg 693]</a></span> 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.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 450px; height: 361px;"><img src="images/img219.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">THE BURGLAR AND STUDENT.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<hr style="width: 25%;" />
-
-<p><i>How to get rid of a Mother-in-Law.</i>&mdash;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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_694" id="Page_694">[Pg 694]</a></span> 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.�</p>
-
-<hr style="width: 25%;" />
-
-<p><i>A Dying Request.</i>&mdash;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.�</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img220.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
-<hr style="width: 50%;" />
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_695" id="Page_695">[Pg 695]</a></span></p>
-<h2><a name="XXVIII" id="XXVIII"></a>XXVIII.</h2>
-<p class="title">BLEEDERS AND BUTCHERS.</p>
-
-<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table">
-<tr><td>“Three special months, September, April, May,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">There are in which ’tis good to ope a vein:</span><br />
-In these three months the moon bears greatest sway;<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Then old or young that store of blood contain.</span><br />
-September, April, May, have daies apiece<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">That bleeding do forbid, <i>and eating geese</i>.�</span></td></tr></table>
-
-<div class="note"><p class="hang"><small>BLEEDING IN 1872.&mdash;EARLIEST BLOOD-LETTERS.&mdash;A ROYAL SURGEON.&mdash;A
-DRAWING JOKE.&mdash;THE PRETTY COQUETTE.&mdash;TINKERS AS BLEEDERS.&mdash;WHOLESALE
-BUTCHERY.&mdash;THE BARBERS OF SOUTH AMERICA.&mdash;OUR FOREFATHERS BLEED.&mdash;A
-FRENCH BUTCHER.&mdash;CUR?&mdash;ABERNETHY OPPOSES BLOOD-LETTING.&mdash;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.</small></p></div>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p>When, in the year of our Lord 1872, a full half dozen educated physicians
-meet around the dying bed of a <i>Rich</i> 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 <i>bleed</i> and leave <i>in articulo mortis</i>,
-it is not too late to take up the subject of venesection.</p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-<p>It is useless to bring one learned man’s opinion against it, because
-another’s can be found equally wise to offset him:<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_696" id="Page_696">[Pg 696]</a></span> 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.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">A Royal Surgeon.</span></p>
-
-<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_697" id="Page_697">[Pg 697]</a></span>
-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.&mdash;<i>Percy’s Anecdotes.</i></p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 450px; height: 336px;"><img src="images/img221.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">ASSISTANCE FROM A ROYAL SURGEON.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">A Drawing Joke.</span></p>
-
-<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_698" id="Page_698">[Pg 698]</a></span> to
-dissect properly, to bleed a patient, and extract a tooth as well as one
-of the faculty.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 387px; height: 450px;"><img src="images/img222.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">PETER THE GREAT AS A SURGEON.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-<p>“Send her to me,� said the czar.</p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Every Tinker has his Day.</span></p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-<p>In 1592 one Nicolas Gyer published a work entitled “The<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_699" id="Page_699">[Pg 699]</a></span> English
-Phlebotomy, or Method of Healing by Letting of Blood.� Its motto was, “The
-horse-leech hath two daughters, which crye, ‘<i>Give, give</i>.’� 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.�</p>
-
-<p>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,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p class="poem">“To bleed doth cheare the pensive, and remove<br />
-<i>The raging furies fed by burning love</i>.�</p>
-
-<p>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,�&mdash;as doubtless is the experience of most
-physicians,&mdash;he could tell of worse habits of some modern priests than
-this quinarial venesection.</p>
-
-<p>“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.</p>
-
-<p>Steele tells of a bleeder of his time who advertised to bleed, at certain
-hours, “all who came, for three pence a head�&mdash;he meant arm, doubtless!</p>
-
-<p>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 <i>gratis</i> 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_700" id="Page_700">[Pg 700]</a></span>
-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.�</p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-<p>In South America venesection is still performed by the barbers, who are
-nearly all natives.</p>
-
-<p>“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.</p>
-
-<p>“These barbers and bleeders are considered to be the leaders of their
-<i>caste</i>, as from their ranks are drawn the native <i>alcaldes</i>, 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.</p>
-
-<p>“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 <i>sangradores</i>, or
-bleeders, who, as of old, unite the two professions.�</p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_701" id="Page_701">[Pg 701]</a></span></p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Bleeding our Forefathers.</span></p>
-
-<p>Dr. Fuller, the first physician amongst the colonists of New England,
-wrote to Governor Bradford, June, 1630, saying,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“I have been to Matapan (now Dorchester), and let some twenty of those
-people’s blood.�</p>
-
-<p>What disease demanded, in the estimation of the good and wise doctor, this
-seemingly bloody visit, we are not informed.</p>
-
-<p>“The <i>Mercure de France</i>, 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 <i>three
-thousand nine hundred and four times</i>, 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.�</p>
-
-<p>No wonder our informant asks, “Did this really occur? Or was the editor of
-the <i>Mercure</i> the original Baron Munchausen?�</p>
-
-<p>“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?�</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">A French Butcher-surgeon.</span></p>
-
-<p>But, then, some of those French surgeons are worse than hangmen.</p>
-
-<p>Dr. Mott, when once in Paris, was invited by M. &mdash;&mdash; to witness a private
-operation, which was simply the removal of a tumor from the neck of an
-elderly gentleman.</p>
-
-<p>“Dr. Mott informed me,� says Dr. S. Francis, “that never<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_702" id="Page_702">[Pg 702]</a></span> in his life had
-he seen anybody but a <i>butcher</i> 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.�</p>
-
-<p>A week after, Dr. M. met the surgeon, and inquired after the patient.</p>
-
-<p>“O, <i>oui</i>,� said the butcher, shrugging his shoulders. “Poor old fellow!
-He grew pious, and suddenly died.�</p>
-
-<p>And this was by one of the first surgeons of France, on the authority of
-Dr. Valentine Mott.</p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Cur?</span></p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-<p>“<i>Cum sanguinem detrahere oportet, deliberatione indiget</i>,� said Aretæus,
-a Greek physician of the first century. (“When bleeding is required, there
-is need of deliberation.�)</p>
-
-<p>“<i>Cur?</i>� (why) was a favorite inquiry of Dr. Abernethy’s.</p>
-
-<p>“We recollect a surgeon being called to a gentleman who was taken suddenly
-ill. The medical attendant, being present, asked the surgeon,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“‘Shall I bleed him at once, sir?’</p>
-
-<p>“‘<i>Why</i> should you desire to bleed him?’</p>
-
-<p>“‘O, exactly. You prefer cupping?’</p>
-
-<p>“‘Why should he be cupped?’</p>
-
-<p>“‘Then shall I apply some leeches?’</p>
-
-<p>“This, too, was declined. In short, it never seemed to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_703" id="Page_703">[Pg 703]</a></span> have occurred to
-the physician that neither might be necessary; still less that either
-might therefore prove mischievous.�</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">The Misfortunes of a Barber-bleeder.</span></p>
-
-<p class="center">Three Scenes from a Story by Douglas Jerrold&mdash;rewritten.</p>
-
-<p><i>Scene 1.</i>&mdash;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.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img223.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">JOB DISCHARGED BY SIR SCIPIO.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_704" id="Page_704">[Pg 704]</a></span>“I say, I ha’ got a dead mun in the wagon.�</p>
-
-<p>“A dead man?� cried Job.</p>
-
-<p>“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.)</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 450px; height: 423px;"><img src="images/img224.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">“BLEED HIM.�</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>“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.</p>
-
-<p>“Ha! what wilt ye do, mun?� cried the wagoner, seeing the razor.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_705" id="Page_705">[Pg 705]</a></span>“Bleed him,� replied Job, with exquisite composure; “I fear his heart is
-stopped.�</p>
-
-<p>“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.</p>
-
-<p>“Grinders! Pshaw! It’s Sir Scipio Manikin.�</p>
-
-<p>“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.</p>
-
-<p>“We shall be hanged for this job&mdash;hanged, hanged!�</p>
-
-<p>“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.</p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-<p>Dr. Saffron took the wounded arm, looked at Job, and said,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“Is this your doings?�</p>
-
-<p>Job looked, “Yes,� but spoke not.</p>
-
-<p>“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?�</p>
-
-<p>“Ay, sir; rolled up like a hedge pig,� replied the wagoner.</p>
-
-<p>Job wiped his razor, and slipped silently away.</p>
-
-<hr style="width: 25%;" />
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_706" id="Page_706">[Pg 706]</a></span><i>Scene 2.</i>&mdash;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.</p>
-
-<p>“Moll, the stool,� said one of the men.</p>
-
-<p>The stool ordered was thrown towards Job, who sank resignedly upon it.</p>
-
-<p>“What’s o’clock?� asked Bats, one of the robbers.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 450px; height: 317px;"><img src="images/img225.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">A BORROWED WATCH.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-<p>“I say, friend, time must be worth something to you to score it by such a
-watch.�</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_707" id="Page_707">[Pg 707]</a></span>“It isn’t mine,� cried Job, the perspiration starting from every pore of
-his body.</p>
-
-<p>“Ha, ha, ha!� laughed the three at this unnecessary information.</p>
-
-<p>“A mistake; I got it in the oddest way.�</p>
-
-<p>“Ha, ha, ha!� again roared his hearers in chorus.</p>
-
-<p>“O Lord! I shall be hanged for this,� cried Job.</p>
-
-<p>“In course you will,� said Mortlake, comfortingly.</p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-<p>Mortlake gave an expressive cluck. Bats uttered a low, accusing whistle.</p>
-
-<p>“What! he was game&mdash;was he? Well, it is all over now; tell us how it
-happened, and what you did with the body,� said the third.</p>
-
-<p>In vain Job persisted in the truth. He was only laughed at....</p>
-
-<p>“Moll, the gin.� Such a gamy highwayman as Job presented evidence of being
-deserves to be treated! Let us see in the next scene <i>how</i> he was treated.</p>
-
-<hr style="width: 25%;" />
-
-<p><i>Scene 3.</i>&mdash;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.</p>
-
-<p>“Job Pippins slept.�</p>
-
-<p>“Job Pippins awoke.�</p>
-
-<p>An insect ticked its little note in Job’s ear.</p>
-
-<p>“The watch!� cried the bewildered Job, springing to his feet and gaspingly
-applying his hands to his flesh.</p>
-
-<p>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&mdash;“<span class="smcap">Shirt</span>�?</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_708" id="Page_708">[Pg 708]</a></span>Hatless, shoeless, hoseless, he stood upon the grass, the bold zephyrs
-playing with his garment&mdash;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!</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 450px; height: 290px;"><img src="images/img226.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">JOB’S DECISION.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>Decision came to Job’s help&mdash;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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_709" id="Page_709">[Pg 709]</a></span> retreated with a full square yard of the false
-flag of truce upon his horns.</p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-<p>“Ah! the river!� That would hide him forever from the uncharitable
-world!...</p>
-
-<p>Job crawled across the field, and was already near the stream.</p>
-
-<p>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?</p>
-
-<p>Reader, “put yourself in�&mdash;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,&mdash;a golden waif,&mdash;a very handsome suit of clothes,&mdash;hat,
-breeches, hose, shoes, gloves, cane, cravat! and no visible second person
-near.</p>
-
-<p>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,&mdash;“just a
-fit,�&mdash;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.</p>
-
-<p>Again Job passed the five-barred gate, where stood the bull, with glaring
-eyes, waving in vain the flag of truce upon his horns.</p>
-
-<p>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 <i>his</i> pocket, and pulled out a <i>purse</i>! It contained
-eight<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_710" id="Page_710">[Pg 710]</a></span> 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.</p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">The Use of Brains.</span></p>
-
-<p>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&mdash;<i>that’s what they’re for, sir</i>.�</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img227.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
-<hr style="width: 50%;" />
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_711" id="Page_711">[Pg 711]</a></span></p>
-<h2><a name="XXIX" id="XXIX"></a>XXIX.</h2>
-<p class="title">THE OMNIUM GATHERUM.</p>
-
-<div class="note"><p class="hang"><small>EX-SELL-SIR!&mdash;“THE OBJECT TO BE ATTAINED.�&mdash;A NOTORIOUS FEMALE
-DOCTOR.&mdash;A WHITE BLACK MAN.&mdash;SQUASHY.&mdash;MOTHER’S FOOL.&mdash;WHO IT
-WAS.&mdash;THE PHILOSOPHER AND HIS DAUGHTER.&mdash;EDUCATION AND
-GIBBERISH.&mdash;SCOTTISH HOSPITALITY.&mdash;THE OLD LADY WITH AN ANIMAL IN HER
-STOMACH.&mdash;STORIES ABOUT LITTLE FOLKS.&mdash;THE BOY WITH A BULLET IN
-HIM.&mdash;CASE OF SMALL-POX.&mdash;NOT MUCH TO LOOK AT.&mdash;FUNERAL ANTHEMS.</small></p></div>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Ex-Sell-Sir.</span></p>
-
-<p class="poem">The morning sun was shining bright,<br />
-As lone upon old Georgetown’s height,<br />
-A Bliss-ful doctor, clad in brown,<br />
-Desiring wealth and great renown,<br />
-Displayed aloft to wondering eyes<br />
-A shrub which bore this strange device,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 12em;">Cundurango!</span><br />
-<br />
-A maiden fair, with pallid cheek,<br />
-With ardent haste his aid did seek<br />
-To stay the progress and the pain<br />
-Of carcinoma of the brain;<br />
-While still aloft the shrub he bore,<br />
-The answer came, with windy roar,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 12em;">To Cundurango!</span><br />
-<br />
-A matron old, with long unrest<br />
-From carcinoma of the breast,<br />
-This Bliss-ful doctor rushed to see,<br />
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_712" id="Page_712">[Pg 712]</a></span>And begged his aid on bended knee.<br />
-The magic shrub waved still on high,<br />
-And rushed through air the well-known cry,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 12em;">Try Cundurango!</span><br />
-<br />
-The evening sun went down in red&mdash;<br />
-The maid and matron both were dead;<br />
-And yet, through all the realms around,<br />
-This worthless shrub, of mighty sound,<br />
-Will serve to fill the purse forlorn,<br />
-And the cancer succumb “in a horn�<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 12em;">To Cundurango.</span></p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">The Object to be attained.</span></p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-<p>“What have you here?� said the doctor.</p>
-
-<p>“Milk, doctor; just what you orthered.�</p>
-
-<p>“But there’s whiskey in it; I smell it.�</p>
-
-<p>“Well, doctor,� sighed the patient, “there may be whiskey in it, but milk
-is my object.�</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">The Laugh wins.</span></p>
-
-<p>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,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_713" id="Page_713">[Pg 713]</a></span> 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.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">A notorious Female Doctor.</span></p>
-
-<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Washington</span>, January 10, 1872.</p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-<p>“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.</p>
-
-<p class="center"><strong><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span></strong></p>
-
-<p>“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.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_714" id="Page_714">[Pg 714]</a></span>“You must have a local habitation, you know.�</p>
-
-<p>“Put me down from Washington, then, for that is the home of everybody
-who has none other.�</p>
-
-<p>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.�</p>
-
-<p>“I never was Mrs.; I never will be.�</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">A White Man turning Black.</span></p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-<hr style="width: 25%;" />
-
-<p>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.�</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center">“<span class="smcap">Squashy.</span>�</p>
-
-<p>Squashy was a contraband. He came from North Carolina. He was looking
-about Washington for “a new masser,� when Dr. &mdash;&mdash;, of &mdash;&mdash; regiment C.
-V., took him for a body servant.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_715" id="Page_715">[Pg 715]</a></span></p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 600px; height: 424px;"><img src="images/img228.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">SQUASHY’S SURGICAL OPERATION ON THE DOCTOR.</p>
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_716" id="Page_716">[Pg 716]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_717" id="Page_717">[Pg 717]</a></span>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.</p>
-
-<p>“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.</p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-<p>The doctor was a joker. “Now, what’s your name, boy?�</p>
-
-<p>“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.</p>
-
-<p>“Well, Squashy,&mdash;that’s a very appropriate name,&mdash;just pull off these
-boots. Left one first. There&mdash;pull! hard! harder!&mdash;There she comes! Now
-the other; now pull; it always comes the hardest; pull
-strong&mdash;stronger&mdash;now it’s coming&mdash;O, murder! you’ve pulled my whole leg
-out!�</p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-<p>“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.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_718" id="Page_718">[Pg 718]</a></span>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.�</p>
-
-<hr style="width: 25%;" />
-
-<p>We do not know who wrote the following which is too good to be lost; hence
-we give it anonymously.</p>
-
-<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 4em;">MOTHER’S FOOL.</span><br />
-“’Tis plain enough to see,� said a farmer’s wife,<br />
-“These boys will make their marks in life;<br />
-They never were made to handle a hoe,<br />
-And at once to college ought to go.<br />
-There’s Fred, he’s little better than a fool,<br />
-But John and Henry must go to school.�<br />
-<br />
-“Well, really, wife,� quoth farmer Brown,<br />
-As he set his mug of cider down,<br />
-“Fred does more work in a day for me<br />
-Than both his brothers do in three.<br />
-Book larnin’ will never plant one’s corn,<br />
-Nor hoe potatoes, sure’s you’re born,<br />
-Nor mend a rod of broken fence:<br />
-For my part, give me common sense.�<br />
-<br />
-But his wife was bound the roost to rule,<br />
-And John and Henry were sent to school,<br />
-While Fred, of course, was left behind,<br />
-Because his mother said he had no mind.<br />
-<br />
-Five years at school the students spent,<br />
-Then into business each one went.<br />
-John learned to play the flute and fiddle,<br />
-And parted his hair, of course, in the middle,<br />
-While his brother looked rather higher than he,<br />
-And hung out a sign, “H. Brown, M. D.�<br />
-<br />
-Meanwhile, at home, their brother Fred<br />
-Had taken a notion into his head;<br />
-But he quietly trimmed his apple trees,<br />
-Milked the cows and hived the bees;<br />
-While somehow, either by hook or crook,<br />
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_719" id="Page_719">[Pg 719]</a></span>He managed to read full many a book,<br />
-Until at last his father said<br />
-He was getting “book larnin’� into his head;<br />
-“But for all that,� added farmer Brown,<br />
-“He’s the smartest boy there is in town.�<br />
-<br />
-The war broke out, and Captain Fred<br />
-A hundred men to battle led,<br />
-And, when the rebel flag came down,<br />
-Went marching home as General Brown.<br />
-But he went to work on the farm again,<br />
-And planted corn and sowed his grain;<br />
-He shingled the barn and mended the fence,<br />
-Till people declared he had common sense.<br />
-<br />
-Now common sense was very rare,<br />
-And the State House needed a portion there;<br />
-So the “family dunce� moved into town,<br />
-The people called him Governor Brown;<br />
-And his brothers, who went to the city school,<br />
-Came home to live with “mother’s fool.�</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Who it was.</span></p>
-
-<p>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?�</p>
-
-<p>“Sixty, sir; and how old are you?� came the quick reply.</p>
-
-<p>“As old as creation, sir,� was the triumphant response.</p>
-
-<p>“Then you are of the same age with Adam and Eve.�</p>
-
-<p>“Certainly; I was in the garden when they were.�</p>
-
-<p>“I have always heard that there was a third party in the garden with them,
-but I never knew before that it was you.�</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_720" id="Page_720">[Pg 720]</a></span></p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">A heavy Doctor.</span></p>
-
-<p>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.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Scottish Hospitality.</span></p>
-
-<p>The Scotch people&mdash;even the females&mdash;are great <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_721" id="Page_721">[Pg 721]</a></span>smokers, and female
-tobacco-users are not considered the embodiment of neatness.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 364px; height: 450px;"><img src="images/img229.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">“WILL YE TAK’ A BLAST NOO?�</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>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,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“There, my good woman, is it not much better?�</p>
-
-<p>“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,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“An’ will ye tak’ a blast noo, my leddy?�</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Animals in the Stomach.</span></p>
-
-<p>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).</p>
-
-<p>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:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“‘Now don’t you laugh at me, doctor, ’cause all the doctors<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_722" id="Page_722">[Pg 722]</a></span> do, and I
-know it ain’t no whim nor notion I’ve got in my <i>head</i>, but a real live
-animal I’ve got into my stomach,’ she said.</p>
-
-<p>“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,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 450px; height: 408px;"><img src="images/img230.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">REPTILES FROM THE STOMACH.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>“‘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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_723" id="Page_723">[Pg 723]</a></span> the bottle, took it to the
-old lady, who sat comfortably in a rocking-chair, taking snuff, and
-nervously humming a little pennyroyal tune.</p>
-
-<p>“‘There, madam&mdash;there is a host of various kinds of reptiles, which the
-doctor has compelled to abandon the living stomach.’</p>
-
-<p>“‘Du tell,’ she exclaimed, readjusting her glasses, ‘if them all come out
-of folks’ stomachs! Let me take the bottle.’</p>
-
-<p>“‘I suppose they really did, marm.’</p>
-
-<p>“‘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&mdash;horns two inches long!</p>
-
-<p>“‘O, let me see. That came out of a colored man&mdash;awful appetite, madam.’</p>
-
-<p>“‘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.</p>
-
-<p>“‘O, I forgot,’ she exclaimed, coming back. ‘Give me some of the medicine
-to get this animal out of my system, doctor.’</p>
-
-<p>“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 <i>but I did the best thing possible for her
-case</i>.�</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Stories about Little Folks.</span></p>
-
-<p>As ludicrous as the above may seem, it is true; but we cannot vouch for
-the truth of the following story:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p><i>The Boy with a Bullet in him.</i>&mdash;A lad swallowed a small bullet. His
-friends were very much alarmed about it; and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_724" id="Page_724">[Pg 724]</a></span> 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:&mdash;</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="smcap">Sir</span>: Don’t alarm yourself. If after three weeks the bullet is not
-removed, give the boy a charge of powder.</p>
-
-<p><span style="margin-left: 2em;">Yours, &amp;c., &mdash;&mdash;</span></p>
-
-<p>P. S. <i>Do not aim the boy at anybody.</i>&mdash;M. D.</p></div>
-
-<hr style="width: 25%;" />
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 450px; height: 450px;"><img src="images/img231.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">“IT ISN’T CATCHIN’.�</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p><i>Case of Small-pox.</i>&mdash;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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_725" id="Page_725">[Pg 725]</a></span> 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,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“Miss &mdash;&mdash;, we’ve got a baby at our house; but mother told me to tell you
-that ‘it isn’t catchin’.’�</p>
-
-<hr style="width: 25%;" />
-
-<p>“<i>Not much to look at.</i>�&mdash;The late eminent Dr. Wallaston was introduced,
-at an evening party, to a rather pert young lady.</p>
-
-<p>“O, doctor,� she said, “I am delighted to meet you; I have so long wished
-to see you.�</p>
-
-<p>“Well,� said the man of science, “and pray what do you think of me now you
-have seen me?�</p>
-
-<p>“You may be very clever,� was the answer, “<i>but you are nothing to look
-at</i>.�</p>
-
-<hr style="width: 25%;" />
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 450px; height: 385px;"><img src="images/img232.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">FUNERAL OF THE CANARY.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p><i>Funeral Anthems.</i>&mdash;Reading in a western paper that at funerals out in
-Terre Haute they closed the solemn <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_726" id="Page_726">[Pg 726]</a></span>ceremony by singing very impressively
-“<i>The Ham-fat Man</i>,� reminds me of the following, which actually occurred
-at Portsmouth, N. H., last year:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>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,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p class="center">“<i>Shoo, fly! don’t bodder me.</i>�</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img233.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
-<hr style="width: 50%;" />
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_727" id="Page_727">[Pg 727]</a></span></p>
-<h2><a name="XXX" id="XXX"></a>XXX.</h2>
-<p class="title">THE OTHER SIDE.</p>
-
-<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table">
-<tr><td>It’s a very good rule in all things of life,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">When judging a friend or brother,</span><br />
-Not to look at the question alone on one side,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">But always to turn to the other.</span><br />
-We are apt to be selfish in all our views,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">In the jostling, headlong race,</span><br />
-And so, to be right, ere you censure a man,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Just “put yourself in his place.�&mdash;<span class="smcap">Anon.</span></span></td></tr></table>
-
-<div class="note"><p class="hang"><small>PUT YOURSELF IN HIS PLACE.&mdash;STEALING FROM THE PROFESSION.&mdash;ANECDOTE OF
-RUFUS CHOATE.&mdash;INGRATES.&mdash;A NIGHT ROW.&mdash;“SAVING AT THE SPIGOT AND
-WASTING AT THE BUNG.�&mdash;SHOPPING PATIENTS.&mdash;AN AFFECTIONATE WIFE.&mdash;RUM
-AND TOBACCO PATIENTS.&mdash;THE PHYSICIAN’S WIDOW AND ORPHANS, THE SUMMONS,
-THE TENEMENT, THE INVALIDS, HOW THEY LIVED, HER HISTORY, THE UNNATURAL
-FATHER, HOW THEY DIED, THE END.&mdash;A PETER-FUNK DOCTOR.&mdash;SELLING OUT.</small></p></div>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p>While I trust that respectable, educated physicians will take no offence
-at the <i>exposé</i> in the foregoing chapters, as nothing therein is
-<i>intended</i> to lessen them in public opinion, or detract from the merit of
-the <span class="smcap">True Physician</span> of any school, I cannot leave the subject without
-presenting some facts to show that the people are not blameless in
-creating and maintaining so many humbugs and impositions, to the damage
-and scandal of respectable practitioners and legitimate medicine.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_728" id="Page_728">[Pg 728]</a></span></p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Stealing from the Profession.</span></p>
-
-<p>I need not tell men of any profession, that there are those, even in the
-respectable walks of life, who will watch their opportunity to button-hole
-the lawyer or the doctor, in the public streets, to “just ask him a
-question,� rather than call at his office, where a fee would certainly be
-a just compensation for the expected advice.</p>
-
-<p>One of these highway robbers once overtook Mr. Choate, the great Boston
-lawyer, on a public street, and asked him if he should sue Mr. Jones, so
-and so, briefly stating his case, if he, the lawyer, thought he, Smith,
-would win the suit.</p>
-
-<p>“O, yes,� replied the great lawyer; and Smith went on his way rejoicing.</p>
-
-<p>The case went to trial, Smith <i>vs.</i> Jones. Smith employed a cheap
-pettifogger. Jones employed Mr. Choate to defend him, and gained the suit.</p>
-
-<p>“Didn’t you tell me I had a good case?� demanded the irascible plaintiff
-of Mr. Choate, when he found that the case had gone against him.</p>
-
-<p>“Well, I think you did say something to me about it,� replied Mr. Choate,
-very indifferently.</p>
-
-<p>“Yes, and didn’t you advise me to sue him?� cried the infuriated Smith.</p>
-
-<p>“Let me see, Mr. Smith: how much did you pay me for that advice?�</p>
-
-<p>“Nothing, sir! nothing!� roared Smith.</p>
-
-<p>“Well, that was all it was worth,� remarked Mr. Choate, quietly.</p>
-
-<p>Another of these free advice fellows detained the author at the
-post-office last week, and very patronizingly asked,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“What would you take for a code id de ed, docdor?�</p>
-
-<p>“Take? take two pocket handkerchiefs,� was the cheap prescription for a
-cheap patient.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_729" id="Page_729">[Pg 729]</a></span></p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Ingrates.</span></p>
-
-<p class="poem">“What, then! doth Charity fail?<br />
-Is Faith of no avail?<br />
-Is Hope blown out like a light<br />
-By a gust of wind in the night?<br />
-The clashing of creeds, and the strife<br />
-Of the many beliefs, that in vain<br />
-Perplex man’s heart and brain,<br />
-Are nought but the rustle of leaves,<br />
-When the breath of God upheaves<br />
-The boughs of the Tree of Life,<br />
-And they subside again!<br />
-And I remember still<br />
-The words, and from whom they came,<br />
-Not he that repeateth the name,<br />
-But he that doeth the will!�</p>
-
-<p>“Of all men, the physician is most likely to discover the leading traits
-of character in his fellow-beings; on no other condition than that of
-sickness do they present themselves without those guards upon the
-countenance and tongue that an artificial mode of life has rendered almost
-indispensable to their existence; in city life, more especially.�</p>
-
-<p>“The confiding patient often hangs, as it were, with an oppressive weight
-upon the conscientious physician, and if he be afflicted with a generous,
-sympathizing soul, farewell to his happiness. His heart will bleed for
-distress, both bodily and pecuniary, that he cannot alleviate, and he
-gives up in despair a profession which will so severely tax his nervous
-system as to render the best medical talent comparatively useless....</p>
-
-<p>“Those who speak of the gratitude of the low Catholic Irish in this (New
-York) city, or any other city, as they present their true characters to
-the young practitioner, will find but one opinion,&mdash;a more improvident,
-heartless, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_730" id="Page_730">[Pg 730]</a></span> dishonest class of people never defiled the fair face of
-the earth. They are indeed a bitter curse to the young and humane
-physician.�</p>
-
-<p>And this from the pen of one of the most noble and humane physicians of
-the great metropolis, whose generosity forbids him ever to refuse a visit,
-day or night, to the distressed, even amongst the lowest of the class he
-so bitterly condemns. The above is the experience of other physicians
-besides Dr. Dixon, and in other cities besides New York.</p>
-
-<p>During my days of extreme poverty in H., an Irish woman, whose child,
-suffering with cholera infantum, I snatched from the very jaws of death,
-cheated me out of my fees, when I afterwards learned that she owned two
-tenements, and had money in the Savings Bank.</p>
-
-<p>While I was practising in H., one cold winter’s night, an Irishman came
-for me to go to Front Street, as a man had fallen down stairs, and was
-“kilt intirely.�</p>
-
-<p>“Then it is Mr. Roberts, the undertaker, whom you want,� I replied.</p>
-
-<p>“O, no, he isn’t kilt intirely, but broke his arrum, doctor.�</p>
-
-<p>Therefore I drew on my boots, took my hat and case, and was soon at the
-designated number. A drunken row, as usual. It was near midnight, Saturday
-night. A big, burly fellow lay on the bed in a large front room,
-surrounded by a dozen men and women, nearly all drunk, except the patient.
-His arm was dislocated at the shoulder downward. I drew off my coat,
-jumped upon the bed, set the man up, raised the limb, clapped my knee
-under the limb, raised the arm, and using it for a lever, the bone snapped
-into the socket as quickly as I am telling the story.</p>
-
-<p>“Ah, that gives me aise; ah, God bless you, docther. How mooch is the
-damage? Get the wallet, woman, and let me pay the good docther,� said the
-grateful patient. “How mooch? Say it asy, noo.�</p>
-
-<p>“Two dollars.� A very modest fee for such a job at midnight.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_731" id="Page_731">[Pg 731]</a></span>“O, the divil!� cried the woman. “And is it two dollars for the snap of a
-job likes to that, noo, ye’ll be axin’ a poor man?�</p>
-
-<p>I made no reply. The man asked for the money.</p>
-
-<p>“Will yeze be axin’ that much?� asked a six and a half foot Irishman who
-stood by the opposite side of the bed.</p>
-
-<p>“Do you have to pay the bill, sir?� I demanded.</p>
-
-<p>“Noo,� he replied.</p>
-
-<p>“Then mind your own business,� I exclaimed, with a clincher, and a flash
-of the eyes that somehow caused him to cower like the miserable drunken
-coward he was, amid the laughs and jeers of the bystanders.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 450px; height: 242px;"><img src="images/img234.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">MY FRONT STREET PATIENT.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>“There, take the money,� said the woman (boarding mistress). “Dr. B. would
-come ferninst the railroad over for half of it, he would,� she added.</p>
-
-<p>“Woman,� said I, “when next any of your kind want a doctor, do you go
-ferninst the railroad for Dr. B.� (I knew she lied), “and get him for a
-dollar. As for me, <i>I never, for love or money, will come to your call
-again</i>.�</p>
-
-<p>I never heard of money enough to induce me to visit Front or Charles
-Street after that night, and I have seen<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_732" id="Page_732">[Pg 732]</a></span> some anxious faces looking about
-for a doctor, in case of emergency, in that locality.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center">“<span class="smcap">Saving at the Spigot, and wasting at the Bung.</span>�</p>
-
-<p>Again, there is a class in every city who, to avoid a physician’s fee, go
-to an apothecary, briefly and imperfectly state their case, perhaps to a
-green clerk, or a proprietor who is as ignorant of the pathology of the
-disease as the miserable applicant; and who ever knew of a druggist too
-ignorant to prescribe for a case over the counter? The result is often the
-administration of harsh remedies, which aggravate the present, or produce
-some other disease worse than the original, and in the end the patient is
-obliged to seek the advice of a physician.</p>
-
-<p>Now the patient is ashamed to tell the whole truth, the doctor has yet to
-learn what drugs are rankling in the system, and the disease is often
-protracted thereby ten times as long as it need have been, had the man at
-the outset sought the advice of a respectable physician. This is an
-every-day occurrence. I knew a young man who recently went into
-consumption from having a comparatively simple case prolonged by this
-apotheco-medical interference.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Shopping Patients.</span></p>
-
-<p>“A queer kind of patients!� you exclaim.</p>
-
-<p>Yes, very queer. One class of them go round from office to office, to
-“just inquire about a friend� (themselves), “if they could be cured,� how
-long it would require, and, ten to one, even ask what medicines “you would
-give for such a case.�</p>
-
-<p>Such persons, if females, usually come into the city for the double
-purpose of seeing a doctor, or a dozen, and shopping,&mdash;doing the shopping
-first; tramping from one end of the city to the other, visiting the doctor
-last, with bundles and boxes by the score, “in a great hurry; must<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_733" id="Page_733">[Pg 733]</a></span> catch
-a certain train; all tired out;� making the opportunity for diagnosis an
-unfavorable one, and not unusually asking the doctor&mdash;a stranger,
-perhaps&mdash;to trust them till they come again.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 416px; height: 450px;"><img src="images/img235.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">A SHOPPING PATIENT.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>Whoever “<span class="smcap">O. Shaw</span>� may be, he knows a thing or two. Hear him.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">An Affectionate Wife.</span></p>
-
-<p>A poor mechanic, three weeks after marriage, was addressed by his wife
-thus:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_734" id="Page_734">[Pg 734]</a></span>“Harry, don’t you think a new silk dress would become my beauty?�</p>
-
-<p>He answered affirmatively, of course, and promised that when his present
-job was completed, which would be in about a fortnight, the necessary
-stamps would be forthcoming, and that she might then array her loveliness
-in the wished-for dress. The affectionate wife kissed him, and thus
-rewarded his generosity. Three days afterwards the man met with an
-accident, and was brought home on a shutter, and it was evident that for
-weeks he would be confined to his bed. On beholding him, his wife gave
-vent to repeated outbursts of agony, as an affectionate woman should,
-considering the cause. This touched the unfortunate man, and he said,
-consolingly,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“Dry your tears, dear Nettie; I’ll be all right again in a few weeks.�</p>
-
-<p>“Perhaps you may,� she answered; “but all your earnings for a long time
-after you resume work will be required to pay your doctor’s bill, and you
-won’t be able to get me <i>that new silk dress</i>.�&mdash;<span class="smcap">O. Shaw.</span></p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">A sensible Prescription.</span></p>
-
-<p>A doctor up town recently gave the following prescription for a lady: “A
-new bonnet, a cashmere shawl, and a new pair of gaiter boots.� The lady,
-it is needless to say, has entirely recovered.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Rum and Tobacco Patients.</span></p>
-
-<p>Then there is a large class,&mdash;men, mostly; males, at least,&mdash;who, having
-spent all their substance and much of their health in excess of
-tobacco-using and whiskey-drinking, apply to the physician for aid, “in
-charity, for God’s sake,� as they have nothing with which to pay him, and
-usually a numerous family dependent upon their miserable labor for<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_735" id="Page_735">[Pg 735]</a></span>
-sustenance. Woe to the physician who gets a reputation for benevolence at
-this day and generation of “cheek.�</p>
-
-<p>“Doctor, I hope you <i>will</i> do something for my distress,� said a
-gentlemanly-dressed individual, not many months ago. “I have but sixteen
-cents in my pocket, and I owe for four weeks’ board, and am out of
-employment.� He was a play actor. Could I say no to so honest a statement
-of his low state of finance? I treated him faithfully, without a penny.</p>
-
-<p>Not many weeks afterwards I knew of his going away and stopping two days
-at a hotel with a strange woman.</p>
-
-<p>Still there are others who are quite able, but who think it no sin to
-cheat a doctor by misrepresenting their inability to pay. They work upon
-the sympathies of the benevolent doctor; they “would willingly pay a
-hundred dollars, if they had it,� etc.; and thus slip off without
-compensating him for his services. Every physician knows that I have not
-overstated the above.</p>
-
-<p>There is also a large class of patients, with whom, like the “old clo’
-Jew,� wisdom, brain work, advice, go for nothing. You must represent their
-case as perfectly fearful, and do something perfectly awful for them, or
-you are of no account.</p>
-
-<p>Selden, who understood these failings in mankind vastly well, gives them a
-sly hit in his “Table Talk.� If a man had a sore leg, and he should go to
-an honest, judicious surgeon, and he should only bid him keep it warm, and
-anoint it with such an oil (an oil well known), that would do the cure,
-haply he would not much regard him, because he knows the medicine to be an
-ordinary one. But if he should go to a surgeon that should tell him, “Your
-leg will gangrene within three days, and it must be cut off; and you will
-die unless you do something that I could tell you,� what listening there
-would be to this man!</p>
-
-<p>“O, for the Lord’s sake, tell me what this is; I will give you any content
-for your pains.�</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_736" id="Page_736">[Pg 736]</a></span></p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">The Physician’s Widow and Orphan.</span></p>
-
-<p class="center">Scenes from “Practice of a New York Surgeon.�</p>
-
-<p>I have abridged the following truthful story from the above work, which
-book I recommend to the perusal of all lovers of moral and entertaining
-literature.</p>
-
-<p><i>The Summons.</i>&mdash;The experienced physician knows, from the sound of the
-door bell, whether it is the representative of wealth or penury who is
-outside at the bell-pull.</p>
-
-<p>The doctor opened the door to the <i>timid</i> summons.</p>
-
-<p>“Will you please come and see my mother?� asked a little delicate and
-thinly-dressed girl. “She has been very ill for nearly a year, and I’m
-afraid she’s going to die.� The poor little heart was swelling with grief.</p>
-
-<p>Almost ashamed as I donned my heavy coat, for the night was bitter cold,
-and the shivering little girl pattered after me with her well-worn shoes
-and scanty dress, I hurried along to the abode of poverty.</p>
-
-<p><i>The Tenement.</i>&mdash;The faint rays of a candle issuing from an upper window
-of one of those wretched wooden buildings, guided us to the invalid’s
-tenement, and as we approached the house the little girl ran ahead of me,
-and stood shivering in the doorway, while I carefully walked up the
-rickety steps.</p>
-
-<p>Poor as the tenement was, its cleanliness was noticeable, from the fact
-that it was isolated from the loathsome Irish neighbors, whose superior
-means and brutal habits allowed them to occupy the lower and more
-accessible apartments almost in common with the swine which are fed from
-their very doorsteps.</p>
-
-<p><i>The Invalid.</i>&mdash;A violent paroxysm of coughing had just seized the lady,
-and I waited some moments before I could observe her features. She had
-surely seen better days. There were about her and the little apartment
-evidences of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_737" id="Page_737">[Pg 737]</a></span> refinement, from her own tidy person to the little sweet
-rosebush in full bloom, and the faultless white board, and the scanty,
-though snowy curtains that shaded the attic window, which produced a
-melancholy effect upon me, which was not lessened when good breeding
-required me to address my patient.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 450px; height: 421px;"><img src="images/img236.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">CALL AT THE TENEMENT.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>Her countenance had evidently been beautiful; an immense mass of auburn
-hair, such as Titian loved to paint, yet shaded her brow; the eyes were
-large and lustrous; the nose was slightly aquiline, the lips thin; and
-every feature bespoke the woman of a highly refined and intellectual
-nature. When her gaze met mine for an instant, I felt that pity was
-misplaced in the emotions which swelled my heart,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_738" id="Page_738">[Pg 738]</a></span> for the lofty dignity,
-almost <i>hauteur</i>, in that look, would have become an empress in reduced
-circumstances.</p>
-
-<p>“Go, dearest, to your little bed, and close the door, my love,� she said,
-turning to the child.</p>
-
-<p>The girl lingered an instant. I stood between the dying mother and her
-child. I turned aside whilst their lips met in that holy kiss that a dying
-mother only can give, ay, and a prayer that she alone can breathe.</p>
-
-<p>When the little creature had withdrawn, by a narrow door scarcely
-distinguishable from the rest of the rough, whitewashed boards that
-divided her little closet from the main room, the mother turned her
-earnest gaze upon me, and said,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“I have troubled you, doctor, not with the view of taxing your kindness to
-any extent, but to ask how long I may yet linger,�&mdash;placing her hand on
-her wasted bosom,&mdash;“depending for every service upon that little fragile
-creature, for whom alone I have, I fear, a selfish desire to live.�</p>
-
-<p>I could not answer immediately. My heart was too full. I had recognized
-the dreadful malady at a glance. She was far gone with consumption.</p>
-
-<p>“I have a duty to perform, connected with her, that depends upon your
-answer&mdash;one that I have selfishly, alas! too long deferred.�</p>
-
-<p class="center"><strong><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span></strong></p>
-
-<p>As I arose to take my departure, she requested me to open the door to the
-little chamber. I did so, and there lay the poor, pale child, with her
-clothes unremoved. Merciful God! an infant watching its dying mother, a
-refined, delicate and intellectual woman, the wife of an educated
-physician, in a wretched tenement, surrounded by palaces!</p>
-
-<p><i>How they lived.</i>&mdash;O, my God, what a discovery was made on my next visit,
-the following morning! Then I saw what had before excited my curiosity,
-viz., the manner in which my patient contrived to support herself and
-child,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_739" id="Page_739">[Pg 739]</a></span> for I was quite sure that she would never condescend to beg.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img237.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">THE WIDOW AT WORK.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>I had observed, during my visit the previous evening, a very large
-package, tied up in commercial form, and by its side a large square board.
-The widow was now sitting up in bed, propped up with some coarse straw
-pillows, her cheeks burning with hectic, and the square board resting upon
-a couple of cross-pieces to keep it from her wasted limbs, and she and the
-child were at work putting up soda and seidlitz powders. Several dozen
-boxes had been filled during the morning, placed in envelopes, and
-labelled.</p>
-
-<p>“’Tis the lot of humanity to labor,� she said, when I had detected her at
-the task which taxed the last mite of her remaining strength, and I stood
-horrified looking on; “and why should I be exempt?� she asked, actually
-smiling gracefully.</p>
-
-<p>I removed the board, but allowed the girl to resume her work by the little
-table near, saying that her remark was applicable only to those able to
-labor. She assured me that their contracted circumstances had “compelled
-her to make this exhibition of her industry.�</p>
-
-<p><i>Her History.</i>&mdash;Twelve years before, this beautiful and refined lady had
-left a home of wealth and affluence to share the fortunes of her husband,
-Dr. &mdash;&mdash;, who was worthy of all the love that a pure and affectionate
-woman could bestow. He struggled on manfully and hopefully against
-misfortune until two years ago....</p>
-
-<p>I had once met her husband. It was under the following circumstances. A
-child had been run over, and much <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_740" id="Page_740">[Pg 740]</a></span>injured. I was called, but found, on my
-arrival, that this young doctor had been before me, and done all that was
-required; but the gentleman whose duty it was said if I would attend the
-case he would pay all charges, and the young physician, on learning this
-fact on the next visit, retired in my favor. That evening I called at his
-office, and insisted upon his accepting one half of the fees which I knew
-I should receive. He hesitatingly accepted, after much persuasion on my
-part; and I remember that it was my impression at the time that he was
-excessively proud.</p>
-
-<p>Now, the poor wife informed me that, at the time, their means were
-entirely exhausted, and when he came home that evening with a large basket
-of necessaries, and some little delicacies to which they had long been
-unaccustomed, and upon her expressing her astonishment, he <i>sat down and
-wept like a child</i>.</p>
-
-<p>“Great God,� he cried, in agony of soul, “why did I take you from your
-father’s house, where you had plenty? What a reward for devoting the
-flower of life to such a profession! To hear a wife, and the mother of my
-child, expressing astonishment and joy at the unwonted sight of the very
-necessaries of life!�</p>
-
-<p>It was only when the note-books and manuscripts of this truly meritorious
-and unfortunate young man fell into my hands, that I discovered what a
-loss his family and the profession had sustained.</p>
-
-<p>He was too proud to ask assistance. Even in his fatal sickness, he
-continued, until a late period, to decline medical treatment, rather than
-expose his poverty to his brethren. Finally he became known to Dr. &mdash;&mdash;,
-who devoted his time and purse to him until he died. That season Dr. &mdash;&mdash;
-died also.</p>
-
-<p>After his death, the lady with her child had removed to these miserable
-quarters. The needle, and coloring of prints, had sustained them both for
-a year, when, finding it<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_741" id="Page_741">[Pg 741]</a></span> impossible, with her failing health, to earn a
-living at that employment, she resumed the one by which her noble husband
-had been compelled to eke out his miserable income,&mdash;putting up seidlitz
-powders,&mdash;in order to sustain them.</p>
-
-<p>Often, she told me, had she sat by his side till late in the night reading
-to him, whilst he plied his fingers industriously at this employment, so
-utterly repulsive to an intellectual man; and when she would beg him to
-retire, he would often cheerfully obey the summons to an all-night visit
-to some wretched and dishonest Irishman&mdash;who could not get the service of
-a more knowing (pecuniarily) physician without an advanced fee&mdash;in the
-remote hope of obtaining a few dollars, which his refinement taught these
-wretchedly dishonest people they had only to refuse, as they almost
-invariably do, in order to escape entirely the obligation! This is the
-gratitude (!) of which we have spoken before. It was whilst attending one
-of these miserable people that he imbibed the fatal disease which swept
-him from the earth, and left his poor wife and child to struggle on alone
-in their cheerless journey.</p>
-
-<p>It is needless to say that from the time of the visits of the benevolent
-physician, the widow wanted for nothing that earth could bestow, to the
-day of her death, which soon occurred; else she would have died at her
-task!</p>
-
-<p><i>The Unnatural Father.</i>&mdash;On the fifth day, evening, a man entered my
-office and inquired for me. He was plainly dressed in black, and possessed
-one of those hard, immovable countenances which admit of no particular
-definition.</p>
-
-<p>“I received a letter from you relative to my daughter.�</p>
-
-<p>This was said in such a perfectly business-like manner, without the least
-emotion, that I was shocked, and my countenance must have expressed my
-astonishment, for he immediately added,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“A sad business, my dear sir. Well, well, I will not detain you. The
-corpse is here?�</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_742" id="Page_742">[Pg 742]</a></span>“No, sir. I will accompany you to the late abode of your daughter.� I was
-glad that she had not been removed; I thought it might do his moral nature
-some good to see the condition to which his unnatural conduct had brought
-her.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img238.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">THE PHYSICIAN AND THE FATHER.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>Not a muscle of his countenance changed, as we ascended the wretched
-steps. The watcher admitted us to the poor, low room, and handing him a
-letter from my pocket, I said, “These are your daughter’s last words to
-you, which she intrusted to my keeping for you. I will not intrude upon
-your privacy, but will await you at my office;� and bowing, I retired,
-leaving him beside the corpse of his neglected child.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_743" id="Page_743">[Pg 743]</a></span>In less than fifteen minutes he returned, and, without any allusion to the
-event, thanked me for my attentions, declining a chair, saying,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“You will please make out your bill. I wish to be ready to start early in
-the morning, and take the corpse with me.� He inquired for the address of
-an undertaker, and the present abode of <i>her</i> child!</p>
-
-<p>I stood speechless! He was an anomaly. I measured him with my eyes; he
-cast his own for an instant to the floor, and then said,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“My business habits, I fear, shock you, sir. I have been in a hurry all my
-life. I have never had time to think. I owe you an apology, sir&mdash;pardon
-me.�</p>
-
-<p>I thought of the future fate of the poor child, and I must acknowledge I
-hypocritically, for once in my adult life, took the <i>hand of the man I
-totally despised</i>, as I asked him mildly if his daughter had not requested
-to be buried by the side of her husband, whom she loved so well.</p>
-
-<p>“No, sir,� he sharply replied; “his name was not mentioned in the letter;
-very properly too. I had no respect for him, sir, none whatever; nor
-should I have acceded to such, had she made the request.�</p>
-
-<p>I gave him the address of the grandchild, and also an undertaker’s.</p>
-
-<p>“I am much obliged to you,� he said, hurriedly. “I will trouble you no
-further. I will send for the bill in the morning. Good evening, sir.�</p>
-
-<p>I wanted the man (<i>brute!</i>) to love the poor little orphan, his
-grandchild, and that night I prepared a letter&mdash;instead of a bill&mdash;which I
-hoped would benefit him, without aggravating his feelings towards her. I
-said that I deemed such a privilege a sacred one, not to be soiled by a
-pecuniary return. I said other things to him, in the note, which I need
-not repeat. Near spring, in a kind, almost affectionate letter, he
-announced to me the death of his grandchild. She had<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_744" id="Page_744">[Pg 744]</a></span> fulfilled her
-mission. She had greatly subdued his nature by her lovely character....</p>
-
-<p>I learned that the remains of Dr. &mdash;&mdash; were afterwards interred by the
-side of his wife and child, and I received but lately the assurance that
-the wretched father, before his death, admitted that money was not the
-chief good.</p>
-
-<p>Thus perished a noble physician, a devoted wife, and their lovely
-offspring, because of the selfish ingratitude of one to whom they were and
-still might have been an inestimable blessing.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">The Physician.</span></p>
-
-<div class="blockquot"><p>“Honor a physician with the honor due unto him, for the uses which ye
-may have of him: for the Lord hath created him; for of the Most High
-cometh healing, and he shall receive honor of the king. The skill of
-the physician shall lift up his head: and in the sight of great men he
-shall be in admiration.�&mdash;<i>Ecclesiasticus</i> xxxviii.</p></div>
-
-<p>If there is one class of men in the world who deserves the gratitude of
-their fellow-creatures above another, it is the physicians. By physician I
-mean not him who alone can theorize garrulously upon anatomy and
-physiology, chemistry and therapeutics, but who can render assistance, in
-time of need, to the sick and distressed. In ancient days physicians were
-reckoned “as the gods.� I much wonder, as I turn the leaves of the
-Testament, at the abuse heaped upon the Saviour; for he went about healing
-the sick, and casting out devils (evil diseases). Surely society was at a
-very low ebb in those times.</p>
-
-<p>Who has greater, firmer friends than the physician! The good physician is
-sure to prosper. Certainly “envy increases in exact proportion with fame;
-the man who is successful in his undertakings, and builds up a character,
-makes enemies, and calls forth swarms of stinging, peevish, biting
-insects, just as the sunshine awakens the world of flies;� but the true
-physician, having the desire at heart to benefit his <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_745" id="Page_745">[Pg 745]</a></span>fellow-creatures, is
-strong, is beloved, is blessed! He calls forth hosts of friends on every
-side, just as the pure morning air calls fragrance from every lovely
-flower. Would you have the prayers and blessing of the good? then</p>
-
-<p class="poem">“Go to the pillow of disease,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Where night gives no repose,</span><br />
-And on the cheek where sickness preys<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Bid health to plant the rose.</span><br />
-Go where the sufferer ready lies<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">To perish in his doom,</span><br />
-Snatch from the grave his closing eyes,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And bring a blessing home.�</span></p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">A Peter-Funk Doctor.</span></p>
-
-<p>One day, passing up Washington Street, Boston, I detected a familiar voice
-issuing from a store, on the window-panes of which lately vacated premises
-was pasted “Removal,� and, looking in, I saw a man mounted on a box
-selling a pinchbeck watch. The place <i>looked</i> a deal like a New York
-Peter-Funk shop. However that may have been, I recognized the hired
-auctioneer as once having been a medical practitioner. He was a graduate
-of C&mdash;&mdash; Medical College. Owing to his honesty and lack of acquisitiveness
-among dishonest and niggardly creatures in &mdash;&mdash;, whom he faithfully served
-in his earlier efforts at his profession, he was <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_746" id="Page_746">[Pg 746]</a></span>compelled to resort to
-other means of gaining a support for himself and family, and finally was
-reduced to clerking and selling goods for those whose business tact
-exceeded his own.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="bbox" style="width: 328px; height: 450px;"><img src="images/img239.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">THE PETER-FUNK PHYSICIAN.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Selling Out.</span></p>
-
-<p>Everybody has heard of Leavitt, the dry little joker, the humorous and
-popular auctioneer of Hartford, who sells everybody, and everything, from
-a riddled sauce-pan to a nine-acre lot in the suburbs.</p>
-
-<p>One fine day he was selling, in front of the State House, a various
-collection of articles, with a lot of ancient and modern household
-furniture and traps that would have made Mrs. Toodles happy for a six
-months, and was “looking sharp� for some one to help him over a tough
-place on an odd lot, when he discovered in the crowd a pleasant, open,
-upturned countenance,&mdash;a sort of oasis in the desert,&mdash;to whom he at once
-appealed for assistance. A knowing wink from young rusticus was the
-response, a return from the auctioneer, and the bids went on with
-astonishing rapidity, till down went a big lot of goods, which everybody
-seemed to have wanted&mdash;a truckle-bed and fixings, with earthen ware, etc.</p>
-
-<p>“Yours, sir&mdash;what’s your name?� said L. to the young man from the
-agricultural district.</p>
-
-<p>“Mine? O, no; I didn’t bid on ’em,� said rustic.</p>
-
-<p>“Yes, you did,� replied the auctioneer.</p>
-
-<p>“Well, I guess not, much.�</p>
-
-<p>“But you did&mdash;the whole lot. You winked every time I looked towards you.�</p>
-
-<p>“Winked?�</p>
-
-<p>“Yes, and kept winking; and a wink is a bid always,� said L., the least
-taken aback at the prospect of losing a good sale.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_747" id="Page_747">[Pg 747]</a></span>“Wal&mdash;as for that&mdash;so did you keep winkin’ at me. I thought you was
-winkin’ as much as to say, ‘Keep dark; I’ll stick somebody onto this lot
-of stuff;’ and I kept winkin’ back, as if to reply, ‘Well, I’ll be hanged
-if you don’t, mister.’�</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img240.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
-<hr style="width: 50%;" />
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_748" id="Page_748">[Pg 748]</a></span></p>
-<h2><a name="XXXI" id="XXXI"></a>XXXI.</h2>
-<p class="title">“THIS IS FOR YOUR HEALTH.�</p>
-
-<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table">
-<tr><td>“Like leaves on trees the race of man is found,<br />
-Now green in youth, now withering on the ground;<br />
-Another race the following spring supplies;<br />
-They fall successive, and successive rise;<br />
-So generations in their course decay,<br />
-So flourish these when those have passed away.�</td></tr></table>
-
-<div class="note"><p class="hang"><small>THE INESTIMABLE VALUE OF HEALTH.&mdash;NO BLESSING IN COMPARISON.&mdash;MEN AND
-SWINE.&mdash;BEGIN WITH THE INFANT.&mdash;“BABY ON THE PORCH.�&mdash;IN A STRAIT
-JACKET.&mdash;“TWO LITTLE SHOES.�&mdash;YOUTH.&mdash;IMPURE LITERATURE AND
-PASSIONS.&mdash;“OUR GIRLS.�&mdash;BARE ARMS AND BUSTS.&mdash;HOW AND WHAT WE
-BREATHE.&mdash;“THE FREEDOM OF THE STREET.�&mdash;KEEP YOUR EYES OPEN AND MOUTH
-CLOSED.&mdash;THE LUNGS AND BREATHING.&mdash;A MAN FULL OF HOLES.&mdash;SEVEN MILLION
-MOUTHS TO FEED.&mdash;PURE WATER.&mdash;CLEANLINESS.&mdash;SOAP VS. WRINKLES.&mdash;GOD’S SUNSHINE.</small></p></div>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Health is above all Things.</span></p>
-
-<p>Health is that which makes our meat and drink both savory and pleasant,
-else Nature’s injunction of eating and drinking were a hard task and a
-slavish custom. It makes our beds lie easy and our sleep sweet and
-refreshing. It renews our strength with the morning’s sun, and makes us
-cheerful at the light of another day. It makes the soul take delight in
-her mansion and pleasures, a pleasure indeed, without which we solace
-ourselves in nothing of terrene felicity or enjoyment.&mdash;<i>Mainwaring.</i></p>
-
-<p>Without health there is no earthly blessing. In comparison with health all
-other blessings dwindle into insignificance. Life is a burden to the
-perpetual invalid, for whom the only solace is in the silent grave. Nor
-can such always<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_749" id="Page_749">[Pg 749]</a></span> look forward with perfect confidence to rest even beyond
-the dark portals of the tomb; for the infirm body is not unusually
-attended by an enfeebled mind which often jeopardizes Hope:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p class="poem">“And Hope, like the rainbow of summer,<br />
-Gives a promise of Lethe at last.�</p>
-
-<p>If, then, health is so essential to our earthly happiness, and to our hope
-of peace in immortality, O, let us who possess the boon strive to retain
-it, and we who have it not seek diligently to regain that which is lost.</p>
-
-<p>The farmer does not consider it a compromise of his dignity to search out
-the best modes and means for increasing the quality as well as the
-quantity of his stock&mdash;his horses, his oxen, his sheep, and his
-swine,&mdash;and is man, the most noble work of his Maker,&mdash;man, created but a
-little below the angels,&mdash;is man an exception to this rule, that he should
-cease to be the study of mankind? Is humanity below the animals?</p>
-
-<p>Mankind deteriorates while domesticated live stock improves.</p>
-
-<p>God has given us bodies formed in his own likeness, and has pronounced
-them “good,� hence, not diseased; and it is evidently our most imperative
-duty to regard it as a great gift, and preserve these bodies as the
-inestimable boon of the Almighty.</p>
-
-<p>It is very evident that man has fallen far short of the requirements of
-his Maker.</p>
-
-<p>From Adam to the flood&mdash;a space of time estimated at upwards of fifteen
-hundred years, according to Hebrew chronographers&mdash;the average of man’s
-years was nine hundred. From Noah to Jacob, by the same chronology, it had
-dwindled to one hundred and forty-seven years. In the ninetieth psalm we
-read, “The days of our years are threescore years and ten.� From actual
-statistics it is shown to average now less than one fourth of threescore
-and ten years.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_750" id="Page_750">[Pg 750]</a></span>And this fact in the face of civilization, enlightenment, and
-Christianity! Why so? How shall we account for the evil?</p>
-
-<p>The Psalmist above quoted says further, “and if by reason of <i>strength</i>
-they be fourscore years,� etc., which implies that strength prolongs, and
-weakness&mdash;reversing the matter&mdash;shortens our days.</p>
-
-<p>Let us begin at the beginning.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">About the Babies.&mdash;How they are reared and how they should be.</span></p>
-
-<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 2em;">BABY ON THE PORCH.</span><br />
-Out on the porch, by the open door,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Sweet with roses and cool with shade,</span><br />
-Baby is creeping over the floor&mdash;<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Dear little winsome blue-eyed maid!</span><br />
-<br />
-All about her the shadows dance,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">All above her the roses swing,</span><br />
-Sunbeams in the lattice glance,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Robins up in the branches sing.</span><br />
-<br />
-Up at the blossoms her fingers reach,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Lisping her pleading in broken words,</span><br />
-Cooing away, in her tender speech,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Songs like the twitter of nestling birds.</span><br />
-<br />
-Creeping, creeping over the floor,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Soon my birdie will find her wings,</span><br />
-Fluttering out at the open door<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Into the wonderful world of things.</span><br />
-<br />
-Bloom of roses and balm of dew,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Brooks that bubble and winds that call,</span><br />
-All things lovely, and glad, and new,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And the Father watching us over it all!</span></p>
-
-<p>“Select the best sprouts for transplanting,� says the “Old Farmer’s
-Almanac.� And here you have the whole root of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_751" id="Page_751">[Pg 751]</a></span> the matter in a nut shell;
-for sickly-looking sprouts produce only sickly-looking plants. Like begets
-like.</p>
-
-<p>Now, how about the babies? Women’s rights are advocated. Men take their
-rights. But who shall defend the babies’ rights? Poor, helpless little
-non-combatants! Let me say a few words in their behalf.</p>
-
-<p>Children, from the cradle, are wrongfully treated. Their first rights are
-here curtailed. Look at the baby that is permitted to creep out “on the
-porch,� or over nature’s green carpet, and there bask in the sunshine and
-frolic in the open air; then look in pity upon the pale weekly house-plant
-child. The contrast is as striking as lamentable.</p>
-
-<p>“O, he’ll get his death’s cold if the air blows upon him,� hysterically
-screams the ignorant mother. Yes, “ignorant�&mdash;that is the adjective I want
-to describe her.</p>
-
-<p>The young mother has doubtless been sent to a fashionable boarding-school,
-where she was taught algebra, French, (?) the art of adornment, how to
-walk fashionably, eat delicately, and dress <i>à la mode</i>, and even how to
-make a good “catch,� but never how to preserve her health or rear an
-offspring. O, this would be shockingly immodest, or “counting chickens
-before they are hatched,� I once heard a lady affirm.</p>
-
-<p>Nine tenths of our American wives are totally ignorant of everything that
-pertains to their own health, or that of the healthful rearing of an
-infant.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Baby in a Strait Jacket.</span></p>
-
-<p>At first the infant is usually bound tightly in swaddling clothes, lest it
-move a limb, or for fear (like the down east orator) that it will “bust,�
-and thus kept from air and exercise the first year or two, till it not
-unusually becomes a stunted, rickety thing, hardly worth “transplanting�
-or raising. Haven’t you and I, kind reader, been subjected to something of
-this sort of strait jacket insanity?&mdash;insanity of parents! And having been
-tolerably strongly constituted from a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_752" id="Page_752">[Pg 752]</a></span> “tough stock,� we survived that
-first wrong, whereas thousands of “nicer� babies have succumbed to the
-swaddling and stifling process.</p>
-
-<p>This is wrong, all wrong. The infant should be left free, at least as to
-its chest and limbs, in order to breathe, kick, and expand. How happy the
-little fellows are at evening to get rid of the murderous clothes which
-have been bundled about them all day, and how they will fight and squirm
-to get down on the carpet all stripped, and creep, or, if old enough, run
-about in freedom! How they crow and prattle!</p>
-
-<p>Now, don’t swaddle them&mdash;a simple, easy bandage is early admissible,&mdash;or
-cover their heads and faces with caps, sheets, or blankets. Inure them to
-the air early and continually, and they will have less colds and
-“snuffles� than if you confined them within doors. Give them air and
-sunlight, and away with your “goose-grease.� Yes, I have even known some
-country people to apply skunk’s oil, and others who larded the infant’s
-nose and chest for the “snuffles.� Croup delights in such babies!</p>
-
-<p>Then from the strait jacket, baby is taken to the other extreme&mdash;bare
-arms, neck, and chest. Old Dr. Warren once said, “Boston sacrifices
-hundreds of children annually by not clothing their arms and chests.�
-Once, when in remonstrating with a mother against this barbarous practice
-of thus exposing her little one-year-old to a chilling atmosphere when my
-arms and chest were not over warm as wrapped in an overcoat, she replied
-to me,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“O, the little dear looks so pretty with its little white arms and neck
-all bare!�</p>
-
-<p>“Yes,� I replied, sorrowfully, “it will look pretty, also, laid out in its
-coffin.�</p>
-
-<p>She was greatly shocked by the remark, which, however, too soon proved
-true.</p>
-
-<p>“Doctor’s stuff� cannot counteract the fatal results of such ignorance and
-exposures.</p>
-
-<p class="poem"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_753" id="Page_753">[Pg 753]</a></span>
-<span style="margin-left: 4em;">TWO LITTLE SHOES.</span><br />
-Two little shoes laid away in the drawer,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Treasured so fondly&mdash;never to be worn;</span><br />
-Two little feet laid away in the tomb,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Cold and all lifeless&mdash;sadly we mourn.</span><br />
-What trifling things does not a mother keep,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Tokens of love the swelling heart to ease;</span><br />
-Useless little toys&mdash;a lock of golden hair;<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Something to fondle&mdash;to cherish like these</span><br />
-Two little shoes laid away in the drawer,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Treasured so fondly, never to be worn!</span><br />
-<br />
-These little shoes are only left us now;<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Gone is our “darling,� ever to remain;</span><br />
-Dear little feet, so plump and all dimpled,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Never will press them&mdash;never again!</span><br />
-But heavenly thoughts shall cheer me on my way:<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Death is but life, in fairer, sunnier view;</span><br />
-Busy little feet but just run on before;<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">This is my solace as my tears bedew</span><br />
-Two little shoes laid away in the drawer,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Treasured so fondly, never to be worn.</span></p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Impure Literature and Passions.</span></p>
-
-<p>It is as marvellous as true that some children survive this treatment;
-besides the stuffing with meat victuals, candies, and cookies, inducing
-colic and dysentery; then dosing with rhubarb, paregoric, peppermint, and
-worse. Soothing syrups! Eternal quietuses! Yes, in spite of extremes of
-heat and cold, stuffing and dosing with crude and poisonous articles, some
-babies actually reach the next stage&mdash;youth!</p>
-
-<p>From chilled blood, indigestion, poisonous air and drugs, repeated attacks
-of croup, bronchitis, dysentery, etc., the majority who have reached
-puberty are afflicted by some scrofulous taint, or development, or broken
-constitutions.</p>
-
-<p>Now, they have appetites and passions to grapple. We have already, in
-chapter fifth, shown how the school-girl is cheated out of health by the
-deprivation of her “rights,� among which are air, freedom, and exercise.
-Here is <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_754" id="Page_754">[Pg 754]</a></span>another evil, which must not be passed over unnoticed. A New York
-physician, who wields an abler pen than myself, thus expresses my ideas.
-What he applies to females is not limited by copyright. Males, help
-yourselves; it belongs to you quite as much as to the beautiful.</p>
-
-<p>“It sickens the heart to contemplate the education of female children in
-this city.� (And let me add, in this country.) “Should nature even triumph
-over all the evils above enumerated, no sooner has the poor girl attained
-the age of puberty, than her mind and nervous system are placed upon the
-rack of novel-reading and sentimental love stories. There is just enough
-of truth in some of these mawkish productions to excite the passions and
-distract the attention of the young girl from the love of nature and its
-teachings, and all rational ideas of real life, and to cause her to
-despise the commonplace parents whose every hour may be occupied for her
-consideration and welfare.�</p>
-
-<p>This writer goes on to condemn those selfish, money-grasping wretches
-“professors of religion, too,� in our city, who publish this impure and
-overstrained literature, to the great injury of the morals of the young;
-adding, “What language can be too strong for such disgusting hypocrisy? We
-punish a poor wretch for the publication of an obscene book or print, and
-give honor and preferment to those who instil poison into the minds of our
-children by a book prepared with devilish ingenuity, and in every possible
-style of attraction and excitement.</p>
-
-<p>“It is the premature excitement of the nervous and sexual system that
-should be avoided. The licentious characters presented in all the glowing
-tints of a depraved imagination cannot fail to injuriously affect the
-youthful organism.�</p>
-
-<p>The dissolute and immoral characters whom we debar from the personal
-friendship of our sons and daughters, whom we exclude from our parlors,
-and even street recognition, are sugared over, and, between gilded covers,
-passed freely into<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_755" id="Page_755">[Pg 755]</a></span> the <i>boudoirs</i>, school-rooms, and seminaries of our
-children, for their companionship at their leisure. The vile characters in
-person would be far less injurious, for in that case their hideousness
-would the surer be revealed.</p>
-
-<p>“Nothing can be more certain than the production of these works of a
-precocious evidence of puberty. The forces of the young heart and vascular
-system are thus prematurely goaded into ephemeral action by the stimulus
-of an imagination alternately moved to laughter, and tears, and sexual
-passion.�</p>
-
-<p>Mr. Baxter, in Part 2, ch. xxi., direction 1, of his <i>Christian
-Directory</i>, which is a direction for reading other books than the Bible,
-says, “I pre-suppose that you keep the devil’s books out of your hands and
-house. I mean cards, and idle tales, and play-books, and romances or
-love-books, and false, bewitching stories, and the seducting books of
-false teachers.... For where these are suffered to corrupt the mind, all
-grave and useful writings are forestalled; and it is a wonder to see how
-powerfully these poison the minds of children, and many other empty
-heads.�</p>
-
-<p>It would astonish and shame some parents if they would take pains to look
-over the books which are daily and nightly perused by their children. It
-is not enough for you to know that such books were obtained from a “dear
-friend,� or from a respectable publisher, or pious bookseller, or that
-they are lawful publications. Parents and guardians, I pray you take
-warning.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center">“<span class="smcap">Our Girls.</span>�</p>
-
-<p>I want everybody, male and female, old and young, to read that most
-excellent book, “Our Girls,� by Dr. Dio Lewis. It will do you good. For
-humanity’s sake, and particularly for the benefit of females, I recommend
-it. Lest some of my readers should not follow this advice, I want to tell
-you what it says about</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_756" id="Page_756">[Pg 756]</a></span></p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Low Neck and Short Sleeves.</span></p>
-
-<p>“Many a modest woman appears at a party with her arms nude, and so much of
-her chest exposed that you can see nearly half of the mammal glands. Many
-a modest mother permits her daughters to make this model-artist exhibition
-of themselves.</p>
-
-<p>“One beautiful woman said, in answer to my complaints, ‘You should not
-look.’</p>
-
-<p>“‘But,’ I said, ‘do you not adjust your dress in this way on purpose to
-give us a chance to look?’</p>
-
-<p>“She was greatly shocked at my way of putting it.</p>
-
-<p>“‘Well,’ I said, ‘this assurance is perfectly stunning. You strip
-yourselves, go to a public party, parade yourselves for hours in a glare
-of gas-light, saying to the crowd, “Look here, gentlemen,� and then you
-are shocked because we put your unmistakable actions into words.’</p>
-
-<p>“In discussing this subject before an audience of ladies in this city
-(Boston), the other evening, I said, ‘Ladies, suppose I had entered this
-hall with my arms and bust bare; what would you have done? You would have
-made a rush for the door, and, as you jostled against each other in
-hurrying out, you would have exclaimed to each other, “O, the
-unconscionable scallawag!� May I ask if it is not right that we should
-demand of you as much modesty as you demand of us?’ But you exclaim,
-‘Custom! it is the custom, and fashion is everything.’� Again the author
-says,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“This exposure of the naked bosom before men belongs not to the highest
-type of Christian civilization, but to those dark ages when women sought
-nothing higher than the gratification of the passions of man, and were
-content to be mere slaves and toys.</p>
-
-<p>“Boston contains its proportion of the refined women of the country. We
-have here a few score of the old families, inheriting culture and wealth,
-and who can take rank with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_757" id="Page_757">[Pg 757]</a></span> the best. A matron who knows their habits
-assures me that she never saw a member of one of those families in ‘low
-neck and short sleeves.’</p>
-
-<p>“In the future free and Christian America, the very dress of women will
-proclaim a high, pure womanhood.... We shall then discard the costumes
-devised by the dissolute capitals of Europe.</p>
-
-<p>“What a strange spectacle we witness in America to-day! Free, brave
-American women hold out to the world the Bible of social, political, and
-religious freedom, and anon we see them down on their knees, waiting the
-arrival of the latest steamer from France, to learn how they may dress
-their bodies for the next month.�</p>
-
-<p>Well, he does not censure ladies in the above manner all through; but yet,
-in a most earnest and interesting way he divulges the most startling
-truths, and even very young misses are delighted with the whole argument.
-“Why, it’s just like a story,� exclaimed my twelve-year-old Katie on
-reading it.</p>
-
-<p>What Dr. Lewis objects to on the score of immodesty, I also oppose on the
-ground of unhealthfulness. The idea of preventing or curing the
-laryngitis, or consumption, in a lady, when there is nothing but gauze, or
-a bit of ribbon and a galvanized bosom pin, between her neck and the cold
-and changeable atmosphere of the north or east, is ridiculously absurd. No
-doctors or doctors’ pectorals can save such. “High necks,� warm flannels,
-or make your wills.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">How and what we should breathe.</span></p>
-
-<p>It would disgust the reader if I should enter into the details of telling
-him what people&mdash;respectable people, even, in nice houses&mdash;breathe over.
-Air is life. The purer the air, the purer the life-stream that courses
-through our hearts. You cannot get too much of it. Take it in freely. Have
-only pure air in your houses, in your sleeping-rooms and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_758" id="Page_758">[Pg 758]</a></span> cellars.
-Particularly see that the children have the freedom of the air, day and
-night, at home, at school, everywhere. It is free&mdash;costs nothing!</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">The Freedom of the Street.</span></p>
-
-<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 2em;">“I dwell amid the city,</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And hear the flow of souls;</span><br />
-I do not hear the several contraries,<br />
-I do not hear the separate tone that rolls<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 3em;">In art or speech.</span><br />
-<br />
-“For pomp or trade, for merry-make or folly,<br />
-I hear the confidence and sum of each,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And what is melancholy.</span><br />
-Thy voice is a complaint, O crowded city,<br />
-The blue sky covering thee, like God’s great pity.�</p>
-
-<p>“Heaven bless the freedom of the park,� has exclaimed a child of song; and
-he might also have invoked the same blessing upon “the freedom of the
-street.� The street is free to all; to high and low, young and old, rich
-and poor. It recognizes no distinctions or castes; it is the very
-expressiveness of democracy.</p>
-
-<p>The child of fashion, arrayed in silks, ribbons, and furbelows; the child
-of penury and want, in rags, filth, and semi-nakedness; the shaver of
-notes and the shaver of faces; the college professor and the chiffonier,
-all mingle in common on the street. Now walking side by side, now brushing
-past each other, now stopping to look at the same cause of excitement, now
-each jostled into the gutter. No distinction in wealth, birth, or
-intellect is recognized; no one dare attempt to restrict the freedom of
-the thoroughfare, and none dare say to another, “Stand aside, for I am
-better than thou.�</p>
-
-<p>The little boy trundles his hoop against the shins of the thoughtful
-student; the little girl knocks the spectacles from the nose of the man of
-science with her rope, while the preacher runs against an awning-post to
-make way for a red-faced nurse with a willow carriage; the antiquated
-apple woman, and the child with its huge chunk of bread and butter, sit
-on the curb; the painter digs the end of his ladder rather uncomfortably
-into some pursy old gentleman’s stomach; while the sweep, with the soot
-trembling upon his eyelashes, strolls along as independently and leisurely
-as the dandy in tights, and with the sweeter consciousness that he is
-doing something for the public good.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_759" id="Page_759">[Pg 759]</a></span></p>
-<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img241.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">THE FREEDOM OF THE PARK.</p>
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_760" id="Page_760">[Pg 760]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_761" id="Page_761">[Pg 761]</a></span>The street is a world in miniature, a Vanity Fair in motion, a shifting
-panorama of society, painted with the pencil of folly and fancy. It is the
-only plane upon which society, “the field which men sow thick with
-friendships,� meets on a common level. It does not flaunt in aristocracy,
-and never dares to be pretentious.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center">“<span class="smcap">Keep your Eyes open and Mouths closed.</span>�</p>
-
-<p>There’s true philosophy in the above saying of a wise <i>savant</i>. But there
-is more wisdom in the latter clause than he even dreamed of in his
-philosophy.</p>
-
-<p>The Book informs us that God breathed the breath of life (air) into man’s
-<i>nostrils</i>. Nothing is more injurious, save continually breathing foul
-air, than the habit of breathing through the mouth. Keep the mouth closed.
-A great many diseases of the teeth, mouth, throat, head, and lungs may be
-traced directly to the pernicious and general habit of breathing with the
-mouth open&mdash;inhaling and exhaling cold air directly into the mouth and
-throat, inflaming and chilling the mucous membrane and the blood. The
-nostrils are the only proper passages for the air to the lungs. Here are
-filterers to exclude particles of dust and foreign matter, and various
-ramifications, whereby the air is properly warmed before reaching the
-lining of the throat and lungs. In infected air you are less injured, and
-less liable to contract contagious diseases, when inhaling only through
-the natural channel, the nostrils.</p>
-
-<p>I think it was Dr. Good, of London, who wrote a book on<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_762" id="Page_762">[Pg 762]</a></span> the subject,
-which Carlyle pronounced “a sane voice in a world of chaos.�</p>
-
-<p>George Catlin says he learned the secret of keeping the mouth closed while
-among the North American Indians. They would not allow themselves or their
-children to sleep with the mouth open (though their reasoning is
-questionable), because the evil spirit would creep in them at night. Hence
-the parent went around after the pappooses were asleep, and closed their
-mouths. Pulmonary diseases are seldom found in the “close-mouthed.� Kant,
-the philosopher, claims to have cured himself of consumption by this
-discovery. Persons never snore except by breathing through the open mouth.
-O, give us quiet, you snorers, by keeping your mouths shut, even at the
-expense of “keeping your eyes open� to watch yourself, and thus deliver
-the world from the disturbance of snoring.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">The Lungs.&mdash;Breathing.</span></p>
-
-<p>All that live, down even to vegetables and trees, breathe, <i>must</i> breathe,
-in order to live; live in proportion as they breathe; begin life’s first
-function with breathing, and end its last in their last breath. And
-breathing is the <i>most important</i> function of life, from first to last,
-because the grand stimulator and sustainer of all. Would you get and keep
-warm when cold, breathe copiously, for this renews that carbonic
-consumption all through the system which creates all animal warmth. Would
-you cool off, and keep cool, in hot weather, deep, copious breathing will
-burst open all those myriads of pores, each of which, by converting the
-water in the system into insensible perspiration, casts out heat, and
-refreshes mind and body. Would you labor long and hard, with intellect or
-muscle, without exhaustion or injury, breathe abundantly; for breath is
-the great re-invigorator of life and all its functions. Would you keep
-well, breath is your great preventive of fevers, of consumption,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_763" id="Page_763">[Pg 763]</a></span> of “all
-the ills that flesh is heir to.� Would you break up fevers, or colds, or
-unload the system of morbid matter, or save both your constitution and
-doctor’s fee, cover up warm, drink soft water&mdash;cold, if you have a robust
-constitution sufficient to produce a reaction; if not, hot water should be
-used. Then let in the fresh air, and breathe, breathe, breathe, just as
-deep and much as possible, and in a few hours you can “forestall and
-prevent� the worst attack of disease you ever will have; for this will
-both unload disease at every pore of skin and lungs, and infuse into the
-system that <i>vis animæ</i> which will both grapple in with and expel disease
-in all its forms, and restore health, strength, and life.</p>
-
-<p>Nature has no panacea like it. <i>Try the experiment</i>, and it will
-revolutionize your condition. And the longer you try, the more will it
-regenerate your body and your mind. Even if you have the blues, deep
-breathing will soon dispel them, especially if you add vigorous exercise.
-Would you even put forth your greatest mental exertions in speaking or
-writing, keep your lungs clear up to their fullest, liveliest action.
-Would you even breathe forth your highest, holiest orisons of thanksgiving
-and worship, deepening your inspiration of fresh air will likewise deepen
-and quicken your <i>divine</i> inspiration. Nor can even bodily pleasures be
-fully enjoyed except in and by copious breathing. In short, proper
-breathing is the alpha and omega of all physical, and thereby of all
-mental and moral function and enjoyment.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">A Man full of Holes.</span></p>
-
-<p>Yes, made of holes!</p>
-
-<p>A gentleman once told me a story, as follows. We were travelling on the
-Ohio River, on board of a steamer.</p>
-
-<p>“You see that bank over opposite?�</p>
-
-<p>“Yes,� I replied.</p>
-
-<p>“Well, thereby hangs a little story. I always laugh<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_764" id="Page_764">[Pg 764]</a></span> when I think of it,
-or pass the spot, which is often. A fellow sat looking at that spot,
-watching the thousands of swallows that were continually flitting to and
-fro, in and out of their nests, and laughing immoderately to himself. I
-approached, and ventured to inquire the cause of his mirth, that I might
-partake of it.</p>
-
-<p>“Well, you see that bank and all them nests? Well, one day I went down on
-the boat and noticed them. When I came back, there had meantime been a
-heavy rain storm which washed the bank away, and left the holes all
-sticking out;� and the fellow continued to laugh as though he would split
-himself, probably from the <i>idea</i> of the holes “sticking out.� I wondered
-how he could see them if the bank around was washed away.</p>
-
-<p>Still the man full of holes is a fact. According to Krause, quoted in
-Gray’s and Wilson’s works on anatomy, there are twenty-eight hundred
-(2800) pores in the skin of the human body to the square inch; and the
-number of square inches to an average-sized man is twenty-five hundred
-(2500). This would give some <i>seven million pores in the whole body</i>.
-These pores, or tubes, are one fourth of an inch in length; hence, the
-entire length of them all is <i>twenty-eight miles</i>.</p>
-
-<p>That part of the skin is the healthiest which is the most exposed to the
-air, as the face and hands. That part the most diseased from which the air
-is most excluded, as the <i>feet</i>. Three fourths of all persons over
-fourteen years of age have diseased feet; either corns, chilblains, or
-diseased joints or nails.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Seven Million Mouths to Feed.</span></p>
-
-<p>These seven million mouths must be fed daily and hourly. Their food is
-light and air. Man is not only fed and nourished through the portal of his
-mouth, but through all the pores of his body, by drawing in nutriment from
-the surrounding elements, even from the viewless air.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_765" id="Page_765">[Pg 765]</a></span>These little mouths also need moisture. This fact is revealed to the
-senses through the medium of the nerves; for, how grateful to the dry,
-parched skin, is a bath of cold water! or, if the blood is in a “low
-state,�&mdash;impoverished by disease,&mdash;let it be a tepid bath. Let it feel
-comfortable and grateful to the user. This is a good rule to direct you.
-The little children love it&mdash;love to paddle and splash in it. If they cry
-and fight against washing, it is usually because of the rudeness of the
-operator, who, with brawny palm or rough sponge takes the child unawares,
-nearly suffocating it, and briskly and rudely rubbing over the surface of
-the tender face, regardless of such small obstructions as nose, chin, and
-lips, and not unusually dashing a quantity of yellow soap suds into the
-infantile eyes. The next time the little fellow is requested to be washed,
-he, remembering the last <i>scouring</i>, naturally objects to a repetition of
-the unpleasant process.</p>
-
-<p>As the nostrils inhale pure air beneficially, they also exhale impurities.
-The pores also excrete, or throw off impurities. A healthy skin will throw
-out, by the pores, from two to three pounds of impure matter every
-twenty-four hours. To be sure a greater quantity of this impurity is a
-vapory substance, yet that holds in solution solid particles of corrupt
-matter, which greatly tend to clog the pores if left to obstruct free
-perspiration.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Water.</span></p>
-
-<p>Then, aside from cooling and nourishing the skin and the system through
-the pores, cleanliness and health demand oft and repeated ablutions of the
-whole body. In order that the perspiration may be unobstructed, it is
-absolutely necessary to wash the whole surface of the body in water, and
-on account of the <i>acid</i> and oily substance collecting on the skin, using
-a small quantity of alkali, as soap or soda in the water, and thus, by
-good brisk rubbing, using the hand in preference to a cloth or sponge,
-thoroughly cleansing the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_766" id="Page_766">[Pg 766]</a></span>little mouths referred to, else their action is
-retarded and suspended. This should be done daily during the summer
-season.</p>
-
-<p>This is a simple process, indispensable to health, and the unwashed can
-hardly believe what beneficial results follow such a plain course, or know
-the healthful influence or the comfort derived from a frequent use of pure
-water.</p>
-
-<p>Those who bathe thus daily seldom take colds. During the winter, in cold
-climates, weekly or semi-weekly bathing may suffice.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img242.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">“IT COSTS NOTHING.�</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>A statesman, in seeking an illustration of the difference between price
-and value, very happily hit upon water, which costs nothing, and yet is of
-inestimable worth. Water, next to air, is the most indispensable of all
-the productions of nature. “Unlike most good things providentially
-supplied for our use, it is hardly capable of abuse. The more common
-danger to be feared is from too little, not too much, water.</p>
-
-<p>“Simple a thing, however, as it may be to quench the thirst from the
-running stream, or the mountain spring, there are but few people who know
-how to drink. Most people, in the eagerness of thirst, swallow with such
-avidity the welcome draught, that they deluge their stomachs without
-proportionately refreshing themselves. The slowly sipping of a single
-goblet of water will do more to alleviate thirst than the sudden gulping
-down of a gallon. It is more frequently the dryness of the mouth, during
-hot weather, than the want of the system, which calls for the supply of
-fluid. When larger quantities, moreover, are poured into the stomach than
-are required, that organ becomes oppressed mechanically by the distention,
-and the digestion is consequently weakened.�</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_767" id="Page_767">[Pg 767]</a></span>The prescribed ablutions of the Jews and Mohammedans have not only a
-spiritual but a hygienic value. “The washing of the body not only whitens
-the outside of the sepulchre, but purifies the internal organs, and renews
-the spiritual man as well.... Hence, when the body becomes foul by the
-retention of worn-out and corrupt material accumulated on the surface and
-the interior of the structure, it becomes a cage suitable only for the
-dwelling of unclean birds, and no others will descend and make their nests
-therein. It is a vessel fitted to receive only the lower passions and
-feelings of human nature.</p>
-
-<p>“Public bathing-houses are as important a means of grace as our poorly
-ventilated churches, and many an unhappy soul would be brought nearer to
-heaven by a judicious application of soap and water than he could be by
-listening to a sermon about that of which he comprehends little and cares
-less.�&mdash;<i>Rev. W. F. Evans’s “Mental Cure.�</i></p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Soap vs. Wrinkles.</span></p>
-
-<p>How much younger and fresher the wayworn traveller or the outdoor laborer
-looks after a thorough washing of the face and hands only. Many who
-complain of “bird’s claws� and wrinkles might murmur less if they made a
-thorough use of warm water and “old brown windsor soap,� or better, the
-true castile soap. Nearly all the soap sold at groceries for castile is
-spurious. A good druggist will have the desired article, and for rough,
-chapped skin nothing is better, not even glycerine.</p>
-
-<p>Then wash out the furrows of fine dirt that gather in the <i>little</i>
-wrinkles, and it will surprise some folks to see how, thereby, they have
-reduced the size of their wrinkles. It is like cleansing an old coat!</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">God’s Sunshine.</span></p>
-
-<p>Next to air and water in importance to health and happiness<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_768" id="Page_768">[Pg 768]</a></span> is sunlight.
-O, “let there be light� in your houses, that there may be light in your
-hearts also!</p>
-
-<p>Our houses should be so constructed and located that the sun may shine
-into every room some time during the day. Too many build houses and live
-in the rear. The hall and large parlors are usually situated in front, to
-the south or west, throwing the sitting, dining, and
-working-room&mdash;kitchen&mdash;in the shade. Let the cheering, life-giving
-influences of God’s dear blessed sunshine flood the working, sitting, and,
-particularly, the sleeping rooms. He or she who sleeps in a room from
-which the sunshine is totally excluded will be pale, weak, tired, and die
-prematurely of consumption. Try a plant in such a room. It soon turns pale
-and sickly. Just so your children and yourself. I have such patients
-daily. Medicine cannot substitute sunshine.</p>
-
-<p>Throw open the blinds, dash aside the curtains, and let in the light and
-sunshine to your homes and hearts. Never mind the carpets; they may be
-replaced, but you and your children, never! Save your health, if <i>you ruin
-an old carpet in so doing</i>!</p>
-
-<p>Cholera, dysentery, scrofula, nervous diseases, and consumption prevail
-more extensively in narrow and darkened, as also in the shady side of
-streets; also in darkened prisons and hospitals.</p>
-
-<p>A heavy heart walks in dark and cheerless apartments. The cheerful, happy
-man, the joyous, contented wife, the beautiful, healthy children, dwell
-and rejoice in homes where flows full and free the pure air and the
-life-keeping, health-giving sunshine.</p>
-
-<p>Christianity is more likely to take up its abode with the latter. There
-only green leaves and beautiful flowers can gladden the sight and
-exhilarate the senses.</p>
-
-<p>Air, water, sunlight! “These three.� Don’t neglect them. So shall you live
-long, live healthy, and at last die happily!</p>
-
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
-<hr style="width: 50%;" />
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_769" id="Page_769">[Pg 769]</a></span></p>
-<h2><a name="XXXII" id="XXXII"></a>XXXII.</h2>
-<p class="title">HEALTH WITHOUT MEDICINE.</p>
-
-<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table">
-<tr><td>How shall I stay life’s sunny hours?<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">For though the summer skies are clear,</span><br />
-Foreboding thoughts steal o’er my heart,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And autumn sounds oppress my ear.</span><br />
-While heart with hope beats warm and high,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And pleasures drink in summer bowers,</span><br />
-I know that autumn frosts will come&mdash;<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">How shall I stay life’s sunny hours?</span></td></tr></table>
-
-<div class="note"><p class="hang"><small>CHEERFULNESS.&mdash;GOOD ADVICE.&mdash;REV. FRANCIS J. COLLIER ON CHRISTIAN
-CHEERFULNESS.&mdash;WHAT GOD SAYS ABOUT IT.&mdash;WHINING.&mdash;LOVE AND
-HEALTH.&mdash;AFFECTION AND PERFECTION.&mdash;SEPARATING THE SHEEP AND
-GOATS.&mdash;THE FENCES UP AND FENCES DOWN.&mdash;SIXTEEN AND SIXTY.&mdash;ACTION AND
-IDLENESS.&mdash;IDLENESS AND CRIME.&mdash;BEAUTY AND DEVELOPMENT.&mdash;SLEEP.&mdash;DAY
-AND NIGHT.&mdash;“WHAT SHALL WE EAT?�&mdash;A STOMACH-MILL AND A
-STEWING-PAN.&mdash;“FIVE MINUTES FOR REFRESHMENTS.�&mdash;ANCIENT DIET.&mdash;COOKS
-IN A “STEW.�&mdash;THE GREEN-GROCERIES OF THE CLASSICS.&mdash;CABBAGES AND
-ARTICHOKES.&mdash;ANIMAL AND VEGETABLE DIET.</small></p></div>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Cheerfulness.</span></p>
-
-<p>I place cheerfulness next, in the catalogue of essentials to long life and
-happiness; before “diet,� for, unless a man eats cheerfully, nothing will
-agree with him; and if he be constantly cheerful, nothing that he eats
-will injure him.</p>
-
-<p>“How shall I be cheerful when all the world goes wrong with me?� asks the
-diseased and despondent man or woman.</p>
-
-<p>Put on cheerfulness as a garment. Assume it. Try my suggestion. Use a
-little hypocrisy with yourself. Go before your glass, if necessary, and
-assume a cheerful <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_770" id="Page_770">[Pg 770]</a></span>countenance. Keep it up, and before long you will be
-astonished to find that Mr. Melancholy don’t like it, and begins to
-withdraw his sombre person. Keep on “keeping it up,� and the most happy
-results will soon follow your exertions.</p>
-
-<p>Try the reverse, and melancholy will return. This is cheap medicine.
-“&#8478;&mdash;A cheerful face, taken daily, feasting.�</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Christian Cheerfulness.</span></p>
-
-<p>The following prize essay was written by Rev. Francis J. Collier:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“<i>Cheerfulness as a Medicine.</i>&mdash;Perhaps nothing has a greater tendency to
-cast gloom over the spirit than <i>disease</i>. The mind sympathizes with the
-body as much as the body with the mind. Their union is so intimate, so
-delicate, so sensitive, that what affects the one necessarily affects the
-other. Each to a certain degree determines the other’s condition. If the
-mind is joyful, its emotion is betrayed by the expression of the body. ‘A
-merry heart maketh a cheerful countenance.’ But if the body is injured, or
-the physical system deranged, the mind at once suffers, and forthwith
-droops into sadness. It becomes, therefore, your Christian duty, if you
-have health, to study the laws of your physical being; to compel yourself
-both to labor and to rest; to avoid unnecessary risks or exposure; to
-abstain from injurious indulgences; to be prudent, temperate, chaste, and,
-by every proper means, to try to preserve what is so essential to your
-spiritual comfort. If you have lost this boon, strive to regain it. Think
-not, speak not, all the while about your malady. Suppress moans and
-complaints. They are always disagreeable to others; they can never be
-beneficial to you. Count your mercies, and not your miseries. Try upon
-your body the stimulus of a cheerful spirit. It may not insure your
-recovery, but it will certainly produce a pleasant alleviation. ‘A merry
-heart doeth good like a medicine; but a broken spirit dryeth the bones.’</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_771" id="Page_771">[Pg 771]</a></span>“<i>Borrowing Trouble.</i>&mdash;Forebodings of evil rob the mind of cheerfulness.
-‘Ills that never happened have mostly made men wretched,’ says Tupper.
-Casting our glance ahead, we see ‘lions’ in the way; difficulties which we
-are sure we can never overcome; griefs under whose heavy weight we shall
-be utterly crushed. Not satisfied with our present troubles, we borrow
-misery from the future. The Holy Scripture instructs us to do otherwise.
-‘Thou knowest not what a day may bring forth.’&mdash;Prov. xxvii. 1. ‘Take
-therefore no thought for the morrow, for the morrow shall take thought for
-the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.’&mdash;Matt.
-vi. 34. And then it gives us a golden promise, ‘As thy days, so shall thy
-strength be.’</p>
-
-<p>“The life of many Christians is a life of constant sadness and gloom. They
-seem to be entire strangers to all the happiness of earth and all the
-hopes of heaven. Their faces commonly appear as sombre as the stones which
-mark the dwelling-places of the dead. Their feelings are better expressed
-in sighs than in songs. Unhappy themselves, they make others unhappy. They
-come and go like clouds, shutting out the sunshine from cheerful hearts,
-and for a while casting upon them shadows cold and dark.</p>
-
-<p>“Arise, O, desponding one! Quit your tearful abode in the valley of gloom,
-and come and make your dwelling on the bright hill-top of cheerfulness.
-Look up! look up! and behold the sun shining through the clouds, and the
-stars through the darkness.�</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Whining.</span></p>
-
-<p>This is a habit opposed to cheerfulness, and producing contrary results.
-It is half-sister to scolding, and equally as obnoxious. Don’t fret and
-whine. It makes you look old and cross. The disease soon becomes chronic
-if indulged in. It is a disease that not only the doctors know at sight,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_772" id="Page_772">[Pg 772]</a></span>
-but every one can read it in the face of those thus afflicted. “O, what a
-cross face that lady has got!� I heard another female exclaim but
-yesterday, as they passed on the street. You cannot hide it; then don’t
-induce such a look.</p>
-
-<p>Somebody has written the following, which so completely expresses my ideas
-of the matter, that I quote the item verbatim:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“There is a class of persons in this world, by no means small, whose
-prominent peculiarity is whining. They whine because they are poor; or, if
-rich, because they have no health to enjoy their riches; they whine
-because it is too shiny; they whine because it is too rainy; they whine
-because they have ‘no luck,’ and others’ prosperity exceeds theirs; they
-whine because some friends have died, and they are still living; they
-whine because they have aches and pains, and they have aches and pains
-because they whine, no one can tell why.</p>
-
-<p>“Now, we would like to say a word to these whining persons. Stop whining.
-It’s of no use, this everlasting complaining, fretting, fault-finding,
-scolding, and whining. Why, you are the most deluded set of creatures that
-ever lived.</p>
-
-<p>“Do you not know that it is a well-settled principle of physiology and
-common sense that these habits are more exhausting to nervous vitality
-than almost any other violation of physiological law? And do you not know
-that life is pretty much what you make it and take it? You can make it
-bright and sunshiny, or you can make it dark and shadowy. This life is
-only meant to discipline us, to fit us for a higher and nobler state of
-being. Then stop whining and fretting, and go on your way rejoicing.�</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Love.</span></p>
-
-<p>“Well, what has that to do with health and long life?� ask the cynic, the
-bachelor, the old maid possibly, and the plodders.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_773" id="Page_773">[Pg 773]</a></span>Everything, I reply.</p>
-
-<p>The man, woman, or child who loves well and wisely, who loves the most, is
-the happiest, healthiest, and will live the longest.</p>
-
-<p>“That is a bold assertion,� says my quizzer.</p>
-
-<p>Yes, and true as bold. Now listen in silence to my statement.</p>
-
-<p>Who loves, what loves, and what is the result?</p>
-
-<p>“God is love.� Here is the first, the fundamental principle.</p>
-
-<p>He is the oldest of all beings. To be like him is to love,&mdash;to love all
-things which he has created. This is Godlike. If you are not thus, you are
-like the ungodly, who “shall not live out half their days.� “Love God, and
-keep his commandments.�</p>
-
-<p>“Love thy neighbor as thyself.�</p>
-
-<p>Is there not more happiness and health in the obeying of this command,
-than in disobedience to it? Whatever is conducive to happiness is
-healthful. Whatever produces unhappiness is injurious to health. Love is
-undefinable.</p>
-
-<p>“There is a fragrant blossom that maketh glad the garden of the heart.</p>
-
-<p>Its root lieth deep; it is delicate, yet lasting as the lilac-crocus of
-autumn.</p>
-
-<p class="center"><strong><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span></strong></p>
-
-<p>I saw, and asked not its name; I knew no language was so wealthy.</p>
-
-<p>Though every heart of every clime findeth its echo within.</p>
-
-<p>And yet, what shall I say? Is a sordid man capable of love?</p>
-
-<p>Hath a seducer known it? Can an adulterer perceive it?</p>
-
-<p class="center"><strong><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span></strong></p>
-
-<p>Chaste, and looking up to God, as the fountain of tenderness and joy.</p>
-
-<p>Quiet, yet flowing deep, as the Rhine among rivers.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_774" id="Page_774">[Pg 774]</a></span>Lasting, and knowing not change, it walketh in truth and sincerity.</p>
-
-<p>Love never grows old, love never perisheth.�</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Affection and Perfection.</span></p>
-
-<p>Love is so closely connected with our lives, and all that makes or mars
-our peace and pleasure, health and beauty, that I should feel guilty of a
-sin of omission by excluding this item from my chapter on health and
-happiness.</p>
-
-<p>To be unloved is to be unhappy. Do not forget the connection between
-health and happiness. They are all but synonymous terms.</p>
-
-<p>You may know the unloved and unlovely by the lines of care, dissipation,
-or crime that are furrowed upon their brows. Go into the highways, and you
-may readily pick out the unloved child by its unsatisfied expression of
-countenance. It lifts its great, hungry eyes to yours instinctively, and
-asks for love and sympathy as plainly by that searching look, as the child
-of penury, the bread-starveling asks for alms when it presents its scrawny
-hand, and in pitiful tones says, “Please give me a penny, for God’s sake.�</p>
-
-<p>O, give the child “love,� for God’s sake; for he so loved the world that
-he gave us his only begotten Son, who only in turn taught us to love.</p>
-
-<p>Physical perfection is never found in the unloved.</p>
-
-<p>The unloved wife is not long beautiful, nor the child of such. There is a
-marked difference between them and the wife and child that the husband and
-father cherishes and caresses with unrestrained affection. In sickness
-love divides the burden, as in the common toils of life.</p>
-
-<p>Disguise or deny the truth of the assertion if you will, woman must love
-somebody or some thing. She were not otherwise a true woman, nor made in
-the image of her Maker. If the husband denies her that affection which
-truly belongs to her nature, he must not blame her, but himself, if she<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_775" id="Page_775">[Pg 775]</a></span>
-loves another. She will cling to something. If she has no children upon
-whom to lavish her affections, she will love some other’s, or a pet
-canary, or even a cat, or lapdog; but love she will.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Separating the Sheep and Goats.</span></p>
-
-<p>I place cheerfulness before love, because angry and melancholy people are
-unlovable. If you wish to be loved and happy, be lovable. Strive to
-please, to make those about you happy, and then you will be lovable.
-Cheerfulness is the first step.</p>
-
-<p>A very sensible writer in the <i>Phrenological Journal</i> says,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“There is not enough thought, and time, and consideration devoted to this
-inevitable requisite, love. It is kept too much in the background. How
-many years are given to preparing young people for professions, trades,
-and occupations; how much counsel and advice are heaped around these
-topics; and yet how little importance is attached to the very influence
-which will probably be the turning-point of their lives. No wonder there
-are so many unhappy marriages. If we could only remember that boys and
-girls are not to be educated for lawyers, merchants, school-teachers, or
-housekeepers alone, but for husbands and wives, as well.�</p>
-
-<p>Those girls are the most chaste and ladylike who have been brought up with
-a family, or neighborhood, or school of boys; and on the other hand, those
-boys who have from their earliest days been accustomed to female restraint
-and girlhood’s influences, make the best men, and most faithful, loving
-husbands and fathers.</p>
-
-<p>What shall I say of those demoralizing institutions where the “young
-ladies� are taught algebra, languages, and ill manners? Where they are
-forbidden to recognize a gentleman in the school-room, prayer-room, or
-street? Can you, honest reader, believe there are such institutions in our
-enlightened land? Yet there are; where the sexes are denied<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_776" id="Page_776">[Pg 776]</a></span> not only the
-association with, but are forbidden the common courtesies of life; where,
-if a friend or brother lifts his hat to the young lady, while belonging to
-that institution, she is forbidden to acknowledge the courtesy.</p>
-
-<p>I remember Mrs. Brandyball, in one of Theodore Hook’s novels of society,
-boasting of her seminary for young ladies as one of the <i>safest</i> in the
-world, being entirely surrounded by a dense wall, eight feet high,
-surmounted by sharp spikes and broken glass bottles. I reckon all the
-virtue preserved in this way was not worth the cost of its defences.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Fences broken down.</span></p>
-
-<p>The writer passed some time in a town where these discourtesies were
-promulgated. I boarded with a pious family, where a large number of male
-students boarded also. There was one class of influences and <i>passions</i>
-pervading that place. All female influence and restraint were withdrawn.
-And what was the result? The boys were forbidden to smoke, or chew
-tobacco, or play at cards. They reckoned me as a “right jolly good
-fellow,� because I could be induced to play a game of euchre with them;
-but they occasionally smoked me out of their rooms, and I was repeatedly
-compelled to check their wonted flow of licentious conversation. Cards, as
-an innocent amusement, I could stand, but the “accomplishments� referred
-to I could not endure. Shall I, as a physician, mention the positive
-evidence, the pathognomonic indications which were revealed to me in the
-faces of many of those young men; of vulgar habits, which are less often
-or seldom revealed in those who customarily associate in pure female
-society? They had little or no respect for the opposite sex. Their ideas
-of them, thoughts and conversations, were most gross. If some now and
-then, as they occasionally would, took a stolen interview, a walk at
-night, when “Old Prof.� was asleep, it was with no more exalted views of
-purity than<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_777" id="Page_777">[Pg 777]</a></span> any other midnight criminal prowlers are supposed to cherish.</p>
-
-<p>And the girls? Alas! they were ready to flirt with every strange man,
-drummer, or else, who came into the village. The aforesaid pious landlord
-assured me further, what my eyes did not see, that he knew of girls
-climbing out of the windows at night, and partaking of stolen rides and
-interviews as late as midnight; and he pointed out to me one coy, plump
-little miss, who he knew “had been out as late as one or two A. M., taking
-a ride with a gentleman scholar.�</p>
-
-<p>The scholars all met in the “chapel� for prayers. Are sly glances, winks,
-or billets-doux prayers? If so, they prayed fervently.</p>
-
-<p>Any well read, observing physician will tell you of the ruined healths of
-the majority of females educated at such exclusive seminaries.</p>
-
-<p>And what is the reverse of this exclusiveness?</p>
-
-<p>Bring the sexes up together. Teach them together, as much as is
-consistent. They will each have better manners, be more graceful, and
-possess clearer ideas of propriety, more beauty and better health, than by
-the plan of a separate education.</p>
-
-<p>We all dread to grow old. Don’t talk of second childhood. Keep the first
-youthfulness fresh till the last. Love will do much towards continuing
-this desirable state. Says the <i>Phrenological Journal</i>, beauty comes and
-goes with health. The bad habits and false conditions which destroy the
-latter, render the former impossible. Youthfulness of form and features
-depends on youthfulness of feeling.</p>
-
-<p class="poem">“Spring still makes spring in the mind,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">When sixty years are told;</span><br />
-Love wakes anew the throbbing heart,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And we are never old.�</span></p>
-
-<p>If, then, we would retain youthful looks, we must do nothing that will
-make us <i>feel old</i>.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_778" id="Page_778">[Pg 778]</a></span>O, the folly of parents in some things! The nonsense of sixty is the
-sweetest kind of sense to sixteen; and the father and mother who renew
-their own youths in that of their children may be said to experience a
-second blossoming of their lives. Teach them to talk to you of their
-friends and companions. Let the girls chat freely about gentlemen if they
-wish. It is far better to control the subject than to forbid it. Don’t
-make fun of your boy’s shamefaced first love, but help him to judge the
-article properly. You would hardly send him by himself to select a coat or
-a hat&mdash;has he not equal need of your counsel and assistance in selecting
-that much more uncertain piece of goods, a sweetheart?</p>
-
-<p>There is a great deal of popular nonsense talked and written about the
-folly of our girls contracting early marriages. It is not the early
-marriage that is in fault, it is the premature choice of a husband. Only
-take time enough about selecting the proper person, and it is not of much
-consequence how soon the minister is called in. Keep him on trial a little
-while, girls; look at him from every possible point of view, domestic or
-foreign. Don’t be deluded by the hollow glitter of handsome features and
-prepossessing manners. A Greek nose or a graceful brow will not insure
-conjugal happiness by any means. A husband ought to be like a watertight
-roof, equally serviceable in sunny or rainy weather.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Action and Idleness.</span></p>
-
-<p>While action is surely essential to our physical and moral being, all
-extremes should be avoided. Excessive labor, even out of door, in the air
-and sunshine, may be injurious. On this point I quote the <i>Scientific
-American</i>:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“It has oftentimes been asserted that those exposed to severe labor in the
-open atmosphere were the least subject to sickness. This has been proven a
-fallacy. Of persons engaged at heavy labor in outdoor exposure, the
-percentage<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_779" id="Page_779">[Pg 779]</a></span> of sickness in the year is 28.05. Of those engaged at heavy
-labor in-doors, such as blacksmiths, etc., the percentage of sickness is
-26.54&mdash;not much to be sure; but of those engaged at light occupations
-in-doors and out, the percentage of sickness is only 20.80-21.58. For
-every three cases of sickness in those engaged in light labor, there are
-four cases among those whose lot is heavy labor. The mortality, however,
-is greater among those engaged in light toil, and in-door labor is less
-favorable to longevity than laboring in the open atmosphere. It is
-established clearly that the quantum of sickness annually falling to the
-lot of man is in direct proportion to demands on his muscular power.</p>
-
-<p>“How true this makes the assertion,&mdash;‘Every inventor who abridges labor,
-and relieves man from the drudgery of severe toil, is a benefactor of his
-race.’ There were many who looked upon labor-saving machines as great
-evils, because they supplanted the hand toil of many operatives. We have
-helped to cure the laboring and toiling classes of such absurd notions. A
-more enlightened spirit is now abroad, for all experience proves that
-labor-saving machines do not destroy the occupations of men, but merely
-change them.�</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Idleness induces Crime.</span></p>
-
-<p>This fact cannot be too strongly or repeatedly impressed upon parents and
-children.</p>
-
-<p>Warden Haynes, of the Massachusetts State Prison, lately uttered these
-emphatic and significant words, which are worthy to be written in letters
-of gold: “Eight out of every ten come here by liquor; and a great curse
-is, not learning a trade. Young men get the notion that it is not genteel
-to learn a trade; they idle away their time, get into saloons, acquire the
-habits of drinking, and then gambling, and then they are ready for any
-crime.� How many young men we see every day who are in the pathway to this
-end. Fathers and mothers who hold the dangerous view that it is not
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_780" id="Page_780">[Pg 780]</a></span>genteel for their children to learn a trade, can see where such ideas
-lead. The words of wisdom quoted above are full of weighty import for both
-parents and children.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Beauty and Development.</span></p>
-
-<p>Activity of body and mind are conducive to health.</p>
-
-<p>Everybody ought to know that moderate exercise develops the muscular and
-nervous power, hence the vitality of all creatures. Is the active,
-prancing steed, or the inactive, sluggish swine, the better representative
-of beauty, strength, and long life?</p>
-
-<p>“The horse,� answers everybody. Then avoid the habits of the other, and
-you will be very unlike that indolent, unclean, and gluttonous animal.
-When you see a man who reminds you of a hog, be assured he has swinish
-habits.</p>
-
-<p>Mental activity, unless it is excessive, is conducive to beauty, to
-strength, and health. A writer in the American Odd Fellow has some good
-ideas illustrative of my argument, that I may be pardoned for quoting
-him:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“We were speaking of handsome men the other evening, and I was wondering
-why K. had so lost the beauty for which five years ago he was so famous.
-‘O, it’s because he never did anything,’ said B.; ‘he never worked,
-thought, or suffered. You must have the mind chiselling away at the
-features, if you want handsome middle-aged men.’ Since hearing that
-remark, I have been on the watch to see whether it is generally true&mdash;and
-it is. A handsome man who does nothing but eat and drink grows flabby, and
-the fine lines of his features are lost; but the hard thinker has an
-admirable sculptor at work, keeping his fine lines in repair, and
-constantly going over his face to improve, if possible, the original
-design.�</p>
-
-<p>Therefore, we infer that this moderate (outdoor) exercise is conducive to
-beauty, health, and longevity. Moderate activity of the mind the same.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_781" id="Page_781">[Pg 781]</a></span>Idleness begets licentious thoughts and deeds. Activity of body and mind
-in honorable pursuits calls away the nervous power from the lower to the
-higher organs. A lively, cheerful, clean man or woman, is seldom wicked or
-licentious.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Sleep.</span></p>
-
-<p>By the assistance of John G. Saxe, we have already given those</p>
-
-<p class="poem">“Early to bed, and early to rise,<br />
-Makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise,�</p>
-
-<p>fellows a touch of our opinion on too early rising. I base my judgment
-upon careful and continued observation during many years.</p>
-
-<p>The Scriptures teach that the day is for work, and night for sleep. This
-turning day into night, sitting up till near midnight, is all wrong. It is
-ruinous to health and beauty. This other extreme, of rising at four or
-five o’clock and pitching into hard labor, is wearing and tearing to the
-constitution; and though nature for a while adapts herself to the
-necessity, by browning and unnaturally developing the exposed parts of
-such deluded or unfortunate persons, <i>it does it at the expense of his
-length of days</i>. He will not live so long for his over-doing.</p>
-
-<p>Begin by retiring earlier, at the first indication after nightfall of
-fatigue and sleepiness. If sweaty, wash the skin quickly, as previously
-directed, with warm water, <i>rubbing dry and warm</i>, and cover up. Lie on
-one side. Do not sleep on your back. You are more liable to dream
-laborious or frightful dreams, snore, or have nightmare. Do not sleep in
-clothes worn during the day.</p>
-
-<p>Unfortunate is the man or woman, who, from necessity, arises before six or
-seven in winter, or five to seven in summer.</p>
-
-<p>Literary persons require more sleep than laborers. Children require more
-than adults. Do not lie in bed long after<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_782" id="Page_782">[Pg 782]</a></span> awaking at morning. Open your
-window wide as soon as you arise&mdash;it is supposed to be partially open at
-the top all night.</p>
-
-<p>In inhaling air at night or morning, do it only through the nostrils.
-Night air is <i>not</i> injurious any more than day air if so inhaled. Sleep
-when sleepy&mdash;this is a good rule, unless disease induces unnatural sleep.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">What shall we eat?</span></p>
-
-<p><i>Eat what relishes well, and agrees with you afterwards.</i> This is the best
-general rule I have been able to adopt for eating.</p>
-
-<p>There has been so much ridiculous stuff written upon “diet� that most
-sensible people have given up trying to follow the prescribed rules of
-writers, if not their physician’s directions on that score.</p>
-
-<p>Take the following, by one celebrated Dr. Brown, of England, for an
-example, although we may find others quite as ridiculous nearer home:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“For breakfast, toast and rich soup made on a slow fire, a walk before
-breakfast, and a good deal after it; a glass of wine in the forenoon,
-<i>from time to time</i>; good broth or soup to dinner, with meat of any kind
-he likes, but always the most nourishing; several glasses of port or punch
-to be taken after dinner, till some enlivening effect is perceived from
-them, and a dram after everything heavy; one hour and a half after dinner
-another walk; between tea-time and supper a game with cheerful company at
-cards or any other play, never too prolonged; a little light reading;
-jocose, humorous company, avoiding that of popular Presbyterian ministers
-and their admirers, and all hypocrites and thieves of every
-description.... Lastly, the company of amiable, handsome, and delightful
-young women and an enlivening glass.�</p>
-
-<p>Dr. Russell, to whom we are indebted for the quotation,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_783" id="Page_783">[Pg 783]</a></span> might well say
-that “John Brown’s prescriptions seem a caricature of his system.�</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">A “Stomach-mill� and a “Stewing-pot.�</span></p>
-
-<p>There have been many speculations about the nature of the digestive
-process, and in relation to them the celebrated Hunter remarked,
-playfully, “To account for digestion, some have made the stomach a mill;
-some would have it to be a stewing-pot, and some a brewing-trough; yet all
-the while one would have thought that it must have been very evident that
-the stomach was neither a mill, nor a stewing-pot, nor a brewing-trough,
-nor anything but a <i>stomach</i>.� All that can be said is, that digestion is
-a chemical process, the mechanical agency spoken of being of service only
-in thoroughly mixing the gastric juice with the food.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center">“<span class="smcap">Five Minutes for Refreshments.</span>�</p>
-
-<p>“Murder! murder!� the conductor might as well cry to passengers, as “Five
-minutes for refreshments.�</p>
-
-<p>Now it makes less difference what we eat than how we eat. Cold hash, eaten
-slowly, therefore, well masticated, and mixed with the saliva, is more
-likely to “set well� than a light cake or a cracker, though it be “Bond’s
-best,� if hurried down the throat.</p>
-
-<p>What the English call the “blarsted Yankee style� of gulping down the food
-half masticated, washing it down with drinks, will ruin anything but a
-sheet-iron stomach in a cast-iron constitution. Talk about “mills.� Why,
-that most excellently contrived mill in the mouth is not suffered to
-perform its duty. The hopper is too crammed; it clogs the whole machinery.</p>
-
-<p>Eating between meals destroys the regular periods naturally established by
-the stomach for digestion. Three meals should be sufficient for
-twenty-four hours.</p>
-
-<p>“Much has been said about exercising after eating, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_784" id="Page_784">[Pg 784]</a></span> the truth has been
-often over-stated. The famous experiment with the two dogs is cited to
-show that exercise after eating interferes with the process of digestion.
-Observe just how much was proved by the experiment. Two dogs were fed to
-the full, and while one was left to lie still, the other was made to run
-about very briskly. In an hour or two both dogs were killed, and it was
-found that the food was well digested in the dog that remained quiet, but
-not in the other. (I have seen it stated the reverse.) This proves simply
-that <i>violent</i> exercise, taken <i>immediately</i> after eating, interferes with
-digestion. Other facts show that light exercise rather promotes than
-impedes the process, and that even very strong exercise does not interfere
-with it if a short interval of rest be allowed, so that the process may be
-fairly commenced.</p>
-
-<p>“The same is to some extent true of exercise of mind. It seems to be
-necessary that there should be some measure of concentration of energy in
-the stomach for the due performance of digestion, and any very decided
-exercise, bodily or mental, tends to prevent this. In the dyspeptic, even
-a slight amount of effort, either of body or mind, often suffices to do
-it.</p>
-
-<p>“It is very commonly said that it is wrong to eat just before going to
-bed. Is this true? Cattle are apt to go to sleep after eating fully. Do
-sleep and digestion agree well in their case, and not so in the case of
-man? In some seasons of the year the farmer takes his heartiest meal at
-the close of the labors of the day, and soon retires. Is this a bad
-custom? Our opinion is that food may be taken properly at a late hour,
-provided, first, that the individual has not already eaten enough for the
-twenty-four hours,&mdash;that he has done so being true, probably, in most
-cases; and provided, secondly, that he is in such a state of health that
-digestion will not so act upon his nerves as to disturb his sleep. If it
-will thus act, it is clear that he had better be<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_785" id="Page_785">[Pg 785]</a></span> disturbed when awake,
-for he can bear the disturbance then with less of injury to his system.�</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Ancient Diet.</span></p>
-
-<p>“How did them old <i>anti-delusion</i> fellows live?� once asked an honest old
-farmer of the writer. “They must have lived differently than we live, or
-they would not have told so many years as they did.�</p>
-
-<p>True, true. The difference between ancient and modern diet is remarkable.
-The ancient Greeks and Romans used no tea, coffee, tobacco, chocolate,
-sugar, lard, or butter. They had but few spices, no “nutmeg, cinnamon,
-ginger, or cloves,� no Cayenne pepper, no sage, sweet marjoram, spinach,
-tapioca, Irish moss, arrow-root, potato, corn starch, common beans; no
-oranges, tamarinds, or candies, or the Yankee invention, “buckwheat cakes
-and molasses.� What would our modern cooks do without the above enumerated
-articles in the culinary department? And the butter! Down to the Saviour’s
-time butter was unknown. Dr. Galen (130-218, A. D.) saw the first butter
-only a short time before his death. Tea is comparatively a modern
-introduction.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">The Green Grocery of the Classics.</span></p>
-
-<p>The cabbage has had a singular destiny&mdash;in one country an object of
-worship, in another of contempt. The Egyptians made of it a god, and it
-was the first dish they touched at their repasts. The Greeks and Romans
-took it as a remedy for the languor following inebriation. Cato said that
-in the cabbage was a panacea for the ills of man. Erasistratus recommended
-it as a specific in paralysis. Hippocrates accounted it a sovereign
-remedy, boiled with salt, for the colic. And Athenian medical men
-prescribed it to young nursing mothers, who wished to see lusty babies
-lying in their arms.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_786" id="Page_786">[Pg 786]</a></span> Diphilus preferred the beet to the cabbage, both as
-food and as medicine,&mdash;in the latter case, as a vermifuge. (Horace Greeley
-prefers the latter, for he says that “a cabbage will beat a beet if the
-cabbage gets a-head.�) The same physician extols mallows, not for
-fomentation, but as a good edible vegetable, appeasing hunger and curing
-the sore throat at the same time. The asparagus, as we are accustomed to
-see it, has derogated from its ancient magnificence. The original “grass�
-was from twelve to twenty feet high; and a dish of them could only have
-been served to the Brobdignagians. Under the Romans, stems of asparagus
-were raised of three pounds’ weight, heavy enough to knock down a slave in
-waiting with. The Greeks ate them of more moderate dimensions, or would
-have eaten them, but that the publishing doctors of their day denounced
-asparagus as injurious to the sight. But then it was also said that a
-slice or two of boiled pumpkin would reinvigorate the sight which had been
-deteriorated by asparagus! “Do that as quickly as you should asparagus!�
-is a proverb descended to us from Augustus, and illustrative of the mode
-in which the vegetable was prepared for the table.</p>
-
-<p>A still more favorite dish, at Athens, was turnips from Thebes. Carrots,
-too, formed a distinguished dish at Greek and Roman tables. Purslain was
-rather honored as a cure against poisons, whether in the blood by wounds,
-or in the stomach from beverage. I have heard it asserted in France, that
-if you briskly rub a glass with fingers which have been previously rubbed
-with purslain or parsley, the glass will certainly break. I have tried the
-experiment, but only to find that the glass resisted the pretended charm.</p>
-
-<p>Broccoli was the favorite vegetable food of Drusus. He ate greedily
-thereof; and as his father, Tiberius, was as fond of it as he, the master
-of the Roman world and his illustrious heir were constantly quarrelling,
-like two clowns, when a dish of broccoli stood between them. Artichokes
-grew less<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_787" id="Page_787">[Pg 787]</a></span> rapidly into aristocratic favor; the <i>dictum</i> of Galen was
-against them, and for a long time they were only used by drinkers against
-headache, and by singers to strengthen their voice. Pliny pronounced
-artichokes excellent food for poor people and donkeys. For nobler stomachs
-he preferred the cucumber&mdash;the Nemesis of vegetables. But people were at
-issue touching the merits of the cucumber. Not so regarding the lettuce,
-which has been universally honored. It was the most highly esteemed dish
-of the beautiful Adonis. It was prescribed as provocative to sleep; and it
-cured Augustus of the malady which sits so heavily on the soul of Leopold
-of Belgium&mdash;hypochondriasis. Science and rank eulogized the lettuce, and
-philosophy sanctioned the eulogy in the person of Aristoxenus, who not
-only grew lettuces as the pride of his garden, but irrigated them with
-wine, in order to increase their flavor.</p>
-
-<p>But we must not place too much trust in the stories, either of sages or
-apothecaries. These pagans recommended the seductive but indigestible
-endive as good against the headache, and young onions and honey as
-admirable preservers of health, when taken fasting; but this was a
-prescription for rustic swains and nymphs. The higher classes, in town or
-country, would hardly venture on it. And yet the mother of Apollo ate raw
-leeks, and loved them of gigantic dimensions. For this reason, perhaps,
-was the leek accounted not only as salubrious, but as a beautifier. The
-love for melons was derived, in similar fashion probably, from Tiberius,
-who cared for them even more than he did for broccoli. The German Cæsars
-inherited the taste of their Roman predecessor, carrying it, indeed, to
-excess; for more than one of them submitted to die after eating melons,
-rather than live by renouncing them.</p>
-
-<p>I have spoken of gigantic asparagus: the Jews had radishes that could vie
-with them, if it be true that a fox and cubs could burrow in the hollow of
-one, and that it was not<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_788" id="Page_788">[Pg 788]</a></span> uncommon to grow them of a hundred pounds in
-weight. It must have been such radishes as those that were employed by
-seditious mobs of old, as weapons in insurrections. In such case, a
-rebellious people were always well victualled, and had peculiar
-facilities, not only to beat their adversaries, but <i>to eat their own
-arms</i>! The horseradish is probably a descendant of this gigantic ancestor.
-It had at one period a gigantic reputation. Dipped in poison, it rendered
-the draught innocuous, and rubbed on the hands, it made an encounter with
-venomed serpents mere play. In short, it was celebrated as being a cure
-for every evil in life, the only exception being that it destroyed the
-teeth. There was far more difference of opinion touching garlic than there
-was touching the radish. The Egyptians deified it, as they did the leek
-and the cabbage; the Greeks devoted it to Gehenna, and to soldiers,
-sailors, and cocks that were not “game.� Medicinally, it was held to be
-useful in many diseases, if the root used were originally sown when the
-moon was below the horizon. No one who had eaten of it, however, could
-presume to enter the temple of Cybele. Alphonso of Castile was as
-particular as this goddess; and a knight of Castile, “detected as being
-guilty of garlic,� suffered banishment from the royal presence during the
-entire month.</p>
-
-<p>It is long since the above instructive article on the “Green Groceries of
-the Classics,� by Dr. Doran, was in print, and I think it will be new to
-most of my readers. I hope it will prove interesting as well as
-instructive.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Animal or Vegetable Diet?</span></p>
-
-<p>Both, if considered in regard to health. With an eye to economy only, I
-should recommend vegetable diet.</p>
-
-<p>I think that poor people lay out more, in proportion, than the rich, for
-the purchase of animal food. They often buy extravagantly, on the credit
-system, purchasing on <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_789" id="Page_789">[Pg 789]</a></span>Saturday nights, when there is a rush at the
-stalls, and less opportunities for good bargains than when there is more
-time. Again, the lower classes fry their meats, losing much of their
-flavor and substance, by its going up chimney; or by boiling, and throwing
-away much of the nutriment with the water, which stewing in a covered dish
-would obviate.</p>
-
-<p>I have been into various markets, and observed the poor as they made their
-purchases. I have seen them count into the butcher’s hand their last penny
-for a rib roast, a piece of pork to fry, a hind quarter of lamb to bake,
-or beef to boil, when a piece to stew, with nourishing vegetables, would
-cost far less, and return double the nutritive principle.</p>
-
-<p>Beefsteak, which contains seventy-five per cent. of water, is poor economy
-of both money and health. The flank and neck pieces are better. The more
-fatty and nutritive fore quarters are better than the hind quarters. Ask
-the Jews. Coarse vegetables, as carrots, cabbages, turnips, and potatoes,
-contain more nourishment than beef, though far less than the cereals, as
-wheat, barley, corn, and buckwheat. Beans, peas, rice, cracked wheat or
-hominy, cooked with meat, make a most wholesome and nourishing diet for
-laborers, for the sedentary, and for invalids. Meat should never be given
-to toothless infants. Milk, or bread and milk, is all they require until
-they have teeth.</p>
-
-<p>A cheap, innutritious regimen is scarcely conducive to longevity, any more
-than a stimulating and high living is contributive to that end. A great
-quantity of hot roast meats is objectionable. Also hot fine flour bread.
-Let those particularly interested in the matter see our article on bread,
-etc., in chapter on Adulterations. Also, as respects coarse sugar against
-the refined. See, also, Nutriment for Consumptives, in next chapter.</p>
-
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
-<hr style="width: 50%;" />
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_790" id="Page_790">[Pg 790]</a></span></p>
-<h2><a name="XXXIII" id="XXXIII"></a>XXXIII.</h2>
-<p class="title">CONSUMPTION (PHTHISIS PULMONALIS).</p>
-
-<div class="note"><p class="hang"><small>CONSUMPTION A MONSTER!&mdash;UNIVERSAL REIGN.&mdash;SIGNS OF HIS
-APPROACH.&mdash;WARNINGS.&mdash;BAD POSITIONS.&mdash;SCHOOL-HOUSES.&mdash;ENGLISH
-THEORY.&mdash;PREVENTIVES.&mdash;AIR AND SUNSHINE.&mdash;SCROFULA.&mdash;A JOLLY FAT
-GRANDMOTHER.&mdash;“WASP WAISTS.�&mdash;CHANGE OF CLIMATE.&mdash;“TOO LATE!�&mdash;WHAT TO
-AVOID.&mdash;HUMBUGS.&mdash;COD-LIVER OIL.&mdash;STRYCHNINE WHISKEY.&mdash;A
-MATTER-OF-FACT PATIENT.&mdash;SWALLOWING A PRESCRIPTION.&mdash;SIT AND LIE
-STRAIGHT.&mdash;FEATHERS OR CURLED HAIR.&mdash;A YANKEE DISEASE.&mdash;CATARRH AND
-COLD FEET, HOW TO REMEDY.&mdash;“GIVE US SOME SNUFF, DOCTOR.�&mdash;OTHER THINGS
-TO AVOID.&mdash;A TENDER POINT.</small></p></div>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p>Phthisis Pulmonalis is consumption of the lungs, which is the common
-acceptation of the term consumption. <i>Phthisis</i> is from the Greek, meaning
-<i>to consume</i>. This fearful disease, from the earliest period in the
-history of medicine to the present day, has proved more destructive of
-human life than any other in the entire catalogue of ills to which frail
-humanity is heir. In Great Britain, one in every four dies of consumption;
-in France, one in five. In the United States, especially in New England,
-the number who die annually by this fearful disease is truly startling!
-One in every three! One reason for this fatality is because of the
-prevailing and erroneous idea that it is inevitably a fatal disease.</p>
-
-<p>Consumption is a relentless monster, and insidious in his approaches. He
-spares not the high or the low. Oftener known in the hovel, he fails not
-to visit dwellers in palaces. He paints the cheek of the infant, youth,
-maiden, the middle-aged, and the aged with the false glow of health. The
-delicate and beautiful are his common subjects.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_791" id="Page_791">[Pg 791]</a></span>Tupper wrote with an understanding when he penned the following:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p class="poem">“Behold that fragile form of delicate, transparent beauty,<br />
-Whose light blue eye and hectic cheek are lit by the bale-fires of decline;<br />
-All droopingly she lieth, as a dew-laden lily,<br />
-Her flaxen tresses rashly luxuriant, dank with unhealthy moisture;<br />
-Hath not thy heart said of her, ‘Alas! poor child of weakness’?�</p>
-
-<p>Yes, the monster “Decline� seeks particularly the fair-skinned, of
-“transparent beauty,� and those of the “light blue eye and flaxen hair,�
-for his victims. Nor are the illiterate alone his subjects, but men of the
-most talented minds, men versed in arts, sciences, and <i>belles-lettres</i>,
-professors of hygiene and physiology, and the very practitioners of the
-art of medicine themselves, are often the shining marks of the insidious
-monster whom they by erudition diligently seek to repel.</p>
-
-<p>Because of the too prevalent belief of the invincibleness of consumption,
-it has been neglected more than any other disease. The victims to its
-wiles have hoped against hope, while the enemy has woven his web quietly
-and flatteringly around them.</p>
-
-<p>You must first be warned of his earliest aggression.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Signs of his Approach.</span></p>
-
-<p>He is a deceiver. Let us be wary of him.</p>
-
-<p>We have been too negligent in this matter. Let us remember that prevention
-is far better than cure.</p>
-
-<p>The slight fatigue on the least exertion we have counted as “nothing.� The
-hectic flush of the cheeks is too often mistaken for a sign of health. The
-cursory pains of the chest, or left side, or under the shoulder-blades,
-are disregarded, or, if noticed at all, are mentioned as though “of no
-account.� The slight hacking cough is scarcely heeded; for do not people
-often cough without having consumption, and without raising blood? True,
-true; and this is the stronghold of the deceiver.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_792" id="Page_792">[Pg 792]</a></span>Consumption is a disease which is not entirely confined to the lungs. It
-is often a depraved condition of the system, particularly the blood. There
-is a “consumption of the blood,� and a variety of morbid phenomena, which
-cannot be expressed in the single word consumption. It not unusually
-results in a scrofulous predisposition. An hereditary predisposition may
-or may not be the cause. If the former, its development must depend upon
-some exciting cause, which will be mentioned hereafter. The intermarrying
-of persons of like temperaments and constitutional dispositions inevitably
-results in children of scrofulous and consumptive diathesis.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img243.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">A NATURAL POSITION.<span class="spacer">&nbsp;</span><span class="spacer">&nbsp;</span>AN UNNATURAL POSITION.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>A neglected cold, cough, or catarrh may soon develop this fatality. The
-peculiar changes in females at certain periods of life often awaken the
-slumbering enemy. Teething in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_793" id="Page_793">[Pg 793]</a></span> infancy not unfrequently develops the
-scrofulous element, and a wasting of the system&mdash;either <i>marasmus</i> or
-<i>tabes mesenterica</i>&mdash;follows, which, under the best treatment, may prove
-fatal.</p>
-
-<p>The slip-shod, doubled-up way that many people have of lying, sitting, and
-standing, are conducive to consumption.</p>
-
-<p>Badly-ventilated school-houses have heretofore been a source of great
-injury to children, developing scrofula and consumption in constitutions
-where it might have remained latent during their lifetime. Every
-reflecting parent should rejoice in the improvements which have been made
-during the last few years in the matter of ventilation in buildings,
-particularly in churches and school-rooms, although janitors, porters, and
-teachers have as yet too limited ideas on the subject of wholesome air.
-The dry furnaces are a very objectionable feature, and not conducive to
-health.</p>
-
-<p><i>Early Symptoms.</i>&mdash;Fatigue on the least exertion; a languid, tired feeling
-in the morning; rosy tint of one or both cheeks during the latter part of
-the day, caused by unoxygenized blood rushing to the surface; swelling of
-the glands of the neck, or elsewhere; enlarged joints; paleness of the
-lips; areola under the eyes; sensitiveness to the air; chills running over
-the body; taking cold easily; catarrhal symptoms; premature development of
-the intellect; and early physical maturity, are among its initiatory
-indications. Also, when the disease is located in the lungs, spitting of
-white, frothy mucus, or blood, with catarrhal symptoms; cough, which is
-noticed by others before by the patient; hacking on retiring, or early in
-the morning; varied appetite; tickling in the throat; short breath on
-exertion, with rapid pulse.</p>
-
-<p><i>Second Stage.</i>&mdash;Cough, and difficult breathing; increased difficulty of
-lying on one side; sharp, short pains; diminution of monthly period;
-swelling of the lower extremities, leaving corrugation on removing the
-hose and garters at<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_794" id="Page_794">[Pg 794]</a></span> night; raising greenish yellow matter, with (at
-times) hard, curd-like substance; sweating easily (sometimes the reverse);
-night sweats; restless, feverish, either dull or sharp bright cast to the
-eyes. Sputa increases to the</p>
-
-<p><i>Third Stage.</i>&mdash;Diarrhœa not unusually supervenes; spitting of blood;
-the person emaciates rapidly; the face changes from a bloated to a
-cadaverous appearance, with hectic fever; the patient faints easily;
-debility increases with the cough, or hæmoptosis occurs often, until death
-finally closes the scene.</p>
-
-<p>These are merely some of the external symptoms. Let the patient mark them,
-not so much to fear, as to provide against them. To be forewarned is to be
-forearmed. I caution you against the causes, and give you the benefit of
-my extensive experience with this disease, both in New England and three
-years in the South, that you may avoid its development by attention to
-rules for health and longevity.</p>
-
-<p>If this fearful disease was better understood by the people, it would
-prove far less destructive of human life. Undomesticated animals do not
-die of it; domesticated ones do. What does that imply? That the people
-have engendered the disease! Let the “people,� then, take the first step
-in preventing its ravages.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Theory of Consumption.</span></p>
-
-<p>At a sitting of the Academy of Medicine at London, Dr. Priory read a paper
-on the treatment of phthisis, in which he developed the following
-propositions:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>1. Pulmonary phthisis is a combination of multifarious variable phenomena,
-and not a morbid unity.</p>
-
-<p>2. Hence there does not and cannot exist a specific medicine against it.</p>
-
-<p>3. Therefore neither iodine nor its tincture, neither chlorine, nor sea
-salt, nor tar, can be considered in the light of anti-phthisical
-remedies.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_795" id="Page_795">[Pg 795]</a></span>4. <i>There are no specifics against phthisis, but there are systems of
-treatment to be followed in order to conquer the pathological states which
-constitute the disorder.</i></p>
-
-<p>5. In order to cure consumptive patients, the peculiar affections under
-which they labor must be studied, and appreciated, and counteracted by
-appropriate means.</p>
-
-<p>6. The tubercle cannot be cured by the use of remedies, but good hygienic
-precautions may prevent its development.</p>
-
-<p>7. The real way to relieve, cure, or prolong the life of consumptive
-patients, is to treat their various pathological states, which ought to
-receive different names, according to their nature.</p>
-
-<p>8. Consumption, thus treated, has often been cured, and oftener still life
-has been considerably prolonged.</p>
-
-<p>9. Phthisis should never be left to itself, but always treated as stated
-above.</p>
-
-<p>10. The old methods, founded on the general idea of a single illness
-called phthisis, are neither scientific nor rational.</p>
-
-<p>11. The exact diagnosis of the various pathological states which
-constitute the malady will dictate the most useful treatment for it.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Preventives of Consumption.</span></p>
-
-<p>If a man desires a house erected, he consults a carpenter, or if a first
-class residence, he employs an architect. If our watch gets out of repair,
-we take it to a skilful jeweller. If our boots become worn, want tapping,
-they are sent to the cobbler. But how many people there are, who, when the
-complicated mechanism of the system gets out of order,&mdash;which they cannot
-look into as they can their watch or old boots,&mdash;first try to patch
-themselves up, instead of employing a professional “cobbler of poor health
-and broken constitutions.�</p>
-
-<p>Before me are Wistar’s, Wilson’s, and Gray’s Works on<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_796" id="Page_796">[Pg 796]</a></span> Anatomy. I have
-read them, or Krause’s, more than twenty years. They contain all that has
-been discovered relative to the human system. But I do not know it all. I
-never can. I doubt if the man lives who knows it all. Then here is
-“Physiology,� which treats of the offices or various functions of the
-system. I do not comprehend it all. “Great ignoramus!� Nobody is perfected
-in it. Next is Pathology, which treats of diseases, their causes, nature,
-and symptoms. Then there are Materia Medica, Chemistry, and much more to
-be learned before one can become competent to prescribe for diseases
-safely.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img244.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">CORRECT POSITION.<span class="spacer3">&nbsp;</span>INCORRECT POSITION.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>Can a carpenter, or any mechanic, a lawyer, minister, or other than he who
-devotes his whole powers to the theory and practice of medicine, be
-intrusted with the precious healths and lives of individuals, about which
-he knows little or nothing? Or can I, in a few chapters, instruct such in
-the art of curing complicated diseases? O, no, no. But I can do something
-better for such. I can tell you how to avoid diseases. I am quite positive
-of it. I should wrong<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_797" id="Page_797">[Pg 797]</a></span> you, and endanger your lives by the deception thus
-put forth. There are some books written on the subject which are useful to
-the masses in the same manner in which I trust this will prove, by
-instructing in the ways of health, and warnings against that which is
-injurious; but there are far too many issued which are but a damage to the
-public by their false claims of posting everybody in the knowledge of
-curing all diseases, particularly that complicated one termed consumption.</p>
-
-<p>Among the preventives of this fell destroyer I enumerate,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p><i>First</i>, Plenty of God’s pure, free air; and <i>second</i>, sunshine. These are
-indispensable. He who prescribes for a patient without looking into this
-matter has yet to learn the first principle of the healing art.</p>
-
-<p>A lady recently came to my office with her son for medical advice. She was
-a robust, matronly looking individual, who might turn the scale at one
-hundred and eighty pounds, while the twelve-year-old boy was almost a
-dwarf, pale and delicate. The contrast was astounding.</p>
-
-<p>“Madam,� I said, “I perceive that your son sleeps in a room where no
-sunshine permeates by day;� for I could liken the pale, sickly-looking
-fellow to nothing but a vegetable which had sprouted in a dark, damp
-cellar. A gardener can tell such a vegetable, or plant, which has been
-prematurely developed away from air and sunshine. And though she looked
-astonished at my Å’dipean proclivity in solving riddles, it was nothing
-marvellous that a physician should detect a result in a patient which a
-clodhopper might discover in a cabbage.</p>
-
-<p>“Yes, sir,� she finally answered, “he always sleeps in a room where the
-sunlight don’t enter; but I did not think it was that which made him so
-pale-like; besides, I have taken him to several doctors, and they said
-nothing about it; but their prescriptions did him no good, and I am
-discouraged.�</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_798" id="Page_798">[Pg 798]</a></span>Such stoicism was unpardonable, but I said in reply,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“Take your son into a light airy room, to sleep. Try a healthy plant in
-the cell where you have so wrongfully intombed him, and observe how
-speedily the color and strength will depart from it. When you can come
-back and assure me of his change of apartment, I will prescribe for him.�</p>
-
-<p>She went away, repeating to herself, as if to impress it firmly upon her
-mind,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“Put a plant into his room&mdash;plant into Johnny’s room.�</p>
-
-<p>The lady afterwards returned, saying that she was sorry that the plant had
-died, but was glad to say that Johnny was better.</p>
-
-<p>It is a daily occurrence for physicians to see patients who are dying by
-inches from the above cause; nor are they the low foreigners alone, but,
-like my stoical one hundred and eighty pounder, of American birth, and
-without excuse for their ignorance.</p>
-
-<p>Do not sleep or live in apartments unventilated, or where the life-giving
-sunshine does not penetrate during some portion of the day. It is living a
-lingering death. If the patient is scrofulous, let him or her employ such
-remedies as are known to remove the predisposition, or seek aid from some
-physician who has cured scrofula. The regular practitioner seldom desires
-such cases. One who has devoted much time to scrofula and chronic diseases
-should be preferred. I think chronic practice should become a separate
-branch in medicine as much as surgery is fast becoming. Take the disease
-in season. Do not neglect colds, coughs, and catarrh.</p>
-
-<p>Persons of a low state of blood, who are weak and debilitated, should wear
-flannels the year round&mdash;thinner in summer than in winter; keep the feet
-dry&mdash;avoid “wafer soles,�&mdash;and the body clean, but beware of what Artemus
-Ward termed “too much baths.� Employ soap and a small quantity of water,
-with a plenty of dry rubbing, till you get a healthy circulation to the
-surface.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_799" id="Page_799">[Pg 799]</a></span>Mothers, see to the solitary and other habits of your daughters. Fathers,
-instruct your sons in the laws of nature, and of their bodies. Do you
-understand?</p>
-
-<p>See our youth swept off by the thousands annually, for want of proper care
-and instruction!...</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">A jolly fat Grandmother.</span></p>
-
-<p>“<i>Wasp Waists.</i>�&mdash;This is what I heard a fine-looking though
-tobacco-sucking gentleman utter, as with his companion he passed two young
-and fashionably dressed ladies on the street recently.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img245.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">HOW WASP WAISTS ARE MADE.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>So I fell into a reverie, in which I called up the image of a fat, jolly
-old lady whom I knew as my “grandmarm.� She had a waist half as large
-around as a flour barrel.</p>
-
-<p>“O, horrid creature!� exclaims a modern belle.</p>
-
-<p>But, then, my grandmother could breathe! You cannot&mdash;<i>only half breathe</i>!
-And my “grandmarm� had a fresh color to her cheeks and lips, and a good
-bust, till she was over sixty years of age, and she lived to be almost a
-hundred years old. You won’t live to see a third of that time. Did our
-grandfathers or mothers die of consumption? O, no. Still they lived
-well&mdash;mine did. When I see a modern mince pie, it quickly carries my mind
-back to childhood days, when I think of a little boy who thought
-grandmothers were gotten up expressly to furnish nice cakes and mince pies
-for the rising generation.</p>
-
-<p>O, but she was jolly&mdash;and so were her pies!</p>
-
-<p>An Irish blunderer once said, “Ah, ye don’t see any of the young gals of
-the present day fourscore and tin years<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_800" id="Page_800">[Pg 800]</a></span> ould;� and probably we should not
-see many of our present “crop� if <i>we</i> should survive that age.</p>
-
-<p>Drs. A., B., and C., tell me how many ladies who visit your offices can
-take a full, deep breath. “Not one in a score or two!� So I thought.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table">
-<tr><td align="center"><img src="images/img246.jpg" alt="" /></td>
-    <td><span class="spacer">&nbsp;</span></td>
-    <td align="center"><img src="images/img246b.jpg" alt="" /></td></tr>
-<tr><td align="center"><small>A CONSUMPTIVE WAIST.<br />CAUSE, TIGHT CORSETS.</small></td>
-    <td>&nbsp;</td>
-    <td align="center"><small>NON-CONSUMPTIVE WAIST.<br />NEVER WORE CORSETS.</small></td></tr></table>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>Lungs which are not used in full become weak and tender. Do you have sore
-places about your chest? Practise inflating your lungs with pure air
-through the nostrils,&mdash;where God first breathed the breath of life,&mdash;and
-give room for the lungs to expand, and the “sore places� will all
-disappear after a time. See my article on breathing. Put it into steady,
-moderate practice, and the result will be beneficial beyond all
-conception.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Consumption is Curable.</span></p>
-
-<p>“Is it true that consumption of the lungs is ever cured?� is a question
-which is often seriously asked.</p>
-
-<p>“O, yes,� I reply.</p>
-
-<p>“What are the proofs?�</p>
-
-<p>Where on dissection we find cicatrices,&mdash;places in the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_801" id="Page_801">[Pg 801]</a></span> lungs where
-tubercles have existed, sloughing out great cavities, which have healed
-all sound, the scar only remaining&mdash;what then? Here is positive proof that
-consumption had been at work, was repelled by some means, and the patient
-had recovered, subsequently dying of some other disease, or from accident.</p>
-
-<p>Such is the fact in many cases. It is an error&mdash;fatal to thousands&mdash;to
-suppose that the lungs, of all substance in the body, cannot be healed.
-Yet it is a fact patent to most educated physicians, that many cases of
-consumption are cured in this country, while others are prolonged, and the
-patient made comfortable during many years.</p>
-
-<p>Change of climate may be much towards saving a patient. Before deciding
-upon such change, consult your physician. Ought not he to know best? A
-climate adapted to one constitution may be quite unsuited to another. What
-a wise provision in Providence in giving this little world a variety of
-climates! There are certain portions of the States and world where
-consumption seldom prevails. The climate of California and the western
-prairies, as also some portions of the South away from the coast, is less
-conducive of lung and throat diseases than the more bleak and changeable
-climate of New England and the Northern States. A change is only
-beneficial in those cases where there is a mere deficiency of vitality in
-the system. If the disease depends upon a scrofulous or other taint in the
-system, one gains little by going from home. Change of climate does not
-alter the condition of the system materially, so much as it relieves one
-from atmospheric pressure, reducing thereby the demands upon his small
-stock of vitality,&mdash;just as some places are less expensive in which to
-live, and your funds hold out longer. The writer resided in the Southern
-States during three cold seasons, and carefully studied the effects of
-changes. He has two brothers in California, who, during the past ten
-years, have often written respecting the climate west of the Rocky<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_802" id="Page_802">[Pg 802]</a></span>
-Mountains. If ever called upon to decide on a climate for a friend or
-patient who had determined to change from this, I would advise him, or
-her, to select California.</p>
-
-<p>Do not change too late! going away from home and friends to die among
-strangers....</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Avoid Humbugs.</span></p>
-
-<p>Do not run to clairvoyants and spiritual humbugs for advice. A clairvoyant
-physician once said to me,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“Mr. So-and-so has just called upon me to learn where he shall spend the
-winter. He thinks he has the consumption, and that I can tell him where he
-will pass the winter safely. What confounded fools some of these men are,
-to be sure!� she exclaimed. “Why, I have got that disease myself (not the
-foolish disease, but consumption), and don’t know what to do to save my
-own life.�</p>
-
-<p>That lady is living in Boston to-day. The gentleman went to St. Thomas,
-dying in the hospital in January, amongst strangers, where every dollar he
-possessed was stolen from him.</p>
-
-<p>Nearly all patent medicines are humbugs. Avoid them. Dr. Dio Lewis says
-that “the bath-tub is a humbug.� I believe him. While you avoid drowning
-inside by pouring down drugs, do not exhaust your vitality externally in a
-bath-tub. The hand-bath is all-sufficient for consumptives.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Cod-liver Oil and Whiskey.</span></p>
-
-<p>“Take cod-liver oil and die!� has become proverbial. The oil is utterly
-worthless as a medicine, and the whiskey usually recommended to be taken
-in connection is decidedly injurious. It is poisonous. I defy one to
-obtain a pure article of whiskey in this country. If it could by any means
-be obtained in its purity, it would not cure this disease any more than
-the nasty oil from fishes’ livers. The oil is often given, not as a
-medicine, but as an article of nourishment. If<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_803" id="Page_803">[Pg 803]</a></span> the patient so understands
-it, all right; it will do no harm; but if he thinks that he is taking a
-remedial agent, he is deceived thereby, and losing the precious time in
-which he ought to be employing some remedy for his recovery. The
-statements that cod-liver oil contains iodine, lime, phosphorus, etc., is
-all bosh. A most reliable druggist of this city, who has sold a <i>ton or
-two</i> of the oil, told me that “all the iodine or phosphorus that it
-contains you might put into your eye, and not injure that organ.�</p>
-
-<p>If good, wholesome bread, butter, milk, eggs, and beef, will not give
-nutriment to the wasting system, cod-liver oil will not, and the patient
-must die&mdash;provided he has trusted to nutriment alone.</p>
-
-<p>I have never known a consumptive patient to recover upon cod-liver oil. I
-have known them to recover by other treatment, particularly by the use of
-the phosphates, as “phosphate of lime,� and iron, soda, and other
-combinations. I have intimated that a patient should be advised by “his
-physician;� but if that physician is one of the old-fogy style who insists
-upon cod-liver oil and whiskey as a cure, why, you had better “change
-horses in crossing a river,� than to perish on an old, worn-out hobby!
-There are two classes of patients which the doctor has to deal with; one
-will follow no instructions accurately, the other swallows everything
-literally.</p>
-
-<p>I remember a story illustrative of the latter. A dyspeptic applied to Dr.
-C. for treatment. The doctor looked into the case, gave a prescription,
-telling the patient to take it, and return in a fortnight.</p>
-
-<p>At the designated time he returned, radiant and happy.</p>
-
-<p>“Did you follow my directions?� inquired the physician.</p>
-
-<p>“O, yes, to the letter, doctor; and see&mdash;I am well!�</p>
-
-<p>“I have forgotten just what I gave you; let me see the prescription,� said
-the doctor, delighted at his success.</p>
-
-<p>“I haven’t it. Why, I took it, sir.�</p>
-
-<p>“Took it&mdash;the medicine, you mean,� explained the man of pills and powders.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_804" id="Page_804">[Pg 804]</a></span>“Medicine? No. You gave me no medicine&mdash;nothing but a paper, and I took
-that according to directions. That’s what cured me.�</p>
-
-<p>The clown had swallowed the recipe!</p>
-
-<p>The consumptive requires nourishment. He must derive it from wholesome
-food,&mdash;even fat meats are beneficial,&mdash;not from medicines. Let food be one
-thing, medicine another. I believe that a man would starve upon cod-liver
-oil. He would not upon bread or beef.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Sit and Lie Straight.</span></p>
-
-<p>Go into one of our school-houses, and you may there see subjects preparing
-for consumption. Our illustrations will give the reader a correct idea of
-our meaning, without any explanation. The sewing-machines, or rather the
-position which many girls assume while sitting at their work by them from
-three to twelve hours a day, tend to depression of the lungs, obstruction
-of circulation, reduction of the vitality, dyspepsia, and sooner or later
-lead to consumption.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img247.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">A HEALTHY POSITION.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>Let everybody when walking stand erect, with shoulders slightly thrown
-back rather than inclined towards the chest, then outward, and keep the
-mouth closed. When sitting, keep the body erect, or lean back slightly,
-resting the shoulders, rather than the spinal column, against any
-substance excepting<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_805" id="Page_805">[Pg 805]</a></span> feathers, changing the limbs from time to time to any
-easy position. If tired, and one can consistently “loll,� recline to one
-side, resting the cheek upon the hand. If one is very tired, and desires
-to “rest fast,� sit with the feet and hands crossed or arms folded.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img248.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">A CONSUMPTIVE POSITION.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>If you lie crooked in bed, do it on the side. “To bend up double, man
-never was made,� says the song. Do not bolster up the head so as to get a
-square look at your toes, or, being in a feather bed, till you resemble a
-letter C. Rather use but one light curled-hair pillow. It is cool and
-healthy. Avoid feather beds and pillows.</p>
-
-<p>“Didn’t your ‘grandma sleep during nearly a hundred years’ on a feather
-bed?� My quizzer has returned, peeped over my shoulder, and asked this
-question. Now see me quench him at a swoop.</p>
-
-<p>“Yes, she did; and I think it probable that if she had not she would have
-been living now. My grandmother’s good habits, free use of muscle,
-sunshine, and air, more than offset the use of mince pies, and the evil of
-sleeping on a feather bed in winter.�</p>
-
-<p>I sleep on a hair mattress and pillow the year round. They are the best.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_806" id="Page_806">[Pg 806]</a></span></p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Catarrh and Cold Feet.&mdash;How to cure both.</span></p>
-
-<p>Catarrh is peculiarly a Yankee disease. Now, how does a Yankee differ in
-his habits from the rest of the world’s people?</p>
-
-<p>Let me tell you wherein he differs. The “five minutes for refreshments� is
-an illustration. He hurries, he rushes, he’s a talker; and having hurried
-unnecessarily, and got himself all in a perspiration, he stops to talk
-with a friend on the street, in a current of air, possibly in a puddle of
-water, the consequence of which is checked perspiration, a cold, the
-catarrh. If the circulation to the skin is checked, that excretory organ
-ceases to throw off the waste and worn-out matter of the system, and the
-work is thrown upon the mucous membrane, which if failing to perform the
-unnatural office, the patient goes into a decline. Set this down as reason
-No. 1 for the catarrh being peculiarly a “Yankee disease.�</p>
-
-<p>Chronic catarrh necessarily must be connected with a bad circulation of
-the blood, a want of action in the skin, and usually with cold feet. I
-must take time to explain these causes of a disease which usually leads to
-the more fatal one&mdash;consumption. Now we have cold feet and loss of action
-in the skin. Result, catarrh, terminating fatal in consumption.</p>
-
-<p>To keep the feet warm is to restore the circulation. Has your doctor
-failed to do this? I fear he did not understand the connection, or the
-patient did not follow his instructions. Dip the cold feet into a little
-cold water! Is that “too homeopathic?�&mdash;cold to cure cold! Never mind, do
-it. It feels cold at first. Well, catch them out, rub them vigorously with
-a towel, then with the hands, and when quite red, cover them up in bed, or
-in stockings and boots. Repeat it daily till cured. Wear thick-soled boots
-and shoes always. Meantime, take a dose of the third dilution of sulphur
-mornings, or at ten A. M., and the third trituration of calcarea-carbonica
-at early bedtime.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_807" id="Page_807">[Pg 807]</a></span>To restore the loss of circulation to the skin, meantime&mdash;for they must
-both be cured together&mdash;take a daily hand-bath; that is, with the hand and
-in a comfortable room, apply a dose of castile or Windsor soap to the
-skin, half of the person at a time, if the weather is cool,&mdash;avoiding a
-current of air,&mdash;then, with cool or cold water, <i>and the hand only</i>, wash
-rapidly over the surface, following quickly with a dry towel and the dry
-hand, till warm. Cover the upper extremity, and proceed to wash the other
-portion of the body in the same manner. I really believe that there are
-individuals with such peculiar temperaments, or low state of the blood,
-that they cannot bear cold water. See to it that it is not fear, or habit,
-which prevents its use, before abandoning a remedy of such curative
-powers.</p>
-
-<p>Now, there is no other way under heaven whereby man can be saved from
-catarrh than this which I have here given. If the patient requires further
-medical treatment, he or she surely requires this, else there is no
-catarrh in the case.</p>
-
-<p>“But can’t you give me some snuff, doctor?�</p>
-
-<p>Snuffs and nasal injections are humbugs. They will not cure a chronic
-catarrh. The sugar and gum arabic powder is excellent for the local
-irritation. That is all any local remedy can reach. Thousands of dollars
-are expended annually for “Catarrh Remedies,� which never cured a case
-yet, but have been the death of thousands, by aggravating and prolonging
-the disease.</p>
-
-<p>Indigestion and “a goneness at the stomach� not unusually accompany the
-above disease. In addition to the instructions here given, rubbing and
-slapping the region of the stomach with water and the hand, and taking
-small quantities of extract gentian, orange-peel, dock, and ginger, equal
-parts, twice daily, following the directions regarding slow eating and
-cheerfulness, will eventually remove the distressing disease.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_808" id="Page_808">[Pg 808]</a></span></p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Other Things to be Avoided.</span></p>
-
-<p>For consumption, the old-fogy treatment by squills, ipecac, laudanum, and
-the host of expectorants, is worthless. One of the fatalities in this
-disease has been the sticking to these useless medicines by a certain
-class of physicians and patients.</p>
-
-<p>Use no tobacco. If tight-lacing and confined habits, as want of air and
-exercise, have been conducive to the development of consumption in
-females, more repulsive habits have led to catarrhal affections,
-destruction of the vitality, and finally to consumption in many of the
-opposite sex. Does the mother, by habits which injure her health,
-jeopardize the life and health of her offspring? The husband and father,
-by the debasing and health-destroying habit of tobacco-using, injures both
-mother and child. The description which I have given in the article on
-tobacco, respecting cleansing the young man, and purifying him fit for
-society, is no joke! The clothes, skin, blood, muscle, and bones,&mdash;even
-the seminal fluid,&mdash;of the confirmed tobacco-user, all are impregnated
-with tobacco poison. Does any one question but something of this virus is
-transmitted to the offspring? Further, I have known many a wife to become
-tobacco-diseased,&mdash;nervous, yellow, sick at the stomach, dyspeptic,
-neuralgic, etc.,&mdash;suffering untold horrors, from lying, night after night,
-during year in and year out, beside a great, filthy, tobacco-plant of a
-husband!</p>
-
-<p>Perhaps some sensitive gentleman&mdash;user of the weed of course&mdash;may object
-to my way of putting it. Sound truths, like sound meat, require no
-mincing. We know that children, sleeping constantly with elderly people,
-become prematurely old and infirm. We know also that nurses and others,
-sleeping with perpetual invalids, imbibe their diseases. The skin of the
-tobacco-user is continually giving off the tobacco poison&mdash;<i>nicotine</i>&mdash;and
-the more susceptible skin<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_809" id="Page_809">[Pg 809]</a></span> of the female, or child, by its absorbent
-powers, is as continually taking in this poison. There are many
-tobacco-users, who, if they knew this fact, would for this reason, if no
-other, abandon the injurious and sinful habit; would not want to continue
-a habit&mdash;be it never so slavish&mdash;which, aside from its injury to
-themselves, was destroying the health and lives of his wife and his
-children.</p>
-
-<p>Tobacco exhausts the saliva, the fluids, the blood, often the muscle, <i>and
-destroys the recuperative powers of the human system</i>. It weakens the
-power of the heart. Nine tenths of the reported deaths from “heart
-disease� really originate, or result directly from the effects of
-tobacco-using. And, finally, it destroys the good effects of nearly all
-medicines. I positively affirm that no patient afflicted with a chronic
-disease can recover by the use of medicines if he continues the excessive
-use of tobacco.</p>
-
-<p>I think these are good and conclusive reasons why one should not use that
-pernicious weed&mdash;tobacco.</p>
-
-<p>Avoid all excesses, particularly of coition. Consumptives should husband
-all their resources. One other way of doing this is to keep from wasting
-the breath and caloric of the system through the mouth. Again, I say,
-breathe only through the nostrils. Keep out of crowded and unventilated
-halls, school-rooms, churches, and houses. Air! air and sunshine! don’t
-forget them.</p>
-
-<p>Avoid patent medicines. They are worthless. Even if one in a thousand were
-adapted to the <i>disease</i> in question, it might not be to the peculiar
-constitution of the invalid.</p>
-
-<p>People are so differently constituted that one kind of food, clothing, or
-medicine cannot be adapted to all. I wish that I could tell every reader
-of these pages what remedies are adapted to persons suffering from not
-only consumption, but from a hundred other diseases. But it is impossible,
-as intimated in the fore part of this chapter. Not only the quality<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_810" id="Page_810">[Pg 810]</a></span> of a
-medicine suited to one constitution may not be at all suited to another,
-but the quantity is even as uncertain. It requires much knowledge and long
-experience in the disease, and its various peculiarities, as also of the
-varied constitution and idiosyncrasies of different patients, in order to
-prescribe successfully.</p>
-
-<p>As the majority of the readers of this work are predisposed to
-consumption, let them seek to prevent its development in their systems.
-The writer has done this; he has told you in plain terms how it was done,
-how it still can be; but it is you who must believe in and abide by these
-instructions. Do this, and you will scarcely require to obtain and retain
-the knowledge of a thousand remedies and a complete knowledge of yourself,
-which it requires a lifetime of practice and study to possess.</p>
-
-<p>Dr. Worcester Beach, of New York, in one of his botanical works, tells of
-a country-woman who, having been given up as incurable with consumption,
-gathered and boiled together all the different kinds of herbs and barks
-which she could find upon the farm, and making this decoction into a
-syrup, drank of it freely, and was cured thereby! I would not recommend
-this empirical sort of practice, but quote it to show the uncertainty of
-what medicine was adapted to the case.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img249.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
-<hr style="width: 50%;" />
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_811" id="Page_811">[Pg 811]</a></span></p>
-<h2><a name="XXXIV" id="XXXIV"></a>XXXIV.</h2>
-<p class="title">ACCIDENTS.</p>
-
-<div class="note"><p class="hang"><small>RULES FOR MACHINISTS, MECHANICS, RAILROAD MEN, ETC., IN CASES OF
-ACCIDENT.&mdash;HOW TO FIND AN ARTERY AND STOP THE BLEEDING.&mdash;DROWNING; TO
-RESTORE.&mdash;SUN-STROKE.&mdash;AVOID ICE.&mdash;“ACCIDENTS WILL HAPPEN.�&mdash;WHAT TO
-HAVE IN THE HOUSE.&mdash;BRUISES.&mdash;BURNS.&mdash;DO THE BEST YOU CAN, AND TRUST
-GOD FOR THE REST.</small></p></div>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p>Mechanics, machinists, railroad men, etc., may find the following rules of
-the most vital importance in case of accidents, whereby valuable lives may
-be saved:&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>1. When a person is seriously injured, do not crowd around him; give him
-air.</p>
-
-<p>2. Send for a surgeon or physician at once.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img250.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">FIG. 1.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>3. Lay the patient on his back, and ascertain whether he is bleeding. If
-it is from the artery of the fore-arm, it must be compressed immediately.
-If from the <i>artery</i>, the blood will <i>spurt out in jets</i>. Do not try to
-stanch the blood at the wound, but find the main artery. Strip the arm,
-feel for the artery, a little below the arm-pit, <i>just inside</i> of the
-<i>large muscle</i>. (Fig. 1.) <i>You can feel it throb.</i> Press it with your
-thumbs or fingers, while an assistant folds a large handkerchief, or piece
-of shirt, if necessary, and ties a knot in the middle, or places a <i>flat</i>,
-<i>round</i> stone in it, puts this over the artery, ties the handkerchief below
-the thumbs, puts<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_812" id="Page_812">[Pg 812]</a></span> a stick through, and twists it just tight enough to stop
-the bleeding. (Fig. 2.) The first man may relax his grasp, to ascertain if
-the compress is sufficiently tight. If you get the knot (or stone) on the
-artery, a few twists will check the blood. If the limb becomes cold and
-purple, you have got it too tight. One end of the stick may be tucked
-under the bandage to hold it from untwisting. The surgeon will arrive and
-take up the bleeding vessel and tie it.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img251.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">FIG. 2.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>4. If it be the leg which is cut or mangled and bleeding, find the artery,
-inside the thigh, quite high up, back of the large muscle. (Fig. 3.) Bear
-on quite hard, for it is deeper than in the arm, till you feel it throb.
-Compress it hard, and proceed with the bandage as above directed for the
-arm. The large artery (femoral) bleeds fast. Work quickly, and do not get
-excited.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img252.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">FIG. 3.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>A schoolmate of mine died in a few moments, in a blacksmith shop, from a
-piece of steel flying into his leg. If the smith had known this simple
-process, stripped the boy, and compressed the artery till help arrived, he
-would have saved a life, an only son, the support and solace of a widowed
-mother.</p>
-
-<p>5. If the wound is much below the knee, find the artery (Fig. 4.) in the
-hollow back of the knee (<i>popliteal space</i>), and proceed as above
-directed.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img253.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-<p class="caption">FIG. 4.</p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<p>6. If a wound is not of an artery, that is, if the blood does not spurt
-out, bandaging the wound may do till the doctor arrives.</p>
-
-<p>7. If the shock has prostrated the patient, give him a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_813" id="Page_813">[Pg 813]</a></span> teaspoonful of
-brandy or other liquor&mdash;always provided he has not been drinking. Many
-accidents occur in consequence of liquor-drinking. If the patient is cold,
-faint, and prostrate, wrap him or her up warm, placing hot bricks, or jugs
-of hot water, at the feet. When he can swallow, some hot tea, or soup, may
-be given, if necessary.</p>
-
-<p>8. If the patient has delirium tremens, give him strong coffee.</p>
-
-<p>9. To remove an injured person, do not call a carriage, but take a
-shutter, or board, or door, throw your coats upon it, and tenderly place
-him thereon. Carry him carefully. Don’t keep step in walking; he will ride
-easier without.</p>
-
-<p>10. If a patient faints, give him air. Let him lie on the back. Wipe the
-face with a little water. A little camphor in water may be applied to the
-face and temples, provided he has not been using it already to excess.
-Camphor, used excessively, may keep one faint a long time. Let the clothes
-be loosened. Keep cool, and wait.</p>
-
-<p>11. Avoid all rude and alarming conversation around the patient. When he
-recovers a little, do not press around and confuse him with questions of
-“What can I do for you?� etc. <i>Let him rest.</i></p>
-
-<p>12. If a person has been under water, <i>don’t roll him to get the water out
-of him. There is no water there beyond the mouth.</i> The life has been
-rolled out of many a poor wretch, over a barrel, under this foolish
-delusion of “getting the water out of him.� Lay him on his side, in a warm
-room, or in the sun. Try to inflate the lungs. Don’t get a “bellows,� and
-blow him full of wind. He is not like a bladder, or a balloon, that he
-needs inflating thus. To breathe is what he needs. Let the water, if any,
-in the mouth, run out. Wrap him warm&mdash;hot water at feet. Rub the limbs, if
-cold, for a long time. Persevere. Do not give him up until a good
-physician has arrived, and pronounced him beyond all hope of recovery.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_814" id="Page_814">[Pg 814]</a></span></p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Sun-stroke (Coup de Soleil).</span></p>
-
-<p>The “ounce of prevention� must first be considered in this case.</p>
-
-<p>1. All who can should keep in the shade during the extreme heat of the
-summer days. You who must “bear the heat and burden of the day� may not be
-able always to avoid the direct rays of the scorching sun. Wide-rimmed
-palm or straw hats should be worn, and when the noonday sun pours down its
-sultry beams, wet the hair, or keep a green leaf, or wet handkerchief, in
-your hat. This will surely prevent sun-stroke, by the evaporation of
-moisture. If away in the field, swinging the scythe, or with spade
-levelling the “everlasting hills,� and no water is near, place some green
-grass or damp earth in the hat,&mdash;any way to avoid sun-stroke and sudden
-death!</p>
-
-<p>2. You will see, every summer, a paragraph in the newspapers recommending
-the application of ice to the head in case of threatened sun-stroke, or
-after sun-stroke. Do not believe all you see in the papers. Just sit down
-and reason a moment. Think of the great, extreme transition from the
-powerful heat of the sun’s rays on the brain to that of the application of
-<i>ice</i>! It requires but little thought to convince one that the extreme
-contrast must give such a shock to the brain (or blood therein) as nature
-cannot resist. Did you ever know a patient to recover from sun-stroke when
-ice had been applied to his head? <i>I think not.</i></p>
-
-<p>I have known one to recover from warm, moist applications. Let the head be
-kept wet (moist) with tepid water, and covered over by a dry cloth. He
-cannot swallow. Do not choke him by villanous whiskey poured into the
-mouth. Having placed him in a warm bed, removed his clothes, and made him
-comfortable, send for a physician.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_815" id="Page_815">[Pg 815]</a></span></p>
-<p class="center">“<span class="smcap">Accidents will happen.</span>�</p>
-
-<p>Yes, and every family should be prepared for them.</p>
-
-<p>1. As a remedy against fatal results, in severe cases, and for deliverance
-from pain, even in smaller accidents, every family should keep in the
-house an ounce bottle of tincture of arnica, the cost of which is
-trifling. Keep it well labelled, and out of the reach of children. To
-drink it is injurious.</p>
-
-<p>2. For a bruise, or any injury, put half a teaspoonful of the arnica into
-a teacupful of tepid water, and bathe tenderly the wound. Then wet a cloth
-in the liquid, bind it on with a dry cloth outside to exclude the air.
-When dry, if pain or tenderness remains, renew the application. This will
-soon reduce any “bump� on your little ones’ heads, except a real
-phrenological “bump.� A woman once brought a boy to my office, to have me
-give her some “liniment for a bad bump on the child’s head,� showing me
-the place.</p>
-
-<p>“Madam,� I said, “I think a considerable persuasion, with plenty of
-patient kindness, will do more than medicine to reduce that bump. It is
-called, by phrenologists, ‘firmness.’ By the development, I should judge
-that the boy was very stubborn.�</p>
-
-<p>3. For burns and scalds, keep in the house a vial of tincture of urtica
-urens. Apply it to burns as above directed for wounds. When the smarting
-ceases, and the wound is whitish, omit it, and dress the wound with a
-little mutton tallow on a linen cloth.</p>
-
-<p>Keep no patent medicines about; then you will be less likely to be dosing
-with them. It is hard to tell what are good, and do not make a medical
-depot of your stomach to ascertain.</p>
-
-<p>The individual who is continually dabbling in medicines is a perpetual
-invalid, from the result of such everlasting dosing.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_816" id="Page_816">[Pg 816]</a></span>If you regard the concise, yet sufficient, instructions for preserving
-health laid down herein, particularly after noting the hints thrown out
-all through the body of the book, you will annually have less and less
-occasion for the use of medicines.</p>
-
-<p>When you actually think you require a physician, get the best,&mdash;the best
-article is the cheapest in the end,&mdash;and abide by his counsel. I have told
-you of some remarkable characters in the history of medicine; but the harp
-and flowing locks of Apollo, the caduceus of Mercury, the staff of
-Æsculapius, the hoary beard of Hippocrates, the baton of De Sault, the
-three-tailed wig of Atkins, the silken coat and charming address of Dr.
-Reynolds, the gay equipage of Hannes, the library of Radcliffe, or the
-knowing nods and significant silence of some of the more modern doctors,
-will avail nothing in the time of great danger and distress.</p>
-
-<p>It is the truly kind-hearted, humane, and educated physician upon whom you
-must depend in your time of need. Seek such. There are yet many; humanity
-is not a thing entirely of the past. Who loses faith in humanity has lost
-it in God. Do the best your circumstances allow in all things,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p class="poem">“Angels can no more,�&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>receiving all afflictions cheerfully, looking hopefully to God for his
-blessing, which faileth not, in all the walks of “this life and in that
-which is to come.�</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img254.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
-<hr style="width: 50%;" />
-<p><strong>Footnotes:</strong></p>
-
-<p><a name='f_1' id='f_1' href='#fna_1'>[1]</a> Small door or window, through which to receive night calls, etc.</p>
-
-<p><a name='f_2' id='f_2' href='#fna_2'>[2]</a> The art of embalming was known, and even practised by “servants,�
-translated or called physicians, or sometimes apothecaries (or “by his
-arts�), four thousand years ago. Jacob, Joseph, Asa, and others were
-embalmed. The Egyptians were early versed in this art, which now is
-almost, or entirely, lost.</p>
-
-<p><a name='f_3' id='f_3' href='#fna_3'>[3]</a> Dover’s Powder.</p>
-
-<p><a name='f_4' id='f_4' href='#fna_4'>[4]</a> See <a href="#frontis">Frontispiece</a>.</p>
-
-<p><a name='f_5' id='f_5' href='#fna_5'>[5]</a> This illustrates our “Origin of Ghosts.�</p>
-
-<p><a name='f_6' id='f_6' href='#fna_6'>[6]</a> An Irishman, who was once asked why the parents of Christ were obliged
-to lodge in a stable on the night of the Saviour’s birth, replied, “And
-weren’t the inns full of the crowd, who had gone up before to celebrate
-Christmas?�</p>
-
-<p><a name='f_7' id='f_7' href='#fna_7'>[7]</a> The writer was fortunately born on Christmas (Sabbath) day. He hopes
-the publishers will present his picture in this book to prove his
-“fairness,� and let the wisdom of these pages prove the remainder.</p>
-
-<p><a name='f_8' id='f_8' href='#fna_8'>[8]</a> The medical man in quest of a curiosity will be gratified by looking
-on page 228 of Hastings’ Surgery, where he will find the head and face of
-a female engraved on the nude body of a male. I discovered it
-accidentally, but how such an <i>error</i> (?) could have occurred I cannot
-say.</p>
-
-<p><a name='f_9' id='f_9' href='#fna_9'>[9]</a> Casa Wappy, a self-conferred, pet name of the little boy.</p>
-
-<p><a name='f_10' id='f_10' href='#fna_10'>[10]</a> <span class="smcap">Esquimaux Hospitality.</span>&mdash;Dr. Kane relates that one day, worn out by
-fatigue, he turned into an Esquimaux hut to get a little sleep. His
-good-natured hostess covered him up with some of her own habiliments, and
-gave him her baby for a pillow; which, Dr. Spooner says, was a living
-illustration of the kindness of woman.</p>
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-<pre>
-
-
-
-
-
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-The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Funny Side of Physic, by A. D. Crabtre
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
-almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
-re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
-with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
-
-
-Title: The Funny Side of Physic
-
-Author: A. D. Crabtre
-
-Release Date: December 10, 2012 [EBook #41595]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: ASCII
-
-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FUNNY SIDE OF PHYSIC ***
-
-
-
-
-Produced by The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
-http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images
-generously made available by The Internet Archive.)
-
-
-
-
-
-
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-
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-  THE FUNNY SIDE OF PHYSIC:
-
-  OR,
-
-  THE MYSTERIES OF MEDICINE,
-  PRESENTING THE
-  HUMOROUS AND SERIOUS SIDES OF MEDICAL PRACTICE.
-
-  AN EXPOSE OF
-  MEDICAL HUMBUGS, QUACKS, AND CHARLATANS
-  IN ALL AGES AND ALL COUNTRIES.
-
-
-  By A. D. CRABTRE, M. D.
-
-
-  HARTFORD:
-  J. B. BURR & HYDE.
-  CHICAGO AND CINCINNATI:
-  J. B. BURR, HYDE & COMPANY.
-  1872.
-
-
-
-
-  Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1872, by
-  J. B. BURR AND HYDE,
-  In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.
-
-
-
-
-PREFACE.
-
-
-The books which most please while instructing the reader, are those which
-mingle the lively and gay with the sedate spirit in the narration of
-important facts. The verdict of the reader of this work must be (it is
-modestly suggested), that the author has luckily hit the happy vein in its
-construction.
-
-Of all facts which bear upon human happiness or sorrow, those which serve
-to increase the former, and alleviate or banish the latter, are most
-desirable for everybody to know; and of all professions which most
-intimately concern the personal well-being of the public at large, that of
-the physician is most important. The author of this book has spared no
-pains of research to collect the facts of which he discourses, and has
-endeavored to cover the whole ground embraced by his subject with
-pertinent and important suggestions, statements, scientific discoveries,
-incidents in the career of great physicians, etc., and to fix them in the
-reader's mind by _apt anecdotes, which will be found in abundance
-throughout the work_.
-
-There is no better man in the world than the true physician, and no more
-base wretch than the ordinary "Quack," or medical charlatan. If the author
-has spared no pains of study to make his book acceptable, he may be said,
-also, to have as unsparingly visited his indignation upon the quacks who
-have all along the line of historic medicine disgraced the physician's and
-the surgeon's profession.
-
-The general public but little understand what a vast amount of ignorance
-has at times been cunningly concealed by medical practitioners, and how
-grossly the people of every city and village are even nowadays trifled
-with by some who arrogate to themselves the honorable title of Doctor of
-Medicine.
-
-Herein not only the base and the good physician, but the honorable and the
-trifling apothecary, receive their due reward, or well-merited punishment,
-so far as the pen can give them. The reader will be utterly surprised when
-he comes to learn how the quacks of the past and the present have brought
-themselves into note by tricks and schemes very similar and equally
-infamous. The wanton trifling with the health and life of their patients,
-the greed of gain, and the perfect destitution of all moral nature, which
-some of these men have exhibited in their career, are astounding.
-
-The apothecaries, as well as physicians, are descanted on, and the
-miserable tricks to which the large majority of them resort, exposed. The
-public will be astonished to find what trash in the matter of drugs it
-pays for; how filthy, vile, and often poisonous and hurtful materials
-people buy for medicines at extortionate prices; how even the syrups which
-they drink in soda drawn from costly and splendid fountains are often made
-from the most filthy materials, and are not fit for the lower animals, not
-to say human beings, to drink. And this fact is only illustrative of
-hundreds of others set forth in this work.
-
-This work not only exposes the multifold frauds of quacks, apothecaries,
-travelling doctors, soothsayers, fortune-tellers, certain clairvoyants,
-and "spiritual mediums," and the like, who "practise medicine" to a more
-or less extent, or profess to discover and heal diseases,--but it points
-out to the reader the most approved rules for protecting the health, and
-recovering it when lost. In short, it is a work embodying the most sound
-advice, founded upon the judgment of the best physicians of the past and
-present, as tested in the Author's experience for a period of twenty
-years' active practice. In other words, it is a compendium of sound
-medical advice, as well as a racy, lively, and incisive dissection and
-exposure of the villanies of quacks and other medical empirics, etc.
-
-Persons of all ages will find the work not only interesting to read, but
-most valuable in a practical sense. To the young who would shun the crafts
-and villanies to which they must be exposed as they grow up,--for all are
-liable to be more or less ill at times,--it will prove invaluable,
-enabling them to detect the spurious from the reliable in medicine, and
-how to judge between the pretentious charlatan (even enjoying a large
-ride) and the true physician. And none are so old that they may not reap
-great advantages from the work.
-
-
-
-
-CONTENTS.
-
-
-  I. MEDICAL HUMBUGS.
-
-  ORIGIN AND APPLICATION OF "HUMBUG."--A FIFTH AVENUE HUMBUG.--
-  JOB'S OPINION OF DOCTORS.--EARLY PHYSICIANS.--PRIESTS AS
-  DOCTORS.--WIZARDS COME TO GRIEF.--A "CAPITAL" OPERATION.--A
-  WOMAN CUT INTO TWELVE PIECES.--ANECDOTE.--ROBIN HOOD'S LITTLE
-  JOKE.--TIT FOR TAT. ENGLISH HUMBUGS.--FRENCH DITTO.--A
-  FORTUNE ON DIRTY WATER.--AMERICAN HUMBUGS.--A FIRST CLASS
-  "DODGE."--A FREE RIDE.--A SHARP INTERROGATOR.--DOCTOR
-  PUSBELLY.--A WICKED STAGE-DRIVER'S STORY.--"OLD PILGARLIC"
-  TAKES A BATH.--LUDICROUS SCENE.--PROFESSOR BREWSTER.                  19
-
-
-  II. APOTHECARIES.
-
-  FIRST MENTION OF.--A POOR SPECIMEN.--ELIZABETHAN.--KING JAMES
-  I. [VI.].--ALLSPICE AND ALOES, SUGAR AND TARTAR EMETIC.--
-  WAR.--PHYSICIAN VS. APOTHECARY.--IGNORANCE.--STEALING A
-  TRADE.--A LAUGHABLE PRESCRIPTION.--"CASTER ILE."--MODERN DRUG
-  SWALLOWING.--MISTAKES.--"STEALS THE TOOLS ALSO."--
-  SUBSTITUTES.--"A QUID."--A "SMELL" OF PATENT MEDICINES.--"A
-  SAMPLE CLERK."                                                        61
-
-
-  III. PATENT MEDICINES.
-
-  PATENT MEDICINES.--HOW STARTED.--HOW MADE.--THE WAY IMMENSE
-  FORTUNES ARE REALIZED.--SPALDING'S GLUE.--SOURED SWILL.--
-  SARSAPARILLA HUMBUGS.--S. P. TOWNSEND.--"A DOWN EAST FARMER'S
-  STORY."--"WILD CHERRY" EXPOSITIONS.--"CAPTAIN WRAGGE'S PILL"
-  A FAIR SAMPLE OF THE WHOLE.--HOW PILL SALES ARE STARTED.--A
-  SLIP OF THE PEN.--"GRIPE PILLS."--SHAKSPEARE IMPROVED.--H. W.
-  B. "FRUIT SYRUP."--HAIR TONICS.--A BALD BACHELOR'S
-  EXPERIENCE.--A LUDICROUS STORY.--A WOLF IN SHEEP'S CLOTHING.          78
-
-
-  IV. MANUFACTURED DOCTORS.
-
-  A BOSTON BARBER AS M. D.--A BARBER "GONE TO POT."--FOOLS MADE
-  DOCTORS.--BAKERS.--BARBERS.--"A LUCKY DOG."--TINKERS.--ROYAL
-  FAVORS.--"LITTLE CARVER DAVY."--A BUTCHER'S BLOCKHEAD.--A
-  SWEEPING VISIT.--HOP-PED FROM OBSCURITY.--PEDAGOGUES TURN
-  DOCTORS.--ARBUTHNOT.--"A QUAKER."--"WALKS OFF ON HIS EAR."--
-  WEAVERS AND BASKET-MAKERS.--A TOUGH PRINCE; REQUIRED THREE M.
-  D.'S TO KILL HIM.--MARAT A HORSE DOCTOR.--A MERRY PARSON.--
-  BLACK MAIL.--POLICE AS A MIDWIFE, ETC., ETC.                          99
-
-
-  V. WOMAN AS PHYSICIAN.
-
-  HER "MISSION."--NO PLACE IN MEDICAL HISTORY.--ONE OF THEM.--
-  MRS. STEPHENS.--"CRAZY SALLY."--RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS.--RUNS IN
-  THE FAMILY.--ANECDOTES.--"WHICH GOT THRASHED?"--A WRETCHED
-  END.--AMERICAN FEMALE PHYSICIANS.--A PIONEER.--A LAUGHABLE
-  ANECDOTE.--"THREE WISE MEN."--"A SHORT HORSE," ETC.--BOSTON
-  AND NEW YORK FEMALE DOCTORS.--A STORY.--"LOVE AND
-  THOROUGHWORT."--A GAY BEAU.--UP THE PENOBSCOT.--DYING FOR
-  LOVE.--"IS HE MAD?"--THOROUGHWORT WINS.                              123
-
-
-  VI. QUACKS.
-
-  ANECDOTE IN ILLUSTRATION.--DERIVATION.--FATHER OF QUACKS.--A
-  MEDICAL "BONFIRE."--THE "SAMSON" OF THE PROFESSION.--SIR
-  ASTLEY.--U. S. SURVEYOR-GENERAL HAMMOND.--HOMEOPATHIC QUACKS,
-  ETC.--A MUDDLED DEFINITION.--"STOP THIEF!"--CRIPPLED FOR
-  LIFE!--TWO POUNDS CALOMEL.--VICTIMS.--WASHINGTON, JACKSON,
-  HARRISON.--THE COUNTRY QUACK.--A TRUE AND LUDICROUS
-  ANECDOTE.--DYEING TO DIE!--A SCARED DOCTOR.--DROPSY!--A HASTY
-  WEDDING!--A COUNTRY CONSULTATION.--"SCENES FROM WESTERN
-  PRACTICE."--"TWIST ROOT."--A JOLLY TRIO.--NEW "BUST" OF
-  CUPID.--AN UNWILLING LISTENER.                                       157
-
-
-  VII. CHARLATANS AND IMPOSTORS.
-
-  DEFINITION.--ADVERTISING CHARLATANS.--CITY IMPOSTORS.--FALSE
-  NAMES.--"ADVICE FREE."--INTIMIDATIONS.--WHOLESALE ROBBERY.--
-  VISITING THEIR DENS IN DISGUISE.--PASSING THE CERBERUS.--
-  WINDINGS.--INS AND OUTS.--THE IRISH PORTER.--QUEER "TWINS,"
-  AND A "TRIPLET" DOCTOR.--A HISTORY OF A KNAVE.--BOOT-BLACK
-  AND BOTTLE-WASHER.--PERQUISITES.--PURCHASED DIPLOMAS.--
-  "INSTITUTES."--WHOLESALE SLAUGHTER OF INFANTS.--FEMALE
-  HARPIES.--A BOSTON HARPY.--WHERE OUR "LOST CHILDREN" GO.--
-  END OF A WRETCH.                                                     180
-
-
-  VIII. ANECDOTES OF PHYSICIANS.
-
-  A WANT SUPPLIED.--ORIGINAL ANECDOTES OF ABERNETHY.--A LIVE
-  IRISHMAN.--MADAM ROTHSCHILD.--LARGE FEET.--A SHANGHAI
-  ROOSTER.--SPREADING HERSELF.--KEROSENE.--"SALERATUS."--HIS
-  LAST JOKE.--AN ASTONISHED DARKY.--OLD DR. K.'S MARE.--A
-  SCARED CUSTOMER.--"WHAT'S TRUMPS?"--"LET GO THEM HALYARDS."--
-  MEDICAL TITBITS.--MORE MUSTARD THAN MEAT.--"I WANT TO BE AN
-  ANGEL."--TOOTH-DRAWING.--DR. BEECHER VS. DR. HOLMES.--
-  STEALING TIME.--CHOLERA FENCED IN.--"A JOKE THAT'S NOT A
-  JOKE."--A DRY SHOWER-BATH.--PARBOILING AN OLD LADY.                  200
-
-
-  IX. FORTUNE-TELLERS.
-
-  PAST AND PRESENT.--BIBLE ASTROLOGERS AND FORTUNE-TELLERS.--
-  ARABIAN.--EASTERN.--ENGLISH.--QUEEN'S FAVORITE.--LILLY.--A
-  LUCKY GUESS.--THE GREAT LONDON FIRE FORETOLD.--HOW.--OUR
-  "TIDAL WAVE" AND AGASSIZ.--A HALL OF FORTUNE-TELLERS.--
-  PRESENT.--VISIT EN MASSE.--"FILLIKY MILLIKY."--"CHARGE
-  BAYONETS!"--A FOWL PROCEEDING.--FINDING LOST PROPERTY.--THE
-  MAGIC MIRROR EXPOSE.--"ONE MORE UNFORTUNATE."--PROCURESSES.--
-  BOSTON MUSEUM.--"A NICE OLD GENTLEMAN."--MONEY DOES IT.--
-  GREAT SUMS OF MONEY.--"LOVE POWDER" EXPOSE.--HASHEESH.--"DOES
-  HE LOVE ME?"                                                         227
-
-
-  X. EMINENT PHYSICIANS AND SURGEONS.
-
-  THEIR ORIGIN, BOYHOOD, EARLY STRUGGLES, ETC.--DOCTORS ARE
-  PUBLIC PROPERTY.--DR. MOTT, OF OYSTER BAY.--DR. PARKER.--A
-  "PLOUGH-BOY."--THE FARMER'S BOY AND THE OLD DOCTOR.--SCENE IN
-  BELLEVUE HOSPITAL.--"LEAVES FROM THE LIFE OF AN UNFLEDGED
-  AESCULAPIAN."--FIRST PATIENT.--"NONPLUSSED!"--ALL RIGHT AT
-  LAST.--PROFESSORS EBERLE AND DEWEES.--A HARD START.--"FOOTING
-  IT."--ABERNETHY'S BOYHOOD.--"OLD SQUEERS."--SPARE THE BOY AND
-  SPOIL THE ROD.--A DIGRESSION.--SKIRTING A BOG.--AN AGREEABLE
-  TURN.--PROFESSOR HOLMES.--A HOMELESS STUDENT.                        253
-
-
-  XI. GHOSTS AND WITCHES.
-
-  FOLLY OF BELIEF IN GHOSTS.--WHY GHOSTS ARE ALWAYS WHITE.--A
-  TRUE STORY.--THE GHOST OF THE CAMP.--A GHOSTLY SENTRY-BOX.--A
-  MYSTERY.--THE NAGLES FAMILY.--RAISING THE DEAD.--A LIVELY
-  STAMPEDE.--HOLY WATER.--CAESAR'S GHOST AT PHILIPPI.--LORD
-  BYRON AND DR. JOHNSON.--GHOST OF A GUILTY CONSCIENCE.--
-  "JOCKEYING A GHOST."--THE WOUNDED BIRD.--A BISHOP SEES A
-  GHOST.--MUSICAL GHOSTS.--A HAUNTED HOUSE.--ABOUT WITCHES.--
-  "WITCHES IN THE CREAM."--HORSE-SHOES.--WOMAN OF ENDOR NOT A
-  WITCH.--WEIGHING FLESH AGAINST THE BIBLE.--THERE ARE NO
-  GHOSTS, OR WITCHES.                                                  278
-
-
-  XII. MEDICAL SUPERSTITIONS.
-
-  OLD AND NEW.--THE SIGN OF JUPITER.--MODERN IDOLATRY.--ORIGIN
-  OF THE DAYS OF THE WEEK.--HOW WE PERPETUATE IDOLATRY.--
-  SINGULAR FACT.--CHRISTMAS FESTIVITIES.--"OLD NICK."--
-  RIDICULOUS SUPERSTITIONS.--GOLDEN HERB.--HOUSE CRICKETS.--A
-  STOOL WALKS.--THE BOWING IMAGES AT RHODE ISLAND.--HOUSE
-  SPIDERS.--THE HOUSE CAT.--SUPERSTITIOUS IDOLATRIES.--
-  WONDERFUL KNOWLEDGE.--NAUGHTY BOYS.--ERRORS RESPECTING
-  CATS.--SANITARY QUALITIES.--OWLS.--A SCARED BOY.--HOLY
-  WATER.--UNLUCKY DAYS.--THUNDER AND LIGHTNING.--A KISS.               307
-
-
-  XIII. TRAVELLING DOCTORS.
-
-  PUBLIC CONFIDENCE(?).--THE EYE OF THE PUBLIC.--A BAD
-  SPECIMEN.--"REMARKABLE TUMOR."--"THE SINGING DOCTOR."--CAUGHT
-  IN A STORM.--BIG PUFFING.--A SPLENDID "TURNOUT."--WHO WAS
-  HE?--A SUDDEN DISAPPEARANCE.--THE "SPANKING DOCTOR."--A FAIR
-  VICTIM.--LOOSE LAWS.--DR. PULSEFEEL.--IMPUDENCE.--A FIDDLING
-  DOCTOR.--AN ENCORE.--"CHEEK."--VARIOUS WAYS OF ADVERTISING.          341
-
-
-  XIV. SCENES FROM EVERY-DAY PRACTICE.
-
-  THE BEGGAR BOY AND THE GOLDEN-HAIRED HEIRESS.--MY MIDNIGHT
-  CALL.--THE CONSCIENCE-STRICKEN MOTHER.--"OLD SEROSITY."--THE
-  ILLEGITIMATE CHILD.--DEATH OF THE BEAUTIFUL.--WHO IS THE
-  HEIR?--A TOUCHING SCENE.--FATE OF THE "BEGGAR BOY."--THE
-  TERRIBLE CALLER.--AN IRISH SCENE, FROM DR. DIXON'S BOOK.--
-  BIDDY ON A RAMPAGE.--TERRY ON HIS DEATH BED.--THE STOMACH
-  PUMP.--BIDDY WON'T, AND SHE WILL.--THE BETRAYED AND HER
-  BETRAYER.--"IS THERE A GOD IN ISRAEL?"--THE HUSBANDLESS
-  MOTHER.--THE CRISIS AND COURT.--ANSWER.--THERE IS A "GOD IN
-  ISRAEL."                                                             362
-
-
-  XV. DOCTORS' FEES AND INCOMES.
-
-  ANCIENT FEES.--LARGE FEES.--SPANISH PRIEST-DOCTORS.--A PIG ON
-  PENANCE.--SMALL FEES.--A "CHOP" POSTPONED.--LONG FEES.--SHORT
-  FEES.--OLD FEES.--A NIGHT-CAP.--AN OLD SHOE FOR LUCK.--A
-  BLACK FEE.--"HEART'S OFFERING."--A STUFFED CAT.--THE "GREAT
-  GUNS" OF NEW YORK.--BOSTON.--ROTTEN EGGS.--"CATCH WHAT YOU
-  CAN."--FEMALE DOCTORS' FEES.--ABOVE PRICE.--"ASK FOR A
-  FEE."--"PITCH HIM OVERBOARD."--DELICATE FEES.--MAKING THE
-  MOST OF THEM.                                                        386
-
-
-  XVI. GENEROSITY AND MEANNESS.
-
-  THE WORLD UNMASKED.--A ROUGH DIAMOND.--DECAYED GENTILITY.--
-  "THREE FLIGHT, BACK."--SEVERAL ANECDOTES.--THE OLD
-  FOX-HUNTER.--"STAND ON YOUR HEAD."--KINDNESS TO CLERGYMEN.--
-  RARE CHARITY.--OLD AND HOMELESS.--THE "O'CLO'" JEW.--DR.
-  HUNTER'S GENEROSITY.--"WHAT'S THE PRICE OF BEEF?"--A SAD
-  OMISSION.--INNATE GENEROSITY.--A CURB-STONE MONEY-MANIAC.--AN
-  EYE-OPENER.--AN AVARICIOUS DOCTOR.--ROBBING THE DEAD.                410
-
-
-  XVII. LOVE AND LOVERS.
-
-  XANTIPPE, BEFORE JEALOUSY.--A FIRST LOVE.--BLASTED HOPES.--A
-  DOCTOR'S STORY.--THE FLIGHT FROM "THE HOUNDS OF THE LAW."--
-  THE EXILE AND RETURN.--DISGUISED AS A PEDDLER.--ESCAPES WITH
-  HIS LOVE.--ENGLISH BEAUS.--YOUNG COQUETTES.--A GAY AND
-  DANGEROUS BEAU.--HANDSOME BEAUS.--LEAP YEAR.--AN OLD BEAU.--
-  BEAUTY NOT ALL-POTENT.--OFFENDED ROYALTY.--YOUTH AND AGE.--A
-  STABLE BOY.--POET-DOCTOR.                                            438
-
-
-  XVIII. MIND AND MATTER.
-
-  IN WHICH ANIMAL MAGNETISM, MESMERISM, AND CLAIRVOYANCE ARE
-  EXPLAINED.--"THE IGNORANT MONOPOLY."--YET ROOM FOR
-  DISCOVERIES.--A "GASSY" SUBJECT.--DRS. CHAPIN AND BEECHER.--
-  HE "CAN'T SEE IT."--THE ROYAL TOUCH.--GASSNER.--"THE DEVIL
-  KNOWS LATIN."--ROYALTY IN THE SHADE.--THE IRISH PROPHET; HE
-  VISITS LONDON.--A COMICAL CROWD.--MESMERISM.--A FUNNY
-  BED-FELLOW.--CLAIRVOYANCE.--THE GATES OF MOSCOW.--THE DOCTOR
-  OF ANTWERP.--THE OLD LADY IN THE POKE-BONNET.--VISIT TO A
-  CLAIRVOYANT.--"FORETELLING" THE PAST.--THE OLD WOMAN OF THE
-  PENOBSCOT MOUNTAINS.--A SECRET KEPT.--CUI BONO?--VISITS TO
-  SEVENTEEN CLAIRVOYANTS.--A BON-TON CLAIRVOYANT.--A BOUNCER.--
-  RIDICULOSITY.                                                        461
-
-
-  XIX. ECCENTRICITIES.
-
-  A ONE-EYED DOCTOR AND HIS HORSE.--A NEW EDIBLE.--"HAVE THEM
-  BOILED."--"BEAUTY AND THE BEAST."--A LOVELY STAMPEDE.--AN
-  ECCENTRIC PHILADELPHIAN.--THE POODLES, DRS. HUNTER AND
-  SCIPIO.--SILENT ELOQUENCE.--CONSISTENT TO THE END.--WHEN
-  DOCTORS DISAGREE.--FOUR BLIND MEN.--DIET AND SLEEP.--SAXE AND
-  SANCHO PANZA.--MOTHER GOOSE AS A DOCTOR'S BOOK.--THE TABLES
-  TURNED ON THE DOCTORS.                                               495
-
-
-  XX. PRESCRIPTIONS REMARKABLE AND RIDICULOUS.
-
-  FIG PASTE AND FIG LEAVES.--SOME OF THOSE OLD FELLOWS.--THEY
-  SLIGHTLY DISAGREE.--HOW TO KEEP CLEAN.--BAXTER VS. THE
-  DOCTOR.--A CURE FOR "RHEUMATIZ."--OLD ENGLISH DOSES.--CURE
-  FOR BLUES.--FOR HYSTERIA.--HEROIC DOSES.--DROWNING A FEVER.--
-  AN EXACT SCIENCE.--SULPHUR AND MOLASSES.--A USE FOR POOR
-  IRISH.--MINERAL SPRINGS.--COLD DRINKS VS. WARM.--THE OLD LADY
-  AND THE AIR-PUMP.--SAVED BY HER BUSTLE.--COUNTRY
-  PRESCRIPTIONS AND A FUNNY MISTAKE.--ARE YOU DRUNK OR SOBER?          517
-
-
-  XXI. SCENES FROM HOSPITAL AND CAMP.
-
-  "HE FOUGHT MIT SIEGEL."--A HOSPITAL SCENE AT NIGHT.--
-  ADMINISTERING ANGELS.--"WATER! WATER!"--THE SOLDIER-BOY'S
-  DYING MESSAGE.--THE WELL-WORN BIBLE.--WARM HEARTS IN FROZEN
-  BODIES.--"PUDDING AND MILK."--THE POETICAL AND AMUSING
-  SIDE.--"TO AMELIA."--MY LOVE AND I.--A SCRIPTURAL
-  CONUNDRUM.--MARRYING A REGIMENT.                                     538
-
-
-  XXII. GLUTTONS AND WINE-BIBBERS.
-
-  GOOD CHEER AND A CHEERFUL HEART.--A MODERN SILENUS.--A SAD
-  WRECK.--DELIRIUM TREMENS.--FATAL ERRORS.--"EATING LIKE A
-  GLUTTON."--STRENGTH IN WEAKNESS.--A HOT PLACE, EVEN FOR A
-  COOK.--A HUNGRY DOCTOR.--THE MODERN GILPIN.--A CHANGE! A SOW
-  FOR A HORSE!--A DUCK POND.--THE FORLORN WIDOW.--A SCIENTIFIC
-  GORMAND.--ANOTHER.--"DOORN'T GO TO 'IM," ETC.--DR. BUTLER'S
-  BEER AND BATH.--CASTS HIS LAST VOTE.                                 550
-
-
-  XXIII. THE DOCTOR AS POET, AUTHOR, AND MUSICIAN.
-
-  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.                                        571
-
-
-  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.                                     599
-
-
-  XXV. ALL ABOUT TOBACCO.
-
-  "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."              633
-
-
-  XXVI. DRESS AND ADDRESS OF PHYSICIANS.
-
-  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.--"DOSH, DOSH."        659
-
-
-  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.                                                  680
-
-
-  XXVIII. BLEEDERS AND BUTCHERS.
-
-  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 DOUGLASS JERROLD); JOB
-  PIPPINS AND THE WAGONER; JOB AND THE HIGHWAYMEN; JOB NAKED
-  AND JOB DRESSED.                                                     695
-
-
-  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.                                        709
-
-
-  XXX. THE OTHER SIDE.
-
-  PUT YOURSELF IN HIS PLACE.--STEALING FROM THE PROFESSION.--
-  ANECDOTE OF RUFUS CHOATE.--INGRATES.--A NIGHT ROW.--"SAVING
-  AT THE SPIGOT AND WASTING AT THE BUNG."--SHOPPING PATIENTS.--
-  AN AFFECTIONATE WIFE.--RUM AND TOBACCO PATIENTS.--THE
-  PHYSICIAN'S WIDOW AND ORPHAN, THE SUMMONS, THE TENEMENT, THE
-  INVALIDS, HOW THEY LIVED, HER HISTORY, THE UNNATURAL FATHER,
-  HOW THEY DIED, THE END.--A PETER-FUNK DOCTOR.--SELLING OUT.          727
-
-
-  XXXI. "THIS IS FOR YOUR HEALTH."
-
-  THE INESTIMABLE VALUE OF HEALTH.--NO BLESSING IN
-  COMPARISON.--MEN AND SWINE.--BEGIN WITH THE INFANT.--"BABY ON
-  THE PORCH."--IN A STRAIT JACKET.--"TWO LITTLE SHOES."--
-  YOUTH.--IMPURE LITERATURE AND PASSIONS.--"OUR GIRLS."--BARE
-  ARMS AND BUSTS.--HOW AND WHAT WE BREATHE.--"THE FREEDOM OF
-  THE STREET."--KEEP YOUR EYES OPEN AND MOUTH CLOSED.--THE
-  LUNGS AND BREATHING.--A MAN FULL OF HOLES.--SEVEN MILLION
-  MOUTHS TO FEED.--PURE WATER.--CLEANLINESS. SOAP VS.
-  WRINKLES.--GOD'S SUNSHINE.                                           748
-
-
-  XXXII. HEALTH WITHOUT MEDICINE.
-
-  CHEERFULNESS.--GOOD ADVICE.--REV. FRANCIS J. COLLIER ON
-  CHRISTIAN CHEERFULNESS.--WHAT GOD SAYS ABOUT IT.--WHINING.--
-  LOVE AND HEALTH.--AFFECTION AND PERFECTION.--SEPARATING THE
-  SHEEP AND GOATS.--THE FENCES UP AND FENCES DOWN.--SIXTEEN AND
-  SIXTY.--ACTION AND IDLENESS.--IDLENESS AND CRIME.--BEAUTY AND
-  DEVELOPMENT.--SLEEP.--DAY AND NIGHT.--"WHAT SHALL WE EAT?"--A
-  STOMACH-MILL AND A STEWING-PAN.--"FIVE MINUTES FOR
-  REFRESHMENTS."--ANCIENT DIET.--COOKS IN A "STEW."--THE
-  GREEN-GROCERIES OF THE CLASSICS.--CABBAGES AND ARTICHOKES.--
-  ANIMAL AND VEGETABLE DIET.                                           769
-
-
-  XXXIII. CONSUMPTION.
-
-  CONSUMPTION A MONSTER!--UNIVERSAL REIGN.--SIGNS OF HIS
-  APPROACH.--WARNINGS.--BAD POSITIONS.--SCHOOL-HOUSES.--ENGLISH
-  THEORY.--PREVENTIVES.--AIR AND SUNSHINE.--SCROFULA.--A JOLLY
-  FAT GRANDMOTHER.--"WASP WAISTS."--CHANGE OF CLIMATE.--"TOO
-  LATE!"--WHAT TO AVOID.--HUMBUGS.--COD LIVER OIL.--STRYCHNINE
-  WHISKEY.--A MATTER-OF-FACT PATIENT.--SWALLOWING A
-  PRESCRIPTION.--SIT AND LIE STRAIGHT.--FEATHERS OR CURLED
-  HAIR.--A YANKEE DISEASE.--CATARRH AND COLD FEET, HOW TO
-  REMEDY.--"GIVE US SOME SNUFF, DOCTOR."--OTHER THINGS TO
-  AVOID.--A TENDER POINT.                                              790
-
-
-  XXXIV. ACCIDENTS.
-
-  RULES FOR MACHINISTS, MECHANICS, RAILROAD MEN, ETC., IN CASES
-  OF ACCIDENT.--HOW TO FIND AN ARTERY AND STOP THE BLEEDING.--
-  DROWNING; TO RESTORE.--SUN-STROKE.--AVOID ICE.--"ACCIDENTS
-  WILL HAPPEN."--WHAT TO HAVE IN THE HOUSE.--BRUISES.--BURNS.--
-  DO THE BEST YOU CAN AND TRUST GOD FOR THE REST.                      811
-
-
-
-
-ILLUSTRATIONS.
-
-
-  1. A. D. CRABTRE, M. D.,                     Frontispiece.
-
-  2. DR. ANGLICUS PONTO,                                  31
-
-  3. MISFORTUNES NEVER COME SINGLY,                       33
-
-  4. THE MISER OUTWITS HIMSELF,                           38
-
-  5. COMMENCING A PRACTICE IN NEW YORK,                   47
-
-  6. GRACE BEFORE MEAT,                                   48
-
-  7. OLD PILGARLIC TAKES A BATH,                          55
-
-  8. PROFESSOR BREWSTER,                                  55
-
-  9. AN INFANTRY CHARGE,                                  60
-
-  10. THE "FREE PASS" PRESCRIPTION,                       69
-
-  11. THE WRONG PATIENT,                                  71
-
-  12. A CANDIDATE FOR THE PRESIDENCY,                     77
-
-  13. UNDER FULL SAIL,                                    77
-
-  14. "IT'S ALL A HUMBUG,"                                82
-
-  15. "BAREFOOTED ON THE TOP OF HIS HEAD,"                93
-
-  16. OLD "SANDS OF LIFE,"                                96
-
-  17. REFRESHMENTS,                                       98
-
-  18. THE EYE DOCTOR,                                    103
-
-  19. THE YOUNG SURGEON'S FIRST EXPERIENCE,              105
-
-  20. HEALING THE SICK WITH A GOLDEN DOSE,               111
-
-  21. THE PARSON BUYING OFF THE "CONGREGATION,"          120
-
-  22. A JUVENILE BACCHUS,                                122
-
-  23. "DON'T YOU OBSERVE THE ARMS OF MRS. MAPP?"         128
-
-  24. THREE WISE STUDENTS CONSULTING A DOCTRESS,         134
-
-  25. "POH! YOU'RE A GIRL,"                              141
-
-  26. "HERE WE GO UP-UP-UPPY,"                           148
-
-  27. "LOVE AMONG THE ROSES,"                            156
-
-  28. THE INQUISITIVE COUNTRYMEN,                        161
-
-  29. CURIOUS EFFECTS OF A FEVER,                        171
-
-  30. MARRYING A FAMILY,                                 173
-
-  31. 'OPATHISTS IN CONSULTATION,                        175
-
-  32. A "HYPO" PATIENT DISCHARGING HIS PHYSICIAN,        178
-
-  33. TOO MUCH HAT,                                      179
-
-  34. CONVINCING EVIDENCE OF INSOLVENCY,                 181
-
-  35. "AN' WHO'LL YEZE LIKE TO SEE, SURE?"               183
-
-  36. A BOSTON QUACK EXAMINING A STUDENT,                189
-
-  37. ORNAMENTAL TAIL-PIECE,                             199
-
-  38. DR. ABERNETHY IN THE HOSPITAL,                     202
-
-  39. AN EXTENSIVE SET,                                  205
-
-  40. "O, DOCTHER, DEAR, I'VE PIZENED ME BOY,"           207
-
-  41. "LOST MARSER! LOST MARSER!"                        209
-
-  42. NOT A STOMACH PUMP,                                213
-
-  43. "LOWER TIER, LARBOARD SIDE,"                       217
-
-  44. THE FARMER'S ESCAPE FROM THE CHOLERA,              223
-
-  45. TOO MUCH VAPOR,                                    224
-
-  46. A DRY SHOWER BATH,                                 225
-
-  47. GRAPES AND WINE,                                   226
-
-  48. CHARGE, INFANTRY!                                  239
-
-  49. AFTER THE BATTLE,                                  240
-
-  50. THE FORTUNE-TELLER'S MAGIC MIRROR,                 244
-
-  51. CHILDREN CONSULTING A FORTUNE-TELLER,              251
-
-  52. THE HUNTRESS,                                      252
-
-  53. THE ONONDAGA FARMER BOY,                           256
-
-  54. THE POLITE QUADRUPED,                              265
-
-  55. YOUNG ABERNETHY,                                   266
-
-  56. "PINNY, SIR? JUST ONE PINNY,"                      274
-
-  57. THE PENNILESS PHYSICIAN,                           276
-
-  58. THE INDIAN WARRIOR,                                277
-
-  59. BELIEVERS IN GHOSTS,                               278
-
-  60. "HARK! THERE'S A FEARFUL GUST!"                    280
-
-  61. A GRAVE SENTRY,                                    282
-
-  62. A GHOST IN CAMP,                                   285
-
-  63. OLD NAGLES,                                        286
-
-  64. THE NAGLES BOYS,                                   287
-
-  65. CHIEF MOURNERS,                                    288
-
-  66. THE CORPSE THAT WOULD NOT SMOKE,                   290
-
-  67. PREPARE TO DIE,                                    293
-
-  68. THE BISHOP'S GHOSTLY VISITOR,                      295
-
-  69. THE MUSICAL PUSS,                                  301
-
-  70. A DARKEY BEWITCHED,                                301
-
-  71. BOYLSTON STATION,                                  303
-
-  72. WEIGHING A WITCH BY BIBLE STANDARD,                305
-
-  73. PASSING THE FORT,                                  306
-
-  74. THE GOD OF RECIPES,                                308
-
-  75. SUN-SUNDAY,                                        310
-
-  76. MOON-MONDAY,                                       313
-
-  77. TUISCO-TUESDAY,                                    313
-
-  78. WODEN-WEDNESDAY,                                   314
-
-  79. THOR-THURSDAY,                                     315
-
-  80. FRIGA-FRIDAY,                                      315
-
-  81. SEATER-SATURDAY,                                   316
-
-  82. GATHERING THE MANDRAKE,                            321
-
-  83. "WAITING TO SEE THE IMAGES BOW,"                   323
-
-  84. SPORT FOR THE BOYS BUT DEATH TO THE CAT,           329
-
-  85. "WHO-A'-YOO?"                                      333
-
-  86. THE PROPER USE OF "HOLY WATER,"                    334
-
-  87. THE MODEST KISS,                                   339
-
-  88. HOLDING THE PLOW,                                  340
-
-  89. THE TUMOR DOCTOR CONTEMPLATES SUICIDE,             343
-
-  90. MARIAM, THE TUMOR DOCTOR,                          345
-
-  91. THE SINGING DOCTOR,                                349
-
-  92. THE SANATORIAN'S TURNOUT,                          351
-
-  93. A NEW SCHOOL OF PRACTICE,                          354
-
-  94. A VICTIM OF THE SPANKER,                           355
-
-  95. DR. PULSFEEL LEAVING TOWN,                         356
-
-  96. THE MUSICAL DOCTOR,                                358
-
-  97. ENTHUSIASM,                                        359
-
-  98. ALL WOOL,                                          361
-
-  99. CHARITY THROWN AWAY,                               363
-
-  100. THE BEGGAR BOY,                                   366
-
-  101. REMORSE,                                          368
-
-  102. THE LOST HEIR,                                    373
-
-  103. A MORNING CALLER,                                 375
-
-  104. "WHY DID I TAZE YE?"                              376
-
-  105. SUCCESS OF TERRY'S COURTSHIP,                     379
-
-  106. THE BETRAYED,                                     382
-
-  107. SAILING INTO PORT,                                385
-
-  108. A SAN BENITO PIG,                                 388
-
-  109. AN OLD ENGLISH CLERGYMAN AND HIS FAMILY,          390
-
-  110. THE KING'S PHYSICIAN AND THE EXECUTIONER,         393
-
-  111. A SLIPPER-Y FEE,                                  397
-
-  112. A LIVING FEE,                                     399
-
-  113. STUFFED PETS,                                     400
-
-  114. A PIONEER OF HOMOEOPATHY,                         403
-
-  115. A SHARP MULE TRADE,                               405
-
-  116. ORNAMENTAL TAIL-PIECE,                            409
-
-  117. PHYSICIAN'S CHARITY,                              411
-
-  118. SEARCH FOR A PATIENT,                             412
-
-  119. AN ECCENTRIC PATIENT,                             417
-
-  120. A WOMAN'S REBUKE,                                 417
-
-  121. AFRAID OF A POLYPUS,                              418
-
-  122. ABERNETHY'S SURGICAL OPERATION,                   420
-
-  123. RECKONING A DOCTOR'S FEES,                        424
-
-  124. PATIENT NUMBER FIVE,                              425
-
-  125. THE ASTONISHED BUTCHER,                           427
-
-  126. MODERN IMPROVEMENTS IN DENTISTRY,                 431
-
-  127. CHARITY NOT SOLICITED,                            431
-
-  128. CAPTURE OF A WALL STREET BULL,                    433
-
-  129. DEATH'S FEE,                                      436
-
-  130. THE AMERICAN SAILOR,                              437
-
-  131. MY FIRST LOVE,                                    439
-
-  132. TEN YEARS LATER,                                  441
-
-  133. FLIGHT OF THE DOCTOR,                             443
-
-  134. THE LOVER AS A PEDDLER,                           447
-
-  135. FLIGHT OF THE LOVERS,                             447
-
-  136. AN AGED PUPIL,                                    453
-
-  137. BIRTHPLACE OF GEORGE CRABBE,                      457
-
-  138. "POPPING THE QUESTION,"                           460
-
-  139. LOVE'S LINKS,                                     460
-
-  140. THE LION MAGNETIZED,                              466
-
-  141. A HARD SUBJECT,                                   467
-
-  142. GASSNER HEALING "BY THE GRACE OF GOD,"            471
-
-  143. NO LACK OF PATIENTS,                              475
-
-  144. "A BOTTLE, A HEN, OR A WOMAN,"                    477
-
-  145. EFFECTS OF AN EARTHQUAKE,                         483
-
-  146. A BELIEVER SEES HIS GRANDMOTHER,                  483
-
-  147. THE CHARMER DIVULGES HER SECRET,                  488
-
-  148. "I PERCEIVE YOU ARE IN LOVE,"                     492
-
-  149. THE FARMER'S DAUGHTERS,                           494
-
-  150. A "HORSE-SLAYER" INDULGING HIS OPINION,           499
-
-  151. NO TIME TO LOSE,                                  500
-
-  152. BEAUTY AND THE BEAST,                             503
-
-  153. DR. HUNTER IN CONSULTATION,                       504
-
-  154. THE RUSSIAN GENERAL'S DRILL,                      506
-
-  155. WHAT THE ELEPHANT IS LIKE,                        511
-
-  156. A DOCTOR'S SOLACE,                                511
-
-  157. HOW A LADY PROCURED A VALUABLE PRESCRIPTION,      525
-
-  158. DOSE--ONE QUART EVERY HOUR,                       526
-
-  159. PUMPING AN OLD LADY,                              537
-
-  160. A DANGEROUS PRESCRIPTION,                         537
-
-  161. THE FARMER'S EMBLEMS,                             537
-
-  162. THE DYING MESSAGE,                                541
-
-  163. STUCK!                                            547
-
-  164. COMMERCE,                                         549
-
-  165. A GOOD LIVER,                                     551
-
-  166. A DOCTOR "KILLING THE DEVILS,"                    555
-
-  167. PAYING FOR HIS WINE,                              555
-
-  168. A BAR-ROOM DOCTOR,                                555
-
-  169. "THE DOCTOR ON A SOW!"                            565
-
-  170. RESCUE OF THE DOCTOR,                             565
-
-  171. "ONLY IRISH BEER,"                                568
-
-  172. CURE FOR THE AGUE,                                569
-
-  173. PLAYING THE REEDS,                                570
-
-  174. AN EMBRYO APOLLO,                                 572
-
-  175. THE PILGRIM CHEAT,                                577
-
-  176. FRANKLIN'S EXPERIMENTS WITH ETHER,                585
-
-  177. END OF THE WONDERFUL ONE-HOSS SHAY,               591
-
-  178. "MUSIC, THE SOUL OF LIFE,"                        597
-
-  179. THE MUSICAL MICE,                                 597
-
-  180. FOUNTAIN,                                         598
-
-  181. SIGNS OF CIVILIZATION,                            603
-
-  182. SWILL MILK (MAGNIFIED),                           605
-
-  183. PURE MILK (MAGNIFIED),                            606
-
-  184. WATERED MILK (MAGNIFIED),                         606
-
-  185. "WHAT'S IN THE MILK?"                             606
-
-  186. A CHAMPAGNE BATH,                                 611
-
-  187. MOTHER'S MILK--PURE AND HEALTHY,                  612
-
-  188. MOTHER'S MILK AFTER DRINKING WHISKY,              612
-
-  189. WAITING FOR ASSISTANCE,                           617
-
-  190. A CONFECTIONERY STORE,                            619
-
-  191. TARTARIC ACID FOR SUPPER,                         629
-
-  192. A STREET CANDY STAND,                             629
-
-  193. THE NEWSBOY'S MOTHER,                             630
-
-  194. THE IDOL OF TOBACCO USERS,                        634
-
-  195. PUNISHMENT OF THE TURK,                           638
-
-  196. SMOKERS OF FOUR GENERATIONS,                      639
-
-  197. "I WANT A CHAW OF TERBACKER,"                     641
-
-  198. YOUNG SMOKERS,                                    642
-
-  199. EXAMINATION OF THE SMOKER,                        643
-
-  200. PURIFYING HIS BLOOD,                              644
-
-  201. CLEANSING HIS BONES,                              645
-
-  202. THE SMOKER,                                       647
-
-  203. THE CHEWER,                                       648
-
-  204. SIGN OF THE TIMES,                                648
-
-  205. MY LAZY SMOKING FRIEND,                           650
-
-  206. "SHALL I ASSIST YOU TO ALIGHT?"                   653
-
-  207. WORK FOR TONGUES AND FINGERS,                     653
-
-  208. WHAT KILLED THE DOG?                              657
-
-  209. THE NEWSBOY,                                      658
-
-  210. THE GREAT SURGEONS OF THE WORLD,                  661
-
-  211. A CALL ON THE VILLAGE DOCTOR,                     663
-
-  212. PHYSICIANS' COSTUME IN 1790,                      664
-
-  213. HOW POOR TOMMY WAS LOST,                          666
-
-  214. BRIDGET'S METHOD OF MENDING STOCKINGS,            667
-
-  215. THE UNDERTAKERS' ARMS,                            671
-
-  216. DISPUTE OF THE DOCTOR AND VALET,                  671
-
-  217. A WIG MOUSE,                                      674
-
-  218. THE MYSTERY EXPLAINED,                            675
-
-  219. MEETING OF THE DOCTOR AND THE CURATE,             679
-
-  220. DOCTOR CANDEE,                                    679
-
-  221. A GERMAN BEER GIRL,                               681
-
-  222. AN INDIGNANT BRIDE,                               686
-
-  223. THE ITCH MITE,                                    689
-
-  224. THE BURGLAR AND STUDENT,                          693
-
-  225. HARVESTED,                                        694
-
-  226. ASSISTANCE FROM A ROYAL SURGEON,                  696
-
-  227. PETER THE GREAT AS A SURGEON,                     697
-
-  228. JOB DISCHARGED BY SIR SCIPIO,                     703
-
-  229. "BLEED HIM,"                                      704
-
-  230. A BORROWED WATCH,                                 706
-
-  231. JOB'S DECISION,                                   708
-
-  232. SQUASHY'S SURGICAL OPERATION,                     715
-
-  233. "WILL YE TAK' A BLAST, NOO?"                      720
-
-  234. REPTILES FROM THE STOMACH,                        722
-
-  235. "IT ISN'T CATCHIN',"                              724
-
-  236. FUNERAL OF THE CANARY,                            725
-
-  237. MY FRONT STREET PATIENT,                          731
-
-  238. A SHOPPING PATIENT,                               733
-
-  239. CALL AT THE TENEMENT,                             737
-
-  240. THE WIDOW'S OCCUPATION,                           739
-
-  241. THE PHYSICIAN AND THE FATHER,                     742
-
-  242. THE PETER FUNK PHYSICIAN,                         745
-
-  243. VIRTUE,                                           747
-
-  244. THE FREEDOM OF THE PARK,                          761
-
-  245. "IT COSTS NOTHING,"                               766
-
-  246. A NATURAL POSITION,                               792
-
-  247. AN UNNATURAL POSITION,                            792
-
-  248. CORRECT POSITION,                                 796
-
-  249. INCORRECT POSITION,                               796
-
-  250. HOW WASP WAISTS ARE MADE,                         799
-
-  251. A CONSUMPTIVE WAIST,                              800
-
-  252. NON-CONSUMPTIVE WAIST,                            800
-
-  253. A HEALTHY POSITION,                               804
-
-  254. POSITION OF ARTERY IN ARM,                        811
-
-  255. COMPRESSING AN ARTERY IN ARM,                     812
-
-  256. POSITION OF ARTERY IN LEG,                        812
-
-  257. THE DOCTOR'S QUEUE,                               816
-
-
-
-
-I.
-
-MEDICAL HUMBUGS.
-
-    _Marina._ ... Should I tell my history,
-              'Twould seem like lies disdained in the reporting.
-
-    _Pericles._ Pray thee, speak.--_Shakspeare._
-
-    ORIGIN AND APPLICATION OF "HUMBUG."--A FIFTH AVENUE HUMBUG.--JOB'S
-    OPINION OF DOCTORS.--EARLY PHYSICIANS.--PRIESTS AS DOCTORS.--WIZARDS
-    COME TO GRIEF.--A "CAPITAL" OPERATION.--A WOMAN CUT INTO TWELVE
-    PIECES.--ANECDOTE.--ROBIN HOOD'S LITTLE JOKE.--TIT FOR TAT.--ENGLISH
-    HUMBUGS.--FRENCH DITTO.--A FORTUNE ON DIRTY WATER.--AMERICAN
-    HUMBUGS.--A FIRST CLASS "DODGE."--A FREE RIDE.--A SHARP
-    INTERROGATOR.--DOCTOR PUSBELLY.--A WICKED STAGE-DRIVER'S STORY.--"OLD
-    PILGARLIC" TAKES A BATH.--LUDICROUS SCENE.--PROFESSOR BREWSTER.
-
-
-Medical humbugs began to exist with the first pretenders to the science of
-healing. Quacks originated at a much later period. So materially different
-are the two classes, that I am compelled to treat of them separately.
-
-The word _humbug_ is a corruption of _Hamburg_, Germany, and seems to have
-originated in London. The following episode is in illustration of both its
-origin and meaning:--
-
-"O, Bridget, Bridget!" exclaimed the fashionable mistress of a brown stone
-front in Fifth Avenue, New York, to her surprised servant girl, "what have
-you been doing at the front door?"
-
-"Och, murther! Nothin', ma'am."
-
-"Nothing!" repeated the mistress.
-
-"Yes'm--that is--" stammered Bridget, greatly embarrassed.
-
-"What were you doing at the front door but a moment since?"
-
-"Nothin', ma'am, but spakin' to me cousin; he's a p'leeceman, ma'am, if ye
-plaze, ma'am," replied Bridget, dropping a low courtesy to the mistress.
-
-"No, no; I did not mean that. But haven't you been cleaning the door-knob
-and the bell-pull?"
-
-"Yes'm," replied Bridget, changing from embarrassment to surprise.
-
-"Why, Bridget, didn't I tell you never to polish the front door-knobs
-during the warm season? Now my friends will think that I have returned
-from Saratoga--"
-
-"And is it to Saratogy ye've been, ma'am?" exclaimed Bridget.
-
-"No, you dunce; but was not the front of the house closed, and the
-servants forbidden to polish the plates and glass, that my friends might
-be led to believe we had all gone to the watering-place?"
-
-That was true humbug. Double humbuggery! for the servant girl was
-humbugging her mistress by pretending to polish the door-knobs, while she
-was really coqueting with a policeman; and the mistress was humbugging her
-friends into the belief that the house was closed, and the family gone to
-Saratoga.
-
-So, Hamburg, on the Elbe, being a fashionable resort of the upper-ten-dom
-of London, those who would ape aristocracy, yet being unable to bear the
-expense of a trip to the Continent, closed the front of their dwellings,
-moved into the rear, giving out word that they had gone to _Hamburg_.
-
-When a house was observed so closed, with a notice on the door, the
-passers by would wag their heads, and exclaim, questionably, "Ah, gone to
-Hamburg!" or, "All gone to Hamburg!" "It's all Hamburg!" and so on. And,
-like a thousand other words in the English language, this became
-corrupted, and "humbug" followed. Hence, taking the sense from the
-derivation of the word, humbug means "an imposition, under fair
-pretences;" cheat; hoax; a deception without malicious intent. Webster
-says it is "a low word."
-
-The humbugs in medicine, we assert, began to exist with the first persons
-of whom we have any account in the history of the healing art. Among the
-early Egyptian physicians, AEsculapius was esteemed as the most celebrated.
-He was the first humbug in his line. However, nearly all the accounts we
-have of him are mythological. If we are to credit the early writers, this
-great healer restored so many to life, that he greatly interfered with
-undertaker Pluto's occupation, who picked a quarrel with AEsculapius, and
-the two referred the matter to Jupiter for adjudication.
-
-But we may go back of this "god of medicine." If he was physician to the
-Argonauts, we must fix the date of his great exploits at about the year B.
-C. 1263. It is claimed by good authority that the Book of Job dates back
-to B. C. 1520, and is the oldest book extant. Herein we find Job saying,
-"Ye are forgers of lies; ye are all physicians of no value." Since his
-friends were trying their best to humbug him, Job certainly intimates that
-physicians--some of them, at least--were looked upon as humbugs. But,
-then, Job was only an Arab prince; not an Israelite, at all; nor does he
-condescend to mention that "peculiar people" in his book. And besides,
-what reliance can be based upon the opinion of a man respecting
-physicians, whose only surgical instrument consisted of a "piece or
-fragment of a broken pot"?
-
-Therefore, leaving the "Arab prince," we will turn for a moment to the
-early Jewish physicians. Josephus does not enlighten us much respecting
-them. The Old Testament makes mention of physicians in three
-instances,--the last figuratively.
-
-The first instance--a rather amusing one--where physicians are mentioned
-in the sacred writings, is in 2 Chron. xvi. 12: "And Asa, in the
-thirty-ninth year of his reign, was diseased in his feet, until the
-disease was exceeding great; yet in his disease he sought not to the Lord,
-but to the physicians." The compiler adds, very coolly, as though a
-natural consequence, "_And Asa slept with his fathers_!" This reminds us
-of an anecdote by the late Dr. Waterhouse. An Irishman obtained twenty
-grains of morphine, which, instead of quinine, he took at one dose, to
-cure the chills. The doctor, in relating it long afterwards, added,
-laconically, "He being a good Catholic, his funeral was numerously
-attended."
-
-For generations nearly all the pretensions to healing were made by the
-priests and magicians, who humbugged and "bamboozled" the ignorant and
-superstitious rabble to their hearts' content. Kings and subjects were
-alike believers in the Magi. Saul believed in the magic powers of the
-"witch of Endor." The wicked king Nebuchadnezzar classed Daniel and his
-three companions with the magicians, although Daniel (chap. xi. 10) denied
-the imputation. Joseph laid claim to the power of divination; for, having
-caused the silver cup to be placed in the sack of corn, and after having
-sent and brought his brother back, he said (Gen. xliv. 15), "What deed is
-this that ye have done? Wot ye not that such a man as I can certainly
-divine?" It seemed necessary to deal with the people according to their
-belief. It was useless to dispute with them. As late as the preaching of
-Paul and Barnabas, the whole nations of Jews and Greeks were so tinctured
-with belief in magic and enchantment in healing, taught and promulgated by
-the priesthood, that when the apostles healed the cripple of Lystra, the
-rabble, headed by the priests, cried out, "The gods are come down to us in
-the likeness of men." And they called Barnabas Jupiter, and Paul
-Mercurius.
-
-The town clerk in the theatre said to the excited crowd, "These men are
-neither robbers of churches, nor yet blasphemers of your goddess."
-
-Diana was appealed to for women in childbirth; Mercurius for the healing
-of cutaneous diseases (_herpes_), probably because he carried a _herpe_,
-or short sword, also, at times, the caduceus; and Jupiter for various
-diseases. But to return to the times of Saul and David.
-
-It seems that the business became overcrowded, and the vilest and most
-degraded of both sexes swelled the ranks of sorcerers, astrologers, and
-spiritualists, until every class and condition of people became
-impregnated with these beliefs, from kings to the lowest subject. Finally,
-the strong arm of the law laid hold of them, and the edict went forth that
-"a witch shall not live," that "a wizard shall be put to death," and that
-"the soothsayer be stoned."
-
-Nevertheless, the wretches continued to practise their deceptions, but
-less openly for a time, and they are made mention of throughout the sacred
-writings, until "the closing of the canon."
-
-But the Scriptures are almost totally silent on surgery, and the remedies
-resorted to by those pretending to the science--as also by physicians and
-priests--were such as to lead us to believe that their _materia medica_
-was very limited. Under the head of Ridiculous Prescriptions, we shall
-mention these remedies:--
-
-The earliest record we find of surgical operations in the Old Testament is
-in Judges xix. 29,--a "capital operation," we may judge, for the account
-informs us that the patient, a woman, "was divided into twelve pieces."
-
-Turning to the profane writers for information, we plunge into an abyss of
-uncertainty, with this exception; that the practice of medicine--it could
-not be called a science--was still in the hands of the priesthood, and
-partook largely of the fabulous notions of the age, being connected almost
-entirely with idolatries and humbuggeries. The cunning priests caused the
-rabble, from first to last, to believe that all disease was inflicted, not
-from the violation of the laws of nature, but by some angry and outraged
-divinity, whose wrath must be appeased by bribes (_paid to the priests_),
-by incantations, and absurd ceremonies, or else the afflicted victim must
-die a painful death, and forever after suffer a more horrible eternity.
-The priests' receiving the pay reminds us of the following little
-anecdote.
-
-A very pious man, recently congratulating a convalescing patient upon his
-recovery, asked his friend who had been his physician.
-
-"Dr. Blank brought me safely through," was his reply.
-
-"No, no," said the friend, "God brought you out of this affliction, and
-healed you,--not the doctor."
-
-"Well," replied the man, "may be he did; but I am sure that the doctor
-will charge me for it."
-
-The offices of priest and physician were united among the Jews, Heathens,
-Greeks, Egyptians, and Romans. The Druids (from _draoi_, magician) ruled
-and ruined the ancient Celts, Gauls, Britons, and Germans. The people of
-these nations looked up to the priests as though life and death and
-immortality hung only upon their lips. Among our aborigines we have also
-examples of the double office of priest and "medicine man." And it is an
-astonishing fact, that notwithstanding the ignorance of the pretenders to
-healing, or the ridiculousness of the prescriptions, or the exorbitant
-fees, the rabble of the age relied upon them with the most implicit
-confidence. If the patient recovered, the priests--embodying the gods--had
-restored them by their great skill and the favor of some particular
-divinity, and so were worshipped, and again rewarded with other fees to
-offer sacrifices to the individual god who was supposed to favor the
-priest or wizard. If he died it was the will of the gods that it should so
-be, and the friends lost none of their faith in the abilities of their
-medical and spiritual advisers.
-
-The priests could not be disposed of so easily as the witches and wizards
-were supposed to have been, for they kept the people under greater fear,
-and held the balance of power in their own hands. The only difference
-between the priests and wizards was, that the former _claimed_ to exercise
-their arts by the power of the gods, while the latter were said to be
-assisted by the evil spirits. The priests claimed this in the times of
-Christ, and tried to persuade the rabble that he was assisted by
-Beelzebub. While the grasping priesthood professed poverty and
-self-denial, they were continually enriching themselves by robberies and
-extortions upon the ignorant and superstitious common people.
-
-A mirth-provoking anecdote is told of Robin Hood and two friars, which we
-cannot forbear relating here as illustrative of the above assertion. If
-our readers regard stories from such a source as very uncertain, we have
-only to reply that we are now dealing with "uncertainties."
-
-"One day, Robin disguised himself as a friar, and went out on the highway.
-Very soon he met two priests, to whom he appealed for charity in the
-blessed Virgin's name.
-
-"'That we would do, were it in our power,' they replied.
-
-"'I fear you are so addicted to falsehood, I cannot believe that you have
-no money, as you say. However, let us all down on our marrow bones, and
-pray the Virgin to send us some money.'
-
-"'No, no,' replied the priests; 'it is of no use.'
-
-"'What! have you no faith in your patron saint? Down, I say, and pray.'
-
-"In fear, down fell the two priests, and Robin by their side, and all
-prayed most lustily.
-
-"'Now feel in your pockets,' said Robin, rising.
-
-"'There is nothing,' they replied, plunging their hands deep into their
-cloaks.
-
-"'Down again, and pray harder,' shouted Robin, drawing his sword.
-
-"Down they fell, and mumbled over their Latin, but declared the gods had
-sent them nothing.
-
-"'I do not believe you,' said Robin; 'you ever were a pack of liars. Let
-each stand a search, that we deceive not each other.' So Robin turned his
-own empty pockets wrong side out, then compelled the friars to follow
-suit, when lo! out fell five hundred pieces of gold.
-
-"When Robin saw this glorious sight, he berated the priests soundly, and
-taking the gold, went away to Sherwood, and made merry at the expense of
-the church."
-
-About 1185 B. C. we find among the Grecians some traces of what was termed
-the healing art. But fact and fable, history and mythology, are so mixed
-and blended, that it is impossible to gain any reliable information so far
-back.
-
-Chiron is made mention of as having acquired much celebrity as a
-physician. It is claimed that he was learned in the arts and sciences,
-that he taught astronomy to Hercules, music to Apollo, and medicine to
-AEsculapius, who came from Egypt. From what can be gleaned, of reliability,
-it seems that he employed simple medicines, and possessed some knowledge
-of dressing wounds and reducing fractures and dislocations; but no doubt
-he pretended to greater things than the times would warrant, for, when
-shot by an arrow from the bow of Hercules, his former pupil, he was unable
-to heal the wound, and begged Jupiter to "set him up" among the stars,
-which request was complied with, and Chiron was translated to the heavens,
-where he still shines in the constellation Sagittarius, represented as a
-centaur, with drawn bow, driving before him the other eleven signs of the
-zodiac.
-
-We have alluded to AEsculapius, and, passing over all others of his class,
-we come to the times of Hippocrates.
-
-Hippocrates is rightly called the "Father of Medicine," for he was the
-first to raise medicine to a science. We mention him without classing him
-with humbugs; but Menecrates, who flourished about the same time, arrived
-at great notoriety by ruse and deception. He was "famous for vanity and
-arrogance." He went about accompanied by some patients, whom he claimed to
-have cured, as proofs of his great ability. One he disguised as Apollo,
-another he arrayed in the habit of AEsculapius, and sent them abroad to
-sound his praise, while he took upon himself the garb, and assumed the
-character, of Jupiter.
-
-Pliny says that medicine was the last of the sciences introduced into
-Rome, and that the Septimont City was six hundred years without a regular
-physician. Archagathus, a Grecian, settled in Rome about 300 B. C., and if
-he was a fair sample of those who followed him, it had been better for
-Rome that it had remained another six hundred years "without a regular
-physician." He introduced cruel and painful escharotics, and made free use
-of the knife and the lancet. He was a humbug of the first water, and a
-quack besides, and as such he was banished in a few years.
-
-The Christian era introduced some light into the medical, as well as the
-religious world; yet we learn, by both sacred and profane writers, that
-truth and knowledge were the exceptions, and ignorance and humbug were the
-rule by which medicine was practised by those who pretended to the art.
-Names changed, characters remained the same.
-
-The priests still held their own, and were not, as already shown, to be
-gotten rid of, as the witches and wizards, their rivals and imitators, by
-litigation, nor was their power broken until the Decree of the Council of
-Tours in 1163 A. D., which prohibited priests and deacons from performing
-certain surgical operations.
-
-After the Reformation the vocations of spiritual and medical adviser
-diverged wider and wider, until now a priest or minister is seldom
-consulted for bodily infirmities, and only by persons of the most ignorant
-and superstitious denominations.
-
-Setting the priesthood aside did not suppress humbugs in medicine. In fact
-the profession went into disrepute, which the priests hastened, and a
-lower order of people took upon themselves the practice of deceiving the
-sick and afflicted. Now and then a greater humbug than common would spring
-up, and for a time draw the rabble after him, till the next arose to
-eclipse him.
-
-From the discovery of America to about 1600, ambitious upstarts, humbugs,
-and seekers of fame and fortune were drawn away from the old world, and
-either for this reason, or because the biographers were attracted to a
-more interesting field, accounts of medical celebrities are very meagre;
-but from the latter period to the present day there has been no lack of
-records from which to draw our material.
-
-During the 17th and 18th centuries medical impostors had things all their
-own way. Ignorance was no hinderance to advancement, socially or
-pecuniarily. Some men published, in their own names, voluminous works, in
-both English and Latin, which they themselves could not read. By soft
-words and cunning arts others gained high positions, and, without
-knowledge of the first branch of medical science, became "court
-physicians."
-
-From the lowest walks, they rose up on every side: from the cobbler's
-bench, and the tailor's board; from cutting up meat in the butcher's shop,
-to "cutting up" naughty boys in a pedagogue's capacity; from shaving the
-unwashed rabble behind the striped barber's pole, to shaving their wives
-behind counters, where they measured the cloth of the weaver, they became
-cobblers of poor healths, butchers of men, and shavers of the invalided
-public. But these will be discoursed of under another head.
-
-We here offer one proof of this state of affairs by a quotation from the
-original charter of the first College of Physicians, granted by Henry
-VIII., which reads, "Before this period a great multitude of ignorant
-persons, of which the greater part had no insight into physic, _nor into
-any other kind of learning_,--some could not even read the Book,--so far
-forth that common artificers, as smiths, weavers, and women boldly and
-accustomedly took upon themselves great cures, to the high displeasure of
-God, great infamy of the faculty, and the grievous hurt, damage, and
-destruction of many of the king's liege people."
-
-The meetings of this august body (College of Physicians) were held at the
-house of Dr. Linacre. "He was a gentleman of distinction, both as a
-physician and scholar." He became disgusted with physic, and took "holy
-orders" five years before his death. He was one of the original
-petitioners of the charter, which complained that the above rabble of
-doctors could not read the Book (Bible). Now see the ignorance--the
-hypocrisy of the man!
-
-Dr. Caius, who wrote his epitaph, says of Linacre, "He certainly was not a
-very profound theologian, for a short time before his death he read the
-New Testament for the first time, when, so greatly was he astonished at
-finding the rules of Christianity so widely at variance with their
-practice, that he threw down the sacred volume in a passion, saying,
-'Either this is not gospel, or we are not Christians.'" This was just
-prior to 1600.
-
-This Dr. Caius is supposed to be the same character whom Shakspeare
-introduced in his "_Merry Wives of Windsor_;" and as it is a fact patent
-to all that the great poet had no very exalted opinion of doctors, and
-would "throw physic to the dogs," it has been suggested that Caius was
-produced by him on that ground.
-
-There are others of this and a later period, whom, though ranking amongst
-the greatest of humbugs, we defer mentioning here, but will notice in our
-chapter on quacks.
-
-Mr. Jeaffreson, in his excellent work, "Book About Doctors," to which work
-I am indebted for several anecdotes, says,--
-
-"The lives of three physicians--Sydenham, Sir Hans Sloane, and
-Heberden--completely bridge over the uncertain period between old
-empiricism and modern science."
-
-The former, Dr. Thomas Sydenham, was born at Windford Eagle, Dorsetshire,
-England, in 1624, and was esteemed as an excellent physician and profound
-scholar of his day. Nothing is known of his boyhood. For a time he was a
-soldier. He was about forty years old when admitted a member of the
-College of Physicians. Dr. Richard Blackmore, his contemporary, who was
-but a pedagogue at the outstart himself, but afterwards knighted as Sir
-Richard, says of Dr. Sydenham, "He was only a disbanded officer, who
-entered upon the practice of medicine for a maintenance, without any
-preparatory learning." The fact of his possessing a diploma went for
-nothing, since Dr. Meyersbach obtained his about this time for a few
-shillings, and without the rudiments of an education, made a splendid
-living out of the credulity even of the most learned and fashionable
-classes of English society, and arrived at the height of honor and
-distinction.
-
-The reader must admit that diplomas were cheap honors, when one was
-granted to a dog! A young English gentleman, for the sport of the thing,
-paid the price of a medical diploma soon after Dr. Meyersbach's was
-granted, and had it duly recorded in the archives of the college (Erfurth)
-as having been awarded to Anglicus Ponto.
-
-"And who was Anglicus Ponto?"
-
-"None other than the gentleman's dog--a fine mastiff."
-
-But this question was not asked till too late to prevent the joke. It had
-the good effect, however, to raise at once the price of degrees.
-
-Dr. Sydenham published several medical works, copies of which are now
-extant, but his pretensions to skill availed him but little in time of
-need. His prescriptions--some of them, at least--were very absurd, and
-during his latter years, while enjoying a lucrative practice, and
-possessing the utmost confidence of the _bon ton_, he suffered
-excruciating pains from the gout, which, with other complications, ended
-his days. "Physician, heal thyself."
-
-[Illustration: DR. ANGLICUS PONTO.]
-
-Dr. Blackmore, an aspirant to medical fame, applied to Dr. Sydenham, while
-residing in Pall Mall, with the following inquiry:--
-
-"What is the best course of study for a medical student?"
-
-"Read Don Quixote," was Sydenham's reply. "It is a very good book. I read
-it yet." I find this in a biographical dictionary of 1779. While some
-biographers endeavor to pass this off as a joke, it is a well-known fact
-that the doctor was a sceptic in medicine, and those who knew him best
-believe that he meant just what he said.
-
-On the arrival of Dr. Sloane in London, he waited on Dr. Sydenham, as
-being the great gun of the town at that time, and presented a letter of
-introduction, in which an enthusiastic friend had set forth Sloane's
-qualifications in glowing language, as being perfected in anatomy, botany,
-and the various branches of medicine. Sydenham finished the letter, threw
-it on the table, eyed the young man very sharply, and said,--
-
-"Sir, this is all very fine, on paper--very fine; but it won't do.
-Anatomy! botany! Nonsense. Why, sir, I know an old woman in Covent Garden
-who better understands botany; and as for anatomy, no doubt my butcher can
-dissect a joint quite as well. No, no, young man; this is all stuff. You
-must go to the bedside; it is only there that you can learn disease."
-
-In spite of this mortifying reception, however, Sydenham afterwards took
-the greatest interest in Dr. Sloane, frequently taking the young man with
-him in his chariot on going his rounds.
-
-In "Lives of English Physicians," the author, in writing of Dr. Sydenham,
-says, "At the commencement of his practice, it is handed down to us, that
-it was his ordinary custom, when consulted by patients for the first time,
-to hear attentively their story, and then reply, "Well, I will consider
-your case, and in a few days will prescribe something for you;" thereby
-gaining time to look up such a case. He soon learned that this
-deliberation would not do, as some forgot to return after "a few days,"
-and to save his fees he was obliged, _nolens volens_, to prescribe on the
-spot.
-
-A further proof of his contemptible opinion of deriving knowledge from
-books, as expressed above to Dr. Blackmore, is exemplified and
-corroborated in an address to Dr. Mapletoft (1675).
-
-"The medical art could not be learned so well and surely as by use and
-experience, and that he who would pay the nicest and most accurate
-attention to the symptoms of distempers, would succeed best in finding out
-the true means of cure."
-
-"Riding on horseback," he says, in one of his books, "will cure all
-diseases except confirmed consumption." How about curing gout?
-
-A very amusing, though painful picture, is drawn by Dr. Winslow, a
-reliable author of the seventeenth century, in his book, "Physic and
-Physicians:"--
-
-"Dr. Sydenham suffered extremely from the gout. One day, during the latter
-part of his life, he was sitting near an open window, on the ground floor
-of his residence in St. James Square, inspiring the cool breeze on a
-summer's afternoon, and reflecting, with a serene countenance and great
-complacency on the alleviation of human misery that his skill enabled him
-to give. Whilst this divine man was enjoying this delicious reverie, and
-occasionally sipping his favorite beverage from a silver tankard, in which
-was immersed a sprig of rosemary, a sneak thief approached, and seeing the
-helpless condition of the old doctor, stole the cup, right before his
-eyes, and ran away with it. The doctor was too lame to run after him, and
-before he could stir to ring and give alarm the thief was well off."
-
-[Illustration: MISFORTUNES NEVER COME SINGLY.]
-
-This reminds one of a story of an old man who stood in a highway, leaning
-on his staff, and crying, in a feeble, croaking voice, "Stop thief! stop
-thief!"
-
-"What is the matter, sir?" inquired a fellow, approaching.
-
-"O, a villain has stolen my hat from my head, and run away."
-
-"Your hat!" looking at the bare head; "why didn't you run after him?"
-
-"O, my dear sir, I can't run a step. I am very lame."
-
-"Can't run! then here goes your wig." And so saying, the fellow caught the
-poor old man's wig, and scampered away at the top of his speed.
-
-Dr. Sydenham died December 29, 1689. He could not be termed a quack, but
-certainly he was a consummate humbug.
-
-An author, before quoted, after copying a description of the "poor
-physician" of the age, adds,--
-
-"How it calls to mind the image of Dr. Oliver Goldsmith, when, with a
-smattering of medical knowledge and a German diploma, he tried to pick out
-of the miseries and ignorance of his fellow-creatures the means of keeping
-soul and body together! He, too, poet and doctor, would have sold a pot of
-rouge to a faded beauty, or a bottle of hair dye, or a nostrum warranted
-to cure the bite of a mad dog."
-
-"Set a rogue to catch a rogue." And to this principle we are indebted for
-the exposition of many fallacies and humbugs pursued by early physicians
-in order to gain practice.
-
-"Dr. Radcliffe," says Dr. Hannes, "on his arrival in London, employed half
-of the porters in town to call for him at the coffee-houses (a famous
-resort of physicians of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries) and
-places of public resort, so that his name might become known."
-
-On the other hand, Radcliffe accused Dr. Hannes of the same trick a few
-years later. Doctors were doctors' own worst enemies. Instead of standing
-by each other of the same school, in lip service, or passing by each
-other's errors and imperfections in silence, as they do nowadays, they
-quarrelled continually, accusing each other of the very tricks they
-practised themselves.
-
-Of Dr. Meade it was confidently asserted, that without practice at first,
-he opened extensive correspondence with all the nurses and midwives in his
-vicinity, associated and conversed with apothecaries and gossips, who,
-hoping for his trade, would recommend him as a skilful practitioner. The
-ruse worked, and soon the doctor found his calls were _bona fide_. This is
-a trick that some American physicians we know of may have learned from Dr.
-Meade. Certainly they know and practise the deception.
-
-When Dr. Hannes went to London, he opened the campaign with a coach and
-four. The carriage was of the most imposing appearance, the horses were
-the best bloods, sleek and high-spirited, the harnesses and caparisons of
-the richest mountings of silver and gold, with the most elegant trimmings.
-
-"By Jove, Radcliffe!" exclaimed Meade, "Dr. Hannes' horses are the finest
-I have ever seen."
-
-"Umph," growled Radcliffe, "then he will be able to sell them for all the
-more." But Dr. Radcliffe's _prognosis_ was at fault for once; and
-notwithstanding all the prejudice that Radcliffe and his friends could
-bring to bear against Hannes, and the lampooning verses spread broadcast
-against him, he kept his "fine horses," and rode into a flourishing
-business.
-
-To make his name known, Dr. Hannes used to send liveried footmen running
-about the streets, with directions to poke their heads into every coach
-they met, and inquire anxiously, "Is Dr. Hannes here?" "Is this Dr.
-Hannes' carriage?" etc.
-
-Acting upon these orders, one of these fellows, after looking into every
-carriage from Whitehall to Royal Exchange, ran into a coffee-house, which
-was one of the great places of meeting for members of the medical
-profession. Several physicians were present, among whom was Radcliffe.
-
-"Gentlemen," said the liveried servant, hat in hand, "can your honors tell
-me if Dr. Hannes is present?"
-
-"Who wants Dr. Hannes, fellow?" demanded Radcliffe.
-
-"Lord A. and Lord B., your honor," replied the man.
-
-"No, no, friend," responded the doctor, with pleasant irony; "those lords
-don't want _your master_; 'tis he who wants them."
-
-The humbug exploded, but Hannes had got the start before this occurred.
-
-A worthy biographer begins thus, in writing of Dr. Radcliffe: "The
-Jacobite partisan, the physician without learning, the luxurious _bon
-vivant_, Radcliffe, who grudged the odd sixpence of his tavern score,"
-etc., "was born in Yorkshire, in the year 1650."
-
-But notwithstanding Radcliffe's plebeian birth, he died rich, therefore
-respected--a fact which hides many sins and imperfections. He not only
-humbugged the people of his day into the belief that he was a learned and
-eminent physician, but by his shrewdness in disposing of his gains, in
-bestowing wealth where it would tell in after years, when his body had
-returned to the dust from whence it came,--such as giving fifty thousand
-dollars to the Oxford University as a fund for the establishment of the
-great "Radcliffe Library," etc.,--he succeeded in humbugging subsequent
-generations into the same belief.
-
-Certainly there is room for a few more such humbugs.
-
-Dr. Barnard de Mandeville, in "Essays on Charity and Charity Schools,"
-says of Radcliffe, "That a man with small skill in physic, and hardly any
-learning, should by vile arts get into practice, and lay up wealth, is no
-mighty wonder; but that he should so deeply work himself into the good
-opinion of the world as to gain the general esteem of a nation, and
-establish a reputation beyond all contemporaries, with no other qualities
-but a perfect knowledge of mankind, and a capacity of making the most of
-it, is something extraordinary."
-
-Mandeville further accuses him of "an insatiable greediness after wealth,
-no regard for religion, or affection for kindred, no compassion for the
-poor, and hardly any humanity to his fellow-creatures; gave no proofs that
-he loved his country, had a public spirit, or love of the arts, books, or
-literature;" and asks, in summing up all this, "What must we judge of his
-motives, the principle he acted from, when after his death we find that he
-left but a mere trifle among his (poor) relatives who stood in need, and
-left an immense treasure to a university that did not want it?"
-
-"Radcliffe was not endowed with a kindly nature," says another writer.
-"Meade, I love you," he is represented as saying to his fascinating
-adulator, "and I will tell you a secret to make your fortune. Use all
-mankind ill."
-
-Radcliffe had practised what he preached. Though mean and penurious, he
-could not brook meanness in others.
-
-The rich miser, John Tyson, approximating his end, magnanimously resolved
-to pay two of his three million guineas to Dr. Radcliffe for medical
-advice. The miserable old man, accompanied by his wife, came up to London,
-and tottered into the doctor's office at Bloomsbury Square.
-
-"I wish to consult you, sir; here are two guineas."
-
-"You may go, sir," exclaimed Radcliffe.
-
-The old miser had trusted that he was unknown, and he might pass for a
-poor wretch, unable to pay the five guineas expected from the wealthy, as
-a single consultation fee.
-
-"You may go home and die, and be d----d; for the grave and the devil are
-ready for Jack Tyson of Hackney, who has amassed riches out of the public
-and the tears of orphans and widows."
-
-As the miserable old man turned away, Radcliffe exclaimed, "You'll be a
-dead man in less than ten days."
-
-It required little medical skill, in the feeble condition of the old man,
-in order to give this correct prognosis.
-
-Radcliffe was the Barnum of doctors. "_Omnia mutantur, et nos mutamus in
-illis_," exclaimed Lotharius the First. But that "all things are changed,
-and we change with them," did not apply to medical humbugs during the
-seventeenth and eighteenth centuries--no, nor in the nineteenth century,
-as we will show, particularly in our articles on Quacks and Patent
-Medicines.
-
-[Illustration: THE MISER OUTWITS HIMSELF.]
-
-The requisites essential to success are amusingly described by a writer of
-the former time, as follows:--
-
-_First._ A decent black suit, and (if your credit will stretch so far), a
-plush jacket, not a pin the worse if threadbare as a tailor's cloak--it
-shows the more reverend antiquity.
-
-_Second._ You must carry a caduceus, or cane, like Mercury, capped with a
-civet-box (or snuff-box like Sir Richard's), and must walk with becoming
-gravity, as if in deep contemplation upon an arbitrament between life and
-death.
-
-_Third._ You must hire convenient lodgings in a respectable neighborhood,
-with a hatch[1] at the door; have your reception-room hung with pictures
-of some celebrated physicians, ancient historical scenes, and anatomical
-plates, and the floor belittered with gallipots and half-empty bottles.
-Any sexton will furnish your window with a skull, in hope of your custom.
-
-_Fourth._ Let your desk never be without some old musty Greek and Arabic
-authors, and on your table some work on anatomy, open at a picture page,
-to amuse, if not astonish spectators, and carelessly thrown on the same a
-few gilt shillings, to represent so many guineas received that morning as
-fees.
-
-_Fifth._ Fail not to patronize neighboring alehouses, which may, in turn,
-recommend you to inquirers; and hold correspondence with all the nurses
-and midwives whose address you may obtain, to applaud your skill at
-gossiping.
-
-_Sixth._ Be not over modest in airy pretensions, not forgetting that
-loquaciousness and impudence are essentials to gaining a fool's
-confidence. In case you are naturally backward in language, or have an
-impediment of speech, you are recommended to persevere in a habit of
-mysterious and profound silence before patients, rendered impressive by
-grave nods and ahems.
-
-
-EARLY FRENCH PHYSICIANS.
-
-From what meagre biographies we have of French doctors of the past, we are
-led to believe that, as at the present time, the humbugs outnumbered the
-honest medical practitioners. In the days of Clovis and the great
-Charlemagne, before the power of Rome was broken, before Russia was a
-nation, and when England was subject to the caprices of many masters,
-there were many surgeons employed in the armies of these kings, but the
-priests and wizards were the physicians to the great public. The surgeons
-possessed all the knowledge there was to be attained at that distant day;
-yet they made the heart, not the brain, the centre of thought, and "the
-palace of the soul," knew little of anatomy, and nothing of the
-circulation of the blood.
-
-The physicians of later periods held court positions by flattery, not by
-merit. This was particularly true up to and inclusive of the reign of
-"LOUIS LE GRAND." Those who attended as physicians upon the court of this
-remarkable monarch of France for seventy-two years, received no stipend
-whatever, except the honor of holding so exalted a position as court
-physician to such a mighty ruler; and, notwithstanding the outside
-practice that this elevated station necessarily brought them, but few
-physicians could long bear the enormous expense attending that position.
-
-Louis resided at a distance from his capital. His changes of residence
-were continual, and not without a design, and chiefly made for the purpose
-of creating and maintaining a number of artificial distinctions. By these
-he kept the court in a state of constant anxiety, expense, and
-expectation. When the next proposed change was announced, he had made it
-the fashion for courtiers to accompany him,--to Versailles, to St.
-Germain, or Marly,--and to occupy apartments near him, and the
-extravagance and magnificence in which he made it incumbent upon his
-followers to appear, with the frequent prescribed changes, rendered it too
-expensive a position for a man to sustain, unless possessed of a previous
-ample fortune. The surgeons of the armies were paid for their services.
-
-Both Drs. O'Meara and Antommarchi have testified to Napoleon's scepticism
-in medicine and distrust of physicians. But "surgeons are godlike," he is
-represented as saying, and upon all worthy he bestowed the "Legion of
-Honor."
-
-At St. Helena, Dr. Antommarchi was endeavoring to persuade the emperor to
-take a simple remedy which he had prepared for him.
-
-"Bah!" exclaimed Napoleon, "I cannot; it is beyond my power to take
-medicine."
-
-"I pray your majesty to try," entreated the doctor.
-
-"The aversion I have for the slightest preparation is inconceivable. I
-have exposed myself to the dangers of the battle-field with indifference;
-I have seen death without betraying emotion; but to take medicine, I
-cannot," was his reply.
-
-Madame Bertrand, who was present, tried also to persuade the emperor to
-take the physician's prescription.
-
-"How do you manage to take all those abominable pills and drugs, Madame
-Bertrand, which the doctor is continually prescribing for you?" asked the
-emperor.
-
-"O, I take them without stopping to think about it," was her reply; "and I
-beg your majesty will do the same."
-
-Still the dying man shook his head, and appealed to General Montholon, who
-gave a similar answer.
-
-"Do you think it will relieve me from this oppression, doctor?" he finally
-asked of Dr. Antommarchi.
-
-"I do, my dear sire; and I entreat your majesty to drink it."
-
-"What is it?" asked Napoleon, eying the glass suspiciously.
-
-"Merely some orange water," was the reply.
-
-"Give it me, then;" and the emperor seized the cup and drank the contents
-at one draught.
-
-"The emperor has no faith in medicine, and never takes any," said Las
-Cases, in his memoirs.
-
-About the year 1723, a man sprang into notice in Paris, styling himself
-Dr. Villars. He claimed relationship to the Duke Louis Hector Villars, and
-the Abbe Pons is represented as saying that "Dr. Villars is superior to
-the great marshal, Louis Hector. The duke kills men,--the doctor prolongs
-their existence."
-
-Villars declared that his uncle, who had been killed at the age of one
-hundred years, and who might, but for his accidental death, have lived
-another half century, had confided to him the secret of his longevity.
-It consisted of a medicine, which, if taken according to directions
-accompanying each bottle, would prolong the life of the fortunate
-possessor _ad infinitum_.
-
-Villars employed several assistants to stand on the corners of the
-streets, and who, when a funeral was seen passing, would exclaim,--
-
-"Ah! if the unfortunate deceased had but taken Dr. Villars' nostrum, he
-might now be riding in his own carriage, instead of in a hearse."
-
-"Of course," says our authority, "the rabble believed the testimony of
-such respectable and _disinterested_ appearing witnesses, and made haste
-to obtain the doctor's nostrum--and instructions." And here is where the
-laugh comes in.
-
-The patient received positive instructions to live temperately, to eat
-moderately, bathe daily, to avoid all excesses, to take steady and
-moderate exercise, to rise early, and, in fact, to obey all the laws of
-nature. Of course those who persevered in these instructions were greatly
-benefited thereby, and the dupes, attributing their recovery to the use of
-the nostrum, lauded the doctor.
-
-The medicine, put up in a small bottle, carefully labelled, and sold for
-the modest sum of five francs, consisted of water from the River Seine,
-tinctured with a quantity of spirits of nitre. A few were wise enough to
-see the trick, but most people believed in the efficacy of the nostrum.
-
-Unfortunately for Villars, he intrusted his secret to another, the humbug
-leaked out, and Othello's occupation was gone; but not, however, until
-Villars had amassed a large fortune from the credulity of the public.
-
-This brings to mind a story, the truth of which can be vouched for,
-respecting a New England doctor. His labels contained the following
-instructions:--
-
-"The doctor charges you to take care of the health God has given you. In
-eating and exercise be moderate. Avoid bad habits and excesses that sap
-the life from you. Use no salt pork, newly-baked fine bread, vinegar,
-coffee, strong tea, or spirits while taking this medicine. 'Tis not in the
-power of man to restore you to health unless you regard these directions."
-
-"What do you think of this?" asked the editor of a journal of Dr. P.,
-former professor of H---- College, presenting a vial of the high dilution,
-as the medicine was, labelled as above.
-
-"All very well," the doctor replied, after having read the label; "for if
-the vial contains nothing but water, with just sufficient alcohol to keep
-it, a strict observance of these directions might restore you to health."
-
-"You have treated my case for a long time, doctor, and have never given me
-such instructions. Pray why don't _you_ get up something similar?"
-
-"Well, what was his reply?" I asked, as the editor hesitated.
-
-"O, he has not yet informed me."
-
-
-AMERICAN HUMBUGS.
-
-Humbug is not necessarily synonymous with ignorance. So far from it, that
-doubtless a very perfect and successful man in the art of humbugging must
-be educated to his business.
-
-The following true statement is a case in point: A physician of New York,
-now in excellent standing, who "rolls in riches," and whose own carriage
-is drawn by a span of horses that Bonner once might have envied, was but a
-few years ago as poor as a church mouse, and as unknown as Scripture. He
-had graduated with honors in Transylvania University, opened an office in
-a country town, where his knowledge and talents were unappreciated, and
-which place he abandoned after a twelve months' patient waiting for a
-practice which did not come. He had become poorer every month, and but
-for the kind assistance of early friends, must have perished of want.
-
-"Either it is distressingly healthy here, or the good people are afraid to
-trust their lives and healths in the hands of an inexperienced physician,"
-he remarked to a friend to whom he applied for means for a new start
-elsewhere.
-
-"And where will you try your luck next?" inquired his friend.
-
-"In New York city."
-
-"In New York city?"
-
-"Yes, and I shall there succeed," he exclaimed, with great determination.
-
-"Well, I hope in my heart of hearts you will," was his friend's reply, as
-he kindly loaned him the required sum of money.
-
-Had his friend asked the advice of a third party before making the loan,
-doubtless the answer would have been something like the following, though
-it was respecting another case:--
-
-"Dr. J. wants me to loan him some money for thirty days; do you suppose he
-will refund it?"
-
-"What! lend him money?" was the reply. "He return it? No, sir; if you lend
-that man an emetic he would never _return_ it."
-
-On his borrowed funds,--neither principal nor interest of which his kind
-friend ever expected him to be able to return,--the doctor entered the
-great metropolis. He hired a house in a respectable locality, and hung out
-his sign. During his long quiet days in the country village he had read a
-great deal, and was "up to the tricks" of his predecessors. He had
-particularly posted himself on the ways and means resorted to by some of
-those physicians, of whom we have already made brief mention, for getting
-into practice.
-
-[Illustration: COMMENCING A PRACTICE IN NEW YORK.]
-
-"What avails it that I know as much as other physicians who have entered
-upon a practice? What does my diploma amount to if I have no patients?"
-he asked himself over and again. Practice was now his want, and this is
-the way he obtained it. Having read of a celebrated physician, who kept
-his few patients a long time in waiting, under pretence that he was
-preoccupied by the many who fortunately had preceded, our young physician
-adopted that great man's tactics. For want of patients to keep in waiting,
-he hired some decently dressed lackeys to apply regularly at his front
-door, at specified times, and wait till the colored servant admitted them,
-one at a time. Each was passed out after a half hour's supposed
-consultation, and the next admitted. The neighbors and others passing,
-seeing patients continually in waiting, some with a hand, a foot, face, or
-other parts bound up, were led to read his sign, and soon a _bona fide_
-patient applied, who, in turn, was kept waiting a long time,
-notwithstanding the young doctor's anxiety to finger a real medical fee
-from his first New York patient. Others followed, the lackeys were
-dismissed, and the physician's practice was established. His merit kept
-what his shrewdness had obtained.
-
-Cannot the reader avouch for the reputed extensive rides of some country
-doctor, who, without a known patient, harnessed his bare-ribbed old horse
-to his crazy gig, and drove furiously about the country, returning by a
-roundabout way, without having made a single professional visit, thereby
-humbugging the honest country people into a belief that he had innumerable
-patients in his route?
-
-To quite another class of humbugs belongs the subject of the following
-sketch. I have had the pleasure of meeting him but twice--may I never meet
-him again. The first interview was at the board of a country hotel.
-
-[Illustration: GRACE BEFORE MEAT.]
-
-I had arrived late at evening by rail, and ordered a light supper. When
-the tea-bell had summoned me, I found a large, phlegmatic individual
-seated opposite at the table, who possibly had arrived by the same
-conveyance as myself. His person was quite repulsive. He was probably
-fifty years of age, his eyes watery and restless, his thin stock of
-hair--indicating a corresponding poverty of brain--black, streaked by
-gray, was stuck back professionally (!) over a low bump of veneration, and
-high organs of firmness and self-esteem, which, with a Roman nose, large,
-protruding under jaw, and wide, open mouth, gave him a striking
-appearance, at least. But what was most observable was his thin, uneven,
-scraggy whiskers, uncombed, and besmeared by tobacco juice and bits of the
-weed, drooling down over their uncertain length, over waistcoat, and so
-out of sight below the table. His coat sleeves had evidently been
-substituted for a handkerchief when too great a surplus of tobacco juice
-obstructed his face. He bent his great, watery eyes over towards me, and
-opened the ball by suggesting that I ask a blessing over the food so
-bountifully and temptingly laid before us. Having too much compassion on
-the present exhausted state of my stomach to disregard its immediate
-demands, and too little confidence in the veneration of my _vis-a-vis_ to
-return the request, I went to eating, while he closed one eye, keeping the
-other on a plate of hot steak just placed before him by the table girl. I
-have since been strongly reminded of him by the character "Bishopriggs,"
-in Wilkie Collins's book, "_Man and Wife_." I think, however, for
-hypocrisy, the present subject exceeded Bishopriggs. Having wagged his
-enormous jaw a few times, by way of grace, he began eating and conversing
-alternately.
-
-"I take it, friend, you're a railroad conductor, coming in so late," he
-suggested, between mouthfuls.
-
-"No," was my brief reply.
-
-"Perhaps, cap'n, you're a drummer. Sell dry or wet goods?"
-
-"No."
-
-"A newspaper man?"
-
-I merely shook my head.
-
-"Then a patent medicine vender?"
-
-"No!" emphatically.
-
-"Not a minister," he asserted. "Perhaps a doctor," he perseveringly
-continued.
-
-"Yes, sir; I am a physician."
-
-"O! ah! indeed! I am rejoiced to learn it. Give me your hand, sir," he
-exclaimed, rising and reaching his enormous palm across the table. "I am
-rejoiced, as I said before, to meet a brother."
-
-"A _brother_!" I repeated, with unfeigned surprise and disgust.
-
-"Yes, a brother! I, too, am a doctor. I have the honor," etc., for the
-next ten minutes, while I hastened to finish my supper.
-
-His last interrogation was what a college boy would call a "stunner."
-
-"_Do you think, sir, that the Fillopian ducks are the same in a male as
-they are in a female?_"
-
-[Dr. S., a quack living in Winsted, Conn., once said to an educated
-physician, that he sometimes found difficulty in introducing a female
-catheter on account of the "prostrate" (meaning _prostate_) gland,--which
-exists only in the male!]
-
-I saw him once after the above interesting interview. He entered the drug
-house of Rust, Bird, & Brother, Boston, just as I was about to go out. I
-could not refrain from turning my attention towards him, as I recognized
-his stentorian voice.
-
-"Have you got any _Bonyset arbs_?" was all I waited to hear. I
-subsequently learned that he was known in Vermont and part of New York
-State by the _sobriquet_ of "Dr. Pusbelly."
-
-The following story respecting "Dr. Pusbelly," related in my hearing by a
-stage-driver, is in perfect keeping with the character of the man, as he
-impressed me in my first interview at the country hotel.
-
-
-DR. PUSBELLY.
-
-One sunny day in autumn I had occasion to take a long journey "away down
-in Maine," when and where there was no railroad. I was seated on the
-outside of a four-horse stage-coach, with three or four other passengers,
-one of whom was a lady, who preferred riding in that elevated station to
-being cramped up inside the coach with eight persons, besides sundry
-babies, a poodle dog, and a parrot.
-
-"Sam," our driver, was a sociable fellow, full of pleasant stories,--and
-Medford rum, though he was considered a perfectly safe Jehu. The greatest
-drawback to his otherwise agreeable yarns was his habit of swearing.
-Notwithstanding the presence of the lady, he would occasionally round his
-periods and emphasize his sentences with an expletive which had better
-have been omitted.
-
-"Can't you tell a story just as well without swearing, Sam?" I inquired.
-
-"O, no; it comes second natur. Why, cap'n, everybody swears sometimes. And
-that reminds me--Git up, Jerry" (to the horse). "There was an old doctor,
-Pill--Pilgarlic, I called him, on account of his pills, and the strong
-effluvia from his cataract mouth. He was up round Champlain, where I drove
-before the d--d railroads ruined the great stage business. Well, he was as
-religious as a cuss,--that ain't swearin', is it, cap'n? Well, he came
-round there pill-peddling, you see, and in order to make the old women
-believe in his (expletive) medicines--"
-
-"Don't swear, Sam. You can tell the story better without. Come, try,"
-interrupted a passenger, with a twinkle of fun in his expressive eyes.
-
-"Who's telling this story,--you or me?" exclaimed Sam, with a wink.
-
-"Yes, he talked pills by Bible doctrine, swore his essences by the blood
-of the Lamb, the ---- old hypocrite. I knowed he was a blamed old
-hypocrite, for I had to drive him round every onct in a while, and he
-never failed, in season and out of place, to exhort me to seek salvation,
-and a new heart, and pure understanding, while, all the time, the filthy
-tobacco juice slobbered all over his filthier mug, and down his scattering
-whiskers;--now and then one, like the scattering trees in yonder
-field,--all over his vest; and his coat sleeves were as bad, from frequent
-drawing across his face. Yes, he said, 'Jesus,' but he meant pills. He
-said, 'Get wine and milk, without money and without price,' but he meant,
-buy his essences, _with_ money. The old gals went crazy over him, and the
-pill market was lively. The louder he prayed and exhorted, the faster he
-sold his medicines.
-
-"One Sunday afternoon he wanted me to shy him over the lake; so, taking
-his Hem-book and Bible in his coat pockets, and his two tin trunks of
-medicine, he followed me to the shore. He seated his great carcass in the
-starn of the boat, while I rowed him over the lake. All the way he
-slobbered tobacco juice; and gabbled his religion at me, while
-occasionally I swore mine back at him.
-
-"When we got over, I jumped out, and told him to set steady till I hauled
-the boat up further; but he didn't mind, and rose up in the starn with his
-kit, a tin trunk in each hand, just as I gave the craft a yerk, when over
-backwards he went kerflounce into the water,--carcass, trunks, Bible,
-pills, and essences, all into the lake. O, the d----! You ought to have
-seen him. Up he came, puffin' and blowin' like a big whale! Then I fished
-him out with the boat-hook, and went for his trunks. No sooner had he
-reached _terror firmer_ than, blowin' the surplus water and tobacco out of
-his throat, _he commenced swearin' at me_. Religion went by the board! O,
-Jerusalem! Such a blessing as he gave me I never before heard. I knowed it
-was pent up in him, the ---- old sinner, and he only wanted the occasion
-to let it out. The bath done it! It was the cussidest baptism I ever
-witnessed in the hull course of my life."
-
-"Was he called Dr. Pusbelly?" I suggested, at the close of the narrative.
-
-"Yes, that was his name; but I called him Old Pilgarlic, blame him."
-
-
-"PROFESSOR BREWSTER."
-
-When I lived in Hartford, Conn., some years ago, there resided in that
-city a black man, then somewhat noted as a "seer" among various classes of
-whites, as well as blacks, and who resides there still, and has since
-become quite famous. In what category to place this man,--Professor
-Brewster, so called,--it is perhaps a little difficult to determine;
-whether among "clairvoyants," "animal magnetizers," "natural doctors,"
-"fortune-tellers," or what, or all, it must be admitted that he is a
-"character," and wields great influence among certain classes. Nature made
-him a superior man of his race, and what thorough, early education
-might have done for him, we are left to conjecture. So noted is
-Professor Brewster, that I have thought him a proper subject for comment
-here, as a living illustration of what a man of subtle genius may
-accomplish, though wholly without "book learning," or other approved
-instruction, in the field of medicine.
-
-[Illustration: OLD PILGARLIC TAKES A BATH.]
-
-A reliable friend of mine has gathered the following facts and statements
-in regard to Professor Brewster, and taken pains to secure the
-accompanying engraving of the veritable professor, as he appears in the
-year 1872.
-
-[Illustration: PROFESSOR BREWSTER.]
-
-"The full name of this remarkable man, now residing in Hartford, Conn., is
-Worthington Hooker Erasmus Brewster, commonly called, by those who venture
-on familiarity, 'Worthy' Brewster, for short. Worthy is of full medium
-height, powerfully built, and well knitted together. His head is very well
-moulded, and also extremely large, but not disproportionally large for his
-massive shoulders. He was born of 'poor but honest' (though undoubtedly
-black) parents, in the town of Granby, Conn., on the 21st day of January,
-1812.
-
-"The boy Worthy, at the age of six years, went with his mother (his father
-having died) and her new husband to the hills of Litchfield County to
-live, and was there brought up to youth's estate, enjoying the
-opportunities of education at the district school in what is now _West_
-Winsted. The places of the birth and early rearing of Professor Brewster
-are fixed beyond question, which fact will, it is hoped, forbid the
-contention of other towns, and of 'seven cities,' or more, over the
-question, after he shall have passed away. Worthy was not attracted to
-literature and science, however. He seemed to spurn these, as unworthy of
-his natural gifts to waste their time upon. But he learned to read, and
-can write a 'fair hand.' Seeing no special need of being cramped and
-confined by the narrow rules of spelling, Worthy has invented a style of
-orthography for himself, and writes a compact, forcible, and even masterly
-letter.
-
-"But we must not linger on the details of his youth. Suffice it that
-Worthy grew up a powerful lad, and became the conquering athlete of all
-the region about his home. No man, of hundreds who tried, was able to
-successfully wrestle with him. The strongest men were no match for him. He
-was as agile as he was powerful, and to this day retains great elasticity
-of foot and limb. He was a mysterious fellow also, and, before he was
-sixteen years old, was regarded by his friends and acquaintances, of
-African descent, especially, as a sort of prophet, while many whites
-considered him a necromancer, and people all about declared he 'had the
-devil in him' to no ordinary extent. Worthy claimed, in those days, to
-'see visions,' and many stories are current among his contemporaries
-regarding his then being able to 'charm snakes,' and do other miraculous
-things. Abundant witnesses, such as they are, can now be found ready to
-take their oaths that they have seen Worthy, 'with their own eyes,'
-perform his miracles. It is certain that these believe in him.
-
-"At the age of twenty Worthy went to New York city, where (in Lawrence
-Street) he lived for the period of a year, successfully practising the art
-of fortune-telling. While there Worthy first discovered his powers as a
-'mesmerizer,' or magnetic physician. A school-girl, knowing that Worthy
-'practised the healing art' somewhat, and suffering intensely with a
-toothache, jeeringly asked him, 'Why can't you think of something to cure
-my toothache?' Whereupon Worthy clapped his hands to her head, and
-vigorously drew them down her cheeks, half in fun, half seriously, when,
-to his astonishment, he found that all his (sound) teeth ached terribly,
-while she declared that the pain had left hers. Such is his story; and it
-is by no means an improbable one; for animal magnetism is a fixed fact
-(however it may be analyzed or defined), and diseases are often
-'magnetically' alleviated; and Worthy, with his powerful body and superb
-health, as well as native force of intellect, may be as naturally gifted,
-as a magnetic operator, as even Mesmer himself. Indeed, the writer is
-inclined to believe that Worthy's great power over many people is largely
-due to his superior vital forces.
-
-"Worthy now turned his attention considerably to diseases, but returned to
-Litchfield County for a while. At the age of twenty-six, he resolved 'to
-see more of the world,' and in the capacity of steward embarked at New
-Haven on board the brig Marshal, Captain Brison, freighted with horses,
-and bound for a long trading voyage to the Island of Demarara, and to
-South America, where they coasted during the winters, and took in coffee,
-etc., in exchange for their cargo. Worthy was gone from home on this
-voyage two years and two months, during which time he learned many
-mysteries. He was a foreign traveller now, and his polite and
-professional education may be said to have at that time become
-'finished.'
-
-"Since then Worthy has practised medicine to considerable extent, told
-fortunes, 'looked' (in a crystal) for stolen property, and, if we are to
-believe half of what is attested by many astute people (such as police
-detectives, etc.), has, by force of his great sagacity, or in some way (he
-would say, through clairvoyance), managed to achieve great success in
-ferreting out lost or stolen treasures, and bringing thieves to grief.
-
-"People of all classes in society visit him with their troubles of mind
-and body. But the major part of his clientage is females. The wives and
-accomplished daughters of wealthy men, as well as poor and ignorant women,
-come from distant parts of the country to consult him, and a great number
-of the first ladies of Hartford also consult him. Worthy carries on the
-business of a 'chair-seater,' partly to occupy his time during the
-intervals of his divinations, and partly to provide an excuse for cautious
-persons to call on him for consultations. Those who consult him do so
-mostly regarding secret matters, and they pretend to visit him to engage
-him to seat chairs!
-
-"He is consulted in respect to all sorts of diseases, and by unsuccessful,
-perplexed, or doubting lovers; by husbands whose wives have absconded, and
-who are anxious to call them back; by wives in regard to their wandering
-husbands; by hosts of superstitious people (and these are found in all
-classes), who believe themselves 'possessed by devils,' or demons. He is
-expected to cast out the devils (and he does so as surely as most doctors
-cure imaginary diseases). People who have lost property, and officers of
-the law in search of stolen goods, consult him; and bachelors and widowers
-in want of wives, and countless maids (both old and young), anxious to get
-married, visit him and receive his sweet consolations, or mourn over the
-ill luck which he prognosticates for them. His correspondence is large. A
-hasty glance through several hundred letters in 'Professor Brewster's'
-possession convinced the writer that the amount and character of the
-superstition and ignorance which exist in these days, in our very midst,
-are probably but little conjectured by the more cultivated classes. They
-are indeed astounding, but are not confined, as we have before intimated,
-to the wholly illiterate classes. People competent to write letters with
-grammatical precision, and observing what would ordinarily be called an
-'excellent business style,' at least, in their composition, consult the
-professor; and so successful is Worthy in his diagnoses of and
-prescriptions for various diseases, that many of his patients write him
-letters overflowing with gratitude, while others voluntarily and
-admiringly attest his skill as a 'seer.' To what talent, 'gift,' or what
-secret of good luck, 'Professor Brewster' owes the many successes he wins
-(even though he may fail ten times more often than he succeeds), we
-cannot, of course, decide. But certain it is that he, with all his claims
-to a knowledge of the 'occult,' exists, practises his arts, and through a
-period of years has retained his old patients, and the postulants before
-his supposed demigodship, while adding constantly to their number. In this
-he is a remarkable man. He has accumulated quite a respectable property,
-and is decidedly one of the 'institutions' of the enlightened and
-cultivated city of Hartford.
-
-"It should be remarked here that Worthy was, during the late civil war, a
-true patriot. He was attached to the twenty-ninth regiment Connecticut
-Volunteers, under Colonel Wooster (a 'colored' regiment), and was 'gone to
-the war' over two years. His powers as a 'clairvoyant,' or 'fore-seer,'
-served him in the war, and he 'always knew what was coming,' he says. As a
-part of the curious history of the war, serving to show how little the
-people of the North understood, in the first years of the contest, that
-they were fighting for a great humanitary end,--the abolition of chattel
-slavery,--it may be noted here, that Worthy wrote to Governor Buckingham,
-in August, 1862, proposing to raise a black regiment, and the governor, by
-his secretary, replied to Worthy's proposition, that he then did 'not deem
-it expedient,'--which fact institutes a comparison between the judgments
-of the governor and Worthy, not uncomplimentary to the latter."
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-II.
-
-APOTHECARIES.
-
-    FIRST MENTION OF.--A POOR SPECIMEN.--ELIZABETHAN.--KING JAMES I.
-    [VI.].--ALLSPICE AND ALOES, SUGAR AND TARTAR EMETIC.--WAR.--PHYSICIAN
-    VS. APOTHECARY.--IGNORANCE.--STEALING A TRADE.--A LAUGHABLE
-    PRESCRIPTION.--"CASTER ILE."--MODERN DRUG SWALLOWING.--MISTAKES.--
-    "STEALS THE TOOLS ALSO."--SUBSTITUTES.--"A QUID."--A "SMELL" OF PATENT
-    MEDICINES.--"A SAMPLE CLERK."
-
-
-There are few occupations wherein Old Time has wrought so few changes as
-in that of the apothecary's. What it was four hundred years ago it is
-to-day! Who first invented its weights, measures, and symbols, I am unable
-to say; but it is a fact that they remain the same as when first made
-mention of by the earliest writers on the subject.
-
-Drop into the "corner drug store,"--and what corner has none!--examine the
-balances, the tables of weights and measures, the graduating glass, the
-signs for grains, scruples, ounces, and pounds, and you will find them the
-same as those used by the earliest known _medical_ apothecaries, by those
-of the Elizabethan period, or when King Lear (Lyr) said, "Give me an ounce
-of civet, good apothecary, to sweeten my imagination; there's money for
-thee."
-
-The money has changed; _names_ of drugs are somewhat altered; some new
-ones have taken the place of old ones; prescriptions changed in quality;
-but quantities, and modes of expressing them, are unchanged.
-
-"In the middle ages an apothecary was the keeper of any shop or warehouse,
-and an officer appointed to take charge of a magazine."--_Webster._
-
-We have good grounds for supposing this to have been the case in the time
-of the rebuilding of the wall of Jerusalem, more that two thousand years
-ago. Nehemiah informs us that the son of an apothecary assisted in
-"fortifying Jerusalem unto the broad wall." Was not this the office of an
-overseer, or "keeper of a magazine"? Various artisans were employed to
-perform certain portions of the work, and who more appropriate or better
-qualified to oversee the rebuilding of the fortifications than "an officer
-appointed to take charge of the magazines"?
-
-One more reference we draw from Scripture,[2] viz., in Exodus xxxvii. 29,
-where "the holy anointing oil" (not for medicine, but for the tabernacle),
-"and the pure incense of sweet spices" (not medical), "were made according
-to the work [book?] of the apothecary." This, however, no more implies
-that the said "apothecary" was a medical man, a dispenser of physic, or
-versed in medical lore, than that the maker of shewbread (Lev. xxiv. 5)
-was necessarily a pharmacist.
-
-In fact, there seems to have been no need of an apothecary, as medicine
-dispenser, until about the latter part of the thirteenth century.
-
-The oldest known work on compounding medicines was written by Nicolaus
-Mynepsus, who died in the commencement of the fourteenth century.
-
-The first apothecaries were merely growers and dispensers of herbs, and
-were but a poor and beggarly set.
-
-Shakspeare's delineation of the "_poor apothecary of Mantua_," in Romeo
-and Juliet, so completely answers the description of the whole "kit" of
-druggists of the times, that we may be pardoned in quoting him.
-
-Romeo says,--
-
-  "I do remember an apothecary,--
-  And hereabouts he dwells,--whom late I noted
-  In tattered weeds, with overwhelming brows,
-  Culling of simples (herbs). Meagre were his looks;
-  Sharp misery had worn him to the bones;
-  And in his needy shop a tortoise hung,
-  An alligator stuffed, and other skins
-  Of ill-shaped fishes; and about his shelves
-  A beggarly account of empty boxes,
-  Green earthen pots, bladders, and musty seeds;
-  Remnants of packthread, and old cakes of roses,
-  Were thinly scattered to make up a show.
-  Noting this penury, to myself I said,--
-  'An' if a man did need a poison now,
-  Whose sale is present death in Mantua,
-  Here lives a caitiff wretch would sell it him.'
-
-         *       *       *       *       *
-
-  What, ho! apothecary!
-    _Apothecary._ Who calls so loud?
-    _Romeo._ Come hither, man! I see that thou art poor.
-  Hold! There is forty ducats! [$80.] Let me have
-  A dram of poison.
-    _Apoth._ Such mortal drugs I have, but Mantua's law
-  Is death to any he that utters them.
-    _Rom._ Art thou so bare, and full of wretchedness,
-  And fear'st to die? Famine is on thy cheeks;
-  Need and oppression starveth in thy eyes;
-  Upon thy back hangs ragged misery;
-  The world is not thy friend, nor the world's law;
-  The world affords no law to make thee rich;
-  Then be not poor, but break it, and take this.
-    _Apoth._ My poverty, but not my will, consents."
-
-When we behold the opulent druggists of the present day, we can hardly
-credit the fact that for nearly two hundred years the apothecary of Mantua
-was a fair specimen of the wretches who represented that now important
-branch of business.
-
-The physician was the master, the apothecary the slave!
-
-The following were among the rules prescribed by Dr. Bullyn for the
-"apothecary's life and conduct" during the Elizabethan era:--
-
-    "1. He must serve God, be clenly, pity the poore.
-
-    2. Must not be suborned for money to hurt mankind.
-
-    4. His garden must be at hand, with plenty of herbes, seedes, and
-    rootes.
-
-    5. To sow, set, plant, gather, preserve, and keepe them in due time.
-
-    6. To read Dioscorides, to learn ye nature of plants and herbes.
-    (Dioscorides published a work on vegetable remedies about 1499, in
-    Greek. The _translation_ was referred to.)
-
-    8. To have his morters, stilles, pottes, filters, glasses, and boxes
-    cleane and sweete.
-
-    12. That he neither increase nor diminish the physician's bill
-    (prescription), nor keepe it for his own use.
-
-    14. That he peruse often his wares, that they corrupt not.
-
-    15. That he put not in _quid pro quo_ (i. e., substitute one drug for
-    another.) (Would not this be excellent advice to some of the
-    apothecaries of the present day?)
-
-    16. That he meddle only in his vocation.
-
-    18. That he delight to reade Nicolaus Mynepsus, and a few other
-    ancient authors.
-
-    19. That he remember his office is only ye physician's _cooke_.
-
-    20. That he use true waights and measures.
-
-    21. That he be not covetous or crafty, seeking his own lucre before
-    other men's help and comfort."
-
-We may see the wisdom evinced by the author of the above advice,
-especially in articles Nos. 2, 12, and 21, when we know of a druggist's
-clerk of modern times, who, having stolen the physician's prescriptions
-intrusted to his care, started out on borrowed capital, and, putting them
-up as his own wonderful discoveries, advertised them extensively, until
-his remedies, for all diseases which flesh is heir to, are now sold
-throughout the entire universe!
-
-As the doctors were accustomed to retain their most valuable recipes, and
-put up the medicines themselves, selling them as nostrums, and because of
-the heavy percentage demanded by them for those intrusted to the
-apothecaries, and the small profit accruing from the sale of medicines at
-the time, the poor wretched "cookes" were necessarily kept in extreme
-poverty. So, in order to eke out a living, the apothecaries were also
-grocers and small tradesmen. As at the present day, they were not required
-to possess any knowledge of medical science beyond the reading of a few
-books "relating to the nature of plants," hence very little honor or
-profit could accrue from the business alone.
-
-Grocers kept a small stock of drugs, sometimes in a corner by themselves,
-but not unusually thrown about and jumbled amongst the articles kept for
-culinary and other purposes. As mineral medicines became more generally
-used, these were also added to the little stock, and not unfrequently was
-some poisonous substance dealt out by a green clerk (as is often the case
-nowadays) to the little errand girl, sent in haste for some culinary
-article.
-
-Allspice and aloes, sugar and tartar emetic, lemon essence and laudanum,
-were thrown promiscuously together into drawers, or upon the most
-convenient shelves, and you need not go far into the country to witness
-the same lamentable spectacle in the enlightened nineteenth century. The
-apothecary gave the most attention, as now, to the exposition and sale of
-those articles which sold the most readily, and returned the greatest
-profit. All druggists at present sell cigars and tobacco, at the same time
-not unusually posting up a conspicuous sign--
-
-  NO SMOKING ALLOWED HERE.
-
-The following is a case in point:--
-
-_Druggist._ Smoking not allowed here, sir.
-
-_Customer._ Why! I just bought this cigar from you.
-
-_Druggist._ Well, we also sell emetics and cathartics. That does not
-license customers to sit down and enjoy them on the premises.
-
-In the thirteenth year of the reign of James I. of England (and James VI.
-of Scotland) the apothecaries and grocers were disunited. The charter,
-however, placed the former under the control of the College of Physicians,
-who were endowed with the arbitrary powers of inspecting their shops and
-wares, and inflicting punishments for alleged neglects, deficiencies, and
-malpractices.
-
-The physicians knew so little, that the apothecaries soon were enabled to
-cope with them; "and before a generation had passed away the apothecaries
-had gained so much, socially and pecuniarily, that the more prosperous of
-them could afford to laugh in the face of the faculty, and by the
-commencement of the next century they were fawned upon by the younger
-physicians, and were in a position to quarrel with the old, which they
-soon improved."
-
-As it was a common occurrence for patients to apply at the apothecary's
-for a physician, the former either recommended the applicant to one who
-favored him, _or else prescribed for the patient himself_. The
-promulgation of this fact was the declaration of war with the old
-physicians, who heretofore had done their best to keep down the
-apothecaries. The former threatened punishment, as provided by law; the
-latter retaliated, by refusing to call them in to consult on difficult
-cases. "Starving graduates of Oxford and Cambridge, with the certificate
-of the college in their pockets, were imbittered by having to trudge along
-on foot and see the mean 'medicine mixers,' who had scarce scholarship
-enough to construe a prescription, dashing by in their carriages."
-
-The war progressed,--Physician _vs._ Apothecary,--and the rabble joined.
-Education sided with the physicians, interest sided with the
-apothecaries.
-
-  "So modern 'pothecaries taught the art,
-  By doctors' bills, to play the doctors' part;
-  Bold in the practice of mistaken rules,
-  Prescribe, apply, and call their masters fools."
-
-To circumvent the apothecaries, a dispensary was established in the
-College of Physicians, where prescriptions were dispensed at cost. While
-this proceeding served to lessen the apothecary's income for a time, it
-could not greatly benefit the prescribing physician. The former might
-parallel his case with Iago, and say of the physician, he
-
-  "Robs me of that which not enriches him,
-  And makes me poor indeed."
-
-Physicians were divided into two classes,--Dispensarians and
-Anti-dispensarians. Charges of ignorance, extortion, and of double-dealing
-were preferred on both sides. The dispensary doctors charged their
-opponents with playing into the hands of the apothecaries by prescribing
-enormous doses, often changing their prescriptions uselessly to increase
-the druggists' revenues and _their own percentage_! On the other hand, the
-dispensarians were accused of charging a double profit on prescriptions
-whenever the ignorance of the patient, respecting the value of drugs,
-would admit of the extortion.
-
-Had the physicians been united, the apothecaries would have had to
-succumb; but a divided house must fall, and the apothecaries won the day.
-
-A London apothecary, having been prosecuted by the college for prescribing
-for a patient without a regular physician's advice, carried the case up to
-the House of Lords, where he obtained a verdict in his favor; and another
-apothecary, Mr. Goodwin, whose goods had been seized by some dispensary
-doctors, having obtained a large sum for damages, which being considered
-test cases, the doctors from this time (about 1725) discontinued the
-exercise of their authority over the apothecaries.
-
-Thus emancipated from the supervision of the physicians, the apothecaries
-began to feel their own importance, and most of them prescribed boldly for
-patients, without consulting a doctor. The ignorance of many of them was
-only equalled by their impudence. It is not unusual, at the present day,
-for not only apothecaries, but their most ignorant clerks, to prescribe
-for persons, strangers perhaps, who call to inquire for a physician; and
-cases, too, where the utmost skill and experience are required.
-
-The following amusing anecdote is sufficiently in accordance with facts
-within our own knowledge to be true, notwithstanding its _seeming_
-improbability:--
-
-
-ANECDOTE OF MACREADY, THE ACTOR.
-
-The handwriting of Macready, the actor, was curiously illegible, and
-especially when writing a pass to the theatre. One day, at New Orleans,
-Mr. Brougham obtained one of these orders for a friend. On handing it to
-the latter gentleman, he asked,--
-
-"What is this, Brougham?"
-
-"A pass to see Macready."
-
-"Why, I thought it was a physician's prescription, which it most
-resembles."
-
-"So it does," acquiesced Mr. Brougham, again looking over the queer
-hieroglyphics. "Let us go to an apothecary's and have it made up."
-
-Turning to the nearest druggist's, the paper was given to the clerk, who
-gave it a careless glance, and proceeded to get a vial ready.
-
-With a second look at the paper, down came a tincture bottle, and the vial
-was half filled. Then there was a pause.
-
-Brougham and his friend pretended not to notice the proceedings. The clerk
-was evidently puzzled, and finally broke down, and rang for the
-proprietor, an elderly and pompous looking individual, who issued from the
-inner sanctum. The clerk presented the paper, the old dispenser adjusted
-his eye-glasses, examined the document for a few seconds, and then, with a
-depreciating expression,--a compound of pity and contempt for the
-ignorance of the subordinate,--he proceeded to fill the vial with some
-apocryphal fluid, and, giving it a professional "shake up," duly corked
-and labelled it.
-
-[Illustration: THE "FREE PASS" PRESCRIPTION.]
-
-"A cough mixture, gentlemen," he said, with a bland smile, as he handed it
-to the gentleman in waiting, "and a very excellent one, too. Fifty cents,
-if you please."
-
-In a copy of the London Lancet, 1844, is reported Dr. Graham's bill. In
-the same number of which is a reply by an apothecary, who asks if "the old
-and respectable class of apothecaries are to be forever abolished;" and
-he quotes the assertion from one of the articles in the bill: "Is it not a
-notorious fact that the masses of chemists and druggists know nothing of
-the business in which they are engaged?" Dr. Graham certainly ought to
-have known.
-
-Druggists are liable to make mistakes,--as are all men; but carelesness
-and ignorance, one or both, are usually to be found at the bottom of the
-fatalities so common in the dispensing of prescriptions. I know an old and
-experienced druggist who sold a pot of extract belladonna for extract
-dandelion. In the same city, on the same street, I know another who was
-prosecuted for dispensing opium for taraxicum, which carelesness caused
-the death of two children. The following mistake was less fatal, but only
-think of the poor lady's feelings!
-
-A servant girl was sent to a certain drug store we know of, who, in a
-"rich brogue," which might have caused General Scott's eyes to water with
-satisfaction, and his ears to lop like Bottom's after his transformation
-by the mischievous fairy, she asked for some "caster ile," which she
-wished effectually disguised.
-
-"Do you like soda water?" asked the druggist.
-
-"O, yis, thank ye, sir," was the prompt reply; "an' limmun, sir, if ye
-plaze; long life to yeze."
-
-The man then proceeded to draw a glass, strongly flavored with lemon, with
-a dose of oil cast upon its troubled waters.
-
-"Drink it at one swallow," said he, presenting it to the smiling Bridget.
-This she did, again thanking the gentlemanly clerk.
-
-"What are you waiting for?" he inquired, seeing that she still lingered.
-
-"I'm waitin' for the caster ile, sir," said the girl.
-
-"O! Why you have just taken it," replied the soda-drug man.
-
-"Och! Murther! It was for a sick man I wanted it, an' not meself at all."
-
-[Illustration: THE WRONG PATIENT.]
-
-While there have been great changes in the drug trade during the last
-fifty years, necessary to the increasing demand for drugs, the
-establishment of wholesale houses and some specialties, and in cities, the
-substitution of cigars, soda water, patent medicines, etc., for groceries
-and provisions, the dispensing apothecary is nearer to what he was
-hundreds of years ago, as we asserted at the commencement of this chapter,
-than any other professional we know of. The paraphernalia of the shop is
-nearly the same. There is no improvement in pot, in jar, in tables, in
-spatula; the old, ungainly mortar is not _substituted_ by a mill; the
-signs of ounces and drachms remain the same, though so near alike that
-they are easily and often mistaken one for the other, and the prescription
-before the dispenser is prefixed by a relic of the astrological symbol of
-Jupiter,--"the god of medicine to the ancient Greeks and Egyptians,"--as a
-species of superstitious invocation. In our largest cities even, in the
-shop windows, the mammoth flashing blue bottles, "a relic of empiric
-charlatanry," still brighten our street corners, and frighten our horses
-at night, as in the days of our forefathers.
-
-We intimated that "patent medicines" had added greatly to the trade. This
-we shall treat of under its proper head. Many have arisen from penury to
-affluence, from obscurity to renown, in the drug trade of later years; but
-take away the tobacco trade, the soda fountain, and the outside patent
-nostrums, and wherein would the apothecary now differ from his
-predecessors?
-
-"The Yankees bate the divil for swallowing drugs," said an Irishman.
-
-"A paddy will take nothing but castor oil," replied the Yankee.
-
-Yankee or Irish, English or Scotch, French or German, they all rush to the
-drug store for pills, for powder, for whiskey (?), for tobacco, for patent
-medicines, and the druggists flourish.
-
-From the window near which I write this, I overlook a wholesale drug store
-on a "retail street." The front windows contain only _patent medicines_,
-and the flashy signs that announce their virtues. Few prescriptions are
-dispensed within. Before the door, piled nearly a story high, I have just
-counted ninety-eight boxes, and some barrels. There are hundreds of these
-drug houses scattered over this city; and every other city of America has
-its quota.
-
-Yes, the Irishman had the right of it; "the Yankees _do_ bate the divil
-for swallowing drugs." Further, it is my positive opinion that his
-infernal majesty beats a good many of them by the encouragement of their
-purchase; and, kind reader, if you have the ghost of a doubt of the truth
-of our intimation, don't, I pray, promulgate it, but, like a wise judge,
-withhold your decision until the evidence is in; until you hear our
-exposition of "patent medicines."
-
-A patient comes to the city for the purpose of consulting some experienced
-physician for a certain complaint. Probably he gets a prescription, with
-instructions to go to a certain respectable druggist or apothecary in town
-to have the necessary medicines put up. Of course a respectable physician
-knows of a reliable apothecary. The patient, in nine cases out of ten,
-desires to retain the prescription, and often does so. He goes to another
-drug store, more convenient, for a second quantity of the same; and now
-let me ask the patient,--no matter who or where he is,--did you ever get
-the same kind of medicine, in _look_, color, quantity, and
-taste,--all,--the second time, from the same prescription? I have often
-heard the patient complain that he could not get the same put up at the
-very store where he got the original prescription compounded.
-
-I once was called to visit a lady who was laboring under great
-prostration; "sickness at the stomach," with constipation.
-
-"What is the disease?" inquired the anxious husband, who had previously
-employed two regular physicians for the case, and discharged them both.
-
-"Nux vomica," was the reply.
-
-I gathered up three of the vials on the table, and, taking them to the
-designated apothecary's, I demanded the prescriptions corresponding with
-the numbers on the vials. These were duplicates.
-
-He had made a mistake! that's all. He had compounded an ounce of tincture
-of nux instead of a drachm! Not that a drachm could be taken at a dose
-with impunity; but whatever the dose was, the patient was continually
-taking eight times as much as the physician intended to prescribe.
-
-Another reason of the failure of the prescribing physician meeting the
-expectation anticipated, is the use of old and inert medicines.
-
-Where a man's treasure is, his heart is also. An apothecary's interest is
-more in nostrums, tobacco, _soda_, etc., than in medicines; how, then, can
-he follow the excellent advice of Dr. Bullyn, in article "14, that he
-peruse often his wares, that they corrupt not."
-
-But the greatest cheat is in the "substituting" business; the "_quid pro
-quo_." Horse aloes may be bought for ten cents a pound. Podophyllin costs
-seventy-five cents an ounce. They each act as cathartic, and I have
-detected the former put in place of the latter. How is the physician to
-know the cheat? How is the patient to detect it? Perhaps the former
-_stuff_--aloes--may have given the victim the hemorrhoids. One dose may be
-quite sufficient to produce that distressing disease. This only calls for
-another prescription! So it looks a deal like a "you tickle me, and I'll
-tickle you" profession, at best. Thus the patient becomes disgusted, and
-resorts to our next--"Patent Medicines."
-
-In closing this chapter on Apothecaries, I must relate a little scene to
-which I was an eye-witness. Meantime, let me say to the "respectable
-druggist," Don't be offended if I have slighted you by leaving you out, in
-my description of the various kinds of apothecaries enumerated above.
-There is a respectable class of druggists whom I have not mentioned, and
-doubtless you belong to that order.
-
-On going home one evening, not long since, I observed several boys, loud
-and boisterous, surrounding a lamp post. As I approached, I heard, among
-the cries and vociferations,--
-
-"Howld to it, Jimmy; it'll be the makin' of ye."
-
-I drew nearer, and discovered a sickly-looking lad leaning up against the
-lamp post, with the stump of a cigar in his mouth, and a taller boy
-endeavoring to hold him up by his jacket collar, while a short-set urchin
-was stooping behind to assist in the task. They were evidently endeavoring
-to teach "Jimmy" to smoke. The poor fellow was deathly sick, and faintly
-begged to be let off.
-
-"O, no, no. Stick to it, Jimmy; it'll be the makin' of yese," was
-repeated.
-
-"Sure, ye'll niver do for a _sample clark in a potecary shop_," said
-another, as he blew a cloud of smoke from his own cigar stump into the
-pale face of the victim to modern accomplishments.
-
-[Illustration: A CANDIDATE FOR THE PRESIDENCY.]
-
-"General Grant smokes, Jimmy, and you'll never be a man if you don't
-learn," added a voice minus the brogue.
-
-A policeman here interfered, and rescued the wretched "Jimmy."
-
-"What is a sample clerk, my lad?" I asked of the boy who had used the
-above expression.
-
-"O, sir, he's the divil o' the 'potecary shop; the lean, pimply-faced
-urchin what tastes all the pizen drugs for the boss. If his constitution
-is tough enough to stand it the first year, then they makes a clark of him
-the nixt."
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-III.
-
-PATENT MEDICINES
-
-    "Expunge the whole."--POPE.
-
-    "These are terrible alarms to persons grown fat and wealthy."--SOUTH.
-
-    PATENT MEDICINES.--HOW STARTED.--HOW MADE.--THE WAY IMMENSE FORTUNES
-    ARE REALIZED.--SPALDING'S GLUE.--SOURED SWILL.--SARSAPARILLA
-    HUMBUGS.--S. P. TOWNSEND.--"A DOWN EAST FARMER'S STORY."--"WILD
-    CHERRY" EXPOSITIONS.--"CAPTAIN WRAGGE'S PILL" A FAIR SAMPLE OF THE
-    WHOLE.--HOW PILL SALES ARE STARTED.--A SLIP OF THE PEN.--"GRIPE
-    PILLS."--SHAKSPEARE IMPROVED.--H. W. B. "FRUIT SYRUP."--HAIR
-    TONICS.--A BALD BACHELOR'S EXPERIENCE.--A LUDICROUS STORY.--A WOLF IN
-    SHEEP'S CLOTHING.
-
-
-In the former chapters are shown some of the causes which led to the
-present immense _demand_ for proprietary nostrums, or patent medicines.
-The conflicting "_isms_" and "_opathies_" of the medical fraternity, their
-quarrels and depreciations of one and another, their expositions of each
-other's weaknesses, frauds, and duplicities, disgusted the common people,
-who finally resorted to the irregulars, to astrologers, and humbugs of
-various pretensions, and to the few advertised nostrums of those earlier
-periods.
-
-"While there is life there is hope," and invalids would, and still
-continue to seize upon almost any promised relief from present pain and
-anticipated death. Speculative and unprincipled men have seldom been
-wanting, at any period, to profit by this misfortune of their
-fellow-creatures, and to play upon the credulity of the afflicted, by
-offering various compounds warranted to restore them to perfect health. At
-first such medicines were introduced by the owner going about personally
-and introducing them; subsequently, by employing equally unprincipled
-parties, of either sex, to go in advance, and tell of the wonderful cures
-that this particular nostrum had wrought upon them. And to listen to these
-lauders, one would be led to suppose that they had been afflicted with all
-the ills nameable, adapting themselves to the parties
-addressed,--yesterday, the gout; to-day, consumption, etc.,--regardless of
-truth or circumstance. The physician created the apothecary. The two
-opened the way for the less principled patent medicine vender.
-
-"Are not physicians and apothecaries sometimes owners of patent
-medicines?" is the inquiry raised. Yes, certainly; but the true physician,
-or honorable apothecary, is then sunk in the nostrum manufacturer. Next we
-have the mountebanks. These were attendant upon fairs and in the
-marketplaces, who, mounted upon a bench,--hence the name,--cried the
-marvellous virtues of the medicine, and, by the assistance of a _decoy_ in
-the crowd, often drove a lucrative business.
-
-Finally, upon the general introduction of printing, physician, apothecary,
-mountebank, speculator, all seized upon the "power of the press," to more
-extensively introduce their "wonderful discoveries."
-
-When you notice the name--and, O, ye gods, such names as are patched up to
-attract your attention!--to a new medicine, systematically and extensively
-advertised in every paper you chance to pick up, you wonder how any profit
-can accrue to the manufacturer of the compound after paying such enormous
-prices as column upon column in a thousand newspapers must necessarily
-cost. "If the articles cost anything at the outset," you go on to
-philosophize, "how can the manufacturers or proprietors make enough profit
-to pay for this colossal advertising?" The solution of the problem is
-embodied in your inquiry. They cost nothing, or as near to nothing as
-possible for worthless trash to cost. This is the secret of the fortunes
-made in advertised medicines.
-
-When we _know_ the complete worthlessness of the majority of the articles
-that are placed before the public,--yea, their more than worthlessness,
-for they are, many of them, highly injurious to the user,--the fact of
-their enormous consumption is truly astonishing. The drug-swallowing
-public has grown lean and poor in proportion as the manufacturers and
-venders of these villanous compounds have grown fat and wealthy.
-
-Said the proprietor of "Coe's Cough Balsam" and "Dyspepsia Cure" to the
-author, "If you have got a _good_ medicine, one of value, don't put it
-before the public. I can advertise _dish water_, and sell it, just as well
-as an article of merit. It is all in the advertising." As the above
-preparations were advertised on every board fence, and in every newspaper
-in New England at least, did his assertion imply that those articles were
-mere "_dish water_"?
-
-
-"SPALDING'S GLUE."
-
-I was informed by a Mr. Johnston, who engineered the advertising of the
-preparation, that it cost but one eighth of a cent per bottle. If you want
-to make a liquid glue, dissolve a quantity of common glue in water at
-nearly boiling point, say one pound of glue to a gallon of water; add an
-ounce or less of nitric acid to hold it in solution, and bottle. The more
-glue, the stronger the preparation.
-
-The pain-killers and liniments are the most costly, on account of the
-alcohol necessary to their manufacture; and, in fact, the principal item
-of expense in all liquid medical articles put up for public sale, is in
-the alcohol essential to their preservation against the extremes of heat
-and cold to which they may be subjected.
-
-
-SOURED SWILL.
-
-There is an article which "smells to heaven," the acidiferous title of
-which glares in mammoth letters from every road-side, wherein the
-audacious proprietor obviates the necessity of alcohol for its preparation
-or preservation. It is merely fermented slops--"dish water," minus the
-alcohol. Take a few handfuls of any bitter herbs, saturate them in any
-dirty pond water,--say a barrel full,--add some nitric acid, and bottle,
-without straining! Here you have _Vinegared Bitters_! The cheeky
-proprietor informs the "ignorant public" that, "if the _medicine_ becomes
-sour (ferments), as it sometimes will, being its 'nature so to do,' it
-does not detract from its medical virtues." True, true! for it never
-possessed "medical virtues."
-
-The cost of this villanous decoction is _scarcely half a cent a bottle_!
-Soured swill! It is recommended to cure fifty different complaints! It
-sells to fools for "one dollar a bottle," and will go through one like so
-much quicksilver. "Try a bottle," if you doubt it. The "dodge" is in
-advertising it as a temperance bitter. Having no alcoholic properties, it
-in no wise endangers the user in becoming addicted to _stimulants_.
-
-Sarsaparilla humbugs are only second to the above. But a few years since
-an immense fortune was realized by a New York speculator in human flesh on
-a "Sarsaparilla" which contained not one drop of that all but useless
-medicine; nor did it possess any real medical properties whatever.
-
-
-THE DOWN EAST FARMER'S STORY.
-
-To illustrate this point, we introduce the following conversation between
-the author and a "down east" farmer, in 1852:--
-
-"It's all a humbug, is saxferilla!" exclaimed the old farmer, rapping his
-fist "hard down on the old oaken table."
-
-"Why, no; not _all_ sarsaparilla; you must admit--"
-
-"No difference. I tell you it's a pesky humbug, all of it."
-
-[Illustration: "IT'S ALL A HUMBUG."]
-
-Withdrawing his tobacco pipe from his mouth, he laid it on the table, and
-standing his thumb end on the board, as a "point of departure," he turned
-to me, and said,--
-
-"Why, in the medical books it has been analyzed, and they say it's nothin'
-but sugar-house molasses, cheap whiskey, and a sprinkling of essence of
-wintergreen and saxafras. Git the book, and see 'Townsend's Saxferilla,'
-and that is the article! But they are all alike. Let me tell you about the
-great New York saxferilla speculation. One man, S. P. Townsend, started a
-compound like this here--nothin' but molasses and whiskey, and essence to
-scent it nicely. When he had got it advertised from Texas to the Gut of
-Canser (Canso, Provinces), from the Atlantic to the Specific, and was
-about to make his fortune off on it, some speculators see he was doin' a
-good thing, and, by zounds! they put their heads together, and their
-dollars, to have a finger in the pie; and they done it. This is the way
-they circumscribed him. They hired an old fellow,--I believe he was a
-porter in a store when they found him,--named Jacob Townsend, and a right
-rough old customer he was, all rags and dirt, hadn't but one reliable eye,
-and a regular old rumsucker.
-
-"Well, they fixed him up with a fine suit of clothes, and, by zounds! they
-palmed him off for the original, Simon Pure saxferilla man. So they
-advertised him as the real ginuine Townsend, and started a 'saxferilla,'
-with his ugly old face on the bottles, and said that the other was
-counterfeit, you see; and there he sat, with his one eye cocked on the
-crowd of customers that crowded round to see the ginuine thing, you know.
-So they blowed the other saxferilla as counterfeit, and finding in a store
-a bottle or two that had _fomented_, they made a great noise about the
-bogus saxferilla, 'busting the bottles,' and all that, and again asserting
-that the Jacob Townsend was the true blue, Simon Pure; and it took, by
-zounds! Yes, the public swallowed the lie, the saxferilla, old Jacob, and
-all. I hearn that both the parties made a fortune on it."
-
-Stopping to take a whiff at his neglected pipe, he resumed:--
-
-"Saxferilla is all a humbug!"
-
-S. P. Townsend, as is well known, amassed a fortune, at one time, on the
-profits of the "sarsaparilla," put up, as the reader may remember, in
-huge, square, black bottles. The Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol.
-XL. p. 237, says, "Townsend's Sarsaparilla, Albany, N. Y., in nearly black
-bottles," is "composed of molasses, extract of roots _or_ barks (sassafras
-bark is better than essence, because of body and color), and _probably_
-senna and sarsaparilla. A. A. HAYES, State Assayer."
-
-The medical properties are all a _supposition_, even though Dr. Hayes was
-_hired_ to give the analysis of it to the public, in the interest of the
-proprietor, and consequently he would not detract from its _supposed_
-merits.
-
-Pectorals, wild cherry preparations, etc., are cheaply made. Oil of
-almonds produces the _cherry_ flavor, _hydrocyanic acid_ (prussic acid, a
-virulent poison) and morphine, or opium, constitute the medical
-properties. I have not examined the exception to the above.
-
-_Pills._ The bitter and cathartic properties of nearly every pill in the
-market,--advertised preparation,--whether "mandrake," "liver,"
-"vegetable," or what else, are made up from aloes, the coarsest and
-cheapest of all bitter cathartics. One is as good as another. You pay your
-money, however; you can take your choice.
-
-One holds the ascendency in proportion to the money or cheek invested by
-the owner in its introduction. A great Philadelphia pill, now sold in all
-the drug stores of America, was introduced by the following "dodge": The
-owner began small. He took his pills to the druggists, and, as he could
-not sell an unknown and unadvertised patent pill, he left a few boxes on
-commission. He then sent round and bought them up. Their ready sale
-induced the druggists to purchase again, for cash. The proprietor invested
-the surplus cash in advertising their "rapid sale," as well as their "rare
-virtues," and by puffing, and a little more buying up, he got them
-started. He necessarily must keep them advertised, or they would become a
-_drug_ in market.
-
-Wilkie Collins, Esq., in "No Name," has the best written description of
-the _modus operandi_ of keeping a "pill before the people," and I cannot
-refrain from quoting Captain Wragge to Magdalen in this connection.
-
-"My dear girl, I have been occupied, since we last saw each other, in
-slightly modifying my old professional habits. I have shifted from moral
-agriculture to medical agriculture. Formerly I preyed on the public
-sympathy; now I prey on the public's stomach. Stomach and sympathy,
-sympathy and stomach. The founders of my fortune are three in number:
-their names are Aloes, Scammony, and Gamboge. In plainer words, I am now
-living--on a pill! I made a little money, if you remember, by my friendly
-connection with you. I made a little more by the happy decease
-(_Requiescat in pace_) of that female relative of Mrs. Wragge's. Very
-good! What do you think I did? I invested the whole of my capital, at one
-fell swoop, in advertising a pill, and purchased my drugs and pill boxes
-on credit. The result is before you. Here I am, a grand financial fact,
-with my clothes positively paid for, and a balance at my banker's; with my
-servant in livery, and my gig at the door; solvent, popular, and all on a
-pill!"
-
-Magdalen smiled.
-
-"It's no laughing matter for the public, my dear; they can't get rid of me
-and my pill; they must take us. There is not a single form of appeal in
-the whole range of human advertisement which I am not making to the
-unfortunate public at this moment. Hire the last novel--there I am inside
-the covers of the book; send for the last song--the instant you open the
-leaves I drop out of it; take a cab--I fly in at the windows in red; buy a
-box of tooth-powders at the chemists--I wrap it up in blue; show yourself
-at the theatre--I flutter down from the galleries in yellow. The mere
-titles of my advertisements are quite irresistible. Let me quote a few
-from last week's issue. Proverbial title: 'A pill in time saves nine.'
-Familiar title: 'Excuse me, how is your stomach?' Patriotic title: 'What
-are the three characteristics of a true-born Englishman?--his hearth, his
-home, and his pill;' etc.
-
-"The place in which I make my pill is an advertisement in itself. I have
-one of the largest shops in London. Behind the counter, visible to the
-public through the lucid medium of plate glass, are four and twenty young
-men, in white aprons, making the pill. Behind another, four and twenty
-making the boxes. At the bottom of the shop are three elderly accountants,
-posting the vast financial transactions accruing from the pill, in three
-enormous ledgers. Over the door are my name, portrait, and autograph,
-expanded to colossal proportions, and surrounded, in flowing letters, the
-motto of the establishment: 'DOWN WITH THE DOCTORS.' Mrs. Wragge
-contributes her quota to this prodigious enterprise. She is the celebrated
-woman whom I have cured of indescribable agonies, from every complaint
-under the sun. Her _portrait_ is engraved on all the wrappers, with the
-following inscription: 'Before she took the pill,' etc."
-
-[In this country we are familiar with the ghostly looking picture of a
-man, the said proprietor of a medicine, "before he took the pill" (aloes),
-and "after;" the "after" being represented by a ridiculous extreme of
-muscular and adipose tissue.]
-
-"Captain Wragge's" is the style in which most medicines are placed before
-the public. We take up our morning journal: its columns are crowded by
-patent medicine advertisements. We turn in disgust from their glaring
-statements, and attempt to read a news item. We get half through, and find
-we are sold into reading a puff for the same trashy article. We take a
-horse-car for up or down town, and opposite, in bold and variegated
-letters, the persistent remedy (?) stares you continually in the face. We
-enter the post office: the lobbies are employed for the exposition,
-perhaps sale, of the patent medicines. We open our box: "O, we've a large
-mail to-day!" we exclaim; when, lo! half of the envelopes contain patent
-medicine advertisements, which have been run through the post office into
-every man's box in the department. And so it goes all day. We breakfast on
-aloes, dine on quassia, sup on logwood and myrrh, and sleep on morphine
-and prussic acid!
-
-"The humors of the press" sometimes inadvertently tell you the truth
-respecting this or that remedy advertised in their columns.
-
-A religious newspaper before me says of a proprietary medicine,
-"Advertised in another column of our paper: It is a _hell-deserving_
-article." Probably the copy read, "Well-deserving article."
-
-Said a certain paper, "A correspondent, whose duty it was to 'read up' the
-religious weeklies, has concluded that the reason of those journals
-devoting so much space to patent medicine announcements is, 'that the
-object of religion and quackery are similar--both prepare us for another
-and better world.'"
-
-The proprietor of a pill,--not Captain Wragge,--threatened recently to
-prosecute a New Hampshire newspaper publisher for a puff of his "Gripe
-Pills."
-
-As every fool, as well as some wise people, read the "personals" in the
-papers, an occasional notice of a tooth-paste, bitter, or tonic is
-inserted therein, thus:--
-
-    "AUGUSTUS APOLPHUS: I will deceive you no longer. My conscience
-    upbraids me. Those pearly white teeth you so much admire are false!
-    false! They were made by Dr. Grinder, dentist. I use Dr. Scourer's
-    tooth-paste, which keeps them clean and white. 'O, how sharper than a
-    serpent's thanks it is to have a toothless child.'
-
-    SUSAN JANE."
-
-Great and public men are sometimes induced or inveigled into recommending
-a patent medicine. In London, one Joshua Ward, a drysalter, of Thames
-Street, about the year 1780, introduced a pill, composed of the usual
-ingredients,--aloes and senna,--which, owing to some benefit he was
-supposed to have derived from their use, Lord Chief Baron Reynolds was led
-to praise in the highest terms. The result of this high dignitary's
-patronage was to give prominence to Ward and his pills, which subsequently
-sold for the fabulous price of 2s. 6d. a pill! General Churchill added his
-praise, and Ward was called as a physician to prescribe for the king.
-Either in consequence, or in spite of the treatment, the royal malady
-disappeared, and Ward was _re_warded with a solemn vote of the House of
-Commons protecting him from the interdiction of the College of
-Physicians. In addition to the liberal fee, he asked for and obtained the
-privilege of driving his carriage through St. James Park! Notwithstanding
-the pill, Reynolds died of his disease not long afterwards.
-
-Henry Fielding subscribed to the wonderful efficacy of "Tar Water," a
-nostrum of his day, but died of the disease for which it was recommended.
-
-Some time prior to 1780 there was published in the newspapers a list of
-the patent nostrums, or advertised remedies, in London, which numbered
-upwards of two hundred.
-
-Now there are known, in the United States alone, to be upwards of three
-hundred differently named hair preparations.
-
-Dr. Head, of whom we have made mention, "realized large sums from
-worthless quack nostrums," while at the same time another popular
-physician, with a Cambridge (England) diploma in his office, was
-proprietor of a "gout mixture," which sold at the shops for two shillings
-a bottle.
-
-Some of these shameless scoundrels, owners of advertised nostrums, with
-little or no sense of honor, have published the recommendations of great
-men, without the knowledge or permission of the parties whose names were
-so falsely affixed to their worthless stuff. A New York quack recently
-used the name of Henry Ward Beecher in this manner. Mr. Beecher published
-him as a thief and forger of his name, which only served to bring the
-doctor (?) into universal notice. Only to-day I read his impudent
-advertisement in a newspaper, with Mr. Beecher's name affixed as
-reference. If you prosecute one of the villains for issuing false
-certificates, even for forging your own name, it does him no great injury,
-you get no satisfaction, and in the end it only serves to call public
-attention to a worthless article, thereby increasing its sale.
-
-In the London _Medical Journal_ of 1806, Dr. Lettsom attacked and exposed
-a "nervous cordial," stating that it was a deleterious article; "that it
-had killed its thousands;" and further asserted that Brodum, its
-proprietor, was a Jewish knave, having been a bootblack in Copenhagen, and
-a wholesale murderer. Brodum at once brought an action against the
-proprietor of the _Journal_, laying the damages at twenty-five thousand
-dollars. Brodum held the advantage, and the _Journal_ proprietor asked for
-terms of settlement. Brodum's terms were not modest. He, through his
-attorney, agreed to withdraw the action provided the name of the author
-was revealed, and that he should whitewash the quack in the next number of
-the _Journal_, over the same signature! Dr. Lettsom consented to these
-terms, paid the lawyers' bills and costs, amounting to three hundred and
-ninety pounds, and wrote the required puff of Brodum and his nostrum.
-
-SOOTHING SYRUPS, nervous cordials, etc., owe their soothing properties to
-opium, or its salt--morphine.
-
-From "OPIUM AND THE OPIUM APPETITE," by Alonzo Calkins, M. D., we are
-informed that an article sold as "Mrs. Winslow's Soothing Syrup," for
-children teething, contains nearly _one grain of the alkaloid_ (morphine)
-_to each ounce of the syrup_! Taking one teaspoonful as the dose (that is,
-one drachm), and there being eight drachms to the ounce, consequently
-about one eighth of a grain of morphine is given to an infant at a dose!
-Do you wonder it gives him a _quietus_? Do you wonder that the mortality
-among children is greatly on the increase? that so many of the darling,
-helpless little innocents die from dropsy, brain fever, epileptic fits,
-and the like?
-
-
-FRUIT SYRUPS FOR SODA WATER.
-
-Perhaps you take yours "plain." No! Then you may want to know how the pure
-fruit syrup, which sweetens and flavors the soda, is made. The "soda"
-itself is a very harmless article.
-
-BUTYRIC ETHER is usually taken for a basis. Butyric ether is manufactured
-from rancid butter, old rotten cheese, or Limburger cheese. The latter is
-the "loudest," and affords the best flavor to the ether. The cheese is
-treated with sulphuric acid. Old leather is known to give it a
-particularly fine flavor. Any old boots and shoes will answer.
-
-PINEAPPLE SYRUP is made from butyric and formic ether. The latter is
-manufactured from soap or glycerine. Sulphuric acid and red ants will do
-as well.
-
-STRAWBERRY is made of twelve parts of butyric ether and one of acetic
-ether, alcohol, and water. Color with cochineal--a bug of the tick
-species, from Mexico. Sometimes a little real strawberry is added, but it
-is not deemed essential.
-
-RASPBERRY is made from the same articles. If convenient, the druggist adds
-a little raspberry jam or syrup. If not, color a little deeper, add some
-strawberry, and change the label to raspberry.
-
-VANILLA SYRUP is made of Tonqua beans, such as boys sell on the street.
-
-PEACH is made from bitter almonds. WILD CHERRY the same.
-
-NECTAR is formed by a compound of various syrups and Madeira wine. You can
-easily make the Madeira of neutral spirits, sugar, raisins, and logwood to
-color it.
-
-SARSAPARILLA. Take the cheapest and nastiest molasses obtainable. Strain
-it to remove dead bees, sticks, cockroaches, etc. Flavor with essence
-sassafras and wintergreen. Little extract sarsaparilla will do no harm if
-added to the mixture. It is very harmless.
-
-LEMON is made of citric acid and sugar.
-
-COFFEE is made mostly of chiccory, burnt livers, sometimes a little coffee
-bean. Horses' livers are said to be the best, giving it a _racy_ flavor,
-and more _body_.
-
-"They are all very good," the vender tells you; he takes his plain,
-however. You see how much cheaper these are than the _real_ fruit syrup
-itself; and as neither you nor I can tell the difference by _taste_, what
-inducement has the dealer in soda water to use the costlier articles?
-
-I have a friend who sells the "pure syrups," and I presume the reader has
-also; but I respectfully decline drinking soda water with "pure fruit
-syrups."
-
-    POISONOUS HAIR TONICS AND COSMETICS.
-
-    Extract from the report of Professor C. F. Chandler, Ph. D., chemist
-    to the Metropolitan Board of Health. This report, which presents the
-    results of the examination of a few of the articles in general use,
-    was printed in full in the Chemical News (American reprint) for May,
-    1870. We present the following list of dangerous preparations, which
-    gives the number of grains of lead, etc., in one fluid ounce.
-
-    I. HAIR TONICS, WASHES, AND RESTORATIVES.
-
-                                                         Grains of lead in
-                                                         one fluid ounce.
-
-      1. Clark's Distilled Restorative for the Hair,         0.11
-      2. Chevalier's Life for the Hair,                      1.02
-      3. Circassian Hair Rejuvenator,                        2.71
-      4. Ayer's Hair Vigor,                                  2.89
-      5. Professor Wood's Hair Restorative,                  3.08
-      6. Dr. J. J. O'Brien's Hair Restorer, America,         3.28
-      7. Gray's Celebrated Hair Restorative,                 3.39
-      8. Phalon's Vitalia,                                   4.69
-      9. Ring's Vegetable Ambrosia,                          5.00
-      10. Mrs. S. A. Allen's World's Hair Restorer,          5.57
-      11. L. Knittel's Indian Hair Tonique,                  6.29
-      12. Hall's Vegetable Sicilian Hair Renewer,            7.13
-      13. Dr. Tebbet's Physiological Hair Regenerator,       7.44
-      14. Martha Washington Hair Restorative,                9.80
-      15. Singer's Hair Restorative,                        16.39
-
-    II. LOTIONS OR WASHES FOR THE COMPLEXION.
-
-    _Perry's Moth and Freckle Lotion._
-
-      Mercury in solution, 2.67 gr. }equiv.{ Corrosive Sub.,   3.61 gr.
-      Zinc in solution,    0.99  "  }  to  { Sulphate of Zinc, 4.25  "
-
-    The sediment contains mercury, lead, and bismuth.
-
-    III. ENAMELS FOR THE SKIN.
-
-                                      Grains of lead in one fluid
-                                         ounce, after shaking.
-
-      Eugenie's Favorite,                    108.94 grains.
-      Phalon's Snow-white Enamel,            146.28   "
-      Phalon's Snow-white Oriental Cream,    190.99   "
-
-    CONCLUSION.--It appears from the foregoing,--
-
-    1. The HAIR TONICS, WASHES, and RESTORATIVES contain lead in
-    considerable quantities; that they owe their action to this metal, and
-    that they are consequently highly dangerous to the health of persons
-    using them.
-
-    2. With a single exception, Perry's Moth and Freckle Lotion, the
-    LOTIONS for the skin are free from lead and other injurious metals.
-
-    3. That the ENAMELS are composed of either carbonate of lime, oxide of
-    zinc, or carbonate of lead, suspended in water. The first two classes
-    of enamels are comparatively harmless; as harmless as any other white
-    dirt, when plastered over the skin to close the pores and prevent its
-    healthy action. On the other hand, the enamels composed of carbonate
-    of lead are highly dangerous, and their use is very certain to produce
-    disastrous results to those who patronize them.
-
-
-HAIR RESTORATIVES: A BALD BACHELOR'S EXPERIENCE.
-
-A gentleman of perhaps thirty-five years of age once called upon the
-writer for advice relative to baldness, when he related the following
-experience, permitting me to make a note of it at leisure.
-
-"In 1865 my friends intimated to me that my hair was getting slightly thin
-on the crown of my head. I have always had a mortal terror of being bald,
-and daily examinations convinced me that my fears were about to be
-realized. My first inquiry was for a remedy.
-
-"'What shall I do to prevent its falling out?' I nervously inquired.
-
-"'Get a bottle of Dr. ----'s Hair Restorative,' one advised; another, some
-different preparation,--all advertised remedies,--till I had a list a yard
-long of various washes, preventives, restorers, etc., _ad infinitum_.
-
-"I obtained one of _the very best_. I used it as directed. It _stuck_ as
-though its virtue consisted in sticking the loose hairs firmly to the
-firmer-rooted ones. But alas! after a month's trial, sufficient hair had
-come out of my head to make a respectable _chignon_!
-
-"I next got some of Mrs. A. S. S. Allon's--or All--something; I forget the
-rest of the name; I'm sure of the A. S. S., however,--and that was worse
-than the _gum-stick-'em_ kind, for the hair came out faster than before.
-
-"In despair, I applied to a 'respectable apothecary,' who keeps the next
-corner drug store. 'For God's sake, Mr. Bilious, have you got any good
-preventive for falling of the hair?' I exclaimed.
-
-"'O, yes, just the article,' he replied, rubbing his palms vigorously. He
-then showed me his stock, consisting of _thirty-nine different kinds_!
-
-"'All very good--highly recommended,' he remarked, with commendable
-impartiality.
-
-"I selected one--with rather an ominous name, I
-admit:--_Kat-hair-on_!--preferring cat's hair to none.
-
-"I used the Kathairon according to directions."
-
-"'Did the cat's hair grow?' I anxiously inquired.
-
-"'Neither cat's hair nor human hair.' No. Worse and worse. I was about to
-abandon all effort, when, stopping on a corner to get a young boot-black
-to shine my boots, preparatory to making a call on a lady acquaintance,
-before whom I was desirous of making a genteel appearance, a dirty, ragged
-little urchin peered around the block, and exclaimed, 'O, mister, you're
-barefooted on top o' yer head!' I had inadvertently removed my hat, to
-wipe my forehead.
-
-[Illustration: "BAREFOOTED ON THE TOP OF HIS HEAD."]
-
-"This was the last feather. Though coming from but a dirty boot-black, it
-stung me to the marrow. I kicked over the boy, box, blacking, and all, and
-rushed into the nearest drug shop. I bought another new hair preparation.
-Another ominous name--'_Bare-it_!'
-
-"This I also used, as directed on the label, for a month. 'I think,' I
-said, 'if I use it a second month, it will entirely _bare it_!'
-
-"I bought a wig, and had my head shaved. I didn't lock myself up in a
-coal-cellar, or hide under a tub, like Diogenes, but I felt that I would
-have gladly done either, to hide myself from the eyes of the world. The
-girls all cast shy glances at me as they passed; as though the majority of
-_them_ did not wear false hair!
-
-"In utter desperation, I visited a dermatologist. What a name to make hair
-grow! Well, he examined my scalp with a microscope, and said the hair
-could be made to grow anew. 'I discover myriads of germs, which only
-require the right treatment in order to spring up in an exuberant crop of
-wavy tresses.' I bought his preparations. Bill, thirty-eight dollars. They
-were worthless.
-
-"Soon after this failure, I heard of a new remedy--'a sure cure.' The
-proprietor possessed a world-wide reputation, from the manufacture of
-various other remedies for nearly all diseases to which we poor mortals
-are subject, and there might be something in this. It was recommended to
-cure baldness, and restore gray hair to its natural color. I would go and
-see the proprietor of this excellent hair restorer. I hastened to Lowell.
-I was ushered into the doctor's sanctum--into the very presence of this
-Napoleon of medicine-makers, the Alexander of conquered worlds--of medical
-prejudices!
-
-"With hat in hand, I bowed low to the great Doctor Hair--or hair doctor.
-He beheld my veneration for himself. With a practised eye, he noted my
-genteel apparel. Flattered by my obeisance, and not to be outdone in
-politeness, he arose, removed his tile, and bowed equally low in return to
-my profound salutation, when lo! _O tempora! O mores!_ he was both bald
-and gray! I retired without specifying the object of my visit."
-
-
-A WOLF IN SHEEP'S CLOTHING.
-
-When a man tells you, point blank, that he is selling an article for the
-profit of it, believe him; but when he asserts that he is advertising and
-offering a remedy solely for the public good, for the benefit of suffering
-humanity, he is a liar. Beware of such.
-
-Furthermore, when he publishes an advertisement in every paper in the
-land, announcing that himself having been miraculously or "providentially"
-cured of a _variety_ of diseases by a certain compound, the _prescription_
-for which he will send free to any address, you should hesitate, until
-satisfied of the disinterestedness of the party, and meantime ask yourself
-the following question: "Provided this be true, why don't the unparalleled
-benevolent gentleman _publish the recipe_, which would cost so much less
-than this persistent advertising 'that he will send it to any requiring
-it'? And you are next led to ask,--
-
-"Where is the 'dodge'? For money is what he is after."
-
-A reverend (?), a scoundrel, a "wolf in sheep's clothing," advertises in
-nearly every paper you chance to notice, especially _religious_
-newspapers, a remedy he discovered while a missionary to some foreign
-country, that cured him of a _variety_ of diseases, the recipe for which
-medicine he will send to any address, _free of charge_.
-
-"Here is the '_Old Sands of Life_' dodge," I said, "which I had the
-satisfaction of exposing fourteen years ago."
-
-The reader may recollect the advertisement of "A Retired Physician,
-seventy-five years of age, whose sands of life had nearly run out," who
-advertised so extensively a remedy which cured his daughter, etc., which
-remedy he would send _free_, to the afflicted, on application.
-
-I investigated his "little fraud." I found, instead of an old man
-"seventy-five years of age," a young man of about twenty-eight or thirty.
-He was no reverend. He had no daughter. He was a tall, gaunt, profane,
-tobacco-chewing, foul-mouthed fellow, with a bad impediment in his speech
-from loss of palate, whose name _was_ Oliver Phipps Brown, a printer by
-trade, who formerly worked as journeyman in the _Courant_ office,
-Hartford, Conn. The police finally got hold of him, and broke up the
-swindle.
-
-[Illustration: OLD "SANDS OF LIFE."]
-
-Here is now a parallel case. The above _reverend_ says he will send the
-recipe free. I directed my student to write for it. The recipe came, with
-various articles named therein, supposed to be the Latin names of plants.
-I assert that there are no such medicines in the Materia Medica, or the
-world. The _reverend_ don't want that there should be. Why? Because you
-would not then send to him for his "Compound."
-
-He sends with his recipe a circular, in which he gives you the history of
-_his marvellous discovery_. Further along, by some oversight, he says it
-was made known to him through a physician!
-
-The names are bogus. The whole remedy is a humbug. There are names in it
-as _species_ which sound something like some medical term; and the
-druggist may be deceived thereby. The reverend quack, foreseeing "the
-difficulty in obtaining the articles in their purity at any druggist's,"
-advises you to send to him for them. Do you begin to see the _dodge_? He
-"will furnish it at _cost_." Only think! How benevolent! "My means make
-me independent." Think again. An invalid from boyhood, his time and means
-exhausted in travelling "in Europe two years," and was only "sent a
-missionary (?) through the kindness of friends," he assures us in his
-circular. Here he _discovered through an old physician_--surely a new mode
-of discovery--this wonderful compound, which cured him in "six weeks," and
-forthwith, in gratitude, he proceeded to New York, and began putting up
-this marvellous remedy "_at cost_."
-
-Let us examine the article sold for three dollars and a half a small
-package. Dr. Hall, of the "Journal of Health," examined the article which
-"Old Sands of Life" sold as _Canabis Indica_, and found the cost "_but
-sixteen cents, bottle and all_." Nevertheless, "The Retired Physician"
-sold it to his dupes for two dollars. I do not hesitate to say that the
-above compound cost even _less than sixteen cents a package_.
-
-"But," said a gentleman to me, "he is connected with the Bible House. Here
-is his address: 'Station D, Bible House, New York.'"
-
-"There is a post-station by that name. Suppose I should give an address,
-'34 Museum Building.' Would that imply that I was a play-actor, or owner
-of the Museum?" I replied.
-
-"Then it is only another 'Reverend' dodge--is it?" he asked.
-
-"Precisely; it is to give character to his characterless address."
-
-"Don't the newspaper publishers know it is a swindle?" he suggested.
-
-"There's not the least doubt that they know it."
-
-"Then hereafter I shall have little faith in the religion or honesty of
-the newspaper that publishes such swindling advertisements."
-
-"Admitting that they know the dishonesty of the thing,--and how can any
-man endowed with common sense but see that there is _swindle_ on the face
-of it?--the publisher of that advertisement is a _particeps criminis_ in
-the transaction."
-
-"Why don't some of the thousand victims who have been swindled into buying
-this worthless stuff expose him?"
-
-"In exposing the _reverend wolf_, don't you see they would expose their
-own weakness? This is the reason of the fellow's selecting the peculiar
-class of diseases as curable by his great discovery. The poor sufferer
-does not wish the community to know that he is afflicted by such a
-disease."
-
-"It is truly a great dodge; and no doubt the knave has found fools enough
-to make him '_independent_.'"
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-RULES. 1. Take no patent or advertised medicines at all. They are of no
-earthly use! You never require them, as they are not conducive to your
-health, happiness, or longevity.
-
-There are physicians who can cure every disease that flesh is heir
-to--_excepting one_.
-
-2. Apply in your need only to a respectable physician.
-
-3. Give your preference to such as administer the smallest quantities of
-medicine--_and are successful in their practice_.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-I have barely begun to exhaust the material I have been years collecting
-for this chapter; but I must desist, to give room for other important
-expositions.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-IV.
-
-MANUFACTURED DOCTORS.
-
-    "One says, 'I'm not of any school;
-    No living master gives me rule;
-    Nor do I in the old tracks tread;
-    I scorn to learn aught from the dead.'
-    Which means, if I am not mistook,
-    'I am an ass on my own hook.'"
-
-    A BOSTON BARBER AS M. D.--A BARBER "GONE TO POT."--FOOLS MADE
-    DOCTORS.--BAKERS.--BARBERS.--"A LUCKY DOG."--TINKERS.--ROYAL
-    FAVORS.--"LITTLE CARVER DAVY."--A BUTCHER'S BLOCKHEAD.--A SWEEPING
-    VISIT.--HOP-PED FROM OBSCURITY.--PEDAGOGUES TURN
-    DOCTORS.--ARBUTHNOT.--"A QUAKER."--"WALKS OFF ON HIS EAR."--WEAVERS
-    AND BASKET-MAKERS.--A TOUGH PRINCE; REQUIRED THREE M. D.'S TO KILL
-    HIM.--MARAT A HORSE DOCTOR.--A MERRY PARSON.--BLACK MAIL.--POLICE AS A
-    MIDWIFE, ETC., ETC.
-
-
-"Every man is either a physician or a fool at forty," says the old
-proverb.
-
-"May not a man be both?" suggested Canning, in the presence of a circle of
-friends, before whom Sir Henry Halford happened to quote the old saying.
-
-"There is generally a fool in every family, whom the parents select at
-once for a priest or a physician," said Peter Pindar. He was good
-authority.
-
-I am of the opinion that there are many whose mental capacity has been
-overrated, who have made doctors of themselves; but we are not to treat of
-fools in this chapter, but of men whom _circumstances_ have created
-physicians, and of men who, in spite of circumstances of birth or
-education, have made themselves doctors.
-
-In the choice of a trade or profession, every young man should weigh
-carefully his natural capacity to the pursuit selected. His parents or
-guardians should consult the youth's adaptability rather than their own
-convenience. How many have dragged out a miserable existence by ill choice
-of a calling! Men who were destined by nature to be wood-sawyers and
-diggers of trenches, are found daily taking upon themselves the immense
-responsibility of teaching those whose mental calibre is far above their
-own, or assuming the greater responsibility of administering to the
-afflicted.
-
-If a man finds himself adapted to a higher calling than that originally
-selected for him by his friends, by all means let him "come up higher;"
-but too many by far have changed from a trade to a profession to which
-they had no adaptability.
-
-So we find men in the medical profession who were better as they
-were,--bakers, barbers, butchers, tailors, tinkers, pedagogues, cobblers,
-horse doctors, etc., etc.
-
-There used to be a fish-peddler going about Boston, blowing a fish-horn,
-and crying his "fresh cod an' haddock," who, getting tired of that loud
-crying and loud smelling occupation, took to blowing his horn for his
-"wonderful discovery" of a "pasture weed," which cured every humor but a
-thundering humor (one can see the humor of the joke), and every eruption
-since the eruption of Hecla in 1783,--which is a pity that he had not made
-his discovery in time to have tried it on old Hecla's back when it was up.
-
-
-BARBERS AS DOCTORS.
-
-A barber of Boston, accidentally overhearing a gentleman mention a certain
-remedy for the "barber's itch," seized upon the idea of speculating upon
-it, and at once sold out his shop, made up the ointment, clapped M. D. to
-his name, put out his circulars, and is now seeking whom he may devour, as
-a physician.
-
-With the looseness of morals and the laxity of our laws, one of these
-fellows "can make a doctor as quick as a tinker can make a tin kettle."
-
-Probably more barbers have become doctors than any other artisans, for the
-reason that barbers were formerly nearly the only acknowledged
-"blood-letters." In the earlier days of Abernethy, barber surgeons were
-recognized, and the great doctor said of himself, "I have often doffed my
-hat to those fellows, with a razor between their teeth and a lancet in
-their hands." Doubtless some of them arrived to usefulness in the
-profession. Dr. Ambrose Pare, a French barber surgeon, was called the
-father of French surgery, and enjoyed the confidence of Charles IX. An
-eminent surgeon of London was Mr. Pott. He was contemporary with Dr.
-Hunter, and gave lectures at St. Bartholomew Hospital in Hunter's
-presence. Some person asking a wag one day where Dr. Hunter was, he
-replied that, "with barber surgeons he _had gone to pot_."
-
-This alliance of surgery and shaving, to say nothing of other
-qualifications with which they were sometimes associated, conceivably
-enough furnished some pretext for apprenticeships, since Dickey Gossip's
-definition of
-
-  "Shaving and tooth-drawing,
-  Bleeding, cabbaging, and sawing,"
-
-was by no means always sufficiently comprehensive to include the
-multifarious accomplishments of "the doctor." "I have seen," says Dr.
-Macillwain, of England, "within twenty-five years, chemist, druggist,
-surgeon, apothecary, and the significant, '&c.,' followed by hatter,
-hosier, and linen draper, all in one establishment."
-
-I saw in New Hampshire, in 1864, doctor, barber, and apothecary
-represented by one man.
-
-William Butts, another barber surgeon of London, was called to attend
-Henry VIII., and was rewarded for his professional services with the
-honor of knighthood in 1512. Another, who was knighted by Henry VIII., was
-John Ayliffe, a sheriff, formerly a merchant of Blackwell Hall.
-
-Royalty had a chronic habit of knighting quacks. Queen Anne became so
-charmed by a tailor, who had turned doctor, and who, by some hook or
-crook, was called to prescribe for the queen's weak eyes, that she had him
-sworn in, with another knave, as her own oculist. "This lucky gentleman,"
-says a reliable author, "was William Reade, a botching tailor of Grub
-Street, London. To the very last he was a great ignoramus, as a work
-entitled 'A Short and Exact Account of all Diseases Incident to the Eyes,'
-attests; yet he rose to knighthood, and the most lucrative and fashionable
-practice of the period." Reade (_Sir William_) was unable to read the book
-he had published (written by an _amanuensis_); nevertheless, aristocracy,
-and wise and worthy people at that, who listened to his dignified voice,
-viewed his pompous person, encased in rich garments, and adorned with
-jewelry and lace ruffles, _cap-a-pie_, resting his chin upon his enormous
-gold-headed cane, as, reclining in his splendid coach, drawn by a span of
-superb blood horses, up to St. James, considered him the most learned and
-eminent physician of that generation.
-
-In the British Museum is deposited a copy of a poem to the great oculist.
-This poem Reade himself had written, at the hand of a penny-a-liner, a
-"poet of Grub Street," immediately after he was knighted, which has been
-mainly instrumental in handing his name down to posterity.
-
-
-TINKER AS DOCTOR.
-
-About the year 1705, one Roger Grant rose into public notice in London, by
-his publication of his own "marvellous cures." This fellow was no fool,
-though a great knave. He was formerly a travelling tinker, subsequently a
-cobbler, and Anabaptist preacher. From tinkering of pots, he became
-mender of soles of men's boots and shoes; thence saver of souls from
-perdition, a tinkerer of sore eyes, and lightener of the body. The
-following bit of poetry was written in 1708 for his benefit, the "picture"
-being one which Grant, who was a very vain man, had gotten up from a
-copperplate likeness of himself, to distribute among his friends. The
-picture was found posted up conspicuously with the lines:--
-
-  "A tinker first, his scene of life began;
-  That failing, he set up for a cunning man;
-  But, wanting luck, puts on a new disguise,
-  And now pretends that he can cure your eyes.
-  But this expect, that, like a tinker true,
-  Where he repairs one eye, he puts out two."
-
-[Illustration: THE EYE DOCTOR.]
-
-He worked himself into notoriety by the publication, in pamphlet form, of
-his cures,--a mixture of truth strongly spiced with falsehood,--and
-scattering it over the community. "His plan was to get hold of some poor,
-ignorant person, of imperfect vision, and, after treating him with
-medicine and half-crowns for a few weeks, induce him to sign a
-testimonial, which he probably had never read, that he was born blind, and
-by the providential intervention of Dr. Grant, he had been entirely
-restored. To this certificate the clergyman and church-wardens of the
-parish, in which the patient had been known to wander in mendicancy, were
-asked to attest; and if they proved impregnable to the cunning
-representations of the importunate solicitors, and declined to sign the
-certificate, the doctor did not scruple to save them that trouble by
-signing their names himself."
-
-More than once was the charge of being a tinker preferred against him. The
-following satire was written and published for his benefit--with Dr.
-Reade's--after Queen Anne had Dr. Grant sworn in as her "oculist in
-ordinary":--
-
-  "Her majesty sure was in a surprise,
-    Or else was very short-sighted,
-  When a tinker was sworn to look to her eyes,
-    And the mountebank Reade was knighted."
-
-
-"THE LITTLE CARVER DAVY."
-
-The distinguished chemical philosopher and physician of Penzance, Sir
-Humphry Davy, Bart., was the son of a poor wood-carver, at which trade
-Humphry worked in his earlier days, and was named by his familiar
-associates, the "Little Carver Davy." On the death of his father, the
-widow established herself as a milliner at Penzance, where she apprenticed
-her son to an apothecary. His mother was a woman of talent and great moral
-sense. When, as Sir Humphry, he had reached the summit of his fame, he
-looked back upon the facts of his humble origin, his father's plebeian
-occupation and associates, and his mother's mean pursuit, followed for his
-benefit, with mortification instead of regarding them as sources of
-pride.
-
-
-A BUTCHER BOY ESCAPES THE CLEAVER AND BECOMES A GREAT PHYSICIAN AND POET.
-
-In a rickety old three story house, the lower part of which was occupied
-as a butcher's shop and trader's room, and the upper stories as a
-dwelling-house, at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, in 1721, was born Mark Akenside.
-His father was a butcher, and one day, as the boy Mark was assisting at
-the menial occupation of cutting up a calf, a cleaver fell from the shop
-block upon another "calf,"--that of young Akenside's leg,--which lamed him
-for life.
-
-[Illustration: THE YOUNG SURGEON'S FIRST EXPERIENCE.]
-
-Akenside was a Nonconformist, and by the aid of the Dissenters' Society
-young Mark was sent to Edinburgh to study theology. From theology he went
-to physic, his honest parent refunding the money to the society paid for
-his studies under their patronage, and he subsequently obtained his degree
-at Cambridge, and became a fellow of the R. S.
-
-Like Davy, Akenside became ashamed of his plebeian origin. His lameness,
-like Lord Byron's, was a continual source of mortification to him.
-
-He became a physician to St. Thomas; and, as he went with the students the
-rounds of the hospital, the fastidiousness of the little bunch of dignity
-at having come so closely in contact with the vulgar rabble, induced him,
-at times, to make the strongest patients precede him with _brooms_, to
-clear a way for him through the crowd of diseased wretches, who,
-nevertheless, had wonderful faith in his wisdom, and would cry out,
-"_Bravo for the butcher boy with a game leg!_" as they fell back before
-the fearful charge of corn brooms.
-
-By the assistance of friends, and his ever extensive practice, Akenside
-was enabled, to the day of his death, in 1770, to keep his carriage, wear
-his gold-hilted sword, and his huge well-powdered wig.
-
-
-HOW ONE HOP-PED FROM OBSCURITY.
-
-"Dr. Messenger Monsey, in the heyday of his prosperity, used to assert to
-his friends that the first of his known ancestors was a baker and a
-retailer of hops. At a critical point of this worthy man's career, when
-hops were 'down,' and feathers 'up,' in order to raise the needful for
-present emergencies he ripped up his beds, sold the feathers, and refilled
-the ticks with hops. When a change occurred in the market soon afterwards
-the process was reversed; even the children's beds were reopened, and the
-hops sold for a large profit over the cost of replacing the feathers!"
-
-"That's the way, sirs, that my family hop-ped from obscurity," the doctor
-would conclude, with great gusto.
-
-The Duke of Leeds used, in the same manner, to delight in boasting of his
-lucky progenitor, Jack Osborn, the shop lad, who rescued his master's
-beautiful daughter from a watery grave at the bottom of the Thames, and
-won her hand away from a score of noble suitors, who wanted, literally,
-the young lady's _pin_-money as much as herself. Her father was a pin
-manufacturer, and had in his shop on London Bridge amassed a considerable
-wealth in the business. The jolly old man, instead of disdaining to
-bestow the lovely and wealthy maid--his only child--on an apprentice,
-exclaimed,--
-
-"Jack Osborn won her, and Jack shall wear her."
-
-When Lord Bath vainly endeavored to effect a reconciliation between the
-doctor and Garrick, who had fallen out, Monsey said,--
-
-"Why will your lordship trouble yourself with the squabbles of a
-merry-andrew and a _quack_ doctor?"
-
-Monsey continued his quarrel with Garrick up to the day of the death of
-the great tragedian. The latter seldom retaliated, but when he did his
-sarcasm cut to the bone.
-
-Garrick's style of satire may be inferred from his epigram on James Quin,
-the celebrated actor, and illegitimate son of an Irishman, "whose wife
-turned out a bigamist." When Garrick make his debut on the London stage,
-at Godman's Fields playhouse, October 19, 1741, as "Richard the Third,"
-Quin objected to Garrick's original style, saying,--
-
-"If this young fellow is right, myself and all the other actors are
-wrong."
-
-Being told that the theatre was crowded to the dome nightly to hear the
-new actor, Quin replied that "Garrick was a new religion; Whitefield was
-followed for a time, but they would all come to church again." Hence
-Garrick wrote the following epigram:--
-
-  "Pope Quin, who damns all churches but his own,
-  Complains that heresy infects the town;
-  That Whitefield-Garrick has misled the age,
-  And taints the sound religion of the stage.
-  'Schism,' he cries, 'has turned the nation's brain,
-  But eyes will open, and to church again!'
-  Thou great Infallible, forbear to roar;
-  Thy bulls and errors are revered no more.
-  When doctrines meet with general approbation,
-  It is not _heresy_, but reformation."
-
-When confined to his bed in his last sickness, Garrick had the advice of
-several of the best physicians, summoned to his villa near Hampton, and
-Monsey, in bad taste and worse temper, wrote a satire on the occurrence.
-He accused the actor of parsimony, among other mean qualities, and though,
-after the death of Garrick, January 22, 1779, he destroyed the verses,
-some portions of them got into print, of which the following is a
-sample:--
-
-  "Seven wise doctors lately met
-    To save a wretched sinner.
-  'Come, Tom,' said Jack, 'pray let's be quick,
-    Or we shall lose _our_ dinner.'
-
-  "Some roared for rhubarb, jalap some,
-    And others cried for Dover;[3]
-  'Let's give him something,' each one said,
-    'And then let's give him over.'"
-
-At last, after much learned wrangling, one more learned than the others
-proposed to arouse the energies of the dying man by jingling a purse of
-gold in his ear. This suggestion was acted upon, and
-
-  "Soon as the favorite sound he heard,
-    One faint effort he tried;
-  He oped his eyes, he scratched his head,
-    He gave one grasp--and died."
-
-Riding on horseback through Hyde Park, Monsey was accompanied by a Mr.
-Robinson, a Trinitarian preacher, who knew that the doctor's religion was
-of the Unitarian stamp. After deploring, in solemn tones, the corrupt
-state of morals, etc., the minister turned to Monsey, and said,--
-
-"And, doctor, I am addressing one who believes there is no God."
-
-"And I," replied Monsey, "one who believes there are _three_."
-
-[Illustration: HEALING THE SICK WITH A GOLDEN DOSE.]
-
-The good man, greatly shocked, put spurs to his horse, and, without
-vouchsafing a "good day," rode away at a high gallop.
-
-
-PEDAGOGUES TURNED OUT AS DOCTORS.
-
-Some of the hundreds of respectable medical practitioners of this
-democratic country, who, between commencement and the following term, used
-to lengthen out their scanty means by "teaching the young idea how to
-shoot" in some far-off country village, will scarcely thank me for
-introducing the above-named subject to their present notice. However, it
-will depend somewhat upon the way they take it; whether, like Sir Davy,
-they are ashamed of their "small beginnings," or, like Dr. Monsey, they
-may independently snap their fingers in the face of their plebeian origin,
-and boast of their earlier common efforts for a better foothold among the
-great men of their generation.
-
-Among English physicians, with whom it was, and still is, counted a
-disgrace to have been previously known in a more humble calling, we may
-find a long list of "doctors pedagogic," beginning with Dr. John Bond, who
-taught school until the age of forty, when he turned doctor. He was a man
-of great learning, however, and became a successful physician. Even among
-the good people of Taunton, where he had resided and labored as a
-pedagogue in former years, he was esteemed as a "wise physician."
-
-John Arbuthnot was a "Scotch pedagogue." He was distinguished as a man of
-letters and of wit; the associate of Pope and Swift, and of Bolingbroke; a
-companion at the court of Queen Anne.
-
-Arbuthnot owed his social elevation to his quick wit, rare conversational
-powers, and fascinating address, rather than to his family influence,
-professional knowledge, or medical success.
-
-"Dorchester, where, as a young practitioner, he endeavored to establish
-himself, utterly refused to give him a living; but it doubtless," says
-Jeaffreson, "maintained more than one dull empiric in opulence. Failing to
-get a living among the rustic boors, who could appreciate no effort of the
-human voice but a fox-hunter's whoop, Arbuthnot packed up and went to
-London."
-
-Poverty for a while haunted his door in London, and to keep the wolf away
-he was compelled to resort to "the most hateful of all occupations--the
-personal instruction of the ignorant."
-
-Arbuthnot was a brilliant writer as well as fluent talker, and by his
-literary hit, "Examination of Dr. Woodward's Account of the Deluge," he
-was soon brought into notice. By the merest accident and the greatest
-fortune he was called to Prince George of Denmark, when his royal highness
-was suddenly taken sick, and, as all who fell within the circle of his
-magical private acquaintance were led to respect and love him, the doctor
-was retained in the good graces of the prince. On the death of Dr. Hannes,
-Arbuthnot received the appointment of physician-in-ordinary to the queen.
-
-The polished manner of the fortunate doctor, his handsome person, and
-flattering, cordial seeming address, especially to ladies, made him a
-court favorite. To retain the good graces of his royal patient, the queen,
-"he adopted a tone of affection for her as an individual, as well as a
-loyal devotion to her as a queen." His conversation, while it had the
-semblance of the utmost frankness, was foaming over with flattery.
-
-"If the queen won't swallow my pills she will my flattery," he is said to
-have whispered to his friend Swift; but this report is doubtful, as he
-stood in fear of the displeasure of the querulous, crotchety, weak-minded
-queen, who had but recently discharged Dr. Radcliffe for a slip of the
-tongue, when at the coffee-house he had said she had the "_vapors_."
-
-"What is the hour?" asked the queen of Arbuthnot.
-
-"Whatever hour it may please your majesty," was his characteristic reply,
-with his most winning smile and graceful obeisance.
-
-By this sort of flattery he retained his hold in the queen's favor till
-her death.
-
-By these facts one is reminded of the saying of Oxenstierna, when, on
-concluding the peace of Westphalia in 1648, he sent his young son John as
-plenipotentiary to the powers on that occasion, remarking, in presence of
-those who expressed their surprise thereat,--
-
-"You do not know with how little wisdom men are governed."
-
-With the loss of the queen's patronage at her death, and his wine-loving
-proclivities, Dr. Arbuthnot became sick and poor, and died in straitened
-circumstances.
-
-
-ANOTHER POOR PEDAGOGUE,
-
-Who reached the acme of medical fame, and became court physician, was Sir
-Richard Blackmer. He surely ought not to have been called an ignoramus (by
-Dr. Johnson), for he resided thirteen years in the University of Oxford.
-After leaving Oxford, his extreme poverty compelled him to adopt the
-profession of a schoolmaster. In the year 1700 there were collected
-upwards of forty sets of ribald verses, under the title of "Commendary
-Verses, or the Author of Two Arthurs, and Satyr against Wit;" in which Sir
-Richard was taunted with his earlier poverty, and of having been a
-pedagogue!
-
-Every man has his advertisement and his advertisers. The poets and
-lampooners were Blackmer's. They assisted in bringing him into notoriety.
-Among them were Pope, Steele, and the obscene Dr. Garth. While the authors
-of those filthy, licentious productions (which no bar-maid or
-kitchen-scullion at this day could read without blushing behind her pots
-and kettles) were flattering themselves that they were injuring the
-honest doctor, they were bringing him daily into the notice of better men
-than themselves, and heaping ignominy upon the authors of such vile
-lampoons.
-
-One satire opened thus:--
-
-  "By nature meant, by want a pedant made,
-  Blackmer at first professed the whipping trade.
-
-         *       *       *       *       *
-
-  In vain his pills as well as birch he tried;
-  His boys grew blockheads, and his patients died."
-
-Mr. Jeaffreson says, "the same dull sarcasms about killing patients and
-whipping boys into blockheads are repeated over and again; and as if to
-show, with the greatest possible force, the pitch to which the evil of the
-times had risen, the coarsest and most disgusting of all these lampoon
-writers was a lady of rank,--the Countess of Sandwich!"
-
-Wouldn't a young Harvard or Yale medical graduate, without money, friends,
-or a practice, leap for joy with the knowledge that he had two-score
-_disinterested_ writers advertising him into universal notice, since it is
-considered a burning disgrace for an honorable, upright, and educated
-physician to advertise himself!
-
-Of course Sir Richard rose, in spite of his foes, to whom he seldom
-replied. He says, in one of his own works, "I am but a hard-working
-doctor, spending my days in coffee-houses (where physicians were wont to
-receive apothecaries, and, hearing the cases of their patients, prescribe
-for them without seeing them, at half price), receiving apothecaries, or
-driving over the stones in my carriage, visiting my patients."
-
-The honest, upright man who rises from nothing, and continues to ascend
-right in the teeth of immense opposition from his enemies, seldom relapses
-into obscurity in after life. Though Dr. Blackmer failed as a poet, he
-died esteemed as an honest man, a consistent Christian, and an excellent
-physician.
-
-
-A WEAVER AND A QUAKER BOY.
-
-Many cases might be instanced of weavers becoming physicians, but let one
-suffice. John Sutcliffe, a Yorkshire weaver, with no early educational
-advantages, and with the broadest provincial dialect, became a respectable
-apothecary, and subsequently a first-class medical practitioner. He rose
-entirely by his own integrity, frugality, industry, and intelligence.
-
-Amongst his apprentices was Dr. John Coakley Lettsom, whose name must ever
-rank high as a literary man, and a benevolent and successful physician.
-Lettsom was born in the West Indies, and was a Quaker. The place under the
-Yorkshire apothecary was secured for the boy by Mr. Fothergill, a Quaker
-minister of Warrington, England.
-
-A senior drug clerk informed the rustic inhabitants of the arrival of a
-Quaker from a far off county, where the people were _antipodes_,--whose
-feet were in a position exactly opposite to those of the English. Having
-well circulated this startling information, the merry clerk and
-fellow-apprentices laid back to enjoy the joke all by themselves.
-
-The very day the new apprentice entered upon his duties, the apothecary
-shop became haunted by an immense and curious crowd of gaping rustics, old
-and young, male and female, to see the wonderful Quaker who was accustomed
-to walking on his head!
-
-Day after day the curious peasants came and went, and if the astonished
-Sutcliffe closed his doors against the unprofitable rabble, they peered in
-at his windows, or hung about the entrances, hoping to see the remarkable
-phenomenon issue forth. But as the day of "walking off on his ear" had not
-then arrived, they were doomed to disappointment and lost faith in his
-ability to do what they had expected of him.
-
-
-JOHN RADCLIFFE.
-
-John Radcliffe, the humbug, "the physician without learning," was the son
-of a Yorkshire yeoman. When he had risen to intimacy with the leading
-nobility of London,--as he did by his "shrewdness, arrogant simplicity,
-and immeasurable insolence,"--he laid claim to aristocratic origin. The
-Earl of Derwenter recognized _Sir_ John as a kinsman; but the heralds
-interfered with the little "corner" of the doctor and earl, after
-Radcliffe's decease, by admonishing the University of Oxford not to erect
-any escutcheon over his plebeian monument.
-
-Of Radcliffe's success in getting patronage we have spoken in another
-chapter. Doubtless he, Dr. Hannes, and Dr. Mead all resorted to the same
-sharp tricks, of which they accused each other by turns, in order to gain
-notoriety and practice.
-
-DR. EDWARD HANNES was reputed a "_basket-maker_." At least, his father
-followed that humble calling. Of the son's earlier life little is known.
-About the year 168-, he burst upon the London aristocracy with a
-magnificent equipage, consisting of coach and four, and handsome liveried
-servants and coachmen.
-
-These were _his_ advertisements, and he soon rode into a splendid
-practice, notwithstanding Radcliffe's contrary prognostication.
-
-Dr. Hannes and Dr. Blackmer, being called to attend upon the young Duke of
-Gloucester, and the disease taking a fatal turn, Sir John Radcliffe was
-also called to examine into the case. Radcliffe could not forego the
-opportunity here offered to lash his rivals, and turning to them in the
-presence of the royal household, he said,--
-
-"It would have been happy for the nation had you, sir (to Hannes), been
-bred a basket-maker, and you, sir (to Blackmer), remained a country
-schoolmaster, rather than have ventured out of your reach in the practice
-of an art to which you are an utter stranger, and for your blunders in
-which you ought to be whipped with one of your own rods."
-
-As the case was simply one of rash, none of them had much to boast of.
-
-
-A HORSE DOCTOR.
-
-There have been, and still are, thousands in the various walks of life,
-who, at some period, have attempted the practice of medicine. Among the
-hundreds whom our colleges "grind out" annually, not more than one in
-twenty succeeds in medical practice so far as to gain any eminence, or the
-competence of a common laborer.
-
-MARAT WAS A HORSE DOCTOR.
-
-The most remarkable thing respecting this noted man occurred at his birth.
-_He was born triplets!_
-
-Yes, though "born of parents entirely unknown to history," three different
-places have claimed themselves, or been claimed, as his birthplace.
-
-Before his energies became perverted to political aims, he had endeavored
-to rise, by his own talent and energies, through the sciences.
-
-The year 1789 found him in the position of veterinary surgeon to the Count
-d'Artois, thoroughly disgusted with his failure to rise in society with
-the "quacks," as he termed them, "of the Corps Scientifique."
-
-Miss Muehlbach, in her "_Maria Antoinette and her Son_," presents Marat in
-conversation with the cobbler, Simon, as follows:--
-
-"The cobbler quickly turned round to confront the questioner. He saw,
-standing by his side, a little, remarkably crooked and dwarfed young man,
-whose unnaturally large head was set upon narrow, depressed shoulders, and
-whose whole (ludicrous) appearance made such an impression upon the
-cobbler that he laughed outright.
-
-"'Not beautiful, am I?' asked the stranger, who tried to join in the laugh
-with the cobbler, but the result was a mere grimace; which made his
-unnaturally large mouth extend from ear to ear, displaying two fearful
-rows of long, greenish teeth. 'Not beautiful at all, am I? Dreadful ugly!'
-
-"'You are somewhat remarkable, at least,' replied the cobbler. 'If I did
-not hear you speak French, and see you standing upright, I should think
-you the monstrous toad in the fable.'
-
-"'I am the monstrous toad of the fable. I have merely disguised myself
-to-day as a man, in order to look at this Austrian woman and her brood.'
-
-"'Where do you live, and what is your name, sir?' asked the cobbler, with
-glowing curiosity.
-
-"'I live in the stables of the Count d'Artois, and my name is Jean Paul
-Marat.'
-
-"'In the stable!' cried the cobbler. 'My faith, I had not supposed you a
-hostler or a coachman. It must be a funny sight, M. Marat, to see _you_
-mounted upon a horse.'
-
-"'You think that such a big toad does not belong there exactly. Well, you
-are right, brother Simon. My real business is not at all with the horses,
-but with the men of the stable. I am the horse doctor of the Count
-d'Artois, and I can assure you that I am a tolerably skilful doctor.'"
-
-We do not quote the above author as reliable authority in personal
-descriptions, beyond the "shrugging of shoulders," which habit she
-attributes to all of her characters (_vide_ "Napoleon and Queen Louisa,"
-where she uses the phrase some twenty-three times).
-
-At the time of his assuming the dictatorship, he resided in most squalid
-apartments, situated in one of the lowest back streets of Paris, in
-criminal intimacy with the wife of his printer.... He sold their bed to
-get money to bring out the first number of his journal, and lived in
-extreme poverty at a time when he could have become immensely rich by
-selling his silence.
-
-The death of this wretch was hastened only a few days by his
-assassination, for he was already consumed by a disgusting disease, and it
-is melancholy to add that he was adored after his death, and his remains
-deposited in the Pantheon with national honors, and an altar erected to
-his memory in the club of the Cordeliers.
-
-"I killed one man to save a hundred thousand!" exclaimed the magnificent
-Charlotte Corday to her judges; "a villain to save innocents, a furious
-wild beast, to give repose to my country!" Thus the "horse doctor"
-ignominiously perished at the hands of a woman,--a woman who immortalized
-herself by killing a "villain."
-
-
-PETER PINDAR, THE PREACHER.
-
-We find many cases where ministers have turned doctors, and _vice versa_.
-
-"PETER PINDAR" is here worthy of a passing notice. His true name was
-Wolcot. Descended from a family of doctors for several generations, he
-nevertheless himself failed to gain a living practice.
-
-When King George III. sent Sir William Trelawney out as governor of
-Jamaica, about 1760, he took young Dr. Wolcot with him, who acted in the
-treble capacity of physician, private secretary, and chaplain to the
-governor's household. Dr. Wolcot's professional knowledge had been
-acquired somewhat "irregularly," and it is very doubtful whether he ever
-received ordination at the hands of the bishops.
-
-It is true, however, that he acted as rector for the colony, reading
-prayers and preaching whenever a congregation of ten presented itself,
-which occurred only semi-occasionally.
-
-The doctor was fond of shooting, and 'tis gravely reported that he and his
-clerk used to amuse themselves on the way to church by shooting pigeons
-and other wild game, with which the wood abounded. Having shot their way
-to the sacred edifice, the merry parson and jolly clerk would wait ten
-minutes for the congregation to convene, and if, at the expiration of that
-time, the quota had not arrived, the few were dismissed with a blessing,
-and the pair shot their way back home. If but a few negroes presented
-themselves, the rector ordered his clerk to give them a bit of silver,
-with which to buy them off.
-
-[Illustration: THE PARSON BUYING OFF THE "CONGREGATION."]
-
-One old negro, more cunning than the rest, and who discovered that the
-parson's interest was rather in the discharge of his fowling-piece than
-the discharge of his priestly duties, used to present himself punctually
-every Sunday at church.
-
-"What brings you here, blackie?" asked the parson.
-
-"To hear de prayer for sinners, and de sarmon, masser."
-
-"Wouldn't a _bit_ or two serve you as well?" asked the rector, with a
-wink.
-
-"Well, masser, dis chile lub de good sarmon ob yer rev'rence, but dis time
-de money might do," was the reply, with a significant scratch of his
-woolly head.
-
-The parson would then pay the price, the negro would grin his thanks, and,
-chuckling to himself, retire; and for a year or more this sort of
-_black_-mailing was continued.
-
-Tiring of _acting_ as priest, Wolcot returned to London, and vainly
-endeavored to establish himself in practice. Neither preaching nor
-practising physic was his forte, and he resorted to the pen. Here he
-discovered his genius. Adopting the _nom de plume_ of "Peter Pindar," he
-became famous as a political satirist, and the author of numerous popular
-works. He died in London in 1819. Wolcot possessed a kindly heart, and a
-benevolence deeper than his pockets.
-
-
-POLICEMEN AS DOCTORS AND SURGEONS.
-
-Some very laughable scenes, as well as very touching and painful ones,
-might be recorded, had we space, where policemen have necessarily been
-unceremoniously summoned to act as physician or surgeon in absence of a
-"regular."
-
-In Portland, the police have to turn their hand to most everything.
-Circumstances beyond his control compelled one Mr. J. S. to act the part
-of midwife to a strapping Irish woman at the station-house, one evening,
-he being the sole "committee of reception" to a bouncing baby that came
-along somewhat precipitately. The account, which is well authenticated,
-closes by saying,--
-
-"Mother, baby, and officer are doing as well as can be expected!"
-
-We have seen the "officer." He did better than was "expected."
-
-The writer was on a Fulton ferry boat in the winter of 1857, when a
-similar scene occurred. A German woman was taken in pain. A whisper was
-passed to a female passenger; a policeman was summoned from outside the
-ladies' (?) cabin; the male occupants were ejected,--even myself and
-another medical student, and the husband of the patient. The latter
-remonstrated, and demonstrated his objection to the momentary separation
-by beating and shouting at the saloon door.
-
-"Katharina! Katharina!" he shouted, "keep up a steef upper lips!"
-
-This roaring attracted nearly all the men from the opposite side of the
-boat, who crowded around him and the door, to learn the cause of the
-Teutonic demonstrations of alternate fear, anger, and encouragement.
-
-"Got in himmel! Vere you leefs ven you's t' home? Vich a man can't come
-mit his vife, altogedder? Hopen de door, unt I preaks him mit mine feest;
-don't it?" So he kept on, alternately cursing the policeman and
-encouraging "Katharina," till we reached the Brooklyn side, and left the
-ferry boat.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-V.
-
-WOMAN AS PHYSICIAN.
-
-    "Angel of Patience! sent to calm
-    Our feverish brow with cooling palm;
-    To lay the storm of hope and fears,
-    And reconcile life's smile and tears;
-    The throb of wounded pride to still,
-    And make our own our Father's will."--WHITTIER.
-
-    HER "MISSION."--NO PLACE IN MEDICAL HISTORY.--ONE OF THEM.--MRS.
-    STEPHENS.--"CRAZY SALLY."--RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS.--RUNS IN THE
-    FAMILY.--ANECDOTES.--"WHICH GOT THRASHED?"--A WRETCHED END.--AMERICAN
-    FEMALE PHYSICIANS.--A PIONEER.--A LAUGHABLE ANECDOTE.--"THREE WISE
-    MEN."--"A SHORT HORSE," ETC.--BOSTON AND NEW YORK FEMALE DOCTORS.--A
-    STORY.--"LOVE AND THOROUGHWORT."--A GAY BEAU.--UP THE
-    PENOBSCOT.--DYING FOR LOVE.--"IS HE MAD?"--THOROUGHWORT WINS.
-
-
-"From the earliest ages the care of the sick has devolved on woman. A
-group by one of our sculptors, representing Eve with the body of Abel
-stretched upon her lap, bending over him in bewildered grief, and striving
-to restore the vital spirit which she can hardly believe to have departed,
-is a type of the province of the sex ever since pain and death entered the
-world.
-
-"To be first the vehicle for human life, and then its devoted guardian; to
-remove or alleviate the physical evils which afflict the race, or to watch
-their wasting, and tenderly care for all that remains when they have
-wrought their result--this is her divinely appointed and universally
-conceded mission.
-
-"Were she to refuse it, to forsake her station beside the suffering, the
-office of medicine and the efforts of the physician would be more than
-half baffled. And yet, where her post is avowedly so important, she has
-generally been denied the liberty of understanding much that is involved
-in its intelligent occupancy. With the human body so largely in her charge
-from birth to death, she is not allowed to inquire into its marvellous
-mechanism. With the administering of remedies intrusted to her vigilance
-and faithfulness, she has not been allowed to investigate the qualities,
-or even know the names or the operations of those substances committed to
-her use. To be a student with scientific thoroughness, and to practise
-independently with what she has thus acquired, has been regarded as
-unseemly, or as beyond her capacity, or as an invasion of prerogatives
-claimed exclusively for men.
-
-"Indeed, the whole domain of medicine has been '_pre-empted_' by men, and
-in their '_squatter sovereignty_' they have sturdily warned off the
-gentler sex."--Rev. H. B. Elliot, in "_Eminent Women of the Age_."
-
-It seems to my mind, and ought to every thinking mind, to be ridiculously
-absurd that "man born of woman" should set up his authority against woman
-understanding "herself." "Man, know thyself," is stereotyped, but if it
-ever was put in type form for "woman to know herself," it has long since
-been "_pied_."
-
-"Search the Scriptures," and you would never mistrust that "eternal life,"
-or any other life, came, or existed a day, through woman. Mythological
-writers, who come next to scriptural, give woman no credit in medical
-science. We will except Hygeia, the goddess of health, the fabled daughter
-of AEsculapius. In the _medical_ history of no country does she occupy any
-prominence. There were "Witches," "Enchantresses," "Wise Women,"
-"Fortune-tellers," who in every age have existed to no small extent, and
-under various names have figured in the histories of all nations,
-receiving the countenance of prince and beggar--but females as physicians,
-_as a class_, have never been recognized by nations or governments, or
-scarcely by communities or individuals.
-
-In searching the memorials of English authors for two hundred years past,
-we can find but little to disprove the above assertions. In Mr.
-Jeaffreson's "Book of Doctors," the author fails to find memorials of
-their actions, as female physicians, sufficient to fill a single chapter;
-and those of whom he has made mention, he discourses of mostly in a
-ridiculous light, as though entirely out of their sphere, or as being of
-the coarser sort, and questions "if two score could be rescued from
-oblivion whom our ancestors intrusted with the care of their invalid wives
-and children."
-
-In this connection, let us briefly mention such as are better known in
-English literature, as doctresses especially as mentioned by Mr.
-Jeaffreson.
-
-Two ladies, who are immortalized in "Philosophical Transactions for 1694,"
-were Sarah Hastings and Mrs. French. Another, who received the support of
-bishops, dukes, lords, countesses, etc., in 1738-9, was Mrs. Joanna
-Stephens, "an ignorant and vulgar creature." After enriching herself by
-her specifics, consisting of a "pill, a powder and a decoction," she
-bamboozled the English Parliament into purchasing the secret, for the
-(then) enormous sum of L5000. "The Powder consists of _eggshells_ and
-_snails_, both calcined."
-
-"The decoction is made by boiling together Alicant _soap_, swine's-cresses
-burnt to a blackness, honey, camomile, fennel, parsley, and burdock
-leaves." "The pill consists of snails, wild carrot and burdock seeds,
-ashen keys, hips, and haws, all burnt to a blackness; soap and honey."
-
-When we take into consideration the fact that there were no "medical
-schools for females," at that day, nor until within the last ten or twelve
-years, that every female applicant was rejected by the medical colleges of
-England, and that all female practitioners were held in disrepute by both
-physician and the public, the above repulsive remedies may not so greatly
-excite our surprise.
-
-
-"CRAZY SALLY."
-
-The most remarkable woman doctor made mention of in English literature,
-was Mrs. Mapp, _nee_ Sally Wallin. We have collected these facts
-respecting her origin, character, and career, from _Chambers' Miscellany_
-and the _Gentlemen's Magazine_, 1736-7. Hogarth has immortalized her in
-his "Undertaker's arms." She is placed at the top of that picture, between
-Josh Ward, the _Pill_ doctor, and Chevalier Taylor, the quack oculist.
-(See page 668.)
-
-She was born in Weltshire, in 169-. Her father was a "bone-setter," which
-occupation "run in the family," like that of the Sweets, of Connecticut,
-or like the marine whom Mrs. Mapp saw one day, as she, in her carriage,
-was driving "along the Strand, O."
-
-Said sailor having a wooden leg, the doctress asked, "How does it happen,
-fellow, that you've a wooden leg."
-
-"O, easy enough, madam; my father had one before me. It sort o' runs in
-the family, marm," was the laconic reply. From a barefooted school-girl at
-Weltshire, where Sally obtained barely the rudiments of a common
-education, she became her father's assistant in bone-setting and
-manipulating.
-
-The next we hear of Miss Wallin, is at Epsom, where she became known as
-"Crazy Sally." She has been described as a "very coarse, large, vulgar,
-illiterate, drunken, bawling woman," "known as a haunter of fairs, about
-which she loved to reel, screaming and abusive, in a state of roaring
-intoxication."
-
-It is astonishing as true, that this unattractive specimen of the female
-sex became so esteemed in Epsom, where she set up as a physician, that the
-town offered her L100 to remain there a year! The newspapers sounded her
-praise, the gentry, even, lauded her skill, and physicians witnessed her
-operations.
-
-"Crazy Sally" awoke one morning and found herself famous. Patients of rank
-and wealth flocked from every quarter. Attracted by her success and her
-accumulating wealth, rather than by her _beauty_ or _amiable_ disposition,
-an Epsom swain made her an offer of marriage, which she, like a woman,
-accepted. This fellow's name was Mapp, who lived with her but for a
-fortnight, during which time he "thrashed her" (or she him, it is not just
-clear which) "three times," and appropriating all of her spare change,
-amounting to five hundred dollars, he took to himself one half of the
-world, and quietly left her the other. Our informant adds, "She found
-consolation for her wounded affections in the homage of the world. She
-became a notoriety of the first water; every day the public journals gave
-some interesting account of her, and her remarkable operations."
-
-The _Grub Street Journal_ of that period said, "The remarkable cures of
-the woman bone-setter, Mrs. Mapp, are too numerous to enumerate. Her
-bandages are extraordinarily neat, and her dexterity in reducing
-dislocations and fractures most wonderful. She has cured persons who have
-been twenty years disabled." Her patients were both male and female. Some
-of her most difficult operations were performed before physicians of
-eminence.
-
-Her carriage was splendid, on the panels of which were emblazoned her coat
-of arms. Regularly every week she visited London in this magnificent
-chariot drawn by four superb, cream-white horses, attended by servants,
-arrayed in gorgeous liveries. She put up at the Grecian Coffee-House, and
-forthwith her rooms would be thronged by invalids.
-
-Notices of her were not always of the most complimentary sort. Being one
-day detained by a cart of coal that was unloading in a narrow street of
-the metropolis, on which occasion she was arrayed in a loosely fitting
-robe-de-chambre, with large flowing sleeves, which set off her massive
-proportion most conspicuously, she let down the windows of her carriage,
-and leaning her bare arms upon the door, she impatiently exclaimed,--
-
-"Fellow, how dare you detain a lady of rank thus?"
-
-"A lady of rank!" sneered the coal-man.
-
-"Yes, you villain!" screamed the enraged doctress. "Don't you observe the
-arms of Mrs. Mapp on the carriage?"
-
-[Illustration: "DON'T YOU OBSERVE THE ARMS OF MRS. MAPP?"]
-
-"Yes--I _do_ see the arms," replied the impudent fellow, "and a pair of
-durned coarse ones they are, to be sure."
-
-On another occasion she was riding up Old Kent Road, dressed as above
-described. "Her obesity, immodest attire, intoxication, and dazzling
-equipage were, in the eyes of the mob, so sure signs of royalty, that she
-was taken for a court lady, of German origin, and of unpopular repute. The
-crowd gathered about her carriage, and with oaths and yells were about to
-demolish the windows with clubs and stones, when the nowise alarmed
-occupant, like Nellie Gwynn, on a similar occasion, rose in her seat,
-and, with imprecations more emphatic than polite, exclaimed,--
-
-"---- you! Don't you know who I am? I am Mrs. Sally Mapp, the celebrated
-bone-setter of Epsom!"
-
-"This brief address so tickled the humor of the rabble that the lady was
-permitted to proceed on her way, amid deafening acclamations and
-laughter."
-
-This famous woman's career may be likened to a rocket. She flashed before
-the people as suddenly, ascended as brilliantly to the zenith of fame, and
-fell like the burned, blackened stick.
-
-Mrs. Mapp spent her last days in poverty, wretchedness, and obscurity, at
-"Seven Dials," where she died almost unattended, on the night of December
-22, 1737. Her demise was thus briefly announced in the journals:--
-
-"Died at her lodgings, near Seven Dials, last week, Mrs. Mapp, the once
-much-talked-of bone-setter of Epsom, so wretchedly poor that the parish
-was obliged to bury her."
-
-Mr. Jeaffreson makes mention of two more "female doctors;" one an honest
-widow, mother of "Chevalier Taylor," who, at Norwich, carried on a
-respectable business as an apothecary and doctress, and Mrs. Colonel
-Blood, who, at Romford, supported herself and son by keeping an apothecary
-shop.
-
-
-AMERICAN FEMALE PHYSICIANS.
-
-Perhaps English authors and English readers may be satisfied to allow the
-above meagre and unenviable array of pretenders to stand on record as the
-representatives of "female doctors" in their liberal and enlightened
-country! Americans can boast of a better representative.
-
-While England claims a "Female Medical Society," and one "Female Medical
-College," the United States has several of the former, and three regularly
-chartered "Female Medical Colleges." In a recent announcement of the
-English college, it claims fifty students, "but the aim of the whole
-movement is at present only to furnish competent midwives."
-
-The "Maternity Hospital," of Paris (which existed long before the late
-Franco-Prussian war, but which we can learn nothing of since the fall of
-that once beautiful city), "afforded some opportunity for observation,
-receiving females nominally as students, but they were not allowed to
-prescribe in the wards, nor were they instructed in regard to the use and
-properties of the remedies there prescribed. Indeed, they can hardly rise
-above the position of proficient nurses," says our informant.
-
-Some few medical colleges of the United States are admitting females on
-the same footing as the heretofore more favored "lords of creation."
-
-A female college has been in existence in Philadelphia for above twenty
-years. The "New England Female Medical College" was chartered in 1856; but
-the "regular" colleges, as Yale, Harvard, etc., refuse all female
-applicants.
-
-New York has been more liberal towards the gentler sex. At Geneva,
-Rochester, Syracuse, and elsewhere, as early as 1849-50, medical schools
-of the more liberal sort, but of undoubted respectability and legal
-charters, opened their doors to female students. In 1869 the New York
-Female Medical College was chartered, since which time more than two
-hundred ladies have therein received medical instruction.
-
-In all the principal cities of the Union may be found from one to a dozen
-respectably educated and successful female practitioners, who have
-attained to some eminence in spite of the opposition of the "faculty," and
-the ignorant prejudices of the common people.
-
-It is surprising how early and persistently some men forget that they were
-"born of woman!" Their contempt of the capabilities of womankind would
-lead one to suppose them to be ashamed of their own mothers. Mark Twain's
-facetious but instructive speech, once delivered before an editorial
-gathering in Boston, ought to be rehearsed to them daily; yes, and
-enforced by petticoat government upon their notice till it became
-stereotyped into their stupid brains. Mark says,
-
-"What, sir, would the peoples of the earth be without woman? They would be
-scarce, sir,--almighty scarce! (Laughter.) Then let us cherish her; let us
-protect her; let us give her our support, our encouragement, our
-sympathy,--our--selves, if we get a chance.
-
-"But, jesting aside, Mr. President, woman is gracious, lovable, kind of
-heart, beautiful, worthy of all respect, of all esteem, of all deference.
-Not any here will refuse to drink her health right cordially, for each and
-every one of us has personally known, and loved, and honored the very best
-of them all,--_his own mother_!"
-
-Sarah B. Chase, M. D., a respectable and successful female physician of
-Ohio, gives the following excellent advice:--
-
-"I would not encourage any woman to study medicine, with the expectation
-of practising, who is not ready and willing--ay, _anxious_ and
-_determined_--to go through the same severe drill of preparation, the same
-thorough discipline, as is required of man before he is crowned with the
-honors of an M. D."
-
-
-A FEMALE PIONEER.
-
-Among the first successful female physicians of Boston, where she was born
-in 1805, is Harriot K. Hunt, M. D. Her father was a shipping merchant,
-who, by honesty and uprightness died comparatively poor, for riches are
-not always to the upright. Her mother is described by Rev. H. B. Elliot,
-"as one possessing a mind of remarkable qualities, argumentative,
-practical, independent, and, withal, abounding in tenderness and genial
-brightness." In 1830 we find Miss Hunt not only thrown upon her resources
-for her own livelihood (her father having left but barely the house that
-gave them shelter to be called their own), but the support and care of an
-only and invalid sister, somewhat her junior, were also entirely dependent
-upon her labors. As a school teacher she met the former, as a student and
-nurse she finally surmounted the latter. "What! more pedagogues turned
-doctors?"
-
-After nearly three years' employment of various physicians on the part of
-the elder sister, and the extreme suffering from the "distressing and
-complicated disease," and, what was worse, the "severest forms of
-prescriptions of the old school of physic" for the same time by the
-younger sister, the Misses Hunt were led to investigate for themselves.
-They purchased medical works, which they read early and late.
-
-In 1833 Harriot leased her house, and entered the office of a doctress,
-Mrs. Mott by name, in the double capacity of secretary and student. The
-younger sister became a patient of Mrs. Mott's. The husband of Mrs. Mott
-was an English physician, who, with his wife to attend the female portion
-of his patients, had established himself in Boston. Mrs. Mott was without
-a thorough medical education. "She made extravagant claims to medical
-skill in the treatment of cases regarded as hopeless." In 1835 Dr. Mott
-died, and Mrs. Mott returned to England. Under the treatment of the latter
-the invalid sister had so much improved in health as to be able to "walk
-the streets for the first time in three years;" yet where is the "old
-school doctor," or the veriest charlatan, that would give her the credit
-she so seemingly deserved in this case. Both were her opponents. Even the
-students of the neighboring medical school were "pitted against her." The
-old adage respecting his Satanic majesty having the credit due him, did
-not seem to apply to her case. But Mrs. Mott was more than a match for
-their cunning, if not for their scientific theorizings, as the following
-anecdote will show.
-
-"Three wise men of Gotham," that amiable lady, Mrs. Goose, tells us,
-"went to sea in a bowl; and had the bowl been stronger, my song would have
-been longer." This has its parallel in the three wise students of H----,
-who laid their wise heads together, and went to _see_--Mrs. Mott, the
-doctress, of Hanover Street. One was to pretend that he had some peculiar
-disease, for which he, with his anxious friends, wished to consult the
-"wise woman." They entered the doctor's office, and demanded to see the
-doctress. This was an open insult to the woman, as she only gave her
-attention to females and children. Nevertheless, Mrs. Mott, whose
-olfactory nerves were not so obtuse as to prevent her from distinguishing
-the aroma of that peculiar little animal quadruped of the genus _Mus_,
-obeyed the summons, and entered the presence of the three wise
-AEsculapians.
-
-Now the fun began. Not the fun that _was to be_ at the expense of the
-"ignorant old female quack," however.
-
-One of the gentlemen arose, and after a profound bow, began, with some
-embarrassment, to state his case.
-
-"But wait just a moment," the doctress interrupted. "You intimate that it
-is a _peculiar_ case. My fee for consultation in such cases is _three
-dollars_. Please hand over the money, and proceed."
-
-This was an unexpected demand. They had thought to have a little fun,
-expose the woman's ignorance, and have a "huge thing" to tell to their
-class-fellows, _and not pay for it_! Mrs. Mott was a woman, but she
-possessed powerful magnetic influence, and held fast to the point, viz.,
-her fee for consultation; and to the chagrin of the patient (?), and the
-astonishment of his chums, the three dollars were paid over to the
-doctress.
-
-"Now, sir, you will please state your case," said the lady, pocketing the
-fee, adjusting her eye-glasses, and seating herself for a consultation.
-
-"Yes. Well--it is a--a peculiar case," stammered the patient.
-
-"You have informed me of that point before. Please proceed," remarked the
-doctress with great complacency to the embarrassed fellow.
-
-"It's a delicate case," he blushingly replied.
-
-"O, indeed; then step into this private consulting room;" and arising, she
-led the way to an inner office, where the young man involuntarily
-followed, greatly to the amusement of the two remaining students, who
-remarked, "It is getting blamed hot for us here."
-
-[Illustration: THREE WISE STUDENTS CONSULTING A DOCTRESS.]
-
-In a moment, the invalid--greatly improved, one might judge, from his
-agility,--rushed from the private sanctum with a bound, grasped his hat
-from the table, exclaiming, "Come on, for God's sake!" and rushed from the
-house, followed by his now thoroughly affrighted companions.
-
-"What's the matter? What did the old tarantula say to you?" demanded the
-young man's chums, when well outside of the web into which they had so
-impudently intruded themselves.
-
-"Don't you ever ask me," he vociferated. "A ---- pretty mess you got me
-into. But if either of you ever again mistake that old woman for a fool, I
-hope to God she'll take you into her private consulting room."
-
-But to return to Miss Hunt and her sister. In 1855 or '56 the sisters
-opened an office in Boston. As with all young physicians without "dead
-men's shoes," professional support, or wealthy and influential friends to
-back them, patients gathered slowly at first, but with a steady increase,
-the care of whom soon devolved entirely upon Harriot, as her sister
-married, and retired from practice.
-
-In 1847 she had an extensive practice among a wealthy and influential
-class of people, which many an older physician of the sterner sex might
-envy. With a large practical knowledge, acquired in twelve years'
-experience, she applied to Harvard College for permission to attend a
-course of medical lectures. She was refused admission. In 1850 she again
-applied. The officers consented this time, but the students offered such
-objections to the admission of females into their presence, that Miss Hunt
-generously declined to avail herself of the long-coveted opportunity.
-
-"The Female Medical College," at Philadelphia, in 1853, granted Miss Hunt
-an honorary degree.... She is now in the midst of an extensive practice.
-Miss Hunt has lived a glorious, self-denying life, upholding her sister
-co-laborers, and the "dignity of the profession," never demeaning herself
-by stooping to sell her knowledge, by any of those disreputable practices
-that mark the avaricious M. D., the charlatan, the parasites, and the
-leeches of the profession, both male and female.
-
-Among eighty-five "female physicians" (?) of Boston, eighteen claim to be
-graduates of some college. We know of several who deserve a favorable
-mention here, but present limits will not admit.
-
-
-NEW YORK FEMALE DOCTORS.
-
-In New York city there are upwards of two hundred so-called "female
-physicians," about eighty per cent. of whom, according to the best
-authority,--police reports, etc.,--subsist by _vampirism_! Here, in this
-chapter, I shall mention a few of the really meritorious ones, reserving
-the large majority to be "shown up" under the various chapters as
-"fortune-tellers," "clairvoyants," and "astrologers."
-
-The subject of the following imperfect, because brief, sketch,--MRS. C. S.
-LOZIER, M. D.,--late of New York city, was born in Plainfield, New Jersey,
-in 1813. Her maiden name was Clemence S. Harned. Her father was a farmer
-by occupation, and a member of the Methodist church. Her amiable and
-excellent mother was a Quakeress. "Why should Mrs. Lozier, a gentle,
-modest, unambitious, home-loving woman, have chosen the calling of a
-physician?" asks her biographer. My answer would be, "She was a creature
-of circumstances." Another, in view of the facts to be related, would say,
-"_It was her destiny_."
-
-The valuable information which Mrs. Lozier gained, as a Quakeress, amongst
-that herbalistic people with which she was early associated, with study
-and practical observation enabled her to "act efficiently as a nurse and
-attendant upon the sick and afflicted of the neighborhood."
-
-The elder brother of Miss Clemence, William Harned, was a physician, as
-also were two of her cousins. In 1830 she was married to Mr. Lozier, and
-removed to New York. Her husband's health failing, and having no other
-support, Mrs. Lozier opened a select school, which she kept successfully
-till after the death of Mr. Lozier, in 1837.
-
-"During this period she read medicine with her brother. When her pupils
-were sick, she would generally be called in before a physician. She also
-was connected with the 'Moral Reform Society,' with Mrs. Margaret Pryor,
-and visited the sick and abandoned, often prescribing for them in
-sickness."
-
-Mrs. Lozier graduated at the Eclectic College, of Syracuse, in 1853,
-having attended her first course of lectures at the Central College,
-Rochester. From that time until her death, in 1870, she continued to
-minister to the sick and afflicted in the city of New York.
-
-At the commencement of this article we stated that Mrs. Lozier was a
-modest woman. This she continued to be to the end. Those leading
-physicians who often met her in consultation, with the thousands of
-patients who from time to time have been under her treatment, the students
-before whom she lectured during several years, the numerous friends who
-thronged her parlors, and the Christian professors with whom she
-mingled,--all, _all_ testify to this fact. "She denied both the expediency
-and practicability of mingling the sexes" in deriving a medical education.
-"Woman physician for women," was her motto. It was not always possible for
-her to refuse to prescribe for male patients, as many can testify. The
-efforts of some, far down in the scale of life, to connect the name of
-Mrs. Lozier with those disreputable practices by which the majority of
-female physicians--the parasites of the profession--subsist, yea, even
-gain a competence, in this city, and, consequently,
-_respectability_,--"for gold buys friends,"--have utterly failed, and her
-_name_ to-day, as it ever will, stands out boldly as belonging to one who
-was a self-denying, God-fearing, honorable, and successful female
-practitioner.
-
-Mrs. Lozier is said to have been a skilful surgeon, "having performed
-upwards of one hundred and twenty capital operations." In 1867-8 Mrs. L.
-visited Europe, where she was received with great marks of esteem by
-eminent men, and admitted to the hospitals.
-
-Her son, Dr. A. W. Lozier, is in practice in New York city.
-
-
-DOCTORS ELIZABETH AND EMILY BLACKWELL.
-
-The first female who received a medical diploma from any college in the
-United States was Miss Elizabeth Blackwell.
-
-This lady, who now stands only second in years of experience to Miss Hunt,
-of Boston, and second to no female in medical knowledge and usefulness,
-came to this country from England in 1831, when she was ten years of age.
-[A lady, of whom I made some inquiries respecting the above, assured me
-"it was only those females who were eligible as nurses, or prospective
-widowhood, which would make them eligible, were desirous of concealing
-their true age."]
-
-Being persuaded that her "mission" was to heal the sick, Miss Elizabeth
-applied, by writing, to six different physicians for advice as to the best
-means to obtain an education, and received from all the reply that it was
-"impracticable," utterly impossible, for a female to obtain a medical
-education; "the proposition eccentric," "Utopian," etc.
-
-It required just this sort of opposition to draw out the true character,
-and arouse the hidden abilities of such women as the Misses Blackwell.
-
-Elizabeth, while supporting herself by giving music lessons in Charleston,
-S. C., received regular medical instruction from S. H. Dixon, M. D., a
-gentleman and scholar, well known to the entire profession of two
-continents; also from Drs. John Dixon, Allen, and Warrington, the two
-latter in Philadelphia. Being considered by these gentlemen competent,
-Miss Blackwell applied to the medical schools of Philadelphia and New York
-for admission as a medical student, by all of which she was rejected
-"because she was a female." Finally she gained admission to the College at
-Geneva, N. Y., and graduated in 1848. Are the _males_ the only
-"oppressors" of the gentler sex? No, no; woman is woman's own worst enemy.
-
-Miss Blackwell was two years in Geneva, and so violent was the opposition
-of _her own sex_, that no lady in Geneva would make her acquaintance while
-there. "Common civilities at the table, even, were denied me." Entirely
-different was the treatment which she received at the hands of the
-students and professors of the college. "Here she found nothing but
-friendliness and decorum, and, on the eve of her graduation, the
-cordiality of the students in making way for her to receive her diploma,
-and pleasantly indicating their congratulations, was marked and
-respectful."
-
-The following morning her parlor was thronged with ladies.
-
-Miss Elizabeth Blackwell visited London and Paris, and was entered as
-student at St. Bartholomew's, and also at "_La Maternite_" (The
-Maternity).
-
-She returned to New York, and, notwithstanding "she found a blank wall of
-social and professional antagonism facing the woman physician, which
-formed a situation of singular loneliness, leaving her without support,
-respect, or counsel," she gained a foothold, and a respectable and living
-practice soon began to flow in and crown her persistent efforts.
-
-Now her sister Emily commenced the study of medicine, first with
-Elizabeth, subsequently with Dr. Davis, of Cincinnati Medical College. In
-1852 she and her sister were permitted to attend upon some of the wards
-(female, we presume) of Bellevue Hospital. In 1854 Emily graduated at
-Cleveland College (Eclectic, I think).
-
-Through their united efforts the "New York Infirmary for Women and
-Children" was established. "Up to the present time over fifty thousand
-patients have received prescriptions and personal care by this means."
-Contrary to Mrs. Lozier, "they are firm in their conviction of the
-expediency of mingling the sexes in _all_ scholastic training. In their
-mode of practice they adopt the main features of the 'regular' system."
-Nearly all other physicians are rather of the _Eclectic_ system. Like Miss
-Hunt, "she was bound by no regular school, as none had indorsed her."
-
-There are many contemporaries of Miss Hunt and the sisters Blackwell whom
-we might mention, but the history of one is the history of the whole, so
-far as early struggles, opposition of the profession, and neglect and
-disrespect of their own sex, is concerned.
-
-Frances S. Cooke, M. D., of the "Female Medical College," East Concord
-Street, Boston, Mrs. Jackson, Lucy Sewall, M. D., recently returned from
-Europe, and a half-score others of Boston, much deserve more than a
-passing notice, but our limited space will not permit. Also, Hannah E.
-Longshore, M. E. Zakezewska, of New York, Miss Jane E. Myers, M. D., Mrs.
-Mary F. Thomas, M. D. (Camden, Ind.), Miss Ann Preston, M. D., of
-Philadelphia, Mrs. Annie Bowen, of Chicago, and others, "too numerous to
-mention," who, in spite of the opposition from their own sex, from the
-profession, and the public in general, have gained a name and a competency
-through their professional efforts.
-
-"A woman's intellectual incapacity and her physical weakness will ever
-disqualify her for the duties of the medical profession," wrote Dr. ----,
-of Pennsylvania.
-
-Edward H. Dixon, M. D., of New York, in an article published in the
-"_Scalpel_" shows, by uncontroverted arguments and facts, that the male
-child, at birth, "in original organic strength," holds only an equal
-chance with the female; that "the chances of health for the two sexes at
-the outset are equal, and so continue till the period when they first
-attain the full use of their legs."
-
-Ask the mother of a family if the labor pains show any respect of sex.
-
-Does not the female show as strong lungs as the male in its _earliest_
-disapprobation of this unceremonious world? How about the comparative
-strength exhibited in the demonstrations of each when the lacteal fluid is
-not forthcoming in proportion to the appetite?
-
-Let us consult Dr. Dixon further,--and charge it to the females!
-
-"We give the girl two years' start of the boy,--we shall see why as we
-proceed. Both have endured the torture of bandaging, pinning (pricking),
-and tight dressing; both have been rocked, jounced on the knee, papped,
-laudanumed, paregoricked, castor oiled, suffocated with blankets over the
-head, sweltered with cap and feather bed, roasted at a fire of anthracite,
-dosed according to the formula of some superannuated doctor or
-'experienced nurse,' or both, for these people usually hunt in couples,
-and are very gracious to each other. We give the girl the start to make up
-for the benefit the boy has derived from chasing the cat, rolling on the
-floor, or sliding down the balustrade, and the torture _she_ had endured
-from her sampler, and being compelled to 'sit up straight, and not be
-_hoidenish_.'"
-
-[Illustration: "POH! YOU'RE A GIRL."]
-
-"Well, they are off to school. Observe how circumspectly our little miss
-must walk, chiding her brother for being 'too rude.' He, nothing daunted,
-(with a '_Poh! you're a girl_'), starts full tilt after an unlucky pig or
-a stray dog. If he tumbles into the mud and soils his clothes the result
-is soon visible in increase of lungs and ruddy cheeks."
-
-"In school the boy has the advantage. The girl 'mustn't loll,' must sit up
-erect, the limbs hanging down, her feet probably not reaching the floor,
-and the spinal column must bear the main support for three to six hours!
-The boy gets relief in 'shying' an occasional paper ball across the room,
-hitching about, and drawing his legs up on the seat, or sticking a pin in
-his neighbor, and a good run and jump at recess, changing the monotony of
-the recreation by an occasional fight after school. At dinner the girl has
-had no exercise to create an appetite, and her meal is made up of pastry
-and dessert. 'Remember that her muscles move the limbs, and are composed
-chiefly of azote, and it is the red meat, or muscle of beef or mutton,
-that she would eat if she had any appetite for it, that is to say, if her
-stomach and blood-vessels would endure it. The fact is, _the child has
-fever and loathes meat_.'"
-
-While the boy, hat in hand, rushes to the common or rear yard to roll
-hoop, fly his kite, or, in winter, to skate or coast down hill, the girl
-is reminded that she has "one whole hour to practise at the piano," either
-in a darkened room, from whence all God's sunshine is excluded, cold and
-cheerless, or the other extreme--seated near a heated register, from which
-the dry, poisonous fumes belch forth, destroying the pure oxygen she
-requires to inflate her narrowing lungs, and increase the fibrine, the
-muscle, and strength necessary to the exhausting exercise. She closes the
-day by eating a bit of cake and a plate of preserves.
-
-The hungry, "neglected" boy has returned, and, with swift coursing blood,
-strength of muscle and brain, catches a glance at his neglected lesson,
-comprehending it all the quicker by the change he has enjoyed, bawls
-boisterously for some cold meat, or something hearty, and tumbles into his
-bed, forgetting to close the door or window; whereas the girl must be
-attended to her room, "she is so delicate," and, being tucked well in on a
-sweltering feather bed, and bound down by heavy blankets, the doors and
-windows are carefully secured, and, committed to the "care of Providence,"
-she is left to swelter till to-morrow.
-
-The period for a great change arrives, often catching the poor, uninformed
-girl completely by surprise. Furthermore, the constant deprivation of her
-natural requirements--pure air, wholesome, nutritious food, unrestrained
-limbs and lungs--now become more apparent. In spite of the constant
-drilling which she has received, she feels exceedingly _gauche_. Her face
-is alternately pale and flushed; she suffers from headache,--"a rush of
-blood to the head." Stays and tight-lacing have weakened the action of the
-heart, cut off the circulation to the extremities, and deprived those
-parts of blood which now require the nutriment necessary to their strength
-and support in the time of their greatest need.
-
-The ignorant mother sends for a physician, perhaps almost as ignorant as
-herself; or, what is still worse, being a miserable time-server, seeing
-the admirable opportunity for making a bill, straightway commences a
-course of deception and quackery that, if it do not result in the death of
-the unfortunate patient, leaves her a miserable creature for life, with
-spinal curvature or consumption; or worse, by confinement and medication
-destroy her chance of restoration; and should some unlucky and ignorant
-young man take her as wife, and she become a mother, she surely will drag
-out a wretched existence as a victim to uterine displacement and its
-concomitant results.
-
-Physically, morally, and intellectually woman is not born inferior to man.
-We have briefly shown where and how she has fallen behind in the race of
-life in a physical view of the matter. The intellectual sense has kept
-pace only with the physical. Morally woman stands alone; by her own
-strength or weakness she stands or falls. Man scarcely upholds or
-encourages her. Her own sex, we have herein-before stated, is woman's own
-worst enemy! "Be thou as chaste as ice, or pure as snow, thou shalt not
-escape calumny," and if she fall, who shall restore her? The whole world
-is against her; one half makes her what she is, the other's scorn and
-neglect keeps her thus! The "ballot" will not keep woman from falling, nor
-raise her when fallen. The "church" does not exempt woman from the wiles
-of men, nor its adherents raise the fallen to their pristine strength,
-beauty, and respectability! Though Christ, the lowly, the magnanimous,
-said, "_Neither do I condemn thee_," his followers (?) cannot lay their
-hands upon their hearts and repeat his gracious words. Where is the fallen
-woman whom the church (not Roman Catholic) ever took in with that good
-faith and spirit of sisterly love or brotherly affection, with which a
-fallen man can, and is, often received into the church and into society?
-
-Echo answers, "Where?"
-
-O, deny this who will! It is no "attack upon the church;" merely a
-lamentably truthful statement.
-
-The church, like society, withdraws her skirts from contact with the
-fallen sister. "She is a wreck, drifted upon our shore, for which God
-holds some one accountable. Not a wreck that can be restored--not a wreck
-that money or repentance can atone for." (What! not money? Then surely she
-is lost, and forever!) "The damage is beyond earthly knowledge to
-estimate, beyond human power of indemnification. If ever the erring soul
-shall retrace her steps, it will be _Christ_ himself who shall lead her;
-if ever peace shall brood again over her spirit, it will be the Comforter
-who shall send the white-winged dove.
-
-"But the merest lad detects the lost woman. She carries the evidences of
-her guilt (or misfortune?) in the very clothes she wears, whether she is
-the richly dressed courtesan of the Bowery, or the beggarly street-walker
-of the village. There is a delicacy in, and a fine bloom on the nature of
-woman, which impurity smites with its first breath, and she cannot conceal
-the loss nor cover the shame!"
-
-  "If there be but one spot upon thy name,
-  One eye thou fearest to meet, one human voice
-  Whose tones thou shrinkest from, Woman! veil thy face,
-  And bow thy head and die!"
-
-Then is there no help for woman's condition in this cold, uncharitable
-world? you ask, in view of these facts related above. Yes; _but it rests
-with woman_. It must begin with the first breath the female infant draws.
-Educate her from the cradle. Give her the freedom of the boy, the pure air
-that the boy breathes; not the romping, rude, boisterous plays, perhaps
-(?), of the boy, but plenty of outdoor exercise, runs, slides, skates,
-rides; let her laugh, yea _shout_, if it be in a country place, till the
-woods ring again with the merry echoes, and the puzzled forest nymphs
-issue from their invaded retreats, endeavoring to solve the riddle by
-ocular demonstration which their ears have failed to unravel, viz., the
-sex, as revealed in the strength of voice and buoyancy of spirits, or
-expressed in unrestrained laughter!
-
-"O, shocking! How hoidenish!"
-
-Who says to laugh is "_hoidenish_?" A female invariably! And this is just
-what we are explaining: women must change tactics as teachers. There is
-time enough to instruct the _young_ lady, after the girl or the miss has
-developed muscle, vitalized her blood, and capacitated her brain for the
-sterner realities of life.
-
-Let women learn to be true teachers of women.
-
-Begin at the beginning. This is the only way. Stand by one another in the
-reform. Never mind the ballot; don't try to wear the _breeches_. No--the
-male attire I mean.
-
-The superfluous boarding-school education must give place to something
-more substantial. Mrs. Dashaway is to the point:--
-
-"No, Pauline; home eddycation is perferable. If there is a requestred spot
-on this toad-stool I detest more'n another it is a female cemetery, where
-bread-and-butter girls are sent and quartered for a finished eddycation;
-and it does finish most of em."
-
-"O, no, no, aunty. You mean _sequestered_ spot, and sent _quarterly_ to a
-_seminary_."
-
-"Well, well; you've got too many oceans in your head already of Greek and
-zebra, of itchiology, and other humerous works; as for me, give me pure
-blood, sound teeth, and a good constitution, and let them what's got them
-sort of diseases see the good Samaritan, and ten to eleven if he don't
-cure them in less than no time. Land! if Pauline ain't drummin' the
-piany!"
-
-Shall women remain passively resigned to the lamentable physical condition
-of her sex? or will she see where lies the main difficulty, viz., in a
-_wrong start_,--in the superfluous, debilitating, _namby-pamby_ education
-of the female infant, miss, young lady?
-
-Thoreau wrote that he believed resignation a _virtue_, but he "rather not
-practise it unless it became absolutely necessary."
-
-"Resignation" is unnecessary in this case. Only let every woman arouse her
-energies, and stand firmly in claiming her "rights" to rightly educate her
-children, girls as well as boys, showing no respect of sex in their
-_early_ training, thereby "commencing at the beginning." What is a house
-without a good foundation? You may build, and rebuild, and finally it will
-all topple over, overwhelming you in its ruins.
-
-There is no "right" that woman may claim for herself and sex in general
-but men must and will concede. Man is not your master. "Habit," "fashion,"
-"opinion," these are your only masters. These shackle woman.
-
-Do women dress for men? to please the opposite sex? or for each other's
-eye? "You know just how it is yourself." Poh! What do men, generally
-speaking, know of woman's dress? Absolutely nothing! I boldly assert that
-not one man in twenty, going out to a call, party, or even a concert or
-opera, knows the cut and color of the dress of his wife accompanying him.
-Woman dresses for women's inspection. Whatever she does for fear or favor
-of man else, woman dresses for her own sex.
-
-"What will Mrs. Codfish say when she sees this turned dress?"
-
-"Old Codfish," her husband, is worth at least fifty thousand dollars, and
-here is Mrs. Copyman, whose husband is as poor as "Job's turkey," standing
-in dread of that woman's criticism!
-
-Not one male in a thousand can detect a well turned dress, but I defy the
-most cunning dressmaker to alter, retrim, frill, and "furbelow" a dress
-that the female eye won't detect at a glance!
-
-"I rather pay the butcher's bill than the doctor's," says the father.
-
-"O, horrors! Just see that girl swallow the meat! Why, it will make your
-skin as rough as a grater and as greasy as an Indian's!" exclaims the
-mother.
-
-Miss Primrose keeps our village school; she who wears the trailing skirts,
-and was seen to cut a cherry in two parts before eating it, at the party
-last week. She almost went into convulsions--not of laughter, as I did--to
-see Kitty Clover astride a plank, with her brother on the opposite end,
-playing at "See-saw."
-
-"Here we go up--up--uppy; and here we go down--down--downy," they were
-singing in unison, when "ding, ding, ding!" went the school-bell, followed
-by a scream from Miss Primrose.
-
-With glowing cheeks--that's from the exercise--and downcast eye, from fear
-of Miss Primrose's anger, Kitty came demurely into the school-room before
-recess was half over.
-
-After a long lecture about her "masculine behavior," "horrid red
-countenance," and "rumpled dress," and "dishevelled hair," poor Kitty is
-sent to her form to "sit up straight, and not forget that she is a young
-lady hereafter."
-
-[Illustration: "HERE WE GO UP--UP--UPPY; AND HERE WE GO
-DOWN--DOWN--DOWNY."]
-
-And what of her brother who was on the other end of the plank? O, he is a
-boy! "That's what's the difference!"
-
-
-LOVE AND THOROUGHWORT.
-
-  "He'll never die for love, I know,
-  He'll never die for love, nor wear
-  Upon his brow the marks of care."
-
-This is a true story, written for this work, but published, by permission
-of the author, in the "American Union."
-
-"So you believe me totally incapable of truly loving _any_ girl, do you?"
-
-"I most assuredly do," was my positive answer.
-
-My friend, George Brown, turned and walked away a few paces, looking
-thoughtfully to the ground. He was a splendid looking man, about twenty
-years of age; my late school-fellow, my present friend and confidant. He
-was, what I did not flatter myself as being, a great favorite with the
-ladies. Handsome, tall, manly, of easy address, a fine singer and dancer,
-the only impediment to his physical perfection was, when the least
-excited, a hesitancy of speech--almost a stammer. Finally he turned and
-walked back to me, saying,--
-
-"Now, Ad, if you will agree to a proposition I have to offer, I will
-disprove your assertion, so oft repeated, that I never loved--not even
-that dear girl, Jenny Kingsbury."
-
-"First let me hear your proposition."
-
-"You have long desired to visit Bangor?"
-
-"Yes," I replied.
-
-"Let us harness 'Simon' early some fine morning for that delightful city;
-go by the way of B. and O., stop and see Jenny, who I have learned by
-roundabout inquiry resides with her aunt in the latter place. And," he
-added, triumphantly, "see for yourself if she isn't a girl to be loved."
-
-"O, no doubt Jenny Kingsbury 'is a girl to be loved;' so was Addie, and so
-was 'Ria, and a dozen others, whom you have sworn you loved so devotedly.
-O George, out upon your affections."
-
-"Will--will--you go? That's the question."
-
-"Yes--I will go--because I wish to visit Bangor very much," was my reply;
-and the time was at once set for the journey, which was to occupy two
-days.
-
-Mrs. Brown, the mother of my friend George, was a devout Christian. She
-believed in her Bible. Moreover, she was an excellent _nurse_, and next to
-her Bible, believed in _thoroughwort_. Thoroughwort tea, or thoroughwort
-syrup, was her panacea for all the ills, physical or moral, that ever was,
-or could be, detailed upon poor humanity.
-
-"Before you start, boys--"
-
-"Boys! Where are your _men_?" interrupted George.
-
-"Hear me!" continued Mrs. Brown. "Before you start for Bangor to-morrow
-morning, do you take a good drink of that thoroughwort syrup in the large
-jar on the first shelf in the pantry. It'll keep out the cold; for
-there'll be frost to-night, I think, and at five o'clock in the morning
-the air will be sharp. O, there is nothing equal to _thoroughwort_ for
-keeping out the cold."
-
-"Anything to eat in that pantry?" asked George, with a wink tipped to me.
-You see I was to sleep with him that night, preparatory to an early start
-for Bangor.
-
-"Yes, some cold meat, bread, and a pie. But don't forget to first take a
-dose of the thoroughwort syrup. Addison, you bear it in mind, for George
-is awful forgetful, especially about taking his thoroughwort." And Mrs.
-Brown detained us fully fifteen minutes, as she rehearsed the remarkable
-qualities of her favorite remedy,--"particularly for keeping out cold."
-
-"Mother thinks that condemnable stuff is meat, drink, and clothing,"
-remarked George, as we sought the pantry at an early hour on the following
-morning, not for the thoroughwort, but for sandwiches, pies, and the like.
-
-"Let me take a taste of the 'stuff,'" I said, as I noticed the jar so
-conveniently at hand.
-
-"O, no; not on an empty stomach. It will make you throw up Jonah if you
-do," exclaimed George, with an expression of disgust distorting his
-features. "Eat something first, and then, if you want to taste the
-condemned 'stuff,' do so, and the Lord be with you," he added, pitching
-into the eatables.
-
-Having made away with the pie, and much of the sandwiches, we turned our
-attention for a moment to the thoroughwort syrup. I took a taste, and
-George spilled a quantity on the shelf, "that mother may know we have been
-to the jar," he remarked, as we left the pantry.
-
-It was not yet five o'clock when we drove noiselessly away from the door.
-If I remember rightly, we were not _noiseless_ after that. The morning was
-delightful, slightly cool,--but that was no impediment to our warm blood,
-owing to the thoroughwort,--and we sped on in an exuberant flow of
-spirits. "Simon" was in excellent travelling order, and went without whip
-or spur. We should have reached the village of B., where we were to
-breakfast, and bait Simon, by eight o'clock, but George would insist on
-making the acquaintance, _nolens volens_, of half the farmers on the road,
-ostensibly to inquire the way to B.
-
-"Hallo!" he shouted, reining up Simon before a small farm-house. Up flew a
-window, and out popped a nightcapped head.
-
-"What d'ye want?" called a feminine voice. It was now hardly daylight, and
-the person could not distinguish us.
-
-"Excuse me, madam, for disturbing your slumbers; but can you inform a
-stranger if this is the right road to B.?" asked George, in his most
-pleasing manner.
-
-"O, yes; keep right on; take the first left hand road to the top o' the
-hill; then go on till yer--"
-
-We drove away, not waiting for the rest.
-
-"Do you suppose that old woman is talking there now, with her nightcapped
-head poked out of the window?" asked George, as we reached the hotel at B.
-
-"For shame!" said I. "Waking up all the people on the road, to inquire the
-way, with which you were perfectly familiar!"
-
-From B. our route lay along the western bank of the beautiful Penobscot. I
-need not detain you while I rehearse the delightful scenery _en route_ to
-Bangor; the variegated and gorgeous splendors of the autumnal leaves; the
-bending boughs, from the abundant ripened fruit, in colors of red, orange,
-and yellow on one hand, and on the other the bright, glassy waters of the
-broad river, dotted here and there by the white sails of boats and vessels
-lying becalmed in the morning sunshine.
-
-We reached the village of O., and George made inquiry for the residence of
-Mr. Kingsbury.
-
-"The large white house just across the bridge."
-
-"Thank you." And we drove up to the front yard.
-
-"Ne-ne-now, Ad, you go up and knock, and call for Miss Kingsbury;
-ye-ye-you know I st-stutter when I get ex-ex-cited," said George, hitching
-Simon to the horse-post.
-
-"What shall I say to her? and how shall I know Miss Kingsbury from any
-other lady?"
-
-"O, ask for her. I'll compose myself, and follow ri-right up. You'll know
-her from the description I have given you. Black eyes and hair, full
-form--O, there is nobody else like her. Come, go up and call for her."
-
-"Well, I'll go; and if I get stuck, come quickly to my rescue," I said,
-turning to the house. "Is _Miss_ Kingsbury at home?" I asked of the young
-lady who answered my knock. "This person is surely not Miss Jenny," I said
-to myself; "cross-eyed, blue at that, and light, almost red hair." She
-smiled, took a second look at me, and said,--
-
-"Who?"
-
-"Miss Jenny Kingsbury," I repeated.
-
-"Well--yes--I guess she is. Will you walk in?"
-
-"No, thank you. Will you please call her out?" And so saying, I beckoned
-to George.
-
-The girl closed the door, and I called to George "to make haste and change
-places with me." He came up just as the door reopened, and a beautiful
-dark-eyed woman appeared, whom he greeted as Miss Kingsbury.
-
-"I'll see to the horse," I said; and having taken a hurried glance at
-the young lady, I withdrew. For a full half hour I walked up and down
-beneath the maples in front of the house, watched the steamer Penobscot,
-as she came up the river, and from thence turned my attention to a
-schooner that was endeavoring to enter the cove, not far from the house. A
-light breeze had sprung up from the westward, and the channel being
-narrow, there seemed much difficulty in gaining the harbor.
-
-Finally George came to the door and beckoned me. I went in, and received
-an introduction to Mrs. Kingsbury and to Jenny.
-
-"O, but she is beautiful," I whispered to George.
-
-He was flushed and excited, consequently stammered some, and I was
-compelled to keep up a conversation, but I did not feel easy. Something
-was wrong. I detected more than one sly wink between aunt and niece, and
-when the cross-eyed miss came into the room, I could not tell whom she was
-glancing at, as her eyes "looked forty ways for Sunday," but she leered
-perceptibly towards first one, then the other of the ladies. I hinted to
-George that we must not delay longer. Still he tarried. Mrs. Kingsbury
-seemed interested in the movements of the schooner in the mouth of the
-cove. Miss Jenny was interested in George. I was interested in getting
-away from them all. Finally the schooner was moored to the wharf, and,
-standing at the window, I noticed a sailor, with a bundle on a stick over
-his shoulder, approaching the house. A whisper passed between aunt and
-niece, and the latter asked George to accompany her into an adjoining
-room.
-
-It was now past noon. A pleasant, savory smell came up from the kitchen,
-but no one asked me to put up the horse, and stay to dinner.
-
-The man with the bundle came familiarly into the yard. Soon George
-returned alone to the room, and seizing his hat, he stammered, "C-c-come,
-Ad," and rushed from the house.
-
-Mrs. Kingsbury attended me to the door, and wished me a pleasant ride to
-Bangor. George jumped into the buggy, seized the reins, and giving a cut
-upon the horse, bawled, "Go on, Simon."
-
-"Hold on. First let me unhitch him," I cried, seizing the spirited beast
-by the bridle. I unfastened the halter, and jumped into the carriage; and
-away flew Simon, snorting and irritated under the unnecessary cuts he had
-received from the whip. At the first corner George took the back road
-towards B.
-
-"Not that way! Hold on, and turn about," I exclaimed, catching at the
-reins. "Now stop and tell me all about it. Did you propose to Jenny? Has
-she accepted, and are you beside yourself with ecstatic joy? Come, tell
-me."
-
-"Ho! Simon." And laying down the reins, George drew out his wallet, and
-taking therefrom a bit of silk goods, he turned upon my astonished gaze a
-woe-begone look, and said,--
-
-"Ad, she's mum-mum-married--"
-
-"Married!"
-
-"Yes, married; and there's a piece of her wedding gown. The fellow you saw
-come in while there, with the bundle on a stick,--the
-land-lubberish-looking fellow,--was her husband. O my God! Did you ever?"
-And so relieving his mind, he caught the reins and whip, and away darted
-Simon at a fearful rate of speed.
-
-At Bangor I said to George,--
-
-"Well, there probably is no love lost on either side. She sold out at the
-first bid, and you never had the least hold on her affections."
-
-"Ah, I have had her confidence in too many moonlight walks to believe
-that," was his reply.
-
-"And it was all moonshine,--that's evident," I said.
-
-"No, no; I wish it was. I never shall love again," said George, with a
-deep sigh, and a sorry-looking cast of countenance.
-
-"No, I suppose not," was my non-consoling reply.
-
-"Still, do you believe I never loved that darling girl?" he asked, almost
-in a rage. "If that man--that _fellow_--should die with the autumn leaves,
-I would at once marry Jenny, who loves me still," he exclaimed, pacing the
-room like an enraged lion.
-
-"He won't die, however. He looks healthy and robust, and will outlive you
-and your affection for his wife," I replied, with a derisive laugh.
-
-It rained the next afternoon, as we returned home by a shorter route than
-_via_ O. and B. George talked a great deal of Jenny on the way back, and
-said he never should get over this fearful disappointment.
-
-"Only think of the lovely Jenny Kingsbury marrying that fellow with the
-bundle and the stick! O, I shall be sick over it; I know I shall."
-
-"Especially if you take a bad cold riding in this storm," I added, by way
-of consolation. "However, you can take some of your mother's good
-thoroughwort--"
-
-"Confound the thoroughwort," he interrupted.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-"Did you know that George is sick?" asked his little brother of me the
-following day.
-
-"No. Is he much sick?" I inquired, in alarm.
-
-"O, yes; he's awful sick--or was last night; and mother fooled him on a
-dose of fresh thererwort tea, which only made him sicker," replied the
-little chap, turning up his nose in disgust.
-
-"Is he better now?" I inquired.
-
-"O, yes; ever so much _now_. I don't know what ma called the disease he's
-got; but howsomever she said thererwort was good for it, and I guess it
-is, 'cause he's better."
-
-I was called away, and did not see my friend George till a week after our
-return from the little trip to B. He never mentioned Jenny afterwards, nor
-said a word about the thoroughwort tea. He took to horses after that,
-and eventually married a poor, unpretending girl, quite unlike the
-dark-eyed, beautiful, and wealthy Miss Jenny Kingsbury.
-
-Mrs. Brown still recommends her favorite panacea for all ails, physical or
-moral; but whenever she mentions it in George's presence, he exclaims,
-with a look of disgust,--
-
-"O, confound the thoroughwort!"
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-VI.
-
-QUACKS.
-
-                                "Verily,
-    I swear, 'tis better to be lowly born,
-    And range with humble livers in content,
-    Than to be perked up in a glistening grief
-    And wear a golden sorrow."--KING HENRY VIII.
-
-    ANECDOTE IN ILLUSTRATION.--DERIVATION.--FATHER OF QUACKS.--A MEDICAL
-    "BONFIRE."--THE "SAMSON" OF THE PROFESSION.--SIR ASTLEY.--U. S.
-    SURVEYOR-GENERAL HAMMOND.--HOMEOPATHIC QUACKS, ETC.--A MUDDLED
-    DEFINITION.--"STOP THIEF!"--CRIPPLED FOR LIFE!--TWO POUNDS
-    CALOMEL.--VICTIMS.--WASHINGTON, JACKSON, HARRISON.--THE COUNTRY
-    QUACK.--A TRUE AND LUDICROUS ANECDOTE.--DYEING TO DIE!--A SCARED
-    DOCTOR.--DROPSY!--A HASTY WEDDING!--A COUNTRY CONSULTATION.--"SCENES
-    FROM WESTERN PRACTICE."--"TWIST ROOT."--A JOLLY TRIO.--NEW "BUST" OF
-    CUPID.--AN UNWILLING LISTENER.
-
-
-On looking over my "collection" on quacks and charlatans, I am so strongly
-reminded of a little anecdote which you may have already seen in print,
-but which so well illustrates painfully the facts to be adduced in this
-chapter, that I _must_ appropriate the story, which story a western
-engineer tells of himself.
-
-"One day our train stopped at a new watering-place, being a small station
-in Indiana, where I observed two green-looking countrymen in 'homespun'
-curiously inspecting the locomotive, occasionally giving vent to
-expressions of astonishment.
-
-"Finally one of them approached and said,--
-
-"'Stranger, are this 'ere a injine?'
-
-"'Certainly. Did you ever see one before?'
-
-"'No, never seen one o' the critters afore. Me an' Bill here comed down t'
-the station purpose to see one. Them's the biler--ain't it?'
-
-"'Yes, that is the boiler,' I answered.
-
-"'What you call that place you're in?'
-
-"'This we call a cab.'
-
-"'An' this big wheel, what's this fur?'
-
-"'That's the driving wheel.'
-
-"'That big, black thing on top I s'pose is the chimley.'
-
-"'Precisely.'
-
-"'Be you the engineer what runs the machine?'
-
-"'I am,' I replied, with the least bit of self-complacency.
-
-"He eyed me closely for a moment; then, turning to his companion, he
-remarked,--
-
-"'Bill, it don't take much of a man to be a engineer--do it?'"
-
-The reader will perceive the distinction which we make between humbugs,
-quacks, and charlatans, though one individual may comprehend the whole.
-
-"Quacks comprehend not only those who enact the absurd impositions of
-ignorant pretenders, but also of _unbecoming acts of professional men
-themselves_."--_Thomas' Medical Dictionary._
-
-This is the view we propose to take of it in this chapter, in connection
-with the derivation of the word.
-
-The word _quack_ is derived from the German "_quack salber_," or mercury,
-which metal was introduced into the _Materia Medica_ by _Philippus
-Aureolus Theophrastus Paracelsus Bombast ab Hohenhein_!
-
-"So extensively was quicksilver used by Paracelsus and his followers that
-they received the stigma of 'quacks.'"--See _Parr's Medical Dictionary_.
-
-There is some controversy respecting the date of birth of Paracelsus, but
-probably it was in the year 1493. He was born in Switzerland.
-
-[Illustration: THE INQUISITIVE COUNTRYMEN.]
-
-Professor Waterhouse (1835) says, "He was learned in Greek, Latin, and
-several other languages. That he introduced quicksilver," etc., "and was a
-vain, arrogant profligate, and died a confirmed sot."
-
-"Paracelsus was a man of most dissolute habits and unprincipled character,
-and his works are filled with the highest flights of unintelligible
-bombastic jargon, unworthy of perusal, but such as might be expected from
-one who united in his person the qualities of a fanatic and a
-drunkard."--_R. D. T._
-
-Mercury was known to the early Greek and Roman physicians, who regarded it
-as a dangerous poison. They, however, used it externally in curing the
-_itch_, and John de Vigo employed it to cure the plague. Paracelsus used
-it internally first for _lues venerea_, which appeared in Naples the year
-of his birth, though doubtless that disease reached far back, even into
-the camp of Israel. The heroic doses of Paracelsus either destroyed the
-disease at once, _or the patient_. Paracelsus proclaimed to the world that
-there was no further need of the _Materia Medica_, especially the writings
-of Galen, and burned them in public; his "Elixir Vitae" would cure all
-diseases. But in spite of his wonderful knowledge and his life-saving
-elixir, he died of the diseases he professed to cure, at the early age of
-forty-eight, while Galen lived to the age of seventy.
-
-So much for the "father of quacks."
-
-For nearly four centuries mercury has been exhibited in the _Materia
-Medica_ to a greater extent than any other remedy. Doubtless it possesses
-great medicinal virtues, but its abuse--the "heroic doses" used by the
-ignorant and brainless quacks, both graduates of some medical college, and
-_soi-disant_ physicians--has made its name a terror to the people and a
-reproach to the profession. To assail it is to tread on dangerous ground;
-to invade the "rights" of a numerous host of worshippers; to uncover an
-ulcer, whose rottenness, though smelling to heaven, is protracted for the
-pecuniary advantage of the prescriber.
-
-Eminent physicians in every age since its introduction, and in every
-enlightened country, have protested against its abuse; yea, even its use!
-They have called its users "_quacks_," the most contemptible epithet ever
-introduced into medical nomenclature,--the "_Samson_" of the profession,
-because through the instrumentality of an ass and his adherents, "it has
-slain its thousands."
-
-I need not quote those distinguished practitioners who have recorded their
-testimony against its general and indiscriminate use. Their name is
-legion, and every well-informed physician is aware of the fact.
-
-Do not "well-informed physicians" prescribe calomel?
-
-Certainly; but cautiously, and often under protest.
-
-It is recorded of Sir Astley Cooper that he made serious objections to its
-free use in the wards of the Borough Hospitals, and forthwith the "smaller
-fry" made such a breeze about his ears that he seemed called upon to
-defend, and even palliate, his offence. Dr. Macilwain says that Sir Astley
-is reported to have said in reply to those who demurred,--
-
-"Why, gentlemen, was it likely that I should say anything unkind towards
-those gentlemen? Is not Mr. Green (surgeon of St. Thomas) my godson, Mr.
-Tusell my nephew, Mr. Travers my apprentice (surgeon of St. Thomas), Mr.
-Key and Mr. Cooper (surgeons of Guy's Hospital) my nephews?"
-
-This was very _naive_, and as good illustration of the value of evidence
-in relation to one thing (his provision for his relatives) which is stated
-in relation to another.
-
-Herein Sir Astley exposed a weakness with which the democratic opponents
-of President Grant have accused him, viz., of furnishing comfortable
-positions for his relatives.
-
-Sir John Forbes, when at the head of the medical profession of England in
-1846, wrote an earnest appeal to his brethren to rescue their art from the
-ruin into which it was falling, saying in relation to modes of curing
-diseases, "Things have become so bad that they must mend or end." This was
-"dangerous ground," and some physicians of the day feared Dr. Forbes had
-done an immense mischief. After his death, be it remembered, some of the
-"medical magnates" of this country virtuously refused to subscribe to his
-monument fund, saying, "it was a misfortune to mankind (?) that he had
-ever lived."
-
-Dr. W. A. Hammond, surgeon general of the United States, also blundered
-when, by an order dated at _Washington, May 4, 1863_, he struck calomel
-from the supply table of the army. This proscription was on the ground
-that "it has so frequently been pushed to excess by military surgeons, as
-to call for prompt steps to correct its abuse.... _This is done with the
-more confidence, as modern pathology has proved the impropriety of the use
-of mercury in very many of those diseases in which it was formerly
-unfailingly administered._"
-
-_The American Medical Times_ (regular) said, "The order appeared not only
-expedient, but judicious and necessary, under the circumstances." _What_
-circumstances? Read on further, and the _Times_ editor explains: "No evil
-can result to the sick soldier from the absence of calomel, however much
-he may need mercurialization, when such preparations as blue pill,
-bichloride and iodide of mercury, etc., remain. But, in prescribing these
-latter remedies, the practitioner generally has a very definite idea of
-the object he wishes to attain, which is not always the case in the use of
-calomel."
-
-By this timely order it was estimated that ten thousand soldiers were
-released from a morning dose of calomel!
-
-Was this a blow aimed at "quackery"? Was Dr. Hammond, "a member of the
-medical profession highly esteemed for scientific attainments," attempting
-a reform in medicine? Any way, Dr. Hammond shared the fate of all medical
-reformers. He was suspended. He was disgraced.
-
-The American Medical Association met at Chicago, and set up a strong
-opposition to the "order." Certain persons brought charges against the
-surgeon general. A commission was appointed. The _Times_ said, "The whole
-affair has the appearance of a secret and deliberate conspiracy against
-the surgeon general.... The commission is, in the first place, headed by a
-person known to be hostile to the surgeon general. This fact throws
-suspicion upon the _object_ of the investigation." Just so. The "object"
-was to appoint some one instead of Dr. Hammond, who would repeal the
-obnoxious order. No matter what _pretence_ was set up beside, this is the
-fact of the case, and the people and the profession know this to be true.
-
-But how shall we judge of the motives of Dr. Hammond but by _appearances_?
-Who so well knew the value, or injury, of calomel, as he who had used it
-for twenty odd years? Admitting Professor Chapman, of Philadelphia, was
-within twenty years of right when he said, "He who resigns the fate of his
-patient to calomel, ... if he has a tolerable practice, will, in a single
-season, lay the foundation of a good business for life," did not Dr. H.
-exhibit a little selfishness in attempting to deprive young practitioners
-of the opportunity of laying for themselves a foundation for a prosperous
-future?
-
-"Doubtless," said a medical journal of the day, "all _quacks_ and
-_irregulars_ are congratulating themselves upon the appearance of this
-'order.'" This leads us to ask, "Who are the quacks?"
-
-The governor of Ohio, in 1861, made inquiry of the United States surgeon
-general, to know if the regiments of that state could be allowed to choose
-between allopathic and homeopathic surgeons.
-
-"_No: I'll see them damned to hell first_," was the gracious reply.
-
-The resolutions drawn up and adopted by the New York Academy of Medicine
-as an offset against the appeal for admission of homeopathic surgeons into
-the army (1862), contained the following:--
-
-"3d. That it (homeopathy) is no more worthy of such introduction than
-other kindred methods of practice as closely allied to _quackery_."
-
-There were then some thirty-five hundred of that sort of "quacks"
-practising under diplomas--mostly obtained from regular colleges--in the
-United States. Shame!
-
-The Royal College, Dublin, the same year, in a resolution passed, called
-Mesmerism and homeopathy quackery.
-
-In an article in the "Scalpel," from the able pen of Dr. Richmond,--about
-the time that the "swarm of vampires that was the first fruits of the
-tribe of rooters that swarmed the State of New York under the teachings of
-T. and B." (Thompson and Beach),--he calls botanics and eclectics quacks
-and Paracelsuses! Clear as--mud!
-
-So! The calomel practitioners are quacks. The homeopathics are quacks. The
-eclectics, and botanics, and Mesmerics, are all quacks! Any more,
-gentlemen? This is getting things somewhat mixed, and I rush to
-Dunglison's Medical Dictionary for explanation. Why, a quack is a
-_charlatan_! I turn to "Charlatan." Lo, it is quack! Clear as mud, again.
-
-In my perplexity I consult Webster. He refers me to a _goose_! So I rush
-to Worcester, and he implies it is a _duck_! Perhaps the _bill_ has
-something to do with the name; especially as I am reminded of a suit
-brought by a Boston M. D. to recover the exorbitant sum of three hundred
-dollars for reducing a dislocation.
-
-Therefore, summing up this "uncertainty," it seems to be a convenient
-word, expressive of contempt, which any professional man may hurl at any
-other whom he dislikes, or with whom he is not in fellowship.
-
-In its general use it is the _thief_ calling, "Stop thief."
-
-It was no unusual practice for physicians of the sixteenth and seventeenth
-centuries to use calomel in scruple, and even drachm doses. Mazerne
-"habitually administered calomel in scruple doses." Yandal gave it by the
-table-spoonful. I knew a physician in Maine who usually administered it by
-the tea-spoonful, and I saw a woman at Deer Isle, Me., suffering from true
-anchylosis of the jaw, in consequence of thus taking his prescription. In
-the same town was a man who was made completely imbecile by overdoses of
-mercury. In the town of B----l, same county and state, once lived an old
-quack, for convenience sake, near a large graveyard. _He "owned" it._ That
-is, he is said to have more victims laid away therein than all the other
-doctors who ever practised in town. "I knew him well." Once he sent to
-Boston for _two ounces_ of calomel. There was no steam conveyance in those
-days, and a sea captain took the order. By some mistake, _two pounds_ were
-sent. It was not returned. "O, never mind," said the doctor; "I shall use
-it all some time."
-
-Every state, county, yes, every town, in the Union has its victims to this
-quackery. In Rochelle, Ill., is a remarkable case, a merchant. Almost
-every joint in his frame is rendered useless. He can speak, and his brain
-is active. He has a large store, and he is carried to it every day, and
-there, stretched upon a counter, he gives directions to his employes.
-Though comparatively young, his hair is blanched like the snow-drift,
-falling upon his shoulders, and he is hopelessly crippled for life. "He
-does not speak in very flattering terms of the calomel doctors," said my
-informant. Neither do the thousands of diseased and mutilated soldiers,
-the victims to quackery while in the army.
-
-"SPEAKING FACTS.--A little boy, ten years of age, and having a paralyzed
-right leg, may be seen occasionally among his more able-bodied companions,
-the newsboys, unsuccessfully striving to 'hoe his row' with his rougher
-and more vigorous fellows. The limb is wholly dead, so far as its
-usefulness is concerned and it was caused by giving the little fellow
-overdoses of calomel, when he was an infant.
-
-"Another victim to calomel lives in the city of Hartford, in the person of
-a young lady of sixteen, who would be handsome but for deformities of face
-and mouth, occasioned by calomel given to her when a little child. She
-cannot open her mouth, and her food is always gruel, etc., introduced
-through the teeth. But the doctors stick to calomel as the sheet anchor of
-their faith."
-
-Behold WASHINGTON, who had passed through the battles of his country
-unharmed, and who in his last illness had, in the brief space of twelve
-hours, ninety ounces of blood drawn from his veins, and in the same space
-of time taken sixty grains of calomel!
-
-Who wonders that he should request his physician to allow him to "_die in
-peace_"?
-
-Andrew Jackson was another victim to calomel, as well as to the lancet, as
-the following letter shows:--
-
-    "HERMITAGE, October 24, 1844.
-
-    "MY DEAR MR. BLAIR: On the 12th inst., I had a return of hemorrhage,
-    and two days after, a chill. With a lancet to correct the first, and
-    calomel to check the second, I am _greatly debilitated_.
-
-    ANDREW JACKSON."
-
-Was not this double quackery? First, it was the _Similia similibus
-curantur_ (like cures like), of the homeopathists, which the Academy of
-Medicine has termed quackery. Second, it was exhibiting calomel to the
-injury (debilitating) of the patient.
-
-President Harrison was another victim.
-
-Are not these historical facts? Nevertheless, it is treason to mention
-them. "And why should any truth be counted as treasonable?" the honest and
-intelligent reader is led to inquire. "For truth is mighty, and must
-prevail," eventually.
-
-Yes, yes, truth will prevail. When bigotry and old-fogy notions are
-uprooted from the profession, and all educated and benevolent physicians
-strike hands and join fortunes to eradicate and discountenance all forms
-of quackery amongst themselves, they will then possess the power to
-suppress outside quackery. Far too many make a _trade_ of the
-_profession_; and just so long as educated physicians countenance or
-practise any one form of quackery, so long will they be powerless to check
-the abominations of charlatans and impostors outside of the profession.
-
-We have not introduced the foregoing facts in the interest of any
-persuasion. With the bickerings of the various schools of medicine we
-propose to have nothing to do, except to seize upon such truths as those
-otherwise useless quarrels are continually revealing. Opposition will not
-weaken a truth, nor strengthen a falsehood. You who are in the right need,
-therefore, have no fear as to final results.
-
-It is hard to kick against the pricks of custom, and custom has perverted
-the word which is the text of this chapter, and it is now more commonly
-applied to the ignorant, boastful _pretender_ to the science of medicine.
-
-Now we will introduce a few facts obtained from without the profession.
-
-
-THE COUNTRY QUACK.
-
-In the town of P----, Conn., there resided two doctors. One, old Dr. B., a
-regular, and the other, Dr. S--h, an irregular. It was in the autumn, and
-a fever was prevailing at this time, of a very malignant character. From
-over-exertion and exposure Dr. B. was taken sick, and in a few days fever
-supervened. This news spread terror over the immediate community, and the
-old doctor becoming delirious, his wife and family soon partook of the
-terror. A neighboring physician was sent for, but being absent, he did not
-at once respond; and the invalid becoming, as they feared, rapidly worse,
-Dr. S. was reluctantly called. He was known to be an ignoramus, formerly a
-peddler, a farmer, horse-jockey, a fifth-rate country lawyer, and, lastly,
-a doctor. Had Dr. B. retained his senses, he would have sooner died than
-have admitted his enemy, this "rooter," into his house. He came, however,
-with great pomposity, examined the patient, whose delirium prevented
-resistance, and ordered an immediate application of the juice of
-poke-berries rubbed over the entire skin of the old doctor, as a
-febrifuge.
-
-"But," inquired the wife, timidly, "is not this an unusual prescription,
-Dr. S.?" The doctor replied that it was a new remedy, but very
-efficacious. "You see," he added, with many a hem and haw, "it will
-out-herod the blush of the skin, put to shame the fever, which retires in
-disgust, and so relieves the patient."
-
-"And won't he die, if we follow this strange prescription?" asked a
-friend, while the doctor was proceeding to deal out a large powder.
-
-"No, no; ahem! _You_ do the _dyeing_, to prevent the _dying_. Haw, haw!"
-roared the vulgar old wretch, convulsed by his own pun, and the
-anticipation of the ludicrous corpse that he expected to see within a few
-days.
-
-There was no alternative. The prescription must be followed, and the
-children were sent to the woods to gather the ripe berries. The quack next
-proceeded to deal out a dose of lobelia and blood-root, which he left on
-the desk where Dr. B. prepared medicines when in health, giving directions
-for its administration, and in high glee took his departure. The
-inspissated juice of the highly-colored berries was applied over the face,
-arms, and body of the unconscious doctor, the remarkable appearance of
-whom we leave the reader to imagine.
-
-By mistake, a large dose of camphorated dover's powders which lay on the
-table was substituted for the lobelia of Dr. S., which with the warm
-liquid applied to the skin, checked the fever, and, contrary to the hope
-and expectation of Dr. S., the following morning found his patient in a
-fine perspiration, and the neighboring physician arriving, he was soon
-placed in a condition of safety.
-
-Notwithstanding Dr. S. told some friends of the joke,--for the worst have
-their friends, you know,--he was known to have prescribed for Dr. B., his
-sworn enemy; and as the patient was pronounced convalescent, S. received
-all the credit, and forthwith his services were in great demand. Day and
-night he rode, till, by the time Dr. B. got out, he was completely
-exhausted! He became alarmed lest he should take the fever. Such fellows
-are ever cowards when anything ails their precious selves. He actually
-became feverish with fear and excitement, and took his bed--and his
-emetic. He took either an overdose, or not enough, and for hours remained
-in the greatest distress. Finally, as a _dernier resort_, his wife sent
-for Dr. B.! Now came his turn to avenge the insult of the painting by
-poke-berries, which stain was yet scarcely removed from the skin of the
-old doctor.
-
-"I'll give him a dose; I'll put my mark on him--one that milk and water,
-or soap, cannot remove. O, I'll be avenged!" exclaimed Dr. B., as he
-mounted his gig, and drove to Dr. S.
-
-"O doctor, doctor! I am in fearful distress. Can you help me? Will I die?"
-whined S., on beholding his opponent.
-
-"No; not such good news. Those born to hang don't die in their beds. But
-you are very sick, and must abide my directions."
-
-"Yes, yes. Thanks, doctor. This blamed lobelia is killing me, though."
-
-"Then take this." And Dr. B. administered a half tea-spoonful of ipecac,
-to bring up the lobelia. So far was good.
-
-"Now a basin of water and a sponge," said Dr. B., which being procured, he
-seemed to examine for a moment very curiously; then ordered the face,
-neck, arms, and hands of the patient bathed well with the fluid.
-
-On the following morning Dr. B. was sent for, post haste, with the
-cheering message that "mortification had set in, and his patient was
-dying."
-
-Off posted the doctor, calling several neighbors, _en route_, who thronged
-the apartment of the invalid doctor in speechless astonishment.
-
-[Illustration: CURIOUS EFFECT OF A FEVER.]
-
-"I'm dying, Dr. B.; O, I'm dying," groaned S., rolling to and fro on his
-bed.
-
-"No, you are not. I told you before, no such good news. Your fever is all
-gone. You are scared--that's what's the matter," replied Dr. B.
-
-"But look, just look at the color of my skin,--all mortifying," said S.
-
-"O, no; that is merely dyed with _nitrate of silver_. It's much better
-than poke-berries--much better," repeated Dr. B.
-
-The recovered patient leaped from his bed, and, with an oath, made
-straight for the doctor; but the bystanders, though convulsed with
-laughter, caught the enraged victim, while, amid the cheers and laughter
-of the crowd, Dr. B. made his escape, saying to himself,--
-
-"The nitrate of silver I put in the basin worked like a charm."
-
-The story soon circulated, and Dr. S., being unable to remove the deep
-stain from his skin, and the curious rabble from his door, left for parts
-unknown. Dr. B., on revisiting his patients, who now rejoiced in his
-recovery, found that S. had not only dispensed lobelia and blood-root, but
-had bled and mercurialized several.
-
-
-REMARKABLE DROPSY.
-
-The writer was acquainted with a young physician who was unceremoniously
-discharged by the family of a beautiful young lady to whom he had been
-called to prescribe, in a country village, his offence being the discovery
-of the true source of the patient's (?) indisposition, which fact he
-_dared_ to intimate to the mother. "An older and more experienced
-physician" succeeded him, who reversed the diagnosis, and pronounced it "a
-clear case of _dropsy_," and the young M. D. went into disrepute. During
-the entire winter the old doctor made daily visits to his patient. Daily
-had the old ladies of the neighborhood adjusted their "specs," smoothed
-down their aprons, and, watching the doctor's return, run out to the gate
-to inquire after the health of the lady, the belle of the town.
-
-"O, she's _convalescent_," was his usual reply, with due professional
-dignity; and thus the matter stood till a crisis came.
-
-[Illustration: MARRYING A FAMILY.]
-
-There was a ball in the village one night. About eleven o'clock a
-messenger appeared in the room, who hastily summoned a certain young
-gentleman, a scion of one of the "first families" in town. At the same
-time the minister was called, and the young man, standing by the bed,
-holding the invalid lady by the right hand, while on his left arm he
-supported a beautiful babe but an hour old, was married to the
-"convalescent" patient. The old doctor had run a beautiful "bill," but it
-was his last in that village.
-
-
-A COUNTRY CONSULTATION.
-
-The difficulty of obtaining competent counsel in the country can only be
-fully comprehended by the intelligent physician who has had experience
-therein.
-
-From Dr. Richmond's "_Scenes in Western Practice_," I have selected the
-following lamentable incidents, which I have abbreviated as much as is
-consistent with the facts, related by the doctor, who in this case was
-called to a wealthy and influential family, two of whom, wife and child,
-were prostrated by epidemic dysentery.
-
-"As my credit was at stake, an old and very grave man was, at my
-suggestion, added to the consultation, to guard our reputation from the
-usual visitation of gossiping slander that always follows a fatal result
-in the country. He examined the child, and gave his opinion that the
-symptoms resembled those of ipecac!... But death was ahead of the doctors,
-and the little sufferer passed quickly away to a better world.
-
-"Another child had died in the vicinity, and the _neighbors_ decided on a
-change of doctors for the lady. By my consent the inventor of the
-'Chingvang Pill' was called, as I assured my friend his wife would now
-recover without either of us!
-
-"He came, and readily detected the fact that he was in luck. His patient
-and fees were both safe, and I was floored.
-
-"'Of course, Dr. R., you will call when _convenient_,' was a polite way of
-'letting me down easily,' and I did call.
-
-"Everything went on swimmingly for two days, when suddenly the scale
-turned; two other children were taken vomiting bile and blood. The doctor
-was in trouble, and on my friendly call his eye caught mine, and spoke
-plainly, 'My credit, too, is gone,--the children will both die.'
-
-"The children grew rapidly worse; the council of the _neighborhood_
-decided to call further aid. Another regular was called, and, being one of
-the heroes, he advised (it is solemn truth, dear reader) _one hundred
-grains of calomel at a dose_! His reason was, that he had given it to a
-child, and the patient recovered. His medical brother thought it a little
-too steep, and they compromised the matter by giving fifty grains! Copious
-quantities of fresh blood followed the operation, and the little victim of
-disease and quackery slipped from his suffering into the peaceful and
-quiet grave!
-
-"One patient remained, and it was decided to call further counsel.
-
-"A simple but shrewd old quack was curing cancers in the neighborhood, who
-sent word to the afflicted family that he 'could cure the remaining child
-by cleansing the bowels with pills of butternut bark, aloes, camphor, and
-Cayenne pepper;' he would feed the little fellow on twist-root tea that
-would at once stop the discharges. Strange as it may seem, the wily old
-fool was called into the august presence of three M. D.'s, and a score of
-other counsellors. He gave his pills; fresh blood followed the raking over
-the inflamed and sensitive membrane; the child screamed with torture, and
-was only relieved from its horrible agony by enemas of morphine. The
-celebrated '_twist-root_' (an Indian remedy, whose virtues could not be
-appreciated by the educated physician) followed, and death closed the
-scene.
-
-"The old cancer-killer escaped by saying the morphine given in his absence
-_killed the child_."
-
-[Illustration: 'OPATHISTS IN CONSULTATION.]
-
-The following brief consultation occurred in Fulton, N. Y., recently:--
-
-Two physicians were called, of opposite schools. After shaking hands over
-the sick man's bed, one said to the other,--
-
-"I believe you are an --'opathist."
-
-"Yes, I am; and you are a --'pathist; are you not?"
-
-"Yes; and I can't break over the rules of my society by aiding or
-counselling with you ---- for the sake of _one_ patient. Good day!"
-
-"Sir, I mistook you for a Christian, not a barbarian! Good day!"
-
-
-A JOLLY TRIO OF DOCTORS.
-
-Before entering upon an exposition of the viler and more reprehensible
-sort of quacks,--the city charlatans and impostors,--I must relate a
-diverting scene, also from a country consultation that occurred in New
-York State some years since, from the perusal of which, if the reader
-cannot deduce a "moral," he may derive some amusement.
-
-Mr. H. was an invalid; he was the worst kind of an invalid--a
-hypochondriac. The visiting physician had made a pretty good thing of it,
-the neighbors affirmed, for "H. was in easy circumstances." Finally he
-took to his bed, and declared he was about to shuffle off this mortal
-coil.
-
-Two eminent physicians were summoned from a distance to consult with the
-attending physician. They arrived by rail, examined the patient, looked
-wise, and the learned trio withdrew to consult upon so "complicated and
-important a case." A tea-table had been set in an adjoining room, and to
-the abundance of eatables wherewith to refresh the distinguished
-professionals who were there to enter upon an "arbitrament of life or
-death," were added sundry bottles yet uncorked.
-
-A little son and daughter of Mr. H. were amusing themselves, meantime, by
-a game at "hide-and-seek," and the former, having "played out" all the
-legitimate hiding-places, bethought himself of the top of a high secretary
-in the "banqueting-room." Action followed thought, and, climbing upon a
-chair-back, he gained the dusty elevation, where he quietly seated himself
-just as the three wise AEsculapians entered the apartment. His only safety
-from discovery was to keep quiet.
-
-Corks were drawn, supper was discussed, and conversation flowed merrily
-along. The weather, the news of the day, and the political crisis were
-discoursed, and the little fellow perched high on the secretary wondered
-when and what they would decide on his father's case. Nearly an hour had
-passed, the doctors were merry, and the boy was tired; but still the
-little urchin kept his position.
-
-"Well, Dr. A., how is practice here, in general?" inquired one of the
-counsel.
-
-"Dull; distressingly healthy. Why, if there don't come a windfall in shape
-of an epidemic this fall, I shall _fall_ short for provender for my horse
-and bread for my family. How is it with you?"
-
-"O, quite the reverse from you. I have alive twenty daily patients now."
-
-"Very sick, any of them?" asked the local physician.
-
-"No, no,--a little more wine, doctor,--some old women, whom any smart man
-can make think they are sick; some stout men, whom medicine will keep as
-patients when once under the weather; and silly girls, whom flattery will
-always bring again,--ha! ha!" and so saying he gulped down the wine.
-
-"Why, there goes nine o'clock."
-
-"What, so late!" exclaimed one counsellor, looking at his gold repeater.
-
-"We must go or we'll miss the return train," remarked the other; "the
-doctor here will manage the patient H., who's only got the _hypo_ badly,"
-he added.
-
-"Is that a bust of Pallas he has over his secretary yonder?" asked the
-first, discovering the boy for the first time.
-
-"I'm afraid Dr. ---- has got a little muddled over this excellent 'Old
-Port,' that he can't see clearly. Why, that's a bust of _Cupid_."
-
-"Well," exclaimed the local physician, "I have been here a hundred times,
-and never before observed that statue; but," eying the statue fixedly, he
-continued, "it looks neither like Pallas nor Cupid, but rather favors H.,
-and I guess it is a cast he has had recently made of himself."
-
-Through all this comment and inspection the boy sat as mute as a post; but
-the moment the door closed on the retiring doctors, he clambered down and
-ran into the sick room.
-
-[Illustration: A "HYPO" PATIENT DISCHARGING HIS PHYSICIAN.]
-
-The old doctor had slipped the customary fee into the hands of his
-brethren as he bade them good night, and entered the room of his patient.
-The latter instantly inquired as to the result of the consultation. The
-doctor entered into an elaborate account of the "diagnosis" and
-"prognosis" of the case, which was suddenly brought to a close by the
-little boy, who, climbing into a chair on the opposite side of the bed,
-asked his father what a "hypo" was.
-
-"You must ask the doctor, my son," replied the father in a feeble voice.
-
-"Hypo," said the unsuspecting doctor, "is an _imaginary_ disease,--the
-hypochondria, vapors, spleen; ha, ha, ha!"
-
-"Well, papa, that's what the doctors said you've got, 'cause I was on top
-of the book-case an' heard all they said, an' that's all."
-
-The doctor looked blank. H. arose in his bed, trembling with rage.
-
-"By the heavens above us, I do believe you, my son; and this fellow, this
-quack, has never had the manliness to tell me so;" and leaping to the
-floor in his brief single garment, he caught the dumb and astonished "M.
-D." by the coat collar and another convenient portion of his wardrobe, and
-running him to the open door, through the hall, he pitched him out into
-the midnight darkness, saying, "There! I have demonstrated the truth of
-the assertion by pitching the doctor out of doors." H. recovered his
-health. The doctor recovered damages for assault and battery.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-VII.
-
-CHARLATANS AND IMPOSTORS.
-
-    "Every absurdity has a chance to defend itself, for error is always
-    talkative."--GOLDSMITH.
-
-    DEFINITION.--ADVERTISING CHARLATANS.--CITY IMPOSTORS.--FALSE
-    NAMES.--"ADVICE FREE."--INTIMIDATIONS.--WHOLESALE ROBBERY.--VISITING
-    THEIR DENS IN DISGUISE.--PASSING THE CERBERUS.--WINDINGS.--INS AND
-    OUTS.--THE IRISH PORTER.--QUEER "TWINS," AND A "TRIPLET" DOCTOR.--A
-    HISTORY OF A KNAVE.--BOOT-BLACK AND BOTTLE-WASHER.--PERQUISITES.--
-    PURCHASED DIPLOMAS.--"INSTITUTES."--WHOLESALE SLAUGHTER OF INFANTS.--
-    FEMALE HARPIES.--A BOSTON HARPY.--WHERE OUR "LOST CHILDREN" GO.--END
-    OF A WRETCH.
-
-
-THE CITY CHARLATAN.
-
-A charlatan is necessarily an impostor. He is "one who prates much in his
-own favor, and makes unwarrantable pretensions to skill." He is "one who
-imposes on others; a person who assumes a character for the sole purpose
-of deception."
-
-Originally the charlatan was one who circulated about the country, making
-false pretensions to extraordinary ability and miraculous cures; but he is
-now located in the larger cities, and is the most dangerous and
-insinuating of all medical impostors. You will find his name in the
-cheapest daily papers.
-
-Name, did I say? No, never.
-
-Of all the charlatans advertising in the papers of this city there is but
-one who has not advertised under an assumed name. This is _prima facie_
-evidence of imposition. Take up the daily paper,--the cheapest print is
-the one that the rabble patronize, a curse to any city,--and run your eye
-over the "_Medical Column_." Of the scores of this class advertising
-therein none dare publish his real name. There is one impudent fellow,
-who, while he assumes respectability, and under his true name, has an
-up-town office, and obtains something bordering on an honorable practice,
-runs the vilest sort of business, under an assumed name, on a public
-thoroughfare down town.
-
-These fellows usually advertise, "Advice Free." This is not on the modest
-principle, that, having no brains, they are scrupulous in not charging for
-what they cannot give, however; but this is to get the unsuspecting into
-their dens, for they are shrewd enough to perceive that whatever is "free"
-the rabble will run after.
-
-[Illustration: CONVINCING EVIDENCE OF INSOLVENCY.]
-
-When once the victim is within the web, flattering, intimidations, and
-extravagant promises, one or all, generally will accomplish their aim. As
-they never expect to see a special victim again, they squeeze the last
-dollar from the unfortunate wretch, giving therefor nothing--worse than
-nothing! I sent a pretended patient to one of these charlatans not long
-since, and, with crocodile tears in his eyes, he related his case to the
-_soi-disant_ doctor, who with great sympathy heard his case, and assured
-him it was "heart-rending, and, though very dangerous, he could cure him;"
-but the knave compelled the patient (!) to turn his pockets inside out to
-assure him they contained but the proffered dollar. A small vial of
-diluted spirits nitre was the prescription, for which the doctor assured
-the patient he usually received twenty to forty dollars!
-
-I have visited several of these places in disguise, including those of
-female doctors, and those advertising as "midwives," every one of whom
-agreed to perform a criminal operation upon the mythical lady for whom I
-was pretending to intercede. Their prices ranged from five to two hundred
-dollars.
-
-The following painfully ludicrous scene I copy from manuscript notes which
-I made some years ago, respecting a visit to one of these impostors. I
-vouch for its truthfulness.
-
-"I next bought a penny paper of a loud-mouthed urchin on the street
-corner, and, reading it that evening, the words 'Medical Notice' attracted
-my attention. It was all news to me, and I resolved to visit this 'very
-celebrated' doctor on the following day, 'advice free.'
-
-"Accordingly I repaired to his office, as designated in the advertisement.
-There were several doors wonderfully near each other, about which were
-several doctors' signs conspicuously displayed; and, since I had heard
-that 'two of a trade seldom agree,' I thought it remarkable that three or
-four of a profession should here be huddled together.
-
-"'STEP IN THE ENTRY AND RING THE BELL,' I read on a sign, in big yellow
-letters. I did so, when a big burly Irishman answered the summons.
-
-"'An' who'll yeze like to see, sure?' he inquired, with a broad grin.
-
-"'Dr. A.,' I replied, eying this Cerberus with awakening suspicion.
-
-"'He's just in, sure. Come, follow me.'
-
-"He led the way across a small room, and through a darkened hall, around
-which I cast a suspicious glance, noticing, among other things unusual,
-that the partitions did not reach the ceiling. Thence we entered another
-room, which, from the roundabout way we had approached, I thought must be
-opposite the outer door of Dr. B.'s or Dr. C.'s office.
-
-"Here Pat left me, saying, 'The ixcillint doctor will be to see yeze
-ferninst he gits through wid the gintleman who was before your honor.'
-
-[Illustration: "AN' WHO'LL YEZE LIKE TO SEE, SURE?"]
-
-"I took a look about the room. The partitions on two sides were temporary.
-On one side of the apartment stood an old mahogany secretary. Through the
-dingy glass doors I took a peep. The shelves contained several volumes of
-'Patent Office Reports,' odd numbers of an old London magazine, and such
-like useless works. On the walls were a few soiled cheap anatomical
-plates, such as you will see in 'galleries' or 'museums' fitted up by
-quack doctors, to intimidate the beholder. I could look no farther, as the
-door opened, and a man entered, who, looking nervously around, at once
-asked my business.
-
-"'Are you Dr. A.?' I asked.
-
-"'I am. Please be seated. You are sick--very sick,' he said hurriedly, and
-in a manner intended to frighten me.
-
-"Five minutes' conversation satisfied us both--him that I had no money,
-and me that he had no skill. After vainly endeavoring to extort from me my
-present address, he unceremoniously showed me out.
-
-"As I closed the door I looked to the name and number, and, as I had
-anticipated, found myself at Dr. B.'s entrance.
-
-"Turning up my coat collar, and tying a large colored silk handkerchief
-over the lower part of my face, I knocked at the third door, Dr C.'s.
-
-"The same Irishman thrust out his uncombed head and unwashed face; the
-same words in the same vernacular language followed.
-
-"'I wish to see Dr. C.,' I replied, changing my voice slightly.
-
-"'He's in, jist. It never rains but it pours. Himself it is that has a
-bully crowd of patients the day; but coome in.'
-
-"He did not recognize me--that was certain; so I followed, and was led
-through a labyrinth of rooms and halls, as before, and ushered into a
-small room, where the polite and loquacious Pat offered me a chair, and
-giving the right earlock a pull and his left foot a slip back, he said,
-with his broadest grin and most murderous English,--
-
-"'I'll be shpaking the doctor to come to yeze at once intirely.'
-
-"'But he has others with whom he is engaged, you said but a moment ago.'
-
-"'Ah, yeze niver mind. Theyze ben't gintlemen like yerself, if yeze do
-come disguised;' and with a '_whist_' he tip-toed across the room, applied
-his ear to the keyhole of the door a moment, and returned in the same
-manner.
-
-"'It's all right; now I'll go for the doctor;' but still he lingered.
-
-"'Well, why the d----l don't you go?' I said, impatiently.
-
-"'Ah, gintlemen always come disguised to see Dr. A.--no--Dr. B., I mean.'
-
-"''Tis Dr. C. I asked for,' I interrupted.
-
-"'Yis, yis,' he replied, collecting his muddled senses. 'Yis, sure, you
-did, an' gintlemen always swear--two signs yeze a gintleman. Could yeze
-spare a quarter for a poor divil? By the howly mither, I git narry a cint,
-bating what sich gintlemen as yeze gives me. I have a big family to ate at
-home. There's Bridget' (counting his fingers by the way of a reminder),
-'she's sick with the baby; then there's the twins,--two of thim, as I'm a
-sinner,--and little lame Mike, what's got the rackabites, the doctor
-says--'
-
-"'Got the what?' I interrupted.
-
-"'The rackabites, or some sich dumbed disease,' he replied, scratching his
-head.
-
-"'O, you mean rickets. But how old are the twins, and Mike, and the baby?'
-
-"'Will, let me see. The baby is tin days, and not christened yit, for
-we've not got the money for Father Prince, and there's Mike is siven, and
-Mary is four, and Bridget junior is five.'
-
-"'And the twins?' I asked, not a little amused.
-
-"'Yis, them's Mary and Bridget junior,--four and five.'
-
-"I interrupted him by a laugh, gave him the desired quarter, and told him
-to hasten the doctor, which request he proceeded to execute.
-
-"On the heels of retiring Pat the door opened, and the same doctor I had
-before seen entered.
-
-"'I want to consult Dr. C.,' I drawled out.
-
-"'I am Dr. C.,' he replied, measuring me from head to foot sharply.
-
-"Fearing he would penetrate my disguise, I hastened my errand. 'Having an
-ulcerated and painful tooth I wish removed, or--'
-
-"'This ain't a dentist's office; but if you have any peculiar disease, I
-am the physician of all others to relieve you.'
-
-"I being sure now of my man, that this same villain was running three
-offices under as many different _aliases_, my next object was to get
-safely out of his den.
-
-"'I have no need of any such services as you intimate. 'Tis only the
-tooth--'
-
-"Here he interrupted me by an impatient gesture, intimating that only a
-descendant of the monosyllable animal once chastised by one Balaam would
-have entered his office to have a tooth drawn. Admitting the truth of his
-assertion, and offering my humblest apology, I hurriedly withdrew from
-this _triplet_ doctor.
-
-"Safely away, I reflected as follows: Here, now, is this scoundrel, by the
-assistance of an equally ignorant Irishman, conducting at least three
-offices on a public thoroughfare, under as many assumed names.
-
-"'Why, the fellow is a perfect chameleon!' I exclaimed, walking away. 'He
-changes his name to suit the applicants to the various rooms. You want Dr.
-A.,--he is that individual. You desire to see Dr. B.,--when, _presto!_ he
-is at once the identical man. And so it goes, while his amiable assistant
-seems to be making a nice little thing of it on his own account. Why all
-these intricate passages? and why was I each time taken around through
-them, and out through a different door from that which I entered? Did a
-legitimate business require such mazy windings as I had just passed
-through? Did Dr. A., B., or C., or whatever his name might be, rob his
-patients in one place and thrust them out at another, that they might not
-be able to testify where and by whom they had been victimized? Was not the
-newspaper proprietor who advertised these several offices a _particeps
-criminis_ in the transaction? And with these facts and suggestions I
-leave the fellow, who by no means is a solitary example of this sort of
-fraud.'"
-
-On another street in this city is another branch from the Upas tree. I do
-not wish to advertise for him, hence omit his _names_, which are legion.
-Two of them begin with the letter D. The true name of this impostor
-commences with an M. He is old enough to be better. I know of patients who
-have been fleeced by him without receiving the least benefit, when the
-knowledge necessary to prescribe for their recovery, or of so simple a
-case, might be possessed by even the office boy.
-
-You go to his first office and inquire for the first _alias_. The usher, a
-boy sometimes, takes you in, and, slipping out the back door, he calls the
-old doctor from the next office. They are not connected. Through a glass
-door he takes a survey of you, to assure himself that you have not been
-victimized by him already under his other _aliases_.
-
-If he so recognizes you, he summons a convenient "assistant" to personate
-the doctor, and thus you are robbed a second time.
-
-
-HISTORY OF A KNAVE.
-
-The following is a brief and true history of one of the vilest charlatans
-and impostors now practising in Boston. He has amassed a fortune within a
-few years by the most barefaced villanies ever resorted to by man. He is
-one of the most abominable charlatans, who, for the almighty dollar, would
-willingly sacrifice the lives of his unfortunate victims, who, by glowing
-newspaper statements and seductive promises, have been drawn into his
-murderous den. By the side of such unprincipled villains, the highwaymen,
-the Dick Turpins, with their "Stand and deliver!" or "Your money or your
-life!" are angels of mercy, for the former rob you of your last dollar,
-and either endanger your life by giving you useless drugs that check not
-the disease, or hasten your demise by poisonous compounds given at
-random, the virulent properties of which the vampires know but little and
-care less.
-
-Their boast that their remedies are "_purely vegetable_," "hence
-uninjurious", is as false as their pretensions to skill, and is counted
-for nothing when we know that vegetable poisons are more numerous, and
-often more rapid and violent in their action, than minerals. Both calomel
-and other minerals are often _given_ by these charlatans. I say _given_,
-for few of them know enough to write a legible prescription, much less to
-write the voluminous works which they put forth on "manhood," "physiology
-of woman," etc., which are but so many advertisements for their vile trade
-and criminal practices, and are intended to alarm and corrupt the young
-and unwary into whose hands they may unfortunately fall.
-
-This fellow, whom I am now to describe, who sometimes prefixes "professor"
-to his name, was born in the State of New Hampshire, and when a young man
-came to this city to seek his fortune. After various ups and downs, he
-became boot-black, porter, and general lackey in the Pearl Street House,
-then in full blast. He was said to be a youth of rather prepossessing,
-though insinuating address, and being constantly on the alert for odd
-pennies and "dimes," succeeded in keeping himself in pocket-money without
-committing theft, or otherwise compromising his liberty. But the odd
-change, and his meagre salary, did not long remain in pocket, for the
-courtesans, who are ever on the alert for unsophisticated youth who throng
-to the cities, managed to obtain the lion's share from this embryo doctor,
-whose future greatness he himself never half suspected. Disease, the usual
-result of intercourse with such creatures, was the consequent inheritance
-of this young man.
-
-"What, in the name of Heaven, shall I now do?" he asked himself, in his
-distress and despair. "Money I have none. O God! what shall I do?"
-
-"Drown yourself," replied the tempter.
-
-Such fellows seldom drown. Females, their victims, drown; but who ever
-heard of a natural-born villain committing suicide, unless to escape the
-threatening halter?
-
-No, he did not drown, though it had been better for humanity if he had. He
-went to an old advertising charlatan, who then kept an office in a lower
-street of this city, a mercenary old vampire, named Stevens. Into the
-august presence of the charlatan young M. entered, and, trembling and
-weeping, told his history.
-
-[Illustration: A BOSTON QUACK EXAMINING A STUDENT.]
-
-"Have you got any money, young man?" growled the old doctor, wheeling
-around, and for the first time condescending to notice the poor wretch.
-
-"No," he sobbed in a pitiful voice.
-
-"Then what do you come here for, sir?" roared the doctor, whose pity was
-a thing of the past. His soul was impenetrable to the appeal of suffering
-as the hide of the rhinoceros to a leaden bullet.
-
-The young man, fortunately, did not know this fact, and persevered.
-
-"I thought I might work for you to pay for treatment. O, I'll do
-anything--sweep your office, wash up the floors and bottles, black your
-boots, do anything and everything, if you'll only cure me. O, do! Say you
-will, sir!" and the young man writhed in agony of suspense.
-
-"Humph!" grunted the old doctor, contemplatingly.
-
-Doubtless he was considering the advantages which might accrue from
-accepting the proposition of this earnest applicant, for, after eying him
-sharply, and beating the devil's tattoo for a few moments upon his table,
-the doctor condescended to "look into his case," and finally to treat the
-young man's disease upon the proposed terms.
-
-M. began his apprenticeship by sweeping the office, and the old doctor
-held him to the very letter of the agreement, keeping him at the most
-menial service,--boot-blacking, bottle-washing, door-tending,
-etc.,--protracting his disease as he found the young man useful, till the
-old knave dared no longer delay the cure, for thereby the victim might go
-elsewhere for help. When cured, M. engaged to continue work for the small
-compensation that the doctor offered, especially since he and the old man
-had begun to understand each other pretty well, and each was equally
-unscrupulous as to the sponging of the unfortunate victims who fell into
-their hands.
-
-When the doctor was observed to prescribe from any particular bottle, M.
-took a mental memorandum thereof till such time as he could take a look at
-the label, thereby learning the prescription for such disease; and the
-result was a decision that if this was the science of healing, "_it didn't
-take much of a man to be a_"--_doctor_.
-
-When the old doctor was absent, M. would prescribe on his own account,
-charge an extra dollar or two as perquisites, and deposit the balance in
-the doctor's till.
-
-In course of time, by this process of extortion, solicitations, and the
-increasing perquisites, M. was enabled to set up doctoring on his own
-account. The old doctor died, and M. had it all his own way.
-
-The young self-styled doctor saw no particular need of making effort to
-acquire medical knowledge, but a diploma to hang upon his office walls,
-with the few disgusting anatomical plates (appropriated from Dr. S.),
-which were admirably adapted to intimidate his simple-minded dupes,--a
-diploma from some medical society would give character to the
-"institution," and such he would obtain.
-
-Being cited to court as defendant in a certain case, this _soi-disant_ "M.
-D." was compelled to retract a former statement that he had attended
-medical lectures in Pennsylvania College, where he graduated with honors,
-and come down to the truthful statement, _for once in his life_, and swear
-that he had obtained his diploma by _purchase_.
-
-His present rooms--house and office--are located in the heart of the city,
-and are not exceeded for convenience and neatness by those of the
-respectable practitioner. Having amassed a great fortune out of the
-credulity, misfortunes, and passions of the unfortunate, he has settled
-down to the plane of the more respectable advertising doctors, and the
-terrifying plates no longer cover the walls of the _best_ reception-room;
-but a few valuable pictures and the Philadelphia diploma are conspicuously
-displayed above the elegant furniture and valuable articles of _virtu_.
-
-The same extortions and reprehensible practices are still resorted to in
-order to keep up this "institution." His earlier history is gathered from
-_his own statements_, by piecemeal, by a confidential "student," the
-latter portion by _personal investigation_ of the writer.
-
-Respecting the matter of purchasing diplomas, I will state that I have
-seen a "Regular Medical Diploma" advertised in the New York _Herald_ for
-one hundred dollars. The name originally written therein is extracted by
-oxalic acid, or other chemicals. I knew a physician who parted with his
-Latin diploma for fifty dollars.
-
-I here warn the youth, and the public in general, against those advertised
-"_institutes_," though the name may be selected from that of some
-benevolent individual,--to give it a look of a benevolent character,--even
-though it be a "Nightengale," or a "Peabody," or a "St. Mary," and
-managed, _ostensibly_, under the sanction of the church or state--beware
-of it. Without, it is the whited sepulchre, within, the blood, flesh, and
-bones of dead men, women, and children.
-
-Some years since there was found, after the flight of one Dr. Jaques (?),
-in a vault in the city of Boston, the bones of some half score infants.
-The murderous charlatan escaped the halter he so richly deserved, and was
-practising in a New England village not above six years since.
-
-Another impostor, who has been extensively advertised in this city under
-an assumed name--selected to correspond with the familiar name of a
-celebrated New York (also a late Boston) physician and surgeon--who not
-only cheekily claims to be an "M. D.," but assumes the titles of F. R. S.,
-etc., was but a short time before a dry goods seller on Hanover Street. He
-never read a standard medical work in his life. Although the villain has
-gone to parts unknown to the writer, the concern he recently represented
-as "consulting physician" is in full blast, and the same name and titles
-are blazoned forth daily in the public prints.
-
-Men get rich in these "institutes," take in an "assistant" for a few
-weeks, then sell out to the _novus homo_, and the thing goes on under the
-old name until the new man gains strength and confidence sufficient to
-carry it along under his own or his assumed title.
-
-
-FEMALE HARPIES.
-
-Under the name of "female physician," "midwife," etc., the most illicit
-and nefarious atrocities are daily practised by the numerous harpies who
-infest all our principal cities. The mythological harpies were represented
-as having the faces of women, heartless, with filthy bodies, and claws
-sharp and strong for fingers, which, once fastened upon human flesh, never
-relaxed till the last drop of life's blood was wrung from their
-unfortunate victim.
-
-Virgil thus expressively described them in the third book of the AEneid:--
-
-  "When from the mountain-tops, with hideous cry
-  And clattering wings, the filthy harpies fly;
-  Monsters more fierce offending Heaven ne'er sent
-  From hell's abyss for human punishment;
-  With virgin faces, but with ---- obscene,
-  With claws for hands, and looks forever lean!"
-
-I will describe but one of the modern harpies of Boston, appealing to the
-reader if our text above is too severe.
-
-More than forty years ago, a young, fair, and promising girl came to this
-city from the White Mountains of New Hampshire. From her maiden home, near
-Meredith Village, from under the humble roof of Christian parents, she
-wandered into the haunts of vice and the abodes of wretchedness and
-disease in the lower part of Boston.
-
-Her maiden name was Elizabeth Leach. You will find her name in the City
-Directory (1871) "_Madam Ester, midwife_."
-
-We have not space to write out her whole history, nor inclination to
-spread before the refined reader the first years of the gay life of this
-attractive damsel, the seductive and sinful debaucheries of the
-fascinating, unprincipled woman, nor the more repulsive declination of the
-diseased and malevolent _bawd_!
-
-The writer has seen a picture of her home in New Hampshire, a
-daguerreotype of her in her virginity, and a painting, taken from her
-sittings, in middle life. In stature, she is tall and stout; in manner,
-coarse and repulsive. If ever I saw a woman carrying, stamped in every
-lineament of her countenance, a hard, heartless, soulless, murderous
-expression, that woman is Madam Ester. Neither the tears, the
-heart-anguishes, nor the life's blood of the fatherless infant, the
-husbandless mother, the orphaned or friendless maiden, could draw a
-sympathizing look or expression from the hardened features of that
-wretched woman. _She is the John Allen of Boston._
-
-For years she has carried on, under the cloak of a "midwife," the most
-cruel and reprehensible occupation which ever disgraced an outraged
-community. By extortionate prices she has gained no inconsiderable wealth,
-and her house, though located in a narrow, darkened alley, or court, is
-fitted up with an elegance equalling that of some of our best and
-wealthiest merchants. From parlor to attic, it is splendidly furnished.
-
-She assured me she hated mankind with inexpressible hatred; that man had
-been her ruin, the instrument of her disease, and would eventually be the
-cause of her death. She cursed both man and her Maker!
-
-Last spring there appeared an advertisement in a city paper of a young
-girl who was lost, or abducted from the home of her parents, in which the
-young lady was described as being but sixteen to seventeen years of age,
-of light complexion, blue eyes, of but medium height, named Mary ----; and
-as she took no clothes but those she had on, never before went from home
-without her parents' consent, and had no trouble at home, her absence
-could not be accounted for. Any information respecting her would be
-gratefully received by her distressed parents.
-
-She was all this time at the home of Madam Ester.
-
-The young man who completed her ruin, like the contemptible cur he was,
-deserted her in her distress, leaving her in the hands of the miserable
-wretch above described. The girl had one hundred and twenty dollars. A
-part of it was her own money; some she borrowed, having some influential
-friends, and the balance her father gave her, ostensibly for the purchase
-of clothing.
-
-The old vampire appropriated every cent of the sum, and in fourteen days
-turned the weak and wretched girl into the street, without sufficient
-money to pay her coach fare to her father's house. A young girl then in
-the employ of the unfeeling old wretch gave her five dollars, and she
-informed her kind benefactress that she should go home and say that she
-had been at service in a family on Beacon Street, but being sick, could
-earn no greater wages than the sum then in her possession. "The pale and
-sickly countenance of the poor girl, after the abuse and torture she had
-undergone," said my informant, "certainly would seem to corroborate her
-story."
-
-Since the above was written the wicked old wretch has died--died a natural
-death, sitting in her chair!
-
-On the last day of July, 1871, she sent a girl, a well-dressed and very
-lady-like appearing young woman, to my office, to know if I could be at
-liberty to give her a consultation that afternoon. She sent no address;
-merely a "woman with a cancer of the breast." She came. She introduced her
-business, not her name. I pronounced her case hopeless, advised her to
-"close up her worldly affairs, and make her peace with God and mankind, as
-she could live but a short time." This was given the more plainly, since
-she "demanded to know the worst," and because of her bold attempt to
-browbeat me into treating her hopeless case. The cancer was immense, had
-been cut once by Dr. ----, of this city. Her attendant told me that the
-old woman never ceased to berate me for my truthful prognosis, and that
-from that time she gave up all hope of recovery, and soon closed her
-nefarious practice. I have since gathered all the information respecting
-her that was possible. I knew at sight that I had a remarkable woman to
-deal with, and, agreeably to her invitation, I took another physician, a
-graduate of Harvard College, and went to her house, ostensibly to consult
-over her case....
-
-A woman who has known madam for many years told me that the old woman was
-familiar with chemicals, and by the use of acids and alkalies could
-completely destroy the flesh and bones of infants. She had never seen her
-do it, but had seen the chemicals, and referred me to persons who had seen
-the dead body of a female brought out from the house at midnight, and
-taken away in a wagon. She said she practised great cruelty upon the
-unfortunate victims who had been placed under her hands, and that their
-cries had often been heard by the neighbors living in the court.
-
-She said that madam claimed to have been the wife of a policeman who was
-killed at Fort Hill, and that she was also since married to a Captain
-----. The latter was untrue. Madam told me she once _thought_ she was
-married, but it was a deception on her--a mock marriage. She possessed
-great quantities of magnificent clothing,--rich dresses of silk, satin,
-velvet, etc.,--and a beautiful wedding _trousseau_, which, but a short
-time before her death, she caused to be brought out and displayed before
-her.
-
-"O, take them away; I never shall wear them," she said. And she never did.
-
-There is another female physician now residing in this city, who I know
-has accumulated a considerable property as midwife; but if report, and
-assertions of victims, are true, she has gained it by threats and
-extortions. She is now out of practice, or nearly. Her _modus operandi_
-was to take the unfortunate female, treat her very tenderly, get hold of
-her secret, learn the gentleman's name, business, and wealth, and
-then--especially if he was a family man before--make him "come down,"
-through fear of exposure. Men have "come down" with thousands, little by
-little, till they were ruined pecuniarily under this fearful blackmailing.
-I doubt if money could hire her to perform a criminal operation. She can
-make more money by keeping the unfortunate girl, and blackmailing the
-seducer, _or any other individual_ who can be scared into the trap,
-provided the guilty one has no money. "Blessed be nothing," said the Arab.
-
-These people carry on their trade very quietly. Their very next door
-neighbors may know nothing of the unlawful acts committed right under
-their noses. It is for the interest of all concerned to keep everything
-quiet. Their customers, and even their victims, come and go after
-nightfall.
-
-There is still another class, mostly males, practising in this city, who,
-under fair pretences and great promises, get the patients' money, and give
-them no equivalent therefor. Beyond the robbery,--for that is what it is;
-no more nor less,--and the protracting of a disease (or giving nature more
-time, as the case may be),--they do the applicant no injury. They receive
-a fee, calculating it to a nicety, according to the depth of your pocket,
-give some simple mixture, and bow you out.
-
-Many an honest patient, seeing their high-flown advertisements in the
-dailies, weeklies, even religious (!) papers, from month to month, is
-induced to visit these impostors. Their offices may be in a less public
-street, in a private residence, and have every outward appearance of
-respectability.
-
-There is a class of male practitioners, not unusually having a Latin
-diploma, who never appear in the prints. They are the "Nurse Gibbon"
-class, who employ one or more females to drum patients for them. The
-following is a truthful statement respecting a visit to one in 1850:--
-
-"On my arrival on the steamer Penobscot at Boston, the lady met me, and,
-according to arrangement, took me to see 'her physician.' His office was
-on Chambers Street, left side, a few doors from Cambridge Street, Boston.
-The doctor was an elderly, pompous individual, who wore gold spectacles,
-an immense fob chain, and chewed Burgundy pitch. Let this suffice for his
-description. Poor man! for if his own theology is true, he has gone where
-Burgundy pitch will be very likely to melt. Excuse this passing tribute to
-his memory, my dear reader.
-
-"Notwithstanding my friend's lavish praise of her doctor, the first sight
-of him failed to inspire me with confidence. I was introduced, and the
-doctor swelled up with his own importance, and said, impressively,--
-
-"Those physicians--amiable men, no doubt--who have treated your case-ah
-have been all wrong in their diagnosis-ah." This was his prelude, as he
-counted my pulse by a large gold watch, which he held conspicuously before
-me.
-
-"Your kind friend and benefactress has saved your life-ah, by conducting
-you to me before too late-ah." He stopped to watch the effect of this bid
-for a high fee before proceeding.
-
-"Ah, sir, had you but come to me first-ah, you would now be rejoicing in
-perfect health-ah; whereas you have narrowly escaped death and eternal
-torments-ah."
-
-He again took breath, looking very solemn.
-
-"But, sir, I never heard of you before this lady wrote to me," I said.
-
-"True-ah. I do not advertise myself. The veriest quack may advertise-ah.
-Your case is very dangerous. _Hepatitis, cum nephritis_-ah," he
-soliloquized, shaking his head very wisely, while my friend nodded, as if
-to say, "There! I told you so. He knows all about it."
-
-"Yes, very dangerous-ah. But take my medicines; my pills--hepatica-lobus,
-and my neuropathicum-ah, and they will restore you to health and
-happiness-ah, in a few weeks-ah;" and he rubbed his palms complacently, as
-if in anticipation of a good fat fee for his prescription.
-
-"Will they cure this?" I asked, turning my head, and placing a finger upon
-a tumor on the right hand side of my neck.
-
-"O-ah, let me see." And so saying, he took a brief survey of the
-protuberance, and coolly remarked that it was of no material importance.
-As that was, to my mind, of great consequence, I was dumbfounded by his
-indifference to its importance.
-
-Selecting a box of pills, and a vial of transparent liquid, the doctor
-presented them to me with a flourish, saying, in his blandest manner,--
-
-"All there; directions inside-ah; ten dollars-ah."
-
-"What!" And I arose in astonishment, gazing alternately at the doctor and
-my friend, but could not utter another word. I was but a country
-greenhorn, you know, and quite unused to city prices.
-
-My friend took the doctor aside, when, after a moment's conversation
-between them, he returned, and said that "in consideration of the
-recommendation of the lady, he would take but five dollars-ah."
-
-I paid the bill, and, quite disgusted, took my departure.
-
-That evening I carried the medicines to a druggist, requesting him to
-inform me what they were. After examining them, he replied,--
-
-"The liquid is simply sweet spirits of nitre, diluted," looking over his
-glasses at me suspiciously, I thought. "These, I should say, are blue
-pills, a mild preparation of mercury," returning me the pills. A second
-druggist, to whom I applied, told me the same, and, knowing they were not
-what I required for a scrofulous tumor, I threw them into the gutter.
-_Ah!_
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-VIII.
-
-ANECDOTES OF PHYSICIANS.
-
-    "I find, Dick, that you are in the habit of taking my best jokes, and
-    passing them off as your own. Do you call that the conduct of a
-    gentleman?"
-
-    "To be sure, Tom. Why, a true gentleman will always take a joke from a
-    friend."
-
-    A WANT SUPPLIED.--ORIGINAL ANECDOTES OF ABERNETHY.--A LIVE
-    IRISHMAN.--MADAM ROTHSCHILD.--LARGE FEET.--A SHANGHAI
-    ROOSTER.--SPREADING HERSELF.--KEROSENE.--"SALERATUS."--HIS LAST
-    JOKE.--AN ASTONISHED DARKY.--OLD DR. K.'s MARE.--A SCARED
-    CUSTOMER.--"WHAT'S TRUMPS?"--"LET GO THEM HALYARDS."--MEDICAL
-    TITBITS.--MORE MUSTARD THAN MEAT.--"I WANT TO BE AN
-    ANGEL."--TOOTH-DRAWING.--DR. BEECHER VS. DR. HOLMES.--STEALING
-    TIME.--CHOLERA FENCED IN.--"A JOKE THAT'S NOT A JOKE."--A DRY
-    SHOWER-BATH.--PARBOILING AN OLD LADY.
-
-
-"There would be no difficulty in multiplying anecdotes attributed to
-Abernethy (or other celebrated physicians) _ad libitum_, but there are
-three objections to such a course. First, there are many told of him which
-never happened; others, which may possibly have occurred, you find it
-impossible to authenticate; and lastly, there is a class which, if they
-happened to Dr. Abernethy, certainly happened to others before he was
-born. In fact, when a man once gets a reputation of doing or saying odd
-things, every story in which the chief person is unknown or unremembered,
-is given to the next man whose reputation for such is
-remarkable."--_Memoirs of Dr. Abernethy, by George Macilwain, F. R. C. S.,
-etc., etc._
-
-Notwithstanding the great number of authentic anecdotes of physicians
-which might be collected together, Mr. Campbell, the experienced
-antiquarian bookseller, of Boston, assures me there is no such book in
-print. I have been many years collecting such, and for this chapter I have
-selected therefrom those most chaste, amusing, instructive, and authentic.
-
-The following original anecdote of the great English surgeon I obtained
-verbally from Mr. Sladden, of Chicago:--
-
-"My grandmother once visited Dr. Abernethy, with her eldest son, my uncle,
-living in London, to consult the great physician respecting an inveterate
-humor of the scalp, with which the child was afflicted.
-
-"There were a great many patients in waiting, and when it came my
-grandmother's turn, she walked up to the great man, and removing the boy's
-cap, presented the case for his inspection in silence. He took a quick
-glance at the humory head, turned to the old lady, and said,--
-
-"'Madam, the best thing I can recommend for that disease is a plenty of
-warm water and soap. And, by the way, if that don't remove it, the next
-best thing is to apply freely soap and warm water. Five guineas, if you
-please, ma'am.'
-
-"As my grandmother was the embodiment of neatness, she never forgave the
-doctor for this broad intimation of the questionableness of her neatness."
-
-Dr. Stowe told the following story of Dr. Abernethy and a live Irishman:--
-
-"It occurred at Bath. A crowd of pupils, myself one of them, were
-following Mr. Abernethy through the crowded wards of the hospital, when
-the apparition of a poor Irishman, with the scantiest shirt I ever saw,
-jumped from a bed, and literally throwing himself on his knees at the
-doctor's feet, presented itself. We were startled for a moment, but the
-poor fellow, with all his country's eloquence, poured out such a torrent
-of praise, prayers, and blessings, and illustrated it with such ludicrous
-pantomimic displays of his leg, all splintered and bandaged, that we were
-not long left in doubt.
-
-"'That's the leg, your hon-nor. Glory be to God. Yer honnor's the buy what
-saved it. May the heavens be yer bed. Long life to yer honnor. To the
-divil with the spalpeens that wanted to cut it off!' etc.
-
-"With some difficulty the patient was replaced in bed, and the doctor
-said,--
-
-"'I am glad your leg is doing well, but never kneel again, except to your
-Maker.'
-
-"The doctor took the opportunity of giving us a clinical lecture about
-diseases and their constitutional treatment. Every sentence Abernethy
-uttered, Pat confirmed.
-
-[Illustration: DR. ABERNETHY IN THE HOSPITAL.]
-
-"'Thrue for yer honnor; divil a lie at all, at all. His honnor's the
-grathe doctor, entirely,' etc.
-
-"At the slightest allusion to his case, off went the bed-clothes, and up
-went the leg, as if taking aim at the ceiling. 'That's it, be gorra! and a
-betther leg than the villain's that wanted to slice it off, entirely.'
-
-"The students actually roared with laughter, but Abernethy retained his
-usual gravity throughout the whole of the ludicrous scene."
-
-Madam Rothschild, mother of the mighty capitalists, attained the great age
-of ninety-eight. Her wits, which were of no common order, were preserved
-to the end. During her last illness, when surrounded by her family and
-some friends, she turned to her physician, and said, in a suppliant
-tone,--
-
-"My dear doctor, I pray you try to do something for me."
-
-"Madam, what can I do? I cannot make you young again."
-
-"No, doctor; nor do I want to be young again. But I want to continue to
-grow old."
-
-
-LARGE FEET.
-
-Dr. Wood was a man of large "understanding." One day at a presidential
-reception he was standing in a large crowd, when he felt two feet pressing
-on his patent leathers. Looking down, he discovered that the said feet
-belonged to a female. Wood was a bachelor, and at first the sensation was
-delightful. It made inexpressibly delicious thrills run all up and down
-his body. But as the _impression_ was all on the lady's side, the above
-sensations became gradually superseded by those not quite so delightful,
-and finally the pressure became very uncomfortable. Mustering courage, he
-said, very gently,--
-
-"Madam, if you please, you are standing on my feet--"
-
-"Your feet, sir, did you say?" For the crowd was so dense that she could
-not possibly see to the ground.
-
-"Yes, madam, on my feet--this last half hour," very politely.
-
-"O, I beg a thousand pardons, sir; I thought I was standing on a block.
-_They are quite large, sir_," trying to remove.
-
-"Yes, ma'am, quite large; but _yours covered 'em, madam_."
-
-
-A SHANGHAI ROOSTER.
-
-Many people suffer more from the anticipation of trouble than by the
-actual infliction. The world is full of "trouble-borrowers." They
-generally keep a stock on hand to lend to those who unfortunately are
-compelled to listen to them. The following is a mitigated case:--
-
-"Sir," said a physician visiting a patient in the suburbs of this city, to
-a neighbor, "your Shanghai greatly disturbs my patient."
-
-"Is it possible?" asked the neighbor, expressing surprise.
-
-"Yes, the bird is a terrible nuisance, giving the patient no peace, day or
-night, he informs me; but he did not want to complain."
-
-"But," replied the sceptical owner, "I don't see how he can annoy neighbor
-B. Why, he only crows twice in the night, and only two or three times at
-regular intervals during the day."
-
-"Yes; but you don't take into consideration all the times the patient is
-_expecting_ him to crow."
-
-
-SPREADING HERSELF.
-
-In a country town in Maine the writer knew an elderly physician, who had
-married a wife much younger than himself, whose aristocratic notions
-hardly coincided with those of this democratic people, though she had now
-lived here several years. Finally a young physician came into the place
-and commenced practice. Among the patients that he obtained from the old
-doctor's former practice was one named Higgins.
-
-Mrs. Higgins, whose daughter had just recovered from a fever, gave a
-party, to which the families of both doctors, with the two ministers, and
-others, were invited.
-
-"Will you go to Mrs. Higgins's party?" asked a neighbor of the old
-doctor's wife.
-
-"Yes, I intend to go, by all means, for I want to see old Mother Higgins
-and her new doctor spread themselves."
-
-This reminds me of the following story, which is too good to be lost:--
-
-"'Once upon a time,' an old lady sent her grandson to set a turkey,--not
-the gobbler, as did the parson in Mrs. Stowe's 'Minister's Wooing.' On his
-return, the following dialogue occurred:--
-
-"'Sammy, my dear, have you set her?'
-
-"'Yes, grandma,' replied Hopeful.
-
-[Illustration: "AN EXTENSIVE SET."]
-
-"'Fixed the nest up all nice, Sammy?'
-
-"'O, mighty fine, grandma.'
-
-"'Did you count the eggs, Sammy, and get an odd number?'
-
-"'Yes, grandma.'
-
-"'How many eggs did you set her on, Sammy, dear?'
-
-"'One hundred and twenty-one, grandma.'
-
-"'O, goodness gracious! Why did you put so many eggs under her, Sammy?'
-
-"'Why, grandma, I wanted to see the old thing spread herself.'"
-
-
-KEROSENE.
-
-Some editors are continually making themselves ridiculous, as well as
-endangering the life of some person as ignorant in the matter as
-themselves, by publishing at random "remedies" for certain complaints, of
-both of which--remedy and disease--they knew nothing. The following I cut
-from a paper:--
-
-"One thing I will mention which may be useful to some one. Kerosene oil
-has been found effective as a vermifuge. It is given by the mouth for
-round stomach worms, and as an enema for pin worms. It is free from the
-irritation which follows the use of spirits turpentine, and is equally as
-effective." (No directions as to quantity at a dose.)
-
-An Irishwoman in Hartford, Conn., spelling out the above in a newspaper,
-concluded to give her child, a boy of ten, a dose, under the belief that
-"wurrums ailed the child," and as it was harmless (?), she would give him
-the benefit of its harmlessness, and her ignorance, and administered
-accordingly a _tea-cup full_!
-
-Frightful symptoms supervened,--colic, vomiting, etc.,--when a doctor was
-sent for, who being absent, his student--who hardly understood the danger
-of the case, and was a bit of a wag, by the way--sent the following
-prescription:--
-
-"[R]. Run a wick down the child's throat; any lamp or candle wick will do,
-provided it is long enough; set fire to the end left outside, _and use him
-for a lamp till the doctor arrives_." SELAH.
-
-This may seem too ridiculous to believe, but it is the truth,
-nevertheless.
-
-
-SALERATUS VS. SUGAR.
-
-Early one summer morning, while practising in Plymouth, Conn., the writer
-was startled by a loud knock at the front door, which I hastened to
-answer. There stood an Irishman, well known as living in a little hut,
-down on the "Meadows," whose name was Fitzgibbon. He was all out of
-breath, and the great drops of sweat were rolling all down his rough face,
-which he was endeavoring to mop up with a huge bandanna handkerchief. As
-soon as he could possibly articulate, he exclaimed,--
-
-"O, docther, docther! take yourself--down to that sha-anty as quick as ye
-conva-niantly can, plaze."
-
-[Illustration: "O, DOCTHER, DEAR, I'VE PIZENED ME BOY."]
-
-"Why, what's the matter at the shanty, Fitzgibbon?"
-
-"O, docther, dear, I've pizened my boy; what will I do intirely?"
-
-"How did it happen? Don't be alarmed, Fitzgibbon." For his manner was
-frightful.
-
-"Will, I'll till yeze. He's been sick wid the masles. Will, he's ate
-nothin' for a hole wake, and in the night he wanted some bread an' sugar,
-do ye see? an' I had no candle, an' I wint in the dark, an' spread him
-some bread, an' he ate it intirely, an' it was saleratus I put on it,
-instead of sugar; an' it's now atin' him intirely! O, dear, dear, that I
-should iver give him saleratus instead o' sugar!"
-
-"Well, Fitzgibbon, if the boy is so big a fool that he don't know the
-difference between saleratus and sugar, let him die."
-
-"O, docther, don't say so!" exclaimed the poor fellow, in agony.
-
-Then I suddenly recollected that the sense of taste was always vitiated in
-measles, and thus excused the matter, adding,--
-
-"Now, run home, 'Gibbon, and give the little fellow a tea-spoonful of
-vinegar in a little sugar and water,--not saleratus and water, mind you."
-
-"No, by the great St. Patrick, I'll niver mistake the likes again," he
-earnestly interrupted, when I went on, saying,--
-
-"Then in half an hour give him another tea-spoonful, and that will relieve
-the 'gnawing at his stomach,' and by an hour I'll drive round there and
-see him, on my way to Watertown."
-
-"I'll trust to yeze to git it out of him. God bless yeze;" and away he
-darted, saying, "O, howly mother! that I should give him saleratus for
-sugar!"
-
-
-HIS LAST JOKE.
-
-A celebrated English physician, who was also a distinguished humorist,
-when about to die, requested that none of his friends be invited to his
-funeral.
-
-A friend inquired the reason of this remarkable request.
-
-"Because," sighed the dying but polite humorist, "it is a courtesy which
-can never be returned."
-
-Charles Matthews, the celebrated comedian, who died in 1837, put the above
-entirely in the shade by _his_ last joke.
-
-The attending physician had left Mr. Matthews some medicine in a vial,
-which a friend was to administer during the night. By mistake, he gave the
-patient some ink from a vial which stood near. On discovering the error,
-his friend exclaimed, "O, gracious Heavens, Matthews, I have given you
-ink, instead of medicine."
-
-"Never--never mind, my dear boy," said the dying man faintly; "_I will
-swallow a piece of blotting paper_."
-
-
-AN ASTONISHED NEGRO.
-
-Dr. Robertson, of Charleston, S. C., who attended the writer in 1852, with
-the yellow fever, was as competent, benevolent, and faithful a physician
-as I ever had the pleasure of meeting. His services were in great demand
-during the raging of the "yellow Jack," and on one occasion he was absent
-from his house and office two whole days and a night. His family became
-alarmed, and a faithful old negro was sent in search of his master. It was
-no uncommon occurrence to see a black man traversing the streets, ringing
-a bell, and crying a "lost child;" but to see a slave searching for his
-lost master, was almost a phenomenon.
-
-[Illustration: "LOST MARSER! LOST MARSER!"]
-
-It was quite dark, and the old negro was shuffling along King Street,
-crying, "Masser Rob'son lost, Masser Rob'son lost," when suddenly he was
-brought to a halt, and silenced by some one saying,--
-
-"What's that you are crying, Neb?" His name was Nebuchadnezzar.
-
-"O, de Lord! if Masser Dr. Rob'son hain't been an' loss hisself!"
-
-"You old fool, Neb, I am your master--Dr. Robertson. Don't you know me
-now?" exclaimed a familiar voice.
-
-Sure enough, it was the doctor, returning from his numerous visits, tired
-and dust-covered.
-
-The whole thing solemnly impressed the old darky, who, a day or two later,
-was met by a ranting Methodist, vulgarly termed a "_carpet-bagger_," who,
-in a solemn voice, said,--
-
-"My colored friend, have you yet found the Lord Jesus?"
-
-"O, golly, masser!" exclaimed the old negro in astonishment; "hab de Lord
-done gone an' loss hisself?"
-
-(I have seen the last part of this anecdote floating about the newspapers;
-but did ever any one see the former connection, or even the latter before
-1852?)
-
-The writer was but a poor medical student, and an invalid, seeking here a
-more salubrious climate, away from the frosts and snows of his northern
-home, and though twenty years have since flown, I have not forgotten, and
-never shall, the kindness and attention received at the hands of the
-benevolent Dr. Robertson. While many who went out with me that fall fell
-victims to the fearful endemic before Jack Frost put a stop to its
-ravages, I escaped the grim monster Death; and to the superior knowledge
-and efficient treatment of Dr. R., with the excellent care of the
-benevolent landlady, Mrs. Butterfield, I owe my life.
-
-Morning and evening the doctor's patter-patter was heard on the
-stairs,--three flights to climb. The whole case was gone over, and then,
-if the good old doctor had a moment to spare, he would retail some little
-anecdote "with which to leave me in good spirits."
-
-The following is one:--
-
-"Mr. Bacon, of Edgefield, was once courting a lady who had frequently
-refused him; but he, with commendable perseverance, had as often renewed
-the suit, until at last she became so exceedingly annoyed at his
-importunities that she told him that she could never marry a man whose
-tastes, opinions, likes and dislikes were so completely in opposition to
-her own as were his.
-
-"'In fact, Mr. Bacon,' she is represented as having said, 'I do not think
-there is one subject on earth upon which we could agree.'
-
-"'I assure you, dear madam, that you are mistaken, which I can prove.'
-
-"'If you will mention one, I will agree to marry you,' replied the lady.
-
-"'Well, I will do it,' replied Mr. Bacon. 'Suppose now you and I were
-travelling together; we arrive at a hotel which is crowded; there are only
-two rooms not entirely occupied, in one of which there is a man, in the
-other a woman: with which would you prefer to sleep?'
-
-"The lady arose indignantly, and replied, 'With the woman, of course,
-sir.'
-
-"'So would I,' replied Mr. Bacon, triumphantly."
-
-(My room had two beds in it, which suggested the above story.)
-
-
-DR. K.'S MARE.
-
-The outline of the following ludicrous "situation" was given me by a
-gentleman of Framingham:--
-
-Old Dr. K., of F., was represented as a rough and off-handed specimen of
-the genus _homo_, who liked a horse even better than a woman,--not that he
-was by any means unmindful of the charms and claims of the
-beautiful,--better than he loved money, though the latter passion
-bordered on avariciousness.
-
-An over-nice and sensitive spinster once was visiting the family of Mr.
-T., in town, which employed a younger and more refined physician than Dr.
-K.; and the spinster, being somewhat indisposed, requested Mr. T. to call
-a physician. His own family doctor was suggested; but on close inquiry,
-she concluded to have "the oldest and most experienced physician that the
-town afforded," and old Dr. K. was called.
-
-Mr. T. had just purchased a beautiful mare, which the doctor was desirous
-of possessing; and the animal was the subject of conversation as the two
-entered the house, even to the parlor, where the spinster reclined upon a
-sofa. The old doctor examined the lady for a moment in silence, but his
-mind was all absorbed in the reputed qualities of the mare, as he timed
-the lady's pulse.
-
-"Slightly nervous," he said to the spinster. "Tongue? Ah! coated. Throat
-sore?" and turning towards T., he resumed the horse discussion, still
-holding the lady's wrist. "Good wind, Mr. T.? No spavins? Nothing the
-matter? Suppose you trot her out this afternoon."
-
-The spinster, supposing the conversation alluded to her, went into the
-most extreme kind of hysterics.
-
-
-"A SCARED CUSTOMER."
-
-We give this incident for what it is worth.
-
-A man recently entered a restaurant in Utica, N. Y., and ordered a very
-elaborate dinner. He lingered long at the table, and finally wound up with
-a bottle of wine. Then lighting a cigar, he sauntered up to the bar, and
-remarked to the proprietor,--
-
-"Very fine dinner, landlord. Just charge it, for I haven't a cent."
-
-"But I don't know you," replied the proprietor, indignantly.
-
-"No, of course you don't, or you never would have let me have the dinner."
-
-"Pay me for the dinner, I say," shouted the landlord.
-
-"And I say I can't," vociferated the customer.
-
-"Then I'll see about it," exclaimed the proprietor, who snatched something
-from a drawer, leaped over the counter, and grasping the man by the
-collar, pointed something at his throat. "I'll see if you get away with
-that dinner without paying for it, you scoundrel."
-
-"What is that you hold in your hand?" demanded the now affrighted
-customer, trying to get a sight at the article.
-
-"That, sir, is a revolver; loaded, sir."
-
-[Illustration: NOT A STOMACH-PUMP.]
-
-"O, d---- that; I don't care a continental for a revolver; I've got one
-myself. _I was afraid it was a stomach-pump!_"
-
-
-"WHAT'S TRUMPS?"
-
-Mrs. Bray, in her book of _Anecdotes_, relates a story illustrative of the
-power of the ruling passion.
-
-"A Devonshire physician, boasting the not untradesman-like name of Vial,
-was a desperate lover of the game of whist. One evening, during his
-opponent's deal, he fell to the floor in a fit. Consternation seized on
-the company, who knew not if the doctor was dead or alive. Finally he
-showed signs of returning life, and retaining the last cherished idea that
-had possessed him on falling into the fit, he resumed his chair,
-exclaiming, '_What's trumps, boys?_'"
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-The writer was present at a similar occurrence. There were a half score of
-boys seated upon some logs near the country school-house, during recess,
-listening to a story, something about "an old woman who had just reached a
-well, with a pitcher to obtain some water, when the old lady tripped her
-toe, and fell into the well head foremost."
-
-At this juncture one of the listeners fell forward from the log in a fit.
-We were greatly frightened, but mustered sufficient courage to throw some
-water in the boy's face, when he gradually came to his senses,
-exclaiming,--
-
-"_Did she break the pitcher, Johnny?_"
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-To Mrs. Bray's book we are again indebted for the following:--
-
-"A _bon-vivant_, brought to his death-bed by an immoderate use of wine,
-was one day informed by his physician that he could not, in all human
-probability, survive many hours, and that he would die before eight
-o'clock the following morning, summoned all his remaining strength to call
-the doctor back, and, when the physician had returned, made an ineffectual
-attempt to rise in bed, saying, with the true recklessness of an innate
-gambler,--
-
-"'Doctor, I'll bet you some bottles that I live till _nine_!'"
-
-
-"LET GO THE HALLIARDS."
-
-A sailor was taken with the pleurisy on board a vessel that was hauling
-through the "seven bridges" that span the Charles River from the Navy Yard
-to Cambridgeport, and a well-known physician, rather of the Falstaffian
-make-up, whom I may as well call Dr. Jones,--because that is _not_ his
-name,--was summoned. He prescribed for the patient, and when the schooner
-touched the pier of the bridge, he stepped ashore, as was supposed by the
-captain and crew, whose whole attention was required to keep the vessel
-from driving against the drawer; but "there's many a slip 'twixt cup and
-lip," and the old doctor had taken the "slip," and went plump overboard,
-unseen by any.
-
-In his descent he grasped at a rope, which happened to be the jib
-halliards, and as he came up, puffing and blowing the salt water from his
-mouth and nose, he began to haul "hand-over-hand" at the halliards. His
-corpulency overbalanced the jib, and gradually the sail began to ascend,
-to the astonishment of the cook, who stood near by, and to the wrath of
-the captain on the quarter-deck.
-
-"Let go the jib halliards, there, you confounded _slush_," roared the
-captain.
-
-"I ain't h'isting the jib," replied the terrified cook, believing that the
-sail was bewitched, for sailors are quite superstitious, you know.
-
-"Let go the halliards," shouted the mate. "We shall be across the draw,
-and all go to Davy Jones' locker. Hear, d---- you, Slush-bucket?"
-
-Still the old doctor pulled for dear life, and still rose the ghost-like
-sail, while the affrighted cook and all hands ran aft, looking as pale as
-death. Still the sail went up, up, and the captain and mate began to be
-astonished, when by this time--less time than it requires to tell it--the
-old doctor had reached the rail of the vessel, and shouted lustily for
-help.
-
-All ran forward to help the corpulent old doctor on deck, and by means of
-a man at each arm, and a boat-hook fast into the doctor's unmentionables,
-he was hauled safely on board, a wetter and a wiser man.
-
-If you want to get kicked out of his office, just say in his hearing,
-"_Let go them 'ere halliards_," and it is done.
-
-  "O, mermaids, is it cold and wet
-    Adown beneath the sea?
-  It seems to me that rather chill
-    Must Davy's locker be."
-
-
-MEDICAL TITBITS.
-
-_More Mustard than Meat._--A poor, emaciated Irishman having called in a
-physician as a forlorn hope, the latter spread a large mustard plaster and
-applied it to the poor fellow's lean chest.
-
-"Ah, docthor," said Pat, looking down upon the huge plaster with tearful
-eyes, "it sames to me it's a dale of mustard for so little mate."
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-"_Don't want to be an Angel._"--"I want to be an angel," which has been so
-long shouted by _millions_ of darling little Sunday school children, who
-hadn't the remotest idea for what they had been wishing (?), and whose
-parents would not voluntarily consent to the premature transformation, if
-the children did, has received a check in the following:--
-
-A little sprite, who had been so very sick that her life was despaired of,
-was told one morning by the doctor that she would now get well.
-
-"O, I'm so glad, doctor!" she replied; "for I don't want to die and go to
-heaben, and be an angel, and wear fedders, like a hen."
-
-
-TOOTH DRAWING.
-
-A snobbish-appearing individual accosted a countryman in homespun with the
-following interrogation:--
-
-"I say, ah, my fraand, are you sufficiently conversant with the topography
-of _this_ neighborhood to direct me to the nearest disciple of AEsculapius,
-eh?"
-
-"What?" exclaimed the astonished rustic.
-
-"Can you familiarize me with the most direct course to a physician?"
-
-"Hey?"
-
-"Can you tell me where a doctor lives?"
-
-"O, a doctor's house. Why didn't you say so before?"
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-The next is after the same sort.
-
-A sailor chap entered a dentist's office to have a tooth extracted.
-
-[Illustration: "LOWER TIER, LARBOARD SIDE."]
-
-_Doctor (with great professional dignity, speaking very slowly)._ "Well,
-mariner, what tooth do you require extracted? Is it an incisor, bicuspid,
-or a molar?"
-
-_Jack (brusque and loud)._ "It's here in the lower tier, larboard side.
-Bear a hand, lively, you dumb'd swab, for it's nippin' my jaw like a
-lobster."
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-_The most astonished boy_ I ever beheld was a little country lad who came
-to have a tooth drawn. "He thought it must be fun," his mother said; "but
-he never had one drawn, and knows nothing of it."
-
-"O!" with a great, round mouth, was all he had time to say, but the
-expression of astonishment depicted on that striking countenance, glaring
-eyes, and by the expressive, spasmodic "O!" I never can forget or
-describe; and he caught his hat and ran home, a distance of two miles,
-without stopping, while his mother followed in the carriage by which they
-came. The boy's idea was summed up as follows:--
-
-"The doctor hitched tight onto the tooth with his pinchers, then he pulled
-his first best, and just before it killed me, the tooth came out, and so I
-run home."
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-"_Taking it out in trade_" is all very well when the arrangement is
-mutual; but there are occasions when the advantages are imperceptible, at
-least to one party, as thus:--
-
-"What's the matter, Jerry?" asked old Mr. ----, as Jeremiah was jogging
-by, growling most furiously.
-
-"Matter 'nough," replied old Jerry. "There I've been luggin' water all the
-morning for the doctor's wife to wash with, and what do you s'pose she
-give me for it?"
-
-"About ninepence."
-
-"Ninepence? No! She told me the doctor would pull a tooth for me some
-time, when he got leisure."
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-Apothecaries sometimes "come down" from the dignity of the professional
-man, and crack a joke. For instance,--
-
-A humorous druggist on Washington Street recently exposed some cakes of
-soap in his window with the pertinent inscription, "Cheaper than dirt."
-
-In the country, you know, they keep almost everything in the apothecaries'
-shops. We mentioned the fact in our chapter on Apothecaries. A wag once
-entered one of these apotheco-groco-dry-goods-meat-and-fish-market-stores,
-and asked the keeper,--
-
-"Do you keep matches, sir?"
-
-"O, yes, all kinds," was the reply.
-
-"Well, I'll take a trotting match," said the wag.
-
-The equally humorous druggist handed down a box of pills, saying,--
-
-"Here, take 'em and trot."
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-_A sure Cure._--Henry Ward Beecher is currently reported as having once
-written to Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes as to the knowledge of the latter
-respecting a certain difficulty. The reply was characteristic, and
-_encouraging_.
-
-"Gravel," wrote the doctor, "gravel is an effectual cure. It should be
-taken about four feet deep."
-
-The "remedy" was not, however, so remarkable as the following:--
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-"_Time and Cure._"--A good-looking and gentlemanly-dressed fellow was
-arraigned on the charge of stealing a watch, which watch was found on his
-person. It was his first offence, and he pleaded, "Guilty." The magistrate
-was struck with the calm deportment of the prisoner, and asked him what
-had induced him to take the watch.
-
-"Having been out of health for some time," replied the young man,
-sorrowfully, "the doctor advised me to take something, which I accordingly
-did."
-
-The magistrate was rather amused with the humor of the explanation, and
-further inquired why he had been led to select so remarkable a remedy as a
-watch.
-
-"Why," replied the prisoner, "I thought if I only had the _time_, Nature
-might work the _cure_."
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-_Dye-stuff._--During the cholera time of 1864, in Hartford, Conn., a
-little girl was sent to a drug store to purchase some dye-stuff, and
-forgetting the name of the article, she said to the clerk, "John, what do
-folks dye with?"
-
-"Die with? Why, the cholera, mostly, nowadays."
-
-"Well, I guess that's the name of what I want. I'll take three cents'
-worth."
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-The Hartford Courant told this story in 1869:--
-
-"_Cholera fenced in._--You have noticed the flaming handbills setting
-forth the virtues of a cholera remedy, that are posted by the hundreds on
-the board fence enclosing the ground on Main Street, where Roberts' opera
-house is being erected. Well, there was a timid countryman, the other day,
-who had so far recovered from the 'cholera scare' as to venture into the
-city with a horse and wagon load of vegetables; and thereby hangs a tale.
-He drove moderately along the street, when he suddenly spied the word
-'Cholera,' in big letters on the new fence, and he staid to see no more.
-Laying the lash on to his quadruped, he went past the handbills like a
-streak of lightning, went--'nor stood on the order of his going'--up past
-the tunnel, planting the vegetables along the entire route,--for the
-tail-board had loosened,--hardly taking breath, or allowing his beast to
-breathe, till he reached home at W.
-
-"Safely there, he rushed wildly into the midst of his household,
-exclaiming,--
-
-"'O, wife, wife, they _have_ got the cholera in Hartford, _and have fenced
-it in_.'"
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-_A Joke that's not a Joke._--A funny limb of the law had an office, a few
-years since, on ---- Street, next door to a doctor's shop. One day, an
-elderly gentleman, of the fogy school, blundered into the lawyer's office,
-and asked,--
-
-"Is the doctor in?"
-
-[Illustration: THE FARMER'S ESCAPE FROM THE CHOLERA.]
-
-"Don't live here," replied the lawyer, scribbling over some legal
-documents.
-
-"O, I thought this was the doctor's office."
-
-"Next door, sir;" short, and still writing.
-
-"I beg pardon, but can you tell me if the doctor has many patients?"
-
-"_Not living_," was the brief reply.
-
-The old gentleman repeated the story in the vicinity, and the doctor
-threatened the lawyer with a libel. The latter apologized, saying, "it was
-only a joke, and that no man could sustain a libel against a lawyer," when
-the doctor acknowledged the joke, and satisfaction, saying he would send
-up a bottle of wine, in token of reconciliation.
-
-The wine came, and the lawyer invited in a few friends to laugh over the
-joke, and _smile_ over the doctor's wine. The seal was broken, the dust
-and cobwebs being removed, and the doctor's health drunk right cordially.
-The excellence of the doctor's wine was but half discussed, when the
-lawyer begged to be excused a moment, caught his hat, and rushed from the
-room. Soon one of the guests repeated the request, and followed; then
-another, and another, till they had all gone out.
-
-The wine had been nicely "doctored" with _tartar emetic_, the seal
-replaced and well dusted over, before being sent to the lawyer. The doctor
-was now threatened with prosecution; but after some consideration, the
-following brief correspondence passed between the belligerents:--
-
-"Nolle prosequi." Lawyer to doctor.
-
-"Quits." Doctor to lawyer.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-_Parboiling an Old Lady._--In Rockland, Me., then called East Thomaston,
-several years ago, there resided an old Thomsonian doctor, who had erected
-in one room of his dwelling a new steam bath. An old lady from the
-"Meadows," concluding to try the virtues of the medicated steam, went
-down, was duly arrayed in a loose robe by the doctor's wife, and with much
-trepidation and many warnings not to keep her too long, she entered the
-bath--a sort of closet, with a door buttoned outside. The steam was kept
-up by a large boiler, fixed in the fireplace which the doctor was to
-regulate. The old lady took a book into the bath, "to occupy her mind, and
-keep her from getting too nervous."
-
-"Now it's going all right," said the doctor, when ding, ding, ding! went
-the front door bell. The doctor stepped noiselessly out, and learned that
-a woman required his immediate attention at South Thomaston, three miles
-away. He forgot all about the old lady fastened into the bath, and leaping
-into the carriage in waiting, he was whisked off to South Thomaston.
-
-Meantime the steam increased, and the old lady began to get anxious. The
-moisture gathered on her book; the leaves began to wilt. The dampness
-increased, and soon the book fell to pieces in her lap. Great drops of
-sweat and steam rolled down over her face and body, and she arose, and
-tapping very gently at the door, said,--
-
-"Hadn't I better come out now, doctor?"
-
-[Illustration: TOO MUCH VAPOR.]
-
-No reply. She waited a moment longer, and repeated the knock louder.
-
-"Let me come out, doctor. I am just melting in here."
-
-Still the doctor, to her astonishment, did not reply, or open the door.
-
-"For God's sake, doctor, let me out." Listening a few seconds, she
-screamed, "O, I believe he's gone, and left me here to parboil! Open,
-open!" And she knocked louder and louder at the door, while the now almost
-scalding waters literally poured from her body. "O, I shall suffocate
-here." And giving a desperate kick, she set her foot through the panelled
-door, and, getting down on all fours, she crawled through the opening.
-Just then the doctor's wife, hearing the thumping, hastened to the room,
-and with many apologies and excuses, rubbed down and dried the old lady,
-and begged her not to mention the affair.
-
-But never, to the day of her death, did the old lady again enter a "steam
-bath," or cease to tell how "_the doctor went off to attend a 'birth'
-leaving her in the bath to parboil_!"
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-_A Dry Shower Bath._--When shower baths were all the rage, a few years
-ago, all sorts of plans were suggested to avoid getting wet. The following
-is to the point:--
-
-_Doctor._ Well, deacon, how did your wife manage her new shower bath?
-
-[Illustration: A DRY SHOWER BATH.]
-
-_Deacon._ O, she had real good luck. Madam Mooney told how she managed
-with hern. She had made a large oiled silk hood, with a large cape to it,
-like a fisherman's in a storm, that came all down over her shoulders.
-
-_Doctor_ (impatiently). She's a fool for her pains. That's not the way.
-
-_Deacon._ So my wife thought.
-
-_Doctor._ And your wife did nothing of the kind, I hope.
-
-_Deacon._ O, no, no. My wife, she used an umbrilly.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-IX.
-
-FORTUNE-TELLERS.
-
-    _1st Witch._ By the pricking of my thumbs,
-                 Something wicked this way comes.
-
-      _Macbeth._ How now, you secret, black and midnight hags,
-                 What is't ye do?
-
-          _All._ A deed without a name.--MACBETH, Act IV. Sc. 1.
-
-    PAST AND PRESENT.--BIBLE ASTROLOGERS AND
-    FORTUNE-TELLERS.--ARABIAN.--EASTERN.--ENGLISH.--QUEEN'S
-    FAVORITE.--LILLY.--A LUCKY GUESS.--THE GREAT LONDON FIRE
-    FORETOLD.--HOW.--OUR "TIDAL WAVE" AND AGASSIZ.--A HAUL OF
-    FORTUNE-TELLERS.--PRESENT.--VISIT EN MASSE.--"FILLIKY
-    MILLIKY."--"CHARGE BAYONETS!"--A FOWL PROCEEDING.--FINDING LOST
-    PROPERTY.--THE MAGIC MIRROR EXPOSE.--"ONE MORE
-    UNFORTUNATE."--PROCURESSES.--BOSTON MUSEUM.--"A NICE OLD
-    GENTLEMAN."--MONEY DOES IT.--GREAT SUMS OF MONEY.--"LOVE POWDER"
-    EXPOSE.--HASHEESH.--"DOES HE LOVE ME?"
-
-
-Under the guise of fortune-telling and clairvoyance the most nefarious
-atrocities are daily enacted, not only in the larger cities, but in the
-villages and towns even, throughout the country. In this chapter I propose
-to ventilate them in a manner never before attempted, and the _expose_ may
-be relied upon as correct in every particular.
-
-"Why," exclaimed a friend, "I thought fortune-telling one of the follies
-of the past, and that there was little or none of it practised at the
-present."
-
-Far from it. Very few, comparatively, who practise the black art come out
-under the ancient name of fortune-tellers; but there are thousands of
-ignorant, characterless wretches, in our enlightened day and generation,
-who pretend to tell fortunes, if not under the open title above, as
-astrologers, seers, clairvoyants, or spiritualists, etc. There are some
-clairvoyants of whom we shall treat under the head of "Mind and Matter."
-
-The Bible fortune-tellers practised their lesser deceptions under the
-various titles of "wise men," "soothsayers," the former being acknowledged
-as the more legitimate by the Jews, and the latter mere heathenish
-prognosticators, without divine authority, as thus: Is. ii. 6. "Therefore
-thou hast forsaken thy people, the house of Jacob, because they be
-replenished from the east, and are _soothsayers, like the Philistines_."
-
-8. "Their land also is full of idols; they worship the work of their own
-hands, that which their own fingers have made."
-
-There were also wizards, astrologers, "star-gazers" (Is. xlvii. 13),
-spiritualists (1 Sam. xxviii. 3), magicians, sorcerers, and "the
-well-favored harlot, the mistress of witchcrafts, that _selleth nations
-through her whoredoms, and families through her witchcrafts_." Nahum iii.
-4.
-
-All of these exist at the present day, carrying on the same sort of vile
-deceptions and heinous crimes, to the "selling of families and nations,"
-and souls, in spite of law or gospel. Even as those of nearly six thousand
-years ago were patronized by the great, the kings, and queens, and nobles
-of the earth, so are the fortune-tellers, under the more refined titles,
-visited by governors, representatives, and ladies and gentlemen of rank,
-of modern times.
-
-In visiting these pretenders, in order "to worm out the secrets of their
-trade," the writer has not only been assured by them in confidence that
-the above is true, but he has met distinguished characters there, face to
-face,--the minister of the gospel, the lawyer, the judge, the doctor, and
-what _ought_ to have been the representative intelligence of the
-land,--consulting and fellowshiping with ignorant fortune-tellers.
-"Ignorant?" Yes, out of the scores whom I have seen, there has not been
-one, male or female, possessing an intelligence above ordinary people in
-the unprofessional walks of life, while the majority of them were in
-comparison far below the mediocrity.
-
-If ignorance alone patronized ignorance, like a family intermarrying, the
-stock would eventually dwindle into nothingness, and entirely die out.
-
-Before the "captivity" the Jews had their wise men, and on their exodus
-they reported the existence of the magicians or magi of Egypt.
-
-It seems that nearly everybody, and particularly the Egyptians, regarded
-Moses and Aaron as but magicians in those days; and the magi of Pharaoh's
-household--for all kings and rulers of ancient times and countries had
-their fortune-tellers about them--had a little "tilt" with Moses and
-Aaron, commencing with the changing of the rods into snakes. The Egyptian
-magicians did very well at the snake "trick," as the modern magician calls
-it, also at producing frogs, and such like reptiles; but they were puzzled
-in the vermin business, and the boils troubled them, and they then gave
-up, and acknowledged that there _was_ a power beyond theirs, and that
-power was with God.
-
-Well, that is not fortune-telling; but this was the class who professed
-the power of foretelling; and we find them, with women of the familiar
-spirits, made mention of all through the scriptural writing. Isaiah
-testifies (chapter xix.) that the charmers, familiar spirits, and wizards
-ruined Egypt as a nation. What advantage were they ever to King Saul, the
-grass-eating king with the long name, or any other individuals, in their
-perplexities?
-
-They rather stood in the light of individuals, nations, and the cause of
-Heaven. Then Jesus and the apostles had them to meet and overcome--for
-their power had become very great, even to the publication of books to
-promulgate their doctrines; for we read in Acts xix. 19, that there were
-brought forth at Ephesus, at one time, these books, to the amount of
-fifty thousand pieces of silver, or about twenty-six thousand five hundred
-dollars' worth, and burned in the public square or synagogue.
-
-There are some instances recorded in the Bible, and by Josephus, where the
-Jews professed to foretell events. The curious case of Barjesus, at
-Paphos, who, for a time, hindered Sergius, the deputy of the country, from
-embracing Christianity, is cited in illustration of the injury that false
-prophets are to all advancement. Paul testifies to that fact in the
-following words: "O, full of all subtlety, and all mischief, child of the
-devil, enemy to all righteousness," etc.
-
-
-ARABIAN FORTUNE-TELLER.
-
-The Arabians, from time immemorial, have been implicit believers in
-fortune-telling, as well as believers in the efficacy of charms and all
-other mystic arts. "No species of knowledge is more highly venerated by
-them than that of the occult sciences, which affords maintenance to a vast
-number of quacks and impudent pretenders." The science of "Isen Allah"
-enables the possessor to discern what is passing in his absence, to expel
-evil spirits, and cure malignant diseases. Others claim to control the
-winds and the weather, calm tempests, and to say their prayers in person
-at Mecca, without stirring from their own abodes hundreds of miles away!
-
-The "Sinia" is what is better known to us as jugglery and feats of
-illusion.
-
-The "Ramle" is the more proper fortune-telling, and is believed in and
-practised by people of all ranks, male and female, and by the physicians.
-
-
-THE EASTERN PRINCE.
-
-Fortune-telling is practised in all Eastern countries, to a great extent,
-to the present day. Some pretend to foretell events by the stars and
-planets, some by charms, cards, the palm of the hand, or a lock of hair;
-the latter is the most vulgar mode, and commonly followed by the gypsies.
-
-When the fortress of Ismail was besieged, in 1790, by the Russians, Prince
-Potemkin, the commanding officer, began to grow impatient, after nearly
-two months' resistance, though he was surrounded by all the comforts and
-luxuries of an Eastern prince--by courtiers and beautiful women, who
-employed the most exciting and voluptuous means to engage his attention.
-Madame De Witt, one of the females, pretended to read the decrees of fate
-by cards, and foretold that the prince would only take the place at the
-expiration of three more weeks.
-
-"Ah," exclaimed the prince, with a smile, "I have a method of divination
-far more infallible, as you shall see;" and he immediately despatched
-orders to Suwarof _to take Ismail within three days_. The brave but
-barbarous hero obeyed the order to the very letter.
-
-
-THE SEER'S WIFE.
-
-When Richmond, afterwards Henry VII., landed at Milford-Haven, on his
-memorable march to his successful encounter with Richard III., then at
-Bosworth Field, he consulted a celebrated Welsh seer, who dwelt in
-magnificent style at a place called Matha Farm. To the duke's question as
-to whether he should succeed or not, the wily seer, whose name was Davyd
-Lloyd, requested a little time in which to consider so important a query.
-
-As Richmond lodged that night with his friend Davyd, he gave him till the
-following morning to make up his decision, when the seer assured Richmond
-that he "would succeed gloriously."
-
-For this wonderful and timely information Lloyd received immense rewards
-at the hand of his grateful prince when he became King Henry VII.
-
-Now for the secret of his success: During the time granted for the answer,
-Davyd, in great perplexity and trepidation, consulted his wife, instead of
-the heavens, for an answer. See the wisdom of the reply.
-
-"There can be no difficulty about an answer. Tell him he will certainly
-succeed. Then, if he does, you will receive honors and rewards; and if he
-fails, depend on't he will never come here to punish you."
-
-
-DEE, THE ASTROLOGER.
-
-One of the most remarkable and successful fortune-tellers known to English
-history was John Dee, who was born in London, 1527, and died in 1608. A
-biographer says, "He was an English divine and astrologer of great
-learning, celebrated in the history and science of necromancy, chancellor
-of St. Paul's, and warden of Manchester College, in the reign of Queen
-Elizabeth. He was also author of several published works on the subject of
-astrology, revelations of spirits, etc., which books are preserved in the
-Cottonian library and elsewhere."
-
-Dee enjoyed for a long time the confidence and patronage of Elizabeth. He
-then resided in an elegant house at Mortlake, which was still standing in
-1830, and was used for a female boarding school. "In two hundred years it
-necessarily had undergone some repairs and alterations; yet portions of it
-still exhibited the architecture of the sixteenth century.
-
-"From the front windows might be seen the doctor's garden, still attached
-to the house, down the central path of which the queen used to walk from
-her carriage from the Shan road to consult the wily conjurer on affairs of
-love and war.
-
-"He was one of the few men of science who made use of his knowledge to
-induce the vulgar to believe him a conjurer, and one possessing the power
-to converse with spirits. Lilly's memoirs recorded many of his impostures,
-and at one time the public mind was much agitated by his extravagances.
-The mob more than once destroyed his house (before residing at Mortlake)
-for being too familiar with their devil. He pretended to see spirits in a
-stone, which is still preserved with his books and papers.... In his
-spiritual visions Dee had a confederate in one Kelley, who, of course,
-confirmed all his master's oracles. Both, however, in spite of their
-spiritual friends, died miserably--Kelley by leaping from a window and
-breaking his neck, and Dee in great poverty and wretchedness. The remains
-of the impostor lie in Mortlake Church, without any memorial."
-
-He unfortunately had survived his royal patroness.
-
-Queen Mary had had Dee imprisoned for practising by enchantment against
-her life; but her successor released him, and required him to name a lucky
-day for her coronation.
-
-"In view of this fact," asks the author of 'A Morning's Walk from London
-to Kew,' "is it to be wondered at that a mere man, like tens of thousands
-of other fanatics, persuaded himself that he was possessed of supernatural
-powers?"
-
-
-ANOTHER IMPOSTOR.--THE GREAT FIRE.
-
-William Lilly followed in the wake of, and was even a more successful
-impostor than the Reverend Dee. He was first known in London as a
-book-keeper, whose master, dying, gave him the opportunity of marrying his
-widow and her snug little fortune of one thousand pounds. The wife died in
-a few years, and Lilly set up as an astrologer and fortune-teller.
-
-His first great attempt at a public demonstration of his art was about
-1630, which was to discover certain treasures which he claimed were buried
-in the cloister of Westminster Abbey. Lilly had studied astronomy with a
-Welsh clergyman, and doubtless may have been sufficiently "weather-wise"
-to anticipate a storm; but however that might have been, on the night of
-the attempt, there came up a most terrific storm of wind, rain, thunder
-and lightning, which threatened to bury the actors beneath the ruins of
-the abbey, and his companions fled, leaving Lilly master of the situation.
-He unblushingly declared that he himself allayed the "storm spirit," and
-"attributed the failure to the lack of faith and want of better knowledge
-in his companions."
-
-"In 1634 Lilly ventured a second marriage, with another woman of property,
-which was unfortunate as a commercial speculation, for the bride proved
-extravagant beyond her dowry and Lilly's income. In 1644 he published his
-first almanac, which he continued thirty-six years. In 1648 he therein
-predicted the "great fire" of London, which immortalized his name. While
-Lilly was known as a cheat, and was ridiculed for his absurdities, he
-received the credit for as lucky a guess as ever blessed the fortunes of a
-cunning rogue.
-
-"In the year 1656," said his prediction, "the aphelium of Mars, the
-signification of England, will be in Virgo, which is assuredly the
-ascendant of the English monarchy, but Aries of the kingdom. When this
-absis, therefore, of Mars shall appear in Virgo, who shall expect less
-than a strange _catastrophe_ of human affairs in the commonwealth,
-monarchy, and kingdom of England?"
-
-He then further stated that it would be "_ominous to London, unto her
-merchants at sea, to her traffique_ at land, to her poor, to her rich, to
-all _sorts of people inhabiting her or her liberties, by reason of fire
-and plague_!" These he predicted would occur within ten years of that
-time.
-
-The great plague did occur in London in 1665, and the great fire in 1666!
-The fire originated by incendiarism in a bakery on Pudding Lane, near the
-Tower, in a section of the city where the buildings were all constructed
-of wood with pitched roofs, and also a section near the storehouses for
-shipping materials, and those of a highly combustible nature. It occurred
-also at a time when the water-pipes were empty.
-
-This fearful visitation destroyed nearly two thirds of the metropolis.
-Four hundred and thirty-three acres were burned over. Thirteen thousand
-houses, eighty-nine churches, and scores of public buildings were laid in
-ashes and ruins. There was no estimating the amount of property destroyed,
-nor the many souls who perished in the relentless, devouring flames.
-
-If this great fire originated at the instigation of Lilly, in order to
-demonstrate his claims as a foreteller of events, as is believed to be the
-case by nearly all who were not themselves believers in the occult
-science, what punishment could be meted out to such a villain commensurate
-to his heinous crime? Curran says, "There are two kinds of prophets, those
-who are inspired, and those who prophesy events which they themselves
-intend to bring about. Upon this occasion, Lilly had the ill luck to be
-deemed of the latter class." Elihu Rich says in his biography of Lilly,
-"It is certain that he was a man of no character. He was a double-dealer
-and a liar, by his own showing, ... and perhaps as decent a man as a
-_trading_ prophet could well be, under the circumstances." Lilly was cited
-before a committee of the House of Commons, not, as was supposed by many,
-"that he might discover by the same planetary signs _who_ were the authors
-of the great fire," but because of the suspicion that he was already
-acquainted with them, and privy to the supposed machinations which brought
-about the catastrophe. At one time, 1648-9, Parliament gave him one
-hundred pounds a year, and he was courted by royalty and nobility, at home
-and abroad, from whom he received an immense revenue. He died a natural
-death, in 1681, "leaving some works of interest in the history of
-astrology," which, in connection with the important personages with whom
-he was associated, and the remarkable events above recorded, have
-immortalized his name.
-
-Respecting the prediction of the plague, I presume that if any prominent
-personage should, at any time, predict a great calamity to a great
-metropolis, to take place "_within ten years, more or less_," there
-necessarily would be something during that time, of a calamitous nature,
-that might seem to verify their prediction. Besides, we should take into
-consideration how many predictions are never verified. Dr. Lamb, Dee,
-Bell, and others prophesied earthquakes to shake up London at various
-times in 1203, 1598, 1760, etc., which never occurred, to any great
-extent.
-
-Supposing a great tidal wave should devastate our coast, within ten years
-even, would not Professor Agassiz be immortalized thereby, although he
-never predicted it, except in the imaginative and mulish brains of certain
-individuals, who will have it that he did so predict?
-
-
-A RAID ON FORTUNE-TELLERS.
-
-In London, at the present day, it is estimated that nearly two thousand
-persons, male and female, gain a livelihood under the guise of
-fortune-telling. Some of them are "seers," or "astrologers," "seventh
-sons," clairvoyants, etc.
-
-From the London Telegraph of the year 1871 we gather the following
-description of a few of the most prominent of these, with their arrest and
-trial, as fortune-telling is there, as elsewhere, proscribed by law:--
-
-"First was arraigned 'Professor Zendavesta,' otherwise John Dean Bryant,
-aged fifty, and described as a 'botanist.' He was charged with having told
-a woman's fortune, for the not very extravagant sum of thirteen cents. Two
-married women, it seems, instructed by the police, went to No. 3 Homer
-Street, Marylebone, and paid sixpence each to a woman, who gave them a
-bone ticket in return. One might have imagined that it was a
-spiritualist's _seance_, but for the fact that the fee for admittance was
-sixpence, and not one guinea. Professor Zendavesta shook hands with one of
-the women, and warmly inquired after her health. She told him she was in
-trouble about her husband, which was false, and he bade her be of good
-cheer, and made an appointment to meet her on another day. Subsequently,
-two constables went to Bryant's house, and on going into a room on the
-ground floor, found thirty or forty young women seated there. The ladies
-began to scream, and there was a rush for the door; while the police, who
-seemed to labor under the impression that to attend an astrological
-lecture was as illegal an act as that of being present at a cock-fight or
-a common gambling-house, stopped several of the women, and made them give
-their names and addresses. The walls of the apartment were covered with
-pictures of Life and Death, with the 'nativities of several royal and
-illustrious personages, and of Constance Kent.' It is a wonder that the
-horoscopes of Heliogabalus and Jack the Painter should have been lacking.
-Then there was a medicine chest containing bottles and memoranda of
-nativities; also a 'magic mirror, with a revolving cylinder,' showing the
-figures of men and women, old and young. Of course the collection included
-a 'book of fate.' This was the case against Bryant.
-
-"One Shepherd, alias 'Professor Cicero,' was next charged, and it was
-shown that the same 'instructed' women went to his house, paying sixpence
-for the usual bone ticket. They saw Shepherd separately. When one of them
-said that she wanted her fortune told, 'Professor Cicero' took a yard tape
-and measured her hand. He gabbled the usual nonsense to her about love,
-marriage, and good luck, hinting that the price of a complete nativity
-would be half a crown, and before they left the place he gave them a
-circular, with their phrenological organs marked. Indeed, the man's
-defence was, that he was a professor of phrenology, and not of the black
-art. A 'magic mirror' and a 'lawyer's gown' were, however, found at his
-house, and the last named item has certainly a very black look. The
-evidence against the next defendant, William Henry, alias 'Professor
-Thalaby,' and against the fourth and last, Frederick Shipton, alias
-'Professor Baretta,' did not differ to any great extent from the testimony
-given against Zendavesta. The solicitor retained for this sage contended
-that if he had infringed the law, it was likewise violated at the Crystal
-Palace, where the 'magic mirror' was to be seen every day. Mr. Mansfield,
-however, had only to deal with the case and the culprits before him, and,
-convicting all the four fortune-tellers, he sent them to the house of
-correction, there to be kept, each and every one of them, to hard labor
-for three months."
-
-
-THE FORTUNE-TELLERS OF TO-DAY.
-
-Before entering upon the _expose_ of the viler practices of this vile
-art,--the "selling of families," and of virginity, and the abominable
-practices of the procuresses, who carry on their damnable treacheries,
-particularly in our large cities, at the present day,--I wish to enliven
-this chapter by one or more amusing instances relative to country
-fortune-tellers.
-
-_Filliky Milliky._--During the summer of 185-, the writer was one of a
-large party of excursionists to Weymouth's Point, in Union Bay. There was
-a large barge full of people, old and young, male and female, besides
-several sailboat loads, who, on the return in the afternoon, decided to
-stop at the hut of a fortune-teller called "Filliky Milliky." This old
-man, with his equally ignorant wife, professed to tell fortunes by means
-of a tea-cup. He claimed that he knew of our intended visit, and had set
-his house in order; but if that house was "in order" that day, deliver us
-from seeing it when out of order.
-
-There were some one hundred or more of us, and whilst but two could occupy
-the attention of the "Millikies" at once, we sought other means of whiling
-away the time. The old man lived near the river side, and at his leisure
-had picked up a large pile of lath edgings which had floated down from a
-lath mill on the river.
-
-One Captain Joy took it upon himself to form "all the gentlemen who would
-enlist in so noble a cause" into a "home guard," and forthwith arming
-themselves with the aforesaid lath edgings, a company of volunteers was
-quickly raised, and drawn up in battle array.
-
-I do not recollect the glorious and patriotic speech by which our noble
-captain fired our "sluggish souls with due enthusiasm for the great cause
-in which we were about to embark," but we were put through a course of
-military tactics, "according to Hardee," and took up our line of march.
-
-[Illustration: CHARGE, INFANTRY!]
-
-There was no Bunker Hill on which to display our valor, but there was
-another hill, just in rear of the barn nearly, which had not been used in
-farming purposes that spring, and for this hill we charged at
-"double-quick." In this charge--the danger lay in the _swamping_ part of
-the hill--we unambushed a large flock of hens, chickens, and ducks, from
-the opposite side.
-
-"_Charge bayonet!_" shouted our noble captain, with great presence of
-mind.
-
-We charged! The ducks quacked and fled. The hens cackled and ran. The
-noise was deafening, the chase enthusiastic, and above the dust and din of
-battle arose the stentorian cry, "Charge bayonet!" The Donnybrook Fair
-advice of "Wherever there's a head, hit it," was followed to the letter,
-until the last enemy lay dead on the gory field, or had hid so far under
-the barn that the small boys could not bring them forth. Then orders came
-to withdraw, and gather up the dead and wounded.
-
-[Illustration: AFTER THE BATTLE.]
-
-There was an interesting string of hens, chickens, and ducks brought in
-and laid at the feet of our great commander, to represent the fowl
-products of that campaign. The captain's congratulatory speech was
-characteristic also of the _fowl proceedings_, at the close of which
-harangue he appointed the "orderly a committee of three to wait on the
-fortune-teller, and present him with the spoils of war," of which his
-"cups" had given him no previous intimation.
-
-What next? The captain informed us that "as the company was 'mutual,' it
-became necessary, in consideration of the losses, to draw on the
-_stock-holders_ (_gun-stock_), as he could see no other 'policy' under
-which to assess those 'damages.'"
-
-"Filliky Milliky" never carried fowl to a better market.
-
-The "fortunate" ones entertained us, on the barge, with the marvellous
-revelations that had transpired within the hut. One married lady was
-assured that she was yet single, but would marry in a six-month. A
-double-and-twisted old maid was told that her husband was in California.
-But the most absurd revelation was to a well-known respectable middle-aged
-lady, who was inclined to believe in the foreseeing powers of old Mother
-Milliky until now, who was told that she was "soon to receive a letter
-from her absent husband, also in California for the last five years; that
-he had become rich, and was soon to return; but that her youngest child, a
-year old, was inclined to worms, and might not live to see its father
-return!" All this wonderful information for a ninepence.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-_Secret of finding lost Property._--In Hopkinton, Mass., there lived a man
-named Sheffield, who professed to tell fortunes. The postmaster of that
-town told my informant that old Sheffield received from seven to ten
-letters per day from the fools who believed in his foreseeing powers. Once
-the surveyor, with a large gang of men, was working on the highway, and
-while they were at dinner an ox chain was stolen. The overseer, happening
-along before the rest of the men, saw some one unhook the chain, and steal
-away to a field adjoining, pull up a fence post, and deposit the chain in
-the hole, replace the post, and return. He "lay low," and as the thief
-passed he discovered him to be old Sheffield, the fortune-teller. He kept
-his own counsel, and, the chain being missed, a committee of three was
-appointed to visit the seer, to discover by his art where the stolen
-property was secreted.
-
-Mr. ----, the overseer, and others, called on Sheffield, who got out his
-mysterious book, and figured away in an impressive manner, and finally
-chalked out a rough plan of the ground on the floor, and again consulting
-his book, he solemnly declared that he had discovered the property.
-
-"You follow this line from the spot where the chain was unhooked from the
-plough, so many rods to this line fence, go along the fence to the seventh
-post, draw it up, and the chain will be found beneath, in the post-hole."
-
-The two men were struck dumb with astonishment, for they believed in the
-mysterious powers of old Sheffield; but the overseer exclaimed, in words
-more impressive than elegant,--
-
-"Yes, you infernal scoundrel, and you put it there, for I saw you with my
-own eyes."
-
-
-THE MAGIC MIRROR EXPOSE.
-
-Not long ago the body of a once beautiful young woman was taken from the
-Merrimack River, below the factories at L----. She was unknown at the
-time, and this was all there was given to the public. To the world she was
-merely--
-
-  "One more unfortunate,
-    Weary of breath,
-  Rashly importunate,
-    Gone to her death."
-
-Now, these are the whole facts of the case. She was the daughter of
-respectable, Christian parents, in a New England village, where she was
-highly esteemed as an amiable and virtuous young lady. But the tempter
-came. Not in the form of a "serpent"--very harmless animals,
-comparatively!--nor that other old fellow, commonly descried as having
-clattering hoofs and forked tail, etc.--but in the flesh and semblance of
-a handsome young man! I think preachers and book-makers paint their devils
-too hideous and too far off! Leave off the d, and look for your evils
-nearer home, and rather pleasant to look at, on the sly, and not (at
-first) very unpleasant to the senses in general. These are the dangerous
-(d)evils; escape _them_, and you avoid all!
-
-In the village there were two young men, rivals for the affections of this
-amiable young lady, and I know not but there were a dozen besides. One
-held the only advantage over the other of having been a native of the
-town, while the other was, comparatively, but little known.
-
-Both were sober, industrious, and moral young men.
-
-One day Miss ---- was going to the great city, and, for the "sport of the
-thing," agreed to visit a celebrated fortune-teller--a clairvoyant!--at
-the instigation of the young man, who, though least known to her, had
-recently distanced his rival by his assiduity in pressing his suit before
-the young lady.
-
-He assured her there could be no impropriety in a young lady's visiting a
-fortune-teller. It was only for fun; nobody believed in them, and she
-could keep her own secret if she chose!
-
-She went in broad daylight. The lady clairvoyant greeted her cordially,
-begged her to feel quite at her ease, as there was great fortune in store
-for her. She described her two lovers very minutely, and informed the girl
-that the one who was to marry her would come to her in a vision, if she
-would but look into a mirror hanging on the wall before her.
-
-"I see nothing but my own face," replied the young lady, when she had
-arisen and looked into the glass.
-
-The woman then turned it half around on the hinges, swung out the frame
-upon which the mirror was also hung, and, disclosing a plain black glass
-behind, fastened to the wall, said,--
-
-"Now, if you will step behind the glass, back to the wall, and again look
-into the mirror, you _may_ possibly see one of the two gentlemen--I cannot
-_say_ which."
-
-More amused than alarmed, the lady complied.
-
-[Illustration: THE FORTUNE-TELLER'S MAGIC MIRROR.]
-
-"Still I see nothing but myself and a dark glass behind me," she said.
-
-"Look steadfastly into the glass. _Now!_" exclaimed the woman.
-
-"O, what--what do I see?" cried the girl. "'Tis he! 'tis Mr. ----"
-
-"Don't be alarmed; 'tis your future husband. No power can prevent it. It
-is fate--fate! But it will be a happy consummation," said the woman,
-closing the mirror.
-
-"Why, I left him at home, surely; and I came by steam. That is a solid
-wall! Ah, my fate is decreed, I believe!"
-
-Can the reader suppose any sensible person would believe this to be magic?
-There are thousands who believe it. Miss ---- was one. She had seen the
-spiritual representation of her future husband, and, finding him at home
-on her return, the same afternoon, she accepted him as her betrothed, and
-the other was dismissed.
-
-Her ruin followed. In the flight of her lover, her hopes were forever
-blasted. To hide her shame, she went secretly from home; and to earn her
-daily bread, she labored in a cotton factory. When she could no longer
-cover her shame in the world, she went without--into outer darkness! Her
-parents went down in sorrow to their untimely graves.
-
-Now about the magic mirror. The young man went to the city by the same
-train with the girl he proposed to ruin. He had previously arranged with
-the fortune-teller--no unusual thing--to appear in person behind the
-darkened glass in the next room, and had returned in disguise by the same
-train with his victim.
-
-The fortune-teller died miserably, and was buried in the Potter's Field at
-the expense of the city of Hartford, Conn.
-
-  "The thorns which I have reaped are of the tree
-  I planted; they have torn me,--and I bleed:
-  I should have known what fruit would spring from such a seed."
-                                                            BYRON.
-
-Such is one of the results of patronizing fortune-tellers. I have seen
-this kind of mirror, and the first effect, even on a strong-minded person,
-seeing but faintly through the darkened glass, over your shoulder, the
-outlines of a face, and finally, as your eyes get familiar with the
-darkness, the very features of a person reflected therein, is truly
-impressive, if not startling.
-
-Young ladies, for your own sakes, for the sake of your friends, and more
-for Heaven's sake, keep away from fortune-tellers! _You cannot possibly
-see into futurity_, neither can any one, much less the ignorant wretches
-who profess the dark mysteries, tell for you what joys or sorrows are in
-store for the future!
-
-
-FORTUNE-TELLERS AS PROCURESSES.
-
-An able reporter to the Boston Daily Post, who devoted a considerable time
-in May, 1869, to visiting and writing up the fortune-tellers of Boston,
-which he reported in full in the above paper, and from which I shall copy
-more fully hereafter, says in conclusion,--
-
-"From what we are able to learn in this direction, we have arrived at the
-conclusion that there are not _less than two hundred men and women_ in
-Boston and vicinity who get a good livelihood by this profession, while
-many do a large and profitable business.
-
-"One lady, who has reduced her charges to the very lowest figure (fifty
-cents for an interview), candidly informed us that her receipts for the
-past year had not been less than twelve hundred dollars. Another reported
-her receipts from ten to fifty dollars a day.
-
-"Of course no reliable estimate, without better statistics, can be made of
-the magnitude of the business; but it seems not extravagant to estimate
-their receipts, on an average, at fifteen hundred dollars per annum! or an
-annual cost to the people of Boston (and vicinity?) for fortune-telling,
-of the snug little sum of three hundred thousand dollars!"
-
-The price advertised for a sitting in 1870 was from twenty-five cents to
-one dollar. The Post reporter says of "Mrs. Nellie Richards" (_alias_ Mrs.
-Nelson), "Not unfrequently her receipts are fifty dollars per day." Again
-of one, "She has received fifty dollars for one sitting." The writer has
-visited the most celebrated fortune-tellers here, and been told by them
-that they have received five, ten, and twenty dollars for one sitting.
-What for? What was the value received? Not from _females_ do they receive
-these liberal sums; but from middle-aged or old gentlemen and "married
-men," as one assured me. It is quite possible for a few sharp
-fortune-tellers to make fifteen hundred dollars per year at merely telling
-fools what they may expect from the future. "Middle-aged, old, and married
-men" do not consult them, as a general rule, for that purpose.
-
-Here is a true history illustrative of my meaning. I gathered the facts
-from the lady.
-
-On Saturday, the 9th of December, 1871, a young woman, residing with her
-parents on ---- Street, went to the afternoon performance at the Boston
-Museum. A young man made three unsuccessful attempts to "flirt" with her.
-The third time she slightly shook her head. Some one, seated immediately
-behind her, touched her on the shoulder, and said, "Right, young lady; you
-did right not to notice him."
-
-"I turned my head," said my informant, "and just made the least bit of
-acknowledgment to a fine-looking, elderly gentleman, who, perhaps, was
-rising fifty. He was an utter stranger to me, and I did not observe him
-afterwards. On the following week I received a note--a very pretty,
-delicate letter--from the very gentleman. He explained that he saw me at
-the performance of "Elfie," and was much struck by my lady-like
-appearance, and the rest, begging the privilege of calling on me
-privately. Now, how could he have obtained my address?"
-
-"Did the other party, the young 'flirt,' know it?" I asked.
-
-"No--not probable. I was not so astonished in receiving a letter from a
-stranger, as I was on learning that the nice-looking old gent at the
-theatre should have sent it, and that he possessed my address."
-
-"Why not surprised by receiving the letter from a stranger?" I asked.
-
-"Because I visited a fortune-teller, a day or two before, who told me I
-should receive a letter from a middle-aged man, and that it would be to my
-interest to cultivate his friendship, as he was a nice old covey, and was
-rich and liberal."
-
-"The secret is out! Did the fortune-teller know your address?"
-
-"O, yes; she was an old friend of my mother's, _and asked me nothing for a
-sitting_. And would _she_ possibly betray the daughter of her old friend?"
-
-I have since learned that the young woman was married at the time, which
-fact the fortune-teller must have known when she advised her to "cultivate
-the friendship" of an old _roue_, "as he was rich and liberal."
-
-Rich and liberal! No doubt! The light was astounding which broke in upon
-the young lady's mind from my intimating that the old viper, the
-fortune-teller (clairvoyant she calls herself), had betrayed her, and
-doubtless had received ocular demonstration of the "nice old gentleman's"
-liberality. Doubtless there was a five, ten, or twenty dollar sitting! and
-the "friend of her mother" could well afford to give her sittings free!
-
-Reader, if you doubt that such villanies are daily practised in this city,
-such "betrayals of confidence," and "selling of families," put up "five or
-ten dollars for a sitting," almost anywhere, and you can have proof. None
-of your fifty cents or dollar affairs--those are for the females; but
-"come down" with the V.'s and X.'s; those bring the "great information."
-
-Let us "parable" a case.
-
-"A nice, middle-aged gentleman" calls on Madam Blank.
-
-"Here, now, my good woman, take this fee. Tell me a good future. Let her
-have dark hair and eyes. If it is satisfactory, I double the fee."
-
-"Call again next week, or in three or four days," is all the conversation
-necessary to pass for the first "sitting."
-
-Before the expiration of the time, just such a young lady calls. The wily
-old fortune-teller--too old to sell herself any longer--sells out this,
-perhaps, unsuspecting lady with black hair and eyes, by mysteriously
-informing her of a certain nice gentleman whom she will meet at a
-designated place, at a specified hour, on a particular day! She is _very_
-courteous to the girl, asks her nothing for a sitting, has taken a liking
-to her, worms from her the secrets of her birth, poverty, weaknesses,
-etc., and, with many smiles and fair promises, bows her out.
-
-She next proceeds to inform the "nice gentleman" that the job is cooked,
-and the victim is unsuspecting, states where he is to meet her, the signal
-by which he is to know her; takes the "double fee," and leaves the rest to
-the "nice middle-aged (and shrewd) gentleman" to manage for himself.
-
-How many young women in Boston can avouch for the truth of this statement?
-I doubt not there are very many.
-
-_Cui Bono?_ While I know and confess that there are a few ladies who
-_profess_ to tell fortunes, find lost property, etc., and who do no
-greater deception, still, what positive advantage has ever been derived
-therefrom?
-
-
-LOVE POWDERS AND DROPS.--FRENCH SECRET, ETC.
-
-I have, by purchase and otherwise, obtained the secret of the compounds of
-the celebrated "Spanish," _alias_ "Turkish, Love Powders." I had
-previously considered them very harmless preparations. They are quite the
-reverse. The powder and drops are _Spanish flies_ and _blood-root_!
-Sometimes the former are mixed (pulverized) with fine sugar; but the
-Spanish flies (cantharides), either in powder or liquid, is a very
-dangerous irritant, a very small dose sometimes producing painful and
-dangerous strangury. It is far more certain to produce this distressing
-complaint than to cause any sexual excitement. There may be some harmless
-powders sold as "love powders," but I have never seen any. I have a
-quantity of the former. Any physician or chemist may see it, who is
-interested. A few drops of it will produce burning and excoriation of the
-mouth and stomach, and inflammation of the stomach, liver, and kidneys.
-And this dangerous stuff is sold by ignorant fortune-tellers to any
-equally ignorant, credulous creature who may send fifty cents therefor.
-
-_The French Secret_ is only for fools. Reader, _you_ have no occasion for
-it. It would be of no positive earthly benefit, provided I could so
-construe language as to explain to you what it is, in this connection. Be
-assured that you cannot circumvent Nature, except at the expense of
-health. _Qui n'a sante n'a rien._
-
-Druggists' clerks sometimes sell to boys _tincture cantharis_ for evil
-purposes.
-
-_Hasheesh_ is another dangerous article, sometimes sold at random, and
-purchased for no good purpose. A few years since, a great excitement was
-produced by the young ladies of P---- Female Seminary obtaining and using
-a quantity of _hasheesh_. "One girl took five grains, another _ten_
-grains. The latter was rendered insensible, and with difficulty restored
-to consciousness, while the former was rushing around under the peculiar
-hallucinating effect of the drug, and in a manner bordering on indecency."
-I obtained this statement, with more that I cannot publish, from a
-physician who witnessed the scene.
-
-
-"DOES HE LOVE ME?"
-
-Young girls and children are seduced into visiting fortune-tellers. A
-Boston fortune-teller, in 1871, took a summer tour through Eastern
-Massachusetts and New Hampshire. At Manchester, one evening, some one
-knocked lightly at her reception-room door, when, on her answering the
-summons, there stood three little girls, of ten or twelve summers.
-
-"Well," said the lady, "what do you children want?"
-
-"We came to have our fortunes told," replied the youngest, drawing her
-little form up to represent every half inch of her diminutive dimensions.
-With a smile of incredulity, the lady said, "It costs fifty cents.
-Besides, you are too small to have a fortune told."
-
-"We've got the money," replied the little speaker; "and we're not too
-little. Why, I am ten, and Jenny, here, is twelve."
-
-[Illustration: CHILDREN CONSULTING A FORTUNE-TELLER.]
-
-"Well, come in," replied the fortune-teller. There was a lady present, who
-also asked what those children came there for.
-
-The girls sat up in some chairs proffered. The younger one was so small
-that her little feet could not reach the floor, and sitting back in her
-chair, her little limbs stuck out straight, as such awkward little folks'
-will.
-
-The woman told them something, to seem to cover the money paid. It was not
-satisfactory, however, and the ten-year-old one put the following
-questions:--
-
-"Do you think, ma'am, that the young man who is keeping company with me
-loves me?"
-
-This was a poser, and the woman laughed outright.
-
-"What did she reply?" I asked, shocked, though amused, by the
-ridiculousness of the whole affair.
-
-"O, Gad, if I know! I was too busy then to listen."
-
-The next question was more strange than the first:--
-
-"Will the young gentleman marry me, eventually?"
-
-"Doubtless he will when you become older," was the reply; "and I advise
-you to think no more about it till you are much older."
-
-I obtained this item from the third party present, the husband of the
-fortune-teller.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-X.
-
-EMINENT PHYSICIANS AND SURGEONS.
-
-    _Lord Say._      Why, Heaven ne'er made the universe a level.
-                     Some trees are loftier than the rest, some mountains
-                     O'erpeak their fellows, and some planets shine
-                     With brighter ray above the skyey route
-                     Than others. Nay, even at our feet, the rose
-                     Outscents the lily; and the humblest flower
-                     Is noble still o'er meaner plants. And thus
-                     Some men are nobler than the mass, and should,
-                     By nature's order, shine above their brethren.
-    _Lord Clifford._ 'Tis true the noble should; but who is noble?
-                     Heaven, and not heraldry, makes noble men.
-
-    THEIR ORIGIN, BOYHOOD, EARLY STRUGGLES, ETC.--DOCTORS ARE PUBLIC
-    PROPERTY.--DR. MOTT, OF OYSTER BAY.--DR. PARKER.--A "PLOUGH-BOY."--THE
-    FARMER'S BOY AND THE OLD DOCTOR.--SCENE IN BELLEVUE HOSPITAL.--"LEAVES
-    FROM THE LIFE OF AN UNFLEDGED AESCULAPIAN."--FIRST
-    PATIENT.--"NONPLUSSED!"--ALL RIGHT AT LAST.--PROFESSORS EBERLE AND
-    DEWEES.--A HARD START.--"FOOTING IT."--ABERNETHY'S BOYHOOD.--"OLD
-    SQUEERS."--SPARE THE BOY AND SPOIL THE ROD.--A DIGRESSION.--SKIRTING A
-    BOG.--AN AGREEABLE TURN.--PROFESSOR HOLMES.--A HOMELESS STUDENT.
-
-
-It is amusing, as well as instructive, to compare notes on the various
-circumstances which have led different young men to adopt the science of
-medicine as their profession.
-
-The advantages of birth and "noble blood" weigh lightly, when thrown into
-the balance, against circumstances of after life, and its necessities, in
-ourselves or fellow-creatures. In searching through biographies of famous
-people, of all ages and countries (to collect a chapter on "Origin of
-Great Men"), I am peculiarly convinced of the correctness of this
-conclusion.
-
-The earlier histories and traits of character--no matter which way they
-point--of all great men are interesting to review; and yet it is a
-lamentable fact that the accounts of boyhood days, aspirations, hopes, and
-struggles, with the many little interesting items and episodes of the
-youth of most great men are very meagre, and, in many cases, entirely lost
-to the world.
-
-In the published biographies of physicians this is particularly the case.
-You read the biography of one, and it will suffice for the whole. It
-begins something like this:--
-
-"Dr. A. was born in Blanktown, about the year 18--; entered the office of
-Dr. Bolus, where he studied physic; attended college at Spoon Haven, where
-he graduated with honors; arrived at eminence in his profession;" and, if
-defunct, ends, "he died at Mortgrass, and sleeps with his fathers.
-_Requiescat in pace._"
-
-In presenting to the public the following little sketches of physicians, I
-may only say that doctors, of all men, are considered public property, and
-have suffered more of the public's kicks and cuffs than any other class of
-men, from the time when Hercules amused himself by setting up old Dr.
-Chiron, and shooting poisoned arrows at his vulnerable heel, to the little
-divertisement of the lovely St. Calvin and his consistory in cooking
-Michael Servetus, the Spanish physician; to the imprisonment of our army
-surgeons by their "brethren" of the South, that they might not be
-instrumental in restoring Union soldiers to the ranks; or the more recent
-imprisonment of a physician without cause, and the wholesale slaughter of
-students, in the Isle of Cuba.
-
-
-"THE QUAKER SURGEON."
-
-Dr. Valentine Mott gave no intimation, in his boyhood days, of the great
-ability that for a time seemed to lie dormant within the after-developed,
-massive, and well-balanced brain of the celebrated surgeon. Except from
-the fact of his being the son of a country doctor, his schoolmates would
-as soon have expected to see him turn out a second-rate
-oyster-man,--suggested by the ominous name of the Bay, at Glen Cove, where
-Valentine was born,--as to believe that a boy of no more promise would
-develop into the greatest physician and surgeon of the age! He was reared
-amongst doctors,--his father, and Dr. Valentine Searnen, and others.
-
-A "plough-boy" is as likely to become an eminent surgeon as is the son of
-a practising physician. Dr. Willard Parker, one of the most prominent
-physicians and surgeons of New York city, was born in New Hampshire, in
-1802, of humble though most respectable parents. When Willard was but a
-few years old, his family removed to Middlesex County, Mass., evidently
-with a hope of bettering their circumstances. Here Mr. Parker entered more
-fully upon the practical duties of an agricultural life, instructing his
-son Willard, when not attending the village school, in the mysteries of
-"Haw, Buck, and gee up, Dobbin."
-
-Until he was sixteen years old, young Parker was brought up a "plough-boy"
-and a tiller of the soil. From a "plough-boy" he became the "master" of a
-village school, "teaching the young idea how to shoot," which honest
-pursuit he continued for several years, until he had accumulated
-sufficient means to enter Harvard. He was a hard-working student, and his
-books were not thrown aside when he had obtained a diploma, in 1830.... As
-a lecturer and operator, Dr. Parker has been most successful.... Since the
-death of Dr. Valentine Mott, in April, 1865, Professor Parker has been
-elected president of the New York Inebriate Asylum (Binghamton).
-
-
-AN ONONDAGA FARMER BOY.
-
-Imagine, dear reader, looking back over the space of nearly forty years,
-that you see an uncouth young man, twenty years of age, clad in the coarse
-clothes and cowhide boots of an Onondaga farmer, who, straightening up
-from his laborious task of potato hoeing, stops for a moment, leaning with
-one hand upon his hoe, while he wipes the sweat from his handsome,
-intelligent, though sun-burned brow with a cotton handkerchief in the
-other. Here is a picture for a painter! Now he seems studiously observing
-the old village doctor, who, seated in his crazy old gig, drawn by his
-ancient sorrel mare, is leisurely jogging by on the main turnpike.
-
-[Illustration: THE ONONDAGA FARMER BOY.]
-
-"Good evening, Stephen; p'taters doin' well?" says the doctor.
-
-Receiving an affirmative answer, the doctor drives past, and is gone from
-the sight, but not from the memory, of the young farmer.
-
-"And _that_ is a representative of the science of medicine!"
-
-So saying, the young man "hoed out his row,"--which was his last,--picked
-up his coat, and returned to the parental mansion, but a few rods distant.
-This was the turning-point in his life.
-
-We pass over twenty years or more.
-
-It is operating-day at Bellevue Hospital, in New York city. A very serious
-and important operation is about to be performed. Three hundred students
-and physicians are seated in a semicircle under the great dome of the
-hospital, in profound silence and intense interest, while the professor
-and attending surgeon is delivering a brief but comprehensive lecture
-relative to the forthcoming operation.
-
-The speaker is a man of middle age, medium height, deep, expressive eyes,
-well-developed brow, with that excellent quality of muscle and nerve that
-is only the result of earlier out-door exercise and development, with calm
-deportment and modest speech. "His conciseness of expression and quiet
-self-possession are evident to every beholder, and comprehensive and
-congenial to every listener."
-
-Who is this splendid man before whom students and physicians bow in such
-profound respect and veneration, and to whom even Professors Mott, Parker,
-Elliott, Clark, etc., give especial attention?
-
-It is Stephen Smith, M. D., once the Onondaga farmer boy!
-
-Says Dr. Francis, of New York, "When a youthful farmer is seen studying
-the works of learned authors during that portion of the day which is
-generally set aside for relaxation and pleasing pastime, one may easily
-predict for him ultimate success in the branch of life that he may choose,
-provided he follows out the higher instincts of his nature. The same zeal
-that caused Stephen Smith, farmer, to study at the risk of ease, and meet
-the fatigue of body with the energies of mind, has ever marked his course
-in after years."
-
-
-COMMENCING PRACTICE.
-
-From that excellent work, "Scenes in the Practice of a New York Surgeon,"
-by Dr. E. H. Dixon, I copy, with some abbreviation, the following, which
-the author terms "Leaves from the Log-book of an Unfledged AEsculapian:"--
-
-"In the year 1830 I was sent forth, like our long-suffering and
-much-abused prototype,--old father Noah's crow,--from the ark of safety,
-the old St. Duane Street College. I pitched my tent, and set up my trap,
-in what was then a fashionable up-town street.
-
-"I hired a modest house, and had my arm-chair, my midnight couch, and my
-few books in my melancholy little office, and I confess that I now and
-then left an amputating-knife, or some other awful-looking instrument, on
-the table, to impress the poor women who came to me for advice.
-
-"These little matters, although the 'Academy' would frown upon them, I
-considered quite pardonable. God knows I would willingly have adopted
-their most approved method of a splendid residence, and silver-mounted
-harnesses for my bays; but they were yet in dream-land, eating moonbeams,
-and my vicious little nag had nearly all this time to eat his oats and
-nurse his bad temper in his comfortable stable.
-
-"In this miserable way I read over my old books, watered my
-rose-bushes,--sometimes with tears,--drank my tea and ate my toast, and
-occasionally listened to the complaint of an unfortunate Irish damsel,
-with her customary account of 'a pain in me side an' a flutterin' about me
-heart.' At rare intervals I ministered to some of her countrywomen in
-their fulfilment of the great command when placed in the Garden of Eden.
-(What a dirty place it would have been if inhabited by Irish women!)
-
-"And thus I spent nearly a year without a single call to any person of
-character. I think I should have left in despair if it had not been for a
-lovely creature up the street. She was the wife of a distinguished fish
-merchant down town.
-
-"This lovely woman was Mrs. Mackerel. I will explain how it was that I
-was summoned to her ladyship's mansion, and had the pleasure of seeing Mr.
-Mackerel, of the firm of 'Mackerel, Haddock & Dun.'
-
-"One bitter cold night in January, just as I was about to retire, a
-furious ring at the front door made me feel particularly amiable! A
-servant announced the sudden and alarming illness of Mrs. Mackerel, with
-the assurance that as the family physician was out of town, Mrs. M. would
-be obliged if I would immediately visit her. Accordingly, I soon found
-myself in the presence of the accomplished lady, having--I confess
-it--given my hair an extra touch as I entered the beautiful chamber.
-
-"Mrs. Mackerel was not a bad-tempered lady; she was only a beautiful
-fool--nothing less, dear reader, or she would have never married old
-Mackerel. Her charms would have procured her a husband of at least a
-tolerable exterior. His physiognomy presented a remarkable resemblance to
-his namesake. Besides, he chewed and smoked, and the combination of the
-aroma of his favorite luxuries with the articles of his merchandise must
-have been most uncongenial to the curve of such lips and such nostrils as
-Mrs. Mackerel's.
-
-"I was received by Mr. Mackerel in a manner that increased observation has
-since taught me is sufficiently indicative of the hysterical _finale_ of a
-domestic dialogue. He was not so obtuse as to let me directly into the
-true cause of his wife's nervous attack and his own collectedness, and yet
-he felt it would not answer to make too light of it before me.
-
-"Mr. and Mrs. M. had just returned from a party. (The party must be the
-'scape-goat'!) He assured me that as the lady was in the full enjoyment of
-health previously, he felt obliged to attribute the cause of her attack
-and speechless condition--for she spoke not one word, or gave a sign--to
-the dancing, heated room, and the supper.
-
-"I was fully prepared to realize the powers of ice-cream, cake, oranges,
-chicken-salad, oysters, sugar-plums, punch, and champagne, and at one
-moment almost concluded to despatch a servant for an emetic of ipecac;
-but--I prudently avoided it. Aside from the improbability of excess of
-appetite through the portal of such a mouth, the lovely color of the
-cheeks and lips utterly forbade a conclusion favorable to Mr. Mackerel's
-solution of the cause.
-
-"I placed my finger on her delicate and jewelled wrist. All seemed calm as
-the thought of an angel's breast!
-
-"I was nonplussed. 'Could any tumultuous passion ever have agitated that
-bosom so gently swelling in repose?'
-
-"Mackerel's curious questions touching my sagacity as to his wife's
-condition received about as satisfactory a solution as do most questions
-put to me on the cause and treatment of diseases; and having tolerably
-befogged him with opinions, and lulled his suspicions to rest, by the
-apparent innocent answers to his leading questions, he arrived at the
-conclusion most desirable to him, viz., that I was a fool--a conviction
-quite necessary in some nervous cases....
-
-"So pleased was Mr. M. with the soothing influences of my brief visit that
-he very courteously waited on me to the outside door, instead of ordering
-a servant to show me out, and astonished me by desiring me to call on the
-patient again in the morning.
-
-"After my usual diversion of investigating 'a pain an' a flutterin' about
-me heart,' and an 'O, I'm kilt intirely,' I visited Mrs. Mackerel, and had
-the extreme pleasure of finding her quite composed, and in conversation
-with her fashionable friend, Mrs. Tiptape. The latter was the daughter of
-a 'retired milliner,' and had formed a desirable union with Tiptape, the
-eminent dry goods merchant. Fortunately--for she was a woman of
-influence--I passed the critical examination of Mrs. T. unscathed by her
-sharp black eyes, and, as the sequel will show, was considered by her
-'quite an agreeable person.'
-
-"Poor Mrs. Mackerel, notwithstanding her efforts to conceal it, had
-evidently received some cruel and stunning communication from her husband
-on the night of my summons; her agitated circulation during the fortnight
-of my attendance showed to my conviction some persistent and secret cause
-for her nervousness.
-
-"One evening she assured me that she felt she should now rapidly recover,
-as Mr. Mackerel had concluded to take her to Saratoga. I, of course,
-acquiesced in the decision, though my previous opinion had not been asked.
-I took a final leave of the lovely woman, and the poor child soon departed
-for Saratoga.
-
-"The ensuing week there was a sheriff's sale at Mackerel's residence. The
-day following the Mackerels' departure, Mr. Tiptape did me the honor to
-inquire after the health of my family; and a week later, Master Tiptape
-having fallen and bumped his dear nose on the floor, I had the felicity of
-soothing the anguish of his mamma in her magnificent _boudoir_, and
-holding to her lovely nose the smelling salts, and offering such
-consolation as her trying position required!"
-
-Thus was commenced the practice of one of the first physicians of New
-York. The facts are avouched for. The names, of course, are manufactured,
-to cover the occupation of the parties. The doctor still lives, in the
-enjoyment of a lucrative and respectable practice, and the love and
-confidence of his numerous friends and patrons.
-
-Quite as ludicrous scenes could be revealed by most physicians, if they
-would but take the time to think over their earlier efforts, and the
-various circumstances which were mainly instrumental in getting them into
-a respectable practice.
-
-
-HOW PROFESSOR EBERLE STARTED.
-
-The young man who has just squeezed through a medical college, and come
-out with his "sheepskin," who thinks all he then has to do is to put up
-his sign, and forthwith he will have a crowd of respectable patients, is
-to be pitied for his verdancy. The great Professor John Eberle "blessed
-his stars" when, after graduating as "Doctor of Medicine" in the
-University of Pennsylvania, and making several unsuccessful attempts at
-practice in Lancaster County, he received the appointment as physician of
-the "out-door poor" of Philadelphia. After that, his writings, attracting
-public attention, were mostly contributive to his success and advancement.
-
-Energy and determination are better property than even scholastic lore and
-a medical diploma, for unless you possess the former, talent and education
-fall to the earth.
-
-Dr. William P. Dewees, formerly Professor of Obstetrics in the University
-of Pennsylvania, the celebrated author, physician, and surgeon, practised
-seventeen years before he obtained a diploma. He was of Swedish descent on
-his father's side, and Irish on his mother's. His father died in very
-limited circumstances, when William was a boy; hence he received no
-collegiate education until such time as he could earn means, by his own
-efforts, to pay for that coveted desideratum. We find him, with an
-ordinary school education, serving as an apothecary's clerk, a student of
-medicine, and at the early age of twenty-one years trying to practise
-medicine in a country town fourteen miles from Philadelphia. Young Dewees
-possessed great talent and energy, but his personal appearance was
-scarcely such, at that early age, as to inspire the stoical country folks
-with the requisite confidence to speedily intrust him with their precious
-lives and more cherished coppers!
-
-"He was scarcely of medium stature, florid complexion, brown hair, and was
-remarkably youthful in his appearance," says Professor Hodge, M. D.
-
-I have before me an excellent likeness "of the embryo professor," which
-admirably corresponds with the description given above; but though
-"youthful," yea, bordering on "greenness," I can read in that frank,
-intelligent countenance the lines of deep thought, and a soul burning with
-desire for greater knowledge. The too florid countenance and narrow
-nostrils are sure indications of a consumptive predisposition. Dr. Dewees
-died May 30, 1841. He was well read in French and Latin, and also various
-sciences.
-
-
-A HARD STARTING.
-
-_Sketch of Western Practice._--The following interesting sketch is from
-the able pen of Dr. Richmond, of Ohio, now a wealthy and eminent M. D. It
-was originally contributed, if I mistake not, to the "Scalpel."
-
-"I set myself down with my household goods in a land of strangers. How I
-was to procure bread, or what I was to do, were shrouded in the mysterious
-future. Memory came to my consolation; for, in spite of myself, the 'Diary
-of a London Physician,' read in other days, came, with its racy pictures,
-flitting before my mind's eye; and I knew not but I, too, might yet wish
-myself, my Mary, and my child sleeping in the cold grave, to hide me from
-the persecution that seemed to follow me with such sleepless vigilance....
-
-"My store of old watches now came into play. A gentleman wishing to sell
-out his land, I invested all the wealth I possessed in the purchase of a
-ten-acre lot, shouldered my axe, and by the aid of a brother I soon
-prepared logs for the mill sufficient to erect me a small dwelling. I
-never was happier than when preparing the ground and splitting the blocks
-of sandstone for the foundation of my house. One customer, whose wife I
-had carried through a lingering fever, furnished me a frame for a
-dwelling, and I fell in his debt for a pair of boots. Another furnished
-nails and glass, and in the course of eight months I moved into my new
-house.
-
-"For two years I fed my cow, and raised my own provender to feed my
-gallant nag, which shared my toil and its profits. My first two years'
-labor barely returned sufficient profit to pay for my home and feed my
-little family.
-
-"My nag had died, and the terrible drought of 1846 forced me to relinquish
-the horse I had hired, and for five months I performed all my visits on
-foot, often travelling from six to ten miles to see one patient....
-
-"These were trying times; but what if the elements were unpropitious? I
-had food and shelter for myself and family,--blessings about which I had
-often been in doubt,--and I was fully prepared to let 'the heathen rage,
-and the people imagine' what they chose!... The first winter was one of
-great severity; the weather was very changeable, and the most awful
-snow-storms were often succeeded by heavy rains, and the roads so horrid
-as to be impassable on horseback or in carriages. I had a patient five
-miles distant, sick with lung fever, and, in an attendance of forty days I
-made thirty journeys on foot (three hundred miles to attend one patient!)
-His recovery added much to my reputation, and I received for my services a
-new cloak and coat, which I much needed, and a hive of honey bees!...
-
-"An old horse which I again hired of a friend had a polite way of limping,
-and was a source of much merriment among my patrons. I persistently
-attributed what they deemed a fault entirely to the politeness of the
-quadruped; and this nag, with my plain and rustic appearance, endeared me
-to the laboring population, and thus my calamities became my greatest
-friends. My fortune changed, and the experience and name I had acquired
-now came in as capital in trade, and a flood of 'luck' soon followed."
-
-
-ABERNETHY'S BOYHOOD.
-
-Seated upon the outside of an ancient London stage-coach, to which were
-attached four raw-boned, old horses, just ready to start for Wolverhaven
-one pleasant afternoon, you may easily imagine, kind reader,--for it is a
-fact,--a chubby-faced, commonplace little boy, some ten years old, with
-another like youthful companion,--"two Londoners,"--while comfortably
-ensconced within, in one corner of the vehicle, is a large, stern-looking
-old gentleman, in "immense wig and ruffled shirt."
-
-[Illustration: THE POLITE QUADRUPED.]
-
-The stage-horn is sounded, the driver cracks his whip, the sleepy old nags
-wake up, the coach rocks from side to side, and in a moment more the team
-is off for its destination.
-
-Why! the reader is readily reminded of the scene of "_Old Squeers_,"
-taking the wretched little boys down to his "Academy," in Yorkshire,
-"where youth were boarded, clothed, furnished with pocket-money," and
-taught everything, from "writing to trigonometry," "arithmetic to
-astronomy," languages of the "_living_ and _dead_" and "diet
-unparalleled!" Nevertheless it is another case, far before "Old Squeers"
-time.
-
-The elderly gentleman, in top-wig and immense ruffles, was Dr. Robertson,
-teacher of Wolverhampton Grammar School, and the chubby little boy was
-Master John Abernethy. Who the "other boy" was is not known, as he never
-made his mark in after life. Says Dr. Macilwain,--
-
-"We can quite imagine a little boy, careless in his dress, not slovenly,
-however, with both hands in his trousers pockets, some morning about the
-year 1774, standing under the sunny side of the wall at Wolverhampton
-School; his pockets containing, perhaps, a few shillings, some ha'pence, a
-knife with the point broken, a pencil, together with a tolerably accurate
-sketch of 'Old Robertson's wig,'--which article, shown in an accredited
-portrait now before us, was one of those enormous by-gone bushes, which
-represented a sort of impenetrable fence around the cranium, as if to
-guard the precious material within; the said boy just finishing a story to
-his laughing companions, though no sign of mirth appeared in him, save the
-least curl of the lip, and a smile that would creep out of the corner of
-his eye in spite of himself."
-
-[Illustration: YOUNG ABERNETHY.]
-
-"The doctor" was represented as being a passionate man. Squeers again!
-One day young Abernethy had to do some Greek Testament, when his glib
-translation aroused the suspicion of the watchful old doctor, who
-discovered the 'crib' in a Greek-Latin version, partially secreted under
-the boy's desk. No sooner did the doctor make this discovery than with his
-doubled fist he felled the culprit with one blow to the earth. Squeers
-again!
-
-"'Why, what an old plagiarist Mr. Dickens must have been!' you exclaim.
-
-"But the case in 'Nicholas Nickleby' is worse, far worse, for 'the little
-boy sitting on the trunk only sneezed.'
-
-"'Hallo, sir,' growled the schoolmaster (Squeers), 'what's that?'
-
-"'Nothing, sir,' replied the little boy.
-
-"'Nothing, sir!' exclaimed Squeers.
-
-"'Please, sir, I sneezed!' rejoined the boy, trembling till the little
-trunk shook under him.
-
-"'O, sneezed, did you?' retorted Mr. Squeers. 'Then what did you say
-"Nothing" for, sir?'
-
-"In default of a better answer to this question, the little boy screwed a
-couple of knuckles into his eyes, and began to cry; wherefore Mr. Squeers
-knocked him off the trunk with a blow on one side of the head, and knocked
-him on again with a blow on the other."
-
-Robertson was a fact; Squeers was a fable. That's the difference.
-
-As Dr. Robertson taught neither arithmetic nor writing in his school, the
-pupils went to King Street, to a Miss Ready, to receive instruction in
-those branches. This lady, if report is true, wielded the quill and
-cowhide with equal grace and mercy, and when the case came to hand, did
-not accept the modern advice, to "spare the boy and spoil the rod."
-
-When the great surgeon was at the height of his fame, in London, many
-years afterwards, Miss Ready, still rejoicing in "single blessedness,"
-called on her former pupil. In introducing his respected and venerable
-teacher to his wife, Abernethy laconically remarked, "I beg to introduce
-you to a lady who has boxed my ears many a time."
-
-An old schoolmate, when eighty-five years old, wrote to the author of
-"Memoirs of Abernethy," saying, among other things, "In sports he took the
-first place, and usually made a strong side; was quick and active, and
-soon learned a new game."
-
-It was contrary to his own desire that John Abernethy became a physician.
-"Had my father let me be a lawyer, I should have known by heart every act
-of Parliament," he repeatedly affirmed.
-
-This was not bragging, as the following anecdote will illustrate:--
-
-On a birthday anniversary of Mrs. Abernethy, mother of John, a gentleman
-recited a long copy of verses, which he had composed for the occasion.
-
-"Ah," said young Abernethy, "that is a good joke, pretending you have
-written these verses in honor of my mother. Why, sir, I know those lines
-well, and can say them by heart."
-
-"It is quite impossible, as no one has seen the copy but myself," rejoined
-the gentleman, the least annoyed by the accusation of plagiarism.
-
-Upon this Abernethy arose, and repeated them throughout, correctly, to the
-no small discomfiture of the author. Abernethy had remembered them by
-hearing the gentleman recite them but once!
-
-"A boy thwarted in his choice of a profession is generally somewhat
-indifferent as to the course next presented to him." Residing next door
-neighbor to Abernethy's father was Dr. Charles Blicke, a surgeon in
-extensive practice. This was very convenient. Sir Charles is represented
-as having been quick-sighted enough to discover that "the Abernethy boy"
-was clever, a good scholar, and withal a "sharp fellow." Thus, between the
-indifference of the parent, and the selfishness of the surgeon, the
-would-be lawyer, John Abernethy, was apprenticed to the "barber-surgeon"
-for five years. He was then but fifteen years of age.
-
-"All that young Abernethy probably knew of Sir Charles was, that he rode
-about in a fine carriage, saw a great many people, and took a great many
-fees; all of which, though presenting no further attractions for
-Abernethy, made a _prima facie_ case not altogether repulsive."
-
-We must not forget to mention that young Abernethy was of a very inquiring
-mind. "When I was a boy," he said in after years, "I half ruined myself in
-buying oranges and sweetmeats, in order to ascertain the effects of
-different kinds of diet on diseases."
-
-Whether he tried said "oranges and other things" on himself or some
-unfortunate victim, my informant saith not; but I leave the reader to
-decide by his own earlier appetites and experiences. "When I was a boy," I
-think is significant of the probabilities that it was his own digestive
-organs that were "half ruined."
-
-Be it as it may, it reminds me of the case of a little country boy, who,
-on his first advent to the city on a holiday, was chaperoned by his
-somewhat older and sharper city cousin,--"one of the b'hoy's,"--who
-exercised a sort of vigilance over the uninitiated rustic, that the little
-fellow might not surfeit himself by too great a rapacity for peanuts,
-gingerbread, candies, and oranges, often generously sharing the danger by
-partaking largely of the small boy's purchases in order to spare his more
-delicate stomach.
-
-Finding the ignorant little rustic about to devour a nice-looking orange,
-his cousin pounced upon him just in time to prevent the rash act.
-
-"Here, Sammy; don't you know that is one of the nastiest and most
-indigestiblest things you could put into your stomach? Give it here!"
-
-Rustic, whose faith in the wisdom of his maturer cousin, though very
-great, was yet quite counterbalanced by the sweets in the orange, slightly
-held back, when the other continued,--
-
-"Leastwise, Sammy, let's have a hold of it, and suck the abominable juice
-out for you."
-
-(For this digression I beg the pardon of the reader; for the idea I thank
-Frank Leslie.)
-
-George Macilwain, M. D., F. R. C. S., etc., in prefacing the life of the
-great London surgeon, gives a brief and interesting sketch of his own
-boyhood, also his early impressions of Abernethy, and his first attendance
-on his lectures.
-
-"My father practised on the border of a forest, and when he was called at
-night to visit a distant patient, it was the greatest treat to me, when a
-little boy, to be allowed to saddle my pony and accompany him. I used to
-wonder what he could find so 'disagreeable' in that which was to me the
-greatest possible pleasure; for whether we were skirting a bog on the
-darkest night, or cantering over the heather by moonlight, I certainly
-thought there could be nobody happier than I and my pony. It was on one of
-these occasions that I first heard the name of 'Abernethy.' The next
-distinct impression I have of him was derived from hearing father say that
-a lady patient of his had gone up to London to have an operation performed
-by Dr. Abernethy, though my father did not think the operation necessary
-to a cure, and that Abernethy entirely agreed with him; that the operation
-was not performed; that he sent the lady back, and she was recovering.
-This gave me a notion that Dr. Abernethy must be a good man, as well as a
-great physician.
-
-"As long as surgery meant riding across the forest with my father, holding
-his horse, or, if he stopped in too long, seeing if his horse rode as well
-as my pony, I thought it a very agreeable occupation; but when I found
-that it included many other things not so agreeable, I soon discovered
-that there was a profession I liked much better....
-
-"Disappointed in being allowed to follow the pursuit I had chosen, I
-looked on the one I was about to adopt with something approximating to
-repulsion; and thus one afternoon, about the year 1816, and somewhat to my
-own surprise, I found myself walking down Holborn Hill on my way to Dr.
-Abernethy's lecture at St. Bartholomew's.
-
-"When Dr. Abernethy entered, I was pleased with the expression of his
-countenance. I almost fancied he sympathized with the melancholy with
-which I felt oppressed. At first I listened with some attention; as he
-proceeded, I began even to feel pleasure; as he progressed, I found myself
-entertained; and before he concluded, I was delighted. What an agreeable,
-happy man he seems! What a fine profession! What wouldn't I give to know
-as much as he does! Well, I will see what I can do. In short, I was
-converted."
-
-All who ever heard him lecture agree that Dr. Abernethy had a most happy
-way of addressing students. Notwithstanding he has often been represented
-as rough in his every-day intercourse with men, he was easy, mild, and
-agreeable in the lecture-hall, and kind and compassionate in the
-operating-room.
-
-After having carefully studied all that has been written respecting his
-style and manner as a lecturer and delineator, and also studiously
-listened to and watched the ways and peculiarities of our most excellent
-lecturer on anatomy at Harvard, I find many striking resemblances between
-Dr. Abernethy and Professor Oliver Wendell Holmes.
-
-"The position of Abernethy was always easy and natural, sometimes almost
-homely. In the anatomical lecture he always stood, and either leaned
-against the wall, with his arms folded before him, or rested one hand on
-the table; sometimes one hand in his pocket. In his surgical lecture he
-usually sat. He was particularly happy in a kind of cosiness, or
-friendliness of manner, which seemed to identify him with his audience, as
-if we were about to investigate something interesting together, and not
-as though we were going to be 'lectured at,' at all. His voice seldom rose
-above what we term the conversational, and was always pleasing in quality,
-and enlivened by a sort of archness of expression."
-
-He always kept his eye on the audience, except slightly turning to one
-side to explain a diagram or subject, "turning his back on no man."
-
-"He had no offensive habits. We have known lecturers who never began
-without making faces;" we might add, "and with many a hem and haw, or
-nose-blowing."
-
-"Not long ago we heard a very sensible lecturer, and a very estimable man,
-produce a most ludicrous effect by the above. He had been stating very
-clearly some important facts, and he then observed,--
-
-"'The great importance of these I will now proceed to show--' when he
-immediately began to apply his pocket-handkerchief most vigorously to his
-nose, still facing his audience."
-
-The ludicrousness of this "illustration" may well be imagined. Of course
-the students lost their gravity, and laughed and cheered vigorously.
-
-Going in to hear Dr. Holmes lecture, at one o'clock one afternoon,
-recently, the writer was both shocked and astonished, on the occasion of
-the professor slipping in a pleasing innuendo, by hearing the students
-cheer with their hands, and stamp with their thick boots on the seats.
-
-I shall have occasion to refer to this splendid man, the pleasing
-lecturer, the skilful operator, the able author, the ripe scholar, the
-pride of Harvard and the state,--Dr. O. W. Holmes,--in another chapter.
-
-
-THE HOMELESS STUDENT.
-
-(Scene from the EARLY LIFE OF A BOSTON PHYSICIAN. By permission.)
-
-Standing on the steps of the Astor House, New York, one cheerless forenoon
-in early June, with my carpet-bag in one hand and my fresh medical diploma
-in the other, with a heavy weight of sorrow at my heart, and only sixteen
-cents in my pocket, I presented, to myself at least, a picture of such
-utter despair as words are inadequate to express.[4]
-
-My home--no; I had none--the home, rather, of my kind old father-in-law,
-where dwelt, for the time being, my wife and child, was many hundred miles
-away. And how was I to reach it? I could not walk that distance, and
-sixteen cents would not carry me there. I looked up Broadway, and I looked
-down towards the Battery. I was alone amid an immense sea of humans, which
-ebbed and flowed continually past me. O, how wistfully I looked to see if
-there might be one face amongst the throng which I might recognize! but
-there was none. Strange, passing strange, not one of that host did I ever
-gaze upon before! Where--how--should I raise the money necessary to take
-me from this land of strangers?
-
-"Pinny, sir? Just one pinny. Me father is broken up, and me mither is sick
-at home. For God's sake give me jist one pinny to buy me some bread."
-
-I turned my gaze upon the picture of squalor and wretchedness just by my
-side. I need not describe her; she was just like a thousand others in that
-great Babel.
-
-"Here is doubtless a case of distress, but it is not of the heart, like
-mine. Such poor have no heart. Skin, muscle, head, stomach! heart, none!"
-
-"Where is your father, did you say?" I asked, mechanically.
-
-"In the Slarter-house; broken up from a fall from a stagin' in
-Twenty-sixth Street, sir," replied the beggar-girl, still extending her
-hand for a penny.
-
-"What is he doing in a slaughter-house, sis?" I inquired.
-
-"The Slarter-house is Bellyvew horse-pittle, sir; that's what we Irish
-call it, sir. Will ye give me the pinny, sir?"
-
-[Illustration: "PINNY, SIR? JUST ONE PINNY."]
-
-"O, yes, to be sure. Here are pennies for you. Go!"
-
-I knew of a poor Irishman who was brought in there at the hospital a few
-days before badly "broken up" from a fall on Twenty-sixth Street. His name
-was John Murphy; they are all named Murphy, or something similar; so it
-was useless to ask the child her father's name--probably it would have
-been Murphy.
-
-The conversation had the good effect of arousing me from my lethargy to
-action. I must not stay in this metropolis and starve. I could not remain
-and beg, like the Irish girl.
-
-I went to Professor ----, the dean, and requested him to take back my
-diploma, and let me have sufficient money to carry me home. He
-complied--God bless him!--and I took the Sound steamer that afternoon for
-the land of my nativity. What cared I if I was a second-class passenger; I
-would in two days see my wife and my child!
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-I had reached home, and was in the bosom of my family once more, and
-amongst my friends, in a Christian land; for which I "thanked God, and
-took courage."
-
-  "Then pledged me the wine-cup, and fondly I swore
-    Ne'er from my home and my weeping friends to part;
-  My children kissed me a thousand times o'er;
-    My wife sobbed aloud in her fullness of heart."
-
-I had a "call" to practise in a country town twenty-five miles from E----,
-where my family was to remain a few days till I had secured a house to
-cover their heads amongst the good friends who were to become my future
-patrons, as a few of them had been previous to my going to college. The
-stage, a one-horse affair, called for my trunk, medicine-case, etc., and,
-having no money with which to pay my fare, I told the driver that "I would
-walk along," while he picked up another passenger in an opposite
-direction, "and if he overtook me on the road before I got a ride with
-some one going to S----, he could take me in."
-
-I walked bravely along a mile or more, and, hearing the stage coming, I
-stepped from the road-side, secreting myself beneath a friendly tree till
-he drove past. Issuing from my hiding-place, I trudged along till noon. My
-darling little wife had taken the precaution to place in my oversack
-pocket some doughnuts and cheese, and, when I had reached a clear, running
-brook, I sat myself down upon a log, under the shade of the woods, and
-partook of my very frugal meal, quenching my thirst from the waters of the
-brook, which, like Diogenes, I raised in the hollow of my hand.
-
-Thus refreshed, I picked up my overcoat, and again walked along. Before
-dark I reached S----, pretty tired and foot-sore from such a long walk.
-
-[Illustration: THE PENNILESS PHYSICIAN.]
-
-The people, who were expecting me, were much surprised at my non-arrival
-in the mail; but the unsophisticated driver assured them I had probably
-secured a ride ahead of him, and I would put in an appearance before
-nightfall.
-
-About midnight the door-bell rang,--I stopped at the hotel that
-night,--and a young gentleman asked for Dr. C. I answered the call at
-once, which was to the daughter of one of the most influential citizens of
-the place. The young man who called me was her intended. They had been to
-a party, and she had partaken freely of oysters, milk, and pickles.
-
-Never did fifteen grains of ipecac prove a greater friend to me than it
-did on that occasion; and in an hour I was back to bed again.
-
-The news of the new doctor's arrival, fresh from a New York college, and
-his first "remarkable cure of the post-master's daughter" that same night,
-spread like wildfire, and my reputation was nearly established.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-XI.
-
-GHOSTS AND WITCHES.
-
-    "Save and defend us from our _ghostly_ enemies."--COMMON PRAYER.
-
-    FOLLY OF BELIEF IN GHOSTS.--WHY GHOSTS ARE ALWAYS WHITE.--A TRUE
-    STORY.--THE GHOST OF THE CAMP.--A GHOSTLY SENTRY-BOX.--A MYSTERY.--THE
-    NAGLES FAMILY.--RAISING THE DEAD.--A LIVELY STAMPEDE.--HOLY
-    WATER.--CAESAR'S GHOST AT PHILIPPI.--LORD BYRON AND DR. JOHNSON.--GHOST
-    OF A GUILTY CONSCIENCE.--"JOCKEYING A GHOST."--THE WOUNDED BIRD.--A
-    BISHOP SEES A GHOST.--MUSICAL GHOSTS.--A HAUNTED HOUSE.--ABOUT
-    WITCHES.--"WITCHES IN THE CREAM."--HORSE-SHOES.--WOMAN OF ENDOR NOT A
-    WITCH.--WEIGHING FLESH AGAINST THE BIBLE.--THERE ARE NO GHOSTS, OR
-    WITCHES.
-
-
-Is it not quite time--I appeal to the sensible reader--that such folly was
-expunged from our literature? What is a ghost? Who ever saw, heard, felt,
-tasted, or smelled one? Must a person possess some miraculous quality of
-perception beyond the five senses commonly allotted to man in order to
-become cognizant of a ghostly presence?
-
-[Illustration: BELIEVERS IN GHOSTS.]
-
-What stupid folly is ghost belief! Yet there are very many individuals in
-this enlightened day and generation, who, from perverted spirituality, or
-great credulousness, will accept a ghost story, or a "spiritual
-revelation," without wincing.
-
-It would seem that many great men of the past, as Calvin, Bacon, Milton,
-Dante, Lords Byron and Nelson, Sir Walter Scott, Wordsworth, and others,
-believed in the existence of ghosts and spirits on this mundane sphere.
-
-There are but two classes who believe in ghosts, viz., the ignorant as one
-class, and persons with large or perverted spirituality--phrenologically
-speaking--as the other. These are the believers in dreams, in ghosts, in
-spirits, and fortune-telling. These, too, are the religious (?) fanatics,
-etc.
-
-
-THE ORIGIN OF THE WORD GHOST
-
-is curious.
-
-"The first significance of the word, as well as 'spirit,' is breath, or
-wind." It is of Anglo-Saxon origin, and is from _gust_, the wind. Hence, a
-_gust_ of _wind_. The Irish word _goath_, wind, comes nearer to the modern
-English pronunciation, and shows how easily it could have been corrupted
-to _ghost_.
-
-It is easy to imagine the good old Saxon ladies, sitting around the
-evening fireside, and just as one of them has finished some marvellous
-story of that superstitious age, they are startled by a sudden blast of
-wind, sweeping around the gabled cottage, and her listeners exclaim, in
-suppressed breath,--
-
-"Hark! There's a fearful gust!"
-
-The transit from _gust_ to _ghost_ is easily done. The clothes spread upon
-the bushes without, or pinned to the lines, flapping in the night air, are
-seen through the shutterless windows, and they become the object of
-attraction. The _effect_ supersedes the _cause_, and the clothes become
-the gust, goath, or ghost! The clothes, necessarily, must be white, or
-they _could not be seen in the night time_! Hence a ghost is always
-clothed in white. Therefore the wind (gust) is no longer the ghost, but
-any white object seen moving in the night air.
-
-[Illustration: "HARK! THERE'S A FEARFUL GUST!"]
-
-  "But I am a wandering ghost--
-    I am an idle breath,
-  That the sweets of the things now lost
-    Are haunting unto death.
-  Pity me out in the cold,
-    Never to rest any more,
-  Because of my share in the purple and gold,
-    Lost from the world's great store.
-
-  "I whirl through empty space,
-    A hapless, hurried ghost;
-  For me there is no place--
-    I'm weary, wandering, lost.
-  Safe from the night and cold,
-    All else is sheltered--all,
-  From the sheep at rest in the fold,
-    To the black wasp on the wall."
-
-Moffat says that a tribe of Caffres formerly employed the word _Morino_ to
-designate the Supreme Being; but as they sank into savagery, losing the
-idea of God, it came to mean only a fabulous ghost, of which they had
-great terror.
-
-Having briefly shown the folly of the existence of the word in our
-vocabulary, I will proceed to explode a few of the best authenticated--so
-called--"ghost stories;" and if I leave anything unexplained in
-ghostology, let the reader attribute it to either my want of space in
-which to write so much, or the neglect of my early education in the _dead
-languages_.
-
-
-THE GHOST OF THE CAMP.
-
-I obtained the following story from one of the sentries:--
-
-At Portsmouth, R. I., there was a camp established during the late war,
-186-. There was a graveyard in one corner of the enclosed grounds, where
-several soldier-boys had been buried from the hospital, and here a guard
-was nightly stationed.
-
-Of course there were many stories told around the campfires, of ghosts and
-spirits that flitted about the mounds at the dead hours of the night,
-circulated particularly to frighten those stationed at that point on
-picket duty.
-
-The body of a soldier had recently been exhumed and placed in a new and
-more respectable coffin than the pine box coffin furnished by Uncle Sam,
-in which he had been buried, and the old one was left on the ground.
-
-Partly to protect himself from the inclemency of the weather, and quite as
-much to show his utter disregard of all ghostly visitors, my informant
-secured the old pine coffin, "washed it out, though it was impossible to
-remove all the stains," and, driving a stake firmly into the ground, he
-stood the coffin on one end, and, removing the lid, used to stand therein
-on rainy nights.
-
-"When it did not rain, I turned it down, and my companion and myself used
-to sit on the bottom.
-
-"One day a soldier-boy had died in the hospital, and his friends came to
-take the body home for Christian burial. It was necessary to remove him in
-a sheet to the place where they had an elegant casket, bought by his
-wealthy friends, to receive the remains.
-
-"That very night I was on duty with my friend Charley S., when, near
-midnight, seated upon the empty coffin, with my gun resting against the
-side, and my head resting in the palms of my hands, I fell into a drowse.
-
-[Illustration: A GRAVE SENTRY.]
-
-"Waking up suddenly, I saw something white through the darkness before me;
-for it was a fearfully dark night, I assure you. I rubbed my sleepy eyes
-to make sure of my sight, and took another look. I discerned a form,
-higher than a man, moving about over the mounds but a few yards distant.
-It had wide side-wings, but they did not seem to assist in the motion of
-the body part, which did not reach to the ground. I thought I must be
-asleep, and actually pinched my legs to awake myself before I took a final
-look at his ghostship. There he stood, stock still. I listened for my
-companion, without removing my eyes from the white object before me. Still
-I was not scared, but meant to see it out. I knew I could not see a man
-far through that impenetrable darkness, for there were no stars nor
-moon to reveal him. I would not call for help, for if it was a farce to
-scare me, I should become the laughing-stock of the whole camp.
-
-[Illustration: A GHOST IN CAMP.]
-
-"Just then I heard the grass crackle, and I knew Charley was approaching
-in the rear. Still there hung the apparition. I arose from the coffin, my
-eyes fixed on the object before me, picked up my musket, took deliberate
-aim at the centre of the thing, and just as I cocked my rifle, I heard
-Charley set back the hammer of his 'death-dealer.' He, too, had discovered
-the very remarkable appearance, whatever it was; and now the guns of two
-'unfailing shots' covered the object. In another second it had suddenly
-disappeared! I then spoke, and we ran forward, but found nothing! Where
-had it gone so very suddenly? It had vanished without sight or sound. We
-gave up the search; but still I did not believe we had seen anything
-supernatural.
-
-"There was no little discussion in camp on the following day on the
-subject. Charley said but little. I could not explain the remarkable
-phenomenon, and a splendid ghost story was about established, in spite of
-me, before the mystery became unravelled.
-
-"A tall fellow, who worked about the hospital, and who assisted in taking
-away the corpse, was returning with the sheet, when he thought he would
-give the sentry a scare from his coffin by throwing the sheet over his
-head and stretching out his arms like wings. His clothes being black, his
-legs did not show; hence the appearance of a white object floating in the
-air. Hearing the guns cocked, he instantly jerked the sheet from his head;
-winding it up, he turned and ran away. This accounted for it becoming so
-instantaneously invisible.
-
-"'Yes,' said the sentry, 'and in a second more you would have been made a
-ghost!'"
-
-
-RAISING THE DEAD.
-
-_The Nagles Family._--The following remarkable and ridiculous affair
-transpired in a village where the writer once resided. The Nagleses were
-Irish. The family consisted of old Nagles, his wife,--who did washing for
-my mother,--John Tom and Tom John, besides Mary. The reason of having the
-boys named as above was, that in case either died, the sainted names would
-still be in the family. This was old Mrs. Nagles' explanation of the
-matter.
-
-The old man worked about the wharves, wheeled wood and carried coal, and
-did such like jobs during summer, and chopped wood in the winter. I well
-remember of hearing stories of his greenness when he first came to town.
-He was early employed to wheel wood on board a coaster lying at the dock.
-The captain told him to wheel a load down the plank, cry "Under!" to the
-men in the hold, and tip down the barrow of wood. All went well till old
-Nagles got to the stopping-place, over the hold, when he dumped down the
-load, and cried out, "Stand ferninst, there, down cellar!" to the imminent
-peril of breaking the heads of the wood-stevedores below.
-
-[Illustration: OLD NAGLES.]
-
-I well remember also the first appearance of the two boys at the village
-school one winter.
-
-"What is your name?" inquired the master of the eldest.
-
-"Me name, is it? John Tom Nagles, sir, is me name, and who comes after is
-the same."
-
-He always was called by us boys "John Tom Nagles, sir," thenceforward. He
-certainly was the rawest specimen I ever met.
-
-One day the old man was wheeling wood on board a vessel. It was at low
-water, and there was a distance of sixteen feet from the plank to the
-bottom of the vessel's hold. The poor old fellow, by some mishap or
-neglect, let go the barrow, when he called, "Stand ferninst, there,
-below!" when wood, barrow, and old Mr. Nagles, all went down together. By
-the fall he broke his neck. I never shall forget the awful lamentation set
-up by the combined voices of the poor old woman, John Tom, Tom John, and
-Mary, as they followed the corpse, borne on a wagon, past our house, on
-the way from the vessel to the Nagles' residence.
-
-[Illustration: THE NAGLES BOYS.]
-
-On the following day great preparations were made to "wake" the old
-gentleman according to the most approved fashion in the old country. There
-were many Irish living--_staying_, at least--in that town, and large
-quantities of pipes, tobacco, and whiskey were bought up, and the whole
-town knew that a "powerful time" was anticipated by the Irish who were
-invited to old Nagles' wake. It was an unusual occurrence, and several
-boys and young men of the village went to the locality of the Nagles'
-house to get a look upon the scene when it got under full pressure. I
-certainly should have been there had not my parents forbidden me to go,
-and I regret the inability to give my personal testimony to the truth of
-the statement of what followed, as I do to what preceded, as related
-above.
-
-[Illustration: CHIEF MOURNERS.]
-
-"When the wake was at its height, the room full of tobacco smoke, and the
-jovial mourners full of Irish whiskey,--strychnine and fusel oil,--there
-was an alarm of fire in the neighborhood. There was a grand rush from the
-room, as well as from the windows where stood the listeners, and only one
-old and drunken woman remained to watch the corpse. The door was left
-open, and some of the young men outside, thinking it a good opportunity to
-play a joke on the drunken party, ran into the room, and, seeing only the
-old woman, who was too drunk to offer any objections, they removed the
-body from the board, depositing it behind the boxes on which the board was
-laid, and one of their number took the place of the corpse, barely having
-time to draw the sheet over his face, when the 'wakers' returned.
-
-"The candles burned dimly through the hazy atmosphere of the old room, and
-no one noticed the change. The pipes were relighted, the whiskey freely
-passed, and finally one fellow proposed to offer the corpse a lighted pipe
-and a glass of whiskey, 'for company's sake, through purgatory.'
-
-"Suiting the action to the word, he approached, attempted to raise the
-head of the 'lively corpse,' and thrust the nasty pipe between his teeth.
-
-"The young man 'playing corpse' was no smoker, and in infinite disgust he
-motioned the fellow away, who, too drunk to notice it, stuck the pipe in
-his face, saying, 'Here, ould man, take a shmoke for your ghost's sake.'
-
-"'Bah! Git away wid the div'lish nasty thing,' exclaimed the young man,
-rising and sitting up in the coffin.
-
-"There was an instantaneous stampede from the room of every waker who was
-capable of rising to his legs, followed by the fellow in the sheet, who,
-dropping the ghostly covering at the door, mingled with the rabble, and
-was not recognized. The priest and the doctor were speedily summoned. The
-former arrived, heard, outside the house, the wonderful story, and then
-proceeded to lay the spirit by sprinkling holy water on the door-stone,
-thence into the room. By this time the smoke had sufficiently subsided to
-allow a view of the room, when the stiff, frigid body of old Nagles was
-discovered on the floor, where 'it had fallen,' as they supposed, 'in
-attempting to walk.' Of course the doctor ridiculed the idea of a stark,
-cold body rising and speaking; but the Irish, to this day, believe old
-Nagles, for that once, refused a pipe and a glass of whiskey. The few
-young men dared not divulge the secret, and it never leaked out till the
-entire family of Nagles had gone to parts unknown."
-
-[Illustration: A CORPSE THAT WOULD NOT SMOKE.]
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-I find a great many ghost stories in books, which are not explained; but
-since the writer knows nothing of their authenticity, nor the persons with
-whom they were connected, they are unworthy of notice here.
-
-
-THE GHOST OF CAESAR AT PHILIPPI.
-
-Dr. Robert Macnish, of Glasgow, in his "Philosophy of Sleep," says, "No
-doubt the apparition of Caesar which appeared to Brutus, and declared it
-would meet him at Philippi, was either a dream or a spectral
-illusion--probably the latter. Brutus, in all likelihood, had some idea
-that the great battle which was to decide his fate would be fought at
-Philippi. Probably it was a good military position, which he had in his
-mind fixed upon as a fit place to make a final stand; and he had done
-enough to Caesar to account for his mind being painfully and constantly
-engrossed with the image of the assassinated dictator. Hence the
-verification of this supposed warning; hence the easy explanation of a
-supposed supernatural event."
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-"The ghost of Byron" may help to verify the above. Sir Walter Scott was
-engaged in his study at Abbotsford, not long after the death of Lord
-Byron, at about the twilight hour, in reading a sketch of the deceased
-poet. The room was quiet, his thoughts were intensely centred upon the
-person of his departed friend, when, as he laid down the volume, as he
-could see to read no longer, and passed into the hall, he saw before him
-the _eidolon_ of the deceased poet. He remained for some time impressed by
-the intensity of the illusion, which had thus created a phantom out of
-some clothes hanging on a screen at the farther end of the hall.
-
-This is not the first time that Byron had appeared to his friends, as the
-following, from his own pen, will show:--
-
-Byron wrote to his friend, Alexander Murray, less than two years before
-the death of the latter, as follows:--
-
-"In 1811, my old schoolmate and form-fellow, Robert Peel, the Irish
-secretary, told me that he saw me in St. James Street. I was then in
-Turkey. A day or two afterwards, he pointed out to his brother a person
-across the street, and said, 'There is the man I took for Byron.' His
-brother answered, 'Why, it is Byron, and no one else.' I was at this time
-_seen_ (by them?) to write my name in the Palace Book! I was then ill of a
-malaria fever. If I had died," adds Byron, "here would have been a ghost
-story established."
-
-Dr. Johnson says, "An honest old printer named Edward Cave had seen a
-ghost at St. John's Gate." Of course, the old man succumbed to the
-apparition.
-
-
-THE GHOST OF CONSCIENCE.
-
-I have yet to find the record of a good man seeing what he believed to be
-a ghostly manifestation. It is only the guilty in conscience who conjure
-up "horrible shadows," as pictured in Shakspeare's ghost of Banquo, as it
-appeared to Macbeth. What deserving scorn, what scathing contempt, were
-conveyed in the language of Lady Macbeth to her cowardly,
-conscience-stricken lord, as she thus rebuked him!--
-
-                "O, proper stuff!
-  This is the very painting of your fear;
-  This is the air-drawn dagger which you said
-  Led you to Duncan! O, these flaws and starts
-  (Impostors to true fear) would well become
-  A woman's story at a winter's fire,[5]
-  Authorized by her grandam. Shame itself!
-                  ... When all's done,
-  You look but on a stool!"
-
-There is a great truth embodied in a portion of the king's reply, that--
-
-  "If charnel-houses and our graves must send
-  Those that we bury, back, our monuments
-  Shall be the maws of kites."
-
-The gay and dissipated Thomas Lyttleton, son of Lord George Lyttleton, and
-his successor in the peerage, has been the subject of "a
-well-authenticated ghost story, which relates that he was warned of his
-death three days before it happened, in 1779, while he was in a state of
-perfect health, and only thirty-five years of age." This is what says a
-biographer. Now let us present the truth of the matter.
-
-He was a dissipated man. He was subject to fits. A gentleman present at
-the time of his seeing a vision, says "that he had been attacked several
-times by suffocative fits the month before." Here, then, was a _body
-diseased_. The same authority says, "It happened that he dreamed, three
-days before his death, that he saw a _fluttering bird_; and afterwards,
-that he saw (dreamed) a woman in white apparel, who said to him, 'Prepare
-to die; you will not exist three days.'
-
-[Illustration: PREPARE TO DIE!]
-
-"His lordship was much alarmed, and called his servant, who slept in an
-adjoining closet, who found his master in a state of great agitation, and
-in a profuse perspiration."
-
-Fear blanches the cheek; perspiration is rather a symptom of bodily
-weakness, and the result of a laborious dream, or even a fit. He had no
-fear, for, on the third day, while his lordship was at breakfast with "the
-two Misses Amphlett, Lord Fortescue," and the narrator, he said,
-lightly,--
-
-"'If I live over to-night, _I shall have jockeyed the ghost_, for this is
-the third day.' That day he had another fit. He dined at five, and retired
-at eleven, when his servant was about to give him some prescribed rhubarb
-and mint-water, but his lordship, seeing him about to stir the mixture
-with a toothpick, exclaimed,--
-
-"'You slovenly dog, go and fetch a teaspoon.'
-
-"On the servant's return, he found his master in another fit, and, the
-pillow being high, his chin bore on his windpipe, when the servant,
-instead of relieving his lordship from his perilous position, ran away for
-help; but on his return, found his master dead."
-
-He had strangled. Is it anything strange that a dissipated, weakened man
-should die after having a score of suffocative fits? It had been more
-surprising if he had survived them. Then, as respecting the dream, it was
-the result of a "mind diseased."
-
-There was evidence that his lordship had seduced the Misses Amphlett, and
-prevailed upon them to leave their mother; and he is said to have
-admitted, before his death, that the woman seen in his dream was the
-mother of the unfortunate girls, and that she died of grief, through the
-disgrace and desertion of her children, about the time that the guilty
-seducer saw her in the vision. How could his dreams but have been
-disturbed, with the load of guilt and remorse that he ought to have had
-resting upon his conscience? The "fluttering bird" was the first form that
-the wretched mother assumed in his vision, as a bird might flutter about
-the prison bars that confined her darling offspring. The more natural form
-of the mother finally appeared to the guilty seducer, and to dream that he
-heard a voice is no unusual occurrence in the life of any person. The
-peculiar words amount to nothing. Lyttleton gave them no serious thoughts,
-and it was an accident of bodily position that caused his sudden death.
-The whole thing seems to be too flimsy for even a respectable "ghost
-story."
-
-
-THE BISHOP SEES A GHOST!
-
-An amusing as well as instructive ghost story is related by Horace
-Walpole, the indolent, luxurious satirist of fashionable and political
-contemporaries, whose twenty thousand a year enabled him to live at his
-ease, "coquetting haughtily with literature and literary men, at his tasty
-Gothic toy-house at Strawberry Hill."
-
-[Illustration: THE BISHOP'S GHOSTLY VISITOR.]
-
-He relates that the good old Bishop of Chichester was awakened in his
-palace at an early hour in the morning by his chamber door opening, when a
-female figure, clothed in white, softly entered the apartment, and quietly
-took a seat near him. The prelate, who, with "his household, was a
-disbeliever in ghosts" and spirits, said he was not at all frightened,
-but, rising in his bed, said, in a tone of authority,--
-
-"Who are you?"
-
-"The presence in the room" made no reply. The bishop repeated the
-question,--
-
-"Who are you?"
-
-The ghost only heaved a deep sigh, and, while the bishop rang the bell, to
-call his slumbering servant, her ghostship quietly drew some old "papers
-from its ghost of a pocket," and commenced reading them to herself.
-
-After the bishop had kept on ringing for the stupid servant, the form
-arose, thrust the papers out of sight, and left as noiselessly and
-sedately as she had arrived.
-
-"Well, what have you seen?" asked the bishop, when the servants were
-aroused.
-
-"Seen, my lord?"
-
-"Ay, seen! or who--what was the woman who has been here?"
-
-"Woman, my lord?"
-
-(It is said one of the fellows smiled, that a woman should have been in
-the aged bishop's bed-chamber in the night.)
-
-When the bishop had related what he had seen, the domestics apprehended
-that his lordship had been dreaming, against which the good man protested,
-and only told what his eyes had beheld. The story that the bishop had been
-visited by a ghost soon got well circulated, which greatly "diverted the
-ungodly, at the good prelate's expense, till finally it reached the ears
-of the keeper of a mad-house in the diocese, who came and deposed that a
-female lunatic had escaped from his custody on that night" (in light
-apparel), who, finding the gates and doors of the palace open, had marched
-directly to his lordship's chamber. The deponent further stated that the
-lunatic was _always reading a bundle of papers_.
-
-"There are known," says Walpole, "stories of ghosts, solemnly
-authenticated, less credible; and I hope you will believe this, attested
-by the father of our own church."
-
-
-MUSICAL GHOSTS.
-
-We occasionally _hear_ of this kind, but seldom, if ever, _see_ them. An
-old lady of Adams, Mass., came to the writer in a state bordering on
-monomania. She stated that at about _three o'clock_ in the night she would
-awake and distinctly hear bells ringing at a distance. She would awake her
-husband, and often compel him to arise and listen "till the poor man was
-almost out of patience with the annoyance;" not of the bells, for he heard
-none, but of being continually "wakened because of her whim," as he
-stated. A brief medical treatment for the disease which caused the
-vibration of the tympanum dispelled the illusion of bells.
-
-
-THE PIANO-FORTE GHOST.
-
-A family residing, three years since, but a few miles out of Boston, used
-to occasionally, during summer only, hear a note or two of the piano
-strike at the dead hour of the night. A Catholic servant girl and an
-excellent cook left their situations in consequence of the ghostly music.
-In vain the family removed the instrument to another position in the room.
-The musical sounds would startle them from their midnight slumbers.
-
-One thing very remarkable occurred after changing the piano: the sound,
-which only transpired occasionally, with no regularity as to time, would
-always begin with the high notes, and end with the lower. Finally, the
-family--I cannot say why--removed to the city, and the house was sold. The
-deed of conveyance did not include the ghost, but he remained with the
-premises, nevertheless. The writer has seen him!
-
-"O, what a pretty cat!" exclaimed a child of the new occupant of the
-haunted house, on discovering the domestic animal which the late possessor
-had left.
-
-"Yes; and she looks so very domestic and knowing, she may stay, if no one
-comes for her, and you'll have her for a playfellow," replied the mother.
-
-A few nights after their settlement, the new family were startled by
-hearing the piano sound! No particular tune, but it was surely the piano
-notes that had been distinctly and repeatedly heard. A search revealed
-nothing. The piano was kept closed thereafter, and no further annoyance
-occurred, until one night when the company had lingered till nearly
-midnight, and the instrument had been left open, the sound again occurred.
-The gentleman quickly lighted a lamp, ran down stairs, and closing the
-door leading to the connecting room, he found the cat secreted beneath the
-piano. The instrument was purposely left open the following night, and a
-watch set, when, no sooner was all quiet, than the cat entered, and leaped
-upon the piano keys. After touching them a few times with her fore paws,
-she jumped down, and hid beneath the instrument. "The cat was out." Only
-one thing remained for explanation, viz., why the change of sound occurred
-after removing the piano by the first occupants of the house. It occurred
-in summer. They removed the piano so that the cat, entering a side window,
-usually left a little raised, had necessarily jumped upon the high keys.
-
-If anybody has got a good ghost, spirit, or witch about his premises, the
-writer would like to investigate it.
-
-The following silly item is just going the rounds of the press:--
-
-
-"A HAUNTED HOUSE.
-
-"The first floor of Mrs. Roundy's house, at Lynn, in which the recent
-murder occurred, is occupied by an apparently intelligent family bearing
-the name of Conway, who assert that they have heard supernatural noises
-every night since the tragedy; and they are so sincere in their belief
-that they are preparing to vacate in favor of their 'uncanny' visitors."
-
-There's nothing to it to investigate.
-
-
-A FEW WORDS ABOUT WITCHES.
-
-My colored boy, Dennis, assures me that an old woman in Norfolk, Va.,
-having some spite against him, "did something to him that sort o'
-bewitched him; got some animal into him, like." The symptoms are those of
-_ascarides_, but I could not persuade him to take medicine therefor.
-
-"'Tain't no use, sir," he replied, solemnly; "I knowed she done it; I
-feels it kinder workin' in yer (placing his hand on his stomach); what
-med'cine neber'll reach."
-
-Neither reason nor ridicule will "budge" him. He knows he's bewitched!
-
-[Illustration: THE MUSICAL PUSS.]
-
-[Illustration: A DARKEY BEWITCHED.]
-
-
-WITCHES IN THE CREAM.
-
-  Through all the long, long winter's day,
-    And half the dreary night,
-  We churned, and yet no butter came:
-    The cream looked thin and white.
-
-  Next morning, with our hopes renewed,
-    The task began again;
-  We churned, and churned, till back and arms
-    And head did ache with pain.
-
-  The cream rose up, then sulking fell,
-    Grew thick, and then grew thin;
-  It splashed and spattered in our eyes,
-    On clothes, and nose, and chin.
-
-  We churned it fast, and churned it slow,
-    And stirred it round and round;
-  Yet all the livelong, weary day,
-    Was heard the dasher's sound.
-
-  The sun sank in the gloomy west,
-    The moon rose ghastly pale;
-  And still we churned, with courage low,
-    And hopes about to fail,--
-
-  When in walked Granny Dean, who heard,
-    With wonder and amaze,
-  Our troubles, as she crossed herself,
-    And in the fire did gaze.
-
-  "Lord, help us all!" she quickly said,
-    And covered up her face;
-  "Lord, help us all! for, as you live,
-    There's witches in the place!
-
-  "There's witches here within this churn,
-    That have possessed the cream.
-  Go, bring the horse-shoe that I saw
-    Hang on the cellar-beam."
-
-  The shoe was brought, when, round and round,
-    She twirled it o'er her head;
-  "Go, drive the witches from that cream!"
-    In solemn voice she said;--
-
-  Then tossed it in the fire, till red
-    With heat it soon did turn,
-  And dropped among the witches dread,
-    That hid within the churn.
-
-  Once more the dasher's sound was heard,--
-    Have patience with my rhyme,--
-  For, sure enough, the butter came
-    In twenty minutes' time.
-
-  Some say the temperature was changed
-    With horse-shoe glowing red;
-  But when we ask old Granny Dean,
-    She only shakes her head.--_Hearth and Home._
-
-
-HORSE-SHOES.
-
-One would suppose the folly of putting horse-shoes into cream, "fish-skins
-into coffee, to settle it," and forcing filthy molasses and water down the
-throats of new-born babes, were amongst the follies of the past; but they
-are not yet, with many other superstitious, and even cruel and dangerous
-notions, done away with. For some prominent instances of this course of
-proceedings the reader may consult next chapter.
-
-Riding through the rural districts of almost any portion of the Union, one
-will sometimes find the horse-shoe nailed over the stable, porch, or even
-house front door, to keep away the witches. As in Gay's fable of "The Old
-Woman and her Cats:"--
-
-  "Straws laid across my path retard,
-  The horse-shoes nailed each threshold guard,"
-
-In Aubrey's time, he tells us that "most houses of the west end of London
-have the horse-shoe at the threshold."
-
-The nice little old gentleman who keeps the depot at Boylston Station is a
-dry joker, in his way. Over each door of the station he has an old
-horse-shoe nailed.
-
-"What have you got these nailed up over the door for?" a stranger asks.
-
-[Illustration: BOYLSTON STATION.]
-
-"To keep away witches. I sleep here nights," solemnly replies the
-station-master; and one must be familiar with that ever agreeable face to
-detect the sly, enjoyable humor with which he is so often led to repeat
-this assertion.
-
-In numerous towns within more than half of the states,--I state from
-personal inquiry,--there are at this day old women, who children, at
-least, are taught to believe have the power of bewitching! My first
-fright, when a little boy on my way to school, was from being told that an
-old woman, whose house we were passing, was a witch.
-
-These modern witches may not have arrived at the dignity of floating
-through the air on a broomstick, or crossing the water in a cockle-shell,
-as they were said to in ancient times; but the belief in their existence
-at this enlightened period of the world is more disgraceful than in the
-darker ages, and the frightening of children and the naturally
-superstitious is far more reprehensible.
-
-There is no such thing as a ghost. There are no witches.
-
-"The Bible teaches that there were witches," has often been wrongly
-asserted. That "choice young man and goodly," whose abilities his doting
-parent over-estimated when he sent him out _in search of the three stray
-asses_, and whose idleness prompted him to consult the seer Samuel, and by
-whose indolence and procrastination the asses got home first, was a very
-suitable personage to consult a "_woman of a familiar spirit_" (or any
-other woman, save his own wife), from which arose the great modern
-misnomer of the "_Witch of Endor_."
-
-"To the Jewish writers, trained to seek counsel only of Jehovah (not even
-from Christ), the 'Woman of Endor' was a dealer with spirits of evil. With
-us, who have imbibed truth through a thousand channels made turbid by
-prejudice and error, she is become a distorted being, allied to the hags
-of a wild and fatal delusion. We confound her with the (fabled) witches of
-Macbeth, the victims of Salem, and the modern Moll Pitchers.
-
-"The Woman of Endor! That is a strange perversion of taste that would
-represent her in hideous aspect. To me she seemeth all that is genial and
-lovely in womanhood."
-
-"Hearken thou unto the voice of thine handmaid, and let me set a morsel of
-bread before thee, and eat, that thou mayest have strength when thou goest
-on thy way."
-
-Then she made and baked the bread, killed and cooked the meat,--all she
-had in the house,--and Saul did eat, and his servants.
-
-I see nought in this but an exhibition of rare domestic ability and
-commendable hospitality; in the previous act (revelation), nothing more
-than a manifestation of the power of mind over mind (possibly the power of
-God, manifested through her mind?), wherein she divined the object of
-Saul's visit, and, through the same channel, surmised who he was that
-consulted her.
-
-[Illustration: WEIGHING A WITCH BY BIBLE STANDARD.]
-
-Witches are said to be "light weight." But a little above a hundred
-years ago, a woman was accused in Wingrove, England, by another, of
-"bewitching her spinning-wheel, so it would turn _neither the one way nor
-the other_." To this she took oath, and the magistrate, with pomp and
-dignity, "followed by a great concourse of people, took the woman to the
-parish church, her husband also being present, and having stripped the
-accused to her nether garment, put her into the great scales brought for
-that purpose, with the Bible in the opposite balance, which was the lawful
-test of a witch, when, to the no small astonishment and mortification of
-her maligner, she actually outweighed the book, and was honorably
-acquitted of the charge!"
-
-Just imagine the picture. In an enlightened age, a Christian people, in
-possession of the Bible, that gives no intimation of such things as
-witches, stripping and weighing a female in public, to ascertain if she
-really was heavier than a common Bible!
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-XII.
-
-MEDICAL SUPERSTITIONS.
-
-    "When cats run home, and light is come,
-      And dew is cold upon the ground,
-    And the far-off stream is dumb,
-      And the whirling sail goes round,
-      And the whirling sail goes round;
-    Alone and warming his five wits
-    The white owl in the belfry sits."--TENNYSON.
-
-    OLD AND NEW.--THE SIGN OF JUPITER.--MODERN IDOLATRY.--ORIGIN OF THE
-    DAYS OF THE WEEK.--HOW WE PERPETUATE IDOLATRY.--SINGULAR
-    FACT.--CHRISTMAS FESTIVITIES.--"OLD NICK."--RIDICULOUS
-    SUPERSTITIONS.--GOLDEN HERB.--HOUSE CRICKETS.--A STOOL WALKS!--THE
-    BOWING IMAGES AT RHODE ISLAND.--HOUSE SPIDERS.--THE HOUSE
-    CAT.--SUPERSTITIOUS IDOLATRIES.--WONDERFUL KNOWLEDGE.--NAUGHTY
-    BOYS.--ERRORS RESPECTING CATS.--SANITARY QUALITIES.--OWLS.--A SCARED
-    BOY.--HOLY WATER.--UNLUCKY DAYS.--THUNDER AND LIGHTNING.--A KISS.
-
-
-Medicine, above all the other sciences, was founded upon superstition.
-Medicine, more than all the other arts, has been practised by
-superstitions. Stretching far back through the vista of time to the
-remotest antiquity, reaching forward into the more enlightened present, it
-has partaken of all that was superstitious in barbarism, in heathenism, in
-mythology, and in religion.
-
-In showing the Alpha I am compelled to reveal the Omega.
-
-Let us begin with Jupiter. I know that some wise AEsculapian--no
-Jupiterite--will turn up his nose at this page, while to-morrow, if he
-gets a patient, he will demonstrate what I am saying, and further, help
-to perpetuate the ignorant absurdities which originated with the old
-mythologists, by placing "[R]"--the ill-drawn sign of Jupiter--before his
-recipe.
-
-[Illustration: THE GOD OF RECIPES.]
-
-De Paris tells us that the physician of the present day continues to
-prefix to his prescriptions the letter "[R]," which is generally supposed
-to mean "recipe," but which is, in truth, a relic of the astrological
-symbol of Jupiter, formerly used as a species of superstitious invocation,
-or to propitiate the king of the gods that the compound might act
-favorably.
-
-There are still in use many other things which present _prima facie_
-evidence of having been introduced when the users placed more faith in
-mythological or planetary influence than in any innate virtue of the
-article itself. For instance, at a very early period all diseases were
-regarded as the effects of certain planetary actions; and not only
-diseases, but our lives, fortunes, conduct, and the various qualities that
-constitute one's character, were the consequences of certain planetary
-control under which we existed. Are there not many who now believe this?
-
-"In ancient medicine pharmacy was at one period only the application of
-the dreams of astrology to the vegetable world. The herb which put an ague
-or madness to flight did so by reason of a mystic power imparted to it by
-a particular constellation, the outward signs of which quality were to be
-found in its color or shape." Red objects had a mysterious influence on
-inflammatory diseases, and yellow ones on persons discolored by jaundice.
-Corals were introduced as a medicine, also to wear about the neck on the
-same principle.
-
-These notions are not yet obsolete. Certain diseases are still attributed
-to the action of the moon. Certain yellow herbs are used for the
-jaundice and other diseases. The _hepatica triloba_ (three-lobed) is
-recommended for diseases of the lungs as well as liver (as its first name,
-_hepatica_, indicates), and some other medicines for other complaints,
-without the least regard to their innate qualities. Corals are still worn
-for nose-bleed, red articles kept about the bed and apartments of the
-small-pox patient, and the red flag hung out at the door of the house,
-though few may know why a _red_ flag is so hung, or that it originated in
-superstition.
-
-The announcement of an approaching comet strikes terror to the hearts of
-thousands; the invalid has the sash raised that he may avoid first seeing
-the new moon through the glass, and the traveller is rejoiced to catch his
-first glimpse of the young queen of the night over his right shoulder,
-"for there is misfortune in seeing it over the left."
-
-But we are not yet done with ancient symbols.
-
-"The stick came down from heaven," says the Egyptian proverb.
-
-"The physician's cane is a very ancient part of his insignia. It has
-nearly gone into disuse; but until very recently no doctor of medicine
-would have presumed to pay a visit, or even be seen in public, without
-this mystic wand. Long as a footman's stick, smooth, and varnished, with a
-heavy gold head, or a cross-bar, it was an instrument with which, down to
-the present century, every prudent aspirant to medical practice was
-provided. The celebrated gold-headed cane which Radcliffe, Mead, Askew,
-Pitcairn, and Baillie successively bore, is preserved in the College of
-Physicians, London. It has a cross-bar, almost like a crook, in place of a
-knob. The knob in olden times was hollow, and contained a vinaigrette,
-which the man of science held to his nose when he approached a sick
-person, so that its fumes might protect him from the disease."
-
-The cane, doubtless, came from the wand or caduceus of Mercurius, and was
-a "relic of the conjuring paraphernalia with which the healer, in
-ignorant and superstitious times, always worked upon the imagination of
-the credulous." The present barber's pole originated with surgeons. The
-red stripe represented the arterial blood; the blue, the venous blood; the
-white, the bandages.
-
-The superstitious ancients showed more wisdom in their selections of
-names, as well as in emblems, than we do in retaining them. Heathen
-worship and mythological signs are mixed and interwoven with all our arts,
-sciences, and literature. Our days of the week were named by the old
-Saxons, who worshipped idols--the sun, moon, stars, earth, etc., and to
-their god's, perpetual honor gave to each day a name from some principal
-deity. Thus we are idolaters, daily, though unconsciously.
-
-I think not one person in a thousand is aware of this fact; therefore I
-give a sketch of each.
-
-
-SUNDAY.
-
-The name of our first day of the week, Sunday, is derived from the Saxon
-_Sunna-daeg_, which they named for the sun. It was also called _Sun's-daeg_.
-
-[Illustration: SUN--Sunday.]
-
-As the glorious sunlight brought day and warmth, and caused vegetation to
-spring forth in its season, warmed the blood, and made the heart of man to
-rejoice, they made that dazzling orb the primary object of their worship.
-When its absence brought night and darkness, and the storm-clouds
-shrouded its face in gloom, or the occasional eclipse suddenly cut off its
-shining, which they superstitiously attributed to the wrath of their chief
-deity, it then became the object of their supplication. With them, and all
-superstitious people, all passions, themes, and worships must be
-embodied--must assume form and dimensions, and as they could not gaze upon
-the dazzling sun, they personified it in the figure of a man--as being
-superior to woman with them--arrayed in a primitive garment, holding in
-his hand a flaming wheel. One day was specially devoted to sun worship.
-
-The modern Sunday is the day, according to historical accounts of the
-early Christians, on which Christ rose from the dead. It does not appear
-to have been the same day as, or to have superseded, the Jewish Sabbath,
-although the Christians early celebrated the day, devoting it to religious
-services. With the Christians, labor was suspended on this "first day of
-the week," and Constantine, about the year 320, established an edict which
-suspended all labor, except agricultural, and forbade also all court
-proceedings. In 538 A. D. the third Council of Orleans published a decree
-forbidding all labor on Sunday.
-
-The Sabbath (Hebrew _Shabbath_) of the Jews, meaning a day of rest,
-originated as far back as Moses--probably farther. It was merely a day of
-rest, which was commanded by Jehovah; and if considered only on
-physiological grounds, it evinces the wisdom and economy of God in setting
-apart one day in seven to be observed by man as a season of rest and
-recuperation. As such it only seems to have been regarded till after the
-forty years of exile, when it changed to a day of religious rites and
-ceremonies, which is continued till the present day by "that peculiar
-people." That particular day, given in the "law of Moses," corresponds--it
-is believed by the Jews--to our Saturday. Christ seemed to teach that the
-Jewish Sabbath was no more sacred than any other day, and he accused the
-Pharisees with hypocrisy in their too formal observance thereof. He
-attended their service on the Sabbath, on the seeming principle that he
-did other meetings, and as he paid the accustomed tax, because it was best
-to adapt one's self to the laws and customs of the country.
-
-We do not purpose to enter into any theological discussion as to which of
-the two days should be observed for rest and religious observances; for
-who shall decide? Physiologically considered, it makes no difference.
-There should be one day set apart for rest in seven at the most, and all
-men should respect it.
-
-Without a Sabbath (day of rest) we should soon relapse into a state of
-barbarism, and also wear out before our allotted time. "In the hurry and
-bustle of every-day life and labor, we allow ourselves too little
-relaxation, too little scope for moral, social, and religious sentiments;
-therefore it is well to set apart times and seasons when all cares and
-labors may be laid aside, and communion held with nature and nature's
-God." And it were better if we all could agree upon one day for our
-Sabbath; and let us call it "Sabbath," and not help to perpetuate any
-heathen dogmas and worship by calling God's holy day after the idolatrous
-customs of the ancient Saxons.
-
-
-MONDAY.
-
-The second day of the week the Saxons called _Monandaeg_, or Moon's day;
-hence our Monday.
-
-This day was set apart by that idolatrous people for the worship of their
-second god in power. In their business pursuits, as well as devotional
-exercises, they devoted themselves to the moon worship. The name
-_Monandaeg_ was written at the top of all communications, and remembrance
-had to their god in all transactions of the day. Each _monath_ (new moon
-or month) religious (?) exercises were celebrated.
-
-The idol Monandaeg had the semblance of a female, crowned or capped with a
-hood-like covering, surmounted by two horns, while a basque and long robe
-covered the remainder of her person. In her right hand she held the image
-of the moon.
-
-[Illustration: MOON--Monday.]
-
-[Illustration: TUISCO--Tuesday.]
-
-
-TUESDAY.
-
-The third object of their worship was Tuisco--corresponding with German
-_Tuisto_--the son of _Terra_ (earth), the deified founder of the
-Teutonic race. He seems to have been the deity who presided over combats
-and litigations; "hence Tuesday is now, as then, court-day, or the day for
-commencing litigations." In some dialects it was called _Dings-dag_, or
-Things-day--to plead, attempt, cheapen: hence it is often selected as
-market-day, as well as a time for opening assizes. Hence the god _Tuisco_
-was worshipped in the semblance of a venerable sage, with uncovered head,
-clothed in skins of fierce animals, touching the earth, while he held in
-his right hand a sceptre, the appropriate ensign of his authority.
-
-Thus originated the name of our third day of the week, and some of its
-customs.
-
-[Illustration: WODEN--Wednesday.]
-
-
-WEDNESDAY.
-
-This day was named for _Woden_,--the same as _Odin_,--and was sacred to
-the divinity of the Northern and Eastern nations. He was the Anglo-Saxons'
-god of war, "who came to them from the East in a very mysterious manner,
-and enacted more wonderful and brilliant exploits of prowess and valor
-than the Greek mythologists ascribed to their powerful god Hercules." As
-_Odin_, this deity was said to have been a monarch (in the flesh) of
-ancient Germany, Denmark, Scandinavia, etc., and a mighty conqueror. All
-those tribes, in going into battle, invoked his aid and blessing upon
-their arms. He was idolized as a fierce and powerful man, with helmet,
-shield, a drawn sword, a _gyrdan_ about his loins, and feet and legs
-protected by sandals and knee-high fastenings of iron, ornamented with a
-death's head.
-
-[Illustration: THOR--Thursday.]
-
-[Illustration: FRIGA--Friday.]
-
-
-THURSDAY.
-
-From the deity _Thor_ our Thursday is derived. This Saxon god was the son
-of Woden, or Odin, and his wife Friga. He was the god of thunder, the
-bravest and most powerful, after his father, of the Danish and Saxon
-deities.
-
-Thor is represented as sitting in majestic grandeur upon a golden throne,
-his head surmounted by a golden crown, richly ornamented by a circle in
-front, in which were set twelve brilliant stars. In his right hand he
-grasped the regal sceptre.
-
-
-FRIDAY.
-
-The sixth day of the week was named in honor of _Friga_, or Frigga, the
-wife of Woden and the mother of Thor. In most ancient times she was the
-same as Venus, the goddess of Hertha, or Earth. She was the most revered
-of the female divinities of the Danes and Saxons. Friga is represented
-draped in a light robe suspended from the shoulder, low neck and bare
-arms. She held in her right hand a drawn sword, and a long bow in the
-left. Her hair is long and flowing, while a golden band, adorned by
-ostrich feathers, encircle her snowy brow.
-
-There is nothing in the name or attributes to indicate the ill luck which
-superstition has attached to the day.
-
-[Illustration: SEATER--Saturday.]
-
-
-SATURDAY.
-
-The god _Seater_, for whom the last day of the week is named, is the same
-as Saturn, which is from Greek--_Time_.
-
-He is pictured, unlike Saturn, with long, flowing hair and beard, thin
-features, clothed in person with one entire garment to his ankles and
-wrists, with his waist girded by a linen scarf. In his right hand he
-carries a wheel, to represent rolling time. In his left hand he holds a
-pail of fruit and flowers, to indicate young time as well as old. The fish
-which is his pedestal represents his power over the abundance of even the
-sea.
-
-
-CHRISTMAS FESTIVALS.
-
-Amongst the very pleasant and harmless customs which have been handed down
-to us from the idolatrous rites and superstitions of the ancient Saxons,
-Scandinavians, etc., are those connected with our Christmas festivities.
-The whole observance and connections form a strange mixture of Christian
-and heathen ceremonies, illustrative of the unwillingness with which a
-people abandon pagan rites to the adoption of those more consistent with
-the spirit of a Christianized and enlightened faith.
-
-Now, little folks and big, I am not going to ridicule or deny your right
-to Christmas and St. Nicholas enjoyments; I will merely hint at their
-origin, for your own benefit. The day brings more happiness--and folks--to
-the homes and firesides of the people of the _whole world_ than any other
-holiday we celebrate.[6] Thanksgiving, you know, is mostly a New England
-custom. The 25th of December is just as good as any other day on which to
-have a good time. Ancient people used to celebrate the first and sixth
-of January. The first three months of the year are named after heathen
-gods.
-
-The _name_ of the day we celebrate is derived from a Christian source: the
-rest from pagan. A good feeling was always engendered amongst the most
-ancient people at the commencement of the lengthening of days in winter,
-and the approach of a new year. The hanging up of the mistletoe, with the
-ceremony of gathering it, the kindling of the Yule log, and giving of
-presents, we trace to the Druids, who were the priests, doctors, and
-judges of the ancient Celts, Gauls, Britons, and Germans. Our modern
-stoves and furnaces have shut out the pleasant old log fires, and the
-candles only remain. The gifts originated in the giving away of pieces of
-the mistletoe by the grizzly old priests.
-
-Who St. Nicholas was, is only conjectured, _not known_, any more than who
-St. Patrick was. It makes no difference where he sprang from; he is a
-good, jolly, benevolent fellow, who brings lots of presents, and, with the
-little folks, we are bound to defend him.
-
-It is supposed that the original St. Nicholas lived in Lycia, in Asia
-Minor, during the fourth century, and was early adopted as a saint of the
-Catholic church, and also by the Russians and ancient Germans, Celts, and
-others.
-
-"He has ever been regarded as a very charitable personage, and as the
-particular guardian of children. Great stories are told of his charity and
-benevolence. One of these, and that, perhaps, which attaches him to the
-peculiar festivities of Christmas, is to the effect that a certain
-nobleman had three lovely daughters, but was so reduced to poverty that he
-was unable to give them a marriage portion, as was the indispensable
-custom, and was about to give them over to a life of shame. St. Nicholas
-was aware of this, and determined in a secret way to assist the nobleman.
-
-"He wended his way towards the nobleman's house, thinking how he could
-best do this, when he espied an open window, into which he threw a purse
-of gold, which dropped at the nobleman's feet, and he was enabled to give
-his daughter a marriage portion. This was repeated upon the second
-daughter and the third daughter; but the nobleman, being upon the watch,
-detected his generous benefactor, and thus the affair was made public.
-From this rose the custom upon St. Nicholas Day, December 6, for parents
-and friends to secretly put little presents into the stockings of the
-children. Doubtless this custom, so near the festivities of Christmas,
-gradually approximated to that day, and become identical with Christmas
-festivities throughout the world. St. Nicholas is often represented
-bearing three purses, or golden balls, and these form the pawn-broker's
-well-known sign, which is traced to this source as its origin--not, we
-should judge, from their resemblance to the charity of St. Nicholas, but
-emblematic of his lending in time of need."
-
-
-POPULAR NOTIONS AND WHIMS.
-
-There was a superstition in Scotland against spinning or ploughing on
-Christmas; but the Calvinistic clergy, in contempt for all such
-superstitions, compelled their wives and daughters to spin, and their
-tenants to plough, on that day.
-
-It is a popular notion to the present time in Devonshire that if the sun
-shines bright at noon on Christmas day, there will be a plentiful crop of
-apples the following year.
-
-Bees were thought to sing in their hives on Christmas eve, and it was
-believed that bread baked then would never mould.
-
-So prevalent was the idea that all nature unites in celebrating the great
-event of Christ's birth, that it was a well received opinion in some
-sections of the old world that the cattle fell on their knees at midnight
-on Christmas eve.
-
-
-RIDICULOUS SUPERSTITIONS.
-
-  "Merlin! Merlin! turn again;
-    Leave the oak-branch where it grew.
-  Seek no more the cress to gain,
-    Nor the herb of golden hue."
-
-Merlin, the reputed great enchanter, flourished in Britain about the fifth
-century. He is said to have resided in great pomp at the court of "Good
-King Arthur." You all know the beautiful rhyme about the latter, if not
-about "Merlin! Merlin!" etc.
-
-  "When good King Arthur ruled the land,--
-    He was a goodly king,--
-  He stole three pecks of barley-meal
-    To make a bag pudding."
-
-Sublime poetry! Easy mode of obtaining the barley-meal (or Scotch
-territory). Merlin attached many superstitious beliefs to some of our
-medicinal plants. The "cress" is supposed to be the mistletoe. "The herb
-of gold"--golden herb--was a rare plant, held in great esteem by the
-peasant women of Brittany, who affirmed that it shone like gold at a
-distance. It must be gathered by or before daybreak.
-
-The most ridiculous part of the affair was in the searching for the "herb
-of golden hue." None but devout females, blessed by the priests for the
-occasion, were permitted the great privilege of gathering it. In order to
-be successful in the search, the privileged person started before
-daylight, barefooted, bareheaded, and _en chemise_. (Of course the priest
-knew the individual, and when she was going.) The root must not be cut or
-broken, but pulled up entire. If any one trod upon the plant, he or she
-would fall into a trance, when they could understand the language of fowls
-and animals--a belief not half as ridiculous as that of the present day,
-that a person may fall into a trance, and understand the language of the
-dead; yes, dead and decayed, the organs of speech gone! Yet thousands
-believe such stuff to-day.
-
-_The Mandrake._--Great superstition was formerly attached to this root,
-and even now is, in some rural districts. The root often resembles the
-lower half of a human being, and it was credulously believed it would
-shriek and groan when pulled from its mother earth. This notion is
-expressed in Romeo and Juliet:--
-
-  "Mandrakes, torn out of the earth,
-  That mortals, hearing them, run mad."
-
-Again, in Henry VI.:--
-
-  "Would curses kill, as doth the bitter mandrake's groans."
-
-[Illustration: GATHERING THE MANDRAKE.]
-
-A favorite mode of uprooting this coveted plant--because of its defensive
-properties, when once gained--was to fasten cords to a dog's neck, thence
-to the base of the stem of the plant, and sealing their own ears with wax
-to prevent hearing the groans, which was death or madness, they whipped
-the unfortunate dog till he drew out the roots, or was killed in the
-attempt; for the dog usually died then or soon after the cruel beating,
-and the shrieks of the mandrake were supposed to have caused his death.
-
-The Scabious, or "Devil's bit," was regarded with great superstition. "The
-old fantastic charmers," said the quaint Gerarde, "say that the Devil bit
-away the greater part of this root for envy, because of its many virtues
-and benefits to mankind." Dr. James Smith (1799) as quaintly observes,
-"The malice of the Devil has unfortunately been so successful, that no
-virtue can now be found in the remainder of the root or herb."
-
-_House Crickets._--The superstition respecting these cheerful and harmless
-little _chirpers_ is remarkable. Some consider their presence a lucky
-sign, others their absence more fortunate. To kill one, with some persons,
-is a sign of death in the house. Very strange! They, blind fools, do not
-see that the saying originated in the death of the poor little cricket.
-
-The following very remarkable occurrence was related to the writer, as
-having actually taken place at Providence, R. I., a few years since. Mrs.
-D., a respectable lady, residing in the city, was reported to have been
-followed about the house and up stairs by a "cricket,"--a wooden one, used
-for a foot-stool. People called at her residence to inquire into the truth
-of the matter; others even requested to see the remarkable phenomenon of a
-cricket or stool walking off on all fours, until the lady became so
-annoyed by the continual stream of credulous callers, that she inserted a
-notice in the city journals denying the truth of the strange rumor. It was
-supposed to have started from some neighbor's seeing or hearing a house
-cricket when on a visit at the lady's house.
-
-_The Bowing Images._--A still more amusing story is related respecting the
-two images surmounting the wall each side of the gate at the residence of
-Professor Gammel, of Providence. A report became current among the
-school-boys of the city, that when the images _heard_ the clock strike
-nine in the forenoon they bowed their heads. My informant said it was no
-unusual thing to see a dozen boys waiting, with books and slates, in front
-of the professor's gate, to see the images bow at nine. Being late at
-school, the teacher would inquire,--
-
-"Where have you been lingering, that you are behind time at school?"
-
-[Illustration: "WAITING TO SEE THE IMAGES BOW".]
-
-"Been down to Professor Gammel's, waitin' to see the images bow."
-
-Then the teacher drew his ferule or rod, and made them "bow" in submission
-to a smart whipping--a sequel anticipated by the older scholars who
-instituted the story.
-
-_House Spiders._--Was there ever a child who was not taught, directly or
-indirectly, that house spiders were poisonous,--that their bite was
-instantaneous death? Was there ever a greater mistake? Many people have a
-superstitious terror of these harmless creatures. The bite of spiders is
-only poisonous to those insects which the divine economy seems to have
-created for them to destroy. It is possible, as by a fly, sometimes for a
-slight skin inflammation, less than a mosquito's bite, to follow the sting
-of a spider on a very small child.
-
-Let me hereby disabuse the public mind of the repugnance or horror with
-which these little creatures are regarded. The Creator has evidently
-placed them here for the destruction of flies and other insects, which
-otherwise would completely overrun us. The fly is such a domestic
-creature, that he soon deserts a house where the family is long absent.
-The spider then removes also. (I have watched this proceeding, with no
-little interest, in the absence of my own family.) Therefore the spider
-was created to suppress a superabundance of insect life. When I have
-before stated this fact, the listener has been led to inquire why the
-flies were then made. We will not answer the suggestion of this "riddle"
-as the Irishman did (you know that he said, "To feed the spiders, to be
-sure"), but reply, that if this question is to arise in this connection,
-we may as well keep on our inquiry till we arrive at the greater riddle,
-"Why are _we_ created?"--to which we have no space for reply.
-
-It is said that manufacturers of quill pens in London, being greatly
-annoyed by a species of moth which infests their quills and devours the
-feathers, and the common spider being endowed with an inordinate appetite
-for those same moths, the penmakers and spiders are on the best of terms,
-and an army of these much-maligned and persecuted insects encamp in each
-pen factory, and do good service to the cause of literature as well as
-trade, by protecting the quills. We may yet find that even mosquitos and
-bedbugs have their uses in the wise economy of nature.
-
-Now, when tidy housewifery requires that brush and broom should ruthlessly
-demolish the webs,--the wonderful work and mechanism of the one species of
-house spider,--let it be done as a necessity, not with a feeling of
-repugnance to the harmless little insect; and let children be taught the
-truthful lesson that nothing is made in vain.
-
-_The House Cat_, with many, is regarded with unaccountable superstition.
-It goes with the witch, particularly the black cat. No witch ever could
-exist without one. This is usually the species that haunts naughty boys in
-their dreams after they have eaten too heartily of cake, and other
-indigestible stuff, at evening.
-
-Cats are as old as time. At least their existence dates back as far as
-man's in history, and they were formerly regarded as a sacred animal.
-
-In ancient Egypt we find that Master Tomas, with his round face and rugged
-whiskers, symbolized the sun. Preserved in the British Museum are abundant
-proofs of the reverence and superstition with which the feline race was
-regarded by the Egyptians. Here several of these revered Grimalkins are
-mummied in spices, and perfumes, and balsams, in which they have survived
-the unknown centuries of the past, "to contrast the value of a dead cat in
-the land of the Pharaohs with the fate of such relics in modern times,
-ignominiously consigned to the scavenger's cart, or feloniously hanging
-upon a tree, the scarecrow of the orchard."
-
-Diodorus, the Greek writer, 1st century B. C., informs us that such was
-the superstitious veneration with which the Egyptians regarded cats, that
-no one could ruffle the fur of Tom or Tabby with impunity, and that any
-man killing a cat was put to death. (O, what a country it must have been
-to sleep in!) In Ptolemy's time, while the Roman army was established in
-Egypt, one of the Romans killed a cat, when the people flew to his house,
-and dragged him forth, and neither the fear of the soldiers nor the
-influence of the prince could deliver the unfortunate cat-slayer from the
-wrath of the infuriated mob.
-
-Mohammed had a superstition for cats, and was said to have been constantly
-attended by one. A cat hospital was founded at Damascus in respect to the
-prophet's predilection, which Baumgarten, the German professor (1714 to
-1762) found filled with feline inmates. Turkey maintained several public
-establishments of this kind.
-
-Howell the Good, king of Wales, 10th century, legislated for the cat
-propagation, and it would seem that the race was limited, since a week old
-kitten sold for a penny,--a great deal of money in those days,--and
-fourpence for one old enough to catch a mouse. The following ludicrous
-penalty was attached to a cat-stealer:--
-
-"If any person stole a cat that guarded the prince's granaries he was to
-forfeit a milch ewe, fleece, and lamb; or, in lieu of these, as much wheat
-as, when poured upon the cat, suspended by the tail, her head touching the
-floor, would form a heap high enough to bury her to the tail tip."
-
-This would seem rather hard on poor pussy, even to threatening her
-suffocation.
-
-Huc, in his "Chinese Empire," tells us that the Chinese peasantry are
-accustomed to tell the noon hour from the narrowing and dilation of the
-pupils of pussy's eyes; they are said to be drawn down to a hair's-breadth
-precisely at twelve o'clock. This horological utility, however, by no
-means gives her a fixed tenure in a Chinese home. There she enters into
-the category of edible animals, and, having served the purpose of a
-cat-clock, is seen hanging side by side with the carcasses of dogs, rats,
-and mice in the shambles of every city and town of the celestial empire.
-
-Descending to the middle ages, a mal-odor of magic taints the fair fame of
-our _proteges_, more especially attaching itself to black or brindled
-cats, which were commonly found to be the "familiars" of witches; or,
-rather, their "familiars" were supposed to take the form of these animals;
-and hence, in nearly all judicial records of these unhappy delusionists,
-demons in the shape of cats are sure to figure. The witches in "Macbeth"
-(for what impression of the times he lived in has Shakspeare lost?)
-awaited the triple mewing of the brindled cat to begin their incantations;
-and more scientific pretenders to a knowledge of the occult arts are
-usually represented as attended in their laboratories by a feline
-companion.
-
-Fragments of a superstitious faith in the magical, or what was till
-comparatively recent times so nearly allied with it, the medicinal
-attributes of the animal, still surviving in certain rustic and remote
-districts of England, where the brains of a cat of the proper color
-(black, of course) are esteemed a cure for epilepsy; and where, within our
-memory, such a faith induced a wretched being, in the shape of woman, mad
-with despair and rage, to tear the living heart from one of these animals,
-that, by sticking it full of pins and roasting it, she might bring back
-the regard of a man, brutal and perfidious as herself. Such formulae are
-frequently to be met with in the works of ancient naturalists and
-physicians, and were, doubtlessly, handed down from generation to
-generation, and locally acted upon in desperate cases.
-
-It is on evidence that more than one old woman has been condemned by our
-wise ancestors to pay the penalty of her presumed league with Satan in a
-fiery death, upon no better testimony than the fact that Harper,
-Rutterkin, or Robin had been seen entering her dwelling in the shape of a
-black cat. But if, in ancient times, old women, and young ones, too, have
-been brought to grief through the cats they fostered, certain it is that
-these creatures have suffered horrible reprisal at the hands of certain
-vagrants of the sex in our own.
-
-Our _Felis domestica_ has, for a long time, labored under the serious
-disadvantage of a traditional character. Buffon sums her up as a
-"faithless friend, brought in to oppose a still more insidious enemy;" and
-Goldsmith--who, it is well known, became a writer of natural history "upon
-compulsion," and had neither time nor opportunity for personal observation
-of the habits and instincts of the creatures he so charmingly
-describes--followed in the track of the great naturalist, and echoes this
-ungracious definition.
-
-Boys have a natural contempt for cats, and picking them up by the tail,
-tossing them over the wall, or tying old tin pots to their caudal end, to
-see how fast they can run, are among their most trifling sports at the
-expense of Tom and Tabby. I have known a cruel boy to roll a cat in
-turpentine, and set fire to her. Few men have any feeling but repugnance
-towards the feline race. The exceptions are in the past.
-
-Cardinal Wolsey's cat sat on the arm of his chair of state, or took up her
-position at the back of his throne when he held audiences; and the cat of
-the poet Petrarch, after death, occupied, embalmed, a niche in his studio;
-indeed, poets appear to be more susceptible of pussy's virtues and graces
-than other persons; and she has, on many occasions, been made the subject
-of their verse, the sentiment of which fully expresses a sense of the
-maligned animal's faithfulness and affection.
-
-Tasso, reduced to such a strait of poverty as to be obliged to borrow a
-crown from a friend to subsist on through a week, turns for mute sympathy
-to his faithful cat, and disburdens his case in a charming sonnet, in
-which he entreats her to assist him through the night with the lustre of
-her moon-like eyes, having no candles by which he could see to write his
-verses.
-
-[Illustration: SPORT FOR THE BOYS BUT DEATH FOR THE CAT.]
-
-An editor facetiously says, "We have here among us at this time an
-addition to the M. D.'s in the shape of two cat doctors, who have the
-terrible idea that they were put upon this earth for the sole object of
-doctoring cats, and now the mortality list shows, at the least
-calculation, that no less than eighteen cats and two kittens have
-travelled to that bourn from which no passengers have ever yet returned,
-and all because they were the unlucky sons and daughters of ye night
-prowlers who had been sacrificed for the good of the future cat
-generation."
-
-
-PRESENT ERRORS.
-
-I think some reason for the present errors and superstitions attached to
-cats, may be attributed to the _cat_-adioptric qualities of their eyes and
-fur. At night their eyes often shine with phosphoric light, and rubbing
-their fur with the human hand causes it to emit electric sparks,
-particularly in very cold weather. They are supposed to partake of
-ghostly, or witch-like qualities, because they can see in the night time.
-Fish scales, as well as the flesh of fish, contain a phosphoric
-principle--there is no witchery about such--which can be seen best through
-the dark. The fur of other animals besides the cat contain electric
-qualities. Humans possess it to a greater or lesser extent. The eye of the
-cat--as also the owl--is made, in the divine economy, expressly for night
-prowling. The back, or reflecting coat (retina), is white, or light, that
-it may reflect dark objects. In man, and most animals, it is dark. A
-light-complexioned person can (_caeteris paribus_) see better at night than
-one who is dark. In a strong light, it is reversed. So much for
-cat-optrics.
-
-Our cat-alogue would be incomplete without this cat-agraph, and we should
-"cat-ch it," hereafter, from some cat-echist, if we here discontinued our
-cat-enary cat-egory, without some little cat-ch relative to the domestic
-and redeeming qualities of this unappreciated cat-tle (excuse the
-cat-achresis).
-
-Webster says the cat is a deceitful animal. Webster don't know. She
-certainly has large cautiousness and secretiveness. Man, with the same
-secretiveness, with the same neglect and abuse that Tom receives, will
-become doubly deceitful. Treat him kindly and affectionately, and he will
-return it. Subject to everybody's kicks, cuffs, and suspicion, the cat
-necessarily becomes shy, ugly, and appears deceitful. So does a child. The
-cat is fond of sweet scents, and pries into drawers and cupboards, oftener
-to gratify her sense of smell than taste. Cats are very fond of music, and
-occasionally go upon the piano keys to make the strings vibrate. Depending
-upon their own exertions for a livelihood, they become thieves. They may,
-by kind instruction, soon be taught to know and keep their own places.
-
-The healthy cat is neat and systematic. Children may be taught a useful
-lesson by noticing that the tabby washes her face and hands after meals,
-and never comes to her repast with them dirty.
-
-Cats are sometimes good fish-catchers, as well as mousers and
-bird-catchers, often plunging into water to secure their favorite aliment.
-Their love of praise is exhibited in their general tendency to bring in
-their prey, and place it at your feet for your approbation. Give them the
-notice due them, and they will redouble their efforts.
-
-It is a vulgar error to suppose their washing over the head is a sign of
-rain, or that you can tell the time of tide by their eye-pupils, or that
-they can go through a solid wall, have nine lives, or suck away a child's
-breath.
-
-The cat, as a sanitary means, should be domesticated, especially with
-scrofulous children and females. Either by their absorbent or repelling
-powers they assist nature in eradicating that almost universal
-disease--scrofula.
-
-Teach children that "God has created nothing in vain," and nothing which
-will harm them if rightly used.
-
-Here we bid good by to Tom and Tabby.
-
-_The Owl._--The superstition which has hung about this very harmless bird
-is liable to soon cease in the extermination of the creature itself.
-
-"Was you born in the woods to be scared by an owl?" my grandmother once
-sarcastically inquired when I was frightened from the barn by an old owl
-inquiring,--
-
-"Who--a'--yoo?"
-
-[Illustration: "WHO--A'--YOO?"]
-
-I acknowledge I was a great coward; but I had heard the old women affirm
-more than once that it was a sign of ill luck or death to hear one of
-these cat-faced, cat-seeing, mousing creatures cry by day; so I fled from
-the barn, while the old owl turned his head sidewise, as he sat on a beam,
-trying to penetrate the light, repeating, "Who--a'--yoo?" It was a sign of
-death, for my uncle shot the owl.
-
-Magpies are made the subject of superstition. To see a single one
-strutting across your path is a sad mishap. There is luck in three, or
-more, however.
-
-_Holy Water._--Church superstitions and rites are not within our
-province, unless they are objectionable in a sanitary point of view. If
-the holy water is clean, it is just as good as any other pure water; but I
-have seen it poured upon my Irish patients--years ago in Hartford and
-elsewhere--when there were "wrigglers" in it from long exposure in an
-unstopped bottle or tea-cup. I approve of holy water, therefore, in large
-quantities, with other rites, tending to a sanitary object. Have plenty of
-water--with soap.
-
-[Illustration: THE PROPER USE OF "HOLY WATER."]
-
-_Bells._--Few useful articles have been held in greater reverence and
-superstition. Their origin is of great antiquity. The first Jewish priests
-adorned their blue tunics with golden bells, as also did the Persian
-kings. The Greeks put bells upon criminals going to execution, as a
-warning, as it was an ill omen to see a criminal and his executioner
-walking. The superstition respecting bells began more particularly with
-the tenth century, when the priests exorcised and blessed them, giving
-them the names of saints, making the rabble believe that when they were
-rung for those ceremonies they had the power to drive devils out of the
-air, making them quake and tremble; also to restrain the power of the
-devil over a corpse; hence bell-ringing at funerals.
-
-There are many legends wherein the evil spirits' dislike to bells is
-promulgated.
-
-As "the devil hates holy water," so he does bell-ringing.
-
-Dr. Warner, a clergyman of the Church of England, in his "Hampshire,"
-enumerates the virtues of a bell, by translating some lines from the
-"Helpe to Discourse."
-
-  "Men's deaths I tell by doleful knell;
-  Lightning and thunder I break asunder;
-  On Sabbath all to church I call;
-  The sleepy head I raise from bed;
-  The winds so fierce I doe disperse;
-  Men's cruel rage I do asswage."
-
-I think the beautiful music discoursed by a chime of bells would be more
-effectual "men's cruel rage" to tranquillize, than a battery of seven
-cannons. Aside from all superstitious notions, there is an irresistible
-charm about the music of bells, and I rejoice that they are gradually
-being redeemed from the superstition and monopoly of one ignorant
-denomination, as the sacred cross may be, to the use and blessing of all
-mankind.
-
-_Fear of Thunder and Lightning._--These have ever been sources of
-superstitious terror. The ancients considered thunder and lightning as
-direct manifestations of divine wrath; hence whatever the lightning struck
-was accursed. The corpses of persons so killed were allowed to remain
-where they fell, to the great inconvenience, often, of the living.
-
-The electricity which plays about high poles and spires was formerly
-attributed to spirits. "Fiery spirits or devils," says old Burton, "are
-such as commonly work by blazing stars, fire-drakes," etc. "Likewise they
-counterfeit suns and moons ofttimes, and sit on ships' masts." The
-electric sparks upon the metal points of soldiers' spears were regarded as
-omens of no small importance.
-
-In some parts of Europe, up to the last century, it was a custom to ring
-bells during a thunder-storm, to drive away evil spirits; but this act
-often was the cause of death, by the exposure of persons to the points of
-attraction, and the conducting power of moist ropes and metallic wires. On
-the night of April 15, 1718, the lightning struck twenty-four steeples
-while the bells were ringing. In July of the following year, while the
-bells were tolling at a funeral celebration in the Chateau Vieux,
-lightning struck the steeple, killing nine persons and injuring
-twenty-two. Statistics show that numerous deaths were caused by
-bell-ringing in England and France, during the last century, to drive away
-imaginary spirits.
-
-The saint usually invoked on these occasions was St. Barnabas.
-
-The houseleek and bay tree were supposed to afford protection from
-lightning.
-
-"The thunder has soured the beer," or the milk, is a common saying; and I
-once saw a piece of iron lying across the beer-barrel to keep away
-thunder. A heavy atmosphere may suddenly sour beer or milk.
-
-Creeping three times under the communion table while the chimes were
-striking, at midnight, was believed to cure fits, as late as 1835.
-
-Glass, stone, and feathers are non-conductors to electricity. Persons very
-susceptible to electric currents need give themselves no fear, and no more
-caution need be taken than we take to protect ourselves against other
-objects of danger. Lightning will not strike one out of doors, unless he
-is near a point of high attraction,--under a tree, or pole,--or has about
-him, exposed, some metallic substance, or some very wet article. Houses
-under or near tall trees, or with suitable lightning-rods, are safe
-enough. A feather bed, particularly one insulated by glass-rollers, or
-plates, under the posts, and not touching the wall, is a perfectly safe
-place for invalids and nervous people who are susceptible to electricity.
-The pulse of such is often increased in frequency before a thunder-storm.
-Let such first have no fear. See God in the storm and lightning as only a
-saving power. I know a girl who "tears around like mad" for a man at the
-approach of a thunder-storm. When finding one, she feels perfectly safe.
-If not, she hides in the cellar till the storm abates.
-
-_Unlucky Days._--The superstition respecting unlucky Friday is well known.
-Some cynical bachelors say it is unlucky because named for a woman. Monday
-was also so named. I can find no account of this superstition until after
-the first century A. D. It is said that our Saviour was crucified on
-Friday--a day of fear and trembling, of earthquakes and divers remarkable
-phenomena; but that day is now as uncertain as the day of his birth, in
-the various changes of the calendar, heathen naming of the days to suit
-their notions, and the great uncertainty of chronology. No doubt Christ
-arose from the dead on the then first day of the week, and was crucified
-the third day before the resurrection; but what day of our present week
-who can tell? If on Friday, it should be counted far from an unlucky day.
-Sailors are particularly superstitious as to sailing on Friday,
-notwithstanding Columbus sailed on Friday, and discovered America on that
-day.
-
-The French believe in unlucky Friday. Lord Byron, Dr. Johnson, and other
-authors and poets, are said to have so believed. Shakspeare, Scott,
-Goldsmith, Bacon, Sir Francis Drake, Napoleon, and many other great men,
-were pretty thoroughly tinged with superstition; the latter, it is said,
-believed in "luck," or destiny.
-
-The future of children is yet believed to depend much upon the day of the
-week on which they are born.
-
-  "Monday's child is fair in face;
-  Tuesday's child is full of grace;
-  Wednesday's child is full of woe;
-  Thursday's child has far to go;
-  Friday's child works hard for its living;
-  Saturday's child is loving and giving;
-  And a child that's born on Christmas day
-  Is fair, and wise, and good, and gay."[7]
-
-This, of course, is all nonsense--or rather the belief in such signs--and
-one day is equally as good as another for nature's work, or in which to
-fulfil the requirements of God and nature. Let no mother, or her who is
-about to become a mother, put faith in old nurses' whims. Their brains are
-full of all such fantastic notions, which are too often revealed in the
-sick room, and the effect is often detrimental to the peace and happiness
-of the mother, and at times dangerous to the life of the invalid.
-
-
-SUPERSTITION OF A KISS.
-
-The monks of the middle ages--great theorists--divided the kiss into
-fifteen distinct and separate orders.
-
-1. The decorous or modest kiss.
-
-2. The diplomatic, or kiss of policy.
-
-3. The spying kiss, to ascertain if a woman had drank wine.
-
-4. The slave kiss.
-
-5. The kiss infamous--a church penance.
-
-6. The slipper kiss, practised towards tyrants.
-
-7. The judicial kiss.
-
-8. The feudal kiss.
-
-9. The religious kiss (kissing the cross).
-
-10. The academical kiss (on joining a solemn brotherhood).
-
-11. The hand kiss.
-
-12. The Judas kiss.
-
-13. The medical kiss--for the purpose of healing some sickness.
-
-14. The kiss of etiquette.
-
-15. The kiss of love--the only real kiss. But this was also to be
-variously considered; viz., given by ardent enthusiasm, as by lovers; by
-matrimonial affection; or, lastly, between two men--an awful kiss, tasting
-like sandwiches without butter or meat.
-
-[Illustration: THE MODEST KISS.]
-
-
-THE END IS NOT YET.
-
-The reign of superstition is not yet ended.
-
-It is impossible for any great catastrophe, involving loss of property or
-life, to occur without a certain superstitious class harping upon the
-event as a judgment of God upon the wickedness of the victims. If a great
-city is swept away by the devouring elements, we hear the cry that "an
-offended Deity has visited the 'Babylon of the West' with his vengeance
-for her wickedness." Some penurious wretch takes it up, and says, "I'll
-give nothing, then, to the victims of the fire. It is God's judgment; I
-won't interfere." A rich man is murdered in cold blood, and the same howl
-goes up, "It is the judgment of God upon him for heaping up riches." The
-fact of his riches going to thousands of poor artisans, actors, musicians,
-widows, orphans, and "western Babylonian sufferers," goes for nothing with
-such people. These same superstitious wretches have not yet done
-asserting that the assassination of President Lincoln was in judgment for
-his attending a theatre.
-
-Twenty-five persons were killed in a church at Bologna, recently, while
-kneeling in prayer. Was this an expression of God's wrath upon
-church-goers?
-
-"The laws by which God governs the universe are inexorable. The frost will
-blight, the fire destroy, the storms will ravage, disease and death will
-do their appointed work, though narrow-mindedness and bigotry misconstrue
-their intent. All things are for good. If natural laws are violated, the
-known and inevitable result follows."
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-I have already exceeded the space to which this chapter was limited, and
-there are a thousand superstitious beliefs and practices which are not
-herein enumerated nor explained. But rest assured that nothing exists
-without its uses, without the knowledge of the divine Author, and nothing
-supernatural does or ever did exist amongst natural beings. There is
-nothing within this world but what God has placed for man's good. There is
-nothing here past man's ability to fathom. God is love.
-
-What there is beyond this world, we shall find out quite soon enough.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-XIII.
-
-TRAVELLING DOCTORS.
-
-    "His fancy lay to travelling."--L'ESTRANGE.
-
-    PUBLIC CONFIDENCE(?).--THE EYE OF THE PUBLIC.--A BAD
-    SPECIMEN.--"REMARKABLE TUMOR."--"THE SINGING DOCTOR."--CAUGHT IN A
-    STORM.--BIG PUFFING.--A SPLENDID "TURNOUT."--WHO WAS HE?--A SUDDEN
-    DISAPPEARANCE.--THE "SPANKING DOCTOR."--A FAIR VICTIM.--LOOSE
-    LAWS.--DR. PULSEFEEL.--IMPUDENCE.--A FIDDLING DOCTOR.--AN
-    ENCORE.--"CHEEK."--VARIOUS WAYS OF ADVERTISING.
-
-
-One might say, with some propriety, that these characters--travelling
-doctors--should have been classed under the heading of our first chapter,
-as "humbugs;" but if we should put all under that head that belong there,
-O, where would the chapter end? As "all is not gold that glitters," so
-neither, on the other hand, is there anything so bad that no virtue can be
-found in it. No heart is so utterly depraved as to prevent any good
-thought or deed from emanating therefrom, though sometimes the good is
-quite imperceptible to us short-sighted mortals.
-
-As the majority of physicians "turned" out of our medical colleges, or of
-those in practice in our cities, are unfit to have intrusted to their care
-the health and lives of our families, friends, or ourselves, so the
-majority of travelling doctors are to be reckoned equally untrustworthy;
-no more so.
-
-If the blessed Saviour should return to earth, and travel from town to
-city, as he did eighteen hundred years ago, healing the sick, I really
-think there would be a less number believing in him now than then. Less
-gratitude for his marvellous cures there could not be; for then some of
-the miserable wretches, whom he healed free of charge, did not so much as
-return him thanks. This may be said of some of our patients at this day.
-
-Let a medical man of ever so great reputation travel, and he is lost. A
-band of angels, on a healing mission, would stand no chance with a people
-who only expect humbugs to visit them. The Shakspearian inquiry would at
-once and repeatedly be put,--
-
-"How chance it they travel? Their _residence_, both in reputation and
-profit, was better both ways!"
-
-Let us view a few travelling doctors through the _public_ eye:--
-
-  "So shall I dare to give him shape and hue,
-  And bring his mazy-running tricks to view;
-  From humbug's minions catch the scattered rays,
-  That in one focus they may brightly blaze.
-
-  "I'd give our (nameless) knight, before he starts,
-  A tireless mind, where never Conscience smarts;
-  An oily tongue, which word should never speak
-  To call a blush to Satan's brazen cheek;
-  With, yet, a power of lungs the weak to move,
-  Which lung-quiescent ... might approve;
-  A changing face, which e'en might Homer feign,
-  A ton of brass for every ounce of brain.
-
-  "Then launch him forth, right cunningly to rage
-  Through the thin shams of this enlightened age;
-  To tell the people they are lords of earth,
-  And pick their pockets while he lauds their worth;
-  Drug men with folly, which no clime engrosses,
-  And sense deal out in homeopathic doses;
-  And making goodness to his projects bend,
-  With all right aims an ultra spirit blend.
-
-         *       *       *       *       *
-
-  "He leagues with those who number in their trade
-  A falsehood told for every sixpence made;
-  To Mammon mortgage all they have of heart,
-  To keep their wealth, with priceless honor part.
-  The fear of God the smallest of their fears,
-  Rolling in wealth, but bankrupt in ideas;
-  To save their purse, their souls contented lose,
-  And count all right, if worldly gain accrues;
-  Who, when they die, no memory leave behind,
-  But in the curses of their cheated kind!
-
-  "With these Sir Humbug riches seeks to gain,
-  And feels his way through lab'rinths of chicane;
-  Embezzles, swindles, lies, until at last
-  The eye of Justice on his crime is cast,
-  When, drugged with wealth, he quits our plundered shore,
-  And Texas boasts one fiery hero more."
-
-[Illustration: THE TUMOR DOCTOR CONTEMPLATES SUICIDE.]
-
-[Illustration: MARIAM, THE TUMOR DOCTOR.]
-
-The worst specimen of a travelling doctor I ever knew first appeared at
-R., one of the principal towns of Vermont, a few years ago. His name was
-Mariam; or that was what he called himself. He was a Canadian by birth,
-about twenty-five years of age, short, dark-complexioned, and claimed to
-be the seventh son of somebody. He was very illiterate, not being able to
-write a prescription, or his name, for that matter, when he came to R.
-
-I visited his rooms at the hotel, after he had been in town some weeks,
-and noticed, among other things, that his table was strewn with sheets of
-paper, upon which he had been practising writing his signature. He opened
-here boldly. He sent out thousands of circulars in the various trains of
-cars running from R., distributing them in person, on the Poor Richard's
-principle, that "if you want your work done, do it; if not, send." He
-inserted cards in the two village papers, containing the most illiterate
-and preposterous statements, and hundreds flocked to see him. Imagine his
-knowledge, for he assured me, to whom he opened his heart in confidence,
-that he never read a page of a medical work in his life.
-
-He first claimed to cure by the laying on of hands; but as he possessed no
-magnetic powers, he gradually abandoned that deception. As he could not
-write a prescription, and knew nothing of compounding medicines, he would
-go with a patient to a druggist's, and looking over the names of drugs on
-the bottles exposed on the shelves, order two or three articles at random,
-and, as one druggist assured me, of the most opposite properties; such as
-tincture of iron and iodide of potash, etc. (NOTE. The acid in the M.
-Tinct. iron sets the iodine free.)
-
-His clothes were very seedy, "and the crown of his hat went flip flap,"
-and his toes were healthy, "being able to get out to the air," when he
-came to R. Soon he was "in luck," and a nice suit of clothes, a new silk
-hat, and boots, speedily graced his not inelegant person. I saw him both
-before and after the transformation.
-
-The following is a true copy of one of his certificates, taken from his
-circular:--
-
-    "A GREAT CURE OF AN OVARIAN TUMOR!
-
-    "This is to certify that Dr. Mariam cured me of an immense _ovarian
-    tumor of the left shoulder_, weighing five pounds and a half, from
-    which I suffered," etc., etc.
-
-    (Signed)      Mrs. ---- ----.
-
-    "MALONE, N. Y."
-
-On this item being ridiculed in the papers of R., Mariam changed it to a
-"rose cancer," and continued the certificate.
-
-Mariam had been practising in Malone, N. Y., also at Whitehall, where, I
-was informed by a newspaper man, he was arrested for obtaining money
-under false pretences. He, however, escaped and fled, to practise his
-deceptions elsewhere. It was reported that he shuffled off his mortal coil
-by finally taking two ounces of laudanum, after the civil authorities had
-placed him comfortably in the county jail, where he had the pleasure of
-passing many days in viewing the world through an iron-barred window, and
-reflecting on his eventful career.
-
-
-THE SINGING DOCTOR.
-
-In remarkable contrast with the above described ignoramus, we present the
-following description, from two contributors, of an extraordinary
-personage, known for a time as "The Singing Doctor."
-
-The "Hoosac Valley News" tells this story:--
-
-"One day late in the autumn of 1860, while the rain poured in torrents,
-and the wind howled fearfully along the hills of old Plymouth, I was
-obliged to drive to Watertown. The 'Branch' was swollen to the river's
-size, and foamed madly down over the sombre rocks, while above my head, on
-the other side of the road, the trees rocked and swayed, as though about
-to fall into the seething, roaring waters below.
-
-"Above, or mingled with the clashing of the elements, I heard some voice,
-as if singing. It struck me with wonder. I stopped to listen. It became
-more distinct, as if approaching. What was it? Who could it be, singing
-amid the fearful tempest?
-
-"In the midst of my surmising, the object of my wonder came in sight,
-around a turn in the road just ahead of me.
-
-"It was the Singing Doctor, whom I instantly recognized by his little old
-white horse, as well as by his own voice, to which I had before listened.
-The little animal was drenched like a 'drowned rat.' The doctor, in his
-open buggy, with no umbrella,--for the sweeping wind precluded the
-possibility of holding one,--and the driving rain pelting mercilessly
-upon his face and head, was singing.
-
-"'You must be a happy man,' I exclaimed, 'to be singing amid this awful
-storm.'
-
-"'Why not?' he replied. 'It is always better to be singing than sighing;'
-and we passed on through the dangerous defile, and separated....
-
-"Last summer, as I journeyed through the Green Mountain State on a
-pleasure excursion, I met, on a romantic mountain pass, a magnificent
-turnout,--a splendid top carriage, drawn by four beautiful, jet black
-Morgan mares,--which did not attract my attention so much, however, as the
-music within the carriage. It was the Singing Doctor again, with his two
-little daughters, singing.
-
-"The handsome and good-natured driver offered me the best half of the
-road; but still I lingered till the last notes of the song died away, when
-I drove past the 'Sanatorian,' wondering to myself what singing had to do
-with his increasing prosperity."
-
-The remainder of the sketch is from the pen of a lady in Vermont:--
-
-"I think it was during the spring of 1867 that our little 'city on the
-lake' was visited by the above remarkable character. We are often visited
-by migratory physicians, who are usually of the 'come-and-go' order; but
-this one burst upon us like a comet, with dazzling splendor, briefly
-announced, but at once proclaimed his determination of returning with the
-regularity of the full moon--repeating his visits every month. Few
-believed his last arrangement could be carried out, as his predecessors
-had generally fleeced the invalid public to their utmost at one visit, and
-if they ever again appeared, it would be under another name and phase. It
-soon became evident that one visit could not repay the outlay, for no
-ready posting-board was large enough to hold the agent's posters, which
-were printed in strips some twenty-five feet in length, and his
-advertisements occupied one, two, or more columns of the public journals,
-while he flooded the houses with his pictorial circulars.
-
-[Illustration: THE SINGING DOCTOR.]
-
-"He was merely announced as 'The Sanatorian,' but was indorsed (true or
-false?) by some of New England's most respectable people. He came in grand
-style, as the papers briefly announced, thus:--
-
-"'_The Sanatorian._ This distinguished physician proposes visiting us on
-the 18th inst.... The doctor comes in great style.... He has the finest
-carriage, and the gayest four black Morgan horses we have ever had the
-pleasure of riding after.'
-
-[Illustration: THE SANATORIAN'S TURNOUT.]
-
-"The driver, a handsome fellow, with full brown whiskers, curling hair,
-and a 'heavenly blue eye,' had taken the editor and writer of this last
-paragraph out to an airing. The team was photographed by the artists, and
-many of the best citizens had the pleasure of a ride in the easy carriage,
-and behind the swift ponies.
-
-"The doctor usually remained _incog._ to the public. If they wished to see
-him, they must go to his 'parlors' at the best hotels. They did go. And
-now the most remarkable part of the affair remains to be recorded. An
-editor who interviewed him reports thus: 'The doctor rocks in a
-rocking-chair,--in fact, never sits in anything else,--or arises and walks
-the floor, and instantly, _at a glance_, tells every patient each pain and
-ache better than the patient could describe them himself. 'Are you a
-clairvoyant?' the editor asked.
-
-"'_Faugh! No, sir._ Clairvoyancy is a humbug; merely power of mind over
-mind. A clairvoyant can go no farther than your _own_ knowledge leads him,
-unless he guesses the rest,' was his emphatic reply.
-
-"The same patients, disguised, visited him twice, but he would tell the
-same story to them as before. His diagnosis was truly wonderful.
-
-"'What is your mode of treatment, or what school do you represent?'
-
-"'There hangs my "school,"' he would reply, pointing to a New York college
-diploma. 'That, however, cures nobody. What cures one patient kills
-another. My opathy is to cure my patient by _any means_, regardless of
-"schools."'
-
-"To some he gave 'nothing but water,' the patients affirmed; to others,
-pills, powders, syrups, or prescriptions. Well, he came the next month, to
-our surprise, and to the joy of most of his patients. He did the greatest
-amount of advertising on the first visit, doing less and less puffing each
-time. The rich, as well as the poor, visited him. He charged all one
-dollar. Then, if they declined treatment, he was satisfied; but if they
-doubted, or were sceptical, he refused all prescription. He advertised
-quite as much by telling one man he was past all help, and would die in
-eight weeks, which he did, as by curing the mayor of the city of a cough
-that jeoparded his life. If a poor woman had no money, he treated her just
-as cheerfully. Men he would not. His cures are said to have been
-remarkable. He made some eleven visits, and his patrons increased at each
-visit; but the novelty wore off before he disappeared. He was said to be
-an excellent musician, an author and composer, a man who was well read (a
-physician here who often conversed with him so informed the writer), could
-translate Latin and French, and converse with the mutes. When the day
-closed, he would see no more patients, but devoted his time to friends, to
-writing, or to music. Often the hotel parlor would be thronged at evening
-with the musical portion of the community. In personal appearance he was
-nothing remarkable,--medium size, wore full beard, had a sharp black eye,
-a quick, nervous movement, and his voice was not unpleasing to the ear.
-
-"Why he--such a man--should travel, no one knew. He had an object,
-doubtless, to accomplish, realized it, and retired upon his true name, and
-from whence he came."
-
-
-"YOURAN, THE SPANKER."
-
-The writer has many times seen a fellow who travelled the country,
-nicknamed "the Spanker." He was a tall, lean, lank-looking Yankee, with
-red hair and whiskers, a light gray eye, and claimed to cure all diseases
-by "spatting" the patient, or the diseased part thereof, with cold water
-on his bare palm, the use of a battery, and a pill. He had served as
-door-keeper to a famous doctor, who created a _furore_, a few years since,
-by the exercise of his magnetic powers, making cripples to throw down
-their crutches, and walk off; the deaf to hear, the blind to see; or, at
-least, many of them _thought_ they did, for the time being, which answered
-the doctor's immediate purpose. But one fine morning the magnetic doctor
-found his door-keeper was among the "missing." He had learned the trade,
-and set up on his own account.
-
-This fellow was as ignorant of physic as Jack Reynolds was of Scripture.
-Reynolds, who killed Townsend in 1870, when under sentence of death,
-listened attentively for the first time to the story of the Saviour's
-crucifixion in atonement for our sins, when he rather startled the
-visitors, as well as the eminent divine, with the inquiry, "Did that
-affair happen lately?"
-
-He was not, it is evident, conversant with Scripture. "The Spanker" was
-not read in medicine. His treatment was the most ridiculous and repulsive
-of the absurdities of the nineteenth century. The patient was stripped of
-his clothes, and often so severely spanked as to compel him, or her, to
-cry out with pain.
-
-[Illustration: A NEW SCHOOL OF PRACTICE.]
-
-The beautiful young wife of the Rev. Mr. F., of Vermont, was brought to
-the writer for medical advice. The patient was carefully examined, and the
-minister taken aside, and assured that the lady was past all help; she was
-in the last stages of consumption; that she would, in all probability, die
-with the falling of the autumn leaves, or within two months.
-
-The following day the minister carried the patient to the spanker doctor,
-who declared her case quite curable. The minister employed him to treat
-the patient.
-
-A few weeks later I saw the minister, seated on the doorstep of his
-house, bowed in grief. He was on the lookout for me, as I was expected
-that way. He called to me, and asked if I would view the corpse of his
-once beautiful wife. I dismounted, and entered the house of mourning.
-There lay the poor, fair young face, within the narrow confines of the
-coffin. The cheeks were hollow, the eyes sunken, and the nostrils closed,
-and I doubt if any air had passed through the left one for
-weeks--pathognomonic indications of that fell disease, consumption.
-
-"She did not live as long, doctor, as you thought she would, in August,"
-said Mr. F.
-
-"No, sir: I did not then make allowance for the harsh treatment of Dr.
-----, that, I am advised, soon followed."
-
-[Illustration: A VICTIM OF THE SPANKER.]
-
-"O, sir," he exclaimed, in agony of soul, while the tears coursed freely
-down his cheeks, and fell upon the coffin,--"O, sir, God only knows what
-the poor thing suffered. Dr. Youran said the spatting and cold water
-treatment would save her, and I was anxious to try it, and did, till the
-poor, dear soul begged us, with tearful eyes, not to punish her further,
-but to let her die in peace."
-
-The ignorant scoundrel is still at large, preying upon the invalid public.
-It is a burning shame that the laxity of our laws permits such ignorant,
-heartless wretches to go about the country, imposing upon the credulity of
-invalidity.
-
-The invalids, as we said in our opening, expect to be humbugged, and will
-believe no honest statement of a case and its probabilities, but will too
-often swallow the lies and braggadocio, and finally the prescriptions, of
-ignorant charlatans and impostors.
-
-[Illustration: DR. PULSFEEL LEAVING TOWN.]
-
-Mr. Jeaffreson, in the "Book about Doctors," before often quoted, says of
-the English travelling doctor of the last century,--
-
-"When Dr. Pulsfeel was tired of London, or felt the want of country air,
-he adopted the pleasant occupation of fleecing rustic simplicity. For his
-journeys he provided himself with a stout and fast-trotting hack--stout,
-that it might bear weighty parcels of medical composition; fast, that in
-case the ungrateful rabble should commit the indecorum of stoning their
-benefactor as an impostor,--a mishap that would occasionally
-occur,--escape might be effected.
-
-"In his circuit the doctor took in all the fairs, markets, wakes, and
-public festivals, not disdaining to stop an entire week, or even month, at
-an assize town, where he found the sick anxious to benefit by his
-marvellous wisdom.
-
-"His manner of making himself known in a new place was to ride boldly into
-the thickest crowd of a town, and inform his listeners that he had come
-straight from the Duke of So-and-so, or the Emperor of Wallachia, out of
-an innate desire to do good to his fellow-creatures. He was born in that
-very town. He had left it when an orphan boy, to seek his fortune in the
-great world. His adventures had been wonderful. He had visited the Sultan
-and the Great Mogul; and the King of Mesopotamia had tried to persuade him
-to tarry and keep the Mesopotamians out of the devil's clutches by the
-offer of a thousand pieces of gold a month. He had cured thousands of
-emperors, kings, queens, princes, grand duchesses, and generalissimos. He
-sold all kinds of medicaments--dyes for the hair, washes for the
-complexion, lotions, rings, and love charms, powders to stay the palsy,
-fevers, croup, and jaundice. His powder was expensive; he couldn't help
-that; it was made of pearl-dust and dried violet leaves from the middle of
-Tartary. Still, he would sell his friends a package at bare cost,--one
-crown,--as he did not want to make money out of them.
-
-"Nothing could surpass the impudence of the fellow's lies, save the
-admiration with which his credulous auditors swallowed his assertions.
-There they stood--stout yeomen, drunken squires, gay peasant girls, gawky
-hinds and gabbling crones, deeming themselves in luck to have lived to
-behold such a miracle of wisdom. Possibly a young student, home from
-Oxford, with the rashness of inexperience, would smile scornfully, and cry
-out, 'Quack!' (quack-salver, from the article he used to cure wens); but
-such interruption was usually frowned down by the orthodox friends of the
-student, and he was warned that he would come to no good end, if he went
-on as he had begun, a contemptuous unbeliever, and a mocker of wise men."
-
-
-A MUSICAL DOCTOR.
-
-Mr. Dayton, vocalist, told me of a fellow who cut a swell in various
-capacities a few years ago. He first knew him as a fiddler at fairs. The
-next time he turned up was under the following circumstances:--
-
-"With Madam L. and some other renowned vocalist, he was giving concerts,
-when one day their pianist was taken suddenly sick. Madam was in great
-trepidation.
-
-[Illustration: THE MUSICAL DOCTOR.]
-
-"'What shall I do? The concert cannot be postponed, and we cannot sing
-unless we have an accompaniment,' exclaimed the lady.
-
-"I looked about, made some inquiry,--it was in a small town,--but no
-competent piano player could be found.
-
-"'We must abandon the concert,' I said, which seemed inevitable, when
-there came a sharp knock at the door.
-
-"'Come in,' I called.
-
-"The door opened, and instead of a servant, as I had expected, there
-appeared a tall, stout specimen of the _genus homo_, with large black
-eyes, and long, dark hair flowing down on to his shoulders, making his
-best bow, and what he doubtless intended as his sweetest smile.
-
-"I offered him a chair, and inquired how I could serve him.
-
-"'You want a piano player?'
-
-"'Yes.'
-
-"'Well, I will undertake to assist you in your strait. Allow me to see
-your programme,' he continued, very patronizingly, waiting for us to make
-no reply whatever.
-
-"'Are you--that is, do you play rapidly, and at sight?' asked madam.
-
-"He replied only by a gesture, a sort of pitiful contempt for the
-ignorance of any person who should ask _him_ such a question....
-
-"Half past seven came, and we went on the stage. I do not know what the
-fellow's prelude was; I was otherwise engaged; but his accompaniments were
-made up, and after he had heard the note sung to which he should have
-accompanied,--O, it was a horrid jargon, a consecutive blast of discords,
-a tempest of incomprehensibleness.
-
-[Illustration: ENTHUSIASM.]
-
-"Madam caught her breath at the first pausing-place, and signalled him to
-stop. He took a side glance at her, misinterpreted her, and played on the
-louder. It became ludicrous in the extreme. He played the minor strains,
-or what should have been minor, in the major key. He only stopped when he
-saw us leave the stage. The audience cheered. He took it all as a
-compliment to himself as a pianist, stopped, and made his most profound
-obeisance to the house. They laughed and cheered the harder. He mistook it
-for an _encore_, bowed again, and returned to the piano. Then the house
-came down. They stamped, they laughed, they shouted. The boys in the
-gallery cat-called; the building fairly shook. I ran back to see what it
-was all about, and there was the pianist (?) beating furiously at the
-keys, the perspiration pouring in streams from his face. But his playing
-could only be _seen_ to be appreciated; it could not be heard for the
-stamping of the audience. He finally desisted, and with repeated halts and
-smiles, he bowed himself off the stage.
-
-"His grand _debut_ and retirement upon the stage occurred the same night.
-Madam would not permit him to go on again, and we sang the duets from
----- without accompaniment. I think the fellow knew nothing of music; he
-had 'cheeked' it right through.
-
-"Perhaps it was two years afterwards--I was staying at the B. Hotel,
-Maine--when I heard a deal of talk about a great doctor then in town.
-After dinner the first day, I noticed a man sauntering leisurely from the
-dining-hall in embroidered slippers, white silk stockings, black pants,
-gaudy dressing-gown, with long hair falling down over his shoulders. I
-thought I recognized that face. I approached him after a while, and called
-him by name.
-
-"'What? Why, I think you are mistaken. I do not know you, sir,' he
-stammered; and then I knew he had recognized me.
-
-"'O, yes; I am Dayton. You remember you were our pianist once in a strait,
-in S.'
-
-"'O, ah! Come up to my room,' he said, leading the way.
-
-"I followed, when he told me he was doing a good thing at the practice of
-medicine about the principal towns of the state, and begged I would say
-nothing about his former occupation. He stated to me that he had been to
-Europe, and had been studying medicine meantime, which I have since
-ascertained was entirely untrue."
-
-And this was the fellow over whom the town was running wild.
-
-The idea of some men trying to become good physicians is as ridiculously
-absurd as Horace Greeley's farming, or trying to ascertain if "cundurango
-is explosive." The requisite qualities are not in them. They may keep
-along a few years, or possibly, in communities where there is no
-competition, succeed in making the people believe they are as good as the
-common run, and thus succeed on brass instead of brains.
-
-Some of these brainless travelling impostors employ a female or two to
-precede them from place to place, and make diligent inquiry when the great
-doctor who performed such marvellous cures in some adjoining town
-mentioned was coming there. Thus putting it in the shape of an inquiry, it
-was less likely to excite suspicion.
-
-Two females--one an elderly, lady-like looking woman, the other younger,
-and anything but lady-like--travelled for a doctor, on a salary, during
-the summer and autumn of 1868. A lady whose occupation took her from town
-to town, seeing the two females at various hotels where the doctor was
-advertised, inveigled the younger one into the confession, in her bad
-temper, and thus I got my evidence. Another travels on his hair; another
-on his face; and a fourth on his free advice and treatment; while a fifth
-succeeds by absurdity of dress.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-XIV.
-
-SCENES FROM EVERY-DAY PRACTICE.
-
-    "History, so warm on meaner themes,
-    Is cold on this."--COWPER'S TASK.
-
-    "Let no one say that his task is o'er,
-    That bonds of earth are for him no more,
-    Until by some kind or holy deed
-    His name from forgetfulness is freed;
-    Until by words from his lips or pen,
-    Dying, he's 'missed' from the ranks of men."
-                                            ALICE LEE.
-
-    THE BEGGAR BOY AND THE GOLDEN-HAIRED HEIRESS.--MY MIDNIGHT CALL.--THE
-    CONSCIENCE-STRICKEN MOTHER.--"OLD SEROSITY."--THE ILLEGITIMATE
-    CHILD.--DEATH OF THE BEAUTIFUL.--WHO IS THE HEIR?--A TOUCHING
-    SCENE.--FATE OF THE "BEGGAR BOY."--THE TERRIBLE CALLER.--AN IRISH
-    SCENE, FROM DR. DIXON'S BOOK.--BIDDY ON A RAMPAGE.--TERRY ON HIS DEATH
-    BED.--THE STOMACH PUMP.--BIDDY WON'T, AND SHE WILL.--THE BETRAYED AND
-    HER BETRAYER.--"IS THERE A GOD IN ISRAEL?"--THE HUSBANDLESS
-    MOTHER.--THE CRISIS AND COURT.--ANSWER.--THERE IS A "GOD IN ISRAEL."
-
-
-Ill-clad poverty, benumbed with cold, was abroad alone, exposed to that
-winter's night, as the white snow fleeced the frost-hardened ground. But
-never mind earth's cold bosom. The rich man's heart warms _him_, making
-him merry, however blows the wind or rages the storm. Shiver, shiver on,
-beggar poor! Starvation and sense-dulling cold alone belong to you.
-
-Through the crunching snow-drifts trudged a weary boy, with alms-basket on
-his shivering arm. From his figure, he seemed not over ten years old; but
-his face was so wan and melancholy, that it was difficult to tell how
-many year-blights the beggar child had experienced. Summer clothes were
-still clinging to him; a tattered comforter was the only winter article he
-wore.
-
-[Illustration: CHARITY THROWN AWAY.]
-
-A gay carriage rolled noiselessly by, with a beautiful girl within, well
-wrapped in fur and cloak, whilst the snow was dashed from the rapid wheels
-like white dust. She saw, through the dim light, the weary, thin-clad boy,
-as he stopped, with face bent aside to the flake-burdened blast, to gaze
-at the smoking horses, as they plunged through the fast-deepening sheet.
-She dropped the sash, and threw the boy a coin. It sank from her warm hand
-deep into the drifted snow. It might have brought him bread and a
-cheering fagot, but the smitten child never found it. The snow closed over
-the coveted prize, while the blast grew keener.
-
-On, on toiled the beggar boy, through drift and darkness, more weary as
-night gathered on. Thus is it ever with the humble poor; their load grows
-heavier as life lessens. No light or warming hearth is there--things that
-make house a home--to welcome the wandering boy.
-
-The clock had just struck two as I was summoned to the house of Mrs. T.
-The same carriage that, in the evening, had borne the beautiful young
-girl, awaited at my door, with its impatient horses snorting against the
-frosted air. A few minutes later I entered the house. Mrs. T. met me in
-the hall, with her face deadly pale, and manner much excited. Her singular
-nervousness had before struck me on my visits, whenever her daughter
-ailed. She informed me that her "darling Emily" was very ill with a high
-fever.
-
-We entered the chamber. The young girl lay with her head turned aside upon
-the pillow, her golden-brown hair scattered in wild profusion upon its
-white cover, while the nurse was gently moistening the fevered palm of her
-outstretched hand. The pulse was beating wildly at the wrist and temples,
-and fever heat glowed from her lustrous eyes. Whilst the nurse held the
-light to her face, the traces of dried tears were revealed upon her
-suffused cheeks.
-
-"Heartache surely is here," I said to myself.
-
-There was something in the whole appearance of my patient that excited my
-curiosity and surprise. Only eight or ten hours had passed since she, from
-her carriage, had thrown the snow-claimed alms to the beggar boy, and
-_now_ a high fever was running hot through every artery of her body.
-
-Silently seated by the bedside, after administering a cooling draught I
-awaited and watched for the changes that might ensue. Her mother sat near
-the fire, its blaze lighting up every feature of her once beautiful face,
-which still remained very pale. In all my intercourse with Mrs. T., I
-never before had so prolonged an opportunity of examining in detail the
-expression of her countenance. The longer I gazed on her, the more
-satisfied I became that she had not passed through life without a fearful
-history.
-
-It was this sensation which struck me when I first became acquainted with
-her. A few vague rumors had floated about relative to her history; that a
-strange desertion of her husband had taken place, and that he afterwards
-was found drowned in the river, near his residence, and that by his death
-Mrs. T. had become possessed of an immense estate. These stories had,
-however, soon subsided; and as her means were ample, and her charities
-liberal, the gossips of the town quietly dropped the past, and speculated
-upon the future, as should all respectable gossips.
-
-The voice of the patient diverted my thoughts; a few words were murmured,
-and then the lips pressed tremblingly together, and the tear-drops again
-started to her cheeks. Suddenly springing up in bed, and threading her
-long, curling hair through her slender fingers, she exclaimed, in a
-thrilling, delirious tone,--
-
-"It cannot be true! O, mother--tell me, mother!"
-
-Mrs. T. fairly leaped to the bedside, and placing her hand over the
-daughter's mouth, with affrighted gestures, she exclaimed,--
-
-"What is it? What does she mean? My God, doctor, she raves!"
-
-The girl fell back on her pillow; the mother stood, pale and trembling, by
-the bedside, with a nameless terror depicted on every feature. Turning to
-me, in a quick, restless voice, she bade me hasten to give her child a
-quieting draught.
-
-"O, anything that will keep her from raving!"
-
-The room was not over warm for such a bitter night, yet the perspiration
-stood upon the brow of the excited mother like the fallen dew.
-
-"Conscience must lie here," I thought to myself.
-
-In the course of an hour the sufferer slumbered heavily; her breathing was
-hurried and oppressed, the fever had increased, and her moanings were
-constant.
-
-Day was breaking, as I left my young patient to return home through the
-falling snow. As I looked out of the carriage window, I saw a little boy
-sitting on the cold walk. It was the poor beggar boy of yesterday, as
-thinly clad, with his pale cheek as white as the snowdrifts through which
-he had toiled. I ordered the coachman to stop.
-
-[Illustration: THE BEGGAR BOY.]
-
-"What brought you out, and where are you going, on this cold winter
-morning, my poor boy?" I exclaimed.
-
-He raised his beautiful dark eyes to my face, and my heart grieved at
-their look of utter hopelessness, as he faintly answered, "To beg for me
-and old grandma."
-
-"Are you not very cold, in those thin clothes?" I asked.
-
-His little teeth chattered, as he replied, "O, I am very--cold--sir."
-
-The impatient horses plunged violently in the traces, and the coachman
-asked to be allowed to drive on. I gave the poor boy the few silver coins
-that were in my pocket, and we passed on.
-
-I never saw that boy but once again; his look haunts me to this day.
-
-As I rode on, memory was busy tracing where I had ever seen features like
-his. The dark hair, that lay in uncombed curls upon his forehead, and
-clustered warmly about his neck, as though in protection against the
-bitter cold; his large, black eyes, with their long lashes; the
-finely-chiselled outlines of his mouth and nose,--these all impressed me
-that I had somewhere seen a face which strikingly resembled his. Poor boy!
-beauty was his only possession.
-
-At breakfast a letter was handed me, summoning me immediately to one of my
-own children, who lay sick in a distant town. Before leaving I wrote a
-hurried note to Mrs. T., stating the cause of my sudden departure,
-desiring her to call another physician, during my absence. The young
-girl's fate and the poor beggar boy's face were almost forgotten in my own
-cares.
-
-On the sixth day following, I again found myself at home. My first thought
-was for poor Emily. I dreaded to ask; there was something whispering to my
-heart that all was not well.
-
-My suspense was not long; a messenger had just left, stating that the dear
-girl was fast failing; that her physician had pronounced her laboring
-under typhus fever. My God, how my heart sank under these words! I had
-dreaded this mistake after I left. Alas! how many have fallen by the name
-of a disease, and not by the disease itself!
-
-After a hurried meal, I drove rapidly to Mr. T.'s residence. The house
-door was quietly opened by a servant, and in another minute I stood in the
-chamber of the invalid. The mantel was crowded with numerous vials. The
-close atmosphere of the sick-room was sickening. By the bedside, with her
-face bowed over one of the pale hands of the daughter, which she held in
-both of her own, sat the wretched mother. It seemed to me as though ten
-years had passed over her faded and care-worn countenance, since I last
-gazed upon it. I could not stir; my heart stood still. _Her hair had
-become entirely gray._
-
-[Illustration: REMORSE.]
-
-I gained heart to approach; the desolate mother heard me, and turning
-quickly she sprang from her chair, and placing her hands on my shoulders,
-she bowed her head: she sobbed wildly, as though her heart would break.
-
-"Look, look, doctor! Would you have known her? O, my God, she is leaving
-me! Save her--O, save her!" and the wretched mother fell fainting to the
-floor. We gently raised and bore her to her own chamber. In a few moments
-I returned to Emily. She turned her head languidly towards me, while her
-right hand moved as if to take mine. How dry was the palm! Her color had
-faded away; the once rounded cheeks were sunken. O, I will not describe
-her!
-
-The physician who had been called, after my departure, had found her with
-high fever and delirium. He mistook the excitement of the brain for its
-inflammation. O, fatal error! A consultation was called. The second comer
-was notedly a man who viewed every excitement as caused by "an over-action
-of the vessels," and bleeding was its only relief. The nervous system he
-entirely ignored. From his theory, man was a mere combination of blood,
-blood-vessels, and biliary secretions, more or less deranged. Calomel,
-salts, and the lancet were his Hercules. The grand _causa mortis_ amongst
-the human family was "serosity." Hence some evil-minded wag amongst his
-brethren had named him "Old Serosity."
-
-The poor child had been bled, cupped, and purged, in order to subdue this
-"over-action of the blood-vessels." Verily it may cure the vessels, but it
-certainly kills the patient.
-
-The life current was nigh exhausted; there was no blood left for renewal
-of brain, nerve, or vital tissue. My heart was bitter against this
-murderous adherence to a false principle. Here a human life, that of a
-young and spotless girl, was the forfeit.
-
-But to return to the thread of the narrative.
-
-"O, I am glad you have come back to me. Do try to save me, doctor," she
-said, with great effort. Sending the nurse from the room, I quickly
-pressed the young girl's hand within my own, and said to her,--
-
-"Do you really wish to live, Emily?"
-
-"Yes, yes," she murmured; "I am very young to die."
-
-"Then, my dear, tell me truly what has so terribly shocked your nervous
-system; tell me." With a strength that startled me, she searched under the
-mattress side, and drew forth a small note, which she silently placed in
-my hand. It was discolored by time. I opened it; the date was above twelve
-years back. It ran thus:--
-
-"When you receive this, Mira (Mrs. T.'s given name), my career will have
-ended. By my death you will inherit all. Let my unborn child have its
-just, legal claim. Your child, Emily, take to your home as though she were
-an adopted orphan. Let not her youth be blighted by the knowledge of her
-unblest birth. I forgive you. Adieu, forever. H. T."
-
-"O my God, the doomed child is illegitimate," I said. I stooped down and
-kissed the sufferer's forehead, and promised that I would be a father to
-her. "Come, cheer up," I whispered, "for your mother's sake. If she has
-sinned she has suffered much for your sake; forgive her."
-
-"I do forgive her," she whispered, "but can I forget myself, unblessed as
-I am? But I must know the whole truth. O, where is the right heir of all
-this wealth? My memory returns now, indistinctly, to my earlier days. A
-cloud intervenes. I remember but a small cottage, in a deep wood, where
-mother often came to see me, and a tall woman took care of me. Then came a
-gay carriage, and took me to a large house; but I never again returned to
-the cottage in the wood. There, at the large house, mother left me a long
-time; and when she came back--O, doctor, I can speak no longer. Do give me
-something to strengthen me, and I will try yet to live."
-
-A cordial was administered by my own hands, and in a short time sleep
-overcame her. Night again closed in; the wind had sunk to rest with the
-setting sun. Another night of bitter cold was ushered in. Woe to the poor!
-Woe to the hungry and the fireless.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-As I entered the mother's apartments I found her sitting by a private
-secretary, which had been brought from the library. Its lid was open, and
-as I seated myself she took from a package of tied letters a sealed paper,
-and placing it in my hands, said,--
-
-"Read this at your leisure, doctor. My pilgrimage of life is nigh ended.
-You will judge how great my sin, and how severe has been my punishment. I
-ask no forgiveness, _for there will be none left to forgive me_."
-
-Well, I knew her heart was nigh crushed!
-
-I sought the daughter's chamber. How still was everything! The very
-candle, with its long flame, parted by the thickened wick-char, seemed not
-to flicker, as it burned dimly on. I looked at the bed; the sweet girl lay
-with both hands crossed upon her bosom, as though in prayer. An
-orange-blossom had dropped from her grasp, and lay neglected by her side;
-her life-hand never touched it more! Death had claimed his bride!
-
-A wild shriek sounded through the house. The erring mother now knew that
-she was alone in the great world.
-
-Whilst the shrouding of the dead took place I retired and opened the
-sealed package. It briefly told its tale of sin and sorrow.
-
-It told how from the first love Emily was the fruit, and how, unknown to
-all, the child had been secreted; how, about three years after Emily's
-birth, the mother was married to Harold T., whom _she never loved_; and
-how, by a singular accident, the knowledge of her transgression became
-known to her husband; that, after violently cursing her for her sin and
-deception, he left her, and shortly afterwards committed suicide; that
-the letter (written by him just before his death), which was so fatal to
-the peace and life of Emily, had accidentally dropped from the secretary,
-and was picked up by her (that night after her return in the carriage),
-unknown to the mother until the sixth day after my return, when she missed
-it.
-
-The narrative went on to state that a male child was born after T.'s
-death, and that, seized with an insane fury, she resolved that he never
-should inherit its father's name and wealth; and that, through the
-assistance of a nurse, it was placed with a sum of money at a beggar's
-door, and a dead child laid beside the mother instead; that before sending
-the infant away, the nurse tattooed its father's initials on its left arm.
-The beggar had died, and all traces of the child had been lost. At length
-her guilty conscience so reproached her that the mother had instituted
-search for the child, but all in vain.
-
-As I read this tale of crime and repentance, busy memory traced out the
-features of the _beggar boy_! Like a sudden light it burst upon me--those
-features that had so tormented my memory to recall were those of the
-unhappy mother.
-
-Quickly I went to her room. She was not there. I hastened to Emily's. The
-mother was wildly clasping the enshrouded form of her daughter, and
-weeping as though her heart would break asunder. Gently removing her to
-her own chamber, I intimated that another child, long lost, might yet be
-restored to her.
-
-She listened as one bewildered. I then informed her of my adventure with
-the beggar boy.
-
-It was hardly day-dawn as I entered the carriage. My breath froze against
-the window panes. After a short ride the horses stopped before the
-wretched snow-covered hovel (where he had seen the beggar child once
-enter). I opened the carriage door, leaped out, and placed my hand on the
-latch. The door opened. It was neither bolted nor locked; for no thief
-would enter there. In the corner of the room lay a bundle of rugs, with
-some straw, but it was unoccupied. Near the fireplace, where nought but a
-little well-charred bark remained upon the cold ashes, half reclining in a
-large wooden chair, lay the beggar boy.
-
-[Illustration: THE LOST HEIR.]
-
-His cap had fallen on the ground, and his dark, curling hair fell
-clustering over his extended arm, as his head rested upon it. He had
-seemingly fallen asleep the night before, for his thin summer clothes were
-on his person, and his basket, yet filled with the fragments of broken
-feasts, remained untouched at his feet. I placed my hand upon his
-beautiful head; it was icy cold. Quickly brushing back the fallen ringlets
-from his face, the unmistakable evidence of death met my gaze.
-
-He had apparently fallen asleep weeping, for a tear-drop lay frozen
-between the long lashes that fringed the eyelids.
-
-I raised the stiffened body of the ill-fated youth, and tearing away the
-thin sleeve from his left arm, I distinctly discovered the letters 'H. T.'
-thereon.
-
-Deserted, famished, and frozen, death had claimed the darling, lone boy
-before he knew a mother's love!
-
-This sad tale is taken from "_Scenes in Northern Practice by Dr. Dewees_,
-N. Y."--_Scalpel_, 1855. (And like all the stories herein, it has the
-merit of being true to the letter.)
-
-
-THE TERRIBLE CALLER.
-
-It was about half past nine in the morning.
-
-My office door suddenly opened, and looking up from my writing, I saw,
-standing in the passage-way, a very tall man, in a long white frock,
-reaching to his knees, sleeves rolled to his elbows, a slouched hat set
-back on his head, his face painted or bedaubed with some white substance,
-and his eyes gleaming upon me most intensely!
-
-There he stood, looking almost fiercely upon me, while he held the
-door-knob with his left hand, and grasped with his right a long
-carving-knife, which was thrust through his belt.
-
-"Are you the doctor?" he shouted with excitement.
-
-"I am the doctor," I replied, calmly awaiting my fate.
-
-He instantly stepped inside the room, when close behind him was revealed
-the form of a very short man, who held a Kossuth hat in one hand, while
-with a handkerchief in the other, he stanched the blood that had evidently
-been flowing pretty freely from his head.
-
-"This man has cut himself very bad on the head; big iron wheel come down
-on him: can you fix him up?" asked the first. This accounted for his
-excited manner. But how about the bedaubed face and the huge knife?
-
-[Illustration: A MORNING CALLER.]
-
-I examined the wound, only through the scalp, less than three inches in
-length; and washing away the surplus clotted blood, I clipped off the
-hair, and soon secured the edges of the gaping wound by taking a stitch or
-two through the scalp.
-
-While so doing, the young man rolled his eyes up to his tall
-companion,--who had explained that they were cooks at Young's Hotel, and
-that the spit wheel and shaft used for turning meat had fallen eight feet;
-by which the assistant had barely escaped being killed,--and with a
-commendable show of thought for his employer's interest, rather than his
-own comfort or safety, he anxiously exclaimed,--
-
-"Jim, do you think that gentleman's 'order,' what I had in the spit, is
-overdone yet?"
-
-
-AN IRISH SCENE.
-
-A young Irish girl, with a wild shriek, an "Och, hone!" and "Ah, murther!"
-and "Hulla-boo--a--hulla-boo, poor Terry! Ah, why did I taze ye?" burst
-into my office one evening, upsetting the servant, and actually laying
-hold on me with her hands, as she exclaimed,--
-
-"Ah, docther, docther, come now, for the love o' the moother that bore ye;
-come this blessed minute. I've killed poor Terry, an' niver shall see him
-again. Ah, murther, murther! Why did I taze ye?"
-
-[Illustration: "WHY DID I TAZE YE?"]
-
-Trying in vain to calm her, I hastily drew on my boots, and almost ran
-after her to a wretched tenement, some quarter of a mile off, and found
-the object of the girl's solicitude alive and kicking, with his lungs in
-the best of order, standing on the stairs that led to his miserable
-chamber, with a broken scissors in his hand, stirring busily the contents
-of a tea-cup.
-
-It seems that he had been courting my fair guide, and after the period she
-had fixed for her final answer to his declaration, she had bantered him
-with a refusal, which her solicitude for his life plainly showed was far
-enough from her real intentions.
-
-In his despair he had swallowed an ounce of laudanum, which he had
-procured from some injudicious druggist, which act had sent Biddy off
-after me in such terror. He was now mixing a powder which he had obtained
-from another druggist, who, knowing of his love affair, it will be seen
-acted with more wisdom than the first, as Terry let slip enough in his
-hearing to show what he wanted to do with the "ratsbane" for which he
-inquired; and Biddy, like a true daughter of Eve, had made no secret in
-the neighborhood that she valued her charms beyond the poor fellow's bid.
-
-As soon as she approached, he, by some inopportune remark, re-excited her
-wrath, and she again declared she wouldn't have him, "if he wint to the
-divil."
-
-Poor Terry, in his red shirt and blue stockings, and an attitude of the
-grandest kind, but covering, as we soon found, a desperate purpose,
-flourished his tea-cup, and stirred its contents with the scissors,
-constantly exclaiming,--
-
-"Ah, Biddy, will ye have me? Ye'll have me now--will ye not?"
-
-Still Biddy refused.
-
-"Divil a bit will I let the docther come near me till ye say yis! Sure,
-weren't we children together in the ould counthry? and didn't we take our
-potaties and butthermilk out o' the same bowl? And yer mother, that's now
-dead, always said ye were to be me wife; and now ye're kapin' coompany
-with that dirty blackguard, Jim O'Connor,--divil take him for a spalpeen.
-Ah, Biddy, will ye have me?"
-
-And he flourished the cup, and stirred away vigorously with the scissors.
-
-Biddy's blood was up at the disrespectful mention made of Jimmy's name,
-for "he had a winnin' way wid him," and she shouted at the top of her
-voice,--
-
-"No, be the St. Patrick, I'll niver have ye."
-
-With an awful gulp, Terry drained the cup, rolled up his eyes, and with
-one most impassioned yet ludicrous look at her, he fell upon his knees on
-the step.
-
-Biddy followed, in strong hysterics.
-
-The whole affair was so irresistibly ludicrous that I scarce could keep
-from laughing; but on observing the bottle, labelled "laudanum," and
-looking into the bottom of the tea-cup, and discovering a white powder, I
-changed my prognosis, and hastened to the druggist's near, to see what it
-was, and procure an antidote, should it really prove "ratsbane."
-
-To my great relief, the man of drugs informed me, laughingly, that he had
-given Terry a quantity of chalk and _eight grains of tartar emetic_, as he
-learned that Terry was already in possession of the ounce of laudanum, and
-all the neighbors knew that Biddy had driven him to desperation by
-flirting with his rival, Jim O'Connor. The young man had judiciously told
-Terry that the powder would make the laudanum sure to operate more
-effectually.
-
-"How long will it take?" he asked, and bagged all for use when the refusal
-should come.
-
-My course was now clear. I was in for sport. Sending the druggist's clerk
-for my stomach-pump, to be in readiness in case the emetic should not
-operate,--which was scarcely impossible, for eight grains of tartar
-emetic, taken at a dose, would almost vomit the potatoes out of a bag,--I
-waited the result.
-
-As for Biddy, I let her lie; for I thought she deserved her punishment. My
-heart was always tender towards the sex, and I generally expected a
-"fellow-feeling."
-
-[Illustration: SUCCESS OF TERRY'S COURTSHIP.]
-
-In a short time it became evident that Terry's stomach was not so tough as
-his will, and he began to intermingle long and portentous sighs with his
-prayers, and to perspire freely. I gave him a wide berth, in anticipation
-of the Jonah that was to come up shortly. I was anxious now that Biddy
-should revive in time to witness his grand effort. Terry was tough, and
-held out. Shortly she revived, and suddenly starting up, and recollecting
-the situation, she made one bound for Terry, crying,--
-
-"Ah, Terry, Terry, dear Terry! I'll have ye now. Yis, I will; and I don't
-care who hears me. I always loved ye, but that divil's baby, Mag, always
-kept tellin' me ye'd love me the betther if I didn't give in to ye too
-soon. Ah, Terry, dear, only live, and I'll go to the ends of the world for
-ye. Ah, an' what would me poor mother say, if she was here? Och, hone!
-Och, hone! Docther, now what are ye doin'? A purty docther ye are; an' ye
-pumped out yer own counthryman, that didn't die, sure, an' he tuk twice as
-much as poor Terry."
-
-Meantime the boy had arrived with the pump.
-
-"Up wid ye now, and use the black pipe ye put down the poor fellow's
-throat over the way last summer. I'd take it mesilf, if it would do; but
-God knows whether I'd be worth the throuble."
-
-As Terry had not yet cast up his accounts, and the stomach-pump was at
-hand, I determined to make a little more capital out of the case, and
-thrusting the long, flexible India rubber tube down poor Terry's throat,
-having separated his teeth by means of a stick, and holding his head
-between my knees, I soon had the satisfaction of depositing the laudanum
-and tartar emetic in a swill pail, the only article of the toilet the
-place afforded.
-
-After years proved Terry and Biddy most loving companions. He never, even
-when drunk, more than threatened her "wid a batin', which she was
-desarvin'," and she never forgave "that divil's baby, Mag," for her cruel
-experiment on her heroic and devoted Terry.--_Practice of a New York
-Surgeon._
-
-
-A LIFE SCENE.
-
-_The Situation._--I was young, but, with a wife and child dependent upon
-my practice for food, raiment, and shelter, I was striving manfully; with
-my household gods and goods I had located here, in a small village, a year
-before. My beginning was encouraging, my success in practice more than
-flattering. But an immense opposition had met and nearly overthrown me, in
-the form of a man, a deacon of the ---- church. He was one of those "rule
-or ruin" men whom you will find in every one-horse village. I did not at
-first know my man,--he did not know me,--or I should have avoided his ill
-will. I did not know his tenaciousness of titles--he was an esquire
-also--which was my first unpardonable offence. He swore--"as deacons
-do"--that I should not practise in that town. I swore, as doctors will,
-that "so long as I could obtain a potato and a clam a day I would remain
-while he was my opposer." Clams could be dug at low water, within a few
-rods of my house; potatoes I grew on the quarter acre of ground given me
-as partial inducement to settle in that town. His two drunken sons were
-his emissaries of evil, set on for my overthrow, in addition to the
-father's voice and known opposition, which few dared to meet. My practice
-dwindled. A few Nicodemuses came by night, but my darling wife trembled
-for my very life when I had a night call. My provision was often short, my
-poor horse was mere skin and bones, standing, day after day, gnawing his
-empty manger.
-
-"O, is there a God in Israel?" I cried, in my anguish, more than once.
-
-Yes, the reply came to my prayers; there is a God of recompense.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-_The Betrayed._--My patient was a young girl, over whose golden head but
-seventeen summers had flown, on rosy wings. Her form was sylph-like, and
-face as beautiful as the opening flower in the golden sunshine of early
-day. She was an attendant at _his_ church, a member of _his_ Sabbath
-school class, and a singer in the choir....
-
-[Illustration: THE BETRAYED.]
-
-I was shown to her room. Sorrow, and not disease, had left its impress
-upon her fair young face. Rumor had already given me a hint on which to
-diagnose my case.
-
-"Who has done this wicked thing?" I asked, holding her hand, and looking
-kindly into her eyes.
-
-"O, my God! O, I must not tell," she cried, springing up from her couch. I
-never shall forget the terror depicted on that fair young countenance, as
-she pronounced these words.
-
-"You must tell. You should not suffer this shame and burden alone. Tell me
-truly. Who has done it? I must know. There may be a chance to cover the
-shame and make your babe legitimate. Come," I said.
-
-"O, sir, dear doctor, it can never be;" and she fell back on her pillow,
-weeping and wringing her hands in awful anguish.
-
-"Come, it shall be done;" and I firmly held to the point.
-
-She arose. I gave her a bowl and napkin that were near; she bathed her
-inflamed and swollen eyes, then, with surprising calmness and fortitude,
-took a pencil and a bit of paper from the light-stand at her bedside, and
-wrote a name.
-
-She then handed it to me, saying "'Tis he." I read the name. I jumped to
-my feet. I forgot my tender patient. I forgot all but my own sufferings,
-and those of my dear little wife and darling babe, and their enemy, as I
-cried out,--
-
-"O, my God in Israel! I have got him! I shall be avenged!"
-
-"O, don't, doctor! What is the matter?" exclaimed the affrighted girl,
-rising in bed. I had rushed, almost frantically across the room and back.
-"Forgive me," I said, "I--I forgot myself. Pardon me."
-
-"O, sir, I thought you were mad."
-
-"I was, dear girl. It is past. Now to your case." And I proceeded to
-unfold to her unsophisticated mind the true state of affairs. Here was a
-pure, respectable, though poor young girl, under age, who had been
-betrayed, locked into an office, and seduced by a son of the squire, and
-deserted, threatened--left to bear the burden and disgrace alone. She
-dared not divulge the name of her destroyer, because of the position of
-his family in the community. I dared. But to bring her mind up above her
-fears, to compel the young man to make restitution, as far as lay in his
-power, was a severe task. It was my duty to do this; sweeter then than
-duty, it was my revenge! By implicating the real villain, I released
-several other young men from suspicion, particularly one young man with
-red hair.
-
-The girl was taken away from the sight of dear sister's sinister looks,
-and the influence and threats of the seducer, and secret offers of bribery
-of the deacon, his father.
-
-The law took its course. No eye could see the hand that worked the
-machinery. The time was counted almost to a day, as the result proved. The
-young man was arrested, and gave bonds. It became the theme of general
-conversation. I was interviewed. I was dumb--deaf--blind! Threats and
-bribes proved equally ineffectual to induce me to give an opinion, or a
-pledge not to appear in the coming trial at the next term of the Superior
-Court. To marry the poor, unfortunate girl was beneath the dignity of the
-seducer and family. They would pay their last farthing first, or the young
-man would sooner go to prison for the crime. His two sisters carried their
-heads higher than ever. The two sons threatened my life. But I kept on the
-even tenor of my way. The girl became a mother.
-
-"Next Tuesday court sits," whispered everybody, and nothing in town was
-discussed but the probabilities of the pending lawsuit.
-
-The lawsuit was nothing, the fine was nothing, which the justice might
-impose; even imprisonment was nothing in comparison to acknowledgment of
-an illegitimate child by the deacon's family, notwithstanding the child
-was not red-haired, but much resembled its reputed father, the deacon's
-son.
-
-There was no trial. The squire paid a sum of money to the idiotic old
-father of the beautiful young mother, and agreed, orally, to support the
-child, and the suit was withdrawn. But this virtually acknowledged the
-child, and the girl returned to her father's roof for shelter, and a place
-wherein to weep alone over her so-called fatherless child, and hide her
-shame (?) from the uncharitable world.
-
-The town became too cramped for the squire and his beautiful family. He
-sold out, but not before he had lost his rule there, and was hanged in
-effigy as being "too Secesh."
-
-The seducer married a frail beauty, who mourns a drunken, brutish husband.
-
-The other son became steady, and married a lovely girl--my first patient.
-
-The daughters never wedded. Too proud to marry a poor man, too poor and
-destitute of real beauty or accomplishments for a wealthy or refined man
-to desire to wed them, they became servants and lackeys. If I desire a
-lunch at a certain saloon, one of them awaits my order. No matter about
-the other unfortunate, unloved girl. The father is an imbecile invalid.
-God is my witness, my judge, I long ago buried my hard feelings against
-them; they have only my commiseration.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-XV.
-
-DOCTORS' FEES AND INCOMES.
-
-    "Three faces wears the doctor; when first sought,
-    An angel's and a god's, the cure half wrought;
-    But, when, the cure complete, he seeks his fee,
-    The d----l looks then less terrible than he."
-                                          EURICUS CORDUS, 1530.
-
-    ANCIENT FEES.--LARGE FEES.--SPANISH PRIEST-DOCTORS.--A PIG ON
-    PENANCE.--SMALL FEES.--A "CHOP" POSTPONED.--LONG FEES.--SHORT
-    FEES.--OLD FEES.--A NIGHT-CAP.--AN OLD SHOE FOR LUCK.--A BLACK
-    FEE.--"HEART'S OFFERING."--A STUFFED CAT.--THE "GREAT GUNS" OF NEW
-    YORK.--BOSTON.--ROTTEN EGGS.--"CATCH WHAT YOU CAN."--FEMALE DOCTORS'
-    FEES.--ABOVE PRICE.--"ASK FOR A FEE."--"PITCH HIM
-    OVERBOARD."--DELICATE FEES.--MAKING THE MOST OF THEM.
-
-
-The great German physician who wrote the above died (as he ought, for
-putting so much truth into four lines) in 1538. He, of all physicians of
-his day, earned his fees; but it is often the case that the most deserving
-get the least reward, and Cordus was not an exception to the rule. A good
-physician, or surgeon, is seldom a sharp financier, and _vice versa_. "It
-is hard to serve two masters."
-
-Ancient physicians' fees were much larger, considering the difference in
-the value of money, than modern.
-
-ERASISTRATUS, in the year 330 B. C., received from General Seleucus, of
-Alexander's army, to whom the kingdom of Syria fell at the termination of
-the Macedonian conquest, the enormous sum of 60,000 crowns as a fee for
-his discovery of the disorder of the general's son, Antiochus. The Emperor
-Augustus employed four physicians, viz., Albutus, Arantius, Calpetanus,
-and Rubrius, to each of whom he paid an annual salary of 250,000
-sesterces, equal to $10,000. Martialis, the Spanish epigramist, who was
-born in 40 A. D. says Alconius received 10,000,000 sesterces ($400,000)
-for a few years' practice.
-
-
-LARGE FEES.
-
-French physicians were never very well paid. The surgeons of Charlemagne
-were tolerably well recompensed. Ambrose Pare, the great surgeon, and
-inventor of ligatures (for peculiar arteries),--previous to whose time the
-arteries were seared with a hot iron; otherwise the patient bled to
-death,--received 5,000 francs for ligaturing one artery. Louis XIV. gave
-his surgeons 75,000 crowns each for successfully performing upon him a
-surgical operation.
-
-Upon the confinement of Maria Louise, second wife of the great Napoleon,
-four physicians--Bourdier, Corvisat, Dubois, and Ivan--received the sum of
-$20,000. Dubois was the principal, and received one half of the
-amount,--not a very extravagant remuneration; but then Napoleon held a
-mean opinion of physicians in general, and this fee was not to be wondered
-at. Dupuytren, the distinguished French surgeon, left a property of
-$1,580,000. Hahnemann, who, in 1785, at Dresden, abandoned physic in
-disgust, afterwards went to Paris, and at the time of his death was
-literally besieged with patients, reaping a reward for his labors of not
-less than $40,000 per annum. Boerhaave was a successful practitioner, born
-at Leyden, and left, at his death, $200,000 from private practice. John
-Stow, the eminent antiquarian writer, whose misfortunes compelled him to
-beg his daily bread at the age of eighty, informs us that "half a crown
-(English) was looked upon as a large fee in Holland, while in England, at
-that same time, a physician scorned to touch any fee but gold, and
-surgeons were still more exorbitant."
-
-In Spain, until a very remote period, the priests continued to exercise
-the double office of priest and physician, and some of them were
-proficient in surgery; and though they fixed no stipulated price for their
-medical services, they usually managed to get two fleeces from the one
-shearing, and on certain occasions dispose of the carcass also, for their
-own pecuniary advantages, as the following will show:--
-
-Anthony Gavin, formerly a Catholic priest of Spain, says, "I saw Fran.
-Alfaro, a Jew, in Lisbon, who told me that he was known to be very rich,
-when in Seville, where the priests finally stripped him of all his wealth,
-and cast him into the Inquisition, where they kept him four years, under
-some pretence, and finally liberated him, that he might accumulate more
-property. After three years' trade, having again collected considerable
-wealth, he was again imprisoned and his wealth confiscated by the
-priest-doctors, but let off, with the order to wear the mark of San Benito
-(picture of a man in the midst of the fire of hell) for six months.
-
-[Illustration: A SAN BENITO PIG.]
-
-"But Alfaro fled from the city, and finding a pig near the gate, he
-slipped the San Benito over the pig's neck, and, sending him into the
-town, made his escape. 'Now I am poor,' he added, 'nobody wants to
-imprison me.'"
-
-
-ENGLISH FEES AND INCOMES.
-
-In no other country have physicians' fees varied so much as in England.
-The Protestant divine and the physician have kept step together to the
-music of civilization and enlightenment. Both of these professions were
-held at a low estimation up to the Elizabethan era, when a young,
-unfledged M. D. from Oxford would gladly accept a situation in a lord's
-family for five or ten pounds a year, with his board, and lodgings in the
-garret, while, in addition to professional services he might act as sort
-of wise clown, "and be a patient listener, the solver of riddles, and the
-butt of ridicule for the family and guests. He might save the expense of a
-gardener--nail up the apricots; or a groom, and sometimes curry down and
-harness the horses; cast up the farrier's or butler's accounts, or carry a
-parcel or message across the country."
-
-As was said also of the divine, "Not one living in fifty enabled the
-incumbent to bring up a family comfortably. As the children multiplied,
-the household became more beggarly. Often it was only by toiling on his
-glebe, by feeding swine and by loading dung-carts, that he could gain his
-daily bread.... His sons followed the plough, and his daughters went out
-to service."
-
-Queen Elizabeth's physician in ordinary received one hundred pounds per
-annum and perquisites--"sustenance, wine, wax, and etceteras." Morgan, her
-apothecary, for one quarter's bill was paid L18 7_s._ 8_d._ A one pound
-fee, paid by the Earl of Cumberland to a Cambridge physician, was
-considered as exceptionally liberal, even for a nobleman to pay.
-
-Edward III. granted to his apothecary, who acted in the capacity of
-physician in those days, a salary amounting to six pence a day, and to
-Ricardus Wye, his surgeon, twelve pence per day, besides eight marks. (A
-mark was 13_s._ 4_d._) In the courts of the kings of Wales, the
-physicians and surgeons were the twelfth in rank, and whose fees were
-fixed by law. Dr. Caius was fortunate in holding position as physician to
-Edward VI., Mary, and Elizabeth. Sir Theodore Mayerne was still more
-fortunate in having the honor of serving Henry IV. and Louis XIII. of
-France, and subsequently King James I., Charles I. and II. of England.
-Mayerne has been the subject of many anecdotes, of which the following is
-a sample:--
-
-[Illustration: AN OLD ENGLISH CLERGYMAN AND HIS FAMILY.]
-
-A parsimonious friend, consulting Mayerne, laid two broad pieces of gold
-(sixty shillings) on the doctor's table, to express his generosity, as he
-felt safe that they would be immediately returned to him. But Mayerne
-quietly pocketed them, saying,--
-
-"I made my will this morning, and if it became known that I had refused a
-fee, I might be deemed _non compos mentis_."
-
-[Illustration: THE KING'S PHYSICIAN AND THE EXECUTIONER.]
-
-In 1700, graduated physicians' dues were ten shillings, licensed doctors,
-six shillings eight pence. A surgeon's fee was twelve pence per mile, be
-his journey long or short, and five shillings for setting a bone or
-dislocated joint, one shilling for bleeding, and five pounds for an
-amputation. All after attendance extra.
-
-
-ANECDOTE OF JAMES COYTHIER.
-
-This jolly doctor was employed by Louis XI., and was said to have sponged
-immense sums from his royal master, beyond a regular salary.
-
-"He wrung favor upon favor from the king, and if he resisted the modest
-demands of his physician, the latter threatened him with speedy
-dissolution. On this menace, the king, succumbing to the fear of death,
-which weakness characterized his family, would at once surrender at
-discretion."
-
-Finally, to rid himself of such despotic demands, the king ordered the
-executioner to behead the physician.
-
-The requisite officer waited on Coythier, and in a courteous and
-considerate manner, as became the occasion, said to him,--
-
-"I deeply regret, my dear sir, the circumstance, but I must kill you. The
-king can stand you no longer, and here are my orders."
-
-"All right," replied the doctor, with surprising unconcern; "I am ready
-whenever you are. What time would you find it most convenient to perform
-the little operation?"
-
-While the officer was trying to decide, Coythier continued,--
-
-"But I am very sorry to leave his majesty only for a few days; for I have
-ascertained by occult science that he can't survive me more than four
-days."
-
-The officer stood struck with amazement, but finally returned and imparted
-the astounding information to the king.
-
-"O, liberate him instantly. Hurt not a hair of his head," exclaimed the
-terrified monarch.
-
-Coythier was of course speedily restored to his place in the king's
-confidence--and treasury.
-
-
-A LONG FEE.
-
-Here is what may be called a _long fee_:--
-
-An English surgeon, named Broughton, had the good fortune to open the
-commerce of the East Indies to his countrymen through a medical fee.
-Having been sent from Surat to Agra, in the year 1636, to treat a daughter
-of the emperor Shah Jehan, he had the great fortune to restore the
-princess.
-
-Beyond the present reward to the physician for his great services, the
-emperor gave him the privilege of a free commerce throughout the whole
-extent of his domains. Scarcely had Broughton returned than the favorite
-nabob of the province--Bengal--sent for the doctor to treat him for a very
-dangerous disease. Having fortunately restored this patient also, the
-nabob settled a pension upon the physician, and confirmed the privilege of
-the emperor, extending it to all Englishmen who should come to Bengal.
-
-Broughton at once communicated this important treaty, as it was, to the
-English governor at Surat, and, by the advice of the latter, the company
-sent from England, in 1640, the first ship to trade at Bengal. Such was
-the origin of the great Indian commerce, which has been continued to the
-present day,--the longest continued doctor's fee ever given.
-
-Another long fee was that given to Dr. Th. Dinsdale, who travelled from
-England to St. Petersburg by order of Catharine of Russia, to inoculate
-her son, the baron of the empire. The empress presented him with a fee of
-twelve thousand pounds, and a life pension of five hundred pounds. This is
-the largest sum ever paid to any physician since the world began, for a
-single operation, and I know of no physician who ever made a longer
-journey to attend a patient.
-
-
-A SHORT FEE.
-
-This is how a physician fell short of his fee. Charles II. was taken
-suddenly and dangerously ill with apoplexy. The court physician being out
-of town, Dr. King, who only being present, with one attendant, instantly
-bled his majesty, to which "breach of court etiquette" John Evelyn
-attributes his salvation for the time; for he would certainly have died,
-had Dr. King staid the coming of the regular physician--for which act he
-must have a regular pardon!
-
-The privy council ordered a handsome fee to be paid Dr. King for his great
-presence of mind and prompt action, but it never was paid. Charles died
-soon afterwards, and poor King fell short of a fat fee.
-
-
-ODD FEES.
-
-Amongst the many funny things told about Sir Astley Cooper, the eminent
-English surgeon, none is better authenticated than that respecting the
-"night-cap fee."
-
-In his earlier practice, he had to pass through all the trials and
-tribulations, "anxious and ill-rewarded waitings," that lesser stars have
-before and since, and ever will, before he became "established." In his
-first year's practice in London, his profits were but five guineas; his
-second reached the encouraging sum of twenty-five pounds, and increased in
-this ratio till the ninth year, when it was one thousand pounds. In one
-year he made twenty-one thousand guineas. It is said that one merchant of
-London paid him annually six hundred pounds. It wouldn't require but a few
-such lucrative patients to keep a doctor in pocket money even at this
-day.
-
-A West India millionnaire, named Hyatt, had been to London, and undergone
-a severe and dangerous surgical operation at the hands of Sir Astley,
-assisted by Drs. Lettsom and Nelson. The operation proved a success, and
-the grateful patient only waited till he could sit up in bed a little
-while at a time before expressing in some measure his gratitude to the
-physicians. All three being present one day, Hyatt arose in bed and
-presented the two physicians with a fee of three hundred gold guineas,
-and, turning to Sir Astley, who seemed for a moment to have been slighted,
-the millionnaire said,--
-
-"And as for you, Sir Astley, you shall have nothing better than that,"
-catching off his night-cap, and flinging it almost into Sir Astley's
-handsome face--he was said to be the handsomest man in England; "there,
-take it, sir."
-
-"Sir," exclaimed the surgeon, with a smile, "I pocket the affront."
-
-On reaching home, and examining the night-cap, he found it contained one
-thousand guineas--nearly five thousand dollars.
-
-
-AN OLD SHOE.
-
-Quite as odd a fee was that presented to a celebrated New York surgeon
-about the year 1845. An eccentric old merchant, a descendant of one of the
-early Dutch families of Manhattan Island, was sick at his summer residence
-on the Hudson, where his family physician attended him. The doctor gave
-him no encouragement that he ever would recover. A most celebrated
-surgeon, since deceased, was called as counsel, who, after careful
-examination of the case, and considering the merchant's age, coincided
-with the opinion of the family physician, and so expressed himself to the
-patient.
-
-"Well, if that is all the good you can do, you may return to New York,"
-said the doomed man. But as the astonished surgeon was going out of the
-house, the invalid sent a servant after him, in haste, saying,--
-
-"Here, throw this old shoe after him, telling him that I wish him better
-luck on the next patient;" and drawing off his embroidered slipper, he
-gave it to the servant, who, well used to his master's whims, as well as
-confident of his generosity, ran after the doctor, flinging the shoe, and
-giving the message, as directed. The surgeon felt sure of his fee, well
-knowing the ability of the eccentric merchant; but he picked up the shoe,
-and placing it in his coat pocket, said to his brother physician, who
-accompanied him, "I'll keep it, and I may get something, to _boot_."
-
-[Illustration: A SLIPPER-Y FEE.]
-
-It contained, stuffed into the toe, a draft for five hundred dollars.
-
-
-A BLACK FEE.
-
-Dr. Robert Glynn, of Cambridge, England, who died nearly eighty years ago,
-was a most benevolent man, as well as a successful medical practitioner,
-with a large revenue. Mr. Jeaffreson tells the following amusing story
-about him:--
-
-"On one occasion a poor peasant woman, the widowed mother of an only son,
-trudged from the heart of the fens (ten miles) into Cambridge, to consult
-the good doctor about her boy, who was very sick with the ague. Her manner
-so interested the doctor that, though it was during an inclement winter,
-and the roads almost impassable by carriages, he ordered horses harnessed,
-and taking in the old lady, went to see the sick lad.
-
-"After a tedious attendance, and the exhibition of much port wine and
-bark, bought at the physician's expense, the patient recovered. A few days
-after the doctor had taken his discharge, without fees, the poor woman
-presented herself at the consulting-room, bearing in her hands a large
-basket.
-
-"'I hope, my good woman, your son is not ill again,' said the doctor.
-
-"'O, no, sir; he was never better,' replied the woman, her face beaming
-with gratitude; 'but he can't rest quiet for thinking of all the trouble
-you have had, and so he resolved this morning to send you this;' and she
-began undoing the cover of the large wicker basket which she had set on
-the floor. The doctor stood overlooking the transaction in no little
-concern. Egress being afforded, out hopped an enormous magpie, that
-strutted around the room, chattering away as independent as a lord.
-
-"'There, doctor, it is his favorite magpie he has sent you,' exclaimed the
-woman, looking proudly upon the piece of chattering ebony. It was a fee to
-be proud of."
-
-
-A HEART'S OFFERING.
-
-The gratitude of the poor country lad for his recovery did not exceed,
-probably, that of a young girl, as related in the Montpelier papers, from
-one of which I cut the following:--
-
-"A young girl, fourteen years of age, named Celia ----, called at the
-hotel to-day where Dr. C., with his family, is stopping, and presenting
-him with a bouquet of Mayflowers, said, 'I have no money to pay you for
-curing my head of scrofula, and I thought these flowers might please you.'
-This was truly the offering of a grateful heart; for her head _had been
-entirely covered by sores, from her birth_, and the doctor had cured it.
-Another journal said, in commenting upon it, 'This heart's offering deeply
-affected the doctor, to whom it was a greater reward than any money
-recompense could have been.' The doctor has the withered and blackened
-flowers and leaves pressed, and hung in a frame in his office, but the
-memory of the touching scene of their presentation will remain fresh
-within his heart forever."
-
-[Illustration: A LIVING FEE.]
-
-
-A STUFFED CAT-SKIN.
-
-An eccentric and parsimonious old lady, who died in a small village in the
-State of Maine, some twenty years ago, always kept a half dozen cats about
-the house. She was a dried-up-looking old crone, and some ill-minded
-people had gone so far as to call her a witch, doubtless because of her
-oddities and her cats, "black, white, and brindled." When one of these
-delightful night-prowlers departed this life, the old lady would have the
-skin of the animal stuffed, to adorn her mantel shelf. My informant said
-he had once seen them with his own eyes, arranged along on the shelf, some
-half score of them, looking as demure and comfortable as a stuffed cat
-could, while the old woman sat by the fireplace, croning over her knitting
-work.
-
-[Illustration: STUFFED PETS.]
-
-The woman paid no bills that she could avoid, always pleading poverty as
-her excuse for the non-fulfilment of her responsibilities.
-
-One dark and stormy night she was taken very sick, and by a preconcerted
-signal to a neighbor,--the placing of a light in a certain window,--help
-was summoned, including the village doctor, to whom she owed a fee for
-each visit he had ever made her. But this was fated to be the doctor's
-last call to that patient.
-
-"O, doctor, then I am dying at last--am I?"
-
-The physician assured her such was the case.
-
-"Then, doctor, I must tell you that you've been very patient with me, and
-have hastened day or night to see me, in my whims, as well as my real
-sickness, and you shall be rewarded. I have no money, but you see all my
-treasures arranged along on the mantel-piece there?"
-
-"What!" exclaimed the doctor; "you don't call those cats treasures, I
-hope!"
-
-"Yes, they are my only treasures, doctor. Now, I want to be just to _you_,
-above all others, because you've not only served me as I said, but you've
-often sent me wood and provisions during the cold winters--"
-
-Here she became too feeble to go on, and the doctor revived her with some
-cordial from his saddle-bags, when she took breath, and continued,--
-
-"See them, doctor; eleven of them. Which will you choose?"
-
-The doctor, with as much grace as possible, declined selecting any one of
-the useless stuffed skins; when the old lady, by much effort, raised her
-head from the pillow, and said, "Well, I will select for you. Take the
-black one--take--the black--cat--doctor!" and died.
-
-Her dying words so impressed him, that he took the cat home, and, on
-opening her,--for it was very heavy,--he found that the skin contained
-nearly a hundred dollars, in gold.
-
-
-AMERICAN FEES AND INCOMES.
-
-There is a surgeon in New York city whose income from practice outside of
-the hospital is said to be twenty-five thousand dollars per annum. Dr.
-Valentine Mott, the celebrated New York surgeon, who died April 26, 1865,
-at the age of eighty-one years, had a very large income, but less than
-that enjoyed by several surgeons in the metropolis at the present time.
-
-There are some specialists in New York, Philadelphia, and Boston, who
-receive greater sums annually than the regular medical or surgical
-practitioners. There is no law particularly controlling the prices of the
-former. The fee for a visit, by the established usage of the medical
-societies in these cities, is from three to ten dollars.
-
-A specialist sometimes receives fifty to one hundred dollars for
-prescribing in a case, for which another physician, in ordinary practice,
-would charge but an office fee of two to ten dollars. A quack
-specialist--and an impostor--in the latter city makes his brags that he
-has received twelve hundred dollars for one prescription. But then this
-same lying braggadocio says he has read medicine with Ricard, and had
-various honors conferred upon him.
-
-Dr. Pulte, of Ohio, one of the western pioneers in homeopathy, who has
-often been greeted, in his earlier professional rounds, by a shower of
-dirt, rotten eggs, stones, brickbats, and had rails and sticks thrust
-through his carriage wheels at night, and been otherwise insulted, until,
-finally, he had to carry his wife about with him, as a protective
-measure,--for his revilers would not insult a lady,--has since made as
-high as twenty thousand dollars a year, and has amassed a fortune of two
-hundred thousand dollars. There is a Boston homeopathist whose income from
-practice is not less than twenty to twenty-five thousand dollars annually.
-Some of the surgeons (allopathic) do better, but hardly reach the figures
-of Dr. Nelaton, the great French surgeon, who, in 1869, earned four
-hundred thousand francs, equal to about eighty thousand dollars.
-
-[Illustration: A PIONEER OF HOMEOPATHY.]
-
-Dr. Bigelow, the very celebrated surgeon of Harvard College, has probably
-received the largest fee for a surgical operation of any New England
-practitioner. He is said to be worth nearly a million.
-
-Dr. Buckingham, the eminent medical practitioner, of Boston, who probably
-earns as much as any physician in the city, a few years ago stated to the
-graduating class of Harvard College--so I am informed by a physician then
-present--that he received for his first year's practice in Boston _but
-fifty-seven dollars_. He then had a little office up stairs, where he
-slept, dined,--often on bread and cheese, or a few crackers; sometimes he
-did not dine,--and received his few patients. But he was a great student,
-and a hard worker, and often, and usually, stuck to his post during those
-hours when more prosperous physicians were seeking amusement or
-relaxation. He was one of the "_hold-fast_" kind, who always win, in the
-end.
-
-"_Catch what you can._"--There is a class of wretches in every city who
-have no established fee for prescribing for the sick. They go on the
-principle of "catch what I can." If they cannot get a fee of twenty
-dollars, they will take two, provided the patient has no more. A young man
-who visited one of these medical shave-shops was charged a fee of
-thirty-five dollars in a very simple case; but the benevolent doctor
-concluded to accept two dollars and a half instead, since the man had no
-more money. The shamefulness of such Jewing reminds one of the story of a
-negro trading off a worn-out old mule:--
-
-"I say, dar, what will you take for dat yer mule, Cuffy?"
-
-"O, I axes thirty-five dollars for him, Mr. Sambo."
-
-"O, go way, dar. I gibs you five dollars for him," said the first.
-
-"Well, you can take him, Sambo. I won't stand for thirty dollars on a mule
-trade, nohow."
-
-There is a female practitioner in St. Louis who earns above ten thousand
-dollars a year, and her individual fees are moderate at that.
-
-Another doctress, Mrs. Ormsby, of Orange, N. J., accumulates some fifteen
-thousand a year, and is in turn outstripped by another woman practising in
-New York, who gets nearly twenty thousand dollars a year. Such certainly
-possess great business tact, with or without professional merit, and for
-such let all men give them credit.
-
-Several female doctors in Boston receive from three to five thousand
-dollars each, yearly.
-
-It is too often the case that a physician's success is reckoned, like a
-tradesman's, by what he has gained in a pecuniary point of view. There
-are, however, thousands of worthy men, successful with their cases, who,
-from less acquisitiveness than benevolence, have failed in securing more
-than a bare competence, through a life devoted to their profession.
-
-[Illustration: A SHARP MULE TRADE.]
-
-I presume nearly every physician who has experienced a dozen years in
-practice has some mementos of his poor patients' gratitude, in the form,
-if not of an ebony bird, or a black cat-skin, of something possessing more
-beauty, and, to the benevolent heart, which always beats within the
-breast of every true physician, keepsakes prized above gold and silver.
-
-  "Who has not kept some trifling thing,
-    More prized, more prized, than jewels rare,
-  A faded flower, a broken ring,
-    A tress of golden hair, a tress of golden hair?"
-
-A very benevolent physician, and a sexagenarian, of New York city, wrote,
-twenty years ago, "I even yet enjoy a sort of melancholy satisfaction in
-hastening to relieve the suffering poor of my neighborhood, though I know
-that my reward will be very small, or, what is far more frequent, that I
-shall be paid with ingratitude, if not slander.
-
-"Sometimes there are bright spots in my horizon, and I think myself more
-than repaid by a new shirt, or a couple of handkerchiefs--the gift of some
-poor, though grateful sewing girl. A few of these little treasures I prize
-with peculiar tenderness."
-
-  "A tress of hair and a faded leaf
-    Are paltry things to a cynic's eyes:
-  But to me they are keys that open the gates
-    Of a paradise of memories."
-
-
-ASKING FOR A FEE.
-
-A Boston M. D., who had been in practice fourteen years without
-accumulating any property, was about to abandon the profession, and, with
-this view, he applied to Fowler, the phrenologist, with the question,
-"What pursuit am I best adapted to follow?" Mr. Fowler, with whom he was
-unacquainted, said, "The practice of medicine;" but, at the same time, he
-assured the doctor that he ought to do business on a _cash_
-principle,--"_accipe dum dolet_,"--or employ a collector, as he would
-never collect his fees. Acting on this hint, the doctor returned to his
-practice, and in a few years was out of debt, and owned a fine residence.
-
-In the matter of collecting fees only he was deficient.
-
-A New York student--if report is true--began earlier to be impressed with
-the propriety of getting his fee in advance, as the following will show.
-
-He went before the censors for examination. One of the board was a
-well-known penurious, fee-loving doctor, who, looking over the list of
-names of the applicants, said,--
-
-"Mr. ----, if a patient came to your office, what would you first do?"
-
-"I would ask him for a fee, sir," was the prompt reply.
-
-An old navy surgeon relates the following regarding examinations:--
-
-"I was shown into the examining-room. Large table, and a half dozen old
-gentlemen at it. 'Big wigs, no doubt,' I thought, 'and, sure as my name is
-Symonds, they'll pluck me like a pigeon.'
-
-"'Well, sir, what do you know about the science of medicine?' asked the
-stout man in the head seat.
-
-"'More than he does of the practice, I'll be bound,' tittered a little
-wasp-like dandy--a West End ladies' doctor.
-
-"I trembled in my shoes.
-
-"'Well, sir,' continued the first, 'what would you do if during an action
-a man was brought to you with both arms and legs shot off? Now, sir, speak
-out; don't keep the board waiting. What would you do?'
-
-"'By Jove, sir,' I answered, 'I would pitch him overboard, and go on to
-some one else to whom I could be of more service.'
-
-"By thunder! every one present burst out laughing, and they passed me
-directly--passed me directly."
-
-
-DELICATE FEES.
-
-There are certain delicate cases, usually terminating in "good news," in
-which it has long been an established custom for the physician to receive
-a double fee. "A father just presented with an heir, or a lucky fellow
-just made one, is expected to bleed freely for the benefit of the
-faculty." Even the Irish, who, in about all other cases, calculate on
-"cheating the doctor to pay the priest," will usually lay by a little sum
-from their penury, or their bank hoardings, as the case may be, "to pay
-the doctor for the babbie."
-
-We insert the following poetry (!) for the fun of the thing; nevertheless,
-it is within the experience of more than one physician, who, after doing
-his duty, exhibiting his best professional ability, and saving the wife of
-some miserable, worthless fellow, who never deserved such a godsend for a
-companion, has cheated the doctor out of his fees from spite, when, if the
-poor woman had died, he would have liberally paid the physician. Let no
-man take this to himself.
-
-  "A woman who scolded one day so long
-  Quite suddenly lost all use of her tongue!
-  The doctor arrived, who, with 'hem and haw,'
-  Pronounced the affection a true locked jaw.
-
-  "'What hopes, good doctor?' 'Very small, I see.'
-  The husband (quite sad) slips a double fee.
-  'No hopes, _dear_ doctor?' 'Ahem! none, I fear.'
-  Gives another fee for an issue clear.
-
-  "The madam deceased. 'Pray, sir, do not grieve.'
-  'My friends, one comfort I surely receive--
-  A fatal locked jaw was the only case
-  From which my dear wife could have died--in peace.'"
-
-
-"MAKE THE MOST OF HIM."
-
-It has been said that physicians have been known to benevolently play a
-fee into a brother's hand when their own palm failed to be broad enough to
-hold them all. Perhaps the reader may derive amusement or instruction from
-the following, in which case the writer is well repaid for their
-insertion:--
-
-"A wealthy tradesman, after drinking the waters of the Bath Springs a
-long time, under advice of his physician, took a fancy to try those of
-Bristol. Armed with an introductory letter from his Bath doctor to a
-professional brother at Bristol, the old gentleman set off on his journey.
-On the way he said to himself,--
-
-"'I wonder what Dr. ---- has advised the Bristol physician respecting my
-case;' and giving way to his curiosity, or anxiety, he opened the letter,
-and read,--
-
-    "'DEAR DOCTOR: The bearer is a fat Wiltshire clothier; _make the most
-    of him_. Yours, professionally, ----.'"
-
-Clutterbuck, the historian, and a pleasant writer, tells the following of
-his uncle, who was a physician:--
-
-"A nervous old lady, a patient of his, took it into her crotchety old head
-to try the Bath waters, and applied to her physician for permission.
-
-"'The very thing I have been thinking to recommend,' he replied; 'and I
-know an excellent physician at the wells, to whom I will give you a letter
-of introduction.'"
-
-With her letter and a companion, she started for the springs. _En route_
-she took out the letter, and, after looking at the address some time, her
-curiosity overcame her, and she said to her friend, "So long as the doctor
-has treated me, he has never told me what my case is, and I have a mind to
-just look into this letter and see what he has told the Bath physician
-about it."
-
-In vain her friend remonstrated against such a breach of trust. The old
-lady opened the epistle, and read the following instructive words:--
-
-    "DEAR SIR: Keep the old woman three weeks, and send her back."
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-XVI.
-
-GENEROSITY AND MEANNESS.
-
-    "Life's better joys spring up thus by the wayside,
-    And the world calls them trifles. 'Tis not so.
-    Heaven is not prodigal, nor pours its joys
-    In unregarded torrents upon man:
-    They fall, as fall the riches of the clouds
-    Upon the parched earth, gently, drop by drop.
-    Nothing is trifling which love consecrates."--AYLMERE.
-
-    "The art of our necessities is strange."--KING LEAR.
-
-    THE WORLD UNMASKED.--A ROUGH DIAMOND.--DECAYED GENTILITY.--"THREE
-    FLIGHT, BACK."--SEVERAL ANECDOTES.--THE OLD FOX-HUNTER.--"STAND ON
-    YOUR HEAD."--KINDNESS TO CLERGYMEN.--RARE CHARITY.--OLD AND
-    HOMELESS.--THE "O'CLO'" JEW.--DR. HUNTER'S GENEROSITY.--"WHAT'S THE
-    PRICE OF BEEF?"--A SAD OMISSION.--INNATE GENEROSITY.--A CURB-STONE
-    MONEY-MANIAC.--AN EYE-OPENER.--AN AVARICIOUS DOCTOR.--ROBBING THE
-    DEAD.
-
-
-Side by side, hand in hand, through the world, go generosity and meanness.
-If these could but be personified, and the individuals compelled to stand
-before men in broad daylight, O, what a staring would there be! Those whom
-we thought the very embodiment of generosity and kindness would "crop out"
-in their true hideousness of character--unmasked meanness and selfishness;
-yes, men too high in the estimation of the world, in church and in state.
-
-On the other hand, we should be equally astonished to find amongst those
-in the humbler walks of life, as well as some in the more exalted, people,
-whom the world counted as mean and penurious, now standing forth adorned
-in robes bleached like the snow-drift, shining bright as the golden
-sunrise, yet blushing to find that their hidden charities, and secret,
-self-denying generosities, had been suddenly brought to light.
-
-And when the secret works of this world shall be revealed, no class of men
-will stand forth more blessed in deeds of generosity and self-sacrifice
-than the physicians. There is an occasional black sheep in the great
-flock.
-
-
-A ROUGH DIAMOND.
-
-There is no better authority for the truth of the many queer stories told
-about the rough benevolence of Dr. Abernethy, the great English surgeon,
-than the author of his memoirs--Sir George Macilwain.
-
-[Illustration: PHYSICIANS' CHARITY.]
-
-"His manner [Dr. Abernethy's], as we shall admit, was occasionally rough,
-and sometimes rather prematurely truthful. One day he was called in
-consultation by a physician to give an opinion in a case of a pulsating
-tumor, which was pretty plainly an aneurism. On proceeding to examine the
-tumor, he found a plaster covering it.
-
-"'What is this you have on it?' asked Abernethy.
-
-"'O, that is only a plaster.'
-
-"'Pooh!' exclaimed the doctor, pulling it off and flinging it aside.
-
-"'The "pooh" was all well enough,' said the attending physician,
-afterwards, 'but it took several guineas out of my pocket.'"
-
-
-"UP THREE PAIR, BACK."
-
-A surgeon--pupil of the above--was requested to visit a patient in a low
-quarter of the suburbs of the metropolis. When he arrived, and mounted
-several flights of crazy stairs, he began searching for the designated
-number, which was so defaced by time that he was only enabled to determine
-it by the more legible condition of the next number.
-
-[Illustration: SEARCH FOR A PATIENT.]
-
-An old woman answered the shake of the dilapidated knocker.
-
-"Does Captain Blank live here?"
-
-"Yes, sir,"--trying to penetrate the darkness.
-
-"Is he at home?"
-
-"Yes, sir. Please, may I make so bold as to ask, are you the doctor?"
-
-"Yes."
-
-"O, then please to walk in, sir."
-
-In the ill-furnished, narrow room sat an old man, in a very shabby and
-variegated _deshabille_, who rose from his chair, and, with a grace worthy
-of a count, welcomed the stranger. His manner was extremely gentlemanly,
-his language well chosen, and the statement of his complaint particularly
-clear and concise.
-
-The surgeon, who like most of us see strange things, was puzzled to make
-out his new patient, but concluded that he was one of the many who, having
-been born to better things, had become reduced by misfortune to these
-apparently very narrow circumstances.
-
-Accordingly, having prescribed, the surgeon was about taking his leave,
-when the gentleman said,--
-
-"Sir, I thank you very much for your attention," at the same time offering
-his hand with a fee.
-
-The benevolent surgeon declined the fee, simply saying,--
-
-"No, I thank you, sir. I hope you will soon be better. Good morning."
-
-"Stay, sir!" exclaimed the old gentleman. "I shall insist on this, if you
-please," in a tone which at once convinced the surgeon that it would be
-more painful to refuse than accept the fee; he accordingly took it.
-
-"I am very much obliged to you, sir," the old gentleman then said; "for
-had you not taken your fee I could not have again had the advantage of
-your advice. I sent for you because I had understood that you were a pupil
-of Dr. Abernethy's, for whom I could not again send, _because he would
-not take his fee_, and I was so hurt that I am afraid I was rude to the
-good man. I suppose he, judging from the appearances of things here,
-thought I could not afford it, hence refused the fee, on which I begged
-him not to be deceived by appearances, but take the fee. However, he kept
-retreating and declining, till, forgetting myself a little, and feeling
-vexed, I said, 'By G----, sir, I insist on your taking it,' when he
-replied as fiercely, 'By G----, sir, I will not,' and hastily left the
-room, closing the door after him."
-
-This gentleman lived to the age of ninety. He was really in very good
-circumstances, but lived in this humble manner to enable him to assist
-very efficiently some poor relatives. The surgeon, after a while, changed
-his professional visits to friendly ones, and continued them up to the old
-man's death. When, however, the gentleman died, about four hundred guineas
-were found in his boxes.
-
-Sometimes Dr. Abernethy would meet with a patient who would afford a
-useful lesson. A lady, wife of a distinguished musician, consulted him,
-and, finding him uncourteous, said,--
-
-"Sir, I had heard of your rudeness before I came, but I did not expect
-this."
-
-When Dr. Abernethy gave her the prescription, she asked,--
-
-"What am I to do with this, sir?"
-
-"Anything you like. Put it into the fire if you choose."
-
-The lady laid the fee on the table, went to the grate, threw the
-prescription on to the fire, and hastily left the room.
-
-The doctor followed her to the hall, earnestly pressing her to take back
-the fee, or permit him to write her another prescription; but the lady
-would not yield her vantage-ground, and so withdrew.
-
-The foregoing is well authenticated. Mr. Stowe, the informant, knows the
-lady well.
-
-[Illustration: AN ECCENTRIC PATIENT.]
-
-[Illustration: A WOMAN'S REBUKE.]
-
-
-THE OLD FOX-HUNTER.
-
-Sometimes, again, the ill usage was all on one side.
-
-We know a hard-drinking old fox-hunter who abused Dr. Abernethy roundly;
-but all that he could say against him was this:--
-
-"Why, sir,--will you believe me?--almost the first words he said, as he
-entered my room, was, 'I perceive you drink a good deal.'
-
-"Now," continued the patient, very _naively_, "supposing I did, what the
-devil was that to him?"
-
-Another gentleman, who had a most unfortunate appearance on his nose,
-exactly like that which accompanies dram-drinking, used to be exceedingly
-irate against Dr. A. because, when he told the doctor that his stomach was
-out of order, Abernethy would reply,--
-
-"Ay, I see that by your nose."
-
-
-THE DUKE, OR THE POOR GENTLEMAN.
-
-One day, just as Dr. Abernethy was stepping into his carriage to make a
-professional visit to the Duke of W., to whom he had been called in a
-hurry, a gentleman stopped him to say that the ----, at Somers Town
-(mentioning a poor gentleman whom he had visited without fee), would be
-glad to have him visit him again at his leisure.
-
-"Why, I cannot go now," Dr. Abernethy replied, "for I am going in haste to
-see the Duke of W." Then, pausing a moment before stepping into his
-carriage, he looked up to the coachman, and quietly said, "To Somers
-Town."
-
-The fidgety irritability of his first impression at interference, and the
-beneficence of his second thought, were very characteristic of Dr.
-Abernethy.
-
-A pupil, who wished to consult him one day, took the very inauspicious
-moment when the doctor (and professor) was looking over his papers, but a
-few moments before lecture, in the museum.
-
-"I am fearful, sir, that I have a polypus in my nose, and want you to look
-at it," said the student.
-
-The doctor made no reply; but when he had completed the sorting of his
-preparations, he said, looking up,--
-
-"Eh?"
-
-To which the pupil repeated his request.
-
-[Illustration: AFRAID OF A POLYPUS.]
-
-"Then stand on your head; don't you see that all the light here comes from
-the skylight? How am I to look into your nose?"
-
-(This was true, for there were no side-lights in the amphitheatre.)
-
-"Where do you live?" continued the doctor.
-
-"Bartholomew Close, sir."
-
-"At what time do you get up?"
-
-"At eight."
-
-"You can't be at Bedford Row" (where Abernethy resided) "at nine, then?"
-
-"Yes, sir, I can."
-
-"To-morrow morning, then."
-
-"Yes, sir; thank you."
-
-The pupil was punctual. Dr. Abernethy made a very careful examination of
-his nose, found nothing of the nature of polypus, made the pupil promise
-never to look into his nose again, and he, in after years, said, that
-there never was anything the matter.
-
-Dr. Abernethy never took a fee from a student, brother doctor, nor full
-fee from a clergyman. His great labors seemed to be in the hospitals, and
-on his resignation as surgeon to St. Bartholomew, he presented for its use
-five hundred dollars. He never neglected his poor hospital patients for
-the richer ones outside.
-
-One morning, on leaving his house for a visit to the hospital patients,
-some one wished to detain him, when he exclaimed, in terms more earnest
-than elegant,--
-
-"Private patients may go to the devil" (or elsewhere, another reports),
-"but the poor fellows in the hospital I am bound to care for."
-
-To poor students whose funds were "doubtful," he presented free tickets to
-his college lectures, afterwards showing them marked attention.
-
-Everybody has heard of his rude kindness to a young fashionable miss, whom
-her mother took to Abernethy for treatment. It is said that the doctor ran
-a knife under her belt, in presence of the mother, instantly severing it,
-and exclaiming,--
-
-"Why, madam, don't you know there are upwards of thirty yards of ----"
-(what are more elegantly termed bowels) "squeezed under that girdle? Go
-home, give nature fair play, and you'll have no need of a prescription."
-
-[Illustration: ABERNETHY'S SURGICAL OPERATION.]
-
-
-KINDNESS TO CLERGYMEN.
-
-"Cynics have been found in plenty to rail at physicians for loving their
-fees; and one might justly retort that the railers love nothing but their
-fees. Who does not love--and who is not entitled to--the sweet money
-earned by labor, be it labor of hand, brain, or cloth? One thing is
-sure--doctors are unpaid."--_A Lawyer._
-
-The above kind-hearted physician, having attended the child of a
-clergyman's widow, without knowing her situation, returned all the fees he
-had received from her when he learned who she was, and added, in a
-letter, fifty pounds besides, with instructions to expend it in daily
-rides in the open air, for her health. To a clergyman he sent a receipt
-for his long services, and also enclosing ten pounds.
-
-The generosity of Dr. Wilson, of Bath (now deceased), has before been
-recorded. He had been attending a clergyman, who, Wilson had learned, was
-in indigent circumstances, and he afterwards sent fifty pounds in gold to
-the minister, by a friend.
-
-"Yes, I will take it to him to-morrow," said the gentleman.
-
-"O, my dear sir," exclaimed Dr. Wilson, "take it to him to-night. Only
-think of the importance to an invalid of one good night's rest."
-
-
-RARE CHARITY.
-
-Another case of "three pair, back," occurs in the memoirs of Dr. Lettsom,
-who is already made mention of in this work. On one of his benevolent
-excursions, the doctor found his way into the squalid garret of a poor old
-woman who had evidently seen better days. With the refined language and
-the easy deportment of a well-bred lady, she begged the physician to
-examine her case, and give her a prescription. (Alas! how often is poverty
-mistaken for disease, and does want foster malady!) But the kind doctor,
-after a careful inquiry, formed a correct diagnosis, and wrote on a slip
-of paper he chanced to have about him, the following brief note to the
-overseers of the parish:--
-
-    "A shilling per diem for Mrs. Moreton. Money, not physic, can cure
-    her.
-
-    LETTSOM."
-
-A shilling, in those days, was considered no mean sum per day.
-
-  "Alas for the rarity
-  Of Christian charity
-    Under the sun!
-  O, it was pitiful!
-  Near a whole city full,
-    Home she had none.
-
-  "Sisterly, brotherly,
-  Fatherly, motherly
-    Feelings had changed;
-  Love, by harsh evidence,
-  Thrown from its eminence,
-  Even God's providence
-    Seeming estranged."
-
-"Alas, doctor," said an unfortunate old gentleman, some seventy-four years
-old,--a merchant ruined by the American war, bowed down by the weight of
-his misfortunes, and by disease,--to Dr. Lettsom, "those beautiful trees
-you may see out of my bedroom window I planted with these now feeble
-hands. I have lived to see them bear fruit; they have become as part of my
-family. But with my children still dearer to me, I must quit this dear old
-home, which was the delight of my youth and the hope of my declining
-years, and become a homeless, joyless wanderer in my old age."
-
-The benevolent Quaker doctor was deeply affected by these words, and the
-utter despair and hopelessness with which the weeping old man uttered
-them; and, speaking a few words of consolation to his unfortunate patient,
-he wrote a prescription, and hastily retired.
-
-On the old gentleman's examination of the remarkable looking recipe, he
-found it to be a check for a large sum of money. The benevolence of the
-physician did not end here. He purchased the residence and grounds of the
-old man's creditors, and prescribed them to him for life. (He is our young
-Quaker antipode, mentioned in another chapter.)
-
-The old apothecary, Sutcliff, was right when he said of young Lettsom,
-while his apprentice, "Thou may'st make a good physician, but I think not
-a good apothecary." An apothecary is not expected to give away his time or
-medicine. (They seldom disappoint one's expectations.) A grocer is not
-expected to give away flour, rice, sugar, tea, to even a starving,
-languishing neighbor; nor the baker, nor the butcher, to give bread or
-meat to the perishing. Why, such demands upon them daily would be laughed
-to scorn. But the physician! These very same niggardly men (individually)
-would berate the doctor, be he ever so needy, or be his family ever so
-large, who would accept a fee for even cold-night services to any but the
-richest patients. All physicians do not have access to the "richest
-patients." Many a good physician has been compelled to quit practice
-because of his too large "bump" of benevolence, and because of the limited
-amount of that article in his first few patients, while thousands of
-practitioners in this country struggle and labor on through a life of
-self-denial, wearing themselves out, dying prematurely, leaving their
-families penniless to the cold charities of an uncharitable world. (See
-Chapter XXX.)
-
-
-THE OLD JEW.
-
-"Ah me," exclaimed a Jew, one day, as he reluctantly drew out his wallet
-to pay three dollars for his examination, prescription, and advice, "if I
-could only make money like the doctors of mede_cene_! Ah me." Then, taking
-two dollars from his purse, he asked, "Won't that do?"
-
-This Jew was a merchant, reputed rich, and penurious as he was wealthy,
-and I demanded the accustomed fee.
-
-"Let me see," said he; "how many patients have you seen to-day?"
-
-"Nine," I replied.
-
-"Let me see," counting his fingers as a tally. "At least twenty-seven
-dollars a day, and nothing out but a bit of paper. Ah, I wish I had been a
-doctor in mede_cene_," he added, with a sigh, and a woful look at the
-money, as he reluctantly handed it over.
-
-This was casting pearls before worse than swine, prescribing for such a
-wretch. Brains, education, anxiety, all went for nought, with him. _Money_
-was his all. A shilling before his eyes would shut out even God's
-sunlight. If the shilling only _shone_, _glistened_,--sunlight enough for
-such a wretch.
-
-[Illustration: RECKONING A DOCTOR'S FEES.]
-
-"Let _me_ see," I said, after his miserable body had taken his penurious
-soul out of my office; "nine patients, one three miles away. Horse-tire
-and carriage-wear, time, advice, and medicine given, because the patient
-was a widow. No. 2 patient, the sick child of an invalid mother; no fee.
-No. 3, an Irishman. The Irish never wish to pay anything; did pay one
-dollar. No. 4, a merchant. "Charge it." That was _his_ fee. No. 5, a young
-sewing girl, who, in sewing on army cloth, had sewed her life's blood into
-the seams. In consumption. Could I take her fee? God forbid. No. 6, a
-"lady," who, having so much upon her back, had nothing in her purse. I may
-get my fee at the end of the quarter. "You know my husband. Good morning."
-It was near two o'clock then. She had occupied my time a whole hour. My
-dinner was cold; my wife was out of sorts, waiting so long. Nos. 7 and 8,
-two sick children. Visit them daily; pay uncertain. The ninth was the
-wealthy Jew. Nine patients; four dollars! Don't I sometimes wish I kept an
-"O' clo'" store, like the old Jew? This actually occurred when I practised
-medicine in Hartford.
-
-[Illustration: PATIENT NUMBER FIVE.]
-
-
-DR. HUNTER'S GENEROSITY.
-
-No man cared _less_ for the profits of the medical profession, or _more_
-for the honor thereof, than the great Dr. John Hunter. He was honest,
-honorable, and simple in his every day life. His works, which contributed
-more to the science of medicine than any other writings during a thousand
-years, were simply announced as by JOHN HUNTER. A plain door plate, with
-the same name, announced his residence. Money was a secondary
-consideration to him. The following shows that he desired a professional
-brother to so consider it:--
-
-    "DEAR BROTHER: The bearer needs your advice. He has no money, and you
-    have plenty; so you are well met.
-
-    "Yours,        JOHN HUNTER."
-
-To a poor tradesman from whom he had received twenty guineas for
-performing a surgical operation upon his wife, he returned nineteen
-guineas, having learned with what difficulty and extreme self-denial the
-husband had raised the money.
-
-"I sent back nineteen guineas, and kept the twentieth," said he, in
-apology for retaining even the one, "that they might not be hurt with an
-idea of too great an obligation."
-
-Where is the other man, or class of men, who would have returned the
-money, honestly earned, as agreed upon beforehand, unasked?
-
-
-GENEROUS AT ANOTHER'S EXPENSE.
-
-It is all very nice when one can exercise a benevolent spirit, and not
-draw upon his own pocket.
-
-A well-authenticated story is repeated in this line of Dr. M. Monsey.
-
-Passing through a market one day, he noticed a miserable old woman looking
-wistfully at a piece of meat hanging just within a stall.
-
-"What is the price of this meat, sir?" she timidly inquired.
-
-"A penny a pound, old woman," replied the butcher, sneeringly, disdaining
-a civil answer to the wretched-looking woman, who probably had not a penny
-to pay for the chop.
-
-"Just weigh that piece of meat, my friend," said the doctor, who had been
-attentively watching the proceedings.
-
-The butcher cheerfully complied with the request of so respectable-looking
-a customer.
-
-"Ten pounds and a half, sir," replied the butcher.
-
-"There, my good woman," said the doctor, "hold up your apron;" and he
-dumped the whole into it, saying, "Now make haste home and cook it for
-your family."
-
-After blessing the very eccentric but benevolent old man over and again
-for the timely provision, she drew up the corners of the apron, and ran
-speedily down the market.
-
-"Here, my man," said the doctor, turning to the smiling butcher, "here is
-ten pence ha'penny, the price of your meat."
-
-"What? What do you mean?" asked the butcher.
-
-"I mean, sir, that I take you at your word. You said the meat was a penny
-a pound. At that price I bought it for the poor old woman. It's all I'll
-pay you. Good morning, sir."
-
-[Illustration: THE ASTONISHED BUTCHER.]
-
-I can imagine the "chop-fallen" butcher, standing, in his long frock, with
-a _beaten_ expression of countenance, alternating his gaze between the
-pence in his palm and the retreating form of the wigged and laughing old
-doctor.
-
-
-A REPORT ON TEETH.
-
-Many stories are told of the eccentricities of Dr. Monsey, and
-
-  "No man could better gild a pill,
-    Or make a bill,
-  Or mix a draught, or bleed, or blister,
-  Or draw a tooth out of your head,
-  Or chatter scandal by your bed,
-    Or tell a twister."
-
-Amongst the vagaries of Dr. Monsey, says Mr. Jeaffreson, was the way in
-which he proceeded to extract his decaying teeth. Around the tooth
-sentenced to be uprooted he fastened securely a strong piece of cord, or
-violin string, to the other end of which he attached a bullet. He then
-proceeded to load a pistol with powder and the bullet. By merely pulling
-the trigger of the pistol, the operation was speedily and effectually
-performed.
-
-It was seldom, however, that the doctor could induce his patients to adopt
-this original mode of extracting undesirable achers.
-
-One gentleman, who had agreed to try this novel process upon a tooth, got
-so far as to allow the whole apparatus to be adjusted, when, at the very
-last instant, he exclaimed,--
-
-"Stop, stop! I have changed my mind--"
-
-"I haven't, though; and you're a fool and a coward, and here's go," which
-saying, the doctor pulled the trigger.
-
-"Bang!" went the pistol, and out flew the tooth, to the delight and
-astonishment of the patient.
-
-Taking this anecdote alone, it is scarcely credible; but considered in
-connection with what we have already selected from the life of Dr. Monsey,
-and what we may write of his eccentricities in our chapter under that
-head, this may be believed as being nearly correct.
-
-[Illustration: MODERN IMPROVEMENTS IN DENTISTRY.]
-
-[Illustration: CHARITY NOT SOLICITED.]
-
-
-A SAD OMISSION.
-
-Believing, as I do, that every reader of these pages is personally
-cognizant of the fact of the true benevolence of our present American
-physicians, and because of the silence of the few biographers respecting
-the generosities and benevolent deeds of those "who have gone before," I
-have devoted more space to anecdotes of English surgeons and physicians
-than I otherwise would. I have searched throughout four volumes of
-biographies of American physicians without being able to find a single
-anecdote of generosity recorded therein worthy of notice. Also in the
-"Lives of Surgeons ----" I have to regret this almost unpardonable
-neglect. I am assured from my personal knowledge of some of these latter
-that there are a thousand instances, which, in justice to their
-benevolence, ought to be put upon record, as they are engraven upon the
-hearts of their suffering fellow-creatures, and not for the aggrandizement
-of the generous bestower so much as an example for the cynical and the
-uncharitable world.
-
-A physician has just left my presence who has given away more than he has
-ever received from his practice. The good physician is always generous. A
-mean-souled man cannot become a successful practitioner. His success with
-his patients depends as much, or more, upon the kindly influences that
-beam from his eye, that flow from his soul, as upon the medicine that he
-deals out from his "saddle-bags."
-
-Generosity and kindness are innate to the man. They require little
-cultivation.
-
-The following amusing anecdote from "Every Saturday," I have reason to
-believe, has reference to one of our best physicians, who is also a man of
-letters, and illustrates my assertion:--
-
-
-"INNATE GENEROSITY."
-
-"One hot August afternoon a gentleman, whose name attached to a check
-would be more valuable to the reader than if written here, was standing in
-front of the Revere House, waiting for a Washington Street car. He was a
-slim, venerable gentleman, with long white hair, and a certain dignity
-about him which we suppose comes of always having a handsome balance in
-the bank, for we never knew a poor man to have this particular air. It was
-a sultry afternoon, and the millionaire, standing on the curb-stone in the
-shade, had removed his hat, and was cooling his forehead with his
-handkerchief, like any common person, when the Cambridge horse-car stopped
-at the crossing at his feet. From this car hastily descended a well-known
-man of letters, whose pre-occupied expression showed at once that he was
-wrestling with an insubordinate hexameter, or laying out the points of a
-new lecture. Suddenly he found himself face to face with a white-haired
-old man, dejectedly holding a hat in one hand. As quick as thought the
-poet--to whom neither old age nor young appeals in vain--thrust his hand
-into his vest pocket, and, dropping a handful of nickel and fractional
-currency into the extended hat, passed on. The millionaire gazed aghast
-into the hat for an instant, and then inverted it spasmodically, allowing
-the money to drop into the gutter, much to the amusement of a gentleman
-and a tooth-pick on the steps of the Revere House, and very much more to
-the amusement of another party, who chanced to know that the supposed
-mendicant and the man of letters had been on terms of personal intimacy
-these twenty years."
-
-
-A CURB-STONE MONEY-MANIAC.
-
-A man may possess large acquisitiveness and benevolence at the same time,
-like Sir Astley Cooper, and succeed both pecuniarily and professionally.
-Such are, however, scarce. Those with an excess of the grasping principle
-in their composition illustrate the truth that "where the treasure is the
-heart will be also." Asleep or awake, drunk or sober, such men never lose
-sight of the almighty dollar. The annexed story, though irreverent to the
-doctors, is not irrelevant to the case:--
-
-During the late "panic," a fellow, whose prominent feature was in his
-Jewish nose, which presented the sign of acquisitiveness by the bridge
-widening on to the cheeks above the _alae_,--all men noted for accumulating
-have this sign, hung out by nature as a warning to the unwary,--was making
-a great noise, as he clung to a friendly lamp-post, to which he was
-arguing the state of the money market. "Come, sir, you are making too much
-noise," said a policeman.
-
-[Illustration: CAPTURE OF A WALL STREET BULL.]
-
-"Me? No, 'tain't me that's--hic--making the noise; it's the bulls--the
-bulls, sir; them's what's making all the noise," replied the fellow,
-skewing first one side of the post, then the other, trying to get a view
-of his new intruder.
-
-"You are tight, sir--tight as a peep," continued the watchman.
-
-"Me tight? No, sir; it's the money-market what's--ti--tight," replied the
-gentlemanly dressed individual, though much the worse for bad whiskey. "Go
-down Wall Street, and Fisk and Vanderbuilt--all of 'em--will tell you so.
-Everybody says money is--hic--tight. I never was more loose in
-my--hic--life;" and he demonstrated the assertion by swinging very loosely
-around the lamp-post, and falling down.
-
-"There, you are down. Too drunk to stand up;" and the policeman helped him
-to his feet again, and walked him along towards the station.
-
-"No, sir. There you are wrong again; it's stocks that's down. It's the
-stockholders--hic--that's staggering along; they've fallen and skinned
-their noses on the curb-stone of adversity. There! don't you see
-them--crawling along?"
-
-"O, you've got the tremens. Come on," exclaimed the policeman.
-
-"Me? No; it's the shorts and bears what's got the dol--hic--lar--tremens.
-I've caught the pan--hics--panics, sir; that's all."
-
-The policeman thrust the money-maniac into a cell, and the last seen of
-him he leaned back against the wall, his feet braced out, while, hatless
-and the knot of his cravat round under his left ear, he stood arguing the
-money-market with an imaginary broker on the opposite side of his cell.
-
-
-AN "EYE-OPENER."
-
-"How much do you charge, sir?" asked a poor farmer, from Framingham, of a
-city doctor, who had just wiped a bit of dust from the eye of his son.
-
-"Twenty-five dollars, if you please," was the modest reply.
-
-"I cannot pay it, sir," said the poor man. "It only took you a half
-minute. Our doctor was not at home; but I didn't think you would charge me
-much, sir."
-
-So the M. D. very benevolently (?) accepted ten dollars--all the poor man
-had.
-
-Can you wonder, after reading this statement, the truth of which is easily
-avouched for, that this doctor owns a whole block--stores, hotel--and is
-immensely rich?
-
-From the English book "About Doctors," here are three anecdotes:--
-
-Radcliffe, the humbug, with a great effort at generosity, had refused his
-fees for visiting a poor friend a whole year. On making a final visit, the
-gentleman said, presenting a purse,--
-
-"Doctor, here I have put aside a fee for every day's visit. Let not your
-goodness get the better of your judgment. Take your money."
-
-The doctor took a look, resolved to carry out his attempt at benevolence,
-just touched the purse to restore it to his friend, when he heard "the
-chink of gold" within, and--put it into his pocket, saying,--
-
-"Singly, I could have refused the fees for a twelvemonth, but
-collectively, they are irresistible. Good day, sir;" and the greedy doctor
-walked away with a heavier pocket and a lighter heart than he came with.
-
-On visiting a nobleman, Sir Richard Jebb was paid in hand three guineas
-when he, by right, expected five. The doctor purposely dropped the three
-gold pieces on the carpet, when the nobleman directed the servant to find
-and restore them; but Sir Richard still continued the search after
-receiving the three coins.
-
-"Are they not all found?" inquired the nobleman, looking about.
-
-"No, there must be two more on the carpet, as I have only three restored,"
-replied the wily doctor.
-
-His lordship took the hint, and said, "Never mind; here are two others."
-
-[Illustration: DEATH'S FEE.]
-
-This sticking for a fee was all cast into the shade by the act of an
-"eminent physician of Bristol." The doctor, entering the bedroom
-immediately after the death of his patient, found the right hand clinched
-tightly, and, pulling open the fingers of the dead man, the doctor
-discovered that the hand contained a guinea.
-
-"Ah!" exclaimed the doctor to the servant and friends around him, "this
-was doubtless intended for me;" and so saying he pocketed the coin.
-
-  "Three hungry travellers found a bag of gold.
-  One ran into the town where bread was sold.
-  He thought, 'I will poison the bread I buy,
-  And seize the treasure when my comrades die.'
-  But they, too, thought, when back his feet have hied,
-  We will destroy him, and the gold divide.
-  They killed him, and, partaking of the bread,
-  In a few moments all were lying dead.
-  O world, behold what ill thy goods have done!
-  Thy gold thus poisoned two and murdered one."
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-XVII.
-
-LOVE AND LOVERS.
-
-    "No task is harder than that of writing to the ideas of
-    another."--JOHNSON.
-
-    _Duke._ "If ever thou shalt love,
-            In the sweet pangs of it, remember me;
-            For such as I am all true lovers are;
-            Unstaid and skittish in all things else,
-            Save in the constant image of the creature
-            That is beloved....
-            My life upon it, young as thou art, thine eye
-            Hath stayed upon some face that it loves;
-            Hath it not, boy?"
-
-    XANTIPPE, BEFORE JEALOUSY.--A FIRST LOVE--BLASTED HOPES.--A DOCTOR'S
-    STORY.--THE FLIGHT FROM "THE HOUNDS OF THE LAW."--THE EXILE AND
-    RETURN.--DISGUISED AS A PEDDLER.--ESCAPES WITH HIS LOVE.--ENGLISH
-    BEAUS.--YOUNG COQUETTES.--A GAY AND DANGEROUS BEAU.--HANDSOME
-    BEAUS.--LEAP YEAR.--AN OLD BEAU.--BEAUTY NOT ALL-POTENT.--OFFENDED
-    ROYALTY.--YOUTH AND AGE.--A STABLE BOY.--POET-DOCTOR.
-
-
-An old lady once said, "I've hearn say that doctors either are, or are
-not, great experts in love affairs; I've forgotten which." Just so!
-
-"I would not be a doctor's wife for the world," I have heard many a lady
-affirm. True; for few doctors have had the misfortune (or folly) to select
-a jealous woman for a life companion.
-
-Socrates, the great philosopher, and physician of the mind, seems to have
-had the ugliest tempered woman in the world, whose very name, _Xantippe_,
-has passed into a proverb for a scolding wife; yet she was not jealous of
-her spouse, but was said to have sincerely loved him; and he bore her
-outbursts of temper only as a great philosopher could, which seemed not to
-have disturbed the equanimity of his living nor the humor of his dying.
-
-"Crito,"--these were his last words,--"Crito, forget not the cock that I
-promised to Esculapius!"
-
-Alas! an affecting satire on philosophy and physic.
-
-[Illustration: MY FIRST LOVE.]
-
-No; we find no cases to record of the jealousies of physicians, or their
-wives. All the jealousies of the former are spent on their professional
-brethren.
-
-It is a philosophical fact that physicians, of all men, seldom are
-involved in disgrace, quarrels, or litigations on account of love affairs.
-Yet they have affections, like other men, and above all men know how to
-appreciate affection and virtue in woman.
-
-
-FIRST LOVE--BLASTED HOPES.
-
-I know of a little episode in the early life of a doctor, whose name
-modesty forbids me to mention. Let me briefly state it in the first
-person.
-
-  Ah, friend, if you and I should meet
-    Beneath the boughs of the bending lime,
-  And you in the same low voice repeat
-    The tender words of the old love-rhyme,
-    It could not bring back the same old time--
-                  No, never.
-
-I was young when I first fell in love,--not above six years of age; but
-love is without reason, blind to age. The object of my first affection was
-my school-_mischief_, as I then called her, who was about twenty. The
-disparagement of years never entered my innocent noddle. I used to start
-for school a half hour before nine, and stop on the way at the squire's
-house, where Miss ---- boarded. O, with what joy I always met her! In
-summer she gave me roses from the beautiful great white rose-bushes in the
-squire's front yard; in autumn and winter, splendid red and green apples,
-from the orchard and cellar, and candy and kisses at all times. So I fell
-desperately in love with her.
-
-I was greatly shocked, and not a little piqued, when one day she, in cold
-blood, bade me good by, and went away with a tall man, with shocking red
-whiskers. That is all I remember about him. I, however, mourned her loss
-for years, although my appetite remained unimpaired--my parents said.
-
-  "Like a still serpent, basking in the sun,
-    With subtle eyes, and back of russet gold,
-  Her gentle tones and quiet sweetness won
-    A coil upon her victims: fold on fold
-  She wove around them with her graceful wiles,
-  Till, serpent-like, she stung amid her smiles."
-
-The next time I saw her was about ten years afterwards. O, with what
-pleasant anticipations I hastened to her house! I remembered her every
-look--her fair, intelligent face; her wavy black hair; her heavenly
-dark-blue eyes. O, I should know her anywhere! Her I never could forget.
-
-[Illustration: TEN YEARS LATER.]
-
-With these thoughts I confidently knocked at the door. "Is Miss ---- at
-home?" I inquired of the--servant, I supposed, who opened the door. Just
-then three or four dirty-looking little children ran screaming after the
-woman, calling out, "Marm, marm!"
-
-"Hush, children, hush!" said the female, and, turning again to me, said,--
-
-"Whom did you inquire for?" pushing back one of the red-headed urchins.
-
-"Miss Mary ----, ma'am," I answered. "She once lived at Blue Hill."
-
-She gave a sickly-looking smile. She looked sick before; her cheeks all
-fallen in; her skimmed-milk colored eyes had a weary, anxious expression;
-and her thin, bony hands, resting on the door-latch, looked like a
-consumptive's, as she said,--
-
-"When did you know her?"
-
-"O, but a few years ago, ma'am. Is she here? Does she live in _this
-house_?" I eagerly inquired.
-
-"Well," she replied, with another more sepulchral smile,
-
-"I was once Miss Mary ----. I married Mr. ---- ----, over ten years ago.
-My baby, here,"--presenting the second in size of the children to my view,
-a reddish-brown haired girl, quite unlike any one I had ever seen before,
-and wiping its nose with her calico apron,--"she is named for me, Mary
-----. Won't you come in, sir?"
-
-No, I thought I would not stop. I didn't stop till I reached the hotel,
-where I had begged the stage-driver to wait for me but a half hour before,
-while I called upon the lovely Miss Mary ----.
-
-  "O, sunny dreams of childhood,
-    How soon they pass away!
-  Like flowers within the wild wood,
-    They perish and decay."
-
-
-A HANDY DOCTOR.
-
-A young physician was supposed to be "keepin' company" with a young lady.
-The matronly friend of the latter, having praised the young man from all
-points of view, returned one day from the death-bed of a friend, at which
-the physician had been present. She eulogized the living fully as much as
-the dead man, and finally turning to the girl, as if she had reached the
-_ne plus ultra_ of enthusiasm, she said, "Jane, he's the handsomest man I
-ever see fixin' round a corpse."
-
-
-A DOCTOR'S STORY.
-
-The writer is acquainted with a young physician, who read medicine with an
-old doctor, named Gitchel, or Twichel, of Portland, and commenced practice
-in his native village,--a great mistake for any practitioner to make,--and
-where he met with consequences natural to even a prophet, opposition and
-scandal. By some mistake, or, as his opponents charged, mal-practice, he
-lost a patient. Being, a few days later, in a shop in the next village, he
-was secretly informed that the "hounds of the law were after him--even at
-the next door, that very moment." Terrified beyond necessity, he caught up
-his medicine chest, and, climbing out of the back window, fled to the
-woods. In the village, at home, he had courted a lovely young girl, with
-whom he had exchanged vows. She knew the talk that was going on
-respecting the young doctor, but she believed it not, or, believing,
-clung the firmer to her pledges.
-
-[Illustration: FLIGHT OF THE DOCTOR.]
-
-"After night fell I left the woods, and took to the highway. To go home I
-was afraid. O, had I but braved the doctors, and defied the lawyers, all
-would have been well," he told me afterwards. "But I had received such ill
-treatment, been scandalized so severely, that I was cowed to the earth. I
-knew not if my life, my Angie, had also turned against me, when the news
-was spread that I had tacitly admitted my crime by fleeing.
-
-"I went to W., hundreds of miles away. I took a new name, and put out my
-shingle. I was at once patronized, and soon extensively; but I was morose
-and unhappy. I was offered a home and a wife. I had as good as a wife away
-in my far-off home; I was bound to her, and I _loved_ her as I _hated my
-own soul_! I dared not write to her, nor go to her. 'O, my God, what shall
-I do?' I cried, in my misery. He did not hear me, and I came to believe
-that _He was not_!
-
-"Thus a whole year wore away, and I had not heard from home. Finally, I
-determined to make an attempt to see my Angie. I had, after going to W.,
-allowed my heavy beard to go uncropped, which I had never done at home. I
-wore no clothes that I brought away with me from home. I purchased a few
-knickknacks, put on a slouched hat, and appeared in my native village as a
-peddler. Unless my voice betrayed me, I had no fears of detection. To
-prevent this mishap I kept a silver coin in my mouth when talking.
-
-"I had called at several houses, but could learn nothing of my betrothed,
-without fear of exciting suspicion by too close inquiries. I therefore,
-unable longer to stand the suspense, entered her father's house. She and
-her mother only were at home. I could scarcely suppress my feelings as I
-beheld her, the idol of my heart. When I spoke, she started to her feet,
-and with staring countenance gazed fixedly upon me. Then she fell back
-into her chair.
-
-[Illustration: FLIGHT OF THE LOVERS.]
-
-[Illustration: THE LOVER AS A PEDDLER.]
-
-"My God, she did not know me.
-
-"The mother noticed how pale the girl looked, and proposed to get her a
-drink of water from the porch.
-
-"'No, no, I am not faint.'
-
-"'Yes, yes,' I articulated, with the coin in my mouth; 'get her some
-water.'
-
-"Away went the old lady, and, dropping my basket and spitting out the
-coin, I cried, 'Angie, Angie, bless you, my darling,' and fell kneeling at
-her feet.
-
-"'O, Charley, it is you,--the Lord be praised!--come at last.'
-
-"I sprang to my feet. There was time to say no more. The mother returned
-and looked wistfully about.
-
-"'I thought I heard some one saying, "Charley, Charley,"' she said,
-presenting the water to Angie, who was now flushed and excited. I was
-searching for my coin.
-
-"'O, the water is warm. Mother, dear, do go to the well in the yard, and
-get some fresh; and look to see if there is anybody outside calling.' And
-away went the old lady.
-
-"'Now, Charley, what brought you back? And why did you stay? And--'
-
-"'Wait, wait. Number nine boots brought me. I've come for you, Angie.'
-
-"'You will be arrested if you are seen here, I am afraid,' she said.
-
-"'Then meet me to-night at ---- Crossing, and fly with me.'
-
-"I then told her how I had lived, how I had suffered, and how much I loved
-her; and she consented to marry me, and secretly go away with me. But the
-difficulty now lay in getting a lawful man to marry us. The license could
-be bought; I was certain of that. So I went away and obtained it. I next
-hired a horse and carriage, and paid for it in advance, to go twelve
-miles.
-
-"'Aren't you Charley ----?' asked the stable man, eying me sharply, as I
-was about to drive away to get Angie, that night.
-
-"'Take this,'--and I gave him a gold piece,--'and ask no questions, nor
-answer any, till you see your horse and carriage safely back,' was my
-reply.
-
-"As we drove out of the village, I heard wagon wheels far behind us.
-Reaching the woods, I drove into a wood road, and the 'hounds of the ----
-doctors' rode fiercely past. Angie trembled for my safety. I reached a
-cross road. The moon shone quite brightly, and, jumping from the buggy, I
-soon found, by the fresh track, which road they had taken. I took a
-different. So I reached a train that night, and rode till morning; arrived
-at W. the next, and was married."
-
-It was at W. that I found him first. He was smart. He had a good memory.
-He was a handsome man, full six feet in his stockings. In all, his address
-was not excelled by any physician with whom I have ever met. He is now an
-excellent physician and surgeon, in a large city, in good practice. When
-he returned on a visit to his native village, as he did last year, the
-affair had blown over; for after a man is honored abroad, he may become so
-at home,--seldom before. I wish him happiness and prosperity.
-
-"There is no greater rogue than he who marries only for money; no greater
-fool than he who marries only for love. I could marry any lady I like, if
-I would only take the trouble," Dr. Macilvain heard an old fellow say. Of
-course, nobody but a conceited old bachelor would have said that, who
-needs a woman to just take some of the self-conceit out of him.
-
-
-ENGLISH DOCTORS AS BEAUS.
-
-Some of the old English doctors were gay fellows amongst the ladies,
-according to the best authorities. Nevertheless, few men have arrived at
-eminence in the medical profession who were known to be afflicted with an
-overplus of romantic or sentimental qualities in their composition.
-
-It may be interesting, particularly to ladies, to know that the majority
-of those physicians who have arrived at the dignity of knighthood owe
-their elevation rather to the smiles of love than the rewards of
-professional efforts. "Considering the opportunities that medical men have
-for pressing a suit in love, and the many temptations to gentle emotion
-that they experience in the aspect of female suffering, and the confiding
-gratitude of their fair patients, it is to be wondered at that only one
-medical duke is to be found in the annals of the peerage." But the
-physician usually has quite sufficient self-control and honor about him,
-not only to keep his own tender sensibilities in subjection, but often to
-check those of his grateful and emotional female patient.
-
-Thackeray has said that "girls of rank make love in the nursery, and
-practise the arts of coquetry upon the page boy who brings up the coals
-and kindlings."
-
-In this connection Mr. Jeaffreson, whose narratives have the virtue of
-being true as well as interesting, says, "I could point to a fair matron
-who now enjoys rank and wealth among the highest, who not only aimed
-tender glances, and sighed amorously upon a young, waxen-faced, blue-eyed
-apothecary, but even went so far as to write him a letter proposing an
-elopement, and other merry arrangements, in which a 'carriage and four,'
-to speed them over the country, bore a conspicuous part."
-
-The "silly maiden" had, like Dinah, a "fortune in silver and gold," of
-about two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and her tall, blue-eyed
-Adonis, to whom she made this _almost_ resistless proposal, was twice her
-age. But he was a gentleman of honor, and, being in the confidence of the
-family, he generously, without divulging the mad proposition of the fair
-young lady, induced the father to take her to the continent, for a
-twelvemonth's change of air and scenery.
-
-"What a cold-blooded wretch!" will some fair reader exclaim.
-
-"What a fool he was, to be sure!" says the bachelor fortune-seeker.
-
-Well, she didn't die for her first unrequited love, but married a "very
-great man," and became the mother of several children. And this is the way
-the fair heroine of this little story avenged herself upon this "Joseph
-amongst doctors."
-
-Very recently she manifested her good will to the man who had offered her
-what is generally regarded as the greatest insult a woman can experience,
-by procuring a commission in the army for his eldest son.
-
-It is interesting to note the various qualities which have attracted the
-attention, or love, of different sons of AEsculapius to female beauties.
-Sometimes it has been her hair, the "pride of a woman," that was the point
-of attraction, as it was with Dr. Mead, "whose highest delight was to comb
-the luxuriant tresses of the lady on whom he lavished his affections;" or
-the "eyes of heavenly blue," like the lady love's of Dr. Elliot, senior;
-or the tiny footprint in the sand, like that which first attracted Dr.
-Robert Ames to the woman of his choice. What the point of attraction was
-in the man is not easily ascertained.
-
-A gay and dangerous beau among the "high ladies" was Dr. Hugh Smithson,
-the father of James Smithson (his illegitimate son), the founder of the
-"Smithsonian Institution" at Washington. Sir Hugh's forte lay in his
-remarkably handsome person, said to be only second to Sir Astley Cooper in
-beauty of form and features. However, he had the address which secured to
-him one of the handsomest and proudest heiresses of England, and this is
-how he accomplished it.
-
-He was but the grandson of a Yorkshire baronet, "with no prospects," and
-was apprenticed to an apothecary, and for a long time paid court to mortar
-and pestle at Hutton Garden. The story runs, that the handsome doctor had
-been mittened by a "belle of private rank and modest wealth," and that
-the only child and heiress of Seymour, Duke of Somerset, and an
-acquaintance of Sir Hugh's, heard of his rejection, when she publicly
-observed that "the beauty who had disdained such a man was guilty of a
-folly that no other woman in England would have been."
-
-Sir Hugh would have been unwise not to have taken this broad hint, and he
-did what none of the heiress's suitors, even of high rank, had yet aspired
-to,--proposed, and was accepted. Sixteen years later he was created Duke
-of Northumberland, and could well afford to laugh in his sleeve at the
-proposition that "his coronet should be surrounded with _senna_ leaves,
-instead of strawberry," since he had reached a rank that no other M. D.
-had previously done, and possessed the "_loveliest woman in England_," and
-a great fortune, to boot.
-
-Lord Glenbervie, who from the druggist's counter reached the peerage, was
-taunted by Sheridan with his plebeian origin, from which a patrician wife
-had redeemed him, in the following amusing verse:--
-
-  "Glenbervie, Glenbervie!
-  What's good for the scurvy?
-    But why is the doctor forgot?
-  In his arms he should quarter
-  A pestle and mortar,
-    For his crest an immense gallipot."
-
-Sir John Elliot was another handsome doctor of that period, who,
-notwithstanding his being disliked by King George, could, with small
-effort and large impudence, "capture the hearts of half the prettiest
-women amongst the king's subjects, and then shrug his shoulders with
-chagrin at his success." "One lady, the daughter of a nobleman, ignorant
-that he was otherwise occupied, made him an offer, and on learning, to her
-surprise and mortification, that he was already married, vowed she would
-not rest till she had assassinated his wife."
-
-Dr. Arbuthnot, whose courtly address, sparkling wit, ready flow of
-language, innate cordiality, and polished manners made him a great
-favorite about London, was one of the finest looking gentlemen of his
-time. The doctor was contemporary with Dean Swift, with whom he used to
-enjoy flirtations with the queen's maids of honor about St. James.
-
-"Arm in arm with the dean, he used to peer about St. James, jesting,
-laughing, causing matronly dowagers to smile at 'that dear Mr. Dean,' and
-young girls, out for their first season at court, green and
-unsophisticated, to blush with annoyance at his coarse, shameless
-badinage,--bowing to this great man, from whom he hoped for countenance;
-staring insolently at that one, from whom he expected nothing; quoting
-Martial to the prelate, who could not understand Latin; whispering French
-to a youthful diplomatist, who knew no tongue but English; and continually
-angling for the bishopric, which he never got."
-
-From flattering court beauties, Arbuthnot became flatterer to the gouty,
-hypochondriacal old queen. But wine and women made sad havoc with poor
-Arbuthnot, who died in very straitened circumstances.
-
-Dr. Mead, before mentioned, was twice married. He was fifty-one years old
-when married the second time, to a baronet's daughter. Fortunate beyond
-fortunate men, he had the great _mis_-fortune of outliving his usefulness.
-His sight failed, and his powers underwent that gradual decay which is the
-saddest of all possible conclusions to a vigorous and dignified existence.
-Even his valets domineered over him. Long before this his second
-childhood, he excited the ridicule of the town by his vanity and absurd
-pretensions as a "lady-killer."
-
-"The extravagances of his amorous senility were not only whispered about,
-but some contemptible fellow seized upon the unpleasant rumors, and
-published them in a scandalous novelette, wherein the doctor was
-represented as a 'Cornuter of seventy-five,' when, to please the damsel
-who 'warmed his aged heart,'--she was a blacksmith's daughter,--the
-doctor, long past threescore and ten, went to Paris, and learned to
-dance."
-
-[Illustration: AN AGED PUPIL.]
-
-Dr. Richard Mead died aged eighty-one. The sale of his library, pictures,
-and statues brought the heirs eighty thousand dollars. His other effects
-amounted to one hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars.
-
-Another Dr. Mead, uncle to the above, lived to the age of one hundred and
-forty-nine years. Both of these physicians were remarkable for their
-kindness and liberality. The latter left five pounds a year to the poor,
-to continue forever.
-
-
-BEAUTY NOT POTENT WITH LADIES.
-
-A handsome person is not alone requisite to win the affections of a
-sensible lady. Radcliffe, who was as great a humbug in affairs matrimonial
-as in all other matters, was represented as being "handsome and imposing
-in person;" but his overbearing manner, and his coarse flings at the
-softer sex, made him anything but a favorite with the ladies. While he
-professed to be a misogynist, he made several unsuccessful attempts,
-particularly late in life, to commit himself to matrimony.
-
-A lady, with "a singing noise in her head," asked what she should do for
-it. "Curl your hair at night with a ballad," was the coarse reply.
-
-Once, when sitting over a bottle of wine at a public house, Queen Anne
-sent her servant for Dr. Radcliffe to hasten to her Royal Highness, who
-was taken suddenly ill with what was vulgarly called "the blue devils," to
-which gormandizers are subject, but more properly termed indigestion.
-"When the wine is in, the wits are out," was readily demonstrated in this
-case; for, on a second messenger arriving from the queen for her physician
-to make all haste, Radcliffe banged his fist down on the board, at which
-other physicians also sat, and exclaimed,--
-
-"Go tell her Royal Highness that she has nothing but the vapors."
-
-When, on the following morning, the process being reversed,--the "wine was
-out, and wits were in"--the doctor presented himself, with pomp and a show
-of dignity, at St. James', judge of his mortification, when the
-chamberlain stopped him in the anteroom, and informed him that he was
-already succeeded by Dr. Gibbons.
-
-The queen never forgave him for saying she had the "vapors." Radcliffe
-never forgave Dr. Gibbons for superseding him. "Nurse Gibbons," he would
-bitterly exclaim, "is only fit to look after nervous women, who only fancy
-sickness."
-
-When the doctor was forty-three years of age, he made love to a lady of
-half his years, and followed with an offer of marriage, which was
-accepted. As the fact became public, the doctor was warmly congratulated
-upon his good fortune, for the lady was not only young, but was a beauty,
-and an heiress to seventy-five thousand dollars.
-
-The wedding day was set, which was to crown Radcliffe's happiness, when a
-little drawback arose, which was not previously mentioned in the bills.
-The peculiar condition of the beauty's health rendered it expedient that,
-instead of the doctor, she should marry her father's book-keeper.
-
-The doctor's acetous temper towards the fair sex was not lessened by this
-mishap, nor were the ladies backward in giving him an occasional reminder
-of the fact. Nevertheless, unlike the burnt child, that avoided the fire,
-Radcliffe, sixteen years afterwards, made a second conspicuous throw of
-the dice. He was then about sixty. He came out with a new and elegant
-equipage, employed the most fashionable tailors, hatters, and wig-makers,
-"who arrayed him in the newest modes of foppery, which threw all London
-into fits of laughter, while he paid his addresses, with the greatest
-possible publicity, to a lady who possessed every requisite charm,--youth,
-beauty, and wealth,--except a tenderness for her aged suitor.
-
-"Behold, love has taken the place of avarice [the affair was thus aired in
-a public print]; "or, rather, is become avarice of another kind, which
-still urges him to pursue what he does not want. But behold the
-metamorphosis! The anxious, mean cares of a usurer are turned into the
-languishments and complaints of a lover. 'Behold,' says the aged
-AEsculapian, 'I submit; I own, great Love, thy empire. Pity, Hebe, the fop
-you have made. What have I to do with gilding but on pills? Yet, O Fate,
-for thee I sit amidst a crowd of painted deities on my chariot, buttoned
-in gold, clasped in gold, without having any value for that beloved
-metal, but as it adorns the hat, person, and laces of the dying lover. I
-ask not to live, O Hebe! Give me gentle death. Euthanasia, Euthanasia!
-That is all I implore.'
-
-"O Wealth, how impotent art thou, and how little dost thou supply us with
-real happiness, when the usurer himself cannot forget thee for the love of
-what is foreign to his felicity, as thou art!"
-
-Although Radcliffe denied his own sisters during his life, "lest they
-should show their affection for him by dipping their hands in his
-pockets," some stories of his benevolence are told, one of which is, that
-finding one Dr. James Drake, when "each had done the utmost to injure the
-other," broken down and in distressed circumstances, he sent by a lady
-fifty guineas to his unfortunate enemy, saying,--
-
-"Let him by no means learn who sent it. He is a gentleman who has often
-done his best to hurt me, and would by no means accept a benefit from one
-whom he had striven to make an enemy."
-
-
-A STABLE-BOY, POET, AND DOCTOR.
-
-Poor George Crabbe, the poet-doctor-apothecary, had a very hard time in
-this cold, unappreciative world, until Love smiled upon his unhappy lot.
-He was born in the old sea-side town of Aldoborough, where his father was
-salt inspector,--not an over-lucrative office in those days. George was
-the eldest of a numerous family.
-
-From the common school he went to apprenticeship with a rough old country
-doctor, who lodged him with the stable-boy. From this indignity he was,
-however, soon released, and went to live with a kind gentleman, a surgeon
-of Woodbridge. Here he began to write poetry. Here, also, he became
-acquainted with a young surgeon, named Leavett, who introduced Crabbe to a
-lovely young lady, with whom he fell desperately in love.
-
-This inestimable young lady resided at Parham Lodge with her uncle, John
-Tovell, yeoman, and her name was Sarah Elmy. Mr. Tovell possessed an
-estate worth four thousand dollars per annum, and, without assuming any
-"airs," was a first-class "yeoman" of that period--"one that already began
-to be styled, by courtesy, an esquire."
-
-"On Crabbe's first introduction to Parham Lodge, he was received with
-cordiality; but when it became known that he had fallen in love with the
-squire's niece, it was only natural that his presumption should at first
-meet with the disapproval of Mrs. Tovell and the squire."
-
-[Illustration: BIRTHPLACE OF GEORGE CRABBE.]
-
-After closing his term of apprenticeship with Dr. Page, young Crabbe
-returned to his native village, where he furnished a little shop with "a
-pound's worth of drugs," and an array of empty bottles, and set himself up
-as an apothecary. His few patients were only amongst the poorer class of
-the town. Although he had plighted troth with the lovely Sarah at Parham
-Lodge, with starvation staring him in the face at Aldoborough, and the
-opposition of the lady's family at the Lodge, there was little prospect
-of bettering his condition in life. The temporary military appointments
-which he received brought him no nearer his desired object. The lady
-remained true to her vows; and long after his friend Leavett had quitted
-the shores of time, and his new and true friend Burke had extended to the
-promising author his patronage, she received the reward for her faithful
-waiting.
-
-The union of Crabbe with Miss Elmy conferred eventually upon the poet,
-doctor, and apothecary, the possession of the estate of "yeoman"
-Tovell--Parham Lodge. A maiden sister of the squire's, dying, left him a
-considerable sum of money. The loving, waiting Sarah proved a faithful,
-though some might say a somewhat domineering, wife, as the following
-quotation intimates:--
-
-"I can screw Crabbe up or down, just like an old fiddle," this amiable
-woman was wont to say; and throughout her life she amply demonstrated the
-assertion.
-
-"But her last will and testament was a handsome apology for all her past
-little tiffs."
-
-
-THE RIGHT MAN.
-
-A curious story is told, and vouched for, respecting the manner in which
-Dr. and Rev. Thomas Dawson obtained a rich and pious wife. This gentleman
-combined the two professions of preacher and doctor. If, during divine
-services, he was called upon to prescribe for an invalid, he wound up his
-sermon, requested his audience to pray for the sick, and repaired
-forthwith to administer to the body. I presume the congregation to whom
-the reasonable request was made did not take it in the same light as did
-an "M. D." of whom we heard, who made a point to be called out of church
-every Sabbath.
-
-Once the minister, who had a bit of humor in his manner, stopped on a
-certain occasion in his "thirdly," and said, "Dr. B. is wanted to attend
-upon Mr. ----, and may the Lord have mercy upon him."
-
-The doctor was so enraged at this "insinuation" that he called upon the
-parson, and demanded an "apology to the congregation, before whom he felt
-he had been grossly slandered."
-
-The parson agreed to this proposal, and in the afternoon he arose and
-said,--
-
-"As Dr. B. feels aggrieved at my remark of this morning, and demands an
-apology, I hereby offer the same; and as that was the first case, I trust
-it may be the last in which I am ever called upon in his behalf to
-supplicate divine intervention."
-
-But to return to Dr. Dawson. Amongst his patients was a Miss Mary Corbett,
-said to be one of the wealthiest and most pious of his flock, whom, on his
-calling upon her one day, he found bending in reverence over the Bible.
-
-The doctor approached, and as she raised her eyes to his she held her
-finger upon the passage which occupied her immediate attention. The doctor
-bent down and read the words at which her finger pointed--"Thou art the
-man."
-
-The doctor was not slow to take the hint. Thus he obtained a pious wife,
-she a devout husband.--_See "Book About Doctors."_
-
-A great deal has been reported respecting the "off-hand" manner in which
-Abernethy "popped the question" to Miss Anne Threlfall. The fact of the
-case is given by Dr. Macilwain. The lady was visiting at a place where the
-doctor was attending a patient--of all places the best to learn the true
-merits of a lady. He was at once interested in her, and ere long there
-seemed a tacit understanding between them. "The doctor was shy and
-sensitive; which was the real Rubicon he felt a difficulty in passing; and
-this was the method he adopted: he wrote her a brief note, pleading
-professional occupation, etc., and requesting the lady to take a
-fortnight in which to consider her reply." From these facts a great
-falsehood has oft been repeated how he "couldn't afford time to make
-love," etc., and that she must decide to marry him in a week, or not at
-all.
-
-He was married to her January 9, 1800, and attended lectures the same day.
-
-[Illustration: "POPPING THE QUESTION."]
-
-"Many years after, I met him coming out of the hospital, and said,--
-
-"'You are looking very gay to-day, sir.'
-
-"'Yes,' he replied, looking at his white vest and smart attire, 'one of
-the girls was married this morning.'
-
-"'Indeed, sir? You should have given yourself a holiday on such an
-occasion, and not come down to lecture.'
-
-"'Nay,' he replied, 'egad, I came down to lecture the same day I was
-married myself.'"--_Memoirs of Abernethy._
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-XVIII.
-
-MIND AND MATTER.
-
-    "The evidence of sense is the first and highest kind of evidence of
-    which human nature is capable."--WILKINS.
-
-    "They choose darkness rather than light because their deeds are
-    evil."--SCRIPTURE.
-
-    IN WHICH ANIMAL MAGNETISM, MESMERISM, AND CLAIRVOYANCE ARE
-    EXPLAINED.--"THE IGNORANT MONOPOLY."--YET ROOM FOR DISCOVERIES.--A
-    "GASSY" SUBJECT.--DRS. CHAPIN AND BEECHER.--HE "CAN'T SEE IT."--THE
-    ROYAL TOUCH.--GASSNER.--"THE DEVIL KNOWS LATIN."--ROYALTY IN THE
-    SHADE.--THE IRISH PROPHET; HE VISITS LONDON.--A COMICAL
-    CROWD.--MESMERISM.--A FUNNY BED-FELLOW.--CLAIRVOYANCE.--THE GATES OF
-    MOSCOW.--THE DOCTOR OF ANTWERP.--THE OLD LADY IN THE
-    POKE-BONNET.--VISIT TO A CLAIRVOYANT.--"FORETELLING" THE PAST.--THE
-    OLD WOMAN OF THE PENOBSCOT MOUNTAINS.--A SECRET KEPT.--CUI
-    BONO?--VISITS TO SEVENTEEN CLAIRVOYANTS.--A BON-TON CLAIRVOYANT.--A
-    BOUNCER.--RIDICULOSITY.
-
-
-Mind and matter!
-
-What is the connection?
-
-Why does one's yawning set a whole room full to yawning?
-
-What is the unseen power, appropriated mostly by the ignorant, which at
-times controls another weaker mind, or, for the time being, controls
-disease? The majority of medical men "get around" this question by denying
-the whole proposition. But that does not satisfy the jury--the people. The
-great community know that there is some unseen power, which is partially
-developed in certain persons, which has great controlling influence over
-certain other persons; hence over their diseases, especially mental or
-nervous diseases.
-
-I hope to be able to explain something of this "phenomenon."
-
-Those who practise it know nothing of its _modus operandi_, any more than
-the bird that sings on yonder willow knows of the science of music.
-
-To the common suggestion, "It's spirits," I say, No, _no_!
-
-If it were "spirits," why does the spirit always seek a _low organization_
-through which to manifest itself? There are few exceptions to this rule.
-
-It is unnatural, inconsistent with the divine attributes for the
-supernatural to mingle with the natural. The circulation of the blood was
-once attributed to the action of the sun--hence a man fell asleep at
-sunset--and to supernatural causes.
-
-Science has done away with these absurd notions.
-
-"It is a manifestation of divine power," say others.
-
-Well, for that matter, everything is; but _directly_ it is not, for what
-answers the "spirit" suggestion answers this one also. Divine power cannot
-be limited.
-
-For want of a better name, let us call this power "animal magnetism."
-
-The man who controls the mind of another, or another's disease, through
-his mind, must possess the following requisites: First, health; second,
-will; third, faith that he can control the subject. No _reasoning_ is
-necessary. The less causality he possesses, the better. The less reasoning
-faculties, the better he can perform.
-
-Why?
-
-Animal magnetism is an animal power--not a spiritual. All the animal
-qualities--organs--are located in the back and lower part of the brain.
-They act independent of reason. Passions have no reason. The affections
-have no reason. Anger and hate have none. The force, driving power of
-man is centred back of the ears. The cerebellum, or lower brain, acts
-independent of reason. Birds, and most of the animals, possess all the
-qualities that the cerebellum of man contains.
-
-The upper brain--the cerebrum--is the instrument of our thoughts--our
-reason. In sleep, it is still; its action is suspended. Hence there is no
-reason in our dreams. The motive power is in the lower brain; hence
-somnambulism. If there is anything of a "trance" nature, it means shutting
-off the action of the cerebrum, and concentring the power in the
-cerebellum. Some persons have but little upper brain. If they have the
-other requisites, they may become good clairvoyants, or magnetizers,
-according to the manner in which they exercise the animal power.
-
-I have yet to find a professional clairvoyant with large or active
-reasoning (intellectual) qualities.
-
-
-YET ROOM FOR MORE DISCOVERIES.
-
-The _living_ blood has not yet been analyzed. It contains a vitalizing
-element which chemistry has not yet been adequate to detect. There is yet
-as much to be discovered in the science of life as has already been
-revealed to man. It will yet be found out.
-
-How is the power, or force, conveyed from the operator to the person
-operated upon? Through what medium does it act?
-
-Let us begin with the brain. Let us take a ball of cotton for our
-illustration. We draw out a piece from it, and spin it out to our fancy.
-It is a thread, but _cotton_ still, twisted to a fine string. The brain is
-located at the top of man. By means of fine threads, called nerves, the
-brain is distributed over the entire body, so completely that you cannot
-stick a pin in the flesh without touching a nerve, wounding the brain.
-Suspend the entire action of the brain, as by ether, chloroform, or
-nitrous oxygen gas, and sticking the pin is not felt. Partially suspend
-the action, as by a small quantity of the nitrous oxygen gas, and the
-force of the brain (or active force) is centred upon the lower brain, and
-the man under its influence acts out his animal nature in spite of reason.
-
-A man, I hold, who magnetizes or mesmerizes another, uses only the force
-of the lower brain. Like begets like. He cannot affect a person of large
-intellectual organs; only one with the animal organs active.
-
-You cannot _see_ the gas, yet it affects the person. You cannot see the
-subtile power conveyed from one man to a weaker. He conveys it by
-touch--nerve to nerve. I believe science will yet discover just what this
-subtile agent is--both in the blood and nerves; for it is in both, or why
-does the suspension of it in one destroy the other? Destroy the nerve, and
-the corresponding blood-vessel is inactive. Destroy the blood-vessel, and
-the corresponding nerve suffers.
-
-It is the power that the mother exercises to hush her sobbing babe to
-slumber. As the child gathers strength of mind, she loses that control. A
-person may be used as a mesmeric subject until he becomes a mere idiotic
-machine. Educate a clairvoyant doctor, and what becomes of his clairvoyant
-power? It is lost with the increase of intellectual power. Now, is this a
-"divine" quality, that only ignorance can make use of? Is it really
-"hidden from the wise and prudent, and given to babes?" All sciences were
-practised by the uneducated first, before being reduced to a _science_. I
-think this will be yet reduced to a useful science. As it now stands, it
-is useless. If it is a spirit power, the spirits are mighty silent as to
-the fact.
-
-We come into this world by natural causes. We live, grow, exist, and we
-die by natural causes. We brought no knowledge with us; we carry none out.
-All the qualities yet developed in man are natural, and adapted to this
-life. Millions upon millions have so lived and so died, and a spirit
-power in _this_ world is no nearer to being established than it was when
-Adam was a little boy. All that heretofore has been attributed to spirit,
-or supernatural causes, has been proven to be but natural. I claim that
-magnetism and the undiscovered sciences are natural, and have no
-connection with the next world, to which we tend. The human eye, to some
-extent, is magnetic. A blind man cannot thrill an audience; hardly can an
-orator with glasses over his eyes. Dr. Chapin approaches the nearest to
-it. Dr. Beecher's great magnetic power is in his eyes, and is also let off
-at the ends of his fingers. But to _thoroughly_ magnetize a person, he
-must be _touched_.
-
-
-POWER OF THE HUMAN EYE.
-
-A wild animal has only small reasoning organs. The influence of the human
-eye is potent over him. Lichtenstein says, "The African hunters avail
-themselves of the circumstance that the lion does not attempt to spring
-upon his prey until he has measured the ground, and has reached the
-distance of ten or twelve paces, when he lies crouching on the ground,
-gathering himself up for the effort. The hunters," he says, "make it a
-rule never to fire on the lion until he lies down at this short distance,
-so that they can aim directly at his head with the most perfect certainty.
-If one meets a lion, his only safety is to stand still, though the animal
-crouches to make his spring; that spring will not be hazarded if the man
-remain motionless, and look him steadfastly in the eyes. The animal
-hesitates, rises, slowly retreats some steps, looks earnestly about him,
-lies down, again retreats, till, getting by degrees quite out of the magic
-circle of man's influence, he takes flight in the utmost haste."
-
-It is said of Valentine Greatrakes, the great magnetizer and forerunner of
-Mesmer, that the glance of his eye had a marvellously fascinating
-influence upon people of a susceptible or nervous organization. All
-magnetizers, etc., who have tried their powers upon the writer, first
-bent a sharp, scrutinizing gaze upon the eye of their unruly subject. Yet
-they have exercised no _reason_ in selecting the subject.
-
-[Illustration: THE LION MAGNETIZED.]
-
-I attended the exhibitions of Professor Cadwell, night after night, in
-Boston. I went on the stage. I examined the subjects whom he controlled
-"like an old fiddle," and, physiognomically and phrenologically, not one
-of them was above mediocrity intellectually, and the most of them were far
-below. The best subjects had the least intellectuality. His control over
-them was astonishing. In some he could suspend the power of memory, others
-all the reasoning faculties. Some he could control muscularly, some
-mentally.
-
-"This is a hot stove," he said, setting an empty chair before the row of
-men, boys, and girls sitting along the wall side of the stage. "_It is
-very hot_;" and they began drawing back--all but one. "Don't you see the
-stove, and feel the awful heat, Frank?" he asked of one hard subject.
-
-[Illustration: A HARD SUBJECT.]
-
-"I can feel the heat, but I can't see the stove in that chair," was his
-droll reply.
-
-The professor could make this gentleman forget his name, but could not
-make him believe that "a silk hat was a basin of water."
-
-
-THE ROYAL TOUCH.
-
-The old ignorant kings and queens were said to remove the scrofula (king's
-evil) by the touch. Gouty old Queen Anne was the last to exercise the
-royal prerogative to any extent.
-
-A scrofulous _development_ is the result of imperfect action, and
-obstruction of some one or more of the five excretory organs of the human
-system. These are the skin (or glands of the same), the lungs, the liver,
-the kidneys, and the colon. The most that the regular physician does in
-scrofula (or one who is not a specialist in this branch of physic) is to
-attend to the general health of the patient of a scrofulous diathesis,
-build up the strength, and endeavor to increase the vitality. This _in a
-measure_ tends to reduce the scrofulous development. Now, will not a child
-sleeping continually with an aged person or invalid tend to reduce the
-vitality of the child? Yes, it absorbs the disease of the one, while the
-vitality is thrown off for the benefit of the weaker person. Here, you
-see, one person may partake of the vitality of another by touch. Then may
-not the continued touch of a healthy person (king or subject) affect the
-health of a weaker, on the principle of increased vitality?
-
-But it really removes no cause, hence cannot take the place of an
-alterative, or anti-scrofulous medicine. The "crew of wretched souls" who
-waited the king's touch really believed that he "solicits Heaven." Hence
-the cure. The coin which he hung about the neck of these "strangely
-visited people, all swollen and ulcerous, pitiful to the eye," called
-their attention continually to "the healing benediction."
-
-Pyrrhus, who was placed upon the throne by force of arms B. C. 306, was
-said to cure the "evil" by the "grace of God." Valentine, who only held
-his throne--A. D. 375--by the help of Theodosius, not by the "grace of
-God"--claimed to cure scrofula by the latter power, as did Valentine II.,
-whose wicked temper ended his life in a "fit of passion."
-
-The subject of the following sketch claimed also divine power:--
-
-
-HERR GASSNER. "THE DEVIL UNDERSTANDS LATIN."
-
-It seems from the following truthful account of Herr Gassner, a clergyman
-at Elwangen, that the devil can understand Latin, as well as "quote
-Scripture." About the year 1758 this clergyman became so celebrated in
-curing diseases by animal magnetism, that the people came flocking from
-Switzerland, the Tyrol, and Swabia, in great numbers, to be cured of
-all sorts of ailments, a thousand persons arriving at a time, who had to
-lodge in tents, as the town could not lodge them all.
-
-[Illustration: GASSNER HEALING "BY THE GRACE OF GOD."]
-
-His _modus operandi_ was as follows. Dressed in a long scarlet cloak, a
-silken sash about his loins, a chain about his neck, and wearing, or
-holding in one hand, a crucifix, and touching with the other the diseased
-part, and in the Latin tongue commanding the disease, or the evil spirit,
-whichever the case was termed, to depart, in the name of Jesus Christ, the
-patient was usually healed. Dr. Schlisel says, that Gassner "spoke chiefly
-in Latin, in his operations, and the devil is said to have understood him
-perfectly."
-
-The Austrian government gave him its assistance. The excitement became
-great. Elwangen was overcrowded by people, rich and poor. Riches flowed
-into the coffers of its trades-people, though Gassner took nothing
-directly for his cures. Hundreds of patients arrived daily; the apothecary
-gained a great revenue from dispensing simples ordered by Gassner,
-principally powder of _blessed thistle_, oils, and washes. The printers
-labored day and night at their presses in order to furnish sufficient
-pamphlets, prayers, pictures, etc., for the eager horde of admirers. The
-goldsmiths were crowded, also, to furnish all kinds of _Agni Dei_,
-crosses, charms, hearts, and rings. Even the beggars had their harvest, as
-well as bakers, hotel-keepers, and the rest.
-
-During seven years he carried on his public cures. Hundreds of physicians
-went to see him. Mesmer, in answer to the inquiry of the Elector of
-Bavaria, declared his astonishing cures were produced merely by the
-exercise of magnetic spiritual excitement, of which he himself (claiming
-no God-like power) gave to the elector convincing proofs on the spot.
-
-On the contrary, Gassner claimed that he could heal none unless they
-exercised faith. His surroundings, trappings, dress, crucifixes, appeals
-to Jesus Christ, and Latin mummery, had the effect to impress the patient
-with faith in Gassner's Christ-like powers.
-
-"Some," says Dr. Schlisel, "described him as a prophetic and holy man;
-others accused him of being a fantastic fellow, an impostor, and leagued
-with the devil. Some accused him of dealing in the black art; others
-attributed his cures to the magnet, to electricity, to sympathy, to
-imagination; and some attributed the whole to the omnipotent power of the
-name of Christ."
-
-Having touched or rubbed the affected part of the patient, Gassner, in a
-"loud, proud voice," commanded the disease to come forth, or to manifest
-itself. Sometimes he had to repeat this command ten times. Then, when the
-part was presented, he seized it with both hands; he inspired the patient
-to himself repel the disease, by saying, "Depart from me, in the name of
-Jesus Christ."
-
-"He then gave the patient his blessing by spreading his cloak over the
-head, grasping his neck or head in both hands, repeating a silent, earnest
-prayer, making the sign of the cross, ordering some simple from the
-apothecary's, which he consecrates, compels the patient to wash his hands
-clean, when he is permitted to 'depart in peace.'
-
-"Most diseases he cured instantly. Some required months, and others he
-could not affect in the least."
-
-There is but one philosophical way to account for these cures. To say
-there is nothing in it, or, "It is all humbug," will not satisfy the
-people. To affirm it is the arts of the devil is merely nonsensical. It is
-_influence_. Of what? Of one powerful mind over another. And when Gassner
-found a mind equally as powerful as his own, the disease refused to
-depart. There you have the whole of it, "in a nutshell,"--the exercising
-of one mind over another; and mind (not unusually) controls matter in the
-living body.
-
-For about seven years Gassner was a public healer, and then he suddenly
-and forever disappeared.
-
-
-ROYALTY IN THE SHADE.
-
-Sir John Fortesque, the learned legal writer of the time of Edward IV.,
-spoke of the gift of healing by touch as a "time immemorial privilege of
-the kings of England." He very seriously attributed the virtue to the
-unction imparted to the hands in the coronation. Elizabeth was not
-superior to this superstition, and she frequently appeared before the
-people in the character of a miraculous healer. There was formerly a
-regular office in the English Book of Common Prayer for the performance of
-this ceremony. The curious reader is referred to Macbeth, Scene III. of
-Act IV. for further particulars.
-
-With the rise of Valentine Greatrakes, the "royal prerogative" received a
-staggering blow. The marvellous cures of this man, living in Ireland,
-reached England, and the king invited him to come to London; and along his
-journey, whither he was preceded by the returning messenger, we are told
-that the magistrates of the towns and cities waited upon Valentine, and
-begged him to remain and heal their sick.
-
-On his arrival, the king, "though not fully persuaded of his wonderful
-gift, recommended him to the care of his physician, and permitted him to
-practise his power as much as he pleased in London."
-
-Greatrakes had no medical education, nor claimed aught beyond a gift of
-healing most diseases by "stroking the parts with his hand." He is
-described as being a man of "commanding address, frank and pleasing,
-having a brilliant eye, gallant bearing, fine figure, and a remarkably
-handsome face. With a hearty and musical voice, and a natural stock of
-high _animal_ spirits, he was the delight of all festive assemblies. Yet
-he was a devout man."
-
-Daily there assembled a great number of people, invalids from all parts of
-the kingdom, to be healed, and to see the wonderful miracles performed by
-a _man_! Here congregated the dropsical, those afflicted by unsightly
-sores, tumors, and swellings, the lame, the halt, and the blind. "Some he
-could not affect, but the most of them he cured." The only visible means
-he took was to stroke, or at times violently rub, the part affected. Lord
-Conway wrote in his praise, but added, "After all, I am far from thinking
-his cures miraculous. I believe it is by a _sanative virtue_ and a
-_natural efficiency_, which extend not to all diseases." The Viscountess
-Conway was afflicted by an inveterate headache, which he could not remove.
-This lady was a positive character. The failure was attributed to the
-_peculiar_ disease, when it should have been assigned to the peculiarity
-of the person. Sir Evremond, then at court, wrote a sarcastic novel on the
-subject of "The Irish Prophet." The Royal Society held a meeting on the
-subject, and, unable to refute the facts of his cures, accounted for them
-as being "produced by a sanative contagion in Mr. Greatrakes' body, which
-had an antipathy to some peculiar diseases, and not to others." They
-demanded (particularly Dr. Loyd, in a "severe pamphlet") how he cured, and
-why he cured some, and could not others. Greatrakes replied that he was
-not able to tell. And "let them," he said, "tell me what substance that is
-which removes and goes out with such expedition, and it will be more easy
-to resolve their questions."
-
-To the scandalous reports respecting his operations upon female patients,
-without referring directly to such report, he says, attributing the
-diseases to evil spirits, "which kind of pains cannot endure my hand, nay,
-not with gloves, but fly immediately, though six or eight coats or cloaks
-be between the person and my hand, as at the Lady Ranelagh's," etc.
-
-The clergy had previously taken alarm, and cited Valentine before the
-Bishop's Court to account for his proceedings, and when he took a
-scriptural view of his cures, he was forbidden to practise more; which was
-as preposterous as the decree of Louis XIV., which commanded that no more
-miracles should be performed at the tomb of the Abbe Paris.
-
-Neither the clergy nor the faculty could prevent him, and daily the crowd
-of representatives of heterogeneous diseases made pilgrimages to the
-Squire of Affam. The scene was said to be ludicrously painful. They came
-in crowds from everywhere; on foot and in carriages; the young and the
-aged; some hobbling upon crutches, others literally crawling along; the
-blind carrying the cripple upon his back, while the latter directed the
-way, and the deaf and dumb followed in their wake.
-
-[Illustration: NO LACK OF PATIENTS.]
-
-While the lord mayor and the chief justice, with great physicians, were
-among his vehement supporters of the sterner sex, the majority of his real
-admirers were the ladies. The lovely Countess of Devonshire entertained
-him in her palace, and other high ladies lionized him nightly in their
-parlors, where he "performed his pleasant operations, with wonderful
-results, on the prettiest and most hysterical ladies present." "But his
-triumph was of short duration. His professions were made the butts of
-ridicule, to which his presence of mind and volubility were unable to
-effectually respond. His tone of conversation was represented by his
-enemies as compounded of the blasphemy of the religious enthusiast and the
-obscene profligate. His boast that he never received a fee for remedial
-services was met by a square contradiction, and a statement that he
-received five hundred dollars at once." Finally, the tide of opposition
-and slander became too strong for him, and he returned to his native land,
-and to oblivion.
-
-We are indebted to several authorities for the foregoing sketch of
-Greatrakes, particularly Chambers' Miscellany, Lord Conway, E. Rich, and
-Jeaffreson.
-
-
-MESMERISM.
-
-Frederick Anthony Mesmer, to whose name the above _ism_ is affixed, was
-born in Werseburg, in 1734. He neither discovered, developed, nor
-understood anything of the art which has immortalized him. He was a
-designing, audacious man. If Gassner, Prince Hohenloe, and Greatrakes were
-falsely accused of dealing with the devil, Mesmer was truly leagued with a
-Father Hell. Father Hell was professor of astronomy at Vienna, where
-Mesmer obtained a medical diploma, and where he was connected at first
-with Maximilian Hell in magnetic instruments. Having a falling out with
-the latter, Mesmer resorted to the arts of his great predecessor,
-Greatrakes, but professed to cure, without the help of God or man, all
-curable diseases. He produced marvellous effects (but only temporary,
-however) in both Vienna and Paris, to which latter place he repaired to
-practise animal magnetism.
-
-Among the little episodes relative to his treatment is one of Madame
-Campan, a lady of the royal household, author of "Memoires de Marie
-Antoinette." The husband of this celebrated lady sent for Dr. Mesmer--for
-all Paris was running mad after him--to cure him of lung fever. He came
-with great pomp, and having timed the pulse, and made certain inquiries
-respecting the case, he gravely informed the husband and wife that it was
-not in the way of magnetism, and the only mode of cure lay in the
-following: "You must lay by his side"--for he was confined to his
-bed--"one of three things, an old empty bottle, a black hen, or a young
-woman of brown complexion."
-
-[Illustration: "A BOTTLE, A HEN, OR A WOMAN."]
-
-"'Sir,' exclaimed the wife, 'let us try the empty bottle first.'
-
-"The bottle was tried, with what result is easily imagined. Monsieur
-Campan grew worse. Improving the opportunity of the lady's absence, Mesmer
-bled and blistered the patient, who recovered.
-
-"Imagine the lady's astonishment when Mesmer asked for and actually
-obtained a written certificate of cure by magnetism" (Mesmerism).
-
-This is more easily believed when one learns that Mesmer obtained his
-degree on an address, or thesis, relating to "planetary influence on the
-human body," and that afterwards, in answer to the inquiry by a learned
-Paris physician, who asked him why he ordered his patients to bathe in the
-Seine, instead of spring water, as the waters of the Seine were always
-dirty, Mesmer replied,--
-
-"Why, my dear doctor, the cause of the water which is exposed to the sun's
-rays being superior to all other water is, that it is magnetized by the
-sun. I myself magnetized the sun some twenty years ago."
-
-All that sort of fellows have ever a short course. Mesmer reached his
-zenith in Paris about the year 1784, when, for one year's practice, he
-received the enormous sum of four hundred thousand francs. The government,
-at the instigation of Count Maurepas, had previously offered him an
-annuity of twenty thousand francs, with ten thousand francs additional, to
-support a college hospital, if he would remain and practise only in
-France. "One unpleasant condition was attached to this offer, which
-prevented its acceptance; viz., three nominees of the crown were to watch
-the proceedings."
-
-The government appointed a commission, consisting of Dr. Guillotin, and
-three other physicians, and five members of the Academy,--Franklin,
-Bailly, Borey, Leroi, and Lavoisier,--to examine the means employed by
-Mesmer. The result of the investigation--the discovery of his battery,
-which he termed the _baquet_, around which his patients assembled, and his
-windy pretensions to the self-possession of some animal magnetism beyond
-even his disciples, Bergasse and Deslon--was unfavorable to the truth of
-animal magnetism and morality, and the enthusiasm in his favor rapidly
-subsided. Mesmer soon found it convenient to repair to London. Here he
-made no great impression; his day had gone by.
-
-He died in his native town, in all but penury and obscurity, in 1815.
-
-Clairvoyance now made its appearance, which was but a different phase of
-magnetism, and Mesmerism was soon but indifferently practised in France.
-In England the faculty entirely ignored it.
-
-
-CLAIRVOYANCE.
-
-What is it? The word is French, meaning, literally, clear-sightedness. It
-is a power attributed to certain persons, or claimed by certain persons,
-of seeing things not visible to the eye, or things at a distance. It is
-the action of mind over mind,--the seeing, mentally, of one mind through
-another.
-
-By personal experiment with clairvoyants, I am positively convinced that
-they follow the mind (thoughts) of the subject or patient. I have laid out
-my programme before visiting one, and the operator, whether pretending or
-not to a "trance" state, has followed that course to the end, but usually
-adding something which was conjectural. Practice helps them very much. But
-the most of those persons, male and female, who proclaim themselves
-clairvoyants, are humbugs and impostors.
-
-Let any clear-headed man, who has good intellectual qualities, go to a
-good clairvoyant, and try the above plan. Think out just the places and
-persons you wish the clairvoyant (or spiritualist, if he or she choose to
-call themselves such) to bring up. Stick firmly to your text, and the
-operator will follow it, if he or she is a clairvoyant. They can tell you
-nothing that you do not already know. If they go beyond that, it is
-guessed at.
-
-No person of large causality can be a clairvoyant. The moment they employ
-cause and effect, they are lost in doubt. How else can you account for
-nearly all the professional clairvoyants (and spiritualists) being persons
-of low intellectuality? Of course they deny this; but a fact is a fact,
-and _it can't be rubbed out_!
-
-There is a magnetizing feature in clairvoyance. The operator can make some
-persons _think_ they see a thing, when it is an impossibility to see it.
-This influence is sometimes passed from one person to another
-imperceptibly.
-
-When the earthquake shook up the minds of the Bostonians, in 1870, there
-was one grand illustration of this fact. A gentleman standing in front of
-the Old State House, on Washington Street, soon after the shock, asserted
-that the earthquake had started a stone in the front end of the Sears
-Building.
-
-"There! don't you see it?" he exclaimed to the people on the sidewalk, who
-are always ready to stop and look at any new or curious object, as he
-pointed towards an imaginary crack in the marble. "It is just above the
-corner of that window there"--pointing--"a crack in the stone a foot
-long."
-
-"O, yes, I see it," said one and another; and the gentleman moved on,
-leaving the gaping crowd to gaze after the imaginary rent in the wall.
-
-"Where is it?" inquired a new comer.
-
-"Right up there over the door," replied one.
-
-"No, over that third window," said another.
-
-Some "saw it," and others didn't "see it," but all day long the tide of
-curious humans ebbed and flowed. At eight o'clock in the morning I took a
-look--not at the broken stone in the marble front, but at the magnetized
-crowd looking upon an imaginary break. People with large causality looked,
-exclaimed, "Pooh!" and went on. The credulous stood gazing, and pointing
-out the rent to the "blind ones, who wouldn't see," hour after hour. At
-noon I again visited the scene. The crowd had shifted, but the same class,
-male and female, stood gazing at the "calico building," and the same sort
-of people "saw the crack over the window."
-
-[Illustration: EFFECTS OF AN EARTHQUAKE.]
-
-[Illustration: A BELIEVER SEES HIS GRANDMOTHER.]
-
-At six P. M., I again visited the Old State House, and at dusk still
-again, to behold the crowd straining to get a last look at the rent before
-darkness shut out the view. On the following day, the scene was repeated,
-with no mitigation. The fact of the papers denying that there was any rent
-went for nothing. The crowd came and went, from morning till evening.
-
-
-THE GATES OF MOSCOW.
-
-Some readers may remember the story of the great Wizard of the North, who
-performed such marvellous feats before the czar, receiving from his
-highness a splendid present in money, and finally wound up by announcing
-that he would leave the city of Moscow on the following day, at twelve M.,
-_by all the gates of the city at the same time_!
-
-The watchmen were doubled at all the gates, to whom a description of the
-man was sent, and a sharp lookout was commanded, when, lo! just at noon
-the wizard was seen leaving the city at each separate outlet at the same
-moment. Of course he could not have left by but one gate, but which of the
-twelve no one could tell, for he was seen at all, or the watchmen were
-made to believe that they saw him, as he passed out. To this the watchmen
-of the several gates testified, and that he uncovered his head to them, as
-he went past.
-
-At which gate did he really make his exit? The beautiful gate Spass
-Voratu, or Gate of the Redeemer, has over the archway a picture of the
-Saviour. All who pass out here are compelled to uncover. Hence it is my
-belief, as he was seen uncovered, that this was the gate at which he
-really went out, and at all the rest the watchmen imagined they saw the
-wizard make his marvellous exit from Moscow.
-
-
-THE DOCTOR OF ANTWERP.
-
-Townsend, on Mesmerism, tells an instructing and amusing anecdote of a
-test, by a learned doctor of Antwerp, upon a clairvoyant girl. The doctor
-was allowed, at a seance, to select his own test, when he said,--
-
-"If the somnambulist"--that was what he termed her--"tells me what is in
-my pocket, I will believe." Then to her he put the question,--
-
-"What is in my pocket?"
-
-"A case of lancets," was the reply.
-
-"True," said the doctor, somewhat startled. "But the young lady may know
-that I am a medical man; hence her guess that I carry a case of
-instruments in my pocket. But if she will tell me the number of lancets in
-the case, I will believe."
-
-"Ten," was the correct answer.
-
-Still the doctor was sceptical, and said,--
-
-"I cannot yet believe but if the form of the case is described I must
-yield to conviction." And the form of the case was given.
-
-"This certainly is very singular," said the doctor, "but still I cannot
-believe. Now, if the young lady will give the color of the velvet lining
-of the case, I really _must_ believe."
-
-"The color is dark blue," was her prompt reply.
-
-"True, true!" said the puzzled doctor, and he went away, saying, "It is
-very curious, very, but still I cannot believe."
-
-Now, if the doctor had not known that the case was in his pocket, or no
-one present had known beforehand, no clairvoyant could have described it.
-What does this prove? That her mind was led by his inquiry to his mind,
-thence to the article on his mind at the moment. "This is a book" I say.
-The fact of my saying it, or thinking it, leads my mind to the book.
-
-As a person may look towards an object, as out of the window towards a
-tree, and not see it till his mind is directed to it, so, on the other
-hand, he may have his mind (thoughts) directed to a thing that his eyes
-cannot see, and in a person whose superior brain is susceptible, it maybe
-reflected so vividly as to permit a description of the object.
-
-One may walk over a stream, upon stones, or ground, and not realize the
-fact till the mind is directed to it; and the thing may be reversed, and a
-susceptible person may be led to think that he or she is walking over or
-through water when none is present. The mind must be directed to an object
-in order to see it mentally.
-
-A gentleman recently told me that a "medium brought up his old
-grandmother."
-
-"How did she describe the old lady as appearing?" I asked.
-
-"In woollen dress and poke bonnet, with specs on, just as she used to
-appear when I was a boy, forty years ago."
-
-"I should have thought the fashions would have changed in the unseen
-world, even if the clothes had not worn out in forty years' service," I
-suggested.
-
-This slightly staggered him, but he replied, "Perhaps fashions do not
-change in the spirit-world."
-
-"Then ladies can never be happy there. Besides, what a jolly, comical set
-they must be down there; the newer fashions appearing hourly in beautiful
-contrast with the ancient styles; especially the janty, little, precious
-morsels called hats of to-day, all covered with magnificent ribbons, and
-flowers, and laces, in contrast with the great ark-like, sombre poke
-bonnets of forty and a hundred years ago!"
-
-"Sir," I said, when he did not reply to this last poser,--"Sir, bring your
-stock of common sense to bear upon the matter, and see that the mind of
-the medium controlled yours, and led you to believe you saw, as the medium
-did, through your thoughts, your ancient grandmother; for how else would
-you imagine her, but as you remembered her, in woollen gown, poke bonnet,
-and spectacles."
-
-
-VISITS TO A CLAIRVOYANT.
-
-Twenty-five years ago, I visited Madam Young, in Ellsworth, Me.
-
-"You are going a journey," she soon said, after I was seated, and she had
-examined my "bumps" to learn that I was a rolling stone. "You are going
-south-west from here." "Marvellous!" one might say, who had little
-reflective qualities of brain, for that was the very thing I was about to
-do. But from Ellsworth, Maine, which way else could one go, without going
-"south-west," unless he really went to the "jumping-off place, away down
-east?"
-
-Again I visited her in Charleston, S. C.
-
-"You are going a journey soon," she informed me.
-
-"Which way?" I amusingly inquired.
-
-"Towards the north," was the necessary reply.
-
-Charleston is at the extremity of a neck of land. I was not expected to
-jump off into the bay, by going southward, and her answer was the only
-rational one. She would minutely describe any person, "good, bad, or
-indifferent," whom I would fix my mind upon. I was suffering at the time
-with bronchitis, which she correctly stated. She was the best clairvoyant
-I have ever tested. She died at Hartford, in 1862.
-
-The following item of the press does not refer to Madam Young:--
-
-A clairvoyant doctor of Hartford proclaims his superiority over other
-seers on the ground that he "foretells the past and present as well as the
-future." We should say he would probably "foretell" them much better. As
-the Irishman said, one gets on better when one goes backward or stands
-still.
-
-I noticed his advertisement in a Providence paper, recently, where "Dr.
----- foretold the past, present, and future."
-
-
-A NIGHT IN THE PENOBSCOT MOUNTAINS.
-
-At Castine I heard of an old lady residing high up in the Penobscot
-mountains, who could magnetize a sore or a painful limb at sight. Such
-marvellous stories were told of her "charming," that I decided to go over
-the mountain and see her. She was not a "professional," however, and
-objected to being made too public. Therefore I made an excuse for calling
-at the house "on my way afoot across the country," and was cordially
-received by the family, of whom there were four generations residing under
-one roof. The house was a story and half brown cottage, large on the
-ground, and surrounded by numerous out-houses and barns. The view from the
-western slope of the mountain where she lived was most magnificent. I
-reached the farm before sunset. Here I lingered to overlook the beautiful
-Penobscot as it flowed at my feet, and the far-off islands of the sea.
-Here one could "gaze and never tire," out over the grand old forests, down
-to the sea-side, and upon countless little white specks, the whitened
-sails of the fishermen and coasting vessels, with an occasional ship or
-steamboat flitting up and down the noble Penobscot river and bay. Still
-above me the eagle built her nest in the rocking pines, on the mountain
-top, and still far below sung the nightingale and wheeled the hungry
-osprey in his belated piscatorial occupations.
-
-The sun sank behind the western hills, tinging the soft, fleecy clouds
-with its golden glory. Slowly changing from purple and gold to faint
-yellow, to dark blue, the clouds gradually assumed the night hue, and
-sombre shadows crept adown the western mountains' sides, flinging their
-dark mantle over the waters, from shore to shore. The sturdy farmer has
-shouldered his scythe, and reluctantly he leaves the half-mown lot to seek
-his evening repast at the family table. Then he discovers me, leaning over
-the gate-bar, rapt in dreamy forgetfulness, and with a hearty salutation
-extends to me the hospitality, so proverbially cordial, of the old New
-England farmer. He shows me his pigs in the pen, and his "stock" in the
-barn-yard, and reaching the house, he calls "mother," who, appearing in
-calico and homespun, though with a cheerful and smiling face, is
-introduced to me as his wife. "A stranger, belated, and I guess pretty
-tired-like, climbing up here; and I won't take no excuses from him; so he
-stays with us to-night."
-
-[Illustration: THE CHARMER DIVULGES HER SECRET.]
-
-I talk with the lady, I play with the babies, I even toy with Towser and
-Tabby, till tea is set. Now I am introduced to the old lady. I thought I
-would get to it at last. She was seventy odd years of age, a deaf, but
-devout old lady, who was easily wheedled into divulging to me her secret
-of "charming." She told me she had the "rheumatiz," and by my tender
-sympathies and a roll of plaster for her lame back, I got into her own
-room before bed-time. O, but I came out soon after! She was very deaf.
-
-"You see," said she, "a woman can't learn it to another woman--only to a
-male. He must be a _good_ man." I nodded assent. "Yes; well, you must have
-faith." Again I nodded--she was very deaf. "You must touch the painful
-part and say--" Here she bent down her lips to my ear and whispered
-something in seven words which she said I must never tell, and she
-compelled me to promise never to divulge the secret while I lived, under
-pain of God's great displeasure.
-
-Perhaps I had better keep my promise, though the good old lady has long
-since "gone to her reward."
-
-
-CUI BONO?
-
-The question is repeated every time there is a great robbery or a murder
-committed,--
-
-"Why do not the clairvoyants tell who has committed this crime?"
-
-Simply because those who consult them do not know. If a person knew where
-the stolen property was secreted, and he consulted a true clairvoyant, he
-or she _might_ describe the property and the place where it is secreted.
-Not otherwise. The same with the murderer. Therefore, of what good is it?
-
-In order to do justice to this subject, to present and explain it in all
-its various phases, we would require a volume, instead of the space
-allotted in this chapter. But whatever name one may apply to it,--animal
-magnetism, Mesmerism, clairvoyance, spiritual or trance mediumship,--its
-success depends mostly upon the credulity of the person.
-
-During the five days preceding May 15, 1869, a reporter of the Boston Post
-visited seventeen of these clairvoyants, mediums, etc., and some curious
-facts and startling contradictions were revealed therein.
-
-"Putting it together," he says, "and carefully epitomizing the amount of
-fortune that we have in this way been able to purchase, we present our
-readers with the following balance sheet:" and this, he says, is from the
-"most experienced and trustworthy fortune-tellers in the good city of
-Boston, where everything like _humbug_ is most scrupulously avoided.
-
-"Four times we have been told that we were engaged in no business at all,
-and as many more that our affairs and prospects were never more
-flourishing. Repeatedly we have been told that we should speedily change
-our business and abode. On the other hand, we were destined to be a
-fixture in Boston, and were so well satisfied with our present calling
-that we should never change. We are not married, but a great many pretty
-maidens stood ready to help us out of that difficulty." Again, "we were
-married, and the father of several roguish boys and bright-eyed girls.
-Thus far in life we had enjoyed good health, were free from all
-infirmities, and stood a good chance to reach fourscore and ten."
-
-"In less than twenty-four hours this sweet hope was buried, and we were
-advised that death would overtake us suddenly and soon."
-
-There are various grades of clairvoyants, as of everything else. Here is
-one class.
-
-"After ascending a rickety, dirty, greasy stairway, you find the madam
-quartered in a small, square bedroom, poorly and miserably furnished. The
-room is dirty, dark, and dingy. Portions of the walls are covered with a
-cheap and quaint paper, patched, here and there, with some of another
-figure and quality. Pictures of a cheap class are hanging on two sides of
-the room,--of Columbus, Webster, and three or four love and courtship
-scenes in France and Germany. The furniture consists of a cheap bed, a
-dilapidated parlor cooking-stove, a small pine table, three common chairs,
-and a rocking-chair, cane-bottomed, a big box, covered with a remnant of
-the national flag, and a few cheap mantel ornaments.
-
-"The madam is a woman under thirty, very stoutly built, weighs one hundred
-and sixty pounds, has quite fair complexion, with pretty blue eyes, light
-hair, and withal not bad-looking. She was attired in a loose and rather
-soiled calico dress, wore no ornaments, and looked rather uninviting."
-
-
-A BON TON CLAIRVOYANT.
-
-The writer visited a special seance at one of the most aristocratic and
-_recherche_ abodes of the marvellous in this city, not long since. I was
-ushered into the brilliantly lighted hall by a janty-looking little biddy
-in white and embroidered apron. That was all I saw of her, as she
-disappeared and was substituted by the lady of the house, the medium. She
-was a pretty, pleasant little lady, with brilliant, dancing, light eyes,
-hair golden brown, and was dressed in a black silk dress, with blue
-overskirt, a rich lace collar, and flowing sleeves of the same material.
-
-Depositing hat, coat, and cane on the hall rack, I was introduced to the
-assembled guests in the great parlors. These rooms were united by a wide,
-open archway, were high, and brilliantly lighted by rich chandeliers in
-each room. An elegant piano occupied the west side of the front parlor,
-upon which was a pile of the latest music. The furniture was of black
-walnut, and richly upholstered in green and gold rep. The mantel was
-adorned with vases of porcelain, images of marble and terra-cotta, and
-little knickknacks of foreign production. The walls were hung with a few
-of Prang's chromos, oil paintings, and two "spirit" photographs. The most
-beautiful, as well as the most remarkable, feature of the rooms was the
-magnificent bouquets of native hot-house flowers, which covered the two
-marble-topped centre-tables and sideboard. These were presents to the
-spirits! They did not take them away; the only one I saw removed was
-knocked over by a careless elbow. I regret to add, that there was no
-"manifestation," nor anything revealed, worth recording.
-
-
-A BOUNCER.
-
-A scene that occurred at another place where I previously visited may be
-considered worthy of notice. I clambered two flights of stairs, and found
-myself face to face with a very large woman, answering to the alias of
-Madam ----. She was very fleshy, weighing probably two hundred and
-thirty-five pounds avoirdupois. Her face was pleasant, and conversation
-easy. I handing over the required "picture paper," she tumbled into a
-great easy-chair, and, without any pretence to a trance, began,--
-
-[Illustration: "I PERCEIVE YOU ARE IN LOVE."]
-
-"I perceive that you are in love." This was startling news to a bachelor.
-"There are two pretty females, one dark-complexioned, the other light."
-(This is the usual "dodge," for, if there is a woman in the question, one
-of the two is bound to answer this general description.) "Which shall we
-follow?" she very teasingly inquired.
-
-"Either that comes handiest," was my indifferent reply.
-
-"Well, the dark one, then. She is tall, fair, and is looking anxiously for
-you to propose. Do you know a lady of this description whom you like?" I
-regretted that I did not. My "notion" ran to small ladies, of the opposite
-complexion. "Well," she said, not the least flurried, "here is one of that
-kind." I instantly placed my mind on one of this class,--my sister,--and
-she ran on. "She is soon to meet you. She is very rich." (Nellie will be
-glad to learn this.) "And I perceive a short-like man looking after her
-fortune. But have no concern; she loves you fondly, and you will marry her
-very soon. You are going a voyage, or across some water." (How far can one
-travel, in this country, without crossing water?) "You will meet an enemy,
-who will try to injure you in business."
-
-"What business?" I inquired.
-
-"You are a--yes--mechanic, though your hand is soft. I reckon you've been
-sick. Yes--machinist; make coffee-mills. Yes" (looking sharply into my
-face). (I was _leading her_!) "Corn poppers are in your line." (I nodded,
-and smiled, for how could I refrain from smiling?) "You trade in tin and
-earthen ware--chamber ware--spoons--and old boots." (True.) "You own a
-splendid house in the city--a large block"-(head).
-
-"Where was I born? Can you see?"
-
-"Yes; you were reared in the country; where there were deep, dark
-woods--all woods; in a log house, with thatched roof, and clay and stick
-chimney. A pig--am I right?--yes, a pig and a dog are kept in the same
-house. The windows are wooden, and--"
-
-"Where was it?" I suggested.
-
-"I should say in Ireland," she replied.
-
-"Enough, I believe. Now about the other lady," I said.
-
-"The dark one? Yes. She loves you, but is poor. Since you are rich, and
-a--" Here I tried to impress her that I was married. "You are married, but
-your wife will not survive you. No, she will soon go to heaven, and you
-will marry the dark-complexioned lady."
-
-"Good," I exclaimed.
-
-"Yes; and will have five boys and three girls."
-
-"Who?"
-
-"Why, the lady, of course."
-
-"O!"
-
-"Yes, and they will be happy and healthy."
-
-Here she informed me I had got my money's worth.
-
-I think I had.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-XIX.
-
-ECCENTRICITIES.
-
-    "They'll not show their teeth in way of smile,
-    Though Nestor swear the jest be laughable."
-
-    "Democritus, dear droll, revisit earth,
-    And with our follies glut thy heightened mirth."--PRIOR.
-
-    A ONE-EYED DOCTOR AND HIS HORSE.--A NEW EDIBLE.--"HAVE THEM
-    BOILED."--"BEAUTY AND THE BEAST."--A LOVELY STAMPEDE.--AN ECCENTRIC
-    PHILADELPHIAN.--THE POODLES, DRS. HUNTER AND SCIPIO.--SILENT
-    ELOQUENCE.--CONSISTENT TO THE END.--WHEN DOCTORS DISAGREE.--FOUR BLIND
-    MEN.--DIET AND SLEEP.--SAXE AND SANCHO PANZA.--MOTHER GOOSE AS A
-    DOCTOR'S BOOK.--THE TABLES TURNED ON THE DOCTORS.
-
-
-We love to see an eccentric individual--something out of the common
-routine of every-day, humdrum life. But what is often taken for an
-eccentricity is sometimes put on for an advertisement.
-
-Nearly all great men have their oddities or peculiarities. I might give
-many little interesting sketches of some physicians' oddities right among
-us, but for too great personality. I may, however, work in a few.
-
-The eccentricities of some doctors lie in their dress. Of this, I shall
-speak under the head of "Dress and Address." Others lie in personal acts,
-in their walk, manners, and conversation.
-
-I know of one physician who delights in the worst looking old horse he can
-obtain. The doctor himself has but one eye. His old donkey-like beast
-corresponded. Report said that he cut out the left eye of the horse to
-gain that desired end, which, however, is discredited. The beast was also
-lame, which defect the doctor would never admit.
-
-"What _you_ ignorantly term 'limping' is only an expression of good
-breeding--which I cannot attach to all whom I meet on the road. It's
-bowing,--merely bowing. You never see him do it unless somebody is in
-sight. Gid-dap!" And so delivering himself, the old doctor would drive on,
-chuckling softly to himself. When his old horse died, he was presented
-with a fine young beast, which he declined to accept, but scoured the
-country till he found a high-boned, rib-bared, foundered, and half-blind
-old roadster.
-
-
-A NEW DISH.
-
-Dr. James Wood was an oddity. He was a bachelor, between thirty and forty,
-large and attractive. He was remarkably neat in dress and person, but
-delighted in "an old rip of a horse."
-
-Once he was on a tour through New Brunswick, and, in company with a
-friend, drove up to a tavern at evening, and called for the landlord.
-
-"He ain't t' home, but I'm the horse-slayer," replied a voice, followed by
-the person of a tall, lean Yankee, who issued from the smoke of the
-bar-room, and approached our friends, still sitting in the open buggy.
-
-"Here, put up my horse; take good care of him, and feed him well."
-
-"Hoss?" said the impudent fellow. "O, yes, I see him now; he's inside that
-ere frame, I s'pose. Climb down, gentlemen, and go inter the house.
-Landlord and the Santipede (Xantippe?) has gone to St. Johns; but I guess
-Dolly in the kitchin, and me in the bar-room, can eat and drink yer,
-though you're two putty big fellows, well's myself." So saying, the
-gentlemen having alighted, he drove the animal to the stable.
-
-[Illustration: A "HORSE-SLAYER" INDULGING HIS OPINION.]
-
-At supper, the doctor and his friend and two ladies were the only
-guests. Just what part the "horse-slayer" had had in its preparation was
-not obvious, since he had, after caring for the horse, only sat with a
-pipe in his mouth and his heels elevated on the bar-room stove, or
-following to the sitting-room, and continually plied the doctor with
-questions. However, the supper was ample, thanks to "Dolly."
-
-"Is there anything more wanted?" inquired the table girl,--a round-faced,
-round-headed country specimen in neat calico.
-
-"Yes," replied the doctor, "we would like some napkins, seeing there are
-none on the table."
-
-Away hastened the girl, who, quickly returning, asked in very primitive
-simplicity,--
-
-"How will you have them cooked?"
-
-"O, boiled, if you please," replied the doctor, without changing a muscle
-about his sober-looking face.
-
-The girl disappeared at full trot, followed by jeers of laughter from the
-gentlemen present, and suppressed titters from the ladies.
-
-In a few moments "Dolly" made her appearance, and after searching in vain
-through the side-table drawer and a cupboard in the dining-room, she said
-they had none in the house, and intimated that the table girl could not be
-induced to return, after being laughed at for her ignorance of what a
-napkin was, and that "herself would wait upon the guests."
-
-When the doctor returned, the "horse-slayer" called out that the napkin
-doctor was coming, upon which the terrified table-girl ran away and hid.
-
-My informant says, "You're only to say, any time, 'Here comes that napkin
-doctor,' and the table girl nearly goes wild, dropping everything, and
-hiding away in her chamber till assured it is only a false alarm."
-
-The writer is well acquainted with W., who assured him this was true.
-
-
-BEAUTY AND THE BEAST.
-
-I heard, while in the South, of a doctor, a little, short man, who rode a
-Canadian horse, a scraggy little specimen, and who, in yellow fever time,
-used to ride right straight into a drug store, and order his prescription,
-catch it up, wheel his pony round on his hind legs, stick in the spurs
-into the flanks of the animal, and go out in a clean gallop.
-
-[Illustration: NO TIME TO LOSE.]
-
-Though the writer never saw this remarkable feat, there is one more
-ludicrous, to which he was an eye-witness.
-
-One fine day, while in Charleston, sitting musing in the window of the
-Victoria Hotel, I saw an African, with bare feet and legs, his whole
-attire consisting of a coarse shirt and brief trousers, drive a mule
-attached to a dray, on which was a box, up towards a milliner's store,
-opposite. The negro jumped from the dray, and, with whip in hand, ran into
-the store to ascertain if that was the place to leave the box.
-
-[Illustration: BEAUTY AND THE BEAST.]
-
-The faithful donkey followed his master directly into the store, nor
-stopped till the wheels of the cart brought up against the door-jambs. The
-ladies, with whom the front store was crowded, screamed with terror, and
-fled towards the back room, where the pretty milliner girls were sewing.
-They caught the panic and sight of the donkey's head and ears in the front
-shop, and screeched in chorus. A more lively and lovely stampede I never
-witnessed. It was "Beauty and the Beast," and the beast stood pulling his
-best to get the cart through; but since a six-foot cart never could go
-through a four foot doorway, he backed out with the negro's assistance,
-and Beauty was rescued from the perilous situation.
-
-"Golly!" exclaimed the Buckee, when himself, mule and cart were back into
-the street. "I fought de ladies were scared ob dis chile, first sight; but
-I never knowed de ladies to be scared ob a hansum darky like me; and when
-I looked round an' see dat ar' mules coming into der mill'ner's store--O,
-yah, yah, yah! I shall die--O, yah, yah, yah!--de Lor'--to only fink ob
-it, a mule in a mill'ner's shop--he wants muslin--O, yah, yah! I shall
-die, sure." Then, after a few more outbursts, he stopped short--for the
-milliner was looking after the box--he rolled up his eyes very solemnly,
-and said to the donkey,--
-
-"Yer ought to be 'shamed ob yerself to go into dat yer store--dar, take
-dat!" levelling a blow at the donkey's head with the whip. Then taking the
-box into the store, he returned, gave the donkey another solemn lecture on
-his impropriety, and mounted the dray and drove away.
-
-
-THE CONSULTING POODLES.
-
-A gentleman well known to the writer assured me that he once had occasion
-to repeatedly consult a physician in Philadelphia, a most excellent
-practitioner, who owned two pet poodle dogs. They were pure white, and
-occupied a portion of his office. When I first entered the doctor's
-presence, I was quite astonished to see, sitting on a corner of his desk,
-at his left, a beautiful poodle. I thought, at first sight, it was a
-stuffed specimen; but after inquiring the nature of my visit, the doctor
-said, "You can retire, sir."
-
-"What!" said I, in surprise at this summary dismissal, when I was startled
-to see the manikin jump from the desk and run away to a crib beside a
-book-case.
-
-[Illustration: DR. HUNTER IN CONSULTATION.]
-
-"I was speaking to Dr. Scipio," the doctor quietly remarked. Then adding,
-"Dr. Hunter, you can come instead," when another like poodle came and
-leaped upon the desk, and sat looking very wisely at his master.
-
-While examining my case, he occasionally cast a glance at "Dr. Hunter,"
-sitting as quiet as a marble dog might, but seeming to understand the look
-which his master gave him, acknowledging it by a pricking up of the ears.
-
-I received my prescription, and what proved to be most excellent advice,
-and retired. The next time I visited the eccentric doctor, both Drs.
-Scipio and Hunter were in full consultation, sitting side by side on the
-desk.
-
-"Now, sirs," said the doctor, after motioning me to a seat near him, "sirs
-Scipio and Hunter, keep very still, and give attention."
-
-A yawning noise and expression was their simultaneous reply.
-
-"What is the object of the two canine specimens being always present when
-I have consulted you?" I ventured to inquire, on my last visit to the
-doctor.
-
-"Some physicians consult two-legged pups, in complicated cases. I prefer
-quadrupeds. Have we not been very successful--myself, Drs. Hunter and
-Scipio--in your case, sir?"
-
-This he said with a pleasant, half-serious countenance.
-
-"Indeed, you have, sir," I replied, to which the dogs gave a gap! (a
-smile?)
-
-"You'll find every successful man with some seeming useless habit or
-appendage, which, nevertheless, is essential to his success, in absorbing
-or distracting the superfluities of his nature. A sing-song, every-day
-man, whom you can see right through, and understand all his moves, seldom
-amounts to anything. I ape nobody, however, but I feel almost lost, in my
-examinations, without my dogs."
-
-Well, there may be much to this, after all. A good singer will seldom go
-forward to master a difficult piece of music without something in his
-hand. Eccentricities in some persons take the place of a vile, injurious
-habit, as the eccentric man is usually free from debasing habits.
-
-I am particularly reminded of Suwaroff, the great Russian general, who was
-so remarkable for his energy, valor, and headlong fighting propensities.
-This wonderful man was very small in stature, being only five feet and a
-half inch in height, miserably thin in flesh, with an aquiline nose, a
-wide mouth, wrinkled brow, and bald head--an eagle look and character.
-"His contempt of dress could only be equalled by his disregard of every
-form of politeness, and some idea may be formed of both from the fact that
-he was washed mornings by several buckets of water thrown over him, and
-that he drilled his men in his shirt sleeves, with his stockings hanging
-down about his heels, and proudly dispensing with the use of a pocket
-handkerchief."
-
-[Illustration: THE RUSSIAN GENERAL'S DRILL.]
-
-His favorite signal of attack was a shrill "_cock-a-doodle-doo!_"
-"To-morrow"--this was his harangue to his men before a great
-battle--"to-morrow morning I mean to be up one hour before daybreak. I
-shall wash and dress myself, then say my prayers, give one good
-_cock-crow_, and capture Ismail!" Which he did to the letter. After
-Catharine's death, Paul, her son and successor, could not brook the
-eccentric habits of "Old Forward and Strike," whose personal appearance
-was ill suited to court, and when compelled to "change or retire,"
-Suwaroff chose the latter. Again in 1799 he was given a command, but would
-not change his principles, and was dismissed; and died in 1800, neglected
-by the imperial Paul, who was assassinated the same year.
-
-
-SILENT ELOQUENCE.
-
-There is a physician doing an office practice in Boston, who, when you
-enter his office, by one gesture and movement of his head, with the
-accompanying expression of his countenance, says to you, as plainly as
-words, "Take a seat; how do you do? State your case." He is a man of few
-words, professionally. Through with his business, he becomes one of the
-most sociable men with whom one need wish to meet.
-
-John Abernethy was remarkable for his eccentricity, and brevity in his
-dealings with patients. Sometimes he met his match. The following has been
-told about him often enough to be true. On one occasion a lady, who
-doubtless had heard of his _brusque_ characteristic, entered his
-consulting-room, at Bedford Row, and silently presented a sore finger. As
-silently the doctor examined and dressed the wound. In the same manner the
-lady deposited the accustomed fee upon the table, and withdrew.
-
-Again she presented the finger for inspection.
-
-"Better?" grunted the great surgeon.
-
-"Better," quietly answered the lady, deposited the fee, and left, without
-saying another word. Several visits were thus made, when, on presenting it
-for the last time, Abernethy said,--
-
-"Well?"
-
-"Well," was the lady's only answer, and deposited her last fee.
-
-"Well, madam, upon my soul, you are the most sensible lady with whom I
-ever met," he exclaimed, and very politely bowed her out.
-
-
-CONSISTENT TO THE END.
-
-The most eccentric physician who ever lived, and the only one I have read
-of who carried his odd notions beyond this life, was Messenger Monsey, of
-whom I have before written in this book. He died at the age of
-ninety-five. He wrote his own will,--having eighty thousand dollars to
-dispose of,--and his epitaph. The will was remarkable, and is still
-preserved. "To a beautiful young lady, named ----," he gave an old
-battered snuff-box, not containing a shilling, lavishing upon her, at the
-same time, the most extravagant encomiums on her wit, taste, and elegance;
-and to another, whom he says he intends to enrich with a handsome legacy,
-he leaves the gratifying assurance that he changed his mind on finding her
-"a pert, conceited minx." After railing at bishops, deans, and clergymen,
-he left an annuity to two of the latter, who did not preach.
-
-"My body shall not be insulted with any funeral ceremonies, but after
-being dissected in the theatre of Guy's Hospital, by the surgeons, for the
-benefit of themselves and students, the remainder of my carcass may be put
-into a hole, or crammed into a box with holes, and thrown into the
-Thames."
-
-The main part of his property went to his only daughter.
-
-[Illustration: WHAT THE ELEPHANT IS LIKE.]
-
-[Illustration: A DOCTOR'S SOLACE.]
-
-This is a true copy of his epitaph:--
-
-  "Here lie my old bones; my vexation now ends;
-  I have lived much too long for myself and my friends.
-  As to churches and churchyards, which men may call holy,
-  'Tis a rank piece of priestcraft, and founded on folly.
-  What the next world may be never troubled my pate;
-  And, be what it may, I beseech you, O Fate,
-  When the bodies of millions rise up in a riot,
-  To let the old carcase of Monsey lie quiet."
-
-The above reminds me of another epitaph in Greenwood:
-
-  "Underneath this turf do lie,
-  Back to back, my wife and I.
-  Generous stranger, spare the tear,
-  For could she speak, I cannot hear.
-  Happier far than when in life,
-  Free from noise and free from strife,
-  When the last trump the air shall fill,
-  If she gets up, I'll just lie still!"
-
-
-"WHEN DOCTORS DISAGREE."
-
-The eccentricities of some doctors lie in their abuse of their brothers;
-especially those of a different school, of which they necessarily know
-little or nothing.
-
-There is a Hindoo story illustrative of the folly of this _ex parte_
-decision.
-
-Four blind men went to examine an elephant, to ascertain what it was like.
-One felt of its foot, the second its trunk, the third its ear, and the
-last felt of its tail. Then they held a consultation, and began to talk it
-up.
-
-"The elephant is very much like a mortar," said the one who had felt of
-the foot.
-
-"It is like a pestle," said the one who had felt of its trunk.
-
-"No; you are both wrong. It's like a fan," said he who had felt of the
-ears.
-
-"You are all mistaken; it is like a broom," vehemently exclaimed the man
-who had felt of the tail. The dispute grew warm. Each was sure he was
-right, because he had personally examined for himself. Then they waxed
-angry, and a lasting quarrel grew out of it; so, in the end, they were all
-as ignorant of the truth as when they began the investigation.
-
-The diversity of medical opinion on diet is equally as great as on
-prescription, and often partakes largely of the notion or eccentricity of
-the individual physician, rather than the requirements of the patient.
-
-One is an advocate of animal diet; another is a strict Grahamite, or
-vegetarian, and a third is an animo-vegetarian, which, according to the
-two kinds of teeth given to man,--the tearing, or canine, and the grinding
-teeth,--seems to be the most rational decision. Then there is the
-slop-doctor. I know of one in Connecticut. He weighs about two hundred and
-fifty pounds. He breakfasts on the richest steak, dines on roast beef, and
-sups on a fowl. Every patient he has is a victim to "typhoid fever: the
-result is inflammation of the glands of the stomach, and induced by too
-hearty food;" hence the patient is starved a month on slop or gruel.
-
-This doctor was formerly a Methodist preacher, and--
-
-  "Exhausting all _persuasive_ means to light
-  Our fallen race to Virtue's glorious height,
-  To Medicine gives his comprehensive mind,
-  And fills his pockets while he cures mankind.
-  He scorns M. D.'s, at all hard study sneers,
-  And soon the science of its mystery clears.
-  _His_ knowledge springs intuitive and plain,
-  As Pallas issued from the Thunderer's brain.
-  He takes a patent for some potent pill
-  Whose cure is certain--for it cures to kill.
-  Such mighty powers in its materials lurk,
-  It grows, like Gibbon's Rome, a standard _work_!
-  Pill-militant, he storms the forts of pain,
-  Where grim Disease has long entrenched lain,
-  Routs fevers, agues, colics, colds, and gouts,
-  Nor ends the war till life itself he routs.
-  If of his skill you wish some pregnant hints,
-  Peruse the gravestones, not the public prints!
-  To aid his work, and fame immortal win,
-  Brings steam from physics into medicine;
-  From speeding packets o'er th' Atlantic waste,
-  O'er Styx's stream old Charon's boat to haste,
-  Proving that steam for double use is fit--
-  To whirl men _through_ the world, and _out_ of it!"
-
-The difference in the item of sleep is amusing. I know a poor, worn-out
-doctor who finds all health in early rising. Let us refer him to the
-following, by John G. Saxe:--
-
-  EARLY RISING.
-
-  "God bless the man who first invented sleep!"
-    So Sancho Panza said, and so say I:
-  And bless him also that he didn't keep
-    His great discovery to himself, nor try
-  To make it--as the lucky fellow might--
-  A close monopoly by patent right.
-
-  Yes, bless the man who first invented sleep
-    (I really can't avoid the iteration);
-  But blast the man, with curses loud and deep,
-    Whate'er the rascal's name, or age, or station,
-  Who first invented, and went round advising,
-  That artificial cut-off--early rising.
-
-  "Rise with the lark, and with the lark to bed,"
-    Observes some solemn, sentimental owl:
-  Maxims like these are very cheaply said;
-    But ere you make yourself a fool or fowl,
-  Pray, just inquire about his rise and fall,
-  And whether larks have any beds at all.
-
-  The time for honest folks to be abed
-    Is in the morning, if I reason right;
-  And he who cannot keep his precious head
-    Upon his pillow till it's fairly light,
-  And so enjoy his forty morning winks,
-  Is up to knavery; or else--he drinks.
-
-  Thomson, who sung about the "Seasons," said
-    It was a glorious thing to _rise_ in season;
-  But then he said it--lying--in his bed,
-    At ten o'clock A. M.,--the very reason
-  He wrote so charmingly. The simple fact is,
-  His preaching wasn't sanctioned by his practice.
-
-  'Tis doubtless well to be sometimes awake,--
-    Awake to duty and awake to truth,--
-  But when, alas! a nice review we take
-    Of our best deeds and days, we find, in sooth,
-  The hours that leave the slightest cause to weep
-  Are those we passed in childhood, or asleep!
-
-  'Tis beautiful to leave the world a while
-    For the soft visions of the gentle night;
-  And free at last from mortal care or guile,
-    To live as only in the angels' sight,
-  In sleep's sweet realm so cosily shut in,
-  Where, at the worst, we only _dream_ of sin.
-
-  So let us sleep, and give the Maker praise.
-    I like the lad who, when his father thought
-  To clip his morning nap by hackneyed phrase
-    Of vagrant worm by early songster caught,
-  Cried, "Served him right!--it's not at all surprising;
-  The worm was punished, sir, for early rising."
-
-
-MOTHER GOOSE.
-
-"Gabriel Betteredge," in "Moonstone," was doubtless a true character from
-life, picked up by the author, Wilkie Collins, somewhere in his travels. I
-think the best authors seldom have made up so good a character "out of
-whole cloth," but have gone to the highways and byways for them.
-Betteredge's forte lay in Robinson Crusoe. That book was his guidance and
-solace in all his trials and perplexities. But what would you think of a
-doctor, a respectable graduate of a medical college, who sought, if not
-advice, recreation and solace in Mother Goose?
-
-This M. D. resided a few years ago in A., New York State. He owned a large
-library, enjoyed the confidence of a large list of friends and patrons,
-and was a man of education and refinement. His eccentricity lay in his
-love of Mother Goose's Melodies. He kept a copy of these nursery rhymes at
-his very elbow, and often turned from a perplexing case, and sought solace
-in the jingling rhymes of old Mother Goose!
-
-Well, that was certainly better than relieving his brain by the use of
-narcotic stimulants, as opium, tobacco, or ardent spirits, which use can
-only be followed at the expense of nerve, tissue, and membrane.
-
-I have here before me an account of another physician, whose solace and
-relief from business cares were in his cats, of which he had several, all
-of which answered to their names. His attachment to these creatures was
-only equalled by theirs for him. Sometimes one or two perched on his
-shoulders and sang to him while he rested in his easy-chair. He seemed to
-drink in Lethean comforts, as thus he would remain for a half hour or more
-at a time, or till business broke the spell. When a patient came, or a
-servant announced a call, he would arise and say, "Pets, vamose!" and the
-cats would all scamper away to their nests, and the doctor, seemingly
-refreshed in body and mind, would return to the reality of life and its
-labors.
-
-One's solace is in his children, another's in his wife, a third in his
-flower-garden; and others' in opium, rum, or tobacco.
-
-
-THE TABLES TURNED.
-
-Sometimes the doctor's oddity seemed to be in his silence, again in asking
-"outlandish" questions. Often they get a good return; for instance,--
-
-Dr. G., of Sycamore, Ill., riding in the country one day, saw a sign upon
-a gate-post, reading thus: "This farm for sail." Stopping his horse, he
-hailed a little old woman, who stood on tiptoe, hanging out clothes.
-
-"I say, madam, when is this farm going to _sail_?"
-
-"Just as soon, sir," replied the old lady, placing her thumb to her nose,
-"as anybody comes along who can raise the wind."
-
-The doctor drove thoughtfully on.
-
-
-THE DIFFERENCE.
-
-"A priest who was jogging along on an ass was overtaken by a loquacious
-doctor, and, after some preliminary conversation as to the destination,
-etc., the doctor proposed that they each should ask a question, and the
-one who proposed the best should receive hospitality at the other's
-expense at the next town. The priest agreed, for he was a fat, jolly
-little fellow, who could enjoy a laugh and "some bottles," even at a
-doctor's expense. So the doctor proposed the following:--
-
-"What is the difference between a priest and a jackass?"
-
-"That's old," replied the priest. "One wears his cross on his breast, the
-other on his back.--Now for my turn. What is the difference between the
-doctor and the ass?"
-
-"I cannot tell," replied the doctor; "what is the difference?"
-
-"I see none," quietly replied the priest.
-
-
-"NOT BY BREAD ALONE."
-
-A physician in P., who had the reputation of being a high liver, was quite
-publicly reprimanded for his gluttony by an advent preacher of some note,
-not a thousand miles from Boston. The doctor bore his abuse without
-flinching, though he believed the man a hypocrite. A long time afterwards,
-he met the Adventist in his town, and, after some conversation, invited
-him to dine at his own house. The hungry Grahamite accepted, and at an
-early moment found himself at the doctor's board.
-
-"Will you ask a blessing?" said the doctor; which request being complied
-with, he uncovered one of the only two dishes on the table, which
-contained nothing but bread. The preacher saw the point, and said, with a
-disappointed grin, "You shall not live by bread alone."
-
-"Yes; I know that much Scripture," replied the doctor; "so I have provided
-some butter," uncovering the other dish!
-
-
-
-
-XX.
-
-PRESCRIPTIONS REMARKABLE AND RIDICULOUS.
-
-    "He finds out what stuff they're made of."--SHAKSPEARE.
-
-    "By setting brother against brother,
-    To claw and curry one another."--BUTLER.
-
-    FIG PASTE AND FIG LEAVES.--SOME OF THOSE OLD FELLOWS.--THEY SLIGHTLY
-    DISAGREE.--HOW TO KEEP CLEAN.--BAXTER VS. THE DOCTOR.--A CURE FOR
-    "RHEUMATIZ."--OLD ENGLISH DOSES.--CURE FOR BLUES.--FOR
-    HYSTERIA.--HEROIC DOSES.--DROWNING A FEVER.--AN EXACT
-    SCIENCE.--SULPHUR AND MOLASSES.--A USE FOR POOR IRISH.--MINERAL
-    SPRINGS.--COLD DRINKS VS. WARM.--THE OLD LADY AND THE AIR PUMP.--SAVED
-    BY HER BUSTLE.--COUNTRY PRESCRIPTIONS AND A FUNNY MISTAKE.--ARE YOU
-    DRUNK OR SOBER?
-
-
-Mythology informs us that Heraclitus, the melancholy philosopher of
-Ephesus, fixed his residence in a manure heap, by the advice of his
-physicians, in hopes of thereby being cured of the dropsy. The remedy
-proved worse than the disease, and the philosopher died. From that time
-till the present, medical prescriptions have rather partaken of the
-extravagant and the ridiculous, than of the rational and beneficial.
-
-In biblical times the real remedies consisted of a few simples, and were
-almost totally confined to external uses. Fig paste was a favorite remedy
-for swellings, boils, and ulcers, and an ointment made of olives and some
-spices was used for wounds, etc. Mrs. Eve, it is said, took to fig leaves.
-The myrrh and hyssop were used chiefly among the Jews for purification.
-The former was obtained from Egypt and Arabia East. The original name was,
-in Arabic, _marra_, meaning bitter.
-
-The history of medicine is referable to about 1184 before Christ, from
-which time to Hippocrates, 460 B. C., it could not lay claim to the name
-of science. It was confined almost entirely to the priestcraft, and
-partook largely of the fabulous notions of that superstitious age, and was
-connected with their gods and heroes. Then, necessarily with such a
-belief, the remedies lay in ceremonies and incantations, as before
-mentioned in chapter first, and the priests had it all their own way.
-
-Chiron, according to Grecian bibliographers, was about the first who
-practised medicine to any extent, and who, with Apollo, claimed to have
-received his knowledge direct from Jupiter. AEsculapius was a son of
-Apollo. AEsculapius had two sons, who became celebrated physicians, and one
-daughter, Hygeia, the goddess of health. For a long time the practice of
-medicine was confined to the descendants of AEsculapius, who was worshipped
-in the temples of Epidaurus, the ruins of one of which is said to still be
-seen.
-
-Hippocrates claimed to be a descendant of AEsculapius (460 B. C.). The
-remedies used by his predecessors were a few vegetable medicines,
-accelerated by a good many mystical rites. It would seem that medicinal
-springs were patronized at this early date, as temples of health were
-established near such wells, in Greece. Theophrastus, of Lesbos, was a
-fuller's son, and wrote a book on plants. He was a pupil to Plato and
-Aristotle.
-
-Podalirius was going to cure every disease by bleeding, Herodicus by
-gymnastics, and Archagathus by burning and gouging out the diseased parts.
-Then arose Chrysippus, who reversed the blood-letting theory, and would
-allay the venous excitement by simple medications (not having discovered
-the difference between veins and arteries, and when they did, it was
-supposed the latter contained only air; hence the name); Asclepiades, who
-"kicked Hippocrates' nature out of doors," and the thermo-therapeutists,
-who turned out the latter.
-
-After the followers of Archagathus, or Archegenus, were driven out of
-Rome, the hot baths were established, which were the earliest mentioned.
-There was a very celebrated cold water bath established somewhat earlier,
-for which Mr. Noah, who owned the right, got up a very large tub, for the
-exclusive use of himself, family, and household pets. The bath--like
-nearly all cold water baths _extensively used since_--was a complete
-success, killing off all who ventured into the water.
-
-During the reign of the Roman emperor Caracalla (211-217) thermal baths
-were extensively established at Rome, and Gibbon informs us that they were
-open for the reception of both senators and people; that they would
-accommodate three thousand persons at once. The enclosure exceeded a mile
-in circumference. At one end there was a magnificent temple, dedicated to
-the god Apollo, and at the reverse another, sacred to AEsculapius, the
-tutelary divinities of the Thermae. The Grecians also established cold,
-warm, and hot baths; and in Turkey the bathing was a religious rite until
-a very recent period. More recently, it is a source of diversion.
-"Cleanliness is akin to godliness," and recreation is a religious duty;
-therefore the warm bath, whether followed as a superstitious rite or as a
-source of amusement, is nevertheless commendable as a sanitary measure.
-
-Dr. Dio Lewis, of Boston, has a grand warm (Turkish) bathing
-establishment. There are several hot, champooing, and cooling rooms for
-ladies or gentlemen, and a grand plunge bath, containing sixteen thousand
-gallons of water, warmed by a steam apparatus. If the Bostonians are dirty
-hereafter, they must not blame the doctor. No man knows how dirty he is
-till he tries one of these baths.
-
-"Crosby's History of the English Baptists preserves the opinion of Sir
-John Floyer, physician, that immersion was of great sanitary value, and
-that its discontinuance, about the year 1600, had been attended with ill
-effects on the physical condition of the population. 'Immersion would
-prevent many hereditary diseases if it were still practised,' he said. An
-old man, eighty years of age, whose father lived at the time while
-immersion was the practice, said that parents would ask the priest to dip
-well into the water that part of the child which was diseased, to prevent
-its descending to posterity.
-
-"Baxter vehemently and exaggeratedly denounced it as a breach of the sixth
-commandment. It produced catarrh, etc., and, in a word, was good for
-nothing but to despatch men out of the world."
-
-"If murder be sin, then dipping ordinarily in cold water over head is a
-sin."
-
-So much for Dr. Floyer vs. Baxter. Surely the latter ought to have been
-"dipped."
-
-A western paper of respectability is responsible for the statement, that
-an old lady followed up a bishop as he travelled through his diocese, in
-that vicinity, and was confirmed several times before detected.
-
-"Why did you do such a remarkable deed?" asked the bishop. "Did you feel
-that your sins were so great as to require a frequent repetition of the
-ordinance?"
-
-"O, no," replied the old lady, complacently; "but I heerd say it was good
-for the rheumatiz."
-
-The bishop didn't confirm her any more. She was really going to baptism as
-the voters go to the polls and vote in New York--"early and often."
-
-
-OLD ENGLISH PRESCRIPTIONS.
-
-The prescriptions and doses of the old English doctors were "stunning."
-
-Billy Atkins, a gout doctor of Charles II.'s time, who resided in the Old
-Bailey, did an immense business in his specialty. His remarkable wig and
-dress will find a place in our chapter on "Dress." He made a nostrum on
-the authority of Swift, compounded of thirty different promiscuous
-ingredients.
-
-The apothecary to Queen Elizabeth brought in his quarter-bill, L83, 7s.
-8d. Amongst the items were the following: "A confection made like a manus
-Christi, with bezoar stone, and unicorn's horn, 11s. Sweet scent for
-christening of Sir Richard Knightly's son, 2s. 6d. A conserve of
-barberries, damascene plums, and others, for Mr. Ralegh, 6s. Rose water
-for the King of Navarre's ambassador, 12s. A royal sweetmeat, with
-rhubarb, 16d."
-
-A sweet preparation, and a favorite of Dr. Theodore Mayerne, was "balsam
-of bats." A cure for hypochondria was composed of "adders, bats,
-angle-worms, sucking whelps, ox-bones, marrow, and hog's grease." Nice!
-
-After perusing--without swallowing--his medical prescriptions, the reader
-would scarcely desire to follow the directions in his "Excellent and
-well-approved Receipts in Cooking." I should rather, to run my risk,
-breakfast on boarding-house or hotel hash, than partake of food prepared
-from Dr. Mayerne's "Cook Book."
-
-According to Dr. Sherley, Mayerne gave violent drugs, calomel in scruple
-doses, mixed sugar of lead with conserves, and fed gouty kings on
-pulverized human bones.
-
-"A small, young mouse roasted," is recommended by Dr. Bullyn, as a cure
-for restlessness and nervousness in children. For cold, cough, and
-tightness of the lungs, he says, "Snayles (snails) broken from the shells
-and sodden in whyte wyne, with olyv oyle and sugar, are very holsome."
-Snails were long a favorite remedy, and given in consumption for no other
-reason than that "it was a _slow_ disease." A young puppy's skin (warm and
-fresh) was applied to the chest of a child with croup, because he
-_barked_! Fish-worms, sow-bugs, crab's eyes, fish-oil, sheep-droppings,
-and such delicious stuff were, and still are, favorite remedies with some
-physicians and country people. The following was one of Dr. Boleyn's royal
-remedies:--
-
-"_Electuarium de Gemmis._ Take two drachms of white perles; two little
-peeces of saphyre; jacinth, corneline, emerauldes, garnettes, of each an
-ounce; setwal, the sweate roote doronike, the rind of pomecitron, mace,
-basel seede, of each two drachms; of redde corall, amber, shaving of
-ivory, of each two drachms; rootes both of white and red behen, ginger,
-long peper, spicknard, folium indicum, saffron, cardamon, of each one
-drachm; of troch. diarodon, lignum aloes, of each half a small handful;
-cinnamon, galinga, zurubeth, which is a kind of setwal, of each one drachm
-and a half; thin pieces of gold and sylver, of each half a scruple; of
-musk, half a drachm. Make your electuary with honey emblici, which is the
-fourth kind of mirobalans with roses, strained in equall partes, as much
-as will suffice. This healeth cold, diseases of ye braine, harte, stomack.
-It is a medicine proved against the tremblynge of the harte, faynting, and
-sounin, the weakness of the stomacke, pensivenes, solitarines. Kings and
-noblemen have used this for their comfort. It causeth them to be
-bold-spirited, the body to smell wel, and ingendreth to the face good
-coloure."
-
-"Truly a medicine for kings and noblemen," says Jeaffreson, who gives the
-following:--
-
-"During the railroad panic of England (1846), an unfortunate physician
-prescribed the following for a nervous lady:--
-
-  [R]. Great Western, 350 shares.
-       Eastern Counties,}
-       North Middlesex, } a. a. 1050.
-
-  M.   Haust. 1. Om. noc. cap.
-
-"This direction for a delicate lady to swallow nightly (noc.) 2450
-railway shares was cited as proof of the doctor's insanity, and the
-management of his private affairs was placed in other hands."
-
-[Illustration: HOW A LADY PROCURED A VALUABLE PRESCRIPTION.]
-
-"A humersome doctor," as Mrs. Partington would say, gives the following
-
-  CURE FOR THE BLUES.
-
-  Tinc. Peruvii barki bitters, 1 oz.
-  Sugari albi, vel sweetningus, considerabilibus.
-  Spiritus frumenti, vel old repeus, ad lib.
-  Waterus pumpus, non multum.
-  Nutmegus, sprinklibus.
-
-
-A SURE CURE.
-
-A physician of our acquaintance was called to a lady patient after she had
-enjoyed a season of unusual domestic quarrels, who was not over long in
-"turning herself wrong-side out"--as some females will insist upon doing,
-for the edification of the medical man--telling, not only all about her
-pains and aches, but her "trials with that man," her husband--her brutal
-usage, her scanty wardrobe, her mortification on seeing Mrs. Outsprout
-appear in a new blue silk, and a "love of a bonnet," and (after
-entertaining the doctor with wine and good things) finally wind up in
-hysterical sobs--for which he prescribed, as follows:--
-
-  [R]. One new silk dress--first quality.
-       One hat and feather.
-       One diamond--solitaire--aq. prim.
-
-    Apply to patient. And 1 coach and span, to Central Park, P. M.
-
-The husband enjoyed the joke; the wife enjoyed the clothes, the diamond
-pin, and the ride; and the doctor heard no more of their quarrels.
-
-
-HEROIC DOSES.
-
-Just prior to the year 1800, two brothers, named Taylor, emerged from
-obscurity in Yorkshire, and set up for doctors. They were farriers, and
-from shoeing they advanced to doctoring and bleeding horses, thence to
-drugging and butchering those of their fellow-creatures who naturally
-preferred brute doctors to respectable physicians. Their system of
-practice was a wholesale one.
-
-[Illustration: DOSE--ONE QUART EVERY HOUR.]
-
-"Soft chirurgions make foul sores," said Boleyn, the grandfather of the
-beautiful and unfortunate Anne Boleyn. The Taylors struck no soft blows,
-"but opened the warfare against disease by bombardment of shot and shell
-in all directions. They bled their patients by the gallon, and drugged
-them, as they did the cattle, by the stone. Their druggists, Ewbank &
-Wallis, of York, supplied them with a ton of Glauber's salts at a time.
-Scales and weights in their dispensary were regarded as bugbears of
-ignoble minds. Everything was mixed by the scoop or handful. If they
-ordered broth for a delicate patient, they directed the nurse to boil a
-large leg of mutton in a copper of water, down to a strong decoction, and
-administer a quart at stated intervals," _nolens volens?_
-
-The little Abbe de Voisenon, the celebrated wit and dramatic writer
-(1708-1775), was once sick at the chateau near Melum, and his physician
-ordered him to drink a quart of ptisan (a decoction of barley and other
-ingredients) every hour.
-
-"What was the effect of the ptisan?" asked the doctor, on his next visit.
-
-"None," replied the Abbe.
-
-"Have you swallowed it all?"
-
-"No; I could not take but half of it at once."
-
-"No more than half! My order was the whole," exclaimed the doctor.
-
-"Ah! now, friend," said the Abbe, "how could you expect me to swallow a
-quart at a time, when I hold only a pint?"
-
-
-DROWNING A FEVER.
-
-As the next anecdote has had to do service for more than one physician, it
-is immaterial which doctor it was. He was an irascible old fellow, at
-least, and not at all careful in leaving orders.
-
-"Your husband is very sick, woman," said the doctor to the wife of an
-Irish laborer. "His fever is high, and skin as dry as a fish, or a parish
-contribution box. You must give him plenty of cold water, all he will
-drink, and to-night I'll see him again. There, don't come snivelling
-around me. My heart is steeled against that sort of thing. But, as you
-want something to cry for, just hear me. Your husband isn't going to die!
-There, now, I know you are disappointed, but you brought it on to
-yourself." Going away--"Mind, lots of water--"
-
-"Wather, sir! Hoo much wather, docther dear? He shall have it, but, yer
-honor didn't tell me hoo much wather I must give him."
-
-"Zounds, woman, haven't I told you to give him all he will take? Hoo much?
-Give him a couple of buckets full, if he will swallow them. Do you hear
-now? Two buckets full."
-
-"The Lord bless yer honor," cried the woman; and the doctor made his
-escape.
-
-At evening the doctor stopped, on his return, to ask after the patient.
-"How is he, woman?" asked the doctor.
-
-"O, he's been tuck away, save yer honor," cried the widow. "The wather did
-him no good, only we couldn't get down the right quantity. We did our
-best, doctor dear, and got down him better nor a pailful and a half, when
-he slipped away from us. Ah, if we could oonly ha' got him to swaller the
-other half pailful, he might not have died, yer honor."
-
-
-AN EXACT SCIENCE.
-
-It is sometimes painfully amusing to observe, not only the difference of
-opinion expressed by medical men from one generation to another, but by
-those of the same period, and same school.
-
-In the "London Lancet" of July, 1864, there appeared a curious table. A
-medical practitioner, who had long suffered from hay fever, had from time
-to time consulted various other medical men by letter, and he gives us in
-a tabular survey the opinions they gave him of the causes of this disease,
-and the remedies, as follows:--
-
-"Herewith," writes Dr. Jones, "I forward a synopsis of the opinions of a
-few of the most eminent men, in various countries, that I have consulted.
-I have substituted a letter for the name, as I do not think it prudent to
-place before the general reader the names of those who have so disagreed."
-
-  Consulted.      Opinion of Cause.              Recommended.
-
-  Dr. A.  A predisposition to phthisis.    Quinine and sea voyage.
-  Dr. B.  Disease of pneumogastric nerve.  Arsen., bell., and cinchona.
-  Dr. C.  Disease of the caruncula.        Apply bell. and zinc.
-  Dr. D.  Inflammation of Schneiderian     To paint with nitrate of
-            membrane.                        silver.
-  Dr. E.  Strumous diathesis.              Quinine, cod liver oil, and
-                                             wine.
-  Dr. F.  Dyspepsia.                       Kreosote, henbane, quinine.
-  Dr. G.  Vapor of chlorophyll.            Remain in a room from 11
-                                             A. M. to 6 P. M.
-  Dr. H.  Light debility, hay pollen.      Do., port wine, snuff, salt,
-                                             and opium, and wear blue
-                                             glasses.
-  Dr. L. From large doses of iodine.
-           (Never took any iodine.)        Try quinine and opium.
-  Dr. M. Disease of iris.                  Avoid the sun's rays from 11
-                                             A. M. to 6 P. M.
-  Dr. N. Want of red corpuscles.           Try iron, port wine, and soups.
-  Dr. O. Disease of optic nerve.           Phosph. ac. and quinine.
-  Dr. P. Asthma from hay pollen.           Chlorodyne and quinine.
-  Dr. Q. Phrenitis.                        Small doses of opium.
-  Dr. R. Nervous debility, from heat.      Turkish baths.
-
-This needs no comment.
-
-The different opinions on doses of medicine is more absurd. We have
-already mentioned cases wherein certain physicians administered calomel in
-scruple, and even drachm doses. Before us is a work wherein it is
-seriously asserted that a medicinal action was obtained from the two
-hundredth trituration,--a dose so small, in comparison with the scruple
-doses, as to be counted only by the _millionths_.
-
-How many of us have had to wake up mornings, and swallow a table-spoonful
-of sulphur and molasses, with mingled feelings of disgust at the sulphur,
-and exquisite delight from the molasses, as we retired, lapping our
-mouths, to get the last taste! Now, L. B. Wells, M. D., of New York,
-informs us that he has cured an eruption of the skin by the use of the
-four thousandth dilution of sulphur,--so comparatively small that I
-cannot express it by figures. Well, these extremes have their uses, and we
-may look for relief in the mediate ground. The smaller we can get the
-dose, and still be reliable, the better we shall suit the people,--though
-we shall seriously offend the apothecaries.
-
-Dr. Francis, in his book, "Surgeons of New York," tells the following,
-which illustrates how a desperate remedy may apply to a desperate disease.
-The cases in reference were "peritonitis." Dr. Smith (our "plough-boy")
-had charge of the lying-in wards, under Professor Clark.
-
-"Dr. Smith, have you ever attended a common school?" asked Professor
-Clark.
-
-"Yes, sir."
-
-"Did you ever hear a teacher say, 'I will whip you within an inch of your
-life?'" pursued Dr. Clark.
-
-"Yes, sir; I have."
-
-"Well, that is the way I wish you to give opium to these patients,--'to
-within an inch of their lives.'"
-
-Dr. Smith determined to follow implicitly his instructions, and gave to
-one as high as twelve grains of opium an hour.
-
-"At this extreme point the remedy was maintained for several days.
-
-"The patient recovered, and remained in the hospital, attached to kitchen
-service, for several months."
-
-Certainly, the poor Irish, even, have their uses in New York city.
-
-
-MINERAL SPRINGS.
-
-The writer, having spent much time at the various mineral springs
-throughout the United States, and partaken of the water of some for weeks
-in succession, is competent to give an opinion as to their merits.
-Collectively, they are commendable, especially those located in country
-places, away from scenes of dissipation and profligacy.
-
-The only reliable way to expect benefit from spring waters is to select
-one by the advice of your physician, and go direct to the spring.
-
-Much of the bottled waters sold are "doctored," either by the retailer,
-the wholesaler, or often at the springs from where they are exported. Who
-is to know whether Vichy, Kissengen, Saratoga, or even Vermont mineral
-water, as sold by the package, ever saw the respective springs from which
-they are named? The various mineral waters are easily made, by adding to
-carbonized water such peculiar minerals, or salts, as analysis has shown
-exists in the natural springs. I knew a man who affirmed that he ruined a
-suit of clothes, while employed at a certain spring, by the acids with
-which he "doctored" the water, before it was shipped. Sulphuret of
-potassium covers the properties of many springs; iron others.
-
-It has been intimated that the waters of a celebrated spring which I
-visited is indebted for its peculiar flavor to an old tannery, which,
-within the memory of that mythical being, "the oldest inhabitant,"
-occupied the site where this favorite spring "gushes forth." Having no
-desire to be tanned inside,--after my boyhood's experience in that
-delightful external process,--I respectfully declined drinking from this
-spring.
-
-By the immense quantities of "spring water" gulped down hourly and daily
-by visitors, one is led to suppose the cure lies in a thorough washing
-out. There is an excellent spring near Nashville, Tenn., from which I
-drank for a week; also another at Sheldon, Vt. There are three different
-springs at this latter place, but I prefer the "Sheldon" to either of the
-other two. I discovered a good spring at Newport, Vt., and there are
-others in that vicinity.
-
-
-COLD DRINKS VS. WARM DRINKS.
-
-"Drink freely of cold water," says an author of no small repute, to
-persons of a weak stomach, viz., dyspeptics.
-
-When I was an apprentice, my master (Sir Charles Blicke) used to say, "O,
-sir, you are faint: pray drink this water." "And what do you think was the
-effect of putting cold water into a man's stomach, under these
-circumstances?" asks the great Dr. Abernethy. "Why, of course, that it was
-often rejected in his face." Never put cold water, or cold victuals, into
-a weak stomach.
-
-The above surgeon is responsible for the following advice.
-
-An Irishman called in great haste upon the doctor, saying,--
-
-"O, dochter--be jabers, me b'y Tim has swallowed a mouse."
-
-"Then, Paddy, be jabers, let your boy Tim swallow a cat."
-
-
-THE OLD LADY AND THE PUMP.
-
-One can readily conceive the utility of a warm bath--even a cold water
-bath, if the bather is robust--or a steam bath, a vapor, or a sun bath;
-but the advantage of the absurdity which the nineteenth century has
-introduced from antiquity, viz., the dry cupping, or pumping treatment, is
-not so self-evident.
-
-An old lady, suffering from "rheumatism, and a humor of the blood," was
-persuaded to visit a "pump-doctor's" rooms.
-
-"What's that hollow thing for?" she nervously inquired.
-
-"That is a limb-receiver," replied the polite operator. "If the disease is
-in the limb, we enclose it within this; the rubber excludes the air, and
-to this faucet we affix the pump, and remove the air from the limb."
-
-"Yes, yes; but I thought air was necessary to health; besides, I don't see
-how that is going to cure the limb. Does it add anything to, or take
-anything from the limb?" she inquired.
-
-"Well--no--yes; that is, it draws the disease out from that part."
-
-"Yes, yes; but suppose the disease is all over the person, as mine is."
-
-"Then we place them in this," putting his hand upon an article which she
-had not before discovered.
-
-"That? Why, that looks like the case to a Dutchman's pipe, only a sight
-times larger. And do tell if you shet folks up in that box," cautiously
-approaching and examining it.
-
-The operator assured her such was the case.
-
-"Is the disease left in the box when you are done pumping? Does it really
-suck all the disease into the thing by the process?" she inquired.
-
-"Well, madam, you put your questions in a remarkable manner. But it
-displaces the air around the person, and the vital principle within forces
-out the disease. It is certain to benefit all diseases," he replied.
-
-"Well, I don't see how it can, if it can't be seen. Does it act as physic,
-emetic, a bath, or do the sores follow right out of the blood into the
-box?"
-
-"Neither, madam." The operator was very patient. "Just try the
-limb-receiver first; then you can tell better about the whole treatment."
-
-After much persuasion, and by the assistance of the female operator, the
-old lady was seated, and the limb-receiver adjusted. Now the man in the
-next room began to pump. The old lady was very nervous, and felt for her
-snuff-box, and while so doing the man was still pumping. Having taken the
-snuff, her mind again referred to the limb in the box, and the pressure
-(suction) having naturally increased, her nervousness overcame her, and
-with a scream and a bound she left the chair and rushed for the door,
-dragging the receiver, which clung tight to the one limb, rather
-outweighing the boot and hose of the other, drawing the gutta-percha pipe
-after her, which only added to her fright, and with another scream for
-"help," and "O, will nobody save me?--O, murder, murder!" she, like a
-bound lion, went the length of her chain, and tumbled over in a heap on
-the floor. The woman rushed from behind the screen, the man from the
-pump-room, and rescued the old lady, who fled to her carriage in waiting;
-and doubtless to her dying day she will continue to tell of how narrowly
-she escaped "being sucked entirely through that gutta-percha pipe--only
-for her having on a bustle."
-
-
-COUNTRY MISTAKES.
-
-A Canadian, of a nervous, consumptive diathesis, went down to Portland,
-Maine, to consult a physician, and fell in with old Dr. F., whom he found
-busily engaged in examining some papers. The old doctor heard his case,
-and hurriedly wrote him a prescription. The chirography of the doctor was
-none of the best, yet the Portland druggists, who were familiar with his
-scrawls, could easily decipher his prescriptions. Not so the country
-apothecary, to whom the patient took the recipe, to save expense, which
-was something as follows: "Spiritus frumenti et valerianum," etc.; then
-followed the directions for taking.
-
-After much delay and consultation with the green-grocer boy, it was put up
-as a painter's article, viz., "spirits turpentine and varnish."
-
-The first glass-full satisfied the invalid.
-
-
-DRUNK, OR SOBER.
-
-A gentleman, knowing the parties in his boyhood, rehearsed to me the
-following anecdote:--
-
-Old Dr. Gallup, of ----, N. H., was an excellent physician, whose failing
-lay in his propensity to imbibe more spirits then he could carry off.
-
-"Are you drunk, or sober?" was no unusual question, put by those requiring
-his services, before permitting the old doctor to prescribe.
-
-[Illustration: "PUMPING" AN OLD LADY.]
-
-[Illustration: A DANGEROUS PRESCRIPTION.]
-
-"Sober as a judge. What--hic--do you want?" he would reply.
-
-Mr. B., who had been a long time confined to his house, under the care of
-an old fogy doctor, one of the "Gods of Medicine," with whom all knowledge
-remains, and with whom all knowledge dies, after taking nearly all the
-drugs contained in his Materia Medica, decided to change, and sent for Dr.
-Gallup.
-
-"Are you drunk, or sober, doctor?" was the first salutation.
-
-"Sober as a judge. What's wanted?" was the reply, omitting the "hic."
-
-"Can you cure me? I've been blistered and parboiled, puked and physicked,
-bled in vein and pocket for the last three months. Now, can you cure me?"
-
-Gallup looked over the case, and the medicine left by the other doctor,
-threw the latter all out of the window, ordered a nourishing diet, told
-Mr. B. to take no more drugs, took his fee, and left. Mr. B. recovered
-without another visit.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-XXI.
-
-SCENES FROM HOSPITAL AND CAMP.
-
-    "HE FOUGHT MIT SIEGEL."--A HOSPITAL SCENE AT NIGHT.--ADMINISTERING
-    ANGELS.--"WATER! WATER!"--THE SOLDIER-BOY'S DYING MESSAGE.--THE
-    WELL-WORN BIBLE.--WARM HEARTS IN FROZEN BODIES.--"PUDDING AND
-    MILK."--THE POETICAL AND AMUSING SIDE.--"TO AMELIA."--MY LOVE AND
-    I.--A SCRIPTURAL CONUNDRUM.--MARRYING A REGIMENT.
-
-
-  I met him again; he was trudging along,
-    His knapsack with chickens was swelling;
-  He'd "blenkered" these dainties, and thought it no wrong,
-    From some secessionist's dwelling.
-  "What regiment's yours, and under whose flag
-    Do you fight?" said I, touching his shoulder;
-  Turning slowly about, he smilingly said,--
-    For the thought made him stronger and bolder,--
-                    "I fights mit Siegel."
-
-  The next time I saw him, his knapsack was gone,
-    His cap and his canteen were missing;
-  Shell, shrapnell, and grape, and the swift rifle-ball,
-    Around him and o'er him were hissing.
-  "How are you, my friend, and where have you been?
-    And for what, and for whom, are you fighting?"
-  He said, as a shell from the enemy's gun
-    Sent his arm and his musket a-kiting,
-                    "I fights mit Siegel."
-
-  We scraped out his grave, and he dreamlessly sleeps
-    On the bank of the Shenandoah River;
-  His home and his kindred alike are unknown,
-    His reward in the hands of the Giver.
-  We placed a rough board at the head of his grave,
-    "And we left him alone in his glory,"
-  But on it we cut, ere we turned from the spot,
-    The little we knew of his story--
-                    "I fights mit Siegel."--GRANT P. ROBINSON.
-
-If any of the little "life stories" which I here relate in this brief
-chapter, have perchance before met the reader's eye, I can only say that
-they cannot be read too often. We need no longer go back to remotest
-history--to Joan d'Arc, Grace Darling, Florence Nightingale, nor to
-revolutionary scenes--to find "cases of courage and devotion, for no
-annals are so rich as ours in these deliberate acts of unquestioning
-self-sacrifice, which at once ennoble our estimate of human nature, and
-increase the homage we pay to the virtues of women."
-
-
-A HOSPITAL SCENE AT NIGHT.
-
-Night gathered her sable mantle about earth and sky, and the cold, wintry
-wind swept around the temporary hospital with a mournful wail, a rude
-lullaby, and a sad requiem to the wounded and dying soldier boys who
-crowded its rankling wards. Through the dark, sickly atmosphere, by the
-flickering lamp-lights, are just discernible the long rows of suffering,
-dying humanity. As the wind lulls, the sighs and groans of the unfortunate
-sufferers greet your ears on every side. "Water, water!" is the general
-request.
-
-Every moment new ones are added to the mangled and suffering throng, as
-they are brought in from the battle-field and the amputating-room. The
-surgeons are busily at work. Every able-bodied soldier must be at the
-front, for the emergency is great. Ah! who shall give the "water" which
-raging thirst momentarily demands? Who is to soothe the fearful anguish,
-from lacerated nerve and muscle, by cruel shot and shell? And who shall
-smooth the dying pillow, hear the last prayer, for self, and for loved
-ones far away in the northern homes? And who will kindly receive the dying
-messages for those dear ones,--wife, children, father, mother,--whom he
-never will see again, and kiss the pallid cheek, commend the soul to God,
-and close the eyes forever of the poor soldier boy, who died away from
-home and friends, in the hospital?
-
-God himself had raised up those to fill this sacred office, in the form of
-frail women--woman, because no man could fill the hallowed sphere.
-Flitting from couch to couch, like a fairy thing, noiselessly; like an
-angel of mercy, administering, soothing; but like a _woman_, beautiful,
-frail, and slender, with a cheering smile, and sympathy, as much expressed
-in the light of the eye as the sound of the voice, she moistened the
-parched lips, lightened the pillows, and the hearts, and seemed never to
-tire in deeds of love and kindness to the distressed soldiers.
-
-Next to the soldiers, the physicians know how to appreciate the true women
-at the hospital couch. After the manifestations of skill, labor, anxiety,
-and devotion to the cause by the physicians, thousands of men would have
-perished but for the hand and heart of woman, and who now live to speak
-her praise and cherish her memory forever.
-
-"Ain't she an angel?" said a gray-haired veteran, as she gave the boys
-their breakfast. "She never seems to tire; she is always smiling, and
-don't seem to walk, but flies from one to another. God bless her."
-
-"Ma'am, where did you come from?" asked a fair boy of seventeen summers,
-as she smoothed his hair, and told him, with gleaming eyes, he would soon
-see his mother, and the old homestead, and be won back to life and health.
-"How could such a lady as you come way down here to take care of us poor,
-sick, dirty boys?"
-
-"I consider it an honor," she said, "to wait on you, and wash off the mud
-you have waded through for me."
-
-Said another, "Lady, please write down your name, that I may look at it,
-and take it home, and show my wife who wrote my letters, combed my hair,
-and fed me. I don't believe you're like other people."
-
-"God bless her, and spare her life," they would say, with devotion, as she
-passed on.
-
-(These things were written of Miss Breckenbridge by Mrs. Hoge, of
-Chicago.)
-
-
-THE SOLDIER BOY'S DYING MESSAGE.
-
-She sat by the couch of a fair-haired boy, who was that day mortally
-wounded. It was night now, and in the hospital before described. The poor
-boy knew he must go, but before he died he wanted to leave a message of
-love for his mother, away in the northern home.
-
-"Tell me all you wish to have her know; I will convey your message to
-her," said the lady, as she bent her slender young form over the dying
-boy, and tenderly smoothed back the fleecy locks from his pallid brow.
-
-[Illustration: THE DYING MESSAGE.]
-
-"O, bless you, dear lady. You speak words of such joy to me. But it is
-this. I left a good mother, and sister Susie, in the dear old home in A.
-O, so much I have longed to see them during these last few hours! to see
-them but for one moment! O God, but for one moment!" And while he took
-breath she turned away her beautiful face to hide the falling tears,
-which she must not let the poor boy see. "Tell her," he pursued,--"my
-mother,--that I never found out how much I loved her till I came away from
-her side to fight for my country. O, lady, tell her this, and Susie, and
-poor father. I see it all now. And the old home comes back to my mind as
-clear as though I left it but yesterday. There is the old house, with its
-gabled roof, and the porch, all covered with clinging jessamines, and the
-big house-dog lying under the porch, and the great old well-sweep; and off
-in the meadow are the trees I used to climb. O, I never, never shall see
-them again. I feel very weak. Can't I have some more of that drink?"
-
-"Yes, poor, dear boy. Here; the surgeon said you could have all you
-wanted."
-
-"O, thank you. I wish I could write. O, there; that is so refreshing. If I
-could but write and tell her how good you have been to me! But write your
-name to her, the whole of it. She will understand, if you don't tell her
-how good you are. Well, I won't say any more, for you shake your head; but
-tell her how I love her, and them all. Am I fainting?"
-
-She arose from her knees, and taking some water, with her hand she
-moistened his brow and his silky hair, and offered him some more of the
-strengthening cordial. But he declined taking it. The boy was dying. He
-made one more effort, and said,--
-
-"Mother! Tell her, too, how I have kept her little Bible; and she can see
-how it has been read, and marked, and worn. O for one sight of her dear
-face, one look from her loving eyes, one kiss from her lips! I'd then die
-in peace."
-
-The beautiful lady softly smoothed his hair, wiped his face, whispered
-words too sacred for sterner hearts, and kissed away her own tears from
-his pallid cheeks.
-
-"Mother! Was it you? Then good by. I die--happy, Mother!"
-
-Thus he expired. The good lady wrote the above to the mother of the brave
-lad, and thus I obtained the original.
-
-
-WARM HEARTS IN FROZEN BODIES.
-
-"A lady in one of the hospitals of the west was much attracted by two
-young men, lying side by side, all splintered and bandaged, so that they
-could not move hand or foot, but so cheerful and happy looking, that she
-said,--
-
-"'Why, boys, you are looking very bright to-day.'
-
-"'O, yes,' they replied, 'we're all right now; we've been turned this
-morning.'
-
-"And she found that for six long weeks they had lain in one position, and
-for the first time that morning had been moved to the other side of their
-cot.
-
-"'And were you among those poor boys who were left lying where you fell,
-that bitter cold morning, till you froze fast to the ground?'
-
-"'Yes, ma'am; we were lying there two days. You know they had no time to
-attend to us. They had to go and take the fort.'
-
-"'And didn't you think it was very cruel in them to leave you there to
-suffer so long?' she inquired.
-
-"'Why, no, ma'am; we wanted them to go and take the fort.'
-
-"'But when it was taken, you were in too great agony to know or care for
-it?'
-
-"'O, no, ma'am,' they replied, with flashing eyes. 'There was a whole lot
-of us wounded fellows on the hill-side, watching to see if they would get
-the fort; and when we saw they had it, every one of us who had a whole
-arm, or leg, waved it in the air, and hurrahed till the air rang again.'"
-
-This is from a letter by Miss M. E. Breckenbridge, a lady who laid down
-her life for the sick soldiers.
-
-
-PUDDING AND MILK.
-
-Under Dr. Vanderkieft's supervision, in Sedgwick's corps, there was one of
-the noblest self-sacrificing women of the army of the Potomac. This lady
-was unwearied in her efforts for the good of the soldiers.
-
-While at Smoketown Hospital, there was a poor, emaciated soldier, whose
-weak and pitiable condition attracted her attention. He could retain
-nothing on his stomach. Mrs. Lee--for that was the lady--had tried all the
-various dishes for which the meagre hospital supplies afforded materials,
-but nothing afforded the patient relief and nourishment, until one day, in
-overhauling the stores, she found a quantity of Indian corn meal.
-
-"O, I have found a prize," she cried, in delight.
-
-"What is it?" inquired the little fellow detailed as orderly.
-
-"Indian meal," was her reply.
-
-"Pshaw! I thought you had found a bag of dollars."
-
-"Better than dollars. Bring it along." And she hastened away to the tent
-where lay her poor patient.
-
-"Sanburn," said she,--for that was the invalid's name,--"could you eat
-some mush?"
-
-"I don't know what that is. I don't like any of your fancy dishes."
-
-"Why, it's pudding and milk," said a boy on the next cot.
-
-"O, yes," exclaimed the starving soldier. "I think I could eat a bucket
-full of pudding and milk."
-
-Mrs. Lee was not long in giving him an opportunity for the trial. She at
-first brought him a small quantity, with some sweet milk, and to her joy,
-as well as that of the lean, hungry patient, it suited him. He ate it
-three times a day, and recovered. Indeed, the sack of meal was worth more
-than a sack of dollars, as she had said.
-
-As strange as this may seem, there are instances on record where very
-remarkable, yea, absurd articles of diet have cured where medicine
-failed.
-
-
-SMALL BEER.
-
-The Earl of Bath, when he was Mr. Pulteney, was very sick of the
-pleuristic fever, in Staffordshire. Doctor after doctor had been called
-down from London, till his secretary had paid out the sum of three
-thousand seven hundred and fifty dollars. The last two physicians had
-given him up. "He must die," said Drs. Friend and Broxholm. They, however
-prescribed some simple remedies, and were about to leave, when the
-invalid, just alive, was heard to mutter, "Small beer."
-
-"He asks for small beer," said the attendants. "Shall we give him some?"
-
-"Yes, give him 'small beer,' or anything," replied the doctors.
-
-A great two-quart silver pitcher full was brought, and he drank the whole
-contents, and demanded more. The request was granted, and, after drinking
-the gallon, he fell asleep, perspired freely, and recovered.
-
-
-THE POETICAL AND AMUSING SIDE.
-
-There is a poetical side, as well as a prosy side, to the camp and
-hospital. The following effusion of confusion was sent to the writer by a
-brother who gave his life for his country. It was written by a rebel
-soldier, who never realized his dream, and doubtless his "Amelia" mourns
-his loss as sincerely as though he had fought in a better cause.
-
-
-TO AMELIA.
-
-1. O, come, my love, and go away to the land up north; for there, they
-say, it's rite good picketin' for rebel boys. And we'll take the land, and
-sweep the band of New Yorkers into the bay.
-
-2. I've heered of Delmonico's, and Barnum's Shows, and how many hotels the
-land only knows. And we'll steer our bark for Centre Park. Here's a health
-to ourselves, and away she goes. (Here I drank.)
-
-3. Then come with your knight so true, and down with the boys that's
-dressed in blue. Farewell to hoe-cake an' hominy, Richmond and Montgomery.
-I'll lick the damn Yankees, an' marry you.
-
-4. Here's a heart, I reckon, as firm's a rock; no truer ever beat neath a
-gray or blue frock. So come, my love, and haste away. We'll moor our bark
-in New York Bay, when I end this fighting work.
-
-  Your true lover,
-  J. PARSLOE.
-
-The next has been in print, and was written by Major McKnight, while a
-prisoner. "He was a poet, musician, and joker, and used to run from grave
-to gay, from lively to severe, on almost all mottoes. He was an especial
-favorite with his guard, the Union boys."
-
-
-MY LOVE AND I.
-
-  My love reposes in a rosewood frame;
-        A bunk have I;
-  A couch of feath'ry down fills up the same;
-        Mine's straw, but dry.
-  She sinks to rest at night without a sigh;
-  With waking eyes I watch the hours creep by.
-
-  My love her daily dinner takes in state;
-        And so do I;
-  The richest viands flank her plate;
-        Coarse grub have I.
-  Pure wines she sips at ease her thirst to slake;
-  I pump my drink from Erie's limpid lake.
-
-  My love has all the world at will to roam;
-        Three acres I;
-  She goes abroad, or quiet sits at home;
-        So cannot I.
-  Bright angels watch around her couch at night;
-  A Yank, with loaded gun, keeps me in sight.
-
-  A thousand weary miles stretch between
-        My love and I;
-  To her, this wintry night, cold, calm, serene,
-        I waft a sigh,
-  And hope, with all my earnestness of soul,
-  To-morrow's mail may bring me my parole.
-
-  There's hope ahead: we'll one day meet again,
-        My love and I;
-  We'll wipe away all tears of sorrow then;
-        Her love-lit eye
-  Will all my many troubles then beguile,
-  And keep this wayward reb from Johnson's Isle.
-
-[Illustration: STUCK!]
-
-
-A SCRIPTURAL CONUNDRUM.
-
-The Georgia contrabands were great on conundrums, says a soldier of
-Sherman's army. One day one of these human "charcoal sketches" was
-driving a pair of contrary mules hitched to a cart loaded with foraging
-stuff. He was sitting on the load, saying to himself, "Now dat Clem ax me
-dat cundrum to bodder dis nigger, and I done just make it out. 'Why ar
-Moses like er cotton-gin?' I done see. I mighty 'fraid I hab to gib dat
-up. Whoa! Git up? What de debble you doin'?"
-
-While "cudgelling his brains" for a solution of Clem's conundrum, the
-mules had strayed from the cart road, and were stuck hard and fast in the
-mud. "Git up dar yer Balum's cusses!" piling on the whip and using some
-"swear words" not to be repeated. "Dar, take dat, and dat, yer!"
-
-Just then Chaplain C. rode up, and hearing the contraband swearing,
-said,--
-
-"Do you know what the great I Am said?"
-
-"Look'er yer, masser," interrupted the negro; "done yer ax me none of yer
-cundrums till I git out ob dis d---- hole; and I answer Clem's fust--'Why
-am Moses like er gin-cotton?'"
-
-
-WOULDN'T MARRY A REGIMENT.
-
-When General Kelley was after Mosby's guerrillas, he captured a girl named
-Sally Dusky, whose two brothers were officers in the guerrilla band. The
-general tried in vain to induce the girl--who was not bad looking, by the
-way--to reveal the rebs' hiding-places. Having failed in all other ways,
-the general said,--
-
-"If you will make a clean breast of it, and tell us truly, I will give you
-the chances for a husband of all the men and officers of my command."
-
-With this bait he turned her over to Captain Baggs. After some
-deliberation she asked that officer if the general meant what he said.
-
-"O, most assuredly; the general was sincere," was his reply.
-
-The girl assumed a thoughtful mood for some moments, and then said,--
-
-"Well, I wouldn't like to marry the whole regiment, or staff, but I'd as
-lief have the old general as any of them."
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-XXII.
-
-GLUTTONS AND WINE-BIBBERS.
-
-    "Full well he knew, where food does not refresh,
-    The shrivelled soul sinks inward with the flesh;
-    That he's best armed for danger's rash career,
-    _Who's crammed so full there is no room for fear_."
-
-    "Strange! that a creature rational, and cast
-    In human mould, should brutalize by choice
-    His nature."--COWPER.
-
-    GOOD CHEER AND A CHEERFUL HEART.--A MODERN SILENUS.--A SAD
-    WRECK.--DELIRIUM TREMENS.--FATAL ERRORS.--"EATING LIKE A
-    GLUTTON."--STRENGTH IN WEAKNESS.--A HOT PLACE, EVEN FOR A COOK.--A
-    HUNGRY DOCTOR.--THE MODERN GILPIN.--A CHANGE! A SOW FOR A HORSE!--A
-    DUCK POND.--THE FORLORN WIDOW.--A SCIENTIFIC
-    GORMAND.--ANOTHER.--"DOORN'T GO TO 'IM," ETC.--DR. BUTLER'S BEER AND
-    BATH.--CASTS HIS LAST VOTE.
-
-
-If I confine this chapter to modern physicians, it will be brief. Though
-doctors are usually pretty good livers, they, at this day of the world,
-too well know the deadly properties of the villanous concoctions sold as
-liquors to risk much of it in their own systems.
-
-There is a whole sermon on eating in our first text above, and, while we
-admit that gluttony is reprehensible, we detest "the shrivelled soul" who
-starves wittingly his body to heap up riches, or under the idle delusion
-of starving out disease, or "mortifying the flesh." If not very
-"mortifying," it is very depressing, to be bored by one of these "lean,
-lank hypochondriacs,"--to have to entertain, or be entertained by, such.
-O, give me the wide-mouthed, the round-faced, or abdomened, the cheerful,
-laughing man, especially if he's a doctor.
-
-[Illustration: A GOOD LIVER.]
-
-"Ah, doctor," said a poor, emaciated invalid to me during my first year's
-practice at ----, "you do me good like a medicine by your presence. Why,
-the blue devils leave the house the moment you enter. I don't believe you
-was ever blue."
-
-"Hereafter my patients shall never know that I am."
-
-Nor is it necessary to gulp down ardent spirits to keep the spirits up.
-Stimulants produce an unnatural buoyancy of spirits, and the unnatural
-destroys the natural habit of the system. A good and natural habit does
-not grow upon a person to his injury; an unnatural one always does, ending
-in his destruction. A good living gives good spirits; _caeteris paribus_, a
-poor living low spirits.
-
-
-A MODERN SILENUS.
-
-Silenus, of the mythologists, was a demigod, who became the nurse, the
-preceptor, and finally the attendant, of Bacchus. He was represented as a
-fat, bloated old fellow, riding on an ass, and drunk every day in the
-year.
-
-I knew a "bright and shining light" in the medical profession who turned
-out a modern Silenus. This was Dr. G., of Plymouth, Conn. His father had
-given him the best medical education which this country afforded. He was a
-gentleman of superior address, as well as talent, tall, straight, and
-handsome as an Apollo, with a dark, flashing eye, a massive brow, shaded
-by a profusion of jet-black locks. How long he had practised medicine I do
-not know. Throughout the county he had an excellent professional
-reputation, particularly as a surgeon. His instruments were numerous, and
-of the best and latest improvements. Alas that such a man should be lost
-to the community, and to humanity! But his appetite for intoxicating drink
-knew no bounds. His thirst was as insatiable as Tantalus'.
-
-When I first knew him, he still was in practice, but the better portion of
-the community had ceased to trust him. He never was sober for a day. He
-occupied then a little office in the square, containing a front and a back
-room. In the latter were his few medicines,--there was no apothecary in
-town,--and a number of large glass jars, containing excellent anatomical
-and foetal specimens. This room was not finished inside, and the walls
-were full of nails, projecting through from the clapboards outside.
-
-One day a Mr. Hotchkiss went after him, hoping to find the doctor
-sufficiently sober to prescribe for a patient, in a case of emergency.
-
-"What do you suppose I found him doing?" said Mr. Hotchkiss to me.
-
-"Hiding from the snakes in his back room?" I suggested.
-
-"No, sir; he had the tremens, and with his coat off, his hair standing
-every way, his eyes glaring like a demon's, he had his case of forceps
-strewn over the floor, and was diving at the ends of the clapboard nails,
-which he called devils, that came through the boards, in the back office."
-
-"Ah, there you are! Another devil staring at me!" he shouted; and with the
-bright, gleaming forceps he dove at a nail, wrenched it from the wall, and
-flinging it on the floor, he stamped on it, crying, "Another dead devil!
-Come on. Ah, ha! there you are again!" and he dove at another. When he
-broke a forceps he flung it on the floor, and caught a new pair. I tried
-to stop him, but he only accused me of being leagued with his evil majesty
-to destroy him.
-
-[Illustration: A DOCTOR KILLING THE DEVILS.]
-
-[Illustration: PAYING FOR HIS WINE.]
-
-Another day, after having pawned nearly all his instruments for money
-with which to buy liquor to appease his raving appetite, he was seen to
-unseal one of the jars containing a foetal specimen, pour out a quantity
-of the diluted alcohol in which it had long been preserved, and drink it
-down with the avidity of a starving man.
-
-His last instrument and case pawned, he sold the coat from his back to buy
-liquors. He could no longer get practice, no longer pay his board, and he
-became an outcast from all respectable society, and a frequenter of
-bar-rooms. A poor and simple old woman in the remote part of the town took
-compassion on him, and gave him a home. But nothing could chain his
-uncontrollable passion for intoxicating drinks.
-
-[Illustration: A BAR-ROOM DOCTOR.]
-
-The last time I saw him was in the month of December. He was in a grocery,
-warming himself by the store fire. He wore a crownless hat, a woman's
-shawl over his shoulders, and a pair of boy's pants partially covered his
-legs; no stockings covered his ankles, and a pair of old, low shoes
-encased his feet. The light had fled from his once beautiful, lustrous
-eyes; great wrinkles furrowed his once manly brow; his hair, once dark and
-glossy as the raven's wing, was now streaked with gray, uncombed and
-unkempt, hanging, knotted and snarled, over his neck and bloated face.
-
-"Don't you recollect me?" he asked, with a shaking voice and a distressing
-effort at a smile. Ah, it was sickening to the senses.
-
-Alas! Such another wreck may I never behold. What power shall awaken him
-from his awful condition, and
-
-  "Picture a happy past,
-    Gone from his sight,
-  Bring back his early youth,
-    Cloudless and bright;
-  Tell how a mother's eye
-    Watched while he slept,
-  Tell how she prayed for him,
-    Sorrowed and wept.
-
-  "Point to the better land,
-    Home of the blest,
-  Where she has passed away,
-    Gone to her rest.
-  O'er the departed one
-    Memory will yearn;
-  God, in his mercy, grant
-    He may return."
-
-
-FATAL ERRORS.
-
-Unfortunately, it is much easier to copy a great man's imperfections than
-those qualities which give him his greatness. Too often, also, are their
-defects mistaken for their marks of distinction,--vice for virtue,--and
-copied by the young, who have not the ability to imitate their greatness.
-
-"General Grant smokes!"
-
-"_President_ Grant drinks!"
-
-These two sentences, with the lamentable fact of their probable truth,
-have made more smokers of young men in the military and civil walks of
-life than all other texts in the English language. General or President
-Grant is not responsible for the lack of brains in the community, to be
-sure; but if "great men" will persist in bad habits, young men should be
-taught the difference between them and their virtues, and cautioned to
-shun them, or their bark will be stranded far out of sight of their
-desired haven,--the port of their ambition,--and nothing but a worthless
-wreck remains to tell what better piloting might have done for them. The
-voyage ended cannot be re-commenced.
-
-A student of medicine, in New York, brought a bottle of liquor to our
-room. I told him where that bottle would carry him.
-
-"Pshaw! It's only a pint of wine. Dr. Abernethy, the great English
-surgeon, bought one hundred and twenty-six gallons at once, and he did not
-_die a drunkard_," was his contemptuous reply.
-
-"But you must remember that Abernethy lived in the days of _good_ port
-wine, when every man had something to say of the sample his hospitality
-produced of his popular beverage. The doctor, who never was intemperate,
-was very hospitable.
-
-"'Honest John Lloyd!'--what an anomaly when applied to a rum-seller--was a
-great wine merchant of London, a particular friend of Abernethy's, and of
-all great men of his day, who loved wines and brandies.
-
-"One day I went to Lloyd's just as Dr. Abernethy left.
-
-"'Well,' said Mr. Lloyd, 'what a funny man your master is.'
-
-"'Who?' said I.
-
-"Why, Mr. Abernethy. He has just been here and paid me for a pipe of wine,
-and threw down a handful of notes and pieces of paper, with fees. I wanted
-him to stop to see if they were all right, and said, 'Some of those fees
-may be more than you think, perhaps.' 'Never mind,' said he; 'I can't
-stop; you have them as I took them,' and hastily went his way.
-
-"In occasional habits we may most safely recollect that faults are no less
-faults (as Mirabeau said of Frederick the Great) because they have the
-shadow of a great name; and we believe that no good man would desire to
-leave a better expiation of any weakness than that it should deter others
-from a similar error."
-
-In fact, the doctor was opposed to drunkenness, and also gluttony,
-although he himself "was a good liver," as the following anecdote will
-show:--
-
-A wealthy merchant who resided in the country had been very sick, and
-barely recovered, when, from the same cause, he was again threatened with
-a return of the like disease.
-
-"I went to see him at home, and dined with him. He seemed to think that if
-he did not drink deeply, he might _eat like a glutton_," said the doctor.
-"Well, I saw he was at his old tricks again, and I said to him, 'Sir, what
-would you think of a merchant, who, having been prosperous in business and
-amassed a comfortable fortune, went and risked it all in what he knew was
-an imprudent speculation?'
-
-"Why, sir," he exclaimed, "I should say he was a great ass."
-
-"'Nay, then, thou art the man,' said Abernethy."
-
-The leopard does not change his spots. For the truth of this read the life
-and fall of Uniac.
-
-O, it is a fearful thing to become a drunkard.
-
-The habit once acquired is never gotten entirely rid of. It sleeps--it
-never dies, but with the death of the victim.
-
-Young men, avoid the first drink. Never take that first fatal glass; thus,
-and only thus, are you safe from a drunkard's grave, and the curse
-entailed upon your progeny.
-
-
-STRENGTH IN WEAKNESS.
-
-"Sir, I am advised that you have a barrel of beer in your room," said the
-president of one of our New England colleges to a student, who, contrary
-to rule and usage, had actually purchased a barrel of the delightful stuff
-made from brewed hops, copperas, and filthy slops, and deposited it under
-the bed, convenient for use.
-
-"Yes, sir; such is the fact," replied the student.
-
-"What explanation can you give for such conduct, sir?"
-
-"Well," began the student with the boldest confidence, "the truth is, my
-physician, in consideration of my ill health, advised me to take a little
-ale daily; and not wishing to be seen visiting the beer-shops where the
-beverage is retailed, I decided to buy a barrel, and take it quietly at my
-room."
-
-"Indeed! and have you derived the anticipated benefit therefrom, sir?"
-inquired the president.
-
-"O, yes, sir; indeed I have. Why, when I first had the barrel placed in my
-room two weeks ago, I could not move it. Now, sir, I can carry it with the
-greatest of ease."
-
-The president _smiled_, and ordered the barrel removed, saying that "in
-consideration of his rapid convalescence the treatment could safely be
-discontinued."
-
-
-A WARM PLACE FOR A COOK.
-
-Soon after the completion of the Roberts Opera House, in Hartford, Conn.,
-the Putnam Phalanx held a grand ball within its walls. The music was
-exquisite; the prompters the best in the state; the ladies were the most
-beautiful and dressy in the land; and all went splendidly, till the supper
-was discussed. There had been a misunderstanding about the number for whom
-supper was to be prepared, and it was found out, when too late, that there
-were a hundred more guests than plates. The supper was spread in the
-basement. When the writer went down with friends, the tables, which had
-already been twice occupied, presented a disgusting scene--all heaped up
-with dirty dishes, debris of "fowl, fish, and dessert," and great
-complaint was made by the hungry dancers, while some unpleasant epithets,
-and uncomplimentary remarks were hurled at the heads of the innocent
-caterers.
-
-With our party were Dr. C., a great joker, and Dr. D., his match.
-
-"If you don't like this fare you can go through into the restaurant," said
-one of the waiters. "It is all the same," he added.
-
-We required no second invitation. We did ample justice to the fare
-provided, and retired, leaving Dr. C. to bring up the rear. In a half
-minute he came running after us, saying,--
-
-"The fellow told me I must pay for the supper in there, extra!"
-
-"Well, what did you tell him?"
-
-"Why, I told him to go to h----."
-
-"Well, you did right; let him go; that is just the place for him."
-
-On another occasion, the dinner not being forthcoming at a hotel where we
-dined, the doctor "fell to," and soon demolished the best part of a
-blanc-mange pudding before him.
-
-"That, sir, is dessert," politely interrupted the waiter, in dismay at
-seeing his dessert so rapidly disappearing.
-
-"No matter," said the doctor, finishing it; "I could eat it if it were the
-Great Sahara!"
-
-
-A MODERN GILPIN.
-
-The widow Wealthy lived in the country. She was a blooming widow, fair,
-plump, and--sickly. She owned a valuable farm, just turning off from the
-main thoroughfare,--broad acres, nice cottage house, great barn and
-granary, and she was considered, by certain eligible old bachelors, and a
-widower or two, as "a mighty good catch."
-
-Dr. Filley practised in the country. He was a bachelor, above forty. He
-was a short, thick-set man, with a fair practice, which might have been
-better, but for certain whispers about a growing propensity to--drinking!
-That's the word. Of course he denied the insinuation, and defied any one
-to prove that he was ever the worse for liquor. The doctor was attendant,
-professionally, upon the widow, and--well you know how the gossips manage
-that sort of a thing in the country. But who was to know whether "the
-doctor made more visits per week to the widow Wealthy than her state of
-health seemed to warrant"? or who knew that "the widow was 'sweet' towards
-the little doctor, and that she intended he should throw the bill all in
-at the end of the year--himself to boot?" Never mind his rivals; they do
-not come into our amusing story.
-
-John, the widow's hired man, was sent very unexpectedly, one day in
-autumn, for the doctor to call that afternoon, to see the invalid. Very
-unexpectedly to the widow, and greatly to her mortification, two gossiping
-neighbors called at her residence just as the doctor was expected to
-arrive. "O, she was so glad to see Mrs. ---- and Mrs. ----!"
-
-Dr. Filley rode a scraggy little Canadian horse,--a fiery, headstrong
-beast, but a good saddle horse. Somehow, the unexpected call, at that
-hour, slightly "flustered" the little doctor; but he threw his saddle-bags
-over his shoulder, mounted the beast, and turned his head towards the
-widow's residence.
-
-"I b'lieve I am a little nervous over this colt; I wonder what's the
-matter!" And he tried to rein up the headstrong little beast, to give
-himself time to--sober off!
-
-"I reary bl'eve I'm a little--taken by surprise--ho, Charley! Why, what's
-got inter--pony? Goes like 'r devil. Ho, ho, boy."
-
-Pretty soon the beast struck into a gallop; and now he reached the lane
-that led into Mrs. Wealthy's farm. The pony knew the lane as well as his
-master, and the barn better. The said lane led by the barn-yard and
-out-buildings, the house being beyond. The barn-yard bars were down, and
-the pony made for the opening, in a clean gallop, over the fallen bars,
-right in amongst the cattle, the sheep, and the swine. A big ox gave a
-bellow at the sudden arrival, and, with tail and head in air, ran to the
-opposite side of the yard, intruding upon the comfort of a big old sow,
-that was dozing in the mud. With a loud snort, the discomfited porker
-rushed from the mire just in time to meet the horse, and in attempting to
-pass on both sides at once, she went between the short fore legs of the
-pony, and brought up with a loud squeal, and a shock that sent the rider
-over the horse's head, down astride the hog. The pony reared, wheeled, and
-ran out of the yard at one pair of bars, and the sow went pell-mell out
-of the other, bearing the doctor and saddle-bags swiftly along towards the
-house.
-
-The hired man witnessed the sudden change of steeds, and gave the alarm.
-The widow--not so very sick--was just graciously showing her two unwelcome
-lady callers out, after being worried nearly an hour by their company; and
-taking an anxious look towards the lane, she saw the doctor coming on a
-clean--no, dirty--gallop, on her old sow.
-
-She lost no time in giving a loud scream. What else should she do?
-
-"O, goodness gracious! What is that?"
-
-"O Lord, save and defend us! What is it?" exclaimed the two ladies, in
-chorus.
-
-"A man on a hog!"
-
-"The doctor on a sow!" again in chorus.
-
-Now the pony and the swine met, the doctor still clinging to the sow's ear
-with one hand, and to the tail with the other; of course, having turned a
-clean summersault from the pony, facing towards the sow's hind quarters.
-The swine, beset on all sides, sheered off, and made directly through a
-large duck-pond in the field, scattering the geese and ducks every way,
-which, crying out, "Quack, quack!" made off as fast as feet and wings
-could carry them. Half way across the pond the doctor lost his balance,
-and, with his saddle-bags, fell splashing into the water.
-
-Another scream from the ladies,--only two of them.
-
-The widow, like a sensible woman, when she saw the doctor's danger, ran
-for the well-pole. "Here, John, here! Take this well-hook, and fish him
-out quick, before he drowns."
-
-John obeyed, and in an instant the doctor was safely landed.
-
-The doctor was sobered.
-
-The widow, seeing no further danger, like a true woman, fainted.
-
-[Illustration: THE DOCTOR ON A SOW.]
-
-[Illustration: RESCUE OF THE DOCTOR.]
-
-Leaving the muddy and half-drowned doctor, who looked like a well-wet-down
-bantam cock, John turned to his mistress, whom he picked up from the
-grass, and carried into the house. The two ladies, who had witnessed her
-discomfiture, assisted in loosening the stays, and administering some
-salts, which revived the widow.
-
-"O, did you ever see such a comical sight?"
-
-"Never. O, wasn't it horrid? The little doctor riding backward, on a
-horrid, dirty, old pig! O, if I ever!"
-
-And the ladies laughed in unison, in which the widow actually joined.
-
-"But what has become of the poor, wet fellow? And did John rescue the
-saddle-bags?" inquired the widow.
-
-John, meantime, had returned to the doctor's assistance. He now fished out
-the saddle-bags, and the unfortunate doctor started on foot for home,
-whither the pony had long since fled.
-
-The story, in the mouth of one servant and three ladies, was anything but
-a secret, and--you know how it is in the country.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-The widow still holds the farm in her own name, in a town in New England.
-
-Dr. Filley practises physic in California.
-
-
-A SCIENTIFIC GOURMAND.
-
-Our familiar friend, "A Book about Doctors," which we have before
-introduced to your notice as the only amusing work in the English
-language, upon the subject, gives a long list of _bon vivants_ of the old
-school, amongst whom are some eminent names in the medical profession. In
-fact, the abstemious doctors during the past centuries would seem to have
-been far in the minority. Even Harvey was accused of being fond of brandy.
-
-"Dr. George Fordyce was fond of substantial fare, like Radcliffe, who was
-a _gormand_. For above twenty years Fordyce dined at Dolly's chop-house.
-The dinner he there consumed was his only meal during the four and twenty
-hours.
-
-"Four o'clock was his dinner hour. Before him was set a silver tankard of
-strongest ale, a bottle of port wine, and a quarter pint of brandy.
-
-"The dinner was preluded by a dish of broiled fowl, or a few whitings.
-Having leisurely devoured this plate, the doctor took a glass of brandy,
-and ordered his steak, which was always a prime one, _weighing one and a
-half pounds_. Of course, vegetables, etc., accompanied the steak.
-
-"When the man of science had devoured the whole of this, the bulk of which
-would have kept a boa constrictor happy a twelvemonth, he took the rest of
-his brandy, drank off the tankard of ale, and topped off by sipping down
-his bottle of port wine.
-
-"Having thus brought his intellects, up or down, to the standard of his
-pupils, he rose, and walked down to Essex Street, and delivered his six
-o'clock lecture on chemistry." (He lived to the age of sixty-six.)
-
-Another glutton, in contrast with whom Fordyce was an abstinent, was Dr.
-Beauford. In 1745 he was summoned to appear before the privy council, to
-answer some questions relative to Lord B., with whom the doctor was
-intimate.
-
-"Do you know Lord Barrymore?" asked one of the lords.
-
-"Intimately, _most_ intimately," replied the doctor.
-
-"You were often with him?"
-
-"We dine together almost daily when his lordship is in town," answered the
-doctor, with expressions of delight.
-
-"What do you talk about?"
-
-"Eating and drinking."
-
-"Eating and drinking! What else?" asked his lordship.
-
-"O, my lord, we never talk about anything but eating and
-drinking,--except--"
-
-"Except what, sir?"
-
-"_Except drinking and eating_, my lord."
-
-The council retired, greatly disappointed, for they had expected to worm
-some important secret from the doctor.
-
-At Finch Lane Tavern, where Dr. Beauford used to receive the apothecaries
-at half fee, he was represented as sitting over his bottles and glasses,
-from which he drank deeply, never offering one of his clients a drop,
-though they often sat opposite, at the same table, looking with anxious
-countenances and watering mouths upon the tempting cordials, as the doctor
-tossed them off.
-
-
-"DOORN'T GO TO 'IM," ETC.
-
-"Not many years since, in a fishing village on the eastern coast, there
-flourished a doctor in great repute amongst the poor, and his influence
-over the humble patients literally depended on the fact that he was sure,
-once in the twenty-four hours, to be handsomely intoxicated.
-
-"Dickens has told us how, when he bought the raven immortalized in
-'Barnaby Rudge,' the vender of that sagacious bird, after enumerating his
-various accomplishments, said, in conclusion,--
-
-"'But, sir, if you want him to come out strong, you must show him a man
-drunk.'
-
-"The simple villagers of Flintbeach had a firm faith in the strengthening
-effect of looking at a tipsy doctor. They usually postponed their visits
-to Dr. Mutchkins till evening, because they then had the benefit of the
-learned man in his highest intellectual condition.
-
-"'Doorn't go to 'im i' the morning; he can't doctor no ways to speak on
-till he's had a glass,' was the advice usually given to strangers not
-aware of the doctor's little peculiarities."
-
-
-DR. BUTLER'S BEER AND BATH.
-
-An amusing description is given of one Dr. Butler, of London, who, like
-the above, used to get drunk nightly. He was the inventor of a beer which
-bore his name, something like our Ottawa, "with a stick in it," by one Dr.
-Irish. We once saw a drunken fellow holding on to a lamp post, while he
-held out one hand, and was arguing with an imaginary policeman that he was
-not drunk,--only had been taking a "little of that--hic--beverage, Dr.
-Waterwa's Irish beer, by the advice of his physician."
-
-[Illustration: "ONLY IRISH BEER."]
-
-Dr. Butler had an old female servant named Nell Boler. At ten o'clock,
-nightly, she used to go to the tavern where the doctor was, by that hour,
-too drunk to go home alone, when, after some argument and a deal of
-scolding from Nell for his "beastly drunkenness," she would carry the
-inebriated doctor home, and put him to bed.
-
-"Notwithstanding that Dr. Butler was fond of beer and wine for himself, he
-was said to approve of water for his patients. Once he occupied rooms
-bordering on the Thames. A gentleman afflicted by the ague came to see
-him. Butler tipped the wink to his assistant, who tumbled the invalid out
-of the window, slap into the river. We are asked to believe that the
-surprise actually cured the patient of his disease."
-
-[Illustration: CURE FOR THE AGUE.]
-
-Water did not cure the doctor, however, but beer did.
-
-Dr. Burrowly was stricken down in his prime, and just as he was about to
-succeed to the most elevated position in the medical profession.
-
-The doctor was a politician, as well as an excellent surgeon. When Lords
-Gower and Vandeput were contesting the election for Westminster, in 1780,
-the doctor was supporting the latter. One Weatherly, who kept a tavern,
-and whose wife wore the ---- belt, was very sick. Mrs. Weatherly deeply
-regretted the fact of the sickness, as she wanted her husband to vote for
-Lord T. Late on election day, Dr. Burrowly called round to see his
-patient, quite willing that he should be sufficiently sick to keep him
-from going to the polls. To his surprise he found him up, and dressed.
-
-"Heyday! how's this?" exclaimed the doctor, in anger. "Why are you up,
-without my permission?"
-
-"O, doctor," replied Joe Weatherly, feebly, "I am going to vote."
-
-"Vote!" roared the doctor, not doubting that his wife had urged him to
-attempt to go to the polls to vote for Lord J. "To bed. The cold air would
-kill you. To bed instantly, or you're a dead man before nightfall."
-
-"I'll do as you say, doctor; but as my wife was away, I thought I could
-get as far as Covent Garden Church, and vote for Sir George Vandeput."
-
-"For Sir George, did you say, Joe?"
-
-"O, yes, sir; I don't agree with my wife. She's for Lord Trentham."
-
-The doctor changed his prognosis.
-
-"Wait. Let me see; nurse, don't remove his stockings;" feeling the man's
-pulse. "Humph! A good firm stroke. Better than I expected. You took the
-pills? Yes; they made you sick? Nurse, did he sleep well?"
-
-"Charmingly, sir;" with a knowing twinkle of the eye.
-
-"Well, Joe, if you are bent on going to the polls, it will set your mind
-better at ease to go. It's a fine sunny afternoon. The ride will do you
-good. So, bedad, I'll take you along in my chariot."
-
-Weatherly was delighted with the doctor's urbanity, resumed his coat, went
-to the election, and voted for Sir George, rode back in the chariot, _and
-died two hours afterwards_, amidst the reproaches of his amiable spouse.
-
-"Called away from a dinner table, where he was eating, laughing, and
-drinking deeply, Dr. B. was found dead in the coach from apoplexy, on the
-arrival at the place of destination."
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-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 AEsculapius, 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.
-
-[Illustration: AN EMBRYO APOLLO.]
-
-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_!'"
-
-[Illustration: THE PILGRIM CHEAT.]
-
-
-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.
-
-[Illustration: FRANKLIN'S EXPERIMENTS WITH ETHER.]
-
-"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.
-
-[Illustration: END OF THE WONDERFUL ONE-HORSE SHAY.]
-
-
-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.
-
-[Illustration: "MUSIC, THE SOUL OF LIFE."]
-
-[Illustration: THE MUSICAL MICE.]
-
-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 Asclepiadae, 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."
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-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.
-
-[Illustration: SIGNS OF CIVILIZATION.]
-
-"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
-
-[Illustration: SWILL MILK (MAGNIFIED).]
-
-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.
-
-[Illustration: PURE MILK.]
-
-[Illustration: WATERED MILK.]
-
-[Illustration: "WHAT'S IN THE MILK?"]
-
-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.
-
-[Illustration: A CHAMPAGNE BATH.]
-
-"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.
-
-[Illustration: MOTHER'S MILK PURE AND HEALTHY.]
-
-[Illustration: MOTHER'S MILK AFTER DRINKING WHISKEY.]
-
-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.
-
-[Illustration: WAITING FOR ASSISTANCE.]
-
-"'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.
-
-[Illustration: A CONFECTIONERY STORE.]
-
-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.
-
-[Illustration: TARTARIC ACID FOR SUPPER.]
-
-[Illustration: A STREET CANDY STAND.]
-
-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 _expose_ 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.
-
-[Illustration: THE NEWSBOY'S MOTHER.]
-
-
-
-
-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!
-
-[Illustration: THE IDOL OF TOBACCO USERS.]
-
-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_.
-
-[Illustration: PUNISHMENT OF THE TURK.]
-
-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.
-
-[Illustration: SMOKERS OF FOUR GENERATIONS.]
-
-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.'"
-
-[Illustration: "I WANT A CHAW OF TERBACKER."]
-
-
-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."
-
-[Illustration: YOUNG SMOKERS.]
-
-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.
-
-[Illustration: EXAMINATION OF THE SMOKER.]
-
-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.
-
-[Illustration: PURIFYING HIS BLOOD.]
-
-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.
-
-[Illustration: CLEANSING HIS BONES.]
-
-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."
-
-[Illustration: THE SMOKER.]
-
-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_!
-
-[Illustration: THE CHEWER.]
-
-
-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!
-
-[Illustration: SIGN OF THE TIMES.]
-
-
-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?
-
-[Illustration: MY LAZY SMOKING FRIEND.]
-
-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."
-
-[Illustration: "SHALL I ASSIST YOU TO ALIGHT?"]
-
-[Illustration: WORK FOR TONGUES AND FINGERS.]
-
-  "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"?
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-[Illustration: WHAT KILLED THE DOG?]
-
-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.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-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 Caesar; 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.
-
-[Illustration: THE GREAT SURGEONS OF THE WORLD.]
-
-"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.
-
-[Illustration: A CALL ON THE VILLAGE DOCTOR.]
-
-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!"
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-[Illustration: PHYSICIANS COSTUME IN 1790.]
-
-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.
-
-[Illustration: HOW POOR TOMMY WAS LOST.]
-
-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."
-
-[Illustration: BRIDGET'S METHOD OF MENDING STOCKINGS.]
-
-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.
-
-[Illustration: THE UNDERTAKER'S ARMS.]
-
-"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.
-
-[Illustration: DISPUTE OF THE DOCTOR AND VALET.]
-
-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.
-
-[Illustration: A WIG MOUSE.]
-
-"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.
-
-[Illustration: THE MYSTERY EXPLAINED.]
-
-"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.
-
-[Illustration: MEETING OF THE DOCTOR AND THE CURATE.]
-
-"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."
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-[Illustration: DR. CANDEE.]
-
-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.
-
-
-
-
-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.
-
-[Illustration: A GERMAN BEER GIRL.]
-
-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.
-
-[Illustration: AN INDIGNANT BRIDE.]
-
-
-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.
-
-[Illustration: THE ITCH MITE.]
-
-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.
-
-[Illustration: THE BURGLAR AND STUDENT.]
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-_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."
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-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._
-
-[Illustration: ASSISTANCE FROM A ROYAL SURGEON.]
-
-
-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.
-
-[Illustration: PETER THE GREAT AS A SURGEON.]
-
-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 Aretaeus,
-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.
-
-[Illustration: JOB DISCHARGED BY SIR SCIPIO.]
-
-"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.)
-
-[Illustration: "BLEED HIM."]
-
-"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.
-
-[Illustration: A BORROWED WATCH.]
-
-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!
-
-[Illustration: JOB'S DECISION.]
-
-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_."
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-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.
-
-[Illustration: SQUASHY'S SURGICAL OPERATION ON THE DOCTOR.]
-
-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.
-
-[Illustration: "WILL YE TAK' A BLAST NOO?"]
-
-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,--
-
-[Illustration: REPTILES FROM THE STOMACH.]
-
-"'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.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-[Illustration: "IT ISN'T CATCHIN'."]
-
-_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_."
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-[Illustration: FUNERAL OF THE CANARY.]
-
-_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._"
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-XXX.
-
-THE OTHER SIDE.
-
-    It's a very good rule in all things of life,
-      When judging a friend or brother,
-    Not to look at the question alone on one side,
-      But always to turn to the other.
-    We are apt to be selfish in all our views,
-      In the jostling, headlong race,
-    And so, to be right, ere you censure a man,
-      Just "put yourself in his place."--ANON.
-
-    PUT YOURSELF IN HIS PLACE.--STEALING FROM THE PROFESSION.--ANECDOTE OF
-    RUFUS CHOATE.--INGRATES.--A NIGHT ROW.--"SAVING AT THE SPIGOT AND
-    WASTING AT THE BUNG."--SHOPPING PATIENTS.--AN AFFECTIONATE WIFE.--RUM
-    AND TOBACCO PATIENTS.--THE PHYSICIAN'S WIDOW AND ORPHANS, THE SUMMONS,
-    THE TENEMENT, THE INVALIDS, HOW THEY LIVED, HER HISTORY, THE UNNATURAL
-    FATHER, HOW THEY DIED, THE END.--A PETER-FUNK DOCTOR.--SELLING OUT.
-
-
-While I trust that respectable, educated physicians will take no offence
-at the _expose_ in the foregoing chapters, as nothing therein is
-_intended_ to lessen them in public opinion, or detract from the merit of
-the TRUE PHYSICIAN of any school, I cannot leave the subject without
-presenting some facts to show that the people are not blameless in
-creating and maintaining so many humbugs and impositions, to the damage
-and scandal of respectable practitioners and legitimate medicine.
-
-
-STEALING FROM THE PROFESSION.
-
-I need not tell men of any profession, that there are those, even in the
-respectable walks of life, who will watch their opportunity to button-hole
-the lawyer or the doctor, in the public streets, to "just ask him a
-question," rather than call at his office, where a fee would certainly be
-a just compensation for the expected advice.
-
-One of these highway robbers once overtook Mr. Choate, the great Boston
-lawyer, on a public street, and asked him if he should sue Mr. Jones, so
-and so, briefly stating his case, if he, the lawyer, thought he, Smith,
-would win the suit.
-
-"O, yes," replied the great lawyer; and Smith went on his way rejoicing.
-
-The case went to trial, Smith _vs._ Jones. Smith employed a cheap
-pettifogger. Jones employed Mr. Choate to defend him, and gained the suit.
-
-"Didn't you tell me I had a good case?" demanded the irascible plaintiff
-of Mr. Choate, when he found that the case had gone against him.
-
-"Well, I think you did say something to me about it," replied Mr. Choate,
-very indifferently.
-
-"Yes, and didn't you advise me to sue him?" cried the infuriated Smith.
-
-"Let me see, Mr. Smith: how much did you pay me for that advice?"
-
-"Nothing, sir! nothing!" roared Smith.
-
-"Well, that was all it was worth," remarked Mr. Choate, quietly.
-
-Another of these free advice fellows detained the author at the
-post-office last week, and very patronizingly asked,--
-
-"What would you take for a code id de ed, docdor?"
-
-"Take? take two pocket handkerchiefs," was the cheap prescription for a
-cheap patient.
-
-
-INGRATES.
-
-  "What, then! doth Charity fail?
-  Is Faith of no avail?
-  Is Hope blown out like a light
-  By a gust of wind in the night?
-  The clashing of creeds, and the strife
-  Of the many beliefs, that in vain
-  Perplex man's heart and brain,
-  Are nought but the rustle of leaves,
-  When the breath of God upheaves
-  The boughs of the Tree of Life,
-  And they subside again!
-  And I remember still
-  The words, and from whom they came,
-  Not he that repeateth the name,
-  But he that doeth the will!"
-
-"Of all men, the physician is most likely to discover the leading traits
-of character in his fellow-beings; on no other condition than that of
-sickness do they present themselves without those guards upon the
-countenance and tongue that an artificial mode of life has rendered almost
-indispensable to their existence; in city life, more especially."
-
-"The confiding patient often hangs, as it were, with an oppressive weight
-upon the conscientious physician, and if he be afflicted with a generous,
-sympathizing soul, farewell to his happiness. His heart will bleed for
-distress, both bodily and pecuniary, that he cannot alleviate, and he
-gives up in despair a profession which will so severely tax his nervous
-system as to render the best medical talent comparatively useless....
-
-"Those who speak of the gratitude of the low Catholic Irish in this (New
-York) city, or any other city, as they present their true characters to
-the young practitioner, will find but one opinion,--a more improvident,
-heartless, and dishonest class of people never defiled the fair face of
-the earth. They are indeed a bitter curse to the young and humane
-physician."
-
-And this from the pen of one of the most noble and humane physicians of
-the great metropolis, whose generosity forbids him ever to refuse a visit,
-day or night, to the distressed, even amongst the lowest of the class he
-so bitterly condemns. The above is the experience of other physicians
-besides Dr. Dixon, and in other cities besides New York.
-
-During my days of extreme poverty in H., an Irish woman, whose child,
-suffering with cholera infantum, I snatched from the very jaws of death,
-cheated me out of my fees, when I afterwards learned that she owned two
-tenements, and had money in the Savings Bank.
-
-While I was practising in H., one cold winter's night, an Irishman came
-for me to go to Front Street, as a man had fallen down stairs, and was
-"kilt intirely."
-
-"Then it is Mr. Roberts, the undertaker, whom you want," I replied.
-
-"O, no, he isn't kilt intirely, but broke his arrum, doctor."
-
-Therefore I drew on my boots, took my hat and case, and was soon at the
-designated number. A drunken row, as usual. It was near midnight, Saturday
-night. A big, burly fellow lay on the bed in a large front room,
-surrounded by a dozen men and women, nearly all drunk, except the patient.
-His arm was dislocated at the shoulder downward. I drew off my coat,
-jumped upon the bed, set the man up, raised the limb, clapped my knee
-under the limb, raised the arm, and using it for a lever, the bone snapped
-into the socket as quickly as I am telling the story.
-
-"Ah, that gives me aise; ah, God bless you, docther. How mooch is the
-damage? Get the wallet, woman, and let me pay the good docther," said the
-grateful patient. "How mooch? Say it asy, noo."
-
-"Two dollars." A very modest fee for such a job at midnight.
-
-"O, the divil!" cried the woman. "And is it two dollars for the snap of a
-job likes to that, noo, ye'll be axin' a poor man?"
-
-I made no reply. The man asked for the money.
-
-"Will yeze be axin' that much?" asked a six and a half foot Irishman who
-stood by the opposite side of the bed.
-
-"Do you have to pay the bill, sir?" I demanded.
-
-"Noo," he replied.
-
-"Then mind your own business," I exclaimed, with a clincher, and a flash
-of the eyes that somehow caused him to cower like the miserable drunken
-coward he was, amid the laughs and jeers of the bystanders.
-
-[Illustration: MY FRONT STREET PATIENT.]
-
-"There, take the money," said the woman (boarding mistress). "Dr. B. would
-come ferninst the railroad over for half of it, he would," she added.
-
-"Woman," said I, "when next any of your kind want a doctor, do you go
-ferninst the railroad for Dr. B." (I knew she lied), "and get him for a
-dollar. As for me, _I never, for love or money, will come to your call
-again_."
-
-I never heard of money enough to induce me to visit Front or Charles
-Street after that night, and I have seen some anxious faces looking about
-for a doctor, in case of emergency, in that locality.
-
-
-"SAVING AT THE SPIGOT, AND WASTING AT THE BUNG."
-
-Again, there is a class in every city who, to avoid a physician's fee, go
-to an apothecary, briefly and imperfectly state their case, perhaps to a
-green clerk, or a proprietor who is as ignorant of the pathology of the
-disease as the miserable applicant; and who ever knew of a druggist too
-ignorant to prescribe for a case over the counter? The result is often the
-administration of harsh remedies, which aggravate the present, or produce
-some other disease worse than the original, and in the end the patient is
-obliged to seek the advice of a physician.
-
-Now the patient is ashamed to tell the whole truth, the doctor has yet to
-learn what drugs are rankling in the system, and the disease is often
-protracted thereby ten times as long as it need have been, had the man at
-the outset sought the advice of a respectable physician. This is an
-every-day occurrence. I knew a young man who recently went into
-consumption from having a comparatively simple case prolonged by this
-apotheco-medical interference.
-
-
-SHOPPING PATIENTS.
-
-"A queer kind of patients!" you exclaim.
-
-Yes, very queer. One class of them go round from office to office, to
-"just inquire about a friend" (themselves), "if they could be cured," how
-long it would require, and, ten to one, even ask what medicines "you would
-give for such a case."
-
-Such persons, if females, usually come into the city for the double
-purpose of seeing a doctor, or a dozen, and shopping,--doing the shopping
-first; tramping from one end of the city to the other, visiting the doctor
-last, with bundles and boxes by the score, "in a great hurry; must catch
-a certain train; all tired out;" making the opportunity for diagnosis an
-unfavorable one, and not unusually asking the doctor--a stranger,
-perhaps--to trust them till they come again.
-
-[Illustration: A SHOPPING PATIENT.]
-
-Whoever "O. SHAW" may be, he knows a thing or two. Hear him.
-
-
-AN AFFECTIONATE WIFE.
-
-A poor mechanic, three weeks after marriage, was addressed by his wife
-thus:--
-
-"Harry, don't you think a new silk dress would become my beauty?"
-
-He answered affirmatively, of course, and promised that when his present
-job was completed, which would be in about a fortnight, the necessary
-stamps would be forthcoming, and that she might then array her loveliness
-in the wished-for dress. The affectionate wife kissed him, and thus
-rewarded his generosity. Three days afterwards the man met with an
-accident, and was brought home on a shutter, and it was evident that for
-weeks he would be confined to his bed. On beholding him, his wife gave
-vent to repeated outbursts of agony, as an affectionate woman should,
-considering the cause. This touched the unfortunate man, and he said,
-consolingly,--
-
-"Dry your tears, dear Nettie; I'll be all right again in a few weeks."
-
-"Perhaps you may," she answered; "but all your earnings for a long time
-after you resume work will be required to pay your doctor's bill, and you
-won't be able to get me _that new silk dress_."--O. SHAW.
-
-
-A SENSIBLE PRESCRIPTION.
-
-A doctor up town recently gave the following prescription for a lady: "A
-new bonnet, a cashmere shawl, and a new pair of gaiter boots." The lady,
-it is needless to say, has entirely recovered.
-
-
-RUM AND TOBACCO PATIENTS.
-
-Then there is a large class,--men, mostly; males, at least,--who, having
-spent all their substance and much of their health in excess of
-tobacco-using and whiskey-drinking, apply to the physician for aid, "in
-charity, for God's sake," as they have nothing with which to pay him, and
-usually a numerous family dependent upon their miserable labor for
-sustenance. Woe to the physician who gets a reputation for benevolence at
-this day and generation of "cheek."
-
-"Doctor, I hope you _will_ do something for my distress," said a
-gentlemanly-dressed individual, not many months ago. "I have but sixteen
-cents in my pocket, and I owe for four weeks' board, and am out of
-employment." He was a play actor. Could I say no to so honest a statement
-of his low state of finance? I treated him faithfully, without a penny.
-
-Not many weeks afterwards I knew of his going away and stopping two days
-at a hotel with a strange woman.
-
-Still there are others who are quite able, but who think it no sin to
-cheat a doctor by misrepresenting their inability to pay. They work upon
-the sympathies of the benevolent doctor; they "would willingly pay a
-hundred dollars, if they had it," etc.; and thus slip off without
-compensating him for his services. Every physician knows that I have not
-overstated the above.
-
-There is also a large class of patients, with whom, like the "old clo'
-Jew," wisdom, brain work, advice, go for nothing. You must represent their
-case as perfectly fearful, and do something perfectly awful for them, or
-you are of no account.
-
-Selden, who understood these failings in mankind vastly well, gives them a
-sly hit in his "Table Talk." If a man had a sore leg, and he should go to
-an honest, judicious surgeon, and he should only bid him keep it warm, and
-anoint it with such an oil (an oil well known), that would do the cure,
-haply he would not much regard him, because he knows the medicine to be an
-ordinary one. But if he should go to a surgeon that should tell him, "Your
-leg will gangrene within three days, and it must be cut off; and you will
-die unless you do something that I could tell you," what listening there
-would be to this man!
-
-"O, for the Lord's sake, tell me what this is; I will give you any content
-for your pains."
-
-
-THE PHYSICIAN'S WIDOW AND ORPHAN.
-
-Scenes from "Practice of a New York Surgeon."
-
-I have abridged the following truthful story from the above work, which
-book I recommend to the perusal of all lovers of moral and entertaining
-literature.
-
-_The Summons._--The experienced physician knows, from the sound of the
-door bell, whether it is the representative of wealth or penury who is
-outside at the bell-pull.
-
-The doctor opened the door to the _timid_ summons.
-
-"Will you please come and see my mother?" asked a little delicate and
-thinly-dressed girl. "She has been very ill for nearly a year, and I'm
-afraid she's going to die." The poor little heart was swelling with grief.
-
-Almost ashamed as I donned my heavy coat, for the night was bitter cold,
-and the shivering little girl pattered after me with her well-worn shoes
-and scanty dress, I hurried along to the abode of poverty.
-
-_The Tenement._--The faint rays of a candle issuing from an upper window
-of one of those wretched wooden buildings, guided us to the invalid's
-tenement, and as we approached the house the little girl ran ahead of me,
-and stood shivering in the doorway, while I carefully walked up the
-rickety steps.
-
-Poor as the tenement was, its cleanliness was noticeable, from the fact
-that it was isolated from the loathsome Irish neighbors, whose superior
-means and brutal habits allowed them to occupy the lower and more
-accessible apartments almost in common with the swine which are fed from
-their very doorsteps.
-
-_The Invalid._--A violent paroxysm of coughing had just seized the lady,
-and I waited some moments before I could observe her features. She had
-surely seen better days. There were about her and the little apartment
-evidences of refinement, from her own tidy person to the little sweet
-rosebush in full bloom, and the faultless white board, and the scanty,
-though snowy curtains that shaded the attic window, which produced a
-melancholy effect upon me, which was not lessened when good breeding
-required me to address my patient.
-
-[Illustration: CALL AT THE TENEMENT.]
-
-Her countenance had evidently been beautiful; an immense mass of auburn
-hair, such as Titian loved to paint, yet shaded her brow; the eyes were
-large and lustrous; the nose was slightly aquiline, the lips thin; and
-every feature bespoke the woman of a highly refined and intellectual
-nature. When her gaze met mine for an instant, I felt that pity was
-misplaced in the emotions which swelled my heart, for the lofty dignity,
-almost _hauteur_, in that look, would have become an empress in reduced
-circumstances.
-
-"Go, dearest, to your little bed, and close the door, my love," she said,
-turning to the child.
-
-The girl lingered an instant. I stood between the dying mother and her
-child. I turned aside whilst their lips met in that holy kiss that a dying
-mother only can give, ay, and a prayer that she alone can breathe.
-
-When the little creature had withdrawn, by a narrow door scarcely
-distinguishable from the rest of the rough, whitewashed boards that
-divided her little closet from the main room, the mother turned her
-earnest gaze upon me, and said,--
-
-"I have troubled you, doctor, not with the view of taxing your kindness to
-any extent, but to ask how long I may yet linger,"--placing her hand on
-her wasted bosom,--"depending for every service upon that little fragile
-creature, for whom alone I have, I fear, a selfish desire to live."
-
-I could not answer immediately. My heart was too full. I had recognized
-the dreadful malady at a glance. She was far gone with consumption.
-
-"I have a duty to perform, connected with her, that depends upon your
-answer--one that I have selfishly, alas! too long deferred."
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-As I arose to take my departure, she requested me to open the door to the
-little chamber. I did so, and there lay the poor, pale child, with her
-clothes unremoved. Merciful God! an infant watching its dying mother, a
-refined, delicate and intellectual woman, the wife of an educated
-physician, in a wretched tenement, surrounded by palaces!
-
-_How they lived._--O, my God, what a discovery was made on my next visit,
-the following morning! Then I saw what had before excited my curiosity,
-viz., the manner in which my patient contrived to support herself and
-child, for I was quite sure that she would never condescend to beg.
-
-[Illustration: THE WIDOW AT WORK.]
-
-I had observed, during my visit the previous evening, a very large
-package, tied up in commercial form, and by its side a large square board.
-The widow was now sitting up in bed, propped up with some coarse straw
-pillows, her cheeks burning with hectic, and the square board resting upon
-a couple of cross-pieces to keep it from her wasted limbs, and she and the
-child were at work putting up soda and seidlitz powders. Several dozen
-boxes had been filled during the morning, placed in envelopes, and
-labelled.
-
-"'Tis the lot of humanity to labor," she said, when I had detected her at
-the task which taxed the last mite of her remaining strength, and I stood
-horrified looking on; "and why should I be exempt?" she asked, actually
-smiling gracefully.
-
-I removed the board, but allowed the girl to resume her work by the little
-table near, saying that her remark was applicable only to those able to
-labor. She assured me that their contracted circumstances had "compelled
-her to make this exhibition of her industry."
-
-_Her History._--Twelve years before, this beautiful and refined lady had
-left a home of wealth and affluence to share the fortunes of her husband,
-Dr. ----, who was worthy of all the love that a pure and affectionate
-woman could bestow. He struggled on manfully and hopefully against
-misfortune until two years ago....
-
-I had once met her husband. It was under the following circumstances. A
-child had been run over, and much injured. I was called, but found, on my
-arrival, that this young doctor had been before me, and done all that was
-required; but the gentleman whose duty it was said if I would attend the
-case he would pay all charges, and the young physician, on learning this
-fact on the next visit, retired in my favor. That evening I called at his
-office, and insisted upon his accepting one half of the fees which I knew
-I should receive. He hesitatingly accepted, after much persuasion on my
-part; and I remember that it was my impression at the time that he was
-excessively proud.
-
-Now, the poor wife informed me that, at the time, their means were
-entirely exhausted, and when he came home that evening with a large basket
-of necessaries, and some little delicacies to which they had long been
-unaccustomed, and upon her expressing her astonishment, he _sat down and
-wept like a child_.
-
-"Great God," he cried, in agony of soul, "why did I take you from your
-father's house, where you had plenty? What a reward for devoting the
-flower of life to such a profession! To hear a wife, and the mother of my
-child, expressing astonishment and joy at the unwonted sight of the very
-necessaries of life!"
-
-It was only when the note-books and manuscripts of this truly meritorious
-and unfortunate young man fell into my hands, that I discovered what a
-loss his family and the profession had sustained.
-
-He was too proud to ask assistance. Even in his fatal sickness, he
-continued, until a late period, to decline medical treatment, rather than
-expose his poverty to his brethren. Finally he became known to Dr. ----,
-who devoted his time and purse to him until he died. That season Dr.
----- died also.
-
-After his death, the lady with her child had removed to these miserable
-quarters. The needle, and coloring of prints, had sustained them both for
-a year, when, finding it impossible, with her failing health, to earn a
-living at that employment, she resumed the one by which her noble husband
-had been compelled to eke out his miserable income,--putting up seidlitz
-powders,--in order to sustain them.
-
-Often, she told me, had she sat by his side till late in the night reading
-to him, whilst he plied his fingers industriously at this employment, so
-utterly repulsive to an intellectual man; and when she would beg him to
-retire, he would often cheerfully obey the summons to an all-night visit
-to some wretched and dishonest Irishman--who could not get the service of
-a more knowing (pecuniarily) physician without an advanced fee--in the
-remote hope of obtaining a few dollars, which his refinement taught these
-wretchedly dishonest people they had only to refuse, as they almost
-invariably do, in order to escape entirely the obligation! This is the
-gratitude (!) of which we have spoken before. It was whilst attending one
-of these miserable people that he imbibed the fatal disease which swept
-him from the earth, and left his poor wife and child to struggle on alone
-in their cheerless journey.
-
-It is needless to say that from the time of the visits of the benevolent
-physician, the widow wanted for nothing that earth could bestow, to the
-day of her death, which soon occurred; else she would have died at her
-task!
-
-_The Unnatural Father._--On the fifth day, evening, a man entered my
-office and inquired for me. He was plainly dressed in black, and possessed
-one of those hard, immovable countenances which admit of no particular
-definition.
-
-"I received a letter from you relative to my daughter."
-
-This was said in such a perfectly business-like manner, without the least
-emotion, that I was shocked, and my countenance must have expressed my
-astonishment, for he immediately added,--
-
-"A sad business, my dear sir. Well, well, I will not detain you. The
-corpse is here?"
-
-"No, sir. I will accompany you to the late abode of your daughter." I was
-glad that she had not been removed; I thought it might do his moral nature
-some good to see the condition to which his unnatural conduct had brought
-her.
-
-[Illustration: THE PHYSICIAN AND THE FATHER.]
-
-Not a muscle of his countenance changed, as we ascended the wretched
-steps. The watcher admitted us to the poor, low room, and handing him a
-letter from my pocket, I said, "These are your daughter's last words to
-you, which she intrusted to my keeping for you. I will not intrude upon
-your privacy, but will await you at my office;" and bowing, I retired,
-leaving him beside the corpse of his neglected child.
-
-In less than fifteen minutes he returned, and, without any allusion to the
-event, thanked me for my attentions, declining a chair, saying,--
-
-"You will please make out your bill. I wish to be ready to start early in
-the morning, and take the corpse with me." He inquired for the address of
-an undertaker, and the present abode of _her_ child!
-
-I stood speechless! He was an anomaly. I measured him with my eyes; he
-cast his own for an instant to the floor, and then said,--
-
-"My business habits, I fear, shock you, sir. I have been in a hurry all my
-life. I have never had time to think. I owe you an apology, sir--pardon
-me."
-
-I thought of the future fate of the poor child, and I must acknowledge I
-hypocritically, for once in my adult life, took the _hand of the man I
-totally despised_, as I asked him mildly if his daughter had not requested
-to be buried by the side of her husband, whom she loved so well.
-
-"No, sir," he sharply replied; "his name was not mentioned in the letter;
-very properly too. I had no respect for him, sir, none whatever; nor
-should I have acceded to such, had she made the request."
-
-I gave him the address of the grandchild, and also an undertaker's.
-
-"I am much obliged to you," he said, hurriedly. "I will trouble you no
-further. I will send for the bill in the morning. Good evening, sir."
-
-I wanted the man (_brute!_) to love the poor little orphan, his
-grandchild, and that night I prepared a letter--instead of a bill--which I
-hoped would benefit him, without aggravating his feelings towards her. I
-said that I deemed such a privilege a sacred one, not to be soiled by a
-pecuniary return. I said other things to him, in the note, which I need
-not repeat. Near spring, in a kind, almost affectionate letter, he
-announced to me the death of his grandchild. She had fulfilled her
-mission. She had greatly subdued his nature by her lovely character....
-
-I learned that the remains of Dr. ---- were afterwards interred by the
-side of his wife and child, and I received but lately the assurance that
-the wretched father, before his death, admitted that money was not the
-chief good.
-
-Thus perished a noble physician, a devoted wife, and their lovely
-offspring, because of the selfish ingratitude of one to whom they were and
-still might have been an inestimable blessing.
-
-
-THE PHYSICIAN.
-
-    "Honor a physician with the honor due unto him, for the uses which ye
-    may have of him: for the Lord hath created him; for of the Most High
-    cometh healing, and he shall receive honor of the king. The skill of
-    the physician shall lift up his head: and in the sight of great men he
-    shall be in admiration."--_Ecclesiasticus_ xxxviii.
-
-If there is one class of men in the world who deserves the gratitude of
-their fellow-creatures above another, it is the physicians. By physician I
-mean not him who alone can theorize garrulously upon anatomy and
-physiology, chemistry and therapeutics, but who can render assistance, in
-time of need, to the sick and distressed. In ancient days physicians were
-reckoned "as the gods." I much wonder, as I turn the leaves of the
-Testament, at the abuse heaped upon the Saviour; for he went about healing
-the sick, and casting out devils (evil diseases). Surely society was at a
-very low ebb in those times.
-
-Who has greater, firmer friends than the physician! The good physician is
-sure to prosper. Certainly "envy increases in exact proportion with fame;
-the man who is successful in his undertakings, and builds up a character,
-makes enemies, and calls forth swarms of stinging, peevish, biting
-insects, just as the sunshine awakens the world of flies;" but the true
-physician, having the desire at heart to benefit his fellow-creatures, is
-strong, is beloved, is blessed! He calls forth hosts of friends on every
-side, just as the pure morning air calls fragrance from every lovely
-flower. Would you have the prayers and blessing of the good? then
-
-  "Go to the pillow of disease,
-    Where night gives no repose,
-  And on the cheek where sickness preys
-    Bid health to plant the rose.
-  Go where the sufferer ready lies
-    To perish in his doom,
-  Snatch from the grave his closing eyes,
-    And bring a blessing home."
-
-
-A PETER-FUNK DOCTOR.
-
-One day, passing up Washington Street, Boston, I detected a familiar voice
-issuing from a store, on the window-panes of which lately vacated premises
-was pasted "Removal," and, looking in, I saw a man mounted on a box
-selling a pinchbeck watch. The place _looked_ a deal like a New York
-Peter-Funk shop. However that may have been, I recognized the hired
-auctioneer as once having been a medical practitioner. He was a graduate
-of C---- Medical College. Owing to his honesty and lack of acquisitiveness
-among dishonest and niggardly creatures in ----, whom he faithfully served
-in his earlier efforts at his profession, he was compelled to resort to
-other means of gaining a support for himself and family, and finally was
-reduced to clerking and selling goods for those whose business tact
-exceeded his own.
-
-[Illustration: THE PETER-FUNK PHYSICIAN.]
-
-
-SELLING OUT.
-
-Everybody has heard of Leavitt, the dry little joker, the humorous and
-popular auctioneer of Hartford, who sells everybody, and everything, from
-a riddled sauce-pan to a nine-acre lot in the suburbs.
-
-One fine day he was selling, in front of the State House, a various
-collection of articles, with a lot of ancient and modern household
-furniture and traps that would have made Mrs. Toodles happy for a six
-months, and was "looking sharp" for some one to help him over a tough
-place on an odd lot, when he discovered in the crowd a pleasant, open,
-upturned countenance,--a sort of oasis in the desert,--to whom he at once
-appealed for assistance. A knowing wink from young rusticus was the
-response, a return from the auctioneer, and the bids went on with
-astonishing rapidity, till down went a big lot of goods, which everybody
-seemed to have wanted--a truckle-bed and fixings, with earthen ware, etc.
-
-"Yours, sir--what's your name?" said L. to the young man from the
-agricultural district.
-
-"Mine? O, no; I didn't bid on 'em," said rustic.
-
-"Yes, you did," replied the auctioneer.
-
-"Well, I guess not, much."
-
-"But you did--the whole lot. You winked every time I looked towards you."
-
-"Winked?"
-
-"Yes, and kept winking; and a wink is a bid always," said L., the least
-taken aback at the prospect of losing a good sale.
-
-"Wal--as for that--so did you keep winkin' at me. I thought you was
-winkin' as much as to say, 'Keep dark; I'll stick somebody onto this lot
-of stuff;' and I kept winkin' back, as if to reply, 'Well, I'll be hanged
-if you don't, mister.'"
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-XXXI.
-
-"THIS IS FOR YOUR HEALTH."
-
-    "Like leaves on trees the race of man is found,
-    Now green in youth, now withering on the ground;
-    Another race the following spring supplies;
-    They fall successive, and successive rise;
-    So generations in their course decay,
-    So flourish these when those have passed away."
-
-    THE INESTIMABLE VALUE OF HEALTH.--NO BLESSING IN COMPARISON.--MEN AND
-    SWINE.--BEGIN WITH THE INFANT.--"BABY ON THE PORCH."--IN A STRAIT
-    JACKET.--"TWO LITTLE SHOES."--YOUTH.--IMPURE LITERATURE AND
-    PASSIONS.--"OUR GIRLS."--BARE ARMS AND BUSTS.--HOW AND WHAT WE
-    BREATHE.--"THE FREEDOM OF THE STREET."--KEEP YOUR EYES OPEN AND MOUTH
-    CLOSED.--THE LUNGS AND BREATHING.--A MAN FULL OF HOLES.--SEVEN MILLION
-    MOUTHS TO FEED.--PURE WATER.--CLEANLINESS.--SOAP VS. WRINKLES.--GOD'S
-    SUNSHINE.
-
-
-HEALTH IS ABOVE ALL THINGS.
-
-Health is that which makes our meat and drink both savory and pleasant,
-else Nature's injunction of eating and drinking were a hard task and a
-slavish custom. It makes our beds lie easy and our sleep sweet and
-refreshing. It renews our strength with the morning's sun, and makes us
-cheerful at the light of another day. It makes the soul take delight in
-her mansion and pleasures, a pleasure indeed, without which we solace
-ourselves in nothing of terrene felicity or enjoyment.--_Mainwaring._
-
-Without health there is no earthly blessing. In comparison with health all
-other blessings dwindle into insignificance. Life is a burden to the
-perpetual invalid, for whom the only solace is in the silent grave. Nor
-can such always look forward with perfect confidence to rest even beyond
-the dark portals of the tomb; for the infirm body is not unusually
-attended by an enfeebled mind which often jeopardizes Hope:--
-
-  "And Hope, like the rainbow of summer,
-  Gives a promise of Lethe at last."
-
-If, then, health is so essential to our earthly happiness, and to our hope
-of peace in immortality, O, let us who possess the boon strive to retain
-it, and we who have it not seek diligently to regain that which is lost.
-
-The farmer does not consider it a compromise of his dignity to search out
-the best modes and means for increasing the quality as well as the
-quantity of his stock--his horses, his oxen, his sheep, and his
-swine,--and is man, the most noble work of his Maker,--man, created but a
-little below the angels,--is man an exception to this rule, that he should
-cease to be the study of mankind? Is humanity below the animals?
-
-Mankind deteriorates while domesticated live stock improves.
-
-God has given us bodies formed in his own likeness, and has pronounced
-them "good," hence, not diseased; and it is evidently our most imperative
-duty to regard it as a great gift, and preserve these bodies as the
-inestimable boon of the Almighty.
-
-It is very evident that man has fallen far short of the requirements of
-his Maker.
-
-From Adam to the flood--a space of time estimated at upwards of fifteen
-hundred years, according to Hebrew chronographers--the average of man's
-years was nine hundred. From Noah to Jacob, by the same chronology, it had
-dwindled to one hundred and forty-seven years. In the ninetieth psalm we
-read, "The days of our years are threescore years and ten." From actual
-statistics it is shown to average now less than one fourth of threescore
-and ten years.
-
-And this fact in the face of civilization, enlightenment, and
-Christianity! Why so? How shall we account for the evil?
-
-The Psalmist above quoted says further, "and if by reason of _strength_
-they be fourscore years," etc., which implies that strength prolongs, and
-weakness--reversing the matter--shortens our days.
-
-Let us begin at the beginning.
-
-
-ABOUT THE BABIES.--HOW THEY ARE REARED AND HOW THEY SHOULD BE.
-
-  BABY ON THE PORCH.
-
-  Out on the porch, by the open door,
-    Sweet with roses and cool with shade,
-  Baby is creeping over the floor--
-    Dear little winsome blue-eyed maid!
-
-  All about her the shadows dance,
-    All above her the roses swing,
-  Sunbeams in the lattice glance,
-    Robins up in the branches sing.
-
-  Up at the blossoms her fingers reach,
-    Lisping her pleading in broken words,
-  Cooing away, in her tender speech,
-    Songs like the twitter of nestling birds.
-
-  Creeping, creeping over the floor,
-    Soon my birdie will find her wings,
-  Fluttering out at the open door
-    Into the wonderful world of things.
-
-  Bloom of roses and balm of dew,
-    Brooks that bubble and winds that call,
-  All things lovely, and glad, and new,
-    And the Father watching us over it all!
-
-"Select the best sprouts for transplanting," says the "Old Farmer's
-Almanac." And here you have the whole root of the matter in a nut shell;
-for sickly-looking sprouts produce only sickly-looking plants. Like begets
-like.
-
-Now, how about the babies? Women's rights are advocated. Men take their
-rights. But who shall defend the babies' rights? Poor, helpless little
-non-combatants! Let me say a few words in their behalf.
-
-Children, from the cradle, are wrongfully treated. Their first rights are
-here curtailed. Look at the baby that is permitted to creep out "on the
-porch," or over nature's green carpet, and there bask in the sunshine and
-frolic in the open air; then look in pity upon the pale weekly house-plant
-child. The contrast is as striking as lamentable.
-
-"O, he'll get his death's cold if the air blows upon him," hysterically
-screams the ignorant mother. Yes, "ignorant"--that is the adjective I want
-to describe her.
-
-The young mother has doubtless been sent to a fashionable boarding-school,
-where she was taught algebra, French, (?) the art of adornment, how to
-walk fashionably, eat delicately, and dress _a la mode_, and even how to
-make a good "catch," but never how to preserve her health or rear an
-offspring. O, this would be shockingly immodest, or "counting chickens
-before they are hatched," I once heard a lady affirm.
-
-Nine tenths of our American wives are totally ignorant of everything that
-pertains to their own health, or that of the healthful rearing of an
-infant.
-
-
-BABY IN A STRAIT JACKET.
-
-At first the infant is usually bound tightly in swaddling clothes, lest it
-move a limb, or for fear (like the down east orator) that it will "bust,"
-and thus kept from air and exercise the first year or two, till it not
-unusually becomes a stunted, rickety thing, hardly worth "transplanting"
-or raising. Haven't you and I, kind reader, been subjected to something of
-this sort of strait jacket insanity?--insanity of parents! And having been
-tolerably strongly constituted from a "tough stock," we survived that
-first wrong, whereas thousands of "nicer" babies have succumbed to the
-swaddling and stifling process.
-
-This is wrong, all wrong. The infant should be left free, at least as to
-its chest and limbs, in order to breathe, kick, and expand. How happy the
-little fellows are at evening to get rid of the murderous clothes which
-have been bundled about them all day, and how they will fight and squirm
-to get down on the carpet all stripped, and creep, or, if old enough, run
-about in freedom! How they crow and prattle!
-
-Now, don't swaddle them--a simple, easy bandage is early admissible,--or
-cover their heads and faces with caps, sheets, or blankets. Inure them to
-the air early and continually, and they will have less colds and
-"snuffles" than if you confined them within doors. Give them air and
-sunlight, and away with your "goose-grease." Yes, I have even known some
-country people to apply skunk's oil, and others who larded the infant's
-nose and chest for the "snuffles." Croup delights in such babies!
-
-Then from the strait jacket, baby is taken to the other extreme--bare
-arms, neck, and chest. Old Dr. Warren once said, "Boston sacrifices
-hundreds of children annually by not clothing their arms and chests."
-Once, when in remonstrating with a mother against this barbarous practice
-of thus exposing her little one-year-old to a chilling atmosphere when my
-arms and chest were not over warm as wrapped in an overcoat, she replied
-to me,--
-
-"O, the little dear looks so pretty with its little white arms and neck
-all bare!"
-
-"Yes," I replied, sorrowfully, "it will look pretty, also, laid out in its
-coffin."
-
-She was greatly shocked by the remark, which, however, too soon proved
-true.
-
-"Doctor's stuff" cannot counteract the fatal results of such ignorance and
-exposures.
-
-  TWO LITTLE SHOES.
-
-  Two little shoes laid away in the drawer,
-    Treasured so fondly--never to be worn;
-  Two little feet laid away in the tomb,
-    Cold and all lifeless--sadly we mourn.
-  What trifling things does not a mother keep,
-    Tokens of love the swelling heart to ease;
-  Useless little toys--a lock of golden hair;
-    Something to fondle--to cherish like these
-  Two little shoes laid away in the drawer,
-    Treasured so fondly, never to be worn!
-
-  These little shoes are only left us now;
-    Gone is our "darling," ever to remain;
-  Dear little feet, so plump and all dimpled,
-    Never will press them--never again!
-  But heavenly thoughts shall cheer me on my way:
-    Death is but life, in fairer, sunnier view;
-  Busy little feet but just run on before;
-    This is my solace as my tears bedew
-  Two little shoes laid away in the drawer,
-    Treasured so fondly, never to be worn.
-
-
-IMPURE LITERATURE AND PASSIONS.
-
-It is as marvellous as true that some children survive this treatment;
-besides the stuffing with meat victuals, candies, and cookies, inducing
-colic and dysentery; then dosing with rhubarb, paregoric, peppermint, and
-worse. Soothing syrups! Eternal quietuses! Yes, in spite of extremes of
-heat and cold, stuffing and dosing with crude and poisonous articles, some
-babies actually reach the next stage--youth!
-
-From chilled blood, indigestion, poisonous air and drugs, repeated attacks
-of croup, bronchitis, dysentery, etc., the majority who have reached
-puberty are afflicted by some scrofulous taint, or development, or broken
-constitutions.
-
-Now, they have appetites and passions to grapple. We have already, in
-chapter fifth, shown how the school-girl is cheated out of health by the
-deprivation of her "rights," among which are air, freedom, and exercise.
-Here is another evil, which must not be passed over unnoticed. A New York
-physician, who wields an abler pen than myself, thus expresses my ideas.
-What he applies to females is not limited by copyright. Males, help
-yourselves; it belongs to you quite as much as to the beautiful.
-
-"It sickens the heart to contemplate the education of female children in
-this city." (And let me add, in this country.) "Should nature even triumph
-over all the evils above enumerated, no sooner has the poor girl attained
-the age of puberty, than her mind and nervous system are placed upon the
-rack of novel-reading and sentimental love stories. There is just enough
-of truth in some of these mawkish productions to excite the passions and
-distract the attention of the young girl from the love of nature and its
-teachings, and all rational ideas of real life, and to cause her to
-despise the commonplace parents whose every hour may be occupied for her
-consideration and welfare."
-
-This writer goes on to condemn those selfish, money-grasping wretches
-"professors of religion, too," in our city, who publish this impure and
-overstrained literature, to the great injury of the morals of the young;
-adding, "What language can be too strong for such disgusting hypocrisy? We
-punish a poor wretch for the publication of an obscene book or print, and
-give honor and preferment to those who instil poison into the minds of our
-children by a book prepared with devilish ingenuity, and in every possible
-style of attraction and excitement.
-
-"It is the premature excitement of the nervous and sexual system that
-should be avoided. The licentious characters presented in all the glowing
-tints of a depraved imagination cannot fail to injuriously affect the
-youthful organism."
-
-The dissolute and immoral characters whom we debar from the personal
-friendship of our sons and daughters, whom we exclude from our parlors,
-and even street recognition, are sugared over, and, between gilded covers,
-passed freely into the _boudoirs_, school-rooms, and seminaries of our
-children, for their companionship at their leisure. The vile characters in
-person would be far less injurious, for in that case their hideousness
-would the surer be revealed.
-
-"Nothing can be more certain than the production of these works of a
-precocious evidence of puberty. The forces of the young heart and vascular
-system are thus prematurely goaded into ephemeral action by the stimulus
-of an imagination alternately moved to laughter, and tears, and sexual
-passion."
-
-Mr. Baxter, in Part 2, ch. xxi., direction 1, of his _Christian
-Directory_, which is a direction for reading other books than the Bible,
-says, "I pre-suppose that you keep the devil's books out of your hands and
-house. I mean cards, and idle tales, and play-books, and romances or
-love-books, and false, bewitching stories, and the seducting books of
-false teachers.... For where these are suffered to corrupt the mind, all
-grave and useful writings are forestalled; and it is a wonder to see how
-powerfully these poison the minds of children, and many other empty
-heads."
-
-It would astonish and shame some parents if they would take pains to look
-over the books which are daily and nightly perused by their children. It
-is not enough for you to know that such books were obtained from a "dear
-friend," or from a respectable publisher, or pious bookseller, or that
-they are lawful publications. Parents and guardians, I pray you take
-warning.
-
-
-"OUR GIRLS."
-
-I want everybody, male and female, old and young, to read that most
-excellent book, "Our Girls," by Dr. Dio Lewis. It will do you good. For
-humanity's sake, and particularly for the benefit of females, I recommend
-it. Lest some of my readers should not follow this advice, I want to tell
-you what it says about
-
-
-LOW NECK AND SHORT SLEEVES.
-
-"Many a modest woman appears at a party with her arms nude, and so much of
-her chest exposed that you can see nearly half of the mammal glands. Many
-a modest mother permits her daughters to make this model-artist exhibition
-of themselves.
-
-"One beautiful woman said, in answer to my complaints, 'You should not
-look.'
-
-"'But,' I said, 'do you not adjust your dress in this way on purpose to
-give us a chance to look?'
-
-"She was greatly shocked at my way of putting it.
-
-"'Well,' I said, 'this assurance is perfectly stunning. You strip
-yourselves, go to a public party, parade yourselves for hours in a glare
-of gas-light, saying to the crowd, "Look here, gentlemen," and then you
-are shocked because we put your unmistakable actions into words.'
-
-"In discussing this subject before an audience of ladies in this city
-(Boston), the other evening, I said, 'Ladies, suppose I had entered this
-hall with my arms and bust bare; what would you have done? You would have
-made a rush for the door, and, as you jostled against each other in
-hurrying out, you would have exclaimed to each other, "O, the
-unconscionable scallawag!" May I ask if it is not right that we should
-demand of you as much modesty as you demand of us?' But you exclaim,
-'Custom! it is the custom, and fashion is everything.'" Again the author
-says,--
-
-"This exposure of the naked bosom before men belongs not to the highest
-type of Christian civilization, but to those dark ages when women sought
-nothing higher than the gratification of the passions of man, and were
-content to be mere slaves and toys.
-
-"Boston contains its proportion of the refined women of the country. We
-have here a few score of the old families, inheriting culture and wealth,
-and who can take rank with the best. A matron who knows their habits
-assures me that she never saw a member of one of those families in 'low
-neck and short sleeves.'
-
-"In the future free and Christian America, the very dress of women will
-proclaim a high, pure womanhood.... We shall then discard the costumes
-devised by the dissolute capitals of Europe.
-
-"What a strange spectacle we witness in America to-day! Free, brave
-American women hold out to the world the Bible of social, political, and
-religious freedom, and anon we see them down on their knees, waiting the
-arrival of the latest steamer from France, to learn how they may dress
-their bodies for the next month."
-
-Well, he does not censure ladies in the above manner all through; but yet,
-in a most earnest and interesting way he divulges the most startling
-truths, and even very young misses are delighted with the whole argument.
-"Why, it's just like a story," exclaimed my twelve-year-old Katie on
-reading it.
-
-What Dr. Lewis objects to on the score of immodesty, I also oppose on the
-ground of unhealthfulness. The idea of preventing or curing the
-laryngitis, or consumption, in a lady, when there is nothing but gauze, or
-a bit of ribbon and a galvanized bosom pin, between her neck and the cold
-and changeable atmosphere of the north or east, is ridiculously absurd. No
-doctors or doctors' pectorals can save such. "High necks," warm flannels,
-or make your wills.
-
-
-HOW AND WHAT WE SHOULD BREATHE.
-
-It would disgust the reader if I should enter into the details of telling
-him what people--respectable people, even, in nice houses--breathe over.
-Air is life. The purer the air, the purer the life-stream that courses
-through our hearts. You cannot get too much of it. Take it in freely. Have
-only pure air in your houses, in your sleeping-rooms and cellars.
-Particularly see that the children have the freedom of the air, day and
-night, at home, at school, everywhere. It is free--costs nothing!
-
-
-THE FREEDOM OF THE STREET.
-
-      "I dwell amid the city,
-      And hear the flow of souls;
-  I do not hear the several contraries,
-  I do not hear the separate tone that rolls
-          In art or speech.
-
-  "For pomp or trade, for merry-make or folly,
-  I hear the confidence and sum of each,
-      And what is melancholy.
-  Thy voice is a complaint, O crowded city,
-  The blue sky covering thee, like God's great pity."
-
-"Heaven bless the freedom of the park," has exclaimed a child of song; and
-he might also have invoked the same blessing upon "the freedom of the
-street." The street is free to all; to high and low, young and old, rich
-and poor. It recognizes no distinctions or castes; it is the very
-expressiveness of democracy.
-
-The child of fashion, arrayed in silks, ribbons, and furbelows; the child
-of penury and want, in rags, filth, and semi-nakedness; the shaver of
-notes and the shaver of faces; the college professor and the chiffonier,
-all mingle in common on the street. Now walking side by side, now brushing
-past each other, now stopping to look at the same cause of excitement, now
-each jostled into the gutter. No distinction in wealth, birth, or
-intellect is recognized; no one dare attempt to restrict the freedom of
-the thoroughfare, and none dare say to another, "Stand aside, for I am
-better than thou."
-
-The little boy trundles his hoop against the shins of the thoughtful
-student; the little girl knocks the spectacles from the nose of the man of
-science with her rope, while the preacher runs against an awning-post to
-make way for a red-faced nurse with a willow carriage; the antiquated
-apple woman, and the child with its huge chunk of bread and butter, sit
-on the curb; the painter digs the end of his ladder rather uncomfortably
-into some pursy old gentleman's stomach; while the sweep, with the soot
-trembling upon his eyelashes, strolls along as independently and leisurely
-as the dandy in tights, and with the sweeter consciousness that he is
-doing something for the public good.
-
-[Illustration: THE FREEDOM OF THE PARK.]
-
-The street is a world in miniature, a Vanity Fair in motion, a shifting
-panorama of society, painted with the pencil of folly and fancy. It is the
-only plane upon which society, "the field which men sow thick with
-friendships," meets on a common level. It does not flaunt in aristocracy,
-and never dares to be pretentious.
-
-
-"KEEP YOUR EYES OPEN AND MOUTHS CLOSED."
-
-There's true philosophy in the above saying of a wise _savant_. But there
-is more wisdom in the latter clause than he even dreamed of in his
-philosophy.
-
-The Book informs us that God breathed the breath of life (air) into man's
-_nostrils_. Nothing is more injurious, save continually breathing foul
-air, than the habit of breathing through the mouth. Keep the mouth closed.
-A great many diseases of the teeth, mouth, throat, head, and lungs may be
-traced directly to the pernicious and general habit of breathing with the
-mouth open--inhaling and exhaling cold air directly into the mouth and
-throat, inflaming and chilling the mucous membrane and the blood. The
-nostrils are the only proper passages for the air to the lungs. Here are
-filterers to exclude particles of dust and foreign matter, and various
-ramifications, whereby the air is properly warmed before reaching the
-lining of the throat and lungs. In infected air you are less injured, and
-less liable to contract contagious diseases, when inhaling only through
-the natural channel, the nostrils.
-
-I think it was Dr. Good, of London, who wrote a book on the subject,
-which Carlyle pronounced "a sane voice in a world of chaos."
-
-George Catlin says he learned the secret of keeping the mouth closed while
-among the North American Indians. They would not allow themselves or their
-children to sleep with the mouth open (though their reasoning is
-questionable), because the evil spirit would creep in them at night. Hence
-the parent went around after the pappooses were asleep, and closed their
-mouths. Pulmonary diseases are seldom found in the "close-mouthed." Kant,
-the philosopher, claims to have cured himself of consumption by this
-discovery. Persons never snore except by breathing through the open mouth.
-O, give us quiet, you snorers, by keeping your mouths shut, even at the
-expense of "keeping your eyes open" to watch yourself, and thus deliver
-the world from the disturbance of snoring.
-
-
-THE LUNGS.--BREATHING.
-
-All that live, down even to vegetables and trees, breathe, _must_ breathe,
-in order to live; live in proportion as they breathe; begin life's first
-function with breathing, and end its last in their last breath. And
-breathing is the _most important_ function of life, from first to last,
-because the grand stimulator and sustainer of all. Would you get and keep
-warm when cold, breathe copiously, for this renews that carbonic
-consumption all through the system which creates all animal warmth. Would
-you cool off, and keep cool, in hot weather, deep, copious breathing will
-burst open all those myriads of pores, each of which, by converting the
-water in the system into insensible perspiration, casts out heat, and
-refreshes mind and body. Would you labor long and hard, with intellect or
-muscle, without exhaustion or injury, breathe abundantly; for breath is
-the great re-invigorator of life and all its functions. Would you keep
-well, breath is your great preventive of fevers, of consumption, of "all
-the ills that flesh is heir to." Would you break up fevers, or colds, or
-unload the system of morbid matter, or save both your constitution and
-doctor's fee, cover up warm, drink soft water--cold, if you have a robust
-constitution sufficient to produce a reaction; if not, hot water should be
-used. Then let in the fresh air, and breathe, breathe, breathe, just as
-deep and much as possible, and in a few hours you can "forestall and
-prevent" the worst attack of disease you ever will have; for this will
-both unload disease at every pore of skin and lungs, and infuse into the
-system that _vis animae_ which will both grapple in with and expel disease
-in all its forms, and restore health, strength, and life.
-
-Nature has no panacea like it. _Try the experiment_, and it will
-revolutionize your condition. And the longer you try, the more will it
-regenerate your body and your mind. Even if you have the blues, deep
-breathing will soon dispel them, especially if you add vigorous exercise.
-Would you even put forth your greatest mental exertions in speaking or
-writing, keep your lungs clear up to their fullest, liveliest action.
-Would you even breathe forth your highest, holiest orisons of thanksgiving
-and worship, deepening your inspiration of fresh air will likewise deepen
-and quicken your _divine_ inspiration. Nor can even bodily pleasures be
-fully enjoyed except in and by copious breathing. In short, proper
-breathing is the alpha and omega of all physical, and thereby of all
-mental and moral function and enjoyment.
-
-
-A MAN FULL OF HOLES.
-
-Yes, made of holes!
-
-A gentleman once told me a story, as follows. We were travelling on the
-Ohio River, on board of a steamer.
-
-"You see that bank over opposite?"
-
-"Yes," I replied.
-
-"Well, thereby hangs a little story. I always laugh when I think of it,
-or pass the spot, which is often. A fellow sat looking at that spot,
-watching the thousands of swallows that were continually flitting to and
-fro, in and out of their nests, and laughing immoderately to himself. I
-approached, and ventured to inquire the cause of his mirth, that I might
-partake of it.
-
-"Well, you see that bank and all them nests? Well, one day I went down on
-the boat and noticed them. When I came back, there had meantime been a
-heavy rain storm which washed the bank away, and left the holes all
-sticking out;" and the fellow continued to laugh as though he would split
-himself, probably from the _idea_ of the holes "sticking out." I wondered
-how he could see them if the bank around was washed away.
-
-Still the man full of holes is a fact. According to Krause, quoted in
-Gray's and Wilson's works on anatomy, there are twenty-eight hundred
-(2800) pores in the skin of the human body to the square inch; and the
-number of square inches to an average-sized man is twenty-five hundred
-(2500). This would give some _seven million pores in the whole body_.
-These pores, or tubes, are one fourth of an inch in length; hence, the
-entire length of them all is _twenty-eight miles_.
-
-That part of the skin is the healthiest which is the most exposed to the
-air, as the face and hands. That part the most diseased from which the air
-is most excluded, as the _feet_. Three fourths of all persons over
-fourteen years of age have diseased feet; either corns, chilblains, or
-diseased joints or nails.
-
-
-SEVEN MILLION MOUTHS TO FEED.
-
-These seven million mouths must be fed daily and hourly. Their food is
-light and air. Man is not only fed and nourished through the portal of his
-mouth, but through all the pores of his body, by drawing in nutriment from
-the surrounding elements, even from the viewless air.
-
-These little mouths also need moisture. This fact is revealed to the
-senses through the medium of the nerves; for, how grateful to the dry,
-parched skin, is a bath of cold water! or, if the blood is in a "low
-state,"--impoverished by disease,--let it be a tepid bath. Let it feel
-comfortable and grateful to the user. This is a good rule to direct you.
-The little children love it--love to paddle and splash in it. If they cry
-and fight against washing, it is usually because of the rudeness of the
-operator, who, with brawny palm or rough sponge takes the child unawares,
-nearly suffocating it, and briskly and rudely rubbing over the surface of
-the tender face, regardless of such small obstructions as nose, chin, and
-lips, and not unusually dashing a quantity of yellow soap suds into the
-infantile eyes. The next time the little fellow is requested to be washed,
-he, remembering the last _scouring_, naturally objects to a repetition of
-the unpleasant process.
-
-As the nostrils inhale pure air beneficially, they also exhale impurities.
-The pores also excrete, or throw off impurities. A healthy skin will throw
-out, by the pores, from two to three pounds of impure matter every
-twenty-four hours. To be sure a greater quantity of this impurity is a
-vapory substance, yet that holds in solution solid particles of corrupt
-matter, which greatly tend to clog the pores if left to obstruct free
-perspiration.
-
-
-WATER.
-
-Then, aside from cooling and nourishing the skin and the system through
-the pores, cleanliness and health demand oft and repeated ablutions of the
-whole body. In order that the perspiration may be unobstructed, it is
-absolutely necessary to wash the whole surface of the body in water, and
-on account of the _acid_ and oily substance collecting on the skin, using
-a small quantity of alkali, as soap or soda in the water, and thus, by
-good brisk rubbing, using the hand in preference to a cloth or sponge,
-thoroughly cleansing the little mouths referred to, else their action is
-retarded and suspended. This should be done daily during the summer
-season.
-
-This is a simple process, indispensable to health, and the unwashed can
-hardly believe what beneficial results follow such a plain course, or know
-the healthful influence or the comfort derived from a frequent use of pure
-water.
-
-Those who bathe thus daily seldom take colds. During the winter, in cold
-climates, weekly or semi-weekly bathing may suffice.
-
-[Illustration: "IT COSTS NOTHING."]
-
-A statesman, in seeking an illustration of the difference between price
-and value, very happily hit upon water, which costs nothing, and yet is of
-inestimable worth. Water, next to air, is the most indispensable of all
-the productions of nature. "Unlike most good things providentially
-supplied for our use, it is hardly capable of abuse. The more common
-danger to be feared is from too little, not too much, water.
-
-"Simple a thing, however, as it may be to quench the thirst from the
-running stream, or the mountain spring, there are but few people who know
-how to drink. Most people, in the eagerness of thirst, swallow with such
-avidity the welcome draught, that they deluge their stomachs without
-proportionately refreshing themselves. The slowly sipping of a single
-goblet of water will do more to alleviate thirst than the sudden gulping
-down of a gallon. It is more frequently the dryness of the mouth, during
-hot weather, than the want of the system, which calls for the supply of
-fluid. When larger quantities, moreover, are poured into the stomach than
-are required, that organ becomes oppressed mechanically by the distention,
-and the digestion is consequently weakened."
-
-The prescribed ablutions of the Jews and Mohammedans have not only a
-spiritual but a hygienic value. "The washing of the body not only whitens
-the outside of the sepulchre, but purifies the internal organs, and renews
-the spiritual man as well.... Hence, when the body becomes foul by the
-retention of worn-out and corrupt material accumulated on the surface and
-the interior of the structure, it becomes a cage suitable only for the
-dwelling of unclean birds, and no others will descend and make their nests
-therein. It is a vessel fitted to receive only the lower passions and
-feelings of human nature.
-
-"Public bathing-houses are as important a means of grace as our poorly
-ventilated churches, and many an unhappy soul would be brought nearer to
-heaven by a judicious application of soap and water than he could be by
-listening to a sermon about that of which he comprehends little and cares
-less."--_Rev. W. F. Evans's "Mental Cure."_
-
-
-SOAP VS. WRINKLES.
-
-How much younger and fresher the wayworn traveller or the outdoor laborer
-looks after a thorough washing of the face and hands only. Many who
-complain of "bird's claws" and wrinkles might murmur less if they made a
-thorough use of warm water and "old brown windsor soap," or better, the
-true castile soap. Nearly all the soap sold at groceries for castile is
-spurious. A good druggist will have the desired article, and for rough,
-chapped skin nothing is better, not even glycerine.
-
-Then wash out the furrows of fine dirt that gather in the _little_
-wrinkles, and it will surprise some folks to see how, thereby, they have
-reduced the size of their wrinkles. It is like cleansing an old coat!
-
-
-GOD'S SUNSHINE.
-
-Next to air and water in importance to health and happiness is sunlight.
-O, "let there be light" in your houses, that there may be light in your
-hearts also!
-
-Our houses should be so constructed and located that the sun may shine
-into every room some time during the day. Too many build houses and live
-in the rear. The hall and large parlors are usually situated in front, to
-the south or west, throwing the sitting, dining, and
-working-room--kitchen--in the shade. Let the cheering, life-giving
-influences of God's dear blessed sunshine flood the working, sitting, and,
-particularly, the sleeping rooms. He or she who sleeps in a room from
-which the sunshine is totally excluded will be pale, weak, tired, and die
-prematurely of consumption. Try a plant in such a room. It soon turns pale
-and sickly. Just so your children and yourself. I have such patients
-daily. Medicine cannot substitute sunshine.
-
-Throw open the blinds, dash aside the curtains, and let in the light and
-sunshine to your homes and hearts. Never mind the carpets; they may be
-replaced, but you and your children, never! Save your health, if _you ruin
-an old carpet in so doing_!
-
-Cholera, dysentery, scrofula, nervous diseases, and consumption prevail
-more extensively in narrow and darkened, as also in the shady side of
-streets; also in darkened prisons and hospitals.
-
-A heavy heart walks in dark and cheerless apartments. The cheerful, happy
-man, the joyous, contented wife, the beautiful, healthy children, dwell
-and rejoice in homes where flows full and free the pure air and the
-life-keeping, health-giving sunshine.
-
-Christianity is more likely to take up its abode with the latter. There
-only green leaves and beautiful flowers can gladden the sight and
-exhilarate the senses.
-
-Air, water, sunlight! "These three." Don't neglect them. So shall you live
-long, live healthy, and at last die happily!
-
-
-
-
-XXXII.
-
-HEALTH WITHOUT MEDICINE.
-
-    How shall I stay life's sunny hours?
-      For though the summer skies are clear,
-    Foreboding thoughts steal o'er my heart,
-      And autumn sounds oppress my ear.
-    While heart with hope beats warm and high,
-      And pleasures drink in summer bowers,
-    I know that autumn frosts will come--
-      How shall I stay life's sunny hours?
-
-    CHEERFULNESS.--GOOD ADVICE.--REV. FRANCIS J. COLLIER ON CHRISTIAN
-    CHEERFULNESS.--WHAT GOD SAYS ABOUT IT.--WHINING.--LOVE AND
-    HEALTH.--AFFECTION AND PERFECTION.--SEPARATING THE SHEEP AND
-    GOATS.--THE FENCES UP AND FENCES DOWN.--SIXTEEN AND SIXTY.--ACTION AND
-    IDLENESS.--IDLENESS AND CRIME.--BEAUTY AND DEVELOPMENT.--SLEEP.--DAY
-    AND NIGHT.--"WHAT SHALL WE EAT?"--A STOMACH-MILL AND A
-    STEWING-PAN.--"FIVE MINUTES FOR REFRESHMENTS."--ANCIENT DIET.--COOKS
-    IN A "STEW."--THE GREEN-GROCERIES OF THE CLASSICS.--CABBAGES AND
-    ARTICHOKES.--ANIMAL AND VEGETABLE DIET.
-
-
-CHEERFULNESS.
-
-I place cheerfulness next, in the catalogue of essentials to long life and
-happiness; before "diet," for, unless a man eats cheerfully, nothing will
-agree with him; and if he be constantly cheerful, nothing that he eats
-will injure him.
-
-"How shall I be cheerful when all the world goes wrong with me?" asks the
-diseased and despondent man or woman.
-
-Put on cheerfulness as a garment. Assume it. Try my suggestion. Use a
-little hypocrisy with yourself. Go before your glass, if necessary, and
-assume a cheerful countenance. Keep it up, and before long you will be
-astonished to find that Mr. Melancholy don't like it, and begins to
-withdraw his sombre person. Keep on "keeping it up," and the most happy
-results will soon follow your exertions.
-
-Try the reverse, and melancholy will return. This is cheap medicine.
-"[R]--A cheerful face, taken daily, feasting."
-
-
-CHRISTIAN CHEERFULNESS.
-
-The following prize essay was written by Rev. Francis J. Collier:--
-
-"_Cheerfulness as a Medicine._--Perhaps nothing has a greater tendency to
-cast gloom over the spirit than _disease_. The mind sympathizes with the
-body as much as the body with the mind. Their union is so intimate, so
-delicate, so sensitive, that what affects the one necessarily affects the
-other. Each to a certain degree determines the other's condition. If the
-mind is joyful, its emotion is betrayed by the expression of the body. 'A
-merry heart maketh a cheerful countenance.' But if the body is injured, or
-the physical system deranged, the mind at once suffers, and forthwith
-droops into sadness. It becomes, therefore, your Christian duty, if you
-have health, to study the laws of your physical being; to compel yourself
-both to labor and to rest; to avoid unnecessary risks or exposure; to
-abstain from injurious indulgences; to be prudent, temperate, chaste, and,
-by every proper means, to try to preserve what is so essential to your
-spiritual comfort. If you have lost this boon, strive to regain it. Think
-not, speak not, all the while about your malady. Suppress moans and
-complaints. They are always disagreeable to others; they can never be
-beneficial to you. Count your mercies, and not your miseries. Try upon
-your body the stimulus of a cheerful spirit. It may not insure your
-recovery, but it will certainly produce a pleasant alleviation. 'A merry
-heart doeth good like a medicine; but a broken spirit dryeth the bones.'
-
-"_Borrowing Trouble._--Forebodings of evil rob the mind of cheerfulness.
-'Ills that never happened have mostly made men wretched,' says Tupper.
-Casting our glance ahead, we see 'lions' in the way; difficulties which we
-are sure we can never overcome; griefs under whose heavy weight we shall
-be utterly crushed. Not satisfied with our present troubles, we borrow
-misery from the future. The Holy Scripture instructs us to do otherwise.
-'Thou knowest not what a day may bring forth.'--Prov. xxvii. 1. 'Take
-therefore no thought for the morrow, for the morrow shall take thought for
-the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.'--Matt.
-vi. 34. And then it gives us a golden promise, 'As thy days, so shall thy
-strength be.'
-
-"The life of many Christians is a life of constant sadness and gloom. They
-seem to be entire strangers to all the happiness of earth and all the
-hopes of heaven. Their faces commonly appear as sombre as the stones which
-mark the dwelling-places of the dead. Their feelings are better expressed
-in sighs than in songs. Unhappy themselves, they make others unhappy. They
-come and go like clouds, shutting out the sunshine from cheerful hearts,
-and for a while casting upon them shadows cold and dark.
-
-"Arise, O, desponding one! Quit your tearful abode in the valley of gloom,
-and come and make your dwelling on the bright hill-top of cheerfulness.
-Look up! look up! and behold the sun shining through the clouds, and the
-stars through the darkness."
-
-
-WHINING.
-
-This is a habit opposed to cheerfulness, and producing contrary results.
-It is half-sister to scolding, and equally as obnoxious. Don't fret and
-whine. It makes you look old and cross. The disease soon becomes chronic
-if indulged in. It is a disease that not only the doctors know at sight,
-but every one can read it in the face of those thus afflicted. "O, what a
-cross face that lady has got!" I heard another female exclaim but
-yesterday, as they passed on the street. You cannot hide it; then don't
-induce such a look.
-
-Somebody has written the following, which so completely expresses my ideas
-of the matter, that I quote the item verbatim:--
-
-"There is a class of persons in this world, by no means small, whose
-prominent peculiarity is whining. They whine because they are poor; or, if
-rich, because they have no health to enjoy their riches; they whine
-because it is too shiny; they whine because it is too rainy; they whine
-because they have 'no luck,' and others' prosperity exceeds theirs; they
-whine because some friends have died, and they are still living; they
-whine because they have aches and pains, and they have aches and pains
-because they whine, no one can tell why.
-
-"Now, we would like to say a word to these whining persons. Stop whining.
-It's of no use, this everlasting complaining, fretting, fault-finding,
-scolding, and whining. Why, you are the most deluded set of creatures that
-ever lived.
-
-"Do you not know that it is a well-settled principle of physiology and
-common sense that these habits are more exhausting to nervous vitality
-than almost any other violation of physiological law? And do you not know
-that life is pretty much what you make it and take it? You can make it
-bright and sunshiny, or you can make it dark and shadowy. This life is
-only meant to discipline us, to fit us for a higher and nobler state of
-being. Then stop whining and fretting, and go on your way rejoicing."
-
-
-LOVE.
-
-"Well, what has that to do with health and long life?" ask the cynic, the
-bachelor, the old maid possibly, and the plodders.
-
-Everything, I reply.
-
-The man, woman, or child who loves well and wisely, who loves the most, is
-the happiest, healthiest, and will live the longest.
-
-"That is a bold assertion," says my quizzer.
-
-Yes, and true as bold. Now listen in silence to my statement.
-
-Who loves, what loves, and what is the result?
-
-"God is love." Here is the first, the fundamental principle.
-
-He is the oldest of all beings. To be like him is to love,--to love all
-things which he has created. This is Godlike. If you are not thus, you are
-like the ungodly, who "shall not live out half their days." "Love God, and
-keep his commandments."
-
-"Love thy neighbor as thyself."
-
-Is there not more happiness and health in the obeying of this command,
-than in disobedience to it? Whatever is conducive to happiness is
-healthful. Whatever produces unhappiness is injurious to health. Love is
-undefinable.
-
-"There is a fragrant blossom that maketh glad the garden of the heart.
-
-Its root lieth deep; it is delicate, yet lasting as the lilac-crocus of
-autumn.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-I saw, and asked not its name; I knew no language was so wealthy.
-
-Though every heart of every clime findeth its echo within.
-
-And yet, what shall I say? Is a sordid man capable of love?
-
-Hath a seducer known it? Can an adulterer perceive it?
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-Chaste, and looking up to God, as the fountain of tenderness and joy.
-
-Quiet, yet flowing deep, as the Rhine among rivers.
-
-Lasting, and knowing not change, it walketh in truth and sincerity.
-
-Love never grows old, love never perisheth."
-
-
-AFFECTION AND PERFECTION.
-
-Love is so closely connected with our lives, and all that makes or mars
-our peace and pleasure, health and beauty, that I should feel guilty of a
-sin of omission by excluding this item from my chapter on health and
-happiness.
-
-To be unloved is to be unhappy. Do not forget the connection between
-health and happiness. They are all but synonymous terms.
-
-You may know the unloved and unlovely by the lines of care, dissipation,
-or crime that are furrowed upon their brows. Go into the highways, and you
-may readily pick out the unloved child by its unsatisfied expression of
-countenance. It lifts its great, hungry eyes to yours instinctively, and
-asks for love and sympathy as plainly by that searching look, as the child
-of penury, the bread-starveling asks for alms when it presents its scrawny
-hand, and in pitiful tones says, "Please give me a penny, for God's sake."
-
-O, give the child "love," for God's sake; for he so loved the world that
-he gave us his only begotten Son, who only in turn taught us to love.
-
-Physical perfection is never found in the unloved.
-
-The unloved wife is not long beautiful, nor the child of such. There is a
-marked difference between them and the wife and child that the husband and
-father cherishes and caresses with unrestrained affection. In sickness
-love divides the burden, as in the common toils of life.
-
-Disguise or deny the truth of the assertion if you will, woman must love
-somebody or some thing. She were not otherwise a true woman, nor made in
-the image of her Maker. If the husband denies her that affection which
-truly belongs to her nature, he must not blame her, but himself, if she
-loves another. She will cling to something. If she has no children upon
-whom to lavish her affections, she will love some other's, or a pet
-canary, or even a cat, or lapdog; but love she will.
-
-
-SEPARATING THE SHEEP AND GOATS.
-
-I place cheerfulness before love, because angry and melancholy people are
-unlovable. If you wish to be loved and happy, be lovable. Strive to
-please, to make those about you happy, and then you will be lovable.
-Cheerfulness is the first step.
-
-A very sensible writer in the _Phrenological Journal_ says,--
-
-"There is not enough thought, and time, and consideration devoted to this
-inevitable requisite, love. It is kept too much in the background. How
-many years are given to preparing young people for professions, trades,
-and occupations; how much counsel and advice are heaped around these
-topics; and yet how little importance is attached to the very influence
-which will probably be the turning-point of their lives. No wonder there
-are so many unhappy marriages. If we could only remember that boys and
-girls are not to be educated for lawyers, merchants, school-teachers, or
-housekeepers alone, but for husbands and wives, as well."
-
-Those girls are the most chaste and ladylike who have been brought up with
-a family, or neighborhood, or school of boys; and on the other hand, those
-boys who have from their earliest days been accustomed to female restraint
-and girlhood's influences, make the best men, and most faithful, loving
-husbands and fathers.
-
-What shall I say of those demoralizing institutions where the "young
-ladies" are taught algebra, languages, and ill manners? Where they are
-forbidden to recognize a gentleman in the school-room, prayer-room, or
-street? Can you, honest reader, believe there are such institutions in our
-enlightened land? Yet there are; where the sexes are denied not only the
-association with, but are forbidden the common courtesies of life; where,
-if a friend or brother lifts his hat to the young lady, while belonging to
-that institution, she is forbidden to acknowledge the courtesy.
-
-I remember Mrs. Brandyball, in one of Theodore Hook's novels of society,
-boasting of her seminary for young ladies as one of the _safest_ in the
-world, being entirely surrounded by a dense wall, eight feet high,
-surmounted by sharp spikes and broken glass bottles. I reckon all the
-virtue preserved in this way was not worth the cost of its defences.
-
-
-FENCES BROKEN DOWN.
-
-The writer passed some time in a town where these discourtesies were
-promulgated. I boarded with a pious family, where a large number of male
-students boarded also. There was one class of influences and _passions_
-pervading that place. All female influence and restraint were withdrawn.
-And what was the result? The boys were forbidden to smoke, or chew
-tobacco, or play at cards. They reckoned me as a "right jolly good
-fellow," because I could be induced to play a game of euchre with them;
-but they occasionally smoked me out of their rooms, and I was repeatedly
-compelled to check their wonted flow of licentious conversation. Cards, as
-an innocent amusement, I could stand, but the "accomplishments" referred
-to I could not endure. Shall I, as a physician, mention the positive
-evidence, the pathognomonic indications which were revealed to me in the
-faces of many of those young men; of vulgar habits, which are less often
-or seldom revealed in those who customarily associate in pure female
-society? They had little or no respect for the opposite sex. Their ideas
-of them, thoughts and conversations, were most gross. If some now and
-then, as they occasionally would, took a stolen interview, a walk at
-night, when "Old Prof." was asleep, it was with no more exalted views of
-purity than any other midnight criminal prowlers are supposed to cherish.
-
-And the girls? Alas! they were ready to flirt with every strange man,
-drummer, or else, who came into the village. The aforesaid pious landlord
-assured me further, what my eyes did not see, that he knew of girls
-climbing out of the windows at night, and partaking of stolen rides and
-interviews as late as midnight; and he pointed out to me one coy, plump
-little miss, who he knew "had been out as late as one or two A. M., taking
-a ride with a gentleman scholar."
-
-The scholars all met in the "chapel" for prayers. Are sly glances, winks,
-or billets-doux prayers? If so, they prayed fervently.
-
-Any well read, observing physician will tell you of the ruined healths of
-the majority of females educated at such exclusive seminaries.
-
-And what is the reverse of this exclusiveness?
-
-Bring the sexes up together. Teach them together, as much as is
-consistent. They will each have better manners, be more graceful, and
-possess clearer ideas of propriety, more beauty and better health, than by
-the plan of a separate education.
-
-We all dread to grow old. Don't talk of second childhood. Keep the first
-youthfulness fresh till the last. Love will do much towards continuing
-this desirable state. Says the _Phrenological Journal_, beauty comes and
-goes with health. The bad habits and false conditions which destroy the
-latter, render the former impossible. Youthfulness of form and features
-depends on youthfulness of feeling.
-
-  "Spring still makes spring in the mind,
-    When sixty years are told;
-  Love wakes anew the throbbing heart,
-    And we are never old."
-
-If, then, we would retain youthful looks, we must do nothing that will
-make us _feel old_.
-
-O, the folly of parents in some things! The nonsense of sixty is the
-sweetest kind of sense to sixteen; and the father and mother who renew
-their own youths in that of their children may be said to experience a
-second blossoming of their lives. Teach them to talk to you of their
-friends and companions. Let the girls chat freely about gentlemen if they
-wish. It is far better to control the subject than to forbid it. Don't
-make fun of your boy's shamefaced first love, but help him to judge the
-article properly. You would hardly send him by himself to select a coat or
-a hat--has he not equal need of your counsel and assistance in selecting
-that much more uncertain piece of goods, a sweetheart?
-
-There is a great deal of popular nonsense talked and written about the
-folly of our girls contracting early marriages. It is not the early
-marriage that is in fault, it is the premature choice of a husband. Only
-take time enough about selecting the proper person, and it is not of much
-consequence how soon the minister is called in. Keep him on trial a little
-while, girls; look at him from every possible point of view, domestic or
-foreign. Don't be deluded by the hollow glitter of handsome features and
-prepossessing manners. A Greek nose or a graceful brow will not insure
-conjugal happiness by any means. A husband ought to be like a watertight
-roof, equally serviceable in sunny or rainy weather.
-
-
-ACTION AND IDLENESS.
-
-While action is surely essential to our physical and moral being, all
-extremes should be avoided. Excessive labor, even out of door, in the air
-and sunshine, may be injurious. On this point I quote the _Scientific
-American_:--
-
-"It has oftentimes been asserted that those exposed to severe labor in the
-open atmosphere were the least subject to sickness. This has been proven a
-fallacy. Of persons engaged at heavy labor in outdoor exposure, the
-percentage of sickness in the year is 28.05. Of those engaged at heavy
-labor in-doors, such as blacksmiths, etc., the percentage of sickness is
-26.54--not much to be sure; but of those engaged at light occupations
-in-doors and out, the percentage of sickness is only 20.80-21.58. For
-every three cases of sickness in those engaged in light labor, there are
-four cases among those whose lot is heavy labor. The mortality, however,
-is greater among those engaged in light toil, and in-door labor is less
-favorable to longevity than laboring in the open atmosphere. It is
-established clearly that the quantum of sickness annually falling to the
-lot of man is in direct proportion to demands on his muscular power.
-
-"How true this makes the assertion,--'Every inventor who abridges labor,
-and relieves man from the drudgery of severe toil, is a benefactor of his
-race.' There were many who looked upon labor-saving machines as great
-evils, because they supplanted the hand toil of many operatives. We have
-helped to cure the laboring and toiling classes of such absurd notions. A
-more enlightened spirit is now abroad, for all experience proves that
-labor-saving machines do not destroy the occupations of men, but merely
-change them."
-
-
-IDLENESS INDUCES CRIME.
-
-This fact cannot be too strongly or repeatedly impressed upon parents and
-children.
-
-Warden Haynes, of the Massachusetts State Prison, lately uttered these
-emphatic and significant words, which are worthy to be written in letters
-of gold: "Eight out of every ten come here by liquor; and a great curse
-is, not learning a trade. Young men get the notion that it is not genteel
-to learn a trade; they idle away their time, get into saloons, acquire the
-habits of drinking, and then gambling, and then they are ready for any
-crime." How many young men we see every day who are in the pathway to this
-end. Fathers and mothers who hold the dangerous view that it is not
-genteel for their children to learn a trade, can see where such ideas
-lead. The words of wisdom quoted above are full of weighty import for both
-parents and children.
-
-
-BEAUTY AND DEVELOPMENT.
-
-Activity of body and mind are conducive to health.
-
-Everybody ought to know that moderate exercise develops the muscular and
-nervous power, hence the vitality of all creatures. Is the active,
-prancing steed, or the inactive, sluggish swine, the better representative
-of beauty, strength, and long life?
-
-"The horse," answers everybody. Then avoid the habits of the other, and
-you will be very unlike that indolent, unclean, and gluttonous animal.
-When you see a man who reminds you of a hog, be assured he has swinish
-habits.
-
-Mental activity, unless it is excessive, is conducive to beauty, to
-strength, and health. A writer in the American Odd Fellow has some good
-ideas illustrative of my argument, that I may be pardoned for quoting
-him:--
-
-"We were speaking of handsome men the other evening, and I was wondering
-why K. had so lost the beauty for which five years ago he was so famous.
-'O, it's because he never did anything,' said B.; 'he never worked,
-thought, or suffered. You must have the mind chiselling away at the
-features, if you want handsome middle-aged men.' Since hearing that
-remark, I have been on the watch to see whether it is generally true--and
-it is. A handsome man who does nothing but eat and drink grows flabby, and
-the fine lines of his features are lost; but the hard thinker has an
-admirable sculptor at work, keeping his fine lines in repair, and
-constantly going over his face to improve, if possible, the original
-design."
-
-Therefore, we infer that this moderate (outdoor) exercise is conducive to
-beauty, health, and longevity. Moderate activity of the mind the same.
-
-Idleness begets licentious thoughts and deeds. Activity of body and mind
-in honorable pursuits calls away the nervous power from the lower to the
-higher organs. A lively, cheerful, clean man or woman, is seldom wicked or
-licentious.
-
-
-SLEEP.
-
-By the assistance of John G. Saxe, we have already given those
-
-  "Early to bed, and early to rise,
-  Makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise,"
-
-fellows a touch of our opinion on too early rising. I base my judgment
-upon careful and continued observation during many years.
-
-The Scriptures teach that the day is for work, and night for sleep. This
-turning day into night, sitting up till near midnight, is all wrong. It is
-ruinous to health and beauty. This other extreme, of rising at four or
-five o'clock and pitching into hard labor, is wearing and tearing to the
-constitution; and though nature for a while adapts herself to the
-necessity, by browning and unnaturally developing the exposed parts of
-such deluded or unfortunate persons, _it does it at the expense of his
-length of days_. He will not live so long for his over-doing.
-
-Begin by retiring earlier, at the first indication after nightfall of
-fatigue and sleepiness. If sweaty, wash the skin quickly, as previously
-directed, with warm water, _rubbing dry and warm_, and cover up. Lie on
-one side. Do not sleep on your back. You are more liable to dream
-laborious or frightful dreams, snore, or have nightmare. Do not sleep in
-clothes worn during the day.
-
-Unfortunate is the man or woman, who, from necessity, arises before six or
-seven in winter, or five to seven in summer.
-
-Literary persons require more sleep than laborers. Children require more
-than adults. Do not lie in bed long after awaking at morning. Open your
-window wide as soon as you arise--it is supposed to be partially open at
-the top all night.
-
-In inhaling air at night or morning, do it only through the nostrils.
-Night air is _not_ injurious any more than day air if so inhaled. Sleep
-when sleepy--this is a good rule, unless disease induces unnatural sleep.
-
-
-WHAT SHALL WE EAT?
-
-_Eat what relishes well, and agrees with you afterwards._ This is the best
-general rule I have been able to adopt for eating.
-
-There has been so much ridiculous stuff written upon "diet" that most
-sensible people have given up trying to follow the prescribed rules of
-writers, if not their physician's directions on that score.
-
-Take the following, by one celebrated Dr. Brown, of England, for an
-example, although we may find others quite as ridiculous nearer home:--
-
-"For breakfast, toast and rich soup made on a slow fire, a walk before
-breakfast, and a good deal after it; a glass of wine in the forenoon,
-_from time to time_; good broth or soup to dinner, with meat of any kind
-he likes, but always the most nourishing; several glasses of port or punch
-to be taken after dinner, till some enlivening effect is perceived from
-them, and a dram after everything heavy; one hour and a half after dinner
-another walk; between tea-time and supper a game with cheerful company at
-cards or any other play, never too prolonged; a little light reading;
-jocose, humorous company, avoiding that of popular Presbyterian ministers
-and their admirers, and all hypocrites and thieves of every
-description.... Lastly, the company of amiable, handsome, and delightful
-young women and an enlivening glass."
-
-Dr. Russell, to whom we are indebted for the quotation, might well say
-that "John Brown's prescriptions seem a caricature of his system."
-
-
-A "STOMACH-MILL" AND A "STEWING-POT."
-
-There have been many speculations about the nature of the digestive
-process, and in relation to them the celebrated Hunter remarked,
-playfully, "To account for digestion, some have made the stomach a mill;
-some would have it to be a stewing-pot, and some a brewing-trough; yet all
-the while one would have thought that it must have been very evident that
-the stomach was neither a mill, nor a stewing-pot, nor a brewing-trough,
-nor anything but a _stomach_." All that can be said is, that digestion is
-a chemical process, the mechanical agency spoken of being of service only
-in thoroughly mixing the gastric juice with the food.
-
-
-"FIVE MINUTES FOR REFRESHMENTS."
-
-"Murder! murder!" the conductor might as well cry to passengers, as "Five
-minutes for refreshments."
-
-Now it makes less difference what we eat than how we eat. Cold hash, eaten
-slowly, therefore, well masticated, and mixed with the saliva, is more
-likely to "set well" than a light cake or a cracker, though it be "Bond's
-best," if hurried down the throat.
-
-What the English call the "blarsted Yankee style" of gulping down the food
-half masticated, washing it down with drinks, will ruin anything but a
-sheet-iron stomach in a cast-iron constitution. Talk about "mills." Why,
-that most excellently contrived mill in the mouth is not suffered to
-perform its duty. The hopper is too crammed; it clogs the whole machinery.
-
-Eating between meals destroys the regular periods naturally established by
-the stomach for digestion. Three meals should be sufficient for
-twenty-four hours.
-
-"Much has been said about exercising after eating, and the truth has been
-often over-stated. The famous experiment with the two dogs is cited to
-show that exercise after eating interferes with the process of digestion.
-Observe just how much was proved by the experiment. Two dogs were fed to
-the full, and while one was left to lie still, the other was made to run
-about very briskly. In an hour or two both dogs were killed, and it was
-found that the food was well digested in the dog that remained quiet, but
-not in the other. (I have seen it stated the reverse.) This proves simply
-that _violent_ exercise, taken _immediately_ after eating, interferes with
-digestion. Other facts show that light exercise rather promotes than
-impedes the process, and that even very strong exercise does not interfere
-with it if a short interval of rest be allowed, so that the process may be
-fairly commenced.
-
-"The same is to some extent true of exercise of mind. It seems to be
-necessary that there should be some measure of concentration of energy in
-the stomach for the due performance of digestion, and any very decided
-exercise, bodily or mental, tends to prevent this. In the dyspeptic, even
-a slight amount of effort, either of body or mind, often suffices to do
-it.
-
-"It is very commonly said that it is wrong to eat just before going to
-bed. Is this true? Cattle are apt to go to sleep after eating fully. Do
-sleep and digestion agree well in their case, and not so in the case of
-man? In some seasons of the year the farmer takes his heartiest meal at
-the close of the labors of the day, and soon retires. Is this a bad
-custom? Our opinion is that food may be taken properly at a late hour,
-provided, first, that the individual has not already eaten enough for the
-twenty-four hours,--that he has done so being true, probably, in most
-cases; and provided, secondly, that he is in such a state of health that
-digestion will not so act upon his nerves as to disturb his sleep. If it
-will thus act, it is clear that he had better be disturbed when awake,
-for he can bear the disturbance then with less of injury to his system."
-
-
-ANCIENT DIET.
-
-"How did them old _anti-delusion_ fellows live?" once asked an honest old
-farmer of the writer. "They must have lived differently than we live, or
-they would not have told so many years as they did."
-
-True, true. The difference between ancient and modern diet is remarkable.
-The ancient Greeks and Romans used no tea, coffee, tobacco, chocolate,
-sugar, lard, or butter. They had but few spices, no "nutmeg, cinnamon,
-ginger, or cloves," no Cayenne pepper, no sage, sweet marjoram, spinach,
-tapioca, Irish moss, arrow-root, potato, corn starch, common beans; no
-oranges, tamarinds, or candies, or the Yankee invention, "buckwheat cakes
-and molasses." What would our modern cooks do without the above enumerated
-articles in the culinary department? And the butter! Down to the Saviour's
-time butter was unknown. Dr. Galen (130-218, A. D.) saw the first butter
-only a short time before his death. Tea is comparatively a modern
-introduction.
-
-
-THE GREEN GROCERY OF THE CLASSICS.
-
-The cabbage has had a singular destiny--in one country an object of
-worship, in another of contempt. The Egyptians made of it a god, and it
-was the first dish they touched at their repasts. The Greeks and Romans
-took it as a remedy for the languor following inebriation. Cato said that
-in the cabbage was a panacea for the ills of man. Erasistratus recommended
-it as a specific in paralysis. Hippocrates accounted it a sovereign
-remedy, boiled with salt, for the colic. And Athenian medical men
-prescribed it to young nursing mothers, who wished to see lusty babies
-lying in their arms. Diphilus preferred the beet to the cabbage, both as
-food and as medicine,--in the latter case, as a vermifuge. (Horace Greeley
-prefers the latter, for he says that "a cabbage will beat a beet if the
-cabbage gets a-head.") The same physician extols mallows, not for
-fomentation, but as a good edible vegetable, appeasing hunger and curing
-the sore throat at the same time. The asparagus, as we are accustomed to
-see it, has derogated from its ancient magnificence. The original "grass"
-was from twelve to twenty feet high; and a dish of them could only have
-been served to the Brobdignagians. Under the Romans, stems of asparagus
-were raised of three pounds' weight, heavy enough to knock down a slave in
-waiting with. The Greeks ate them of more moderate dimensions, or would
-have eaten them, but that the publishing doctors of their day denounced
-asparagus as injurious to the sight. But then it was also said that a
-slice or two of boiled pumpkin would reinvigorate the sight which had been
-deteriorated by asparagus! "Do that as quickly as you should asparagus!"
-is a proverb descended to us from Augustus, and illustrative of the mode
-in which the vegetable was prepared for the table.
-
-A still more favorite dish, at Athens, was turnips from Thebes. Carrots,
-too, formed a distinguished dish at Greek and Roman tables. Purslain was
-rather honored as a cure against poisons, whether in the blood by wounds,
-or in the stomach from beverage. I have heard it asserted in France, that
-if you briskly rub a glass with fingers which have been previously rubbed
-with purslain or parsley, the glass will certainly break. I have tried the
-experiment, but only to find that the glass resisted the pretended charm.
-
-Broccoli was the favorite vegetable food of Drusus. He ate greedily
-thereof; and as his father, Tiberius, was as fond of it as he, the master
-of the Roman world and his illustrious heir were constantly quarrelling,
-like two clowns, when a dish of broccoli stood between them. Artichokes
-grew less rapidly into aristocratic favor; the _dictum_ of Galen was
-against them, and for a long time they were only used by drinkers against
-headache, and by singers to strengthen their voice. Pliny pronounced
-artichokes excellent food for poor people and donkeys. For nobler stomachs
-he preferred the cucumber--the Nemesis of vegetables. But people were at
-issue touching the merits of the cucumber. Not so regarding the lettuce,
-which has been universally honored. It was the most highly esteemed dish
-of the beautiful Adonis. It was prescribed as provocative to sleep; and it
-cured Augustus of the malady which sits so heavily on the soul of Leopold
-of Belgium--hypochondriasis. Science and rank eulogized the lettuce, and
-philosophy sanctioned the eulogy in the person of Aristoxenus, who not
-only grew lettuces as the pride of his garden, but irrigated them with
-wine, in order to increase their flavor.
-
-But we must not place too much trust in the stories, either of sages or
-apothecaries. These pagans recommended the seductive but indigestible
-endive as good against the headache, and young onions and honey as
-admirable preservers of health, when taken fasting; but this was a
-prescription for rustic swains and nymphs. The higher classes, in town or
-country, would hardly venture on it. And yet the mother of Apollo ate raw
-leeks, and loved them of gigantic dimensions. For this reason, perhaps,
-was the leek accounted not only as salubrious, but as a beautifier. The
-love for melons was derived, in similar fashion probably, from Tiberius,
-who cared for them even more than he did for broccoli. The German Caesars
-inherited the taste of their Roman predecessor, carrying it, indeed, to
-excess; for more than one of them submitted to die after eating melons,
-rather than live by renouncing them.
-
-I have spoken of gigantic asparagus: the Jews had radishes that could vie
-with them, if it be true that a fox and cubs could burrow in the hollow of
-one, and that it was not uncommon to grow them of a hundred pounds in
-weight. It must have been such radishes as those that were employed by
-seditious mobs of old, as weapons in insurrections. In such case, a
-rebellious people were always well victualled, and had peculiar
-facilities, not only to beat their adversaries, but _to eat their own
-arms_! The horseradish is probably a descendant of this gigantic ancestor.
-It had at one period a gigantic reputation. Dipped in poison, it rendered
-the draught innocuous, and rubbed on the hands, it made an encounter with
-venomed serpents mere play. In short, it was celebrated as being a cure
-for every evil in life, the only exception being that it destroyed the
-teeth. There was far more difference of opinion touching garlic than there
-was touching the radish. The Egyptians deified it, as they did the leek
-and the cabbage; the Greeks devoted it to Gehenna, and to soldiers,
-sailors, and cocks that were not "game." Medicinally, it was held to be
-useful in many diseases, if the root used were originally sown when the
-moon was below the horizon. No one who had eaten of it, however, could
-presume to enter the temple of Cybele. Alphonso of Castile was as
-particular as this goddess; and a knight of Castile, "detected as being
-guilty of garlic," suffered banishment from the royal presence during the
-entire month.
-
-It is long since the above instructive article on the "Green Groceries of
-the Classics," by Dr. Doran, was in print, and I think it will be new to
-most of my readers. I hope it will prove interesting as well as
-instructive.
-
-
-ANIMAL OR VEGETABLE DIET?
-
-Both, if considered in regard to health. With an eye to economy only, I
-should recommend vegetable diet.
-
-I think that poor people lay out more, in proportion, than the rich, for
-the purchase of animal food. They often buy extravagantly, on the credit
-system, purchasing on Saturday nights, when there is a rush at the
-stalls, and less opportunities for good bargains than when there is more
-time. Again, the lower classes fry their meats, losing much of their
-flavor and substance, by its going up chimney; or by boiling, and throwing
-away much of the nutriment with the water, which stewing in a covered dish
-would obviate.
-
-I have been into various markets, and observed the poor as they made their
-purchases. I have seen them count into the butcher's hand their last penny
-for a rib roast, a piece of pork to fry, a hind quarter of lamb to bake,
-or beef to boil, when a piece to stew, with nourishing vegetables, would
-cost far less, and return double the nutritive principle.
-
-Beefsteak, which contains seventy-five per cent. of water, is poor economy
-of both money and health. The flank and neck pieces are better. The more
-fatty and nutritive fore quarters are better than the hind quarters. Ask
-the Jews. Coarse vegetables, as carrots, cabbages, turnips, and potatoes,
-contain more nourishment than beef, though far less than the cereals, as
-wheat, barley, corn, and buckwheat. Beans, peas, rice, cracked wheat or
-hominy, cooked with meat, make a most wholesome and nourishing diet for
-laborers, for the sedentary, and for invalids. Meat should never be given
-to toothless infants. Milk, or bread and milk, is all they require until
-they have teeth.
-
-A cheap, innutritious regimen is scarcely conducive to longevity, any more
-than a stimulating and high living is contributive to that end. A great
-quantity of hot roast meats is objectionable. Also hot fine flour bread.
-Let those particularly interested in the matter see our article on bread,
-etc., in chapter on Adulterations. Also, as respects coarse sugar against
-the refined. See, also, Nutriment for Consumptives, in next chapter.
-
-
-
-
-XXXIII.
-
-CONSUMPTION (PHTHISIS PULMONALIS).
-
-    CONSUMPTION A MONSTER!--UNIVERSAL REIGN.--SIGNS OF HIS
-    APPROACH.--WARNINGS.--BAD POSITIONS.--SCHOOL-HOUSES.--ENGLISH
-    THEORY.--PREVENTIVES.--AIR AND SUNSHINE.--SCROFULA.--A JOLLY FAT
-    GRANDMOTHER.--"WASP WAISTS."--CHANGE OF CLIMATE.--"TOO LATE!"--WHAT TO
-    AVOID.--HUMBUGS.--COD-LIVER OIL.--STRYCHNINE WHISKEY.--A
-    MATTER-OF-FACT PATIENT.--SWALLOWING A PRESCRIPTION.--SIT AND LIE
-    STRAIGHT.--FEATHERS OR CURLED HAIR.--A YANKEE DISEASE.--CATARRH AND
-    COLD FEET, HOW TO REMEDY.--"GIVE US SOME SNUFF, DOCTOR."--OTHER THINGS
-    TO AVOID.--A TENDER POINT.
-
-
-Phthisis Pulmonalis is consumption of the lungs, which is the common
-acceptation of the term consumption. _Phthisis_ is from the Greek, meaning
-_to consume_. This fearful disease, from the earliest period in the
-history of medicine to the present day, has proved more destructive of
-human life than any other in the entire catalogue of ills to which frail
-humanity is heir. In Great Britain, one in every four dies of consumption;
-in France, one in five. In the United States, especially in New England,
-the number who die annually by this fearful disease is truly startling!
-One in every three! One reason for this fatality is because of the
-prevailing and erroneous idea that it is inevitably a fatal disease.
-
-Consumption is a relentless monster, and insidious in his approaches. He
-spares not the high or the low. Oftener known in the hovel, he fails not
-to visit dwellers in palaces. He paints the cheek of the infant, youth,
-maiden, the middle-aged, and the aged with the false glow of health. The
-delicate and beautiful are his common subjects.
-
-Tupper wrote with an understanding when he penned the following:--
-
-  "Behold that fragile form of delicate, transparent beauty,
-  Whose light blue eye and hectic cheek are lit by the bale-fires of
-      decline;
-  All droopingly she lieth, as a dew-laden lily,
-  Her flaxen tresses rashly luxuriant, dank with unhealthy moisture;
-  Hath not thy heart said of her, 'Alas! poor child of weakness'?"
-
-Yes, the monster "Decline" seeks particularly the fair-skinned, of
-"transparent beauty," and those of the "light blue eye and flaxen hair,"
-for his victims. Nor are the illiterate alone his subjects, but men of the
-most talented minds, men versed in arts, sciences, and _belles-lettres_,
-professors of hygiene and physiology, and the very practitioners of the
-art of medicine themselves, are often the shining marks of the insidious
-monster whom they by erudition diligently seek to repel.
-
-Because of the too prevalent belief of the invincibleness of consumption,
-it has been neglected more than any other disease. The victims to its
-wiles have hoped against hope, while the enemy has woven his web quietly
-and flatteringly around them.
-
-You must first be warned of his earliest aggression.
-
-
-SIGNS OF HIS APPROACH.
-
-He is a deceiver. Let us be wary of him.
-
-We have been too negligent in this matter. Let us remember that prevention
-is far better than cure.
-
-The slight fatigue on the least exertion we have counted as "nothing." The
-hectic flush of the cheeks is too often mistaken for a sign of health. The
-cursory pains of the chest, or left side, or under the shoulder-blades,
-are disregarded, or, if noticed at all, are mentioned as though "of no
-account." The slight hacking cough is scarcely heeded; for do not people
-often cough without having consumption, and without raising blood? True,
-true; and this is the stronghold of the deceiver.
-
-Consumption is a disease which is not entirely confined to the lungs. It
-is often a depraved condition of the system, particularly the blood. There
-is a "consumption of the blood," and a variety of morbid phenomena, which
-cannot be expressed in the single word consumption. It not unusually
-results in a scrofulous predisposition. An hereditary predisposition may
-or may not be the cause. If the former, its development must depend upon
-some exciting cause, which will be mentioned hereafter. The intermarrying
-of persons of like temperaments and constitutional dispositions inevitably
-results in children of scrofulous and consumptive diathesis.
-
-[Illustration: A NATURAL POSITION.]
-
-[Illustration: AN UNNATURAL POSITION.]
-
-A neglected cold, cough, or catarrh may soon develop this fatality. The
-peculiar changes in females at certain periods of life often awaken the
-slumbering enemy. Teething in infancy not unfrequently develops the
-scrofulous element, and a wasting of the system--either _marasmus_ or
-_tabes mesenterica_--follows, which, under the best treatment, may prove
-fatal.
-
-The slip-shod, doubled-up way that many people have of lying, sitting, and
-standing, are conducive to consumption.
-
-Badly-ventilated school-houses have heretofore been a source of great
-injury to children, developing scrofula and consumption in constitutions
-where it might have remained latent during their lifetime. Every
-reflecting parent should rejoice in the improvements which have been made
-during the last few years in the matter of ventilation in buildings,
-particularly in churches and school-rooms, although janitors, porters, and
-teachers have as yet too limited ideas on the subject of wholesome air.
-The dry furnaces are a very objectionable feature, and not conducive to
-health.
-
-_Early Symptoms._--Fatigue on the least exertion; a languid, tired feeling
-in the morning; rosy tint of one or both cheeks during the latter part of
-the day, caused by unoxygenized blood rushing to the surface; swelling of
-the glands of the neck, or elsewhere; enlarged joints; paleness of the
-lips; areola under the eyes; sensitiveness to the air; chills running over
-the body; taking cold easily; catarrhal symptoms; premature development of
-the intellect; and early physical maturity, are among its initiatory
-indications. Also, when the disease is located in the lungs, spitting of
-white, frothy mucus, or blood, with catarrhal symptoms; cough, which is
-noticed by others before by the patient; hacking on retiring, or early in
-the morning; varied appetite; tickling in the throat; short breath on
-exertion, with rapid pulse.
-
-_Second Stage._--Cough, and difficult breathing; increased difficulty of
-lying on one side; sharp, short pains; diminution of monthly period;
-swelling of the lower extremities, leaving corrugation on removing the
-hose and garters at night; raising greenish yellow matter, with (at
-times) hard, curd-like substance; sweating easily (sometimes the reverse);
-night sweats; restless, feverish, either dull or sharp bright cast to the
-eyes. Sputa increases to the
-
-_Third Stage._--Diarrhoea not unusually supervenes; spitting of blood; the
-person emaciates rapidly; the face changes from a bloated to a cadaverous
-appearance, with hectic fever; the patient faints easily; debility
-increases with the cough, or haemoptosis occurs often, until death finally
-closes the scene.
-
-These are merely some of the external symptoms. Let the patient mark them,
-not so much to fear, as to provide against them. To be forewarned is to be
-forearmed. I caution you against the causes, and give you the benefit of
-my extensive experience with this disease, both in New England and three
-years in the South, that you may avoid its development by attention to
-rules for health and longevity.
-
-If this fearful disease was better understood by the people, it would
-prove far less destructive of human life. Undomesticated animals do not
-die of it; domesticated ones do. What does that imply? That the people
-have engendered the disease! Let the "people," then, take the first step
-in preventing its ravages.
-
-
-THEORY OF CONSUMPTION.
-
-At a sitting of the Academy of Medicine at London, Dr. Priory read a paper
-on the treatment of phthisis, in which he developed the following
-propositions:--
-
-1. Pulmonary phthisis is a combination of multifarious variable phenomena,
-and not a morbid unity.
-
-2. Hence there does not and cannot exist a specific medicine against it.
-
-3. Therefore neither iodine nor its tincture, neither chlorine, nor sea
-salt, nor tar, can be considered in the light of anti-phthisical
-remedies.
-
-4. _There are no specifics against phthisis, but there are systems of
-treatment to be followed in order to conquer the pathological states which
-constitute the disorder._
-
-5. In order to cure consumptive patients, the peculiar affections under
-which they labor must be studied, and appreciated, and counteracted by
-appropriate means.
-
-6. The tubercle cannot be cured by the use of remedies, but good hygienic
-precautions may prevent its development.
-
-7. The real way to relieve, cure, or prolong the life of consumptive
-patients, is to treat their various pathological states, which ought to
-receive different names, according to their nature.
-
-8. Consumption, thus treated, has often been cured, and oftener still life
-has been considerably prolonged.
-
-9. Phthisis should never be left to itself, but always treated as stated
-above.
-
-10. The old methods, founded on the general idea of a single illness
-called phthisis, are neither scientific nor rational.
-
-11. The exact diagnosis of the various pathological states which
-constitute the malady will dictate the most useful treatment for it.
-
-
-PREVENTIVES OF CONSUMPTION.
-
-If a man desires a house erected, he consults a carpenter, or if a first
-class residence, he employs an architect. If our watch gets out of repair,
-we take it to a skilful jeweller. If our boots become worn, want tapping,
-they are sent to the cobbler. But how many people there are, who, when the
-complicated mechanism of the system gets out of order,--which they cannot
-look into as they can their watch or old boots,--first try to patch
-themselves up, instead of employing a professional "cobbler of poor health
-and broken constitutions."
-
-Before me are Wistar's, Wilson's, and Gray's Works on Anatomy. I have
-read them, or Krause's, more than twenty years. They contain all that has
-been discovered relative to the human system. But I do not know it all. I
-never can. I doubt if the man lives who knows it all. Then here is
-"Physiology," which treats of the offices or various functions of the
-system. I do not comprehend it all. "Great ignoramus!" Nobody is perfected
-in it. Next is Pathology, which treats of diseases, their causes, nature,
-and symptoms. Then there are Materia Medica, Chemistry, and much more to
-be learned before one can become competent to prescribe for diseases
-safely.
-
-[Illustration: CORRECT POSITION.]
-
-[Illustration: INCORRECT POSITION.]
-
-Can a carpenter, or any mechanic, a lawyer, minister, or other than he who
-devotes his whole powers to the theory and practice of medicine, be
-intrusted with the precious healths and lives of individuals, about which
-he knows little or nothing? Or can I, in a few chapters, instruct such in
-the art of curing complicated diseases? O, no, no. But I can do something
-better for such. I can tell you how to avoid diseases. I am quite positive
-of it. I should wrong you, and endanger your lives by the deception thus
-put forth. There are some books written on the subject which are useful to
-the masses in the same manner in which I trust this will prove, by
-instructing in the ways of health, and warnings against that which is
-injurious; but there are far too many issued which are but a damage to the
-public by their false claims of posting everybody in the knowledge of
-curing all diseases, particularly that complicated one termed consumption.
-
-Among the preventives of this fell destroyer I enumerate,--
-
-_First_, Plenty of God's pure, free air; and _second_, sunshine. These are
-indispensable. He who prescribes for a patient without looking into this
-matter has yet to learn the first principle of the healing art.
-
-A lady recently came to my office with her son for medical advice. She was
-a robust, matronly looking individual, who might turn the scale at one
-hundred and eighty pounds, while the twelve-year-old boy was almost a
-dwarf, pale and delicate. The contrast was astounding.
-
-"Madam," I said, "I perceive that your son sleeps in a room where no
-sunshine permeates by day;" for I could liken the pale, sickly-looking
-fellow to nothing but a vegetable which had sprouted in a dark, damp
-cellar. A gardener can tell such a vegetable, or plant, which has been
-prematurely developed away from air and sunshine. And though she looked
-astonished at my Oedipean proclivity in solving riddles, it was nothing
-marvellous that a physician should detect a result in a patient which a
-clodhopper might discover in a cabbage.
-
-"Yes, sir," she finally answered, "he always sleeps in a room where the
-sunlight don't enter; but I did not think it was that which made him so
-pale-like; besides, I have taken him to several doctors, and they said
-nothing about it; but their prescriptions did him no good, and I am
-discouraged."
-
-Such stoicism was unpardonable, but I said in reply,--
-
-"Take your son into a light airy room, to sleep. Try a healthy plant in
-the cell where you have so wrongfully intombed him, and observe how
-speedily the color and strength will depart from it. When you can come
-back and assure me of his change of apartment, I will prescribe for him."
-
-She went away, repeating to herself, as if to impress it firmly upon her
-mind,--
-
-"Put a plant into his room--plant into Johnny's room."
-
-The lady afterwards returned, saying that she was sorry that the plant had
-died, but was glad to say that Johnny was better.
-
-It is a daily occurrence for physicians to see patients who are dying by
-inches from the above cause; nor are they the low foreigners alone, but,
-like my stoical one hundred and eighty pounder, of American birth, and
-without excuse for their ignorance.
-
-Do not sleep or live in apartments unventilated, or where the life-giving
-sunshine does not penetrate during some portion of the day. It is living a
-lingering death. If the patient is scrofulous, let him or her employ such
-remedies as are known to remove the predisposition, or seek aid from some
-physician who has cured scrofula. The regular practitioner seldom desires
-such cases. One who has devoted much time to scrofula and chronic diseases
-should be preferred. I think chronic practice should become a separate
-branch in medicine as much as surgery is fast becoming. Take the disease
-in season. Do not neglect colds, coughs, and catarrh.
-
-Persons of a low state of blood, who are weak and debilitated, should wear
-flannels the year round--thinner in summer than in winter; keep the feet
-dry--avoid "wafer soles,"--and the body clean, but beware of what Artemus
-Ward termed "too much baths." Employ soap and a small quantity of water,
-with a plenty of dry rubbing, till you get a healthy circulation to the
-surface.
-
-Mothers, see to the solitary and other habits of your daughters. Fathers,
-instruct your sons in the laws of nature, and of their bodies. Do you
-understand?
-
-See our youth swept off by the thousands annually, for want of proper care
-and instruction!...
-
-
-A JOLLY FAT GRANDMOTHER.
-
-"_Wasp Waists._"--This is what I heard a fine-looking though
-tobacco-sucking gentleman utter, as with his companion he passed two young
-and fashionably dressed ladies on the street recently.
-
-[Illustration: HOW WASP WAISTS ARE MADE.]
-
-So I fell into a reverie, in which I called up the image of a fat, jolly
-old lady whom I knew as my "grandmarm." She had a waist half as large
-around as a flour barrel.
-
-"O, horrid creature!" exclaims a modern belle.
-
-But, then, my grandmother could breathe! You cannot--_only half breathe_!
-And my "grandmarm" had a fresh color to her cheeks and lips, and a good
-bust, till she was over sixty years of age, and she lived to be almost a
-hundred years old. You won't live to see a third of that time. Did our
-grandfathers or mothers die of consumption? O, no. Still they lived
-well--mine did. When I see a modern mince pie, it quickly carries my mind
-back to childhood days, when I think of a little boy who thought
-grandmothers were gotten up expressly to furnish nice cakes and mince pies
-for the rising generation.
-
-O, but she was jolly--and so were her pies!
-
-An Irish blunderer once said, "Ah, ye don't see any of the young gals of
-the present day fourscore and tin years ould;" and probably we should not
-see many of our present "crop" if _we_ should survive that age.
-
-Drs. A., B., and C., tell me how many ladies who visit your offices can
-take a full, deep breath. "Not one in a score or two!" So I thought.
-
-[Illustration: A CONSUMPTIVE WAIST. CAUSE, TIGHT CORSETS.]
-
-[Illustration: NON-CONSUMPTIVE WAIST. NEVER WORE CORSETS.]
-
-Lungs which are not used in full become weak and tender. Do you have sore
-places about your chest? Practise inflating your lungs with pure air
-through the nostrils,--where God first breathed the breath of life,--and
-give room for the lungs to expand, and the "sore places" will all
-disappear after a time. See my article on breathing. Put it into steady,
-moderate practice, and the result will be beneficial beyond all
-conception.
-
-
-CONSUMPTION IS CURABLE.
-
-"Is it true that consumption of the lungs is ever cured?" is a question
-which is often seriously asked.
-
-"O, yes," I reply.
-
-"What are the proofs?"
-
-Where on dissection we find cicatrices,--places in the lungs where
-tubercles have existed, sloughing out great cavities, which have healed
-all sound, the scar only remaining--what then? Here is positive proof that
-consumption had been at work, was repelled by some means, and the patient
-had recovered, subsequently dying of some other disease, or from accident.
-
-Such is the fact in many cases. It is an error--fatal to thousands--to
-suppose that the lungs, of all substance in the body, cannot be healed.
-Yet it is a fact patent to most educated physicians, that many cases of
-consumption are cured in this country, while others are prolonged, and the
-patient made comfortable during many years.
-
-Change of climate may be much towards saving a patient. Before deciding
-upon such change, consult your physician. Ought not he to know best? A
-climate adapted to one constitution may be quite unsuited to another. What
-a wise provision in Providence in giving this little world a variety of
-climates! There are certain portions of the States and world where
-consumption seldom prevails. The climate of California and the western
-prairies, as also some portions of the South away from the coast, is less
-conducive of lung and throat diseases than the more bleak and changeable
-climate of New England and the Northern States. A change is only
-beneficial in those cases where there is a mere deficiency of vitality in
-the system. If the disease depends upon a scrofulous or other taint in the
-system, one gains little by going from home. Change of climate does not
-alter the condition of the system materially, so much as it relieves one
-from atmospheric pressure, reducing thereby the demands upon his small
-stock of vitality,--just as some places are less expensive in which to
-live, and your funds hold out longer. The writer resided in the Southern
-States during three cold seasons, and carefully studied the effects of
-changes. He has two brothers in California, who, during the past ten
-years, have often written respecting the climate west of the Rocky
-Mountains. If ever called upon to decide on a climate for a friend or
-patient who had determined to change from this, I would advise him, or
-her, to select California.
-
-Do not change too late! going away from home and friends to die among
-strangers....
-
-
-AVOID HUMBUGS.
-
-Do not run to clairvoyants and spiritual humbugs for advice. A clairvoyant
-physician once said to me,--
-
-"Mr. So-and-so has just called upon me to learn where he shall spend the
-winter. He thinks he has the consumption, and that I can tell him where he
-will pass the winter safely. What confounded fools some of these men are,
-to be sure!" she exclaimed. "Why, I have got that disease myself (not the
-foolish disease, but consumption), and don't know what to do to save my
-own life."
-
-That lady is living in Boston to-day. The gentleman went to St. Thomas,
-dying in the hospital in January, amongst strangers, where every dollar he
-possessed was stolen from him.
-
-Nearly all patent medicines are humbugs. Avoid them. Dr. Dio Lewis says
-that "the bath-tub is a humbug." I believe him. While you avoid drowning
-inside by pouring down drugs, do not exhaust your vitality externally in a
-bath-tub. The hand-bath is all-sufficient for consumptives.
-
-
-COD-LIVER OIL AND WHISKEY.
-
-"Take cod-liver oil and die!" has become proverbial. The oil is utterly
-worthless as a medicine, and the whiskey usually recommended to be taken
-in connection is decidedly injurious. It is poisonous. I defy one to
-obtain a pure article of whiskey in this country. If it could by any means
-be obtained in its purity, it would not cure this disease any more than
-the nasty oil from fishes' livers. The oil is often given, not as a
-medicine, but as an article of nourishment. If the patient so understands
-it, all right; it will do no harm; but if he thinks that he is taking a
-remedial agent, he is deceived thereby, and losing the precious time in
-which he ought to be employing some remedy for his recovery. The
-statements that cod-liver oil contains iodine, lime, phosphorus, etc., is
-all bosh. A most reliable druggist of this city, who has sold a _ton or
-two_ of the oil, told me that "all the iodine or phosphorus that it
-contains you might put into your eye, and not injure that organ."
-
-If good, wholesome bread, butter, milk, eggs, and beef, will not give
-nutriment to the wasting system, cod-liver oil will not, and the patient
-must die--provided he has trusted to nutriment alone.
-
-I have never known a consumptive patient to recover upon cod-liver oil. I
-have known them to recover by other treatment, particularly by the use of
-the phosphates, as "phosphate of lime," and iron, soda, and other
-combinations. I have intimated that a patient should be advised by "his
-physician;" but if that physician is one of the old-fogy style who insists
-upon cod-liver oil and whiskey as a cure, why, you had better "change
-horses in crossing a river," than to perish on an old, worn-out hobby!
-There are two classes of patients which the doctor has to deal with; one
-will follow no instructions accurately, the other swallows everything
-literally.
-
-I remember a story illustrative of the latter. A dyspeptic applied to Dr.
-C. for treatment. The doctor looked into the case, gave a prescription,
-telling the patient to take it, and return in a fortnight.
-
-At the designated time he returned, radiant and happy.
-
-"Did you follow my directions?" inquired the physician.
-
-"O, yes, to the letter, doctor; and see--I am well!"
-
-"I have forgotten just what I gave you; let me see the prescription," said
-the doctor, delighted at his success.
-
-"I haven't it. Why, I took it, sir."
-
-"Took it--the medicine, you mean," explained the man of pills and powders.
-
-"Medicine? No. You gave me no medicine--nothing but a paper, and I took
-that according to directions. That's what cured me."
-
-The clown had swallowed the recipe!
-
-The consumptive requires nourishment. He must derive it from wholesome
-food,--even fat meats are beneficial,--not from medicines. Let food be one
-thing, medicine another. I believe that a man would starve upon cod-liver
-oil. He would not upon bread or beef.
-
-
-SIT AND LIE STRAIGHT.
-
-Go into one of our school-houses, and you may there see subjects preparing
-for consumption. Our illustrations will give the reader a correct idea of
-our meaning, without any explanation. The sewing-machines, or rather the
-position which many girls assume while sitting at their work by them from
-three to twelve hours a day, tend to depression of the lungs, obstruction
-of circulation, reduction of the vitality, dyspepsia, and sooner or later
-lead to consumption.
-
-[Illustration: A HEALTHY POSITION.]
-
-Let everybody when walking stand erect, with shoulders slightly thrown
-back rather than inclined towards the chest, then outward, and keep the
-mouth closed. When sitting, keep the body erect, or lean back slightly,
-resting the shoulders, rather than the spinal column, against any
-substance excepting feathers, changing the limbs from time to time to any
-easy position. If tired, and one can consistently "loll," recline to one
-side, resting the cheek upon the hand. If one is very tired, and desires
-to "rest fast," sit with the feet and hands crossed or arms folded.
-
-[Illustration: A CONSUMPTIVE POSITION.]
-
-If you lie crooked in bed, do it on the side. "To bend up double, man
-never was made," says the song. Do not bolster up the head so as to get a
-square look at your toes, or, being in a feather bed, till you resemble a
-letter C. Rather use but one light curled-hair pillow. It is cool and
-healthy. Avoid feather beds and pillows.
-
-"Didn't your 'grandma sleep during nearly a hundred years' on a feather
-bed?" My quizzer has returned, peeped over my shoulder, and asked this
-question. Now see me quench him at a swoop.
-
-"Yes, she did; and I think it probable that if she had not she would have
-been living now. My grandmother's good habits, free use of muscle,
-sunshine, and air, more than offset the use of mince pies, and the evil of
-sleeping on a feather bed in winter."
-
-I sleep on a hair mattress and pillow the year round. They are the best.
-
-
-CATARRH AND COLD FEET.--HOW TO CURE BOTH.
-
-Catarrh is peculiarly a Yankee disease. Now, how does a Yankee differ in
-his habits from the rest of the world's people?
-
-Let me tell you wherein he differs. The "five minutes for refreshments" is
-an illustration. He hurries, he rushes, he's a talker; and having hurried
-unnecessarily, and got himself all in a perspiration, he stops to talk
-with a friend on the street, in a current of air, possibly in a puddle of
-water, the consequence of which is checked perspiration, a cold, the
-catarrh. If the circulation to the skin is checked, that excretory organ
-ceases to throw off the waste and worn-out matter of the system, and the
-work is thrown upon the mucous membrane, which if failing to perform the
-unnatural office, the patient goes into a decline. Set this down as reason
-No. 1 for the catarrh being peculiarly a "Yankee disease."
-
-Chronic catarrh necessarily must be connected with a bad circulation of
-the blood, a want of action in the skin, and usually with cold feet. I
-must take time to explain these causes of a disease which usually leads to
-the more fatal one--consumption. Now we have cold feet and loss of action
-in the skin. Result, catarrh, terminating fatal in consumption.
-
-To keep the feet warm is to restore the circulation. Has your doctor
-failed to do this? I fear he did not understand the connection, or the
-patient did not follow his instructions. Dip the cold feet into a little
-cold water! Is that "too homeopathic?"--cold to cure cold! Never mind, do
-it. It feels cold at first. Well, catch them out, rub them vigorously with
-a towel, then with the hands, and when quite red, cover them up in bed, or
-in stockings and boots. Repeat it daily till cured. Wear thick-soled boots
-and shoes always. Meantime, take a dose of the third dilution of sulphur
-mornings, or at ten A. M., and the third trituration of calcarea-carbonica
-at early bedtime.
-
-To restore the loss of circulation to the skin, meantime--for they must
-both be cured together--take a daily hand-bath; that is, with the hand and
-in a comfortable room, apply a dose of castile or Windsor soap to the
-skin, half of the person at a time, if the weather is cool,--avoiding a
-current of air,--then, with cool or cold water, _and the hand only_, wash
-rapidly over the surface, following quickly with a dry towel and the dry
-hand, till warm. Cover the upper extremity, and proceed to wash the other
-portion of the body in the same manner. I really believe that there are
-individuals with such peculiar temperaments, or low state of the blood,
-that they cannot bear cold water. See to it that it is not fear, or habit,
-which prevents its use, before abandoning a remedy of such curative
-powers.
-
-Now, there is no other way under heaven whereby man can be saved from
-catarrh than this which I have here given. If the patient requires further
-medical treatment, he or she surely requires this, else there is no
-catarrh in the case.
-
-"But can't you give me some snuff, doctor?"
-
-Snuffs and nasal injections are humbugs. They will not cure a chronic
-catarrh. The sugar and gum arabic powder is excellent for the local
-irritation. That is all any local remedy can reach. Thousands of dollars
-are expended annually for "Catarrh Remedies," which never cured a case
-yet, but have been the death of thousands, by aggravating and prolonging
-the disease.
-
-Indigestion and "a goneness at the stomach" not unusually accompany the
-above disease. In addition to the instructions here given, rubbing and
-slapping the region of the stomach with water and the hand, and taking
-small quantities of extract gentian, orange-peel, dock, and ginger, equal
-parts, twice daily, following the directions regarding slow eating and
-cheerfulness, will eventually remove the distressing disease.
-
-
-OTHER THINGS TO BE AVOIDED.
-
-For consumption, the old-fogy treatment by squills, ipecac, laudanum, and
-the host of expectorants, is worthless. One of the fatalities in this
-disease has been the sticking to these useless medicines by a certain
-class of physicians and patients.
-
-Use no tobacco. If tight-lacing and confined habits, as want of air and
-exercise, have been conducive to the development of consumption in
-females, more repulsive habits have led to catarrhal affections,
-destruction of the vitality, and finally to consumption in many of the
-opposite sex. Does the mother, by habits which injure her health,
-jeopardize the life and health of her offspring? The husband and father,
-by the debasing and health-destroying habit of tobacco-using, injures both
-mother and child. The description which I have given in the article on
-tobacco, respecting cleansing the young man, and purifying him fit for
-society, is no joke! The clothes, skin, blood, muscle, and bones,--even
-the seminal fluid,--of the confirmed tobacco-user, all are impregnated
-with tobacco poison. Does any one question but something of this virus is
-transmitted to the offspring? Further, I have known many a wife to become
-tobacco-diseased,--nervous, yellow, sick at the stomach, dyspeptic,
-neuralgic, etc.,--suffering untold horrors, from lying, night after night,
-during year in and year out, beside a great, filthy, tobacco-plant of a
-husband!
-
-Perhaps some sensitive gentleman--user of the weed of course--may object
-to my way of putting it. Sound truths, like sound meat, require no
-mincing. We know that children, sleeping constantly with elderly people,
-become prematurely old and infirm. We know also that nurses and others,
-sleeping with perpetual invalids, imbibe their diseases. The skin of the
-tobacco-user is continually giving off the tobacco poison--_nicotine_--and
-the more susceptible skin of the female, or child, by its absorbent
-powers, is as continually taking in this poison. There are many
-tobacco-users, who, if they knew this fact, would for this reason, if no
-other, abandon the injurious and sinful habit; would not want to continue
-a habit--be it never so slavish--which, aside from its injury to
-themselves, was destroying the health and lives of his wife and his
-children.
-
-Tobacco exhausts the saliva, the fluids, the blood, often the muscle, _and
-destroys the recuperative powers of the human system_. It weakens the
-power of the heart. Nine tenths of the reported deaths from "heart
-disease" really originate, or result directly from the effects of
-tobacco-using. And, finally, it destroys the good effects of nearly all
-medicines. I positively affirm that no patient afflicted with a chronic
-disease can recover by the use of medicines if he continues the excessive
-use of tobacco.
-
-I think these are good and conclusive reasons why one should not use that
-pernicious weed--tobacco.
-
-Avoid all excesses, particularly of coition. Consumptives should husband
-all their resources. One other way of doing this is to keep from wasting
-the breath and caloric of the system through the mouth. Again, I say,
-breathe only through the nostrils. Keep out of crowded and unventilated
-halls, school-rooms, churches, and houses. Air! air and sunshine! don't
-forget them.
-
-Avoid patent medicines. They are worthless. Even if one in a thousand were
-adapted to the _disease_ in question, it might not be to the peculiar
-constitution of the invalid.
-
-People are so differently constituted that one kind of food, clothing, or
-medicine cannot be adapted to all. I wish that I could tell every reader
-of these pages what remedies are adapted to persons suffering from not
-only consumption, but from a hundred other diseases. But it is impossible,
-as intimated in the fore part of this chapter. Not only the quality of a
-medicine suited to one constitution may not be at all suited to another,
-but the quantity is even as uncertain. It requires much knowledge and long
-experience in the disease, and its various peculiarities, as also of the
-varied constitution and idiosyncrasies of different patients, in order to
-prescribe successfully.
-
-As the majority of the readers of this work are predisposed to
-consumption, let them seek to prevent its development in their systems.
-The writer has done this; he has told you in plain terms how it was done,
-how it still can be; but it is you who must believe in and abide by these
-instructions. Do this, and you will scarcely require to obtain and retain
-the knowledge of a thousand remedies and a complete knowledge of yourself,
-which it requires a lifetime of practice and study to possess.
-
-Dr. Worcester Beach, of New York, in one of his botanical works, tells of
-a country-woman who, having been given up as incurable with consumption,
-gathered and boiled together all the different kinds of herbs and barks
-which she could find upon the farm, and making this decoction into a
-syrup, drank of it freely, and was cured thereby! I would not recommend
-this empirical sort of practice, but quote it to show the uncertainty of
-what medicine was adapted to the case.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-XXXIV.
-
-ACCIDENTS.
-
-    RULES FOR MACHINISTS, MECHANICS, RAILROAD MEN, ETC., IN CASES OF
-    ACCIDENT.--HOW TO FIND AN ARTERY AND STOP THE BLEEDING.--DROWNING; TO
-    RESTORE.--SUN-STROKE.--AVOID ICE.--"ACCIDENTS WILL HAPPEN."--WHAT TO
-    HAVE IN THE HOUSE.--BRUISES.--BURNS.--DO THE BEST YOU CAN, AND TRUST
-    GOD FOR THE REST.
-
-
-Mechanics, machinists, railroad men, etc., may find the following rules of
-the most vital importance in case of accidents, whereby valuable lives may
-be saved:--
-
-1. When a person is seriously injured, do not crowd around him; give him
-air.
-
-2. Send for a surgeon or physician at once.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 1.]
-
-3. Lay the patient on his back, and ascertain whether he is bleeding. If
-it is from the artery of the fore-arm, it must be compressed immediately.
-If from the _artery_, the blood will _spurt out in jets_. Do not try to
-stanch the blood at the wound, but find the main artery. Strip the arm,
-feel for the artery, a little below the arm-pit, _just inside_ of the
-_large muscle_. (Fig. 1.) _You can feel it throb._ Press it with your
-thumbs or fingers, while an assistant folds a large handkerchief, or piece
-of shirt, if necessary, and ties a knot in the middle, or places a _flat_,
-_round_ stone in it, puts this over the artery, ties the handkerchief
-below the thumbs, puts a stick through, and twists it just tight enough
-to stop the bleeding. (Fig. 2.) The first man may relax his grasp, to
-ascertain if the compress is sufficiently tight. If you get the knot (or
-stone) on the artery, a few twists will check the blood. If the limb
-becomes cold and purple, you have got it too tight. One end of the stick
-may be tucked under the bandage to hold it from untwisting. The surgeon
-will arrive and take up the bleeding vessel and tie it.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 2.]
-
-4. If it be the leg which is cut or mangled and bleeding, find the artery,
-inside the thigh, quite high up, back of the large muscle. (Fig. 3.) Bear
-on quite hard, for it is deeper than in the arm, till you feel it throb.
-Compress it hard, and proceed with the bandage as above directed for the
-arm. The large artery (femoral) bleeds fast. Work quickly, and do not get
-excited.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 3.]
-
-A schoolmate of mine died in a few moments, in a blacksmith shop, from a
-piece of steel flying into his leg. If the smith had known this simple
-process, stripped the boy, and compressed the artery till help arrived, he
-would have saved a life, an only son, the support and solace of a widowed
-mother.
-
-5. If the wound is much below the knee, find the artery (Fig. 4.) in the
-hollow back of the knee (_popliteal space_), and proceed as above
-directed.
-
-[Illustration: FIG. 4.]
-
-6. If a wound is not of an artery, that is, if the blood does not spurt
-out, bandaging the wound may do till the doctor arrives.
-
-7. If the shock has prostrated the patient, give him a teaspoonful of
-brandy or other liquor--always provided he has not been drinking. Many
-accidents occur in consequence of liquor-drinking. If the patient is cold,
-faint, and prostrate, wrap him or her up warm, placing hot bricks, or jugs
-of hot water, at the feet. When he can swallow, some hot tea, or soup, may
-be given, if necessary.
-
-8. If the patient has delirium tremens, give him strong coffee.
-
-9. To remove an injured person, do not call a carriage, but take a
-shutter, or board, or door, throw your coats upon it, and tenderly place
-him thereon. Carry him carefully. Don't keep step in walking; he will ride
-easier without.
-
-10. If a patient faints, give him air. Let him lie on the back. Wipe the
-face with a little water. A little camphor in water may be applied to the
-face and temples, provided he has not been using it already to excess.
-Camphor, used excessively, may keep one faint a long time. Let the clothes
-be loosened. Keep cool, and wait.
-
-11. Avoid all rude and alarming conversation around the patient. When he
-recovers a little, do not press around and confuse him with questions of
-"What can I do for you?" etc. _Let him rest._
-
-12. If a person has been under water, _don't roll him to get the water out
-of him. There is no water there beyond the mouth._ The life has been
-rolled out of many a poor wretch, over a barrel, under this foolish
-delusion of "getting the water out of him." Lay him on his side, in a warm
-room, or in the sun. Try to inflate the lungs. Don't get a "bellows," and
-blow him full of wind. He is not like a bladder, or a balloon, that he
-needs inflating thus. To breathe is what he needs. Let the water, if any,
-in the mouth, run out. Wrap him warm--hot water at feet. Rub the limbs, if
-cold, for a long time. Persevere. Do not give him up until a good
-physician has arrived, and pronounced him beyond all hope of recovery.
-
-
-SUN-STROKE (COUP DE SOLEIL).
-
-The "ounce of prevention" must first be considered in this case.
-
-1. All who can should keep in the shade during the extreme heat of the
-summer days. You who must "bear the heat and burden of the day" may not be
-able always to avoid the direct rays of the scorching sun. Wide-rimmed
-palm or straw hats should be worn, and when the noonday sun pours down its
-sultry beams, wet the hair, or keep a green leaf, or wet handkerchief, in
-your hat. This will surely prevent sun-stroke, by the evaporation of
-moisture. If away in the field, swinging the scythe, or with spade
-levelling the "everlasting hills," and no water is near, place some green
-grass or damp earth in the hat,--any way to avoid sun-stroke and sudden
-death!
-
-2. You will see, every summer, a paragraph in the newspapers recommending
-the application of ice to the head in case of threatened sun-stroke, or
-after sun-stroke. Do not believe all you see in the papers. Just sit down
-and reason a moment. Think of the great, extreme transition from the
-powerful heat of the sun's rays on the brain to that of the application of
-_ice_! It requires but little thought to convince one that the extreme
-contrast must give such a shock to the brain (or blood therein) as nature
-cannot resist. Did you ever know a patient to recover from sun-stroke when
-ice had been applied to his head? _I think not._
-
-I have known one to recover from warm, moist applications. Let the head be
-kept wet (moist) with tepid water, and covered over by a dry cloth. He
-cannot swallow. Do not choke him by villanous whiskey poured into the
-mouth. Having placed him in a warm bed, removed his clothes, and made him
-comfortable, send for a physician.
-
-
-"ACCIDENTS WILL HAPPEN."
-
-Yes, and every family should be prepared for them.
-
-1. As a remedy against fatal results, in severe cases, and for deliverance
-from pain, even in smaller accidents, every family should keep in the
-house an ounce bottle of tincture of arnica, the cost of which is
-trifling. Keep it well labelled, and out of the reach of children. To
-drink it is injurious.
-
-2. For a bruise, or any injury, put half a teaspoonful of the arnica into
-a teacupful of tepid water, and bathe tenderly the wound. Then wet a cloth
-in the liquid, bind it on with a dry cloth outside to exclude the air.
-When dry, if pain or tenderness remains, renew the application. This will
-soon reduce any "bump" on your little ones' heads, except a real
-phrenological "bump." A woman once brought a boy to my office, to have me
-give her some "liniment for a bad bump on the child's head," showing me
-the place.
-
-"Madam," I said, "I think a considerable persuasion, with plenty of
-patient kindness, will do more than medicine to reduce that bump. It is
-called, by phrenologists, 'firmness.' By the development, I should judge
-that the boy was very stubborn."
-
-3. For burns and scalds, keep in the house a vial of tincture of urtica
-urens. Apply it to burns as above directed for wounds. When the smarting
-ceases, and the wound is whitish, omit it, and dress the wound with a
-little mutton tallow on a linen cloth.
-
-Keep no patent medicines about; then you will be less likely to be dosing
-with them. It is hard to tell what are good, and do not make a medical
-depot of your stomach to ascertain.
-
-The individual who is continually dabbling in medicines is a perpetual
-invalid, from the result of such everlasting dosing.
-
-If you regard the concise, yet sufficient, instructions for preserving
-health laid down herein, particularly after noting the hints thrown out
-all through the body of the book, you will annually have less and less
-occasion for the use of medicines.
-
-When you actually think you require a physician, get the best,--the best
-article is the cheapest in the end,--and abide by his counsel. I have told
-you of some remarkable characters in the history of medicine; but the harp
-and flowing locks of Apollo, the caduceus of Mercury, the staff of
-AEsculapius, the hoary beard of Hippocrates, the baton of De Sault, the
-three-tailed wig of Atkins, the silken coat and charming address of Dr.
-Reynolds, the gay equipage of Hannes, the library of Radcliffe, or the
-knowing nods and significant silence of some of the more modern doctors,
-will avail nothing in the time of great danger and distress.
-
-It is the truly kind-hearted, humane, and educated physician upon whom you
-must depend in your time of need. Seek such. There are yet many; humanity
-is not a thing entirely of the past. Who loses faith in humanity has lost
-it in God. Do the best your circumstances allow in all things,--
-
-  "Angels can no more,"--
-
-receiving all afflictions cheerfully, looking hopefully to God for his
-blessing, which faileth not, in all the walks of "this life and in that
-which is to come."
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-FOOTNOTES:
-
-[1] Small door or window, through which to receive night calls, etc.
-
-[2] The art of embalming was known, and even practised by "servants,"
-translated or called physicians, or sometimes apothecaries (or "by his
-arts"), four thousand years ago. Jacob, Joseph, Asa, and others were
-embalmed. The Egyptians were early versed in this art, which now is
-almost, or entirely, lost.
-
-[3] Dover's Powder.
-
-[4] See Frontispiece.
-
-[5] This illustrates our "Origin of Ghosts."
-
-[6] An Irishman, who was once asked why the parents of Christ were obliged
-to lodge in a stable on the night of the Saviour's birth, replied, "And
-weren't the inns full of the crowd, who had gone up before to celebrate
-Christmas?"
-
-[7] The writer was fortunately born on Christmas (Sabbath) day. He hopes
-the publishers will present his picture in this book to prove his
-"fairness," and let the wisdom of these pages prove the remainder.
-
-[8] The medical man in quest of a curiosity will be gratified by looking
-on page 228 of Hastings' Surgery, where he will find the head and face of
-a female engraved on the nude body of a male. I discovered it
-accidentally, but how such an _error_ (?) could have occurred I cannot
-say.
-
-[9] Casa Wappy, a self-conferred, pet name of the little boy.
-
-[10] ESQUIMAUX HOSPITALITY.--Dr. Kane relates that one day, worn out by
-fatigue, he turned into an Esquimaux hut to get a little sleep. His
-good-natured hostess covered him up with some of her own habiliments, and
-gave him her baby for a pillow; which, Dr. Spooner says, was a living
-illustration of the kindness of woman.
-
-
-
-
-Transcriber's Notes:
-
-Passages in italics are indicated by _italics_.
-
-The original text includes the prescription symbol that is represented as
-[R] in this text version.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-End of Project Gutenberg's The Funny Side of Physic, by A. D. Crabtre
-
-*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FUNNY SIDE OF PHYSIC ***
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