A Book About Doctors

CHAPTER XXVII.. The Country Medical Man 478

The Country Medical Man 478

ILLUSTRATIONS.

PAGE

PROF. BILLROTH'S SURGICAL CLYNIC. Frontispiece From the Original Painting by A. F. Seligmann.

THE FOUNDERS OF THE MEDICAL SOCIETY OF LONDON 228 From the Original Painting.

AN ACCIDENT 258 From the Original Painting by Dagnan-Vouveret.

THE ANATOMIST 374 From the Original Painting by Max.

Original by courtesy of William Wood & Co., New York.

PREFACE.

The writer of this volume has endeavoured to collect, in a readable and attractive form, the best of those medical Ana that have been preserved by tradition or literature. In doing so, he has not only done his best to combine and classify old stories, but also cautiously to select his materials, so that his work, while affording amusement to the leisure hours of Doctors learned in their craft, might contain no line that should render it unfit for the drawing-room table. To effect this, it has been found necessary to reject many valuable and characteristic anecdotes--some of them entering too minutely into the mysteries and technicalities of medicine and surgery, and some being spiced with a humour ill calculated to please the delicacy of the nineteenth century.

Much of the contents of this volume has never before been published, but, after being drawn from a variety of manuscript sources, is now for the first time submitted to the world. It would be difficult to enumerate all the persons to whom the writer is indebted for access to documents, suggestions, critical notes, or memoranda. He cannot, however, let the present occasion go by without expressing his gratitude to the College of Physicians, for the prompt urbanity with which they allowed him to inspect the treasures of their library. To Dr. Munk, the learned librarian of the College--who for many years, in the scant leisure allowed him by the urgent demands of an extensive practice, has found a dignified pastime in antiquarian and biographic research--the writer's best thanks are due. With a liberality by no means always found in a student possessed of "special information," the Doctor surrendered his precious stores to the use of a comparative stranger, apparently without even thinking of the value of his gift. But even more than to the librarian of the College of Physicians the writer is indebted for assistance to his very kind friend Dr. Diamond, of Twickenham House--a gentleman who, to all the best qualities of a complete physician, unites the graces of a scholarly mind, an enthusiasm for art, and the fascinations of a generous nature.

A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS

CHAPTER I.. Something About Sticks, and Rather Less About Wigs.

SOMETHING ABOUT STICKS, AND RATHER LESS ABOUT WIGS.

Properly treated and fully expanded, this subject of "the stick" would cover all the races of man in all regions and all ages; indeed, it would hide every member of the human family. Attention could be called to the respect accorded in every chapter of the world's history, sacred and profane, to the rabdos--to the fasces of the Roman lictors, which every school-boy honours (often unconsciously) with an allusion when he says he will lick, or vows he won't be licked,--to the herald's staff of Hermes, the caduceus of Mercury, the wand of Æsculapius, and the rods of Moses and the contending sorcerers--to the mystic bundles of nine twigs, in honour of the nine muses, that Dr. Busby loved to wield, and which many a simple English parent believes Solomon, in all his glory, recommended as an element in domestic jurisdiction--to the sacred wands of savage tribes, the staffs of our constables and sheriffs, and the highly polished gold sticks and black rods that hover about the anterooms of St. James's or Portsoken. The rule of thumb has been said to be the government of this world. And what is this thumb but a short stick, a sceptre, emblematic of a sovereign authority which none dares to dispute? "The stick," says the Egyptian proverb, "came down from heaven."

The only sticks, however, that we here care to speak about are physicians' canes, barbers' poles, and the twigs of rue which are still strewn before the prisoner in the dock of a criminal court. Why should they be thus strung together?

The physician's cane is a very ancient part of his insignia. It is now disused, but up to very recent times no doctor of medicine presumed to pay a professional visit, or even to be seen in public, without this mystic wand. Long as a footman's stick, smooth and varnished, with a heavy gold knob or cross-bar at the top, 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, bearing the arms which those gentlemen assumed, or were entitled to. In one respect it deviated from the physician's cane proper. It has a cross-bar almost like a crook; whereas a physician's wand ought to have a knob at the top. This knob in olden times was hollow, and contained a vinaigrette, which the man of science always held to his nose when he approached a sick person, so that its fumes might protect him from the noxious exhalations of his patient. We know timid people who, on the same plan, have their handkerchiefs washed in camphor-water, and bury their faces in them whenever they pass the corner of a dingy street, or cross an open drain, or come in contact with an ill-looking man. When Howard, the philanthropist, visited Exeter, he found that the medical officer of the county gaol had caused a clause to be inserted in his agreement with the magistrates, exonerating him from attendance and services during any outbreak of the gaol fever. Most likely this gentleman, by books or experience, had been enlightened as to the inefficacy of the vinaigrette.

But though the doctor, like a soldier skulking from the field of battle, might with impunity decline visiting the wretched captives, the judge was forced to do his part of the social duty to them--to sit in their presence during their trial in a close, fetid court; to brow-beat them when they presumed to make any declaration of their innocence beyond a brief "not guilty"; to read them an energetic homily on the consequences of giving way to corrupt passions and evil manners; and, finally, to order them their proper apportionments of whipping, or incarceration, or banishment, or death. Such was the abominable condition of our prisons, that the poor creatures dragged from them and placed in the dock often by the noxious effluvia of their bodies made seasoned criminal lawyers turn pale--partly, perhaps, through fear, but chiefly through physical discomfort. Then arose the custom of sprinkling aromatic herbs before the prisoners--so that if the health of his Lordship and the gentlemen of the long robe suffered from the tainted atmosphere, at least their senses of smell might be shocked as little as possible. Then, also, came the chaplain's bouquet, with which that reverend officer was always provided when accompanying a criminal to Tyburn. Coke used to go circuit carrying in his hand an enormous fan furnished with a handle, in the shape of a goodly stick--the whole forming a weapon of offence or defence. It is not improbable that the shrewd lawyer caused the end of this cumbrous instrument to be furnished with a vinaigrette.

So much for the head of the physician's cane. The stick itself was doubtless a relic of the conjuring paraphernalia with which the healer, in ignorant and superstitious times, worked upon the imagination of the credulous. Just as the ? which the doctor affixes to his prescription is the old astrological sign (ill-drawn) of Jupiter, so his cane descended to him from Hermes and Mercurius. It was a relic of old jugglery, and of yet older religion--one of those baubles which we know well where to find, but which our conservative tendencies disincline us to sweep away without some grave necessity.

The charming-stick, the magic Æsculapian wand of the Medicine-man, differed in shape and significance from the pole of the barber-surgeon. In the "British Apollo," 1703, No. 3, we read:--

"I'd know why he that selleth ale Hangs out a chequer'd part per pale: And why a barber at port-hole Puts forth a parti-coloured pole?"

ANSWER.

"In ancient Rome, when men loved fighting, And wounds and scars took much delight in, Man-menders then had noble pay-- Which we call surgeons to this day. 'Twas order'd that a huge long pole, With basin deck'd, should grace the hole, To guide the wounded, who unlopt Could walk, on stumps the other hopt; But when they ended all their wars, And men grew out of love with scars. Their trade decaying, to keep swimming, They joined the other trade of trimming; And to their poles, to publish either, Thus twisted both their trades together."

The principal objection that can be made to this answer is that it leaves the question unanswered, after making only a very lame attempt to answer it. Lord Thurlow, in a speech delivered in the House of Peers on 17th of July, 1797, opposing the surgeons' incorporation bill, said that, "By a statute still in force, the barbers and surgeons were each to use a pole. The barbers were to have theirs blue and white, striped with no other appendage; but the surgeons', which was the same in other respects, was likewise to have a gallipot and a red rag, to denote the particular nature of their vocation."

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