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.

[Pg 3]

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[Pg 4] 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.

[Pg 5]

[Pg 14]

[Pg 19]

MEDICAL HUMBUGS.

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.

[Pg 20]“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[Pg 21] 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 [Pg 22]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,[Pg 23] “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[Pg 24] 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.

[Pg 25]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.

[Pg 26]“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[Pg 27] 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.

[Pg 28]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[Pg 29] 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,—

[Pg 30]“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[Pg 31] the utmost confidence of the bon ton, he suffered excruciating pains from the gout, which, with other complications, ended his days. “Physician, heal thyself.”

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[Pg 32] 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?

[Pg 33]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.”

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!”

[Pg 34]“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.

[Pg 35]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?”

[Pg 36]“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 [Pg 37]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[Pg 38] 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.

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[Pg 39] 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[Pg 40] 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.”

[Pg 41]“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[Pg 42] 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[Pg 43] 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[Pg 44] 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.

 [Pg 45]

COMMENCING A PRACTICE IN NEW YORK.

[Pg 46] 

[Pg 47]“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.

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.[Pg 48] 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[Pg 49] 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?”

[Pg 50][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.

[Pg 51]“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[Pg 52] 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.

 [Pg 53]

OLD PILGARLIC TAKES A BATH.

[Pg 54] 

[Pg 55]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.

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)[Pg 56] 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[Pg 57] 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 [Pg 58]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[Pg 59] 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[Pg 60] 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.”

[Pg 61]

APOTHECARIES.

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.

[Pg 62]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.

[Pg 63]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.[Pg 64] Bullyn for the “apothecary’s life and conduct” during the Elizabethan era:—

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!

[Pg 65]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.

[Pg 66]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.

[Pg 67] “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.

[Pg 68]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[Pg 69] 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.

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[Pg 70] 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.”

 [Pg 71]

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.

[Pg 72]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[Pg 73] 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.”

[Pg 74]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.

 [Pg 75]

A CANDIDATE FOR THE PRESIDENCY.

[Pg 76] 

[Pg 77]“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.”

[Pg 78]

PATENT MEDICINES

“Expunge the whole.”—Pope.
“These are terrible alarms to persons grown fat and wealthy.”—South.

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,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[Pg 79] 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.[Pg 80] 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.

 [Pg 81]

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.”

[Pg 82]“Why, no; not all sarsaparilla; you must admit—”

“No difference. I tell you it’s a pesky humbug, all of it.”

“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[Pg 83] 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[Pg 84] 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[Pg 85] 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[Pg 86] 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.

[Pg 87]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:—

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 rewarded with a solemn vote of the House of Commons protecting him from[Pg 88] 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;”[Pg 89] 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[Pg 90] 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?

[Pg 91]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.”

 [Pg 92]

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.

[Pg 93]“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.

“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.[Pg 94] ‘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.”

 [Pg 95]

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[Pg 96] 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.

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[Pg 97] 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[Pg 98] 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.

[Pg 99]

MANUFACTURED DOCTORS.

“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.

[Pg 100]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.

[Pg 101]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 [Pg 102]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[Pg 103] 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.”

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[Pg 104] 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.

 [Pg 105]

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.

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.

[Pg 106]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.[Pg 107] 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.”

[Pg 108]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.”

 [Pg 109]

HEALING THE SICK WITH A GOLDEN DOSE.

[Pg 110] 

[Pg 111]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[Pg 112] 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.

[Pg 113]“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[Pg 114] 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.

 [Pg 115]

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.

 [Pg 116]

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[Pg 117] 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.

[Pg 118]“‘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.

[Pg 119]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[Pg 120] 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.

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.”

[Pg 121]“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[Pg 122] 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.

[Pg 123]

WOMAN AS PHYSICIAN.

“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.

[Pg 124]“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,[Pg 125] 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,[Pg 126] 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[Pg 127] 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 [Pg 128]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?”

“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[Pg 129] 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,[Pg 130] 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[Pg 131] 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[Pg 132] 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.[Pg 133] 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.

[Pg 134]“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.”

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.

[Pg 135]“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.

 [Pg 136]

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[Pg 137] 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.

 [Pg 138]

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[Pg 139] 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.”

[Pg 140]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!

[Pg 141]“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.’”

“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.”

[Pg 142]“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[Pg 143] 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[Pg 144] 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[Pg 145] 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:—

[Pg 146]“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.”[Pg 147] 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.

[Pg 148]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.”

“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!”