The Whitworth Doctors
are almost forgotten now, but a century ago they were famous all over England. The Whitworth red bottle and the Whitworth drops are still more or less popular reminiscences of their pharmacy. The former was an embrocation, and the second an antispasmodic tincture. Both contained oil of thyme. Formulas are given in “Pharmaceutical Formulas,” published at 42, Cannon Street.
The founder of the family of the Whitworth Doctors was John Taylor, originally a farrier, of Whitworth, then a village about three miles from Rochdale. He died in 1802 at the age of sixty-two. John Taylor had a younger brother and two sons, and the younger brother also had sons, all of whom practised surgery. A third and even a fourth generation of surgeons, some of whom were fully qualified, likewise practised at Whitworth, and the last of the race died in 1876.
The original brothers Taylor were both farriers, but they became famous for their treatment of human patients. Their methods were of the most vigorous character. They were in the habit of buying a ton of Glauber’s salts from their wholesale druggists, Ewbank and Wallis, of York, and they dispensed it to those who sought their medical advice with no niggard hands, and without any formality of weighing. The two brothers provided free bleeding for poor patients every Sunday morning, and something like a hundred victims attended for this operation.
John Taylor (the original “Doctor”) never discontinued his treatment of horse complaints, and was believed to have taken more pride and pleasure in his veterinary work than in his dealings with humans. But the latter flocked to him from all parts of the country. Cancers, improperly set fractures, and deformities were his specialities, but his practice gradually extended to all kinds of ills. A crowd of rich and poor patients had to find lodgings somehow in the village, for they sometimes had to stay for weeks there. Fifty at a time could be seated in the long room where John treated them. They came in at one end of the room and went out at the other, and no one, no matter what his rank, was allowed to have the slightest preference. Eighteen-pence a week for medicine and treatment was the charge to all, and those who could not afford that fee were never asked for it. A lord drove up in his carriage one day, and the powdered footman was sent to ask John Taylor to “wait upon his lordship.” “Tell the man he must come in here and take his turn like the rest, if he wants me to wait on him,” said John; and “the man” had to do so. It is recorded that he left Whitworth cured.
The other doctors used to tell of Taylor’s failures; but as his cases were mostly those which they had pronounced incurable, it is not astonishing if he did not always succeed. But he effected many notable cures. A lady with a cancer in the breast who had been given up by her own doctors came from a hundred miles away to Whitworth. John examined the breast, and then said, “What art thou come here for, woman?” “To be cured, of course,” she answered. “Not all the doctors in England can cure thee,” he said sternly; “thou must go home and die.” “I shall not go home,” said the lady, “till you have tried your hand on me. I can bear any pain you inflict, and I can only die at last.” “Thou art a brave lass,” said John; “I will try, and God prosper us.” The lady stayed at Whitworth six months, and went home cured. She lived thirty years longer.
This lady was well known to William Howitt, a Quaker and popular writer in the first half of the nineteenth century. In an article he wrote in Tait’s Edinburgh Magazine, 1839, Mr. Howitt relates recollections of a visit he had paid to Whitworth some twenty years previously, and from that visit, and from the conversations he had had with the lady just referred to, he had gathered the particulars which he gave in his article.
While under the care of Doctor John at Whitworth the lady told Mr. Howitt how she occupied herself in assisting “Mrs. George,” old John’s daughter-in-law, to prepare the medicines. Glauber’s salts were principally relied upon for internal administration. A caustic known as “keen” was used for eradicating cancers; a black salve made up into sticks; a snuff made from asarabacca leaves which he grew in his garden; blisters; and the Red Bottle, made up the medicinal armoury. The last is made still in Lancashire, thus: Camphor, 6; oil of origanum, 6; Anchusa root, 1; methylated spirit, 80.
The lady’s account of the preparation of the salve was that they used to boil a kettleful of ingredients, and then they would mop the kitchen floor. While it was wet they would pour the salve on it, and then scraping it up they would roll it into sticks with their fingers, and cut it into little pieces.
Howitt also describes seeing James Taylor, the head of the family, when he visited Whitworth, making his pills. In an old hat slung in front of him by a cord round his neck was his pill mass. Thus armed, he would walk up and down in front of his house nipping off bits of the mass and rolling them into pills with his fingers as he walked.
In his later years John Taylor sometimes visited patients in distant places. Once he went to attend a duchess at Cheltenham. She had an abscess which he opened and so relieved her at once. George III was staying at Cheltenham at the time, and heard of this skilful man. Later he sent for him to come to London to treat the Princess Elizabeth, who had pains in her head with fits of stupor. John is said to have cured her with his snuff. Having prescribed this and provided the patient with some, John Taylor turned to Queen Charlotte, who with her other daughters was in the room, and patting her on the back, said: “Well, thou art a farrantly (good-looking) woman to be the mother of all these straight-backed lasses.” “Ah, Mr. Taylor,” said the Queen, “I was once as straight-backed as any of them.” John’s son James was fond of telling this story.
Thurlow, Bishop of Durham, brother of Lord Chancellor Thurlow, was one of his patients, and John was once sent for to London to attend him. More than one eminent physician was in the room when Taylor arrived. “I won’t say a word till Jack Hunter is here,” said Dr. John; “he is the only man among you who knows anything.” Jack Hunter was the famous anatomist. When he was present, Taylor proceeded to examine the Bishop, and was applying some ointment from a box he had with him. “What’s that made of?” asked Hunter. “No, Jack, that’s not a fair question,” was Taylor’s reply. “I’ll send you as much of it as you like, but I won’t tell you what it’s made of.”
XXII
POISONS IN HISTORY
“To give an exact and particular account of the Nature and Manner of acting of Poisons is no easy matter; but to Discourse more intelligibly of them than authors have hitherto done, not very difficult.”
(From Dr. Richard Mead’s Preface to his “Essays on Poisons,” 1702.)
It has been shown elsewhere (Vol. I., page 52) how intimate was the connection between ancient pharmacy and poisoning. In Greek the terms came to be almost synonymous, and there is an echo of the same association of ideas in the words Poison and Potion, which a few centuries ago were used in English without much distinction.
The priests of Egypt, the Æsculapians of Greece, and perhaps still more the herbalists of that country and of Italy, necessarily learnt many things from their studies of medicinal plants. They found herbs which would cause sleep, furnish dreams, and confuse the brain. They professed and perhaps believed in their ability to accomplish far more with their philtres than the vegetable world was capable of, but the common people had no means of checking their claims, and such science as there was tended to support them. In the palaces of kings, in the tents of generals, and in all the high places where intrigues, jealousies, and enmities found their fullest scope, pharmaceutical skill was much sought after; in some cases to dispose of rivals, but more usually to counteract the murderous schemes which in those times constituted so large a portion of statecraft. There was nothing the brave men of old dreaded so much as secret poisoning. It is impossible to say how far this crime was practised. Suspicion and terror may have exaggerated its records, but on the other hand it is equally possible that thousands of deaths may have occurred from poisons which were not attributed to that cause.
Hecate and her daughters Medea and Circe figured prominently in Greek legends as inventors and discoverers of poisons. The magic arts for which they were all famous were closely associated with deadly drugs. They were supposed to live in the island of Colchis, the name of which still recalls a vegetable which for many centuries retained the reputation of possessing the most venomous properties. Colchicum was discovered by Medea, but to Hecate is attributed the earliest use of aconite.
Kings studied pharmacy and invented antidotes. Orpheus, the physician and poet, who preceded Æsculapius, wrote a poem on precious stones, in which he relates that Theodomas, son of Priam, King of Troy, had learned how to administer these as antidotes to poisons. The marvellous properties of the antidote invented by Mithridates, King of Pontus, is one of the commonplaces of medical history. Down to the seventeenth century theriaca, emeralds, and bezoar stones were the antidotes to all poisons recognised by the faculty.