THE DOCTOR AS A BON-VIVANT.
"What must I do, sir!" inquired an indolent bon-vivant of Abernethy.
"Live on sixpence a day, and earn it, sir," was the stern answer.
Gabriel Fallopius, who has given his name to a structure with which anatomists are familiar, gave the same reproof in a more delicate manner. With a smile he replied in the words of Terence,
"Otio abundas Antipho,"—"Sir, you're as lazy as Hall's dog."
But, though medical practitioners have dealt in sayings like these, to do them bare justice, it must be admitted that their preaching has generally been contradicted by the practice. When medicine remained very much in the hands of the ladies, the composition of remedies, and the making of dinners, went on in the same apartment. Indeed hunger and thirst were but two out of a list of diseases that were ministered to by the attendants round a kitchen table. The same book held the receipts for dishes and the recipes for electuaries. In many an old hall of England the manual still remains from which three centuries ago the lady of the house learned to dress a boar's head or cure a cold. Most physicians would now disdain to give dietetic instruction to a patient beyond the most general directions; but there are cases where, even in these days, they stoop to do so, with advantage to themselves and their patients.
"I have ordered twelve dinners this morning," a cheery little doctor said to the writer of these pages, on the white cliffs of a well-known sea-side town.
"Indeed—I did not know that was your business."
"But it is. A host of rich old invalids come down here to be medicinally treated. They can't be happy without good living, and yet are so ignorant of the science and art of eating, that they don't know how to distinguish between a luxurious and pernicious diet, and a luxurious and wholesome one. They flock to the 'Duke's Hotel,' and I always tell the landlord what they are to have. Each dinner costs three or four guineas. They'd grudge them, and their consciences would be uneasy at spending so much money, if they ordered their dinners themselves. But when they regard the fare as medicine recommended by the doctor, there is no drawback to their enjoyment of it. Their confidence in me is unbounded."
The bottle and the board were once the doctor's two favourite companions. More than one eminent physician died in testifying his affection for them. In the days of tippling they were the most persevering of tavern-haunters. No wonder that some of them were as fat as Daniel Lambert, and that even more died sudden deaths from apoplexy. The obesity of Dr. Stafford was celebrated in an epitaph:—
"Take heed, O good traveller, and do not tread hard,
For here lies Dr. Stafford in all this churchyard."
Dr. Beddoes was so stout that the Clifton ladies used to call him their "walking feather-bed."
Dr. Flemyng weighed twenty stone and eleven pounds, till he reduced his weight by abstinence from the delicacies of the table, and by taking a quarter of an ounce of common Castile soap every night.
Dr. Cheyne's weight was thirty-two stone, till he cured himself by persevering in a temperate diet. Laughing at two unwieldly noblemen whose corpulence was the favourite jest of all the wits in the court, Louis XV. said to one of them, "I suppose you take little or no exercise."
"Your Majesty will pardon me," replied the bulky duke, "for I generally walk two or three times round my cousin every morning."
Sir Theodore Mayerne, who, though he was the most eminent physician of his time, did not disdain to write "Excellent and Well-Approved Receipts in Cookery, with the best way of Preserving," was killed by tavern wine. He died, after returning from supper in a Strand hotel; his immediate friends attributing his unexpected death to the quality of the beverage, but others, less charitable, setting it down to the quantity.
Not many years ago, about a score surgeons were dining together at a tavern, when, about five minutes after some very "particular port" had been sent round for the first time, they all fell back in their chairs, afflicted in various degrees with sickness, vertigo, and spasm. A more pleasant sight for the waiters can hardly be conceived. One after one the gentlemen were conveyed to beds or sofas. Unfortunately for the startling effect which the story would otherwise have produced, they none of them expired. The next day they remembered that, instead of relishing the "particular port," they had detected a very unpleasant smack in it. The black bottles were demanded from the trembling landlord, when chemical analysis soon discovered that they had been previously used for fly-poison, and had not been properly cleansed. A fine old crust of such a kind is little to be desired.
It would perhaps have been well had old Butler (mentioned elsewhere in these volumes) met with a similar mishap, if it had only made him a less obstinate frequenter of beer-shops. He loved tobacco, deeming it
"A physician
Good both for sound and sickly;
'Tis a hot perfume
That expels cold Rheume,
And makes it flow down quickly."
It is on record that he made one of his patients smoke twenty-five pipes at a sitting. But fond though he was of tobacco, he was yet fonder of beer. He invented a drink called "Butler's Ale," afterwards sold at the Butler's Head, in Mason's Alley, Basinghall Street. Indeed, he was a sad old scamp. Nightly he would go to the tavern, and drink deeply for hours, till his maid-servant, old Nell, came between nine and ten o'clock and fetched him home, scolding him all the way for being such a sot. But though Butler liked ale and wine for himself, he thought highly of water for other people. When he occupied rooms in the Savoy, looking over the Thames, a gentleman afflicted with an ague came to consult him. Butler tipped the wink to his servants, who flung the sick man, in the twinkling of an eye, slap out of the window into the river. We are asked to believe that "the surprise absolutely cured" the patient of his malady.
The physicians of Charles the Second's day were jolly fellows. They made deep drinking and intrigue part of their profession as well as of their practice. Their books contain arguments in favour of indulgence, which their passions suggested and the taste of the times approved. Tobias Whitaker and John Archer, both physicians in ordinary to the merry monarch, were representative men of their class. Whitaker, a Norfolk man, practised with success at Norwich before coming up to London. He published a discourse upon waters, that proved him very ignorant on the subject; and a treatise on the properties of wine, that is a much better testimony to the soundness of his understanding. Prefixed to his "Elenchus of opinions on Small-Pox," is a portrait that represents him as a well-looking fellow. That he was a sincere and discerning worshipper of Bacchus, is shown by his "Tree of Humane Life, or the Bloud of the Grape. Proving the possibilitie of maintaining humane life from infancy to extreame old age without any sicknesse by the use of Wine." In this work (sold, by the way, in the author's shop, Pope's Head Alley) we read of wine,—"This is the phisick that doth not dull, but sets a true edge upon nature, after operation leaveth no venomous contact. Sure I am this was ancient phisick, else what meant Avicenna, Rhasis, and Averroes, to move the body twice every month with the same; as it is familiar to Nature, so they used it familiarly. As for my own experience, though I have not lived yet so long as to love excesse, yet have I seene such powerful effects, both on my selfe and others, as if I could render no other reason, they were enough to persuade me of its excellencie, seeing extenuate withered bodies by it caused to be faire, fresh, plumpe, and fat, old and infirme to be young and sound, when as water or small-beer drinkers looke like apes rather than men."
John Archer, the author of "Every Man his own Doctor," and "Secrets Disclosed," was an advocate of generous diet and enlightened sensuality. His place of business was "a chamber in a Sadler's howse over against the Black Horse nigh Charing-cross," where his hours of attendance for some years were from 11 A. M. to 5 P. M. each day. On setting up a house at Knightsbridge, where he resided in great style, he shortened the number of hours daily passed in London. In 1684 he announced in one of his works—"For these and other Directions you may send to the Author, at his chamber against the Mews by Charing-cross, who is certainly there from twelve to four, at other times at his house at Knightsbridge, being a mile from Charing-cross, where is good air for cure of consumptions, melancholy, and other infirmities." He had also a business established in Winchester Street, near Gresham College, next door to the Fleece Tavern. Indeed, physician-in-ordinary to the King though he was, he did not think it beneath him to keep a number of apothecaries' shops, and, like Whitaker, to live by the sale of drugs as well as fees. His cordial dyet drink was advertised as costing 2s. 6d. per quart; for a box containing 30 morbus pills, the charge was 5s.; 40 corroborating pills were to be had for the same sum. Like Dr. Everard, he recommended his patients to smoke, saying that "tobacco smoke purified the air from infectious malignancy by its fragrancy, sweetened the breath, strengthened the brain and memory, and revived the sight to admiration." He sold tobacco, of a superior quality to the ordinary article of commerce, at 2s. and 1s. an ounce. "The order of taking it is like other tobacco at any time; its virtues may be perceived by taking one pipe, after which you will spit more, and your mouth will be dryer than after common tobacco, which you may moisten by drinking any warm drink, as coffee, &c., or with sugar candy, liquorish, or a raisin, and you will find yourself much refreshed."
Whilst Whitaker and Archer were advising men to smoke and drink, another physician of the Court was inventing a stomach-brush, in some respects much like the bottle-brush with which fly-poison ought to be taken from the interior of black bottles before wine is committed to them. This instrument was pushed down the gullet, and then poked about and turned round, much in the same way as a chimney-sweeper's brush is handled by a dexterous operator on soot. It was recommended that gentlemen should thus sweep out their insides not oftener than once a week, but not less frequently than once a month. The curious may find not only a detailed description but engraved likeness of this remarkable stomach-brush in the Gentleman's Magazine, vol. xx., for the year 1750.
It would be unfair to take leave of Dr. Archer without mentioning his three inventions, on which he justly prided himself not a little. He constructed a hot steam-bath, an oven "which doth with a small faggot bake a good quantity of anything," and "a compleat charriot that shall with any ordinary horse run swift with four or five people within, and there is place for more without, all which one horse can as easily draw as two horses." In these days of vapour baths, bachelors' kettles, and broughams, surely Dr. Archer ought to have a statue by the side of Jenner in Trafalgar Square.
The doctors of Anne's time were of even looser morals than their immediate predecessors. In taverns, over wine, they received patients and apothecaries. It became fashionable (a fashion that has lasted down to the present day) for a physician to scratch down his prescriptions illegibly; the mode, in all probability, arising from the fact that a doctor's hand was usually too unsteady to write distinctly.
Freind continually visited his patients in a state of intoxication. To one lady of high rank he came in such a state of confusion that when in her room he could only grumble to himself, "Drunk—drunk—drunk, by God!" Fortunately the fair patient was suffering from the same malady as her doctor, who (as she learnt from her maid on returning to consciousness) had made the above bluff comment on her case, and then had gone away. The next day, Freind was sitting in a penitent state over his tea, debating what apology he should offer to his aristocratic patient, when he was relieved from his perplexity by the arrival of a note from the lady herself enclosing a handsome fee, imploring her dear Dr. Freind to keep her secret, and begging him to visit her during the course of the day.
On another occasion Freind wrote a prescription for a member of an important family, when his faculties were so evidently beyond his control that Mead was sent for. On arriving, Mead, with a characteristic delicacy towards his professional friend, took up the tipsy man's prescription, and having looked at it, said, "'Pon my honour, Dr. Freind can write a better prescription when drunk than I can when sober."
Gibbons—the "Nurse Gibbons" of our old friend Radcliffe—was a deep drinker, disgusting, by the grossness of his debaucheries, the polite and epicurean Garth. But Gibbons did something for English dinner-tables worth remembering. He brought into domestic use the mahogany with which we have so many pleasant associations. His brother, a West Indian Captain, brought over some of the wood as ballast, thinking it might possibly turn to use. At first the carpenters, in a truly conservative spirit, refused to have anything to do with the "new wood," saying it was too hard for their tools. Dr. Gibbons, however, had first a candle-box and then a bureau made for Mrs. Gibbons out of the condemned material. The bureau so pleased his friends, amongst whom was the Duchess of Buckingham, that her Grace ordered a similar piece of furniture, and introduced the wood into high life, where it quickly became the fashion.
Of Radcliffe's drunkenness mention is made elsewhere. As an eater, he was a gourmand, not a gourmet. When Prince Eugene of Savoy came over to England on a diplomatic mission, his nephew, the Chevalier de Soissons, fell into the fashion of the town, roaming it at night in search of frays—a roaring, swaggering mohock. The sprightly Chevalier took it into his head that it would be a pleasant thing to thrash a watchman; so he squared up to one, and threatened to kill him. Instead of succumbing, the watchman returned his assailant's blows, and gave him an awful thrashing. The next day, what with the mauling he had undergone, and what with delirium tremens, the merry roisterer was declared by his physician, Sieur Swartenburgh, to be in a dying state. Radcliffe was called in, and acting on his almost invariable rule, told Prince Eugene that the young man must die, because Swartenburgh had maltreated him. The prophecy was true, if the criticism was not. The Chevalier died, and was buried amongst the Ormond family in Westminster Abbey—it being given out to the public that he had died of small-pox.
Prince Eugene conceived a strong liking for Radcliffe, and dined with him at the Doctor's residence. The dinner Radcliffe put before his guest is expressive of the coarseness both of the times and the man. On the table the only viands were barons of beef, jiggets of mutton, legs of pork, and such other ponderous masses of butcher's stuff, which no one can look at without discomfort, when the first edge has been taken off the appetite. Prince Eugene expressed himself delighted with "the food and liquors!"
George Fordyce, like Radcliffe, was fond of substantial fare. For more than twenty years he dined daily at Dolly's Chop-house. The dinner he there consumed was his only meal during the four-and-twenty hours, but its bulk would have kept a boa-constrictor happy for a twelvemonth. Four o'clock was the hour at which the repast commenced, when, punctual to a minute, the Doctor seated himself at a table specially reserved for him, and adorned with a silver tankard of strong ale, a bottle of port-wine, and a measure containing a quarter of a pint of brandy. Before the dinner was first put on, he had one light dish of a broiled fowl, or a few whitings. Having leisurely devoured this plate, the doctor took one glass of brandy, and asked for his steak. The steak was always a prime one, weighing one pound and a half. When the man of science had eaten the whole of it, he took the rest of his brandy, then drank his tankard of heady ale, and, lastly, sipped down his bottle of port. Having brought his intellects, up or down, to the standard of his pupils, he rose and walked down to his house in Essex Street to give his six o'clock lecture on Chemistry.
Dr. Beauford was another of the eighteenth-century physicians who thought temperance a vice that hadn't even the recommendation of transient pleasure. A Jacobite of the most enthusiastic sort, he was not less than Freind a favourite with the aristocracy who countenanced the Stuart faction. As he was known to be very intimate with Lord Barrymore, the Doctor was summoned, in 1745, to appear before the Privy-Council, and answer the questions of the custodians of his Majesty's safety and honour.
"You know Lord Barrymore?" said one of the Lords of Council.
"Intimately—most intimately,"—was the answer.
"You are continually with him?"
"We dine together almost daily when his Lordship is in town."
"What do you talk about?"
"Eating and drinking."
"Oh, my lord, we never talk of anything except eating and drinking—drinking and eating."
A good deal of treasonable sentiment might have been exchanged in these discussions of eating and drinking. "God send this crum-well down!" was the ordinary toast of the Cavalier during the glorious Protectorate of Oliver. And long afterwards, English gentlemen of Jacobite sympathies, drinking "to the King," before they raised the glass to their lips, put it over the water-bottle, to indicate where the King was whose prosperity they pledged.
At the tavern in Finch Lane, where Beauford received the apothecaries who followed him, he drank freely, but never was known to give a glass from his bottle to one of his clients. In this respect he resembled Dr. Gaskin of Plymouth, a physician in fine practice in Devonshire at the close of the last century, who once said to a young beginner in his profession, "Young man, when you get a fee, don't give fifteen shillings of it back to your patient in beef and port-wine."
Contemporary with Beauford was Dr. Barrowby—wit, scholar, political partisan, and toper. Barrowby was the hero of an oft-told tale, recently attributed in the newspapers to Abernethy. When canvassing for a place on the staff of St. Bartholomew's Hospital, Barrowby entered the shop of one of the governors, a grocer on Snow-hill, to solicit his influence and vote. The tradesman, bursting with importance, and anticipating the pleasure of getting a very low bow from a gentleman, strutted up the shop, and, with a mixture of insolent patronage and insulting familiarity, cried, "Well, friend, and what is your business?"
Barrowby paused for a minute, cut him right through with the glance of his eye, and then said, quietly and slowly, "I want a pound of plums."
Confused and blushing, the grocer did up the plums. Barrowby put them in his pocket, and went away without asking the fellow for his vote.
A good political story is told of Barrowby, the incident of which occurred in 1749, eleven years after his translation of Astruc's "Treatise" appeared. Lord Trentham (afterwards Lord Gower) and Sir George Vandeput were contesting the election for Westminster. Barrowby, a vehement supporter of the latter, was then in attendance on the notorious Joe Weatherby, master of the "Ben Jonson's Head," in Russell Street, who lay in a perilous state, emaciated by nervous fever. Mrs. Weatherby was deeply afflicted at her husband's condition, because it rendered him unable to vote for Lord Trentham. Towards the close of the polling days the Doctor, calling one day on his patient, to his great astonishment found him up, and almost dressed by the nurse and her assistants.
"Hey-day! what's the cause of this?" exclaims Barrowby. "Why are you up without my leave?"
"Dear Doctor," says Joe, in a broken voice, "I am going to poll."
"To poll!" roars Barrowby, supposing the man to hold his wife's political opinions, "you mean going to the devil! Get to bed, man, the cold air will kill you. If you don't get into bed instantly you'll be dead before the day is out."
"I'll do as you bid me, doctor," was the reluctant answer. "But as my wife was away for the morning, I thought I could get as far as Covent Garden Church, and vote for Sir George Vandeput."
"How, Joe, for Sir George?"
"Oh, yes, sir, I don't go with my wife. I am a Sir George's man."
Barrowby was struck by a sudden change for the better in the man's appearance, and said, "Wait a minute, nurse. Don't pull off his stockings. Let me feel his pulse. Humph—a good firm stroke! You took the pills I ordered you?"
"Yes, sir, but they made me feel very ill."
"Ay, so much the better; that's what I wished. Nurse, how did he sleep?"
"Charmingly, sir."
"Well, Joe," said Barrowby, after a few seconds' consideration, "if you are bent on going to this election, your mind ought to be set at rest. It's a fine sunny day, and a ride will very likely do you good. So, bedad, I'll take you with me in my chariot."
Delighted with his doctor's urbanity, Weatherby was taken off in the carriage to Covent Garden, recorded his vote for Sir George Vandeput, was brought back in the same vehicle, and died two hours afterwards, amidst the reproaches of his wife and her friends of the Court party.
Charles the Second was so impressed with the power of the Medical Faculty in influencing the various intrigues of political parties, that he averred that Dr. Lower, Nell Gwynn's physician, did more mischief than a troop of horse. But Barrowby was prevented, by the intrusion of death, from rendering effectual service to his party. Called away from a dinner-table, where he was drinking deeply and laughing much, to see a patient, he got into his carriage, and was driven off. When the footman opened the door, on arriving at the house of sickness, he found his master dead. A fit of apoplexy had struck him down, whilst he was still a young man, and just as he was ascending to the highest rank of his profession.
John Sheldon was somewhat addicted to the pleasures of the table. On one occasion, however, he had to make a journey fasting. The son of a John Sheldon, an apothecary who carried on business in the Tottenham Court Road, a few doors from the Black Horse Yard, Sheldon conceived in early life a strong love for mechanics. At Harrow he was birched for making a boat and floating it. In after life he had a notable scheme for taking whales with poisoned harpoons; and, to test its merit, actually made a voyage to Greenland. He was moreover the first Englishman to make an ascent in a balloon. He went with Blanchard, and had taken his place in the car, when the aeronaut, seeing that his machine was too heavily weighted, begged him to get out.
"If you are my friend, you will alight. My fame, my all, depends on success," exclaimed Blanchard.
"I won't," bluntly answered Sheldon, as the balloon manifested symptoms of rising.
In a furious passion, the little air-traveller exclaimed, "Then I starve you! Point du chicken, by Gar, you shall have no chicken." So saying, he flung the hamper of provisions out of the car, and, thus lightened, the balloon went up.
Abernethy is said to have reproved an over-fed alderman for his excesses at table in the following manner. The civic footman was ordered to put a large bowl under the sideboard, and of whatever he served his master with to throw the same quantity into the bowl as he put on the gourmand's plate. After the repast was at an end, the sated feaster was requested to look into the bowl at a nauseous mess of mock turtle, turbot, roast-beef, turkey, sausages, cakes, wines, ale, fruits, cheese.
Sir Richard Jebb showed little favour to the digestion thinking it was made to be used—not nursed. Habitually more rough and harsh than Abernethy in his most surly moods, Jebb offended many of his patients. "That's my way," said he to a noble invalid, astonished at his rudeness. "Then," answered the sick man, pointing to the door, "I beg you'll make that your way."
To all questions about diet Jebb would respond tetchily or carelessly.
"Pray, Sir Richard, may I eat a muffin?" asked a lady.
"Yes, madam, 'tis the best thing you can take."
"Oh, dear! Sir Richard, I am glad of that. The other day you said it was the worst thing in the world for me."
"Good, madam, I said so last Tuesday. This isn't a Tuesday—is it?"
To another lady who asked what she might eat he said contemptuously, "Boiled turnips."
"Boiled turnips!" was the answer; "you forget, Sir Richard—I told you I could not bear boiled turnips."
"Then, madam," answered Sir Richard, sternly, as if his sense of the moral fitness of things was offended, "you must have a d——d vitiated appetite."
Sir Richard's best set of dietetic directions consisted of the following negative advice, given to an old gentleman who put the everlasting question, "What may I eat?" "My directions, sir, are simple. You must not eat the poker, shovel, or tongs, for they are hard of digestion; nor the bellows; but anything else you please."
Even to the King, Sir Richard was plain-spoken. George the Third lamented to him the restless spirit of his cousin, Dr. John Jebb, the dissenting minister. "And please your Majesty," was the answer, "if my cousin were in heaven he would be a reformer."
Dr. Babington used to tell a story of an Irish gentleman, for whom he prescribed an emetic, saying, "My dear doctor, it is of no use your giving me an emetic. I tried it twice in Dublin, and it would not stay on my stomach either time." Jebb's stomach would have gone on tranquilly, even when entertaining an emetic.
Jebb, with all his bluntness, was a mean lover of the atmosphere of the Court. His income was subject to great fluctuations, as the whims of his fashionable employers ran for or against him. Sir Edward Wilmont's receipts sank from £3000 to £300, in consequence of his having lost two ladies of quality at the Court. Jebb's revenue never varied so much as this, but the £15,000 (the greatest sum he ever made in one year) often fell off by thousands. This fact didn't tend to lessen his mortification at the loss of a great patient. When George the Third dismissed him, and took Sir George Baker in his place, he nearly died of chagrin. And when he was recalled to attend the royal family in the measles, he nearly died of delight. This ruling passion exhibited itself strongly in death. When he was on his death-bed, the Queen, by the hand of a German lady, wrote to inquire after his condition. So elated was the poor man with this act of royal benignity, that he grasped the letter, and never let go his hold of it till the breath of life quitted his attenuated body.
This chapter has been for the most part on the feasting of physicians. We'll conclude it with a few words on their fasts. In the house of a Strand grocer there used to be a scientific club, of which the principal members were—W. Heberden, M.D., J. Turton, M.D., G. Baker, M.D., Sir John Pringle, Sir William Watson, and Lord C. Cavendish who officiated as president. Each member paid sixpence per evening for the use of the grocer's dining-room. The club took in one newspaper, and the only refreshment allowed to be taken at the place of meeting was—water.
The most abstemious of eminent physicians was Sir Hans Sloane, the president of the Royal Society and of the College of Physicians, and (in a certain sense) the founder of the British Museum. A love of money made him a hater of all good things, except money and his museum. He gave up his winter soirées in Bloomsbury Square, in order to save his tea and bread and butter. At one of these scientific entertainments Handel offended the scientific knight deeply by laying a muffin on one of his books. "To be sure it was a gareless trick," said the composer, when telling the story, "bud it tid no monsdrous mischief; pode it but the old poog-vorm treadfully oud of sorts. I offered my best apologies, but the old miser would not have done with it. If it had been a biscuit, it would not have mattered; but muffin and pudder. And I said, Ah, mine Gotd, that is the rub!—it is the pudder! Now, mine worthy friend, Sir Hans Sloane, you have a nodable excuse, you may save your doast and pudder, and lay it to that unfeeling gormandizing German; and den I knows it will add something to your life by sparing your burse."
The eccentric Dr. Glyn of Cambridge, rarely dined, but used to satisfy his hunger at chance times by cutting slices off a cold joint (a constant ornament of the side-table in his study), and eating them while standing. To eat such a dinner in such an attitude would be to fare little better than the ascetic physician who used twice a week to dine off two Abernethy biscuits, consumed as he walked at the pace of four miles an hour. However wholesome they may be, the hard biscuits, known as Abernethies (but in the construction of which, by-the-by, Abernethy was no more concerned than were Wellington and Blucher in making the boots that bear their names), are not convivial cates, though one would rather have to consume them than the calomel sandwiches which Dr. Curry (popularly called Dr. Calomel Curry) used to give his patients.