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.”