“‘But, sir, if you want him to come out strong, you must show him a man drunk.’
“The simple villagers of Flintbeach had a firm faith in the strengthening effect of looking at a tipsy doctor. They usually postponed their visits to Dr. Mutchkins till evening, because they then had the benefit of the learned man in his highest intellectual condition.
“‘Doorn’t go to ’im i’ the morning; he can’t doctor no ways to speak on till he’s had a glass,’ was the advice usually given to strangers not aware of the doctor’s little peculiarities.”
Dr. Butler’s Beer and Bath.
An amusing description is given of one Dr. Butler, of London, who, like the above, used to get drunk nightly. He was the inventor of a beer which bore his name, something like our Ottawa, “with a stick in it,” by one Dr. Irish. We once saw a drunken fellow holding on to a lamp post, while he held out one hand, and was arguing with an imaginary policeman that he was not drunk,—only had been taking a “little of that—hic—beverage, Dr. Waterwa’s Irish beer, by the advice of his physician.”
“ONLY IRISH BEER.”
Dr. Butler had an old female servant named Nell Boler. At ten o’clock, nightly, she used to go to the tavern where the doctor was, by that hour, too drunk to go home alone, when, after some argument and a deal of scolding from Nell for his “beastly drunkenness,” she would carry the inebriated doctor home, and put him to bed.
“Notwithstanding that Dr. Butler was fond of beer and wine for himself, he was said to approve of water for his patients. Once he occupied rooms bordering on the Thames. A gentleman afflicted by the ague came to see him. Butler tipped the wink to his assistant, who tumbled the invalid out of the window, slap into the river. We are asked to believe that the surprise actually cured the patient of his disease.”