A Dying Request.—A kind physician living near Boston, wishing to smooth the last hours of a poor woman whom he was attending, asked her if there was anything he could do for her before she died. The poor soul, looking up, replied, “Doctor, I have always thought I should like to have a glass butter-dish before I died.”
XXVIII.
BLEEDERS AND BUTCHERS.
| “Three special months, September, April, May, There are in which ’tis good to ope a vein: In these three months the moon bears greatest sway; Then old or young that store of blood contain. September, April, May, have daies apiece That bleeding do forbid, and eating geese.” |
BLEEDING IN 1872.—EARLIEST BLOOD-LETTERS.—A ROYAL SURGEON.—A DRAWING JOKE.—THE PRETTY COQUETTE.—TINKERS AS BLEEDERS.—WHOLESALE BUTCHERY.—THE BARBERS OF SOUTH AMERICA.—OUR FOREFATHERS BLEED.—A FRENCH BUTCHER.—CUR?—ABERNETHY OPPOSES BLOOD-LETTING.—THE MISFORTUNES OF A BARBER-SURGEON (THREE SCENES FROM DOUGLAS JERROLD) JOB PIPPINS AND THE WAGONER; JOB AND THE HIGHWAYMEN; JOB NAKED AND JOB DRESSED.
When, in the year of our Lord 1872, a full half dozen educated physicians meet around the dying bed of a Rich man in this city to quarrel over him, and in the absence of one branch of the faction, the other assume charge of the patient, whom they bleed and leave in articulo mortis, it is not too late to take up the subject of venesection.
Podalirius is supposed to have been the first man who employed blood-letting, since whose time the lancet is said to have slain more than the sword; and, notwithstanding the many lives that have been sacrificed to this bloody absurdity, it is still practised by those who claim to have all science and wisdom for its sanction.