Dr. Fuller, the first physician amongst the colonists of New England, wrote to Governor Bradford, June, 1630, saying,—
“I have been to Matapan (now Dorchester), and let some twenty of those people’s blood.”
What disease demanded, in the estimation of the good and wise doctor, this seemingly bloody visit, we are not informed.
“The Mercure de France, April, 1728, and December, 1729, gives an account of a French woman, the wife of a hussar named Gignoult, whom, under the direction of Monsieur Theveneau, Dr. Palmery bled three thousand nine hundred and four times, and that within the space of nine months. Again the bleeding was renewed, and in the course of a few years, from 1726 to the end of 1729, she had been bled twenty-six thousand two hundred and thirty times.”
No wonder our informant asks, “Did this really occur? Or was the editor of the Mercure the original Baron Munchausen?”
“Once, in the Duchy of Wurtemberg, the public executioner, after having sent a certain number of his fellow-creatures out of this troublesome world, was dignified by the title of ‘Doctor.’ Would it not be well to reverse the thing, and make such murderous physicians as Theveneau and M. Palmery rank as hangmen-extraordinary?”
A French Butcher-surgeon.
But, then, some of those French surgeons are worse than hangmen.
Dr. Mott, when once in Paris, was invited by M. —— to witness a private operation, which was simply the removal of a tumor from the neck of an elderly gentleman.
“Dr. Mott informed me,” says Dr. S. Francis, “that never in his life had he seen anybody but a butcher cut and slash as did this French surgeon. He cut the jugular vein. Dr. Mott instantly compressed it. In a moment more he severed it again. By this time, the patient being feeble, and having, by these two successive accidents, lost much blood, a portion of the tumor was cut off, the hole plugged up by lint, and the patient left.”