In this connection, let us briefly mention such as are better known in English literature, as doctresses especially as mentioned by Mr. Jeaffreson.
Two ladies, who are immortalized in “Philosophical Transactions for 1694,” were Sarah Hastings and Mrs. French. Another, who received the support of bishops, dukes, lords, countesses, etc., in 1738-9, was Mrs. Joanna Stephens, “an ignorant and vulgar creature.” After enriching herself by her specifics, consisting of a “pill, a powder and a decoction,” she bamboozled the English Parliament into purchasing the secret, for the (then) enormous sum of £5000. “The Powder consists of eggshells and snails, both calcined.”
“The decoction is made by boiling together Alicant soap, swine’s-cresses burnt to a blackness, honey, camomile, fennel, parsley, and burdock leaves.” “The pill consists of snails, wild carrot and burdock seeds, ashen keys, hips, and haws, all burnt to a blackness; soap and honey.”
When we take into consideration the fact that there were no “medical schools for females,” at that day, nor until within the last ten or twelve years, that every female applicant was rejected by the medical colleges of England, and that all female practitioners were held in disrepute by both physician and the public, the above repulsive remedies may not so greatly excite our surprise.
“Crazy Sally.”
The most remarkable woman doctor made mention of in English literature, was Mrs. Mapp, née Sally Wallin. We have collected these facts respecting her origin, character, and career, from Chambers’ Miscellany and the Gentlemen’s Magazine, 1736-7. Hogarth has immortalized her in his “Undertaker’s arms.” She is placed at the top of that picture, between Josh Ward, the Pill doctor, and Chevalier Taylor, the quack oculist. (See page 668.)
She was born in Weltshire, in 169-. Her father was a “bone-setter,” which occupation “run in the family,” like that of the Sweets, of Connecticut, or like the marine whom Mrs. Mapp saw one day, as she, in her carriage, was driving “along the Strand, O.”
Said sailor having a wooden leg, the doctress asked, “How does it happen, fellow, that you’ve a wooden leg.”
“O, easy enough, madam; my father had one before me. It sort o’ runs in the family, marm,” was the laconic reply. From a barefooted school-girl at Weltshire, where Sally obtained barely the rudiments of a common education, she became her father’s assistant in bone-setting and manipulating.
The next we hear of Miss Wallin, is at Epsom, where she became known as “Crazy Sally.” She has been described as a “very coarse, large, vulgar, illiterate, drunken, bawling woman,” “known as a haunter of fairs, about which she loved to reel, screaming and abusive, in a state of roaring intoxication.”