But other duties such as bleeding, cupping, and drawing teeth had to be attended to in turn. Those who have seen the
“Black rotten teeth in order strung,
Rang’d cups, that in the window stood,
Lin’d with red rags to look like blood,”
will acknowledge that this was once a very important branch of industry. We have ourselves seen the tooth of some unknown animal in a collection of the kind, which, for size, would have astonished Professor Owen; the sight of it, we were told, had frightened away many a toothache. The reader has probably met with the anecdote of Queen Elizabeth, who hesitated about having a tooth drawn; when Bishop Aylmer sat down in the chair, and said to the operator, “Come, though I am an old man, and have but few teeth to spare, draw me this!” which was done; and the queen, seeing him make so slight a matter of it, sat down and had hers drawn, also.
When it was part of the popular belief that the human subject required to be bled at regular intervals to ensure good health and make the ladies fair, and when every barber-surgeon was ready “to breathe a vein,” we may be sure the lancet was in constant request. Cupping was recommended to remove a catarrh or cold in the head; and one who made trial of its virtues says, he was startled by being asked by the operator if he wished to be sacrificed; but declined being scarified on that occasion. We take it for granted there must have been uncommon stamina in the British constitution, or it would long since have broken down hopelessly under the rough handling it has undergone.
Benjamin Suddlechop, in Scott’s “Fortunes of Nigel,” has become the model barber of our popular literature; the sketch is confessedly a slight one, and, indeed, after Cervantes, Fielding, Smollett, and Le Sage—not to mention others—have given their delineations of the character, the barbers stand in need of no further help to fame. Even Suddlechop had some music in his soul; his shop in Fleet-street resounded with the tinklings of the guitar, where the lover, if so inclined, might warble “a woeful ballad to his mistress’ eyebrows,” or flay some spell-bound Marsyas with sounds by no means
“As sweet and musical
As bright Apollo’s lute, strung with his hair.”
But what shall we say to Suddlechop’s little back shop, from which he supplied his customers with strong waters. We consider this a sad blot upon his fame. Many of the barbers sold cordials and compounded English aqua-vitæ, and to them we are indebted for some of the earliest recipes for British brandy—an abominable mixture, which, like the filthy poison known as gin, has destroyed more victims than ever groaned under the lancet of the barber-surgeon. Could these worthies have foreseen what scandalous things would come of this gin drinking, how