The man of art then entered into a learned disquisition on pathology and the healthful practice of blood-letting. Time was evidently no object, neither the extremity of his patient. “Think not,” said he warmly, “that it suffices to bleed; any paltry barber can open a vein. The art is to know what vein to empty, and for what disease. T’other day they brought me one tormented with earache. I let him blood in the right thigh, and away flew his earache. By-the-bye, he has died since then. Another came with the toothache. I bleed him behind the ear, and relieved him in a jiffey. He is also since dead as it happens.”
After thus reciting his powers in venesection, the worthy doctor thought he could not do better than back it up with a show of knowledge, and recommenced on a new theme.
“Know, young man, that two schools of art contend at this moment throughout Europe. The Arabian, whose ancient oracles are Avicenna, Rhazes, Allricazis; and its revivers are Chauliac and Lanfranc; and the Greek school, whose modern champions are Bessarion, Platinus, and Marsilius Ficinus, but whose pristine doctors were medicine’s very oracles—Phœbus, Chiron, Æsculapius, and his sons Podalinus and Machaon, Pythagoras, Democritus; Praxagoras, who invented the arteries, and Dioctes, qui primus urinæ animum dedit. All these taught orally. Then came Hippocrates, the eighteenth from Æsculapius, and of him we have manuscripts, to him we owe ‘the vital principle’. He also invented the bandage, and tapped for water on the chest; and above all, he dissected, yet only quadrupeds, for the brutal prejudices of the pagan vulgar withheld the human body from the knife of science. Him followed Aristotle, who gave us the aorta, the largest blood-vessel in the human body.”
“Surely, sir, the Almighty gave us all that is in our bodies, and not Aristotle nor any Grecian man,” objected Gerard humbly.
“Child! of course He gave us the thing; but Aristotle did more—he gave us the name of the thing. But young men will still be talking. The next great light was Galen; he studied at Alexandria, then the home of science. He, justly malcontent with quadrupeds, dissected apes, as coming nearer to man, and bled like a Trojan. Then came Theophilus, who gave us the nerves, the lacteal vessels, and the pia mater.”
“I am put to silence, sir.”
“And that is better still, for garrulous patients are ill to cure, especially in fever. I say, then, that Eristratus gave us the cerebral nerves and the milk vessels; nay, more, he was the inventor of lithotomy, whatever you may say. Then came another whom I forget; you do somewhat perturb me with your petty exceptions. Then came Ammonius, the author of lithotrity, and here comes Hans with the basin to stay your volubility. Blow thy chafer, boy, and hand me the basin; ’tis well. Arabians, quotha! What are they but a sect of yesterday, who about the year 1000 did fall in with the writings of those very Greeks, and read them awry, having no concurrent light of their own? for their demi-god and camel-driver, Mahomed, impostor in science as in religion, had strictly forbidden them anatomy, even of the lower animals, the which he who severeth from medicine, tollit solem e mundo, as Tully quoth. Nay, wonder not at my fervour, good youth; where the general weal stands in jeopardy a little warmth is civic, humane, and honourable. Now, there is settled of late in this town a pestilent Arabist, a mere empiric, who, despising anatomy, and scarce knowing Greek from Hebrew, hath yet spirited away half my patients, and I tremble for the rest. Put forth thine ankle; and thou, Hans, breathe on the chafer.”
At the end of this tirade Gerard’s friend and fellow-traveller Denys appears on the scene, and will not hear of the bleeding being carried out. The blustering but good-tempered soldier soon comes to hot words with the old physician on the subject, and a wordy battle ensues, which ends by the doctor being offended, and decides to beat a dignified retreat. The concluding scene is too good to omit, and we will give it in the author’s own words.
“Ah! you reject my skill, you scorn my art. My revenge shall be to leave you to yourself; lost idiot, take your last look at me, and at the sun. Your blood be on your head!” And away he stamped.