But to come down to more recent times, in 1700 one John Pechey, living at the Angel and Crown, in Basing Lane, an Oxford graduate and member of the College of Physicians, London, advertised that all sick people might for sixpence have a faithful account of their diseases and plain directions for their cure, and that he was prepared to visit any sick person in London for 2s. 6d.; and that if he were called by any person as he passed by, he would require but one shilling for his advice. A physician who in our day advertised like this would be deprived of his diploma. In 1734 one Joshua Ward became a celebrity even among quacks by his pills, which he extensively advertised, and which were patronized by the Queen herself. There was a rhyming quack, Dr. Hill, who also wrote a farce, and wanted Garrick to produce it, till the latter published the following distich on him:
'For farces and physic his equal there scarce is,
His farces are physic, his physic a farce is.'
A Dr. Hannes, a contemporary of Dr. Radcliffe, ordered his servant to stop a number of coaches between Whitehall and the Royal Exchange, and to inquire at each whether it belonged to Dr. Hannes, as he was called to a patient. Entering Garraway's Coffee-House, the servant put the same question. Dr. Radcliffe happening to be there, he asked who wanted Dr. Hannes. The servant named several lords who all wanted him. 'No, no, friend,' said Radcliffe; 'Dr. Hannes wants the lords.'
Quacks were never more flourishing than they are now, and they always will be, for the public like mysterious remedies, and are anxious to recommend them and to force them on their friends. In nothing is a little knowledge more dangerous than in medicine; mothers and nurses especially, who have acquired some smattering of it from their conversations with doctors, may do a lot of mischief. To them are due nearly all so-called diseases of children—as if children must necessarily have diseases—a superstition which is shared by some doctors, who also encourage the reading of their books. The reading of those books has physically the same effect on the body that the reading or hearing of ghost stories has morally on the mind: the reader or hearer everywhere feels dis-ease and sees ghosts; ergo beware of medical books and goblin stories—both are unwholesome. Modern invalids are fortunate in escaping the tortures inflicted on patients in earlier days. Edmund Verney thus writes concerning his father, Sir Ralph Verney, of Claydon House, in 1686: 'He hath been blooded, vomited, blistered, cupt and scarified, and hath three physicians with him, besides apothecary and chirurgian.' And then he wonders that 'he still continues very weak.' The marvel was that he survived at all. Had not Molière a few years before the above date said: 'You must not say that a man died of such and such a disease, but of so many physicians, surgeons and apothecaries'?
The most pungent and most witty definition of the doctor's character probably is that given, I think, by Talleyrand. When Napoleon, in a fit of despondency, said that he would forsake war and turn physician, the sarcastic courtier said sotto voce: 'Toujours assassin?'
XV.
THE LOST RIVERS OF LONDON.
London is deficient in two conditions to render it picturesque: it lacks diversity of surface, and it lacks water. In so vast an expanse of ground as is covered by London, Ludgate Hill and Notting Hill are mere molehills.[#] As to water, it has the Thames, but that is accessible at short and broken intervals only. There is the Embankment from Blackfriars to Westminster; a short bit at Chelsea, and the Albert Embankment. But the City people during the day have no time to waste on their Embankment, and in the evening they are gone to the suburbs, and so this grand promenade is given up to occasional country cousins' visits, and to permanent ruffianism. For, of course, no one from the more northern parts of London ever thinks of coming so far to take a stroll on that Embankment, from which nothing is to be seen but mud-banks in the near prospect, as by a perverse arrangement of nature it is generally low water when you want to take a walk; on the opposite bank only dismal wharves present themselves. As to the Chelsea Embankment, that is patronized by the dwellers in that region only, if they do not neglect it altogether, as people generally do who live in a rather picturesque locality. The less we say about the Albert Embankment the better; its characteristics are dingy hovels and smoke-belching pottery chimneys on one side, smoke and cinders from passing steam-barges and penny steamers on the river, and a dreary outlook on the opposite side, scarcely relieved by the Tate Gallery, which, for reasons unknown to the general public, but self-evident to those who can see the wire-pulling behind, has been pitched, like a King Log, into the Pimlico swamp. All other parts of the river are inaccessible to the public, and therefore as good as non-existent for the Londoner.
[#] The highest point north is Hampstead Hill, 400 feet above sea-level; to the south Sydenham Hill, 365 feet; Primrose Hill, about 260 feet; Herne Hill, about 180 feet; Denmark, about 100 feet; Orme Square, 95 feet; Broad Walk, 90 feet; North Audley Street, 83 feet; Tottenham Court Road, 85 feet; Regent Circus, 90 feet; Cornhill, 60 feet; Charing Cross, 24 feet; Euston Road, 90 feet; Cheapside, 59 feet; Farringdon Street, 28 feet; St. Katherine's, Regent's Park, 120 feet; Camberwell Green, 19 feet.
Thus much for the Thames. As to other pieces of water to be found in public parks, they are mere ponds, and of benefit only locally. As to public fountains, which form the peculiar charm of so many Continental cities, where the melodious splash of water is heard day and night, London possesses none. True, there are two squirts in Trafalgar Square, and the Shaftesbury fountain is making asthmatic efforts to assert itself, whilst the Angel at the top seems to be shooting Folly as it flies all around him in the savoury purlieus of the Haymarket. The small drinking fountains found here and there are evidences of philanthropy, which may be grateful to children and tramps, to horses and dogs, but do not add much to the aquatic features of London. There are canals, it is true, but they are private property, and so fenced, hoarded, and walled in, as to be of no use to the public. And as a rule their water is so dirty that no one with a nose would walk by the side of them, even if allowed to do so.