This first step, this apprenticing, has a questionable tendency as regards the interests of the public and the profession. It exerts, also, a considerable influence on the character and disposition of the boy, which we must by and by consider. It is a mode of proceeding which, we fear, has done not a little to impede the progress of surgery as a science, and to maintain that handicraft idea of it suggested by the etymology of the word. Where one man strikes out a new path, thousands follow the beaten track. A boy, with his mind ill-prepared, having no definite ideas of the nature and objects of scientific inquiries, and almost certainly uninstructed as to the rules to be observed in conducting them—knowing neither any distinction between an art and a science—a boy thus conditioned is bound for a certain number of years! to a man of whom he knows little, and to a profession of which he knows nothing. He takes his ideas and his tone from his master; or, if these be repulsive to him, he probably adopts an opposite extreme. If the master practise his profession merely as an art, he furnishes his pupil with little more than a string of conventionalisms; of which, if the pupil has talent enough to do anything for himself, he is tolerably certain to have a great deal to unlearn.
We believe the system is in course of improvement; it is high time it was put an end to altogether. Apprenticeships might not have been an inauspicious mode of going to work in former times, when there existed barber-surgeons. This alliance of surgery and shaving, to say nothing of the numerous other qualifications with which they were sometimes associated, might conceivably enough have furnished some pretext for apprenticeships; since Dickey Gossip's definition of
"Shaving and tooth-drawing,
Bleeding, cabbaging, and sawing,"
was by no means always sufficiently comprehensive to include the multifarious accomplishments of "the doctor." I have myself seen, in a distant part of this island, within twenty-five years, chemist, druggist, surgeon, apothecary, and the significant &c. followed by the hatter, hosier, and linen-draper, in one establishment; but as we shall have to discuss this subject more fully in relation to Abernethy in another place, we may proceed.
Sir Charles Blicke had a large and lucrative practice. He had the character of taking care to be well remunerated for his services. He amassed a considerable fortune; but we incline to think that the ideas of the profession which Abernethy derived from his experience of his apprenticeship were not very favourable. The astute, business-like mode of carrying on the profession, which seems to have characterized Sir Charles Blicke's practice, could have had few charms for Abernethy. Mere money-making had never at any time much attraction for him, and, at that period of his life, probably none at all; whilst the measured pretensions of surgery to anything like a science could hardly have been, at times, otherwise than repulsive.
The tone in which he usually spoke of Sir Charles's practice did not convey a very favourable idea of the impression which it had left on him. In relating a case, he would say: "Sir Charles was at his house in the country, where he was always on the look out for patients." On another occasion, speaking of patients becoming faint under peculiar circumstances, he observed: "When I was an apprentice, my master used to say: 'Oh, Sir! you are faint; pray drink some of this water.' And what do you think was the effect of his putting cold water into a man's stomach under these circumstances? Why, of course, that it was often rejected in his face."
Sir Charles's manipulatory and operative proceedings seem, however, to have represented a tolerably adroit adoption of the prevailing modes of practice; while his medical surgery consisted chiefly of the empirical employment of such remedies as he had found most frequently successful, or, at all events, somehow or other associated with a successful issue; with the usual absence of any investigation of the cause of either success or failure. By a mind like Abernethy's, this sort of routine would be very soon acquired, and, in a short time, estimated at its real value. Still, while a clear head is all that is necessary to the reception of what may be positive and truthful, it requires a vivid perception and a cultivated understanding to detect error. Many things, however, would creep out in Abernethy's lectures, showing that, young as he was, even during his apprenticeship, he was not only a real student, but he had begun to think for himself.
He mentions a case of "Locked-jaw," that occurred as early as 1780 (the first year of his apprenticeship), which he appears to have noted with great accuracy. He mentions the medicine that was given to the man, the unusually large doses, and, lastly, the enormous quantity of it which was found in the stomach after death. It was opium, and amounted to many drachms.
We also find him engaged in inquiries involving much more extended views than were in that day generally associated with the study of surgery. He very early participated in those researches which had for their object to determine the relation of the digestive functions to one of the most recondite affections of an extremely important organ (the kidney).