"3. For the Holy Spirit of Wisdom! or celestial discipline! flees from duplicity and deceit, and from haughtiness and hardness of heart; it removes far from the thoughts that are without understanding; and will not abide when unrighteousness cometh in."
The man who was fool enough to write such stuff as this had, however, some common sense. He detected the real cause of the maladies of half those who consulted him, and he did his utmost to remove it. Like the French quack Villars, he preached up "abstinence" and "cleanliness." Of the printed "general instructions" to his patients, No. 2 runs thus:—"It will be unreasonable for Dr Graham's patients to expect a complete and lasting cure, or even great alleviation of their peculiar maladies, unless they keep their body and limbs most perfectly clean with frequent washings, breathe fresh open air day and night, be simple in the quality and moderate in the quantity of their food and drink, and totally give up using deadly poisons and weakeners of both body and soul, and the canker-worms of estates, called foreign tea and coffee, red port wine, spirituous liquors, tobacco and snuff, gaming and late hours, and all sinful and unnatural and excessive indulgence of the animal appetites, and of the diabolical and degrading mental passions. On practising the above rules, and a widely-open window day and night, and on washing with cold water, and going to bed every night by eight or nine, and rising by four or five, depends the very perfection of bodily and mental health, strength, and happiness."
Many to whom this advice was given thought that ill-health, which made them unable to enjoy anything was no worse an evil than health brought on terms that left them nothing to enjoy. During his career Graham moved his "Temple of Health" from the Adelphi to Pall-Mall. But he did not prosper in the long-run. His religious extravagances for a while brought him adherents, but when they took the form of attacking the Established Church, they brought on him an army of adversaries. He came also into humiliating collision with the Edinburgh authorities.
Perhaps the curative means employed by Graham were as justifiable and beneficial as the remedies of the celebrated doctors of Whitworth in Yorkshire, the brothers Taylor. These gentlemen were farriers, by profession, but condescended to prescribe for their own race as well, always, however, regarding the vocation of brute-doctor as superior in dignity to that of a physician. Their system of practice was a vigorous one. They made no gradual and insidious advances on disease, but opened against it a bombardment of shot and shell from all directions. They bled their patients by the gallon, and drugged them by the stone. Their druggists, Ewbank and Wallis of York, used to supply them with a ton of Glauber's salts at a time. In their dispensary scales and weights were regarded as the bugbears of ignoble minds. Every Sunday morning they bled gratis any one who liked to demand a prick from their lancets. Often a hundred poor people were seated on the surgery benches at the same time, waiting for venesection. When each of the party had found a seat the two brothers passed rapidly along the lines of bared arms, the one doctor deftly applying the ligature above the elbow, and the other immediately opening the vein, the crimson stream from which was directed to a wooden trough that ran round the apartment in which the operations were performed. The same magnificence of proportion characterized their administration of kitchen physic. If they ordered a patient broth, they directed his nurse to buy a large leg of mutton, and boil it in a copper of water down to a strong decoction, of which a quart should be administered at stated intervals.
When the little Abbé de Voisenon was ordered by his physician to drink a quart of ptisan per hour he was horrified. On his next visit the doctor asked,
"What effect has the ptisan produced?"
"Not any," answered the little Abbé.
"Have you taken it all?"
"I could not take more than half of it."
The physician was annoyed, even angry that his directions had not been carried out, and frankly said so.