The few memorials, however, that we have of the quarrels of physicians are of a kind that makes us wish we had more. Of the great battle of the apothecaries with the physicians we have already spoken in the notice of Sir Samuel Garth. To those who are ignorant of human nature it may appear incredible that a body, so lovingly united against common foes, should have warred amongst themselves. Yet such was the case. A London druggist once put up at the chief inn of a provincial capital, whither he had come in the course of his annual summer ride. The good man thought it would hurt neither his health nor his interests to give "a little supper" to the apothecaries of the town with whom he was in the habit of doing business. Under the influence of this feeling he sallied out from "The White Horse," and spent a few hours in calling on his friends—asking for orders and delivering invitations. On returning to his inn, he ordered a supper for twelve—as eleven medical gentlemen had engaged to sup with him. When the hour appointed for the repast was at hand, a knock at the door was followed by the appearance of guest A, with a smile of intense benevolence and enjoyment. Another rap—and guest B entered. A looked blank—every trace of happiness suddenly vanishing from his face. B stared at A, as much as to say, "You be ——!" A shuffled with his feet, rose, made an apology to his host for leaving the room to attend to a little matter, and disappeared. Another rap—and C made his bow of greeting. "I'll try to be back in five minutes, but if I'm not, don't wait for me," cried B, hurriedly seizing his hat and rushing from the apartment. C, a cold-blooded, phlegmatic man, sat down unconcernedly, and was a picture of sleeping contentment till the entry of D, when his hair stood on end, and he fled into the inn-yard, as if he were pursued by a hyena. E knocked and said, "How d' you do?" D sprung from his chair, and shouted, "Good-bye!" And so it went on till, on guest No. 11 joining the party—that had received so many new comers, and yet never for an instant numbered more than three—No. 10 jumped through the window, and ran down the street to the bosom of his family. The hospitable druggist and No. 11 found, on a table provided for twelve, quite as much supper as they required.
Next morning the druggist called on A for an explanation of his conduct. "Sir," was the answer, "I could not stop in the same room with such a scoundrel as B." So it went straight down the line. B had vowed never to exchange words with C. C would be shot rather than sit at the same table with such a scoundrel as D.
"You gentlemen," observed the druggist, with a smile to each, "seem to be almost as well disposed amongst yourselves as your brethren in London; only they, when they meet, don't run from each other, but draw up, square their elbows, and fight like men."
The duel between Mead and Woodward, as it is more particularly mentioned in another part of these volumes, we need here only to allude to. The contest between Cheyne and Wynter was of a less bloody character. Cheyne was a Bath physician, of great practice and yet greater popularity—dying in 1743, at the age of seventy-two. At one time of his life he was so prodigiously fat that he weighed 32 stone, he and a gentleman named Tantley being the two stoutest men in Somersetshire. One day, after dinner, the former asked the latter what he was thinking about.
"I was thinking," answered Tantley, "how it will be possible to get either you or me into the grave after we die."
Cheyne was nettled, and retorted, "Six or eight stout fellows will do the business for me, but you must be taken at twice."
Cheyne was a sensible man, and had more than one rough passage of arms with Beau Nash, when the beau was dictator of the pump-room. Nash called the doctor in and asked him to prescribe for him. The next day, when the physician called and inquired if his prescription had been followed, the beau languidly replied:—
"No, i' faith, doctor, I haven't followed it. 'Pon honour, if I had I should have broken my neck, for I threw it out of my bed-room window."
But Cheyne had wit enough to reward the inventor of the white hat for this piece of insolence. One day he and some of his learned friends were enjoying themselves over the bottle, laughing with a heartiness unseemly in philosophers, when, seeing the beau draw near, the doctor said:—
"Hush, we must be grave now, here's a fool coming our way."