A Book About Doctors

by John Cordy Jeaffreson

"Were you to milk and straw confin'd,
Thrice happy might you be;
Perhaps you might regain your mind,
And from your wit be free."

"I can't your kind prescription try,
But heartily forgive;
'Tis natural you should wish me die,
That you yourself may live."

The concluding two lines of Cheyne's answer were doubtless little to the taste of his unsuccessful opponent.

In their contentions physicians have not often had recourse to the duel. With them an appeal to arms has rarely been resorted to, but when it has been deliberately made the combatants have usually fought with decision. The few duels fought between women have for the most part been characterized by American ferocity. Madame Dunoyer mentions a case of a duel with swords between two ladies of rank, who would have killed each other had they not been separated. In a feminine duel on the Boulevard St. Antoine, mentioned by De la Colombèire, both the principals received several wounds on the face and bosom—a most important fact illustrative of the pride the fair sex take in those parts.[21] Sometimes ladies have distinguished themselves by fighting duels with men. Mademoiselle Dureux fought her lover Antinotti in an open street. The actress Maupin challenged Dumény, but he declined to give her satisfaction; so the lady stripped him of watch and snuff-box, and bore them away as trophies of victory. The same lady, on another occasion, having insulted in a ball-room a distinguished personage of her own sex, was requested by several gentlemen to quit the entertainment. She obeyed, but forthwith challenged and fought each of the meddlesome cavaliers—and killed them all! The slaughter accomplished, she returned to the ball-room, and danced in the presence of her rival. The Marquise de Nesle and the Countess Polignac, under the Regency, fought with pistols for the possession of the Duc de Richelieu. In or about the year 1827, a lady of Châteauroux, whose husband had received a slap in the face, called out the offender, and severely wounded him in a duel fought with swords. The most dramatic affair of honour, however, in the annals of female duelling occurred in the year 1828, when a young French girl challenged a garde du corps who had seduced her. At the meeting the seconds took the precaution of loading without ball, the fair principal of course being kept in ignorance of the arrangement. She fired first and saw her seducer remain unhurt. Without flinching, or changing colour, she stood watching her adversary, whilst he took a deliberate aim (in order to test her courage), and then, after a painful pause, fired into the air.

Physicians have been coupled with priests, as beings holding a position between the two sexes. In the Lancashire factories they allow women and clergymen the benefit of an entrée—because they don't understand business. Doctors and ladies could hardly be coupled together by the same consideration; but they might be put in one class out of respect to that gentleness of demeanour and suavity of voice which distinguish the members of the medical profession, in common with well-bred women.

Gentle though they be, physicians have, however, sometimes indulged in wordy wrangling, and then had recourse to more sanguinary arguments.

The duel between Dr. Williams and Dr. Bennet was one of the bloodiest in the eighteenth century. They first battered each other with pamphlets, and then exchanged blows. Matters having advanced so far, Dr. Bennet proposed that the fight should be continued in a gentlemanly style—with powder instead of fists. The challenge was declined; whereupon Dr. Bennet called on Dr. Williams, to taunt him with a charge of cowardice. No sooner had he rapped at the door, than it was opened by Williams himself, holding in his hand a pistol loaded with swan-shot, which he, without a moment's parley, discharged into his adversary's breast. Severely wounded, Bennet retired across the street to a friend's house, followed by Williams, who fired another pistol at him. Such was the demoniacal fury of Williams, that, not contented with this outrage, he drew his sword, and ran Bennet through the body. But this last blow was repaid. Bennet managed to draw his rapier, and give his ferocious adversary a home-thrust—his sword entering the breast, coming out through the shoulder-blade, and snapping short. Williams crawled back in the direction of his house, but before he could reach it fell down dead. Bennet lived only four hours. A pleasant scene for the virtuous capital of a civilized and Christian people!

The example of Dr. Bennet and Dr. Williams was not lost upon the physicians of our American cousins. In the August of 1830, a meeting took place, near Philadelphia, between Dr. Smith and Dr. Jeffries. They exchanged shots at eight paces, without inflicting any injury, when their friends interposed, and tried to arrange the difficulty; but Dr. Jeffries swore that he would not leave the ground till some one had been killed. The principals were therefore put up again. At the second exchange of shots Dr. Smith's right arm was broken, when he gallantly declared that, as he was wounded, it would be gratifying to his feelings, to be killed. Third exchange of shots, and Dr. Smith, firing with his left arm, hits his man in the thigh, causing immense loss of blood. Five minutes were occupied in bandaging the wound; when Dr. Jeffries, properly primed with brandy, requested that no further obstacles might be raised between him and satisfaction. For a fourth time the mad men were put up—at the distance of six feet. The result was fatal to both. Dr. Smith dropped dead with a ball in his heart. Dr. Jeffries was shot through the breast, and survived only a few hours. The conduct of Dr. Jeffries during those last few hours was admirable, and most delightfully in keeping with the rest of the proceeding. On seeing his antagonist prostrate, the doctor asked if he was dead. On being assured that his enemy lived no longer, he observed, "Then I die contented." He then stated that he had been a school-mate with Dr. Smith, and that, during the fifteen years throughout which they had been on terms of great intimacy and friendship, he had valued him highly as a man of science and a gentleman.

One of the latest duels in which an English physician was concerned as a principal was that fought on the 10th of May, 1833, near Exeter, between Sir John Jeffcott and Dr. Hennis. Dr. Hennis received a wound, of which he died. The affair was brought into the Criminal Court, and was for a short time a cause célèbre on the western circuit; but the memory of it has now almost entirely disappeared.

As we have already stated, duels have been rare in the medical profession. Like the ladies, physicians have, in their periods of anger, been content with speaking ill of each other. That they have not lost their power of courteous criticism and judicious abuse, any one may learn, who, for a few hours, breathes the atmosphere of their cliques. It is good to hear an allopathic physician perform his duty to society by frankly stating his opinion of the character and conduct of an eminent homœopathic practitioner. Perhaps it is better still to listen to an apostle of homœopathy, when he takes up his parable and curses the hosts of allopathy. "Sir, I tell you in confidence," observed a distinguished man of science, tapping his auditor on the shoulder, and mysteriously whispering in his ear, "I know things about that man that would make him end his days in penal servitude." The next day the auditor was closeted in the consulting-room of that man, when that man said—quite in confidence, pointing as he spoke to a strong box, and jingling a bunch of keys in his pocket—"I have papers in that box, which, properly used, would tie a certain friend of ours up by the neck."