Lettsom, loose-living man though he was for a member of the Society of Friends, had enough of the Quaker element in him to be very fond of controversy. He dearly loved to expose quackery, and in some cases did good service in that way. In the Medical Journal he attacked, A. D. 1806, no less a man than Brodum, the proprietor of the Nervous Cordial, avowing that that precious compound had killed thousands; and also stating that Brodum had added to the crime of wholesale murder the atrocities of having been born a Jew, of having been a shoe-black in Copenhagen, and of having at some period of his chequered career carried on an ignoble trade in oranges. Of course Brodum saw his advantage. He immediately brought an action against Phillips, the proprietor of the Medical Journal, laying his damages at £5000. The lawyers anticipated a harvest from the case, and were proceeding not only against Phillips, but various newsvendors also, when a newspaper editor stept in between Phillips and Brodum, and contrived to settle the dispute. Brodum's terms were not modest ones. He consented to withdraw his actions, if the name of the author was given up, and if the author would whitewash him in the next number of the Journal, under the same signature. Lettsom consented, paid the two attorneys' bills, amounting to £390, and wrote the required puff of Brodum and his Nervous Cordial.
One of the singular characters of Dublin, a generation ago, was John Brenan, M.D., a physician who edited the Milesian Magazine, a scurrilous publication of the satirist class, that flung dirt on every one dignified enough for the mob to take pleasure in seeing him bespattered with filth. The man certainly was a great blackguard, but was not destitute of wit. How he carried on the war with the members of his own profession the following song will show:—
"THE DUBLIN DOCTORS.
"My gentle muse, do not refuse
To sing the Dublin Doctors, O;
For they're the boys
Who make the joys
Of grave-diggers and proctors, O.
We'll take 'em in procession, O,
We'll take 'em in succession, O;
But how shall we
Say who is he
Shall lead the grand procession, O?
Least wit and greatest malice, O,
Least wit and greatest malice, O,
Shall mark the man
Who leads the van,
As they march to the gallows, O.
First come then, Doctor Big Paw, O,
Come first then, Doctor Big Paw, O;
Mrs Kilfoyle
Says you would spoil
Its shape, did you her wig paw, O.
Come next, dull Dr Labat, O,
Come next, dull Dr Labat, O;
Why is it so,
You kill the doe,
Whene'er you catch the rabbit, O?
Come, Harvey, drunken dandy, O,
Come, Harvey, drunken dandy, O;
Thee I could paint
A walking saint,
If you lov'd God like brandy, O.
Come next, Doctor Drumsnuffle, O,
Come next, Doctor Drumsnuffle, O;
Well stuffed with lead,
Your leather head
Is thick as hide of Buffaloe.