The superior branch of the Faculty invited in many ways the same satire. Indeed, pedantry was the prevalent fault of the manners of the eighteenth century. The physician, the divine, the lawyer, the parliament-man, the country gentleman, the author by profession—all had peculiarities of style, costume, speech, or intonation, by which they were well pleased they should be recognised. In one respect, this was well; men were proud of being what they were, and desired to be known as belonging to their respective vocations. They had no anxiety to be free from trade-marks. The barrister's smirk, the physician's unctuous smiles, the pedagogue's frown, did not originate in a mean desire to be taken for something of higher mark and esteem than they really were.
From the time when Bulleyn called him the physician's cook, down to the present, generation, the pure apothecary is found holding a very subordinate position. His business is to do unpleasant drudgery that a gentleman finds it unpleasant to perform, but which cannot be left to the hands of a nurse. The questions to be considered previous to becoming an apprentice to an apothecary, put in Chemberlaine's "Tyrocinium Medicum," well describe the state of the apothecary's pupil. "Can you bear the thoughts of being obliged to get up out of your warm bed, on a cold winter's night, or rather morning, to make up medicines which your employer, just arrived through frost and snow, prescribes for a patient taken suddenly or dangerously ill?—or, supposing that your master is not in sufficient business to keep a boy to take out medicines, can you make up your mind to think it no hardship to take them to the patient after you have made them up?" &c., &c. When such services were expected from pupils studying for admittance to the craft, of course boys with ample means, or prospects elsewhere, did not as a rule desire to become apothecaries.
Within the last fifty years changes have been affected in various departments of the medical profession, that have rendered the apothecary a feature of the past, and transferred his old functions to a new labourer. Prior to 1788, it is stated on authority there were not in all London more than half-a-dozen druggists who dispensed medicines from physicians' prescriptions. Before that time, the apothecaries—the members of the Apothecaries' Company—were almost the sole compounders and preparers of drugs. At the present time it is exceptional for an apothecary to put up prescriptions, unless he is acting as the family or ordinary medical attendant to the patient prescribed for. As a young man, indeed, he sometimes condescends to keep an open shop; but as soon as he can get on without "counter" business, he leaves the commercial part of his occupation to the druggist, as beneath his dignity. The dispensing chemists and druggists, whose shops, flashing with blue bottles (last remnant of empiric charlatanry), brighten our street corners and scare our horses at night, are the apothecaries of the last century. The apothecary himself—that is, the member of the Company—is hardly ever found as an apothecary pur et simple. He enrolls himself at "the hall" for the sake of being able to sue ungrateful patients for money due to him. But in the great majority of cases he is also a Fellow or Member of the College of Surgeons, and acts as a general practitioner; that is, he does anything and everything—prescribes and dispenses his prescriptions; is at the same time physician, surgeon, accoucheur, and dentist. Physic and surgery were divided at a very early date in theory, but in practice they were combined by eminent physicians till a comparatively recent period. And yet later the physician performed the functions of the apothecary, just as the apothecary presumed to discharge the offices of physician. It was not derogatory to the dignity of a leading physician, in the reign of Charles the Second, to keep a shop, and advertise the wares vended in it, announcing in the same manner their prices. Dr. Mead realized large sums by the sale of worthless nostrums. And only a few years since, a distinguished Cambridge physician, retaining as an octogenarian the popularity he had achieved as a young man, in one of our eastern counties, used to sell his "gout tincture"—a secret specific against gout—at so many shillings per bottle. In many respects the general practitioner of this century would consider his professional character compromised if he adopted the customs generally in vogue amongst the physicians of the last.
CHAPTER VI.
QUACKS.
"So then the subject being so variable, hath made the art by consequence more conjectural; an art being conjectural hath made so much the more place to be left for imposture. For almost all other arts and sciences are judged by acts or masterpieces, as I may term them, and not by the successes and events. The lawyer is judged by the virtue of his pleading, and not by the issue of the cause. The master of the ship is judged by the directing his course aright, and not by the fortune of the voyage. But the physician, and perhaps the politician, hath no particular acts demonstrative of his ability, but is judged most by the event; which is ever but as it is taken: for who can tell, if a patient die or recover, or if a state be preserved or ruined, whether it be art or accident? and therefore many times the impostor is prized, and the man of virtue taxed. Nay, we see the weakness and credulity of men is such, as they will often prefer a mountebank or witch before a learned physician."—Lord Bacon's "Advancement of Learning."
The history of quackery, if it were written on a scale that should include the entire number of those frauds which may be generally classed under the head of humbug, would be the history of the human race in all ages and climes. Neither the benefactors nor the enemies of mankind would escape mention; and a searching scrutiny would show that dishonesty has played as important, though not as manifest, a part in the operations of benevolence, as in the achievements of the devil. But a more confined use of the word must satisfy us on the present occasion. We are not about to enter on a philosophic inquiry into the causes that contributed to the success of Mahomet and Cromwell, but only to chronicle a few of the most humorous facts connected with the predecessors of Dr. Townsend and Mr. Morrison.
In the success that has in every century attended the rascally enterprises of pretenders to the art of medicine, is found a touching evidence of the sorrow, credulity, and ignorance of the generations that have passed, or are passing, to the silent home where the pain and joy, the simplicity and cunning, of this world are alike of insignificance. The hope that to the last lurks in the breast of the veriest wretch under heaven's canopy, whether his trials come from broken health, or an empty pocket, or wronged affection, speaks aloud in saddest tones, as one thinks of the multitudes who, worn with bodily malady and spiritual dejection, ignorant of the source of their sufferings, but thirsting for relief from them, have gone from charlatan to charlatan, giving hoarded money in exchange for charms, cramp-rings, warming-stones, elixirs, and trochees, warranted to cure every ill that flesh is heir to. The scene, from another point of view, is more droll, but scarcely less mournful. Look away for a few seconds from the throng of miserable objects who press round the empiric's stage; wipe out for a brief while the memory of their woes, and regard the style and arts of the practitioner who, with a trunk full of nostrums, bids disease to vanish, and death to retire from the scenes of his triumph. There he stands—a lean, fantastic man, voluble of tongue, empty-headed, full of loud words and menaces, prating about kings and princes who have taken him by the hand and kissed him in gratitude for his benefits showered upon them—dauntless, greedy, and so steeped in falsehood that his crazy-tainted brain half believes the lies that flow from his glib tongue. Are there no such men amongst us now—not standing on carts at the street-corners, and selling their wares to a dingy rabble, but having their seats of exchange in honoured places, and vending their prescriptions to crowds of wealthy clients?